Volume 51, Number 8 · May 13, 2004
Master of Fear
By Ian Buruma
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Knopf, 785 pp., $30.00
Dictators come in many forms. Some are religious maniacs, and some total cynics; some are mama's boys with a lust to dominate, and some are compelled by a higher cause or mission; some wish to be worshiped as gods, some just want to be feared, and most are probably a mixture of all these things. But they all have one quality in common: striving for absolute power consigns them to a world of lies. And one is tempted to assume that if a dictator such as, say, Mao Zedong really believed his own press—that he was the greatest genius who ever lived, the greatest statesman, general, scientist, poet, or whatnot—he would surely be a madman.
Review, 3506 words
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