28. VI. of this year, precisely at 16:00, accompanied by his wife and Comrade Arosev, Romain Rolland was received by Comrade Stalin. They greeted each other in a friendly manner. Comrade Stalin invited those present to sit down. Romain Rolland thanked Comrade Stalin for affording him the opportunity to speak with him, and, in particular, expressed gratitude for the hospitality.

Stalin. I am glad to have a conversation with the greatest world writer.

Romain Rolland. I very much regret that my health did not permit me to visit this great new world earlier, a world which is a source of pride for all of us and with which we link our hopes. If you will allow me, I shall speak to you in my dual role as an old friend and fellow traveler of the USSR, and as a witness from the West, an observer and confidant of the youth and sympathizers in France.

You must know what the USSR represents in the eyes of thousands of people in the West. They have a very vague idea of it, but they see in it the embodiment of their hopes, their ideals, which are often diverse and sometimes contradictory. In the conditions of the current severe crisis, both economic and moral, they expect from the USSR guidance, a slogan, clarification of their doubts.

Of course, it is difficult to satisfy them. The USSR has its own gigantic task, its work of construction and defense, and to this it must devote itself entirely: the best slogan it can give is its example. It shows the way and, by following that way, affirms it. But still, the USSR cannot shirk the great responsibility which the situation of the modern world places upon it, a kind of "supreme" responsibility — to care for these masses from other countries who have come to believe in it. It is not enough to repeat Beethoven's famous words: "O man, help thyself!"; one must help them and give them advice.

But in order to do this usefully, one must take into account the particular temperament and ideology of each country — here I shall speak only of France. Ignorance of this innate ideology can cause, and in fact does cause, serious misunderstandings.

One cannot expect from the French public, even the sympathetic part of it, that dialectics of thought which has become second nature in the USSR. The French temperament is accustomed to abstract-logical thinking, rationalistic and straightforward, less experimental than deductive. One must know this logic well in order to overcome it. This is a people, a public opinion, that is accustomed to reasoning. They always need to be given the motives for an action. In my view, the policy of the USSR does not sufficiently concern itself with providing its foreign friends with the motives for certain of its actions. Meanwhile, it has enough of these motives, just and convincing ones.

But he seems to be little interested in this; and this, in my opinion, is a serious mistake: for this can and does give rise to false or deliberately distorted interpretations of certain facts, generating anxiety among thousands of sympathizers.

Since I have observed lately this alarm among many honest people in France, I must signal this to you. You will tell us that our role — as intellectuals and fellow-travelers — consists precisely in explaining. We are not coping with this task, first of all because we ourselves are poorly informed: we are not supplied with the necessary materials to make things understandable and to explain. It seems to me that in the West there ought to exist an institution for intellectual communication, something like VOKS, but of a more political character. But since no such institution exists, misunderstandings accumulate, and no official institution of the USSR undertakes to clarify them. It is apparently thought that it is enough to let them evaporate with the passage of time. They do not evaporate, they thicken. One must act from the very beginning and disperse them as they arise. Here are a few examples: The Government of the USSR adopts decisions, which is its supreme right, either in the form of judicial rulings and sentences, or in the form of laws altering ordinary punitive measures. In certain cases, the questions or the persons concerned present or acquire universal interest and significance; and for one reason or another, foreign public opinion becomes agitated. It would be easy to avoid misunderstandings. Why is this not done? You were right to energetically suppress the accomplices in the conspiracy of which Kirov was the victim. But, having punished the conspirators, inform the European public and the world of the murderous guilt of the condemned. You exiled Victor Serge for 3 years to Orenburg; and this was a far less serious matter, but why was it allowed to be so blown up over the course of two years in the public opinion of Europe.

He is a writer who writes in French, whom I do not know personally; but I am a friend of some of his friends. They bombard me with questions about his exile to Orenburg and about how he is being treated.

I am convinced that you acted with serious motives. But why not announce them from the very beginning before the French public, which insists on his innocence? In general, it is very dangerous, in the country of the Dreyfus and Calas affairs, to allow a convicted person to become the center of a general movement. Another case, of a completely different nature: a law on the punishment of juvenile offenders over the age of 12 was recently published. The text of this law is not sufficiently known; and even if it is known, it raises serious doubts.

One gets the impression that the death penalty hangs over these children. I well understand the motives that make it necessary to instill fear in the irresponsible and in those who wish to exploit this irresponsibility. But the public does not understand.

