Political, Russia 

This is the first thoroughly new and comprehensive biography of Stalin to appear in many years. It is based on years of research by author Robert McNeal and on extensive work in previously unexplored and untapped Soviet and Western sources. Excitingly as well as accessibly written, the book offers a great wealth of fresh information on Stalin and provides the reader with a particularly vivid portrait of Stalin's character and his imposing and - McNeal argues - his underestimated political talents. The story opens with important evidence that as a youth Stalin was deeply committed to Christianity, dropping his faith for the Marxism to which he devoted the rest of his life. He shows that Stalin operated successfully in a relatively democratic setting with the Communist party following Lenin's death, and that he played a moderating role in the disastrous collectivism that the party sponsored at the end of the 1920s. McNeal adds to the understanding of the establishment of Stalin's police state and offers the first extended description of the rise and character of the cult of personality, a means of control that Stalin used as effectively as physical coercion. He provides a wealth of information on Stalin's declining years including the first documented account of the Stalin-Mao talks. He discusses the ways in which Stalin wielded power during these years. Stalin's physical and mental deterioration, his alcohol abuse and a careful analysis of evidence that he did not die of natural causes are examined as part of a larger story. Even-handed, thoughtful, unpolemical, McNeal's account of Stalin the man and of Stalin the ruler, is a major reassessment of the man who more than anyone other than Lenin himself shaped the Soviet Union of today. - from Amzon