Testimonial: I am coming to Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar after reading (The House of Government by Yuri Slezkine)[https://papertrail.biblish.com/books/b9fa8215-c71e-4151-8912-4e2125b24384]. Slezkine’s book, which treated of The House on the Embankment and it’s residents, many of whom were killed during the purges of the 30s, left Stalin at the margins, as it focused on the lives of the residents of what was the largest housing complex in Europe. It will be interesting to study the prime movers of those purges and develop a picture in stereo between the two books.

Tsaritsyn and the lower Volga - is this to become Stalingrad, and the reason Ukraine is of such importance to Russia?

Perhaps not. According to Wikipedia, it is a lowlands, and I heard somewhere or other that the chokepoint that makes Ukraine of strategic importance to Moscow is a pass that, past which, makes for an easy route to Moscow.

The notion that fidelity to Marxism-Leninism, and with it its sense of justice, is alone a qualification for authority, while meanwhile wild injustices are exercised at every turn, is bizarre. It does seem a madness, or a religion. This notion was refuted at length in The House of Government, but seems to be given oxygen by Montefiore.

This exact incident, where Stalin harangues Terekhov by saying

Fabricating such a fairy tale about famine! Thought you’d scare us but it won’t work. Wouldn’t it be better for you to leave the post of … Ukrainian CC Secretary and join the Writer’s Union.

is also in The House of Government. This occurs around page 425 of THoG.

The House of Government delves into the religiosity of Bolshevism, generally concluding that Bolshevism was not a religion, or that is not a relevant question, with highly compelling essays.

These articles must have been awful and stale.

Combining the role of economic invention with the state monopoly on power would seem to lead to this myopic paranoia and its scapegoatism. Giving the role to individual, risk-taking actors, who, however often they may like to employ violence, are required to make the initiative work, or fail, means that the system is optimized for making things work. Your mandate as a government agent in running these enterprises is to not fail, and the construction of a rationale for why your failure was not truly your responsibility therefore abound.

What is the strategy for effectively countering the possessor of a personality cult when you are without one yourself?

This book makes it seem like Stalin, ironically, is the only one who has a true sequence of human relations, reflections, and feelings. Everyone else reads like gambling addicts, concerned about nothing else save the next hand in the game of political intrigue, history, revolution, or execution.

Radek is described at length in The House of Government, as is Bukharin. Notably, Radek weaseled out of this danger, watching almost all of his co-defendants go to their death, but Radek was later killed in a work camp.

Just as the marathoner died after delivering the news of victory, the communist Liskov almost met the same fate after swimming a Pruth.

The image of Pierre wandering through a war zone runs too deep with the Russian elites for them to do but recreate it.