The Soviet Union was the largest state in the world, but its repressive power and terrible ambition were on display most clearly in Europe. Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, from 1928 to 1953, the Soviet Union transformed itself and then all of the European countries with which it came into contact. Stalinism involved the self-colonization of the Soviet Union in order to create a modern state; it unleashed a mass terror against Soviet peasants and workers of all nationalities in order to prepare for a coming war; it successfully mobilized that same population for war against Nazi Germany; ... More

The Soviet Union was the largest state in the world, but its repressive power and terrible ambition were on display most clearly in Europe. Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, from 1928 to 1953, the Soviet Union transformed itself and then all of the European countries with which it came into contact. Stalinism involved the self-colonization of the Soviet Union in order to create a modern state; it unleashed a mass terror against Soviet peasants and workers of all nationalities in order to prepare for a coming war; it successfully mobilized that same population for war against Nazi Germany; and it extended the communist system into much of eastern and central Europe. This book considers each aspect of the encounter of Stalin with Europe: the attempt to create a kind of European state by accelerating the European model of industrial development; mass murder in anticipation of a war against European powers; the actual contact with Europe’s greatest power, Nazi Germany, during four years of war fought chiefly on Soviet territory; and finally the reestablishment of the Soviet system, not just in the Soviet Union that experienced Nazi rule, but in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and East Germany.