Stalin. An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence.

First UK edition. Thick 8vo. Pp. xv, 516. Red buckram boards, lettered in black to spine; black top-stain. Red dustwrapper, printed in black and white (priced 25s. net to front flap). Frontis., illus. with 35 b/w pls., appendix, chronological guide, list of Stalin's aliases, bibliography, glossary, index. Edited and translated from the Russian by Charles Malamuth.

Backstrip hinges loosening but still holding, offsetting to the endpapers in a V/G, lightly-soiled dustjacket with a few tiny closed tears and chips. Contents clean and bright.

Biography of Stalin by the "one man who knew the truth and was not afraid to tell it." Assassinated on the subject's orders before he could complete the book, the final section was completed by translator and editor Charles Malamuth using Trotsky's own drafts. "The editorial policy... was to publish Trotsky's text entire except for repetitions and utterly extraneous material [with] many of the documents published here for the first time." [Editor's Note].

Originally scheduled for publication in the second half of 1941, the book was abruptly withdrawn from distribution after pressure from the US government, anxious to retain the joint war effort with Russia against Nazi Germany. The book's eventual release in 1946 drew an enraged response from the pro-communist press, which took particular umbrage at Trotsky's charge that Stalin had poisoned Lenin. "Like most of Trotsky's writings, Stalin is a literary tour de force," –Frederick L. Schuman, The Atlantic