TY  - BOOK
AU  - Rayfield, Donald,
TI  - Stalin and his hangmen: an authoritative portrait of a tyrant and those who served him 
SN  - 0670910880
AV  - DK268.4 .R39 2004b
U1  - 947.08420922 22
PY  - 2004///
CY  - London
PB  - Viking
KW  - Stalin, Joseph,
KW  - Heads of state
KW  - Soviet Union
KW  - Biography
KW  - Police chiefs
KW  - Communists
KW  - Politics and government
KW  - 1917-1936
KW  - 1936-1953
KW  - History
KW  - 1925-1953
KW  - fast
N1  - Ports. on lining papers; Includes bibliographical references and index
N2  - "Stalin did not act alone. The mass executions, the mock trials, the betrayals and purges, the jailings and secret torture that ravaged the Soviet Union during the three decades of Stalin's dictatorship, were the result of a tight network of trusted henchmen (and women), spies, psychopaths, and thugs. At the top of this pyramid of terror sat five indispensable hangmen who presided over the various incarnations of Stalin's secret police. Donald Rayfield probes the lives, the minds, the twisted careers, and the unpunished crimes of Stalin's loyal assassins."; "As Rayfield shows, Stalin and his henchmen worked relentlessly to coerce and suborn leading Soviet intellectuals, artists, writers, lawyers, and scientists. Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Fadeev, Alexei Tolstoi, Isaak Babel, and Osip Mandelstam were all caught in Stalin's web - courted, toyed with, betrayed, and then ruthlessly destroyed. In bringing to light the careers, personalities, relationships, and "accomplishments" of Stalin's key henchmen and their most prominent victims, Rayfield creates a chilling drama, spanning half a century, of the intersection of political fanaticism, personal vulnerability, and blind lust for power."--Jacket
UR  - http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017.12/366306
ER  -