From Hoover Press: Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives by Paul R. Gregory

In Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives (Hoover Institution Press, 2008) Hoover fellow Paul R. Gregory has written 14 tales drawn from the Hoover Institution’s collections on the Soviet state and party archives. From the scientific study of Lenin’s brain to prove his genius, featured in the title story, to the infamous Katyn massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets during World War II to the decision to invade Afghanistan, Gregory brings to light details and offers insights into the inner workings of not only the Soviet Union, but the repressive nature of dictatorships, in general, through these stories.

Oxford historian Robert Service, commenting on Lenin’s Brain, said, “Paul Gregory brings a light touch to a heavy subject. Prospecting in rare Soviet archives, he has produced important nuggets of information about the way the USSR functioned at the supreme level in politics and economics. Readers will relish the spectacle he puts on for them.”

Gregory heads up an initiative at the Hoover Institution to research its unique archival holdings on the Soviet state and party. Many of the once-secret archives were not opened to the public until the early 1990s. “Under this project we are studying the Soviet state and party archives to gain a basic understanding of the way the Soviet economic, political, and social system worked,” said Gregory. As a result of the Hoover Soviet Archives Workshop more than 40 articles, 10 books (three of which have won international awards), and two documentary collections, the internationally recognized History of Stalin’s Gulag and The Political Economy of Stalinism, and now Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives have been published.

Gregory, a Hoover Institution research fellow, holds an endowed professorship in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, Texas, and is a research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin.

Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives, by Paul R. Gregory