Richard Overy
A Man of Steel
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 693pp £25
ONE OF STALIN'S closest colleagues in the turbulent years of the dictatorship, Lazar Kaganovich, once remarked that he had known many Stalins. This does not mean that Stalin had doubles everywhere like Saddam Hussein. He was simply a man of many parts oneand many faces. The men and women at Stahn's court had to learn them all to survive.
There are many Stalins in this magnificent portrait of the dictator and the court that surrounded him. Simon Sebag Montefiore has mined the rich veins of recent Russian writing on the Stalin age and of newly opened archives to give us an intimate history of a man who was always secretive with hls colleagues and who has remained elusive to posterity. What was he like? Harsh, cruel, unyielding, amoral certainly. But Stalin emerges from these pages as a real human being who loved, swore, joked, sang and - judging from the picture on the cover - went on picnics.
Montefiore starts by making the assertion that Stalin was 'exceptional'. This is a bold claim for a man damned in history by Trotsky's dismissive epithet, 'grey blur'. But he is surely right. Sdn survived in the Stalin: too close maelstrom of Soviet politics for
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Don't ask about the dress code, don't talk about your spouse too much, flirt with everyone
Andrew Martin on the rules, pleasures and pitfalls of living in Paris
Andrew Martin - Bobos versus Beaufs
Andrew Martin: Bobos versus Beaufs - Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century by Simon Kuper
literaryreview.co.uk
for the latest edition of @Lit_Review I worked on some excellent pieces – @MortenHoiJensen on Kafka
@ellafox_m on @mimpathy (Honor Levy)
@profrhodrilewis on Shakespeare novels
@edcumming on Kaliane Bradley
@zoeguttenplan on @NationalTheatre's Dickens show
wrote about MY FIRST BOOK (@GrantaBooks) for @Lit_Review, a book that I think makes difficult things look very easy: