The Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra (Annals of Communism Series)

Book Description

The last Tsaritsa of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna, was murdered with her family on the night of 16-17 July 1918 by agents acting on behalf of the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The recently declassified 1918 diary of Alexandra-published here for the first time in its entirety-provides something no other account could do: a glimpse of the Tsaritsa`s thoughts and activities from 1 January 1918 until the night of her death. The introduction by Robert Massie places Alexandra in the historical context of the Revolution, her marriage to Nicholas, and the tragic events that encompassed her, her family, and her nation.

Customer Reviews:

what i think.......2002-06-20

Alix's diary is a most important document,
it reveals her , but in a very different way to say
how her letters do.in her diary, it is of chief importance
to note the things she leaves out, and how laconic the
text itself is.this tells as much about her at the time
than had she written pages about her feelings and experiences.
This is an extremely important book, the last page is
agonising - the "ex-Tsarina" has written in a fine and clear
hand "July 17th" - but the page is blank. We have to read
what Alexandra didnt write - between the lines.her last
diary reveals her final states of mind, her humaness, her fear,
in those last terrible words, in the entry for July 16th.
Alix has written her own memorial here, and it is a just tribute.

Final Record Invaluable to Romanov Enthusiasts.......2000-01-26

It is ironic that, being the most private of persons, many of the last Tsarinia's most intimate thoughts are now available in several books, including this recently declassified diary of her final days. However, readers who search out this book are probably sympathetic, and will find her daily entries of interest and sometimes moving. Alexandra wasn't writing a best-selling novel -- simply a daily account of the tedium of their imprisonment, and how she, her family, and attendants passed the time -- but for those interested in Alix, her husband, and children, this book is a valuable link to their final days. The introduction, essay by Jonathan Brent, and other sections are all appropriate accompaniment. It will be interesting to see if excerpts from the children's diaries also are eventually published; several books compiled and edited by Russian archivists already have quoted from some of those diaries.

If you are interested in the last tsar and his family, I invite you to contact me at whitcombj@juno.com.

Fascinating but only for the true fanatic.......1999-07-04

As many reviewers have said, the very monotony of Aleksandra's last diary gives it an eerie significance. However, beyond that, there is little to recommend it. Entries, spaced one to a page, mostly consist of a single brief paragraph, and the content is boring-- notes on the weather, her health, the health of her children. "Sat for 10. m[inutes] on the balkony [sic]." It is a very short book, and a very quick read. Only for the true Romanov fanatic (of which I am one), I'm afraid. Aleksandra's letters and the letters & diaries of the others who shared her captivity are far more interesting.

Chilling monotony.......1998-01-07

Tsaritsa Alexandra had no idea, of course, that this was her last diary or that anyone besides herself would ever read it. Since we know the ultimate fate of this unhappy woman the banality and monotony of the last few months of her life have an unintentional sense of tragedy. How sad, for example, that she took the time to note the birthdays of various royal connections, people she would never see again and who in some cases (such as George V of England) had abandoned her and her family to their fate. A brief but compulsive read

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Geology for the non geologist
This book is a gem, and may help you find some...
Excellent Resource for the layperson.
Yes, Geology Is Interesting!
Got Geology

Annals of the Former World
John McPhee
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Assembling California

ASIN: 0374518734

Amazon.com

In 1978 New Yorker magazine staff writer John McPhee set out making notes for an ambitious project: a geological history of North America, centered, for the sake of convenience, on the 40th parallel, a history that encompasses billions of years. In 1981 he published the first of the four books that would come from his research: Basin and Range, a study of the mountainous lands between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas. Two years later came In Suspect Terrain, a grand overview of the Appalachian mountain system. In 1986 McPhee released Rising from the Plains, a history of the Rocky Mountains set largely in Wyoming. And in 1993 came Assembling California, a survey of the area geologists find to be a laboratory of volcanic and tectonic processes, a place where geology can be watched in the making. Annals of the Former World gathers these four volumes, which McPhee always conceived of as a whole, to make that epic of the Earth's formation; to it he adds a fifth book, Crossing the Craton, which introduces the continent's ancient core, underlying what is now Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska.

McPhee's great virtue as a journalist covering the sciences--and any other of the countless subjects he has taken on, for that matter--is his ability to distill and explain complex matters: here, for example, the processes of mineral deposition or of plate tectonics. He does so by allowing geologists to speak for themselves and an entertaining lot they are, those sometimes odd men and women who puzzle out the landscape for clues to its most ancient past. Annals of the Former World is a magisterial work of popular science for which geologists--and devotees of good writing--will be grateful. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

The Pulitzer Prize-winning view of the continent, across the fortieth parallel and down through 4.6 billion years

Twenty years ago, when John McPhee began his journeys back and forth across the United States, he planned to describe a cross section of North America at about the fortieth parallel and, in the process, come to an understanding not only of the science but of the style of the geologists he traveled with. The structure of the book never changed, but its breadth caused him to complete it in stages, under the overall title Annals of the Former World.

Like the terrain it covers, Annals of the Former World tells a multilayered tale, and the reader may choose one of many paths through it. As clearly and succinctly written as it is profoundly informed, this is our finest popular survey of geology and a masterpiece of modern nonfiction.

Customer Reviews:

Geology for the non geologist.......2007-05-08

John McPhee makes non fiction more exciting than fiction. Maybe you have to be looking for brilliant writing, over the top descriptions, in depth understanding and revelatory prose that lifts the curtains of ignorance we all have about the world around us. I first read Assemblying California and then found this volume with his four other companion books on geology in them. Since finishing this book, I am lost and lonely without it. Wow, what a writer.

This book is a gem, and may help you find some..........2007-03-29

Geology as a page turner! My copy of this book is now so dog eared it looks like a dust brush. I don't know how to praise the writing and this book enough. It will not only make your journeys more enjoyable
* By, say, noting how Pt. Reyes is actually a chunk of the Sierra mountains that moved north from the area right about where you go over that huge pass on I5 heading out of the central valley going towards LA.

But this book will give you insights into how and where things formed
* For example oil is generally former wetlands, often river deltas leading to the ocean that collected all the organics, especially algae and trapped them in the stagnant ponds near the delta outlets over a few million years. Sink them in earth, cook *just right* and the oil migrates to the sand that once formed the berms at the river ocean outlets.

The book will give you a feel for the vast scope of time
* For example, "lakes" don't really exist except as fleeting dynamic piffles, like eddies in a river. Lakes fill in fast and so only exist right after glaciers retreat or where earth movements are pulling things apart . Rivers themselves come and go like summer rain showers. But they often act as concentrators of the metals we seek.

At the same time you get a view of science in action
* It chronicles the slow rise of plate tectonics and shows how science really works as contradiction, new data and ideas slowly topple old paradigms even as the data gathered for those old paradigms becomes fodder for the new ... and are not themselves always wrong, at least locally.

I could go on and on. All this and more is written in a book that is more of a page turner than most novels I read. A simply stunning job for a normally glacial subject.

It does have some downside.
No pictures and almost no maps (look right before the index to see what maps there are and mark them with book tags -- helps a lot). McPhee is a great writer, but not being able to actually see and place some of this stuff is very disappointing and often grating. I recommend reading with Google earth booted up and handy -- I wish someone would put together a photo and/or map and or Google geo-location concordance for this book.

Even so -- this is one of those books that becomes a treasured friend over time.

Excellent Resource for the layperson........2007-01-15

Though this book is not perfect, it helped me to understand a subject that I have interest in but find difficult to grasp, namely "geology."
McPhee's prosaic writing style sure helped.

Now, the book is long and is a difficult read. But,seriously, how can one write with any depth about geology and it not be somewhat difficult for an average layperson like me to understand?

I often found myself amazed at the age of the Earth and how evidence can be found for its age in some of the strangest and mundane places. I credit McPhee and his style of writing for helping me to "wonder at it all" instead of falling to sleep after 20 pages.

Excellent book.

Yes, Geology Is Interesting! .......2006-10-15

Brought together in one volume are four McPhee works that collectively span the continent. By reworking books written years apart, John McPhee weaves a seamless narrative of rocks and the personalities who interpret them. Begun only a few years after the plate tectonics revolution, McPhee includes the opinions of some who are unimpressed by the evidence, notably Anita Harris. There is plenty of scrambling up roadcuts with rock hammers, and time spent under the stars with geological legend David Love whose radical theories about where to find new sources of uranium proved correct. Each of the five sections covers a different type of terrain, and biographs a different geologist, creating both personal and regional histories, and frequently relating them to aspects of geology that span the planet. Of the four original works, "Assembling California" contains the most exotic and technical geology of the book, but McPhee does it all without diagrams, so capable is his descriptive power. "Annals of the Former World" is capped by a new essay "Crossing the Craton" that serves to further unify the work. All of the major components of geology are handled in the book, hot spots, paleogeography, glaciation, environmentalism, and countless others, so that Annals serves as an excellent primer for an entire discipline, and is as interesting to an enthusiast as it would be to a professional.

Got Geology.......2006-06-15

I never did care much about geology before I read this book. I bought it because it was on my Pulitzer non-fiction list. It is however is such a great read, a third of the way through I was already an amateur geologist looking for structure in rocks everywhere.
With his engaging style the author turns Tectonic Plate Theory into a captivating tale. From Manhattan to Niagara, every landscape has a story to tell and this book helps you hear that story.
Author also provides a new viewpoint in the conflict between environmentalism and consumerism that we constantly face, and helps put into perspective the fleeting presence and short-lived effects of humans on this planet.

The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (Annals of Communism Series)

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Factual and thorough

The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (Annals of Communism Series)
Oleg Khlevniuk
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Gulag
The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements
The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years
Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941
The War Against the Peasantry, 1927-1930: The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside, Volume one (Annals of Communism Series)

ASIN: 0300092849

Book Description

The human cost of the Gulag, the Soviet labor camp system in which millions of people were imprisoned between 1920 and 1956, was staggering. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and others after him have written movingly about the Gulag, yet never has there been a thorough historical study of this unique and tragic episode in Soviet history. This groundbreaking book presents the first comprehensive, historically accurate account of the camp system. Russian historian Oleg Khlevniuk has mined the contents of extensive archives, including long-suppressed state and Communist Party documents, to uncover the secrets of the Gulag and how it became a central component of Soviet ideology and social policy.

