Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  Lenin was concerned about a possible “split” (raskola) in the Party around Stalin and Trotsky—and he used the term four times in the short letter of December 25, 1922. He worried also about the growth of the “apparatus” but proposed, nonetheless, that the Central Committee be expanded to fifty or even a hundred members. He thought a larger body would be more difficult for a strong personality to dominate. He also wanted belatedly to include worker-members in hopes the Party would become or remain in tune with the people.

  In his note he mentioned six men who might be possible heirs and had quite mixed comments on each. The two that really concerned him were Stalin and Trotsky. He said that Stalin, as general secretary, had “unlimited authority concentrated in his hands.” Lenin was “not sure” he would “always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.” On the other hand, Trotsky, who was likely “the most capable man” on the Central Committee, showed “excessive self-confidence” and “excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.” These characteristics of the “two outstanding leaders of the present Central Committee could lead to a split. If our Party does not take measures to prevent this happening, a split may occur unexpectedly.”

  Lenin mentioned four other leaders in this “testament” but did not consider them material for leadership on the same par with Stalin and Trotsky. He could never forgive Zinoviev and Kamenev for their vacillations at the time of the coup in 1917. Of the two youngest candidates, Bukharin and Georgy Pyatakov, Lenin said they had strengths and weaknesses. He said Bukharin was “the favorite” of the Party and its most valuable theorist, whose views, however, were not entirely Marxist and were somewhat removed from the real world. He said Pyatakov was more concerned with administrative matters than with serious political issues.

  On January 4, 1923, Lenin dictated a brief postscript, but this time he came down heavily on Stalin, who was now said to be too “rude” to remain general secretary. He added: “I suggest that the comrades consider a way of transferring [peremesyeniya] Stalin from the post [of general secretary] and appointing in his place another man who differs from Comrade Stalin in having one advantage, namely that of being more patient, more loyal, more polite, and more helpful to comrades, less unpredictable, and so on.”23 Lenin said this was no trifling matter because of the growing conflict between Stalin and Trotsky.

  It is difficult to interpret Lenin’s intentions. Was he really going to get rid of Stalin? To answer the question, we need to focus on Lenin’s use of one word, peremesyeniya. This is commonly translated as “remove” or even “dismiss,” and many have seen in that term Lenin’s desire to save Communism from Stalin at the last moment. More likely, Lenin was deeply concerned to stave off a coming split in the Party. He was already facing the problem of succession in the Soviet dictatorship, one that plagued it to the end. He did not want a split, could not really opt for Trotsky, but wanted someone else to take over as general secretary of the Party who was more conciliatory. He made no suggestions about who that might be.

  Even if Stalin had been removed as general secretary, however, it would be wishful thinking to assume his career would have been over. He would have remained on the Central Committee of the Party, and, given his ties to many Communist leaders, he likely would have been reelected to the Politburo. His position in the Party was secure, and it would have been hard even for Lenin to replace him as commissar of nationalities on Sovnarkom. Moreover, the split in the Party, which Lenin feared, was already under way, and some of the heavyweights (such as Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin) had lined up on Stalin’s side. Molotov remembered long afterward that next to Lenin, “Stalin was the strongest politician. Lenin viewed him as the most reliable, the one you could count upon. But he criticized him, too.”24

  Stalin had upset Lenin because of a run-in he had had with Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, back in December 1922. Finding that she was, against doctors’ orders, taking dictation from her weakened husband, Stalin made an “insulting” phone call to her, and when Lenin heard about it, he sent off a letter complaining about his “rudeness.” For all that, Lenin did not issue an ultimatum to Stalin, who in any case promptly apologized.25

  Lenin’s “testament” was embarrassing for Stalin, however, and when Krupskaya turned it over to the Central Committee on May 18, 1924, she may well have hoped for Stalin’s dismissal or at least to have him reined in. She said Lenin had wanted Stalin’s behavior discussed by the Party and the Central Committee (at that time with forty members and seventeen candidate members), and they did so with Stalin present. His offer to resign was declined. He had enough support, and the matter was shelved. Krupskaya herself soon said she did not appreciate how certain “enemies” inside and outside the USSR tried to use the “testament” to discredit the current leaders of the Party.26

  In October 1927, Trotsky again tried to break Stalin’s power by using the “testament.” Stalin turned the tables by saying that Lenin had only charged him with being rude, a charge to which he happily pleaded guilty. He said he intended to stay that way “towards those who rudely and treacherously destroy and split the Party.” As usual, he avoided the impression he was pleading for himself and attacked Trotsky in the name of defending Lenin, the fallen hero. At the moment Stalin did this, Trotsky, or so he later recalled, vividly imagined a guillotine dangling over his head.27

  Some commentators continue to point to the “testament” as one of the great ifs in history. The reasoning is that Lenin was leaning toward getting rid of Stalin, and if he had done so, then the “unblemished” Leninist heritage would have been preserved, and the history of the Soviet Union and Communism would have been different. The unwarranted assumption underlying this line of thought is that Stalin “perverted” Lenin’s teachings.

  Molotov, who worked closely with both Soviet titans, was asked after 1945 whom he considered more severe. He answered without hesitation: “Lenin, of course.” Molotov remembered how Lenin reproached Stalin for his softness. “What kind of a dictatorship do we have? We have a milk-and-honey government, and not a dictatorship!”28

  DISUNITY IN THE PARTY

  The division in the Communist Party after Lenin crystallized around two issues, namely the rapid growth of the Party apparatus and the economy. Matters came to a head in the autumn of 1923, when Leon Trotsky became the focal point of opposition. On October 8 he wrote to the Central Committee to complain that Party leaders had abandoned democratic procedures, and a week later there was a letter by a group of forty-six prominent members of the Party who said leaders were “handpicking” candidates for positions in the apparatus.29

  The Central Committee noted caustically how Trotsky had, in April 1922, turned down the opportunity to become one of Lenin’s deputies, a grave sin in its own right.30 He was also criticized for not attending meetings of Sovnarkom for years; and instead of trying to work within existing structures, he was accused of wanting to go his own way. Trotsky was charged with leading a “faction” and trying to acquire “dictatorial powers in the economic and military spheres.”

  These Party factions had been banned on Lenin’s insistence at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, the same one at which he introduced the New Economic Policy. He said that the Communist Party had so many enemies it could no longer afford the “luxury” of disputes and discord. The “task of the dictatorship of the proletariat in a peasant country is so enormous and difficult,” he added, that their efforts had to be “more united and harmonious than ever.” They could not show the “slightest trace of factionalism.” The conference decided that the Central Committee could, by a two-thirds vote, exclude anyone it considered part of a faction in the Party. Members of the Party’s top organs found guilty would be demoted to the status of deputy members. It was precisely this resolution that brought Trotsky down.31

  A special meeting of the Central Committee on October 23, 1923, voted 102 to 2 (with 10 abstentions) in favor of reprimanding Trotsky on the factionalism charge. K
amenev and Zinoviev recommended expulsion from the Party, and suggestions were floated to have him arrested. Stalin, however, who relished this victory, appeared the moderate now by suggesting that Trotsky be allowed to stay on. Stalin not only was the defender of Lenin but, contrary to mythology, often appeared as the calm voice of reason.32

  Trotsky made matters worse by brushing aside the Central Committee’s condemnation and going public with his complaints. He claimed to be the true Leninist who knew where the country should be headed, and for the Thirteenth Party Congress in January 1924 he mustered some support. However, he was too ill to attend, but perhaps he sensed the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

  The congress overwhelmingly condemned “Trotskyism” as a “petit bourgeois” deviation from Communism, and his days as a force in the USSR were as good as over. Trotsky’s background was always a factor, because he used to be a prominent Menshevik, the group that broke with the Bolsheviks prior to 1914, and he had said and written a lot that defamed the godlike Lenin. Ultimately his “anti-Leninism” counted more than the fact that as commissar of war he had put together the Red Army and saved the revolution.33

  By coincidence, Lenin fell into a coma not long afterward and passed away on January 21, 1924. Trotsky, still convalescing in the south, made the additional mistake of not returning for Lenin’s funeral on January 27. He later said that Stalin had deceived him about the date. Be that as it may, it was a disastrous error to miss the funeral.

  Hanging over Trotsky was the additional factor of his Jewish heritage. Anti-Semitism was a big problem in parts of the country. Though Trotsky had dissociated himself from Judaism, he feared that his background would always be held against him. He had tried to avoid taking on the leadership of the Red Army because he believed—rightly, as it turned out—that opponents would point to his Jewish roots and anti-Semitism would spread.

  Zinoviev and Kamenev, two other potential successors to Lenin, also had Jewish backgrounds. To the anti-Semites it was irrelevant that these men no longer saw themselves as practicing members of the Jewish faith. It is very doubtful that the USSR would have accepted Jewish leaders.

  At Lenin’s death a form of “collective leadership” was in place in the Politburo, so the mantle of power did not fall immediately on Stalin’s shoulders. Nevertheless, by that time he had built up a basis of support and was well regarded in the Party.

  He used the position of general secretary to foster the careers of those who agreed with him and to deny advancements to those who did not. Candidates for appointments could expect perks—such as having permission to shop in special stores—and Stalin built up networks. He was able to control the central apparatus and thus had an enormous advantage over all other potential challengers.34

  LENINISM AFTER LENIN

  A Lenin cult emerged even before he died. “Lenin corners,” which would have a picture of the hero and quotations, became a standard feature of many official buildings, from schools to prisons, and was consistent with the tradition of the religious icon and ritual.

  For Lenin’s funeral on January 27, 1924, millions stood in the freezing cold across the great land. The turnout was orchestrated by the Party, but by all accounts the wish to venerate Lenin hit a responsive chord. The cult grew, with memorial sites, museums, and a mausoleum for his body at the Kremlin wall in Moscow. It projected an uncritical narrative of the man’s life, struggles, and successes and was designed to evoke in the Party as in the country “a mood of loyalty toward the system and its values.”35

  A public signal for the beginning of the cult was sounded by a special commemorative meeting on January 26, 1924. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. The idea came from local Party officials, and though Stalin got some credit for it, he was not the primary maker of the cult.36

  Even before he had passed away, there was a national call for a “Lenin enrollment” to join the recently “purged” Communist Party. The Party had expanded from around 25,000 in 1917 to 250,000 by 1919, but membership had been purged of 100,000 “unworthy” people by year’s end. In 1921 Lenin advocated another purge to unmask the dishonest and insincere.

  In January 1924 an estimated 350,000 members remained. The Lenin enrollment added 240,000 new members in two years. More important, the recruitment was conducted to favor candidates loyal to Stalin, who began to construct the Party in his own image.37

  In order to inherit Lenin’s place, Stalin had to become more than the most important official in the Party. He associated himself with the cult by identifying with the “infallible” doctrine of Leninism, a term heard before the leader’s death but one that came into greater use from 1923 onward.

  Stalin strove for recognition as the interpreter of the word of Lenin in a series of lectures he gave to the Party university in Moscow just two months after Lenin’s death. These were published in Pravda and later issued as a short book, The Foundations of Leninism. Seminars on Leninism and chairs devoted to the topic were soon introduced at other universities. Stalin’s little book, revised and updated, eventually sold in excess of seventeen million copies and was considered a basic text that one had to read.38

  The Foundations of Leninism offers an easy “textbook” presentation of what Stalin considered the master’s central teachings. The text is sprinkled with numerous quotations and aphorisms from Lenin’s writings.

  Unlike the major intellectuals in the Party, Stalin did not consider himself Lenin’s equal, but for that very reason the cult worked to his favor. What he learned was how to get the upper hand in any debate by a timely production of supporting quotations from the great man.39

  Although The Foundations of Leninism does not go into details on every future policy, Stalin established a kind of “general line” by using Lenin’s texts. The book has some of the qualities of Mao’s Little Red Book (1964), which became so prominent during the Chinese Cultural Revolution that began in 1966.

  Stalin showed dexterity during the Party debates that raged from 1923 to 1928. He spoke in the name of the Party, in the Leninist tradition, and found ways of labeling others as “deviationists.” He became a master at putting every line uttered by his opponents through a kind of linguistic strainer.40

  A good example of his skills was how he fared in the theoretical debates at the time of Lenin’s illness and death. Stalin’s speech on November 24, 1924, to a Communist group was published as Trotskyism or Leninism?41 He claimed to draw his strategy for the future from the great man and in the course of 1924 worked out his own position as advocating “socialism in one country.” He differed with Trotsky on a number of key points, particularly on the latter’s theory of “permanent revolution,” which stated that a Communist revolution could not survive in the Soviet Union unless matched by revolutions in the West. Lenin and most Bolsheviks, including Stalin, had once accepted this point of view, but Lenin himself had suggested, in 1915, that it might be possible to achieve the victory of Socialism in one country. Trotsky was now accused of being a “permanentist,” a new crime; he apparently showed too little faith in the Soviet peoples.

  Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, acting as a troika that dominated the Politburo, dragged up Trotsky’s own statements to discredit him. Given the dearth of “spontaneous” revolutions in the West, Socialism in one country seemed a more attractive alternative to “permanent revolution.” For those who hoped terror was over, there was some comfort in the fact that Stalin condemned Trotsky for using it.42

  Another feud, this one pitting Stalin against Zinoviev and Kamenev, came to a head at the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925, which supported Stalin’s point that “in general the victory of socialism (not in the sense of final victory) is definitely possible in one country.” Zinoviev and Kamenev were goaded into presenting a minority report that seemed to oppose the will of the Party and to be shaky on Leninism. When Kamenev said Stalin was “not a figure who can unite the old Bolshevik staff,” commotion broke out on the floor. He added, “We are against the doctrine of the one
-man rule, we are against the creation of a Leader.” The stenographic record of the meeting notes how delegates reacted: “‘Untrue.’ ‘Nonsense.’ ‘So that’s what they’re up to!’ ‘Now they’ve showed their hand.’ ‘We won’t surrender the command posts to you.’ ‘Stalin! Stalin!’ The delegates rise and salute Comrade Stalin. Stormy applause. Cries of ‘Here’s where the party’s united’ and ‘The Bolshevik general staff must be united.’ ‘Long live Comrade Stalin!’ Prolonged stormy applause. Shouts of ‘Hurrah.’ General Commotion.”43

  Stalin’s resolution on Socialism in one country passed by a resounding 559 votes to 65. The interregnum, the period of collective leadership, was over, and Stalin had become the dominant figure and the Party’s most popular leader.44 Even in Leningrad, which was regarded as Zinoviev’s home turf, the overwhelming majority of workers in meetings voted against him, and he was unseated in favor of Sergei Kirov, a Stalin supporter.45

  An effort to stop the inevitable was made in the spring and summer of 1926 when Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev joined with others in a united opposition. They attacked the economic policies put forth by Stalin and the Politburo member Nikolai Bukharin and charged Stalin with unduly favoring the kulaks and so-called Nepmen (members of a resurging capitalist bourgeoisie) at the expense of the proletariat.

  But with the economy improving, famine mostly beaten, and modest signs of prosperity, there was no real support for an attack on the NEP. This situation favored Stalin, because, in keeping with the Party at that point in time, he stood for cautious optimism rather than adventurous gambling on a world revolution.46

  Bukharin thought it might be enough if the united opposition admitted it was wrong. They were told to “come before the Party with head bowed and say: Forgive us for we have sinned against the spirit and against the letter and against the very essence of Leninism.” They were told to “say it, say it honestly: Trotsky was wrong.”47 This gesture was more than other leaders of the opposition were willing to make, and by the end of 1926 Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev had been dropped from the Politburo and their places taken by men loyal to Stalin.