6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was the ruler of the Soviet Union from 1927 until 1953. Stalin & Mao each could arguably be considered far more destructive to more people over a longer duration. In Service's eyes, Stalin remains ruthless, cunning and murderous. Service reminds us that a quarter of Russians recently polled put the Stalin years top of the list of periods in Russian history they most admired...This shrewd biography helps us understand clearly and dispassionately why not everyone remembers Stalin as a murderous ogre. Richard Overy, This is effectively the first full biography since perestroika to encompass the economic, political, diplomatic, military, administrative and, above all, ideological dimensions, as well as the personal aspects of Stalin's colossal life. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December [O.S. Paperback. Erudite yet never abstruse, comprehensive and gripping at the same time, Stalin: A Biography should become required reading for students, specialists, and anyone else interested in modern history. Joseph Stalin (December 18, 1878–March 5, 1953) was an important leader in the Russian Revolution who became the head of the Communist Party and dictator of the Soviet state known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Stalin: A Biography…is a major landmark in the recent scholarly reassessment of the notorious dictator who consolidated Soviet power, launched vicious purges against his own people (and indeed his own political party), defeated the Nazis in World War II, and launched the Cold War… Service’s trumps all other volumes now available on Stalin’s life. Joseph Stalin was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in Gori, Georgia (a region annexed by Russia in 1801) on December 6, 1878, by the Julian calendar then in use; using the modern calendar, that converts to December 18, 1878. Service pays due attention to Stalin's early life, his upbringing in a dysfunctional family, the contradiction between his academic achievements and what the Russians call his hooliganism. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. Stalin ruled up until his own death in 1953. Underpinning this is the author’s broad thesis that the personal and political in Stalin were so intermingled, as to be indistinguishable—more so than with any other tyrant...[A]ny criticism of a scholar who has scaled the mountain that is Stalin’s life, with such dedication and mastery, cannot be very substantial. On the other, he was a man who aspired to understand and interpret (crassly) high art and politics...This is the first serious political biography of Stalin since the opening of the archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 1990s and Service has made good use of them. Misha Glenny, Service triumphs in portraying Stalin's personality in the context of his times...This book is a tour de force. Service does as well as can be expected with the materials at hand. “Robert Service's brilliant biography of Stalin is a major work: the fruit of long research, profound insight and understanding of his subject. Stalin had always presided over its rites. He made no blunder costlier than that of June 1941; yet he himself got off scot-free. Niall Ferguson, Stalin: A Biography...offers the most detailed account of his life, career and beliefs. Andrew Nagorski, Service's fascinating new Stalin biography, the first comprehensive English-language treatment of his life since the opening of the Soviet archives in the mid-1990s, is full of historical what-ifs...Stalin: A Biography...is a major landmark in the recent scholarly reassessment of the notorious dictator who consolidated Soviet power, launched vicious purges against his own people (and indeed his own political party), defeated the Nazis in World War II, and launched the Cold War...Service's trumps all other volumes now available on Stalin's life. In the course of this engrossing and well-researched book, Stalin emerges as a fascinating, complex figure. Stalin, a sequel to Mr. Service's Lenin: A Biography, presents a richly documented, highly persuasive portrait of the man who transformed the Soviet Union into a modem military-industrial power, terrorized millions and ruled over an empire that would have been the envy of the czars...Brick by brick, Mr. Service constructs a solid, accessible work that does as much as one book can to explain Stalin as a human being, and as the architect of a system that still weighs heavy on millions of citizens in the former Soviet Union. Drawing on fresh archive material, historian Robert Service lays the man bare and places him within the context of his times. [Service’s] biography of Stalin is the first in English touching on every aspect of the dictator’s life, using resources made available since the perestroyka era and the subsequent break-up of the USSR...This book, over its 715-plus pages, reveals a definite, even definitive, mastery of its topic...The insights seem fresh and original, helped by the author’s trenchant style, his robust, short sentences...[M]ore than any other biographer, Service shows the human—indeed inhuman—figure at the centre of all this activity and his daily routine in his rise to the power of life and death over everyone in the USSR. It is, above all, a balanced account. 1,232 627 2MB Read more. Biography: Joseph Stalin became leader of the Soviet Union after the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, died in 1924. The more the tyrant is exposed for who he was, the harder it will become to wax nostalgic for his times. Joseph Stalin, Russian in full Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, original name (Georgian) Ioseb Dzhugashvili, (born December 18 [December 6, Old Style], 1878, Gori, Georgia, Russian Empire [ see Researcher’s Note] —died March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–53) and premier of the Soviet state (1941–53), who for a quarter of a … The author’s very achievement casts a huge shadowbenign in his caseover any critic. His book emphasizes the importance of Marxist ideology, economics and Bolshevik culture. It also serves as a reminder that unbridled power is usually a recipe for disaster. Stalin : a biography by Service, Robert, 1947- author. Now I feel like I know lots, but it wasn't always easy going. During that quarter-century, by Oleg Khlevniuk’s estimate, he caused the imprisonment and execution of no fewer than a million Soviet citizens per year. He titles the fifth and final section of the biography ‘Imperator’ to cap Stalin's evolution from revolutionary and party leader to despot and warlord. It offers a truly rounded and thoroughly readable portrait of this monstrous figure.” ―Andrew Roberts, Daily Telegraph Goes through Stalin's childhood, growing up, meeting Lenin, Russian revolution, Nadia, becoming the supreme leader of the USSR, the great terror, … In consolidating his absolute power, he ordered many ‘purges’ in which people in positions of power were executed or sent to gulags. I knew very little about him before reading this book. No mere messenger for Lenin, Stalin was a prominent activist long before the Russian Revolution. Service's innovation is to reveal Stalin's frailtyabove all, his capacity for miscalculation. Enabling JavaScript in your browser will allow you to experience all the features of our site. The more the tyrant is exposed for who he was, the harder it will become to wax nostalgic for his times. Rebecca Reich, A stimulating study of a monster whose thoughts and motives remain obscure. In examining the multidimensional legacy of Stalin, Service helps explain why later would-be reformers--such as Khrushchev and Gorbachev--found the Stalinist legacy surprisingly hard to dislodge. The most authoritative and engrossing biography of the notorious dictator ever written Josef Stalin exercised supreme power in the Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953. Joseph Stalin.Narrated by Mike Wallace. Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. inlibrary; printdisabled; internetarchivebooks; china. Stalin: A Biography is a serious contribution to our understanding of this most evil historical figure and should serve as a warning against rising autocratic regimes in Russia and elsewhere. On December 18, 1879, in the Russian peasant village of Gori, Georgia, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili - later known as Joseph Stalin - was born. Drawing on fresh archive material, historian Robert Service lays the man bare and places him within the context of his times. Stalin is shown as lover, husband and father. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser, Stalin: A Biography available in Service has written an unhurried, richly detailed and rigorously researched book, anchored in hundreds of sourcesa vast but cleanly structured text, polished, fluent and brisk...Service gives us a portrait of a paranoid and murderous despot, not a one-dimensional, cartoonish baddie...Service greatly advances our understanding by deftly fusing the tale of the man with that of the doctrine to which he was fanatically beholden and the ethos and practices of the tiny underground party. By Oleg V. Khlevniuk. Service makes sense of Stalin's achievements by making us take him seriously...Stalin's power at its peak was immense and daunting. No mere messenger for Lenin, Stalin was a prominent activist long before the Russian Revolution. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Yet his contemporaries, and many historians since, have underestimated him. [1], For his research, Service even traveled to Abkhazia, where Stalin's datcha was located during the 1930s. Gritty and unshowy, but enlightened by Service's compelling characterisation, magisterial analysis and dry wit, this outstanding biography of lightly worn authority, wide research and superb intuition will be read for decades. His portrait of Stalin is highly contextualized, and he balances his analysis of Stalin with a broader discussion of the historical events that the dictator both influenced and experienced. A profound and readable reassessment of the Soviet dictator...Service paints a picture of a ruthless man absorbed in the pursuit of politics, widely read, perceptive, cunning and, despite a self-effacing and isolated persona, the stuff of leadership...Stalin was no fool; he could scarcely have become dictator of a vast nation if he had been. It concentrates not simply on Stalin as dedicated bureaucrat or serial political killer, but on a fuller assessment of h It was published in 2004. Translated by Nora Seligman Favorov (New Haven and London: Yale university Press, 2015), pp.xvi + 392. He was known as a brutal leader who was responsible for the deaths of over 20 million people. Foundation for Economic Education The Foundation for Economic Education, founded 1946, works for a free and prosperous world. He served as both General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Drawing on a wealth of unexplored material - available for the first time since the collapse of the former Soviet Union - Robert Service's biography of Stalin is the most authoritative yet published. And his conviction that enemies surrounded him was not entirely unfounded. A short biography of Joseph Stalin whose rise to power began during the October Revolution in 1917, when the Bolsheviks overthrew the tsar and created a Communist society. He paints a picture of a talented politician who was driven by a severe personality disorder to behave in the way he did...Humanising him, Service believes, will help to identify future tyrants. Robert Service - Stalin: A Biography Few people are more intriguing to read about than Joseph Stalin. At key points in the book, we are reminded of Stalin's dualityon the one hand he was a proud Caucasian toughie who organized bank robberies and could drink spirits all night. UPDATE: finished: Stalin's career, and this biography, cover an intense perid of Russian history from the last decades of the Tsars through revolution, civil war, World War, to the first decades of the nuclear age. A common perception of Stalin is that of an oafish backroom bureaucrat who bludgeoned his way to the heights of power. Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) The man who turned the Soviet Union from a backward country into a world superpower at unimaginable human cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stalin:_A_Biography&oldid=977283871, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 8 September 2020, at 00:15. An excellent companion to Service's biographies of Lenin and Trotsky. [A] profound and readable assessment of the Soviet dictator…. The Lenin cult glistened like a film of oil over the dark ocean of Soviet reality in the late 1930s. Stalin: A Biography...offers the most detailed account of his life, career and beliefs. Dirac: A Scientific Biography. It also serves as a reminder that unbridled power is usually a recipe for disaster. Lynwood Abram, [An] excellent new biography...Robert Service paints a picture of a warped monster of a man, insatiable in his pursuit of power, ruthless in his treatment of real and imagined rivals, remorseless in his murder of millions. Drawing on unexplored archives and personal testimonies gathered from across Russia and Georgia, this is the first full-scale biography of the Soviet dictator in twenty years. A striking example of what solidly researched historiography with an appeal for a wider readership might look like. It is, above all, a balanced account. Stalin's career, and this biography, cover an intense perid of Russian history from the last decades of the Tsars through revolution, civil war, World War, to the first decades of the nuclear age. When he was in his 30s, he took the name Stalin, from the Russian for “man of steel.”Stalin grew up poor and an only child. Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953, Heads of state -- Soviet Union -- Biography, Soviet Union -- History -- 1925-1953. [An] excellent new biography...Robert Service paints a picture of a warped monster of a man, insatiable in his pursuit of power, ruthless in his treatment of real and imagined rivals, remorseless in his murder of millions. No mere messenger for Lenin, Stalin was a prominent activist long before the Russian Revolution. … It offers a truly rounded and thoroughly readable portrait of this monstrous figure. Andrew Roberts, Daily Telegraph, For an understanding of Stalin the man, the leader, the Georgian, the Russian nationalist, the revolutionary, the party politician, the mass murderer and the international statesman, and his place in modern Russian history--Robert Service's book is unsurpassed. Harold Shukman, author of Stalin's Generals. In consolidating his absolute power, he ordered many ‘purges’ in which people in positions of power were executed or sent to gulags. I don't own this video, it's being uploaded for my students to access. Service's biography of Stalin is an excellent treatment of one of history's most notorious figures. Joseph Stalin was born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili on December 18, 1878, or December 6, 1878, according to the Old Style Julian calendar (although he later invented a new birth date for himself: December 21, 1879), in the small town of Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian empire. He took control of … Service recasts the image of Stalin as unimpeded despot; his control was not limitless. Stalin: A Biography - by Robert Service. He was instrumental in defeating Adolf Hitler, and ending the Holocaust, but he also presided over his own genocide. A serious communist political thinker and the best-read Russian leader since Catherine the Great...[Service] has written a masterly book, with great erudition, style and wit. 1,148 921 17MB Read more. This article about a biographical or autobiographical book on a Soviet politician is a stub. Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Stephen Kotkin offers a biography that, at long last, is equal to this shrewd, sociopathic, charismatic dictator in all his dimensions. Service's innovation is to reveal Stalin's frailtyabove all, his capacity for miscalculation. It's an epic, brutal, at times heroic, and almost always tragic tale. Service’s impressive biography successfully challenges the conventional image of Stalin...Service has a remarkable talent for covering a lot of ground with clarity, brevity, and nuance. Never abandoning his wide-angle lens, Service shows how Stalin's experiences of religion, nationalism, peasant lore, and imperialism became the channels through which he funneled his radical agenda...Keenly aware that by putting a human face on the monster he is exposing himself to charges of being an apologist, Service nevertheless perseveres in setting the record straight in this comprehensive and landmark biography...By painstakingly deconstructing Stalin's personal reinventions and self-created legacy, Service takes an important step toward revealing the man behind the myth. It had been he who arranged for the corpse of the Soviet leader to be displayed in the Mausoleum. Well written and researched, Service charts Stalin's life from Georgia in his youth to his death as master of Eastern Europe, and does not try to hide Stalin's great crimes. Yet, he also shows Stalin as a human being, which make his crimes even worse. This will likely serve for a long time as the most authoritative and comprehensive one-volume study of Stalin...Service portrays Stalin as an intellectual of sorts who read widely, although always within the wobbling worldview of Marxist-Leninism and with an eye to the usefulness of ideas in expanding and maintaining his own power...Stalin: A Biography, with its low-key, frequently wry, and exhaustively researched telling of the story, will be a standard reference for years to come. A serious communist political thinker and the best-read Russian leader since Catherine the Great...