![]() The most widely cited works on Stalin were written by his political opponents, people like Leon Trotsky and Nikita Khrushchev, or dissident writers like Roy Medvedev. Stalin left no diary or memoirs, and what we do know about the "man of steel" comes not from him but from others. Service's exhaustive biography reads as one long corrective to the current historiography on Stalin. Service states that his book "is aimed at showing that Stalin was a more dynamic and diverse figure than has conventionally been supposed" (p. ![]() Montefiore hopes that his book will make Stalin "a more understandable and intimate character, if no less repellent" (p. When the subject concerns a brutal, complex, and monumental figure like Josif Stalin, it is useful to let the authors speak for themselves. The wording of each text helps to illustrate the authors' distinct styles and approaches. ![]() Robert Service and Simon Sebag Montefiore have produced strikingly different books, although they both offer a revision of the standard history concerning one of the twentieth century's bloodiest dictatorships. ![]()
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