Synopses & Reviews
A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understandingand#160;of Stalin and his world It has the quality of myth: a poor cobblerand#8217;s son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian empire, reinvents himself as a top leader in a band of revolutionary zealots. When the band seizes control of the country in the aftermath of total world war, the former seminarian ruthlessly dominates the new regime until he stands as absolute ruler of a vast and terrible state apparatus, with dominion over Eurasia. While still building his power base within the Bolshevik dictatorship, he embarks upon the greatest gamble of his political life and the largest program of social reengineering ever attempted: the collectivization of all agriculture and industry across one sixth of the earth. Millions will die, and many more millions will suffer, but the man will push through to the end against all resistance and doubts.
Where did such power come from?and#160; In Stalin, Stephen Kotkin offers a biography that, at long last, is equal to this shrewd, sociopathic, charismatic dictator in all his dimensions. The character of Stalin emerges as both astute and blinkered, cynical and true believing, people oriented and vicious, canny enough to see through people but prone to nonsensical beliefs. We see a man inclined to despotism who could be utterly charming, a pragmatic ideologue, a leader who obsessed over slights yet was a precocious geostrategic thinkerand#151;unique among Bolsheviksand#151;and yet who made egregious strategic blunders. Through it all, we see Stalinand#8217;s unflinching persistence, his sheer force of willand#151;perhaps the ultimate key to understanding his indelible mark on history.
Stalin gives an intimate view of the Bolshevik regimeand#8217;s inner geography of power, bringing to the fore fresh materials from Soviet military intelligence and the secret police. Kotkin rejects the inherited wisdom about Stalinand#8217;s psychological makeup, showing us instead how Stalinand#8217;s near paranoia was fundamentally political, and closely tracks the Bolshevik revolutionand#8217;s structural paranoia, the predicament of a Communist regime in an overwhelmingly capitalist world, surrounded and penetrated by enemies. At the same time, Kotkin demonstrates the impossibility of understanding Stalinand#8217;s momentous decisions outside of the context of the tragic history of imperial Russia.
The product of a decade of intrepid research, Stalin is a landmark achievement, a work that recasts the way we think about the Soviet Union, revolution, dictatorship, the twentieth century, and indeed the art of history itself.
Review
Jennifer Siegel, The New York Times Book Review and#8220;A masterly account... Kotkin offers the sweeping context so often missing from all but the best biographies... Stalin is a complex work... but it presents a riveting tale, one written with pace and aplomb. Kotkin has given us a textured, gripping examination of the foundational years of the man most responsible for the construction of the Soviet state in all its brutal glory.... This first volume leaves the reader longing for the story still to come.and#8221;
Richard Pipes,and#160;Theand#160;New York Review of Books:
and#8220;This is a very serious biography thatand#8230; is likely to well stand the test of time.and#8221;and#160;
The Wall Street Journal:
and#8220;Superb . . . Mr. Kotkinand#8217;s volume joins an impressive shelf of books on Stalin. Only Mr. Kotkinand#8217;s book approaches the highest standard of scholarly rigor and general-interest readability.and#8221;
New Statesmanand#160;(UK):and#160;
and#8220;[Kotkinand#8217;s] viewpoint is godlike: all the world falls within his purview. He makes comparisons across decades and continents.... An exhilarating ride.and#8221;
Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic: and#8220;An exceptionally ambitious biographyand#8230; Kotkin builds the case for quite a different interpretation of Stalinand#8212;and for quite a few other things, too. The bookand#8217;s signature achievementand#8230; is its vast scope: Kotkin has set out to write not only the definitive life of Stalin but also the definitive history of the collapse of the Russian empire and the creation of the new Soviet empire in its place.and#8221;
Robert Gellately, Times Higher Education (London):and#160;
and#8220;A brilliant portrait of a man of contradictions... In the vast literature on the Soviet Union, there is no study to rival Stephen Kotkinand#8217;s massive first instalment of a planned three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin. When it is complete, it will surely become the standard work, and I heartily recommend it.and#8221;
John Thornhill, Financial Times:and#160;
"It is a measure of Kotkinand#8217;s powers of research and explanation that Stalinand#8217;s decisions can almost always be understood within the framework of his ideology and the context of his times.... With a ferocious determination worthy of his subject, the author debunks many of the myths to have encrusted themselves around Stalin.... [A] magnificent biography. This reviewer, at least, is already impatient to read the next two volumes for their authorand#8217;s mastery of detail and the swagger of his judgments.and#8221;
David Johnson, Johnsonand#8217;s Russia List:and#160;
and#8220;Required reading for serious Russia-watchers... As the product of years of work and careful thought, it is for me a reminder of what it takes to get close to the truth about important and controversial subjects. And the distance and time required to do so.and#8221;
Geoffrey Roberts, Irish Examiner:and#160;
and#8220;Monumental... For Kotkin it was not Stalinand#8217;s personality that drove his politics but his politics that shaped his personality. His research, narrative and arguments are as convincing as they are exhaustive. The book is long but very readable and highly accessible to the general reader.... Magisterial.and#8221;
Donald Rayfield, Literary Review:and#160;
"Masterful... No other work on Stalin incorporates so well the preliminary information needed by the general reader, yet challenges so thoroughly the specialist's preconceptions. Kotkin has chosen illustrations, many of them little known, which reveal the crippled psyches of his dramatis personae.and#8221;
Booklist (starred):
and#8220;An ambitious, massive, highly detailed work that offers fresh perspectives on the collapse of the czarist regime, the rise of the Bolsheviks, and the seemingly unlikely rise of Stalin to total power over much of the Eurasian land mass....This is an outstanding beginning to what promises to be a definitive work on the Stalin era.and#8221;
