REVIEWS unscrupulous Vozhd. His refusal to listen to the judgment of local commanders meant that whole armies were surrounded and decimated by the Germans in the early months of the war. Stalin's systematic assault on the officer corps during the Great Terror left the Red Army unprepared for battle. And his illusions about Hitler's fidelity to his word made Operation Barbarossa even more devastating than it had to be. Stalin does not deserve the encomiums he still receives in Russia-and sometimes abroad-for leading the USSR to victory in the Second World War. Twentyseven million Soviet citizens perished during the war in no small part because of Stalin's errors of judgment and because of the fact that he had no concern for the value of human life. To all these deaths one must add the victims of "periodic famines or starvation." Five to seven million alone perished in 1932 and 1933 in southern Russia, the north Caucasus, and the Ukraine (this was a war against the independent peasantry-a democide if you will-and not an ethnic genocide). Another million or two starved to death in 1946 and 1947. These Stalinist famines were the result of political decisions, and the Stalinist regime did nothing to alleviate the fate of the Russian and Ukrainian peasantry. Grain was expropriated from the dying, and no grain was purchased abroad. All this occurred during relatively good weather, and with no conflict or war, other than the self-conscious war against the independent peasantry unleashed in 1929 and 1930. Khlevniuk's use of the word war is by no means hyperbolic. Stalin despised economic incentives and humane techniques of labor management. He wanted to turn the peasantry into "slaves of the state." He "favored the total expropriation of peasant property" and waged a ruthless and uncompromising military campaign against the Russian village and peasant way of life. moder nagejour nal .com 137http://www.modernagejournal.com