Rating: 
Summary: Chilling
Review: Montefiore's Stalin: The Court Of The Red Tsar is chilling. Absolute power has dire effects on human relationships. You will learn many of the personal details of the lives of Stalin and his henchmen. You will observe so much pathology that led to the ruin of millions of lives by a small group of men.
Stalin's court was evil in so many ways. There were no checks and balances to stop the evil. Both the absolute power and the lack of any mechanisms to put a stop to it are chilling and terrifying. As you read the book you will most likely try to understand what happened and how it happened. It is not easy.
Rating:
Summary: At Last, a Stalin Study Free of Cold War Hyperbole!
Review: Montefiore's study of Stalin is truly the first, comprehensive, academic study of Stalin WITHOUT the ubiquitious Cold War rhetoric and moral grandstanding of so many previous English language biographies. Unlike Payne, Ulam, Tucker, and Lacquer, for example, Montefiore provides readers with an exhaustive examination of Stalin and his close associates for what they really were: Human beings who loved, hated, gossiped, told bawdy jokes, back-stabbed, got drunk, went on picnics, struggled with self doubt, cried, worried about their careers, enjoyed singing folk songs, spent long hours at the office, played with their children, endured personal health problems, and grieved for lost family members. This book does NOT focus on geopolitics or diplomacy but rather the million-and-one seemingly day-to-day activities that make up the thing we call Existence. Based on many interviews and newly-opened Russian archives, Montefiore presents a fascinating, lively, and well written study for both the scholar and the general reader. Stalin and all of his lieutenants -- including Molotov, Kagonovitch, Mikoyan, Beria, Zhukov, and dozens of others -- are portrayed not as two-dimensional robots mindlessly spouting-off Marxist-Leninist slogans, but rather as ordinary persons struggling with the mundane pettiness of Life. As a result, this tome leaves nothing sacred, and makes no apology for the horrific crimes committed by the Stalin regime. Nevertheless, because of the everyday banality of these individuals, it only makes the reader think of the hatred and destruction ordinary humans are potentially capable of....
Rating: 
Summary: OK book but not for beginners
Review: Mr. Montefiore certainly worked hard to get this book right and his intimate look at Stalin and his inner circle certainly is worth reading if you are already knowledgable about Stalin and the happenings of the Soviet Union under his rule. THis book goes to a level where we almost know what Stalin had for dinner every night. It spends much time on his relations with his family, friends and comrades. I am sure this will enlighten some.On the other hand this book is not recommended for non-Stalin scholars. Important external details (like much of WW2) are omitted so it is hard to figure out exactly what is happening at times. The onset of the Cold War is even less well explained, although some events, like the meetings with Churchill and FDR are explained in detail. I would say the greatest plus of this book is its description of a tyrant going mad, eliminating every person around him who might be a threat and creating new threats out of an overwhelming imagination. I would say the greatest flaw is the picture much of the book draws of Stalin as some sort of intellectual who likes to eat with friends and party with women. WHile this is going on millions are dieing, but hte focus remains on the fete of the evening and not the atrocities. Finally, while I understand Mr. Montefiore is Jewish, his focus on who is and is not jewish was quite off=putting. If somebody did not tell me he was jewish I would have guessed he was leading to some sweeping anti-semitic conclusions. I was not sure through the whole book why I needed to know who was Jewish and who was not. Maybe in England the word "Jew" is used as an adjective before a name like the Jew, Leon Trotsky, but it is not common in the U.S. and as I just said, it turned me off tremendously.
Rating:
Summary: A multi-faceted Stalin: sometimes tender, always terrifying
Review: Simon Sebag Montefiore has written perhaps the greatest chronicle of the life of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (Djugashvili to anyone who dared), his cabinet, their relationships with Koba and each other, their fears, power struggles, double and sometimes triple sidedness, with the utmost academic integrity and sensitivity.
It is easy to look back at Stalin and call him a devil, a Mephistopheles with no redeeming qualities, no hope for a better person struggling to escape from deep within his crippled body, no regrets for the crimes he commited. As Kruschev later said about himself, that applies doubly to Stalin: "I am up to my elbows in blood." Stalin often doubted himself, thought himself vicious and even cruel, had outbursts of sensitivity (the death of Nadya, for example) that make him seem all too human. But, with Stalin, these moments are underscored with very dark intentions. Did he murder Nadya himself in a fit of rage? Did he order the murder of Sergei Kirov, essentially paving the way for killing millions in the Great Purges? Why did he let a family member kill himself in a German concentration camp rather than agree to swapping him for a captured German general? It is easy to say it was out of some twisted malevolence, some psycopathic murderous rampage without reason, a hyperbolic shooting spree, but that is too easy. Montefiore does not paint Stalin in a sympathetic light, nor does he paint him in a Mesphistophelian one, he paints him in what I believe is a balanced and, for all intents and purposes, true one.
