دانلود کتاب Stalin's Prosecutor: The Life of Andrei Vyshinsky

During Joseph Stalin’s reign few men proved to be more appallingly ruthless than Andrei Vyshinsky, who as prosecutor-general presided over the infamous Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s. In this groundbreaking history, Soviet journalist Arkady Vaksberg draws on previously unseen KGB files and other source material to limn an unforgettable portrait of one of that period’s most important and, until now, mysterious figures.Born in Odessa in 1883, Andrei Vyshinsky rose to the upper echelon of power to become one of the most feared and despised of Stalin’s henchmen. He gained notoriety for carefully orchestrating the purge trials of the thirties. Which led to the deaths of thousands of Stalin’s enemies—real or imagined. Radek, Rykov, Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin were only some of the many revolutionaries, high-ranking army officers and senior government officials to fall during this dark period. Through it all, Vyshinsky was there to guarantee conviction, with or without evidence, while maintaining a pretense of legality.When his savage legal career ended in 1938, Vyshinsky moved on to diplomatic service, eventually rising to the post of foreign minister, where he continued to exercise his special talent for justifying Soviet actions during the cataclysmic 1940s and early 1950s. Hid remarkably long career ended with “honorable exile” as the Soviet delegate to the United Nations after Stalin’s death in 1953. In ironic contrast to his many victims, Andrei Vyshinsky died a peaceful death in his residence on capitalistic Park Avenue a year later.The life of this single, crucial individual is also the previously untold story of the inner workings of the Stalinist justice system, a fascinating and telling look at Soviet conduct during that epoch, and, ultimately, a unique and staling glimpse into the very inner circle of Stalin’s coterie. This, one of the first and most revealing of the post-glasnost books to come out of the Soviet Union, is a truly valuable contribution to our understanding of 20th Century history.