Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  156. Perhaps 775,000 were killed in action; another 2.6 million were wounded, of whom up to 970,000 died.

  157. Some 182,000 Russian POWs died. Peter Gatrell, Russia’s First World War, 255, 259; Rossiia v mirovoi voine 1914–1918 goda, 4 and 4n; Krivosheev, Rossiia i SSSR, 101–96. Britain, France, and Germany suffered 1.3 million taken prisoner—combined; Austria-Hungary, 2.2 million POWs.

  158. PSS, XXXVII: 260.

  159. PSS, XXVI: 16 (March 15, 1918).

  160. “What you intend is being carried out by us; what you call ‘communism’ we call ‘state control,’” a German economic negotiator in Berlin in 1918 told the Polish Bolshevik Mieczysław Bronski, who had an economics doctorate from Zurich (and had accompanied Lenin on the German-supplied sealed train from Switzerland to Russia). Trudy i Vserossiiskogo S”ezda Sovetov Narodnogo Khoziiastva, 157. (Bronski, born in 1882 in Lodz, was the father of Wolfgang Leonhard.) Ludendorff went on to coin the expression “total war.” Honig, “The Idea of Total War,” 29–41; Chickering, “Sore Loser,” esp. 176–7.

  161. “The Germans,” recalled one Jewish imperial Russian subject originally from Vilna/Wilno, “treated the local population as if they were animals that were of use to their master but had no rights whatever themselves.” This applied not merely to Jews. Under Russian rule, pogroms became more prevalent during the Great War and immediately after. Abramowicz, Profiles of a Lost World, 199; Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism, 122–4.

  162. Holquist, Making War, 205, 285–7.

  163. Genkina, Tsaritsyn v 1918, 202. The Tenth Army was only one of several Red forces engaged on the southern front. Nadia, O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii grazhdanskoi voiny 106–11.

  164. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 4, l. 93. Trotsky “declared to Voroshilov and me,” Minin stated at the 8th Party Congress, “that I will conduct you back to Moscow by convoy.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 153. Minin was soon moved to the interior commissariat (Decemeber 1918). Sytin was transferred to Moscow (mid-November).

  165. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 4, l. 117 (December 12, 1918).

  166. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 14, l. 65, and RGVA, f. 33 987, op. 2, d. 96, l. 10, Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 17 (telegram from Pyatakov in Kursk to Stalin in the Kremlin, copies to Lenin and Sverdlov); Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 75 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 12, l. 70: January 4, 1919).

  167. For Ukraine, Trotsky recommended anyone else, even Moisei Rukhimovich (whom he also held in low regard). In the event, both Voroshilov and Rukhimovich were appointed in Ukraine. Deutscher alleges that Trotsky would reproach himself for not having dealt more harshly with his intriguing critics, especially Voroshilov, but in fact Trotsky tried to deal harshly with them. Deutscher, Prophet Armed, 431–2 (no citation). Fyodor Sergeyev (“Artyom”) was named head of government in Ukraine, replacing Pyatakov, who wrote to Trotsky asking about this: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 14, l. 78. Fyodor Sergeyev had met Stalin in 1906; he had lived together with Stalin (and Nadya) in the same railcar in Tsaritsyn. Alexander Yegorov took over the Tenth Army in Tsaritsyn.

  168. Deutscher, Prophet Armed, 425–6.

  169. Pravda, December 25, 1918.

  170. Trotskii, “Po nauke ili koe-kak?” [January 10, 1919], in Kak vooruzhalas’ revoliutsiia, I: 169–73 (at 170–2).

  171. Robert MacNeal understood that Stalin managed to secure some grain, fulfilling his war-hanging-in-the-balance task, that Lenin hesitated to remove Stalin despite Trotsky’s insistence, and that Lenin went on to use Stalin in additional critical assignments. MacNeal, Stalin, 55–8. Robert Conquest, by contrast, merely condemned Stalin’s insubordination and egoism. Conquest, Stalin, 81, 85.

  172. Benvenuti, Bolsheviks and the Red Army, 89–91. The three reports (January 1, January 13, and January 31, 1919) can be found in Sochineniia, IV: 197–224; and Perepiska sekretariata TsK RKP (b), V: 182–3.

  173. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 230 (citing RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 26388, l. 1–2); Ul’ianova, O Lenine i sem’e Ul’ianovykh, 113–7; Gil’, Shest' let s V. I. Leninym, 28–34; Malkov, Reminiscences, 190–2; “Kak grabili Lenina.” A far more inventive version can be found in Radzinsky, The Last Tsar, 247 (no citation). The case was cracked when Lenin’s Rolls was found crashed into a wall near Moscow’s Church of Christ the Savior, and Cheka operatives traced footprints in the snow away from the car, across the frozen Moscow River, to an apartment where the chief bandit, Yashka Koshelkov, barricaded himself. Koshelkov’s gang had killed around two dozen regular police and Chekists since the revolution. “He gave desperate resistance,” the Kremlin commandant, Pyotr Malkov, would write, “and was taken only after he had emptied his Mauser and had no more bullets.” Mal’kov, Zapiski, 159. After the assassination attempt on Lenin in August 1918, a seventeen-man rotating bodyguard detail had been assigned to him, but Lenin disliked bodyguards and had only one that day. Abram Belenky, who had taken part in the interrogation process following the assassination attempt, had become Lenin’s head bodyguard (from October 1918), but he was not with him that day. Supposedly, according to a November 1919 report of the political department of the Thirteenth Army, twelve spies had been sent to assassinate Lenin: GARF, f.3, op. 22, d. 306, l. 4, Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 21.

  174. The value of 132 billion gold marks in 1919 would be roughly $442 billion (£284) in 2013. Twice, in 1924 and in 1929, the Germans negotiated the amount down. In 1933, Hitler unilaterally suspended the payments. In 2010, Germany finally finished paying off the levy. Overall, taking inflation into account, Germany paid less to Britain and France than France had paid to Germany after losing the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71).

  175. MacMillan, Paris 1919. Harold Nicolson, in Peacemaking, portrayed a bunch of old men out of their depth (his last chapter was entitled “Failure”).

  176. Steiner, The Lights That Failed, 772.

  177. In an all too typical passage, the British ambassador to France had written in his diary in April 1916, “Although the Russians perhaps will have to lose two men for every one German, Russia has sufficient numbers of men to endure disproportionate losses.” Quoted in Karliner, “Angliia i Petrogradskaia konferentsiia Antanty 1917 goda,” 329.

  178. Neilson, Strategy and Supply.

  179. Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism and the Versailles Peace, 398.

  180. Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism and the Versailles Peace, 310, 395.

  181. One of John Maynard Keynes’s arguments against Versailles had been that a pariah Germany and a pariah Russia might embrace each other; Lenin had taken favorable note. Keynes warned that Germany might go leftist as well. Keynes, Economic Consequences, 288–9; PSS, XLII: 67, 69, XLIV: 294–5.

  182. Sadoul waxed that “from beginning to end the delegates were in the best of spirits,” and singled out “Lenin’s never-ending and resonant laughter, which makes his shoulders shake and his belly quiver—the lofty, majestic laugh of a Danton or a Jaures; Trotsky’s piercing irony; Bukharin’s mischievous jocularity; Chicherin’s mocking humor. Mixed with these nuances of Russian joy was the boisterous gaiety of the beer drinkers—[Fritz] Platten, [Hugo] Eberlein, Gruber [Karl Steinhardt]—and [Krastyo] Rakovski’s subtle wit, more Parisian than Romanian” (Rakovski was Bulgarian). Sadoul, “La Fondation de la Troisieme international,” at 180. See also the British journalist Ransome, Russia in 1919, 215, 217.

  183. Vatlin, Komintern, 57 (RGASPI, f. 488, op. 1, d. 13, l. 13–9).

  184. “Rozhdenie tret’ego internatsionala,” Pravda, March 7, 1919 (Osinsky).

  185. Pravda, March 6, 1919, reprinted in Trotskii, Piat’ let Kominterna, II: 28–30.

  186. Riddell, Founding the Communist International, 8.

  187. Schurer, “Radek and the German Revolution.”

  188. The delegates also approved Trotsky
’s manifesto narrating the degradation of capitalism and march of Communism. Pervyi kongress Kominterna, esp. 250–1 (list of delegates); Riddell, Founding the Communist International, esp. 18–9; Carr, Russian Revolution, 14.

  189. Arkadii Vaksberg offers a variant of the blunt trauma thesis, claiming it was motivated by Sverdlov’s Jewishness. Vaksberg, Iz ada (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 2159, l. 36–7).

  190. Trotsky, March 13, 1925, printed in Fourth International, 7/11 (1946): 327–30. Lenin went to Petrograd by train on March 11, returning on March 14, for the funeral of M. T. Yelizarov.

  191. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 8: 164.

  192. VIII s”ezd RKP (b), 18–23 marta 1919g. in PSS, XXXVIII: 127–215 (Lenin made ten interventions at the congress). Two years later, at the 10th Party Congress in March 1921, Krestinsky rose in remembrance of Sverdlov, recalling his importance as all the delegates stood. X s”ezd [1921], 267–70; X s”ezd [1933], 499–504.

  193. Soviet Russia had about 8,000 party committees, organized in around 40 provincial party organizations, with a total membership of 220,495. Party organizations in the Red Army claimed another 29,706 members. Party organizations of Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belorussia, and Poland counted for another 63,565 members. VIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1959], 274. See also Istoriia grazhdanskoi voiny, III: 312–3 (Stasova).

  194. In addition, 7 percent were Latvian, 4 percent were Ukrainian, and 3 percent were Polish, VIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1959], 451. These numbers would change little at the 9th Party Congress in 1920, except that Russians would reach 70 percent and Jews would fall to 14.5 percent of the 500-plus attendees: IX s”ezd RKP (b), 551. On the Jewish issue, see Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 99–114.

  195. The Times of London (March 5, 1919) asserted that Jews held 75 percent of top positions. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 560; Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, I: 225–6.

  196. A version of the proceedings was published three times (1919, 1933, 1959), but none was complete; all left out the separate military sessions of March 20–21. Lenin’s speech to the closed session on March 21, however, was published (Leninskii sbornik, XXXVII: 135–40). Fragments of Stalin’s speech were published much later (Sochineniia, IV: 249–50). See also Benvenuti, Bolsheviks and the Red Army, 106. The military discussion was finally published during glasnost: Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 134–90, no. 10: 171–89, no. 11: 144–78.

  197. PSS, XXXVIII: 137–8.

  198. Aralov, Lenin vel nas k pobede, 96–7. Aralov was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic.

  199. Trotsky wrote that on the eve of the congress, under the barrage of talk about tsarist officer treason, he had informed Lenin that at least 30,000 former tsarist officers were serving in Red ranks, making the instances of treason minuscule by comparison. Lenin supposedly expressed surprise. (He could feign surprise.) Deutscher, Prophet Armed, 429–30. Lenin, Sobranie sochinenii [1920–26], XVI: 73.

  200. Trotskii, Sochineniia, XVII/i: 362.

  201. Pravda and Izvestiia, February 25, 1919, reprinted in Izvestiia TsK KPPS, 1989, no. 9: 175–81. The military opposition included Smirnov, Georgy Safarov (Voldin), Grigory “Yuri” Pyatakov, Andrei Bubnov, Emelyan Yaroslavsky, V. G. Sorin, Voroshilov, Sergei Minin, Filippr Goloshchyoëkin, Alexander Myasnikov, N. G. Tolmachëv, R. S. Samoilova (Zemlyachka), and others.

  202. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 8: 171–3.

  203. Some noted that the solution would be to train young Red commanders, but Sergei Minin, of Tsaritsyn, objected that “White Guardism”—former tsarist officers in Red service—blocked young proletarian commanders from rising up. By contrast, Semyon Aralov, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic in Moscow, argued the opposite: “in whatever area you take, supply, technology, communications, artillery, we need military specialists for it, and we do not have them.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 153, 1989, no. 10: 183–9, 1989, no. 11: 156–9, 159–66; Danilevskii, V. I. Lenin i voprosy voennogo stroitel’stva, 76.

  204. Pokrovskii and Iakovlev, Gusdarstvennoe soveshchanie, 61–6.

  205. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 11: 162–4.

  206. Trotsky, too, believed the peasantry would betray the revolution as soon as its own inteests had been secured. Meyer, Leninism, 142. On the near universal Russian Social Democrat hostility toward peasants, see Deutscher, Unfinished Revolution, 17.

  207. Aralov, Lenin vel nas k pobede, 101–2.

  208. In August 1919, Lenin instructed Mikhail Frunze, commander of the Turkestan front, “to exterminate every Cossack to a man if they set fire to the oil.” Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 69. On Lenin’s hardness, see also Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1924, no. 3: 168–9; also in Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 50.

  209. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 11: 170; Leninskii sbornik, XXX: 138–9.

  210. Danilevskii, V. I. Lenin i voprosy voennogo stroitel’stva, 88. Some delegates supporting the position of Trotsky/Sokolnikov walked out after Grigory Yevdokimov’s speech.

  211. VIII s”ezd RKP (b), 273, 339–40, 412–23.

  212. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 9: 173.

  213. It was Zinoviev, who in his congress speech had attacked Trotsky—a large, inviting target useful for raising his own profile—who now telegrammed him that concessions had been made to the military opposition and instructed him to treat this as a “warning.” In a speech (March 29, 1919) to the Leningrad party organization he oversaw, Zinoviev indicated that Trotsky needed to absorb the message that in the army the party needed to play a bigger role, because “military specialists” could not be trusted. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 8: 185–98 (at 192–5).

  214. Pravda, March 1, 1919; Benvenuti, Bolsheviks and the Red Army, 72–4.

  215. VIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1959], 177. On food scarcity, see also Brovkin, “Workers’ Unrest.”

  216. On the army’s share (25 percent of all flour, 40 percent of fodder), see Osinskii, “Glavnyi nedostatok,” 236.

  217. Piat’ let vlasti Sovetov, 377; Malle, Economic Organization of War Communism, 407, 425.

  218. Scheibert, Lenin an der Macht.

  219. Krasnaia Moskva, 54. Rationing, which had been introduced by the Provisional Government, had become class-based: workers in heavy physical labor comprised the top category, followed by workers not in physical labor (this included officials), and lastly non-laboring elements or exploiters, those who lived off the labor of others (i.e., the bourgeoisie), who were small in number but conspicuous in symbol. Individuals connived to raise their designations. Before the civil war was out, the “class ration” would give way to the “labor ration,” or how much labor a recipient had recently performed.

  220. Borrero, Hungry Moscow. Potatoes would be the sole important crop over which the government did not declare a monopoly (as of late 1919).

  221. Emmons, Time of Troubles, 237 (January 31, 1919), 392 (December 6, 1920).

  222. VIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1933], 170.

  223. Istoriia grazhdanskoi voiny, IV: 46.

  224. Francesco Benvenuti established the depth and breadth of animosity to Trotsky early on, writing, “For his contribution to the creation of the Soviet armed forces, Trotsky was rewarded with the distrust and hatred of a great many of his party comrades.” Benvenuti, Bolsheviks and the Red Army, 216.

  225. Schapiro, Commmunist Party (citing Lenin, Sochineniia, XXV: 112).

  226. The political bureau was already functioning by December 1918; the organizational bureau dated from January 1919. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, VI: 284, 319, 328, 435, 577, 588.

  227. Sverdlov’s safe was not opened until 1935, and duly reported to Stalin: “Kuda khotel bezhat’ Sverdlov?,” Istochnik, 1994, no. 1: 3–4. Rumors in 1919 circulated that the Bolsheviks were transferring money and gold abroad, as if readying their possible fl
ight. Stasova, Stranitsy zhizni i bor’by, 103. Boris Bazhanov claimed that during the civil war, confiscated gems were hoarded just in case, and that Klavdiya Novgorodtseva, Sverdlov’s widow, was one of those entrusted with the jewels, locked in a desk, including large diamonds evidently taken from the State Diamond Fund. Bazhanov, Vospominaniia [1990], 96.

  228. Carsten, Revolution in Central Europe.

  229. Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg.

  230. Luxemburg, Die russische Revolution, 109.

  231. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 93.

  232. Pravda, April 22, 1930.

  233. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria; Waite, Vanguard of Nazism.

  234. Weitz, Weimar Germany; Mawdsley, Russian Civil War, 15.

  235. Hoover Institution Archives, Thomas T. C. Gregory Papers, box 2: Hungarian Political Dossier, vol. 1: Alonzo Taylor to Herbert Hoover, March 26, 1919.

  236. Degras, The Communist International, I: 52.

  237. Kun telegrams of February 2 and April 19, 1919: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 46, l. 1–2; Trotsky’s message to Kh. G. Rakovski, N. I. Podvoiski, and V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko: RGASPI, f. 325, op. 1, d. 404, l. 86 (April 18, 1919); Lenin’s telegram to S. I. Aralov and J. Vacietis: l. 92 (April 21, 1919); telegram of J. Vacietis and S. I. Aralov to V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, op. 109, d. 46, l. 3–5 (April 23, 1919).

  238. Mitchell, 1919: Red Mirage, 221 (quoting Manchester Guardian correspondent, no citation).

  239. Tokés, Béla Kun; Janos and Slottman, Revolution in Perspective.

  240. Bortnevskii, “White Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence”; Kenez, Civil War in South Russia, I: 65–78; Holquist, “Anti-Soviet Svodki.”

  241. Bortnevskii, “White Administration,” 360 (citing N. M. Melnikov, “Pochemu belye na Iuge Rossiin e pobedili krasnykh?,” 29, in N. M. Melnikov Collection, Bakhmetev Archives, Columbia University).

  242. Mawdsley, Russian Civil War, 275–81.