What do you think?
Rate this book
Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator
The most authoritative and engrossing biography of the notorious dictator ever written
Josef Stalin exercised supreme power in the Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953. During that quarter-century, by Oleg Khlevniuk’s estimate, he caused the imprisonment and execution of no fewer than a million Soviet citizens per year . Millions more were victims of famine directly resulting from Stalin's policies. What drove him toward such ruthlessness? This essential biography, by the author most deeply familiar with the vast archives of the Soviet era, offers an unprecedented, fine-grained portrait of Stalin the man and dictator. Without mythologizing Stalin as either benevolent or an evil genius, Khlevniuk resolves numerous controversies about specific events in the dictator’s life while assembling many hundreds of previously unknown letters, memos, reports, and diaries into a comprehensive, compelling narrative of a life that altered the course of world history.
In brief, revealing prologues to each chapter, Khlevniuk takes his reader into Stalin’s favorite dacha, where the innermost circle of Soviet leadership gathered as their vozhd lay dying. Chronological chapters then illuminate major themes: Stalin’s childhood, his involvement in the Revolution and the early Bolshevik government under Lenin, his assumption of undivided power and mandate for industrialization and collectivization, the Terror, World War II, and the postwar period. At the book’s conclusion, the author presents a cogent warning against nostalgia for the Stalinist era.
Josef Stalin exercised supreme power in the Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953. During that quarter-century, by Oleg Khlevniuk’s estimate, he caused the imprisonment and execution of no fewer than a million Soviet citizens per year . Millions more were victims of famine directly resulting from Stalin's policies. What drove him toward such ruthlessness? This essential biography, by the author most deeply familiar with the vast archives of the Soviet era, offers an unprecedented, fine-grained portrait of Stalin the man and dictator. Without mythologizing Stalin as either benevolent or an evil genius, Khlevniuk resolves numerous controversies about specific events in the dictator’s life while assembling many hundreds of previously unknown letters, memos, reports, and diaries into a comprehensive, compelling narrative of a life that altered the course of world history.
In brief, revealing prologues to each chapter, Khlevniuk takes his reader into Stalin’s favorite dacha, where the innermost circle of Soviet leadership gathered as their vozhd lay dying. Chronological chapters then illuminate major themes: Stalin’s childhood, his involvement in the Revolution and the early Bolshevik government under Lenin, his assumption of undivided power and mandate for industrialization and collectivization, the Terror, World War II, and the postwar period. At the book’s conclusion, the author presents a cogent warning against nostalgia for the Stalinist era.
392 pages, Hardcover
First published February 4, 2015
478 people are currently reading
2,927 people want to read
About the author
Oleg V. Khlevniuk
11 books37 followersOleg Vitalyevich Khlevniuk Ukrainian and Russian historian of Stalinism and the Soviet Union. His position as senior researcher of the State Archive of the Russian Federation has given him unprecedented access to source documents kept strictly secret until the fall of Communism in 1991, and he has done much to study the materials and make them available to other scholars.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 192 reviews
February 28, 2024
There should be a guide for us poor readers of biographies. There are multiple biographies available for all famous people and the biographies differ wildly. With this guy Stalin, I have recently tried Stephen Kotkin's massive first-of-three parts 900 page tome with its teenytiny typeface and it defeated me, there was wayyyyy too much detail for a simple soul like me - I drowned, even though Stephen has a wonderful racy style. He knows too much and he thinks you should too! So Kotkin takes 900 pages to tell Stalin's story up to age 45. In great contrast Oleg Khlevniuk takes 340 pages to tell the entire story. *
HOW DID STALIN GET TO THE TOP
Stalin undoubtedly deserved his standing and reputation as a prominent Bolshevik. His organizational and writing abilities, daring, decisiveness, cool head, simple tastes, adaptability and devotion to Lenin all contributed to his elevation to the top ranks.
So, you see, hard work, talent and ambition sometimes will pay off handsomely.
WHAT WE DON’T GET TO FIND OUT
Praise has gushed forth for this book, but I had some complaints. We are never sure what Stalin thought communism was, what the whole point of it was, how long it would take to achieve; what he thought of Hitler, when he realised the Nazis were lethal, is also unknown. The Stalin in this book is a valueless paranoid who endlessly signs orders for purges, for exiles, for transportations and for executions. He sees enemies everywhere so at some point the only purpose of his dictatorship is to maintain himself as dictator. Stalin becomes the point of the Russian revolution.
Another great swathe of this book is concerned with the sterile jockeying of the top politburo cheeses for position, also value-free. Did these horrible bureaucrats think they were benefitting the Russian people? We must assume so, in some way, but really we have no idea. At some point it kind of looks like they’re doing it for themselves (see Animal Farm).
So this book leaves out too much! He should surely have mentioned that one of Hitler's main obsessions was the destruction of Bolshevism - he made no secret of it - so what did Stalin think of that ? He doesn't even tell us what Stalin thought communism was for! I mean to say, if all it did was oppress the peasants, liquidate millions of innocent workers, create unintended famines by wrecking agriculture and eventually reaching a standard of living way below anything experienced in the west, what was it all for? You have to wonder. Did Stalin think revolution was possible in the west or in other countries? The Chinese revolution occurs offstage until 1949 when suddenly it happens without any warning and without any hint of what Stalin thought about this huge event.
Instead of investigating all this our author keeps us in a claustrophobic space where all we can see is the endless jockeying for position and power amongst the politburo, enlivened by the endless recurring purges.
WHY DID IT ALL GO HORRIBLY WRONG?
He had no expertise whatsoever when it came to dealing with the economy and probably sincerely believed it could be forced into whatever mold politics dictated.
USSR WAS NEVER COMMUNIST
It was state capitalist.
Wikipedia gives us this definition :
A state-capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts as a single huge corporation, extracting surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production.
Indeed, the Stalinist version of communism seemed to have been the mirror image, at the level of the entire state, of the standard idea of the capitalist enterprise, in which the greedy bosses mercilessly exploit the workers, whose wages are kept as low as possible, strikes forbidden, no holidays. And all profits go to the directors who live their lives of luxury, spending their millions on vanity projects. According to the author, this is exactly what happened in the USSR from the 30s to the 50s.
HOW IDEAS ABOUT AGRICULTURE DESTROYED THE USSR
The main reason it all went wrong, it seems, is that Stalin and his mates had a deep loathing for the peasants. You might be thinking that the communism is all for the working class and you’d be right but wrong if you thought that the toiling millions of Russian peasants were considered to be working class. No! they were exploiters! The better-off ones, anyway. The working class were the industrial workers only. So it was perfectly okay, therefore, to maintain a kind of war on the greedy food-withholding peasants. As soon as he could, Stalin forced all the peasants into collective farms :
“Communes” – agricultural and social utopias, the brainchild of socialist fanatics – were proclaimed to be the ideal form and goal of collectivization…. Peasant property became the property of the community, right down to family chickens and personal items. These insane and bloody plans fully reflected Stalin’s ideas and intentions. …. One factor in Stalin’s calculations was his belief (shared by many party functionaries) that a moneyless form of socialism based on the exchange of goods was right around the corner.
They could never figure out how to make collective farms productive; they seemed to be crippled by a universal foot-dragging fueled by a gut-level hatred of the Soviet government. If your agriculture is on its knees for 30 years your country is going to fail. There will be regular famines in various areas. The USSR could never seem to fix it.
THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
The Bolsheviks were committed to their revolution in the sincere belief that life in Russia was intolerable and communism would make things infinitely better. They didn’t intend to cause famines but they did. Because they had no knowledge of how to run an industrial state they made many horrible mistakes :
Vast sums and resources were poured into undertaking construction that was never completed; into equipment for which no use was ever found, purchased from abroad out of Soviet gold reserves; into wasteful redesigns, the inevitable result of excessive haste; and into goods so poorly produced as to be unusable.
This is heartbreaking. **
HITLER/STALIN
Though this gruesome twosome were the big dictator opponents in WW2 and ruled their empires with amazing cruelty they were utterly different. Hitler rose from nothing and nowhere by the power of his charisma and rhetoric, galvanising thousands with his iron dreams of glory. The German people were in love with Hitler. He had them in a trance, listening to him spit fire for an hour, all without notes, they thought they had caught a glimpse of German heaven. He was their great leader. But Stalin spent ten years toiling tirelessly for someone else's revolution; he slowly wormed and connived his way to the top, nothing was handed to him, he wangled and backstabbed and he also worked 25 hours a day. He hardly ever spoke in public, he was stumbling and rambling and dull. It took him another ten years after the revolution to eliminate his rivals and become supreme dictator. Hitler's cult of personality was spontaneous and heartfelt, Stalin's was manufactured by the Party - but it's true, eventually that became a deep heartfelt thing too.
*****
*Compare this with the new biography of Sylvia Plath Red Comet by Heather Clark – 1154 pages on a life that ended at the age of 30.
** Grotesque errors made by democratic governments are of course not uncommon – there’s an entertaining book about the subject called The Blunders of Our Governments by Anthony King. But they are fairly mild compared to the Stalin gang’s mistakes.
HOW DID STALIN GET TO THE TOP
Stalin undoubtedly deserved his standing and reputation as a prominent Bolshevik. His organizational and writing abilities, daring, decisiveness, cool head, simple tastes, adaptability and devotion to Lenin all contributed to his elevation to the top ranks.
So, you see, hard work, talent and ambition sometimes will pay off handsomely.
WHAT WE DON’T GET TO FIND OUT
Praise has gushed forth for this book, but I had some complaints. We are never sure what Stalin thought communism was, what the whole point of it was, how long it would take to achieve; what he thought of Hitler, when he realised the Nazis were lethal, is also unknown. The Stalin in this book is a valueless paranoid who endlessly signs orders for purges, for exiles, for transportations and for executions. He sees enemies everywhere so at some point the only purpose of his dictatorship is to maintain himself as dictator. Stalin becomes the point of the Russian revolution.
Another great swathe of this book is concerned with the sterile jockeying of the top politburo cheeses for position, also value-free. Did these horrible bureaucrats think they were benefitting the Russian people? We must assume so, in some way, but really we have no idea. At some point it kind of looks like they’re doing it for themselves (see Animal Farm).
So this book leaves out too much! He should surely have mentioned that one of Hitler's main obsessions was the destruction of Bolshevism - he made no secret of it - so what did Stalin think of that ? He doesn't even tell us what Stalin thought communism was for! I mean to say, if all it did was oppress the peasants, liquidate millions of innocent workers, create unintended famines by wrecking agriculture and eventually reaching a standard of living way below anything experienced in the west, what was it all for? You have to wonder. Did Stalin think revolution was possible in the west or in other countries? The Chinese revolution occurs offstage until 1949 when suddenly it happens without any warning and without any hint of what Stalin thought about this huge event.
Instead of investigating all this our author keeps us in a claustrophobic space where all we can see is the endless jockeying for position and power amongst the politburo, enlivened by the endless recurring purges.
WHY DID IT ALL GO HORRIBLY WRONG?
He had no expertise whatsoever when it came to dealing with the economy and probably sincerely believed it could be forced into whatever mold politics dictated.
USSR WAS NEVER COMMUNIST
It was state capitalist.
Wikipedia gives us this definition :
A state-capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts as a single huge corporation, extracting surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production.
Indeed, the Stalinist version of communism seemed to have been the mirror image, at the level of the entire state, of the standard idea of the capitalist enterprise, in which the greedy bosses mercilessly exploit the workers, whose wages are kept as low as possible, strikes forbidden, no holidays. And all profits go to the directors who live their lives of luxury, spending their millions on vanity projects. According to the author, this is exactly what happened in the USSR from the 30s to the 50s.
HOW IDEAS ABOUT AGRICULTURE DESTROYED THE USSR
The main reason it all went wrong, it seems, is that Stalin and his mates had a deep loathing for the peasants. You might be thinking that the communism is all for the working class and you’d be right but wrong if you thought that the toiling millions of Russian peasants were considered to be working class. No! they were exploiters! The better-off ones, anyway. The working class were the industrial workers only. So it was perfectly okay, therefore, to maintain a kind of war on the greedy food-withholding peasants. As soon as he could, Stalin forced all the peasants into collective farms :
“Communes” – agricultural and social utopias, the brainchild of socialist fanatics – were proclaimed to be the ideal form and goal of collectivization…. Peasant property became the property of the community, right down to family chickens and personal items. These insane and bloody plans fully reflected Stalin’s ideas and intentions. …. One factor in Stalin’s calculations was his belief (shared by many party functionaries) that a moneyless form of socialism based on the exchange of goods was right around the corner.
They could never figure out how to make collective farms productive; they seemed to be crippled by a universal foot-dragging fueled by a gut-level hatred of the Soviet government. If your agriculture is on its knees for 30 years your country is going to fail. There will be regular famines in various areas. The USSR could never seem to fix it.
THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
The Bolsheviks were committed to their revolution in the sincere belief that life in Russia was intolerable and communism would make things infinitely better. They didn’t intend to cause famines but they did. Because they had no knowledge of how to run an industrial state they made many horrible mistakes :
Vast sums and resources were poured into undertaking construction that was never completed; into equipment for which no use was ever found, purchased from abroad out of Soviet gold reserves; into wasteful redesigns, the inevitable result of excessive haste; and into goods so poorly produced as to be unusable.
This is heartbreaking. **
HITLER/STALIN
Though this gruesome twosome were the big dictator opponents in WW2 and ruled their empires with amazing cruelty they were utterly different. Hitler rose from nothing and nowhere by the power of his charisma and rhetoric, galvanising thousands with his iron dreams of glory. The German people were in love with Hitler. He had them in a trance, listening to him spit fire for an hour, all without notes, they thought they had caught a glimpse of German heaven. He was their great leader. But Stalin spent ten years toiling tirelessly for someone else's revolution; he slowly wormed and connived his way to the top, nothing was handed to him, he wangled and backstabbed and he also worked 25 hours a day. He hardly ever spoke in public, he was stumbling and rambling and dull. It took him another ten years after the revolution to eliminate his rivals and become supreme dictator. Hitler's cult of personality was spontaneous and heartfelt, Stalin's was manufactured by the Party - but it's true, eventually that became a deep heartfelt thing too.
*****
*Compare this with the new biography of Sylvia Plath Red Comet by Heather Clark – 1154 pages on a life that ended at the age of 30.
** Grotesque errors made by democratic governments are of course not uncommon – there’s an entertaining book about the subject called The Blunders of Our Governments by Anthony King. But they are fairly mild compared to the Stalin gang’s mistakes.
