Every biography of Stalin needs to answer several foundational questions:
1. Was Stalin a sincere believer in the cause of word revolution? Or was he an opportunist who used Marxism to get power?
2. Did he collaborate with the secret police of the tsarist regime?
3. What was his relationship with Lenin like? Did he hasten Lenin’s death?
4. Was Stalin stupid? Or was he bright?
5. How did Stalin manage to push much more brilliant revolutionaries out of power?
6. Was Stalin paranoid?
7. Was Stalin planning to attack Hitler’s Germany in 1941?
8. Was Stalin preparing World War III?
9. Did Stalin kill his wife?
10. Was Stalin an anti-Semite?
11. Was Stalin murdered?
I’m still reading Stalin’s biography by Kotkin, and there haven’t been any surprises so far. I’m somewhat of a Stalin’s biography buff, so it’s hard to tell me something crucially new. Kotkin’s is a good book but, to be honest, I’ve seen better. The greatest problem I’m seeing so far is Kotkin’s tendency to drown in trivia. He is incapable of letting go of any part of his research and makes a point of mentioning the name of every single person Stalin ever met and every single woman Stalin is rumored to have had sex with. I love long books but not when their message is too watered down. Kotkin provides a ton of historic context for Stalin’s life, which is great for readers who are not very familiar with the European history of the XIXth century. I have not encountered any bloopers in his coverage of the Russian Empire, except for the obnoxious tendency to refer to Ukrainians as “Little Russians (Ukrainians).” Obviously, this doesn’t make the book any shorter either.
Kotkin has read everything there is to read about Stalin. Sometimes, it works to his detriment, like in an episode where he retells, almost verbatim, Stalin’s account of his own life in Solzhenitsyn’s novel In the First Circle. The problem with this approach is that the novel is a work of fiction, and Stalin’s long indirect free style narrative in the novel serves artistic and not scholarly purposes. Solzhenitsyn wasn’t doing research. He was writing a novel. Of course, his narrative powers are such that it is hard not to allow the writer’s artistic genius to overshadow our impressions of the historic persona who shares his name with Solzhenitsyn’s character.
I will gradually provide Kotkin’s answers to the above-listed questions and offer both my own comments and the general consensus of Stalin’s biographers on these issues. If you have questions about Stalin that are not on the list, do leave them in the comments.
Clarissa's Blog 
Indeed, was he a different species? Mike had the view that since Stalin was from Georgia, he had neanderthal blood
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He was neither more nor less cruel than any of the other revolutionaries of the Russian Empire whose slogan was, “We shouldn’t wonder how many people we will have to kill on our way to world revolution. We should, rather, wonder how many we can allow to remain alive.
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Yeah, but Mike wonders f he was literally a neanderthal, same as the basque people of spain, whom he considers may also have been speaking a non-human language.
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Actually, what I said to Jennifer is that neither the Basques nor the Georgians speak a language which stems from the Indo-European base and the geographical areas where the Georgians and Basques now lie more or less correspond to where the last of the dominant Neanderthal species lived. I understand that all humans have some genetic connection with Neanderthals, with perhaps the exception of some of the African humans who never migrated out of the mother continent with the others who first started populating the rest of the planet around 75,000 + years ago.
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Sorry…typo…now live, not now lie.
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My husband also hates it when I retell his comments. 🙂
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I know more about him than most Americans (which is saying almost nothing). My guesses
1. Was Stalin a sincere believer in the cause of word revolution? Or was he an opportunist who used Marxism to get power?”
He was a sincere beiliever in the cause of any revolution that would bring him power.
2. Did he collaborate with the secret police of the tsarist regime?
It wouldn’t suprrise me at all.
3. What was his relationship with Lenin like? Did he hasten Lenin’s death?
Troubled. Probably.
4. Was Stalin stupid? Or was he bright?
Street smart but not intellectually curious (like most dictators).
5. How did Stalin manage to push much more brilliant revolutionaries out of power?
They had their agenda, he had his and he stuck to it.
6. Was Stalin paranoid?
By human standards yes. By bloody dictator standards I don’t know. Did he become a clean freak later terrified of germs?
7. Was Stalin planning to attack Hitler’s Germany in 1941?
Only if he thought he could win.
8. Was Stalin preparing World War III?
Only if he thought he could win.
9. Did Stalin kill his wife?
If he didn’t do it directly, he probably did it indirectly through spiritual poisoning.
10. Was Stalin an anti-Semite?
Does that have any meaning in the CCCP? Measurable anti-semitism only exists when there is the opposite feeling around as well and it seemed to be like oxygen during most of the soviet period.
11. Was Stalin murdered?
I would like to think so (especially if it was long and drawn out and painful). But I have no idea.
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Very interesting responses! I think you will enjoy my posts on this subject.
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1. Was Stalin a sincere believer in the cause of word revolution? Or was he an opportunist who used Marxism to get power?
Both. He loved revolution also for the power it gave him, but not only for that.
2. Did he collaborate with the secret police of the tsarist regime?
Yes.
3. What was his relationship with Lenin like? Did he hasten Lenin’s death?
Lenin said something really bad (I forgot what and when) about Stalin, so I suppose Lenin had no respect for Stalin. As for Stalin, he helped to isolate Lenin in his last years, but I don’t know whether he had respect / admiration for Lenin. (Having respect doesn’t contradict imprisoning Lenin, when Stalin needed it.) Would be interesting to read your take on it.
4. Was Stalin stupid? Or was he bright?
// Street smart but not intellectually curious (like most dictators).
I think Stalin was both street smart and intellectually curious. Your post about his huge library supports the latter.
5. How did Stalin manage to push much more brilliant revolutionaries out of power?
He was brighter in things which counted. Somebody can be bright in theory, but fail when the time comes to put theory into practice in our not-filled-with-idealistic-communists world.
6. Was Stalin paranoid?
No. In his daughter’s book “20 letters to a friend” she describes how he stopped in villiages in his mother country, sat near tables with food, even though he didn’t like it, iirc. I don’t think Putin would dare to do so.
7. Was Stalin planning to attack Hitler’s Germany in 1941?
No. He believed the man, thus the Red Army was left unprepared for the attack despite the existing intelligence about Hitler’s plans.
8. Was Stalin preparing World War III?
I heard that “Yes.” Though I still don’t understand what he needed it for and on what evidence “yes” answer is based.
9. Did Stalin kill his wife?
No. She was unhappy with him, but I believe she could’ve divorced him and stayed alive and free. Am I mistaken?
10. Was Stalin an anti-Semite?
You think “no.”
In her book, his daughter said something about Stalin being unhappy with her Jewish husband, so I think he was anti-semitic to some degree. This doesn’t contradict leaving one Jew (who helped him) free despite anti-communist sayings OR surrounding himself with Jews when it suited him.
11. Was Stalin murdered?
No.
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Actually, the Red Army was super prepared for attack in 1941. It was unprepared for defense.
I have so much to say about all these questions and I will so stay tuned. 🙂
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Found something funny about Stalin (towards the end of the post):
Вот несколько образцов его своеобразного юмора (разной степени достоверности).
http://sergeytsvetkov.livejournal.com/361399.html
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I feel ashamed, but I know nothing about Stalin’s life. I learned History in school in the 90s after communism ended, but the political atmosphere was still unstable in Eastern Europe, and teachers just didn’t dare teach anything about the role of Stalin or the Soviet Union. I hope your blog will help me out of my ignorance.
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Nothing to be ashamed of! To the contrary, you give me a chance to blab as much as I want on the subject. 🙂
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