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Stalin’s Scribe
- Literature, Ambition, and Survival; The Life of Mikhail Sholokhov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
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Publisher's summary
A masterful and definitive biography of one of the most misunderstood and controversial writers in Russian literature
Mikhail Sholokhov is arguably one of the most contentious recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature. As a young man, Sholokhov’s epic novel, Quiet Don, became an unprecedented overnight success.
Stalin’s Scribe is the first biography of a man who was once one of the Soviet Union’s most prominent political figures. Thanks to the opening of Russia’s archives, Brian Boeck discovers that Sholokhov’s official Soviet biography is actually a tangled web of legends, half-truths, and contradictions. Boeck examines the complex connection between an author and a dictator, revealing how a Stalinist courtier became an ideological acrobat and consummate politician in order to stay in favor and remain relevant after the dictator’s death.
Stalin’s Scribe is remarkable biography that both reinforces and clashes with our understanding of the Soviet system. It reveals a Sholokhov who is bold, uncompromising, and sympathetic - and reconciles him with the vindictive and mean-spirited man described in so many accounts of late Soviet history.
Shockingly, at the height of the terror, which claimed over a million lives, Sholokhov became a member of the most minuscule subset of the Soviet Union’s population - the handful of individuals whom Stalin personally intervened to save.
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This is the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin from his birth to the October Revolution of 1917, a panoramic and often chilling account of how an impoverished, idealistic youth from the provinces of tsarist Russia was transformed into a cunning and fearsome outlaw who would one day become one of the 20th century's most ruthless dictators. In this monumental book, Ronald Grigor Suny sheds light on the least understood years of Stalin's career, bringing to life the turbulent world in which he lived and the extraordinary historical events that shaped him.
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Great
- By Anonymous User on 02-05-23
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Goering
- The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader
- By: Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In Goering, Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel use firsthand testimonies and a variety of historical documents to tell the story of a monster lurking in Hitler's shadows. After rising through the ranks of the German army, Hermann Goering became Hitler's right hand man and was hand-picked to head the Luftwaffe, one of history's most feared fighting forces. As he rose in power, though, Goering became disillusioned and was eventually shunned from Hitler's inner circle.
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From Fighter Pilot Ace to Cartoon Villain
- By aaron on 03-27-21
By: Roger Manvell, and others
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The Invention of Russia
- From Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War
- By: Arkady Ostrovsky
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The end of Communism and breakup of the Soviet Union was a time of euphoria around the world, but Russia today is violently anti-American and dangerously nationalistic. So how did we go from the promise of those days to the autocratic police state of Putin's new Russia? The Invention of Russia reaches back to the darkest days of the Cold War to tell the story of the fight for the soul of a nation.
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Sad Story of Russia's Abandonment of Liberalism
- By Amazon Customer on 10-03-16
By: Arkady Ostrovsky
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Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris
- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 28 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his thirty-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the indigent to uncontested rule over the German nation that had tried and rejected democracy in the crippling aftermath of World War I.
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The heart of evil
- By Mike From Mesa on 01-20-14
By: Ian Kershaw
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Stalin
- New Biography of a Dictator
- By: Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Nora Seligman Favorov - translator
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
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This essential biography, by the author most deeply familiar with the vast archives of the Soviet era, offers an unprecedented, fine-grained portrait of Stalin, the man and dictator. Without mythologizing Stalin as either benevolent or an evil genius, Khlevniuk resolves numerous controversies about specific events in the dictator's life while assembling many hundreds of previously unknown letters, memos, reports, and diaries into a comprehensive, compelling narrative of a life that altered the course of world history.
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Loved it, but wouldn't want to live it
- By Neil on 01-12-20
By: Oleg V. Khlevniuk, and others
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Lenin on the Train
- By: Catherine Merridale
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In April 1917, as Tsar Nicholas II's abdication sent shockwaves across war-torn Europe, the future leader of the Bolshevik revolution, Vladimir Lenin, was far away, exiled in Zurich. To lead the revolt, Lenin needed to return to Petrograd immediately. But to get there, he would have to cross Germany, which meant accepting help from the deadliest of Russia's adversaries and betraying his homeland.
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Deteriorates into Unhinged Lenin-Bashing
- By Ike Nahem on 03-18-19
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Goebbels: A Biography
- By: Peter Longerich, Alan Bance - translator, Jeremy Noakes - translator, and others
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 28 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In life and in his grisly family suicide, Goebbels was one of Hitler's most loyal acolytes. Though powerful in the party and in wartime Germany, Longerich's Goebbels is a man dogged by insecurities and consumed by his fierce adherence to the Nazi cause. Longerich engages and challenges the careful self-portrait that Goebbels left behind in his diaries, and, as he delves deep into the mind of Hitler's master propagandist, Longerich discovers firsthand how the Nazi message was conceived. This complete portrait of the man behind the message is sure to become a standard for historians and students of the Holocaust for years to come.
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Excellent Account of the Private Goebbels, But...
- By Derek on 05-29-15
By: Peter Longerich, and others
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The Unfathomable Ascent
- How Hitler Came to Power
- By: Peter Ross Range
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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On the night of January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler leaned out of a spotlit window of the Reich chancellery in Berlin, bursting with joy. The moment seemed unbelievable, even to Hitler. After an improbable political journey that came close to faltering on many occasions, his march to power had finally succeeded. While the path of Hitler's rise has been told in books covering larger portions of his life, no previous work has focused solely on his eight-year climb to rule: 1925-1933.
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The best account of Hitler’s rise to power.
