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Praise for Simon Sebag Montefiores STALIN

A marvelously well-researched book.... Montefiore has written a supremely important book about Joseph Stalin, a biography that other scholars will find hard to equal. This is sure to be one of the outstanding books of the year. St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Ultra reader-friendly, lively, gossipy and packaged with revelations about the intimacies and intrigues of Stalin the man and his courtiers. Brilliant. Evening Standard Book Page

A book that had to be written.... Montefiores biography is far different from anything in this genre. A superb piece of research and frighteningly lucid. The Washington Times

Gripping and timely.... Montefiore has illuminated wider aspects of the history of the USSR. This is one of the few recent books on Stalinism that will be read in years to come.

Robert Service, The Guardian (London)

Montefiore combines his research among the primary sources and the fruits of his interviews into a focused, gripping story about a man, who, along with Mao, Hitler and Genghis Khan, has to be in the running for historys greatest mass murderer. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

[A] masterful and terrifying account of Stalin as seen within his close entourage.... Seldom has the picture been put in finer focus than by Montefiore. Alistair Horne, The Times (London)

Horrific, revelatory and sobering.... A triumph of research.

John le Carr, The Observer

I loved the totalitarian high baroque sleaze of Simon Sebag Montefiores Stalin.... One of the 2004 Guardian Books of the Year.

Simon Schama, The Guardian (London)

A grim masterpiece shot through with lashes of black humor.... The personal details are riveting. Antonia Fraser, Mail on Sunday

A well-researched and insightful book.... The narrative adroitly catches the atmosphere of the time. Los Angeles Times Book Review

I did not think I could learn anything new about Stalin, but I was wrong. A stunning performance. Henry Kissinger

An extraordinary book and Simon Sebag Montefiore might well be one of the very few people who could possibly have written it.... For anyone fascinated by the nature of eviland by the effects of absolute power on human relationshipsthis book will provide insights on every page.

Anne Applebaum, Evening Standard

Montefiores deft combination of biography and history brings Stalin alive, so that he becomes as complex and contradictory as any of the great characters in fiction. The New York Sun

If you plan (wisely) to read only one book about Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, let it be Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar . Simon Sebag Montefiore, writing with the skill of a novelist... has based his highly readable biographical thriller solidly and factually not only on all of the preceding scholarly studies of the Soviet dictator but also upon newly available archival materials. The Seattle Times

A large and ambitious overviewand under-viewof the Soviet leaders life and epoch, drawn from an impressively wide array of Russian sources.

The Atlantic Monthly

Spectacular.... An impressive and compelling work, using important new documents. The Spectator

Sebag Montefiore has done a valuable service in drawing our attention to a hitherto little-studied aspect of Stalinism. As his Stalin demonstrates, the personal relationships of those who ran the Kremlin provided an essential dynamic for the development of the Stalinist system. Isolated from the masses, these members of the privileged elite depended on one another for emotional sustenance to an extraordinary degree.

The Times Literary Supplement (London)

SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE

STALIN

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian specializing in Russia. Born in 1965, he read History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University. His book Potemkin: Catherine the Greats Imperial Partner was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper and Marsh Biography Prizes in Britain. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar was awarded the History Book of the Year Prize at the 2004 British Book Awards and is being published in over twenty languages. Author of two novels and presenter of television documentaries, he is married with two children and lives in London.

ALSO BY SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE

Potemkin: Catherine the Greats Imperial Partner

To
Lily Bathsheba

Illustrations

19291934

Stalin kisses his daughter Svetlana on holiday, early 1930s.1

Nadya holds Svetlana.1

Stalin and his driver in the front, with Nadya in the back of one of the Kremlin limousines.2

The Stalins on holiday on the Black Sea, with the plodding Molotov and his clever, passionate, Jewish wife, Polina.3

Stalin carries Svetlana in from the garden at Zubalovo, their country house near Moscow.1

Stalin chats behind the scenes at a Party Congress in 1927 with allies Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Premier Alexei Rykov.2

At a Party Congress, Stalin holds court among his grandees.2

After her tragic death, Nadya lay in state.2

Nadyas funeral.2

Stalin leaving the Kremlins Great Palace with two of his closest allies: Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Mikhail Papa Kalinin.4

Lazar Kaganovich, Stalins deputy in the 1930s, leads an expedition into the Siberian countryside to search for grain hidden by peasants.2

The magnates were so close they were like a family: Uncle Abel Yenukidze with Voroshilov.2

Stalins holiday in 1933: Stalin and Voroshilov go camping; weeding at his Sochi dacha; setting off on a hunting expedition with Budyonny, Voroshilov and bodyguard; Lavrenti Beria offers to help weed the gardens; Stalin embarking on a fishing and shooting trip on the Black Sea, which was to end in a mysterious assassination attempt.2

Molotov, Premier during the 1930s, plays tennis with his family.2

Stalin ruled his empire informally: sitting out in the sun at the Sochi dacha.2

19341941

Sergei Kirov holidays with Stalin and Svetlana at Sochi.3

Stalin with Svetlana.3

Andrei Zhdanov joins the family, probably at the Coldstream dacha. 3

The Court of the Red Tsar in the mid-1930s.2

Stalins women.2

Stalin with his grandees and their wives in the former imperial box at the Bolshoi.2

Stalin (with Beria and Lakoba) visits his ailing mother, Keke, shortly before her death.3

Beria hosts Voroshilov and Mikoyan in Tiflis for the Rustaveli Festival at the height of the Terror, 1937.2

Yagoda, Kalinin, Stalin, Molotov and Beria.2

Marshal Semyon Budyonny poses with Kaganovich and Stalin, among swooning women.2

Beria and Yezhovthe two most depraved monsters of Stalins court. 2

Yezhov and his wife Yevgenia entertain their powerful friend, Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Yezhov would soon help Stalin harass Sergo to his death.2

Stalin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan and Voroshilov pose with Sergo Ordzhonikidzes body.2

Yezhov and his friend Nikita Khrushchev accompany Molotov, Kaganovich, Stalin, Mikoyan and Kalinin.2

Stalin takes tea with the novelist Gorky.2

Poskrebyshev with Bronislava, the pretty, glamorous and well-educated doctor, with whom he fell in love, and her sister.5

Alexander Poskrebyshev, Stalins chef de cabinet for most of his reign. 5

General Nikolai Vlasik with Stalins doomed son Yakov, just before the war.3

Svetlana in her early teens, sporting her Young Pioneers Uniform. 1

194 11945

Stalin runs the war, assisted by his magnates and generals.6

In 1945, Stalin with Zhukov, Voroshilov and Bulganin.4