Stalin: A Biography

by Robert Service

  This would not have mattered in the annals of Russian and global history if a second event had not spun him around in the winter of 1916–17. The cause was political tumult in Petrograd. Nicholas II spent an unhappy Christmas. The one bright spot was Brusilov’s December 1916 offensive, which pushed the Germans back several miles. It was a long-overdue Russian military success. But the rest of the news was grim. Leaders of the conservative and liberal parties in the Fourth State Duma murmured ever more openly about the need for a change of regime if the armed forces were ever to defeat the Central Powers. One of them, Alexander Guchkov, sounded out the generals for a coup d’état. The dynasty’s reputation was in tatters. Rasputin, the ‘holy man’ who had helped to alleviate the effects of the haemophilia of the heir to the throne Alexei, had been assassinated in December but the stories about him — his gambling, philandering, blaspheming and political venality — continued to cling to Nicholas and Empress Alexandra. In fact it is doubtful that the liberals or conservatives could have done much better. The prolongation of the war put immense and inevitable strain on transport and administration; it also made unavoidable the printing of money to finance the war effort, and this was bound to cause inflation. Nicholas II dispersed the Duma on 26 February 1917. He was determined to keep hold of the situation.

  This might have worked if popular opinion had not been so hostile to the Romanovs. Peasants were complaining about fixed grain prices and about the deficit in industrial goods as the result of the priority given to the production of armaments and military equipment. Garrison soldiers disliked the possibility that they might be mobilised to the front. Workers were angry about the deterioration of living and working conditions. Even if they had gained higher wages, the effect was ruined by the devalued currency. Factory strikes occurred in December 1916 and were put down with severity. Yet the grievances remained.

  Unbeknown to the revolutionaries in Achinsk, industrial conflict recurred in Petrograd in the last week of February 1917. Trouble erupted among female textile workers on International Women’s Day and quickly spread to the workforces in the Putilov armaments plant. The dispatch of garrison troops to control the crowds was counterproductive because soldiers took the side of the strikers and either joined them or handed over their weapons. Order collapsed in the capital. Police fled, generals panicked. The politicians in the dispersed Fourth State Duma sensed that an opportunity to settle accounts with the Romanov monarchy had at last arrived, but lacked the nerve to take action. Even the revolutionary parties were in a quandary. The suppression of the December strikes made them pause for thought. The clandestine networks of Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had not yet been repaired and morale was still at a low ebb. But the fervour of the strikers was unquenchable, and soon there were demands for the formation of a Petrograd Soviet.

  Nicholas II was late in comprehending the scale of the opposition. Hurrying back from Mogilëv towards Petrograd, he was told the game was already up. He took the advice of the Supreme Command; he consulted the speaker of the dispersed State Duma, Mikhail Rodzyanko. At first he wanted to preserve the dynasty by transferring the throne to his haemophiliac son Alexei. No one at court thought this sensible. Then he approached his brother Grand Duke Mikhail, but Mikhail refused the offer. Nicholas II succumbed and on 2 March abdicated to public delight across the empire. Euphoric crowds took to the streets of every town and city.

  News travelled to Siberia along the telegraph lines faster than newspapers could be carried by rail. The Bolshevik group in Achinsk was jubilant. Nicholas the Bloody had been overthrown. The dynasty was at an end. The revolutionaries in the town gathered together regardless of party affiliation just after Grand Duke Mikhail’s refusal was made known. A spirited discussion followed. Feeling the need to contribute actively to the political outcome, many exiles signed a telegram congratulating the Grand Duke on his civic gesture. Stalin later claimed that his friend Kamenev appended his signature. Kamenev vehemently rejected the accusation; and even Stalin admitted that Kamenev had immediately regretted his action. In March 1917, in any case, Kamenev and Stalin agreed on their strategic objectives. A Provisional Government was formed on 3 March with the sanction of the Menshevik-led Petrograd Soviet. The Prime Minister would be the liberal Prince Georgi Lvov and liberals, especially the Constitutional-Democrats (or Kadets), dominated the cabinet. Only one socialist, the Socialist-Revolutionary Alexander Kerenski, became a minister. The original Bolshevik scheme for the establishment of a ‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship’ had been thwarted, and Kamenev and Stalin were willing — like most Mensheviks, most Socialist-Revolutionaries and many Bolsheviks — to give the Provisional Government their support conditional on ministers promulgating the basic civil freedoms and limiting themselves to a defensive war against the Central Powers.

