Let History Judge [Paperback]

Roy Medvedev (Author), George Shriver (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0231063512 | ISBN-13: 978-0231063517 | Publication Date: May 15, 1989 | Edition: Rev Exp Su

The most comprehensive and revealing investigation of Stalinism and political developments in the Soviet Union from 1922-1953, this edition is an extensively revised and expanded version of a classic work. Internationally known historian Roy Medvedev has included more than one-hundred new interviews, unpublished memoirs, and archives from survivors of Stalin's death camps. This updated version of a classic work was written during a time of great change in the Soviet Union. With the advent of perestroika and glasnost, more progressive leadership has sought to demolish the Stalinist system which had finally crippled the Soviet Union and incited public discontent.

Let History Judge contains new material on: purges in 1929-1931 and terror against the peasantry, the Kirov assasination and show trials, the "great terror" from 1936-1938 which caused irreparable damage to the Soviet Union and left it vulnerable for Hilter's attack in 1941, the trial of Bukharin, Trotsky's revolutionary activity and Stalin's involvement with his murder in Mexico, Stalin's miscalculations and errors during the war which cost the Soviet Union nearly 25 million in casualties, new purges from 1946-1953, and the actual vote of the Seventeenth Congress, which decided Stalin's candidacy.

Since the first edition was finished by the author in 1969 and published in 1971, dozens of new informants have come forward to give their evidence to Roy Medvedev. Distinguished Soviet literary, cultural, and political figures like the late Alexander Twardovsky, Ilja Ehrenburg, Konstantin Simonov, Yuri Trifono, Mikhail Romm and many others have accumulated documentary records of Stalinism in anticipation of an expanded version.

(Time )

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This weighty--physically and emotionally--book speaks volumes about the play of individual and group memory in a totalitarian society. It grew from notebooks and files secretly kept by the Russian historian Roy Medvedev on the history of his times, from the emergence of Josef Stalin as a leader in the 1917 Revolution to the dictator's death in 1953. Some of the documents Medvedev gathered, including memoranda on secret agreements with Nazi Germany, shocked Russian readers when these notebooks first began to appear in 1988, and his book became one of the primary documents of glasnost.

From Library Journal

Justifiably, Medvedev, the great Marxist historian, has called this book "the main work of my life." His conclusions remain substantially the same as the first edition of this volume ( LJ 1/15/72). Stalin's terror was a "deliberate policy and not the results of some persecution mania"; he was possessed by "limitless ambition and limited ability," and was supported by "a majority of the Soviet people . . . backward enough to be deceived." Some may feel the author fails to connect all this to Soviet socialism today. Nevertheless, the new edition's strength lies in the voluminous new testimony and findings, such as the assertion that in 1934 Stalin's poor physical health caused Politboro "to name a possible successor Kirov." Indispensable for larger Soviet collections.
- Zachary T. Irwin, Behrend Coll., Pennsylvania State Univ., Erie
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 891 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press; Rev Exp Su edition (May 15, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231063512
• ISBN-13: 978-0231063517
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,156,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an historical gem that passed unnoticed, September 1, 2005

By 

simpcity - See all my reviews

This review is from: Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (Hardcover)

The original version of this book, published in 1972 by Alfred A Knopf, reflects the thinking of historian Roy A Medvedev in the period of August 1962 to August 1968. The revised and expanded 1989 version must first be examined in light of the original.

The original was translated by Colleen Taylor and edited by David Joravsky of Northwestern University. Medvedev couldn't get published in the USSR, and this work thus first appeared in the West. It was written primarily during the transition from Khrushev's anti-Stalinist reforms to Brezhnev's immanent social-imperialism.

August 1968 is also the month of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslavakia and the defeat of Dubcek's "socialism with a human face." This is also the period of Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Stalin was as evil as Hitler, yet he rose to power in the first Socialist state. The Second World War played itself out as one totalitarian dictatorship in a death struggle with another, yet Stalin ended up through the course of events as an ally of the democratic and capitalist Anglo-American West in its life-or-death struggle against fascism.

Totalitarianism turns out to have been the big infatuation of the twentieth century intelligentsia. Medvedev represents Russia's awakening from this plague. He is wrong about so much, yet for his age he was so far ahead of his times.

This book is a classic, and I believe the original should be the preferred version. Stalin's terror is nearly beyond belief. It is tragic in a different way than Nazism; perhaps with consequences more evil.

If Leninism ever revives, this will be a classic, just as it is now in the wake of the Cold War defeat of Communism.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and interesting, May 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Let History Judge (Paperback)

This book is a very thorough and well-written biography of Josef Stalin. It was one of the few books I read in college that I didn't mind reading. The information on Stalin's political and personal life gives the reader an opportunity to make informed judgements about Stalin's actions.

7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Passion overwhelms the writing, December 23, 2000

By 

Tom Munro "tomfrombrunswick" (Melbourne, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (Hardcover)

This book was the first in the Soviet Union to treat Stalin in an objective way. Prior to its release Stalin had been the great hero of the patriotic war the father of the country and so forth. Whilst the secret speech by Krushev had distanced the country from his system scholarship had not taken the step of subjecting his rule to objective analysis.

The author was a person who was an opponent of Stalin and prior to the fall of the regime was active in its criticism. The book goes through the issues associated with Stalin such as the decision to collectivize agriculture, the forced industrialization, the terror and the handling of the war. The author forms the view that Stalin was an unmitigated disaster. That is the country would have progressed economically better without him, and his handling of the war was catastrophic.

It is a good book to read with other western accounts such as Bullocks.