Product Description

A professor of politics emeritus at Princeton University explains at last in authoritative detail the motivations, personality, and actions of the brutal ruler whose years in power still cast a dark shadow on the world stage. A dramatic narrative interweaving newly documented information, political analysis, and psychological insight. Photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #801752 in Books
• Published on: 1992-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 752 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Many Western historians portray Stalin as a pragmatic, if disastrously blundering revolutionary who had no overarching vision of where Russia was heading under his leadership. Not so, argues Tucker in this massive, provocative history; Stalin acted with forethought. Driven by a need to prove himself "a second and greater Lenin," he boldly and confidently implemented his collectivist schemes, backed by a policy of terror and accomplished through the seizure of peasant lands and households, mass murder, forced resettlement and prison camps. His state-directed, state-enforced "revolution from above," in Tucker's ( Stalin as Revolutionary ) view, was a throwback to the state-building of the earliest Muscovite grand princes. The author illumines the "Stalinist culture" the dictator promoted in everything from movies to "folk" songs, with its master themes of heroism and communal uplift. This gripping history is crucial reading for anyone seeking to understand Stalin or contemporary Soviet affairs. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This remarkable sequel to Stalin As Revolutionary, 1879-1929 ( LJ 9/1/73) is at once the best of Tucker's many books and arguably the finest work in the burgeoning field of Stalin studies. The author's achievement synthesizes recent Soviet revelations, better-known sources on Stalin, and personal interviews into a major work of biography. Tucker's Stalin is neither simply mad nor opportunistic, but the methodical "Iosif Grozny," an idealized Ivan the Terrible, and, tragically for millions, one whose terror far surpassed that of any czar. Tucker's depiction of Stalin and the terror machine is persuasive; but more controversial is the assertion that the purges served a "cathartic function" of exculpating Stalin for his own conspiracy against the revolution. The psychological dimension coexists with the political. Thus, Stalin's decimation of foreign Communists is both an expression of xenophobia and preparation for the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact. Whatever one's judgment of author or subject, this book can be safely recommended for all academic and public libraries.
- Zachary T. Irwin, Penn State - Behrend Coll. , Erie
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
.Mr. Tucker's portrait is persuasive, not least because it offers a psychological explanation for Stalin's relentless persecution of his Bolshevik comrades as well as for the bizarre rituals of the Moscow show trials, in which he forced the revolution's leaders to confess to absurd crimes. (The Economist )

Anyone who does not read Stalin in Power from cover to cover will miss the opportunity of gaining real insight into the forces that shaped the Soviet Union. This is the best book about Stalin that has ever been written and one that is not likely to be superseded in the foreseeable future. (W. Bruce Lincoln - Chicago Tribune )

Mr. Tucker has hunted out the sources, and he has discovered and developed a great deal more than has been generally known. . . . An extremely valuable contribution to our knowledge. (Robert Conquest - Wall Street Journal )

Tucker writes psychobiography with tact and common sense, never letting Freud get out of hand, while his narrative holds the reader in grim fascination. (Jane A. Taubman - Los Angeles Times )

Tucker's contribution is to document how Stalin became a 'revolutionary of the radical right' by consciously turning to history, not to Communist ideology, for his model of the state as the agent of change. . . . This is history as it should be written: compelling narrative, intriguing detail, bold thesis. (Jane E. Good - Washington Post )

Customer Reviews

The finest treatment of its subject
Neither Stalin, the collectivization crisis, nor the terror suffer from a dearth of good and serious studies. Yet despite the crowded field, Tucker's "Stalin in Power" is by far the best treatment of all three complex events. No other book sets out as credible, well-researched and well considered a theory of the workings of Stalin's mind. The great challenge presented by the Soviet thirties is the comprehension of the real logic behind what appears from the outside as mass irrationality. Most writers' personal models of depth and social psychology are inadequate to the task. Tucker succeeds, by a significant margin.

A great book on a bad man
Over the years, I have read a number of books on Stalin, some good and some awful and I am convinced that this book, along with Professor Tucker's other work, "Stalin as a Revolutionary" is the best work on this subject (Adam Ulam's work would be the best one volume study of Stalin).

What sets this book apart from the others is Tucker's first rate understanding of Stalin and the world in which he operated. Only someone as stubborn as Stalin could have imagined he was creating paradise on earth while at the same establishing one of the most hellish regime's in world history and Tucker captures him in all of his evil. Even though he is a widely respected actademic, Tucker writes in such a way as to make this 20th century monster understandable to expert and beginner alike.

The only complaint that I have is that Tucker has yet to follow through with the next part of Stalin's career. It seems to be truism of late that no one can complete a multi-volume work on one of the leaders of World War II. Kenneth Davis was unsuccessful in his magnificent FDR biography as was William Manchester in his attempt to capture Churchill in his series of books on the great prime minister. I am only hoping that wealth of material that has become available with the fall of communism and the Soviet Union does not hamper Professor Tucker's efforts.

Comprehensive, accessible, and supremely coherent
Tucker's careful storytelling hews to historical facts and grippingly narrates Stalin's creeping domination of the Soviet idea. This book is complete. A must read for all interested in recent Russian history.