<i>Stalin’s Usable Past: A Critical Edition of the 1937 Short History of the USSR</i> edited by David Brandenburger

The Short History, carefully overseen and edited by Stalin, reflects the evolution of the Soviet state and the dictator’s views. The project began in 1934 when Stalin proposed to Andrei Bubnov, a veteran Bolshevik and at that point Commissar of Education, the creation of a new history textbook. Responding to criticism, he advocated dropping the “sociological” approach of previous textbooks to try to create a narrative accessible and inspiring for the masses. Nadezhda Krupskaia—Lenin’s widow, a veteran educator and deputy to Bubnov—agreed with Stalin’s suggestions. The new Short History would, advocates argued, educate the masses who were not understanding or absorbing earlier mass education initiatives. Unfortunately, the textbook initiative collided with the height of the purges; many of those consulted, including Bubnov, were jailed and often shot.Brandenburger’s ninety-one-page introduction provides context and is very helpful in situating the Short History as part of Stalin-era propaganda that placed the U.S.S.R. in the frame of a thousand years of Russian history. Printed in the millions, the 1937 Short History, representing the evolution of Soviet propaganda to the masses, remained the basic Soviet history textbook until 1955, two years after Stalin’s death and a year before Khrushchev’s secret speech revealing Stalin’s crimes and condemning his “cult of personality.”Brandenburger has done a meticulous job of tracing the process of developing and revising the text, the basic outlines of which were ultimately produced by Andrei Shestakov. He has conducted extensive research in Soviet archives. This edition shows all the edits to the original text, demonstrating how Stalin, a Georgian, put his stamp on the text, carefully editing it to emphasize the role of Russians in building a powerful state and often minimizing the brutality of prerevolutionary rulers like Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. In line with Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, he promoted a narrative highlighting the importance of the working class in achieving the Bolshevik Revolution, driving Soviet progress, and minimizing the countless peasant revolts as unsuccessful and limited in consciousness. In the prerevolutionary end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, all attention focuses on the male Bolsheviks, especially Lenin, and especially not Trotsky, whose role in leading the Red Army to victory in the 1919–1921 Civil War is unsurprisingly erased, as are all pictures of him. Surprisingly, given the Stalin cult, the Soviet leader edited out most mentions of his participation in revolutionary events, while emphasizing Lenin’s key role in guiding the Bolsheviks to victory.This is very much a male history, emphasizing male rulers of Russia and its various non-Russian colonies. Peasants and workers are coded male, although they are largely an undifferentiated mass. In the prerevolutionary period, the rule of any of the eighteenth century empresses, including Catherine the Great, are largely glossed over. Stalin does add mention of women among those who sparked the February Revolution, but with no specifics, and there is no illustration of the February uprisings. Significant Bolshevik female leaders, such as Alexandra Kollontai, Krupskaia, and Inessa Armand, are absent from the narrative. Of all the 148 illustrations, there is just one of a woman, the Empress Elizabeth. There are no other pictures of women, no female revolutionaries, no peasants, no workers of the majority sex. There is no mention of Lenin’s repeated assertions that women were key to the success of the revolution or Soviet initiatives on the emancipation of women. Perhaps that was to be expected from Stalin, who characterized educated women as “herrings with ideas,” was notably brutal in his treatment of Krupskaia, and drove his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, to suicide.As Brandenburger has noted, the Short History is an excellent source for courses in Russian and Soviet history, easy to read, and provids ample opportunity for classroom discussion about its slant on the thousand-year history of the largest country on earth, what it highlights, and what it omits.