This Week in Books: History Scares Authoritarians
This is an edition of the revamped Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.For many who were purged during Stalin’s reign in the Soviet Union, one erasure followed another. After being sent to the Gulag (if they weren’t shot in the basement of the Lubyanka building), the ousted person would suffer the further indignity of having their face crosshatched with frantic pen marks to make them disappear from family albums.


























