Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin's Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina

By Paul R. Gregory

Book Overview

Drawing from Hoover Institution archival documents, Paul Gregory sheds light on how the world's first socialist state went terribly wrong and why it was likely to veer off course through the tragic story of Stalin's most prominent victims: Pravda editor Nikolai Bukharin and his wife, Anna Larina.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0817910352
• ISBN13: 9780817910358
• Release Date: April 2010
• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A Masterful Look into the Heart of Soviet Darkness

This concise gem of a work relates the gradual, tortuously prolonged destruction by Joseph Stalin of Nicolai Bukharin--a humanly fallible but idealistic Russian revolutionary. It fascinates with its vivid, chilling picture of the wily, cunning, serpentine nature of Stalin's modus operandi and his diabolic ability to read his opponents and play patiently and masterfully on their weaknesses or scruples. It is a mesmerizing account of what happens when a creature of pure evil, single-minded in the pursuit of total power, opposes other human beings--not just the hapless Bukharin--who are not so selfishly or malignly focussed. The book's short, meaty chapters enhance its readability and facilitate understanding of a complex series of events. It is rare that a scholar and authority at Gregory's level is able to present a historical narrative so clearly and compellingly to lay readers.