A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

by Orlando Figes

  Lenin was devastated by the incident. He became ill overnight. One of his doctors described his condition on 6 March: 'Vladimir Ilich lay there with a look of dismay, a frightened expression on his face, his eyes sad with an inquiring look, tears running down his face. Vladimir Ilich became agitated, tried to speak, but the words would not come to him and he could only say: "Oh hell, oh hell. The old illness has come back." ' Three days later Lenin suffered his third major stroke. It robbed him of the power to speak and thus to contribute to politics. Until his death, ten months later, he could only utter single syllables: 'vot-vot' ('here-here') and 's'ezi-s'ezi ('congress-congress').41

  In May Lenin was moved to Gorki, where a team of doctors was placed at his disposal. On fine days he would sit outside. There a nephew found him one day 'sitting in his wheelchair in a white summer shirt with an open collar . .. A rather old cap covered his head and the right arm lay somewhat unnaturally on his lap. [He] hardly noticed me even though I stood quite plainly in the middle of the clearing.' Krupskaya read to him — Gorky and Tolstoy gave him the most comfort — and strove in vain to teach him how to speak. By September, with the help of a cane and a pair of orthopaedic shoes, he was just able to walk again. Sometimes he pushed his wheelchair round the grounds. He began to read papers sent from Moscow and, with Krupskaya's help, learned to write a little with his left hand. Bukharin visited in the autumn and, as he later told Boris Nikolaevsky, found Lenin deeply worried about who was to succeed him and about the articles he could not write. But there was no question of him ever returning to politics. Lenin, the politician, was already dead.42

  * * * Getting Lenin out of the way was just what Stalin needed. Through his spies Stalin had learned of Lenin's secret letter to the Twelfth Party Congress. If he was to survive in office, he had to prevent it from being read out there. On 9 March Stalin used his power as the General Secretary to put off the Congress from mid-March until mid-April. Trotsky, although he stood to gain most from Stalin's likely downfall at the Congress, readily agreed to its delay. He even reassured Kamenev that, whilst he agreed 'with Lenin in substance' (i.e. on the Georgian question and party reform), he was 'for preserving the status quo' and

  * It was not published until 1989.

  'against removing Stalin' provided there was a 'radical change' of policies. Trotsky concluded with the hope that: 'There should be no more intrigues but honest co-operation.' The outcome of this 'rotten compromise' — just what Lenin had warned him not to make — was that the Party Congress witnessed Stalin's triumph rather than his final defeat. Lenin's notes on the nationality question and the reform of the party were distributed among the delegates, discussed, and then dismissed by the leadership. Most of the delegates, in any case, probably shared the view expressed by Stalin that at a time when unity was needed in the party above all else there was no need to waste time discussing democracy. The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power.43 Lenin's notes on the question of the succession, including his demand that Stalin be removed, were not read out at the Congress and remained suppressed until 1956.*

  It is difficult to explain Trotsky's conduct. At this crucial moment of the power struggle, when he could have won a major victory, he somehow engineered his own defeat. Among the forty members of the new Central Committee, elected at the Congress, he could count only three supporters. Perhaps, sensing his growing isolation, especially after Lenin's stroke, Trotsky had decided that his only hope lay in trying to appease the triumvirate. His memoirs are filled with the conviction that he had been brought down by a conspiracy of its three leaders. There was certainly a very real danger that, if he had opted to defy them, Trotsky would have been accused of 'factionalism' — and after 1921 this was a political death sentence. But there is also some truth in the claim that Trotsky lacked the stomach for a fight. There was an inner weakness to his character, one that stemmed from his pride. Faced with the prospect of defeat, Trotsky preferred not to compete. One of his oldest friends tells the story of a chess game in New York. Trotsky had challenged him to a game, 'evidently considering himself a good chess player'. But it turned out that he was weak and, having lost the game, went into a temper and refused to play another game.44 This small episode was typical of Trotsky: when he came up against a superior rival, one who was able to out-manaeuvre him, he chose to retreat and sulk in glorious isolation rather than lose face by trying to confront him on disadvantageous terms.

