SOURCE: "Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936," in The New Republic, Vol. 213* No. 10, September 4, 1995, p. 34.

In the following review, Genovese finds Stalin's Letters to Molotov an important source to understanding the Soviet ruler's motivations and methods.

In 1969, Viacheslav Molotov released eighty-six letters written to him by Josef Stalin between 1925 and 1936. Seventy-one of those letters, which now appear in English in Stalin's Letters to Molotov, were written between 1925 and 1930, years of bitter intraparty struggles and the onset of the bloody collectivization of agriculture and forced-march industrialization. The Bolsheviks were building 'socialism in one country,' as hopes waned for Communist revolutions in Western Europe and China. As might be expected, Stalin's Letters contain only hints of the atrocities that were mounting during the 1920s and rose to a horrifying magnitude in the 1930s. No doubt Molotov winnowed his collection carefully, and he included none of his own letters to Stalin...