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Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 Hardcover – October 31, 2017

4.7 out of 5 stars 680

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Pulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin has written the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror to the conflict with Hitler's Germany that is the signal event of modern world history
 
In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world’s largest peasant economy into “socialist modernity,” otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost.
 
What it cost, and what Stalin ruthlessly enacted, transformed the country and its ruler in profound and enduring ways. Building and running a dictatorship, with life and death power over hundreds of millions, made Stalin into the uncanny figure he became. Stephen Kotkin’s
Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 is the story of how a political system forged an unparalleled personality and vice versa.
 
The wholesale collectivization of some 120 million peasants necessitated levels of coercion that were extreme even for Russia, and the resulting mass starvation elicited criticism inside the party even from those Communists committed to the eradication of capitalism. But Stalin did not flinch. By 1934, when the Soviet Union had stabilized and socialism had been implanted in the countryside, praise for his stunning anti-capitalist success came from all quarters. Stalin, however, never forgave and never forgot, with shocking consequences as he strove to consolidate the state with a brand new elite of young strivers like himself. Stalin’s obsessions drove him to execute nearly a million people, including the military leadership, diplomatic and intelligence officials, and innumerable leading lights in culture.
 
While Stalin revived a great power, building a formidable industrialized military, the Soviet Union was effectively alone and surrounded by perceived enemies. The quest for security would bring Soviet Communism to a shocking and improbable pact with Nazi Germany. But that bargain would not unfold as envisioned. The lives of Stalin and Hitler, and the fates of their respective dictatorships, drew ever closer to collision, as the world hung in the balance.
 
Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 is a history of the world during the build-up to its most fateful hour, from the vantage point of Stalin’s seat of power. It is a landmark achievement in the annals of historical scholarship, and in the art of biography.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize, 2018
A
Sunday Times (London) History Book of the Year 2017
One of
Kirkus Reviews' Best Biographies of 2017

“Monumental . . . Drawing on an astonishing array of sources, Kotkin paints a richly variegated portrait, delving into Stalin’s peculiar personality even while situating him within the trajectories of Soviet history and totalitarianism more generally. . . Kotkin teases out his subject’s contradictions, revealing Stalin as both ideologue and opportunist, man of iron will and creature of the Soviet system, creep who apparently drove his wife to suicide and leader who inspired his people. . . will surely stand for years to come as a seminal account of some of the most devastating events of the 20th century.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“The book makes it mark through its theoretical sophistication, relentless argumentation, and sheer Stakhoanovite immensity. . . Kotkin also attempts to answer the chief philosophical question about Stalin: whether the monstrous regime he created was a function of his personality or of something inherent in Bolshevism.”Keith Gessen, The New Yorker

“A masterpiece, surely one of the most remarkable books on 20th-century history to have been published in many years. It is not only the depth of research that takes the breath away; it is the scale and range of Kotkin’s framing of his subject and the acuity of his observations.”  —
Mark Mazower, The Guardian

“A stunning achievement . . . In a landmark work of historical scholarship, Kotkinhas written a captivating biography of a despot that chronicles the evolutionof Stalin as a human being, political operator, and growing archfiend in this horrificera of modern history.”
—Jurors of the Mark Lynton History Prize, 2018

“Kotkin delivers more than a detailed and revealing biography. His academic precision and narrative power illuminates Stalin’s personal journey with an exactness that stays with the reader long after the book is finished. . . . Kotkin brings a refreshing objectivity to one of the most complex figures in recent world history.” —
Former Senator Jim Webb

“[T]he second volume of what will surely rank as one of the greatest historical achievements of our age . . . few other biographies have so succeeded in showing how one man shaped his times, and how his times shaped him. This is a book not just about Stalin but about the entire spectrum of world affairs in the 1930s, its focus constantly shifting from the tiniest personal details to the grand sweep of international strategy. Kotkin’s project is the
War and Peace of history: a book you fear you will never finish, but just cannot put down. The ending is perfectly judged. It is the night of Saturday, June 21, 1941. In his office, Stalin paces nervously, waiting for news. And on the border, Hitler’s war machine prepares to strike.” The Times (London)

