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Young Stalin

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About this listen

 Winner of the Costa Biography Award, 2007.

Young Stalin is a remarkable adventure story about an exceptional, turbulent young man, born in exoticism, raised in the church, fancying himself a poet, then embracing revolutionary idealism and thereby finding his romantic, Messianic mission in life.

All the roots of Stalin the Great Dictator can be traced to his youth - not merely his psychology, but his hatreds, his loves, his intellectual interests, his gangsterish murderousness, his friendships, his knowledge of the world. Above all, in the underground Bolshevik life are the seeds that grew into the paranoia and Terror of the Soviet imperium. Young Stalin is the product of major new research.

This book is the prequel to the international best-selling biography Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar.

©2007 Simon Sebag Montefiore; (P)2006 Orion Publishing Group Ltd Historical Politicians Politics & Activism Politics & Government Presidents & Heads of State Russia Russian & Soviet World Stalin Soviet Union Imperialism
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Superb recent history of pre-revolution Stalin, from childhood up to October 1917. Based largely it seems on recently released archival material. Those Russkies kept records on everything and everyone. Stalin is revealed to be a far more interesting and human character from the cold fish terror of 'The Terror' and beyond. I had bought the second volume (The Court of the Red Tsar) first, thinking this is the Stalin I want to know about. Big Mistake which I realised about 10 minutes in. You need to know what comes before the 1930's purging Stalin, indeed what helps explain (as much as one can) the infectious paranoia of those times. The fascinating story of Stalin's early life may help.

The dialogue is fabulous, the narration is superb. Sean Barratt has one of the great documentary voices. Some knowledge of Russian history of this time might be useful, yet the brief sketches of Lenin , Trotsky and other major figures and events are probably enough. This is not a detailed history of Communism, more a tale of a model dictator and how he came to be. The scary thing is, at times you feel you could have liked him !

Good old Secret Police for keeping tabs !

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A tremendous insight and profile of the giant of Marxism that will inform the reader of the events that led through a twisted journey of Stalin’s rise, in put down able, switchgrass off the phone and get carried away to the rise of the revolution.Sean Bennet presents the narrative superbly.

Enthralling, put everything on hold and enjoy.

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Very clear and suitably sober narration. Effective abridgement. Enjoyed the story if not the man and his deeds.

Sturdy abridgement

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Loved this book, really engaging insight into a brutal but fascinating character. I will be getting the Red Tsar by the same author to find out what happens next. It is well read by the narrator.

Brilliant

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The book loses a star because it’s abridged which always makes me feel cheated. This is the story of Stalin’s life up to the October Revolution from the marriage of his putative father, Beso, a Georgian cobbler who descended into alcoholism, to his ambitious attractive mother, Keke. Choir boy, seminarian, bank robber, terrorist and revolutionary, ruthless and amoral, Stalin seemed an unlikely successor to the 300 year Romanov dynasty, especially as he wasn’t Russian (neither were they, in truth, as Tsar followed Tsar with increasingly Germanic heredity!)

From choir boy to apprentice tyrant.

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