Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

Stalin overruled his generals and forbade full mobilisation until German forces actually invaded the USSR. He was confident Soviet frontier defences would hold long enough for the Red Army to complete its counter-mobilisation. That proved to be a disastrous miscalculation when, on 22 June 1941, powerful German forces punched straight through Soviet frontier fortifications. By the end of 1941, the Wehrmacht had surrounded Leningrad, reached the outskirts of Moscow and penetrated deep into Ukraine and southern Russia. In these six months alone, the Red Army suffered a stunning 4 million casualties. Stalin sent Zhukov back to the front line and recalled Shaposhnikov as chief of the General Staff, giving him the opportunity to test the ideas of Mozg Armii in the crucible of total war.

One of the best-known war stories about Stalin, related by Khrushchev in his damning secret speech to the 20th party congress, is that he suffered a nervous collapse when the Germans invaded, and retreated to his dacha. It is a story reminiscent of pejorative tales about Ivan the Terrible skulking in his tent when confronted with military failure.

One oft-repeated version of this myth is that the shock and initial success of the German surprise attack on 22 June caused Stalin’s mental anguish. Another version claims that what disturbed Stalin was the collapse of the Red Army’s Western Front and the fall of the Belorussian capital, Minsk, at the end of June. There is no contemporaneous evidence to support either story. All the documentary evidence, notably Stalin’s Kremlin appointments diary, shows he remained in command of both himself and the situation.²⁶² Post hoc witness testimony claims otherwise but the hostile memoirs of Khrushchev’s supporters are contradicted by other witnesses. Stalin did, it is true, disappear to Blizhnyaya (not called ‘nearby’ for nothing) for thirty-six hours or so in early July, but he emerged to deliver a masterly radio broadcast. If Stalin did have a breakdown it was short-lived and he staged a miraculous recovery.

The common-sense explanation for Stalin’s brief absence from the Kremlin is that he went there to think things over and to compose his speech – his first public statement on the war and his first-ever radio broadcast.

Stalin was doubtless perturbed by what had happened – which was completely unexpected, given the enormous strength of the Red Army. He may well have wondered whether his generals were conspiring against him. On 1 July 1941, he removed General G. D. Pavlov as commander of the Western Front and had him arrested along with his chief of staff, his chief of communications and other senior members of his team. Like Tukhachevsky in 1937, Pavlov was falsely accused of being involved in an anti-Soviet conspiracy (both men were rehabilitated after Stalin’s death). But when Pavlov was sentenced to death it was not for treason but for cowardice, panic-mongering, criminal negligence and unauthorised retreats – a change in the charge sheet that signalled Stalin had chosen to discount the anti-Soviet conspiracy theory.

Another possibility is that when Stalin retreated to his dacha he did what he habitually did when he was there: he read a book. Not just any book, but Mikhail Bragin’s Polkovodets [Commander] Kutuzov, sent for printing on 14 June 1941 with a run of 50,000 (normal by Soviet standards). Its price was 2.5 roubles, plus 50 kopeks extra for a bound copy.²⁶³ The author was a young historian (b.1906) with a military background who had studied at the Frunze Military Academy. Major-General Levitsky’s preface to the book was written before Hitler’s attack but included an addendum that cited Molotov’s national radio address announcing the invasion on 22 June 1941: ‘When Napoleon invaded Russia our people responded with a patriotic war and he was defeated. Now Hitler has declared a new march on our country. The Red Army and the whole people will once again wage a patriotic war for the motherland, for honour and for freedom.’

Levitsky did not mention Stalin’s broadcast, which dates publication to the last week of June or thereabouts. Stalin would certainly have been sent a copy of the book straight away and it may have grabbed his attention. In his broadcast, Stalin made the same Hitler and Napoleon comparison: Napoleon’s army had been considered invincible but it had been smashed and so, too, would be Hitler’s.²⁶⁴

Kutuzov’s biography and the drama of his 1812 defeat of Napoleon’s Grande Armée was, of course, well known to Stalin. The restoration of Kutuzov’s status as a patriotic war hero began in the mid-1930s. By 1941, students at the higher party school were being taught a glowing account of Kutuzov’s role in the ‘people’s war’ of 1812. Stalin read the text of this lecture with avid interest, underlining lecturer E. N. Burdzhalov’s conclusion that ‘for Kutuzov, the overthrow of Napoleon was not important, it was his ejection from Russia.’