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Young Stalin

(Joseph Stalin #1)

Simon Sebag Montefiore (Goodreads Author)

4.01 · Rating details · 5,525 ratings · 401 reviews

Based on ten years' astonishing new research, here is the thrilling story of how a charismatic, dangerous boy became a student priest, romantic poet, gangster mastermind, prolific lover, murderous revolutionary, and the merciless politician who shaped the Soviet Empire in his own brutal image: How Stalin became Stalin.

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Hardcover, 397 pages

Published 2007 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

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Mar 04, 2015 Mary rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015, non-fiction

This is Stalin before he was “Stalin.” While Montefiore's previous book, The Court of the Red Tsar, covers Stalin’s years in power, here we get a look into his childhood home and abuse, his questionable parentage, his career as a poet (who knew?!), his seminary schooling, his early crimes, arrests, exiles, his multiple girlfriends, his meeting with Lenin, his early rivalry with Trotsky, and his seemingly constant impregnating of teenagers and fathering of children he never met. Both his marriage ...more

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Apr 20, 2020 Susan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

As I am planning to read, “Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar,” I thought it would make sense to read this volume first and I am so glad that I did.

This volume takes Stalin from his childhood, up to 1917, and encompasses so much. I knew very little about Stalin, before reading this, and so this was full of surprises for me. It begins with a bank raid – of which Stalin was involved in many – to get money for the cause. Montefiore writes as though this is fiction, rather than fact, and really draws th ...more

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Nov 30, 2008 Adam Floridia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Even the preface starts off strong with a brilliantly vivid description of Stalin's first bank heist. That particular narrative reads more like an action novel than a biography.

Similarly, the author portrays Soso's (Stalin's) childhood home of Gori, Georgia as a hotbed of mischief, both major and minor. From all out town brawls to school field trips to witness an execution, the town reminds me of an almost cartoonish depiction of a criminal haven. Furthermore, Stalin's NUMEROUS escapes from capt ...more

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Aug 25, 2020 Ana-Maria Bujor rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, history

I can imagine a clickbaity description: "the book Stalin does not want you to read!". While historical and well researched in its nature, this book reads like an action novel and it's one of the best character studies I've ever read. It's entertaining, intense, revealing and sobering at times, showing how a tyrant is made. Having been to some of the places described in the book, it all becomes a bit even more tangible. I wish more history was written like that. A good book can be both informativ ...more

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Jul 27, 2011 E. G. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star, biography-memoir-letters, non-fiction, own, montefiore, uk-ireland

List of Illustrations
Stalin Family Tree
Maps
Introduction
List of Characters
Note

--Young Stalin

Stalin's Names, Nicknames, Bylines and Aliases
Acknowledgements
Select Bibliography
Index

(The full and extremely extensive references for this book are available in the hardback edition and also on the author's website at: http://www.simonsebagmontefiore.com. In order to make the paperback a manageable and readable size, the author and publishers have decided not to include the notes in the paperback. We hope ...more

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Jan 14, 2013 Patrick Peterson rated it really liked it

Shelves: biography, history, sense-of-life, political, communism, psychology

February 2016. then on 31 July and 1 Aug. 2018 - edited for clarity.
Listened to this on Audio CD. Fascinating. Very well read by James Adams. Paints Stalin as much more intellectual than most describe him. One cause: Trotsky was a powerful writer, who totally misjudged and demeaned Stalin and has had much better press. Another reason, socialists who still love the idea of socialism, find it very hard to justify and explain how the Soviet Union could fall prey to this man Stalin, had to paint him ...more

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May 18, 2009 Meaghan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, biography, read-in-2009, favorites, soviet-union

This is the best biography I've read in a long time. I didn't know much about Stalin and had only basic knowledge of Russian history before I started, but Montefiore's book leaves me hungry for more.

The book begins with an excellent "hook," describing a sensational bank robbery Stalin perpetrated in Tiflis, Georgia. It's also very well researched, with lots of endnotes and footnotes (but no so many footnotes as to distract from the text). Even better, it's written in such a way that the characte ...more

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May 27, 2020 Adam rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, 2020, russia, biography

Wow what a cool guy. Real Robin Hood bank robber, taking from the rich and giving to the central committee, always one step ahead of the tsar and his okhrana henchmen. Lot of affairs with bolshevik babes and I guess he ran some kind of underground journal? Badass. Also lots of cool stuff about going into exile and being pulled around on reindeer sleighs and escaping exile. And some good clowning on that nerd Trotsky.

Not going to bother reading the sequel about his life after 1917. Assume he eith ...more

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Mar 31, 2018 Ana rated it really liked it

Shelves: about-murders, law-abiding-citizen, page-turner, somehow-societal, me-likey-a-lot, history, non-fiction, ebook, biography

A really entertaining read about the life of Stalin... before he actually became Stalin. Filled with a wealth of information about his upbringing, family, friends, relationships, gangster days and the beginnings of the original Politburo in Communist Russia. Would recommend to anyone interested in the personal history of one of the world's most hated dictators.

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Oct 05, 2013 Bettie rated it really liked it

Recommended to Bettie by: E. G.

