top ten' families live? Exploring every aspect of this supreme politician, from his doomed marriage and mistresses, and his obsession with film, music and literature, to his identification with the Tsars, Simon Sebag Montefiore unveils a less enigmatic, more intimate Stalin, no less brutal but more human, and always astonishing.Stalin organised the deadly but informal game of power amongst his courtiers at dinners, dances, and singsongs at Black Sea villas and Kremlin apartments: a secret, but strangely cosy world with a dynamic, colourful cast of killers, fanatics, degenerates and adventurers. From the murderous bisexual dwarf Yezhov to the depraved but gifted Beria, each had their role; during the Second World War, Stalin played the statesman with Churchill and Roosevelt, aided by Molotov while, with Marshal Zhukov, he became the triumphant warlord. They lived on ice, killing others to stay alive, sleeping with pistols under their pillows: their wives murdered on Stalin's whim, their children living by a code of lies. Yet they kept their quasi-religious faith in the Bolshevism that justified so much death.Based on a wealth of new materials from Stalin's archives, just recently, opened, interviews with witnesses and massive research from Moscow to the Black Sea, this is a sensitive but damning portrait of the Genghis Khan of our epoch.
【作者简介】
Simon Sebag-Montefiore was a journalist on the SUNDAY TIMES before he started writing books. He speaks several languages, has travelled widely, and now writes books full time. His first biography, Prince of Princes, the life of Catherine the Great's lover and chief minister Potemkin, was a huge seller in hardback and paperback.
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