The Secret Speech

Author: Tom Rob Smith
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847377157
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 458

Book Description
Soviet Union, 1956: Stalin is dead. With his passing, a violent regime is beginning to fracture - leaving behind a society where the police are the criminals, and the criminals are innocent. The catalyst comes when a secret manifesto composed by Stalin's successor Khrushchev is distributed to the entire nation. Its message: Stalin was a tyrant and a murderer. Its promise: The Soviet Union will transform. But there are forces at work that are unable to forgive or forget Stalin's tyranny so easily, that demand revenge of the most appalling nature. Meanwhile, former MGB officer Leo Demidov is facing his own turmoil. The two young girls he and his wife Raisa adopted have yet to forgive him for his involvement in the murder of their parents. They are not alone. Now that the truth is out, Leo, Raisa and their family are in grave danger from someone with a grudge against Leo. Someone transformed beyond recognition into the perfect model of vengeance.

Child 44

Author: Tom Rob Smith
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847398081
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 471

Book Description
DON'T MISS THE NEW TOM ROB SMITH NOVEL, COLD PEOPLE, OUT NOW! OVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD MOSCOW, 1953. Under Stalin’s terrifying regime, families live in fear. When the all-powerful State claims there is no such thing as crime, who dares disagree? AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER IN OVER 30 LANGUAGES An ambitious secret police officer, Leo Demidov believes he’s helping to build the perfect society. But when he uncovers evidence of a killer at large – a threat the state won’t admit exists – Demidov must risk everything, including the lives of those he loves, in order to expose the truth. A THRILLER UNLIKE ANY YOU HAVE EVER READ But what if the danger isn’t from the killer he is trying to catch, but from the country he is fighting to protect? Nominated for seventeen international awards and inspired by a real-life investigation, CHILD 44 is a relentless story of love, hope and bravery in a totalitarian world. From the screenwriter of the acclaimed television series, THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE: AMERICAN CRIME STORY.

Khrushchev Lied

Author: Grover Furr
Publisher: Erythros Press & Media
ISBN: 9780615441054
Category : Soviet Union
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Book Description
Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence That Every “Revelation” of Stalin’s (and Beria’s) “Crimes” in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous “Secret Speech” to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Provably False / Grover C. Furr; translations by Grover C. Furr

Khrushchev: The Man and His Era

Author: William Taubman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393324842
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 929

Book Description
Tells the life story of twentieth-century Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, featuring information from previously inaccessible Russian and Ukrainian archives.

Mao Cult

Author: Daniel Leese
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139498118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
Although many books have explored Mao's posthumous legacy, none has scrutinized the massive worship that was fostered around him during the Cultural Revolution. This book is the first to do so. By analyzing secret archival documents, Daniel Leese traces the history of the cult within the Communist Party and at the grassroots level. The party leadership's original intention was to develop a prominent brand symbol, which would compete with the nationalists' elevation of Chiang Kai-shek. However, they did not anticipate that Mao would use this symbolic power to mobilize Chinese youth to rebel against party bureaucracy itself. The result was anarchy and when the army was called in it relied on mandatory rituals of worship such as daily reading of the Little Red Book to restore order. Such fascinating detail sheds light not only on the personality cult of Mao, but also on hero-worship in other traditions.

The Victims Return

Author: Stephen F. Cohen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857730622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
Stalin's reign of terror in the Soviet Union has been called 'the other Holocaust'. During the Stalin years, it is thought that more innocent men, women and children perished than in Hitler's destruction of the European Jews. Many millions died in Stalin's Gulag of torture prisons and forced-labour camps, yet others survived and were freed after his death in 1953. This book is the story of the survivors. Long kept secret by Soviet repression and censorship, it is now told by renowned author and historian Stephen F. Cohen, who came to know many former Gulag inmates during his frequent trips to Moscow over a period of thirty years. Based on first-hand interviews with the victims themselves and on newly available materials, Cohen provides a powerful narrative of the survivors' post-Gulag saga, from their liberation and return to Soviet society, to their long struggle to salvage what remained of their shattered lives and to obtain justice. Spanning more than fifty years, "The Victims Return" combines individual stories with the fierce political conflicts that raged, both in society and in the Kremlin, over the victims of the terror and the people who had victimized them. This compelling book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Russian history.

