Stalin - Volume I Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding of Stalin and his world The product of a decade of intrepid research, Stalin is a landmark achievement. Stephen Kotkin offers a biography that, at  long last, is equal to this shrewd, sociopathic, charismatic dictator in  all his dimensions. We see a man inclined to despotism who could be  utterly charming; a pragmatic ideologue; a leader who obsessed over  slights yet was a precocious geostrategic thinker—unique among  Bolsheviks—and yet who made egregious strategic blunders. Through it  all, we see Stalin’s unflinching persistence, his sheer force of  will—perhaps the ultimate key to understanding his indelible mark on  history. Drawing on Kotkin’s exhaustive study of Soviet archival  materials as well as vast scholarly literature, Stalin recasts  the way we think about the Soviet Union, revolution, dictatorship, the  twentieth century, and indeed the art of history itself.