Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  33. Mikoyan wrote that on the afternoon of January 21, he went to Stalin’s apartment to discuss strategy, and that “some 30 or 40 minutes into our conversation an excited Bukharin burst in and did not say but shrieked that Maria had called from Gorki and said that ‘Lenin has just died at 6:50 p.m.’” This was a lie, designed to undermine the fact that Bukharin was in Gorki with the dying Lenin; the call about Lenin’s death came through not to Stalin’s apartment but to the Congress of Soviets in session. Mikoian, Tak bylo, 113.

  34. Ioffe, Vremia nazad, ch. 4.

  35. Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich also organized a special two-car train for the health commissar and the team of doctors who would perform the autopsy and embalming, as well as family members not already at Gorki (Lenin’s sister Anna and brother Dmitry). Bonch-Bruevich, “Smert’ i pokhorony Vladimira Il’icha”; Pravda, January 21, 1925; Otchet Komissii TsIK SSSR, 5.

  36. Bonch-Bruevich, “Smert’ i pokhorony Vladimira Il’icha,” 189–90. Note that Bonch-Bruevich does not mention Bukharin going to Gorki on the sled-tracked vehicles or train, but has him in the room saying good-bye with the others.

  37. Izvestiia, January 24, 1922.

  38. Sakharov, Politicheskoe zaveshchanie, 576 (citing RGASPI, f. 16, op. 1, d. 44, l. 1).

  39. Izvestiia, January 25, 1924; Pravda, January 26, 1924. Nikolai Semashko, Soviet health commissar, observed of Lenin’s cranial blood vessels that “when struck with a tweezer they sounded like stone.” Pravda, January 24, 1924; Semashko, Otchego bolel, 35. See also Fischer, Life of Lenin, 672. The published reports, citing “an incurable disease of the blood vessels,” seemed to be saying that Lenin was beyond the doctors’ help; they could not have saved him and should not be blamed. But whereas Semashko stressed Lenin’s “superhuman mental activity, life of constant agitation and ceaseless anxiety,” Doctor Abrikosov emphasized the hereditary factors in Lenin’s arteriosclerosis. Izvestiia, January 25, 1924; Tumarkin, Lenin Lives!, 172, n34.

  40. Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 87.

  41. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 409 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 22, d. 307, l. 135: doctor’s notes discovered in December 1935 by the head of the Kremlin medical administration—Khodorovsky—and placed in secret archive).

  42. Service, Lenin, III: 255–62. Lenin had consulted specialists in nervous disorders at least as early as 1900, while in Germany. RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 385, l. 1.

  43. Duranty, “Lenin Dies of Cerebral Hemorrhage”; Pravda, January 24, 1924. The congress did resume, then closed on January 29, after approving the new constitution of the USSR. XI Vserossiiskii s”ezd Sovetov.

  44. Maksimov, “U tovarsihcha Stalina (po vospominaniiam byvshego detkora),” Raboche-Krest’ianskii korrespondent, 1934, no. 10: RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 649, l. 208 (Viktor Maksimov).

  45. Ia. G. Zimin, “Sklianskii Efraim Markovich,” in Nenarokov, Revvoensovet Respubliki, 56–70 (at 68); Zetkin, We Have Met Lenin, 73–5; Gil’, Shest’ let s V. I. Leninym, 100–1; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 664–79.

  46. Izmozik, Glaza, 84.

  47. Sevost’ianov, “Sovershenno sekretno,” I/i: 52–3 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op, 2, d. 1, l. 1).

  48. Izmozik, Glaza, 160–1. Izmozik maintains that unlike party and Soviet officials, Chekists did not dress up the situation in their domains, although he argues their reports became “less objective” by the end of the 1920s.

  49. RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 325, l. 4–6.

  50. Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 291–2.

  51. Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, 63.

  52. Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 88–9.

  53. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 266 (citing RGVA, f, 33987, op. 3, d. 80, l. 587; RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 27088, l. 1; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 816, l. 75–6).

  54. Trotsky, My Life, 508; Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, 131–4.

  55. Izvestiia, January 25 and January 26, 1924.

  56. New York Times, January 28, 1924 (Walter Duranty). Later, Duranty recreated a conversation with a French journalist of Le Temps in Moscow. “My God, what an opportunity to miss! Achilles sulking in his tent. Quel idiot. As if he couldn’t understand that the whole strength of his position was his reputation with the masses as Lenin’s chief aide and supporter . . . If he had come to Moscow. . . he would have stolen the whole show, as you say in America.” Duranty, I Write as I Please, 225–6. This was Henri Louis-Victor-Mars Rollin, who, Duranty omits to mention (or did not know), was perceived as a Bolshevik agent by the Quai d’Orsay. Rollin wrote what for decades was the major historical work (L’apocalypse de notre temps, 1939) on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

  57. “One could feel in his letter,” Natalya Sedova’s mother observed of mail they received from Lev in Moscow, “bitter bewilderment and diffident reproach.” Trotsky, My Life, 511. See also Patenaude, Stalin’s Nemesis, 170–3.

