Book Review: "Koba the Dread" by Martin Amis

I know, this book is a rather contentious one. But forgive me, it's late April 2025 and I've been reading a lot of contentious stuff lately. Slated in various newspapers and magazines, Koba the Dread is the second installment in a series which started with Experience (which I read back during COVID) and though it is hated, it is probably much better in terms of explaining itself. Focusing on the horrors of Communism in Russia, Martin Amis rips into the mid-20th century Western intelligentsia who professed that the ideas coming over from Russia were great, popular and useful for society. Of course they weren't. Taken from Stalin's own nickname 'Koba', this book really does cut deep into the bleeding heart of Communism with not only insult and analysis, but also with dark humour.

Covering how during his Oxford days, mid-20th Century ideas about Communism politicised everything whilst also causing a bit of a rift with his friend, Christopher Hitchens - Martin Amis seeks to get the reader to understand the situation in England in which the Western university liberals were adopting Communist values (in a similar sort of way that is happening today): shaking off religion, calling for the fall of the upper classes (irony being that they were probably part of those classes themselves) and for some reason honestly respecting the murder of the Russian royal family.

One of the ideas that I thought was especially interesting which Amis covers about the way in which the Bolsheviks work is the 'politicisation of sleep'. It was 'another opportunity to feel like a Bolshevik' in dreams. I know, it's not just weird but in some ways it is anti-science, but the Communists aren't exactly very good at science, are they? Well, that's the thing: it goes on to state why Stalin himself hated intellectualism (boo hoo for the Western university liberals) - he hated them because he wasn't them. I think we all forget that Stalin was not very intelligent and didn't really do anything very well until he came on to the Communist throne and that's only because he started killing people he didn't like in path with everyone before him.

Lenin's famine was also another part I liked how Amis explained. The failings of Lenin was not the point, but the deliberacies of Lenin was the whole deal. Lenin deliberately starved the poor and caused a famine, leading to the deaths of more people during his few years than in the entirety of the Civil War. (This is not me talking, it is lifted from the book and if it's wrong then that's on Martin Amis). Once the camps opened, there seems to have been a quota of people to kill which makes it even worse. Amis goes back to explain Lenin's story and how his brother was executed but honestly, I can't help but feel that anyone who would be reading a book like Koba the Dread probably already knows this story quite well. That part seems like a bit of filler more than anything else.

As the book goes on, it uses books like The Gulag Archipelago to detail the horrors of Stalin's nightmare-fuelled rule. I have always thought this one thought: there are very few human beings that embody the term 'evil' like Joseph Stalin. Very few. He not only did what he did but there are people alive and kicking today that still think of him as a hero. It's terrifying. I read The Gulag Archipelago some years ago and it was the edition where Dr Jordan Peterson did the foreword. I also read another edition which comes in separate 'volumes' (one abridged and one unabridged). I was mortified - it was just simply horrifying. Martin Amis uses this book to evaluate the Western Intelligentsia's claim that there is some good in the philosophies on which Communism is built. The consensus: no there isn't. There never was.

When it comes to things I'm not so sure about in this book there's the claim that Trotsky was brave and a nice guy. I don't think we're really hitting the mark with that one. The author states that Stalin's manipulation was more extreme than Hitler's which is honestly correct and that's mainly because Stalin silenced people he didn't like by throwing them into a Gulag in the middle of the night. But when it comes to relative intelligence regarding both politics and the people, we have to admit Stalin and Hitler had about the same amount of intelligence: basically none. Stalin only tolerated certain writers because he couldn't understand how they could ignite the soul - these were writers such as Boris Pasternak and definitely at least the start of Gorky's career until he bowed to serve Stalin by himself.

I think Martin Amis probably didn't need to weave through his own life story and conversations with his father in this book because it is meaty with ideas already. Also, some of the ideas are a bit all over the place, not particularly the best writing he has ever done. But if some reviews are stating the book is self-indulgent then if you've read The Rub of Time or even my review on the anthology, you'll know it's a classic marker of a nonfiction work by Martin Amis. It barely bothers me anymore.