“…The history of the collectivisation of agriculture in the late 1920s and early 1930s (with millions exiled, several million dead from forced famine, and massive property expropriations) shows that affection for Stalin was hardly as universal or spontaneous as Barbusse would have us believe (see Tucker, 1990: 80–145; Medvedev, 1989: 211–54). Further, while Barbusse paints a picture of natural domesticity chez Stalin, he makes no mention of his wife, a fact not incidental, as she had committed suicide in 1932, an act interpreted by some as a loyal Communist’s protest against Stalin’s policies ( Tucker, 1990: 217; Medvedev,1989: 299; Kuromiya, 2005: 108). Finally, the notion that Stalin lived a meagre life as leader of the USSR is a fallacy: for instance, although he lived in a ‘gloomy’ apartment in the Poteshny Palace in the early 1930s (Montefiore, 2004: 3), he also had a country home outside Moscow (Tucker, 1990: 215–16).…”