Stalin

2 IN LENIN’S SHADOW

Historians debate the extent to which the unrest in Petrograd in late February 1917 was spontaneous. Some claim the demonstrations were organized by professional revolutionaries, but nobody can say with certainty that this was so. The revolution erupted without warning, as a result of the social destabilization caused by almost four years of war, and the tsar and his advisers did not immediately grasp the gravity of the situation. Lenin, in Switzerland, learned of the revolution by reading about it in Western newspapers. The news was also slow in reaching Stalin in Siberian exile, as the local authorities, apparently hoping the upheavals would blow over, banned their local papers from carrying reports from Petrograd.

The tsar’s abdication sparked widespread jubilation. His brother, Grand Duke Mikhail, had been named Nicholas’s successor, but he also relinquished the throne, thus formally ending the monarchy. Shortly thereafter, in early March 1917, a town meeting was held in Achinsk, where Stalin was exiled at the time. For some reason he was not present, but his close comrade Lev Kamenev played a major role in it. A telegram praising the grand duke’s decision was sent on behalf of those gathered.¹ In 1925, when Stalin and Kamenev wound up on different sides in the struggle for power, Stalin reminded his old friend of this warm gesture toward a member of the royal family, a gesture that now looked like a serious political blunder.² It is unlikely, however, that Stalin felt this way in 1917. The telegram reflected the prevailing intoxication with hope and freedom. In this mood, Stalin, Kamenev, and other freed revolutionaries streamed toward Petrograd.

It took some time before Stalin and his fellow Bolsheviks found their bearings when they first were able to emerge from the underground and play a legitimate role in the new system. In the capital, they discovered divided political power. Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, had formed a provisional government, composed primarily of members of liberal parties that favored the creation of a Western-style parliamentary republic. Yet at the same time, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, a revolutionary body whose authority came from the support of rebelling workers and, most important, soldiers of the Petrograd garrison, exercised a significant share of actual power. The soviet was run by members of socialist parties: Menshevik Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs). These two parties were the most influential forces within the revolutionary camp, and they had so far outmaneuvered the other parties, including the Bolsheviks. The SRs and Mensheviks were the ones setting the revolution’s short- and long-term objectives. They considered the events of February a bourgeois revolution that would introduce a prolonged period of bourgeois-democratic development. They therefore believed that at the initial stage, a liberal bourgeois party should hold power and that it was for the Constituent Assembly to determine the shape of the new Russia. The attainment of socialism was a distant goal. Other, more developed capitalist countries—not Russia—would lead the way toward world socialism.

At the same time, the Russian socialists had no intention of renouncing the power that had fallen into their laps. They were not obtuse dogmatists, incapable of deviating from doctrine, but realists and pragmatists, albeit lacking in political sophistication and decisiveness. They were well aware of the dangers confronting the country. Foremost among them was civil war and the spread of a bloody rebellion that could wreak havoc and take Russia to the brink of catastrophe and collapse, not for the first time in its history. The most eloquent symbols of this danger were the millions of war-weary and embittered armed men returning from the front. In 1917, the only responsible position a politician could take was that civil war must be avoided at all costs. Maintaining civil peace was the only way to prevent massive casualties and pave the way toward a better future. The socialists leading the soviet saw it as their duty to suppress revolutionary excesses and work with the liberals and the Provisional Government. Cooperating from a position of strength, they made reasonable use of their power and placed the highest priority on maintaining peace. The official formulation of this policy of compromise was: support for the Provisional Government so long as it advanced the cause of revolution.

Many Bolsheviks, usually described as “moderate” or “rightist,” endorsed essentially the same approach.³ Kamenev was one of this faction’s leaders. He and Stalin shared a bond of long-standing friendship and party collaboration. In December 1912 Stalin wrote him, “Greetings friend! I rub your nose in an Eskimo kiss. Dammit. I miss the hell out of you. I miss you—I swear on my dog! There’s nobody, nobody to have a heart-to-heart talk with, devil take you.”⁴

There is nothing surprising in the fact that early on, Stalin and Kamenev held similar political positions. While Lenin and many other prominent Bolsheviks remained in Switzerland, Kamenev and Stalin played an important role in leading the party in Russia. After arriving in Petrograd, they essentially took control of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda and used it to promote a moderate agenda, based on the belief that the ascent of the liberal bourgeoisie to power was in accordance with the dictates of history and that socialism was a long-term prospect. The newspaper proclaimed conditional support for the Provisional Government. As members of the Petrograd soviet leadership, Kamenev and Stalin interacted closely with other socialists. The Bolsheviks were beginning negotiations to explore joining forces with the Menshevik left wing.

From the start, Kamenev and Stalin were forced to defend their stances. Lenin, dissatisfied with the political line being promoted by Pravda, demanded different slogans. Writing from emigration, he argued for a radical course, declaring war on the Provisional Government and advocating socialist revolution. Kamenev and Stalin worked together to parry these attacks. They heavily edited an article sent by Lenin before publishing it in Pravda.⁵ Most likely, they truly did not understand Lenin’s intentions and assumed his radicalism was simply a function of being out of touch with what was actually happening in the country.

Lenin’s position, however, was based on meticulous political calculations. Kamenev’s and Stalin’s moderate positions opened the door to cooperation among the main socialist parties, but the cooperation never materialized. From the standpoint of the country’s well-being, cooperation in a joint effort to keep radicalism at bay was the only correct course. From the standpoint of the ultimate goal of a Bolshevik takeover of sole power, it was ruinous. Taking part in a coalition, even as oppositionists, would tie the Bolsheviks’ hands and deprive them of support from radical segments of the population. This was not what Lenin had in mind, and his disapproval ultimately sealed the fate of “rightist” Bolshevism.

When news of revolution in Russia reached Lenin, he was ready with a plan of action, carefully worked out in light of past political struggles. Lenin was gambling on being able to grab power before the revolutionary situation stabilized. His historical moment would be the period of revolutionary radicalization, a period he knew well based on the experience of other revolutions. Even at the early, relatively moderate stage of the revolution, Lenin advanced an extreme program for which the revolution was not quite ready. To put it another way, knowing that a tendency toward radicalization would come, he was playing a waiting game. This strategy had obvious advantages for a party whose ultimate goal was to seize power. The advancement of radical goals that many saw as reckless put the party in a class all its own. That nobody wanted to enter a coalition with it allowed it a certain freedom. A radical program also served as a means of crushing moderate forces within the party and mobilizing its more decisive elements. Finally, such a program, despite being initially rejected by the masses, would eventually gain wider acceptance as mounting despair and impatience fostered a greater acceptance of extremism.

Once he heard about the revolution, Lenin hastily prepared to leave Switzerland for Russia. Eager to enter the fray, he negotiated an agreement with the German authorities allowing him to travel to Russia across enemy territory. In so doing, he was taking a serious risk and opening himself up to accusations of collusion with the enemy or even espionage. But the ends justified the means: he needed to get to Petrograd. As soon as he stepped off the train, he publicly announced his plan of action.⁶

Lenin proclaimed that the Bolsheviks must refuse to support the Provisional Government and fight for socialist revolution and the transfer of power “into the hands of the proletariat and the poorest segments of the peasantry”—in other words, into the hands of the Bolshevik party. The fledgling democracy that had come about after the February Revolution was never given a chance to establish itself, but for Lenin, it had already outlived its usefulness. The parliamentary republic had to be replaced with a soviet republic that, under Bolshevik leadership, would introduce socialist changes. For now, Lenin mentioned just a few of the most important changes: the nationalization of land, the transformation of large estates into model farms under the control of the soviets, and the nationalization of banks or even their merger into a single national bank. In accordance with these new objectives and to clearly distinguish the Bolshevik party from other socialist parties, Lenin proposed changing its name from the Social Democratic Party to the Communist Party.

This platform met with serious opposition, both from outside the party and within. Lenin was, in essence, proposing a vaguely articulated program for the seizure of power. How would that power be used if his plan succeeded? What would socialism mean under Russian conditions? What guarantee was there that revolution in Russia would be followed by revolution in more developed countries (without which Russia would find itself isolated)? Instead of answers, these questions were met with brazen demagoguery. For now it was clear that the Leninist course was kindling civil war.

According to contemporary memoirs, during one of Lenin’s speeches after his arrival in Petrograd, a party comrade who had once been close to him cried out from his seat, “That’s nonsense, the ravings of a madman!”⁷ Lenin’s Bolshevik associates could not abide such an outcry, even if they more or less agreed with it. Yet in early April, at meetings of the leading Bolshevik organizations, Lenin’s ideas were voted down by the majority. Not only did Kamenev continue to publicly oppose Lenin’s ideas, but so too did Stalin.

The sharp reaction of political opponents outside the party apparently suited Lenin’s purpose. He was intentionally setting up a confrontation that would distance the Bolsheviks from the country’s other political forces. Within the party, however, he would have to calm the discord. It was not possible to do so by the methods Stalin would employ later. The Bolsheviks were not yet that party. The situation in the country—buffeted by the turmoil of revolution and fledgling democracy—was also different. And Lenin was a different sort of leader. He used a combination of hard-line intransigence and conciliation. A particularly important maneuver was the recruiting of “rightist” Bolsheviks, especially Stalin and Kamenev, to his side. Lenin moved cautiously, always allowing his opponents to save face. Instead of driving them into a corner, he promoted them to top party positions. In Stalin’s case, this approach worked. Whatever may have been going on in Stalin’s head, he quickly threw his support behind Lenin.

The endorsement that Lenin gave Stalin during Central Committee elections at the April 1917 party conference clearly reflects their close working relationship: “We have known Com. Koba for very many years.… He handles any responsible job well.”⁸ This recommendation earned Stalin a spot on the Central Committee, yielding him more votes than anyone except Zinoviev and Lenin himself.⁹ Stalin saw, very directly, Lenin’s huge influence within the party. After some wavering, he made a firm decision to align himself with strength.

Was Stalin merely advancing his own career, or did he actually understand and accept what Lenin stood for? Identifying the source of Stalin’s initial inclination toward “moderate” Bolshevism is of fundamental importance for anyone seeking to understand the workings of his mind. Clearly, the flexibility he exhibited in March–April 1917 does not fit the image of an uncompromising, power-hungry radical. Was his apparent moderation due to Kamenev’s influence? Or was he swayed by the other socialists in the Petrograd soviet, where many of the Mensheviks were fellow Georgians? Perhaps he had not yet developed the confidence to act as an independent political figure and felt he needed someone to follow. In that case, why did he not immediately fall in line behind Lenin after receiving his letter from Switzerland? Perhaps Stalin was genuinely “moderate” in early 1917 but, like many others, changed under the force of circumstances. Historical sources offer no clear-cut answers to these questions. What we do know is that Stalin was not always a radical Bolshevik. His “moderation” and “rightism” would emerge again after Lenin’s death, when the party leaders were choosing the path toward socialism, down which they would lead their vast and isolated country.

 STALIN IN LENIN’S REVOLUTION

The escalation of Russia’s February Revolution followed a typical pattern. The moderate revolutionaries who found themselves in power after the tsar’s overthrow sought mainly to avoid civil war. But while these moderates vacillated, stumbled, and missed opportunities to consolidate their position, the increasingly impatient masses began looking to those who promised radical and immediate change. In this environment, Bolshevik propaganda found fertile ground. Calls for immediate withdrawal from the war, immediate expropriation of large estates and the turning over of land to the peasants, and immediate worker control of industry had broad appeal. As often happens in times of revolution, few demanded that the Bolsheviks spell out just how their program would be put into practice. The masses were inspired by a new faith. Among the Bolshevik rank and file, fewer and fewer were asking their leader the difficult question: What would come next? Lenin led the party with amazing energy, promising that socialism would somehow solve all problems. The banners of the Leninist party—“Most important—engage the enemy”; “We’ll see what happens”; and “Things couldn’t be any worse”—sum up the folk wisdom that guided millions to put their faith in Bolshevik promises.

Stalin was among the Bolshevik leaders who supported Lenin without demanding detailed explanations. Having cast off doubts about the suitability of socialism for a predominantly agrarian country, Stalin now proclaimed that “It is entirely possible that Russia will prove to be the country that paves the way toward socialism.… We must reject the obsolete notion that only Europe can show us the way. There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand on the ground of the latter.”¹⁰ The ground of “creative Marxism” proved so accommodating to Stalin’s political needs that he settled there permanently. In 1917, having cast aside the apprehensions of “rightist” Bolshevism, Stalin set out on Lenin’s radical course toward the seizure of power and the introduction of socialism. He never wavered in this decision. The occasional inconsistencies that scholars have noted between Lenin’s and Stalin’s pronouncements are quite superficial and probably show only that Stalin had trouble keeping up with Lenin’s frequent tactical twists and turns. Lenin himself had trouble keeping up with them.

Having set his sights on seizing power, Lenin faced a changeable and complicated situation that made it hard to choose the right moment to strike. The Bolsheviks’ strategy was to maintain revolutionary momentum while awaiting the right moment to cross the line of legality. Overt action against the Provisional Government and the soviets would undoubtedly trigger a confrontation. The time for action had to be chosen carefully, but holding back also had its risks. The only way to gauge the opposing side’s strength was to probe its weaknesses. Furthermore, the Bolsheviks needed to demonstrate to the radical workers and soldiers on whom they were counting that they were capable of action, not just words. Bolshevik forces had to maintain a constant state of combat readiness through “war games,” one of which would turn into a real battle.

