osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2010-06-05 06:36 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2010-06-05 06:36 pm
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Book Review: Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
I just finished reading Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, and you guys, it's a hell of a book. It's six hundred pages long and it gave me nightmares every time I read it too close to bedtime but nonetheless I would stay up till one o'clock reading it, because I had to know what would happen next.
As it's such a thick book it has a number of theses and purposes, and I'm going to talk about the three most important.
First: it explores the workings of Bolshevism-as-cult.
There are two stories that show this best, I think. The first is the tale of an old Bolshevik who got arrested during Stalin's Terror. Mikoyan, my favorite Politburo member, got him out of prison and told him to hop on the next train to Paris, stat, but the old Bolshevik, "with all the punctiliousness of a knight who must have his sword returned," refused to leave until he got his Party card back - and of course ended up arrested again.
And after the war, when Stalin suspected Mikoyan and Molotov (for whom Molotov cocktails are named) of disloyalty, he tested them by rambling on about how "Communism has been achieved." Now this is rank Leftist deviation, and although Mikoyan and Molotov knew that they had to agree or they would confirm Stalin's fears of their disloyalty - they just couldn't bring themselves to uphold incorrect doctrine. Death lists, starving Ukrainians, fine, but this anti-Marxist blasphemy, that was just too much. They would die before they agreed.
(They got lucky. Stalin died before he could order their deaths.)
Second, he wants to break down the good Bolshevik/bad Bolshevik dichotomy.
This is the "Well, of course Stalin was evil, but if Lenin had lived/Trotsky had gotten power, all would have been well" dichotomy. I blame it on Animal Farm, in which the Lenin and Trotsky analogues seem positively sweet, and I think it survives because there is some truth to it: the Terror probably wouldn't have happened without Stalin.
But collectivization killed more people than the Terror, and would have continued under Lenin ("The peasant must do a bit of starving," he said, if Russia was to achieve socialism) or any other Politburo member who led Russia - they all voted for it, and this was in 1930-32, before Stalin was dictator and when Politburo votes actually mattered. Trotsky might not have, but Montefiore seems to think Trotsky had a snowball's chance in hell of leading the Soviet Union.
So perhaps you have bad Bolsheviks and worse Bolsheviks, but the fact that millions died and communism was not achieved is not all Stalin's fault. The beliefs of the Bolshevik party made that outcome inevitable.
Eleven million Ukrainians ended up dying - honestly, it's amazing there are any Ukrainians left. First they starve in the famines, then the Nazis roll in and shoot a bunch of them, and then the Ukrainians start slaughtering Poles who in turn slaughter more Ukrainians, and then the Soviet Union wins the war and there's another famine in the Ukraine.
Mikoyan tried to bring this second famine to Stalin's attention at one of Stalin's dinner, prompting a positively farcical scene: Mikoyan tries to get Stalin's attention, Stalin chows down on soup and chicken legs and eggplant and asks, again and again - increasingly plaintive - "Why's there no food?" Meanwhile the rest of the Politburo glares at Mikoyan into between shots of vodka, because he's ruined Stalin's mood and they're all going to be stuck here dealing with that forever.
This ties into the third aim and most important aim of the book, showing the lives and relationships of the Politburo - the titular "Court of the Red Tsar" - which is the bulk of the book and fascinating, like a horrible wonderful novel with a larger-than-life cast of characters (although no author would allow herself three different characters named Sergo) with epic stakes and loves and hates. You feel you get to know them, and inevitably end of with favorites (Mikoyan! And Bukharin. Damn Stalin for killing him.) and ones you would happily seen cast into the abyss. (Beria. The Poliburo evidently agreed with me on this one, because after Stalin died they had him assassinated.)
On the one hand I feel a bit bad for having a favorite Politburo member. They all did such rotten things, and with such enthusiasm, that it's basically like having a favorite Nazi concentration camp administrator.
On the other hand, it's hard not to feel for them on the human level - because so much of life is quotidian, and they couldn't sit around plotting evil all the time, and because they become increasingly battened down by Stalin, whose favorite post-war entertainment seems to have been making the Politburo cry.