Shelves: biography, published-2007, history, autumn-2013, fraudio, slavic

Bettie's Books ...more

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May 07, 2012 Carl R. rated it liked it

After reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Court of the Red Tsar (Sabout Stalin’s post revolution reign I didn’t want to read more. I think Montefiore’s writing is pedestrian and that he somehow made the story of the man who is arguably history’s most brutal and bloody dictator and of his alliances with the western world’s greatest mid-century leaders less than transporting work. However, I have a neighbor who’s a glutton for this kind of thing, so I fell heir to a copy of Young Stalin, and here After reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Court of the Red Tsar (Sabout Stalin’s post revolution reign I didn’t want to read more. I think Montefiore’s writing is pedestrian and that he somehow made the story of the man who is arguably history’s most brutal and bloody dictator and of his alliances with the western world’s greatest mid-century leaders less than transporting work. However, I have a neighbor who’s a glutton for this kind of thing, so I fell heir to a copy of Young Stalin, and here we are.
This one is infinitely more readable than the first, though it still doesn’t measure up to the lively novelistic quality that Henri Troyat achieves in his story of Catherine the Great, let alone of David McCullough. The difference here is that Montefiore tells a story as much as he presents his catalogue of facts, figures, and biographical sketches. I even caught myself rooting for the Bolsheviks over the Menscheviks during the short time in 1917 when the issue was in doubt.
Most important, I now think I know a bit about Stalin the inner man, how he got to be such a brute, and what, aside from position and savagery, gave him his power over others.
Stalin was the perfect combination of nature and nurture to become a brutal revolutionary. He was born into nearly bestial poverty with a probably-promiscuous mother and a drunken swine of a father (who may or not have been his real one). His mother wanted him educated (against daddy’s wishes) and sacrificed and begged and probably prostituted herself to get the money to send him to school and then seminary.
He was a born leader in a Georgian (not Russian--it’s different, I found out.) hamlet ruled by street gangs. So his training in thuggery and physical violence began early. The whole town ran that way. On holy days, the men would drink and brawl--starting with the three-year-olds--in the streets. It was just the way things were. Good training for resisting the cossacks who were sure to run another pogrom sometime soon.
He was naturally contemptuous of authority and as ruthless toward others as his parents were to him. He led rebellions (often connected with forbidden books. He was quite the reader.) in seminary, joined anti-establishment groups well before he knew about Marx. He became a Marxist, but dictatorship of the proletariat to him meant dictatorship over the proletariat by an oligarchy--headed by himself, of course. He had to be in charge. Just had to. Any political position he ever advocated was calculated for his personal advantage rather than to fulfill some philosophical premise. He despised as tea-talkers those who would rather talk than kill and steal for the cause. In addition to all that he was quite a competent poet, given to romantic versifying. Montefiore prefaces each section of the book with one of his poems, and they’re not half-bad in a conventional sort of way.
Most of his early youth was spent as a robber and brigand for “the movement,” sending stolen money to the exiled Lenin and Trotsky and getting arrested and sent to Siberia for his pains. Siberian exile in Czarist Russia meant not prison, but life in a small, cold village far from the lights of St. Petersburg, and most of the time he escaped well before his term was up. Then he’d get arrested again. He did serve out nearly all of his last four year term because they sent him so far up the river not even he could get out. He was saved by the WWI draft, for which he turned out to be ineligible once medically examined because of a right arm lame from a childhood accident. All of which brings us right up to the collapse of the Czar and the beginning of the revolution.
All during his criminal, underground life he was beset by spies from the Czar’s police. Of course, he had his own bribed moles inside the police as well. He also ran protection rackets that enabled him to live briefly in mansions of oil barons--including the Rothschilds and Nobels. However, he seldom stayed long anywhere or with anyone, seldom took money for himself. He was never acquisitive in that way. Eventually he built a number of villas and retreats, but they were as much for security as luxury. He had to keep his enemies guessing his whereabouts.
He had affairs right along--sex was apparently abundant among revolutionaries, and his charisma was particularly attractive. He sired some kids he neglected, and he buried a wife whom he had virtually abandoned. All in all, an intelligent, charismatic, ruthless, and despicable man whose historical timing was unfortunately just right to grab a big hunk of power.
He wasn’t born Stalin. He had to work his way to it. From Josef Vissrionovich Djugashvili through thirty or so aliases and bylines to Joseph Steelman. Lenin was just as bloodthirsty as Stalin. Some of the Bolsheviks in the beginning wanted to give some amnesty and he simply declared that without plenty of blood there was no such thing as a revolution. Stalin was his perfect agent. Trotsky gave nice speeches, but Stalin considered him a tea talker, kept him at a distance, and finally had him ice-picked in 1940.
Nature loves a vacuum and doesn’t seem to care how it gets filled. In this case, she filled the empty power space left by the Romanovs with a poisonous substance that killed 20-25 million people over the course of thirty-seven years. Quite a guy. ...more

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Mar 24, 2008 Terence rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Russian history buffs

Shelves: history-general, biography

Oh, the "what ifs" of history - if only Stalin had obeyed his mother's wishes and become a priest (or his father's and become a cobbler). But Simon Montefiore's Young Stalin explores why he didn't.

Young Stalin fills in the period from Stalin's birth in 1878 to the success of the Bolsheviks in 1917, only touched on in Montefiore's earlier biography, The Court of the Red Tsar. The book attempts to explain from whence the brutal megalomaniacal dictator of both Soviet and Western myth emerged, and ( Oh, the "what ifs" of history - if only Stalin had obeyed his mother's wishes and become a priest (or his father's and become a cobbler). But Simon Montefiore's Young Stalin explores why he didn't.

Young Stalin fills in the period from Stalin's birth in 1878 to the success of the Bolsheviks in 1917, only touched on in Montefiore's earlier biography, The Court of the Red Tsar. The book attempts to explain from whence the brutal megalomaniacal dictator of both Soviet and Western myth emerged, and (I think) succeeds pretty well.

Stalin was a complicated man. At one moment, a vicious thug; at another, a serious intellectual; and at another, a creditable romantic poet (Montefiore prefaces each section with one of Soselo's (one of Stalin's many aliases) poems). He was also an unrepentant womanizer, neglectful and tyrannical father, and an uncompromising true believer in Marxism and Lenin. Montefiore is quite good at recreating the Georgian milieu where Stalin grew up and the dysfunctional family he was born into. The Caucasus was a tribal culture steeped in machismo, honor and violence. Home was dominated by an abusive, alcoholic father and an abusive, smothering mother. Conditions only exacerbated by the equally abusive environs of Tbilisi's streets and the seminary where Stalin studied.

Most would have ended up as many of Stalin's friends did: dead or eventually middle-aged men who held down working-class jobs, married and raised another generation. Unfortunately for millions, Stalin was too intelligent, too ambitious and too able to be satisfied with that destiny, and he found an outlet for his energies in the revolutionary groups that flourished in Tsarist Russia.

I'm still not sure why Stalin became a Marxist. Montefiore focuses on a straight narrative of events without indulging in too much psychoanalysis regarding motives and inspirations. Admirable in many ways but I would have welcomed a bit more speculation (as long as it's clearly identified as such).

The reader should also be aware that they'll need a pretty good background in late Tsarist history or they'll get lost and frustrated amid all the Russian, Georgian, Ossetian, et al., names, not to mention the larger background history that Montefiore largely assumes is known to the reader. Fortunately, I'm not entirely ignorant of the period but, even so, I've been motivated to hunt up the Service and Conquest bios of Stalin and Lenin so I can get a better appreciation of the period.

With that in mind, I would definitely recommend this work to the interested. ...more

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Mar 06, 2017 Erik Graff rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Erik by: Phil Kostov

Shelves: biography

During high school I recall having a group conversation with fellow students about what we would do if power was thrust upon us by events. It was 1968 or '69 and we were, however naif, serious.

Young Stalin covers his life until the revolution in 1917, a topic substantially veiled until the breakup of the Soviet Union. The little I knew about Stalin before reading this book was from two, unsympathetic, sides: either that of Trotsky and his followers or that of social democrats whose affections w ...more

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Jul 16, 2018 Susan rated it really liked it

Shelves: history-books, read2018, non-fiction

Everyone has heard of Stalin. The Russian dictator, with the big moustache who was responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people. The man who took over the Russia Soviet Union from Lenin and lead Russia through World War Two but at the casualty rate of 27 million Russian people; men, women and children.

Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore is a book about Stalin before he became Stalin. This book is based on ten years of research on his younger years, his brutal household (alcoholic ...more

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Sep 19, 2008 Jane Routley rated it really liked it

I love biographies. When I was a kid there were a series of uplifitng books for children that I loved with titles like "Young Florence Nightingale." This however is not one of them. In fact is was hard for an old lefty like me to realize just what a vicious bunch of scumbags the Bolsheviks were and how in a lot of ways they were very like Al Quieda are now. They even planned to crash a bi-plane full of explosives into the Winter Palace at one stage.
They were proud to be terrorists and happy to k ...more

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Oct 03, 2019 Hemn yousefi rated it it was amazing

Whoever wants to know how a person like Stalin is created in a society of ferocity and oppression, this is the book.
The kind of narration employed by the writer is really astonishing.

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Oct 10, 2018 Tomq rated it it was ok

The subject matter is intrinsically fascinating.

Stalin grows up in relative poverty, born of an abusive alcoholic father, and a manipulative, promiscuous and resourceful mother. His mother, Keke, harbors the greatest ambitions for her third son, having lost the previous two in their infancy. An atheist from a young age, "Soso Djugashvili" (Stalin), encouraged by Keke, is learning to become a priest at the seminary. Despite this mismatch, he is studious, an avid reader of Tolstoy or Victor Hugo; The subject matter is intrinsically fascinating.

Stalin grows up in relative poverty, born of an abusive alcoholic father, and a manipulative, promiscuous and resourceful mother. His mother, Keke, harbors the greatest ambitions for her third son, having lost the previous two in their infancy. An atheist from a young age, "Soso Djugashvili" (Stalin), encouraged by Keke, is learning to become a priest at the seminary. Despite this mismatch, he is studious, an avid reader of Tolstoy or Victor Hugo; he understands the importance of education.

But he is also a thug and a bully; he develops into a fanatic believer in communism and a careless womanizer. He engages in criminal revolutionary activities for a couple decades, including ordering bank robberies, murders, rackets; at the same time, he learns to maneuver in political circles, to win allies, to eliminate rivals, to argue his views, and to hide from the secret police. For young Stalin, criminal ultra-violence, political activity, unrestrained personal ambition, and fanatical devotion to the revolution, are all complementary facets of a single unified life, of just one struggle. This drive towards total power is, according to Montefiore, the product of a combination of circumstances including personality, family, friends, and the particular atmosphere of the time and place.

It seems an extraordinarily engaging story when summarized into a couple paragraphs, and you'd think it would comfortably fill over 500 pages. Alas, after 150 pages I was so exhausted by Montefiore's awful writing that I began skimming through the chapters and resumed exhaustive reading only around page 300. There are three major problems:

1. The lack of structure. What structure there is (parts, chapters, even paragraphs) was slapped onto a massive, shapeless blob of text. There is no inherent structure, only a superficial organization of a seemingly huge collection of notes. Chapter titles very loosely correlate to their contents; sometimes only two or three pages of a chapter bear any relationship to the chapter's title. As a consequence, this reads more like a timeline of a person's activities than like a compelling portrait of that person.

2. The lack of historical context. Only minimal historical context is provided, and the personal motives of the various individuals are rarely investigated. As a result, reading about young Stalin's gesticulations is like watching a (bad) pantomime: we see which actions Stalin is performing, but we're consistently missing much of the narrative context (personal and historical) in which those actions would acquire meaning and weight. Why did Stalin do X, instead of Y or Z? This book doesn't just fail to answer the question - it does not even ask it. The availability of Y and Z is never even be mentioned; X happened, and that's all you need to know.

3. The focus on the grotesque at the expense of the essential. Because the author knows a great deal about the historical context and because his research activity consists in finding new factoids, great emphasis is put on presenting the "sexiest" factoids, while no effort is put into synthesizing the evidence. The book contains more in-depth discussion of anecdotes of Stalin cross-dressing to evade the secret police than of his ideological development, which, the author appears to believe, we ought to already know everything about.

Overall, I didn't waste my time. I learned important things. But I wasn't the right public for this book. I'm no historian; when I picked up this biography, I was looking for the portrait of a real person, not for a stream-of-consciousness regurgitation of somebody's historical research. ...more

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Apr 18, 2018 Gordan Karlic rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"The history of the world is but the biography of great men." - Thomas Carlyle
Having that famous quote in mind sometimes I wonder whether the authors of biographies of the great man are good writers or men they are writing about are so interesting they can't write a bad book about them.
An answer for this book would be both.
Montefiore did his homework and did a tone of research and the final product is this great book.
But history is strange discipline, you are looking events in backward and it is "The history of the world is but the biography of great men." - Thomas Carlyle
Having that famous quote in mind sometimes I wonder whether the authors of biographies of the great man are good writers or men they are writing about are so interesting they can't write a bad book about them.
An answer for this book would be both.
Montefiore did his homework and did a tone of research and the final product is this great book.
But history is strange discipline, you are looking events in backward and it is hard to distinguish what did happen and what will happen.
What I mean by that is you all the time know (at least you know most important parts) how the story of Stalin will end. So even as you are looking at teenager you are looking why did this child become a dictator that is responsible for millions of deaths.
But Stalin is a just unbelievable character, he did it all and they did it all to him. He got beaten, was poor, drunk father, moms boy (kinda), was smart as f..., always underestimeted, was thought to become a priest, was terrorist, pirate, freedom fighter, spy, murderer, extortionist, kidnaper, lover, father, conspirator, was betrayed, spent several times in prison, robber, did mayor heists, had so many name he probably didn't know half of them, caused tragedy, was struck by tragedies, always in hiding, always with one eye open, always searching for ways to escape, ways to spot police of enemy spies, almost freeze to death in barren Siberia. It was a hard life, he deserved his nickname Stalin (man of steel). But Russian Revolution (World War I) changed all of that, he managed to survive, endure and fight his way to become one of the most powerful men in dead Empire, that will rise and transform under him into a Red Empire, paying a terrible price, he himself so often had to pay.
I never knew much about Stalin as a person, like so many others I knew of him as dictator, but things are never as simple, although I will get more info in next book, it would be seen he really (and author mention that lots of times) religiously believed in Marxism, that was just continuing in the form of Leninism, Stalinism socialism (at least in his eyes) that in the end, he was Marxism and Marxism had to survive no matter the price.
One strange thought crosses my mind read this book.
Stalin is dead and forgotten and is used only for scaring childer (something like Hannibal ad Portas) and to beat your political opponents, socialism (or at least SSSR version of it) is dead and most of this story is just interesting for history buffs. So you may ask what is strange idea I had, well Stalin would be an amazing character for Red Dead Caucasus.
A story is just telling itself, you have a smart kid with whom you can sympathize, he is having hard life, system is treating him and his people with cruelty and discrimination, he wants to learn but backward thinking tries to forbid him that all the time, he sees unbelievable wealth of the few and even more unbelievable poverty of so the many, he fights for idea, for better tomorrow, but more and more he is becoming villain, he is more and more crueler in the land where might is right and old traditions centuaries old customs are meat with brand new technology and thinking. It would be a just amazing combination because the story could end with you (as a player) becoming Stalin (he used other names, only at the end of his "youth" did he adopted Stalin) shocking the player with the realization he was playing maybe the worse person in history.
Overall all, a must-read for all interesting in a period of SSSR Russia.
PS I hate footnotes at the end of the book, why publishers, authors do that I do not know. ...more

