Monstrous Folly: Paul R. Gregory’s Lenin’s Brain peers into the nightmare workings of the Soviet state


 

Publication Date: January 2008

Publisher: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace

Author(s): Andrew Nagorski

Research Area: Politics; Social conditions

Keywords: Soviet Union; Joseph Stalin; Gulag

Type: Brief

Coverage: Soviet Union

Abstract:

Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives, by Paul R. Gregory, draws on the author’s experiences presiding over a team of scholars who have mined the Hoover Institution’s extensive collection of documents from Soviet state and party archives. The result is an enticingly short (164 pages) sampler of stories from the archives that offers a glimpse into how the Soviet system worked in all its chilling inhumanity, not just under Stalin but also under his successors.