So, while he was in Smolny he used Lenin’s office. Lenin evidently chose to keep Koba at his side. Who knew what Kerensky would do next? Or the generals, the army? He might have to run for it at a moment’s notice. He wanted Koba near him, just in case.
Panic reigned among Lenin’s closest associates throughout the first few weeks. Kamenev, who headed the Central Executive Committee elected at the Second Congress of Soviets, trembled, and Zinoviev was terrified. They saw their prophecies coming true: they wouldn’t succeed in holding on to power unless they shared it with parties supported by the majority of the population. Otherwise there would be civil war. The People’s Commissars appointed by Lenin were also losing their nerve. They too demanded the creation of a “multiparty government drawn from the socialist parties.” The leadership of the Railmen’s Union, Vizkhel, threatened to bring traffic on the railroads to a halt. With famine and an icy winter at the door (there was no fuel in the city) the Central Committee discussed the situation. Lenin and Trotsky were fully occupied with the defense of the capital against Kerensky, and in their absence the Central Committee agreed to create a multiparty government. Lenin was enraged. He had not seized power in order to share it with the Socialist Revolutionaries and the hated Mensheviks. Lenin never wavered in his support of one-party government. Kamenev demonstratively abandoned his post at the head of the Central Executive Committee, and some other Bolsheviks left the government.
AN OFFICE WHICH ONLY TWO COULD ENTER
Meanwhile, what of Koba? While so many of those closest to Lenin were wavering, Koba remained faithful. But did it really matter? Who cared what he thought?
My father recalled that, arriving in Petrograd at the time, he saw enormous portraits of the leaders at the station: Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev. But there were no portraits of Stalin. Nor was his name known to the people. At that time he played only supporting roles. That is the unshakable view of many historians.
Imagine, then, my amazement when I saw in the former Party Archive a document headed “Instructions to the Guard on Lenin’s Office,” signed by Lenin himself in the early months of the new regime, on January 22, 1918. In accordance with these instructions only two people had the right to enter Lenin’s office without prior notification and at any time—Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky was the acknowledged joint leader of the October coup. Lenin was obliged to acknowledge it. But why Koba?
Because Koba was his shadow and the person he trusted above all others in the Party. Lenin was the Ruler. Koba was the Ruler’s trusted aide. The others, of course, enjoyed much of the glory. But much glory does not always mean much power.
Koba would shortly prove it.
THE “PUNITIVE SWORD”
Lenin and Trotsky were now putting the finishing touches to their program. Trotsky formulated it as follows: “All this petit bourgeois riffraff … once it realizes that our regime is strong will be with us.… When we crushed Krasnov’s Cossacks on the outskirts of Petrograd a mass of sympathizers emerged on the following day. The petit bourgeois mass looks for the power to which it must submit. Whoever fails to understand that understands nothing.”
The ruthless, uncompromising exercise of power—that was the path they must follow. They shut down all opposition newspapers, and workers’ squads wrecked the print shops.
Shortly afterward, in December 1917, they established the Cheka—the “Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage by Officials.” The Cheka was the “punitive sword of the Revolution” (the new leaders loved rhetoric in the style of the French Revolution).
Gippius noted in her diary: “There are only two newspapers left—Pravda and New Life [Gorky’s paper]. Horrifying stories are told about the torture chamber of the Peter and Paul Fortress.” The Cheka, with the Polish professional revolutionary Dzherzhinsky at its head, filled the cells with aristocrats, officers, and striking civil servants. In the women’s cells the wives and daughters of yesterday’s bigwigs met prostitutes and thieves. It was announced in the city that in the night hours dangerous criminals could buy their way into the women’s cells and enjoy their fun.
Civil servants, frightened by horrific rumors of torture chambers, hurried back to the new people’s commissariats, while the mutinous Kamenev and the undisciplined commissars quickly submitted to the Leader’s will. Kamenev repeated, as so often before, that “as time goes by I am more and more convinced that Ilyich does not make mistakes.” But Lenin chose to install the docile Sverdlov in Kamenev’s place, as head of the Central Executive Committee. The mighty organ of the Soviets was finally converted into an ornamental facade for the government. The Soviets were finished. The Party would rule. And the Party’s Leader. Koba saw once again that force majeure worked very well in that country.
THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
Lenin’s government also described itself as “provisional” and undertook to provide for immediate elections to a Constituent Assembly. Lenin promised at the victorious Second Congress to abide by the results of the imminent elections—the “will of the popular masses.”
Koba was now given a splendid lesson in Leninist tactics. Lenin was in no doubt that the results of the elections would be unfavorable. But since he had no intention of surrendering power, the dismissal of the first freely elected Russian parliament was a prospect already dimly visible.
Lenin needed a revolutionary ally for this most unrevolutionary enterprise. He therefore offered the Left Socialist Revolutionaries seats in the government. They accepted, subject to a number of conditions—restoration of the freedom of the press and the suppression of the Cheka among them. Newspapers were allowed to appear, but the Cheka was not suppressed. Instead, a number of people on the extreme left of the Socialist Revolutionary Party were brought into it, but only in less important posts. SRs were also given seats in the government, but these were relatively unimportant. Elections to the Constituent Assembly followed. As Lenin had expected, the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries were the losers. But he was unperturbed—the Bolsheviks were victorious among the garrison troops in both capitals. The soldiers liked this new regime, under which they did not have to fight and could shoot their officers and break into rich Petersburg apartments and hold drunken public meetings. For the time being it was they who decided, these armed assemblies of soldiers’ greatcoats and sailors’ reefers. Lenin had the means of dispersing the Constituent Assembly. He could act.
Koba was behind the scenes. But in the dismissal of the Assembly we can see the hand of an expert organizer of mass demonstrations. Latvian snipers, other soldiers, and sailors surrounded the Tavrida Palace. Every street was packed with troops loyal to the Bolsheviks. Demonstrators supporting the Assembly were fired upon, as in tsarist times. The first session opened only after the dispersal of the demonstrators. In the hall, soldiers and sailors acted the part of spectators. The stenographic record shows that this, the one and only session, was accompanied throughout by shouting and whistling from the body of the hall. An amusing detail: when he put on his overcoat, Lenin found that his Browning was no longer in the pocket—someone had stolen it while the meeting was in progress. This tells you something about the invited audience. At 5:00 A.M., when he judged that the orators had been teased enough, the bearded giant Dybenko, who had served in the tsar’s navy and now commanded the republic’s naval forces, ordered the sailors on guard to terminate the session. The guard commander, the sailor Zheleznyakov, tapped the chairman on the shoulder and spoke his “historic words”: “The guard is tired. It is time to go home.”
Reactions to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly were muted. Koba realized yet again how quickly the spirit of the intelligentsia could be broken by stern measures. “Lackeys of the imperialists,” “slaves of the American dollar,” “stabbers in the back”—such were the epithets with which Pravda escorted the first freely elected Russian parliament to its grave.
Twenty years later, in the same newspaper, Koba would escort to their graves Dybenko
and the other old Bolsheviks who had so cheerfully dispersed the helpless Russian Assembly.
PEACE WITH GERMANY
Once they helped to secure approval for the dismissal of the parliament at the next session of the Congress, the Left SRs had served their purpose. Lenin’s government could rid itself of the prefix “provisional.” Next to go would be the Left SRs. The clash would inevitably come, Lenin expected, during the peace negotiations with the Germans.
Lenin urgently needed peace. He had to have breathing space, to put an end to the power of the street meeting, to demobilize the unruly soldiery and create an army of his own. And, of course, the Germans were insisting on peace and he had to meet his obligations to his creditors.
The Germans had signed an armistice with the Bolsheviks in January. A highly representative delegation, headed by Trotsky, the second leader of the Revolution, had set off for Brest-Litovsk. Koba was not a member of the delegation. He had already chosen his role—that of Trotsky’s enemy. It enabled him to stand aside in this dubious “German affair.”
As they approached Brest, that most cynical of Bolsheviks, Karl Radek, made an eccentric display of idealism, feverishly throwing from the window of the train leaflets urging German soldiers to stop the war with their Russian brother-workers. In Brest, Trotsky continued Radek’s ideological fun and games. He turned the negotiations into an interminable lecture in condemnation of imperialism. The German generals heard him out, and then presented him with the harsh conditions under which they would make peace: the Baltic states, the Ukraine, the Caucasus etc., would be lost to Russia.
Trotsky broke off the peace talks and returned to the capital for consultation. An endless dispute broke out within the Party. Lenin explained that breathing space was essential: “If we don’t conclude peace—peace will be concluded by a different government.” But the “left opposition,” led by one of the Party’s most talented theoreticians, the young Bukharin, demanded the rejection of the German conditions. “Lenin’s mistake,” Bukharin declared, “is that he looks at this matter from the Russian, not the international point of view. The international viewpoint calls not for a shameful peace but for revolutionary war, a war of self-sacrifice. The struggle of the first workers’ and peasants’ state in the world must rouse the European proletariat to rally to its defense immediately.” In short, it must spark off the longed-for world revolution.
Lenin explained that there would be a world revolution, without fail—but there already was a Russian Revolution, the one they should be thinking about. Besides, there was no one to do the fighting. The army had disintegrated: “The Russian trenches are almost empty.” Lenin insisted on peace at any price. Koba supported the Leader, and noted that “there is no revolutionary movement in the West. There is only potential—and we can’t bank on potential.” Lenin, of course, protested against this lack of faith. And Koba, also of course, meekly held his tongue.
He did, however, see clearly, as he listened to all these furious arguments about world revolution, that it was all superstitious nonsense. Marx’s dogmas were now the Old Testament. Lenin served the New Testament, the one and only idea of which was to hang on to the power you have seized in this country. Koba had mastered the teaching of those who served the New Testament—you could ally yourself with the devil himself if it was necessary in order to win and keep power. He understood too what an enormous concentration of power there was in this broad-browed little man wearing an old suit and a shirt with a dirty collar. It was not hard to understand. He was just the same himself.
Lenin obtained the Central Committee’s support. But agreed tactics were to drag out negotiations in expectation of world revolution. Only if faced with an ultimatum would they conclude a humiliating peace. Trotsky set off for Brest again. Once again the German generals had to listen to his impassioned outpourings. In the end, the Germans presented an ultimatum. But instead of concluding peace Trotsky uttered a paradoxical call for “neither peace nor war,” and took his leave.
The Germans, inevitably, launched an attack. How eagerly people in Petrograd awaited them! “You’ll see, when the Germans come they’ll restore order” was a statement often heard on the city streets at the time.
But the Bolsheviks knew very well that the Germans would not come.
Lenin begged for peace. The attacking Germans put forward new, much more onerous conditions. Again Lenin summoned the Central Committee. He urged them to make peace at any price. Koba again supported Lenin. After endless discussion Lenin won. The shameful peace would be concluded.
Stalin’s historians would never stop cursing Trotsky for his inexplicable move. But Lenin quickly forgave his crazy behavior. Why? Let Trotsky speak for himself: “I thought that before we signed the peace treaty it was essential at all costs to give the workers of Europe clear proof of the hostility between ourselves and the rulers of Germany.” That was why he had provoked the Germans into starting military operations. It was all done to show the workers of Europe that “we signed the peace at bayonet point.” Yes, it was all just a show. Like the proclamations scattered by Radek. The object was the same: cleanse the Bolsheviks of the “German agents” smear before making peace.
This game suited the Germans very well. It gave them the right to attack and help themselves to extra slices of the Russian cake. But they knew too that the offensive must be a limited one. If they bent the stick too far, if they didn’t halt in time, the Bolsheviks would simply fall. And wounded national pride might give Russia fresh strength to resist. Instead of the loyal Bolsheviks they might get a government of war. And Lenin, of course, realized that the Germans would call a halt.
Both sides, then, knew that peace would be made. The simple truth was that both Bolshevik leaders put on the Brest show for the eyes of their uncomprehending Party and allowed the Germans to “pinch a bit off the Russian cake.” Both sides needed this German offensive along the whole front: it enabled the Bolsheviks to explain Brest to the proletariat, while the Germans were repaid in territory for their gold. Lenin was, in fact, paying not only for past support, but for that which the Germans went on generously providing.
After the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, Baron Mirbach became German ambassador to Russia. In his secret dispatches to the kaiser he described the aid which the Germans were now giving to the Bolsheviks. He did not believe that the Bolsheviks would last long: “I should be grateful for instructions on the following questions. Is the use of large sums in our own interests? What tendency should we support if the Bolsheviks do not hold on?” Berlin replied that “it is in our own best interests for the Bolsheviks to remain in power.”
The peace treaty was discussed at the Seventh Congress of the Party. The nerve-racking struggle between Lenin and the “leftists” was resumed. Bukharin, Kollontai, and even Lenin’s lover, Inessa Armand, were among the young intellectuals opposed to the treaty. Opposition was fashionable. The treaty cast too ambiguous a shadow. But what of Koba? To begin with, he took up his favorite position, midway between the disputants: drag out the negotiations, don’t sign the treaty. But after one rebuke from Lenin, he immediately voted with his Leader, for peace. Still, his main aim had been achieved: he had more or less dissociated himself from this shameful peace.
After a long struggle Lenin won the Party’s support for the Brest peace.
The Seventh Congress, at which the Brest treaty was approved, also changed the Party’s name. It was now the “Communist Party.” Another of history’s little ironies, since this was the Congress at which the Party said farewell to communist idealism.
The shameful peace treaty consolidated the position of the new regime.
“I cannot picture the signature of Emperor Hohenzollern side by side with the signature of Bronstein-Trotsky,” wrote the well-known journalist Yablonovsky. But he was obliged to picture it.
Now, with the help of the treaty, the next step was to get rid of the Left SRs.
“WAKE UP, OLD FELLOW, WE AREN’T IN THE SMOLNY NOW”<
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This was a feat which Lenin preferred to perform in a more convenient setting. He decided to transfer the capital to Moscow.
The move was meant partly as further proof that there was no secret understanding with the Germans: the Bolsheviks were so distrustful of the German imperialists, so afraid of a sudden attack, that they were transferring the capital to the heartland of Russia. In reality they had decided to exchange Petrograd with its hostile intelligentsia and its SR militants for quiet, patriarchal Moscow.
Lenin and the other senior leaders installed themselves in the Kremlin. Trotsky remarked on the strangeness of it—the Kremlin with its medieval walls and gilded domes as the citadel of the Revolution. It was in fact symbolic. Removal to the capital of the tsars signified the beginning of a new reign. Revolution and utopia would gradually die.
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