...Beria was going down, much as Beria's predecessors did. Volkogonov is rightfully appalled by Yezhov and Yagoda, predecessors to Beria.
The most interesting part of the book is how Stalin rose to power with the willing assistance of Zinoviev and Kamanev, both of whom Stalin later had executed, in defeating Trotsky. He indicates that neither Trotsky - whose methods Stalin assumed - nor Lenin, had he lived, differed in their approach to rule by terror.
Volkogonov is of the opinion that the 1939 Pact with Hitler was really a matter of buying for time, since he had decimated the high command of the Soviet Army in the late 1930's purges.
He indicates that Stalin was initially terrified and shocked when the war came two years earlier than he expected. He argues that Stalin was quite prepared to sacrifice large tracts of land in exchange for peace with Hitler, at least in the earliest phases of the war.
Eventually Stalin recovered, and the truth is that the Soviet Union had far more to do with Hitler's defeat than either the Americans or the British. He also makes clear that Stalin had no concern whatsoever about how many of his soldiers were killed, that anyone who had been taken prisoner and then escaped or was recaptured was sent to the Gulag, and that the Soviet victory was unnecessarily costly.
There is a marvelous and quite sardonic account of how people had to "find" (that is invent) heroics from the war for Brezhnev and the now forgotten Chernenko, pretending that they were major figures.
Again, I recommend this book. It has flaws, but it widens one's perspective by quite a bit.
= new reply since forum marked as read
