BOOK REVIEW – FIVE STARS
Joseph Stalin: Images of War by A. S. Semeraro
This excellent book relates a provocative true life story of an unconscionable bully bastard paranoid short man pushing his way to the top of political power. He holds the world record for murdering twenty million of his countrymen. This fascist went on to die of old age in 1953 while still in power.
EXCERPTS:
An image of ‘Uncle Joe’, savior of his people? In reality a monstrous mass murderer.
The son of serfs who, destined for the priesthood, instead became a street-fighting revolutionary using torture and terror as tools to attain power.
Lauded abroad as a cultural giant and could, in his own country, have spellbound so many millions as an object of worship.
Whose personality cult attained Messianic proportions should be recognized not as a self-styled towering ‘Man of Steel’ but as a bloodstained, mere 5ft 5ins tall idol with feet of clay.
The Soviet Union was by this time the world’s largest sovereign state – a federation of 15 union republics, with another 20 autonomous republics and several smaller provinces. It occupied an area of 22,500,000 square kilometres (8,650,000 square miles) from Iran to Finland, from Czechoslovakia to China. It was unwieldy and needed more than the bombast of a bully like Joseph Stalin to hold it together.
outside Russia’s borders Joseph Stalin is listed alongside Adolf Hitler and China’s Mao Zedong in terms of their brutality, his image within his own country is more opaque.
History is being rewritten. The monster is being resurrected. It’s a disturbing thought as the Russian bear again sharpens its claws.
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