Stalin: Breaker of Nations

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant discussion of the face of evil.
Review: Conquest's book is a description of the most powerful man in human history. This book is not an attempt at a comprehensive recounting of Stalin's life. Instead Robert Conquest tries to show one the face of the man who was evil and not a description of the mechanism or the effect of that evil. For such comprehensive treatments one should read Conquest's other brilliant works especially THE GREAT TERROR.

Rating:
Summary: A largely useless, narrow view of a complex man.
Review: In Stalin: Breaker of Nations, Robert Conquest has done what should never be done in historical works. He starts out with a point to prove, then chooses stories which support that point. This is a ridiculously skewed view of a terribly complex human being. Conquest compounds the problem by not footnoting the work at all, so that 90% of his material cannot even be found by anyone wishing to follow his research. He also, in the bibliographical notes, relates how other authors on Stalin have been "taken in" by various accounts, which are more neutral in their portrayal of Stalin... yet fails to expound on what other, more negative, sources have taken him in. For a simple work of character assasination (of a figure for whom this has been done MANY times), this work is acceptable. As a historical work, it is essentially useless

Rating:
Summary: Mass murder as politics
Review: Joseph Stalin had a paranoid personality. Nikita Krushchev, one of Stalin's successors as Soviet dictator, could look back on terrifying times with Stalin. He said that Stalin was "sickly suspicious."

Stalin imputed his own cruel motives to the people around him. This made him terrified of other people and drove him to seek unassailable power over everyone.

And after he came to supreme power he never tired of killing real people for imaginary threats. Read about him in this riveting story of his career as the most prolific murderer in all of human history.

Rating:
Summary: Meet the World's Worst Tyrant
Review: Joseph Stalin was worse than Adolf Hitler. He ruled more territory (one-sixth of the globe, plus satellites), killed more people(estimates start at 20 million) and lasted longer (1925-1953). Yet unlike Hitler, he charmed politicians and intellectuals the world over, enjoyed an enthusiastic world press and inspired apologetic histories. Vladimir Putin, upon becoming the ruler of Russia, raised a toast to Stalin. Stalin's native country, Georgia, is restoring his name and monuments.

The one man who labored the longest to document Stalin's crimes in the West is Robert Conquest. Decade after decade he turned out volume after volume on the purges, the labor camps, the mass deportations and other horrors of the Stalin regime, all written in a calm, understated tone in defiance of "progressive" politicians and professors. These volumes, together with the quite different works of first-hand witnesses, such as Victor Kravchenko and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, kept the public record
straight and allowed inquiring readers to evaluate the propaganda of the Soviet state and its foreign sympathizers.

Curiously, Conquest did not write a biography of Stalin until now. STALIN: BREAKER OF NATIONS is quite unlike his previous works--more relaxed, less academic, not specialized. It truly distills the work of those heavier tomes and enjoys the luxury of not having to argue the case already made. Ideal for the non-specialist, it will inform the specialist as well, since Conquest likes to pick little gems from his treasure-trove of knowledge.

One example. A famous propaganda picture of Stalin holding up a smiling little Central Asian girl with black bangs. She hugs his neck as he grasps a big bouquet of flowers that she had just presented him at a state-organized ceremony. Conquest writes: "Stalin as children-lover (he later shot her father)."

Rating:
Summary: Meet the World's Worst Tyrant
Review: Joseph Stalin was worse than Adolf Hitler. He ruled more territory (one-sixth of the globe, plus satellites), killed more people(estimates start at 20 million) and lasted longer (1925-1953). Yet unlike Hitler, he charmed politicians and intellectuals the world over, enjoyed an enthusiastic world press and inspired apologetic histories. Vladimir Putin, upon becoming the ruler of Russia, raised a toast to Stalin. Stalin's native country, Georgia, is restoring his name and monuments.

The one man who labored the longest to document Stalin's crimes in the West is Robert Conquest. Decade after decade he turned out volume after volume on the purges, the labor camps, the mass deportations and other horrors of the Stalin regime, all written in a calm, understated tone in defiance of "progressive" politicians and professors. These volumes, together with the quite different works of first-hand witnesses, such as Victor Kravchenko and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, kept the public record
straight and allowed inquiring readers to evaluate the propaganda of the Soviet state and its foreign sympathizers.

Curiously, Conquest did not write a biography of Stalin until now. STALIN: BREAKER OF NATIONS is quite unlike his previous works--more relaxed, less academic, not specialized. It truly distills the work of those heavier tomes and enjoys the luxury of not having to argue the case already made. Ideal for the non-specialist, it will inform the specialist as well, since Conquest likes to pick little gems from his treasure-trove of knowledge.