He had these enormous dinners - they started at midnight and lasted six hours and involved eating and drinking till everyone threw up. (In Politburo photos from this period, all the members look like grumpy beach balls. This is why.) The inexpressible evil Beria was the tamada, the man in charge of the drinks, and he made damn sure that everyone got drunk. He liked to slip salt in Stalin's secretary's vodka to make him throw up, and to stick old tomatoes in Mikoyan's pockets and then shove him into the wall to make the tomatoes explode. Stalin thought it was hilarious.
You'd think they'd all hate him, and they did - but they didn't; when he died they stood around his bed sobbing, possibly in part because they were completely uncertain how to live without orders from Stalin who had been controlling their lives in minute detail since 1937 - except for Beria, who capered around the bed like a goat boasting about how much he hated Stalin. It's a testament to Montefiore's skill that you know exactly how much the Politburo hates him for it - not least because they half agree - and know already that this outburst, even more than his lack of Bolshevik credentials, his past as a torturer and future desires to liberalize the Soviet Union, seals the fact that they're going to have him assassinated.
So you are, unavoidably, steeped in sympathy for this pack of devils; there are moments when you even feel sorry for Stalin. But the book never lets you forget what they did, and that's what makes it an uncomfortable read and an excellent history.
As it's such a thick book it has a number of theses and purposes, and I'm going to talk about the three most important.
First: it explores the workings of Bolshevism-as-cult.
There are two stories that show this best, I think. The first is the tale of an old Bolshevik who got arrested during Stalin's Terror. Mikoyan, my favorite Politburo member, got him out of prison and told him to hop on the next train to Paris, stat, but the old Bolshevik, "with all the punctiliousness of a knight who must have his sword returned," refused to leave until he got his Party card back - and of course ended up arrested again.
And after the war, when Stalin suspected Mikoyan and Molotov (for whom Molotov cocktails are named) of disloyalty, he tested them by rambling on about how "Communism has been achieved." Now this is rank Leftist deviation, and although Mikoyan and Molotov knew that they had to agree or they would confirm Stalin's fears of their disloyalty - they just couldn't bring themselves to uphold incorrect doctrine. Death lists, starving Ukrainians, fine, but this anti-Marxist blasphemy, that was just too much. They would die before they agreed.
(They got lucky. Stalin died before he could order their deaths.)
Second, he wants to break down the good Bolshevik/bad Bolshevik dichotomy.
This is the "Well, of course Stalin was evil, but if Lenin had lived/Trotsky had gotten power, all would have been well" dichotomy. I blame it on Animal Farm, in which the Lenin and Trotsky analogues seem positively sweet, and I think it survives because there is some truth to it: the Terror probably wouldn't have happened without Stalin.
But collectivization killed more people than the Terror, and would have continued under Lenin ("The peasant must do a bit of starving," he said, if Russia was to achieve socialism) or any other Politburo member who led Russia - they all voted for it, and this was in 1930-32, before Stalin was dictator and when Politburo votes actually mattered. Trotsky might not have, but Montefiore seems to think Trotsky had a snowball's chance in hell of leading the Soviet Union.
So perhaps you have bad Bolsheviks and worse Bolsheviks, but the fact that millions died and communism was not achieved is not all Stalin's fault. The beliefs of the Bolshevik party made that outcome inevitable.
Eleven million Ukrainians ended up dying - honestly, it's amazing there are any Ukrainians left. First they starve in the famines, then the Nazis roll in and shoot a bunch of them, and then the Ukrainians start slaughtering Poles who in turn slaughter more Ukrainians, and then the Soviet Union wins the war and there's another famine in the Ukraine.
Mikoyan tried to bring this second famine to Stalin's attention at one of Stalin's dinner, prompting a positively farcical scene: Mikoyan tries to get Stalin's attention, Stalin chows down on soup and chicken legs and eggplant and asks, again and again - increasingly plaintive - "Why's there no food?" Meanwhile the rest of the Politburo glares at Mikoyan into between shots of vodka, because he's ruined Stalin's mood and they're all going to be stuck here dealing with that forever.
