Joseph Stalin was responsible for one of the largest mass-killings of the 20th century—but this isn’t reflected in how he’s remembered, in Russia or here in the States. This morning NYU professor and Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen joined MSNBC’s Morning Joe to explain why Stalin’s legacy remains so contradictory today, and the implications this legacy have for contemporary Russian society. 

"We know the story of people who survived the Holocaust," Cohen says, "but almost nobody has ever written about, or asked about, what happened to the survivors of Stalin’s terror." Cohen takes on these questions in his new book, The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin. The book is the result of years of research and interviews with friends and acquaintances who experienced Stalin’s prison camps firsthand.

—Braden Goyette