Donald Rayfield’s Stalin and His Hangmen chief concern is the people Stalin surrounded himself with. As Rayfield promises, he does not tell a biography of Stalin, and much of the material about the man is not enlightening, but necessary to the discussions of men like Dzierżyński, Menzhinsky, Iagoda, Ezhov, and others that the book focuses on. He outlines how Stalin used these individuals to direct the tools of his power. Rayfield does offer a biography of each individual Stalin empowered, a comparison to Stalin, as well as a chronicle of their cruel and unethical exploits aimed at pleasing and supplanting Stalin as a totalitarian leader with no challengers.
