Annals of Communism

"What did the early rulers of the Soviet Union - Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Dzerzhinsky, among others - truly think and feel about each other? Piggy Foxy and the Sword of Revolution provides a window into the soul of Bolshevism, the Bolshevik leaders, and the meaning of the revolution that no other set of materials has ever offered: the top leaders' cartoons, caricatures, and portraits of each other. Sketching on notebook pages, official letterheads, and the margins of draft documents, prominent Soviet leaders in the 1920s and 1930s amused and attacked their colleagues with drawings of one another. Nearly 200 of these informal sketches, only recently uncovered in secret Soviet files, are reproduced here. Funny, original, spontaneous, sometimes vicious or grotesque, the drawings and their accompanying notes reveal the relationships and mindsets of the Bolshevik bosses at the time of Stalin's rise to power with a blazing immediacy." "The album's editors select characteristic drawings by such prominent leaders as Nikolai Bukharin, who depicts himself as "piggy foxy," Valery Mezhlauk, and Stalin himself, whose trademark blue pencil appears in several of the drawings. A number of sketches of unknown authorship are also included. The editors identify the political issues, events, and discussions that inspired the drawings, and they provide biographical information about the people who drew and were drawn. The book opens a rare window on Stalin's inner circle, allowing us access to the powerful men who, despite living in a grim epoch, developed a special humor of their own."--BOOK JACKET

Collects the writings of a diverse group of people who survived imprisonment in the Gulag, recounting their experiences and relationships, and offering insight into the psychological aspects of life in the camps.

"Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989), a brilliant physicist and the principal designer of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, later became a human rights activist and - as a result - a source of profound irritation to the Kremlin. This book publishes for the first time ever KGB files on Sakharov that became available during Boris Yeltsin's presidency. The documents reveal the untold story of KGB surveillance of Sakharov from 1968 until his death in 1989 and of the regime's efforts to intimidate and silence him. The disturbing archival materials show the KGB to have had a profound lack of understanding of the spiritual and moral nature of the human rights movement and of Sakharov's role as one of its leading figures."--BOOK JACKET

Was Lenin a visionary whose ideals were subverted by his followers? Or was he a cynical misanthrope, even crueler than Stalin? This book, which contains newly released documents from the Lenin archive in Russia, lays bare Lenin the man and the politician, leaving little doubt that he was a ruthless and manipulative leader who used terror, subversion, and persecution to achieve his goals. Edited and introduced by the eminent scholar Richard Pipes, the documents date from 1886 through the end of Lenin's life. They reveal, among other things, that Lenin's purpose in invading Poland in 1920 was not merely to sovietize that country but to use it as a springboard for the invasion of Germany and England; Lenin took money from the Germans (here we have the first incontrovertible evidence for this); in 1919 Lenin issued instructions to the Communist authorities in the Ukraine not to accept Jews in the Soviet government of that republic; as late as 1922 Lenin believed in the imminence of social revolution in the West, and he planned subversion in Finland, Turkey, Lithuania, and other countries; Lenin had little regard for Trotsky's judgment on important matters and relied heavily on Stalin; Lenin assiduously tracked dissident intellectuals and urged repressive action or deportation; and Lenin launched a political offensive against the Orthodox Church, ordering that priests who resisted seizure of church property be shot - "the more the better."

Spain Betrayed provides full documentation of the Soviets' activities during the Spanish Civil War. Documents in the book reveal that the Soviet Union not only swindled the Spanish Republic out of millions of dollars through arms deals but also sought to take over and run the Spanish economy, government, and armed forces in order to make Spain a Soviet possession, thereby effectively destroying the foundations of authentic Spanish antifascism. The documents also shed light on many other disputed episodes of the war: the timing of the Republican request for assistance from the Soviet Union; the rise and fall of the International Brigades; the internal workings of the Comintern and its influence on Spain; and much more.

"The last Tsaritsa of Russia, Alexandra Fyodorovna, was murdered with her family on the night of 16-17 July 1918 by agents acting on behalf of the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The dramatic story of the demise of the Romanov dynasty has been recounted many times and has captivated the imagination of generations of readers throughout the world." "The recently declassified 1918 diary of Alexandra - published here for the first time in its entirety - provides something no other account could do: a glimpse of the Tsaritsa's thoughts and activities from 1 January 1918 until the night of her death. As the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Alexandra wrote in English, though her native language was German and she became fluent in Russian after her marriage to Nicholas. The 1918 diary takes us into her private world, revealing the care she lavished on her children during this period of revolutionary turmoil, how she felt toward her husband, Tsar Nicholas, and what she imagined about the profound struggle - between past and present, old and new worlds, the sacred and the profane - then occurring over the destiny of Russia. The diary reveals that even in her most intimate reflections, she remained the representative of a great system of belief that had prevailed for hundreds of years in Russia and that she and Nicholas hoped to perpetuate. We see in painful detail the tragic daily confrontation between this system of belief and the reality of the modern world that had, in every sense, broken free of her and Nicholas's control."--BOOK JACKET.

"Georgi Dimitrov (1882-1949) was a high-ranking Bulgarian and Soviet official, one of the most prominent leaders of the international Communist movement and a trusted member of Stalin's inner circle. Accused by the Nazis of setting the Reichstag fire in 1933, he successfully defended himself at the Leipzig Trial and thereby became an international symbol of resistance to Nazism. Stalin appointed him head of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1935, and he held this position until the Comintern's dissolution in 1943. After the end of the Second World War, Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria and became its first Communist premier." "During the years between 1933 and his death in 1949, Dimitrov kept a diary that described his tumultuous career and revealed much about the inner working of the international Communist organizations, the opinions and actions of the Soviet leadership, and the Soviet Union's role in shaping the postwar Eastern Europe. This important document, edited and introduced by historian Ivo Banac, is now available for the first time in English. It is an essential source for information about international Communism, Stalin and Soviet policy, and the origins of the Cold War."--Jacket.