A Note on a Spurious Source: Finskii Vestnik

Abstract

When lecturing on Stalinism in Helsinki University in the autumn of 1984, I came across Francis B. Randall's Stalin's Russia (New York, 1965). The book apparently contained remarkable information, especially about Stalin's opinions on cultural matters. The author had taken the task of elucidating Stalin's ideological views and presumed that this would teach us a great deal about what made Stalin tick. Randall's main source turned out to be a journal that had been published in Finland, Finskii Vestnik. There were 37 references to it, mostly to an interview with Stalin in December 1928, which consisted of no less than 42 pages. Randall stated that the journal had published also another, shorter interview with Stalin in 1938 and an article by Viktor Chernov in the same year. Randall characterized the Vestnik as a journal edited and published by Russian revolutionaries in Helsinki from 1891 to 1944 save in periods of police suppression and war chaos. It was said to have originally been narodnik, then veered toward Bolshevism about 1917, been fellow-traveling in the 1920's, and after 1930 increasingly critical of Stalin's regime. A journal with such a remarkable history would, of course, deserve the attention of anybody interested in Russian history. It turned out, however, that it could not be found in the Helsinki University Library, although it was to get a free copy of everything published in Finland, and Finskii Vestnik was supposed to have a history of more than fifty years of publication. The only Finskii Vestnik that figures in the catalogues is the well-known St. Petersburg journal of the 1840's. There is also no other title with a profile comparable to Randall's Vestnik; the possibility of the title having been given incorrectly had to be ruled out. After this, I was not very surprised by the fact that old Russian emigrants living in Finland had never heard about a Finskii Vestnik. Professor Randall now ought to show his sources or give some other explanation. The influence of the Vestnik has not been restricted to Randall's book. It is cited in Robert H. McNeal's bibliography (Stalin's Works, Hoover Institution bibliographical series XXVI, entries 813, 936a), with due reference to Randall. In his Stalin: The History of a Dictator