Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  He saw poverty and social misery for himself and experienced what happened when large industries replaced handicraftsmen, for his shoemaker father was put out of business by the competition of a new factory. For true believers like Stalin, Marxism offered “scientifically” grounded certainty that the way to happiness was by going forward, not back, and that the “good” would inherit the earth.

  Hundreds of men and women took up this message and the vocation of the professional revolutionary at the same time as Stalin. In Russian Marxism, which blended the teachings of Marx with revolutionary terrorism, there was no room for the half measures of democrats or liberals. The desire for root-and-branch change went beyond the Russian Marxists, to include other revolutionary sects. The emotions ran so deep that all those who wanted change were affected, so that mere moderates were considered as bad as the tsarist regime itself.

  The number of victims of terrorist attacks, including innocent bystanders, increased steadily. There were approximately one hundred casualties in such incidents between the 1860s and around 1900, but after 1905 terrorist murder reached epidemic proportions. Newspapers stopped carrying full stories, and some only added a short section naming various revolutionary groups thought responsible for the assassinations, bank robberies, and other such crimes. Across the empire in the first seventeen years of the twentieth century, terrorists killed or wounded an estimated seventeen thousand people.5

  There is little information on Stalin’s early career, and even less on his private life. Although he was a rebel against existing society, he was traditionalist enough to get married in 1902 or 1903. His wife, Ekaterina, was the sister of Alexander Svanidze, a revolutionary Stalin met in one of the safe houses in Tiflis. What he liked about Ekaterina was that she was not really one of the fashionable “new women” in the movement, whom he considered amoral because of their belief in sexual freedom. Stalin’s wife made a home for him, and he, a terrorist on the run, visited her when he could. Exactly where they lived and how they paid the bills remains a mystery, as does the exact birth date (likely 1908, sometimes given as 1907) of their only son, Yakov. Stalin was deeply saddened when Ekaterina died in November 1907. He continued the life of the hard-bitten revolutionary and moved around to keep one step ahead of the police.6

  Lenin spelled out more about Party organization through the newspaper Iskra after the turn of the century. He was not living in Russia and was out of touch with ordinary people in the vast tsarist empire. He was keen to take the fight into the public arena, but knew so little he did not predict how society would react to the calamities of 1904 and 1905—brought about in the wake of the disastrous Russo-Japanese War. He did not initially appreciate the significance of Bloody Sunday in January 1905, along with the series of strikes, mutinies, and assorted social protests that would culminate in revolution. The young Stalin was more involved in events as part of the Tiflis Committee of the RSDLP but played no leadership role in distant Georgia, where the repression during the year was severe.7

  Lenin returned to Russia after the October Manifesto of 1905 was issued. He was psychologically remote from the crowds, however, and unlike Leon Trotsky, the fiery Menshevik and leader of the radical St. Petersburg soviet, he was no rabble-rousing orator. He stood out by his readiness to advocate terrorism of all kinds, including assassinations and “confiscations.” He made outlandish and strangely amateurish suggestions, for example, that the political activists keep acid with them at all times, to throw at the police who might pursue them. He was prepared, though, to take advantage of the new elections. Unlike most leaders of the Party, he thought it might be useful to run candidates for the State Duma.

  Once the uprising of December 1905 was repressed and the tide of what was still a moderate revolution turned, Lenin went for his own safety to Finland. The lesson of December, he wrote during the following summer, “proved” that the general strike was not the answer. Instead, the “immediate task” was to organize the masses and prepare them to overthrow the regime. He wanted power, not to play at elections. Military tactics would be needed in the coming “great mass struggle,” or so he predicted with the usual certainty. The time would come, he said, for the attack of the organized masses, who would be led into what he called a “ruthless war of extermination.”8 Toward the end of 1907 he went to Western Europe and did not return to Russia until a decade later, after the collapse of the tsarist regime.

  Stalin ventured out of Georgia for the first time when sent as an elected delegate to a Bolshevik conference in Tampere, Finland, in December 1905. He remembered well how he looked forward at last to seeing Lenin, “the mountain eagle of our party, the great man,” but he promptly opposed Lenin’s suggestion that the Party engage in electoral politics now that the tsar, under the pressure of events in 1905, had granted democratic concessions.9 Lenin’s aim was certainly not a parliamentary democracy, but he thought there might be gains to be made by burrowing away at the system from within. Stalin disagreed because he believed that such political participation would sap the strength of the revolutionary movement. He wanted no compromises, but a “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.”10

  Lenin ran into more opposition when he pushed for reuniting with the Mensheviks. That proposal was taken up again in April 1906 and passed at the All-Russian Conference of RSDLP in Stockholm. Although on the surface the Party was reunited, the underlying split did not go away. The Mensheviks (led by people like Trotsky) stood for a revolution, but, in keeping with their version of Marxism—certainly not Lenin’s—the revolution would be led by the middle classes and result in civil rights and democracy.

  Stalin attended the Stockholm meetings, and though he continued to hold Lenin in awe, he was no sycophant. The two disagreed about important issues. Lenin believed the land should be taken over by the state and nationalized, whereas Stalin thought Communists should seize the opportunity to win over the poor peasants by giving them the land they longed for. Lenin won the debate, but at the time of the October Revolution of 1917, when he had to give land to the peasants to keep them on the side of the revolution, he realized Stalin had been right.11

  In the prewar era Stalin was generally conciliatory toward opponents within the Party and disliked how Lenin baited and abused them. Nevertheless, he went along with the unsavory tactics and in the Caucasus worked on Lenin’s behalf with another revolutionary with the nom de guerre “Kamo” (real name Simon Ter-Petrosyan), an Armenian friend from his youth in Gori. They were part of the shady Combat Technical Group, but today we would term it the Party’s armed wing in charge of “fund-raising,” which is to say, robbing banks. These kinds of activities appalled the Mensheviks and separated them from the Bolsheviks. Lenin and his comrades favored such “expropriations,” but Trotsky and others said what they were doing made them little better than common criminals.12

  Lenin was delighted about an armed and violent robbery of a stagecoach in Tiflis in June 1907 that was organized by Stalin and carried out by Kamo. Bolshevik lawlessness was condemned again by the 1907 London conference of the RSDLP, but under Lenin’s aegis terrorism and “expropriations” continued to help finance the lives of the revolutionaries. Some of these “exes” (thefts) in Georgia took large sums of money, and later in life Stalin boasted that some netted as much as a quarter-million rubles. Lenin and the Bolsheviks continued these practices despite what the Mensheviks or anyone else said. Thus, well before the Bolsheviks came to power, they worried little about conventional morality and legality.13

  Lenin took a great liking to Stalin for his commitment, ruthlessness, and intellectual abilities. He wanted Stalin at his side as a natural ally, but under close watch by the tsarist secret police their holding meetings was no easy matter. Stalin got recognition for his exploits and for some of his publications back in Georgia, but the real turning point in his career came in January 1912. Lenin demanded at meetings of the Bolshevik faction in Prague, though Stalin was not there, that he be brought into the new Cen
tral Committee. Lenin convened the meeting in such a way that only eighteen delegates showed up, sixteen of them Bolsheviks, but they went ahead and put together the committee.14

  Lenin’s favoring of Stalin was not surprising given the latter’s attitudes, loyalties, and “fund-raising” activities. Stalin was a Leninist to the core and a staunch opponent of the Mensheviks in the Caucasus. By 1912 Lenin was more appreciative than he had been earlier when he had disagreed with Stalin and other praktiki, or “practical workers,” about giving the peasants land. He was beginning to see something special in Stalin, the “man of steel,” as he was calling himself at this time. Stalin had used a variety of aliases until around 1910, when “Koba” began adding the new surname “Stalin.” He continued to use Koba as his first name and only started using his real first name, Joseph, during the October Revolution.

  STALIN AS A NON-RUSSIAN

  Stalin had other qualities that made him a good choice for Lenin. He knew the political situation on the ground in Russia, above all in the Caucasus region, and also had the advantage of being closer in social background to the working class than most other leading lights in the Party. He had organized strikes and was directly involved with workers.

  As well, Stalin was a non-Russian and well acquainted with the complex nationality question, an aspect of his background that would have had a natural appeal for Lenin, with his ambitions to carry out a revolution in what was after all a multinational empire. At a Central Committee meeting with Party activists in Cracow in late 1912, the two spoke at length about the nationality question, a topic that was gaining ground everywhere in Europe and a hot issue for Socialists. Lenin suggested Stalin write an article on the topic for Prosveshchenie (Enlightenment), the Party’s main theoretical journal.

  Stalin went from Cracow to Vienna in January-February to do more research. When Lenin received the finished article, he was delighted and, in an oft-cited letter to Maxim Gorky in February, simply referred to Koba as the “wonderful Georgian” who was writing an essay for him. In it Stalin showed that he was at home with the issue of nationalities and the ethnic groups in the Caucasus and that he saw through the sophisticated debates on nationalism among the Socialists in Western Europe. His essay became a classic and paved the way for him to be named commissar of nationalities in Lenin’s government five years later.

  Contrary to what one might expect, Stalin did not favor merely assimilating the minorities into one great Russian melting pot. He also did not accept the view of some Western Socialists that the answer for minorities was to be granted more autonomy and have their own elected bodies no matter where they happened to live inside a multinational empire. He thought that strategy would lead to fragmentation, and he called instead for national self-determination, whereby the government would foster the language, culture, and schools of minority groups. However, workers of all nationalities would not join their own separate institutions; instead, they would form “integral collective bodies, which would come together as one party” and work for what he called the “complete democratization of the country.”15

  Stalin’s approach would stop the splintering of the revolutionary movement into hundreds of national variants. In the long run in a multilingual state, particularly one with as many ethnic groups as the new Soviet Union, there were no easy solutions to nationality problems.16

  In late February 1913, Stalin ended his stay abroad after about six weeks—the longest period he was ever outside Russia—and returned to St. Petersburg. He was promptly arrested and exiled yet again, this time for four years in Siberia. He did not return until after the collapse of the tsarist regime in February 1917.

  STALIN IN 1917

  Stalin’s role in the revolutionary events of 1917 was small. He missed several important meetings on the eve of the October coup, and his reputation suffered for not being included on an assignment list of those leading it on October 25.17 He was, however, on the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) and the Bolshevik Central Committee, and appears to have been more involved in the events than is often supposed. At the stormy meeting of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets on the evening of October 25, Stalin made no speeches and did not make his presence felt. Nevertheless, it seems an exaggeration to suggest he was the man who missed the revolution.18

  Soon enough he was appointed a member of Sovnarkom, the new government, as the commissar of nationalities. He was the obvious choice because of his ties to Lenin and because as a Georgian he was one of the few non-Russians among Bolshevik leaders. His presence helped convey the appearance that the takeover represented the country as a whole.

  However, Stalin could point to no heroic feats, great speeches, or monumental decisions of his own during the revolution itself, a fact that embarrassed him for the rest of his life. It was held against him by opponents like Trotsky, the inspiring speaker, “genius” behind the coup, creator of the Red Army, and renowned military leader during the civil war. Stalin did not seem to have any obvious gifts that marked him for greatness.

  A potential Communist leader had to demonstrate expertise in Marxist theory. On that score Stalin was no match for Trotsky or for the younger and brilliant Nikolai Bukharin. Therefore, in 1917 or 1918 it was anything but clear that Stalin would become Lenin’s successor.

  Stalin would, however, learn better than anyone how to build on the foundations established by Lenin. It might be tempting to think that if Lenin had only gotten rid of Stalin at some point, then all the abuses associated with the subsequent history of the Soviet Union might have been avoided. That assumption would be mistaken. It was Lenin who established the new regime, complete with secret police, concentration camps, and suppression of civil liberties. None of those who competed with Stalin to be Lenin’s heir would have changed these fundamentals. However, Stalin was the logical successor to Lenin in the sense that he fully internalized Lenin’s thought and built on it faithfully.

  8

  LENIN’S PASSING, STALIN’S VICTORY

  The new Communist leaders were bedeviled by major economic, cultural, and political problems. Russia was a backward society compared with its great Western rivals in 1914, and the Great War, the revolution, and the civil war made things worse. Russia’s gross industrial output in 1921 was 69 percent lower than in 1913. Agricultural production was down as much or more, and the country faced famine. The utopian dreamers were professional revolutionaries but were almost completely devoid of any relevant practical experience in governing. Where was the expertise to come from to run the country?

  The civil service strike that began at the start of the regime soon ended. The Bolsheviks dominated the higher ranks of the administrative pyramid, but they had to allow the lower levels to be run as of old by tsarist officials they inherited. Lenin admitted to the Eleventh Party Congress in March 1922 that the Communists were incapable of directing the giant bureaucratic machine, which fell off drastically in the countryside. It was difficult enough to control the Cheka in Moscow, for example, but it became almost a law unto itself in the distant parts of the new republic.1

  Lenin and the Bolsheviks despised the “bourgeois” specialists in the civil service and elsewhere in the economy but had to rely on them. In April 1918, Lenin vented his fury at “the high price” of letting these people stay on. He called the excessive salaries of these specialists a “tribute” that had to be paid for the backwardness of the country. The hope was to educate the masses quickly and thus relieve the Communist state from its regrettable reliance on the bourgeoisie.

  A second major problem, arguably even more perplexing than Russia’s economic backwardness, was the fact that most people in the country did not want a Communist-style revolution. How was it possible to build a Socialist society when so many rejected its fundamental tenets?

  Most Russian Marxists believed that the country was not ready for a Socialist revolution in 1917, and Lenin had been almost alone in pushing for the coup. He famously admitted that Russia was an “inadequately c
ultured country” and that it was “semi-Asiatic,” but he plunged ahead with single-minded fanaticism. However, it was not so easy to solve the two central problems facing the new regime even after the organized opposition was beaten: Russia’s underdevelopment and the unpopularity of Communism.

  Lenin advocated thoroughgoing violence and even civil war in the name of the higher cause of Communism. Terror was employed on a scale unprecedented in Russian or European history, and Stalin, who was Lenin’s keenest disciple, learned his lessons well.

  They had awakened enough support to beat the White armies and the forces of the counterrevolution by appealing to the poorest peasants, who worried the Whites would restore the old system and they would lose their lands.

  The Communists also aroused a messianic zeal within the minds of some people, who yearned for the universal cause. They won over young idealists, for whom achieving utopia justified any means. The Party grew from 115,000 in January 1918 to 576,000 in January 1921. Despite purges and resignations, membership hit 1 million in 1926 and never fell below that number again. It was and remained mainly a workers’ party, with less than 30 percent of its members peasants during Lenin’s era and even later. As best we can judge, the new joiners were the “bold and committed,” but their motives ran from idealism all the way to a desire for vengeance against the exploiters. The diaries and autobiographies of Communists who lived through those times reveal that many heartily agreed with the methods and the aims of their leaders.