Kirkus Reviews (starred):
and#8220;Authoritative and rigorousand#8230;. Staggeringly wide in scope, this work meticulously examines the structural forces that brought down one autocratic regime and put in place another.and#8221;and#160;
Publishers Weekly:
and#8220;This is an epic, thoroughly researched account that presents a broad vision of Stalin, from his birth to his rise to absolute power.and#8221;
Library Journal:
and#8220;Kotkin has been researching his magisterial biography of Stalin for a decade. Inescapably important reading.and#8221;
John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University; author of George F. Kennan: A Life, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography:
and#8220;In its size, sweep, sensitivity, and surprises, Stephen Kotkinand#8217;s first volume on Stalin is a monumental achievement: the early life of a man we thought we knew, set against the worldand#8212;no lessand#8212;that he inhabited. Itand#8217;s biography on an epic scale. Only Tolstoy might have matched it.and#8221;
William Taubman, Professor of Political Science Emeritus, Amherst College; author of Khrushchev: The Man and his Era, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
and#8220;Stalin has had more than his fair share of biographies. But Stephen Kotkinand#8217;s wonderfully broad-gauged work surpasses them all in both breadth and depth, showing brilliantly how the man, the time, the place, its history, and especially Russian/Soviet political culture, combined to produce one of historyand#8217;s greatest evil geniuses.and#8221;
David Halloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, Stanford University; author of Stalin and the Bomb:
and#8220;Stephen Kotkinand#8217;s first volume on Stalin is ambitious in conception and masterly in execution. It provides a brilliant account of Stalinand#8217;s formation as a political actor up to his fateful decision to collectivize agriculture by force. Kotkin combines biography with historical analysis in a way that brings out clearly Stalin's great political talents as well as the ruthlessness with which he applied them and the impact his policies had on Russia and the world. This is a magisterial work on the grandest scale.and#8221;
Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution:
and#8220;More than any of Stalinand#8217;s previous biographers, Stephen Kotkin humanizes one of the great monsters of history, thereby making the monstrosity more comprehensible than it has been before. He does so by sticking to the factsand#8212;many of them fresh, all of them marshalled into a gripping, fine-grained story.and#8221;
The Sunday Times (London):
and#8220;Staggeringly researched, exhaustively thorough... Kotkin has no patience for the idea that Stalin... was a madman or a monster. His personality and crimes, Kotkin thinks, are only explicable in the wider contexts of Russian imperial history and Marxist theory. So this is less a conventional biography than a colossal life and times.... Hugely impressive.and#8221;
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Guardian:
and#8220;Unlike a number of Stalin studies, this is not an etiology of evil. The author does not appear to be watching his subject narrowly for early signs of the monstrous deformations that will later emerge. He tries to look at him at various stages of his career without the benefit of too much hindsight.... [Kotkin] is an engaging interlocutor with a sharp, irreverent wit... making the book a good read as well as an original and largely convincing interpretation of Stalin that should provoke lively arguments in the field.and#8221;
and#160;
Synopsis
A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding of Stalin and his world It has the quality of myth: A poor cobblers son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian empire, reinvents himself as a revolutionary and finds a leadership role within a small group of marginal zealots. When the old world is unexpectedly brought down in a total war, the band seizes control of the country, and the new regime it founds as the vanguard of a new world order is ruthlessly dominated from within by the former seminarian until he stands as the absolute ruler of a vast and terrible state apparatus, with dominion over Eurasia. But the largest country in the world is also a poor and backward one, far behind the great capitalist countries in industrial and military power, encircled on all sides. Shortly after seizing total power, Stalin conceives of the largest program of social reengineering ever attempted: the root-and-branch uprooting and collectivization of agriculture and industry across the entire Soviet Union. To stand up to the capitalists he will force into being an industrialized, militarized, collectivized great power is an act of will. Millions will die, and many more will suffer, but Stalin will push through to the end against all resistance and doubts. Where did such power come from? We think we know the story well. Remarkably, Stephen Kotkins epic new biography shows us how much we still have to learn.
The product of a decade of scrupulous and intrepid research, Stalin contains a host of astonishing revelations. Kotkin gives an intimate first-ever view of the Bolshevik regimes inner geography, bringing to the fore materials from Soviet military intelligence and the secret police. He details Stalins invention of a fabricated trial and mass executions as early as 1918, the technique he would later impose across the whole country. The book places Stalins momentous decision for collectivization more deeply than ever in the tragic history of imperial Russia. Above all, Kotkin offers a convincing portrait and explanation of Stalins monstrous power and of Russian power in the world. Stalin restores a sense of surprise to the way we think about the former Soviet Union, revolution, dictatorship, the twentieth century, and indeed the art of history itself.
About the Author
Stephen Kotkin is the John P. Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University and vice dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, where he has taught since 1989, and is currently a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. From 1996 to 2009 he directed Princetons Russian and Eurasian Studies program. He also works as a consultantand strategist for the Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and is the author of several books, most recently Uncivil Society and Armageddon Averted.