Rating: 
Summary: Amiss is not amiss
Review: This is one of the better works I have read on Stalin and the "Great Terror". Apart from the "Gulag" a work of infinite greatness, this is a grand essay on a moment in time. The personal touch, is almost name dropping, but it surves well when trying to demonstrate the truth of Stalin's quote, "The death of one is tragic, the death of millions is a statistic." One cannot comprehend millions of people slaughtered, but individual stories cut to the core. Who was worse, the NAZIs or Stalin? It is not just an academic question. It needs to be answered. Do we rely soley on the head count of the dead? Stalin wins. Do we rely on the brutality of the idea? Stalin wins! Do we rely solely on who was more inloved with power, self and control? Stalin wins again. It should be noted that the killings by Stalin are more random and focused on class and not solely on religion, but millions, more than 6 million Russian Christians died. A great short introduction for the neophite into the reality of Communism and why it is so important NOT to allow tyrants the chance to gain control of nations.
Rating: 
Summary: Digging up Stalin's corpse and throwing stones at it
Review: It's funny how a stray remark can set one off on a journey of discovery. Martin Amis heard his friend Christopher Hitchens giving a speech, and drawing a laugh with an ironic use of the word 'comrades'. Amis apparently then set to educating himself about the original 'comrades' in Russia, reading up on Stalin and Soviet communism. The enormity of that person and those events affected him profoundly, jogging his creative powers. This book is the product. The book is part précis, part meditation on the Stalin years. Amis quotes liberally from his stack of Solzhenitsyn, Nabokov and Conquest, and adds some caustic reactions of his own. The reader feels the numbing horror of Soviet communism anew in his telling. The book resembles to an extent Robert Conquest's Stalin: Breaker of Nations, as a meditation on a historical figure. Unlike many other historians who viewed Stalin as a betrayer of the Revolution, Conquest viewed the Revolution as a betrayal of humanity. Amis adopts this tone, and sprinkles some literary devices throughout (Zachto? Why?, negative perfection, and the place of laughter as a reaction to Bolshevism). He brackets the book with some barely relevant reflections about his friend's and his father's own radical youths, his daughter, and the death of his sister. And the point is'? I know how he feels, to an extent. I was appalled by my reading of Solzhenitsyn and Conquest, too, and wanted to corner friends and tell them about these things. And many of the critics who have slammed him for his tardy absorption of Stalinism would not have had similar reactions to the appearance of another exploration of Nazism, or South African apartheid. But Amis is simply too late for what he seems to want to accomplish. Stalin is safely dead and widely execrated; The Soviet Union is gone; Communism has (largely) retreated from its positions in the worlds of free governments and higher intellect; the famous Western dupes have long since been discredited; and Amis' father Kingsley dropped his illusions well before his death. All he can really do is call out friend and lefty columnist Christopher Hitchens, who is certainly wrong to cling to Lenin and Trotsky, but who is hardly the greatest misleader of public opinion of the 20th century. In that chapter Amis is just coming down to the battlefield and finishing off the wounded. (Search for Hitchen's 'we were just trying to make a better world' response elsewhere on the web) About a quarter of this book should have been confined to a personal journal. But that would have taken away the raison d'etre from the rest of it, so what can you say? For a while in the 19th century authors would pen flowery, mock self-disparaging introductions, apologizing for imposing on the public's attention. We certainly need to have the evils of communism forcefully and regularly repeated, but such a forward wouldn't have been out of place for Koba the Dread.
Rating:
Summary: Marxism is Nazism
Review: Koba the Dread asks the long overdue question: Why is Marxism discussed in polite society? The left likes to pretend that Marxism can be separated from the results of its application in the real world. 30 years ago, the left acknowledged that Stalin was a tyrant, but held onto the hope that Lenin was a "genius." Read The Nation and you'll get the latest rationalization. Now the left acknowledges that Lenin was also a tyranical murderer, but Karl Marx is in no way tarnished by the results of his murderous, insane rantings. The left is being called on the carpet by Amis, and it is about time. In leftist "intellectual" circles and in colleges, Marxism is still being taught as a legitimate method of discourse, rather than the murderous, insane madness that it has proven to be. It is time for reality to be acknowledged. Marxism is Nazism. Even in the details, the truth is obvious. Stalinism became as rabidly anti-Semitic as Nazism. This is not an accident. Marxism must be erased from public discourse and its language must be driven from everyday conversation. I am not suggesting censorship or McCarthyism. Nazism has been driven from public discourse by the universal acknowledgement that those who adhere to Nazism are barbarians with murder in their hearts. Reasonable, responsible, decent people should assert the same reality in realtionship to Marxism. Marxism is Nazism is mass murder. It's not an accident. Thanks, Mr. Amis for finally demanding a public accounting from the adherents of this ideology of genocide.
