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Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

4.18 of 5 stars 4.18 · rating details · 1,903 ratings · 164 reviews

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 a...more

Paperback, 848 pages

Published September 13th 2005 by Vintage (first published 2003)

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Aug 04, 2008 Harry Rutherford rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, history, biography

This is a biography of Stalin, focussed on his domestic life and the tightly-knit group of people around him: his own family, and politicians, bodyguards, and their families.

As a piece of history, it's very impressive. It's clearly the result of a huge amount of research by Montefiore: he seems to have personally interviewed just about every living relative of the major figures, quite apart from the endless reading of archives and memoirs that must have been involved. As a casual reader I found...more This is a biography of Stalin, focussed on his domestic life and the tightly-knit group of people around him: his own family, and politicians, bodyguards, and their families.

As a piece of history, it's very impressive. It's clearly the result of a huge amount of research by Montefiore: he seems to have personally interviewed just about every living relative of the major figures, quite apart from the endless reading of archives and memoirs that must have been involved. As a casual reader I found it slightly hard going at times. I didn't do it any favours by largely reading it in bed at night, but even allowing for that, I found it hard to keep track of all the people involved. I found I was having difficulty remembering which was which even of the most important figures, like Molotov, Mikoyan and Malenkov.

I don't know if that's an inevitable result of a book with quite so many people in it — It's not a subject I've read about before, and all the unfamiliar Russian names didn't help — or if it's my fault for reading it while drowsy, or if there's more Montefiore could have done to fix the various people in my mind. I didn't find I got much sense of their various personalities that would have helped me keep them separate. Still, what I did get was a strong sense of Stalin himself, and his trajectory from a charming (though ruthless) young man living an almost campus lifestyle at the Kremlin, surrounded by the young families of his colleagues, to a sickly, garrulous old despot wandering nomadically from dacha to dacha and living in a vortex of terror and awe.

But even a sense of what Stalin was like to live and work with doesn't get you much closer to understanding his motivations and the motivations of people around him. Was it just about power or did he believe to the end that he was acting in the interests of Russia and the party? The inner clique around Stalin clearly knew at some level that all the denunciations and show trials were arbitrary and could attach to anyone: they saw the process happen over and over again. And when colleagues they had known for years confessed to ludicrously unlikely accusations, they surely can't have believed it. But the things they said and wrote suggest that at the same time they sort of did believe it, and remained theoretically committed to the ideology to the end. It made me inclined to reread 1984, because the concept of 'doublethink' is so startlingly apt.

In some ways the Stalinist purges are even more incomprehensible than the Holocaust. The Holocaust at least has a kind of simple central narrative: an attempt to exterminate the Jews. It fits into a thousand year history of European anti-Semitism as well as a broader human history of racism and genocide. The purges don't offer any kind of similarly clear story: at different times they focussed on different things. It might be a whole social class, a profession, an ethnicity, or it might start with one or two individuals that Stalin was suspicious of and spread out through their colleagues and families to take in hundreds of people. Targets included kulaks, engineers, doctors, army officers, Poles, Jews, ethnic Germans, Chechens, Estonians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Koreans: in fact any ethnic minority that could provide a possible focus for dissent. The total number of deaths, including not just those executed but those who died in slave labour camps or famine, is disputed; but 20 million is apprently a plausible ballpark figure.

At one stage Stalin was setting two quotas for the different regions: the number to be shot and the number to be arrested. These numbers were in the tens or hundreds of thousands, but the regions were soon writing back and requesting that their quotas be extended — out of ideological zeal? In an attempt to demonstrate their loyalty? Or just because these things have a momentum of their own?

It's a staggering story and despite the slight reservations I expressed earlier, this is a very impressive book.
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Mar 29, 2009 Maria rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

This book was so gruesome that I could barely read a chapter a day. Stalin's fifties are best described as specializing in ignoring truth. An ostrich with its head buried in the sand had nothing on Stalin. His incompetent management of World War II was truly awful, and his disloyalty and manipulation of friends and their families to their deaths was unbelievable. All in all, he personifies the boss no one wants to work for.

