The Birth of An Industrial Super Power Underwritten in Blood. (Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar - Simon Sebag Montefiore)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar - Simon Sebag Montefiore
Date:	26/06/06 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Comprehensive, meticulous, fascinating at times

Disadvantages: Factual, will be too dry for some

I’ve always been fascinated by history. In particular, I’ve always been drawn to those monsters who have managed the unspeakable; things that we can only imagine until people like me and you have actually read first-hand accounts of what went on. There have been many over the centuries and examples of the 20th century include Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao and Joseph Stalin. Their collective propensity for genocide binds them together like an invisible chord and the similarities in their respective psyches is spine chilling yet bears objective inspection. For these reasons, I decided to read the comprehensive “The Court of the Red Tsar” by the wonderfully named Simon Sebag Montefiore. The book won the History Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2004.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a first time author for me. Born in 1965, Montefiore read history at Cambridge and spent much of the nineties travelling through the former Soviet Empire. In particular, he spent time in the Caucasus, Ukraine and Central Asia, covering their wars and turmoil, and writing widely on Russia, Georgia and Chechnya. He has a strong working relationship with The Sunday Times and The New York Times amongst others. “The Life of Potemkin” was published in 2000 and short-listed for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper and Marsh Biography prizes. The author of two novels, he lives in London with his wife, Santa Montefiore, and their two children.

“The Court of the Red Tsar” is a thorough account of the life and times of the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. Covering the span of the Premier’s life from 1878 through until his death in 1953, the book uses factual accounts and first hand recollections of Stalin and the events in the Soviet Union in the first half of the 20th Century. Written in ten parts with a prologue including Stalin’s family tree, maps of the Soviet Union, an introduction and acknowledgements and a lengthy list of characters, the book sweeps across the decades using an informative and comprehensive view of the events of those times. Written in the third person, the author breaks down each period into a chronological sequence of events, usually backed up by reminiscences of those still alive today that knew Stalin.

Some aspects of the book are more interesting than others. I found the earlier accounts fairly dull as a prelude to the “Great Terror” of the late 1930’s. Whilst it is important to set the backdrop to Stalin’s state of mind based on his own childhood experiences, those earlier years seem more about posturing than anything else as Stalin searched for the clinical solution that he eventually found to drive his own rampant paranoia forward. Cited as a key event in his life, his wife Nadya’s suicide in 1932 seems to have had a profound effect on Stalin. Moreover, when the events of the “Night of the Long Knives” occurred in Nazi Germany two years later, Stalin was apparently most impressed that Adolf Hitler had found such a salutary solution to his political problems in simply murdering his political opponents en masse. It’s these events that seem most influential in costing the lives of millions of people in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the collectivisation of the production of grain and the deliberate elimination of the farming classes or kulaks is another grim instalment in Soviet history that underlines the suffering of the people of this great nation at that time. Montifiory brings this to life with his graphic accounts of the methods and madness associated with the mass murders, starvation and interminable suffering as well as doing his best to delve into the mind of the man who came to be a dictator who ruled with an iron fist.

What the author does best is to draw a picture of a complicated political court swathed in paranoia and lethal backbiting. Influenced by *Ivan the Terrible’s ruthless suppression of the Boyars or nobles, Stalin was ably aided and abetted in his purges by talented killers like Beria, Yezhov and others. Most people will be unfamiliar with the names of Stalin’s accomplices but the book brings their roles in the killings to life, highlighting the staggering magnitude of the State-backed murder of those times. To think that random quotas of people to be purged were set running into tens of thousands backed by hit lists based on the flimsiest of rationales almost beggars belief and the fact that the appearance on such a list would often mean the extermination of the victim’s family as well leaves the reader feeling stone cold. I guess it is this morbid fascination with someone so widely seen as evil that will draw people to this book and it’s due credit to the writer that he documents these events so objectively although his own feelings do slip through at times to echo the widespread acceptance that Stalin did manage unspeakable evils even with such a clinical backing as he had. The reader will also see that Stalin was very much a family man with his own personal agenda that was often subsumed by a total commitment to the Bolshevik ideology.

This book is very much a factual account of proceedings. In this meticulous piece of work, the author has thoroughly researched archives to provide both hard facts and word of mouth accounts of those incidents that came together to forge the intimidating legend of Joseph Stalin. Montefiore writes in a very matter-of-fact style. Short-clipped sentences, lots of factual events with dates and even times and a plethora of footnotes to support make the book very readable but not in a fictional, enjoyable way but more of a studious, hard-working, absorbing manner. For anyone needing background for a course or showing a genuine interest in the subject then you will enjoy the book but it absolutely should not be treated as one’s next work of fiction because the book simply isn’t written in a flowing, story-based style. In this, Montefiore succeeds in sticking so rigidly to the facts and refusing to drift into the realms of unsupported speculation that must have surrounded many of the events of those times.

Where the book potentially falls down is its relentless dryness. Effective as it is in covering the facts in such minutiae, for anyone seeking out a creative read with lots of drama and description that you might expect in a more story-telling based account then this won’t be for you at all. The author is dogmatic in his sticking to the reported facts of the times and unless you have a burning interest in the subject then many will fail to navigate all 672 pages of this particular tome. Speaking for myself, I thoroughly enjoyed it although found it hard going in places. For one book to draw two monsters together at the same time i.e. Hitler and Stalin during the Second World War then even more kudos to Montefiore. The book is punctuated throughout with black and white photographs of the main characters from the political court of Stalin adding a pictorial depth to the author’s analysis and his attention to detail is chronologically drawn to a cyclical finale with the inclusion of Stalin’s successor, Khrushchev often hovering in the background through much of the book, ultimately to take over from the Russian dictator.

Overall, this is a hugely impressive/defining account of Stalin for those interested in the man himself. For anyone looking for a lighter, more fiction based book then this will not be for you.

Recommended with four stars.

Thanks for reading

Mara

pp.672

Published by Phoenix books

ISBN: 0-75381-766-7

R.R.P. £9.99. I bought this at Tesco for £6.97 in paperback form. Available at Amazon for £6.59.

*Ivan the Terrible was born in 1530, inheriting the Russian throne following his father's death. Ivan was a man of God that personally tortured his victims and brutally put thousands to death in carefully orchestrated purges.

Summary: Overview of the book