Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

Briefed by Stalin and armed with the boss’s editorial corrections, Alexandrov’s team quickly revised their draft text. The new edition of the biography was published by Pravda in February 1947 and then as a book with an initial print run of a million copies.

As was the case with the Short Course, Stalin toned down the adulation of himself. He inserted the names of many co-workers and made changes that emphasised his partnership with Lenin. He cut completely a section extolling his role as the leader of the international communist movement beloved by proletarians throughout the world. A substantial section was added on the role of women in the revolutionary movement and in building socialism. ‘Working women are the most oppressed of all the oppressed,’ Stalin is quoted as saying in one of his speeches.

One version of the draft ended with a stirring quote from Molotov: ‘The names of Lenin and Stalin are a bright light of hope in all corners of the world and a thundering call to struggle for peace and happiness of all peoples, a struggle for complete liberation from capitalism.’ This was deleted by Stalin, as were the concluding slogans: ‘Long live our dear and great Stalin!’; ‘Long live the great invincible banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin!’ In the final product, these were replaced by a more restrained quote from Molotov that the USSR had been fortunate to have at its disposal the great Stalin during the war, who would now lead it forward in peacetime.³³

There were limits to Stalin’s modesty and he left in many cultish statements, especially in the chapter on the Great Patriotic War. Like its predecessor, the new edition was more hagiography than biography, but not a ridiculous one. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, extravagant claims about Stalin’s military genius had more than a modicum of credibility.³⁴

Among his insertions was this one:

Although he performed the task of leader of the party and the people with consummate skill and enjoyed the unreserved support of the entire Soviet people, Stalin never allowed his work to be marred by the slightest hint of vanity, conceit or self-adulation. When interviewed by the German writer, Emil Ludwig, Stalin paid glowing tribute to Lenin’s genius in transforming Russia, but of himself he simply said: ‘As for myself, I am merely a pupil of Lenin and my aim is to be a worthy pupil of his.’³⁵

While there was some theory in the Short Biography, there was no equivalent to the section on dialectical and historical materialism in the Short Course. Perhaps that’s what Alexandrov had in mind when he proposed a third edition in 1950 that would deal with Stalin’s postwar activities but also summarise his major theoretical writings. Outlines were devised and dummies prepared by Alexandrov and his staff, but nothing came of the proposal.³⁶

CONTROL THE NARRATIVE: FALSIFIERS OF HISTORY

Stalin’s only public comment on the Nazi–Soviet pact came in his radio broadcast a few days after the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941:

How could the Soviet Government have consented to conclude a non-aggression pact with such treacherous monsters as Hitler and Ribbentrop? Was this not a mistake on the part of the Soviet government? Of course not! A non-aggression pact is a pact of peace between two States. It was such a pact that Germany proposed to us in 1939. Could the Soviet Government have declined such a proposal? I think that not a single peace-loving state could decline a peace treaty with a neighbouring Power, even though the latter was headed by such monsters and cannibals as Hitler and Ribbentrop.³⁷

In private, he spoke at length about the pact at a Kremlin dinner in honour of Lord Beaverbrook and Averell Harriman, who travelled to Moscow in September 1941 to discuss British and American supplies to the Soviet Union. Captain H. H. Balfour, a member of the British delegation, recorded in his diary:

He explained plausibly how he had come to sign the Russo-German pact in 1939. . . . He saw war coming, and Russia must know where she stood. If he could not get an alliance with England, then he must not be left alone—isolated—only to be the victim of the victors when the war was over. Therefore, he had to make his pact with Germany.³⁸

Churchill provided further insight into Stalin’s calculations and thinking in his memoir-history of the Second World War: