Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  Stalin now expropriated Snesarev’s operations department: a July 22 inventory yielded typewriter (Remington), one; telephone (city line), one; telephone (Tsaritsyn HQ), one; desks, four; wicker chairs, seven; pens, three; pencils, five; folders, one; trash can, one.93 Stalin had forced Snesarev, whom he viewed as Trotsky’s man, to unite two armies under the command of Klim Voroshilov.94 Born in Lugansk, the same Donbass coal-mining hometown as Alexander Chervyakov of the Tsaritsyn Cheka, Voroshilov had met Stalin at the 4th Party Congress in 1906 (they shared a room). His origins were similarly humble: the son of a washerwoman and a peasant who worked the mines and railways. Voroshilov had ended his formal schooling at age eight, tended animals, and trained as a locksmith. In August 1917, he took over the Lugansk City Duma from Chervyakov, heading it through February 1918, when the Germans began to overrun Ukraine and he turned to partisan warfare, which constituted his first military experience.95 He had retreated from Ukraine to Tsaritsyn with other Red Guards. Although a fine horseman and marksman, and a genuine proletarian, which garnered him some popularity with rank-and-file troops, he was no strategist. “Personally Voroshilov does not sufficiently possess the characteristics necessary for a military chief,” Snesarev had written to Trotsky in July 1918, adding that he “does not observe elementary rules of commanding troops.”96 But Stalin, with Voroshilov, pushed a defense plan that stipulated removing troops from Tsaritsyn’s northern defenses to its southern and western side for an offensive. It was duly launched on August 1. Within three days Tsaritsyn had lost contact with Moscow; units had to be transferred back to the city’s north. Stalin wrote to Lenin (August 4) blaming his “inheritance” from Snesarev.97

  Stalin had Snesarev and various tsarist-era military men arrested, part of a sweep of “military specialists” that included the entire local artillery directorate down to the scribes.98 They were imprisoned on a barge moored in the river in front of Cheka HQ. Trotsky sent an aide, the Siberian Alexei Okulov, to investigate, and he freed Snesarev (who was reassigned elsewhere), while criticizing Stalin and Voroshilov. Trotsky also sent a stern telegram ordering Tsaritsyn to allow tsarist officers to do their jobs, but Stalin wrote on it, “Take no account.”99 Many of the 400 or so arrestees crammed onto the barge would die of starvation or a bullet to the neck that summer of 1918.

  Stalin was conducting a parallel incandescent intrigue against a high-level fuel expedition. Fuel, too, was scarce in Moscow and Lenin had tasked the Bolshevik K. E. Makhrovsky of the Supreme Council of the Economy with mounting an expedition to the Grozny refinery in the North Caucasus with 10 million rubles in cash to secure petroleum. Accompanied by the non-Communist technical expert N. P. Alekseev of the transport commissariat, as well as Sergei Kirov, head of the Terek province (North Caucasus) soviet, Makhrovsky’s special tanker train reached Tsaritsyn around July 23, passing through on its way to Grozny. Stalin informed them that the rail lines farther south had fallen into the hands of rebellious Chechens and Terek Cossacks. Makhrovsky, after also failing to lay claim even to the fuel supplies he spotted in Tsaritsyn, returned to Moscow to report, leaving behind his empty fuel train and the 10 million rubles in a locked suitcase with his wife and the non-party specialist Alekseev. On August 13, Kirov accosted Makhrovsky’s wife and demanded the money, in Stalin’s name. She refused, then privately discussed with Alekseev how to hide it at a new location. Makhrovsky arrived back in Tsaritsyn on August 15. After further back and forth about the 10 million and related matters, on the night of August 17–18, Stalin had Alekseev arrested and driven to the Cheka, accompanied by Makhrovsky, to face charges of masterminding a wide conspiracy to seize power. His coconspirators were said to be, variously, ex-tsarist officers, Serbian officers, Socialist Revolutionaries, trade unionists, one of Trotsky’s “generals,” ex-Provisional Government officials.100 “All specialists,” the Cheka chief Chervyakov is said to have remarked, “are bourgeois and most are counterrevolutionary.”101

  Makhrovsky, too, found himself under arrest. Tsaritsyn’s Cheka refused to recognize his government mandate signed by Lenin. “Comrade, give up talking about the center and the necessity of the localities’ subordination to it,” the interrogator Ivanov told Makhrovsky, according to the latter’s account (submitted to Lenin). “In Moscow they do things their way, and here we do it all afresh in our own fashion. . . . The center cannot dictate anything to us. We dictate our will to the center, for we are the power in the localities.”102 Later that same month, when the local soviet sought to investigate unfounded arrests and summary executions by the Tsaritsyn Cheka, the latter fended them off by claiming that their mandate came from the center. In fact, they followed Stalin’s orders. Stalin would eventually let Makhrovsky go, but he got what he sought: the fuel expedition’s money, vehicles, and all other property.103

  Stalin had his prisoner barge, like his local counterparts up and down the Volga, but he had more than a barge. With fanfare, the Stalin-directed Tsaritsyn Cheka proclaimed the discovery of millions of rubles aimed at funding counterrevolution; mass arrests followed, and the execution of twenty-three leaders of an “Alekseev counter-revolutionary-White Guard plot of Right SRs and Black Hundred officers.”104 No trial took place. Alekseev was beaten to a bloody pulp, then shot, along with his two sons (one a teenager); others in custody for whatever reason, or for no reason, were rolled into the “plot.” Stalin made energetic use of the press, having changed (on August 7) the local newspaper News of the North Caucasus Military District into the mass-oriented Soldier of the Revolution; the foiling of the Alekseev “conspiracy” was duly proclaimed in an “extra” edition (August 21, 1918). “Stalin placed high hopes on agitation,” wrote Colonel Anatoly Nosovich, a former tsarist officer and a member of the command staff in the Red Army in Tsaritsyn. “He frequently remarked in arguments over the military arts that everything being said concerning the necessity of the military arts is fine, but if the most talented commander in the world lacked politically conscious soldiers properly prepared by agitation, then, believe me, he would not be able to do anything against revolutionaries who were small in number but highly motivated.”105

  When news of the grand “Alekseev plot” broke, General Pyotr Krasnov, the recently elected ataman (leader) of the Don Cossacks, and his army had surrounded Tsaritsyn, but Stalin’s executions did not flow from panic.106 Many were panicking at the prospect of the Cossacks’ entrance into the Red city, but Stalin was enacting a strategy, wielding the specter of “counterrevolution” to galvanize the workers and intimidate would-be anti-Bolsheviks. In a political spectacle, the Cheka forced “the bourgeoisie” to dig defense trenches around the city, and conspicuously frog-marched inmates from “the barge” to the prison, accompanied by whispers they were being led to their deaths. Informants were said to be everywhere.107 Above all, the Stalin-directed Cheka’s extermination of “enemies” was given a strong propaganda message: it was said that while Krasnov’s White forces surrounded Tsaritsyn, the internal foes of the revolution were planning to stage an uprising to enable the Cossacks to capture the city.108 (Later, this would be called a fifth column.) Here, in tiniest embryo, was the scenario of countless fabricated trials of the 1920s and 30s, culminating in the monstrous terror of 1937–38.

  So entrenched was Stalin’s class-inflected modus operandi that he sought to restore make-or-break rail lines by the arrest or summary execution of the few technical specialists who actually knew something about rail lines, because they were class aliens, saboteurs by definition. Admittedly, he was not so improvident as to be against all former tsarist officers.109 But he relied on upstarts, those who, like himself, had emerged from “the people,” so long as they remained loyal to him. The proletarian Voroshilov (b. 1881) showed no inclination to pursue his own ambitions at Stalin’s expense. Voroshilov would deem Stalin’s actions “a ruthless purge of the rear, administered by an iron hand”—hardly a vice among Bolsheviks.

  Around this time (August 1918), after Kazan had
fallen to the Whites, Trotsky had gone to Sviyazhsk, near Kazan, where he got to know the former tsarist colonel and Latvian commander Jukums Vacietis, whom he promoted to Red supreme commander (a position that had been vacant).110 Trotsky also got to know Fyodor Raskolnikov, commander of the Volga Flotilla, and two commissars, Ivan Smirnov (the “Siberian Lenin”) and Arkady Rozengolts, a Kazan-battle group that would form something of Trotsky’s counterpart to Stalin’s Tsaritsynites.111 To save the collapsing front, Trotsky ordered that “if any unit retreats of its own accord, the first to be shot will be the commissar, the second, the commander . . . cowards, self-seekers, and traitors will not get away from a bullet.”112 Trotsky’s objections about Stalin did not, therefore, involve the latter’s excess of inhumanity, but his military amateurism and insubordination. Stalin, for his part, bristled at the military orders from afar, which, to him, took no account of “local conditions.” He was illegally diverting supplies sent from Moscow for the Caucasus front farther south, locking up and shooting military specialists, and aiming to have armed workers hold the city, Red Guard style.

  In Tsaritsyn, Stalin revealed himself in depth: rabidly partisan toward class thinking and autodidacts; headstrong and prickly; attentive to political lessons but militarily ignorant. Trotsky perceived the martial dilettantism, willfulness, and prickliness, but little else. Few besides Voroshilov caught the full Stalin. But one person who “got” Stalin was the former tsarist officer Nosovich (b. 1878), a descendant of nobility who had joined the Reds in 1918 and escaped Stalin’s guillotine for class aliens and critics by defecting to the Whites that fall, an act that reconfirmed Stalin in his view about military specialists.113 “Stalin does not hesitate in the choice of paths to realize his aims,” Nosovich (under the pseudonym A. Black Sea Man) wrote in his real-time expose of the Red camp. “Clever, smart, educated and extremely shifty, [Stalin] is the evil genius of Tsaritsyn and its inhabitants. All manner of requisitioning, apartment evictions, searches accompanied by shameless thievery, arrests, and other violence used against civilians became everyday phenomena in the life of Tsaritsyn.” Nosovich correctly explained the true nature of the Georgian’s assignment—grain at any cost—and the real threats Red Tsaritsyn faced. He captured not only Stalin’s thirst for absolute power but his absolute dedication to the cause: Stalin stole 10 million rubles and a fleet of vehicles from his own (Red) side not for personal luxuries, but for defense of the revolution; he was executing “counterrevolutionaries” without proof or trial, not from sadism or panic, but as a political strategy, to galvanize the masses. “To be fair,” Nosovich concluded, “Stalin’s energy could be envied by any of the old administrators, and his ability to get things done in whatever circumstances was something to go to school for.”114 Nonetheless, Tsaritsyn hung by a thread.

  STALIN’S RECALL AND CLOSE CALL

  When Lenin was shot at the Mikhelson factory in Moscow on August 30, 1918, Stalin exchanged telegrams with Sverdlov about his patron’s precarious condition.115 With Stalin and Trotsky absent from Moscow, Sverdlov took charge; slight in physical stature yet with a booming baritone, he was authoritative in a meeting hall but commanded nothing of the stature of a Lenin. Trotsky had the highest profile after Lenin, while Stalin’s profile was growing, but the two had developed deep mutual enmity; Sverdlov could neither resolve their differences nor rise above either of the two. All three had to pray for Lenin’s recovery: Bolshevik survival depended on it.

  As Lenin convalesced, Trotsky and Stalin deepened their antagonism. On September 11, 1918, a “southern front” replaced the North Caucasus military district and Sverdlov summoned Stalin to Moscow; he arrived on September 14 and the day after that had an audience with Sverdlov and Lenin. Trotsky, at a session of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic on September 17, which Stalin attended, appointed Pavel Sytin, a former major general in the tsarist army, above Voroshilov as commander of the southern front (not merely a place, but like an army group).116 Stalin arrived back in Tsaritsyn on September 24; three days later, he complained to Lenin that Tsaritsyn wholly lacked ammunition and nothing was arriving from Moscow (“some kind of criminal negligence, outright treachery. If this persists, we will for sure lose the war in the South.”)117 That same day, Stalin demanded from the military a load of new weapons and 100,000 full sets of uniforms (more than the number of troops locally), and, in purple ink, threatened, “we declare that if these demands (which are the minimum considering the number of troops on the Southern Front) are not met with the utmost urgency, we shall be forced to cease military action and withdraw to the left bank of the Volga.”118

  Major General Sytin arrived in Tsaritsyn on September 29, 1918; immediately Stalin and Minin obstructed his prerogative to name commanders or issue operational orders, and objected to his plan to ensure contact with Moscow by moving the front headquarters outside Tsaritsyn.119 On October 1, Stalin formally requested that Sytin be replaced by Voroshilov.120 Sverdlov telegrammed sternly that same day: “All decisions of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic”—Trotsky—“are binding on the Revolutionary Military Councils of the front.”121 Trotsky complained to Sverdlov (October 2), and sent a direct order (October 3) to Stalin and Voroshilov not to interfere in military matters.122 That same day, Stalin wrote to Lenin excoriating his nemesis at length. “The point is that Trotsky generally speaking cannot get by without noisy gestures,” Stalin wrote. “At Brest-Litovsk he delivered a blow to the cause by his far-fetched ‘leftist’ gesturing. On the question of the Czechoslovaks he similarly harmed the cause by his gesturing with noisy diplomacy. . . . Now he delivers a further blow by his gesturing about discipline, and yet all that this Trotskyite discipline amounts to in reality is the most prominent leaders on the war front peering up the backside of military specialists from the camp of ‘nonparty’ counter-revolutionaries.”123 In fact, although Trotsky argued that revolution would radically change everything, even speech, he insisted that revolution had not changed war: the same operational tactics, logistics, basic military organization still held.124 On military matters, Stalin was the leftist, waging relentless class warfare against former tsarist officers, regardless of their behavior. Disingenuously, Stalin concluded his October 3 telegram to Lenin, “I am no lover of noise and scandal,” and “right now, before it’s too late, it’s necessary to bridle Trotsky, bringing him to heel.” Sverdlov counseled diplomacy, but on October 4, Trotsky, from elsewhere in the south, telegrammed Sverdlov, with a copy to Lenin, “I categorically insist on Stalin’s recall.”125

  And so the clash had come to its logical conclusion: Trotsky and Stalin each appealing to Lenin for the other’s removal.

  In his incredulous fury, Trotsky pointed out that the Red Army outnumbered the Whites three to one on the southern front, yet Tsaritsyn remained in grave danger.126 “Voroshilov could command a regiment, but not an army of 50,000 soldiers,” Trotsky wrote in his October 4 telegram demanding Stalin’s recall. “Nonetheless, I will leave him [Voroshilov] as commander of the Tenth Tsaritsyn Army on the condition that he is subordinated to the [overall] Southern Front Commander Sytin.” Trotsky threatened that “if this order is not implemented by tomorrow, I will remand Voroshilov and Minin to court martial and publish this fact in an order to the army. . . . No more time for diplomacy. Tsaritsyn should either follow orders or get out.”127 On October 5, Sverdlov again directed Stalin, Minin, and Voroshilov to fulfill Trotsky’s orders.128

  Lenin acceded to Trotsky’s demand to recall Stalin—Tsaritsyn could not be lost—but refused Trotsky’s demand to punish Stalin. “I received word of Stalin’s departure from Tsaritsyn for Moscow,” Sverdlov telegrammed Trotsky (October 5). “I consider maximum caution necessary right now regarding the Tsaritsynites. There are many old comrades there. Everything must be done to avoid conflict without retreating from conducting a hard line. Needless to say I am communicating only my opinion.”129 Sverdlov had tactfully revealed his judgment of Stalin, while imposin
g limits on Trotsky. On October 6, Stalin departed for Moscow, meeting Lenin on the eighth.130 In Tsaritsyn, on October 7, an assembly of more than fifty local party, soviet, and trade union activists chaired by Minin approved a resolution recommending “a national congress to reexamine and assess the policy of the center” on hiring former tsarist military brass. This act—provincials calling upon the Central Committee to reverse policy—demonstrated both the decentralization of power in 1918 and the locals’ confidence in having a “roof” (or protector) in Stalin.131 In Moscow, however, Stalin failed to get his way: he was relieved of his post on the southern front, although he was appointed a member of the central Military Council of the Republic, an obvious attempt to mollify him.132 Stalin would now have to communicate with Trotsky by addressing telegrams to the “Chairman of the Military Council” from “Member of the Military Council Stalin.”133

  Stalin returned to Tsaritsyn around October 11, evidently in the company of Sverdlov, who aimed to impose a local diplomatic resolution on the daggers-drawn Red camp.134 The Whites reached Tsaritsyn’s outskirts on October 15, 1918, a day on which the situation was described as “catastrophic” in a telegram sent by Red supreme military commander Vacietis to Voroshilov, with copies to Sytin and Trotsky; Vacietis blamed Voroshilov’s refusal to cooperate with his superior, Sytin.135 Stalin departed Tsaritsyn for good on October 19–20, in the heat of the decisive battle. Trotsky arrived to replace him and salvage the city’s defense.136