The anecdotes are from a book I read while I was in Grad School. It was not part of the required text but I read it anyway...
The book was Stalin's Secret War by Nikolai Tolstoy
Here's the link:
http://www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/5/1/Lutton84-94.htmlIf you want I can give you more links to more examples of Stalin's perfidy:
-the massacre of The Polish Officer Corps at Katyn Forest
-the forced collectivization which resulted in countless deaths
and
-The Doctor's Plot
Along with Mao and Hitler, Stalin was one of the greatest mass murderers of the twentieth century...