Khlevniuk argues persuasively that the Stalinist penal camps created in the 1930s were essentially different from previous camps. He shows that political motivations and paranoia about potential enemies contributed no more to the expansion of the Gulag than the economic incentive of slave labor did. And he offers powerful evidence that the Great Terror was planned centrally and targeted against particular categories of the population. Khlevniuk makes a signal contribution to Soviet history with this exceptionally informed and balanced view of the Gulag.

Customer Reviews:

Factual and thorough.......2006-04-12

Oleg Khlevniuk's Russian archive work on researching the true extent of the destruction of humans under Stalin is by far the best work in the field. By painstakingly analyzing secret reports, top secret letters between Commissars, censuses, official data, the Chrushchov era KGB research, etc. he is capable of giving an authoritative and absolutely fair analysis of exactly what went on in the GULAG system in particular and Stalinism as a whole, how many people were affected and how, and what this means for the accuracy of the 'popular view' of Stalin's crimes.

Contrary to Conquest, Malia, Montefiore etc. etc. he presents the facts and the documents as they are and lets them speak for themselves, instead of going on and on about the moral/sentimental issues without any thorough factual backing, as almost all such popular writers on the USSR do. Certainly no fan of Stalin either, he manages to present the simple facts in such a clear and well-evidenced way that he does justice to all involved. An impressive achievement considering the political meaning of the subject.

Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Annals of Communism)

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Powerful, definitive account of Soviet anti-semitism
Important documentation of Soviet horror under Stalin

Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Annals of Communism)
Laura E. Wolfson
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300084862

Book Description

In the spring and summer of 1952, fifteen Soviet Jews, including five prominent Yiddish writers and poets, were secretly tried and convicted; multiple executions soon followed in the basement of Moscow's Lubyanka prison. The defendants were falsely charged with treason and espionage because of their involvement in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and because of their heartfelt response as Jews to Nazi atrocities on occupied Soviet territory. Stalin had created the committee to rally support for the Soviet Union during World War II, but he then disbanded it after the war as his paranoia mounted about Soviet Jews.

For many years, a host of myths surrounded the case against the committee. Now this book, which presents an abridged version of the long-suppressed transcript of the trial, reveals the Kremlin's machinery of destruction. Joshua Rubenstein provides annotations about the players and events surrounding the case. In a long introduction, drawing on newly released documents in Moscow archives and on interviews with relatives of the defendants in Israel, Russia, and the United States, Rubenstein also sets the trial in historical and political context and offers a vivid account of Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign.

Customer Reviews:

Powerful, definitive account of Soviet anti-semitism.......2004-03-15

Mr. Rubenstein has done an outstanding job as a researcher and writer in giving us this gripping record of Stalin's purge in 1950-52 of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. The JAC had been active during WWII in organizing international aid to the besieged Soviets. Despite their vigorous efforts in the struggle against the Nazis, some of the most respected Russian Jewish poets, writers, and cultural figures associated with the JAC were eventually imprisoned on blatantly fabricated charges of espionage, then executed in 1952. Using recently-opened soviet files, he and Mr. Vladimir Naumov have carefully and authoritatively documented this sordid chapter in recent Soviet history.

Important documentation of Soviet horror under Stalin.......2003-11-15

This book documents just one of the horrors of the Soviet regime. While Stalin murdered millions of innocent people who were unlucky enough to have been citizens under his rule, this book tells of the way this evil regime turned on fifteen people whose crime was being Jewish and wanting to examine the Nazi atrocities in the portions of the USSR they occupied.

It is a particularly poignant telling because the authors provide us with excerpts from the transcripts of the trial so you hear the victims and their accusers in their own words. These people were destroyed by the system they tried to serve and help largely because Stalin decided to use the Jews and the fear of paranoid Zionist conspiracies as the Nazis had done.

This is a very valuable book and I am glad it is in print. As part of the Annals of Communism series it provides important and permanent testimony of the criminality of the USSR that had been lied about and hidden for too long.

Book Description

This gripping book assembles and translates into English for the first time top secret Soviet documents from 1932 to 1939, the era of Stalin`s purges. The nearly 200 documents-dossiers, police reports, private letters, secret transcripts, and more-expose the hidden inner workings of the Communist Party and the dark inhumanity of the purge process.

Customer Reviews:

A Paper Trail Of Arbitrary Terror And Murder!.......2006-12-19

This review refers to the hardcover edition of the book. I have always been one of those who prefer primary source material, as opposed to second hand material. Not that the latter is without merit, however, with the primary documents one gets a better look into history. And without a doubt the history of Soviet Russia under Stalin was truly a road to terror. The books material has been culled and translated from primary source documents from the archives of the former Soviet regime. These documents were preserved at three major archives in Moscow, and provide invaluable primary source material for those wishing to delve into the mindset of the criminals whose actions against the Russian people are there for all to see.

