STALIN'S LIBRARY INVESTIGATING THE BOOKS THAT MADE STALIN

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Stalin remains a controversial figure in modern history. His reign of terror in the 1930s saw  tens of thousands of innocent men and women marched off to their death. The forced collectivization following the failure of the New Economic Policy saw at least 10 million peasants die of starvation and the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union was achieved at a huge human cost. The German attack on Soviet Union after the collapse of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact consumed another 25 to 30 million lives. When we face such statistics we can only remember what Stalin once said: The death of an individual is a tragedy but the death of millions is a statistic. Cynical though this statement is, it contains the sad truth.

What kind of a man was Stalin. This book, by Geoffrey Roberts published by the Yale University Press is based on an analysis of the books in Stalin's  Library. The Stalin Digital Archive created by Yale University contains a  complete catalogue of his Collection of nearly 25,000 books. These books were distributed over three buildings : the dacha where he lived, the Kremlin Office where he worked and an annexe which he used for his official entertainment and meeting party colleagues. After his death in 1953, when Soviet Union lurched suddenly towards destalinization his library was dismantled and books distributed to a number of different libraries. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 provided the opportunity for scholars to reexamine the legacy of Stalin. Yale University was first to grab the opportunity and a number of  documents, papers, letters and books of the Russian statesman were regathered collated and catalogued. The book under review is a product of that endeavour.

Stalin was a well educated and well read man. This came as a shock to me even though I have read the Biography of Stalin by Issac Deutcher. As a Marxist, he believed that books were the tools of the mind and his Library contained a rich collection of classics of European Literature. Apart from Georgian and Russian, Stalin could read French but was not adept at English or German. It seems that he made an attempt to learn English as he told H G Wells when he met him before the War. Stalin covered the margins of the books he read with notations--pometki--and these marginal notations are used by the author to probe and explore the mind of Stalin as a reader, thinker and ideologue.

Geoffrey Robert has written an interesting book but a large chunk of the space is taken up by regurgitating the history and life story of Stalin which is by now widely known. He does take time out to dispel some of the myths that have grown around Stalin. He was not an agent of the Tsarist secret police, Okhrana. And unlike the picture of a dour blood thirsty tyrant, Stalin seems to have been intellectually engaged and as the author points out, did not take his own personality cult seriously as he was too intelligent and self aware go be taken in by panegyrics of his sycophants. 

A book of this sort raises an obvious question. Is Stalin being normalized and humanized by such efforts. As a human being Stalin was cold and brutal as his own daughter Svetlana recalled in her Autobiography. When his eldest son was captured by the Germans during World War II, Stalin did not treat his daughter in law and granddaughter any different. They were imprisoned as were other families of Soviet PoWs in German camps. This son was shot by the Germans and only after that was his daughter in law released from prison. Stalin had read the works of Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev,  Kamenev, Bukharin very carefully and the copies of their work were preserved carefully in his collection. 

This book is worth reading as it eschews the pieties of post colonialism and makes a sincere effort to look at Stalin as a reader and producer of ideas. Some of his books such as his work on the National Question are still considered works with great theoretical value. We may recall what Walter Benjamn once wrote: It is not the books that come alive by being collected, it is the collector.

Culture Wars in Tamil Nadu A New Beginning?

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

It is still too early to say whether the few swallows fluttering against the dead morbid skies of Dravidianist parties marks the beginning of a New Spring. Neverhteless the fact that the master narrative of Dravidianism is being challenged on its own turf by ther likes of Maridas and Kishore K Swamy. The dravidianist master narrative was founded on three pillars all of which remained essentially unchallenged which led to dravidianism becoming the dominant hegemonic ideology of the Tamil society. Though there have been bitter personal and political battled between thr three factions of dravidianist political formations--DK, AIADMK and the DMK--there was no challenge at the level of ideology. All three were quite content arguing with each other within the margins set by the dominant ideology.

In the mid nineteeth century, a Protestant cleric called Rober Cauldwell propouded the racial theory of Dravidian exclusivism based on his study of the Tamil Language. In his bookComparative  Grammar of Dravidian Languages he argued that (a) Tamil and Snaskrit do not share any common heitage and Tamil language arose independent of Sanskrit (b) from this he went on to identify the Tamil speaking population as Dravidian and (c) Tamil Race with its exclusive culture is opposed to other Cultures/World Views/Social and Political Formations. To execute this exclusive ideology based on a contrived misreading of History politcal actors like E V Ramasamy Naikkar and his group launched a vicious violent and ferocious campaign against Brahmins who were identified as (a) Aryans therefore not Dravidian (b) Sankritic Culture which they allegedy upheld was ant Tamil therfore anti Dravidian and (c) their Religion is uncivilized and barbaric. Ramasamy's deranged rhetoric did not end with these three propositions. But they form the cornerstone of Dravidianism and that has been the ruling ideology of Tamil Nadu for nearly a century and with the DMK coming to power in 1967 was in a position to translate them into policy and the Brahmins and the SC Population bore the brunt of this sort of political fascism.

