Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

According to Volkogonov, Stalin called in Tovstukha and asked his trusted assistant to sort out a decent personal library for him. When Tovstukha wanted to know what books it should contain, Stalin started to dictate something but then decided to dash off the above-cited note.⁴

Volkogonov often failed to cite the sources for his stories about Stalin, and this was one such example. But that didn’t deter other historians from repeating this highly improbable story.⁵ Stalin did habitually issue detailed on-the-spot instructions to his staff, usually in the form of dictation. When he handwrote such instructions they were invariably immediately edited and corrected by him. This note had no such corrections and has the air of careful not spontaneous composition by Stalin.

It is possible that Stalin did ask a high-level functionary to supervise if not carry out the classification of his books, but the actual recipient of his ‘request’ was probably a librarian called Shushanika Manuchar’yants. She was certainly one recipient of the note because, on 3 July 1925, she wrote to Stalin asking him if he wanted to expand his categories to include Transport, Education, Statistics, Popular Science and Law. Manuchar’yants also wanted to know if items such as reports, surveys and popular tracts were to be kept separate and whether to order some adjustable shelving that she thought would be ideal for his library.

As was his custom, Stalin replied by writing his answers in the margins of her typed memo. To the first question, he answered nuzhno (one should) but added in brackets after Law, isklyuchaya dekrety – ‘excluding decrees’. The answer to the second and third questions was a simple da (yes).⁶

Manuchar’yants had been Lenin’s librarian and after his death in 1924 continued to work for his sister Maria and his widow Nadezhda Krupskaya. It seems likely she served as Stalin’s librarian as well, which would explain why he presented her with a signed copy of his book Voprosy Leninizma (Problems of Leninism) in 1926.⁷ In all probability, it was Shushanika who prompted Stalin to devise his classification scheme and have created his ex-libris stamp – Biblioteka I. V. Stalina – which had the same simple design as the one she used when working as Lenin’s librarian.

Lazar Kaganovich, Stalin’s transport commissar in the 1930s, also had an ex-libris stamp. Like Stalin, Kaganovich was from a modest, non-intellectual background. He, too, numbered as well as stamped his books, indicating an intention to build up a substantial collection.⁸

When she went to work for Lenin in 1920, Manuchar’yants was surprised there were not more books in his office, but she soon learned that he kept to hand only those volumes he needed for current work or for reference purposes. Even so, there were about 2,000 books, many of them in foreign languages, and another 3,000 were kept in a room adjacent to Lenin’s small Kremlin flat. The books were shelved in alphabetical order on six bookcases, one of which contained the classics of Marxism, while another was filled with counter-revolutionary ‘White Guard’ literature that had been published abroad. On other shelves were collections of encyclopaedias, dictionaries and journals, military books and maps, Russian and foreign literature, texts on communism and Soviet foreign policy, and the writings of Russian revolutionary democrats.

Lenin was a fast reader and had a habit of writing in his books with a red or black pencil. Manuchar’yants’s recollection of her daily routine as Lenin’s librarian was as follows:

Have a look at the newly received books and take the most essential to the table beside Lenin’s desk. Register the new books and fill out the cards for the catalogue. Tidy up the bookshelves and bring to Lenin the books he has asked for. Order books that he needs from other libraries.⁹

Among Shushanika’s co-workers in Lenin’s office was Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva. According to Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, hundreds of the history and art books in her father’s library belonged to her mother, a sub-collection to which she (unsuccessfully) laid claim in a 1955 letter to the party leadership.¹⁰ Maybe it was Nadezhda’s idea to ask Shushanika to organise their books.

Manuchar’yants’s memoir did not refer to working for Stalin, nor even mention his name, except once in passing. Such reminiscences were prohibited in the USSR after Khrushchev denounced the dictator; the only exceptions were military-related memoirs concerning Stalin’s role as supreme commander during the Second World War.