As early as June 9 rumors of an impending Bolshevik demonstration against the government were spread at the Congress of Soviets. The Menshevik Gechkori read out to the Congress a leaflet with Koba’s appeal, which he had picked up in the street.
Taken in conjunction with Lenin’s declaration, the demonstration acquired a sinister significance. Tsereteli, speaking from the rostrum, said that “what we have here is a Bolshevik conspiracy to seize power.” A storm of indignation swept through the hall, and Chkheidze said that “tomorrow may prove a fateful day.”
Kamenev, Koba, and the other members of the Bolshevik group feigned astonishment and voted with the Congress as a whole against the demonstration. The Provisional Government warned that any resort to violence would be met with the full force of the state power, and Lenin decided to back down. It was decided overnight to cancel the demonstration. This decision prompted Koba to make an amusing move. He gave notice of his resignation from the Central Committee, arguing that the decision to cancel the demonstration was a mistake. He knew very well that this was not a dangerous move, that he would be invited to withdraw his resignation. That indeed was what happened. But his declaration had revealed to the Party as a whole what until then had been a secret—his part in organizing the demonstration. It showed too what a bold and uncompromising fellow Koba was. Koba the chess player.
AN “IN-DEPTH” LANGUAGE
While I was working in the Party Archive, one of my anonymous informants told me: “Bolshevik documents are peculiar in that wherever they say ‘peaceful demonstration’ they most probably mean ‘armed uprising.’ The general rule is that ‘yes’ almost invariably means ‘no.’ Somebody has called this an ‘in-depth’ language—a false-bottomed language, in which words have two or three meanings. Add to this that Stalin was a grand master. To understand the reasons for his moves you must look at the result. Only then will certain things become clear.” I often recall these words. Koba really did want an armed demonstration. We shall not understand why until much later.
The Congress of Soviets, then, reacted indignantly to news that preparations for a demonstration were under way. A storm blew up. It looked for a while as if the Bolsheviks would be torn limb from limb. The harshest measures were proposed, and then it all petered out. Instead, the Congress resolved to “organize a demonstration” of its own. A peaceful one, of course, with “Trust the Congress and the Government” as its slogan. But it cost a great deal of intrigue behind the scenes to jockey the delegates into adopting this idiotic resolution, which instead of condemning the Bolsheviks in effect authorized them to carry on with the demonstration they had organized. Who foisted this stupid motion on the Congress? It was the handiwork of a genius at intrigue. Koba’s scheme is taking its course, though for the present its purpose remains unclear.
A spectacular demonstration, with Bolshevik slogans, took place on June 18. It was a triumph. Two articles about the demonstration appeared in Pravda, by Lenin and by Koba. One by each of the two organizers. “A bright, sunny day,” Koba wrote. “The procession to the Field of Mars went on from morning till evening.… An endless forest of banners.… There was a steady roar from the crowd.… Every now and then cries of ‘All power to the Soviet.… Down with the capitalist ministers’ rang out.”
No more than two hours after this success, Lenin, in consultation with other members of the Central Committee, decided that it was time for the proletarian masses to show just how strong they were.
The ailing Provisional Government was going through one of its regular crises. Russia’s wrangling democrats had created a favorable situation for an attempt to seize power. Lenin resolved to take advantage of it.
NOT NECESSARY, YET NECESSARY
The hand that would someday write Stalin’s masterpieces can be clearly seen in the organization of the July action. Rumors that it was about to be sent to the front were circulated in the First Machine Gun Regiment, which teemed with Bolshevik agitators. Soldiers who preferred to do their fighting at political meetings were furious, and called for armed resistance. The Bolsheviks, of course, urged them to cancel the demonstration. One of the leaders of the military organization, V. Nevsky, described how they went about it: “I gave my advice in such a way that only a fool could conclude from my speech that the demonstration should not take place.” The regiment naturally had no wish to look like fools. They had mastered the “in-depth” language of the agitators: when they said “Don’t act,” they meant “Act.”
A regimental meeting on July 2 called for an uprising. The regiment sent delegates to other army units, to factories, and to Kronstadt. Soldiers came out onto the streets fully armed. Lenin was reported ill; he disappeared from active life.
In the Kronstadt Fortress the sailors were in permanent session. The rebels among them had distinguished themselves at the very beginning of the Revolution. During those first, “bloodless” days, sailors on vessels of the Baltic fleet had shot 120 officers. They tore off Admiral Viren’s epaulettes, dragged him to Anchor Square, and killed him. Admiral Butakov and 36 other senior officers were shot on the same day. The naval fortress became a stronghold of piratical freedom. The newly organized Bolshevik Committee assumed the leadership of the mutinous sailors. Kronstadt had become a Leninist citadel. When representatives of the Machine Gun Regiment appeared there, the comedy continued as before: the Bolsheviks urged the sailors to disobey the machine gunners’ call to arms, but urged them in such a way that they obeyed it. The Bolshevik midshipman Raskolnikov, one of the leaders of Red Kronstadt, wrote, “We had very nice custom according to which I telephoned Petrograd daily and asked for Lenin, Zinoviev, or Kamenev … to get my instructions.”
The Kronstadters received instructions from one other leader. The poet Demyan Biedny described how he was once sitting in Pravda’s editorial office when the phone on Koba’s desk rang. An inquiry from Kronstadt—should the sailors turn up in Petrograd for a demonstration with or without their weapons? Koba took a puff or two on his pipe and answered, “Well, hacks like me always carry our own weapons—our pencils—with us … what do you do with yours?”
As ever, he was at the center of the action, yet uninvolved. That very same day, as Tsereteli related in his Reminiscences of the February Revolution, Koba stated at a session of the Soviet that armed soldiers and workers were eager to take to the streets, but that the Bolsheviks had dispatched agitators to restrain them. Koba asked for this statement to be recorded, then he took his leave. Chkheidze told Tsereteli with a wry smile that “men of peace have no need to put their peaceful intentions on record.”
Koba did not, of course, expect to be believed. It was simply the latest move in his game: he had chosen the convenient role of peace-loving intermediary between the Soviets and the Bolsheviks. He may possibly have persuaded Lenin to allot him that role. A Georgian would obviously find it easier to reach an accommodation with other Georgians if the demonstration was a failure.
On July 4, armed Kronstadters set sail to take control of Petrograd. They disembarked on Vasilievsky Island, with “their weapons.” An endless procession of armed sailors made for Ksheshinskaya’s mansion. Naturally, the peace-loving Koba was not at Bolshevik headquarters. Lunacharsky and Sverdlov, Bolsheviks of secondary importance, came out on the balcony to address the crowd, but the sailors demanded Lenin, and they were told that he was ill. The sailors began to feel uneasy. Knowing that Lenin was in the building, the exhausted Raskolnikov tracked him down to his hiding place, and the “sick man” had to make a (very cautious) speech. Then the demonstrators went on to the Tavrida Palace, to insist that the Soviet take power. Once there, the sailors arrested Chernov, leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, who came out to meet them. They were about to drive away with him and shoot him, when Trotsky, realizing that there would be a heavy price to pay for this, jumped onto the hood of the car. From that platform, he began extolling the sailors, “the fine flower and the pride of the Russian Revolution,” but concluded his panegyric wit
h the words “Citizen Chernov, you are free.”
Disorderly demonstrations continued throughout the day. Crowds of workers and armed sailors roamed the streets. Lenin had by now moved to the Tavrida Palace. But this was the moment at which troops loyal to the government arrived from the front. The fate of the action was decided. Midshipman Raskolnikov prepared to stand siege in Ksheshinskaya’s mansion.
THE ENDGAME BEGUN
The attempted coup was crushed. Lenin had lost. The question arises—what about Koba? True, in the event of victory he would have come to power with the Party. But even in the event of defeat he was on his way to power. Power within the Party. That explains his torturous maneuvers.
The Provisional Government was carrying out a secret investigation at the time. Evgeny Yermolenko, who had returned from across the German lines, testified that he had been recruited by the Germans to agitate in favor of peace with Germany, and that Lenin likewise had been commissioned by the Germans to do everything in his power to undermine confidence in the Provisional Government. These activities were funded by the German general staff. Yermolenko also indicated the channels by which the money reached Lenin. The Directorate of Military Intelligence at Supreme Headquarters latched onto the investigation, and from that moment Lenin was under surveillance. Intercepted telegrams showed that the Bolsheviks were receiving large sums of money from abroad.
Kerensky personally took charge of the inquiry into Lenin’s involvement in these activities. Only a very narrow circle knew about it. But the Socialist Revolutionary Kerensky realized that proof of Bolshevik guilt could be used by the army, the monarchists, and reactionaries generally, against the forces of the left. How could he fail to inform his party brethren, the SR leadership, and his Menshevik collaborators in the Soviet, of this investigation? Rumors of a secret inquiry soon reached the general public. Obviously, they could not have been unknown to Koba, a Georgian member of the Soviet Executive Committee. Koba calculated that any Bolshevik demonstration would prompt the government to make use of this investigation, and that the accusations leveled at them would exclude the Bolshevik leadership and Trotsky from legal activity. They were all, in one way or another, connected with German money. Only one leader of the first rank was not tarred with this brush—Koba himself. Nor had he stepped into the limelight during the July rebellion. He would be the only one left at liberty.
Yet again it happened just as he expected. Toward evening on July 4, P. Pererzev, the Minister of Justice, made known some of the findings of the inquiry (still in progress) into the connections between Lenin and the Bolsheviks on the one hand and the Germans on the other. That night the Bolsheviks hastily called off the demonstration, but it was too late. Proceedings against “the spies” were already under way. The genie was out of the bottle. Lenin, of course, also knew about this delayed-action bomb. Was this perhaps why he had been in such a hurry, and risked the July action?
Lenin turned to Koba. He was the only immaculate member of the leadership. The Georgian Koba went to see the Georgian Chkheidze and asked him to “nip the slanders in the bud” and forbid the publication of materials relating to the case before the investigation was completed. Koba got his way. Chkheidze promised. But Koba, an experienced journalist himself, could easily see that it would be impossible to prevent publication of such sensational material by one newspaper or another. A defiant newspaper came forward immediately: the bold Living Word published letters from two revolutionaries, N. Pankratov, who had been imprisoned for many years in the Schlusselburg Fortress, and a former associate of Lenin’s, Aleksinsky. Both denounced Lenin and his comrades as spies. The endgame had begun.
THE ENDGAME: KOBA’S VICTORY
Troops newly arrived from the front surrounded Ksheshinskaya’s former residence. The government ordered the organization of a task force to storm the building. Sailors under Raskolnikov’s command prepared to defend it. But this was a gesture of despair. The grim-faced, unshaven front-line soldiers hated and longed to avenge themselves on these sailors who had always skulked in the rear.
Once again Koba saved the situation by parleying with the Soviet. No blood was shed, and the building was surrendered without a fight. Koba made his way next to the Peter and Paul Fortress. The Kronstadters installed there were determined to defend themselves. Soldiers had surrounded the fortress and were about to fire on the “German spies.” But Koba talked the sailors round with an unhurried speech and a few Georgian jokes. They agreed to surrender their weapons and returned peacefully to Kronstadt. The peacemaker had twice succeeded in preventing bloodshed.
On July 6, the Provisional Government signed a warrant for the arrest of the Bolshevik leaders. The names of Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Lunacharsky were on the list. Lunacharsky and Trotsky were plucked from their beds and taken straight to jail. But Lenin and his faithful aide Zinoviev managed to vanish underground. It was Koba again who helped them do it.
Lenin hid at first in the apartment of a Bolshevik called Kayurov. But Krupskaya wrote, “Kayurov’s son was an anarchist, and the young people were always fiddling with bombs, which was not altogether appropriate in a conspiratorial apartment.”
Sergo Ordzhonikidze said in his memoirs that “many prominent Bolsheviks took the view that since such a grave accusation had been leveled at the Leader of the Party he should stand trial and clear himself and the Party.” And Lenin told Krupskaya that “Grigori [Zinoviev] and I have decided to stand trial.… Let us say goodbye. We may never see each other again.” He was very anxious not to go to jail. And, of course, Koba came to his aid yet again. He thought up another of his comedies with a predetermined ending. He sent Ordzhonikidze to the Soviet to ask about the conditions Ilyich could expect in jail. When told, Koba immediately declared the conditions unacceptable. He made the statement which Lenin so wanted to hear: “The Junkers will never get Lenin as far as the jail—they’ll kill him on the way.” Meaning that Lenin must not go to jail at all. The Central Committee followed this with a ruling that “in view of the danger to his life Lenin must not stand trial.”
Lenin himself had no wish to remain in Petrograd. He was naturally afraid of standing trial. Once more the faithful Koba came to his aid. He found Lenin and Zinoviev another refuge, in the house of a worker called Yemelyanov, not far from Sestroretsk. Faithful Koba even escorted Lenin to the railway station. Koba, his savior.
Yemelyanov hid the fugitives in a shack out in the hay fields on the lake shore. Lenin and Zinoviev would remain there until autumn. So for the present the Party was left in the charge of Koba Stalin.
His lengthy game of chess had ended in victory.
TRYING ON THE LEADER’S CLOTHES
Kerensky, the head of the Provisional Government, was afraid that the “espionage” affair would strengthen the forces of the right. The arrest of Trotsky and the disappearance of Lenin gave him all that he wanted. He did not believe that they would return to politics after such a scandal.
The espionage case was postponed indefinitely. What is more, the Red Guard was not disarmed, Bolshevik newspapers continued to publish, and the Bolsheviks prepared for their next Congress unhindered. The Congress was semilegal, and Kerensky’s government studiously averted its eyes from the assembly of three hundred Bolshevik delegates. The proceedings were presided over by Koba Stalin, trying himself out for the first time in the role of Leader.
Lenin, however, remained in control of the Party from his shack, and submitted to the Congress what would have been the key points in his report. These were read aloud by Koba, who made the two main speeches at the Congress: the Central Committee’s wartime report and a statement on the political situation. He also made the closing speech.
Stalin would later designate Lenin’s shack one of the shrines of the Communist religion. Thousands of pictures by Soviet artists show Lenin all alone there, busily writing his immortal works, or Lenin welcoming to the shack his friend Koba. The shack’s other occupant, Zinoviev, would later vanish from the far-f
amed shack, destroyed by Stalin. Yemelyanov would be expelled from the Party and banished, and his two sons would both perish in Stalin’s camps.
The shack itself was always kept in good repair, and Stalin decided in 1947, its thirtieth anniversary, to have it enclosed in marble. Then, on his orders, a live exhibit was introduced to the shack—the aged Yemelyanov. The old man, having lost his children, and by now half-blind, would tell visitors all about the immortal friendship between Koba and Lenin. And about their meetings in 1917—when “one of my sons used to bring Stalin to the shack by boat.”
They did in fact meet there on a number of occasions. It was there that Lenin passed on to Koba the Party’s new and somewhat alarming slogans. Kerensky’s government was called “an organ of counterrevolution,” while the Soviets were a “fig leaf” to cover the government’s nakedness. Lenin canceled the slogan “All power to the Soviets,” and called on the Party to prepare for an armed uprising.
After Lenin’s departure, Stalin left the bachelor apartment where he had lived so contentedly and moved in with the Alliluyevs, taking over the room which had recently hidden Lenin and Zinoviev. As always, Koba tried not to put his hosts to any trouble. “What he did about his meals, and where, apart from his early morning tea, I don’t know,” wrote Fyodor Alliluyev in his memoirs. “I sometimes saw him devouring bread, sausage, and smoked sea carp at a stall opposite our building. That was obviously his dinner—and perhaps his lunch too.”
The move coincided with his hour of destiny—the Sixth Congress. But Koba possessed only one cotton shirt and a jacket that had seen better days. The Alliluyevs decided, Fyodor recounted, that “the Leader could not direct the work of the Congress looking like that. So we bought him a new suit. He didn’t like ties. Mother sewed on a high collar so that it was like a military tunic.” That form of dress would be known to history as the typical costume of a Bolshevik Leader. It was really, of course, Koba’s own invention. His semimilitary appearance symbolized his secret pursuit of the Great Dream—the world revolution which the Bolsheviks were initiating. That was why they were about to seize power in Russia. Later on, Lenin too would wear the semimilitary tunic.
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