January 17, 2019
Oleg V. Khlevniuk presents a new biography on one of history’s most ruthless dictators, Joseph Stalin. Taking the reader well behind the (iron) curtain, Khlevniuk explores some of the many topics only briefly mentioned in passing before, if not entirely erased from outsider discussion. Joseph Stalin, born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, came from a frugal household. A Georgian by birth, Jughashvili did not let his family’s plight shape his academic successes, earning top honours throughout his educational endeavours, before joining the seminary. As a young man, Jughashvili rebranded himself as Joseph Stalin, a name that rolled off the tongue with greater ease, while also finding solace in the Bolshevik Party, speaking out for a Marxist way of life. Stalin’s close ties to Lenin saw him rise in the Party and help develop the plans for the eventual uprising that history has called the Russian Revolution. Stalin could not stomach much of the class divisions that he saw developing in his homeland, but also did not stay quiet about these issues, finding himself shipped off to Siberia on a few occasions. Khlevniuk offers up a few interesting vignettes about Stalin’s time there, including letters pleading for assistance as he starved and froze. Under Lenin’s leadership, the Bolsheviks stormed to power after raising a Red Army that crippled the already weakened Russian troops under the current government, with Stalin close to the top of the power structure. Lenin could see that his protégé was less about the Marxist ideology in practice than the complete concentration of power and its delivery with an iron fist—a theme that would recur throughout the biography. As history has recounted, Lenin feared his eventual death, as it would surely see Stalin take the reins and steer the USSR in another direction. Khlevniuk illustrates Stalin’s impatience as he waited for control over the Communist Secretariat, biding his time as Lenin sought a firm, but not harsh, approach to the new ideological delivery. When Stalin did succeed Lenin, things took a significant change in the USSR, as the new leader sought to focus his attention on bringing to pass some of his collectivisation tactics, textbook communism wherein the country would share all. Khlevniuk explores Stalin’s first ‘five year plan’ in which commodities were taken from the various communities and amassed centrally. Brutal hoarding of products brought about by Party rules saw people literally starving, with no remorse by Stalin whatsoever. Khlevniuk depicts brutal murder for those who would not abide by the rules and how some mothers, mad with starvation, turned to murdering their children to eat their flesh. This brutality continued as Stalin killed or brought about the deaths of millions under the USSR’s control, all in an effort to concentrate power. [As an aside, it is fascinating as well as horrifying to see the narrative go in depth about all these atrocities, substantiated by much of Khlevniuk’s research. While the world remained clueless about these acts, focus and shock appeared turned towards Hitler’s decision to exterminate people over the next 10-15 years!] Stalin continued his brutal governing, instilling fear and repression into his people with some of these foundational Marxist values that were taken out of context. Khlevniuk offers countless examples to show just how authoritarian things became in the USSR in the lead-up to the Second World War. Without any firm alliances on the international scene, Stalin inched towards the Nazis, who were solidifying their own power structure in Western Europe. As Khlevniuk explores, Stalin soon realised that he may have made a pact with the devil, noticing Hitler’s plans to overtake Europe with no thought to anyone else. Not wanting to show any sign of weakness, Stalin held onto his loose non-aggression pact with Hitler, only to have the German dictator plot an invasion of Russia in secret. The narrative of the war years is both bold in its assertions of how Stalin kept the Red Army in line and brutal in discussions about the clashes with the Nazis and punitive measures doled out for not ‘serving Russia adequately’. By the end of fighting, Khlevniuk cites that over six million Russians had died, a figure that becomes even more astonishing when added to the millions who perished during the famines and collectivisations mentioned before. With the war over, Stalin turned to his own territorial expansions across Eastern Europe, amassing countries under his Communist umbrella. While he did that, he watched with fascination as China turned red, though its leader, Mao, would not be suppressed or bullied. Stalin may have had the role of brutal communist dictator sewed up, but Mao was surely ready to learn and did enact some of his own horrible treatment of the Chinese. Stalin’s health had always been an issue, but it became even more apparent the final years of his life, as his outward appearance showed significant signs of wear. Khlevniuk examines this, both through the narrative and with extracted comments by others, as Stalin suffered a debilitating stroke while those in his inner circle could do nothing. By the end, it was a waiting game, as Russia’s powerful leader and generalissimo soon drifted off and never woke. Sentiment in the streets was mixed, though the Secret Police and communist officials sough to quell much of the critical talk. The end of an era and a loosening of the reins of power would follow for Russia, as one of the world’s most ruthless dictators was no more, his indelible mark not one the world will soon be able to ignore. A brilliant biographical piece that will entertain and educate many who take the time to read it. Highly recommended for those who love political biographies, particularly of those leaders who have received such a whitewashed tale in history books.
While I am no expert on Stalin, communist, or even Marxist theory, I can see that Khlevniuk’s efforts with this piece are not only stellar, but comprehensive. Choosing to focus on the man and add the lenses of his leadership and the ideology he espouses, the reader sees a new and definitely more brutal Stalin than has been previously substantiated. Those readers who love biographies and how they are cobbled together will find significant interest in the introduction, where Khlevniuk explains not only why this piece is ‘new’, but how he was able to take past biographies (both of Stalin and those closest to him) and weave new narratives to tell the story from inside the Kremlin walls. Actions are no longer part of a sterlised account and the reader is not fed tasteless narrative pablum, but able to see more of the actions and the blood flowing in the proverbial streets. I was shocked on more than one occasion with the attention to detail provided within the piece and how these accounts received substantiation from those in the room, as though they could now speak out without worry of being persecuted. Khlevniuk is able to convey a great deal of information in his narrative, taking the reader deep into the history, but knows what will appeal to the general reader and what might be too mundane. His dividing the book into six parts (chapters) allows the reader to see the various parts of Stalin’s life. Interestingly enough, Khlevniuk tells the reader in his introduction that each part can be read in whatever order they choose, though anyone seeking a chronological depiction of Stalin should (and would) read from beginning to end in that order. Full of detail and substantiated comments, this biography of Joseph Stalin is not only new, but well worth the reader’s time and should not be missed solely because of its length. There is much to learn about the man and his impact on world history, as we enter an era of new authoritarian leaders who seek to control large portions of the population.
Kudos, Mr. Khlevniuk, for an outstanding piece of writing. I learned a great deal and hope that others will be able to take as much away from reading this book as well.
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
While I am no expert on Stalin, communist, or even Marxist theory, I can see that Khlevniuk’s efforts with this piece are not only stellar, but comprehensive. Choosing to focus on the man and add the lenses of his leadership and the ideology he espouses, the reader sees a new and definitely more brutal Stalin than has been previously substantiated. Those readers who love biographies and how they are cobbled together will find significant interest in the introduction, where Khlevniuk explains not only why this piece is ‘new’, but how he was able to take past biographies (both of Stalin and those closest to him) and weave new narratives to tell the story from inside the Kremlin walls. Actions are no longer part of a sterlised account and the reader is not fed tasteless narrative pablum, but able to see more of the actions and the blood flowing in the proverbial streets. I was shocked on more than one occasion with the attention to detail provided within the piece and how these accounts received substantiation from those in the room, as though they could now speak out without worry of being persecuted. Khlevniuk is able to convey a great deal of information in his narrative, taking the reader deep into the history, but knows what will appeal to the general reader and what might be too mundane. His dividing the book into six parts (chapters) allows the reader to see the various parts of Stalin’s life. Interestingly enough, Khlevniuk tells the reader in his introduction that each part can be read in whatever order they choose, though anyone seeking a chronological depiction of Stalin should (and would) read from beginning to end in that order. Full of detail and substantiated comments, this biography of Joseph Stalin is not only new, but well worth the reader’s time and should not be missed solely because of its length. There is much to learn about the man and his impact on world history, as we enter an era of new authoritarian leaders who seek to control large portions of the population.
Kudos, Mr. Khlevniuk, for an outstanding piece of writing. I learned a great deal and hope that others will be able to take as much away from reading this book as well.
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
May 26, 2015
An excellent scholarly yet easy to read Stalin biography.
Oleg V. Khlevniuk has dug deep into the Russian archives to create this relatively concise by most biographical standards yet authoritative account of Stalin's life.
Whilst I was familiar with Stalin’s wartime role I was less familiar with his rise and the circumstances of his death. The author cleverly uses the dictators last days to bind a wide ranging account to a common point of reference and uses the circumstances of his death to effectively show how he became so dominant.
Several standard Stalin histories are questioned and undermined by the lack of firm evidence that Khlevniuk has found in the archives as well as questioning the reliability of some of eyewitness accounts those histories have been based on.
An excellent easy to read biography of the man who by most accounts killed more people than Hitler.
Oleg V. Khlevniuk has dug deep into the Russian archives to create this relatively concise by most biographical standards yet authoritative account of Stalin's life.
Whilst I was familiar with Stalin’s wartime role I was less familiar with his rise and the circumstances of his death. The author cleverly uses the dictators last days to bind a wide ranging account to a common point of reference and uses the circumstances of his death to effectively show how he became so dominant.
Several standard Stalin histories are questioned and undermined by the lack of firm evidence that Khlevniuk has found in the archives as well as questioning the reliability of some of eyewitness accounts those histories have been based on.
An excellent easy to read biography of the man who by most accounts killed more people than Hitler.
March 8, 2017
4,5 close to 5. Definitely best book I've read this year yet... Well written, very readable and impressively informative. The latter is no surprising, taking into account that endnotes make up to almost 70 pages. Extremely impressive...
November 28, 2023
I have been interested in reading a good Bio on Stalin for a while and this new once popped up on my radar. Well researched and written it reads well and seems to cover his life from early obscurity to his death. Enjoyable read. Recommended
May 26, 2020
دا كتاب لطيف جدا، سيرة شبه شاملة لمسيرة ستالين الحديدية، وقدرته المستمرة على التواجد في المناطق الآمنة والانقلاب بعد كدا والانتصار على الكل، بحقد وكره واضح.
ستالين فعلا من أهم شخصيات القرن العشرين واخطرهم، الرجل قدر ينافس ويفوز في الاتحاد السوفيتي بكل جرأة واقتدار، من أول وفاة لينين وهو دخل صراعات كان فيها خصم عنيد ومستبد حقيقي، والأهم إنه شخص بلا رحمة، يستحق صورته الدموية واللي كسبها بعنف واقتدار تخليه يتحط ضمن أكبر ديكتاتور في القرن العشرين واكثرهم عنفا وسفكا للدماء.
المهم في الكتاب هو تركيزه على نشاطات ستالين وتصرفاته ولقاءاته المدونة والمسجلة في دفاتر ومدونات رسمية غير المحاضر الرسمية للاجتماعات، قدر من خلالها تصوير حياة الديكتاتور وطريقة تصرفه، وكمان تسليط الكاتب الضوء على حياة ستالين ما قبل الثورة وهو طفل وشاب ساعد في رسم صورة الانسان الظالم دا.
وفي كل مرة بقرأ فيها عن الحقبة الستالينية بندهش من تجرد الرجل دا من كل مشاعر ممكنة في التخلص من البشر حتى لو أقرب المقربين له، حرفيا دا رجل مكنش له لا حبيب ولا قريب ولا صديق، والأعجب هو قوته المفرطة في التحكم، رجل كان متحكم فعليا في حياة ملايين، وفي ايده كل الخيوط والادارات وقدر يبث في نفوس مرؤوسيه صفة الإله، ففضلوا تحت ايده يحركهم زي العرايس.
ومن مميزات الكتاب دا بردو إنه قدّم لنا حياة إنسان ديكتاتور من غير شيطنة، وازاي كانت الصراعات هي هوسه الاكبر، حتى لو صراعات هو اللي بيعملها وينافس فيها ناس هو اللي حكم عليهم انهم خصومه، وينكل بهم زي ما هو عايز.
في المجمل كتاب جميل لشخصية ديكتاتور غريب عجيب وسفاح.
ستالين فعلا من أهم شخصيات القرن العشرين واخطرهم، الرجل قدر ينافس ويفوز في الاتحاد السوفيتي بكل جرأة واقتدار، من أول وفاة لينين وهو دخل صراعات كان فيها خصم عنيد ومستبد حقيقي، والأهم إنه شخص بلا رحمة، يستحق صورته الدموية واللي كسبها بعنف واقتدار تخليه يتحط ضمن أكبر ديكتاتور في القرن العشرين واكثرهم عنفا وسفكا للدماء.
المهم في الكتاب هو تركيزه على نشاطات ستالين وتصرفاته ولقاءاته المدونة والمسجلة في دفاتر ومدونات رسمية غير المحاضر الرسمية للاجتماعات، قدر من خلالها تصوير حياة الديكتاتور وطريقة تصرفه، وكمان تسليط الكاتب الضوء على حياة ستالين ما قبل الثورة وهو طفل وشاب ساعد في رسم صورة الانسان الظالم دا.
وفي كل مرة بقرأ فيها عن الحقبة الستالينية بندهش من تجرد الرجل دا من كل مشاعر ممكنة في التخلص من البشر حتى لو أقرب المقربين له، حرفيا دا رجل مكنش له لا حبيب ولا قريب ولا صديق، والأعجب هو قوته المفرطة في التحكم، رجل كان متحكم فعليا في حياة ملايين، وفي ايده كل الخيوط والادارات وقدر يبث في نفوس مرؤوسيه صفة الإله، ففضلوا تحت ايده يحركهم زي العرايس.
ومن مميزات الكتاب دا بردو إنه قدّم لنا حياة إنسان ديكتاتور من غير شيطنة، وازاي كانت الصراعات هي هوسه الاكبر، حتى لو صراعات هو اللي بيعملها وينافس فيها ناس هو اللي حكم عليهم انهم خصومه، وينكل بهم زي ما هو عايز.
في المجمل كتاب جميل لشخصية ديكتاتور غريب عجيب وسفاح.
September 29, 2021
Leon Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher, Robert Service, Stephen Kotkin, Robert Conquest, and Simon Sebag Montefiore have all produced widely-read accounts of Joseph Stalin’s life. They’re among scores of others. In fact, Amazon dredges up more than 1,000 titles in response to the query “Stalin biography.” Why, then, is yet a new biography of the man necessary? The Russian historian who wrote it explains that “in today’s Russia . . . Stalin’s image is primarily being shaped by pseudo-scholarly apologias.”
Rejecting an “alternative” Stalin
This “large-scale poisoning of minds with myths of an ‘alternative’ Stalin” prompted him to write his sixth book on the man. And Oleg Khlevniuk may well be the world’s leading expert on Joseph Stalin, having dedicated more than two decades to studying his life. His “new biography,” published in 2015, benefits from the opening of Soviet archives and his own seemingly obsessive pursuit of other original sources. While the book is not an easy read, it may be as close to an authoritative and well-balanced picture of the man who ruled the USSR as a dictator from 1928 to his death in 1953.
