Description
Who was Stalin? What did he represent to the millions of communists and peoples fighting for liberation?
Much has been clouded in mystification and personal defamation. In his own time and after, imperialists, fascists, Trotskyites and revisionists of every hue conjured the “spectre of Stalin” to slander communism worldwide. They were and are his greatest enemies — and even his name alone sends shivers down their spine.
Yet a spade is still a spade. Under his leadership, the Red Army liberated Europe. Under his leadership, the great Bolshevik Party inspired hundreds of millions to rise for national liberation and the building of a new, socialist society.
There is also a side of Stalin that few today speak of — his behaviour toward sincere comrades and friends of the Soviet people. With distance, this side grows ever more obscured in popular knowledge. In reality, Stalin was kind, modest, genuine and helpful — profoundly human in all he did.
No one brings this out more clearly than Comrade Enver Hoxha. With Stalin is not only a book that shows what Stalin was truly like, but one that makes readers feel they personally know him. Written on the centenary of his birth, it lives on as the testimony of how Stalin eagerly helped a small socialist country, leaders he had scarcely met, and a people he knew little about — always giving sincere advice, never orders, and creating the most comradely atmosphere imaginable.