Credited with nearly 20 million deaths (I don't think that includes the...more

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Feb 12, 2009 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

Powerful, shocking and terrible. Anyone interested in politics or history should read this book. It is humbling to think how fortunate we all are who are free to read this that we do not live in the world described. With the slow accumulation of detail and careful analysis it creates an overwhelming impact conveying that this is the truth about an era of lies, about a political system whose external image was carefully and deliberately constructed exclusively of lies. It describes a world in whi...more

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Mar 31, 2007 Tyler rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: one and all

Some of the 20th century's greatest monsters finally get the celebrity gossip treatment they so richly deserve...

A delicious stew of new documents and speculations, Stalin:TCOFTRS is the first actual bio ever produced on Stalin and his inner circle. Its an intensive, often meandering study of the inconsequential, smaller than life moments of an unbelievably private and powerful group. Its also entertaining as hell.

A favorite tabloid-esque nugget: the Stalinist Terror was variously entrusted to...more

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Aug 15, 2007 Clear_enGlish rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biographical, history, politics-philos-ethics, favourites

As close as we will get to Stalin.
Horror.... Stalin's circle were often good fathers, jolly friends and good company.
When on Party business they variously took personal part in atrocity and blithely orchestrated the cold blooded murder of millions of their own citizens.
Then they went home to be loving family men, that is until they fell into the meat grinder themselves. I groan with the horror and brutality. Coldly I realise that future monsters will read these lines looking for tips on State sp...more

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May 11, 2013 Linh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Để hiểu về chế độ toàn trị, không thể không đọc về Stalin và chế độ do nhà độc tài này tạo nên.

Nếu như Lenin là người khai sinh ra nhà nước Nga Xô Viết thì Stalin chính là người đã mang lại cho nó cái hình hài thực sự và biến nó thành một đế chế tội lỗi từng khuynh loát gần một nửa thế giới. Cuốn sách của Simon Sebag Montefiore mô tả con người Stalin, gia đình và những chiến hữu thân cận của ông ta, hay nói đúng hơn không thể gọi là chiến hữu mà là những kẻ thù và những tay sai. Chính vì thế tên...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Jan rated it 1 of 5 stars

The blurbs on the cover of this book are over-the-top gushers of praise. Yes, the book contains detailed research, and a lot of new info on the personal side of Stalin. But it is written like a school-girl (or an old woman) gossiping breathlessly about all her closest friends.

- It is disorganized.
- The punctuation is a mystery. The author makes a statement, then adds a colon, then follows with a quote or another statement that either contradicts the first statement, or has nothing to do with i...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Okokok rated it 5 of 5 stars

Although the book opens in a slightly frivolous way with Montefiore dedicating much time to Mrs Stalin’s preparations for a party, there is an immediate hint of the corruption to come. While most of the USSR was queuing for bread, hoping for the bare necessities of life and forbidden from even peeping towards the Wicked West, Mrs Stalin’s beautiful black party dress came from no less than that universal Capital of Chic, Paris. It is obvious that for all the talk of equality and the feigned disgu...more Although the book opens in a slightly frivolous way with Montefiore dedicating much time to Mrs Stalin’s preparations for a party, there is an immediate hint of the corruption to come. While most of the USSR was queuing for bread, hoping for the bare necessities of life and forbidden from even peeping towards the Wicked West, Mrs Stalin’s beautiful black party dress came from no less than that universal Capital of Chic, Paris. It is obvious that for all the talk of equality and the feigned disgust with the oppressive, aristocratic Romanovs, the new-born Communist regime was immediately well set to create its own ‘aristocracy’, its own ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.
The Stalins and their intimate clique of privileged associates accompanied by their wives and children – the court - lived together, partied together, murdered together and then set to torturing, raping and murdering each other as Stalin got more and more paranoid and suspected all of betrayal.
Stalin’s USSR became a vast, hysterical blood bath whose viciousness was denied - for decades - by Western ‘intellectuals’ who were simply too stupid to believe eye-witnesses to the deportations, prison camps and endless massacres. For these faux intellectuals there is no excuse, as there is no excuse for those who employed them to teach, no less, in some of our best universities.
It was only with the arrival of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s books that the truth was impossible to deny any further.
Montefiore gives a very well documented look behind the scenes at the Kremlin during the decades that Stalin was in power. There can be no serious denial that by comparison to this despot, Hitler was a dilettante. Notwithstanding the intrinsic historical value of the work, the book reads like a veritable, often overly-horrific thriller. Ample space is dedicated to who the members of Stalin’s ‘court’ really were (expect some surprising revelations here), and to how they operated around the 20th Century’s maddest autocrat. A must read for all.

