Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

35. On gender relations at the top level of the party, see M. Delaloi (Delaloye), Usy i Yubki: Gendernye Otnosheniya vnutri Kremlevskogo Kruga v Stalinskuyu Epokhu (1928–1953), Rosspen: Moscow 2018. A French variant of this book is the same author’s Une Histoire érotique du Kremlin, Payot: Paris 2016. On Soviet policy on women: W. Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1993.

36. L. T. Lih et al. (eds), Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, Yale University Press: New Haven & London 1995 p.232.

37. Cited by L. Vasilieva, Kremlin Wives, Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London 1994 p.68.

38. Cited by S. Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1928–1941, Penguin: London 2017 p.112.

39. S. Fitzpatrick, On Stalin’s Team, Princeton University Press: Princeton 2015 p.80.

40. The material on the dacha is based on S. Devyatov, A. Shefov & Yu. Yur’ev, Blizhnyaya Dacha Stalina, Kremlin Multimedia: Moscow 2011. The book contains a chapter on the dacha’s library room and a treatment of Stalin’s library. The authors state (p.192) that Shushanika Manuchar’yants was Stalin’s librarian in the 1930s but they cite no source.

41. F. Chuev, Sto Sorok Besed s Molotovym, Terra: Moscow 1991 p.296.

42. M. Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, Penguin: London 2014 pp.54, 105.

43. RGASPI, F558, Op.11 D.504–692. The maps have yet to be declassified but the type of map is described in Op.11 – which is the document that lists the contents of this subset of Stalin’s lichnyi fond.

44. A. J. Rieber, ‘Stalin: Man of the Borderlands’, American Historical Review (December 2001).

45. A. J. Rieber, Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

46. A. Resis (ed.), Molotov Remembers, Ivan R. Dee: Chicago 1993 p.8. The anecdote is Felix Chuev’s, the Soviet journalist whose conversations with Molotov are the subject of this book. Chuev’s sources are Molotov and Akaki Mgeladze, who was leader of the Abkhazian communist party from 1943 to 1951 and the Georgian communist party from 1952 to 1953.

47. See M. Folly, G. Roberts & O. Rzheshevsky, Churchill and Stalin: Comrades-in-Arms during the Second World War, Pen & Sword Books: Barnsley 2019.

48. Stalin’s extensive record collection disappeared after his death. According to Roy and Zhores Medvedev, Stalin was sent a copy of virtually every record produced in the USSR. After listening to records he would write on the sleeve ‘good’, ‘so-so’, ‘bad’ or ‘rubbish’. The collection is known to have included recordings of opera, ballet and folk songs. Medvedev & Medvedev, The Unknown Stalin, p.100. Reports about dancing at the dacha may be found in various memoirs.

49. I. Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography, Penguin: Harmondsworth 1966 pp.456, 457.

50. G. Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 2006.

51. On Stalin’s death, see J. Rubenstein, The Last Days of Stalin, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 2016. Medical evidence relating to Stalin’s death may be found in I. I. Chigirin, Stalin: Bolezni i Smert’: Dokumenty, Dostoinstvo: Moscow 2016.

52. Medvedev & Medvedev, The Unknown Stalin, p.90.

53. Alliluyeva, 20 Letters to a Friend, pp.13, 28–9.

54. Bol’shaya Tsenzura: Pisateli i Zhurnalisty v Strane Sovetov, 1917–1956, Demokratiya: Moscow 2005 doc.469.

55. Ibid., doc.467.

56. Murin, Iosif Stalin v Ob”yatiyakh Sem’i, doc.113.

57. Ilizarov, Tainaya Zhizn’ Stalina, p.163.

58. S. Alliluyeva, Only One Year, Penguin: London 1971 p.348.

59. Among Stalin’s Pushkin collection was a rare edition of Yevgeny Onegin, published in St Petersburg in 1837. This book was donated to the Lenin Library in the 1970s.

60. Gul fought for the ‘Whites’ during the Russian Civil War and then emigrated to Germany, France and the United States. In 1933 he published a book (in Russian) called Red Marshals: Voroshilov, Budenny, Blyukher, Kotovskii.

61. Cited by Medvedev & Medvedev, The Unknown Stalin, p.97.