Khrushchev's Thaw and National Identity in Soviet Azerbaijan, 1954–1959

Author: Jamil Hasanli
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498508146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 483

Book Description
On February 25, 1956, Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev delivered the so-called “secret speech” in the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU in which he denounced Stalin’s transgressions and the cult of personality around the deceased dictator. Replete with sharp criticism of the Terror of the late 1930s, the unpreparedness of the USSR for the Nazi invasion, numerous wartime blunders, and the deportation of various nationalities, the speech reverberated throughout the subordinate Soviet republics. For republics such as Azerbaijan, the speech was an unmistakable signal to readjust the entire political orientation and figure out ways to redefine governance in post-Stalin era. Previously frozen under the mortal threat of Stalinist persecution, various forms of national self-expression began to experience rapid revival under the Khrushchev thaw. Encouraged by the winds of change at the Center, the Azeris cautiously began to reclaim possession of their administrative domain. Among other local initiatives, the declaration of the Azerbaijani language as the official language was one step that stood out in its audacity, for it was not pre-arranged with the Kremlin and defied the modus operandi of the Soviet leadership. Somewhat reformist in his intentions yet ignorant of the non-Slavic peripheries, Mr. Khrushchev had not foreseen the scenarios that would unfold as a result of its new tone and the developments that would come to be interpreted as the rise of nationalism in the republics. Jamil Hasanli’s research on 1950s’ Azerbaijan sheds light on this watershed period in Soviet history while also furnishing the reader with a greater understanding of the root causes of the dissolution of the USSR.

The personality cult of Stalin in Soviet posters, 1929–1953

Author: Anita Pisch
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 176046063X
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 538

Book Description
From 1929 until 1953, Iosif Stalin’s image became a central symbol in Soviet propaganda. Touched up images of an omniscient Stalin appeared everywhere: emblazoned across buildings and lining the streets; carried in parades and woven into carpets; and saturating the media of socialist realist painting, statuary, monumental architecture, friezes, banners, and posters. From the beginning of the Soviet regime, posters were seen as a vitally important medium for communicating with the population of the vast territories of the USSR. Stalin’s image became a symbol of Bolshevik values and the personification of a revolutionary new type of society. The persona created for Stalin in propaganda posters reflects how the state saw itself or, at the very least, how it wished to appear in the eyes of the people. The ‘Stalin’ who was celebrated in posters bore but scant resemblance to the man Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, whose humble origins, criminal past, penchant for violent solutions and unprepossessing appearance made him an unlikely recipient of uncritical charismatic adulation. The Bolsheviks needed a wise, nurturing and authoritative figure to embody their revolutionary vision and to legitimate their hold on power. This leader would come to embody the sacred and archetypal qualities of the wise Teacher, the Father of the nation, the great Warrior and military strategist, and the Saviour of first the Russian land, and then the whole world. This book is the first dedicated study on the marketing of Stalin in Soviet propaganda posters. Drawing on the archives of libraries and museums throughout Russia, hundreds of previously unpublished posters are examined, with more than 130 reproduced in full colour. The personality cult of Stalin in Soviet posters, 1929–1953 is a unique and valuable contribution to the discourse in Stalinist studies across a number of disciplines.

1956

Author: Francis Beckett
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849549885
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
1956: a defining year that heralded the modern era.Britain and France occupied Suez, and the Soviet Union tanks rolled into Hungary. Nikita Khrushchev's 'secret speech' exposed the crimes of Stalin, and the Royal Court Theatre unveiled John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. Rock 'n' roll music was replacing the gentle pop songs of Mum and Dad's generation, and it was the first full year of independent television.As post-war assumptions were shattered, the upper middle class was shaken and the communist left was shocked, radical new ideas about sex, skiffle and socialism emerged, and attitudes shifted on an unprecedented scale - precipitated by the decline of Attlee's Britain and the first intimations of Thatcher's.From politics and conflict to sport and entertainment, this extraordinary book transports us back in time on a whirlwind journey through the history, headlines and happenings of this most momentous of years, vividly capturing the revolutionary spirit of 1956 - the year that changed Britain.

Khrushchev's Cold Summer

Author: Miriam Dobson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080145851X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
Between Stalin's death in 1953 and 1960, the government of the Soviet Union released hundreds of thousands of prisoners from the Gulag as part of a wide-ranging effort to reverse the worst excesses and abuses of the previous two decades and revive the spirit of the revolution. This exodus included not only victims of past purges but also those sentenced for criminal offenses. In Khrushchev's Cold Summer Miriam Dobson explores the impact of these returnees on communities and, more broadly, Soviet attempts to come to terms with the traumatic legacies of Stalin's terror. Confusion and disorientation undermined the regime's efforts at recovery. In the wake of Stalin's death, ordinary citizens and political leaders alike struggled to make sense of the country's recent bloody past and to cope with the complex social dynamics caused by attempts to reintegrate the large influx of returning prisoners, a number of whom were hardened criminals alienated and embittered by their experiences within the brutal camp system. Drawing on private letters as well as official reports on the party and popular mood, Dobson probes social attitudes toward the changes occurring in the first post-Stalin decade. Throughout, she features personal stories as articulated in the words of ordinary citizens, prisoners, and former prisoners. At the same time, she explores Soviet society's contradictory responses to the returnees and shows that for many the immediate post-Stalin years were anything but a breath of spring air after the long Stalinist winter.