Trotsky's 'Stalin' Chap 12 The Road to Power

Chapter 12
The Road to Power.


Part One: Lenin moves to remove Stalin

[Early in 1923 it6 had become clear to the top leaders cognizant of the political situation that Stalin was literally packing the forthcoming Twelfth Congress, the highest authority in the Party, with delegates unswervingly loyal to him personally. Lenin became so alarmed by this trend of affairs that he] summoned me to his room in the Kremlin, spoke of the frightful growth of bureaucratism in our Soviet apparat [Note: The Communist word for political machine – C.M.] and of the need to find a solution for the problem. He suggested a special commission of the Central Committee and asked me to take an active part in it. I replied:

“Vladimir Ilyich, I am convinced that in the present fight against bureaucratism in the Soviet apparat we must no lose sight of what is going on: a very special selection of officials and specialists, Party members and non-partisans, in the Center and in the provinces, even for district and local Party offices, is taking place on the basis of loyalty to certain dominant Party personalities and ruling groups inside the Central Committee itself. Every time you attack a minor official, you run up against an important Party leader . . . I could not undertake the work under present circumstances.”

Lenin was thoughtful for a moment and –I am quoting him literally –said: “In other words, I am proposing a campaign against bureaucratism in the Soviet apparat and you are proposing to extend the fight to include the bureaucratism of the Party’s Orgburo?”

I laughed at the very unexpectedness of this, because no such finished formulation of the idea was in my mind at the time. I replied: “I suppose that’s it.”

“Very well, then,” Lenin retorted, “I propose a bloc.”

“It is a pleasure to form a bloc with a good man,” I said.

It was agreed that Lenin would initiate the proposal for this commission of the Central Committee to fight bureaucratism “in general” and in the Orgburo in particular. He promised to think over “further” organizational details of the matter. On that we parted. Two weeks passed. Lenin’s health became worse. Then his secretaries brought me his notes and letter on the national question. For months he was prostrate with arteriosclerosis and nothing could be done about our bloc against the bureaucratism of the Orgburo. Obviously, Lenin’s plan was directed against Stalin, although his name was not mentioned; it was in line with the train of thought Lenin expressed explicitly in his Testament.

[If by that time Stalin had the Central Control Commission, the Orgburo and the Secretariat in his grip, Zinoviev still held the plurality in the Politburo and in the Central Committee, by virtue of which he was the leading member of the triumvirate. The contest between him and Stalin, tacit and hidden by nonetheless vehement, was for the majority at the forthcoming Congress. Zinoviev had complete control of the Leningrad organization and his part Kamenev of the Moscow organization. These two most important Party centers needed only the support of a few other large Party centers to secure a majority of the Congress. This majority was necessary for the election of a Central Committee and the ratification of resolutions favorable to Zinoviev. But Zinoviev failed to secure that majority; most of the Party organizations outside of Leningrad and Moscow proved to be under the firm control of the General Secretary.

[Nevertheless Zinoviev was foolhardy enough to insist on taking Lenin’s place at the Twelfth Congress and assumed the role of Lenin’s successor by delivering the Political Report at its opening session. During the preparations for the Congress, with Lenin ill and unable to attend,] the most ticklish question was who should deliver this keynote address, which since the founding of the Party had always been Lenin’s prerogative. When the subject was broached in the Politburo, Stalin was the first to say, “The Political Report will of course be made by Comrade Trotsky.”

I did not want that, since it seemed to me equivalent to announcing my candidacy for the role of Lenin’s successor at a time when Lenin was fighting a grave illness. I replied approximately as follows: “This is an interim. Let us hope that Lenin will soon get well. In the meantime the report should be made, in keeping with his office, by the General Secretary. That will eliminate all grounds for idle speculations. Besides, you and I have serious differences on economic questions, and I am in the minority.”

“But suppose there were to be no differences?” Stalin asked, letting me understand that he was ready to go far I making concessions, i.e., to conclude a rotten compromise.

Kalenin intervened in this dialogue. “What differences?” he asked. “Your proposals always pass through the Politburo.”

I continued to insist on Stalin making the report.

“Under no circumstances,” he replied with demonstrative modesty. “The Party will not understand it. The report must be made by the most popular member of the Central Committee.”

[The matter was finally decided by Zinoviev’s majority in the Central Committee. That made it clearer to every Party member that Zinoviev was Lenin’s successor as head of the Party. With the delegates he controlled and the majority controlled by his junior partner in the triumvirate, he had every reason to expect an ovation the moment he appeared on the rostrum in the role of Number One Bolshevik to deliver the Political Report. But the General Secretary double-crossed his fellow-triumvir: Zinoviev was not greeted by the customary applause. He delivered his keynote address in virtually oppressive silence. The verdict of the delegates was clear: in this new role Zinoviev was an usurper.

[The Twelfth Congress, which lasted for the week between April 17 and 25, 1923 raised Stalin from junior to senior partnership of the triumvirate. Zinoviev’s plurality in the Central Committee and the Politburo were destroyed. Stalin gained control of both. But his most important achievement at the Twelfth Congress was I the Central Control Commission and the network of provincial control commissions. At the Eleventh Congress Stalin had become the secret boss of the Central Control Commission; the majority of its members were his men. But the provincial, county and local control commissions, many of them elected before he became General Secretary, were beyond his control. Stalin tackled the problem in characteristic fashion. On one pretext or another, cases subject to the jurisdiction of hostile control commissions and involving the interests of Stalin’s political machine were transferred for hearing wherever possible to the Central Control Commission; moreover, whenever it could be done without attracting too much notice, on one or another pretext, a number of hostile control commissions were simply abolished by the Central Control Commission. This, supplemented by organized conniving at provincial and regional conferences of the control commissions, produced fruitful results.

[The Party Collegium, made up of Central Control Commission members and especially created at this Congress to “try” and “liquidate” oppositionists, was made up entirely of Stalinists. The membership of the Central Control Commission itself was raised from 7 to 50, with 10 alternates –more high-placed offices with which to reward the faithful. Moreover, the new definitions of its functions and its actual activities transformed the Central Control Commission into a special OGPU for Communist Party members.

[Having suffered defeat at the Twelfth Congress, Zinoviev tried to recoup his political fortunes by a deal with the top leaders. He wavered between two plans: (1) to reduce the Secretariat to its former status as a subsidiary of the Politburo, by depriving it of its self-aggrandized appointive powers; and (2) to “politicize” it, which meant establishing a special collegium of three members of the Politburo within it as its highest authority, these three to be Stalin, Trotsky and either Kamenev, Bukharin or Zinoviev. Some such combination, he felt, was indispensable to offset Stalin’s undue influence.

[He initiated his conferences on the matter in a cave new Kislovodsk, a famous Caucasian watering place, in September, 1923. Voroshilov, who was in Rostov at the time, received a telegraphic invitation form Zinoviev to attend. So did Stalin’s friend Ordzhonikidze. The others present were Zinoviev, Bukharin, Lachevich and Evdokimov. Zinoviev, who wrote down a summary of the views expressed at that conference in a letter addressed to Stalin and personally given by him to his best friend Ordzhonikidze for delivery to the addressee, revealed that:

Comrade Stalin . . . replied with a telegram in a coarse but friendly tone . . . Some time later he arrived and . . . we had several conversations. Finally it was decided that we would not touch the Secretariat, but, in order to coordinate organizational work with political activities, we wou8ld place three members of the Politburo in the Orgburo. This not very practical suggestion was made by Comrade Stalin, and we agreed to it . . . The three members of the Politburo were Comrades Trotsky, Bukharin and I. I attended the sessions of the Orgburo, I think, once or twice, Comrades Bukharin and Trotsky did not come even once. Nothing came of it all . . .

[Actually, all the hopeful Zinoviev had to do was to attend one or two meetings of the Orgburo, to realize the hopelessness of anyone not a member of the Stalin machine trying to “crash the gate” there; Trotsky and Bukharin had at least the foresight and imagination to stay away.

[Meantime, the revolutionary situation in Germany had come to a head. But the triumvirs and their allies in the Politburo were still too busy undermining the prestige of the over-popular Comrade Trotsky and knifing each other, to give more than an occasional perfunctory glance to the paramount problem of world revolution. The German comrades had standing order to work the level of the United Front tactic to the limit. Then Zinoviev convoked the enlarged Executive of the Comintern in Moscow, and from June 12th to the 24th the leaders of World Communism talked revolution.

[The desperate German masses –fifteen million of them in the towns, seven million of them in the country – backed the German section of the Comintern. But with Lenin paralyzed and speechless, with Trotsky hamstrung by Party discipline and rendered politically impotent by his isolation in the Politburo, the Comintern leaders in Moscow had nothing to say to the Communist leaders of Germany. No orders came through and nothing happened. During the fateful August of 1923, Stalin wrote the following lines to Zinoviev (the head of the Communist International) and Bukharin (the officially-acknowledged “chief theoretician of Communist after Lenin”)]:

Should the Communists at the present stage try to seize power without the Social-Democrats? Are they sufficiently ripe for that? That, in my opinion, is the question. When we seized power, we had in Russia such resources in reserve as (a) the promise of peace; (b) the slogan: the land to the peasants; (c) the support of the great majority of the working class; and (d) the sympathy of the peasantry. At the moment the German Communists have nothing of the kind. They have of course a Soviet country as neighbor, which we did not have; but what can we offer them? . . . Should the government in Germany topple over now, in a manner of speaking, and the Communists were to seize hold of it, they would end up in a crash. That is the “best” case. While at worst, they will be smashed to smithereens and thrown away back. The whole point is not that Brandler wants to “educate the masses” but that the bourgeoisie plus the Right Wing Social-Democrats is bound to turn such lessons –the demonstration – into a general battle (at present the odds are on their side) and exterminate them [the German Communists]. Of course the Fascists are not asleep; but it is to our advantage to let them attack first: that will rally the entire working class around the Communists (Germany is not Bulgaria). Besides, all our information indicates that in Germany Fascism is weak. In my opinion the Germans should be restrained and not spurred on.