It seems to her that this threat is being carried out or that the judges, at their discretion, may carry it out. This could be a source of a very large protest movement. This must be prevented immediately. Comrades, forgive me, perhaps I have spoken for too long and, perhaps, I am raising questions that I should not be raising. Stalin. No, no, please. I am very glad to listen to you, I am entirely at your disposal. Romain Rolland. Finally, I turn to a very large current misunderstanding caused by the question of war and the attitude toward it. This question has long been discussed in France. Several years ago, I discussed with Barbusse and my communist friends the danger of an unconditional campaign against war.

It seems to me necessary to study the various cases of war that may arise and to work out the various provisions that may be adopted in relation to each case. If I understand correctly, the USSR needs peace, it wants peace, but its position does not coincide with integral pacifism.

The latter, in known cases, can mean a renunciation in favor of fascism, which in turn can provoke war. In this regard, I am not entirely satisfied with certain resolutions of the Amsterdam Congress against war and fascism in 1932, since its resolutions raise some doubt on the question of tactics against war. At the present moment, the views not only of pacifists but also of many friends of the USSR on this question are disoriented: socialist and communist consciousness is troubled by the military alliance of the USSR with the government of imperialist French democracy — this sows alarm in minds. There are many serious questions of revolutionary dialectics here that require clarification. This should be done with the greatest possible sincerity and openness. That, it seems to me, is all I wanted to say.

Stalin. If I must reply, then allow me to reply on all points. First of all, about the war. Under what conditions was our mutual assistance agreement with France concluded? Under conditions when in Europe, in the entire capitalist world, two systems of states emerged: a system of fascist states, in which everything living is suppressed by mechanical means, where the working class and its thought are stifled by mechanical means, where the working class is not allowed to breathe, and another system of states, preserved from old times — this is the system of bourgeois-democratic states.

These latter states would also be ready to stifle the workers' movement, but they act by other means — they still have a parliament, some kind of free press, legal parties, etc. Here there is a difference.

True, limitations exist here as well, but still a certain freedom remains, and it is more or less possible to breathe. Between these two systems of states, a struggle is taking place on an international scale. Moreover, this struggle, as we see, becomes increasingly intense with the passage of time.

The question is: under such circumstances, should the government of a workers' state remain neutral and not intervene? No, it should not, for to remain neutral means to facilitate the possibility of a victory for the fascists, and a victory for the fascists is a threat to the cause of peace, a threat to the USSR, and, consequently, a threat to the world working class as well. But if the government of the USSR must intervene in this struggle, on whose side should it intervene? Naturally, on the side of the bourgeois-democratic governments, which, moreover, are not seeking to disrupt the peace.

The USSR is therefore interested in France being well armed against possible attacks by fascist states, against aggressors. By intervening in this way, we are, as it were, throwing onto the scales of the struggle between fascism and anti-fascism, between aggression and non-aggression, an additional weight that tips the scales in favor of anti-fascism and non-aggression. That is the basis of our agreement with France. I say this from the standpoint of the USSR as a state. But should the Communist Party in France adopt the same position on the question of war? In my opinion, no. It is not in power there; the capitalists and imperialists hold power in France, and the Communist Party of France represents a small opposition group.

Is there a guarantee that the French bourgeoisie will not use the army against the French working class? Of course not. The USSR has a treaty with France on mutual assistance against an aggressor, against attack from without.

But he does not have and cannot have any agreement to the effect that France will not use its army against the working class of France. As you see, the position of the Communist Party in the USSR is not identical to the position of the Communist Party in France.

It is clear that the position of the Communist Party in France will likewise not coincide with the position of the USSR, where the Communist Party is in power. I therefore fully understand the French comrades who say that the position of the French Communist Party must fundamentally remain what it was before the agreement between the USSR and France.

From this, however, it does not follow that if war, despite the efforts of the Communists, is nevertheless imposed, the Communists should supposedly boycott the war, sabotage work in the factories, etc. We Bolsheviks, although we were against the war and for the defeat of the tsarist government, never renounced weapons.

We were never supporters of sabotaging work in factories or boycotting war; on the contrary, when war became inevitable, we went into the army, learned to shoot, to operate weapons, and then directed our weapons against our class enemies. As for the admissibility of the USSR concluding political agreements with certain bourgeois states against other bourgeois states, this question was resolved in the affirmative even under Lenin and on his initiative. Trotsky was a great supporter of such a resolution of the question, but now, apparently, he has forgotten about it... You said that we should lead our friends in Western Europe. I must say that we are wary of setting ourselves such a task. We do not undertake to lead them, because it is difficult to give direction to people living in a completely different environment, in completely different circumstances.

Every country has its own specific situation, its own specific conditions, and to direct these people from Moscow would be too bold on our part. We therefore limit ourselves to the most general advice. Otherwise, we would assume a responsibility we could not handle.

We experienced firsthand what it means when foreigners lead, and from a distance at that. Before the war, or more precisely — at the beginning of the nineteen-hundreds, German Social Democracy was the core of the Social Democratic International, and we Russians were their pupils.

She tried to lead us at that time. And if we had given her the opportunity to guide us, then we certainly would not have had a Bolshevik party, nor the revolution of 1905, and, consequently, we would not have had the revolution of 1917 either.

It is necessary that the working class of each country have its own communist leaders. Without this, leadership is impossible. Of course, if our friends in the West are poorly informed about the motives behind the actions of the Soviet government and are often baffled by our enemies, this indicates not only that our friends are unable to arm themselves as well as our enemies do. It also indicates that we do not sufficiently inform and arm our friends. We will try to fill this gap. You say that much slander and tall tales are concocted by enemies about the Soviet people, and that we do little to refute them. That is true. There is no fantasy and no slander that the enemies of the USSR would not invent. Sometimes it is even awkward to refute them, as they are too fantastical and clearly absurd.

They write, for example, that I marched with the army against Voroshilov, killed him, and six months later, forgetting what they had said, in the same newspaper they write that Voroshilov marched with the army against me and killed me, evidently after his own death, and then they add to all this that Voroshilov and I came to an agreement, and so on. What is there to refute? Romain Rolland. But it is precisely the absence of refutations and explanations that breeds slander. Stalin. Perhaps. You may be right. Of course, one could react more vigorously to these absurd rumors. Now allow me to answer your remarks concerning the law on punishments for children from the age of 12. This decree has a purely pedagogical significance. We wanted to intimidate with it not so much the hooligan children themselves as the organizers of hooliganism among children.

It must be kept in mind that in our schools, separate groups of 10–15 hooligan boys and girls have been discovered, who set themselves the goal of killing or corrupting the best pupils, both male and female shock workers.

There were cases when such hooligan groups lured girls to adults, got them drunk there, and then turned them into prostitutes. There were cases when boys who study well in school and are shock-workers were drowned in a well by such a group of hooligans, were inflicted with wounds, and were terrorized in every possible way.

It was discovered at the same time that such hooligan children's gangs are organized and directed by bandit elements from among adults. It is understandable that the Soviet government could not overlook such outrages.

The decree was issued in order to intimidate and disorganize adult bandits and to protect our children from hooligans. I draw your attention to the fact that simultaneously with this decree, alongside it, we issued a resolution stating that it is forbidden to sell, buy, and possess Finnish knives and daggers.

Romain Rolland. But why don’t you publish these very facts? Then it would be clear why this decree was issued.

Stalin. This is not such a simple matter. In the USSR there are still quite a number of derailed former people, gendarmes, policemen, tsarist officials, their children, their relatives. These people are not accustomed to labor, they are embittered and represent ready ground for crimes. We fear that the publication of hooligan escapades and crimes of the indicated type could have a contagious effect on such derailed elements and could push them toward crimes.

Romain Rolland. That is true, that is true.

Stalin. Could we have given an explanation to the effect that we issued this decree for pedagogical purposes, for the prevention of crimes, for the intimidation of criminal elements? Of course, we could not, since in that case the law would lose all force in the eyes of criminals.

Romain Rolland. No, of course, you could not.

Stalin. For your information I must say that so far there has not been a single case of applying the most severe articles of this decree to child criminals, and we hope there will not be.

You ask why we do not hold public trials of terrorist criminals. Take, for example, the case of Kirov’s murder. Perhaps here we were indeed guided by a feeling of hatred that flared up in us toward the terrorist criminals.

Kirov was a wonderful man. The murderers of Kirov committed the greatest crime. This circumstance could not fail to affect us. The hundred people we shot had no direct connection, from a legal standpoint, to the murderers of Kirov.

