Can we ever understand the mind of a mass murderer and dictator?
我们能够理解一个杀人如麻的刽子手和独裁者的想法吗？
The question was raised by Martin Amis at a recent FT event when talking about his latest novel on the Holocaust, The Zone of Interest. In the case of Hitler, Amis argued, it was near-impossible to grasp what lay behind the Nazi leader’s crimes. The killing of millions of innocents for no reason other than blind hatred hovers at the outer edges of – if not beyond – human comprehension. Amis referred to the writings of Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz, who was told by one camp guard: “Hier ist kein warum” (There is no why here). “[T]here is no rationality in the Nazi hatred; it is a hate that is not in us; it is outside man . . . ” Levi wrote.
最近在英国《金融时报》举办的一次活动中，马丁•埃米斯(Martin Amis)在谈及他关于纳粹大屠杀的最新小说《利害之畿》(The Zone of Interest)时，提出了这个问题。埃米斯认为，就希特勒而言，几乎不可能理解是什么使这位纳粹头子犯下诸多罪行。只因为盲目的憎恨就屠杀数百万无辜的人，这若非超出人类理解能力之外，也至少达到了人类理解能力的极限。埃米斯提到了奥斯维辛集中营(Auschwitz)幸存者普里莫•莱维(Primo Levi)的著作。集中营的一位看守曾告诉莱维：“这儿没有为什么(Hier ist kein warum)”。莱维写道，“纳粹的憎恨没有理性可言；这种憎恨不属于人类的心灵；它已超出了人性的界限……”

That problem, however, becomes a lot more complex when dealing with the other mass-murdering tyrant of Europe’s 20th century: Stalin. Amis suggested that it was possible to understand Stalin’s actions, no matter how monstrous his regime may have been. His hatred was inside man.
然而，谈及20世纪另一个手上沾满鲜血的欧洲暴君斯大林(Stalin)，问题就变得复杂多了。埃米斯认为，不论斯大林政权如何残暴，理解斯大林的行为还是可能的。他的憎恨并没有脱离人的范畴。
Stephen Kotkin’s monumental biography of Stalin could be presented as Exhibit A for the Amis thesis. Arguably, Kotkin knows as much about Stalin as any historian: he has already written an important work on Stalinism viewed from the ground up and has taught Russian history at Princeton University for many years. It is a measure of Kotkin’s powers of research and explanation that Stalin’s decisions can almost always be understood within the framework of his ideology and the context of his times – at least during the early days of power covered by this first book in a projected three-volume biography. There was more often than not a Why in Stalin’s Russia.
斯蒂芬•科特金(Stephen Kotkin)这部规模宏大的传记《斯大林》(Stalin)可以作为埃米斯观点的最佳佐证。可以说，科特金对斯大林的了解不输给任何历史学家：他已经写过一本探究斯大林主义来龙去脉的重要著作，并且多年来一直在普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)教授俄罗斯历史。归功于科特金出色的研究和解释能力，斯大林的所有抉择几乎都可以在他的意识形态框架下和他所处的时代背景下得到解释——至少第一卷叙述的斯大林掌权早期是这样（传记计划用三卷完成）。在斯大林主政下的苏联，事情在多数情况下是有原因可循的。
That is not to say that Stalin’s story is anything but fantastical: how a Georgian cobbler’s son born in an outpost of the Tsarist empire could help shatter the shackles of a 300-year dynasty, emerge as the supreme leader of one-sixth of the world’s landmass, and reshape the destiny of millions. Nor is it to deny the irrationality of the entire Leninist project: that violence, murder and mass repression are permissible today to build a more peaceful and just tomorrow. As Kotkin puts it, Stalin “intensified the insanity inherent in Leninism” – but his actions were mostly sanctified by that ideology.
这并不是说斯大林的人生算不上了不起：他出生于沙皇俄国边缘地带的格鲁吉亚，父亲是个鞋匠，而他居然推动俄罗斯摆脱了帝俄持续300年的桎梏，他自己成为一个占世界六分之一面积的国家的最高领袖，改写了数百万人的命运。本书也不是要否认整个列宁主义事业的不合理之处：现在的暴力、杀戮和大规模镇压是可以容许的，只要是为了构建更和平、更公正的未来。正如科特金所写的，斯大林“强化了列宁主义中固有的荒谬之处”，但这种意识形态却基本上让他的行为神圣化了。
Soviet historians used to present their past as the onward march of vast, impersonal forces (albeit with some erroneous detours). But Kotkin, building on the recent western historiography of Russia, emphasises the role of accident in Stalin’s times and the primacy of human actors.
