Joseph Stalin: References & Edit History

The standard Soviet edition of Stalin’s works in Russian is Joseph Stalin, Sochineniia, 13 vol. (1946–51), covering publications up to January 1934. His later works have been issued in Russian in similar format by the Hoover Institution; Robert H. McNeal (ed.), Sochineniia, 3 vol. (1967), is considered to be the extension, as vol. 14–16, of the standard edition. The standard edition has been translated into English and published in Moscow: Works, 13 vol. (1952, reprinted 1975). A selection of Stalin’s works in English is Bruce Franklin (ed.), The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Writings, 1905–52 (1972). An annotated bibliography, Robert H. McNeal (compiler), Stalin’s Works (1967), considers the authenticity of material in Russian attributed to Stalin.

There is no definitive biography of Stalin. The most useful of published studies include Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (1991; originally published in Russian, 1989), based on archival sources; Robert Payne, Rise and Fall of Stalin (1965); Leon Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence, trans. from Russian, new ed. (1967), and The Stalin School of Falsification, 3rd ed. (1972; originally published in Russian, 1932), both denunciatory; Boris Souvarine, Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism (1939, reissued 1972; originally published in French, 1935); and Bertram D. Wolfe, Three Who Made a Revolution, 4th rev. ed. (1964, reissued 1984). T.H. Rigby (ed.), Stalin (1966), is an excellent short anthology of biographical and critical material. Other studies include Adam B. Ulam, Stalin: The Man and His Era (1973, reprinted 1987); Ronald Hingley, Joseph Stalin: Man and Legend (1974); Ian Grey, Stalin: Man of History (1979); Robert H. McNeal, Stalin: Man and Ruler (1988); Robert Conquest, Stalin: Breaker of Nations (1991); and Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (1991).

Reliable, detailed firsthand accounts of Stalin’s domestic background are few, the only family memoirs not subject to Stalinist censorship being those published after emigration by Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend (1967; originally published in Russian in the United States, 1967), and Only One Year (1969; originally published in Russian in the United States, 1969). Soviet-censored memoirs by other family members are found in David Tutaev (trans. and ed.), The Alliluyev Memoirs (1968).

Studies of Stalin’s prerevolutionary career include Edward Ellis Smith, The Young Stalin: The Early Years of an Elusive Revolutionary (1967), an attempt to prove that the subject was an agent of the Tsarist political police; L. Beria, On the History of the Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia (1949; originally published in Russian, 7th ed., 1947), the chief classic of Stalinist legend-building; and, on the historical context, Catherine Merridale, Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin: The Communist Party in the Capital, 1925–32 (1990); Graeme Gill, The Origins of the Stalinist Political System (1990); Robert V. Daniels, Trotsky, Stalin, and Socialism (1991); and Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (1973), and a sequel, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (1990).

Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2nd ed. (1970), is valuable on the political background of Stalin’s mature career; as is John A. Armstrong, The Politics of Totalitarianism (1961). A more subjective version is Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party: A Study in the Technology of Power (1959; originally published in Russian in West Germany, 1959). Boris I. Nicolaevsky, Power and the Soviet Elite (1965, reissued 1975), is a collection of essays bearing on Stalin’s activities from 1934 onward. Also of interest are Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society Under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1941 (1978); Eugène Zaleski, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, 1933–1953 (1980; originally published in French, 1962); and Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928–1932 (1988).

Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties, rev. ed. (1973), is the fullest account of the massacres of 1937–38. Further studies are The Great Purge Trial, ed. by Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen (1965), based on the official Soviet translation of the report of court proceedings; Joel Carmichael, Stalin’s Masterpiece: The Show Trials and Purges of the Thirties—The Consolidation of the Bolshevik Dictatorship (1976); and Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko, The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny (1981; originally published in Russian in the United States, 1980). F. Beck and W. Godin, Russian Purge and the Extraction of Confession (1951, trans. from German), remains a classic account of Stalin’s reign of terror. W.G. Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service (1939, reissued 1985; also published as I was Stalin’s Agent, 1939, reissued 1992), is a firsthand account. Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes (1953), contains informative primary sources. Nikolai Tolstoy, Stalin’s Secret War (1981); and Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (1994), present testimony of victims of Stalin’s purges.

