Stalin

Breaker of Nations

By: Robert Conquest

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Of all the despots of our time, Joseph Stalin lasted the longest and wielded the greatest power, and his secrets have been the most jealously guarded - even after his death.

In this book, the first to draw from recently released archives, Robert Conquest gives us Stalin as a child and student; as a revolutionary and communist theoretician; as a political animal skilled in amassing power and absolutely ruthless in maintaining it. He presents the landmarks of Stalin's rule: the clash with Lenin; collectivization; the Great Terror; the Nazi-Soviet pact and the Nazi-Soviet war; the anti-Semitic campaign that preceded his death; and the legacy he left behind.

Distilling a lifetime's study, weaving detail, analysis, and research, Conquest has given us an extraordinarily powerful narrative of this incredible figure.

©1991 Robert Conquest (P)1992 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

A good comprehensive story of one of the most if not the most paranoid and ruthless individuals in history.

I was recently approached by an individual who told me there are “intellectuals” who now are preaching not only socialism in the USA but citing Stalin and Stalinism in an attempted positive light.
To these and anyone who implacably would fall into such rank I recommend this book.
Stalin as the book in such detail sets out was psychotic. Lenin even attempted to warn the Politburo and fellow revolutionaries of Stalins delusions before his death but too late.
He killed millions. He tortured millions of his own people, Georgians, Ukrainians (in the holodomor) his own soldiers returning from Germany and his own family. Great book of a loathsome creature.

A Portrait of a Lovecraftian Human Monster

Mr. Conquest's book fills out the few blank places in the "Dorian Gray" like portrait of this monstrous creature J.V. Stalin, painted in Simon Sebag Montefiore's two-volume works; "Young Stalin" and "STALIN, THE COURT OF THE RED STAR" that I had listened too last month. These three books, along with Victor Sebestyen's "LENIN" and A. Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" are my sources of understanding the first half of the twentieth century concerning the Soviet Union. I recommend Mr. Conquest's book as a "Quicker" but still comprehensive study of this "Breaker of Nations": Joseph V. Stalin.

Poor recording quality

I am only a few hours into this book and am enjoying the the words but this is technically the worst Audible recording I have listened to.
After an hour, you are instructed to "Go to Disc 2...".
I am constantly changing the volume of my car radio or my iPhone as I listen. In some ways, it is like watching a commercial on TNT where you get blown out by the advertisers, and then have to increase the volume to hear what Brenda is saying to Provenza.
I will finish this interesting book, but it is distracting.

Wonderful fascinating book

Fascinating well-read interesting subject that everyone should be familiar with as human nature and human society haven’t changed.

A little unbalanced- but essential reading.

Conquest could have teased out some of the positive results of Stalin’s dictatorship. I would have liked to have heard about rural electrification, the excellent tanks that rolled out of WWII factories, the fact that Stalin did defeat Hitler, as well as the successful manufacture of the atom bomb (which made sure that the US - a racist almost fascist culture at the time was not the only one to posses the bomb), the beginnings of the space race and numerous other positive developments. This book is basically all of the bad things about Stalin (and most, if not all of them are true) impeccably written but often snidely read. It is a must for anyone reading Russian history.