Readers plunging into Stephen Kotkin’s “Stalin: Paradoxes of Power” expecting a detailed dissection of the cobbler’s son and seminarian from Georgia who evolved into the monster called Stalin may be disconcerted to find that, as a boy called Iosif Dzhugashvili (Jughashvili in this book), he plays a relatively minor role in early chapters.
阅读斯蒂芬·科特金(Stephen Kotkin)的《斯大林：权力的悖论》之时，读者可能会期望本书详尽剖析一位格鲁吉亚鞋匠的儿子与神学院学生如何变成了名为斯大林的魔鬼，但他们会不安地发现，儿时的约瑟夫·朱加什维利（Iosif Dzhugashvili，本书中称他为“Jughashvili”），也就是小斯大林，在本书前几章中占的分量并不重。

The narrative focuses largely on the disintegration of czarist Russia. What we do learn about the life of Soso, as Stalin’s family referred to him, is served up as a relatively acceptable childhood given the time and place, denouncing the popular Freudian analyses that spot early evidence of a psychopath stemming from his absentee father, physical defects, beatings, religious education or doting mother.
叙事主要集中在沙皇俄国解体时期。我们会看到，处在那个时代和地点，索索（Soso，家里人这样称呼小斯大林）的童年时光相对来说是可以接受的，这本书没有从他缺席的父亲、身体缺陷、挨打、宗教教育背景或溺爱的母亲等背景中寻找精神变态的早期证据，驳斥了流行的弗洛伊德式解析。
But “Stalin” is far more than the story of the man. “Paradoxes of Power,” even at almost 1,000 pages, is only the first of three volumes that, in Mr. Kotkin’s somewhat understated explanation, tell “the story of Russia’s power in the world and Stalin’s power in Russia.” Mr. Kotkin’s stunningly ambitious project is nothing less than to write an exhaustive history of Russia and the world around it, from the collapse of the czarist empire through the end of World War II. The first volume ends in 1928 on the eve of the savage collectivization of Russia’s peasant agriculture, with fascism rising to the west.
但是“斯大林”的故事并不是关于一个人的故事。《权力的悖论》大约一千页，不过是三卷本的第一卷；在这一卷里，科特金用略有些平淡的口吻，讲述了“俄罗斯在世界上的权力与斯大林在俄罗斯的权力”。科特金的目标极具野心，相当于要写出俄罗斯与俄罗斯周遭世界的详尽历史，从沙皇帝国的崩溃到“二战”的结束。第一卷止于1928年，残酷的俄罗斯农民经济集体化即将拉开序幕，与此同时，法西斯主义正在西方崛起。
It becomes immediately clear that Mr. Kotkin, a professor of history at Princeton, has done prodigious research, not only among the troves of scholarly works about Stalin but also in the archives that have become accessible since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And while the often intimidating torrent of fact and detail will tax the general reader, there are enough juicy details, colorful personalities and anecdotes to keep the story moving at a lively pace. Ministers of the doomed czarist order, and Nicholas II himself, come to life here, as do peripheral figures like Kaiser Wilhelm II and Benito Mussolini, and, of course, the main figures: Lenin, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Trotsky and the other young Bolshevik zealots who somehow navigated through the rubble of czarism and war to create a revolutionary state, only to hand it in the end to Stalin.
科特金是普林斯顿的历史学教授，显然他进行了大量研究工作，不仅研究了关于斯大林丰富的学术资料，也研究了许多自苏联解体后公诸于世的档案。虽然大量令人望而生畏的事实和细节可能会令普通读者感到疲惫，但书中也充满有趣的细节、丰富多彩的人物个性和趣闻轶事，令故事保持生动活泼。穷途末路的沙皇政府中的大臣们，以及尼古拉斯二世(Nicholas II)本人都被刻画得栩栩如生，德皇威廉二世(Kaiser Wilhelm II)和贝尼托·墨索里尼这些边缘人物也很生动；更不用说列宁(Lenin)、菲利克斯·捷尔任斯基(Felix Dzerzhinsky)、托洛茨基(Trotsky)这些主角，还有那些年轻的布尔什维克热心分子们，他们在沙皇俄国与战争的废墟中跋涉，缔造出一个革命的国家，但最终却落入斯大林之手。
Sometimes Mr. Kotkin’s efforts to entertain get a bit out of line, as when he discusses Stalin’s reputation as a ladies’ man with a crass reference to his sex organ. More important, he is not shy about assailing what he regards as false interpretations by other historians. His Stalin is not a disciple who deviates from Lenin; he is Lenin’s true disciple, in pitiless class warfare, in the inability to compromise, and, above all, in unshakable ideological conviction. Lenin’s “Testament,” which questioned Stalin’s ability to govern the Soviet Union, plays a major part in the maneuvering of his rivals to block his ascent, but Mr. Kotkin leans toward the theory that the document was a forgery, possibly by Lenin’s wife.
