Stalin, Volume 1

201. G. Ia. Sokol’nikov, “Liquidatsiia Turkestanskogo rublia,” Pravda, December 30, 1920.

202. Arnold, Banks, Credit and Money, 126; Iurovskii, “Arkhitektor denezhnoi reform,” at 141; Katzenellenbaum, Russian Currency and Banking, 149–52; Nikolaev, “Na puti k denezhnoi reforme 1922–1924 godov,” 89. Katzenellenbaum worked under Sokolnikov. Efforts at private bank restoration had actually begun in the fall of 1919 but did not bear fruit until 1921, when the regime sought to reestablish normal trade relations, which also required determining a value for tsarist-era debts. On Sokolnikov’s health problems, see V. Rozanov, “Vladimir Il’ich Lenin,” Krasnaia nov’, 1924, no. 6: at 153. The State Bank was located at Neglinka, 12, in a solid two-story structure, with allegorical figures on the façade; it had been the Moscow branch of the imperial Russian State Bank built in 1894 on the site of the Vorontsov clan gardens. The vaults (Gokhran) were at Nastasinsky Lane, in the former Moscow Treasury building, built in 1913–16 in the style of the seventeenth century (called Moscow Baroque or neo-Byzantine).

203. Al’tman, “Lichnost’ reformatora,” 159. Details on the monetary reforms can be found in Finansovaia politika Sovetsko; and Sokolov, Finansovaia politika Sovetskogo gosudarstva; Denezhnaia reforma; Atlas, Ocherki po istorii denezhnogo obrashcheniia. Atlas (b. 1903) presents the story of monetary reform without mentioning Sokolnikov’s name, an oddity related to the date of his book’s publication (1940). He was the top person (professor) in the department of monetary circulation and credit in capitalist countries and the USSR at the economics institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

204. Atlas, Ocherki po istorii denezhnogo obrashcheniia, 196 (who, again, fails to mention Sokolnikov’s name); Goland, “Currency Regulation”; David Woodruff, “The Politburo on Gold, Industrialization, and the International Economy, 1925–1926,” in Gregory and Naimark, Lost Politburo Transcripts, 199–223. Herbert Hoover, when he learned in 1923 of renewed Soviet exports of food—which, unbeknownst to him, went to pay for imports of rifles and machine guns—suspended ARA operations. Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 418–9.

205. Katzenellenbaum, Russian Currency and Banking, 84–8, 105, 145. The ruble went from 10,000 to 1 (January 1, 1922), 100 to 1 (January 1, 1923), and 50,000 to 1 (March 7, 1924). Lawton, Economic History of Soviet Russia, I: 151.

206. Goland, Diskusii ob ekonomicheskoi politike. 1924 would be the last such surplus of the NEP.

207. In 1924–5, vodka would deliver 500 million rubles to the budget—a spectacular, embarrassing revival of the “drunken budget” of the old regime. Carr, Interregnum, 43, n5.

208. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 278 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 231, l. 2).

209. Galina Serebriakova, “Iz vospominanii,” in Anfert’ev, Smerch, 230–49 (at 234).

210. Mau, Reformy i dogmy, 137–51.

211. XI s”ezd RKP (b), 360–1. Larin, in the mid-1920s, recanted utterly: “I think it’s safe to say that, first, this is the most intelligent of our commissariats, and secondly, it is the only commissariat with a clear economic line at any time.” Quoted in Genis, “Upriamyi narkom s Il’inki,” in Sokol’nikov, Novaia finansovaia politika, 5–38 (at 19).

212. Carr, Socialism in One Country, I: 490. The Workers and Peasants Inspectorate fought for its prerogatives against the finance commissariat.

213. Mikhail Koltsov, the talented young journalist, dubbed Sokolnikov “the stubborn commissar from Ilinka,” who imposed all manner of taxes and restrictions—which, however, had conjured into being a real currency and economic stabilization. Kol’tsov, Izbrannoe, 39.

214. The society began with sixty-four members, who participated in commemorative evenings and published memoirs. Inside the regime, in parallel, tensions arose over the notion of Old Bolsheviks and whether comparative length of party membership should be treated as a kind of seniority. By 1925, when the party would nearly double in size to 1.1 million members and candidates, just 8,500 of them (0.8 percent) had joined before 1917, and a mere 2,000 (0.2 percent) before 1905 (the earliest date in order to be eligible members of the society). XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 460; Korzhikhina, “Obshchestvo starykh Bol’shevikov,” 50–65. Ustav obshchestva starykh bol’shevikov; Rezoliutsii i postanovleniia pervoi Vsesoiuznoi konferentsii Obshchestva starykh bol’shevikov; Spisok chlenov Vsesoiuznogo obshchestvo starykh bol’shevikov.

215. Rigby, “The Soviet Political Elite,” 419–20. Rigby points out that only 13 percent of the delegates to the 9th Congress had attended party congresses before the October Revolution; at the 10th Congress, the proportion fell to 5 percent. IX s”ezd RKP (b), 483; X s”ezd RKP (b), 762.

216. Lenin, characteristically, fretted about dilution of the party from admitting too many workers, because many had only recently arrived from a “petty-bourgeois” village milieu, complaining to Molotov that “the proletarian policy of the party is determined not by its composition, but by the immense, indivisible authority of its narrowest stratum, which could be called the old party guard.” But most other high officials were embarrassed about the glaring dearth of worker members in a worker party. PSS, XLV: 17–20; Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 239–41 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 27, l. 9–10).

217. In the factories, most party members as of 1921 were managers and administrators, not proletarians. The 10th Party Congress reprioritized recruitment of workers, a goal reaffirmed at the 11th Party Congress. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State, 50–1; X s”ezd, 236–41, 284, 564; Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 93–5.

218. Rigby, “The Soviet Political Elite.” See also Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 132.

219. “The obvious prominence of the lower-middle strata necessitates rethinking many problems of the revolution,” one scholar has correctly noted. “It has been like a missing puzzle piece whose placement permits many new connections.” Daniel T. Orlovsky, “State Building in the Civil War Era: The Role of the Lower Middle Strata,” in Koenker, Party, State, and Society, 180–209 (at 203, n3). See also Buldakov, Bor’ba za massy, 164–256; and Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class.

220. “Moi ded, Viacheslav Molotov, ne platil Leninu gonorarov,” Rodnaia gazeta, May 20, 2005 (interview with Viacheslav Nikonov).

221. Nikonov, Molotov, 88, 91–2, 109–13.

222. Watson, Molotov and Soviet Government, 43.

223. Bazhanov, Vospominaniia [1990], 179.

224. Kuibyshev, Epizody iz moei zhizni; Elena Kuibysheva, Valerian Vladimirovich Kuibyshev; Berezov, Valerian Vladimirovich Kuybyshev; G. V. Kuibysheva, Valerian Vladimirovich Kuibyshev; Khromov and Kuibysheva, Valerian Vladimirovich Kuibyshev; Flerov, V. V. Kuibyshev; Buzurbaev, Kuibyshev v Sibiri; Erofeev, Valerian Kuibyshev v Samare.

225. Schapiro, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 260–2; Schapiro, Origin of the Communist Autocracy 1977 ed., 288–9. Kuibyshev had replaced Mikhailov in the party secretariat.

226. Trotsky, Stalin School of Falsification, 126.

227. Kuibyshev appeared in a compendium of top regime figures, which mostly included politburo members and candidates (Molotov was not included). Volin, 12 biografii. The twelve, alphabetical in Russian, were Bukharin, Dzierzynski, Zinoviev, Kalinin, Kamenev, Kuibyshev, Rykov, Smirnov, Stalin, Tomsky, Trotsky, and Frunze.

228. Rees, “Iron Lazar,” 1–59.

229. “I always laughed at that. I told Makhover, for example, in the presence of everyone, ‘You’ll never resemble Stalin, you have a different brain and anyway the main thing is you lack a mustache.’” Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 195. Balashov was short, 153 cm (about five feet).

230. In 1923, Kaganovich noted that entire branches of industry were concentrated in the hands of unverified non-party people, sometimes even not the best non-party specialists but “slick careerists” (lovkikh proidokh). The upshot, he insisted, was that the party had to get involved and insert its people. Pavliuchenkov, Rossiia Nepovskaia “Orden mechenostsev,” 68 (citing f. 17, op. 68, d. 49, l. 28–31).

231. Bazhanov, Avec Staline dans le Kremlin, 58.

232. On April 7, 1925, Stalin would name Kaganovich party boss in Ukraine, one of the three strategic party organizations, alongside Moscow and Leningrad. Rees, “Iron Lazar,” 17. Kaganovich would not obtain an entry in Granat’s 1925 bibliography of the top 240 leading personages of the Soviet Union, but he belonged to the innermost core of Stalin’s machine. Gambarov, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’.

233. “Kalinin is a good fellow and for us an irreplaceable person,” Voroshilov wrote to Orjonikidze after a spring 1923 trip across the North Caucasus (Dagestan, Chechnya, Vladikavkaz, Nalchik). “In order to judge him properly, one needs to travel with him to villages and hear his conversations with peasants; here, he is utterly in his all peculiar beauty and, I should say straight out, force. One cannot find another like him in our party. Very few can like him set out our theory and practice to the peasants. . . . I had thought he was a bit of a lummox, but now I repent and beg forgiveness from Allah for my sins. I suggested to Kalinin that he visit you in Tiflis, but he clearly explained to me that without permission from the Central Committee he could not do such things.” Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 274 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 24, d. 150, l. 1–2).

234. Sergei Minin, the top Tsaritsyn Bolshevik, would side with the anti-Stalin opposition at the 14th Party Congress in 1925. He appears to have fallen mentally ill by 1927. Minin would survive the terror and live until 1962. Pravda, June 29, 1962. Alexander Chervyakov, the Donbass miner who served as head of the Cheka in Tsaritsyn, returned to his native Ukraine in 1919 after the restablishment of a Bolshevik regime there, and served as deputy chairman of the Ukraine Cheka. In 1921, he was demoted to a party position in Zhitomir; for a time, he served on the commission for the struggle against famine in Zaporozhe. In 1922, he was transferred over to the Soviet executive committee of Ukraine. He would also survive the terror. With the war’s approach to Moscow, he would volunteer for the front but survive by being mostly in the rear. After the war he would teach and write; he would die in 1966. This Chervyakov (Alexander Ivanovich) is not to be confused with Alexander Grigoryevich Chervyakov (1892–1937), who helped found the Belorussian SSR, served in the USSR central executive committee, and committed suicide on June 16, 1937, during an intermission of a Belorussian party conference.

235. Nazarov, Stalin i bor’ba za liderstvo, 93.

236. Nazaretyan was the courier Stalin entrusted with delivering his private letters to Lenin (or Trotsky), and the person Stalin assigned to draft many Central Committee circulars. Bazhanov, Vospominaniia [1983], 53. Kun, Unknown Portrait, 286–8.

237. Rusanova, “I. P. Tovstukha.” From 1924 to 1926, Stalin would send him over to the Lenin Institute, as an aide to the director, responsible for Lenin’s archive and Collected Works. In 1930–1, Stalin sent Tovstukha back to the Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin as deputy director and head of the archives. He would die in August 1935, and his ashes would be interred in the Kremlin Wall.

238. Nazaretyan, complaining of overwork, after a stint at Pravda on Stalin’s behalf, was returned to Georgia. Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1935, no. 6: 129–31.

239. Rubtsov, Iz-za spiny vozhdia, 33.

240. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 6: 184–5.

241. Demidov, Politicheskaia bor’ba i oppozitsiia, 61–72; Medvedev, On Stalin and Stalinism, 25. Malenkov entered a technical university in Moscow in 1921, where he became the party secretary; his wife, Valeria Golubtsova (whose aunt knew Lenin), got hired in the orgburo and obtained an apartment among the trading rows near the Kremlin at the former Loskutnaya Hotel (House of Soviets no. 5), where many young apparatchiks lived. Malenkov received an invitation to join the central apparatus in 1924, becoming a protégé of Poskryobyshev, responsible for record-keeping on personnel. Nikolai Yezhov (b. 1895) would enter Stalin’s apparatus in 1927, as Poskryobyshev was gaining ever greater responsibility, and become Malenkov’s new patron. Danilov, Tragediia Sovetskoi derevni, III: 850; Petrov, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 184–6; Rosenfeldt, Knowledge and Power, 131–2. The Loskutnaya Hotel would become the headquarters of Moscow metro construction in the early 1930s; in 1938, it was torn down as the site was opened for a larger square as part of Moscow’s reconstruction.

242. Rees, “Iron Lazar,” 33–5.

243. “One of the most talented and brilliant Bolshevik leaders,” wrote Bazhanov (who worked in both Stalin’s secretariat, under Kaganovich, and in the finance commissariat, under Sokolnikov). “Whatever assignments he was given, he handled them.” Bazhanov, Vospominaniia [1990], 122.

244. “Our dear, talented, and most valuable in practical matters Sokolnikov does not understand anything in trade. And he will bury us, if given the chance,” Lenin complained to Kamenev in a letter. At the same time, Lenin called Sokolnikov’s book State Capitalism and the New Financial Policy “very successful.” Lenin, PSS, XLIV: 428, LIV: 90. Lenin’s Collected Works (vol. LIV) contain considerable correspondence with Sokolnikov in 1921–22.

245. In 1908, Chicherin had a falling out with Lenin and went over to the Mensheviks. In 1917, the British jailed him for preaching peace and socialism (which they deemed to be pro-German, anti-Entente sentiments). Trotsky obtained Chicherin’s release in exchange for resuming the granting of visas and diplomatic couriers for the British. He became Trotsky’s deputy at foreign affairs, then, quickly, his replacement. Debo, Revolution and Survival, 34–41. See also Debo, “The Making of a Bolshevik”; O’Connor, Diplomacy and Revolution. Chicherin was a leftist. In January 1922, for example, he expressed alarm that, from abroad, “people are sending newspapers by mail to private persons. To allow this means to restore the possibility of press agitation against us. Glaring examples of the White Guard press will circulate in Moscow.” Goriaeva, Istoriia sovetskoi politicheskoi tsenzury, 427–8.

246. When Litvinov instead joined the army, despite poor eyesight, he mastered Russian and became familiar with underground revolutionary literature. Stationed in Baku, in 1898, he refused to fire upon a crowd of striking workers and was discharged. Georgii Cherniavskii, “Fenomenon Litvinova,” XX Vek: istoriia Rossii i SSSR, January 22, 1924.

247. In the U.K. still, Litvinov was arrested on September 8, 1918, and charged with encouraging Bolshevik propaganda; released after ten days, he was exchanged for the incarcerated British spy Bruce Lockhart. Pope, Maksim Litvinoff, 129–30.

248. Sheinis, “Pervye shagi diplomaticheskoi deiatel’nosti M. M. Litvoinov,” 153; Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 110–2.

249. Voroshilov detested Litvinov. Dullin, Men of Influence, 13 (citing Zvezda [Odessa], September 21, 1928).

250. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 88–9.

251. “Posledniaia sluzhebnaia zapiska Chicherina,” Istochnik, 1995, no. 6: 100.

252. Georgii Cherniavskii, “Fenomenon Litvinova,” XX Vek: istoriia Rossii i SSSR, February 4, 1924. An especially unsympathetic portrait of Litvinov can be found in the defector Dmitrievskii [Dmitriev], Sovetskie portrety, 240–52, translated as Dans les coulisses du Kremlin (Paris: Plon, 1933), 182–207.

253. Ivanov, Neizvestnyi Dzerzhinskii; Plekhanov, Dzerzhinskii; Plekhanov and Plekhanov, Zheleznyi Feliks.

254. Sinyavsky, Soviet Civilization, 126 (no citation). The arrested Christian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, after an interrogation in the Lubyanka inner prison, wrote that “Dzierzynski gave the impression of a person who was completely convinced and sincere. He was a fanatic. . . . In the past he had wanted to become a Catholic monk, and he transferred his fanatical faith to Communism.” Berdiaev, Samopoznanie, 215.

255. Dvadtsat’ let VChK-OGPU-NKVD, 20–3; Blobaum, Feliks Dzierżyński.

256. Tishkov, Dzherzhinskii [1976], 75, 78. Once, despite being himself in a weakened state, he is said to have carried an ailing cellmate on his back when they were allowed out to the prison courtyard. Dmitriev, Pervyi chekist, 53–62.

257. Sheridan, From Mayfair to Moscow, 95.

258. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 227 (no citation); Shteinberg, Ekab Peters, 119; Viktor Baklanov, “Slovo Dzherzhinskomu,” Gazeta “Dos’e,” November 3, 2002. Victor Chernov called Dzierzynski “a genuine monk-ascetic. And really a good person.” D. A. Lutokhin, “Zarubezhnye pastyri,” Minuvshee, 1997: 71.

259. Ostensibly to prevent operational data from being revealed, Mezynski instructed OGPU officials not to turn over to the procuracy any documents concerning political crimes—thereby thwarting the provision of procuracy supervision of arrests. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 305; Zdanovich, Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 142–3, citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 3, d. 60, l. 40; Fomin, Zapiski starogo chekista, 214. Fomin headed the border guards in the North Caucasus, so he saw a lot of Cheka visitors to the Kislovodsk spa. The daughter of a Soviet diplomat in Berlin recalled Mezynski “as taciturn, gloomy, and extremely polite—he even addressed me [she was then twelve] with the formal ‘You.’” Ioffe, Vremia nazad, ch. 2.

260. Deacon, History of the Russian Secret Service, 286–7 (unfootnoted).

261. Fomin, Zapiski starogo chekista, 220–1; Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 166–74.

262. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 17.

263. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 278–9. Yagoda would rebuild the Lubyanka building, erect the NKVD club and the Dynamo Stadium for police-sponsored sports teams, and oversee a plethora of monumental forced labor construction projects.

264. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 273–5.

265. Gladkov, Nagrada za vernost’—kazn’; Kuvarzin, Dorogami neskonchaemykh bitv, 53; Tumshis and Papchinskii, 1937, bol’shaia chistka, 295.

266. Frunze remarked that “I have data that secret information from the staff of the Red Army is leaking abroad. I, for example, receive information about directives earlier from Poland than from Moscow.” Mikhaleva, Revvoensovet Respubliki, 335.

267. Vinogradov, Genrikh Yagoda, 312–7 (TsA FSB, f. 1, op. 6, d. 37, l. 102–3). See also Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 228; and Istochnik, 1995, no. 6: 154–5 (APRF f. 32, op. 1, d. 1, l. 27–27ob: Unszlicht, April 21, 1922).

268. The operative Jan Berzin was briefly imprisoned. Dzierzynski admitted the latter’s fondness for trinkets such as gold rings and watches, but had him released. Gerson, The Secret Police, 69–70 (citing Pravda, December 25 and December 26, 1918).

269. Ward, Stalin’s Russia, 36–7.

270. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 1594, l. 3; Gromov, Stalin, 72.

271. Leninskii sbornik, XXXVI: 122; Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 1933, no. 36–7: 10.

272. Trotsky, My Life, 477.

273. Trotsky, Stalin, 389 (quoting Serebryakov, who claimed to have heard it from Yenukidze).

274. Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, 54–5.

275. Ilizarov, “Stalin”; Gromov, Stalin, 57–9; Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, I/ii: 118.

276. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 105–6.

277. “Stalin Closely Observed,” in Urban, Stalinism, 6–30 (at 8).

278. Ul’ianov, “Ob otnoshenii V. I. Lenina I. V. Stalina,” 197.

279. Izvestiia, April 5, 1923.

280. Sochineniia, VIII: 66–8; Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, III: 1156. See also Sukhanov, Zapiski, IV: 32–4.

281. Getzler, Martov, 218 (citing Poslednye novosti, April 11, 1923, and Sovremennye zapiski, 1923, vol. 15: 368–70).

282. Budennyi, Proidennyi put’ I: 339.

283. Trotsky, Portraits, 217.

284. Mikhail S. Gorbachev, “Slovo o Lenine,” Pravda, April 21, 1990 (quoting Alexei Svidersky). Gorbachev was interested in this vignette as an example of supposed apparatus sabotage. Svidersky, under Stalin, worked in the workers and peasants inspectorate and the agriculture commissariat; he had his ashes buried in the Kremlin Wall, after dying a natural death in 1933. See also PSS, spravochnyi tom, chast’ II: 471.

285. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 256–7 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/S, d. 13, l. 6). Nazaretyan also reported that he had received an apartment, from Avel Yenukidze, the Kremlin commandant. “The apartment is excellent” (Povarskaya Street, no. 11). After August 9, 1922, to Orjonikidze: “Koba is training me big time. I am undergoing a comprehensive but extremely boring education. For the time being they are trying to turn me into the consummate functionary, the most perfect controller of implementation of resolutions of the politburo, orgburo and secretariat.” Nazaretyan lobbied Stalin to be moved out of the heavy paperwork position. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 262–3 (RGASPI, f. 85, op 1/S, d. 13, l. 10).

286. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 262–3. See also Chevychelov, Amaiak Nazaretian.

287. “We saw Stalin often,” recalled Maria Joffe, the wife of Adolf Joffe (b. 1883), who was among the closest people to Trotsky. “We would run into him at the Bolshoi Theater premieres, in the box held by the theater management. Stalin usually showed up in the company of his close associates, among whom were Voroshilov and Kaganovich. . . . Very sociable, on friendly speaking terms with everyone, but there was not a truthful gesture in any of this . . . Stalin was an actor of rare ability, capable of changing his mask to suit any circumstance. And one of his favorite masks was precisely this one: simple, ordinary good fellow wearing his heart on his sleeve.” Mariia Ioffe, “Nachalo,” Vremia i my, 1977, no. 20: 163–92 (at 178). Maria emigrated to Israel in 1975.

288. This was established, in a major revision to the literature, by Rigby, “Was Stalin a Disloyal Patron?”

289. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1279, d. 1482.

290. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1289, l. 22

291. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 357.

292. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 351–2.

293. In 1930, some of the land would go to the construction of an elite sanitorium named Barvikha.

294. Alliluev, Khronika odnoi sem’i, 29; Iosif Stalin v ob”iatiiakh sem’i, 177.

295. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline.

296. Stalin’s dacha settlement was designated Zubalovo-4. Dzierzynski’s was in Gorky-2, where he established a GPU state farm to feed the elite. Molotov was also in Gorky-2 (from the late 1920s).

297. http://protown.ru/information/hide/6965.html (Alexander Bek interview of Fotiyeva).

298. “K istorii polsednikh Leninskikh dokumentov: Iz arkhiva pisatelia Aleksandra Beka, besedovavsheo v 1967 godu s lichnyi sekretariami Lenina,” Moskovskie novosti, April 23, 1989: 8–9.

299. McNeal, Stalin, 46–7.

300. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 262–3. See also Chevychelov, Amaiak Nazaretian.

301. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 193–5. Stalin let Balashov enter the Institute of Red Professors in the fall of 1926.

302. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 93.

303. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 194. One scholar has written that “the foundation of Stalin’s power in the party was not fear: it was charm . . . when he set his mind to charming a man, he was irresistible.” Charm there was aplenty, but fear as well. Montefiore, Stalin, 41–2.

304. Balashov added that “Stalin should see with his own eyes how the people lived, himself spend time with the masses, listen to people, but all we did was send instructions and directives to these people. The main misfortune of Stalin and of other leaders, I think, was that they spent time in the struggle over theoretical issues, all energy went to that, and concerned themselves little with living people. Is it possible to build socialism in one country, is it impossible, that’s the cud they chewed from morning to night.” After Balashov brought up the idea of what they would say if suddenly confronted with a live peasant, they jokingly began to call him a “kulak.” Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 5: 194-5.

305. Dan, “Bukharin o Staline,” 182.

306. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 4: 182. Balashov, as it happened, did see Trotsky often: he shared living quarters with Vera Inber and her father, who was Trotsky’s uncle. “Trotsky and his children (Sedov and his two daughters) often came to see him, other comrades, whole assemblies took place” (no. 5: 193). Balashov had met Kaganovich in Turkestan but did not follow him right away to Moscow in March 1922. Balashov had contracted malaria in Samarkand, which prompted him to ask for a transfer to Russia; once he had been transferred, Kaganovich took him in, from June 1, 1922. When Stalin named Kaganovich party boss of Ukraine, Balashov was transferred from Kaganovich’s Organization and Instruction Department and became Tovstukha’s assistant. Then Balashov became the politburo recording secretary, replacing Maria Burakova.

307. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 131, l. 270–1. Van Ree, Political Thought of Joseph Stalin, 148.

308. On the the Soviet system as “a vast collection of personal followings,” see Armstrong, Soviet Bureaucratic Elite, 146. One eminent scholar has suggested that the concept of patronage was the defining characteristic of the imperial Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet polities, without, however, providing the comparisons to other systems that look remarkably similar. Hosking, “Patronage and the Russian State,” which is essentially a gloss on M. N. Afanas’ev, Klientelizm i Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennost’ (Moscow: Tsentr konstitutsionnykh issledovanii, 1997). See also Orlovsky, “Political Clientelism in Russia,” 174–99; and Ransel, “Character and Style of Patron-Client Relations in Russia,” among others.

309. Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 368–9.

310. Iu. A. Shchetinov, “Rezhim lichnoi vlasti Stalina,” in Kukushkin, Rezhim lichnoi vlasti Stalina, 19 (citing GARF. F. 5865, op. 1, d. 41: letter to Yekaterina Kuskova).

311. PSS, XLV: 302.

CHAPTER 11: “REMOVE STALIN”

1. PSS, XLV: 345.

2. PSS, XLV: 346.

3. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie.

4. There were 217 strikes between August and December 1923, including 51 in Moscow. Mozokhin, VChK-OGPU, 26 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 1, por. 794, l. 141).

5. Important exceptions are Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 172–212, and van Ree, “Stalin and the National Question.”

6. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2479, l. 159–60, 272–4.

7. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 199.

8. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 646–7 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 278, l. 2; f. 558, op. 1, d. 2479, l. 262–5). The orgburo commission members included Stalin, Kuibyshev, Rakovski, Orjonikidze, and Sokolnikov, as well as representatives of the republics: Alexander Chervyakov (Belorussia), Grigory Petrovsky (Ukraine), Alexander Myasnikyan (Armenia), S. A. Aga-Maly-Ogly (Azerbaijan), and Polikarp “Budu” Mdivani (Georgia), among others.

9. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 192–3, 196. For Stalin’s handwritten formal proposal, see Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 647–8 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2479, l. 241).

10. PSS, XLV: 556–8, n136.

11. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 198–9 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 28, l. 23–4: September 22, 1922); TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 78–9; Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 181–4 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 28, l. 19–21).

12. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 220.

13. Leninskii sbornik, XXXVI; PSS, XLV: 211–3. On Lenin’s self-congratulation, see Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle, 60.

14. Lenin, PSS, XLV: 211–3.

15. As one Soviet scholar tamely put it, “The head of the government of the RSFSR, V. I. Lenin, more than once indicated in his speeches, that the RSFSR in its domestic and foreign policy expressed the interests also of the Soviet republics federated with it.” Filimonov, Vozniknovenie i razvitie RSFSR kak federativnogo gosudarstva, 22.

16. One estimate has 2 percent of writings by Marx devoted to nationalism, 25 percent by Lenin, and 50 percent by Stalin. Munck, Difficult Dialogue, 76.

17. Kun, Bukharin, 130–1.

18. Mdivani told Lenin that the Georgians would agree to “a union” of equals in a USSR but not incorporation into the RSFSR—a point Stalin had already conceded, as a politburo note to Lenin had confirmed. Kharmandanian, Lenin i stanovlenie Zakavkazskoi federatsii, 344; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 208.

19. Pospelov et al., Vladimir Il’ich Lenin. Lenin had accused Stalin of “hurriedness” in an earlier letter. At the politburo on September 28, Stalin and Kamenev exchanged notes. Kamenev: “Ilich has decided on war in defense of independence. He proposes that I meet with the Georgians.” Stalin: “We need firmness against Ilich.” Kamenev: “I think that given that Ilich insists, it will be worst to resist.” Stalin: “I don’t know. Do as you see fit.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 206, 208–9; PSS, XLV: 214. Trotsky had been granted holiday from September 13, 1922, but he remained in Moscow; Kamenev was also technically on holiday.

20. Reshetar, “Lenin on the Ukraine”; Szporluk, “Lenin, ‘Great Russia,’ and Ukraine.”

21. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 205. Lenin wrote a note to Kamenev on October 6, 1922, stating, “I have declared a fight to the death against Great Russian chauvinism,” and demanding that the chairmanship of the USSR Soviet central executive committee be rotated among the member republics, and not be controlled by the RSFSR. Lenin also carried this point (Stalin wrote on Lenin’s note “correct”). PSS, XLV: 214, 559, n136; Lenin, Sochineniia, XXXIII: 335.

22. Borys, Sovietization of the Ukraine.

23. PSS, XLI: 161–8 (at 164); Lenin, Sochineniia, XXV: 624; “Iz istorii obrazovanii SSSR,” in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 191–218; 1991, no. 3: 169–82; no. 4: 158–76; no. 5: 154–76. Stalin’s letter was drastically abbreviated in later editions of Lenin’s works. See also van Ree, Political Thought of Joseph Stalin, 209.

24. Smith, “Stalin as Commissar for Nationality Affairs, 1918–1922,” in Davies and Harris, Stalin, 51–2.

25. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 171. As Jeremy Smith almost uniquely points out, the truth about Lenin as the arch-centralizer runs exactly contrary to what is put forward in the scholarly literature (Pipes, Lewin, Carrere d’Encausse). Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 179.

26. Orakhelashvili, Sergo Ordzhonikidze; Kirillov and Sverdlov, Grigorii Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze; Ordzhonokidze, Put’ Bol’shevika; Dubinskii-Mukhadze, Ordzhonikidze.

27. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow, 14, 19–20.

