Because Sheila Fitzpatrick is probably best known as a revisionist social historian, her On Stalin's Team may appear at first glance to be a rather idiosyncratic departure into the world of high politics. Closer examination, however, reveals the book to be less about party leadership than about the personal relationships within that leadership—a fascinating topic that is usually discussed in moralizing or gossipy terms without adequate attention to source study. Here, Fitzpatrick expertly captures the essence of the General Secretary's inner circle—a group within which long-term male relationships often dating back to the 1918–1921 Russian Civil War collided with the everyday demands of ruling a modern state.
On Stalin's Team demonstrates Fitzpatrick to possess a thorough command of the historical record, whether declassified archival sources including Iosif Stalin's personal correspondence with Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich or the memoiristic accounts left behind by both of these leaders and others such...