Stalin's Folly - Annotated by Constantine Pleshakov (Paperback)

About the Book

Drawing on a wealth of newly available documents, from classified Politburo papers and diaries of key generals to diplomatic cables and secret police memos, Russian historian Pleshakov paints a startling portrait of Stalin, one of history's most feared despots, as a vulnerable and paralyzed leader.

Book Synopsis

Stalin's cunning and ruthlessness brought him to supreme power in the Soviet Union. Yet in the summer of 1941 he appeared to lose his touch. With unparalleled access to the Soviet archives, this text reveals why the dictator behaved as he did.

Review Quotes

"Pleshakov, already author of outstanding and wonderfully readable books on Soviet foreign policy and the 1904 Russo-Japanese War, delivers an accessible, scholarly and gripping narrative that tells of Stalin's biggest mistake and the mayhem of the first days of Barbarossa." --Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar and Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner

"Stalin's failure to prepare for Hitler's sudden attack in June of 1941 takes on terrible new meaning in Constantine Pleshakov's gripping book. Trained as an historian, but interpreting newly available sources with a novelist's eye and ear, Pleshakov provides devastating sketches of Stalin and his generals, heartbreaking descriptions of ordinary soldiers and civilians awash in the chaos of war, new revelations about Stalin's own secret planning for a preemptive attack until Hitler beat him to it, and biting, trenchant analysis of how the rout and despair demonstrated the utter failure of the Soviet system, yet inspired the Red Army to fight its way to the heart of the Third Reich four years later." --William Taubman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era

"A stimulating, and often fruitfully provocative account of the array of complex and self-contradictory irrationalities with which Stalin mishandled, and barely survived, Hitler's attack in 1941. And, as background, a striking overview of the human suffering that resulted." --Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror and The Dragons of Expectation

"This is a very lively account of a most deadly moment in modern history. Pleshakov knows how to tell a story, and his portrait of Stalin, based on fresh evidence from the Russian archives, is a devastating depiction of colossal incompetence." --Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of His Excellency: George Washington, American Sphinx, and Founding Brothers --