Joseph Stalin
The Last BooksWednesday, May 1, 2013 by Jonathan Brent | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The invisible structures created by the Jewish people of Eastern Europe over a thousand years were given shape and transmitted through the books and the documents collected by YIVO. These structures still move us. If we do not know what they are, we do not know ourselves.
World War II and the Impossibility of Polish HistoryWednesday, February 27, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Must any history of Poland in the Second World War therefore put the Jews and the Holocaust at the center? If it does not, is that originality or revisionism?
Antisemitism: Obsession or Logic?Thursday, January 24, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Robert Wistrich’s new book, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel, does much to demonstrate that anti-Semitism was and is a fixture of the Left—but stops short of that conclusion.
Can Jews Write History?Thursday, November 8, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In his well-known book Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, historian Eric Hobsbawm made the remarkable assertion that “no serious historian of nations and nationalism can be a committed political nationalist.”
Editors' Picks
Surviving Stalin Ben Cohen, Tablet. Stalin's "Doctors' Plot" is now seen by many historians as the opening move of a grand plan to deport and eliminate Soviet Jews. They were saved only by Stalin's own death.
Preconditions to Murder Timothy Snyder, New York Review of Books. It is no accident that the Final Solution took place in territory where first the Soviets had destroyed independent states, then the Germans had destroyed Soviet institutions.
The Fuhrer Was Not Amused Nigel Jones, Spectator. From average Germans to Jews in concentration camps, gallows humor was one of the few weapons of resistance against the Third Reich. So, Hitler tried mightily to repress it.
Stalin’s Jewish Spies Baruch Sterman, Rarest Blue. While Stalin was persecuting their coreligionists at home, a disproportionate number of Jews dutifully served him by spying on America’s nuclear research.
Seventy Years of Soviet Zion David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times. Despite predictions of its demise, Birobidzhan, the autonomous Jewish region in Siberia founded by Stalin, still has a Jewish character and is seeing a rebirth in Jewish culture.
The Most Dangerous Man in the World Reuel Marc Gerecht, Weekly Standard. The West may hope that Iran would have enough acumen not to actually use a nuclear bomb, but her Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, hasn’t exhibited much sense yet.