Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

20. For detailed studies of Bolshevik policy on religion during the Stalin era, see I. A. Kurlyandskii, Stalin, Vlast’, Religiya, Kuchkovo Pole: Moscow 2011, and A. Rokkuchchi, Stalin i Patriarkh: Pravoslavnaya Tserkov’ i Sovetskaya Vlast’, 1917–1958, Rosspen: Moscow 2016. Roccucci’s (sic) book is also published in Italian: Stalin e il Patriarca: La Chiesa Ortodossa e il Potere Sovietico, Einaudi: Turin 2011.

21. See J. Ryan, ‘Cleansing NEP Russia: State Violence Against the Russian Orthodox Church in 1922’, Europe-Asia Studies, 65/9 (November 2013).

22. D. Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless, Cornell University Press: Ithaca NY1998 p.39.

23. J. Stalin, Works, vol.10, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1954 pp.138–9.

24. See L. H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society Between Revolutions, 1918–1929, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1992.

25. V. Smolkin, A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, Princeton University Press: Princeton 2018 p.46.

26. Ibid., pp.47–9.

27. F. Corley (ed.), Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader, Macmillan: Basingstoke 1996 doc.89.

28. See Smolkin, A Sacred Space is Never Empty, chap.2.

29. R. Boer, ‘Sergei and the “Divinely Appointed” Stalin’, Social Sciences (April 2018) p.15.

30. Smolkin, A Sacred Space is Never Empty, p.53.

31. See S. Merritt Miner, Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945, University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill 2003.

32. Ibid., p.6. See also Boer’s Stalin: From Theology to the Philosophy of Socialism in Power, Springer: Singapore 2017.

33. J. Stalin, Works, vol.4, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1953 p.406.

34. In relation to communism as a political religion I have followed closely the argument of Erik van Ree in his ‘Stalinist Ritual and Belief System: Reflections on “Political Religion”’, Politics, Religion and Ideology, 17/2–3 (June 2016).

35. I owe the Napoleon reference to Patrick Geoghegan’s Robert Emmet: A Life, Four Courts Press: Dublin 2004. According to Donald Rayfield, Stalin wrote ‘stupidity!’ beside this remark in one of Konstantine Gamsakhurdia’s historical novels: ‘If brought up by the path of historical patriotism, we can make a Napoleon out of any bandit.’ D. Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, Viking: London 2004 p.16.

36. Stalin, Works, vol. 1, p.57.

37. See E. van Ree, ‘The Stalinist Self: The Case of Ioseb Jughashvili (1898–1907)’, Kritika, 11/2 (Spring 2010).

38. Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution, p.138. For the purposes of quotation, I have changed the order of this passage.

39. R. M. Slusser, Stalin in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution, Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore 1987.

40. Stalin, Works, vol.1 pp.133–9.

41. S. Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London 2007. For a more sober treatment of the Tbilisi robbery, see Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution, chap.17.

42. Cited by Suny in ibid., p.361.

43. L. Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification, Pioneer Publishers: New York 1962 p.181.

44. See J. Ryan, Lenin’s Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence, Routledge: London 2012 chaps 1–2.

45. On the Malinovsky affair see I. Halfin, Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition, 1918–1928, University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh 2007 pp.1–17.

46. I. Deutscher, ‘Writing a Biography of Stalin’, The Listener, https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1947/writing-stalin.htm (25 December 1947).