I m not a big fan of communism, nor of Stalin. But I cross checked the facts mentioned in this book with facts in some other books I have read on similar subject and found that author Edvard Radzinsky is strongly biased against Stalin. In the entire book he seems to give no credit for anything to Stalin nor to his leadership qualities during the course of Second World War. Dont waste your money on a propaganda book. Better to go for an unbiased account from a neutral observer, thats what Biographies are supposed to be.

This is one of the most interesting biographies that I have ever read. It should be, as the author is also a successful Russian playwright, and he is not inexperienced at writing biographies. Combine this talent for researching and telling dramatic stories with the fact that the author had privileged access to formerly top-secret archives of the Soviet Union, and the ingredients are there for the compulsive read that it is.

Radzinsky makes it clear just how little is known about Stalin's early years. Nevertheless, he considers various testimonies and documents to offer several possibilities about the nature of each of his parents - an absent father and a poor, toiling mother. Considering similar kinds of evidence, and also painting a picture of how Georgia may have been like at the close of the 19th Century, the author also offers glimpses of a child who was always small, feisty, and yet natural as a leader.

His mother pressures him into going to a seminary school so that he may become an orthodox priest. However, this proves to be against a backdrop of various ideologies and revolutionaries, and so we can imagine the transition as Stalin goes from bright student, to atheist, and on to zealous terrorist who has no qualms about taking innocent lives for his ideals.

Stalin's rise to prominence is just as fascinating, in its own way, as Hitler's; but we don't only meet Stalin. We see a lot of Soviet history in the making, and we meet an array of colourful contemporaries along the way. The book is gripping as we read about revolutions, wars, civil wars, the rise and death of Lenin, and the rise of Stalin as he consolidates absolute power into his own hands. By now, we have already glimpsed just how un-human his heart can be, but that is only just the beginning in what is to become an all out attempt to eliminate all political rivals and all classes who may not conform to a system that promises a utopia built upon a foundation of human bones.

There is brief respite during WWII, where some power had to be given back to the generals. With this sense of relative freedom, and the victory over Nazi Germany, it seems as if for a while things will get better. However, as soon as the war is over, the time for independent thinkers is over, and it's back to purges, and then the purges of those who purged, once more.

Unfortunately, I could never really get a feel for how accurate some of the story was, as this is the first major biography on Stalin that I have read, and I have also read relatively little on Soviet history in general. Some reviewers praise this book, saying how they use it to teach their high-school students. Others attack it for being unfounded lies and propaganda. Having been a student of history for some while, I never got the sense that it was too much of the latter; but then I wouldn't be aware of some of the more technical points. Still, if like any other book it can't be assumed to be absolute fact, I continue to feel there has to be much to it that is fair.

Overall, I thought Radzinsky was clear about the fallibility of his explanations, and I always felt as if I were being allowed to draw my own conclusions. The only time that I really questioned the validity of some of his arguments was when it came to Radzinsky's interpretation of Stalin's death, and the seeming conclusion that one way or another Stalin was murdered. This was when at best it looked as if people had been slow to help him because he was not in his normal place to issue commands from the top; and at worst it looked like he may have suffered from a well-deserved dose of neglect. Neither of these possibilities would personally lead me to conclude 'murder'. Still, as I have said, I was able to reach this conclusion for myself, based on the fact that Radzinsky presented alternative evidence and that he was clear when his own conclusions were not absolute.

To sum up,

The research done in this book is solid. I read both Russian and English stories, articles, and even books on the recently (if you can call mid nineties that) opened archived by the FSB (then KGB).

Radzinsky does little to interfere with his opinion. He is solely the messenger here, the message is what has been rumored about, spoken of, conspired around, and basically shared in millions of dining rooms, "skomeyak" while old men played dominoes.

Most of what is projected to the reader has been known for some time, especially in Russia proper. Some of the most incredible finds are not really anything knew to most Russian; mainly those that read "Suvorov" back when he first made allegations that based on the numbers, his own eyes when documents passed him, that Stalin was, indeed, planning to attack Hitler first. The difference with Radzinsky and Suvorov, is the incentive.

These finds, of course, would be, and were met with outrage. Partisans would never want to submit they sacrificed so much just for some madman's play. The maginitude of personal destruction, farms, families, culture, religion, all for what? The more documents come to light, the more truth and evidence that this was, in fact, a very real possibility.

Radzinsky does an excellent job of sifting through a lot, picking up where there was little trace, and attempting to explain, as subtle as he can, the sheer magnificance of the issue.

