Stalin is really the gold standard of dictatorship. No dictator has amassed more power than Stalin, exercised it with greater consequence. It hurts to understand that he didn't have to make those decisions. He could have been more magnanimous. His regime would have survived. And so my job in a way is to convey from the inside, from the original documents, from a sense of deep empathy or understanding as we historians call it, empathy.
Historian and author Stephen Kotkin of Princeton University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the historical significance of the life and work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Solzhenitsyn's birth.