THE KREMLIN IS ALWAYS WELL-INFORMED, THEN AND NOW: 5/8: 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
⏱️ 8 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 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.
1914 RUSSIAN ARTILLERY
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a |
| 0:05.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. |
| 0:08.0 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:10.0 | Professor Jeffrey Roberts of University College Cork, a Meredith's Professor of History, |
| 0:16.0 | member of the Royal Irish Academy is here to introduce us to the themes in Stalin's library. |
| 0:22.0 | The Professor's new book, Stalin's library, the professor's new book. |
| 0:24.0 | Stalin's library, a dictator in his books. |
| 0:27.4 | We're now in the dachcha outside of Moscow. |
| 0:31.1 | It's entitled nearby, Blige Nyaya, and the collection sometimes numbered as much |
| 0:38.8 | as 25,000 disappears after Stalin is condemned by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956. |
| 0:46.0 | It disappears. |
| 0:48.0 | It's scattered everywhere. |
| 0:49.0 | Some parts of it have ex-Silibrised stamps that you can say this was a member of Stalin's library. |
| 0:55.6 | Some don't have any markings at all, in fact were borrowed and never returned. |
| 0:59.6 | Some are the books, of his |
| 1:03.2 | of his daughter's Fetlana. Sometimes there are borrowed books that were |
| 1:06.0 | marked up by someone else and the professors done the detective work of what is |
| 1:10.2 | Stalin's Pometki marginalia, markings, and what is |
| 1:13.4 | what is somebody else's and what can we make conclusions. |
| 1:16.8 | The important theme I come to professor, |
| 1:19.4 | no smoking gun, so let's enjoy ourselves. No smoking gun we're not looking for a |
| 1:25.0 | magical theory to be vindicated by Stalin's own handwriting. We're just accumulating |
... |
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