[This opinion of the senior member of the triumvirate and secret boss of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was virtually an order to the head of the Communist International, who formulated his instruction to the German Communist Party accordingly. Like all such pronouncements, it was “secret” and “confidential” and not generally known at the time. Trotsky, unaware of Stalin’s secret “opinion” but very much aware of the seriousness of the German situation, urged that a flexible provisional date eight to ten weeks ahead be set at once for the German Insurrection and corresponding preparations be launched at once. But the majority of the Central Committee was in Stalin’s pocket.

[Brandler, who came to Moscow early in September for guidance and help, could not even get an interview with the leaders of the world revolution. After being shunted from office to office day after day and week after week, he finally secured an opportunity to air his knowledge and his views of the German situation in the presence of Stalin as well as Zinoviev. Their advice to Brandler was the same as the decision of the Comintern Executive of the previous June –form a workers’ government by entering the Social-Democratic government of Saxony. When Brandler balked he was told the purpose of th4e maneuver was the better to prepare for insurrection. Stalin countered further arguments with a peremptory order for immediate entry, and Zinoviev as head of the Comintern sent telegraphic orders to the Communist Party of Saxony to ente4r the Social-Democratic government at once. Moreover, Brandler himself was instructed to enter that government. He was thus confronted with the alternative of relinquishing leadership of the German Communist Party, if he did not obey. He bowed his head.

[The hasty preparations begun at the end of September were woefully inadequate and badly mismanaged. The German Communist Party had organized fighting detachments, the so-called Red Hundreds, in each Communist center, and held them in readiness for the signal to be given as a result of a conference to be held in Chemnitz on October 21st. The insurrection was to begin in Saxony. If it developed according to plan the Communist Party would lead it; if it did not, the Communist Party would disclaim any responsibility and hide behind the protective coloration of coalition with the Social Democrats, with whose aid it would attempt to stave off the inevitable reaction.

[It was a typical Stalinist maneuver. He had behaved thus in October, 1917, in Russia, during the debates in the Bolshevik Central Committee, clandestinely supporting Zinoviev and Kamenev who were openly opposed to Lenin’s insistence on the insurrection, while keeping a sharp lookout to see which side was actually winning. In Russia it was of no importance where he stood on the issue of insurrection because he was not entrusted with preparing it. But in the German situation of 1923 he was the supreme boss.

[When at the Chemnitz Conference on October 21st the Saxon Social-Democrats turned down Brandler’s proposal for a general strike and an armed insurrection, Brandler gave the only signal he could give in keeping with his instructions from Stalin and Zinoviev; he called the revolution off. But this was not the first time that a revolution in Germany had been scheduled, called off and scheduled again. A revolutionary party straining at the leash for action cannot be expected to respond indefinitely with the regularity of a water faucet. Two days after the off signal from Chemnitz, the insurrection was on in Hamburg. All to no purpose. The fighters were leaderless and without an objective. The uprising petered out. What might have been a revolution became a senseless and criminal adventure. It was the first of a progressive series under Stalin’s leadership in the international arena, his first great rehearsal for his first capitulation to Hitler in 1933.

[The German failure found immediate repercussion in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The sincere Bolsheviks were perturbed; many of them insisted on more than the perfunctory accounting of performance by the Party leaders. They wanted to thrash the problems out in open debate. Their first demand therefore was the restoration of the right to form groupings within the Party, abolished by the Tenth Congress in 1921 during the crucial days of the Kronstadt Rebellion. The dissatisfaction with the rule of the triumvirate had been brewing ever since the Twelfth Congress, nor was it confined to the triumvirs; it was directed against the Central Committee as a whole. Forty-six prominent Bolsheviks, among them Pyatakov, Sapronov, Serebryakov, Preobrazhensky, Ossinky, Drobnis, Alsky, V.M. Smirnov, issued a statement in which they declared in part:

The regime which has been set up in the Party is utterly intolerable. It is destructive of initiative within the Party. It is replacing the Party with a political machine . . . which functions well enough when all goes well but which I inevitably misfires at moments of crisis and which threatens to prove its absolute bankruptcy in the face of the grave developments now impending. The present situation is due to the fact that the regime of factional dictatorship which developed objectively after the Tenth Congress has outlived its usefulness.

[The Forty-Six were not satisfied with the empty gestures of the September Plenum on “extending democracy” in the Party. Meetings of protest were organized and public agitation against the bureaucratic regime was carried on not only in Soviet institutions but even in Party organizations.

[In an effort to catalyze this growing movement of protest, which threatened to develop into a united opposition from the Left, Zinoviev on behalf of the triumvirate published an article in the November 7th issue of Pravda, on the sixth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, which legalized the discussion by announcing the existence of “workers’ democracy” within the Party. At the same time, negotiations among the top leaders led finally to a resolution drafted in the Politburo and adopted by the Central Committee on December 5th, 1923, in which all such evils as bureaucracy, special privileges, and the like were condemned and the restoration of the rights to criticize and investigate and to have all offices filled through honest elections was solemnly promised. Trotsky, who had been ill since the beginning of November and therefore unable to participate in the general discussion, attached his signature to it along with all the other members of the Politburo and the Central Committee.

