Stalin

by Edvard Radzinsky

  Lenin was not sentimental. The reason for his love, his touching solicitude for Koba was of course strictly practical. Koba’s death would have been a tremendous blow to him, just when he had planned his latest dizzy somersault. And Koba had been assigned a special role.

  FAREWELL TO UTOPIA

  The end of the Civil War did not bring peace to Russia. While the war raged Lenin had consolidated the state, bugbear of all revolutionaries, and buried the Great Utopia. With the economy it was the other way around. Using the Civil War as his excuse, Lenin had realized a number of Marx’s fantasies. He called them “war communism.” Industry was nationalized and private trade was prohibited. From 1919 a tax in kind was imposed on the peasant. This meant that all of his grain, except that needed to feed his family, was confiscated. The peasant had no right to trade in grain. Now that the Civil War was over the peasants expected changes. But the Party rank and file believed that having won the war they would go on from war communism to peace communism. Onward, along the road to the Great Utopia! Only the peasant now refused to surrender his grain.

  Ever since the “mutiny” of 1918, the peasants’ well-wishers, the Socialist Revolutionaries, had been in Butyrki Prison—in the “socialist wing,” as their part of the prison was jestingly called. But news of the peasant unrest which had begun to flare up reached them even there. They learned too that the revolutionary Lenin, only yesterday their ally, was suppressing these revolts with a cruelty of which the dethroned tsar would never have dreamed. Lenin ordered: “The revolt of five kulak cantons must be mercilessly suppressed. An example must be made by (1) hanging—execution must be by hanging, so that the people can see it—at least 100 known kulaks, (2) publishing their names, (3) confiscating all their grain, (4) naming hostages—and doing all this in such a way that people for hundreds of versts around can see it and tremble.” Molotov complacently recalled in his old age how “Lenin gave orders to suppress the Tambov rising by setting fire to everything.”

  In May 1921 Tukhachevsky, no less, was appointed commander of the “Tambov army to combat banditry.” An order issued by him on June 12, 1921, reads: “remnants of the defeated gangs are gathering in the woods.… I hereby order you to clear these woods using poison gas in such a way that it will spread and destroy anything hiding in there.” The commander was sent 250 barrels of chlorine. By then thousands of rebels were already held in the concentration camps which had been hastily set up around Tambov. Tukhachevsky had 45,000 soldiers, 706 machine guns, 5 armored trains, and 18 airplanes. He laid waste with poison gas and fire a large part of the Tambov region. (My nanny, Masha, fled from her Tambov village to Moscow. Her father and brothers were shot before her eyes. Masha woke up screaming every night of her life. She could never forget the heroic feats of the illustrious commander.)

  But these were peasants—counterrevolutionaries through the ages. “The Vendée”—a word familiar to the revolutionary ear—explained it all. Soon afterward, though, the sailors—“the pride and joy of the Russian Revolution”—were up in arms. On the last day of February 1921, exactly four years after the February Revolution, Kronstadt rebelled yet again.

  Trotsky in person went to put down the mutiny, with the famous Tukhachevsky lending a hand. Koba gave no sign of life. He realized that the Party looked on with mixed feelings as the former tsarist officer Tukhachevsky and the Bolshevik leader Trotsky dealt with the sailors. Kronstadt held out. The rebels’ newspaper described how “Marshal Trotsky, up to his knees in blood, opened fire on revolutionary Kronstadt, which has risen against the Communist autocracy to reestablish real Soviet power.”

  Lenin made the Party as such help shed the blood of the disloyal. At the Tenth Party Congress, in March, three hundred of the delegates were mobilized and sent out over the icebound Gulf of Finland to storm Kronstadt. The rising was suppressed, but some of the Kronstadt rebels escaped over the ice to Finland.

  Koba forgot nothing. After the defeat of Hitler, the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs would bring the hapless Kronstadters, old men by now, back from Finland, and dispatch them to Stalin’s camps.

  “The cuckoo has cuckooed its last” was Trotsky’s verdict on the sailors’ revolt. The country was weary of privations. The last rebels had once been the bulwark of the regime. Lenin now performed a fantastic salto mortale. He buried utopia and the dreams of Karl Marx, and announced to a stunned audience at the Tenth Congress the transition to the New Economic Policy (NEP).

  THE SECRET OF NEP

  The October coup had created deep divisions in the Russian intelligentsia. Some of its most brilliant representatives emigrated, or were exiled, to the West, while many of those who remained in Russia hated the Bolsheviks. My father was a journalist who used the English word “Waiting” as his nom de plume. He was waiting for that regime to fall. But, like many other intellectuals, he had faith in NEP. They decided that the Bolsheviks had finally come to their senses. N. Valentinov described how a group of brilliant economists wrote a secret paper entitled “The Fate of the Main Ideas of the October Revolution.” They came to the conclusion that as a result of Lenin’s proclamation of NEP nothing was left of the ideas with which the Bolsheviks had come to power four years earlier. Instead of the state withering away, they were constructing a new and mighty state. Instead of the disappearance of money, NEP called for the reinforcement of the ruble. Lenin had abolished the forcible confiscation of grain, replaced it with an ordinary tax in kind, and—horror of horrors!—permitted the peasant to sell his surplus grain. The free market, that once-detested mainstay of capitalism, was reappearing. Gone was the dream of collective farms, which the peasants would be compelled to join. Instead the peasants were set free. True, lip service to the dream of world revolution was still obligatory, but that was all. The Bolsheviks were already trading with capitalist countries. Their minds were on the prosperity of their own country, not on a universal conflagration. This was how a group of clever intellectuals understood NEP. While in the West the émigré professor Ustryalov welcomed this “new wave of common sense set rolling by the breath of the vast peasant country,” and joyfully exclaimed that “Lenin is one of us. Lenin is a true son of Russia. Lenin is a national hero.”

  Many people believed Lenin when he said that NEP was meant to be “serious and for a long time.” My father and other nonparty intellectuals may be forgiven for this, but how could N. Valentinov forget the traditions of the Party at whose headwaters he had once stood? How could he forget Rule Number 1—that statements by the Party’s leaders were only the product of tactical considerations, whereas the real, long-term plans, the Party’s strategy, had to remain hidden, to be revealed at some future time? A certain person, for instance, assured everyone in 1924 that class warfare was on the wane. He made mock of those who exaggerated the kulak danger. He insisted that the Party should show the greatest tolerance toward those who had gone astray. That certain person was Stalin, who just a few years later would herd the peasants into collective farms, extirpate the kulaks, and present the slogan “Intensify class warfare” as the country’s be-all and end-all. This, it seemed, was strategy. Yesterday’s lie was tactics.

  So when Lenin declared that NEP was “serious and for a long time,” it meant only that he wanted people to think so. At the very same time, he was writing the Commissar for Foreign Trade, the ex-terrorist Krasin, that “it’s a very great mistake to think that NEP means the end of terror. We shall resort to terror again, and to economic terror. Foreigners are now buying up our officials with bribes.… My dears, when the moment comes I shall hang you for it.” In a secret note he offered Kursky, the Commissar for Justice, his own draft version of a clause to be added to the criminal code, defining the nature of terror and the situations which justified its use. Even as he introduced NEP Lenin was already thinking about the retribution to be meted out when the Bolsheviks abandoned it and reverted to the Great Utopia. This is why during NEP the land itself, major industries, foreign trade, the banks, and transport
all remained in the hands of the Bolshevik state. Lenin’s creed remained what it had always been: the dictatorship of the proletariat, which meant “power relying on force, with no limitations, unrestricted by any laws.” Could power of this kind coexist with a NEP that was meant seriously and meant to last”? To Lenin, NEP was just a breathing space, like the Brest peace. When Trotsky called NEP a maneuver, that was the truth of it. But it was not a truth that the Party could be told, because Lenin was eager to obtain funds from the West. Capitalism must come to his aid, so that he could destroy it later.

  But for this to happen the West had to believe that Jacobinism was finished—seriously and for a long time—now that NEP had arrived!

