Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

Stalin #1

by Stephen Kotkin

The magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding of Stalin and his world

In January 1928 Stalin, the ruler of the largest country in the world, boarded a train bound for Siberia where he would embark upon the greatest gamble of his political life. He was about to begin the largest programme of social reengineering ever attempted: the root-and-branch uprooting and collectivization of agriculture and industry across the entire Soviet Union. Millions would die, and many more would suffer. How did Stalin get to this point? Where did such great, monstrous power come from?

The first of three volumes, the product of a decade of scrupulous and intrepid research, this landmark book offers the most convincing portrait and explanation yet of Stalin's power, and of Russian power in the world. The book is as much about the Russia that Stalin inherits and reshapes as about the man himself. It gives a brilliantly nuanced picture of the sequence of catastrophes that disposed of the social structures, armies, rivals and close colleagues that should have stood in Stalin's way, as he emerged from obscurity to shoulder the terrifying responsibility of upholding Russian power in the world.

Genres: History, Biography, Russia, Nonfiction, Politics, Russian History, Soviet Union

976 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2014

About the author

Stephen Mark Kotkin is an American historian, academic, and author. He is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. For 33 years, Kotkin taught at Princeton University, where he attained the title of John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs, and he took emeritus status from Princeton University in 2022. He was the director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the co-director of the certificate program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy. He has won a number of awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He is the husband of curator and art historian Soyoung Lee.
Kotkin's most prominent book project is his three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin, of which the first two volumes have been published as Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014) and Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (2017), while the third volume remains to be published.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Closed and gregarious, vindictive and solicitous, Stalin shatters any attempt to contain him within binaries. He was by inclination a despot who, when he wanted to be, was utterly charming. He was an ideologue who was flexibly pragmatic. He fastened obsessively on slights yet he was a precocious geostrategic thinker…who was, however, prone to egregious strategic blunders. Stalin was as a ruler both astute and blinkered, diligent and self-defeating, cynical and true believing. The cold calculation and the flights of absurd delusion were products of a single mind.
- Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power


Whew! Finishing this felt like an accomplishment.

Russia is big, in every way. In her landmass, her characters, her tragedies, and her books. Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin has the ambition to match such a land of excess and extremes. At 739 pages of text (and 120 pages of triple-columned notes in itty-bitty font), this isn’t the longest book I’ve tackled. It is far shorter, indeed, than War and Peace. But this one felt long. It is information dense. And since it is only the first in a proposed three-volume life of Iosif Jughashvili, a.k.a. Stalin, it is detailed.

Russian history is fascinating to me, but I’m a rank amateur. I’ve read a book on Peter the Great, a book on Catherine the Great, and maybe a half-dozen or so titles about the Romanovs in general, and Nicholas II in particular. Frankly, I’ve never read a thing about Russian history following the Russian Revolution in 1917. In a way, grabbing Stalin is a bit like heading for Everest (29,092 feet, the apex of the world) after taking a single practice hike up Hawkeye Point (1,670 feet, the apex of Iowa). But go big or go home, right?

It is a testament to Kotkin’s abilities as a writer that I not only didn't give up, but finished with a twinge of expectation for Volume II.

Kotkin begins his opus with Stalin’s childhood in Georgia, a backwater of the Russian Empire. He was a poor cobbler’s son, who attended a seminary in Tiflis, and even worked for a time as a meteorologist. He also became a devotee of Marx and Engels, and was drawn into the revolutionary orbit. He held secret meetings, arranged strikes, and was arrested and given a free trip to Siberia.

One of the interesting things about the early going is how seldom Stalin is actually in it. For long sections, Kotkin spends far more time on the larger events going on around Stalin, than in following his step-by-step journey. Though he doesn’t come straight out and say it, I wonder if this isn’t a result of their being a dearth of dependable primary sources about this portion of Stalin’s life.

To fill in these gaps, Kotkin spins the larger story of Russia's plunge into World War I, the last days of the Tsar, and the Russian Revolution. (No matter how much I read about the fall of the Romanovs, it never gets old). He does this very well. Tolstoy digressed at length in War and Peace about the role of individuals in history. Kotkin has picked up on this tension, and ably balances the large, uncontrollable forces at play, with the importance of individual action and agency within this environment. In short, Lenin and Stalin did not create the conditions of revolution, but once revolution came, they certainly shaped it to their ends, and in doing so, shaped the arc of history.

Once the Russian Revolution ended in Civil War, and once the Bolsheviks seized absolute power for themselves, there were times when I got a bit lost. Kotkin does not skimp on details, and though he is an accessible writer, he is not a hand-holder. There were more than a few times I found myself out of my league, especially when Kotkin is describing the endless infighting among Bolsheviks. There are a lot of characters passing in and out, and they all speak in the slogan-ridden lexicon of Communism that is hard for outsiders to interpret.

I never despaired, though, because the characters here are so titanic. Lenin, Trotsky, and of course, the General Secretary himself, Stalin. Kotkin is meticulous in describing Stalin’s assent to the heights of power, and what he did to protect and expand his burgeoning personal dictatorship.

Kotkin rigidly rejects any attempts to romanticize or mythologize Stalin. He also disagrees with the notion that Stalin was some kind of power-hungry chameleon, willing to take any position simply to advance. To the contrary, the Stalin here is a committed Leninist, and like Lenin, willing to reach that goal through pragmatism, if not ideological purity.

Utterly, eternally wrong, Stalin made history, rearranging the entire socioeconomic landscape of one sixth of the earth. Right through mass rebellion, mass starvation, cannibalism, the destruction of the country’s livestock, and unprecedented political destabilization, Stalin did not flinch. Feints in the form of tactical retreats notwithstanding, he would keep going even when told to his face by officials in the inner regime that a catastrophe was unfolding – full speed ahead to socialism. This required extraordinary maneuvering, browbeating, and violence on his part. It also required deep conviction that it had to be done. Stalin was uncommonly skillful in building an awesome personal dictatorship, but also a bungler, getting fascism wrong, stumbling in foreign policy. But he had will.

Like I said, this is my first dive into the realm of Soviet biographies. In gathering other titles to read, on Trotsky and Lenin and the like, I have definitely noted the passion that still exists about these men and their cause. There are still a lot of Communist apologists for whom a certain historical interpretation is required to sustain their beliefs. I can’t really comment on that. Well, I could, but I would be talking completely out of my…my ignorance. Whether or not Kotkin’s is a consensus or revisionary portrait is beyond my current knowledge.

However, I can say with conviction that Kotkin made Stalin real for me. He is an intimidating figure, a mass murderer who lacks the simplistic, annihilationist instinct of Adolf Hitler. Perhaps that’s why I’ve avoided reading about him for so long.

Early on, Kotkin caught my attention by delivering this doozy of a sentence: “The young Stalin had a penis, and he used it.” In context or out, this is a great line.

Contextually, Kotkin was criticizing the cocksman’s image of Stalin as swashbuckling bandit and lover. In a larger sense, though, it stands for this point: that Stalin, for all his inhumanity, was human. He had a penis, among other appendages. He was monstrous but not, unfortunately, a monster.

[Morgan Blackledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is long.

Endlessly long man.

It’s LONG!!!

Oh fuck is it long.

It’s like, WAY more than I needed to know about Stalin.

And it’s a two volume tome.

And volume II is LONGER than volume I.

And volume I leaves off right when he starts killing people.

So you definitely have to keep going.

And it’s FUCKING good.

Really fucking good.

But damn!

