Organizing the execution was Genrikh Yagoda, head of the hated and feared NKVD (the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs). It was August, 1936, when two former high-level leaders - but not members of Stalin’s inner circle - were executed, each shot through the back of the head: Lev Borisovich Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev. There is the tale of two bullets that may give an insight into these men and their brilliant and brutal leader. And the tens of millions of everyday citizens who died of starvation and disease because of failed Communist experiments on a nationwide scale. And the millions of bureaucrats, scientists, military men and people from just about every other walk of life who were purged (i.e., killed). The rest were killed in some way or forced to commit suicide.Īnd, of course, that doesn’t include the dozens of other less exalted leaders who were exterminated, often with their families. Only two of those succumbed to natural causes.
There are really great photo inserts in the book, but I found it even more helpful to prepare my own handy bookmark-size collection of mugshots of 18 of Stalin’s closest aides.īy the end of this long book and Stalin’s long reign as the Red Tsar, nine of the 18 were dead. Like a Russian novel, Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar has a seeming cast of thousands. When Stalin wanted to remove one of his inner circle of toadying confidantes, he had the guy killed. It might be helpful to think of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar as akin to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals.Įxcept that, when Abraham Lincoln wanted to get someone out of his cabinet, he moved the guy somewhere else, like to the U.S.
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