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Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 Hardcover – November 6, 2014
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Kirkus Reviews (starred):
“Authoritative and rigorous…. Staggeringly wide in scope, this work meticulously examines the structural forces that brought down one autocratic regime and put in place another.”
Publishers Weekly:
“This is an epic, thoroughly researched account that presents a broad vision of Stalin, from his birth to his rise to absolute power.”
Library Journal:
“Kotkin has been researching his magisterial biography of Stalin for a decade. Inescapably important reading.”
John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University; author of George F. Kennan: A Life, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography:
“In its size, sweep, sensitivity, and surprises, Stephen Kotkin’s first volume on Stalin is a monumental achievement: the early life of a man we thought we knew, set against the world—no less—that he inhabited. It’s biography on an epic scale. Only Tolstoy might have matched it.”
William Taubman, Professor of Political Science Emeritus, Amherst College; author of Khrushchev: The Man and his Era, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
“Stalin has had more than his fair share of biographies. But Stephen Kotkin’s wonderfully broad-gauged work surpasses them all in both breadth and depth, showing brilliantly how the man, the time, the place, its history, and especially Russian/Soviet political culture, combined to produce one of history’s greatest evil geniuses.”
David Halloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, Stanford University; author of Stalin and the Bomb:
“Stephen Kotkin’s first volume on Stalin is ambitious in conception and masterly in execution. It provides a brilliant account of Stalin’s formation as a political actor up to his fateful decision to collectivize agriculture by force. Kotkin combines biography with historical analysis in a way that brings out clearly Stalin's great political talents as well as the ruthlessness with which he applied them and the impact his policies had on Russia and the world. This is a magisterial work on the grandest scale.”
Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution:
“More than any of Stalin’s previous biographers, Stephen Kotkin humanizes one of the great monsters of history, thereby making the monstrosity more comprehensible than it has been before. He does so by sticking to the facts—many of them fresh, all of them marshalled into a gripping, fine-grained story.”
“Authoritative and rigorous…. Staggeringly wide in scope, this work meticulously examines the structural forces that brought down one autocratic regime and put in place another.”
Publishers Weekly:
“This is an epic, thoroughly researched account that presents a broad vision of Stalin, from his birth to his rise to absolute power.”
Library Journal:
“Kotkin has been researching his magisterial biography of Stalin for a decade. Inescapably important reading.”
John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University; author of George F. Kennan: A Life, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography:
“In its size, sweep, sensitivity, and surprises, Stephen Kotkin’s first volume on Stalin is a monumental achievement: the early life of a man we thought we knew, set against the world—no less—that he inhabited. It’s biography on an epic scale. Only Tolstoy might have matched it.”
William Taubman, Professor of Political Science Emeritus, Amherst College; author of Khrushchev: The Man and his Era, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
“Stalin has had more than his fair share of biographies. But Stephen Kotkin’s wonderfully broad-gauged work surpasses them all in both breadth and depth, showing brilliantly how the man, the time, the place, its history, and especially Russian/Soviet political culture, combined to produce one of history’s greatest evil geniuses.”
David Halloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, Stanford University; author of Stalin and the Bomb:
“Stephen Kotkin’s first volume on Stalin is ambitious in conception and masterly in execution. It provides a brilliant account of Stalin’s formation as a political actor up to his fateful decision to collectivize agriculture by force. Kotkin combines biography with historical analysis in a way that brings out clearly Stalin's great political talents as well as the ruthlessness with which he applied them and the impact his policies had on Russia and the world. This is a magisterial work on the grandest scale.”
Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution:
“More than any of Stalin’s previous biographers, Stephen Kotkin humanizes one of the great monsters of history, thereby making the monstrosity more comprehensible than it has been before. He does so by sticking to the facts—many of them fresh, all of them marshalled into a gripping, fine-grained story.”
About the Author
Stephen Kotkin is the John P. Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1989. He is also a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He directs Princeton’s Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies program. He has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times, among other publications, and is the author of several books, including Uncivil Society, Armageddon Averted, and Magnetic Mountain.
