Ok so hate him or deplore him, it’s worth knowing how he came to be who he was, and how that personality put him in the chairmanship of the general secretariat of the CPSU.

Kotkin left no stone unturned and compiled a great narrative of Stalin’s formative years. Stalin himself isn’t center stage for a lot of time as the events of the 1917 revolution and civil war swirl around him, but he sure ends up in the center of centers in a personal dictatorship within the Bolshevik dictatorship. It’s an improbable journey.