The harsh reality of Stalin’s rule
To the West, Joseph Stalin was a monster who was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of Soviet citizens. Khlevniuk does not shy away from this reality. “Official records show,” he writes, “that approximately eight hundred thousand people were shot [on Stalin’s orders] between 1930 and 1952.” But that number only hints at the wider truth. “Between 1930 and 1952, some 20 million people were sentenced to incarceration in labor camps, penal colonies, or prisons. During that same period no fewer than 6 million, primarily ‘kulaks‘ and members of ‘oppressed peoples,’ were subjected to . . . forced resettlement to a remote area of the USSR. “On average, over the more than twenty-year span of Stalin’s rule, 1 million people were shot, incarcerated, or deported to barely habitable areas of the Soviet Union every year.”
And these numbers don’t include the seven to ten million people who died in the Great Famine in Ukraine—or the twenty-seven million people who lost their lives in the country in World War II, many of them needlessly as a result of blunders by Stalin.
The death of Stalin is a linchpin for the story
At its core, Khlevniuk’s Stalin is a conventional political biography, chronologically ordered. But its six chapters alternate with interludes that use Stalin’s death and the events surrounding it as a device to explore the dictator’s family life and the way he conducted himself on a daily basis. The book opens on the evening of February 28, 1953, at Stalin’s home near Moscow. The five men who govern the Soviet Union—ostensibly as a collective known as “the Five”—are at dinner. As the author explains how Stalin relates to them, we learn how terrified all four of the others are. But this is the last time they will meet for dinner.
After they leave, sometime in the early hours of the morning of March 1, the seventy-four-year-old Stalin suffers a devastating stroke that leaves him immobile and alone. Subsequent interludes reveal how he lay dying for hours, with everyone in his entourage afraid to intrude. It’s a brutally effective portrayal. And Khlevniuk’s account proceeds to relate the great speed with which the men around Stalin moved to undo many of the harsh and counterproductive policies he’d pursued.
Nearly four decades to rise to unchallenged control
In the main body of the book’s text, Khlevniuk describes—sometimes in mind-numbing details—Stalin’s twenty-year rise to a position as “one of Lenin’s closest associates” and the power politics that consumed the Soviet leadership for years after Lenin’s death in 1924. Most accounts of Soviet history report that Stalin had clawed his way to unchallenged command of the Party and the government by 1928. But the author suggests that time didn’t arrive until 1937. The Great Purge (or Red Terror) eliminated any hint of potential opposition as Stalin methodically murdered his Bolshevik colleagues, one after another, only to replace them with younger men who were beholden only to him.
That shift to inexperienced and sometimes incompetent men sorely tested Stalin’s ability to respond once Nazi Germany attacked in July 1941. Khlevniuk’s account explains in great detail in his depiction of the disbelief, shock, and inaction with which Stalin and his close associates greeted the arrival of the invading German armies. He writes, “There is no serious basis for revising the traditional view that Stalin was fatally indecisive and even befuddled in the face of the growing Nazi threat.”
A balanced portrayal of Stalin’s life
Most accounts of the life of Stalin imply that his paranoid personality and lack of compassion stem from the brutal circumstances of his upbringing. He is commonly portrayed as an ignorant thug. Khlevniuk dispels that notion. He writes, “By many measures, Stalin’s childhood was ordinary or even comfortable.” His mother could read and fiercely pursued all possibilities for him to receive an education. Because he was a “model student” and his mother used all the resources at her disposal, Stalin benefited from ten years of religious education, including four in a seminary—he was studying for the priesthood—and gained a lifelong love of reading.
He was also well-traveled early in his life, visiting Stockholm, London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Krakow. Apparently, too, he could read English, French, and German to some extent. For a time before the Revolution, he was the editor of Pravda. And he had a prodigious memory. The man was formidable. In most respects, it was difficult to distinguish him from the middle-class intellectuals who predominated in the Bolshevik leadership—other than that he was just a little smarter than most.
About the author
Wikipedia notes that Oleg V. Khlevniuk (1959-) “is a historian and a senior researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow. Much of his writing on Stalinist Soviet Union is based on newly released archival documents, including personal correspondence, drafts of Central Committee paperwork, new memoirs, and interviews with former functionaries and the families of Politburo members.” Stalin is his sixth book.
Rejecting an “alternative” Stalin
This “large-scale poisoning of minds with myths of an ‘alternative’ Stalin” prompted him to write his sixth book on the man. And Oleg Khlevniuk may well be the world’s leading expert on Joseph Stalin, having dedicated more than two decades to studying his life. His “new biography,” published in 2015, benefits from the opening of Soviet archives and his own seemingly obsessive pursuit of other original sources. While the book is not an easy read, it may be as close to an authoritative and well-balanced picture of the man who ruled the USSR as a dictator from 1928 to his death in 1953.
The harsh reality of Stalin’s rule
To the West, Joseph Stalin was a monster who was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of Soviet citizens. Khlevniuk does not shy away from this reality. “Official records show,” he writes, “that approximately eight hundred thousand people were shot [on Stalin’s orders] between 1930 and 1952.” But that number only hints at the wider truth. “Between 1930 and 1952, some 20 million people were sentenced to incarceration in labor camps, penal colonies, or prisons. During that same period no fewer than 6 million, primarily ‘kulaks‘ and members of ‘oppressed peoples,’ were subjected to . . . forced resettlement to a remote area of the USSR. “On average, over the more than twenty-year span of Stalin’s rule, 1 million people were shot, incarcerated, or deported to barely habitable areas of the Soviet Union every year.”
And these numbers don’t include the seven to ten million people who died in the Great Famine in Ukraine—or the twenty-seven million people who lost their lives in the country in World War II, many of them needlessly as a result of blunders by Stalin.
The death of Stalin is a linchpin for the story
At its core, Khlevniuk’s Stalin is a conventional political biography, chronologically ordered. But its six chapters alternate with interludes that use Stalin’s death and the events surrounding it as a device to explore the dictator’s family life and the way he conducted himself on a daily basis. The book opens on the evening of February 28, 1953, at Stalin’s home near Moscow. The five men who govern the Soviet Union—ostensibly as a collective known as “the Five”—are at dinner. As the author explains how Stalin relates to them, we learn how terrified all four of the others are. But this is the last time they will meet for dinner.
After they leave, sometime in the early hours of the morning of March 1, the seventy-four-year-old Stalin suffers a devastating stroke that leaves him immobile and alone. Subsequent interludes reveal how he lay dying for hours, with everyone in his entourage afraid to intrude. It’s a brutally effective portrayal. And Khlevniuk’s account proceeds to relate the great speed with which the men around Stalin moved to undo many of the harsh and counterproductive policies he’d pursued.
Nearly four decades to rise to unchallenged control
In the main body of the book’s text, Khlevniuk describes—sometimes in mind-numbing details—Stalin’s twenty-year rise to a position as “one of Lenin’s closest associates” and the power politics that consumed the Soviet leadership for years after Lenin’s death in 1924. Most accounts of Soviet history report that Stalin had clawed his way to unchallenged command of the Party and the government by 1928. But the author suggests that time didn’t arrive until 1937. The Great Purge (or Red Terror) eliminated any hint of potential opposition as Stalin methodically murdered his Bolshevik colleagues, one after another, only to replace them with younger men who were beholden only to him.
That shift to inexperienced and sometimes incompetent men sorely tested Stalin’s ability to respond once Nazi Germany attacked in July 1941. Khlevniuk’s account explains in great detail in his depiction of the disbelief, shock, and inaction with which Stalin and his close associates greeted the arrival of the invading German armies. He writes, “There is no serious basis for revising the traditional view that Stalin was fatally indecisive and even befuddled in the face of the growing Nazi threat.”
A balanced portrayal of Stalin’s life
Most accounts of the life of Stalin imply that his paranoid personality and lack of compassion stem from the brutal circumstances of his upbringing. He is commonly portrayed as an ignorant thug. Khlevniuk dispels that notion. He writes, “By many measures, Stalin’s childhood was ordinary or even comfortable.” His mother could read and fiercely pursued all possibilities for him to receive an education. Because he was a “model student” and his mother used all the resources at her disposal, Stalin benefited from ten years of religious education, including four in a seminary—he was studying for the priesthood—and gained a lifelong love of reading.
He was also well-traveled early in his life, visiting Stockholm, London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Krakow. Apparently, too, he could read English, French, and German to some extent. For a time before the Revolution, he was the editor of Pravda. And he had a prodigious memory. The man was formidable. In most respects, it was difficult to distinguish him from the middle-class intellectuals who predominated in the Bolshevik leadership—other than that he was just a little smarter than most.
About the author
Wikipedia notes that Oleg V. Khlevniuk (1959-) “is a historian and a senior researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow. Much of his writing on Stalinist Soviet Union is based on newly released archival documents, including personal correspondence, drafts of Central Committee paperwork, new memoirs, and interviews with former functionaries and the families of Politburo members.” Stalin is his sixth book.
June 24, 2023
An excellent and (apparently) very reliable biography of Stalin. It is by a Russian historian based on the then recently opened archives and is well translated into English. He occasionally has an agenda--which is portraying Stalin (accurately) as the terrible person he was, against the increasingly positive portrayals and apologia in Russia. But that barely gets in the way of a very well told story that is based on careful parsing of the sources. I particularly loved the structure which was an alternation of more conventional historical/biographical chapters in chronological order with short chapters set in the last days of Stalin's life--each one of which used a moment in the present to focus on a specific theme across Stalin's life (e.g., his relationship to his securities services, his doctors, his family, etc.). It's also a nice length.
This covers much of the same ground as the also excellent Stalin, with slightly less narrative flair and slightly more careful sourcing. For Stalin's early life Young Stalin is also excellent.
This covers much of the same ground as the also excellent Stalin, with slightly less narrative flair and slightly more careful sourcing. For Stalin's early life Young Stalin is also excellent.
August 4, 2021
A sober and well-organized biography.
The book is based on twenty years of research, but the book itself is pretty modest and easy to read. Khlevniuk’s writing is insightful and all of his arguments are clearly presented; he disputes the idea that Stalin was behind the Kirov murder, for example, and suggests that Stalin’s medical condition may have influenced his paranoia. There isn’t too much on politics, and this is usually discussed in terms of Stalin’s feuds
The book reads more like a history of Stalin’s times than a conventional biography of the man, though, and often seems like an overview. Still, the narrative is insightful and witty, and you get a good sense of who Stalin was; less so of the people surrounding him.
A well-researched, concise and readable work.
The book is based on twenty years of research, but the book itself is pretty modest and easy to read. Khlevniuk’s writing is insightful and all of his arguments are clearly presented; he disputes the idea that Stalin was behind the Kirov murder, for example, and suggests that Stalin’s medical condition may have influenced his paranoia. There isn’t too much on politics, and this is usually discussed in terms of Stalin’s feuds
The book reads more like a history of Stalin’s times than a conventional biography of the man, though, and often seems like an overview. Still, the narrative is insightful and witty, and you get a good sense of who Stalin was; less so of the people surrounding him.
A well-researched, concise and readable work.
June 21, 2015
Although this book is published by Yale, Klehvniuk is a research fellow at the Russian national archives, and has devoted twenty years of his life to studying Stalin, the ruler that held much of Eastern Europe in an iron grasp from 1929-1953, when he died. That must be a really dark place, but he’s done a brilliant job. Many thanks go to Net Galley and Yale University Press for allowing me a free peek. This book is available for purchase right now.
The author tells us that revisionists have undertaken to rehabilitate Stalin’s reputation lately, and to attribute his various unspeakable crimes against humanity to those below him. What a thought! Many previously secret archives were opened in the early 1990s, and our researcher has been busy indeed.
He begins with a brief but well done recounting of Stalin’s childhood, which he says was grim, but not grimmer than that of most of his peers, and surely not sufficiently grim to account for the monster he would become later in life. Then he discusses the Russian Revolution, and the relationship and struggle among its leadership, most notably Lenin (of whom he has a less favorable view than my own), Trotsky, and Stalin. Lenin and Trotsky disagreed over a number of things, primarily the role of the peasantry in the new society and its government. Lenin pushed Stalin to a higher level of leadership for a brief while because he was not happy with Trotsky, who in any case was in charge of the military, a critical task all by itself at the time. However, when Lenin’s health began to fail and he realized he would have to select a successor, he turned to Trotsky. By then, unfortunately, Stalin had built himself a clique within the leadership. A struggle for control ensued. Stalin came out on top, and Trotsky was banished. In 1940, Stalin paid a henchman to go to Mexico City and kill him with an ice pick.
After Lenin’s death, government was largely by committee, and although ruthless decisions sometimes had to be made at a time when there were still Mensheviks (Social Democrats) who would turn the revolutionary achievement into a bourgeois state, no one person had the ultimate power over the lives of his comrades. Over the next few years, however, the German Revolution failed and scarce resources had to be allocated. Stalin consolidated his hold on authority and the precious resources that could not be distributed sufficiently to keep everyone under the Soviet umbrella warm and fed went first (and increasingly lavishly) to the corrupt bureaucratic caste that controlled the Soviet Union, foremost Stalin himself. After that came resources for the workers in Russian cities; and after that came everyone else. The peasantry, which had been in a state close to slavery under the Tsar, were still shut off from the benefits of the Revolution, and Stalin undertook to force them to produce food for the city while punishing and often executing those that tried to stockpile a small amount on which to sustain their own families.
Klehvniuk gives a good deal of space, and rightly so, to the Great Terror of 1937-1938, when Stalin began suspecting all sorts of people, those close to him, far away, sometimes in large groups, of conspiring against him. He had them rounded up and executed. There even came a point in his career when he was having family members rounded up and shot. Toward the end of his life it was hard to find a qualified physician to treat him, because Stalin had been having so many doctors arrested and shot.
Klehvniuk provides us with a surprisingly readable narrative. He tells the chronological story of Stalin’s rule, with the horrifying numbers of people, most of them innocent, that were slain for political and nonpolitical “crimes” during the quarter century of his rule, and he alternates it with a narrative of Stalin on his deathbed. (Because everyone was so afraid of the guy, when they found him on the floor, alive but in a humiliating position, they had to step out and take a meeting so that no one individual would bear that responsibility. Until then, he stayed on the floor right where he was.)
An intriguing question that will probably never be answered has to do with the very congested state of his arteries upon autopsy. How much of his behavior can be associated with physical causes, possibly including dementia? He was one mean old man when he died. It’s a haunting consideration.
This reviewer was already familiar with a lot of the basic facts of Russian history, and moreso with the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, and Trotsky. Nevertheless I think that the interested lay reader, if not overly attached to remembering the names of all of the secondary players that came and went, ought to be able to make it through this work and find it as absorbing as I did. It’s dark material, and I read other things in between sessions in order to keep my own mood from sliding. That said, I don’t think you will find a more knowledgeable writer or a more approachable biography anywhere than this one.
Whether for your own academic purposes or simply out of interest and the joy in reading a strong biography, you really aren’t likely to find a better written biography of Stalin nor a more well informed author. It went on sale May 19, so you can get a copy now. Highly recommended!
