Stalin and His Hangmen: An Authoritative Portrait of a Tyrant and Those Who Served Him by Donald Rayfield, and the imprinted with another subtitle: Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him, is a political biography by Donald Rayfield, of Joseph Stalin and his subordinates who ran the Soviet secret police: Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrentiy Beria.
The books are based on recent publications by Russian authors, Soviet archives, starting to open after the dissolution of the USSR and some private holdings, including the Nestor Lakoba archive (acquired by the Hoover Institute). It demonstrates how Cheka and its successors were indispensable in Stalin's consolidation and maintenance of power.
Read more about Stalin And His Hangmen: Table of Contents, The Work, Reviews
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“To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed ... there is nothing sweeter in the world.”
—Josef Stalin (1879–1953)