Customer Reviews

Stalin

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There have been a number of biographies written in the west about Stalin the Soviet dictator. This is the first Russian book that is not simply a piece of hackwork. The writer has had full access to all Soviet archives. These archives had been kept from all other writers.

The writer was a red army general and the general expectations from the west were that his work would be of poor quality. This book was written with the approval of the Soviet General Staff before the complete collapse of communism. Volkogonov had been a prolific author but his previous works to use the words of the New York Review of Books "none of his previous works had hinted at independence, rigor or critical thought."

It was thus a surprise to find that the book departed form the party line and showed independence from the ideas of the old Soviet State. During the writing of the book the author examined thousands of files in which Stalin either ordered the murder of Soviet citizens or agreed to them. The writer's father was in fact one of Stalin's victims and he found out the details of what had happened during his research. After finishing the book he joined Yelstin's government as indicative of his break with the past.

Stalin was for his early life a fringe figure of the Bolshevik movement. He rose to prominence as he organized a large number of armed robberies that proved important to the parties' finances. Around the time of the revolution he became a trusted associate of Lenin. After Lenin's death Stalin entrenched himself in the rather unglamorous job of running the bureaucratic apparatus of the Communist Party. The other contenders for leadership took more glamorous positions. Stalin basically was able to stack the organs of power with his men and he seized power murdering his other rivals.

Initially Stalin was seen as an economic moderate. He had supported the continuation of a private agricultural sector. By the late twenties and early thirties he decided on a policy of force industrialization. To pay for the imports that were necessary he had to export huge amounts of agricultural products. To do this he introduced collectivization of the farming sector. This was bitterly resented by farmers especially in the Ukraine and Stalin murdered around 3 million farmers by starving them to death.

The forced industrialization of Russia proceeded at a breakneck pace with growth rates of around 5% a year. All of the growth however was going back into expansion of secondary industry. This meant that his regime was unpopular and only kept in power because of its security apparatus. In 1934 Stalin's likely successor Kirov was murdered. This set of a number of purges or the random killing of communist party officials. It would seem that the reason for this was to forestall opposition in a desperately unpopular regime. Just before he war some 40,000 army officers were liquidated in further purges. Again these were clearly aimed at keeping the army from opposing the regime.

In 1941 Russia was invaded and the first few months were a disaster with some 3 million Soviet troops being captured and the loss of about half of European Russia. Despite this colossal reversal Russia was able to recover and defeat Germany and to the enslave Eastern Europe for forty years.

Russians in considering their history prior to Volkogonov have accepted Stalin's crimes. They have however suggested that he has an important place in history as the industrialization in the thirties turned Russia from the weak power which had succumbed to Germany in the first world war to the superpower which went on to dominate the world for forty years. Secondly Stalin's apologists have suggested that his rock solid tyranny was able to keep together Russia in a time of crisis and in the end not only saved itself but to destroy a tyranny far worse.

Volkogonov in fact attacks this myth and suggests that the purges and Stalin's actions in 1941 lay at the heart of the military defeat.

The book contains no new surprises such as revealing if it was Stalin who killed Kirov. It also does not allow us to quantify Stalin's crimes in any more detail. It is however a readable biography of one of the most significant figures of the twentieth century. The tragedy of the last century is of course that its three most significant figures have been criminals.

This is the best biography of Stalin there is, in my opinion. Volkogonov simply had the access to the kind of materials no one else had. This book takes full advantage of them. It correctly depicts Stalin as a great actor who sold his image to the masses, the image of benevolent and infallible ruler. In contrast to his fascist counterparts, Hitler and Mussolini, Stalin did not have a good speaking ability, and often read his boring speeches monotonously. But his self-assured and reassuring monotony came to have a hypnotic effect. His smile and almost goofy mustache and eyebrows covered the soul of a despot.

Stalin was a single-minded individual: for him, power came before everything else. A Georgian nationalist who called himself Koba in his youth and resented Russian rule over his people, he rose to become Stalin (man of steel) who ruled over the new Russian Empire called the Soviet Union. Volkogonov gives us the most factual biography yet of the man who slaughtered millions in the name of the workers' paradise and future generations; the man who feared and obsessed over Adolph Hitler and who ultimately defeated him; the man whose cruelty and destruction are a warning to all future generations not to lend a sympathetic ear to promises of future earthly utopias in exchange for absolute power and elimination of civil rights.

