ABSTRACT
Most critical studies of Solzhenitsyn's portrait of Stalin have hitherto been based on the 87-chapter version of The First Circle, published in 1968. Careful attention has been devoted to the structure of the 'Stalin chapters': their order has been changed, and the new biographical chapter has been inserted between chapters dealing with Stalin's life in the present. Solzhenitsyn emphasises the psychological and metaphysical springs of Stalin's conduct rather than the political climate in which he matured as a revolutionary. The depiction of the relationship between Stalin and Lenin is an important aspect of Circle-96. Solzhenitsyn emphasises the great impact on Russian history of one individual of great evil, Stalin. The mainspring of Solzhenitsyn's portrait in Circle-96 is hatred rather than pity; the falsehood, megalomania, paranoid suspiciousness and satanic pride which animate the tyrant are now stripped bare. In contrast with Bek and Maksimov, Solzhenitsyn's aim is to analyse Stalin's entire biography up to 1949.
