Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

62. Yu. Sharapov, ‘Stalin’s Personal Library: Meditations on Notes in the Margins’, Moscow News, 38 (1988). In the Russian edition of the newspaper the article was headlined ‘Pyat’sot Stranits v Den’ (500 Pages a Day).

63. When the dissident poet Osip Mandelstam learned about Stalin’s inscription from the Soviet press, he turned to his wife Nadezhda and said, ‘We are finished!’ (N. Mandelstam, Hope against Hope: A Memoir, p.339). When, in 1934, Stalin learned from Bukharin that Mandelstam had been exiled, Stalin wrote at the top of the letter: ‘Who gave them the right to arrest Mandelstam? Disgraceful.’ (RGASPI, F.558, Op.11, D.70, L.167). Subsequently, Mandelstam’s situation improved, perhaps as a result of a telephone conversation between Stalin and Boris Pasternak, who was a friend of Mandelstam’s. The poet was arrested again in 1938 and died in the Gulag that same year.

64. Neizdannyi Shchedrin, Leningrad 1931 (RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.231); Gromov, Stalin: Iskusstvo i Vlast’, p.161.

65. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/11/25.htm. Accessed 4 August 2021.

66. ‘Reshenie: Direktsii Instituta Marksizma Leninizma pri TsK KPSS ot 9 Yanvarya 1963’. This document was on display at the exhibition on the history of Stalin’s lichnyi fond in the foyer of RGASPI in October 2018. The many letters and notes from publishers and authors may be found in RGASPI, F.558, Op.1, Dd.5754–5.

67. L. Spirin, ‘Glazami Knig Lichnaya Biblioteka Stalina’, Nezavisimaya Gazeta (25 May 1993). Spirin died in November 1993.

68. An electronic version of the SSPL catalogue is under construction by the library.

69. The document was on display at the exhibition on the history of Stalin’s lichnyi fond in the foyer of RGASPI in October 2018.

70. The catalogue of the marked texts from Stalin’s library is available on Yale’s Stalin Digital Archive.

71. The first section of the SSPL catalogue – Books with the Library of J. V. Stalin stamp – may be viewed on Yale’s Stalin Digital Archive. The catalogue was transcribed by Professor Yury Nikiforov in conjunction with the present author.

72. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, Dd.301–3.

73. M. G. Leiteizen, Nitsshe i Finansovyi Kapital, Gosizdat: Moscow 1924.

74. Cited by M. Agursky, ‘Nietzschean Roots of Stalinist Culture’ in B. Glatzer Rosenthal (ed.), Nietzsche and Soviet Culture, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1994 p.272. Agursky (1933–1991), a Soviet-era dissident who emigrated to Israel in the mid-1970s, argued that many of Stalin’s supporters were open or closet Nietzscheans who saw him as the embodiment of the ‘will to power’ of Nietzsche’s ‘superman’. Agursky claimed, without any direct evidence, that Nietzscheanism influenced Stalin, too. His weakest argument is that Stalin’s Marxism had no real content; his strongest is that Stalin, like Nietzsche, supported the Lamarckian alternative to Darwinism (i.e. that acquired characteristics could be inherited).

75. E. van Ree, ‘Stalin and Marxism: A Research Note’, Studies in East European Thought, 49/1 (1997).

76. N. Lukin, Iz Istorii Revolyutsionnykh Armii, Gosizdat: Moscow 1923. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.192 pp.33–4 of the book for the passage with Stalin’s marginal comment.

77. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/23.htm. Accessed 4 August 2021.

78. B. Ilizarov, Stalin, Ivan Groznyi i Drugie, Veche: Moscow 2019 pp.49–50, 56, 69–71.

79. J. Stalin, Works, vol.1, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1952 pp.369–71.

80. See M. Perrie, ‘The Tsar, the Emperor, the Leader: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Anatoli Rybakov’s Stalin’ in N. Lampert & G. T. Rittersporn (eds), Stalinism: Its Nature and Aftermath, Macmillan: London 1992 pp.80–1.

81. Cited by R. Service, Stalin: A Biography, Macmillan: London 2004 pp.273–4.

82. T. O’Conroy, The Menace of Japan, Hurst & Blackett: London 1933; T. O’Konroi, Yaponskaya Ugroza, Gossotsizdat: Moscow 1934. Stalin’s copy of the book may be found here: RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.98. The book is marked but probably not by Stalin.

83. On O’Conroy’s biography: P. O’Connor, ‘Timothy or Taid or Taig Conroy or O’Conroy (1883–1935)’ in H. Cortazzi (ed.), Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, vol.4, Routledge: London 2002.