Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

42. See Stalin’s marking of a 1923 edition of Kautsky’s The Agrarian Question: RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.86. Other Kautsky works marked by Stalin may be found here: RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, Dd.87, 88, 89, 90, 92 and Op.1, D.1576.

43. Y. Buranov, Lenin’s Will: Falsified and Forbidden, Prometheus Books: Amherst NY 1994 pp.150, 151.

44. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3 Dd.357, 359, 360, 361; Op.11, D.1577.

45. On the evolution of Trotsky’s economic thinking in the 1920s, see Richard B. Day’s classic Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1973.

46. For a judicious overview of Trotsky’s factional activities in the 1920s, see I. D. Thatcher, Trotsky, Routledge: London 2003 chaps 5–6.

47. See J. Harris, ‘Discipline versus Democracy: The 1923 Party Controversy’ in L. Douds, J. Harris & P. Whitewood (eds), The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution: Illiberal Liberation, 1917–41, Bloomsbury Academic: London 2020. Many of the relevant documents may be found in V. Vilkova, The Struggle for Power: Russia in 1923, from the Secret Archives of the Former Soviet Union, Prometheus Books: Amherst NY 1996.

48. See S. F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938, Oxford University Press: Oxford 1971.

49. I. Halfin, Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition, 1918–1928, University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh 2007.

50. Ibid., p.250.

51. M. David-Fox, Revolution of the Mind: Higher Learning Among the Bolsheviks, 1918–1929, Cornell University Press: Ithaca NY and London 1997 p.117. Stalin’s copy of the text may be found among the collection of his library books in the State Socio-Political Library. Ironically, Kanatchikov himself became a member of the United Opposition. He recanted and then held several responsible party posts but was arrested and executed in 1937.

52. Volkogonov, Stalin, p.260.

53. S. Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1928–1941, Penguin: London 2017 p.787.

54. Many relevant documents may be found in Politburo i Lev Trotsky, 1922–1940gg: Sbornik Dokumentov, IstLit: Moscow 2017.

55. J. Stalin, Works, vol.12, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1955 p.358.

56. Ibid., vol.13 p.101.

57. Ibid., p.113.

58. Ibid., p.354.

59. 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 pp.140–1.

60. See J. Arch Getty, ‘The Politics of Repression Revisited’ in J. Arch Getty and R. T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1993. Also: M. E. Lenoe, The Kirov Murder and Soviet History, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 2010.

61. Thatcher, Trotsky, pp.190–1.

62. Cited by Y. Slezkine, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution, Princeton University Press: Princeton 2019 p.716.

63. Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror, doc.37.

64. M. Lenoe, ‘Fear, Loathing, Conspiracy: The Kirov Murder as Impetus for Terror’ in J. Harris (ed.), The Anatomy of Terror, Oxford University Press: Oxford 2013 p.208. Some of the interrogation documents may be found here: Lubyanka: Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD (Yanvar’ 1922–Dekabr’ 1936), Materik: Moscow 2003 docs.494, 505, 506–9, 511–14. English translations of these documents may be found in D. R. Shearer & V. Khaustov (eds), Stalin and the Lubianka: A Documentary History of the Political Police and Security Organs in the Soviet Union, 1922–1953, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 2015.

65. I have merged and separated by the ellipsis two quotations from Stalin’s conversion with Rolland: from the archive document (RGASPI, F.558, Op.11, D.795, doc.1 Ll.10–11.) and from H. Kuromiya, Stalin, Pearson Longman: Harlow 2005 p.116. I am grateful to Michael David-Fox for the archival reference.