Modern Age - Summer 2016 - 135

REVIEWS

version of "class war gave the Terror the breadth and brutality
of an actual war." Khlevniuk rightly notes that "the Soviet dictator has earned the distinction of being the organizer and director of one of the most powerful and merciless terror machines
known to history." Yet it is important not to turn Stalin into a mere
caricature-a symbol of pure evil, even if he was an evildoer on a
massive scale. This excellent biography shows that he was a man
of some capacity who "deserved his standing and reputation as
a prominent Bolshevik." He had considerable writing and organizational abilities, as well as daring, decisiveness, and a singleminded devotion to Lenin (despite conflicts that would emerge
between the two men in the first years of Bolshevik rule). Half of
Stalin's life was lived in the years before the Soviet Revolution,
and twenty of those years were spent tirelessly promoting the
revolutionary cause. And while he was cruel and merciless, there
is no evidence to suggest he was mad in the clinical, as opposed
to moral, sense of the term.
One of the great merits of Khlevniuk's biography, rooted as it is
in minute attentiveness to archival sources, is that it demolishes
the argument of certain "revisionists" that Stalinist terror was an ad
hoc affair, decentralized and with many local initiatives. Khlevniuk
makes clear that the archives provide no support whatsoever for
"the idea of a 'weak dictator.' " All decisions of major consequence
were made by Stalin and Stalin alone. He never ceased to exercise
dictatorial control. He was the mastermind behind collectivization
and the massive dislocations and deaths that followed. The Terror
of 1937 and 1938 was conducted under his watchful eye. He had
"a firm grip on power and the implementation of key decisions."
Repression and purges kept the governmental and party apparat
"in a state of mobilized tension" and thus easy prey for Stalin's
moder nagejour nal .com

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Modern Age - Summer 2016

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Contents
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