…far more than the story of the man…Mr. Kotkin's stunningly ambitious project is nothing less than to write an exhaustive history of Russia and the world around it, from the collapse of the czarist empire through the end of World War II…Mr. Kotkin…has done prodigious research, not only among the troves of scholarly works about Stalin but also in the archives that have become accessible since the collapse of the Soviet Union…there are enough juicy details, colorful personalities and anecdotes to keep the story moving at a lively pace. Ministers of the doomed czarist order, and Nicholas II himself, come to life here, as do peripheral figures like Kaiser Wilhelm II and Benito Mussolini, and, of course, the main figures: Lenin, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Trotsky and the other young Bolshevik zealots…It is a testament to Mr. Kotkin's skill that even after almost a thousand pages, one wants more.
Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928
Narrated by Paul Hecht
Stephen KotkinUnabridged — 38 hours, 47 minutes
Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928
Narrated by Paul Hecht
Stephen KotkinUnabridged — 38 hours, 47 minutes
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Editorial Reviews
…a masterly account…Though the outlines of Stalin's story are well known, Kotkin makes an enormous effort to debunk some of the myths…And Kotkin offers the sweeping context so often missing from all but the best biographies…Stalin is a complex work, demanding a dedicated reader…But it presents a riveting tale, one written with pace and aplomb. Kotkin has given us a textured, gripping examination of the foundational years of the man most responsible for the construction of the Soviet state in all its brutal glory. Ending as it does, before the years of collectivization, the purges, the struggles of World War II and the establishment of the Cold War geopolitical landscape, this first volume leaves the reader longing for the story still to come.
09/15/2014
How did the “fugitive vagrant” Ioseb Jugashvili—poet, bank robber, student of Esperanto, and Marxist revolutionary—become Joseph Stalin, the architect of Soviet collectivism and the Great Purges? In this first volume of a planned three-volume biography, Kotkin (Uncivil Society) begins unraveling Stalin’s strange, monstrous life. This is an epic, thoroughly researched account that presents a broad vision of Stalin, from his birth to his rise to absolute power. The details Kotkin reveals of Stalin and the revolution seem absurd: as a youth he went by aliases including Pockmarked Oska and Oddball Osip and wore an Islamic veil on occasion to escape the attention of czarist authorities. At the beginning of Soviet rule, Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky holed up in a former finishing school for girls where the headmistress was still living, even as they dismantled czarist Russia. Kotkin tracks the changing revolution, noting how Stalin and the Bolsheviks benefited from the disintegration of the old order. After Lenin died and his opponents were sidelined, Stalin plunged into “collectivization,” even as Soviet citizens cried out for “butter not socialism.” How did Stalin accomplish so much, and unleash so much terror? Kotkin identifies an essential quality: “Stalin did not flinch.” (Nov.)
Jennifer Siegel, The New York Times Book Review
“A masterly account... Kotkin offers the sweeping context so often missing from all but the best biographies... Stalin is a complex work... but it presents a riveting tale, one written with pace and aplomb. Kotkin has given us a textured, gripping examination of the foundational years of the man most responsible for the construction of the Soviet state in all its brutal glory.... This first volume leaves the reader longing for the story still to come.”
Richard Pipes, The New York Review of Books:
“This is a very serious biography that… is likely to well stand the test of time.”
The Wall Street Journal:
“Superb . . . Mr. Kotkin’s volume joins an impressive shelf of books on Stalin. Only Mr. Kotkin’s book approaches the highest standard of scholarly rigor and general-interest readability.”
New Statesman (UK):
“[Kotkin’s] viewpoint is godlike: all the world falls within his purview. He makes comparisons across decades and continents.... An exhilarating ride.”
Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic:
“An exceptionally ambitious biography… Kotkin builds the case for quite a different interpretation of Stalin—and for quite a few other things, too. The book’s signature achievement… is its vast scope: Kotkin has set out to write not only the definitive life of Stalin but also the definitive history of the collapse of the Russian empire and the creation of the new Soviet empire in its place.”
Robert Gellately, Times Higher Education (London):
“A brilliant portrait of a man of contradictions... In the vast literature on the Soviet Union, there is no study to rival Stephen Kotkin’s massive first instalment of a planned three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin. When it is complete, it will surely become the standard work, and I heartily recommend it.”
John Thornhill, Financial Times:
"It is a measure of Kotkin’s powers of research and explanation that Stalin’s decisions can almost always be understood within the framework of his ideology and the context of his times.... With a ferocious determination worthy of his subject, the author debunks many of the myths to have encrusted themselves around Stalin.... [A] magnificent biography. This reviewer, at least, is already impatient to read the next two volumes for their author’s mastery of detail and the swagger of his judgments.”