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Aug 30, 2010 Ken rated it it was amazing

Stalin has been seen as a one dimensional person - mostly a tyrant/dictator. The book offers information never before published from the disintegrating Georgian archives and memoirs or interviews from (the few) survivors. Stalin's personal history was mutated into a huge cult myth during his lifetime and then equally distorted by the west and also by those who denounced him after his death. He was a monster that rose up from questionable and murky origins (we don't even know who his father was.. ...more

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Jun 29, 2008 John rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: soviet-history

Montefiore has given us another fascinating and utterly engaging biography of Stalin, or rather a biographical narrative of his life through the October Revolution (1917).

Montefiore has mined the archives of Russia and former Soviet republics and he has also interviewed surviving acquaintances of Stalin's (One former friend still lives at 109 years!)to present a great deal of material for the first time. His integration of this material as well as his interpretation of it in larger political con ...more

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Feb 10, 2018 Pamela rated it liked it

Shelves: biography, history, non-fiction

Most of this book is an endless repetition of Stalin's escapades as a gangster, bank robber, fundraiser for Lenin and womanizer. It does deal with his early youth in his home village of Gori, his poor and abusive family background and his years at the seminary (also abusive). The rest is one continual episode of gangsterism, and brutal behavior after another as he grows to be, well. Stalin. Names become a befuddlement after awhile and not really worth keeping track of. Most of them wind up dead ...more

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Dec 06, 2015 George rated it really liked it

Shelves: russia, audible-library, history, soviet-union, read-in-2015, biography, read-in-2015-best

A good, close-up look at Stalin from his birth up to age 39 (1917). Montefiore has done a superb job at providing details of his family life, childhood, early life in Georgia, his activities for the Bolsheviks, his imprisonments, time in Siberia, and his involvement in the beginnings of the 1917 Revolution.

In contrast, Stephen Kotkin's 'Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power' covers the same time period with a much wider focus - more on the historical situation and less on Stalin himself. Kotkin ...more

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Dec 21, 2010 Tasha rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fic, russia-reads

This seems a very well-researched book. I learned much about this guy both as a person and as a political. I preferred the parts which focused more on the person rather than the politics but clearly, they can't be separated so overall a really interesting read. A really good history lesson as I feel I have a much better understanding now of the politics and the lead-up to Stalin's reign. I plan on moving on to Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. ...more

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Oct 31, 2017 Anna Baillie-Karas rated it it was amazing

Outstanding biography of the man who became a monster. Simon Sebag Montefiore has a deep understanding of the time, country and context; & new sources that shed light on Stalin’s early years. It’s a compelling story told in a pacy, narrative style. Helped me understand how the type of person he was, hard childhood & violent town - combined w his passion for the cause - shaped Stalin. Fascinating, disturbing & nuanced. Highly recommended. ...more

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Aug 10, 2018 John David rated it really liked it

Shelves: modern-history, biography-or-autobiography

The life of the young Joseph Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis Jughashvili) is probably very much like you would think it was, given what we know of his adult life. He was born to the alcoholic and physically abusive shoemaker father Bessarion and an overly fond mother Ekaterina (“Keke”). The streets of his native town of Gori, located in modern-day Georgia, required young boys to hone their cruelty and brutality early on. Despite getting into dozens of fights, he was also exceedingly bright. From a The life of the young Joseph Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis Jughashvili) is probably very much like you would think it was, given what we know of his adult life. He was born to the alcoholic and physically abusive shoemaker father Bessarion and an overly fond mother Ekaterina (“Keke”). The streets of his native town of Gori, located in modern-day Georgia, required young boys to hone their cruelty and brutality early on. Despite getting into dozens of fights, he was also exceedingly bright. From a young age, he developed a passion for poetry, including writing his own – which, upon translation, is only slightly less embarrassing than Hitler’s painting.

At the age of 15, he entered the Seminary in the Georgia capital of Tiflis, where his native language of Georgian was looked down on with derision by his pro-Tzarist Russian Orthodox priests. It was in seminary where the first sparks of Soso’s interest in politics were sparked. He started a book club with fellow seminarians devoted to the reading of politically revolutionary books, including Kazbegi’s “The Patricide” and Chernyshevsky’s “What Is To Be Done?” (whose title Lenin would later borrow to write one of his most influential pamphlets). Most importantly of all, they read Marx. In 1899, he was kicked out of seminary for missing his exams and never returned.

