A Review of Young Stalin
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Account of the Youth of the Red Tsar
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s previous book, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, was an excellent account of the vast powerbase that sustained Stalin during his time in power although it was unable to provide a detailed analysis of how Stalin came to power and the motivation for his actions once he did. As well as being an exceptional biography in its own account then, Young Stalin is a great companion to Montefiore’s early work since it charts Stalin’s rise from nondescript peasant boy to all-powerful leader of the Soviet Union.
The Childhood of a Dictator
Stalin seems to have been something of an enigma since childhood; at the very least he was adept at reinventing himself and assuming the best character to blend into a particular group or situation. The only surviving son of an ambitious and overprotective mother and a father who opposed education, the young Stalin loved both poetry and violence and fitted in well as both a trainee priest and a gang member.
Growing up in the Caucasus of Georgia, Stalin developed a passionate hate for the Tsarist government of Russia and he soon fell in with the Bolsheviks. Although his criminal activities were not always political and he was by no means an idealist, Stalin was a dab hand at extremely violent protest and a committed advocate for change. Young Stalin leaves it as no surprise that he was soon welcomed into Lenin’s inner circle.
Foreshadowing of Terror
Having decided to concentrate on the early years of Stalin, Montefiore has had to tread fine line between accurately detailing the activities of Stalin as youth and leaving the reader with too rosy a picture. Since Young Stalin concludes before Stalin instigated the greatest terrors and purges of his reign it would be easy to be left with the idea that he wasn’t such a bad chap after all. Even the Revolution might not have been as bad as it was portrayed if rioting firemen really took the time to stop and drink their way through the Tsar’s wine cellar during the storming of the Winter Palace. Montefiore notes that more people were hurt when Eisenstein filmed the storming of the palace than during the actual event itself.
However, Montefiore has done an excellent job of conveying the sense of foreboding that anyone who knows how life in the Soviet Union ultimately ended up will feel as they read of Stalin starting to gain power. There is a palpable sense of malice behind even some of the most mundane of Stalin’s activities and the sense of his emotional detachment was obvious from as early as his childhood. While daring bank robberies and trips to the pub with Lenin may at first seem almost heroic, Montefiore’s account never fails to portray Stalin’s lethal desire for power.
Young Stalin is a fascinating and important book, the formative years of one of the twentieth century’s most terrible dictators need never be shrouded in mystery again.
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
ISBN 978-0753823798, Phoenix, 2008, £9.99, pp512
