Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

Character

Stalin believed in things for which there was no evidence. Stalin disbelieved in things for which there was evidence. When reality did not agree with his mind, Stalin became paranoid, believing that people were trying to trick him. Stalin had difficulty owning up to his own mistakes, and instead blamed others. Stalin blamed saboteurs and wreckers for the failings of the socialist system. 

Caucasian Gangster

The author explains that the Caucasus, where Stalin came from, were full of gangsters, feuds and anarchy. The Mingrellians ran Georgia.

Knowing Too Much

Stalin repeatedly eliminated people who knew too much about his past activities.

Personal Life

This book is much more about his personal life than other books about the Soviet Union. Stalin and his friends drank, danced and sang. However, his friends consisted only of his fellow Bolsheviks. Nadya Sergeyevna Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife, killed herself with a gun in 1932.

Jewish Women

There were many Jewish women in Stalin's inner circle. Many Jewish Bolshevicks used Russian pseudoyms to disguise their Jewishness. Jews were removed from positions of power after Israel was created. Some non-Jewish Bolsheviks who had Jewish spouses had to divorce them. Stalin suspected the wives of his colleagues as being foreign spies and had many of them killed.

Ukraine

Stalin regarded the subjugation of the Ukraine during the 1930s as being his biggest crisis, not the German invasion of World War II. 

Great Terror

Much of this book is about the Great Terror (1937-1939) when Stalin had many of his fellow Bolsheviks shot. Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (nicknamed Blackberry) supervised executions of the Great Terror. For almost all of his victims, there was little evidence that they had committed any crimes. Most of the evidence consisted of confessions under torture. Stalin had the NKVD force prisoners to sign false confessions, so that Stalin would have manufactured evidence that supported his suspicions. Stalin tortured people to force them to implicate targets that he wanted to accuse of treason. The NKVD was in charge of the arrest, torture, executions.