Young Stalin

October 1, 2007
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 and my son will be one too"), Stalin possessed a talent for poetry and mischief. Amidst his mom's trysts (with men she hoped would further Stalin's education), his father's alcohol-fueled violence and the powder-keg environment of the Caucasus, Stalin turned from priesthood training to gang life and petty crime. As he grew, so did his hatred of Tsarist Russia, leading him to meet the initial Bolsheviks, and to more spectacular and violent capers. From the start, Stalin proved a remarkable talent for meticulous planning, a skill that would become vital to the revolutionaries and, later, to his iron-fisted reign. Using recently opened records, Montefiore turns up intriguing new information (like the "Fagin-like" role he played among "a prepubescent revolutionary street intelligence" network), Montefiore captures in an absorbing narrative both Stalin's conflicted character-marked by powerful charisma and deep paranoia-and the revolution's early years with stunning clarity.

Starred review from October 15, 2007
We know him as Stalin, or Josef Stalin, but before he settled on this alias he had at least a dozen others, including Koba and Soso. His youthful friends were responsible for most of his monikers, which were sometimes taken of necessity to escape from the Okhrana (secret police) and the local police. No book published in the last 100 years goes into as much detail about the youthful Stalin as Montefiore's does. Unlike Sarah Davies and James Harris's "Stalin: A New History", which has a 25-page chapter covering Stalin's youth, Montefiore ("Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar") uses many newly available archival records from Stalin's peers to greatly amplify information on the man's early years and his growing attachment to the revolutionary movement. Stalin's early experiences shaped his paranoia for the rest of his life, and his revolutionary experiences reinforced it. Montefiore says, "The machine of repression, the flinthearted, paranoid psychology of perpetual conspiracy and the taste for extreme bloody solutions to all challenges were not just accidents, but glamorized and institutionalized. He was patron of these brutal tendencies but also their personification." Montefiore goes on to refute the notion that Stalin was a double agent of the Okhrana and that he "missed the revolution," ideas that his detractors formulated from flimsy evidence. This accessible book is highly recommended for academic and public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 6/1/07.]Harry Willems, Park City P.L., KS

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2007
As historian Montefiore demonstrated in his account of Stalins entourage (Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, 2003), proximity to the dictator was dangerous. And as this biographical prequel shows, acquaintances of the youthful Marxist revolutionary Josef Djugashvili were apt to suffer fatal consequences, too. Thus, hints to the character of the mass-murderer-to-be abound in this profile, whose basis in original research forces revision of this period (18781917) of Stalins life. In detail Montefiore discusses Stalins Georgian parentage and schooling in a seminary, the venue of his rebellion and conversion to radical Marxism. After his last legitimate job, as a meteorologist, Stalin entered the underground and supported Lenins violently Marxist party, whose conspiratorial mentality Montefiore vividly documents in the course of recounting Stalins organization of bank robberies and murders. Naturally suspicious and truculent, a serial abandoner of women, Stalins nascent inhumanness is visible as is the ruthlessness and intellect that Lenin valued well before the revolutions of 1917. Imparting an extraordinary and sinister intimacy with Stalin, Montefiore chills anyone knowledgeable about the tyrants future accomplishments.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)