In fact the funeral took place on 27 January, and Stalin was a pallbearer with Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Molotov, Dzierżyński, Tomski and Rudzutak. He turned out in his quasi-military tunic. Along with others he gave a speech. It included a series of oaths ending with the words:2
Leaving us, comrade Lenin left us a legacy of fidelity to the principles of the Communist International. We swear to you, comrade Lenin, that we will not spare our own lives in strengthening and broadening the union of labouring people of the whole world — the Communist International!
He was not alone in using religious imagery3 and his delivery was still not that of a polished orator. The significance of the speech lay elsewhere. Stalin was at last talking like someone who could speak to the party as a whole. Indeed he spoke as if on the party’s behalf. He was emerging on to centre-stage — and he had the nerve to drape himself in a flag of loyalty to the man who had wished to shatter his career. Few had imagined he would act with such aplomb.
The Central Committee put aside its disputes, at least in public. Bolsheviks had often talked about the threat posed by other political parties. This was an exaggerated fear after the Civil War; organised opposition to Bolshevism was at its nadir. Yet GPU head Felix Dzierżyń-ski and Stalin did not drop their guard, believing that Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries or even ‘Black Hundreds’ (who had organised anti-semitic pogroms before the Great War) might arrange ‘counterrevolutionary’ outbreaks against the Bolsheviks.4 Their attitude mirrored the beleaguered, suspicious outlook of the communist leaders. They had surprised their opponents by seizing power in the October Revolution and were concerned lest something similar might happen to themselves.
Stalin had worked closely with the GPU since returning from the Soviet–Polish War.5 This reflected the interdependence of party and police as well as his personal preoccupation with considerations of security. The Soviet dictatorship was maintained by repression, and no Bolshevik — not even ‘softer’ ones like Kamenev and Bukharin — failed to appreciate the regime’s dependence on the GPU. As Stalin began to show his confidence, Lenin’s widow Krupskaya temporarily changed her behaviour towards the General Secretary. She no longer said what she thought of him. Nor could she prevent historical confections about his career from appearing in print. Her authority in the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment was on the wane.6 In order to reassert herself she presented herself as the prime annalist of Lenin in his time. She undertook this also as a means of coping with bereavement: she had written a sketch for Lenin’s biography within weeks of his death. In May she sent it to Stalin asking what he thought of her project.7 Stalin, who had his own reasons to build a bridge towards her, wrote back approvingly. Certainly he read the piece carefully since he took the trouble to correct a mistaken date.8
Stalin and Krupskaya were setting themselves up as the high priest and priestess of the Lenin cult. Lenin’s image was ubiquitous. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad and books and articles on him were produced in vast quantities. Paradoxically this new cult required the censoring of Lenin’s works. Comments by Lenin at variance with Stalin’s policies were banned. Lenin could not be allowed to appear as having ever made mistakes. An example was the speech to the Ninth Party Conference in which Lenin admitted that the Polish War had been a blunder and declared that ‘Russian forces’ alone were insufficient for the building of communism in Russia.9 It was withheld from publication. Stalin also censored his own works so as to enhance his reputation for consistent loyalty. At Lenin’s fiftieth-birthday celebration in 1920 Stalin’s eulogy had included a reference to past failures of judgement. A decade later when Stalin was approached for permission to reprint the speech, he refused: ‘Comrade Adoratski! The speech is accurately transcribed in essence although it does require some editing. But I wouldn’t want to publish it: it’s not nice to talk about Ilich’s mistakes.’10 Christianity had to give way to communism and Lenin was to be presented to society as the new Jesus Christ. He also had to be displayed as quintessentially Russian if communism’s appeal was to spread among the largest national group. Stalin forbade mention of Lenin’s mixed ethnic ancestry — the fact that Lenin’s great-grandfather had been Jewish was kept secret.11
Meanwhile Stalin was eager to put himself forward as a theorist. He had had no time to write a lengthy piece since before 1917; and no Bolshevik leader was taken seriously at the apex of the party unless he made a contribution on doctrinal questions. Despite the many other demands on his time and intellect, he composed and — in April 1924 — delivered a course of nine lectures for trainee party activists at the Sverdlov University under the title Foundations of Leninism.