And so starts a fascinating life, full of violence, political intrigue, and paranoia. “Young Stalin,” which was actually written chronologically after Montefiore’s “Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar” recounts the first 38 years of his life until ominous events surround the October Revolution of 1917. Throughout the book, Montefiore repeatedly emphasizes Stalin’s conniving, surreptitious, manipulative behavior, including his repeated love affairs with women whom he would woe (and occasionally impregnate) only to abruptly leave in order to help the next big Bolshevik cause. Montefiore is careful to never portray Stalin as a rank ideologue, though. Instead, he continually casts him in the role of revolutionary wingman – once he met Lenin, something along the line of Lenin’s personal Michael Cohen. At many junctures, the money that he was able to raise for the Party’s cause singularly kept them afloat. More than once, he robbed banks and committed acts of civic terrorism, including killing members of the Okhrana (the Tsar’s personal secret police) in order to achieve his personal or political aims. He was a vicious gangster with a multitude of talents and a cunning mind: he ran protection rackets, he was a master counterfeiter and extortionist, and a purveyor of the unique kind of propagandistic journalism for which Pravda, which he regularly wrote, would become famous.

Once Stalin actually meets Lenin in 1905, Montefiore portrays the relationships as very much one in which Lenin calls the ideological shots and Stalin is simply there to agree and continue to raise money. Montefiore slightly touches on their political disagreements but does not make much of them in the first volume, leaving them (at least I would imagine – I’m reading it next) for the second volume when the Bolsheviks are in control of the government. One of the things that Stalin especially resented was Lenin’s inability to let go of bourgeois parliamentarianism. Lenin wanted to get Bolsheviks elected to the Duma, where Stalin thought that this was a waste of time.

In the Epilogue, Montefiore quickly glosses over the aftermath of the October Revolution, describing how Lenin quickly consolidated his power, partially through the “liquidation” of Mensheviks and his other political enemies. In a few brisk pages, it details the sometimes gory and tragic, and other times completely pedestrian fates of the more minor characters that had introduced in the book. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the terror and cruelty: at one turn, he would order the execution of friends and long-term supporters, and at the next blithely look over those who had been less than amendable to his ideas. Given the triumvirate of megalomaniacs at the head at the Bolshevik wing – Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin – it’s amazing that all of them actually saw the other side of the Revolution. Montefiore especially emphasizes the role that Stalin always had in Lenin’s inner circle here, giving him particular permission to be one of only two people who could interrupt him in his office without prior notification.

Montefiore goes out of his way to repeatedly point out that this revelation, this interview, or this biographical sketch was only recently found upon the opening of certain Soviet archives. But being able to present afresh the allure of the new and unvarnished seems to be something historians are always quick to point out. Whether the psychological portrait that Montefiore paints is based on information that is either new or dated has no impact on his ability to tell his story – and he tells it like a talented African griot. If you’re interested in this period of Russian history (and honestly, how could you not be?) but you think that you’re not up for a 400-page volume (or 1,000-page, if you count the second volume, too) biography, this is definitely the book to change your mind. It’s a fascinating story, fascinatingly told. ...more

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May 27, 2012 Jerome rated it it was amazing

An interesting portrayal of Stalin the revolutionary. Montefiore gives us a vivid picture of Stalin’s youth and the various stages he found himself in: Stalin the choirboy, Stalin the poet, and Stalin the Bolshevik fanatic. Stalin’s turbulent life in the underground would do much to mold his notions of loyalty and betrayal, notions that would lead to mass terror and world war.

Montefiore shows Stalin’s career of undercover revolutionary: party organizer, bank robber, and Siberian exile. The most An interesting portrayal of Stalin the revolutionary. Montefiore gives us a vivid picture of Stalin’s youth and the various stages he found himself in: Stalin the choirboy, Stalin the poet, and Stalin the Bolshevik fanatic. Stalin’s turbulent life in the underground would do much to mold his notions of loyalty and betrayal, notions that would lead to mass terror and world war.

Montefiore shows Stalin’s career of undercover revolutionary: party organizer, bank robber, and Siberian exile. The most interesting revelation to me was how Stalin was immersed in the shadowy world of the revolutionary underground from his youth, a world full of the deception and treachery that would come to play such a large role in his later life. He was always on the run from the secret police and was several times captured due to acquaintances that betrayed him. This undoubtedly kindled the paranoia that would lead him to arrest and murder so many of his former comrades when he was finally in power.

Throughout his life Stalin attracted numerous unbounded psychopaths. His childhood partners in crime were the first of a long line. In prison, Stalin preferred a following of common criminals and murderers to one of "politicals", and even there he killed suspected traitors. When he was in power, Stalin shocked Party comrades by promoting criminals in the secret police, but Stalin had used criminals all his life.

The young Stalin was bright and hardworking, and distinguished himself academically, and as a pet and choirboy. At the same time, in seeming paradox, he was a violent troublemaker who picked fights often. As a communist activist, Stalin discovered more of his talents: he was a great organizer and an efficient political gangster. When he wasn’t a surly thug or a self-obsessed melodramatist, Stalin played the chivalrous suitor, singing songs and admiring and giving gifts to young women.

Going to Tiflis to become a priest, Stalin first encountered Marxism, eventually quit the seminary and became a revolutionary. Here he organized “expropriations” (bank robberies) to fund Marxist activities. Eventually, Stalin became a man constantly on the move, from Baku to Vienna to London to exile in Siberia (twice, in fact). He also developed his relationships with Lenin, who came to regard him as dangerous, and Trotsky, who would engage in an epic rivalry that would result in his murder. Trotsky saw Stalin as a nothing, someone incapable of ever leading the Party.

