Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Stalin: The Kremlin Mountaineer (Icons) (Kindle Single)

Top positive review

25 people found this helpful

A valuable short biography of a 20th-century monster

ByGraham H. Seiberton February 11, 2014

This is a brief book – a one-day read, 58 print pages. It contains the estimate essential biographical information one needs.

A lot must be sacrificed in such a brief recounting of a man's lifetime. The book does not provide a great deal of historical context. The reader needs to be reasonably familiar with czarist Russia, Nazi Germany, and the first and second world wars, because Johnson simply does not budget pages to provide the background.

The writing is superb, as one expects from Paul Johnson. The book flows easily and logically. It touches on the appropriate major themes: the Bolshevik revolution, consolidation of power under Lenin, forced collectivization and the Holodomor, the purges, Stalin's indecisive dealings with Germany and failure to prepare for the war, the beginning of the Cold War period, and his deteriorating health, increasing paranoia, and death.

I learned from the book that Lenin was the first to use systematic terror and liquidations to consolidate his power. Stalin merely improved on proven methods. Stalin's great gift was his tremendous appetite for work in his methodical execution of schemes to keep his opponents, real or imagined, always off-balance.

The very brevity of this book makes it accessible to people who need to read it, people coming of age in the 21st century. Several historians are drawing parallels between this era and that of a century ago,the last days of the Tzar, World War I, a cataclysmic war which destroyed three empires and significantly rearranged the world power structure. Significantly, the century's three worst despots, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, got their start in these chaotic times. If we are again facing chaos, it is good to know what can possibly ensue.

Top critical review

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8 people found this helpful

interesting but limited

Byjtqon February 22, 2014

Johnson places Stalin as among history's three most evil monsters along with Mao and Hitler, but leaves open some room for demoting Stalin to the next level lower, as monsters go. Stalin was supported by marginal and violent Russian culture-now emerging again, by an astonishing array of assistant monsters possible even surpassing Hitler's befuddled coterie, but most overwhelmingly by the support Stalin got from the intelligentsia of western civilization.

This would include the New York Times, the battalions of establishment defenders of Kim Philby and Alger Hiss, and those who believed in Soviet socialism for thirty years. Evil, for Stalin, had a broad and deep kind of historical support not available to Adolph.

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Showing 21-30 of 88 reviews(Verified Purchases). See all 113 reviews

A must read

ByThomas Connorson July 18, 2014

Format: MP3 CDVerified Purchase

An excellent short biography. A must read, lest we forget what a monster Stalin was and how his cruel Communist regime waged war against the Russian people. Paul Johnson is a wonderful writer, engaging and thoughtful. One of the great historians of our time.

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A Very Good Read

ByDonald Ohnemuson September 13, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This book is short, but it is very well written and contains a lot of explanation of Stalin's evil character. It ended too fast for me...I was hoping for more.