Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  169. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 47–8 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 68, l. 4).

  170. Magerovskii, Soiuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, 16n; Pipes, Formation of the Soviet Union, 247.

  171. Rorlich, Volga Tatars, 137–8, 146–9.

  172. TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 42–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 100, l. 83–83ob, 4).

  173. Stalin had supposedly told his deputy Semyon Dimanshtein in 1919, “Soltanğaliev had long looked askance at us and has only recently been somewhat tame.” Blank, “Struggle for Soviet Bashkiria.”

  174. Dakhshleiger, V. I. Lenin, 186–7; Murtazin, Bashkiria i Bashkirskie voiska, 187–8; Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia, 1926, no. 12: 205–7; Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism, 205–6.

  175. Togan, Vospominaniia, 265–7.

  176. Togan, Vospominaniia, 267–9. Validi would write a letter requesting amnesty in late 1922; Rudzutaks conferred with Stalin, who agreed to grant it, provided Validi made a public renunciation and agitated among the basmachi to lay down their arms. Supposedly, nothing more was heard from Validi. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 93. Validi fought the Soviets for years before emigrating to Iran, then Turkey, where he took the surname Togan.

  177. Bailey, Mission to Tashkent, 119–21. The war commissar, Osipov, escaped to Iran.

  178. Zhizn’ natsional’nostei, March 2, 1919; Sochineniia, IV: 230–1.

  179. Marshall, “Turkfront.”

  180. Frank, Bukhara.

  181. Dokumenty vneshnei politiki, II: 657 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 14345, l. 13).

  182. Eleuov, Inostrannaia voennaia interventsiia, II: 513 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 14884, l. 1).

  183. Litvak and Kuznetzov, “The Last Emir of Noble Bukhara and His Money.” See also Becker, Russia’s Protectorates, 273–95.

  184. Genis, “S Bukharoi nado konchat’,” 39–44, 49–56. Frunze: Istochnik, 1994, no. 5: 38–48.

  185. Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstva, 245, n2 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 315, l. 83: Chicherin to Molotov).

  186. Gvardeitsy Oktiabria, 269 (RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 1474, l. 3–5: 1928 autobiography); Beatty, Red Heart of Russia, 134–5. Peterss had an English wife and spoke the language with a London accent.

  187. Peterss wrote to Moscow: “In my opinion an investigation should be launched and those who did not take measures to prevent these outrages should be called to account.” Genis, “S Bukharoi nado konchat’,” 49.

  188. Genis, “S Bukharoi nado konchat’,” 39–49 (citing RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 234, l. 5; d. 357, l. 1). Plekhanov and Plekhanov, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, 596 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 357, l. 1: to Zinovy Katznelson, March 14, 1925).

  189. Urazaev, Turkestanskaia ASSR.

  190. Schapiro, “General Department.”

  191. Istoricheskii arkhiv, I (1992): 14–29, translated in Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 94–115 (Pipes gives the wrong date). See also Westad, Global Cold War, 46. Lenin’s speech was omitted from the stenographic record of the 9th Party Conference published in 1972.

  192. Service, Lenin, III: 140–5.

  193. Pravda, September 29, 1920.

  194. IX konferentsiia RKP (b), 34–6 (Radek), 60–2 (Stalin), 75–9 (Trotsky), 82 (Stalin), 372–3, n18. See also Trotsky, Stalin, 327–8; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 203.

  195. “Our foolhardy vanguard, certain of victory,” Lenin privately told Clara Zetkin, the German Communist, “had no reinforcements in troops or ammunition and could not even get enough dry bread,” inducing them to squeeze “Polish peasants and townspeople,” who “looked upon the Red Army men as enemies, not brothers and liberators.” Zetkin, Vospominaniia o Lenine, 18–9; Zetkin, Reminiscences of Lenin, 20. Zetkin first published these reminiscences in 1924. See also Pravda, October 9 and October 10, 1920. Lenin would soon tell the 10th Party Congress: “In our offensive we moved too fast—almost to Warsaw; this was undoubtedly a mistake. I will not now analyze whether it was a strategic or a political mistake—this would lead me too far from my topic. I think this will have to be the work of future historians.” V. I. Lenin, “Otchet o politicheskoi deiatel’nosti TsK RKP (b)” [March 8, 1921], in PSS, XLIII: 11.

  196. Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, 208–10.

  197. Even if the Poles had not evicted Tukhachevsky from Warsaw, the way Piłsudski had been evicted from Kiev, would Britain and France have stood aside and allowed an attempt to Sovietize Poland?

  198. Told by Soviet agitators they were “liberators,” Red Army soldiers found themselves greeted with anger by Polish workers. Putna, K Visle i obratno, 137–8; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, III: 215, n2; Mikhutina, Pol’skaia-Sovetskaia voina, 191–5.

  199. “In 1920 and partly in 1921,” one anonymous Polish Communist would recall, the party labored “under an illusion concerning the tempo of the development of the revolution.” Dziewanowski, Communist Party of Poland, 95 (citing K., “Poland,” Communist International, 1924, no. 1).

  200. The Bolshevik presence in Białystok/Belostok lasted from July 28 through August 22, 1920. As one enthusiast eyewitness recorded at the time, “the Polish Revolutionary Committee arrived with very few staff [rabotnikov]. Red Poland will in time create them in the process of work.” Skvortsov-Stepanov, S Krasnoi Armiei, 47.

  201. Lerner, “Poland in 1920,” at 410 (Julian Marchlewski). See also the analysis in Suslov, Politicheskoe obespechenie sovetsko-pol’skoi kampanii.

  202. In a fall 1920 conversation with Clara Zetkin, the German Communist, Lenin acknowledged that “what happened in Poland was perhaps bound to happen . . . The peasants and workers, gulled by the followers of Piłsudski and [vice-premier Ignacy] Daszynski, defended their class enemies, allowed our gallant Red Army men to starve to death, enticed them into ambushes and killed them.” Zetkin, Vospominaniia o Lenine, 18–9; Zetkin, Reminiscences of Lenin, 20. See also Pravda, October 9 and October 10, 1920.

  203. Lerner, “Poland in 1920.” Lerner wrongly speculated that Tukhachevsky had no express orders to march on Warsaw. But of course he did: Mel’tiukhov, Sovtesko-pol’skie voiny, 74.

  204. Tukhachevskii, Pokhod za Vislu, chapter 3, translated in Piłsudski, Year 1920 (New York: Piłsudski Institute of New York, 1972), at 242–4. The “Revolution from Abroad” chapter would be omitted from subsequent editions.

  205. He wrote, obliquely, that “for a whole series of unexpected reasons, the high command’s efforts to bring about a regrouping of the great bulk of the Southwestern Front’s forces in the Lublin salient were unsuccessful.” Tukhachevskii, Izbrannye proizvedennye, I: 154.

  206. Shaposhnikov, Na Visle. More broadly, see McCann, “Beyond the Bug.”

  207. Many biographers have followed the Stalin insubordination line. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 203–5. An early exception is Ulam, Stalin, 188–9. Lenin’s disciples protected his reputation, at Stalin’s expense. “Who on earth would go to Warsaw through Lvov!” Lenin supposedly remarked, according to Bonch-Bruevich, in an obviously fabricated quote: Na boevykh postakh, 283.

  208. Kantor, Voina i mir, 206, citing Tukhachesvsky’s “zapiski o zhizni” (September 9, 1921), in his police file: TsA FSB, ASD no. R-9000.

  209. Lewis and Lih, Zinoviev and Martov.

  210. Fischer, Stalin and German Communism, 146 (citing Zinoviev, Zwolf Tage, 74).

  211. Angress, Stillborn Revolution, 71–2; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, III: 217–20; Debo, Survival and Consolidation and Survival, 308–9; Weitz, Creating German Communism, 98.

  212. Broue, German Revolution, 502.

  213. The Soviets would declare Bessarabia Soviet territory under Romanian occupation. The United States and Japan failed to ratify the treaty. In 1924, in response, the USSR would create a Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on the left bank of the Dniester Ri
ver in Ukraine.

  214. Wyszczelski, Varshava 1920, 256.

  215. Mel’tiukhov, Sovtesko-pol’skie voiny, 104–5.

  216. Lenin, “Nashe vneshnee i vnutrennee polozhenie i zadachi partii,” PSS, XLII: 17–38 (at 22: speech to a Moscow province party gathering, November 21, 1920).

  217. Piłsudski, Year 1920, 222.

  218. Pravda, November 7.

  219. Davatts and L’vov, Russkaia armiia na chuzhbine, 7. Wrangel claimed 160,000: Hoover Institution Archives, Maria Dmitrevna Vrangel’ Collection, box 145, folder 28.

  220. Zarubin, Bez pobeditelei; A. L. Litvin, “VChK v sovremennoi istoricheskoi literatury,” in Vinogradov, Arkhiv VChK, 51–70 (at 59). Yefim Yevdokimov was the chief of a special department of the southern front.

  221. Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, II: 431.

  222. Kalyvas, Logic of Violence, 389.

  223. Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 208.

  224. Osipova, Klassovaia bor’ba v derevene, 315, 317, 321; Abramovitch, Soviet Revolution, 143–5; Iarov, “Krest’ianskoe vol’nenie na Severo-Zapade Sovetskoi Rossii,” 134–59; Arthur Adams, “The Great Ukrainian Jacquerie,” in Hunczak, The Ukraine, 247–70; Graziosi, Bol’shevikii i krest’iane na Ukraine; Arshinov, Istoriia makhnovskogo dvizheniia; Danilov, Nestor Makhno; Aleshkin and Vasil'ev, Krest'ianskie vosstaniia; Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War.

  225. Novaia zhizn’, March 26, 1918: 4 and April 19, 1918: 4, in Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 664; Pravda, March 17, 1918.

  226. Graziosi, “State and Peasants,” 65–117 (at 76–7, 87).

  227. Landis, Bandits and Partisans; Danilov, Krest’anskoe vosstanie. Previous studies include Singleton, “The Tambov Revolt”; Radkey, Unknown Civil War; and Delano DuGarm, “Local Politics and the Struggle for Grain in Tambov, 1918–1921,” in Raleigh, Provincial Landscape, 59–81.

  228. Baranov, Krest’ianskoe vosstanie, 79.

  229. Aptekar’, “Krest’ianskaia voina,” 50–55 (citing GARF, f. 6, op. 12, d. 194; f. 235, op. 2, d. 56, l. 6: Shikunov).

  230. X s”ezd [1921], 231.

  231. Shishkin, Sibirskaia Vandeia, II: 128.

  232. Litvin, Krasnyi i belyi terror, 379 (February 13, 1921).

  233. Landis, Bandits and Partisans, 165–6.

  234. “We have to cope with the present situation, which has deteriorated both internally and internationally,” Lenin told the Moscow party organization on February 24, 1921. “[A formal peace treaty] with Poland has not yet been concluded, and at home we have a growth of banditry and kulak revolts. As for food and fuel, things have gone from bad to worse.” He blamed the influence of the Socialist Revolutionaries. “Their main forces are abroad; every spring they dream of overthrowing Soviet power.” Lenin, Collected Works, 42: 272–3.

  235. Maslov, Rossiia posle chetyrekh let revoliutsii, II: 133.

  236. Pravda, February 12, 1921.

  237. Lenin received a copy of the nine-point resolutions of the Baltic Factory. “1. Down with Communism and Communist power over the Russian Socialist Republic, for not implementing the interests of the majority of the working people of the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic. 2. Long live Soviet power, that is, that power which will realize the interests of the working peoples of the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic.” And so on. The workers demanded a state without bloodshed, and closed their resolution with the cry, “Long live truth, freedom of speech and the press in the free Socialist Republic.” RGASPI, f. 2, op. 2, d. 561, l. 40.

  238. “Doklad nachal’nika 1-go spetsial’nogo otdela VChK Fel’dmana v osobyi otdel VChK” [December 10, 1920], in Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 19–23. On February 28, the politburo in Moscow took a hard line concerning Kronstadt, and Cheka deputy chairman Kesnofontov ordered that “SRs and Mensheviks, using the natural dissatisfaction of the workers with the difficult conditions of life, are trying to call forth a strike movement against Soviet power and the Russian Communist party, giving it an organized, all-Russia character.” Prikaz VChK, “‘Ob usilenii bor’by s konterrevoliutsiie,” in Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 36–7

  239. Izvestiya Vremennogo revoliutsionnogo komiteta matrosov, krasnoarmeitsev i rabochikh, March 3, 1921; Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 50–1; Kronstadskaia tragediia, 114–5; Getzler, Kronstadt, 205–45 (esp. 213–4). More than 300 volumes of archival documents on Kronstadt are said to sit in FSB archives, gathered from many agencies and publications, including from the Cheka itself: Kronstadtskaia tragediia, I: 30. Paul Miliukov, in Paris, gave the Kronstadt slogan as “Soviets without Communists,” which was Soviet propaganda against the sailors, and oft repeated. Poslednie novosti, March 11, 1921.

  240. Pravda, March 3, 1921; Kronstadtskaia tragediia, I: 130–1. Trotsky had complained on March 1 that he was unable to get solid information on events on Kronstadt. The next day Zinoviev, Kalinin, and Lashevich telephoned Trotsky’s assistant Grushin: “We are now convinced that the events in Kronstadt constitute the beginning of an uprising. . . . Your help is needed.” They requested armored cars and trustworthy troops (a phrase crossed out on the version of the telegram that was sent). Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 59. No former tsarist officers served on the fifteen-member Revolutionary Committee, but some were invited to help plan the defense of Kronstadt.

  241. Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 60, 68.

  242. Kronstadtskaia tragediia, I: 215; Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines, 396–7. The hostage taking included anyone with family ties to Kozlovsky (twenty-seven people, including his wife and children) as well as Petrichenko (including people who had no family ties but only the same name as Petrichenko).

  243. Trotskii, Kak vooruzhalas’ revoliutsiia, III/i: 202; Berkman, Kronstadt, 31–2. The newspaper editor, A. Lamanov, would be among those executed. At Kronstadt, at least 900 of the 2,680 Communist party members and candidates quit the party, many requesting publication of their resignations in the newspaper.

  244. Krasnov and Daines, Neizvestnyi Trotskii, 339–41.

  245. Kronstadskaia tragediia, I: 287.

  246. Krasnov and Daines, Neizvestnyi Trotskii, 345.

  247. Tukhachevsky was shocked to discover that a Siberian infantry division considered as the absolute most reliable, which he had specially chosen for the crackdown, refused to put down the sailors. “If the 27th Division will not do it,” one regime official observed on March 14, “no one will.” On March 15, a revolutionary tribunal sentenced many of the insubordinate troops to execution, which newspapers broadcast. Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921, 188 (V. Nasonov); Minakov, Sovetskaia voennaia elita, 269.

  248. X s’ezd, 750–65.

  249. Sotsialistickeskoe stroitel’stvo SSSR, 2–3; Gladkov, Sovetskoe narodnoe khoziaistvo, 151, 316, 357; Klepikov, Statisticheskii spravochnik po narodnomu khoziaistvu, 26 (table 8); S. G. Wheatcroft, “Agriculture,” in Davies, From Tsarism to the New Economic Policy, at 94.

  250. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 6, l. 80.

  251. Gimpel’son, Sovetskii rabcohii klass, 80–2; Selunskaia, Izmeneniia sotsial’noi struktury sovetskogo obshchestva, 258. Diane Koenker quipped that “when Bolshevik party leaders saw support slipping away, they blamed the physical disappearance of their supporters rather than changed attitudes.” Diane Koenker, “Introduction: Social and Demographic Change in the Civil War,” in Koenker, Party, State, and Society, at 51.

  252. Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, II: 431–6; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, I: 197–200.

  253. XX s”ezd , 98 (Rafail); Pavliuchenkov, “Orden mechenostsev”: 37–48.

  254. Lenin, Collected Works, 32: 41, 43, 52, 86. “It was a great mistake to put up these disagreements for broad party discussion and the party congress,” he asserted, because debate revealed “the party is sick.” Harding, “Socialist, Society, and the Organic Labour State,” 33.

  255. X s”ezd [
1921], 1; X s”ezd [1933], 4. The Workers’ opposition advanced their own resolutions for consideration (the last time resolutions would be submitted by anyone other than the apparatus), but they were not submitted to vote.

  256. Lenin, Collected Works, 32: 206.

  257. X s”ezd [1921], 207; X s”ezd [1933], 380–1. In a passage from that same speech often quoted out of context, Lenin added, referring to Trotsky’s labor army mobilizations that, “first of all we must convince, then coerce [prinudit’]. We have not been able to convince the broad masses.” X s”ezd [1921], 208; X sezd [1933], 382.

  258. As it happened, Lenin himself signed the treaty. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, I: 386; Arthur Adams, “The Great Ukrainian Jacquerie,” in Hunczak, The Ukraine, 247–70 (at 260).

  259. Borys, Sovietization of the Ukraine. See also Wolfe, “The Influence of Early Military Decisions.”

  260. Magerovsky, “The People’s Commissariat,” I: 179–84.

  261. “Ob ocherednykh zadachakh partii v natsional’nom voprose: tezisy k X s”ezdu RKP (b),” Pravda, February 10, 1921, in Sochineniia, V: 15–29 (at 21–2). Georgy Chicherin, foreign affairs commissar, argued against Stalin’s theses, asserting that Stalin’s view of setting up a dichotomy between national and multinational states was outdated because now there had appeared a supranational state, a result of imperialism and global financial entities. The struggle, therefore, was not between strong or weak, independent or colonial states, but between the revolutionary working class and the supranational capitalist trusts. Chicherin, “Protiv tezisov Stalina,” Pravda, March 6, 8, 9, 1921.

  262. Borys, Sovietization of the Ukraine, 343.

  263. X s”ezd [1933], 184–91, Sochineniia, V: 33–44.

  264. X s”ezd [1933], 191–2; X s”ezd [1963], 187.

  265. X s”ezd [1933], 192–205; X s”ezd, [1921], 189–96. This bold assertion—that the party did not create the revolution in Turkestan, but the other way around—became the basis for a book-length treatment he published the same year. Safarov, Kolonial’naia revoliutsiia, first published as a short essay in Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, 1920, no. 14: 2759–2768. Safarov had the distinction of having been among those who had returned with Lenin in the sealed train and, in September 1919, of having been among the victims injured in the terrorist bombing of the Moscow party organization on Leontyev Lane. Following a dispute with Tomsky, the head of the Turkestan party bureau, Safarov as well as Tomsky were recalled.