7/8: (Mutiny like Progozhin and Surovikin was what Stalin feared) : 7/8: Stalin's Library: A Dictator and his Books –by Geoffrey Roberts
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2023
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
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Yalta 1945
7/8: (Mutiny like Progozhin and Surovikin was what Stalin feared) : 7/8: Stalin's Library: A Dictator and his Books –by Geoffrey Roberts
https://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Library-Dictator-his-Books/dp/0300179049/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin’s tumultuous life and politics.
Stalin, an avid reader from an early age, amassed a surprisingly diverse personal collection of thousands of books, many of which he marked and annotated revealing his intimate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Based on his wide-ranging research in Russian archives, Roberts tells the story of the creation, fragmentation, and resurrection of Stalin’s personal library. As a true believer in communist ideology, Stalin was a fanatical idealist who hated his enemies—the bourgeoisie, kulaks, capitalists, imperialists, reactionaries, counter-revolutionaries, traitors—but detested their ideas even more.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS I In The World. |
| 0:02.7 | I'm John Bachelors with Professor Jeffrey Roberts, who's very generous to help me understand |
| 0:08.3 | his new book, Stalin's Library, a dictator in his books. |
| 0:12.2 | The professor has witnessed these books. |
| 0:14.2 | I have to imagine them and Stalin writing in the margins, writing, underlining, writing |
| 0:20.0 | notes to himself, doodling in some instance. |
| 0:23.0 | Stalin was also a keen copy editor and an editor in chief of documents in the course of |
| 0:29.6 | his career. |
| 0:30.6 | He was a very busy manager of information. |
| 0:34.4 | He was a knowledge worker. |
| 0:36.2 | He also was a great fan of history. |
| 0:39.7 | What kind of history is revelatory? |
| 0:42.8 | Professor Rome, what a surprise. |
| 0:45.1 | Rome is important to Stalin, especially as told by an historian who was not a socialist |
| 0:52.2 | of I understand, not a Bolshevik, Robert Vipper, who was Robert Vipper to Stalin. |
| 0:56.9 | Well, Vipper was a Russian historian, a pre-Ribbiliush street, Russian history. |
| 1:06.8 | He specialized in the history of the Christian history, actually. |
| 1:11.8 | But he also wrote about the ancient world in general, and particularly about the rise |
| 1:17.6 | and thought of the Russian Empire. |
| 1:20.6 | Stalin was very interested in people's historical works and he marked them extensively. |
| 1:29.4 | History was Stalin's favorite subject. |
| 1:35.4 | And Vipper, I would say, was his favorite historian. |
... |
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