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Jul 16, 2012 Tocotin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: my-own-books, nonfiction, used-books

Whew... that was one brick of a book. Well, I have mixed feelings about it. I thought it fascinating when I started, then annoying, then horrifying and fascinating again.

The author is clearly impressed by Stalin and seems to consider him far cleverer than the guy really was. Yes, Stalin possessed a certain kind of intelligence - but it was a mean, extremely short-sighted intelligence of a particularly monstrous cockroach. This sort of intelligence was just good enough to keep him constantly at...more Whew... that was one brick of a book. Well, I have mixed feelings about it. I thought it fascinating when I started, then annoying, then horrifying and fascinating again.

The author is clearly impressed by Stalin and seems to consider him far cleverer than the guy really was. Yes, Stalin possessed a certain kind of intelligence - but it was a mean, extremely short-sighted intelligence of a particularly monstrous cockroach. This sort of intelligence was just good enough to keep him constantly at the trough, but it failed to keep him happy or to save his life (when he had the stroke, his henchmen and staff were too afraid to actually help him, and there was no competent doctor around, because he had had them all arrested). The power he enjoyed - I don't know, it was so vast he had to remind himself of it daily, mostly by micromanaging his family and "friends". He was so stupid that he has almost caused his country to be defeated during WWII.

His achievements are mostly due to the stupidity, laziness and inertia of other Bolsheviks, and the lack of knowledge and imagination of his Western contemporaries. In other words, dude was lucky. Adolph, on the other hand, was not. As a result Adolph is the Big Bad of history and not Joseph.

The style and treatment of the subject sometimes got on my nerves. There are a lot of statements which lead nowhere and have no follow-up. Some stuff is just ridiculous, for example the author's claim that Stalin's cruelty and paranoia were induced by his second wife Nadya's suicide, or the speculations on inner thoughts of the members of Stalin's court (for example, how can he be sure whether Klim Voroshilov's wife was jealous of the other ladies' outfits or not?) Also, what he says about the Warsaw Uprising is outrageous - that it was staged in an attempt to stall the Red Army's progress. Seriously, dude... And if the book is an attempt to describe Stalin as a human and not a maligned Commie demon, how come Beria or Yezhov don't get the same treatment, but are "monsters" and "beasts"? Even Gorky gets the short end of the stick, while he DID know that he couldn't have written the truth about what was going on during the construction of the Belomor Canal. Yeah... Stalin was a good tsar, only his courtiers were evil. Again, seriously, dude... All right, it's not like this all the time, but still I got this vibe especially at the beginning. Look, Stalin had to snap, they were trying his patience, the ladies acted too familiar, some friends were late for the meetings... see what I mean?

But it was an interesting read all the same, and the author gets one more star for his sympathy for Babel (who in turn made me angry... what exactly was he doing at the Yezhovs'?! Complicated times...)(less)

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May 07, 2012 Carl Brush rated it 3 of 5 stars

Anyone who approaches Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin hoping for light to be cast into one of history’s darkest corners may be as disappointed as I was. Mostly, Montefiore confirms the popular image of Stalin as a ruthless slaughterer of millions. I didn’t know the numbers (28 million or so) or the full cast of characters, but I came away after 650 grueling pages feeling not particularly knowledgeable about how he attained and kept power. Maybe there’s not that much to know. Montefiore’s Stalin...more Anyone who approaches Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin hoping for light to be cast into one of history’s darkest corners may be as disappointed as I was. Mostly, Montefiore confirms the popular image of Stalin as a ruthless slaughterer of millions. I didn’t know the numbers (28 million or so) or the full cast of characters, but I came away after 650 grueling pages feeling not particularly knowledgeable about how he attained and kept power. Maybe there’s not that much to know. Montefiore’s Stalin is the image of a Hollywood godfather. Clever, cruel, charming, and manipulative, playing his minions off against one another. But he’s still basically a street thug who just had more going for him than the other thugs. He read a lot, but only to confirm his Leninist view of things. Thinking? That was for Trotskyites--discredited and massacred intellectuals. The difference between him and Marlon Brando was scale. Brando’s influence may have reached back to Sicily. Stalin’s covered the world.

