
Stalin: Volume I ; Paradoxes of power, 1878-1928
Biography, Politics and government biography
Human-narrated audio
Summary
In this biography of Stalin, the author rejects the inherited wisdom about Stalin's psychological makeup, showing us instead how Stalin's near paranoia was fundamentally political and closely tracks the Bolshevik revolution's structural paranoia, the predicament of a Communist regime in… an overwhelmingly capitalist world, surrounded and penetrated by enemies. At the same time, he posits the impossibility of understanding Stalin's momentous decisions outside of the context of the history of imperial Russia. 2014.