| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
As well as being an indictment of the woolly-minded utopianism of his father's generation, the book is a direct challenge to the lingering romanticism that, even today, attaches itself to Bolshevism, to Lenin, and in particular to Trotsky. That challenge comes in the form of a splendid letter--in the final, personal section of the book--to his long-time friend Christopher Hitchens. In it, he reminds his friend "Comrade Hitchens" that "Bolshevism presents a record of baseness and inanity that exhausts all dictionaries" before confessing his confusion as to "why you wouldn't want to put more distance between yourself and these events than you do, with your reverence for Lenin and your unregretted discipleship of Trotsky".
The myth Amis wants to quash is the idea that the "real" revolution was lost with the death of Lenin, the murder of Trotsky and the liquidation of the Bolshevik old guard. Any "differences between the regimes of Lenin and Stalin were quantitative, not qualitative" and, as individuals, Lenin was a "congenital moral imbecile" while Trotsky's smattering of literary talent concealed "a murdering bastard and a fucking liar" who got what he deserved. They were nun-killers all and they did it with gusto. The final verdict, the final indictment, is that under Bolshevik rule--under Lenin as well as Stalin--"the value of human life collapsed".
It's a curious fact that Robert Conquest--the man who wrote the definitive account of the Stalinist purges while many intellectuals were still in denial--was a personal friend of the Amis family. Conquest's The Great Terror is still the source to visit if want the full story whereas Koba the Great is a short book packed with the most interesting and shocking facts about the Stalin era, with a thoughtful and often persuasive personal commentary from Amis. --Larry Brown --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Sad to say, Amis was not up to the task he set. Although well-written, the book is overly self-indulgent and superficial.
The book is divided, into three parts. Part I, approximately one third of the book contains general background information on Amis and his `credentials' for writing the book. Those credentials include his reading of the historian Robert Conquest's Reflections on a Ravaged Century and his presence at a celebration of the end of the millennium along with Tony Blair and the Queen. The remainder of Part I explores Amis' coming of age in a family in which political discourse formed the focus of dinner table and other conversations. It also contained more than a bit of information about Amis' education and early work experience. Last, he touches on some of the political developments in post-revolutionary Russia including an overview of Lenin and the formation of the earliest labor camps. Although interesting, it provides nothing more than a cursory overview of the issues allegedly at the core of the book.
Part II, which constitutes more than a half of the book, is entitled Iosif the Terrible: Short Course. This is a two-fold play on words as Stalin fancied himself as a latter day version of Ivan the terrible and wrote a book entitled "Short Course on the Soviet Union." The overview reads well. Amis is, clearly, a good writer. However, it does not contain any new research or original thought. Rather, as Amis acknowledges, it is a summary of many books Amis has read on the subject, specifically Conquest's The Great Terror. Again, anyone coming to this book with even a passing knowledge of Soviet history will find one half the book superfluous.
Part II, a mere 34 pages, addresses the question posed on the book cover as its central theme, "the indulgence of communism by intellectuals of the West." Part III consists of a Letter to a Friend (Christopher Hitchens) and an after word addressed to his late father. Although both are touching and deeply personal in their own way they never really did get to the heart of the question.
The question posed was a decent one. But I left disappointed. I gave the book three stars because, despite my disappointment, it was well-written. I also realize that the book could serve as a valuable introduction to readers new to Russian/Soviet history who might wish to dip their toes into the subject matter. This is not a bad place to start. However, I would not recommend this book to anyone with more than superficial knowledge of the subject matter. At best, this should have been a magazine length article.
As the subtitle to the book suggests - 'Laughter and the Twenty Million' - the book is also interested in laughter. Amis asks us why we feel it is ok to make jokes about Communist times in Russia; the Gulag; the activities of Lenin and Stalin, whereas to make a joke about Hitler or the holocaust would be seen as distasteful and disrespectful. I won't go into his ideas on the matter here in case people reading this review have not read the book, but will say that he sets out on an investigation of the similarities and differences between Hitler and Stalin - 'the little moustache and the big moustache' - that is in many ways enlightening and does make one feel shame that you could have ever made facetious remarks about the Gulag.
The book, as others have commented, is absolutely one-sided (but then Amis would argue that a book on Stalin could, and should morally, be no other way). Within its pages he looks at why intellectuals chose to follow Trotsky and Lenin; how they turned a blind eye to their murderous sides. In fact, I would say that if this book changed my opinion on anything, it changed my opinion on Lenin. Realistically, everyone knows that Stalin was a mindless murderer, but from other history books it's easy to get the message that Lenin was an intellectual who would have changed the world for the better had it not been for a few hitches here and there, and that his murderous schemes were begun more out of necessity than any personal belief in their utility or desire to do so. Amis takes this idea and throws it in the gutter, blaming Lenin (and Trotsky) for setting up the police state that allowed Stalin to become the tyrant that he was.
So the book may be biased, but it's brilliantly written, completely engaging, and gives a perspective on Stalin that you're unlikely to find elsewhere (in terms of the level of indignant vituperation, rather than the general anti-Stalin stance). And isn't that part of the point of history - looking at it through different sets of eyes? Anyone interested in Russian, German or 20th century history should read this book.
Amis repeatedly protests he isn't a historian and fair enough, he isn't, but his perspective on Stalin seems no more illuminating than that of anyone else who grew up in postwar Britain. (For heartbreaking eye-witness accounts of the purges, see Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoirs 'Hope against Hope' and 'Hope Abandoned'.)
'Koba the Dread' also suffers from Martin's trademark self-absorption. He makes some unconvincing attempts at tying his own life-story up with the Great Terror and I couldn't stick these attempts at making 'Koba the Dread' another Martin autobiography. Bizarre as it now sounds, Kingsley Amis was briefly a card-carrying Party member but this fact just lets Martin reminiscence some more about having a famous Dad. (Compare those bits of 'Experience' where Amis tries building up his story by dragging in Fred West.) Maybe Martin finds Martin overwhelmingly interesting but the fascination is lost on me.
On the positive side, Amis makes good points about the British Left's lack of realism about what Stalin actually did. Still, this book is not a patch on Conquest's 'The Great Terror'. While subsequent research has qualified some of Conquest's claims, all his main points stand - more facts than 'Koba the Dread' but without the posturing.
A good introduction to soviet atrocities, with a number of well chosen examples of inhumanity - among the many proposed by authors... Read more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Historical > 1901 Onwards
- Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > Europe
- Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > Russia
- Books > Biography > Historical > Social & Urban History
- Books > Biography > Political > Countries & Regions > Europe
- Books > Biography > Political > Countries & Regions > Russia
- Books > History > Europe
- Books > History > Political History > Marxism & Communism
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Government & Politics > Countries & Regions > Europe
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Government & Politics > Political Science & Ideology > Communism & Marxism
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
