Customer Reviews

Young Stalin

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Montefiore paints a very vivid picture of Stalin's youth, providing a comprehensive narrative from his birth in Georgia to his rise to power as a member of the inner circle of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. He shows a youthful Stalin who was variously a seminary student, a star choirboy, a proud Georgian poet and a rabble-rousing Marxist fanatic. He shows his development as an undercover party leader, including his role as an organizer of bank robberies and extortions, and emphasizes his early ruthlessness in organizing the executions of "traitors". He explores the different facets of Stalin's life as a Siberian exile, an escapee, a charming philanderer, and an absentee father. And finally he shows the rising Bolshevik leader: a founder of Pravda, one of Lenin's most trusted lieutenants, ruthless and pragmatic, who could be relied on to do the dirty work, and who was already one of the innermost circle when the Bolsheviks seized power.

Montefiore uses a variety of materials, but especially unpublished memoirs from Stalin's early friends and colleagues newly available in the Georgian communist party archives. Material from these was sometimes used in the official Stalinist biographies, but anything that deviated from the official dull accounts was quietly buried. Montefiore explains that both Stalin and Trotsky were eager to obscure Stalin's early life: Trotsky wished to belittle him as a mere party bureaucrat, while Stalin feared that his unruly past would be an obstacle as he moved towards supreme power. Montefiore acknowledges the difficulties in assessing the accuracy of the various memoirs, but observes that there are enough different accounts (and also independent accounts from refugees in the West) that even if we can't be sure of all the details, the overall picture seems sound.

In Montefiore's portrayal, one striking aspect of Stalin's youth is that he was genuinely immersed in a world of treachery and betrayal. A wanted man, always on the run, several times betrayed and captured due to Tsarist double agents deep in the Bolshevik leadership, he was right to be distrustful and paranoid. At this time in Stalin's life there really were traitors everywhere.

Overall, this is a fascinating account of a wild young revolutionary daredevil. But probably its greatest value is in providing insights towards the underlying strengths and weaknesses of the later General Secretary Stalin. We see his considerable personal charm and his vast capacity for organization. But we also see his cynicism, his mistrustfulness, and his willingness to use force and terror as everyday tactics.

This book gave me back my faith in the art of biography, that something new can be found about even the most heavily referenced figures. Although I've read many Stalin biographies, in most of them the Vozhd's early years failed to come into focus. We learned little about the family other than papa Beso's drunken brutality and about mama Keke's resourcefulness and pride.

Yet, even in this most studied of lives, there is plenty of gold to be found by those who know where to look. Montefiore takes us back to the almost Mediterranean splendor of the Caucasus, a land of fierce feuds and vendette, of revolutionary nobles and passionate women, where everything (the weather, the clothing, the food, the tempers) is as un-Russian as can be. Stalin was definitely a Caucasian. He was proud and violent, but also very sharp and able to behave with unexpected generosity. He was extremely bright and amazingly well read. It is easy to see why Stalin was offended by the poet Mandelstam's celebrated line in his "Ode to Stalin", about "His fat fingers" "slimy like slugs". Stalin surely regarded himself as an intellectual and this description as a dim-witted vulgarian could only wound him deeply. In his pictures as a young man he is curiously good looking, and one can imagine the attraction this bright young rebel might have had for all sorts of women. In this Stalin was very unlike Hitler, for whom fleshly pleasures were repellent, and rather like Mussolini who was to the end a ladies' man.

Stalin's friends come alive in this book. Sure, they felt no compunction about cutting an enemy's throat, or blowing up an oil refinery, or bombing a police station, but they were also able to have fun, to drink, to joke, perhaps like many rebels of our day. It is to me a mistery how such a fanatic as Stalin, whose faith in revolutionary communism was boundless, could also enjoy all sorts of social and physical pleasures. Perhaps the explanation might be in his mother's example. Keke Geladze, as religious a woman as ever lived, was not above drinking or taking up lovers.

