Stalin

The Court of the Red Tsar

De: Simon Sebag Montefiore

Narrado por: Jonathan Aris

Duración: 27 h y 50 m

Resumen del Editor

Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains a figure of powerful and dark fascination. The almost unfathomable scale of his crimes - as many as 20 million Soviets died in his purges and infamous Gulag - has given him the lasting distinction as a personification of evil in the 20th century. But though the facts of Stalin’s reign are well known, this remarkable biography reveals a Stalin we have never seen before as it illuminates the vast foundation - human, psychological and physical - that supported and encouraged him, the men and women who did his bidding, lived in fear of him and, more often than not, were betrayed by him.

In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin’s court from the time of his acclamation as “leader” in 1929, five years after Lenin’s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of 73. Through the lens of personality - Stalin’s as well as those of his most notorious henchmen, Molotov, Beria and Yezhov among them - the author sheds new light on the oligarchy that attempted to create a new world by exterminating the old. He gives us the details of their quotidian and monstrous lives: Stalin’s favorites in music, movies, literature (Hemingway, The Forsyte Saga and The Last of the Mohicans were at the top of his list), food and history (he took Ivan the Terrible as his role model and swore by Lenin’s dictum “a revolution without firing squads is meaningless”). We see him among his courtiers, his informal but deadly game of power played out at dinners and parties at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We see the debauchery, paranoia, and cravenness that ruled the lives of Stalin’s inner court, and we see how the dictator played them one against the other in order to hone the awful efficiency of his killing machine.

With stunning attention to detail, Montefiore documents the crimes, small and large, of all the members of Stalin’s court. And he traces the intricate and shifting web of their relationships as the relative warmth of Stalin’s rule in the early 1930s gives way to the Great Terror of the late 1930s, the upheaval of World War II (there has never been as acute an account of Stalin’s meeting at Yalta with Churchill and Roosevelt) and the horrific postwar years when he terrorized his closest associates as unrelentingly as he did the rest of his country.

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalin’s dictatorship and, as well, a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal. It is a galvanizing portrait: razor-sharp, sensitive, and unforgiving.

©2007 Simon Sebag Montefiore (P)2019 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Terrific... Montefiore’s portrait of Stalin and his circle is a deeply researched and wonderfully readable accomplishment - scholarship as a kind of savage gossip...its sensationalism redeemed by Montefiore’s deep grounding in the facts.” (Lance Murrow, Time)

“Montefiore’s superb book offers a closer look at this personal side of Stalin and his top collaborators. Indeed, no Western writer has got as close. He trawled through newly opened (and often subsequently closed) Soviet archives, which brought some astonishing material to the surface... [A] dark and excellent book.” (Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books)

“Mr. Montefiore draws upon new archival material, unpublished memoirs and interviews with survivors of that era (including many children of Stalin’s associates and underlings) to create a harrowing portrait of life in the dictator’s inner circle. In doing so, he gives us an intimate look at Stalin himself and the culture of sadism, ruthlessness and dread that flourished around him, fueling a murderous regime that would leave tens of millions of people dead.” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)

Been looking for this one for a while.

A well researched book from the author who's written a few books on Stalin. His finest work, if I do say so myself.

Monumental

Simon Sebag Montefiore's biographies are second to none. His work in "Stalin" is just as incredible as his book on the Romanovs. He's able to capture all the contradictions of Stalin, without sparing his brutality and cruelty. Stalin was clearly the consummate psychopath. Montefiore also captures his excessive paranoia, which fits perfectly within the NKVD-laden, fascist Communist state. The chapters on the purge are most telling. And the detail is chilling. However, it is necessary to not spare details here. To censor information is to make these events less terrible. And for the long suffering Soviet Union, Stalin's terror left it's lasting mark.

Jonathan Aris's narration is stunning. His voicing of Stalin is powerful. He provides the perfect tone and pacing all the way through. This book could not be better. It's absolutely spectacular.

Reads like a novel

By far the best Stalin account I've ever heard. Reads like a novel. Love it.

amazing!

without a doubt the best history audiobook I've ever listened to. the detail is incredible

Should be required listening...

...for anyone enamored with the CONCEPT of socialism.

Because Stalin, his terrors and his 28 million+ murders are the necessary result of such an evil system.

scarey stuff

for a history buff, this is so very well researched and yet, somehow I still don't know what this man was like. I take away a healthy distrust....power corrupts and am glad to have never been touched by his destructive edits.

Excellent!

A well written history and an easy listen, well, apart from the awful slaughter perpetrated by most of the cast of characters..

Excellent

An excellent story teller. Light on military history. Much about the Club of oligarchs who ran the Soviet Union.

Intimate look at Stalin and his henchmen

This book is a detailed examination of Stalin and his court, the personalities and mechanisms of his regime. I wish that the book expanded a bit to include the wider view into history of that time, still fascinating. Beautifully read, one of the first readers I have encountered that did a superb job of creating voices for the various characters so you knew immediately who was speaking when you were listening.

Incredible duplicity

I knew some of Stalin before embarking on the biography but what an incredibly informative read. Stalin’s amazing personality swings, kindness to brutality, sadistic manipulative impulses, and cunning high intellect.

Definitely worth a read.

P.S. The people around Stalin definitely are as interesting as he was, some for Nefarious reasons, others for being true believers of Bolshevik principles.