The author tells us that revisionists have undertaken to rehabilitate Stalin’s reputation lately, and to attribute his various unspeakable crimes against humanity to those below him. What a thought! Many previously secret archives were opened in the early 1990s, and our researcher has been busy indeed.
He begins with a brief but well done recounting of Stalin’s childhood, which he says was grim, but not grimmer than that of most of his peers, and surely not sufficiently grim to account for the monster he would become later in life. Then he discusses the Russian Revolution, and the relationship and struggle among its leadership, most notably Lenin (of whom he has a less favorable view than my own), Trotsky, and Stalin. Lenin and Trotsky disagreed over a number of things, primarily the role of the peasantry in the new society and its government. Lenin pushed Stalin to a higher level of leadership for a brief while because he was not happy with Trotsky, who in any case was in charge of the military, a critical task all by itself at the time. However, when Lenin’s health began to fail and he realized he would have to select a successor, he turned to Trotsky. By then, unfortunately, Stalin had built himself a clique within the leadership. A struggle for control ensued. Stalin came out on top, and Trotsky was banished. In 1940, Stalin paid a henchman to go to Mexico City and kill him with an ice pick.
After Lenin’s death, government was largely by committee, and although ruthless decisions sometimes had to be made at a time when there were still Mensheviks (Social Democrats) who would turn the revolutionary achievement into a bourgeois state, no one person had the ultimate power over the lives of his comrades. Over the next few years, however, the German Revolution failed and scarce resources had to be allocated. Stalin consolidated his hold on authority and the precious resources that could not be distributed sufficiently to keep everyone under the Soviet umbrella warm and fed went first (and increasingly lavishly) to the corrupt bureaucratic caste that controlled the Soviet Union, foremost Stalin himself. After that came resources for the workers in Russian cities; and after that came everyone else. The peasantry, which had been in a state close to slavery under the Tsar, were still shut off from the benefits of the Revolution, and Stalin undertook to force them to produce food for the city while punishing and often executing those that tried to stockpile a small amount on which to sustain their own families.
Klehvniuk gives a good deal of space, and rightly so, to the Great Terror of 1937-1938, when Stalin began suspecting all sorts of people, those close to him, far away, sometimes in large groups, of conspiring against him. He had them rounded up and executed. There even came a point in his career when he was having family members rounded up and shot. Toward the end of his life it was hard to find a qualified physician to treat him, because Stalin had been having so many doctors arrested and shot.
Klehvniuk provides us with a surprisingly readable narrative. He tells the chronological story of Stalin’s rule, with the horrifying numbers of people, most of them innocent, that were slain for political and nonpolitical “crimes” during the quarter century of his rule, and he alternates it with a narrative of Stalin on his deathbed. (Because everyone was so afraid of the guy, when they found him on the floor, alive but in a humiliating position, they had to step out and take a meeting so that no one individual would bear that responsibility. Until then, he stayed on the floor right where he was.)
An intriguing question that will probably never be answered has to do with the very congested state of his arteries upon autopsy. How much of his behavior can be associated with physical causes, possibly including dementia? He was one mean old man when he died. It’s a haunting consideration.
This reviewer was already familiar with a lot of the basic facts of Russian history, and moreso with the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, and Trotsky. Nevertheless I think that the interested lay reader, if not overly attached to remembering the names of all of the secondary players that came and went, ought to be able to make it through this work and find it as absorbing as I did. It’s dark material, and I read other things in between sessions in order to keep my own mood from sliding. That said, I don’t think you will find a more knowledgeable writer or a more approachable biography anywhere than this one.
Whether for your own academic purposes or simply out of interest and the joy in reading a strong biography, you really aren’t likely to find a better written biography of Stalin nor a more well informed author. It went on sale May 19, so you can get a copy now. Highly recommended!
December 20, 2020
Probably one of the best history books I've ever read. Eminently readable, despite the major focus of the book, whom committed some of the worst atrocities in history. Stalin's combined policies of mass repression of potential enemies (both real and imagined), horrific economic decisions, unhinged purges of close associates at the top of the Soviet leadership, as well as reckless wartime decisions, have been estimated to have killed millions of people. And he did not just commit one or a few heinous acts, but almost every year of his dictatorship was filled with some combination of the aforementioned dreadful policies that resulted in innummerable suffering and deaths.
This book is absolutely well-researched and brutally honest. The author does not play down or seek justification on the horrific acts perpetrated by Stalin and his associates. However, the author clearly indicates unsubstantiated accusations or rumors that can't be verified by historical documents. An excellent brief yet comprehensive introductory biography on Stalin as a dictator.
4.5 Star.
This book is absolutely well-researched and brutally honest. The author does not play down or seek justification on the horrific acts perpetrated by Stalin and his associates. However, the author clearly indicates unsubstantiated accusations or rumors that can't be verified by historical documents. An excellent brief yet comprehensive introductory biography on Stalin as a dictator.
4.5 Star.
October 8, 2022
Sehr detailreiche Darstellung vom Werdegang und Leben des Gen. Stalin und der Entwicklung der Sowjetunion vor, während und nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg. Aus mir nicht ganz verständlichen Gründen hat der Autor sich dafür entschieden, die letzten Tage in Stalins Leben auszugliedern und in Abwechslung zur chronologischen Biographie zu präsentieren. Das hat bei mir leider dazu geführt, dass der Lese-Flow verloren ging, machte man beim Lesen teilweise doch eine literarische Zeitreise um einige Jahre vor und wieder zurück. Das ist für mich der Grund für den Abzug eines Sterns.
December 29, 2024
Ovo mi je prva biografija o Staljinu i, s obzirom na njen kvalitet, najverovatnije i jedina koju ću pročitati. Delovalo mi je da su pozitivna i negativna mitologizacija već trebale biti prevaziđene. Biografije iz vremena Sovjetskog Saveza su naravno otpale, dok su one iz devedesetih i početka veka verovatno bile podjednako subjektivne.
Arhipelag me dosad nije razočarao izborom istorijskog štiva, a Oleg Hlevnjuk deluje kao prava osoba za ovaj posao. Ruski istoričar specijalizovan za Staljinovo doba, Hlevnjuk je poznat po tome što koristi arhive otvorene nakon raspada SSSR da bi pružio autentičan uvid u Staljinovu vladavinu, čemu doprinosi i njegovo iskustvo naučnog saradnika u moskovskim arhivima.
Biografija kao takva, na prvi pogled možda i suviše koncizna. Svega 480 strana, pa ako je poredimo sa detaljnom biografijom Hitlera Iana Kershawa, ova deluje pomalo siromašno, oskudno. Ipak, završivši je, i ostavivši potom vremena da se vratim pojedinim delovima i razvijam misli - nemam osećaj da nešto propuštam. Svaka tvrdnja je argumentovana, najčešće na osnovu arhivskih podataka koji su postali dostupni nakon raspada Sovjetskog Saveza, uključujući i dokumente iz Staljinove kancelarije, pisma, dnevnike, ukaze. Na primer, Staljinove lične beleške o partijskim sednicama osvetljavaju njegov način odlučivanja, dok pisma Molotovu pokazuju njegovu direktnu kontrolu nad saradnicima. Naredbe o kolektivizaciji pružaju dublji uvid u njegove ekonomske prioritete i metode nadzora. Kad se sve sabere, Život jednog vođe daje uvid u trajan uticaj Staljinovih odluka na Sovjetski Savez, ali i na globalne procese njegovog vremena.
Ipak, najviše me obradovao Hlevnjukov objektivan pristup. U uvodu čitamo o (za mene) iznenađujućoj rehabilitaciji Staljinove ličnosti u Rusiji u poslednjih desetak godina. Znamo i da je od mnogih senzacionalističkih hroničara sa zapada viđen maltene kao utelovljenje zla; neki su išli toliko daleko da ga izjednačavaju sa Hitlerom. Hlevnjuk ne radi ni jedno ni drugo. Kroz ceo tekst se na Džugašvilija fokusira kao na lidera, koji jeste pragmatičan, nemilosrdan diktator, čije akcije dovode do velikih nesreća miliona ljudi, ali istovremeno kao na osobu koja ima svoje metode i ciljeve. Nije samo "ludak jedan" ili "zao do kosti". Autor ne ulazi u detalje o Staljinovoj (mogućoj) narcisoidnosti niti se fokusira na njegovu psihologiju. Umesto toga, objektivno (neki bi mogli reći i hladno) analizira njegove odluke i njihov uticaj, čak i kada su te odluke bile katastrofalne po pojedince i velike grupe ljudi..
Knjiga je podeljena na šest većih glava. Svaka glava fokusira se na jedno istorijsko razdoblje, a svakoj glavi sledi šira analiza nekog od koncepata, i to kroz opis pet dana oko Staljinove smrti, od 1. do 5. marta 1953. Analiza tih pet dana se čita poput romana, a osvetljava poslednje trenutke diktatorskog režima, uključujući reakcije najbližih saradnika, unutrašnje tenzije u partiji, i načine na koje se njegov kult ličnosti održavao čak i u trenucima neizvesnosti. Detalji o haosu u vrhu vlasti, načinu na koji su Staljinovi naslednici raspravljali o budućim pravcima, kao i važnosti njegovog kraja pružaju razumevanje kako se završava jedna epoha neograničene vlasti.
Prva glava tako priča o vremenu pre revolucije, o Josifovom odrastanju u Gruziji, školovanju i robijanju u Sibiru, a njoj prethodi poglavlje "Mesta Staljinove moći", u kojoj opisuje poslednju večeru "petorke" (Maljenkov, Berija, Hruščov, Bulganjin, i naravno, Staljin) u čuvenoj dači. U tom delu govori o organizaciji uskih rukovodećih grupa (poput te petorke), čvrstoj kontroli organa državne bezbednosti, prednost u odnosu na zakone, njegovom načinu rada u kremaljskom kabinetu i u pomenutoj dači, gozbi i večera koje je organizovao u njoj (pio je umereno, ali je voleo da opija pozvane i da posmatra njihovo ponašanje), ličnom raspoređivanju državnih resursa i rezervi, kombinaciju štapa i šargarepe za kontrolisanje kako najbližih saradnika, već i miliona građana SSSR, nesklonosti kompromisima i ustupcima, i potpunu predanost stalnoj klasnoj borbi i napretku socijalizma. Nakon što se polako, ali sa uživanjem, probiješ kroz tih prvih 15-ak strana, pitaš se da li je moguće da je Hlevnjuk sve to smestio na tako mali prostor - i onda ti je jasno da ti "svega 480 strana" neće smetati.
Prva glava, Pre revolucije, vodi nas dakle kroz Kobino detinjstvo i mladost, dok sledeća, Za Lenjinom, bez Lenjina, analizira njegov politički uspon nakon Lenjinove smrti i borbu za prevlast u partiji. (vreme revolucije, preuzimanje uloge generalnog sekretara, preuzimanje kontrole nakon Lenjinove smrti i pobeda nad Trockim i Zinovjevim), pa Njegova revolucija (rat se seljaštvom i glad, ubistvo Kirova, poluteror pred početak čistki). Slede Teror i rat (o vremenu najvećih čistki NKVD, vremenu pred sam početak rata i o manijakalnoj želji da se SSSR što brže industrijalizuje i spremi na sukob sa fašizmom), pomenuti Staljin u ratu (od uplašenosti, tvrdoglavosti u ulozi neiskusnog vojskovođe, do prihvatanja toga da veliki generali treba da vode ratište) i Apsolutni generalisimus (vreme od 1945. do smrti 1953). Autor se pri kraju dotiče i pada diktature, promena Hruščovljevim dolaskom na vlast, ali i Staljinovom mitu ne samo za vreme Sovjetskog Saveza, već i danas.
Ovo je celovit pogled na jedno istorijsko razdoblje, ali i na uticaj jedne osobe na desetine miliona života. Da li je Staljin bio proizvod sistema, ili je bilo obrnuto, to su stvari o kojima je zanimljivo razmišljati, ali mi je bilo interesantno razmišljati i o Hlevnjukovom pristupu istoriji. Ne piše na osnovu prepričavanja ili spekulacija, barem dok ne prouči autentične dokumente i arhivsku građu, ne nagađa, proverava dosad dostupne tvrdnje i kritički ih sagledava, sistematizuje informacije i segmentira ih, a oslanja se na činjenice čak i kada piše o velikim zločinima u kojima je od 1930. do 1952. streljano više od 800,000 ljudi, ili o velikoj gladi u Ukrajini, koja je prouzrokovala smrt miliona ljudi. Uz sve to, povezuje njegove odluke sa posledicama po njegovo okruženje i po svet. Da li bi se holokaust desio da možemo da se vratimo u prošlost i "ubijemo Hitlera bebu u kolevci"? I da li bi se desile stravične čistke tridesetih, da nije bilo Staljina?
Hlevnjuk pokazuje kako odluke pojedinca menjaju istoriju, ali pokazuje i da su te odluke često uslovljene okolnostima i kontekstom u okviru kojih su donešene. Čitajući ovako, naravno da je sve ovo prilično logično - kritičko razmišljanje iznad svega, sagledavanje činjenica, razum pre osećaja kad razmišljaš o takvim stvarima. Ali ipak, fino je podsetiti se na to, pogotovo kad treba da se sklonimo od Staljina i Hitlera, i kad treba da počnemo da razmišljamo o našoj bliskoj ili daljoj istoriji, gde su emocije često mnogo jače.
Kritike? Da se vratim na šturost... Nije mi smetalo to što možda nije obratio dovoljno pažnje na njegov privatni život (ima priče o tome, ima), ali jesam očekivao više o vremenu Drugog svetskog rata. Nije ovo istorija sovjetskog patriotskog rata, niti nemačke Barbarose, ali činilo mi se da je pomalo preleteo preko tog najvažnijeg razdoblja (sve zajedno 70-ak strana o tom periodu). Tako da, iako mislim da ovo jeste jedina Staljinova biografija koju ću čitati, to ne znači da je i poslednje delo koje ću čitati o njegovom vremenu. Autor te inspiriše na dalja istraživanja, čitanje o vremenu revolucije i nakon nje, o vojnoj istoriji na istočnom frontu koja nije samo opšti pregled događaja, kao i o vremenu u Sovjetskom savezu nakon Staljinove smrti.
Arhipelag me dosad nije razočarao izborom istorijskog štiva, a Oleg Hlevnjuk deluje kao prava osoba za ovaj posao. Ruski istoričar specijalizovan za Staljinovo doba, Hlevnjuk je poznat po tome što koristi arhive otvorene nakon raspada SSSR da bi pružio autentičan uvid u Staljinovu vladavinu, čemu doprinosi i njegovo iskustvo naučnog saradnika u moskovskim arhivima.