Rating:
Summary: A melancholy Martin Amis is still worth reading.
Review: Martin Amis is one of my favorite novelists, but for the past few years he has been feeling in a bad mood, judging from his books. I thought his novels Money, London Fields, Other People, and The Information are comedic classics. Also his short story collection: Heavy Water. (I was less crazy about The Rachel Papers, and Dead Babies, and I haven't gotten around to Einstein's Monsters or his other books of essays and criticism yet.) But in the last few years he has seemed to reject the sublimely hard-hearted joke making of his earlier novels. His father's death, followed by his younger sister a few years later, and the turmoil in his personal life have all understandably put him in a mood where he sometimes seems to think his earlier output was rather too jokey, sarcastic, and not empathetic enough for a mature writer. Koba the Dread (a nickname for Stalin,) is part of the exploration into fascism that Amis started in his novel Time's Arrow, and for Amis fans it is worth adding to one's library. He has certainly not lost his knack for expressing concentrated anger through his prose. Other readers have noted that a more programmatic history of the Soviet Union's many atrocities and inefficiencies should look up writers like (the book's dedicatee,) Robert Conquest. But the book's purpose seems to be to ask why so many western intellectuals forgave communism despite its brutal inefficiencies and shocking cruelty. The question is posed, and then there are a number of short, bitter essays on the bottomless cruelty of Lenin and Stalin that are so damming that the question almost seems beside the point: no explanations could even remotely hope to excuse this wholesale death and degradation of millions of people. I can only guess that things like 40 hour weeks, retirement insurance, maternity leave, all those things that could be called social justice, are not inherently communistic, but right-wing forces in this country and elsewhere struggled (and still struggle,) so hard against even the mildest of them that many western intellectuals put themselves in the "communist" camp just to distance themselves from those in their own society who called even the mildest of social improvements "communism." (It seems to me left-leaning western intellectuals made a really horrible mistake accepting the capitalist-communist dichotomy, but hey-George Orwell is only one man!)
In the last section of Koba the Dread Mr. Amis prints a long letter to his friend Christopher Hitchens, the left-wing journalist. Mr. Hitchens admires the merciless Lenin, (Lenin seems to appeal to a certain sort of political mind. The decidedly right-wing Grover Norquist was said to admire Lenin's quote "Probe for weakness with bayonets," and to have had Lenin's portrait in his house,) and the letter is a long, challenging one. Because Mr. Amis has spent the previous 243 pages excoriating Lenin et al, and because Mr. Hitchens is surely one of those western intellectuals who tried to excuse the inexcusable, Mr. Amis' signing the letter "With Fraternal Love," seems a bit odd. I can only think that for seasoned polemicists this sort of letter is not as unfriendly as it seems.
The last section of the book is "A Letter to My Father's Ghost," in which Mr. Amis speaks to his late father, who started out by being one of those intellectuals the book is concerned with who embraced Soviet communism and ended up by being very decidedly against it. I think Mr. Amis is arguing with his father's memory that the egalitarian goals he was pursuing as a young man are worthwhile, even if communism is not.
I hope this overly long and badly written review does not discourage anyone from reading this generally excellent book, and I hope Martin Amis is able to honor his father's memory by writing the kind of compassionate, yet blackly hilarious prose that even Kingsley Amis' pessimistic view of the world did not prevent him from writing.
