TIL: "democide"
I mean, JFC, so much murdering.
Even the murderers responsible for the murdering end up getting murdered by the next wave of murderers.
And the danger of success: generals, scientists, writers...if you were good at your job you were probably gonna get murdered because of it.
I mean, it seems like people who were bad at their jobs got murdered too. Still...
Ian Brown @igb
And if you were related to or a friend of someone who got murdered? Well, then you were probably gonna be murdered as well.
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Or tortured. Or imprisoned. Or enslaved. Or (and this seems like the best possible option) exiled.
Anyway, this book was a fascinating and terrifying examination of the humans who enabled and implemented massacre on a horrific scale.
Not a history of the Stalin-era Soviet Union, not a biography of Stalin, it’s a sketch of Koba and his eager/reluctant murderous peers.
Worth a read, if only to reinforce how easily humanity can slide into mass murder on an almost incomprehensible scale.
The book itself is at times a bit rushed and the narrative thread can get a bit confusing.
It also glosses over events outside of Stalin’s inner circles (Hitler, China, Korean War) & focuses on the lives of the Soviet "magnates".
But, as I said above, worth a read if you aren’t a student of Stalin-era Soviet history. *shudder*