“There have been many other biographies of Stalin, but none matches the range of information and analysis that animates Mr. Kotkin’s ambitious project. 
Waiting for Hitler is biography and history on a grand scale – equal in scope to the enormity of the events it describes.” —Joshua Rubenstein, The Wall Street Journal

“This has never been better nor more plausibly told than by Kotkin in this brilliant, compelling, propulsively written, magnificent tour de force . . . I eagerly await volume three.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard 
 
“It is the most gripping of reads, packed with epoch-shaking events and human tragedy. This volume sweeps through the collectivisation of agriculture and the mass famine of the early 1930s, the Great Terror of 1936-38, the outbreak of the second world war, the disastrous winter war against Finland, and the macabre diplomatic dance between Stalin and Hitler ahead of the Nazi invasion of June 1941. This is, as close as it is possible to imagine, the definitive biography of Stalin.” —Financial Times

“A triumph, necessary reading for anyone hoping to make sense of Stalin and the Soviet Union.” —New Criterion

“Kotkin, a Princeton history professor, has performed prodigies of research, wading through masses of previously inaccessible Soviet-era documents to produce what is surely the definitive portrait.” —American Conservative

“It is unlikely we will soon have a biography the equal of Kotkin’s… We turn to a biography of this heft for the larger history, and for detailed analyses of that history, and Kotkin doesn’t disappoint… Thrilling and engrossing.” —Jewish Currents

“Against all odds considering their grim topics, these Stalin volumes from Kotkin, in addition to being definitive, are the kind of infectiously entertaining that only comes from perfect match of topic and storyteller.”  —
Open Letters Monthly

“A magisterial second entry in this multivolume biography. He integrates a massive body of newly available documents with extant scholarship, comprehensively detailing the development of the U.S.S.R. and the nature of Stalin’s rule. . . Kotkin’s account is a hefty challenge, but an eminently worthwhile one.” —
Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A well-written, finely detailed installment in a definitive biography—sure to receive many prize nominations this year.” —
Kirkus, starred review

About the Author

Stephen Kotkin is the John P. Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is also a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He directs Princeton's Institute for International and Regional Studies and co-directs its Program in the History and Practice of Diplomacy. His books include Uncivil Society, Armageddon Averted, and Magnetic Mountain. Kotkin was a Pultizer Prize finalist for Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press; American First edition (October 31, 2017)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 1184 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594203806
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594203800
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.62 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 2.13 x 9.52 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 out of 5 stars 680

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Stephen Kotkin
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Stephen Mark Kotkin (born February 17, 1959) is an American historian, academic and author. He is currently a professor in history and international affairs at Princeton University and a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Kotkin's most recent book is his first of three planned volumes, which discuss the life and times of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin: Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 (2014).

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Taylordw (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
680 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2017
Volume II of Stephen Kotkin’s STALIN: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 picks up where the scholar left off, cataloging the 20th century’s most successful and ruthless dictator’s consolidation of power. In urban areas this meant building factories and marginalizing enemies. In rural areas it included forced collectivization—undoing the land distribution of hundreds of millions of acres seized by peasants since the revolution. Most importantly it meant enforcing one man's interpretation of Communist doctrine upon 160 million people in a country that spanned 13 time zones. Dragging them into the 20th century and the first rank of world power by any means was no mean feat. Some would call it madness or impossible. Kotkin characterizes it as a triumph of will.