Though beware: before you plunge into this book be at least reasonably well versed in the general events and lingo of World War II. This isn't a historical recollection of the principle events of World War II: there is more time dedicated to the affairs of Politburo members and the sadistic rape-sprees of NKVD chief Beria than there is information about the fall of Berlin, the death of Hitler, or the Battle of Stalingrad. The War is over in a paragraph, Hiroshima and Nagasaki obliterated in the span of a sentence. Furthermore, Montefiore does not dare (I'm sure he is able to) come to general conclusions at the end of what are information dense chapters, which can prove to be frustrating. The books lacks a definite "spine": some information - complicated information - such as the intermarriage of Politburo sons and step-sons and daughters and step-daughters that appear in all their complicated glory for a couple of pages, only to disappear into obscurity never to be mentioned again. I poured over these sections trying to get the order right only to find it had little to do with anything. The book certainly needed another editor to get rid of these points that may only prove interesting to hardcore chroniclers. The general reader or even the student reader will find no use for them.
With these flaws in mind, it must be said that Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar is a triumph of post-Communist Soviet scholarship. The prose, although sometimes amateurish (some of his grammar is clunky and his structure unnecessarily complicated), is more often strong and powerful. Forceful even, with strong emotional impact. The fate of Sergo, the Rykovs, Kamenev and Zinoviev, Bukharin, are tragic events in the life of an increasingly paranoid, dangerously unstable, vicious, chilling tyrant that so often resembles nothing short of a tragicomedy.
This is a highly recommended book. If you have a decent knowledge of basic War-time Europe and the principle events then this is a must have. My advice is to slog through the perhaps extraneous bits, because the moments of brilliance you get along the way are well worth it. The postscript is marvellous.
I'd say enjoy this book, but enjoy is the wrong word. There isn't much enjoyable about mass murder and the systematic destruction of friends and family. Rather than enjoy this book, consider it. Consider all its themes, all its messages. Consider it and you will come out with an altered perspective on history and the judgement of the great personalities.
Rating:
Summary: A Extraordinarily intimate biography
Review: Stalin has been the subject of many interpretations and some decent biographical sketches. Nevertheless Stalin, the man, has remained largely clouded in mystery, like something that haunts Russian history. Here fort he first time Stalin is unmasked and his daily life is brought into the open. This intensely personal biography delves into the inner circle of Stalin's 'court'. From Mikoyan to Molotov, Khrushchev, Kagonovich to others like Beria and Zhdanov. Here is the intensely intimate portrait of a nation, a people, and a group of leaders who rose to power in the late 20s and early 30s. Stalin and his friends participated in a mass psychosis, one that came to grip the entire country as the Great Terror and the Purges accelerated. As literally millions were shipped to the Gulags to work on such inane projects as the White Sea Canal, Stalin and his circle remained ever in control, but ever intriguing against one another. This book covers every year and almost every great gathering in detail not hum drum "he went to lunch and then to bed" but in shocking irreverent portraits of how these characters circulated amongst one another and how they related to the country. The most fascinating aspect of this is the intentions of the title 'Red Tsar'. Stalin believed that the Tsar had controlled the country with 300,000 minor nobility and Stalin intended to control the country with roughly 300,000 political officers. In the end Stalin and his court mirrored the court of Ivan the Terrible or Catherine the Great. Very little had changed. Although Politics and Foreign affairs and the war is touched on it is not the main point of the biography. The main point of this biography is to try to understand, nay to experience, the inner workings of the Politburo and the Kremlin under Comrade Stalin. Other biographies such as Volkoganovs have served as eye openers into 'secret' portions of Stalin's life, while Conquests 'Breaker of Nations' delved into Stalin's Gulags and foreign affairs. But this is the first serious biography that allows the reader to understand the Russianess and the uniquely Russian traits that haunted the Soviet leaders. Far from being revolutionary communists these men embodied the very spirit of Russia, from the standard suspicions to the shadow that history cast upon them. Any Russophile or anyone with interest in Russia will love this biography, and anyone even mildly interesting in Stalin or his actions will love this biography. Seth J. Frantzman
Rating:
Summary: Koba the Dread
Review: Stalin, Koba to his friends (did he really have any?), has obviously been the focus of many historical works over the years; this new book, however, focuses on his private life and inner circle. Benefiting from newly released archival information as well as interviews, memoirs and new research, "The Court of the Red Tsar" is well written and almost compulsively readable for people like myself who have have been both fascinated and repelled by this astonishing and terrible man. For me, it serves as a sort of compendium of all the stories and anecdotes one might hope to read about the bizarre menagerie of misfits, sycophants and sociopaths with whom Stalin seemed to feel most at home, all living (and often dying) together in an environment that would have seemed very familiar to Caligula himself. And yet Stalin was no Caligula; he was horribly sane and chillingly far sighted, willing to wait years before striking down a perceived rival. That he was so successful, and ruled for so long, is a sobering testament to the power of evil in statecraft and human relations. Read this book for its unforgettable portrayal of the inner circle and their crimes, but don't expect too much by way of a broader historical context. The author's focus is unabashedly local, and the book is much more like Suetonius than Gibbon.
