others.50 Stalin spent most of the day and often a large part of the evening there. Nadya did not nag him about being left on her own, but she did feel that his behaviour at home — when he was there — left a lot to be desired. Her unhappiness was understandable. Stalin had no interests outside work and study apart from the occasional hunting expedition. Unlike Molotov and his other cronies, he did not play tennis or skittles. He did not even go to the cinema. The marriage of Joseph and Nadya looked like a divorce waiting to happen.
22. FACTIONALIST AGAINST FACTIONS
The year 1925 brought the disputes in the Politburo to a head. Personal bickering became all-out factional conflict as Zinoviev and Kamenev moved into open opposition to Bukharin and Stalin. They wrangled over the party’s internal organisation as well as over international relations. Official agrarian measures were also highly controversial. Bukharin in his enthusiasm for the New Economic Policy had said to the more affluent peasants: ‘Enrich yourselves!’1 This hardly coincided with Lenin’s comments on kulaks over the years. Even in his last dictated articles Lenin had envisaged a steady movement by the peasantry towards a system of farming co-ops; he had never expressly advocated the profit motive as the motor of agricultural regeneration. Stalin’s ally Bukharin appeared to be undermining basic Leninist ideas, and Zinoviev and Kamenev were not just being opportunistic in castigating this. They generally objected to the growing compromises of the New Economic Policy as it had been developed. Stalin and Bukharin stuck together to see off their factional adversaries. Having fought against Trotski and the Left Opposition, they battled against Zinoviev and Kamenev when they called for a more radical interpretation of the ‘union of the working class with the peasantry’. The survival of the NEP was at stake.
Clashes occurred at the Central Committee in October 1925. Zinoviev and Kamenev had arrived with assurances of support from Grigori Sokolnikov, the People’s Commissar of Finances, and Lenin’s widow Nadezhda Krupskaya. Stalin and Bukharin carried the majority on that occasion. But neither Zinoviev nor Kamenev had lost their following at the party’s highest level. Stalin therefore decided to attack them openly at the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925. He did this deftly by revealing that they had once tried to get him to agree to Trotski’s expulsion from the party. Sanctimoniously disclaiming his own propensity for butchery, Stalin announced:2
We are for unity, we’re against chopping. The policy of chopping is repugnant to us. The party wants unity, and it will achieve this together with comrades Kamenev and Zinoviev if this is what they want — and without them if they don’t want it.
Although his own personality had been criticised by Lenin as crude and divisive, he contrived to suggest that the menace of a party split was embodied by what was becoming known as the Leningrad Opposition.
Kamenev put things starkly:3
We’re against creating a theory of ‘the Leader’ [
This warning appeared extravagant to the supporters of Stalin and Bukharin. But Kamenev had a point. He understood that, beneath the surface of amity between Stalin and Bukharin, Stalin aspired to become the party’s unrivalled leader.
Zinoviev repaid Stalin for breaching the secrecy of their conversations by divulging details of the Kislovodsk episode, when even some of Stalin’s friends had discussed the desirability of trimming his powers;4 but he was relying on his rhetorical flourishes to get his way and the usual applause was no longer forthcoming. Although Zinoviev had been outmanoeuvred, he could not blame all his misfortune on the General Secretary. It had been Zinoviev who had started up the engine of mutual suspicion. If anyone had shown overweening ambition it was him. As yet he had little to counterpose to the policies of the Stalin– Bukharin duumvirate running the Politburo. Zinoviev and Kamenev might mumble about the inadequacies of the regime, but they had until recently been pillars supporting its pediment. When Zinoviev delivered a co-report to Stalin’s official report for the Central Committee, he complained about his treatment at Stalin’s hands and warned against the further compromises with the peasantry promoted by Stalin and Bukharin. But quite what he would do in their place was not made clear.
Zinoviev and Kamenev had put themselves in the wrong with most party leaders and militants. They had restored factionalism to the party at a dangerous time. Scarcely had Trotski been defeated than they split the ascendant party leadership. The party was insecure across the USSR. Its victory over the Whites in the Civil War left it without illusions about its isolation in the country. Workers outside the Bolshevik ranks were widely disgruntled. Peasants were far from being grateful to the Bolsheviks for the NEP; a deep resentment existed about the continuing attacks on the Russian Orthodox Church. Many members of the technical professions, while operating in Soviet institutions, yearned for the very ‘Thermidorian degeneration’ which the party feared. Thermidore had been the month in 1794 when the Jacobins who had led the French revolutionary government were overthrown and radical social experiments were brought to an end. Most creative intellectuals continued to regard Bolshevism as a plague to be eliminated. Many non-Russians, having experienced independence from Russia in the Civil War, wished to assert their national and ethnic claims beyond the bounds allowed by the USSR Constitution. ‘Nepmen’ made big money during the NEP but yearned for a more predictable commercial environment. The richer peasants — the so- called kulaks — had the same aspiration. In the shadows of public life, too, lurked the legions of members of the suppressed political parties: the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Kadets and the many organisations established by various nationalities.
The party felt surrounded by enemies in its own country, and the Soviet communist leadership — including Stalin — was acutely aware that the imposition of a centralised one-party state had not yet led to a revolutionary change in attitudes and practices at lower levels of the party, the state and society. Policies were formulated largely without consultation outside the Kremlin. Overt opposition was restricted to the successive internal Bolshevik party oppositions. Other tendencies, whenever they came into the open, were suppressed with vigour by the OGPU (as the GPU was renamed in 1924). Politburo members without exception were aware that they presided over a state with imperfect methods of rule. Social, national and religious antagonism to Bolshevism was widespread. Even the party had its defects: factional strife and administrative passive disobedience as well as a decline in ideological fervour at the very lowest echelons was evident. Whoever won the struggle to succeed Lenin would immediately face a graver task: to make the governance of the USSR denser and irreversible. Stalin had power over the formulation of policy and the choice of personnel; he had managed to trounce his main individual enemies in the party. He had not yet turned the Soviet order into a system of power enshrining pervasive obedience and enthusiasm.
The sense that at any time a capitalist ‘crusade’ might be declared against the USSR added to his fundamental concern. Foreign states had intervened in Soviet Russia in 1918–19 and might do so again. Admittedly the USSR had trade treaties with the United Kingdom and other states. It had signed the Treaty of Rapallo with defeated Germany. The Comintern was gradually building up the number and strength of affiliated communist parties. Ostensibly there was no threat to peace. Even the French, who had made trouble over the Soviet renunciation of the debts of Nicholas II and the Provisional Government, were in no mood to start an invasion. Yet so long as the USSR was the sole socialist state in the world, there would be diplomatic tension which could abruptly turn the situation on its head and the Soviet Union could be invaded. Bolsheviks were on the alert for military outbreaks on their borders. They believed that the Poles would not have moved into Ukraine in 1920 unless the incursion had been instigated by the Western Allies (and although this was untrue, there was indeed military collusion with French military advisers and diplomatic negotiation with the British). If the British and French
