Product Description

Stalin remains one of the creators of our world - like Hitler, the personification of evil. Yet Stalin hid his past and remains mysterious. This enthralling biography that reads like a thriller finally unveils the secret but extraordinary journey of the Georgian cobbler's son who became the Red Tsar. What forms such a merciless psychopath and consummate politician? Was he illegitimate? Did he owe everything to his mother - was she whore or saint? Was he a Tsarist agent or Lenin's chief gangster? Was he to blame for his wife's premature death? If he really missed the 1917 Revolution, how did he emerge so powerful? Born in poverty, exceptional in his studies, this charismatic but dangerous boy was hailed as a romantic poet, trained as a priest, but found his mission as fanatical revolutionary. The secret world of Joseph Conrad-style terrorism was Stalin's natural habitat, where he charmed his future courtiers, made the enemies he later liquidated, and abandoned his many mistresses and children. Montefiore shows how the murderous paranoia and gangsterism of the criminal underworld, combined with pitiless ideology, taught Stalin how to triumph in the Kremlin.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7543 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 442 pages

Review
'this terrific and terrifying biography of the years to 1917.' THE INDEPENDENT 'It shares with its predecessor (STALIN THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR) the virtues of fine prose, empathy with a rich range of characters and narrative of great ability.' Ross Leckie, THE TIMES 'brilliantly readable history of Stalin...Sebag Montefiore's re-creation of the world in which his subject's picaresque career unfolded is wonderfully detailed and convincing, and the portrait he paints of an egotistical monster in the making is unforgettable.' Pick of the Week in THE SUNDAY TIMES 'this lively and accomplished account of Stalin's "gangsterish", pre-revolutionary youth, which draws on material from newly opened archives.' THE GUARDIAN 'bring[ing] to life the unnerving 'young man with the burning eyes" THE OBSERVER 'This colourful account...is a gripping read as well as faultlessly scholarly' THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'this zippy prequel' EVENING STANDARD 'gripping account... An excellent companion to Montefiore's previous bestseller' BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE 'a thrilling portrait of Lenin's chief gangster and successor.' DAILY EXPRESS --various

'this terrific and terrifying biography of the years to 1917.' (THE INDEPENDENT )

'It shares with its predecessor (STALIN THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR) the virtues of fine prose, empathy with a rich range of characters and narrative of great ability.' (Ross Leckie, THE TIMES )

'brilliantly readable history of Stalin.....Sebag Montefiore's re-creation of the world in which his subject's picaresque career unfolded is wonderfully detailed and convincing, and the portrait he paints of an egotistical monster in the making is unforgettable.' (Pick of the Week in THE SUNDAY TIMES )

'this lively and accomplished account of Stalin's "gangsterish", pre-revolutionary youth, which draws on material from newly opened archives.' (THE GUARDIAN )

'bring[ing] to life the unnerving 'young man with the burning eyes'' (THE OBSERVER )

'This colourful account...is a gripping read as well as faultlessly scholarly' (THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

'this zippy prequel' (EVENING STANDARD )

'gripping account....... An excellent companion to Montefiore's previous bestseller' (BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE )

'a thrilling portrait of Lenin's chief gangster and successor.' (DAILY EXPRESS ) --various

Review
'this terrific and terrifying biography of the years to 1917.' (THE INDEPENDENT )

'It shares with its predecessor (STALIN THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR) the virtues of fine prose, empathy with a rich range of characters and narrative of great ability.' (Ross Leckie, THE TIMES )

'brilliantly readable history of Stalin.....Sebag Montefiore's re-creation of the world in which his subject's picaresque career unfolded is wonderfully detailed and convincing, and the portrait he paints of an egotistical monster in the making is unforgettable.' (Pick of the Week in THE SUNDAY TIMES )

'this lively and accomplished account of Stalin's "gangsterish", pre-revolutionary youth, which draws on material from newly opened archives.' (THE GUARDIAN )

'bring[ing] to life the unnerving 'young man with the burning eyes'' (THE OBSERVER )

'This colourful account...is a gripping read as well as faultlessly scholarly' (THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

'this zippy prequel' (EVENING STANDARD )

'gripping account....... An excellent companion to Montefiore's previous bestseller' (BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE )

'a thrilling portrait of Lenin's chief gangster and successor.' (DAILY EXPRESS )

About the Author
Simon Sebag Montefiore's books are international bestsellers in 27 languages. CATHERINE THE GREAT AND POTEMKIN was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Prizes. STALIN won the History Book of the Year Prize at the 2004 British Book Awards. Montefiore is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, novelist, and TV presenter, he lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children. He is now writing JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY.

