In January 1928 Stalin, the ruler of the largest country in the world, boarded a train bound for Siberia where he would embark upon the greatest gamble of his political life.
Stephen Kotkin has a fair claim to be the greatest living expert on Stalin. He is the author of Magnetic Mountain- Stalinism as a Civilization and Armageddon Averted- The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000. He is Professor of History at Princeton University.
In its size, sweep, sensitivity, and surprises, Stephen Kotkin's
first volume on Stalin is a monumental achievement: the early life
of a man we thought we knew, set against the world - no less - that
he inhabited. It's biography on an epic scale. Only Tolstoy might
have matched it
*John Lewis Gaddis (author of THE COLD WAR)*
Stalin has had more than his fair share of biographies. But Stephen
Kotkin's wonderfully broad-gauged work surpasses them all in both
breadth and depth, showing brilliantly how the man, the time, the
place, its history, and especially Russian/Soviet political
culture, combined to produce one of history's greatest evil
geniuses
*William Taubman (author of KHRUSHCHEV: THE MAN AND HIS ERA)*
Stephen Kotkin's first volume on Stalin is ambitious in conception
and masterly in execution ... combines biography with historical
analysis in a way that brings out clearly Stalin's great political
talents as well as the ruthlessness with which he applied them and
the impact his policies had on Russia and the world. This is a
magisterial work on the grandest scale
*David Holloway (author of STALIN AND THE BOMB)*
Stephen Kotkin's biography of Stalin, of which this but the first
of three volumes, is a most impressive achievement. Based on both
archival and printed sources, it treats in meticulous detail the
early years of a tyrant who was destined to become one of the most
influential political figures of the twentieth century
*Richard Pipes (author of RUSSIA UNDER THE BOLSHEVIK REGIME)*
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