Autopsy of an Autocrat
FIRESIDE, HARVEY
Autopsy of an Autocrat The Death of Stalin By Georges Bortoli Praeger. 214 pp. $8.95. Reviewed by Harvey Fireside Professor of Politics, Ithaca College; author, "Icon and Swastika" This...
...There are many ironic touches of this sort, along with a wealth of local color...
...The dread police chief has just been charged with treason...
...and although the author came to Moscow after Stalin's death in March 1953, he has been able to recreate the atmosphere of the era from interviews, the pages of Pravda and the writings of "insiders" like Nikita Khrushchev and Svetlana Alliluyeva...
...Indeed, the Yugoslav's portrait of a master criminal combining "the senselessness of a Caligula" with "the refinement of a Borgia and the brutality of a Tsar Ivan the Terrible' seems to be the model for this glimpse of a despot in his dotage...
...Nonetheless, Bortoli's efforts at turning history into a tale of suspense must, on the whole, be adjudged a success...
...Moreover, Bortoli needlessly piles up rumored villainies and character defects culled from emigre sources, including Stalin's alleged murder of his second wife and his supposed descent from Osse-tian bandits...
...Tension begins to build from the first "zoom," showing the paunchy little man of 73, so unlike his heroic portraits, as he glances at his" watch while a limousine speeds him to his suburban retreat...
...In particular, The Death of Stalin unravels the mysteries of the "doctors' plot," highlights the minor albeit significant parts played by Leonid I. Brezhnev and Aleksei N. Kosygin during the transition period, and reports popular reactions to the Kremlin drama...
...The book features strange usages like Ministry of Alimentation (instead of Food Production...
...The Death of Stalin has 38 brief chapters, in the manner of movie "takes," plus some fascinating photographs...
...A complaint must be entered, too, regarding the translating and editing...
...For one thing, discussions of Stalin's foreign policy by Marshall Shulman of Columbia and Adam Ulam of Harvard reveal little diminution of the old Georgian's cunning...
...This, however, contributes to a serious flaw in his study...
...Regrettably, Bortoli is rather stingy with his credits...
...Among the tortured metaphors is the "store of memorable spectacles" seen at a parade...
...author, "Icon and Swastika" This account of Stalin's final days offers readers a scenario of a turning point in history...
...Close-ups of the paranoid autocrat and his court are alternated with "pans" of contemporary life in factories, collective farms and prison camps...
...One story describes how an inmate offered to contribute a wreath to Stalin's memory, only to be told that his request had to be submitted in writing...
...In historical perspective, his reduction of Stalin to the stature of an aging Moscow mafioso is unsatisfying...
...It is a sus-penseful story, told by a man who has been covering Soviet affairs for French radio and television since the late '50s...
...The most intriguing recollections are those of survivors of the prison camps...
...Bortoli's treatment is cinematic...
...There are also many typographical mistakes - e.g, 1933 for 1913 as the date of Stalin's essay on the national question-and some transposed lines...
...For another, the author is misled by the absence of Stalin from revolutionary film footage to conclude that both his ties to Lenin and his major role in those events were nonexistent, rather than merely exaggerated...
...Khrushchev's revelations furnish most of the remaining details on Stalin's progressive senility-such as the forced merriment of his late-night feasts and the wild charges against old comrades, which they received in stunned horror...
...Yet the ultimate irony, not touched on by Bortoli, is the survival of the "personality cult" in Peking no less than in the hearts of Soviet Stalinists, secretly yearning for the good old days when everyone marched in step, even to a faltering piper...
...Another priceless anecdote has a prisoner berating the camp commandant for sitting beneath a picture of "the scoundrel Beria...
...To Stalin buffs, the scene brings to mind Milovan Djilas' vignette of his 1948 visit with the supreme Soviet ruler...
...The official pounces to arrest the man for this sacrilege, but a phone call from headquarters makes him eat his words...
...He is more forthright in his admission that some basic questions about the dictator's "usefulness" or "inevitability" in Soviet development are beyond his purview...
Vol. 58 • September 1975 • No. 18
