A good one volume biography of Stalin. I think this would be good to read in conjunction with Montefiore's Young Stalin and The Court of the Red Star, especially Young Stalin, which I thought had more detail although it might also have been the fact that Montefiore has more of a narrative approach. Together the three books really provide the lay person, like myself, who has a general interest in Stalin and his times with a good portrait.

Here is a life-and-times biography in the grand style: deeply researched, well written, brimming with interpretations. Oxford historian Service, author of an acclaimed biography of Lenin, provides the most complete portrait available of the Soviet ruler, from his early, troubled years in a small town in Georgia to the pinnacle of power in the Kremlin. Most previous biographers have depicted Stalin as a plodding figure whose only distinguishing characteristic was brutality. But Service describes a man who was intelligent and hardworking, who learned from experience and who played an important role in the Russian revolutionary movement. On so many of the complex issues of Soviet history--including Stalin's rise to power within the Communist Party, the policy shift to forced collectivization, the Great Terror and the prosecution of the war against Nazi Germany--Service provides lucid accounts based on his own research and the most recent scholarship. Stalin was the key figure behind every major development from the mid-1920s onward. He based his policy decisions on his understanding of Marxism-Leninism and on a hardheaded, realistic assessment of his own often uneasy position and of the Soviet Union's relatively weak standing in the world. By providing such a rich and complex portrait of the dictator and the Soviet system, Service humanizes Stalin without ever diminishing the extent of the atrocities he unleashed upon the Soviet population.

A very absorbing and full biography, probably the best I have read about Stalin (along with Montefiore's Court of the Red Tsar). Gives more coverage both to international affairs and to the evolution of Stalin's world outlook over the years, than some others. The result is a richer biography, full of sober and mature judgement, and free of the slightly more sensationalist coverage in some post-USSR works on Stalin, such as Radzinsky's. ( )