From one of our greatest contemporary historians of Russia and author of the bestselling Lenin, Robert Service's Stalin brings us closer than ever before to the enigma of this terrifying, fascinating and complex figure Drawing on a wealth of unexplored material - available for the first time since the collapse of the former Soviet Union - Robert Service's biography of Stalin is the most authoritative yet published. It concentrates not simply on Stalin as dedicated bureaucrat or serial political killer, but on a fuller assessment of his formative interactions in Georgia, his youthful revolutionary activism, his relationship with Lenin, with his family, and with his party members.