SOURCE: "Stalin and the Cold War: A Second Look," in The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. LIX, No. 1, Winter, 1960, pp. 1-12.

In the following essay, Warth contends that Stalin's notorious personal defects—including vanity, deceit, and brutality—did not necessarily have a negative impact on his political skills or his leadership ability.

The image of Joseph Stalin in the Western world was never a pleasant one—except, obviously, during the war years when the heroic achievements of the Red Army in the common cause lent a glow of enchantment to the Soviet Union and its paternal "Uncle Joe." Through the prism of the cold war his image was refracted to become one of calculated deceit, monstrous vanity, and senseless brutality, a view which Nikita Khrushchev's celebrated "secret" speech of February, 1956, did much to confirm.

These unsavory traits Stalin undoubtedly possessed, though to what extent they warped his political judgment...