Biografija kao takva, na prvi pogled možda i suviše koncizna. Svega 480 strana, pa ako je poredimo sa detaljnom biografijom Hitlera Iana Kershawa, ova deluje pomalo siromašno, oskudno. Ipak, završivši je, i ostavivši potom vremena da se vratim pojedinim delovima i razvijam misli - nemam osećaj da nešto propuštam. Svaka tvrdnja je argumentovana, najčešće na osnovu arhivskih podataka koji su postali dostupni nakon raspada Sovjetskog Saveza, uključujući i dokumente iz Staljinove kancelarije, pisma, dnevnike, ukaze. Na primer, Staljinove lične beleške o partijskim sednicama osvetljavaju njegov način odlučivanja, dok pisma Molotovu pokazuju njegovu direktnu kontrolu nad saradnicima. Naredbe o kolektivizaciji pružaju dublji uvid u njegove ekonomske prioritete i metode nadzora. Kad se sve sabere, Život jednog vođe daje uvid u trajan uticaj Staljinovih odluka na Sovjetski Savez, ali i na globalne procese njegovog vremena.
Ipak, najviše me obradovao Hlevnjukov objektivan pristup. U uvodu čitamo o (za mene) iznenađujućoj rehabilitaciji Staljinove ličnosti u Rusiji u poslednjih desetak godina. Znamo i da je od mnogih senzacionalističkih hroničara sa zapada viđen maltene kao utelovljenje zla; neki su išli toliko daleko da ga izjednačavaju sa Hitlerom. Hlevnjuk ne radi ni jedno ni drugo. Kroz ceo tekst se na Džugašvilija fokusira kao na lidera, koji jeste pragmatičan, nemilosrdan diktator, čije akcije dovode do velikih nesreća miliona ljudi, ali istovremeno kao na osobu koja ima svoje metode i ciljeve. Nije samo "ludak jedan" ili "zao do kosti". Autor ne ulazi u detalje o Staljinovoj (mogućoj) narcisoidnosti niti se fokusira na njegovu psihologiju. Umesto toga, objektivno (neki bi mogli reći i hladno) analizira njegove odluke i njihov uticaj, čak i kada su te odluke bile katastrofalne po pojedince i velike grupe ljudi..
Knjiga je podeljena na šest većih glava. Svaka glava fokusira se na jedno istorijsko razdoblje, a svakoj glavi sledi šira analiza nekog od koncepata, i to kroz opis pet dana oko Staljinove smrti, od 1. do 5. marta 1953. Analiza tih pet dana se čita poput romana, a osvetljava poslednje trenutke diktatorskog režima, uključujući reakcije najbližih saradnika, unutrašnje tenzije u partiji, i načine na koje se njegov kult ličnosti održavao čak i u trenucima neizvesnosti. Detalji o haosu u vrhu vlasti, načinu na koji su Staljinovi naslednici raspravljali o budućim pravcima, kao i važnosti njegovog kraja pružaju razumevanje kako se završava jedna epoha neograničene vlasti.
Prva glava tako priča o vremenu pre revolucije, o Josifovom odrastanju u Gruziji, školovanju i robijanju u Sibiru, a njoj prethodi poglavlje "Mesta Staljinove moći", u kojoj opisuje poslednju večeru "petorke" (Maljenkov, Berija, Hruščov, Bulganjin, i naravno, Staljin) u čuvenoj dači. U tom delu govori o organizaciji uskih rukovodećih grupa (poput te petorke), čvrstoj kontroli organa državne bezbednosti, prednost u odnosu na zakone, njegovom načinu rada u kremaljskom kabinetu i u pomenutoj dači, gozbi i večera koje je organizovao u njoj (pio je umereno, ali je voleo da opija pozvane i da posmatra njihovo ponašanje), ličnom raspoređivanju državnih resursa i rezervi, kombinaciju štapa i šargarepe za kontrolisanje kako najbližih saradnika, već i miliona građana SSSR, nesklonosti kompromisima i ustupcima, i potpunu predanost stalnoj klasnoj borbi i napretku socijalizma. Nakon što se polako, ali sa uživanjem, probiješ kroz tih prvih 15-ak strana, pitaš se da li je moguće da je Hlevnjuk sve to smestio na tako mali prostor - i onda ti je jasno da ti "svega 480 strana" neće smetati.
Prva glava, Pre revolucije, vodi nas dakle kroz Kobino detinjstvo i mladost, dok sledeća, Za Lenjinom, bez Lenjina, analizira njegov politički uspon nakon Lenjinove smrti i borbu za prevlast u partiji. (vreme revolucije, preuzimanje uloge generalnog sekretara, preuzimanje kontrole nakon Lenjinove smrti i pobeda nad Trockim i Zinovjevim), pa Njegova revolucija (rat se seljaštvom i glad, ubistvo Kirova, poluteror pred početak čistki). Slede Teror i rat (o vremenu najvećih čistki NKVD, vremenu pred sam početak rata i o manijakalnoj želji da se SSSR što brže industrijalizuje i spremi na sukob sa fašizmom), pomenuti Staljin u ratu (od uplašenosti, tvrdoglavosti u ulozi neiskusnog vojskovođe, do prihvatanja toga da veliki generali treba da vode ratište) i Apsolutni generalisimus (vreme od 1945. do smrti 1953). Autor se pri kraju dotiče i pada diktature, promena Hruščovljevim dolaskom na vlast, ali i Staljinovom mitu ne samo za vreme Sovjetskog Saveza, već i danas.
Ovo je celovit pogled na jedno istorijsko razdoblje, ali i na uticaj jedne osobe na desetine miliona života. Da li je Staljin bio proizvod sistema, ili je bilo obrnuto, to su stvari o kojima je zanimljivo razmišljati, ali mi je bilo interesantno razmišljati i o Hlevnjukovom pristupu istoriji. Ne piše na osnovu prepričavanja ili spekulacija, barem dok ne prouči autentične dokumente i arhivsku građu, ne nagađa, proverava dosad dostupne tvrdnje i kritički ih sagledava, sistematizuje informacije i segmentira ih, a oslanja se na činjenice čak i kada piše o velikim zločinima u kojima je od 1930. do 1952. streljano više od 800,000 ljudi, ili o velikoj gladi u Ukrajini, koja je prouzrokovala smrt miliona ljudi. Uz sve to, povezuje njegove odluke sa posledicama po njegovo okruženje i po svet. Da li bi se holokaust desio da možemo da se vratimo u prošlost i "ubijemo Hitlera bebu u kolevci"? I da li bi se desile stravične čistke tridesetih, da nije bilo Staljina?
Hlevnjuk pokazuje kako odluke pojedinca menjaju istoriju, ali pokazuje i da su te odluke često uslovljene okolnostima i kontekstom u okviru kojih su donešene. Čitajući ovako, naravno da je sve ovo prilično logično - kritičko razmišljanje iznad svega, sagledavanje činjenica, razum pre osećaja kad razmišljaš o takvim stvarima. Ali ipak, fino je podsetiti se na to, pogotovo kad treba da se sklonimo od Staljina i Hitlera, i kad treba da počnemo da razmišljamo o našoj bliskoj ili daljoj istoriji, gde su emocije često mnogo jače.
Kritike? Da se vratim na šturost... Nije mi smetalo to što možda nije obratio dovoljno pažnje na njegov privatni život (ima priče o tome, ima), ali jesam očekivao više o vremenu Drugog svetskog rata. Nije ovo istorija sovjetskog patriotskog rata, niti nemačke Barbarose, ali činilo mi se da je pomalo preleteo preko tog najvažnijeg razdoblja (sve zajedno 70-ak strana o tom periodu). Tako da, iako mislim da ovo jeste jedina Staljinova biografija koju ću čitati, to ne znači da je i poslednje delo koje ću čitati o njegovom vremenu. Autor te inspiriše na dalja istraživanja, čitanje o vremenu revolucije i nakon nje, o vojnoj istoriji na istočnom frontu koja nije samo opšti pregled događaja, kao i o vremenu u Sovjetskom savezu nakon Staljinove smrti.
February 7, 2022
Εξαιρετικά καλογραμμένο, νηφάλιο, τολμηρό και σφαιρικό. Τα κομμάτια που αφορούν στην εσωτερική πολιτική του Στάλιν, της αναρρίχησής του, της δολοφονικής του μανίας, του τρόπου διατήρησης της εξουσίας, είναι τα πιο δυνατά και αναλυτικά. Τα της προσωπικής ζωής είναι μάλλον λίγο-πολύ γνωστά και φαίνεται ότι ο συγγραφέας δεν τους έχει ιδιαίτερη αδυναμία. Τα της εξωτερικής πολιτικής είναι στακάτα και χωρίς ιδιαίτερες αναλύσεις γεωπολιτικής ή διπλωματικής σκοπιάς. Τα του Β'ΠΠ είναι ουσιώδη, αρκετά.
Γενικά, για τον (σχετικά ή τελείως) άπειρο στα της Ρωσικής/σοβιετικής ιστορίας το βιβλίο προτείνεται ανεπιφύλακτα. Για τους πιο έμπειρους επί του θέματος συστήνεται ως πολύ χρήσιμο συμπλήρωμα των υπόλοιπων αναγνωσμάτων.
Διαβάζεται εύκολα, γρήγορα, δεν χάνει το ενδιαφέρον του πουθενά και οδηγεί σε περαιτέρω αναγνώσεις άλλων, παρόμοιων προσεγγίσεων.
Highly recommended.
Γενικά, για τον (σχετικά ή τελείως) άπειρο στα της Ρωσικής/σοβιετικής ιστορίας το βιβλίο προτείνεται ανεπιφύλακτα. Για τους πιο έμπειρους επί του θέματος συστήνεται ως πολύ χρήσιμο συμπλήρωμα των υπόλοιπων αναγνωσμάτων.
Διαβάζεται εύκολα, γρήγορα, δεν χάνει το ενδιαφέρον του πουθενά και οδηγεί σε περαιτέρω αναγνώσεις άλλων, παρόμοιων προσεγγίσεων.
Highly recommended.
May 7, 2015
Есть некоторый misleading в названии. Кажется, что книга - исследование жизни Сталина, в реальности - следующий после википедии этап для желающих ознакомиться с историей его правления: приход к власти, уничтожение оппонентов, методики управления, террор, война, послевоенные дела и уход. Америка не открывается, всё что здесь описано - очень известно и давно. Но компактно изложено, хорошим языком с верно найденной пропорцией фактологии, эмоций, исторических выводов и анекдотов. Полезная была бы книжка для молодых остолопов с телевизионной лапшой на ушах, но они-то ее и не прочитают, увы.
June 10, 2015
Good ol' Uncle Joe...
Josef Stalin's 24-year reign as the supreme power in the USSR resulted in the deaths of millions of its citizens, either directly, as a result of repression, or indirectly, as a result of the famines created in large part by the policies his government pursued. In this new biography, Oleg V Khlevniuk sets out to sift through the massive quantity of documentation available to historians, including material newly released from the archives, with a view to understanding the dictator – his personality and motivations. Khlevniuk claims that many previous biographies have given inaccurate portrayals of Stalin, either because of lack of information or because the biographers were apologists for the regime, or sometimes because they repeated inaccuracies from earlier sources that have passed into the historical mythology. Despite the huge amount of material, Khlevniuk makes the point that there is still much more not yet released by the Russian government. One bonus for historians is that, because Russia was somewhat backwards technologically, Stalin continued to communicate by letter rather than phone until well into the 1930s.
I give my usual disclaimer that I am not qualified to judge the historical accuracy of the book. It certainly appears well researched and gives a coherent and convincing picture of the period. Khlevniuk has used an unconventional structure that I think works quite well. The main chapters provide a linear history of the period, while between these are short interludes where Khlevniuk tells the story of the Stalin's last hours as he lay dying, using this as a jumping off point to discuss various aspects of his life, such as his relationships with his family and the other men at the top of the regime, his reading habits, his health issues, how he organised and controlled the security services, etc. These are not just interesting in themselves – they provide much-needed breaks from what might otherwise be a rather dry account of the facts and figures of his time in power.
Born Ioseb Jughashvili in Georgia in 1879, Stalin was the son of a cobbler, but had a relatively privileged upbringing and education for someone of his class. As a student, he began to associate with the Bolsheviks, gradually rising to a position of prominence. Although he was initially a moderate, believing in a gradual evolution towards socialism, he was clearly a pragmatist, willing to change his views when politically expedient. So when the Revolution kicked off in 1917, he threw his lot in behind Lenin. During the war he had his first experiences as a military commander, at which he failed badly, and it was at this early period that he first developed his technique of 'purging' opponents that he would use with such brutality throughout his life.
After Lenin's death, Stalin became even more ruthless in pursuit of power, eventually emerging as the de facto head of government, though the Socialist committee structures remained in place. He seems to have been bull-headed, forcing ahead with policies regardless of advice to the contrary, and completely uncaring about the consequences of them to the people. He appeared to hate the rural poor, considering them a 'dying breed', and they suffered worst throughout his dictatorship. But he would occasionally do an about-turn if circumstances required, using what we now think of as Orwellian techniques for distorting the past so that his inconsistencies would be hidden. These distortions of course make the later historian's job more difficult in getting at the real truth, hence the ongoing debates around just how many people were imprisoned or died under the Stalinist regime – debates which may never be fully resolved.
Khlevniuk looks in some depth at the Great Terror of 1937-8 when Stalin's purges reached their peak. He tells us that it has been suggested that Stalin must have been going through a period of madness (it's hard to imagine a completely sane brutal murdering dictator somehow, setting targets for the numbers of people each district must purge). But Khlevniuk suggests that the root of his paranoia lay in fear of the approaching war. Stalin remembered that the upheavals of the previous world war had created the conditions for civil war within Russia and wanted at all costs to avoid a repetition of that in the next. This, he suggests, was also the reason that Stalin tried hard to keep the peace with Nazi Germany. However this led to him being unprepared for the German invasion, and as a result the country suffered massive losses of both men and territory in the first few years of the war, while famine, never far away during Stalin's experiment in collectivisation, again reared its ugly and devastating head as the war ended.
Khlevniuk gives an overview of Stalin's relationship with his unlikely war-time allies, Churchill and Roosevelt, and describes his frustration at their delay in opening a second front to relieve some of the pressure on the hard-pressed USSR forces. It was at this time that Stalin was portrayed in the west as Uncle Joe, good ol' friend and staunch ally, suggesting perhaps that the American and British governments were pretty good at Orwellian propagandising too. Of course, when the war ended, so did this uneasy relationship as the 'Great' Powers haggled over spheres of influence and political ideology.
Stalin was to live another eight years after the war ended, during which time he continued his firm grasp on power by periodically purging anyone who looked as if they might be getting too powerful. Khlevniuk paints a picture of Stalin's somewhat lonely death that would be rather sad if one didn't feel he deserved it so much. The most powerful men in his government had secret plans already in place for after Stalin's death, and quickly reversed some of his cruellest policies along with some of his extravagant vanity building projects. A rather pointless life in the end – so much suffering caused for very little permanent legacy. Such is the way of dictatorship, I suppose, and Khlevniuk ends with a timely warning against allowing history to repeat itself in modern Russia.
