Personality of Stalin, according to contemporaries(ING)

Sergeev: He gave us books. On my 7th Birthday he gave me "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe, and for my 8th Birthday - "The Jungle Book" by Kipling.

Glushik: Did Stalin read a lot? Which books were in his library?

Sergeev: Stalin read many books. And each time we saw each other he would ask me what am I reading at the moment and what do I think of it. Right before the entrance to his cabinet, on the floor there was a tower of books. He would look through them and set aside those which he would put in his personal library in the Kremlin. I don't know what happened to it now.

He always read books with a pencil in his hand, marking something. The majority of his books were philosophical works and our classics. He liked Gogol', Salti'kov-Shedrin, Tolstoy, Leskov, had works of Esenin, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Bulgakov (famous Russian writers). The last one Stalin respected and told us: "This writer shows that heroes were not only in the Red Army. Heroes are those who love their Motherland more then life itself. And such, unfortunately, didn't fight only on our side." In fact Stalin payed special attention to education of Russian language and literature. Knowing who we want to be when we grow up he asked us: "So you will be in the military. And what is the most important subject for a soldier?" We began naming diffrent subjects: mathematics, physics, fitness training. And he told us: "No. Russian Language and Literature. You have to speak so that everyone could understand you and in extreme battle conditions you have to speak brief. And you too have to understand what you are being told. A military must be able to express himself both verbally and in writing. In war you will face such situations, which you have never faced before. You will have to make decisions. And if you read a lot, then in your memory you will find a hint how to act and what to do. Literature will help you."

Glushik: Did Stalin choose books to read himself or did he consider his friends and comrades taste in literature?

Sergeev: He always picked books to read himself. He looked through and read a huge amount of literature. I never counted exactly how many, but I always seen him reading and writing from dawn to dusk. He would be brought new documents and old ones would be taken away. There was a Commissar of the Artillery Command - Georgi' Savchenko, who even knew Stalins parents, and knew Stalin himself very well. He wrote that Stalin read 500 pages a day. I think that's true.

Glushik: Did he have preferences is the genre of books?

Sergeev: No, he never had specific preferences, he ready a bit of everything and always learned something and thought how to use it for the benefit of the soviet government.

In Summer, August of 1934, on his country-house in Sochi, Stalin and Kirov were working on an order to make a new school-book "History of USSR", which was published in 1937 under professor Shestakovs editing. Stalin himself new history brilliantly, including history of war, he didn't just know all the great wars and battles, he knew what got them started, the proportion of forces and how they ended: he studied and knew why did one side loose and how and why the other came out victorious.
Me and Vasily were given assignments. We both received a book - Illovai'sky and Bel'yarminov history schoolbook. We had to read it and answer questions, do assignments on what we read. I think Stalin and Kirov didn't just want us to learn it, they also wanted to know our attitude on what we read, what interested us more and with what we had difficulties. While Kirov was away we had a little free time, but when he arrived, we completely forgot that there is a sea near us.
The books were really old, and their condition was proof enough. And when Stalin gave them to us, we laid them down on the terrace and gone out to play volleyball to a neighboring house. When we returned we saw that the entire terrace was filled with something white and Stalin was walking around and was picking something up. Thats when we realized that something was wrong, so we ran to the terrace and saw that he was picking up pages. Turned out there was a strong wind and it tore apart one of the books (and it turned out to be one of mine), and so Stalin was walking around, gathering its pages. When he saw us, he told me "Do you have an ass instead of a head?" But that flash of anger instantly died and he calmly explained to me, that in that book were centuries of history, and that people literally shed blood to collect and store all that knowledge, and that later scientists and historians spent dozens of years working with that material, to provide us with knowledge of mankinds history. "And you?" He then told us to get awl, some thread, glue and peace it back together. We spent the following several days working on that book, with great effort. Finlay we showed it to Stalin, and he said: "You did good. Now you know how to treat books". It was a lesson we never forgot, ever since then I don't dare to tear even a newspaper. And Vasily from that moment on and until the end of his life was always extremely careful with books.