  As quickly as they could get tickets, the Bolsheviks in Achinsk made their way from Krasnoyarsk along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow and then onwards to Petrograd. Chief among them were Kamenev, Stalin and former Duma deputy Matvei Muranov. The experience was very different from the earlier trip each had made towards their place of exile. They travelled as normal passengers rather than in the arrest wagon. Because of their recent detention near the main line they were going to reach Petrograd before most other leading exiles, not to mention the émigrés. Kamenev and Stalin in particular were committed allies; they agreed on policy, and Stalin was not keen to resurrect the old business of Kamenev’s behaviour at the 1915 trial. Their intention was to seize control of the Bolshevik Central Committee in the capital. They aimed to make up for years lost in Siberian detention.

  On 12 March 1917 the three of them stepped off the train at the Nicholas Station in east-central Petrograd. Light snow was falling, but Stalin and his companions hardly noticed. Kureika had accustomed them to a lot worse. They were back in Petrograd at last! In his hands Stalin carried a wicker suitcase of medium size; his personal possessions were few and he had no savings to his name. He was wearing the same suit he had worn on his departure in July 1913.13 The one sartorial difference was that he had valenki on his feet. These were the long padded boots worn by Russians in the winter.14 He was pinched-looking after the long train trip and had visibly aged over the four years in exile. Having gone away a young revolutionary, he was coming back a middle-aged political veteran. Stalin had written to alert his old friend Sergei Alliluev of their arrival.15 He expected him to be at the station and, perhaps, to have passed on the message to the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee. Fellow passengers and railway personnel had been fêting Stalin, Kamenev and Muranov as heroic fighters against the fallen regime. An honorific reception in Petrograd was anticipated.

  In fact no one turned up at the Nicholas Station. There were no bands, no speeches, and no ceremonial escort to party headquarters at the house of the Emperor’s former mistress Matilda Kseshinskaya.16 They had to fend for themselves. When they had left the capital for Siberia, they had been Central Committee members and they expected to be treated with due decorum. They had a rude surprise.

  The fact that Shlyapnikov and Molotov, who led the Bureau, had not greeted them was not an accident. Kamenev, Muranov and Stalin expected to be given seats on the Bureau alongside the existing members who had much lower standing in Bolshevism; but the Bureau had other thoughts. If Stalin was willing to overlook Kamenev’s breach of revolutionary etiquette, the Bureau was not so indulgent. He had sinned; he had shown no repentance. It would also seem that Stalin’s reputation for uncomradely behaviour had preceded him. A struggle for leadership in the Russian Bureau was unavoidable. There was also a political angle to this. The Russian Bureau under Shlyapnikov and Molotov had objected to any support, however conditional, for the Provisional Government. They advocated outright opposition. They also knew that there were many Bolshevik militants not only in the districts of the capital but also in the provinces who felt the same. They edited the new factional newspaper Pravda on this basis and strove to win all Bo
lsheviks to their side. They were already not best pleased by Kamenev’s arrival, and when they discovered which side he — together with Stalin and Muranov — was taking in the current political debate they were determined to avoid having rank pulled on them.

  The position was clarified on 12 March when the Bureau decided to include only those new members ‘whom it considers useful according to its political credo’.17 Muranov fell easily into this category and was given a place. Then Stalin’s case came up for consideration:18

  About Stalin it was reported that he was an agent of the Central Committee in 1912 and therefore would be desirable in the membership of the Bureau of the Central Committee, but in the light of certain personal features which are basic to him the Bureau of the Central Committee reached its decision to invite him [to join] with an advisory place.

