Alexander J. Motyl: Stalin’s partisans in Ukraine
A man holds a portrait of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin during a rally to mark the 98th anniversary of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution in Crimean city of Simferopol on Nov. 7.
Alexander Gogun’s excellent study, Stalin’s Commandos: Ukrainian Partisan Forces on the Eastern Front, sometimes reads like an analysis of Putin’s commandos in the eastern Donbas. In both cases, the official Moscow line was and is that they’re a popular movement generated by discontent from below.
