Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

I was four years old when my parents, brother and I left communist Poland in 1969. My mother's immediate family survived the Holocaust; they were assimilated Jews who escaped the Warsaw Ghetto during the third week of the deportations, and survived in large part because my grandfather (Władysław Winawer) and the head of Żegota (the Polish Home Army's Jewish Assistance Division) were friends. My grandfather was co-counsel for Kazimierz Moczarski in 1956, when K.M.--who had been a high-level officer in the Polish Home Army and was therefore arrested and sentenced to death by Poland's Stalinists in 1945--was released after 11 years of Stalinist prison hell, including two years during which he was tortured in 49 different ways physically, along with 255 days in the same cell as Jürgen Stroop (who murdered or helped murder most of the last 60,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Ghetto Uprising; K.M. had tracked Stroop during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw but could not find an opportunity to assassinate Stroop -- KM write the most insightful book about a Nazi war criminal ever published, which was translated into English as Conversations With An Executioner). When KM was released in 1956, he refused to accept an amnesty, and is the only victim of a Stalinist show trial I am aware of who sued the communist government that had falsely imprisoned him, demanding official recognition of his innocence of the preposterous allegation that he had been a Nazi collaborator. When the court ruled in his favor, not only he, but also the Home Army was rehabilitated in communist Poland. Eleven years later, my mother and my godfather (who became Poland's third post-communist prime minister) represented my mom's best friend, Janusz Szpotański, who received three years in prison for writing privately circulated satire about the Party leadership. I became friends with "Szpot," my godfather (Jan Olszewski) and many of my parent's friends when I lived in Warsaw for six months in 1988, at age 23. Reading such a personal portrait of Stalin and his primitive henchmen is a very personal experience for me, given my family's survival of both Hitler's and Stalin's occupations of Poland. My parents were on the Polish Security Service's list of top 10 most dangerous dissidents abroad in the 1970s. I still shake my head in dismay that typically the leaders of powerful nations have only a remnant of a conscience by the time they attain the power they sought. To paraphrase Socrates: the most dangerous leaders are people who seek such powerful positions. He may have been correct in suggesting that citizens be randomly chosen to run government for fixed terms. Reading this book, I felt I had come so close to the mass murderers who ran the Soviet Union that I felt I needed a shower after each time I read about them.

Fascinating take on Stalin. Covering the period from when he assumed absolute power after Lenin's death to his own passing, the book focuses on his "court" - the daily life of Stalin and his inner circle - the personal interactions with family and colleagues as all the well known events unfold in the background. This book could only have been written when it was as Montefiore was able to take advantage of both the unprecedented access to Soviet records in the early post-USSR days and first hand accounts of many individuals who had been members of the "court" as children or young adults. Montefiore's Stalin comes across as very human - ruthless, cruel, etc, but also a man devastated by his wife's suicide who struggled to be a good father, and at the same time a dedicated Bolshevik conscious his outsized place in history.

Poorly written. Too many pronouns makes it hard to follow which person the author is referring on many occasions. Too many footnotes. This is a problem when reading in a Kindle as it is not so easy to go to the end of the chapter to see what the asterisk means. I don't understand why the footnote is not simply included into the body of the text. If there is something that needs a reference or acknowledgement why not just include it in the paragraph. Despite my comments the book is informative and gives us some idea about the paranoid crazy person Stalin and his cronies were. However I did not find adequate information about their rationale and what they really hoped to achieve. Perhaps they had none.

One of the best detailed accounts of Stalin and his circle. The author poignantly writes about the fear and terror even amongst his closest comrades. He also captures how both revered and feared he was by his people. So many naive Americans merely portray Hitler and Stalin simplistically both as these crazy monsters who terrorized their people. They did terrorize their people but both were worshipped by many millions. And contrary to what many say, he was no insane megalomaniac. Rather he was an astute politician and yes statesman who built a society with him as its unquestionable dictator.This book does a marvelous account at portraying those around him including his family.I have read this book twice, and thoroughly enjoyed it both times.No book has given such a lucid, descriptive, and fascinating account of the man, his closest so circle and the country at the time. I also like the fact that unlike many other biographies it does not preach or lecture on the negatives of socialism ad nauseum. It merely tells the facts

A gripping and truly masterful work. Simon Sebag Montefiore has put together a very adept, voluminous work of scholarship that is by far the most broadranging and far sighted work on Stalin that this reader has yet read (though still have yet to read Service's biography).In the preface, Montefiore acknowledges his collaboration with the other masterful scholars of Stalinism, Robert Service and Oleg Khlevniuk, so this leads me to think of this book as not a competitor to the other masterful scholars, but rather a stand alone work to be read on its own merits, along with the other works.So why read this, by far the lengthiest out of the aforementioned works, rather than the more concise offerings from Service or Khlevniuk? Because this is by far the most broad ranging panorama of Stalin's court. It entirely lives up to its title, it covers all the characters and intrigue of Stalin's court, so think of this work not so much as a biography (although it definitely is) and more of a panorama. In this sense, the strength of this work is the insight into all the other characters, giving perhaps the fullest picture of the politics of the Stalin era this reader has yet read.The book itself is lengthy and challenging, and this was completed on my second attempt. It begins as something of a slow starter, and the covering of Stalin's terror is very detailed and becomes lengthy at times, but if one wants a complete picture, then one is unlikely to be disappointed.In short a masterful work, confirming Simon Sebag Montefiore as one of the pre-eminent historians of the modern day.

