4. Ibid., doc.19.
5. Ibid., doc.20.
6. Vlast’ i Khudozhestvennaya Intelligentsiya, 1917–1953, Demokratiya: Moscow 2002 doc.46, p.40.
7. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.21.
8. J. Barber, ‘The Establishment of Intellectual Orthodoxy in the U.S.S.R. 1928–1934’, Past & Present, 83 (May, 1979) p.159.
9. L. Maximenkov & L. Heretz, ‘Stalin’s Meeting with a Delegation of Ukrainian Writers on 12 February 1929’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 16/3–4 (December 1992). This publication contains the Russian transcript of the meeting, together with an English translation. A substantial extract from the transcript may be found in Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.27. The archive typescript may be found here: Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii (hereafter RGASPI), F.558, Op.1, D.4490.
10. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.33.
11. Stalin’s reply was private at the time but published in his collected works after the war: J. Stalin, Works, vol.13, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow 1955 pp.26–7.
12. N. Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir, Harvill Press: London 1999 p.26. Reputedly, Bedny was betrayed by his secretary, who copied this entry from his diary and sent it to Stalin.
13. R. V. Daniels, ‘Soviet Thought in the 1930s: The Cultural Counterrevolution’ in his Trotsky, Stalin and Socialism, Westview Press: Boulder CO 1991 p.143.
14. Mezhdu Molotom i Nakoval’nei: Soyuz Sovetskikh Pisatelei SSSR, vol.1, Rosspen: Moscow 2010 doc.29.
15. S. Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1928–1941, Penguin: London 2017 pp.151–2. See further Michael David-Fox’s chapter ‘Gorky’s Gulag’ in his Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy & Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941, Oxford University Press: Oxford 2012.
16. In making this point, Stalin doubtless had in mind what Lenin said in October 1920: ‘Proletarian culture is not something that springs from nowhere, is not an invention of people who call themselves specialists in proletarian culture. This is complete nonsense. Proletarian culture must be a logical development of those funds of knowledge which humanity has worked out under the yoke of capitalist society’ (R. K. Dasgupta, ‘Lenin on Literature’, Indian Literature, 13/3 (September 1970) p.21. See further: A. T. Rubinstein, ‘Lenin on Literature, Language, and Censorship’, Science & Society, 59/3 (Fall 1995). Stalin certainly read Lenin’s speech because he marked it in vol.17 of the 1st edition of Lenin’s collected works published in 1923 (RGASPI, Op.3, D.131, pp. 313–29). On Marx: S. S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature, Verso: London 1976.
17. Bol’shaya Tsenzura: Pisateli i Zhurnalisty v Strane Sovetov, 1917–1956, Demokratiya: Moscow 2005 doc.196; S. Davies & J. Harris, Stalin’s World: Dictating the Soviet Order, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 2014 pp.250–1.
18. Stalin’s remarks are those recorded by the literary critic K. L. Zelinsky. RGASPI, F.558, Op.11, D.1116, doc.3, Ll.32–3; Mezhdu Molotom i Nakoval’nei, doc.38; C. A. Ruder, Making History for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal, University Press of Florida: Gainesville 1998 p.44; Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, pp.130–1. The authorship of the term ‘socialist realism’ is unclear. One possibility is that it emerged in exchanges between Stalin and the journalist Ivan Gronsky in 1932–3. According to Gronsky, he suggested the term ‘proletarian socialist realism’ but Stalin thought it sounded better without the first adjective (Kemp-Welch p.132).
19. RGASPI, F.71, Op.10, D.170, L.162.
20. Soviet Writers’ Congress 1934: The Debate on Socialist Realism and Modernism, Lawrence and Wishart: London 1977 pp.21–2. The quoted passage has been truncated and ellipses omitted.
21. Ibid., pp.252–5.
22. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.123.
23. Bol’shaya Tsenzura, doc.327.
24. RGASPI, F.558, Op.3, D.251. This connection was brought to my attention by ibid., p.455, n.11. The translation of Plekhanov derives from https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1895/monist. Accessed 4 August 2021.
25. I. R. Makaryk, ‘Stalin and Shakespeare’ in N. Khomenko (ed.), The Shakespeare International Yearbook, vol. 18, Special Section on Soviet Shakespeare, Routledge: London 2020.
26. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.129.
27. Ibid., doc.131
28. On this whole episode, see M. Belodubrovskaya, Not According to Plan: Filmmaking under Stalin, Cornell University Press: Ithaca NY 2017 pp.41–2, 83–4, 192–3.
29. Davies & Harris, Stalin’s World, pp.254–5.
30. The transcript of the meeting may be found in G. L. Bondareva (ed.), Kremlevskii Kinoteatr, 1928–1953, Rosspen: Moscow 2005 doc.214. This is the key documentary collection of Soviet film-making during the Stalin era. See further, J. Miller, Soviet Cinema: Politics and Persuasion under Stalin, I. B. Tauris: London 2010 especially pp.60–9.
31. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.132. The last three sentences added and translated by me from the Russian transcript.
32. S. Yekelchyk, Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian–Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination, Toronto University Press: Toronto 2004 pp.40, 54–5.
33. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.177.
34. Ibid., p.455. Stalin’s comments took the form of an anonymous report on the film that was published in Soviet newspapers.
35. S. Alliluyeva, 20 Letters to a Friend, Penguin: Harmondsworth 1968 p.129.
36. Cited by A. M. Ball, Imagining America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-Century Russia, Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham MD 2003 p.87.
37. A. Mikoyan, Tak Bylo, Moscow: Vagrius 1999 pp.533–4.
38. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.163.
39. Bol’shaya Tsenzura, doc.414.
40. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, docs 153–5.
41. Vlast’ i Khudozhestvennaya Intelligentsiya, docs 14, 22 pp.565, 598.
42. Clark et al., Soviet Culture and Power, doc.162.
43. N. Mitchison, ‘AWPA Writers Visit to the USSR’, Authors World Peace Appeal, Bulletin no.7 (1952) p.9. The AWPA was a 1950s non-aligned peace movement.
44. M. Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, Penguin: London 2014 p.111.
45. Ibid., pp.77–8.
46. S. Alliluyeva, Only One Year, Penguin: London 1971 p.336.
47. D. Shepilov, The Kremlin’s Scholar, Yale University Press: London & New Haven 2014 p.92. Only two volumes of Dostoevsky’s collected writing and his diary for 1873–6 survived the dispersal of Stalin’s library. These books may be found in the SSPL’s collection of Stalin’s books. According to Boris Ilizarov, Stalin marked parts of Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. However, upon inspection of the book in the library it is practically certain that these are not Stalin’s markings.
48. R. L. Strong, ‘The Soviet Interpretation of Gogol’, American Slavic and East European Review, 14/4 (December 1955) pp.528–9, 533.