Select language, opens an overlay

Comment

Koba the Dread

Laughter and the Twenty Million
Oct 16, 2012BertBailey rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
'Not sure I'd call this a "brilliant weave" of political, personal and other remarks about Stalin, although it's certainly a valuable compendium of the hell Stalin turned his country into – as well as of the disputes about Stalin between Amis's father Kingsley and Robert Conquest, between Nabokov and Wilson, about the intransigence of Hobsbawm, the unrepentant Brit Stalinist historian, the gruesome literature on the matter and its authors, including much detail on what the Soviets bore with under this unintelligent yet canny, evil man, etc. In fact, Amis's writing renders these very personal monologues on the issues quite readable, despite the book's rather arbitrary organization. Still, if you're after the main issues and historical causes, the struggles with which Stalin had to contend at various times, and other traditional matters about the 'history' involved, go elsewhere. Most astonishing to me about Amis (and others on this subject) is the apparent blind spot to how Stalin and his henchmen were absolute tyrants (of a very perverse order) running a 2-tiered society with far more in common with Tsarist Russia than anything dreamed up or intended by Marx as a communist state. The Cold War was indeed fought against "the communist bloc," but only in Time-magazine parlance. Stating the matter right calls for much qualification. Such a concern - whether he was some kind of socialist trying to prompt Marxist communism, or a leader for whom all moves toward a desired political order were just pretexts for totalitarian rule - doesn't arise here, as the focus is on the suffering Stalin inflicted.