Prologue: The holiday dinner: 8 November 1932.

That wonderful time: Stalin and Nadya, 1878-1932. The Georgian and the schoolgirl ; The Kremlin family ; The charmer ; Famine and the country set ; Holidays and hell: the Politburo at the seaside ; Trains full of corpses ; Stalin the intellectual.

The jolly fellows: Stalin and Kirov, 1932-1934. The funeral ; The omnipotent widower and his loving family: Sergo the Bolshevik prince ; Spoiled victory: Kirov, the plot and the Seventeenth Congress ; Assassination of the favourite.

On the brink, 1934-1936. "I'm orphaned": the connoisseur of funerals ; A secret friendship: The rose of Novgorod ; The dwarf rises; Casanova falls ; The tsar rides the Metro ; Take your partners; Mount your prisoners.

Slaughter: Yezhov the poison dwarf, 1937-1938. The executioner: Beria's poison and Bukharin's dosage ; Sergo: death of a "perfect Bolshevik" ; The Massacre of generals, fall of Yagoda, and death of a mother ; Blood bath by numbers ; "The blackberry" at work and play ; Bloody shirtsleeves ; Social life in the Terror.

Slaughter: Beria arrives, 1938-1939. Stalin's Jewesses and the family in danger ; Beria and the weariness of hangmen ; The tragedy and depravity of the Yezhovs ; Death of the Stalin family: a strange proposal and the housekeeper.

"The great game": Hitler and Stalin, 1939-1941. The carve-up of Europe: Molotov, Ribbentrop and Stalin's Jewish question ; The murder of the wives ; Molotov cocktails: the Winter War and Kulik's wife ; Molotov meets Hitler: brinkmanship and delusion ; The countdown: 22 June 1941.

War: the bungling genius, 1941-1942. Optimism and breakdown ; "Ferocious as a dog": Zhdanov and the Siege of Leningrad ; "Can you hold Moscow?" ; Molotov in London, Mekhlis in the Crimea, Khrushchev in collapse ; Churchill visits Stalin: Marlborough vs. Wellington ; Stalingrad and the Caucasus: Beria and Kaganovich at war.

War: the triumphant genius, 1942-1945. The Supremo of Stalingrad ; Sons and daughters: Stalin and the Politburo's children at war ; Stalin's song contest ; Teheran: Roosevelt and Stalin ; The swaggering conqueror: Yalta and Berlin.

The dangerous game of succession, 1945-1949. The bomb ; Beria: potentate, husband, father, lover, killer, rapist ; A night in the nocturnal life of Joseph Vissarionovich: tyranny by movies and dinners ; Molotov's chance: "You'll do anything when you're drunk!" ; Zhdanov the heir and Abakumov's bloody carpet ; The eclipse of Zhukov and the looters of Europe: the Imperial Elite ; "The Zionists have pulled one over you!" ; A lonely old man on holiday ; Two strange deaths: the Yiddish actor and heir apparent.

The lame tiger, 1949-1953. Mrs. Molotov's arrest ; Murder and marriage: the Leningrad case ; Mao, Stalin's birthday and the Korean War ; The Midget and the killer doctors: Beat, beat and beat again! ; Blind kittens and hippopotamuses: the destruction of the Old Guard ; "I did him in!": the patient and his trembling doctors.