Stalin's environment also becomes completely understandable. Georgia was also much like the American far West, a violent borderland where strong men imposed their will on others and insults where washed away in blood. Many Georgian notables supported the rebels not because they sympathised with socialism but because they saw them as nationalists fighting against the Russian invaders. It is a tragedy that Stalin ordered the murder of so many of his former backers, and that he came, in time, to be even more Russian than the Tsar ever was. Far from being a social outsider, in Georgia Stalin was known to everyone in his hometown, and he was very close to the local nobility, magnates, clergy, intellectuals and criminals. Stalin was uniquely Georgian, which might explain to some extent his current popularity there.

These are just a few of the surprises this book has in store. It includes several surprisingly good poems by Stalin as a young man. It is a pity that in later years he would dedicate himself to writing leaden treatises on subjects such as linguistics, when in fact he was a light, luminous poet. It has some wonderful pictures of a few of the Vozhd's girlfriends, and they are also surprisingly good looking. But its greatest triumph is that it shows how Josif-Soso-Koba-Ivanovitch became Stalin. You take a boy of many gifts (bright, curious, brave, strong) and with a few but very great defects (proud, spiteful, fanatical) and subject him to violence and brutality during his early years, then allow him to develop his intellect while leaving his morality stunted, place him in an environment where he might become a negative leader without being punished for it, add in social ferment and revolution in the air, and then a mighty conflagration. The boy is father to the man. Stalin was not a wolf or a beast in human shape, as many said, he was just that same boy Soso, but now inmeasurably powerful, and with history on his side. The son of a cobbler and a washing woman ended up as one of the two most powerful men in the world.

Stalin's enemies dismissed him as "the man who missed the Revolution", "a grey blur", a nonentity who sidelined Lenin's true heirs through bureaucratic wiles. But although he was a terrorist and a sociopath since youth, Stalin was no "grey blur": he was one of the most fascinating personalities yet encountered, a colourful bundle of contradictions, intellectual and man of action, womanizer and ascetic, political fanatic and cynical pragmatist. Far from having usurped a role reserved to other revolutionaries such as Trotski or Bukharin, Stalin was Lenin's true heir, which is not meant to be a praise. Lenin admired Stalin precisely because of his ruthlesness and obduracy rather than in spite of them. One doesn't need to be sympathetic to Stalin or to Communism to enjoy this, a brilliant book, with enormous cinematic potential. It begs to be made into a movie.

I came away from "Young Stalin" very impressed. The author has done a superb job of constructing Josef Stalin's life story from his birth to his initial rise at the start of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. I can't remember being as impressed with a book's research as I was with this book. There is a wealth of information on Stalin's early life -- a period that has never been written about in such great detail -- tapped from hundreds of new sources and revealed in fascinating text. Even if you're not terribly interested in Stalin's life -- I wasn't -- you will find this book interesting, as Stalin's early life was one adventure after another.

The book begins by discussing Stalin's birth to a tough-minding, loving mother and an alcoholic father in a town in Georgia as dirt-poor as anything imaginable. From there, Stalin excelled in school, and nearly became a priest, but was ironically driven away by excessively strict priests at his school, running right into the arms of the revolutionary beliefs that were taking the world by storm at the end of the 19th Century. It was at this point that Stalin's life really began to take shape. From there, Stalin became a shadowy figure in the underground, specializing in everything from arch-conspirator, to bank robber extraordinaire, to extortionist, to intelligence specialist, to counter-intelligence expert, to even murderer. Using his dark intelligence, over time Stalin became the key problem-solver for Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, helping rid the party of spies -- both real and imagined -- and planning and executing the bank robberies which would fund Lenin and his fledging Bolshevik Party in its early days.