David Johnson, Johnson’s Russia List:
“Required reading for serious Russia-watchers... As the product of years of work and careful thought, it is for me a reminder of what it takes to get close to the truth about important and controversial subjects. And the distance and time required to do so.”
Geoffrey Roberts, Irish Examiner:
“Monumental... For Kotkin it was not Stalin’s personality that drove his politics but his politics that shaped his personality. His research, narrative and arguments are as convincing as they are exhaustive. The book is long but very readable and highly accessible to the general reader.... Magisterial.”
Donald Rayfield, Literary Review:
"Masterful... No other work on Stalin incorporates so well the preliminary information needed by the general reader, yet challenges so thoroughly the specialist's preconceptions. Kotkin has chosen illustrations, many of them little known, which reveal the crippled psyches of his dramatis personae.”
Booklist (starred):
“An ambitious, massive, highly detailed work that offers fresh perspectives on the collapse of the czarist regime, the rise of the Bolsheviks, and the seemingly unlikely rise of Stalin to total power over much of the Eurasian land mass....This is an outstanding beginning to what promises to be a definitive work on the Stalin era.”
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.”
The Sunday Times (London):
“Staggeringly researched, exhaustively thorough... Kotkin has no patience for the idea that Stalin... was a madman or a monster. His personality and crimes, Kotkin thinks, are only explicable in the wider contexts of Russian imperial history and Marxist theory. So this is less a conventional biography than a colossal life and times.... Hugely impressive.”
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Guardian:
“Unlike a number of Stalin studies, this is not an etiology of evil. The author does not appear to be watching his subject narrowly for early signs of the monstrous deformations that will later emerge. He tries to look at him at various stages of his career without the benefit of too much hindsight.... [Kotkin] is an engaging interlocutor with a sharp, irreverent wit... making the book a good read as well as an original and largely convincing interpretation of Stalin that should provoke lively arguments in the field.”
An exceptionally ambitious biography... Kotkin builds the case for quite a different interpretation of Stalin—and for quite a few other things, too. The book's signature achievement... is its vast scope: Kotkin has set out to write not only the definitive life of Stalin but also the definitive history of the collapse of the Russian empire and the creation of the new Soviet empire in its place.
This is a very serious biography that... is likely to well stand the test of time.
Masterly.... Kotkin offers the sweeping context so often missing from all but the best biographies. In his introductory chapter he makes the lofty assertion that a history if Stalin Is akin to "a history of the world"... and he delivers not only a history of the late imperial Russia and of the revolution and early Soviet state, but also frequent commentary on the global geopolitics at play. [Stalin] presents a riveting tale, written with pace and aplomb. Kotkin has given us a textured, gripping examination of the foundational years of the man most responsible for the construction of the Soviet state in all its brutal glory. The first volume leaves the reader longing for the story still to come.
Monumental.... Kotkin has burrowed deep into the archives that opened following the collapse of the Soviet Union and has absorbed much of the recent Russian research on Stalin. With a ferocious determination worthy of his subject, the author debunks many of the myths to have encrusted themselves around Stalin....[A] magnificent biography. This reviewer, at least, is already impatient to read the next two volumes for their author's mastery of detail and the swagger of his judgments.
...a brilliant portrait of a man of contradictions... This book's extraordinary final chapter, "If Stalin had died", cannot fail to whet readers' appetites for the next volumes in the biography.
Kotkin's subject is immense, and his book is commensurate with it. Kotkin uses the word "diligence" several times of Stalin's unremitting commitment to work and it is a quality that he, too, has in spades. His viewpoint is godlike: all the world falls within his purview. He makes comparisons across decades and continents."
...[Kotkin] is an engaging interlocutor with a sharp, irreverent wit that [makes] the book a good read as well as an original and largely convincing interpretation of Stalin that should provoke lively arguments in the field. Of course, this is just volume one: the hardest bit, on the purges and terror of the 1930s, is still to come. Having given us a human character, albeit one whose menace is growing, how will Kotkin handle the menace full-blown in volume two? Will he try to keep Stalin human or let him morph into a monster? That's a tricky decision for the author. For readers, it's something to look forward to.
Superb... Mr. Kotkin's volume joins an impressive shelf of books on Stalin. Only Mr. Kotkin's book approaches the highest standard of scholarly rigor and general-interest readability.
