Martin Amis is not an author I am particularly fond of: The two novels of his I have read (London Fields and Times Arrow) left me rather cold. Koba the Dread, however, is in a different league: it isn't a conventional biography of Stalin rather it focuses on the madness of the Stalin era. It is also an assault on the myths surrounding the revolution and its leaders. Many on the Left will say that Stalin was a bastard who perverted the good works of Lenin and Trotsky. The reality was that he used their "good works" as the bedrock of his own terror. The book reminds us that Stalin was evil but so were Ulyanov and Bronstein, the only key difference being a matter of scale.
Another key element of this book is the culpability of intellectuals across the world who chose to swallow the romantic image of the USSR, perhaps because the truth was simply to awful to contemplate. There is a major personal element to this - his father Kingsley was a card carrying communist from 1941 right up to the effective death of Communist Party of Great Britain in the aftermath of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956
3 comments:
The culpability of intellectuals (i.e. those who were not deported, executed etc) is the key. I see both revisionisy trends (Holocaust and Gulag) as a real threat. Or, I go too often to such sites, khe.
I like the book too...Amis still is the best writer of the english language around - although his novels are getting bit samey.
And you are rigt about the lwft's self-delusion about Stalin and communism in general. Living in Poland, as it do, reminds me everyday what a complete and utter failure the whole thing was. And Poles are still sufering for it now.
Good to see you have started this blog...and I wish your poor Labour party a speedy exit from power (I was a member till a few years ago too).
:-)
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