The purges by Stalin in the 1930s have been well documented, however, these latest documents add further to those whose research into Stalin's crimes, also implicate many of his cronies, who without their support, Stalin would not have been able to carry out his heinous crimes. The documents in the book are also accompanied by commentary by the authors. I remember talking with Dr. Arch Getty many years ago at UCLA, and was fascinated when he discussed how he had always been more interested in those in lower positions of power who carry out the crimes of their leaders, than by those that are in positions of power. For without the willing executioners, those in power cannot carry out their twisted and appalling crimes.

Dr. Getty's discussion was very enlightening. [As were his seminars and lectures]. The fact that the terror was not planned in the begining, but consisted of haphazard steps until Stalin took charge in 1937, leading to his crushing of ALL resistance in the Communist Party is a very fascinating look into Stalin's reign of terror. And as one of the other reviewers noted, until a diary is discovered with Stalin's own reasons for his actions, we will never know fully why Stalin did what he did. However, these docuements are insightful into the terror of the purges which took place under Stalin in the 1930s, and in a sense act as a sort of diary. The book is highly recommended as a supplement to your history library.

be careful.......2005-09-05

before buy it, use amazon.com look inside at In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage - John Earl Haynes; Hardcover

Brilliant.......2003-03-12

Dr Getty's study of the Terror is among the most groundbreaking and insightful of the last decade. I believe it is the best book on the Terror yet written. What began as a moderate attempt to clean up the Party in 1933 through controled means turned into violent chaos in mid-1937. The Yezhov years are covered deeply with a great reliance on archives avalible. For the first time the documents themselves can be viewed by the reader. Getty clearly defines the periods of the Terror according to their severity. In 1933 people were purged from the Party but it only ment dismissal and a chance for readdmition. In 1936 things began to get bloody but it was still controled by the elites. The explosion of 1937 with the liquidation of top Soviet Marshals signaled the coming of a full blown bloodbath. This period lasted from the last half of 1937 to the first half of 1938. This was largely directed by the NKVD under Yezhov but Getty stresses Yezhov was ordered by Stalin and the Politburo to conduct arrest and executions of party elites in both the Center and provinces along with mass shootings of social marginals. The Terror was horrible yet more conservative numbers of deaths are given. Elites were the primary victims. Getty's statistics appear to be correct. Millions were not executed but social trama of the Terror was horrid. This work shreds Robert Conquest to pieces...

Bolshevik Crimes Exposed.......2000-07-19

Unlike other mass murderers, the Bolsheviks left a paper trail detailing their horrific criminal deeds. Naturally, dictator Josef Stalin is prominently cited in the formerly top secret transcripts of the Soviet's Central Committee. Others, however, like his nomenklatura henchmen; Lazar Kaganovich, a Jew and rabid Christian hater; Vyacheslav Molotov; Lavrenti Beria; and Genrikh Yagoda, were just as complicit as him. The historian, H. R. Trevor-Roper put it well, "Great massacres may be commanded by tyrants, but they are imposed by people." The authors conservatively estimate that "1.5 million" Communist Party members were killed during the "Great Terror" purges of the 1930s. The majority were shot to death, others died in the GULAG camps, originally established by the fanatical Bolshevik thug, Vladimir I. Lenin. This riveting story opens by telling the sad tale of one Alexander Yulevich Tivel. It is typical of what happened to many of Marxism's true believers. A hack propagandist for Pravda, Tivel was shot as an "enemy of the people" on March 7, 1937, in Moscow, after a perfunctory trial. He was also a Zionist, who had made the fatal mistake of knowing Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek. Like Tivel, they were all Jews, who were suspected by the Kremlin elite of plotting with its arch rival, the exiled zealot, Lew Davinovich Bronstein, a/k/a Leon Trotsky. The Tivel drama didn't end there. His wife was sent to Siberia and she wasn't freed until 1953. Their young son was placed in an orphanage for being a "member of the family of a traitor of the Motherland." In this book, too, surprisedly, you will find the modern seeds of the dubious "Hate Crime" concept, championed by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). Stalin, in a rant about the putative enemies of his Communist hell hole, is quoted in October, 1937, as saying, "Anyone who by his actions and thoughts-yes, his thoughts-encroaches on the unity of the socialist state, we will destroy them and their kin." I'm sure Schumer, a pompous windbag, will deny the alien-based connection to his legislative scheme. This is an authoritative book that exposes the unspeakable crimes of Stalin's Bolshevik gang against its own party faithful. It should be a sobering lesson to anyone who tends to believe in extremist solutions.

William Hughes, J.D. Baltimore, MD. (Published in the journal of the Social Justice Review, July-August, 2000 issue.)

