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Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million
by: Martin Amis

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 900
EAN: 9780099438021
ISBN: 009943802X
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: September 04, 2003
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 196473

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
Koba the Dread is a book about Stalin and the past and present culpability of intellectuals rather than a personal memoir. It's personal to Amis because his father Kingsley became a card-carrying Communist in 1941 and remained so for 15 years: along with the majority of intellectuals everywhere he chose the big Stalinist lie over the truth. The only reasonable excuse for believing the Stalinist story, Amis suggests, is perhaps that "the real story-–the truth—-was entirely unbelievable". The bulk of the book is taken up with the real story of Stalinism and--given the powerful subject matter and Amis's literary skill--one shouldn't be surprised to hear that it makes for a riveting read. Even if you are already familiar with the story the facts still stagger the imagination.

As well as being an indictment of the woolly-minded utopianism of his father's generation, the book is a direct challenge to the lingering romanticism that, even today, attaches itself to Bolshevism, to Lenin, and in particular to Trotsky. That challenge comes in the form of a splendid letter--in the final, personal section of the book--to his long-time friend Christopher Hitchens. In it, he reminds his friend "Comrade Hitchens" that "Bolshevism presents a record of baseness and inanity that exhausts all dictionaries" before confessing his confusion as to "why you wouldn't want to put more distance between yourself and these events than you do, with your reverence for Lenin and your unregretted discipleship of Trotsky".

The myth Amis wants to quash is the idea that the "real" revolution was lost with the death of Lenin, the murder of Trotsky and the liquidation of the Bolshevik old guard. Any "differences between the regimes of Lenin and Stalin were quantitative, not qualitative" and, as individuals, Lenin was a "congenital moral imbecile" while Trotsky's smattering of literary talent concealed "a murdering bastard and a fucking liar" who got what he deserved. They were nun-killers all and they did it with gusto. The final verdict, the final indictment, is that under Bolshevik rule--under Lenin as well as Stalin--"the value of human life collapsed".

It's a curious fact that Robert Conquest--the man who wrote the definitive account of the Stalinist purges while many intellectuals were still in denial--was a personal friend of the Amis family. Conquest's The Great Terror is still the source to visit if want the full story whereas Koba the Great is a short book packed with the most interesting and shocking facts about the Stalin era, with a thoughtful and often persuasive personal commentary from Amis. --Larry Brown

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- No laughing matter
Just as the prequel to this book, 'Experience', directed a lot of its attention towards death, particulalry that of the author's father in the final 80 pages or so, this book does the same, which is no surprise considering it is about Stalin. The deaths of Amis' father and sister are also mentioned at the beginning and end, as Amis sets out to debunk Stalin's maxim that 'The death of one person is tragic, the death of a million a mere statistic'.

As the subtitle to the book suggests - 'Laughter and the Twenty Million' - the book is also interested in laughter. Amis asks us why we feel it is ok to make jokes about Communist times in Russia; the Gulag; the activities of Lenin and Stalin, whereas to make a joke about Hitler or the ... Read More:

Rating:

- A step beyond non-fiction
This is a thoughtful, emotional and stimulating read. For those who are Russian or have spent time in Russia it is particularly engaging. As a part-time historian Amis is never going to answer the big questions that are posed by the tragedy of Stalinism. However he uses his remarkable upbringing and literary talent to discuss the issues with an intriguing mix of insight, lucidity and zeal. As someone who spends a good deal of time reading non-fiction on Russia I throughly enjoyed this change of tone.

Rating:

- wake up call
Everyone knows about the evils of Hitler and National Socialism (Nazism). Stalin was far worse than Hitler and some of his policies are still supported around the world today. This book brilliantly explores the conundrum that it is anathema to be a Nazi yet being a communist is still a "respectable" position: one of the reasons that Stalin has not yet been as demoised as Hitler. A great but brief and easy to read historical and psychological study that raises a lot of difficult questons as well.

Rating:

- Interesting Idea: Flawed, Self-Indulgent Execution
The concept behind Martin Amis' Koba The Dread had promise. Its stated goal was to examine the apparent willingness of many left-leaning 20th century intellectuals to overlook the worst excesses of the Soviet regime. The book was designed to explore why those same intellectuals who would be the first to man the barricades in opposition to Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile, or the Colonels in Greece could, at the same time find reasons not to condemn or even to excuse the great purges and the labor camps of the Gulag, the Hitler-Stalin pact, and the Soviet suppression of liberal movements in Hungary, Poland, and, finally, Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Sad to say, Amis was not up to the task he set. Although well-written, the book is overly ... Read More:

Rating:

- Interesting...
It is an interesting book, this is sure.
A good introduction to soviet atrocities, with a number of well chosen examples of inhumanity - among the many proposed by authors such as Solzenycin or Salamov or Grossman.
Still, there are a few things very annoying: not the fact that this is not an actual work of history - since we know this from the outset; rather the artificial connexion made with Amis' personal and utterly irrelevant events (see the first pages, the last chapter and the letter to Hitchens); the narcissist style; and the inexplicable footnotes, which sometimes try to be humourous, other pedantic, and instead are always out of place.
In conclusion, if you need a readable introduction to communism atrocities, read this ... Read More:

Books : Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million