New novel offers a glimpse into the Young Stalin's time in Edwardian London

Set in the Edwardian era, its protagonist is the 29-year-old Josef Stalin, a delegate at the 5th Congress of the Russian Communist Party which took place in London in May 1907. Among the other Marxist thinkers and activists attending were Lenin, Gorky, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg. It’s a fascinating point in history, ten years before the Russian Revolution and long before Stalin became the ruthless tyrant with which we are more familiar. “As soon as I discovered that story, I just felt it had to be written,” says May who is based in West Yorkshire. “No-one really knows what Stalin got up to during his time in London. We know he was there for three weeks, the lodgings he stayed in and that he met a young boy called Arthur Bacon – he appears in a newspaper article in the 1950s talking about ‘the Stalin I knew.’ So there was this skeleton of things that we did know and plenty of room for imaginative invention.”

May then began to dig further, disappearing down “a Wikipedia rabbit hole” and spending many hours in the British newspaper archive – “the conference was well covered in the press” – as well as reading novels written around that time. “I didn’t want the book to be weighed down by the research, so I spent a lot of time reading fiction to get more detail on what London was like then. I found the novels of Joseph Conrad and Jack London really helpful in that respect.”

One of the non-fiction books he read suggested that Stalin may have worked as a spy for the Czar as a young man and spent much of the rest of his career trying to cover that up. “It’s never been substantiated but I thought it was really interesting,” says May. “And it would explain his subsequent actions in killing off all the people who might have known about it.”

The character in Sell Us the Rope seems far-removed from such murderous barbarism, but May is careful to also point up the darker side of the young Stalin’s personality. “I think it is possible to like the 29-year-old Stalin because there’s still a recognisable humanity about him. He was a big, vivacious presence but he was also quite threatening and vengeful.”

Given what has been happening in Ukraine over the past month, the novel is more resonant than May expected it to be when he was researching and writing it. “It does feel horribly timely,” he says. “I started working on this over two years ago when we thought those things were all in the past. It seems extraordinary, and ridiculous, that Putin has got himself into the Stalin mindset.”

This is May’s sixth novel and his first foray into historical fiction and it has already received much critical acclaim – it’s pretty impressive to have a quote on the cover from Hilary Mantel which states: ‘What can I say except I wish I had written it myself?’

“As a writer I tend to follow what I’m interested in and hope that readers will be interested too,” he says. “I’ve been totally knocked out by the response to this so far, it’s been so positive”.

Stephen May appears at Huddersfield Litfest, March 30.

Review

Sell Us the Rope

by Stephen May

published by sandstone press, £8.99

yvette huddleston 4/5

There’s a glittering cast of characters in Stephen May’s compelling new novel – Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Maxim Gorky to name just a few, all gathered in London in May 1907 for the 5th Congress of the Russian Communist Party.

The starring role goes to 29-year-old Josef Stalin, then calling himself Koba after a Georgian folk hero. A published poet, recently married and a new father, Koba cuts a dashing figure among the delegates and catches the eye of feisty young Finnish activist Elli Vuokko, one of the so-called ‘girl nihilists’ at the conference. Sparks fly.

While the political-historical context is obviously key here, May tackles it all with a deft lightness of touch – there are lively debates on social justice but there is also plenty of romance, drama and intrigue. He also manages to subtly emphasise contemporary resonances with observations on the kind of British exceptionalism, entitlement and xenophobia rife in Edwardian London. His portrayal of Stalin is complex and nuanced – Koba is driven and ambitious, sensitive and capable of kindness but there are dark hints at the monster he will become. A perfectly pitched combination of historical fact and imaginative fiction, real-life figures and invented characters, it is a pacy, rich and rewarding read and deserves all the plaudits.