He took intense delight in Soviet achievements. As he and Georgian Communist Party boss Akaki Mgeladze looked at a map, he mused:19
Let’s see what we have here. In the north we have everything in order and normal. Finland has given way to us and we’ve pushed the frontier up from Leningrad. The Baltic region — which consists of truly Russian lands! — is ours again; all the Belorussians are now living with us and so are the Ukrainians and the Moldavians. Everything’s normal in the west.
He was equally pleased about the east: ‘What have we got here?… The Kurile Islands are now ours, Sakhalin is wholly ours: doesn’t that look good! And Port Arthur and Dalni [Darien] are both ours. The Chinese Railway is ours. As to China and Mongolia, everything’s in order.’ The only frontier annoying him was the southern one. Presumably he itched to obtain the Straits of the Dardanelles and perhaps also northern Iran. He had come to aspire to the restoration of the Russian Imperial frontiers and regard the foreign policy objectives of the Romanovs as his own; and works on the history of Muscovy and the Russian Empire, including Nikolai Karamzin’s classic nineteenth-century series of volumes, had an increased appeal for him.
Stalin’s passion for things Russian had become hypertrophied. When reading V. V. Piotrovski’s In the Steps of Ancient Cultures, he came across the name ‘Rusa’ in a section on the Assyrians. He took note of this,20 evidently thinking the word might give a clue about the origins of Russian nationhood. Anything with the slightest connection with Russia caught his eye. Like an elderly trainspotter who has to see one last steam engine before giving up the hobby, he had turned from enthusiast into zealot.
Few authors failed to incur some criticism from him. Piotrovski was among them. On the margin of the page where the author had claimed credentials as a pioneer in the historiography of culture, Stalin scoffed: ‘Ha, ha!’21 Stalin had combed purposefully through Piotrovski’s book. The notes he took on the ancient languages of the Middle East were important for him, for he intended to write a lengthy piece on linguistics. To say that this caused surprise among the Soviet intelligentsia is an understatement. The expectation had been that when he took up the pen again he would offer his thoughts on politics or economics. But Stalin went his own way. In the course of his extensive reading he had come across the works of Nikolai Marr. A member of the Russian Imperial Academy before 1917, Marr had made his peace with the Soviet state and adjusted his theories to the kind of Marxism popular in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Marr had argued that Marxists should incorporate ‘class principles’ in linguistics as much as in politics. Language was to be regarded as class-specific and as the creation of whichever class happened to be in power. This was the official orthodoxy which Stalin had decided to overthrow.
Articles appeared in Pravda in summer 1950 and were collected in a booklet entitled Marxism and Problems of Linguistics. University faculties across the USSR stopped whatever they were doing to study Stalin’s ideas.22 Much of what he wrote was a healthy antidote to current ideas in Soviet linguistics. Marr had argued that the contemporary Russian language had been a bourgeois phenomenon under capitalism and should be re-created as a socialist phenomenon under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Stalin thought this was claptrap. He insisted that language had its roots in an earlier period of time; in most societies, indeed, it was formed before the capitalist epoch. Recent changes in Russian involved mainly the introduction of new words to the lexicon and the abandonment of old words as political and economic conditions were transformed. Grammatical tidying also took place. But the Russian language written and spoken by Alexander Pushkin in the early nineteenth century contrasted little with the language of the mid-twentieth century.23 While some classes had had their own jargon and some regions their own dialect, the fundamental language had been common to all Russians.24
Stalin’s motives baffled those politicians and intellectuals accustomed to his polemical contributions on world politics, political dictatorship and economic transformation. His usual menace was barely evident. Only once did the anger show itself. This happened when he said that if he had not known about a particular writer’s sincerity, he would have suspected deliberate sabotage.25 Otherwise Stalin kept to the proprieties of a patient, modest teacher.
Marxism and Problems of Linguistics has been unjustly ignored. Despite turning to leading linguisticians such as Arnold Chikobava for advice, Stalin wrote the work by himself; and he did nothing without a purpose.26 It was far from being only about linguistics. The contents also show his abiding interest in questions of Russian nationhood. At one point he stated magisterially that the origins of ‘the Russian national language’ can be traced to the provinces of Kursk and Orël.27 Few linguisticians would nowadays accept this opinion. But it retains an importance in Soviet history, for it demonstrates Stalin’s desire to root Russianness in the territory of the RSFSR. This was especially important for him because some philologists and historians regarded Kiev in contemporary Ukraine as the Russian language’s place of origin. Moreover, he used the language of Russians as an example of the longevity and toughness of a national tongue. Despite all the invasions of the country and the various cultural accretions, the Russian language was conserved over centuries and emerged ‘the victor’ over efforts to eradicate it.28 Frequently praising the works of Alexander Pushkin, Stalin left no doubt about the special nature of Russia and the Russians in his heart.
Yet this fascination with the ‘Russian question’ did not exclude a concern with communism and globalism. Stalin in fact asserted that eventually national languages would disappear as socialism covered the world. In their place would arise a single language for all humanity, evolving from ‘zonal’ languages which in turn had arisen from those of particular nations.29 The widely held notion that Stalin’s ideology had turned into an undiluted nationalism cannot be substantiated. He no longer espoused the case for Esperanto. But his current zeal to play up Russia’s virtues did not put an end to his Marxist belief that the ultimate stage in world history would bring about a society of post-national globalism.
Nevertheless it was his zeal for Russia and the Soviet Union which took up most space in his intellectual considerations. This was clear in his very last book. He had written it in his own hand, refusing as usual to dictate his thoughts to a secretary.30 The book, appearing shortly before the Nineteenth Party Congress in 1952, was The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. It followed a public discussion on the topic inaugurated at Stalin’s behest in November 1951; and in preparation for his own contribution he instructed Malenkov to acquaint himself with recent writings on political economy. Malenkov had been required to undertake many difficult tasks in his career but the instant assimilation of the whole corpus of Marxism was one of the most arduous.31 Stalin recognised that he had neither the time nor the energy — nor even perhaps the intellectual capacity — to compose an innovative general conspectus on political economy. But it was well within his mental powers to indicate his preferred framework in so far as the USSR was affected. He aimed to supply guidelines for policies expected to stay in place for many years ahead. The Economic Problems of Socialism was intended by an ailing Leader as his intellectual testament.32