[Random House Inc]
Kategoria: Książki / Literatura obcojęzyczna
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<...
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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 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 fundame
