Young Stalin

I started this book when I was attending uni residentially, but with the end of the semester, I never got to finish it, although one of my professors highly recommended it. Then when I switched to online uni, I decided to get a copy for myself. I loved it! It was an easy read and one I finished in about two and a half days. I especially appreciated the footnotes that were added at the bottom of the pages in which the author explained in more detail some of the incidents that he was referring to that weren't essential to the central theme. I would say the book is great for anyone wanting to learn a bit more about the man behind the colossal figure in history. 10/10

Attention all historians! This is the way that history should be written. Simon Sebag Montefiore's magnificent chronicle of Stalin's early years is easily one of the most entertaining and knowledgeable historical biographies that I have ever read. Montefiore has proven to be both an assiduous researcher, as well as a masterful storyteller. Some reviewers have accused Montefiore of being too sensationalistic and novelistic. I call it vivid, descriptive storytelling of the highest caliber. I could actually visualize the scenes in my head as he was describing them. Remember that excruciatingly leaden college professor whose lectures you dreaded sitting through, that tiresome mathematician in historian's clothing? That is the type who will surely be annoyed by this book, although anyone with half a pulse will find it to be a superlative exercise in biographic history. For Pete's sake, the reason I like history is because it is the study of animate objects; people, places, events, etc. It is adventurous, and when done rightly, like Montefiore here, it can truly inspire. Witness the style: "So this is not just a biography, but the chronicle of their milieu, a pre-history of the USSR itself, a study of the subterranean worm and the silent chrysalis before it hatched the steel winged butterfly." Born in 1879 as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, the man who would become known as Stalin, was known throughout his childhood and youth as Soso. Young Soso was born and raised in the industrial Georgian town of Gori, in the far reaches of the Russian Empire. This seething Caucasian town was a turbulent mix of piety, honor and drunken unruliness. "Gori was one of the last towns to practice the picturesque and savage custom of free for all town brawls with special rules, but no holds barred violence. Boozing, praying and fighting were all interconnected, with drunken Priests acting as referees." Soso's father was a drunken cobbler who viciously abused him. His mother was compassionate, yet maybe too much so, as she had a reputation for being promiscuous. Stalin was certainly aware, writes Montefiore, that his biological father might have been one of three neighborhood men that were close to the family. The Georgia of Stalin's youth was also steeped in a culture of rebellion and banditry. Young Soso grew up hearing stories of heroic Georgians who fought off the imperialist forces of Russia, and his original revolutionary cohorts were a turbulent admixture of dedicated Marxists and bloodthirsty criminals. Here is another quote that highlights both the ambiance of Stalin's birthplace, as well as Montefiore's writing style: "Georgians and other Caucasian men in traditional chokha, their skirted long coats lined down the chest with bullet pouches, swaggered down the streets singing loudly. Georgian women in black headscarves and the wives of Russian officers in European fashions, promenaded through the gates of the Pushkin Gardens, buying ices and sherbet alongside