One example. A famous propaganda picture of Stalin holding up a smiling little Central Asian girl with black bangs. She hugs his neck as he grasps a big bouquet of flowers that she had just presented him at a state-organized ceremony. Conquest writes: "Stalin as children-lover (he later shot her father)."

Rating:
Summary: The Monster
Review: Robert Conquest is one of the better known authors on Russian history, specifically on the rule of Stalin and the Communist era. The beginning of this book lists over fifteen books written by Conquest on these subjects, along with books of poetry. There is even a fictional book listed, written in conjunction with Kingsley Amis. Conquest's sources are vast and are included at the back of the book, although a lack of footnotes is bothersome.

Conquest starts out his book where it all began, in the country of Georgia at the birth of Stalin. We learn there is some confusion over Stalin's birth date and his birth father. Life is hard for young Iosif; his home life is abusive and the family moves around a bit. Stalin ends up enrolled in a seminary school, where he spends five years studying Russian and reading banned Western books. School discipline is strict, and this discipline and arbitrary rules radicalizes young Stalin. Stalin falls in with Marxist revolutionaries and begins his long march to infamy. Conquest's account of Stalin's revolutionary years is a long litany of arrest and internal exile. Stalin repeatedly escapes from Siberian exile only to be rearrested. Stalin does manage to move up in the ranks, becoming known to both Lenin and Trotsky. When the revolution breaks out, Stalin ends up on the front lines, where he takes part in a few unimportant actions (which are elevated to godlike military exploits once Stalin is in charge). Iosif defies many orders and tends to take matters into his own hands, a trait that others will die for when Stalin assumes control.

The rest of the book is the monster. After the death of Lenin, Stalin begins his climb to power by systematically eradicating his fellow Politburo members. Conquest succinctly covers the internal power struggles, the show trials, the war against the peasantry, the treaties and war with Hitler, and the post-war era of lies and murder. Along the way untold millions die of famine, executions, and imprisonment in the gulag system. The most interesting information in these sections is the rise of the personality cult, where Stalin is elevated to the status of a god. Conquest reveals the ridiculousness of this cult. When one of Stalin's speeches is released on records, one side of an album is devoted entirely to applause. A picture in the book, from a celebration of Stalin's 70th birthday, shows Stalin's head in the sky emitting beams of light over the lowly masses, like some bizarre sun. This is sick, sick stuff.

Conquest attempts to account for Stalin's behavior by showing that Stalin has no links to humanity (his wives died and he has few friends). Some of his attributes reek of sociopathy: his emotional expressions always seem to be forced, as though he is acting a part and not really feeling anything, and his natural state is one of cruelty. Conquest also shows how Stalin is really, well, nothing. The guy is a vacuum; he is not Russian, and he doesn't really share the traits of a typical Georgian. It is as though Stalin rose up out of the ground from nowhere. Isn't that how Damien appeared in "The Omen"? Maybe they should check his mother's grave and see if a jackal's skeleton is in there.

This book should be required reading. I did have some problem with Conquest's writing style, which I thought was a little obtuse. This may be my own fault, as I have been reading literature for the past month and I'm out of practice with textbook language. This book gets five stars for its subject. Let's never forget about this monster.

Rating:
Summary: The monster deserves better
Review: Stalin was a perfect dictator: he was above it all. He was above dogma, as seen in his rebellious activity in the theological seminary and his "creative socialism". Ever since his bank robbing escapades he did not mind being above the law. In the Tsaritsyn affair, he showed the penchant for being above authority. He was above any respect for science and arts, having arrested most of the members of the Writers' Union and interfered in a spectrum of scientific fields. He was above any Party allegiance: a half of the party members were arrested and a million of them died in his camps. He did not have any use for familial ties, having imprisoned and shot his own and others' relatives. Of course, he was above any morality.

As much as I.V. Dzhugashvili was a notable character, Stalin also was made by the people around him. Lenin, a militant opportunist himself, found in Stalin a kindred spirit of his own extremism. Kamenev and Zinoviev saved Stalin from the fall (after the disclosure of Lenin's Testament) because they needed him in their struggle against Trotsky. Roosevelt and Churchill needed him to fight Hitler and turned a blind eye on what they did not want to see, such as Katyn massacre.

Stalin was the most evil ruler in the history of mankind, he killed over 40 million of his own people (to put it in perspective, Hitler killed 20 million and Saddam less than half a million), and yet Stalin's specter is very much alive today. During the Ribbentrop-Molotov negotiations, Stalin raised a toast to Hitler. In 2000, Putin was drinking to Stalin. After meeting Stalin in Teheran, Roosevelt commented on the "sympathetic quality in his nature". And G.W.Bush, having looked Putin in the eye, liked what he saw. It is interesting how history repeats itself: Russian leaders keep toasting the humankind's worst tyrants and the leaders of the free world keep seeing good souls.

