How Does Stalin Take It?

And how does the 'great and beloved Stalin' himself react to this zealous attention on the part of the Soviet people?

It is well-known that Stalin is perhaps the most unassuming and unpretentious of all the great leaders in the world today. He needs no military uniform, swaggering bearing, or autocratic manner—nor, it may be uncharitably added, any umbrella or cigar. His domestic relations are shrouded in obscurity; he will not allow his birthday to be celebrated publicly; he constantly emphasises in public that the people's praises must be construed as applying to his policy and not to his person.

Apparently the only occasion on which Stalin discussed 'Stalin-worship' with a Foreigner in an interview was when Lion Feuchtwanger visited Moscow in 1937.

Listen to portion of Feuchtwanger's report of the interview, taken from his fine And impartial book, Moscow, 1937:

'He shrugs his shoulders at the vulgarity of the immoderate worship of his person. He excuses his peasants and workers on the grounds that they have too much to do to be able to acquire good taste as well, and laughs a little at the hundreds of thousands of enormously enlarged portraits of a man with a moustache which dance before his eyes at demonstrations. I pointed out to him that in the end even men of unimpeachable taste have set up busts and portraits of him, of more than doubtful artistic merit, in places to which they do not belong, as, for example, the Rembrandt Exhibition. Here he became serious. He supposed that there lay behind such extravagances the zeal of men who had only lately espoused the regime and were now doing everything within their power to prove their loyalty. He thinks it is possible even that the "wreckers" may be behind it in an endeavour to discredit him. "A servile fool," he said irritable, "does more harm than a hundred enemies." If he tolerates all the cheering, he explained, it is because he knows the naïve joy the uproar of the festivities affords those who organise them, and is conscious that it is not intended for him personally, but for the representative of the principle that the establishment of Socialist economy in the Soviet Union is more important than the permanent revolution.'

Not with standing this, the Russian Communist Party is well aware of the dangers page 16 Attendant on 'Stalin-worship,' and resolutions have been passed condemining 'the misguided practice of unnecessary and meaningless salutation of the Party leaders.'