A KREMLIN MYSTERY
“One fine morning,” Krupskaya wrote, “he went to the garage unaided, got into the car and insisted on being driven to Moscow.… When he got there he went round all the rooms, called at his office, looked in on Sovnarkom, sorted out his copybooks, collected three volumes of Hegel,… and then decided to go for a ride round the city. Next day he was in a hurry to get back to Nizhny Novgorod. Moscow wasn’t mentioned again.”
But there was someone else in the car with him besides his faithful wife. Maria Ulyanova accompanied them. Krupskaya’s failure to mention it is not due to mere forgetfulness.
N. Valentinov, of whom we have heard before, has published a story attributed to Maria Ulyanova: “All the way from Nizhny Novgorod Lenin kept hurrying the driver up.… After looking in at his office in Sovnarkom Lenin went to his apartment. He spent a long time searching for something there. He got extremely annoyed about it, and went into convulsions.… Maria told the doctor about it when she arrived.… Krupskaya called the doctor in afterward and said: ‘V.I. is sick. He may have a somewhat distorted view of things. I don’t want the rumor to get around that letters or documents have been stolen from him. A rumor of that sort can only cause great unpleasantness. Please forget everything that Maria Ilyinishna said to you … she joins me in this request.’ ” But what was it Lenin was looking for in his office?
Lenin’s “Letter to the Congress” leaves us with a distinct impression that something is left unsaid. For instance, Lenin writes to the Congress about Stalin’s “immense power,” and expresses his apprehension that he will not always “use it cautiously enough.” Should Stalin, then, be relieved of his post? Lenin makes no such suggestion. What is more, as if to demonstrate that there is no one to replace Stalin, he gives unflattering character sketches of other Party leaders. So he is not to be removed? What then should be done? All that is needed, apparently, is to enlarge the membership of the Central Committee by bringing in more workers. Are these workers supposed to curb the lust for power of Stalin and the other Party bosses? Can Lenin really have been so naive? After Stalin’s rudeness to Krupskaya Lenin added another paragraph in which he now demanded Stalin’s “transfer from the post of Gensek.” Did he leave it at that, with no recommendation for a replacement? No name mentioned? That could cause chaos. A Leader cannot leave his Party without precise instructions. They must have been there. But where are they now?
With all his political experience Lenin was bound to realize that a letter containing such demeaning descriptions of all his heirs might simply never reach the Party. It would unite them in the wish to suppress it. (That, incidentally, is what actually happened. When the American Communist Max Eastman once mentioned it, Trotsky promptly declared that no such letter existed.)
Another strange thing: of all those mentioned in the letter Stalin appears in the most favorable light. He is the one Lenin accuses of rudeness and intolerance, but that was never regarded as a fault in the proletarian party. And the postscript calling for Stalin’s transfer could be regarded as an emotional outburst, the result of Stalin’s clash with Krupskaya. Surely a brilliant journalist like Lenin could not fail to realize all this if he had been eager to remove Stalin. So where does that leave us?
The most likely explanation is that the text that has come down to us is only part of the letter and that the expert conspirator Lenin deliberately left this variant in the Secretariat, allowing for the unreliability of the office staff, and for Koba’s hyperactivity. This text was meant for Koba-Stalin.
Was there then, another, fuller, text? If so, he might have kept it in a secret place in his Kremlin office. Possibly his proposals to the Congress were also there. Was there a recommendation, for example, to replace the Gensek with a triumvirate of secretaries—Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Stalin? A proposal which would reduce Stalin’s influence to nothing?
It may be that a story told by Annenkov, the artist, shows traces of this full text. After Lenin’s death the artist, working in the Lenin Institute, saw there a jar containing the Leader’s brain. He was astonished to find that one of the cerebral hemispheres was healthy, and of normal weight, while the other seemed to be hanging by a thread and was shriveled, no bigger than a walnut. He also saw in the institute rough drafts of Lenin’s last writings, which utterly amazed him. These were Lenin’s recommendations on ways of deceiving “deaf-mutes”—the name used here for Western European capitalists. Annenkov reproduces them in his own words: “In their pursuit of profit the capitalists of the whole world will want to conquer the Soviet market. Blinded by their greed for gain they will be ready to close their eyes to our activities, to turn themselves into deaf-mutes. As a result we shall obtain from them the goods and the money to create an army. Their capital will raise it to the level of perfection. For a future victorious attack on our own creditors. We will make the deaf-mutes work for their own destruction, but to do so we must first do a thorough job of turning them into deaf-mutes.” This was followed by a plan in outline: NEP, the fictitious separation of Party and government, reestablishment of relations with all countries, do everything possible to make the deaf-mutes believe, etc.
