NIGHT OF THE MURDERED POETS

Long-Suppressed Trial Transcript, Now Available in English, Shows What Really Happened When Stalin Falsely Charged, Secretly Tried, and Unjustly Convicted Fifteen Soviet Jews;

In STALIN'S SECRET POGROM, Joshua Rubenstein-a highly regarded authority on Soviet history, human rights, and international affairs-provides annotations about the players and events surrounding the case. In a long, compellingly written introduction, he draws on newly released documents in Moscow archives and on interviews with relatives of the defendants in Israel, Russia, and the United States to set the trial in historical and political context and to offer a wrenching account of Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign. Because much misinformation appears in respected English language works on the subject, and because the trial sheds so much light on the Jewish Question in the Soviet Union, STALIN'S SECRET POGROM serves as an important corrective. Its revelations about the behavior of the defendants, who were tortured and held in isolation for more than three years, may prove controversial (almost all of them denounced each other in the trial and abased themselves in last-ditch attempts to save their lives). Certainly it provides a frightfully dramatic picture of the anti-Jewish character of Stalin's regime during his last year.