Young Stalin

Young Stalin. Simon Sebag Montefiore. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]25.00. xxviii + 397 pages. ISBN 978-0-297-85068-7. This book follows the author's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar and traces Stalin's life up to October 1917. His procedure was to tap hitherto unused sources in the former USSR (particularly those in Georgia), Britain, Europe and the US to tell us more about the 'sheer weird singularity' of Stalin the man. He combined a gangster's mentality with intelligence. He was brave, immoral and evil. He was never, as Trotsky alleged, a 'mediocrity'. His early years formed the man and explain his paranoid behaviour, his hatreds and his obsessions once he had absolute power. As the author wisely points out, the secretive nature of Soviet government can be traced to the habits formed in the 'ruthless little circle of conspirators' which existed before 1918 when the gangsters became the government. The author is to be congratulated on a powerful tour de force of a man one wishes had never lived. (L.S.R.)

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