This is CBSI on the World. I'm John Batsworth, Professor Jeffer Roberts, University College

Corps, Emeritus Professor of History and the Author of Stalin's Library. A dictator

in his books, we meet large figures in Stalin's Library and the first to come across, because

it seems so logical given the time between the 19th and the 20th century that Stalin

rose to power. Bismarck. The challenge of dealing with Bismarck, Bismarck and Machiavelli,

is that you don't know whether Stalin thought he was Bismarck, learned from Bismarck,

you learned what not to do from Bismarck. Professor, you've looked at this very carefully

now. What did Stalin think of Bismarck? Did he divide his life between early and late?

Was he attracted to the iron chancellor? Was he attracted to the reformer? What about

Bismarck? It's very difficult to know what Stalin thought about Bismarck in detail,

because the Bismarck books that Stalin read in some cases, they disappeared from the archive.

We don't know, we don't know, we don't know where to go. What we can say with Stalin

is that Stalin was very interested in Bismarck. He was very insistent that Bismarck's

memoirs should be translated to Russia, in fact there should be a new addition to Bismarck

members. He was interested in other books about Bismarck and about treatments of Bismarck.

I didn't really keen to discuss Bismarck's memoirs, so we know that he had a huge interest

in Bismarck. My sub-assistor is that he saw Bismarck as a practical pragmatic politician,

but someone who had also had a project, a rather grand scale project, which this project

is as emerged, of unifying Germany into a single day, and building up Germany as a great

pal. Some people say that Bismarck carried out a revolution from above in Prussia and

in the wider German space. You could see a parallel there with Stalin's revolution from above.

At the end of 1920s, when he produced this collectivization and the five-year plans,

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