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Montefiore And The Stalin Conspiracy File

Review of Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Date : 30/07/2012

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Guy

Uploaded by : Guy
Uploaded on : 30/07/2012
Subject : History

This is a critical review of Montefiore`s biography covering Stalin`s early years. I argue that Young Stalin is thoroughly and deliberately under-researched. Montefiore is little inclined to shed light on who really were the financial backers behind the Bolsheviks.

Stalin`s true ancestry, his relationship with oil tycoons like the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, and the British Fabians remain obscure in Montefiore`s account.

Likewise, Montefiore`s mythologizing of Stalin as a swashbuckling arch brigand and "super-conspirator" cannot hide the fact that his record as a Bolshevik leader is actually seriously flawed. Notwithstanding all his bank robberies, currency counterfeiting, protection rackets, political agitation and journalism the Bolsheviks were still desperately short of money by 1913 when Stalin was sent to Siberia. Moreover the movement had been heavily infiltrated by Tsarist secret police agents.

Stalin`s string of affairs with very young women while in exile together with his record of failed terrorism and robberies while at liberty made him more a liability than a Bolshevik asset by 1917. Indeed, even Montefiore notes that between 1908-17 Stalin was only at liberty for eighteen months and that after 1910 he had only been free for ten months.

The review concludes that no amount of glamorisation by Montefiore can hide the fact that Stalin became a brutal murderer of millions of people. No amount of execrable poetry or vicarious revelations about his romantic liaisons can hide the likelihood that Stalin may well have enjoyed far more Western backing than Montefiore cares to tell us about.

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