Gives an exceptionally valuable insight into Stalin's purges.......2000-07-11

This book is tremendously useful because it gives a hitherto unknown insight into exactly how Stalin and his closest cronies set in motion the purges of the 1930s. The heart of the book consists of around 200 secret Communist Party documents interspersed with commentary from the authors. The archival material suggests very strongly that the path to the terror was not planned meticulously from the start but consisted of a series of false starts and zigzags until Stalin decided in 1937 to crush all resistance to the party's rule. Of particular interest are a couple of documents which show how many members of the inner Politburo demanded stricter punishments for alleged wrong-doers than Stalin did himself. Barring the discovery of Stalin's diary many of the dictator's motives will remain unknown forever but the documents in this book do paint a largely convincing portrait of an unpopular regime in Moscow lurching from crisis to crisis, trying both to stablise the internal situation and also to eliminate the possibility of serious internal resistance. What does come through very clearly is how arbitrary the terror was and how many of those charged with repressing alleged foreign spies and saboteurs were almost guaranteed to be shot themselves. First the Politburo lashed out at the secret police for not doing enough to stamp out centres of Trotskyite resistance and then issued orders demanding the execution and arrest of millions of people across the country. Later the secret police came under fire for allegedly indulging in indiscriminate terror and repressing too many people. I can understand the point of the Kirkus Reviews contributor who doubted the authors' explanation that the Politburo pushed ahead with the purges because they were indeed convinced enemies lay behind every corner and a coup was always possible. A sense of self-preservation and the need to show Stalin they were onside surely did partly explain their enthusiasm for spilling blood. But this is a minor quibble about an otherwise excellent book.

The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution (Annals of Communism Series)

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A Very Good Book
Lacking Actual Causes of the Fall of the Dynasty
An incredible work
HORRID READ!
A huge disappointment.

The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution (Annals of Communism Series)
Mark D. Steinberg , and Vladimir M. Khrustalev
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Romanovs: the Final Chapter
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Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra

ASIN: 0300070675

Book Description

The compelling and poignant story of the arrest, captivity, and execution of the last tsar of Russia and his family during the revolution of 1917-1918 has been recounted-and romanticized-for decades. Now a new book explores the full range of events and reveals the thoughts, perceptions, and judgments of the individuals involved-Nicholas and Alexandra, their children, and the men who guarded and eventually killed them.

Customer Reviews:

A Very Good Book.......2006-05-02

This is one of the better books concerning the final days of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. A "must" for anyone who collects books on the Romanovs.

Lacking Actual Causes of the Fall of the Dynasty.......2006-02-26

I suppose most who read this are looking for information about the Ramanovs...however, I was writing an essay about Rasputin's influence on the last Russian dynastic family and its fall, and the authors fail to mention much of his affects on their decisions--only briefly are Alexandra's ideas, changed with the encounter of Rasputin, looked at. Thus, the authors don't seem to look for all substantial reasons of the fall of the Ramanovs, and the piece is not as worth while as it could have been.

An incredible work.......2004-01-08

It is difficult to express the debt of gratitude that it owed to the authors of this book. For all too long an America scholar should have cast a critical eye on the Soviet files regarding the story the Soviet regime wanted the world to believe. A healthy dose of realism and - if you read between the lines - skepticism was echoed in the writing and analysis. Steinberg scrutunized his findings with a view to the historical record he would leave behind.

He has accomplished a much needed task for those of us who value scholarship not sensationalism. And the effort is a much needed addition to any Romanov library. My edition has so many dog-earred pages and has been so used that the spine is lovingly weakened from use.

I shall buy another.

HORRID READ!.......2002-02-01

This book is absolutely horrible. The photos are mislabeled (Olga and Maria as Alexandra?!) and there's nothing new and interesting. I don't think it deserves even one star.

A huge disappointment........2001-09-08

This book is a good example of why the average American knows nothing or next to nothing about the forty to fifty million people who were murdered by the Soviet regime. A book about the last tsar and his family should be the perfect opportunity to familiarize the general reader with the basic facts about the Soviet terror. After all, the murder of Nicholas II, his wife, five children, their family doctor and three servants, was but an opening salvo in the mass terror perpetrated against the general population by the Communist regime under both Lenin and Stalin. But you would never guess that, reading this book. While the author Mark Steinberg dwells with excrutiating detail on the personal and political failings of Nicholas and Alexandra, which contributed to the downfall of their dynasty, he neglects to put their murders into any larger historical context. Everything ends in 1918. In fact, in 1918 the terror was just beginning, and it would make the murders in Ekaterinburg look like a mere dress rehearsal (which, in a sense, they were).

Steinberg has much to say about the public's tendency to "romanticize" the Romanovs, but he doesn't offer any new insights into the underlying reasons for our continuing fascination with the family. Nevertheless, by publishing this book he himself profited from that fascination. Books about the Romanovs were extremely popular when this particular one came out. Perhaps the rush to publish and cash in on popular demand explains the overall poor quality of the translation of key documents (which unfortunately do not retain the flavor of the original Russian), as well as the many factual errors in this book. In the photograph section alone, there are three glaring mistakes: two of Nicholas' daughters, Olga and Marie, are misidentified as Alexandra in two separate photographs (is it really that hard to distinguish between teenaged girls and their middle-aged mother?); in yet another photograph, all of the imperial children are misidentified with the sole exception of the only boy, Alexey. Furthermore, it is simply not true that most of the documents in this book had not been published previously in the West. Most of them had already appeared in other books, and in better translations, too.