[The struggle at the top had been going on for well-nigh two years in such tight-lipped secrecy that the Party as a whole knew nothing about it and all but a handful of trusted initiates regarded Trotsky by and large as a loyal supporter of the reigning regime. He decided therefore to supplement his signature to the Central Committee Resolution of December 5th with a statement of his own position in which he frankly explained his misgivings about the dangers of bureaucracy, the possibilities of the political degeneration of the Bolshevik movement, called upon the youth to spurn passive obedience, careerism and servility, and drew the explicit inference that the new course outline in the Central Committee Resolution of December 5th should lead first of all to clear understanding by everyone “that henceforth no one should terrorize the Party.”

[The letter aroused a storm of indignation among the top leaders. Most bitter of all was Zinoviev, who, as Bukharin revealed in the course of a factional fight four years later, insisted on Trotsky’s arrest for the “treason” implicit in his “New Course” letter. Moreover, although the discussion had been sanctioned officially, the Central Control Commission worked full blast. So did the entire political machine of the General Secretary and the senior triumvir. The Thirteenth Party Congress, which met January 16th to 18th, 1924, to lay the groundwork for the forthcoming Thirteenth Party Congress, to be held in May, adopted a resolution on the basis of Stalin’s report which condemned the pro-democracy discussion and Trotsky’s role in the following words:

The opposition headed by Trotsky put forward the slogan of breaking up the Party apparat and attempted to transfer the center of gravity from the struggle against bureaucracy in the State apparat to the struggle against “bureaucracy” in the Party apparat. Such utterly baseless criticism and the downright attempt to discredit the Party apparat cannot, objectively speaking, lead to anything but the emancipation of the State apparat from Party influence . . .

and that was of course a “petty-bourgeois deviation.” Finally, the Politburo ordered the ailing Trotsky to take a cure in the Caucasus. It was a polite way –(in view of his popularity they were constrained to go easy with him) –of exiling him from the political center for the time being. The sick Trotsky hardly reached the Caucasus, when he received a telegram from Stalin that Lenin, whose health had been improving lately, had suddenly died.]

Politically, Stalin and I have long been in opposite and irreconcilable camps. But in certain circles it has become the rule to speak of my “hatred” of Stalin and to assume a priori that everything I write, not only about the Moscow dictator but about the U.S.S.R. as well, is inspired by that feeling. During the more than ten years of my present exile the Kremlin’s literary agents have systematically relieved themselves of the need to answer pertinently anything I write about the U.S.S.R. by conveniently alluding to my “hatred” of Stalin. The late Freud regarded this cheap sort of psychoanalysis most disapprovingly. Hatred is, after al l, a kind of personal bond. Yet Stalin and I have been separated by such fiery events as have consumed in flames and reduced to ashes anything personal, without leaving any residue whatever. In hatred there is an element of envy. Yet to me, in mind and feeling, Stalin’s unprecedented elevation represents the very deepest fall. Stalin is my enemy. But Hitler, too, is my enemy, and so is Mussolini, and so are many others. Today I bear as little “hatred” toward Stalin as toward Hitler, Franco, or the Mikado. Above all, I try to understand them, so that I may be better equipped to fight them. Generally speaking, in matters of historic import, personal hatred is a petty and contemptible feeling. It is not only degrading but blinding. Yet in the light of recent events on the world arena, as well as in the U.S.S.R., even many of my opponents have now become convinced that I was not so very blind: those very predictions of mine which seemed least likely have proved to be true.

These introductory lines pro domo sua are all the more necessary, since I am about to broach a particularly trying theme. I have endeavored to give a general characterization of Stalin on the basis of close observation of him and a painstaking study of his biography. I do not deny that the portrait which emerges from that is somber and even sinister. But I challenge anyone else to try to substitute another, more human figure back of these facts that have shocked the imagination of mankind during the last few years –the mass “purges,” the unprecedented accusations, the fantastic trials, the extermination of a whole revolutionary generation, and finally, the latest maneuvers on the international arena. Now I am about to adduce a few rather unusual facts, supplemented by certain thoughts and suspicions, from the story of how a provincial revolutionist became the dictator of a great country. These thoughts and suspicions have not come to me full-blown. They matured slowly, and whenever they occurred to me in the past, brushed them aside as the product of an excessive mistrustfulness. But the Moscow trials –which revealed an infernal hive of intrigues, forgeries, falsifications, surreptitious poisonings and murders back of the Kremlin dictator –have cast a sinister light on the preceding years. I began to ask myself with growing insistency: What was Stalin’s actual role at the time of Lenin’s illness? Did not the disciple do something to expedite his master’s death?

