Stalin : the court of the red tsar / by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

Originally published: London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 743-755) and index.

Prologue: The holiday dinner: 8 November 1932. -- That wonderful time: Stalin and Nadya, 1878-1932. The Georgian and the schoolgirl ; The Kremlin family ; The charmer ; Famine and the country set ; Holidays and hell: the Politburo at the seaside ; Trains full of corpses ; Stalin the intellectual. -- The jolly fellows: Stalin and Kirov, 1932-1934. The funeral ; The omnipotent widower and his loving family: Sergo the Bolshevik prince ; Spoiled victory: Kirov, the plot and the Seventeenth Congress ; Assassination of the favourite. -- On the brink, 1934-1936. "I'm orphaned": the connoisseur of funerals ; A secret friendship: The rose of Novgorod ; The dwarf rises; Casanova falls ; The tsar rides the Metro ; Take your partners; Mount your prisoners. -- Slaughter: Yezhov the poison dwarf, 1937-1938. The executioner: Beria's poison and Bukharin's dosage ; Sergo: death of a "perfect Bolshevik" ; The Massacre of generals, fall of Yagoda, and death of a mother ; Blood bath by numbers ; "The blackberry" at work and play ; Bloody shirtsleeves ; Social life in the Terror. -- Slaughter: Beria arrives, 1938-1939. Stalin's Jewesses and the family in danger ; Beria and the weariness of hangmen ; The tragedy and depravity of the Yezhovs ; Death of the Stalin family: a strange proposal and the housekeeper. -- "The great game": Hitler and Stalin, 1939-1941. The carve-up of Europe: Molotov, Ribbentrop and Stalin's Jewish question ; The murder of the wives ; Molotov cocktails: the Winter War and Kulik's wife ; Molotov meets Hitler: brinkmanship and delusion ; The countdown: 22 June 1941. -- War: the bungling genius, 1941-1942. Optimism and breakdown ; "Ferocious as a dog": Zhdanov and the Siege of Leningrad ; "Can you hold Moscow?" ; Molotov in London, Mekhlis in the Crimea, Khrushchev in collapse ; Churchill visits Stalin: Marlborough vs. Wellington ; Stalingrad and the Caucasus: Beria and Kaganovich at war. -- War: the triumphant genius, 1942-1945. The Supremo of Stalingrad ; Sons and daughters: Stalin and the Politburo's children at war ; Stalin's song contest ; Teheran: Roosevelt and Stalin ; The swaggering conqueror: Yalta and Berlin. -- The dangerous game of succession, 1945-1949. The bomb ; Beria: potentate, husband, father, lover, killer, rapist ; A night in the nocturnal life of Joseph Vissarionovich: tyranny by movies and dinners ; Molotov's chance: "You'll do anything when you're drunk!" ; Zhdanov the heir and Abakumov's bloody carpet ; The eclipse of Zhukov and the looters of Europe: the Imperial Elite ; "The Zionists have pulled one over you!" ; A lonely old man on holiday ; Two strange deaths: the Yiddish actor and heir apparent. -- The lame tiger, 1949-1953. Mrs. Molotov's arrest ; Murder and marriage: the Leningrad case ; Mao, Stalin's birthday and the Korean War ; The Midget and the killer doctors: Beat, beat and beat again! ; Blind kittens and hippopotamuses: the destruction of the Old Guard ; "I did him in!": the patient and his trembling doctors.

A biography of the Soviet dictator and the men and women who surrounded him focuses on the foundation of human, psychological, and physical supports that encouraged him through the early days of Communism, World War II, and the Great Terror.