From Publishers Weekly
Most Western historians believe that Joseph Stalin masterminded the 1934 assassination of Sergei Kirov, a hard-line Bolshevik whom the Soviet dictator may have seen as a rival. Conquest ( Harvest of Sorrow ) builds on the research of Roy Medvedev and others in this close scrutiny of the available evidence. Making liberal use of underground samizdat accounts and defector sources, he finds Stalin's complicity in the murder "almost undeniable." This short, well-documented book reads like a taut police procedural. It builds with chilling illogic, documenting how Stalin systematically used the murder as a pretext to unleash state terror against Party and general populace alike. Thousands of people were falsely accused of participating in a conspiracy that supposedly centered on Kirov's slaying. Mass arrests, deportations, torture and murder followed.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
From School Library Journal
YA-- An account of one of the most far-reaching assassinations of the century, which left Sergei Kirov dead, and the murder's perpetrator, Joseph Stalin, the dominating leader of Russia. Using facts from defectors and reports from Kruschev's 200 sealed volumes of the investigation of this murder and subsequent purges, Conquest presents a chilling panorama of Stalin's total, maniacal, despotic control of communications, people, and events on a grand international scale. This easily read book should be on the required reading list for all history students. It gives rise to some comparisons of recent events in other totalitarian states, and to conjecture as to whether a democracy can survive in Russia.
- Barbara Batty, Port Arthur I.S.D., TXCopyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