Overall, this is more a history of the Stalin era than a biography of the man. Despite its considerable length, the scope of the subject matter means that it is necessarily an overview of the period, rarely going into any specific area in great depth. And I found the same about the personalities – while Stalin himself is brought to life to a degree, I didn’t get much of a feeling for the people who surrounded him, while often the suffering of the people seemed reduced to a recital of facts and figures. It’s clearly very well researched and well written, but it veers towards a rather dry, academic telling of the story. I learned a good deal about the time, but in truth rather struggled to maintain my attention. One that I would recommend more perhaps for people with an existing interest in and knowledge of the period rather than for the casual reader like myself.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Yale University Press.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Josef Stalin's 24-year reign as the supreme power in the USSR resulted in the deaths of millions of its citizens, either directly, as a result of repression, or indirectly, as a result of the famines created in large part by the policies his government pursued. In this new biography, Oleg V Khlevniuk sets out to sift through the massive quantity of documentation available to historians, including material newly released from the archives, with a view to understanding the dictator – his personality and motivations. Khlevniuk claims that many previous biographies have given inaccurate portrayals of Stalin, either because of lack of information or because the biographers were apologists for the regime, or sometimes because they repeated inaccuracies from earlier sources that have passed into the historical mythology. Despite the huge amount of material, Khlevniuk makes the point that there is still much more not yet released by the Russian government. One bonus for historians is that, because Russia was somewhat backwards technologically, Stalin continued to communicate by letter rather than phone until well into the 1930s.
I give my usual disclaimer that I am not qualified to judge the historical accuracy of the book. It certainly appears well researched and gives a coherent and convincing picture of the period. Khlevniuk has used an unconventional structure that I think works quite well. The main chapters provide a linear history of the period, while between these are short interludes where Khlevniuk tells the story of the Stalin's last hours as he lay dying, using this as a jumping off point to discuss various aspects of his life, such as his relationships with his family and the other men at the top of the regime, his reading habits, his health issues, how he organised and controlled the security services, etc. These are not just interesting in themselves – they provide much-needed breaks from what might otherwise be a rather dry account of the facts and figures of his time in power.
Born Ioseb Jughashvili in Georgia in 1879, Stalin was the son of a cobbler, but had a relatively privileged upbringing and education for someone of his class. As a student, he began to associate with the Bolsheviks, gradually rising to a position of prominence. Although he was initially a moderate, believing in a gradual evolution towards socialism, he was clearly a pragmatist, willing to change his views when politically expedient. So when the Revolution kicked off in 1917, he threw his lot in behind Lenin. During the war he had his first experiences as a military commander, at which he failed badly, and it was at this early period that he first developed his technique of 'purging' opponents that he would use with such brutality throughout his life.
After Lenin's death, Stalin became even more ruthless in pursuit of power, eventually emerging as the de facto head of government, though the Socialist committee structures remained in place. He seems to have been bull-headed, forcing ahead with policies regardless of advice to the contrary, and completely uncaring about the consequences of them to the people. He appeared to hate the rural poor, considering them a 'dying breed', and they suffered worst throughout his dictatorship. But he would occasionally do an about-turn if circumstances required, using what we now think of as Orwellian techniques for distorting the past so that his inconsistencies would be hidden. These distortions of course make the later historian's job more difficult in getting at the real truth, hence the ongoing debates around just how many people were imprisoned or died under the Stalinist regime – debates which may never be fully resolved.
Khlevniuk looks in some depth at the Great Terror of 1937-8 when Stalin's purges reached their peak. He tells us that it has been suggested that Stalin must have been going through a period of madness (it's hard to imagine a completely sane brutal murdering dictator somehow, setting targets for the numbers of people each district must purge). But Khlevniuk suggests that the root of his paranoia lay in fear of the approaching war. Stalin remembered that the upheavals of the previous world war had created the conditions for civil war within Russia and wanted at all costs to avoid a repetition of that in the next. This, he suggests, was also the reason that Stalin tried hard to keep the peace with Nazi Germany. However this led to him being unprepared for the German invasion, and as a result the country suffered massive losses of both men and territory in the first few years of the war, while famine, never far away during Stalin's experiment in collectivisation, again reared its ugly and devastating head as the war ended.
Khlevniuk gives an overview of Stalin's relationship with his unlikely war-time allies, Churchill and Roosevelt, and describes his frustration at their delay in opening a second front to relieve some of the pressure on the hard-pressed USSR forces. It was at this time that Stalin was portrayed in the west as Uncle Joe, good ol' friend and staunch ally, suggesting perhaps that the American and British governments were pretty good at Orwellian propagandising too. Of course, when the war ended, so did this uneasy relationship as the 'Great' Powers haggled over spheres of influence and political ideology.
Stalin was to live another eight years after the war ended, during which time he continued his firm grasp on power by periodically purging anyone who looked as if they might be getting too powerful. Khlevniuk paints a picture of Stalin's somewhat lonely death that would be rather sad if one didn't feel he deserved it so much. The most powerful men in his government had secret plans already in place for after Stalin's death, and quickly reversed some of his cruellest policies along with some of his extravagant vanity building projects. A rather pointless life in the end – so much suffering caused for very little permanent legacy. Such is the way of dictatorship, I suppose, and Khlevniuk ends with a timely warning against allowing history to repeat itself in modern Russia.
Overall, this is more a history of the Stalin era than a biography of the man. Despite its considerable length, the scope of the subject matter means that it is necessarily an overview of the period, rarely going into any specific area in great depth. And I found the same about the personalities – while Stalin himself is brought to life to a degree, I didn’t get much of a feeling for the people who surrounded him, while often the suffering of the people seemed reduced to a recital of facts and figures. It’s clearly very well researched and well written, but it veers towards a rather dry, academic telling of the story. I learned a good deal about the time, but in truth rather struggled to maintain my attention. One that I would recommend more perhaps for people with an existing interest in and knowledge of the period rather than for the casual reader like myself.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Yale University Press.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
July 29, 2023
If I could give this book zero stars, I would. Besides the fact that I cannot respect or like any book that is assigned as summer reading, I certainly cannot respect a book that is over-detailed in ways that don't matter and ignorant of the realities that actually do. The writing style was clustered and confusing, and I HATED how the book was organized.
My Ukrainian ancestors are rolling over in their graves at the fact that I dedicated two months of my life reading about this sorry-excuse of a man.
My Ukrainian ancestors are rolling over in their graves at the fact that I dedicated two months of my life reading about this sorry-excuse of a man.
June 7, 2024
Впечатлило!
Информативно и увлекательно. Подтвердило моё мнение об этом человеке.
Нельзя давать власть в руки одного человека. Система сдержек и противовесов критически важна. Её отсутствие в данном случае привело к миллионам человеческих жизней.
Советский союз - эксперимент у которого возможно есть свои достижения, однако цена, которую пришлось за это заплатить на мой взгляд неоправдана. В книге подробно об этом говорится.
Я за медленные, органичные и экологичные изменения, когда дело касается миллионов людей.
Информативно и увлекательно. Подтвердило моё мнение об этом человеке.
Нельзя давать власть в руки одного человека. Система сдержек и противовесов критически важна. Её отсутствие в данном случае привело к миллионам человеческих жизней.
Советский союз - эксперимент у которого возможно есть свои достижения, однако цена, которую пришлось за это заплатить на мой взгляд неоправдана. В книге подробно об этом говорится.
Я за медленные, органичные и экологичные изменения, когда дело касается миллионов людей.
October 22, 2019
Oleg V. Khlevniukin "Stalin: Diktaattorin uusi elämäkerta" (Tammi, 2019) on informatiivinen mutta siitä huolimatta tämmöisen maallikon näkökulmasta helposti sulatettava yleisesitys Stalinin elämästä. Kaikin puolin erinomainen elämäkerta, jota kelpaa suositella kaikille Neuvostoliiton historiasta kiinnostuneille!
July 4, 2015
Очень интересная биография Сталина. Просто прекрасная книжка, написанная интересным и живым языком. Автор проделал титанический труд, работая в архиве и нарисовал очень яркую, но в тоже время взвешенную и в меру нейтральную картину, основываясь и работая исключительно с архивами и не оставляя места додумыванию и выкручиванию фактов. Я не знал, что у нас есть такие ученые-историки. Книгу отчаянно рекомендую. Захватила меня полностью и не отпускала, пока я не перевернул последнюю страницу.
Quotes:
Колебания охранников были вполне объяснимы. Конечно, они привыкли к Сталину, так же как одинокий Сталин (которому обслуга отчасти заменяла семью) привык к ним. Время от времени Сталин вместе со служащими дачи работал в саду, жарил шашлыки в камине. Иногда приходил на кухню, чтобы полежать на русской печи, – лечил больную спину.
Временами высшие советские руководители развлекались тем, что рисовали друг на др��га шаржи и карикатуры, в том числе неприличные. На одном из таких рисунков, изображавшем наркома финансов Н. П. Брюханова подвешенным за гениталии, Сталин сделал надпись: «Членам П. Б. За все нынешние и будущие грехи подвесить Брюханова за яйца; если яйца выдержат, считать его оправданным по суду, если не выдержат, утопить его в реке». Очевидно, что Сталин считал это смешным и остроумным.
Во время ссылки на севере:
Сталин все реже контактировал с руководителями партии, находящимися в эмиграции, периодически жаловался в письмах, что они забыли его. Широко известны нелицеприятные для Сталина запросы Ленина, сделанные в 1915 г. разным лицам: «Не помните ли фамилии Кобы?»; «Большая просьба: узнайте […] фамилию «Кобы» (Иосиф Дж…?? Мы забыли)»[116].
Также в книге потрясающе передана атмосфера двадцатых годов (дальше я еще не дочитал) и борьба Сталина с внутренней большевистской оппозицией:
Уважаемый товарищ Сталин,
вчера я узнал, что В. М. Смирнов[237] высылается на три года куда-то на Урал (видимо, в Чердынский уезд), а сегодня, встретив на улице Сапронова[238], услыхал, что он отправляется в Архангельскую губернию, на такой же срок. При этом выезжать им надо уже во вторник, а Смирнов только что вырвал себе половину зубов, чтобы заменить их искусственными, и вынужден теперь ехать беззубым на Уральский Север.
В свое время Ленин выпроводил Мартова[239] за границу со всеми удобствами, а перед тем заботился о том, есть ли у него шуба и галоши. Все это потому, что Мартов когда-то был революционером. Высылаемые теперь бывшие наши товарищи по партии – люди, политически глубоко ошибающиеся, но они не перестали быть революционерами – этого отрицать нельзя […] Спрашивается поэтому, нужно ли загонять их на Север и фактически вести линию на их духовное и физическое уничтожение? По-моему, нет. И мне непонятно, почему нельзя 1) отправить их за границу, как Ленин поступил с Мартовым или 2) поселить внутри страны, в местах с теплым климатом […]
Высылки такого рода создают только лишнее озлобление […] Они усиливают шушуканья о сходстве нынешнего нашего режима и старой полицейщины […].
Сталин ответил через день, 3 января, быстро, но грубо:
Тов. Осинский!
Если подумаете, то поймете, должно быть, что Вы не имеете никакого основания, ни морального, ни какого-то ни было, хулить партию или брать на себя роль супера между партией и оппозицией. Письмо Ваше возвращаю Вам, как оскорбительное для партии. Что касается заботы о Смирнове и др. оппозиционерах, то Вы не имеете оснований сомневаться в том, что партия сделает в этом отношении все возможное и необходимое.
Встревоженный Сталин нарушил привычный распорядок и предложил членам Политбюро поехать в Наркомат обороны[574]. Здесь он лишний раз убедился в том, что катастрофа приобрела огромные размеры. Сталин обрушился на генералов с упреками и обвинениями. Не выдержав напряжения, начальник Генерального штаба Жуков разрыдался и выбежал в соседнюю комнату. Успокаивать его отправился Молотов[575].
Quotes:
Колебания охранников были вполне объяснимы. Конечно, они привыкли к Сталину, так же как одинокий Сталин (которому обслуга отчасти заменяла семью) привык к ним. Время от времени Сталин вместе со служащими дачи работал в саду, жарил шашлыки в камине. Иногда приходил на кухню, чтобы полежать на русской печи, – лечил больную спину.
Временами высшие советские руководители развлекались тем, что рисовали друг на др��га шаржи и карикатуры, в том числе неприличные. На одном из таких рисунков, изображавшем наркома финансов Н. П. Брюханова подвешенным за гениталии, Сталин сделал надпись: «Членам П. Б. За все нынешние и будущие грехи подвесить Брюханова за яйца; если яйца выдержат, считать его оправданным по суду, если не выдержат, утопить его в реке». Очевидно, что Сталин считал это смешным и остроумным.
Во время ссылки на севере:
Сталин все реже контактировал с руководителями партии, находящимися в эмиграции, периодически жаловался в письмах, что они забыли его. Широко известны нелицеприятные для Сталина запросы Ленина, сделанные в 1915 г. разным лицам: «Не помните ли фамилии Кобы?»; «Большая просьба: узнайте […] фамилию «Кобы» (Иосиф Дж…?? Мы забыли)»[116].
Также в книге потрясающе передана атмосфера двадцатых годов (дальше я еще не дочитал) и борьба Сталина с внутренней большевистской оппозицией:
Уважаемый товарищ Сталин,
вчера я узнал, что В. М. Смирнов[237] высылается на три года куда-то на Урал (видимо, в Чердынский уезд), а сегодня, встретив на улице Сапронова[238], услыхал, что он отправляется в Архангельскую губернию, на такой же срок. При этом выезжать им надо уже во вторник, а Смирнов только что вырвал себе половину зубов, чтобы заменить их искусственными, и вынужден теперь ехать беззубым на Уральский Север.
В свое время Ленин выпроводил Мартова[239] за границу со всеми удобствами, а перед тем заботился о том, есть ли у него шуба и галоши. Все это потому, что Мартов когда-то был революционером. Высылаемые теперь бывшие наши товарищи по партии – люди, политически глубоко ошибающиеся, но они не перестали быть революционерами – этого отрицать нельзя […] Спрашивается поэтому, нужно ли загонять их на Север и фактически вести линию на их духовное и физическое уничтожение? По-моему, нет. И мне непонятно, почему нельзя 1) отправить их за границу, как Ленин поступил с Мартовым или 2) поселить внутри страны, в местах с теплым климатом […]
Высылки такого рода создают только лишнее озлобление […] Они усиливают шушуканья о сходстве нынешнего нашего режима и старой полицейщины […].
Сталин ответил через день, 3 января, быстро, но грубо:
Тов. Осинский!