  Stalin had been snubbed. Even his career had been misrepresented; for he had not been a mere ‘agent’ of the Central Committee but a co-opted full member since 1912. Exactly which ‘features’ had riled the Bureau was not specified. His underhandedness in political and personal dealings had probably done for him. Kamenev, though, was entirely rejected for membership: he was allowed to contribute to Pravda only on condition that he did this anonymously; he was also required to give a satisfactory explanation of his past behaviour.19

  Stalin made his way to the Alliluev apartment after the Bureau meeting. He had written to Olga Allilueva in 1915 saying that he would visit them as soon as his exile was over.20 When he paid his call, only daughter Anna was at home. Her parents and brother Pavel were out at work and the younger daughter Nadya was having a piano lesson elsewhere. Her brother Fëdor (or Fedya) too was out.21 By the end of the day the whole Alliluev family had returned. They talked with their visitor late into the night. A bed was offered to him in the sitting room, where Sergei also slept; and Olga and the girls went off to the bedroom. Joseph made a positive impression on everybody. Anna and Nadya were very taken with him. Sixteen-year-old Nadya especially enjoyed his jollity. The noise from the bedroom disturbed Sergei, who had to work next day at the electricity station. But Joseph intervened on the girls’ behalf: ‘Leave them alone, Sergei! They’re only youngsters… Let them have a laugh!’ Next day, before he left for the Russian Bureau, he asked if he could lodge with them. The apartment was not big enough for all of them but he was held in such affection that the family decided to look for a larger one. Anna and Nadya were given the task. Joseph was equally keen: ‘Do please make sure you keep a room for me in the new apartment.’22

  Stalin’s priority was to sort out his position in the Russian Bureau. After leaving the Alliluevs, he hurried to headquarters and raised a fuss. This time he was more successful. The result was an agreement to find work for Kamenev on the ground that Bolshevik émigrés, presumably including Lenin, continued to value him highly. Stalin was added to the Pravda editorial board. Kamenev joined him on 15 March and Stalin was appointed to the Presidium of the Bureau on the same day.23 Persistence and experience were paying off. Molotov was pushed out of the Bureau.24 Evidently there had been a fierce dispute and Shlyapnikov and Molotov had lost. Pravda began to toe a line approved by Stalin and Kamenev, and the Russian Bureau ceased to demand the Provisional Government’s removal.

  The position of Stalin and Kamenev was soon to be a matter of shame for them, and Stalin apologised for his failure to take a more radical view; but he had not been as moderate as his later enemies, especially Trotski, liked to suggest. It is true that he refused to attack the Mensheviks in public. Equally undeniable is Stalin’s espousal of a policy of mere ‘pressure’ upon the Provisional Government.25 Yet he consistently denounced those Mensheviks who advocated straightforward defence of the country. Stalin demanded more; he proposed that Bolsheviks should co-operate only with Mensheviks who accepted the line of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal Conferences and actively campaigned for an end to the Great War. He did not want unity at any cost.26 Moreover, he wanted the Petrograd Soviet to go on intimidating the Provisional Government. The Soviet, he declared, should work to bind ‘metropolitan and provincial democracy’ together and ‘turn itself at the necessary moment into an organ of revolutionary power mobilising all the healthy forces of the people against counter-revolution. The immediate objective was to ensure that the Provisional Government did not go over to the side of the counter-revolution. The speedy convocation of a constitutional assembly was essential.27

  Nor did Stalin fail to introduce a theme untouched by Pravda before he returned: the national question. He demanded linguistic equality for the non-Russian nations. He called for regional self-rule. More than any other Bolshevik in Petrograd in March 1917 he understood that Bolshevism had to appeal to the peoples of the borderlands. Deliberately he opposed talk of federalism.28 Orthodox Bolsheviks aimed at forming a unitary state and Stalin agreed with this; but ‘self-determination’ was possible within the framework of the policy he and Lenin had proposed before the war. ‘National oppression’ had to be eradicated, and the Provisional Government as a cabinet pursuing the interests of capitalism had not shown the necessary sympathy.29

  Kamenev and Stalin continued with their combative programme at the unofficial gathering of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks from across the country which was held at the end of March 1917. The Russian Bureau selected him to speak to the joint debate on the Provisional Government. His criticism of the post-Romanov regime was a damning one:30

  The elites — our bourgeoisie and the West European one — got together for a change in the décor, for the substitution of one tsar for another. They wanted an easy revolution like the Turkish one and a little freedom for the waging of war — a small revolution for a large victory. Yet the lower strata — workers and soldiers — deepened the revolution, destroying the foundations of the old order. Thus there were two currents in motion — from below and from above — which put forward two governments, two different forces: 1) the Provisional Government supported by Anglo-French capital, and 2) the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Power was divided between these two organs and neither of them has the fullness of power. Tensions and conflict between them exists and cannot but exist.