The author expands upon Volume I’s paradoxes: there simply was never enough power to be had. As power is accumulated, so too are enemies. That requires more power, which requires more purging. It’s an unending cycle of exile, arrest or murder. Compounded by the sheer magnitude of his task (bringing Russia to the Modern Era in a decade rather than a generation) and the size of the country, the table is set for disasters of epic proportions. As his personality spirals into sociopathic paranoia, Stalin produces catastrophe after catastrophe that includes a body count that is truly mind-boggling. He also achieved some spectacular successes and the biography is richer for the fact that Kotkin is always prepared to give the devil his due. Waiting for Hitler is a triumph of scholarship over polemics.

The book begins with the exile of Trotsky, and the “neutering” of Bukharin (an erstwhile ally), and exile of Rykov and Tomsky from the Politburo. Stalin is by 1929 already decisively moving against his enemies—rightists who support Lenin’s New Economic Plan or others simply charismatic and therefore a threat to the cult of Stalin (unofficially launched during his 50th birthday commemoration.) Stalin is a master at both pity and self-promotion—constantly bewailing the “attacks” of others while cutting them off at the knees. By 1930 Stalin has honed bloody skills he will use effectively for more than 20 additional years in power.

Increasingly in the public imagination and Stalin’s mind, he and the state become one. An affront to Communism is an affront to Stalin and vice-versa. Therefore, the existence of Kulaks, well-to-do peasants who benefited from the breakup of aristocratic estates are deemed a “rightist” deviation—an obstacle to collectivization and must be eliminated. Indeed, any and all who resist are enemies of the state and its leader and must be forced to submit or eliminated. To the shock (and awe) of all, particularly those who supported Lenin’s more tolerant New Economic Plan, there simply was no middle ground.

Forced collectivization, dislocation from the land, the ensuing peasant revolt (they slaughtered their livestock rather than let the state confiscate it) and bad harvests combined to pose a serious threat to Stalin’s power. Indeed, 1932 is one of the few times Stalin vacillates and backs down on policy, making course “adjustments”. Still, the whispers that Stalin had to go continued. To counter the whispers, purges are ratcheted up along with everyone's paranoia. The political corpses literally pileup by the tens and hundreds of thousands.

These numbers are nothing in comparison to the starvation count in rural Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakh provinces. Seven to ten million estimated dead. Families cannibalizing family members. Orphans murdered to be eaten. All because Stalin refused to admit error and abandon the collective. Worse still he would not import grain to relieve the suffering because opponents of his regime would use it to depict communism as a failure. The author states unequivocally this was a disaster of one man's making and largely avoidable had Stalin even a smidgeon of compassion. While Kotkin’s detailed accounts make for great history it is both exhausting and at times numbing. Waiting for Hitler depressingly summons to mind Hannah Arendt’s remark about the banality of evil.

By 1934-1935 the economy is on track in a remarkable comeback. It is around this time he begins to experience the adulation of the masses which Kotkin makes clear while exaggerated by the Party was also based on a fundamental truth--the Russian people loved Papa. In the cat bird's seat, Stalin strikes, remaking the Party entirely in his image, often using the assassination of Sergei Kirov as an excuse to cleanse. The 30s show trials section was most interesting and perhaps the most psychologically revealing. Murder and purging become spectacle, modern-day cousin to a Roman circus where the outcome of the show is a foregone conclusion. Witnessing the narcissistic preening, and his opponents robotic recanting (in the hopes of at least saving their families from the same fate) is fascinating in the way a train wreck is riveting. The carnage is horrific but you can’t look away. The sense of fear and intimidation is palpable.

The third section of Waiting For Hitler covers the geopolitical scene of the 1930s with the particular focus on Germany and Hitler. Again, Kotkin's analysis is astute and multi-dimensional. Russia will be able to survive the Nazi onslaught to come in large part because of Stalin's remarkable modernization. However murdering your experienced generals and colonels in fits of political pique only a year or two before invasion does nothing to improve your odds of survival. Also, considering everyone knew it was just a matter of time, Russia was caught surprisingly flat-footed when the moment comes. Perhaps blitzkrieg doesn't translate to Russian.