有时候科特金娱乐读者的努力有点出格了，他谈起斯大林有“大众情人”之称的时候，粗鲁地谈起了斯大林的性器官。更重要的是，如果他认为其他历史学家的解读是错误的，便会毫不迟疑地对之进行攻击。他笔下的斯大林并不是列宁门下离经叛道的学徒，而是列宁的真正传人，继承了列宁无情的阶级斗争与毫不妥协的态度，最重要的是，继承了列宁毫不动摇的意识形态理念。列宁生前的一份“遗嘱”质疑了斯大林统治苏联的能力，这成了斯大林的对手阻挠他上位的重要武器，但科特金倾向于认为这份文件是伪造的，很可能是出自列宁的妻子之手。
There is little equivocation in Mr. Kotkin’s judgments. Scholars who argue collectivization was necessary to force Russian peasants into a modern state are “dead wrong.” The conclusion by the British historian E. H. Carr that Stalin was a product of circumstances, and not the other way around, is “utterly, eternally wrong.” On the contrary, it is one of Mr. Kotkin’s major theses that Stalin “reveals how, on extremely rare occasions, a single individual’s decisions can radically transform an entire country’s political and socioeconomic structures, with global repercussions.” Or, as he puts it in a more graphic passage: “The Bolshevik putsch could have been prevented by a pair of bullets” — one for Lenin and one for Stalin. (In fact, there was a would-be-assassin’s bullet lodged in Lenin’s shoulder, and poisoning by its lead was raised as a possible reason for his medical problems.)
科特金的判断中绝少模棱两可的成分。有些学者认为，集体化是迫使俄罗斯农民进入现代化必不可少的手段，他说这些学者“彻底错了”。英国历史学家E·H·卡尔(E.H. Carr)认为是时代环境造就了斯大林，而不是斯大林造就了时代环境，科特金说这个结论“完全、绝对大错特错”。相反，科特金的主要结论之一就是，斯大林“解释了在极少的情况下，个人的决定可以剧烈地改变整个国家的政治与社会经济结构，并带来全球性后果”。或者如他在更生动的一段话中所写的，“其实两颗子弹就足以防止布尔什维克的暴动”——一颗给列宁，一颗给斯大林（事实上，列宁曾在一次暗杀中肩膀中弹，后来又因子弹患上铅中毒，可能导致了他后来的一系列健康问题）。
Mr. Kotkin’s involvement in his subject is so intense that at times he leaps from his historian’s perch right into the fray. He dismisses as “gobbledygook” Trotsky’s explanation that he did not want a senior post because people would say the Soviet Union was being ruled by a Jew. Then, amid the endless backstabbing among top Bolsheviks, Mr. Kotkin exclaims, “What in the world was Bukharin doing spilling his guts out to Kamenev?”
科特金深深沉浸在自己的主题里，以至于有时候跳出历史学家的身份，卷入争论之中。托洛茨基曾解释自己不想谋求高位，因为担心人们会觉得苏联是在受犹太人统治，科特金斥之为“官样文章”。其后科特金更是无休止地痛斥布尔什维克的高层人物，说“布哈林(Bkharin)竟然会向卡曼年科告密，他到底在干什么？”
A work of this scope, ambition and intensity is bound to attract challenge, debate and criticism. I would have wished more attention to the role of culture and religion in the fall of the Russian empire and the rise of Soviet power, given their central places in Russian identity and sense of messianic destiny. Mr. Kotkin notes that Stalin wrote poetry and often attended the theater — Mikhail Bulgakov was his favorite playwright — but there is no discussion of what this meant to him, or of the role writers, poets, composers and artists played in those fateful years.