  Stalin finished by saying that political rupture with the ‘bourgeoisie’ was desirable and that ‘the sole organ capable of taking power is the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on an All-Russia scale’.31

  A separate session of Bolsheviks took place. It was here that Kamenev denounced the warmth of official Menshevik support for the Provisional Government and urged the need to back the Petrograd Soviet.32 The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, after all their organisational divisions since 1903, belonged to the same party once again. They were the largest two factions in the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. At the central level they maintained separate bodies, but across the country — especially outside Petrograd — they worked together. This was an unsustainable situation. The right wing of Menshevism advocated vigorous national defence whereas all Bolsheviks wanted a robust campaign for a multilateral peace. Kamenev and Stalin planned to resolve matters by calling upon the anti-defencist Mensheviks to split themselves off from their faction’s right wing.

  Among Bolsheviks, Kamenev was frank about his calculations:33

  It’s wrong to run ahead of things and pre-empt disagreements. There’s no party life without disagreements. Within the party we’ll survive petty disagreements. But there is one question where it’s impossible to unify the non-unifiable. We have a single party together with those who come together on the basis of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, i.e. those who are against revolutionary defencism.

  We need to announce to the Mensheviks that this wish is only the wish of the group of people gathered here and is not obligatory for all Bolsheviks. We must go to the meeting and avoid presenting particular platforms. [We should do this] within the framework of a wish to call a conference on the basis of anti-defencism.

  Such a statement, made three days before Lenin’s arrival in Petr
ograd, indicates that Kamenev and Stalin were very far from having a gentle attitude to Menshevism. Implicitly they aimed at schism on the basis of a policy on war and peace which was bound to bring the party into direct conflict with the Provisional Government.

  This was a plausible strategy, and it is only because the Bolsheviks within weeks had started to go it alone and then, months later, made their October Revolution that the audacity of the Kamenev–Stalin strategy became forgotten. Both Kamenev and Stalin after 1917 had to forswear their strategy as the more radical policy of seizing power without Menshevik assistance was turned into one of the sacred items of Bolshevik history. The episode is anyway important for the light it sheds on Stalin’s career. He and Kamenev, despite the Russian Bureau’s hostility, had barged their way into the leadership of the faction and elaborated a strategy which, if it had been continued, could have produced a party of radical opposition to the Provisional Government. Factional allegiances were extremely fluid in March and April. The clever idea of tempting left-wing Mensheviks into a Bolshevik embrace had solid political potential. Kamenev and Stalin had been both nimble and determined. They had seen much more of Russia in the twentieth century than Lenin; they had experienced the atmosphere of revolutionary politics in Petrograd since the February Revolution. Their plan for a campaign for radical policies on peace, bread, land and government had the potential for huge popularity.

  Lenin violently disagreed. Based in Switzerland, he wrote his ‘Letters from Afar’ which demanded the overthrow of the Provisional Government. The original strategy of Bolshevism, enunciated since 1905, had been for the workers to overthrow the monarchy and establish a temporary revolutionary dictatorship, uniting all socialist parties, which would implement all imaginable civic freedoms and establish a capitalist economy. Leninist strategy had been made obsolete by the formation of the liberal-led Provisional Government and its promulgation of civic freedoms. Lenin never properly explained why he suddenly thought Russia to be ready for the second great projected stage in its revolutionary development — namely the ‘transition to socialism’. But he insisted that this was the only true policy for Bolshevism. He got his chance to fight for his ideas when, at the end of March, the German government allowed him and a group of anti-war Russian Marxists to travel across Germany to Scandinavia before making their way to Petrograd.