Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

TASS reported that Vipper’s lecture on one of the most significant figures in Russian history had been a great success, noting that Ivan IV had created a powerful Muscovy state that played a crucial role in the gathering of the Russian lands and in developing close cultural, political and economic links with western Europe. The cause closest to Ivan’s heart, however, was the Livonian War (1558–83), which, according to Vipper, was a war for the restoration of ancient Russian rights. Vipper also dealt with the common complaint that Ivan was a cruel tyrant. To understand his harsh actions, people needed to appreciate the depth of domestic opposition to his efforts to create a centralised state – opponents who had allied themselves with foreign enemies.

The comparisons with Stalin’s time were self-evident and Vipper had no need to spell them out. He did, however, conclude with one explicit parallel between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries: then, as now, there were Germans who believed the Russians were incapable of defending themselves and underestimated the deep patriotism of the Russian people.¹⁸⁷

A fortnight later, Vipper was elected a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and appointed to its Institute of History. In 1944 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and in 1945 the Order of Lenin.

The aesthetic rehabilitation of Ivan the Terrible proved to be more problematic than the historical. There were three parts to Tolstoy’s projected play, the first of which dealt with the formation of Ivan’s character, the second with affairs of state and the third with his ‘inglorious end’.¹⁸⁸ He started work in autumn 1941 and had finished part one by the following spring. Printed copies of the script for the first part started to circulate, including one that found its way to Stalin’s desk. It was quite short and Stalin made a few inconsequential marks, indicating that he had read it.¹⁸⁹ There was talk of Tolstoy being awarded a second Stalin Prize but the party leadership didn’t like the portrayal of Ivan. At the end of April 1942 the Moscow party boss, Alexander Shcherbakov, who was also chief of the Soviet Information Buro, wrote to Stalin recommending prohibition of the play in its current form.¹⁹⁰ Shcherbakov also composed a longer version of his note, laying out detailed criticism of Tolstoy’s work. Stalin’s direct input into this critique remains unknown but it can be taken as read that it reflected his views as well.

‘Ivan IV was an outstanding political figure of sixteenth-century Russia,’ wrote Shcherbakov. ‘He completed the establishment of a centralised Russian state . . . successfully crushing the resistance of representatives of the feudal order.’ Tolstoy’s ‘confused play’ had numerous historical inaccuracies and had failed ‘to rehabilitate the image of Ivan IV’. The main flaw was not showing Ivan as a major, talented political actor, the gatherer of the Russian state and an implacable foe of the feudal fragmentation of Rus’ and of the reactionary boyars.¹⁹¹

Undeterred by this criticism, Tolstoy rewrote part one and continued working on part two, utilising Vipper’s book, among others. He sent both parts to Stalin for review but does not seem to have received any response, though they were published in the November–December 1943 issue of the magazine Oktyabr’.¹⁹² Part one premiered in Moscow’s Malyi Teatr (Little Theatre) in October 1944 but the production was not considered a success so it was restaged, to great acclaim, in May 1945.¹⁹³ Part two was performed by the Moscow Arts Theatre in June 1946. The final part of the trilogy – on Ivan’s last years – remained unwritten, it seems.

Part one made it into print again in November 1944, when Stalin took a more active interest and marked a few passages from Ivan’s longer lines of dialogue, the most interesting being this:

They want to live in the old way, each sitting in a fiefdom with their own army, just like under the Tatar yoke. . . . They have no thought or responsibility for the Russian land. . . . Enemies of our state is what they are, and if we agreed to live the old way, Lithuania, Poland, Germans, Crimean Tatars and the Sultan would rush across the frontier and tear apart our bodies and souls. That is what the princes and boyars want – to destroy the Russian kingdom.¹⁹⁴

Tolstoy, who died in February 1945, did not live to see part two of his play performed or to collect his second, posthumously awarded, Stalin Prize in 1946.