organisers, Stalin and his previous Bolshevik opponent Alexander Shlyapnikov, to procure grain in the south of the Soviet republic. The Volga region and the north Caucasus were traditional areas of agricultural abundance, and Stalin and Shlyapnikov were given full powers to obtain food wherever it could be found. Stalin was to make for Tsaritsyn, Shlyapnikov for Astrakhan.
His Alliluev assistants in the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities’ Affairs would accompany him. Fedor would come as his aide and Nadya as his secretary. They arrived with their luggage at the Kazan Station in Moscow two days later. Chaos awaited them and their Red Army guards. Beggars and pickpockets swarmed in the booking hall and on the platforms. There were also the many ‘sack-men’ who travelled to Moscow to sell flour, potatoes and vegetables on the black market. Sometimes passengers had to sit around for days before they could board a train. The atmosphere was frantic. When announcements of departure were made, a rush occurred to get a seat or a space in the corridor. Every compartment would be crammed with people and it was common for the disappointed ticket holders to clamber to the tops of carriages and ride unsheltered from summer heat or winter cold. Stalin had a sheaf of documents indicating his priority over other passengers. But the People’s Commissar for Nationalities’ Affairs had to lose his temper before the station officials granted a compartment to him and his party. He was being given yet another display of the extreme disorder of revolutionary Russia.1
The travellers from Moscow, after many halts on the way, reached their destination on 6 June.2 Tsaritsyn, later called Stalingrad and now — ever since Khrushchev’s posthumous denunciation of Stalin — Volgograd, was one of the cities on the River Volga built in the late seventeenth century as Cossack outposts. In most ways it was an unremarkable place. It was not even a provincial capital but was subject to the administrative authorities in Saratov. Yet geographically and economically Tsaritsyn was of strategic importance. The city handled regional trade in grain, timber and livestock. It was also a vital entrepot. Situated at the first great angle of the Volga for ships heading upriver towards central Russia from the Caspian Sea, Tsaritsyn had been a great staging post since its foundation. The construction of rail links increased its significance. A main line ran directly south from Moscow to Rostov-on-Don and a branch was built from Kozlov down to Tsaritsyn and on to Astrakhan on the Caspian coast. Tracks had also been laid from Tsaritsyn west to Rostov-on-Don and south-east to Tikhoretskaya junction and the mountains of the north Caucasus. Control over Tsaritsyn and its environs would enable Sovnarkom to gain food supplies over a vast area.
Sovnarkom’s brief to Stalin was to improve the supply of grain. He had been preceded to Tsaritsyn by Andrei Snesarev, a former Imperial Army general who had enlisted with the Reds. The functions of Stalin and Snesarev were meant to complement each other. The combined application of political and military muscle was thought the best method of securing bread for Moscow and Petrograd.3
Sovnarkom had misjudged its People’s Commissar. Stalin interpreted his duties in grain procurement, which relied on the use of the Red Army, as entitling him to impose himself over all the military commanders in the region. Rejection for service as a private in the Imperial Army had not made him diffident about taking charge of the North Caucasus Front. A month later he informed Lenin:4
The food-supplies question is naturally entwined with the military question. For the good of the cause I need full military powers. I’ve already written about this and received no answer. Very well, then. In this case I myself without formalities will overthrow those commanders and commissars who are ruining the cause. That’s how I’m being nudged by the interests of the cause and of course the absence of a scrap of paper from Trotski won’t stop me.
Stalin was greedily seizing his opportunity. His renown in Moscow came nowhere near to matching that of his most eminent comrades in Sovnarkom and the Party Central Committee. This was a situation for him to prove his mettle militarily and politically. He was determined to rise to the challenge.
