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Young Stalin Paperback – October 14, 2008

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Simon Sebag Montefiore (Author)
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Simon Sebag Montefiore (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 109 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 528 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (October 14, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1400096138
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400096138
  • Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.1 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (109 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #354,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA vivid picture of Stalin's turbulent youth
By Graham on October 16, 2007
Format: Hardcover
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Montefiore uses a variety of materials, but especially unpublished memoirs from Stalin's early friends and colleagues newly available in the Georgian communist party archives.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.Read more ›
3 Comments 70 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsDefinitely not a "grey blur"
By Antonio on October 19, 2007
Format: Hardcover
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.Read more ›
13 Comments 84 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsA very impressive work
By Mark Greenbaum on October 31, 2007
Format: Hardcover
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.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Excellent book & service.

Published 4 days ago by SAB
4.0 out of 5 starsWell researched and written history of the young Stalin with ...

Well researched and written history of the young Stalin with escapes to the older Stalin and geopolitics and USSR in general. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Landmark
5.0 out of 5 starsMost of all I want more of this author

Although I rarely read such historical novels, this Young Stalin gave me history, story ,insights, characters and knowledge.

Published 3 months ago by VICKY
4.0 out of 5 stars... do book "reviews" and will just say that I enjoyed this book

I do not do book "reviews" and will just say that I enjoyed this book. I had never read anything about Stalin's life prior to his ascension to the throne as the Red Tsar... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Bud Man
4.0 out of 5 starsStalin - The Scariest Version.

Kudos to the author. This book is based on exhaustive research into sources which include interviews of people who participated in the events of the times, many existing written... Read more

Published 4 months ago by Mit1
5.0 out of 5 starsA strong narrative

Montefiore's biography of the young Stalin is both humanizing and surprisingly fair-minded. Montefiore is not inclined to like Stalin and is fairly anti-Bolshevik overall, and... Read more

Published 4 months ago by C. D. Varn
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Great book about a sick and nasty man. Very well written and always easy to read Sebag.

Published 5 months ago by beverly miller
4.0 out of 5 starsGreat job, Comrade Montefiore!

A great insight into the mind of Stalin that is both not boring and full of information. A good book for anyone who is in to the early days of communism and the Russian revolution

Published 6 months ago by Imran Verhulst
5.0 out of 5 starsWell researched, well written.

Fascinating and well researched. For those that studied the Russian Revolution and the subsequent history of the Soviet Union at school or university, this is a must read to give... Read more

Published 8 months ago by Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 starsThe story of the making of a brutal man--not an easy read

Young Stalin describes the life of this Communist Russian leader from birth through the Russian Revolution that led to the establishment of Communism in Russia. Read more

Published 9 months ago by Dave Schan

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