Matthew Yglesias (September 04, 2007) - Stranger Than Fiction (Miscellaneous)

Bush can't even get the oil pumps working in Iraq.
It's too soon to get the oil pumps working; the Iraqi Parliament has not yet passed an oil law that lets US oil companies siphon off as much money and oil as they want. If and when such a law is passed, oil exports from Iraq will somehow, magically, begin to increase.

Posted by joel hanes | September 4, 2007 8:15 PM

It's sad when the incompetence is the upside.

Posted by Warren Terra | September 4, 2007 8:18 PM

Ha, Matt, we knew that someday your facade would crack and out would come the giant Stalin posters and you would be exposed for the revolutionary subversive fifth columnist you are!!!

Posted by El Cid | September 4, 2007 8:23 PM

A friend of mine and I had the same running gag in grad school, only our book was going to be called Joseph Stalin: Misunderstood Liberal.

Posted by William Burns | September 4, 2007 8:28 PM

I've read the book by Roberts that Bacevich reviews. It's by and large a fair review but the book is still worth reading b/c it is probably contains the most primary evidence from the Soviet archives of any work in english to date.

Posted by dave | September 4, 2007 8:30 PM

ps: was Stalin a liberal hawk?

Posted by dave | September 4, 2007 8:31 PM

To echo El Cid, this is going to be used against you in the righty blogosphere -- Matt Yglesias unreconstructed Stalinist.

The notion of Stalin as military genius is laughable. He put the USSR in a huge bind by not responding to all manner of warnings that Germany was going to attack. He also had deeply harmed the Red Army through his purges of the leadership in the 1930s. He got very, very lucky to have a chance to recover from these mistakes.

The detente claim is preposterous as well.

Posted by klein's tiny left nut | September 4, 2007 8:31 PM

"The notion of Stalin as military genius is laughable. He put the USSR in a huge bind by not responding to all manner of warnings that Germany was going to attack."

Parole Board: "About that tattoo on you chest."
Sideshow Bob: "What about it?"
PB: "It says, 'Die Bart Die.'"
SB: "No, that's German for 'The Bart, The.'"
PB: "Nobody who speaks German could be evil."

Posted by Reality Man | September 4, 2007 8:44 PM

"Roberts also uncovers evidence leading to the stunning conclusion that Stalin was both the greatest military leader of the twentieth century and a remarkable politician who sought to avoid the Cold War and establish a long-term detente with the capitalist world."

In actual fact, Stalins' incompetence in military affairs almost lost the Second World War for the former Soviet Union. His troop dispositions on the Ukraines' Western front and his appointment of incompetent political generals led to the loss of almost 100 Soviet divisions and almost to the loss of Moscow. Fortunately for him, his opponent, Hitler was even more incompetent. Hitlers attempt to take both Leningrad and Moscow at the same time ended up with the German Army taking neither. Had Hitler concentrated on capturing Moscow in 1941, he undoubtedly could have done so. This capture would have crippled the Soviet response to the 1942 campaign as all the Russian lateral railroads ran through Moscow. If Hitler had captured Moscow, he next move should have been to move toward the Caucasus where much of the Soviet oil reserves were; he should have ignored Leningrad which had little strategic value. Had the lateral railroads been rendered unusable, it is likely that the Battle of Stalingrad would not have taken place as the Soviet Army would have been hard put to send reinforcements.

Posted by SLC | September 4, 2007 8:44 PM

Re Reality Man

This is absolutely incredible. Mr. Reality Man and I actually agree on something! Maybe I had better reassess my position.

Posted by SLC | September 4, 2007 8:51 PM

I'll join the voices pointing out how absurd it is to call Stalin a military genius. The USSR's most effective strategy (scorched earth) basically consisted of capitalizing (unintentional pun that I will now keep) on the fact that Russia was far too large for Germany to take over, especially while fighting on a second front.
The Germans never really stood a chance on the eastern front. It would have been remarkable had Stalin managed to lose to them.

Posted by Khaled | September 4, 2007 8:53 PM

I the people you linked to might want to read "Stalin's Blunders" before you call him a "military genius". His "genius" nearly cost the USSR the war by late 1941 - had the Japanese held off on any attack (on the US or elsewhere) for another 6 months, the USSR would have had to sue for peace - the only thing that saved Moscow in 1941 was the eastern divisions that were freed up by Soviet spies in Japan tipping the government off.