Steinberg's so-called "objectivity" really amounts to no more than moral relativism and superficial historical analysis. People who want to read an in-depth, objective, and thoughtful account of the Russian Revolution should read Orlando Figes' excellent history, A People's Tragedy; people who want an in-depth account of the murders and the events leading up to them should read Robert K. Massie's The Romanovs: The Final Chapter or Edward Radzinsky's admittedly very subjective biography of Nicholas II (where, in fact, most of the documents pertaining to the murders were originally published). Personal accounts of the family are available in dozens of contemporary memoirs. Sergei Mironenko's Nicholas and Alexandra: A Lifelong Passion, is a far more inclusive collection of excerpts from the family's personal letters and diaries (including the children's); the translations are very well done and the book as a whole is quite simply excellent.

Unfortunately, a large amount of historical material from Russian archives still awaits translation into English. For example, there are several accounts of the murders by perpetrators and other firsthand witnesses which have been published in Russia but which, for whatever reason, Steinberg chose not to include here.

Finally, I would suggest that one of the reasons some of us "romanticize" (remember?) the last Romanovs is that they have come to symbolize the millions of (mainly anonymous) victims of the Soviet regime. Of the eleven people murdered in the Ipatiev House by the Bolsheviks on the night of July 16-17, 1918, only two, Nicholas and Alexandra, had ever held any political power. The remaining nine people were all, by any definition, complete innocents: four girls (Olga, 22 years old; Tatiana, 21; Marie, 19; Anastasia, 17); their brother, Alexey, not yet 14 years old; the family physician, Eugene Botkin; the cook Kharitonov, the valet Trupp, and the maid Anna Demidova. There is a symbolic power in remembering these victims, for persons of both sexes and of every age, class, and profession would be murdered by the Soviet state in the next forty years. Interestingly, Steinberg doesn't provide us with any photographs of the murdered servants. Apparently, he's as much of a romantic snob as the rest of us.

Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents (Annals of Communism Series)
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Chilling dig into the archives reveals the horrors of Soviet life

Stalinism as it really was

Heeding the past

Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents (Annals of Communism Series)

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Stalin's Letters to Molotov: 1925-1936 (Annals of Communism Series)

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Dimitrov and Stalin, 1934-1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives (Annals of Communism Series)

In the Shadow of Revolution

ASIN: 0300084803

Book Description

In this unique book, we hear the poignant voices of those who experienced firsthand the 1930s in the Soviet Union. The book's 157 documents, selected from newly opened Soviet archives, include primarily letters from ordinary citizens to authorities but also various official reports and correspondence. The documents illuminate in new ways the complex social roots of Stalinism and the texture of daily life during a highly traumatic decade."Maybe some people are shy about writing, but I will write the real truth. . . . Is it really possible that people at the newspaper haven't heard this. . . that we don't want to be on the kolkhoz [collective farm], we work and work, and there's nothing to eat. Really, how can we live?"-A farmer's letter, 1936, from Stalinism as a Way of Life. Annals of Communism series

Customer Reviews:

Chilling dig into the archives reveals the horrors of Soviet life.......2007-07-07

Thanks to careful digging through some of the many archives in Moscow, Siegelbaum and Sokolov have produced a minor masterpiece. They selected 157 documents (many of them letters, but some secret reports) showing the devastation wrought on the lives of Soviet citizens during the 1930s. Reading through these often heartbreaking pleas, denunciations and complaints gives you an idea of the damage done to people by Stalin's decisions to rip apart the agricultural system, focus blindly on industrialisation while purging millions of allegedly unreliable elements.

As the authors say: "In reading the documents, one cannot help but be astonished at how skilfully the country's leadership created hardships and problems for its citizens, only to solve them with considerably less success." Tens of millions starved while others walked around in bare feet or attended wretched schools because all elements of society were in total chaos. What also comes through clearly is that the quickest thinkers usually did best, for they had the foresight to loudly pledge allegiance to the Communist system while the majority of the population struggled to work out what was happening.

And if you take the documents here at face value, those Communist bosses were often total incompetents, more keen to curry favour with Moscow and steal what they could for family and friends rather than doing their jobs. When you finish this remarkly depressing work you do wonder quite how anything ever got done in the Soviet Union and you also marvel at how much potential the country squandered.

Stalinism as it really was.......2001-11-15

Stalinism as a Way of Life is collection of first hand accounts of the people who actually lived in Stalin's Russia. This book is wonderful if you are interested in the everyday life of the Russian people. Warning, if you get sick of everyone complaining because they have no shoes then this book is not for you. If you are more interested in the political aspects of the politburo then Getty's Road to Terror is better for you.

Heeding the past.......2001-05-19

Siegelbaum has performed a valuable historical service by compiling these letters. Americans, and perhaps other Westerners, would do well to pay heed to what man wrought in that era, and its implications for our politically correct society of today. The outpourings of the hearts of Soviet citizens who were led to believe they were building the society of the future will, at times, make you want to cry. The responses from some of the Soviet leaders to their pleas make the blood run cold.

Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (Annals of Communism Series)

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valuable documents on Communist role in Spain
RIPS AWAY THE ROTTING SCAB OF STALINISM
Important documentary evidence of Stalin's criminality
A poor work
The bitter taste of Soviet bureaucracy

Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (Annals of Communism Series)

Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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The Spanish Civil War, The Soviet Union, and Communism
The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and Political Background of the Spanish Civil War (Canto)
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ASIN: 0300089813

Book Description

The Spanish Civil War has long been the stuff of legend. Thousands of brave young men from all over the Western world, most of them organized by their local Communist parties, rushed to Spain to support the democratic Republic against right- wing forces led by rebellious generals in the Spanish officer corps. Although the Republic was eventually defeated, some observers believed that the effort to defend it was a selfless undertaking of the international Communist movement and the Soviet Union—a noble crusade against Hitler, Mussolini, and their Spanish puppet Franco.

