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Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

Posted By: Balisik
Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

Stephen Kotkin "Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928"
Penguin Press HC | English | November 6, 2014 | ISBN: 1594203792 | 976 pages | azw, epub, lrf, mobi | 79,5 mb

I'm a big World War II buff, and in addition to all of the books I own about the battles, campaigns, weaponry, and general histories of the war, I also own many biographies and autobiographies of people, both famous and unknown, from the era. However, one thing I lacked was a good biography of Stalin. I have a few, but they were written before the Iron Curtain had fallen, and primarily used "western" rather than Soviet sources. Now, with this book "Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928", I finally have a good one. Or should I say, one-third of a good one, as this is the first part of a three part biography.

At over 900 pages, over 600 are devoted to the biography, 100 to the lengthy bibliography, and 200 to notes pages, so you won't be reading this in one sitting. For this account of Stalin, the author opens the aperture quite widely, covering Stalin's life to 1928 (while dispelling quite a few myths) and placing Stalin's life in context the situation around the world as it affected Russia, as well as his efforts to help overthrow the Russian Imperial regime and his political maneuvers within the communist party.

As noted above, this is a massive, somewhat dense work, but the author is an excellent writer, and by that I mean he takes a lot of dry material and breathes life into it. He truly begins to put flesh and blood into Stalin's life story, humanizing him to a certain extent. By that I don't mean you'll be sympathetic to Stalin, but you'll begin to understand the man behind the myth. Stalin isn't at the center of every page, as the author (as I noted above) also covers the larger picture around Stalin, giving view to the events and politics that helped shape him. As the author describes, what Stalin had in abundance, more than his contemporaries, was his great will, and it was this will that drove Stalin.



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