Reddit mentions of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

The similarities only seem to outweigh the differences to a westerner who is not used to brutal forms of government. Stalin's USSR and Hitler's Germany were both ruled by despotic, totalitarian leaders, but that does not mean they were the same. Their methods of control were different, and those differences reflected the societies in which they ruled.

Stalin took control of a vast multiethnic empire mostly populated by uneducated peasants. His methods borrowed heavily from the the Tsarist government that he replaced. He created a personality cult that was a secular facsimile of the religious devotion that Tsars of centuries past had inspired. His totalitarian state and security apparatus pervaded into the daily lives of every citizen. Everyone was a potential traitor. And significantly, the danger was greater the more important you were. Communist party and military officials were at greater risk of being purged than the average peasant, because competent people represented a threat. The communist revolution was all about overthrowing the old power structure. Anyone who held any power before the revolution, any factory owner, military leader, etc was highly suspect and could be be killed or sent to the gulag on the slightest suspicion. In short, Stalin sought to overthrow and replace the existing power structure, and anyone who was part of the old guard was not safe.

In contrast, Hitler's Germany was a fundamentally conservative revolution that preserved old power structures. Germany was highly educated and industrialized before the Nazis came to power, and Hitler intended to use this to his advantage. He worked to court industrialists and military leaders rather than overthrow them, except when he couldn't avoid doing so. When the war went south, so did his relationship with the generals, but they were merely fired rather than shot. He ruled primarily by love rather than fear, promising the average German economic advancement as long as they supported him. So long as he was a good little citizen who didn't publicly dissent, the average German did not fear the Nazis in the same way that the average Russian feared Stalin. In short, Hitler was a pretty good leader as long as you were a German Aryan who held the right political persuasions. Towards the end of the war the power relationship between the Nazis and the average German devolved into a more fear based system as the old incentives broke down.

So where are they similar? Both Hitler and Stalin were brutal leaders, who had no respect for liberal traditions or the rule of law, and who wanted to empower their nations by any means necessary. The difference is that they ruled very different countries with different cultures and histories, and their tactics were therefore very different.

Sources:

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

The third Reich at war

Speaking of Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale is also really good.

On a totally different subject, Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote a two-volume biography of Joseph Stalin (Young Stalin, which follows him through the end of the 1918 revolution, and Joseph Stalin: The Court of the Red Tzar, which goes from 1918 to death and legacy). Ian Kershaw's magisterial biography of Adolph Hitler is also excellent. I recommend the abridged version, which is "only" 900 pages long (the unabridged version is closer to 1500 pages, IIRC).

Also, anything by Brian Greene. Theoretical physics for the lay-person.

Lazar Kaganovich was directly under Stalin, and he oversaw the murder of 14.5 million (that is a conservative estimate) Christians. He is the greatest mass murderer in history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazar_Kaganovich

The farmers of the Ukraine and Russia were ordered by Stalin to turn over ALL their grain and food. The Soviet government promised the farmers that they would be provided with enough food to get them through the winter. They were lied to and many farmers and their families starved to death. The next year, the farmers hid some of their grain and food to keep from starving to death. Stalin had ordered that any farmer caught hiding grain or food would be put to death; not only his family, but the farmer's entire village. The end result was millions upon millions of innocent victims, including women and children, slaughtered. The tribe would strip these people down in the dead of winter, and while they were alive, the murderers would slice open their bellies and then wrap their intestines around fence posts and other poles.

The reason that the Nazis are "worse" is because that is what has been spoon-fed to all of us. We have been brainwashed. I'm not saying the Nazis weren't evil, but if you do some research, you will see that Stalin and his henchmen were by far the most evil men that ever lived.

A good read is: "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Sebag Montefiore

http://www.amazon.com/Stalin-The-Court-Red-Tsar/dp/1400076781

I highly recommend anyone to read The Court of the Red Czar for the full banal horror of the Great Purges. Stalin honour roll with his closest friends & family

• His best friend (Sergei Kirov) was murdered. Not really known who ordered the killing but it all the signs point to Stalin.
  
  
• Beria personally poisoned a rival and minister of Stalin called Nestor Lakoba, he later personally beat his son to death and drove Lakobas wife mad by putting a snake in her cell.
  
  
• Shot three of his brother in laws (Stanislav Redens ,Pavel Alliluyeva, Alexander Svanidze plus his wife Maria)
  
  
• Had his father in law shot.
  
  
• Wife killed herself (Nadezhda Alliluyeva)
  
  
• Son tried to kill himself, Stalin mocked him for missing target
  
  
• Exiled his mistress to a work camp
  
  
• His sons wife was put into a camp (Julia Meltzer).
  
  
• shot his barber + body guard (Karl Pauker)
  
  
• Several geniuses in their fields (Tukhachevsky, Kamenev, Isaac Babel, Nikolai Bukharin)
  
  
• The great writer Gorky was suspected of being poisoned by Yagoda on Stalins orders.
  
  
• Trotsky assassinated with an ice pick.
  
