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improbablebanana's review against another edition
4.0
This isn't an easy book to review. At least for me. As a biography it's not great. Stalin appears in maybe a third of the book? Mostly the book sets the scene for Stalin's growth. It talks about WWI, the revolution in Russia and events in Germany and Italy.
Stalin didn't flip a switch and become a monster, it was always building and growing until it could be unleashed. This book reads more like a 'recent' history of Russia than anything. And it's tough to get through. Socialism's rhetoric is brutal.
This is my first book on Stalin and my first introduction to Russia's history. I think you do need to understand the social upheaval at the time to get a handle on Stalin himself. So if you are new to the topics, it's a tough but informative read.
Stalin didn't flip a switch and become a monster, it was always building and growing until it could be unleashed. This book reads more like a 'recent' history of Russia than anything. And it's tough to get through. Socialism's rhetoric is brutal.
This is my first book on Stalin and my first introduction to Russia's history. I think you do need to understand the social upheaval at the time to get a handle on Stalin himself. So if you are new to the topics, it's a tough but informative read.
tittypete's review against another edition
4.0
Stalin was born in Georgia as Ioseb Jughashvili son of a drunken shoemaker and a house cleaner named Keke. He was a good student but also a naughty student and he liked to write poetry. He got hit by a horse-drawn carriage and would subsequently have a gimp arm for the rest of his life. He went to seminary and didn’t like his teachers. Russia is ruled by the Tsar and basically everyone else is a peasant and people are starting to get pissed. They get even more pissed when the Tsar drags them into WWI. Old Joe becomes a commie and a bandit. Then there is a long time of commie meetings and pamphlet making and basically the entire story of the Russian revolution:
People were pissed. The new Tsar was kind of an incompetent ass. During his inauguration free food was promised to the peasants that showed up but too many showed up and thousands of them died in the ensuing stampede and subsequent quelling of said stampede. Then the Tsar started a shitty war with Japan that cost a bunch of money and lives. Meanwhile his wife was gettin tooled out by Rasputin and everybody knew it. Then, looking like a total puss, the Tsar gets Russia into WWI and that costs a bunch more money and a huge bunch more lives. People are getting even more pissed as he’s just hiding in his palaces and letting his woman get plugged up by a creepy priest. There are strikes and protests and folks are dying and starving. So the Tsar decided he better clampdown on people and put em in jail or shoot them or whatever. It’s bad news. And it backfires. He’s so shitty at being an autocrat that the there’s a revolution. People are feeling what the commies are saying.
Turns out there were a bunch of different commie/pinko factions and they were all jockeying for power and shitting on each other. Lenin was the guy who came out on top. Stalin was lurking around in his shadow and when he dies there’s supposedly a note from him that says “Don’t let Stalin be in charge. But he becomes the head honcho anyway and then, due to the shitty infighting way the bolsheviks took power, they’re all paranoid and ruthless so that their initially open ideals get perverted into a shitty version of the same autocracy they had before.
It’s a frickin’ paradox, mane!
People were pissed. The new Tsar was kind of an incompetent ass. During his inauguration free food was promised to the peasants that showed up but too many showed up and thousands of them died in the ensuing stampede and subsequent quelling of said stampede. Then the Tsar started a shitty war with Japan that cost a bunch of money and lives. Meanwhile his wife was gettin tooled out by Rasputin and everybody knew it. Then, looking like a total puss, the Tsar gets Russia into WWI and that costs a bunch more money and a huge bunch more lives. People are getting even more pissed as he’s just hiding in his palaces and letting his woman get plugged up by a creepy priest. There are strikes and protests and folks are dying and starving. So the Tsar decided he better clampdown on people and put em in jail or shoot them or whatever. It’s bad news. And it backfires. He’s so shitty at being an autocrat that the there’s a revolution. People are feeling what the commies are saying.
Turns out there were a bunch of different commie/pinko factions and they were all jockeying for power and shitting on each other. Lenin was the guy who came out on top. Stalin was lurking around in his shadow and when he dies there’s supposedly a note from him that says “Don’t let Stalin be in charge. But he becomes the head honcho anyway and then, due to the shitty infighting way the bolsheviks took power, they’re all paranoid and ruthless so that their initially open ideals get perverted into a shitty version of the same autocracy they had before.
It’s a frickin’ paradox, mane!
lukeibaldwin's review against another edition
5.0
A thorough and clear account of a confusing place and time in history. The first 400 pages are a masterful telling of the last years of the tzar, the subsequent revolution and the inevitable civil war. After that it’s all about Stalin’s rise to and consolidation of power amidst a new and struggling nation(s).
Great read. Definitely five stars.
Great read. Definitely five stars.
chad_vinny's review against another edition
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
3.75
A well constructed biography of one of the 20th century most violent and destructive tyrant. Instead of presenting Stalin as one-dimensional, a thin-skinned bully obsessed with power, Kotkin demonstrates Stalin's Marxist/Leninist zealotry and his strong belief as world defining leader. The biography reads as much as a general history book of early twentieth century Russia which help frame much of the book.
My only qualm is that some historians are critical of Kotkin's analysis of Lenin's Testament possibly being a forgery. Something I don't know enough about to comment on but should be noted.
My only qualm is that some historians are critical of Kotkin's analysis of Lenin's Testament possibly being a forgery. Something I don't know enough about to comment on but should be noted.
lukebaldwin's review against another edition
5.0
A thorough and clear account of a confusing place and time in history. The first 400 pages are a masterful telling of the last years of the tzar, the subsequent revolution and the inevitable civil war. After that it’s all about Stalin’s rise to and consolidation of power amidst a new and struggling nation(s).
Great read. Definitely five stars.
Great read. Definitely five stars.
abeanbg's review against another edition
5.0
A staggeringly huge and successful work that is somehow only volume 1 of 3. Kotkin's approach, a history of the world from Stalin's office, is fascinating and illuminating. It draws us away from Freudian psychoanalysis and instead focuses upon the ideas, situations, and challenges that lead Stalin to the be master of 1/6th the planet by 1928.
The rise is stupefying in its improbability, of course. The fact that the Tsarsist regime never saw the strategic usefulness of fascism, which Russia was primed for, or that the Bolsheviks held onto power after 1917 despite, um, literally everything they touched turning to shit are both sort of unreal. It's also astounding how Stalin then leaned into his Marxist-Leninist ideology as a bulwark against all opponents despite the fact that the vast majority of Soviet citizens already hated the regime by 1927. Stalin, to put it simply, should have failed. That he didn't is a global tragedy and one that Kotkin has helped me understand and contextualize much more clearly.
The rise is stupefying in its improbability, of course. The fact that the Tsarsist regime never saw the strategic usefulness of fascism, which Russia was primed for, or that the Bolsheviks held onto power after 1917 despite, um, literally everything they touched turning to shit are both sort of unreal. It's also astounding how Stalin then leaned into his Marxist-Leninist ideology as a bulwark against all opponents despite the fact that the vast majority of Soviet citizens already hated the regime by 1927. Stalin, to put it simply, should have failed. That he didn't is a global tragedy and one that Kotkin has helped me understand and contextualize much more clearly.