Between the events shaping Stalin's rise, the author does a brilliant job in discussing and highlighting many of the more "colorful" events in his young life. These events include Stalin's many, many affairs and several illegitimate children, how his amazing calmness and coldness allowed him to intimidate or control countless lackies nearly all of whom he later discarded, how he survived astonishingly brutal stretches of exile in Siberia, in particular a four year stretch on the Artic Circle in an area that is closer to being a hellhole that any other place imaginable, his many escapes from bumbling Tsarist police, and many other great tales. The author's writing is sharp and lively, and he well bolsters these and other stories with copious amounts of starred-* notes at the bottom nearly every page providing details of forgotten stories. Specifically, I loved how the author would tell what later became of the hundreds of people who Stalin came across in his youth; not surprisingly, nearly all of them despite often strong loyalty, were later imprisoned and/or killed by Stalin once he became supreme leader of the country. While the author acknowledges time and again what an astonishing brute and killer Stalin would later become, he does so with kind of a bemusement. Indeed, while it is easier to slap that label on Hitler because he was such a cold-hearted martinet, it is tougher with Stalin simply because he had so much personality, charisma, and wit! He really was a fascinating figure. As I noted above, the author has constructed such a sharp look at Stalin by tapping dozens of unpublished memoirs of former associates and friends of Stalin, many of whom he later forgot or destroyed.

After finishing this book, I was struck by what a mystery Stalin was, and continues to be. While the book well captures his ferocity, brilliance, zealotry, taste for young girls, lack of loyalty to even his closest friends, cold heart, and difficult upbringing, I think the author well encapsulates Stalin when, near the end, he simply calls him "weird". Despite possessing strong intelligence, a loving mother, and many loyal friends and colleagues, he was a thug who reveled in violence and mayhem, and when he became leader, he liquidated even his closest allies. The reason he became that man? Well, that's impossible to say, even with this great book. Needless to say that his cold heart made it easier for him to treat people so poorly and always possess the view that human life had almost no value.

This is a very impressive book. I'm not trying to repeat myself, I just came away with that feeling. The book does not tackle the heady diplomatic and war decisions in Stalin's later life -- those are in the author's other book on Stalin -- but focuses on his early life and many of the fascinating gossipy elements that aren't widely known. It's a little long (nearly 400 pages), but an easy and fun read. If you're a student of any history, it is well worth your time.

Five stars.

Simon Sebag Montefiore has a habit, by his pedestrian ways, of annoying not just the historian, but perhaps also the more intellectual kind of reader. And he does so not just by selling more books than his collegues. In his new book on Stalin Montefiore can't resist temptation, opening with a bankrobbery and describing it in glowing terms. Since the rest of Young Stalin is strictly chronological, and the robbery takes place in 1907, this is a deliberate choice. It's Hollywood, not history. Montefiore talks about `heists', `glamourpussy's' and `spooks'. Richard Lourie, writing a piece for the New York Times is scathing about Montefiore. Remarking upon how Djugashvili became Stalin, he writes: "You won't find out here. Simon Sebag Montefiore, the author of "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar," is not one historian but two. The first is capable of serious research and insight, but he is eclipsed by the second, who sees history as scandal and its writing as gossip. Vanity Fair goes to Lubyanka." Orlando Figes writes, in the New York Review (Rise of a Gangster): `Young Stalin' is not without its weaknesses. Scholars may have reservations about its occcasional lapses into semifictional narrative, while others may be driven mad by the endnotes, from which in many cases it is virtually impossible to find the sources for quotations in the text."
Although it seems to me that Figes is more rational than Lourie, there is a lot of truth in these observations. When I started reading his first volume on Stalin (Court of the Red Tsar), I felt the same way. I was irritated by the tone and by the novellistic approach. And I felt again, exactly the same way, when I started in Young Stalin, more so even, probably because of the unnecessary heist (sorry) at te beginning. But in the end you surrender: you just have to start admiring the immense amount of detectivework, the investigation of numerous sources, the detailed and very factual approach. Montefiore may be seduced by his own story, but he tells it very well. His research is terrific, but so is his style. And I find it silly to complain that Montefiore is so busy "glamourizing his hero" (Lourie) that there is no insight left. That isn't true. The enormous amount of facts that Montefiore presents, is chilling enough. And is it, after having read Kearshaw on Hitler, possible to tell how the young man became the dictator? The best thing to hope for is that a biography gives you the facts. The rest is mystery. In the end you can only - like Figes does in the New York Review - admire the book, which ends in 1917. And since Court of the Red Tsar begins, more or less, in 1932, there are 15 more years to hope for.