Posted by James Robertson | September 4, 2007 9:00 PM

Misedited above.

The people you linked to might want to read "Stalin's Folly" before they call him a "military genius". His "genius" nearly cost the USSR the war by late 1941 - had the Japanese held off on any attack (on the US or elsewhere) for another 6 months, the USSR would have had to sue for peace - the only thing that saved Moscow in 1941 was the eastern divisions that were freed up by Soviet spies in Japan tipping the government off.

Posted by James Robertson | September 4, 2007 9:01 PM

Re Khaled

I am afraid I will have to take issue with Mr. Khaled relative to the chances of the former Soviet Union losing the Second World War. As I pointed out in my comment, only the incompetence of Hitler saved them from defeat. And even then, it was a near run thing. As I stated, if the Germans had taken Moscow in 1941 and then moved successfully on the Caucasus in 1942, the former Soviet Union probably would have been forced out of the war.

Posted by SLC | September 4, 2007 9:08 PM

Nobody's all bad, especially in retrospect. Mussolini did make the train run on time, more often at least. Hitler was a fervent anti communist, loved puppies, children and his vegetables, A real feather in his cap is that he hated smoking.

Posted by rapier | September 4, 2007 9:08 PM

What is a "military leader"?

Stalin wasn't a great strategist or a great general. His "genius" would appear to be something like FDR's -- the ability to find good generals and then let them work. Actually, FDR was probably better at that; Stalin's paranoia meant that he could never quit micromanaging.

So, Franklin Roosevelt -- greatest military leader of the 20th century? Why not, if we're defining the term that loosely?

Posted by Anderson | September 4, 2007 9:14 PM

Arguably Stalin was no worse, morally speaking, than Peter the Great - who seems to generally get a free pass or even admiration from Westerners. Yet Peter was very similar - saw human lives as expendable for the greater good of the nation (the construction of St Petersburg was just as murderous and profligate with human life as the infamous White Sea Canal project), believed military expansion was the only way to protect the country, plied his subordinates with alcohol to keep them off balance, etc. In fact Stalin was a much nicer father than Peter (in that he didn't murder his own son with his bare hands). Yet for all that, Peter succeeded in building a legacy and Stalin did not. On what basis can Stalin be considered a success when his state crumbled away within 40 years of his death without a shot being fired? Almost every weakness of the Soviet State was a direct legacy of Stalinism - underdeveloped agriculture, overinvestment in heavy industry, a disfunctional paranoid bureacratic apparatus, repressed ethnic tension, etc. Stalin was an unmitigated disaster for Russia.

Posted by vanya_6724 | September 4, 2007 9:26 PM

Anderson,

Actually, in broad conceptual terms, I think one can make the case for FDR without blushing. Pretty much every move he made -- from the pre-war maneuvering to the choice of leaders to the management of the war economy and the Europe first strategy in war -- all were incredibly prescient. Far more so than any of the other major leaders of the war, including Churchill, Roosevelt saw both the big and small pictures exceedingly well.

Posted by klein's tiny left nut | September 4, 2007 9:28 PM

Stalin's paranoia wasn't accidental either; he fell for an Abwehr dirty trick; that relied on
the backstory of German soldiers training in Soviet Russia to avoid Versailles era sanctions.
Those Soviet officers who had most contacts with
the Germans; were the ones who were flagged as having anti-Stalinist sympathies. Stalin did the
rest with the purges. The Ukraine famine of the
fifties delivered Bandera's UPA straight to the Germans, and his aggressive anti-Moslem atheism did the same for Tadjiks, Uzbeks, and Kazakhs; all the Chechen's suffered by their historical lot.

As to the other point, you do realize since 1927; when the first oil finds were made by IPC (Standard Oil's Mesopotamian branxh) and Anglo Persian Oil) in Mosul; that those resources were
stolen from their Kurdish and Shia owners and turned over to a long line of Sunni tribal oligarch (Nuri Al Said,the Pachachi's, Ghailanis
and the Aref-Hussein Baathist cliques)

Posted by narciso | September 4, 2007 9:30 PM

did you write this post so you could let it be known that you work out?

Posted by jvoe | September 4, 2007 9:31 PM

Sorry, even you and Sullivan won't be able to prop up McArdle's blog much longer. Is this going to be a daily occurrence now?

