Product Description
Overthrowing the conventional image of Stalin as an uneducated political administrator inexplicably transformed into a pathological killer, Robert Service reveals a more complex and fascinating story behind this notorious twentieth-century figure. Drawing on unexplored archives and personal testimonies gathered from across Russia and Georgia, this is the first full-scale biography of the Soviet dictator in twenty years.
Service describes in unprecedented detail the first half of Stalin's life--his childhood in Georgia as the son of a violent, drunkard father and a devoted mother; his education and religious training; and his political activity as a young revolutionary. No mere messenger for Lenin, Stalin was a prominent activist long before the Russian Revolution. Equally compelling is the depiction of Stalin as Soviet leader. Service recasts the image of Stalin as unimpeded despot; his control was not limitless. And his conviction that enemies surrounded him was not entirely unfounded.
Stalin was not just a vengeful dictator but also a man fascinated by ideas and a voracious reader of Marxist doctrine and Russian and Georgian literature as well as an internationalist committed to seeing Russia assume a powerful role on the world stage. In examining the multidimensional legacy of Stalin, Service helps explain why later would-be reformers--such as Khrushchev and Gorbachev--found the Stalinist legacy surprisingly hard to dislodge.
Rather than diminishing the horrors of Stalinism, this is an account all the more disturbing for presenting a believable human portrait. Service's lifetime engagement with Soviet Russia has resulted in the most comprehensive and compelling portrayal of Stalin to date.
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Anatomy of a Dictator
Robert Service has succeeded in restoring to Stalin his humanity. This does not mean that he makes him less guilty of huge crimes or more lovable. Not at all. He succeeds in showing Stalin's talents as well as his vices. He demonstrates that while Stalin had paranoid tendencies and uncivilized traits he was neither psychologically insane nor unintelligent. Stalin overcame his deprived cultural and emotional background and his semi-
Asiatic nationality to demonstrate real intellectual curiosity and ability, organizational talent, and hard work. He was no Hitler, not being obsessed by ideas of grandeur and ideological fantasies. He was a Marxist-Leninist and whatever one thinks of that philosophical school it was more rationalist and modern than anything hanging around Hitler.
There are three areas where Service could have done more. The victory of Stalin over Trotsky is not sufficiently treated, nor is it sufficiently and convincingly explained. Stalin was not as surprised by Hitler's attack on the USSR as some imagine but there are still questions about Stalin's expectations in 1939-41 which could be more clarified. Finally, the alleged anti-semitism of Stalin is correctly modified. Stalin had close Jewish collaborators right up to the end and he regarded Jews as possibly too inclined towards Jewish nationalism but he did not share the paranoid and conspiratorial view of real anti-semites. I suspect that Zionist activities turned Stalin into a more suspicious man concerning the Jews. We know that the current crop of Jewish neoconservatives got started with Henry Jackson's campaign to get Soviet Jews the right to emigrate to the West and to Israel. Israel's need, and the need of Jews to deny their once close relationship to Soviet Socialism, probably exacerbated Stalin's view of the Jews. A recent book by a Soviet emigre, Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century, shows the close collaboration between Soviet Jews and Lenin and Stalin -- right up to the Israeli campaign to Zionize them. Soviet anti-semitism is more the result than the cause of the falling out between Jews and the Soviets. Service could have spent more time on issues of anti-semitism.
Finally, Service is quite dismissive, as he should be, of the nonsense advanced by J. Arch Getty that Stalin did not inaugurate the Great Terror. In one simple sentence Service puts Getty where he belongs, on the dung heap of historians.
Service's prose is at times tedious and his need constantly to restate his basic thesis about Stalin and his ability is another negative in an otherwise important book.