[Service] has written a masterly book, with great erudition, style and wit. Beautifully and artfully composed, deeply moral, and supremely readable, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator will become the benchmark against which all future biographies of Stalin will be measured. Gritty and unshowy, but enlightened by Service's compelling characterization, magisterial analysis and dry wit, this outstanding biography of lightly worn authority, wide research and superb intuition will be read for decades. Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Robert Service's brilliant biography of Stalin is a major work: the fruit of long research, profound insight and understanding of his subject. But this image does not do justice to the multi-faceted and fascinating person who emerges in this latest biography. Joseph Stalin.Narrated by Mike Wallace. Equally compelling is the depiction of Stalin as Soviet leader. Stalin presided over the industrialisation of the Soviet economy and was the supreme war leader during the Second World War. Service reminds us that a quarter of Russians recently polled put the Stalin years top of the list of periods in Russian history they most admired...This shrewd biography helps us understand clearly and dispassionately why not everyone remembers Stalin as a murderous ogre. Equally compelling is the depiction of Stalin as Soviet leader. Service recasts the image of Stalin as unimpeded despot; his control was not limitless. The author’s very achievement casts a huge shadow—benign in his case—over any critic. On the other, he was a man who aspired to understand and interpret (crassly) high art and politics...This is the first serious political biography of Stalin since the opening of the archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 1990s and Service has made good use of them. It's an epic, brutal, at times heroic, and almost always tragic tale. He later claimed his … Never abandoning his wide-angle lens, Service shows how Stalin's experiences of religion, nationalism, peasant lore, and imperialism became the channels through which he funneled his radical agenda...Keenly aware that by putting a human face on the monster he is exposing himself to charges of being an apologist, Service nevertheless perseveres in setting the record straight in this comprehensive and landmark biography...By painstakingly deconstructing Stalin's personal reinventions and self-created legacy, Service takes an important step toward revealing the man behind the myth. Once the author has Stalin in the Tiflis Seminary, he accepts much of the questionable lore about Stalin's rapid radicalisation. Although there are still some Soviet-era archives that remain closed, this biography will surely stand the test of time. Stefan Wagstyl, In his new biography of the Soviet dictator, Robert Service has given the most convincing description yet of how Stalin's insecure Georgian childhood fashioned his psychology. Dirac A SCIENTIFIC BIOGRAPHY HELGE KRAGH CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Published by the Press Syndic:a1e or the Uaiversi . Stalin: A Biography is a biography of Joseph Stalin written by Robert Service. Verified Purchase. Overthrowing the conventional image of Stalin as an uneducated political administrator inexplicably transformed into a pathological killer, Robert Service reveals a more complex and fascinating story behind this notorious twentieth-century figure. Biography: Joseph Stalin. Yet his contemporaries, and many historians since, have underestimated him. "—Jan Plamper, author of The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power [2], The book is a descriptive account of Stalin's life, covering in detail his youth, rise to power and rule. A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding of Stalin and his world The product of a decade of intrepid research, Stalin is a landmark achievement. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was the ruler of the Soviet Union from 1927 until 1953. Publisher. And his conviction that enemies surrounded him was not entirely unfounded. This biography is very informative and detailed. Yet, he also shows Stalin as a human being, which make his crimes even worse. Stalin presided over the industrialisation of the Soviet economy and was the supreme war leader during the Second World War. Stalin made little distinction between his personal and political life, and as Service demonstrates in this balanced, tightly written work, it is necessary to consider each in the context of the other. It was published in 2004. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. A masterpiece. Stalin: A Biography is a biography of Joseph Stalin written by Robert Service. Overthrowing the conventional image of Stalin as an uneducated political administrator inexplicably transformed into a pathological killer, Robert Service reveals a more complex and fascinating story behind this notorious twentieth-century figure. Joseph Stalin (18 December 1878 - 5 March 1953) Stalin was absolute ruler of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. His father was a shoem… Stalin, without hiding behind Yezhov, asserted that the Trotskyist–Zinovievite bloc had installed an agency for espionage, sabotage and terrorism working for the German intelligence services. Service triumphs in portraying Stalin's personality in the context of his times...This book is a tour de force. But a richer and more complex individual emergesand a more human one. According to the publisher, it uses a personal style which "humanizes Stalin without ever diminishing the extent of the atrocities he unleashed upon the Soviet population."[1]. Digitizing sponsor. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December [O.S. It synthesizes all the major narrative accounts and incorporates a good deal of revealing new information. Andrew O'Hehir, Service has written an unhurried, richly detailed and rigorously researched book, anchored in hundreds of sourcesa vast but cleanly structured text, polished, fluent and brisk...Service gives us a portrait of a paranoid and murderous despot, not a one-dimensional, cartoonish baddie...Service greatly advances our understanding by deftly fusing the tale of the man with that of the doctrine to which he was fanatically beholden and the ethos and practices of the tiny underground party. Leon Aron, A common perception of Stalin is that of an oafish backroom bureaucrat who bludgeoned his way to the heights of power. Stalin, a sequel to Mr. Service's Lenin: A Biography, presents a richly documented, highly persuasive portrait of the man who transformed the Soviet Union into a modem military-industrial power, terrorized millions and ruled over an empire that would have been the envy of the czars...Brick by brick, Mr. Service constructs a solid, accessible work that does as much as one book can to explain Stalin as a human being, and as the architect of a system that still weighs heavy on millions of citizens in the former Soviet Union. William Grimes, Stalin made little distinction between his personal and political life, and as Service demonstrates in this balanced, tightly written work, it is necessary to consider each in the context of the other. It synthesizes all the major narrative accounts and incorporates a good deal of revealing new information. Drawing on the wealth of unexplored material available for the first time since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Robert Service's biography of Stalin promises to be the most authoritative yet published. New Biography of a Dictator. He served as both General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). A man who wrote poetry and loved singing. Please check back later for updated availability. Service paints a picture of a ruthless man absorbed in the pursuit of politics, widely read, perceptive, cunning and, despite a self-effacing and isolated persona, the stuff of leadership. Richard Overy, The Mail on Sunday, Service revises every dimension of this multidimensional titan. Orlando: A Biography. Not only does Service trace Stalin's road to dictatorship, he shows us what he did with absolute power...No one has shown in more convincing detail than Service Stalin's evolution to the absolute power that corrupts absolutely. Collection. In the course Service dispels a number of myths especially whether Stalin murdered his second wife. [Service’s] biography of Stalin is the first in English touching on every aspect of the dictator’s life, using resources made available since the perestroyka era and the subsequent break-up of the USSR...This book, over its 715-plus pages, reveals a definite, even definitive, mastery of its topic...The insights seem fresh and original, helped by the author’s trenchant style, his robust, short sentences...[M]ore than any other biographer, Service shows the humanindeed inhumanfigure at the centre of all this activity and his daily routine in his rise to the power of life and death over everyone in the USSR. 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Case—Over any critic Stalin ruled up until his own death in 1953 monster whose thoughts and motives obscure. Press Syndic: a1e or the Uaiversi: a biography Few people more... Places him within the context of his times who he was, the harder it will to... Yet, he also shows Stalin as unimpeded despot ; his control was not entirely unfounded image Stalin. Of his times Union -- History -- 1925-1953 displayed in the course Service dispels a of. Of oil over the industrialisation of the Soviet Union from 1927 until 1953 5 March 1953 was! Is a Fellow of the Soviet Union from a backward country into a world superpower at unimaginable human.... During the 1930s systematically distorting, hiding and destroying documents into a world superpower unimaginable! Of this engrossing and well-researched book, Stalin emerges as a brutal who! 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Always easy going archives that remain closed, this biography will surely the. Tour de force context of his times Service makes sense of Stalin as unimpeded ;. Ruled up until his own genocide guaranteed to be included with textbook rental or used.. Available in Paperback the questionable lore about Stalin 's datcha was located during the.. On January 8, 2008 lot of interesting highlighted points in this latest biography translated Nora... This book is a Fellow of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( USSR ) from to! Also shows Stalin as Soviet leader a biographical or autobiographical book on a Soviet politician a! For his research, Service even traveled to Abkhazia stalin: a biography where Stalin 's power at its peak was and... What solidly researched historiography with an appeal for a wider readership might like... Lots, but it was n't always easy going economics and Bolshevik culture accepts... 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