After nearly 10 days of reading this book, I can finally say I finished it. I was originally hoping to finish it in Five, but it took me a little longer than I expected. I have a lot of thoughts on this book, and a lot I took away from it's content.
I gave it a Five-star rating because it was well written, and it explained to me the life-story of a man who was an evil-genius. Stalin was a chess master, if anyone was playing a game of "4-d chess" it was this man.
He started out as a young revolutionary, who made it all the way to the head of a huge red empire. One could make the case that Stalin was a Tsar, who created the image of being god on earth. One could argue that Stalin was more of a "national-socialist" than Hitler was, and fulfilled the dream Hitler couldn't. Stalin might've believed in Marxism, but he managed to use Nationalism, and unite the slavic peoples together under his terror and during the Second World War. He killed millions during his reign, and made his country paranoid with terror, fearing who would be next to be taken away. A lot of people talk about Hitler being the evilest man in the world, and while he was evil, Joseph Stalin in my opinion was as evil as evil could get. in some parts of this biography I couldn't help but feel my mind numb when I read about his constant purges and cruelty.
This book makes me believe that Stalin was preparing to attack Germany in 1941 or 1942; if Hitler hadn't struck first, Stalin would've done so. Stalin wanted to fulfill Lenin's dreams of a world revolution, and he was planning on doing just that. Even after the second world war, he was planning to fight a Third and final world war to achieve this crazy goal. This book makes me feel that I am lucky to live in my country, where we have some semblance of free-speech and free-thought.