Customer Reviews
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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful
By
Laurence R. Bachmann
VINE VOICE on August 29, 2014
Format: Hardcover
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Any review of Stephen Kotkin's Stalin is like a reproduction of great artwork: it in no way will reflect the depth, color or texture of the original, which is nothing short brilliant. Like all classics in the genre, Kotkin's biography is a many layered and nuanced portrait of both a man and an era; a person and a people; a hero and a villain. If Stalin deteriorated into murderous sociopathy, he was not always so. Sometimes he was incredibly brave, clinging to his convictions with resolve and courage. Usually detached, and always willing to use men for his purpose and women for his needs, Kotkin captures the boundless dichotomy in this smart, always ambitious man. One who begins with good, even noble intent and along the way trades principle for power; compassion for control. In the end, perhaps the author's greatest accomplishment is to show how the most seemingly ordinary men are capable of extraordinary evil; how sheer force of will can change history.
Stalin is constructed like a jigsaw puzzle. Kotkin fills in the borders and the edges first, framing his subject in the context of 19th century Imperial Russia; a Georgian with few advantages having to assert, excel and assimilate to get ahead. He hews closely to known facts, avoiding conjecture. As a result, in the first 150 pages there is surprising little Stalin in Stalin. Rather than pop psych musings that link a drunken father's abuse to mass murder, Kotkin puts his subject in the context of the time. He examines how suffocatingly autocratic Imperial Russian Society happened to be with the Orthodox Church Stalin's only potential escape route. A bright and eager adolescent idealizes his church entering the seminary only to find himself in a de facto boot camp that brooked no opposition, stifled all curiosity.Read more ›
Stalin is constructed like a jigsaw puzzle. Kotkin fills in the borders and the edges first, framing his subject in the context of 19th century Imperial Russia; a Georgian with few advantages having to assert, excel and assimilate to get ahead. He hews closely to known facts, avoiding conjecture. As a result, in the first 150 pages there is surprising little Stalin in Stalin. Rather than pop psych musings that link a drunken father's abuse to mass murder, Kotkin puts his subject in the context of the time. He examines how suffocatingly autocratic Imperial Russian Society happened to be with the Orthodox Church Stalin's only potential escape route. A bright and eager adolescent idealizes his church entering the seminary only to find himself in a de facto boot camp that brooked no opposition, stifled all curiosity.Read more ›
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By
T. Kunikov
VINE VOICE on September 26, 2014
Format: Hardcover
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In 'Stalin', historian Stephen Kotkin tries his best to balance a biography of Stalin with the environment Stalin found himself living in. Kotkin details the politics of the Russian Empire and her neighbor, the newly created Germany under Bismarck, as well as the industrialization (including the rise and popularity of socialist and Marxist thought) and Russificiation that Georgia and the Russian Empire in general underwent. All would play important roles in how a young Stalin was raised and educated and how he formed his worldview. In general, Kotkin uses Stalin as a tool to showcase a world and environment that existed at the time and helped craft the man Stalin would become in the future. Simultaneously he describes and analyzes the people and events that affected Stalin's youth and adolescence and slowly positioned him for a future no one could have predicted was on the horizon. Due to the above, much of this volume does not solely focus on Stalin but on the personalities he interacted with (Lenin, Trotsky, Miliukov, Martov, etc.) or those important enough to alter the direction of European politics (Bismarck, Wilhelm II, Witte, Nicholas II, etc.).
I think the title 'Stalin' is a misnomer here since a significant portion of this work focuses on many other topics/subjects and often enough Stalin is nowhere to be found. In many ways the large swath of territory covered is useful and even needed in understanding how Stalin's life unfolded and how it fit into the greater pattern of European history. But, unfortunately, that also makes this first volume a bit less interesting for me personally as we only see Stalin's evolution through 1928. My understanding is that the following volumes will have a lot more concentration on Stalin.Read more ›
I think the title 'Stalin' is a misnomer here since a significant portion of this work focuses on many other topics/subjects and often enough Stalin is nowhere to be found. In many ways the large swath of territory covered is useful and even needed in understanding how Stalin's life unfolded and how it fit into the greater pattern of European history. But, unfortunately, that also makes this first volume a bit less interesting for me personally as we only see Stalin's evolution through 1928. My understanding is that the following volumes will have a lot more concentration on Stalin.Read more ›
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By
WryGuy2
TOP 500 REVIEWER on October 9, 2014
Format: Hardcover
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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 lengthy the 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 shaped him.Read more ›
At over 900 pages, over 600 are devoted to the biography, 100 to lengthy the 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 shaped him.Read more ›
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