Stalin

by Ian Grey

  Addressing the cadets of the Kremlin Academy at a memorial service on January 28, 1924, Stalin, as Koba had then become, said: “I first became acquainted with Lenin in 1903. True, it was not a personal acquaintance; it was made by correspondence. . . . I was then in exile in Siberia. My knowledge of Lenin’s revolutionary activities since the end of the nineties and especially after 1901, after the publication of Iskra, had convinced me that in Lenin we had a man of unusual calibre. He was not then for me the leader of the party, he was its actual creator. When I compared him with the other leaders of our party, it seemed to me constantly that Lenin’s fellow workers - Plekhanov, Martov, Axelrod and others - stood a full head below Lenin, that by comparison with them Lenin was not simply one of the leaders, but a leader of the highest type, a mountain eagle. . . . This impression became so deeply imprinted on my mind that I felt impelled to write to a close friend, living as a political exile abroad, asking his opinion. Some time later, when I was already in exile in Siberia - this was at the end of 1903 - I received an enthusiastic letter from my friend and a letter, simple but profound in content, from Lenin to whom, it appeared, my friend had shown my letter. Lenin’s note was comparatively short, but it contained a bold and fearless criticism of the practical work of our party and a remarkably clear and concise account of the entire plan of work of the party in the immediate future. . . . This simple and bold letter strengthened my opinion that Lenin was the mountain eagle of our party. I cannot forgive myself for having, from the habit of an old underground worker, consigned this letter of Lenin’s, like many other letters, to the flames. My acquaintance with Lenin dates from that time.”

  It was scarcely possible that Koba could have received a letter addressed to him in Novaya Uda, where, according to the official version, his stay was so brief. It is also improbable that Lenin, then in Switzerland, had heard of Koba or Joseph Dzhugashvili at this time. The story might have been a deliberate fiction, employed on a solemn occasion and carefully invoking Lenin’s name to suggest that he was Lenin’s true successor; the text of the address, published in Pravda some two weeks later, had wide circulation. Or it might have been a slip of memory after the lapse of twenty tumultuous years.

  The story appears, however, to have been true in essence. In October 1904, Koba had written from Kutais to his friend Mikhail Davitashvili, in Leipzig, expressing strong support for Lenin’s ideas. Davitashvili showed the letter to Lenin, who commented favorably on this “fiery Colchian,” Colchis being the ancient name for western Georgia.

  It has been suggested, also, that Koba had in mind Lenin’s Letter to a Comrade on our Organizational Tasks, which was not addressed to him personally but was circulated by the Siberian Social Democratic party in June 1903. Koba probably read it while in Siberia. Writing to Davitashvili, he made the request, “Don’t forget to send by the same person the pamphlet Letter to a Comrade - many here haven’t read it!”

  The Letter fitted Koba’s enthusiastic description. It expressed an aggressive practical approach and emphasized the importance of the Central Committee which must direct all local organizations and funds, and also the need for “the greatest possible centralization in relation to the ideological and practical leadership of the movement and the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.” It made an impact on Koba because it formulated so effectively the ideas which had been stirring in his own mind.

  The year 1903, when he first properly appreciated Lenin’s ideas, was momentous in his development. He had dated his acquaintance with Lenin “from the end of the nineties and especially after 1901, after the publication of Iskra,” but he went on to say that in 1903, Lenin had made an indelible impression on him as “the mountain eagle,” soaring above the other leaders.