Customer Reviews

Amazing
This is a great biography. It's fast moving, full of action and Montefiore really brings the young Stalin to life as you flick from page to spell-binding page.

You find yourself at turns liking the passion and charisma of the protagonist, and then repelled by his nascent cruelty and emotional coldness.

This book really explodes the myth that Stalin was simply a "grey blur" before he began to seize power in the 1920's. He was a competent, intelligent and experienced revolutionary, who was important to Lenin and popular with the party grass roots. His drive and personal magnetism are awe-inspiring, and Sebag Montefiore's book is an exercise in demonstrating how true greatness is born.

I can't wait to read the author's book on Stalin's later life, "The Court of the Red Tsar".

Great Biography of a Surprising Sympathetic Character...
I was really surprised by my reaction to this book. Like pretty much any sane person I consider Stalin to be one of the great tyrants of history. A brutal murderer; paranoid, violent and cruel. However, reading the story of his early years I often found myself rooting for him in his struggles with the Tsarist police, brutal teachers and violent father.

He comes across, at least to start with, as a romantic character. He was an excellent writer and poet, and was loyal to his friends and his women. He saw injustice and fought against it with all his strength. But over time his brutal upbringing and his resulting lack of trust in others began to take over. In the end the sympathetic traits are consumed by paranoia and hatred, and this book is a wonderful description of how this transformation happened.

A really exciting story and a brilliant case study in the formative events of a unique criminal psychopathology.

Bringing the Dictator to Life.
A must read. Stuffed with hidden, longlost references, notes letters and quotes, personal family interviews and reference to memoirs including recently revealed FSB documents.
Stalin is revealed as likely the most extraordinarily capable and brilliant of dictators in world history.
A complex, often cold and taciturn man with hot Caucasian temperament, yet mainly lacking in expressive human warmth. A young man with a burning, all consuming conviction in his own destiny.
Reared in brawling Gori in Georgia, this brilliant childhood academic nicknamed 'Chopura', the 'pockmarked one' spent years in a Seminary as a ravenous teenage reader, capable poet, enthralled by the Bolshevik ideology that eventually drew him out, or got him thrown out of the Seminary.
Embarking on Georgian Revolutionary activities, he was always surrounded by Thugs and Psychopaths for friends, traits his Communist Party Colleagues would show in abundance years later under his leadership. These were men of unbridled, though well planned violence.
His astonishing appetite for learning ultimately ensured a well read library of 20,000+ books. An blend of intellectual and terrorist ideologue, he suffered permanently from childhood injuries. A brachial plexus avulsion must have caused his withered left arm, that amongst other features, left him a sullen and touchy man in constant pain.
Yet attractive to woman, though limited emotionally and with infrequent expressions of affection, (by contemporary European as a pose to Caucasian expectations of male behaviour), he sired several children with a lusty appetite. His highly analytical, and deeply well read mind versed in Religion, Philosophy and Politics and profound grasp of Literature and Literary Criticism, and his capability in action made him first master of the Caucasus, and then indispensible to his one lifelong constant source of admiration- Lenin.

Stalin, or Soso, Soselo or Beso was an extraordinarily gifted, brilliant and complex man. A man that in different times may have offered the world something very different to the Stalinist Nightmare that is his legacy.
The times Stalin lived in were intense, and intensely hard. Dictatorship is not the preserve of men like Stalin alone. It is everywhere in small seemingly innocuous packets. Marriage, parenthood, the workplace, society.
Stalin managed to inject the totalitarian state into all of these aspects with the demonic energies of a man who spent a full 20 years in exile, prison and on the run in the Pre-Revolutionary years, prior to even coming near power.
Montefiore brings, or rather allows to life this restless angrily burning young man who has indeed fulfilled his own prophecies, and who history will judge one day on a Par with Chingiz Khan, Alexander the Great. Great men of great terror...