Attention all historians! This is the way that history should be written. Simon Sebag Montefiore's magnificent chronicle of Stalin's early years is easily one of the most entertaining and knowledgeable historical biographies that I have ever read. Montefiore has proven to be both an assiduous researcher, as well as a masterful storyteller. Some reviewers have accused Montefiore of being too sensationalistic and novelistic. I call it vivid, descriptive storytelling of the highest caliber. I could actually visualize the scenes in my head as he was describing them. Remember that excruciatingly leaden college professor whose lectures you dreaded sitting through, that tiresome mathematician in historian's clothing? That is the type who will surely be annoyed by this book, although anyone with half a pulse will find it to be a superlative exercise in biographic history. For Pete's sake, the reason I like history is because it is the study of animate objects; people, places, events, etc. It is adventurous, and when done rightly, like Montefiore here, it can truly inspire. Witness the style: "So this is not just a biography, but the chronicle of their milieu, a pre-history of the USSR itself, a study of the subterranean worm and the silent chrysalis before it hatched the steel winged butterfly." Born in 1879 as Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, the man who would become known as Stalin, was known throughout his childhood and youth as Soso. Young Soso was born and raised in the industrial Georgian town of Gori, in the far reaches of the Russian Empire. This seething Caucasian town was a turbulent mix of piety, honor and drunken unruliness. "Gori was one of the last towns to practice the picturesque and savage custom of free for all town brawls with special rules, but no holds barred violence. Boozing, praying and fighting were all interconnected, with drunken Priests acting as referees." Soso's father was a drunken cobbler who viciously abused him. His mother was compassionate, yet maybe too much so, as she had a reputation for being promiscuous. Stalin was certainly aware, writes Montefiore, that his biological father might have been one of three neighborhood men that were close to the family. The Georgia of Stalin's youth was also steeped in a culture of rebellion and banditry. Young Soso grew up hearing stories of heroic Georgians who fought off the imperialist forces of Russia, and his original revolutionary cohorts were a turbulent admixture of dedicated Marxists and bloodthirsty criminals. Here is another quote that highlights both the ambiance of Stalin's birthplace, as well as Montefiore's writing style: "Georgians and other Caucasian men in traditional chokha, their skirted long coats lined down the chest with bullet pouches, swaggered down the streets singing loudly. Georgian women in black headscarves and the wives of Russian officers in European fashions, promenaded through the gates of the Pushkin Gardens, buying ices and sherbet alongside

Simon Sebag Montefiore has a habit, by his pedestrian ways, of annoying not just the historian, but perhaps also the more intellectual kind of reader. And he does so not just by selling more books than his collegues. In his new book on Stalin Montefiore can't resist temptation, opening with a bankrobbery and describing it in glowing terms. Since the rest of Young Stalin is strictly chronological, and the robbery takes place in 1907, this is a deliberate choice. It's Hollywood, not history. Montefiore talks about `heists', `glamourpussy's' and `spooks'. Richard Lourie, writing a piece for the New York Times is scathing about Montefiore. Remarking upon how Djugashvili became Stalin, he writes: "You won't find out here. Simon Sebag Montefiore, the author of "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar," is not one historian but two. The first is capable of serious research and insight, but he is eclipsed by the second, who sees history as scandal and its writing as gossip. Vanity Fair goes to Lubyanka." Orlando Figes writes, in the New York Review (Rise of a Gangster): `Young Stalin' is not without its weaknesses. Scholars may have reservations about its occcasional lapses into semifictional narrative, while others may be driven mad by the endnotes, from which in many cases it is virtually impossible to find the sources for quotations in the text." Although it seems to me that Figes is more rational than Lourie, there is a lot of truth in these observations. When I started reading his first volume on Stalin (Court of the Red Tsar), I felt the same way. I was irritated by the tone and by the novellistic approach. And I felt again, exactly the same way, when I started in Young Stalin, more so even, probably because of the unnecessary heist (sorry) at te beginning. But in the end you surrender: you just have to start admiring the immense amount of detectivework, the investigation of numerous sources, the detailed and very factual approach. Montefiore may be seduced by his own story, but he tells it very well. His research is terrific, but so is his style. And I find it silly to complain that Montefiore is so busy "glamourizing his hero" (Lourie) that there is no insight left. That isn't true. The enormous amount of facts that Montefiore presents, is chilling enough. And is it, after having read Kearshaw on Hitler, possible to tell how the young man became the dictator? The best thing to hope for is that a biography gives you the facts. The rest is mystery. In the end you can only - like Figes does in the New York Review - admire the book, which ends in 1917. And since Court of the Red Tsar begins, more or less, in 1932, there are 15 more years to hope for.

