Words cannot convey my deepest gratitude to Marie Fleming, to whom I dedicate the book. Without her encouragement and her moral and intellectual support at every turn, the book would never have been completed.
Tsarist police photographs of Joseph Stalin taken after his arrest in Baku, Azerbaijan, March 1908. In early November he was sent to Siberia, from where he escaped, as he had before, to be rearrested and exiled again. Finally in June 1913 he was sent to Turukhansk in northern Siberia. (Illustration Credit ill.1)
Stalin photographed in 1935 with Communist Party official Nikita Khrushchev and members of the Communist Young Pioneers. Khrushchev would emerge as the first of Stalin’s heirs. (Illustration Credit ill.2)
Outside the Soviet embassy during the Tehran Conference, 1943. From left, American general George C. Marshall, shaking hands with British ambassador to the USSR Archibald Clark Kerr; Harry Hopkins; a Soviet interpreter; Joseph Stalin; Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov; and Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. (Illustration Credit ill.3)
President Harry Truman and Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in July/August 1945. To Truman’s right, with his hand on the rail, is Secretary of State James Byrnes. On Stalin’s left is Commissar Molotov. Leaning over Truman’s left shoulder is Charles Bohlen, presidential translator and adviser. (Illustration Credit ill.4)
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, leaving New Year’s Day services in Alexandria, Virginia, with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, January 1, 1942. (Illustration Credit ill.5)
A ceremonial meeting at the border between the Soviet and British sectors near the Brandenburg Gate in defeated Berlin in 1945. British field marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, with his back to the camera and shaking hands with Marshal Georgi Zhukov, with Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky saluting on the right. (Illustration Credit ill.6)
The celebration of Stalin’s seventieth birthday in Moscow, December 1949, brought together most of the leaders of the Communist world. From left: Mao Zedong, Walter Ulbricht, Stalin, and Nikita Khrushchev. (Illustration Credit ill.7)
An oversized and godlike image of the Soviet leader in an event at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, 1951. This was one of many examples of Stalin’s popular deification. (Illustration Credit ill.8)
The 1952 poster says “Glory to the great Stalin—the architect of Communism!” Such titles had been used since the 1930s. In the background is one of the seven “tall buildings.” Stalin remarked to Nikita Khrushchev after 1945, “We won the war and are recognized as victors the world over. What will happen if visitors walk around Moscow and find no skyscrapers? They will make unfavorable comparisons with capitalist cities.” (Illustration Credit ill.9)
At the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, 1935, with several persons who gained prominence after the war. Left to right, front row: Georgi Dimitrov (Bulgaria), Palmiro Togliatti (Italy), Wilhelm Florin (Germany), Wang Ming (China); back row: Otto Kuusinen (Finland), Klement Gottwald (Czechoslovakia), Wilhelm Pieck (Germany), and Dmitry Manuilsky (Ukraine). (Illustration Credit ill.10)
A meeting of the Yugoslav Communist Partisan guerrilla leadership at Vis, Yugoslavia, in 1944: Josip Tito is in the middle and his next in command, Edvard Kardelj, is to his immediate left; on Tito’s right is secret police boss Aleksandar Ranković. Milovan Djilas is on the far right. (Illustration Credit ill.11)
Communist leaders of Hungary, from left to right: Mátyás Rákosi, first secretary of the party (1945–56) and deputy prime minister until 1952, then prime minister to 1953. In the center is Ernö Gerö, prime minister (July 18, 1956–October 25, 1956); and on the right Imre Nagy, prime minister (1953–1955, briefly also 1956). (Illustration Credit ill.12)
Władysław Gomułka, first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, arrested in 1951 as part of purges that swept Eastern Europe. He was released, rehabilitated, and, in 1956, made first secretary again. He ruled “with an iron fist” until 1970. (Illustration Credit ill.13)
The newly appointed Czechoslovakian cabinet under Communist leader Prime Minister Klement Gottwald (right). Following a coup in February 1948, Deputy Prime Minister Antonín Zápotocký is signing papers, and to the left is President Edvard Beneš, who would resign and die in June, and be succeeded by Gottwald. (Illustration Credit ill.14)
Romanian leaders in 1950, from left to right: Prime Minister Petru Groza; Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, general secretary of the Communist Party; Ana Pauker, minister of foreign affairs; Vasile Luca, vice premier; Teohari Georgescu, minister of the interior; and propaganda chief Iosif Chişinevschi. (Illustration Credit ill.15)
Berliners watching the arrival and departure of planes after the beginning of the blockade in mid-1948, as the Cold War unfolded. The picture conveys a sense of how people were enthralled because, just over three years after Hitler’s death, Western bombers were flying to their rescue, bearing the necessities of life. (Illustration Credit ill.16)
APRF: Arkhiv Presidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Archive of the President of the Russian Federation)
AVPRF: Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation), Moscow
BAB: Bundesarchiv Berlin (German Federal Archives)
CWIHP: Cold War International History Project, Washington, D.C.
DGFP: Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series D (Washington, D.C.)
DRZW: Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1979ff.)
FRUS: Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington, D.C.)
GARF: Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archives of the Russian Federation), Moscow
HIA: Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California
HP: Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, Russian Research Center, Cambridge, Mass.
Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: V. I. Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii (Moscow, 1959ff.), the complete collected works in Russian
NA: U.S. National Archives, Washington, D.C.
PRO: Public Record Office, London
RGASPI: Rossiiskii gosudarvstvennyi arkhiv sotsialno-politicheskoi istorii (Russian State Archive of Social and Political History), Moscow