Mark Kramer, director of the Cold War studies program at Harvard University, pointed us to something close. In memoirs written after his retirement, Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's former personal secretary, claimed that Stalin said: "Я считаю, что совершенно неважно, кто и как будет в партии голосовать; но вот что чрезвычайно важно, это кто и как будет считать голоса." It translates to: "I regard it as completely unimportant who in the party will vote and how, but it is extremely important who will count the votes and how."
Bazhanov said Stalin was talking about the voting procedures for higher organs of the Communist Party, according to Kramer.
"There is no way to know for sure whether he is accurately recounting Stalin's words, if Stalin in fact said such a thing," Kramer said. "Hence, I regard this as a statement attributed to Stalin by his former secretary Boris Bazhanov."
David Brandenberger, an associate history professor at the University of Richmond, said Bazhanov fled the Soviet Union in 1928 and then published his "rather unreliable muckraking memoir in 1930."
"Most experts consider Bazhanov's Stalin quotation to be apocryphal," he said.
