Simon Montefiore - Young Stalin

Here is the arch-conspirator and escape-artist whose brutal ingenuity so impressed Lenin that he made Stalin (with Trotsky) his top henchman. The paranoid underworld of Joseph Conrad-style terrorism was Stalin's natural habitat. Montefiore shows how clannish Caucasian banditry and murderous gangsterism, combined with pitiless ideology, qualified Stalin to dominate the Kremlin – and create the USSR in his flawed image.

Based on massive research and astonishing new evidence in archives from Moscow to Georgia, Young Stalin, companion and prequel to bestselling, prize-winning Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, is a chronicle of the Revolution, a pre-history of the USSR – and a fascinatingly intimate biography: this is how Stalin became Stalin.

Young Stalin tells the story of an exceptional, charismatic, darkly turbulent young man born into obscurity who embraced revolutionary idealism, the world in which he found his Messianic mission in life. Equal parts scholar and terrorist, Stalin was so impressive in his brutality that Lenin made him, along with Trotsky, his chief henchman.

Here is Stalin the supreme dictator in the making—his psychology, his hatreds, his loves, his knowledge of the world—and steeped in the paranoia of the underworld, learning how to triumph in the Kremlin and to create the USSR in his profoundly flawed image.

Based on exhaustive research and astonishing new evidence, Young Stalin is a brilliant prehistory of the USSR from the perspective of those who would bring it into being.


Blackstone Audio Young Stalin Simon Sebag Montefiore
Introduction Narrated by James Adams
Prologue The Bank Robbery

PART ONE

• Keke's Miracle Soso
• Crazy Beso
• Brawlers, Wrestlers and Choirboys
• A Hanging in Gori
• The Poet and the Priesthood
• The 'Young Man with the Burning Eyes'
• Battle of the Dormitories Soso versus Father 'Black Spot'
• The Weatherman Parties and Princes
• Stalin Goes Underground Konspiratsia
• 'I'm Working for Rothschilds!' Fire, Massacre, Arrest in Batumi

PART TWO

• The Prisoner
• The Frozen Georgian Siberian Exile
• Bolshevik Temptress
• King of the Mountain
• Fighters, Urchins and Dressmakers
• The Mountain Eagle Stalin Meets Lenin
• The Man in Grey Marriage, Mayhem (and Sweden)
• Pirate and Father
• Stalin in London
• Kamo Goes Insane The Game of Bandits and Cossacks
• The Tragedy of Kato Stalin's Stony Heart
• Boss of the Black City Plutocrats, Protection-Rackets and Piracy
• Louse Racing, Murder and Madness Prison Games
• 'River Cock' and the Noblewoman
• 'The Milkman' Was Stalin a Tsarist Agent

PART THREE

• Two Lost Fiancees and a Pregnant Peasant
• The Central Committee and 'Glamourpuss' the Schoolgirl
• 'Don't Forget That Name and Be Very Wary!'
• The Escapist Kamo's Leap and the Last Bank Robbery
• Travels with the Mysterious Valentina
• Vienna, Wonderful Georgian, Austrian Artist and Old Emperor
• The Secret Policeman's Ball Betrayal in Drag

PART FOUR

• 'Darling, I'm in Desperate Straits'
• Arctic Sex Comedy
• The Hunter
• The Robinson Crusoe of Siberia
• Stalin's Reindeer-Propelled Sleigh and a Siberian Son

PART FIVE

• Spring Floundering Leader
• Summer Sailors on the Streets
• Autumn Soso and Nadya
• Winter The Countdown
• Glorious October The Bungled Uprising
• Power Stalin Out of the Shadows

Epilogue An Old Tyrant in Remembrance of Things Past
Blackstone Audio Young Stalin Simon Sebag Montefiore

Read by James Adams | 13 cds | 16.5 hrs | unabridged |
Blackstone Audio | 2007 | isbn 9781433203916 |
53 mp3 | 419.4 mb | vbr 59.3 kbps avg | 32000 1ch.m | runtime 16:28:09 |
eac 099pb4 | SoX 310 >> 53 | lame -V 6 --rs 32 | mp3g.trk 91.5 dB