ABSTRACT
This chapter provides critically important and little explored aspect of understanding of Joseph Stalin’s literary and cultural interests for understanding the mind and methods of a man who shape the twentieth’s century’s history. Drawing directly from the records of Stalin’s personal collection of books, and related archival sources, ‘Stalin’s Library’ highlights the methodological significance of archival sources in the history of security and intelligence. As was his habit, Stalin carried the book he was editing with him to his daily Red Army High Command briefing. The actual book that he wrote on was unimportant to Stalin; it just happened to be in his hand as he hurried into a meeting. Stalin sent the copy of the play, with his doodles, to his library. On Stalin’s death in 1953, some 14,000 books, mostly fiction, art books and atlases, were dispersed to other libraries, leaving a residue of 5,500 items, including some 400 that he annotated.
