Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  216. XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 953 (Orjonikidze).

  217. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 192–5, 198; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 557.

  218. “Il’ich byl tysiachu raz prav,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 192–208 (at 197–9).

  219. Oleg Khlevniuk noted that Orjonikidze allowed himself to get entangled in the intrigue. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow, 18–9. Molotov, later in life, would recall that once Orjonikidze was voicing praise for Zinoviev as a true Leninist and that when Molotov disagreed the two nearly came to blows (Kirov interceded to separate them; later, Bukharin served as peacemaker). Chuev, Sto sorok, 190–1.

  220. Mikoyan, a member of the Central Committee and party boss in the North Caucasus, where the cave meeting took place, found out about it via a letter from Voroshilov, and noted that he and others in the Central Committee roundly rejected Zinoviev’s effort to weaken Stalin’s position. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 110.

  221. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 196–7; Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 554–5.

  222. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 199–200.

  223. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 201–2.

  224. Stalin’s letter was marked “copy to Voroshilov.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 203–4. “If the comrades were to persist in their plan, I was prepared to clear out without any fuss and without any discussion, be it open or secret,” Stalin would later explain. XIV s”ezd RKP (b), 506.

  225. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 205–6.

  226. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 561 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 246, IV vyps. 104: Bukharin at the July 1926 plenum).

  227. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 370, l. 7 (August 9 politburo approval for a 1.5-month holiday commencing on August 15).

  228. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 565 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 374, l. 1; d. 375, l. 6).

  229. Fischer, The Ruhr Crisis. Édouard Herriot, mayor of Lyon and leader of France’s Radical Party, along with his deputy, Édouard Daladier, had visited the USSR back in September–October 1922 on a trip that, although unofficial, was meant to explore restoration of commercial and diplomatic relations, despite the obstacle of unpaid tsarist debts. “[France] was too magnanimous to its enemy,” Herriot told Chicherin and Leonid Krasin (foreign trade commissar) in Moscow. “The price of this magnanimity is that we are hated by everyone and Germany does not pay us. The reparations question will be resolved very quickly. It will have two stages. First stage: Germany is too weak and cannot pay; second phase: Germany is too strong and will not pay. I am absolutely persuaded that in fifteen years Germany will fall upon us again.” Carley, “Episodes from the Early Cold War,” 1277 (citing AVPRF, f. 04, o. 42, d. 53619, l. 259, 11, 23–25: Bronsky report to Veinshtein, September 22, 1922, and l. 45: Chicherin to Trotsky, October 9, 1922). See also Williams, Trading with the Bolsheviks, 111–2; and Namier, “After Vienna and Versailles,” 19–33.

  230. Feldman, The Great Disorder.

  231. “The Polish imperialists do not attempt to conceal their plans to seize Russian as well as German soil,” noted a Soviet newspaper editorial. “They are endeavoring to break up the united federation of soviet socialist republics into states at odds with one another, and to place some of these states, such as Belorussia and the Ukraine, under their direct influence.” Izvestiia, January 21, 1923, translated in Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 200–1; Ruge, Die Stellungnahme, 32–59; Eichwede, Revolution und Internationale Politik, 154–75.

  232. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 155–6, n2 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 2, d. 28, l. 45–6), 157–8; Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 126–7. Litvinov, reporting on a conversation with Brockdorff-Rantzau, had warned Zinoviev against the ill effects of Communist subversion in Germany. Sevost’ianov, Moskva-Berlin, I: 165–7 (RGASPI, f. 359, op. 1, d. 7, l. 95: June 5, 1923). Back in late 1918, Radek had boasted to Lenin of a revolutionary wave enveloping Germany, and been proved wrong. Drabkin, Komintern i ideia mirovoi revoliuitsii, 90–8 (RGASPI, f. 2, op. 2, d. 143, l. 22–6: January 24, 1919). Radek was arrested in Germany on February 12, 1919.

  233. Orlova, Revoliutsionnyi krizis, 264; Gintsberg, Rabochee i kommunisticheskoe dvizhenie Germanii, 117.

  234. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 159–60, 162–4; Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 129–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 317, l. 22). Trotsky reproduced Stalin’s letter to Zinoviev: Stalin, 368–9. See also Deutscher, Stalin, 393–5.

