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A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understandingof Stalin and his worldIt has the quality of myth a poor cobblers son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian empire, reinvents himself as a top leader in a band of revolutionary zealots. When the band seizes control of the country in the aftermath of total world war, the former seminarian ruthlessly dominates the new regime until he stands as absolute ruler of a vast and terrible state apparatus, with dominion over Eurasia. While still building his power base within the Bolshevik dictatorship, he embarks upon the greatest gamble of his political life and the largest program of social reengineering ever attempted the collectivization of all agriculture and industry across one sixth of the earth.



About the Author

Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Mark Kotkin (born February 17, 1959) is an American historian, academic and author. He is currently a professor in history and international affairs at Princeton University and a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.Kotkin's most recent book is his first of three planned volumes, which discuss the life and times of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin: Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 (2014) .Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Taylordw (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) ], via Wikimedia Commons.



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