On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics - Paperback

by Sheila Fitzpatrick (Author)

The first chronicle of Stalin's inner political and social circle--from a leading Soviet historian

Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that most historians have dismissed the officials surrounding him as mere yes-men and political window dressing. On Stalin's Team overturns this view, revealing that behind Stalin was a group of loyal men who formed a remarkably effective team with him from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Drawing on extensive original research, Sheila Fitzpatrick provides the first in-depth account of this inner circle and their families. She vividly describes how these dedicated comrades-in-arms not only worked closely with Stalin, but also constituted his social circle. Stalin's team included the wily security chief Beria; Andreev, who traveled to provincial purges while listening to Beethoven on a portable gramophone; and Khrushchev, who finally disbanded the team four years after Stalin's death. Taking readers from the cataclysms of the Great Purges and World War II to the paranoia of Stalin's final years, On Stalin's Team paints an entirely new picture of Stalin within his milieu--one that transforms our understanding of how the Soviet Union was ruled during much of its existence.

Back Jacket

"On Stalin's Team is an utterly absorbing and sometimes blood-curdling account of the domestic and office life of the most bourgeois of proletarian dictators. Sheila Fitzpatrick's group biography of Stalin's inner circle of meritocratic bureaucrats and squalid mobsters is unputdownable."--Bernard Wasserstein, author of Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time

"On Stalin's Team is an extremely readable, lively, and exciting account of the lives and work of the men who were closest to the unpredictable dictator. The reader is a kind of voyeur, peeking into the personal and political relationships of powerful people who worked together on a knife's edge. It is hard not to become fascinated by these characters, whose portraits Sheila Fitzpatrick so deftly draws in this seductive book. Her scholarship is impeccable and the stories she tells are dramatic, engrossing, and tragic."--Ronald Grigor Suny, author of The Soviet Experiment

"This important book focuses on the team led by Stalin and on its members' relationships with him and each other: the Politburo after hours, as it were. Here we have fascinating details about real people with recognizable personalities, likes and dislikes, and wives and children. Written in an attractive style, this book should have a broad audience."--J. Arch Getty, author of Practicing Stalinism

Author Biography

Sheila Fitzpatrick is professor of history at the University of Sydney and Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago.