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January 12, 2010
Stalin
2nd book finished of 2010
It's been a year for starting books - I had 2 mysteries going at my parents' house and left them both there. But when I got home I decided to finish off my bedroom book - Stalin and His Hangment: the tyrant and those who killed for him, Donald Rayfield. Yeah, yeah - not great reading for the winter, but a friend gave it to me when he was leaving Geneva this fall, and I've been reading a bit here and there.
I'm not all that interested in Stalin, but I've read most of Solzhenitsyn and am fascinated by the systematization of evil in the 20th Century. Is it bureaucracy that lets us pull it off? I think so. I think that Henry VIII was a complete totalitarian, but he couldn't pull it off with the resources he had. Diocletian certainly was, but without modern communications he just couldn't do what he liked.
The portrait of Beria is especially creepy. Not recommended for winter reading - save it for brighter weather.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at January 12, 2010 10:51 AM