Stalin
The Court of the Red Tsar
by Simon Sebag-Montefiore · first published 2003
83% recommend17% neutral
The fascination with evil; that is how I describe reading this book. Because the main character - Josyp Stalin - fascinated like a snake. His evil is unwavering; from the early 1920's until his death in 1953; Stalin plots, deceives, fools, liquidates, anyone he feels threatened by, or annoyed with; whether one person or millions of persons. This book reveals the personal Stalin - his private life, family life, likes and dislikes, paranoia, psychoticism, rage, and guilt - his private dinners while on vacation in the Crimea and Georgia; his conversations with the Politburo members who lived
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I can recommend (if that is the correct term) the book "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" for a chilling description of the leadership of the Soviet Union from the early 30s until Stalin's death: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stalin-The-Court-Red-Tsar/dp/0753817...
on “Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers” ↗http://www.amazon.com/Gulag-History-Anne-Applebaum/dp/140003... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stalin-Court-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisperers-Private-Life-Stalins-Russ...
on “Russia's Crime of the Century” ↗…Dickens The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/bd090cb4-bc9a-41cb-9833... Nonfiction - The House of Government by Yuri Slezkine (my luckiest find of the year) Stalin: The Court of The Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/13ebec0d-0859-4858-864a... Vienna by Richard Cockett - https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/c0e1d1fb-dea7-456b-a95e...…
on “Ask HN: What were the best books you read this year?” ↗It’s well worth reading the books on him by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin was incredibly well read, sleeping little and devouring books at the seminary where he studied, and he carried this on through this life. It’s chilling the way he behaved to relatives of those he killed.…
on “H. G. Wells' 1934 interview with Stalin (2014)” ↗The deep and continual paranoid suspicion of difference and of everything is well covered in a great book by Simon Sebag Montefiore called "Stalin: Court of the Red Czar". Actually, anything by Montefiore is great - His book on Jerusalem is particularly excellent.
on “A Soviet scientist created tame foxes” ↗"Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Sebag Montefiore. It's honestly hard to tell if the narratives outlined in the book are real; it reads like fiction or a novel. It's backed by a mountain of sources,…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗…worked. In hindsight I'm not sure it was the best way to do it. If you liked it tho, id suggest the two kravchenko books on the trials, Rudolph Hess book (very interesting), Simon Sebag Montefiore book on Stalin. I can provide many more about this kind of subject, I found that fascinating for a few months and did read a lot of books on it. Although I'd argue that the most fascinating is watching the usa, from…
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗Beria's daughter in law mused to Simon Sebag Montefiore, a recent Stalin biographer, in an interview that "Beria was the kind of man who, if he lived in the United States, might very well have become chairman of General Motors."
on “Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria” ↗