This book presents a very different view of the role of the Soviet Union in this war. Based on previously unavailable Moscow archives, it provides the first full documentation of that country's duplicitous and self-serving activities. Documents in the book reveal that the Soviet Union not only swindled the Spanish Republic out of millions of dollars through arms deals but also sought to take over and run the Spanish economy, government, and armed forces in order to make Spain a Soviet possession, thereby effectively destroying the foundations of authentic Spanish antifascism. The documents also shed light on many other disputed episodes of the war: the timing of the Republican request for assistance from the Soviet Union; the rise and fall of the International Brigades; the internal workings of the Comintern and its influence on Spain; and much more.

Authoritative and startling in the new information it offers, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in Soviet foreign policy or the Spanish Civil War.

Customer Reviews:

valuable documents on Communist role in Spain.......2005-02-05

Don't let Ron Radosh's move to the political right discredit the
value of this book from a leftwing point of view. The documents
are of value in themselves. To over-simplify a bit, there were
really three sides to the Spanish Civil War. It wasn't just
a civil war but a working class revolution. Spain in the '30s
had a vast revolutionary labor movement. The industrialists,
land-owning oligarchy, Church leaders and generals backed a
violent "final solution" aiming at the extermination of this
movement. But the Communists had very little support within the
Spanish working class. The main social force was an anarchist-
inspired union movement, together with socialist unions
mostly outside the control of the Communist Party.
An interesting aspect of this book are the documents that
give the assessment of the non-Communist left from
the point of view of Stalin's agents. From the point of view of
the workers who built the first labor militias to fight the
fascist army, the war was a class war, a revolutionary war.
Radosh's book shows clearly that the Communists aimed to create
a one-party totalitarian state in Spain, if Franco had been
defeated. To do this they had to crush the authentic Spanish
working class left. It's strategy was to use the leverage it got
from the Soviet Union's arms shipments to Spain to first create
a conventional hierarchical army to replace the initial labor
militias and then eventually capture control of the state by
gaining control of the army officer corps. The documents in this
book, from the Soviet archives, provide evidence to support this
hypothesis.

RIPS AWAY THE ROTTING SCAB OF STALINISM.......2005-01-15

Ron Radosh, whose own uncle, Irving Keith died in fighting the Fascists in Spain, has written a gripping, if ponderous, terrifying if also mundane account of the Stalinist grip on the Republic of Spain.

In a series of documents, culled from the former Soviet archives, Radosh spins a thoroughly believeable tale of cunning, avarice, deceit and betrayal not only of the Spanish Republic, but of the thousands of idealistic young men - the vast majority of them Communists - who flocked to Spain believing that MOTHER RUSSIA was the great white hope of stopping Hitlerism in its tracks. And thousands died, never knowing of the deals that pockmarked scum toady was making with Herr Hitler.

Radosh also presents the documents of those International Brigade men who went to Spain fighting for Democracy and Revolution, and when they found out that the revolution and fight against Fascism had been betrayed, they themselves were arrested and many shot. Close to a dozen Americans were shot by the GPU, some on charges of desertion, others like Albert Wallach, Vernon Selby, Marvin Stern and Harry Perchik on political grounds. Even non-Communist Lincoln Brigaders like one-time commander Philip Detro, a self-described Roosevelt Democrat, may have been terminated by a Party that was little tolerant of dissent.

One of the foremost documents Radosh features is one written by "M. Fred" M. Fred was Manfred Stern or Emil Kleber the vaunted General Emilio Kleber who saved Madrid during the November 1936 siege. Kleber writes a critical document, encompassing almost 75 pages, justifying his role in the International Brigades and acknowledging mistakes. What Kleber was really writing here was a plea for his life, because Stalin had already begun the purges of International Brigade commanders (1938) when this document was written.

And little did Kleber know - he was to perish shortly after returning to Moscow - that Stalin had already made up his mind that no matter how many victories the International Brigades would win, the Republic was doomed and just a pawn, a toy to be played with Herr Hitler.

Many, like Bill Herrick in his excellent "Jumping the Line" would learn the bitter truth early on. Others, like Harry Fisher, would parrot the Party Line till the day he died protesting the just war against the Stalin of the Middle East, Saddam Hussein.

This is a five star book that only received four stars because I wish that Radosh would write more of the Lincolns and his uncle. Their idealism, and in many cases a sincere fight against Hitlerism and to support the democratic republic of Spain - instead of the cynical betrayal of it by Joe Stalin.

Important documentary evidence of Stalin's criminality.......2003-11-15

This is another wonderful volume in the very important Annals of Communism series published by Yale University Press. I can't praise this series enough for the service they have provided us in every one of these volumes.

