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Title: Stalin: Breaker of Nations by Robert Conquest ISBN: 0-14-016953-9 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (19 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent overview of a tyrant by historiographic nemesis
Comment: This is not a biography in the strict sense, but a historiographical essay on Stalin, along the lines of Lukacs' more recent "Hitler in History," by a scholar who is probably the greatest living expert on Stalin outside Russia. It is a very readable and insightful precis of the only monster who furnishes serious competition with Hitler for the title of "the most evil man in history" (and who, astonishingly, as the other review here demonstrates, still retains various mindless partisans in sundry nooks and crannies). Robert Conquest has devoted the greater part of a lifetime painstakingly researching and documenting Stalin's crimes in such pioneering works as "The Great Terror" and "Harvest of Sorrow," earning himself the undying gratitude of the nations Stalin victimized as well as the catty resentment of Western leftist self-styled elites. Conquest is thus of course pre-eminently the man for a retrospective such as this. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Good, solid biography, but not a classic
Comment: ... Conquest is a great Sovietologist; his works on collectivization and the terror are classics. This is a little different from his other works, however. This biography is not exhaustive; it's not long, it's not tedious, it's almost as much anecdotal as anything else. Conquest's not-too-subtle attempts at psychological history don't help; but it is quite obvious that he is repulsed by his subject, which anybody should, and would, be when studying the life of one of the worst human monsters that ever walked the face of the earth (as Alex De Jonge said, Stalin made Hitler look like an "inept bungler"). And his revulsion shows through at times. And historians do need to start pointing out, with greater regularity, the fool that Stalin made of Roosevelt, just for the sake of the hundreds of millions of people that had to live under tyrannical Soviet rule because FDR was convinced that Stalin was a great "democrat." Contrary to what one reviewer said, Conquest's "Stalin" is not a difficult book to read at all. If one is looking for a succinct, and imminently fair, biography of Stalin, it would be harder to find a better one than Conquest's. A bit a knowledge of 20th century Soviet history WOULD help the reader; and don't tackle "Harvest of Sorrow" or "The Great Terror" without some knowledge of the times. But with "Stalin", Conquest appears to be aiming more at the general reader and in this he succeeds admirably.
Rating: 3
Summary: The monster deserves better
Comment: Stalin was a perfect dictator: he was above it all. He was above dogma, as seen in his rebellious activity in the theological seminary and his "creative socialism". Ever since his bank robbing escapades he did not mind being above the law. In the Tsaritsyn affair, he showed the penchant for being above authority. He was above any respect for science and arts, having arrested most of the members of the Writers' Union and interfered in a spectrum of scientific fields. He was above any Party allegiance: a half of the party members were arrested and a million of them died in his camps. He did not have any use for familial ties, having imprisoned and shot his own and others' relatives. Of course, he was above any morality.
As much as I.V. Dzhugashvili was a notable character, Stalin also was made by the people around him. Lenin, a militant opportunist himself, found in Stalin a kindred spirit of his own extremism. Kamenev and Zinoviev saved Stalin from the fall (after the disclosure of Lenin's Testament) because they needed him in their struggle against Trotsky. Roosevelt and Churchill needed him to fight Hitler and turned a blind eye on what they did not want to see, such as Katyn massacre.
Stalin was the most evil ruler in the history of mankind, he killed over 40 million of his own people (to put it in perspective, Hitler killed 20 million and Saddam less than half a million), and yet Stalin's specter is very much alive today. During the Ribbentrop-Molotov negotiations, Stalin raised a toast to Hitler. In 2000, Putin was drinking to Stalin. After meeting Stalin in Teheran, Roosevelt commented on the "sympathetic quality in his nature". And G.W.Bush, having looked Putin in the eye, liked what he saw. It is interesting how history repeats itself: Russian leaders keep toasting the humankind's worst tyrants and the leaders of the free world keep seeing good souls.
As Conquest himself states, this book is not a "dissection" of Stalin's character, but a sketch. Written just after many Soviet materials on Stalin became newly available, the book feels like a period piece. Not having any source references and the frequent mention of "recent Soviet publications" only strengthen the impression. Unfortunately, Conquest's Stalin still remains fairly impenetrable. What was driving him: megalomania, paranoia, inferiority complex, dogma, self-righteousness, all of the above? Until the late 1920's (and the ripe age of 50) Stalin's persona in the book remains fairly obscure. The narrative does not really elucidate what led him, a good and pious student of theological seminary, become a professional revolutionary. Or how exactly he ingratiated himself with Lenin to the point of becoming one of the top Party functionaries. Or how in the crucial years after Lenin's death he was able to come unscathed from the many factional fights. The linguistic constructions are a bit heavy-handed which, along with the macabre subject of the book, makes for a somewhat strained reading. Rather than painting a portrait, the book reads like the author's struggle to piece it all together and understand its subject. On the other hand, it takes one to know one. So if we do not understand Stalin all that well - maybe, so much for the better.
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Title: The Great Terror: A Reassessment by Robert Conquest ISBN: 0195071328 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: October, 1991 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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Title: The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine by Robert Conquest ISBN: 0195051807 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: November, 1987 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Stalin : The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia'sSecret Archives by Edvard Radzinsky ISBN: 0385479549 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 18 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956 by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn ISBN: 0060007761 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 22 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Lenin: A Biography by Robert Service ISBN: 0674008286 Publisher: Belknap Pr Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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