Quickly brought out as a booklet, it was a work of able compression. Stalin avoided the showiness of similar attempts by Zinoviev, Trotski, Kamenev and Bukharin, who in private liked to disparage him. The rumour was also put about that, in so far as Stalin’s words had merit, he had plagiarised the contents of a booklet by a certain F. Xenofontov. In fact Stalin was a fluent and thoughtful writer even though he was no stylist. His exegesis of Lenin’s doctrines was concise and to the point and his lectures were organised in a logical sequence. He was doing what Lenin had not undertaken on his own behalf, and by and large he succeeded in codifying the ragbag of writings, speeches and policies of Lenin’s lifelong oeuvre. He denied that Bolshevik ideas were applicable exclusively to ‘Russian reality’. For Stalin, Lenin had developed a doctrine of universal significance: ‘Leninism,’ he proclaimed,12
is the Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution. More precisely, Leninism is the theory and tactics of proletarian revolution in general and the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular.
Stalin contended that Lenin was the sole great heir to the traditions of Marx and Engels.
He laid out Lenin’s ‘teaching’ with catechistic neatness. It was this quality which provoked his rivals’ condescension; but it elicited approval from the young Marxists listening to the lectures. Not that the booklet was unambiguous in content. Stalin’s summary of Leninist theory indeed displayed a veritable precision of vagueness. He emphasised certain topics. Quoting from Lenin, he argued for the ‘peasant question’ to be solved by a steady movement towards large-scale farming co-operatives.13 He urged the party to ignore the sceptics who denied that this transition would end with the attainment of socialism. He also looked at the national question, maintaining that only the establishment of a socialist dictatorship could eliminate the oppression of nations. Capitalism allegedly disseminated national and ethnic hatreds as a means of dividing and ruling the planet.
Stalin had little to say about topics of conventional significance for Marxists. He seldom referred to the ‘worker question’. He offered just a few brief comments on worldwide socialism. But he had started again, for the first time since before the Great War, to make his mark as a contributor to Marxist theoretical discussions. He was making progress in his career. Yet there was a fly in the ointment. Lenin had laid down that his Testament should be communicated to the next Party Congress in the event of his death. Krupskaya, despite her reconciliation with Stalin, felt a higher duty to her husband’s memory and raised the question with the central party leadership.14 The Thirteenth Party Congress was scheduled for May 1924. Stalin had reason to be concerned. Even if Krupskaya had not made a move, the danger existed that Trotski would see tactical advantage in doing it for her. Stalin could not automatically rely on support from Kamenev and Zinoviev: the Kislovodsk saga had showed as much. All his gains over the past few months would be lost if an open debate were to be held at the Congress and a resolution was passed to comply with Lenin’s advice to appoint a new general secretary.
Stalin was lucky since the Party Central Committee, with the encouragement of Kamenev and Zinoviev, ruled that the Testament should be read out only to the heads of the provincial delegations. If Kamenev and Zinoviev had not still been worried about Trotski, they might have done for Stalin. But i
nstead they spoke up for him. Stalin sat pale as chalk as the Testament was revealed to the restricted audience. But the sting was extracted from Stalin’s political flesh. Trotski, scared of appearing divisive so soon after the death of Lenin, declined to take the fight to the ‘troika’ of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Zinoviev’s amour propre was coddled by the decision that he should deliver the Central Committee political report which had regularly been given by Lenin until his final illness. Thus was lost the best opportunity to terminate Stalin’s further rise to power. Perhaps Stalin would have defended himself effectively. Zinoviev and Kamenev were not very popular and Stalin’s behaviour was not widely in disrepute in the party at this stage. Yet Stalin liked to fight from a position of strength and he was at his weakest in those few days at the Congress. The notion that he owed his survival to his antics as a trapeze artist is wrong. What saved him was the safety net provided by provisional allies Zinoviev and Kamenev and Trotski’s failure to attack.
His own moments of prominence were few. He gave the organisational report with the usual dour assemblage of structural and numerical details; but he made no interventions in the rest of the open proceedings. The most perilous time occurred when he reported on the national question at lengthy closed sessions. Now that leading delegates knew about Lenin’s deathbed criticisms this was a sensitive topic. His Georgian communist enemies were lining up to take pot-shots at him. Yet Stalin did not flinch. Rather than apologise, he gave a spirited apologia of official policy.
The sense of hurt diminished but did not disappear. The internal strains of the troika irked him: he knew that Zinoviev and Kamenev looked down on him and that, given a chance, they would ditch him. His health, too, was poor. Feeling humiliated, Stalin followed his usual course: he requested release from his duties. In a letter to the Central Committee on 19 August 1924 he pleaded that ‘honourable and sincere’ work with Zinoviev and Kamenev was no longer possible. What he needed, he claimed, was a period of convalescence. But he also asked the Central Committee to remove his name from the Politburo, Orgburo and Secretariat:15
When the time [of convalescence] is at an end, I ask to be assigned either to Turukhansk District or to Yakutsk Province or somewhere abroad in some unobtrusive posting.
All these questions I’d ask the Plenum to decide in my absence and without explanations on my part since I consider it harmful to the cause to give explanations apart from those comments which have already been given in the first section of this letter.
He would be going back to Turukhansk as an ordinary provincial militant and not as the Central Committee leader he had been in 1913. Stalin was requesting a more severe demotion than even the Testament had specified.
He was psychologically complex. That he contemplated going back to northern Siberia may be doubted. But he was impulsive. When his pride was offended, he lost his composure. Even by offering his resignation, he was taking a huge risk. He was gambling on his exhibition of humility inducing the Central Committee, which included some of his friends, to refuse his request. He needed to put his enemies in the wrong. The ploy worked perfectly.
The Central Committee retained him as General Secretary and the final settling of accounts among Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev was yet again postponed. Coming back from vacation in the autumn, he had recovered his self-possession. In advance of Politburo meetings he consulted Kamenev and Zinoviev. If Zinoviev was in Moscow, the three of them met privately and then, in conspiratorial fashion, arrived at the Politburo separately. Stalin brazened it out, shaking hands with his archenemy Trotski as they greeted each other. He also restrained any display of personal ambition. Kamenev, not Stalin, chaired the Politburo after Lenin’s death.16 Yet already Stalin was taking care of his future. When his rivals fail to join him in the Orgburo, he was free to replace them with appointees more to his liking. The Stalin group formed itself under his leadership; it was like the street gang which he had been thwarted from leading as a boy in Gori.17 None was more important than Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich. Both were Secretaries of the Central Committee; they also intermittently headed one or another of its departments and helped Stalin in the Orgburo. And when Ukrainian communist politics became troublesome for the Kremlin in April 1925, Kaganovich was dispatched to Kiev to become First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
Stalin also built up a retinue of supporters in the Central Committee. Among them were Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Kliment Voroshilov, Semën Budënny, Sergei Kirov and Andrei Andreev. All these men were loyal to him without being servile and called him Koba.18 Some had had disputes with him in the past. Molotov had fallen out with him in March 1917. Kaganovich had criticised the Central Committee’s organisational policy in 1918–19 and Ordzhonikidze could never button his lip when he had something on his mind.19 Andreev had even been a Workers’ Oppositionist. Budënny and Voroshilov had served under him in Tsaritsyn; Ordzhonikidze and Kirov had been his subordinates in the Caucasus. Andreev had impressed him with administrative work in the early 1920s. The gang took time to coalesce, and Stalin never allowed its members to take their positions for granted. Even the Tsaritsynites needed to keep proving their worth in his eyes. Sergei Minin and Moisei Rukhimovich, cronies on the Southern Front, came to seem as useless as hardened paint. Minin sided with the opposition to the ascendant party leadership and Stalin had nothing more to do with him. Minin committed suicide in 1926. When Rukhimovich’s incompetence at organising transport was exposed, Stalin sacked him as ‘a self-satisfied bureaucrat’.20
He demanded efficiency as well as loyalty from the gang members. He also selected them for their individual qualities. He wanted no one near to him who outranked him intellectually. He selected men with a revolutionary commitment like his own, and he set the style with his ruthless policies. None earned disapprobation for mercilessness towards enemies. He created an ambience of conspiracy, companionship and crude masculine humour. In return for their services he looked after their interests. He was solicitous about their health. He overlooked their foibles so long as their work remained unaffected and they recognised his word as law.
