Even-Stefan

FICTION The Red Monarch: Scenes from the Life of Stalin By Yuri Krotkov Norton, 253 pp., $10.95 EVEN-STEFAN D. KEITH MANO

Novelists are authoritarian; also snobbish. Though their genre has been, traditionally, a utensil of realism, nonetheless super-powerful, -rich, -attractive, -talented characters show up on the set more often than not. You’d fetch less trouble getting into Studio 54, than into modern fiction. And the novelist, by temperament, by the Realpolitik that comes with authorship, will exert totalitarian influence over his voteless constituency. Josef Stalin, for instance, made up a blockbuster piece of fiction called Soviet Russia. Some truth got left in: for those who like the roman a clef But 86.7 per cent was imperial imagination. It’s just even-Stefan then then Yuri Krotkov should turn the table of contents on his super-powerful (and super-improbable but true) character, Josip Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, a/k/a Stalin. St a l in obsessed Russia. Personality, in a dictator, is more affecting than, say, personality in a president. Somehow you care about who-ness when that Who might transfer you next week from Gorki Street to Vorkuta-by-the-Arctic, or from head accountant to head ice-brick layer. Krotkov (he never met Stalin) will say in his preface: “. . . for 35 years I lived with this man, day and night, voluntarily and involuntarily, thinking about him and knowing that my destiny depended on him and his political reasoning.” One can ignore a Carter. With Stalin, political awareness was wonderfully enhanced: the awareness that ants have for an anteater. Anyhow, because we know so little about Stalin-at-Home—and, conversely, so much that is apocryphal—he has become well-nigh folkloric: like Merlin or Till Eulenspiegel or things that go bump (on the door) at night.