I’m going to have a virtual masters degree in Stalinology after I complete his read.

And I don’t want one.

I honestly have no Idea what to do with all this Stalin.

But I’m in.

So bring on the next one I guess.

😐

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

UPDATE

YouTube strikes again! I found a talk by Stephen Kotkin about Stalin and it was pretty good. Then I found another, where he was launching this very book at a store in Washington. So there he is standing amongst the bookshelves and a small group hanging around, and this informal talk is BRILLIANT and if you're interested in Stalin it's a must watch. He extemporises for an hour. He explains so many of the Big Issues about Uncle Joe. I love the guy's style and his sense of humour when he's TALKING, I admit to not loving his writing style half as much, and he doesn't allow himself any jokes in the book.

So this is a five star talk on Stalin and for my money a lot more informative than the first 300 pages of the book, I'm sure he'd hate me for saying that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFcb5...

**************

A REVIEW OF THE FIRST 300 PAGES

This is a brontosaurus – no, a brachiosaurus of a book. I have another 450 pages to go. Time to pause and make a few notes.

SPARE A THOUGHT FOR THE FEEBLER READER

The paperback of this 949 page book (of which 210 pages are notes and index) is quite heavy. Because of its size the printers have thoughtfully made the spine superstrong with a double layer of excellent glue so that it does not fall apart. Unfortunately this means you have to grip the book firmly with both hands to stop it snapping shut all the time. You would have to be King Kong to bend it open to the point where it would stay open. So this poses a challenge. I have tried balancing heavy weights on each page to keep it open in order to free my hands for other tasks but the book is too strong, one or another of the weighty objects was always catapulted into mid air, causing domestic chaos wherever it fell. So I must report that feebler readers will have to find a different, kinder Stalin biographer. This one will be too much for you.


SPARE A THOUGHT FOR THE READER WHO HAS NO MAGNIFYING GLASS

Second, because of its vast size, the printers have been forced to shrink the print to a particularly teensy size. If it was printed normally God alone knows how many pages long it would be. You would need a wheelbarrow to move it. And should you be a real Stalin freak and you wish to consult the 200 pages of notes at the back, you will need a microscope, they are printed in the type they use to get all the Bible onto the back of a postage stamp.

SURPRISE! IT’S NOT ABOUT STALIN

This surprised me, too. I was constantly checking the cover, which says STALIN on it and has a photo of the dashingly handsome not-yet-dictator. But the details of Stalin’s life are really rather murky until he suddenly steps forth from the shadows into the full glare of history after 1918. So the first 300 pages of this book get by very well with only brief mentions of Stalin. Maybe he did this here, maybe he went there, could be he got married and had a kid, not too sure. That kind of thing.

Instead of stuff about Stalin we get a fantastically detailed history of the Russian revolution. For the last 100 pages this book really could have been called LENIN with more justification. It’s actually a little too geekily detailed for me, but I realise it is excellent stuff.

IT’S ALWAYS THE STRANGE LITTLE DETAILS YOU REMEMBER

Stephen Kotkin allows himself to throw in a few barbed comments and humorous asides every now and then, and these are very welcome, there should have been more. But he lets some rather crazy stuff pass by without comment, like this bit here. He is describing the non-judicial execution of the family of the ex-czar Nicholas. Included in those up against the wall were Nicholas’s four daughters.

Some of the daughters, whose bodies held concealed jewels that repelled the bullets, were bayoneted to pieces.

I find that a very bizarre statement which calls for more explanation. How big does a jewel have to be before it can literally repel bullets? And where do you conceal these jewels? Seems that if they were well placed to repel bullets (front and centre maybe, or right across your forehead) they wouldn’t really be concealed. So even in such a huge book as this (which only takes Stalin up to the year 1928) there are a few things that don’t get explained.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paradoxes of a Monster

This book is long, it is heavy, but it is also brilliant. Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 is the first volume of a three part biography of Joseph Stalin (aka Ioseb dze Jughashvili). The second being Waiting for Hitler and the third, not yet released.

Kotkin’s thesis is that Stalin was not an insane bloodthirsty monster, who was the product of his upbringing (beaten by his father, difficult relationship with his mother etc), but was one of those individuals in history who come along only so rarely. He also argues that in order to understand Stalin, you have to understand the world he was born into and grew up in. That’s why the book starts with Prince Otto von Bismarck’s unification of Germany and is broader than just following the exploits of Stalin. After reading this book I have to agree with Kotkin and completely understand the need for this. This the the ultimately biography and I feel you wouldn’t need another.

Stalin’s rise and accumulation of power reaches a truly transcendent level. He is one of few people in history who have actually influenced history (for better or worse depending on your political leaning), who had pure natural talent to sustain life at the top of the greasy pole. He enjoyed reading party pamphlets, meeting minutes and political dictations, he had a fervour for creating what Kotkin calls a ‘dictatorship within a dictatorship’. How he did this is truly amazing, pulling off the wings of political opponents, removing internal and external rivals, the ability to prosecute innocent people to strengthen his position and creating an atmosphere and distrust. Stalin held loyalists around him and then had others who hated them, what them and report back to him. As Kotkin states, this truly was a work of art.

In spite of this, this is by no means praise of one humanity’s most evil products. The study is balanced and shows how he had no personal friends, was a terrible husband and father and had a complete disregard for human life. However, as Kotkin shows he truly believed in Marxism and Communism and would stop at nothing to see it through. This is why against all the evidence he pushed through collectivisation and the persecution of the Kulaks and when people began to die in their millions he stuck at it. He wrongly assumed there was no other way to drive forward Russia (by then the USSR) to catch up with the West. No one could have done this but Stalin. A man who was a vindictive despot who could be charming when he wanted to be, was the ultimate ideologue who forced Trotsky out on his left-opposition and then adopted it, was a great strategic thinker who made a huge amount of mistakes. He had great ability but was uneducated, had poor military prowess and needed some luck.

It is strange to read a book about someone so horrific, where the annals of history can condemn then for all eternity. However, I truly enjoyed it. Like reading Sir Ian Kershaw’s Hitler, I have found this topic (if not this exact book) essential reading for the historian and non-historian alike. The true nature of the indefensible is there and anyone trying to defend or apologise for these two do not know the facts. Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 is heavy and part of a three part series (this being 739 pages alone!) so it may not be for everyone. As for me, Volume II is ordered.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not follow debates among academic/"professional" historians. Nonetheless I suspect that the first volume of Kotkin's biography of Stalin must be generating a torrent of comment among specialists who care about such topics.

It seems to me that in volume one Kotkin has already managed to demolish Robert Tucker's biography altogether - as well as the biographical narratives of scores of others, whom I designate "name-callers," liberals and right-wingers only too eager to abandon historical analysis in order to furnish the materials of Cold War propaganda. I have long thought that the world doesn't need another biographer of Stalin who believes that he has exhausted the subject through seemingly endless (and ultimately boring) iterations of such words as monster, monstrous, fiend, fiendish, ghoul, sociopath, psychopath, etc., etc. None of this sanctimonious outrage illuminates Stalin's project nor his historical significance. None of this foaming-at-the-mouth answers the So-What question.

My impression is that Kotkin seeks to establish a new framework for the biographical/historical analysis of Stalin and his life's work, now that the Cold War has receded sufficiently into the past - maybe - to allow "revision" to proceed. Kotkin's framework includes three categories: Stalin as state-builder, Stalin as modernizer, Stalin as strategist/leader, who seeks to preserve the Revolution (above all), the USSR and to enhance Soviet power in an altogether hostile geopolitical environment.

