Word: stalins
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...book it superficially resembles, but only superficially) CHILD 44 By Tom Rob Smith A serial killer is loose in 1953 Russia, but the state won't even admit that he exists How do you catch a killer in a world run by the biggest serial killer of them all--Stalin? Anything by Alan Furst, Martin Cruz Smith (who wrote Gorky Park) or John le Carré. Or Dostoyevsky
...remnants of the event—like a sign with Stalin warning partygoers not to smoke lest they be sent to Siberia—were still scattered around the Co-op recently...
...iconic Reichstag photo, however, was anything but a candid shot: It was stage-crafted from beginning to end. Khaldei, in fact, had been at his Tass headquarters in Moscow when Soviet forces captured Hitler's capital. The photographer had received orders from on high - possibly from Stalin himself, it was murmured - to rush there and produce a picture symbolizing the Soviet victory. The Red Army flag in the picture was brought to Berlin in Khaldei's luggage, and before settling on the Reichstag as his location, he first checked out Tempelhof Airport and the Brandenburg Gate. A Soviet combat team...
...Colton has written a fine biography of Russia's first postcommunist President. He has done his homework, going to the Urals, for example, to talk to individuals who knew Yeltsin in his poverty-stricken childhood. One finding: a grandfather of Yeltsin's was persecuted as a rich peasant when Stalin imposed agricultural collectivization. Colton also spoke to acquaintances from Yeltsin's period as Communist Party boss in Sverdlovsk. He justifiably concludes that Yeltsin was already a rambunctious politician before Gorbachev promoted him to head the Moscow City Party in 1985. Yeltsin was like a bull in a china shop...
Lucas details a 1984-style "History According to the Kremlin" now being taught in classrooms, according to which Josef Stalin, the greatest mass murderer in history, was a patriot who did what had to be done to defeat fascism. And he also examines the Kremlin's repeated use of its ample energy resources to threaten its Western-oriented neighbors. Most troubling is what Lucas calls "pipeline politics" - Moscow's plans to build the Nord Stream gas pipeline from the Shtokman Field in the Barents Sea to the German city of Greifswald; and its attempts to derail Western plans to install...