In early July 1917, armed soldiers, sailors, and workers took to the streets, marching under Bolshevik banners calling for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Blood was spilled. The Bolsheviks did not overtly take charge of the rebels, but few were fooled. It was crystal clear to virtually everyone that they were working behind the scenes to overthrow the government. The only question—and historians continue to debate it—was the extent of their involvement in planning the demonstrations. The Provisional Government was able to crush these disturbances, but its efforts at counterstrikes proved haphazard and ineffective. The authorities launched an investigation into allegations that Lenin was a spy being financed by Germany to foment revolution. Charges that the Bolsheviks had organized the riots provided grounds for certain actions against them. The Bolshevik newspaper offices and headquarters were laid waste and shut down, and a few activists were arrested. The “moderate” Kamenev was among those arrested, while Lenin and Zinoviev remained free and went underground.

Stalin, less well known to the government, was not on the list of targeted revolutionaries. He felt so secure that he even proposed that Lenin hide out where Stalin was living at the time, in the apartment of his old friends, the Alliluevs. Stalin’s friendship with the Alliluevs was long-standing and strong. In 1919 he married their daughter Nadezhda, still a teenager at the time.

Stalin accompanied Lenin and Zinoviev as they traveled from Petrograd to the suburban town of Razliv, where the two fugitives were concealed by the family of a worker, Nikolai Yemelianov, a Bolshevik sympathizer. They lived in a loft above Yemelianov’s shed. Later, disguised as farm workers, they made their way to a more sparsely populated area where they took shelter in a hut. In August, Lenin moved to Finland, and from July to October Stalin did not meet with him. Nevertheless, during Stalin’s dictatorship several assertions appeared claiming that he had met with Lenin not once but twice during this period. The main witness of these supposed meetings was Yemelianov.

Like many other revolutionaries, Yemelianov met a tragic fate. He and three of his sons were arrested in the 1930s. Two sons were shot, and one was released after Stalin’s death. The elder Yemelianov was sent into exile in Siberia. In June 1945, apparently grasping that offering an appropriately hagiographic episode for Stalin’s biography represented his best chance for leniency, he appealed to Stalin for permission to return to his village: “In 1917 you saved the life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin by arranging for me to hide him in a hut.”¹¹ The appeal was shown to Stalin, and soon afterward Yemelianov was permitted to return to Razliv and even to work in the Lenin Museum established there. There is no doubt that his release was decided by Stalin personally. Yemelianov’s “recollection” that Stalin twice visited Lenin became part of Stalin’s official biography.¹²

While Lenin was in hiding in Finland, Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders continued to strengthen the party ranks. In late July 1917 they convened the Sixth Party Congress, at which Stalin delivered speeches and generally played a prominent role. The political winds were starting to favor the Bolsheviks. Having fully recovered from the Provisional Government’s ineffective efforts at suppression, they began to strengthen their position, helped by Prime Minister Aleksandr Kerensky’s frequent missteps. In August, Kerensky provoked a confrontation with the commander in chief of the Russian Army, General Lavr Kornilov. With Kerensky’s consent, Kornilov had sent some of his most reliable units to Petrograd to help secure the city after the unrest in July. Soon, however, Kerensky began to doubt Kornilov’s loyalty to the Provisional Government. In a pivotal moment of anti-Bolshevik dysfunction, he proclaimed Kornilov to be a mutineer. This conflict distracted attention from the Bolshevik threat. When the Bolsheviks sided with Kerensky against Kornilov, they obtained the release of several of their activists from prison. Lenin remained in hiding.

In September and October, the Provisional Government’s hold on power was clearly weakening, as was the influence of the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary soviets that supported it. The Bolsheviks, meanwhile, grew increasingly active. Lenin believed that the time to revolt and seize power had come. Again he encountered opposition within the party to his call for armed insurrection, most prominently from Kamenev and Zinoviev. Most of the other party leaders, including Stalin, supported him. Understanding that his presence would help assuage doubts about the use of force, Lenin snuck into Petrograd. The final vote on the uprising was held at a Central Committee meeting on 10 October 1917. Kamenev and Zinoviev found themselves in the minority but did not back down. The following day they wrote a letter to a wider circle of members.

They had a strong case to make. They enumerated the weaknesses of Lenin’s arguments, disputing the assumption that the majority of Russians supported the Bolsheviks. They reminded their comrades of the huge difference between chanting popular slogans and putting them into effect. Furthermore, Germany was apparently prepared to reject the Bolsheviks’ peace terms, and Russian soldiers were clearly in no mood for a “revolutionary war.” “The soldierly masses will leave us in droves.” Kamenev and Zinoviev rejected Lenin’s references to imminent revolutions in the West as hypothetical. They hoped to avoid a civil war, but such avoidance required that the Bolsheviks coexist with other political forces. Now that they had majority support in many soviets, the Bolsheviks needed to gain seats within the Constituent Assembly since “only in the Soviets will the Constituent Assembly be able to find support for its revolutionary work. The Constituent Assembly plus the Soviets—this is the combined type of state institution toward which we are moving.” The way events were developing, the Bolsheviks were guaranteed significant or even overwhelming influence in these legal governmental bodies. On the other hand, if they launched an insurrection and it failed, the consequences would be much worse than the aftermath of the July riots.¹³

A strategy of achieving dominance through legal and peaceful means was neither utopian nor farfetched, but it did not appeal to Lenin. It is hard to know whether he truly believed that the Bolsheviks would be crushed in a counterrevolution if they failed to act first, but it is certain that Lenin did not want his party to join a coalition or take part, even as a dominant force, in the legal political process. The armed seizure of power was the best or perhaps the only means of avoiding a coalition with Mensheviks and SRs and getting rid of the Constituent Assembly, which was due to hold elections in a few weeks. Zinoviev and Kamenev’s proposal that the Bolsheviks launch a serious campaign for seats in the Constituent Assembly reflected the general recognition within the country of the importance of Russia’s new parliament. Officially, the Bolsheviks also recognized it. Stalin was among the party leaders running for a seat. It is telling that on 18 October 1917, amid heated preparations to seize power, he did not forget to send the Caucasus District Electoral Commission a telegram confirming his candidacy.¹⁴

Clearly concealing his true thinking and offering eloquent editorializing and slogans in place of practical planning, Lenin stubbornly repeated his call to action: it was necessary and possible to seize power by force, and the time had come. What would happen after the revolution? This question seemed to worry everyone but Lenin, whose implacable obstinacy was the only real argument in favor of insurrection. For a party that was not monolithic but was strongly oriented toward its leader, a party that was tired of uncertainty and contention, Lenin’s stubbornness was decisive. Most historians agree that without Lenin the October Revolution would probably never have happened.

Convinced that they were right (and not without justification, as it turned out), Zinoviev and Kamenev made a desperate move. Having been blocked from publishing in the Bolshevik press, Kamenev submitted an article to a small non-party newspaper spelling out the opposition’s views. Lenin was furious and demanded that Kamenev and Zinoviev be expelled from the party. Stalin was among those opposing this measure. He responded to Lenin by using his position as editor of Pravda to publish a letter from Zinoviev, along with a conciliatory editorial characterizing the incident as having “run its course” and stating that “overall, we remain like-minded.”¹⁵ This is one of the few times he openly opposed Lenin on a matter of substance. What explains this mini-revolt? Was Stalin not yet free of “rightist illusions”? It is possible that while appearing to follow Lenin, in his heart he shared Kamenev’s and Zinoviev’s concerns. Other factors were probably at play as well, including Trotsky.

Lev (Leon) Trotsky had always played a prominent role within the Russian Social Democratic movement, but his ambitions were not limited to prominence within the party. Before the revolution, he was often at loggerheads with Lenin, and their mutual attacks often turned ugly. But as much as Lenin and Trotsky may have argued, they were also drawn to one another. Both were preoccupied with the idea of socialist revolution and fervently believed that it would soon be possible. Both were decisive and fearless of risk. Like Lenin, Trotsky learned of the revolution when he was out of the country, in the United States. He did not manage to return to Russia until May 1917, but once there he immediately entered the fray. His talents as an orator and organizer, along with his revolutionary credentials (he had been one of the leaders of the soviets during the 1905 revolution), earned him instant recognition. Upon arriving in Petrograd in 1917, Trotsky immediately understood that he and Lenin were natural allies. Their allegiance fell into place naturally, without any negotiations. Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks and Lenin immediately recognized him as a strong partner, ready to use word and deed in an unwavering battle for power. Trotsky quickly found himself at the center of events. By September he was head of the Petrograd soviet, playing a key role in plotting the insurrection.

Even as they recognized Trotsky’s value to the party, Lenin’s long-standing comrades could not have been happy about his meteoric ascent. To them he was an ambitious interloper. Stalin would surely have felt a certain sting of envy, if only because this rising Bolshevik star was everything he was not. During the fevered lead-up to revolution, when oratorical gifts were in demand, Trotsky could keep a crowd of thousands spellbound, while Stalin was a lackluster speaker. Trotsky was a brilliant and compelling writer, while Stalin lacked the talent for inspiring slogans or mobilizing catchphrases.

Trotsky’s ascent prompted Lenin’s long-term comrades-in-arms to close ranks, a realignment complicated by Kamenev’s and Zinoviev’s diminished standing. It was during these tumultuous months that the seeds of the anti-Trotsky alliance were sown; they would sprout shortly after Lenin’s demise. Lenin must have understood the clashes taking place around him in 1917, but what he cared about most was party unity and, undoubtedly, a distribution of counterpoising power within the party leadership. He put up with the internal divisions. Kamenev and Zinoviev kept their posts, and events soon overtook intraparty strife. In the early hours of 26 October 1917, the Bolsheviks arrested members of the Provisional Government and formed their own Council (or Soviet) of People’s Commissars, with Lenin as its chairman. Stalin was named people’s commissar for nationalities.

After Stalin achieved power, official Soviet propaganda proclaimed him and Lenin the leaders of the revolution. His political opponents, Trotsky especially, argued that his role had actually been insignificant. The truth lies somewhere between these highly politicized interpretations. Stalin did not lead the revolution, but as a senior Bolshevik, member of the party’s Central Committee, and editor of its main newspaper, he filled an important role. His choice to follow Lenin determined his place within the revolution.

What lessons did Stalin draw from his first experience in fighting to attain power? He seems to have been greatly impressed by Lenin’s decisiveness, his stubborn and relentless insistence on his own program of action. Years later, when Stalin carried out his “revolution from above,” one of many crises in the history of long-suffering Russia, he fully demonstrated his own talent for decisive action. Borrowing from Lenin a dogged and unscrupulous political modus operandi, he strove to seize and maintain power without worrying about what effect his actions would have on others. This principle allowed him to act with maximal ruthlessness and little constraint. Pushing his own revolution in the 1920s, Stalin, like Lenin, bet on a strategy of unrestrained radicalism.

 THE MILITARIZATION OF THE PARTY

One aspect of Lenin’s ruthlessness that put him in a particularly strong position was his utter lack of reluctance to provoke a civil war, which he saw as a natural element of the transition to socialism. There was no reason to expect that all of Russia, to say nothing of its allies, would compliantly accept the supremacy of radical Bolshevism. The unexpectedness of their uprising and the fatigue of the masses initially bought the Bolsheviks some time, but the situation soon changed. The illegitimacy of the new government, its crude and cynical actions, and social experiments that turned the existing order on its head inevitably met with mass resistance. The Provisional Government was toppled and replaced by a Bolshevik Council of People’s Commissars. In January 1918, the Constituent Assembly disbanded. In March 1918, a humiliating and predatory separate peace with Germany was concluded. All these events paved the way toward a civil war that soon engulfed the country. Aligned against the Bolsheviks were members of the upper and middle classes (“the White movement”), persecuted socialists, and peasants angry over the confiscation of their crops. The peace with Germany also brought Russia’s former allies into the Civil War. War furthermore presented opportunities for ultra-radical elements and ordinary criminals. Peasants rose up against both the Bolsheviks and the Whites, and soon innumerable groups were fighting one another. The new wave of bloodletting unleashed by the Bolsheviks grew with amazing speed and continued more or less unabated for three years, from 1918 through 1920.

In scale and loss of life, the Civil War greatly exceeded Russian casualties during World War I and the February Revolution. Of the 16 million people within the Russian Empire and Soviet Russia who demographers estimate died of wounds, hunger, or disease during 1914–1922, at least half (8 million) perished during the three years of the Civil War. Another 2 million fled the country. The horrific famine of 1921–1922, largely a by-product of the Civil War, took some 5 million lives. By comparison, “only” slightly more than 2 million Russians were killed in World War I (1914–1917).¹⁶ These gruesome statistics set Russia apart from the other countries ravaged by World War I. War, famine, epidemics, and civil strife persisted there twice as long and took a much greater toll.

Even these awful numbers do not fully reflect the Civil War’s horrors. Statistics cannot capture the pervasive misery, the numbing of human feelings, and the destruction of any sense of right and wrong. Savage murders and mass terror became commonplace. The epidemic of savagery inevitably engulfed the Bolsheviks themselves. The Civil War shaped the new state and largely determined its trajectory.