It is also notable, and indicative of his intentions, that Kotkin's volume is immense. It contains 739 pages of text (printed in rather small font) and 175 pages of scholarly apparatus (in even smaller font). He is, in fact, starting all over again by giving us a "square one" biography - a point of departure for all related biographical projects in the future.

I find this approach appealing and indispensable. One result is that we have several hundred pages of historical narrative in which Stalin appears not at all or appears as a negligible actor at the fringes of everything. And then ever so gradually Kotkin shows us Stalin's relentless accumulation of power and prominence - through agencies and offices that others, especially Lenin, created specifically for Stalin. Stalin did not seize power. He used the means handed to him/thrust upon him very effectively. His assent to personal dictatorship was a result of twenty years' unremitting drudgery, and Kotkin tells us about every event and milestone in Stalin's promotion from non-entity to Leader. And he assesses these events and milestone by applying one element or another of his analytical framework - and in this way he gives us an account that merits serious consideration as the product of rigorous and systematic thought.

Unfortunately - when, to my mind, it mattered most, Kotkin abandons his framework and thereby betrays his project.

The last two chapters of volume one deal with Stalin's very first effort to "build socialism" in the USSR - the decision to collectivize agriculture - once he had sufficient (and nearly undisputed) power within the party apparatus and Soviet government to decide and to implement his decisions. But rather than to interpret these pivotal events of central importance in 20th century history from the perspective of his analytical framework, in a chapter entitled "If Stalin Had Died" Kotkins gives us such stuff as: "The Soviet Union, like imperial Russia, faced an imperative to modernize in order to survive in the brutally unsentimental international order, but market systems have been shown to be fully compatible with fast-paced industrialization, including peasant countries. Forced wholesale collectivization only seemed necessary within the straitjacket of Communist ideology and its repudiation of capitalism." (p. 725) And on and on.

So much to notice, but I will make two points.

Counter-factual speculations do not constitute historical analysis worth reading. Stalin died in 1953 - if I remember correctly. He did not die in 1928, so I see no point in retailing that shop-worn and tiresome nonsense in answer to a question that has no answer: Was Stalin Necessary? The last resort of the name-callers.

Notice how Kotkin's language changes in the passage I quoted: "market systems have been shown ..." The passive voice - a dead giveaway, as if "market systems" animate themselves, are independent actors, which they most decidedly are not.

"The straitjacket of Communist ideology." Straightjacket? There we are: Stalin as obsessive sociopath, psychopath. But the fact is that Bolsheviks/Lenin led the Russian Revolution of (November) 1917. Lenin did not find bourgeois liberalism persuasive. Nor did he admire the achievements of capitalism and the societies that expressed relations of capitalist production and markets. For real. Stalin was a disciple of Lenin. Therefore he did not/could not act from any other perspective. One may as well regret that the transmigration of souls did not enable Woodrow Wilson to take possession of Stalin in 1928.

I am extremely disappointed. But there's still volume 2 and 3, one hopes. And in vol. 2 I would love to read a sensible analysis of Stalin's decisions of 1928 that includes a discussion of Stalin's understanding of the state of geopolitical conditions at the time the Decider decided. Stalin seems to have feared that world war loomed, given the war scare of 1827-1928, and that the Red Army was not ready in any way to defend the USSR in war on any scale, that the continuing existence of the USSR, and more importantly, of the Revolution, was at stake in the results of his decision-making. I suspect that he understood that national survival and the survival of the Revolution (considered in a global geopolitical context) absolutely demanded that debate end, that the complete transformation of Soviet society and the Soviet economy proceed at whatever pace - and cost - this transformation required.

One final comment - Kotkin's framework is perilously similar to the categories that Soviet historians have applied and, for all I know, that Russian historians apply now in considering Stalin's regime. And even if their approach is correct - or at least defensible - I wonder if Kotkin has the will and the stamina to endure all the name-calling that most certainly will ensue once Western academics - and the folks a Fox News - smell blood.

Does Kotkin possess even a twinge of Stalin's strength of conviction?

[Arianne X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biography + History

This book is more than a biography of Stalin. Like any good biography, it is also a history of an era. As the author states, a biography of Stalin cannot help but be the history of an era, even more so than one of Hitler, Churchill, or Gandhi. Steven Kotkin adroitly balances the profile of Stalin within the wider history of events, the institutional structures of Russia, Europe, and the world as well as the contingent nature of history and how all this both enabled and constrained Stalin. From this melee arises the human Stalin. The Soviet Union was a fusion of philosophical Marxism, fanatical communism, committed Bolshevism, raw power, and great nation dynamics. From here, the paranoia, sociopathic pathology, and the iron determination of Stalin becomes more comprehensible, not executable, and aids in understanding how and why Stalin built a personal dictatorship from within the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Paradox

By paradoxes of power (subtitle of the book) the author is referring to the simultaneous supremacy of Stalin’s power with the insecurity of his position. But this is the paradox of all authoritarianism, at once all powerful and yet completely vulnerable to populist backlash and insider intrigue. This was proven in the brittleness of the regimes in Eastern Europe that fast collapsed in the late 1980s after popular protest and the loss of insider elite support. Stalin was at once all-powerful and yet highly insecure; this combination made him thin-skinned and vindictive. The paradox of Stalin is like the paradox of Trump, claiming to be all-powerful and yet the victim of intrigue, resulting in a combination of paranoia, cynicism, and aggression. Just as Stalin, Trump needs enemies, real and imagined, to aggrandize his power. Part of the ruler mystique is to cast themselves as the victims. Power combined with a sense of victimization and self-pity is part of the Stalin-Trump parallel and paradox. Like Stalin, Trump is nasty, unpleasant, cruel, angry, resentful but Trump is also the unwitting instrument of a larger changes in the world, Stalin to a lesser degree. Like Stalin, Trump appeals to lower class resentments to spearhead the remake of social life. Trump, like Stalin, also creates faux emergencies to justify the use of emergency powers. High profile arrests of foreign workers and students to appeal to a resentful domestic political base is yet another Trump-Stalin match in the politics of the theatrical. Experts are now class enemies in Trumpist America just as they were in the Stalinist Soviet Union.

Tinker-Tailor-Soldier-Spy (Stalin-Hitler-Putin-Trump)

Stalin and Hitler shared a key characteristic, the cunning ability and personal resourcefulness to turn changing circumstances and unexpected developments to their advantage. They were both experts in manipulation. This is a characteristic not shared by the emerging American dictator Trump who is more likely to be the target of manipulation and flustered by changing circumstances and unexpected developments. Rather than taking advantage of developments, Trump is impulsively reactive. Trump is a dupe rather than a manipulator. Rather than taking advantage of the ineptitude of others as did Hitler and Stalin, the ineptitude of Trump is taken advantage of by others such as Putin and Xi. Trump is the dupe of others because he seeks personal rule via a strong state conflated with intense personal vanity. This does not create a governing class. This creates a governing structure based on elites rendering personal services in exchange for personal rewards much like in Putin’s Russia today, but without the cunning. In the American case, the elites have no governing experience as they would in a classic oligarchy. This reduces the government to personal rule in the Stalin-Hitler-Putin-Trump model. But in the American case, it is the personal arbitrary rule of an easily flattered and thus manipulated deluded dupe – the very model of a major modern mediocrity. The danger is that the state will no longer be distinct from the ‘ruler’ as expressed in the unfortunate language of “Putin’s Russia” or “Trump’s America”. Such personal rule undermines the state. As such, Trump is an enemy of the state. The party and the state converge into a single person in such dictatorships, e.g., Stalin-Hitler-Putin-Trump. And in each case, a ubiquitous but amorphous internal enemy is needed, e.g., Tsarists-Jews-liberals-immigrants.

