The picture that emerges from ''Stalin'' is both disturbing and perplexing. The result is the first intimate portrait of a man who had more lives on his conscience than Hitler and yet, according to opinion polls, is regarded by Russians even today as a giant, the fourth greatest human being in world history. In addition, Montefiore has made an exhaustive study of the published literature. This was made possible by the author's access to previously secret private documents, including Stalin's notes and messages, as well as by interviews with the surviving offspring of his closest companions. ''Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar,'' by the British journalist and novelist Simon Sebag Montefiore, reverses this approach: it pays minimal attention to Stalin's politics and concentrates on the man and his immediate associates. As a consequence, his image was blurred: an immensely powerful historic figure, he remained incomprehensible as a human being, a distant and shadowy apparition, a demigod. But because his private life was so closely shielded, the vast bulk of this material concentrated on his domestic and foreign policies rather than on his person. THERE are literally hundreds of books about Stalin, the dictator who for a quarter of a century tyrannized the Soviet Union and kept much of the world on tenterhooks.
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