An excellent account of Stalin's rise to power and some insight into him as a person. Not overly detailed nor sidetracked by too much detail on side shows. A fair case to be made for Stalin as sociopath - I don't know how one man can fool/dominate/dupe so many people, an entire nation basically. A study in the exercise of raw power and fear - come with me or die, agree with my absurdities or disappear.
Over the years Stalin seems to have been able to create a completely alternate reality, but one that only existed in his mind, in a universe of propaganda and by force, in other peoples' minds. Imagine the effect, and the aftereffect, of living for decades in a universe where the mental, social and public reality, and discourse, was completely at odds with your everyday experienced personal and social reality. A world where everyone lies, everyone pretends (nothing new - we all do this) but in the same lie, the same fantasy universe - that's what's weird. No wonder Russia is such a messed up place. I wonder if this is why Putin is so popular - he is working to restore a mythologically great Russia; after decades of the communist illusions of greatness, maybe they can only feel comfortable in a fantasy universe of communal greatness as an antidote to the tawdry daily personal reality of corruption and repression.
Some other interesting points:
"Hitler had also said that while Communists could easily be converted to Nazism, Social Democrats could not." A point Conquest takes up further in his book, "Reflections on a Ravaged Century".
The mystery of Communism's and Stalin's rise: "First of all, the peasants, still the majority, overwhelmingly loathed the system.[communism] The intelligentsia, or a large part of it, had little use for a regime which suppressed all but a particular orthodoxy of thought. The supposedly favoured 'workers' lived a miserable existence, mainly in hovels and huts around the new blast furnaces."
The first bureaucratic nightmare society of the 20th century. The domination of the many by the few through ideology, reason, and bureaucratic process.
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