From the Introduction:
More than a hundred biographies of Stalin have been written in the USSR, in the new Russia and in other countries in the decades following his death in 1953. When Communist Party and state archives began to open after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, yet more books and articles appeared, some examining specific aspects of the Stalin era: industrialization, collectivization, policies during the war, the terror, etc. Some authors have attempted to rehabilitate Stalin and justify his policies. Several pseudo-biographies have also been published, largely based on fictional 'information'. There have been books about Stalin's family, about his daughter Svetlana and his sons, Yakov and Vasily, as well as other relatives. Richard Harris 's novel Archangel was a British bestseller in 1999. Stalin is the central figure in a number of memoirs, often published posthumously, by his close and not so close colleagues, ministers, generals, intelligence officers, interpreters and even his personal servants and bodyguards. In view of this flow of literature about Stalin, the title we have chosen for the present volume, The Unknown Stalin, may seem rather surprising. However, after studying much of what has been written about Stalin since the opening of formerly top-secret archives, we remain convinced that so far only a surface layer of the new materials has been explored; a truly informed understanding of Stalin's era and his role in history is just beginning. Lenin was the protagonist in a revolutionary process that led to the creation of an innovative social and political structure in a new type of state, the Soviet Union. The development of this state into a highly centralized, totalitarian, industrially developed military power was accomplished by Stalin. It was also Stalin who after 1945 established an external empire that extended from Berlin to Beijing. There is a certain irony in the fact that it was the disappearance of this empire and the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself that made it possible for scholars to analyse the role of the USSR in history more objectively and to arrive at a more accurate assessment of the historical significance of its founders. Until recently, the study of history in the USSR was less an academic discipline than a tool of state and Party ideology. Therefore the restoration of a more authentic picture of our history in the twentieth century coincides with the restoration of history itself as a proper academic subject. And this is of significance beyond the borders of the new Russia.
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