View source for Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928

{{Short description|2014 biography of Joseph Stalin by Stephen Kotkin}}
{{use American English|date=October 2020}}
{{use mdy dates|date=October 2020}}
{{Infobox book
| name = Stalin: Paradoxes of Power
| image = Book Cover for Stalin Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928.jpeg
| image_size =
| alt = Book Cover for Stalin: Paradoes of Power
| caption = First edition book cover
| author = [[Stephen Kotkin]]
| country = United States
| language = English
| subject = [[Joseph Stalin]], [[Russian Revolution]], [[History of the Russian Revolution]], [[History of the Soviet Union]], [[Stalinism]].
| published = 2014
| publisher= [[Penguin Random House]] (print and digital), Recorded Books (audiobook)
| media_type = Print, digital, audiobook
| pages = 976
| followed_by       = [[Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941]]
| website = [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/299269/stalin-by-stephen-kotkin/ Penguin Random House]
| genre          = [[History]], [[biography]]
}}
'''''Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928''''' is the first volume in the three-volume biography of [[Joseph Stalin]] by American historian and Princeton Professor of History [[Stephen Kotkin]]. It was originally published in November 2014 by [[Penguin Random House]] and as an audiobook in December 2014 by Recorded Books.{{efn|Book was reprinted as a paperback by Penguin in October 2015 ({{ISBN|978-0143127864}}).}}<ref name="guardian" /> The second volume, ''[[Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941]]'', was published in 2017 by Penguin Random House.
== Synopsis ==
[[File:Joseph Stalin 1911 mug shot.jpg|right|thumb|Police mugshots of Stalin, c. 1911]]
[[File:Stalin 1917-1.1.jpg|right|thumb|Stalin 1917]]
[[File:Lenin and stalin crop.jpg|right|thumb|Lenin and Stalin]]
This first volume details Stalin's life from his birth through his rise to power within the [[Bolshevik]] party in 1928.
''Paradoxes of Power'' can be viewed as having two halves: the first half where the world Stalin developed in is explored, the state of Russian society, the [[Russo-Japanese war]], World War I, and other forces changing Russia. In this section, Stalin as an individual plays only a minor role compared to the world around him. The second half of the book shifts to focus on the revolutionary movement, the revolution itself, and the development of Bolshevik power and Stalin's place in it. In this half Stalin emerges from the background and his role in the revolution and his rise to power with the paradoxes that accompanied it are the focus.
The book's appendix contains categorized bibliography.<ref name="sr">{{cite journal |doi=10.5612/slavicreview.74.3.604|title=Stalin. Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928. By Stephen Kotkin |year=2015|last1=Siegelbaum|first1=Lewis H.|journal=Slavic Review|volume=74|issue=3|pages=604–606|s2cid=164564763 }}</ref>
== Biography and history ==
The work is both a political biography recounting his life in the context of his involvement in Russian and later Soviet history, and to a lesser degree a personal biography, detailing Stalin's private life and connecting it to his public life as revolutionary, leader and dictator. ''[[The Independent]]'' writes in their review, Kotkin's biography "tends to history rather than biography"<ref name="independent">{{cite web |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/stalin-paradoxes-of-power-1878-1928-by-stephen-kotkin-book-review-how-did-his-youth-result-in-one-of-9875249.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220524/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/stalin-paradoxes-of-power-1878-1928-by-stephen-kotkin-book-review-how-did-his-youth-result-in-one-of-9875249.html |archive-date=May 24, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=Stalin: Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928 by Stephen Kotkin, Book Review: How did his youth result in one of history's greatest tragedies? |newspaper=The Independent |date=November 21, 2014 |author=Edward Wilson}}</ref> and Hiroaki Kuromiya writes, "the book is more a “marriage of biography and history".<ref name="jcws">{{cite journal |url=https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/595087 |title=Review of the book Stalin, Vol. 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, by Stephen Kotkin |author=Kuromiya, H. |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=245–247 |date=2015 |journal=[[Journal of Cold War Studies]]|doi=10.1162/JCWS_r_00576 |s2cid=57568906 }}</ref>
