86. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 459.
87. PSS, XLV: 349–53; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 375 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 4, d. 10, l. 13ob).
88. Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 58–9, n33 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 4, d. 98, l. 114–45); XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 453–4).
89. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 557–60 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 274, l. 1–2); Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 9–11.
90. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 660–2 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 275, l. 2–3); Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 9–11.
91. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 10: 178–9 (letter of Trotsky to Central Control Commission, October 1923).
92. On January 20, in another letter, Trotsky complained of having been absorbed in the recent Comintern Congress. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 660–72 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 275, l. 2–3; d. 307, l. 5; d. 308, l. 1–5); Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 12–5.
93. The Dzierzynski commission report’s conclusions were discussed and approved at the orgburo on December 21, 1922. A final draft of the Dzierzynski commission’s report, which confirmed that Orjonikidze had struck a fellow Georgian Communist, called for no disciplinary action, and instead recommended that the (former) Georgian Central Committee members be reassigned to Soviet Russia. It was approved at the orgburo on January 13, 1923, and sent to the politburo; a copy of the conclusions went to Lenin. The politburo confirmed the orgburo decision as well as the new composition of the Georgian Central Committee. On January 18 the politburo resolved to delay the discussion for one week, to allow Mdivani and others to acquaint themselves with the materials. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 330, l. 3.
94. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 331, l. 1. The Dzierzynski commission report: RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 69–73.
95. PSS, XVL: 476; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 300; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 568–9.
96. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 301. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 276–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 4, d. 10, l. 23–23ob). It may be noteworthy that Fotiyeva admitted she first asked Dzierzynski, who told her that Stalin had the materials.
97. Molotov provided another possibility: “Stalin introduced a secretariat decision not to allow Zinoviev and Kamenev to visit Lenin, since the doctors forbid such contacts. They complained to Krupskaya. She became outraged, spoke to Stalin, and Stalin answered her, ‘the Central Committee decided and the doctors believe that visiting Lenin cannot be done.’ ‘But Lenin himself wants it!’ ‘If the Central Committee so decides, we could even forbid you from seeing him.’” Chuev, Sto sorok, 212.
98. Chuev, Sto sorok, 212–3; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 132.
99. Recollections dating to 1926: Ul’ianova, “Ob otnoshenii V. I. Lenina k I. V. Stalina,” 198, 196.
100. PSS, LIV: 329; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 332, l. 5.
101. Kentavr, October–December 1991, 100–1; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 392.
102. “In the last analysis the working class can maintain and strengthen its guiding position not through the apparatus of government, not through the army, but through industry, which reproduces the proletariat itself,” Trotsky wrote in theses on industry. “The party, the trade unions, the youth league, our schools, and so on, have their tasks in educating and preparing new generations of the working class. But all this work would prove to be built on sand if it did not have a growing industrial base under it.” State finances, he urged, should be spent on state industry. Daniels, Documentary History of Communism [1960], I: 234–6 (citing Trotsky archives, Houghton Library, Harvard University: March 6, 1923).
103. Stalin won the fight, and the reorganization took place according to his proposals, as confirmed at the Central Committee plenum in summer 1923. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 663–71; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 363, l. 2; d. 364, l. 5; d. 369, l. 5.
104. Naumov and Kurin, “Leninskoe zaveshchanie,” 36.
105. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 421 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 138–9).
106. Izvestiia TsK KPSS,1989, no. 12: 198. The women in the Council of People’s Commissars secretariat were evidently ill disposed toward Stalin. Later, they would visit Stalin’s apartment at the invitation of their former coworker, Nadya Alliluyeva, for example, on the birth of little Svetlana (February 28, 1926). When Stalin opened the door, and Nadya told him to close it or the baby would get a cold from the draft, he supposedly replied, in his bizarre sense of humor, “If it catches a cold it will die more quickly.” Genrikh Volkov, “Stenografistka Il’icha,” Sovetskaia kul’tura, January 21, 1989: 3 (manuscript dated October 18, 1963).