  This was, in a sense, what Trotsky did next. Rather than fight Stalin

  * The contents of the Testament were made known to the delegates of the Thirteenth Party Congress in 1924. Stalin offered to resign but his offer was rejected on the suggestion of Zinoviev to 'let bygones be bygones'. The conflict with Lenin was put down to a personal clash, with the implication that Lenin had been sick and not altogether sound in mind. None of these last writings was fully published in Russia during Stalin's lifetime, although fragments appeared in the party press during the 1920s. Trotsky and his followers made their contents well known in the West, however (Volkogonov, Stalin, ch. II).

  in the highest party organs he took up the standard of the Bolshevik rank and file, posing as the champion of party democracy against the 'police regime' of the leadership. It was a desperate gamble — Trotsky was hardly known for his democratic habits and he ran the deadly risk of 'factionalism' — but then he was in desperate straits. On 8 October he addressed an Open Letter to the Central Committee in which he accused it of suppressing all democracy within the party:

  The participation of the party masses in the actual formation of the party organization is becoming increasingly marginal. A peculiar secretarial psychology has been established in the past year or so, its main feature is the belief that the [party] secretary is capable of deciding every and any question, without even knowing the basic facts . . . There is a very broad stratum of party workers, both in the government and party apparatus, who completely abnegate their own party opinion, at least as expressed openly, as if assuming that it is the apparatus of the secretarial hierarchy which formulate party opinion and policy. Beneath this stratum of abstainers from opinion lies the broad party masses, for whom every decision already comes down in the form of a summons or command.

  Support for Trotsky came from the so-called 'Group of 46' — Antonov-Ovseenko, Piatakov and Preobrazhensky were the best known — who also wrote in protest to the Central Committee. The climate of fear in the party was such, they claimed, that even old comrades had become 'afraid to converse with one another'.43

  Predictably, the party leadership accused Trotsky of instigating a dangerous 'platform' which could lead to the creation of an illegal 'faction' in the party. Without responding to his political criticisms, the Politburo issued a vicious personal attack on Trotsky on 19 October. Trotsky was arrogant, considered himself above the day-to-day work of the party, and acted by the maxim 'all or nothing' (i.e. 'Give me all or I'll give you nothing'). Four days later Trotsky addressed a defiant rebuttal of the charges of 'factionalism' to the Plenum of the Central Committee. On 26 October he appeared at the Plenum itself.

  Until recently it was thought that Trotsky had not attended this crucial meeting. Deutscher and Broue, his two main biographers, both have him absent with the flu. But he did attend and, indeed, put up such a powerful defence that Bazhanov, Stalin's secretary, who was charged with transcribing Trotsky's speech, buried the records of it in his personal files. They were found there in 1990. Trotsky's speech was a passionate denial of the allegations of 'Bonapartism' which he claimed had been levelled against him. It was at this point that he raised the question of his Jewish roots. To prove that he lacked ambition Trotsky

  cited two occasions when he had turned down Lenin's offer of high office — once in October 1917 (Commissar of the Interior) and once again in September 1922 (Deputy Chairman of Sovnarkom)—on the grounds that it would not be wise, given the problem of anti-Semitism, to have a Je
w in such a high post. On the first occasion Lenin had dismissed this as 'trivial'; but on the second 'he was in agreement with me'.46 Trotsky's implication was obvious: opposition to him in the party — and Lenin had acknowledged this — stemmed partly from the fact that he was a Jew. It was a tragic moment for Trotsky — not just as a politician but also as a man — that at this turning point in his life, standing condemned before the party, he should have to fall back on his Jewish roots. For a man who had never felt himself a Jew, it was a mark of how alone he now was.

  Trotsky's emotional appeal made little impression on the delegates — most of whom had been picked by Stalin. By 102 votes to two the Plenum passed a motion of censure against Trotsky for engaging in 'factionalism'. Kamenev and Zinoviev pressed for Trotsky to be expelled from the party; but Stalin, always eager to appear as the voice of moderation, thought this was unwise and the motion was rejected.47 Stalin, in any case, had no need to hurry. Trotsky was finished as a major force and his expulsion from the party — which finally came in 1927 — could await its time. The one man capable of stopping Stalin had now been removed.

  * * * The public had not been told that Lenin was dying. Right until the end the press continued to report that he was recovering from a grave illness — one from which any mortal man would have died. By inventing this 'miracle recovery' the regime sought to keep alive the cult of Lenin upon which it now increasingly depended for its own sense of legitimacy. The term 'Leninism' was used for the first time in 1923: the triumvirate sought to present themselves as its true defenders against Trotsky, the 'anti-Leninist'. The same year saw work commence on the first edition of his collected works (the Leninskii shornik), the holy scriptures of this orthodoxy, and the establishment of the Lenin Institute (formally opened in 1924), complete with an archive, a library and a museum of Leninania. There was a spate of hagiographies whose main aim was to create myths and legends — Lenin as a poor peasant, or a worker, Lenin as the lover of animals and children, Lenin as the tireless worker for the people's happiness — which might help to make the regime more popular. It was also from this time that huge portraits of Lenin began to appear on the facades of public buildings — one Moscow park even had a 'living portrait' of him made up of bedding plants — while inside many factories and offices there were 'Lenin Corners' with approved photographs and artefacts to illustrate his achievements.48 As Lenin the man died, so Lenin the God was born. His private life was nationalized. It became a sacred institution to consecrate the Stalinist regime.

  Lenin died on 21 January 1924. At 4 p.m. he had a massive stroke, fell into a deep coma and died shortly before 7 p.m. Apart from his family and attendant doctors, the only witness to his death was Bukharin. In 1937, pleading for his own life, he claimed that Lenin had 'died in my arms'.49

  The announcement was made by Kalinin the next day to the delegates of the Eleventh Soviet Congress, which was then in session. There were screams and sobbing noises from the hall. Perhaps because of its unexpectedness, the public showed signs of genuine grief: theatres and shops closed down for a week; portraits of Lenin, draped in red and black ribbons, were displayed in many windows; peasants came to his rest home at Gorki to pay their last respects; thousands of mourners braved the arctic temperatures to line the streets of Moscow from the Paveletsky Station to the Hall of Columns, where Lenin's body was brought to lie in state. Over the next three days half a million people queued for several hours to file past the bier. Thousands of wreaths and mournful declarations were sent by schools and factories, regiments and naval ships, towns and villages throughout Russia. Later, in the months following the funeral, there was a mad rush to erect monuments and statues of Lenin (one in Volgograd had Lenin standing on top of a giant screw), and to rename streets and institutions after him. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. Whole factories pledged to join the party — one agitator said that this 'would be the best wreath on the coffin of the deceased leader' — and in the weeks following his death 100,000 proletarians were signed up in this so-called 'Lenin enrolment'. Many Western journalists saw this 'national mourning' as a 'post-mortem vote of confidence' in the regime. Others saw it as a cathartic release of collective grief after so many years of human suffering. People sobbed hysterically, hundreds fainted, in a way that defies rational explanation. Perhaps it shows that the cult of Lenin had already cast its spell: that however much they may have hated his regime the people still loved the 'Good Lenin', just as in the old days they had despised the boyars but loved the 'Father Tsar'.

  Lenin's funeral took place on the following Sunday in arctic temperatures of minus 35° centigrade. Stalin led the guards of honour who carried the open coffin from the Hall of Columns to Red Square, where it was placed on a wooden platform. The Bolshoi Theatre orchestra played Chopin's Funeral March, followed by the old revolutionary hymn, 'You Fell Victim', and the Internationale. Then, for six hours, column after column, in all an estimated half a million people, marched past the coffin in gloomy silence, lowering their banners as they passed. At precisely 4 p.m., as the coffin was slowly lowered into the vault, sirens and factory whistles, cannons and guns, were sounded across Russia, as if letting out a huge national wail. On the radio there was a single message: 'Stand up, comrades, Ilich is being lowered into his grave.' Then there was silence and

  everything stopped — trains, ships, factories — until the radio broadcast once again: 'Lenin has died — but Leninism lives!'

  In his will Lenin had expressed the wish to be buried next to his mother's grave in Petrograd. That was also the wish of his family. But Stalin wanted to embalm the corpse. If he was to keep alive the cult of Lenin, if he was to prove that 'Leninism lives', there had to be a body on display, one which, like the relics of the saints, was immune to corruption. He forced his plan through the Politburo against the objections of Trotsky, Bukharin and Kamenev. The idea of the embalmment was pardy inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. Lenin's funeral was compared in Lzvestiia to those of 'the founders of the great states in ancient times'. But it probably owed as much to Stalin's Byzantine interpretation of the Russian Orthodox rites. Trotsky, who was horrified by Stalin's plan, compared it to the religious cults of the Middle Ages: 'Earlier there were the relics of Sergius of Radonezh and Serafim of Sarov; now they want to replace these with the relics of Vladimir Ilich.' At first they tried to preserve Lenin's body by refrigeration. But it soon began to decompose. A special team of scientists (known as the Commission for Immortalization) was appointed on 26 February, five weeks after Lenin's death, with the task of finding an embalming fluid. After working round the clock for several weeks, the scientists finally came up with a formula said to contain glycerine, alcohol and other chemicals (its precise composition is still kept a secret). Lenin's pickled body was placed in a wooden crypt — later replaced by the granite mausoleum which exists today — by the Kremlin wall on Red Square. It was opened to the public in August 1924.50

  Lenin's brain was removed from his body and transferred to the Lenin Institute. There it was studied by a team of scientists, charged with the task of discovering the 'substance of his genius'. They were to show that Lenin's brain represented a 'higher stage of human evolution'. It was sliced up into 30,000 segments, each stored between glass plates in carefully monitored conditions, so that future generations of scientists would be able to study it and discover its essential secrets. The brains of other 'undisputed geniuses' — Kirov, Kalinin, Gorky, Mayakovsky, Eisenstein and Stalin himself — were later added to this cerebral collection. They formed the beginnings of the Institute of the Brain, which still exists in Moscow today. In 1994 it publicized its final autopsy on Lenin: his was a perfectly average brain.51 Which just goes to show that ordinary brains can sometimes inspire extraordinary behaviour.

  * * * What would have happened if Lenin had lived? Was Russia already set on the path of Stalinism? Or did the NEP and Lenin's last writings offer it a different departure? Historians should not really concern themselves with hypothetic
al questions. It is hard enough to establish what actually happened, let alone to

  prophesy what might (or in this case might not) have happened. But the consequences of Lenin's succession are perhaps large enough to warrant a few words of speculation. After all, so much of the history of the revolution has been written from the perspective of what happened inside Stalin's Russia that one may well ask whether there was any real alternative.

  On the one hand it seems clear that the basic elements of the Stalinist regime — the one-party state, the system of terror and the cult of the personality — were all in place by 1924. The party apparatus was, for the most part, an obedient tool in Stalin's hands. The majority of its provincial bosses had been appointed by Stalin himself, as the head of the Orgburo, in the civil war. They shared his plebeian hatred for the specialists and the intelligentsia, were moved by his rhetoric of proletarian solidarity and Russian nationalism, and on most questions of ideology were willing to defer to their Great Leader. After all, they were the former subjects of the tsars. Lenin's last struggle for the 'democratic' reform of the party was never likely to succeed in its attempt to change this basic culture. His proposed reforms were purely bureaucratic, concerned only with the reform of the internal structure of the dictatorship, and as such were incapable of addressing the real problem of the NEP: the strained political relationship between the regime and society, the unconquered countryside in particular. Without a genuine democratization, without a basic change in the ruling attitudes of the Bolsheviks, the NEP was always doomed to fail. Economic freedom and dictatorship are incompatible in the long term.