| Product: |
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar - Simon Sebag Montefiore |
| Date: |
16.12.04 (164 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: If you want to know, about Stalin and his court, then this is the book
Disadvantages: Can't really think of, any disadvantages., Sorry about that
Stalin's one of those guys who is pretty hard to avoid if you have any kind of interest in Twentieth Century history. One of the century's more unpleasant tyrants, he succeeded Lenin as head of the Soviet Union and ruled until his death in 1953. He was responsible for an awful lot of suffering and misery. His style of government can best be described as paranoid, as anyone who was suspected of even the slightest disloyalty to the Communist cause was executed. Millions died as a result of his agricultural policies, and millions more through persecution led by his sinister secret police chiefs - show trials, Siberian gulags and all the rest of that bad stuff. He invaded Poland with Hitler, and after the Second World War he was responsible for starting the Cold War, as his paranoia and dislike of the Capitalist West made it impossible for him to work with the other Allies.
But apart from all that famous stuff, he wasn't someone I knew much about. I assumed he'd be a bit like Hitler - someone no biographer could properly pin down because he was just too strange for normal people to understand. This book proved me wrong on that front. Stalin was actually frighteningly normal, apart from the absurd paranoia and complete disregard for other people's lives. He was affectionate with his children and grandchildren, enjoyed gardening and liked to get drunk with his friends. This is a bit unsettling in some ways - Hitler, in spite of some excellent biographies, still remains quite alien-seeming and unknowable. This is comforting, as it suggests that there will always be something uncanny about truly evil people, and so there's no danger of going badly wrong oneself. Stalin, on the other hand, is disturbingly familiar, as are most of his henchmen. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic, but I can't help but feel that people aren't inherently virtuous, and that if the circumstances are right almost anyone can be made into a monster. Stalin's relative normality only confirms my rather bleak view of humanity.
Heh, well, anyway, no point dwelling on it, this is meant to be a book review, not a lament about the cold, empty depths of the human soul. This is a hefty book, weighing in at 672 pages. It's obviously been thoroughly researched, and has taken advantage of the opening of Soviet archives since the end of the Cold War. (There are no source notes in the book, presumably for space reasons - instead there is a URL where you can go to check them if you're interested.) It's not quite a regular biography of Stalin; as the title suggests, it's also about his intimate circle, the ruling elite of Soviet Russia and their families. It doesn't go into enormous detail about every aspect of the government and its policies, mainly focusing on the more monstrous or absurd elements. It also doesn't really go into very much detail about Stalin's early life or his rise to power. It effectively starts with the suicide of his chronically depressed second wife Nadya in 1932. It was only after her death that Stalin's regime became truly horrendous (although it wasn't exactly pleasant to start with), and the book describes the rest of his career, the political infighting that went on around him, and the atrocities that were carried out at his behest.
It's particularly good to read in detail about the other leading members of the government. Apart from Molotov, Beria and Khrushchev, I don't think I could have named any of them. But they're all here in their sordid, rotten glory, people like Mikoyan, Kagnovich, Zhdanov. They're an interesting bunch, and for the most part far more capable than the more famous Nazi leaders. They all seem to have been enthusiastic drinkers - drinking long into the night with Stalin seems to have been an obligatory feature of life in the higher echelons of government. Their other hobbies ranged from pornography and underage ballerinas to rape and torture. Every now and then one of them fell from grace, and he and his entire family were wiped out. It's fascinating stuff.
It's also very entertaining, in a blackly comic way. Although Montefiore never lets us forget just how bad things were in Russia for the ordinary people (and neatly contrasts it with the opulent lifestyles the potentates led), there's enough absurdity to keep anyone entertained along the way. The swearing, the stupid practical jokes, Stalin's fondness for dirty rhymes, the petulant bickering, the clumsy bungling and frequent idiocy; it stops it all from getting too bleak. The lives these people led were ridiculous and frequently hilarious (although I'm sure none of them would have seen the funny side). Probably my favourite was the when a middle-aged writer decided to seduce Stalin's 16-year-old daughter during the war - obviously not the cleverest thing to do. The absurd tragi-comic scenes when his ministers surrounded Stalin's death bed are also enjoyable in a slightly grim way. It's a bit like reading I, Claudius, except that it all actually happened. (One odd thing - the book's title is surely a King Crimson reference. Is there some unfathomable connection between totalitarian Communism and prog rock that I'm unaware of?)
But for all the silliness, this was a destructive, brutal regime that probably caused more human suffering than any other last century, with the possible exception of the Nazis. I think the book strikes the right balance in describing the inherent stupidity of the behaviour of the Politburo and the terrible consequences of their actions. These were monstrous, nationalist and racist people who killed for absurdly arbitrary reasons (there was a strong anti-Semitic streak in a lot of what they did, although they were never as single-minded about it as Hitler). The fact that they joke, danced and drank with each other like a deranged university fraternity doesn't excuse them anything.
In spite of its length, this is a pretty easy book to read. You will need to pay attention, as there are an awful lot of Russian names to absorb, and most of them seem to begin with M. Also, individuals are frequently referred to by more than one name - Stalin had at least three - and I occasionally had to refer to the index to try and work out whether the person I was reading about had previously been mentioned under a different name. But you get the hang of it after a while. And there are plenty of photos to help you out. I hoped this book would fill in the huge gaps in my knowledge about Stalin. It succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.
Published by Phoenix, 672 pages, £9.99 (good value for money).
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