Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

30. A. Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 1928–1939, St Martin’s Press: New York 1991 p.19.

31. H. Ermolaev, Censorship in Soviet Literature, 1917–1991, Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham MD 1997 p.57.

32. J. Arch Getty & O. V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 1999 docs16 & 44.

33. V. S. Astrakhanskii, ‘Biblioteka G. K. Zhukova’, Arkhivno-Informatsionnyi Byulleten’, 13 (1996); Alliluyeva, Only One Year, p.348.

34. S. Alliluyeva, 20 Letters to a Friend, Penguin: Harmondsworth 1968 pp.150–1.

35. Molotov’s grandson, Vyacheslav Nikonov, a prominent pro-Putin political commentator in post-Soviet Russia, wrote a two-volume biography of him: Molotov, Molodaya Gvardiya: Moscow 2016. A popular, abridged version has been published in French: Molotov: notre cause est juste, L’Harmattan: Paris 2020.

36. R. Polonsky, Molotov’s Magic Lantern, Faber and Faber: London 2010 chap.2.

37. On Molotov: G. Roberts, Molotov: Stalin’s Cold Warrior, Potomac Books: Washington DC 2012.

38. J. Brent, Inside the Stalin Archives, Atlas & Co.: New York 2008 pp.299–302.

39. Stalin’s letters to his mother, wife and children may be found in Murin (ed.), Iosif Stalin v Ob”yatiyakh Sem’i.

40. S. Kotkin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928, Allen Lane: London 2014 p.597.

41. H. Kuromiya, Stalin, Pearson: Harlow 2005 p.137.

42. A. Werth, Russia: The Post-War Years, Robert Hale: London 1971 p.250.

43. RGASPI F.558, Op.3, D.46, L.15.

CHAPTER 2: THE SEARCH FOR THE STALIN BIOGRAPHERS’ STONE

1. Stalin’s staff kept a diary of visitors to his Kremlin office from 1924 to 1953 but not those to his apartment, dachas or elsewhere in the Kremlin: Na Prieme u Stalina: Tetradi (Zhurnaly) Zapisei Lits, Prinyatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953), Novyi Khronograf: Moscow 2008.

2. Cited by R. H. McNeal, Stalin: Man and Ruler, Macmillan: London 1989 p.9 (Papermac edition).

3. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/dec/13a.htm. Accessed 4 August 2021. Not long after the interview, Stalin was asked about his impression of Ludwig. He replied: ‘Nedalekii chelovek’ (a dull man); Mezhdu Molotom i Nakoval’nei: Soyuz Sovetskikh Pisatelei SSSR, 1, Rosspen: Moscow 2010 p.156.

4. Recalled by Bulgakov’s widow in a conversation with Edvard Radzinsky in the 1960s. E. Radzinsky, Stalin, Sceptre Books: London 1997 pp.9–11. Elena Bulgakova’s recollection was recorded by Radzinsky in his diary.

5. G. Safarov, Taktika Bol’shevizma: Osnovnye Etapy Razvitiya Taktiki R.K.P., Priboi: Petrograd 1923. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii (hereafter RGASPI), F.558. Op.3, D.309. Lenin volumes: Dd.115–18; Stalin volume: D.324. Safarov signed the resolution on the shooting of the Tsar and his family in July 1918. In the 1920s he was a member of the opposition to Stalin within the Bolshevik party and in the 1930s a victim of the purges. He was executed in the Gulag in 1942.

6. https://revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv12n2/cpi2.htm. Accessed 4 August 2021.

7. Cited in M. Folly, G. Roberts & O. Rzheshevsky, Churchill and Stalin: Comrades-in-Arms During the Second World War, Pen & Sword Books: Barnsley 2019 pp.1–2.

8. R. G. Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution, Princeton University Press: Princeton 2020 p.2.

9. RGASPI, F.558, Op.1, D.4507. Stalin seems to have written 1879 and then changed the 9 to an 8, as if he wasn’t sure himself. An article based on the questionnaire was published in the Swedish social democratic newspaper Folkets Dagblad Politike in August 1921.

10. Ibid., Op.4, D.333, L.1.

11. Ibid., Op.1, D.4343, Ll.1–3. See further: ‘Kogda Rodilsya I. V. Stalin’, Izvestiya TsK KPSS, 11 (1990) pp.132–4. ‘Old-Style’ and ‘New-Style’ refer to the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar after the Bolsheviks seized power, which meant that birth and other dates before January 1918 were twelve or thirteen days behind those of the new calendar.