Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

There were hundreds of works by Lenin in Stalin’s book collection, dozens of them marked and annotated. Lenin was Stalin’s most-read author. In Stalin’s own collected writings there are many more references to Lenin than any other person.²³ Stalin was renowned as the master of the Lenin quote. He didn’t just pore over Lenin’s original writings, he read summaries and condensations by other authors, being particularly fond of publications that provided excerpts of Lenin’s writings on the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ and other vital issues of the day.²⁴ Another useful crib were collections containing notes and plans for his major speeches, which gave Stalin insight into how Lenin constructed and presented arguments.²⁵ In a book about the reasons for Bolshevik victory in the civil war, Stalin simply highlighted all the quotes from Lenin: the Bolsheviks had won because of international working-class solidarity, because they were united whereas their opponents were divided, and because soldiers had refused to fight against the Soviet government. Lenin’s reference to the failure of Winston Churchill’s prediction that the allies would take Petrograd in September 1919 and Moscow by December was double-lined in the margin.²⁶

In his comprehensive study of Stalin’s political thought, Erik van Ree concluded that his ‘notes in Lenin’s writings are remarkable for their lack of criticism. In the most intensively read books by his predecessor there is no hint of it all.’ The same was true of Marx: ‘I did not find a single critical remark by Stalin.’ While Stalin’s reading of Engels was more critical, his markings of Engels’s books was always attentive and respectful. ‘Only idiots can doubt that Engels was and remains our teacher,’ he wrote to the Politburo in August 1934. ‘But it does not follow from this at all, that we must cover up Engel’s short-comings.’ As van Ree also pointed out, the marked books in his library show that Stalin kept on reading Marx, Engels and Lenin until the very end of his life.²⁷

Stalin’s toast to scientists at a reception for higher education workers in May 1938 is one of his many fulsome tributes to Lenin:

In the course of its development science has known not a few courageous men who were able to break down the old and create the new. . . . Such scientists as Galileo, Darwin . . . I should like to dwell on one of these eminent men of science, one who at the same time was the greatest man of modern times. I am referring to Lenin, our teacher, our tutor. (Applause.) Remember 1917. A scientific analysis of the social development of Russia and of the international situation brought Lenin to the conclusion that the only way out of the situation lay in the victory of socialism in Russia. This conclusion came as a complete surprise to many men of science. . . . Scientists of all kinds set up a howl that Lenin was destroying science. But Lenin was not afraid to go against the current, against the force of routine. And Lenin won (Applause).²⁸

When Stalin devised his library classification schema in May 1925, Trotsky had already emerged as his fiercest rival and a leading opponent in the post-Lenin succession power struggles. Yet Stalin placed Trotsky sixth in the list of Marxist authors whose books were to be separated from the general, subject-based classification scheme. Apart from Marx, Engels and Lenin, only Kautsky (the chief theoretician of German social democracy) and Plekhanov (the founding father of Russian Marxism) were listed ahead of Trotsky. After Trotsky’s name came those of Stalin’s then close allies – Bukharin, Kamenev and Zinoviev.

More than forty of Trotsky’s books and pamphlets, including some quite hefty tomes, may be found among the remnants of Stalin’s library, but he was particularly interested in his rival’s ‘factional’ polemics – The New Course (1923) and The Lessons of October (1924). Stalin combed through these and other writings seeking ammunition for his critique of Trotsky and Trotskyism. His withering attacks on Trotsky’s views made his name as a top-class polemicist and consolidated his authority as the party’s general-secretary. At the 15th party conference in November 1926, he was scathing in his criticism of Trotsky’s statement in The New Course that ‘Leninism, as a system of revolutionary action, presumes a revolutionary instinct trained by reflection and experience which, in the social sphere, is equivalent to muscular sensation in physical labour.’ Stalin’s commented: ‘Leninism as “muscular sensation in physical labour”. New and original and very profound, is it not? Can you make head or tail of it? (Laughter).’²⁹