Lenin once told one of his comrades of “Koba’s immaturity as a Marxist.” When told of Stalin’s brutality, Lenin replied “That is exactly the sort of person I need.”

Although historians call Stalin “the man who missed the revolution,” Montefiore disputes this. Stalin missed significant military action because he was busy printing Bolshevik propaganda shortly after Kerensky’s troops had smashed his presses and swamped his offices with troops. But Stalin actually called in Red troops and soon got the presses working again. he missed the action not because he was a political nobody but because he had his hands full at the presses.

Despite common portrayals as such, Stalin was not a born bureaucrat. A hard worker, dedicated to politics, Stalin’s style was eccentric and unbureaucratic. He won lenin’s trust through intrigues and bank robberies. Before 1920, Stalin was barely in his office.

Stalin, it seems,was trouble from the start, shaped by adversity. His father was a drunk, his mother beat him frequently. When he moved into the world of underground politics, everyone underestimated him, sometimes to their peril. The young Stalin was little more than a common criminal who, by cunning, ruthlessness, and sheer force of will, overcame his detractors and came to lead and terrorize a nation.

Sometimes it seems like Montefiore could have used a better editor. There are mangled sentences like “Svelte Mauser-toting Patsia Goldava then called porters, perhaps some of Stalin’s urchins, and supervised its removal to another safe house across the River Kura.” There are also a couple of rather glaring typos: “foxing” instead of “outfoxing”, “everthing” instead of “everything”, and “ageing” instead of “aging”. There also a few vague statements like “his service in the Russo-Japanese war had converted him to Marxism.” on page 311, Montefiore writes of “a speech by Chkheidze about conciliation with the Bolsheviks,” when he means the Mensheviks. ...more

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Jan 28, 2015 Tim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: politics-policy, history

Now this was an absolutely fascinating, and very powerful book. However, for a Ukrainian-American, it does make for some painful reading (although Ukraine does not figure in the story, I am certain it appears in the sequel to this, the equally acclaimed "In the Court of the Red Tsar".) Stalin was without question one of the most evil leaders in all human history, a man who had no compunction over sending millions to their deaths to further his goals, and (this part was somewhat new to me) a man Now this was an absolutely fascinating, and very powerful book. However, for a Ukrainian-American, it does make for some painful reading (although Ukraine does not figure in the story, I am certain it appears in the sequel to this, the equally acclaimed "In the Court of the Red Tsar".) Stalin was without question one of the most evil leaders in all human history, a man who had no compunction over sending millions to their deaths to further his goals, and (this part was somewhat new to me) a man who sent his own family members to prison or death if they displeased him, along with close friends and allies. At times in my life I have found myself asking, who was Stalin? What drove him to do the things he did? Where did he come from? What, if anything, did he believe in other than his own lust for power? This book fully answers all those questions.

I do not know how much about Stalin's life was really known in the West, or the East for that matter, beyond what the Soviet propagandists came up with. My recollection is that he was a kind of eminence grise, albeit a deadly one. "Young Stalin" clearly demonstrates that this was not the case. This was a man who was passionate, driven, a master manipulator and a meticulous planner, a fanatical Marxist zealot with a messianic sense of himself. Montefiore in this book does more than just read what other historians have come up with, he got into some old KGB archives and read previously top secret memoirs and interviews from Josef Djugashvili's old cronies. And of course Stalin had cronies, and lovers, and enemies, and family members, and an education. Here we see his illegitimate children, his ruses, his murderous thefts (for the cause), his clashes with others, his friendships with like-minded people. The tale is a lively and panoramic one, full of revolutionaries, bandits, spies, narrow escapes, treachery, and conspiracy. Montefiore shows how this man went from being the son of a poor, violent, alcoholic cobbler and his strong wife in a rough part of Georgia, to a seminary student, to a revolutionary agitator, and then to the inner circle of Bolshevik leadership in revolution era Russia. It was quite a journey, and Djugashvili, whatever we think of him, was an extraordinary individual.

To say however that Stalin was flawed would be one of the greatest understatements of all time. He was vicious, paranoid, megalomaniacal, and almost certainly a psychopath. But Montefiore does not spend a lot of time pondering the implications of his life or his psychology, and this makes sense, for Djugashvili came of age in a time and place where direct action, espionage, and violence counted for more than well-reasoned debate. His associates, the original Leninist Bolsheviks, were a motley crew of killers, intellectuals, angry rebels, idealists, crooks, apostate aristocrats, and regular working people. A good many of them appear in these pages, and they came from a long Russian tradition of revolutionary fanaticism. Djugashvili clearly did not act alone, nor was he particularly novel in any way. He was not the only one to be sent into exile in Siberia on multiple occasions, to espouse anti-mainstream views in the halls of the seminary he attended, or to grow up angry and nasty on the streets of Gori and Tiflis. Montefiore's well-written, non-academic prose hits the right note in telling this man's tale. One imagines that Stalin - a talented writer himself who, while still in his teens, had his poetry published in a leading Georgian magazine and was a founding editor of Pravda - would have approved of the style if not the content.

