Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

16. In making this point, Stalin doubtless had in mind what Lenin said in October 1920: ‘Proletarian culture is not something that springs from nowhere, is not an invention of people who call themselves specialists in proletarian culture. This is complete nonsense. Proletarian culture must be a logical development of those funds of knowledge which humanity has worked out under the yoke of capitalist society’ (R. K. Dasgupta, ‘Lenin on Literature’, Indian Literature, 13/3 (September 1970) p.21. See further: A. T. Rubinstein, ‘Lenin on Literature, Language, and Censorship’, Science & Society, 59/3 (Fall 1995). Stalin certainly read Lenin’s speech because he marked it in vol.17 of the 1st edition of Lenin’s collected works published in 1923 (RGASPI, Op.3, D.131, pp. 313–29). On Marx: S. S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature, Verso: London 1976.

17. Bol’shaya Tsenzura: Pisateli i Zhurnalisty v Strane Sovetov, 1917–1956, Demokratiya: Moscow 2005 doc.196; S. Davies & J. Harris, Stalin’s World: Dictating the Soviet Order, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 2014 pp.250–1.

18. Stalin’s remarks are those recorded by the literary critic K. L. Zelinsky. RGASPI, F.558, Op.11, D.1116, doc.3, Ll.32–3; Mezhdu Molotom i Nakoval’nei, doc.38; C. A. Ruder, Making History for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal, University Press of Florida: Gainesville 1998 p.44; Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, pp.130–1. The authorship of the term ‘socialist realism’ is unclear. One possibility is that it emerged in exchanges between Stalin and the journalist Ivan Gronsky in 1932–3. According to Gronsky, he suggested the term ‘proletarian socialist realism’ but Stalin thought it sounded better without the first adjective (Kemp-Welch p.132).

19. RGASPI, F.71, Op.10, D.170, L.162.

20. Soviet Writers’ Congress 1934: The Debate on Socialist Realism and Modernism, Lawrence and Wishart: London 1977 pp.21–2. The quoted passage has been truncated and ellipses omitted.

21. Ibid., pp.252–5.

22. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.123.

23. Bol’shaya Tsenzura, doc.327.

24. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.251. This connection was brought to my attention by ibid., p.455, n.11. The translation of Plekhanov derives from https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1895/monist. Accessed 4 August 2021.

25. I. R. Makaryk, ‘Stalin and Shakespeare’ in N. Khomenko (ed.), The Shakespeare International Yearbook, vol. 18, Special Section on Soviet Shakespeare, Routledge: London 2020.

26. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.129.

27. Ibid., doc.131

28. On this whole episode, see M. Belodubrovskaya, Not According to Plan: Filmmaking under Stalin, Cornell University Press: Ithaca NY 2017 pp.41–2, 83–4, 192–3.

29. Davies & Harris, Stalin’s World, pp.254–5.

30. The transcript of the meeting may be found in G. L. Bondareva (ed.), Kremlevskii Kinoteatr, 1928–1953, Rosspen: Moscow 2005 doc.214. This is the key documentary collection of Soviet film-making during the Stalin era. See further, J. Miller, Soviet Cinema: Politics and Persuasion under Stalin, I. B. Tauris: London 2010 especially pp.60–9.

31. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.132. The last three sentences added and translated by me from the Russian transcript.

32. S. Yekelchyk, Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian–Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination, Toronto University Press: Toronto 2004 pp.40, 54–5.

33. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.177.

34. Ibid., p.455. Stalin’s comments took the form of an anonymous report on the film that was published in Soviet newspapers.

35. S. Alliluyeva, 20 Letters to a Friend, Penguin: Harmondsworth 1968 p.129.

36. Cited by A. M. Ball, Imagining America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century Russia, Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham MD 2003 p.87.

37. A. Mikoyan, Tak Bylo, Moscow: Vagrius 1999 pp.533–4.

38. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.163.

39. Bol’shaya Tsenzura, doc.414.

40. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, docs 153–5.