28. The Caucasus bureau formally resolved to form a federation on November 2–3, 1921; on November 8, Orjonikidze telegrammed Stalin, informing him that the process had been launched, and asking for the Moscow Central Committee’s reaction. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 198–9 (citing Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, I: 208; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 231, l. 2; op. 3, d. 237, l. 2; f. 64, op. 1, d. 61, l. 16; PSS, XLIV: 255; and Kharmandarian, Lenin i stanovleniie, 96–8, 202–3).

29. Smith, “The Georgian Affair of 1922,” 528 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 61). Right after the Bolshevik takeover of Menshevik Georgia, a Bolshevik plenipotentiary in Azerbaijan (Behbud aga Shakhtakhtinsky) had proposed a South Caucasus federation in order to manage a host of volatile territorial disputes.

30. Gornyi, Natsional’nyi vopros, 144–5. Orjonikidze had taken unilateral steps to unify the South Caucasus railroad system and economy even before forcing the political union. Jones, “Establishment of Soviet Power,” 622, citing Comunisti, the party organ in Georgia (September 1921).

31. Smith, “The Georgian Affair of 1922,” 529–30 (citing Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, I: 208); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 231, l. 2. The politburo, with Lenin’s approval, decreed: “Recognize as absolutely correct the federation of South Caucasus republics in principle and as unconditionally to be realized.” PSS, XLIV: 255. On September 27, 1922, the day Lenin received Mdivani in Gorki, Kamenev had sent the Bolshevik leader a diagram of the USSR structure with the South Caucasus Federation. Under Stalin’s original RSFSR autonomization plan, Georgia was to enter as a self-standing unit granted autonomy, like Ukraine. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 186 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 28, l. 13–4).

32. Kharmandarian, Lenin i stanovleniie, 218. Pilipe Makharadze, the elder statesmen of Georgian Bolsheviks, and a person heretofore known for his internationalism, complained to the Central Committee in Moscow on December 6, 1921, that the Red Army’s arrival had “had the outward appearance of a foreign occupation . . . We must realize that the Georgian masses had become accustomed to the idea of an independent Georgia,” meaning that Georgia should not be forced into a South Caucasus Federation. Lang, Modern History, 240 (no citation). Stalin sent Svanidze to Berlin. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 257.

33. Smith, “The Georgian Affair of 1922.”

34. Suny, Georgian Nation, 214-5; Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, I: 226ff.

35. Sochineniia, IV: 162, 237, 372.

36. The imperial Russian army had opposed separate national units, even insisting that three quarters of all units be eastern Slav. Trotsky welcomed the “national” units in the Red forces in 1918–1919. Ukraine’s experience, however, whereby national units wanted to pursue exclusively nationally defined aims, changed his mind. But the desire for a single, integrated Red Army with a single command structure proved elusive in the borderlands of the new state. A Georgian Red Army was set up in August 1922, to blunt political dissatisfaction. Kudriashev, Krasnaia armiia, 17 (APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 251, l. 158). Some 97 percent of the officer corps in 1922 were former Mensheviks. In 1923 they instituted a draft of the “toiling classes”; one stated aim was to spread the influence of the party on the non-party mass, especially villagers. By 1925 they had 40,000 soldiers in Georgian units. Kacharava, Bor’ba za uprochenie sovetskoi vlasti v Gruzii, 51–3; RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 7–17.

37. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 244–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 26, l. 10–12).

38. PSS, XLIV: 299–300; XLV: 595, n210; Pipes, Formation of the Soviet Union, 274. Lenin sent a copy of his rebuke of the Georgians to Orjonikidze. On October 21, 1922, Stalin called Orjonikidze as well as Mamia Orakhelashvili, secretary of the Georgian party committee, reporting that Lenin was livid and noting that the Georgian Central Committee members had failed to code their communications, allowing interception by foreigners. Heads would roll. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2441, l. 1–2; d. 2491, l. 1–1ob. Other Georgians, including Makharadze, had sent private communications to Lenin, through Kamenev and Bukharin to obviate Stalin, also seeking once more to secure Georgia’s entry into the Union with the same status as Ukraine or Belorussia. Kamenev and Bukharin now sent their own wires to Makharadze and others in Tiflis instructing them to desist. Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, January 17, 1923.

39. Kharmandarian, Lenin i stanovleniie, 351–4.

40. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 201 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 49–50: Mikhail Okujava).

41. The other members now chosen were the Lithuanian Communist Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas (head of the short-lived Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic of 1918) and the Trotsky supporter Lev Sosnovsky, a journalist, but Mdivani objected to Sosnovsky and Stalin seized this moment to substitute his own loyalist, the Ukrainian centralizer Dmitry Manuilsky. Kharmandarian, Lenin i stanovleniie, 369–70; XII s”ezd RKP (b), 541, 551. There is a photograph from this time of Dzierzynski, Rykov, and Yagoda with Lakoba at the Zugdid Botanical Garden in Sukhum. A similar commission, headed by Frunze, had been appointed back in May 1922 to investigate a formal protest by the Ukrainian SSR that Soviet Russia had infringed upon its sovereignty. That commission upheld both Ukraine’s existence and the Central Committee’s prerogatives. TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 64–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 338, l. 122–3), 67–9 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 326, l. 1). See also Pentkovskaia, “Rol’ V. I. Lenina,” 14–5; Iakubovskaia, Stroitel’stvo soiuznogo sovetskogo sotsialisticheskogo gosudarstva, 139–40; and Gililov, V. I. Lenin, 145–6.

42. Mikoyan, Dorogoi bor’by, 433; Kharmandarian, Lenin i stanovleniie, 370.

43. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 250–1 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 43–43ob.); Kirillov and Sverdlov, Grigory Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze, 174–7.

44. Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 41 (citing RGASPI, f. 325, op. 2, d. 50, l. 35–8); Pravda, March 17, 1922 (Zinoviev’s theses); XI s”ezd RKP (b), 680–7. Lenin acknowledged that Trotsky had a point: Lenin was incapable of functioning at the same level as before, and Stalin was overloaded. Lenin, PSS, XLV: 103–4, 113–4, 122.

45. V. I. Lenin: neizvestnye dokumenty, 513–5. Rigby’s influential account of Lenin’s supposed attempt, after he had taken ill, to fight off party domination is contradicted by too many inside sources. Rigby, Lenin’s Government, 207–22.

46. Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 16–7; RGASPI, f. 325, op. 1, d. 88, l. 1, 2, 5. The state planning commission, essentially a continuation of the State Electrification Commission (GOELRO), with about forty staff, had been established almost simultaneously with the NEP. Piat’ let vlasti Sovetov, 150–2. Krzyzanowski headed the state planning commission from August 1921; Tsyryupa took over in December 1923, lasting about two years (when Krzyzanowski returned), by which time it had a staff of several hundred. Pyatakov was a deputy chairman (from 1923). Trotsky had denounced the state planning commission’s impotence almost from its inception; Lenin commented to Zinoviev that “Trotsky is in a doubly aggressive mood.” Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 42; Leninskii sbornik, XX: 208–9. Other than Trotsky, no one in the inner circle wanted to invest the state planning commission with extraordinary, dictatorial powers. Stalin had mocked him, writing to Lenin in March 1921 that Trotsky’s calls for planning resembled “a medieval artisan who imagines himself an Ibsenite hero summoned to ‘save’ Russia by means of an old saga.” Kalinin, Stalin: sbornik statei, reprinted in Sochineniia, V: 50–1.

47. Izvestiia, March 28 and March 29, 1922; PSS, XLV: 69–116 (at 77, 81–2).

48. Therefore, by Lenin’s reasoning, should socialist revolution succeed in Western Europe, the Bolsheviks could proceed to override the desires of the vast majority of Soviet Russia’s population. XI s”ezd RKP (b), 130.

49. Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 43–4.

50. V Vserossiiskii s”ezd RKSM, 11–19 oktiabria 1922 g., 31–2.

51. Lenin added: “Allow me to conclude with an expression of confidence that just as this task is not difficult, it is not new. . . . All of us, not tomorrow, not in a few years, all of us together will solve this task no matter what it takes, so that from NEP Russia will emerge socialist Russia.” PSS, XLV: 309; Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 33–4.

52. Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 30–1.

53. All told, between his return to Moscow on October 2 and December 16, 1922, Lenin wrote 224 letters and memoranda, received 171 recorded visitors, and chaired 32 meetings. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: xviii; Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1957, no. 4: at 149 (Fotiyeva).

54. PSS, XLV: 469. The substance of the conversation between Lenin and Rykov remains undocumented but likely touched at least partly on the events in Georgia. Fotiyeva’s memoir omitted the meeting with Rykov: Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 249.

55. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 534; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 250–1; PSS, XLV: 596.

56. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 416.

57. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 261.

58. PSS, LIV: 331–2.

59. The state’s foreign trade monopoly had been introduced in 1918, but with the changeover to the NEP most top Bolsheviks, including Stalin, viewed the monopoly as unsustainable and a relic, but Lenin viewed it as a defense (“otherwise foreigners will buy up and export everything of value”) and a critical source of revenue. PSS, XLIV: 427, 548, LIV: 325–6, 338.

60. PSS, XLV: 596, n210.

61. PSS, XLV: 338–9.

62. Trotskii, Stalinskaia shkola fal’sifikatsii, 74–5; Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, 279. In fact, Lenin relied on several people for retention of the trade monopoly. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 203–22; Lenin, PSS, XLV: 471.

63. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 207–22.

64. RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2, d. 13, l. 180–90.

65. PSS, XLV: 472; LIV: 325–6.

66. PSS, XLV: 327.

67. This letter of Lenin’s does not appear in the PSS. See Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 329 (APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 19); and Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 201 (who dates the letter). According to Maria Ulyanova, Lenin “summoned Stalin and turned to him with the most intimate tasks.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1898, no. 12: 196.

68. The last face-to-face encounter between Stalin and Lenin may have been December 13, 1922. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 537–43.

69. “O zhizni i deiatel’nosti V. I. Lenina (vospominaniia, pis’ma, dokumenty),” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 189–201 (at 191).

70. Lenin had established the rule that a politburo member’s health fell under the jurisdiction of the party. Ulam, The Bolsheviks, 560.

71. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1991, no. 9: 44–5.

72. PSS, LIV: 327–8, 672. Trotsky mentioned the letter to Kamenev, who, as Trotsky requested, informed Stalin. On December 20, 1922, Doctor Otfried Forster arrived from Germany and saw Lenin that day, but there is no record of him seeing Lenin on December 21 (or 22) and there is nothing in the physician’s journal about any changes to Lenin’s personal regimen allowing dictation. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 191–2; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 274.

73. Suspiciously, the Lenin letter to Trotsky was published abroad, in the Menshevik Sotsialisticheski vestnik, in 1923. Additionally, it was signed “N. Lenin,” a signature that Lenin had long ago abandoned, and recorded by “N. K. Ulyanova,” a name Krupskaya never used. The copy in Lenin’s archive has a handwritten note from Krupskaya to Trotsky to answer Lenin by phone, but when that was written in remains unknown (it may have been added to explain why there was no written answer from Trotsky). Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 387; Trotsky archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University, T 770; Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 72; PSS, XLIV: 327–8, 672; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 545.

74. The document is signed by Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. It is likely Stalin showed Lenin the text before the plenum. Sakhahrov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 215–6 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 86, l. 7–7ob). Scholars have perpetuated Trotsky’s falsehood concerning retention of the foreign trade monopoly that only he had won the day at the plenum on Lenin’s behalf. Viz. Kumanev and Kulikova, Protivostoianie, 14–5. In fact, Krupskaya, on behalf of Lenin, had also written to Yaroslavsky (a Trotsky foe), asking that he find someone to substitute for Lenin at the December 18, 1922, plenum discussion, given Lenin’s turn for the worse on December 16. It is noteworthy that Trotsky was not given, nor did he request, a written-out copy of the meeting protocols on the trade monopoly. The monopoly on foreign trade—which supposedly launched Lenin’s alienation from Stalin—does not recur in the late documents. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 203–22.

75. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 87, l. 1–2. Trotsky, in his memoirs, invented a conversation with Lenin about attacking the bureaucratism in the state but also in the party, specifically targeting the orgburo, Stalin’s source of power. Lenin, according to Trotsky, concluded “then I offer you a bloc against bureaucracy in general and against the organizational bureau in particular.” Trotsky claims he reported this conversation with Lenin to his followers: “Rakovski, I. N. Smirnov, Sosnovsky, Preobrazhensky, and others”—repetition that supposedly helped him remember it. Trotskii, Moia zhizn’, II: 215–7; Trotsky, My Life, 78–9.

76. Krupskaya sought to record the Stalin rudeness incident by writing to Kamenev that “in connection with the very short letter that Lenin dictated, with the permission of the doctors, Stalin yesterday allowed himself the rudest attack on me. . . . The interests of the party and Ilich are no dearer to me than they are to Stalin.” This letter to Kamenev exists but has no date; a date was inserted—December 23, 1922. PSS, LIV: 674–5 (RGASPI, f. 12, op. 2, d. 250); Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 1: 192; Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle, 152–3. In turn, Kamenev’s note to Stalin conveying that Trotsky had told him he had received a letter from Lenin is undated; retroactively dated “no later than December 22” by archivists, but it refers to “the congress,” not the plenum, and the congress took place in March–April 1923. Stalin answered Kamenev: “how could the Old Man conduct a correspondence with Trotsky given Forster’s absolute prohibition.” Stalin’s answer is usually dated December 22—not clear if that is correct. Stalin did not phone Krupskaya on December 22 and curse her out. The Central Committee prohibition against political discussions did not mention contacts with members of the leadership; the politburo imposed that prohibition only on December 24. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 6: 193.

77. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1991, no. 9: 43-5; PSS, XLV: 474; Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 337–8; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 6: 191; 1989, no. 12: 196; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 202.

78. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 542–6.

79. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1991, no. 9: 45.

80. Sakharov, among other documents, reproduces a facsimile of the handwritten text, which he attributes to Alliluyeva: Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 352–53 (plates). The letter exists in two forms, handwritten and typed. The handwritten version carries the title “Letter to the Congress,” evidently added later (since it was demonstrably not such a letter). Tellingly, the typed version lacks that designation. The texts do not match. Fotiyeva wrote to Kamenev on December 29 that Volodicheva had been present. Volodicheva later said she gave the letter to Stalin, but it is not clear if that is true, even though this is what Fotiyeva wrote to Kamenev (December 29). Nadya might have conveyed it to Stalin. For Volodicheva’s stories, see Izvestiia TsK KPSS,1989, no. 12: 191–2, 198; Genrikh Volkov, “Stenografistka Il’icha,” Sovetskaia kul’tura, January 21, 1989 (a manuscript dated October 18, 1963, citing conversations with Volodicheva); and PSS, XLV: 343; “K istorii poslednikh Leninskikh dokumentov: Iz arkhiva pisatelia Aleksandra Beka, besedovavshee v 1967 godu s lichnymi sekretariami Lenina,” Moskovskie novosti, April 23, 1989: 8–9. See also PSS, XLV: 474. When Volodicheva (or someone on her behalf) imagined this fanciful scene about giving the letter to Stalin unknowingly, everyone in the scene was dead, besides herself. Note also that publication in the bulletin of the 15th Party Congress did not include the December 23 dictation as part of Lenin’s so-called Letter to the Congress or Testament. The text was also not numbered as it would be later. Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 73–8.

