Stalin and the Shaping of the Soviet Union

by Alex de Jonge

Profiles the man whose ruthless and single-minded quest for personal power led him from an impoverished childhood to the pinnacle of authority, where he ordered the murder of thousands of his countrymen

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Russia

542 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Mateo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Immensely biased and borderline racist in its promulgation of Slav's inherent weaknesses and backwards cultural practices, mixed in with De Jonge's reviews of many books as "horrible" or "awful," opinions readers don't care for and that any respectable biographer would refrain from. Evidently another one of those British baby boomer generation biographers who retain their offices at Oxford and don't go beyond the premises of their college, De Jonge's singular redeemable quality is occasionally how funny and entertaining his opinions can get. He consistently remarks communism as a diabolical ideology that figures such as Sartre should be ashamed for supporting, all the while going back and forth as to whether Stalin was justified or not to commit to certain authoritarian practices, confusing readers by praising Western politicians for doing the same exact moves as Stalin, all while ridiculing the latter, or vice versa. Overall, terrible book, but wonderful read. Two stars because of just how ridiculously bad it is

[Fee · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I am reading this 500 page book at my work, I am getting to the end and the reader tries to find anything possible to give stalin to be somewhat human. The closest he gets is that he was 5'4" and his mom was a whore. Some people are just plain evil. The land he claimed, territorally he was more powerful than Hitler. All these little guys hitler, stalin, napoleon, and kim from today's korea are crazy. For the love of humanity, don't ever let little people run the country. They always think they have something to prove. How short was Dick Cheney?

[Bert Bruins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alex de Jonge has here written a knowledgeable biography of Stalin, that focuses on the ruthlessness of the man, although de Jonge manages to find a few, minor, redeeming qualities of the man (i.e. he didn't prosecute artists as ruthlessly as he did political opponents and allies). Sadly, the book was published 2 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and 4 years before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, so it was outdated soon after it was published.
The fascinating and informative main body of the book gets let down by a spurious introduction (returned to in the finale) about cultures of the north European "grain spirit belt" (as opposed to the more southerly "beer belt" and "wine belt") being inherently prone to hard drinking and therefore low work productivity.... Considering Scandinavia does very well for itself this sounds more like an ill-disguised prejudice against the East-Slavs than a serious historian's well-researched conclusion.