Quote Originally Posted by HeroPie1862 View Post
If only you knew a single thing about me, eh?

A lot of what I stated there was directly from Stalins biography

Kotkin - Stalin, Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928

Kotkin - Stalin, Waiting for Hitler 1929-1941

A People's Tragedy - A History of the Russian Revolution

Edit: Feel free to read a book yourself, and your edit showed your ignorance.
Stephen Kotkin is tremendously informative on Russia. Decades of research in the Russian archives translating and analysing documents and he explains it all in such an accessible way. A lot of his talks are available on YouTube and I enjoy them hugely.

Just want to pick your brains on a couple of things though. I thought the mod to late twenties were the only time in Stalin's reign that there was anything approaching a 'liberal' policy, and early thirties onwards was the beginning of enforcement of collectivised agriculture and therefore severe repression and famine. I may be wrong but would be interested to know.

Second question is does 'Waiting for Hitler' get into Stalin's view of Nazism and fascism? I have a feeling I've read or heard (possibly from Kotkin) that according to record of Soviet government meetings Stalin didn't care too much about the rise of Hitler or Mussolini, he was happy to trade with both of them and he was perfectly happy for them to flourish as he thought they would accelerate the fall of capitalism, which was his main goal. Of course that changed when Hitler broke the pact and attacked him, but until self-defence became an issue he was far from an anti-fascist. Don't know how long ago you read these or if you still look at them but can your confirm or deny this?

By the way, if you're interested in the history of the Russian security apparatus I can recommend The Mitrokhin Archive. It's a bit of a slog at times but also very informative.