Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

197. Eisenstein’s background thinking about Ivan and his film is revealed in an article he published in Literatura i Iskusstvo (Literature and Art) in July 1942, summarised by Platt, Terror and Greatness, pp.212–13.

198. Kremlevskii Kinoteatr, 1928–1953, Rosspen: Moscow 2005 doc.257.

199. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.177. On this whole episode, see further M. Belodubrovskaya, Not According to Plan: Filmmaking Under Stalin, Cornell University Press: Ithaca NY 2017, and D. Brandenberger & K. M. F. Platt, ‘Terribly Pragmatic: Rewriting the History of Ivan IV’s Reign, 1937–1956’ in Platt & Brandenberger, Epic Revisionism.

200. In May 1944 Cherkasov presented Zhdanov with a signed photograph of himself as Ivan the Terrible, which carried the inscription, ‘We are standing at the edge of the sea and will continue to stand there.’ This is a reference to Ivan’s expansion of Russia to the Baltic. In 1944 Zhdanov was the head of the Leningrad communist party and the Red Army was in the process of recapturing the Baltic coastal lands from the Germans. See Platt, Terror and Greatness, p.214.

201. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, pp.441–2.

202. Vlast’ i Khudozhestvennaya Intelligenstiya, doc.34, pp.612–19. For an English translation of the entire discussion: Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.175. Irena Makaryk speculates that Stalin might have derived his view of Hamlet as a weak-willed character from Turgenev’s essay ‘Hamlet and Don Quixote’ and his short story ‘Hamlet of the Shchigrov District’. See her ‘Stalin and Shakespeare’ in N. Khomenko (ed.), The Shakespeare International Yearbook, vol. 18, Special Section on Soviet Shakespeare, Routledge: London July 2020 pp.46–7. The only other known Stalin reference to a specific work of Shakespeare is an ambiguous marginal comment on Pyotr Kogan’s Essays on the History of West European Literature (1909) in which he appears to say the author has ignored The Tempest, a play which has a bearing on the Bard’s character. However, it is not certain the crabbed handwriting is Stalin’s (RGASPI, Op.1, D.32, p.158 of the book).

203. R. C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941, paperback edn, Norton: New York 1992 pp.276–9; Perrie, ‘The Tsar, the Emperor, the Leader’, p.89.

204. Cited by Y. Gorlizki & O. Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953, Oxford University Press: Oxford 2004 pp.34–5.

205. Cited by Service, Stalin: A Biography, pp.561–2.

206. On the Alexandrov episode see chap.2 of E. Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, Princeton University Press: Princeton 2006.

207. G. Alexandrov, Filosofskie Predshestvenniki Marksizma, Politizdat: Moscow 1940. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.1. The markings may possibly be Svetlana’s.

208. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.237, pp.76–7 of the book.

209. Dobrenko, Late Stalinism, pp.396–402; Gorlizki & Khlevniuk, Cold Peace, pp.36–8.

210. On the Lysenko affair, see chap.3 of Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars.

211. Cited by J. Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War, Princeton University Press: Princeton 2000 pp.213–14.

212. Platt, Terror and Greatness, p.177.

213. V. A. Nevezhin, Zastol’nye Rechi Stalina, AIRO: Moscow-St Petersburg 2003 doc.107.

214. On the Pushkin centenary: Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades, chap.5.

215. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1947/09/08.htm. Accessed 4 August 2021.

216. J. Brunstedt, The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2021 pp.37–8, 107–8.

217. Rol’ Russkoi Nauki v Razvetii Mirovoi Nauki i Kul’tury, MGU: Moscow 1946; RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.368, pp.29–36 of the book for Stalin’s markings.

218. A. Popovskii, ‘Zametki o Russkoi Nauke’, Novyi Mir, 3 (March 1948), RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.234, pp.174–85 for Stalin’s markings.

219. Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin!, pp.213–14.