107. “Dnevnik dezhurnykh sekretarei V. I. Lenina,” PSS, XLV: 607. See also Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle, 96. This is perhaps the first persuasively documented instance on the Georgia affair with Lenin expressing doubts not just about Orjonikidze and Dzierzynski but Stalin, too.
108. The doctors added that “Vladimir Ilich got angry at this refusal, stated that he had already read the protocols and just needed them for one question.” Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 276. Glasser refused to turn over to Lenin a copy of the “Short Letter of the CC to provincial party committees about the conflict in the Communist party of Georgia.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 9: 153 n1, 162–63.
109. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 589 (RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, l. 53–73); Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 315. The dossier materials are at: RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 32, 33, 34. Glasser related to Bukharin that Lenin “had an already preconceived opinion of our work and literally directed and was terribly worried that we will not be able to prove in our report what he needs and he does not have time to prepare his Congress speech.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 9: 163.
110. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 501 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 31, l. 1, 3, 4).
111. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 345–62.
112. RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 34, l. 15; Trotsky, My Life, 482–8.
113. Smith, “The Georgian Affair of 1922,” 538 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 34, l. 3); Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 208. Trotsky and Lenin (as well as Rykov) shared a German doctor, F. A. Guetier, so Trotsky could get firsthand information on Lenin’s actual condition as well as use this extra channel to communicate with the Bolshevik leader.
114. PSS, XLV: 329–30.
115. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 192–3 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 26004, l. 3); Volkogonov, Stalin: politicheskii portret, II: 384–5; Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 274 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 27–9). Note: “about 5 weeks ago”—meaning late January, not December 23. In 1989, Vera Dridzo, Krupskaya’s personal secretary (from 1919–1939), suddenly remembered how Stalin had called to apologize to Krupskaya in March 1923; Dridzo did not mention this in her Brezhnev-era memoir. V. Dridzo, 105; cf. Dridzo, Nadezhda Konstantinovna.
116. Trotsky, Between Red and White, 81.
117. Kentavr, 1991, Oktiabr’—dekabr’: 109–12. Lenin was also credited with dictating “Better Fewer but Better” (dated March 2–9), a searing condemnation of state administration and of the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate, which was supposed to improve state administration. Trotsky claimed that he forced a meeting to get this dictation published in Pravda. Trotsky, Stalin School of Falsification, 72.
118. Trotskii, “Zaveshchanie Lenina [Portrety],” 280.
119. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 9: 151. Stalin that same day telegrammed Orjonikidze with word of Lenin’s letters. Trotsky claimed he informed Kamenev of the letter for Mdivani and Makharadze, but it was addressed “copy to” Kamenev as well as Trotsky. It is not clear if a Kamenev-Trotsky meeting took place on the night of March 6–7 as Trotsky claimed; no such letter from Trotsky to Kamen
ev was registered in Kamenev’s secretariat, while Kamenev said the meeting with Trotsky took place later, after Lenin’s hopeless condition had become definitive.
120. PSS, LIV: 329–30 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 26004, l. 1–3 [including Stalin’s response]); Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 192–3. There is one extant copy of the Stalin letter, not signed by him, written in Volodicheva’s hand; a second copy, evidently written by Stalin, has his signature—but it looks like a facsimile version. The archives contain a cover note, in Stalin’s hand: “Comrade Lenin for Stalin Only personally.” It is not clear if this note was written for this letter, however. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 395–7.
121. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1963, no. 2, reprinted in PSS, XLV: 455–86 (“journal” of Lenin’s secretaries, November 21, 1922, to March 6, 1923).
122. Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 343.
123. On March 17: “After a short time he wanted to express either an idea or a wish, but neither the nurse, nor Maria Ilichna, nor Nadezhda Konstantinova could understand him.” Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 497. The duty physician journal noted that Lenin was “given dried bread chips, but for a long time he could not put his hand straight onto the plate and kept putting it around it.” Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 430 (citing RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2, d. 13). See also Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 343.
