THE KREMLIN IS ALWAYS WELL-INFORMED, THEN AND NOW: 1/8: Stalin's Library: A Dictator and his Books –by Geoffrey Roberts
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
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 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.
1900 MOSCOW
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a |
| 0:05.0 | is CBS Eye on the World. |
| 0:08.0 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:10.0 | Joseph Stalin. |
| 0:12.0 | I welcome Professor Jeffrey Roberts, the University of College |
| 0:16.9 | Cork. He is an emeritus professor of history and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, but importantly he's the author of a new book, |
| 0:26.2 | Stalin's library, a dictator and his books. |
| 0:29.8 | Professor, a very good evening to you. |
| 0:31.6 | Congratulations and I go immediately to a fascination. |
| 0:35.6 | It is a dacha outside of Moscow and named Bliznyaya, |
| 0:40.9 | meaning nearby, and the dictator, the general secretary, Stalin, has a library. |
| 0:48.9 | You describe it as 30 meters square. |
| 0:51.3 | We're standing in the middle of it. What do I see around me Jeff? |
| 0:54.6 | Good evening to you. |
| 0:55.6 | Good evening, John. Thanks very much for the invitation. Yeah, so in the mid-1930s, Stalin had a new dacha or country mansion, especially constructed for |
| 1:07.9 | him and the centerpiece of this quite grand house was this massive library room which had four huge |
| 1:17.3 | bookcases wide bookcases so a room actually containing, you know, what if you're standing |
| 1:25.5 | minute what you would look around and see these bookcases and you will see on the |
| 1:28.4 | shelves thousands of books and in fact Starling spent a lot of time in this particular room indeed, you know, when he dies in March 9, 2003, that's the room and he has is drunken that leads to his death. to that's what you're what you're looking at but |
| 1:46.0 | what you're looking at is okay thousands of books this only a very small part of |
| 1:50.0 | Stalin's personal book collection. The main bulk of the books that are at the |
| 1:56.3 | dachachar, this dachia called Bleechner because it's just a few miles from |
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