Stalin

Breaker of Nations

By: Robert Conquest

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

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 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 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 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.

Fascinating, critically important and timeless

One of the greatest books exposing the evils of Stalin and the ideology that he embodied. Must reading by everyone who cares. The consequences of Marxism are clearly shown. Bravo

Fantastic

The narrator is awesome and the book sheds light on how evil Stalin was and how often he’s overlooked because of Hitler,Stalin was a little more “sneaky” and kept things on the low where as Hitler had a full propaganda new team filming the atrocities for the whole world to see,plus the Soviet archives weren’t opened up till after the fall of the Soviet Union, and then only partially,so we’ll probably be learning more about Stalin and his regime for years to come and this book might not be 100% accurate but it’s worth a listen

Great 1991 Study on Stalin fka Dzhugashvili

Robert Conquest is one of the greatest historians writing about an evil dictator whose is responsible for more deaths, famine and destruction than perhaps any other dictator. The bio is comprehensive but not too long esp when listening to a fine narrator.

I hope Conquest's many other books, including The Great Terror and The Harvest of Sorrow, will become available on Audible.

Superb

Of the three great dictators of the 20th century (Hitler, Stalin and Mao zedong) only Hitler has generated a great many biographies available here in the US. A search for Hitler on Audible generates 14 pages of book listings while one for Stalin generates 3 and Mao zedong and Mao tae-tung each generate less than 1. This was one of the reasons that I grabbed Robert Conquest’s Stalin: Breaker of Nations when I saw it, another being because I knew Robert Conquest to be an expert on the Russian Revolution, its history and the period leading up to the fall of the Soviet Union. While Mr Conquest was originally considered an ideologue by some historians, the KGB records available during the time of Boris Yeltsin ended up verifying all of his claims and cemented his name as an accurate portrayer of these events. His book The Great Terror is the definitive work on the subject of Stalin’s great terror.

While Mr Conquest describes this book as more of a portrait than a biography, I found it to be both fascinating and very informative. This was not the first biography of Stalin that I had read, but it was the most informative and the most complete as it covers his political life from his time as a bank robber and petty criminal through his death in 1953. While the entire book is interesting, it was particularly so for me in explaining the process of Stalin’s destruction of his rivals (Trotsky, Bukharin, Kamenev, Kirov, Zinoviev and many others) during the late 1920s and the 1930s as well as how he ended up dominating the entire Communist power structure in such a way that he had no real rivals left by the start of World War 2. Any description of Stalin’s policies has to be replete with the horrors of his rule, but some events serve as a perfect example of the capriciousness of his governing. One of these is the story of the Soviet census taken during the 1930s. Millions had died during the great Soviet famine, brought on my the forced collectivization of the farms, and the census results showed this. Stalin denied that there had been a famine and so any census results showing a drop in population had to be another example of spies plotting against the state and therefore cause for the execution of those involved. Life was indeed precarious during Stalin’s time. A second census taken after the execution of those involved in the first did not show the drop in population since those taking it knew the punishment given to those who took the first one, and this is one example of how much care must be exercised in viewing Soviet statistics from that time period.

While the book covers The Great Terror lightly those wanting more information on it probably should consider buying Mr Conquest’s book on that subject. For those interested in a less in-depth view of how the Communist State became established, this is a wonderful source and highlights how much of a change took place right after Stalin’s death, only for a form of Stalinism to be reinstated a decade later.

Mr Conquest was born a British citizen so readers should expect that he would write using a British form of English. The narration by Frederick Davidson (David Chase) is first class, but he, as well, was English and hence his pronunciation is also English. One reviewer complained that he mispronounced the word “cadre” as “CAD-er”, but that is a proper regional British pronunciation of the word and hence should be expected. I found the narration clear and compelling and I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the life of Joseph Stalin and an overview of both the development of the Russian Revolution into Stalinism as well as the terrible events of the 1930s.

A bid you adieu

The voice actor on this book is so horrible,they have the strangest accent that sounds like a 1800s high society gentlemen, but very nasal.

It is very hard to understand anything they say,especially names.

Listen before you buy