Stalin was a typical product of his time. As he did before the revolution, he continued to follow Lenin. Part of an exclusive group of influential Soviet functionaries, Stalin was a member of the government, a member of the party’s Central Committee, and a member of the top leadership. He spoke with Lenin almost daily. In 1919 he was elected to the Politburo, the body that remained at the center of power in Soviet Russia and the USSR for the next seventy years, until the collapse of the Communist system. Stalin had his own area of expertise: smoothing relations between the Bolshevik center and the outlying ethnic entities that comprised the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. But as with all Bolshevik leaders, his “portfolio” would remain subordinate to the primary imperative of retaining power. He spent his time from 1918 to 1920 on various fronts. He was away from Moscow so often that of the fifty-one Politburo meetings held in 1919, he took part in only fourteen; in 1920 he attended thirty-three out of seventy-five.¹⁷

His first mission on behalf of the Soviet government came in June 1918. As hunger swept central Russia, Stalin was sent to Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad, now Volgograd) to acquire grain from southern Russia for the country’s starving center. This economic mission quickly turned into a military one. Tsaritsyn was under attack by forces hostile to the Bolsheviks. Railway lines connecting the cities of central Russia with agricultural areas were constantly being cut. Bolshevik armed forces in Tsaritsyn were organized on a model that became widespread during the early stages of the Civil War, a model that relied primarily on poorly disciplined and unprofessional partisan detachments. Aware that no successful war could be waged without a regular army, the Bolshevik leaders in Moscow—primarily Trotsky, who was in charge of the Red Army—decided to use officers from the former tsarist army and place them under the control of party commissars. This policy met with serious resistance. Newly appointed revolutionary commanders had little desire to subordinate themselves to former officers, whom they did not trust. The feeling was mutual. Indignities and mistreatment drove many officers to defect to the other side. Gradually, military necessity and pressure from Moscow forced the army to become more professional and tolerant of former officers.

Largely thanks to Stalin, Tsaritsyn became a model of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. He wielded his authority as a member of the government and Central Committee and enjoyed unimpeded control not only over the civilian government, but also over the forces of the North Caucasus Military District, headquartered in Tsaritsyn. He found a loyal and obedient helper in Kliment Voroshilov, commander of Red Army detachments retreating to Tsaritsyn from Ukraine, which had been captured by the Germans. The two men shared a mutual hostility and mistrust toward trained military professionals or “specialists.” This theme often came up in Stalin’s telegrams to Moscow:

Specialists are lifeless pen-pushers, completely ill-suited to civil war.¹⁸

If our military “specialists” (cobblers!) weren’t sleeping and loafing, the [railway] line would not have been cut, and if the line is restored, it won’t be because of the military men, but despite them.¹⁹

They, as “headquarters” workers, capable only of “drafting plans” and submitting plans for reorganization, are absolutely indifferent to operational actions, to the matter of supplies, to the control of different army commanders and generally feel like outsiders, like guests.²⁰

Our new army is being built thanks to the fact that side-by-side with new soldiers, new revolutionary commanders are being born. Imposing known traitors on them [Stalin goes on to list a number of military professionals] disrupts the entire front.²¹

These comments (there are many more examples) accurately reflect Stalin’s philosophy of how the Soviet military should be developed. His words were matched by actions. Stalin dismissed the experienced officers and took operational command into his own hands. His dispatches to the capital were filled with glowing reports of the results brought about by this decision. It is difficult to imagine, however, that Stalin, who had no military experience, had never served in the army, and was relying on dilettantes like himself for guidance, was able to quickly acquire the complicated skills needed to run an effective military force. Common sense and revolutionary fervor could have taken him only so far. Indeed, the Stalin-Voroshilov partisan army was not able to withstand attacks by the enemy’s regular units.

In August 1918, after two months under his command, Tsaritsyn was on the verge of falling. Stalin responded to the threat of defeat with a maneuver that would later become his political signature: a hunt for “counterrevolutionary plots.” A wave of arrests in Tsaritsyn swept up former tsarist officers (including those currently serving in the Red Army), former tsarist officials, businessmen, and ordinary citizens unfortunate enough to find themselves in the path of the purge. A “plot” headed by an employee of the People’s Commissariat for Railroads, N. P. Alekseev, was alleged to be at the center of the counterrevolutionary movement. Alekseev was a “bourgeois specialist,” a former nobleman and officer working for the Soviet government who had been sent to Tsaritsyn from Moscow on commissariat business. In short, he perfectly fit the preconceived profile of someone who would mastermind a counterrevolutionary conspiracy. The accusations leveled against the “conspirators” were boilerplate and not terribly persuasive. A case was thrown together in a matter of days, culminating in executions and an announcement in the local newspaper.

This incident might have been just another chapter in the annals of the “Red Terror” had Alekseev not been accompanied on his trip to Tsaritsyn by Konstantin Makhrovsky, a senior official from the Supreme Economic Council and a long-standing member of the Bolshevik party. In the heat of the moment, Makhrovsky was also arrested and imprisoned for several months. He was not shot, however, and eventually was released under pressure from Moscow. This left an unwanted witness eager to relate what he had observed. The indignant Makhrovsky wrote a long report chronicling how things were being done in Tsaritsyn. He made it clear that the Alekseev case had been fabricated by members of the secret police “obsessed,” he wrote, “with hunting down counterrevolution.” Makhrovsky’s portrait of life in Tsaritsyn probably shocked some senior officials in Moscow who had been following the war from their offices:

Here is the picture I saw: … N. P. Alekseev, whose face was totally covered by a mask of blood.… One eye was completely closed, and you could not tell if it had been beaten out of him or was just covered by swelling.… They were beating Alekseev with the butt of a revolver and their fists, and, after he collapsed, they trampled him with their feet.…

Returning to the gallery of types, in regard to those arrested and detained by the Cheka whom I happened to see, I must make the following comment: most of them were arrested by chance, shot, and some time later notices appeared in the local paper listing those who had been shot as all sorts of criminals.…

Two arrestees were brought into my cell who had been held on a barge. One of them told me about the barge on the Volga holding 400 people. Using a barge as a prison started during the evacuation of Tsaritsyn. When the [anti-Bolshevik] Cossacks attacked, they put arrestees from prisons on one, and the assortment of arrestees was extremely diverse. There were 30 from a labor camp, 70 former officers, 40 members of the bourgeoisie, and the rest were arrested for a wide variety of reasons, mostly workers and peasants. The barge packed with all these people had only one latrine, and people had to stand in line for four hours and fainted. The prisoners were not given anything to eat.²²

Makhrovsky accused not only the Cheka of abuses, but also Tsaritsyn’s political leaders, including Stalin. He provided examples of people being arrested for merely arguing with Stalin.²³ Several months later, Voroshilov confirmed Stalin’s leading role in organizing the terror. “These ‘gentlemen,’” Voroshilov said of the former officers, “were arrested [by me] and Comrade Stalin.”²⁴ Having developed a taste for the Tsaritsyn approach, Stalin requested that it be applied in surrounding areas. On 31 August 1918 he asked Lenin to authorize a “group of reliable people” from Tsaritsyn to “purge” the city of Voronezh of “counterrevolutionary elements.” The request was granted.²⁵

Stalin apparently sent his request to Lenin before he heard that the previous day, 30 August, the Bolshevik leader had been wounded by an act of terrorism attributed to the SRs. The assassination attempt opened up new prospects for Stalin and the Bolshevik party overall: the Red Terror became official policy. In early September Stalin sent a report to Moscow on behalf of the leadership of the North Caucasus District outlining plans to organize “open, mass, systematic terror against the bourgeoisie and its agents.” In September and October, the Tsaritsyn Cheka, according to some sources, executed 102 people, of whom 52 were former tsarist army officers or former members of the tsarist security police.²⁶

Whether the scale of the terror was due to the panic triggered by military defeat or whether it was premeditated, the threat of terror made it easier to keep the unruly Red Army in line. Furthermore, the discovery of “plots” offered convenient excuses for military failures and opportunities to demonstrate decisiveness and efficiency to the top leadership. Stalin used the threat of growing counterrevolution to demand special powers and justify his refusal to subordinate himself to the military authorities in his district.

It is not known through what channels and in what form information about the Tsaritsyn atrocities reached Moscow or how widely the Makhrovsky report and other firsthand accounts were circulated. There is evidence that the top leadership knew about Stalin’s initiatives. Several months later, in March 1919, Lenin said at the Eighth Party Congress, “When Stalin was shooting people in Tsaritsyn, I thought this was a mistake; I thought that they were shooting incorrectly.” (He did not, apparently, object to the executions in principle, only that they were being carried out in a disorderly manner.) Lenin even claimed he sent a telegram to Stalin asking him to be careful, although no such telegram has been discovered. Another speaker mentioned the “famous” barge in Tsaritsyn “that did so much to prevent military specialists from being assimilated.”²⁷ Apparently, Stalin’s executions were no secret, but he suffered no serious consequences as a result. The Bolshevik leaders took a relaxed attitude toward excesses committed in defense of the revolution. During the same speech to the Eighth Congress, Lenin even said that in the end the Tsaritsyners were right. Why condemn comrades over a few “holdovers of the bourgeoisie”?

While mass shootings did not much trouble Lenin, military setbacks did. As head of the Red Army, Trotsky took an implacable position toward the Tsaritsyn events. His feelings were influenced both by a strong personal dislike for Stalin and by pragmatic concerns. In his eyes, the measures taken in Tsaritsyn were a dangerous example of unconstrained action that would hinder the professionalization of the army through the institution of strict discipline and the recruitment of military professionals. He made his position clear to Lenin in a telegram dated 4 October 1918:

I categorically insist that Stalin be recalled. Things are not going well on the Tsaritsyn front, despite an abundance of forces. Voroshilov can command a regiment, but not an army of fifty thousand soldiers.… Tsaritsyn must either submit [to its ranking commanders] or get out of the way. We are seeing success in all armies except the Southern one, especially in Tsaritsyn, where we have a colossal superiority of forces but total anarchy at the top. We could get this under control in 24 hours with your firm and decisive support; in any event, this is the only way forward I see for myself.²⁸

Stalin began to campaign against Trotsky. In telegrams to Lenin, he and Voroshilov accused Trotsky of making a mess of the front and behaving disrespectfully toward “prominent members of the party to please traitors from among military specialists.”²⁹ He traveled to Moscow, hoping to talk to Lenin personally and tip the scales in his favor, but his trip was in vain. The leadership supported Trotsky’s efforts to consolidate the army. In October 1918 Stalin was forced to leave Tsaritsyn. Soon thereafter, Voroshilov and other Stalin allies were also removed. From that point forward, Stalin took every opportunity to scheme against Trotsky and advance the careers of his Tsaritsyn comrades.

The experience acquired in Tsaritsyn seems to have guided Stalin throughout the remaining years of the Civil War. Although he was compelled to recognize the party policy of recruiting military professionals, Stalin apparently remained hostile toward it. He had little respect for professional military men, whom he considered politically suspect, and preferred the enthusiasm and “common sense” of true revolutionaries. In a 16 June 1919 telegram to Lenin from the Petrograd front, he wrote with slightly comical bravado and arrogance: “Naval experts assert that the capture of Krasnaya Gorka [a Petrograd fort] from the sea runs counter to naval science. I can only deplore such so-called science. The swift capture of Gorka was due to the grossest interference in the operations by me and civilians generally, even to the point of countermanding orders on land and sea and imposing our own. I consider it my duty to declare that I shall continue to act in this way in future, despite all my reverence for science.”³⁰ Lenin, who knew that the fort had not, despite Stalin’s claim, fallen from a naval attack, seems to have been amused by Stalin’s swagger. He left a notation on the telegram: “??? Krasnaya Gorka was taken by land.”³¹

Stalin’s bravado stayed with him through the war’s concluding stages. In the spring and summer of 1920 he was on the Southwestern Front, where the Soviet-Polish War was raging and Soviet forces were facing General Petr Wrangel, the commander of what was left of the White Army who had moved beyond his main stronghold in Crimea. At first the Polish forces dealt the Red Army crushing defeats, but the situation soon changed. The Red Army went on the offensive, made its way to Warsaw, and prepared to take it. Bolshevik leaders were euphoric. They anticipated that revolution would not only prevail in Poland, but (finally!) would also spread to other European countries. “Through Warsaw to Berlin!” was the watchword. On 13 July 1920, in response to Lenin’s question about the advisability of concluding a truce with Poland, Stalin wrote: “The Polish armies are completely falling apart; the Poles have lost communication lines and management; Polish orders, instead of reaching their recipient, are increasingly falling into our hands. In a word, the Poles are experiencing a breakdown from which they won’t soon recover.… I don’t think that imperialism has ever been as weak as it is now, at the moment of Poland’s defeat, and we have never been as strong as we are now, so the more resolutely we behave ourselves, the better it will be for Russia and for international revolution.”³²

Stalin’s writings from this period are permeated with the hope that Red Army bayonets would coax along world revolution. On 24 July, in a telegram to Lenin that treated victory over Poland as a foregone conclusion, he proposed “raising the question of organizing an insurrection in Italy and in such still precarious states as Hungary and Czechoslovakia (Romania will have to be crushed).”³³ Stalin backed up his words with actions. On the Southwestern Front that had been entrusted to him, he was especially anxious to capture the important city of Lvov. He pressed the leaders of the First Cavalry, urging them to make a decisive charge, but in vain: Lvov evaded his grasp. The Soviet military effort was not going well in another sector of the Southwestern Front, Crimea. Units of Wrangel’s army were entrenched there, and with the Red Army busy on the Polish front, Wrangel undertook successful attacks beyond the peninsula. Stalin, as one of the main officials responsible for the failures outside Lvov and in Crimea, sent reports to Moscow citing objective difficulties and blaming the inaction of the Red Army’s central command. He clearly felt uncomfortable as a military commander incapable of achieving decisive success. This failure was particularly mortifying given the rapid advance on Warsaw by the Red Army that was taking place on the neighboring Western Front.