Side note: what exactly is The Atlantic's editorial policy on cross-linking? Do they encourage it? Has it never been discussed? Is it completely innocent or part of a marketing strategy? I think that is a legitimate question, don't you?

Posted by jim | September 4, 2007 9:33 PM

This is quite funny- Roberts writes a book that offers new evidence to show why Stalin was a very effective "warlord" (his term) and you all respond by saying "not true" without even pausing to consider what evidence is actually offered. As they say "read the damn book first" or at least the thoughtful roundtable on it on H-diplo (http://www.h-net.org/%7Ediplo/roundtables/#roberts) by many of the world's leading authorities-- incl. Zubok and Pleshakov (both quite traditionalist)-- on Stalin. Their view is more mixed than Bacevich's. At the very least stop name-dropping the one bloody book on Stalin that was on your undergrad syllabus. I say this as someone who strongly disagrees with some of the conclusions Roberts draws.

Posted by dave | September 4, 2007 9:39 PM

Dave,

I like to think I'mreasonably well read on the subject, although I have not read the book referenced. But for a recent short treatment of Stalin's decision making check out Ian Kershaw's "Fateful Choices" which is also based on the latest available documents and strikes me as sober and measured in tone. Stalin does not appear to have ben a military genius in those pages.

Posted by klein's tiny left nut | September 4, 2007 9:52 PM

[...] only our book was going to be called Joseph Stalin: Misunderstood Liberal.

Isn't that pretty much the book Jonah Goldberg keeps threatening to publish?

Posted by live | September 4, 2007 11:25 PM

Can't the Atlantic hire better readers for this blog? You know how you can tell that Matt is not necessarily endorsing something? He puts it in quotes, to indicate someone else said it. Matt obviously picked that quote because it was so hype-full, better to fit in with the jokey tone of the post. When a post starts with a joke, has a quote about the awesomeness of Stalin in the middle, and ends with a joke, I think it's pretty safe to assume the quote was picked for its joke-friendly qualities.

Posted by Walt | September 4, 2007 11:38 PM

Um, commenters, I am 99.9% certain that neither Matt nor Bacevich think Stalin was a great military leader.

I believe that is the joke.

Perhaps I am wrong.

Posted by Armando | September 5, 2007 12:11 AM

I'll just note that John Erickson, author of undoubtedly the two best (and densest) operational histories of the Eastern Front in WWII titled his books STALIN'S WAR AGAINST GERMANY for a reason. Stalin made appalling mistakes, but the Soviet victory would probably have not occurred without him.

Also superb reading is Evan Mawdsley's THUNDER IN THE EAST: THE NAZI-SOVIET WAR 1941-1945.

Posted by tequila | September 5, 2007 7:05 AM

Yes, he does deserve better readers -- we were all joking as well, although somewhat ruefully as the idiocy of the right wing blogosphere is never to be underestimated; or misunderestimated. I would bet money that at some point Matt is tarred as sympathetic to Stalin.

Posted by Klein's tiny left nut | September 5, 2007 7:08 AM

Re: SLC,

Maybe I'm wrong about whether the invasion of the USSR was truly impossible. We're in "what if" territory, and you seem better informed on the military particulars of the time than I am. I'll just clarify/re-iterate what my own readings tell me:

Whatever Hitler's mistakes were after starting the Russian campaign, they are vastly outweighed by the blunder of even trying to invade such a large landmass while he was still fully engaged in a fight on his western front. Add to this that he effectively picked a fight with the United States at around the same time (although some might debate whether he gave a green light to the attack on Pearl Harbor), and it seems to me that Hitler put himself at a massive disadvantage right at the outset, before making any other mistakes.

Posted by Khaled | September 5, 2007 7:12 AM

Anybody who thinks Stalin was a brilliant military leader should read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/What-Stalin-Knew-Enigma-Barbarossa/dp/030011981X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-2240096-2532442?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188993400&sr=1-1

I don't see how his responsibility for the tragedy of Barbarossa would be considered brilliant. His only redeeming quality as a military leader was the realization he needed professionals to run the war once the shock wore off and he let the likes of Zhukov and Koniev finish off the Germans.

Posted by Pan | September 5, 2007 7:44 AM

George Bush half asses everything, including dictatorship. Hard to expect anything else.