''Paradoxes of Power'' stands out as part biography and part history, and finds a unique place among the many biographies of Stalin. In a review of ''Paradoxes of Power'', ''[[The Guardian]]'' states "It feels not so much like a biography of the man as a biography of the world in his lifetime."<ref name="guardian">{{cite news |last=Bullough |first=Oliver |date=November 23, 2014 |title=Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 – the despot's early years |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/23/stalin-paradoxes-of-power-1878-1928-review--kotkin-despot-early-years |work=The Guardian |access-date=August 7, 2020 }}</ref> [[Ronald Grigor Suny]] writes that Kotkin "details better than any previous account the viciousness that brought down Stalin's opponents, one after the other, with these personal conflicts obscuring the original aims of the revolution."<ref name="guardian" /><ref name="wapo" /> Writing in the Historian, Martin H. Folly writes "His main concern is political rather than biographical, and from the start he looks to set Stalin in a broad context of the crisis of Russia from tsarism to provisional government to Lenin’s Soviet Union."<ref name="historian">{{cite journal |doi=10.1111/hisn.12396 |title=Stalin: Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928. By Stephen Kotkin |year=2016 |last1=Folly |first1=Martin H. |journal=The Historian |volume=78 |issue=4 |pages=813–815 |s2cid=152066357 }}</ref>
== The world in which Stalin developed ==
In the first part of the volume, Kotkin explores the world that Ioseb Jugashvili developed in and details how this world was the primary force that transformed him into the person of Joseph Stalin. The author takes time to detail the various circumstances in Russia that impacted Stalin's development, such as the impact of the 1905-06 revolution, the unfolding disaster Russia faced in World War I, and the poverty and hopelessness of the average Russian worker, soldier, and sailor.<ref name="guardian" /><ref name="atlantic">{{cite web |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/understanding-stalin/380786/ |title=Understanding Stalin |newspaper=The Atlantic |date=November 1, 2014  |author=Anne Applebaum |author-link=Anne Applebaum }}</ref> In the ''[[Slavic Review]]'', [[Lewis H. Siegelbaum]] comments, "Kotkin insists on presenting a panoply of structural forces and contingencies. Among the former is the Russian autocratic system and its fitful modernizations; the "European castle-in-the air project of socialism" and its bastardized Bolshevik version; global geopolitics; world war and the destruction of belligerent empires.".<ref name="sr" />
Writing about Kotkin's approach to writing his biography, [[Vladislav Zubok]] states, "The book deals with big concepts: Soviet Eurasia, revolution, mass politics, ideology, modernization, and geopolitics. Yet in the end, the biographer places an individual squarely in the centre of history. Dzhugashvili-Stalin himself is the key answer to ‘paradoxes of power’. While structural causes and challenges explain much of Russian history, only individual decisions and contingencies determined the course of events."<ref name="cwh">{{cite journal |doi=10.1080/14682745.2016.1153851|title=Stalin, Vol. I: Paradoxes of power, 1878–1928|year=2016|last1=Zubok|first1=Vladislav|journal=Cold War History|volume=16|issue=2|pages=231–233|s2cid=156644120}}</ref>
Many commentators have noted that the person of Stalin is present only as a supporting player in the first half of the book. Stalin's personal life, family, and education receive only the minimal attention needed to place him in the world Kotkin describes.<ref name="nyt">{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/books/stalin-paradoxes-of-power-by-stephen-kotkin.html |title='From Czarist Rubble, a Russian Autocrat Rises. Review of Stalin: Paradoxes of Power' by Stephen Kotkin |newspaper=The New York Times |date=January 8, 2015  |author=Serge Schmemann |author-link=Serge Schmemann }}</ref>
== Stalin and the world he helped shape ==
Transitioning into the second half of the work, which is more biographical, but still fundamentally more history than biography, Kotkin provides the reader with a view of how Stalin both worked within and transformed the [[Bolshevik]] party after the [[October Revolution]] and mastered the regime’s  ever evolving power structures.<ref name="guardian" /><ref name="ahr">{{cite journal |last1=Brandenberger |first1=David |date=2016 |title=Book Review: Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 |url=https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/121/1/333/2582302?redirectedFrom=fulltext |journal=The American Historical Review |volume=121 |issue=1 |pages=333–334 |doi=10.1093/ahr/121.1.333}}</ref> In a major contrast with the first half of the book, Kotkin here shows how Stalin was not molded by the circumstances he found himself in, but rather molded those circumstances and shaped the events unfolding around him to facilitate his rise to power.