What had happened to pre-revolutionary assurances about sticking to democracy, humanism, justice? A sinister link was formed between the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the use of force and totalitarianism which graphically illustrates the role of personality in revolution. Giving the working class the right to determine the lives of the people in general led inevitably to the consolidation of totalitarianism with its harsh division between the ‘leader’ and the ‘masses’. Naturally, it was only among the leaders that there could be ‘personalities’ and a hierarchy. The supreme ‘leader’, surrounded by ‘outstanding leaders’, was supported by a pyramid of other ‘leaders’ in descending order. This was the system which, by rejecting genuine democratic power, was established after the revolution in Russia.
Totalitarianism also established a division within the people, between the ‘conscious’ and the ‘unconscious’. After the revolution the latter included the middle classes, the intelligentsia, tsarist administrators and almost the entire peasantry. The population was now reorganized and sub-divided in ‘strata’ and groups whose social ‘purity’ was determined by their class origins. But since it had been the war that had made the revolution possible, the Bolsheviks naturally adopted many methods that had been generated by the war, notably the instant resort to violence. Lenin’s instruction to the Bolsheviks in Saratov in August 1918 to shoot not merely ‘conspirators’ but also ‘the hesitant’, and ‘without wasting time on idiotic red tape’, was a classic example of the trend.
As an orthodox Marxist, Trotsky was quick to understand Bolshevik authoritarianism, but he refrained from protesting because he also saw that there was a part for him to play as a leader in the emerging system. We have seen that he was congenitally well suited to the radicalism and maximalism of Bolshevik policies in 1917, and it was without a shadow of doubt that he could assert for years to come that the revolution of October was possible only because the masses were led by Lenin and himself. At the end of March 1935, he wrote in his diary:
Had I not been present in 1917 in Petersburg, the October Revolution would still have taken place—on the condition that Lenin was present and in command. If neither Lenin nor I had been present in Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution … The same could by and large be said of the Civil War, although in its first period, especially at the time of the fall of Simbirsk and Kazan, Lenin wavered and was beset by doubts. But this was undoubtedly a passing mood which he probably never admitted to anyone but me. (I must tell about this in greater detail.)116
While this assertion is not an exaggeration of Trotsky’s part in the events, its frankness, bordering on vanity, illuminates an important facet of his personality.
As Bolshevik-Communist custom quickly superseded social democratic tradition in the Party, it was enough for a ‘leader’ on any level to declare that a measure was ‘in the interests of the proletariat’, or that ‘the working class demands’ or ‘the masses insist’, for an action to appear legitimate. The monopoly of power and thought meant that only the ‘leaders’ could express the masses’ interests, and the creation by the Party ‘old guard’ of a new layer of Soviet leaders, all of them outside any form of democratic control, soon led to the bureaucratization of the whole edifice of power. Party membership became the irreplaceable and virtually the sole path to a successful career. Leaders, intellectuals and Party workers, all of a new type, emerged, their suitability being their absolute dedication, not only to Communist ideology, but to the new leadership, and their outright hostility to all things bourgeois. Henceforth, and especially from the end of the 1920s, meetings, conferences and congresses were dominated by loud voices competing to support the ‘general line of the Party’, to praise the ‘wisdom of the leader’ (now the sole leader), or the ‘genius’ of his plans. Uniformity of ideas, indeed uniformity in everything, generated the sinister atmosphere in which the poisonous tendrils of one-man rule, bureaucracy and dogmatism could flourish. Party unity was achieved at the cost of intellectual and moral liberty. The transformation of the Party into a state organization facilitated the emergence of a new form of careerism.
These propositions are well illustrated by a letter from Adolf Ioffe, dated 1 May 1920, requesting Trotsky’s help in obtaining either the post of Commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection (Rabkrin) or an influential position in the Foreign Commissariat. Whether intentionally or not, Ioffe’s letter reveals the origins of the bureau-cratization of the Party and state, and in particular the emergence of Soviet careerism. Ioffe wrote that the new conditions in the country meant that ‘belonging to the Party, instead of having shackles on your legs or a rope round your neck, brings with it access to the use of all the real material goods’, and that this was ‘altering Party mentality and Party morale’. There was, he went on, ‘an unwritten law in our Constitution’ according to which ‘the Party organization stands above Soviet power, and this makes it possible for a demagogue to rise to the top, a mercenary and politically amoral demagogue whose only merit is a well-endowed tongue.’ He continued: ‘Given the lack of material goods in Soviet Russia, the Party and Soviet bureaucracy enjoy what there is at the expense not only of the bourgeoisie, but also the proletariat, which is wrong. Why should commissars and commissarchiks [minor commissars] be able to move around freely, and we can’t? Why is there always a seat for them on the train, but not for us? Why can they always get a place in a sanatorium, but we can’t? And so on. I have heard this said at every non-Party conference I have spoken at.’ There was, he said, a new psychological climate in which ‘the leaders can do anything’.
