The Minister and the Massacres

First edition, first impression.  xxii, 442pp.  Burgundy cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on the spine.  8vo.  Cloth a little brushed with gentle rounding at corners and spine ends.  Internally neat, clean, bright and tight.  In its original dust wrapper, In its original dust wrapper, not price clipped, a tad faded and gently bumped on extreme edges.  Dust wrapper now protected in an archival-quality Mylar sleeve, fitted without the use of tape or adhesives.

In a highly controversial book, British historian Nikolai Tolstoy re-examines the flight of thousands of anti-communist Cossacks, White Russians and Yugoslav collaborationist soldiers into Austria and their forced  return – operation keelhaul –  to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia under the terms of the Yalta Agreement, where Tolstoy argues they were subject to mass executions and detentions.  But what made the book very controversial was Tolstoy’s contention of British complicity, placing blame directly on future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Lord Aldington for knowingly sending these men to their deaths.  Lord Aldington sued Tolstoy, and won record-breaking damages – but the debate over the historical ethics of the repatriations and British complicity remains subject to intense discussion.