Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  Even as the Ukrainians and Georgians managed to hold the line against annexation into Russia, the Georgians remained deeply unsatisfied: they were not being afforded the same status in the Union as Ukraine, for which they blamed Orjonikidze. Sergo Orjonikidze, thirty-six years old in 1922, had been born in western Georgia to a non-serf family, and studied medicine in Tiflis, qualifying as a medical orderly, while also joining the Bolsheviks (1903). In 1907 he had met Stalin, aka Koba, in cell number 3 of the Baku prison.26 In 1920–21, colluding with Stalin, Orjonikidze had seized back Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia militarily, raising Georgians’ ire. Only Lenin’s forceful intervention had spared Orjonikidze being dropped from the Central Committee. “What can I do?” Orjonikidze had pleaded. “I’m a hot-tempered person. Maybe when I turn fifty I’ll mellow a bit, but in the meantime I can’t do anything about it.”27 Not long after this, in November 1921, Orjonikidze, over the objections of his fellow Georgian Bolsheviks, had set in motion the formation of a South Caucasus Federation.28 Georgians were forcibly driving the large Armenian population from Tiflis, directly or indirectly, and the Georgian Council of People’s Commissars issued instructions for citizenship in Soviet Georgia based upon ethnic criteria.29 Armed territorial disputes, customs barriers, and other acts of “chauvinist poison” also argued for federation.30 After Orjonikidze’s latest fait accompli, Lenin, writing to Stalin (November 28, 1921), deemed the formation of a South Caucasus Federation premature but accepted it.31 The formal treaty for the South Caucasus Federation was signed on March 12, 1922.

  The Georgian Central Committee had refused to accede. “Dear Iosif!” Alyosha Svanidze, Stalin’s brother-in-law from his deceased first wife, Kato, wrote to him in despair. “Not a single Central Committee meeting has taken place lately that did not start and end with stormy scenes between Sergo and Budu. . . . Teach them to treat each other with respect. P.S. I shall be boundlessly grateful to you for tearing me out of this milieu and giving me the chance to work in some mission abroad.”32 Mdivani, also the offspring of west Georgian nobility, was himself stubborn and hotheaded, but the intense personal animosity between him and Orjonikidze flowed from significant policy disagreements over Georgia’s place in the Union.33 Orjonikidze’s federation plan was passed at a Georgian Party Congress with the support of rank-and-file delegates.34 Orjonikidze also had behind him Stalin, who made none of the arguments on behalf of national “equality” for the Georgians that he had made for the Bashkirs and Tatars. This derived partly from grudges—Stalin and Mdivani had long known and detested one another—but also from Georgia’s borderland position. Stalin reasoned that as the case of Georgian Menshevism had proven, socioeconomic “backwardness” spawned “opportunists” who, wittingly or even unwittingly, used nationalism to separate territories from Soviet Russia, which played into the hands of the international bourgeoisie by creating “a zone of foreign intervention and occupation.”35 Mdivani and his supporters complained to Lenin about an influx of non-Georgians to Georgia, Moscow’s concession of Georgian territory to Turkey, and the abandonment of Georgian territorial claims vis-à-vis Armenia and Azerbaijan.36 In Stalin’s mind, this behavior was no different from that of the Georgian Mensheviks.

  As the formation of the USSR entered its final stage, Orjonikidze erupted in fury, vowing to purge the “chauvinist rot” from the Georgian Central Committee. On October 21, 1922, at 2:55 a.m., Mdivani called from Tiflis to the Kremlin on the Hughes apparatus and unleashed a long stream of invective against Orjonikidze to Avel Yenukidze, an ethnic Georgian in Moscow and the secretary of the Soviet central executive committee presidium. Yenukidze responded sharply that if the situation in Georgia had deteriorated, the “soil had been prepared by the Georgian Central Committee majority.”37 Lenin, too, had now had his fill of them, sternly rebuking Mdivani in a telegram later that same day, defending Orjonikidze, and proposing that the dispute go to the party secretariat—meaning Stalin.38 In Tiflis, the local Central Committee met in the presence of Orjonikidze as well as Rykov (who happened to be down south), yet a majority voted up a resolution to join the USSR not in the form of a South Caucasus Federation but as the Georgian republic, against the decision of the Central Committee of Soviet Russia—a blatant flouting of party discipline. The Georgians were instructed to resign and on October 22 nine of the eleven Georgian Central Committee members did so. Orjonikidze had achieved his purge.39 But the Georgians still refused to desist, and one Mdivani supporter leveled formal party charges against Orjonikidize for going after him with a marble paperweight as well as a knife and threatening to have him shot; Orjonikidze denied the accusations.40

