Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

In that anniversary year there was a broad shift in Soviet discourse about Russia’s past. The revolution was celebrated as a radical historical break and its heroes lionised, but so, too, was Alexander Pushkin. That year was the cen—tenary of the poet’s death and it provided an opportunity to appropriate him and his works for the Soviet project. He was deemed a revolutionary writer both aesthetically and politically, a man of the people whose poems were accessible to all. ‘Only our time entirely and completely accepts Pushkin and Pushkin’s heritage’, editorialised Literaturnyi Sovremennik (Contemporary Literature). ‘Only now has Pushkin become truly close to millions of hearts. For the new masses conquering the heights of culture, Pushkin is an “eternal companion”.’ A 1931 piece by the former commissar for enlightenment, Anatoly Lunacharsky, was reprinted: ‘It is Pushkin who, among others, must become a teacher of the proletarians and peasants in the construction of their inner world. . . . Every grain that is contained in Pushkin’s treasury will yield a socialist rose or a socialist bunch of grapes in the life of every citizen.’¹⁶⁸ Also revived was the heroic reputation of Peter the Great in a biopic based on Alexei Tolstoy’s 1934 novel. Peter was lauded as ‘a strong national figure who won territory through war and defended it through diplomacy’ and praised for ‘the achievement of raising Russia to the status of a great power in the European arena’.¹⁶⁹

REHABILITATING IVAN THE TERRIBLE

Although Robert Vipper was primarily a historian of the ancient world and of early Christianity, his most influential book was about Russian history – Ivan Grozny (Ivan the Terrible). First published in 1922, Vipper’s book challenged the widely accepted view – in Russia and elsewhere – that Ivan IV was a bloodthirsty tyrant. Vipper’s Ivan was fearsome and menacing towards the Russian state’s domestic and foreign foes. Strengthening the monarchy was necessary to empower the Russian state and external threats and pressures motivated his harsh internal regime. His struggle for power against Russia’s barons was just, and his security apparatus – the much-maligned Oprichnina – as honourable as it was effective. He was also a great warlord and diplomat who had built Russia into one of the greatest states in the world.¹⁷⁰

Vipper was not alone in his rehabilitation of Ivan’s reputation. S. F. Platonov (1860–1933) mounted a similar defence in his 1923 book on Ivan the Terrible.¹⁷¹ We don’t know for certain if Stalin read either of these books, since neither is to be found among the remnants of his personal library, although it does contain a copy of Platonov’s 1924 history of Russia’s north and the colonisation of its coastal lands.¹⁷² It is not unreasonable to assume that Stalin read Vipper’s book and that it influenced his conversion to a positive view of Ivan the Terrible’s role in Russian history. The earliest hint that this was Stalin’s direction of travel was his editing the first volume of Istoriya Grazhdanskoi Voiny v SSSR (History of the Civil War in the USSR) in 1934. He deleted a reference to Ivan IV as the initiator of the Tsarist policy of aggressive, land-grabbing conquests. The Tsars remained repressive as a group but Ivan was nothing special in that regard.¹⁷³

This civil war history was Maxim Gorky’s project, the writer with whom Stalin maintained close relations. At the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in August 1934, Gorky made this somewhat ambiguous point which, depending on the folklore in question, could be construed as either anti-Vipper or anti-Pokrovsky:

Since olden times folklore has been in constant and quaint attendance on history. It has its own opinion regarding the actions of Louis XI and Ivan the Terrible and this opinion sharply diverges from the appraisal of history, written by specialists who were not greatly interested in the question as to what the combat between monarchs and feudal lords meant to the life of the toiling people.¹⁷⁴