165. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 564. Bukharin nonetheless underscored the problem of Great Russian chauvinism, adding, “I understand that our dear friend comrade Koba does not criticize Russian chauvinism severely but as a Georgian criticizes Georgian chauvinism.” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 614. Bitterness among the Georgians: Orjonikidze and Stalin had stacked the deck, delegate-wise: there were nine voting delegates from Georgia among whom only Makharadze defended the Georgian national line; Mdivani and Cote Tsintsadze (the first commissar of the Georgian Cheka) held the same views but were non-voting attendees. Makharadze declared the Georgian Central Committee, stacked with Orjonikidze supporters, “sick.” Orjonikidze charged Mdivani and Pilipe Makharadze with collaborating with the Mensheviks during the latter’s government in Georgia (1918–20), harboring class enemies (landowners) in the Georgian party, “leftism” and “adventurism.” Radek complained that “a majority of the party does not understand the significance of the [national] question.” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 615.
166. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 113. Zinoviev crowed that “the theses of comrade Stalin and the Central Committee are superlative, exhaustive, thought-through to the end, complete, and no one can say there is a mistake in them.” XII s”ezd RKP (b), 557, 607.
167. Volkogonov, Stalin: politicheskii portret, I: 160.
168. Shvetsov, Diskussiia v RKP (b), 10.
169. Stalin likened the NEP to participating in Duma elections after 1905, rather than pressing on to the revolutionary struggle. Sochineniia, V: 215, 238–40, 244–5, 248–9; Himmer, “The Transition from War Communism.”
170. Nazarov, Stalin i bor’ba za liderstvo, 85 (citing RGASPI, f. 50, op. 1, d. 58, l. 17). Fewer votes were received only by Rakovski, Orjonikidze, Ukhanov, Zalutsky, and Kharitonov, who got the fewest votes of those elected (264).
171. “He has recovered from the sensory aphasia and begun to learn to speak,” Doctor Kozhevnikov noted hopefully. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 429, (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 140).
172. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 430.
173. Angelica Balabanoff had visited Lenin at Gorki in fall 1918, after the assassination attempt, and already then noted of Krupskaya: “I thought how much older and more haggard she looked since I had last seen her. The strain of the past few months had told more heavily upon her than upon her husband.” Balabanoff, My Life as a Rebel, 186–7.
174. Krupskaya was fond of his second wife, Zlata Lilina Bernstein; the Lenins and Zinovievs had visited each other as couples in the emigration.
175. PSS, XLV: 343–8, 593–4, n208; Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 279–82. The typescripts of the alleged dictation contain curiosities or odd mistakes: “as I said above,” when there is no above; remarks about both Zinoviev and Kamenev that use the pronoun he (“to him [emu]”). PSS, XLV: 474–6, 482. In connection with dictation for which a shorthand record is extant, they show that Fotiyeva tended to leave the original jumble of words, while Volodicheva introduced grammatical corrections.
176. Entries in the secretaries’ journal for many days are missing: December 17, December 19–22 (the day Stalin supposedly called Krupskaya); for the entire period from December 25 to January 16, there are just two entries, one noting that Lenin was reading Sukhanov. This was supposedly when Lenin was dictating these monumentally significant documents. “Dnevnik dezhurnykh sekretarei Lenina,” PSS, XLV: 457–86; 608, n297. At age eighty, in 1967, Fotiyeva told Alexander Bek, “We did not write everything in the diary.” “K istorii polsednikh Leninskikh dokumentov: Iz arkhiva pisatelia Aleksandra Beka, besedovavsheo v 1967 godu s lichnyi sekretariami Lenina,” Moskovskie novosti, April 23, 1989: 8–9. Volodicheva, in 1929, would claim that she first wrote down the dictation, then rewrote it in five copies, then retyped a clean copy that she sent to Pravda. Therefore, there should be at least three versions. PSS, XLV: 592. But today, there is no such first handwritten version (stenography) and no rewritten versions either. In dictation, one would expect to see multiple copies, corrections, insertions, after, for example, Lenin had gone over the transcribed drafts. Dictation rarely occurs in one clean swoop.
177. Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 73. Fotiyeva wrote that the staff at the Council of People’s Commissars secretariat waited with anxiety for her or Volodicheva to return following a summons by Lenin to find out how he looked and felt. “Sometimes after our return from Vladimir Ilich Nadezhda Konstantinova [Krupskaya] or Maria Ilinichna [Ulyanova] would read what he had dictated and share their thoughts about his condition.” Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 281. Vladimir Naumov concluded that Stalin and the rest all knew about the so-called Testament right away. Pravda, February 26, 1988. But all Stalin learned about—as the Fotiyeva letter to Kamenev (December 29) attests—was the December 23 dictation, which in fact was a letter to Stalin; no one learned of the dictation of December 24 or December 25 right away—because it likely did not happen then.
178. Kuromiya, Stalin, 64 (citing Trotsky letter to Max Eastman, June 7, 1933: Trotsky manuscripts, Lily Library, Indiana University, Bloomington). See also Bazhanov, Vospominaniia [1990], 107.
179. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveschanie, 311–3.
180. In mid-1922, when Dzierzynski was railways commissar, the politburo created a commission to inquire about purchases made abroad, which effectively constituted a judgment about Trotsky’s previous work as the commissar. Stalin, Rykov, Tomsky, and Kamenev voted in favor; Trotsky voted against. Lenin was absent; when apprised, he did not seek to overturn the politburo decision. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 298, l. 1, 6; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 3: 189–90; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 368–9.
181. PSS, XLV: 345. Volkogonov speculates that Trotsky, as a man of the utmost self-regard, may have taken the “Letter to the Congress” to mean that Lenin had anointed him as successor—“probably the most able man in the current Central Committee”—and perhaps imagined that Lenin had added some criticisms about him only to soften the blow of his elevation for the others. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 264–5.
182. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 122, 136, 139; Valentinov, Novaia ekoniomicheskaia politika, 57–8; Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 335. At the congress itself, the triumvirate had its people initiate a whispering campaign about Trotsky’s supposed Bonapartism. Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 94–5; Deutscher, Stalin, 273. Far from all of this was underground: on April 19, 1923 (the second day of the 12th Party Congress), Economic Newspaper had republished Lenin’s 1921 attack on Trotsky’s proposals for the state planning commission. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 543–4.
183. XII s”ezd RKP (b), 47, 92–95, 121, 122, 136, 137, 139, 151; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 418–27. Vladimir Kosior—the younger brother of Stanisław Kosior, party boss of Siberia and one of Stalin’s men—would be expelled from the party as a Trotskyite in 1928.
184. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 423.
185. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 427. Volkogonov correctly noted that “it is remarkable that Lenin was capable of dictating these lengthy works in such a short time, especially taking into account the sharp deterioration that took place in his condition during the nights of 16 and 22 December,” a worsening noted by all the physicians—Kramer, Kozhenikov, Forster, Strumpfell, Hentschell, Nonne, Bumke, and Yelistratov. But Volkogonov failed to connect the dots: Lenin indeed could not have dictated all that work. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 419.
186. Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 56 (Zinoviev cover letter to Stalin dated June 2, 1923). Moshe Lewin correctly grasped that the message of the alleged Lenin Testament, essentially, was to fight nationalism in favor of internationalism, to fight bureaucracy, especially the party leadership, and to remove Stalin, but Lewin did not question the legitimacy of the documents, which, after all, were published in Lenin’s Complete Collected Works by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Lewin
, Lenin’s Last Struggle, 132–3.
187. Later, Trotsky himself would give reason to suspect his involvement in the dictation, which, according to him, “rounds out and clarifies the proposal that Lenin made me in our last conversation.” According to Trotsky, Lenin “was systematically preparing to deliver at the 12th congress a crushing blow at Stalin as personifying bureaucracy, the mutual shielding among officials, arbitrary rule and general rudeness.” Trotsky hilariously added that “The idea of a ‘bloc of Lenin and Trotsky’ against the apparatus-men and bureaucrats was at that time fully known only to Lenin and me.” The reason it was not “known” to anyone else is that Trotsky imagined it. Trotsky, My Life, 479–81. Trotsky does not date this alleged conversation with Lenin.
188. In November 1921, for example, Stalin wrote an exasperated letter to Lenin about how Krupskaya had “again” gotten ahead of herself. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2176, l. 1–5ob. On the Krupskaya-Stalin hostility, see also Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 31 (which follows Trotsky).
