By Edvard Radzinsky
I have had several people ask me why I would invest so much reading time to a large tome on Stalin. My answer is simple, I am trying to wrap myself around the gulags and Russia during the time period of the gulags. As I read memoirs, novels and even history books about them without getting into the mind of Stalin I realized I could never fully understand them. And I don't mean to imply that I would ever understand them. As a friend of mind passed on to me a quote from Pirmo Levi when he was asked if he would ever be able to understand the Holocaust, "‘No I don’t understand it and nor should you understand it, but it’s a sacred duty not to understand.’"
The author grew up in Stalins Russia, his father was a playwright during that time period. He begins the book at the beginning of Stalins life, when he was known by his mother as little Soso, into seminary as a young man, then into his years working for Lenin under the nickname Koba, and finally onto supreme ruler of Russia as Stalin.
There is a danger when writing about a man who created such destruction in his wake. There is the temptation to explain why they were the way they were - find some psychological angle or injured psyche - but this can in turn sound like justifications of their actions. Understanding evil is one step from justifying it. Radzinsky refrains from such explanation. He is disciplined about telling the facts as he sees them without trying to understand or make the reader understand Stalin. Which is also frustrating because it is human to want to understand "Why?"
It is tempting to debate who was more evil - Hitler or Stalin. Its an impossible debate, the only winner being the general ability of humans to be destructive, using creativity to find the best way to kill millions. There are stories in the past to support this, stories in this book, stories yet to come in human history.
"Tkachev's original contribution to Russian revolutionary thought was the idea that a popular uprising is not necessary for the success of a revolution. Revolution can be successfully carried out by a narrow conspiratorial group of revolutionary leaders. They must seize power first and then transform a country accustomed to slavish submission. They would speed the Russian people, full steam ahead, along the route to socialism into the bright future. But the expectation was that for the sake of that bright future the majority of the population must be exterminated.." Pg 34
"One of the pillars of revolutionary socialism was Makhail Bakunin, the father of Russian anarchism. . . . The Catechism prescribed that the revolutionary should break with the laws of the civilized world: 'Our task is terrible, universal destruction.' He must be merciless, expect no mercy for himself, and be ready to die." Pg 35
"His conversations with the deputies can have left Koba in no doubt about
Malinovsky's role. And the miserable role assigned to himself. For the second time in his life Koba suffered a terrible spiritual upheaval. The first time he had lost his belief in in God. Now he lost his belief in the god Lenin. And in his comrades." Pg. 87
"It all looked so easy: everything is monopolized in the interests of the victorious people, a single State Bank is established, a Leviathan to dominate the whole country. Everybody would take a turn governing everybody else. Literally the whole population would be involved in government: cooks would learn how to administer the state. And people would gradually reach the point at which nobody governed anybody else. The hateful state, which had enslaved mankind for centuries, would die away.
This was the dream which would lead them to create the most monstrous state of all." Pg 122
"Koba embarked on a revolutionary solution of the problem with a round of executions, just to inspire respect for his decisions. He shot everybody involved in black marketeering or counterrevolutionary activity. Or anybody who might become involved. Pg. 143
"The White armies were fatally weakened by an age-old Russian ill: thievery. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Russian writer and historian Karamazin was asked for a succinct description of his country. He summed it up in a single word (in Russian): 'They steal.'"
Pg. 165
"The Boss, I believe, genuinely grieved for Sergo, just as before he had grieved from Kirov. This was a horrifying trait in his character - he could sincerely grieve for those whom he murdered." Pg 366
"On August 25, 1938 when the Terror was ebbing, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet discussed the possibility of early release for prisoners who had distinguished themselves in the camps. But the Boss said, 'Can't we find some other way of showing appreciation of their work? From the point of view of the economy it is a bad idea. The best people would be freed, and those left would be the worst.' In 1939, he decreed through the Presidium that 'a convicted person must serve the full sentence.' The 'best' were left to die slowly." Pg 414
"The Boss announced the results of the Terror. Half a million new appointments had been made responsible posts in the state and the Party. In the higher ranks of the Party 293 out of 333 regional party leaders were new appointments." Pg. 426
Slaughter of the Polish soldiers Stalin tried to pass off as Hitler's slaughter until recent years - "What remains is a letter from A. Shelepin, then head of the KGB, informing Krushchev that 'in all, 21,857 people were shot on orders from the KGB, including 4,421 in the Katyn Forest, 6,311 in the Ostashkovo camp, and 3,820 in the Starobel camp near Kharkov.'" Pg 499
"The country desperately needed a dose of terror. The counterespionage service zealously intercepted letters from the front, Beria regularly reported their contents, and the Boss saw that the worst had happened: independent thought. A relentless struggle with independent thinking would soon follow." Pg 506
"He also solved the problem of prisoners of war liberated from German camps. They had to pay for disobeying his orders to die on the battlefield. They had dared to survive as prisoners. Ad of course he had in mind the dangerous ideas they would have 'picked up' (a favorite phrase in his propaganda) in multinational camps.
Their fate, then, was decided in advance. THese unfortunates, who had survived years of nightmare as prisoners, and lived to see their country victorious, were to be sent straight from German to Soviet prison camps." Pg 506
"With his mind always on the Great Dream he knew that there were two emotions which could unite society: fear, and hatred of the Jews. His 'anti-cosmopolitan' campaign had been instructive. The results had surpassed his expectations. The public had joined wholeheartedly in vilifying Jews, deliberately distorting the names of their victims. He remembered particularly the enthusiasm of the workers in that factory at the time of the ZIS affair. As one Russian writer put it: 'Anti-semitism makes your vodka stronger and your bread more appetizing.' Before leading his people to the Apocalypse he would bestow on them a great claim to superiority: the most downtrodden of Russians would rejoice in the fact that he was not a Jew." Pg 551
Book 63
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