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This essential biography, by the author most deeply familiar with the vast archives of the Soviet era, offers an unprecedented, fine-grained portrait of Stalin, the man and dictator. Without mythologizing Stalin as either benevolent or an evil genius, Khlevniuk resolves numerous controversies about specific events in the dictator's life while assembling many hundreds of previously unknown letters, memos, reports, and diaries into a comprehensive, compelling narrative of a life that altered the course of world history.

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  • Crimea

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The terrible conflict that dominated the mid-19th century, the Crimean War, killed at least 800,000 men and pitted Russia against a formidable coalition of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire. It was a war for territory, provoked by fear that if the Ottoman Empire were to collapse then Russia could control a huge swathe of land from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf. But it was also a war of religion, driven by a fervent, populist and ever more ferocious belief by the Tsar and his ministers that it was Russia's task to rule all Orthodox Christians and control the Holy Land.  

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  • Private Life in Stalin's Russia
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  • Imperial Twilight

  • The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age
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When Britain launched its first war on China in 1839, pushed into hostilities by profiteering drug merchants and free-trade interests, it sealed the fate of what had long been seen as the most prosperous and powerful empire in Asia, if not the world. But internal problems of corruption, popular unrest, and dwindling finances had weakened China far more than was commonly understood, and the war would help set in motion the eventual fall of the Qing dynasty - which, in turn, would lead to the rise of nationalism and communism in the 20th century. 

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The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers audiobook cover art

  • The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

  • Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000
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A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 audiobook cover art

  • A History of Fascism, 1914-1945

  • By: Stanley G. Payne
  • Narrated by: Michael Kramer
  • Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
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    4 out of 5 stars 16
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Focusing mostly on Italy and Germany but also considering Spain, Romania, Japan, and movements in other countries, Payne describes fascism as revolutionary ultranationalism based on national rebirth, extreme elitism, mass mobilization, and the promotion of violence and military virtues. He also suggests that the early Russian communists borrowed many techniques from fascism, and that though we are fairly well-inoculated against fascism itself, the values it represents could still emerge in new forms.

Publisher's Summary

The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the face of the Russian empire, politically, economically, socially, and culturally and also profoundly affected the course of world history for the rest of the 20th century. Historian S. A. Smith presents a panoramic account of the history of the Russian empire, from the last years of the 19th century, through the First World War and the revolutions of 1917 and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, to the end of the 1920s, when Stalin simultaneously unleashed violent collectivization of agriculture and crash industrialization upon Russian society.

Drawing on recent archivally based scholarship, Russia in Revolution pays particular attention to the varying impact of the Revolution on the various groups that made up society: peasants, workers, non-Russian nationalities, the army, women and the family, young people, and the church. In doing so, it provides a fresh way into the big, perennial questions about the Revolution and its consequences: Why did the attempt by the tsarist government to implement political reform after the 1905 Revolution fail? Why did the First World War bring about the collapse of the tsarist system? Why did the attempt to create a democratic system after the February Revolution of 1917 not get off the ground? Why did the Bolsheviks succeed in seizing and holding on to power? Why did they come out victorious from a punishing civil war? Why did the New Economic Policy they introduced in 1921 fail? And why did Stalin come out on top in the power struggle inside the Bolshevik party after Lenin's death in 1924?

A final chapter then reflects on the larger significance of 1917 for the history of the 20th century - and, for all its terrible flaws, what the promise of the Revolution might mean for us today.

©2017 S. A. Smith (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting but way too long

From a political scientists’ point of view, I find it very interesting that the author puts so mich focus into non-political causes and conditions surrounding the revolution. Yet, still, a big minus is that the author includes way, way, way too many unnecessary details - to the extent that I think the book could have been half as long, and still made the same point. There is simply top much “noise” in that respect. At the same time, the author sometimes makes statements that appear to be stated facts, even as they are still very much up for discussion. Whether Lenin received payments from the German government in 1917 is one such example. It is not a bad book. It’s just not... very good either.

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent centenary look at the complete revolutio

This book was great as a balanced look at the events of the Russian revolution, including a part that many books miss - the Civil War and the NEP.