(If the author’s previous book, The Court of the Red Tsar, had a fault, it was a sporadic infective indulgence of the old tyrant, which no doubt stemmed from Sebag Montefiore’s interviews with the grandchildren of Stalin’s courtiers, whom he charmed into trusting him with their most intimate memories. I approached this book with a trepidation that was instantly dissipated by every fact and report that Simon Sebag Montefiore cites of Stalin the child, adolescent, or young man.
Anyone who writes the biography of the first half of a tyrant’s life risks humanising a monster: ‘Robert Mugabe/Fidel Castro/Leon Trotsky: the First Forty Years’ would make for a very misleading assessment.
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