Here we have an obviously biased but fantastic portrait of a ruthless dictator and the methods to the madness that consoladated and kept him in power for 3 decades. After reading this you will have a clearer picture of how dictatorships work in general, and how men like Sadam Hussein could use the same pattern of terror and constant purging to maintain control. In Stalin's world the idealogy of marxism became simply a macheovelian ploy to subdue the masses, any shred of emotion or decency is used against you, empathy and caring are as good as death certificates.

Radzinsky, already renowned as a playwright and biographer has, an entertaining writing style and is not afraid to propose new theories based on his tireless research. The Cover claims that the book is based on 'explosive new documents from Russia's secret archives' and it does not dissapoint in that regard. With all the disinformation and revisionism that occured in the Soviet archives, piecing together a coherrent story must have been exceedingly difficult. However Radzinsky makes compelling cases for the assination of Stalin by Beri, Krushcev et al. with the knowledge of the leaders of the politburo among other things. My question is why did it take so long to take him out!!! Also fascinating is his portrayal of Molitov, the genius brown-noser who could not make even the simplest decision without direct advice from the leader, who mindlessly signed off on atrocities, and even regretted abstaining from voting that his own wife to be purged(though admittedly he may have saved his life in doing so)! If people like Molotov are the only kind that can survive in your organization it might be a good idea to look elsewhere if you have a choice.

My main criticism of the book would be that it spends a couple of hundred pages describing theories behind hunderds of political killing and it becomes skimmingly redundant. We see the planning and strategy behind the first and second major purges. Sergei Kirov a war hero who was killed for being popular, and how the 'mystery' behind is death is turned around and used against all of Stalin's enemies and competitiors.
The heplessness of politial rivals such as Trotsky and paticularly of Bukharrin where we get the text of several letters he wrote while on death row, unable to come to terms with the ruthlessness of his foe. Though mortal political manuevering is despisable, the major tragedy here is in the collectivazation of the peasentry and the destruction of their culture, and the starvation that it caused when they were forced to make steel instead of wheat. Not enough emphasis is put on that. We do however get a good sense of the grip of terror on the entire society where everything is sensored, from a letter to your cousin or an innocent conversation on a train, and where govt agents frequently come and take whole families away seemingly at random in the middle of the night for the slightest preceived offense. In this we see the difficulty and time it would take to have a productive democracy in a place like Iraq or even China.

Reading Macheaveli's 'The Prince' is a rather tiresome intellectual exercise, but with Stalin we see it put into action with devestating results.
From this I get a tangible sense of why it is never a good idea to consolidate power into the hands of the very few. Though there may be a few good kings out there, eventually you will get a Nero, Stalin, etc. As flawed as it may be, any political system which flollows peaceable transfer of power over short intervals with an open press and right of protest is vastly, vastly superior to indeffinate dictatorship with absolute power.
For comparison I would say this books ranks as high as the fantastic autobiography of the clever Nazi, Albert Speer.

Capitalist propaganda goes to ridiculous lengths. Especially the post-Reagan and Thatcher "Reader's Digest" goddy-goody stuff. This book is written by one such "dissenter". Take the example of the nonsense here about eliminating Jews. Oh yes, tomorrow your eyes might well pop their sockets when you hear these propagandists trying to accuse Stalin of plotting to exterminate Red Indians and Australian aboriginals. It is as farfetched as that, but trust these propagandists to go to such lengths. Granted that Stalin was a brute no doubt. But who can not be, when ruling the most vast nation of the world spanning 11 time zones, and trying to develop and industrialise its peasant people overnight at the same time, to catch up with the "sophisticated" West? Something a ninny "autocrat" like Nicholas II couldn't have done with all his power. Stalin's brutality also saved the USSR from a worse brutal fate, that of Hitler's "lebensraum", which had got underway effectively and had resulted in the deaths of 27 million Russians. Had even the meeker Lenin or Trotsky been at the helm of Soviet affairs at that time, let alone Tsar Nikolai the Second, the world would now effectively be under the domination of the Third Reich, and all that it implied.
Another untruth that this bohemian, scruffy slanderer of a writer tells us is about Soviet nuclear weapons. Many don't know, yet it should be noted that Stalin was against these weapons all his life, and they had to wait till he died for Sakharov to fashion the first Hydrogen Bomb. However, it will be infinitely easy for the purveyors of "free enterprise" and the "free world" to tell gullible, clueless Americans otherwise. This book and its theme amply illustrate that capitalism is the ultimate, insiduous evil over the "drab, totalitarian clunker" of Soviet communism - and that is borne out by what America has done to the world since 1991, and what it openly does nowadays under G.W. Bush in Iraq, his tax breaks for the rich, to the Kyoto protocol and how it is snatching its own citizens' rights in the name of "homeland security", to name just a few instances.