Editing Henri Barbusse (section)

=== Support for Stalin ===
In his 1928 book ''Voici ce qu'on a fait de la Géorgie'', Barbusse praised post-[[sovietization]] political, social, and economic conditions in [[Georgian SSR|Georgia]] and completely glossed over the brutal methods employed by Stalin which disturbed the dying Lenin,<ref name="three"/> triggering a critical response from the Georgian émigré Dathico Charachidze who published in 1929 ''Barbusse, les Soviets et la Géorgie'', with a sympathetic preface by [[Karl Kautsky]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Russian Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921 an Annotated Bibliography.|date=2006|publisher=Continuum International Pub. Group|location=London|isbn=1441119922|page=468}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=David-Fox|first1=Michael|title=Showcasing the great experiment: cultural diplomacy and western visitors to Soviet Union, 1921-1941|date=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=978-0199794577|page=231}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Kandelaki|first1=Constantin|title=The Georgian Question Before the Free World|date=1953|publisher=Navarre|page=46}}</ref>

In 1930, he published a book ''Russie'', an account of year-long living in the Soviet Union which contained flattering references to Stalin.<ref name="three"/>

In 1932, Barbusse agreed to write a biography of Stalin.<ref name="three"/> Originally, Stalin wanted [[Maxim Gorky]] to write it, but he didn't, and the task was handed to Barbusse;<ref>{{cite book | last1=Geller | first1=M. | last2=Nekrich | first2=A.M. | title=Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present | publisher=Hutchinson | year=1986 | isbn=978-0-09-155620-4 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NmQjAQAAIAAJ| page=250}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last=Rosenthal | first=B.G. | title=New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism | publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press | year=2010 | isbn=978-0-271-04658-7 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ppvr3LZ8o2wC | page=308}}</ref> the key condition was that it would be checked and subject to editorial changes in the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, and Barbusse assured that he would break with the "Trostkyist elements" in the editorial of his journal ''Monde''.<ref name="s"/> It appeared in 1935 as ''Staline: Un monde nouveau vu à travers un homme'' (''Stalin: A New World Seen Through the Man''). Barbusse praised Stalin, whom he called in his personal notes as "great comrade",<ref name="s"/> as a man with "the head of a scholar, with the figure of a worker, and with the dress of a simple soldier" and as the only true heir of Lenin;<ref name="three"/> one of the phrases of the book, "Stalin is the Lenin of today", became one of the most celebrated slogans of the Stalin cult; according to [[Isaak Mints]], the slogan was written by Stalin himself.<ref name="s"/> Although Barbusse had a friendly relationship with [[Leon Trotsky]] in the middle of the 1920s, in the book he was condemned as an intriguer and a deviationist, a [[Menshevik]] at heart.<ref name="three"/> Nevertheless, [[Aleksei Stetskii]],  one of the chief ideologues of the Stalin cult, was concerned by Barbusse's description of Stalin not as "the greatest theoritician of Marxism after Lenin", as he was described in the Soviet Union, but as a "man of action" and practice, while Trotsky still seemed as a "different type of leader": the opposition between Trotsky and Stalin seemed as an opposition between Trotsky's intellectualism and Stalin's anti-intellectualism. The book was published in Russian in the same year.<ref name="s"/>

[[Victor Serge]], a writer and a member of the [[Left Opposition]], met Barbusse in the 1920s and tried to make him aware of the political repression in the USSR:
{{blockquote|When I told him about the persecution, he pretended to have a headache, or not to hear, or to be rising to stupendous heights: "Tragic destiny of revolution, immensities, profundities, yes... yes... Ah my friend!" My jaws juddered as I realised that I was face to face with hypocrisy itself.<ref name="three"/>}}
After this conversation, Barbusse made Serge one of the cosponsors of ''Monde'',<ref>Victor Serge. Memoirs of a Revolutionary</ref> but removed him from the masthead after his imprisonment.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Cm3nDwAAQBAJ | isbn=9781781689578 | title=Victor Serge: A Political Biography | date=15 April 2014 | publisher=Verso Books }}</ref>

Trotsky criticised Barbusse as representative of a "pretentious ... humanitarian, lyric and pacificstical 'communism'".<ref>Trotsky, L ''The Revolution Betrayed'', Introduction</ref>