I realize more than anyone else the monstrosity of such suspicion. But that cannot be helped, when it follows from the circumstances, the facts and Stalin’s very character. In 1922, the apprehensive Lenin had warned: “That cook will prepared nothing but peppery dishes.” They proved to be not only peppery but poisoned, and not only figuratively but literally so. Two years ago [probably 1937 C.M.] I wrote down for the first time the facts which in their day (1923-24) were known to no more than seven or eight persons, and then only in part. Of that number, besides myself, only Stalin and Molotov are still among the living. But these two –even allowing that Molotov was among the initiated, of which I am not certain –have no motives for confessing that which I am now about to tell. I should add that every fact I mention, every reference and quotation, can be substantiated either by official Soviet publications or by documents preserved in my archives. I had occasion to give oral and written explanations before Dr. John Dewey’s commission investigating the Moscow trials, and not a single one of the hundreds of documents what I presented was ever impugned.

The iconography, rich in quantity (we say nothing about quality), produced in the last few years, invariably portrays Lenin in Stalin’s company. They sit side by side, take counsel together, gaze upon each other in friendly fashion. The obtrusiveness of this motif, reiterated in paintings, in sculpture, on the screen, is dictated by the desire to make the people forget the fact that the last period of Lenin’s life was filled with intense conflict between him and Stalin, which culminated in a complete break between them. As always, there was nothing in any way personal about Lenin’s hostility toward Stalin. Undoubtedly he valued certain of Stalin’s traits very highly, his firmness of character, his persistence, even his ruthlessness and conniving, attributes indispensable in struggle and consequently at Party Headquarters. But as time went on, Stalin took increasing advantage of the opportunities his post presented for recruiting people personally devoted to him and for revenging himself upon his opponents. Having become in 1919 the head of the People’s Commissariat of Inspection, [Note: Another name for the Commissariat of Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, for which Rabkrin is the Russian portmanteau word – C.M.] Stalin gradually transformed it into an instrument of favoritism and intrigues. He turned the Party’s General Secretariat into an inexhaustible fountainhead of favors and dispensations. He had likewise misused for personal ends his position as member of the Orgburo and the Politburo. A personal motive could be discerned in all of his actions. Little by little Lenin became convinced that certain of Stalin’s traits, multiplied by the political machine, were directly harmful to the Party. From that matured his decision to remove Stalin from the machine and thereby transform him into a rank and file member of the Central Committee. In present-day U.S.S.R. Lenin’s letters of that time constitute the most tabu of all writings. Fortunately, copies and photostats of a number of them are in my archives, and some of them I have already published.

Lenin’s health took a sudden turn for the worse towards the end of 1921. The first stroke came in May of the following year. For two months he was unable either to move, to speak or to write. Beginning with July, he began to convalesce slowly. In October he returned from the country to the Kremlin and took up his work again. He was literally shaken by the spread of bureaucracy, arbitrariness and intrigues in the institutions of the Party and the Government. In December he opened fire against Stalin’s persecutions along the line of the nationalities policy, especially as enforced by him in Georgia, where the authority of the General Secretary was openly defied. He came out against Stalin on the question of foreign trade monopoly and was preparing for the forthcoming Party Congress an address which Lenin’s secretaries, quoting his own words, called ‘a bombshell against Stalin.” On January 23rd, to the great trepidation of the General Secretary, he proposed a project for organizing a control commission of workers [Note: Not to be confused with the Central Control Commission, already functioning then. – C.M.] that would check the power of the bureaucracy. “Let us speak frankly,” wrote Lenin on March 2nd, “the Commissariat of Inspection does not today enjoy the slightest authority . . . There is no worse institution among us than our People’s Commissariat of Inspection . . .” and the like. At the head of the Inspection was Stalin. He well understood the implications of such language.

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Part 2: Lenin dies, Stalin wins

In the middle of December, 1922, Lenin’s health again took a turn for the worse. He was obliged to absent himself from conferences, keeping in touch with the Central Committee by means of notes and telephonograms. Stalin at once tried to capitalize on this situation, hiding from Lenin much of the information which was concentrating in the Party Secretariat. Measures of blockade were instituted against persons closest to Lenin. Krupskaya did whatever she could to shield the sick man from hostile jolts by the Secretariat. But Lenin knew how to piece together a complete picture of the situation from stray and scarcely perceptible indications. “Shield him from worries!” the doctors insisted. It was easier said than done. Chained to his bed, isolated from the outside world, Lenin was aflame with alarm and indignation. His chief course of worry was Stalin. The behavior of the General Secretary became bolder as the reports of physicians about Lenin’s health became less favorable. In those days Stalin was morose, his pipe firmly clenched between his teeth, a sinister gleam in his jaundiced eyes, snarling back instead of answering. His fate was at stake. He had made up his mind to overcome all obstacles. That was when the final break between him and Lenin took place.

The former Soviet diplomat Dmitrievsky, who is very friendly toward Stalin, tells about this dramatic episode as it was bandied about in the General Secretary’s entourage:

When Krupskaya, of whom he was thoroughly sick because of her constant annoyances, telephoned him in the country once more for some information, Stalin . . . upbraided her in the most outrageous language. Krupskaya, all in tears, immediately ran to complain to Lenin. Lenin’s nerves, already strained to the breaking point by the intrigues, could not hold out any longer. Krupskaya hastened to send Lenin’s letter to Stalin . . . “But you know Vladimir Ilyich,” Krupskaya said triumphally to Kamenev. “He would never have ventured to break off personal relations, if he had not thought it necessary to crush Stalin politically.”