  Two further events in this period were decisive for Koba. One was his reading, probably early in 1904, of Lenin’s pamphlet, What Is to Be Done? The other event was the congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ party, held in July-August 1903, which ended with the division of the party into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

  Lenin’s pamphlet, published in March 1902, reads turgidly with occasional gleams of inspiration, but it is scarcely less important than Das Kapital itself in the Russian revolutionary movement. In it, under the pretext of elucidating orthodox Marxism, Lenin was in effect Russifying the doctrine. Marx had held that the proletariat would evolve its own class consciousness and in the process would discover within itself the will and the way to revolution. Lenin’s interpretation was distinctively Russian in that he demanded a party, organized on military lines, that would lead, direct, and impose Marxism and revolution on the people. This was the experience of Russian history, in which every major change had come, not in response to popular demand, but from above, imposed on the people, who stolidly obeyed. The revolutionary movement was not conceivable to Lenin in other terms. With the arrogance of the Russian intelligentsia, he saw the Russian people, not as individuals, but as a mass which had to be led and compelled along certain paths for its own good. To him and his comrades, including Stalin, this Russian mass could not be left to decide a matter so important.

  Lenin proposed a centralized, disciplined party of professional revolutionaries, which would direct the working class. Marx, too, had envisaged such a party, but one which was representative of the workers after the spontaneous emergence of political class consciousness among them. Lenin had no time for the concepts of party democracy, freedom of expression and criticism, or spontaneity of political movements. Democracy was anathema to him. The party must be in the vanguard, leading, teaching, compelling the workers to revolution. Left to themselves, the workers were capable only of trade-unionism and of fighting for narrow economic objectives, but the political class consciousness, which would lead to revolution, “can only be brought to the workers from the outside, that is to say from outside the economic struggle, outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers.”

  Lenin demanded an elitist party disciplined and in complete control of the revolutionary movement. In What Is to Be Done? he argued that this control should vest in the émigré editorial board of Iskra, while the Central Committee in Russia would administer the local committees. It was, in fact, a military organization, and it assumed that there would have to be a commander in chief, a dictator.

  Intolerant of opposition, incapable of accepting the leadership of another person, and driven by an obsessive hunger for power, Lenin took it for granted that he would be in command of the party. As one who knew him well noted, he possessed “unshakeable faith in himself . . . faith in his destiny, in his conviction that he was preordained to carry out some great historical mission.” Indeed, he himself remarked that the idea of anyone else in the party taking the supreme position was enough “to make a cat laugh.”

  Meanwhile, the need to convene a congress of the party had become pressing. The Iskra group seethed with ideological and personal conflicts during 1902 as party policy was hammered out in readiness for the Second Party Congress. Plekhanov was jealous of his position as Father of Russian Marxism. Lenin had asserted himself as leader of the group and resented Plekhanov, whose support he still needed.

  A further source of conflict between them was the arrival of Lev Bronstein, already known as Trotsky and nicknamed “The Pen,” who burst upon the scene with “instant brilliance.” Plekhanov detested him from the start, whereas Lenin, who had sudden, often short-lived, enthusiasms for people, welcomed him with open arms.

  Trotsky was the son of a small-scale Jewish landowner in the Ukraine. His parents were both nearly illiterate, but he early developed a passion for words, and it was as an orator and a writer that he was most outstanding. Pale in complexion, with heavy dark mustache and small goatee, and thick-lensed pince-nez to aid his weak, shortsighted eyes, he looked a typical Russian Jewish intellectual. Lenin was soon eager to co-opt this young man with the fluent pen to the editorial board of Iskra, a move that Plekhanov angrily opposed.

  Trotsky was
generally disliked for his arrogant, patronizing manner. Like Lenin, he was convinced that he had a special role in history and was destined to lead. His love of power was supported by the “certainty of the rectitude of his principles.” But, while Lenin behaved with a certain modesty, Trotsky was vain, prickly, and overbearing, Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first kommissar of Education, wrote of “his colossal arrogance and inability or unwillingness to show any human kindness or to be attentive to people. . . .” All at one time or another felt the lash of Trotsky’s sarcasm and abuse and the insult of his condescension.

