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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.
- Sales Rank: #266633 in Books
- Published on: 2015-05-19
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.13" w x 6.13" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 408 pages
Review
“Authoritative, fluently written. . . . The pinnacle of current scholarship on its subject.”—Charlotte Hobson, Spectator (Charlotte Hobson Spectator 2015-05-23)
“Oleg Khlevniuk is incontestably the best Russian student of Soviet history. In this biography, he uses his experience and talents to give us an innovative and convincing portrait of the Soviet “micromanaging” despot. The chapters dealing with the Terror, war, victory and the tragic postwar years break new ground. Stalin’s political and private life, his relationships with his immediate circle, his family and the “Soviet people,” his intellectual capacities and his way of leading the country, as well as his cruelty and the system of power he built, come vividly to life, and one leaves the book with a much more profound understanding of some of Europe’s darkest decades.”—Andrea Graziosi, author of the Histoire de l'URSS (Andrea Graziosi)
"Oleg Khlevniuk, master of the Russian archives, provides a fresh and acute analysis of Stalin the destroyer to confound revisionists who portray him as a state builder and modernizer."—Alfred J. Rieber, author of Stalin and the Struggle for Eurasia (Alfred J. Rieber)
"Khlevniuk is one of the most knowledgeable historians of Stalin and his era. This excellent biography of Stalin represents the current state
of scholarship, and should be read widely."—Hiroaki Kuromiya, author of Stalin: Profiles in Power (Hiroaki Kuromiya)
"A superb account by the eminent scholar who pioneered the opening of the Soviet archives. Oleg Khlevniuk summarizes a lifetime of research, eschewing unsubstantiated anecdotes and tales and sticking to the documentary record, to produce an authoritative narrative of Stalin’s life and times."—Paul Gregory, Hoover Institution (Paul Gregory)
"Enthralling, brilliant, and groundbreaking, this book confirms Khlevniuk as probably the greatest living expert on Stalin. The culmination of his revelatory archivally-researched works that were the first to understand Stalin as a politician, the book reveals him as a fanatical Marxist and Russian statesman of exceptional but flawed complexity formed above all by his political life and the idiosyncratic realities of Soviet power. Essential reading."—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar (Simon Sebag Montefiore)
"Oleg Khlevniuk makes the modest claim that this is a biography of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union for thirty years. In fact, Khlevniuk has given us not just a biography of Stalin, but a history of the ruling system that Stalin created, and he does so in six concise chapters. Khlevniuk writes with clarity and insight, following the evolution of Stalin from young revolutionary, to undisputed dictator, and finally to ruthless despot, alone and dying as his subordinates cower and hope for the end. The translation by Nora Favorov is excellent, and makes the book easily accessible to English reading audiences. Khlevniuk's biography of Stalin is a deft achievement."—David Shearer, author of Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Social Order and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953 (David Shearer)
“Oleg Khlevniuk’s biography adds greatly to our understanding of Stalin by making extensive and careful use of newly available archives to throw new light on Stalin’s rule. His clear-eyed analysis draws a sharp distinction between what we know from serious research and what we should discard as mere speculation. The result is an unvarnished account that warns against nostalgia for Stalin’s rule.”—David Holloway, author of Stalin and the Bomb (David Holloway)
"In this excellent book, Oleg Khlevniuk answers questions that have engaged historians, puzzled political scientists, and fascinated casual observers for decades. How did Stalin rise from a minor revolutionary to one of the most powerful men in history? How did he manage to first defeat contenders within the Soviet leadership, then to subordinate the Communist Party and the Red Army to his personal authority, to eventually build an empire whose specter haunts Eastern Europe to the present day? And crucially, why didn’t anyone stop him before it was too late?”—Milan Svolik, author of The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (Milan Svolik)
“Khlevniuk manages to take us into the inner sanctum of the dictator's power and show how he ruled his subordinates—indeed the whole country—through the knout and the ginger cookie, the Russian version of carrot and stick. A masterly portrait drawn by a master historian.”—Ronald Grigor Suny, author of The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States (Ronald Grigor Suny)
“No one in the world knows the inner workings of Soviet power in Stalin’s time better than Oleg Khlevniuk. Beautifully and artfully composed, deeply moral, and supremely readable, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator will become the benchmark against which all future biographies of Stalin will be measured. A masterpiece.”—Jan Plamper, author of The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (Jan Plamper)
“A very digestible biography, yet one packed with revelations. . . . If you read just one biography this year, make it this one.”—Paul E. Richardson, Russian Life magazine (Paul E. Richardson Russian Life magazine)
“Superb . . . deeply informed and utterly compelling . . . What [Khlevniuk] highlights is so frequently new and revealing that the portrait in the end seems more accurate and complete than anything before. Favorov’s masterful translation from the Russian preserves the book’s spare, penetrating prose.” Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs (Robert Legvold Foreign Affairs)
Won the 2016 PROSE Award in Biography & Autobiography. The Prose Awards recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing. Presented by the Professional Schoarly Publishing (PSP) Dision of the Associaton of American Publishers (AAP) (Award PROSE 2016-02-08)
Awarded second prize for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize for the Best Russian book in translation.
(Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Pushkin House 2016-05-03)
From the Author
Why do we need another biography of Stalin?
Rarely have so many new sources of information become available within a short period as with the opening of the Stalin-era Soviet archives. I saw it as my task to weave the most salient new information into a narrative that rests entirely on what we know for certain about Stalin and his time.
Was Stalin necessary?
Decades ago the British historian Alec Nove asked, "Was Stalin really necessary?" Everyone knows what a brutal murderer Stalin was, but many believe that "the trains ran on time." The evidence, however, points to catastrophic mismanagement. Nothing in Stalin's background qualified him to take dictatorial control of a vast country, reorganize its agriculture, or serve as its chief military strategist. To the end, he remained willfully blind to the fact that he had built an unworkable system.
You have been among the first to explore Stalin's personal archive. What discovery from this collection most surprised you?
It is interesting that Stalin kept the coerced confessions of the Old Bolsheviks whom he condemned to death. He, of course, knew they were innocent, but for some reason he needed these confessions. Maybe he felt they would justify his actions to posterity?
Beside the lost lives, what, for you, is the greatest tragedy of the Stalinist legacy?
I am frightened that so many of our fellow Russians proclaim the Stalinist period to represent the pinnacle of the country's achievement and that we should use Stalinist methods to return Russia to glory. They refuse to see the horrible price paid. Stalin's admirers regard human life as expendable—the needs of the state come first—and are eager to hunt down twenty-first century "enemies." This totalitarian mindset is Stalin's most terrifying legacy.
About the Author
Oleg V. Khlevniuk is a leading research fellow at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences and senior research fellow at the State Archive of the Russian Federation. His previous Yale books include The History of the Gulag, Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle, and several collections of Stalin's correspondence.
Most helpful customer reviews
38 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Superb portrait of Stalin
By J. Romane
I remember when Stalin was still alive. A miasma of fear surrounded his name. It made no difference whether someone believed Stalin was a terrible monster or that he was the stern and slandered point man leading to the new world. Clearly, the Soviet Leader took Machiavelli’s dictum to heart: best to be feared. Preferring secrecy, at times duplicitous, able to handle convoluted situations with a winning hand, Stalin maneuvered through thirty years of challenging and difficult events. But what was he really like?
There are many fine biographies of Stalin, starting with Trotsky’s interesting rendering of Stalin and proceeding to the excellent works of Ulam and Tucker. Then General Volkogonov open real archives and a richer and more nuanced image began to emerge. Archival information, added to memoirs and other sources produced, in the hands of Radzinsky and Montefiore, intriguing and compelling images.
Oleg Khlevniuk has written a book, not about Soviet history, but about Stalin. Here is the man as he saw himself, as others saw him, and as he interacted with others. Solidly based on primary sources, using notes, agendas, memoirs, writings in Stalin’s hand, and other such materials made during the events, Khlevniuk draws an image of Stalin that reveals itself as the pages pass. Of course, at the bottom remains the mystery of personality but Khlevniuk’s picture is clearer than most.
A word about the book’s organization: Khlevniuk starts each of the seven sections with narratives of events during Stalin’s death. Each section, chronologically presented, picks up themes from the death scene. This allows Khlevniuk to balance both chronological integrity and topical treatments in a skillful narrative. Moreover, Khlevniuk presents his materials in a way that allows the reader to see how different interpretations can apply to the same event.
This is a very good read and an important book on Stalin.
30 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
The Brutal Regime of Stalin
By Paul Gelman
To start with, here are some statistics: during the reign of Stalin, between 1930 to 1952, 26 million people in Russia were put to death, 20 million were incarcerated in labor camps, penal colonies or prisons, 6 million peasants were subjected to administrative exile, and, on average, 1 million people were shot, incarcerated ,or deported to barely habitable areas every year.
During 1937-1938, Stalin personally initiated all the main repressive campaigns, devised plans to carry them out, and monitored their implementation. He also guided the fabrication of evidence for numerous political trials and in several instances wrote detailed scripts for how show trials should play out. He had a passion for reading the cascade of arrestee interrogation protocols that came before him, and the notations he made on them show he read them attentively.
These are just some samples taken from this new and brilliantly written biography about one of the most notorious monsters who ruled Russia during the previous century.
What makes this book stand out is the huge effort invested in searching for new , original documents hitherto buried in various Russian archives and it is here where the main strenght of this book lies. The aothor dispels many myths about Stalin. For example, Stalin never gave the order to Kill Kirov in 1934.
By using many letters, diaries, memos, reports and other marginalia, this work shows the extent of the horror experienced by the Russians in their everyday life.
Stalin's paranoia is well documented, but the new angle offered here has to do with one possible and main reason for it. Indeed, Mr Khlevniuk, in one central chapter, incorporates the testimony of one of Stalin's doctors, Miasnikov, who concluded that "Stalin's cruelty and suspiciousness, his fear of enemies and loss of the ability to assess people and events-all this was the result to a certain extent, of arteriosclerosis of the arteries of the brain (or rather, artheriosclerosis exacerbated these traits). Basically, the state was being governed by a sick man".
These observations are entirely consistent with the testimony of Stalin's associates, and, according to Molotov, "Stalin was not quite in possession of his faculties during the final years".
But the author adds that this in itself does not explain the dictator's ruthlessness. He adds that the Spanish Civil War and the hesitant behaviour of the West has added fuel to the fire.
In six excellent chapters, Stalin's reign is broadly described. Many other questions are posed and answered, among them: Why did the majority of the people accept Stalin's methods? How come Stalin managed to instill terror in every household? How did the peasants react during the brutal collectivization? Why was the army so weak before the Nazi invasion in 1941? What happened to the Soviet Union after WW2 under the rule of the tyrant? How did he react after reading many letter he received from concerned citizens regarding their economic situation after WW2?
In a way, Stalin enjoyed the image of a saviour who had delivered the world from a terrible Nazi evil. For decades after the end of WW2, the 1945 victory lent legitimacy to the Stalinist regime and those of his successors.
Most of this book focuses on Stalin the man and not on his policies, although they are definitely far from being ignored.This biography is one of the best ones that have been written by a master historian and is is more than highly recommended.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Good ol' Uncle Joe...
By FictionFan
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.
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