Sergeev: No we never celebrated any religious holidays. However everybody used such phrases as "Thank God", "God protect", "God forgive", and Stalin sometimes used those too. I never heard Stalin say a single bad or even negative word about the Church, Faith or Religion. In fact I remember how, I think, in 1931 or 32, right across the school where Vasily studied, there was a church. One day when there was a procession inside and everybody were praying, some of the guys from his school were shooting with a fake gun nearby (the fake guns referred to in this situation are made to sound like real guns and have a small fire spark to make it look like its firing, originally made for self-defense, to fool aggressors that you have an actual gun), Vasily didn't participate in this but he did tell Stalin about it. So he asked him: "Why were they doing that? Those people pray, they don't interrupt your studying, so why are you interrupting their praying?" Then he asked Vasily: "Do you love and respect your grandmother?" And Vasily answered that of course he did, she was after all his fathers mother. Then Stalin told him: "She prays too", and Vasily asked: "Why?", and father answered: "Maybe she knows something that you don't".
Stalin knew matters of religion very well, he had many books, including ones about history of religions. He wrote important articles on the matter as well. For instance in his article "Against destruction of Churches" he explains, that churches - are cultural monuments of our Motherland. And to destroy them would be destroying cultural heritage. In his article "Forbidding political pursuit for faith" he speaks about the importance to stop hunting people for their faith.

I was present at Stalin funeral from the beginning and to the end, and amongst the people who came to pay their respects to him, were many priests and other church servants.

Did Stalin enjoy humor?

Sergeev: Always. No matter what, in any situation. He often quoted Gogol', Salti'kov-Shedrin, Leskov, Zoshenko and other funny things. He and Kirov knew well Satirist-writers and classics of the genre.
They also had personal humor, like Kirov would call Stalin the "Great Leader of all Peoples and Times". He would joke: "Listen, maybe you can help me, you are more educated then me, the Great Leader of what else are you? Other then Times and Peoples, what else is there?"
And Stalin called him "The Beloved Leader of the Leningrad Proletariat" and also liked to joke around: "And not just of the Leningrad Proletariat, but of the Bakinsk proletariat, perhaps of the entire North-Caucasus proletariat! Wait, "the Great Leader of what else are you?" What do you think? My head is not the House of Sovnarkom (From Russian "Soviet Narodnih Commissarov" - Soviet of the Peoples Commissars) to know everything!"
Stalin and Kirov always fruitfully spend time, even during the so called vacations. On his country-house in Zubalovo, Stalin and Kirov would grab gardening tools and go to the vegetable-garden. He loved hand-labor, just like everyone in the family, in fact love for labor was developed and appreciated in our family. At his country-house in Sochi Stalin himself grew lemons, apricots, peaches, took care of them himself when had the opportunity, and those trees nicely grew fruits, and Stalin would offer guests and the country-house staff a treat of his own-grown fruits. He and Kirov discussed how to best grow them and if it was possible to cultivate them in other regions of the country. For instance Stalin tried growing watermelons at his country-house outside Moscow. I think he wanted to make sure himself if it was possible to grow them in our climate and then spread experience how to grow them across the country.

lingering anticipations of a dour sinister Highlander vanished at the sight of him. He is one of those people who in a photograph or painting become someone entirely different. He is not easy to describe, and many descriptions exaggerate his darkness and stillness. His limited sociability and a simplicity that makes him inexplicable to the more consciously disingenuous, has subjected him to the strangest inventions of whispering scandal. His harmless, orderly, private life is kept rather more private than his immense public importance warrants, and when, a year or so ago, his wife died suddenly of some brain lesion, the imaginative [people] spun a legend of suicide which a more deliberate publicity would have made impossible. All such shadowy undertow, all suspicion of hidden emotional tensions, ceased forever, after I had talked to him for a few minutes.
My first impression was of a rather commonplace-looking man dressed in an embroidered white shirt, dark trousers and boots, staring out of the window of a large, generally empty, room. He turned rather shyly and shook hands in a friendly manner. His face also was commonplace, friendly and commonplace, not very well modelled, not in any way "fine." He looked past me rather than at me but not evasively; it was simply that he had none of the abundant curiosity which had kept Lenin watching me closely from behind the hand he held over his defective eye, all the time he talked to me.
The conversation hung on a phase of shyness. We both felt friendly, and we wanted to be at our ease with each other, and we were not at our ease. He had evidently a dread of self-importance in the encounter; he posed not at all, but he knew we were going to talk of very great matters. He sat down at a table and Mr. Umansky [the translator] sat down beside us, produced his notebook and patted it open in a competent, expectant manner.
I felt there was heavy going before me but Stalin was so ready and willing to explain his position that in a little while the pause for interpretation was almost forgotten in the preparation of new phrases for the argument. I had supposed there was about forty minutes before me, but when at that period I made a reluctant suggestion of breaking off, he declared his firm intention of going on for three hours. And we did. We were both keenly interested in each other's point of view. What I said was the gist of what I had intended to say....
I had never met a man more candid, fair, and honest, and to these qualities it is, and to nothing occult and sinister, that he owes his tremendous undisputed ascendancy in Russia. I had thought before I saw him that he might be where he was because men were afraid of him, but I realize that he owes his position to the fact that no one is afraid of him and everybody trusts him.
Wells, Herbert George. Experiment in Autobiography. New York: Macmillan. 1934, p. 687-689

