180
Surprisingly, Lenin chose Kamenev to be the effective first Bolshevik head of state as Chairman of the Soviet Executive Committee, though he lasted only a few days. Sverdlov succeeded him.
181
Pestkovsky’s first memoirs, when published in 1922, contained Stalin’s grunts and moodiness. Naturally, when these were republished in 1930 the grunts were gone.
182
It is still widely believed that Stalinism was a distortion of Leninism. But this is contradicted by the fact that in the months after October they were inseparable. Indeed for the next five years Lenin promoted Stalin wherever possible. Lenin single-handedly pushed the Bolsheviks to frenzied bloodletting on orders that have recently been revealed in the archives and published in Richard Pipes’s Unknown Lenin. He knew what he was doing with Stalin, even though he realized that “that chef will cook up some spicy dishes.” Stalinism was not a distortion but a development of Leninism.
183
Trotsky later claimed that Stalin amassed power as a bureaucratic mediocrity, but it was actually Yakov Sverdlov, assisted by Elena Stasova, who ran the Party machine. Stalin was not a born bureaucrat at all. He was a hard worker utterly dedicated to politics; indeed everything with Stalin was political, but he worked in an eccentric, structureless, unbureaucratic, almost bohemian, style that would not have succeeded in any other government, then or now. Lenin’s trust was won in the bank robberies and intrigues of the early years and, later, on the battlefields of the Civil War: Stalin was hardly in his office before 1920.
184
Alexandra Kollontai always treated Stalin with old-world courtesy: she served as his Swedish Ambassador and died naturally. Dybenko was shot in the Great Terror.
185
Since he used Vasily as his Party alias, he in some ways named his son after himself.
186
Sukhova’s later memoirs are unpublished. Natasha Kirtava and Alvasi Talakvadze became Party workers in Batumi and lived into old age, revered for their early association with Stalin. Stefania Petrovskaya, his fiancee in Baku, remained a Party member and was implicated in the Slepkov Case of 1932–33. Slepkov himself was spared in 1932, then shot in 1937, but her fate is unknown. Serafima Khoroshenina, Stalin’s partner in Vologda, was alive in the 1930s and recorded her memoirs, but her fate is likewise unknown.
187
Georgia caused Stalin’s schism with Lenin. Menshevik Georgia became independent in 1918. The Old Man was content to leave Georgia, but in 1921 Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze arranged a successful invasion. The dashing, merciless Sergo rode triumphantly into Tiflis on a white horse, but he soon earned the nicknamed “Stalin’s Ass” for his brutal suppression of the country. When it came time to define the status of Georgia, Stalin insisted that it join a Transcaucasian Federation, but the local Bolsheviks, led by the flamboyant Mdivani and the ideologue Makharadze, both associates of Stalin’s for decades, demanded a separate Georgian republic. In the ensuing row between the Stalinists and the so-called deviationists, Sergo punched one of their opponents. This outraged Lenin, who now supported the Georgians against Stalin and Sergo. This led to Stalin’s insulting Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya. Lenin wrote his Testament, which demanded Stalin’s removal from the General Secretaryship. But it was too late. Lenin suffered another stroke. Stalin survived.
188
The Mensheviks enjoyed a strange trajectory: Karlo Chkheidze, as we saw, became the most powerful man in the early 1917 Revolution as Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, while his fellow Georgian Menshevik Irakli Tsereteli became a powerful Russian minister during the summer of 1917. But when the Bolsheviks seized power, Chkheidze, Jordania, Tsereteli and Noe Ramishvili became the leaders of the independent Georgia. When the Bolsheviks invaded, they managed to flee into exile. Chkheidze committed suicide in 1926, Ramishvili was murdered in Paris in 1930. Jordania, Uratadze, Arsenidze, Sagirashvili and Nikolaevsky all survived in exile and wrote their memoirs. Sukhanov, who called Stalin a “grey blur,” was shot in the Great Terror.
189
Tsintsadze joined the Georgian Cheka in 1921, and he too wrote his memoirs, at the same time as Kamo— but he was considerably more tactful. He joined the Georgian “deviationists” opposition to Stalin and was dismissed. Arrested as a Trotskyite, he died of TB in prison in 1930.
190
The Egnatashvilis had known Beria since 1918 in Baku, where he was a Bolshevik double-agent in the Azeri Musavist Party—or vice-versa. When Beria fell ill, the Egnatashvilis nursed their fellow Georgian. When Beria became Caucasian viceroy, then NKVD boss, he tried to keep a monopoly of information and influence in the