Like its predecessor, volume II is a scholarly work. It is accessible to the amateur historian but at 900 plus pages and with thousands and thousands of footnotes it is not any person's idea of a light read. It is a commitment. Its cast of characters is like a Cecil B. DeMille production and not always easy to keep straight. Also, the detail and documentation, necessary to scholarship is also occasionally a drag—more than once I found myself thinking “O god, another plenum; another purge; another footnote.” Stalin’s life provides new meaning to the cliché “been there; done that.” That said, Waiting For Hitler will be one of those essential tomes of 20th century politics and history. I am very, very glad I read it, and a little bit glad it’s over.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2019
Like the first volume, this is a work of remarkable scholarship. It is hard to imagine this work will ever be equaled as a biography of Stalin and a history of the Soviet Union.

I found the second half of this book more readable than the first. During the first half of the book the subject matter is more scattered paragraph to paragraph and even within a single paragraph. This is less so in the second half where the emphasis is much more centered on the relationships with Nazi Germany.

I wish there had been some more detail on the famines of the early 30’s, this is given less emphasis than it probably deserves. One almost gets the feeling that the author is impatient to get to the run up to WWII.

Indeed it seems it is the relationship with Germany and Hitler that is the story Kotkin most wants to tell and he does in extraordinary detail. If your reading about WWII has emphasized the Western European front and the pacific war as mine has, you will learn that the early years of the war in the East were much more complicated than I had been aware.

The footnotes are as detailed as any book I have ever read. One needs an electron microscope to read them, but on the other hand if they were a larger font the book would have probably run to nearly 1300 pages or more.

I wish there was a glossary of names in the back. Many middle tier figures come in and out with hundreds of pages in between.

One last point. The author is quite opinionated. I suppose that is partly what we are paying him for. But by the time Stalin has achieved absolute power, a few hundred pages into the book, whenever he needs to mention Stalin twice in a sentence, the second mention is almost always the “despot” or the “dictator”. This makes the author appear more subjective, less objective than is ideal for a book of this importance.

Nevetheless it is a remarkable book, worthy of five stars
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Top reviews from other countries