★ 01/01/2017
Historian Kotkin authoritatively examines Stalin's life, from his childhood in current-day Georgia to his metamorphosis as student priest to his unlikely rise as Lenin's ultimate successor. The first in a planned epic trilogy. (LJ 5/1/14)
★ 2014-09-08
The first volume of a massive biography of Joseph Stalin (1878-1953).Authoritative and rigorous in his far-flung research and fresh assertions, Kotkin (History and International Affairs/Princeton Univ.; Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment, 2009, etc.) fashions a life of Stalin against the enormous political upheaval in czarist Russia at the turn of the century, which gave rise to the revolutionary socialist movement fomented in Germany. The author sketches Stalin's early development as a poor cobbler's son in the Caucasus town of Gori: Iosif "Soso" Jughashvili evolved into a diligent young man despite parental hostilities, attending seminary in Tiflis and becoming radicalized against the prevailing imperial rot. As the old order exploded in bombs around him, he became a Bolshevik pundit, V.I. Lenin acolyte, Trotsky nemesis and disputed successor. In January 1928, Stalin's fateful trip to Siberia to begin consolidating his land collectivization scheme would transform—disastrously, it turned out—Soviet Eurasia. Kotkin has no patience with psychological explanations for Stalin's obsessiveness, thuggery and paranoia—e.g., being beaten as a child or his later humiliation as a rustic "Asiatic" Georgian amid the Russian elite. What Stalin did have was the devotion of his mother and a drive to better himself, despite ill health and accidents that left him with a withered arm and limping gait. Steeped in Marxism thanks to his revolutionary mentor at seminary, "Lado" Ketskhoveli, Stalin quit school, went underground and became a self-styled "enlightener" to the workers, his political ideas solidified by the oppression of the collapsing czarist regime, frequent jailings or internal exile, and adherence to Lenin's inexorable class war. Stalin's elevation as Lenin's "general secretary" in 1922 both spurred Stalin's own personal dictatorship and aroused alarm—e.g., in Lenin's disputed deathbed "Testament" urging Stalin's removal. Staggeringly wide in scope (note the 100-page bibliography), this work meticulously examines the structural forces that brought down one autocratic regime and put in place another.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170969494 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
| Publication date: | 01/02/2015 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
RUSSIA’S DOUBLE-HEADED EAGLE NESTED across a greater expanse than that of any other state, before or since. The realm came to encompass not just the palaces of St. Petersburg and the golden domes of Moscow, but Polish and Yiddish-speaking Wilno and Warsaw, the German-founded Baltic ports of Riga and Reval, the Persian and Turkic-language oases of Bukhara and Samarkand (site of Tamerlane’s tomb), and the Ainu people of Sakhalin Island near the Pacific Ocean. “Russia” encompassed the cataracts and Cossack settlements of wildly fertile Ukraine and the swamps and trappers of Siberia. It acquired borders on the Arctic and Danube, the Mongolian plateau, and Germany. The Caucasus barrier, too, was breached and folded in, bringing Russia onto the Black and Caspian seas, and giving it borders with Iran and the Ottoman empire. Imperial Russia came to resemble a religious kaleidoscope with a plenitude of Orthodox churches, mosques, synagogues, Old Believer prayer houses, Catholic cathedrals, Armenian Apostolic churches, Buddhist temples, and shaman totems. The empire’s vast territory served as a merchant’s paradise, epitomized by the slave markets on the steppes and, later, the crossroad fairs in the Volga valley. Whereas the Ottoman empire stretched over parts of three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa), some observers in the early twentieth century imagined that the two-continent Russian imperium was neither Europe nor Asia but a third entity unto itself: Eurasia. Be that as it may, what the Venetian ambassador to the Sublime Porte (Agosto Nani) had once said of the Ottoman realm—“more a world than a state”—applied no less to Russia. Upon that world, Stalin’s rule would visit immense upheaval, hope, and grief.
Stalin’s origins, in the Caucasus market and artisan town of Gori, were exceedingly modest—his father was a cobbler, his mother, a washerwoman and seamstress—but in 1894 he entered an Eastern Orthodox theological seminary in Tiflis, the grandest city of the Caucasus, where he studied to become a priest. If in that same year a subject of the Russian empire had fallen asleep and awoken thirty years later, he or she would have been confronted by multiple shocks. By 1924 something called a telephone enabled near instantaneous communication over vast distances. Vehicles moved without horses. Humans flew in the sky. X-rays could see inside people. A new physics had dreamed up invisible electrons inside atoms, as well as the atom’s disintegration in radioactivity, and one theory stipulated that space and time were interrelated and curved. Women, some of whom were scientists, flaunted newfangled haircuts and clothes, called fashions. Novels read like streams of dreamlike consciousness, and many celebrated paintings depicted only shapes and colors. As a result of what was called the Great War (1914–18), the almighty German kaiser had been deposed and Russia’s two big neighboring nemeses, the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, had disappeared. Russia itself was mostly intact, but it was ruled by a person of notably humble origins who also hailed from the imperial borderlands. To our imaginary thirty-year Rip Van Winkle in 1924, this circumstance—a plebeian and a Georgian having assumed the mantle of the tsars—could well have been the greatest shock of all.
(Continues…)
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