Russia: Epitaph for a Killer

The career of Author Ilya Ehrenburg, 74, spans the history of modern Russia from Czardom through Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin's years of terror, and the gentler years of the old killer's successors. Ehrenburg managed to survive it all by saying just enough of the right things and keeping a discreet tongue about the wrongs around him. Last week, in the final chapters of his rambling memoirs, People, Years, Life, Ehrenburg reminisced on the darker side of the Stalin era.

"I would just like to explain to the readers why I did not like Stalin," he wrote, because "a new generation...

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