Krupskaya did really say that, but far from “triumphantly”; on the contrary, t5hat thoroughly sincere and sensitive woman was frightfully apprehensive and worried by what had taken place. It is not true that she “complained” about Stalin: on the contrary, as far as she was able, she played the part of a shock-absorber. But in reply to Lenin’s persistent questioning, she could not tell him more than she had been told by the Secretariat, and Stalin concealed the most important matters. The letter about the break, or rather the note of several lines dictated on the 6th of March to a trusted stenographer, announced dryly the severance of “all personal and comradely relations with Stalin.” That note, the last surviving Lenin document, is at the same time the final summation of his relation with Stalin. Then came the hardest stroke of all and loss of speech.

A year later, when Lenin was already embalmed in his mausoleum, the responsibility for the break, as is clearly apparent in Dmitrievsky’s story, was openly placed on Krupskaya. Stalin accused her of “intrigues” against himself. The notorious Yaroslavsky, who usually carried on Stalin’s dubious errands, said in July, 1026, at a session of the Central Committee: “They sank so low that they dared to come to the sick Lenin with their complaints of having been hurt by Stalin. How disgraceful –to complicate policy on such major issues with personal matters!” Now “they” was Krupskaya. She was being vengefully punished for Lenin’s affronts against Stalin. Krupskaya, for her part, told me about Lenin’s deep distrust of Stalin during the last period of his life. “Volodya was saying: ‘He’ (Krupskaya did not call him by name, but nodded her head in the direction of Stalin’s apartment) “ ‘is devoid of the most elementary honesty, the most simply human honesty . . .’”

The so-called Lenin “Testament” –that is, his last advice on how to organize the Party leadership –was written in two installments during his second illness; on December 25th, 1922, and on January 4th, 1923. “Stalin, having become General Secretary,” declares the Testament, “has concentrated enormous power in his hands, and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution.” Ten days later this restrained formula seemed insufficient to Lenin, and he added a postscript: “I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position and appoint to it another man,” who would be, “more loyal, more courteous and more considerate to comrades, less capricious, etc.” Lenin tried to express his estimate of Stalin in as inoffensive language as possible. Yet he did broach the subject of removing Stalin from the one post that could give him power.

After all that had taken place during the preceding months, the Testament could not have been a surprise to Stalin. Nevertheless he took it as a cruel blow. When he first read the text –which Krupskaya had transmitted to him for the forthcoming Party Congress –in the presence of his secretary Mekhlia, later the political chief of the Red Army, and of the prominent Soviet politician Syrtsov, who has since disappeared from the scene, he broke out into billingsgate against Lenin that gave vent to his true feelings about his “master” in those days. Bazhanov, another former secretary of Stalin’s, has described the session of the Central Committee at which Kamenev first made the Testament known.
“Terrible embarrassment paralyzed all those present. Stalin sitting on the steps of the praesidium’s rostrum, felt small and miserable. I studied him closely: notwithstanding his self-possession and show of calm, it was clearly evident that his fate was at stake . . .” Radek, who sat beside me at that memorable session, leaned over with the words: “Now they won’t dare to go against you.” He had in mind two places in the letter: one, which characterized me as “the most gifted man in the present Central Committee,” and the other, which demanded Stalin’s removal in view of his rudeness disloyalty and tendency to misuse power. I told Radek: “On the contrary, now they will have to see it through to the bitter end, and moreover as quickly as possible.” Actually, the Testament not only failed to terminate the internal struggle, which was what Lenin wanted, but, on the contrary, intensified it to a feverish pitch. Stalin could no longer doubt that Lenin’s return to activity would mean the political death of the General Secretary. And conversely: only Lenin’s death could clear the way for Stalin.

During Lenin’s second illness, toward the end of February, 1923, at a meeting of the Politburo members Zinoviev, Kamenev and the author of these lines, Stalin informed us, after the departure of the secretary, that Lenin had suddenly called him in and had asked him for poison. Lenin was again losing the faculty of speech, considered his situation hopeless, foresaw the approach of a new stroke, did not trust his physicians, whom he had no difficulty catching in contradictions. His mind was perfectly clear and he suffered unendurably. I was able to follow the course of Lenin’s illness day by day through the physician we had in common, Doctor Guetier, who was also a family friend of ours.

“Is it possible, Fedor Alexandrovich, that this is the end?” my wife and I would ask him time and again.
“That cannot be said at all. Vladimir Ilyich can get on his feet again, He has a powerful constitution.”
“And his mental faculties?”
“Basically, they will remain untouched. Not every note, perhaps, will keep its former purity, but the virtuoso will remain a virtuoso.”

We continued to hope. Yet here I was unexpectedly confronted with the disclosure that Lenin, who seemed the very incarnation of the will to live, was seeking poison for himself. What must have been his inward state!

