Stalin

by Ian Grey

  At this time Gosplan, the State Planning Commission, was working on a plan for the overall development of industry, as instructed by the Fifteenth Party Congress. The commission envisaged a gradual industrial growth based on estimates of agricultural expansion. The Gosplan economists were astounded in May 1928, when Kuibyshev, as head of the kommissariat responsible for the economy, suddenly demanded an expansion of 130 percent in industry within five years. To the protest that this was impossible came the reply: “Our task is not to study economics, but to change it. We are bound by no laws. There are no fortresses which Bolsheviks cannot storm.” At the end of May, Stalin proclaimed to the party his new policy of collectivization and rapid industrialization. He presented it as a challenge and the only course open to the nation.

  Bukharin, Rykov, and others supporting right-wing policy made no public comment at this time, but they were alarmed. The force used against the peasants in extracting their grain during the past months had horrified them. Stalin’s new policy portended the abolition of NEP and the use of compulsion against the peasantry in place of their policy of persuasion. They knew that they could not hope to gain the support of the party against Stalin, but there might be the possibility of defeating him in the Politburo and the Central Committee.

  The meeting of the Central Committee from July 4 to 12, 1928, was stormy, but the official account, published in the Soviet press at the time, maintained that a spirit of compromise had reigned. The resolution passed by the committee on the agricultural problem affirmed again that there was no thought of repealing NEP, and rumors to the contrary were dismissed as “counterrevolutionary chatter.” The small and middle peasants would continue to be the main grain producers. Severe restrictions on the kulaks and the brutal methods used in extracting grain from the peasantry amounted to “breaches of revolutionary legality and were denounced.

  Stalin’s speeches to the Central Committee, which were only published long afterward, revealed that he had spoken bluntly about the need for the new policy. Industrialization was moving too slowly, and to promote more rapid development, it was necessary to exact “tribute” from the peasantry temporarily to generate the necessary capital. It was an “unpleasant business,” but there was no other source of capital, and Bolsheviks could not shut their eyes to things merely because they were unpleasant. In the Politburo and now in the Central Committee, he had come into headlong conflict with Bukharin and Rykov.

  On July 11, 1928, before the close of the Central Committee session, Bukharin called suddenly on Kamenev. He was in a highly excitable state and near to panic. “Do not let anyone know of our meeting!” he exclaimed. “Do not telephone; it is overheard. The GPU is following me and watching you also. . . . We consider Stalin’s line fatal to the revolution. This line is leading us to the abyss. Our disagreements with Stalin are far far more serious than those we have with you. . . . He is an unprincipled intriguer who subordinates everything to his appetite for power. At any given moment, he will change his theories in order to get rid of someone. . . . He will strangle us!” Several times he referred to Stalin as “the Genghiz Khan of the Secretariat.”

  Bukharin, who had done so much to destroy Kamenev politically, now approached him secretly, because he was expecting Stalin to seek alliance with Kamenev and Zinoviev, and even with Trotsky in order to defeat the right wing. In his hysterical outburst, he revealed how little he understood his adversary. In fact, Stalin was staking everything on enforcing his extreme policy. It was a bold and courageous step. It might easily miscarry, and then his opponents would turn on him savagely. Bukharin was desperate, too, because, outmatched and overruled, he felt the menace of Stalin’s opposition and foresaw that, like Trotsky, he was soon to be excommunicated and crushed.

  Kamenev was not carried away by Bukharin’s pleas for support. He was noncommittal and decided “to wait calmly for signals from the other camp.” Like Bukharin, he, Zinoviev, and Trotsky still clung to their pathetic belief that they were indispensable to Stalin and that they would be recalled to play their parts in the central organs of the party. The habit of underestimating Stalin lingered. Bukharin had calculated that with the support of Genrikh Yagoda, the deputy head of OGPU, of Kalinin, Voroshilov, and Ordzhonikidze, the right wing would be able to vote down the new policy. But they voted with Stalin. Bukharin alleged that he had some kind of hold over them; in fact, he dominated them by force of character and leadership.

  At this stage, Stalin avoided any public break with Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, and their supporters. Rumors of conflict among the party leaders were still firmly denied. At this time, too, foreign delegates had gathered in Moscow for the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, which met there from July 17 until September 1, 1928. A special statement, addressed to the Comintern and signed by all members of the Politburo, including Bukharin and Rykov, denied that there were any disagreements between the Russian leaders. But the rumors persisted, encouraged by a whispering campaign directed against Bukharin.

  Stalin now engineered the final defeat of the right wing through the congress of the Comintern. He himself had suffered severe criticism from Trotsky and others for supporting alliances with noncommunist elements in China and in Britain. He now abandoned this policy and those who supported it. The congress passed resolutions condemning right-wing reformists. Bukharin and other right-wing leaders had misgivings but tamely supported the new line. The Comintern resolutions served as a prelude to a similar change in direction within the Russian party. On September 18, 1928, Pravda stated that the struggle against the right-wing pro-kulak forces was equally vital in Russia.

  At the end of September, Bukharin published in Pravda, of which he was still nominally the editor, an article entitled “Notes of an Economist,” which brought the conflict into the open. The article was a reasoned statement of right-wing policy toward industry and agriculture. Stalin conceded that it presented a justifiable, if abstract, point of view. But Bukharin and his supporters did not realize that Russia could not afford the time for slow and gradual reconstruction; it was a matter of terrible urgency. Moreover, he was convinced that peasant noncooperation would cripple the all-important industrialization program, and also he would not accept that the party and its policies should be at the mercy of the conservative, anticommunist masses.

  While still maintaining the fiction of unity among the leaders, Stalin struck against his opponents. He removed three of Uglanov’s chief lieutenants in the Moscow party organization, in which the right-wing challenge was, he declared, particularly strong. But again, he asserted that there was no conflict within the Politburo. Bukharin and his colleagues also kept up the pretense of unity in public. But they were more and more desperate. Bukharin made a further approach to Kamenev, apparently without result, and, indeed, there was little that Kamenev or Zinoviev could do in their isolation. With the support of Tomsky, he made an attempt in the Politburo to remove Stalin’s chief allies, but this failed completely. Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky threatened to resign, and to avoid the crisis that this would have caused, Stalin agreed to several compromise resolutions in the Central Committee. In a speech published in Pravda and other papers, he again denied rumors of conflict in the Politburo.

  Inexorably he pressed ahead with his plans. To the meeting of the Central Committee on November 16–24, 1928, he enunciated the principles of his policy. Socialism would be achieved in Russia, he stated, only by “catching up with and overtaking” the capitalist nations in economic and industrial development. Furthermore, military strength that would ensure the security of the nation and of the Soviet regime depended on a strong and developed industry. There was no time to lose, for, as was inculcated by communist dogma, the capitalist powers were watching and waiting for the opportunity to destroy the young socialist nation.

  Bukharin and the right-wing group were defenseless and defeated. Stalin displaced their key supporters and prepared to implement his policy. On November 27, 1928, Uglanov and others were sacked from the Moscow party org
anization. In the following month, the Central Executive Committee approved a new law, depriving the peasantry of their remaining individual rights to the land.

  At this time, too, Stalin was undermining the authority of Tomsky, who had always maintained strong control over the trade unions. The Eighth Trade Union Congress, meeting at the end of December 1928, duly approved the program for industrialization, which, as revised by Kuibyshev, set impossibly high targets. The congress also endorsed the demand for more democracy and freedom of criticism within the unions and for the removal of “bureaucratic officials” no matter how senior. This was aimed directly at Tomsky, who was renowned for his authoritarian methods. He offered to resign and his offer was rejected, but he was removed the following year. Power over the trade unions passed into the hands of five of Stalin’s men, including Kaganovich, whom the congress elected to its presidium.

  Bukharin and Rykov knew that the end was near. They and their supporters were under observation by the OGPU. Bukharin’s approaches to Kamenev were known and, indeed, left-wing supporters of Trotsky who were in exile abroad had published an account of Bukharin’s secret meeting. Among Russian Social Democrats, there was no room for charity or forbearance toward defeated enemies, only for vicious hostility. Bukharin had never been a contender for the leadership, like Trotsky and Zinoviev. He was content to accept Stalin’s primacy but was desperately concerned about the extreme policies, especially toward the peasantry, on which Stalin was determined. He was a gentle, emotional intellectual, awed by Stalin’s ruthless determination to take action which would involve wide-scale violence and possibly civil war.

  In a last attempt to alert the party to the dangers as he saw them, Bukharin delivered a long speech on January 21, 1929, the anniversary of Lenin’s death. It was published in Pravda and as a pamphlet with the evocative title Lenin’s Political Testament. He quoted Lenin to emphasize that a period of peaceful development was needed and that a “third revolution” must be avoided.

  Stalin was losing patience with this debate on policies when immediate action was needed. In February 1929, Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky were summoned before the party Control Commission, charged with making contact with the disgraced left-wing leader, Kamenev. They at once laid a complaint with the Politburo which, according to Stalin’s subsequent report, criticized the rule of one man and “bureaucratization.” They also urged a slowing down of industrialization and a halt to the setting up of collective and state farms, the restoration of private trade, and an end to the extreme measures against the kulaks. The Politburo, meeting with the Presidium of the Central Control Commission, condemned their views, especially their apparent defense of the kulaks, their conduct in approaching Kamenev and in threatening to resign, and their formation of a faction.

  In April 1929, Stalin delivered a lengthy attack on Bukharin at the meeting of the Central Committee. He would not allow the right-wing leaders to appear as the champions of the peasantry or of a gradual and undemanding economic policy. The right wing was, he declared, so eager for union with the peasants that they even embraced the kulaks. They were at one extreme while the Trotskyites in opposing any union with the peasants were at the other, and both extremes were wrong. He took the middle way of union with the poor and middle peasants against the kulaks. A campaign, discrediting Bukharin as a theoretician, began. The Central Committee denounced the right-wing leaders and recommended that Bukharin and Tomsky should be removed from all offices held by them. The judgment of the Central Committee was circulated within the party and not made public at this stage. But the split in the party leadership was soon widely known.

  Bukharin, the “favorite of the whole party,” as Lenin had called him, had been a friend and member of Stalin’s family circle, but this did not protect him. Stalin abhorred weakness, passivity, defeatism. He interpreted the policies of the right oppositionists in these terms and held them up to cruel ridicule. “Have you ever seen fishermen before the storm on a great river like the Yenisei?” he said to the joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission in April 1929. “I have more than once. It happens that one group of fishermen mobilizes all its forces in the face of the oncoming storm, inspires its people, and boldly heads the boat into the storm, saying ‘Hold fast, boys! Tighter on the rudder! Cut through the waves! We’ll win!’

  “But there is another kind of fishermen who lose heart when they see the storm coming, start to whine, and demoralize their own ranks. ‘Oh woe, the storm is breaking! Lie down, boys, on the bottom of the boat, close your eyes! Maybe, somehow, we’ll be carried into the shore!’ [General laughter]

  “Need it be demonstrated that the Bukharin group’s outlook and behaviour are as similar as two drops of water to the outlook and behaviour of the second group of fishermen, those who retreat in panic in the face of difficulties?”

  The meeting roared with laughter which expressed scorn for Bukharin and his weakling associates. It was this meeting that marked the end of Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky and the right opposition as a political force. The party was in a heroic mood. It needed positive, forthright leadership, and at this juncture, it had no patience with cautious men who showed fear of the dangers.

  On April 23–29, 1929, the Sixteenth Party Conference met and unanimously adopted the five-year plan for industrialization and the policy of rapid collectivization. Rykov, anxious to be restored to favor, proposed the adoption of the plan and delivered a stirring speech in support of it. Bukharin and Tomsky did not speak but evidently voted for the new policies.

  Stalin now dealt with his opponents, removing them, from their various offices. Bukharin and the other right leaders were guilty of attempting to form a faction with former Trotskyites and of “collaboration with capitalist elements.” To ensure that they were all discredited in the eyes of the party and of the people, they were required to make public confessions of their errors in most humiliating terms. On November 26, 1929, Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky made their final confession of defeat and publicly acknowledged the wisdom of Stalin’s policies.

  On December 21, 1929, the nation celebrated Stalin’s fiftieth birthday with unprecedented extravagance. Newspapers poured out acclamations. Enormous portraits covered the walls of the Kremlin. Statues and busts dominated the squares and public buildings of every town. Party organizations, factories, collectives, and simple groups of people in every part of the country sent him avowals of loyalty. The slogan “Stalin is the Lenin of today” appeared on banners and was chanted at public meetings. Stalin, the Man of Steel, was commemorated in new names of cities and towns, and the highest mountain in the Pamirs was called Mount Stalin. The name and the portrait became part of the daily lives of the people. It was the beginning of the Stalin cult, which developed on a phenomenal scale.

  This frenetic adulation was, in part, the enthusiastic work of the party machine in Moscow and of party officials throughout the country. They were praising the general secretary of the party and ensuring that the people joined in. They owed their positions to him and knew his authority could reach into the most distant corners of the organization. But servility and self-interest were accompanied by genuine veneration.

  The demonstrations of worship were, in part, a spontaneous popular expression of relief and gratification that at last Russia had a strong leader. The traditions of five and more centuries were revived and gave strength to the cult of Lenin and even more to that of Stalin, who certainly encouraged the cult. Indeed, once it had gathered momentum, it is doubtful whether he could have halted it. He was already in some degree a prisoner of his own power and position. But the cult was important in buttressing his authority within the party and among the people. The power of the tsars had been their unassailable heritage and was upheld by the Orthodox Church. He depended on the cult and on the almost mystical veneration of the Communist party as the foundations of his leadership.

  While accepting the need for the cult, however, Stalin probably took little active part in promotin
g it. The Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas, meeting him in 1945, formed the opinion that “the deification of Stalin . . . was at least as much the work of Stalin’s circle and the bureaucracy, who required such a leader, as it was his own doing.”

  Stalin was, in fact, not a vain, self-obsessed man who had to be surrounded by fawning and flattery. He detested this mass adulation of his person, and throughout his life he went to great lengths to avoid demonstrations in his honor. Indeed, he was to be seen in public only at party congresses and at ceremonial occasions on Red Square, when he was a remote figure standing on Lenin’s mausoleum. He had the same lack of personal vanity as Peter the Great and Lenin, but like them, he had the same supremely arrogant conviction, transcending mere vanity, that he was the man of destiny, who held the key to the future and knew what was right for the people and for Russia and, as Djilas observed, “that he was carrying out the will of history.”

  An immeasurable gulf seemed to separate the man of 1929, aged fifty, from the small boy at the theological school in Gori and the pock-marked youth who attended the seminary in Tiflis and was destined for the priesthood. At every stage of his career, he had grown in stature, showing the confidence and ability to meet greater challenges. He possessed a natural authority, an inner strength and courage. He was not overwhelmed by the responsibilities that now lay upon him as sole ruler over a nation of 200 million people, and at a time when its survival was threatened. He did not play safe, evading dangers which might lead to destruction; on the contrary, although cautious by nature, he pursued his objectives with an implacable single-mindedness, undeterred by risks. Indeed, he was about to plunge the nation into a new revolution, which, as he saw clearly, might end in catastrophe.