![]() ![]() This was very impressive to people, and it’s easy when we know about the colossal disasters, which he cared little about, to forget this. I mean even in the Battle of Moscow, which was the key battle of the war, his grasp of the material of war was astonishing, the fact that he had the number of tanks of the entire Soviet Army in a little notebook on his desk. When he started to run the war, particularly after the early period when the whole thing was in free-fall and he really was out of his depth, he really did become a superb organiser of war materials. I mean, you only have to look at Roosevelt’s relationship with him to see how charming he could be, how fascinating, and that was his hold on the Russian leadership, it wasn’t just terror. Though a Georgian he came across as the sort of Russian candidate and he cultivated a sort of gentleness and a sort of quietness, a lack of showiness which people trust, but also he was very charismatic in a sort of feline way. ![]() He’d come to power as the anti-charismatic charismatic ruler, in the sense that there were always people like Trotsky who were these brilliant speakers and flamboyant, but no one trusted them and they were very un-Russian. ![]() SIMON SEBAG-MONTEFIORE: No, he’s not conventional. LAURENCE REES: And what’s interesting from your own work on Stalin’s personality is that Stalin seems to lack conventional charisma. ![]()
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