But the situation soon took another sharp turn. The invasion of Poland bogged down, the Red Army suffered heavy casualties, and the Poles ended up imposing humiliating peace terms on the Bolsheviks. Defeat on the Polish front had a number of causes, one of which can be traced directly to Stalin. It has been suggested the Red Army spread itself too thin by carrying out offensive actions in too many areas at once. For example, the First Cavalry Army, an important force, was trying to take Lvov instead of supporting the troops marching on Warsaw. Not long before the Red Army’s defeat, a decision was made to move the First Cavalry Army west from Lvov, but it was never implemented. Stalin played a part in this failure. On 13 August 1920 he sent the Red Army Main Command a telegram asserting that the redeployment of the cavalry would be harmful, in that it had already begun a new offensive against Lvov. The redeployment should have been ordered earlier, he maintained, when the army was still in reserve. “I refuse to sign the order,” he wrote.³⁴

Stalin’s refusal was probably not a major factor in the Polish debacle. In 1920, when the reasons for the Red Army’s defeat were dissected, most of the blame was laid on the commanders of the Western Front in charge of the invasion of Warsaw. But Stalin’s willful behavior may be why he was recalled from the front just a few days after the incident with the First Cavalry Army. He left for Moscow and never returned to military action. The laurels for victory over Wrangel that soon followed were placed on other heads.

The return to the capital was hardly triumphant. On top of his failure to achieve a decisive victory either in Lvov or against Wrangel, Stalin’s refusal to carry out an order could be seen as a major factor in the Warsaw defeat. It may have been fear that he would be cast as a scapegoat, together with hurt feelings, that led him to launch a characteristic preemptive attack. On 25 August 1920, when events in Poland were clearly turning catastrophic for the Red Army, he submitted a memorandum to the Politburo calling for the creation of military reserves. On the surface, this memorandum—calling for a troop increase, expanded military production, and the formation of new units—was fully in keeping with the priorities that had dominated Bolshevik policy throughout the Civil War. But its real importance lies in one sentence: “The latest successes of the Poles have disclosed a fundamental defect of our armies, namely, the lack of effective fighting reserves.”³⁵ This was Stalin’s attempt to place responsibility for the defeat on the shoulders of the army’s main leadership. He attributed great significance to this memorandum and insisted on a response. On 29 August 1920 he again wrote to his Politburo colleagues: “I am drawing the attention of the Central Committee to the urgency of the matter of the republic’s military reserves that I raised … and which as of now (29 August) has yet to be dealt with.”³⁶

Trotsky ultimately provided a condescending explanation of the situation and proposed creating a procurement council, on which he invited Stalin to serve. It was a clever move to invite Stalin to take on the thankless job of keeping the army of their impoverished country well supplied, and Stalin seems to have been enraged by Trotsky’s response. On 30 August he sent three memoranda to the Politburo, all aimed at Trotsky. In one, he characterized Trotsky’s response to his previous memorandum as a “runaround” and demanded that the Central Committee keep a closer watch over the military—in other words, over Trotsky.³⁷ In a second brief but categorical note, he responded to Trotsky’s proposal that he join the procurement council: “I hereby state that I cannot and, consequently, will not work on Trotsky’s planned procurement council.”³⁸ To top off these hostile pronouncements, he made a risky move. He proposed creating a commission “to investigate the circumstances of our July offensive and August retreat on the Western Front.”³⁹ Given the context of his accusations of negligence in regard to reserves, this was a clear declaration of war against Trotsky. Was Stalin aware that he was indirectly attacking Lenin as well since Lenin had been at the forefront of those urging the Polish adventure? If, in the heat of emotion, he did not immediately realize this, he certainly was informed of it soon enough.

The next day, on 1 September, a decisive showdown took place at a Politburo meeting. The main parties to the conflict—Stalin, Trotsky, and their arbitrator, Lenin—were all present. The mood was somber. Much of the meeting was spent discussing the humiliating peace with Poland. Stalin’s military reserves proposal was taken up toward the end and essentially rejected. The resolution adopted recognized “Trotsky’s statement that the military is taking measures in the spirit of Stalin’s proposals.”⁴⁰ In other words, steps were being taken and Stalin’s advice on the matter was no longer required. A special council on supplying the army was chaired by Trotsky and did not include Stalin, whose refusal to serve was taken with infuriating literalness. Equally insulting was the rejection of Stalin’s call for an investigation into the reasons for defeat in Poland. Lenin adamantly opposed this idea.

To the great regret of historians, no detailed stenographic record was kept of this Politburo meeting (or of many other important meetings). The only documentation is a laconic record of resolutions, a poor indicator of the passions that no doubt flared, either openly or within the hearts of the participants. Stalin resigned his military duties. His resignation was accepted, depriving him of his membership in the Military Revolutionary Council. Trotsky’s authority and rights were confirmed, and he was assigned to inspect the Western Front.⁴¹ Lenin clearly took Trotsky’s side. On 20 September a Central Committee plenum adopted a decision to send Stalin “on long-term assignment to the Caucasus.” He was given the job of “settling relations with highlanders” and “bringing order … to policy in the Caucasus and East [Soviet Asia].”⁴² Perhaps this was an honorable exile, or perhaps it was a new and important assignment. In any case, several days later, at the ninth conference of the Russian Communist Party, a public confrontation took place between Stalin on one side and Lenin and Trotsky on the other. The recriminations over the Polish war that had been roiling in the Politburo erupted into public view.

At the conference, Lenin and Trotsky both spoke out against the charges Stalin had leveled against the commanders of the Western Front and, essentially, the entire Red Army command. Lenin took personal responsibility for a large share of the strategic miscalculations and rejected Stalin’s call for an investigation. Trotsky made snide references to Stalin’s optimistic anticipation of victory in Poland and his assurances that he would take Lvov.⁴³ On 23 September, a deeply offended Stalin submitted a statement to the conference’s presidium. He categorically denied Trotsky’s and Lenin’s accusations. He reiterated his charge that the commanders of the Western Front were responsible for the defeat in Poland (a jab at Trotsky) and claimed that he, Stalin, had always advocated prudence and caution. “Comrade Lenin evidently is being merciful toward the command, but I think what is needed is mercy for the cause, not the command,” he concluded caustically.⁴⁴ With the benefit of currently available documents, we can state with certainty that Stalin was lying about his past advocacy of caution. Lenin nevertheless did not challenge him, probably because Stalin’s calls for decisiveness and world revolution suited his interests. Ultimately, all their fates hung on the success of their common endeavor, so they preferred to put this unpleasant chapter of defeat behind them as quickly as possible. In his call for an investigation into mistakes, Stalin looked like a dissident. Furthermore, everyone knew that he was as guilty as anyone. But as in the past, he escaped this episode generally unscathed. He left for the Caucasus, but several weeks later, in late November 1920, he returned to Moscow. Stalin’s conflicts with his colleagues during these years were turning into a habit. It was not a new habit, but it was becoming more pronounced and deeply rooted. His behavior reflected the objective fact that the party was plagued by conflict spawned by principled differences and personal ambitions. This circumstance inevitably led to the formation of cliques. Stalin’s was comprised of veterans of Tsaritsyn, members of the First Cavalry Army, and Transcaucasians who enjoyed Stalin’s patronage and support. Other Soviet leaders were also assembling followers. The seeds of future clashes and power struggles were being sown.

The Bolsheviks’ first experience running the country came in a time of war. This factor shaped both their practical approach to governing and their philosophy. Experiences acquired in Tsaritsyn and Petrograd reinforced Stalin’s intuitive mistrust of “bourgeois specialists” and his fear of conspiracies. Grain requisitions in the south and the organization of a labor army in Ukraine gave him experience using strong-arm tactics to steer the economy.⁴⁵ The Civil War accustomed the Bolsheviks to blood and ruthlessness. Atrocities lost their horror.

 GENERAL SECRETARY

The Bolsheviks emerged from the Civil War as winners. But explaining to the exhausted country, or even to themselves, what they had been fighting for was no simple matter. The dream of world revolution appeared to be just that, and Lenin’s idea that socialism would be immediately introduced in Russia proved catastrophically utopian, just as his opponents had warned. Attempts to abolish the market system and replace it with direct exchange under total governmental control only furthered economic collapse. Famine and devastation sparked massive anti-government protests. Huge areas were engulfed by peasant revolts. The unrest spread to cities, including such Bolshevik strongholds as Moscow and Petrograd. The rebellion by sailors of the Kronstadt garrison outside Petrograd became a symbol of the failures of the Bolshevik policy of militarized socialism. When this bastion of the 1917 revolution took up arms, “Kronstadt” became a highly fraught political watchword.

Under these circumstances, Lenin, who had a well-developed instinct for political self-preservation, allowed his steadfast principles a generous bend. In 1921–1922, Leninist socialism was replaced by the Leninist NEP (New Economic Policy). Many aspects of the Soviet economy reverted to their state before the Bolshevik revolution. The lion’s share of the economy remained under state control, but certain market activities were allowed. The use of money was restored. Peasants were allowed to sell their produce after paying taxes to the state. Private small industry and trade were returned to private ownership (the entrepreneurs who ran small businesses were called “Nepmen”). Despised capitalism came to the Bolsheviks’ rescue, saving their country and their hold on power. Thanks to the NEP, the USSR came back from the brink of disaster in just a few years. But before the recovery could be felt, the horrific famine of 1921–1922, a direct outcome of the Civil War, took millions of lives.

Such was the backdrop to Stalin’s life during the lead-up to the death of his teacher, Lenin. The historical record does not offer evidence of any active involvement by Stalin in discussing or deciding key problems in the transition to the NEP. He followed the political course set by Lenin and was a loyal and true comrade. Lenin undoubtedly valued this loyalty. But after the Civil War, Stalin’s political prominence was hardly guaranteed. Simply being a member of the Politburo assured him a certain degree of power. But in the Soviet party-political system, the degree of power a leader actually exercised was directly tied to the influence of the government agency he headed. From this standpoint, Stalin was in danger of becoming a second-tier functionary.

The conclusion of the war found Stalin running two agencies: the nationalities commissariat and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate. Neither had meaningful levers of power or more than limited lobbying potential. At a closed meeting, Stalin himself characterized the nationalities commissariat as serving a purely “agitation” purpose without any “administrative rights.”⁴⁶ He spent very little time at this agency. In November 1921 he submitted his resignation from it to the Politburo, but it was not accepted.⁴⁷ He did everything he could to abolish the commissariat, and in 1923 he finally succeeded. Even earlier, in 1922, he had managed to shed his duties with the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate. He exchanged these undesirable posts for one that was much more appealing: running the Central Committee apparat. This position moved him into the upper echelons of the leadership.

What brought about this turning point in Stalin’s political career was not only his talents and energy, but also a heated battle within the Soviet leadership. The central conflict was between Lenin and Trotsky, but smaller clashes reverberated all around them. Trotsky was the only top Bolshevik who could rightfully claim to be a leader in his own right, not just a follower of Lenin. His role was more that of a partner and ally in revolution, and he behaved accordingly, earning himself a following within the party. At the end of 1920, Lenin realized that a significant portion of party functionaries, including some within the Central Committee apparat, supported Trotsky. Lenin had to respond to this challenge to his primacy. At the Tenth Party Congress in early 1921, after intense maneuvering and considerable use of his authority, Lenin made sure that his followers received a majority of votes. This outcome determined who would be chosen to run the top party organizations, and many Trotsky followers were removed from their posts. Stalin was one of Lenin’s key allies in this struggle. Given Lenin’s declining health, such cooperation took on new importance. Beginning in mid-1921, he was increasingly plagued by symptoms of severe cerebral arteriosclerosis. Headaches, fatigue, episodes of paralysis, and impaired speech and cognition forced him to take extended vacations.

Lenin’s illness and clash with Trotsky, along with the reshuffling of party personnel, all helped Stalin play an increasingly important role in party affairs. In early 1922, this role was formalized when Stalin was appointed to the newly created post of general secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks)—TsK RKP(b). The job of the general secretary included overseeing the Central Committee apparat and its “leading structures”—the bureaucratic machine that carried out the will of the party. Two duties deserve particular mention: setting the agenda for Politburo meetings and deciding personnel matters. Countless mid-level functionaries now depended on Stalin for their careers.

For Stalin, the running of the party apparat was not a burden. His previous party experience and his personality made him well suited for this position. Later, even as dictator, Stalin seemed to enjoy routine bureaucratic work. Upon taking up the post of general secretary, he began to reorganize the work of the Politburo. On 31 August 1922 he announced at a Politburo meeting that certain institutions were tardy in submitting materials for consideration. A resolution was adopted to “not place any matter before the Politburo unless materials are submitted by four o’clock the previous day.”⁴⁸ A few weeks later, the rule became even stricter: the deadline was pushed back to noon.⁴⁹ Through these petty decisions Stalin was gradually, and with increasing confidence, shaping how the party apparat was run.

Some interesting accounts survive of how this tendency was perceived within the apparat. Stalin’s assistant, Amaiak Nazaretian, regularly corresponded with Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Stalin’s old friend who was working in Transcaucasia in the early 1920s.⁵⁰ This correspondence has been preserved in Ordzhonikidze’s archive. In the letters written during the summer of 1922, Nazaretian described his work under Stalin:

Am I happy with my job? Yes and no. On one hand, I’m getting quite an education here, I know what’s going on in international and Russian life, and I’m being schooled in discipline, developing precision in my job.… On the other, this work is purely paper pushing, painstaking, not very satisfying from a subjective standpoint; it’s menial work that takes such tremendous amounts of time that you can’t sneeze or squirm, especially under Koba’s firm hand. Do we get along? We do.… You can learn a lot from him. Now that I’ve gotten to know him, I have extraordinary respect for him.… Under his stern demeanor is an attentiveness to those he works with. We’re creating order in the TsK.