  The congress opened in Brussels on July 30, and under pressure from the police, it moved to London, where it concluded on August 10, 1903. Lenin’s machinations throughout the meetings aroused hostility, but he gained a spurious majority for his program and in the process succeeded in splitting the party. Unscrupulously, he made the most of his advantage, publicizing the result as a victory for the Bolsheviki (the Majority-ites) over the Mensheviki (the Minority-ites), terms which quickly became part of the language of the Revolution.

  Koba may have heard reports about the London congress while he was in Siberia, and he learned the full story on his return to Georgia. It was clear that the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ party had been formally established; it was clear also that the party was split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Noi Zhordania, who had attended the congress, had been alarmed by Lenin’s perfidious conduct and by his conception of the party as a rigidly centralized organization, wielding supreme power. He favored a loose union of more or less autonomous groups, and on his return to Georgia, he exercised his authority to ensure that Georgian Social Democrats took the Menshevik position. Indeed, under his leadership and that of Sylvestr Dzhibladze, the Mensheviks became by far the strongest faction in Georgia, and they remained dominant during the next twenty years.

  Koba immediately took the Bolshevik position. He did so without hesitation and was to be single-minded in his dedication to the Bolshevik cause. It was a decision demanding conviction and courage. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had little support in Transcaucasia, and the possibility of their gaining power appeared remote. The fact that his decision might doom him to permanent opposition did not deter Koba. By temperament, he belonged to the opposition at this stage of his career. He was opposed to the tsar and his regime, to the liberals and the Socialist Revolutionaries, and now to the great majority of Social Democrats. Opposition was part of his way of life: He needed enemies.

  The positive reason for his support of the Bolshevik stand was his conviction that it provided the only effective approach to revolution. What Is to Be Done? had given rational arguments for what he believed was the right course of action. The intellectuals, like Plekhanov, Axelrod, Martov, Vera Zasulich, and others, who spent their time abroad and had no experience of the workers or the peasants, could talk about the spontaneous growth of political consciousness, but he knew that without leadership they would never make a revolution. Lenin alone would get action and results; he was the one positive force in the midst of the theorizing intellectuals, and Koba stood at his side.

  The firmness of his commitment was shown in the two letters, mentioned above, which he wrote from Kutais to his friend, Davitashvili, in September-October 1904. In the first letter, he asked him to send Iskra, which now had a Menshevik editorial board, critical of Lenin’s position. He added in explanation of his request that “though it’s without a spark [Iskra] it’s still needed; at least it has a chronicle, devil take it, and you have to know the enemy well.”

  Koba was incensed, too, by an attack, written by Plekhanov, on What Is to Be Done? In particular, Plekhanov had questioned Lenin’s view that no reliance could be placed on the spontaneous emergence of a revolutionary outlook in the working class and that the workers had to be taught and led by the party. Plekhanov was revered by most Social Democrats, but not by the young Georgian member, who wrote scathingly: “This man had either gone completely mad or hate and hostility are speaking in him. I think that both causes have a place here. I think Plekhanov has fallen behind on the new questions. He is haunted by the old opponents and as of old he confirms that ‘Social consciousness determines social life,’ ‘ideas do not fall from heaven.’ . . . Now what interests us is how to work out a system of ideas (a theory of socialism) from the separate ideas. . . . Does the mass give its programme to the leaders and the supporting arguments or do the leaders give it to the mass?”

  Like Lenin, Koba found it inconceivable that the party should wait passively for the workers to awaken to consciousness of their revolutionary role. The eruptions of discontent that were to bring the nation close to chaos during the coming months confirmed both men in their view, for the masses showed themselves ready to accept economism and constitutionalism, but stopped short at revolution.

  Throughout Russia, unrest among the intelligentsia, workers, peasants, and the subject nationalities mounted dangerously. Political crimes, strikes, violence, and outbreaks of arson and destruction of property in the country districts became more frequent. The tsar and his ministers were bewildered, and they, too, shared the widespread feeling that the nation was about to be overwhelmed in a terrible paroxysm of rebellion.

  War against Japan, which started in February 1904, aggravated the explosive mood of the people. The humiliating defeats suffered by the Imperial Army and, in May of the following year, by the Navy, went far to undermine confidence in the regime.

  The tragedy of January 22, 1905, known as “Bloody Sunday,” dealt a severe blow to the authority and prestige of the tsar when troops opened fire on a mass procession to the Winter Palace to petition him. Hostility toward the autocratic regime gained momentum. Violent outbreaks among workers and peasants threatened anarchy. Bewildered by the situation, Nicholas II made concessions, announcing in March a plan to give limited popular participation in government. But the imperial decree providing for a consultative Duma, or council, confirmed the general fear that the tsar would make only minimal concessions. Toward the end of September, a printers’ strike in Moscow spread, and within a week, the vast country was paralyzed by a general strike. Faced with the alternative of civil war, Nicholas II capitulated, and on October 30, issued a manifesto, promising a parliamentary system of government and, in effect, the beginnings of a constitutional monarchy.

  For months, Russia had been like an immense volcanic zone, the surface of which was broken by countless jets of steam and gas and beneath which the earth’s crust was cracking. Away in Switzerland, however, Lenin was little concerned with these tumultuous events. Since the Second Party Congress, when he had lost control of Iskra, he had been campaigning for the Central Committee in Russia to summon another congress at which he would, he hoped, recover his position in the party. He was meeting with strong opposition, however, for he had antagonized many of his supporters. But Lenin, indefatigable and unscrupulous, and aided by events in Russia, got his way.

  On April 25, 1905, the congress, called by the Bolsheviks the Third Congress, opened in London. The Mensheviks denounced it as illegal, but it served his purpose as another step toward forging a party of professional revolutionaries directly under his leadership.

  All revolutionaries were disturbed, however, by the way they and their programs had been swept aside in the rush of events. The explosions of popular discontent should have provided ideal conditions for launching a revolution. But they had not been ready, and the unpalatable fact was that the nation, too, was not ready. The people wanted reform, not revolution. To Lenin, of course, it was not relevant that the people did not want revolution. He wrote of the need for stronger organization, fighting units, and a centralized party leadership. Under Menshevik control, Iskra took a different line, calling for “a wide organization based on the working masses, acting independently.”

  The Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, set up late in 1905 on the initiative of the Mensheviks, also incurred Lenin’s hostility. Nonparty in its composition, the Soviet was remark
ably successful in defying the authorities during its short existence (October 26 to December 15, 1905) in the period to be known as “the days of freedom.” This success was due mainly to Trotsky, who dominated and led it.

  At first, the October Manifesto, setting out the tsar’s major concessions, did nothing to calm the turbulence which was tearing the nation apart. Workers, peasants, and units of the armed forces demonstrated against the autocratic regime, while right-wing opinion reacted angrily against the manifesto as an act of betrayal of the autocracy. Landowners and others organized bands of thugs, the Black Hundreds, which attacked, often with horrible brutality, Jews and others regarded as intellectuals. Conservatives and reactionaries also formed societies to defend the old Muscovite institutions.

  Russia was in the thrall of dark forces. Cities and towns became cauldrons of violence and crime. Revolutionaries and reactionary bands, terrorists, anarchists, and criminals preyed on each other and on society, as misguided idealism, brutal crime, and a sense of desperation powered the vortex which whirled the nation toward chaos.

  In the midst of this turmoil, the main political parties were organizing to contest the elections to the Duma, the new state council. The Constitutional Democrats, known as the Kadets, demanded a constitution or fundamental law, and some of its members wanted full parliamentary democracy on the British model, and even a republic. The Octobrists were less radical in their demands.

  The Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries were thrown into confusion. All expressed furious hostility to the new liberal parties, to the Duma, and to the October Manifesto. But they had to recognize that events had displaced them and that they had no real support among the people. Nevertheless, the small hard core of Social Democrats did not lose heart, and with extraordinary tenacity, they looked ahead.