I feel like I should review every book I mention in my books. I...

I feel like I should review every book I mention in my books. I read (most) of Young Stalin because I wanted to know the psychology of a villain. This book definitely helped with that. I couldn’t finish it though, it was too depressing/horrific. Stalin was definitely the product of a perfect stew of global upheaval: the gradual fall of fascism to more democratic social structures, economic revolution and the end of the primacy of agriculture, fundamentalist religion, and a horrid family background. This is about his early years, and I don’t think it reached the part where he got syphilis and really went nuts.

Tsarist Russia, was perhaps, the most repressive of the old European monarchies. As a young man, Stalin was forced to go to a seminary that was extremely conservative—they taught that if bad things happened to you, like you know, starvation—it was because you were a sinner. This sort of thought is necessary to prop up despotic regimes of course. It is also something that if you have an ounce of intelligence you will reject. Oh, and at the seminary, they routinely went through the boys personal effects, i.e., spied on them. And the boys were often buggered and beaten by priests and other students. Stalin’s seminary graduated more revolutionary atheists than priests.

Also, Stalin was sent to Siberia for his revolutionary activities … and escaped the Tsarist Russian prison camp too. It wasn’t that tough, at that time.

Stalin basically took everything he learned at the hands of his seminary priests—spying, and torture, and in prison in Siberia—and perfected it. Awesome. 

I think he actually wanted to help people—but he wasn’t revolutionary enough in mind to realize he’d become everything he was rebelling against. Or maybe he was just crazy with syphilis.

Anyway, didn’t finish it. But yeah, would recommend it. You can purchase on Amazon or get it from your friendly neighborhood library!