Koba has really got me trained.… He’s really cunning. Hard as a nut, it takes a while to understand what he’s up to.… Despite his well-reasoned savagery of temperament, if I can put it that way, he is soft, he has a heart, and he knows how to appreciate people’s dignity.… Now, the work of the TsK has really changed. What we found here was indescribably awful. Now we’ve shaken things up.⁵¹

Nazaretian felt Stalin was tremendously significant: “Ilyich has fully recovered.… Yesterday, Koba went to see him. He has to keep a watchful eye over Ilyich and all of Mother Russia”; “Ilyich undoubtedly has a trusty Cerberus in him, fearlessly standing guard at the gates of the TsK RKP.”⁵² Nazaretian’s letters provide important details on how Stalin was perceived within the Bolshevik bureaucratic community. In Moscow, according to Nazaretian, an expression came into fashion: “to be going under Stalin.” This referred to officials who had been summoned to Moscow from their previous posts but had not yet been assigned new jobs and were “hanging, so to speak, in the air.”⁵³

Such was Stalin as he appeared to his assistant early in his tenure as general secretary. Obviously, these descriptions carry an element of exaggeration, the admiration of a loyal secretary toward his boss. But the intelligent and observant Nazaretian was conveying a certain mood within the apparat. Many members of the bureaucracy began to perceive Stalin as an experienced and confident bureaucrat who held secure positions within the hierarchy. He was coolheaded, but he could be stern and unbending in standing up for his interests and opinions. At a time when the world of the Bolshevik bureaucracy was increasingly fracturing into patron-client cliques, these qualities drew him quite a few supporters.

In Nazaretian’s letters, Stalin is perceived within the party as Lenin’s loyal comrade, his pillar in times of political strife. And this view was largely accurate. Long years of collaboration, marred by only a few instances of discord, had created a strong bond between Lenin and Stalin. One Bolshevik left behind an eloquent memoir of a meeting between Lenin and Stalin in September 1921 in the latter’s apartment. A difficult squabble among top officials in Petrograd was being settled. Lenin tried to reconcile the feuding parties while Stalin paced the room smoking his pipe. At one point, Lenin looked at Stalin and said, “That’s an Asian for you—all he does is suck on his pipe!” Stalin knocked the pipe right out of his own mouth.⁵⁴ This playful manner went beyond the boundaries of the boss-subordinate relationship. For Lenin, Stalin was a comrade-in-arms with whom relations were warm enough to allow for teasing. It is difficult to imagine that he would take such liberties with Trotsky, with whom he maintained a stiff, official manner, using the polite pronoun vy for “you” rather than the familiar ty.

On 30 May 1922, an incident occurred that further attests to the close relationship between Lenin and Stalin. Lenin, who was ill and facing the prospect of paralysis, summoned Stalin to Gorki, his residence outside Moscow. He asked Stalin to procure poison so that he could have the option of taking his own life when the time came. Stalin immediately told Lenin’s sister, Maria Ilinichna Ulianova, and Nikolai Bukharin, who then happened to be staying at Gorki, about this request.⁵⁵ According to Maria Ulianova’s memoirs, they decided together to try to boost Lenin’s spirits. Stalin went back to him and told him that the time to carry out his intention had not yet come, and the doctors were promising he would get better. Lenin, in Ulianova’s account, “became noticeably more cheerful and consented, although he asked Stalin, ‘Are you being deceitful?’ ‘When have you ever seen me be deceitful?’ Stalin replied.”⁵⁶

Lenin showed his concern for Stalin in several ways. While seriously ill in Gorki in June 1922, Lenin sent a recommendation to Moscow: “Require Com. Stalin, through the Politburo, to spend one day per week, beside Sunday, entirely at his dacha outside town.” The Politburo adopted the resolution.⁵⁷ In August, after Lenin’s health improved, Stalin visited him regularly in Gorki. According to Maria Ulianova’s memoirs, “Ilyich greeted him in a friendly manner, with jokes and laughter, and urged me to be hospitable to Stalin and bring him wine, etc.”⁵⁸ Later, when he himself was in power, Stalin adopted Lenin’s manner of showing concern for his subordinates.

Harmony between Lenin and Stalin lasted until the fall of 1922.

 QUARRELS WITH THE TEACHER

Lenin’s illness had tremendous political ramifications. The party, which was structured around a single leader, was vulnerable. The Politburo was forced to begin thinking about Lenin’s successor. The “troika” of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin was growing in influence in its contest with its main opponent, Trotsky. This face-off was actually an outcome of Lenin’s tactic of isolating Trotsky, but with Lenin’s illness, Trotsky’s isolation served to strengthen the troika, a dangerous prospect in Lenin’s eyes. Hoping for a recovery from illness, Lenin attempted to shift the balance of power, and Stalin was the easiest target.

A conflict over the program for uniting the Soviet republics can be seen as the starting point of Lenin’s efforts. The Civil War had created a unified state, but in the second half of 1922 it was decided to make this union official by publicly announcing the principles on which the new state would be built. For the most part, the Bolshevik leadership saw eye to eye on this issue. Nobody entertained thoughts of breaking up what had been the Russian Empire or granting real autonomy to any areas under Moscow’s control. There were arguments over the form the new union would take and the degree of independence various Bolshevik entities would enjoy, but all parties to the decision were expected to submit to the discipline of a unified party.

Stalin was open about his position. He proposed that the real state of affairs and Moscow’s true intentions be codified in the constitution without undue ceremony or diplomacy. He favored bringing all the major republics (Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and the smaller ethnic entities into the Russian Federation with certain rights of autonomy. Overall, this proposal was in full accord with the party line and was supported by most party officials, in both Moscow and the ethnic republics. Stalin was probably surprised when Lenin opposed his proposal and advanced his own plan to proclaim a union of “independent” Soviet republics—even though the Bolshevik leader had no intention of granting genuine independence. The motives for Lenin’s position are difficult to pinpoint. Perhaps he was responding to dissatisfaction with Stalin’s program among Georgian and some Ukrainian party leaders. Perhaps, with his illness receding, he simply saw this as a good opportunity to reenter the political fray.

In September 1922 Lenin began promoting his program. He criticized Stalin for being too hasty, an assessment that must have stung. Stalin resisted and made a fighting retreat, accusing Lenin of “national liberalism.”⁵⁹ His feelings are easy to understand: he had been put in a humiliating position and was forced to change a stance that he had put a lot of energy into advocating. But he chose not to do serious battle with Lenin. On 28 September, an interesting exchange of notes took place between Kamenev and Stalin during a Politburo meeting:

KAMENEV: Ilyich is ready to go to war to defend independence.…

STALIN: I think we need to stand up to Ilyich.…

KAMENEV: I think so long as Vladimir Ilyich is insistent, we’d be worse off resisting.

STALIN: I don’t know. Let him do as he sees fit.⁶⁰

Stalin relented. He knew Lenin well and appreciated how powerful he still was.

In October–December 1922 a conflict surrounding the question of monopolizing foreign trade followed a similar script. At a plenum on 6 October, a majority within the Central Committee voted to somewhat loosen the monopoly. Lenin, who was away from Moscow, took a stand against the liberalization. Stalin, who supported the 6 October decision, was slow to relent and expressed reservations. Lenin undoubtedly was not pleased.

This dispute ended with a move by Lenin that Stalin must have found extremely upsetting. On the issue of monopolizing foreign trade, Lenin demonstratively brought Trotsky out of disfavor and recruited him as an ally. Lenin had often resorted to this sort of maneuver—exploiting the conflicts ever-present at the upper echelons of the party. Now, however, the circumstances were different. Lenin was seriously ill, and the jockeying for power and influence was greatly intensified. To the alarm of Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, whose influence had been growing, Lenin proposed that Trotsky continue to work with him. On 21 December 1922, immediately after a Central Committee plenum voted to uphold his opposition to liberalization, Lenin dictated a note to Trotsky, employing his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaia, as stenographer: “It seems that we’ve captured the position without firing a single shot, using a simple maneuver. I propose that we not stop here and continue the offensive.” Lenin advised Trotsky to raise the question of foreign trade at the upcoming party congress and also to speak at the Congress of Soviets.⁶¹ Such a move would discredit Lenin’s opponents, including Stalin, before a large assembly of party functionaries.

Trotsky immediately got to work and telephoned Kamenev, who told Stalin about the call. Stalin refused to carry out Lenin’s instructions to put Trotsky’s speech on the schedule of the Congress of Soviets. He also called Krupskaia and reprimanded her for taking down and sending the letter to Trotsky. Apparently the reprimand was rather indelicate, or at least it seemed so to the overburdened and high-strung Krupskaia. In theory, Stalin had a legitimate grievance against Krupskaia. Just a few days previously, on 18 December, the Central Committee plenum had voted to limit contact with Lenin, who had suffered another health setback. “Personal responsibility shall be placed on Com. Stalin to isolate Vladimir Ilyich both in regard to face-to-face dealings with officials and correspondence.”⁶² Krupskaia had violated this directive. But Stalin had also crossed the line with his emotional outburst. The troika saw Lenin’s appeal to Trotsky as dangerous and provocative.

Realizing his mistake, Stalin apologized to Krupskaia. Judging by Maria Ulianova’s memoirs, he also made an attempt to reconcile with Lenin. He met with Ulianova and told her how upset he was about being estranged from him:

I couldn’t sleep at all last night.… What does Ilyich think of me, how does he feel about me! As if I were some sort of traitor. I love him with all my heart. Find a way to tell him that.

But Lenin was implacable. Ulianova offers the following description:

Ilyich called me in to see him for something, and I told him, among other things, that his comrades send their respects.… “And Stalin asked me to send you his heartfelt regards and asked me to say that he truly loves you.” Ilyich grinned and remained silent. “So should I send him your regards?” I asked. “You can send them,” Ilyich replied rather coldly. “But Volodia,” I continued. “He is, after all, very smart, Stalin.” “He’s not smart at all,” Ilyich replied firmly, wincing.⁶³

Ulianova does not say exactly when this conversation with her brother took place, but it was almost certainly in late 1922 or early 1923, when relations between Lenin and Stalin were deteriorating and threatened to rupture completely. On 24 December Lenin dictated a document to his secretary—the well-known “Letter to the Congress”—in which he expressed apprehension about divisions within the party’s top leadership. Regarding Stalin, this document states, “Com. Stalin, now that he is general secretary, has concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of exercising this power with sufficient caution.”⁶⁴ In another letter, dictated on 4 January, Lenin was even more categorical. He proposed removing Stalin from the post of general secretary because he was “too rude.”⁶⁵

Lenin’s growing irritation was the backdrop against which the “Georgian Affair” unfolded. This episode involved a dispute between a group of Georgian Bolsheviks and the leadership of the Transcaucasian Federation, which comprised Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The conflict was not with the entire federation leadership but with its head, Ordzhonikidze. The friendship between Stalin and Ordzhonikidze would certainly have influenced the general secretary’s stance on the matter. The Georgian Bolsheviks, with variable success, were inundating Moscow with complaints about Ordzhonikidze’s heavy hand. In late 1922 Ordzhonikidze gave his opponents more ammunition against him: in a fit of anger, he struck one of his adversaries. A commission headed by Feliks Dzerzhinsky was sent from Moscow to investigate.⁶⁶ Lenin took a great interest, and when the commission turned in a report favorable toward Ordzhonikidze, he was not pleased. He believed that Dzerzhinsky and Stalin were covering for Ordzhonikidze and being unfair to his beleaguered accusers.

If it had not been for the clash between an ailing Lenin and his increasingly powerful followers, the Georgian Affair would have remained a bureaucratic squabble of the sort that was commonplace within the Bolshevik party, especially early on, when their government had yet to achieve a stable footing. In Transcaucasia, infighting among competing groups continued for many years. It was Lenin who elevated this incident—artificially, one could argue—to the level of fundamental political principles since it gave him a pretext for attacking his ambitious associates. Though ill, Lenin was still prepared to fight for control of the party and was obviously looking for a way to quell the dissent that threatened to undermine his power. He saw Stalin as the symbol of that dissent.

All the evidence suggests that Lenin spent the winter of 1923 preparing to launch an attack against Stalin at the Twelfth Party Congress, scheduled for March. On 5 March 1923, having assembled the necessary materials, he again approached Trotsky with a proposal that they collaborate: “Dear Com. Trotsky! I would like to ask you to take on the defense of the Georgian Affair within the party’s TsK. This matter is currently being ‘pursued’ by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, and I cannot rely on their impartiality. Quite the contrary. If you agreed to defend it, I could rest assured.”⁶⁷ That same day, 5 March, Lenin dictated a note addressed to Stalin in regard to an old matter—the reprimand Stalin had made against Krupskaia in December 1922. The note was curt. Lenin threatened to sever their relationship: “Dear Com. Stalin! You were so ill-mannered as to call my wife to the telephone and scold her.… I have no intention of so easily forgetting what has been done against me, and it goes without saying that what has been done against my wife is also done against me. I therefore ask you to weigh whether you are amenable to taking back what was said and apologize or you prefer to break off relations with me.”⁶⁸

The appearance of this letter, written two and a half months after Stalin’s reprimand, has generated many hypotheses among historians. Perhaps Lenin had only just learned of Stalin’s telephone call to Krupskaia. It appears more likely, however, that Lenin saw the incident as an excuse for removing Stalin from the post of general secretary, a possibility proposed by Robert Tucker.⁶⁹ All of Lenin’s objections to Stalin emphasized the same point: he was too rude. Such a charge was much more persuasive and clear-cut than any of the other possible complaints he might have lodged. Rudeness toward party comrades was completely inappropriate for someone holding the post of general secretary.

