DAVID YEARSLEY is fascinated by the account of four composers who transformed their experiences of the second world war and the Holocaust into deeply moving works of art
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Stalin in a rear-view mirror
MARTIN HALL introduces a new translation of a book that examines the changing perspectives by which Stalin has been viewed from 1953 to the present day
DEPLORABLE LEGACY: The Gulag Museum in Moscow on Petrovka Street - first from right photo of Red Army Marshal Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, the “Red Napoleon”, who became a victim of Joseph Stalin’s murderous purges
[Vladimir OKC/Public domain]
PETER MASON thrills to the sound of south London-born Yussef Dayes, and the galaxy of musicians drawn into his orbit
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
Re-releases from Iain Matthews, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and The Charlie Daniels Band
JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend
by Domenico Losurdo, IngramSpark, £13.25
WHILE it would be somewhat facetious to argue that a book with Stalin’s name in the title isn’t predominantly about Stalin, there would be some truth in such a claim.
Like much of Domenico Losurdo’s work as a historian of ideas, this 2008 book, available in an official English translation for the first time, is concerned with historical revisionism.
Losurdo’s principal question is this: how did we get from Stalin’s death in 1953, when he was lauded by millions in the USSR and other state socialist countries, and treated with “respect” and “balance” in Western obituaries as well, to the majority contemporary view of the Soviet leader?
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