![]() ![]() ![]() Sebag Montefiore has a lot more time for the tsars than did Stalin. Stalin also despised the tsars’ modish subservience to foreign influences and advisers. Rather, he measured the tsars against his own rule and found them severely wanting for failing to secure Russia’s borders or to catch up and overtake the West economically. But contrary to Sebag Montefiore’s assertion, Stalin did not measure himself against the Romanovs. Stalin was fascinated by the tsars and spent a considerable amount of time personally correcting Soviet textbook accounts of their history. Much the same could be said of the Romanovs, the autocratic dynasty that ruled Russia for more than 300 years. ![]() In that book, Sebag Montefiore showed that Stalin was as charming as he was fearsome, a dictator whose rule relied as much on loyalty as it did on terror. Simon Sebag Montefiore made his name as a historian with Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2003), a compelling account of life in the Soviet dictator's inner circle. ![]()
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