Stalin

If you want to read about Russia, there is no better author than Simon Sebag Montefiore. His writings, like all the best history, place a high premium on discovering the truth as nearly as possible from the most direct sources possible. Russian history, especially Soviet history, is so wrought with mythology, ideology, and stereotype that it can be difficult to arrive at a real picture.

Such is history.

The thing about Montefiore is that he doesn't generalize, he doesn't categorize, and he resists the sweeping generalizations most historians love to make. He doesn't have an agenda on how he wants to present his subject. He has just thoroughly investigated the vast archives (with a whole slew of cheerful grad students) and tried to develop a picture of Stalin from what remains of him.

Here is an interesting story:

One night, shortly after the funeral of his wife (she had killed herslef), his sister-in-law visited him but there was no sound. Then she heard an ugly screeching and found Stalin lying on a sofa in the half-light, spitting on the wall. She knew he had been there a very long time because the wall was dripping with glistening trails of spit.

"What on earth are you doing, Joseph?" she asked him. "You can't stay like that." He said nothing, staring at the saliva rolling down the wall.