Lenin had by no means intended to hand over supreme power to Stalin. Some insight into how Lenin might have envisioned Stalin’s new position can be gleaned from the circumstance that the politburo had acceded to Zinoviev’s request for creation of a Comintern “general secretary” to run its day-to-day affairs, appointing Otto Kuusinen, a Finnish Communist resident in Moscow, while Zinoviev (in Petrograd) remained chairman (predsedatel’).22 In similar fashion, Lenin remained chairman of the government (Council of People’s Commissars), while Stalin became general secretary of the (party) apparatus.23 Of course, the Russian Communist party far outweighed the Comintern as a power base, and Stalin’s “chairman” was not well.24 Still, no one dreamed Lenin would become utterly incapacitated, and so quickly. In March 1922, Stalin had imported two German doctors, Otfried Forster (a neurologist) and Felix Klemperer (a lung specialist), at a cost of 50,000 gold rubles each.25 The latter judged Lenin’s severe headaches to be caused by lead poisoning from the bullets, which, following the attempted assassination four years earlier, were still lodged in his body (one in the neck, one, which had pierced his lung, in the left collarbone).26 April 22 was Lenin’s birthday—he turned 52—and the next day he underwent surgery to remove the neck bullet: it turned out to be three millimeters from his carotid artery.27 After his surgery, on May 19, in good cheer, Lenin composed a playful note to Stalin.28 Doctors in the hospital, however, recorded “a general nervousness, . . . neurasthenia,” which they attributed to “overwork.” On May 23, 1922, Lenin went back to the countryside to continue his post-surgery recuperation.29 There, catastrophe struck: on the night of May 26-27, he suffered severe memory lapse, partial loss of speech, and partial paralysis of his right leg and right arm. The regime issued a bulletin to the effect that Lenin had a stomach ailment.30 In fact, he had suffered a massive stroke—a mere seven weeks after having elevated Stalin to general secretary.
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LENIN’S ILLNESS became another avenue for Stalin to draw closer to him. The stroke, a state secret (like the hemophilia of Tsarevich Alexei), exposed Lenin’s dearth of close confidantes and protectors. He had no children, who might be considered possible heirs, and no Praetorian Guard, whose leader might have sought to mount a coup, as so often happens in a dictatorship. He did have a politburo, but Molotov, who worked very closely with Lenin and knew him well, would recall that “Lenin had no friends in the politburo.”31 One reason may have been Lenin’s relentless disparagement of his colleagues.32 He did have an extremely loyal service staff, which included a business manager and a number of secretaries, one of whom, the most junior, was Nadya Alliluyeva, Stalin’s wife.33 But after the death of Lenin’s mistress Inessa Armand (in fall 1920), he was left with just two trustworthy intimates: his unwed younger sister Maria Ulyanova (b. 1878), who worked at Pravda, and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya (b. 1869), who worked in the commissariat of enlightenment; both of them lived with Lenin.34 Stalin was well-positioned as Lenin’s right hand and all-purpose fixer.
Unbeknownst to the world, Lenin had retreated to the thick woods outside Moscow, where, in the southeast, lay the Gorki estate, a 16th century property that had changed hands a number of times and fallen into disrepair by the early 1900s, when a two-time widow (of both a leading art collector and the second-to-last Moscow governor-general) had the main building remodeled in gaudy “Russian Empire” style. This produced a yellowish baronial manor fronted by six white columns, which the Bolsheviks nationalized. Lenin first went to Gorki on September 25, 1918, about a month after the near fatal attempt on his life.35 (To prolong the restless leader’s recuperation, Yakov Sverdlov began to refurbish a new Kremlin apartment for Lenin in the Imperial Senate: three bedrooms, one each for Lenin, Krupskaya, and Ulyanova, as well as a service kitchen and a small dining room formed out of a former hallway, but, conspicuously, no parlor room to receive guests.)36 As Lenin’s health further deteriorated, he spent more and more time at the estate: all told, about two-and-a-half of the next five years after his initial visit. Gorki acquired a staff, including the worker-cook Spiridon Putin (grandfather of Vladimir Putin), a large library, and a direct telephone line to Moscow. Leonid Krasin, the former top salesman in tsarist Russia for the German company Siemens and now the Bolshevik foreign trade commissar, purchased a Rolls-Royce “Silver Ghost” in 1921, so Lenin could be driven around, while a film projector enabled him to watch newsreels of Bolshevik anniversaries and Henry Ford’s assembly lines.37 Nonetheless, Lenin came to feel isolated in his second home, imprisoned by incapacitating illness.38 Stalin visited Gorki more than any other person in the inner circle—twelve times—and was observed by Lenin’s sister Maria Ulyanova to cheer Lenin up, cracking wise, mockingly impersonating others in the regime, sharing jokes about police surveillance on Lenin’s doctors.39 Stalin would use these visits to advantage, arriving from Gorki to politburo meetings, passing on “greetings from Ilich,” and orally transmitting the leader’s directives.
Lenin’s medical issues did not stem from the lead in the bullet or overwork (nor, for that matter, from syphilis: Lenin’s tests had come back negative, although he was nonetheless injected with arsenic, the remedy of the day).40 On May 27, 1922, Professor V.V. Kramer, a neuropathologist, definitively concluded not only that Lenin’s migraines, acute anxiety, and insomnia stemmed from brain disease, but that “the basis of his illness is actually not only overstrain of the brain, but also severe disorder of the blood vessels in the brain.” The diagnosis was inadequate supply of blood to the brain caused by a clogging of the arteries with fibrous plaque (athereosclerosis). Kramer noted that his patient “has lost the ability to recall even a few short phrases, while retaining his intellect in full”—a grim dynamic that intensified Lenin’s anxieties about becoming paralyzed.41 “When the first obvious signs of brain disease appeared,” Ulyanova would recall, “Lenin spoke about it with Stalin, asking him for poison, since his further existence would be pointless. Stalin promised to fulfill Lenin’s request, should it become necessary, while treating [the likelihood] rather skeptically.”42 On May 29, after proving unable to fulfill the doctor’s request to multiply 12 by 7, the Bolshevik leader “determined . . . that it was over for him and demanded we summon Stalin for the briefest interval.” Lenin’s other Russian doctor, A.M. Kozhenikov, advised against the meeting, but Lenin was adamant. Stalin arrived on May 30 with Nikolai Bukharin, who remained outside Lenin’s room, leaving Stalin alone with Lenin for perhaps five minutes. Stalin, walking back to the car with Bukharin and Ulyanova, divulged that Lenin had reminded him of his request for cyanide “to help him leave the stage should he become paralyzed” and stated “now that time had come.” The three evidently decided to send Stalin back in to say he had conferred with the doctors and they did not consider Lenin’s condition irreversible, a blatant lie.43 Kozhevnikov recorded in his notebook: “Stalin visited. Conversation about suicidium.”44 Had Stalin wanted to poison Lenin, the Bolshevik leader himself had furnished him a golden opportunity to do so, as a humanitarian gesture, with reliable witnesses. Stalin did no such thing.
Lenin’s illness also had an impact on his relations with Trotsky. No one had given him more grief. Once, at a politburo meeting, Trotsky was sitting studying the English language, then paused briefly to criticize the politburo’s poor organization—causing Lenin to lose his composure. At another politburo meeting Trotsky was said to have called the Bolshevik leader “a hooligan,” inducing him to turn “white as chalk.”45 In March 1921 Lenin had deemed Trotsky “a temperamental man . . . as for policy [politika], he hasn’t got a clue.”46 In summer 1921, Lenin had taken part in a scheme to transfer Trotsky to Ukraine, a move that Trotsky, in breach of party discipline, resisted; Lenin backed down.47 Still, in violation of party rules, “Lenin proposed that we gather for the politburo meetings without Trotsky,” Molotov recalled. “We conspired against him.” Molotov, whose recollections comport with the archival record, added that “Lenin’s relations with Stalin were closer, a
lbeit on a business footing.”48 But now, in 1922, Lenin appears to have tried to reconcile and balance Stalin and Trotsky. In summer 1922, Lenin miraculously seemed to improve—a circumstance celebrated in Pravda—and on July 11 Stalin visited him.49 “Ilich greeted him in friendly manner, joked, laughed, demanded that I afford Stalin hospitality, I brought wine and such,” recalled Ulyanova, who added that “during this and subsequent visits they spoke about Trotsky. . . . They discussed inviting Trotsky to visit Ilich.” She maintained that the invitation “had the character of diplomacy,” denoting mere mollification, but it appears to have been genuine.50 Trotsky, although duly invited, never once came to see Lenin in Gorki in 1922.51 On July 14, Stalin telegrammed Orjonikidze, apropos of his own Gorki visit, that “for the first time after a month and a half the doctors permitted Lenin visitors. Today we already have written directives from him. The doctors think that in a month he’ll be able to return to work in the old way.”52 Stalin—writing to an intimate—showed himself unafraid of Lenin’s return, a sign of confidence in his position and perhaps affection for Lenin—or of dissembling. On July 18, Lenin wrote Stalin, gleefully, “Congratulate me! I got permission for newspapers!”53 That same day Lenin wrote again to Stalin to make a note for himself and Kamenev inquiring whether Kamenev had not forgotten, as he had agreed, to answer Lenin about Trotsky.”54 Lenin may have been urging them to desist from ganging up.
Lenin’s efforts to reconcile and balance Trotsky and Stalin did not come easily. The party that Lenin had founded and Stalin now led wielded too much power. On July 20, for example, when the entire politburo, Trotsky included, resolved that “Lenin should have absolutely no meetings” without that ruling body’s permission, they tasked Stalin with overseeing enforcement.55 Stalin tried not to overdo it. At the 12th party conference (August 4–7, 1922), the first major gathering since his appointment as general secretary—which he and his staff organized—he was observed behaving with arch-humility. “Such conduct,” recalled Anastas Mikoyan, a delegate, “raised Stalin’s prestige in the eyes of the delegates.”56 Lenin’s continuing confidence in Stalin’s management of party affairs is copiously documented in the archives, but so is Lenin’s continued desperation to do something about the Council of People’s Commissars and the regime’s future more broadly. On September 2, 1922, he evidently discussed with his sister Maria the ages of the leading figures and noted it would be good to have people of various age cohorts in the Central Committee, to ensure longevity.57 On September 11, Lenin wrote to Stalin (for the entire politburo) proposing an expansion of his formal deputies by adding Trotsky to the Council of People’s Commissars and Kamenev to the Council of Labor and Defense (a parallel, if smaller, top executive body).58 Lenin’s motives remain unclear: He was proposing to move Trotsky near the top of the government, but rather than offering him the economy portfolio, which was Trotsky’s preference, Lenin seems to have wanted him to take up ideology and education, as well as second-order questions of international affairs.59 Was Lenin, who had just browbeaten the party to swallow the legalized markets of the New Economic Policy, concerned about Trotsky’s obsession with state planning? Or was he trying to elevate Trotsky’s position? It is impossible to say for sure, but it is likely Lenin had both considerations in mind: containment of Trotsky’s anti-NEP impulses and balancing of Stalin’s power.
Lenin’s proposal presented an immense opportunity for Trotsky to begin to lay claim to Lenin’s government mantle.60 Stalin put Lenin’s proposal before the seven members of the politburo (likely the very day he received it) for vote by telephone. Stalin, Rykov, and Kalinin (“do not object”) voted with Lenin; Kamenev and Mikhail Yefremov, known as Tomsky, abstained. One person voted against Trotsky’s appointment—Trotsky himself: “I categorically refuse.”61 Trotsky’s most outstanding biographer surmised that he refused because he “had no doubt that even as Lenin’s deputy he would depend at every step on decisions taken by the General Secretariat which selected the Bolshevik personnel for the various government departments and by this alone effectively controlled them.”62 Dependency on Stalin was indeed anathema to Trotsky. But equally important, Trotsky seems to have been holding out for a major overhaul of the administration to allow planning of the entire economy under his leadership. On September 12, Stalin went to see Lenin in Gorki, evidently to discuss the situation. Trotsky’s stance meant that, at a politburo meeting on September 14, Kamenev alone was added to the ranks of deputies at both the Council of People’s Commissars and the Council of Labor and Defense, which meant he also chaired politburo meetings. “The politburo,” stated its September 14 protocols, “records the categorical refusal of comrade Trotsky with regret.”63 Trotsky’s refusal—like his failure to visit Lenin at Gorki in 1922—was a choice.64
Immediately after Trotsky’s refusal to become Lenin’s deputy in the government, Pravda, the organ of the party apparatus that Stalin controlled, spotlighted Stalin’s September 1922 visits to Gorki in an illustrated supplement (September 24) intended to demonstrate how well Lenin was doing. Stalin was quoted enumerating the plethora of matters he and Lenin had supposedly discussed: “the internal situation . . . the harvest . . . the condition of industry . . . the ruble exchange rate . . . the budget . . . the external situation . . . the Entente . . . France’s behavior . . . England and Germany . . . America’s role . . . the SRs and Mensheviks . . . the White press . . . the emigration . . . the far-fetched legends about Lenin’s death.”65 In effect, Stalin was enumerating his own limitless responsibilities. The article, in addition, carried a photograph, taken by Ulyanova, of a happy Lenin with Stalin outdoors at Gorki seated side by side, smiling, conveying Lenin’s supposed ruddy health as well as Stalin’s proximity to him, for the entire party, the country, and the world.66 The succession struggle was on, but the prospects for Lenin’s recovery had not been extinguished and, on October 2, 1922, after a four-month absence, he returned to Moscow, presiding the next day over the Council of People’s Commissars. “The meeting was populous, fifty-four people attended,” recalled the head of Lenin’s secretariat, Lidiya Fotiyeva. “Everyone wanted to see Lenin, as soon and as closely as possible.”67 But the Trotsky question lingered. Around this time, Lenin reacted sharply to efforts by Kamenev and Stalin to reduce Trotsky’s position. “You write, ‘(the Central Committee) is casting or is preparing to cast a healthy cannon overboard’,” Lenin observed in a letter to Kamenev. “To cast Trotsky overboard—which is what you’re hinting at, there’s no other interpretation—would be the height of absurdity. If you do not consider me to have become hopelessly stupid, then how can you think of such a thing!!!” Lenin went so far as to close with a quotation from Pushkin’s Boris Godunov warning about “bloody children before the eyes”—a clear allusion to the wages of betrayal for the sake of political ambition.68
Hopes that Lenin might beat his health troubles were raised on October 31, when, in his first public address since the stroke, he delivered the closing speech to a session of the Soviet central executive committee, which incited a prolonged ovation.69 The euphoria did not last, however. Lenin declined an invitation for November 7, 1922, the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution, to return to the Mikhelson factory, now renamed for him, where he had been shot in 1918.70 On November 13, he did speak at the Fourth Comintern Congress, for an hour, in German, but he was drenched in perspiration and told people that during the speech he had “forgot what he had already said, and what he still had to say.”71 On November 20, Lenin delivered a public speech to the Moscow soviet at the Bolshoi Theater. “Long Live Ilich!” the audience shouted upon spotting him, applauding until their hands ached. When, finally, Kamenev introduced Lenin as speaker, a prolonged ovation erupted again.72 But, one witness recalled, Lenin “seemed to me even more exhausted than at the Fourth Comintern Congress.”73 A French Communist eyewitness noted that “those who were seeing him for the first time said, ‘This is still the same Lenin!’ But for the others no such illusion was possible; in
stead of the alert Lenin they had known, the man before them now was strongly affected by paralysis, his features remained immobile . . . his usual simple, rapid, confident speech was replaced by a hesitant, jerky delivery.”74 Lenin himself stated in the speech that “he had lost his ability to work for a rather long time.”75 The next day (November 21, 1922) a “diary of duty secretaries” was launched to monitor Lenin; the first entry was made by Alliluyeva (Stalin’s wife).76 Four days later, Lenin was walking along the corridor when his legs erupted in spasms, which caused him to fall. He rose only with great difficulty. In consultation with his doctors, he had to cancel meetings and speeches. On November 30, a day Lenin missed a politburo session, he wrote “retain on the shelf,” meaning do not return to the library, on a copy of Engels’s Political Testament (Moscow, 1922).77 Perhaps Lenin would compose his own political testament?
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FEW ISSUES IN SOVIET HISTORY involved more intrigue than Lenin’s so-called Testament, which is dated to December 1922-January 1923, but which, as we shall see, Lenin might not have dictated at that time—contrary to entrenched scholarship—or even dictated at all. Whatever its provenance, however, the document gravely threatened Stalin’s embryonic personal dictatorship, and became an enduring, haunting aspect of his rule. Usually adduced in connection with delegitimizing Stalin’s position as Lenin’s successor, the Testament is important as a key to Stalin’s psyche and behavior. The Testament helped bring out his demons, his sense of persecution and victimhood, his mistrust of all and sundry, but also his sense of personal destiny and iron determination. None of this is intended in any way to affirm Stalin as Lenin’s legitimate successor. But it bears reminding that the assertion that Stalin “usurped” power has an absurdist quality. Beyond the fact that Stalin’s ascendancy inside the regime owed a great deal to Lenin’s actions, the Communist regime had come into being as a result of a coup, and, while claiming to rule in the name of the proletariat, executed proletarians who dared to question the party’s self-assigned monopoly. It was the party that had usurped power. In effect, those scholars who intentionally or unintentionally echo Trotsky and his supporters are accusing Stalin of stealing what had already been stolen.78
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