Geoffrey Roberts

A compelling intellectual biography of Stalin told through his personal library In this engaging life of the twentieth century's most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin's tumultuous life and politics. Stalin, an avid reader from an early age, amassed a surprisingly diverse personal collection of thousands of books, many of which he marked and annotated revealing his intimate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Based on his wide-ranging research in Russian archives, Roberts tells the story of the creation, fragmentation, and resurrection of Stalin's personal library. As a true believer in communist ideology, Stalin was a fanatical idealist who hated his enemies--the bourgeoisie, kulaks, capitalists, imperialists, reactionaries, counter-revolutionaries, traitors--but detested their ideas even more.

A Dictator and His Books

Stalin's Library

The orthodox view of Vyacheslav Molotov is that he was no more than Stalin’s faithful servant, a dogmatic communist, and a conservative hard-liner of little or no imagination.Molotov was, indeed, Stalin’s right-hand man; from the 1920s to the early 1950s the two men presided over a brutal, authoritarian communist system that resulted in the deaths of millions of people. But there was far more to their partnership. In this engaging biography, Geoffrey Roberts proposes a radical reappraisal of Molotov’s life and career. He argues that although Molotov, as Soviet foreign minister since 1939, was certainly Stalin’s cold warrior, he personally preferred détente and peaceful coexistence with the West. The differences and tensions between Molotov and Stalin came to a head in 1949, when Molotov’s wife was arrested and imprisoned because of her involvement with the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Molotov was removed as foreign minister but was reappointed to the post after the dictator’s death in 1953. In 1957 Molotov was ousted from the leadership following his attempted coup against Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor as the leader of the Soviet Communist Party. After Stalin’s death, Molotov revived his efforts to curtail the Cold War and campaigned for the establishment of a pan-European system of collective security that would halt the polarization of the continent into competing military-political blocs. While Molotov’s attempt to negotiate an end of the Cold War were stymied by Soviet and Western hard-liners, his campaign for European collective security paved the way to détente in the 1960s and 1970s and the abolition of the Cold War in the 1980s and 1990s.

Stalin's Cold Warrior

Molotov

A compelling intellectual biography of Stalin told through his personal library In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin’s tumultuous life and politics. Stalin, an avid reader from an early age, amassed a surprisingly diverse personal collection of thousands of books, many of which he marked and annotated revealing his intimate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Based on his wide-ranging research in Russian archives, Roberts tells the story of the creation, fragmentation, and resurrection of Stalin’s personal library. As a true believer in communist ideology, Stalin was a fanatical idealist who hated his enemies—the bourgeoisie, kulaks, capitalists, imperialists, reactionaries, counter-revolutionaries, traitors—but detested their ideas even more.

A Dictator and his Books

Stalin's Pact with Hitler

The Unholy Alliance

Are historians story-tellers? Is it possible to tell true stories about the past? These are just two of the questions raised in this comprehensive collection of texts about philosophy, theory and methodology of writing history.

The History and Narrative Reader

A major profile of the Soviet general credited with a decisive role in key World War II victories compares his legend with his achievements while surveying his eventful post-war experiences as Krushchev's disgraced defense minister. 15,000 first printing.

The Life of Georgy Zhukov

Stalin's General

A comprehensive, accessible, and authoritative account of the party systems of modern Germany, this book covers the period from 1945 to the present.

Party Politics in the New Germany

Victory at Stalingrad tells the gripping strategic and military story of that battle. The hard-won Soviet victory prevented Hitler from waging the Second World War for another ten years and set the Germans on the road to defeat. The Soviet victory also prevented the Nazis from completing the Final Solution, the wholesale destruction of European Jewry, which began with Hitler’s "War of Annihilation" against the Soviets on the Eastern Front. Geoffrey Roberts places the conflict in the context of the clash between two mighty powers:their world views and their leaders. He presents a great human drama, highlighting the contribution made by political and military leaders on both sides. He shows that the real story of the battle was the Soviets’ failure to achieve their greatest ambition: to deliver an immediate, war-winning knockout blow to the Germans. This provocative reassessment presents new evidence and challenges the myths and legends that surround both the battle and the key personalities who led and planned it.

The Battle That Changed History

Victory at Stalingrad

Historians have heatedly debated the Soviet role in the origins of the Second World War for more than 50 years. At the centre of these controversies stands the question of Soviet relations with Nazi Germany and the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939. Drawing on a wealth of new material from the Soviet Archives, this detailed and original study analyses Moscow's response to the rise of Hitler, explains the origins of the Nazi-Soviet pact, and charts the road to Operation Barbarossa and the disaster of the surprise German attack on the USSR in June 1941.

Russo-German Relations and the Road to War, 1933–1941

The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War

Marshal Georgy Zhukov is one of military history’s legendary names. He played a decisive role in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk that brought down the Nazi regime. He was the first of the Allied generals to enter Berlin and it was he who took the German surrender.He led the huge victory parade in Red Square, riding a white horse, and in doing so, dangerously provoking Stalin’s envy. His post-war career was equally eventful – Zhukov found himself sacked and banished twice, and wrongfully accused of disloyalty. However, he remains one of the most decorated officers in the history of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Since his death in 1974, Zhukov has increasingly been seen as the indispensable military leader of the Second World War, surpassing Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery and MacArthur in his military brilliance and ferocity. Making use of hundreds of documents from Russian military archives, as well as unpublished versions of Zhukov’s memoirs, Geoffrey Roberts fashions a remarkably intimate portrait of a man whose personality was as fascinating as it was contradictory. Tough, decisive, strong-willed and brutal as a soldier, in his private life he was charming and gentle. Zhukov’s relations with Stalin’s other generals were often prickly and fraught with rivalry, but he was the only one among them to stand up to the Soviet dictator. Piercing the hyperbole of the Zhukov personality cult, Roberts debunks many of the myths that have sprung up around Zhukov’s life, to deliver fresh insights into the marshal’s relations with Stalin, Khrushchev and Eisenhower. A highly regarded historian of Soviet Russia, Roberts has fashioned the definitive biography of this seminal 20th-century figure.

A comprehensive overview of the structures and influences of politics in Germany, which covers both historical and recent events

Third edition

German politics today

At Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin and in virtually all the principal battles on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, Georgy Zhukov played a major role. He was Stalin's pre-eminent general throughout the conflict, and in his autobiography he chronicled his brilliant career as he saw it and wanted it to be seen.His memoirs are fascinating reading because they portray in first-hand detail, through the entire course of the war, thethinking and decision-making at the highest level of the Soviet command. They are one of the indispensable sources for studying the struggle in the east, and they give the reader an intriguing insight into Zhukov the man as well as Zhukov the commander.This new edition of the memoirs, which were first published in heavily censored form in Russian in 1969, features a newintroduction by Professor Geoffrey Roberts who summarizes important additional material that was omitted from previous editions. He also provides, in an appendix, a translation of Zhukov's account of the 1953-7 period as well as an interview with Zhukov that has previously not been available in English.Zhukov's autobiography is an essential text for readers who are keen to deepen their understanding of how Stalin and his generals conducted the war on the Eastern Front.

The Autobiography of General Georgy Zhukov

Marshal of Victory

This breakthrough book provides a detailed reconstruction of Stalin’s leadership from the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 to his death in 1953. Making use of a wealth of new material from Russian archives, Geoffrey Roberts challenges a long list of standard perceptions of Stalin: his qualities as a leader; his relationships with his own generals and with other great world leaders; his foreign policy; and his role in instigating the Cold War. While frankly exploring the full extent of Stalin’s brutalities and their impact on the Soviet people, Roberts also uncovers evidence leading to the stunning conclusion that Stalin was both the greatest military leader of the twentieth century and a remarkable politician who sought to avoid the Cold War and establish a long-term detente with the capitalist world. By means of an integrated military, political, and diplomatic narrative, the author draws a sustained and compelling personal portrait of the Soviet leader. The resulting picture is fascinating and contradictory, and it will inevitably change the way we understand Stalin and his place in history. Roberts depicts a despot who helped save the world for democracy, a personal charmer who disciplined mercilessly, a utopian ideologue who could be a practical realist, and a warlord who undertook the role of architect of post-war peace.

Geoffrey Roberts

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