S. Kotkin. Stalin: Waiting for Hitler 1928-1941.

I would be unfair to proclaim that the book is useless. Its absurd convention to render names of the Soviet leaders according to the post-Soviet nationalist orthographies of their ethnic groups makes it almost impenetrable for a junior American scholar but for me it is but a minor impediment.

The strongest feature of this book is its "Comments" section, which lists hundreds and hundreds of sources. Some of them are of dubious veracity, some of them are unadulterated propaganda but many are accurate and/or accurately reflect perceptions and designs of the contemporaries.

The weakest is as always the author's concept as "Stalin as a Demiurge", dictated by the orders of the Party Committee of the Hoover Institution, so that his personal history is non-distinguishable from the history of the USSR. But even in this department he is lacking. The three most significant events of the Soviet history of the period were:

                       1. Industrialization;
                       2. Collectivization of agriculture, called by some wiseacres a Second Serfdom
                      (by Bolsheviks), abbreviated as VKP(b), i.e. then Russian abbreviation for the    Communist Party;
                       3. The Great Purges (1937-1938)

       But there is next to nothing about these issues, in particular, the second, which was repeatedly recognized by Stalin as his main "achievement". Concerning industrialization, he only mentions massive purchases of the Western equipment financed by merciless exploitation of practically enserfed peasantry. But if massive purchases of foreign equipment was the only reason for emergence of the USSR as a major industrial power, what in the world could prevent interwar China and Turkey, not to speak of Japan and Italy, which had much less restrictions in what they could buy and from whom, to simulate this experience? Japan before the war could have modernized its Navy, but its aviation designs largely remained in the late 1930s throughout the war and it could not produce a qualified battle tank.

        Similarly clueless is his treatment of the Great Purges. Naming Stalin "cruel dictator" or "tyrant" every other page does not explain anything. How could anyone emerge, from an obscure Party apparatchik into an all-powerful dictator in the span of six years, and then as a demigod in the span of another six years? Kotkin correctly mentions that his line did not command a majority in Politburo even during collectivization, yet it was his vision of the country, which always prevailed in the end.

         The largest emphasis according to the overall direction of the book is dedicated to the border wars with Japan (1930-1939) and Winter War with Finland (1939-1940). His explanation of the reasons for both wars is surprisingly lucid given his complete confusion with respect to almost everything else, especially military matters and economics (see above). Even his description of the Polish Government of "Sanitation period" as "a nasty regime squeezed between two nastiest" is apt. But this can only be explained that, unlike American neocon agitprop, Finnish nationalist agitprop required to be followed by the Hoover Party Committee is not as counterfactual and stupid.