Anyone interested in the history of Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucusus, and leftist revolutions should read this. It sheds a very clear light on the formative years of a man (and a movement) that would shake the world. It would also make for a fascinating read for pretty much anybody, since it presents a vivid picture of the character and youthful adventures of this almost Satanic, yet oddly idealistic leader. Josef Djugashvili cannot be forgiven or forgotten, but he can be understood, and this book goes a long way to helping us do that. ...more

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Jan 07, 2015 Frank Stein rated it really liked it

This book shares many similarities with Montefiore's earlier book, Court of the Red Tsar, which deals with Stalin's later life in power. This book too is gossipy, filled with private inneundo, sexual scuttlebutt, and violent family relationships. Despite dealing with less world-shaking events, it is perhaps even more readable because the overall tenor of the writer goes better with Stalin's more private life in this period.

Stalin (or Soso, his previous nickname which is used throughout the book This book shares many similarities with Montefiore's earlier book, Court of the Red Tsar, which deals with Stalin's later life in power. This book too is gossipy, filled with private inneundo, sexual scuttlebutt, and violent family relationships. Despite dealing with less world-shaking events, it is perhaps even more readable because the overall tenor of the writer goes better with Stalin's more private life in this period.

Stalin (or Soso, his previous nickname which is used throughout the book) was a quiet but haughty boy from his youngest days. The beatings of his alcoholic, cobbler father Beso and his time spent playing with the rough street orphans of Gori also made him feisty and wily. His teenage years spent at an elite seminary in Tblisi, due to his mom's, Keke's, extraordinary efforts and local charity, gave him the education that he needed to use those attributes as a path to power. In what may have been the book's greatest revelation for me, while at the seminary, Soso wrote a series of poems, filled with nature imagery and native Georgian symbolism, that made him a mild celebrity in the region even in his teens, and many saw a real future for this young prodigy in literature. The seminary, though, is also where Soso found other proto-radicals who fought against the school's strict rules on outside reading and limited, classic library. Despite Stalin's later reputation as purely anti-intellectual, he spent much of his early years trading 19th century Russian novelists with friends, and in the earliest secret Ohkrana reports on his revolutionary activity he is called "the intellectual Josef." Much of his early revolutionary work involved setting up illegal printing presses and putting out papers and leaflets for strikes or organizing.

Still, Soso became most famous as a revolutionary attack dog in the region, willing to kill and bomb to raise money for the Bolshevik party, most notably in a bank robbery in 1907, which Lenin especially admired. Despite spending much of the 1910s in Siberian exile, he managed to attend many of the party conferences in Europe and help formulate Bolshevik policy on the touchy "nationality question." (Montefiore shows how light such Tsarist Siberian sentences were compared to Stalin's later murderous gulag. They involved mainly sending convicts to a small, isolated town with weekly spending money provided by the government. Most exiles easily escaped.) Far from the "bureaucratic non-entity" that Trotsky later characterized him as, Stalin was a potent and active member of the party in this era who made a bigger impression in Russia than in the European circles that Trotsky frequented.

Like the previous book, this can be too gossipy, and can contain lots of questionable suppositions based on post-hoc recollections. Much of it is based on later memoirs (it seems practically everyone anywhere near Stalin wrote one!), but Montefiore is careful to parse the statements for accuracy, and one can always analyze these claims and make up one's own mind. This book though provides an amazing look inside the revolutionary world in the Caucuses's in the early 20th century, before Stalin himself turned them into a endless graveyard. ...more

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Aug 26, 2020 Paul Praet rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

After having read the author's previous excellent book Stalin: the court of the red Tsar, my expectations was high for this 'prequel' describing the youth and rise of Stalin.
It's clear the author spared no effort to utilize as many knowledgeable sources on this topic as possible, including many that were unknown to the public up until now.

I can only recommend this book if you want to know more about Stalin.

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Feb 06, 2018 Jonny rated it really liked it

This is better than I thought it would be and is incredibly well-researched; Montefiore really goes into the archives and there are some fascinating personal interviews which illuminate Stalin’s youth and early adulthood. What comes through is first the debunking of the idea that he was ‘just’ a bureaucrat, and also how totally unglamorous and in many ways unaccomplished his life was until 1917. The description of how haphazard the Bolsheviks were even as they took power is persuasive, and demon ...more

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About Simon Sebag Montefiore

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of the global bestsellers 'The Romanovs' and 'Jerusalem: the Biography,' 'Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar' and Young Stalin and the novels Sashenka and One Night in Winter and "Red Sky at Noon." His books are published in 48 languages and are worldwide bestsellers. He has won prizes in both non-fiction and fiction. He read history at Gonville and Caius Colleg ...more

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“So much of the inexplicable about the Soviet experience—the hatred of the peasantry for example, the secrecy and paranoia, the murderous witch hunt of the Great Terror, the placing of the Party above family and life itself, the suspicion of the USSR’s own espionage that led to the success of Hitler’s 1941 surprise attack—was the result of the underground life, the konspiratsia of the Okhrana and the revolutionaries, and also the Caucasian values and style of Stalin. And not just of Stalin.” — 6 likes

“It seems that Russia today—dominated by, and accustomed to, autocracy and empire, and lacking strong civic institutions especially after the shattering of its society by the Bolshevik Terror—is destined to be ruled by self-promoting cliques for some time yet.” — 5 likes

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