Attention all historians! This is the way that history should be written. Simon Sebag Montefiore's magnificent chronicle of Stalin's early years is easily one of the most entertaining and knowledgeable historical biographies that I have ever read. Montefiore has proven to be both an assiduous researcher, as well as a masterful storyteller. Some reviewers have accused Montefiore of being too sensationalistic and novelistic. I call it vivid, descriptive storytelling of the highest caliber. I could actually visualize the scenes in my head as he was describing them. Remember that excruciatingly leaden college professor whose lectures you dreaded sitting through, that tiresome mathematician in historian's clothing? That is the type who will surely be annoyed by this book, although anyone with half a pulse will find it to be a superlative exercise in biographic history. For Pete's sake, the reason I like history is because it is the study of animate objects; people, places, events, etc. It is adventurous, and when done rightly, like Montefiore here, it can truly inspire. Witness the style:

"So this is not just a biography, but the chronicle of their milieu, a pre-history of the USSR itself, a study of the subterranean worm and the silent chrysalis before it hatched the steel winged butterfly."

Born in 1879 as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, the man who would become known as Stalin, was known throughout his childhood and youth as Soso. Young Soso was born and raised in the industrial Georgian town of Gori, in the far reaches of the Russian Empire. This seething Caucasian town was a turbulent mix of piety, honor and drunken unruliness. "Gori was one of the last towns to practice the picturesque and savage custom of free for all town brawls with special rules, but no holds barred violence. Boozing, praying and fighting were all interconnected, with drunken Priests acting as referees." Soso's father was a drunken cobbler who viciously abused him. His mother was compassionate, yet maybe too much so, as she had a reputation for being promiscuous. Stalin was certainly aware, writes Montefiore, that his biological father might have been one of three neighborhood men that were close to the family. The Georgia of Stalin's youth was also steeped in a culture of rebellion and banditry. Young Soso grew up hearing stories of heroic Georgians who fought off the imperialist forces of Russia, and his original revolutionary cohorts were a turbulent admixture of dedicated Marxists and bloodthirsty criminals. Here is another quote that highlights both the ambiance of Stalin's birthplace, as well as Montefiore's writing style:

"Georgians and other Caucasian men in traditional chokha, their skirted long coats lined down the chest with bullet pouches, swaggered down the streets singing loudly. Georgian women in black headscarves and the wives of Russian officers in European fashions, promenaded through the gates of the Pushkin Gardens, buying ices and sherbet alongside Persians and Armenians, Chechens, Abkhaz and mountain Jews in a fancy dressed jamboree of hats and costumes.... ....This un-Slavic, un-Russian and ferociously Caucasian kaleidoscope of east and west was the world that nurtured Stalin."

Soso was somewhat of a paradox from early on. He was at once the brightest, most hard-working student, as well as the most mischievous and violent. He was small but tough, constantly getting into fights and assorted thuggery, but at the same time he was a gifted poet, and star choirboy. "Attractive to women, often singing Georgian melodies and declaiming poetry, he was charismatic and humorous, yet profoundly morose, an odd Georgian with a Northern coldness." He was a dashingly handsome and prolific lover, a great organizer, and a maliciously effective political gangster. Soso was, in fact, a typical Georgian in many ways, a people of unfailing hospitality and blood feuds. From Gori, he moved to Tiflis (Tblisi) where he entered a seminary to become a Priest. Ironically, it was here where he first encountered Marxism. After several years, Soso quit the seminary and dedicated his life to being a Marxist revolutionary. It was in Tiflis where he began his political career, which included activities such as brazen bank robberies and extortions. He was constantly on the move, residing at one time or another in Batumi, Baku, Vienna, London, and twice exiled to Siberia, the second time for several years, which had a lasting effect on him. We also learn about his relations with Lenin, Trotsky, and the rest as Montefiore takes us right up until 1917. Montefiore also notes that Stalin's turbulent underground life helped mold his extreme notions of loyalty and betrayal.

