A person’s library can tell us only so much. Mr. Roberts underscores the limitations of book collections and marginalia in illuminating his subject’s mind ... Mr. Roberts makes the obvious but necessary point that underlining a passage about Genghis Khan doesn’t make Stalin a Khan disciple ... Stalin’s Library assumes the reader’s familiarity with the way the dictator’s reliance on book learning led him catastrophically awry. The point is fundamental and deserves to be emphasized ... Books are what readers make of them. They can be disposable entertainments or a lens for understanding the world. Trivia about Stalin’s reading shouldn’t overshadow the way he failed to absorb the knowledge or truth that a lifetime of study can provide.
A truly fascinating study that leaves no doubt that Stalin took ideas as seriously as political power itself ... Roberts makes a convincing case that the key to understanding Stalin’s capacity for mass murder is 'hidden in plain sight: the politics and ideology of ruthless class war in defence of the revolution and the pursuit of communist utopia' ... In an era of dictatorships whose legacy lingers to this day, Stalin was one of the most bookish of them all. Yet to be well-read is in itself no guarantee of a humane approach to politics and life.
Stalin kept no diary and wrote no memoirs, so these scribblings in the margins become invested with greater significance than perhaps they deserve. Roberts warns against reading too much into Stalin’s decision to underline a line attributed to Genghis Khan ... Roberts is startlingly forgiving towards Stalin ... According to Vitaly Shentalinsky...approximately 1,500 writers perished during Stalin’s Terror. There is surprisingly little focus on their struggle in this book. Fascinating in parts, its promised insight into Stalin’s true feelings remains elusive.
Alas, in Stalin's Library Roberts can not offer a close analysis of the entire holdings of Stalin's personal library, as: 'the dictator's books were dispersed to other libraries' ... At times Stalin's Library feels like there's a bigger book about Stalin trying to burst through. Mostly, however, Roberts does return to his main focus -- showing just how central books were to Stalin, throughout his life ... One of the consequences of Stalin's focus on ideas and ideology was that it ignored the human side—as Roberts also arguably does, in not considering very closely many of the horrific consequences that resulted from Stalin's policies and fixations ... Discussion of Stalin's own writing and, especially, his editing—which can also be seen as an extension of his inveterate annotation of texts—is also quite illuminating, neatly presented by Roberts ... Roberts makes a convincing case for the central role of books in Stalin's life—not merely in his formative period ... Unfortunately, the book's index is very thin...disappointing, given that it is a book referring to so many authors and people; an exhaustive index would have been helpful.
