Joseph Stalin | The Guardian (original) (raw)

January 2025

The Sound of Utopia: Musicians in the Time of Stalin review – hymn to the exiled and executed

Book of the day
The Sound of Utopia by Michel Krielaars review – the musicians persecuted by Stalin

November 2024

The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad by Simon Parkin review – the lost heroes of Soviet horticulture

Gulag History Museum in Moscow temporarily closed ‘for safety reasons’

September 2024

Australian book reviews
The First Friend review – one of history’s greatest monsters reimagined in jet-black satire
A toxic friendship between a Soviet despot and his chauffeur is the basis for a novel that channels Armando Iannucci with a laconically Australian twist

July 2024

Sonata for Broken Fingers review – chamber opera of Stalin’s terror fails to grip

Joe Cutler’s new work – premiered here by BCMG – is an awkward mix of fact and fantasy that adds up to less than the sum of its parts

May 2024

‘Shouldn’t we be proud?’: new Stalin statues symbolise Georgia’s battle to control the past as well as the present

I spent years studying American communism. Here’s what I learned

Maurice Isserman

March 2024

The Guardian view on Russia’s election: in Stalin’s footsteps

Editorial: Vladimir Putin’s landslide victory in a fake contest marks the latest phase in a transition from authoritarianism to outright autocracy

September 2023

‘Everything became a lie, a performance’ – Werner Herzog on Soviet Russia

The German director is championing Georgian film-maker Rezo Gigineishvili’s movie about the dying days of the USSR. But, he says, he won’t be drawn into contemporary political debates

April 2023

Defiant Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza likens his case to Stalin’s show trials

Russian opposition figure facing up to 25 years in jail tells Moscow court he stands by all of his political statements

February 2023

Brief letters
Putin’s threats and Vodka With Stalin

Each day, President Zelenskiy reads my book on military history. I hope he heeds these warnings

Laurence Rees

November 2022

Germany set to declare starvation of Ukrainians under Stalin a genocide

Bundestag hopes move will serve as ‘warning’ to Moscow as Ukraine faces potential hunger crisis

March 2022

Cannibalism and genocide: the horrific visions of Ukraine’s best loved artist

A new treaty will not end the war in Ukraine

February 2022

Book of the day
Stalin’s Library by Geoffrey Roberts review – the marks of a leader
Joseph Stalin owned about 20,000 books, many with jottings in the margin. Does his library hold the key to his character?

December 2021

Russian court increases jail sentence for Gulag historian

The Observer view on a decade of North Korea under Kim Jong-un

October 2021

Book of the day
Skin by Sergio del Molino review – a meditation on psoriasis and the psyche
A sufferer writes about how the skin condition affected figures as diverse as Joseph Stalin, John Updike and Cyndi Lauper

About 337 results for Joseph Stalin