Stalin: 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 thinkerunique among Bolsheviksand yet who made egregious strategic blunders. Through it all, we see Stalins unflinching persistence, his sheer force of willperhaps the ultimate key to understanding his indelible mark on history. Drawing on Kotkins 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.