Harvard Around Town:*
Joshua Rubenstein Book Talk on "The Last Days of Stalin"

February 22 presented by the Mercantile Library

5:30 pm reception/6 pm program

$15   (Mercantile Library members are$10)

Reservations required: 513-621-0717 OR email reservations@mercantilelibrary.com

Joshua Rubenstein has been professionally involved with human rights and international affairs for over forty years as an activist and independent scholar with particular expertise in Russian affairs.

Mr. Rubenstein is a longtime Associate at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He is the author and editor of several major works on Soviet and Soviet Jewish history, including biographies of Leon Trotsky and of the writer Ilya Ehrenburg. He has also written about the history of the Soviet human rights movement and about the Holocaust in German-occupied Soviet territory.

He was on the staff of Amnesty International USA from 1975 to 2012, serving as an organizer and Northeast Regional Director. He is now Associate Director for Major Gifts at Harvard Law School.

His previous books include the National Jewish Book Award–winner Stalin’s Secret Pogrom, published by Yale University Press.

http://new.mercantilelibrary.com/event/the-last-days-of-stalin/  *This event is not sponsored or run by Harvard Club of Cincinnati.  The HCC advertises events with Harvard alumni and affiliates under the banner "Harvard Around Town".  If you know of an alum appearing in Greater Cincinnati, please contact the webmaster.

The Last Days of Stalin
by Joshua Rubenstein

A gripping account of the months before
and after Stalin’s death and how his demise
reshaped the course of twentieth-century history
Joshua Rubenstein’s riveting account takes us back to the second half of 1952 when no one could foresee an end to Joseph Stalin’s murderous regime. He was poised to challenge the newly elected U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower with armed force, and was also broadening a vicious campaign against Soviet Jews. Stalin’s sudden collapse and death in March 1953 was as dramatic and mysterious as his life. It is no overstatement to say that his passing marked a major turning point in the twentieth century.


The Last Days of Stalin is an engaging, briskly told
account of the dictator’s final active months, the vigil at his deathbed, and the unfolding of Soviet and international events in the months after his death.