Young Stalin
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Narrated by:
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James Adams
About this listen
Here is Stalin the supreme dictator in the making - his psychology, his loves and hatreds, his intellectual interests, his knowledge of the world - learning how to triumph in the Kremlin and create the USSR in his profoundly flawed image.
Based on exhaustive research and astonishing new evidence, Young Stalin is a brilliant prehistory of the USSR from the perspective of those who would bring it into being.
©2007 Simon Sebag Montefiore (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
" Young Stalin is a gripping read....Montefiore's research, especially in the Georgian archives, is brilliant. The book provides a wealth of serious and scurrilous detail, creating a memorable portrait of one of the 20th century's greatest monsters." ( Telegraph)
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For almost a century, historians could only speculate about the role Grigory Rasputin played in the downfall of tsarist Russia. But in 1995 a lost file from the state archives turned up, a file that contained the complete interrogations of Rasputin's inner circle. With this extensive and explicit amplification of the historical record, Edvard Radzinsky has written a definitive biography, reconstructing in full the fascinating life of an improbable holy man who changed the course of Russian history.
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Good old Radzinsky
- By Babs on 03-13-18
By: Edvard Radzinsky, and others
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Rasputin
- The Untold Story
- By: Joseph T. Fuhrmann
- Narrated by: Curtis Sisco
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A century after his death, Grigory Rasputin remains fascinating: the Russian peasant with hypnotic eyes who befriended Tsar Nicholas II and helped destroy the Russian Empire, but the truth about his strange life has never fully been told. Written by the world's leading authority on Rasputin, this new biography draws on previously closed Soviet archives to offer new information on Rasputin's relationship with Empress Alexandra, sensational revelations about his sexual conquests, a re-examination of his murder, and more.
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The Legend of Rasputin
- By S on 05-02-13
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Enemies of the People
- My Family's Journey to America
- By: Kati Marton
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In this true-life thriller, Kati Marton draws on her skill as an investigative reporter to discover who her journalist parents really were---and how they survived the Nazis in Budapest and imprisonment by the Soviets during the Cold War.
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Couldn't stop listening
- By Jane on 04-09-10
By: Kati Marton
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Stalin's Daughter
- The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
- By: Rosemary Sullivan
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 19 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history's most monstrous dictators—her father, Josef Stalin. Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy—the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.
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Insightful and thoroughly researched
- By Jean on 06-16-15
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Rasputin
- Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs
- By: Douglas Smith
- Narrated by: PJ Ochlan
- Length: 33 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Rasputin separates fact from fiction to reveal the real life of one of history's most alluring figures. Drawing on a wealth of forgotten documents from archives in seven countries, Smith presents Rasputin in all his complexity - man of God, voice of peace, loyal subject, adulterer, drunkard. Rasputin is not just a definitive biography of an extraordinary and legendary man, but a fascinating portrait of the twilight of imperial Russia as it lurched toward catastrophe.
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A story that deserves a better narrator.
- By James on 01-27-18
By: Douglas Smith
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The Romanovs
- 1613-1918
- By: Simon Sebag Montefiore
- Narrated by: Simon Beale
- Length: 28 hrs and 41 mins
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This is the intimate story of 20 tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Simon Sebag Montefiore's gripping chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence, and wild extravagance, with a global cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries, and poets, from Ivan the Terrible to Tolstoy and Pushkin.
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Scholarly but gripping
- By William on 06-16-16
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The Empire Must Die
- Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900 - 1917
- By: Mikhail Zygar
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The window between two equally stifling autocracies - the imperial family and the communists - was open only briefly, in the last couple of years of the 19th century until the end of WWI, by which time the revolution was in full fury. From the last years of Tolstoy until the death of the Tsar and his family, however, Russia experimented with liberalism and cultural openness. Novelists and playwrights blossomed and political ideas were swapped in coffee houses.
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An excellent look at an interesting history.
- By brian on 06-22-18
By: Mikhail Zygar
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Sleeping with the Enemy
- Coco Chanel's Secret War
- By: Hal Vaughan
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- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
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Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture. She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She inspired women to take off their bone corsets and cut their hair. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric, elevated the waistline, and created bell-bottom trousers, trench coats, and turtleneck sweaters. In the 1920s, when Chanel employed more than 2,000 people in her workrooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire.
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Wandering account, errors in French
- By Vivien Tarkirk-Smith on 07-04-13
By: Hal Vaughan
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The Whisperers
- Private Life in Stalin's Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 29 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.
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A Real Life Dystopian Nightmare
- By Timothy on 08-31-18
By: Orlando Figes
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Trotsky
- Downfall of a Revolutionary
- By: Bertrand M. Patenaude
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
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In Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, Stanford University lecturer Bertrand M. Patenaude tells the dramatic story of Leon Trotsky's final years in exile in Mexico. Shedding new light on Trotsky's tumultuous friendship with painter Diego Rivera, his affair with Rivera’s wife Frida Kahlo, and his torment as his family and comrades become victims of the Great Terror, Trotsky: Downfall ofa Revolutionary brilliantly illuminates the fateful and dramatic life of one of history's most famous yet elusive figures.