Those who fell into his sphere lived “life in a closed jar with intriguers fighting one another to the death.” People tattled on one another to save their lives, then found their own tale-telling used to send them to prison or death. Tell Stalin about a famine, and you got everyone from the local farmers to the agriculture minister fired, tortured, even slaughtered. If a general lost a battle, he and his whole staff risked being shot. Et cetera. And, oh, by the way, the families were subject to the same treatment. I guess that’s why they called it “The Terror” instead of just “The Slaughter.”

His unique management style involved all night business banquets with lots of booze and practical jokes (overripe tomatoes in your pocket. Ha-ha.) He seemed to live his live between early afternoon and early morning, which wore everyone else out and destroyed many livers. And you didn’t dare turn down the invitations, of course. If you weren’t at dinner, you were probably out plotting. He didn’t amass great wealth and luxury. He had several country homes, but they seemed as much for security as for comfort. When everyone’s gunning for you, you need to keep moving.

I didn’t know Kruschev was so close to Stalin. I didn’t know that the Molotov Cocktail wasn’t invented by Molotov, but was devised and named by Finnish resistors who concocted it as a weapon against the tanks he commanded during WWII.

Montefiore has a lot of apparently new material here, gleaned from first-time looks into Stalin’s personal papers, but I felt the load of material subsumed the story he was trying to tell. I was often lost in the narrative, wasn’t sure which year I was in, which characters were playing which roles at any particular time. I can get the facts of a situation from a synopsis. I want to read the story to grasp the experience of the situation and to understand how and why what happened happened. I knew, for example, that Stalin charmed the pants off Roosevelt and took eastern Europe as much by cleverness as by militarism. However, I don’t even now understand more about how he did it. Placed against such works as Troyat’s Catherine The Great, in which the author turns a mountain of fact into a stirring tale, Stalin reads like a dull monograph. Disappointing. (less)

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Mar 19, 2012 Angelo P. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Simon Sebag has made this chilling man into a real person and i can expalin this bescause in the book it make stalin sound more like a human being and not just a man in a text book.

Stalin at the beagging of the book starts as the man who was in love sery times with many types of women. Unforntly he loses them and his wife Nadyda shoot's herself. A mystery has invoned her death did stalin kill her? Nadyda also say's as her death wish that Stalin was a tryant and not the devoted husband or father...more

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Mar 07, 2012 Filip rated it 4 of 5 stars

Just to be clear, this great read is not a biography of Stalin. His early years as a Bolshevik aren't covered, and often more attention is given to the "Soviet aristocracy" families surrounding him, justifying the subtitle "the Court of the Red Tsar".
The book relies on a lot of research and interviews with the last survivors of that period. It paints a horrifying picture of the ruthlessness with which internal politics (the Terror) and external politics (Molotov/Ribbentrop) were conducted. The...more

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Dec 13, 2011 Jonfaith rated it 4 of 5 stars

Christmas time is a tricky time for my friends and relatives. Only the intrepid make moves to buy books, films and music without my preapproval. My friend Ed bought me a book, a memoir, which I had previusly found for a quarter and considered myself cheated at that price. I returned his book and selected this among the meager offerings at the local independent book store; I should qualify that the independent stores across the river are not provincial nor meager but the one here is, despite my b...more

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Oct 20, 2010 Hobbes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What sets this book apart is the personal details it includes. It is clearly the product of prodigious research; the author appears to have read every book and memoir that even touches on his subject, and to have interviewed every person that didn't write a book. It gives a real look at the life of those in Stalin's inner circle after his ascension to power and of course, the life of Stalin himself.

Though sometimes touted as a biography, Stalin: tCotRT is most certainly not that. It follows the...more

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Oct 23, 2007 Holly rated it 4 of 5 stars

A clear-eyed assessment of Stalin's reign. Montefiore is neither an apologist nor a conspiracy theorist, and his assessment of Stalin's crimes struck me as being very well-researched and non-partisan. Though it does sometimes read like the Zagat Guide to Stalin (lots of sentences with a single word in quotes), it was informative and well-structured. Certainly recommended for anyone who would like to know more about this era in Soviet history.

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Dec 29, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was hoping this book would be more general interest; it presumes more knowledge of Soviet history than I have. But with the help of Wikipedia, I was able to get up to speed. The accounts of Stalin's power and the Terror (capital T indeed) are frightening. Stalin's assessments of Hitler and views on the war are interesting, but it is odd thinking of these two men fighting one another--which one was more paranoid and evil. It's a hard choice.
The book allows the reader to see Stalin as a man as...more

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Feb 11, 2010 Alex Fabish rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of the most thorough, well researched and readable histories I’ve come across. The book deliver’s exactly what it says, a history of Stalin’s court and does so in extreme detail, drawing from a wide variety of sources. The author’s pacing and humorous comments are top notch.

