Stalinova diktatura

Stalina
Stalin
This is an amazing biography on the man that would one day become a monster named Stalin.

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donnaadouglas's review against another edition

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4.0

Following the early life of Stalin, up to the October Revolution, this book is both well-researched and well-written, providing an insight into the journey of a young boy on the path to becoming one of histories most notorious dictators. Many of the sources which created this book would have been banned from being recorded during Stalin's rule.

stevenyenzer's review against another edition

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3.0

Coming into this with little knowledge of Stalin's biography, I found it interesting but ultimately kind of "meh." It seems like Montefiore uncovered some previously unknown elements of Stalin's history, but it all felt a little inside baseball.

susani_'s review against another edition

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4.0

Everyone has heard of Stalin. The Russian dictator, with the big moustache who was responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people. The man who took over the Russia Soviet Union from Lenin and lead Russia through World War Two but at the casualty rate of 2

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giant_crab's review against another edition

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4.0

Holy hell what an awful human being. Without delving into psychoanalytical presumption, this is a fascinating portrait of the development of a monster.

fallona's review against another edition

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4.0

A generally interesting, readable book that gives an interesting and seemingly well-researched pop history/biography look at Stalin's life before he came to power.

My greatest complaint is that the author seems to lean heavily on stereotypes to characterize the people he talks about--the Svanidze sisters are "Rachvelians from Racha, famous for its placid and loving beauties," the reputation of Georgians in general as being passionate and hotheaded, etc. This is fine, in moderation, and does provide some context for the way many of these people would have been seen in an Imperial Russian and, later, a Soviet context--but these stereotypes are invoked with surprising consistency, sometimes resulting in contradictory descriptions of people and places.

It's enjoyable, and provides

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Chapter 1. Simina 9a in a New Yugoslavia

1Svetlana Velmar-Janković has written a story about a short street in the center of Belgrade called “Sima Street” (Simina ulica).1 It was named for Sima Nešić, a Serbian policeman whose attempts to pacify Serbs and Turks in a famous confrontation in 1862 resulted in his own death at the hands of the Turkish army brigade in Belgrade. For Velmar-Janković, Sima the targoman (interpreter), who knew many languages and saw himself as a mediator between two hostile extremes, stands as a symbol of reconciliation lost among hostile and incomprehending voices. Velmar-Janković’s Sima Nešić believed that “much evil stemmed from the fact that people were unaccustomed to listening to or understanding each other—they simply did not pay attention to words.”2 She finds it compelling that both Milan Bogdanović, an eloquent Marxist writer, and Slobodan Jovanović, Serbia’s renowned liberal historian, lived on Sima Street. Velmar-Janković does not mention that after the liberation of Belgrade in October 1944, a flat on Sima Street became the gathering