I recall how extraordinary, enigmatic and out of tune with the circumstances Stalin’s face seemed to me. The request he was transmitting to us was tragic; yet a sickly smile was transfixed on his face, as on a mask. We were not unfamiliar with the discrepancy between his facial expression and his speech. But this time it was utterly unsufferable. The horror of it was enhanced by Stalin’s failure to express any opinion about Lenin’s request, as if he were waiting to see what others would say: did he want to catch the overtones of our reaction to it, without committing himself? Or did he have some hidden thoughts of his own? . . . I see before me the pale and silent Kamenev, who sincerely loved Lenin, and Zinoviev, bewildered, as always at difficult moments. Had they known about Lenin’s request even before the session? Or had Stalin sprung this as a surprise on his allies in the triumvirate as well as on me?

“Naturally, we cannot even consider carrying out this request!” I exclaimed. “Guetier has not lost hope. Lenin can still recover.”
“I told him all that,” Stalin replied, not without a touch of annoyance. “But he wouldn’t listen to reason. The Old Man is suffering. He says he want to have the poison at hand . . . he’ll use it only when he is convinced that his condition is hopeless.”
“Anyway, it’s out of the question,” I insisted –this time, I think, with Zinoviev’s support. “He might succumb to a passing mood and take the irrevocable step.”
“The Old Man is suffering.” Stalin repeated, staring vaguely past us and, as before, saying nothing one way or the other. A line of thought parallel to the conversation but not quite in consonance with it must have been running through his mind.

It is possible of course, that subsequent events have influenced certain details of my recollection, though, as a general rule, I have learned to trust my memory. However, this episode is one of those that leave an indelible imprint on one’s consciousness for all time. Moreover, upon my return home, I told it in detail to my wife. And ever since, each time I mentally review this scene, I cannot help repeating to myself: Stalin’s behavior, his whole manner, was baffling and sinister. What does the man want? And why doesn’t he take that insidious smile off his mask? . . . No vote was taken, since this was not a formal conference, but we parted with the implicit understanding that we could not even consider sending poison to Lenin.

Here naturally arises the question: how and why did Lenin, who at the time was extremely suspicious of Stalin, turn to him with such a request, which on the face of it, presupposed the highest degree of personal confidence? A mere month before he made this request to Stalin, Lenin had written his pitiless postscript to the Testament. Several days after making this request, he broke off all personal relations with him. Stalin himself could not have failed to ask himself the question: why did Lenin turn to him of all people? The answer is simple: Lenin saw in Stalin the only man who would grant his tragic request, since he was directly interested in doing so. With his faultless instinct, the sick man guessed what was going on in the Kremlin and outside its walls and how Stalin really felt about him. Lenin did even have to review the list of his closest comrades in order to say to himself that no one except Stalin would do him this “favor.” At the same time, it is possible that he wanted to test Stalin: just how eager would the chef of the peppery dishes be to take advantage of this opportunity? In those days Lenin thought not only of death but of the fate of the Party. Lenin’s revolutionary nerve was undoubtedly the last of his nerves to surrender to death.

When still a very young man in prison, Koba would surreptitiously incite hotheaded Caucasians against his opponents, which usually ended in a beating and on one occasion even a murder. As the years passed by, he perfected his technique. The monopolistic political machine of the Party, combined with the totalitarian machine of the Sate, opened to him possibilities which even such of his predecessors as Caesar Borgia could not have imagined. The office in which the investigators of the OGPU carry on their super-inquisitorial questioning is connected by a microphone with Stalin’s office. The unseen Joseph Djugashvili, a pipe in his teeth, listens greedily to the dialogue outlined by himself, rubs his hands and laughs soundlessly. More than ten years before the notorious Moscow trials he had confessed to Kamenev and Dzerzhinsky over a bottle of wine one summer night on the balcony of a summer resort that his highest delight in life was to keep a keen eye on an enemy, prepare everything painstakingly, mercilessly revenge himself, and then go to sleep. Later he avenged himself on a whole generation of Bolsheviks! There is no reason here to return to the Moscow judicial frame-ups. The judgement they were accorded in their day was both authoritative and exhaustive.
[Note: The Case of Leon Trotsky: Report of the Hearings on The Charges Made Against Him In The Moscow Trials: By the Preliminary Commission of Inquiry, John Dewey, Chairman, and others: Harper & Brothers: New York & London” 1937, 617 pp. Not Guilty: Report of the Commission of Inquiry Into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials: By John Dewey, Chairman, and others: Harper & Brothers: New York & London: 1938: 422 pp.]

But in order to understand the real Stalin and the manner of his behavior during the days of Lenin’s illness and death, it is necessary to shed light on certain episodes of the last big trial staged in March, 1938.

