Rakhmetov
15th February 2011, 23:09
I laughed when I read this passage in a biography of Stalin and it made me think would Somoza, Batista, Suharto, Mobutu, Pinochet or any ordinary two-bit dictator even consider developing a library like this????
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In May 1925 Stalin charged [his secretary] Tovstukha with assembling a good personal library for him. Hesitantly, his assistant asked what sort of books he had in mind. Stalin was about to begin dictating a list, when instead he suddenly sat down at his desk and, Tovstukha looking on and almost without thinking, took ten to fifteen minutes to dash off the following list, writing in an ordinary school exercise book with a pencil:
Note to librarian. My advice (and request):
1 Books should be arranged according to subject, not author: a) philosophy;
b) psychology; c) sociology; d) political economy; e) finance; f) industry;
g) agriculture; h) cooperatives; i) Russian history; j) history of other countries; k) diplomacy; l) foreign and domestic trade; m) military affairs; n) national question; o) Party, Commintern and other Congresses and Conferences, with resolutions, without decrees and law codes); p) position of workers; q) position of peasants; r) Komsomol (everything there is in separate editions); s) history of the revolution in other countries; t) 1905 [revolution]; u) February revolution 1917; v) October revolution 1917; w) Lenin and Leninism x) history of the RKP and Comintern; y) on discussions in RKP (articles and pamphlets); z) trade unions; aa) creative literature; ab) artistic criticism; ac) political journals; ad) scientific journals; ae) various dictionaries; af) memoirs.
2 Books to be removed from the above categories and shelved separately: a) Lenin;
b) Marx; c) Engels; d) Kautsky; e) Plekhanov; f) Trotsky; g) Bukharin; h) Zinoviev;
i) Kamenev; j) Lafargue; k) Luxembourg; l) Radek
3 All other books are to be classified by author (except any textbooks, popular magazines, anti-religious pulp literature and so on, which are to be put to one side).
Considering that this was scribbled down with virtually no forethought, and also given the state of the 'book culture' of the time, a certain breadth of vision was clearly at work here. At the top of the pyramid he placed the basic components of Marxism, history and a number of specific areas of knowledge directly connected with the political activity and the struggle against the oppositions ...
Many of the books from the Kremlin, the dacha or the apartment, some of them bearing an ex libris label 'Library No ....I. V. Stalin', contain annotations, markings, and marginal comments. Lenin's Collected Works, for instance, are covered with underlinings, ticks and exclamation marks in the margins. Stalin evidently returned to certain items several times, for they are marked in red, blue and ordinary pencil. The topics that seem to have interested him the most were Lenin's views on the dictatorship of the proletariat, his struggles with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, and his speeches at party congresses.
He maintained a lifelong interest in historical literature, above all the lives of emperors and tsars. He made a careful study of I. Bellyarminov's Course of Russian History, R. Vipper's History of the Roman Empire, Alexei Tolstoy's Ivan the Terrible, and a miscellany entitled The Romanovs. All the school and university textbooks that were collected for him in the 1930s and the 1940s bear the marks of his close examination ...
This excerpt is taken from Dmitri Volkogonov's Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy
Chapter 23--- Stalin's Mind pages 225-227 English translation provided by
Harold Shukman
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In May 1925 Stalin charged [his secretary] Tovstukha with assembling a good personal library for him. Hesitantly, his assistant asked what sort of books he had in mind. Stalin was about to begin dictating a list, when instead he suddenly sat down at his desk and, Tovstukha looking on and almost without thinking, took ten to fifteen minutes to dash off the following list, writing in an ordinary school exercise book with a pencil:
Note to librarian. My advice (and request):
1 Books should be arranged according to subject, not author: a) philosophy;
b) psychology; c) sociology; d) political economy; e) finance; f) industry;
g) agriculture; h) cooperatives; i) Russian history; j) history of other countries; k) diplomacy; l) foreign and domestic trade; m) military affairs; n) national question; o) Party, Commintern and other Congresses and Conferences, with resolutions, without decrees and law codes); p) position of workers; q) position of peasants; r) Komsomol (everything there is in separate editions); s) history of the revolution in other countries; t) 1905 [revolution]; u) February revolution 1917; v) October revolution 1917; w) Lenin and Leninism x) history of the RKP and Comintern; y) on discussions in RKP (articles and pamphlets); z) trade unions; aa) creative literature; ab) artistic criticism; ac) political journals; ad) scientific journals; ae) various dictionaries; af) memoirs.
2 Books to be removed from the above categories and shelved separately: a) Lenin;
b) Marx; c) Engels; d) Kautsky; e) Plekhanov; f) Trotsky; g) Bukharin; h) Zinoviev;
i) Kamenev; j) Lafargue; k) Luxembourg; l) Radek
3 All other books are to be classified by author (except any textbooks, popular magazines, anti-religious pulp literature and so on, which are to be put to one side).
Considering that this was scribbled down with virtually no forethought, and also given the state of the 'book culture' of the time, a certain breadth of vision was clearly at work here. At the top of the pyramid he placed the basic components of Marxism, history and a number of specific areas of knowledge directly connected with the political activity and the struggle against the oppositions ...
Many of the books from the Kremlin, the dacha or the apartment, some of them bearing an ex libris label 'Library No ....I. V. Stalin', contain annotations, markings, and marginal comments. Lenin's Collected Works, for instance, are covered with underlinings, ticks and exclamation marks in the margins. Stalin evidently returned to certain items several times, for they are marked in red, blue and ordinary pencil. The topics that seem to have interested him the most were Lenin's views on the dictatorship of the proletariat, his struggles with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, and his speeches at party congresses.
He maintained a lifelong interest in historical literature, above all the lives of emperors and tsars. He made a careful study of I. Bellyarminov's Course of Russian History, R. Vipper's History of the Roman Empire, Alexei Tolstoy's Ivan the Terrible, and a miscellany entitled The Romanovs. All the school and university textbooks that were collected for him in the 1930s and the 1940s bear the marks of his close examination ...
This excerpt is taken from Dmitri Volkogonov's Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy
Chapter 23--- Stalin's Mind pages 225-227 English translation provided by
Harold Shukman