In doing so, he gives us an intimate look at Stalin himself and the culture of sadism, ruthlessness and dread that flourished around him, fueling a murderous regime that would leave tens of millions of people dead. Montefiore draws upon new archival material, unpublished memoirs and interviews with survivors of that era (including many children of Stalin's associates and underlings) to create a harrowing portrait of life in the dictator's inner circle.

In ''Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar,'' Mr. Montefiore recounts, went through all the family photograph albums, erasing the faces of those friends now deemed enemies ''as they were arrested and shot, a horrible distortion of the coloring-in books that most children so enjoy.'' The cleverer ones arranged a schedule for their children in case they were arrested.'' The son of one Old Bolshevik, Mr.

During the height of the Stalinist terror, when even those closest to the dictator were in grave danger, members of the political elite lived in a state of perpetual dread, waiting each night for the groan of the elevators, the knock on the door, signaling that the secret police had arrived to make an arrest.Īs the British journalist Simon Sebag Montefiore writes in his revealing new account of life in Stalin's court: ''Parents kept bags packed for prison and Mauser and Chagan pistols under their pillows, ready to commit suicide.

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