Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941

by Robert C. Tucker

Release Date: April, 1992

Edition: Paperback

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This is an excellent biography of Stalin, the middle book in a proposed trilogy. Tucker weaves events in the Soviet Union around the twisted, paranoid personality of Joseph Stalin, former seminary student. What I found to be the most intriguing was how every time Stalin changed his mind about something, everyone had to fall in line or risk being labeled a "wrecker" or "counter-revolutionary." Stalin was not particularly brilliant, and he was not Lenin's choice as a successor, but he had a genius for bureacratic maneuvering that put him in the powerful position that he held for years. For all his paranoia and all the damage he did to Russia, it is amazing that someone didn't actually knock him off. It is a chilling reflection on how obsequious even the best of us can be when motivated by fear.

The finest treatment of its subject

Neither Stalin, the collectivization crisis, nor the terror suffer from a dearth of good and serious studies. Yet despite the crowded field, Tucker's "Stalin in Power" is by far the best treatment of all three complex events. No other book sets out as credible, well-researched and well considered a theory of the workings of Stalin's mind. The great challenge presented by the Soviet thirties is the comprehension of the real logic behind what appears from the outside as mass irrationality. Most writers' personal models of depth and social psychology are inadequate to the task. Tucker succeeds, by a significant margin.