Donald, Christian, and Connor sit down and discuss the man of steel: Joseph Stalin. Less of a focused biography, we put Stalin in his historical context. In this episode we focus primarily on his ascension to power over the course of 1920s and the road to the Great Terror. Other important topics covered include the Agrarian Question, the First Five Year plan, along with a brief detour into the adventures of a young Stalin and the Russian Civil War.
We end the first part here because of the important historical lessons to be drawn from the logic of the purges. A second episode will cover Stalin through World War 2 up to his death.
References:Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution - Robert C. AllenSoviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War - Stephen F. CohenEveryday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times : Soviet Russia in the 1930s - Sheila FitzpatrickThe Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939 - J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. NaumovLet History Judge - Roy MedvedevRussian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization - Moshe LewinStalinism and the Politics of Mobilization: Ideas, Power, and Terror in Interwar Russia - David PriestlandStalin's Library: A Dictator and his Books - Geoffrey RobertsFactory and Community in Stalin’s Russia: The Making of an Industrial Working Class - Kenneth M. StrausStalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation - Robert C. TuckerStalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941 - Robert C. Tucker
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