There were several threats to the Bolsheviks across the Soviet republic by the middle of 1918. A Russian ‘Volunteer Army’ was being trained in Novocherkassk. It was led by Generals Alexeev and Kornilov, who had escaped from Petrograd and planned to march on Moscow. The Volunteer Army was the first of the self-styled White armies which objected to socialism and internationalism and sought the restoration of the pre-1917 social order through the military destruction of the Reds. In September, another armed force under the Socialist- Revolutionaries had been forced out of Kazan — seven hundred miles to the north of Tsaritsyn — by the Red Army. Trotski’s reorganised system of command and recruitment was already proving effective. Yet the regiments of the Socialist-Revolutionaries had not been crushed. Retreating to the Urals, they regrouped and were joined by officers of the type being gathered by Alexeev and Kornilov in the south. In November a coup took place in Omsk, and Admiral Kolchak got rid of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and reorganised the army on his own terms. These armies denounced Bolshevism as a betrayal of Mother Russia. Cossacks led by General Krasnov were attacking the Bolsheviks and their sympathisers in the area south of Tsaritsyn. They were well equipped and had high morale; they detested Lenin’s Sovnarkom for its socialism, atheism and hostility to national traditions. Stalin’s assignment had put him in personal danger — and he and his Alliluev companions were never unaware of the risks.5
Later enemies overlooked the nerve he showed in the Civil War. He was not a physical coward; he put Lenin, Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin in the shade by refusing to shirk wartime jeopardy. Yet he was hardly a war hero, and his subsequent eulogists overdid their depiction of him as a commander of genius who saved the October Revolution from the banks of the Volga.
Stalin’s assignment in the south was important. Without food the Soviet regime was doomed. The German occupation of Ukraine as well as the presence of Alexeev and Kornilov in Rostov-on-Don had perilously narrowed the Soviet state’s agricultural base. Krasnov’s raids by late July had disrupted communication with Tsaritsyn. South Russia and the north Caucasus were crucial areas of wheat production, and Lenin in Moscow was determined to clear the bottlenecks in procurement and shipment. White armies were not the only menace. Many local armed groups also interfered with trade and traffic; and although some of them were mere bandits, others had a political or religious motive. The nationalities of the area wanted autonomy from Moscow. The disintegration of the Russian state in 1917 had given them an opportunity to revert to self-rule as well as brigandage. Charged with restoring the passage of grain from this turbulent region, Stalin shouldered a weighty burden. But he never flinched; he carried his responsibilities with pride and imparted his determination to his fellow travellers.
Tsaritsyn’s authorities had thought he would function as the baleful ‘eye of Moscow’.6 They were wrong. Stalin showed total disregard for instructions from the capital. Immediately upon arrival he set about purging the Red Army and the food-collection agencies of the middle-class ‘specialists’ he collectively detested. This was in blatant contravention of official policy. Stalin did not trouble himself with Lenin’s potential objections: ‘I drive everyone onwards and curse everyone I need to.’ He referred to the specialists as ‘cobblers’.7 This was a significant metaphor for the cobbler’s son who wanted to prove his prowess as an army commander; it was also a breach with the line approved by the Central Committee.
Despite having only the powers of a food-supplies commissar, Stalin imposed himself on all the military and civil authorities in the vicinity: Andrei Snesarev, commander of the North Caucasus Front; Sergei Minin, chair of the Tsaritsyn Soviet; and Kamil Yakubov, leader of the food-supplies missions in the region. If Stalin wanted to be known as a fighting man, he had to do something unusual. The Whites had cut the railway line between Tsaritsyn and Kotelnikovo. Stalin braved danger by going out to inspect the situation. This was not typical of him: during the rest of the Civil War and throughout the Second World War he avoided any such venture.8 But from Tsaritsyn he took an armoured train down to Abganerovo-Zutovo where a railway-repair brigade was at work restoring the line. Putting his life at risk, he returned two days later with his reputation enhanced.9 Back in Tsaritsyn Stalin called together the city functionaries and, parading his authority as a member of the Party Central Committee and Sovnarkom, announced a total reorganisation of the military command in Tsaritsyn. He was making his bid for supremacy on the North Caucasus Front.
Shrewdly he got fellow Bolsheviks on his side. Sergei Minin was one. Another was Kliment Voroshilov, who was itching to take command in the field despite his lack of military experience. Both were more than happy to join Stalin in forming their own Military Council to oversee operations in the region (which was renamed the Southern Front). On 18 July Stalin and his new associates sent a telegram to Lenin demanding the sacking of Snesarev and confirmation of their Military Council.10
The request was granted. Lenin and his comrades in Moscow accepted that tighter co-ordination of military and economic measures was vital in Tsaritsyn for the security of food supplies. Stalin was delighted. Setting himself
