Review: Stalin: Czar of all the Russias, by Eugene Lyons

Eugene Lyons in 1940.

This is how history books used to look: no index, no footnotes, no bibliography. Life for historians was easier in 1940.

Eugene Lyons, a journalist, was the first Western newspaperman to interview Josef Stalin in 1930. He was impressed with the man, and actuallly liked him. But his views changed and he became one of Stalin’s harshest critics. This is a well-written book and a very quick read, but not entirely trustworthy (those missing footnotes and bibliography explain this).

Like many writers of the time, Lyons believed that the young Stalin was, for a while at least, a collaborator with the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana. But the stories Lyons told about this were recycled from other not-entriely-reputable sources and he offered nothing new.

In 1938, Leon Trotsky wrote an angry letter to his close comrade Max Shachtman — this was before the two had a falling out — saying: “It is difficult to understand here why you are so tolerant and even friendly toward Mr. Eugene Lyons. He speaks, it seems, at your banquets; at the same time he speaks at the banquets of the White Guards.”

Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed.