Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

9. I. Mints, ‘Podgotovka Velikoi Proletarskoi Revolyutsii: K Vykhodu v Svet Pervogo Toma “Istoriya Grazhdanskoi Voiny v SSSR”, Bol’shevik, 12/15 (November 1935) p.30 for the quote.

10. This section on the Short Course leans heavily on the work of David Brandenberger: ‘The Fate of Interwar Soviet Internationalism: A Case Study of the Editing of Stalin’s 1938 Short Course on the History of the ACP(B)’, Revolutionary Russia, 29/1 (2016); ‘Stalin and the Muse of History: The Dictator and His Critics on the Editing of the 1938 Short Course’ in V. Tismaneanu & B. C. Iacob (eds), Ideological Storms: Intellectuals, Dictators and the Totalitarian Temptation, CEU Press: Budapest 2019; Stalin’s Master Narrative: A Critical Edition of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 2019 (co-edited with M. Zelenov); and ‘Kratkii Kurs Istorii VKP (b)’: Tekst i Ego Istoriya v 2 Chastyakh: Chast’ 1, Rosspen: Moscow 2014 (co-edited with M. Zelenov). The former edited volume reproduces the official English-language translation of the Short Course together with the details of Stalin’s editing, while the latter contains the archive documents appertaining to the process of producing the book.

11. Brandenberger & Zelenov, ‘Kratkii Kurs Istorii VKP (b)’, doc.112.

12. Ibid., doc.165.

13. Brandenberger & Zelenov, Stalin’s Master Narrative, pp.17–18.

14. Brandenberger & Zelenov, Kratkii Kurs Istorii VKP (b)’, doc.231 p.429. The conference took place from 27 September to 1 October 1938.

15. Brandenberger & Zelenov, Stalin’s Master Narrative, p.20.

16. Ibid., p.21.

17. Brandenberger & Zelenov, Kratkii Kurs Istorii VKP (b)’, doc.231 p.457.

18. The text of the section may be found in Brandenberger & Zelenov, Stalin’s Master Narrative, pp.48–73.

19. For an overview, see E. van Ree, ‘Stalin as a Marxist Philosopher’, Studies in East European Thought, 52/4 (December 2000). See further G. V. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism: A Historical and Systematic Survey of Philosophy in the Soviet Union, Routledge & Kegan Paul: London 1958 chap.10, and Z. A. Jordan, The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism, Macmillan: London 1967 chap.8.

20. J. Stalin, ‘Anarchism or Socialism?’ in Works, vol.1, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1952 pp.297–372.

21. Cited by A. Bonfanti, ‘Eric Hobsbawm’s Dialectical Materialism in the Postwar Period 1946–56’, Twentieth Century Communism, 19 (November 2020).

22. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, p.212. Brandenberger quotes a figure of 40 million copies during Stalin’s time.

23. RGASPI, Op.558, Dd.1602–4. In the archive the typescript is misidentified as being that of a separate book but the pagination indicates that it is part of a larger MS, i.e. Istoriya Diplomatii. Only the chapters dealing with the 1920s are preserved in these files.

24. RGASPI F.558, Op.1, D.5754, L.98. On Pankratova, see R. E. Zelnik, Perils of Pankratova: Some Stories from the Annals of Soviet Historiography, University of Washington Press: Seattle 2005.