On Stalin's Team

The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics

Sheila Fitzpatrick

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780691175775
  9780691145334
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400874217
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Biografías políticas

The first chronicle of Stalin's inner political and social circle—from a leading Soviet historian

Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that most historians have dismissed the officials surrounding him as mere yes-men and political window dressing. On Stalin's Team overturns this view, revealing that behind Stalin was a group of loyal men who formed a remarkably effective team with him from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Drawing on extensive original research, Sheila Fitzpatrick provides the first in-depth account of this inner circle and their families. She vividly describes how these dedicated comrades-in-arms not only worked closely with Stalin, but also constituted his social circle. Stalin's team included the wily security chief Beria; Andreev, who traveled to provincial purges while listening to Beethoven on a portable gramophone; and Khrushchev, who finally disbanded the team four years after Stalin's death. Taking readers from the cataclysms of the Great Purges and World War II to the paranoia of Stalin's final years, On Stalin's Team paints an entirely new picture of Stalin within his milieu—one that transforms our understanding of how the Soviet Union was ruled during much of its existence.

INDEX

Abakumov, Viktor, 215

Adzhubei, Alexei, 186, 236, 237, 321

agriculture, 167, 180, 199, 228, 259, 317, 323; lack of Politburo representation of, 52. See also collectivization; peasants

Afinogenov, Alexander, 155

Agricultural Academy (Timiryazevka), 69, 186, 196

Akhmatova, Anna, 191

Alliluyev, Fedor (brother of Nadya), 198

Alliluyev, Joseph (son of Svetlana), 164, 194, 264, 317

Alliluyev, Pavel (brother of Nadya), 68, 79, 103, 138

Alliluyev, Sergei (father of Nadya), 29, 66, 327

Alliluyeva (Redens), Anna, 68, 79, 138, 198, 326

Alliluyeva, Nadezhda (Nadya), 7, 18, 28, 31, 64, 66, 67, 69, 112, 264, 317, 319, 321; death of, 7, 79–81, 110, 123, 175, 289 n. 14; friends of, 69, 133; health of, 79; and Stalin, 78–79, 327; as student, 63, 68, 79, 80

Alliluyeva, Svetlana, 7, 8, 9, 54, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 79, 80, 104, 108, 117, 138, 155, 163, 165, 175, 188, 184, 191, 221, 223, 261, 263–64, 318; affairs of, 163–64, 263; biography of, 317; defection of, 8, 263–64; education of, 71, 175, 187; friends of, 125, 179, 320; marriages and divorces of, 164, 186, 194–95, 198, 263, 328; as memoirist, 12; and Stalin, 112, 116, 199, 204, 225

Alliluyeva, Zhenya (sister-in-law of Nadya), 68, 138, 198

Amerika (magazine), 175, 193

Andreasian, Napoleon, 137

Andreev, Andrei, 3, 5, 27, 28, 32, 34, 56, 60, 67, 71, 74, 89, 110, 141, 167, 184, 187, 202, 218, 262, 265, 2...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Explanatory Note
• Glossary
• Introduction
• One The Team Emerges
• Two The Great Break
• Three In Power
• Four The Team on View
• Five The Great Purges
• Six Into War
• Seven Postwar Hopes
• Eight Aging Leader
• Nine Without Stalin
• Ten End of the Road
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Biographies
• Bibliography of Works Cited
• Index