<ref name="nytrob">{{cite magazine |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/cleverness-joseph-stalin/ |title=The Cleverness of Joseph Stalin |newspaper=NYT Review of Books |date=November 20, 2014 |author=Richard Pipes |author-link=Richard Pipes }}</ref><ref name="newyorker">{{cite web |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/how-stalin-became-stalinist |title=How Stalin Became Stalinist |newspaper=The New Yorker |date=October 20, 2017  |author=Keith Gessen }}</ref> He shows Stalin to be a true student of Lenin method of leadership: an uncompromising class warrior with a complete lack of willingness to compromise with resolute ideological conviction.<ref name="nyt" /><ref name="jcws" />
[[Hiroaki Kuromiya]] writes, "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."<ref name="jcws" /> In writing about how Stalin's development and the development of the early Soviet Union were inextricably linked, Gary Saul Morson writes, "How was all this carnage possible? How did a revolution made in the name of social justice, and supported by so many progressive spirits around the world, lead to such monstrous results? What made Stalin capable of such cruelty, and how did he manage to accumulate the power to practice it?"<ref name="tas">{{cite web |url=https://theamericanscholar.org/persecution-complex/ |title=The American Scholar: Persecution Complex |author=Gary Saul Morson |publisher=The American Scholar |date=December 10, 2014 |accessdate= August 22, 2020}}</ref><ref name="crb">{{cite journal |url=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/blood-soaked-monster/ |title=Blood-Soaked Monster - Stalin Vol. 1 by Stephen Kotkin |newspaper=Claremont Review of Books |date=2018 |volume=18 |issue=4 |author=Ian Ona Johnson}}</ref>
In contrast to most other biographies of Stalin, which portray Stalin in the early years of the revolution as a minor figure of little importance, Kotkin details how Stalin in these years was an ambitious organizer, intriguer and political infighter, and this experience ultimately prepared him to win the Bolshevik power struggle after Lenin's death. Noted scholar of Soviet history Ronald Grigor Suny states, "Reversing Trotsky’s famous conclusion that 'Stalin did not create the apparatus. The apparatus created him,' Kotkin shows convincingly that 'Stalin created the apparatus, and it was a colossal feat.' His “power flowed from attention to detail but also to people{{mdash}} and not just any people, but often to the new people." Later, Suny states "The Stalin that Kotkin presents was a strategic thinker, both realistic to the point of cynicism and ideological to a fault", highlighting one more of the many paradoxes of power Kotkin explores.<ref name="wapo">{{cite web |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-stalin-volume-1-paradoxes-of-power-1878-1928-by-stephen-kotkin/2014/12/19/2039c70a-577e-11e4-b812-38518ae74c67_story.html |title=Book review: 'Stalin: Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928,' by Stephen Kotkin |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=December 19, 2014  |author=[[Ronald Grigor Suny]]}}</ref>
Hiroaki Kuromiya in his review in the ''[[Journal of Cold War Studies]]'' that, "this is an enormously rich book that, if read carefully, will greatly benefit anyone interested in Russia and the Soviet Union."<ref name="jcws" />
== Theme ==
The central theme of the first volume of Kotkin's biography is Stalin as an individual of paradoxes and how those paradoxes affected his rise to power. David Brandenberger writes, "According to Kotkin, Stalin was the paradoxical embodiment of the Bolshevik Revolution: an upstart driven by a fusion of Leninist vanguardism, political realism, and bureaucratic savvy. Kotkin’s Stalin was supremely capable, while at the same time firmly rooted in the Bolshevik ideological experience, a depiction that avoids the mistake made by many of the general secretary’s would-be biographers who portray him as standing somehow outside of his historical place and time."<ref name="ahr" />
== Criticism ==
