Re: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Рес&
Being a Expert in Soviet Stalinist History, I arent qualified much to comment on the Post-Stalin Years, For I am more educated in Pre-Stalin/Stalin/Early Khruschev. There is so much to say but I shall state it summarized here.
Stalin was a cruel backstabbing Heartless Dictator, His Politics were so corrupted and controlled. His power was basically in appointing the members of the central Comittee and Politburo, and then ordering them to vote for his Decisions such as The 5-Year Plan and Laws on Counter-Terror. He put His Own Henchmen in and made them order the crimes, and if they didnt he simply replaced them, for he knew he didnt want to have his signature on those death warrants, even though he personally signed still around 60,000.
Personally he was a very calm man, at parties he drank a lot and made fun of his appointees, such as one time he stuck a Pastry on Khruschevs seat and when Khruschev sat on it he laughed. He was very well read, as he annoted so many of the books in his library, which is estimated to be over 20,000 books. He apparently did not care much though for theoretics or logical thinking, such as he rarely wrote a theoretic aritlce , except once in his pre-dicator years and a few loose ones later on, and he showed his illogical thinking when he destroyed his Miltary right before declaring war.
The Stalinist Era can be viewed from two sides: Emotional and Logically, as most things can. The Emotional part is the personal stories and such by beings, as seen in the books such as "The Gulag Archipelago" By Solzhenitsyn and also by him "One day in the life of Ivan Denoizivich", "Enemies of the State; personal stories from the Gulag", and part of "Stalin and His Hangman: The Tyrant and those who killed for him", and Also the book by Former Politburo Member Yakovlev "A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia", whie the other side is the scholarly analysis and counting of the dead and political powers, by people such as Robert Conquest and RJ Rummel in their Numerous Books, and also Jim powell, even though Jim Powell only briefly Touches the Subject. One truly Non-Emotional Analysis is one by Oleg Khlevnuk, in his "History of the Gulag" which is pure analysis, no Emotion Attached at all, a amazing feat when talking about that system.
One part that personally saddens me is the Merciless Execution of the Intelligentsia and the Former Politburo and Elite Members/Theoretical Elite of Lenins Crowd or Pre-Revolution Group, such as Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Buhkarin, and others just to name a few. The Subject of Soviet History is vastly more complicated than this, but one can only fit so much in so little.