Oxford University Press, USA
Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953
Key Metrics
- Yoram Gorlizki
- Oxford University Press, USA
- Paperback
- 9780195304206
- 9.21 X 6.14 X 0.57 inches
- 0.85 pounds
- History > World - General
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Often dismissed as paranoid and irrational, Stalin's behavior followed a clear political logic, contend Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk. Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after the war was to consolidate the Soviet Union's status as a superpower and, in the face of growing decrepitude, to maintain his own hold as leader of that power. To that end, he fashioned a system of leadership that was at once patrimonial-repressive and quite modern. While maintaining informal relations based on personal loyalty at the apex of the system, in the postwar period Stalin also vested authority in committees, elevated younger specialists, and initiated key institutional innovations with lasting consequences.
Close scrutiny of Stalin's relationships with his most intimate colleagues also shows how, in the teeth of periodic persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death. Based on newly released archival documents, including personal correspondence, drafts of Central Committee paperwork, new memoirs, and interviews with former functionaries and the families of Politburo members, this book will appeal to all those interested in Soviet history, political history, and the lives of dictators.
Cold Peace was a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2005.
Author Bio
I have been at the University of Manchester since 1994, as a Professor since 2006. I did my undergraduate degree at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, before going on to a one year postgraduate Russian language diploma at the University of Strathclyde and a doctorate at St Antony's College, Oxford, under the supervision of Mary McAuley. From 1991-1994 I held a Junior Research Fellowship at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
I have been the sole principal investigator on two ESRC grants (R00022676, R000230880), the outputs of both of which were rated "outstanding" by ESRC assessors, and the recipient of numerous small grants from the British Academy and other bodies. In 2005 my co-authored book Cold Peace won the Alec Nove Prize of the British Association of Slavic and East European Studies for its "outstanding contribution to the field" and was selected as a CHOICE "Outstanding Academic Title.
My new co-authored book, Substate Dictatorship: Networks, Loyalty, and Institutional Change in the Soviet Union (2020) is now out from Yale. I am on the Editorial Board of the journal Government and Opposition and was, from 2001-2007, its review editor. I have been a member of the ESRC Politics, Economics and Geography Research College and was, from 2000-2005, Chair of the Validation Panel for the Moscow School of Social Sciences.
Source: University of Manchester
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