About the book: 2011 / Based on archival documents, the book studies the system of supreme power in the USSR in the post-war years, during the so-called “late Stalinism." Strengthening his personal dictatorship, Stalin created narrow leadership groups in the Politburo, bringing closer or disgracing his closest associates. The book examines such events as the disgrace of Malenkov and Molotov, the “Leningrad affair”, purges in the MGB, the “Mingrelian affair” and the reorganization of supreme power on the eve of Stalin’s death. The work shows how, in the depths of the dictatorship, the preconditions for its negation gradually took shape. Under the pressure of growing contradictions in socio-economic development, already during Stalin’s lifetime the need for reforms was realized. Immediately after Stalin's death, the rapid dismantling of the most important pillars of the dictatorship began. The original version of the book entitled “Cold Peace. Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953" was published in English in 2004. The new revised edition is published under an agreement with Oxford University Press».