The following day, 6 March, Lenin again wrote about Stalin’s abrasive manner. He dictated several lines to the beleaguered Georgian Bolsheviks, instructing that copies of the note be sent to Trotsky and Kamenev. Kamenev was scheduled to travel to Georgia and was asked to deliver the note personally. “Dear Comrades!” Lenin wrote. “With all my heart I am following your case. I am outraged by Ordzhonikidze’s rudeness and the connivances of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. I am drafting a memorandum and speech for you.”⁷⁰

To the Politburo, the meaning of Lenin’s actions was clear: he had declared war on Stalin. Shortly before leaving for Georgia, Kamenev wrote to Zinoviev that Lenin wanted not only reconciliation in Transcaucasia, “but also certain organizational expulsions at the top”—Soviet administrative jargon for firings.⁷¹ Stalin could sense the approaching storm. On 7 March he received Lenin’s ultimatum threatening to sever relations. He immediately responded with a half-hearted apology: “Although if you feel that to maintain ‘relations’ I have to ‘take back’ the words that I said … I can take them back, but I really can’t understand what the point is, where my ‘guilt’ lies, and just what it is they want from me.”⁷² That same day Stalin sent a strictly confidential letter to Ordzhonikidze. He warned him that Lenin had sent a letter of support to Ordzhonikidze’s opponents. Stalin urged caution: “Reach a compromise … that is natural, voluntary.”⁷³ This letter to Ordzhonikidze clearly shows that Stalin appreciated the seriousness of the situation and was maneuvering to deprive Lenin of ammunition.

Until this decade, the authenticity of Lenin’s dictated correspondence and accounts of the actions he took against Stalin have never been called into question. Recently, however, there have been attempts to demonstrate that evidence of a rupture between the two men was fabricated.⁷⁴ With no real evidence beyond an assumption of Stalin’s infallibility, some revisionists have proposed that evidence of Lenin’s doubts about Stalin were manufactured and placed in Lenin’s archives by followers of Trotsky!

The strongest evidence of the authenticity of Lenin’s dictated correspondence from this period is that nobody among Lenin’s comrades-in-arms, including Stalin himself, had any doubts about it. Stalin certainly had both the cunning and wherewithal, given his control over the apparat and influence within Lenin’s inner circle, to avoid falling victim to a forgery. He understood the danger of Lenin’s “testament” and went to great pains to neutralize any evidence that he did not enjoy Lenin’s full confidence.

There is no question that Lenin took steps against Stalin during the final weeks of his active life. The reasons are another matter. We must consider not only the intentions and motives of a masterful politician, but also the role played by his sense of imminent death. “Lenin’s last struggle,” as Moshe Lewin has called it, is a clear manifestation of his single-minded will toward political domination and power—his primary personality trait.⁷⁵ Illness did not break this will but, if anything, intensified it. One can only marvel at the persistence of Lenin, racked by agonizing physical and emotional suffering, as his dogged ascent to power was interrupted by forced intervals in the background. The struggle for power sustained him, energized him, and gave purpose to his battle against affliction. This was not the first time he had taken up a challenge from a comrade-in-arms, but the gravity of his illness in 1922–1923 lent any such challenge a new and urgent significance.

From the standpoint of “the technology of power,” Lenin’s maneuvers in late 1922 and early 1923 relied on the same sources of strength that had carried him through earlier clashes: his unquestionable authority among party functionaries and rivalries among party leaders (primarily between Trotsky and the troika). That Stalin bore the brunt of Lenin’s manipulations appears to be largely a matter of chance. The positions he took in regard to the organization of the USSR and the Georgian Affair represented political miscalculations and turned out to be poorly timed. Finally, he insulted the wife of the ailing leader, exhibiting behavior unbecoming a Bolshevik. Stalin had stepped under the sword himself and so provided Lenin a perfect opportunity to reassert his political authority and subdue other Bolshevik leaders. Lenin probably had no intention of removing Stalin from the party’s upper echelons. Such a move would have thrown a wrench in the mechanism he used to maintain power. Within that mechanism, Stalin was the perfect counterbalance to the ambitions of other Bolshevik leaders, as well as an irreplaceable administrator. Lenin’s actions were part of a rebalancing that required a dialing back of Stalin’s power.

This context is important in understanding Stalin’s reactions to the disfavor being shown him by his teacher. Stalin had every reason to feel genuinely hurt. When all was said and done, his sins were no worse than those he and other Soviet leaders had committed in the past. All Bolshevik leaders contradicted and argued with Lenin, and like Stalin, they all eventually relented. Sometimes Lenin punished these transgressions by removing their perpetrators from the center of power, but he later brought them back into the fold. Lenin usually punished his subordinates out of public view to avoid wounded pride. What was different now? What was behind such a provocative and demonstrative move against a man who had served Lenin so loyally? Stalin apparently found the most convenient explanation for this lashing out, both psychologically and politically, in Lenin’s illness.

As it turned out, the letter to the Georgian Bolsheviks was the last document Lenin dictated. Several days later, his health took a sharp turn for the worse. He did not speak at the party congress; the Politburo swept the Georgian Affair under the carpet and later abandoned the idea of removing Stalin as general secretary. These decisions were not charity on the part of Stalin’s “friends.” They were the outcome of a fierce power struggle that began during Lenin’s final months and continued into 1924.

 TRYING OUT COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP

Although he managed to avoid the more serious dangers posed for him by the political game Lenin was playing during his final months of leadership, Stalin found himself somewhat weakened and thus more dependent on his Politburo colleagues. It is a commonly held view that the Bolshevik oligarchs who inherited power after Lenin’s demise underestimated Stalin and believed him to be harmless and mediocre. This is not true. The members of the Politburo fully appreciated Lenin’s concerns about Stalin and the power he held as general secretary, and they tried to limit this power. But political happenstance and, to no small degree, Stalin’s skillful maneuvering undermined the plans of his rivals and enemies.

The first serious conflict that we know of within the Politburo’s tightly knit opposition to Trotsky occurred during the summer of 1923. After the party congress, the successful neutralization of Lenin’s attack, and the country’s return to relative stability after the horrific famine, Politburo members regained enough peace of mind to take a vacation. In July 1923, while resting in the North Caucasus resort town of Kislovodsk, Grigory Zinoviev came up with a scheme to shift the balance of power within the Politburo to limit Stalin’s influence. In a 30 July letter to Kamenev, who was in Moscow, he launched into a tirade against Stalin: “If the party is destined to go through a stretch (probably a very short one) of Stalin’s sole power—so be it. But I, for one, have no intention of covering up this swinishness.… In reality, there is no troika, there is only Stalin’s dictatorship. Ilyich was a thousand times right. Either a serious way out has to be found, or a long stretch of struggle is inevitable.”⁷⁶

Although the letter contained no detailed plan, it charged that Stalin was manipulating the Politburo and essentially making unilateral decisions. It is important to note the line “Ilyich was a thousand times right”: Zinoviev was using Lenin’s letters as ammunition against Stalin. In Kislovodsk, he discussed joint action with Bukharin, who was also upset by some of Stalin’s moves, and with other prominent party figures who were vacationing in the south. No specific proposals were entrusted to paper, but Stalin was sent a “spoken letter” (Ordzhonikidze, who was leaving for Moscow, was supposed to convey a message). Because this communication was oral, we do not know in detail what was proposed. From statements made in subsequent years, it appears that the plan involved reorganizing the Central Committee secretariat. Stalin would remain a member, but Zinoviev and Trotsky would also be included. This reorganization would have created a new balance of power in Stalin’s fiefdom: the Central Committee apparat.

Stalin, not surprisingly, was indignant, perhaps even furious. He responded to the grievances of his “friends” with a show of hurt feelings and accusations of their undermining unity. On 3 August 1923, immediately after meeting with Ordzhonikidze, he wrote to Zinoviev and Bukharin: “Evidently you’re not hesitant to make ready for a break, as if it were inescapable.… Do as you wish—there must be some people in Russia who will see that for what it is and condemn the guilty.… But what fortunate people you are: you’re able to dream up all sorts of fairy tales at your leisure … while I’m stuck here like a chained dog and turn out to be ‘guilty’ to boot. You can tell anyone you want. All that soft living has gone to your heads, my friends.”⁷⁷

This half-angry, half-friendly letter attests to Stalin’s relatively limited options in opposing his colleagues. For their part, Zinoviev’s and Bukharin’s proposals signaled that they still felt they could limit Stalin’s influence. They were not impressed by Stalin’s expression of injury. Calmly but firmly they let him know that the matter was not settled. Soon they would be able to meet face to face in the south, where Stalin was planning to vacation in mid-August.

Stalin could not have relished this prospect. His opponents held all the cards. Their proposal to reorganize the secretariat so as to promote unity and cohesion seemed perfectly reasonable. Stalin’s objections would appear to confirm Lenin’s warnings that he did not want to work as part of a team. Zinoviev’s accusation that Stalin was violating the principle of collective leadership also put him in an awkward position. And another idea advanced by Zinoviev and Bukharin could prove particularly dangerous—that Stalin’s position on events in Germany was “incorrect.”

The political crises that had shaken Germany since early 1923 had reawakened Moscow’s dream of salvation through European revolution. For the Bolsheviks, who still had trouble imagining a future for the USSR if it remained the only socialist bastion, socialism in Germany would be a great relief. But they took warning from the European revolutionary movements’ recent defeats. Stalin was among the Bolshevik leaders who urged restraint, while Zinoviev and Bukharin were eager to do battle, as was Trotsky, for whom world revolution remained a precondition for the victory of socialism in Russia. Realizing that his cautious approach was becoming politically dangerous and gave his rivals ammunition against him, Stalin made an effective political move. On 9 August 1923, amid frantic letter writing with Zinoviev and Bukharin, he placed a resolution before the Politburo summoning Zinoviev, Trotsky, and Bukharin back to Moscow to discuss the prospects for revolution in Germany. Naturally, all three agreed. The meeting was set for 21 August.

This change of plans gave Stalin important advantages. He deflected charges that he was not sufficiently attentive to revolutionary developments in Germany. Also, the question of reorganizing the secretariat and the collective leadership was pushed off the agenda by the more urgent German problem. Stalin had managed to disrupt Zinoviev’s and Bukharin’s offensive and had forced them to follow a new script. After gathering in Moscow on 21 August, the Politburo heatedly and enthusiastically discussed the impending German revolution, the assistance the USSR would provide, and the possible responses by European powers. Everyone agreed that war was imminent. Supporting his colleagues’ optimism, Stalin stated: “If we really want to help the Germans, and we do want that and must help, we have to prepare for war seriously and thoroughly, since in the end it will be a matter of the existence of the Soviet Federation and of the fate of world revolution in the near future.… Either the revolution in Germany will collapse and they will beat us, or revolution will succeed there and everything will go well, and our situation will be assured. There is no other option.”⁷⁸

Here we see that Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders still shared the opinion that the USSR’s fate was tied to the fate of world revolution, although the extent of this interdependence was not discussed in detail. What exactly did Stalin mean by “they will beat us” or “our situation will be assured”? What would this “beating” entail, and just what kind of assurance did he expect? These appear to be empty phrases, a nod to Marxist orthodoxy. When it came to tactical questions, he still sounded cautious and skeptical. He refused to support Trotsky and Zinoviev’s proposal to set an exact date for the German revolution, believing it was better to make preparations and await the right moment. He also warned against hasty “leftism”: “Concerning the [German Communist] leftists. They are the most dangerous people for us. A premature takeover of factories, etc., would hold great dangers for us.”⁷⁹ On the question of setting an exact timetable for revolution, he wound up in the same camp as Bukharin and Aleksei Rykov.⁸⁰ The latter was the most consistent adherent of caution: “It is completely clear that everything is being bet on this one card. We are absolutely not ready.… We have to back off.”⁸¹

With war supposedly looming, the reorganization of the secretariat must have seemed inconsequential. We do not know how and when this issue, which just two weeks earlier had seemed vitally important, was finally resolved—probably some agreement was reached in the corridors during breaks between meetings devoted to Germany. As a result, in September 1923 a rather pointless decision was made: Zinoviev and Trotsky were made members of the Central Committee’s Organizational Bureau rather than the secretariat. This move would do nothing to solve the original problem—Stalin’s excessive control over decision making, to which Zinoviev and Bukharin had so hotly objected in July and August.

An event of great political significance took place at a plenary session of the Central Committee in September. The plenum adopted a decision to place Stalin and Voroshilov on the governing bodies of the military—Trotsky’s domain. Trotsky was being surrounded by his political opponents on his own turf. He stormed out of the plenum in indignation.⁸²

Historians still lack information on how this highly provocative attack against Trotsky was staged. It must have emerged from behind-the-scenes collusion between (at least) Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. They may have rationalized their actions with the following logic: events in Europe were coming to a head. The role of the Red Army and the military would be crucial, as it had been during the Civil War, and the influence of the Red Army’s recognized leader would grow. The military therefore had to be brought under the control of Politburo members other than Trotsky before he became too powerful. It is unclear who initiated the ejection of Trotsky from the army’s leadership. What is clear is that Stalin benefited significantly from this sharp escalation in the power struggle among the party’s top leadership.

Aggrieved and isolated, in October 1923 Trotsky launched a counterattack. He submitted a letter to the membership of the party’s Central Committee and Central Control Commission charging that the majority of Politburo members were conducting a misguided and unsound policy. He became a magnet for dissatisfied members. A fierce struggle broke out in which Zinoviev and other Politburo members, even those who felt that Stalin was already too powerful, were forced to join forces with him. In the coming two years this polarization—the Trotsky camp versus the Stalin camp—would serve Stalin well.