In his review, Ronald Grigor Suny writes about some of the more frequent criticisms of Kotkin's biography. Among his conclusions about Kotkin's biography are "he fails at times to link Lenin's and Stalin's emotional makeups and intellectual passions to the choices they made in the swirl of great historical forces. [...] He deprives the reader of insight into how Stalin's early experience as a writer and an outlaw influenced his later life." Regarding Stalin's role as a [[Marxist]] and [[communist]] thinker and ideologue, he states, "the debates within the party are reduced to personality disputes, and the author treats Stalin's philosophical universe with hostile condescension." He critiques Kotkin's analysis of the controversy surrounding Lenin's testament, he states, "Kotkin's interpretation, fascinating as it is, relies on conjecture rather than evidence." Finally Suny states, "Kotkin radically simplifies 'socialism' to mean anti-capitalism as practiced in Stalin's Soviet Union. In Kotkin's view, Marxist–Leninist ideology was the straitjacket chosen by the communists to destroy a society and build a new order."<ref name="wapo" />
In his review in ''The Independent'', Edward Wilson offers this final assessment, "This otherwise excellent book is marred by its conclusion. In a final coda, 'If Stalin had died', Kotkin plays 'what-if-history' – a dangerous game for any historian. He suggests that the horrors of Stalin's forced collectivisation of agriculture could have been alleviated by 'market systems' which are 'fully compatible with fast-paced industrialisation.'"<ref name="independent" />
A controversial element of his work has been the assertion that [[Lenin's Testament]] was a forgery and written by his wife, Krupskaya. This has attracted criticism from several, prominent historians. Suny wrote that Kotkin's hypothesis lacked mainstream support in a review: <blockquote>"Few other scholars doubt the authorship of the document, which accurately reflected Lenin’s views, nor was it questioned at the time it was written and debated in high party circles. Kotkin’s interpretation, fascinating as it is, relies on conjecture rather than evidence".<ref name="Red Flag Wounded">{{cite book |last1=Suny |first1=Ronald |title=Red Flag Wounded |date=25 August 2020 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78873-074-7 |page=59 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I4XzDwAAQBAJ&dq=Few+other+scholars+doubt+the+authorship+of+the+document,+which+accurately+reflected+Lenin%E2%80%99s+views,+nor+was+it+questioned+at+the+time+it+was+written+and+debated+in+high+party+circles.+Kotkin%E2%80%99s+interpretation,+fascinating+as+it+is,+relies+on+conjecture+rather+than+evidence&pg=PA59 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote> Historian [[Mark Edele]] was critical of this hypothesis and argued that Kotkin "went as far as embracing the empirically shaky thesis that Lenin’s 'Testament' was a forgery. As one of his critics pointed out, this discredited position is otherwise embraced only by Russian [[neo-Stalinism|neo-Stalinists]]".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Edele |first1=Mark |title=Debates on Stalinism |date=11 June 2020 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-1-5261-4895-7 |pages=137–239 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1-rqDwAAQBAJ&dq=lenin+testament+forgery&pg=PT126 |language=en}}</ref>
==Reception==
===Journal reviews===
''Paradoxes of Power'' was widely reviewed in notable academic journals. Some of the journals reviews of the book were:
* Andreyev, C. (2016). [https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cew127 Stalin. Vol. 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928, by Stephen Kotkin].''The English Historical Review'', ''131''(551), pp.&nbsp;949–951.
* Brandenberger, D. (2016). [https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/121.1.333 Book Review: Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 Stephen Kotkin]. ''The American Historical Review'', ''121''(1), pp.&nbsp;333–334.
* Folly, M. H. (2016) [http://doi.org/10.1111/hisn.12396 Stalin: Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928. By Stephen Kotkin]. ''The Historian'', ''78'':4, pp.&nbsp;813–815
* Kuromiya, H. (2015). [https://doi.org/10.1162/JCWS_r_00576 Book Review: Stalin, Vol. 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 by Stephen Kotkin]. ''Journal of Cold War Studies'', ''17''(3), pp.&nbsp;245–247.
* Siegelbaum, L. (2015). [http://doi.org/10.5612/slavicreview.74.3.604 Review: Stalin. Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 by Stephen Kotkin]. ''Slavic Review'', ''74''(3), pp.&nbsp;604–606.
* Thatcher, I. D. (2016). [https://doi.org/10.1177/0265691415622934p Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Vol. 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928]. ''European History Quarterly'', ''46''(1), pp.&nbsp;151–154.
* [[Vladislav Zubok|Zubok, V]]. (2016). [http://doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2016.1153851 Book Review: Stalin, Vol. I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928]. ''Cold War History'', ''16''(2), pp.&nbsp;231–233.
