ABSTRACT
One might have expected Western scholars studying a dictatorial system to concentrate attention on the dictator. That is, however, not the case. This neglect is primarily due to current historiographic fashion, which de-emphasizes the role of personality in human affairs, but it is also partly because the documentary sources recently made available1 show that Iosif Vissarionovich was very much the man he was always thought to be: capricious, wily, ruthless, blessed with a remarkable memory but suspicious to the point of paranoia, even of his closest counsellors.