  58. RGAKFD, ed. khr. 1-14097 (year 1924).

  59. Trotsky, Stalin, 381.

  60. “Lenin is No More” was wired to Moscow for publication in Pravda and Izvestiya: Pravda, January 24, 1924; Izvestiia, January 24, 1924; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 266 (citing RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 27088, l. 1).

  61. “Po povodu smerti Lenina,” Pravda, January 30, 1924; Sochineniia, VI: 46–51. Stalin’s name was absent from the original list of speakers decided at the politburo; on a subsequent list, he was added as “conditional” (uslovno). What to make of this remains unclear. Krupskaya’s name appeared on none of the speaker lists, but obviously there could never have been any doubt she would speak (as she did). RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2s, d. 47, l. 1–4. Stalin gave another speech to the Kremlin military school cadets on January 28, 1924.

  62. “Zavëty Lenina” was the title of the front-page essay in Izvestiya on January 24, 1924.

  63. Izvestiia, January 27, 1924. Ulam, normally a shrewd analyst, misjudged the speech as out of place. Ulam, Stalin, 235.

  64. Pravda, January 30 and January 31, 1924.

  65. Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XII: 678. In July 1929, the politburo would decide to build a permanent mausoleum, a granite copy of the wooden one; it would be completed in 1933.

  66. Adolf Joffe, who was very close to Trotsky, wrote to Zinoviev proposing that no one replace Lenin as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, suggesting instead a presidium consisting of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev; if, however, they did decide on a single government head, Joffe suggested it be Trotsky. Whether Joffe acted on his own or had cleared his letter with Trotsky remains unknown. Vasetskii, Trotskii, 193.

  67. Pravda, February 12, 1924, in Sochineniia, VI: 52–64.

  68. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 6: 200 (RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2, d. 48, l. 41).

  69. A three-day Central Committee plenum concluded on January 31 by rechristening the plan for 100,000 workers to join the party—the “Lenin Enrollment.” Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, XI: 679. The Lenin Enrollment would claim 240,000 new party members.

  70. Shelestov, Vremia Alekseia Rykova, 222–3. There was a second executive position, which Lenin had also held—chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense—and Kamenev got that. Lenin’s sister and wife remained in the Kremlin apartment (until 1939), and preserved Lenin’s room as it had been. Stalin evicted Krupskaya and Maria Ulyanova from Lenin’s Gorki dacha and initially considered taking it for himself, but then it became a museum. In April 1955, Khrushchev would open Lenin’s Kremlin suite to the public (more than 2 million people would visit); in 1994, all the contents of Lenin’s Kremlin apartment-museum were removed to his former Gorki dacha, and the senate was again sealed off from the public. From 1994 through 1998, a major renovation took place of the interior of the Imperial Senate, transforming it beyond recognition.

  71. Artamonov, Spetsob”ekty Stalina, 33
–4; Korotyshevskii, “Garazh osobogo znacheniia.” The Special Purpose Garage had been overseen by Lenin’s principal driver, Stepan Gil’, but even before Lenin’s death, Stalin’s main driver, Pavel Udalov, had replaced him. Nikolai Solovyov, another of Stalin’s drivers, had been one of General Brusilov’s drivers. The Soviet regime had bought seventy-three Silver Ghosts in England between 1922 and 1925 (when the model was discontinued) for Lenin and others in the elite. Despite the USSR’s icy temperatures and snowfalls, they preferred the open-top models.

  72. The villa was built in 1922–3, but the property had belonged to Nikolai Smetskoi (sometimes written as Smetskii), and the facility was registered as Resort No. 3 of the central executive committee. No. 1 was in Kursk province (Ivanov-Lgovsky county) and No. 2 in Crimea (Gurzuf). Artamonov, Spetsob”ekty Stalina, 128.

  73. Trotsky, My Life, 509.

  74. Rikhter, Kavkaz nashikh dnei.

  75. Hoover Institution Archives, N. A. Lakoba papers, 1–23. See also Lakoba, “Ia Koba, ty Lakoba,” 50–4. Trotsky came with bodyguards, again for his “safety.” On January 6, 1924, Abram Belenky, the head of Lenin’s bodyguard detail, wrote a letter to Lakoba, marked “Completely Secret,” without letterhead: “The doctors have forbidden com. Trotsky from working and [ordered] that he depart immediately on a two month vacation for recuperation in the south. It seems to me we could not pick a better spot than by you in Sukhum, especially since the doctors insist on Sukhum. I think the best place to put him up would be the Smitskovo dacha, that is, where in the past you put up comrades Dzierzynski and Zinoviev.” Belenky noted that the doctors were prescribing complete tranquility, and “I ask you dear Comrade Lakoba to use your accurate eye and solicitude and to take him under your wing, so that we here will be utterly relaxed.” Kauzov will be responsible for Trotsky’s food and security. “I am certain that you have understood me in everything. It’s clear that there should be no meetings and parades. . . . Comrade Kauzov will give you photographs which I took in Zubalovo. Heartfelt and warm greetings to you from comrades Dzierzynski and Yagoda.” Lakoba Papers, 1–28.

  76. While the couple was still en route to Sukhum, Trotsky’s wife Natalya Sedova had noted how “the uncertainty tried one’s patience: what sort of life would there be at Sukhum? Would we have enemies or friends about us there?” Trotsky, My Life, 508.

  77. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 307–8 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 2, d. 9, l. 247).

  78. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 267 (citing Trotsky archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS/Russ. 13.1, 8967–86, folder 1/2, 1–2); Fel’shtinskii, Kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR, I: 89; Trotsky, My Life, 511.

  79. Pravda, January 3, 1924. Krupskaya had also delivered a speech, published in Pravda (January 11, 1924), at Moscow’s Bauman ward party organization, in connection with elections to the party conference, on behalf of the ruling triumvirate (she praised only Zinoviev by name). McNeal, Bride of the Revolution, 233–4.

  80. “It is well known among Trotsky’s friends,” Max Eastman would write, “that he received a letter from Lenin’s wife some days after Lenin died, reminding him of their early friendship.” Eastman, Since Lenin Died, 13.

  81. Kudriashov, Krasnaia armiia, 96–102 (APRF, f. 3, op. 50, d. 254, l. 77, 83–84ob., 99–99ob., 103–7). The replacement was formalized on March 11, 1924. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 424, l. 8. Dzierzynski, at the Supreme Council of the Economy, took Sklyansky in, naming him head of a Moscow textile trust. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 424, l. 8.

  82. Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba’,” 55.

  83. Velikanova, Making of an Idol, 52–3 (citing RGASPI, f. 16, op. 2s, d. 49, l. 2–4; d. 48, l. 12; op. 3, d. 412, l. 1; op. 2s, d. 49, l. 37); Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia o Lenine [1965], 435; Izvestiia, January 26, 1924. Krupskaya vehemently objected to the Lenin mummification plan and the religious-like veneration. Pravda, January 30, 1924. One scholar has pointed out that when Egyptian king Tut’s mummy had been discovered at an unplundered site at Luxor in 1922, to worldwide fascination, it received ample coverage in the Soviet press. Tumarkin, Lenin Lives!, 179–80. Soviet Russia in 1924 happened to have no crematoria.

  84. Religious imagery had already made its appearance when Lenin had been shot in 1918 and Lev Sosnovsky, then editor of the newspaper for peasant activists (Bednota), had described Lenin as a Christ figure, asserting that “Lenin cannot be killed . . . because Lenin is the rising of the oppressed.” Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! 83–4 (citing L. Sosnovskii, “K pokousheniiu na tov. Lenina,” Petrogradskaia Pravda, September 1, 1918).

  85. Kotyrev, Mavzolei V. I. Lenina.

  86. Nikolai Gorbunov, the head of the government’s business directorate, had pinned his own Order of the Red Banner to the dead Lenin’s jacket on January 22. Lenin was awarded his own such medal the next day. But Gorbunov’s seems to have stayed on Lenin until perhaps 1943. It is likely Gorbunov received the one awarded to Lenin.

  87. Krasin, “Arkhitekturnye uvekovechenie Lenina,” Izvestiia, February 3, 1924; Ennker, Die Anfänge des Leninkults, 234. See also Ennker, “The Origins and Intentions of the Lenin Cult,” 118–28.

  88. Izvestiia, August 2, 1924.

  89. New York Times, August 4, 1924.

  90. “So long as he is there, so long as he does not change, Communism is safe and the new Russia will prosper,” noted the visiting American writer Theodore Dreiser. “But—whisper—if he fades or is destroyed, ah, then comes the great, sad change—the end of his kindly dream.” Dreiser, Dreiser Looks at Russia, 31.

  91. Pravda, July 8, 1923. The Lenin Museum would attract 37,000 visitors during the first seven months of 1925, most on organized tours. Arosev, “Institut V. I. Lenina”; Tumarkin, Lenin Lives!, 125; Holmes and Burgess, “Scholarly Voice or Political Echo?,” 387.

  92. Annenkov, “Vospominaniia o Lenine,” 144. The museum had received Lenin’s brain, as well as his heart, on January 25, 1924.

  93. The professor tried to explain the Lenin “cult” by its function of inspiring the party’s “active element to greater activity,” for whom “Lenin is the guide—to be studied and followed, his precepts to be carried out faithfully.” For the broad masses, Lenin is portrayed with a suggestion of the supernatural, a “sun breaking through clouds with a bright ray of light.” Harper, Civic Training, 39–40.

  94. Izvestiia, August 22, 1923, and September 28, 1927; Pravda, October 27, 1923.

  95. Kamenev would be removed as director in January 1927.

  96. Izvestiia, January 21, 1927; Vestnik Kommunisticheskoi akademii, 1928, no. 27: at 298; Zapiski Instituta Lenina, 1927, no. 1: 176; “IML k 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia V. I. Lenina.” Kommunist, 1968, no. 17. There were other initiatives: one was the formation of a project to write the history of the party (known in Russian as Istpart), which derived from Lenin’s conviction that the October coup had vindicated his theory of party organization; another was the conversion of the Marx cabinet, dedicated to the collection and study of documents about and by Marx and Engels, into the Marx-Engels Institute. Both initiatives eventually merged in the Lenin Institute. PSS, XLI: 176 (Mikhail Pokrovsky and Vladimir Adoratsky); Komarov, “Sozdanie i deietel’nost’ Istparta 1920–1928 gg.”; Volin, “Istpart i Sovetskaia istoricheskaia nauka,” 189–206; Burgess, “The Istpart Commission”; Komarov, “K istorii instituta Lenina,” 181–91; Ivanova, “Institut Marksa-Engelsa-Lenina,” IV: 214–23.

  97. Lenin, Sobranie sochinenii; Lenin, Sobranie sochinenii, 2nd and 3rd eds. In 1925, 6,296 publications of Leniniana would be catalogued. Karpovich, “Russian Revolution of 1917,” 258.

  98. Otchet 15 s”ezdu partii, 71.

  99. Velikanova, Making of an Idol, 110–1 (citing RGASPI, f. 12, op. 2, d. 41, l. 1–1ob). On February 19, 1925, the politburo asked Krupskaya to write Lenin’s biography. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 489, l. 4.

  100. Pravda, February 12, 1924. />
  101. Gor’kii, Vladimir Ilich Lenin, 10. Victor Chernov, the emigre former Socialist Revolutionary Party head, in a shrewd portrait that appeared in the American journal Foreign Affairs, concluded that Lenin had been a “lifelong schismatic” yet lived in mortal fear of a schism in the party. “Lenin’s intellect was energetic but cold . . . an ironic, sarcastic and cynical intellect,” he added. “Nothing to him was worse than sentimentality, a name he was ready to apply to all moral and ethical considerations in politics.” Chernov, “Lenin.” Bertrand Russell, who had gone to Russia as a Communist but developed doubts, noted of Lenin, “I think if I had met him without knowing who he was, I should not have guessed that he was a great man; he struck me as too opinionated and narrowly orthodox.” Russell, Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, 42.

  102. Chuev, Sto sorok, 184.

  103. Soldatskaia pravda, May 1917, reprinted in Zapiski instituta lenina, 1927, no. 2: 24–33; Pravda, April 16, 1927, reprinted in PSS, XXXII: 21; Savitskaia, “Razrabotka nauchnoi biografii V. I. Lenina,” 4. By the summer of 1924, the combination Marxism-Leninism was appearing in many documents. Shcherbakov, “A kratkii kurs blagoslovil,” Pravda, September 13, 1990. See also Nikolai Babakhan [Sisak Babakhanyan], “Marksizim i leninizm,” Pravda, April 6, 1923.

  104. The Sverdlovka, as it was known, at Miusskaya Square, no. 6, in the former Shanyavsky Moscow City People’s University, was best equipped of all institutions of higher education in Soviet Russia. Reznik, Trotzkizm i Levaia oppozitsiia, 38; Desiat’ let Kommunisticheskogo universiteta; Ovsiannikov, Miusskaia ploshchad’, 6; Harper, Civic Training, 285. Originally, the Communist University had managed to get hold of the premises of the former Moscow merchant association club at Malaya Dmitrovka, 6, executed in the art moderne style (down to the lights, furniture, and drapes), but in 1923 it opened a cinema and a jazz hall.