This ties into the third aim and most important aim of the book, showing the lives and relationships of the Politburo - the titular "Court of the Red Tsar" - which is the bulk of the book and fascinating, like a horrible wonderful novel with a larger-than-life cast of characters (although no author would allow herself three different characters named Sergo) with epic stakes and loves and hates. You feel you get to know them, and inevitably end of with favorites (Mikoyan! And Bukharin. Damn Stalin for killing him.) and ones you would happily seen cast into the abyss. (Beria. The Poliburo evidently agreed with me on this one, because after Stalin died they had him assassinated.)
On the one hand I feel a bit bad for having a favorite Politburo member. They all did such rotten things, and with such enthusiasm, that it's basically like having a favorite Nazi concentration camp administrator.
On the other hand, it's hard not to feel for them on the human level - because so much of life is quotidian, and they couldn't sit around plotting evil all the time, and because they become increasingly battened down by Stalin, whose favorite post-war entertainment seems to have been making the Politburo cry.
He had these enormous dinners - they started at midnight and lasted six hours and involved eating and drinking till everyone threw up. (In Politburo photos from this period, all the members look like grumpy beach balls. This is why.) The inexpressible evil Beria was the tamada, the man in charge of the drinks, and he made damn sure that everyone got drunk. He liked to slip salt in Stalin's secretary's vodka to make him throw up, and to stick old tomatoes in Mikoyan's pockets and then shove him into the wall to make the tomatoes explode. Stalin thought it was hilarious.
You'd think they'd all hate him, and they did - but they didn't; when he died they stood around his bed sobbing, possibly in part because they were completely uncertain how to live without orders from Stalin who had been controlling their lives in minute detail since 1937 - except for Beria, who capered around the bed like a goat boasting about how much he hated Stalin. It's a testament to Montefiore's skill that you know exactly how much the Politburo hates him for it - not least because they half agree - and know already that this outburst, even more than his lack of Bolshevik credentials, his past as a torturer and future desires to liberalize the Soviet Union, seals the fact that they're going to have him assassinated.
So you are, unavoidably, steeped in sympathy for this pack of devils; there are moments when you even feel sorry for Stalin. But the book never lets you forget what they did, and that's what makes it an uncomfortable read and an excellent history.
Re: Just curious
The second. I know many people (including my relatives), who lived that time. And their impressions don't coincide with horrible antistalin mythology. It is besides dozens of different books, I've read about that period.
And the third. If you don't like the word "fiction"... There is no pure fiction in our world, ofcourse.
How do you call the book, which depicts two persons. The first is polite and mild vegetarian, artist, who loves animals and kids. The second man is of base peasant culture, likes long dinners. But this book forgets to mention that the second person offers life, and the first offers death.
Re: Just curious
And I would call any book about Stalin and Hitler that doesn't depict both of them as megalomaniac mass killers the work of a lying hack.
So no, I don't think Montefiore's book is an "agreeable fiction." The dozens of books you've read about Stalin, however, clearly were.
Re: Just curious
Have you seen that archives? Or you saw "copies" in American books?
megalomaniac mass killers
BTW. Population of American prisons (2,4 million in 2008 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States)) more than number of GULAG inmates during peak of the "repressions" (less then 2 million in 1939) according to historian Victor Zemskov (http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/2003/0103/analit01.php), who saw original papers.
that doesn't depict
But how would depict official Western propaganda the leader of the country, against which they prepared operations Unthinkable, Totality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Totality), Dropshop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dropshot), etc. As wise ruler, who protects interests of his own country? Or strong governor, whose will allowed us to avoid fate of Hiroshima inhabitants?
…
Well, ok. I'm not going to persuade you. You are graduate, who studied Russian and Soviet history and simply I wanted to know how you feel the border between propaganda and real historical background... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable)