Jeune stalin biography

Historian Montefiore tells the story of a charismatic, turbulent boy born into poverty, of doubtful parentage, scarred by his upbringing but possessed of.
The shadowy journey from obscurity to power of the Georgian cobbler's son who became the Red Tsar--the man who, along with Hitler, remains the modern.
This is a biography of the first part of Stalin's life, from his birth up to the October revolution (1917).

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Source Notes

A NOTE ON SOURCES

This book is based overwhelmingly on archival research, mainly in the Stalin archives of the Communist Party’s Marxism - Leninism Institute, the archives of RGASPI in Moscow, Russia, and of GF IML in Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia, as well as the GARF State Archive in Moscow, the archive of the Stalin Museum in Gori, the archives in Batumi, the State Archive in Baku of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and the Nikolaevsky archives and those of the Paris Office of the Okhrana, both at Stanford University, California.

I have been hugely fortunate in finding new sources, often unpublished or partly unpublished and barely used previously by historians. Archival sources are more reliable than oral history, but of course they too have their dangers and must be analysed carefully. But the anti - Stalinist histories often turn out to be just as unreliable.

Many of the archives used in this book, for example, were recorded by official Party historians during the period of Stalin’s rise to power, cult of personality and Terror, from the 1920s t

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Description de l’éditeur

Winner of the Costa Biography Award

What makes a Stalin? Was he a Tsarist agent or Lenin's bandit? Was he to blame for his wife's death? When did the killing start?

Based on revelatory research, here is the thrilling story of how a charismatic cobbler's son became a student priest, romantic poet, prolific lover, gangster mastermind and murderous revolutionary. Culminating in the 1917 revolution, Simon Sebag Montefiore's bestselling biography radically alters our understanding of the gifted politician and fanatical Marxist who shaped the Soviet empire in his own brutal image. This is the story of how Stalin became Stalin.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Russian historian and author Montefiore presents an exciting, exemplary biography of the nondescript peasant boy who would become the most ruthless leader in Soviet history, a prequel of sorts to his Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Born in 1878 in the Caucasus of Georgia to an overprotective mother (who had already lost two sons) and a father opposed to education ("I'm a shoemaker
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Young Stalin
The shadowy journey from obscurity to power of the Georgian cobbler's son who became the Red Tsar--the man who, along with Hitler, remains the modern personification of evil: a merciless psychopath who was, as well, a consummate politician, the dynamic world statesman who helped create and industrialize the USSR, outplayed Churchill and Roosevelt, and defeated Hitler? Historian Montefiore tells the story of a charismatic, turbulent boy born into poverty, of doubtful parentage, scarred by his upbringing but possessed of unusual talents. Admired as a romantic poet and trained as a priest, he found his true mission as a fanatical revolutionary. A mastermind of bank robbery, protection rackets, arson, piracy and murder, he was equal parts terrorist, intellectual and brigand. The paranoid criminal underworld was Stalin's natural habitat, and murderous banditry and political gangsterism, combined with pitiless ideology, enabled Stalin to dominate the Kremlin--and create the USSR in his flawed image.--From publisher description.