My Friend, Stalin’s Daughter (2014)
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
I wish the article had pictures, and I found the author a bit cold. When he reduced his frequency of writing, because he had finished his book and gotten what he needed, this seemed a bit distant.
I haven't listened to it yet. But I have heard the Ad too many times. (Outside the US podcast ads are mostly for other podcasts)
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-svetlana-svetlana-107693...
You're not missing out much these days; most ads in the US are for other podcasts now, too.
This much I know about Svetlana, many who bear that name.
She came to visit in New York, and was bewildered by the vast array of toothpaste in a local grocery store.
She was so accustomed to shortages, and expected queues, that she could not accept the immediacy and availability of commerce in the U.S.
She did not stay long.
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/10/22/archives/ceausescu-gets-9...
https://paperpile.com/blog/elena-ceausescu-scientist-fraud/
Similar story with Yeltsin visit to a small local grocery mart in Texas in 1989.
Not to cast doubt on his overall goal there, liberal economics clearly are pretty dang effective!
What king of homeland feeling can you have if you only ever live in guarded mansions?
It is a far cry from the pathetic excuses leading Russia today who use his name but drink champagne in foreign 5 star hotels far away from the front.
The last season of the Revolutions podcast from Mike Duncan, mostly focuses on the Lenin era but does cover the ruthlessness of Stalin from way before he got even close to power, all the way to his accession to power.
"Court of the Red Tzar" is less fun and more of a portrait of him using his enormous capacity to work and execute to relentlessly grind out his plans to take over the world in the name of Marxism/Leninism and absolutely steamrolling over anyone or anything in the most brutal way possible that got in his way.
One of the things that people miss about Stalin is that more than any leader in the past centuries, he wasn't a puppet for a shadowy cabal, or a front man for someone else, he was fully totally in charge and running the whole thing totally outmaneuvering Trotsky and anyone else who would attempt to grab power away from him. He could do this because he had a legendary memory for people and their personalities. He was able to take over the government by remembering thousands of people who he considered loyal to him and placing them in key posts throughout the government after he was appointed party secretary. There have been very few leaders with that sort of raw cognitive capability.
He was a maniac for sure, and a total jerk, but a brilliant one. In "Court of the Red Tzar" after he achieves all his narcissistic glory by winning world war II he starts torturing his inner circle making them drink to the point of passing out on a regular basis trying to find any flaws in their loyalty.
The real hero of that book is Anastas Mikoyan. The guy survives Lenin, Stalin and even Khrushchev and Brezhnev kept him around. He keeps his dignity, plays a key role in defeating fascism and his brother ran a damned good aircraft design bureau the whole way through.