Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar [Paperback]

'Crammed with grimly revealing anecdotes and hitherto unheard testimony, this is a book that anatomises, with vivid insight and compelling readability, the corruptions of absolute power and the psychology of those who wield it. SUNDAY TIMES 'There is unlikely ever to be a more engrossing account of the life of Joseph Stalin than his huge biography.' -- Charles Osborne SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'As intellectually perceptive as it is horrifically enthralling the book is packed with insights into this ostensibly avuncular paranoid... prodigious in his research, Montefiore tells the grisly story with style and elegance.' -- Christopher Hirst THE INDEPENDENT 'Daily accounts from the breakfast table to the Politburo provide an incisive portrait of the inner workings of a brute's mind.' THE HERALD 'This isn't just a gripping slice of history, but an extraordinary psychological study of a murderous dictator who 'Knew He Was Right.' Here is more love, death and intrigue than you find in any thirller.' INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 'a marvellously racy, gossipy study, based on immense research.' THE EVENING STANDARD 'Simon Sebag Montefiore's writing is caustic and superb and he wears his rigorous scholarship with style.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'This is not simply another book about Stalin. It is a horrifying, hypnotic and at times, darkly amusing account of the lives of the families who ruled the Soviet Union... this page turner captivates and repels in equal measures.' THE OBSERVER 'This book should help purge any lingering nostalgia for the USSR.' IRISH TIMES 'there are plenty of political histories of the Stalinist era, but what makes Simon Sebag Montefiore's grimly fascinating book so special is the intimate protrait he sketches of the Soviet dictator's close circle of family and friends.' MAIL ON SUNDAY

'a marvellously racy, gossipy study, based on immense research.'

'Simon Sebag Montefiore's writing is caustic and superb and he wears his rigorous scholarship with style.'

'This book should help purge any lingering nostalgia for the USSR.'

The remarkable untold story of the men and women who sustained Stalin in power in the Soviet Union for nearly 30 years - a Sunday Times bestseller.

There have been many biographies of Stalin, but the court that surrounded him is untravelled ground. Simon Sebag Montefiore, acclaimed biographer of Catherine the Great's lover, prime minister and general Potemkin, has unearthed the vast underpinning that sustained Stalin. Not only ministers such as Molotov or secret service chiefs such as Beria, but men and women whose loyalty he trusted only until the next purge. 'Spectacular...an impressive and compelling work' Philip Mansel, Spectator 'This magnificent portrait of the dictator' Richard Overy, Literary Review

'Simon Sebag Montefiore has pulled it off. His book succeeds in giving us an intimate picture of daily life in the Kremlin under Stalin. A gripping account.' Robert Service Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains one of the creators of our world. The scale of his crimes has made him, along with Hitler, the very personification of evil. Yet while we know much about Hitler, Stalin and his regime remain mysterious. Now, in this enthralling history of Stalin's imperial court, the fear and betrayal, privilege and debauchery, family life and murderous brutality are brought blazingly to life. Who was the boy from Georgia who rose to rule the Empire of the Tsars? Who were his Himmler, Goring, Goebbels? How did these grandees rule? How did the 'top ten' families live? Exploring every aspect of this supreme politician, from his doomed marriage and mistresses, and his obsession with film, music and literature, to his identification with the Tsars, Simon Sebag Montefiore unveils a less enigmatic, more intimate Stalin, no less brutal but more human, and always astonishing. Stalin organised the deadly but informal game of power amongst his courtiers at dinners, dances, and singsongs at Black Sea villas and Kremlin apartments: a secret, but strangely cosy world with a dynamic, colourful cast of killers, fanatics, degenerates and adventurers. From the murderous bisexual dwarf Yezhov to the depraved but gifted Beria, each had their role: during the Second World War, Stalin played the statesman with Churchill and Roosevelt aided by Molotov while, with Marshal Zhukov, he became the triumphant warlord. They lived on ice, killing others to stay alive, sleeping with pistols under their pillows; their wives murdered on Stalin's whim, their children living by a code of lies. Yet they kept their quasi-religious faith in the Bolshevism that justified so much death. Based on a wealth of new materials from Stalin's archives, freshly opened in 2000, interviews with witnesses and massive research from Moscow to the Black Sea, this is a sensitive but damning portrait of the Genghis Khan of our epoch. £25.00 in UK only Illustrated --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'Simon Sebag Montefiore has pulled it off. His book succeeds in giving us an intimate picture of daily life in the Kremlin under Stalin. The arrests and killings are not ignored; indeed Montefiore supplies extra chapters and verses on the process by which the Soviet dictator moved against his enemies real and potential. An abundance of the sources are wholly new. The book rests on an extraordinary feat of digging up letters and memoirs from the archives of members of Stalin's entourage and their families. Montefiore has also travelled around Russia to trace many surviving witnesses to the scenes he describes. The result is a gripping account. Stalin was a vengeful conspirator and a murderous leader. But he was also "normal" in many ways. He was convivial, solicitous and even flirtatious. When he wanted, he could be quite a charmer. This duality has long been under-appreciated, but it helps to explain why Stalin was admired as well as feared by his associates - and indeed why his power endured to the end of his life. This is a fundamental theme and it is one of Montefiore's merits that he handles it with excitement and cogency.' Robert Service, PRINCE OF PRINCES: THE LIFE OF POTEMKIN 'Fascinating¿this highly ambitious biography has succeeded triumphantly.' Antony Beevor, Sunday Times 'If you want a good racy historical read, Prince of Princes certainly provides it! Book of the Year.' Antonia Fraser, Sunday Telegraph 'The best new book I've read this year and indeed for several years. Impeccably researched, beautifully written, it takes us at an unslackening pace through the colourful life of one of the most legendary Russians - war hero, politician, visionary and lover. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Born in 1965 Simon Sebag Montefiore is a biographer, novelist and journalist. He contributes to the Sunday Times, the Spectator and the New York Republic and New York Times in the USA. In the early nineties he travelled through the turbulent ex-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia and in 1996 presented a Channel 4 documentary on his 2000 mile desert quest for slavery in Mauritania. He now lives in London with his wife, Santa, née Palmer-Tomkinson, and two children.