relies with all his weight upon reason and practical common sense. He is impeccably and inexorably methodical. He knows. He thoroughly understands Leninism. . . . He does not try to show off and is not worried by a desire to be original. He merely tries to do everything that he can do. He does not believe in eloquence or sensationalism. When he speaks he merely tries to combine simplicity with clearness.29
As this quotation shows, Stetsky did not succeed in shifting Barbusse from his view that Stalin was primarily a praktik – a man of action. He was more successful in relation to Barbusse’s treatment of Trotsky, though he would probably have wished that Stalin’s rival did not loom so large in the book. Barbusse’s conclusion was the orthodox one that by the time Leningrad party chief Sergei Kirov was assassinated in December 1934, Trotsky had become a counter-revolutionary. But Barbusse plotted Trotsky’s alleged path to counter-revolution carefully and plausibly. His account of the disputes with Lenin and Stalin that led Trotsky to a counter-revolutionary position was highly effective compared to the hysterical denunciations and polemics of Soviet propagandists.
Barbusse’s book, Andrew Sobanet suggests, may have provided a template for the plot of the official Soviet Short Biography of Stalin that was to be published in 1939:
The Short Biography, like Staline, recounts Stalin’s early family life and schooling, followed by a description of life in his native region and the rising importance of Marxism. Both texts elaborate on Stalin’s affection for Lenin’s work and writing, his work as a propagandist, his pre-1917 revolutionary activities, and his heroic work in the revolutionary and civil war eras. Just as in Barbusse’s text, Stalin is described in the Short Biography as ‘the worthy continuer of the cause of Lenin . . . Stalin is the Lenin of today’. References to Stalin’s alleged omnipotence and omniscience are also found in both books. . . . Both books end with pages on Stalin that praise him in absurdly grandiose terms.30
The problem with Barbusse’s book was that it was hostage to the fortunes of the people who populated its pages, some of whom would soon became ‘unpersons’ in the USSR after falling victim to Stalin’s purges. Within a couple of years of its publication, the Russian edition had been withdrawn from circulation and a block put on further editions or translations.
The English edition of the book contained a photograph of Stalin and Marshal Alexander Yegorov, with whom he had served during the Russian Civil War. However, Yegorov was arrested in 1938 for participating in an anti-Soviet conspiracy, and shot in 1939. Tantalisingly, the English edition also carries a photo of some bookcases said to be ‘Stalin’s Secret Library, Now in Tiflis Museum’, a secret stash, one assumes, from his underground days.
In general, Stalin remained resistant to biographies or hagiographies of himself, because he didn’t want to give too much encouragement to his personality cult. In 1933 he opposed a proposal from the Society of Old Bolsheviks to stage an exhibition based on his biography, commenting that ‘such undertakings lead to the strengthening of the “cult of personality”, which is harmful and incompatible with the spirit of our party’. He also prohibited publication of a Ukrainian party brochure about his life to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the foundation of the Komsomol (Young Communist League). When, in 1935, a journal wanted to publish a military-related article about ‘Stalin in the Sal’sk Steppe’, he objected that his role was exaggerated and there was little about other people. Stalin was particularly averse to the publication of accounts of his childhood.31 Most dramatic was his intervention to stop publication in 1938 of a children’s book by V. Smirnova called Tales of Stalin’s Childhood:
The little book is filled with a mass of factual errors, distortions, exaggerations and undeserved praise. The author has been misled by fairy tale enthusiasts, liars (perhaps ‘honest’ liars) and sycophants. A pity for the author, but facts are facts. . . . Most important is that the book has a tendency to inculcate in the consciousness of Soviet children (and people in general) a cult of personalities, great leaders and infallible heroes. That is dangerous and harmful. . . . I advise you to burn the book.32
He was similarly outraged by an article on ‘J. V. Stalin at the Head of Baku Bolsheviks and Workers, 1907–1908’. Mikhail Moskalev (1902–1965) was its author and it was published in a historical journal in January 1940 and then summarised by a feature article in Pravda. Stalin read the Pravda piece and marked it with some angry-looking red-penned underlining and question marks. He also read the original article and marked it in a similar fashion. Stalin then wrote to the editor of the journal, who, as it happens, was Yaroslavsky. The letter was marked ‘not for publication’, but Stalin forwarded copies to the Politburo and to the editor of Pravda as well as to the author. Stalin complained to Yaroslavsky that the article distorted historical truth and contained factual errors. He criticised Moskalev’s use of dubious memoir sources and concluded that ‘the history of Bolshevism must not be distorted – that’s intolerable, it contradicts the profession and dignity of Bolshevik historians’.33
Yaroslavsky wanted to meet Stalin to discuss the matter but ended up writing him a detailed letter setting out the sources on which Moskalev’s article had been based. Stalin replied two days later, on 29 April, repeating and detailing his point that the sources were unreliable. ‘An historian has no right’, wrote Stalin, ‘to just take on trust memoirs and articles based on them. They have a duty to examine them critically and to verify them on the basis of objective information.’ The party’s history, Stalin stated, had to be a scientific history, one based on the whole truth: ‘Toadyism is incompatible with scientific history.’
One issue in dispute was Moskalev’s statement that Stalin had been the editor of the Baku oil workers’ newspaper Gudok (The Siren), which, as Yaroslavsky pointed out, was based on a number of different sources, including the recollections of the paper’s editor-publisher. The publisher was ‘confused’, Stalin wrote in reply. ‘I never visited the Gudok editorial offices. I was not a member of its editorial board. I was not the de facto editor of Gudok (I didn’t have the time). That was Comrade Dzhaparidze.’ However, Stalin did make numerous contributions to the paper in 1907–8, so a little confusion in the memories of his old comrades was not all that surprising.34
STALIN’S COLLECTED WORKS
Stalin’s sixtieth birthday celebrations in December 1939 provided an opening for Yaroslavsky to revive his attempts to publish a Stalin biography. When a piece about Stalin that he wrote for a Soviet encyclopaedia was rejected by its editors as too long and dense, he appealed to Stalin to allow its publication as a short book, assuring him that it had been written in a ‘simple style accessible to the masses’. His book was published at the end of 1939 but he had been upstaged by IMEL’s publication of a Short Biography of Stalin, with a print run of more than 1.2 million copies. However, when Stalin was sent a copy of the book’s proofs, he wrote on the covering note that he had ‘no time to look at it’.35 The signed copy of Yaroslavsky’s book was unmarked by Stalin, and probably unread.
A project closer to Stalin’s heart was the publication of his collected writings. Articles, leaflets, letters, speeches, statements, reports, interviews and contributions to Marxist theory – these were texts that charted his political life, marked its milestones and recorded his most important thoughts.