A comprehensive book on Stalin's life as reflected in his interaction with people close to him: family, party members, friends and the fate of these people. The author personally interviewed some of their descendants, used recently uncovered/made accessible Soviet archive materials. Lots of references (full list at the back), footnotes, a few photographs. It's the most well-grounded and interesting work on Stalin's court I've read (including a few originals in Russian) in a way how it's written: not a dry research but a vivid journalistic coverage.

It shows Stalin not as a black&white person but as a live one with all the contradictions, weaknesses and strengths. ( )

Significant insight into the madness that was Bolshevism. ( )

This book presents in great detail, the rise and fall of the various powerful personalities, their wives and lovers. The appalling cruelty of the Terror and the war are revealed in the rise and fall of the people around Stalin. What made the most telling impression was the staggering numbers of people who were killed, or who starved to death in the famines and executions of the Terror. The bizarre personal lives of the leaders of the Secret Police such as Lavrenti Beria and Yehzov are revealed in detail. The book's focus is limited and because of that, one will be disappointed if looking for an historical or strategic account of the the war and other major events, however this lengthy book is a fascinating account of an era in history when 20,000,000 people list their lives and another 28,000,000 were dislocated to the gulags. While almost any history will outline the horrific losses of the holocaust, far fewer pay attention to staggering losses of Stalin's rule. ( )

To a reader unfamiliar with Soviet history should read Lenin by Robert Service and Young Stalin by Montefiore before reading Stalin... ( )

Not read yet.

It is a massive book, both in scope and in terms of the sheer size of the book (even in paperback, it's well over 700 pages long). There is no question but that Sebag-Montefiore has done his research, especially in terms of the primary sources he employs, the places he visited, and the people interviewed. But the lack of footnotes in the paperback edition is still jarring. They are omitted for reasons of space; but with so much new material used, so many quotes cited, and just for general historical accuracy, I don't find it good enough. All the references are apparently available somewhere online, but neither I nor Google can seem to find them. A glossary would also have been heplful - for example, he doesn't explain the term Vozhd until about the twentieth or so time he uses it.

It's probably best not to approach this book as either a primer on Russian history (Sebag-Montefiore tends to use the history of the Soviet Union to '53 as merely a backdrop for the goings on in Stalin's court) or as a life of Stalin. As a (gossipy) history of the incestuous gaggle which surrounded Stalin, it is extremely good; as a record of the banality of their evil, it is even better.

The one thing that truly irks me about the whole thing (yes, even more than the footnotes) is his style. It's very erudite and polished, but it is also very journalistic, with a very breathless quality to the first 150 pages or so. He frequently refers to Yagoda simply as Blackberry, or Molotov as Iron-Arse. He's also inclined to do things like comparing articles in Pravda to Hello or OK! magazine, or the rooms where the magnates gathered at the show trials of the 1930s to modern celebrity green rooms, backstage at TV shows. They're colourful and graphic, yes, but I think they're a little bit too much of a... studied anachronism, maybe? And I do think they will help to date the work enormously. There are places where I think he could have used an editor to show him the joys of semicolons, and to cut down on extraneous information (do we really need to know twice in twenty pages that Yuri Zhdanov's primary degree was in chemistry, with a postgraduate degree in philosophy?) and the purple prose (the immediate pre-WWII period being described as 'an oasis of consolation in a darkening sky'?)

It's a very good book, but I think it had the potential to be an excellent one. Recommended, but a qualified recommendation. ( )

Montefiore's treatment of 'the Red Tsar', Joseph Stalin, and his Soviet 'court' is a laudable achievement. The work repels, chills and almost brutalises the reader as the tragic, horrific, evily banal saga unfolds. Stalin here is thoroughly human - no longer the enigmatic demi-god/demon of popular imagination - and his family life, friendships, humour and personality come to life. This is the key to Montefiore's work because, juxtaposed to the monstrosity (I struggle to find an apt word) of the man, his regime and their collective deeds, the result is a picture of a life lived so utterly cynically as to jar and bewilder the reader. Many of the sordid vignettes in the book resonate. For me, M.V. Blokhin, one of Stalin's executioners and possibly one of the single biggest murderers in history, haunts the book, draped in his butchers apron, brutally executing onetime comrade after onetime comrade, a dull, banal figure from hell reporting back the last words of his victims for his bosses'dinner table amusement. ( )

TBR

http://jdpwash.googlepages.com/home; http://www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelId=G91AS62N&word=depoortere ( )

Case study of absolute power corrupting that raises the interesting side issue of what happens if you destroy civil society and competing social groups-Dictators arise. Democracies need a balance of social forces to work. Or do you need a strong centre when those social forces are too antagonistic? ( )

This work did not do much for me on understanding Stalin except importantly turning me to two or three other biographies which were more extensive and complete. It was good in speculation, e.g., on the death of his wife, if I remember. The book, then raised questions for me which I immediately pursued, by reading good histories of Russia (which I will evenutally list here) and a bio on Lenin, and a classic three volume one on Troksky (which I didnot and perhaps willnot finish). It is apparent to me that there is a western conceit in understanding leaders and styles of life of other countries. There is one book on my list which is an actual account of a black man's life in Russia. Robert Robinson was a trained machinist from Detroit who answered Russia's call of volunteers during the 30s. He had faced nothing but closed doors in his own country. His bio presents the realism of political and human fear under the Stalin communists. I had a romantic view of communism, and I needed Robert Robinson's experiences to counter it. I still have more to say, more feeling, on radical thought, how it helped my people in America during the 30s, 40s. But as for Stalin, Montefiore's work did not help me understand this personage anymore than previous works, as I have said. My point is that this work demonstrates a strange conceit which I cannot at the moment explain. I appreciate the ordering of Stalin's hencemen, his administrators, the betrayals. But I need to understand why such as Molotov survived. What did such an individual have inside that could counter and control the mad and criminal genius of Stalin that one such as Troksky did not have. And I need to understand several questions of morality. Is there a political morality? Is there a Russian morality? A Stalin morality? A Scottsboro Boys Morality? There are desperate parallels of history in all countries. At this moment American violence is letting loose in a war of which now are coming out unspeakable acts. Robert Robinson grew to fear Russia because they didnot let him leave the country until, I believe, the 60s. He wanted to come home. In Chicago at present, if you do not support the ascendency of a certain black politician's family, you are toasted cheese. There is no difference here from if you didn't follow a stalin. I would like to develop this thought. ( )