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Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
Publisher: Phoenix
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

41 reviews
Sales Rank: 7372

Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 852
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 2

ISBN: 0753817667
Dewey Decimal Number: 940
EAN: 9780753817667
ASIN: 0753817667

Publication Date: June 1, 2004
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Customer Reviews: Read 36 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

PAPERBACK BOLSHEVIKS July 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

PAPERBACK BOLSHEVIKS

By IAIN FRASER GRIGOR

IT WAS THE Chinese communist Chou en Lai who, when asked what he thought the enduring lessons of the French Revolution might be, pondered deeply for a long time and then remarked that it was too early to say.

The same observation might well be made with regard to the Russian revolution of 1917, along with the Soviet state and empire which followed it over the next 70-odd years: although it can be said at once that, on the evidence of this and other recent titles in paperback form, there are no positive lessons whatsoever to be drawn from the seven bloody decades of Bolshevik praxis.

That Soviet affairs were for the most of the time bloodily and brutally murderous is, of course, nothing new. Among many other books, Robert Conquest's The Great Terror and Nikolai Tolstoy's Stalin's Secret War told us all about it long ago - Conquest, astonishingly, as far back as 1968, and Tolstoy in 1981.

But since the collapse of the USSR, once-secret archives have opened to researchers: and it is on these that Simon Sebag Montefiore has drawn for his masterly portrait of Stalin's court and courtiers, at work and play.

He has also availed himself of a huge amount of material in the form of the private letters, telegrams, memoranda and diaries of those involved, along with lengthy interviews with family-members of the former Bolshevik aristocracy: the author lists as sources names such as Molotov, Mikoyan, Alliluyeva, Budyonny, Khrushceheva, Litvinova, Malenkov, Ordzhonikidze, Poskrebysheva, Redens, Rykova, Zhdanov and Djugashvili.

At the heart of this aristocracy was, of course, that shining sun of all humanity, Cde. Stalin himself: a fine singer, as dangerous as a tiger politically, a supreme judge of men and their weaknesses, a keen gardener, an elementary teacher (spelling, to Kaganovich), a skilled bank-robber, a man of exceptional literary tastes, a six-times escapee from Tsarist exile, highly intelligent, and a gifted poet and mass-murderer, with whom large numbers of women were - unsurprisingly, perhaps - very keen to sleep.

Montefiore is never less than highly readable as he takes us from Stalin's youth and early years through to his increasing eminence in the later twenties and early thirties (and the starvation, effectively deliberate, of maybe ten million Ukrainian peasants in these same years).

But from the 17th Congress in 1934 (perhaps the last point at which Stalin could have been tumbled within the Party?), things move quickly to the mysterious murder of Kirov and the launching of Terror on an increasingly generalized scale. (Sadly, Montefiore adds nothing to Conquest's story of the anarchist Eisenberg, reportedly sent to a lunatic asylum on account of his abnormal resistance to torture - but of course, this Eisenberg was not of the Soviet aristocracy).

And thus by way of the murderous Thirties, to the Hitler-Stalin Pact (partly at least due to British bumbling): and - soon enough - the fearful (and avoidable) disasters of Barbarossa. The big picture here is well known, though Montefiore adds irresistible detail and colour: "Tukhachevsky's confession, which survives in the archives, is dappled with a brown spray that was found to be blood spattered by a body in motion".

Montefiore's description of Stalin's Kremlin on the eve of German invasion is a tour de force of descriptive writing (though that insane afternoon and evening might even be better suited to the stage). After all, Stalin had known about Hitler's invasion plans for six months: and by the summer of 1941 the early trickle of intelligence evidence had become a flood.

Stalin's failure to prepare defensive measures must be counted one of the really great military blunders of history: a thousand planes destroyed on the ground on the first day of war, and 400,000 men encircled at Minsk by the end of the first week.

Here was another of those very rare chances when Stalin could have been over-thrown by his cabal of guttersnipes: but, once again, they failed the test. Within three weeks of war, the Soviets had lost something around two million men, 3, 500 tanks and maybe 6, 000 war planes.

