Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

It is claimed that Nadya had some health issues, physical and mental. There is also much talk about her political differences with Stalin, notably over the violent ‘revolution from above’ he unleashed at the end of the 1920s, but there is no probative evidence to support such speculation. The conspiracy theory that Stalin had her murdered because of these supposed differences may be safely dismissed.

Hard evidence about the Stalin marriage is sparse and the memoir literature overdetermined by post hoc speculation about what led to Nadya’s suicide. Their surviving correspondence from the late 1920s and early 1930, conducted while Stalin was on holiday at his dacha in Sochi and Nadya was in Moscow studying, suggests theirs was a happy if not always smooth marriage.³²

Their marriage breakdown appears to have been gradual rather than sudden, and gender inequality may have played a role. As radical socialists, the Bolsheviks were committed to female emancipation and sought to mobilise Soviet women in support of the communist project. But while there were many female activists and leaders throughout Soviet society, there were hardly any at the top levels of politics and power. One exception was Molotov’s wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina – a good friend of Nadya’s – who ran the fisheries industry in the 1930s and also looked after Soviet cosmetics.³³ Another was Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai, who later became ambassador to Sweden – the only female Soviet diplomat of that rank. An early diary of hers was part of Stalin’s book collection. Among the very few other female authors that featured in his library were Lenin’s widow Krupskaya, the German communist Clara Zetkin, and the Polish Marxist Rosa Luxemburg, whose book on the General Strike as a revolutionary tactic was copiously marked by him. He was particularly interested in her treatment of the experience of strikes in Russia, especially in the Caucasus, where he himself had been active.³⁴

The early years of the Stalin marriage coincided with the most liberationist and egalitarian phase of Bolshevik policy and practice on gender issues. However, from the early 1930s there developed a more conservative approach towards ‘the woman question’ and a reversion to more traditional gender relations.³⁵

Soviet political culture from the outset was heavily male-dominated and Bolshevik leaders, including Stalin, affected a tough, coarse macho style. ‘Today I read the section of international affairs,’ Stalin wrote to Soviet premier Vyacheslav Molotov in January 1933, congratulating him on a speech. ‘It came out well. The confident, contemptuous tone with the respect to the “great” powers, the belief in our own strength, the delicate but plain spitting in the pot of the swaggering “great powers” – very good. Let them eat it.’³⁶ For a young and ambitious female activist like Nadya, this was an inhospitable climate, even with the privileges that came from being Stalin’s wife. Matters came to a head at a private party in the Kremlin to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. After a drunken row with Stalin, Nadya left the room and shot herself with a revolver that her brother had brought back from Berlin as a souvenir.

Her suicide was obfuscated but not her death, which was announced in Pravda: ‘On the night of 9 of November, active and dedicated Party member Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva died’. The dedication that followed was signed by top Soviet leaders and their wives:

We have lost a dear, beloved comrade with a beautiful soul. A young Bolshevik filled with strength and boundlessly dedicated to the Party and the Revolution, is no more. . . . The memory of Nadezhda Sergeevna, dedicated Bolshevik, close friend and faithful helper to Comrade Stalin, will remain forever dear to us.³⁷

Further tributes were paid when she was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery on 12 November and a few days later Stalin replied publicly to all the sympathy messages he had received: ‘With heartfelt gratitude to all organisations, comrades, and individuals who have expressed their condolences on the occasion of the death of my close friend and comrade Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva-Stalina.’³⁸

As Sheila Fitzpatrick has written, ‘Stalin’s reactions [to Nadya’s suicide] are variously reported but grief, guilt and a sense of betrayal were all evidently present.’³⁹ After his wife’s death, Stalin gradually withdrew from the family life that he had enjoyed in the 1920s. He moved into another apartment in the Kremlin, one that was located directly below his office. He stopped going to Zubalovo, although many of his books remained there.

STALIN’S MAPS