Stalin: A Biography

monarchy. Order on the streets was maintained by ‘mass organisations’ such as the Red Guard. Military officers learned to consult their troops. Public life was dedicated to the service of the people. Camaraderie was demanded on all official occasions. If decisions had to be taken, the assumption was that they would be preceded by debate and that workers, peasants and soldiers should have influence over what was resolved. Soviets sprang up in towns across the country. Elected by the lower social orders, they intervened in public affairs whenever their leaders — the Mensheviks and the Social-Revolutionaries — felt that the bodies of central or local government contravened the agreement with the Provisional Government on universal civil freedom and defensive war.

Stalin worked with Lenin to prepare a conference of Bolsheviks later in April. He was one of many leading Bolsheviks in Petrograd and the provinces shifting their opinions under the impact of the debate started by Lenin. They were joining those other Bolsheviks who had always resented giving the slightest support to the Provisional Government. Several Mensheviks even converted to Bolshevism in disdain for their official leadership’s policy, and the entire Inter-District Organisation, which had previously been anti-Bolshevik, joined the Bolsheviks in May.¹ The gap between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had always been wide but the original emigre split in 1903 had been followed by several attempts at reunification; and although the Prague Conference of 1912 had divided the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party yet again, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in many Russian cities continued to co-operate with each other for many weeks after the February Revolution. But steadily the radical difference in policies counted and the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions definitively became entirely separate parties.

Stalin, even after accepting Lenin’s April Theses, did not adopt all the leader’s policies. Lenin demanded state ownership of the land. Stalin continued to argue that it would alienate the peasants who wished to have total control over the countryside.² The land, he insisted, should be transferred to the peasantry without conditions,³ and perhaps he thought that once Lenin gained direct experience of Russian conditions he would see the point. Stalin also shunned the more provocative of Lenin’s slogans on the war. Like Kamenev, Stalin omitted to call on soldiers and workers to turn the existing ‘imperialist war’ into a ‘European civil war’ between Europe’s proletariats and its bourgeoisies.⁴ Kamenev and Stalin understood that if the Bolsheviks were to increase their popularity, they had to stress that they were the only party in Russia which could bring about peace. Equally noteworthy was Stalin’s avoidance of terms such as ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’.⁵ He had his ears open to attitudes in society. Workers and soldiers saw the downfall of the monarchy as inaugurating an order of freedom and democracy. Ideas of dictatorship were regarded as characteristic of the monarchy overthrown in February 1917. Stalin defended his ideas — and it was not he but Lenin who eventually had to amend his position.⁶

Meanwhile the Provisional Government plunged into difficulties. The war dragged on and Russia’s armies appeared increasingly inferior to their German enemy. The dislocation of the economy worsened. Food supplies fell. Factories faced closures as metal, oil and other raw materials failed to be delivered. Banks ceased to bail out industrial enterprises. The civilian administrative system, which was already creaking under wartime strains, started to collapse. Transport and communication became unreliable. At the same time the demands of popular opinion intensified. Workers called for higher pay and secure employment. Soldiers in the garrisons supported a peace policy: they were horrified by the possibility of being transferred to the front line. Peasants wanted higher prices for their harvest; they also insisted on possession of all agricultural land and an end to the war. Shopkeepers and artisans demanded protection against the interests of big business. Ukrainians, Finns and Georgians wanted proof that the authorities in Petrograd were not putting them at a disadvantage. The Provisional Government made concessions. It introduced arbitration tribunals to industrial disputes. It increased prices paid for grain. It overlooked the insubordination of the garrisons. It granted massive autonomy to local organs of self-rule. It promised to hold elections to a constituent assembly at the earliest opportunity.

Ministers refused to sanction further reforms until after the defeat of the Central Powers. The problem manifest since the February Revolution was that the Provisional Government lacked the capacity to restrain those groups in society which demanded that reforms be introduced immediately. The Petrograd Soviet’s permission had been crucial in the establishment of the first cabinet, and the soviets, factory–workshop committees, army committees and village land communes proceeded to restrict the capacity of ministers to govern. The armed forces were disabled from enforcing the Provisional Government’s will by the insistence of garrison soldiers on ignoring orders they disliked. The police had always been useless at confronting civil disobedience — and anyway they had virtually disbanded themselves on the Imperial monarchy’s overthrow.

If Stalin had any doubts about following Lenin, they were dispelled by events in Petrograd. Minister of External Affairs Pavel Milyukov had sent a diplomatic note to London and Paris affirming that Russian war aims remained what they had been under Nicholas II. Since these aims included territorial expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire there was much popular revulsion among the workers and soldiers of the capital. The Provisional Government had come to power with the Petrograd Soviet’s support on the clear understanding that the war would be fought defensively and that expansionism had been disavowed. On 20–21 April a political demonstration against the cabinet was held by the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leadership of the Petrograd Soviet. Similar demonstrations occurred in cities across the country. Some Bolsheviks in Petrograd called for armed uprising against the Provisional Government, and Lenin had to disown them as his party’s representatives. All the same the whole Milyukov affair played into Lenin’s hands. To many as yet unpersuaded Bolsheviks as well as to a rising number of workers and soldiers it appeared that he had been proved right and that the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were to blame for having trusted the Provisional Government.

Opinion in Bolshevism turned definitively in Lenin’s favour as he gathered support from those who had been pushed aside by Kamenev and Stalin in March. Lenin achieved this by imposing his status and personality on listeners and readers, and he had the advantage that many veteran Bolsheviks, although they had not developed exactly his ideas on strategy, felt uneasy about offering even conditional support to the liberal-led Provisional Government.⁷ Kamenev too aligned himself with him. Lenin for his part abandoned some of his more outrageous slogans. He no longer demanded the transformation of ‘the imperialist war into a European civil war’. He temporarily ceased in public to urge ‘dictatorship’ and ‘revolutionary war’.⁸ Although Lenin had not yet made all the adjustments required by the Russian political environment, Kamenev believed that he was not the revolutionary fanatic he had seemed at the Finland Station. Stalin formed the same opinion. Putting aside his previous conciliatory attitude to the Provisional Government, he became an unequivocal advocate of Leninism. Milyukov completed the job for Lenin; and when the Bolshevik Party Conference started on 24 April, he knew that victory would be his.

There was a coming together of Lenin and Kamenev at the Conference to advocate unconditional opposition to the Provisional Government. They also demanded drastic measures to end the Great War. Lenin continued to promote his policy of land nationalisation and the Conference voted in his favour. Stalin, despite having put an opposing case in Pravda, held his tongue. He soon felt vindicated: Lenin became convinced in midsummer that the land should be handed over to the peasantry through ‘land socialisation’.

Stalin and Lenin had been allies on the national question since before the Great War and it was Stalin who gave the report to the Conference. Both sought to make the Bolsheviks attractive to non-Russians in the former Russian Empire. The result, though, was the Conference’s most contentious debate. The majority in the preparatory commission voted against Stalin and for Georgi Pyatakov. Most Bolsheviks did not like the commitment of Lenin and Stalin to national self-determination, including even the possibility of secession from the former Russian Empire. It seemed that official policy ignored internationalist principles and indulged nationalism; this appeared to neglect both global economic trends and the interests of the world’s working classes. Bolshevik policy supposedly ought to give proletarian revolution precedence over national self-determination. According to Lenin, Pyatakov underestimated the hatred for Russia and Russians in the borderlands. Hostility would be dissipated only if the Ukrainians and Finns were told they had the right to independence. He predicted that such an offer would allay anti-Russian feelings and reconcile not only Ukraine and Finland but also other non-Russian territories to continued union with Russia.

Stalin picked up these themes and added another. Whatever policy was formulated for the former Russian Empire, he maintained, would have implications abroad. If the Bolsheviks were seen to treat their national minorities decently, they would encourage movements of national liberation around the world. The policy would act as a ‘bridge between West and East’. Stalin’s stirring contribution won the day.⁹ He had needed support from Lenin and Zinoviev. Nevertheless he had acquitted himself well in the first report he had delivered to a party conference. He had not flinched when picked out for personal criticism. This had come from the veteran Georgian Bolshevik Pilipe Makharadze, who queried how Stalin would handle the ‘separatist aspirations’ of nations in