“He took over ruined Russia with a plow, and left it as a great power, equipped with an atomic bomb,” it was not his friend, Winston Churchill, who said this about Stalin. It is impossible to measure Stalin’s figure with an ordinary yardstick. The time of Lenin and Stalin has passed. But lovers of revolutions must remember him. One of my opponents and ill-wishers once remarked to me: “What do you know about Stalin!” I can answer not only him: I know more than Alexei Tolstoy did when he undertook to write a novel about Peter. The author of the book saw Stalin with his own eyes, heard his speeches, watched newsreels, visited the places where he lived (except Tehran), and, finally, in October he collected a “dossier” on Stalin, putting clippings from newspapers, magazines into folders and rewriting, what was possible. The collection of this “dossier,” which began around 1936, continues to this day. Nikolai Nikonov pays great attention to the personal life of the leader, in particular, he offers his version of his long love affair with a certain Valechka Istrina...