Lenin’s intention in visiting his Kremlin office was to check the full text of his “Letter to the Congress.” But the Gensek too was an experienced conspirator. He had anticipated something of the sort, and had already checked the office himself. The text had vanished. Hence, obviously, the unhappy Leader’s seizure. The last lines of a note written by Maria Ulyanova shortly before she died read as follows: “V.I. valued Stalin as a practical worker, but thought it essential to find some means of restraining his idiosyncrasies and his oddities, on account of which he thought that Stalin should be removed from the post of Gensek. He said so specifically in his political testament, which never reached the Party, but I will deal with that on another occasion.”
There was no other occasion. Maria died soon after. Or was there? Did she write later about the missing testament? And did Ulyanova pay for the “other occasion” with her life?
11
THE END OF THE OCTOBER LEADERS
TROTSKY ATTACKS
Trotsky realized the full horror of the dying Leader’s legacy. The secret resolution forbidding factionalism, ordered by Lenin and adopted at the Tenth Party Congress in 1921, made it possible for Trotsky’s enemies to shut his mouth at any time. All they needed was a simple majority, and that was provided for: the Gensek had organized it in advance. In a letter to the Central Committee, yesterday’s champion of the toughest methods possible now called for Party democracy. At the same time, a letter repeating Trotsky’s demands for democracy and signed by forty-six prominent Party members was sent to the Central Committee. Among these latter-day supporters of democracy was Alexander Beloborodov, former Party boss of the Red Urals, who had organized the execution of the tsar and his family at Ekaterinburg, and was now Dzherzhinsky’s deputy in the bloody Cheka. Other equally ruthless Bolsheviks had also signed the letter. In his reply the Gensek ridiculed them: “In the ranks of the opposition we find such comrades as Comrade Beloborodov, whose democratism lingers on in the memories of Russian workers, Rozengoltz, whose democratism did little for the health of workers on our waterways and railroads, Pyatakov, whose democratism had the Donbas not just crying out but howling.” He went through the whole list of signatories, recalling the bloody deeds of which they had so recently been guilty.
But his allies in the triumvirate were frightened and unsure of themselves. Knowing how they feared Trotsky, he met them halfway, and at the same time took the wind out of Trotsky’s sails, with promises to follow the Party’s electoral traditions, and other fine words. He had, however, studied Lev closely enough to know that concessions would only whet his appetite. Sure enough, the “permanently inflamed Lev Davidovich,” as his enemies laughingly called him, sent Pravda an article entitled “A New Course,” repeating his denunciation: “Leadership is degenerating into mere command. We must put an end to this old course and ad
opt a New Course. The degeneration of our old guard (i.e., Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, etc.) is not precluded. We must look to the young.” Trotsky had thereby compelled Stalin’s timorous comrades-in-arms to join the fight.
Kamenev and Zinoviev were not long in replying. Bukharin also spoke out: “Bolshevism always did, and still does, value the apparat.” Heated discussion followed. “The Party was in a fever. Debates went on night after night, all night long,” Zinoviev wrote later. The country read the newspapers with astonishment: the Party which had constantly stressed its unity was torn by controversy over the need for democracy in the Party, while a country crushed by terror looked on. (My father and his friends, as he often told me, were sure that all these debates were a cunning farce, to be followed by new calamities for the intelligentsia.)
To the delight of his allies, Stalin demonstrated for the first time the strength of the apparat he had created. A Party conference, the first organized by him, was held in January 1924. It was unsparing in its condemnation of Trotsky and the opposition, and it decided that the secret resolution (Lenin’s resolution) “on expulsion from the Party for factional activity” should be made public for the first time. Trotsky had always acted alone: in 1917 he had been able to make use of an organization created by Lenin. His calculation now was that he could take the conference by storm. But this was the twentieth century: the age of individuals was over.