This book provides, in English translation, 81 important documents of the true Soviet actions in its participation in the Spanish Civil War. Historians will have to make the final judgments and assessments of this material. But I am glad to have the myth of the idealistic Soviet exposed for the lie it always was.

Just as an example of what we learn, we now understand Stalin's desire and success at basically stealing the $50,000,000 Spain had in gold reserves. by shipping Spain outdated and non-functioning military junk as arms. We also know that the French, in effect, supported the Nazi's by interdicting other Soviet arms shipments to the Republic.

There is much more valuable information between the covers of this wonderful book. It reads shorter than its five-hundred plus pages because the documents can be read quickly and the commentary on them is completely fascinating.

A poor work.......2003-09-29

This work contains many false statements, poor use of evidence, and just plain incompetence. Far from showing Soviet "betrayal," these 81 documents make the Comintern, the International Brigades, and the massive Soviet aid to Spain appear in an extremely positive light. Reading the documents alone, and ignoring Radosh's "commentary," any objective person will come away with tremendous respect for the communist effort in the Spanish Civil War, not only by the Comintern and the justly famed International Brigades, but of the Soviet Union -- or, as Radosh says it, in his crude demonizing synecdoche, of "Moscow" and "Stalin."

I've written a longer review of this book at

http://eserver.org/clogic/2002/furr.html

In short, the documents are of great interest, but Radosh's commentary is incompetent and dishonest.

The bitter taste of Soviet bureaucracy.......2002-08-06

The facts speak for themselves. But in this case the casual student of history might nod off during the lecture. The numerous translated documents lose their novelty appeal rather quickly. I recommend it only to the hardcore SCW scholar who can use it for citing references or teaching college courses. It really is a huge, valuable piece of the puzzle. However I would not take it as total vindication for the Republic's detractors: the Popular Front had some support from the Comintern, but it is a slippery-slope fallacy to claim that its decline into Stalinism was therefore inevitable. Its decline was greatly helped along by the war, a condition that always tends to centralize authority and rationalize police-state tactics, and by European & American isolationism. France also elected a Popular Front coalition which, like Spain's, had all the left factions from moderate liberal to communist. Despite the fragmentation of this multiparty system, France managed not to have a civil war over it, and was not undermined by Stalinism. Conspiracies can only do so much; if you look at the documents, the Soviets in Spain had their hands full dealing with the chaos. One could just as easily argue that quick intervention by France, the UK & USA could've saved the Republic from Stalin AND Franco. FDR later admitted to US Ambassador Bowers that he had been right on this point all along.

Dimitrov and Stalin, 1934-1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives (Annals of Communism Series)

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Dimitrov and Stalin, 1934-1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives (Annals of Communism Series)

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The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949
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The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (Annals of Communism Series)

ASIN: 0300080212

Book Description

This collection of over fifty top-secret letters are drawn from classified Soviet archives only recently opened to scholars. The letters offer unique insight into Soviet foreign policy and Stalin's attitudes and intentions during the Great Terror of the 1930's and the years leading up to the Second World War. They confirm the dependence of Comintern on the Kremlin and Stalin's role in shaping it. They also shed light on the confusion about policies toward foreign Communist parties and the effect this had on the history of the twentieth century.

The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-36 (Annals of Communism Series)

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Useful book on how the Soviet working class built socialism

The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-36 (Annals of Communism Series)

Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300093675

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Useful book on how the Soviet working class built socialism.......2004-09-30

This is an interesting compilation of letters between Joseph Stalin and Lazar Kaganovich. In the 1930s, Kaganovich was Stalin's deputy on party matters, a secretary of the Central Committee, secretary of the Moscow Regional Party Committee, and Stalin's deputy in the Defence Commission. Despite the intentions of the anti-Soviet editors, we can learn much about how the Soviet working class governed the Soviet Union.

During these years, the Soviet working class collectivised agriculture, industrialised the country and hugely expanded the health and education services. The first Five-Year Plan (1928-33) successfully laid the foundations of a heavy industry able to re-equip the national economy. This reconstruction doubled industrial output between 1929 and 1933, while the capitalist world was mired in slump. The Soviet working class built a workers' state in the teeth of hostile encirclement by the capitalist states, and of sharpening class struggle in the country and in the party.

The Soviet Union also, alone, aided the Spanish Republic's heroic struggle against the Hitler-Mussolini invasion. Stalin urged that the Soviet Union sell oil, grain and food to the Republic `on the most favourable terms for them'.

The book shows how the capitalist class used splits in the Bolshevik party, supporting oppositions `left' or `right' to try to defeat socialism and restore capitalism. The party continually struggled to defeat the kulaks (the rural capitalist class) and the Opposition.

The Opposition assisted the Soviet Union's enemies abroad and adopted a strategy of terrorism: Trotsky wrote, "Inside the Party, Stalin has put himself above all criticism and the State. It is impossible to displace him except by assassination. Every oppositionist becomes ipso facto a terrorist."

In 1936, the Soviet Union responded by trying members of the Anti-Soviet United Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centre for their terrorist activities, including the assassination of Sergei Kirov, a member of the Politburo. This focused and open response is surely a better way to fight terrorism than the Bush/Blair method of holding terrorist suspects forever without charge or trial.

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