The downside of this book is that the content is so focused, that it rarely attempts to put many of the events into broader perspective, sticking only to the intrigues of Stalin’s inner circle without delving into how th...more

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Aug 17, 2008 Mandie Ditchburn rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 17, 2012 Hub rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, non-fiction, biographical

What makes this book stand out for me is the detail of day to day life in the centre of power of the Stalinist regime at that time. Yes, at times there are an almost overwhelming amount of names that flow towards the reader, but even if you let many of those flow past you like I did on my first read through, what remains is the sense of intimacy with the characters involved.

Interviews with survivors, children of officials and archival evidence provide a shocking picture of how even the most pett...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Jim Hubbs rated it 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the book I had a hard time putting it down, the author I think liked Stalin and had a hard time hiding it which is disturbing to me. Still in order to really understand this Georgian monster one should read Stalin's biography by Robert Service. Service in my opinion is the most accurate of authors and I back this up by the fact that Service is linguist he speaks, writes fluent Russian which is critical when it comes to researching the Soviet Union. He is also one of the few Westerners...more

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Aug 12, 2011 Gainerm rated it 5 of 5 stars

In this dense political biography - one could, of course, argue that it would be impossible to write anything but about one of the 20th century's most thoroughly political figures - Montefiore makes good use of the now-reclosed Russian government archives to create a portrait of an obsessive, manipulative Joseph Stalin who could simultaneously charm and terrify both commoners and world leaders alike. We get a detailed look at the dictator's many facades - poet, general, movie critic, father, pol...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Amélie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, grande-bretagne, non-fiction

J'ai une appréciation assez, euhm, chambranlante? des biographies, alors faut dire que j'ai pas commencé cette lecture avec la meilleure des dispositions. Mais! Comme j'avais entendu des tonnes de choses élogieuses sur ce livre, & comme ça fait à peu près huit mois que mon copain me harcèle jour & nuit pour que je le lise, j'ai fini par m'y plonger.

& c'est pas une biographie au sens strict, je crois. On suit Staline, oui, mais à peu près seulement à partir de la fin des années vingt,...more J'ai une appréciation assez, euhm, chambranlante? des biographies, alors faut dire que j'ai pas commencé cette lecture avec la meilleure des dispositions. Mais! Comme j'avais entendu des tonnes de choses élogieuses sur ce livre, & comme ça fait à peu près huit mois que mon copain me harcèle jour & nuit pour que je le lise, j'ai fini par m'y plonger.

& c'est pas une biographie au sens strict, je crois. On suit Staline, oui, mais à peu près seulement à partir de la fin des années vingt, quand il commence à s'imposer comme véritable successeur de Lénine. (Alors pas de longs chapitres sur son enfance difficile ou les prénoms de ses deux meilleurs amis de l'école primaire ou sa première job comme cireur de souliers -- ce qui m'a vraiment soulagé, parce que je sais pas pour vous, mais moi les il est né un vingt-neuf décembre & était un enfant particulier & etcétéra, ça fait partie des choses qui m'intéressent le moins AU MONDE.) Mais ce n'est pas non plus un manuel d'histoire de l'URSS entre 1927 & 1953, ou même une une vitrine sur ce que pouvait être la vie quotidienne à cette époque -- c'est, comme l'indique le titre, le récit de tous ces gens qui, au fil des ans, se sont agglutinés autour de la personne de Staline & ont fini par constituer, souvent à leurs dépens, parfois contre leur gré, une petite noblesse bureaucratique, une véritable cour en orbite autour du chef d'État.

L'auteur gagnera certainement pas de prix avec sa prose, mais c'est fonctionnel & ça passe. Le contenu est pas toujours présenté clairement, il y a des chapitres qui se succèdent de façon confuse, presque pêle-mêle, & on a parfois l'impression que Montefiore a passé tellement de temps à accumuler du matériel que, une fois arrivée l'étape de la rédaction, il a pas voulu se défaire de ce que toute personne normalement constituée qualifierait d'excédent -- mais ce sont des détails. Ce qu'on a ici, c'est un livre solide, pas dépourvu de temps morts ou de redondances, mais qui souligne admirablement bien la cruauté & le ridicule des extrêmes du pouvoir, ses contradictions incroyables, les hasards de l'histoire.

