Stalin: A beginner's guide
Stalin in the round
Websites
Joseph Stalin: Biographical chronicle
www.stel.ru/stalin/
Timeline-based Russian site. Lots of photographs of Stalin and his cronies (but the video doesn't work). Refers to Stalin as a 'great Soviet leader' …
Joseph Stalin
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSstalin.htm
Basic biography on the Schoolnet site. Lots of links to the various personalities that Stalin encountered throughout his life.
Joseph Stalin Reference Archive
www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/
Short biography from the Encyclopedia of Marxism and some dozen examples of Stalin's writing. A mainly apologist site.
The Age of Totalitarianism: Stalin and Hitler
www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture10.html
Solid lecture comparing the rise of both Stalin and Hitler before World War II. On the History Guide website, run as a free resource by that passionate historian Steven Kreis.
Stalin era posters
www.jhindin.com/posters/
Good collection of 40 posters, many of which feature the Soviet leader. Unfortunately the messages on the posters are not translated.
Russia: From the Vikings to the last tsar – a beginner's guide
www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/
history/n-s/russia.html
A multitude of links that set the stage for the emergence of Joseph Stalin.
Books
The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia by Richard Overy (Allen Lane, 2004) 071399309X
Half a century after their deaths, the dictatorships of Stalin and Hitler still cast a long and terrible shadow over the modern world. Overy paints a powerful and vivid account of the different ways in which they rose to power and abused and dominated their people.
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Hitler and Stalin: Parallel lives by Alan Bullock (Fontana, 1998) 0006863744
Hitler and Stalin never met, but this book interweaves their lives chronologically. This edition has been revised to take account of revelations about the death of Hitler and the fate of his body, and Stalin's relations with China and Vietnam.
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Stalin: Breaker of nations by Robert Conquest (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000) 1842124390
Conquest focuses on Stalin's terrifying character, portraying him as an unnatural monster who was responsible for slaughtering millions but who demanded adulation. He tells of Stalin's skill at falsification and deception, which duped many, both in the West and in his own empire.
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Stalin: The court of the red tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Phoenix, 2004) 0753817667
Relying on Stalin's personal correspondence with his family and his 'magnates', as he calls the dictator's lieutenants, Sebag Montefiore liberally quotes letters, memoirs and interviews he conducted with survivors to chronicle the years 1929-53. The British Book Awards history book of the year.
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Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy by Dmitri Volkogonov, translated by H Shukman (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000) 1842120263
The first Russian account of Stalin's terrible reign. Communist Party, military and secret police files, as well as Stalin's personal files and books – with his scrawled comments in the margins – were opened to the author alone and revealed why Stalin emerged as Lenin's successor, why he eliminated the intelligentsia and the leaders of the Red Army, why he terrorised an entire population while proclaiming his regime the most popular in Russian history.
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