Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity)

The chilling story of Stalins crimes against humanity Between the early 1930s and his death in 1953 Joseph Stalin had more than a million of his own citizens executed. Millions more fell victim to forced labor deportation famine bloody massacres and detention and interrogation by Stalins henchmen. Stalins Genocides is the chilling story of these crimes. The book puts forward the important argument that brutal mass killings under Stalin in the 1930s were indeed acts of genocide and that the Soviet dictator himself was behind them. Norman Naimark one of our most respected authorities on the Soviet era challenges the widely held notion that Stalins crimes do not constitute genocide which the United Nations defines as the premeditated killing of a group of people because of their race religion or inherent national qualities. In this gripping book Naimark explains how Stalin became a pitiless mass killer. He looks at the most consequential and harrowing episodes of Stalins systematic destruction of his own populacethe liquidation and repression of the so-called kulaks the Ukrainian famine the purge of nationalities and the Great Terrorand examines them in light of other genocides in history. In addition Naimark compares Stalins crimes with those of the most notorious genocidal killer of them all Adolf Hitler.