  
• Two of his secret policemen shot (Yagoda+ Yezhov)
  
  He pinned the purge on the excesses of Yezhov. The Purge is known as the yezhovshchina in Russian. The Russian people believed it because what kind of psycho would murder half his family? They assumed the NKVD had him under their thumb.The truth was very different.
  
  
• Harassed several friends and associates into suicide
  (Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and the brother of Anastas Mikoyan killed himself)
  He ordered the death the wife one of his aide-de-camps the love of his life( Bronka Poskrebysheva). He was a loyal servant to Stalin for years afterwards and regularly held meetings with Beria, the man who personally killed her. Its kinda unimaginable today.
  
  He had the wife of a minister by Beria abducted straight up murdered. When he inquired after his wife's whereabouts he told him to remarry.
  
  Rokossovsky one of the greatest generals of WWII had all his teeth knocked out and finger nails pulled. A Polish man of incredible bravery. He was brought out for mock executions 2 times and they tried to coerce him into ratting out his friends refused on ever count. Refused and worked with his torturers to save the country from German invasion.
  
  These are just people in Stalins inner circle. You can imagine what normal people endured. Stalin was depraved but he was udoubtedly a great man like Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan or Napoleon.
  One Russian general was beaten so badly the his eye ball popped out of his head and he died under torture. The NKVD published it as a "heart attack" Vasily Blyukher was his name. Tukhachesky was beaten so badly there was blood spray on his confession documents.
  He shot numerous people of great valour after WWII like the leaders in Leningrad Zhdanov or [Kuznetsov] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Kuznetsov) who was known for his great decency and kidness, and was pipped as a future leader. Khrushchev only survived because of his smallness and the favour of Stalins wife Nadya (who killed herself). Khrushchev called her his lotto ticket. Stalin also liked him because he was a rustic proletarian. Khrushchev hid his great intelligence and political guile by appearing to be a boorish peasant and getting drunk. He also survived by denouncing enemies during the Purge.
  
  Stalin did much to save Russia and industrialize it but he killed a lot of people of great talent and initiative. USSR would probably be around today if he hadn't put a Stalinist kosh on initiative and drive. Through its history their was a mindless appeal to bureaucracy that left it less able to compete with capitalist societies.

I link to wikipedia because it's on the web and thus easily available. There are hundreds of books documenting the atrocities committed by communists. I would suggest you read some of them, as I have.

If you read Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore, he describes Stalin not expecting a German invasion of the Soviet Union at all. When his staff came to tell him the Nazis had broken the non-aggression pact he thought they were coming to arrest him. Nobody in Russia was spoiling for a war with the Germans. Had the Nazis not invaded Soviet territory, the Soviets would most likely have allowed France and Britain to fall. They were really forced into the alliance by necessity and self-preservation.

Ya prochel vot etu biografiu:

http://www.amazon.com/Stalin-The-Court-Red-Tsar/dp/1400076781

Yesche to shto mne raskazivali v sem'ye, razniye biograficheskiye fil'mi (Ruskiye i Amerikanskiye), Vikipedia...

I think I probably came to this a bit too late.

I'm currently reading several books; something I actually try to avoid but it just kinda happened this time.

The Court of the Red Czar by Simon Sebag Montefiore is an absolutely fascinating, gripping and wonderfully written history of Stalin, his family and his close associates. I very much like this book, even though it's quite a volume (~900 pages). Interesting things that have popped up so far is the effect Nadya's suicide had on Stalin, his intelligence, despite lacking much formal education, his down-right cold bloodedness (this wasn't really a surprise to be honest) and the inherent violence and nastiness in the Bolshevik system; I always assumed the Terror was born of Stalin's paranoia (it was), but it had its roots in Lenin's Dictatorship of the Proletariat, insofar as this desensitized the leadership to the suffering of the people. Fascinating stuff! Though probably not to everyone's taste. :)

Kraken by China Mieville. I'm only a few chapters into this and so far it is by far and away my least favourite of his books. I don't like the "chatty Londoner" dialogue (smacks of trying to sound too clever), the characters are all horrible and the syntax of the prose is very disjointed. I'll continue and see how it develops.

The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. I started this (vampire & zombie books are my guilty "mental popcorn" books) and meh... It's pretty lame. The clashing perspectives, the sudden change in voice (third person to first person with flashes of second person thrown in... I mean WTF? Did they not have an editor?) and the general cheesiness put me off. I will pick it up again and try to get past the second chapter.

Ragtime by E L Doctorow was a disappointment. I very much liked his The March, but this just didn't do it for me.

Good lord, man.

There are histories of Russia from 1890-1980 all over the place and they broadly agree.

I'd recommend A People's Tragedy for a well-told history with solid historical foundations. One with more heft is Pipes' The Russian Revolution. Also, Court of the Red Tsar is a must-read on Stalin.

They're certainly very telling, but I've also found that Young Stalin does a good job of showing how messed up his earlier life was. The Court of the Red Tsar by the same author goes into later life. Both great reads if you haven't gotten to them already.