Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

Impressive work about Stalin, who at all times was some combination of of cynical, ingenious, paranoid, brutal and mad. Purges work some of the time, but give personnel challenges. I should read this again to get more of the history. ( )

Montefiore has written what will be the defining book on Stalin for years to come. He portrays in great historical detail every aspect of Stalin and his inner circle, and remarkably shows Stalin, Beria et al. as humans (which makes their excesses and crimes even worse). Montefiore has proven himself an able scholar here and Court of the Red Tsar is an excellent addition to Soviet studies. ( )

school reading

This widely acclaimed biography provides a vivid and riveting account of Stalin and his courtiers—killers, fanatics, women, and children—during the terrifying decades of his supreme power. In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research and narrative ?lan, Simon Sebag Montefiore gives us the everyday details of a monstrous life.We see Stalin playing his deadly game of power and paranoia at debauched dinners at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We witness first-hand how the dictator and his magnates carried out the Great Terror and the war against the Nazis, and how their families lived in this secret world of fear, betrayal, murder, and sexual degeneracy. Montefiore gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalin’s dictatorship, and a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal. ( )

I started reading Montefiore's two-volume history of Stalin with Young Stalin which comes first chronologically but which he wrote second and which I found absolutely compelling and chilling, because of DieFledermaus's fascinating and comprehensive review last year. There is little I can add to that review, so I'll just note a few comments about my reaction to this book.

Montefiore had access to recently released Soviet archives, and also was able to interview some people who still remembered Stalin, whether because they had been fortunate enough to live to an advanced age or because they had been children of his associates. So even though I knew the broad outlines of Stalin's life from having read the excellent Hitler and Stalin, these added texture to the story. And it is really a story of the magnates (as he calls them) who clustered around Stalin, schemed against their colleagues, tried desperately to stay in Stalin's favor, and endured endless alcohol- and food-filled nights with him -- his court, in other words. It is not a biography of Stalin (and, after a break, because he's a hard man to spend a lot of time with, both in real life and on the pages of a book, I would still like to read a biography that takes advantage of the Soviet archives) and it isn't a history of the tumultuous middle of the 20th century, although history intrudes now and then.

And there, in a nutshell, lies my problem with the book, its strength and its weakness. It is a remarkable accomplishment, and I appreciated the broad outline of what the magnates were like and what happened to them, but I guess I just wasn't that interested in the details of who said what to whom or did what to whom day in and day out (I exaggerate). Things picked up for me a little when the war started, because at least there was a little (!) action. Young Stalin was a real biography of Stalin's early life, and Montefiore integrated the quotations from archives and interview into the story in a very readable way, and I enjoyed (?) that book a lot more than this one. I'm glad I read it, and I certainly learned things I didn't know, but I was glad when it was over.