DEATH AND DEIFICATION: THE IMPERISHABLE GOD
By October the previous year Lenin had given up the struggle and was rapidly sinking. The Leader who had once been such a brilliant seminarist devised an unprecedented propaganda campaign which might have been called “Departure of the Messiah.” Stalin had taken the measure of this country long ago. Under the Romanovs, during the Revolution, in the past and in the future, it was forever looking for a god and tsar. (We shall hear his own formulation of this idea later.) He decided to present it with a new god, in place of the one overthrown by the Bolsheviks. An atheist Messiah, the God Lenin.
In the autumn months he was already planning the “Ascension.” He sent delegations to Nizhny Novgorod. Ritual farewells to the Messiah were instituted: representatives of the toiling masses vowed to the departing God that they would continue his immortal work. Representatives of the heroic Red army made their farewells. Lenin was enrolled for all eternity as an honorary Red army man, and presented with a bundle containing his uniform. In November the half-dead Lenin had to receive the proletariat as represented by a delegation from the Glukhov factory. An old workman delivered greetings which were also an epitaph: “I am a blacksmith.… We shall forge all that you have designed.”
Lenin still had several months to live when the Gensek first spoke about his funeral in the Politburo: “I learn that this question is also a matter of great concern to some of our provincial comrades.” He went on to report a surprising request made by those comrades: “Do not bury Vladimir Ilyich. It is essential that Ilyich remains physically with us.” Trotsky who was present, realized that Stalin intended to transform the atheist Ulyanov into a sacred relic to be worshiped by the faithful. Molotov recalls that “Krupskaya was against it, but we did it by decision of the Central Committee. Stalin insisted.” He had his way and produced an imperishable Marxist god.
He had thought of everything. When the death of the God was imminent, doctors advised the ailing Trotsky to take a cure at Sukhumi. After Lev’s departure Stalin saw to it that none of the remaining leaders visited Lenin, in case one of them turned up at the Messiah’s bedside at the very moment when he began withdrawing into eternity, and turned the dying man’s mumblings into “last words” to suit himself.
But it happened just as he feared. Bukharin, who was receiving medical treatment right there in Nizhny Novgorod, appeared at Lenin’s bedside. He described that “when I rushed into Ilyich’s room … he heaved one last sigh. His head fell backward, his face was terribly pale, I could hear a hoarse gurgle, his arms went slack.”
Stalin corrected Bukharin’s mistake, simply wiped him out of the deathbed scene, transferred him from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow. As a result, Zinoviev was shortly writing in an article that “Ilyich had died.… An hour later we were on our way to Nizhny Novgorod where Ilyich was already lying dead—Bukharin, Tomsky, Kalinin, Stalin, Kamenev, and I.”
Trotsky would later speak of “Stalin’s poison.” But this is irrelevant. Professor V. Shklovsky, son of the eminent physician M. Shklovsky found in his father’s records the testimony (originally meant to be destroyed) of V. Osipov, one of the senior doctors attending Lenin, and the speech therapist S. Dobrogayev. We read in particular that “the final diagnosis dismisses the stories of the syphilitic character of Lenin’s disease, or of arsenic poisoning. It was atherosclerosis, mainly affecting the cerebral blood vessels. The calcium deposit was so thick that during dissection the tweezers made a noise as if they were rapping on stone. Lenin’s parents also died of this disease.” But the story that Lenin had been poisoned would never die. Stalin killed too many others for anyone to believe that he had not also sent his most dangerous enemy to the grave.
While preparations were being made for Lenin’s funeral, a telegram was sent to Trotsky: “Funeral takes place on Saturday, you cannot get here in time. The Politburo thinks that the state of your health makes it essential for you to go to Sukhumi. Stalin.”
In fact the funeral had been postponed until Sunday. But Stalin was not simply lying. Where there is a god there are loyal and disloyal disciples. The disloyal, who have insulted the Messiah in his lifetime, must not be present at his obsequies.
Stalin devised a grandiose plan for the God’s funeral. The arrival of the Body by train was a solemn ceremony in itself (the compartment which held the sacred remains and the locomotive which pulled it would be stationed forever in a building clad in granite and marble). The loyal disciples devotedly bore the precious Body from the station across Moscow to the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. Few of those helping to carry the Lord’s coffin would survive.
At 7:00 P.M. the public were admitted to the Hall of Columns. The God Lenin lay there in his khaki tunic. And Stalin, also wearing a tunic, kept vigil over him. People filed past all night long. The frost was incredible, and bonfires were lit. There was a frozen mist; people were wreathed in the steam of their own breath.
The Body had been embalmed on the morning of January 22. It was a temporary job, done so that the Messiah could lie in state in the Hall of Columns for several days. But Stalin had thought up a fantastic scheme: he would show that the Bolsheviks could conquer even death. The God would be imperishable. Thousands of telegrams from workers called for postponement of the funeral. In response to the wishes of them and millions of others, the Kremlin announced: “It has been decided to preserve the coffin with Lenin’s body in a special Mausoleum on Red Square near the Kremlin wall.” Simultaneously, “at the request of the workers of Petrograd” the capital of the Romanov empire was renamed Leningrad.
By the end of January a wooden mausoleum designed by A. Shchusev had been erected over the coffin. Stalin meanwhile was working out the details of the new cult. “Red corners” in honor of Lenin would be set up all over the country. At one time the “red corner” was where the icons were hung in a peasant hut. Now portraits of the God Lenin would hang there.
Behind the closed doors of the Mausoleum Stalin’s unprecedented idea was already being realized. When experts declared that contemporary science lacked the means of preserving a body for any considerable length of time, other experts were found. The anatomist Vladimir Vorobyov and the young biochemist Boris Zbarsky undertook to embalm the body as required.
The scientists worked day and night, and Stalin himself went down into the Mausoleum several times. He obtained a result in time for the Thirteenth Congress in May. Kamenev, presiding, announced on the second day that after the morning session delegates would be able to see Lenin in his new immortal guise. They were stunned. Asked by Zbarsky whether “the likeness ha
s been preserved,” Lenin’s brother said, “I can’t say anything, I’m overcome. He’s lying there looking just as he did when I saw him after he died.” Thus, Stalin’s present to the first Congress held without Lenin was—Lenin.
When he had created an empire, he would rebuild the wretched little wooden Mausoleum in marble, porphyry, and labradorite, with columns of different kinds of granite. Such would be made the dwelling place of the imperishable God, his holiest shrine in the atheist empire. Krupskaya, when she lived in the Kremlin complex, often went down into the Mausoleum. Zbarsky tells us that “six months or so before she died she visited the Mausoleum. She stared for a long time, and then said ‘he’s just the same, and I’m getting so old.’ ”
In the West, not everybody believed in the “ever-living” Lenin. They alleged that the figure lying in the Mausoleum was a wax doll. So Stalin arranged in the thirties for a group of Western journalists to be shown the relics worshiped by Bolsheviks. Lenin’s biographer, Louis Fischer, was one of their number. He has described how “Zbarsky opened the glass case containing the remains, and pinched Lenin’s nose. Then he turned his head to right and left. That was no wax doll. It was Lenin. The iconoclast had become a relic.”
Stalin had given them their imperishable God. Next he must give them a tsar.
GENERAL SECRETARY, NOW AND FOREVER
The Thirteenth Party Congress had arrived. Lenin’s “Letter to the Congress” was to be read there. On the eve of the Congress Krupskaya solemnly presented the Central Committee with certain sealed packets.
Emelyan Yaroslavsky recalled that “when these few pages written by Lenin were read to the members of the Central Committee the reaction was one of incomprehension and alarm.” It was true. The members of the Central Committee could not understand what Lenin wanted. Why was he abusing all the leaders, without suggesting any replacement? Why should Stalin be driven out of the Secretariat if all he could be reproached with was rudeness? Besides, they all knew that it was Lenin, not Stalin himself, who had “concentrated power” in the Gensek’s hands. It was all rather embarrassing because it seemed that the only reason for these attacks was that Ilyich’s wife had been offended. That Stalin was terrified of this letter, that he was saved by Kamenev, and so on, is mere legend. Kamenev spoke for everyone when he said that “our dear Ilyich’s sickness prevented him at times from being fair. And since Stalin has already confessed to the character faults noted by Lenin and will, of course, correct them, we should begin by accepting the possibility of leaving Stalin in the post of Secretary General.” And so, out of concern for Lenin’s reputation, it was resolved that these “sickbed documents” should not be reproduced. They would be read to each delegation separately.
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