Preface

Source: Works, Vol. 1, November 1901 - April 1907
Publisher: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954
Transcription/Markup: Salil Sen for MIA, 2008
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit "Marxists Internet Archive" as your source.

The present collection of the works of J. V. Stalin is published by decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

Hitherto only part of Comrade Stalin's works has been published in separate collections. His articles and speeches of the period immediately before October 1917 were collected in the book On the Road to October, which appeared in two editions in 1925. In 1932 the collection The October Revolution was published, containing articles and speeches on the Great October Socialist Revolution. Works on the national question went into the collection Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, which has appeared in several editions. The articles and speeches of 1921-1927, dealing mainly with internal Party questions and the rout of the opposition groups that were hostile to the Party, constituted a separate collection entitled On the Opposition, which was published in 1928. In addition, there are other collections in which are compiled J. V. Stalin's articles and speeches on definite subjects, such as, for example, the collections: On Lenin, Articles and Speeches on the Ukraine, The Peasant Question, The Young Communist League, and others.

At different times several collections were published containing works by both V. I. Lenin and J. V. Stalin, such as, 1917—Selected Writings and Speeches, The Defence of the Socialist Motherland, A Collection of Works for the Study of the History of the C.P.S.U.(B.). in three volumes, Lenin-Stalin—selected works in one volume, On Party Affairs, On Socialist Emulation, On Labour, and others.

The most widely distributed collection of the works of Comrade Stalin up to this point has been the book Problems of Leninism, which has gone through eleven editions. With every new edition the contents of this book underwent considerable change: nearly every edition included new works and, at the same time, in order to keep the book to its previous size, the author deleted certain works from it. Comrade Stalin's speeches, reports and Orders of the Day delivered during the Patriotic War the Soviet people waged against the German fascist invaders are collected in the book On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, which has gone through five editions.

However, a large number of J. V. Stalin's works, written before and after the October Revolution, were not reprinted and, hitherto, not collected after their publication in newspapers and magazines. Moreover, there are articles and letters by Comrade Stalin which have not been published before.

This is a first attempt to collect and publish in one edition nearly all the works of J. V. Stalin.

Volume 1 contains the works of J. V. Stalin written from 1901 to April 1907.

Volume 2 includes works written from 1907 to 1913.

Volume 3 consists of works of the period of preparation for the Great October Socialist Revolution (March-October 1917). These are mainly articles that were published in Pravda.

Volume 4 (November 1917-1920) includes works written in the first months of the existence of the Soviet government and in the period of foreign military intervention and civil war.

The next three Volumes—5, 6 and 7—contain works of the period of the Soviet state's transition to the peaceful work of rehabilitating the national economy (1921-1925). Volume 5 contains works written from 1921 up to the death of V. I. Lenin (January 1924). Volume 6 includes works of 1924. Volume 7 contains works written in 1925.

J. V. Stalin's works of the period of the struggle for the socialist industrialisation of the country (1926-1929) constitute Volumes 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. Volumes 8 and 9 contain articles, speeches, reports, etc., made during 1926; Volumes 10 and 11, those of 1927; and Volume 12, those of the period of 1928-1929.

Volume 13 contains works of the period 1930-1933, dealing mainly with questions concerning the collectivisation of agriculture and the further development of socialist industrialisation.

Volume 14 contains works covering the period 1934-1940, dealing with the struggle to complete the building of socialism in the U.S.S.R., with the creation of the new Constitution of the Soviet Union, and with the struggle for peace in the situation prevailing at the opening of the Second World War.

Volume 15 consists of J. V. Stalin's work, History of the C.P.S.U.(B.), Short Course, which appeared in a separate edition in 1938.

Volume 16 contains works of the period of the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War, including J. V. Stalin's reports, speeches, and Orders of the Day on the anniversaries of the Great October Socialist Revolution, addresses to the people in connection with the rout and surrender of Germany and Japan, and other documents.

All the works in the respective volumes are arranged in chronological order according to the time at which they were written or published. Each volume is furnished with a preface, brief explanatory notes, and a biographical chronicle. Dates until the adoption of the New Style calendar (up to February 14, 1918) are given in Old Style; those after that are given in New Style.

The texts of Comrade Stalin's works are given in their original form except in a few instances where the author has introduced slight changes of a purely stylistic character.

Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute of the C.P., C.P.S.U.(B.)