A monster in the making

One day in 1915, when Stalin was in exile in Siberia, he was eating dinner with a few other revolutionaries. Everyone had to say what his greatest pleasure was. Some said women, others — can this be true? — ‘earnestly replied that it was the progress of dialectical materialism towards the workers’ paradise’. Stalin, known then as ‘Soso’ or ‘Koba’, replied, ‘My greatest pleasure is to choose one’s victim, prepare one’s plans minutely, slake an implacable vengeance, and then go to bed. There’s nothing sweeter in the world.’

In Number 10 and the White House there may be those who would like to slake their implacable vengeances, but — and for once I am grateful for our pipsqueak leaders — they cannot murder their rivals, old comrades and relatives. In the epilogue to this magnificent ‘prequel’ to his yet more wonderful Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Sebag Montefiore describes another meal.