I bought this book first when I was in Russia. I bought it in the original Russian. I had already read Volkogonovs study of Lenin and Trotsky and his book 'Autopsy of the Soviet empire'. THis, though, is the seminal work of a man who passed far to quickly from our view. He had yearned to detail the crimes of Stalin, the secrets also. This grand book details many obscure facts not found in other books. DIsjointed writing,as anyone fmailiar with VOlkogonov knows, this book nevertheless is very readable. Many critisize this saying it was not written by a true historian, its not organized, it smacks of a freshmens writing, in that it does not develop a topic thouroughly before going on to something else. It jumps around. THis is all true. Mr. Volkogonov was not a writer by trade. He was a military bureacrat who yearned to breeth free and compiled this information, independent of the west, for years before publishing his account after the fall of the Soviet empire. If we view it that way this book is unique, it is a testimony of a man who witnessed the evils of the Soviet system, who knew personally what Stalin had done and wanted to expose it. He could weight the good and the bad. This book is invaluable as history. It is by a Russian writing about the failings of his own country, in its formative period nonetheless. A must have and a must read. A landmark in Soviet studies.

I haven't quite finished the book, but I'm going to fire this off anyway. Never having been a great reader of biographies, I was hesitant to start one asfat as Volkogonov's *Stalin*, but the book grabbed me quickly and hasn't let go. Well-written and utterly absorbing, it beats most novels for sheer narrative drive. We all knew Stalin was bad, but you may not have known he was this bad. Get it and read it.

Gen. Volkogonov is not a professional historian, and certainly not a great writer. His work his well researched and meticolous, but is fails to either capture the general reader or to impress the reader looking for a clear analysis of causes and consequences. The book is very long, the style of prose quite boring and at times repetitive. The author very often has a moralistic tone ("How could Stalin posssibly be so cruel? Look how corrupt his cronies were...") that bothers those who would like a more detached approach. I guess one has to remember that once he believed in Communism and cannot have helped being shocked by what he found in the state's archives (where he ventured with the original purpose of writing an orthodox biography of the Great Leader); this might explain his being upset at Stalin, but does not make the book more appealing. In the end, Gen. Volgokonov's main merit is exactly this: to have been able to access, thanks to his position in the Red Army, the USSR's impenetrable archives, and to have revealed to the world a deluge of details and documents. Some of them are immensely controversial in their potential consequences (eg the statements made by Stalin before the German attack that war was inevitable; or Zukov's plan for a preventive strike against Germany). Indeed, this book deservedly appears in most bibliographies on the USSR and the Russo-German war, and has provided the academic community with valuable insights for further analysis on Stalin and Stalinism. But it is probably more suited for an historian than for a general reader.

I am giving this book 4 stars because it tends to be slightlysuperficial in its biographical analysis of Stalin and in itsdescription of the Russian condition the book explores in its 600 pages. The author takes for granted you know the detailed history of Russian and Stalin and therefore glosses over certain events or aspects of events that Stalin engendered. At times you feel left out of the book because the important detail is missing e g a description of the plight of the peasants during the collectivization effort would have been valuable to better understand and feel the malignancy of this action which offended Bukahrin so deeply. You tend to view the man more than get into his skin or even into the hearts and minds of the cast of characters and the evnets the author covers. I feel that I was seriously enlightened by the book and found it valuable. I guessmy problem with it was Volkogonov's style (particularly after reading Pipes' three volumes on the history of Russia...a beautiful writer). Read the book, it's worth it, but it is not a 5 star achievement in general. END

I've read Volkogonov's other seminal biographies on Lenin and Trotsky which are extremely good, but this is by far his best. It contains his most effective writing and a fluidity that all solid bios should have. It's clear that in writing this superb and terrifying book, he is writing about his own struggle in learning that one of the 'Big Men' of Russia had more than clay feet. Stalin was really, a Big Tyrant...and a most murderous one

Harold Shukman is a professional historian, an Emeritus fellow of St. Anthony's College, Oxford University and a prolific author of major works on Rasputin, Stalin, Trotsky, and is an expert on the communist-socialist period of Russia in general. This 110-page work, published in 1999, is highly readable and covers its complex material with expert balance, selecting and compressing the extremely rich detail and competing interpretations (held to an absolute minimum) with ease. The overall impression is very factual and objective, the author's attitude to the man Stalin confined to very brief comment on pages 1 and 98. All in all this is an ideal introduction to the man and the period, suitable for GCSE (age 15/16) students, first year undergraduates, or the interested layman. Mr Shukman all but ignores the complexities of Soviet economic disasters, but this would require a much larger book. (Anyone interested in a selection of basics would do well to try `Basic Economics' by Thomas Sowell, professor of economics at Stanford University, a book which is an veritable education in itself. Anyone interested in professional analysis covering the period of Lenin's NEP to the point of Soviet collapse, by two top Soviet economists, would do well to consult `The Turning Point' by Shmelev & Popov (English translation, 1989).) It should also be borne in mind that the large bulk of previously secret archive materials of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (terminated: 1989) is still being declassified and carefully studied, so the fact that reports of these atrocities apparently get worse as the 21st century progresses is simply due to the process of the full truth taking time to get its boots on. In 2005 an analysis of the Soviet Gulag (concentration camps) gave a tally of 43 million Russians killed: 30 million died in the camps, 13 million died in the freezing transport trains en route. A good summary of the period of East German socialist tyranny has yet to come to my attention, but the 2006 German film on DVD `The Lives of Others' (Das Leben der Anderen) will do if you want a dramatic sample of life behind the Iron Curtain under der Stasi.

