If most people were asked to name “a serious intellectual” of the 20th century who also “had a high degree of emotional intelligence”, it might be a while before they alighted on Joseph Stalin. This, though, is how he is described in a new book by the historian Geoffrey Roberts.
In his previous works, such as Stalin’s Wars and Stalin’s General, Roberts has, somewhat controversially, sought to remind us of the Soviet ruler’s “positive side” – primarily as the man who saved the world from Hitler. Now, he broadens his approach considerably to present us with somebody whose erudition and intellectual curiosity have been sadly overlooked.
Granted, the familiar “stereotypes” of Stalin as a “bloody tyrant” and “paranoid personality” are “to a degree” accurate. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t forget the times when he offered “a master class in clear thinking and common sense”.
As the title indicates, central to the book is the huge library – of about 25,000 books, periodicals and pamphlets – that Stalin accumulated over the course of his life. When he died in 1953, the initial plan was for it to feature in a museum dedicated to his memory. But when he was posthumously denounced by Khrushchev in the world’s least secret “secret speech”, the museum idea was abandoned and the collection broken up.
Much of it disappeared into other libraries, but, fortunately for Roberts’s purposes, the Communist Party archives retained any books that he’d stamped or autographed. Better still, they also kept the 391 containing Stalin’s own pometki: personal markings beside the text that ranged from the approving (“agreed”, “spot on”, “NB”) to the scornful (“nonsense”, “scumbag”, “p— off”) by way of the pensive – as signalled by the phrase “m-da”, which Roberts translates as “really?” or “are you sure?”.