And yet, at immense cost to the various peoples of the Soviet empire, Germany was to be beaten: and Stalin, sixty-seven years old in 1945 and not far from the terminal near-madness of his last years, could consolidate his power once more, and prepare for another series of phantasmagoric purges.

But in these few short years before his death, Stalin could still outwit his Western Alllies at the Great Power conferences, acquire The Bomb by 1949, and enclose his new east European empire within the walls of the Iron Curtain.

Montefiore's book is enormously readable and could easily be twice as long as it is: in places, indeed, such as with his coverage of the Doctors' Plot, it might be thought a little skimped, for the reader, astonishingly, wants more detail rather than less. He deftly avoids the danger of hagiography (and for a man as politically talented as Stalin, that must always be a danger, in any account that looks for balance and insight).

Montefiore's command of telling detail and narrative drive is compelling. He does not unduly trouble his readers with some of the big why's and what-if's of Stalinism: among them, why didn't the party ditch Stalin, as it might have done, at the 1934 Congress?

What if Stalin had pre-emptively attacked Germany in 1940 or early 1941, or had at least foreseen the German attack in the summer of that year; and what if he had not destroyed the best of party and army and not surrounded himself with a revolving circus of murderous and extremely talented scum (of whom Comrade Stalin was just a little more than primus inter pares)? But not till the post-war period, however, were there signs that some of the top leadership might contemplate a coup.

The Court of the Red Tsar is hugely ambitious and impeccably turned, beautifully paced and organized. No precis can begin to do it justice, and it certainly deserves the prizes it has won. No less an authority that Henry Kissinger has let it be known of the book that, `I did not think I could learn anything new about Stalin but I was wrong'.

And by one leading 20th century war-criminal on another, that is high praise indeed.

5 out of 5 stars

Monsters June 5, 2008
There is nothing here about policies or ideology, but the unbelievable monstrosity of Stalin and his magnates is described as never before. A terrifying and gripping story.

5 out of 5 stars

Aha! March 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I oftentimes wondered when I still knew not what how come Messrs Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot could get away with murder and terror. Surely these men were not impervious to a bullet to the head. What Montefiore does is give you an (almost) insider's account of how ambition, greed, cruelty and primeval instinct can be used to devastating effect to run and ruin a people. In the eat or be eaten world of Stalin you either condemn or be denounced.

So what if you get rid of No.1, will your erstwhile "comrades" - fellow suppers at this bestial feast - sigh with joy at the demise of The Chief? No, no, no, Sir they won't when even you might send them to the Lubyanka cells to be tortured by the NKVD. (They) You will be made to confess to the grossest crimes. Afterwards of course you will then be hanged or shot in the back of the head for treason. In classic divide and rule style Stalin set all against one and one against all. Some of the stories are way too gruesome.

Quite revealing is how Stalin's magnates lived in dachas, entertained at lavish dinners, rode limousines, flew about in jets, their expensive Paris shopping, private schools for children, immense corruption and lasciviousness, rapes and gross abuse of the people's power. I was brought up on American propaganda that life was grim and grey for everyone in the USSR. Obviously not. The whole story is a tragedy of unsung proportions.

This is not Stalin's biography. It is a rambunctious and supremely terrifying account of what it was like to live for or against Stalin. This book was a joy to read and a pain to put down. Easy and breezy with a menacing undertone because you know unspeakable crimes were committed in the name of the people and so many lives were destroyed en masse for real and for nothing. Mr Montefiore, well done!

4 out of 5 stars

A fine study March 22, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

I don't agree with the reviewers who criticise the author's style. I found this book eminently readable and enthralling. My one complaint, hence the loss of the fifth star, is the copious number of footnotes, which do intrude into the narrative. I am looking forward to reading "Young Stalin" by the same author, which is apparently due soon in paperback.

5 out of 5 stars

Magnificent history lesson February 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This is a superb history of the Soviet Union and its bearing on the 20th century. It should be a history standard in our secondary schools; alas, history is no more considered an important subject in education. I cannot agree with those who have criticised the writing style. I found it an outstanding example of modern writing. My very sad conclusion is that this evil man was an ally of our country during the second world war. Read Sebag Montefiore and Solhzenitsyn and thank your god, if you have one, that you live in the free world.