Note to Assistants, May 29, 1925

My advice
(and request)

1) Classify the books not by authors but by subjects:
a) philosophy;
b) psychology;
c) sociology;
d) political economy;
e) finance;
f) industry;
g) agriculture;
h) cooperatives;
i) Russian history;
j) history of foreign countries;
k) diplomacy;
l) foreign and domestic trade;
m) military affairs;
n) the national question;
o) congresses and conferences (as well as resolutions), party, Comintern, and others (excluding decrees and codes of law);
p) the condition of workers;
q) the condition of peasants;
r) the Komsomol (everything available in separate editions about the Komsomol);
s) the history of revolution in other countries;
t) on 1905;
u) on the February Revolution of 1917;
v) on the October Revolution of 1917;
w) on Lenin and Leninism;
x) History of the RCP;
y) on discussions in the RCP (articles, brochures, etc.);
y1) trade unions;
y2) belles-lettres;
y3) literary criticism;
y4) political journals;
y5) natural-science journals;
y6) dictionaries of all kinds;
y7) memoirs;

2) Exempt from this classification books by:
a) Lenin (separately)
b) Marx (--)
c) Engels (--)
d) Kautsky (--)
e) Plekhanov (--)
f) Trotsky (--)
g) Bukharin (--)
h) Zinoviev (--)
i) Kamenev (--)
j) Lafargue (--)
k) R. Luxemburg (--)
l) Radek (--)

3) Classify all the rest by authors
(exclude from the classification and set aside:
textbooks of all kinds, minor journals, anti-religious rubbish, and the like)

29/V-25

Ilizarov B.S. The Secret Life of Stalin. Moscow, 2003. Between pp. 224 and 225.

NOTE
The note concerns the systematization of Stalin's personal library. "It all began with the library in the first apartment," writes E.S. Gromov, "around 1920. Its owner was evidently completely indifferent to rarities, to bibliophilic treasures. The General Secretary simply had no time for them. He needed the library strictly for work, for current tasks, references, information, as well as for relaxation. Social-political and historical books and journals predominated. Stalin had felt a strong pull toward history, including military history, since his youth. He also kept the works of political opponents, above all Trotsky. Naturally, he had all of Lenin, read and reread. Nor was literary classics forgotten, although initially there were few of them: Lev Tolstoy, Garshin, Gorky, Chekhov, Uspensky..." The wife of S.M. Kirov, who also had a large library, once suggested inviting a librarian to systematize the books. "Kirov objected: 'Comrade Stalin's wife invited a librarian, who arranged the books according to all the rules of library science. And then Comrade Stalin could not find a single book without the catalogue and rearranged everything his own way'" (See Gromov E.S. Stalin: Art and Power. Pp. 58-59). By the end of his life, Stalin's library comprised no fewer than 20,000 volumes.