Discussion of Lenin’s last dictated texts, about the need to remove Stalin from the post of general secretary, was shaped by this battle. Lenin died in January 1924. In May came the next party congress. During the congress, party leaders decided to disclose Lenin’s “testament.” By general consensus this was done in such a way as to minimize the sting to Stalin. Lenin’s final dictated words were not read at a general session of the congress but at the meetings of separate delegations.⁸³ This procedure made it inevitable: Stalin was reelected as general secretary. Trotsky did not speak out, but it was not his silence that helped Stalin. Trotsky’s very presence was enough.

Despite his masterful handling of this situation, Stalin found himself in a vulnerable position. His virtues and shortcomings were a matter of public discussion. The very fact that such conversations could take place and that verdicts were being reached, however favorable, threatened to diminish his political authority. Rather than feeling gratitude toward those colleagues who had defended him before the congress’s delegates, he seemed to respond with festering resentment. Their sympathy was demeaning; it looked too much like condescension, and their support felt like a favor that would have to be returned in kind. Stalin had no intention of paying off any political debts or allowing himself to be turned into a junior partner. Several weeks after the end of the congress he started biting the hands that fed him. In June 1924, Pravda published a speech by Stalin in which he found fault with some rather innocuous statements by Kamenev and Zinoviev.

This outrageous breach of the anti-Trotsky leadership’s united front caused consternation among top party ranks. Historians have uncovered no documents to shed light on what prompted Stalin’s public scolding of Kamenev and Zinoviev, but it appears that this incident was discussed among a close circle of party leaders during the Central Committee plenum of August 1924, and Stalin found himself outnumbered. It is hard to find another explanation for Stalin’s 19 August 1924 letter of resignation, a copy of which is preserved in his archive. In this remarkable document, Stalin stated that his collaboration with Kamenev and Zinoviev in the Politburo after Lenin’s retirement had yielded deplorable results, demonstrating the “impossibility of an honest and sincere political collaboration with these comrades within the framework of a single, close collegium.” In light of this, he submitted his resignation from the Politburo and, accordingly, from the post of general secretary. He requested a two-month medical leave, after which he asked to be “assigned to some minor post either in Turukhansky Krai, Yakutsk Oblast, or abroad.”⁸⁴

This manipulative passive-aggressive outburst could hardly have been taken seriously. Nobody would have believed that Stalin actually intended to endure another Siberian exile, this time as a low-level paper-pusher! The full membership of the Central Committee, to whom the letter of resignation was addressed, never saw it. The matter was dealt with by a close-knit group of “friends” and allies, probably on 19 August, the day the letter appeared, or the following day. One can only assume that the establishment of an informal majority within the Central Committee took place in conjunction with the discussion of Stalin’s letter. Later testimony by Zinoviev suggests that this all occurred between sessions of the Central Committee plenum, which concluded on 20 August. The majority faction, made up of the most influential anti-Trotsky members of the Central Committee, elected a semerka, a group of seven, to serve as its governing body. The Seven included the chairman of the Central Control Commission and all the members of the Politburo except for Trotsky and functioned as a sort of shadow Politburo.⁸⁵ Historians most often describe the establishment of this Central Committee majority faction and the Seven as an anti-Trotsky effort. This is partially true, but as Stalin’s letter of resignation shows, the new unofficial body’s primary task was to work behind the scenes to consolidate a majority within the Politburo and overcome internal disagreements. The Seven replaced the troika, which had not succeeded in this role.

This pivotal episode in the party’s internal struggles reflects the balance of power in the Politburo during the summer of 1924. Stalin was apparently intentionally inciting conflict with Kamenev and Zinoviev, even though he could not yet be certain that other Politburo members, who were concerned with unity, would take his side. The letter of resignation was not only an obvious test of his own strength, but also a sign that he was still relatively weak. This incident was an important step toward Stalin’s break with Kamenev and Zinoviev and his gradual alliance with Bukharin and Rykov. Having freed himself from the confines of the troika and now having the Seven to work with, he gained maneuverability.

Whatever personal intentions and calculations were at play in forming the anti-Trotsky coalition in 1924–1925, it gave rise to a curious system of collective leadership that has been little studied as a force shaping the system of government that developed after Lenin’s death. This collective leadership involved the interaction of politically equal Soviet leaders and the relatively autonomous government agencies they headed. It featured a rather well-developed division of functions between party and governmental apparats. Government policy, shaped by compromises among the competing interests represented by these leaders and agencies, became flexible and well balanced.

The period of collective leadership was a time of productive decision making and the flourishing of the NEP. The Seven overcame the crises the NEP was designed to address and adjusted the country’s economic course while avoiding measures that would have caused systemic damage. Oligarchic government lent itself to relatively moderate political and economic policies. But collective leadership began to disintegrate when the government turned to a more hard-line, radical course. As historians have long believed and as recent archival research has confirmed, the seeds of conflict that put an end to collective leadership were intentionally sown by Stalin.

 THE CRUSHING OF TROTSKY AND ZINOVIEV

Ultimately, the viability of the collective leadership depended on its top leaders’ willingness to adhere to the rules of their unique system of government. This system, which faced no threats beyond the personal ambitions of individual Politburo members, had marked advantages over an individual dictatorship. Whether it would survive after Lenin’s demise had everything to do with the personal qualities of the three Bolshevik oligarchs: Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Stalin (in theory, these names could be given in any order—their standing was supposed to be equal). These personal qualities, however, undermined collective leadership, and intrigues among these three figures inevitably drew other highly placed Bolsheviks into the fray, destabilizing the entire collective decision-making process.

Lacking a system for resolving personal conflicts, the collective leadership resorted to rather boorish methods to isolate Trotsky and exclude him from power. In so doing, it launched a process that destroyed the last shreds of relative democracy within the Bolshevik party. In January 1925, Trotsky was removed from his post as people’s commissar for military and naval affairs, ending his hold on any real power. Zinoviev proposed that he also be removed from the Politburo. This proposal made perfect sense since Trotsky had already been excluded from the Politburo’s work (as well as the unofficial deliberations of the Seven). But most members of the Politburo and Central Committee did not relish such changes, which always carried unpredictable consequences, and stood firmly under the banner of “unity.” Zinoviev’s proposal seemed a bit bloodthirsty. The jokester Bukharin even made up an aphorism inspired by Zinoviev’s anti-Trotsky zeal: “If you see that the name Othello has been replaced with ‘Grigory’ [Zinoviev’s first name], believe your eyes.”⁸⁶

Stalin was well aware of these moods, and along with the rest of the Seven, he opposed Zinoviev’s proposal, cunningly presenting himself as a supporter of unity and collective leadership. “We plan to take all measures that preserve the unity of the Seven come what may,” he wrote to Ordzhonikidze in February 1925.⁸⁷ In actuality, the situation was coming to a head. New jabs were being exchanged between the Seven majority, on the one hand, and Zinoviev and Kamenev on the other, and Stalin’s skilled hand could be seen in these intrigues. By late 1925 Zinoviev and Kamenev had formed a faction that threw down a gauntlet before Stalin, Bukharin, Rykov, and their followers.

At first the struggle for control centered on procedural matters—how and by whom the Politburo’s agenda should be set, as well as how the matter of Trotsky should be handled. These seemingly innocuous questions actually expressed a heated struggle for dominance within the collective leadership, but in order for this struggle to be taken beyond the bounds of the Seven, it needed a program. One could not gain the support of party functionaries, as Zinoviev and Kamenev counted on doing, with talk of winning control of the Politburo. Zinoviev, Kamenev, and their supporters chose a more respectable theme: the struggle against the “rightist” threat of allowing the NEP—which supposedly would strengthen “capitalist elements” and prosperous peasants (kulaks)—to become entrenched. Coming from the “moderate” Kamenev and Zinoviev, who were opposing the “leftist” Trotsky, or from Lenin’s widow Krupskaia (who, out of long-standing friendship, supported Zinoviev and Kamenev over Stalin), this program looked out of place, even absurd. But they had no other choice. The Politburo majority was following a “rightist” course, so in order to oppose it, they were forced to move leftward. Probably Zinoviev and Kamenev also counted on recruiting to their cause the rather sizable subset of party functionaries who were inclined against the NEP.

They miscalculated. Even those party leaders who may have felt opposed to the NEP knew on which side their bread was buttered: all power flowed downstream from the Politburo. Everything was decided by this supreme body and transmitted to the local level through the top leaders’ client networks. During the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925, when Zinoviev and Kamenev launched a determined attack against the Politburo majority in general and Stalin in particular, they were able to count on only the Leningrad delegation, which had been handpicked by Zinoviev, the region’s party boss. This backing was not enough: they suffered a crushing defeat. Furthermore, the move cost Zinoviev his Leningrad fiefdom. Immediately after the congress a large group of Central Committee members was sent to Leningrad to make sure that Stalin’s protégé, Sergei Mironovich Kirov, became Leningrad’s new boss. Kirov’s letters indicate that this takeover did not go particularly smoothly:

The situation is heated. There’s a lot of work to be done, and even more yelling.

Here, you get nothing without a battle. And what battles! Yesterday we were at Triangle [a reference to the party organization of the Triangle rubber factory], a collective of 2,200 people. The fighting was incredible. I haven’t seen a meeting like that since the days of October, and I never even imagined that there could be such a meeting of party members. At times, it even came to fistfights in some corners of the meeting!⁸⁸

Zinoviev’s loyal party followers in Leningrad and the local party apparat were dealt with ruthlessly—although by the standards of the time, “ruthless” did not extend beyond large-scale firings and transfers to remote regions of the country. This heavy-handed purge escalated the conflict between the opposition and the majority, which continued through 1926 and 1927. After a period of relative calm, in the spring of 1926 the majority found itself confronted with a newly unified opposition headed by Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. This “marriage of convenience” (though no more so than the other alliances within the top leadership) was doomed to failure, but it made life difficult for the majority. The united opposition provided a rallying point for the dissatisfied, of whom there was no shortage. Keeping the opposition at bay demanded time, effort, and resourcefulness. Someone had to make this struggle his primary focus. By position and temperament, the best man for the job was Stalin.

The full range of intrigues perpetrated by both camps deserves a thorough study, which remains to be undertaken. Particularly worthy of attention is one basic and potent ingredient in this toxic brew: the use of state security to suppress the opposition. Gradually, with increasing frequency, the party opposition was branded the “enemy,” a label the Bolsheviks had previously reserved for outsiders such as the bourgeoisie, Mensheviks, or SRs. The historical record allows us to trace the origins of this practice to Stalin, who employed it not just in the mid-1930s, when the fight against the opposition reached its bloody apogee, but also much earlier.

On 6 June 1926, approximately seventy Moscow Bolsheviks with oppositionist sympathies gathered in a dacha community outside the capital. They chose this setting because they had been banned from holding meetings and needed to gather out of sight of the authorities. The gathering was addressed by a supporter of Zinoviev, Mikhail Lashevich, a longtime Bolshevik who had managed to keep his post as deputy head of the military commissariat. As might have been expected, an undercover agent was present at the meeting, possibly a specially infiltrated agent of the OGPU. The matter was placed in the hands of the party’s investigative commission, which, try as it might, was not able to prove that the opposition’s leaders had helped organize the meeting. This did not stop Stalin. In a 25 June 1926 letter to the Politburo, written while on vacation, he proposed using the “Lashevich Affair” as a pretext for destroying the Zinoviev group and expelling Zinoviev himself from the Politburo.⁸⁹ The ideological justification for this cynical move rested on the idea that the opposition was breaking the party apart. An exceptionally stormy Central Committee plenum in July 1926, during which the opposition attempted to make a decisive stand, ended in accordance with Stalin’s script. The plenum passed a resolution asserting that “the opposition had decided to cross the line from legally advocating its views to creating an all-union illegal organization.”⁹⁰ The next step—casting this “all-union illegal organization” as an “all-union counterrevolutionary and terrorist organization”—would take Stalin another ten years, by which time his hold on power would be firm and his opponents executed.

Stalin’s plan to expel only Zinoviev from the Politburo was a diversion, an attempt to divide the opposition and demonstrate objectivity. Just months later, in October 1926, Trotsky and Kamenev were also removed. Yet the oppositionists did not lay down their arms: they used every opportunity to do battle, denouncing the Politburo majority and its policies. The mutual animosity finally reached its pinnacle when, with no other options left to them, the oppositionists resorted to an underground propaganda campaign, to which the Politburo responded with a sting operation. In September 1927 the OGPU sent an agent posing as a former officer from Wrangel’s army to a printing press that, despite the official prohibition, was still publishing opposition materials. Fabricated materials were used to charge the oppositionists with belonging to a “counterrevolutionary organization” that was supposedly plotting a military coup. The OGPU carried out the arrests. This police operation was organized by Stalin. While other Politburo members were vacationing in the south, he remained in Moscow and kept the others informed.⁹¹

In October 1927, Zinoviev and Trotsky were removed from the Central Committee in a particularly ugly plenary session. When Trotsky attempted to address the plenum with a question, he had a book and a glass thrown at him and was forcibly pushed from the podium as shouting erupted in the hall. On 7 November, the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, the oppositionists attempted to hold their own demonstrations in parallel with the official ones but were forcibly dispersed. These demonstrations served as an excuse for new reprisals: many opposition members were arrested and sent into exile. In December, the crushing of the opposition was officially sanctioned at the Fifteenth Party Congress. Some publicly capitulated, but Trotsky and his closest associates did not back down. Trotsky was sent to Kazakhstan and later expelled from the USSR. The majority of oppositionists, both those who had relented and those who had not, were killed during the second half of the 1930s. In 1940, on Stalin’s orders, Trotsky was killed by a Soviet agent in Mexico.