Если подумаете, то поймете, должно быть, что Вы не имеете никакого основания, ни морального, ни какого-то ни было, хулить партию или брать на себя роль супера между партией и оппозицией. Письмо Ваше возвращаю Вам, как оскорбительное для партии. Что касается заботы о Смирнове и др. оппозиционерах, то Вы не имеете оснований сомневаться в том, что партия сделает в этом отношении все возможное и необходимое.
Встревоженный Сталин нарушил привычный распорядок и предложил членам Политбюро поехать в Наркомат обороны[574]. Здесь он лишний раз убедился в том, что катастрофа приобрела огромные размеры. Сталин обрушился на генералов с упреками и обвинениями. Не выдержав напряжения, начальник Генерального штаба Жуков разрыдался и выбежал в соседнюю комнату. Успокаивать его отправился Молотов[575].
July 5, 2015
Needless to say, there is already a vast, existing canon of literature out there on the Soviet dictator, by established authors such as Robert Service and Simon Sebag Montefiore, so the immediate question is, can Oleg Khlevniuk contribute to the already highly acclaimed works out there. The simple answer, is yes.
Much like Service and Montefiore, Khlevniuk has had access to the archives, and therefore has been able to shed more light on Stalin's life and rule. As such, the book takes a very analytical approach, offering key insights into his decision making process. The book is not a simple chronology of events, rather it is also an analysis and insight into what motivated the Soviet strongman, how he thought, and how he rose to supreme power.
The book has an unusual structure. While it does follow a chronological pattern, each chapter ends with a flash forward, in many cases to 1953 with a different in depth analysis of the circumstances surrounding his death.
Oleg Klevniuk does not offer a positive appraisal of Stalin's rule or governance. This may seem like an obvious conclusion, but when one considers the increasing tendency in Russia for a positive reappraisal of the man of steel, in light of the disorderly and chaotic times that have followed, a negative assessment is not to be taken for granted.
Khlevniuk cites the increasing tendency toward slave labor within the Soviet Union, the rather harsh conditions workers were subject to, the suppression of any information that Western Countries had a better way of life, and overall, the very intense climate of fear.
Perhaps most interesting is Khlevniuk's assessment of the eventual end of his life. He states that one can never truly know the public reaction, since many people would choose (out of the will for self preservation) to keep their opinions to themselves.
On the whole, this is a more concise work than other works out there, but by no means an easy read. Khlevniuk is very intense and detailed, and the book can be demanding at times, but definitely worth it.
Much like Service and Montefiore, Khlevniuk has had access to the archives, and therefore has been able to shed more light on Stalin's life and rule. As such, the book takes a very analytical approach, offering key insights into his decision making process. The book is not a simple chronology of events, rather it is also an analysis and insight into what motivated the Soviet strongman, how he thought, and how he rose to supreme power.
The book has an unusual structure. While it does follow a chronological pattern, each chapter ends with a flash forward, in many cases to 1953 with a different in depth analysis of the circumstances surrounding his death.
Oleg Klevniuk does not offer a positive appraisal of Stalin's rule or governance. This may seem like an obvious conclusion, but when one considers the increasing tendency in Russia for a positive reappraisal of the man of steel, in light of the disorderly and chaotic times that have followed, a negative assessment is not to be taken for granted.
Khlevniuk cites the increasing tendency toward slave labor within the Soviet Union, the rather harsh conditions workers were subject to, the suppression of any information that Western Countries had a better way of life, and overall, the very intense climate of fear.
Perhaps most interesting is Khlevniuk's assessment of the eventual end of his life. He states that one can never truly know the public reaction, since many people would choose (out of the will for self preservation) to keep their opinions to themselves.
On the whole, this is a more concise work than other works out there, but by no means an easy read. Khlevniuk is very intense and detailed, and the book can be demanding at times, but definitely worth it.
February 1, 2018
Чрезвычайно понравилось. Очень, очень мрачно, конечно, и становятся предельно ясны три вещи. (Они и так, наверное, были ясны, но тем не менее.)
1. Сталин - очень банальный, заурядный тиран, озабоченный исключительно удержанием власти, довольно трусливый. Разумеется, на протяжении всего сталинского времени на самом деле правит "Политбюро", а Сталин лишь угадывает "волю народа".
2. Один из популярных мемов у сталинистов - "принял страну с сохой, а оставил с атомной бомбой". Нет. И оставил "с сохой" - такую же бедную, измученную, тёмную, несчастную страну (с лёгким налётом "науки и образования").
3. И про преступления коллективизации тоже сильно написано - без деталей, так, знаете, слегка отстранённо - но просто жуть берёт.
1. Сталин - очень банальный, заурядный тиран, озабоченный исключительно удержанием власти, довольно трусливый. Разумеется, на протяжении всего сталинского времени на самом деле правит "Политбюро", а Сталин лишь угадывает "волю народа".
2. Один из популярных мемов у сталинистов - "принял страну с сохой, а оставил с атомной бомбой". Нет. И оставил "с сохой" - такую же бедную, измученную, тёмную, несчастную страну (с лёгким налётом "науки и образования").
3. И про преступления коллективизации тоже сильно написано - без деталей, так, знаете, слегка отстранённо - но просто жуть берёт.
February 26, 2020
Δεν μπορώ να φανταστώ τι διάβασμα έριξε ο συγγραφέας για να το ολοκληρώσει!!! Πλούσια βιβλιογραφία και πήγες στο τέλος.
Δυσκολεύτηκα στην αρχή να κατανοήσω τη δομή του βιβλίου ( ημέρες/ώρες πριν το θάνατο - γέννηση και μετέπειτα πορεία) αλλά στην συνέχεια την συνηθίζεις.
Επίσης, θα ήθελα μεγαλύτερη εμβάθυνση στα ιστορικά γεγονότα, αυτά κάθε αυτά. Προφανώς όμως είναι βιογραφία και όχι ιστορία οπότε έμεινε στα γεγονότα που αφορούσαν τον Στάλιν και πως κινήθηκε ο ίδιος.
Όπως είχα πει κ όταν το ξεκίνησα, ο συγγραφέας δεν ήταν αμερόληπτος και χρησιμοποίησε σκληρή γλώσσα κατά του Στάλιν.
Δεν παύει όμως να είναι ένα μεγάλο έργο που μας φέρνει σε επαφή με έναν άγνωστο '' ηγέτη '' και τον ιδιαίτερα πονεμένο λαό της Ρωσίας.
(ούτε την κορυφή του παγόβουνου δεν άγγιξα 😂)
Δυσκολεύτηκα στην αρχή να κατανοήσω τη δομή του βιβλίου ( ημέρες/ώρες πριν το θάνατο - γέννηση και μετέπειτα πορεία) αλλά στην συνέχεια την συνηθίζεις.
Επίσης, θα ήθελα μεγαλύτερη εμβάθυνση στα ιστορικά γεγονότα, αυτά κάθε αυτά. Προφανώς όμως είναι βιογραφία και όχι ιστορία οπότε έμεινε στα γεγονότα που αφορούσαν τον Στάλιν και πως κινήθηκε ο ίδιος.
Όπως είχα πει κ όταν το ξεκίνησα, ο συγγραφέας δεν ήταν αμερόληπτος και χρησιμοποίησε σκληρή γλώσσα κατά του Στάλιν.
Δεν παύει όμως να είναι ένα μεγάλο έργο που μας φέρνει σε επαφή με έναν άγνωστο '' ηγέτη '' και τον ιδιαίτερα πονεμένο λαό της Ρωσίας.
(ούτε την κορυφή του παγόβουνου δεν άγγιξα 😂)
October 19, 2016
Maybe I was spoiled by Jung Chang's 'Mao' biography, but I was hoping for more from this book.
I never really felt like I understood Stalin's motivations behind actions. This book just sort of a feels like a general overview of Stalin's life. The best parts of the book were when it intercut a narrative about the end of his life, and the book slowed down to dwell on things.
I never really felt like I understood Stalin's motivations behind actions. This book just sort of a feels like a general overview of Stalin's life. The best parts of the book were when it intercut a narrative about the end of his life, and the book slowed down to dwell on things.
August 23, 2020
Molto interessante, rende e descrive bene gli avvenimenti, i disastri, il terrore, il clima, le assurdità del periodo staliniano. Ho apprezzato particolarmente lo stile di scrittura, chiaro e mai stancante.
(i testi che riporto sono tratti dalla prefazione dell’autore e dal libro stesso)
La letteratura su Stalin e la sua era è sterminata. Gli stessi studiosi dello stalinismo ammettono tranquillamente di non averne visionata neppure la metà. In questo mare magnum, ricerche serie e meticolosamente documentate coesistono con sciatte compilazioni di aneddoti, dicerie e montature, raffazzonate alla bell’e meglio. I due ambiti – studio storico e divagazione popolare (in genere filostaliniana) – raramente si sovrappongono e hanno da tempo rinunciato alla possibilità di una conciliazione.
Da qualche anno avevo la curiosità di affrontare la figura di Stalin, prima di partire ero indeciso tra
- questo di Oleg Chlevnjuk
- Stalin di Boris Souvarine
- La rivoluzione russa. Un impero in crisi di Stephen A.Smith
Sono decisamente contento della lettura, tante le cose imparate e chiarite. Paragrafi ricchi di avvenimenti e dei loro significati. Quasi comica la descrizione degli eventi nei suoi ultimi giorni di vita
Un altro aspetto del libro che mi auguro possa facilitarne la lettura, oltre alla mole contenuta, è la sua struttura. Una convenzionale divisione cronologica in capitoli non era adatta a presentare i due livelli interdipendenti della biografia staliniana: la sequenza degli eventi della sua vita e i tratti salienti della sua personalità e dittatura. Da tale difficoltà è nata l’idea di due narrazioni alternate, come una sorta di matrioska testuale. Una catena concettuale esamina la personalità di Stalin e il suo sistema di governo sullo sfondo dei suoi ultimi giorni di vita. L’altra, di taglio più convenzionalmente cronologico, segue le fasi principali della sua biografia.
L’elenco delle circostanze storiche che consentirono al sistema staliniano di perdurare potrebbe proseguire, ma anche con l’ausilio di un insonne apparato repressivo queste non potevano celare del tutto le contraddizioni inerenti alla società sovietica né soffocare un diffuso malcontento. Fin dalla loro ascesa al potere in veste di partito rivoluzionario radicale, i bolscevichi si basarono sulla strategia di dividere la società sopprimendone la frazione che, per origini di classe o ruolo assolto nel corpo sociale, era considerata ostile al socialismo. In tale strategia rientrava l’eliminazione fisica dei membri dei gruppi ostili.15 La rivoluzione staliniana investì enormi risorse nell’epurazione della società da tali «elementi». Ma oltre a nobiltà, borghesia, burocrazia ed esercito zarista, e chiunque altro fosse stato proclamato persona non grata dopo il 1917, a incorrere negli strali del regime fu la fascia più vasta della popolazione: i contadini. Durante la collettivizzazione, molti agricoltori furono bollati come kulaki e passati per le armi, deportati o cacciati dai villaggi natii. Milioni di persone di ogni provenienza sociale furono perseguitate con i pretesti più vari e rinchiuse nel sistema concentrazionario o semplicemente uccise. Consapevole che una tale linea d’azione aveva guadagnato acerrimi nemici alla dittatura, Stalin intensificò le sue epurazioni preventive, in particolare durante il Grande Terrore del 1937-38. La repressione generò repressione. Al termine del suo regime, una parte considerevole – se non la maggioranza – dei cittadini sovietici era stata almeno in un’occasione arrestata, imprigionata in un campo di lavoro, deportata o sottoposta a qualche forma più blanda di abuso.
Fa sempre effetto l’assurdità e l’irragionevolezza dei dittatori
Nel 1947 rivide personalmente la sua biografia ufficiale, inserendo alcune interpolazioni, tra cui la frase seguente: «Magistrale esecutore della missione di vožd’ del partito e del popolo, forte dell’unanime sostegno del popolo sovietico, nondimeno, nelle sue azioni, Stalin non ha mai messo in mostra neppure un’ombra di presunzione, di vanità o di narcisismo». Furono stampate 13 milioni di copie del volume.
Se voleva conservare il potere, pensava, doveva essere considerato infallibile. Talora riconobbe che erano stati fatti degli errori, ma di certo non potevano essere suoi. Scelte e azioni malaccorte erano regolarmente attribuite al «governo», alla burocrazia o – il più delle volte – alle trame dei nemici. L’idea che potesse avere una qualche responsabilità personale per le sofferenze del paese era semplicemente inammissibile. Era disposto, viceversa, a prendersi il merito dei successi. Come accade nei dittatori, il potere assoluto gli instillò inevitabilmente la convinzione di essere dotato di una straordinaria preveggenza. Ma a differenza delle inclinazioni misticheggianti di Hitler, convinto di seguire una via tracciata dall’alto, la fiducia staliniana nella propria infallibilità aveva probabilmente più a che fare con la sua natura diffidente e con le sue inquietudini. Era certo che l’unica persona su cui potesse contare era lui stesso. Tutt’intorno era un pullulare di nemici e traditori. E, a volte, da questa paranoia politica scaturirono immani tragedie. Come nel 1937-38.
Come la data del suo compleanno
Secondo la biografia ufficiale sovietica, Stalin nacque nel 1879. In realtà, Ioseb Džugašvili (così all’anagrafe) era nato un anno prima. Ovviamente, Stalin conosceva perfettamente la data e il luogo della propria nascita: Gori, in Georgia, piccola cittadina di una sperduta contrada del vasto Impero russo. A fornire la data esatta è un registro parrocchiale di Gori (conservato nell’archivio personale di Stalin): 6 dicembre 1878. La stessa data si ritrova in altri documenti, come il diploma conseguito alla Scuola teologica della sua città natale. In un modulo compilato nel 1920, viene nuovamente indicato come anno di nascita il 1878. Ma il 1879 cominciava a fare capolino nei documenti messi a punto dai suoi vari assistenti, e di quella data si sarebbe da allora fatto uso in enciclopedie e rimandi bibliografici. Dopo che egli ebbe consolidato il proprio potere, furono organizzati grandi festeggiamenti in onore del suo cinquantesimo compleanno il 21 dicembre 1929. C’era dunque confusione non solo sull’anno, ma anche sul giorno della nascita: il 9 dicembre (secondo il calendario giuliano) anziché il 6. L’inesattezza giunse all’attenzione degli storici soltanto nel 1990. Resta ancora da chiarirne il motivo. Unica cosa certa è che negli anni Venti Stalin decise di ringiovanire di un anno. E lo fece.