As Conquest himself states, this book is not a "dissection" of Stalin's character, but a sketch. Written just after many Soviet materials on Stalin became newly available, the book feels like a period piece. Not having any source references and the frequent mention of "recent Soviet publications" only strengthen the impression. Unfortunately, Conquest's Stalin still remains fairly impenetrable. What was driving him: megalomania, paranoia, inferiority complex, dogma, self-righteousness, all of the above? Until the late 1920's (and the ripe age of 50) Stalin's persona in the book remains fairly obscure. The narrative does not really elucidate what led him, a good and pious student of theological seminary, become a professional revolutionary. Or how exactly he ingratiated himself with Lenin to the point of becoming one of the top Party functionaries. Or how in the crucial years after Lenin's death he was able to come unscathed from the many factional fights. The linguistic constructions are a bit heavy-handed which, along with the macabre subject of the book, makes for a somewhat strained reading. Rather than painting a portrait, the book reads like the author's struggle to piece it all together and understand its subject. On the other hand, it takes one to know one. So if we do not understand Stalin all that well - maybe, so much for the better.

Rating:
Summary: Breaker of Stalin
Review: The master of Soviet scholarship and research, Robert Conquest, lightens up on his usual dense methodology for a slightly more easygoing character sketch on Stalin here. Conquest mentions in his prologue that the point of this biography is not to delve into extreme detail about the history of the USSR during Stalin's lifetime or all the political maneuvers and intrigue that took place. Therefore many historical details are intentionally left out, and more of a high-level view is given. That makes this book a much easier read than Conquest's other works, and it's significantly shorter too. On the other hand, you may be perplexed by the missing historical background if you have not already read Conquest's definitive works on the USSR, especially "The Great Terror" and possibly "Harvest of Sorrow." One criticism is that with Conquest's lighter intellectual mood, he sometimes loses the distinction between biography and political history, neglecting Stalin the man as a focus for the book at some points. Conquest also occasionally lapses into personal opinions, which is not a problem in his other works. This includes his criticisms of Franklin Roosevelt and British diplomat Anthony Eden, and the use of words like "useless," "crackpot," or "charlatan" for many Soviet theorists and scientists, such as the biologist Lysenko. Here all Conquest has to do is let the facts speak for themselves.

With that aside, here Conquest dives as deeply into Stalin's life and personality as possible, though some readers who are trying to understand the extreme depths of his evil may be disappointed. Of course, such deeply psychological info is impossible to obtain, and only the man himself could know what he was thinking, even though Stalin was probably quite unhinged mentally. What we see is a man possessed by such extreme paranoia, not to mention a severe persecution complex, that he became one of history's worst monsters, mostly because he deeply needed to validate himself. Not much different from a typical schoolyard bully by the way, except this bully was at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people. Stalin also wrecked the idea of socialism once and for all, which may have once been genuinely concerned about "the people" and equality, although it was always doomed to failure as an economic impossibility. Instead the world was inflicted with Stalinism, the doctrine in which tyrants consolidate personal power by eliminating opponents, suppressing any vestige of independent thought, crushing the population, and ruining one's country for decades (if not centuries) to come. Robert Conquest sums up Stalin succinctly at the end of the book - "...hope that no one like him will ever appear again."

Rating:
Summary: Stalin: Breaker of Nations
Review: The shelf of Stalin biographies lengthens, but a definitive work awaits further opening of Soviet archives. Conquest, a fellow of the Hoover Institute, is a noted student of the Soviet Union; his study can best be compared with the recent biographies by Robert H. McNeal (Stalin: Man and Ruler, CH, Dec'88), and Dmitri Volkogonov (Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1991). Whereas McNeal's narrative pointedly relates scholarly disputes concerning Stalin's life, Conquest, in a more flowing style, seeks to present a portrait of Stalin's villainous personality and character. He draws on more recently revealed data, such as those used by General Volkogonov. Although it does not supersede comparable studies, this readable interpretation deserves consideration. Conquest quite naturally emphasizes Stalin's rise to power in the 1920s and the terror of the 1930s, topics covered extensively in his earlier works. No footnotes, but an annotated bibliography and a few photos. Suitable for general readers and undergraduates

Rating:
Summary: A splendid, terrifying book
Review: The world's foremost authority on Stalinism and an outstandingly skilful literary writer, Conquest has created a work on a par with Solzhentizyn's. This is a towering achievement.