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Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, by Stephen Kotkin
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Review
Jennifer Siegel, The New York Times Book Review“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.”Richard Pipes, The New York Review of Books:“This is a very serious biography that… is likely to well stand the test of time.” The Wall Street Journal:“Superb . . . Mr. Kotkin’s volume joins an impressive shelf of books on Stalin. Only Mr. Kotkin’s book approaches the highest standard of scholarly rigor and general-interest readability.”New Statesman (UK): “[Kotkin’s] viewpoint is godlike: all the world falls within his purview. He makes comparisons across decades and continents.... An exhilarating ride.”Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic:“An exceptionally ambitious biography… Kotkin builds the case for quite a different interpretation of Stalin—and for quite a few other things, too. The book’s signature achievement… 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.”Robert Gellately, Times Higher Education (London): “A brilliant portrait of a man of contradictions... In the vast literature on the Soviet Union, there is no study to rival Stephen Kotkin’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.”John Thornhill, Financial Times: "It is a measure of Kotkin’s powers of research and explanation that Stalin’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 author’s mastery of detail and the swagger of his judgments.”David Johnson, Johnson’s Russia List: “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.”Geoffrey Roberts, Irish Examiner: “Monumental... For Kotkin it was not Stalin’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.”Donald Rayfield, Literary Review: "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.”Booklist (starred):“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.”Kirkus Reviews (starred):“Authoritative and rigorous…. Staggeringly wide in scope, this work meticulously examines the structural forces that brought down one autocratic regime and put in place another.” Publishers Weekly:“This is an epic, thoroughly researched account that presents a broad vision of Stalin, from his birth to his rise to absolute power.”Library Journal:“Kotkin has been researching his magisterial biography of Stalin for a decade. Inescapably important reading.”John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University; author of George F. Kennan: A Life, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography:“In its size, sweep, sensitivity, and surprises, Stephen Kotkin’s first volume on Stalin is a monumental achievement: the early life of a man we thought we knew, set against the world—no less—that he inhabited. It’s biography on an epic scale. Only Tolstoy might have matched it.”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“Stalin has had more than his fair share of biographies. But Stephen Kotkin’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 history’s greatest evil geniuses.”David Halloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, Stanford University; author of Stalin and the Bomb:“Stephen Kotkin’s first volume on Stalin is ambitious in conception and masterly in execution. It provides a brilliant account of Stalin’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.”Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution:“More than any of Stalin’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 facts—many of them fresh, all of them marshalled into a gripping, fine-grained story.”The Sunday Times (London):“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.”Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Guardian:“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.”
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About the Author
Stephen Kotkin is the John P. Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1989. He is also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He directs Princeton’s Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies program and is the author of several books, including Uncivil Society, Armageddon Averted, and Magnetic Mountain.
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Product details
Paperback: 976 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (October 13, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0143127861
ISBN-13: 978-0143127864
Product Dimensions:
6 x 2.1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
183 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#110,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
I teach a course in Russian politics and have read numerous biographies of Stalin. I wondered how anyone could stretch the story out into three massive volumes. Kit kin did it by creating a brilliant study of Russian history from the late 1800s on. Of course there is a very detailed coverage of Stalin’s own life, but also the best analysis of every aspect of Russian society and politics, both tsarist and soviet that I have seen. I’m just starting volume two and only hope that the author is taking care of himself because, if volume three doesn’t follow, I will have nothing to live for.
I'll keep this short, as I'm not an expert on anything. From what i had, casually, read about the period covered by this book, my impression was that Stalin was a not-so-intelligent, but cunning, thug who brute-forced his way into power on the backs of foe and friend, alike. Maybe there are some "seminal" biographies that arrive at just this conclusion. After finishing this book, my original impression has been revised somewhat. Stalin was a quite intelligent and cunning, Marxist ideologue who, with a mixture of cleverness and good luck, brute-forced his way into power on the backs of foe-and friend alike to carry out his conception of the unfinished work of V. Lenin.I only want to respond to one part of the author's depiction of Stalin's character, his growing paranoia. First of all, almost all of the key actors in this book were paranoid. Second, given the external and internal threats to Bolshevism in thes years, who wouldn't have become paranoid? Finally, Stalin was no more paranoid than your average anti-communist Western leader or high level security bureaucrat during the Cold War.I also disagree that the book is badly written. I liked the author's casual style, and despite the details and length of the book, I found it very captivating, as I had little knowledge about this period or Stalin. The book made lasting impression on me, although it interfered with my sun-bathing during the few summer days we were able to enjoy this year.
This is such a marvelous book that has guaranteed I will read the full trilogy. I started this journey with Anne Applebaum's great book 'Red Famine - Stalin's War on Ukraine' which despite enjoying immensely I realised I would enjoy more if I knew more about Stalin and the Russian Revolution as Anne's book assumes some knowledge I didn't have. This then triggered me to read the wonderful Simon Sebag Montefiere book 'Red Tsar' another wonderful book that covered Stalin from 1928, but really kicks off in 1934 through to his death, this meant I needed more knowledge of Stalin's earlier years. Simon himself via twitter suggested this book by Kotkin & what a great book, truly stunning, more than a book this is an achievement, the depth of insight you get, not just into Stalin but into the societal fissures that made a Stalin figure possible, with a deep dive into Tsarist Russia you develop an understanding of how the Bolshevik coup was made possible, then despite kind of skipping through Stalin's role in the Civil War and even the Revolution itself, the information given on that period and Trotsky gives you the background you need to understand the final 2/3 of the book where the Stalin v Trotsky war is covered in minute detail.Just a wonderful wonderful book, can not recommend it highly enough. If you have any desire to learn about Stalin, The Russian Revolution or even Tsarism, then I can't imagine there is a better book out there to kick off your learning. I may come back to add more to this review lately, as I still have the epilogue to read, but finishing the period mentioned in the title [Birth to 1928] i cannot express how delighted I am to have discovered this book, I truly thank Simon for recommending it, Kotkin for writing it and whoever the publisher is for committing to publish such an exhaustive work. Read this wonderful book
This is a good book. It suffers from some significant flaws but is definitely worth reading.First three negative comments, then the positive. 1) Kotkin chooses to ignore some critical information about Stalin's childhood. A number of recent studies, based largely on evidence that Stalin, once in power, insisted be locked away in archives, reveals the young boy to have suffered material deprivation and a lot of physical and emotional abuse. Do the newly available records show conclusively that Stalin was so damaged that he became a sociopath? No. But those records are highly suggestive. Yet in several places--most notably on page 735--Kotkin says "the beatings likely never took place." Now how on earth could Kotkin know that? He never explains why he disregards the evidence of abuse let alone why, if there were no good evidence, we should believe in a Caucasian version of Little House on the Prairie.Kotkin goes on to suggest that Stalin did not become sociopathic until he was an adult, brutalized by his political conflicts with Trotsky and others. In short, the evil emerged when Stalin was in his 40s. That, though, is as strange a view of personality development as it is of the man himself. The prevailing view among psychologists is that psychopathy/sociopathy are either genetic or induced by extreme abuse during childhood. The notion that a man could be normal, or nearly normal, until nearly middle age and then develop the sort of sadism exhibited by Stalin is a real stretch. Furthermore, it requires almost a willful decision to ignore several instances of ruthless behavior during Stalin's 20s and 30s, a pervasive philandering, and a penchant for violence (or ordering violence) that was both widely recognized and typical of the main Bolsheviks. Once again, Kotkin offers no alternative to the plausible story told by students of the newly available records: that Stalin was profoundly damaged in childhood and developed through adolescence and early adulthood the way most sociopaths do.2) A number of the recent studies (for example, Montefiore's Young Stalin) have found in the archives answers to a previously perplexing question. Namely, why would Lenin in the late 1910s treat a Georgian rube with few ties to Russian and European Marxist leaders as well as he did Stalin? Why was Stalin preferred so consistently over older and more experienced, more connected Bolsheviks? Several of the recent studies contend that Stalin ran a gang of thugs in the Caucasus, and particularly in Baku, that robbed banks, kidnapped members of rich families and held them for ransom, etc., and then forwarded the money to Lenin and his associates. Stalin was a big source of funding for the Bolsheviks, so Lenin needed him. Now, however, Kotkin says that the case for Stalin's life as a gangster is largely unproven. That is strictly true; the evidence is certainly not "beyond a reasonable doubt." But in history the standard is "what is the most reasonable, the most logical explanation?" and in that context the gangster theory has a lot going for it. When Kotkin then insists that Stalin did not run a criminal enterprise that financed much of the Bolshevik effort, he leaves us once again facing that troublesome original question: why would Lenin have treated Stalin so well for so long? Having resurrected the question, Kotkin ventures no answer at all.3) In order to argue against the newly consensual view that Stalin had a horrible childhood, emerged as a young sociopath, organized a criminal gang, and forwarded his earnings to Lenin, Kotkin has no choice but to ignore the bulk of the evidence that is available regarding Stalin's early decades. The result is a strange reticence. Why would a biographer refuse to address a significant body of evidence about his subject? Perhaps to differentiate his book from other recently published biographies. In any case, the silence about young Stalin is a significant flaw in a book that purports to be a biography. Ultimately that silence renders the book more a history of Bolshevism and the Soviet Union than a description of Stalin's life.Now the positive. As a history of Bolshevism and the Soviet Union, the book is excellent. One example is Kotkin's description of the factional struggles in the socialist movement before the October 1917 Revolution and afterwards. The analysis here is clearer than in most books and does a better job of explaining why, for instance, Stalin turned against Kamenev and Zinoviev when he did and why he later had no choice but to isolate and weaken Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky. Kotkin shows quite persuasively why these were pragmatic moves and not simply the result of Stalin's sadism and opportunism. Another strength is Kotkin's treatment of "Lenin's Testament" and the other documents that magically appeared after Lenin's death and that purported to show that Lenin wanted Stalin ousted from power. The author's contention that those documents may have been fabricated by Stalin's enemies is well-argued and well-documented. Kotkin certainly changed my view on that matter. Finally, whereas a lot of writers describe Stalin as a mere opportunist with little ideological conviction, Kotkin demonstrates a consistent devotion to Marxism-Leninism that reasserted itself time and again in Stalin's actions and policies. The result is a portrayal of Stalin not as a cynical and sadistic opportunist but as a zealous communist who, when necessary, made tactical retreats with cynical and sadistic ease. He was a murderous sociopath, but an ideologically committed and consistent one.So the book is definitely worth reading. I really regret the sparse analysis of Stalin's youth. One of the problems that arises constantly in history is the way in which ruthless leaders--Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden--rise to the top of their movements or states. These people often combine political charisma, geopolitical insight, extreme cynicism, vindictiveness, and sadism. To understand what produces, and will continue to produce, such "leaders" one must understand their childhood environments and experiences. An author who chooses to ignore or de-emphasize such factors does the student of history and of current events a disservice by refusing to shed any light on the wellsprings of human evil. Nevertheless, Kotkin's book is a very solid treatment of Bolshevism and the Soviet Union and, by its latter chapters, its focus on Stalin has sharpened somewhat.I hope he moves further in that direction in the second volume.
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