===Popular media===
''Paradoxes of Power'' received reviews in the mainstream media, including many reviews by notable scholars in Soviet history and Stalinism. Some of these reviews include:
* {{cite web |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-stalin-volume-1-paradoxes-of-power-1878-1928-by-stephen-kotkin/2014/12/19/2039c70a-577e-11e4-b812-38518ae74c67_story.html |title=Book review: 'Stalin: Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928,' by Stephen Kotkin |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=December 19, 2014 |author=Ronald Grigor Suny |author-link=Ronald Grigor Suny }}
* {{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/books/stalin-paradoxes-of-power-by-stephen-kotkin.html |title='Stalin: Paradoxes of Power' by Stephen Kotkin |newspaper=The New York Times |date=January 9, 2015  |author=Serge Schmemann |author-link=Serge Schmemann}}
* {{cite web |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-stalin-by-stephen-kotkin-1416592803 |title=Book Review: 'Stalin' by Stephen Kotkin |newspaper=The Wall Street Journal |date=November 21, 2014 |author=[[Joshua Rubenstein]]}}
* {{cite journal |url=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/blood-soaked-monster/ |title=Blood-Soaked Monster - Stalin Vol. 1 by Stephen Kotkin |newspaper=Claremont Review of Books |date=2018 |volume=18 |issue=4 |author=Ian Ona Johnson}}
* {{cite magazine |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/cleverness-joseph-stalin/ |title=The Cleverness of Joseph Stalin |newspaper=NYT Review of Books |date=November 20, 2014 |author=Richard Pipes |author-link=Richard Pipes }}
* {{cite web |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/understanding-stalin/380786/ |title=Understanding Stalin |newspaper=The Atlantic |date=November 1, 2014  |author=Anne Applebaum |author-link=Anne Applebaum }}
* {{cite web |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/how-stalin-became-stalinist |title=How Stalin Became Stalinist |newspaper=The New Yorker |date=October 20, 2017  |author=Keith Gessen }}
* {{cite web |url=https://theamericanscholar.org/persecution-complex/ |title=Book Review: Persecution Complex, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power |author=Gary Saul Morson |date=December 10, 2014 |newspaper=The American Scholar }}
* {{cite web |url=https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-georgian-caliban |title=Review: A Georgian Caliban. Stalin, Vol 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928; By Stephen Kotkin |author=Donald Rayfield |publisher=Literary Review |date=November 1, 2014 }}
* {{cite web |url=https://reason.com/2015/01/17/norman-naimark-reviews-stalin-paradoxes/ |title=Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, by Stephen Kotkin |author=Norman Naimark |date=January 17, 2015 |publisher=Reason }}
* {{cite web |url=https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/12/learning-from-kotkins-stalin |title=Learning From Kotkin's Stalin |publisher=First Things |date=December 1, 2014 |author=Carl R. Trueman }}
===Awards and recognition===
*''Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928'' was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Biography.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/stephen-kotkin |title=Finalist: Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, by Stephen Kotkin (Penguin Press) |last= |first= |date=2015 |website=Official Website: The Pulitzer Prizes |publisher= |access-date=August 7, 2020}}</ref>
==See also==
* [[Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union]]
* [[Early life of Joseph Stalin]]
* [[Joseph Stalin in Revolutionary Russia]]
* [[Russian Civil War]]
* [[Polish–Soviet War]]
* [[Rise of Joseph Stalin]]
* [[Stalin: Breaker of Nations]]
* [[Stalinism]]
* [[History of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (1917–1927)]]
==Notes==
{{notelist}}
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
* [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/299269/stalin-by-stephen-kotkin/ Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928]; Penguin Random House.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SLUK1hjnBs Author Interview: Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 with Stephen Kotkin and Slavoj Žižek]; New York Public Library.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=359D046sy6g Author Lecture on ''Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878 – 1928'']; The Ellison Center.
* [https://www.c-span.org/video/?322744-1/book-discussion-stalin Author Lecture on ''Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878 – 1928'']; C-SPAN.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz1ROc0pTU4 Author Interview: Stalin's World: Stephen Kotkin in Conversation with David Remnick]; The Harriman Institute at Columbia University.
{{Joseph Stalin|state=collapsed}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:Books about Joseph Stalin]]
[[Category:Stalinism]]
[[Category:Stalinism-era scholars and writers]]
[[Category:Writers about the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:2014 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Biographies of Joseph Stalin]]
[[Category:Penguin Books books]]
[[Category:History books about the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:History books about the Russian Revolution]]
[[Category:Russian biographies]]
[[Category:Georgian biographies]]
[[Category:Books about Stalinism]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928}}