Rating: 
Summary: This charming tyrant and mass murderer
Review: The dictator was an autodidact who read exhaustively, while envious of his more intellectual colleagues. He liked Steinbeck and Galsworthy and he admired Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable films. Surprisingly, he had a good singing voice while less surprisingly he had "a hangman's wit." Although he became the unrivaled leader by 1929, well into the thirties he had to show respect, deference and charm to his fellow Politburo members. During the years of collectivization he frequently had to write letters of apology to the leading party members whose sensitivities had been bruised. At the same time he could write to one colleague "I could cover you with kisses in gratitude for your actions down there." The atmosphere in the early thirties was rather different from what one would think. The elite lived comfortably but not (yet) luxuriously and they would still have problems with money. Many of the children remember the dictator's fondness towards them. The elite would go into each others apartments to talk, to chat, to ask if they had extra food or sugar. The dictator himself had only one or two bodyguards until the assassination of Kirov... Welcome to Simon Sebag Montefiore's history of Stalin and his inner circle. As a work of history it is based on the most extensive archival research yet, the most recent scholarly research as well as intensive interviews with the survivors of the elite and their families. The result is a fascinating, disturbing work that details the life of Stalin and incidentally of the country that he ran. We read such tense passages such as the Revolution Day parade in 1941 held while the Germans were only fifty miles away. The work is full of interesting facts. The secret policeman Yagoda had a 165 pornographic pipes and cigarette holders while his successor Beria had eleven satin teddy bears (presumably because twelve would be just too much). We get to see a picture of a shirtless Molotov (of all people) playing tennis (of all things). In one of the very few good things one can say about him, Molotov still laid a place at the table for his arrested and imprisoned wife. (They were eventually reunited, unlike millions of other Soviets). Stalin's daughter apparently had a serious crush on Beria's son. Babel, Sholokhov and Yezhov all slept with the same woman (Yezhov's wife). Stalin was shocked at the fall of France: "Couldn't they put up any resistance at all? Now Hitler's going to beat our brains in!" He also described Hiroshima as "super-barbaric." More to the point Montefiore discusses Stalin's personal life. His wife almost certainly did commit suicide (and was not murdered as others suggested). Montefiore points out that she appeared to have been genuinely manic-depressive. Being married to Stalin obviously didn't help this, but it didn't cause it either. Montefiore leans against the idea that Kirov was murdered on Stalin's order. Like the burning of the Reichstag and the assassination of John F. Kennedy this probably was the act of a single individual. Maxim Gorky's death was probably the result of natural causes. As Montefiore goes on he points out that the purges was not just the result of one's man evil (his colleagues and lower level bureaucrats eagerly participated and made their own lists.) Oddly enough, the doctor's plot, the sinister anti-Semitic "conspiracy" that was apparently supposed to launch Stalin's final purge, had a basis in fact: apparently Zhdanov's doctors had hastened his death by incompetence. We learn more about Beria; on the one hand he was a sadistic torturer, a man who murdered and poisoned with his bare hands, a vile rapist. But on the other hand he was an effective bureaucrat, married to a beautiful woman who was loyal to him to the end of her days, and was surprisingly liberal. And so we read about how Stalin moved from the purges through the war to the cold war and became an absolute dictator. And so we read how no-one was safe: Molotov's wife, Kaganovich's brother, Kalinin's wife, Mikoyan's son, Khruschev's daughter in law and several of Stalin's own-in-laws all faced imprisonment or death. As the book goes on some weaknesses become clearer. The notes are somewhat awkward and it is not always clear which fact refers to which source. There are certain slips such as when Montefiore writes that Jews did not make up 6% of the party but were a majority of the government (which was what exactly?) At one time Montefiore says that Stalin was "more paranoid and more confident" which does not exactly explain things. More and more there is emphasis on the striking detail and the horrific anecdote, as opposed to sustained analysis. And so we get two pages on how Stalin went about getting a new national anthem, five pages on his first meeting with Churchill, two and a half pages on his daughter's relationship with a much older man. But the battle of Kursk only gets a paragraph, and it is not clear how the Soviet Union survived to stop Hitler. There is little on economic planning, while nationalities policy is only discussed when deportations come up. By the postwar years the narrative is the grim, familiar horrific account of endless, bullying banquets with Stalin's colleagues in deadly fear for their lives, and Soviet history is too much reduced to Stalin's whims (this particularly weakens his discussion of the cold war). But overall this is an important book that tells us much that we didn't know about the man whose victims ran into the eight digits.
