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Title: Very good intro to this topic
Review: The last review is utter nonsense: Conquest is one of the most respected of all Soviet historians. He clearly despises Stalin, but how could one look upon his unfathomable devastation otherwise? As someone who has studied Soviet history for years, I can tell you that Conquest's writings are right in line with nearly all books on the topic of Stalin, even those by Marxists like Medvedev (not to mention the great Solzhenitsyn himself).This is a good intro to the topic of Stalinist terror. To a novice reader, it will be a bit hard to keep all of the names straight, but it will also be a real eye-opener -- you'll see where Orwell mined many of his ideas. I'd strongly recommend that all readers of this gravitate to Kravchenko's I Chose Freedom (cliched title, I know, but a great autobiography).
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