One of the fun things about reading Young Stalin, which is a biography of Stalin from birth to the Russian revolution, is nobody liked him in Georgia where he grew up, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, so it was easy for the biographer to get sources to tell all the negative and horrifying details of his earlier life building and running organized crime gangs to fund the Russian revolution. Imagine the most paranoid narcissistic jerks you've ever known who also happen to be exceptionally intelligent decide to take over a country and they manage to pull it off. Fascinating stuff.
