WHEN Joseph Stalin succeeded Lenin in the leadership of the Soviet Union few people outside her frontiers knew anything of him. The channels of information were also so choked with prejudice and ignorance that it was exceedingly difficult for people to make up their minds about him. When they did so their conclusions were usually wrong. Of no statesman of our day and generation have so many people been compelled to revise their opinions.
His life has been so completely absorbed in the Russian Revolution that to write of one without the other would be as absurd as to write of Hamlet and ignore Shakespeare. Indeed, I think it is no exaggeration to say that no man has been so completely absorbed in his life’s work to the subordination of almost every other interest. The biography of Stalin must perforce be a political biography, and I make no apology for being unable to describe his favourite dishes or the colour of his pyjamas.
I have attempted to tell the story of his career without either adulation or personal antipathy, to appraise him as I think history will appraise him, in the hope that it will prove helpful to the understanding of the man and the cause he serves.
In conclusion, my warm thanks are due to Sir Stafford Cripps for his introduction, H. Kemp, H. W. Leggett, F. W. Hickinbottom, and Dr. John Lewis for their invaluable and varied help, and to Ian Gibson-Smith for kindly reading the proofs.
J. T. Murphy
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