The repression of the late 1920s, though relatively mild, still made a gloomy impression on the party’s old guard and marked an important turning point in the party’s development. As had happened during the French Revolution—whose history the Bolsheviks knew well—the Russian Revolution had begun to eat its own children. The similarities provoked a sense of dejection and unease. On 1 January 1928, soon after the opposition had been definitively crushed, Valerian Osinsky, one of the Old Bolsheviks, wrote an anxious letter to Stalin reflecting the sense that an injustice had been committed.⁹²

Dear Comrade Stalin,

Yesterday I learned that V. M. Smirnov⁹³ is being sent somewhere in the Urals (evidently to Cherdyn District), and today, when I met Sapronov⁹⁴ on the street, I heard that he is heading for Arkhangelsk Province for the same term. Furthermore, they have to leave by Tuesday, and Smirnov only just had half his teeth removed so they can be replaced with false teeth, and now he’ll have to leave for the Ural north toothless.

In his day, Lenin kicked Martov⁹⁵ out of the country in comfort, first making sure that he had a warm coat and galoshes. This is because Martov was once a revolutionary. Our former party comrades who are being sent away are deeply mistaken politically, but they are still revolutionaries—there’s no denying this.… The question therefore arises: is it really necessary to drive them all up north and essentially pursue a policy of their spiritual and physical destruction. I don’t think so. And I don’t understand why we can’t (1) send them abroad the way Lenin did with Martov or (2) settle them within the country in places with a warm climate.…

These sorts of banishments only create unnecessary bitterness.… They intensify whisperings about similarities between our current regime and the old police state.⁹⁶

On 3 January Stalin sent a curt response: “Com. Osinsky! If you think about it you’ll probably understand that you have no grounds, either moral or any other kind, for putting down the party or taking up the role of some sort of arbiter between the party and opposition. I’m returning your letter as insulting to the party. As for concern for Smirnov and other oppositionists, you have no grounds for doubting that the party is doing everything possible and necessary in this regard.”

Was Stalin’s promise to do “everything necessary” for the oppositionists a kind of black humor, a hint at the coming moral and physical destruction of his opponents? There is no evidence that in 1928 Stalin was planning the purges or terror of the late 1930s. How are we to interpret the apparently genuine anger with which he responded to Osinsky? Was it merely that he was sick of talking about the opposition, worn out from years of tense struggle during which he had to watch every step, exercise unrelenting caution, make no false moves, hide his intentions, and conceal his actions? At the time he corresponded with Osinsky, Stalin was evidently making a critical decision that no opposition would be tolerated and no collective leadership was needed. Perhaps he was curt with Osinsky because he was anxious. Or perhaps he was confident and felt no hesitation in making it clear to Osinsky that they were no longer on the same level and “heart to heart” talks between them were no longer appropriate.

 THE CHOICE

Stalin’s alliance with Rykov, Bukharin, and other Politburo members, first against Trotsky and later against Zinoviev, was a tactical move in a struggle for power and influence. It is probably safe to say that the primary forces driving this struggle were the personal ambitions of Lenin’s heirs, their confrontational characters and outsized political ambitions, their nasty revolutionary habit of fighting for the sake of fighting, and a propensity to see enemies at every turn. That said, in their constant skirmishes the Bolshevik leaders were also guided by certain political ideas.

The Politburo majority, including Stalin, adhered to the so-called “rightist course.” This was a logical continuation of the NEP of 1921–1922. Once they saw that it would be impossible to immediately introduce a socialism free of money and markets, the Bolshevik leaders, with Lenin at their forefront, took a step backward. Keeping political power and heavy industry in the hands of the government, they allowed small industry and business owners (peasants first and foremost) relative freedom. Markets and money were rehabilitated. Nobody knew how or in what directions they should be moving. Only the general principles were clear: there would be a mixed economy combining market mechanisms, a strong state, and a monopoly on political power. There was also general agreement on the timetable: all shared Lenin’s vision of the NEP as a long-term policy lasting through the 1920s.

The issue of the NEP was bound to become entangled in intraparty squabbles. Trotsky, later joined by Zinoviev and Kamenev, criticized the NEP strategy that had been devised by the Politburo majority. While not urging a total abandonment of the NEP, the oppositionists felt too many concessions had been made to the peasants and the urban bourgeoisie, and they called for greater emphasis on the development of major industries. This criticism was typical of the opposition movement in its struggle to undermine the power of those in charge and gain more for themselves: it exploited popular desires for greater equality and nostalgia for a “heroic epoch.” Most important, it was short on details. Had they achieved power, the “leftist” leaders, who were fundamentally pragmatic, would most likely have shifted imperceptibly onto the “rightist” path, abandoning their radicalism under the force of the objective need to develop the economy. This assumption is supported by the past behavior of “leftist” leaders. During the Civil War, did not the ultra-revolutionary Trotsky use the tsarist officer corps as a foundation for the Red Army? Did not all the Bolshevik leaders originally support the NEP? While a member of the government, Kamenev, one of the leaders of the left opposition, always gravitated toward moderation and followed a perfectly “rightist” course. Grigory Sokolnikov, another member of the opposition, was a brilliant finance commissar under whose leadership the country stabilized its currency.⁹⁷ Often it was not principled programmatic differences that spawned conflict but ties of friendship, sore feelings, or ambition.

The consequences of this battle of political wills were devastating. The Bolshevik party endured irreparable losses of personnel. The disinclination to show mercy or compromise and the desire to decimate opponents not only took time and energy away from real problems, but it also undermined the collective leadership’s will to conduct needed reforms and adjust social and economic policies. Every decision was examined under a magnifying glass, not only with an eye toward viability, but also to detect the slightest ideological vulnerabilities. Such an approach deprived the country’s leadership of the flexibility and initiative it needed.

Many of the decisions made in 1926–1927, a time of fierce struggle against the opposition, were politically motivated and destructive for the economy. Measures against “capitalist elements” were primarily targeted at relatively prosperous peasants and small-scale traders. Reckless and misguided economic decisions undermined stability. Yet these measures were not catastrophic or irreversible. The NEP, like any economic strategy, demanded constant adjustments, the elimination of mistakes, and an agile response to disparities as they arose. Lacking were the political preconditions for effective decision making. And the party infighting was only making the atmosphere worse.

One sign of the unhealthy political situation was the noisy campaign waged under the banner of fighting foreign threats. In 1927, a series of international crises was used to pump up war hysteria: a note from Britain’s foreign secretary, Austen Chamberlain, objecting to Soviet anti-British propaganda in February; a raid on the Soviet embassy in Beijing in April; the breaking off of diplomatic relations with Great Britain in May; the June murder of the Soviet ambassador to Poland, Petr Voikov, who had helped organize the 1918 execution of Russia’s royal family; and repression against Communists in China. Calls for vigilance and military readiness spawned rumors and panic buying of manufactured goods and food supplies “in case of war.” The government’s fanning of martial passions was largely an attempt to counter criticism from the left, which was using foreign policy difficulties as fodder for attacks against the majority.

All of the Bolshevik leaders, both those still in power and those who had been expelled from office, took part in fanning militaristic passions. Stalin was no exception. News of Voikov’s murder found Stalin vacationing in the south. In an 8 June coded telegram to Moscow he offered his take on the situation: “Received about murder of Voikov by monarchist. Sense England’s hand here. They want to provoke conflict with Poland. They want to repeat Sarajevo.” By comparing Voikov’s murder with the event generally seen as the trigger for World War I, Stalin showed that he felt war was imminent.⁹⁸ In the coded message he urged “maximal caution” in regard to Poland but recommended conducting ruthless reprisals and purges within the USSR:

Without delay, all prominent monarchists in our prisons or labor camps should be proclaimed hostages. We should immediately shoot five or ten monarchists and announce that with every assassination attempt, new groups of monarchists will be shot. We should give the OGPU a directive about house-to-house searches and arrests of monarchists and any sort of White Guardists throughout the entire USSR in order to completely liquidate them using all measures. Voikov’s murder gives us grounds to take revolutionary measures to completely crush monarchist and White Guard cells in all parts of the USSR. The task of fortifying our own rear demands this.⁹⁹

These statements foreshadow some of the hallmarks of Stalin’s policies in the coming years. Relative prudence in foreign policy (“maximal caution”) always went hand-in-hand with exceptional ruthlessness at home. The idea of “fortifying our own rear” through repression would be a cornerstone of Stalin’s policy in the 1930s.

The Politburo members who had remained in Moscow adopted Stalin’s recommendation. A wave of repressions swept the country. On 10 June 1927, Pravda reported that twenty former members of the nobility—“hostages”—had been shot. The barbaric executions of innocent people severely damaged the Soviet government’s reputation. The bloodthirsty behavior of the collective leadership suggested that all the top Bolsheviks were cut from the same cloth, but this is true only up to a point. On many key issues, Politburo members were capable of independent judgment. That the members of this body did not think in lockstep offered a kernel of hope that the Bolshevik authorities could govern with a degree of rationality.

One of the last glimmers of true collective leadership could be seen in the summer of 1927. This was a time of escalating crisis, and the Politburo reached its decisions on important political matters through genuine debate. A series of short letters from Molotov to Stalin, who spent that June and July vacationing in the south, offer a window onto these debates. The main points of conflict were the nation’s policies toward China and Great Britain and the question of expelling Trotsky and Zinoviev from the Central Committee. Politburo members were still conducting themselves rather independently and forming surprising (in light of subsequent events) tactical coalitions. For example, Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov, Rykov, and Rudzutak¹⁰⁰ were critical of the policy toward China, where Moscow insisted, without success, on cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists. (Voroshilov “has reached the point of groundless name-calling toward ‘your leadership over the past few years,’” Molotov complained in a letter to Stalin dated 4 July 1927.) Molotov and Bukharin, who enjoyed Stalin’s support, defended the correctness of the policy.¹⁰¹ Opinions were evenly split on the fates of Trotsky and Zinoviev. Kalinin,¹⁰² Rykov, Ordzhonikidze, and Voroshilov believed that their expulsion from the Central Committee should be delayed until the party congress that fall. In telegrams from the south, Stalin unsuccessfully objected. Only after he demanded that his vote be counted in absentia and Kalinin joined those in favor of immediate expulsion did the Politburo resolve in late June to advance the timetable.¹⁰³ Nevertheless, the implementation of this decision was delayed. The opposition leaders were not expelled during the Central Committee plenum in late July–August but in October. Molotov, fresh from a contentious Politburo meeting on 4 July 1927, sent Stalin an anxious letter:

The most unpleasant thing is the situation within the Seven.¹⁰⁴ In terms of questions concerning the opposition, China, and the ARK [Anglo-Russian Unity Committee], you can already see more or less distinct divisions, and over and over we’re split down the middle with one deciding vote.… I’m increasingly wondering whether you’ll need to come to Moscow earlier than scheduled. As undesirable as that might be in health terms, judge for yourself what the situation is.… The symptoms are bad; you can’t count on stability. I haven’t talked to anyone about this, but I feel the situation isn’t good.¹⁰⁵

How justified were Molotov’s expressions of alarm? Judging from the correspondence, Stalin took these reports in stride: “I am not afraid of the situation in the group. Why—I’ll explain when I come.”¹⁰⁶ He had every reason for optimism. The clashes in the Politburo did not pose a serious threat to any of the Bolshevik oligarchs, including him. A stable balance of power was taking hold within the collective leadership. The summertime disputes Molotov described showed that the conflict within the Politburo was not among combating groups bent on crushing one another. As Stalin’s follower, Molotov acted in conjunction with Bukharin. Rykov, who was close to Bukharin, was acting in coordination with Stalin’s old friend Voroshilov. Kalinin, who had no strong alliances, moved from camp to camp. This sort of debate and formation of blocs was usual and helpful to the Politburo’s functioning. The future of the collective leadership depended on the extent to which Bolshevik leaders were prepared to follow the rules of the oligarchy. Stalin was the weakest link in this chain.

Once the very ambitious Trotsky and Zinoviev were removed, only one power-hungry member remained in the Politburo: Stalin. The others, for a variety of reasons, were not capable of pretending to supreme power. In the pivotal post of general secretary, Stalin used the battle against the left opposition to strengthen his position. The schism within the party permitted him to play the role of preserver of Lenin’s legacy and strengthened his control over the party apparat and state security. These advantages did not assure him victory, but they shifted the odds in his favor.

In December 1927, during the first plenary session of the Central Committee elected at the Fifteenth Party Congress, Stalin made a carefully calculated move: he submitted his resignation and refused to run for reelection to the post of general secretary. Now that the opposition had been crushed, he announced, it was a good time to fulfill Lenin’s “testament.” Earlier, he modestly explained, a “tough” man had been needed as general secretary to wage a “tough” battle against the opposition. “Now, it is no longer necessary to have tough people in such a prominent post.”¹⁰⁷

As Stalin had surely expected, the plenum refused to accept his resignation. This move earned him important political dividends. First, once again, it diminished the relevance of Lenin’s proposal that Stalin be removed as general secretary. Second, he presented himself to top party functionaries as the driving force behind the victory over the opposition: a “tough” leader capable of “tough” measures. This toughness undoubtedly enhanced his credentials in the eyes of those who favored a “firm hand.” Third, his show of loyalty, his stated readiness to retire, must have mollified those concerned about the breakdown of collective leadership and the emergence of a “gravedigger of the revolution” (as Trotsky had labeled him). Stalin had sought and found an important formal affirmation of his status. It is hard to believe that he took this risk for the sake of intraparty democracy. What came next—his famous voyage to Siberia and attacks against rightists—attests that he was acting with careful deliberation at the December plenum. This may well have been when he reached the fateful conclusion that he was destined to rule as dictator.