Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

‘The Pope,’ asked Stalin. ‘How many divisions has he got?’ The quote is apocryphal, but he reportedly said – with a smile on his face – something similar to Pierre Laval in May 1935, when the visiting French foreign minister suggested he should build some diplomatic bridges to the Catholic Church by signing a pact with the Vatican: ‘A pact? A pact with the Pope? No, not a chance! We only conclude pacts with those who have armies, and the Roman Pope, in so far as I know, doesn’t have an army.’¹²³

CAESARS AND TSARS

Stalin was aghast when Svetlana told him she wanted to study literature at university.

So you want to be one of those literary types! You want to be one of those Bohemians! They’re uneducated, the whole lot, and you want to be just like them. No, you’d better get a decent education – let it be history. Writers need social history, too. Study history. Then you can do what you want.

She took her father’s advice, and did not regret it, but later switched to literary studies.¹²⁴

Exhausted by the war, in October 1945 Stalin retreated to his dacha near Sochi on the Black Sea – the first of a series of long holidays he took in the postwar years. One of the first things he did was to invite two Georgian historians, Nikolai Berdzenishvili and Simon Dzhanshiya, to his dacha at Gagra to discuss their textbook history of Georgia.¹²⁵ When they arrived, Stalin was ready and waiting for them with a copy of their book in front of him. Incredibly, the conversation lasted four days and ranged far and wide: the origins of Georgia and its connections with the peoples of the Ancient East; the feudal era in Georgian history; the formation of Georgian society during the struggle against Tsarism; and the eighteenth-century monarchy of Heraclius II, who Stalin considered was a moderniser and state-builder.

Berdzenishvili wrote a near contemporary account of his encounter with the man he considered a genius.¹²⁶ He was bowled over by Stalin’s knowledge and erudition, wondering how he found the time to read so much about the Ancient East. He waxed lyrical about Stalin as both a Georgian and a Soviet patriot, and dutifully noted his preferences when it came to historians: ‘He likes Turaev and Pavlov and does not like Struve and Orbeli.’¹²⁷

Stalin had plenty of queries about the book but the discussion was respectful throughout. Indeed, both authors were awarded Stalin Prizes for History in 1947.

According to Berdzenishvili, Stalin said that while the history of Georgia should be a patriotic history, it ought to feature the strivings of Georgians for connections with the Russian people and it had to acknowledge the progressive historical role of Russia: Georgia was a European country that had returned to the European path of development only when it became part of Russia.

These comments of Stalin’s exemplified the Soviet concept of the ‘Friendship of the Peoples’, which originated in the mid-1930s but had developed strongly during the war – the idea that even in Tsarist times the Russian state and its core population of Russians had been staunch allies of non-Russian nationalities in their struggles for liberation, progress and modernity.¹²⁸

Among Stalin’s more general comments was that the study of history was a search for the truth about the past, a science based on evidence. He deplored those communists who liked to spout on about dialectical materialism and big-picture issues but made no reference to documentation. When Stalin came across Berdzenishvili in the corridor reading a newspaper, he asked him about the situation in the country. ‘Peaceful and calm,’ replied Berdzenishvili. ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Stalin, before smiling and walking way. ‘Where is the evidence?’¹²⁹

The discussion was not limited to Georgian history. Stalin reminisced about his years in the Bolshevik underground and also spoke about the war. Prone to national stereotyping, Stalin told his audience that Russians were sturdy, the English well nourished, Americans crude, Italians short in stature and the Germans weak from eating too much ersatz food. About Soviet Jews during the war, Stalin had this to say:

Among them there are proportionally fewer Heroes of the Soviet Union [the equivalent of the Victoria Cross or the Congressional Medal of Honor – GR]. They are more drawn to economic organisations, gathering around them and leaving military matters to others. No one will beat them to a warm and safe place. It has to be said that there are among them fearless warriors, but not many.¹³⁰

Stalin’s remark echoed the popular wartime prejudice that ‘the Jews are fighting the war from Tashkent’. In fact, Soviet Jews were as courageous and committed as any other section of the country’s population.¹³¹

Svetlana was convinced that he didn’t like her first husband, Grigory Morozov, because he was Jewish, and claimed he wasn’t happy that her eldest brother Yakov’s wife, Yulia, was also Jewish.¹³²