Young Stalin
First and foremost – I’d thoroughly recommend reading the hardback version of this book. I spent the first 100 pages or so abusing the author for failing to reference very fundamental quotations and assertions, until I spotted a note at the end of the book which stated that many references were removed from the paperback version to improve ease of reading! Once I had realised that these omissions were intentional and not accidental, I was much more able to recognise the brilliance of the work. Montefiore’s research is impeccable to say the least. But, for such an historically detailed account, it remains extremely readable.
Russian history is not my strong-point, but one of the things that struck me about the book was how Communist terminology still remains to prevalent in modern left-wing and trade union movements. Of course, that’s hardly surprising given their emergence at about the same time (for example, the Irish Labour Party was founded several years before the October Revolution), but it’s still remarkable to realise that terms like General Secretary and Central Committee have stood the test of time despite the negative connotations communism now holds for most left-wing movements.
But the most remarkable aspect of this work is the personal history of Josef Djugashvili as a young man – the accounts of his abusive Georgian childhood, his time as a seminarian and the side of him represented by his romantic poetry and shameless womanising, add greatly to any evaluation of him as a man as well as a dictator. The work is also greatly enhanced by the abundance of trivia the author has managed to glean from a wide array of sources – my favourite tidbit is the fact that Vladimir Putin’s grandfather was a chef who cooked for Rasputin and later Lenin and Stalin!
As I age, I’m growing an appreciation of the importance of history – a subject spoiled for me by some poor teaching in school. And books like this one go a long, long way towards encouraging me to increase the amount of history I squeeze into my reading life!
2 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
More then a passing similarity there mate. I can see where you get your inspiration for your hair
Very interesting post. I think that you make an interesting point about communist terminology, although I’d have thought that this predated the 20th century at least in part and came from shared roots for the left in broader political movements (after all, it’s fairly reasonable to posit that social democracy was a split from more generalised left/Marxism than the other way around even if social democracy took more people).