But they were sent from Poland, Germany, and Finland by our enemies; all of them were armed, and they were given the assignment to carry out terrorist acts against the leaders of the USSR, including against Comrade Kirov.

These hundred White Guard members did not even think of denying their terrorist intentions at the military court. "Yes," many of them said, "we wanted and still want to destroy the Soviet leaders, and there is no point in you talking to us, shoot us if you do not want us to destroy you."

It seemed to us that it would be too much honor for these gentlemen to examine their criminal cases in an open court with the participation of defense lawyers. We knew that after the villainous murder of Kirov, the criminal terrorists intended to carry out their villainous plans against other leaders as well.

To prevent this villainy, we took upon ourselves the unpleasant duty of shooting these gentlemen. Such is the logic of power. Power under such conditions must be strong, firm, and fearless. Otherwise, it is not power and cannot be recognized as power.

The French Communards apparently did not understand this; they were too soft and irresolute, for which Karl Marx censured them. That is why they lost, and the French bourgeoisie did not spare them. This is a lesson for us. Having applied the supreme measure of punishment in connection with the murder of Comrade Kirov, we would like henceforth not to apply such a measure to criminals, but, unfortunately, not everything here depends on us. It should also be borne in mind that we have friends not only in Western Europe, but also in the USSR, and while our friends in Western Europe recommend to us the maximum of leniency toward enemies, our friends in the USSR demand firmness, demand, for example, the shooting of Zinoviev and Kamenev, the inspirers of the murder of Comrade Kirov. This, too, cannot be ignored. I would like you to pay attention to the following circumstance. Workers in the West work 8, 10, and 12 hours a day. They have a family, wives, children, and concerns about them. They have no time to read books and derive guiding rules from them.

They do not have much faith in books, for they know that bourgeois scribblers often deceive them in their writings. That is why they believe only facts, only such facts as they see with their own eyes and can feel with their fingers.

And these very workers see that in the east of Europe a new, worker-peasant state has appeared, where there is no longer any place for capitalists and landowners, where labor reigns and where working people enjoy unprecedented honor.

Hence the workers conclude: it means one can live without exploiters, it means the victory of socialism is entirely possible. This fact, the fact of the USSR’s existence, is of the greatest significance in the matter of revolutionizing the workers in all countries of the world.

The bourgeoisie of all countries know this and hate the USSR with an animal hatred. Precisely for this reason the bourgeoisie in the West would like us, the Soviet leaders, to drop dead as soon as possible. That is where the basis lies for their organizing terrorists and sending them into the USSR through Germany, Poland, Finland, sparing neither money nor other means for this.

Here, for example, recently in the Kremlin we discovered terrorist elements. We have a government library, and there are women librarians there who visit the apartments of our responsible comrades in the Kremlin to keep their libraries in order.

It turns out that some of these librarians were recruited by our enemies to commit terror. It must be said that these librarians for the most part represent the remnants of the once ruling, now defeated classes — the bourgeoisie and the landowners.

And what did we find? We discovered that these women were carrying poison, intending to poison some of our responsible comrades. Of course, we arrested them; we do not intend to shoot them, we will isolate them. But here is yet another fact that speaks of the brutality of our enemies and of the need for Soviet people to be vigilant. As you see, the bourgeoisie fights rather cruelly against the Soviets, and then in its own press it itself cries out about the cruelty of Soviet people. With one hand it sends us terrorists, murderers, hooligans, poisoners, and with the other hand it writes articles about the inhumanity of the Bolsheviks.

As for Victor Serge, I do not know him and am not in a position to give you any information right now.

Romain Rolland. I also do not know him personally; personally, I have heard that he is being persecuted for Trotskyism.

Stalin. Yes, I remember now. He is not just a Trotskyist, but a deceiver. He is a dishonest man; he was digging tunnels under Soviet power. He tried to deceive the Soviet government, but he did not succeed. The Trotskyists raised the issue concerning him at the Congress for the Defense of Culture in Paris.