Nel testo anche tanti dati, nomi, numeri
L’apertura degli archivi ha consentito agli storici di valutare con una certa precisione numerica il livello di violenza necessario a ottenere un tale controllo. Si apprende da documenti ufficiali che circa 800.000 persone furono passate per le armi fra il 1930 e il 1952. Tuttavia, molto più elevato è il numero di coloro che perirono in conseguenza delle azioni del regime, dato il frequente ricorso da parte dell’apparato di sicurezza di Stalin a tecniche di tortura letali e le condizioni prevalenti nei campi di lavoro, tali da renderli indistinguibili da veri e propri campi di sterminio. Fra il 1930 e il 1952, circa 20 milioni di persone furono condannate alla reclusione in campi di lavoro, colonie penali o carceri. Nel medesimo periodo, non meno di 6 milioni di individui, principalmente kulaki (contadini agiati) e membri delle «popolazioni represse», furono sottoposti a «esilio amministrativo», vale a dire al trasferimento coatto in qualche remota contrada dell’URSS. Mediamente, nell’arco ultraventennale del dominio di Stalin, un milione di persone all’anno furono uccise, imprigionate o deportate in zone pressoché inabitabili del paese.
Tra le vittime di queste misure c’era un buon numero di criminali comuni. Ma l’eccezionale severità delle leggi e la criminalizzazione di tutte le sfere della vita politica e socioeconomica faceva sì che cittadini comuni rei di infrazioni di poco conto o bersagli di qualche campagna politica venissero spesso classificati come criminali. Per di più, oltre ai 26 milioni di vittime fucilate, incarcerate o condannate all’esilio interno, altre decine di milioni di persone furono costrette a sfacchinare in malagevoli o pericolosi programmi di lavoro, arrestate, soggette a lunghi periodi di reclusione senza alcun capo d’imputazione, o licenziate dal posto di lavoro e cacciate dalle proprie case per essere imparentate con «nemici del popolo». Complessivamente, non meno di 60 milioni di persone subirono sotto la dittatura staliniana gli effetti – in forma «blanda» o «severa» – della repressione e della discriminazione. A questa cifra si devono aggiungere le vittime delle periodiche carestie, che solo nel biennio 1932-33 provocarono la morte di un numero di abitanti compreso fra i 5 e i 7 milioni. Sotto il regime staliniano, la morte per fame era in gran parte la risultante di decisioni politiche. Nella sua battaglia volta a stroncare la protesta contadina contro la collettivizzazione agricola, il governo impiegò la carestia quale mezzo per «punire» le campagne. Qualsiasi opportunità per alleviare la situazione – come l’acquisto di cereali dall’estero – fu respinta. Interi villaggi ridotti alla fame si videro espropriare le loro ultime scorte di cibo.
Da questo orripilante compendio è lecito concludere che una quota ragguardevole di cittadini sovietici incorse in qualche forma di repressione o discriminazione durante il periodo staliniano. [All'inizio del 1937 l'URSS contava complessivamente 162 milioni di abitanti, passati a 188 milioni ai primi del 1953. Di gran lunga più contenuta era naturalmente la popolazione adulta, che nel 1937, per esempio, ammontava all'incirca a 100 milioni di individui.] Non sarebbe esagerato dire che una stragrande maggioranza viveva brutalmente oppressa da una minoranza privilegiata, se non fosse che anche buona parte di quest’ultima finì travolta dal terrore imperante.
(i testi che riporto sono tratti dalla prefazione dell’autore e dal libro stesso)
La letteratura su Stalin e la sua era è sterminata. Gli stessi studiosi dello stalinismo ammettono tranquillamente di non averne visionata neppure la metà. In questo mare magnum, ricerche serie e meticolosamente documentate coesistono con sciatte compilazioni di aneddoti, dicerie e montature, raffazzonate alla bell’e meglio. I due ambiti – studio storico e divagazione popolare (in genere filostaliniana) – raramente si sovrappongono e hanno da tempo rinunciato alla possibilità di una conciliazione.
Da qualche anno avevo la curiosità di affrontare la figura di Stalin, prima di partire ero indeciso tra
- questo di Oleg Chlevnjuk
- Stalin di Boris Souvarine
- La rivoluzione russa. Un impero in crisi di Stephen A.Smith
Sono decisamente contento della lettura, tante le cose imparate e chiarite. Paragrafi ricchi di avvenimenti e dei loro significati. Quasi comica la descrizione degli eventi nei suoi ultimi giorni di vita
Un altro aspetto del libro che mi auguro possa facilitarne la lettura, oltre alla mole contenuta, è la sua struttura. Una convenzionale divisione cronologica in capitoli non era adatta a presentare i due livelli interdipendenti della biografia staliniana: la sequenza degli eventi della sua vita e i tratti salienti della sua personalità e dittatura. Da tale difficoltà è nata l’idea di due narrazioni alternate, come una sorta di matrioska testuale. Una catena concettuale esamina la personalità di Stalin e il suo sistema di governo sullo sfondo dei suoi ultimi giorni di vita. L’altra, di taglio più convenzionalmente cronologico, segue le fasi principali della sua biografia.
L’elenco delle circostanze storiche che consentirono al sistema staliniano di perdurare potrebbe proseguire, ma anche con l’ausilio di un insonne apparato repressivo queste non potevano celare del tutto le contraddizioni inerenti alla società sovietica né soffocare un diffuso malcontento. Fin dalla loro ascesa al potere in veste di partito rivoluzionario radicale, i bolscevichi si basarono sulla strategia di dividere la società sopprimendone la frazione che, per origini di classe o ruolo assolto nel corpo sociale, era considerata ostile al socialismo. In tale strategia rientrava l’eliminazione fisica dei membri dei gruppi ostili.15 La rivoluzione staliniana investì enormi risorse nell’epurazione della società da tali «elementi». Ma oltre a nobiltà, borghesia, burocrazia ed esercito zarista, e chiunque altro fosse stato proclamato persona non grata dopo il 1917, a incorrere negli strali del regime fu la fascia più vasta della popolazione: i contadini. Durante la collettivizzazione, molti agricoltori furono bollati come kulaki e passati per le armi, deportati o cacciati dai villaggi natii. Milioni di persone di ogni provenienza sociale furono perseguitate con i pretesti più vari e rinchiuse nel sistema concentrazionario o semplicemente uccise. Consapevole che una tale linea d’azione aveva guadagnato acerrimi nemici alla dittatura, Stalin intensificò le sue epurazioni preventive, in particolare durante il Grande Terrore del 1937-38. La repressione generò repressione. Al termine del suo regime, una parte considerevole – se non la maggioranza – dei cittadini sovietici era stata almeno in un’occasione arrestata, imprigionata in un campo di lavoro, deportata o sottoposta a qualche forma più blanda di abuso.
Fa sempre effetto l’assurdità e l’irragionevolezza dei dittatori
Nel 1947 rivide personalmente la sua biografia ufficiale, inserendo alcune interpolazioni, tra cui la frase seguente: «Magistrale esecutore della missione di vožd’ del partito e del popolo, forte dell’unanime sostegno del popolo sovietico, nondimeno, nelle sue azioni, Stalin non ha mai messo in mostra neppure un’ombra di presunzione, di vanità o di narcisismo». Furono stampate 13 milioni di copie del volume.
Se voleva conservare il potere, pensava, doveva essere considerato infallibile. Talora riconobbe che erano stati fatti degli errori, ma di certo non potevano essere suoi. Scelte e azioni malaccorte erano regolarmente attribuite al «governo», alla burocrazia o – il più delle volte – alle trame dei nemici. L’idea che potesse avere una qualche responsabilità personale per le sofferenze del paese era semplicemente inammissibile. Era disposto, viceversa, a prendersi il merito dei successi. Come accade nei dittatori, il potere assoluto gli instillò inevitabilmente la convinzione di essere dotato di una straordinaria preveggenza. Ma a differenza delle inclinazioni misticheggianti di Hitler, convinto di seguire una via tracciata dall’alto, la fiducia staliniana nella propria infallibilità aveva probabilmente più a che fare con la sua natura diffidente e con le sue inquietudini. Era certo che l’unica persona su cui potesse contare era lui stesso. Tutt’intorno era un pullulare di nemici e traditori. E, a volte, da questa paranoia politica scaturirono immani tragedie. Come nel 1937-38.
Come la data del suo compleanno
Secondo la biografia ufficiale sovietica, Stalin nacque nel 1879. In realtà, Ioseb Džugašvili (così all’anagrafe) era nato un anno prima. Ovviamente, Stalin conosceva perfettamente la data e il luogo della propria nascita: Gori, in Georgia, piccola cittadina di una sperduta contrada del vasto Impero russo. A fornire la data esatta è un registro parrocchiale di Gori (conservato nell’archivio personale di Stalin): 6 dicembre 1878. La stessa data si ritrova in altri documenti, come il diploma conseguito alla Scuola teologica della sua città natale. In un modulo compilato nel 1920, viene nuovamente indicato come anno di nascita il 1878. Ma il 1879 cominciava a fare capolino nei documenti messi a punto dai suoi vari assistenti, e di quella data si sarebbe da allora fatto uso in enciclopedie e rimandi bibliografici. Dopo che egli ebbe consolidato il proprio potere, furono organizzati grandi festeggiamenti in onore del suo cinquantesimo compleanno il 21 dicembre 1929. C’era dunque confusione non solo sull’anno, ma anche sul giorno della nascita: il 9 dicembre (secondo il calendario giuliano) anziché il 6. L’inesattezza giunse all’attenzione degli storici soltanto nel 1990. Resta ancora da chiarirne il motivo. Unica cosa certa è che negli anni Venti Stalin decise di ringiovanire di un anno. E lo fece.
Nel testo anche tanti dati, nomi, numeri
L’apertura degli archivi ha consentito agli storici di valutare con una certa precisione numerica il livello di violenza necessario a ottenere un tale controllo. Si apprende da documenti ufficiali che circa 800.000 persone furono passate per le armi fra il 1930 e il 1952. Tuttavia, molto più elevato è il numero di coloro che perirono in conseguenza delle azioni del regime, dato il frequente ricorso da parte dell’apparato di sicurezza di Stalin a tecniche di tortura letali e le condizioni prevalenti nei campi di lavoro, tali da renderli indistinguibili da veri e propri campi di sterminio. Fra il 1930 e il 1952, circa 20 milioni di persone furono condannate alla reclusione in campi di lavoro, colonie penali o carceri. Nel medesimo periodo, non meno di 6 milioni di individui, principalmente kulaki (contadini agiati) e membri delle «popolazioni represse», furono sottoposti a «esilio amministrativo», vale a dire al trasferimento coatto in qualche remota contrada dell’URSS. Mediamente, nell’arco ultraventennale del dominio di Stalin, un milione di persone all’anno furono uccise, imprigionate o deportate in zone pressoché inabitabili del paese.
Tra le vittime di queste misure c’era un buon numero di criminali comuni. Ma l’eccezionale severità delle leggi e la criminalizzazione di tutte le sfere della vita politica e socioeconomica faceva sì che cittadini comuni rei di infrazioni di poco conto o bersagli di qualche campagna politica venissero spesso classificati come criminali. Per di più, oltre ai 26 milioni di vittime fucilate, incarcerate o condannate all’esilio interno, altre decine di milioni di persone furono costrette a sfacchinare in malagevoli o pericolosi programmi di lavoro, arrestate, soggette a lunghi periodi di reclusione senza alcun capo d’imputazione, o licenziate dal posto di lavoro e cacciate dalle proprie case per essere imparentate con «nemici del popolo». Complessivamente, non meno di 60 milioni di persone subirono sotto la dittatura staliniana gli effetti – in forma «blanda» o «severa» – della repressione e della discriminazione. A questa cifra si devono aggiungere le vittime delle periodiche carestie, che solo nel biennio 1932-33 provocarono la morte di un numero di abitanti compreso fra i 5 e i 7 milioni. Sotto il regime staliniano, la morte per fame era in gran parte la risultante di decisioni politiche. Nella sua battaglia volta a stroncare la protesta contadina contro la collettivizzazione agricola, il governo impiegò la carestia quale mezzo per «punire» le campagne. Qualsiasi opportunità per alleviare la situazione – come l’acquisto di cereali dall’estero – fu respinta. Interi villaggi ridotti alla fame si videro espropriare le loro ultime scorte di cibo.
Da questo orripilante compendio è lecito concludere che una quota ragguardevole di cittadini sovietici incorse in qualche forma di repressione o discriminazione durante il periodo staliniano. [All'inizio del 1937 l'URSS contava complessivamente 162 milioni di abitanti, passati a 188 milioni ai primi del 1953. Di gran lunga più contenuta era naturalmente la popolazione adulta, che nel 1937, per esempio, ammontava all'incirca a 100 milioni di individui.] Non sarebbe esagerato dire che una stragrande maggioranza viveva brutalmente oppressa da una minoranza privilegiata, se non fosse che anche buona parte di quest’ultima finì travolta dal terrore imperante.
November 17, 2018
Face à un personnage suscitant encore aujourd'hui les sentiments les plus extrêmes, Khlevniuk montre dans ce livre une exceptionnelle rigueur d'historien. S'appuyant sur des sources incontestables accessibles depuis la chute du communisme, il décrit avec une parfaite objectivité l'ascension de Staline menée par son immense capacité de travail, ses talents d'organisateur et son total cynisme. Apportant des éclairages nouveaux sur ses liens avec Staline, sur l'assassinant de Kirov, sur l'impact de la Guerre d'Espagne sur les grandes purges ou sur les graves fautes commises au début de la guerre, cette nouvelle biographie intercale en outre avec talent les chapitres chronologiques avec des analyses construites autour des dernières heures de la vie du dictateur qui aura cependant symbolisé - ou peut-être permis- l'écrasement de l'Allemagne nazie.
October 31, 2021
As a avid Stalin biography reader, this was on of the best that i have read. Its style of mixing meticulous academic research standards and analyses with a Holywood movie biopic narrative style, made it a engaging and informative read. The new evidence presented in this book shows that Stalin was worst than previously known.
The only problem that i saw in this book is the authors clear anticommunist bias. He for example says that communes are a "insane idea". But that was the only instance that i picked that bias. The most interesting thing in this book is, that it proves that Stalin was a true believer in communism, not just and opportunist that masked himself as a communist to gain power.
The only problem that i saw in this book is the authors clear anticommunist bias. He for example says that communes are a "insane idea". But that was the only instance that i picked that bias. The most interesting thing in this book is, that it proves that Stalin was a true believer in communism, not just and opportunist that masked himself as a communist to gain power.
Read
July 12, 2023well written for sure! but it’s not fair for me to rate this book because any book i have to read over the summer for history class is automatically a 1 star in my mind.
July 27, 2020
No doubt this is a gripping read. But content wise its just adequate. I'd have loved to read more about the context (factors, society before and after Stalin, revolution, opponents especially Trotsky, nationalities question and so on). This is just what Stalin did when and some speculation on why.
however I will always be amazed at MLs choosing Stalin as the hill to die on. do better, lads.
however I will always be amazed at MLs choosing Stalin as the hill to die on. do better, lads.
June 19, 2020
Good introduction to Stalin if you were looking for a nice overall perspective on his leadership that's not to big. Excellent read with some nice quotables.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 192 reviews