A Brief History of Communism: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire

A Brief History of Communism: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire

by Anatole Konstantin
A Brief History of Communism: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire

A Brief History of Communism: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire

by Anatole Konstantin

Paperback

$10.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

This book is the story of the men who believed they knew how to create an ideal world, and in its name did not hesitate to sacrifice millions of innocent lives.

On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in 1917, it is important to understand how a small band of Communists was able to take over a country of 150 million, and how, seventy-four years later, the huge Soviet Empire they had created, was exploded by three inebriated men.

The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has said that the demise of the Soviet Empire in 1991 was the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. This book aims to show that the greatest tragedy of the century was the creation of this Empire in 1917.

The book is written in conversational language by Anatole Konstantin, the author of A Red Boyhood, Growing up under Stalin, in which he describes his own experience of life in a Communist country.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781513623696
Publisher: KONSTANTIN MEMOIRS
Publication date: 10/27/2017
Pages: 242
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Anatole Konstantin grew up in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union ruled by Stalin. In 1938, when Anatole was ten years old, his father was arrested by the KGB and the family never heard about him until fifty years later when Gorbachev came to power and they received a letter from the KGB saying that he had been executed and was now being posthumously rehabilitated. This was an admission that he had been innocent. Upon his father's arrest, the family became "enemies of the people" and barely survived. In 1941 when Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Anatole with his mother and little brother escaped several days before the Germans occupied their town and they became refugees in the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. In spite of misery and near starvation, Anatole managed to go to school, and when WW II ended, the family escaped to Poland and then to West Germany where he became a student at the Technical University of Munich. When he graduated as a Mechanical Engineer, the United States was admitting 200,000 Displaced Persons and he came to the land of his dreams. After having worked for twenty years in several companies, Anatole started an engineering consulting company which later became the PDC International Corp. that manufactures packaging machinery. His book, A RED BOYHOOD - Growing Up Under Stalin, describes life under Communist dictatorship and his escape from it. He also taught a course on The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire at the Lifetime Learners Institute at the Norwalk Community College.

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 — How It All Began

How Did the Communists Do It?

Who Was Lenin?

Russia in 1917

The Democratic Revolution of Feb. 1917

The Bolshevik Coup

Chapter 2 — The Chaos

Who Was Going to Supply Food?

Who Was Dzerzhinsky?

Lenin and Germany

Who Was Trotsky?

The Red Terror

Chapter 3 — How Communists Won the Civil War

The New Morality

Today Russia, Tomorrow the World

Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP)

Lenin’s Death

Chapter 4 — Who Was Stalin?

Lenin’s Testament

How Stalin Became a Dictator

Chapter 5 — What was Collectivization?

Stalin’s Five-Year Plans

Chapter 6 — The Gulag

The Terror Years 1937 – 1938

After the Arrest

Chapter 7 — Who Killed Kirov?

The Show Trials

Why Were the Hardened Revolutionaries Admitting to Crimes Which They Could Not Possibly Have Committed?

The Time of Yezhov

The Madhouse

Bringing the Army Under Control

What Did Stalin Have to Say?

The Spanish Civil War

Chapter 8 — Stalin And Hitler

Chapter 9 — World War Ii: 1941 – 1945

German Atrocities

Soviet Atrocities

D-Day, The Yanks Are Coming

Chapter 10 — Stalin’s Rule After The War

Stalin’s Foreign Policy

Soviet Economy After World War II

Stalin’s Test of Loyalty

Who Killed Stalin?

Chapter 11 — After Stalin – Khrushchev

Who Was Khrushchev?

The Sausage Communism

Chapter 12 — Brezhnev, Andropov, And Chernenko

The Prague Spring

Far East and Africa

The Cult of Brezhnev

Andropov and the KGB Take Over

The Party Retakes Power

Chapter 13 — Who Was Gorbachev?

What Were Glasnost and Perestroika?

The Beginning of the End

Who Was Yeltsin?

Chapter 14 — The End Of The Empire

Conclusion

Afterword

Yeltsin: A Trial Democracy

Putin: The End of Democracy

List of Major Names

Glossary

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

About The Author

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews