Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  135. Manikovskii, Boevoe snabzhenie russkoi armii [1923].

  136. Matsuzato, “Soryokusensoto chihotochi.”

  137. Anstiferov, Russian Agriculture.

  138. Kitanina, Voina, khleb i revoliutsiia, 70–1.

  139. Kondrat’ev, Rynok khlebov, 137–8; Holquist, Making War, 31–2.

  140. Lih, Bread and Authority; Holquist, Making War, 44–6. Before the war, only one third of Russian cereal production reached market, and half of that went for export.

  141. Kondrat’ev, Rynok khlebov, 127; Struve, Food Supply in Russia, 128; Zhitkov, “Prodfurazhnoe snabzhenie russkikh armii”; Pavel Volobuev, Ekonomicheskaia politika Vremmenogo Pravitel’stva, 384–7; Yaney, Urge to Mobilize, 408–19; Kitanina, Voina, khleb i revoliutsiia, 217–8.

  142. Lih, Bread and Authority, 12; “Gibel’ tsarskogo Petrograda,” 7–72. “We have grain at flour mills that have no fuel,” commented Moscow’s mayor, “flour where there aren’t any freight cars to move it, and freight cars where there is no freight for them to carry.” Quoted in Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia, 314.

  143. The agent warned that “Mothers, exhausted from standing endlessly at the tail of queues, and . . . watching their half-starved and sick children, are perhaps much closer to a revolution than Misters Miliukov and Co.—that is, the Duma’s Progressive Bloc.” But that reckoning underestimated Miliukov. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 201 (citing GARF, f. POO, op. 5, d. 669 [1917], l. 25–33); Shchëgolëv, Padenie, I: 184 (Khabalov).

  144. Gatrell, Russia’s First World War, 170.

  145. Mil’chik, “Fevral’skie dni.”

  146. Kolonitskii, Symvoly vlasti i bor’ba za vlast’, 14–37. Richard Wortman argues that “the symbolic abdication of Nicholas II took place long before he actually left the throne in February 1917.” Wortman, “Nicholas II,” 127. See also Steinberg, “Revolution,” 39–65; and Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 307–53.

  147. Gurko, Features and Figures, 546. See also Kir’ianov, Pravye partii, II: 604–46; and Sadikov, “K istorii poslednikh dnei tsarskogo rezhima,” 241–2.

  148. Diakin, “Leadership Crisis”; Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia, 300–2; Golder, Documents of Russian History, 116; Sovremennye zapiski, 1928, no. 34: 279 (Maklakov); “Aleksandr Ivanovich Guchkov rasskazyvaet,” Voprosy istorii, 1991, nos. 7–8: at 205; Rodzyanko, Reign of Rasputin, 244–5, 253–4; Gleason, “Alexander Guchkov”; Pares, Fall of the Russian Monarch, 427–9; Katkov, Russia, 1917, 215; Hasegawa, February Revolution, 187. Pipes dismisses the plots as idle chatter. Pipes, Russian Revolution, 269–70.

  149. Steinberg and Khrustalëv, Fall of the Romanovs, 72; Hynes, Letters of the Tsar, 315 (February 24, 1917); Journal intime de Nicholas II, 93.

  150. Steinberg and Khrustalëv, Fall of the Romanovs, 73 (Letter from Alexandra to Nicholas, February 25, 1917); Journal intime de Nicholas II, 92. Khabalov’s first telegram to staff headquarters about the Petrograd disturbances was received on the twenty-fifth at 6:08 p.m., but Alexeyev may only have reported it to the tsar on the twenty-sixth. Sergeev, “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia 1917 goda,” 4–5; Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 80–1.

  151. “What revolution?” scoffed the leading Bolshevik figure in the capital, Alexander Shlyapnikov, a Central Committee member (since 1915) who was also close to the workers’ moods, on February 25, 1917. “Give the workers a loaf of bread and the movement would be gone!” Hasegawa, February Revolution, 258 (citing Sveshnikov, “Vyborgskii raionnyi komitet,” 83–4). See also “Gibel’ tsarskogo Petrograda,” 39–41; Shchëgolëv, Padenie, I: 191–4 (Khabalov); II: 231–3 (Beliaev).