124. Pravda, March 12 and March 14, 1923; Izvestiia, March 14, 1923.
125. Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 33–40.
126. Velikanova, Popular Perceptions, 27 (citing RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 287, l. 6–7, 13); Izmozik, Glaza, 84.
127. Trotskii, “O bol’nom” (April 5, 1923) in O Lenine, 159–61.
128. Karl Radek, “Trotskii, organizator pobedy,” Pravda, March 14, 1923, reprinted in his Portrety i pamflety (Moscow and Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1927), but suppressed from subsequent editions (1930, 1933–34).
129. Valentinov, Novaia ekoniomicheskaia politika, 54; Valentinov, Nasledniki Lenina, 13–4.
130. Sevost’ianov, “Sovershenno sekretno”: Lubianka—Stalinu, I/i: 51–2 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 1, d. 42: March 24, 1923). The editors do not reproduce the full document, only a few excerpts, and do not remark upon the absence of Stalin’s name.
131. Lenin had asked Stalin for poison on May 30, 1922, and on December 22, 1922.
132. Sochineniia, XVI: 25. The recipients of Stalin’s letter were Tomsky, Zinoviev, Molotov, Bukharin, Trotsky, and Kamenev; Rykov and Kalinin were absent. Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, II: 347–50 (APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 1–2). After Stalin’s death, Fotiyeva did not repudiate the poison request, and she explained its absence in the notebook by claiming she had “forgotten” to record it. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 6, 217; Fotieva, Iz zhizni; “K istorii poslednikh leninskikh dokumentov,” Moskovskie novosti, April 23, 1989: 8–9 (1960s interviews by Aleksandr Bek with Fotiyeva and Volodicheva, published after Bek’s death: in Bek’s telling, Stalin was miraculously saved by Lenin’s stroke); Ulyanova, “O zhizni i deiatel’nosti V. I. Lenina (vospominaniia, pis’ma, dokumenty),” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 12: 189–201 (at 199). Lenin’s earlier request for poison (December 22, 1922) was not recorded in the duty journal. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 6: 217.
133. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 273n.
134. Stalin tried to reassure Orjonikidze in a March 16 telegram: “I think that matters at the [Georgian] congress will go well and just like the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist party will support the policy of the South Caucasus Party Committee.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d, 2518, l. 1.
135. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 505 (citing RGASPI, f. 5, op. 2, d. 33, l. 50).
136. A telegram from Orjonikidze in Tiflis to Voroshilov and Mikoyan in Rostov, conveying that Zinoviev was en route, said of the latter: “He inclines somewhat, it seems, toward the [national] deviationists, but more than him Kamenev, who offers diverse advice to the deviationists. I spoke with Zinoviev. And you both will speak to him. All kinds of attempts at the current moment on their part will give them nothing, and will orient our comrades against Kamenev and create a schism in the South Caucasus delegation to the congress.” RGASPI, f. 85, op. 24, d. 2479, l. 1–1ob.
137. TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 106 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2522, l. 1). On March 22 at the politburo, Stalin’s theses on the national question for the upcoming Party Congress were approved. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 816–9.
138. Trotsky charged that the formation of the USSR had been decided in the secretariat, not the politburo. A March 29 collective letter of the politburo to Trotsky repudiated this lie. The next two days, at the Central Committee plenum Trotsky again tried to get Orjonikidze sacked and again got only a single vote besides his own. Smith, Bolsheviks and the National Question, 210. Kaganovich recalled that Trotsky supported the Georgian “national deviationists” fully. Kaganovich, Pamiatnye zapiski, 282.