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Good Trotsky Book, BAD conclusions at end
- By Darius on 02-09-15
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What listeners say about Young Stalin
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- brian
- 08-26-13
Stalin's life before He came to power now revealed
Would you listen to Young Stalin again? Why?
I might to catch up on chatpers I might have missed.
What did you like best about this story?
Knowing who was who in Stalin's life.
What about James Adams’s performance did you like?
I liked the whole thing honestly.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
NOt really, but I had no idea Joseph was such a womanizer.
Any additional comments?
A must have for any history fan.
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2 people found this helpful
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- David
- 11-13-17
salad days of a genocidal tyrant
as 20th century villains go, stalin is a much richer topic for biography than most of the other leading contenders, especially hitler. here's a guy who abandoned what would likely have been a successful career in the arts--stalin was a published poet several times over--when it became clear he had a knack for politics, as opposed to hitler, who embarked on a career of political charlatanry after failing as an artist.
of his biographers, i think simon sebag montefiore best understands the paradox of stalin--how a dude responsible for the starvation of tens of millions of his country's peasants, not to mention engineering a climate of extreme paranoia amongst his own ruling class still manages to command the reverence that stalin does to this day in the former soviet union. stalin's erudition, his magnetism and his tireless working habits, not to mention his role in keeping his country united and standing up to hitler's armies even as his country bore the brunt of the violence of ww2, all add up to a figure who is as much an object of fascination as of revulsion.
the narrative here is gripping and sebag montefiore's access to previously unavailable archives means this book is a trove of previously overlooked information on the early days of the bolshevik movement. young stalin, coupled with his earlier stalin: the court of the red tsar, represent an important revision in our assessment of this towering figure of the 20th century.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Innovating
- 11-23-14
Carefully researched ground breaking biography
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Offers a much deeper humanistic look into who Stalin was.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Stalin for his ability to change, agitate, manipulate and steal. He was a magician and brilliant actor and that isn't something that gets noticed, All is said is his atrocities and this book shows the talented human being behind the history.
What about James Adams’s performance did you like?
Solid, eloquent and engaging.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Too long for one sitting and also too rich, I am going to listen to that last few chapters during the revolution as I had fallen off and want to reengage with it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Antonio
- 10-01-09
Young Stalin audio book part 1
This book is an absolute delight! Very informative, unbiased, a clear approach of how the muderer we call Stalin came to be, and how he matured into his image. It turns out, he's much more than a ruthless thug, rather an extremely intelligent fox-like persona, who Lenin himself at times yielded to.
2 thumbs up!
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6 people found this helpful
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- DENNIS
- 03-15-15
Stalin was a hottie
Now that the subject is so far past as Napoleon, the young Stalin emerges as an unexpetedly lively person, resembling the thug-rappers on recent American experience (tho he has a better voice), but our thugs are nowhere so bold as to rob our national banks. Everywhere Stalin goes, he gets laid, even in Siberia.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 01-03-22
Brilliant and Entertaining
Loved this audio book. How does a choir boy studying to be a priest become a revolutionary with complete disregard for human life? In other words how did Stalin become Stalin. Brilliant analysis beautifully read beautifully written.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Savvy in Santa Monica
- 07-31-18
Great narrator and globe trotting action
Following the adventures of young Stalin and his many personae is a great way to learn about pre-revolutionary Russia
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- Daisy
- 06-01-16
Amazing book!
This book is brilliantly researched and written. It opens up a completely new perspective on the young Stalin. I highly recommend it.
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Overall
- Jim
- 02-20-11
Really Good Read/Listen
This is an excellent book, perhaps even better than Montefiore's In the Court of the Red Tsar. It is surprising so many details of Stalin's life as a young revolutionary survived the ordered destruction of his personal history. Georgia was distant enough from Moscow that first person memoirs, letters, and documents survived destruction, setting in forgotten drawers. The reader/listener gets an amazingly detailed account of Stalin the prodigy, teenaged poet, under-sized street fighter, angry seminary student reading Karl Marx, the quirky promiscuous rebel with multiple children born out of wedlock, the organizer of bank robberies and extortions to fund the revolution, the intellectual who read every book he got his hands on, and finally the indispensable (to Lenin anyway) behind-the-scenes political manipulator. Much in the book runs against what was accepted in the West about his life for decades. Despite his small stature, for example, he gave and received physical beatings yet was an exceptional child in nearly every school subject. Not enough praise can be given the narrator, James Adams, for his breezy handling of difficult Georgian and Russian words and names—he does an exemplary job. This listener highly recommends this book for history buffs, Stalin buffs, and students of the period.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Andy
- 05-13-18
Incredible story
This book is simply amazing -- in the quality of its research, the scope of its narrative, and the ability of the author to move between minor details in Stalin's early life and the repercussions these details would have on his later actions.
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1 person found this helpful