Stalin

by Ian Grey

  At the same time, Lenin had misgivings about him. He recognized his single-minded devotion to the Bolshevik cause, his ability, and his self-reliance. He had an acute need for young men of this caliber. But Koba also showed a strong independence, and when he presumed to criticize and disagree, Lenin considered it to be not independence, but lack of party discipline. In June 1908, in a letter to a friend in Switzerland, Koba had referred to Lenin’s polemics with Bogdanov as a “storm in a teacup” and had even expressed support for some of Bogdanov’s philosophical views.

  After the publication of Lenin’s Materialism and Empiriocriticism, Koba wrote to another friend in Switzerland, commending the book, but also mentioning that Bogdanov had drawn attention to certain “individual faults of Ilyich [Lenin] and had correctly observed that Ilyich’s materialism differs in many ways from Plekhanov’s, which Ilyich, contrary to the demands of logic - for diplomatic reasons? - tries to cover up.” Writing from Solvychegodsk on January 24, 1911, to Vladimir Bobrovsky, he commented that “we have of course heard about the ‘storm in a teacup’ abroad: the blocs of Lenin-Plekhanov on the one hand and Trotsky-Martov-Bogdanov on the other. So far as I know, the workers’ attitude toward the first bloc is favourable. But in general the workers are beginning to look upon the emigration with disdain; ‘Let them crawl on the wall to their hearts’ content; but as we see it, let anyone who values the interests of the movement work, the rest will take care of itself.’”

  All of these comments were repeated to Lenin, and they rankled. Walking with Ordzhonikidze in Paris one day, Lenin asked him if he was familiar with the expression “storm in a teacup.” Ordzhonikidze knew about Koba’s letters and began defending his friend. “You say, Koba is our comrade, as if to say, he’s a Bolshevik and won’t let us down.” Lenin retorted, “But how do you close your eyes to his inconsistency? Nihilistic little jokes about a ‘storm in a teacup’ reveal Koba’s immaturity as a Marxist.”

  Like many political leaders, Lenin lacked a sense of humor and could be petty. He also had little understanding of the impatience felt by the party workers for the squabbles of the émigrés. In fact, Bogdanov’s attempts to evolve a theory of knowledge in harmony with Marxist materialism were interesting and posed no threat to party unity, whereas Bogdanov’s ultra-leftist policies were a danger and were the real reason for Lenin’s break with him. Koba had read the writings of both men on the subject, and his comments were pertinent. Lenin could not brook criticisms, and the touch of mockery in Koba’s comments disturbed him.

  Meanwhile, at the end of January 1910, a further resolution of the Baku Committee, written by Koba and distributed as a hand sheet, declared that “the state of despondency and apathy” which had been paralyzing the moving forces of the Russian Revolution was passing. Closely in touch with the oil workers and sensitive to the mood of the country, Koba was in advance of Lenin and other émigré leaders. The resolution proposed urgently the transfer of the (leading) practical center to Russia, the publication of a national newspaper, produced in Russia with the proposed practical center providing its editorial board, and the organization of local papers in the most important party centers. It was proposed, too, that Bolsheviks should unite with Mensheviks who supported underground work and that all others, the liquidators, should be expelled.

  At this time, Koba was working frantically to bring about a general strike in the Caucasian oil industry. On March 23, however, he was again arrested and held in Bailov prison. Six months later, he was sentenced by administrative decree to return to Solvychegodsk to complete his term of exile. Again it was lenient treatment, and this time, he served out his sentence, remaining in Solvychegodsk until June 27, 1911. He was then banned for five years from returning to the Caucasus or living in St. Petersburg or Moscow. He chose Vologda as his place of residence, but on September 6, he went illegally to St. Petersburg, where he was promptly arrested and sent back to Vologda for a three-year term.

  This marked the end of the Caucasian chapter of his career. The Caucasus had given him an education and revolutionary experience, but he had grown beyond its narrow stage. He was to return for brief visits, but from this time, he belonged to the national party.

