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Book Review, The Economist magazine
London, UK, July 26-August 1, 2003
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 693 pages; ¸25
Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953
By Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov
HarperCollins; 416 pages; $26.95. John Murray; ¸20
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AS WITH Stalin himself, it is hard to remember sometimes that the
monstrous, ruthless, terrified, sycophantic, debauched, idealistic,
deluded people around him were human beings. Simon Sebag
Montefiore's book, based on a thorough synthesis of existing works,
archival material, and his own interviews with survivors and their
descendants, provides a richly detailed reminder.
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Thanks to Dear Comrade Stalin For Our Happy Childhood
Color postcard, 1939
(Click on images to enlarge them)
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His account does give one a start. It is much easier to read ghastly
accounts of Beria's debauchery, or Stalin's paranoia, than anecdotes
about children scampering happily through their parents' Kremlin
offices, or of Stalin's punctilious habits in his personal
correspondence, his bizarre flashes of kindness and decency or his
extraordinary appetite for books. But Mr Sebag Montefiore's book is
all the more valuable for the surprises it presents. As the author
himself points out, demonology is no substitute for history.
What also jars, to less effect, though, is when the author's
effortless prose turns facile. A good editor might have advised
against over-use of words like "pinguid", avoided the use of
nicknames for the main characters, pruned some sloppy repetition of
details and tidied up the Russian transliterations.
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Scholars disagree still over whether Stalin was born bad or whether
he was simply corrupted by power, and many continue to ask themselves
what he might have done next. Mr Sebag Montefiore's book offers a
convincing argument that shows that Stalin's manners, and much else
besides, grew worse as he got older. Despite the terror which was
used against the Russian people, in the 1920s the inner dealings of
the Bolshevik elite were still collegial. Stalin then was a first
among equals, dominating his powerful colleagues by charm and
persuasion.
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Stalin and a Group of Workers at a Hydroelectric Power Station in Georgia
Color postcard, 1939
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In the 1930s, as the supply of external enemies ran dry, the Soviet
regime turned the terror inwards, in tighter and tighter circles.
Even at the top, intimacy gave way to fear. For a few years after the
disastrous outbreak of war, Stalin backtracked. For all their
political reliability, he realised, cronies could not win battles the
way that generals could. The post-war years brought ever more terror,
and ever more sycophancy-but also a physical and mental decline that
set his subordinates thinking about what might follow.
This, like many other chapters in Mr Sebag Montefiore's racy
narrative, is worth a separate book of its own. Jonathan Brent, a
distinguished American specialist in Soviet archives, and Vladimir
Naumov, one of modern Russia's best historians, provide an
unparalleled account of one such episode: the famous doctors' plot of
January 1953, in which a vast conspiracy of Jewish doctors is meant
to have planned to murder the Kremlin leaders. In reaction, Russia
seemed to wobble for a while towards its own final solution.
Although the outlines of this piece of history are clear, the details
are devilishly difficult to pin down. Stalin was certainly anti-
Semitic by instinct. The foundation of the state of Israel gave him
reason to doubt the loyalty of even the most zealous Jewish
communists. And by 1953 he needed a new enemy, having killed so many
of the old ones. Russia's Jews, starting with a group of unfortunate
doctors, provided a tempting target.
But so much was also invented, so much disguised. Stalin died less
than two months after he dramatically pointed his finger at the
doctors. The authors have managed, with commendable scholarship, to
trace the origins of the so-called plot. But they cannot prove, as
some conspiracy-minded scholars insist, that Stalin died of anything
but natural causes. Meanwhile, in Russia, there is still a dreadful
nostalgia for his rule.
The Economist magazine, London, UK, July 26-August 1, 2003
FOR PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC USE ONLY
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