Stalin

by Edvard Radzinsky

  RESULTS OF HIS OPENING MOVES

  After only two weeks in Petrograd Koba had already seized control of a newspaper, become one of the main figures among the city’s Bolsheviks, and joined the leadership of the Soviet, the effective holder of power. Yet in the Soviet he was strangely self-effacing. “When he was playing his modest part in the work of the Soviet the impression he made on me—and not only on me—was that of a gray blob, now dimly visible, now fading without trace. There is really nothing more to be said of him,” observed the Menshevik Sukhanov. But Koba Stalin was no gray blob.

  A NEW PIECE ON THE CHESSBOARD

  In mid-March a woman no longer young, but still something of a beauty, turned up in Pravda’s editorial office. This was the famous ultra-Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai, daughter of a tsarist general. She handed the editors two letters from Lenin, for publication. In these “Letters from Afar” Lenin’s fury knew no bounds. He stigmatized both the Menshevik leaders of the Soviet and the Provisional Government. He ordered “no support for the bourgeois government.” Lenin was announcing a change of course—toward a second revolution, a socialist revolution.

  To Kamenev, all of this looked like the ravings of an émigré long divorced from Russia. But—Marx or no Marx—Lenin did not want to wait for the completion of democratic changes in backward Russia: that Asiatic peasant country, lacking as it did a strong proletariat, must nonetheless be steered toward proletarian revolution in a hurry. Trotsky had put forward similar ideas during the first Russian revolution, and Lenin had ridiculed him at the time. Yet now … the Leader’s letters could not be left unpublished. It was evidently Kamenev’s idea to publish the first, deleting the harshest words about the government and the Mensheviks, and then pretend to forget the second. Koba consented, knowing that in retrospect Kamenev would bear the main responsibility. Kamenev was the Party’s leading journalist and he, Koba, was a mere “practical worker.”

  Koba was thinking more and more carefully about his future.

  He had already sized up the freedom-loving windbags in the Soviet—eternally bickering democrats, scared by the steadily rising waves of mindless Russian rebellion. Chkheidze, Tsereteli, Jewish idealists like Dan, Nakhamkis, and the rest of them—how could they cope with this elemental force? True, the Bolsheviks were only just emerging from underground, but Koba knew the full strength of that ruthless “moth-balled” organization. Accustomed as it was to rigid discipline, to unquestioning obedience, it was nothing without a Leader. But with a Leader …

  Its Leader was due to arrive shortly. Koba did not doubt that the Germans would agree to let Lenin and his comrades-in-arms pass unhindered. He had, of course, heard by then of the firm ties which had unexpectedly linked the Bolsheviks with the kaiser’s Germany. He knew that Lenin would return to Russia with lots of money.

  This was money the Bolsheviks had been receiving since the beginning of the war. There was nothing strange about it. Lenin was agitating for the defeat of tsarist Russia, for the conversion of the war with Germany into a civil war inside Russia, with the workers and peasants in soldiers’ greatcoats, turning their weapons against “their own” bourgeoisie.

  Koba could easily deduce the scale of German support from the large subsidies received by his newspaper, Pravda. And from the generous funds for arms which went to the military organization set up within the Party. With this money the Party was, with feverish haste, establishing a Red Guard with units throughout Russia.

  GERMAN GOLD

  Koba had not gone to live with the hospitable Alliluyevs, although they had told him that there “was always a room waiting for him.” Instead, he moved into a large flat shared by the young leaders of the Petrograd Bolsheviks.

  “Stalin and I lived in the same apartment at that time,” Molotov wrote. “He was a bachelor, and so was I. It was a large apartment on the Petrograd side. I shared a room with Zalutsky, then there was Smilga (the Bolshevik Smilga) with his wife, and Stalin joined us. It was a sort of commune we had there.” And that was where Koba could have heard a great deal of talk about German gold. Possibly from a frequent visitor to the apartment, a colleague in the leadership of the Petersburg Bolsheviks, Shlyapnikov. German money had paid for Shlyapnikov’s travels between the European capitals during the war, and for the printing and dispatch to Russia of masses of defeatist propaganda—and German gold. This was one of Bolshevism’s shameful secrets, and many attempts would be made to prove it untrue. But documents from the secret German archives published after the fall of Nazi Germany revealed that the Bolsheviks continued to receive German money even after the October Revolution. “It is in our best interests that the Bolsheviks should remain in power.… If you need more money telegraph the amount”—so wrote Kuhlmann, the German minister of foreign affairs, to the German ambassador in Moscow, Baron Mirbach.

  Did the Bolsheviks take money from the Germans? Certainly. Were they, then, German agents? Certainly not. They were simply obeying their Catechism: “Make use of the Devil himself if the Revolution requires it.” Lenin could have no scruples about taking the money. Yet again, Koba realized that all things were permitted for the good of the cause. “We learn, bit by bit, we learn.”

  KOBA’S EXPECTATIONS REALIZED

  A Russian rebellion: once it starts there’s no restraining it. During the first days of the Revolution, while the intelligentsia were joyfully hailing the “dawn of Russian freedom,” the famous artist Somov noted in his diary that “so far the crowd is good-humored, but I believe that there will be a great bloodletting.” Nothing is more dangerous than eternal Russia with the bit between her teeth.

  The man who was eager to fan the spreading flames into a conflagration was on his way. Koba judged correctly what the advent of his Jacobin Leader, furnished with German gold, would mean. In Russia he would find waiting for him an organization battle-hardened in the underground, and the army in a state of collapse and unwilling to fight. Koba knew instinctively to whom the future belonged. That was why he was so cautious in the Soviet: from mid-March onward he was waiting for the new master. Kamenev would answer for Pravda’s sins, but he, Koba, would have to answer for his stance in the Soviet. He adopted his favorite tactic—impenetrable silence. He was present in the Soviet, yet absent. A gray blob. He realized that the time for speeches was over, and the time for action at hand. His time.

  The train on which Lenin and thirty or so other Russian revolutionary émigrés were passengers crossed the Russian frontier on April 3. It had traveled unhindered through a Germany at war with Russia. As General Hoffman later wrote, “We had the idea of using these Russians to speed up the demoralization of the Russian army.” And Ludendorff, in his memoirs, observed that “this journey was justified from a military point of view.”

  What these German generals would subsequently write was obvious enough to the general public at the time. Krupskaya recalled how apprehensive Lenin was at the prospect of “the savage outcry from the chauvinists” upon their return, and even thought that it might end with him being put on trial and “carted off to the Peter and Paul [Fortress].” They were also worried about the practicalities. It was Easter Day, and they were afraid that they would arrive late and have difficulty finding a cab.

  Instead of which a Bolshevik delegation was waiting for Lenin at the Finnish frontier. Koba was not among them. He had preferred to let Ilyich vent his wrath on Kamenev. It went just as he expected. A member of the delegation, Fyodor Raskolnikov, who represented the pro-Bolshevik sailors in their mutiny against their officers at the beginning of the Revolution, described the scene as follows in his memoirs. The welcoming party came in and sat down on a sofa, and Lenin immediately attacked Kamenev. (Koba would later improve on history. Hundreds of paintings showed the joyous meeting between the great leaders Stalin and Lenin.) Then it was night, and an enormous crowd had gathered at the Finland Station. What awaited Lenin was not a cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress, but a reception committee from the mighty Soviet, led by its president, Chkhe
idze, whom Lenin had so unmercifully vilified in his letters. A guard of honor and an armored car had been provided for the small, bald-headed man who had never addressed more than a handful of émigrés. At last Lenin saw the great crowds he had always longed for. From the armored car he called on his listeners to realize the insane Utopian dream, to ensure the victory of socialist revolution. Only a year ago all this had been delirium, pure fantasy. And now … the crowds, the floodlights, the armored car.

  WINNING MOVES

  Who had organized Chkheidze’s arrival at the station? He was president of the Soviet, which was the real master of the situation in Petrograd, and his appearance legalized the scandalous circumstances in which Lenin and his henchmen had returned. Who had worked to persuade Chkheidze that the rumors about German money only served the right-wing forces and that his presence at the station would put an end to this reactionary talk?

  Lenin was bound to appreciate the service which Koba and Kamenev, both old members of the Bolshevik Party, had performed for him.

  Late that evening Lenin laid his “April Theses” before an audience. His address was a bombshell. No support for the bourgeois Provisional Government! No more “up to a point,” no more “insofar as.” All power must belong to the Soviets. But what must have struck Koba most forcibly was the ease with which Lenin had discarded the most familiar Marxist dogmas. Marx had written about the inevitable accession to power of the bourgeoisie after a democratic revolution. And here was Lenin declaring that the bourgeoisie had come to power in Russia as the result of a mistake on the part of the proletariat and calling for immediate transition to a socialist revolution. The astonished audience heard a man who used to represent Marxism as gospel truth calmly reject one of its main postulates. Koba realized yet again that all things are permitted to the Leader.

  He immediately adjusted his own views by 180 degrees. Koba Stalin now wrote article after article for Pravda in which he slavishly expounded Lenin’s ideas. The Boss was back.

  The Bolsheviks met in conference on April 29. In the great hall of which the ballerina Ksheshinskaya had been so fond, Lenin repeated the message of his “April Theses.” Kamenev chose to defend his own beliefs and railed against Lenin. Whereupon Lenin unleashed Koba. Koba spoke in his new style—without systematic argument, crudely and brazenly garbling Kamenev’s views. He lambasted his friend of yesterday unmercifully. This was a new Koba—a Koba who from now on had no friends. His line prevailed. The delegates turned on Kamenev, reminding themselves of all his past sins.

  Then came the election of the Central Committee, and Lenin personally proposed Koba. “We have known ‘Comrade Koba’ for very many years,” Lenin asserted. “He is a good worker in any responsible position.” The audience took its Leader’s point: Koba’s earlier articles were not to be held against him. The “good worker” collected ninety-seven votes, more than anyone except Lenin and Zinoviev. This was a great victory. Koba was finally playing a leading role. What he had failed to win by devotion he had won at once by dirty tricks. Lenin nonetheless had to support Kamenev as well: Lev Borisovich knew too much, and had indeed done a great deal for Lenin. To the amazement of his audience Lenin, usually so unforgiving, suppressed the story of Kamenev’s behavior on trial: “The incident is closed.” And that was that. He recommended Kamenev too for the Central Committee, and the conference duly elected him.

  Koba was not mistaken in Lenin. They began working to seize power there and then, at the conference. They decided to enmesh the whole country in a network of Bolshevik cells and detachments of the Red Guard. For this purpose Lenin selected an organizer of genius, Koba’s onetime roommate in exile in Turukhan, Yakov Sverdlov. Party functionaries were quickly on their way to the provinces, to prepare a new revolution, with German money in their pockets. Russia would soon be ablaze.

  After the conference a narrow inner leadership called the Bureau of the Central Committee was elected. It would later be known as the Politburo and would become the official ruling body of one-sixth of the earth’s land surface for many decades. The first Bureau had four members: Lenin, his faithful assistant Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Koba Stalin. In May 1917 Koba was already a member of the Party’s four-man leadership.

  They had set their course toward a new revolution. Lenin the Jacobin called his policy “peaceful,” but he was preparing to shed blood. He had need now of that wily terrorist who had proved his worth in the Party’s most dubious deeds. Lenin knew too that Koba would always voice his thoughts. Koba’s instant capitulation had given him fresh assurance of it.

  Koba, however, soon had to make room for someone else. As did the other members of the Bureau. May saw the return of Trotsky to Russia.

  THE SECOND QUEEN

  He had been a Menshevik, and vehemently denounced the Bolsheviks, then distanced himself from the Mensheviks in turn. This “freelance revolutionary,” a brilliant journalist and outstanding orator, had fought against Lenin throughout, calling him the “Dictator,” the “future Robespierre,” while Lenin called Trotsky “Yudushka” (after a character in one of Lenin’s favorite novels, The Golovlyov Family, by Shchedrin; Yudushka was a monster of greed, cunning, cruelty, and hypocrisy). These were the mildest of the insults they exchanged. But now, since February, the gap between the views of these old enemies had surprisingly narrowed. Lenin was now the spokesman for Trotsky’s old dream of “permanent revolution,” and they uttered in a single voice the battle calls to rebellion: “All power to the Soviets” and “Down with the Provisional Government.” There was a third slogan, the most fearful of all, calling for the defeat of Russia and the conversion of war with Germany into civil war. The foes had traveled in opposite directions for so many years—and finally met.

  Trotsky’s very first speech, at the station, electrified the crowd. A great actor in the drama of revolution had taken the stage again. Lenin sorely needed such an ally, but he knew that Trotsky, fame’s spoiled darling, would never be the first to seek reconciliation. So, after all those years of vilification, he took the initiative himself and traveled “the road to Canossa” just a few days after Trotsky’s return. He made Zinoviev and Kamenev assist in the negotiations—or rather the suasions. Trotsky’s former enemies urged him to join the Bolshevik Party together with his supporters. Trotsky was stubborn: he demanded the abandonment of the name Bolsheviks. Lenin refused, but continued his efforts at persuasion. Kamenev and Zinoviev jealously watched Lenin humiliating himself, and Trotsky behaving as though he was the Party’s leader even before he had joined it.

  A USEFUL PIECE ON THE BOARD

  Trotsky began cooperating with Lenin. But Koba was not worried.

  Trotsky was later convinced that Koba had always envied and hated him. He was mistaken. Koba’s feelings were dictated by the game of chess he was playing. And, strange as it may seem, Trotsky’s arrival was very helpful to him. He could see into other men’s souls, or at least read their baser emotions. He knew that the advent of the new favorite would bind the three of them—he, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, the three faithful old servants—more closely together. Henceforth they would be as one. What is more, he knew that Lenin would never forgive Trotsky for the long years of struggle against him, would never regard him as “one of us.” He would always be wondering anxiously about the next move of this unmanageable revolutionary, who felt himself to be co-Leader and Lenin’s equal.

  Koba realized that Lenin would appreciate hatred for Trotsky. To outdo others in your devotion to Lenin you must exhibit a particular hatred of Trotsky.

  A COMPLICATED MANEUVER

  The first All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened on June 3. One episode in the proceedings would find a place in all books about the Revolution. The Menshevik Tsereteli declared that “there is at present no party in Russia which would say ‘just put power in our hands and go away, we will take your place.’ There is no such party in Russia.” At which Lenin shouted from the body of the hall, “There is such a Party!” It seemed preposterous: a miserable nine
percent of the delegates at the Congress were Bolsheviks.

  But at a joint meeting of the Bolshevik military organization and the Central Committee on June 6, Lenin proposed that they should organize a demonstration and show how strong the Party was, in spite of its small numbers.

  “All power to the Soviets!” and “Down with the ten capitalist ministers!” were the belligerent slogans of this allegedly peaceful demonstration. I. Smilga told the Central Committee, of which he was a member, in so many words that “if events lead to a clash those taking part must seize the post office and telegraph buildings and the arsenal.” M. Latsis echoed this: “With the support of the machine gun regiment we must occupy the station, the banks, the arsenal, and the post and telegraph buildings.” Yes, the impatient Lenin was getting ready for a first attempt at a Bolshevik coup. How could he fail to make use of Koba, who had organized bloody demonstrations in Georgia? Koba was, of course, at the center of events. He it was who drafted the appeal to “all toilers and to all the workers and soldiers of Petrograd.” But his participation was a matter of the utmost secrecy; he was, after all, an influential member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet, and he had to be kept there in case the demonstration was a failure. Hence his rejoinders in the course of the Central Committee session: “We must neither force the pace, nor let any opportunity slip.… Our duty is to organize a demonstration … but [there must be] no attempt to seize the telegraph office.”