This is CBS I in the World. I'm John Batchler with Professor Jeffrey Roberts of the University

of College Corp. Also a Meredith's Professor of History at the College at the University.

And a member of the Royal Irish Academy, we're discussing his new book, Stalin's Library,

which is part archaeological discovery of these books written in or doodled in or crossed

out with Stalin's direction, his pencil, his ever prominent pencil. The library is scattered.

There are many questions about where the books are, what he collected, what he didn't

collect, what's missing. We're right now in post-revolution, Glenn and died of a series

of strokes, and he's gone in 1924, and Stalin, who sees himself as the inheritor, is not

exactly profoundly challenged because he was good as General Secretary, but he begins

his consolidation. He has an opponent whose name is Leon Trotsky. All of these players

are vivid 20th century personalities. We're following the library, and the professor

takes us to 1925. The woman who was Lenin's librarian now becomes Stalin's librarian,

and the professor, this is a marvelous list of what Stalin wanted his library to look

like. Is there an organizing principle here, why he detailed these subjects and then

singled out these certain authors to be separate from the other subjects? How did he explain

it to the librarian?

Yeah, as we were discussing earlier, Stalin was great at the more of Lenin and he can

listen himself to be Lenin's disciple. So, to think about Lenin, for instance, Lenin

was Stalin's role model, yeah. And I think about Stalin, Lenin was, he was an intellectual,

but he was also a practical man of action, and Lenin was also a huge reader as well, of

course, and he had a huge personal library, and he works around it by books, yes. So Lenin

is very much Stalin's role model in relation to Stalin's library as well, the aspiration

...