170
That summer, the other intriguing Party scandal was that Kamenev was accused of having been an Okhrana agent: the Central Committee asked Stalin to inform the Soviet Executive Committee. There was an investigation. Kamenev was cleared on 30 August.
171
After its humiliation in the July Days, the Soviet was moved out of the Taurida Palace into another neo- classical edifice next door, the Smolny Institute, built by Catherine the Great as a boarding-school for noble girls, where all the parties, including the Bolsheviks, now set up their offices. It was from the Smolny that Zinoviev and then, after his downfall in 1926, Sergei Kirov, a young protege of Stalin’s, ruled Leningrad. Here, in 1934, Kirov was assassinated, a crime which, whether or not it was organized by Stalin, provided the excuse for the Great Terror. During the Siege of Leningrad, the city was ruled from the Smolny. Today, it houses the office of the mayor of St. Petersburg.
172
Another conciliatory gesture to Kamenev that shows Stalin’s instinct for maintaining some balance between Lenin and Trotsky, on the one hand, and the moderates on the other, in the Party. This was to pay rich dividends in the struggle to succeed Lenin.
173
In this rarely quoted article of 20 October, biblically entitled “The Strong Bulls of Bashan Have Beset Me Round!,” Stalin warned how he and the Party would regard intellectuals and artistic celebrities in their new Russia. Maxim Gorky, despite being a longtime supporter and funder of the Bolsheviks, now had severe reservations, declaring, “I cannot keep silent.” Stalin mocked such “terrified neurasthenics… verily ‘strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round,’ threatening and imploring. Here’s our reply!” Stalin warned that “there is a general croaking in the marsh of our bewildered intellectuals. The Revolution has not cringed before celebrities but has taken them into our service or, if they refused to learn, has consigned them to oblivion.”
174
Trotsky preferred to use his own new recruits to the Bolshevik Party, such as Antonov-Ovseenko, as his top operatives on the MRC, which had existed since 9 October. Sverdlov, Molotov and Dzerzhinsky were members. Why not Stalin? It is possible Stalin’s confrontation with the Military Organization in August or just his general truculence inhibited Sverdlov from inviting him to join. But it is more likely Stalin was simply busy with his press responsibilities and communications with Lenin, both vital. As for the Centre, on which Stalin served, it never met, even though his propagandists claimed that it was the real centre of the Revolution.
175
“Within the Military-Revolutionary Committee, there are two points of view,” said Stalin. “The first is that we organize an uprising at once and the second is that we consolidate our forces. The CC has sided with the second view.”
176
Earlier John Reed witnessed Trotsky himself being refused entry.
“You know me. My name is Trotsky.”
“You can’t go in. Names mean nothing to me!”
“But I’m the Chairman of the Soviet!”
“If you’re as important a fellow as that, you must have at least one bit of paper!” retorted the guard, who summoned an equally bemused officer:
“Trotsky! I’ve heard the name somewhere. I guess it’s alright…”
177
The junior leaders such as Molotov and Dzerzhinsky were sent out on missions: Molotov, accompanied by a detachment of Red Guards, was ordered to arrest the editors of the SR newspaper and then a counter-revolutionary group of Mensheviks meeting at the Holy Synod.
178
The Soviet Union became an empire of acronyms: the People’s Commissars became “Narkoms;” the Council of People’s Commissars was known as Sovnarkom; and its President (the effective Premier, successively Lenin, Rykov, Molotov, then Stalin) was Predsovnarkom. These lasted until Stalin reintroduced ministers at the end of the Second World War.
179
Sagirashvili was not the only Menshevik whom Stalin was courting. A Bolshevik-turned-Menshevik, Alexander Troyanovsky, the noble officer with whom Stalin had stayed in Vienna, was walking in the streets when a pair of hands covered his eyes. “Are you with us or against us?” asked Stalin.
