Customer Reviews

Stalin: The Man and His Era

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This is quite simply a masterful book. Ulam gives the impression of having read, pondered, and put in context everything ever written in any language by and about Stalin, the other Bolsheviks, and their close contemporaries in the USSR and Europe. And yet he is anything but tedious. He is as fine a writer as any historian around -- lucid, incisive, authoritative, serious and yet with a very witty, very dry irony. His tone is ideally suited for writing about historical figures, especially such grotesque ones as Stalin and his cohorts.

Certainly, any rational thinking American is completely flabbergasted by the atrocities Stalin commited in the very long twenty-four years he reigned in the Soviet Union. And naturally any thinking person would want to know why a person would commit these atrocities.

Ulam's excellent biography puts into perspective how a seemingly under-educated person such as Stalin could fill the void left by a giant of a person like Lenin. The part of the book that is most insightful is the chapters describing the power stuggle that took place "after" V.I. Lenin's death. You really start to understand how a gifted author and orator such as Leon Trotsky lost the battle for Lenin's mantle to Stalin. A person can even begin to sypathize for Stalin, but then the author describes what happened after Stalin became the maximum leader of the USSR in 1929. Of course everyone knows what happened after 1929, collectivization, purges, show trials of Bukharin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, and the assasination of Leon Trotsky. Ulam's book is quite lengthy, but it is well worth the read, I would recommend this book to anyone.

I agree with a previous review that this book is so dense that it must be read in short intervals, but it was an extremely good learning experience. It never ceases to amaze me how a society can put so much faith in a supreme leader and never rise up against atrocities. Stalin was certainly a monster but I never fully appreciated how good a diplomat he was and how he capitalized on Russia's sacrafices to shape the map post World War 2 and the enabling role both the U.S. and U.K. played in this. My one complaint with the book is that it spends too much time on intraparty struggles and politics that gets a little boring at points and becomes repetetive. All in all a good read, but don't bring it to the beach!

Ulam's book is "must read" history for those who are even moderately interested in the development of totalitarianism and/or how Russia came to be what it is today.

Ulam's descriptions of the death of Lenin (physically limited by the stroke that he suffered, controlled by Stalin, and ultimately crying in despair at the devil that he himself had unleashed), was especially poignant. The book is also very enlightening as to the mechanics of how Stalin wielded such absolute power and held it to the very end, and the air of fear, distrust, syncophany, and total unreality that he foisted upon Russian society typified by such things as "Potemkin villages" (cardboard houses constructed to impress visiting dignitaries).

However, the book is long and detailed, and not for anyone looking for a quick read.