Robert Conquest
Stalin

It's tough to read a biography about one of the worst inventions of the dis-human kind. And it's even more so if the presentation of information is rather pedestrian. That Iosif Vissarionovich Dzugashvili, known to his friends as Stalin, was a despicable being, unfortunately, we all know it by now, and very well. And that a reputable journalist, historian, writer, academic like Conquest has mapped out an uncertain and often "partisan" biography of him is even too much. Not that an objective biography could justify it, don't get me wrong. However, it's known that objectivity, in medio stat virtus, is always the best way.

This little book of about 350 pages, although it was written quite fluently, I must say, was thrown together, and it's the case to say it, in 1993, shortly after the end of the Soviet Union and the sudden opening of historical archives. Previously, in the '70s, Robertino Conquestino had written a major work on the terror generated by the Stalinist purges that enjoyed deserved success. Detailed, profound, in this case rightly partisan, also because the author works for the "National Review," the main press organ of the American right, and we know how the Americans were towards the communists, desecrators and hypocrites, in the sense that first they highlighted the worst sides, inciting hatred and repression, especially of the McCarthyist stamp (see from Charlie Chaplin to Angela Davis) to then plan the largest economic and political negotiations through Kissinger and Truman. How clever.

Apart from this point, this biography is absolutely devoid of any detail, citation, connection, reference, and rich in big doubts and/or subjective hypotheses. It starts with the part dedicated to the young Stalin, born in Gori, Georgia, from a very poor family, experiencing a rather difficult childhood due to sufferings brought by hunger, cold, and the systematic daily beatings suffered from his perpetually intoxicated father. Adolescence in a seminary, the approach to politics, the first subversive groups, various detentions, and the occupation of the first influential positions within the party generated by the Lenin and Trotsky revolution. This path, which should have traced an important line on his psychology, character, acquaintances, and contexts that would lead him to be one of the foulest beasts in history, is peppered with "it seems, apparently, it could be, it is said that, he would have said, according to reports..." I've counted dozens. Very strange if you think that well before him, Boris Souvarine, in the years of the "Great Purges," wrote a very detailed biography of Stalin, producing a pedestal of nearly 1,000 pages. Then there's that of Adam Ulam, which comes close to a porphyry block, also rich in details and citations. Recently, the good Simon Sebag Montefiore, sifting through the same archives visited by Conquest, wrote another pavement collar of almost 600 pages titled "The Young Stalin". 300 or 700 extra pages on the subject seem frankly too much to me. Strange that Conquest overlooked them.

Anyway, memory comes back to him, coincidentally, in the "Great Terror" chapter, where, besides describing the dictator's atrocities with more interest, he shamelessly invites to read, and therefore buy his volume on the subject. Here too, by reading other books, we find ourselves facing a great mystery related to the famine that Stalin generated in Ukraine in the early '30s. It talks about tens of millions of deaths that vary based on the sources. The problem is that whatever figure has been crunchedup, and it's the case to say it, clashes with the ever-increasing percentages related to Soviet demography of those years, including war casualties, deported and others that exceeded twenty million. I also want to hypothesize, and I'm not the only one, that the population data were falsified to contain the horrible, but hiding these millions of deaths is a feat that even the Nazis didn’t manage. No wonder it's still a subject of thorny discussions. I have to acknowledge that despite the partisanship, the author remains objective in an important case, not associating such atrocities with communism, but with Stalinism, that is, the badly seen and absolutely distorted and terrifying interpretation of what Stalin derived from the Marx and Engels' Manifesto.

During the Great Patriotic War, Conquest becomes a good anti-Soviet partisan, painting Hitler as a puppet in the hands of Stalin, in some cases almost pitying him, and reserving pages of massive doses of resentment for "Baffone" and company. Overlooking any shadow of objectivity and losing memory again, he forgets that we are talking about a war context but consigns to oblivion all the atrocities committed by the Nazis at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen during the invasion of the Soviet Union. The war’s victory, in fact, is due to the great Russian patriotism. The people were exhausted, torn apart by the effects of famine, and I cannot imagine a population that after having suffered such horror due to the madness of a single man, finds the pride to defend the motherland from the Nazi attack. Not surprisingly, Stalin himself admitted that the people had chosen to fight for Russia and not for the Party. As a token of gratitude, the Red Army's soldiers had to face the enemy under pitiful conditions, due to the incompetency and purges of competent Officers, and suffer severe losses for the absurd silence of the first week and the deportations to the gulags of those captured by the Germans, on charges of espionage and desertion. Crazy. Rightly, Conquest highlights the Katyn massacre, carried out by the NKVD and attributed for decades with the most naive of vainglories to the Germans. But this is another mystery.

Many historians say that if Stalin hadn't been surrounded by criminals, maybe he would have been a different man, or at least he wouldn’t have committed all that has been attributed to him. The good Montefiore wrote a very detailed and expensive book (29 euros! Montefiò, I love you but I'll wait for the pocket edition!), of almost 900 pages depicting "Stalin’s Men", and highlighting how the latter often didn’t know what his disgusting henchmen were capable of doing. Stalin was crazy, a lunatic, a rough and vulgar man, one who mocked and scorned even his most faithful men in public. To the head of the secret police, the terrible Lavrentiy Beria, during the tedious night dinners in case of possible conflicts, he reserved insults, slaps, and in some cases threw water on him. Such a person like Stalin even denied the existence of his son Yakov (!), among the prisoners of the Germans, and the latter, having no hope of any support, decided to "suicide" himself by getting machine-gunned in the back by a guard during a deliberately ostentatious escape attempt. Highly suspicious of anyone and anything, I wonder how he could do what is known without someone daring to eliminate him. Churchill, Roosevelt, De Gaulle, Truman, how could they support him, backing him, knowing full well the horrors he committed? Conquest, and he’s not the only one, even hypothesizes superhuman, hypnotic, absurd abilities. I wouldn’t be surprised if he possessed them. Thinking of Rasputin, some doubts arise. At Katyn, during peaceful processes and political negotiations with the ex-hated Poland, when asked about the missing officers, on more than one occasion he had to lie with shameful concealed lies or with trivial procrastinations. Anyone would have noticed. When the Germans discovered the graves, all evidence pointed to the Russians, and despite everything, including the Nuremberg trials, even the Khrushchevian de-Stalinization process, that tragic episode was shamelessly kept hidden until Gorbachev's rise. Why? How was it possible? Anyway, after reading it, one wonders what kind of biography was written.

This is an absolutely sparse presentation and there isn’t much else around even if definitely more in-depth. I encourage reading more but a strong gnawing remains.

But who was, really, Stalin?