一本拥有如此眼界、抱负与强度的书必然会引发质疑、争议和批评。我原本期待本书更关注俄罗斯帝国覆灭与苏联势力崛起期间，俄罗斯文化与信仰所扮演的角色，因为文化与信仰是俄罗斯人的身份认同，以及他们那种弥赛亚式宿命感的核心。科特金提到，斯大林也写诗，经常去剧院——他最喜欢的剧作家是米哈伊尔·布尔加科夫(Mikhail Bulgakov)——但他并没有探讨这对斯大林来说意味着什么，也没有提到作家、诗人、作曲家与艺术家们在那些决定命运的年代里所扮演的角色。
What was striking throughout the book were the many troubling echoes with Russia today. Mr. Kotkin argues convincingly that Stalin was that rare individual whose decisions radically changed history, and his next volume, on collectivization, promises to further develop the thesis. But it is hard when looking at the path Russia is plotting today not to wonder how much of that terrible era was Stalin’s implacable will, and how much was a Russia that seems forever dreaming of a special destiny and forever meekly surrendering all power to autocrats.
书中从始至终引人瞩目的那些东西至今仍令人忧虑地回荡在俄罗斯。科特金令人信服地指出，斯大林的决定剧烈地改变了历史，像他这样的人是极为罕有的。第二卷将会讲述集体化问题，也承诺进一步深入这个主题。但审视如今俄罗斯的道路，人们很难不去思考，那个恐怖的时代究竟有多少是由于斯大林毫不动摇的意志，又有多少要归咎于永远梦想着特别的命运，却又永远对独裁者权力逆来顺受的俄罗斯呢？
“The Russian Revolution — against the tyranny, corruption, and, not least, incompetence of czarism — sparked soaring hopes for a new world of abundance, social justice and peace,” Mr. Kotkin writes. “But all that was precluded by the Bolsheviks, who unwittingly yet relentlessly reproduced the pathologies and predations of the old regime state in new forms.” Is that not what is happening today, after the soaring hopes raised by the collapse of the Bolshevik state?
“俄罗斯革命反对暴政和腐败，特别是无能的沙皇制度，令人们燃起希望，憧憬一个富裕、公正与和平的新世界，”科特金写道，“但这一切都被布尔什维克们阻碍了，他们不自觉地、然而又是不屈不挠地以新的形式复制旧政权的种种症结与掠夺行为。”这种情况是不是如今仍在发生呢？当布尔什维克的国家崩溃后，人们再度燃起了希望，但之后呢？
Of course, President Vladimir V. Putin is not even a pale shadow of Stalin, and today’s Russia is a far cry from Stalin’s totalitarian state, but then the young Dzhugashvili gave no sign that he would become Stalin, just as Mr. Putin, as a low-ranking K.G.B. officer, showed no early evidence of what he would evolve into. Yet much of what Mr. Putin has shaped — the restoration of strong central authority around one man, the intolerance of opposition, the cultivation of self-pity and victimhood, the “hand of Washington” behind every problem (for Stalin it was the hand of England) and the creation of a state of siege in Russia — all have precedents in “Stalin.”
当然，弗拉迪米尔·V·普京总统(President Vladimir V. Putin)绝非斯大林的影子，如今的俄罗斯也同斯大林治下的集权国家相去甚远，但是并没有任何迹象表明年轻的朱加什维利在未来会成为斯大林；正如克格勃低级官员普京并没有显示出任何日后飞黄腾达的迹象一样。然而普京所塑造的东西——恢复以统治者为中心的强大中央集权制度、对异见的不宽容、培养自怜和牺牲者心态，在任何问题之后都要揪出“华盛顿的黑手”（对于斯大林来说是“英格兰的黑手”），乃至在俄罗斯创造一种戒严的状态——这一切在《斯大林》中都可以找到先例。
This reader, for one, still hopes for more evidence that Stalin was indeed singular, a historical malignancy, and not a product of circumstances of the kind that might already be shaping the next chapter of Russian history. And that only whets the appetite for the next installment, in which Stalin decides to starve Russia almost to death to bring peasants under state control. That, Mr. Kotkin has already declared, was an assault on the peasantry for which there was no political or social logic, and that only Stalin could have done. It is a testament to Mr. Kotkin’s skill that even after almost a thousand pages, one wants more.
因为这个原因，读者仍然希望作者能够提出更多证据，证明斯大林确实是特例，是一种历史的恶意，而不是环境作用下的产物，而这种环境或许已经开始塑造俄罗斯历史的下一章。这个悬念只能刺激起人们对本书下一卷的兴趣——在下一卷里，科特金将会描写斯大林决定让俄罗斯忍饥挨饿，到了极度危险的地步，以便把农民置于国家控制之下。科特金认定，这种对农民阶层的攻击毫无政治或社会逻辑可言，只有斯大林才干得出来。这足以证明科特金的才华——已经读了一千页，人们还想继续读下去。