苏联历史学家将过去的历史描述成各种巨大的客观力量推动的结果（尽管错误地走了一些弯路）。但科特金以近年来西方眼中的俄罗斯历史为基础，强调斯大林时期一些偶然性事件的作用，认为人是其中最重要的因素。
In this account, had Lenin and Trotsky been killed early in 1917 – in the same way that Germany’s Communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were assassinated in 1919 – there would have been no October revolution. “The Bolshevik putsch could have been prevented by a pair of bullets”, Kotkin writes. Had Stalin died of tuberculosis in the early 1920s then the Soviet Union would not have been brutally frogmarched through the collectivisation of agriculture and forced industrialisation.
从这个角度出发，如果列宁和托洛茨基(Trotsky)在1917年初，就像德国共产主义领袖卡尔•李卜克内西(Karl Liebknecht)和罗莎•卢森堡(Rosa Luxemburg)在1919年那样遇刺身亡，十月革命(October revolution)就不会发生了。“两颗子弹就可能阻止布尔什维克(Bolshevik)暴动，”科特金写道。如果斯大林在20世纪20年代就死于结核病，那么苏联就不会被野蛮地驱赶着被迫完成了农业集体化和工业化。
So much has been written about Stalin that one might doubt there is much new to say about the man. Library shelves groan with heavy tomes on the Russian revolutionary. But history, like science, advances one obituary at a time.
关于斯大林的著作如此之多，以至于我们可能会怀疑关于他的书已经写不出多少新意。关于俄罗斯革命的大部头著作汗牛充栋。但是和科学一样，历史也是随着每次讣告的发表而一步步缓慢前进的。
Kotkin has burrowed deep into the archives that opened following the collapse of the Soviet Union and has absorbed much of the recent Russian research on Stalin. His book stretches to almost 1,000 pages; his compendious notes and index make up close to 20 per cent of the length. Describing his work as a marriage of biography and history, Kotkin subjects our previous understanding of Stalin to searing scrutiny and finds much of it wanting.
科特金深入挖掘了苏联解体后解封的档案，并吸收了近年来俄罗斯有关斯大林的大部分研究成果。他这卷书将近1000页，其中简明的注解和索引几乎占到篇幅的20%。科特金称自己的书是传记和历史著作的结合体，他将人们之前对斯大林的理解置于放大镜下审视，发现大部分理解存在问题。
With a ferocious determination worthy of his subject, the author debunks many of the myths to have encrusted themselves around Stalin. First, Kotkin rubbishes the notion that Stalin was some kind of revolutionary superman, as later portrayed by Soviet propagandists. We learn all about Stalin’s human impulses and medical complaints, and his mass of personal contradictions. Stalin was “an uncanny fusion of zealous Marxist convictions and great-power sensibilities, of sociopathic tendencies and exceptional diligence and resolve”.
带着和他笔下人物一样的决绝，作者批驳了许多围绕着斯大林的误区。首先，一些人认为斯大林是某种革命超人（正如后来苏联宣传的那样），而科特金称这是胡说八道。在科特金的书中，我们看到了斯大林作为人的冲动、病痛，和大量自我矛盾之处。斯大林身上“诡异地融合了狂热的马克思主义信仰、强烈的权力欲、反社会倾向、以及异乎常人的勤奋和毅力”。
Kotkin is equally dismissive of efforts to explain Stalin’s lust for power through cod psychology. Some historians have made much of the beatings that Stalin endured during his childhood, his early banditry and his sexual conquests. But Kotkin argues that Stalin’s childhood was no more traumatic than those of others of his time. When Stalin was born, the average lifespan for a Russian was just 30 years. His worldview was shaped more by the revolutionary mentality encapsulated by Sergei Nechaev: “Everything that allows the triumph of the revolution is moral.”