Mass Politics

In mass politics, the focus becomes increasingly on the personages (Stalin-Hitler-Putin-Trump) rather than on the society or the state which is a clear sign of the transition from the rule of law to personal autocratic rule. The original American Revolution was an intellectual revolution of sorts, not one of mass politics. Mass politics is now the norm and mass politics without the rule of law leads to mass (mob) solutions such as collective socialism on the ‘left’ or popular authoritarianism on the ‘right’ (my view, not the author’s). As such, the so-called America experiment is now one of criminal adventurism where the current leader (the MAGA thief-in-chief) is a criminal bandit ruling via predation, confiscation, intimidation, and extortion refracted through the lens of Christian fundamentalism. This is not so different from the way the Bolsheviks seized power. In such mass politics, the members of the mass mob become as radical as the most radical mob leaders present, e.g., Stalin and Trump. In the U.S., as in the formation of the USSR, political success is to be found in appealing to the parochial middling mass, not the educated rational elite.

A moderate liberal consensus is the exception to human patterns of governance. This is because the moderate liberal consensus that produces democracy and the rule of law is an intellectual or Enlightenment era proposition. But we are now in a post Enlightenment and anti-intellectual culture. The current problems of American democracy are not political, technical, or institutional, they are cultural and historical. The culture has moved from enlightenment to nihilism making possible the transition from the rule of law and democracy to magical thinking and personal autocratic rule. The cultural antecedents of liberal democracy have been dissolved, and the Enlightenment assumptions have been refuted. “Novus Ordo Seclorum” is no longer new. Democracy, or any sort of constitutional arrangement, without the rule of law, is self-defeating and subject to internal collapse. For example, members of executive agencies in the U.S. are now faced with either obeying a court order and not the executive orders of the President, thus getting fired, or obeying the executive orders of the President and finding themselves in contempt of court. This is exactly parallel to pre-revolutionary Russia where government functionaries had to decide between heeding the will of the Tsar or acting within existing laws and regulations. The U.S. ‘government’ has become an oxymoron (combining caprice and decree) run by an elected mad as a hatter moron who is enabled, not contained, by the rest of the government. It has been intentionally made as dysfunctional as prerevolutionary autocratic Russia thus inviting the authoritarian take-over.

Trump is a Leninist

Trump is like Lenin, and the later Stalin, just not as smart. Trump and his minions are essentially Leninists, not conservatives, creating similar irreconcilable contradictions in politics and economics. Trump issues executive orders in the way Lenin issued decrees, proclaimed to have the force of law in both cases. Lenin saw the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers as a sham, so does Trump. Both Lenin and Trump reject the rule of law and see it as an impediment to their rule rather than as a protection from arbitrary rule. For both, executive power is enhanced by a grim ideological appeal to fanatical supporters. Just like the Bolsheviks, Trump is both hostile to and dependent on the market for his corruption and embezzlement. Lenin, later Stalin, built a personal dictatorship within the dictatorship of the proletariat just as Trump is now building a personal dictatorship within the dictatorship of the MAGA Christian right. The result in both cases is an ideological blinkered dictatorship resulting in costly global antagonisms. Did Lenin and Trump create their dictatorships, or did the dictatorships create Lenin and Trump? Just as Lenin, later Stalin, empowered the Cheka and the GPU to sentence people to labor camps without trial, hearings or legal proceedings, Trump empowers ICE to do the same to immigrants without due process of law using labor camps located in foreign countries. In both cases, suspicion is justification enough for arrest and detainment without due process. Just as successful peasant farmers became class enemies under Bolshevism, so too the educated and the experts are the class enemies of MAGA. Both need to declare war on reality to undermine truth and prop up their rule. The technique of appointing compromised individuals who can thus be easily controlled or disposed of by the dictator, Hegseth, et. al. in the case of Trump, Yagoda in the case of Stalin, is the same.

Hegel Was Right

The nonreality-based beliefs of the Christian right are an example of the grim ideological appeal creating the mass mad politics needed to establish a popular rightwing authoritarian regime. The collapse of the American democratic order has already happened. The Republican Party has become a cult of Christian charlatans and deranged degenerates. As such, I fear that traditional democratic means of reversing the current chaotic takeover and establishment of a rapacious oligarchy are no longer operable. Only an equally militant but opposite backlash will work, otherwise, the dictatorship will devolve into something worse, despotism. Maybe Hegel was right after all. This would fit perfectly well with the Christian yearning for apocalyptic violence. It is the type of reaction the Christian right wants to provoke to justify its repressive eschatological millenarian desire for an apocalypse to explain their ongoing efforts to terrorize and traumatize people. Cruelty is now a governing principle of Christianity. Returning to reality is the greatest threat to Christian power over people, this must be avoided in any successful totalitarian or theocratic system. This shows that liberal democracy is an exception to the typical patterns of human governance. We are experiencing a reversion to the mean. America’s soft democracy is transitioning into a hard dictatorship. Many worms have come crawling out from under the overturned slab of democracy. In any case, this will be the third fundamental reshaping of American political culture since the founding revolution and the Civil War.

[Maciek]

I learned about this book from Anne Applebaum's excellent article in The Atlantic - it's the first volume of a planned trilogy, which has all the potential to become the definite work on Stalin. You can read Applebaum's article here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/a...

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though he had inherited the possibility of a personal dictatorship from Lenin, Stalin went through significant psychological ordeals in the struggle to be acclaimed as Lenin’s successor.

I loved the incredible erudition on display. The chauvinism in Kotkin’s speculation was a distraction but certainly not a disservice to the analysis. The lens dissolves away from Koba routinely to situate events in proper perspective and context. I certainly welcomed such. I can also imagine criticism for such efforts as well.

Stalin may remain inscrutable. His efforts were implacable if often monstrous. He emerges here as being personally nebulous. The relationships he had with Lenin and Trotsky are explored and thankfully shorn of Freudian posturing. Most historians, maybe the popular ones, paint something teleological, how this happened because this occurred and this was the result. The author here remains humble and nuanced. Uncertainty is the prevailing milieu. The author does appear to enjoy skewering prevalent theories about Stalin, the Civil War, and the NEP. More to follow.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A super read. Whilst presented as a bio of Stalin it also provides a huge amount of background to illuminate Stalins origins and the atmosphere in which a dictator was born.

Stalin was a man of contrasts, charming and clubbable, loyal and treacherous, spiteful and vindictive - and a workaholic who was appreciated for being effective and efficient. He also exploited a niche as one of the few Bolsheviks from the Tsarist periphery, enlarging a role as a minorities expert into a place at the side of Lenin.

One aspect I did not fully appreciate was that Stalins hold on power was precarious, certainly at the outset, and this amplified his natural tendency for intrigue.

[Charlotte Achelois · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leon Trotsky, after being expelled from the Communist Party in 1928, and finding himself in an increasingly desperate exile, shaped the perception of his old rival through his prolific writing. Trotsky established the image of Stalin as a sinister mediocrity, who nonetheless outmaneuvered Trotsky through his utter lack of scruples. In truth, as Kotkin shows, Stalin was an autodidact, “a people person” with “surpassing organizational abilities; a mammoth appetite for work, [and] a strategic mind," combined with "an unscrupulousness that recalled his master teacher, Lenin." The reality is simply that Trotsky was outclassed at every turn by an exceptionally canny and highly intelligent rival. Kotkin explodes many other myths in this superlative volume, but none more enduring that the one that Trotsky created.

