List of Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism, James Ryan (Cardiff University, UK) and Susan Grant (Liverpool John Moores University, UK) -- Part I. The Controversial Vozhd': Stalin as Leader and Statesman -- 1. The Many Lives of Joseph Stalin: Writing the Biography of a 'Monster', Christopher Read (Warwick University, UK) -- 2. Stalin's Purge of the Red Army and Misperception of Security Threats, Peter Whitewood (York St. John University, UK) -- 3. Stalin and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939: The New Historiography, Daniel Kowalsky (Queen's University Belfast, UK) -- 4. Brute Force and Genius: Stalin as War Leader, Chris Bellamy (University of Greenwich, UK) -- Part II. Challenging Stalinist Models: Cults of Personality -- 5. The Stalin Cult in Comparative Context, Judith Devlin (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) -- 6. From Heroic Lion to Streetfighter: Historical Legacies and the Leader Cult in 20th Century Hungary, Balz̀s Apor (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) -- Part III. New Ways of Understanding the Stalinist System: The Cold War -- 7. Revisioning Stalin's Cold War, Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (Loughborough University, UK) -- 8. Working Towards the Vozhd'? Stalin and the Peace Movement, Geoffrey Roberts (University College Cork, Ireland) -- 9. Construction of a Confession: The Language and Psychology of Interrogations in Stalinist Czechoslovakia, Molly Pucci (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) -- Part IV. In Lieu of an Epilogue -- 10. Reckoning with the Past: Stalin and Stalinism in Putin's Russia, James Ryan (Cardiff University, UK) -- Select Bibliography -- Index

This thought-provoking collection of essays, assembled in honour of renowned historian Geoffrey Roberts, analyses the complex, multi-faceted, and even contradictory nature of Stalinism and its representations. This volume 'revisions' Stalin in his various guises - despot and diplomat, soldier and statesman, rational bureaucrat and paranoid politician - and explores the complex picture that this created in Russia during the period. Broadly speaking, three important areas of debate are examined, united by a focus on political leadership: the key controversies surrounding Stalin's leadership role; a reconsideration of Stalin and the Cold War; and new perspectives on the cult of personality.