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Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him, by Donald Rayfield
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Stalin did not act alone. The mass executions, the mock trials, the betrayals and purges, the jailings and secret torture that ravaged the Soviet Union during the three decades of Stalin’s dictatorship, were the result of a tight network of trusted henchmen (and women), spies, psychopaths, and thugs. At the top of this pyramid of terror sat five indispensable hangmen who presided over the various incarnations of Stalin’s secret police. Now, in his harrowing new book, Donald Rayfield probes the lives, the minds, the twisted careers, and the unpunished crimes of Stalin’s loyal assassins.
Founded by Feliks Dzierzynski, the Cheka–the Extraordinary Commission–came to life in the first years of the Russian Revolution. Spreading fear in a time of chaos, the Cheka proved a perfect instrument for Stalin’s ruthless consolidation of power. But brutal as it was, the Cheka under Dzierzynski was amateurish compared to the well-oiled killing machines that succeeded it. Genrikh Iagoda’s OGPU specialized in political assassination, propaganda, and the manipulation of foreign intellectuals. Later, the NKVD recruited a new generation of torturers. Starting in 1938, terror mastermind Lavrenti Beria brought violent repression to a new height of ingenuity and sadism.
As Rayfield shows, Stalin and his henchmen worked relentlessly to coerce and suborn leading Soviet intellectuals, artists, writers, lawyers, and scientists. Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Fadeev, Alexei Tolstoi, Isaak Babel, and Osip Mandelstam were all caught in Stalin’s web–courted, toyed with, betrayed, and then ruthlessly destroyed. In bringing to light the careers, personalities, relationships, and “accomplishments” of Stalin’s key henchmen and their most prominent victims, Rayfield creates a chilling drama of the intersection of political fanaticism, personal vulnerability, and blind lust for power spanning half a century.
Though Beria lost his power–and his life–after Stalin’s death in 1953, the fundamental methods of the hangmen maintained their grip into the second half of the twentieth century. Indeed, Rayfield argues, the tradition of terror, far from disappearing, has emerged with renewed vitality under Vladimir Putin. Written with grace, passion, and a dazzling command of the intricacies of Soviet politics and society, Stalin and the Hangmen is a devastating indictment of the individuals and ideology that kept Stalin in power.
From the Hardcover edition.
- Sales Rank: #767226 in Books
- Brand: Rayfield, Donald
- Published on: 2005-12-13
- Released on: 2005-12-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.50" w x 5.30" l, .90 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 592 pages
From Publishers Weekly
This investigation of Stalin and his coterie is at its best when it focuses on the latter—henchmen such as Feliks Dzierzynski, Viacheslav Molotov and Lavrenti Beria—showing that it was their "spellbound submission" that made it possible for tens of millions of Soviet citizens to be killed, while the account adds nuance to our understanding of how the brutality of the U.S.S.R. was possible. As Rayfield (Anton Chekhov), a professor of Russian and Georgian at the University of London, shows, the leaders Stalin appointed also needed no direct instructions to turn their hands to violence; Beria, for instance, who took over the secret police in 1938, was a "vindictive sadist" who combined "unscrupulousness" with "finesse." Rayfield focuses less than Moses Montefiore in his recent biography of Stalin on the personal lives of top Soviet officials, and more on their policies. When Rayfield concentrates on Stalin, however, while some of the details are new, the picture overall is familiar. By focusing on Stalin's tactics and network of violent underbosses, though, Rayfield makes an important argument: discussions of Stalin's ideology should be secondary to the brutal means he used to remain in power for 30 years. 32 pages of photos, maps, not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From the Inside Flap
Stalin did not act alone. The mass executions, the mock trials, the betrayals and purges, the jailings and secret torture that ravaged the Soviet Union during the three decades of Stalin's dictatorship, were the result of a tight network of trusted henchmen (and women), spies, psychopaths, and thugs. At the top of this pyramid of terror sat five indispensable hangmen who presided over the various incarnations of Stalin's secret police. Now, in his harrowing new book, Donald Rayfield probes the lives, the minds, the twisted careers, and the unpunished crimes of Stalin's loyal assassins.
Founded by Feliks Dzierzynski, the Cheka-the Extraordinary Commission-came to life in the first years of the Russian Revolution. Spreading fear in a time of chaos, the Cheka proved a perfect instrument for Stalin's ruthless consolidation of power. But brutal as it was, the Cheka under Dzierzynski was amateurish compared to the well-oiled killing machines that succeeded it. Genrikh Iagoda's OGPU specialized in political assassination, propaganda, and the manipulation of foreign intellectuals. Later, the NKVD recruited a new generation of torturers. Starting in 1938, terror mastermind Lavrenti Beria brought violent repression to a new height of ingenuity and sadism.
As Rayfield shows, Stalin and his henchmen worked relentlessly to coerce and suborn leading Soviet intellectuals, artists, writers, lawyers, and scientists. Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Fadeev, Alexei Tolstoi, Isaak Babel, and Osip Mandelstam were all caught in Stalin's web-courted, toyed with, betrayed, and then ruthlessly destroyed. In bringing to light the careers, personalities, relationships, and "accomplishments" of Stalin's key henchmenand their most prominent victims, Rayfield creates a chilling drama of the intersection of political fanaticism, personal vulnerability, and blind lust for power spanning half a century.
