Stalin and His Hangmen : An Authoritative Portrait of a Tyrant and Those Who Served Him

This work has a strong historical and political orientation but its main focus is the psychological chain that connected Stalin with those men he chose as executioners, in both the narrow and broad sense of the world. His successful manipulations depended on an attraction to figures like himself to laconic and ruthless controllers. To understand Stalin, the reader must understand the background of his life - abused child, trainee priest, resentful victim of imperial power, bandit and puppet master.