Uma Resenha Excelente da Nova Biografia de Stalin

Uma das melhores resenhas de livro que já li. Curta, objetiva, crítica, informativa e bem humorada. Escrita por Donald Rayfield sobre a nova biografia de Stalin de Stephen Kotkin: Inescapably, the young Stalin's intellectual acumen is as impressive as his ambition. Perhaps the crucial remark (not cited by Kotkin) is to be found in a letter to a girlfriend, telling her that The Tempest was the greatest Shakespearean play. Stalin was a Caliban who, helped by drunken sailors, would overthrow Prospero and seize his kingdom. What emerges well from Kotkin's account is Stalin's activity as a publicist and editor. Books that Stalin annotated reveal that we are dealing with the ultimate proofreader, a man who never missed an author's or an editor's mistake. No wonder Soviet literature's greatest achievement was eliminating misprints, which were considered 'raids by the class enemy' (an attitude one wishes Penguin Press might adopt).