I came away from "Young Stalin" very impressed. The author has done a superb job of constructing Josef Stalin's life story from his birth to his initial rise at the start of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. I can't remember being as impressed with a book's research as I was with this book. There is a wealth of information on Stalin's early life -- a period that has never been written about in such great detail -- tapped from hundreds of new sources and revealed in fascinating text. Even if you're not terribly interested in Stalin's life -- I wasn't -- you will find this book interesting, as Stalin's early life was one adventure after another. The book begins by discussing Stalin's birth to a tough-minding, loving mother and an alcoholic father in a town in Georgia as dirt-poor as anything imaginable. From there, Stalin excelled in school, and nearly became a priest, but was ironically driven away by excessively strict priests at his school, running right into the arms of the revolutionary beliefs that were taking the world by storm at the end of the 19th Century. It was at this point that Stalin's life really began to take shape. From there, Stalin became a shadowy figure in the underground, specializing in everything from arch-conspirator, to bank robber extraordinaire, to extortionist, to intelligence specialist, to counter-intelligence expert, to even murderer. Using his dark intelligence, over time Stalin became the key problem-solver for Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, helping rid the party of spies -- both real and imagined -- and planning and executing the bank robberies which would fund Lenin and his fledging Bolshevik Party in its early days. Between the events shaping Stalin's rise, the author does a brilliant job in discussing and highlighting many of the more "colorful" events in his young life. These events include Stalin's many, many affairs and several illegitimate children, how his amazing calmness and coldness allowed him to intimidate or control countless lackies nearly all of whom he later discarded, how he survived astonishingly brutal stretches of exile in Siberia, in particular a four year stretch on the Artic Circle in an area that is closer to being a hellhole that any other place imaginable, his many escapes from bumbling Tsarist police, and many other great tales. The author's writing is sharp and lively, and he well bolsters these and other stories with copious amounts of starred-* notes at the bottom nearly every page providing details of forgotten stories. Specifically, I loved how the author would tell what later became of the hundreds of people who Stalin came across in his youth; not surprisingly, nearly all of them despite often strong loyalty, were later imprisoned and/or killed by Stalin once he became supreme leader of the country. While the author acknowledges time and again what an astonishing brute and killer Stalin would later become, he does so with kind of a bemusement. Indeed, while it

This book gave me back my faith in the art of biography, that something new can be found about even the most heavily referenced figures. Although I've read many Stalin biographies, in most of them the Vozhd's early years failed to come into focus. We learned little about the family other than papa Beso's drunken brutality and about mama Keke's resourcefulness and pride. Yet, even in this most studied of lives, there is plenty of gold to be found by those who know where to look. Montefiore takes us back to the almost Mediterranean splendor of the Caucasus, a land of fierce feuds and vendette, of revolutionary nobles and passionate women, where everything (the weather, the clothing, the food, the tempers) is as un-Russian as can be. Stalin was definitely a Caucasian. He was proud and violent, but also very sharp and able to behave with unexpected generosity. He was extremely bright and amazingly well read. It is easy to see why Stalin was offended by the poet Mandelstam's celebrated line in his "Ode to Stalin", about "His fat fingers" "slimy like slugs". Stalin surely regarded himself as an intellectual and this description as a dim-witted vulgarian could only wound him deeply. In his pictures as a young man he is curiously good looking, and one can imagine the attraction this bright young rebel might have had for all sorts of women. In this Stalin was very unlike Hitler, for whom fleshly pleasures were repellent, and rather like Mussolini who was to the end a ladies' man. Stalin's friends come alive in this book. Sure, they felt no compunction about cutting an enemy's throat, or blowing up an oil refinery, or bombing a police station, but they were also able to have fun, to drink, to joke, perhaps like many rebels of our day. It is to me a mistery how such a fanatic as Stalin, whose faith in revolutionary communism was boundless, could also enjoy all sorts of social and physical pleasures. Perhaps the explanation might be in his mother's example. Keke Geladze, as religious a woman as ever lived, was not above drinking or taking up lovers. Stalin's environment also becomes completely understandable. Georgia was also much like the American far West, a violent borderland where strong men imposed their will on others and insults where washed away in blood. Many Georgian notables supported the rebels not because they sympathised with socialism but because they saw them as nationalists fighting against the Russian invaders. It is a tragedy that Stalin ordered the murder of so many of his former backers, and that he came, in time, to be even more Russian than the Tsar ever was. Far from being a social outsider, in Georgia Stalin was known to everyone in his hometown, and he was very close to the local nobility, magnates, clergy, intellectuals and criminals. Stalin was uniquely Georgian, which might explain to some extent his current popularity there. These are just a few of the surprises this book has in store. It includes sever