Posted by soullite | September 5, 2007 8:07 AM

Re Khaled

Mr. Khaled makes some good point relative to Hitlers' failure to drive Great Britain out of the war before invading the former Soviet Union and declaring war on the United States. However, my point is that he could have driven the Soviet Union out of the war before these mistakes became fatal.

1. The number of troops the German Army committed to the North African campaign was relatively insignificant compared to the number committed to operation Barbarossa.

2. Had Hitler not made the many mistakes in the invasion of the Soviet Union, the latter might well have been driven out of the war before the weight of the presence of the US forces began affecting the course of the war. Recall that the US Army in 1941 was still rather small, compared to the other nations in the fight. A large army can't be created overnight.

All this is not to say that Germany would have eventually prevailed in WW2. Had the Soviet Union been eliminated from the war in 1942, it is very unlikely that the invasion of Sicily in 1943 and the Normandy invasion in 1944 would have taken place. On the other hand, the US/British development of nuclear weapons in 1945 might have, on their own, been sufficient to win the war without an invasion.

Posted by SLC | September 5, 2007 8:10 AM

Stalin may not have been the smartest person in the world, but, unlike MacArthur, who got driven into Corregidor by a force 1/3 the size of his own, Stalin probably never graduated from high school.

If the British generals had done their job properly in WW I, they would have seized the Dardanelles and kept supply lines open to Czarist Russia, which might have averted the Russian Revolution altogether.

Just no end to the fun we can have with history.

Posted by serial catowner | September 5, 2007 8:23 AM

Side note: what exactly is The Atlantic's editorial policy on cross-linking? Do they encourage it? Has it never been discussed? Is it completely innocent or part of a marketing strategy? I think that is a legitimate question, don't you?

No policy. Not explicitly. I've heard it discussed once. Everyone the Atlantic pays to blog has an interest in seeing the "let's hire these bloggers" initiative succeed, and I suspect that knowledge motivates all of us. The question's legitimate enough that I answered it.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | September 5, 2007 8:24 AM

Iraq pumps oil.

When the repeatedly blown up oil pipelines allow.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 5, 2007 8:35 AM

Serial Catowner wrote: "Stalin probably never graduated from high school."

Not to nitpick, but to nitpick: Stalin not only graduated from high school in Gori (northernish Georgia), but completed several years of seminary in Tbilisi before dropping out just before his final exams.

You, too, would know this had you been subjected to a 3-hour long tour of the Stalin Museum in Gori. The quote of that day was, "Stalin was misunderstood, but history is beginning to redeem his legacy."

Posted by &chik | September 5, 2007 9:06 AM

Obviously, Stalin was not a tactical nor strategic genius, but he was an impressive leader. Leadership involves getting people to follow, not doing the right thing.

Stalin took power after the Soviet Union was humiliated militarily by Poland. He left it one of the 2 most powerful countries on Earth. Empirically, while he certainly did a hell of a lot wrong, he must have done a lot right.

Posted by Njorl | September 5, 2007 9:11 AM

Someone actually has written that book, and got it published by Princeton. It's called Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution.

To say that history's greatest economic experiment--Soviet communism--was also its greatest economic failure is to say what many consider obvious. Here, in a startling reinterpretation, Robert Allen argues that the USSR was one of the most successful developing economies of the twentieth century. He reaches this provocative conclusion by recalculating national consumption and using economic, demographic, and computer simulation models to address the "what if" questions central to Soviet history. Moreover, by comparing Soviet performance not only with advanced but with less developed countries, he provides a meaningful context for its evaluation.

Although the Russian economy began to develop in the late nineteenth century based on wheat exports, modern economic growth proved elusive. But growth was rapid from 1928 to the 1970s--due to successful Five Year Plans. Notwithstanding the horrors of Stalinism, the building of heavy industry accelerated growth during the 1930s and raised living standards, especially for the many peasants who moved to cities. A sudden drop in fertility due to the education of women and their employment outside the home also facilitated growth.

While highlighting the previously underemphasized achievements of Soviet planning, Farm to Factory also shows, through methodical analysis set in fluid prose, that Stalin's worst excesses--such as the bloody collectivization of agriculture--did little to spur growth. Economic development stagnated after 1970, as vital resources were diverted to the military and as a Soviet leadership lacking in original thought pursued wasteful investments.

Posted by Isaac | September 5, 2007 9:37 AM

unlike MacArthur, who got driven into Corregidor by a force 1/3 the size of his own, Stalin probably never graduated from high school.