81. Fotiyeva wrote that from December 23, 1922, other than herself and Volodicheva, Glasser (once), the physicians and orderlies, and Krupskaya, no one had any contact with Lenin. But this is wrong. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 275.

82. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 278–89 (esp. 282–3); Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2005, no. 2: 162–74.

83. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1963, no. 2: 68; Ulam, The Bolsheviks, 560.

84. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990. no. 1: 57.

85. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 653–8 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 305, l. 1–5; d. 301, l. 1–2).

86. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 459.

87. PSS, XLV: 349–53; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 375 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 4, d. 10, l. 13ob).

88. Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 58–9, n33 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 4, d. 98, l. 114–45); XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 453–4).

89. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 557–60 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 274, l. 1–2); Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 9–11.

90. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 660–2 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 275, l. 2–3); Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 9–11.

91. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 10: 178–9 (letter of Trotsky to Central Control Commission, October 1923).

92. On January 20, in another letter, Trotsky complained of having been absorbed in the recent Comintern Congress. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 660–72 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 275, l. 2–3; d. 307, l. 5; d. 308, l. 1–5); Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 12–5.

93. The Dzierzynski commission report’s conclusions were discussed and approved at the orgburo on December 21, 1922. A final draft of the Dzierzynski commission’s report, which confirmed that Orjonikidze had struck a fellow Georgian Communist, called for no disciplinary action, and instead recommended that the (former) Georgian Central Committee members be reassigned to Soviet Russia. It was approved at the orgburo on January 13, 1923, and sent to the politburo; a copy of the conclusions went to Lenin. The politburo confirmed the orgburo decision as well as the new composition of the Georgian Central Committee. On January 18 the politburo resolved to delay the discussion for one week, to allow Mdivani and others to acquaint themselves with the materials. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 330, l. 3.

94. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 331, l. 1. The Dzierzynski commission report: RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 69–73.

95. PSS, XVL: 476; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 300; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 568–9.

96. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 301. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 276–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 4, d. 10, l. 23–23ob). It may be noteworthy that Fotiyeva admitted she first asked Dzierzynski, who told her that Stalin had the materials.

97. Molotov provided another possibility: “Stalin introduced a secretariat decision not to allow Zinoviev and Kamenev to visit Lenin, since the doctors forbid such contacts. They complained to Krupskaya. She became outraged, spoke to Stalin, and Stalin answered her, ‘the Central Committee decided and the doctors believe that visiting Lenin cannot be done.’ ‘But Lenin himself wants it!’ ‘If the Central Committee so decides, we could even forbid you from seeing him.’” Chuev, Sto sorok, 212.

98. Chuev, Sto sorok, 212–3; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 132.

99. Recollections dating to 1926: Ul’ianova, “Ob otnoshenii V. I. Lenina k I. V. Stalina,” 198, 196.

100. PSS, LIV: 329; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 332, l. 5.

101. Kentavr, October–December 1991, 100–1; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 392.

102. “In the last analysis the working class can maintain and strengthen its guiding position not through the apparatus of government, not through the army, but through industry, which reproduces the proletariat itself,” Trotsky wrote in theses on industry. “The party, the trade unions, the youth league, our schools, and so on, have their tasks in educating and preparing new generations of the working class. But all this work would prove to be built on sand if it did not have a growing industrial base under it.” State finances, he urged, should be spent on state industry. Daniels, Documentary History of Communism [1960], I: 234–6 (citing Trotsky archives, Houghton Library, Harvard University: March 6, 1923).

103. Stalin won the fight, and the reorganization took place according to his proposals, as confirmed at the Central Committee plenum in summer 1923. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 663–71; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 363, l. 2; d. 364, l. 5; d. 369, l. 5.

104. Naumov and Kurin, “Leninskoe zaveshchanie,” 36.

105. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 421 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 138–9).

106. Izvestiia TsK KPSS,1989, no. 12: 198. The women in the Council of People’s Commissars secretariat were evidently ill disposed toward Stalin. Later, they would visit Stalin’s apartment at the invitation of their former coworker, Nadya Alliluyeva, for example, on the birth of little Svetlana (February 28, 1926). When Stalin opened the door, and Nadya told him to close it or the baby would get a cold from the draft, he supposedly replied, in his bizarre sense of humor, “If it catches a cold it will die more quickly.” Genrikh Volkov, “Stenografistka Il’icha,” Sovetskaia kul’tura, January 21, 1989: 3 (manuscript dated October 18, 1963).

107. “Dnevnik dezhurnykh sekretarei V. I. Lenina,” PSS, XLV: 607. See also Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle, 96. This is perhaps the first persuasively documented instance on the Georgia affair with Lenin expressing doubts not just about Orjonikidze and Dzierzynski but Stalin, too.

108. The doctors added that “Vladimir Ilich got angry at this refusal, stated that he had already read the protocols and just needed them for one question.” Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 276. Glasser refused to turn over to Lenin a copy of the “Short Letter of the CC to provincial party committees about the conflict in the Communist party of Georgia.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 9: 153 n1, 162–63.

109. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 589 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 53–73); Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 315. The dossier materials are at: RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, 33, 34. Glasser related to Bukharin that Lenin “had an already preconceived opinion of our work and literally directed and was terribly worried that we will not be able to prove in our report what he needs and he does not have time to prepare his Congress speech.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 9: 163.

110. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 501 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 31, l. 1, 3, 4).

111. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 345–62.

112. RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 34, l. 15; Trotsky, My Life, 482–8.

113. Smith, “The Georgian Affair of 1922,” 538 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 34, l. 3); Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 208. Trotsky and Lenin (as well as Rykov) shared a German doctor, F. A. Guetier, so Trotsky could get firsthand information on Lenin’s actual condition as well as use this extra channel to communicate with the Bolshevik leader.

114. PSS, XLV: 329–30.

115. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 192–3 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 26004, l. 3); Volkogonov, Stalin: politicheskii portret, II: 384–5; Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 274 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 27–9). Note: “about 5 weeks ago”—meaning late January, not December 23. In 1989, Vera Dridzo, Krupskaya’s personal secretary (from 1919–1939), suddenly remembered how Stalin had called to apologize to Krupskaya in March 1923; Dridzo did not mention this in her Brezhnev-era memoir. V. Dridzo, 105; cf. Dridzo, Nadezhda Konstantinovna.

116. Trotsky, Between Red and White, 81.

117. Kentavr, 1991, Oktiabr’—dekabr’: 109–12. Lenin was also credited with dictating “Better Fewer but Better” (dated March 2–9), a searing condemnation of state administration and of the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate, which was supposed to improve state administration. Trotsky claimed that he forced a meeting to get this dictation published in Pravda. Trotsky, Stalin School of Falsification, 72.

118. Trotskii, “Zaveshchanie Lenina [Portrety],” 280.

119. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 9: 151. Stalin that same day telegrammed Orjonikidze with word of Lenin’s letters. Trotsky claimed he informed Kamenev of the letter for Mdivani and Makharadze, but it was addressed “copy to” Kamenev as well as Trotsky. It is not clear if a Kamenev-Trotsky meeting took place on the night of March 6–7 as Trotsky claimed; no such letter from Trotsky to Kamenev was registered in Kamenev’s secretariat, while Kamenev said the meeting with Trotsky took place later, after Lenin’s hopeless condition had become definitive.

120. PSS, LIV: 329–30 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 26004, l. 1–3 [including Stalin’s response]); Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 192–3. There is one extant copy of the Stalin letter, not signed by him, written in Volodicheva’s hand; a second copy, evidently written by Stalin, has his signature—but it looks like a facsimile version. The archives contain a cover note, in Stalin’s hand: “Comrade Lenin for Stalin Only personally.” It is not clear if this note was written for this letter, however. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 395–7.

121. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1963, no. 2, reprinted in PSS, XLV: 455–86 (“journal” of Lenin’s secretaries, November 21, 1922, to March 6, 1923).

122. Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 343.

123. On March 17: “After a short time he wanted to express either an idea or a wish, but neither the nurse, nor Maria Ilichna, nor Nadezhda Konstantinova could understand him.” Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 497. The duty physician journal noted that Lenin was “given dried bread chips, but for a long time he could not put his hand straight onto the plate and kept putting it around it.” Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 430 (citing RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2, d. 13). See also Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 343.

124. Pravda, March 12 and March 14, 1923; Izvestiia, March 14, 1923.

125. Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 33–40.

126. Velikanova, Popular Perceptions, 27 (citing RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 287, l. 6–7, 13); Izmozik, Glaza, 84.

127. Trotskii, “O bol’nom” (April 5, 1923) in O Lenine, 159–61.

128. Karl Radek, “Trotskii, organizator pobedy,” Pravda, March 14, 1923, reprinted in his Portrety i pamflety (Moscow and Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1927), but suppressed from subsequent editions (1930, 1933–34).

129. Valentinov, Novaia ekoniomicheskaia politika, 54; Valentinov, Nasledniki Lenina, 13–4.

130. Sevost’ianov, “Sovershenno sekretno”: Lubianka—Stalinu, I/i: 51–2 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 1, d. 42: March 24, 1923). The editors do not reproduce the full document, only a few excerpts, and do not remark upon the absence of Stalin’s name.

131. Lenin had asked Stalin for poison on May 30, 1922, and on December 22, 1922.

132. Sochineniia, XVI: 25. The recipients of Stalin’s letter were Tomsky, Zinoviev, Molotov, Bukharin, Trotsky, and Kamenev; Rykov and Kalinin were absent. Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 347–50 (APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 1–2). After Stalin’s death, Fotiyeva did not repudiate the poison request, and she explained its absence in the notebook by claiming she had “forgotten” to record it. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 6, 217; Fotieva, Iz zhizni; “K istorii poslednikh leninskikh dokumentov,” Moskovskie novosti, April 23, 1989: 8–9 (1960s interviews by Aleksandr Bek with Fotiyeva and Volodicheva, published after Bek’s death: in Bek’s telling, Stalin was miraculously saved by Lenin’s stroke); Ulyanova, “O zhizni i deiatel’nosti V. I. Lenina (vospominaniia, pis’ma, dokumenty),” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 189–201 (at 199). Lenin’s earlier request for poison (December 22, 1922) was not recorded in the duty journal. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 6: 217.

133. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 273n.

134. Stalin tried to reassure Orjonikidze in a March 16 telegram: “I think that matters at the [Georgian] congress will go well and just like the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist party will support the policy of the South Caucasus Party Committee.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d, 2518, l. 1.

135. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 505 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 33, l. 50).

136. A telegram from Orjonikidze in Tiflis to Voroshilov and Mikoyan in Rostov, conveying that Zinoviev was en route, said of the latter: “He inclines somewhat, it seems, toward the [national] deviationists, but more than him Kamenev, who offers diverse advice to the deviationists. I spoke with Zinoviev. And you both will speak to him. All kinds of attempts at the current moment on their part will give them nothing, and will orient our comrades against Kamenev and create a schism in the South Caucasus delegation to the congress.” RGASPI, f. 85, op. 24, d. 2479, l. 1–1ob.

137. TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 106 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2522, l. 1). On March 22 at the politburo, Stalin’s theses on the national question for the upcoming Party Congress were approved. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 816–9.

138. Trotsky charged that the formation of the USSR had been decided in the secretariat, not the politburo. A March 29 collective letter of the politburo to Trotsky repudiated this lie. The next two days, at the Central Committee plenum Trotsky again tried to get Orjonikidze sacked and again got only a single vote besides his own. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 210. Kaganovich recalled that Trotsky supported the Georgian “national deviationists” fully. Kaganovich, Pamiatnye zapiski, 282.

139. Kun, Bukharin, 130–1.

140. After the call, Fotiyeva wrote Stalin a note detailing the date that the article had been “written” [sic!] and how “Vladimir Ilich proposed to publish it,” but “I do not have a formal directive of Vladimir Ilich.” Fotiyeva did not send Stalin her cover letter: “Not sent, since comrade Stalin said he is not getting involved.” Fotiyeva did send a letter to Kamenev, with a copy to Trotsky, for the politburo, noting that “not long before his last illness he told me he wanted to publish this article, but later. After that he took sick without giving final directions”—a formula that went beyond what she had conveyed to Stalin. She also noted that Trotsky had already been sent the article. Kamenev responded that Trotsky had showed him the article more than a month ago, and that, as proper procedure, he was forwarding the correspondence to the party secretariat (that is, to Stalin). Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 9: 155–6, 161.

141. Everything else in the late dictation materials attributed to Lenin—the correctness of the October path, the need to strengthen party authority and improve apparatus functioning, the dangers of petty-bourgeois corruption of the revolution, the promise of cooperatives as a way peasants could overcome the market toward socialism—comported with his views. Lih, “Political Testament.”

142. Kommunist, 1956, no. 9, reprinted in PSS, XLV: 356–62.

143. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 286.

144. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 514–8; Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 136–44; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 9: 151, 158; Tainy natsional’noi politiki TsK RKP, 97.

145. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 329–30, 335–6.

146. Valentinov, Nasledniki Lenina, 17.

147. Stalin got the organizational report, Bukharin substituted for Zinoviev in the report on the Comintern, and Trotsky was assigned to report on industry (but only after the politburo imposed revisions to his theses on the economic role of the state). Kamenev was assigned to substitute for the ill Sokolnikov and report on tax policy. RGASPI, f. 17. op. 3, d. 329, l. 203; op. 2, d. 96, l. 1; op. 3, d. 346, l. 5. More colorfully, Bazhanov has Stalin proposing Trotsky for the main political report, Trotsky refusing and proposing Stalin, and Kamenev brokering the selection of Zinoviev, who was dying for the role. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 30.

148. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 8–9. Zinoviev, in his political report, stated: “a division of labor, yes, a division of power, no,” in the relations between the party and the state. This was evidently directed at Trotsky. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 41–2. Of Zinoviev, Carr wrote uncharitably, “His ambition to assume the mantle of Lenin was so naively displayed as to make his vanity ridiculous.” Carr, Socialism in One Country, I: 170. By contrast, Kamenev would hit upon the appropriate stance, remarking of Lenin, “His teaching has been our touchstone every time this or that problem, this or that difficult question, has confronted us. Mentally, each of us has asked himself, ‘And how would Vladimir Ilich have answered this?’” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 523.

149. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 199.

150. Pravda, December 7, 1923.

151. Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 54 [1991], 99.

152. Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, 205; Izvestiia, April 7, 1923 (Petrovsky). See also Barmine, One Who Survived, 212; and Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 94.

153. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 393. Maurice Dobb printed a different version of the graph, taken from Strumilin: Dobb, Russian Economic Development, 222.

154. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 306–22 (at 321).