I can’t believe some of the negative reviews on here are criticising the writing of Simon Sebag Montefiore!As someone with a somewhat limited attention span when it comes to longer non-fiction texts, I found myself gripped throughout Stalin by his sparkling prose and evocative descriptions. He presents a monumental amount of research and information whilst still keeping an almost movie-like narrative the whole way through.Having read his Young Stalin a few years back, I knew that I would eventually get round to reading what is essentially the sequel. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t put off by the length - I was initially worried that it would be another half-read historical tome on my bookshelf, but Montefiore’s writing kept me reading until the end.As with Young Stalin, he tells the story of one of history’s greatest in such a way as to present him as human. At times the reader almost sympathises with him, as we read of his personal tragedies. We discover more of Stalin’s personal relationships and the scheming and crawling of the members of the Politburo as they try to gain favour.I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in learning about Stalin and his entourage. I’m sure there are plenty of great works out there, but Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar presents never before seen information in a highly accessible and readable way, a biography which I doubt will be rivalled for many years.

This makes a great follow up to Simon Sebag Montefiore's superb 'Young Stalin', albeit there's some overlap in content. If you want to really know about the rise of the young Stalin - and it's fascinating - then read the other title, as this hefty tome, whilst including enough background to set the scene, concentrates as the title suggests on Stalin's time in power.I find a lot of current history books tend to be rather heavy going, often as a result of their desire to be as comprehensive as possible. In this respect, Montefiore comes up trumps, being both highly readable - the adjective compelling is much overused (esp. on book jacket hype) but is totally apt here - and also very detailed.This book is itself massively hyped, in a chorus of critical approval that is, fortunately, very well founded. One thing many comment upon is that, rather than just rehashing the Stalin-as-monster line, we get a very rounded picture, showing how he could charm and disarm, as well as decimating any and all in the more familiar tale of power-drunk paranoia.With a central cast of characters that range from the wives to the cronies and henchmen, dominated of course by 'Uncle' Stalin himself, and a 'supporting cast' of faceless millions, death hovers over all.Ultimately it's almost impossible to discern whether Stalin was just a Georgian gangster writ large, or an ideologue who dug a monomaniac furrow though history in pursuit of a Socialist utopia like a juggernaut over mountains of dead, or a bit of both. But what is certain is that this is a fascinating and deeply compelling story, adroitly told by a gifted historian and storyteller.

As the title suggests this is a book about Stalin the man and his 'magnates' (big bosses like Molotov, Beria, Voroshilov, Yezhov, Kaganovich, and so on). These are the guys familiar (to dumb it all down a bit) from The Death of Stalin. Following on from the excellent 1st volume, this one runs from the 1920s through to Stalin's death and this covers collectivization, the Terror, and World War II. But with its focus on the big bosses the geopolitical aspects are a bit underplayed. The author writes well and it is probably my fault for being a dry old stick, but I wanted more of the big picture.I expected to like this book more and I can't quite think why this solid, well researched and very well written book on a subject I am interested in didn't excite me. There is a good level of detail and I couldn't complain, given the title does explain exactly what's in it. But it did feel a bit claustrophobic and when the perspective widens (as in chapter 23 when the cultural scene is filled in) it felt much more engaging and informative. Perhaps I have been spoiled by Dikotter's excellently balanced books on Mao where the big perspective is so well integrated with the political and personal levels?

I knew about Stalin in a general way but not in this detail to this depth. The 1937 Terror was even worse than I realised. It continued throughout his life, even during and after the Great Patriotic War. He constantly played his fellow revolutionaries off against each other so that he kept his power absolutely.What makes this book so important is the author's attempt to get inside Stalin's mind which he does very well. And yet. In everything he said, did and ordered there is a dark corner which is completely unpredictable which is why those even in favour were all terrified. Time and again those who thought they knew Stalin got it wrong with fatal consequences: all were informers and informed upon by each other in a perfect circle of fear.If you lined up all those who occupied positions of power during his reign, most of them would have a (red) cross through them. Violence, torture (for extracting false confessions) and murder were systemic, essential elements of Lenin's Bolshevism which Stalin expanded exponentially, even carelessly. Many millions died during the liquidation of farms (collectivisation) and the resulting famine. Many more millions were arbitrarily murdered and sent to the gulags during the 1937 Terror. The Second World War piled yet more millions on top of all of those, initially because Stalin failed to see through Hitler's intentions and because he had decimated the Red Army's officers, senior and junior.The scale of the slaughter is so vast that's it's impossible to encompass it mentally. In these uncertain times, this is a work which should be read by everyone who's concerned with the so-called "populist" leaders around the world: this is the map to the deepest hell.