Rating:
Summary: Good, some new things
Review: The main elements of Stalin's life have been known since the seventies. The opening of the Soviet archives gave some insights into his person life but did not greatly alter what we know of his career. Basically he was one of the lower ranked leaders of the Bolsheviks in Russia. He was thought of as a rather dull character, much less brilliant than Trotsky, Bukahrin or Kamenev. However in reality he was much brighter and more astute than any of these leaders. In the power struggle after Lenin's death he portrayed himself as a moderate and allied himself with those who opposed Trotsky. He put himself in charge of what would have been considered a rather dull job of organising the party. His rivals took more glamorous jobs. Stalin was able to manipulate the numbers so that he emerged as the man who controlled the levers of power. From being a cautious conservative Stalin decided on a policy of forced industrialisation. The problem was how to fund such a policy? Stalin did so by forcing the peasants into collective farms and then reducing their incomes so that he could export the industrial surplus and import capital equipment. This was met by tremendous opposition from the peasants. Stalin responded by creating an artificial famine leading to the death of 3-4 millions of them. This war on the peasants led to the Bolsheviks being loathed in the country. Stalin then egaged in the random killing of members of his own party to create a climate of fear to protect his position. The killing of course could not stop and he had to kill more and more to continue the climate of fear. Thus his rule led to show trials, the killing of a large percentage of the officer corp and the routine trial of those accused of wrecking. Stalinism as a system developed as a police state in which even the most powerful has to worry each night about the knock on the door of the secret police. Of the destruction of all interlectual values and a slavish cult of the personality which turned the leader into a god on earth. Many works have seen Stalin not unreasonably as the personification of evil. A large number of contempory books and those affected by his crims have also tried to suggest that he was stupid and to try to suggest a range of person motives for each event which occured during his reign. This book focuses on Stalin's person life. It suggests that he was a man very much in love with is wife. (Who was younger than him and attractive.) When his wife killed herself in horror at his war on the peasantry it unhinged him and was responsible for some of his later excesses and the development of his personality. This sort of speculation is of course just speculation. However the book is able to say a lot about Stalin's person life that was unkown. His mistresses, the places he stayed and a better accout of his relationship with his children. It also suggests that he was far smarter and better read than has been understood untill now. The writer has written a previous book on Potemkin and has an ability to make a book interesting.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Marvelous.
Review: This is a book I'd place in the same stratosphere as Conquest's The Great Terror. It's lively and written with a skilled hand. You'll be shocked at the speed in which you'll read this meticulous and entertaining history. The sickness and sadism that embodied Stalinism is vividly defined by Montefiore. The author spent considerable time analyzing primary source materials and it paid off in a biography that was definitely worth the money I paid for it. I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Bloody, Salacioius, Murderous Facts but Little Overview
Review: This is a curiously flawed but still fascinating book. It is a wealth of facts -- many from newly opened archives -- about Stalin viewed "up close and personal." It details his sexual life, his surprisingly high brow taste in literature and music, his mania for all manner of movies, food and drinking. Like "I Claudius," or "The Sopranos" the quotidian picture of ordinary daily life is mixed up with the most appalling, perverse violence. For example two of Stalin's closest aides' wives- including the wife of his foreign minister - were imprisoned while the aides worked day to day, warmly and loyally. Or when his son was captured by the Germans he had his daughter in law imprisoned and his own grandchild sent to an orphanage -- because he blamed his son for not committing suicide. Every chapter is filled with stuff such as the pediaphilia and other sexually predatory practices of various Stalinist magnates.
But there is still something very wrong with the book . The author has an obsessional interest in details (and so the book is satisfying because the facts are so lurid and his command of the material so immense) but he is allergic to painting overall gestalts. Most frustrating is his failure to draw a coherent picture of Stalin's personality which would thread through the book and give it a "spine." Instead he lists Stalin's traits and habits. Was Stalin a paraonid personality as is widely believed - the author really doesn't dwell on this question. The same failure to be able to turn on the wide focus lens is shown in not being able to draw summaries of the larger historical contexts for individual historical events. Finally this is the worst edited book I have ever read. The most interesting stuff is in the footnotes (Why not in the text?) and there are typos. In summary this is a flawed but nonetheless impressive bit of popular historical writing. Who for example would ever be able to forget an "anectode" like this: Stalin was convinced that Hitler would not invade on June 22, 1941 despite many notices that the invasion was coming. The night before the invasion a German communist selflessly swam a river separating the two forces to inform the Russians that he had just been given instructions to prepare to fight. The news was sent to Stalin who ordered that the helpful German deserter be shot. Great guy.
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