139. Kun, Bukharin, 130–1.
140. After the call, Fotiyeva wrote Stalin a note detailing the date that the article had been “written” [sic!] and how “Vladimir Ilich proposed to publish it,” but “I do not have a formal directive of Vladimir Ilich.” Fotiyeva did not send Stalin her cover letter: “Not sent, since comrade Stalin said he is not getting involved.” Fotiyeva did send a letter to Kamenev, with a copy to Trotsky, for the politburo, noting that “not long before his last illness he told me he wanted to publish this article, but later. After that he took sick without giving final directions”—a formula that went beyond what she had conveyed to Stalin. She also noted that Trotsky had already been sent the article. Kamenev responded that Trotsky had showed him the article more than a month ago, and that, as proper procedure, he was forwarding the correspondence to the party secretariat (that is, to Stalin). Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 9: 155–6, 161.
141. Everything else in the late dictation materials attributed to Lenin—the correctness of the October path, the need to strengthen party authority and improve apparatus functioning, the dangers of petty-bourgeois corruption of the revolution, the promise of cooperatives as a way peasants could overcome the market toward socialism—comported with his views. Lih, “Political Testament.”
142. Kommunist, 1956, no. 9, reprinted in PSS, XLV: 356–62.
143. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 286.
144. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 514–8; Sakharov, Na rasput’e, 136–44; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 9: 151, 158; Tainy natsional’noi politiki TsK RKP, 97.
145. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 329–30, 335–6.
146. Valentinov, Nasledniki Lenina, 17.
147. Stalin got the organizational report, Bukharin substituted for Zinoviev in the report on the Comintern, and Trotsky was assigned to report on industry (but only after the politburo imposed revisions to his theses on the economic role of the state). Kamenev was assigned to substitute for the ill Sokolnikov and report on tax policy. RGASPI, f. 17. op. 3, d. 329, l. 203; op. 2, d. 96, l. 1; op. 3, d. 346, l. 5. More colorfully, Bazhanov has Stalin proposing Trotsky for the main political report, Trotsky refusing and proposing Stalin, and Kamenev brokering the selection of Zinoviev, who was dying for the role. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 30.
148. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 8–9. Zinoviev, in his political report, stated: “a division of labor, yes, a division of power, no,” in the relations between the party and the state. This was evidently directed at Trotsky. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 41–2. Of Zinoviev, Carr wrote uncharitably, “His ambition to assume the mantle of Lenin was so naively displayed as to make his vanity ridiculous.” Carr, Socialism in One Country, I: 170. By contrast, Kamenev would hit upon the appropriate stance, remarking of Lenin, “His teaching has been our touchstone every time this or that problem, this or that difficult question, has confronted us. Menta
lly, each of us has asked himself, ‘And how would Vladimir Ilich have answered this?’” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 523.
149. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 199.
150. Pravda, December 7, 1923.
151. Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 54 [1991], 99.
152. Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, 205; Izvestiia, April 7, 1923 (Petrovsky). See also Barmine, One Who Survived, 212; and Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 94.
153. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 393. Maurice Dobb printed a different version of the graph, taken from Strumilin: Dobb, Russian Economic Development, 222.
154. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 306–22 (at 321).
155. Carr, Interregnum, 32–4.
156. Barmine, One Who Survived, 93–4.
157. Avel Yenukidze, who had close contact with Stalin, put forth a less innocent explanation. “Comrade Lenin was made a victim of one-sided incorrect information,” Yenukidze speculated. “When they come to a person, who out of sickness lacks the possibility to follow daily affairs, and they say that such and such comrades were insulted, beaten, kicked out, displaced and so on, he, of course, can be expected to write such a sharp letter.” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 541. On April 18, the presidium of the Party Congress had decided to show the “Notes on the Question of Nationalities” to a council of elders.
158. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 171–2.
159. Sochineniia, V: 257.
160. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 449.
161. XII s”ezd VKP (b), 31.
162. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 171.
163. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 571, 650–2.
164. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 561–4; Sakharov, Politichskoe zaveshchanie, 521–34. Some 100 people took part in a special “national section” of the congress on April 25 for the discussion; this included twenty-four people not delegates to the congress but invited especially for this sectional discussion. Stalin reported on the results of the discussion to the congress. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 649–61.
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