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4.13 AVERAGE
4.13 AVERAGE
This one gets a solid 5 stars as it was clearly thoroughly reasearched and well-written. It's a history lesson full of information, dates, names and events (so it's not always a smooth read) but it's also an inside look at the man and his effect on those around him. I've read many books centered around this time in history but never once specifically focused on Stalin and his reign. I feel like I have gained so much knowledge of the behind the scenes workings of this man and his politics. A great lesson in history.
The title describes this book pretty accurately. It gives a history of the interpersonal politics of the upper echelon of the USSR, describing from Stalin's rise after Lenin's death to Stalin's own death. There was of course a little bit on Stalin's early life, but that was presented to set up existing relationships within his court. I honestly had a very hard time getting into this because I couldn't differentie many of the officials. Each at a random point would get a page or two on their early life up to the point where they were really relevant, but I couldn't remember much about their personalities unless they continued with Stalin. Budyonny, Voroshilov, and a couple others I'm forgetting would constantly get confused in my head. The ones who lived past the '30s, as well as the intelligence chiefs, were usually memorable enough though. For the intimate nature of the book, looking largely at personal relationships, I was genuinely surprised and awed that the author managed to speak to so many people who were still alive from this time. It seems that virtually all the magnates' living children spoke to him, as did many side characters still alive. I did not like how within chapters, Montefiore would often drop the year(s) in question, which made it difficult for me to follow who was dead or not when events in the '30s were described. Another complaint I had though was his frequent descriptions of the raging private parties given by magnates throughout the book as "orgies." Though I'm sure there were some of those, I think a better word could have been chosen for most of the cases. Overall, the book describes the nutty world of Soviet politics under Stalin very well, avoiding the trap of social history of the USSR that's best left for another book.
Randomish thoughts
I did not realize the significant presence of the families of Stalin's wives before World War II. Also didn't know that Stalin had an adopted son, Artyom Sergeyev. In addition, the tenuous nature of Stalin's rule until after the war was kind of a surprise to me, as was his rapid personal decline afterwards. His affinity for Georgia and Georgians also was unexpected.
Reading about how the officials handled World War II, particularly the beginning, where they treated armies like toys they had an infinite amount of made me quite angry because there was so much loss not even for any supposed "treasonous" actions but because Stalin and his men thought they were better able to manage a war than the generals. Some of the men even favored cavalry, thinking tanks were obsolete. My god, so many people's lives lost just for these men to play around and blunder through war, not to mention the lives lost for their paranoia and powergrabbing the decade before.
Randomish thoughts
I did not realize the significant presence of the families of Stalin's wives before World War II. Also didn't know that Stalin had an adopted son, Artyom Sergeyev. In addition, the tenuous nature of Stalin's rule until after the war was kind of a surprise to me, as was his rapid personal decline afterwards. His affinity for Georgia and Georgians also was unexpected.
Reading about how the officials handled World War II, particularly the beginning, where they treated armies like toys they had an infinite amount of made me quite angry because there was so much loss not even for any supposed "treasonous" actions but because Stalin and his men thought they were better able to manage a war than the generals. Some of the men even favored cavalry, thinking tanks were obsolete. My god, so many people's lives lost just for these men to play around and blunder through war, not to mention the lives lost for their paranoia and powergrabbing the decade before.
Well written, lots of intense stuff of course.
Amongst it all, this book kinda implies that the almost-invited-in-by-Stalin German attack in WWII was a collollary of the terror, and that the terror was a collollary of Stalin's wife (presumably) killing herself. He was, in fact, bonkers.
Amongst it all, this book kinda implies that the almost-invited-in-by-Stalin German attack in WWII was a collollary of the terror, and that the terror was a collollary of Stalin's wife (presumably) killing herself. He was, in fact, bonkers.
This is fairly good Biography, though it is less of biography of Stalin himself and more a biography of the political times in which he led. This book can be maddening at times. If you aren't particularly astute when it comes to Russian History, especially in the period that the book covers this book can be maddening. Figures move in and out of the narrative, rising and falling in the political structure of the Central Committee. This book would perhaps, greatly be assisted by a series of charts or graphs detailing the makeup the politburo power structure. This would help keep Meklin, Mikoyan, and others clear and distinct. Nevertheless, the book presents a complex picture of man how has been caricatured more than most historical figures.
When I read Montefiore's "Romanovs," I both listened to the audiobook and bought the paperback. Somehow, I did not learn my lesson, here. These books are incredibly packed with information and, every time I read Montefiore's work, my head feels overstuffed by the end. To me, that's a good thing, but do with that what you will. However, by only listening to this book on audio, I don't think the information saturated as well as it could have. That's also a me thing. Any intense history lover should read these books, just give yourself a hand and have the hard copy around.
The Court of the Red Tsar is an unexpected page turner. Worth 5 stars. The thing it lacks is more reflection on the wider political sphere.
This is a biography of Stalin, focussed on his domestic life and the tightly-knit group of people around him: his own family, and politicians, bodyguards, and their families.
As a piece of history, it's very impressive. It's clearly the result of a huge amount of research by Montefiore: he seems to have personally interviewed just about every living relative of the major figures, quite apart from the endless reading of archives and memoirs that must have been involved. As a casual reader I found it slightly hard going at times. I didn't do it any favours by largely reading it in bed at night, but even allowing for that, I found it hard to keep track of all the people involved. I found I was having difficulty remembering which was which even of the most important figures, like Molotov, Mikoyan and Malenkov.
