Rudý car - Stalin v čele Sovětského svazu 1924-1953 – Veber Václav (2016)

This Czech-language nonfiction book examines Stalin’s rule at the head of the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953. In Russia and perhaps throughout the world, some people on the political left still view Stalin as the architect of socialism, the victor over the Nazis and the creator of the Soviet empire. In reality, he was an extreme personal tyrant, despot or “super-dictator” whose apparent sole skill was the perfect application of a hyper-bureaucratic system of control accompanied by terror, carried out consistently and with complete success. He created no new order, Hitler’s empire was defeated by soldiers with substantial Allied assistance and at heavy losses for which he bore responsibility, and the supposedly eternal empire, though large, was uneven and no longer exists. Stalin’s communist attempt at total domination of society was “temporarily successful,” its sole purpose being a destructive and enslaving path toward world conquest. It also proved to be a masterful instrument for controlling people and making them perfectly obedient, as well as a factory for official myths, filled with cynicism toward truth. The ruling elite convincingly demonstrated that whoever holds power also possesses the truth. Totalitarianism, and not only the Bolshevik variety, is a comprehensive moral collapse affecting attackers and others, persecutors and victims alike. Stalinism and Stalin himself fulfilled the extremist plans of political adventurers, or rather criminals, who aspired to rule the world, with theft, mass repression, terrorism, poverty, the Iron Curtain and genocide among its manifestations. It was an entirely anti-democratic system, filled with militaristic propaganda, preparations for aggression, and propagandistic slogans and promises. Stalinism was not only prisons, executions, labor camps and exile, but unless these crimes are acknowledged, the full truth about Stalin can never be told.