The 1934 murder of the charismatic politician Sergei Kirov sparked Stalin's brutal purges, and speculation about it still fascinates the Russians. Who killed Kirov, and why? In Russia, conspiracy theories about Kirov have abounded, and scholars throughout the world have tackled various pieces of the story -- but definitive evidence has eluded them. Now Amy Knight has combed the recently opened Russian archives to reconstruct this fascinating crime and analyze its effect on the Russian people. The result is at once an intriguing murder mystery and a major piece of scholarship that sheds new light on the terrors of Stalin.

Drawing on hundreds of newly available, top-secret KGB and party Central Committee documents, historian Matthew E. Lenoe reexamines the 1934 assassination of Leningrad party chief Sergei Kirov. Joseph Stalin used the killing as the pretext to unleash the Great Terror that decimated the Communist elite in 1937–1938; these previously unavailable documents raise new questions about whether Stalin himself ordered the murder, a subject of speculation since 1938.The book includes translations of 125 documents from the various investigations of the Kirov murder, allowing readers to reach their own conclusions about Stalin’s involvement in the assassination.

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"The definitive work on Stalin's purges, the author's The Great Terror was universally acclaimed when it first appeared in 1968. Provides accounts of on everything form the three great 'Moscow Trials' to methods of obtaining confessions, the purge of writers and other members of the intelligentsia, on life in the labor camps, and many other key matters. On the fortieth anniversary of thew first edition, it is remarkable how many of the most disturbing conclusions have born up under the light of fresh evidence." --

“Monumental.” —The New York Times Book Review Pulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin has written the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror to the conflict with Hitler's Germany that is the signal event of modern world history In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world’s largest peasant economy into “socialist modernity,” otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost. What it cost, and what Stalin ruthlessly enacted, transformed the country and its ruler in profound and enduring ways. Building and running a dictatorship, with life and death power over hundreds of millions, made Stalin into the uncanny figure he became. Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 is the story of how a political system forged an unparalleled personality and vice versa. The wholesale collectivization of some 120 million peasants necessitated levels of coercion that were extreme even for Russia, and the resulting mass starvation elicited criticism inside the party even from those Communists committed to the eradication of capitalism. But Stalin did not flinch. By 1934, when the Soviet Union had stabilized and socialism had been implanted in the countryside, praise for his stunning anti-capitalist success came from all quarters. Stalin, however, never forgave and never forgot, with shocking consequences as he strove to consolidate the state with a brand new elite of young strivers like himself. Stalin’s obsessions drove him to execute nearly a million people, including the military leadership, diplomatic and intelligence officials, and innumerable leading lights in culture. While Stalin revived a great power, building a formidable industrialized military, the Soviet Union was effectively alone and surrounded by perceived enemies. The quest for security would bring Soviet Communism to a shocking and improbable pact with Nazi Germany. But that bargain would not unfold as envisioned. The lives of Stalin and Hitler, and the fates of their respective dictatorships, drew ever closer to collision, as the world hung in the balance. Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 is a history of the world during the build-up to its most fateful hour, from the vantage point of Stalin’s seat of power. It is a landmark achievement in the annals of historical scholarship, and in the art of biography.

This is a study of the structure of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1930s. Based upon archival and published sources, the work describes the events in the Bolshevik Party leading up to the Great Purges of 1937-1938. Professor Getty concludes that the party bureaucracy was chaotic rather than totalitarian, and that local officials had relative autonomy within a considerably fragmented political system. The Moscow leadership, of which Stalin was the most authoritarian actor, reacted to social and political processes as much as instigating them. Because of disputes, confusion, and inefficiency, they often promoted contradictory policies. Avoiding the usual concentration on Stalin's personality, the author puts forward the controversial hypothesis that the Great Purges occurred not as the end product of a careful Stalin plan, but rather as the bloody but ad hoc result of Moscow's incremental attempts to centralise political power.

Examining Stalin's reign of terror, this text argues that the Soviet people were not simply victims but also actors in the violence, criticisms and local decisions of the 1930s. It suggests that more believed in Stalin's quest to eliminate internal enemies than were frightened by it.

Between 1934 and 1941 Stalin unleashed what came to be known as the 'Great Terror' against millions of Soviet citizens. The same period also saw the 'Great Retreat', the repudiation of many of the aspirations of the Russian Revolution. The response of ordinary Russians to the extraordinary events of this time has been obscure. Sarah Davies's study uses NKVD and party reports, letters and other evidence to show that, despite propaganda and repression, dissonant public opinion was not extinguished. The people continued to criticise Stalin and the Soviet regime, and complain about particular policies. The book examines many themes, including attitudes towards social and economic policy, the terror, and the leader cult, shedding light on a hugely important part of Russia's social, political, and cultural history.

On September 5, 1945, cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko severed ties with the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, reporting to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police allegations of extensive Soviet espionage in North America, providing stolen documents detailing Soviet intelligence matters to back his claims. This action sent shockwaves through Washington, London, Moscow, and Ottawa, changing the course of the twentieth century. Using recently declassified FBI and Canadian RCMP files on the Gouzenko case, author and Cold War scholar Amy Knight sheds new light on the FBI's efforts to incriminate Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White in order to discredit the Truman Administration. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover seized upon Gouzenko's defection as a means through which to demonize the Soviets, distorting statements made by Gouzenko to stir up "spy fever" in the U.S., setting the McCarthy era into motion. Through the FBI files and interviews with several key players, Knight delves into Gouzenko's reasons for defecting and brilliantly connects these events to the strained relations between the Soviet Union and the West, marking the beginning of the Cold War.

BLOOD LIES: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands Is False." PLUS: What Really Happened in: the Famine of 1932-33; the "Polish Operation"; the "Great Terror"; the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; the "Soviet invasion of Poland"; the "Katyn Massacre"; the Warsaw Uprising; and "Stalin's Anti-Semitism" (ISBN: 978-0-692-20099-5) by Grover Furr "Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder" (N.Y: Basic Books, 2010) is by far the most successful attempt to date to equate Stalin with Hitler, the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. It has received dozens of rave reviews, prizes for historiography; and has been translated into 25 languages. Snyder's main target is Joseph Stalin. His broader claim is that the Soviets killed 6 to 9 million innocent civilians while the Nazis were killing about 14 million. Snyder finds parallels between Soviet and Nazi crimes at every turn. Grover Furr methodically checked every single footnote to anything that could be construed as a crime by Stalin, the USSR, or pro-Soviet communists. Snyder's main sources are in Polish and Ukrainian, in hard-to-find books and articles. Many sources are reprinted in Blood Lies in their original languages - Polish, Ukrainian, German, Russian - always with English translations. Furr has found that every single "crime" Snyder alleges is false - a fabrication. Often Snyder's sources do not say what he claims. Often Snyder cites anticommunist Polish and Ukrainian secondary sources that do the lying for him. Not a single accusation holds up. Blood Lies exposes the lies and falsehoods behind Soviet history of the Stalin period with the same meticulous attention to detail as Furr's 2011 work "Khrushchev Lied," and his 2013 book "The Murder of Sergei Kirov."