Bragin concluded by asserting Russia’s military prowess. After 1812 the victorious Russian army penetrated deep into Europe: ‘It entered Germany and seized Berlin, it entered France and took Paris and demonstrated the power of Russian arms to the whole world.’ When, at the end of the Second World War, Harriman said to Stalin, ‘Generalissimo, this must be a great satisfaction to you to be here in Berlin,’ he replied, ‘Tsar Alexander got to Paris.’267
Another book published just as Hitler invaded Russia was a biography of Suvorov by ‘K. Osipov’ – the pseudonym of the Soviet writer and literary critic Joseph Kuperman.268 Stalin’s copy has been lost but we can presume he read it, since in January 1942 he edited the draft of a review by the military historian Colonel Nikolai Podorozhny.269 Stalin changed the review’s title, ‘The Unsurpassed Master of War’, to ‘Suvorov’, but retained the phrase in the first paragraph. As might be expected, Stalin edited the piece with an eye to current events. He inserted a paragraph attributing to Suvorov the idea that if you can frighten the enemy and make them panic, you have won the battle without even setting eyes on them. Another addition cited Suvorov’s belief that victory was not won by capturing territory but by destroying enemy forces.
1. Stalin working in his Kremlin office in 1938.
2. Shushanika Manuchar’yants, Lenin’s and Stalin’s librarian (photo dating from the 1960s).
3. An early photo of Stalin’s second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, in 1917.
4. Stalin with his two youngest children, Vasily and Svetlana, in 1935.
5. Stalin’s handwritten library classification scheme, May 1925.
6. Title page of Nikolai Bukharin’s pamphlet about Lenin, Revolutsionnyi Teoretik, with Stalin’s ex-libris stamp.
7. Stalin’s numbering of some of Lenin’s arguments against political opponents in his polemic One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.
8. In the margin of Karl Kautsky’s Terrorism and Communism, Stalin notes: ‘With Kautsky, statics overwhelm dynamics. He does not understand that under the rule of the [proletariat] things must be different.’ At the bottom of the page he wrote ‘ha-ha’ beside Kautsky’s statement that it was desperation which drove the proletariat to take power in Paris and then lead the French Revolution at home and abroad.
9. On the front cover of Lenin, Conspiratorialism, and October (1924), Stalin wrote: ‘Tell Molotov that Trotsky lied to Il’ich [Lenin] about the course of the insurrection.’
10. Stalin proposed to change the name of Shestakov’s school textbook from Short Course History of the USSR to History of the USSR; A Short Course, but the original title was retained.
11. Stalin’s doodles on the back cover of Alexei Tolstoy’s 1942 play Ivan Grozny (Ivan the Terrible). The word uchitel’ (teacher) appears several times, as it does on other books in Stalin’s library.
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