Article: STALIN: A BiographyBOOKS / Nonfiction

by William Grimes
International Herald Tribune
04-15-2005
STALIN: A Biography By Robert Service. 715 pages. $29.95. Belknap/Harvard. Reviewed by by William Grimes * Pity the biographer who takes on Josef Stalin. The challenges lie somewhere between daunting and impossible. Stalin took great pains to cover up the facts of his childhood and youth. Aided by state hagiographers, he revised the events of his life multiple times, making it nearly impossible to determine what role he played in the crucial events of the October Revolution and civil war. Airbrushing by state hagiographers added extra layers of obfuscation. Inconvenient witnesses tended to disappear. Secretive, introverted, and ...

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