Booklists: suggested reading

 

Tweet

Stalin Booklist

 

Fiction and Nonfiction about Stalin and the Stalinist Era.

 

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

Fiction

• In the Casa Azul
  Author: Delahunt, Meaghan
  Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN:031229106x Date: 2002
  Library Journal
  Spreading before the reader a panorama of Russian history, revolution, and upheaval through the first half of the 20th century, this literary work finds Leon Trotsky taking refuge in Mexico City when he is pursued country to country by Stalin's agents.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 4/1/02
• Archangel
  Author: Harris, Robert
  Publisher: Random House Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0679428887 Date: 1999
  PW Kirkus
  From the author of the bestselling Fatherland and Enigma comes the dramatic - and deadly - story of a chase through present-day Russia for the stunning secret Stalin tried to take to his grave.
  
• The Commissariat of Enlightenment
  Author: Kalfus, Ken
  Publisher: Ecco $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060501367 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW
  Brimming with intellect, humor, sweep, and rich, inventive storytelling, The Commissariat of Enlightenment is a novel of ideas that brilliantly evokes the tragicomic world of revolutionary Russia and the birth of today's image-based society, marking Kalfus as a daring and talented writer.
  Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 1.3.03
• Hitler's Peace: A Novel of the Second World War
  Author: Kerr, Philip
  Publisher: Putnam $ 26.95 ISBN: 0399152695 Date: 2005
  LJ
  From the author of the Berlin Noir trilogy comes a stunning World War II "what if" thriller in which the fate of Europe--and of its remaining three million Jews--hangs in the balance.
  Suggested Reading: Alternate History | World War Stars | Thrillers
  Updated 4.19.05
• The Revolutionist
  Author: Littell, Robert
  Publisher: Bantam $ 18.95 ISBN: 0553052608 Date: 1988
  Thundering through four turbulent decades of Russian history, this ambitious novel propels the reader from Moscow to the Winter Palace. From the birth of rebellion to the death of Stalin, one man has chosen to act as the war for freedom becomes a betrayal.
  Updated 11.2.05
• The Music of a Life
  Author: Makine, Andrei
  Publisher: Arcade $ 21.95 ISBN: 1559706376 Date: 2002
  Kirkus LJ
  His father is a dramatist, his mother an opera singer. But during Stalin's reign of terror in the 1930s, both parents are arrested. Alexei Berg flees, and begins his endless journey until he lands, two decades later, in a snowbound train station in the Urals, where he relates his harrowing saga to the novel's narrator.
  Updated 7.16.02
• Snow Wolf
  Author: Meade, Glenn
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312144210 Date: 1996
  PW
  January 1953: The Cold War is at its coldest. President Eisenhower receives increasingly alarming reports that Josef Stalin's mental health is rapidly deterioating; that his thermonuclear bomb program is almost complete and likely to precipitate another World War. Within hours of his inauguration, the President sanctions Operation Snow Wolf, and two CIA agents, posing as man and wife, travel across the icy wastes of Russia to Moscow to assassinate the world's most powerful despot.
  Updated 10.31.05
• Momumental Propaganda
  Author: Voinovich, Vladimir
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375412352 Date: 2004
  Kirkus Booklist
  From the author of The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin comes a brilliant new novel spanning 50 years of Russian history--from the tumult following the Second World War to the chaos of today's "new Russia."
  Updated 8.12.04

Nonfiction

• At Stalin's Side: His Interpreter's Memoirs from the October Revolution to the Fall of the Dictator's Empire
  Author: Berezhov, Valentin M.
  Publisher: Birch Lane $ 24.95 ISBN: 1559722126 Date: 1994
  PW
  Valentin M. Berezhkov was an important part of Josef Stalin's inner circle, where he found himself at center stage of international diplomacy. In his capacity as interpreter for both Stalin and Molotov, he was present when the fateful meeting leading to the Munich Pact took place; when Hitler negotiated the nonaggression agreement with Molotov; when Germany declared war on Russia; at the historic meeting where the Allies formed a united front against the Axis; and at the 1943 Teheran conference. Like a fly on the wall, he observed everything, including Stalin's fear of Hitler. When Berezhkov met with the German leader, the latter was so taken aback with his perfect use of the German language that he refused to believe the interpreter was a Russian native. Berezhkov may be one of the last survivors of the events that shaped the destiny of Russia and the world. He personally observed how the major leaders of this century related to each other and the circumstances in which they found themselves. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 10.31.05
• Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives
  Author: Bullock, Alan
  Publisher: Knopf $ 35 ISBN: 0394586018 Date: 1992
  Kirkus | Choice Outstanding Books
  A magnificent dual biography, the crowning achievement of one of today's most admired and celebrated historians, Hitler and Stalin is remarkable for the richness and clarity of its narrative and its fresh perspective. Bullock examines his subjects not in the usual context of their conflicts with the western alliance but primarily against the more fruitful background of Berlin-Moscow relations.
  Updated 10.25.05
• Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Bases on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives
  Author: Radzinskii, Edvard
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 30 ISBN: 0385473974 Date: 1996
  PW | LJ Best Books
  The most remarkable book yet to emerge from the fall of the Soviet Union: an utterly original portrait of Joseph Stalin that reads like a mystery novel and brims with headline-making revelations gathered from an astounding array of entirely new sources.
  Updated 10.31.05
• Stalin: A Biography
  Author: Service, Robert
  Publisher: Belknap $ 29.95 ISBN: 0674016971 Date: 2005
  PW
  Overthrowing the conventional image of Stalin as an uneducated political administrator inexplicably transformed into a pathological killer, Service reveals a more complex and fascinating story behind this notorious 20th-century figure.
  Updated 10.31.05
• Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator
  Author: Volkov, Solomon
  Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 0375410821 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  Updated 10.25.05