Resisting Stalin
The more we learn of Josef Stalin, the more alluring he becomes.
By Lewis H. Siegelbaum Published: December 24, 2004
For reasons that seem obvious, if a little ghoulish, readers can't get enough of Josef Stalin and the horrors he committed. This past year alone, we have been treated to several blockbuster biographies, of which Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" made the greatest splash. Reports that Saddam Hussein modeled his unsavory career on Stalin's only whetted the public's appetite for one of the greatest WMDs of all time.
The more we learn of Stalin -- and we have learned a great deal since the archives began offering up their secrets in the early 1990s -- the more nasty but also the more fascinating he becomes. Variously diagnosed by biographers as insecure, mistrustful, paranoid, vengeful, cynical, fanatical, and in nearly constant physical pain, he channeled whatever it was that ailed him into besting his more eloquent, better educated and less psychotic rivals for the mantle of Communist Party leadership, and presiding over the Soviet empire for more than a quarter of a century.
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/24/109.html