One of the most fascinating books about Stalin I've ever read. This biography of Napoleon tells us of a great man who took control of a great revolution and crushed it, turning the emancipatory impulse of the masses toward a program of war and conquest. He wants power above all else, personal power, and if the destruction of the Ancien Regime is the path to this power, then he will crush the old world without a second thought. But in this story, Napoleon fails precisely because he cannot stomach starting the fire of social revolution. He fails because he does not have the courage to counterpose Lafayette with Marat, as Tarlé writes in his sneaky little epilogue. He fails, above all, in Russia, when he rejects the silver bullet of serf emancipation. And yet although this is a book intended to destroy a god, it cannot, for all it tries, fall out of love with its protagonist; Napoleon, for all his power-hungry violence and his bourgeois blinders, is the Little Corporal who kills the Duke of Enghien.
What a remarkable book. I stand by my contention that no one, no one writes better books than dissident Communists.