Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  343. “Tomorrow,” he told the new lower-order commanders in the fall of 1918, “you will be at the head of platoons, companies, battalions, regiments, and you will be recognized as real exemplars of a newly forming army.” Trotskii, “Unter-ofitsery” [fall 1918], in Kak vooruzhalas’ revoliutsiia, I: 176–80.

  344. Trotsky, Stalin, 279. Other estimates of the continuing weight of military specialists are higher. Bubnov, Grazhdanskaia voina, II: 95; Erickson, Soviet High Command, 33.

  345. MacNeal understood that Stalin’s “contribution to the Red victory was second only to Trotsky’s.” McNeal, Stalin, 50. In the civil war, Moshe Lewin argued, “Stalin learned the secret of victorious politics in the most daunting situations: State coercion as the secret of success; mobilization, propaganda, military might, and terror were the ingredients of power.” Of course, nearly every Bolshevik had learned this lesson, some already from the Great War. Moshe Lewin, “Stalin in the Mirror of the Other,” in Lewin, Russia/USSR/Russia, 214.

  346. Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 88.

  347. America’s Red Cross chief in Russia supposedly called Trotsky “the greatest Jew since Christ.” Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, 225.

  348. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 23 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 1, d. 21, l. 35–41). The ethnic Korean, Nigay, advised “to create a mighty Jewish army and arm it to the teeth.”

  349. Kartevskii, Iazyk, voina i revoliutsiia, 36.

  350. RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 13s, Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 19 (Otto von Kurfell). The Nazi Alfred Rosenberg wrote in a pamphlet that “from the day of its inception, Bolshevism was a Jewish enterprise,” and that “the proletarian dictatorship over the dazed, ruined, half-starved people was devised in the Jewish lodges of London, New York, and Berlin.” Rosenberg, Der jüdische Bolschewismus. See also Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 144.

  351. Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 88.

  352. Carr, Socialism in One Country, I: 157.

  353. The Ulyanov family’s Jewish ancestry would be discovered by Lenin’s sister Anna Ulyanova (1864–1935), who conveyed it to Stalin in a 1932 letter stressing how beneficial it would be to reveal Lenin’s one-quarter Jewish ancestry. Stalin forbid public mention. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 9. In 1972, all extant documents on Lenin’s origins were transferred to the “special file.”

  354. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 44–5.

  355. Bortnevskii and Varustina, “A. A. Borman,” I: 115–49 at 119. Borman escaped via Finland. (The Chekists, he later boasted, “mostly were involved in arrests of innocent people, but their real enemies traveled in commissar’s trains, occupied important positions in people’s commissariats and military staffs.”) Bortnevskii, “White Intelligence and Counter-intelligence,” 16; GARF, f. 5881, op. 1, d. 81 (Borman, “V stane vragov: vospominaniia o Sovetskoi strane v period 1918 goda”), l. 42.

  CHAPTER 9: VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY

  1. Gor’kii, “V. I. Lenin” [1924, 1930], in Sobranie sochinenii, XVII: 5–46, reprinted in Bialika, V. I. Lenin i A. M. Gor’kii, 238–78 (at 262). Gorky lived on Capri from 1907 to 1913; Lenin stayed with him in 1908. Lenin also visited Gorky in 1910.

  2. X s”ezd [1933], 573–83; Vsesoiuznaia Kommunisticheskaia Partiia (b) v rezoliutsiiakh [5th ed.], I: 393.

  3. Stolypin had sketched some ideas for a state reorganization, in May 1911, four months before his assassination, according to a financial expert in local self-government with whom he periodically consulted. The sketch has not been found in the state archives and the consultant’s notes of the purported conversation have not been preserved; all we have is the consultant’s memoir. Stolypin, in this account, envisioned expansion and strengthening of self-government in localities and expansion and reorganization of the central ministerial system, including a number of new ministries: labor, social security, natural resources, religion, and, most unusually, nationalities. On the latter, Stolypin is said to have envisioned that “all persons, residing in Russia, independent of their nationality and religious beliefs, should be completely equal citizens,” and that the new ministry of nationalities “should create the conditions so that the cultural and religious desires of each nation should, when possible, be fully satisfied.” But he also thought some minorities, such as Poles and Ukrainians, with co-ethnics in neighboring states, posed a special threat. Therefore, the new ministry “must not ignore all the external and internal enemies who strive to dismember Russia. Any kind of Government vacillation and hesitation toward those nationalities who fall under the influence of propaganda by Russia’s enemies might easily create complications in the State.” Aleksandr V. Zen’kovskii, Pravda o Stolypine (New York: Vseslovianskoe, 1956), 79–81, translated, inadequately, as Stolypin, Russia’s Last Great Reformer (Princeton, N.J.: Kingston Press, 1986), 33–4. Zenkovsky worked as the chief financial expert in the Kiev Zemstvo from 1903 through 1919.

  4. PSS, XXXVII: 153; Debo, Revolution and Survival, 408 (quoting Lenin at the 6th All-Russia Congress of Soviets).

  5. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, III: 231–7.

  6. White, Siberian Intervention; Teruyuki, Shibberia shuppei; Stephen, Russian Far East, 132, 142–5; Coox, Nomonhan, 9.

  7. “The civil war between the Reds and Whites was always conducted by relatively insignificant minorities, against the astounding passivity of the population,” observed Pyotr Struve, an assessment Pipes accepts: Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 136–8 (citing Russkaia mysl, May–June 1921: 211). By contrast, Figes asserts that “as long as the peasants feared the whites, they would go along, feet dragging, with the demands of the Soviet regime . . . Thus the Bolshevik dictatorship climbed up on the back of the peasant revolution.” Figes, Peasant Russia, 354.

  8. Adelman, “Development of the Soviet Party Apparat,” 97.

  9. Laruelle, L’ideologie eurasiste russe; Widerkehr, “Forging a Concept.”

  10. Iskhod k vostoku, vii.

  11. Riasanovsky, “The Emergence of Eurasianism,” 57. See also Glebov, “The Challenge of the Modern.” The politics of the self-proclaimed Eurasianists varied—from national Bolshevism (Petr Savitskii) to Trotskyism (Petr Suvchinskii) to anti-Sovietism (Prince Nikolai Trubetskoi).

  12. McNeal, “Stalin’s Conception.” Stalin on Russianism: Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, I: 102.

  13. “Soviet power must become as dear and close to the masses of the borderlands of Russia,” he wrote in Pravda (October 10, 1920). “But in order to make it dear, Soviet power must above all be understandable to them. Therefore it is necessary that soviet organs in the borderlands, the court, administration, organs of the economy, organs of direct rule (and organs of the party) consist when possible of local people, who know the daily life, mores, customs, and language of the local population.” “Politika sovetskoi vlasti po natsional’nomu voprosu v Rossii,” in Sochineniia, IV: 351–63 (at 358–60).

  14. Rieber, “Stalin: Man of the Borderlands.”

  15. Stalin’s writings on the colonial and national questions predate Lenin’s: Boersner, The Bolshevik, 32–58.

  16. Gellner, Encounters with Nationalism, 13, quoting “Draft of an Article on Friedrich List’s Book: Das nationalische System der politischen Ökonomie” (1845).

  17. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 9.

  18. Luxemburg wrote a series of six articles for her Krakow-based journal, Przeglad socialdemokratyczny, five of which are available in translation at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lux emburg/1909/national-question/.

  19. Bauer, “The Nationalities Question.”

  20. Rieber, “Stalin, Man of the Borderlands,” n. 113. The Georgian Pilipe Makharadze had advanced a similar critique of the Austrian position on cultural autonomy. Jones, Socialism, 228. Stalin’s work recalled that of the Dutch social democra
t Anton Pannekoek. Van Ree, Political Thought of Joseph Stalin, 67.

  21. Stalin’s article existed in draft before he arrived in Krakow in early January 1913, where he stayed briefly; he also stayed only briefly in Vienna. Van Ree, “Stalin and the National Question,” at 220–1. In private letters Lenin described Stalin’s 1913 essay as “very good,” but did not see fit to mention it in his own. PSS, XLVIII: 169 (February 25, 1913), 173 (March 29, 1913). Another of Lenin’s writings on the national question one year later also omitted any reference to Stalin or his work: “O prave natsii na samoopredeleniia,” in Lenin, Sochineniia, 2nd and 3rd eds., XVII: 427–74. Following publication of Stalin’s essay, Lenin wrote to Stepan Shaumyan, who had published a long article in 1906 attacking federalism in the South Caucasus: “Do not forget also to seek out Caucasian comrades who can write articles on the national question in the Caucasus. . . . A popular brochure on the national question is very necessary.” It is hard to imagine what Stalin’s essay was if not a “popular brochure.” Lenin, Sochineniia, XVII: 91.

  22. V. I. Lenin, “O natsional’noi gordosti Velikorossov,” Sotsial-Demokrat, December 2, 1924, PSS, XXVI: 106–10. See also Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 7–28. Over the years, many changes were made to the corpus of Lenin’s writings on the nation, especially those of the years 1915–18; sometimes it is necessary to use earlier editions of his works, rather than the PSS.

  23. Trotskii, Literatura i revoliutsiia, 68.

  24. PSS, XXVI: 109.

  25. “Rossiiskaia Sotsial-demokraticheskaia partiia i ee blizhaishie zadachi,” Sochineniia, I: 11–31 (at 11, 22).

  26. Sochineniia, I: 32–55; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 7 (drafts).

  27. Van Ree, “Stalin and the National Question,” 218 (citing RGASPI, f. 71, op. 10, d. 183, l. 106–7).

  28. Smith, “Stalin as Commissar for Nationality Affairs,” 54. On occasion, Stalin paid lip service to Great Russian chauvinism. But more typically, in a speech to Turkic Communists on January 1, 1921, he called Great Russians the ruling nation for whom nationalism was beside the point. Turkic Communists, however, “sons of oppressed peoples,” had to be vigilant against their nationalist sentiments, “which serves as a break against communism’s crystallization in the East of our country.” Pravda, January 12, 1921, in Sochineniia, V: 1–3.

  29. Because Lenin’s many pre-October writings, as well as Lev Karakhan’s description of Bolshevik plans to John Reed, had made no mention of a special agency for nationalities, this has been deemed a mystery rather than an obvious reaction to events by people who did not fully understand them. Blank, Sorcerer as Apprentice; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 181. See also Rigby, Lenin’s Government, 5; Reed, Ten Days [1960], 77.

  30. Blank, Sorcerer as Apprentice, 13–6; Pestkovskii, “ob ktiabr’skie dniakh v Pitere,” 101–5; Pestkovskii, “Vospominaniia o rabote v Narkmonatse,” 124–31; Istoriia natsional’no-gosudarstvennogo stroitel’stva, I: 48; Manusevich, “Pol’skie sotsial-demokraticheskie,” 131–33.

  31. Pravda, May 19, 1918; Sochineniia, IV: 88 ff.

  32. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, I: 135–6.

  33. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, I: 137.

  34. “Protiv federalizma,” Pravda, March 28, 1917, in Sochineniia, III: 23–8 (at 27).

  35. Sochineniia, IV: 32–3, IV: 66–73, 79–80; Gurvich, Istoriia sovetskoi konstitutsii, 147–8 (Stalin’s draft).

  36. Gurvich, Istoriia sovetskoi konstitutsii, 33, 146–7 (Stalin’s theses).

  37. Hardy, “The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic”; Chistiakov, “Obrazovanie Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 1917-1920 gg.”; Chistiakov, “Formirovanie RSFSR kak federativnoe gosudarstvo.”

  38. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, I: 124–50, esp. 139.

  39. “Odna iz ocherednikh zadach,” Pravda, April 9, 1918, in Sochineniia, IV: 74–8. “See also Organizatsiia Rossiiskoi federativnoi respubliki,” Pravda, April 3 and April 4, 1918, in Sochineniia, IV: 66–73. Stalin, Works, IV: 372.

  40. This point was made by Isabelle Kreindler, who, wrongly, attributed its discovery and realization to Lenin: Kreindler, “A Neglected Source of Lenin’s Nationality Policy.”

  41. VIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1959], 46–48, 77–81. See also Nenarokov, K edinstvu ravnykh, 91–2 (Latsis), 92–3 (Joffe); and Slezkine, “USSR as a Communal Apartment,” 420–1. Before 1917 many liberals, too, had regarded the idea of a federation as a utopia. See the arguments of Baron B. E. Nolde, the offspring of a Baltic German father and Ukrainian mother who from 1907 to 1917 helped formulate and implement state policy: Holquist, “Dilemmas,” 241–73. Stalin sought a middle ground, reiterating his call to have nation serve class, arguing that the slogan of national self-determination “should be subordinated to the principles of socialism.” Sochineniia, IV: 158.

  42. VIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1959], 55.

  43. VIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1919], 343–4.

  44. VIII s”ezd RKP (b) [1959], 425; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 8: 177.

  45. Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 23.

  46. De Gaulle, Lettres, II: 27–8 (May 23, 1919, to his mother).

  47. The Bolshevik “Western Front,” created in late 1918, counted fewer than 10,000 soldiers. Kakurin, Russko-pol'skaia kampaniia 1918–1920, 14. Around the same time a German general staged a coup in Latvia; Finland declared war with Russia over Karelia.

  48. Debo, Survival and Consolidation, 191–212 (esp. 202), 191 (citing DBFP, I: 694, 696–8, 689–91, 710–5); Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 91; Dokumenty i materialy po istorii sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, II: 339–43.

  49. Carley, “The Politics of Anti-Bolshevism.”

  50. Debo, Survival and Consolidation, 191–212 (esp. 202), 404, 406. See also Korbel, Poland Between East and West, 79–93.

  51. Borzecki, Soviet-Polish Treaty of 1921; Wandycz, Soviet-Polish Relations. See also D’Abernon, The Eighteenth Decisive Battle of the World. Polish troops fought six concurrent wars between 1918 and 1922: Pogonowski, Historical Atlas of Poland.

  52. The Baedeker guide to the Russian empire (1914) stated that “the Western Provinces (the former kingdom of Poland), the Baltic Provinces, and Finland have all preserved their national idiosyncracies,” adding that “Russia proper begins at the line drawn from St. Petersburg via Smolensk and Kiev to Bessarabia.” This view turned out to be prescient. Baedeker, Russia, with Teheran, xv.

  53. V. I. Lenin, “Telegramma L. D. Trotskomu,” PSS, LI: 145–6, February 27, 1919; Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 98. Kostiushko, Pol’sko-Sovetskaia voina, I: 40, 43, 47; Blank, “Soviet Nationality Policy.” On March 17, 1920, a jumble of Freikorps and other paramilitary ruffians led by the conservative monarchist Wolfgang Kapp attempted a putsch in Germany; Lenin telegrammed Stalin to accelerate the mopping up of the Whites in Crimea, “in order to have our hands entirely free, given that civil war in Germany could oblige us to move west to assist the Communists.” Kapp’s putsch failed and to Lenin it looked like a replay of the Kornilov Affair, presaging a decisive shift leftward to revolution. Lenin, V. I. Lenin, 330–1 (March 17, 1920); Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 39; PSS, XL: 235–6 (speech to 9th Party Congress, March 29, 1920), XL: 332 (April 29, 1920). See also Balabanoff, Impressions of Lenin, 109–12; and Buber-Neumann, Von Potsdam nach Moskau, 8.

  54. Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, II: 301; Wandycz, Soviet-Polish Relations, 94–100; Borzecki, Soviet-Polish Treaty of 1921, 27–9. See also Dziewanowski, Joseph Piłsudski. The Poles were quick to point out in upholding their claims to the borderlands (kresy wschodnie, in Polish) that in the summer of 1918, the Bolsheviks repudiated all imperial Russian treaties, which included those that had legalized the partitions of Poland. Horak, Poland’s International Affair, doc. 223.

  55. Reshetar, The Ukrainian Revolution, 301–2; Wandycz, Soviet-Polish Relat
ions, 191–2; Palij, The Ukrainian-Polish Defensive Alliance.

  56. Pravda, April 23, 1920. At the Moscow gathering one of the speakers, Mikhail Olminsky [Vitimsky], a long-time worshipper of Lenin, recalled the ill will that Lenin had generated before the revolution. “Lenin was known then (18 years ago) as a person who loved power, strived for dictatorship, rejected the best old leaders of the social democracy movement, criticized everyone and was at war with everyone,” Olminsky noted, before adding that Lenin “was right in promoting the organizing principle of non-democracy and the principle of a military organization.” Velikanova, Making of an Idol, 34 (citing Bukov, Nedorisovannyi portret, 1920). See also Tumarkin, Lenin Lives!, 103.

  57. Velikanova, Making of an Idol, 34 (citing Nedorisovannyi portret, 1920).

  58. RGASPI, f. 44, op. 1, d. 5, l. 11 (Lenin, political report to the 9th Party Conference).

  59. Borzecki, Soviet-Polish Treaty of 1921, 63–8.

  60. Trotskii, “Smert’ pol’skoi burzhuazii” [April 29, 1920], in Kak vooruzhalas’ revoliutsiia, II: 91. See also Lenin’s speech, that same day, to the All-Russian congress of glass workers: PSS, XL: 331–2.

  61. Trotsky, Stalin, 328. But see also Pravda, May 6, 1920.

  62. Stalin, “Novyi pokhod Antanty na Rossiiu,” Pravda, May 25 and May 26, 1920; Sochineniia, IV: 319. For Stalin on Polish nationalism, see also Pravda, March 14, 1923, in Sochineniia, IV: 167.