Stalin Quotes

“At the end of his life, Stalin was at the pinnacle of his power. His authority was unassailable and not under threat from any source. But he did not feel that way. Like other dictators, he never stopped fighting for power and never quite trusted his subjects. The methods he used in his never-ending battle for power were universal and simple. They included the elimination of any potential threat from within his inner circle, unrelenting oversight of the secret police, the encouragement of competition and mutual control among the various components of government, and the mobilization of society against perceived enemies both internal and external.”
― Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator

“He was especially fond of Svetlana, who was a promising student and very attached to her father. He began to play a little game with his daughter, calling her khoziaika (which could be translated as “housekeeper” or “the boss”) while he played the role of the sekretarishka (little secretary) who followed her orders: “Setanka-Housekeeper’s wretched Secretary, the poor peasant J. Stalin.” Svetlana would write out orders for her father: “I order you to let me go to Zubalovo tomorrow”; “I order you to take me to the theater with you”; “I order you to let me go to the movies. Ask them to show Chapaev and an American comedy.” Stalin responded with facetious pomposity.21 Other members of Stalin’s inner circle were appointed Svetlana’s sekretarishkas, playing along with the vozhd. “Svetlana the housekeeper will be in Moscow on 27 August. She is demanding permission to leave early for Moscow so that she can check on her secretaries,” Stalin wrote to Kaganovich from the south on 19 August 1935. Kaganovich replied on 31 August: “Today I reported to our boss Svetlana on our work, she seemed to deem it satisfactory.”22 Until the war began, father and daughter exchanged affectionate letters. “I give you a big hug, my little sparrow,” he wrote to her, as he had once written to his wife.23”
― Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator

“Iosif was particularly fond of the youngest, the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Nadezhda, who reciprocated his feelings despite the twenty-three-year difference in their ages. To a young woman from a revolutionary family, he must have seemed like the ideal man: a tried-and-true revolutionary, brave and mysterious but also personable. In 1919 Stalin and Nadezhda tied the knot. As to the nature of their relationship before marriage, we can only guess.”
― Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator

“Here he became acquainted with an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl named Pelageia Onufrieva, the fiancée of one of his fellow exiles, Petr Chizhikov. The future dictator flirted openly with the girl and gave her a book with the inscription, “To clever, nasty Polya from the oddball Iosif.” When Pelageia left Vologda, Jughashvili sent her facetious cards, such as: “I claim a kiss from you conveyed via Petka [Chizhikov]. I kiss you back, and I don’t just kiss you, but passionately (simple kissing isn’t worth it). Iosif.”7 In his personal files, Stalin kept a photograph of Chizhikov and Onufrieva dating to his time in Vologda: a serious, pretty, round-faced girl in glasses and a serious young man with regular features and a moustache and beard. The jocular cards, presents, and photograph attest to the thirty-three-year-old Jughashvili’s interest in the young woman but do not prove that he was romantically involved with her. We”
― Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator

“On Saturday, 28 February 1953, Josef Stalin invited four of his senior associates to the Kremlin: Georgy Malenkov, Lavrenty Beria, Nikita Khrushchev, and Nikolai Bulganin.1 During the final six months of his life, Stalin and these four men constituted what was known as the “ruling group” or simply the “Five.” They met regularly in Stalin’s home. The leader’s other old friends—Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, and Kliment Voroshilov—were in disgrace, and he did not wish to see them.2 Assembling a small group of supporters to act as his right hand in ruling the country was a key element of Stalin’s modus operandi. He liked to name these groups according to the number of members: the Five (Piaterka), the Six (Shesterka), the Seven (Semerka), the Eight (Vos’merka), the Nine (Deviatka).”
― Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator

“Tight control over the alchemy of official “Staliniana” has created false and doubly majestic images of Stalin and his accomplishments.39 These images outlive the man himself and have an appeal even in contemporary Russia. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the stresses of the transitional period, corruption, poverty, and glaring social inequality all feed the longing for a social utopia. A significant portion of Russian society seeks recipes for the present by looking to the Stalinist past. Popular images of the greatness of the Stalinist empire—of equality and the fight against corruption, of the joy and purity of this distant life undone by “enemies”—are exploited by unscrupulous commentators and politicians. How great is the danger that a blend of historical ignorance, bitterness, and social discontent will provide fertile ground for pro-Stalinist lies and distortions to take root?”
― Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator

“March 1953 saw a surge in arrests and convictions of people charged with “anti-Soviet agitation” for expressing satisfaction with Stalin’s death or otherwise denigrating him. A forty-four-year-old Muscovite named S. M. Telenkov, who worked at a scientific institute, drunkenly proclaimed in a commuter train, “What a fine day it is today; today we buried Stalin. There’ll be one less scoundrel around and now we can get back to living.” R. S. Rybalko, a twenty-eight-year-old working-class woman from Rostov Oblast, was convicted of using profanity in regard to Stalin. Ya. I. Peit, who had been forcibly resettled in Kazakhstan, was sentenced for destroying and stomping on a portrait of Stalin after an official mourning ceremony. Upon hearing of Stalin’s death, P. K. Karpets, a thirty-two-year-old railroad worker from the Ukrainian city of Rovno, swore and exclaimed, “Smell that? The corpse is already stinking.” Ye. G. Gridneva, a forty-eight-year-old female railroad worker from Transcaucasia, was not able to contain herself and commented to a coworker, “A dog dies a dog’s death. It’s good that he died. There won’t be any kolkhozes and life will be a little easier.”7”
― Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator

“We summoned Molotov to us and read him the telegram in full. After pausing to think, Molotov said that he had made a lot of mistakes but felt that mistrust toward him was unjust, and then he began to cry.”35 There is no way to know whether they were describing this confrontation accurately. This was a drama played out for one spectator who was not even in the theater. What mattered was not the drama itself but the account of how the confrontation was handled, which had to be designed to satisfy Stalin. Molotov played along. That same day he sent Stalin his own telegram: “Your coded telegram was filled with deep mistrust toward me as a Bolshevik and a man, which I take as the most serious party warning for all my work going forward, wherever that might be. I will try through my deeds to earn your trust, in which every honest Bolshevik sees not simply personal trust, but the trust of the party, which is dearer to me than my life.”36 Judging by the correspondence that followed, Stalin felt that he had achieved the desired effect. He clearly knew that Molotov’s “crimes” had no significance, and his underling had never disobeyed any direct instruction. Molotov had simply used his own discretion on occasions when Stalin’s long-distance guidance was intermittent and vague.”
― Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator

“According to Svetlana, his reaction forever destroyed the closeness between them: I’d never seen my father look that way before.… He was choking with anger and was nearly speechless.… “Your Kapler is a British spy. He’s under arrest!” … “But I love him!” I protested at last, having found my tongue again. “Love!” screamed my father, with a hatred of the very word. And for the first time in my life he slapped me across the face, twice. “Just look, nurse, how low she’s sunk!” He could no longer restrain himself. “Such a war going on, and she’s busy the whole time---------!” Unable to find any other expression, he used the coarse peasant word.27”
― Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator

“In a 16 June 1919 telegram to Lenin from the Petrograd front, he wrote with slightly comical bravado and arrogance: “Naval experts assert that the capture of Krasnaya Gorka [a Petrograd fort] from the sea runs counter to naval science. I can only deplore such so-called science. The swift capture of Gorka was due to the grossest interference in the operations by me and civilians generally, even to the point of countermanding orders on land and sea and imposing our own. I consider it my duty to declare that I shall continue to act in this way in future, despite all my reverence for science.”30 Lenin, who knew that the fort had not, despite Stalin’s claim, fallen from a naval attack, seems to have been amused by Stalin’s swagger. He left a notation on the telegram: “??? Krasnaya Gorka was taken by land.”31”
― Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator