This massive volume surveys the trajectory of the life of the Soviet dictator Iosif Stalin in more detail than most existing biographies. The first of three projected volumes, Paradoxes of Power covers the period up to 1928, when Stalin embarked on the forced collectivization of agriculture. The volume is more than a mere biography. Kotkin seeks to place Stalin in a global (or at least Eurasian) geopolitical context and tells “the story of Russia's power in the world and Stalin's power in Russia, recast as the Soviet Union” (p. xi). The book is more a “marriage of biography and history” (p. xi) than a traditional biography. The result is immensely impressive if exhausting.
Stalin emerges in the book as a singularly important historical figure who defined much of the history of the world in the twentieth century. Kotkin summarizes the Soviet dictator as a leader “who stands out in his...