Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar | Simon Sebag Montefiore

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar | Simon Sebag Montefiore | The History of a Monster

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Stalin: The Court ...

	Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar Simon Sebag Montefiore Vintage, 2005 - 848 pages average customer review:based on 85 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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 and paranoia at debauched dinners at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We witness first-hand how the dictator and his magnates carried out the Great Terror and the war against the Nazis, and how their families lived in this secret world of fear, betrayal, murder, and sexual degeneracy. Montefiore gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalin?s dictatorship, and a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal.

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A delicious read

Josef Stalin was an artist. While some artists work in clay, oils or water color, Stalin worked in mass murder. It was his medium and he was a virtuoso. And just as Picasso's style shifted from his pink to his blue period, Stalin's abattoir art developed through his Trotskyite period, his old guard Bolshevik period, his military officer period, his Jewish period, his doctor's period, his Mingrelian period and so on, across several decades of obscene, senseless blood-letting.

Simon Sebag Monteriore tells the story of this deranged madman in a way few if any have before. The suicide of Stalin's wife, Nadya, in the Kremlin in 1932 is the pivot upon which the whole narrative turns. Monteriore notes that prior to that traumatic event Stalin was primus inter pares in the Soviet leadership hierarchy and not the omnipotent, dreaded dictator of his later years when the Politburo "studied [him] like zoologists to read his moods, win his favor and survive." In the early thirties old colleagues like Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Alexei Rykov were casual with Stalin, addressing him as "Koba" and were quite comfortable challenging his proposals within senior leadership circles. Within a couple years of Nadya's death these and other patriarchs were dead and so too was any thought of informality with Stalin or speaking freely on any topic no matter how trivial.

The author provides a rare and stunning glimpse inside Stalin's personal and political circle over a quarter century of his rule. The picture that emerges is somewhat analogous to HBO's Sopranos family - only without the mafia code of honor. In Stalinist Russia nobody was off-limits: the elderly, women, children, pregnant wives, extended family, casual friends and neighbors, others completely and undeniably innocent. All were subject to heinous beatings, prolonged torture, hard labor and execution - often in that order. Proximity to the "Vozd" himself was no guarantee of safety; indeed, it was one of the more parlous positions in the Soviet Union. For instance, five of Stalin's eight in-laws from his marriages to Ekaterina Svanidze and Nadya Alliluyeva were liquidated during his rule. Meanwhile, the passionately Marxist-Leninist wives of long-standing and blindly devoted acolytes, such as Moltov, Poskrebyshev, and Kalinin, were arrested and in some cases shot. His secret police chiefs - Yagoda, Yezhov, Beria, Abakumov - each outdid their predecessor in zealotry to the cause of uprooting "enemies" and in the cruelty of their methods before being arrested and shot themselves on the falsified charges of being one the very "enemies" they were supposedly hunting (Beria, of course, being the exception, having survived Stalin's rule only to be shot by Khrushchev). The whole story is so twisted and nonsensical that it is difficult to fully comprehend.

What was most surprising about Monteriore's narrative, in my opinion, was how human, talented, and common Stalin could be. Here you find Stalin locking himself in a Kremlin bathroom as his angry wife pounds furiously on the door in a fit of spousal rage; slapping his beloved daughter Svetlana for her romantic relationship with a middle-aged married poet during the Second World War; reprimanding his hard-drinking debauchee son, Vasily, for irresponsibility and sullying the family name; serving as a Simon Cowell-like judge in a bizarre version of "Soviet Idol" put on to create a new national anthem in 1943; unleashing a deadly inquiry into corruption and incompetence after being served under ripe bananas in 1951; and throwing tomatoes at dinner guests during a summer holiday on the Black Sea and forcing his inner circle to drink until they vomited at the table.

Not only was Stalin often a doting parent, smothering his daughter and grandchildren with affectionate kisses and hugs, but he also possessed a first-rate intellect, at least according to the author, who writes "it would be no exaggeration to say that Stalin was the best-read ruler of Russia from Catherine the Great to Vladimir Putin, even including Lenin..." That's high praise given the unusually highbrow literary consumption of the Russian people.

This is one of the most enjoyable and eye-opening (not to mention unsettling) books that I have read in quite some time. No matter what opinion you hold of Stalin (and hopefully it's not a positive one), this book will likely forever alter that perception.

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The History of a Monster

In the pantheon of the 20th century's most heinous individuals, Joseph Stalin would be prominently placed along with Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot. Stalin was a truly repulsive individual who brought death and misery to millions. To think that he should deserve some accolades for industrialising the Soviet Union is historical blindness of the greatest degree. He was simply a repugnant monster.

Simon Sebag Montefiore has told the tale of Stalin as a riveting piece of history. You may ask if there is anything new about Stalin to be told. Well, the short answer is that much has been learned in recent years. Montefiore was given unparalleled access to Russian records and has a keen eye for detail. Indeed, it is remarkable that such records even exist. Yet it seems that the Soviets were, if nothing else, diligent keeps of files. Montefiore has unearthed a veritable treasure trove.

Stalin was a man of immense paranoia. In his life, he trusted no one except, ironically, Adolph Hitler. Right up to the last moment, he was convinced that Hitler would keep his word and leave the Soviet Union in peace. When Hitler's word was broken, Stalin nearly collapsed. Yet, everyone else was a danger, real or perceived. The bloodletting that this unleashed in the 1930s has few parallels in history. But for all this carnage, Stalin was able to live a life cut short only by natural death. He created fear in his people and his immediate colleagues. He used this fear as a weapon. He was utterly remorseless.

Simon Sebag Montefiori's book is a master piece. It is a superlative piece of historical writing and biography. Not with standing the repugnance of the subject, this book is great reading. I thoroughly recommend it to all interested in understanding one of the great figures of the twentieth century.

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Monsters

There is nothing here about policies or ideology, but the unbelievable monstrosity of Stalin and his magnates is described as never before. A terrifying and gripping story.

Scary insight into how totalitarian regimes operate

This is a great book if you want to understand the horrors and paranoia among the elites in totalitarian regimes. The book discusses how Stalin manipulated his court and why his associates went along with his schemes. There are some fascinating tidbits, but one of the most unnerving is the fact that Stalin was actually a very well-read and intelligent man who read Western history and Russian literature (books he banned incidentally), but still believed in the Communist system and perpetuated mass murder. He also skillfully involved his associates in crimes, so none of them could take the moral high ground and they all had some stains on their character which could be used against them when Stalin decided to get rid of them.

I thought there was enough of an overview on Stalin for reasonably educated people to delve right into this book, but you may want to review a brief online biography (or even Wikipedia) before tackling this book.

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Not for novices

Yowzahs! If you want a DETAILED biography of Stalin's political life then pick this up. I fully recommend it to grad and doctoral students or anyone else writing a book.
If you are a little curious and your last Russian history class was in high school, then you might want to look elsewhere.
I was overwhelmed. When I got out of bed, wanting to draw my own character profiles and story arcs, I decided that this would NOT be a good bed time read.
Thorough, scholarly and well-written this book made me feel stupid.

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