  A tragedy was in the making. Lenin would have to do battle with an indignant Party ignorant of this truth. A Party which now believed that what had to be taken seriously was the death of the Great Utopia. Lenin knew that the opposition would take advantage of this situation. He tells us that “NEP gave rise to panic, grumbling, despondency, and indignation in the Party.”

  NEP. Smart hansom cabs and private cars on the streets, carrying the hated “unculled bourgeois” as the Party called them, beautiful women in mink coats, and casinos reappeared. Moscow plunged into a life of feverish enjoyment. Foodstuffs surfaced from underground. New restaurants opened.

  It was all so reminiscent of Thermidor, the month in which the French Revolution died—a memory hateful to the Bolsheviks.

  It reminds us, too, of Moscow in 1992.

  There were murmurs of discontent from ordinary Party members, who sensed the possibility of dissent within the leadership.

  “We have conjured up the devil of the market,” warned Trotsky.

  9

  THE BIRTH OF STALIN

  LENIN’S NEW ROLE FOR KOBA

  Lenin had allowed for the explosion of indignation within the Party that NEP would cause. While liberating the economy, he now imposed the strictest discipline on the Party. On his initiative the Tenth Congress adopted a resolution forbidding the formation of factions within the Party. Factionalism became punishable by expulsion. Lenin sought to stifle the very possibility of opposition. The wording of this resolution, unthinkable in a democratic party, grated on the ear, and it was therefore kept secret from the public.

  In the spring of the following year, 1922, Lenin introduced a new post—General Secretary of the Party—and in April, on his proposal, Koba was elected to the post. Some suppose that it was meant to be a purely executive position and that only Koba’s malign genius made it so influential in the Party. This is to misunderstand both the situation and Lenin himself. The post of General Secretary was the latest in a series of measures adopted by Lenin against dissidence in the Party. He knew that discontent would grow as NEP took its course and that the eternally rebellious Trotsky would inevitably make a move. Lenin, with all his experience, knew that although factionalism was now banned he had to be wary of open rebellion on the part of the old guard. By 1922 he had begun to feel very tired, exhausted by the constant struggle at Congress after Congress with opposition groups—the “Workers’ Opposition” and all the rest. He was also tormented by inexplicable headaches, which were becoming more and more painful. He decided to create a machine capable of organizing more businesslike and pacific Congresses. This was the Secretariat, headed by faithful Koba. The tried and trusty Koba was to ensure that Congresses behaved themselves. He must learn how to control the Party. Put more simply, he must tame it. That was the meaning of the new post. No wonder that Lenin defined the functions of the Secretariat in disingenuously vague terms. The Politburo had been set up to decide the most important questions of policy, the Orgburo to deal with major organizational questions. The implication was that the Secretariat would deal with less important questions. But with this went a dangerous proviso: any decision by the Secretariat which went unchallenged by members of the Orgburo automatically became a decision of the Orgburo. Any decision of the Secretariat unchallenged by members of the Politburo became a Politburo decision. So that from its inception it was possible for the Secretariat to decide matters of the greatest importance. On Koba’s proposal, his old acquaintance Molotov became Second Secretary. (Lenin had affectionately nicknamed him “Stone Arse” because of his diligence and his ability to work twenty-four hours a day.) The Secretariat and the Orgburo annexed by Koba (and run by the loyal Molotov) began to control all appointments within the Party.

