At last I have them: the Collected Works of Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, or Stalin to his mates. I have always felt slightly bogus running a blog called ‘Stalin’s Moustache’ and not having the man’s works in hand. But now, after much sleuthing – for they are not as popular as they once were – I tracked them down in … Kansas. Of course, why did I not think of that earlier?
Update: of course, these works are well known in The Stalin Society, ‘formed in 1991 to defend Stalin and his work on the basis of fact and to refute capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against him’. (ht jm)
16 September, 2011 at 8:57 am
They used to have these “Big Red Book Sales” at Trades Hall in Melbourne. Maybe they still do – they would be a gold mine for a nostalgic anti-revisionist gentleman such as yourself. They would sell off all the publications that they considered – rightly or wrongly – to be somewhat less relevant to the struggle of the Australian working class than perhaps they once were. So a friend of mine got mint condition sets of the collected works by Enver Hoxha and Kim Il Sung for 50c a volume that fetched many, many times that on Ebay.
In any case, I look forward to your report of what the correspondence between Stalin and Lysenko on the Kyrgyz grain question can tell us about China’s proposed purchase of European sovereign bonds.
16 September, 2011 at 10:03 am
No-one’s perfect.
16 September, 2011 at 4:28 pm
I just have to read the name “Lysenko” and it makes me smile – it’s like “La Peyrère” or “Alan Sokal” or “Andrew Ridgeley”.
16 September, 2011 at 7:32 pm
With nostalgic happiness, obviously.
16 September, 2011 at 4:28 pm
That’s a fine looking set of books, Chairman Boer. I don’t mind admitting that am just a little bit bibliophile-horny.
It’s good to see you bringing Orientalism back into biblical studies, too, what with your conference and all. As Suzanne Marchand sez, ‘invoking the Orient has often been the means by which counter-hegemonic positions were articulated’. YEah – take that, Occident!
16 September, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Suze is a bit of an idiot, really. But you of all people should know why I love going to communist China.
17 September, 2011 at 4:40 am
Actually, a theology conference is the one place you still might find “communist” China.
3 November, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Congratulations! That set of hardbound goodies is infinitely better than the PDFs I have to recourse to from time to time. And way more durable than the Mao Selected Works paperbacks I have with me at present. A red salute!
11 February, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Hello, I would like to know how to get the collection, too.
9 May, 2013 at 4:47 am
Is this collected works of Stalin for sale?