Others have already pointed out that Stalin graduated from high school; let me point out that Gen. Homma had an army roughly equivalent to MacArthur's in size, with the crucial problem for MacArthur being that he was cut off from his supply lines by Japanese air and naval superiority.

Posted by rea | September 5, 2007 10:14 AM

Stalin established himself as a mediocre general during Soviet-Polish war, 1919-1921. Tukhachevsky broke Polish defences in the northern part of the front and threatened the capital, Warsaw. Stalin got bogged down besieging Lvov, so he stayed ca. 400 miles behind, opening Tukhachevky's flank to a counter-attack.

Stalin never forgave Tukhachevsky, so the slaughter of Red Army commanders started with unmasking Tukhachesky's "Bonapartist plot".

I do not think that it would help Germans to "concentrate" on Moskow or Leningrad. In 1941 you could not just send tanks on 600 mile blitzkrieg, you would need to replace all their engines, perhaps twice. Russians knew how to slow down invaders in forest country, and their doctrine quite properly required the retreating armies to destroy railroads.

Perhaps Leningrad was much easier to attack, with Finland being a German ally and sea transport available. But northern granitic country is even easier to defend, as Fins themselves have proven in 1940.

Even a genius fails when he tries to do more than it is possible. Perhaps the true genius can discern what is possible and what is not --- think about all the unnamed genius generals who DID NOT START WARS. I wonder what would happen if Hitler sticked to Ribentrop-Molotov pact.

Posted by piotr | September 5, 2007 10:37 AM

We are not better than Stalin and Hitler ourselves?

(I am glad Godwin's Law counts for nothing. Sure - if it were up to me such a book an such a review would NEVER have been published.. but on the other hand I feel much more comfortable when it comes to pointing at our my own perceived similarities to oppressors and tyrants?)

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | September 5, 2007 10:45 AM

We are not better than Stalin and Hitler ourselves?

Well, dude, if you don't like being compared to Stalin and Hitler, don't embark on wars of choice and torture prisoners.

Posted by rea | September 5, 2007 12:30 PM

I just want to know if it's better than America Deceived(book)?

Posted by Steve | September 5, 2007 12:37 PM

@Matt,

>>The question's legitimate enough that I answered it.

Thank you for answering it.

Posted by jim | September 5, 2007 12:43 PM

Re piotr

Despite the fact of Hitlers fatal error in trying to capture both Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and Moscow at the same time, his forces came within 7 miles of the Soviet capitol. Unfortunately for him, this occurred too late and his forces were ground to a halt by General Winter rather then the Soviet generals. Had he concentrated on Moscow, his forces would have reached that position at least 6 weeks earlier and General Winter would not have been a factor.

Posted by SLC | September 5, 2007 12:49 PM

Re: SLC

Although General Winter did a good job at slowing the Germans down, if the Russians didn't redeploy their Siberian troops to counterattack in front of Moscow, the Germans would have had their parade in front of Red Square. That said, I don't think the Soviets would have folded then and there as they evacuated their government and most industries to the Urals and Siberia. But the Germans would have been in a much better position in 1942 to move towards the east and the Caucuses oilfields.

Posted by Pan | September 5, 2007 1:00 PM

Re Pan

Mr. Pan is correct. However, if the German army had arrived at the same position 6 weeks earlier, the Siberian reinforcements wouldn't have been there to contest them.

Posted by SLC | September 5, 2007 1:13 PM

I thought Mr. Zhukov was supposed to be the greatest military leader.

Posted by abb1 | September 5, 2007 4:35 PM

Re abb1.

If we are talking about a purely military commander, the top generals of WW2 are generally considered to be (not necessarily in any particular order):

Erich von Manstein
Erwin Rommel
Albert Kesselring
George Patton
Douglas MacArthur
Chester Nimitz
Heinz Guderian
Georgi Zhukov
Raymond Spruance

Posted by SLC | September 5, 2007 8:05 PM

SLC,

I assume you are talking about generals in the field -- but I would certainly put Gneral George C. Marshall and Admiral Ernest King at the top of any list of overall military leaders during the war.

On a lower level, General James Gavin of the 82nd Airborne, seems to me to epitomize the best of hands on generalship in the war.

