Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

One issue in dispute was Moskalev’s statement that Stalin had been the editor of the Baku oil workers’ newspaper Gudok (The Siren), which, as Yaroslavsky pointed out, was based on a number of different sources, including the recollections of the paper’s editor-publisher. The publisher was ‘confused’, Stalin wrote in reply. ‘I never visited the Gudok editorial offices. I was not a member of its editorial board. I was not the de facto editor of Gudok (I didn’t have the time). That was Comrade Dzhaparidze.’ However, Stalin did make numerous contributions to the paper in 1907–8, so a little confusion in the memories of his old comrades was not all that surprising.³⁴

STALIN’S COLLECTED WORKS

Stalin’s sixtieth birthday celebrations in December 1939 provided an opening for Yaroslavsky to revive his attempts to publish a Stalin biography. When a piece about Stalin that he wrote for a Soviet encyclopaedia was rejected by its editors as too long and dense, he appealed to Stalin to allow its publication as a short book, assuring him that it had been written in a ‘simple style accessible to the masses’. His book was published at the end of 1939 but he had been upstaged by IMEL’s publication of a Short Biography of Stalin, with a print run of more than 1.2 million copies. However, when Stalin was sent a copy of the book’s proofs, he wrote on the covering note that he had ‘no time to look at it’.³⁵ The signed copy of Yaroslavsky’s book was unmarked by Stalin, and probably unread.

A project closer to Stalin’s heart was the publication of his collected writings. Articles, leaflets, letters, speeches, statements, reports, interviews and contributions to Marxist theory – these were texts that charted his political life, marked its milestones and recorded his most important thoughts.

Publishing the collected works of Bolshevik leaders was a small industry in the prewar USSR. As early as 1923, a twenty-two-volume edition of Zinoviev’s writings was in print. In 1929 Trotsky’s collected works reached volume twenty. By the mid-1930s, there were already three editions of Lenin’s collected works. By these standards, the publication of Stalin’s works was slow off the mark.

The indefatigable Tovstukha started gathering material for Stalin’s collected works in the early 1930s, and in 1931 Stalin himself sketched a plan for an eight-volume edition. In August 1935 – a fortnight after Tovstukha’s death – the Politburo, spurred on by the unauthorised republication of his pre-revolutionary writings, passed a resolution decreeing the publication of Stalin’s collected works. The job was given to IMEL, in conjunction with Stetsky and the party’s propaganda department.³⁶

By November, Stetsky had outlined to Stalin the plans for publication. There would be eight to ten volumes called Sochineniya (Works or Writings). The edition would contain Stalin’s previously published writings plus unpublished items such as stenograms of speeches, letters, notes and telegrams. The documents would be published in chronological order and would be supported by detailed factual information on their content. The volumes would contain a chronology of Stalin’s life and political activities and would be published in all the national languages of the USSR as well as various foreign languages.³⁷

In later years, the intended number of volumes was increased to twelve and then to sixteen but the rest of the plan remained much the same and, indeed, was mostly delivered. However, it took a lot longer than expected. The intention was to publish the first volumes in 1936 and to complete the series by 1937 – in time for the twentieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. But the first volume did not see the light of day for another decade, for reasons that were many and varied.