Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Many Western historians portray Stalin as a pragmatic, if disastrously blundering revolutionary who had no overarching vision of where Russia was heading under his leadership. Not so, argues Tucker in this massive, provocative history; Stalin acted with forethought. Driven by a need to prove himself ``a second and greater Lenin,'' he boldly and confidently implemented his collectivist schemes, backed by a policy of terror and accomplished through the seizure of peasant lands and households, mass murder, forced resettlement and prison camps. His state-directed, state-enforced ``revolution from above,'' in Tucker's ( Stalin as Revolutionary ) view, was a throwback to the state-building of the earliest Muscovite grand princes. The author illumines the ``Stalinist culture'' the dictator promoted in everything from movies to ``folk'' songs, with its master themes of heroism and communal uplift. This gripping history is crucial reading for anyone seeking to understand Stalin or contemporary Soviet affairs. Photos. (Nov.)
Library Journal
This remarkable sequel to Stalin As Revolutionary, 1879-1929 ( LJ 9/1/73) is at once the best of Tucker's many books and arguably the finest work in the burgeoning field of Stalin studies. The author's achievement synthesizes recent Soviet revelations, better-known sources on Stalin, and personal interviews into a major work of biography. Tucker's Stalin is neither simply mad nor opportunistic, but the methodical ``Iosif Grozny,'' an idealized Ivan the Terrible, and, tragically for millions, one whose terror far surpassed that of any czar. Tucker's depiction of Stalin and the terror machine is persuasive; but more controversial is the assertion that the purges served a ``cathartic function'' of exculpating Stalin for his own conspiracy against the revolution. The psychological dimension coexists with the political. Thus, Stalin's decimation of foreign Communists is both an expression of xenophobia and preparation for the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact. Whatever one's judgment of author or subject, this book can be safely recommended for all academic and public libraries.-- Zachary T. Irwin, Penn State - Behrend Coll. , Erie
Washington Post - Jane E. Good
"Tucker's contribution is to document how Stalin became a 'revolutionary of the radical right' by consciously turning to history, not to Communist ideology, for his model of the state as the agent of change. . . . This is history as it should be written: compelling narrative, intriguing detail, bold thesis."
Los Angeles Times - Jane A. Taubman
"Tucker writes psychobiography with tact and common sense, never letting Freud get out of hand, while his narrative holds the reader in grim fascination."
The Economist
"Mr. Tucker's portrait is persuasive, not least because it offers a psychological explanation for Stalin's relentless persecution of his Bolshevik comrades as well as for the bizarre rituals of the Moscow show trials, in which he forced the revolution's leaders to confess to absurd crimes."
Wall Street Journal - Robert Conquest
"Mr. Tucker has hunted out the sources, and he has discovered and developed a great deal more than has been generally known. . . . An extremely valuable contribution to our knowledge."
Chicago Tribune - W. Bruce Lincoln
"Anyone who does not read Stalin in Power from cover to cover will miss the opportunity of gaining real insight into the forces that shaped the Soviet Union. This is the best book about Stalin that has ever been written and one that is not likely to be superseded in the foreseeable future."