The 67% Reservation in medical, engeneering and other professional courses, including jobs essentially excluded the Brahmins from employment in Tamil Nadu and they migrated to the North leaving the field open for depradation. The few who were left, like the Kasturi Group which runs the Hindu m,ade their peace with Dravidianism and were quite content to lend the weight of their Newspaper for the propogation ofthe Dravidian ideology. Any dissent from the dominant ideas was branded "castetist" "fascist" and more recently "anti subaltern". There was no space fo dissent from the dominant ideology. History was distorted to subserve this end. The SangamAge was valorized as a "pristine age" before the fall brought about by the advent of Hindu religion. The fact that many Vedic deities are mentioned is conveniently ignored. The role of Sanskrit in shaping the culture and civilization of Tamil Society is often ignore. The fact that medieval dynasties like the Cholas and the Pandyas issued their inscriptions  in bothe Tamil and Sanskrit is suppressed and only the meykritis of the Cholas were regarded as historical evidence ignoring the large volume of Sanskrit Inscriptions. Medieval Inscriptions were written in Grantha, the true script of the Tamil Language. The Temple and its ramifications around the historical space of Tamil region was quite falsely and in a way tragically misrepresented as "sinful" "irrational" "savage" a line of thught derived from the early sixteenth century Europeans who visited India and were quite shocked at the open and exuberant dispaly of sensuality in Temples. E V Ramasamy Naikkar in fact advocated a sort of iconoclasm against the Vaishnava tradition and is best seen in positioning a statue of this man in his iconic squatting posture with beard and upper cloth smack outside the Great Srirangam Temple. Tamil language and script was mutilated by the removal of what they thought were varga letters or symbols
from the writing system altogether and today that mutilation is celebrated as liberation. The Tamil Printing Presses were forced to aboandon the grantha letters and a strange script without the intermediate vowels was thrust down in the name of Pure Tamil.

The Brahmins bore the brunt of the fascist attack just as the Jews bore the brunt of the attack in the German incarnation of fascism, the Nazi Party. And as long as the target of attck was the Brahmin community, tgheir values, their religion and culture the domiant backward castes which formed the backbone of the dravidianist movement did not stir. Of late the attack has shifted to a general attack on the indigenous faith and its culture by a group that calls itself Karpagu Kootam. A few months back a vulgar "poet" Vairamuthu made some obscne comments on the Vaishnava Saint, Andal who was revered even by Krishnadevaraya who composed the Amuktamalyada in her honour, the Giver of Worn Garlands. The son of the dead Patriarch of the dravidianist polical faction, DMK, one misnamed, Ayyadurai aks Stalin, made some nasty remarks about Hindu wedding rituals and when the beloved God of the Tamil region Skanda/ Muruga/Subramania was attcked the worm turned. Now the culture war was on.

The Tamil Media has been a handmaid of the dravidianist parites and there are credible accounts that news broadcast is based on ideology and money. The narrative was exclusively one sided: the dravidianist side and no other voice was heard. Against this hegemony of Sun TV, Jaya TV, Vijay TV,Makkal TV etc each an arm of a particular dravidianist faction, two youn men Maridass and Kishore Swamy have emerged as credible voices of dissent. Using Social Media Platform like UTube and Twitter they have raised certain vital issues that hit at the very root of the dravidianist ideologies. First, while they attck Hind faith in general and Vaishnava faith in particular, do the dravidianist have the courage to call out the Semetic religions. The answer is No. They have questioned the legitimacy of E V Ramasamy Naikkar being given the honour of being a "Socretes" that is "teacher" and "philosopher". The land scams of his followers stand exposed. They have enen questioned whether Ayyadurai aka Stalin, the son of Karunanidhi was ever a MISA detainee. It has been an article of faith that this misnamed man was in jail as a political prisoner during the Emergency. The challenge is to prove that he was in prison for political and not crimianl reasons. And the response of the DMK has been pathetic. When Dr Subramaniam Swamy raised the 2G Scam, Karubnanidhi tried in vain to turb it into a brahmin vs high caste non brahmin issue and he failed and his daughter spent 11 months in jail and the case is still going on.

This time around the attck is happening where it hurts. And the attackeras are from within the tradition and hence we must take this counter narrative that is slowly being crafted seriously.