The Rise and Fall of Stalin

The Rise and Fall of Stalin – by Robert Payne

I read this book directly after my first Robert Payne biography - his biography of Lenin.  The similarities between the two books, obviously, are striking. Good and Bad. Good – this is a very thorough biography of Joseph Stalin, the man.  Or as thorough as it can be.  The life of Joseph Stalin is fascinating. Frightening, but fascinating.  The man was nothing short of a psychopathic bully. When one tries to construct a narrative about an individual in a place like early twentieth century Russia, there are a lot of gaps to fill. Many of these gaps are filled by Stalin himself. He either a) lies about his accomplishments b) over exaggerates his importance and c) thinks of himself as one with flawless character.  When he becomes dictator in 1924 – his evilness cultivates to unprecedented levels. I cannot think of any time nor any place in modern history that I would rather not be.

Critics state that this book isn’t a linear account of his life. That’s only partly true. When we arrive at the decade of the 1930's, for example, we read the account of his infamous purges. We read about several key people (including his wife, allegedly) that Stalin has put to death for some obscene reason. Do we read about these accounts chronologically?  Not necessarily. In my judgement, though, this doesn’t affect the impact of such travails.  Instead of a strict timeline, there are many chapters detailed to a key figure that suffered death at the hands of this tyrant during this period.

There are times, though, when one wishes the author would devote a bit more attention to the events of the time and not assume the reader is completely familiar with history. Example: We read about the alliance between Hitler and Stalin during the early stages of World War II. Most know that Hitler did a double-cross and sent his armies deep into Russia in the hope of conquering the country (he wanted the oil). So the author begins to tell of this event and then….well….stops.  History tells us Germany failed in its advance because of the long, cruel Russian winter that they had to crawl through (like Napoleon). The German military just couldn’t handle the brutal cold.  If you weren’t knowledgeable of this, you wouldn’t have any inkling of it if you had only read this book.  I remember the author made this mistake as well in his biography of Lenin. Some more background would have definitely been helpful in many instances.

Now, the above mentioned faux pas is somewhat forgivable. The biggest Achilles Heel of this book is that the author isn’t content with simply referring to his sources when bringing up key events.  Rather, he feels the need to quote his sources verbatim – sometimes lasting pages within the book. It’s quite the distraction. I almost think that had he not felt the need to quote pages and pages of material, he could have easily cut the length of this book by about 20%.   (I remember reading about one of the summits that Stalin attended with Roosevelt and Churchill. The author feels obliged to spend about a page describing the menu that was offered at the dinner!  Unbelievable.) I soon learned that it was unnecessary to pour through these long recollections. Most of the time when I arrived at one of these quotes (provided in italics), I simply skipped it. It didn’t hurt my enjoyment of the book. In fact, it helped. I suggest you do the same.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed it as much as one could about such a tyrant. Not only is it difficult reading about the every day life of such a monster, but when his behavior inflects paranoia of every single person that he comes in contact with, it makes the enjoyment rather limited in that aspect as well.  Much of what is on these pages is devoted to only what Stalin though or only what Stalin did.  After all, nobody else was allowed any sort of say about anything.  A very sad time in history.