Stalin's Curse by Robert Gellately (2013, Knopf Publishers.)

Stalin’s Curse (Gellately, Robert, Knopf, 2013).

This  really good text about the efforts of the U.S.S.R. in Eastern Europe over the crucial decades – Great Depression and WWII – of the 20^th century does begin as many biographical texts do with a brief summation of Stalin’s young life, how he became a communist and was influenced by Lenin, and by the mid – 1920’s was positioned and then allowed control of the U.S.S.R. administration until 1953 when he died at more than seventy years of age.  Keep in mind as well, that while in many cases briefly, the Bolsheviks themselves as they rose to power only made progress by small fits and starts, and only when conditions in Russia were truly surreal were they allowed to stage their coup and take over Russia at the end of WWI.  This biographical text of Josef Stalin does not deeply examine the Russian Civil War, nor does it deeply look at the path to power the Bolsheviks took under Lenin:  It really begins with the accession to power of Stalin and the kind of revolutionary government, what was to become typical among communist regimes, he promoted as heavily dependent upon the military, and heavily doctrinaire in its practices in what concerned the carrying out of Marxist ideals that indeed included elimination of any threats to his singular power and the primacy of socialism / communism in the former Russian empire. 

Mostly, the level of analysis of this text appears to be the dissuasion of Eastern Europe away from the West, including White Russia and Ukraine at the end of WWII.  As well, the illusions of the West to transform Germany from a bitter, brutal and primitively defeated axis power into a European country again, were dispelled by machinations involving the demands of communism in reparations, primarily as stated, for Red Army losses during the war, and this not only in personnel, but in property and goods as the Wehrmacht had been as far East as the outskirts of Moscow, and perhaps further East in the Southern part of the U.S.S.R. and had done much damage to the soviets in the process before retreating.  Due to adamant demands from foreign minister Molotov and Stalin himself, Western powers were compelled to allow for the expansion of soviet influences into Eastern Europe, and into places like the Balkans, Central Europe and even places like Italy where communism was to have its moments of prominence.  Remember the Red Army was the first to capture parts of the WWII German capitol, then the British and Americans, and as occupiers placed themselves in no other position than to make demands upon the Western Powers as far as regional politics and influence were concerned.  The terror of the 1930’s and then WWII had taken a heavy toll on soviet society due to attrition among the intelligentsia, including in the soviet military, and due to the number of war dead including civilians. 

The text goes on to explain the power relationships among the great powers of the day, chiefly Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt and then including U.S. president Harry Truman after the passing of FDR.  One might remark here that post – WWII Europe had been settled at Potsdam, FRG, outside Berlin and the agenda that followed included the foreseeable increasing importance of Asia (mostly China and Japan) and the nuclear arms race.  Russia did not yet have a thermonuclear weapon and as the U.S. developed one, the soviets followed with their own about a year later.  There were additional purges in the soviet union after WWII in the 1950’s that provoked a re – affirmation of increasingly dogmatic Marxism in the country and in this way a kind of ideological contest, as at least in part documented for example in the sixteen bound volumes of Stalin’s writings, took place with PRC that led to an international party split.  Nonetheless, new communist regimes as directly sponsored by Moscow were enforced in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and important ones arose in Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.  Important and major communist influences on administrations were reified elsewhere in Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece, and a party system as set up in Europe overall continued the structure of soviet efforts in this way.  These communist regimes of the time were and should be viewed as dictatorships that were choices and deliberate efforts of the Kremlin to shape the future of Europe, and this despite the again foreseeable failures of the soviets in Yugoslavia and Germany. 

There are other important details that make this work entirely worth a critical reading and analysis by any interested reader, including some of the long – held attitudes of the Kremlin about Asia and the future of Stalinization everywhere, including obviously in places like North Korea and Southeast Asia, Cuba and Latin America.  Overall, the text has many insights and includes narratives on many levels about the life of this notorious and powerful 20^th century political figure.