I was fortunate in being able to present my ideas about Stalin’s library to a number of probing audiences, the first being at the Dublin History Festival in 2016. This was followed by talks at the University of Tampere, University College Cork, the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, the Central European University’s Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest and the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies. A scheduled appearance at New York University’s Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia in March 2018 was thwarted by an emergency tooth extraction!
My earliest published pieces on the library were commissioned by Vadim Staklo for Yale’s Stalin Digital Archive. He was also instrumental in commissioning a Russian colleague, Yury Nikiforov, to transcribe the major part of the catalogue of Stalin’s surviving library books. The UK’s Society for Cooperation in Russian and Soviet Studies (formerly the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR) published an article by me on the library in their Bulletin. Another piece was published on the Irish Times website under the headline ‘Bloody Tyrant and Bookworm’.
Facundo Garcia, interviewed me about the project in 2019 and published an article about Stalin’s library in the Argentinian newspaper Página/12. I was also interviewed on the radio in Ireland, a country fortunate to have outstanding programmes such as Newstalk’s Talking History, and The History Show produced by its public broadcaster, RTÉ.
Researching the book required a lot of trips to Moscow, which would not have been possible without generous financial support from the School of History and the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences at University College Cork.
The book was commissioned by Heather McCallum. Her dedication to publishing books that are both accessible and scholarly never ceases to amaze me. Many thanks to Heather and her colleagues at Yale London.
Like Heather, my agent Andrew Lownie displayed super-human patience during the years it took me to produce this book.
Finally, thank you Susan Certo for compiling such an excellent index, and Svetlana Frolova for double-checking my transliterations from Russian to English.
INDEX
Abakumov, Victor, (i)
Abyssinia, (i)
Adler, Mortimer J., (i)
Admiral Nakhimov (Pudovkin), (i)
‘Adventures of a Monkey’ (Zoshchenko), (i)
‘Against Federalism’ (Stalin), (i)
Agursky, M., (i)n74
Air War 1936 (Helders), (i)
Akhmatova, Anna, (i), (ii)
Alexander Nevsky (Eisenstein), (i)
Alexandrov, Georgy, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Alien Shadow (Simonov), (i)
Alliluyeva, Nadezhda ‘Nadya’, (i), (ii), (iii)n5
Alliluyeva, Svetlana see Stalina, Svetlana
All-Russian Communist Party, (i)
All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, (i), (ii)
‘American Billions’ (Stalin), (i)
Anarchism or Socialism? (Stalin), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Ancient Europe and the East (Vipper), (i)
Antaeus, (i)
anti-cosmopolitan campaign, (i), (ii)
anti-religious propaganda, (i)
anti-Semitism, question of Stalin and, (i)
Anti-Soviet Parallel Trotskyist Centre trial, (i)
anti-western cultural campaign, (i)
‘Armed Insurrection and Our Tactics’ (Stalin), (i)
Armenia, (i), (ii)
Arnould, Arthur, (i)
Around the Union of Soviets (Gorky), (i)
Art and Literature Committee, (i), (ii)
atheism, Soviet, (i)
atheist, Stalin as an, (i)
Avdeenko, Alexander, (i)
Azerbaijan, (i), (ii)
backwardness of Russia, (i)
Bakhrushin, S. V., (i), (ii)
Baku Commune, (i)
Balashov, A. P., (i)
Balfour, H. H., (i)
Barber, John, (i)
Barbusse, Henri, (i), (ii)n27
Battle for Our Soviet Ukraine (Dovzhenko), (i)
Batumi shootings, (i), (ii)n45
Bedny, Demyan, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)n12
Before Sunrise (Zoshchenko), (i)
Beloff, Max, (i)
Benjamin, Walter, (i)
Berdzenishvili, Nikolai, (i), (ii)n126
Beria, Lavrenty, (i), (ii), (iii)
Beria, Sergo, (i)
Bernstein, Eduard, (i), (ii)
Bible, the, (i), (ii)
biographies on Stalin: background and overview of, (i), (ii)n1; absence of, (i); Barbusse and, (i); Beria and, (i); biographical questionnaire and, (i), (ii)n9; childhood and youth and, (i), (ii); by Medvedev, (i); in memoirs, (i), (ii); by Moskalev, (i); reimagining Stalin in, (i); Short Biography, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi); Stalin and His Hangmen, (i); Stalin: A Political Biography, (i); Stalin’s Mind, (i); Tovstukha and, (i); Triumph and Tragedy, (i)
Birse, A. H., (i), (ii)n17
Bismarck, Otto von, (i), (ii), (iii)
Bismarck and the European Great Powers (Windelband), (i)
Black Sea straits, (i), (ii)
Bliokh, Yakov, (i)
Blizhnyaya, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
‘Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites’ trial, (i)
Bloody Sunday, (i)
Boer, Roland, (i)
Bogatyrs, The (Bedny), (i)
Bol’shevik, (i), (ii), (iii)
Bolsheviks: book culture and, (i); Brest-Litovsk peace treaty and, (i); Dickens and, (i); in the Duma, (i); gender and, (i); nationalism and, (i); national self-determination and, (i); Petrograd coup of, (i); Provisional Government and, (i); religion and, (i), (ii)n19; RSDLP split and, (i); self-effacement of, (i); socialism and, (i); Stalin and, (i), (ii)
bookmarks, Stalin’s, (i), (ii), (iii)n5
bookplate of Stalin, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
borderlands, (i)
bourgeois military specialists, (i)
Brackman, Roman, (i)
Bragin, Mikhail, (i)
Brandenberger, David, (i), (ii)
Brdzola, (i), (ii)
Brent, Jonathan, (i)
Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, (i), (ii)
Brik, Lilya, (i)
Brunstedt, Jonathan, (i)
Bryl, Yanka, (i)
Bubnov, Andrei, (i)
Bucar, Annabelle, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)n91
Budenny, Semen, (i), (ii)
Bukharin, Nikolai: All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers and, (i); opposition of, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii); in Stalin’s library, (i)
Bulgakov, Mikhail, (i), (ii)
Burdzhalov, E. N., (i)
Burlatsky, Fedor, (i)
Caesar, Julius, (i)
capitalism, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
censorship, (i), (ii)
Chapaev, (i)
Charkviani, Kandid, (i), (ii)
Chavchavadze, Ilia, (i)
‘Cheap Library’, (i)
Cheka, the, (i), (ii)
Cherkasov, Nikolai, (i), (ii), (iii)n200
Chernenko, Konstantin, (i)n34
Chernyshevsky, Nikolai, (i)
Chikobava, Arnold, (i)
Chizhikov, Petr, (i)
Christianity, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv); see also Russian Orthodox Church
Chuev, Felix, (i)
Churchill, Winston: History of the Second World War, (i); ‘iron curtain’ speech, (i), (ii); Stalin and, (i), (ii), (iii); treaty of alliance with USSR and, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv); The World Crisis, (i)
Clark, Katerina, (i)
class and language, (i), (ii)
class and political parties, (i)
Clausewitz, Carl von, (i), (ii)
‘Clausewitz and German Military Ideology’ (Meshcheryakov), (i)
cold war, (i), (ii), (iii)
Collected Works (Lenin), (i)