"The best of all the books this year - and highly significant in terms of genuine new research - was Miklos Kun's Stalin: An Unknown Portrait, a splendid, subtle and deeply researched picture of the dictator and his circle, filled with new photographs. Kun manages to give a much more intimate and true picture of the workings of the inner circle: among several gems, he quotes Stalin's correspondence with his 10-year-old daughter Svetlana, who cheekily quizzes him on power and sends him orders signed "Svetlana Stalina the Boss".
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