This is a horrifying book. It gets painfully close to the innermost machinations of the handful of politicians close to Stalin from his accession to undisputed power following Lenin’s death to his urine-soaked death more than a quarter of a century later. It is based on extensive research in the recently opened archives, and contains voluminous quotes from correspondence between Stalin and members of his entourage.
For all those reasons, it’s a very welcome book. But, regrettably, it suffers from being massively overwritten. Far from being the sober, scholarly narrative that one has come to expect from modern British historians such as Richard J. Evans, Ian Kershaw, Richard Overy, Orlando Figes and Robert Service, it is written in a ghoulish prose that sets out to judge the protagonists at every turn. Make no mistake, these are historical figures who need to be judged, but such judgement should be considered not sound like it has come from the pen of an airport thriller writer.
All too often, Montefiore uses cartoonish language to describe Stalin and his colleagues, words like ‘magnates’, ‘vizier’, ‘cronies’ and so forth. Here’s a particularly egregious example:
Malenkov stood up and ran forward, chins aquiver, with the desperate grace of a whippet sealed inside a blancmange.
It’s a memorable phrase, certainly, but not one that it behoves an objective historian to deploy, and it’s not attributed to a source or footnoted, so one can only assume that this is Montefiore’s own coinage. There are innumerable examples of this type of thing strewn throughout the book. He also has an annoying tic where he describes a character as follows: “This [insert cartoonish description] was [insert thing person was known for]“. For example: “this self-anointed Messianic hero worked hard to envelop his protégés in an irresistible embrace of folksy intimacy”. This recurs again and again until it becomes sickening.
Montefiore’s own prejudices are also a problem. He frequently refers with distain to the proletarian background of the protagonists, as though a shoe-maker’s son has no business being the leader of a nation, per se. He’s particularly snobbish about Khrushchev, no genius certainly, but Montefiore consistently emphasises his lack of intellect and his illiteracy, as though these things were Khruschev’s fault. There’s also a bizarre footnote when he praises Queen Victoria’s ‘graciousness’ for allowing an ageing Gladstone to be seated in her presence. I find this type of snobbery almost impossible to take.
The same thing applies to the leaders’ appearances. He has a particular problem with Yezhov – a outstandingly brutal murderer even in this group – which is reasonable enough, but he constantly stresses that Yezhov was short (’practically a dwarf’) and bisexual. These are perhaps biographical facts that we can be informed of once, rather than used as evidence of his depravity, but they do not inform us in any way about how he came to be the man he did, and Montefiore provides no evidence that they were linked in any way. Montefiore seems to be trying to suggest a connection between the ‘depravity’ of Yezhov’s sex life with his crimes, but that seems almost unbelievably stupid. And, in any case, what is ‘depraved’ about being bisexual? It’s all very puzzling, and again detracts from the historical value of the book, and it’s something that he comes back to time and time again – Stalin’s yellow eyes, Malenkov’s corpulence, and Mekhlis’s weasel face, and on, and on.
I mention these problems because they fundamentally undermine the book and its claim to historical impartiality, and this is a great pity, because we are still not as horrified by Stalin as we are by Hitler, and that is something that desperately needs to change. Stalin was a monstrously callous waster of human life, both of strangers and of his closest comrades. He was responsible for the deaths of more than 20 million Soviet citizens, often condemning them to death as part of a quota.
Like Hitler, though, he could also be personally charming, kind and thoughtful. He was adored by his people and by his domestic staff. He lived a life of comparative simplicity, although this changed after the war. The account of the war is patchy, and there are far better accounts if that is your specific area of interest (Richard Overy’s Russia’s War is particularly good).
While the reliance on documents is laudable, Montefiore’s style fails to blend these into a smooth narrative, and the text is broken up by including several quotations per paragraph, but mixed in with Montefiore’s colourful commentary, so it becomes difficult to track what is reported documentation and what is interpretation. He also has a bizarre habit of including the sign-off on almost every telegram or letter he quotes, so the text is littered with ‘Communist Greetings! J.Stalin’, or ‘let Nikolaenko find calm and fruitful work, J.St.’ Since it’s clear from the context who is being quoted, what purpose does this serve?
This is a necessary book. Anyone interested in Stalin, Soviet history specifically or world history generally should read it, but it is a great, great shame that it suffers so many fatal flaws. For the best one-volume biography of Stalin, you should turn to Robert Service’s biography of the Vozhd, but there are telling details in Montefiore’s account that can only help round out an understanding – and a horror – of the most brutal dictator of the catastrophic 20th century.
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