Stalin : man of contradiction /
Kenneth Neill Cameron.
- Toronto, Canada : NC Press Limited, c1987.
- 190 pages ; 24 cm
The item contains a excerpt from The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov, which discusses the impressions the Marshal Zhukov had of Joseph Stalin.
Includes bibliographical references (pages [181]-184) and index.
Chapter one: Prelude to revolution -- Chapter two: Revolution and the Civil War -- Chapter three: Stalin and Trotsky -- Chapter four: Foundations of Leninism -- Chapter five: The five year plan and the Bukharin opposition -- Chapter six: Socialism, democracy and control -- Chapter seven: Theorist for world communism -- Chapter eight: World revolution: China and Eastern Europe -- Chapter nine: The war years -- Chapter 10: The last years -- Chapter eleven: The Khrushchev report -- Portrait of Stalin / by Marshal Zhukov -- Dialectical materialism: Stalin and after.
"A popular written re-evaluation of the man who shaped the Soviet union and modern history in critical ways. It challenges the current tide of denunciatory oversimplification, the "immediate purpose" of which, the author argues, is "to arbitrarily establish an image so monstrous as to make balanced evaluation suspect." Cameron attempts such an evaluation, emphasizing the contradiction between Stalin's political thinking and his metaphysical philosophizing, between his great practical accomplishments and his failures as a Marxist theorist. The book traces his career from his days as a young romantic poet - like a young Shelley or Byron - in his native Georgia to his firm conduct of the war against Nazi Germany. The book examines Stalin's early revolutionary career, his role in the Russian Revolution and the Civil War that followed it, his leadership in the era of industrialization and collectivization, his struggles with Trotsky and Bucharin, and his complex relationship with Lenin. The book also examines Stalin's international policies, particularly in regard to China, his political works, includes the influential foundations of Leninism, and the 1950 linguistics controversy that produces Stalin's "super-structure" doctrine (still in vogue in some Marxist circles). The final chapter examines Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in his secret report of 1956, and especially his treatment of the political repressions of the late 1930's. The book concludes with an appendix on Marshal Zhukov's evaluations of Stalin and one on dialectical materialism as interpreted by Stalin and by modern Soviet philosophers influenced by him." --From dust jacket.