  152. Voeikov, S tsarem, 195–200.

  153. Chermenskii, IV Gosudarstvennaia Duma, 196, n4, 201; Daly, Watchful State, 189–92; Pares, Fall of the Russian Monarchy, 378–81, 393–96, 416–19.

  154. Fuhrmann, Complete Wartime Correspondence, 6. There was also War Minister Mikhail Belyaev, known as “dead head,” a functionary whom Nicholas II characterized as “an extremely weak man who always gives way in everything.” Hasegawa, February Revolution, 160–3.

  155. Balk led the way in later damning Khabalov, as well as Belyaev, as indecisive. Poslednie novosti, March 12, 1921.

  156. “Gibel’ tsarskogo Petrograda,” 32; Burdzhalov, Vtoraia Russkaia revoliutsiia, 96; Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, I: 121.

  157. Ascher, Revolution of 1905, I: 225.

  158. Burdzhalov, Russia’s Second Revolution, 91–3. The contingency plan for suppressing street protests in the capital did not entail possibly summoning troops from the front—a consequence, perhaps, of having formed a separate Petrograd military district. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 163.

  159. Nicholas II’s telegram to General Khabalov has not survived. We have only Khabalov’s testimony: Shchëgolëv, Padenie, I: 190–1. Compare Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 81.

  160. “Gibel’ tsarskogo Petrograda,” 38.

  161. “Gibel’ tsarskogo Petrograda,” 39–41; Shchëgolëv, Padenie, I: 191–4 (Khabalov), II: 231–3 (Beliaev).

  162. Kak russkii narod zavoeval svobodu, 8.

  163. Only hours after inclining to compromise with the Duma, the government ministers now took the initiative to use the tsar’s authority to prorogue the Duma! Katkov surmised that Nikolai Golitsyn, head of government, had an undated decree signed by the tsar to prorogue the Duma and acted on his own by filling in the date. Katkov, Russia, 1917, 287. See also Vasilyev, Ochrana, 215.

  164. Sukhanov, Zapiski, I: 53, 59. See also the police-perspective account in Daly, Watchful State, 201–6.

  165. Burdzhalov, Russia’s Second Russian Revolution, 161; Burdzhalov, Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia, 182. When the okhranka sought to monitor the political reliability of the armed forces, top military men, their sense of honor offended, resisted. Surveillance on the military would have made no difference. Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek, 333–6.

  166. Some members of the Pavlovsky Guards were imprisoned. “A terrible breach in the stronghold of tsarism,” recorded Sukhanov. Sukhanov, Russian Revolution, I: 29. Of the encounter on February 26, Balk recalled that his office was visited by large numbers of police and state officials concerned about the situation. “Conversing with them about events, a state coup did not come up. Disorder, yes, but Russia had experienced many disorders over the last years and we, staff of the interior ministry, were far from hysterical: we were accustomed to the fact that avoiding victims on each side was not possible, yet the idea that the troops in the end would not put down the rebellion was unthinkable.” “Gibel’ tsarskogo Petrograda,” 42–3.

  167. The words of General K. I. Globachev: Ganelin, “The Day Before the Downfall,” 245–55; Ganelin et al., “Vospominaniia T. Kirpichnikova,” 178–95. On a December 1916 Cossack refusal in the Don region to fire on women whose husbands were at the front, see Engel, “Not by Bread Alone,” 712–6.

  168. “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia i okhrannoe otdelenie,” Byloe, January 29, 1918: 175–6.

  169. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 233–8. “I don’t know how many collisions I saw during those days,” recalled one armored vehicle driver, Viktor Shklovsky. Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 16.

  170. Sergeev, “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia 1917 goda,” 8 (telegram from Khabalov to Nicholas II, February 27, sent 12:10 p.m., received 12:20 p.m.), 15–6 (telegram from Khabalov to Alexeyev, February 27, sent 8:00 p.m., received at 12:55 a.m.).

  171. On the evening of February 27, Balk evidently asked the interior minister for permission to retreat with troops to Tsarskoe Selo. “What, you, the City Chief, think you will withdraw from Petrograd? What is that?” Shchëgolëv, Padenie, II: 149–50 (Protopopov). Protopopov confused the date.

  172. Vasilyev, the last tsarist Department of Police head, was correct when he wrote that “there was no possibility of suppressing the revo
lt.” But like many after him, he wrongly attributes this impossibility to a lack of reliable military units in the capital, arguing that “with a few reliable regiments, order in Petersburg could have been quite easily maintained.” Vasilyev, Ochrana, 221.

  173. Shchëgolëv, Padenie, V: 32–49 (at 38) (Frederiks).

  174. Bublikov, Russkaia revoliutsiia, 17; Kantorovich and Zaslavskii, Khronika fevral’skoi revoliutsii, 28–9; Skobelev, “Gibel’ tsarizma”; Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, I: 41–7; Abraham, Kerensky, 131–2; Chermenskii, “Nachalo vtoroi rossiiskoi revoliutsii,” at 99. See also Lyandres, “On the Problem of ‘Indecisiveness.’”

  175. Izvestiia, February 28, 1917, in Golder, Documents of Russian History, 287–8; Avdeev, Revoliutsiia 1917 goda, I: 41; A. Blok, “Poslednie dni tsarizma,” Byloe, 1919, no. 15: 28. A “central worker group” had been formed in November 1915 as a liaison between the military-industrial committee and the workers. Another source of the soviet was an all-socialist-party leadership group in Petrograd that had begun to coalesce in November 1916, and met frequently right before and during the February days. Melancon, Socialist Revolutionaries, 256–64.

  176. Shul’gin, Dni, 127. Prince Nikolai Golitsyn, the last prime minister (appointed in December 1916), had claimed illness and implored Nicholas II not to appoint him. Shchëgolëv, Padenie, I: 331 (Golitsyn). See also Gippius, Siniaia kniga, 75–6 (diary entry for February 25, 1917).

  177. Voeikov, S tsarem, 175.

  178. Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, I: 86; Lyandres, “‘O Dvortsovom perevorote ia pervyi raz uslyshal posle revoliutsii . . .’,” 252.

  179. Nicholas II noted “frightened expressions” but also that Alexeyev wanted “a very energetic man” named to assume responsibility for restoring order. Steinberg and Khrustalëv, Fall of the Romanovs, 83. See also Beckendroff, Last Days, 2–3.

  180. Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 114–5; Spiridovich, Velikaia voina i fevral’skaia revoliutsiia, III: 240ff; Shchëgolëv, Padenie, V: 317–8 (Ivanov); Katkov, Russia, 1917, 315–6; Hasegawa, February Revolution, 461–4.

  181. Hasegawa, February Revolution, 473–92.

  182. Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 145; Sergeev, “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia 1917 goda,” 31; S. N. Vil’chkovskii, “Prebyvanie Gosudaria Imperatora v Pskove 1 i 2 marta 1917 goda, po razskazu general-ad’ iutanta N. V. Ruzskogo,” Russkaia letopis’, 1922, no. 3: 169. Alexeev had on his own already ordered Ivanov to desist. Sergeev, “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia 1917 goda,” at 31.

  183. Back in February 1916, rather than summon the Duma deputies to the Winter Palace, as per custom on the rare occasions that Nicholas II deigned to meet them, the tsar had gone to the Duma’s Tauride Palace himself. Following the Te Deum, Nicholas spoke (his words were inaudible to many), after which there was a spontaneous singing of Russia’s anthem, “God Save the Tsar.” But the good feelings of Nicholas II’s gesture quickly dissipated. Rodzyanko asked him, again, for a “responsible government.” “I shall give it some thought,” Nicholas replied, upon exiting. Rodzianko, Krushenie imperii, 149–50; Dubenskii, Ego Imperatorskoe Velichestvo Gosudar’ Imperator Nikolai Aleksandrovich, IV: 221. See also Paleologue, La Russie, II: 196; and Miliukov, Vospominaniia, II: 226.

  184. Steinberg and Khrustalëv, Fall of the Romanovs, 103–5; Sergeev, “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia 1917 goda,” 55–9.

  185. Sergeev, “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia 1917 goda,” 72–3.

  186. Steinberg and Khrustalëv, Fall of the Romanovs, 93. Nicholas initially did not mention the abdication to Alexandra, who was given to understand only that the tsar had made “concessions” (which in her view could be withdrawn). Fuhrmann, Complete Wartime Correspondence, 699–701. “Never forget that you are and must remain [an] autocratic emperor,” she would exhort him. Hynes, The Letters of the Tsar, 105.

  187. Steinberg and Khrustalëv, Fall of the Romanovs, 107; Journal intime de Nicholas II, 93. Katkov has argued, plausibly, that Nicholas II was already broken by having conceded a parliamentary government, thereby violating the autocratic principle, so that the abdication itself, counterintuitively, entailed a lesser step. Katkov, Russia, 1917, 323.

  188. Ol’denburg, Gosudar’ Imperator Nikolai II Aleksandrovich, 29–31; Ol’denburg, Last Tsar, IV: 152–61; Voeikov, S tsarem, 207–19; Russky, “An Account of the Tsar’s Abdication”; Danilov, “Moi vospominaniia,” 223–4; Danilov, “How the Tsar Abdicated”; Bark, “Last Days of the Russian Monarchy.” As one scholar summarized, “the army did, in fact, destroy the old regime simply by not defending it.” Mayzel, Generals and Revolutionaries, 49.

  189. By the fall of 1917, Russia had at least 1 million total deserters. Frenkin, Russkaia armiia, 197.

  190. Danilov, “Moi vospominaniia,” 221; Sergeev, “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia 1917 goda,” 37 40; Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, I: 120.

  191. Airapetov, “Revolution and Revolt,” 94–118 (at 114).

  192. For an argument that Alexeyev’s move against Nicholas II amounted to a de facto coup d’etat, see Lohr, “War and Revolution,” II: 658, 664–5. On military seizures of power, see Trimberger, Revolution from Above.

  193. Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict, 228, 262.

  194. Mayzel, Generals and Revolutionaries, 78–9; Shulgin, Days, 180–3; Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict, 259–63. See also Steinberg, All the Tsar’s Men.

  195. Shchëgolëv, Padenie, VI: 263–6 (Guchkov); de Basily, Memoirs, 127–31. “Who would stand with him?” Shulgin had despaired of Nicholas II. “He has no one, no one.” Shul’gin, Gody, 459.

  196. Steinberg and Khrustalëv, Fall of the Romanovs, 96–100 (at 98).

  197. Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, I: 85; Ostrovskii, Kto stoial, 418–23; Shveitzer, “V achinskoi ssylke”; Shveitzer, Stalin v Turukhanskoi ssylke; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 662, l. 275 (Shveitzer); Baikalov, “Moi vstrechi s Osipom Dzhugashvili,” 118; Baikaloff, I Knew Stalin, 27–30; Tutaev, Alliluyev Memoirs, 189–90; Shliapnikov, Kanun semnadtsatogo goda, II: 444–6; Montefiore, Young Stalin, 304.

  CHAPTER 6: KALMYK SAVIOR

  1. VI s”ezd, 111–2, 114.

  2. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, II: 150 (quoting Duma representative Fyodor I. Rodichev, member of the Cadet Central Committee).

  3. Karpinskii, “Vladimir Il’ich za granitsei,” II: 105–6; Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 385. The month before, the impatient Lenin had complained in a speech to young Swiss socialists, “We, the old people, won’t survive to see the decisive battles of the forthcoming revolution.” PSS, XXX: 328; Tucker, Lenin Anthology, 292.

  4. Kornakov, “Znamena Fevral’skoi revoliutsii,” 12–26; and Kornakov, “Opyt privlecheniia veksilologicheskikh pamiatnikov dlia resheniia geral’ dicheskikh problem.”

  5. Keep, Russian Revolution, ix. Only one in nine villages had a soviet before October 1917.

  6. White, “1917 in the Rear Garrisons,” 152–68 (at 152–3).

  7. Steinberg, Moral Communities; Steinberg, “Workers and the Cross.”

  8. Rosenberg, “Representing Workers.”

  9. Kolonitskii, “Anti-Bourgeois Propaganda.”

  10. Kizevetter, “Moda na sotsializm.”

  11. Sukhanov, Zapiski, II: 265–6. Sukhanov, wanted by the police, lived illegally in the capital, hiding under his real name (Himmer), which he used to obtain a position in the agricultural ministry as a specialist for irrigation in Turkestan.

  12. De Lon, “Stalin and Social Democracy,” 198.

  13. Pravda, April 18, 1917 (May Day on the Russian calendar), in Sochineniia, II: 37–8.

  14. In all of Lenin’s voluminous writings from July to October 1917 (volume XXXIV of PSS), Stalin’s name is mentioned just once. McNeal, Stalin’s Works, 51–7. Stalin also took part in the Bolshevik commission pre
paring elections for the Constituent Assembly, and appeared on the candidate list. (One of his nominal constituencies—Stavropol—had to write to ask his real name, age, address, and occupation, to comply with candidate registration laws.) McNeal, Stalin 35–6 (citing Perepiska Sekretariata TsK RSDRP (b), I: 378).

  15. The name of the party organ changed several times in 1917 in response to efforts to close it down: Rabochii i soldat (July 23–August 9), Proletarii (August 13–24), Rabochii (August 25–September 2), and Rabochii put’ (September 3–October 26).

  16. “The early version (of authoritarianism) was rule by the few in the name of the few; modern authoritarianism is rule by the few in the name of the many.” Perlmutter, Modern Authoritarianism, 2.

  17. Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii pravitel’stva, March 6, 1917, no. 54: 344; Golder, Documents of Russian History, 297–8; Shchëgolëv, Otrechenie Nikolaia II; Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 160; Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo, 46–7. “I cannot part with him,” Nicholas remarked of Alexei to Shulgin and Guchkov. Mel’gunov, Martovskie dni, 192 (citing the stenogram of the meeting in Pskov); Steinberg and Khrustalëv, Fall of the Romanovs, 96–100.

  18. De Basily, Memoirs, 119–20.

  19. Mel’gunov, Martovskie dni, 226–7; Miliukov, “From Nicholas II to Stalin.” Kerensky would imprison the grand duke four months later on trumped-up charges of treason; the grand duke was executed on June 12, 1918.

  20. Rodzyanko in Gessen, Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, VI: 62; Shul’gin, Dni, 295–307; Martynov, Tsarskaia armiia, 181; Miliukov, Istoriia vtoroi, I: 53–5; Miliukov, Vospominaniia, II: 316–8.

  21. Vladimir Nabokov and Boris Nolde were the two jurists. Nabokov, “Vremennoe pravitel’stvo,” 17–22; Boris Nol’de, “V. D. Nabokov v 1917 g.,” in Gessen, Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, VII: 5–14 (at 6–8); Medlin and Powers, V. D. Nabokov, 17–28, 49–55; Mel’gunov, Martovskie dni, 356–7; Katkov, Russia, 1917, 409–15; Holquist, “Dilemmas.” Nor could the Duma legally transfer supreme power to the Provisional Government: the Fundamental Laws of 1906 did not even grant the Duma full legislative authority, and anyway Nicholas II had prorogued the legislature.