- By Deal W. Hudson on 08-26-20
By: Peter Ross Range
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Stalin, Volume I
- Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928
- By: Stephen Kotkin
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 38 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Volume One of Stalin begins and ends in January 1928 as Stalin boards a train bound for Siberia, about to embark upon the greatest gamble of his political life. He is now the ruler of the largest country in the world, but a poor and backward one, far behind the great capitalist countries in industrial and military power, encircled on all sides. In Siberia, Stalin conceives of the largest program of social reengineering ever attempted.
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Excellent Book But First Time Listener Beware
- By Nostromo on 03-23-15
By: Stephen Kotkin
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Appeasement
- Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War
- By: Tim Bouverie
- Narrated by: John Sessions
- Length: 22 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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On a wet afternoon in September 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stepped off an airplane and announced that his visit to Hitler had averted the greatest crisis in recent memory. It was, he later assured the crowd in Downing Street, "peace for our time." Less than a year later, Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began. Appeasement is a groundbreaking history of the disastrous years of indecision, failed diplomacy, and parliamentary infighting that enabled Hitler's domination of Europe.
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I cannot tolerate the narrator
- By DrBCFR on 06-05-19
By: Tim Bouverie
What listeners say about Stalin’s Scribe
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Rich
- 06-17-19
'Quiet Don' was His Talisman
"Literature cannot be judged by courts... ideas can only be combated with ideas, not camps and jails." --Lidiia Chukovskaia
I read 'Scribe' in the hopes of learning more about Quiet Don, Sholokov, and its controversial position in world literature. 'Stalin's Scribe' covers the the controversial position very well, Sholokov pretty well, and Quiet Don (somewhat surprisingly) very little.
I really liked the primer/abridged history on the Soviet Union (I can't imagine a book like this not covering this topic). I really liked learning how Sholokov worked the system, battling conflicts of his love of the Don and his supposed writing career with necessary loyalties to Moscow. Without question his ability to walk this decades-long tightrope would have been hampered (if not impossible) without his Quiet Don talisman.
This book is very political, and needs more details about Sholokov's early life/family life and the history/inspriation of the characters and plots of Quiet Don itself (both plagarism and unique aurthorship is recognized by Boeck) to really present a full picture. 'Scribe' did not grip me as tightly as 'The Zhivago Affair' for these reasons, combined with the fact that protagonists on the run (e.g. Pasternak: tracked by the government, extramarital affair, etc.) simply hold your attention more than the alternative (e.g. Sholokov: protected by the government, struggling alchoholic).
'Scribe' is a challenging, but well-researched read. If you're looking for a entry point into Russian literature, start with Doctor Zhivago/The Zhivago Affair. For those with an already-developed love for Russian lit, 'Scribe' (and for that matter: 'Quiet Don', aka 'And Quiet Flows the Don' + 'The Don Flows Home to the Sea') is certainly worth your time.
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- BG
- 04-21-24
Very interesting biography
I enjoyed the entirety of this book. wow! The writing, the history and narration was superb. I decided to buy the Audible version of "Quiet Flows the Don" after reading this biography. I also rented the 1953? movie version.
The author is a scholar on Russian history, but also I must say a very good writer. I listened every moment available until finished. Really enjoyable. I recommend highly.
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- Michael D. Stone
- 06-28-22
Very good ….. not ‘great’.
Well done, just not the most interesting subject. Narration quite good. Lots of interesting incidental factoids
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- Lee
- 01-05-20
Great Biography
My favorite novel is Quiet Flows the Don. I've read it in both English and Russian. Admittedly, I was probably predisposed to like this book since it is one of the few books written in English about Sholokhov. I think that Boeck did an excellent job placing Sholokhov within the time in which he lived, with various intrigues, etc, which were common in the Soviet period. He also gives a full and balanced look at the plagiarism controversy that surrounded Sholokhov's best work.
The narrator likewise does a good job. I've found that in listening to non-fiction, the narrator makes all the difference. Rudnicki was definitely up to the challenge. As an added bonus, he's also narrated a version of Quiet Flows the Don which came out in August 2019. So if you like this book, check that one out.
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- Jason G
- 10-02-21
A quick read with a good reader.
Reader has a very deep voice at high speed. Not many affectations. As with all audiobooks on Russia or Russian topics, I wished Audible would give a PDF of the characters. (It took me a while to find out how to spell Alexander Fadeyev and look him up.)
Story is VERY brisk. The Stalin years are obviously the focus, but the 1960s flew by. The author goes through three Soviet leaders in about a page. I wish there had been more background on the machinations with how Sholokhov win the Nobel Prize. He was hopeful to win in 1956 but then a few short chapters later he won it in 1965. The narrative arc was missing.
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- I. D.
- 03-28-21
Very well written and researched biography
I liked this book a lot. I knew very little about Sholokhov, having read Quiet Don only recently. Being a fan of Soviet history, especially the Stalin era, I was pleased to find details that not even Stalin's biographers like Kotkin and Montefiore mention in their works.
It's totally fascinating to me how Stalin amidst the famine, purges and even the WWII found the time to micromanage.
Stefan Rudnicki is a superb narrator
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- Serviette
- 10-15-20
Death of Stalin
Boeck documents the intricacies of survival in an autocracy — where extremist political narratives shift like sand dunes in the Sahara. Solokov is a powerful survivor who risks it all to fight for saving the innocent and getting the truth out. So, it’s a bit of a primer for anyone attempting to survive America in 2020.
I’ve seen Death of Stalin, the absurd movie — and am thrilled by this book’s detailed historical accounts of many of the same characters.
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- Daniel D.
- 11-19-22
Great book about Soviet’s most well known writers
Scholokhov used to be a household name in the eastern block. This book shows his troubled story, which is inevitably following the fate of the Soviet Union
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