What a Stalin Biography Tells Us About Our Time
History illuminates the present. I’ve been reading Stephen Kotkin’s widely and justly praised multivolume biography of Josef Stalin and have encountered many passages that illuminate the present.
TL;DR
- Stephen Kotkin's biography of Josef Stalin provides illuminating passages about the present.
- Stalin met Vladimir Lenin before the 1917 revolution.
- Lenin was in failing health by the early 1920s, with Spiridon Putin, Vladimir Putin's grandfather, on his staff.
- This history offers context for Vladimir Putin's 2005 remark on the Soviet Union's collapse.