The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "LEON TROTSKY IS TRYING TO KILL ME..." (more)
Key Phrases: few rubles, Central Committee, Comrade Stalin, Trotsky Two (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In a brief poem written in response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, W.H. Auden ridiculed the inexpressive nature of tyranny and tyrants: "One prize is beyond his reach, / The Ogre cannot master Speech." Now, it seems, the translator and novelist Richard Lourie has set out to prove Auden wrong. In The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin, he lets that chuckling despot tell his own story, from his obscure origins in the Georgian sticks to his bureaucratic apotheosis as ruler of all Russia. In part Stalin simply wants to get his life down on paper. But as he informs the reader, he's also trying to launch a preemptive strike against his arch-nemesis, Leon Trotsky, who's currently compiling a scurrilous (i.e., fundamentally accurate) biography of Stalin in Mexico City.

Given this scenario, many a novelist would have turned Uncle Joe into an articulate monster, a kind of Bolshevik Iago. Lourie takes a different route. Oh, his narrator does have a gift for poetic doublespeak, which comes into play during his ruminations on the 1938 Moscow show trials: "In a certain highly literal sense of the word, most of these men are not guilty of most of these crimes. They may, however, be guilty of many other crimes, crimes for which the state has decided to spare itself the expenses of a trial but which would have cost them their head in any case." He also gets off some memorable character sketches, like this one of Lenin:

He was five feet three at most but so solidly planted on the floor that he made you feel the smaller man. As the Hungarians say, his forehead reached to his ass, but his baldness was dynamic, not pathetic--as if intense thought had sent the hairs flying from his scalp. He wore a three-piece suit and had the lawyer's habit of hooking his thumbs inside his vest.

Still, Lourie's Stalin is very much a meat-and-potatoes stylist--perhaps blood-and-guts would be the more appropriate epithet, considering the number of corpses he leaves in his wake. His raw efficiency as a narrator does have its black-comic charms, however, and his race to the biographical finish with Trotsky gives the book a powerful momentum. (Students of history will recall that the narrator's rival was brutally cut off in mid-sentence.) And what would be the moral of Stalin's story, at least in Lourie's version? There are two, which should surprise nobody: Always watch your back and It's lonely at the top. --James Marcus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Chilling and mesmerizing, Louries novel traces the Russian dictators life from childhood to the apex of his career, exploring the diabolical nuances of Stalins psychology. The USSR dictator narrates, in a grim and relentless voice, often referring to himself in the third person (Stalin needs peace for terror). His first words, Leon Trotsky is trying to kill me, reveal the fury and incipient dementia of his reaction to the news that his nemesis Trotsky, whom he has driven into exile in Mexico, is writing a biography of his former revolutionist comrade. Indignantly comparing Trotskys libelous biography to his own egotistical version, and ostensibly refuting Trotskys account, Stalin reveals the origins of his criminal mind and the extent to which he has indulged his murderous instincts. From the beatings he suffered at his fathers hands, Stalin learned the perverse power and effectiveness of psychological detachment and physical cruelty. From Darwin he ecstatically gleans that there is no God, therefore no judgment from above. Lourie juxtaposes Trotskys deeply intellectual analysis of Stalin with Stalins own earthy account, which is Machiavellian conviction sieved through the mindset of a thug, less a matter of dialectics than of bullying. Stalin uses bank robbery to finance the Bolsheviks; in prison, his friends are criminals, not the intellectuals he despises. Lourie (First Loyalty) plausibly speculates on key events in Stalins life, combining known history with well-researched probabilities, grounding the book in the actualities of this terrifying era while illuminating the unfathomable darkness of the mind that created it. Stalin realizes that Trotsky is on the heels of discovering his big secretthe one assassination Stalin has systematically concealedwhich sealed the fate of his reign and of countless traitors at the hands of the brutal new leader. Of course he acts to silence Trotsky, and to change the course of history. This nightmarish glimpse into a monsters mind is confidently and frighteningly realistic, appalling and irresistible at once.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (September 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306809974
• ISBN-13: 978-0306809972
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #214,143 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TRUE, July 27, 1999

By	Ivo J. Steijn (Greater Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin (Hardcover)

Yes, I know it's fiction, but a piece of fiction like this has to navigate all the cliffs of historical truth (or what we think is historical truth) to get us to suspend our disbelief, and it succeeds brilliantly. I've read a LOT of biographies of Stalin (Ulam, Deutscher, De Jonge, Volkogonov, Tucker, Conquest and a few others. I much prefer Tucker) and this book just doesn't put a foot wrong. But more than that, it's..compelling. Of COURSE Stalin thinks Trotsky is trying to kill him! After all, he is trying to kill Trotsky, and he assumes Trotsky is as driven as he is, although he fears Trotsky will obtain much more lethal weaponry than an icepick. A wonderful, appalling book. Of course it only covers a part of Stalin's world - personally, I would have loved to have seen more of his views of his supporters, such as Kaganovich, Kalinin, etc. - but it's a novel, keep saying that to yourself, it's a novel, not an autobiography in the usual sense. Obligatory reading.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inside the mind of one of history's most amoral leaders., July 21, 2000

By	Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin (Hardcover)

In the last chapter of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPH STALIN, it is a week after the August 1940 assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City, and the Soviet dictator is wrapping up his narrative history of the events that led up to the successful ax murder of his archrival by a conspiracy that he personally directed. In previous chapters, Stalin tells the story of his life as a young boy in Russian Georgia, as a young communist revolutionary, as an associate of Lenin before and after the Revolution, and as the dictator that assumed total power after Lenin's death in 1924 by destroying all of his old Bolshevik comrades. All events are related in the context of his paranoid fear and hatred of Trotsky who, in his Mexican exile, is apparently assembling a biography of the Soviet leader - a biography that will reveal to the world Stalin's ultimate crime against Russia and the Revolution, and which will hopefully spark his downfall. Thus, according to Stalin, the necessity of having to effect Trotsky's murder. (After all, even paranoids have enemies.)

Of course, Stalin wrote no autobiography for the world to ponder. This book is a novel written by Richard Lourie. It is absorbing and interesting only to the degree that the facts of Stalin's life and Trotsky's death, as related herein, are historically true. Since Lourie has a Ph.D. in Russian, and has written previously on Russian history, I give him the benefit of the doubt. I was both absorbed and fascinated by the author's Stalin, a personality so isolated and megalomaniacal as to be able to "write" at the very end:

"Now I know what my name really means: Stalin is the strength to bear a world in which there is only nothing and yourself. At last I have defeated God at loneliness".

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good book - misleading title, June 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin (Hardcover)

This is a well written account exploring Joseph Stailn's bizarre and evil psychology. It grabs your attention early and is stong throughout. It is not, however, a fictional autobiography. Rather it is a detailed illustration of one example of Stalin's paranoia : his obession with wacking Trotsky. Because of this singlemindeness the book loses some of its power. Very little mention is made of the millions Stalin tortured and killed - his true sad legacy. Such focus would have been fine in a book that was titled "Stalin and Trotsky", but not one advertising itself as an autobiography.... Otherwise,recommended.