[11811 (Eleven) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is killing my reading groove this year so I'm throwing in the towel at 80%. I've been spoiled by historical writers like Erik Larson and Ron Chernow who turn facts into stories that come alive. This reads more like an undergraduate term paper. Solid facts; boring as hell.

I wish the writing was as fascinating as the material. Stalin was an interesting dude. Anyone who travels with nothing but clothes, books, and a typewriter - I can dig it. Of course, the murder and pedophilia were somewhat less admirable qualities. But then the mummification of Lenin was weird and worth reading about.

So yeah, mixed feelings on my end and I'd like to read more of this stuff as long as it's written by someone else.

As for now, I have horror novels and comic books waiting so this shit needs to be flushed.

[Brad Eastman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a ponderous tome (950 pages with notes and it is only volume 1). The first part with biographical information about Stalin's early life is quite good and thorough. Stalin's early life and education are explained in the historical setting of tunr-of-the century Russia. The context of Russia's geopolitical situation gives context to young Stalin's life. Once 1917 comes, however, the last two-thirds of the book turn into a sterile analysis of internal Communist party politics with no connection to the wider society at all. To some extent Mr. Kotkin's thesis is that Communist party politics had little to do with the country at large. Still, somehow large crowds just magically appear at the right moment with no explanation of the appeal to the people or the preparation work that went into generating those crowds. Instead Mr. Kotkin focuses on who wrote what memo, when, who read that memo and what order did people read the memo. The remainder of the book post-1917 becomes a chore of detail with no real lessons or insights. In addition, at times I could not tell why massive amounts of material was relegated to the notes or first stated in the notes and then repeated in the main text. Sometimes I had trouble determining how a note related to the text to which it was appended. I view the final 2/3 of this book as a chronicle rather than a history. Mr. Kotkin allows detail to substitute for analysis.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately I have not been able to really concentrate or delve too deeply into this book because I have a huge editing job that has occupied a lot of my time. But I am so delighted because I have been looking for a definitive biography of Joseph Stalin for several years. The author is obviously steeped in Russian history. He gives a detailed background on the peoples and politics of Russia which is really helpful in providing a real perspective of Stalin's thinking and motives for a lot of his behavior. This is really such a fascinating story. I was so engrossed I actually spilled an entire cup of coffee onto page twenty-three. I missed my mouth. Pages twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two and twenty-three are completely ruined. The text it totally illegible. So I must pay the lovely Library for the book. I just hope I get to keep the book forever.

I did finally finish this incredibly wonderful book. I don’t know a lot about Stephen Kotkin but the depth of his understanding and the research on this book was absolutely fantastic. This is a thorough, insightful and definitive book about Joseph Stalin and the world during his time. It was totally satisfying. Highly recommended to anyone interested in history and the people who influenced geopolitics.

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comrades in the United States produced a nice podcast episode about Kotkin's Stalin series that could be listened here:

https://www.prolespod.com/episodes/20...

Kotkin does not deviate from the general line of the American academia: Stalin was evil. But he thinks Stalin was a genuine communist who uncompromisingly fought for the cause. Ooo, be careful Mr. Kotkin, you are walking a thightrope.

As Grover Furr says, if you want to flourish and be recognized in the US academia as a Soviet scholar, there are some certain anti-Stalin rituals you have to perform. For sure Kotkin spills some Stalin blood on the altar of anti-Sovietism but in his own way:

i. Never attribute a positive intention to him. If Stalin said "maybe I should resign" for example, it could be anything but a sincere intention to resign.
ii. If you want to show Soviet leadership suspicious about some counter-revolutionary plots (i.e. "kulak agitation"), immediately ward off any doubts about a real kulak threat: "that is discussions among peasants." Because oppressive Bolsheviks were the real problem.
iii. Discredit socialism, communism, collectivization, "class war" (always within those ironic, oh-so-blindly-doctrinaire-to-see-the-reality-that-i-see quotes) and seasoned bolshevik leadership (parrots of Stalin, cowards, apparatchiks) wherever you can.

"All non-Leninist socialists eventually discovered that if they wanted genuine democracy, they had to abandon Marx's summons to negate and transcend capitalism and markets." (That is, all reasonable socialists discovered that they should stop being socialists.)

Make no mistake, this book was published not in 1980s but in 2014, when the majority of the West's enlightened scholars have already raised serious doubts about the coexistence of capitalism, markets and *genuine* democracy. Peh.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is interesting as a book about Stalin, but much more interesting as a formal experiment in biography, because there's not that much about Stalin here. Kotkin's canvas is much broader, and a better title might have been "Russia in the Age of Stalin" or, since that's probably the next volume, maybe "Russia During the Lifetime of Stalin." This is pretty impressive stuff, and it's an interesting way to write biography: just don't focus on the man, focus on the events, and then see where the man fits into them. Kotkin has some... biases, which aren't particularly helpful, but he's also a solid writer and pretty good at organizing his material. It can't be easy spending years with such a loathsome creature as Stalin, and I hope Kotkin's okay when he's finish. And I hope he gets rid of his biases then, too. I look forward to volume two, once my wrists have recovered from holding this monster.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928' is the first volume in a three volume series of tomes on the life of the Soviet dictator Iosef 'Soso' Jugashvili a.k.a Joseph Stalin by the eminent Princeton Professor of history and international affairs, Stephen Kotkin. It is a prodigious work of epic proportions - in terms of its expansive narrative spanning nearly half a century, and its probing of the geopolitical upheavals disrupting the socioeconomic fabric of nations far beyond Eurasia.

Whilst perusing this volume, it is evident from the outset that Kotkin would not engage his readers in conjectures; rather, he would painstakingly go to great lengths to corroborate his version of Stalin with archival materials, meticulously researched and dispassionately analyzed by himself. Deciphering the conundrum of Stalin's psyche will prove to be an onerous task, and Kotkin would not be carried away by binary deductions of Koba as a ruffian-turned-ghoulish despot, out on a murderous spree of orgasmic heaven.

Far from it, Jugashvili was anything but. Kotkins chronicles the upstart's ascendancy to power with great diligence, and in doing so, demonstrates quite convincingly, that Koba was an autodidact of the highest order. He was a bibliophile and a voracious reader, a conniving strategist with a hallmark of conspiratorial maneuverings which would stalemate his arch-rival, the erudite Trotsky.



In his formative years, he might have been looked upon as riffraff, but he soon created his nuisance value by excelling in banditry, agitation, and later punditry, so much so, that Lenin is said to have asked about the whereabouts of a certain 'Koba'. Above all, he was a pragmatist, who prided himself on being from the proletariat - being the son of a cobbler, his meteoric rise to power is nothing short of a myth. But more importantly, he was a theoretician, and deeply embedded in his psyche was Marxism.

Stalin was a proponent of Marxism, and Leninism (even after the alleged 'testament' by Lenin which explicitly demanded for the removal of Stalin from the general secretary role of the Central Committee - a document shrouded in mystery that would continue to hound him, and would leave an indelible imprint on his psyche). 'Leninism', more specifically, was a tool that he effectively wielded to great effects - vandalizing the opposition as being anti-Leninist, and substantiating his policies of the police state for combing the insurgency from within - and of course, such shenanigans were always instigated by the bourgeois of the capitalist states.