189. McNeal, Bride of the Revolution, 117.
190. Trotsky, who disliked Maria Ulyanova, calling her “an old maid,” surmised that Krupskaya had shunted her aside and pushed her into Stalin’s camp, and scholars have tended to follow this line, viewing Ulyanova as on Stalin’s side, and Krupskaya on Trotsky’s. Trotsky, Diary in Exile [1963], 33; Trotskii, Dnevniki i pis’ma [1986], 76; Trotskii, Stalin, II: 254–5.
191. “It was extremely difficult to maintain equilibrium between Trotsky and the other members of the politburo, especially between Trotsky and Stalin,” Ulyanova wrote. “Both of them are people of extreme self-regard and impatience. For them, the personal trumps the interests of the cause.” Ul’ianova, “Ob otnoshenii V. I. Lenina k I. V. Stalina,” 197.
192. Blank, Sorcerer as Apprentice, 157–8 (citing K. A. Khasanov, “Tatariia v bor’be za Leninskuiu natsional’nomu politiku,” Revoliutsiia i natsional’nosti, 1933, no. 11: 30).
193. Bennigsen and Wimbush, Muslim National Communism, 51–7.
194. Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev 44–5 (TsGA IPD RT, f. 8237, op. 1, d. 2, l. 112). Antonov-Ovseenko asserted the letter resulted from a Stalin provocation, to entrap Soltanğaliev, an assertion followed by others. Antonov-Ovseenko, Stalin bez maski, 40–3; Landa, “Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev,”
195. Bulat Sultanbekov, “Vvedenie,” in Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 4–11. See also Sultanbekov, Pervaia zhertva Genseka. There were also secret informant reports to the effect that Soltanğaliev was organizing an underground congress of eastern Communists from across the USSR. Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev, 32–4 (TsGA IPD RT, f. 8237, op. 1, d. 5, l. 22–3). Dzierzynski, complaining of overwork, had assigned Mezynski to the case. Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev, 71 (TsA IPD RT, f. 8237, op. 1, d. 2, l. 117).
196. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 15–23. The interrogation protocols do not mention a request to be executed: Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev, 74–5 (TsGA IPD RT, f. 8237, op. 1, d. 20, l. 103–4; d. 2, l. 121).
197. Skrypnyk added that a Muslim nationalist was being demonstratively called to account, but not one of the many Russian-chauvinist Communists. Trotsky spoke at length, deeming Soltanğaliev not a matter of nationalism but of treason, and not treason by Turkish embassy recruitment, but by political evolution from nationalism, which “did not meet the necessary resistance from those who worked closely with him”—even now Tatar comrades were trying to protect him, citing a poor translation of his letters. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 54–7 (Orjonikidze), 61 (Skrypnyk, Trotsky), 74 (Trotsky).
198. Rakovski and Skrypnyk presented their own draft constitution and pushed for republic commissariats of foreign affairs and foreign trade. Davletshin, “The Federal Principle in the Soviet State,” at 24; Sullivant, Soviet Politics and the Ukraine, 65–76; TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 120–9 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 3478, l. 20–25, 30–7: commission meeting of June 14, 1923). Before the Moscow national Communist gathering was brought to a close, Rakovski and Skrypnyk called Stalin to account for using the terms “united” and “indivisible” to describe the USSR; he called their complaints and demands, in a sharp exchange, tantamount to confederation, in place of the agreed federation. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 270–2 (Rakovski and Stalin).
199. Hearsay exists (from Kamenev’s secretary in 1926) about how only Kamenev and Zinoviev saved Soltanğaliev from execution. More persuasively, there is a note from Mezynski expressing doubts about an informant’s allegation of secret Soltanğaliev contacts with Turkish, Persian, and Afghan diplomats in Moscow—the kind of material needed for such a treason trial. (Stalin mentioned such contacts as a fact during the party gathering.) Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 64.
200. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 85. (The version of the transcript published in Stalin’s Works differs slightly: Sochineniia, V: 301–12.) On June 6, 1923, the GPU’s Mezynski had also recommended release. Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev, 76–80 (at 80: TsGA IPD RT, f. 8327, op. 1, d. 5, l. 91–5). In his main report on the June 10 evening, Stalin went through a long discussion of how the Russian Communist party had been forged, under tsarism, first in the battle against Menshevism, bourgeois tendencies, rightists, and later in a struggle against left Communists, and that something analogous was going on with the party in national-minority regions. But, he added, the party in the borderlands could not combat rightism and leftism sequentially, with the help of one against the other, as the Russian party had done, but had to struggle against both simultaneously. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 99–106.
201. Tainy natsiona’noi politiki TsK RKP, 270–2 (Kamenev), 273–4. At some point during the four-day proceedings, Zinoviev handed Stalin a note suggesting that “a permanent commission for national affairs in the Central Committee is absolutely necessary.” Stalin wrote back: “The matter is complex: we would need to have people from every or the main nationalities. . . . [T]he national Central Committees and national province party committees will be unhappy if issues were decided without them in Moscow . . . More than that they have few people and will not give their best ones to such a commission (they’ll give their worst, if they give at all).” Stalin proposed they ask the national minority Communists themselves whether they wanted such a commission. Stalin, in his concluding remarks, rejected the commission idea (“two or three people from Ukraine would not be able to substitute for the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist party”). TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, 119 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 734, l. 15–6); Sochineniia, V: 338–9.
202. In 1928, he would be arrested again for nationalism and anti-Soviet activity and, in July 1930, sentenced to be shot, but in January 1931 his sentence would be commuted to ten years. In 1934 he would be released and allowed to reside in Saratov province. In 1937 would come yet another arrest, the final one; he would be executed in Moscow on January 28, 1940.
203. Tagirov, Neizvestnyi Sultan-Galiev, 81–184 (TsGA IPD RT, f. 15, op. 1, d. 857, l. 1–249). The GPU chief in Tataria was Sergei Shwartz.
204. On July 3, the politburo approved six weeks of holiday for Zinoviev and two months for Bukharin. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 362, l. 5. The Harvard historian of Russia Richard Pipes happened to be born in Poland the day after the cave meeting (July 11).
205. Fotieva, Iz zhizni, 295.
206. This section closely follows Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchenie, 547–66, but differs from him on a crucial point: there was no plot in the summer of 1923 to remove Stalin, only to contain him. See also Chuev, Sto sorok, 183.
207. PSS, XLV: 343–8. The alleged December 1922 dictation presented as a letter to the congress was meant for the wide party public; the January 4 “postscript” appears to have been for a narrower group: just the conspirators against Stalin. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 563–5. Th
e alleged postscript can be found in PSS, XLV: 346.
208. Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1991, no. 9: 45, 47.
209. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 538–9.
210. Molotov recalled the intrigue as Zinoviev’s initiative. Chuev, Sto sorok, 183.
211. Voroshilov explained at the 14th Party Congress: “In Rostov I received a telegram from comrade Zinoviev to travel to Kislovodsk. At that time comrades Zinoviev, Bukharin, Yevdokimov, Lashevich and other comrades were there [at the spa]. I arrived in Kislovodsk and at one of the private meetings together with comrades Zinoviev, Bukharin, Yevdokimov, and Lashevich we discussed the issue of collective leadership.” XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 398–9. Subsequently, in a letter to the congress, Voroshilov clarified the cave meeting: “at the aforementioned meeting in the ‘cave’ there were only five people: namely: comrades Zinoviev, Bukharin, Yevdokimov, Lashevich, and I.” XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 950.
212. By then, Voroshilov had left. XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 950.
213. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 196. Trotsky had been afforded a vacation from June 15 through September 7, 1923, owing to illness. Molotov also went to Kislovodsk on holiday.
214. Eastman, Leon Trotsky. Kislovodsk was buzzing that summer: the American dancer Isadora Duncan was there, too, with her adopted daughter; Eastman ran into them at the train station. Stalin may have had some knowledge of such comings and goings: Yefim Yevdokimov, a top official in the Moscow secret police, had just become the GPU plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus (on June 22, 1923) and Yevdokimov, in Rostov, might have had some role in looking after the security of politburo members and other important personages on holiday in Kislovodsk, although whether he supplied Stalin with information about the clandestine “cave meeting” is unknown.
215. XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 455–7. Perhaps Zinoviev imagined that, given the infamous enmity between Trotsky and Stalin, Zinoviev conveniently could serve as the arbiter.
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