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In reply to the discussion: John Meacham finally goes there on Morning Joe. [View all]NNadir
(33,515 posts)Besides Trotsky's biography of Stalin, which hardly could have avoided some, um, bias, I read Radzinsky's biography, billed as a first post USSR fall archive biography, which claimed the Stalin was planning a first strike nuclear war just before dying.
Of course this is the season of consideration of malevolent dictators in "it can't happen here " America and if the season comes to an end, as I think it may, interest in the most horrible human beings nay wane.
I believe that it may have been Radinsky who reported that Stalin had a magnificent singing voice, which he used to disarm his opponents.
Where I am in the current book is just at the beginning of the absolute dictatorship, the exile of Trotsky, and Stalin's use of a powerful ascerbic wit that finalized his rise, after overcoming Zinoviev and Kamanev.
I would not have thought a comedy about Stalin could be made that actually captured something about him, but the movie The Death of Stalin is both hilarious and on some level, not entirely removed from the reality of the historical situation. A subtle point is the maintenance of accents in English to reflect the reality of the different dialects of Russian that historically existed among the upper levels of the governing class of Stalin Era Soviet Union.