Joseph Stalin bibliography

Works (so-called "Collected Works")

During the middle 1920s, as historian Geoffrey Roberts observes, a "small industry" emerged publishing the collected works of prominent Bolshevik worthies, including V.I. Lenin, Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, and Leon Trotsky. Having produced a smaller number of leaflets, pamphlets, articles, published speeches, and books than his peers, Stalin was not immediately part of this publishing frenzy, with his first systematic selected works volume appearing only in 1926.

Initial planning and collection of material for a Stalin collected works began in the early 1930s, with Stalin himself outlining a plan for an 8-volume collection in 1931. Stalin's secretary Ivan Tovstukha began the process of gathering such materials about this time. In August 1935, shortly after the death of Tovstukha, the Politburo began to push forward definitively on a Stalin collected works project, passing a revolution decreeing that such a collection should be published and assigning the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute (IMEL) the job of compiling and producing such a work, operating in conjunction with the propaganda department of the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) [VKP(b)].

Propaganda department chief Alexei Stetsky was the first coordinator of the project, outlining a plan for a 10-volume series of Stalin collected works in November 1935. This set was to include all of Stalin's previously published writings, supplemented with previously unpublished transcripts of speeches, letters, and telegrams. Publication was to be made not only in Russian and the other national languages of the Soviet Union, but also in an array of foreign languages, according to Stetsky's plan.

This project underestimated the difficulty of the project and its scope, however, and projections rose from 10 to 12 volumes, and later to 16. Nevertheless, according to Stetsky's plan, actual publications were to begin in 1936 and to be completed by 1937 — in time for celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.

The Stalin Sochineniia (Works) was published in 13 volumes from 1946 until 1954. It is not truly a "Collected Works" per se, being incomplete both in terms of chronology (ending with material published in January 1934) and content (suffering tendious alterations, after-the-fact editing, and omissions of many complete items) even within the truncated timeline.

6 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

Problems of Leninism (Selected Works)

For the introduction to the first edition of this book, see On the Problems of Leninism

Unlike his Communist Party peers V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev, there was no attempt made at publishing a comprehensive collection of Stalin's writings in the 1920s. Instead, a selected works volume called Problems of Leninism [Voprosy leninizma] first appeared in 1926. It remained in print for the rest of Stalin's life, running through 11 editions before being terminated in 1954, following his death. Content of this volume changed over time. The table below lists the contents of the 1st, 9th, and 11th editions of this volume, all of which are readily available in English translation.

Prior to 1940, the English translation of this selected works collection was simply titled Leninism.

English-language pamphlets

The following pamphlets were published in English translation but never appeared in Problems of Leninism or Works or in the standard collection of World War II-related speeches and orders of the day, On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. Most of these have alternate titles for national reprints. Pamphlets which were incorporated into any of the standard Stalin works collections mentioned above are not included. Produced in a multitude of alternate titles in English-speaking countries around the globe, the total of such "reused" English-language pamphlets issued runs into the hundreds.

English-language topical collections

A number of English-language titles collect speeches and articles dealing with specific themes, occasionally featuring material not published in Works, Problems of Leninism, or as free-standing pamphlets. Several symposiums including one reprinted Stalin article are excluded.

History of the CPSU(b): Short Course

The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course, commonly known as the Short Course, is a special case in the Stalin literary corpus. While the basic writing of the book was done by others, Stalin took a direct and active hand in the editing process — restructuring the periodization, rewriting passages, and contributing an entire chapter ("Dialectical and Historical Materialism.") While not properly a work by Stalin, neither should it be considered a mere editing job.

Conceived as a training manual for students and party cadres, the Short Course was first published in English in 1939 by the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow, and was rapidly reprinted by various English-speaking Communist Parties around the world.

Unofficial Works continuations

The Stalin Works was originally projected as series of 16 volumes, of which only the first 13 saw print before the posthumous policy of destalinization tenuously began in the Soviet Union in 1954. Over the ensuing decades, various unofficial efforts have been made to continue and complete the truncated Works series.

Stalin scholar Robert H. McNeal has noted that

According to the original plan for the series, as set forth in [Volume 1, pages v to iiii], there were to have been three more volumes, bringing the collection up to the end of the Second World War. Had the dictator been followed by more loyal heirs, it is reasonable to surmise that they would have wished to see the extension of the series, covering the period 1946–53.

The three projected volumes were to include the Short Course in full as forthcoming volume l5, even though the book was belatedly attributed to Stalin only in 1946, with his authorship formally recanted in 1956.

In 1965, McNeal embarked on a project to publish material for the years 1934 to 1953 counted as Sochineniia volumes 14, 15, and 16, with Stanford's Hoover Institution publishing the material in volumes of a similar size and shape to the original series. McNeal made the editorial decision to include only the chapter on "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" in his three volume extension, which eventually saw print in 1967. The volumes were published only in Russian, however, with McNeal pointing to six topical collections readily available in English translation for "the majority of the documents included in the present continuation."

Uncontroversially omitted works

In an introductory section to a 1967 bibliography of Stalin's published works, Robert McNeal marks the existence of "a large body of material which bears Stalin's name but is in essence the work of staff assistants assigned to certain routine activities." These are said to include official notices of military promotions announced in Pravda during World War II, brief notes of thanks to various factories and collective farms for having donated money to the war effort, and acknowledgments of messages from international figures for best wishes extended to the USSR in connection with certain anniversaries or achievements.

McNeal observes that "not even Stalinist bibliographers bothered to list all these empty documents, and no attempt to fill this gap seems necessary today."

On top of this, some but not all short messages of congratulation sent by Stalin to various Soviet citizens, economic officials, and military school commanders were considered part of the Stalin literary corpus, McNeal notes. The dividing line for planned inclusion in the Stalin Works seems to have been ill-defined, making their inclusion in any future project at least somewhat problematic.