This is what Amakyan Nazaretyan wrote about working ‘under Koba’s firm hand’:21
I can’t take offence. There’s much to be learned from him. Having got to know him at close hand, I have developed an extraordinary respect towards him. He has a character that one can only envy. I can’t take offence. His strictness is covered by attentiveness to those who work with him.
On another occasion he added:22
He’s very cunning. He’s hard as a nut and can’t be broken at one go. But I have a completely different view of him now from the one I had in Tiflis. Despite his rational wildness, so to speak, he’s a soft individual; he has a heart and knows how to value the merits of people.
Lazar Kaganovich shared this endorsement:23
In the early years Stalin was a soft individual… Under Lenin and after Lenin. He went through a lot.
In the early years after Lenin died, when he came to power, they all attacked Stalin. He endured a lot in the struggle with Trotski. Then his supposed friends Bukharin, Rykov and Tomski also attacked him…
It was difficult to avoid getting cruel.
For Kaganovich, Stalin’s personality responded to circumstances not of his making.
He discouraged attention to his national origin. In the provinces his supporters played up the fact that his main opponents — at first Trotski and then Kamenev and Zinoviev — were Jews. He himself never mentioned this, but he did not stop others from bringing it up.24 He had his own reasons for caution. Not only Jews but also Poles, Georgians and Armenians had a presence in the Bolshevik party central and local leadership out of proportion to the USSR’s demography, and there was growing resentment of the fact in the country. Stalin, moreover, still spoke with a heavy accent. Trotski put this with typical cattiness: ‘The Russian language always stayed for him not only a language half-foreign and improvised but — much worse for his awareness —
conventional and strained.’25 Snubs about his linguistic facility were not uncommon in the 1920s.26
Yet no one else in the ascendant central leadership set himself up quite so effectively. Bukharin had a following in the party but no consolidated network of clients. Zinoviev had such a network but most of his clients were based in Leningrad. Kamenev had never been much of a patron. The sole leader to match Stalin’s ability in forming a cliental group was Trotski. He still appealed to members of the Inter-District group which had joined the Bolsheviks in May 1917, and he had attracted admirers in the Civil War as People’s Commissar for Military Affairs. The Left Opposition, when attacking the Politburo in the last quarter of 1923, looked to him for inspiration. Among them were Yevgeni Preobrazhenski, Leonid Serebryakov, Nikolai Krestinski, Adolf Ioffe and Christian Rakovski. Yet Trotski lacked Stalin’s day-to-day accessibility. He had the kind of hauteur which peeved dozens of potential supporters. He was also devoid of Stalin’s tactical cunning and pugnacity, and there was a suspicion among Trotski’s followers that their idol’s illnesses at crucial conjunctures of factional struggle had a psychosomatic dimension. Yet he had a large enough following to take on and beat Stalin if the situation had been different. The trouble was that Trotski had lost the early rounds of the contest. He was always coming from behind on points.
Stalin continued to box warily. The defeat of the Left Opposition in the winter of 1923–4 had been achieved in open combat. Trotski and the Left Opposition had attacked and Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin had retaliated. Stalin had had little need to sack Trotskyists and replace them with individuals loyal to the ascendant party leadership.27 Yet the Orgburo and the Secretariat — as well as the Politburo in the highest instance — used their right to change postings in the following months. The ascendant party leadership manipulated the various administrative levers to its advantage. Steadily the Left lost its remaining key jobs in party, government, army and police. The sackings were accompanied by demotions which frequently involved relocation to distant parts of the USSR. This was really a light form of exile whereby the ascendant leadership consolidated its grip on power. The Left was also doctrinally undermined. The Agitprop Department of the Secretariat publicised past disputes between Lenin and Trotski. Its various adjuncts printed dozens of anti-Trotski pamphlets; and Stalin as an avid reader scribbled an aide-mémoire on the cover of a work on the October Revolution: ‘Tell Molotov that Tr[otski] lied about Lenin on the subject of ways to make an insurrection.’28
Stalin: A Biography Page 29