This is a surprisingly interesting book. In just 143 pages (including extensive footnotes), the author examines many aspects of the Soviet dictator’s life through the prism of Freudian psychoanalysis. And many of his conclusions are quite interesting. Some of it is quirky: Stalin’s seeming obsession with boots (he wore no other footware) and kicking, keeping in mind that his father, who beat him regularly, was a cobbler. Some of it is a bit outdated (I hope): linking Stalin’s obvious paranoia with the possibility that he was a homosexual. (The author seems to be saying that all paranoids are gay, but it’s not clear if all gays are paranoid.). And some of it relates to what I am working on these days, finding a psychological basis for the possibility that Stalin as a young man may have worked as a secret agent of the tsarist police, the Okhrana. Recommended.
Review: The Mind of Stalin: A Psychoanalytic Study, by Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
