“Here is the second sentence of Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine: We may perhaps put this in perspective in the present case by saying that in the actions here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in this book.”
The author describes the role of communism in mid-twentieth-century thought and its influence on his own family as he reflects on Stalin, his impact on the Soviet Union, and his legacy.