Moscow, 1937 - Tapa blanda

An almost impossibly rich masterpiece. The density and seriousness, the deliberation and literary art of this exhilarating tour de force testifies to the enduring value and purpose of that perhaps now-vanishing triumph of the human intellect, the book.
The Atlantic, best five books of 2012

Exceptionally readable. An extraordinary, thought-provoking masterpiece.
 Literary Review

No book could be more equal to the task of restoring Stalin’s victims to Western memory than Schlögel’s Moscow, 1937 – it is an extraordinary work of scholarship, prose and remembrance. 
Times Literary Supplement

Compelling in every way, the book startles the mind and stirs the imagination in the way that only poetry and music can sometimes do. An instant classic.
Wichita Eagle

An incomparable book about people during one of the most grandiose and terrifying epochs of the twentieth century.
David Shearer, University of Delaware

Schlögel captures the complex specificity of a time and place of immense significance in Soviet and twentieth-century history [and] brings into play an ingenious variety of sources, ranging from architectural blueprints and city directories to execution records, not forgetting diaries and literary evocations. This is a masterful, panoramic work by a gifted story-teller who is also a highly innovative, sophisticated and erudite historian.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, University of Chicago  

Moscow, 1937: the soviet metropolis at the zenith of Stalin's dictatorship. A society utterly wrecked by a hurricane of violence. In this compelling book, the renowned historian Karl Schlögel reconstructs with meticulous care the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the 'Great Terror' during which 1 1/2 million human beings lost their lives within a single year. He revisits the sites of show trials and executions and, by also consulting numerous sources from the time, he provides a masterful panorama of these key events in Russian history. He shows how, in the shadow of the reign of terror, the regime around Stalin also aimed to construct a new society. Based on countless documents, Schlögel's historical masterpiece vividly presents an age in which the boundaries separating the dream and the terror dissolve, and enables us to experience the fear that was felt by people subjected to totalitarian rule. This rich and absorbing account of the Soviet purges will be essential reading for all students of Russia and for any readers interested in one of the most dramatic and disturbing events of modern history.