On Stalin’s role as wartime leader, an anthology of Soviet memoir material, Seweryn Bialer (ed.), Stalin and His Generals (1969, reprinted 1984), is useful; so, too, are Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought, 2nd ed. (1967); Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945 (1964, reissued 1984); G.K. Zhukov, Reminiscences and Reflections (1969, reissued 1985; also published as The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov, 1971; originally published in Russian, 1969); Albert Seaton, Stalin as Military Commander (1975; also published as Stalin as Warlord, 1976), based on the memoirs of Russian generals from 1918 to 1953; H. Montgomery Hyde, Stalin: The History of a Dictator (1971, reprinted 1982), especially useful for the coverage of World War II; John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin’s War with Germany (1975, reprinted 1984), and The Road to Berlin: Continuing the History of Stalin’s War with Germany (1983); Robin Edmonds, The Big Three: Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in Peace & War (1991); and Amos Perlmutter, FDR & Stalin: A Not So Grand Alliance, 1943–1945 (1993).

The postwar period is examined by William O. McCagg, Stalin Embattled, 1943–1948 (1978), emphasizing foreign policy; Timothy Dunmore, The Stalinist Command Economy: The Soviet State Apparatus and Economic Policy, 1945–53 (1980); William Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy: From Entente to Détente to Cold War (1982); and Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (1993). Stalin’s image after his death is explored in Columbia University, Russian Institute, The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism: A Selection of Documents, rev. ed. (1956); Bertram D. Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin’s Ghost: Text, Background, and Meaning of Khrushchev’s Secret Report to the Twentieth Congress on the Night of February 24–25, 1956 (1957, reprinted 1983); and T.H. Rigby, The Stalin Dictatorship: Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” and Other Documents (1968).

Stalin’s influence on the arts is examined in Boris Groys (Boris Groĭs), The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond (1992; originally published in German, 1988); Matthew Cullerne Bown, Art Under Stalin (1991); A. Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 1928–39 (1991); and Frank J. Miller, Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudofolklore of the Stalin Era (1990). Studies of the effects of Stalinism on the 20th-century Communist movement include Alec Nove, Stalinism and After, 3rd ed. (1989); Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, trans. from Russian, rev. and expanded ed. (1989), and On Stalin and Stalinism, trans. from Russian (1979); Robert C. Tucker (ed.), Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (1977); Robert C. Tucker, The Soviet Political Mind: Stalinism and Post-Stalin Change, rev. ed. (1971); Alan Wood, Stalin and Stalinism (1990); and Alec Nove (ed.), The Stalin Phenomenon (1993).

Joseph Stalin’s birth date

Anarkhizm ili sotsializm? (1949, Russian version of articles published serially in Georgian periodicals, 1906–07; Anarchism or Socialism?, 1950); Natsionalny vopros i marksizm (1914, based on the article “Natsionalny vopros i sotsial-demokratiya” in the periodical Prosveshchenie, 1913, and reissued as Marksizm i natsionalnokolonialny vopros, 1934; Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, 1935); Na putyakh k Oktyabryu (1925; selections translated as The Road to Power, 1937); Voprosy leninizma (1926, 11th ed., much enlarged, 1939; Leninism, 1940, or Problems of Leninism, 1940 and 1953), a monumental collection of treatises, articles, reports, and speeches including “Ob osnovakh leninizma” (1924; Theory and Practice of Leninism, 1925, and Foundations of Leninism, 1932); “K voprosam agrarnoy politiki v SSSR” (1929); “O proyekte konstitutsii Soyuza SSR” (1936; On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R., 1936, and The New Democracy, 1937); and “O dialekticheskom i istoricheskom materializme” (1938; Dialectical and Historical Materialism, 1941); Ob oppozitsii (1928), a massive collection of writings of the period 1921–27; O pravom uklone v VKP(b) (speech of 1929 published integrally as a separate book in 1954); O nedostatkakh partiynoy raboty i merakh likvidatsy Trotskistskikh i inykh dvurushnikov (1937); Istoriya Vsesoyuznoy Kommunisticheskoy Partii (Bolshevikov): Kratky kurs (1938, ostensibly the work of a party committee but wholly Stalinian in inspiration; Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1939); Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin: Kratkaya biografiya (1940, 2nd ed. 1947, likewise ostensibly a collective production; Stalin, 1943); O Velikoy Otechestvennoy Voyne Sovetskogo Soyuza (1942, 5th ed., much enlarged, 1946–52; The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1945, or War Speeches, Orders of the Day, and Answers to Foreign Press Correspondents during the Great Patriotic War, July 3, 1941–June 22nd, 1945, 1946); Marksizm i voprosy yazykoznaniya (1950; Marxism and Linguistics, 1951); Ekonomicheskie problemy sotsializma v SSSR (1952; Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., 1952); Perepiska Predsedatelya Sovieta Ministrov SSSR s prezidentami SShA i premier-ministrami Velikobritanii vo vremya Velikoy Otechestvennoy Voyny (1957; Correspondence with Churchill, Attlee, Roosevelt and Truman, 1941–45, 2 parts, 1958).