Rating: 
Summary: A Book about Freedom
Review: The remarkably elastic Martin Amis this time writes about perhaps the most depressing subject of the Twentieth Century: Stalin. Koba The Dread seems like an attempt to place Stalin next to Hitler; it's a comparison that should be made more often seeing as both believed in genocide as an end to a means and both were clearly "crazy evil" and both had major roles in the history of the last century. It's a bold and courageous comparo because few in the intellectual enclaves of New York or London or elsewhere would probably want to start a discussion about who was the most awful. Saying that Stalin might be more horrible than Hitler is the type of stuff that gets you struck off effete intellectual dinner party lists extremely quickly. Martin - you'll be eating and drinking a lot "donwa' pub" with the likes of John Self and Keith Talent from now on. Get your darts boots on. Say goodbye to those Hillary Clinton-style gigs replete with Californian Chardonnays and Harvard professors. Repeat after me: mine's a lager! A terminal complainer and/or Russian history expert could argue that Koba the Dread is just a précis of the longer works that have already detailed the horrors of the terrors. They'd be mostly right, of course: Koba the Dread is not a history book so much as a book about history - a nasty piece of history that's still probably fresh in the minds of millions of Russians. While the prose gets a little dry in places, the Amis non-fiction style that works so well in his essays is here and there are even moments of quasi-comic relief. Annoyingly for routine readers like me, Amis uses lots of big show-offy words that mean I have to lurch for the dictionary instead of reading the book. And all those footnotes! They are so irritating! But semantics aside, Amis is a big name and his literary fame is likely to help younger readers learn a little about a big event and perhaps initiate forays into some of the writers quoted and cited. Going back to Amis' almost certain upcoming ostracisation from intellectual circles, the book created reminders and echoes of freedom-stealers around the world: certain white South Africans, Castro, the Chinese, the Saudis, etc. There are mini- and even maxi-terrors going on all around the world to this day; the perpetrators should all hang pictures of Stalin on their walls. And even in the United States, there are socialists of varying degrees and assorted colors who created a form of censorship and freedom-robbery called political correctness that's right out of Stalin's playbook. So I'm delighted that a New Yorker regular has, by writing a book about imprisonment, essentially written a book about the vital importance of freedom and what happens when a man and his cronies simply flush it down the toilet - in the name of communisim/spreading the wealth/socialism/whatever. Even the book is a bit intellectual and a bit pompous, Amis pokes all the namby-pamby socialist/liberal democrats/communists/merchants of political correctness in the eye. The message: here's what happens when you lot get some power - it's the end of freedom. In a world where namby-pamby socialist/liberal democrats/communists/merchants of political correctness have complete control over most of the media and the intellectual dinner parties, it's exciting that there's a Martin Amis out there willing to be his own man. The more I think about the premise of the book (and my perspective on it) the more I like it: the subject is vomituous and I may have to quaff Welbutrins for a while to stave off the gulag nightmares, but the courage that Martin Amis displays in telling all the namby-pamby namby-pamby socialist/liberal democrats/communists/merchants of political correctness to get stuffed inspires me. I'm not clever enough to have a mind meld with the author, but in reading Amis' other works, I've always sensed a bit of a soul meld: now I know why.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Comment On Our Ignorance of History
Review: A detailed and accurate description of the horrendous crimes of Stalin is to be found here in Martin Amis's book, dressed up around a a far more dubious proposition - that the West somehow did not know or would not listen to stories about Stalin's terror, and still hasn't processed it. In fact many (and the best) Western historians and politicians have known about these crimes from the begining. As a Soviet Studies student in the 80s and 90s I find it odd to hear it suggested otherwise - if anything, awareness among Kremlinologists of the immensity of Stalin's crimes made them too wary of glasnost and the fall of communism - many believed it to be a trick of the USSR to lure the West into a false sense of security before the Eastern Bloc expanded again - (following the "expansion and coexistence" theories of Harvard's Adam Ulam). What novelist Amis's book really is, is an attempt to soothe the vast majority of people out there who knew and know no history at all - not from any love of communism (!) but simply because they didn't feel knowing ANY history was important (History remains the least favorite subject, at least in American schools). By saying the West would not pay attention to Solzhenitsyn - in fact everyone who cared did - quite a few people, too - lets off the hook those individuals who thought it irrelevant to know any history - their personal responsibility for remaining ignorant is ignored, papered over. Amis's championing of his father's old friend Robert Conquest can be nothing more than an act of filial piety - Conquest was considered a joke in the Soviet Studies profession for his continually claiming he was the only one who had written about the crimes of Stalin, when, in fact, many (actual) historians had done so - E. H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Leonard Schapiro, to name a few - his false denigrating of his collegues and his childish self-aggrandizement understandably made professionals contemptuous. Conquest was also dismissed due to his own advanced political extremism which didn't differ that much from Stalin's in intensity - only (ironically) in ability (most Sovietologists dislike the USSR precisely because its political extremism led to so many crimes). Amis's clouting of the mostly unimportant and irrelevant New Left seems like hitting a butterfly with a sledgehammer - reminding me of the way conservatives denounced the anemic American Communist Party in the 50s when it was of no political significance whatsoever. If anything, the mistake of USSR watchers' was taking the Soviets too seriously at the end - to the point that many "experts" were caught with their pants down when the USSR collapsed, saying to the last moment it wouldn't. By concentrating on the New Left, Amis has created a false impression that our understanding of Russia's true nature was somehow the New Left's to decide - ludicrous! I'd like to think the average citizen who has been up till now - in a post 9/11 world - ignorant of history, will be big enough to admit his or her own need to redress the balance by reading more books - I think most responsible readers will, rather than hide behind blaming irrelevant factors. A good way to learn about the USSR and the crimes of Stalin is through the books of historians like E. H. Carr, Leonard Schapiro and a host of others.
Rating:
Summary: Another neocon who had the courage to reflect
Review: This book is a catharsis for Martin Amis, son of neo-conservative Kingsley Amis, who questions (notably Christopher Hitchens) the continued ignorance of his former comrades with regard to their demands for government mandated "social justice." This theme sandwiches a chronological depiction of the crimes of Lenin, Stalin, and their Bolshevik chums against the citizens of Russia and its buffer states. With regard to making the reader retch it's on a par with "the Black Book of Communism. This intellectual journey from "True Believer" to political agnostic is one outlined in "Twilight of the Intellectuals" by Hilton Kramer as well as in a slew of other well-chronicled tomes mostly written by formerly Left-wing Jewish intellectuals (Himmelfarb, Krystol, etc) who reside in the environs of greater Manhattan. Amis abley follows in this tradition. One can see a similar variation in the contemporary schism which has developed between Jews supporting Israel and those supporting the Palestinians. The looming question which might possibly be resolved through future findings of the Human Genome project is what causes otherwise intelligent and gifted people to block out new information which might possibly confict with their world views? As Saul Bellow opined, "a great deal of intellect can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion runs deep". This condition is what has allowed so many intellectuals in the West to continue with their delusions about Communism in the face of the overwhelming evidence that its societal implementation into public policy has repeatedly ended in disaster. Would the world not be a better place if the pharmeceutical industry could discover a drug to ameliorate this most heinous of human conditions? Amis is another in a growing group of such intellectuals who questions why none of those responsible for perpetrating such horrific crimes against humanity, in the name of social justice, have not themselves been brought to justice? Where is the equivalent of the Neuremburg trials for the former Communist leaders and their apparatchiks? This is Amis's question. To this end he relates his discussions with his friend Mr. Hitchens and the inability of said Christopher to even admit to the man-made famines in the Ukraine in the 30's (see "Harvest of Sorrow" by Robert Conquest) as more than "shortages"? We might note that we are seeing an identical famine unfold in present day Zimbabwe with Robert Mugabe playing the role of Lenin / Stalin. Where is the outcry from Leftist intellectuals in the West who purport to be for social justice? Here's hoping that an increasing number of intellectuals will have the courage to undergo the torments of agonizing self reappraisal by emulating the revelations of Martin Amis. And, if you don't know the story of the Bolsheviks this book is a good place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Hardly impressive
Review: Only a leftist could have a book published in 2002 asking why no one knew of the horrific events which took place during the Russian Communist era. Apparently for such a literary person Amis never bothered to pick up even one book by Alexander Solzhenitsyn or other critics of the Soviet Union. Plenty of people were quite aware of the atrocities occurring in the Soviet Union *as they were occurring* and it was common knowledge in the 1950s in the West of the pogroms, jailings and killings. Read some Solzhenitsyn if you want a true study of the mindset that created the horrors of Russian communism.
Rating:
Summary: Stalin and the Terror
Review: This book is astounding. Yes, it has for long been quite clear that Stalin was a monster, responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million. Amis's book forces one to contemplate the enigma of the legacy of Stalin in particular and Bolshevism in general. Why did Western intellectuals act as Soviet apologists for so long? Why are Stalin and Hitler viewed so differently through the lens of recent history? Why is laughter intrinsic to the "black face of bolshevism"? What are the relative sins of Lenin and Trotsky? All of these themes are examined by the skillful pen of Amis. This book is all that it should be; informative, provocative, and eminently readable.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping Literary Biography of the Worst Human Being, Ever
Review: When Robert Conquest released the second, post-glasnost edition of his monumental work on the Stalinist horrors, "The Great Terror" he was asked if he wanted to give it a new title. He replied, "How about, 'I Told You So, You F-----g Fools!'" That is one of the more darkly amusing stories told by Martin Amis in this new book. Amis' goal seems to be to translate Conquest and Solzhenitsyn into terms comprehensible to the benighted intellectual classes of Britain and America. They were completely mistaken about *everything* related to Stalin and communism, and Amis wants to know why. (The answer could be the always-present human lust for Utopia that is found, ironically, even in William Blake's great unofficial second national anthem of England, "Jerusalem.") Amis' great gifts as a novelist are his supple, seductive style and his sure instinct for black humor, both of which are deployed to great effect in this biography/memoir. Some things are just so awful that the only response is knowing laughter: Amis writes that Stalin's life was not a tragedy like "Hamlet", but a dark farce like "Titus Andronicus" or something very Russian written by Gogol. Amis immerses us in the sheer awfulness of the times--I really can't think of another book, besides "The Gulag Archipelago", that so vividly conveys what happened. And the end of the book, Amis the hipster nihilist of previous books, finds himself with a wife, small children, and a dead father and sister. He grapples toward a new, mature understanding of tragedy that might include a glimmer of faith. "One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic", said Koba the Dread. Amis' book is an attempt to mourn the 20 million dead victims of Stalin, one by one.
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