degree to which Stalin himself relished the cult surrounding him is debatable. Like Lenin, Stalin acted modestly and unassumingly in public. In the 1930s, he made several speeches that diminished the importance of individual leaders and disparaged the cult forming around him, claiming that such a cult was un-Bolshevik; instead, he emphasized the importance of broader social forces. Stalin claimed that the only reason Lenin could acceptably be adored as a leader was because Lenin understood these social forces, and therefore knew how to most effectively channel the desires of the Soviet people. Stalin's public actions seemed to support his professed disdain of the cult: Stalin often edited reports of Kremlin receptions, cutting applause and praise aimed at him and adding applause for other Soviets leaders.[15] Additionally, in 1936, Stalin passed a ban on renaming places after him.[16]


Privately, Stalin claimed that he had tried to stop the pervasive level of frenzied devotion, but that everyone assumed he was acting out of false modesty. He admitted that he understood the cult of personality was a necessary evil among the simpler section of the Soviet population, who were used to worshipping a tsar, but feared that for the intelligentsia, this attention on the individual would take the focus away from Party ideas.[17] Artyom Sergeev, Stalin’s adopted son, recalled a fight between Stalin and his biological son Vasily. After Stalin found out that Vasily had used his famous last name to escape punishment for one of his drunken debauches, Stalin screamed at him. “‘But I’m a Stalin too,’ retorted Vasily. ‘No, you’re not,’ said Stalin. ‘You’re not Stalin and I’m not Stalin. Stalin is Soviet power. Stalin is what he is in the newspapers and the portraits, not you, not even me!’” To some degree, Stalin accepted the Soviet people's dedication to him as an embodiment of the Party, but he discouraged all interest in his private and family life, and divulged only limited personal information.[18] The Finnish communist Arvo Tuominen reports a sarcastic toast proposed by Stalin at a New Year Party in 1935 in which he said, "Comrades! I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism [he rattled off all the appellations applied to him in those days] – Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, and I hope this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening."[19]

Were toasts made in his honor?

Sergeev: Ofcourse. But if someone started overpraising him, he would joke about it. He always joked about the praises he received. He made toasts as well, in which he thanked everyone for their kind words. His toasts always had meaning in them, he always had some specific word for each person, which was simple, yet satisfying for the one, whom it was meant for.

Glushik: Did Stalin receive gifts?

Sergeev: Never! There were absolutely no gifts, ever! He didn't like getting presents, and everyone knew that.

Glushik: And did the country celebrate Stalins Birthday? Were there congratulations in the papers?

Sergeev: Yes, and when Stalin read them in the papers, he would joke about them. Stalin never liked being worshiped but he accepted it as something unavoidable, like something he had to go through with, even though he didn't enjoy it. And he never considered his Birthday a personal holiday, even less so as a national one.
I remember that on the 23rd of February, 1948, when Red Army Day was celebrated and it was an anniversary, there was a great concert in the Bolshoy Theater. Many who came mostly spoke about Stalin. He didn't interrupt anyone, but during a small break he spoke: "Comrades, I believe you forgot, where and why you came. I don't have an anniversary today, the Red Army does. I am telling this to those who have forgotten, who is celebrating an anniversary today. And that would be the Red Army and not Comrade Stalin".

Glushik: Perhaps he dressed more officially on hist Birthdays?

Sergeev: No, he always had the same clothes: soft boots, straight pants, and a french (service jacket). It was plain, simple and comfortable.