Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

109. Stalin i Kaganovich: Perepiska, 1931–1936 gg., Rosspen: Moscow 2001 doc.621. I am grateful to Michael Carley for this reference. Stalin’s remark about Anglo-German entente was prompted by the recent naval agreement between the two states.

110. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.267, pp.32–3 of the book for Stalin’s annotation.

111. Ibid., Op.1, D.5755, L.142.

112. Ibid., Op.3, D.232.

113. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/19.htm. Accessed 4 August 2021.

114. Nevezhin, ‘I. V. Stalin o Vneshnei Politike’, p.71.

115. RGASPI F.558, Op.1, D.5754, Ll.98–100.

116. Nevezhin, ‘I. V. Stalin o Vneshnei Politike’, pp.72–3.

117. RGASPI, F.558, Op.1, D.5754, L.101.

118. Ibid., Op.3, D.79.

119. J. Stalin, Works, vol.2, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1953 p.285.

120. Dokumenty Vneshnei Politiki, 1941, part two, Mezhdunarodnaya Otnosheniya: Moscow 1998 p.563.

121. Folly, Roberts & Rzheshevsky, Churchill and Stalin, p.88.

122. Ibid., pp.75–6.

123. Ivan Mikhailovich Maiskii: Dnevnik Diplomata, London, 1934–1943, book 1, Nauka: Moscow 2006 p.111. I am grateful to Michael Carley for this reference. Maisky’s diary entry was based on a story he had heard about what was said at the Stalin–Laval meeting. There is no known official Soviet or French record of the conversation.

124. S. Alliluyeva, 20 Letters to a Friend, Penguin: Harmondsworth 1968 p.161.

125. The third author of the book – Ivan Dzhavakhishvili – had died in 1940. Stalin’s marked copy of this Georgian-language book may be found in RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.382. Donald Rayfield, who attributes authorship of the book to Dzhavakhishvili (Javakhishvili), reports that Stalin wrote in the margin: ‘Why does the author fail to mention that Mithridates and the Pontic Empire were a Georgian ruler and a Georgian state?’ D. Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, p.16.

126. ‘Novye Rechi Stalina o Gruzii, Istorii i Natsional’nostyakh (1945)’, Issledovaniya po Istorii Russkoi Mysli: Ezhegodnik 2019, Modest Kolerov: Moscow 2019 pp. 491–525. Berdzenishvili’s recollection is dated December 1945 but the bulk of it seems to have been composed before that date. It was first published in 1998.

127. Ibid., p.504. Joseph Orbeli (1887–1961) was an Armenian orientalist who served as head of the Hermitage Museum from 1934 to 1951. Boris Turaev’s (1868–1920) two-volume history of the ‘Ancient East’ was in Stalin’s library, as was Nikolai Pavlov-Sil’vanskii’s (1869–1908) book on feudalism in Ancient Rus’. Vasily Struve (1889–1965) was an Egyptologist and Assyriologist.

128. L. R. Tillett, The Great Friendship: Soviet Historians and the Non-Russian Nationalities, University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill 1969.

129. ‘Novye Rechi Stalina’, p.506.

130. Ibid., p.515. See further: E. van Ree, ‘Heroes and Merchants: Stalin’s Understanding of National Character’, Kritika, 8/1 (Winter 2007).

131. J. Hellbeck, Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich, paperback ed., PublicAffairs: New York 2016 p.437.

132. Alliluyeva, 20 Letters to a Friend, pp.140, 163.

133. Zh. Medvedev, Stalin i Evreiskaya Problema: Novyi Analiz, Prava Cheloveka: Moscow 2003.

134. F. Chuev, Tak Govoril Kaganovich: Ispoved’ Stalinskogo Apostola, Otechestvo: Moscow 1992 p.89.

135. G. Kostyrchenko, Out of the Red Shadows: Anti-Semitism in Stalin’s Russia, Prometheus Books: Amherst NY 1995.

136. ‘Novye Rechi Stalina’, p.494.

137. Apparently, Stalin marked these two books but they have disappeared from the archive.

138. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.311.

139. Ibid., D.267, p.25 of the book. Stalin does not appear to have read the diary itself, only the introduction by Boris Shtein, a Soviet diplomat.

140. Stalin, Leninism, pp.479–80.

141. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.37, p.5 of Vipper’s book; D.97, p.3 of S. I. Kovalev et al., Istoriya Drevnego Mira: Drevnii Vostok i Gretsiya, Gosudarstvennoe Uchebno-Pedagogicheskoe Izdatel’stvo: Moscow 1937.

142. Ibid., D.36. Stalin’s markings may be found in chap.4 of the book on pp.120–4, 126–7, 130–1, 133–7.

143. As Boris Ilizarov (Stalin, Ivan Groznyi, p.75) points out, the marginalia are written in the old Russian script, i.e. the one in use before the reform and rationalisation of the Cyrillic alphabet in 1917–18, so they won’t have been made by Svetlana and are unlikely to belong to Stalin’s young wife, Nadezhda.