The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin - Hardcover

Lourie, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582430047 ISBN 13: 9781582430041

Publisher: Counterpoint, 1999

Synopsis

Worried that the biography that Trotsky is writing about him in Mexico will reveal a crime from his past that could topple him from power, Stalin is forced to think back on his own memories of his life and rise to power

About this title

From the Back Cover

In what might be his own heartless words, Stalin here tells the spellbinding story of his rise to power. The treachery, cold-bloodedness, and murder would give even Shakespeare pause. A remarkable blending of fact and the truly unimaginable.

Reviews

If the universe were fair, a big chunk of the money people will spend on Hannibal Lecter and young Darth Vader this summer would go instead to Richard Lourie, because the monster with whom The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin brings us face-to-face is the genuine article.... A writer, translator, and eminent scholar, Lourie knows perfectly well the horrors to which Stalin's postulates lead, but he refuses us the lazy comfort of "explaining" Stalin as mad or demonic.

Chilling and mesmerizing, Louries novel traces the Russian dictators life from childhood to the apex of his career, exploring the diabolical nuances of Stalins psychology. The USSR dictator narrates, in a grim and relentless voice, often referring to himself in the third person (Stalin needs peace for terror). His first words, Leon Trotsky is trying to kill me, reveal the fury and incipient dementia of his reaction to the news that his nemesis Trotsky, whom he has driven into exile in Mexico, is writing a biography of his former revolutionist comrade. Indignantly comparing Trotskys libelous biography to his own egotistical version, and ostensibly refuting Trotskys account, Stalin reveals the origins of his criminal mind and the extent to which he has indulged his murderous instincts. From the beatings he suffered at his fathers hands, Stalin learned the perverse power and effectiveness of psychological detachment and physical cruelty. From Darwin he ecstatically gleans that there is no God, therefore no judgment from above. Lourie juxtaposes Trotskys deeply intellectual analysis of Stalin with Stalins own earthy account, which is Machiavellian conviction sieved through the mindset of a thug, less a matter of dialectics than of bullying. Stalin uses bank robbery to finance the Bolsheviks; in prison, his friends are criminals, not the intellectuals he despises. Lourie (First Loyalty) plausibly speculates on key events in Stalins life, combining known history with well-researched probabilities, grounding the book in the actualities of this terrifying era while illuminating the unfathomable darkness of the mind that created it. Stalin realizes that Trotsky is on the heels of discovering his big secretthe one assassination Stalin has systematically concealedwhich sealed the fate of his reign and of countless traitors at the hands of the brutal new leader. Of course he acts to silence Trotsky, and to change the course of history. This nightmarish glimpse into a monsters mind is confidently and frighteningly realistic, appalling and irresistible at once.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A forceful attempt to plumb the heart of evil. Lourie, a novelist (Zero Gravity, 1987, etc.), translator, and the author of a series of nonfiction books on modern Russia, brings great knowledge to bear on this imagined record by Stalin. In straightforward prose, his Stalin traces with no hint of sentimentality his childhood, his clashes with a drunken, abusive father, his early hopes (quickly dashed) to be a poet, and his embrace of Bolshevism in prerevolutionary Russia as a likely path to power. Stalin is above all things shrewd, calculating, without hesitation. His wary relationship with the cunning Lenin, his ruthless attempts to ceaselessly gain more power and displace those others closer to Lenin, his clashes with the party intellectuals, whom he scorns, are all recounted in rapid-fire manner. Because Stalin is supposed to be setting down these memoirs in the '30s, long after hes gained power, his recollections of his long years in the underground, the coming of the revolution, and the early days of the Communist state are repeatedly interrupted by his obsessive musings on Leon Trotsky. Lourie's Stalin is consumed by hatred and fear of Trotsky, the true revolutionary and a figure once seen as Lenin's heir. Distrusting Trotsky's principles, fearful of his influence, Stalin argues, again and again, his case against the exiled Trotsky, and plots to have him killed. Lourie catches, in the laconic tones of Stalin's self-satisfied recollections, his pure ruthlessness; his absolute contempt for life; his furious need for power; his scorn for those willing to be led; his hatred of principles, and his exuberant nihilism (``I feel nothing because nothing is all there is to feel''). Gradually, without melodrama, Lourie creates a convincing portrait of a figure for whom, eventually, only absolute power could stave off terror. His version of Stalin's warped soul subtly demonstrates how true evil is all too human in its origins. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Sometimes the facts are so horrifying that only great literature can really portray them effectively. Lourie, who served as Gorbachev's translator for the New York Times and has written many articles on Russia as well as three novels, is not necessarily a great litt?rateur, but he is a very, very fine writer who knows his stuff and has done a splendid job of portraying an evil genius far too cool and calculating to be described as a madman. In this "autobiography," Stalin himself tracks his rise to power, from childhood with a worshipful mother and grotesquely abusive and neglectful father, through his stint in seminary and rebellion against God, to his jockeying for power within the party and final clinching of the top post. In chilling passages that may indeed have some basis in truth, Stalin is seen cooperating with the tsar's secret police in order to further his own political career and arranging to murder Lenin. Hanging over all is Stalin's single-minded obsession with having Trotsky assassinatedApartly because he fears Trotsky will uncover and reveal ugly secrets from Stalin's past. A persuasive study of power; highly recommended.ABarbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1582430047
• ISBN 13: 9781582430041
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 261