Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

12.  Beside a paragraph of a 1946 article on contemporary military art that asserts the role of leadership and willpower in winning wars, Stalin wrote ‘not that’ and ‘the most important thing is knowledge of Marxism’.

13.  Pages from a draft of the Short Course History of the CPSU containing a section on Stalin’s role in the Bolshevik underground in Transcaucasia. It is one of many such sections deleted by Stalin.

14.  At the top of this page summarizing a discussion of the character of economic laws at the 1951 conference on the draft of the Political Economy textbook, Stalin wrote ‘what economic laws’ and in the margin ‘ha-ha-ha’, ‘hee-hee’ and ‘not so’.

Given the stupendous defeats and retreats of the Red Army during the first six months of the war, it is, perhaps, understandable that Stalin would want to delete a paragraph describing Suvorov as the ‘Marshal of the Advance’ – a reference to Suvorov’s slogan during the second Russo-Turkish war of 1789: ‘Only forward! Not a step back. Else death. Forward!’ He also deleted these stirring words of Podorozhny’s: ‘Not a step back! – demand the Soviet people of the Red Army. Beat the enemy on the spot, overrun them and smash their forces, chase them “day and night until they are destroyed” – this Suvorov maxim is as apt today as it was 150 years ago.’ But the words may have stuck in his mind because, a few months later, as the Germans advanced on Stalingrad, Stalin issued his most famous of wartime decrees – Ni shagu nazad! (Not a Step Back): ‘This must now be our chief slogan. It is necessary to defend to the last drop of blood every position, every metre of Soviet territory.’

The bulk of the review remained untouched by Stalin, including the colonel’s recommendation for the book to be read by every Soviet commander. It may even have inspired Stalin to ask Osipov to author a version for ‘command staff’. In August 1942 Osipov submitted an 189-page typescript to Stalin, who edited it but only to tone down Osipov’s enthusiasm for Suvorov.²⁷⁰

Stalin had involved himself in Suvorov-related matters before. In June 1940 he reviewed a film script about Suvorov. The script was inadequate, wrote Stalin. It was tedious and insubstantial and depicted Suvorov as a ‘kindly old man who occasionally crows “Cock-a-doodle-do” and keeps repeating “Russian”, “Russian”.’ What the film should to do was show what was special about Suvorov’s military leadership: the identification and exploitation of enemy weaknesses; well-thought-out offensives; the ability to select and direct experienced but bold commanders; the willingness to promote by merit not seniority; the maintenance of iron discipline among the ranks of the armed forces.²⁷¹

Stalin’s criticisms did not impede production of the film, which premiered in January 1941. Its two directors – Mikhail Doller and Vsevolod Pudovkin – were awarded Stalin Prizes, as was the actor who played Suvorov, Nikolai Cherkasov.

In the 1940s Stalin made a number of notable general statements about war that distilled his reading of strategy and military history books and synthesised it with the practical experience of supreme command. At an April 1940 conference on the lessons of the recently concluded ‘Winter War’ with Finland, Stalin delivered a long speech in which he explained to his generals why the Red Army had suffered such high casualties. First, the Red Army had expected an easy war and had not been prepared for hard battles with the Finns. Second, the war showed the Red Army was not a ‘contemporary’ army. In contemporary warfare, artillery was the main thing, followed by masses of airplanes, tanks and mortars. A contemporary army was an attacking, mechanised army. It also needed an educated command staff as well as trained and disciplined soldiers capable of themselves taking the initiative.²⁷²

At the back of Stalin’s mind when making this speech might have been a recently read Tsarist-era history of Russia’s armed forces in which he noted the problems Peter the Great experienced when unsuccessfully trying to capture Finland during the Great Northern War against Sweden (1700–1721). Stalin loved statistics: Peter’s Finnish war had lasted twenty-one years and required the mobilisation of 1.7 million troops, 120,000 of whom had perished, while another 500,000 had deserted.²⁷³ The Red Army’s campaign in Finland in 1939–40 was equally disastrous, but it lasted only a few months and Stalin did defeat the Finns and capture territory deemed vital to the security of Leningrad, albeit at the cost of a quarter of a million Soviet casualties, including 70,000 dead.