Ça me réconcilie presque avec les biographies.(less)

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Oct 21, 2009 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, biography, non-fiction

I don't know. I may need something lighter -- and soon!

Update: I may write some more on this later. At times fascinating, heartbreaking, but also at times boring read. Montefiore has all kinds of juicy gossip, due to the opening up of old Soviet archives. He takes the new material and attaches it to the history of the period. It works well -- up until WW 2, and then he has to cover a lot of big events quickly -- and this in a 650 page book! When Montefiore gets to WW 2, I sensed a creeping admir...more

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Nov 24, 2009 Katie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: My dad

Shelves: history

The trouble with a really good book is that eventually you finish it. Even one that's 700 pages long. After that, your life is basically over. That's what's wrong with this one.

We learned precisely jack about Soviet history in school. Aside from the propaganda they ladled out, which was pretty short on recognizable facts. One is left educating oneself, and this is the best the TCL could do on the subject of "show trials" and "Great Terror." I still don't know enough about Russian history, eviden...more The trouble with a really good book is that eventually you finish it. Even one that's 700 pages long. After that, your life is basically over. That's what's wrong with this one.

We learned precisely jack about Soviet history in school. Aside from the propaganda they ladled out, which was pretty short on recognizable facts. One is left educating oneself, and this is the best the TCL could do on the subject of "show trials" and "Great Terror." I still don't know enough about Russian history, evidently. This book glosses over Stalin's early career--who knew there was a Civil War after the Revolution?--and starts out in the mid-20's, just before he got started killing his 20,000,000 people.

Stalin and Co. had this interesting policy in 1931 or so of creating instant industry, sort of "just add water," by forcing the peasants to export all their grain to the west. So the peasants had to starve, be deported, or be shot. The Bolsheviks were really into death as a solution to many problems--"no man, no problem."

The Kremlin got into WWII through a wall of screeching denial, and for the life of me I can't see how the hell Germany lost the eastern front. The Soviet leadership approached their defense like guys trying to escape a flood by banging holes in the bottom of their boat and shooting at the rescue helicopter. Look at it: A reasonable wartime government encourages its population and military with posters, marching music, slogans, and other jingoistic propaganda. The Kremlin's idea of bucking up the troops was to terrorize anyone who looked a little bit chicken-hearted, plus their families. Case in point: The German army was descending on Moscow; the city was being bombed; there were 90,000 defenders, and what does Stalin do? He has more than 23,000 of them arrested for cowardice.

And yet Stalin was apparently personally charming, an enthusiastic scholar, a serious literary critic, and a fine singer who could have sung professionally. He was from Georgia; "Stalin" was his nom de guerre, or de revolution or whatever. In the early 1930's, all the Politburo families lived cosily together in flats in the Kremlin, had dinner parties, shared nannies, vacationed together in the Crimea. (Planning massacres.) After the war, things were different: Stalin really was more like a dictator, controlling things from his various dachas, ordering the magnates to all-night dinner parties where they were required to eat till they vomited and try to drink him under the table.

It's tempting to try to diagnose a man like Stalin. Was he a psychopath, an Antisocial Personality? He had some antisocial traits, like egregious criminal behavior and a taste for hearing the last words of those he had arrested, tortured and shot. But he was a loving father and a thoughtful friend. Unlike a true psychopath, he had a fine ability to think through consequences, to plan, to weigh alternatives. He could be gentle. No, he wasn't sick. He, along with others, entered into a system that was based on violence, devoted to violence; that believed in "no revolution without blood;" that made up enemies where there were none; that trusted lies; that rewarded sycophancy; that punished courage, honesty, and integrity.

The author relies on an incredible amount of basic research for this biography--interviews with Stalin's adopted son and the children of his associates, the newly published writings of his underlings, his own letters and those of his family, and histories from both East and West. One of the best things about this 700-page biography is that it is broken up into little short chapters, like this one.(less)

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Feb 28, 2012 Seth Lynch rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

This was another Audio Book (unabridged). I got it from Douglas Library and the first evening I got it home my youngest daughter got hold of it. She put all ten disks into her little CD player and jammed the lid shut, snapping disk 7. So I had to buy a copy to replace the damaged disks. If anybody wants a copy of this minus disk 7 I am open to offers!