Although the books in this series can seem expensive on a cost per page basis, it is the quality that counts, and as a fast overview they represent good value. This book on Stalin makes an interesting comparison to another in the series: `Mao Zedong' by Delia Davin. This is especially instructive in revealing some of the Soviet dominance of China in the twentieth century, which killed millions of peasants there too. But what really burns me is that socialists are so holier-than-thou.

CONTENTS
Chronology (birth of Stalin 1878, to death 1953)

1. Introduction
Thumbnail sketch of his career, as the `outstanding mediocrity'

2. Beginnings
1878- : Georgia, home and education; Lenin and Trotsky; early criminal tendencies

3. Party worker
1903- : armed bank robbery; journalism; Bolsheviks and Mensheviks vie for party control

4. Power
1914- : war and Revolution; Molotov; the Red Guard, state and party apparatus set up, Cheka secret police; German-Soviet peace pact made at Brest-Litovsk in 1918 at huge cost to Russia

Photographs: including his police mug-shot and one with an unpopular former colleague airbrushed out (the Marxist approach to history!)

5. Lenin's Heir
1918- : Lenin orders murder of Tsar and his family; Lenin's NEP (New Economic Policy); The Red Terror, Orthodox churches and priests destroyed, Stalin and Trotsky clash; peasant farmers suffer State collectivisation; Lenin dies; Trotsky deported; Stalin rules)

6. The Great Turn
1929- : kulak farmers resist State robbery of grain for the cities and are dekulakised by Stalin (class warfare!); millions starve or are killed by the NKVD secret police; first Five Year Plan for industrialisation; economists face firing squad for pointing out flaws in plans; Stalin's private life)

7. Stalin the Executioner
The 1930s: State and party purges of opponents; the `Big Lie' re-writes history from Marxist view; Stalin aspires to become a god; law courts controlled by party; powers of NKVD secret police enlarged; Trotsky assassinated in 1940, in Mexico by NKVD using the `ice pick to the head' technique; 7 million enemies of the State shot; Moscow underground Metro opens - so it's not all bad then)

8. The Nation Revived
1939- : Nazism and Stalinism - mutually hostile but similar in many ways; Hitler and Stalin make secret pact to allow USSR to annex Polish, Ukrainian, and Baltic territory; Hitler invades USSR in 1941; war excuses any degree of Soviet tyranny over its own people; church partly restored to boost national feeling; Churchill declares existence of the `Iron Curtain' in 1946; communist party purge - 2000 shot in Leningrad; paranoia affects his judgement, retreats from public exposure; targets Jews to create a scapegoat; dies 1953; his top henchman Beria is executed by the new rulers

Conclusion
Russian memories today are short and selective - many hanker for the basics provided for all by Stalin but forget the starvations, fear of the Gulag, and injustice of the secret police.

Notes (chapter references to more academic works and sources)

Bibliography (main general sources, some by insiders, eg Molotov and Trotsky)

So: people aren't equal, you can't make them equal, and it's wrong to try.

This book is four-star worthy because of Volkogonov's look inside Soviet archives and his insider position. Perhaps it sounds and reads a bit heavy not just because it's written at least somewhat to an academic office but also because it's reflecting Stalin's bureaucratic personality in that way.

One of the best parts of this book was the chapters covering the period between the purges and Stalingrad, where we see just how paralyzed, thinned out and more the post-purge Red Army was.

That said, I do agree with many reviewers that this book was a bit heavy, and more designed for professional use. And that said, I've got books far more footnoted, and one on the history of the Goths that has at least as many names unpronounceable by many modern American lips.

It would be interesting to have a revised edition based on 20 more years of looks at the Soviet archives, and with better editing.

Reading "Triumph and Tragedy" is, quite simply, a life-altering
experience. Volkogonov was a loyal member of the Red Army and
Communist Party when he gained access to the whole of the KGB's
archives. As he researched the past, his level of disenchantment grew
until the very core of his world-view was torn asunder. This book is
written unevenly, as Volkogonov was still struggling to absorb the
historical record as he wrote. Nevertheless, the occasional
awkwardness serves to drive home the horror of this period. The
experience is as if the reader can feel the author there with them,
reeling from it all. While the book certainly contains much
interesting historical information, particularly with respect to
Stalin's purges of the Red Army and its affects on WWII, it is also
much, much more. When I read it, the phrase "the horror, the horror"
from Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" kept coming into my mind.