Though Beria lost his power-and his life-after Stalin's death in 1953, the fundamental methods of the hangmen maintained their grip into the second half of the twentieth century. Indeed, Rayfield argues, the tradition of terror, far from disappearing, has emerged with renewed vitality under Vladimir Putin. Written with grace, passion, and a dazzling command of the intricacies of Soviet politics and society, "Stalin and the Hangmen is a devastating indictment of the individuals and ideology that kept Stalin in power.
"From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Donald Rayfield is professor of Russian and Georgian at the University of London and the author of a number of books on Russian writers and intellectuals, including an acclaimed biography of Anton Chekhov.
From the Hardcover edition.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
did not like the
By leonard rogan
very slow reading , did not like the writing
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Stalin: The Red Satan and his unspeakably evil minions are indicted before the Bar of Human Justice and condemned to infamy
By C. M Mills
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) was Ivan the Terrible with a copy of Karl Marx in his hand. In fact, Stalin (Russian for "steel") was much worse than Ivan. Under Stalin's dictatorship the Soviet Union underwent years of murders; shootings; forced removal of millions of ethnic and other groups; persecution of a wide array of groups:
(Jews; physicians, professors, religious leaders, non-ethnic Russian citizens, artists; writers; actors; lawyers-you name it!)
Stalin seized power by ruthlessly murdering his opponents. As he emerged with total power in 1927 "Koba" (to use a nickname) ruled the Soviet Union with cruelty, stupidity and crimes so immense it takes Rayfield 500 small printed pages to describe them in searing detail!!
Lenin had established Soviet rule but it was Stalin with such loathsome cronies as Iagoda; Estov and the repulsive Lavria Beria who launched a reign of terror on the very people they governed! Millions were slaughtered by bullet, ax or starvation. In the Great Purge of 1937-1938 millions were relocated to distant lands; sent into slavery in the GULAG in the far east or murdered after a short kangaroo court proceeding.
Justice was absent from the Soviet lexicon under the evil Stalin.
Stalin trusted no person. He executed those who had worked hard to establish him in power. Most of the powerful men who were vassals of Stalin's whims died betrayed by him.
On the eve of World War II Stalin purged the Red Army of gifted generals. When Nazi Germany launched its attack against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 the Soviets were woefully unprepared. Generals were murdered: Pows returning from German captivity were executed as spies. In all over 20 million Soviet citizens would die in the war. Many of these victims died at the hands of the evil sorcerer of the Kremlin.
Donald Rayfield teaches Russian and Georgian at the University of London. His book on playwright Anton Chekhov was well received. In this book he shows us the Soviet hell on earth world of sudden death; betrayal; cruelty beyond belief; hatred; racial and ethnic hatred that boggles the mind of anyone with a claim to be a member of the human race!
Stalin and his hangmen were thugs; bullies and merciless killers of all that is decent and good in the human soul. Rayfield suggests at the end of his book that he fears democracy in the new Russia under Putin is very fragile.The ghosts of Stalin may again materialize in the Russia of the 21st century.
Anyone who lives in a Western democracy should thank God that they did not first see daylight in the Soviet Union in the black days of Stalin and his cruel cronies.
Rayfield's book is well written. Though he is a scholar the book can be
read by one who has little familiarity with the history of this sad chapter of human history (the chapter on the Katyn Forest of Polish officers is just one case among countless tales told in the book which will break your heart). Stalin killed women, children, the old and the poor, the wealthy and the smart. He was an indiscriminate murderer of all he feared in his paranoic isolatiion inside tall Kremlin walls. He also was adept at turning people against one another. Several cases are related where a husband would volunteer to murder his own wife if this was the ukase ultimatum from Stalin which would prove the man's loyalty!
As one who has read several books on Stalin I would give this book five stars. Every page has something to shock the reader. We should know what Stalin did as we honor his millions of helpless victims.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
New Perspectives On An Old Evil
By Jonathan S.
This painstakingly thorough compendium of knowledge on Stalin, the Communist movement, Bolshevik leaders and the enslaved masses is one of the best books available on its subject. Rayfield tells you all the news you already know about the Red Terror, and some you didn't- he began his research shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when many secret documents and personal possessions of Stalin's became publicly accessible. These resources allowed him to paint a more complete picture of the Stalinist government than was previously possible, untangling endless webs of intrigue.
Rayfield occasionally writes too long on insignificant subjects, but his generally focused and thorough style works. It's a bit reminiscent of "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by Shirer, and almost as masterful. Rayfield restrains himself from sensationalism throughout, then concludes with a brief and needed social critique on Russia's failure to acknowledge the criminal nature of the Cheka, the NKVD and the other deadly machinery of Russian Communism.
This is one of the best places to start reading about Stalin, and may have just enough new information to satisfy seasoned readers. I especially recommend it to those who have read books focused on Stalin himself, but haven't yet examined the hangmen who made his slaughter possible.
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