Kotkin is a leading Russian historian and author of a well-received book about everyday life under Stalin, so his biography of the man himself can be expected to be deeply researched, comprehensive, and groundbreaking. And all of those expectations are well-met.

More than a biography of Stalin, this is a book about the fall of the Tsars and the rise of Communism, a sprawling journey across two continents and decades. A biography of a figure like Stalin is innately challenging; how do you balance the man, the leader, and the mass murderer? Kotkin avoids a straightjacket theoretical paradigm, showing Stalin as a canny tactician and theorist, who turned the chaos of the Russian revolution into a personal dictatorship, using the Communist Party as an instrument to extend his power down to the lowest levels.

Vol. 1 of the three volume series covers Stalin's childhood, rise to power, and the decision to 'de-Kulakize' farming in 1928, forced collectivization which sent millions into the nightmare of the gulag system, and killed millions more through famine. Kotkin argues that the collectivization was a distinctly Stalinist move, based on his understanding of the nature of class warfare, and the availability of secret police power against 'internal enemies'. A second major innovation in scholarship is Kotkin's evaluation of Lenin's Testament. This short document, produced at the end of 1922 when Lenin was crippled by strokes, provided negative evaluation of top communists, including Stalin. Kotkin argues the document was written by personal secretaries around Lenin, not the man itself, but it was treated as credible by the Communist Party, and hung like a sword of Damocles over Stalin's power.

So this book is deeply researched, and as good as scholarship gets. It's also a slog, 740 pages of text and another 200 or so of footnotes. And while individual anecdotes sparkle, there's a layer of distance from the times and the man himself.

I guess I'm up for the next two books, but I'm not exactly looking forward to it.