However, Roberts doesn’t deviate from the fact that Stalin was a mass murderer but in doing so portrays him as the sole, successful leader of the Russian war effort. Nonetheless, in using newly available material from the Russian archives, he paints a picture of Stalin that is none too familiar to the general history reader, while finding a generous amount of admiration in his leadership

Perhaps not surprisingly is that the majority of Roberts writing is circumstantial to the events of the Second World War where he presents it not as ‘the war which was won by Stalin but as the war which was lost by Hitler’.

Commencing with the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 we are led through the Russian war with Finland, the Nazi invasion of Russia, the consequential battles around cities such as Leningrad and Moscow and the Nazi’s sequential repelling by Russian armed forces. Portraying a substantial grasp of military planning, Roberts not only portrays Stalin as the Supreme military leader but as a leader of compassion that murders his military officers for cowardice upon retreat. We learn how Stalin thought he total ruler as having had the majority of his ‘military brains’ murdered in 1937; he impressed upon his people that offensive and not defensive action was the only option available to the Red Army.

In parallel with his portrayal of Stalin’s military leadership, Roberts portrays him as a great politician whose diplomatic wrangling was admired not only by Winston Churchill, but by Franklin D. Roosevelt and subsequently Harry Truman and discusses with some clarity the party diplomacy and duality of not only Stalin’s but other Allied and Axis governments. We learn of the diplomacy involved at, amongst others, the Yalta and Potsdam agreements and get a hint of the thread of political self-interest with which Stalin approached these meetings as well as his reaction to Churchill’s infamous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946.

Stalin linked this speech to the growth of anti-Soviet forces in the West and the threat of a new war though it didn’t have any direct affect as such. Stalin was fearful of Western penetration and so while creating a culture of ‘political normalization’ and elections he took his country through a period of rooting out the spies, regardless of their nationality, ethnic background or religious beliefs which resulted in executions throughout the communist block.

Leading on from the war we are led into Stalin’s influence upon post-war culture. After considering the effects of the Berlin blockade, perhaps not so well known are the revelations Roberts makes concerning Stalin’s influence over the communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Yugoslav’ split from Communism. Although there is, in its early pages some distinctions made concerning the concept of collective guilt of those of German heritage, these are soon dismissed by the unsympathetic interpretation of Stalin seemingly personifying all Germans as warmongers and making excuses of acceptability for the war crimes of the Red Army as they purged across parts of Europe, sustained Partisan uprisings and were involved in the slaughter and internment of many innocent civilians in the years of peace that followed World War 2.

Subsequently to Roberts in-depth analysis of Stalin’s influence with-in the European Theatre he discusses, all be it briefly, Stalin’s involvement in the war with Japan, the Sino-Soviet treaty with China and of his material support of the war in Korea; a war that he considered the Americans couldn’t win because of their lack of manpower but nevertheless a war he didn’t dare to become directly involved.

Culmination in the ‘Destalinization’ of the Russian people while he was still alive and Stalin’s eventual death in March 1953 at the age of 73, this ‘kindly…..sincerely modest man’ left a legacy of ‘many faces’ for the world to judge.

Roberts’s final words are “as jurors it is our duty to review all the evidence……history can make us wiser, if we allow it.” This wise old man thinks it is a shame that in an otherwise in depth portrayal of Joseph Stalin, Roberts seemingly withholds evidence of mass murder, rape and pillage in Eastern Europe, thus preventing us from ruling on the actions of Generalissimo Joseph Stalin.

Douglas Brough currently lives in the South East of England, near enough to the continent for him to be able to study the real truth behind the events of the last century. A member of the G.W.A, one of the worlds largest human rights organizations, his main passion is of the human rights abuses and historical inaccuracies portrayed as fact. Studying with the Open University (yes I thoroughly recommend them) for a degree of History and Religion he still finds time for his children as well as reviewing the latest off the shelf history books whilst working on his own first book.

© 2007 Laura Hird All rights reserved.