It is a ponderous tome and it can be a slog at times, but if you persevere, it is a rewarding experience - it does not help that the text reads through like a history textbook on USSR; but I highly doubt it, if anyone would be able to produce a more exhaustive account of the despot; I will be on to the second volume, 'Waiting for Hitler' once I get my sanity back. Thank you!

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m puzzled by the general rating of this bio on Goodreads. 3.71 makes no sense to me when this is easily one of the better biography/history books I’ve read. A deserved five-star rating. Stephen Kotkin knows his subject and he masters the art of history with his contextualization of events which coalesce around Joseph Stalin. Undeniable scholarship coupled with sharp writing.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Kotkin’s work is an exhaustive, meticulous, academic biography of the man born December 1878 first named Ioseb Jugashvili, Soso to his family, then later known as Iosif, Koba to intimates, and, most notably, Stalin, the ‘man of steel.’ The author may have set the bar for conducting academic research; the bibliography alone is 50 pages, in triple columns, in what appears to be 5 point font, and by my rough estimate contains some 3,000 references. This diligence comes at a cost in readability - what a difference between Robert Caro’s works and this one. Professor Kotkin admits he’s up to more than the person; he’s written a Russian period history, doubling as biography.

Interestingly, I didn’t feel much blood oozing from these pages, maybe because of the author’s detailed thoroughness, or maybe because Stalin had yet to realize his true nasty potential by 1928. Nor did I find much evidence for a sociopathic or psychopathic (is there a difference?) personality, or whatever psychological craziness he suffered from, in this volume. I’m surprised Trotsky and his crowd got away with as much as they did – Stalin seemed to treat them rather politely, at least until 1927. In those days, you could actually criticize Stalin in open forum … and live.

I believe Stalin the most significant national leader of the 20th century, owing to the combination of (1) his length of rule, (2) the number of persons directly or indirectly harmed or killed during his tenure, and (3) the international political consequences to his policies, which is saying quite a bit since his principal rivals for that award are Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler. And just how do you get to that exalted position? We can see in this work how the forces of randomness are forever at play. When Stalin’s pachinko ball dropped upon his birth in Gori, Georgia, his odds of hitting a jackpot were the slimmest of any then alive; yet, he won, in a way. Yes, Gregori, you too can grow up to be the most infamous and powerful dictator in modern history, despite your most humble beginnings; anything is possible.

Professor Kotkin describes Stalin’s behavior from a strict adherence to Leninist principles, ultimately without equivocation. Now this raises the question of whether Lenin himself would have equivocated. Certainly the New Economic Policy of 1921 provides evidence that Lenin was a pragmatist. Stalin seems to be done with pragmatism by 1928. Professor Kotkin also answers the question of whether Stalin was shaped by events or did the shaping, noting that Stalin’s dogmatic pursuit of his Leninist perceptions explains much of this history. To the notion that “circumstances make the man,” Professor Kotkin responds, “Utterly, eternally wrong. Stalin made history, rearranging the entire socioeconomic landscape of one sixth of the earth. Right through mass rebellion, mass starvation, cannibalism, Stalin did not flinch.” I think Stalin is a most understudied and underappreciated historical figure in America, perhaps because we prefer to warm our minds to a Western European hearth and the villains produced from within, Adolf Hitler first and foremost.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

An accomplished poet, a pious divinity student, a highly cultured autodidact with broad intellectual interests and an expert knowledge of classical music; a bank robber, an extortionist, a meteorologist, a union organiser, factory worker, an agitator, and an oil rig operator.

It was said that his voice, in the church choir, could bring hardened men to tears.

A political theorist; a prolific, if unoriginal, polemicist; an escaped convict (more times than I could count), a father of innumerable illegitimate children (each with a different woman), an effective military leader, a loyal follower; a flexible strategist who felt no compunction about taking up the position of a rival he had assassinated, on idealogical grounds, the day before.

A doting and loving husband (first marriage), a chauvinistic and despotic husband (second marriage), a negligent and hard hearted father; an irresistible charmer and, most of all, a ruthless political manipulator who outclassed his counterparts, both inside and outside his movement, in every encounter but one. Oh, and let's not forget: a convincing candidate for the title of the world's worst mass murderer.

Stalin was only one of his nicknames. But he preferred it over both 'Pockmarked Pavel' and 'Oddball Osip'. Ironically, his slide into paranoia and his pretensions to infallibility only manifested after his leadership position had already become unquestioned.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb first volume of a projected three volume series.

Most people who have read anything at all about modern political and military history know about Stalin. It is also likely that what they know about him is not very good. Indeed, he well known as one of the most terrible tyrants of all time, the essential totalitarian dictator, and the man behind the deaths of millions. At the same time, he led his nation through WW2 and kept the Nazis from winning while the US prepared its entry and the UK recovered from its early defeats. Stalin was also the master architect (on the Russian side) of the Cold War and helped to structure superpower relations long after his death until the end of the Soviet Union.

It always struck me as strange that this enormously influential person has been largely characterized in cartoonish stereotypes of evil and more than a little pseudo psychologizing. That seems too easy a way to come to grips with who this person really was.

Stephen Kotkin has written the first volume of a biography that seriously tries to sort out the hype, stereotypes, conflicting stories, propaganda, and the like to serious consider Stalin's life and how he developed into the larger than life figure he became for so many. This is a very involved story and Kotkin attempts to tell the story thoroughly and with the necessary detachment so that readers can sort through the conflicting accounts and varied interpretations.

I think he succeeds fairly well. The book is well written and flows well. It was honestly difficult to put down (hard to say for a 1000 page book). Kotkin is also generous in providing context to the story. He brings the reader up to date on Russian history, the course of WW1, the Great Depression, or whatever else is happening to influence his prime story. He also confronts areas of conflict squarely and lets you know his assessment on whose arguments were strong or weaker. He even includes a marvelous epilog to assessment Stalin's importance by working through the thought experiment of what would happen if Stalin died in the 1920s. There are lots of characters and subplots to keep track of and Russian names are sometimes a chore. Overall, I really enjoyed the book and cannot wait for the other volumes.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to keep this short—there are a lot of good, substantive review out there. I'd just like to mention a couple of takeaways I had from the book

One—Kotkin does a good job of illuminating Stalin the man. He may not be the most pleasant example of a human being, but he is recognizable as one. I know worse examples.

Two—the amount of leaves in this book makes it hard to see the trees, let alone the forest. I'm sure it wasn't Kotkin's intention, but all this focus on detail seems to sanitize the period. He does not spend time highlighting the horrible events of this period (of which I'm thankful), but I do think there needs to be a method of giving us the detail and also imparting how absolutely awful the results were.

Three—Kotkin is convincing when he implies that Trotsky would have made no better leader than Stalin—actually, his thrust is that Trotsky would never have made it to that spot. He was a thinker, and Stalin was an organizer, and there was really never any contest.

Four—Teamster-style tactics brought Stalin to power.

The book is comprehensive, but dry. There are sections that rise to the level of narrative sweep, but there are a lot of details to drag it back down. But I don't know how you paint the comprehensive picture of Stalin without them—otherwise he turns into a caricature. That is probably the greatest strength of the book—that Stalin was not a caricature. Believing that he was lets our own selves off the hook—we'd never have to search our own character for the tendencies that made Stalin Stalin.