  Although the South Caucasus Federation had been settled by majority Georgian vote, the accusations could not be ignored and the politburo decided on November 25, 1922, to send a three-person investigatory commission headed by GPU chief Dzierzynski, who was on holiday near Tiflis in Sukhum on the Black Sea.41 Lenin, for whatever reason, did not participate in the telephone vote confirming the commission’s composition, but he may have asked Rykov, who was also on holiday in Sukhum, to be his eyes and ears. Rykov stayed in Orjonikidze’s Tiflis apartment, where he arranged to meet a former Siberian coexile, Akaki Kabakhidze, who belonged to the Mdivani group. It is likely the parties were drinking. Kabakhidze accused Orjonikidze of keeping a fine white horse at state expense. Orjonikidze’s friend Mikoyan would later explain that the animal had been a gift from mountain tribesmen in the Caucasus—such a gift could not be declined—and that Orjonikidze had turned it over to the state stables, riding it occasionally.42 Orjonikidze struck Kabakhidze. Rykov separated the men, and reported to Moscow that the altercation had been personal, not political.43 But the slap would reverberate, and form the basis of a challenge to Stalin’s dictatorship.

  FAILED QUEST FOR ECONOMIC DICTATORSHIP

  While Stalin had his hands full trying to forge a functioning state across Eurasia, Trotsky was busy trying to seize command over the economy. Just before the 11th Party Congress in spring 1922—the one at which Stalin was appointed Communist party general secretary—Trotsky had sent a critical note to Lenin complaining that provincial party organizations were concerning themselves with economic issues such as the agricultural sowing campaign or the leasing of factories. “Without the emancipation of the party, as a party, from direct governing and supervision, it is impossible to cleanse the party from bureaucratism and the economy from dissoluteness,” Trotsky wrote, urging that the party confine its attention to questions such as the rearing of youth in matters of theory.44 Lenin wrote on the note: “to the archive.”45 Trotsky, however, continued his struggle to forge an “economic dictatorship” by proposing to vastly expand the powers of the tiny state planning commission, which did not do economic planning, only ad hoc consultation with managers.46 But the kind of planning Trotsky desired was incompatible with the NEP. Whereas Trotsky warned of a revolution drowning in an ocean of petit bourgeois peasants, Lenin warned that the peasants were the “judges” of the Bolsheviks: rural toilers were extending the Bolsheviks political “credit” and would cease to do so if the Bolsheviks failed to raise living standards.47 Lenin called a working class “alliance” (smychka) with the peasantry a necessity “insofar as there is not yet a possibility to rely on the victorious working class of Europe.”48 At Lenin’s initiative, the 11th Congress reaffirmed the NEP as well as the party’s predominance in all spheres, including the economy.

  Following his defeat at the 11th Party Congress, Trotsky took to criticizing Lenin regarding the likely ineffectiveness of his proposals to improve the state’s performance.49 Their exchanges heated up when Trotsky declared in a speech in October 1922 that if world capitalism managed to stand another ten years, it would be “strong enough to put down the proletarian revolution once and for all throughout the world, and of course, in Soviet Russia, too.”50 There can be no doubt that Trotsky was trying to change Lenin’s version of the NEP, and that he provoked Lenin to respond. On November 20,
1922, at the Moscow soviet—in what would turn out to be his final public appearance—Lenin declared that “we never doubted that we should . . . attain success alone.” He tried to stress that “socialism is now not a question of the far-off future,” suggesting rivalries among the capitalist powers would provide an opening, but overall he was stumped: “We dragged socialism into everyday life and here we need to figure it out.” Workers were organizing production at factories themselves, peasants were forming cooperatives, maybe socialism, or at least its seeds, lay in that.51 Trotsky persisted in exposing the despair of Lenin’s position, demanding immediate industrialization through planning. Lenin in effect was saying be patient: the regime was fully secure for now and in time would win out if it performed its job of regulating capitalist relations. Trotsky was saying build socialism in the economy now, or else the opportunity would be lost forever.52

  SECOND STROKE

  Lenin’s poststroke return to public life, after a long, slow, and partial convalescence, would turn out to be brief: only from October 2, 1922, through December.53 On December 7, after departing a politburo meeting early, he was ushered back to Gorki, where he was visited two days later by Rykov, just returned from Tiflis.54 Lenin insisted on returning to the Kremlin, which he did on December 12, but, after discussions with his government deputies in his Kremlin office during the day, and in the evening receiving Dzierzynski to hear about the Georgian events, Lenin retired to his apartment down the corridor, feeling extremely unwell.55 It would prove to be his last working day in his Kremlin office. The next morning he suffered two attacks. “He is having paralytic attacks every day,” the doctors’ journal noted. “Vladimir Ilich is upset and worried by the deterioration in his condition.”56 Still, Lenin met with Stalin in the apartment from 12:30 p.m. for more than two hours.57 That same day, however, he conveyed to his deputies that he was compelled to take another holiday after “liquidating” the issues he was working on.58 On December 14 and 15, Lenin continued working in his apartment, lobbying several officials, including Trotsky, to forestall dilution of the state monopoly on trade.59 On December 15, Lenin wanted to dictate a letter on the national question but did not manage to do so.60 Nonetheless, he sent a letter to Stalin reporting that he had finished the “liquidation” of pressing matters, and reminded him that Trotsky would be defending his position on the trade monopoly at the upcoming plenum, warning against any backsliding.61

  This letter would serve, in Trotsky’s memoirs, as evidence that Lenin had proposed that he and Trotsky form a “bloc” on the trade monopoly, and that Lenin and Stalin suffered a break in relations over this question, on top of their national question contretemps.62 But in an exchange of letters around this time, both Lenin and Trotsky underscored not just their partial agreement (trade monopoly) but their continuing differences (planning).63 Moreover, on the trade monopoly, just as on the USSR structure, Stalin readily acceded to Lenin’s wishes. There was no bloc and no break.

  Before Lenin could depart for Gorki to renew his convalescence, in the wee hours of December 15–16 he suffered what may have been a series of lesser strokes. “His condition has worsened,” the physicians wrote. “He can write with difficulty, but what he writes is illegible, the letters overlapping each other. . . he could not touch the tip of his nose with the tip of his finger.”64 Lenin would never write again.65 Despite migraines, spasms, memory loss, speech impairment, bouts of paralysis, and despair, Lenin somehow managed to dictate a letter to his three deputies (recorded in Krupskaya’s hand) instructing that Rykov should be given the state planning commission.66 Sometime between December 16 and 18, Lenin dictated a letter to Stalin conveying that just days ago (December 14) he had received Kamenev and had “a lively political conversation. Slept well, felt wonderfully. Then, on Friday [December 15], paralysis. I demand your appearance immediately, to tell you something in the event the illness worsens.”67 Lenin feared the onset of total paralysis and wanted poison. Stalin is not recorded in the visitors’ book for Lenin’s office but, like Kamenev, could have gone to the apartment.68 On December 18, 1922, a Central Committee plenum voted to make Stalin responsible for “the isolation of Vladimir Ilich in terms of personal relations with staff and correspondence,” as per doctors’ orders, based on a diagnosis of strain from overwork.69 Visits to Lenin were forbidden, beyond immediate family members, physicians, orderlies, and secretaries, and those few allowed contact were forbidden to agitate him by discussing current affairs.70

  The physicians’ journal records no activities by Lenin for December 19–22.71 Trotsky claimed that on December 21 Lenin dictated a warm letter to him (“with the very best comradely greetings”) via Krupskaya, thanking Trotsky for winning the battle on the foreign trade monopoly.72 But the alleged letter in Trotsky’s archive is not an original but a copy of a copy; the copy in Lenin’s archive is a copy of that copy.73 Lenin certainly had reason to be pleased: the December 18 Central Committee plenum had voted to uphold his position on keeping the state foreign trade monopoly—the draft resolution is in Stalin’s hand.74 The plenum had also voted for Lenin’s preferred version of the new state structure, a USSR, which Stalin arranged. Finally, the plenum had rejected Trotsky’s insistence on a reorganization of economic management under the state planning commission.75 Further doubts about the December 21 dictation are connected with Krupskaya’s manufacture of an incident on December 22 whereby Stalin, having supposedly learned of Lenin’s alleged congratulatory dictation for Trotsky the day before, phoned to berate her.76 Stalin would indeed get angry at Krupskaya, but that would take place a month later, and, as we shall see, the difference in timing is crucial. What we know for sure is that on December 22, Lenin managed to dictate a formal request (through Lidiya Fotiyeva) to Stalin for cyanide “as a humanitarian measure.”77 Right then, Lenin’s worst fears were realized: during the night of December 22–23, he suffered his second massive stroke.78 “Absolutely no movement,” the doctors wrote, “neither of the right arm nor of the right leg.”79

  We also know for sure that on the evening of December 23, Lenin wheedled permission for five minutes’ dictation with a stenographer, “since,” according to the doctors’ journal, “he is anxious about one question and worried that he won’t be able to fall asleep.” After a tiny bit of dictation, “he calmed down.” The original of the dictation of December 23 appears to be in Nadya Alliluyeva’s hand.80 If so, this was the last time Stalin’s wife would be summoned to take dictation.81 The short dictation was a personal letter to Stalin, as is clear from the fact that it was addressed with a capital “You” (for a person), not lower case (for a group); the subject matter comported with Stalin’s role as head of the party: namely, a proposal for expansion of the Central Committee from the then 27 to 50 or even 100.82 Lenin’s dictation to Stalin also called for granting law-making but not executive functions to the state planning commission and noted he was prepared to “move toward Trotsky’s position to a certain degree and under certain conditions.” Lenin was furiously insisting that he be able to continue dictation, spurring the politburo subcommittee responsible for him (Stalin, Kamenev, Bukharin) to hold a conference with his doctors on December 24; they resolved that “Vladimir Ilich has the right to dictate every day for 5 to 10 minutes, but this cannot have the character of correspondence, and Vladimir Ilich may not expect to receive any answers”—restrictions that, far from soothing Lenin, provoked his ire, undercutting their ostensible medical purpose.83 The injunction also deepened Lenin’s already near-paranoiac suspicions that his politburo colleagues were hiding political decisions from him that contradicted his instructions.

  Stalin evidently informed Trotsky straightaway of Lenin’s December 23 letter, including the unspecified concession to Trotsky on the economy.84 Trotsky seems to have been emboldened, for on December 24 and 26, 1922, he sent two letters to the Central Committee relitigating his proposal for a grandiose reorganization of executive institutions, insisting that the matter be placed on the upco
ming Party Congress’s agenda.85 In the letters, Trotsky effectively sought a merger of the state planning commission and the Supreme Council of the Economy under himself.86 Lenin received a copy of the letters, and expressly rejected Trotsky’s proposal for a super ministry to run the economy and, against Trotsky’s criticisms, defended state planning commission chairman Gleb Kryzanowski, a respected, soft-spoken specialist.87 Lenin’s staff passed his December 27 dictation to Stalin, for the politburo, in real time.88

  On December 30, 1922, in the Bolshoi Theater, the USSR was formally acclaimed by the Tenth Congress of Soviets, which now became the First USSR Congress of Soviets. Constituent republics were awarded control over commissariats of justice, education, land, health, and social security, while the Union government in Moscow controlled the commissariats of war, foreign affairs, foreign trade, and finance, as well as the GPU—now rechristened the “united” or OGPU. Lenin had missed both the October 1922 and the December 1922 Central Committee plenums when the form of the new state had been discussed, and had not been able to attend and speak at the Tenth Congress of Soviets, but the USSR state structure conformed to his vision of a federation of equal members. True, because of the party, the federative nature of the USSR was overridden, but the fact that, as Lenin insisted, the Soviet Socialist republics such as Ukraine formed a joint federation with the RSFSR would have immense consequences one day. The USSR would dissolve into its constituent republics, but the RSFSR would remain intact. Lenin’s preferred form of a USSR was ultimately a bet on world revolution, while Stalin’s proposal—annexation into the RSFSR—would have been a bet on historic Russia, without excluding world revolution.