Stalin's Russia (Reading History)

Rating:
Summary: Nearly Unreadable
Review: Although the preface says that this book was designed for undergraduates, it is not. It was designed for Chris Ward. The author tends to bypass any explaination of who and what historical figures and organizations were. Just one example: What exactly the Checka was, although Ward mentions it, is never explained at all. The racing "narrative" jumps around from one factoid to another. There is no sense of continutity. I was baffled as to what Ward's point was at the end of the first chapter and found myself more confused about Stalinism than before.

Even more, Ward's use of an overwhelming amount of tangential footnotes is irritating at best and only serves to confuse the reader at worst. Each chapter is arbitrarily and very post-modernly divided into a "narrative" section, an "interpretations" section and an "explainations" section.

I wanted to send Ward off to a gulag after reading this.