155. Carr, Interregnum, 32–4.

156. Barmine, One Who Survived, 93–4.

157. Avel Yenukidze, who had close contact with Stalin, put forth a less innocent explanation. “Comrade Lenin was made a victim of one-sided incorrect information,” Yenukidze speculated. “When they come to a person, who out of sickness lacks the possibility to follow daily affairs, and they say that such and such comrades were insulted, beaten, kicked out, displaced and so on, he, of course, can be expected to write such a sharp letter.” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 541. On April 18, the presidium of the Party Congress had decided to show the “Notes on the Question of Nationalities” to a council of elders.

158. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 171–2.

159. Sochineniia, V: 257.

160. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 449.

161. XII s”ezd VKP (b), 31.

162. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 171.

163. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 571, 650–2.

164. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 561–4; Sakharov, Politichskoe zaveshchanie, 521–34. Some 100 people took part in a special “national section” of the congress on April 25 for the discussion; this included twenty-four people not delegates to the congress but invited especially for this sectional discussion. Stalin reported on the results of the discussion to the congress. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 649–61.

165. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 564. Bukharin nonetheless underscored the problem of Great Russian chauvinism, adding, “I understand that our dear friend comrade Koba does not criticize Russian chauvinism severely but as a Georgian criticizes Georgian chauvinism.” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 614. Bitterness among the Georgians: Orjonikidze and Stalin had stacked the deck, delegate-wise: there were nine voting delegates from Georgia among whom only Makharadze defended the Georgian national line; Mdivani and Cote Tsintsadze (the first commissar of the Georgian Cheka) held the same views but were non-voting attendees. Makharadze declared the Georgian Central Committee, stacked with Orjonikidze supporters, “sick.” Orjonikidze charged Mdivani and Pilipe Makharadze with collaborating with the Mensheviks during the latter’s government in Georgia (1918–20), harboring class enemies (landowners) in the Georgian party, “leftism” and “adventurism.” Radek complained that “a majority of the party does not understand the significance of the [national] question.” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 615.

166. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 113. Zinoviev crowed that “the theses of comrade Stalin and the Central Committee are superlative, exhaustive, thought-through to the end, complete, and no one can say there is a mistake in them.” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 557, 607.

167. Volkogonov, Stalin: politicheskii portret, I: 160.

168. Shvetsov, Diskussiia v RKP (b), 10.

169. Stalin likened the NEP to participating in Duma elections after 1905, rather than pressing on to the revolutionary struggle. Sochineniia, V: 215, 238–40, 244–5, 248–9; Himmer, “The Transition from War Communism.”

170. Nazarov, Stalin i bor’ba za liderstvo, 85 (citing RGASPI, f. 50, op. 1, d. 58, l. 17). Fewer votes were received only by Rakovski, Orjonikidze, Ukhanov, Zalutsky, and Kharitonov, who got the fewest votes of those elected (264).

171. “He has recovered from the sensory aphasia and begun to learn to speak,” Doctor Kozhevnikov noted hopefully. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 429, (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 140).

172. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 430.

173. Angelica Balabanoff had visited Lenin at Gorki in fall 1918, after the assassination attempt, and already then noted of Krupskaya: “I thought how much older and more haggard she looked since I had last seen her. The strain of the past few months had told more heavily upon her than upon her husband.” Balabanoff, My Life as a Rebel, 186–7.

174. Krupskaya was fond of his second wife, Zlata Lilina Bernstein; the Lenins and Zinovievs had visited each other as couples in the emigration.

175. PSS, XLV: 343–8, 593–4, n208; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 279–82. The typescripts of the alleged dictation contain curiosities or odd mistakes: “as I said above,” when there is no above; remarks about both Zinoviev and Kamenev that use the pronoun he (“to him [emu]”). PSS, XLV: 474–6, 482. In connection with dictation for which a shorthand record is extant, they show that Fotiyeva tended to leave the original jumble of words, while Volodicheva introduced grammatical corrections.

176. Entries in the secretaries’ journal for many days are missing: December 17, December 19–22 (the day Stalin supposedly called Krupskaya); for the entire period from December 25 to January 16, there are just two entries, one noting that Lenin was reading Sukhanov. This was supposedly when Lenin was dictating these monumentally significant documents. “Dnevnik dezhurnykh sekretarei Lenina,” PSS, XLV: 457–86; 608, n297. At age eighty, in 1967, Fotiyeva told Alexander Bek, “We did not write everything in the diary.” “K istorii polsednikh Leninskikh dokumentov: Iz arkhiva pisatelia Aleksandra Beka, besedovavsheo v 1967 godu s lichnyi sekretariami Lenina,” Moskovskie novosti, April 23, 1989: 8–9. Volodicheva, in 1929, would claim that she first wrote down the dictation, then rewrote it in five copies, then retyped a clean copy that she sent to Pravda. Therefore, there should be at least three versions. PSS, XLV: 592. But today, there is no such first handwritten version (stenography) and no rewritten versions either. In dictation, one would expect to see multiple copies, corrections, insertions, after, for example, Lenin had gone over the transcribed drafts. Dictation rarely occurs in one clean swoop.

177. Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 73. Fotiyeva wrote that the staff at the Council of People’s Commissars secretariat waited with anxiety for her or Volodicheva to return following a summons by Lenin to find out how he looked and felt. “Sometimes after our return from Vladimir Ilich Nadezhda Konstantinova [Krupskaya] or Maria Ilinichna [Ulyanova] would read what he had dictated and share their thoughts about his condition.” Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 281. Vladimir Naumov concluded that Stalin and the rest all knew about the so-called Testament right away. Pravda, February 26, 1988. But all Stalin learned about—as the Fotiyeva letter to Kamenev (December 29) attests—was the December 23 dictation, which in fact was a letter to Stalin; no one learned of the dictation of December 24 or December 25 right away—because it likely did not happen then.

178. Kuromiya, Stalin, 64 (citing Trotsky letter to Max Eastman, June 7, 1933: Trotsky manuscripts, Lily Library, Indiana University, Bloomington). See also Bazhanov, Vospominaniia [1990], 107.

179. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveschanie, 311–3.

180. In mid-1922, when Dzierzynski was railways commissar, the politburo created a commission to inquire about purchases made abroad, which effectively constituted a judgment about Trotsky’s previous work as the commissar. Stalin, Rykov, Tomsky, and Kamenev voted in favor; Trotsky voted against. Lenin was absent; when apprised, he did not seek to overturn the politburo decision. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 298, l. 1, 6; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 3: 189–90; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 368–9.

181. PSS, XLV: 345. Volkogonov speculates that Trotsky, as a man of the utmost self-regard, may have taken the “Letter to the Congress” to mean that Lenin had anointed him as successor—“probably the most able man in the current Central Committee”—and perhaps imagined that Lenin had added some criticisms about him only to soften the blow of his elevation for the others. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 264–5.

182. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 122, 136, 139; Valentinov, Novaia ekoniomicheskaia politika, 57–8; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 335. At the congress itself, the triumvirate had its people initiate a whispering campaign about Trotsky’s supposed Bonapartism. Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 94–5; Deutscher, Stalin, 273. Far from all of this was underground: on April 19, 1923 (the second day of the 12th Party Congress), Economic Newspaper had republished Lenin’s 1921 attack on Trotsky’s proposals for the state planning commission. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 543–4.

183. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 47, 92–95, 121, 122, 136, 137, 139, 151; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 418–27. Vladimir Kosior—the younger brother of Stanisław Kosior, party boss of Siberia and one of Stalin’s men—would be expelled from the party as a Trotskyite in 1928.

184. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 423.

185. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 427. Volkogonov correctly noted that “it is remarkable that Lenin was capable of dictating these lengthy works in such a short time, especially taking into account the sharp deterioration that took place in his condition during the nights of 16 and 22 December,” a worsening noted by all the physicians—Kramer, Kozhenikov, Forster, Strumpfell, Hentschell, Nonne, Bumke, and Yelistratov. But Volkogonov failed to connect the dots: Lenin indeed could not have dictated all that work. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 419.

186. Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 56 (Zinoviev cover letter to Stalin dated June 2, 1923). Moshe Lewin correctly grasped that the message of the alleged Lenin Testament, essentially, was to fight nationalism in favor of internationalism, to fight bureaucracy, especially the party leadership, and to remove Stalin, but Lewin did not question the legitimacy of the documents, which, after all, were published in Lenin’s Complete Collected Works by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle, 132–3.

187. Later, Trotsky himself would give reason to suspect his involvement in the dictation, which, according to him, “rounds out and clarifies the proposal that Lenin made me in our last conversation.” According to Trotsky, Lenin “was systematically preparing to deliver at the 12th congress a crushing blow at Stalin as personifying bureaucracy, the mutual shielding among officials, arbitrary rule and general rudeness.” Trotsky hilariously added that “The idea of a ‘bloc of Lenin and Trotsky’ against the apparatus-men and bureaucrats was at that time fully known only to Lenin and me.” The reason it was not “known” to anyone else is that Trotsky imagined it. Trotsky, My Life, 479–81. Trotsky does not date this alleged conversation with Lenin.

188. In November 1921, for example, Stalin wrote an exasperated letter to Lenin about how Krupskaya had “again” gotten ahead of herself. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2176, l. 1–5ob. On the Krupskaya-Stalin hostility, see also Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 31 (which follows Trotsky).

189. McNeal, Bride of the Revolution, 117.

190. Trotsky, who disliked Maria Ulyanova, calling her “an old maid,” surmised that Krupskaya had shunted her aside and pushed her into Stalin’s camp, and scholars have tended to follow this line, viewing Ulyanova as on Stalin’s side, and Krupskaya on Trotsky’s. Trotsky, Diary in Exile [1963], 33; Trotskii, Dnevniki i pis’ma [1986], 76; Trotskii, Stalin, II: 254–5.

191. “It was extremely difficult to maintain equilibrium between Trotsky and the other members of the politburo, especially between Trotsky and Stalin,” Ulyanova wrote. “Both of them are people of extreme self-regard and impatience. For them, the personal trumps the interests of the cause.” Ul’ianova, “Ob otnoshenii V. I. Lenina k I. V. Stalina,” 197.

192. Blank, Sorcerer as Apprentice, 157–8 (citing K. A. Khasanov, “Tatariia v bor’be za Leninskuiu natsional’nomu politiku,” Revoliutsiia i natsional’nosti, 1933, no. 11: 30).

193. Bennigsen and Wimbush, Muslim National Communism, 51–7.

194. Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev 44–5 (TsGA IPD RT, f. 8237, op. 1, d. 2, l. 112). Antonov-Ovseenko asserted the letter resulted from a Stalin provocation, to entrap Soltanğaliev, an assertion followed by others. Antonov-Ovseenko, Stalin bez maski, 40–3; Landa, “Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev,”

195. Bulat Sultanbekov, “Vvedenie,” in Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 4–11. See also Sultanbekov, Pervaia zhertva Genseka. There were also secret informant reports to the effect that Soltanğaliev was organizing an underground congress of eastern Communists from across the USSR. Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev, 32–4 (TsGA IPD RT, f. 8237, op. 1, d. 5, l. 22–3). Dzierzynski, complaining of overwork, had assigned Mezynski to the case. Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev, 71 (TsA IPD RT, f. 8237, op. 1, d. 2, l. 117).

196. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 15–23. The interrogation protocols do not mention a request to be executed: Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev, 74–5 (TsGA IPD RT, f. 8237, op. 1, d. 20, l. 103–4; d. 2, l. 121).

197. Skrypnyk added that a Muslim nationalist was being demonstratively called to account, but not one of the many Russian-chauvinist Communists. Trotsky spoke at length, deeming Soltanğaliev not a matter of nationalism but of treason, and not treason by Turkish embassy recruitment, but by political evolution from nationalism, which “did not meet the necessary resistance from those who worked closely with him”—even now Tatar comrades were trying to protect him, citing a poor translation of his letters. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 54–7 (Orjonikidze), 61 (Skrypnyk, Trotsky), 74 (Trotsky).

198. Rakovski and Skrypnyk presented their own draft constitution and pushed for republic commissariats of foreign affairs and foreign trade. Davletshin, “The Federal Principle in the Soviet State,” at 24; Sullivant, Soviet Politics and the Ukraine, 65–76; TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 120–9 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 3478, l. 20–25, 30–7: commission meeting of June 14, 1923). Before the Moscow national Communist gathering was brought to a close, Rakovski and Skrypnyk called Stalin to account for using the terms “united” and “indivisible” to describe the USSR; he called their complaints and demands, in a sharp exchange, tantamount to confederation, in place of the agreed federation. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 270–2 (Rakovski and Stalin).

199. Hearsay exists (from Kamenev’s secretary in 1926) about how only Kamenev and Zinoviev saved Soltanğaliev from execution. More persuasively, there is a note from Mezynski expressing doubts about an informant’s allegation of secret Soltanğaliev contacts with Turkish, Persian, and Afghan diplomats in Moscow—the kind of material needed for such a treason trial. (Stalin mentioned such contacts as a fact during the party gathering.) Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 64.

200. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 85. (The version of the transcript published in Stalin’s Works differs slightly: Sochineniia, V: 301–12.) On June 6, 1923, the GPU’s Mezynski had also recommended release. Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev, 76–80 (at 80: TsGA IPD RT, f. 8327, op. 1, d. 5, l. 91–5). In his main report on the June 10 evening, Stalin went through a long discussion of how the Russian Communist party had been forged, under tsarism, first in the battle against Menshevism, bourgeois tendencies, rightists, and later in a struggle against left Communists, and that something analogous was going on with the party in national-minority regions. But, he added, the party in the borderlands could not combat rightism and leftism sequentially, with the help of one against the other, as the Russian party had done, but had to struggle against both simultaneously. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 99–106.

201. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 270–2 (Kamenev), 273–4. At some point during the four-day proceedings, Zinoviev handed Stalin a note suggesting that “a permanent commission for national affairs in the Central Committee is absolutely necessary.” Stalin wrote back: “The matter is complex: we would need to have people from every or the main nationalities. . . . [T]he national Central Committees and national province party committees will be unhappy if issues were decided without them in Moscow . . . More than that they have few people and will not give their best ones to such a commission (they’ll give their worst, if they give at all).” Stalin proposed they ask the national minority Communists themselves whether they wanted such a commission. Stalin, in his concluding remarks, rejected the commission idea (“two or three people from Ukraine would not be able to substitute for the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist party”). TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 119 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 734, l. 15–6); Sochineniia, V: 338–9.

202. In 1928, he would be arrested again for nationalism and anti-Soviet activity and, in July 1930, sentenced to be shot, but in January 1931 his sentence would be commuted to ten years. In 1934 he would be released and allowed to reside in Saratov province. In 1937 would come yet another arrest, the final one; he would be executed in Moscow on January 28, 1940.

203. Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev, 81–184 (TsGA IPD RT, f. 15, op. 1, d. 857, l. 1–249). The GPU chief in Tataria was Sergei Shwartz.

204. On July 3, the politburo approved six weeks of holiday for Zinoviev and two months for Bukharin. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 362, l. 5. The Harvard historian of Russia Richard Pipes happened to be born in Poland the day after the cave meeting (July 11).

205. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 295.

206. This section closely follows Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchenie, 547–66, but differs from him on a crucial point: there was no plot in the summer of 1923 to remove Stalin, only to contain him. See also Chuev, Sto sorok, 183.

207. PSS, XLV: 343–8. The alleged December 1922 dictation presented as a letter to the congress was meant for the wide party public; the January 4 “postscript” appears to have been for a narrower group: just the conspirators against Stalin. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 563–5. The alleged postscript can be found in PSS, XLV: 346.

208. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1991, no. 9: 45, 47.

209. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 538–9.

210. Molotov recalled the intrigue as Zinoviev’s initiative. Chuev, Sto sorok, 183.

211. Voroshilov explained at the 14th Party Congress: “In Rostov I received a telegram from comrade Zinoviev to travel to Kislovodsk. At that time comrades Zinoviev, Bukharin, Yevdokimov, Lashevich and other comrades were there [at the spa]. I arrived in Kislovodsk and at one of the private meetings together with comrades Zinoviev, Bukharin, Yevdokimov, and Lashevich we discussed the issue of collective leadership.” XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 398–9. Subsequently, in a letter to the congress, Voroshilov clarified the cave meeting: “at the aforementioned meeting in the ‘cave’ there were only five people: namely: comrades Zinoviev, Bukharin, Yevdokimov, Lashevich, and I.” XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 950.

212. By then, Voroshilov had left. XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 950.

213. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 196. Trotsky had been afforded a vacation from June 15 through September 7, 1923, owing to illness. Molotov also went to Kislovodsk on holiday.

214. Eastman, Leon Trotsky. Kislovodsk was buzzing that summer: the American dancer Isadora Duncan was there, too, with her adopted daughter; Eastman ran into them at the train station. Stalin may have had some knowledge of such comings and goings: Yefim Yevdokimov, a top official in the Moscow secret police, had just become the GPU plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus (on June 22, 1923) and Yevdokimov, in Rostov, might have had some role in looking after the security of politburo members and other important personages on holiday in Kislovodsk, although whether he supplied Stalin with information about the clandestine “cave meeting” is unknown.

215. XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 455–7. Perhaps Zinoviev imagined that, given the infamous enmity between Trotsky and Stalin, Zinoviev conveniently could serve as the arbiter.

216. XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 953 (Orjonikidze).

217. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 192–5, 198; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 557.

218. “Il’ich byl tysiachu raz prav,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 192–208 (at 197–9).

219. Oleg Khlevniuk noted that Orjonikidze allowed himself to get entangled in the intrigue. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow, 18–9. Molotov, later in life, would recall that once Orjonikidze was voicing praise for Zinoviev as a true Leninist and that when Molotov disagreed the two nearly came to blows (Kirov interceded to separate them; later, Bukharin served as peacemaker). Chuev, Sto sorok, 190–1.

220. Mikoyan, a member of the Central Committee and party boss in the North Caucasus, where the cave meeting took place, found out about it via a letter from Voroshilov, and noted that he and others in the Central Committee roundly rejected Zinoviev’s effort to weaken Stalin’s position. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 110.

221. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 196–7; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 554–5.

222. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 199–200.

223. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 201–2.

224. Stalin’s letter was marked “copy to Voroshilov.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 203–4. “If the comrades were to persist in their plan, I was prepared to clear out without any fuss and without any discussion, be it open or secret,” Stalin would later explain. XIV s”ezd RKP (b), 506.

225. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 205–6.

226. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 561 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 246, IV vyps. 104: Bukharin at the July 1926 plenum).

227. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 370, l. 7 (August 9 politburo approval for a 1.5-month holiday commencing on August 15).

228. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 565 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 374, l. 1; d. 375, l. 6).

229. Fischer, The Ruhr Crisis. Édouard Herriot, mayor of Lyon and leader of France’s Radical Party, along with his deputy, Édouard Daladier, had visited the USSR back in September–October 1922 on a trip that, although unofficial, was meant to explore restoration of commercial and diplomatic relations, despite the obstacle of unpaid tsarist debts. “[France] was too magnanimous to its enemy,” Herriot told Chicherin and Leonid Krasin (foreign trade commissar) in Moscow. “The price of this magnanimity is that we are hated by everyone and Germany does not pay us. The reparations question will be resolved very quickly. It will have two stages. First stage: Germany is too weak and cannot pay; second phase: Germany is too strong and will not pay. I am absolutely persuaded that in fifteen years Germany will fall upon us again.” Carley, “Episodes from the Early Cold War,” 1277 (citing AVPRF, f. 04, o. 42, d. 53619, l. 259, 11, 23–25: Bronsky report to Veinshtein, September 22, 1922, and l. 45: Chicherin to Trotsky, October 9, 1922). See also Williams, Trading with the Bolsheviks, 111–2; and Namier, “After Vienna and Versailles,” 19–33.

230. Feldman, The Great Disorder.

231. “The Polish imperialists do not attempt to conceal their plans to seize Russian as well as German soil,” noted a Soviet newspaper editorial. “They are endeavoring to break up the united federation of soviet socialist republics into states at odds with one another, and to place some of these states, such as Belorussia and the Ukraine, under their direct influence.” Izvestiia, January 21, 1923, translated in Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 200–1; Ruge, Die Stellungnahme, 32–59; Eichwede, Revolution und Internationale Politik, 154–75.

232. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 155–6, n2 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 2, d. 28, l. 45–6), 157–8; Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 126–7. Litvinov, reporting on a conversation with Brockdorff-Rantzau, had warned Zinoviev against the ill effects of Communist subversion in Germany. Sevost’ianov, Moskva-Berlin, I: 165–7 (RGASPI, f. 359, op. 1, d. 7, l. 95: June 5, 1923). Back in late 1918, Radek had boasted to Lenin of a revolutionary wave enveloping Germany, and been proved wrong. Drabkin, Komintern i ideia mirovoi revoliuitsii, 90–8 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 2, d. 143, l. 22–6: January 24, 1919). Radek was arrested in Germany on February 12, 1919.

233. Orlova, Revoliutsionnyi krizis, 264; Gintsberg, Rabochee i kommunisticheskoe dvizhenie Germanii, 117.

234. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 159–60, 162–4; Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 129–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 317, l. 22). Trotsky reproduced Stalin’s letter to Zinoviev: Stalin, 368–9. See also Deutscher, Stalin, 393–5.

235. Istochnik, 1995, no. 5: 116.

236. “‘Naznachit’ revoliutsiii v Germaniiu na 9 noiabria’,” Istochnik, 1995, no. 5: 115–39 (at 115–7). In Kislovodsk Zinoviev drafted radical Comintern theses on the revolutionary situation in Germany in the first weeks of August, as he prepared to return to the Soviet capital in mid-August. On his mood, see Kuusinen, Neudavsheesia izobrazhenie “nemetskogo Oktiabria”: 10. Radek on August 13 advised Brandler in a letter to be sober and cautious. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 165, n1 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 18, d. 175a, l. 275ob).

237. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 166.

238. Istochnik, 1995, no. 5: 120–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 375, l. 1–6). Bazhanov compiled these discussion notes. See also Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 46–50.

239. Kommunisticheskii internatsional, 196.

240. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 168–9 (RGASPI, f. 325, op. 1, d. 518, l. 90).

241. Istochnik, 1995, no. 5: 115–39 (at 128). The politburo also adopted Trotsky’s suggestion to have the Comintern invite representatives of the Communist parties of France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Belgium, along with Germany, for secret joint discussions in Moscow. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 168, n1 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 2, d. 17, l. 163); Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 131 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 2, d. 19, l. 161–162ob).

242. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 201.

243. Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1923, no. 9: 227–32.

244. On December 11, 1923, Lenin would request that the staff bring him the September issue of the journal; evidently he had been told about it by someone. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 650.

245. XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 456. Trotsky congratulated himself and Bukharin for having had “the foresight and imagination to stay away” from orgburo meetings. Trotsky, Stalin, 368.

246. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 550 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 246, IV vyp, s. 104: the joint plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of July 1926).

247. Bukharin, either deputized by Zinoviev or on his own initiative, seems to have written to Kamenev seeking to recruit him to as yet unspecified changes in “org[anizational] methods” even before the July 29 joint letter to Stalin and Kamenev. Certainly Bukharin took a sharper, more direct stance than Zinoviev in the joint letter dated July 29. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 206–7. Sakharov explains how the published letters (in Izvestiia TsK KPSS) are out of order: Politicheskoe zaveschanie, 553–4.

248. Orjonikidze, in his August 3 letter to Voroshilov, wrote that he had spoken to Kamenev—an indication, perhaps, of Orjonikidze’s political vacillation concerning Stalin—and that Kamenev had deemed the complaints of Zinoviev and Bukharin exaggerated. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 201.

249. Hirsch, Empire of Nations. A declaration on July 13 stipulated that “all Soviet Socialist Republics which may be founded in the future” would have the option of “voluntarily joining the Union”—evocation of world revolution. That same day Stalin removed the Trotsky supporter Cristian Rakovski as head of the government of Ukraine, planning to exile him into diplomatic work abroad.

250. Chuev, Sto sorok, 182–3.

251. Krupskaia, “Poslednie polgoda zhizni Vladimira Il’icha.” When Yevgeny Preobrazhensky went out to Gorki and recoiled from shock, Lenin’s head of security, Abram Belenky, gestured “over there, they’re carrying him.” Preobrazhensky, writing privately to Bukharin on July 29, 1923, explained that “I went, not exactly knowing how to behave, or even, really, whom I would see. . . . He pressed my hand firmly, I instinctively embraced him. But his face! It cost me a great effort to keep my mask and not cry like a baby.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 4: 186–7.

252. On August 31, 1923, in Kislovodsk, he received word that the British had consented to receiving Rakovski as Soviet negotiator in talks on diplomatic recognition; Stalin had just removed Rakovski from Ukraine in July, aiming to reduce one of Trotsky’s bases of support. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 67, l. 1. In Ukraine Vlas Chibar replaced Rakovski.

253. Fischer, Stalin and German Communism, 312.

254. The main Bulgarian Communist leaders of the uprising escaped, including Georgi Dimitrov, who went first to Yugoslavia, then to the Soviet Union, where he moved into the Hotel Lux.

255. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 139, l. 11 (Stalin to August Thalheimer). Rote Fahne published Stalin’s letter of October 10, 1923; Chicherin heard about it over the radio, and wrote to Molotov: “is this radio report a complete fabrication or is something real hidden behind it?” Molotov passed the letter to Stalin. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 169–70 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 139, l. 31).

256. Simultaneously, a conference of Russian, German, Polish, Czechoslovak, and French Communists opened under Comintern auspices in Moscow, where speaker after speaker preached to the choir, urging a revolutionary course for Germany. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 172–85 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 19, d. 68, passim).

257. Firsov, “K voprosu o taktike edinogo fronta v 1921–1924 gg.,” 118. The politburo unanimously approved Zinoviev’s revised Comintern theses, which stipulated that a German revolution was imminent and that hostile actions had to be expected from world imperialism, “but all the same the German Communist party will hold power,” because of “an alliance between a Soviet Germany and the USSR.” There were intimations that successful revolution in Germany would enable the USSR to repeal the dreaded NEP. Pavlova, Stalinizm, 208 (no citation).

258. Luppol, “Iz istorii sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo gerba.”

259. Istochnik, 1995, no. 5: 130–5. By contrast, Pravda (September 22, 1923) observed of Germany that “we consider . . . the seizure of power not difficult and an utterly realizable task. Much more complex and difficult is the question of holding power.”

260. Internatsionale Presse Korrespondenz, October 6, 1923: 957–9.

261. Kamenev had the general staff academy assess how many divisions the Entente had available for an occupation of Germany. Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 131 (RGASPI, f. 325, op. 1, d. 41, l. 47–50), 135 (f. 17, op. 2, d. 109, l. 15, 18. 19).

262. Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 132, n32; Iwański, II Zjazd Komunistycznei Partii Rabotniczei Polski, I: 156, 162–3.

263. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 101, l. 15–15ob.

264. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 103. The plenum’s second and third days were given over to reports on cooperatives, wages, appointments versus elections to party posts (by Dzierzynski), and the scissors crisis. The content of Dzierzynski’s report went unspecified in the protocols. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 102.

265. According to Deutscher, Zinoviev instead suggested he would go to Germany, as head of the Comintern, but Stalin lightheartedly interjected that the politburo could not yield either of its two most beloved members, and furthermore that there would be no thought of accepting Trotsky’s resignations. In this version, Stalin also volunteered not to join the Revolutionary Military Council, as a way of keeping harmony. Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 111–2 (no citation). It is hard to imagine Trotsky, at this moment, knowing about the “Ilich letter about the [general] secretary” and keeping silent about it.

266. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 50–1; Bazhanov, Vospominaniia [1980], 67–8; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 3: 216.

267. “The Central Committee constitutes that comrade Trotsky, leaving the meeting hall in connection with the speech by comrade Komarov, in which the Central Committee sees nothing offensive against comrade Trotsky, put the Central Committee in a difficult position. The Central Committee considers that comrade Trotsky behaved incorrectly by refusing to fulfill the request of the Central Committee to return to the meeting and made the Central Committee discuss the question of the composition of the Revolutionary Military Council in his absence.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 102.

268. The resolution was for two Trotsky supporters (Pyatakov, Nikolai Muralov), one Zinovievite (Mikhail Lashevich), and three Stalin men (Orjonikidze, Voroshilov, and Stalin). RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 103, l. 2–3. Ultimately, Pyatakov, Muralov, and Stalin did not become members, but Voroshilov, Orjonikidze, and Lashevich did, along with two others whose appointments took effect in February 1924 (Andrei Bubnov and Ali Heydar-Karaev). Nenarokov, Revvoensovet Respubliki. They joined Sklyansky (Trotsky’s right hand), Antonov-Oveseyenko (a Trotsky zealot), as well as Kamenev and Frunze; the council had recently added a number of non-Russians (Shalva Eliava, Vatslav Bogutsky, Heydar Vezirov, Inagadan Hydyr-Aliev, and Unszlicht) as well as Semyon Budyonny.

269. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 241 (citing Balashov); Volkogonov, Trotskii, II: 8–9. Balashov gives no date for this incident.

270. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State, 231–2.

271. XI s”ezd VKP (b), 279 (Tomsky). See also Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State, 231–2.

272. Brovkin, Russia After Lenin, 176–7 (citing Golos rabochego [Sormovo], September 1923 [an underground periodical]).

273. Pravda, December 13 and December 21, 1923.

274. Velikanova, Popular Perceptions, 34–5.

275. Brovkin, Russia After Lenin, 175 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 87, d. 177, l. 5).

276. Zinov’ev, Istoriia Rossiiskoi kommunisticheskoi partii, lecture 1; Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, 270 (citing Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party: A Popular Outline [London: New Park, 1973], 10).

