Die Stalin-Biographie Isaac Deutschers zählt zu den bedeutendsten Werken über den Sowjetdiktator. Die englische Erstausgabe erschien bereits 1949 unter dem Titel "Stalin, a Political Biography". Das Buch wurde in zwölf Sprachen übersetzt, die deutsche Ausgabe "Stalin. Eine politische Biographie" kam 1962 auf den Markt, sie wurde in Neuauflagen immer wieder durchgesehen und ergänzt.

Deutscher, ein Trotzkist mit jüdisch-orthodoxen Wurzeln, wanderte 1939 von Polen nach England aus und begann dort als Journalist, die stalinistische Politik zu beobachten und anhand seiner eigenen sozialistischer Überzeugungen zu kritisieren. 1946, mit Beginn des Ost-West-Konflikts, beendete er seine Tätigkeit als Journalist und wandte sich größeren historischen Arbeiten zu. Nach der Stalin-Biographie widmete er sich einem ebenfalls biographisch angelegten Werk über Leo Trotzki.

Mr Deutscher makes it clear in his forward to this book that he is no acolyte of Stalin. He also promises not to make the work a destruction of all for which Stalin stood.

I think that he makes an excellent job of this. I have a far greater understanding of the man and the leader than I did before hand. Stalin was an administrator, not a political mentor. He clung to Lenin's works as his guiding star but, practicality meant that he veered further and further from Marxist-Leninist theory.

It is not just Stalin, Lenin before him, had been in favour of rule by the proletariat but, being unable to accept that anyone but himself knew what the people wanted. It is a strange irony that a revolution which was genuinely for the people, almost before its activation, began to pare the acceptable voices to whom it was willing to listen. It was Lenin that threw out the Social Democrats and the Mensheviks. Stalin continued to shave the unacceptable members until, there was only himself. In his final years, he purged and re-purged his leadership until no one was safe.

Deutscher could have made this a real hatchet job. He does not so do: he explains how this came about - if Stalin had not pushed the country to the brink of despair, he wouldn't have been able to grow its industrial base at such speed and it is likely that Hitler may have been successful in the Second World War. That Russia was cast aside by the West afterwards was cruel beyond measure. Stalin was left with little choice but to return to a series of punishing five year plans to rebuild the broken country. His distrust of the West, whilst understandable, lead to his putting military strength too far ahead of comfort for the people.

From being the hero of WW II, he rapidly degenerated to a sad, fearsome dictator. ( )

I was hoping to get more personal information about Stalin. Maybe I didn't realize the definition of political biography would necessarily leave out his personal life. But still a fascinating read of this giant of Soviet History. I'm glad I never lived in the country while he was leader. ( )

Overpraised in the reviews when it came out.

Good read. For someone that had no real knowledge of Stalin before reading the book I found this book to be very imformative. Having had the opportunity to visit Russia it is easy to see the lasting effects that Stalin has left with present-day Russia. Extremely polarizing figure. ( )