Stalin: A Biography
Page 77
The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, but this did not mean that it was characterised by perfect central control. Far from it. The more Stalin concentrated in his own hands power over specific areas of politics, the greater the lack of compliance he encountered in others. His USSR was a mixture of exceptional orderliness and exceptional disorderliness. So long as the chief official aims were to build up military and heavy-industrial strength the reality of the situation was disguised from him, his supporters and even his enemies. Stalin had only the dimmest awareness of the problems he had created.
Yet he was also much more complex than is widely supposed. As a politician he knew how to present himself selectively to diverse groups. Most of the world knew that he was determined, ruthless and murderous and that he chased the objective of turning the USSR into a global military and industrial power. It was no secret that he possessed skills as conspirator and bureaucrat. Paradoxically the effect of his official cult was often counter-productive. If Soviet propagandists said he was an exceptional person, critics drew the opposite conclusion and assumed he must have been a nonentity. But exceptional he surely was. He was a real leader. He was also motivated by the lust for power as well as by ideas. He was in his own way an intellectual, and his level of literary and editorial craft was impressive. About his psychological traits there will always be controversy. His policies were a mixture of calculated rationality and wild illogicality, and he reacted to individuals and to whole social categories with what was excessive suspiciousness by most standards. He had a paranoiac streak. But most of the time he did not seem insane to those close to him. The ideology, practices and institutions he inherited were ones which allowed him to give vent to his chronic viciousness.
Stalin was not a certifiable psychotic and never behaved in such a way as to be incapable of carrying out his public duties. As a family man, a guest and a friend he was crude. But his behaviour was seldom so bizarre until the late 1930s that others failed to find him companionable. He wrote poems as a young man and went on singing at dinner parties into his old age. He sent money to his boyhood friends in Georgia. There are those who want the ‘monsters’ in history to be represented as a species unto themselves. This is a delusion. Individuals like Stalin are thankfully few and far between in the recorded past — and without the October Revolution there would have been one fewer: Stalin’s emergence from exile and obscurity on to a worldwide stage of power, fame and impact would have been impossible if his party had not made the October Revolution and bolted together the institutional, procedural and doctrinal scaffolding which he was to exploit. Such individuals, when they have appeared, have usually displayed congenial ‘ordinary’ features even while carrying out acts of unspeakable abusiveness. History seldom gives unambiguous lessons, but this is one of them.
GLOSSARY
All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) — The communist party’s name from 1952.
Bolsheviks — The faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party which was formed by Lenin in 1903 and consolidated as a separate party in 1917.
Central Committee — The supreme party body elected at Party Congresses to run the party until the next such Congress.
Central Control Commission — Party body established in 1920 to supervise the fair administration of the communist party.
Cheka — The Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage.
Cominform — International organ founded in 1947 supposedly to facilitate consultation among communist parties of eastern Europe and France and Italy. In fact it was used to impose Moscow’s will on those parties.
Comintern — Abbreviation for the Communist International.
Communist International — The international organ founded in Petrograd in March 1919 to co-ordinate and direct the entire world communist movement. It was disbanded in 1943.
Council of Ministers — The successor organ of government to the Council of People’s Commissars, set up in 1946.
Council of People’s Commissars — The government established by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. Usually known by the acronym Sovnarkom.
Democratic Centralists — Faction of Bolsheviks, formed in 1919, which called for the restoration of internal democratic procedures to the party.
GPU — The name of the Cheka from 1921. The full name is Main Political Administration.
GUGB — The Russian acronym of the Main Administration of State Security: this was the departmental name of the OGPU after its incorporation in the NKVD in 1934.
Gulag — Properly the acronym should be GUlag; it is short for the Main Administration of Camps.
Ilich — One of Lenin’s nicknames, used by his political associates.
Kadets — Acronym of the Constitutional-Democrats. This was the main Russian liberal party and was formed by Pavel Milyukov in 1905.
Koba — One of Stalin’s youthful nicknames which he continued to use as a Marxist militant and leader before 1917.
Kuomintang — Chinese nationalist movement led by Chiang Kai-shek.
Left Opposition — Bolshevik faction led by Trotski from 1923 committed to accelerating industrial growth and to de-bureaucratising the party.
Lenin — Main pseudonym of the Bolshevik leader. He was christened Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov.
Mensheviks — Faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, initially led by Martov and founded at the Second Party Congress in 1903.
MGB — Ministry of State Security, the successor organisation to the NKGB from 1946.
MVD — Ministry of Internal Affairs, the successor organisation to the NKVD from 1946.
NKGB — People’s Commissariat of State Security. This was the name of the security police agency; it was designated thus in 1941 and again in 1943–6.
NKVD — The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs established after the October Revolution. In 1934 it incorporated the OGPU.
OGPU — Successor organ of the GPU and Cheka from 1924. It formally united all the GPUs of the various Soviet republics when the USSR came into existence. The full name in English is the United Main Political Administration.
Orgburo — Internal body of the Party Central Committee with responsibility for organisational leadership of the party in the period between meetings of the Central Committee.
Politburo — Internal committee of the Party Central Committee, empowered to direct the party in the period between meetings of the Central Committee.
Rabkrin — Abbreviated name of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate. Set up in 1920, it was headed by Stalin till December 1922.
Red Army — The Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, formed in 1918.
Right Deviation — The supporters of Bukharin who opposed the abandonment of the NEP in 1928.
RSFSR — The Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic. Established in 1918, it became a constituent republic of the USSR in 1924. It was renamed the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic in 1936.
Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) — The name of the Bolshevik party from 1918.
Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party — The Marxist party of the Russian Empire, formed in 1898. In 1903 its leadership split into two factions, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. After recurrent attempts at reunification the party fell apart into two separate parties in 1917.
Social-Federalists — Georgian socialist party which opposed Marxism and advocated Georgian national and territorial unity in a federal state within the boundaries of the Russian Empire.
Socialist-Revolutionaries — Party formed by Viktor Chernov and others in 1901 in the tradition of those revolutionaries of the Russian Empire who looked mainly to the peasants as the guiding force of revolution and to the village land commune as the future basis of a socialist society.
Soselo — One of Stalin’s youthful nicknames.
Soso — Stalin’s main youthful nickname.
Soviet Army — The name of the Red Army from 1946.<
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Sovnarkom — The government established by Lenin and the Bolsheviks through the October Revolution. Acronym for the Council of People’s Commissars.
Ulyanov, Vladimir Ilich — Original name of Lenin before he adopted revolutionary pseudonyms.
United Opposition — The faction formed from a combination of the Left Opposition and the Leningrad Opposition in 1926.
Wehrmacht — The German army.
White Armies — The various armies which were ranged against the Red Army from 1918. Their commanders and soldiers were both anti-socialist and distrustful of liberalism and parliamentarism.
Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate — The full name of the institution usually known as Rabkrin.
Workers’ Opposition — Bolshevik faction which emerged at the end of the Civil War and called both for the internal democratisaton of the party and for the granting of authority to workers and peasants to control their sectors of the economy.
NOTES
1. Stalin as We Have Known Him
1. N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o russkoi revolyutsii.
2. See in particular B. Souvarine, Staline: aperçu historique du bolchévisme; L. Trotsky, Stalin. An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence; T. Dan, Proiskhozhednie bol’shevisma: k istorii demokraticheskikh i sotsialisticheskikh idei v Rossii posle osvobozdeniya krest’yan.
3. No one apart from Lenin and Trotski was more condescending to him in the 1920s than Bukharin, who paid the ultimate price. It remains to be explained why fellow leaders omitted to recognise his potential importance in due time. The answer they themselves gave at the time was that they had overlooked his political cunning. Having dismissed Stalin as an ignorant office clerk, they did not anticipate his ruthless skills in conspiracy and manoeuvre. This will not do. The rudimentary point must be made that Stalin’s defeated rivals had an incentive to suggest they had been worsted by a master-deceiver who bore no similarity to themselves and had no talents of his own.
4. ‘Stalin (Dzhughashvili), Iosif Vissarionovich’.
5. Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (1st edn).
6. G. Gorodetsky, The Grand Delusion.
7. R. Conquest, The Great Terror. Conquest, while highlighting Stalin’s psychological oddity, affirms that he was not insane.
8. The Trotskyist Isaac Deutscher’s Stalin after World War Two incorporated the basic ideas of pre-war Trotskyist and Menshevik analyses of Stalin’s career but, unlike Trotski’s biography, insisted that the personal dictatorship of Stalin had brought about institutional and educational changes which eventually could work to the favour of genuinely communist objectives. E. H. Carr in a biographical vignette offered a similar interpretation while emphasising, to a greater extent than Deutscher, the task discharged by Stalin in Russia’s general ‘modernisation’: Socialism in One Country, 1924–1926, vol. 1, pp. 174–86. Even Trotski, though, stressed that Stalin had presided over changes in the USSR which would have effects beyond his permanent control.
9. R. W. Davies, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era.
10. R. Medvedev, Let History Judge.
11. D. Volkogonov, Stalin: triumf i tragediya.
12. E. Radzinsky, Stalin.
13. J. A. Getty, Origins of the Great Purges.
14. S. Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: At the Court of the Red Tsar; M. Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait.
15. A. Ulam, Stalin; R. McNeal, Stalin. Man and Leader; R. Hingley, Stalin; R. Tucker, Stalin.
16. R. McNeal, Stalin. Man and Leader; R. Tucker, Stalin, pp. 133–7.
17. R. Slusser, Stalin in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution.
18. R. Medvedev, Let History Judge.
19. R. Conquest, The Great Terror; R. Medvedev, Let History Judge.
20. J. A. Getty, The Origins of the Great Purges.
21. O. V. Khlevniuk, 1937–i.
2. The Family Dzhughashvili
1. Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (1st edn), p. 5. In order to avoid chopping and changing in this early chapter I have transliterated Stalin’s Georgian surname as Dzhughashvili even though, strictly speaking, it should be rendered Dzhugashvili when taken from the Russian text of the official biography.
2. See the notes of the 23 December 1946 meeting taken by a participant, V. D. Mochalov: Slovo tovarishchu Stalinu, pp. 469–73. I owe to Arfon Rees the point about Bolshevik distaste for personal biographical accounts.
3. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 61, p. 1.
4. I am grateful to Stephen Jones for sharing his thoughts on this with me.
5. J. Davrichewy, Ah! Ce qu’on rigolait bien, p. 90. See also A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoyal za spinoi Stalina?, p. 90.
6. R. Medvedev, Sem’ya tirana, p. 5.
7. Ibid., p. 4.
8. J. Davrichewy, Ah! Ce qu’on rigolait bien, p. 27.
9. Ibid.
10. S. Beria, Beria, My Father, p. 21.
11. J. Davrichewy, Ah! Ce qu’on rigolait bien, pp. 27–8. Another person mentioned as Stalin’s biological father was a certain Dzhulabovi: ibid. R. Brackman has recently contended that Stalin was the bastard son of a priest called Egnatashvili: The Secret File of Joseph Stalin, p. 4; but most primary sources accurately refer to Egnatashvili as the local tavern keeper.
12. A. Mgeladze, Stalin, kakim ya ego znal, pp. 242–3.
13. J. Davrichewy, Ah! Ce qu’on rigolait bien, pp. 27–9.
14. R. and Zh. Medvedev, Neizvestnyi Stalin, p. 265.
15. I am grateful to Stephen Jones for discussing this matter with me.
16. Sochineniya, vol. 13, p. 113.
17. S. Allilueva, Tol’ko odin god, p. 313.
18. Ibid.
19. G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniya i razmyshleniya, vol. 3, p. 215.
20. A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoyal za spinoi Stalina, p. 95.
21. Ibid.
22. Memoir of G. I. Elisabedashvili in Stalin: v vospominaniyakh i dokumentov epokhi, p. 12.
23. GF IML, fond 8, op. 2, ch. 1, d. 24, p. 191, cited in A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoyal za spinoi Stalina, p. 97.
24. Ibid.; and J. Davrichewy, Ah! Ce qu’on rigolait bien, p. 38.
3. The Schooling of a Priest
1. This is the point made by A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoyal za spinoi Stalina, p. 97.
2. Ibid., pp. 100–1.
3. V. Kaminskii and I. Vereshchagin, Detstvo i yunost’ vozhdya, pp. 28 and 43–4; see also A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoyal za spinoi Stalina?, pp. 100–1.
4. F. Ye. Makharadze and G. V. Khachapuridze, Ocherki po istorii rabochego i krest’yanskogo dvizheniya v Gruzii, pp. 143–4. This part of the book was written solely by Makharadze.
5. Ibid., p. 144.
6. RGASPI, f. 71, op. 10, d. 275. See M. Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait, p. 18.
7. There is an implicit account of Beso’s material woes in Sochineniya, vol. 1, p. 318.
8. Skating and wrestling incidents have also been blamed: see A. Ostrovskii, Kto stoyal za spinoi Stalina, p. 95. But the phaeton is by far the likeliest story.
9. A. Ostrovskii suggests that the accident might have preceded Stalin’s schooling: ibid., p. 99.
10. J. Iremaschwili, Stalin und die Tragödie Georgiens, p. 5.
11. J. Davrichewy, Ah! Ce qu’on rigolait bien, pp. 71 and 73.
12. See below, p. 522.
13. J. Davrichewy, Ah! Ce qu’on rigolait bien, p. 39.
14. Ibid., p. 82.
15. Ibid., pp. 43–4.
16. Ibid., p. 61.
17. J. Iremaschwili, Stalin und die Tragödie Georgiens, p. 18.
18. V. Kaminskii and I. Vereshchagin, Detsvo i yunost’ vozhdya, p. 48.
19. J. Davrichewy, Ah! Ce qu’on rigolait bien, p. 59.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. RGASPI, fond 558, op. 4, d. 61, p. 1.
23. A. Chelidze, ‘Neopublikovannye materialy iz biografii tovarishcha Stalina’, p. 19.
24. I am not saying that his arithmetical supervision was exercised impartially. On the contrary, he deliberately manipulated official grain output figur
es in the late 1920s.
25. RGASPI, fond 558, op. 4, d. 61, p. 1.
4. Poet and Rebel
1. Stalin in old age described his early time in Tbilisi to K. Charkviani. I derive this reference from the notes on Charkviani’s memoirs kindly shared with me by Simon Sebag Montefiore: p. 2a. See also Stalin: v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov i dokumentov epokhi, p. 18.
2. Istoricheskie mesta Tbilisi. Putevoditel’ po mestam, svyazannym s zhizn’yu i deyatel’nost’yu I. V. Stalina, pp. 30–1.
3. I am grateful to Peter Strickland for his advice on nineteenth-century European architecture.
4. See M. Agursky, ‘Stalin’s Ecclesiastical Background’, pp. 3–4.
5. Ibid., p. 6.
6. The original Russian was sobachii yazyk, literally translatable as ‘a dog’s language’. In either translation, however, it was very offensive to Georgians.
7. T. Darlington, Education in Russia, p. 286.
8. Ibid., p. 287.
9. N. Zhordaniya, Moya zhizn’, p. 8.
10. T. Darlington, Education in Russia, p. 288.
11. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 17, p. 1.
12. T. Darlington, Education in Russia, p. 286.
13. J. Iremaschwili, Stalin und die Tragödie Georgiens, pp. 16–17.
14. J. Davrichewy, Ah! Ce qu’on rigolait bien, p. 113.
15. N. Zhordaniya, Moya zhizn’, p. 11.