I read a bit of both kotkin's second book then skipped over to Furrs book on the second book to read the general synopsis of both, and put them both down to read other books. Kotkin's second book basically went full cold war warrior, loosing a lot of the relative objectivity the first book had on Stalin as a man and veers off more towards Stalin as a caricature.

Furr basically echos this and says more or less if you're a serious communist intent on learning about the man and the history around him the first book was good enough with the successor two after it being serious can of :brainworms: . More or less said if you want to torture yourself you can keep reading, or you can read kotkin and furr side by side since furr said his book basically spends the whole time cross-examining Kotkin's book.

Follow up comment on books

Molotov Remembers by Felix Chuev, This Soviet World by Anna Strong, twenty letters to a friend by Svetlana Alliluyeva, The Politburo - the men who run Russia by Duranty, Russian Justice by Marcy Callcott, Stalin's Kampf by "written by himself" edited by M.R Werner, Joseph Stalin a short biography compiled by G.F Alexandrov and Co., fraud famine and fascism by Douglas tottle, Stalin's Library by Geoffrey Roberts, The Unwomanly Face of War and Last Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich, The Third Reich at War by Richard Evans, Hitler's army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich by Omer Bartov.

That's what I have at home, not accounting for more books I'm trying to get.