Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him

6581-CD T: STALIN AND HIS HANGMEN A: By Donald Rayfield B: (6581-CD) 18 compact discs R: Read by Jonathan Marosz The mass executions, the mock trials, the betrayals and purges, the jailings and secret torture that ravaged the Soviet Union during the three decades of Stalin's dictatorship, were the work of a tight network of trusted henchmen. As Donald Rayfield shows, Stalin and his henchmen worked relentlessly to coerce and suborn leading soviet intellectuals, artists, writers, lawyers, and scientists. Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Fadeyev, Aleksey Tolstoy, Isaak Babe, Osip Mandelstam, among many others, were all caught in Stalin's web, courted, toyed with, betrayed, and then ruthlessly destroyed. In bringing to light the careers, personalities, relationships, and "accomplishments" of Stalin's key henchmen as well as their most prominent victims, Rayfield creates a chilling drama, spanning half a century, of the intersection of political fanaticism, personal vulnerability, and blind lust for power.