Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  Lenin was in exile when the RSDLP was founded, but he won considerable attention when, in 1902, he published What Is to Be Done?11 He advocated a party of professional revolutionaries dedicated to the cause. In this model, revolution would be brought about not by elections and democracy but by small cells of dedicated revolutionaries who would use violence and any means necessary. Many young people like Stalin were attracted by Lenin’s “heroic idea” and by the optimism he and others found in Marxism.12 The full implications for political violence of this theory became clear only later. But Lenin was convinced early that revolution without terror and dictatorship, on the model of the French Jacobins, was all but impossible. In the meantime, his work struck a chord among radicals by fusing the European and Russian tradition of revolutionary terrorism with Marx’s idea of “dictatorship of the proletariat.”13

  By the time of the second congress of the RSDLP, which was of necessity held outside Russia (first in Brussels, then in London), in July 1903, Lenin had attracted attention and gained followers. It was at this gathering that the fateful split took place between the Bolsheviks (majority) and the Mensheviks (minority). Lenin stood out, and while some of his more radical demands were defeated, he won a tactical political advantage when he cleverly named the group gathering around him the “Bolshevik” faction at the right moment during the meetings.

  The Russian revolution of 1905 broke out on January 9, “Bloody Sunday,” when troops shot at peaceful marchers. The events that followed offered fresh hope to émigré radicals like Lenin who called on Russian Marxists to hold a unifying congress, even if in his heart his disdain for the Mensheviks was unchanged. The delegates met in London in April, albeit with few of the major Russian figures in attendance.

  Lenin’s admiration of the previous generation of Russian terrorists led him to craft slogans that suggested Leninism was already taking shape. He advocated “armed insurrection” and “mass terror” and disdained any form of liberal democracy.14 In a pamphlet on tactics in July, he ridiculed those who did not want “a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.”15

  The tsarist regime held on to power by granting a constitution in October, and Lenin assumed it was safe enough to return. The Romanov dynasty and its advisers merely bent before the storm, however, and as the unrest subsided, the regime clawed back many of the reforms. Lenin was always aware of historical precedents, particularly the French Revolution. He also drew lessons from the failed Paris Commune that had been defeated in 1871 (supposedly) because of reservations about using mass repression. He knew he might well fail in all his efforts, just like the Communards of Paris, and he wanted to leave behind a heritage that would inspire the next revolution.16 The lesson for him was that the only answer to the utter bankruptcy of the tsarist regime was to use every means available, including terrorism.

  At the Fourth Party “Unity Congress,” held in Sweden in April 1906, Lenin managed (briefly) to bring the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks together again. Although he favored participation in the system provided by the new constitution in Russia, he was unequivocal in calling for nationalization of the land, an armed uprising, and guerrilla operations.17 Increasingly, he advocated a “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” and dropped the caveat that it would only be “provisional.”18

  After the 1905–6 revolution Lenin went into exile again in the West. Not everything on the revolutionary front lived up to his expectations. He bemoaned having to deal with so many compromisers and “legalists” whose will to power was not nearly steadfast and ruthless enough for him. He despised all opponents, including even left-wingers who merely disagreed with him. He wanted an elite party committed to him and the cause as he saw it. He had no time for vacillating Socialists, much less “philistine” liberals and democrats.

  War in 1914 represented for Lenin the ultimate betrayal of Marxian internationalism. As he saw it, the war was waged in the interests of capitalism, but wrongly supported by Socialists and cheered by the masses. This turn of events was a vindication of his view that it was an illusion to attempt a democratic approach to Socialism. On the other hand, he was delighted with the coming of war, because he rightly saw that it would likely hasten the revolution he yearned for. That millions would die in the conflagration did not matter to him in the least.

  However, against his expectations, the war dragged on interminably, and by early 1917 he had all but given up on seeing revolution in his lifetime. Thus he was taken completely unawares when the Russian monarchy suddenly collapsed, so little did he understand his native land and the government’s crisis.19 When the Romanov dynasty was deposed in February and a provisional government took over, he recognized that Russia had become “the freest of all the belligerent countries in the world.” The new regime was all the more hateful to him, because it might seem to represent progress to those who could not see the underlying social basis. To Lenin the new system functioned to reduce revolutionary energies and was a step backward. The provisional government carried on the war as before, and the people grew quiet again.

  In a famous article published in Pravda on April 9, 1917, he remarked that “the basic question of every revolution is that of state power.” At the earliest possible moment that was what he wanted. He cared less about the fine words of the constitution makers or the advocates of civil rights. He preferred to say there was a “dual power,” embodied by the provisional government and the Soviets. The latter had emerged everywhere on the model of those in 1905. In the short run he bet on the Soviets, even though the Bolsheviks had little support among them. However, that was a tactic to make it appear he and his tiny group stood for the people, particularly the workers and peasants, while the provisional government represented the bourgeoisie. The Soviets, he insisted, had the power of the people behind them, in the tradition of the Paris Commune of 1871.20

  The German government, in the meantime driven to desperation, came to Lenin in Switzerland and offered to send him back to Russia. The provisional government allowed even outlawed revolutionaries to return home. And so Lenin and the Bolsheviks made the trip to Petrograd. He and thirty-one others left Zurich on March 27 in a sealed train and, traveling via Sweden and Finland, arrived in Petrograd on April 3. There was a hullabaloo in Russia that the Bolsheviks would even travel through enemy territory, but a month later some Mensheviks and others took the same route.21

  Recent revelations from Russian archives show that before and after the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, Lenin received millions of marks from the German government to make antiwar propaganda in Russia.22 He had disdain for patriotic Russians, including those in the revolutionary movement, for their “defensism.” In his view, they were wrongheaded and failed to see that only Russia’s defeat would lead to revolution.

  The militants who gathered round him on his return to Petrograd were shocked by his demand that Russia leave the war at all costs, even if it meant giving away large tracts of territory to the Germans.

  During the trip to Petrograd, Lenin composed what became known as his “April Theses,” which formed his platform for what needed to be done. He said it was mistaken to support the new democratic government and nonsensical to aim merely for a bourgeois revolution—stage three of Marx’s grand historical schema. According to Marx, history progresses through five stages closely tied to economic conditions: early forms of human community, feudalism, capitalism, Socialism, and international Communism. Lenin had been trying to prove for some time that capitalism already existed in Russia. He now urged his fellow revolutionaries to be bold and proceed immediately to stage four, that is, make the transition to Socialism. This conclusion had major ramifications not only for the coming revolution but for the development of Russia thereafter. What he really wanted was power, which he considered the crucial target in all revolutions.

  Lenin’s program was summed up in the phrase “All power to the Soviets,” which was a cry to overthrow the provi
sional government. He expressly rejected a parliamentary republic and democracy as a “retrograde step.” He wanted a republic of workers, peasants, and other kinds of Soviets. To mobilize that support, he was prepared to confiscate all landed estates and to nationalize all land—to be handed over to the peasant Soviets. He said it would be no simple matter to “introduce Socialism” and that it would have to be fought for with violence. A hint of his growing confidence and radicalism was that he wanted a name change, from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party to the Communist Party.23

  Throughout 1917 Lenin used another slogan—“Peace, land, and bread”—to highlight the Bolsheviks’ social agenda. But he would not compromise with the Mensheviks, whom he saw as moderate and committed to issues like civil rights and mere reforms. Other leaders of the RSDLP (including Stalin) wanted the factions to merge.

  The Bolsheviks thought Lenin mistaken to conclude that “bourgeois democracy,” or stage three of Marx’s historical schema, had already been attained when the provisional government took over from the tsar. They knew Russia as a vast, underdeveloped country, burdened with mass illiteracy and, despite what Lenin said, closer to a feudal than to a capitalist society. What they failed to understand was that Lenin’s schematic thinking provided a rationalization for attempting to take power immediately. Once back in Russia, however, Lenin won over most of the Bolsheviks and wanted to expel anyone who disagreed with him.24

  Stalin was elected to the new Central Committee, despite differences with Lenin. While he soon became one of Lenin’s closest collaborators, he did not assume an important role in the events leading up to the revolution in October.

  FAILURE OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

  The pursuit of the utopian goals espoused by Lenin would never have had a chance if the provisional government had been able to make peace with Germany, but the new government put patriotism first, even as its armies were ground to dust.

  The Petrograd soviet added to the crisis atmosphere when it immediately allowed soldiers to elect committees to run the army. They exceeded these instructions, abolished military codes of discipline, and even elected officers. Saluting became a thing of the past. Social hierarchies crumbled everywhere, including in factories, where bosses and owners were humiliated and assaulted. Peasants began seizing land and engaged in arson and murder. The old order was falling apart but still had surprisingly more support than is often assumed.25

  The Bolsheviks tried to capitalize on demonstrations in Petrograd with slogans such as “All power to the Soviets” and “Down with the provisional government.” There was rebellion in Petrograd and Moscow on April 20–21, which some have likened to the first attempt at a Bolshevik coup. Either way, the provisional government barely managed to survive this first major crisis.26

  Alexander Kerensky was named minister of war on May 5 as part of a shake-up to cope with the situation. Much was expected of him because of his charismatic personality and fiery temperament. He was the product of the revolutionary times, but he symbolized patriotism, not an end to war, which would in fact destroy the provisional government no matter what else he might try. Kerensky and the new commander in chief, Aleksei Brusilov, thought victory over Germany was possible and wanted to fulfill commitments made to the Allies for an early offensive. They believed success would win popular support for the new democracy and give the government a strong hand to deal with rebellion. They suffered from illusions (shared by many Russians) similar to those that had led the tsarist regime in July 1914 to risk what elites and the patriots supposed would be a “short little war.”27 Russian estimates put the total losses in the war at 900,000 dead and 400,000 wounded by 1917. These casualties, the apparent senselessness of the war, and shortages on the home front led to a crisis across the great land.

  Kerensky’s gamble in June-July 1917 was that if Russia could win, all sins would be forgiven. The attack aimed at the Austro-Hungarian lines fell apart with the appearance of German troops. Again there were unacceptably high casualties, which came on the back of years of suffering. Kerensky reported from the front on June 24 that “after the first days, sometimes even after the first hours of battle,” the mood of a breakthrough “changed and spirits fell.” Desertions spread and mutinies threatened.28

  These setbacks brought greater tensions than ever to Petrograd, and on July 4 as many as fifty thousand soldiers and workers prepared to storm the soviet and the provisional government. It is not possible to establish whether the Bolsheviks had planned a coup at that point or tried to take advantage of the chaotic situation. Lenin addressed a mass demonstration but, overwhelmed by the moment, failed to inspire the unruly crowd. He spoke only a few lines, issuing neither a call to arms nor a demand for the overthrow of the government.29

  The crowds melted away, and loyalist troops restored order. The next day the press published a bombshell about Lenin’s collaboration with the Germans and blamed the Bolsheviks for reverses in the war. Lenin went into hiding, aided by Stalin, who became a kind of special assistant.30 They both branded the government the embodiment of counterrevolution but were sure Kerensky would continue the war, which would inevitably end in defeat.31

  Indeed, on July 6, Kerensky returned from the front and just days later became the new prime minister after Prince Lvov resigned in disgrace. Kerensky named General Lavr Kornilov the new army commander in chief but kept the portfolios of minister of war and navy. His resolve to carry on the war was unbroken, but power went to his head, and he adopted scandalous habits for a Socialist leader. He lived in the luxurious Winter Palace and even slept in the tsar’s bed.32

  On July 18the more radical Petrograd soviet was expelled by the government from the Tauride Palace and moved into the Smolny Institute, a former school for daughters of the nobility on the outskirts of the city. Whatever Kerensky’s intentions, the new quarters created a distance between “the people” and what many considered their “real” representatives and the provisional government. The soviet was incensed not only by this move but by harsh measures that were reintroduced to restore order and discipline in the army and on the streets.33

  Lenin drew rigorous lessons from the failure in July. The slogan he advocated until then—“All power to the Soviets”—had not worked. Henceforward he demanded simply “the dictatorship of the proletariat established through the medium of the Bolshevik Party.” In a pamphlet he wrote in August-September 1917, he tried to disabuse his followers of the idea that there could ever be a peaceful “withering away of the state,” as some assumed to be the meaning of Marx and Engels’s famous phrase. The dictatorship of the proletariat, he told wavering comrades, could not be created without a “violent revolution.” The old state machine and the resistance of capitalist exploiters had to be smashed. An impressive-sounding dictatorship—“the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed”—would take over and go beyond “democracy for a minority” and strive for a Communist society.34

  Lenin brushed aside the criticism of the doubters, even among his closest collaborators, and heaped scorn on longtime Marxists among the Mensheviks. His anger knew no bounds when it came to enemies beyond these ranks. He hated compromise and was impervious to argument. He insisted on aiming for the mythical Communist society as if it were a realistic option and damned anyone who questioned an assumption. He had the rigid mentality of an extremist convinced, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he is on the verge of victory.

  In the summer of 1917 Lenin believed the government would have the Bolsheviks hunted down and shot—which is precisely what he would have done had the situation been reversed.35 But Kerensky faced a more immediate challenge than the handful of fanatical Bolsheviks, since the Germans, in a new offensive, had shattered what remained of the morale of the ten-million-strong Russian army. Between June and October as many as two million soldiers deserted, some even murdering their officers. The peasant army, fed up with war, wanted to go home and claim their share of the land redistribution. The Germans pressed thei
r advantage until the Russian lines broke on August 22 and the way to Petrograd was open.

  General Kornilov, now commander in chief of the army, was disgusted at the new government and on August 27 started toward the capital in mutiny. He did not want Russia to lose the war and at the same time was determined to stem the left-wing tide. He may or may not have hoped to depose the provisional government, but in any case ended up being branded as the embodiment of the counterrevolution. Kerensky sacked him and took over the post of commander in chief himself.36

  If Kornilov had succeeded, he would have had the propertied classes on his side and driven out Kerensky. But social crisis was spreading by the minute, and it would have been impossible for such a right-wing government to keep the peasant army in harness and repress popular rebellion in the cities. Kornilov’s advance on the capital was stopped on August 30 when his troops were met by the Committee for the Struggle Against the Counterrevolution, which comprised Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Social Revolutionaries. They told the troops of their general’s treacherous plans. Kornilov was arrested the next day, and though the affair ended, it deepened the distrust of many soldiers, and tens of thousands began deserting each day.37

  For months, and even years later, Lenin and the Bolsheviks used the phantom of the Kornilov affair as the right-wing conspiracy waiting in the wings to take back the gains made by the people. This supposed threat became one of the great excuses for introducing terror and putting off democratic reform.38

  THE OCTOBER COUP

  Kerensky’s dilemma was that if he withdrew from the war, no matter how disastrous the situation, he would be attacked by all sides, including the Bolsheviks. But to keep up the fight would fritter away his credibility. His only real hope was that the Western Allies would destroy Germany, and soon.