STALIN

I finished reading Robert Service's recent biography on Josef Stalin and have drafted my book review and will start editing it. When I first received the book, I thought: "Not another biography on Stalin." However, Service's study will be the biography to read for years to come (unless some new archival sources open up in Moscow). It is an excellent study of the life and times of the vozhd.

It is fascinating to see how the private life and experiences influenced Stalin throughout his career. I know it is not popular in America to believe that a leader's private decisions and experiences influence one's leadership (aka Bill and Monica). But anyone who writes or reads a biography has to consider how the private experiences of powerful people influence them as they rule and develop policy. In Stalin's case the issue is how his private experiences caused him to view or use people as he manipulated the Terror. I believe Service does a good job showing that the purges were a culmination of his values growing up in a dysfunctional family and then advancing into leadership positions in the organization environment of the Bolshevik party. One quote I particularly liked was: "terror attracted him like a bee to a perfumed flower"(158).

Service does not go as far as some other writers in choosing to see Stalin as suffering from servere psychological problems, although he does recognize he has a strong tendency toward paranoia. I am more inclined to see some serious maladjustments. Service has no answer to how Stalin "displayed congenial 'ordinary' features even while carrying out acts of unspeakable abusiveness"(604).