[Robert Jeens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A history of Stalin is a history of the world. Kotkin contends that Stalin was so important, so powerful, that his life has to be analyzed on three levels: the personal, how he fit into and transformed Russian politics, and how he affected the larger great power rivalries around him. “Stalin’s rule … demonstrates how, on extremely rare occasions, a single individual’s decisions can radically transform an entire country’s political and socioeconomic structures, with global repercussions.” Stalin was an outsider who came to have the most power of anyone in history.
This book is almost a thousand pages long and only the first of a three-volume series. It covers the first fifty years of Stalin’s life, bringing the reader right up to the time when Stalin began to grasp absolute power. The adjectives describing the book on the jacket are enough that I will not add any of my own: I will only say that it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and I understand why. On the jacket, a reviewer compares the biography to Tolstoy. It is a good comparison. Like Tolstoy, I had a lot of trouble following the dizzyingly large cast of characters with difficult Russian names. However, even though I could not follow all the actors in detail, the main character shines through.
The main questions the author is seeking to answer are, how did Stalin’s personality both change and contribute to his rise, exactly how did he come to find himself in such a position, and what were the consequences of his rule? Kotkin provides much background about Tsarist Russia and the wider world, the details of politics in the Caucusus region where Stalin grew up, Stalin’s family life and education, and how exactly Stalin became a Bolshevik. Kotkin takes sides in many controversies and tells you why he thinks what he thinks.
Kotkin says that Stalin’s personality evolved mostly because of politics. From being the son of a shoemaker to a seminary student, a Communist agitator, Siberian exile, a member of Lenin’s inner circle, to the Bolshevik triumph of 1917, and after Lenin’s death. He probably was not always a monster: he was a competent person, stubborn, bossy, demanding, but fair with his subordinates. However, he was an ideologically committed Marxist, which is a bad ideology, and so that made him a bad person, much as if someone is an Islamic or Christian fundamentalist. He occupied a key position in the Communist Party; Lenin had made him the General Secretary, so he became the dictator of the party dictatorship, with the Party in control of the government. The rivalry with Trotsky after Lenin’s death did a lot to make Stalin worse, as he was fighting for legitimacy when dealing with Lenin’s Testament, in which Lenin had declared Stalin not suitable for the post of General Secretary. Stalin had to constantly be on guard and defend himself against it. He remained vulnerable as General Secretary of the Party because he could be removed by a majority vote of the Politburo, but he also used the secret police to spy on the members of the Politburo. There were various points at which key figures could have taken out Stalin politically but decided not to. It is not always clear why. Stalin was competent and capable of talking the responsibility of running the country, driving forward the revolution in the country and the world. He had energy, organizational and administrative skills and could get important things done. He was also malevolent and vindictive towards former friends and allies; eventually, criticism of Stalin’s opinions became treason; also, failure to implement Stalin’s directives could be interpreted as treachery, whatever the reason.
Kotkin’s narrative of 1917 is compelling. From the abdication of the Tsar and Kerenky’s government to the Bolshevik coup, large areas of Russia had no central government control. He describes how the Bolsheviks went from being a small force in charge of only the capital to controlling the whole country through revolutionary, arbitrary violence, terror and mass killings of former Tsarist officials and “bourgeoisie”. The Bolsheviks claimed to be a dictatorship of the proletariat, but were actually a dictatorship of apparatchiks over the proletariat and peasantry. They stole everything in the country from the previous elite and then turned it over to the Bolshevik elite. I felt like I was back in high school reading Animal Farm again. At the same time, in a concurrent revolution, peasants took over land from former aristocrats, and started farming the land in small plots. These peasants, the majority of the population, were potential enemies of the Bolsheviks because the Bolsheviks wanted to collective agriculture. Lenin therefore recognized a truce, the New Economic Policy (NEP), in which small private plots were allowed, but peasants who became too rich would be prosecuted. It worked for a while. Meanwhile, Stalin, as the commissar for nationalities, was the main person who shaped the transformation of the Russian Empire into the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). In the end, there was “a triumphant debacle”. The Bolshevik revolution was completely triumphant and as a result wrecked the country’s economics and politics; people starved, not enough was produced, and the army was weakened.
The schisms and factions on the left are related in detail. There are minutes from many important meetings, including the Party Congresses. There were slashing personal attacks, things like people getting water poured on them and books thrown at them. The most important of these political schisms came to be, after Lenin’s death, the rivalry between Trotsky and Stalin, which ended in Stalin’s victory. Two things stood out for me. Although Trotsky was instrumental in the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War, after Lenin died, it was revealed that Trotsky just did not have the political skills of Stalin. Trotsky opposed the NEP and Stalin fought him all the way, and then, once Stalin had completely vanquished him, he just reversed himself, repudiated the NEP, and brought in collectivized agriculture. George Orwell again, 1984.
In foreign policy, contradictions made success impossible. The Soviet Union could not have normal relations with countries that they were at the same time trying to subvert. Although Russia and Germany had many reasons for cooperation, including a secret treaty regarding weapons development, at the same time, the Bolsheviks were actively aiding German Communists to subvert the German government. “[C]apitalist encirclement, ubiquitous enemies, vigilance, mercilessness” were the shared characteristics of both the Bolshevik Party and Stalin. Time and again, Stalin the ideologue sabotaged Russia’s relations with the capitalist powers.
This sabotaging of foreign relations for ideological reasons, plus the problem of incorporating “bourgeois” specialists (doctors, economists, engineers, military officers, etc.), who the Bolsheviks hated, but who were necessary to run the country, were highlighted in the “Shakhty” trial of 1928. This was the first of the public show trials, in which justice was used for political education as an example of class war. Fifty-three engineers, including three Germans, were put on trial for sabotage and creating a counterrevolutionary organization. Authorities knew they were not guilty but they were tried for ideological reasons. This angered the German government unnecessarily and scared the other engineers in Russia, who were not only very scarce but also very valuable and necessary for the development of industry, another important Bolshevik goal, but the trial was an important aspect of class war and so it was pursued. In the end, the Germans were let go, but five people were executed, others sent to prison, and an ideological point had been made
As the book ends in 1928, we see accelerated class struggle. The idea was that capitalists would fight harder as their defeat approached, and thus even “sharper” struggle was needed to defeat them. There was a ratcheting up of tensions and control. Stalin announced the new policy of giant collective farms. The policy of forced requisitions from the peasants was not getting enough grain. Anti-kulak (rich farmer) campaigns were also bringing about opposition from poor peasants, who had had to give up all their grain too. The needs of the urban proletariat and money for industrial equipment were put before the interests of the peasants. There was a lot of anti-Communism in the countryside, and Stalin knew it. Local Party officials often took the side of the starving peasants, so groups of urban Communist youth were sent out from the cities to carry out the violent requisitions. Collectivization of agriculture was seen as key to breaking the opposition in the countryside and as an ideological end in itself.
I’m not sure if we learn more about human nature by studying the wicked or the good, but we certainly learn a lot about power, how to accumulate it and how to use it, in this book. You need some commitment to get to the end, but the goal is worth the journey.

[Петър Панчев · Rating 5 out of 5]

Разбулването на един диктатор
Цялото ревю тук: http://knijenpetar.blogspot.bg/2016/0...

„Когато човек гледа малката му приведена глава, има чувството, че ако я прободе с карфица, целият „Капитал“ на Карл Маркс ще излезе оттам със съскане като газ от бутилка. Неговата естествена среда беше марксизмът, там той беше непобедим. Нямаше сила в света, която да го накара да се отрече от веднъж заявена позиция и за всяко нещо беше в състояние да намери подходящата марксистка формула.“
Политически затворник, пребивавал заедно със Сталин в затвора в Баку, 1908 година

Само фактът, че една биография на Сталин може да заема цели три тома, оставя доста въпросителни: откъде е черпена информацията и дали книгите включват и спекулативни твърдения, нанасящи вреда както на историческите факти, така и на сериозните читатели. Беше ми изключително приятно да науча, че Стивън Коткин (професор по история и международни отношения в Принстънския университет) не се е заиграл с общоизвестните факти, попълвайки празнините с неясни и недоказуеми твърдения, а с цялата мощ на анализаторските си способности е подредил един гигантски пъзел от архивни материали, част от които в определени периоди са били засекретявани. Добрата новина тук е, че дълги години авторът се е специализирал именно в руската и съветска история, и дори вече има опит по темата със „Сталинизмът като цивилизация“. Самата книга е написана изключително увлекателно, смесвайки биографичните материали с анализи и вмъкнати факти, разкриващи по-лична информация. Към последното е подходено прецизно, като всички места с подобна информация са номерирани и водят до специална секция от бележки в края на книгата. А те са хиляди и хиляди, показващи нагледно откъде са почерпени фактите. Преди да започна с четенето, доста обстойно разгледах как е структурирано всичко, за да мога да извличам веднага полезната информация и да не изпадам в неведение относно цитатите и всичко останало. Все пак това е сериозен труд и няма да е добре, ако самият аз не подхождам сериозно. „Сталин – Том 1: Пътят към властта (1878-1928)“ („Millenium“, 2015, с превод на Мирела Иванова) се доказа наистина като мащабен труд, но без да се натрапва със сухота и излишни конспирации. (Продължава в блога: )

[胡串 · Rating 5 out of 5]

40%斯大林，60%晚期俄国早期苏联史以及世界地缘，期间政治人物群像，互相交织，合纵连横，较少西书之普遍脸谱化倾向，诸多政治思潮意识形态叙述，似曾相识。

[Benjamin Henley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some historical biographers love to brush over major figures and events within the context of their subject in passing. As someone who does have an advanced degree in the eras these authors are describing, I am sometimes left baffled at how much responsibility is heaped on the reader to research aspects of the book or even to have previous knowledge or familiarity. This is not the case for Kotkin, he works to describe the political developments of Russia and the world as well as for the diverse cast of characters surrounding the Russian revolution and it's early years. There were some times that people were mentioned and not given account, but Kotkin always got around to it when it would have a greater effect towards understanding.

My only complaint is how the author describes Koba's relationships. He had a minimum (from my memory) of three underage flings and partners, one of which was his longstanding wife! They met while he was nearly thirty! The author mentions these few encounters as minutia of his life as a revolutionary, and then zips over to the next developments— HOW ARE YOU SO NONCHALANT ABOUT THIS?

I really enjoyed the themes of the paradoxical nature of Stalin, which runs contrary to the history I have been taught and learned through my life. My only wish in this regard is that the author emphasized these paradoxes in approach to life and politics as they were occurring rather than leaving this analysis for the last few paragraphs before close.

Great stuff!

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kotkin is a leading Russian historian and author of a well-received book about everyday life under Stalin, so his biography of the man himself can be expected to be deeply researched, comprehensive, and groundbreaking. And all of those expectations are well-met.

More than a biography of Stalin, this is a book about the fall of the Tsars and the rise of Communism, a sprawling journey across two continents and decades. A biography of a figure like Stalin is innately challenging; how do you balance the man, the leader, and the mass murderer? Kotkin avoids a straightjacket theoretical paradigm, showing Stalin as a canny tactician and theorist, who turned the chaos of the Russian revolution into a personal dictatorship, using the Communist Party as an instrument to extend his power down to the lowest levels.

Vol. 1 of the three volume series covers Stalin's childhood, rise to power, and the decision to 'de-Kulakize' farming in 1928, forced collectivization which sent millions into the nightmare of the gulag system, and killed millions more through famine. Kotkin argues that the collectivization was a distinctly Stalinist move, based on his understanding of the nature of class warfare, and the availability of secret police power against 'internal enemies'. A second major innovation in scholarship is Kotkin's evaluation of Lenin's Testament. This short document, produced at the end of 1922 when Lenin was crippled by strokes, provided negative evaluation of top communists, including Stalin. Kotkin argues the document was written by personal secretaries around Lenin, not the man itself, but it was treated as credible by the Communist Party, and hung like a sword of Damocles over Stalin's power.

So this book is deeply researched, and as good as scholarship gets. It's also a slog, 740 pages of text and another 200 or so of footnotes. And while individual anecdotes sparkle, there's a layer of distance from the times and the man himself.

I guess I'm up for the next two books, but I'm not exactly looking forward to it.

[Carter Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paradoxes of Power by Stephen Kotkin is a monumental biography covering the first 50 years of the life of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Stephen Kotkin tells the story of how a young Soso Jughashvili, a student in Georgia studying to be a priest, to Joseph Stalin, the legendary dictator and leader of the Soviet Union. From his life in the Caucasus, to leading a revolution, Stephen Kotkin covers every detail of the beginning of Stalin's life. This book reflects the epic writing styles of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and the realism of Chekhov.

I discovered this book during the summer of 2021, and always knew I would read it. And after my fifth attempt, I had it finished. Of all the books I've indulged myself in, this one comes on top. I would be surprised if someone can write a biography of Stalin better than Stephen Kotkin. While other historians have written on the life of Joseph Stalin such as Simon Sebag Montefiore and Oleg V. Khlevniuk, I would strongly recommend Stephen Kotkin's Paradoxes of Power. This is the only book where I enjoyed every minute I spent reading it. Please go out and read this book, you won't be disappointed.

[Ari Damoulakis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, unlike me, if you don’t enjoy very long history books that diverge into all sorts of topics and paint pictures about the wider world, and it doesn’t focus on Stalin often because it spends a lot of time on geopolitics, then don’t read this book.
You won’t even get near World War 2 and Stalin yet.
If you hate long history books and just want to focus on Stalin, maybe read another book.
But if you love history, want to know how situations in the world were made and want to learn in detail about Stalin and how he fit in, read this.
A major drawback though is that Volume 3 doesn’t exist, so you won’t have a clear complete history of Stalin or even the war if you struggle through these 2 volumes, you’ll still need another history to finish a complete picture of him, his life and his achievements in making Soviet Union very powerful.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ambitious in scale, this is the first of a 3 volume long Stalin biography.
I came across the book because I watched lectures from professor Kotkin on Russia and instantly got hooked on the subject of this book.

Not being that familiar with Russian history, I appreciated Kotkin's approach which is to tell Stalin's life as it was through the developments of relevant world events of his time (in parts of the book, he is often completely omitted and the focus is usually about geopolitics or communism). The author often gives his thoughts on other Stalin scholars and questions some popular and accepted truth about his early years such as the so called Lenin's testament.

I definitely recommend that book if you are interested in Soviet Russia.

[Matt Brady · Rating 4 out of 5]

a great and pretty balanced bio of stalin's early life and rise to power mitigated only a little bit by a weird afterword where the author makes some weird judgements on communist ideology as a whole that seem to badly miss the point (talking about collective farms never being as efficient as large privately run farms seems odd as "efficiency" isnt the sole, or even the main, motivation behind the collectivisation drive)