The poet Tikhonov and the writer Ilya Ehrenburg answered them. Victor Serge is currently living in Orenburg in freedom and, it seems, is working there. He was not subjected to any tortures, torments, etc., of course. That is all nonsense. We do not need him and we can release him to Europe at any moment. Romain Rolland (smiling). I was told that Orenburg is some sort of desert. Stalin. Not a desert, but a good city. I, for instance, actually lived in a deserted exile in the Turukhansk region for 4 years, with frosts of 50–60 degrees there. And it was nothing, I lived through it. Romain Rolland. I would also like to speak on a topic that is particularly significant for us, the intelligentsia of Western Europe, and for me personally: about the new humanism, of which you, Comrade Stalin, are the herald, when you declared in your splendid recent speech that "the most valuable and most decisive capital of all the existing values in the world is people."

The new man and the new culture emanating from him. There is nothing more capable of attracting the whole world to the goals of the revolution than this offering of new great paths of proletarian humanism, this synthesis of the forces of the human spirit.

The legacy of Marx and Engels, the intellectual party, the enrichment of the spirit of discovery and creation — is probably the least known area in the West. And yet this is destined to have the greatest impact on peoples of high culture, such as ours.

I am happy to note that in the very latest period our young intelligentsia is truly beginning to acquire Marxism. Until the very latest period, professors and historians tried to keep the doctrines of Marx and Engels in the shadows or attempted to discredit them.

But now a new trend is emerging even in the highest university circles. An extremely interesting collection of speeches and reports has appeared under the title "In the Light of Marxism," edited by Prof. Wallon of the Sorbonne: the main theme of this book is the role of Marxism in the scientific thought of today.

If this movement develops — as I hope — and if we manage in this way to spread and popularize the ideas of Marx and Engels, it will evoke the deepest responses in the ideology of our intelligentsia.

Stalin. Our ultimate goal, the goal of Marxists — is to free people from exploitation and oppression and thereby make the individual free. Capitalism, which entangles man with exploitation, deprives the individual of this freedom. Under capitalism, only a few, the wealthiest individuals, can become more or less free. The majority of people under capitalism cannot enjoy personal freedom.

Romain Rolland. True, true.

Stalin. Once we remove the fetters of exploitation, we thereby liberate the individual. This is well stated in Engels' book "Anti-Dühring."

Romain Rolland. It seems it has not been translated into French.

Stalin. That cannot be. There is a wonderful expression in Engels there. It says that the communists, having broken the chains of exploitation, must make a leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom. Our task is to liberate individuality, to develop its abilities, and to develop in it a love and respect for labor. Now an entirely new situation is taking shape among us, an entirely new type of person is emerging, a type of person who respects and loves labor.

In our country, idlers and lazybones are hated; at factories, they are wrapped in bast mats and carted out that way. Respect for labor, industriousness, creative work, shock work — that is the prevailing tone of our life. Shock workers, men and women — these are the ones who are loved and respected, these are the ones around whom our new life, our new culture is now concentrated.

Romain Rolland. Correct, very good. I am very ashamed that I have detained you so long with my presence and taken up much of your time.

Stalin. Not at all, not at all!

Romain Rolland. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you.

Stalin. Your gratitude somewhat embarrasses me. People usually thank those from whom they do not expect anything good. Did you really think that I was incapable of receiving you well enough?

Romain Rolland (rising from his chair). I will tell you honestly, for me this is completely unusual. I have never anywhere been so well received as here.

Stalin. Do you intend to be at Gorky's tomorrow, the 29th of June?

Romain Rolland. It was agreed that Gorky will come to Moscow tomorrow. He and I will go to his dacha, and later, perhaps, I might avail myself of your offer to also stay at your dacha.

Stalin (smiling). I do not have any dacha. We, the Soviet leaders, generally have no personal dachas. That is simply one of many reserve dachas that are state property. It is not I who am offering you a dacha, but the Soviet government is offering it; it is being offered to you by: Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, and myself. You would be very peaceful there; there are neither trams nor railways there. You could rest well there. This dacha is always at your disposal. And if you wish it, you may use the dacha without fear of inconveniencing anyone. Will you be at the physical culture parade on the 30th of June?

Romain Rolland. Yes, yes, I would very much like to. I would ask to be given this opportunity. Perhaps you will allow me to hope that when I am at Gorky's dacha or at the dacha which you have kindly offered me, perhaps I will see you there once more and be able to converse with you.

Stalin. Please, whenever you like. I am entirely at your disposal and will gladly come to see you at the dacha. And the opportunity to attend the parade will be arranged for you.

The conversation was translated by Comrade A. Arosev.

Vestnik. 1996. No. 1. Pp. 142–149.