I don't know if that's an inevitable result of a book with quite so many people in it — It's not a subject I've read about before, and all the unfamiliar Russian names didn't help — or if it's my fault for reading it while drowsy, or if there's more Montefiore could have done to fix the various people in my mind. I didn't find I got much sense of their various personalities that would have helped me keep them separate. Still, what I did get was a strong sense of Stalin himself, and his trajectory from a charming (though ruthless) young man living an almost campus lifestyle at the Kremlin, surrounded by the young families of his colleagues, to a sickly, garrulous old despot wandering nomadically from dacha to dacha and living in a vortex of terror and awe.
But even a sense of what Stalin was like to live and work with doesn't get you much closer to understanding his motivations and the motivations of people around him. Was it just about power or did he believe to the end that he was acting in the interests of Russia and the party? The inner clique around Stalin clearly knew at some level that all the denunciations and show trials were arbitrary and could attach to anyone: they saw the process happen over and over again. And when colleagues they had known for years confessed to ludicrously unlikely accusations, they surely can't have believed it. But the things they said and wrote suggest that at the same time they sort of did believe it, and remained theoretically committed to the ideology to the end. It made me inclined to reread 1984, because the concept of 'doublethink' is so startlingly apt.
In some ways the Stalinist purges are even more incomprehensible than the Holocaust. The Holocaust at least has a kind of simple central narrative: an attempt to exterminate the Jews. It fits into a thousand year history of European anti-Semitism as well as a broader human history of racism and genocide. The purges don't offer any kind of similarly clear story: at different times they focussed on different things. It might be a whole social class, a profession, an ethnicity, or it might start with one or two individuals that Stalin was suspicious of and spread out through their colleagues and families to take in hundreds of people. Targets included kulaks, engineers, doctors, army officers, Poles, Jews, ethnic Germans, Chechens, Estonians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Koreans: in fact any ethnic minority that could provide a possible focus for dissent. The total number of deaths, including not just those executed but those who died in slave labour camps or famine, is disputed; but 20 million is apprently a plausible ballpark figure.
At one stage Stalin was setting two quotas for the different regions: the number to be shot and the number to be arrested. These numbers were in the tens or hundreds of thousands, but the regions were soon writing back and requesting that their quotas be extended — out of ideological zeal? In an attempt to demonstrate their loyalty? Or just because these things have a momentum of their own?
It's a staggering story and despite the slight reservations I expressed earlier, this is a very impressive book.
As a piece of history, it's very impressive. It's clearly the result of a huge amount of research by Montefiore: he seems to have personally interviewed just about every living relative of the major figures, quite apart from the endless reading of archives and memoirs that must have been involved. As a casual reader I found it slightly hard going at times. I didn't do it any favours by largely reading it in bed at night, but even allowing for that, I found it hard to keep track of all the people involved. I found I was having difficulty remembering which was which even of the most important figures, like Molotov, Mikoyan and Malenkov.
I don't know if that's an inevitable result of a book with quite so many people in it — It's not a subject I've read about before, and all the unfamiliar Russian names didn't help — or if it's my fault for reading it while drowsy, or if there's more Montefiore could have done to fix the various people in my mind. I didn't find I got much sense of their various personalities that would have helped me keep them separate. Still, what I did get was a strong sense of Stalin himself, and his trajectory from a charming (though ruthless) young man living an almost campus lifestyle at the Kremlin, surrounded by the young families of his colleagues, to a sickly, garrulous old despot wandering nomadically from dacha to dacha and living in a vortex of terror and awe.
But even a sense of what Stalin was like to live and work with doesn't get you much closer to understanding his motivations and the motivations of people around him. Was it just about power or did he believe to the end that he was acting in the interests of Russia and the party? The inner clique around Stalin clearly knew at some level that all the denunciations and show trials were arbitrary and could attach to anyone: they saw the process happen over and over again. And when colleagues they had known for years confessed to ludicrously unlikely accusations, they surely can't have believed it. But the things they said and wrote suggest that at the same time they sort of did believe it, and remained theoretically committed to the ideology to the end. It made me inclined to reread 1984, because the concept of 'doublethink' is so startlingly apt.
In some ways the Stalinist purges are even more incomprehensible than the Holocaust. The Holocaust at least has a kind of simple central narrative: an attempt to exterminate the Jews. It fits into a thousand year history of European anti-Semitism as well as a broader human history of racism and genocide. The purges don't offer any kind of similarly clear story: at different times they focussed on different things. It might be a whole social class, a profession, an ethnicity, or it might start with one or two individuals that Stalin was suspicious of and spread out through their colleagues and families to take in hundreds of people. Targets included kulaks, engineers, doctors, army officers, Poles, Jews, ethnic Germans, Chechens, Estonians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Koreans: in fact any ethnic minority that could provide a possible focus for dissent. The total number of deaths, including not just those executed but those who died in slave labour camps or famine, is disputed; but 20 million is apprently a plausible ballpark figure.
At one stage Stalin was setting two quotas for the different regions: the number to be shot and the number to be arrested. These numbers were in the tens or hundreds of thousands, but the regions were soon writing back and requesting that their quotas be extended — out of ideological zeal? In an attempt to demonstrate their loyalty? Or just because these things have a momentum of their own?
It's a staggering story and despite the slight reservations I expressed earlier, this is a very impressive book.
Utterly, compelling biography of Stalin. You see the genius, the paranoia, the bloodlust, the family man, the mafia boss, the Georgian, in this macabre read about one of history's greatest monsters. Highly recommended!