Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941

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"To my mind, the most significant single scholarly contribution made to date, anywhere, to the history of Soviet power."―George F. Kennan This book forms the second volume of Tucker's biography of Stalin, the first volume of which was "Stalin as Revolutionary". The author shows that Stalin was a Bolshevik of the radical right whose revolution cast the country deep into its imperial, autocratic past. In 1929 Stalin plunged Soviet Russia into a coercive "revolution from above", a decade-long effort to amass military-industrial power for a new war. He forced 25 million peasant families into state-run collectives and transformed the Communist Party into a servile instrument. In 1939, he concluded the pact with Hitler that enabled him to grasp at Eastern Europe while Hitler made war in the West. Tucker brings a fresh analysis to these events and to the Terror of the 1930s, revealing the motives and methods of what he calls the greatest murder mystery of this century. Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Toward a New October Part One: THE SETTING Part One: THE SETTING Chapter One – The Tsardom’s Rise Chapter Two – Lenin’s Legacy Chapter Three – Stalin’s Program Part Two: THE FIRST PHASE Part Two: THE FIRST PHASE Chapter Four – Starting the Second Revolution Chapter Five – The Five-Year Plan In Four! Chapter Six – The Making of a Rural Upheaval Chapter Seven – The Cult and Its Creator Chapter Eight – Terror and Calamity: Stalin’s October Chapter Nine – Stalin’s Time of Trouble Chapter Ten – The Diplomacy of Rapprochement with Germany Chapter Eleven – The Congress of Victims Part Three: THE SECOND PHASE Part Three: THE SECOND PHASE Chapter Twelve – The Coming of the Great Purge Chapter Thirteen – Politics and Society in the Purge Era Chapter Fourteen – Stalin and Fascism Chapter Fifteen – The Forging of Autocracy I Chapter Sixteen – The Forging of Autocracy II Chapter Seventeen – The Terror Process Chapter Eighteen – Terror, Russian Nationalism, and Foreign Policy Chapter Nineteen – The Revolution of Belief Chapter Twenty – The Scripted Culture Chapter Twenty-One – Culminations, 1939-1940 Chapter Twenty-Two – The Reckoning