Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  In a third major decree proclaiming one-party rule, Lenin followed his own plan to establish a dictatorship. The Council of People’s Commissars, henceforth known by the acronym Sovnarkom, with Lenin as the chairman, was packed with Bolsheviks. Some left-wing Social Revolutionaries were invited to join, but they had left by October 27, unable to agree with what they called Bolshevik “political terrorism.” Thus Sovnarkom (SNK), despite its populist-sounding name, heralded the beginning of what would become the dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party.

  Stalin was named chairman for nationality affairs, an important position that gave him oversight over more than a hundred nationalities, many of whom (Poles, Ukrainians, and others) wanted to break away from Russia. Keeping the country in one piece was a challenge, all the more because of Lenin’s well-known advocacy of national self-determination. The other major historical figure appointed to Sovnarkom was Leon Trotsky, chosen as commissar of foreign affairs.

  Sovnarkom was supposedly responsible to the Congress of Soviets but styled itself as a provisional government “until the Constituent Assembly” could convene. Lenin was passionately determined, however, that the assembly would never meet.6

  STAMPING OUT CIVIL LIBERTIES

  Lenin’s understanding of “real freedom” was soon clarified. The first civil liberty to be excised like a diseased limb was freedom of expression. Not forty-eight hours into the revolution a “decree on the press” was issued under Lenin’s signature. This was on October 27, and it already marked the end of any hope that the new regime would be tolerant, much less that it would establish democracy. He boldly declared that he was keeping his promise to close the press of the middle class or bourgeoisie.7 Any opposing opinions identified with their interests were anathematized. Henceforth, any newspaper that incited (broadly defined) resistance to Sovnarkom could be shut down. John Reed, the American who chronicled the revolution, noted but did not criticize Lenin’s rationale during a debate in the Congress of Soviets: “We Bolsheviki have always said that when we reached a position of power we would close the bourgeois press. To tolerate bourgeois newspapers would mean to cease being a Socialist. When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward—or go back. He who now talks about the ‘freedom of the press’ goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.”8

  Leon Trotsky also spoke at length in favor of the resolution. He said that “during civil war the right to use violence”—this less than forty-eight hours into what was still a bloodless revolution—“belongs only to the oppressed.” There were catcalls at the meeting: “Who’s the oppressed now? Cannibal!” Trotsky pressed on to say, “If we are going to nationalize the banks, can we then tolerate the finance journals? The old regime must die: that must be understood once and for all.”

  The press clampdown did not sit well with all Bolsheviks, and Kamenev, Zinoviev, and others resigned from the Central Committee. (They would never be forgiven.) The new censorship appalled supporters of the revolution, who correctly saw it as a portent of worse to come. Lenin’s excuse to Sovnarkom was that “the civil war is not yet finished; the enemy is still with us; consequently it is impossible to abolish the measures of repression against the press.”9

  His vision was decisive at almost every turn, but Trotsky, who later blamed Stalin for everything that went wrong, supported the same course. The few who resigned from the Central Committee or Sovnarkom over the suppression of the press and other antidemocratic measures quickly made peace with Lenin and begged their way back into his good graces before the year was out, even as he was establishing full-fledged dictatorship based on terror.10 They put “the cause” before civil and legal rights.

  SIGNS OF RESISTANCE

  Despite Lenin’s best efforts, the Bolsheviks’ hold on power remained tenuous, and resistance began to form. On October 29 the railway union (Vikzhel) threatened to strike. Many workers wanted democracy, not a dictatorship. Lenin and other leaders tried to keep this threat at bay by promising to include other parties in the government and even allowed some left Social Revolutionaries back on Sovnarkom.

  The peasants had their reservations, but they were a vast body with numerous and conflicting interests who could hardly vote as one. In their way they saw to it that the Bolsheviks did not gain a majority in the Congress of Peasants’ Deputies that began in Petrograd on November 26. At the meeting Lenin and his Party adopted disruptive tactics that eventually led to a walkout of the majority (mostly members of the Social Revolutionary Party), whereupon the Bolsheviks and some left Social Revolutionaries dissolved the congress. Much more trouble would flare up in the countryside once the peasants began to learn what was in store for them.11

  There was also significant armed resistance to the seizure of power in Moscow beginning on October 28 with pitched battles for control of the city. The Bolsheviks mustered fifteen thousand armed men, opposed on the other side by an equal number of troops and guards still loyal to the Kerensky government. The Committee of Public Safety in Moscow, led by Mayor V. V. Rudnev and the military commander K. I. Riabtsev, was determined to resist but did not relish being seen as part of the counterrevolution. They refused to hand over the Kremlin fortress in the heart of the city, and armed clashes dragged on until November 2.12

  Another source of resistance was the civil service. During the week following the coup, when newly minted commissars showed up at government offices, white-collar employees refused to let them in. Various ministries joined to create their own strike. They had built a national coordinating committee by October 29 and called on all government employees to stop work. The response was positive and spilled over into the private sector. Banks would not open despite demands from Sovnarkom, which eventually dealt with them by nationalizing the lot. The new commissar of finance, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, who was desperate for funds to carry on government business, was left with little choice but to authorize armed robberies of the state bank and other financial institutions until December.

  The will of other white-collar workers was broken over several weeks, but in some cases the strikes stretched into 1918. The Bolsheviks eventually came to dominate the upper reaches of the civil service but in the short run had to rely on carryovers from the old regime. Initially the new commissars, barred from their own offices, often had to force their way into their ministry buildings.13

  The opposition put its dwindling hopes on the elections to the Constituent Assembly called in August and due to take place on November 12. There was no choice but to let them go ahead. Given the vast expanse of the country and its backward infrastructure, the elections took two weeks. The Bolsheviks got 24 percent of the vote, well below the 38 percent gained by the Social Revolutionary Party.

  Lenin minimized the results and claimed they were unrepresentative of the “people’s will.” Sovnarkom came up with one reason after another to delay opening the assembly and soon postponed it again. In protest the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly was organized by a variety of people, including some from the Petrograd soviet, trade unions, and all other Socialist parties. On November 28 a large crowd of ten to twenty thousand that included white-collar workers on strike, students, and some workers demonstrated in Petrograd about these delays. They made their way through guards ringing the Tauride Palace and, once inside, tried to convene the assembly. The next day the building was surrounded by armed troops, and no one was permitted to enter.14

  After this incident, and in the context of continuing white-collar resistance, Lenin opted for harsher measures. The liberals (Kadets, or Constitutional Democrats) were a convenient target, for they were considered the bourgeois enemy. Pursuing them distracted from the fact that the opposition was broad and growing. On December 1 the Kadet Party was outlawed and all its leaders arrested, a sure sign the terror was starting. To judge from a memorandum issued on December 12 and published in Pravda just over two weeks later, Lenin was leaning toward either abolishing the Constituent Assembly before it me
t or calling new elections. Most of his comrades shared those views. His statement was replete with code words about the “transition” under way from a bourgeois to a Socialist system. Their “dictatorship of the proletariat,” he claimed, represented a “higher” form of democratic institution than a mere republic with a Constituent Assembly. He had a way with words, heaping abuse on anyone who opposed him. The struggle was pictured as pitting the virtuous workers and peasants against the “ruthless military suppression” of the nefarious “slave owners.”15

  REPRESSION

  To stamp out resistance, the regime established three new institutions: the Cheka, or secret police; concentration camps; and the Red Army. Outbreaks of violence and looting made it necessary to establish the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) on October 26. The NKVD had to secure their headquarters, and Felix Dzerzhinsky, one of the top Bolsheviks on the MRC, suggested on November 21 that they set up a special commission; by December 5, the MRC had been dissolved to make way for this body, which was in fact a full-time secret police. It would deal with the counterrevolution and with strikes and unrest.

  Lenin’s note to Dzerzhinsky prior to the Sovnarkom meeting on December 7 shows that he thought about “enemies” in social rather than only in political terms. The crackdown would be in the name of the “exploited” masses. Lenin’s note—which basically formulated the rationalization for creating the secret police—said the decree on “fighting counterrevolutionaries and saboteurs” might run along the following lines:

  The bourgeoisie, the landowners, and all the rich classes are making desperate efforts to undermine the revolution, the aim of which is to safeguard the interests of the workers, the working and exploited masses. The bourgeoisie are prepared to commit the most heinous crimes. They are bribing the scum of society and giving them drink to use them in riots. The supporters of the bourgeoisie, especially among higher clerical and bank officials and so on, . . . are organizing strikes in order to undermine government measures for bringing about social reforms. They have even sabotaged food supplies, thus threatening millions with hunger. Urgent measures are needed to fight the counterrevolutionaries and saboteurs. Consequently the Council of People’s Commissars [Sovnarkom] decrees: …16

  Following this colorful prelude, Lenin set forth a series of measures that were to be enforced by the NKVD. Sovnarkom agreed not to disperse until Dzerzhinsky presented specific steps to take. The result was the creation of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combatting Counterrevolution and Sabotage, or Cheka. Although Lenin’s immediate worry was the general strike of state employees, it is obvious that he wanted to use radical measures against the “wealthy classes” and the “bourgeoisie”—that is, his opponents on the right—as well as anyone who disrupted the economy and a host of other people.

  The minutes of the December 7 Sovnarkom meeting that discussed establishing the Cheka already reveal a striking propensity for extreme violence. The tasks of the new police were as follows:

  1. To suppress and liquidate all attempts and acts of counterrevolution and sabotage throughout Russia, from whatever quarter.

  2. To hand over for trial by revolutionary tribunal all saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries, and to work out means of combating them.

  3. The Commission [that is, the Cheka] solely carries out preliminary investigation, in so far as this is necessary for suppression.17

  It is one of the ironies of the Russian Revolution that the Bolsheviks, who had suffered most at the hands of the tsarist secret police (the Okhrana), should now invent an infinitely more horrific successor. Some have argued that neither Lenin nor his comrades envisioned that setting up the Cheka would lead to full-scale terror. However, that outcome was very likely, given how they also stripped away citizens’ legal and civil rights. The results can hardly have surprised the Bolsheviks.

  One of the best studies of the Cheka places the main responsibility for its creation on Dzerzhinsky’s shoulders.18 But Lenin was the driving force behind Dzerzhinsky. He never had a second thought about giving the secret police the upper hand over the rights of citizens. On the contrary, he invariably wanted more rather than less terror.

  On January 5, 1918, the gathering of the elected representatives from across Russia in the Constituent Assembly could not be put off any longer. The Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly had taken up the challenge and campaigned to ensure the process went ahead. It planned a march to the Tauride Palace on the day the assembly was to meet.

  Lenin and the Bolsheviks called in loyal troops. The demonstration, estimated at fifty thousand, was made up of striking civil servants, students, and others from the educated classes. There were not as many workers or soldiers as organizers had hoped. As the marchers approached, troops opened fire, and about twenty people were killed.

  Here was another first. The Leninists were shooting at unarmed civilians, and even some supporters were quick to point to the uncanny resemblance to the tsarist atrocities on the infamous Bloody Sunday of 1905. The burials took place on January 9, the anniversary of Blood Sunday, and the dead were laid to rest alongside those killed by the tsarist forces.

  Maxim Gorky, one of Russia’s leading intellectuals, wrote a scathing newspaper account and wondered whether the new people’s commissars—“among whom there must be decent and sensible people”—knew what they were doing. “Do they understand,” he asked rhetorically, that they would “inevitably strangle the entire Russian democracy and ruin all the conquests of the revolution?”19

  Lenin awaited events, and once he heard that the marchers were dispersed, he called the Constituent Assembly into session in hopes of ramming through his agenda. Only one resolution was put to the gathering—a Bolshevik proposal titled the “Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Masses”—which was soundly defeated by a vote of 237 to 136. In fact, every member of the house not in Lenin’s Party voted against. Never one to take such complete lack of support seriously, Lenin used the result as an excuse to stage a walkout, after he declared the assembly part of the omnipresent counterrevolution. When the other delegates finally left early the next day, none was allowed back, the assembly was dissolved, and the building was sealed. The road that might have led to democracy was now irrevocably closed off.

  On January 6, in an article published in both Pravda and Izvestia, Lenin announced that he was prepared to use terror in “the interests of workers, soldiers, and peasants” and to do what was necessary “for the good of the revolution.” As he saw it, “the enemies of Socialism” were to be “denied for a time not only inviolability of the person, and not only freedom of the press, but universal suffrage as well. A bad parliament should be ‘dismissed’ in two weeks. The good of the revolution, the good of the working class, is the highest law.”20

  His explanation for abolishing the assembly was that the elections had been held “on the basis of electoral lists drawn up prior to the October Revolution,” and allegedly reflected the outdated power of the “compromisers” and the Kadets. According to Lenin, the “bourgeois parliamentary republic” that would have resulted would inevitably have become an “obstacle in the path of the October Revolution and Soviet power.”21 On January 8, a new assembly met, the so-called Third Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks reserved a majority of seats for themselves. It passed every measure put to it, including rubber-stamping a law that made Sovnarkom the government of a newly created state, the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.22

  A new constitution, quickly drafted by a committee dominated by the Bolsheviks, gave powers to central over local authorities. It restricted voting rights on the basis of social origins and political attitudes. The vote in the future would carry almost no weight, but even so it was to be withheld from a wide range of people—the so-called lishentsy, or disenfranchised. The lishentsy was not a firm category, but could include anyone who employed hired labor, lived from investments, or had been a trader. Also deprived of their r
ights were monks and clerics, former members of the police, the royal family, and anyone “convicted of crimes of greed and depravity.”23

  DEALING WITH GERMANY

  Russia was still at war, and the terms demanded by Germany for peace were harsh. The Bolsheviks wanted to extend the armistice of mid-November 1917 and dragged out negotiations. With the exception of Stalin and others close to Lenin, they balked at surrendering Russian territory. On February 17 the Germans gave notice they were resuming the war, soon swept past demoralized Russian troops, and advanced on the capital. Lenin convinced the Central Committee to return to negotiations, but now got no response from the other side.

  It was at this point on February 21 that Lenin signed the notorious decree—written by Trotsky—titled “The Socialist Fatherland in Danger.” It mobilized the entire country, called for a scorched-earth policy in case of retreat before the Germans, and threatened dire consequences to anyone who might take advantage of the invasion. It demanded the immediate execution of “enemy agents, profiteers, marauders, hooligans, counterrevolutionary agitators, and German spies.”24 When the commissar of justice, Isaac Steinberg, questioned these measures, Lenin asked rhetorically: “Do you really believe that we can be victorious without applying the cruelest revolutionary terror?”25

  Steinberg later wrote how exasperated he was. After all, they were discussing a decree with the potential to be misused, and Lenin was putting him off by claiming it was needed in the name of vaguely defined “revolutionary terror.” In frustration Steinberg called out: “Then why do we bother with a Commissariat of Justice? Let’s call it frankly the Commissariat for Social Extermination and be done with it!” Lenin perked up and replied: “Well put…that’s exactly what it should be… but we can’t say that.” According to Steinberg, the “soil of revolutionary Russia was poisoned in that period; it was inevitable that in the future it should bear poisonous fruit.”26