Stalin

by Ian Grey

  Koba was apparently detached from the dramatic events of these months. Returning to Tiflis from his brief Siberian exile early in 1904, he had found new developments among Georgian Social Democrats. The Transcaucasian party organizations had held a constituent congress in March 1903 and had set up a “Caucasian Union Committee” of nine members to give leadership to the movement. At some time after his return, he was co-opted to the committee.

  About the same time, Stefan Shaumyan, an Armenian Bolshevik, was also co-opted to the committee. He at once became Koba’s enemy. Shaumyan, who had studied engineering in Riga and philosophy in Germany, and had met Lenin, probably treated Koba as an uneducated provincial, and he appears to have been a vicious opponent. He is said to have denounced Koba as “a viper,” and he reported to Lenin any critical remarks that Koba made about him. Rivalries and disputes among the revolutionaries and especially the Bolsheviks were seldom notable for tolerance, compromise, or courtesy, but were marked by savage vituperation and bitterness. The rivalry between the two men continued until 1918 when Shaumyan died as one of the “twenty-six commissars shot by the British,” who have been enshrined as martyrs in Soviet history.

  During 1904, Koba was active as a member of the Caucasian Union Committee. In June, he was in Baku, setting up a new Bolshevik committee, and during the summer, he traveled to all the regions of Transcaucasia, leading discussion meetings and tirelessly opposing the Mensheviks at every opportunity. In September, Proletariatis Brdzola, the illegal paper published in Georgian and Armenian by the Union Committee, contained his article “How Does Social Democracy Understand the Nationality Question?” a subject on which he was to write further as an acknowledged authority.

  During 1905, the year of violence and upheaval, Transcaucasia and especially Georgia were torn by even worse turbulence than Russia. Black Hundreds in Baku provoked massacres between Armenians and Turks. Arson and sabotage destroyed industrial plants. Crime and senseless violence were rife. In August, a week of bloodshed in Tiflis ended in a battle with troops at the town hall in which many were killed. But the rioting continued, and only toward the end of the year was order restored.

  Koba was probably involved in many of these upheavals, but working in the background. The official chronology and other sources contain scant information. In January 1905, he published in Proletariatis Brdzola an article on “The Proletariat Class and the Party of the Proletariat,” and in May, his pamphlet Briefly About Party Dissensions appeared in Russian, Georgian, and Armenian. In it, he presented a strong defense of Lenin’s basic thesis that the working class would attain revolutionary consciousness only by means of the teaching and leadership of the party. He attacked Noi Zhordania, who had criticized this thesis. Zhordania published a reply, and on August 15, Proletariatis Brdzola carried two further articles in which Koba rejected the reply.

  In these hard-hitting polemics, Koba showed he had a full understanding of Marxism and of Lenin’s views and that he could be a formidable opponent. The fact that Zhordania, the most eminent Social Democrat in Transcaucasia, should have engaged in public debate with him showed that Koba was no longer a humble apprentice who could be ignored. Indeed, Zhordania, who must have known his identity, may have paused to wonder whether he had been wise to rebuff the young seminarist who had offered his services seven years earlier.

  In July, he published in Proletariatis Brdzola an article on “Armed Uprising and Our Tactics,” in which he wrote that “the flame of revolution is burning more and more strongly” and stressed the need for armed rebellion. It was a cogent statement of the necessity for the Bolsheviks to plan and train “fighting bands” and to bring order and discipline into the revolutionary struggle.

  Koba’s articles were gaining attention not only in Transcaucasia but also abroad. In July 1905, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, wrote on his behalf, requesting a copy of the pamphlet Briefly About Party Dissensions and the regular supply of the Russian edition of Proletariatis Brdzola. Lenin expressed delight with the pamphlet and the articles and their forthright expression of Bolshevik policies. Koba’s rebuttal of Zhordania’s reply to the pamphlet particularly pleased him, and in writing about the paper, he referred to the “splendid formulation of the question of the celebrated ‘introduction of consciousness from without.’”