John L.
5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful history writing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2021
This is a long, long read - but riveting from start to finish. Its greatest strength is the hugely detailed context supporting the Stalin story, not only in the USSR but Germany, Britain and all the other major players. Provides clear exposition of international top level politics alongside the internal Russian triumph and tragedy of Stalin's crimes and achievements. Hugely recommended.
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J. C. Mareschal
5.0 out of 5 stars Best biography of Stalin I have read!
Reviewed in Canada on December 16, 2017
With “Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941” Stephen Kotkin presents the second volume of a compelling biography of Josef Stalin. The first volume covered the life of Stalin until 1928 when he had consolidated his power over the Bolshevik party and the Soviet Union. This second volume covers the many events in the Soviet Union and in the world between 1928 and 21 June 1941 when the Wehrmacht launched its assault on the Soviet empire. These years were marked in the Soviet Union by the forced industrialization, the dekulakization and the famine, and the great terror with the murderous purges in the party and the Red Army. In the world, Hitler came in power to make Germany great again, the western democracies did not raise to face the challenges of fascism, particularly in Spain, and the spectacular failure of the British policy of appeasement after Munich led to the infamous German-Soviet non-aggression treaty and the start of World War II. The value of Stephen Kotkin’s book is that it presents a clear and somehow original account of these events.
Perhaps the greatest merit of the book is that it does not rely on Stalin’s evilness to explain the tragedies that fell on the USSR and Europe. Stalin had raised to power, not only by cunning, but because he had extraordinary qualities that no other leader of the Bolshevik party possessed: he was intelligent, hardworking, and attentive to details, he could be affable, and he combined steel determination with an absolute lack of scruples. After the party decided to follow the course of forced industrialization and dekulakization and the Soviet Union faced famine and disaster, it is Stalin’s determination that kept the course and avoided a complete collapse of the Soviet state. The book does not shed new light on how and why the NKVD went out of control during the great terror. Although many of the victims were convinced that Stalin did not know about the horrors of the repression, he knew and approved the terror. Kotkin avoids to evoke the unprovable explanation of the terror by the psychological impact on Stalin of the suicide of Nadia Allliulevya. It was a time when a French poet declared that he would rather see 1000 innocents killed than one guilty escaping punishment. Stalin approved the execution of Bukharin, whom he had genuinely liked as a friend, with the same lack of emotion as he showed for the execution of his worst enemies.
Kotkin’s account brings a new perspective to the evolution of international relations after Hitler’s arrival to power. Until Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia after Munich, the English political establishment felt more affinity for the right wing dictatorships than for the European left leaning democracies, not to mention the Bolsheviks, hence the non-intervention policy in Spain that led to Franco’s victory. England and France’s actions in Poland confirmed Stalin in his deep suspicion that they were trying to entrap the USSR to fight the Nazis for them. Probably without illusion and at a heavy political cost for the communist parties, he chose to sign the non-aggression pact with Germany, and to improve Soviet military readiness. Kotkin’s account shows that the rationale for the winter war against Finland was not land grabbing but making Leningrad and the Baltic fleet less vulnerable to land attacks. The Soviet campaign was a disaster but Stalin and the Red Army learned from it. The book ends on the night of June 21 when the Wehrmacht launched operation Barbarossa. The Red Army was not ready yet and it would pay a heavy price, but it would keep learning. The Wehrmacht had taken the road to Leningrad and Moscow, but it was on its way to Stalingrad!
I have read many biographies of Stalin and I believe that Stephen Kotkin’s book is by very far the best. The main interest of the present volume is that it explains the logic of the Soviet international policy during that period. And it also shows that the person Stalin was not simply a blood thirsty tyrant. He could be sensitive, as shown by his letters to Nadia Allilulevya. He did not care much for his sons, but he very much loved his daughter Svetlana. Often, he publicly acknowledged that his opponents, even Trotsky whom he hated, had strong qualities. He protected many artists whether or not they were Bolsheviks, but he approved the arrest and execution of Babel, Meyerhold, and others who had well served the Soviet state. I feel that, after reading the book, I understand a lot more the Soviet policy than before, but the person Stalin remains an enigma!
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Holger Breme
5.0 out of 5 stars A Monster at Work
Reviewed in Germany on September 25, 2018
Stephen Kotkin's book about Stalin is a meticulously written account of the Red Zar's day to day working. How he sidelined and later killed his comrades, how he directed the expropriation of the richer peasants to further the rise of Soviet heavy industry, how he prepared the red state for the unescapable confrontation with Hitler and so on. Sometimes this could be boring, but I have read it with growing fascination and also in abhorrence because of the matter-of- factly nature of disposing with people.
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PB
5.0 out of 5 stars A must have book!
Reviewed in Australia on December 1, 2019
A must read and must have. A book that shows the factual history of communism and how it leads to anarchy!
don novak
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Follow Up
Reviewed in Canada on November 7, 2020
I was surprised at the weight of Waiting for Hitler. It is a very heavy book. I read it in bed and have yet to find a comfortable position to avoid impacting my ribs. I thought of adding some more girth but my doctor thinks that is not a good choice. My biceps are developing nicely though. I have enjoyed the book as the previous one. It reveals how much power we give certain people to determine how we live our lives. It is frightening to contemplate how Stalin was able to destroy so many lives on an experiment; maybe Marxism will work or maybe it won't but don't stand in my way you poor people of Russia and Ukraine and Kazakh and Poland and Estonia and on and on.
These people are maniacs. Castro said he would not have stood down over the missile crisis, and would have rather seen his island and all its people decimated, turned to dust rather than acquiesce to the will of the US. Thankfully the Soviet ships turned back. I believe the US has missiles in Turkey aimed at Russia but that is a topic for another time.