He continued:
The inequality in Moscow is really enormous and one’s material security virtually depends on one’s job, a situation, you must agree, which is becoming extremely dangerous. I heard, for instance, that before the last purge of the VTsIK, its old members were anxious and concerned mainly because they were afraid they would lose the right to live in the Hotel National and would lose the privileges that went with it. From top to bottom and bottom to top, it’s the same thing. At the lowest level it means a pair of boots and a tunic; higher up, an automobile, a railcar, access to the Sovnarkom dining room, an apartment in the Kremlin or the National, and at the very top, where they have all these things anyway, it means prestige, a prominent position and a well-known name. There is no room here for the old Party dedication and self-sacrifice, revolutionary endeavour and self-denial … The young people are being brought up in these new traditions. How can one not be horrified for our Party and the revolution?117
Ioffe was citing facts that characterized the danger looming for the system and the Party, but he did not identify the deep well-springs from which it originated. After the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, at which factions within the Party were banned, the bureaucratic ossification gathered pace. Once all ‘platforms’, ‘deviations’ and ‘oppositions’ were eliminated, the Party became an ideological order. Henceforth it would be necessary to demonstrate and prove one’s purity and orthodoxy, and to expose anyone who stood out from the crowd in any way. The personalities of the revolutionaries were profiled and arranged in order of their Party importance. Having destroyed the middle classes, the Party had no one to consume but its own members who might depart in any way from the standards it set. A new type of leader emerged, one who served only the centre, who was suspicious of everyone, lacking in initiative, incompetent, uneducated but self-assured, a harsh executor of the Party line. He was, as Berdyaev wrote, psychologically ‘congenial to Lenin’s plan, he became the material of the Communist Party organization … A new psychological type … emerged from the milieu of the workers and peasants and was trained in military and Party discipline. These new people … were alien to the traditions of Russian culture.’118
As one of the leaders of the Revolution, Trotsky made a substantial contribution to the canonization of Lenin’s image, chiefly as a tribute to ‘the greatest Russian revolutionary’, but also no doubt be
cause it would raise his own prestige still higher in society and in Comintern. By praising Lenin, Trotsky praised himself. When V. Sorin set about formulating the tasks of the Lenin Institute in 1925, Trotsky made many proposals for developing the project. It was decided to gather all of Lenin’s manuscripts and to publish them as a collection, as well as to prepare a full biography and organize the systematic, widespread promulgation of his teachings.
The articles Trotsky wrote about Lenin, before and after Lenin’s death, often approached the hagiographie tone of a later, more obedient generation. In his article ‘Lenin on the Dais’, which on 15 April 1924 his assistant Poznansky sent to three newspapers—Pravda, Gudok and Krasnaya zvezda—he wrote:
Grabbing at his notes, Lenin would rush from the platform to try to evade the inevitable … The roar of applause would grow, wave upon wave. ‘Long live … Lenin … Leader … Ilyich.’ There in the glow of the electric lights glimmered that inimitable human head, lashed from all sides by the unbridled waves. And then when it seemed the whirlwind of ecstasy had reached the height of its frenzy, suddenly above all the roaring and yelling and clapping the sound of a young, intense, happy and passionate voice would cut through the storm, like a siren’s: ‘Long live Ilyich!’ And from somewhere within the deepest palpitating depths of solidarity, love and enthusiasm, the reply would come like a threatening cyclone, in unison, making the rafters ring, the cry: ‘Long live Lenin!’119
Trotsky would repeatedly employ his journalistic skill to inspire the masses with the thought of Lenin’s divine nature. After Lenin’s death such eulogies became even more essential to the leadership than when he was alive. Trotsky would do everything to underline how close he had been to the late leader and how much Lenin had trusted and liked him. Deep down, he wanted public and official recognition that he had been the second man of the revolution after Lenin. But, as he was to write in Norway after his deportation from Soviet Russia:
Up to now, every revolution has produced a reaction, even a counter-revolution … The first victims of the reactionary wave were as a rule the pioneers, the initiators, the originators who had stood at the head of the masses during the offensive phase of the revolution; and the first place was taken by people of the second rank in alliance with yesterday’s enemies of the revolution.120
The revolution dissolved personality, which was delivered up as a sacrifice to ephemeral ideals. The revolution could now be represented only by the personalities of the leaders who after Lenin’s death began to dwindle sharply in number, as the post-revolutionary monster devoured them, one after the other.
5
The Outcast Revolutionary
Life is a paradox. Success alternates with failure. Grandiose plans and titanic efforts can end in historic defeat. The victor can become the outcast, and in this respect Trotsky’s life was especially graphic. Having reached the crest of the wave in the October revolution, when the civil war came to an end he slithered steeply downwards. Not that he became less popular or less possessed by his idea, nor did he lose his touch as a brilliant pamphleteer and original thinker. His speeches were no less stirring, and he still believed that the lull in the revolution was only temporary, even if he now thought the new wave would come from the East. He did not change, but the times changed. The revolution by which he lived and found meaning in life receded.
The move to peace in the ruined country proved difficult. It was time to redeem the promises made to the population, and the debate on how this should be done exposed differences among the Boshevik leaders. The main stumbling block to new ideas was the cumbersome bureaucracy of a system created by a now hopelessly sick leader. Trotsky outlined his own ideas on how to rule the country in a memorandum to the Politburo, dated January 1923:
The centrepiece of my written proposals to the Central Committee is the need to secure the correctly planned, day-to-day running of the state economy, with the reconstruction of state industry as the first priority. I have stated that we do not have a body that is directly responsible for the planned management of the state economy, endowed with its own rules, obligations and personnel, and that can carry out such management. I have stated that this is the precise cause of the growing tendency to pile up more and more new administrative and combined organs which in the end only get in the way of each other. Apart from the Sovnarkom and Presidium of the VTsIK, we now have: the collegium of deputies [Deputy People’s Commissars], the Council of Labour and Defence, the Finance Committee, the Little Sovnarkom, Gosplan [the State Planning Agency]. Moreover, absolutely all questions are also dealt with by the Central Committee (Secretariat, Orgburo, Politburo). In my view, this multiplicity of governing institutions, which have no defined relationship to each other and scattered responsibilities, is causing chaos at the top.1
At the Politburo, especially in Lenin’s frequent absences, Trotsky repeatedly raised the question of the bureaucratic ossification of the system, the lack of proper monitoring of the administrative organization and the inefficiency of state government. His harsh and independent judgements were taken by many Party leaders to represent an unequivocal claim to the role of new leader, once Lenin’s imminent demise became a fact.
The Stalinist Ring
A.P. Balashov, an old Bolshevik who had worked in Stalin’s secretariat, told me that on one occasion at the Politburo when a row flared up between Zinoviev and Trotsky, ‘everyone was supporting Zinoviev who burst out at Trotsky, “Can’t you see you’re in a ‘ring’? Your tricks don’t work any more, you’re in the minority, a minority of one.” Trotsky was enraged, and Bukharin tried to smooth things over. Often, before a meeting of the Politburo or some other gathering, Kamenev and Zinoviev would meet Stalin separately, no doubt in order to agree a position. In the secretariat these meetings of the triumvirate, with other members of the Politburo if needed, were known as “the ring”, and they called them that themselves, like Zinoviev.’
Trotsky soon realized that there was a plot against him. At first he kept his peace, but then took every opportunity in his speeches to expose Stalin’s ‘technique’. In June 1927, at a meeting of the Central Party Control Commission, he declared:
You all of course know perfectly well that since 1924 a faction of seven has existed, consisting of all the members of the Politburo, except me. My place has been taken by your former chairman, Kuybyshev, whose job is supposed to be chief custodian of the Party rules and Party morals, but who in fact has been the first to break the rules and pervert them. This ‘group of seven’ is an illegal and anti-Party body that has been deciding the Party’s life behind its back … Its meetings have been used to devise ways of attacking me. In particular, it set a rule that Politburo members should not polemicize amongst themselves, but that they should all polemicize against Trotsky. The Party did not know about this, and nor did I. It has been going on for a long time.2
Under the guise of fighting for the interests of the people, the Party and socialism, a banal and utterly unprincipled struggle for leadership was going on at the summit of power, where the ruling group had ganged up against one of its own members because they feared he could lead the Party on his own. The warning that the Party could split, which Lenin had put in his so-called ‘Testament’, or ‘Letter to the Congress’, seemed about to be fulfilled. The ‘ring’, consisting of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev, set about isolating and discrediting Trotsky and pushing him out of the main control centres. Events had to be accelerated in case Lenin’s health should recover and he should bring Trotsky even more closely into his confidence. There can be little doubt that Lenin’s suggestion, dated 4 January 1923,3 that Stalin be removed as General Secretary if he, Lenin recovered, would have been quickly carried out.
The reason why Trotsky declined Lenin’s proposal to enter into an alliance with him against Stalin over the Georgian affair* seems likely to remain a mystery. The triumvirate, however, must have been alarmed at the possibility of a union between the leader and Trotsky on such important issues as the nation
al question, the monopoly on foreign trade, the struggle against bureaucratization and so on, and could not permit Trotsky to be so significantly reinforced.
Lenin’s ‘Testament’, which was dictated in a series of sessions on 23, 24, 25, 26 and 29 December 1922, dealt at length with relations between Stalin and Trotsky, but it also examined the qualities of other Party leaders. It is therefore plausible to suppose that, once the contents of the ‘Testament’ became known to the Politburo, the struggle for power was intensified. Lenin’s secret document only added fuel to the flames. Had Lenin returned to active work, it would have been difficult for Stalin to count on retaining his ‘unbounded power’. He needed to get rid of Trotsky, who was still seen by most of the Party as second only to Lenin, especially as in his ‘Testament’ Lenin spoke of Trotsky in immeasurably higher terms of praise than he did of any of the other leaders. Despite mentioning Trotsky’s non-Bolshevik past, which ‘can hardly be blamed on him personally’, Lenin stressed that he was ‘probably the most able man in the present Central Committee’, with ‘outstanding capabilities’.4
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