It is commonly thought that Stalin was not particularly intelligent, but according to Montefiore, that is not true. He lacked a formal education, yet he was a voracious autodidact with a mind like a steel trap. Occasionally mentioned is what type of books Stalin was reading at certain times, and how it affected him. Montefiore also notes that much of the prevailing opinion about Stalin, his intelligence, and his involvement in the Revolution has been taken from Trotsky, who Montefiore says is not entirely reliable. I could go on and on about this terrific book, but I suspect that you get the idea. `Young Stalin' is just an all around enthralling read. Five stars.

This fascinating biography of Stalin's youth before he became established as the terror mongering leader of the USSR sheds light on the complex forces that shaped the great monster. Growing up as a half scamp, half nurtured mummy's boy, Stalin left the restrictive religious seminary where he was educated in the ways of double crossing and dissembling, and embarked on a picaresque coming of age as robber, womaniser and intellectual. It is a youth of almost Dickensian dimensions, and Montefiore draws on newly uncovered Georgian archives to try and penetrate the myth behind 'Soso', as the author calls Stalin.

Well worth reading for anyone interested in the chaotic and epoch making events of the Russian Revolution, and subsequent establishment of the Soviet Superpower.

Stalin was one of the great butchers of the twentieth century. In a race to the bottom, Stalin would be vying with Hitler and Mao. Indeed, Stalin was little more than a common criminal who, by sheer dint of will, engineered himself to the leadership of a large country.

Simon Sebag Montefiore has done some excellent work in unearthing the real background to Stalin from the time of his birth until the Russian Revolution in 1917. We are given the picture of a neglected child who trained to be a priest before going off to that other great delusion, Marxism. He brooked no challengers and was absolutely egomaniacal.

Was Stalin any worse than Lenin? Possibly so. He certainly caused more deaths. But this may be due to his having more time. Lenin was struck down in his fifties and held power for only a few short years. Stalin, by contrast, had decades to put his obsessions to work. His legacy is one of misery on a monumental scale. The final insult to his legacy though was the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

More needs to be known of Stalin. Too much secrecy has surrounded his life. Simon Sebag Montefiore has created a masterful piece of scholarship to fill in many gaps in the timeline. His youth is unveiled in great detail. The character of the man is thrown into the light of examination.

For any general reader of biography or for those with an interest in Russian history, this is book that needs to be read. We see the real face of a monster in the making.

It is well known that Trotsky for a long time fatally underestimated Stalin, whom he thought colourless and plodding. The flamboyant Trotsky was for years more famous than the laconic provincial from Georgia, but if he had familiarized himself with Stalin's early career, he would have realized, as Lenin did, that Stalin was ruthless and efficient. This book documents Stalin's early career in great detail. It shows the charisma, leadership qualities, toughness and ambition that he had displayed from his schooldays onwards; how he was hardened by the brutality of his drunken father and by the violent nature of Georgian society; what a genius he had for organizing strikes, the burning of oil refineries, murderous bank raids and piracy, protection rackets and kidnappings, while himself not taking a direct part. Sebag Montefiore says that Stalin's involvement in some of these crimes has never been conclusively proved; but he has little doubt that they all bore his stamp. Stalin frequently used disguises and aliases, and several times escaped from prison or from exile.

The frequent inefficiencies of the Okhrana and the Tsarist police emerge strongly in this account; but it was not always inefficiency: Stalin had many informers inside the security forces, just as they had many informers inside all revolutionary parties - so much so that some have suspected Stalin himself of at times having been a Tsarist agent, which Sebag Montefiore does not believe. But Stalin did have many people murdered whom he suspected of being agents for the security forces, sometimes perhaps because real agents planted such suspicions in his mind. The worst traitor was Roman Malinovsky, a man whom Stalin trusted implicitly, but who was instrumental in getting him sent to the worst of his exiles in 1913 and then betrayed Stalin's attempts to escape from there also. Malinovsky's treachery was exposed in 1914. Sebag Montefiore says that Stalin's future suspicions of even his closest comrades was rooted in this experience.

