Stalin: A Biography

judgement. A decade later when Stalin was approached for permission to reprint the speech, he refused: ‘Comrade Adoratski! The speech is accurately transcribed in essence although it does require some editing. But I wouldn’t want to publish it: it’s not nice to talk about Ilich’s mistakes.’¹⁰ Christianity had to give way to communism and Lenin was to be presented to society as the new Jesus Christ. He also had to be displayed as quintessentially Russian if communism’s appeal was to spread among the largest national group. Stalin forbade mention of Lenin’s mixed ethnic ancestry — the fact that Lenin’s great-grandfather had been Jewish was kept secret.¹¹

Meanwhile Stalin was eager to put himself forward as a theorist. He had had no time to write a lengthy piece since before 1917; and no Bolshevik leader was taken seriously at the apex of the party unless he made a contribution on doctrinal questions. Despite the many other demands on his time and intellect, he composed and — in April 1924 — delivered a course of nine lectures for trainee party activists at the Sverdlov University under the title Foundations of Leninism.

Quickly brought out as a booklet, it was a work of able compression. Stalin avoided the showiness of similar attempts by Zinoviev, Trotski, Kamenev and Bukharin, who in private liked to disparage him. The rumour was also put about that, in so far as Stalin’s words had merit, he had plagiarised the contents of a booklet by a certain F. Xenofontov. In fact Stalin was a fluent and thoughtful writer even though he was no stylist. His exegesis of Lenin’s doctrines was concise and to the point and his lectures were organised in a logical sequence. He was doing what Lenin had not undertaken on his own behalf, and by and large he succeeded in codifying the ragbag of writings, speeches and policies of Lenin’s lifelong oeuvre. He denied that Bolshevik ideas were applicable exclusively to ‘Russian reality’. For Stalin, Lenin had developed a doctrine of universal significance: ‘Leninism,’ he proclaimed,¹²

is the Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution. More precisely, Leninism is the theory and tactics of proletarian revolution in general and the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular.

Stalin contended that Lenin was the sole great heir to the traditions of Marx and Engels.

He laid out Lenin’s ‘teaching’ with catechistic neatness. It was this quality which provoked his rivals’ condescension; but it elicited approval from the young Marxists listening to the lectures. Not that the booklet was unambiguous in content. Stalin’s summary of Leninist theory indeed displayed a veritable precision of vagueness. He emphasised certain topics. Quoting from Lenin, he argued for the ‘peasant question’ to be solved by a steady movement towards large-scale farming co-operatives.¹³ He urged the party to ignore the sceptics who denied that this transition would end with the attainment of socialism. He also looked at the national question, maintaining that only the establishment of a socialist dictatorship could eliminate the oppression of nations. Capitalism allegedly disseminated national and ethnic hatreds as a means of dividing and ruling the planet.

Stalin had little to say about topics of conventional significance for Marxists. He seldom referred to the ‘worker question’. He offered just a few brief comments on worldwide socialism. But he had started again, for the first time since before the Great War, to make his mark as a contributor to Marxist theoretical discussions. He was making progress in his career. Yet there was a fly in the ointment. Lenin had laid down that his Testament should be communicated to the next Party Congress in the event of his death. Krupskaya, despite her reconciliation with Stalin, felt a higher duty to her husband’s memory and raised the question with the central party leadership.¹⁴ The Thirteenth Party Congress was scheduled for May 1924. Stalin had reason to be concerned. Even if Krupskaya had not made a move, the danger existed that Trotski would see tactical advantage in doing it for her. Stalin could not automatically rely on support from Kamenev and Zinoviev: the Kislovodsk saga had showed as much. All his gains over the past few months would be lost if an open debate were to be held at the Congress and a resolution was passed to comply with Lenin’s advice to appoint a new general secretary.

Stalin was lucky since the Party Central Committee, with the encouragement of Kamenev and Zinoviev, ruled that the Testament should be read out only to the heads of the provincial delegations. If Kamenev and Zinoviev had not still been worried about Trotski, they might have done for Stalin. But instead they spoke up for him. Stalin sat pale as chalk as the Testament was revealed to the restricted audience. But the sting was extracted from Stalin’s political flesh. Trotski, scared of appearing divisive so soon after the death of Lenin, declined to take the fight to the ‘troika’ of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Zinoviev’s amour propre was coddled by the decision that he should deliver the Central Committee political report which had regularly been given by Lenin until his final illness. Thus was lost the best opportunity to terminate Stalin’s further rise to power. Perhaps Stalin would have defended himself effectively. Zinoviev and Kamenev were not very popular and Stalin’s behaviour was not widely in disrepute in the party at this stage. Yet Stalin liked to fight from a position of strength and he was at his weakest in those few days at the Congress. The notion that he owed his survival to his antics as a trapeze artist is wrong. What saved him was the safety net provided by provisional allies Zinoviev and Kamenev and Trotski’s failure to attack.

His own moments of prominence were few. He gave the organisational report with the usual dour assemblage of structural and numerical details; but he made no interventions in the rest of the open proceedings. The most perilous time occurred when he reported on the national question at lengthy closed sessions. Now that leading delegates knew about Lenin’s deathbed criticisms this was a sensitive topic. His Georgian communist enemies were lining up to take pot-shots at him. Yet Stalin did not flinch. Rather than apologise, he gave a spirited apologia of official policy.

The sense of hurt diminished but did not disappear. The internal strains of the troika irked him: he knew that Zinoviev and Kamenev looked down on him and that, given a chance, they would ditch him. His health, too, was poor. Feeling humiliated, Stalin followed his usual course: he requested release from his duties. In a letter to the Central Committee on 19 August 1924 he pleaded that ‘honourable and sincere’ work with Zinoviev and Kamenev was no longer possible. What he needed, he claimed, was a period of convalescence. But he also asked the Central Committee to remove his name from the Politburo, Orgburo and Secretariat:¹⁵

When the time [of convalescence] is at an end, I ask to be assigned either to Turukhansk District or to Yakutsk Province or somewhere abroad in some unobtrusive posting.

All these questions I’d ask the Plenum to decide in my absence and without explanations on my part since I consider it harmful to the cause to give explanations apart from those comments which have already been given in the first section of this letter.

He would be going back to Turukhansk as an ordinary provincial militant and not as the Central Committee leader he had been in 1913. Stalin was requesting a more severe demotion than even the Testament had specified.

He was psychologically complex. That he contemplated going back to northern Siberia may be doubted. But he was impulsive. When his pride was offended, he lost his composure. Even by offering his resignation, he was taking a huge risk. He was gambling on his exhibition of humility inducing the Central Committee, which included some of his friends, to refuse his request. He needed to put his enemies in the wrong. The ploy worked perfectly.

The Central Committee retained him as General Secretary and the final settling of accounts among Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev was yet again postponed. Coming back from vacation in the autumn, he had recovered his self-possession. In advance of Politburo meetings he consulted Kamenev and Zinoviev. If Zinoviev was in Moscow, the three of them met privately and then, in conspiratorial fashion, arrived at the Politburo separately. Stalin brazened it out, shaking hands with his archenemy Trotski as they greeted each other. He also restrained any display of personal ambition. Kamenev, not Stalin, chaired the Politburo after Lenin’s death.¹⁶ Yet already Stalin was taking care of his future. When his rivals fail to join him in the Orgburo, he was free to replace them with appointees more to his liking. The Stalin group formed itself under his leadership; it was like the street gang which he had been thwarted from leading as a boy in Gori.¹⁷ None was more important than Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich. Both were Secretaries of the Central Committee; they also intermittently headed one or another of its departments and helped Stalin in the Orgburo. And when Ukrainian communist politics became troublesome for the Kremlin in April 1925, Kaganovich was dispatched to Kiev to become First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine.