24. Smith, “Stalin as Commissar for Nationality Affairs, 1918–1922,” in Davies and Harris, Stalin, 51–2.
25. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 171. As Jeremy Smith almost uniquely points out, the truth about Lenin as the arch-centralizer runs exactly contrary to what is put forward in the scholarly literature (Pipes, Lewin, Carrere d’Encausse). Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 179.
26. Orakhelashvili, Sergo Ordzhonikidze; Kirillov and Sverdlov, Grigorii Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze; Ordzhonokidze, Put’ Bol’shevika; Dubinskii-Mukhadze, Ordzhonikidze.
27. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow, 14, 19–20.
28. The Caucasus bureau formally resolved to form a federation on November 2–3, 1921; on November 8, Orjonikidze telegrammed Stalin, informing him that the process had been launched, and asking for the Moscow Central Committee’s reaction. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 198–9 (citing Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, I: 208; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 231, l. 2; op. 3, d. 237, l. 2; f. 64, op. 1, d. 61, l. 16; PSS, XLIV: 255; and Kharmandarian, Lenin i stanovleniie, 96–8, 202–3).
29. Smith, “The Georgian Affair of 1922,” 528 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 61). Right after the Bolshevik takeover of Menshevik Georgia, a Bolshevik plenipotentiary in Azerbaijan (Behbud aga Shakhtakhtinsky) had proposed a South Caucasus federation in order to manage a host of volatile territorial disputes.
30. Gornyi, Natsional’nyi vopros, 144–5. Orjonikidze had taken unilateral steps to unify the South Caucasus railroad system and economy even before forcing the political union. Jones, “Establishment of Soviet Power,” 622, citing Comunisti, the party organ in Georgia (September 1921).
31. Smith, “The Georgian Affair of 1922,” 529–30 (citing Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, I: 208); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 231, l. 2. The politburo, with Lenin’s approval, decreed: “Recognize as absolutely correct the federation of South Caucasus republics in principle and as unconditionally to be realized.” PSS, XLIV: 255. On September 27, 1922, the day Lenin received Mdivani in Gorki, Kamenev had sent the Bolshevik leader a diagram of the USSR structure with the South Caucasus Federation. Under Stalin’s original RSFSR autonomization plan, Georgia was to enter as a self-standing unit granted autonomy, like Ukraine. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 186 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 28, l. 13–4).
32. Kharmandarian, Lenin i stanovleniie, 218. Pilipe Makharadze, the elder statesmen of Georgian Bolsheviks, and a person heretofore known for his internationalism, complained to the Central Committee in Moscow on December 6, 1921, that the Red Army’s arrival had “had the outward appearance of a foreign occupation . . . We must realize that the Georgian masses had become accustomed to the idea of an independent Georgia,” meaning that Georgia should not be forced into a South Caucasus Federation. Lang, Modern History, 240 (no citation). Stalin sent Svanidze to Berlin. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 257.
33. Smith, “The Georgian Affair of 1922.”
34. Suny, Georgian Nation, 214-5; Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, I: 226ff.
35. Sochineniia, IV: 162, 237, 372.
36. The imperial Russian army had opposed separate national units, even insisting that three quarters of all units be eastern Slav. Trotsky welcomed the “national” units in the Red forces in 1918–1919. Ukraine’s experience, however, whereby national units wanted to pursue exclusively nationally defined aims, changed his mind. But the desire for a single, integrated Red Army with a single command structure proved elusive in the borderlands of the new state. A Georgian Red Army was set up in August 1922, to blunt political dissatisfaction. Kudriashev, Krasnaia armiia, 17 (APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 251, l. 158). Some 97 percent of the officer corps in 1922 were former Mensheviks. In 1923 they instituted a draft of the “toiling classes”; one stated aim was to spread the influence of the party on the non-party mass, especially villagers. By 1925 they had 40,000 soldiers in Georgian units. Kacharava, Bor’ba za uprochenie sovetskoi vlasti v Gruzii, 51–3; RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 7–17.
37. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 244–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 26, l. 10–12).
38. PSS, XLIV: 299–300; XLV: 595, n210; Pipes, Formation of the Soviet Union, 274. Lenin sent a copy of his rebuke of the Georgians to Orjonikidze. On October 21, 1922, Stalin called Orjonikidze as well as Mamia Orakhelashvili, secretary of the Georgian party committee, reporting that Lenin was livid and noting that the Georgian Central Committee members had failed to code their communications, allowing interception by foreigners. Heads would roll. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2441, l. 1–2; d. 2491, l. 1–1ob. Other Georgians, including Makharadze, had sent private communications to Lenin, through Kamenev and Bukharin to obviate Stalin, also seeking once more to secure Georgia’s entry into the Union with the same status as Ukraine or Belorussia. Kamenev and Bukharin now sent their own wires to Makharadze and others in Tiflis instructing them to desist. Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, January 17, 1923.
39. Kharmandarian, Lenin i stanovleniie, 351–4.
40. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 201 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 49–50: Mikhail Okujava).
41. The other members now chosen were the Lithuanian Communist Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas (head of the short-lived Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic of 1918) and the Trotsky supporter Lev Sosnovsky, a journalist, but Mdivani objected to Sosnovsky and Stalin seized this moment to substitute his own loyalist, the Ukrainian centralizer Dmitry Manuilsky. Kharmandarian, Lenin i stanovleniie, 369–70; XII s”ezd RKP (b), 541, 551. There is a photograph from this time of Dzierzynski, Rykov, and Yagoda with Lakoba at the Zugdid Botanical Garden in Sukhum. A similar commission, headed by Frunze, had been appointed back in May 1922 to investigate a formal protest by the Ukrainian SSR that Soviet Russia had infringed upon its sovereignty. That commission upheld both Ukraine’s existence and the Central Committee’s prerogatives. TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 64–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 338, l. 122–3), 67–9 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 326, l. 1). See also Pentkovskaia, “Rol’ V. I. Lenina,” 14–5; Iakubovskaia, Stroitel’stvo soiuznogo sovetskogo sotsialisticheskogo gosudarstva, 139–40; and Gililov, V. I. Lenin, 145–6.
42. Mikoyan, Dorogoi bor’by, 433; Kharmandarian, Lenin i stanovleniie, 370.
43. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 250–1 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 43–43ob.); Kirillov and Sverdlov, Grigory Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze, 174–7.
44. Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 41 (citing RGASPI, f. 325, op. 2, d. 50, l. 35–8); Pravda, March 17, 1922 (Zinoviev’s theses); XI s”ezd RKP (b), 680–7. Lenin acknowledged that Trotsky had a point: Lenin was incapable of functioning at the same level as before, and Stalin was overloaded. Lenin, PSS, XLV: 103–4, 113–4, 122.
45. V. I. Lenin: neizvestnye dokumenty, 513–5. Rigby’s influential account of Lenin’s supposed attempt, after he had taken ill, to fight off party domination is contradicted by too many inside sources. Rigby, Lenin’s Government, 207–22.
46. Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 16–7; RGASPI, f. 325, op. 1, d. 88, l. 1, 2, 5. The state planning commission, essentially a continuation of the State Electrification Commission (GOELRO), with about forty staff, had been established almost simultaneously with the NEP. Piat’ let vlasti Sovetov, 150–2. Krzyzanowski headed the state planning commission from August 1921; Tsyryupa took over in December 1923, lasting about two years (when Krzyzanowski returned), by which time it had a staff of several hundred. Pyatakov was a deputy chairman (from 1923). Trotsky had denounced the state planning commission’s impotence almost from its inception; Lenin commented to Zinoviev that “Trotsky is in a doubly aggressive mood.” Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 42; Leninskii sbornik, XX: 208–9. Other than Trotsky, no one in the inner circle wanted to invest the state planning commission with extraordinary, dictatorial powers. Stalin had mocked him, writing to
Lenin in March 1921 that Trotsky’s calls for planning resembled “a medieval artisan who imagines himself an Ibsenite hero summoned to ‘save’ Russia by means of an old saga.” Kalinin, Stalin: sbornik statei, reprinted in Sochineniia, V: 50–1.
47. Izvestiia, March 28 and March 29, 1922; PSS, XLV: 69–116 (at 77, 81–2).
48. Therefore, by Lenin’s reasoning, should socialist revolution succeed in Western Europe, the Bolsheviks could proceed to override the desires of the vast majority of Soviet Russia’s population. XI s”ezd RKP (b), 130.
49. Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 43–4.
50. V Vserossiiskii s”ezd RKSM, 11–19 oktiabria 1922 g., 31–2.
51. Lenin added: “Allow me to conclude with an expression of confidence that just as this task is not difficult, it is not new. . . . All of us, not tomorrow, not in a few years, all of us together will solve this task no matter what it takes, so that from NEP Russia will emerge socialist Russia.” PSS, XLV: 309; Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 33–4.
52. Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 30–1.
53. All told, between his return to Moscow on October 2 and December 16, 1922, Lenin wrote 224 letters and memoranda, received 171 recorded visitors, and chaired 32 meetings. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: xviii; Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1957, no. 4: at 149 (Fotiyeva).
54. PSS, XLV: 469. The substance of the conversation between Lenin and Rykov remains undocumented but likely touched at least partly on the events in Georgia. Fotiyeva’s memoir omitted the meeting with Rykov: Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 249.
55. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 534; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 250–1; PSS, XLV: 596.
56. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 416.
57. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 261.
58. PSS, LIV: 331–2.
59. The state’s foreign trade monopoly had been introduced in 1918, but with the changeover to the NEP most top Bolsheviks, including Stalin, viewed the monopoly as unsustainable and a relic, but Lenin viewed it as a defense (“otherwise foreigners will buy up and export everything of value”) and a critical source of revenue. PSS, XLIV: 427, 548, LIV: 325–6, 338.
60. PSS, XLV: 596, n210.
61. PSS, XLV: 338–9.
62. Trotskii, Stalinskaia shkola fal’sifikatsii, 74–5; Trotskii, Portrety revoliutsionerov, 279. In fact, Lenin relied on several people for retention of the trade monopoly. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 203–22; Lenin, PSS, XLV: 471.
63. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 207–22.
64. RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2, d. 13, l. 180–90.
65. PSS, XLV: 472; LIV: 325–6.
66. PSS, XLV: 327.
67. This letter of Lenin’s does not appear in the PSS. See Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 329 (APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 19); and Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 201 (who dates the letter). According to Maria Ulyanova, Lenin “summoned Stalin and turned to him with the most intimate tasks.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1898, no. 12: 196.
68. The last face-to-face encounter between Stalin and Lenin may have been December 13, 1922. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 537–43.
69. “O zhizni i deiatel’nosti V. I. Lenina (vospominaniia, pis’ma, dokumenty),” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 189–201 (at 191).
70. Lenin had established the rule that a politburo member’s health fell under the jurisdiction of the party. Ulam, The Bolsheviks, 560.
71. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1991, no. 9: 44–5.
72. PSS, LIV: 327–8, 672. Trotsky mentioned the letter to Kamenev, who, as Trotsky requested, informed Stalin. On December 20, 1922, Doctor Otfried Forster arrived from Germany and saw Lenin that day, but there is no record of him seeing Lenin on December 21 (or 22) and there is nothing in the physician’s journal about any changes to Lenin’s personal regimen allowing dictation. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 191–2; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 274.
73. Suspiciously, the Lenin letter to Trotsky was published abroad, in the Menshevik Sotsialisticheski vestnik, in 1923. Additionally, it was signed “N. Lenin,” a signature that Lenin had long ago abandoned, and recorded by “N. K. Ulyanova,” a name Krupskaya never used. The copy in Lenin’s archive has a handwritten note from Krupskaya to Trotsky to answer Lenin by phone, but when that was written in remains unknown (it may have been added to explain why there was no written answer from Trotsky). Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 387; Trotsky archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University, T 770; Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 72; PSS, XLIV: 327–8, 672; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 545.
74. The document is signed by Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. It is likely Stalin showed Lenin the text before the plenum. Sakhahrov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 215–6 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 86, l. 7–7ob). Scholars have perpetuated Trotsky’s falsehood concerning retention of the foreign trade monopoly that only he had won the day at the plenum on Lenin’s behalf. Viz. Kumanev and Kulikova, Protivostoianie, 14–5. In fact, Krupskaya, on behalf of Lenin, had also written to Yaroslavsky (a Trotsky foe), asking that he find someone to substitute for Lenin at the December 18, 1922, plenum discussion, given Lenin’s turn for the worse on December 16. It is noteworthy that Trotsky was not given, nor did he request, a written-out copy of the meeting protocols on the trade monopoly. The monopoly on foreign trade—which supposedly launched Lenin’s alienation from Stalin—does not recur in the late documents. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 203–22.
75. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 87, l. 1–2. Trotsky, in his memoirs, invented a conversation with Lenin about attacking the bureaucratism in the state but also in the party, specifically targeting the orgburo, Stalin’s source of power. Lenin, according to Trotsky, concluded “then I offer you a bloc against bureaucracy in general and against the organizational bureau in particular.” Trotsky claims he reported this conversation with Lenin to his followers: “Rakovski, I. N. Smirnov, Sosnovsky, Preobrazhensky, and others”—repetition that supposedly helped him remember it. Trotskii, Moia zhizn’, II: 215–7; Trotsky, My Life, 78–9.
76. Krupskaya sought to record the Stalin rudeness incident by writing to Kamenev that “in connection with the very short letter that Lenin dictated, with the permission of the doctors, Stalin yesterday allowed himself the rudest attack on me. . . . The interests of the party and Ilich are no dearer to me than they are to Stalin.” This letter to Kamenev exists but has no date; a date was inserted—December 23, 1922. PSS, LIV: 674–5 (RGASPI, f. 12, op. 2, d. 250); Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 1: 192; Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle, 152–3. In turn, Kamenev’s note to Stalin conveying that Trotsky had told him he had received a letter from Lenin is undated; retroactively dated “no later than December 22” by archivists, but it refers to “the congress,” not the plenum, and the congress took place in March–April 1923. Stalin answered Kamenev: “how could the Old Man conduct a correspondence with Trotsky given Forster’s absolute prohibition.” Stalin’s answer is usually dated December 22—not clear if that is correct. Stalin did not phone Krupskaya on December 22 and curse her out. The Central Committee prohibition against political discussions did not mention contacts with members of the leadership; the politburo imposed that prohibition only on December 24. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 6: 193.
77. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1991, no. 9: 43-5; PSS, XLV: 474; Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 337–8; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 6: 191; 1989, no. 12: 196; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 202.
78. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 542–6.
79. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1991, no. 9: 45.
80. Sakharov, among other documents, reproduces a facsimile of the handwritten text, which he attributes to Alliluyeva: Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 352–53 (plates). The letter exists in two forms, handwritten and typed. The handwritten version carries the title “Letter to the Congress,”
evidently added later (since it was demonstrably not such a letter). Tellingly, the typed version lacks that designation. The texts do not match. Fotiyeva wrote to Kamenev on December 29 that Volodicheva had been present. Volodicheva later said she gave the letter to Stalin, but it is not clear if that is true, even though this is what Fotiyeva wrote to Kamenev (December 29). Nadya might have conveyed it to Stalin. For Volodicheva’s stories, see Izvestiia TsK KPSS,1989, no. 12: 191–2, 198; Genrikh Volkov, “Stenografistka Il’icha,” Sovetskaia kul’tura, January 21, 1989 (a manuscript dated October 18, 1963, citing conversations with Volodicheva); and PSS, XLV: 343; “K istorii poslednikh Leninskikh dokumentov: Iz arkhiva pisatelia Aleksandra Beka, besedovavshee v 1967 godu s lichnymi sekretariami Lenina,” Moskovskie novosti, April 23, 1989: 8–9. See also PSS, XLV: 474. When Volodicheva (or someone on her behalf) imagined this fanciful scene about giving the letter to Stalin unknowingly, everyone in the scene was dead, besides herself. Note also that publication in the bulletin of the 15th Party Congress did not include the December 23 dictation as part of Lenin’s so-called Letter to the Congress or Testament. The text was also not numbered as it would be later. Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 73–8.
81. Fotiyeva wrote that from December 23, 1922, other than herself and Volodicheva, Glasser (once), the physicians and orderlies, and Krupskaya, no one had any contact with Lenin. But this is wrong. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 275.
82. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 278–89 (esp. 282–3); Otechestvennaia istoriia, 2005, no. 2: 162–74.
83. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1963, no. 2: 68; Ulam, The Bolsheviks, 560.
84. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990. no. 1: 57.
85. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 653–8 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 305, l. 1–5; d. 301, l. 1–2).
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