The book is a prequel of the author's The Court of the Red Tsar, and, as in that book, Sebag Montefiore pays little attention to ideology. He consistently calls Stalin's followers gangsters, and some of them indeed were no more than that: Stalin certainly made use of the criminal underworld. But he himself and many of his followers (women as well as men) were more than simply gangsters. Of course they believed - as do the followers of Bin Laden today - that the ends justify the most brutal and ruthless means; but the ends were ideological. Stalin fought for Bolshevism when among the Georgian (Marxist) Social Democrats, the Mensheviks were in a majority; he was prepared to challenge (successfully) even his hero Lenin when Lenin thought the Bolsheviks should take part in the elections after the 1905 Revolution. He was not interested in personal enrichment, and the bulk of the proceeds of the bank-raids he organized went to Lenin or to the Bolshevik cause in the Caucasus, keeping back only a little to celebrate each successful heist in a wild party.

We see Stalin becoming the leading Bolshevik inside Russia while Lenin was abroad: he joined the Bolshevik Central Committee in 1912 with special responsibility for Bolshevik policy on nationalities; he edited Pravda (where he sometimes took a different line from Lenin's and indeed turned down forty-seven of articles Lenin sent in!) But then he was sent into exile, and the description of his four years (1913 to 1917) near the Arctic Circle is one of the most graphic parts of the book. In October 1916, with the war going badly, the exiles were conscripted. Before they had left Siberia, the Tsar had fallen, and the Kerensky's government ordered their release, March 1917, and Stalin returned to Petrograd.

Claiming seniority, he resumed the editorship of Pravda and was the most dominant Bolshevik until Lenin arrived in Russia three weeks later; then he aligned himself with Lenin's determination to fight the Provisional Government. In July, afer a failed Bolshevik uprising, Kerensky's government struck at the Bolsheviks. Trotsky, Kamenev and other leaders were imprisoned; Lenin and Zinoviev went into hiding. Stalin, for some reason left at liberty, was once again briefly in charge. In September the imprisoned leaders were released when Kerensky needed their help against General Kornilov; and then began the struggle inside the Bolshevik Party between Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin on the one hand who now wanted an immediate uprising, and `the Waverers', Kamenev and Zinoviev on the other who thought it too dangerous. But Lenin had his way, and the Bolsheviks seized power. Sebag Montefiore enjoys himself describing some of the farcical elements of the take-over: `the reality of October was more farce than glory. Tragically, the real Revolution, pitiless and bloody, started the moment this comedy ended.'

Montefoire's approach in this book combines the skills of a historian with the eyes of a narrator. It wasn't surprising to get detailed information about Stalin in the Kremlin, but I can't believe that so much details could be retrieved about an individual's life even before they were born. THe part where he got his mother's diary into the book is really something you can get your eyes off

Would recommend this book for anybody not just researching about Stalin, but about the origins of the communist movement in Imperial Russia as well

Young Stalin is a very narrowly focused biography on the early life of Josef Stalin. The research is impeccable. There is no agenda by the author. This is purely a terrific biography on how Stalin came to be the power figure that everyone feared. In this book Montefiore dispels a myth of Stalin being used by the Tsarists as a spy simply by providing all of the evidence. That's what I liked the most about this book. Montefiore provides the research and then puts it into a readable format so that the history is laid out before the reader.

There are a tremendous number of references to other Russians and Georgians - too many to keep track of. However, as Montefiore brings up these names from earlier in the book, he will make a quick reference as to why the name was brought up previously. This is not done with every name, but it is done sufficiently to help with the process. Not many authors bother with this and it was very much appreciated by this reader.

In order to keep the story flowing, Montefiore has extensively used footnotes to bring in more detail either from the research or to reference what happened later in Stalin's life. However, there are so many footnotes that it breaks the flow more than helps. This is a slight negative for me. Many of these footnotes refer to his other work: Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.

Montefiore has done his homework delving into the newly released files from Russia and Georgia on Stalin's life. Additionally, the author interviewed several key individuals in Stalin's life.

In particular, I was fascinated with the times that Lenin and Stalin were organizing the final push. Additionally, Stalin's exile in Siberia was well written and showed a piece of Stalin that we have not seen previously.

The only real negative was that his intent is so narrowly focused that there are no forays into the history surrounding these times and very few additional historical references to things happening even in Russia. This book is pure Stalin, all the time. Not a bad thing, but it does make the book tedious at times.