British historian Max Beloff’s highly critical review of volume three bemoaned its poor use of sources. Sources that suited the proffered interpretation were cited with no effort made to assess their accuracy and reliability, while the sources on Soviet foreign policy consisted entirely of official pronouncements.26
LESS IS MORE: THE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Stalin’s role during the Second World War was the culminating episode of his biography. Preparations for that ‘inevitable war’ drove his brutal push to modernise Russia. The Soviet victory over Nazi Germany was by far his greatest achievement. From near defeat in 1941 the USSR emerged as a mighty socialist state that controlled half of Europe and had the power to compete for global supremacy against the war’s other great victor, the United States.
The momentous nature of the war made it imperative to revise Stalin’s Short Biography, published by the Institute of Marx, Engels and Lenin (IMEL) in 1939. There was also a great deal of interest in his biography internationally. The Stalin cult had gone global. Stalin was Time Man of the Year in both 1939 and 1942. During the war, Stalin was inundated with questions and requests for interviews from foreign journalists. In January 1943 New York publishers Simon & Schuster wrote to Stalin suggesting that he write them a book about Soviet war and peace aims.27 Soon after the war the Kremlin received enquiries from a British publisher wishing to issue a photographic biography of Stalin and from an American company that wanted to include him in its Biographical Encyclopedia of the World.28
A redraft of the Short Biography was sent to Stalin for approval in late 1946. Stalin had affected disinterest in the first edition but was greatly interested this time, perhaps because the new version dealt with his military leadership. The draft landed on his desk while he was still revelling in his feats as supreme commander and jostling to snatch the limelight of victory from generals such as his deputy, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, whom he had recently dismissed as commander-in-chief of Soviet ground forces.
Stalin was not satisfied with the new edition and at the end of December he called in the editorial team for what David Brandenberger rightly calls ‘a collective dressing-down’.29
The editorial team was headed by Agitprop chief Georgy Alexandrov, and included the historian Vasily Mochalov, who also played a key role in the production of Stalin’s collected works. Twelve months previously, Mochalov had been summoned to Stalin’s Kremlin office to discuss that project. As we learned in Chapter Two, he wrote a report of that memorable encounter, and he did the same for this meeting.
The need for a biography of Lenin that would teach people Marxism-Leninism was Stalin’s first comment. As to his own biography, it was full of mistakes. ‘I have all kinds of teachings,’ said Stalin sarcastically – about the war, communism, industrialisation, collectivisation, etc. ‘What are people supposed to do after reading this biography? Get down on their knees and pray to me?’ The biography should instil in people a love of the party. It should feature other party cadres. The chapter on the Great Patriotic War wasn’t bad, although it, too, needed to mention other prominent personalities.30
Mochalov’s account tallies with that of Pravda editor P. N. Pospelov. ‘There is some idiocy in the biography draft,’ complained Stalin to Pospelov. ‘And it is Alexandrov who is responsible for this idiocy.’31 Pospelov took particular note of Stalin’s demand that it should reference leading figures who had worked with him in Baku, name those who had also taken up Lenin’s banner after his death, and mention the members of his Supreme Command during the war. Something should also be added about the role of women, said Stalin. The tone of the biography was ‘SRish’ i.e. too focused on him as a hero. To prove that point, he quoted the line, ‘No one in the world ever led such broad masses.’ And nowhere did the biography state what Stalin had told Emil Ludwig in 1931 – that he considered himself merely a pupil of Lenin’s.32
Briefed by Stalin and armed with the boss’s editorial corrections, Alexandrov’s team quickly revised their draft text. The new edition of the biography was published by Pravda in February 1947 and then as a book with an initial print run of a million copies.
As was the case with the Short Course, Stalin toned down the adulation of himself. He inserted the names of many co-workers and made changes that emphasised his partnership with Lenin. He cut completely a section extolling his role as the leader of the international communist movement beloved by proletarians throughout the world. A substantial section was added on the role of women in the revolutionary movement and in building socialism. ‘Working women are the most oppressed of all the oppressed,’ Stalin is quoted as saying in one of his speeches.
One version of the draft ended with a stirring quote from Molotov: ‘The names of Lenin and Stalin are a bright light of hope in all corners of the world and a thundering call to struggle for peace and happiness of all peoples, a struggle for complete liberation from capitalism.’ This was deleted by Stalin, as were the concluding slogans: ‘Long live our dear and great Stalin!’; ‘Long live the great invincible banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin!’ In the final product, these were replaced by a more restrained quote from Molotov that the USSR had been fortunate to have at its disposal the great Stalin during the war, who would now lead it forward in peacetime.33
There were limits to Stalin’s modesty and he left in many cultish statements, especially in the chapter on the Great Patriotic War. Like its predecessor, the new edition was more hagiography than biography, but not a ridiculous one. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, extravagant claims about Stalin’s military genius had more than a modicum of credibility.34
Among his insertions was this one:
Although he performed the task of leader of the party and the people with consummate skill and enjoyed the unreserved support of the entire Soviet people, Stalin never allowed his work to be marred by the slightest hint of vanity, conceit or self-adulation. When interviewed by the German writer, Emil Ludwig, Stalin paid glowing tribute to Lenin’s genius in transforming Russia, but of himself he simply said: ‘As for myself, I am merely a pupil of Lenin and my aim is to be a worthy pupil of his.’35
While there was some theory in the Short Biography, there was no equivalent to the section on dialectical and historical materialism in the Short Course. Perhaps that’s what Alexandrov had in mind when he proposed a third edition in 1950 that would deal with Stalin’s postwar activities but also summarise his major theoretical writings. Outlines were devised and dummies prepared by Alexandrov and his staff, but nothing came of the proposal.36
CONTROL THE NARRATIVE: FALSIFIERS OF HISTORY
Stalin’s only public comment on the Nazi–Soviet pact came in his radio broadcast a few days after the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941:
How could the Soviet Government have consented to conclude a non-aggression pact with such treacherous monsters as Hitler and Ribbentrop? Was this not a mistake on the part of the Soviet government? Of course not! A non-aggression pact is a pact of peace between two States. It was such a pact that Germany proposed to us in 1939. Could the Soviet Government have declined such a proposal? I think that not a single peace-loving state could decline a peace treaty with a neighbouring Power, even though the latter was headed by such monsters and cannibals as Hitler and Ribbentrop.37