  Lenin probably knew the identity of the author of the pamphlet and the articles, although they were unsigned. Koba had first come to his attention late in 1904 through the letters written from Kutais. Direct correspondence began in May 1905 when Koba as a member of the Caucasian Union Committee wrote to him about the relative strength of Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in the region. Lenin was on the lookout for supporters of this caliber and would hardly have overlooked this active Georgian.

  Taking advantage of the relaxation of censorship after the October Manifesto, Koba and Shaumyan produced the Caucasian Workers’ News Sheet. The first issue, which appeared in November 1905, contained his short article expressing in forceful terms his hostility toward the liberals and the Mensheviks and to participation in the elections to the Duma. As in everything he wrote, the article was a consistent expression of the Bolshevik stand, and he was not just echoing Lenin as his master but expressing his own ideas and outlook.

  Koba was already becoming known as the stubborn champion of Bolshevism in the region where Bolsheviks were few in number. In fact, this reputation, supported by his writings, probably led to the next major step in his revolutionary career.

  In December 1905, Koba traveled to Finland to take part in the Bolshevik conference at Tammerfors. It was a momentous journey, for it brought him into direct contact with Lenin and into the mainstream of the revolutionary movement.

  Koba was now twenty-six years old. He had spent all his life in Transcaucasia except for his brief exile in Siberia, and he had developed through several distinct stages. The schoolboy in Gori who had had to dominate his fellows had become a Georgian nationalist and then a rebel against authority in the Tiflis seminary. His natural rebelliousness had intensified and gained direction, as he learned about Marxism and the Russian revolutionary tradition. Reading Lenin’s Letter to a Comrade and What Is to Be Done? had crystallized his sense of purpose. But although he accepted the basic correctness of Lenin’s program and acknowledged his leadership, he retained a strong independence and never became a subservient disciple.

  The Bolsheviks gathered in Tammerfors to discuss participation in the coming elections to the Duma and also the general move among Social Democrats toward unity. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had drawn further apart, and Lenin was chiefly responsible, for he constantly attacked the Mensheviks. In Tammerfors, he was anxious only to ensure the solidarity of his own supporters. Koba was known to be a staunch Bolshevik, and it was probably Lenin who sponsored his presence at this conference.

  In Tammerfors, the two men met face to face. Lenin’s first impressions of Stalin are not known. But nineteen years later, Stalin spoke of this occasion, and despite the lapse of time and the special circumstances, his remarks, made in the address to the Kremlin Academy, are interesting.

  The speech, cast in simple words and carefully avoiding the grandiloquence that might have been expected, contained several elements: It was a genuine tribute to Lenin as the founder and leader of the Bolshevik party; it laid emphasis on those virtues of dedication, discipline, and humility which Stalin himself valued and wanted to impress on young Russians; and it was an effective assertion of his role as Lenin’s partner and of his claim to be his natural successor.

  I was hoping to see the mountain eagle of our Party, the great man, great not only politically but, if you please, physically, for in my imagination I pictured Lenin as a giant, stately and impressive. What then was my disappointment when I saw a most ordinary man, below average height, in nothing, literally in nothing, distinguishable from ordinary mortals. . . .

  It is accepted that “a great man” must usually arrive late at a meeting so that the people assembled may
await his appearance with fast-beating hearts, and then before “the great man” appears the warning goes round, “Hush! Silence! . . . He’s coming!” This ceremony did not seem unnecessary to me, for it impresses and inspires respect. What then was my disappointment when I learnt that Lenin had arrived at the conference before the delegates and, settled somewhere in a corner, was quite simply carrying on a conversation, a most ordinary conversation, with the most ordinary delegates at the conference. I will not conceal that this seemed to me rather a breach of certain essential rules. . . .

  Only later I understood that this simplicity and modesty of Lenin, this striving to remain unnoticed or, at least, not to be conspicuous and not to stress his high position - that this characteristic was one of Lenin’s strongest features as the new leader of the new masses, of the simple, ordinary masses of fundamental humanity.

  In this same style, he extolled “the irresistible force of logic” of Lenin’s speeches, and their “extraordinary power of conviction, the simplicity and clarity of argument.” He was presenting Lenin as the hero of the party and nation, for he knew that the Russian people, accustomed to the tsar at the apex of their national life, needed some readily understandable image in his place.

  At the time of the Tammerfors Conference, however, Lenin was far from being the acknowledged leader of the social democratic movement. He headed only the small Bolshevik faction. To Koba, he was not the infallible leader to be followed blindly, but the revolutionary most outstanding for his leadership and his sound practical approach.

  What part Koba played in the conference is not known, for the records were lost. Krupskaya acclaimed “the enthusiasm that reigned there! The revolution was in full swing. . . . Every comrade was ready for the fight!” While sharing in this enthusiasm, he was probably content to remain in the background. It was his first conference outside Transcaucasia, and he was cautiously finding his feet. At the congress in Stockholm, four months later, he was not silent.

  The Fourth Congress, known by the Mensheviks as the Unification Congress, met from April 10–25, 1906. It was attended by 111 voting delegates. The Russians made up less than half of the total. The Georgian delegation of eleven, reflecting the predominance of the Mensheviks in the country, contained only one Bolshevik - Koba, using the alias of “Ivanovich.” Lenin had hoped for a Bolshevik majority but found that the Mensheviks could muster sixty-two against his forty-four or forty-six supporters. Moreover, while Plekhanov, who now sided with the Mensheviks, was treated with special respect and was promptly elected to the Bureau or Steering Committee of the Congress, Lenin failed to get elected. But, noting the general desire to reunify the party, he made a display of being reasonable and declared his belief that Bolsheviks and Mensheviks could work together.

  Koba was not overawed by his first congress and the presence of the most prominent members of the party. It was to be characteristic of him that he was never overawed by people or events. Although young and without real support in Georgia, he was a convinced Marxist and revolutionary, and he was prepared to express his views forthrightly. Plekhanov was to Koba the archetypal intellectual revolutionary, living abroad and out of touch with Russian life. When Plekhanov with his dry academic manner and sharp tongue made critical remarks about Lenin, Koba was quick to castigate him.

  The main issues debated by the congress concerned the support of the peasantry, the Duma elections, and expropriations. Lenin had never come to grips with the role of the peasants in the revolutionary struggle. He had taken it for granted that the peasants must follow the proletariat. After the Revolution of 1905, he was forced to revise his policy. The peasants were, he realized, crucial to the coming revolution. The Socialist Revolutionaries and the new liberal parties were attracting their support by promising them the land. Belatedly, the Social Democrats had awakened to the fact that they needed a policy to win over the peasantry.

  At the Stockholm congress, the Mensheviks argued in favor of municipalization of the land, which meant vesting it in locally elected councils to be administered for the benefit of the peasants. Lenin and the Bolsheviks proposed nationalization by vesting the land in the central government and, so they claimed, making it the property of all citizens. Argument raged around these two proposals.

  Koba had no time for debates which were so enmeshed in dialectics that the realities of the situation were forgotten. In the congress, he bluntly condemned both municipalization and nationalization and proposed as a “temporary” expedient what he called distributism, which meant seizing and sharing out the land directly among the peasants. They wanted this dispersal; it alone would win their support. Lenin and others attacked his proposal, but he stood his ground, maintaining it was the obvious practical policy. He argued further that in fostering rural capitalism, his proposal was in accordance with Marxist doctrine and a logical advance toward the socialist revolution. And in 1917, his policy, by then endorsed by Lenin, produced the slogan “All land to the peasants,” which gained the party wide support and was a major factor in its victory.

  Lenin had been unable also to make up his mind about participation in the Duma elections. At the Tammerfors Conference, he had supported the resolution to boycott them. The Bolsheviks held, mistakenly as it proved, that the Duma was bound to be a reactionary body which they must oppose. Participation in the elections and cooperation within the Duma would lead workers to think they could gain their objectives by parliamentary means and without resorting to revolution.

  The Mensheviks were divided in their attitude and left it to local committees to decide whether or not to take part in the elections. By the time the delegates had assembled in Stockholm, the elections were nearly over, and it was clear that the Kadets had severely defeated the right-wing and reactionary parties. The Social Democrats, who had belatedly contested the elections in certain regions, had a mere eighteen seats.

  Lenin now changed his mind about the boycott and in Stockholm voted for a Menshevik resolution, approving participation in the few elections still to be held. Several Bolsheviks, including Stalin, refused to follow him and abstained.

  In articles published in Georgia in March before he had left to attend the congress, Stalin had clearly expounded his policy of dividing the land among the peasants and of boycotting the Duma elections. His stand against Lenin on both issues was thus not for effect, as a gesture of independence, or to establish himself in the eyes of party comrades. He was acting consistently and apparently without thought for his popularity or advancement.

  An issue debated with displays of anger in the congress was expropriations. This euphemism covered robbery, often with violence, of state and private institutions, and extortion and terrorism, committed to obtain funds for the party. The Stockholm congress passed, by a large majority, a resolution forbidding nearly all forms of expropriation. Lenin did not openly oppose the resolution, but at once set about organizing secretly a Bolshevik Center with the main task of planning further robberies to provide him with funds. Stalin, it seems, became its agent in the Caucasus. The activities of this secret center were to cause a major storm.

  The congress elected a new Central Committee of seven Mensheviks and only three Bolsheviks. It closed with the two factions formally united. Lenin had no intention, however, of accepting decisions merely because they had been agreed by the majority of the delegates. He told Lunacharsky that he would never allow the Mensheviks to “lead us along after them on a chain.”

  At the end of the congress, he and several members of the “former” Bolshevik faction, but not Stalin, signed a declaration, listing the decisions which they had opposed and claiming the democratic right to urge their own views in “comradely” debate while, of course, fully acknowledging and accepting the decisions of the majority. At the time of making this declaration of good faith, his secret Bolshevik Center was already at work. As one Bolshevik stated, the unification “had practically no influence on our Bolshevik affairs. We certainly did not disarm as a strong, independent revolu
tionary faction.”

  The First Duma met on May 10, 1906. The Kadet party, emboldened by its large majority, demanded full constitutional government and, lacking any traditions of discussion, tolerance, or compromise, pressed its demands. The inevitable deadlock was resolved by dissolution of the Duma on July 21.

  Nicholas II then appointed as his prime minister Peter Stolypin, a remarkable man whose firm but enlightened policies might have averted the collapse of the regime. In the period until the new Duma was elected, he introduced major reforms and began a transformation in the position of the peasantry.

  The Second Duma, which assembled on March 5, 1907, was stormy. The crisis came on June 14 when Stolypin faced it with the demand that the parliamentary immunity of the Social Democrat deputies be waived so that they could be tried for fomenting mutinies in the armed services. The Duma rejected the demand, and on June 16, an imperial manifesto, declaring that the Duma harbored enemies of the nation, dissolved it.

  During 1905, the year of anarchy, the party’s fighting units had carried out countless raids and expropriations, and until the Stockholm congress, the practice had been more or less accepted by most members as part of the tactics of revolution. The Caucasus was the scene of intensive activity. No fewer than 1,150 acts of terrorism were recorded in the years from 1905 to 1908. Koba was probably involved in many of these acts, but precise information is lacking. Mensheviks inside Russia and, after 1921, abroad repeatedly condemned his activities as an expropriator. It seems, however, that the Okhrana did not connect him with these raids. Early in 1908, the Caucasian Mensheviks tried to indict him before a party court for disobeying the ban on expropriations. The party trial never took place, for he moved from Tiflis to Baku, and on March 25, he was arrested.

  Subsequent official accounts of this period of Stalin’s career are silent about his role in directing fighting units and robberies. Truly Russian in being sensitive to criticism, especially of the kind reflected in the remark, made privately by Rosa Luxemburg, about the “Tatar-Mongolian savagery” of the Bolsheviks, and at the same time conscious of the dignity of the regime, Soviet leaders have been unwilling to admit association with such activities.