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In Review

04 December 2008 04:56 BST

Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, out May 17th, 322 pages, £25.

In a nutshell…

Robbery, myth-making, conspiracy, plotting, death

What's it all about?

"Stalin's singing," Simon Sebag Montefiore writes, "was said to be good enough for him to go professional. As a poet he showed a certain talent in another craft which might have provoked an alternative to politics and bloodletting". George Orwell's cunning and scheming pig, called Napoleon, wasn't known for his verse. In fact it was Snowball, the meeker of the two pigs, who had a good turn of phrase and could articulate the most complex into a decent idea. Yet Orwell's deliberately crude comparison in Animal Farm doesn't quite explain the reality. It was Leon Trotsky who was defeated, left dead in South America with a pick axe from Russia hammered into him. Despite the botched photographs and the embarrassing cult which Joseph Stalin aimed to build, the Georgian gangster turned politician won the leadership of the Politburo and so the whole of Russia.

Montefiore's account does, in a similar way to Robert Service in his Lenin biography, create a different image of Stalin. His violent and drunken father is an accepted part of what turned a young boy on to a not-so-good path. But Stalin's time in a seminary, his obvious organisational and terrorist capabilities and his poetry are rarely touched upon. Montefiore's research into the archives of the Caucasus as well as the information transferred to the Stalin archives in Russia show up a mix of the dictator's personal life and youth.

Young Stalin is the prequel to the brilliant Court of the Red Tsar and Montefiore writes in a fashion that allows this work to stand alone. The whole picture cannot be gained from this book, but Montefiore's obvious depth of knowledge and his ability to draw comparisons and make references to sometimes obscure facts that had been long-hidden is an admirable quality.

A fair few of Stalin's Bolshevik comrades who feature in this work were soon dead under his orders after he took power. The clever and articulate Bukharin was dead in 1938, Kamenev and Zinoviev before him and followed by Trotsky in 1940 – all killed on orders from Stalin. From 1937–38, about one and half million people were shot and the dictator personally signed 39,000 death lists. But from reading Young Stalin you seek to understand how this murderer was still content to go to a beach resort in his retirement and entertain other friends while his former colleagues were wiped from the Soviet history books. Montefiore has once again managed to craft a thrilling historical account, one that focuses on Stalin and those he surrounded himself with. Many now look back on the October revolution as an opportunistic farce; a people's tragedy which turned into a nightmare under the leadership of anti-political folly.

Who's it by?

Montefiore is a historian and author of Catherine the Great, Potemkin and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. His future works include Jerusalem: The Biography and The Romanovs: The Intimate Chronicles of the Russian Imperial Family.

Specialising in Russian history, Montefiore is notable for his dramatic and story-telling style. He sets the scene like an old novel and is less in the mould of Robert Service or Orlando Figes and more like a classical historian such as Josiah Osgood, except with a more personal tone.

As an example

"Petrograd in October 1917 seemed calm, but beneath the glossy surface the city danced in a trance of last pleasures. Gambling clubs functioned hectically from dusk till dawn,' reported John Reed, 'with champagne flowing and stakes of 20,000 roubles. In the centre of the city at night, prostitutes in jewels and expensive furs walked up and down and crowded the cafes… Hold-ups increased to such an extent that it was dangerous to walk the streets'."

One of the finest things about Montefiore's Young Stalin is the physical context which he creates for the book's subject. The damp and dark wintry streets of Rostov-on-Don, which Stalin traipsed in exile, are not simply presented as named roads – basic facts – but are given a presence to enrich the understanding of Stalin's life and state of mind.

Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster

After the success of Downfall, mainly over those critics that said films can 'humanise' evil dictators and murderers, a film about Stalin seems apt. The vast plains of Russia under Stalin saw a great many changes: fixed-term industrial plans, battles won and lost, political purges and ultimately mass murder. Film producers could do a lot worse than taking historical direction from Montefiore.

What the others say

"Montefiore shows Stalin to be a compound of many individuals. He had as many selves as he had aliases and Montefiore lists dozens of these phony identities, from Oddball Osip and Pockmarked Oska to the baleful-sounding Organez Totomiants." – Peter Conrad, the Guardian.

"The product of the classic dictator-breeding childhood Stalin may have been, but the primary insight of this study is that Georgian culture of blood feuds, 'honour', nationalism and banditry shaped his character as surely as his parents." – Carol Rumens, the Independent.

So is it any good?

In the early part of Young Stalin, Montefiore depicts the future leader – or Soso as Montefiore often calls him – as having a Fagan-like magnetism. He describes the town in which Stalin lived as Dickensian in nature and the stories of the man's various terrorist attacks and robberies are all the richer for the imagery that Montefiore creates. This magnetism is what made Stalin so attractive to women and there were many conquests for the Georgian – all thoroughly dissected and dealt with in Young Stalin.

If Montefiore strays into biographical hyperbole, it is momentary and quickly sobered with an obvious sign of Stalin's dark and aggressive character. The ruler's historical image of being the 'grey blur' in the Politburo, sneaking around waiting for Lenin to pop his clogs has always been seen as too blunt, too simplistic and too easy to explain as a way of avoiding a cruel man's talents. Montefiore points out Lenin's various spots of paperwork in the aftermath of the October 1917 revolution, with one in particular featuring what appears to be the handwritten names of two people who were – if you like – the first two names on the team sheet. Stalin features just below Trotsky at a time when many Bolsheviks, particularly exiled ones, had no idea who Stalin really was. The four most powerful men in Russia after the collapse of the February 1917 government were Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Sverdlov, although the latter dropped away after being absorbed in party matters.

Montefiore manages, by the time we arrive at 1917, to have fleshed out Stalin as a comprehendible figure, allowing readers to understand why Lenin consulted with him on so many matters. He provided the Bolsheviks with funds when others were idealising in western Europe and he served time in Siberia when many were denying their true political mentality. Although his final rise was unlikely, he was very much a man of the time. Montefiore points out that had the tea drinkers – Bukharin and Kamenev – as Lenin called them succeeded over the hard men, Soviet Russia would have turned out very different.

When Montefiore soars, he makes references to the continuity between Leninism and Stalinism, about how the two were inseparable and then draws the reader's attention back to 19th century Stalin and the signs he was showing then. This is marvellous work, drawing new ties and reinvigorating old ones. More significantly, it points out new avenues which should be explored in the future.

8/10

Karl Pike