/410/ Reading Club: Deutscher’s Stalin

Deutscher’s work in historical context

Stalin’s parents’ experience as serfs and the significance of his boyhood education in an Orthodox seminary

How the oppression of the Russian Empire and the promises of Soviet industrialisation shaped young Stalin’s lifecourse

Whether, compared to other Bolshevik leaders, Stalin would have succeeded anytime, anywhere

Was Stalin honest in his commitment to the revolution? Was Trotsky right that Stalin was just a cynic?

How did Stalin compare to the other leaders at Yalta, such as the aristocratic Churchill?

How do we compare Stalin to Cromwell or Napoleon?

And what’s behind cheeky internet Stalinism today?

Message of the Non-Jewish Jew, Isaac Deutscher, Marxists.org

On Orwell: 1984 – The Mysticism of Cruelty, Isaac Deutscher, Marxists.org

I must start completely alone: Gonzalo Pozo on Isaac Deutscher’s wartime years in London, LRB