Stalin: A Biography - Softcover

Service, Robert

3.94

1,655 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330419137 ISBN 13: 9780330419130

Publisher: Picador, 2005

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Reveals the complex story of the Soviet dictator, from his dysfunctional childhood in Soviet Georgia, through his education and early political activism, to his tyrannical control over the Soviet Union and the legacy of his reign.

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About the Author:

Robert Service is the author of Lenin: A Biography, and Russia: Experiment with a People and is the author of numerous other books on Russian history, including his History of Twentieth Century Russia

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. Here is a life-and-times biography in the grand style: deeply researched, well written, brimming with interpretations. Oxford historian Service, author of an acclaimed biography of Lenin, provides the most complete portrait available of the Soviet ruler, from his early, troubled years in a small town in Georgia to the pinnacle of power in the Kremlin. Most previous biographers have depicted Stalin as a plodding figure whose only distinguishing characteristic was brutality. But Service describes a man who was intelligent and hardworking, who learned from experience and who played an important role in the Russian revolutionary movement. On so many of the complex issues of Soviet history—including Stalin's rise to power within the Communist Party, the policy shift to forced collectivization, the Great Terror and the prosecution of the war against Nazi Germany—Service provides lucid accounts based on his own research and the most recent scholarship. Stalin was the key figure behind every major development from the mid-1920s onward. He based his policy decisions on his understanding of Marxism-Leninism and on a hardheaded, realistic assessment of his own often uneasy position and of the Soviet Union's relatively weak standing in the world. By providing such a rich and complex portrait of the dictator and the Soviet system, Service humanizes Stalin without ever diminishing the extent of the atrocities he unleashed upon the Soviet population. 47 b&w photos, 4 maps. (Apr.)
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