有人试图通过伪心理学解释斯大林的权力欲，科特金对这种解释同样不屑一顾。一些历史学家在斯大林童年时期遭受的毒打、他早期的匪徒生涯以及他的风流韵事上面大做文章。但科特金认为，斯大林童年时期遭受的痛苦和他的同时代人并无二致。斯大林出生时，俄罗斯人的平均寿命仅为30年。斯大林的世界观更大程度上是由谢尔盖•涅恰耶夫(Sergei Nechaev)概括的革命思维所塑造的：“一切有利于革命取得胜利的事情都是道德的。”
Finally, and most substantively, Kotkin dismisses the Trotskyite theory that Stalin betrayed the revolution. In Kotkin’s view, Stalin was Lenin’s faithful pupil. One of the few constants in Stalin’s life was his faith in – and adherence to – Marxist-Leninist theory. A fellow prisoner in a Baku jail in 1908 described Stalin: “Looking at that low and small head, you had the feeling that if you pricked it, the whole of Karl Marx’s Capital would come hissing out of it like gas from a container.”
最后，也是最具实质意义的一点是，科特金驳斥了托洛茨基关于斯大林背叛了革命的理论。在科特金看来，斯大林是列宁忠诚的学生。斯大林一生中为数不多的始终坚守的东西就是对马列主义的信仰和忠诚。1908年与斯大林一同被关押在巴库监狱的一名狱友曾这样描述斯大林：“看着那低垂的小小的头颅，你就会有一种感觉，如果用针刺一下，卡尔•马克思(Karl Marx)的整部《资本论》(Capital)都会像瓦斯从瓦斯罐里漏出来一样，嘶嘶地从里面跑出来。”
The disciple was true to his teacher. In Kotkin’s view, “Pitiless class warfare formed the core of Lenin’s thought.” Or, as Maxim Gorky wrote, “His [Lenin’s] love looked far ahead, through the mists of hatred.”
斯大林这个学生忠于他的老师。在科特金看来，“残酷无情的阶级斗争组成了列宁思想的核心”。或者就像马克西姆•高尔基(Maxim Gorky)所写的那样，“他（列宁）的爱，穿透了仇恨的迷雾，望向遥远的未来”。
A similar impulse was evident in Stalin’s decision in 1928 to attack Russia’s richer peasants – or kulaks – and collectivise agriculture. This action, which could only be explained within the “straitjacket of Communist ideology” according to Kotkin, led to the deaths of between 5m and 7m in a horrific famine. Had Stalin’s only concern been to amass personal power – as some have it – he would not have launched such a ruinous campaign. “Right through mass rebellion, mass starvation, cannibalism, the destruction of the country’s livestock, and unprecedented political destabilisation, Stalin did not flinch,” Kotkin writes. That tragic episode in Soviet history is the focus of Volume Two.
类似的冲动也明显体现在斯大林在1928年作出的抉择中：打击富农并推行农业集体化。这个造成500万到700万人死于可怕大饥荒的举动，在科特金看来，只能用“共产主义意识形态的思想桎梏”来解释。如果斯大林像一些人那样只顾谋权，他就不会发动这样一场毁灭性的运动。“在大规模叛乱、大规模饥荒、人吃人现象、全国范围的屠宰家畜潮、以及前所未有的政治不稳定面前，斯大林还是没有退缩，”科特金写道。苏联历史上这悲剧的一幕是第二卷的重点。
So keen is Kotkin to explain the historical context in which Stalin rose to power that the main protagonist is – at times – strangely absent from the narrative in Volume One. But by the end of the book, Stalin has emerged as the dictator of the Kremlin and will doubtless dominate proceedings throughout the rest of this magnificent biography. This reviewer, at least, is already impatient to read the next two volumes for their author’s mastery of detail and the swagger of his judgments.
科特金急于解释斯大林掌权过程中所处的历史背景，以至于在第一卷中，斯大林本人有时会从叙述中消失，这显得有些怪异。但在这卷书的末尾，斯大林已经成为执掌克里姆林宫的独裁者，毫无疑问将是这部宏伟传记接下来叙述的主角。至少，作者驾轻就熟的细节把控和自信的论断，已经让笔者本人迫不及待地想要阅读接下来的两卷。