Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret...

Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives | Edvard Radzinsky | A Chilling Warning to Us All

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Stalin: The First ...

	Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives Edvard Radzinsky Anchor, 1997 - 624 pages average customer review:based on 70 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

From the author of The Last Tsar, the first full-scale life of Stalin to have what no previous biography has entirely gotten hold of: the facts. Granted privileged access to Russia's secret archives, Edvard Radzinsky paints a picture of the Soviet strongman as more calculating, ruthless, and blood-crazed than has ever been described or imagined. Stalin was a man for whom power was all, terror a useful weapon, and deceit a constant companion.

As Radzinsky narrates the high drama of Stalin's epic quest for domination-first within the Communist Party, then over the Soviet Union and the world-he uncovers the startling truth about this most enigmatic of historical figures. Only now, in the post-Soviet era, can what was suppressed be told: Stalin's long-denied involvement with terrorism as a young revolutionary; the crucial importance of his misunderstood, behind-the-scenes role during the October Revolution; his often hostile relationship with Lenin; the details of his organization of terror, culminating in the infamous show trials of the 1930s; his secret dealings with Hitler, and how they backfired; and the horrifying plans he was making before his death to send the Soviet Union's Jews to concentration camps-tantamount to a potential second Holocaust. Radzinsky also takes an intimate look at Stalin's private life, marked by his turbulent relationship with his wife Nadezhda, and recreates the circumstances that led to her suicide.

As he did in The Last Tsar, Radzinsky thrillingly brings the past to life. The Kremlin intrigues, the ceaseless round of double-dealing and back-stabbing, the private worlds of the Soviet Empire's ruling class-all become, in Radzinsky's hands, as gripping and powerful as the great Russian sagas. And the riddle of that most cold-blooded of leaders, a man for whom nothing was sacred in his pursuit of absolute might--and perhaps the greatest mass murderer in Western history--is solved.

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Great Book

Of all the Stalin books, this is the best one by far. I strongly recommend it.

A Chilling Warning to Us All

For 50 years, few have disputed that Stalin was one of the cruelest men since Vlad the Impaler and his own contemporary, Adolf Hitler. It's an interesting footnote that, long after his death, we have people bearing signs that read, "Jews Beware! Stalin Will Soon Return!"

His reign of terror is remarkable in that he was able to slaughter so many while at the same time maintaining a public façade of "Uncle Joe," the merciful one. One can only speculate on what drove so paranoid a lunatic into the games he played with human lives and how he so coldly turned his back and partied during the starvation of his people. A horrifying example is the amusement with which he would dispose of wives and family members merely to "send a message" to his henchmen--and then killed them anyway.

I have read of Stalin before the fall of the Soviet Union and the release of many of the archives that led to this book--while he was known to have murdered so many, reading Radzinsky's exploration of the files leaves one utterly repulsed at so ugly an animal. May his example give us the strength to topple such madmen in the future.

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Literate and dramatic bio

This is a literate and dramatic telling of Stalin's life and times from birth to death. The knowns and unknowns of Stalin are covered, as well as his colleagues (or adverseries in Stalin's case). The author's style is literary - a playwright by vocation - as if writing a novel. So, yes, there are the usual cliffhanger chapter endings and is suspensful to a degree - - a definite page turner overall. Also, the author is a native who lived part of his childhood during the Stalin era and his father felt the full brunt of Stalinism. So I like the touch of the personal emotion here. Is more readable and personable than the Conquest and Service bios, and covers more time than Montefiore. I heartily recommend.

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A Very Mixed Review

Well it was a very interesting book. But sadly this book didn't make me want to hate Stalin any more then I used to. In fact it only made me want to understand him more! Now I'm not going to lie, I like the guy a lot. But I have very mixed feelings about Stalin. Part of me admires him deeply, while the other half despises what he did to those poor Russians, Ukranians, Georigans, Eastern Europeans, ect..... But did it even accure to the author of the book that mabye Stalin was trying to act more Russian then Georgian due to the fact that his country was a part of the Russian empire when he was a child? And did it accure to him that maybe in some kind of way those Russians perhaps made him feel a little ashamed of being Georigan? Heck it wouldn't suprise me. After all it seems to me like this guy was trying to act more Russian then his own nationality. I say the guy should do a little more research about Stalin! Even if it kills him!

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Disjointed

This book does have a lot of information and does provide some unique insights into the personality of Stalin, but it suffers in several ways:
1. The author tends to jump from one time period to another and it is sometimes difficult to tell exactly where in time an event took place.
2. It occasionally has some awkward sentence structures. This may be a result of translation.
3. The author used the pronoun "I" much more than what I have seen in other biographies. In other words he places myself in the action or explains how he got some information.
4. At times it reads more like a mystery spy novel than a biography. He would end a paragraph with a question instead of a declarative statement.
5. Except for the main characters, the long and un-pronounceable Russia names made it very hard to follow exactly who he was talking about.

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