named ‘the most blatant mediocrity on the Central Committee’ did annihilate all his rivals. At this point, the party and its history fully belonged to Stalin." The Great Purges are covered in all their horror and the author provides a detailed account of how Stalin was responsible for their initiation and course and that his inner circle were accomplices, sometimes willing and sometimes due to self-preservation. Kotkin shows how Stalin used the ultimate loyalty test against his inner circle, their willingness to participate in the destruction of their own families, as a sign of loyalty to the despot above all others; those that passed might remain, those that didn't eventually share the fate of those they tried in vain to protect. Kotkin describes vividly the dystopian world created by the purges, the ever-present fear of arrest by the NKVD, the endless cycle of denunciations in a usually futile effort to save oneself, the bloody shadow of figures such as Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, and Lavrentiy Beria. One of the most debated issues surrounding the Great Terror is why Stalin decided to embark on a campaign that was so destructive to the party, government and military he had worked to build. Suny writes about Kotkin's answer, "he contends that the cause lies in a particular mentality that originated in Marxism and lethally meshed with Stalin's peculiar psychology. "The combination of Communist ways of thinking and political practice," he argues, "with Stalin's demonic mind and political skill allowed for astonishing bloodletting. Perceived security imperatives and a need for absolute unity once again turned the quest in Russia to build a strong state into personal rule. ... Tyranny has a circular logic: once a dictator has achieved supreme power, he becomes keener still to hold it, driving him to weed his own ranks of even potential challengers." As damaging as the purges were, Stalin was not irrational, Kotkin contends, but calculating and strategic." Another common question asked by many about the Great Terror is how and why Stalin was able to conduct the purges and not face opposition or become a casualty in the process, Mark Atwood Lawrence states, "Kotkin’s most striking contribution, though, is to probe reasons Stalin encountered little opposition as he wrought mayhem on his nation. Careerism and bureaucratic incentives in the Soviet Union’s formidable apparatus of repression had something to do with it, Kotkin writes, but so too did