ABSTRACT
The question of the intellectual sources of Stalin’s political thought is not easily answered. From early on, he covered up his tracks. However, we have in the course of this study met a number of Marxists whose work was reflected in Stalin’s, including the Georgian Marxists Zhordaniia, Makharadze and Shaumian; the Austro-Marxists Bauer and Renner; the “collectivist” Aleksandr Bogdanov; the “father of Russian Marxism” Plekhanov; and Stalin’s despised opponents Bukharin, Preobrazhenskii and Trotskii. But Stalin never admitted to having had any “teachers” other than Marx, Engels and Lenin. Furthermore, we saw that he did on occasion mention the Georgian nationalist Chavchavadze and the Russian “revolutionary democrats” Belinskii and Chernyshevskii as representatives of healthy popularity and patriotism. Then again, although he was flattering, such references remained sporadic. Stalin did not admit to having learned or borrowed anything from them. He did not acknowledge personal debts.
