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  • Stalin, Vol. 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 by Stephen Kotkin
  • Hiroaki Kuromiya
Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, Vol. 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928. New York: Penguin Press, 2014. xiii + 949 pp. $40.00.

This massive volume surveys the trajectory of the life of the Soviet dictator Iosif Stalin in more detail than most existing biographies. The first of three projected volumes, Paradoxes of Power covers the period up to 1928, when Stalin embarked on the forced [End Page 245] collectivization of agriculture. The volume is more than a mere biography. Kotkin seeks to place Stalin in a global (or at least Eurasian) geopolitical context and tells “the story of Russia’s power in the world and Stalin’s power in Russia, recast as the Soviet Union” (p. xi). The book is more a “marriage of biography and history” (p. xi) than a traditional biography. The result is immensely impressive if exhausting.

Stalin emerges in the book as a singularly important historical figure who defined much of the history of the world in the twentieth century. Kotkin summarizes the Soviet dictator as a leader “who stands out in his uncanny fusion of zealous Marxist convictions and great-power sensibilities, of sociopathic tendencies and exceptional diligence and resolve” (p. xi). The most significant contribution of this first volume is Kotkin’s analysis of how Stalin became a dictator with “great-power sensibilities.” The book traces Stalin’s ideological breakthrough to 1924-1925, when, in the wake of the death of his mentor, Vladimir Lenin, he began to formulate the concept of “Socialism in One Country,” which Kotkin characterizes as a “Marxist approach to geopolitics” (p. 532). Stalin’s ideological breakthrough linked revolution to war (and not just to class), depicting “conflicts and wars between our enemies” (p. 558) as a catalyst for revolution. Of course, this may not have been a breakthrough, insofar as Lenin had advocated the same much earlier. Yet Kotkin carefully traces the evolution of Stalin’s thinking within a geopolitical context vastly different from the one that faced Lenin. The book places Stalin in a position similar to that occupied by his Tsarist Russian predecessors, particularly Petr Stolypin, who led Russia under Tsar Nicholas II after the 1905 revolution. Kotkin’s portrayal of Stalin is thus essentially as a Marxist who became—or made himself into—a Russian (recast as Soviet) statesman.

Kotkin does not say so, but his position comes close to that taken by another biographer of Stalin, Robert C. Tucker, who described Stalin’s postrevolutionary ideology as “neo-Tsarist Marxism.” As Kotkin reminds us, Stalin always criticized dogmatic Marxism and insisted on “creative Marxism” (p. 205). Was Stalin’s breakthrough really a breakthrough, or did it have roots in Stalin’s experience of war? Unfortunately, Kotkin, like his predecessors, has been unable to find much information on Stalin’s contemporary thoughts about the Russo-Japanese War and World War I: Stalin “published absolutely nothing of consequence during the greatest conflict of world history, a war that roiled the international socialist movement” (p. 153). However, Kotkin details Stalin’s experience of the civil war, which clearly had far-reaching effects on his thinking.

Like Tucker, Kotkin emphasizes the singular importance of Stalin as an individual. Without Stalin, the Soviet Union would have been utterly different. No other person would have done what Stalin did, particularly the brutal and headlong campaign for the wholesale collectivization of agriculture. Stalin proved far superior as a politician than his chief rival, Leon Trotsky: “Stalin’s core beliefs, Stalin’s abilities and resolve were an order of magnitude greater” (p. 738). Like Tucker, Kotkin believes that if Stalin had died, everything would have been different. Kotkin thus harshly criticizes E. H. Carr, who is “[u]tterly, eternally wrong” in claiming that more than “almost any other great man in history, … Stalin illustrates the thesis that the circumstances [End Page 246] make the man, not the man the circumstances” (p. 739). Kotkin may be right but may be wrong too. He acknowledges that history is full of surprises. Stalin’s rise to power itself was a surprise to many of his contemporaries, even though, as Kotkin and others have shown...

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