277. Trotsky and Shachtman, The New Course, 154.

278. Gimpel’son, NEP, 347–8 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 467, l. 128–9); Brovkin, Russia After Lenin, 38 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 467, l. 2). Already on October 14, Trotsky’s October 8 letter was denounced at a meeting of the inner bureau of the Moscow party (Trotsky’s primary party organization), which prompted Molotov in the secretariat to accuse Trotsky of distributing his letter more widely than the politburo had permitted; Trotsky, for his part, accused the secretariat of spreading the document. The next day, at a special session of the Central Control Commission presidium, Trotsky’s letter was censured as an act of party factionalism. Trotsky sent his blistering theses only to internal party bodies (they were, nonetheless, soon published abroad). RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 685, l. 53–68; Izvstiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 5: 165–73; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 10: 184. Excerpts appeared in Sotsialisticheskii vetsnik, May 24, 1924. See also Eastman, Since Lenin Died, 142–3. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 174–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 685, l. 93–5), 176–7 (l. 91–2), 178–80 (l. 96–7), 222.

279. Brovkin, Russia After Lenin, 44–5. See also RGASPI, f. 17, op. 87, d. 177, l. 5 (Yagoda on the Donbas); Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 282–6 (at 284: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2565, l. 2–7: Magidov on the Donbass); and Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 55–61 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 87, d. 177, l. 93–94, d. 178, l. 15, 18–19, 22–9), 61–2 (op. 84, d. 531, l. 97–97ob.), 63 (l. 63).

280. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 409–14 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 318, l. 60–9); Pravda, November 7, 1923 (Zinoviev). In November 1923, Anastas Mikoyan came up from the North Caucasus to Moscow and was directed to attend party meetings at universities to gain a sense of the atmosphere; he claimed to have been shocked at the passion among students on behalf of the opposition. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 111. See also Daniels, “The Left Opposition.”

281. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 6: 189–93; Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 83–8; Carr, Interregnum, 367–73; Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 83–8.

282. Ivanov and Shmelev, Leninizm i ideino-politicheskii razgrom trotskizma, 343. There is no clear evidence that Trotsky wrote the Declaration of the 46. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 212. See also Carr, Interregnum, 303–7, 374–80.

283. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 6: 181. See also Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 57–8. In parallel, Trotsky, Radek, and Pyatakov also formally protested Nazaretyan’s “note-taking” at meetings and “deliberate and malicious alteration of the text of official documents.” RGASPI, f. 323 [Kamenev], op. 2, d. 64. See also Graziosi, “New Archival Sources,” 40.

284. Trotsky himself may not have been above contemplating unusual means in the fight: see the contacts between E. A. Berens, a former tsarist captain who served under Trotsky in the Military Revolutionary Council and often received special assignments, and the Paris emigre Alexander Guchkov, who had been the initial war minister in the Provisional Government and had supported the Whites. Whether Berens acted on his own or at Trotsky’s suggestion remains unclear, but the fact that Stalin did not seek to use the contacts to discredit Trotsky indicates Berens was not conducting a provocation on assignment from the GPU. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 329 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1049, l. 96; GARF, f. 5868, op. 1, d. 15: Guchkov to N. N. Chebyshev, whom he called “Admiral B”).

285. XIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1924], 371–3 (Boris Souvarine); Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 140–1.

286. Souvarine, Staline. When the Polish Communist party, which was in exile in Moscow, sent the Soviet Central Committee letters decrying the hounding of Trotsky, Stalin had the entire Polish Central Committee replaced, with no pretense of holding a Polish party congress. Dziewanowski, Communist Party of Poland, 103–10. See also Bol’shevik, September 20, 1924; Sochineniia, VI: 264–72.

287. Liberman, Building Lenin’s Russia, 79; Lunacharsky, Revolutiuonary Silhouettes, 43, 62; Lunacharskii, Revoliutsionnye siluety, 27; Eastman, Heroes, 258–9. As Carr observed, Trotsky just “could not establish his authority among colleagues by the modest arts of persuasion or by sympathetic attention to the views of men of lesser intellectual caliber than himself.” Carr, Socialism in One Country, I: 166. Deutscher wrongly deemed the reaction to Trotsky’s grating personality “a sense of inferiority,” rather than indignation. Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 34.

288. Trotsky, My Life, 504. Although he addressed his letters to “Dear Vladimir Ilich,” while Stalin wrote “Comrade Lenin,” Trotsky, unlike Stalin or Bukharin, did not visit Lenin at home. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 256.

289. Trostky, My Life, 481; Eastman, Since Lenin Died, 17; Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, 206–7.

290. Trotsky, My Life, 498.

291. Trotsky, My Life, 500.

292. V. Doroshenko and I. Pavlova, “Posledniaia poezdka,” Altai, 1989, no. 4: 3–18. Details of Lenin’s surprise trip come from his nurse attendant (Zinovy Zorko-Rimsha), his sister Maria, his wife Krupskaya, and witness reports recorded at the time.

293. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 431–2 (citing RGASPI, f. 4, op. 1, d. 142, l. 406–7); “Zapis’ Z. I. Zor’ko Rishmi,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 8 (RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2, d. 17, l. 857–76: October 18, 1923; l. 877–88: October 19, 1923); “Poslednii priezd Vladimira Il’icha v Moskvu: vospominaniia M. I. Ul’ianovoi,” RGASPI, f. 16, op. 3, d. 37, l. 1–3 (1930s); Krupskaia, “Poslednie polgoda zhizni Vladimira Il’icha (3 fevralia 1924 goda),” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 4: 169–78 (at 174). See also Kul’tura i zhizn’, 1975, no. 1: at 11 (G. P. Koblov); Gudok, April 23, 1924; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich lenin, XIII: 638–9.

294. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 8: 177 (RGASPI, f. 4, op. 2, d. 1744, l. 7–8: V. I. Ryabov, August 16, 1940).

295. “Poslednii priezd Vladimira Il’icha v Moskvu: vospominaniia M. I. Ul’ianovoi,” RGASPI, f. 16, op, 3, d. 37, l. 1–3 (1930s). Also later, a Pravda journalist referred to a section of the memoirs of another of Lenin’s nurse attendants from that day about Lenin being disappointed not to encounter members of the leadership, but no such passage is in the extant archival record of the referenced memoirs. Kul’tura i zhizn’, 1975, no. 1: at 11 (D. I. Novoplianskii, citing V. A. Rukavishnikov).

296. “Voot, voot, voot, voot!” in Russian, according to the attendant V. A. Rukavishnikov (RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2, d. 91, l. 37–8: October 19, 1923).

297. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 25, l. 110; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 1. l. 21–2.

298. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 7: 176–89; Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 197–220 (RGASPI, f. 51, op. 1, d. 21, l. 51–4). The respondents, listed alphabetically (in Russian), were Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kalinin, Kamenev, Molotov, Rykov, Stalin, and Tomsky; Lenin and Rudzutaks did not sign. Bukharin, in Leningrad at the time, sent a telegram insisting on textual changes, which Stalin ignored while affixing Bukharin’s name. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 7: 190.

299. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 266–271. Those from the 46 invited to appear on October 26 included Kosior, Lobanov, Muralov, Osinsky, Preobrazhensky, Serebryakov, and Smirnov. Those who took part in the discussion included Preobrazhensky, Osinsky, Kamenev, Rykov, Yaroslavsky, Bumazhny, and Dzierzynski.

300. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 478. Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 9, 18–19; RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 305, l. 2–4. Prior to January 1924, there was no practice of making stenographic records of politburo meetings.

301. See also Carr, Socialism in One Country, I: 157.

302. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 255–65 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 685, l. 39–49); Ivanov and Shmelev, Leninizm i ideino-politicheskii razgrom trotskizma, 344 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 104, l. 46). A less detailed version of Trotsky’s speech by Bazhanov is at: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 104, l. 31–8. They were also published in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 10: 183–7; and in Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1990, no. 5: 33–9.

303. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 250–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 104, l. 31–8).

304. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 266–8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 104, l. 1–4); Koloskov, XIII konferentsiia RKP (b), 14.

305. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 2: 201–2.

306. Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 136 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 19, d. 362, l. 117). Chicherin attended politburo meetings even though he was not a member.

307. Ruth Fischer, Brandler’s leftist rival, wrote that he and Zinoviev detested each other, and asserted that Brandler had become close to Trotsky. Fischer, Stalin and German Communism, 318, 323. See also Lessons of the German Events, 36–7; XIII konferentsiia RKP (b), 158–78.

308. The Soviet journalist Grigory N. Kaminsky (b. 1895), unlike his colleagues who wrote pie-in-the-sky blather about the strength of the German proletariat, reported the truth on October 15 from Dresden (in Saxony): the German Communists were poorly prepared for battle, reaching only those workers already affiliated. Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 135 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 293, d. 673, l. 58; op. 18, d. 182, l. 10–1).

309. Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 134–5 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 293, d. 14, l. 177).

310. Even in the coalition government in Saxony, the Communists had expended their efforts not building a movement but denouncing and intriguing against the Social Democrats, revealing the limits of even a sincere “united front” strategy ordered from above. Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 143 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 109, l. 22: Pyatakov, January 15, 1924). Adding insult to injury, the Left Communists in Berlin spent more effort battling others in their own party than preparing an insurrection. Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 151 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 2-e, d. 6968, l. 3: Vasily Shmidt to Stalin and Zinoviev).

311. Kuusinen, Rings of Destiny, 63–5.

312. Voss, Von hamburger Aufstand zur politische Isolierung, 13; Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 139–40 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 293, d. 14, l. 37).

313. On November 3, the politburo resolved to summon back to Moscow the team sent to Germany. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 216.

314. Out of Berlin, Stalin had been getting regular reports from Pyatakov, mostly complaints about the difficulties in staging the revolution, mixed with worries about the divisive politics at home (Pyatakov was close to Trotsky): “P.S. I am concerned about our internal party conflict in the USSR . . . For God’s sake, do not start a fight, or we will abandon our work here.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 785, l. 1–8ob.

315. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 785, l. 23–6.

316. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 785, l. 28. Radek wrote to Moscow that revolution had been “premature.” Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 209–13; Komintern i ideia mirovoi revolutsii: dokumenty, 428–35. Pyatakov was trying to get Stalin to focus on the German Communists, writing to him on November 14 that “All of you, obviously, do not notice that such a party in its present form cannot attract the working class to an armed uprising.” The politburo resolved to issue an open letter about German events but failed to come to agreement on the text. Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 145 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 293, d. 638, l. 20–2). Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 218–20. It was in November 1923 that the leadership of the Germans of the Volga Valley proposed setting up an “Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Volga Germans,” just after having celebrated the fifth anniversary of the First National Autonomy (oblast). GARF, f. 58s, op.1, d. 9, l. 14–10, Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 21.

317. Gordon, Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch.

318. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 311.

319. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 135.

320. “M. I. Ul’ianova ob otnoshenii V. I. Lenina k I. V. Stalinu,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 196–201 (at 198–9: RGASPI, f. 14, op. 1, d. 398, l. 1–8). Ulyanova was referring to her statement of July 26, 1926, to the plenum: see chapter 13.

321. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 212.

322. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, 190–1; Chuev, Kaganovich, 263.

CHAPTER 12: FAITHFUL PUPIL

1. “Po povodu smerti Lenina,” Pravda, January 30, 1924, reprinted in Sochineniia, VI: 46–51.

2. Trotsky’s best biographer commented that “hardly any Menshevik writer attacked Lenin with so much personal venom.” Deutscher, Prophet Armed, 93.

3. V. I. Lenin, “Letter to Yelena Stasova and Others,” in Lenin, Collected Works, 42: 129.

4. V. I. Lenin, “Letter to Grigory Zinoviev,” in Lenin, Collected Works, 34: 399–400.

5. Kommunist, 1988, no. 6: 3–5 (to Goldenberg, October 28, 1909).

6. V. I. Lenin, “Judas Trotsky’s Blush of Shame,” Collected Works, 18: 45. “What a swine that Trotsky is!” Lenin, Collected Works, 39: 290.

7. PSS, XLIX: 390.

8. Trotskii, Trotskii o Lenine i Leninizme; Lenin o Trotskom i trotskizme.

9. On Stalin’s understanding of his role as Lenin’s deputy, see the revealing typescript in the nationalities commissariat, dated 1923, and headed “Biographical Details on Stalin,” in Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 512 (RGASPI, f. 1318, op. 3, d. 8, l. 85).

10. Carr, Socialism in One Country, I: 151–202 (portraits of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and Stalin).

11. Balabanoff, My Life as a Rebel, 243–4. Carr, however, mischaracterized Zinoviev, both selling him short (“an intellectual void” and “weakness of conviction”) and overselling him (wrongly “the leading figure in the party” during the triumvirate). Socialism in One Country, I: 165, 169. By contrast, see Lih, “Zinoviev.”

12. Even Walter Duranty understood this, writing: “Yet it had occurred to me that Trotsky, who was essentially an intellectual aristocrat, not to say an intellectual snob, was somewhat out of place in the Bolshevik milieu.” Duranty, I Write as I Please, 199.

13. Yuri Annenkov, commissioned to paint Trotsky’s portrait for the Red Army’s fifth anniversary in 1923, discovered him to be not only “a healthy height, thickset, full shouldered and wonderfully muscular,” but also familiar with Annenkov’s recent portrait book and conversant about Matisse and Picasso. Annenkov, Dnevnik moikh vstrech, II: 286–7. See also Annenkov, Semnadtsat’ portretov, II: 295–6. This Annenkov book, which contained drawn portraits of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, among others, would be ordered removed from all Soviet libraries, shops, and private collections in 1928. Annenkov also wrote a devastating portrait of Lenin as anti-intellectual: Dnevnik moikh vstrech, II: 268–70. Annenkov’s 1921 portrait of Lenin was used on Soviet postage stamps and featured at the Soviet Pavilion at the 1925 Paris exhibition.

14. Lawrence Freedman invites us to consider “strategy as a story about power told in the future tense from the perspective of a leading character,” which was precisely Stalin’s achievement, within the rigid Marxist framework. Freedman, Strategy.

15. Stalin’s book based on public lectures, O Lenine, appeared with his speech to Kremlin military cadets. Zinoviev also published it at his own Leningrad publishing house (Priboi). It also came out in Ukrainian (Kharkov: Derzhavne vyd-vo Ukraïny), German (Vienna: Verlag für Literatur und Politik), French (Paris: Bureau d’éditions), and other languages.

16. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 409–14 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 318, l. 60–9).

17. Pravda, January 8, 1924.

18. On January 12, the party newspaper reported that of the 72 party cells in Moscow’s higher education institutions, 32 (with a combined 2,790 members) had voted for the Central Committee, while 40 (with 6,594 members) had voted for the Left opposition: here is where the impatient program of industry now, socialism now, appealed. Moskovskie bol’sheviki, 83 (citing MPA, f. 3, op. 5, d. 2, l. 200); Abramovich, Vospominaniia i vzgliadi, I: 22, 36.

19. Lively polemics ensued as Grigory Sokolnikov (Mr. Fiscal Discipline) went up against Yevgeny Preobrazhensky (Mr. Print Money to Finance Industry), with thuggish rebuttals of the latter by the likes of Bukharin and Nikolai Uglanov, and a stacked voting majority to back them up. Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, II: 34, 101; XIII konferentsiia RKP (b); Vil’kova, RKP (b): vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 390–406.

20. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 385–93 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 109, l. 6ob–7ob); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 107, l. 14–7 (stenographic records of Central Committee plenums began at this January 14–15, 1924, gathering); XIII konferentsiiia RKP (b), 95. Provincial affiliates of the party control commission were activated against oppositionists: Olekh, Povorot, kotorogo ne bylo, 146 (citing Dni, December 19, 1923).

21. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 107, l. 100–1; X s”ezd, 524; Sochineniia, VI: 15. Schapiro, Origin of the Communist Autocracy [1977], 317–8. Radek correctly objected that no Party Congress had lifted the veil of secrecy over this punishment clause, but no body could hold Stalin to account. Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, 230; Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 403–8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 109, l. 13ob– 14).

22. When Radek charged that Trotsky was “being baited,” Stalin seized the moment, in his closing speech on January 18, 1924, to rehearse the September 1923 incident when “Trotsky jumped up and left the meeting. You will recall that the Central Committee plenum sent a ‘delegation’ to Trotsky to request that he return to the meeting. You will recall that Trotsky refused to comply with this request.” “Zakliuchitel’noe slovo (18 ianvaria [1924 g.],” Sochineniia, VI: 27–45 (at 38–39). But the mauling had become so relentless that Stalin felt compelled to answer criticisms that he had failed to preemptively ban Trotsky’s December 11 article on The New Course: “that would have been a very dangerous step on the part of the Central Committee. Just try to ban an article of Trotsky’s that has already been read aloud in Moscow districts!” (33).

23. Pravda, January 26, 1924. See also Halfin, Intimate Enemies; Robert Service, “How They Talked: The Discourse of Politics in the Soviet Party Politburo in the 1920s,” in Gregory and Naimark, Lost Politburo Transcripts, 121–34. Stalin also had the 13th party conference name a military reform commission, headed by Sergei Gusev, a member of the party’s Central Control Commission, the battering ram Stalin’s men controlled. The conference confirmed a December 5 decision to enroll 100,000 new worker party members.

24. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 576 (citing RGASPI, f. 16, op. 1, d. 98, l. 107).

25. Stalin was the lead but not the sole pummeler of the absent Trotsky. Alexander Shlyapnikov, the trade unionist and one-time coleader of the outlawed Workers’ opposition, shredded Trotsky and the Left opposition for their complicity in repressing the Workers opposition back in 1921. Shliapnikov, “Nashi raznoglasiia,” Pravda, January 18, 1924.

26. Trotsky, My Life, 515.

27. Only belatedly, in late August 1923, after his condition had modestly improved, had the regime revealed the gravity of his illness, but even after this disclosure official reports had continued to contain unwarranted doses of optimism (“substantial improvement . . . great strides”). Pravda, August 30, 1923; Pravda, October 21, 1923 (Health Commissar Semashko). See also Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 414 (citing RGASPI, f. 16, op. 3, d. 6, l. 7), 430 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d, 307, l. 410); Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 646, 650; and Tumarkin, Lenin Lives!, 115–7. Kamenev had instructed the artist Yuri Annenkov to drive out to Gorki for what was thought to be a final portrait. Krupskaya “said there was no question of a portrait,” Annenkov recalled. “And, indeed, Lenin could serve solely as an illustration of his illness, reclining on a chaise-lounge, wrapped in a blanket and looking past us with the helpless, twisted, babyish smile of a man in his second infancy.” Annenkov, Dnevnykh moikh vstrech, II: 271; Annenkov, “Vospominania o Lenine,” 141–9.

28. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 658–9; Krupskaia, “Chto nravilos’ Il’ichu iz khudozhestvennoi literatury,” Narodnyi uchitel’, 1927, no. 1: 4–6. On January 19, at the 11th All-Russia Congress of Soviets, Mikhail Kalinin told the delegates that “rays of hope are already visible” in Lenin’s battle to overcome his illness and return to work. “Hurrah,” shouted the congress, an episode carried in the newspaper: Izvestiia, January 20, 1924.

29. Bukharin showed up nearly every Saturday. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 4: 174–5.

30. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 299–301; Kun, Bukharin, 135. Later, Bukharin’s presence at Lenin’s death bed would be erased by Stalin’s henchmen: Mikoian, Mysli i vospominaniia, 235–6. Krupskaya, too, even in her unpublished memoirs, insisted Bukharin had not been allowed in. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 433 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 175).

31. Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 361 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 33, d. 307, l. 175–6); Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 435.

32. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 662, 664; Prof. V. Osipov, “Bolezn’ i smert’ V. I. Lenina,” Ogonek, 1990, no. 4; Ul’ianova, “O Vladimire Iliche,” no. 3; N. Petrenk [B. Ravdin], “Lenin v Gorkakh: bolezn’ i smert’,” Minuvshee: Istoricheski almanakh, 1986, no. 2: 189–91.

33. Mikoyan wrote that on the afternoon of January 21, he went to Stalin’s apartment to discuss strategy, and that “some 30 or 40 minutes into our conversation an excited Bukharin burst in and did not say but shrieked that Maria had called from Gorki and said that ‘Lenin has just died at 6:50 p.m.’” This was a lie, designed to undermine the fact that Bukharin was in Gorki with the dying Lenin; the call about Lenin’s death came through not to Stalin’s apartment but to the Congress of Soviets in session. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 113.

34. Ioffe, Vremia nazad, ch. 4.

35. Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich also organized a special two-car train for the health commissar and the team of doctors who would perform the autopsy and embalming, as well as family members not already at Gorki (Lenin’s sister Anna and brother Dmitry). Bonch-Bruevich, “Smert’ i pokhorony Vladimira Il’icha”; Pravda, January 21, 1925; Otchet Komissii TsIK SSSR, 5.

36. Bonch-Bruevich, “Smert’ i pokhorony Vladimira Il’icha,” 189–90. Note that Bonch-Bruevich does not mention Bukharin going to Gorki on the sled-tracked vehicles or train, but has him in the room saying good-bye with the others.

37. Izvestiia, January 24, 1922.

38. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 576 (citing RGASPI, f. 16, op. 1, d. 44, l. 1).

39. Izvestiia, January 25, 1924; Pravda, January 26, 1924. Nikolai Semashko, Soviet health commissar, observed of Lenin’s cranial blood vessels that “when struck with a tweezer they sounded like stone.” Pravda, January 24, 1924; Semashko, Otchego bolel, 35. See also Fischer, Life of Lenin, 672. The published reports, citing “an incurable disease of the blood vessels,” seemed to be saying that Lenin was beyond the doctors’ help; they could not have saved him and should not be blamed. But whereas Semashko stressed Lenin’s “superhuman mental activity, life of constant agitation and ceaseless anxiety,” Doctor Abrikosov emphasized the hereditary factors in Lenin’s arteriosclerosis. Izvestiia, January 25, 1924; Tumarkin, Lenin Lives!, 172, n34.

40. Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 87.

41. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 409 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 135: doctor’s notes discovered in December 1935 by the head of the Kremlin medical administration—Khodorovsky—and placed in secret archive).

42. Service, Lenin, III: 255–62. Lenin had consulted specialists in nervous disorders at least as early as 1900, while in Germany. RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 385, l. 1.

43. Duranty, “Lenin Dies of Cerebral Hemorrhage”; Pravda, January 24, 1924. The congress did resume, then closed on January 29, after approving the new constitution of the USSR. XI Vserossiiskii s”ezd Sovetov.

44. Maksimov, “U tovarsihcha Stalina (po vospominaniiam byvshego detkora),” Raboche-Krest’ianskii korrespondent, 1934, no. 10: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 649, l. 208 (Viktor Maksimov).

45. Ia. G. Zimin, “Sklianskii Efraim Markovich,” in Nenarokov, Revvoensovet Respubliki, 56–70 (at 68); Zetkin, We Have Met Lenin, 73–5; Gil’, Shest’ let s V. I. Leninym, 100–1; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 664–79.

46. Izmozik, Glaza, 84.

47. Sevost’ianov, “Sovershenno sekretno,” I/i: 52–3 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op, 2, d. 1, l. 1).

48. Izmozik, Glaza, 160–1. Izmozik maintains that unlike party and Soviet officials, Chekists did not dress up the situation in their domains, although he argues their reports became “less objective” by the end of the 1920s.

49. RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 325, l. 4–6.

50. Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 291–2.

51. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 63.

52. Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 88–9.

53. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 266 (citing RGVA, f, 33987, op. 3, d. 80, l. 587; RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 27088, l. 1; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 816, l. 75–6).

54. Trotsky, My Life, 508; Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 131–4.

55. Izvestiia, January 25 and January 26, 1924.

56. New York Times, January 28, 1924 (Walter Duranty). Later, Duranty recreated a conversation with a French journalist of Le Temps in Moscow. “My God, what an opportunity to miss! Achilles sulking in his tent. Quel idiot. As if he couldn’t understand that the whole strength of his position was his reputation with the masses as Lenin’s chief aide and supporter . . . If he had come to Moscow. . . he would have stolen the whole show, as you say in America.” Duranty, I Write as I Please, 225–6. This was Henri Louis-Victor-Mars Rollin, who, Duranty omits to mention (or did not know), was perceived as a Bolshevik agent by the Quai d’Orsay. Rollin wrote what for decades was the major historical work (L’apocalypse de notre temps, 1939) on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

57. “One could feel in his letter,” Natalya Sedova’s mother observed of mail they received from Lev in Moscow, “bitter bewilderment and diffident reproach.” Trotsky, My Life, 511. See also Patenaude, Stalin’s Nemesis, 170–3.

58. RGAKFD, ed. khr. 1-14097 (year 1924).

59. Trotsky, Stalin, 381.

60. “Lenin is No More” was wired to Moscow for publication in Pravda and Izvestiya: Pravda, January 24, 1924; Izvestiia, January 24, 1924; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 266 (citing RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 27088, l. 1).

61. “Po povodu smerti Lenina,” Pravda, January 30, 1924; Sochineniia, VI: 46–51. Stalin’s name was absent from the original list of speakers decided at the politburo; on a subsequent list, he was added as “conditional” (uslovno). What to make of this remains unclear. Krupskaya’s name appeared on none of the speaker lists, but obviously there could never have been any doubt she would speak (as she did). RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2s, d. 47, l. 1–4. Stalin gave another speech to the Kremlin military school cadets on January 28, 1924.

62. “Zavëty Lenina” was the title of the front-page essay in Izvestiya on January 24, 1924.

63. Izvestiia, January 27, 1924. Ulam, normally a shrewd analyst, misjudged the speech as out of place. Ulam, Stalin, 235.

64. Pravda, January 30 and January 31, 1924.

65. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 678. In July 1929, the politburo would decide to build a permanent mausoleum, a granite copy of the wooden one; it would be completed in 1933.

66. Adolf Joffe, who was very close to Trotsky, wrote to Zinoviev proposing that no one replace Lenin as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, suggesting instead a presidium consisting of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev; if, however, they did decide on a single government head, Joffe suggested it be Trotsky. Whether Joffe acted on his own or had cleared his letter with Trotsky remains unknown. Vasetskii, Trotskii, 193.

67. Pravda, February 12, 1924, in Sochineniia, VI: 52–64.

68. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 6: 200 (RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2, d. 48, l. 41).

69. A three-day Central Committee plenum concluded on January 31 by rechristening the plan for 100,000 workers to join the party—the “Lenin Enrollment.” Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XI: 679. The Lenin Enrollment would claim 240,000 new party members.

70. Shelestov, Vremia Alekseia Rykova, 222–3. There was a second executive position, which Lenin had also held—chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense—and Kamenev got that. Lenin’s sister and wife remained in the Kremlin apartment (until 1939), and preserved Lenin’s room as it had been. Stalin evicted Krupskaya and Maria Ulyanova from Lenin’s Gorki dacha and initially considered taking it for himself, but then it became a museum. In April 1955, Khrushchev would open Lenin’s Kremlin suite to the public (more than 2 million people would visit); in 1994, all the contents of Lenin’s Kremlin apartment-museum were removed to his former Gorki dacha, and the senate was again sealed off from the public. From 1994 through 1998, a major renovation took place of the interior of the Imperial Senate, transforming it beyond recognition.

71. Artamonov, Spetsob”ekty Stalina, 33–4; Korotyshevskii, “Garazh osobogo znacheniia.” The Special Purpose Garage had been overseen by Lenin’s principal driver, Stepan Gil’, but even before Lenin’s death, Stalin’s main driver, Pavel Udalov, had replaced him. Nikolai Solovyov, another of Stalin’s drivers, had been one of General Brusilov’s drivers. The Soviet regime had bought seventy-three Silver Ghosts in England between 1922 and 1925 (when the model was discontinued) for Lenin and others in the elite. Despite the USSR’s icy temperatures and snowfalls, they preferred the open-top models.

72. The villa was built in 1922–3, but the property had belonged to Nikolai Smetskoi (sometimes written as Smetskii), and the facility was registered as Resort No. 3 of the central executive committee. No. 1 was in Kursk province (Ivanov-Lgovsky county) and No. 2 in Crimea (Gurzuf). Artamonov, Spetsob”ekty Stalina, 128.

73. Trotsky, My Life, 509.

74. Rikhter, Kavkaz nashikh dnei.

75. Hoover Institution Archives, N. A. Lakoba papers, 1–23. See also Lakoba, “Ia Koba, ty Lakoba,” 50–4. Trotsky came with bodyguards, again for his “safety.” On January 6, 1924, Abram Belenky, the head of Lenin’s bodyguard detail, wrote a letter to Lakoba, marked “Completely Secret,” without letterhead: “The doctors have forbidden com. Trotsky from working and [ordered] that he depart immediately on a two month vacation for recuperation in the south. It seems to me we could not pick a better spot than by you in Sukhum, especially since the doctors insist on Sukhum. I think the best place to put him up would be the Smitskovo dacha, that is, where in the past you put up comrades Dzierzynski and Zinoviev.” Belenky noted that the doctors were prescribing complete tranquility, and “I ask you dear Comrade Lakoba to use your accurate eye and solicitude and to take him under your wing, so that we here will be utterly relaxed.” Kauzov will be responsible for Trotsky’s food and security. “I am certain that you have understood me in everything. It’s clear that there should be no meetings and parades. . . . Comrade Kauzov will give you photographs which I took in Zubalovo. Heartfelt and warm greetings to you from comrades Dzierzynski and Yagoda.” Lakoba Papers, 1–28.

76. While the couple was still en route to Sukhum, Trotsky’s wife Natalya Sedova had noted how “the uncertainty tried one’s patience: what sort of life would there be at Sukhum? Would we have enemies or friends about us there?” Trotsky, My Life, 508.

77. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 307–8 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 2, d. 9, l. 247).

78. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 267 (citing Trotsky archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS/Russ. 13.1, 8967–86, folder 1/2, 1–2); Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 89; Trotsky, My Life, 511.