Gellately R. Stalins Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War

London: Vintage, 2013 — 512 p. — ISBN10: 0307389456; ISBN13: 978-0307389459.At the Big Three conferences of World War II, Joseph Stalin persuasively played the role of a great world leader, whose primary concerns lay in international strategy and power politics, and not communist ideology. Now, using recently uncovered documents, Robert Gellately conclusively shows that, in fact, the dictator was biding his time, determined to establish Communist regimes across Europe and beyond. His actions during those years—and the poorly calculated responses to them from the West—set in motion what would eventually become the Cold War. Exciting, deeply engaging, and shrewdly perceptive, Stalin’s Curse is an unprecedented revelation of the sinister machinations of Stalin’s Kremlin.The Stalinist revolution.
Making the Stalinist Revolution.
Exterminating Internal Threats to Socialist Unity.
War and Illusions.
Soviet Aims and Western Concessions.
Taking Eastern Europe.
The Red Army in Berlin.
Restoring the Stalinist Dictatorship in a Broken Society.
Shadows of the Cold War.
Stalin and Truman: False Starts.
Potsdam, the Bomb, and Asia.
Soviet Retribution and Postwar Trials.
Soviet Retribution and Ethnic Groups.
Reaffirming Communist Ideology.
Stalin’s Cold War.
New Communist Regimes in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
The Pattern of Dictatorships: Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary.
Communism in Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece.
The Passing of the Communist Moment in Western Europe.
Stalin’s Choices and the Future of Europe.
Stalinist Failures: Yugoslavia and Germany.
Looking at Asia from the Kremlin.
New Waves of Stalinization.
Stalin’s Last Will and Testament.
Epilogue.