Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

44. Fal’sifikatory Istorii (Istoricheskaya Spravka), Ogiz: Moscow 1948. In English: Falsifiers of History (Historical Survey), Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1948.

45. RGASPI, F.558, Op.11, D.243, docs.1, 5, 5a.

46. Falsifiers of History (Historical Survey), p.41.

47. Ibid., p.43.

48. Ibid., pp.47–8.

49. Ibid., p.51. Stalin was being a little unfair to Truman. In that same speech he said that on no account did he want Hitler to win. During the war he was a highly effective overseer of Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease aid to Britain and the Soviet Union.

50. Ibid., p.52.

51. See G. Roberts, Molotov: Stalin’s Cold Warrior, Potomac Books: Washington DC 2012 chap.2.

52. Falsifiers of History, p.59.

53. E. Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, Princeton University Press: Princeton 2006 p.169. In this section I follow in the footsteps of chap.7 of Pollock’s book: ‘“Everyone Is Waiting”: Stalin and the Economic Problems of Communism’. See also the memoirs of Dmitry Shepilov, who was heavily involved in the textbook discussion and production: The Kremlin’s Scholar, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 2014.

54. An English translation of the record of Stalin’s January 1941 meeting with the economists may be found in Pollock, Conversations with Stalin.

55. English translation of Stalin’s February, April and May conversations with economists may be found in ibid.

56. They are published in Stalinskoe Ekonomicheskoe Nasledstvo: Plany i Diskussii, 1947–1955gg, Rosspen: Moscow 2017.

57. RGASPI, F.558, Op.11, Dd.1242–6.

58. J. Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1952. For a nit-picking scholastic critique, see N. Leites, ‘Stalin as Intellectual’, World Politics, 6/1 (October 1953).

59. See K. D. Roh, Stalin’s Economic Advisors: The Varga Institute and the Making of Soviet Foreign Policy, I. B. Tauris: London 2018.

60. Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, p.192.

61. Ibid., p.207.

62. An English translation of the textbook may be found here: https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/index.htm. Accessed 4 August 2021.

63. R. B. Day, Cold War Capitalism: The View from Moscow, 1945–1975, M. E. Sharpe: Armonk NY 1995 pp.83–4.

CONCLUSION: THE DICTATOR WHO LOVED BOOKS

1. F. Chuev, Tak Govoril Kaganovich: Ispoved’ Stalinskogo Apostola, Otechestvo: Moscow 1992 pp.154, 190. The conversation took place in 1991.

2. Litsedei: Russian for an actor. I owe this reference to S. Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London 2003 p.3, who, in turn, derived it from V. Zubok & C. Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev, Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA 1996 p.21.

3. C. Read, ‘The Many Lives of Joseph Stalin: Writing the Biography of a “Monster”’ in J. Ryan & S. Grant (eds), Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism: Complexities, Contradictions and Controversies, Bloomsbury Academic: London 2021.

4. R. G. Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution, Princeton University Press: Princeton 2020 pp.668–95.

5. I. Deutscher, ‘Writing a Biography of Stalin’, The Listener, https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1947/writing-stalin.htm (25 December 1947).

6. G. Roberts, ‘Working Towards the Vozhd’? Stalin and the Peace Movement’ in Grant & Ryan, Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism.

7. G. Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 2006 pp.247–8.

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