For twenty years Gerhard Schnehen has been combing the writings of Russian, English, German and other observers to learn why socialism collapsed in the USSR and in other countries.

He has written books on the history of the German Democratic Republic, on Khrushchev’s putsch in 1953, the fate of four German Communists who became victims of the great purges in the USSR in the late thirties, and also on Gorbachev’s perestroika.

An unbiased review of primary resources leads one to some rather shocking conclusions about how the history of the Soviet Union has been misrepresented. Slander and libel against Beria and Stalin have been repeated until they took on the sheen...

An unbiased review of primary resources leads one to some rather shocking conclusions about how the history of the Soviet Union has been misrepresented. Slander and libel against Beria and Stalin have been repeated until they took on the sheen of accepted truth.

Yet they had fought for the rights of the working poor. This kind of agenda tends to draw the wrath of the elites, who, after Stalin’s violent death in 1953, were quick to move things in a different direction.

The West has always been sympathetic to Khrushchev. He was heralded for his “courage� in condemning his predecessor and for introducing capitalist elements into the Soviet economy. In fact, he was put in place to dismantle the socialist system, especially the socialist economic system, which had been created under Lenin and Stalin, and to substitute it with an essentially capitalist system ruled by the profit principle and a privileged nomenclature.

The facts, the actual record, show that Stalin and Beria fought fight to build socialism, prioritizing the interests of the workingman. This has never been forgotten or forgiven; it is still a thorn in the side of the new Russian rulers, who are building a hybrid system with many capitalist features; they downplay the Communist past.