I hope that your “browsing reader” glances at the Prologue, the pages one through six. One informed reader said this must be the best short overview of Stalin’s terror ever published.Having read the horrors described in those few pages may well make one want to know what later happened to the victims that survived them.In three photo album inserts, I have included striking photos, showing the faces of some names that will be known to more than a few American readers—the widow of Nikolai Bukharin, Anna Larina, and her children—as well as less-well-known others, before, during, and after the years of their victimization.The faces of the victims need to be seen.
Several compelling photographs of Olga Shatunovskaya are reproduced in the book.Many of the photos in the book are my own, and thus quite personal.In the pages eight and nine I explain how this author, who grew up in Kentucky far from all of that, ended up living among Stalin’s victims in Moscow and eventually writing their story. If nothing else, my own “fate” in this regard reminds us how unexpected our lives can be.The Victims Return is about one of the great tragedies of the 20th century and one of its greatest human sagas. But it is also a book about Russia today.Readers may be surprised to discover that despite the monstrous crimes recounted in the book, some 50% of Russians surveyed today nonetheless consider Stalin to have been “a great leader.”As a result, yet another debate is underway in Russia over Stalin’s long rule and its present-day relevance—the third controversy since the despot died in 1953 (the first was under Khrushchev, the second under Gorbachev).In the Epilogue, I try to explain why this has happened—and what it may mean for Russia’s future. And it is not due to Putin’s rule, as the US media regularly asserts. The “significance” of that will be clear to American readers.