This was an enjoyable and interesting book. I think I prefer listening to non-fiction. I needn’t add that Stalin was not a nice man (about 22 milli...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Carlos rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Riveting. I felt as if I were sitting with the "Vozhd" himself... and in the presence of his toxic elements. I sat through the meetings with Ribbentrop and Molotov.

The details about how Joseph Vissarionovich handled Hitler's Operation Barbarrosa, his blunders, his paranoia, his sleepless nights and how finally Mr Djugashvili finally let Georgi Zhukov be all that he could be were fascinating. I wish there had been a little bit more about the battles of Stalingrad, Moscow, and the greatest tank ba...more

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Mar 27, 2012 XR rated it 5 of 5 stars

Impressionant i desmitificadora anàlisi de les interioritats del govern bolxevic sota Stalin. La conclusió inevitable és que no s'entén com una classe dirigent com la soviètica va crear i governar un imperi. La boarroeria, incoherència ideològica i personal del cerle íntim del poder resulta aclaparadora. Un autèntic govern de mafiosos amb llenguatge i pràctiques de mafiosos. Clans familiars del Càucas dirigint un superestat amb els mètodes més primitius i brutals i enfrontat-se entre ells sota l...more

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Jul 18, 2010 Charlie Brown rated it 5 of 5 stars

Utilizing the sources of information that only became available in the 1990s, Montefiore profiles the revolutionary leaders of the Soviet Union and their incredible accomplishments (for good or ill). Stalin's rise, the suicide of his wife, the kulaks, the surreality of the purges, the heroic defense against the savagery of the Third Reich, it's all here. For example, those who have read with interest over the years of certain historical events, such as the Katyn Forest incident, will find chapte...more

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Apr 28, 2012 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Despite TIME Magazine's review stating that this book is "wonderfully readable", it was actually one of the more difficult history books that I have read lately. This was partly my own fault. This book i not written for those who are unfamiliar with Russian history, and it seems that Montefiore wrote the book assuming that the reader would already have some grasp of the Bolshevik Revolution and Stalin's relationship with Lenin. He frequently alludes to things that took place in Russia in the ear...more Despite TIME Magazine's review stating that this book is "wonderfully readable", it was actually one of the more difficult history books that I have read lately. This was partly my own fault. This book i not written for those who are unfamiliar with Russian history, and it seems that Montefiore wrote the book assuming that the reader would already have some grasp of the Bolshevik Revolution and Stalin's relationship with Lenin. He frequently alludes to things that took place in Russia in the early twentieth century, but never gives a full explanation of the events themselves. I think the last time I studied the rise of communism in Russia I was in 10th grade, so needless to say I had to spend a little time on Wikipedia getting the facts sorted out. The book was also inherently difficult because of the extent of Montefiore's research. He did a magnificent job, but refers to so many characters with Russian names that I often had trouble keeping track of who was who. His vocabulary also compelled me to keep a dictionary close every time I read.

That being said, the story of Stalin's life is a very interesting one. I am always surprised to read about how such heartless leaders can rise to such absolute power without anyone getting fed up and kicking them out of office (or killing them). It takes a massive effort to cover up mistakes, create an atmosphere of terror, and generate unquestioned loyalty among the masses, and this book does a wonderful job describing how Staling managed to pull it off. Montefiore also does a great job describing how such a lifestyle affected Stalin, his closest advisers, and their families. The book is based on countless personal interviews, as well as information that apparently has only recently been made available from old KGB and government archives including personal correspondence, which gave the story a very personal touch.

Overall, the book is certainly worth reading. It is a slow read for the amateur Russian historian like myself, but it paints a great picture of a man who played a central role in recent world history. I highly recommend it. (less)

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Aug 23, 2010 Derek rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the first biography that i ever read about Stalin. The author seems very knowledgeable and based the book on personal interviews with some of Stalin's associates, their wives, and children. A lot of it also comes from KGB files that were rather recently released.

I would recommend this book, but I had to have a notebook to keep track of some names, foreign words, and even some English words with which I was unfamiliar (about 25 through out the book), a good example being "sartorial."

I pla...more

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About Simon Sebag Montefiore

Simon Sebag Montefiore was born in 1965 and read history at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University. Jerusalem: the Biography was awarded the Jewish Book of the Year Prize by the Jewish Book Council (USA), Catherine the Great & Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Prizes. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year...more

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