  In mid-February 1912, while still in exile in Vologda, Stalin, as he was beginning to call himself, received a firsthand report on the Prague conference, at which Lenin had established a separate and independent Bolshevik party. Ordzhonikidze had come personally to give him the news of the new party. He learned, too, that he had been co-opted as a full member of the party’s Central Committee. Moreover, Lenin had acted on his insistent demands that there should be an organizing center as well as a newspaper inside Russia. The Central Committee had set up a Russian bureau with the functions of supervising and revitalizing party groups throughout the country. Stalin had been appointed a member of the bureau.

  For Stalin, this was the beginning of a period of frantic activity. As he had forecast, a new tide of popular unrest had begun to flow. The death of Leo Tolstoy, revered as a great writer and even more as a powerful moral force, had marked the start of a wave of demonstrations, but more important was the removal of the strong leadership of Peter Stolypin. On September 1, 1911, while attending a gala performance in the Kiev opera house in the presence of the tsar, he was shot at point-blank range.

  Stolypin had succeeded within a remarkably short time in establishing order and giving Russians promise of a more liberal way of life. Lenin and other revolutionaries recognized that he was creating conditions in which revolution would be delayed, perhaps indefinitely. Unknown to them, however, Stolypin’s tenure of office had been nearing its end, and the assassin’s bullet had shortened it only by a few days. Incapable of appreciating the wisdom of Stolypin’s policies or of recognizing in him the savior of his regime, Nicholas II had decided to dismiss him. Under his successors, the government became increasingly reactionary. The mood of the people changed, and discontent showed in demonstrations and strikes.

  On February 29, 1912, Stalin escaped from Vologda, and after a brief stop in St. Petersburg, he hastened south to Baku. Social Democrats, with a few individual exceptions, had never envisaged the permanent division of the party. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks alike took for granted that ultimately they would be united. Lenin’s coup in forming his own Bolshevik party met with wide disbelief and opposition, and nowhere more than in Transcaucasia, the Menshevik stronghold. The purpose of Stalin and other members of the bureau was to persuade Social Democrats that the Bolshevik party under Lenin’s leadership was the true revolutionary party.

  Early in April 1912, Stalin was again in St. Petersburg, organizing production of the new Bolshevik newspaper, a task that Lenin had entrusted to him. He had been agitating for publication of a newspaper to inform and unite party groups, but now it was more urgently needed to project the new party, purged of Menshevik liquidators. Newspapers were subject to severe censorship, but even under this constraint, a Bolshevik newspaper could do much to strengthen the party.

  On April 22, 1912, the first issue of Pravda (The Truth) appeared with the editorial written by Stalin. The secretary of the editorial board was a young man named Vyacheslav Skriabin, later to be known as Molotov. The name of the new paper was deliberately taken from Trotsky’s Pravda, published abroad, which had remained by far the most popular of the newspapers smuggled into Russia. It was a shrewd theft, for the new paper claimed many of Trotsky’s readers while controverting the policies he had been advocating. Trotsky protested angrily and could do nothing but cease publication of his own paper.

  On the day that the first issue of Pravda appeared, Stalin was arrested. Other members of the bureau were arrested soon afterward. Malinovsky, the only member to remain at liberty, had done his job well, and most Bolsheviks, influenced by Lenin’s vehement support of him, were slow to suspect that he was an agent of the police. When Molotov was arrested, another of Lenin’s protégés, Miron Chernomazov, who was also a police agent, was appointed secretary to the editori
al board in his place.

  This time, Stalin was sentenced to three years’ exile in the Narym province of Western Siberia. He arrived there on July 18, 1912, and escaped on September 1, returning to St. Petersburg. At once, he resumed control of Pravda, and now he found himself protecting the paper from Lenin’s angry criticisms. In his editorial in the first issue, Stalin had written, “We believe that a strong full-blooded movement is unthinkable without controversy - only in a cemetery can total identity of opinions be achieved!” And further, the editorial proclaimed: “Just as we must be uncompromising in our attitude to the enemy, so we must make concessions to each other. War against enemies of the workers’ movement, peace and comradely endeavour within the movement - that will be the guiding principle of Pravda in its day-by-day work.”

  This conciliatory policy was abhorrent to Lenin. Remote from Russian realities, as Stalin had pointed out in his Baku articles, he could not appreciate the pressure of demands by Bolsheviks inside Russia for reunion of the party. At this stage, in the judgment of Stalin and others living and working in Russia, Pravda had to be conciliatory to gain support, and circulation was soon steadily rising toward its peak of 80,000 copies. Lenin nevertheless continued to bombard the editorial board with articles, viciously attacking the Mensheviks as “liquidators” and “conciliators.” Stalin and other members of the board carefully censored his articles, and this brought angry tirades from Cracow, where Lenin had moved in order to be closer to operations without facing any of the risks of life inside Russia.

  “Vladimir Ilyich was so upset,” wrote Krupskaya, “when from the outset Pravda deliberately struck out from his articles all polemics with the liquidators.” Typical of Lenin’s petulant outbursts was “We must kick out the present editorial staff. . . . Would you call such people editors? They aren’t men, but pitiful dish rags, who are ruining the cause!”

  During the autumn of 1912, Stalin was directly involved in the elections to the Fourth Duma. He wrote the election manifesto for the party’s candidates under the title “Instruction of the Petersburg Workers to Their Labour Deputy.” It required them to publicize the demands of the workers, to promote revolution, and not to take part “in the empty game of legislation in the ruling Duma.”

  The “Instruction” was adopted by workers in all major industries in St. Petersburg. Moreover, briefly forgetting his anger with Pravda, Lenin expressed himself to be so pleased with it that he published it in The Social Democrat, and in a letter to the editorial board of Pravda he wrote: “Without fail print this Instruction to the Petersburg deputy in a prominent position in heavy type.”

  Thirteen Social Democrat deputies were elected, six Bolsheviks and seven Mensheviks. As in the previous Duma, they began at once to cooperate with each other, forming a united faction and electing Chkheidze, the Georgian Menshevik, as their leader. In doing so, they were reflecting the strong demand among the workers for party unity; furthermore, as a very small minority group in a now reactionary Duma, they needed to stand together.

  Lenin exploded in anger. He demanded that the Bolshevik deputies publicly break from their Menshevik colleagues in the Duma. Soon after the elections, Stalin made his way to Cracow in answer to a summons from Lenin calling a meeting of the Central Committee there. Lenin lectured the committee members on the immediate need for the Bolshevik deputies to make the break. While convinced that such action was inevitable at a later date, Stalin knew that to do so forthwith would lose the Bolsheviks’ support. Moreover, on returning to St. Petersburg toward the end of November, he found that the Bolshevik deputies were unwilling to meet Lenin’s demand. He did not press them, nor did he publicize in Pravda the need for the division in the party.

  Thwarted in his demands, Lenin resorted to more devious tactics. He called for another meeting of the Central Committee in Cracow, this time with the six Bolshevik deputies taking part. For Stalin and others, this meant yet another frontier-crossing and breaking away from important work in Russia. It was a demonstration of Lenin’s great authority that his summons was obeyed, and by the end of December 1912, all had assembled in Cracow. Meanwhile, Lenin had dispatched Jacob Sverdlov to take charge of Pravda in Stalin’s absence and to make the required changes.

  In Cracow at the end of December, Lenin again urged on the members of the Central Committee, and particularly the six Bolshevik deputies, the importance of an immediate open split with the Mensheviks. Fired by the absolute conviction that he was right, he finally secured their agreement. Stalin had always accepted the need for an open split but had disagreed only about the timing, and now he accepted Lenin’s demand.

  When the members of the Central Committee and the Bolshevik deputies returned to Russia, Stalin remained in Cracow at Lenin’s request. It was the first time that the two men had been together without other members being present, but there is no record of their conversations or of their impressions of each other. In many ways, they were strikingly similar. Both were small, sturdy in build, and with a slight Asiatic cast of feature; both possessed enormous strength of will, and Stalin was soon to develop the same drive to power, which was to make them the dominant leaders of the first half of the twentieth century. But there was a fundamental difference. Lenin, with his bullet head thrust forward, vibrant with nervous energy, was a dynamic personality, while Stalin, controlled and inscrutable and not yet fully conscious of his mission, appeared quieter in temperament. But he possessed an inner strength, ruthless and cold as steel - in character he was the more powerful.

  Lenin was not interested in people, only in their views, and specifically in whether he could count on their support. He was nevertheless probably curious to know more about this Georgian. Stalin’s record as a staunch Bolshevik and his origin as a man of the people, not a member of the intelligentsia, had told in his favor. His strongly independent cast of mind and his readiness to disagree on occasions were, however, disturbing characteristics to Lenin, who demanded subservience from his supporters. At this time, however, apart from keeping him away from St. Petersburg and leaving Sverdlov a free hand on Pravda, he had particular need of Stalin’s assistance in finding a solution to the troublesome problem of the nationalities.

  At the turn of the century, the Great Russians formed less than half of the empire’s total population of 124.2 million. Of the other nationalities within its frontiers the most important were Ukrainians (22.5 million), Poles (7.9 million), Jews (5 million), Letts (1.4 million), Lithuanians (1.65 million), and Georgians (1.35 million), while the Grand Duchy of Finland, linked with Russia through the person of the tsar, had a population of 3 million.

  Nationalist movements among most of the non-Russian peoples had gathered strength, reacting particularly against the rigorous Russification policies of Alexander III. In 1905, the revolutionary year, massive demonstrations and rebellions had taken place in Poland, the Ukraine, Finland, the Baltic provinces, and the Caucasus, but this upsurge had been countered after 1907 by a Russian nationalist offensive.

  On the problem of the nationalities, Lenin had been confused in his thinking. He had always expressed strong support for nationalist movements as for any other activity that might help destroy the tsarist regime. He was the champion of self-determination, territorial autonomy, and the absolute right of secession, but still, he thought in terms of a strictly centralized party of all workers in the Russian Empire. He gave his attention to the problem for the first time when the Bund, claiming to represent all Jews as a distinct nationality, demanded “national-cultural autonomy.” He opposed the claim on the ground that the Jews were widely scattered and did not occupy a recognized territory; the correct solution was for the Jews to merge into Russian organizations. But he continued to promote the rights of Poles, Ukrainians, and other nationalities, which occupied their own distinct territories.

  The real dangers of nationalism struck Lenin forcibly early in 1912 when he was living in Cracow in Austrian Poland. The Austrian Empire, like the Russian, contained numerous national m
inorities, and over the years, the Austrian Social Democrat party had developed as a federation of autonomous groups, organized on national lines. Lenin now saw this as a serious weakness. At the same time, he became aware of the division among Poles between Józef Pilsudski’s Socialist party, which stood for full independence, and the Polish Social Democrat party, dominated by Rosa Luxemburg, who was an internationalist, adamantly opposed to the Polish and all other nationalist movements as irrelevant and potentially damaging to the revolutionary cause. Lenin argued against this internationalism because it was inexpedient and would lose his party support in Russia, but he also condemned nationalism, which would weaken the party.

  Lenin remained basically a Great Russian in outlook and in his assumption that the party would be Russian dominated and led. Now he became alarmed by the possibility that the Russian party might also lose its unity and decline into a loose federation of national groups, each with its own independent standpoint. The time had come to combat this pernicious threat. The dilemma nevertheless remained of how to reconcile the promotion of national independence movements with the unity of the Russian party and ultimately with the centralized Russian republic, which would emerge after the Revolution.

  Stalin’s arrival was timely. As a Georgian, he could not be charged with Great Russian chauvinism, and he came from a region in which there was one Social Democrat organization, embracing Georgians, Armenians, Russians, Tatars, and others. Recently, Noi Zhordania and a group of Georgian Mensheviks had proposed the adoption of the Austrian principle of “national-cultural autonomy.” Stalin was the right man to expose the falsity of the idea. He had always opposed this deviation in Transcaucasia. As long ago as 1904, he had written strongly in support of a centralized Russian party, embracing workers of all nationalities, and had attacked Georgians who favored national groups within the party. Again in 1906, he had opposed national autonomy when it was mooted by a group of Social Democrats in Kutais.