  235. Istochnik, 1995, no. 5: 116.

  236. “‘Naznachit’ revoliutsiii v Germaniiu na 9 noiabria’,” Istochnik, 1995, no. 5: 115–39 (at 115–7). In Kislovodsk Zinoviev drafted radical Comintern theses on the revolutionary situation in Germany in the first weeks of August, as he prepared to return to the Soviet capital in mid-August. On his mood, see Kuusinen, Neudavsheesia izobrazhenie “nemetskogo Oktiabria”: 10. Radek on August 13 advised Brandler in a letter to be sober and cautious. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 165, n1 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 18, d. 175a, l. 275ob).

  237. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 166.

  238. Istochnik, 1995, no. 5: 120–7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 375, l. 1–6). Bazhanov compiled these discussion notes. See also Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 46–50.

  239. Kommunisticheskii internatsional, 196.

  240. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 168–9 (RGASPI, f. 325, op. 1, d. 518, l. 90).

  241. Istochnik, 1995, no. 5: 115–39 (at 128). The politburo also adopted Trotsky’s suggestion to have the Comintern invite representatives of the Communist parties of France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Belgium, along with Germany, for secret joint discussions in Moscow. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 168, n1 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 2, d. 17, l. 163); Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 131 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 2, d. 19, l. 161–162ob).

  242. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 201.

  243. Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1923, no. 9: 227–32.

  244. On December 11, 1923, Lenin would request that the staff bring him the September issue of the journal; evidently he had been told about it by someone. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 650.

  245. XIV s”ezd VKP (b), 456. Trotsky congratulated himself and Bukharin for having had “the foresight and imagination to stay away” from orgburo meetings. Trotsky, Stalin, 368.

  246. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 550 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 246, IV vyp, s. 104: the joint plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of July 1926).

  247. Bukharin, either deputized by Zinoviev or on his own initiative, seems to have written to Kamenev seeking to recruit him to as yet unspecified changes in “org[anizational] methods” even before the July 29 joint letter to Stalin and Kamenev. Certainly Bukharin took a sharper, more direct stance than Zinoviev in the joint letter dated July 29. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 206–7. Sakharov explains how the published letters (in Izvestiia TsK KPSS) are out of order: Politicheskoe zaveschanie, 553–4.

  248. Orjonikidze, in his August 3 letter to Voroshilov, wrote that he had spoken to Kamenev—an indication, perhaps, of Orjonikidze’s political vacillation concerning Stalin—and that Kamenev had deemed the complaints of Zinoviev and Bukharin exaggerated. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 4: 201.

  249. Hirsch, Empire of Nations. A declaration on July 13 stipulated that “all Soviet Socialist Republics which may be founded in the future” would have the option of “voluntarily joining the Union”—evocation of world revolution. That same day Stalin removed the Trotsky supporter Cristian Rakovski as head of the government of Ukraine, planning to exile him into diplomatic work abroad.

  2
50. Chuev, Sto sorok, 182–3.

  251. Krupskaia, “Poslednie polgoda zhizni Vladimira Il’icha.” When Yevgeny Preobrazhensky went out to Gorki and recoiled from shock, Lenin’s head of security, Abram Belenky, gestured “over there, they’re carrying him.” Preobrazhensky, writing privately to Bukharin on July 29, 1923, explained that “I went, not exactly knowing how to behave, or even, really, whom I would see. . . . He pressed my hand firmly, I instinctively embraced him. But his face! It cost me a great effort to keep my mask and not cry like a baby.” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 4: 186–7.

  252. On August 31, 1923, in Kislovodsk, he received word that the British had consented to receiving Rakovski as Soviet negotiator in talks on diplomatic recognition; Stalin had just removed Rakovski from Ukraine in July, aiming to reduce one of Trotsky’s bases of support. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 67, l. 1. In Ukraine Vlas Chibar replaced Rakovski.

  253. Fischer, Stalin and German Communism, 312.

  254. The main Bulgarian Communist leaders of the uprising escaped, including Georgi Dimitrov, who went first to Yugoslavia, then to the Soviet Union, where he moved into the Hotel Lux.

  255. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 139, l. 11 (Stalin to August Thalheimer). Rote Fahne published Stalin’s letter of October 10, 1923; Chicherin heard about it over the radio, and wrote to Molotov: “is this radio report a complete fabrication or is something real hidden behind it?” Molotov passed the letter to Stalin. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 169–70 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 139, l. 31).

  256. Simultaneously, a conference of Russian, German, Polish, Czechoslovak, and French Communists opened under Comintern auspices in Moscow, where speaker after speaker preached to the choir, urging a revolutionary course for Germany. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 172–85 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 19, d. 68, passim).

  257. Firsov, “K voprosu o taktike edinogo fronta v 1921–1924 gg.,” 118. The politburo unanimously approved Zinoviev’s revised Comintern theses, which stipulated that a German revolution was imminent and that hostile actions had to be expected from world imperialism, “but all the same the German Communist party will hold power,” because of “an alliance between a Soviet Germany and the USSR.” There were intimations that successful revolution in Germany would enable the USSR to repeal the dreaded NEP. Pavlova, Stalinizm, 208 (no citation).

  258. Luppol, “Iz istorii sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo gerba.”

  259. Istochnik, 1995, no. 5: 130–5. By contrast, Pravda (September 22, 1923) observed of Germany that “we consider . . . the seizure of power not difficult and an utterly realizable task. Much more complex and difficult is the question of holding power.”

  260. Internatsionale Presse Korrespondenz, October 6, 1923: 957–9.

  261. Kamenev had the general staff academy assess how many divisions the Entente had available for an occupation of Germany. Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 131 (RGASPI, f. 325, op. 1, d. 41, l. 47–50), 135 (f. 17, op. 2, d. 109, l. 15, 18. 19).

  262. Babichenko, “Politbiuro TsK RKP (b),” 132, n32; Iwański, II Zjazd Komunistycznei Partii Rabotniczei Polski, I: 156, 162–3.

  263. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 101, l. 15–15ob.

  264. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 103. The plenum’s second and third days were given over to reports on cooperatives, wages, appointments versus elections to party posts (by Dzierzynski), and the scissors crisis. The content of Dzierzynski’s report went unspecified in the protocols. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 102.

  265. According to Deutscher, Zinoviev instead suggested he would go to Germany, as head of the Comintern, but Stalin lightheartedly interjected that the politburo could not yield either of its two most beloved members, and furthermore that there would be no thought of accepting Trotsky’s resignations. In this version, Stalin also volunteered not to join the Revolutionary Military Council, as a way of keeping harmony. Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 111–2 (no citation). It is hard to imagine Trotsky, at this moment, knowing about the “Ilich letter about the [general] secretary” and keeping silent about it.

  266. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 50–1; Bazhanov, Vospominaniia [1980], 67–8; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 3: 216.

  267. “The Central Committee constitutes that comrade Trotsky, leaving the meeting hall in connection with the speech by comrade Komarov, in which the Central Committee sees nothing offensive against comrade Trotsky, put the Central Committee in a difficult position. The Central Committee considers that comrade Trotsky behaved incorrectly by refusing to fulfill the request of the Central Committee to return to the meeting and made the Central Committee discuss the question of the composition of the Revolutionary Military Council in his absence.” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 102.

  268. The resolution was for two Trotsky supporters (Pyatakov, Nikolai Muralov), one Zinovievite (Mikhail Lashevich), and three Stalin men (Orjonikidze, Voroshilov, and Stalin). RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 103, l. 2–3. Ultimately, Pyatakov, Muralov, and Stalin did not become members, but Voroshilov, Orjonikidze, and Lashevich did, along with two others whose appointments took effect in February 1924 (Andrei Bubnov and Ali Heydar-Karaev). Nenarokov, Revvoensovet Respubliki. They joined Sklyansky (Trotsky’s right hand), Antonov-Oveseyenko (a Trotsky zealot), as well as Kamenev and Frunze; the council had recently added a number of non-Russians (Shalva Eliava, Vatslav Bogutsky, Heydar Vezirov, Inagadan Hydyr-Aliev, and Unszlicht) as well as Semyon Budyonny.

  269. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 241 (citing Balashov); Volkogonov, Trotskii, II: 8–9. Balashov gives no date for this incident.

  270. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State, 231–2.

  271. XI s”ezd VKP (b), 279 (Tomsky). See also Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State, 231–2.

  272. Brovkin, Russia After Lenin, 176–7 (citing Golos rabochego [Sormovo], September 1923 [an underground periodical]).

  273. Pravda, December 13 and December 21, 1923.

  274. Velikanova, Popular Perceptions, 34–5.

  275. Brovkin, Russia After Lenin, 175 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 87, d. 177, l. 5).

  276. Zinov’ev, Istoriia Rossiiskoi kommunisticheskoi partii, lecture 1; Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, 270 (citing Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party: A Popular Outline [London: New Park, 1973], 10).

  277. Trotsky and Shachtman, The New Course, 154.

  278. Gimpel’son, NEP, 347–8 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 467, l. 128–9); Brovkin, Russia After Lenin, 38 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 467, l. 2). Already on October 14, Trotsky’s October 8 letter was denounced at a meeting of the inner bureau of the Moscow party (Trotsky’s primary party organization), which prompted Molotov in the secretariat to accuse Trotsky of distributing his letter more widely than the politburo had permitted; Trotsky, for his part, accused the secretariat of spreading the document. The next day, at a special session of the Central Control Commission presidium, Trotsky’s letter was censured as an act of party factionalism. Trotsky sent his blistering theses only to internal party bodies (they were, nonetheless, soon published abroad). RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 685, l. 53–68; Izvstiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 5: 165–73; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 10: 184. Excerpts appeared in Sotsialisticheskii vetsnik, May 24, 1924. See also Eastman, Since Lenin Died, 142–3. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 174–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 685, l. 93–5), 176–7 (l. 91–2), 178–80 (l. 96–7), 222.

  279. Brovkin, Russia After Lenin, 44–5. See also RGASPI, f. 17, op. 87, d. 177, l. 5 (Yagoda on the Donbas); Kvashonkin, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo, 282–6 (at 284: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 2565, l. 2–7: Magidov on the Donbass); and Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 55–61 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 87, d. 177, l. 93–94, d. 178, l. 15, 18–19, 22–9), 61–2 (op. 84, d. 531, l. 97–97ob.), 63 (l. 63).

  280. Vil’kova, RKP (b
), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 409–14 (RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 318, l. 60–9); Pravda, November 7, 1923 (Zinoviev). In November 1923, Anastas Mikoyan came up from the North Caucasus to Moscow and was directed to attend party meetings at universities to gain a sense of the atmosphere; he claimed to have been shocked at the passion among students on behalf of the opposition. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 111. See also Daniels, “The Left Opposition.”

  281. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 6: 189–93; Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 83–8; Carr, Interregnum, 367–73; Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 83–8.

  282. Ivanov and Shmelev, Leninizm i ideino-politicheskii razgrom trotskizma, 343. There is no clear evidence that Trotsky wrote the Declaration of the 46. Vil’kova, RKP (b), vnutripartiinaia bor’ba, 212. See also Carr, Interregnum, 303–7, 374–80.

  283. Balashov and Markhashov, “Staraia ploshchad’, 4 (20-e gody),” no. 6: 181. See also Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 57–8. In parallel, Trotsky, Radek, and Pyatakov also formally protested Nazaretyan’s “note-taking” at meetings and “deliberate and malicious alteration of the text of official documents.” RGASPI, f. 323 [Kamenev], op. 2, d. 64. See also Graziosi, “New Archival Sources,” 40.

  284. Trotsky himself may not have been above contemplating unusual means in the fight: see the contacts between E. A. Berens, a former tsarist captain who served under Trotsky in the Military Revolutionary Council and often received special assignments, and the Paris emigre Alexander Guchkov, who had been the initial war minister in the Provisional Government and had supported the Whites. Whether Berens acted on his own or at Trotsky’s suggestion remains unclear, but the fact that Stalin did not seek to use the contacts to discredit Trotsky indicates Berens was not conducting a provocation on assignment from the GPU. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 329 (citing RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1049, l. 96; GARF, f. 5868, op. 1, d. 15: Guchkov to N. N. Chebyshev, whom he called “Admiral B”).