Posted by klein's tiny left nut | September 5, 2007 8:42 PM

The thing about the campaign in the Caucusus is that it exposed the flanks of the drive on Stalingrad. In looking at the map, one wonders why Hitler didn't just drive to the Volga river near Stalingrad, without bother to waste men and material in taking the city out right (usually they surrounded the city) but instead, driven down the Volga to the vicinity of Astrakhan. In that way protecting the flank of the move to Stalingrad.

In doing so the strategic aims of the Caucasus drive would have been met: Control of the west bank of the Volga from Stalingrad to Astrakhan would have prevented the movement of supplies coming up from Iran and Azerbaijan (oil) and starved the Soviet Caucus forces into eventual submission with hardly a shove. In effect, creating an opportunity for air superiority over most of the Caspian Sea.

This maneuver would have left more forces for dealing with Soviet attempts on the German's flanks. And had the German's taken Moscow the year before I am sure things would have been so much more better for them.

It's easy to see the strategic mistake of Invading Russia in hindsight. It's equivalent to the idea of a python swallowing a pig, or bigger still, an elephant. Guderian's envelopment's from a fully mobile armored forces were novel and breathtaking. Still the German's captured hundreds of Soviet divisions and yet Stalin never ran out of more divisions to throw at the Germans. German nationalist movements arose on the myth of the stab in the back. In the first world war, the won in the east only to lose in the west. It was perfectly natural for them to think that if they could only win in the West, they could win in the east all over again. And in WWII, the German's did win in the west (by World War I standards) at least for the first four years of the war, only to lose in the east. (Normandy was more important for ensuring that the Russians didn't dominate all of Europe, circa Orwell's 'Urasia' then it was in defeating Germany, by June 1944 German defeat, at least at the hands of the Russian's, was only a matter of timing).

My two cents worth.

Posted by Klagenfurt | September 6, 2007 3:36 AM

Klagenfurt - you are correct regarding Stalingrad and the drive on the Caucasus. But that observation would be valid if one assumes the overall objective in that operation was military, not political. Unfortunately for Von Paulus, Hitler was obsessed by the city which bore Stalin's name. He wanted to own it outright and completely raze it. Certainly Stalingrad was not as significant a point on the map compared with the oil fields to the south. The encirclement of the 6th Army completely changed the plans of the 4th Panzer Army's drive to the south.

Posted by Pan | September 6, 2007 7:30 AM

Another highly interesting thread for those interested by historical complexity. The truth of the matter is that, despite copious propaganda to the opposite effect, Stalin was no military genius and he more or less recognized the fact (unlike Hitler) after the first six months of the war and let guys who did have skills, like Zhukov run the war (not that he was without his follies, see Glantz on "Operation Mars). Of course Roberts is not arguing anything of the sort, but rather that he was an effective war leader--and that he certainly was (at least in 1942-1944; I have some hesitations on considering the slaughter of Red Army soldiers in Berlin to be "effective"). While total war was in the political DNA of Leninist political culture from the time of the Civil War, Stalin's decision to stay in Moscow when the governmnet began to disintergrate in late October, early November of 1941 leading to riots against officials, was certainly one of the pivotal events of the war. On the other hand--Stalin did not, and could not have won the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet soldier, whose experiences are wonderfully chronicled in Catherine Merridale's Ivan's War deserves that credit--as did all the allied armies and homefronts. The bulk of the fighting obviously occurred in the East but D-Day was not unimportant to the Soviet ability to destroy Army Group Center and open the road to Berlin.
Oh by the way, Stalin did, in a sense, kill his son just like Peter did with Alexis. Yakov was his much despised son of his first marriage (relations were so appalling betweeen father and son that rumors persist that Yakov attempted suicide, just like Stalin's second wife). After being captured by the Nazis, Stalin refused to agree to a prisoner swap that would have spared him (being a Soviet POW was practically a death sentence). Details are sketchy but Yakov was either shot or electrocuted in what was probably a suicide when he simply couldn't take watching his fellow countrymen being slowly starved to death. Interestingly enough, Ivan the Terrible killed his son too, thus making a perfect trifecta of filicide for Russia's major historical despots.
Finally, others have said this but even though I also disagree with a number of the conclusions in Robert's book (especially on the possibility of an early detente), the snark here lampoons a truly important book. The scholarship is meticulous and capacious and the author in no sense an apologist for Stalinism's inhumanities. It's worth a read by all the posters so interested in the conduct of the war

Posted by Matt | September 7, 2007 11:37 PM

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