  A SILENT COUP WITHIN THE LEADERSHIP

  Still in 1922, Lenin said at a Politburo meeting that “we [he meant Trotsky and himself] are in our fifties, you [the rest] are all in your forties. We must prepare the thirty- and twenty-year-old comrades who will replace us—select them and train them for leadership.” So it was not Koba’s but Lenin’s idea to replace the leading cadres. The leader was tired of the old guard, his brilliant and eternally carping associates. So he gave Koba the job of preparing replacements. Brilliance must be replaced by efficiency. Koba saw the possibilities and carried out his task enthusiastically. This, for instance, explains the emergence of thirty-year-old Lazar Kaganovich, a shoemaker by trade, like Koba’s father. Born in a Jewish shtetl, he was semiliterate but extremely hardworking. Molotov discovered him and introduced him to Koba, who put him in charge of the Central Committee’s organizational department. Kaganovich had under him a team of Central Committee “instructors,” who were sent to the provinces to check the work of local Party organizations. The future of a local leader depended on their reports. Kaganovich’s department was shortly given the right to appoint local Party officials on the spot. Provincial Party organizations were now entirely in Koba’s hands. Kaganovich set about the gigantic task of installing the right people, checking up on their loyalty, generally shaking up Party officialdom. In less than a year forty-three secretaries of guberniya Party organizations (the plenipotentiary rulers in the provinces) were checked and confirmed. These Party mandarins were endowed with power beyond the dreams of the tsar’s governor-general.

  In the General Secretary’s copy of Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism, beside a sentence of Trotsky’s about the Party’s leadership in the state apparatus, Koba’s marginal comment is a single word: indivisible.

  The power to appoint congenial provincial party leaders and inspect their work—this was the simple lever which enabled Koba to subordinate the Party to himself within a very short time. Trotsky understood what was happening, was dismayed, but it was, alas, too late. Local leaders acceptable to Koba and dependent on the Secretariat were in place everywhere. They were ready to constitute a new, manipulated majority at Congresses. And if any of the Kremlin boyars made bold to defy this majority, he would be hounded out of the Party, in accordance with Lenin’s prohibition of factionalism. Koba had carried out his task successfully. A docile Party had been created, in a very short time.

  But Lenin was not destined to take advantage of it.

  THE GPU KNOWS EVERYTHING

  In February 1922, after inventing the post of General Secretary, Lenin reformed the Cheka. Its new name was the State Political Administration attached to the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs—GPU for short. But before 1923 was out, it was renamed Unified State Political Administration (OGPU). (In common usage it was the GPU as before, and its staff were still GPU men. So GPU is the name which will often be used in our narrative.) The GPU was detached from the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs and officially answerable to the Council of Peoples Commissars, but in reality to Lenin and the Politburo. All this was advertised as the end of the “bloody Cheka.” It was announced that the GPU’s only tasks now were the struggle against serious crimes which endangered the state and intelligence gathering. In reality the ill-defined functions of the old Cheka remained sacrosanct. The collegium of the GPU retained the right to shoot any Russian citizen without exception, and with no questions asked. A triumvirate consisting of the chairman of the GPU, his assistant, and the investigator in charge of the case also had powers of summ
ary execution. The threesome took its decision without calling the accused or his defending lawyer, and the accused was not informed of the verdict until shortly before his execution. Koba immediately involved the newly formed GPU in his offensive against the opposition. For the reorganization of the Cheka was really just another part of Lenin’s plan to tame the Party. To begin with, the GPU was used in the fight against rival revolutionary parties. It was permitted to employ former officials of the tsarist secret police against SRs and Mensheviks: they had so much experience in hunting down those other revolutionaries. The GPU also set its sights on its own Party’s heretics. A new order from the Central Committee obliged all Party members to inform the GPU of all “anti-Party” talk and all opposition groups within the Party. Lenin and Koba had thereby thrust the GPU into the intra-Party struggle. Members of the Party had a duty to inform against their Party comrades. Members of the collegium of the GPU were listed as employees of the Central Committee, so their appointment too was in Koba’s gift. The semiliterate sailors with bombs and the Bolshevik hotheads soon disappeared from the GPU.

  Koba involved the GPU more and more in the life of the Party. After the privations of the prerevolutionary period, high Party functionaries were greedily enjoying life. The GPU now kept the General Secretary regularly informed of fun and games among the bigwigs: the adventures of such high Party functionaries as Kalinin and Yenukidze with ballerinas; the visits of the commissar of education, Lunacharsky, to the Actors’ Club, from which the cultural supremo was carried to his car, to the accompaniment of loud female laughter, as the lights were dimmed at dawn; and the scandalous exploits of Kamenev’s young son Lyutik. For that matter, Kamenev himself had taken a mistress. All this was known to the GPU and to Koba. Files were now kept on Party officials.