Stalin: A Biography

They were back in Petrograd at last! In his hands Stalin carried a wicker suitcase of medium size; his personal possessions were few and he had no savings to his name. He was wearing the same suit he had worn on his departure in July 1913.¹³ The one sartorial difference was that he had valenki on his feet. These were the long padded boots worn by Russians in the winter.¹⁴ He was pinched-looking after the long train trip and had visibly aged over the four years in exile. Having gone away a young revolutionary, he was coming back a middle-aged political veteran. Stalin had written to alert his old friend Sergei Alliluev of their arrival.¹⁵ He expected him to be at the station and, perhaps, to have passed on the message to the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee. Fellow passengers and railway personnel had been feting Stalin, Kamenev and Muranov as heroic fighters against the fallen regime. An honorific reception in Petrograd was anticipated.

In fact no one turned up at the Nicholas Station. There were no bands, no speeches, and no ceremonial escort to party headquarters at the house of the Emperor’s former mistress Matilda Kseshinskaya.¹⁶ They had to fend for themselves. When they had left the capital for Siberia, they had been Central Committee members and they expected to be treated with due decorum. They had a rude surprise.

The fact that Shlyapnikov and Molotov, who led the Bureau, had not greeted them was not an accident. Kamenev, Muranov and Stalin expected to be given seats on the Bureau alongside the existing members who had much lower standing in Bolshevism; but the Bureau had other thoughts. If Stalin was willing to overlook Kamenev’s breach of revolutionary etiquette, the Bureau was not so indulgent. He had sinned; he had shown no repentance. It would also seem that Stalin’s reputation for uncomradely behaviour had preceded him. A struggle for leadership in the Russian Bureau was unavoidable. There was also a political angle to this. The Russian Bureau under Shlyapnikov and Molotov had objected to any support, however conditional, for the Provisional Government. They advocated outright opposition. They also knew that there were many Bolshevik militants not only in the districts of the capital but also in the provinces who felt the same. They edited the new factional newspaper Pravda on this basis and strove to win all Bolsheviks to their side. They were already not best pleased by Kamenev’s arrival, and when they discovered which side he — together with Stalin and Muranov — was taking in the current political debate they were determined to avoid having rank pulled on them.

The position was clarified on 12 March when the Bureau decided to include only those new members ‘whom it considers useful according to its political credo’.¹⁷ Muranov fell easily into this category and was given a place. Then Stalin’s case came up for consideration:¹⁸

About Stalin it was reported that he was an agent of the Central Committee in 1912 and therefore would be desirable in the membership of the Bureau of the Central Committee, but in the light of certain personal features which are basic to him the Bureau of the Central Committee reached its decision to invite him [to join] with an advisory place.

Stalin had been snubbed. Even his career had been misrepresented; for he had not been a mere ‘agent’ of the Central Committee but a co-opted full member since 1912. Exactly which ‘features’ had riled the Bureau was not specified. His underhandedness in political and personal dealings had probably done for him. Kamenev, though, was entirely rejected for membership: he was allowed to contribute to Pravda only on condition that he did this anonymously; he was also required to give a satisfactory explanation of his past behaviour.¹⁹

Stalin made his way to the Alliluev apartment after the Bureau meeting. He had written to Olga Allilueva in 1915 saying that he would visit them as soon as his exile was over.²⁰ When he paid his call, only daughter Anna was at home. Her parents and brother Pavel were out at work and the younger daughter Nadya was having a piano lesson elsewhere. Her brother Fedor (or Fedya) too was out.²¹ By the end of the day the whole Alliluev family had returned. They talked with their visitor late into the night. A bed was offered to him in the sitting room, where Sergei also slept; and Olga and the girls went off to the bedroom. Joseph made a positive impression on everybody. Anna and Nadya were very taken with him. Sixteen-year-old Nadya especially enjoyed his jollity. The noise from the bedroom disturbed Sergei, who had to work next day at the electricity station. But Joseph intervened on the girls’ behalf: ‘Leave them alone, Sergei! They’re only youngsters… Let them have a laugh!’ Next day, before he left for the Russian Bureau, he asked if he could lodge with them. The apartment was not big enough for all of them but he was held in such affection that the family decided to look for a larger one. Anna and Nadya were given the task. Joseph was equally keen: ‘Do please make sure you keep a room for me in the new apartment.’²²

Stalin’s priority was to sort out his position in the Russian Bureau. After leaving the Alliluevs, he hurried to headquarters and raised a fuss. This time he was more successful. The result was an agreement to find work for Kamenev on the ground that Bolshevik emigres, presumably including Lenin, continued to value him highly. Stalin was added to the Pravda editorial board. Kamenev joined him on 15 March and Stalin was appointed to the Presidium of the Bureau on the same day.²³ Persistence and experience were paying off. Molotov was pushed out of the Bureau.²⁴ Evidently there had been a fierce dispute and Shlyapnikov and Molotov had lost. Pravda began to toe a line approved by Stalin and Kamenev, and the Russian Bureau ceased to demand the Provisional Government’s removal.

The position of Stalin and Kamenev was soon to be a matter of shame for them, and Stalin apologised for his failure to take a more radical view; but he had not been as moderate as his later enemies, especially Trotski, liked to suggest. It is true that he refused to attack the Mensheviks in public. Equally undeniable is Stalin’s espousal of a policy of mere ‘pressure’ upon the Provisional Government.²⁵ Yet he consistently denounced those Mensheviks who advocated straightforward defence of the country. Stalin demanded more; he proposed that Bolsheviks should co-operate only with Mensheviks who accepted the line of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal Conferences and actively campaigned for an end to the Great War. He did not want unity at any cost.²⁶ Moreover, he wanted the Petrograd Soviet to go on intimidating the Provisional Government. The Soviet, he declared, should work to bind ‘metropolitan and provincial democracy’ together and ‘turn itself at the necessary moment into an organ of revolutionary power mobilising all the healthy forces of the people against counter-revolution. The immediate objective was to ensure that the Provisional Government did not go over to the side of the counter-revolution. The speedy convocation of a constitutional assembly was essential.²⁷

Nor did Stalin fail to introduce a theme untouched by Pravda before he returned: the national question. He demanded linguistic equality for the non-Russian nations. He called for regional self-rule. More than any other Bolshevik in Petrograd in March 1917 he understood that Bolshevism had to appeal to the peoples of the borderlands. Deliberately he opposed talk of federalism.²⁸ Orthodox Bolsheviks aimed at forming a unitary state and Stalin agreed with this; but ‘self-determination’ was possible within the framework of the policy he and Lenin had proposed before the war. ‘National oppression’ had to be eradicated, and the Provisional Government as a cabinet pursuing the interests of capitalism had not shown the necessary sympathy.²⁹

Kamenev and Stalin continued with their combative programme at the unofficial gathering of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks from across the country which was held at the end of March 1917. The Russian Bureau selected him to speak to the joint debate on the Provisional Government. His criticism of the post-Romanov regime was a damning one:³⁰

The elites — our bourgeoisie and the West European one — got together for a change in the decor, for the substitution of one tsar for another. They wanted an easy revolution like the Turkish one and a little freedom for the waging of war — a small revolution for a large victory. Yet the lower strata — workers and soldiers — deepened the revolution, destroying the foundations of the old order. Thus there were two currents in motion — from below and from above — which put forward two governments, two different forces: 1) the Provisional Government supported by Anglo-French capital, and 2) the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Power was divided between these two organs and neither of them has the fullness of power. Tensions and conflict between them exists and cannot but exist.

Stalin finished by saying that political rupture with the ‘bourgeoisie’ was desirable and that ‘the sole organ capable of taking power is the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on an All-Russia