A special place in the prisoner’s dock was occupied by Henry Yagoda, who had worked in the Cheka and the OGPU for sixteen years, at first as an assistant chief, later as the head, and all the time in close contact with the General Secretary as his most trusted aid in the fight against the Opposition. The system of confessions to crimes that had never been committed is Yagoda’s handiwork, if not his brainchild. In 1933 Stalin rewarded Yagoda with the Order of Lenin, in 1935 elevated him to the rank of General Commissar of State Defense, that is, Marshal of the Political Police, only two days after the talented Tukhachevsky was elevated to the rank of Marshal of the Red Army. In Yagoda’s person a nonentity was elevated, known as such to all land held in contempt by all. The old revolutionists must have exchanged looks of indignation. Even in the submissive Politburo an attempt was made to oppose this. But some secret bound Stalin to Yagoda –apparently, forever. Yet the mysterious bond was mysteriously broken. During the great “purge” Stalin decided to liquidate at the same time his fellow-culprit who knew too much. In April, 1927, Yagoda was arrested. As always, Stalin thus achieved several supplementary advantages: for the promise of a pardon, Yagoda assumed at the trial personal guilt for crimes rumor has ascribed to Stalin. Of course, the promise was not kept: Yagoda was executed, in order the better to prove Stalin’s irreconcilability in matters of law and morals.

But exceedingly illuminating circumstances were made public at that trial.
According to the testimony of his secretary and confidant, Bulanov, Yagoda had a special poison chest, form which, as the need arose, he would obtain precious vials and entrust them to his agents with appropriate instructions. The chief of the AGPU, a former pharmacist, displayed exceptional interest in poisons. He had at his disposal several toxicologists for whom he organized a special laboratory, providing it with means without stint and without control. It is, of course, out of the question that Yagoda might have established such an enterprise for his own personal needs. Far from it. In this case, as in others, he was discharging his official functions. As a poisoner, he was merely instrumentum regni, even as old Locusta at Nero’s court –with this difference, that he had far outstripped his ignorant predecessor in matters of technique!

At Yagoda’s side in the prisoner’s dock sat four Kremlin physicians, charged with the murder of Maxim Gorky and of two Soviet cabinet ministers. “I confess that . . . I prescribed medicines unsuited to the given illness . . .” Thus “I was responsible for the untimely death of Maxim Gorky and Kuibyshev.” During the days of the trial, the basic background of which consisted of falsehood, the accusations, like the confessions of poisoning the aged and ailing writer, seemed phantasmagoric to me. Subsequent information and a more attentive analysis of he circumstances forced me to alter that judgment. Not everything in the trials was a lie. There were the poisoned and the poisoners. Not all the poisoners were sitting in the prisoners’ dock. The principal poisoner was conducting the trial by telephone.

Gorky was neither a conspirator nor a politician. He was a softhearted old man, a defender of the injured, a sentimental protester. Such had been his role during the early days of the October Revolution. During the first and second five-year plans famine, discontent and repressions reached the utmost limit. The courtiers protested. Even Stalin’s wife, Alliluyeva, protested. In that atmosphere Gorky constituted a serious menace. He corresponded with European writers, he was visited by foreigners, the injured complained to him, he molded public opinion. But, most important, it would have been impossible for him to acquiesce in the extermination, then being prepared, of the Old Bolsheviks, whom he had known intimately for many years. Gorky’s public protest against the frame-ups would have immediately broken the hypnotic spell of Stalin’s justice before the eyes of the world.

In no way was it possible to make him keep still. To arrest him, to exile him, not to say to shoot hi, was even less possible. The thought of hastening the liquidation of the sick Gorky through Yagoda “without bloodshed” must have seemed to the boss of the Kremlin as the only way out under the circumstances. Stalin’s mind is so constituted that such decisions occur to him with the impact of reflexes. Having accepted the assignment, Yagoda turned to his “own” physicians. He did not risk anything. Refusal, according to Dr. Levin’s own words, “would spell ruin for me and my family.” Moreover, “you will not excapte Yagoda anyhow. Yagoda is a man who does not stop at anything. He would get you even if you were underground.”

But why did not the authoritative and respected Kremlin physicians complain to members of the government, whom they knew well as their own patients? On Dr. Levin’s list of patients alone were twenty-four high-ranking officials, including members of the Politburo and of the council of People’s Commissars. The answer is, that Dr. Levin, like everyone else in and around the Kremlin, knew perfectly well whose agent Yagoda was. Dr. Levin submitted to Yagoda because he was powerless to oppose Stalin.

As for Gorky’s discontent, his efforts to go abroad, Stalin’s refusal to grant him a foreign passport –that was common knowledge in Moscow and was discussed in whispers. Suspicions that Stalin had somehow aided the destructive force of nature sprang up directly after the great writer’s death. A concomitant task of Yagoda’s trial was to clear Stalin of that suspicion. Hence, the repeated declarations by Yagoda, the physicians and the other accused that Gorky was “a close friend of Stalin’s,” “a trusted persons,” “a Stalinist,” fully approved of the “Leader’s” policy, spoke “with exceptional enthusiasm” of Stalin’s role. If only half of this were true, Yagoda would not have taken it upon himself to kill Gorky, and still less would have dared to entrust such a plot to a Kremlin physician, who could have destroyed him by simply telephoning Stalin.

Here is a single “detail” taken from a single trial. There were many trials, and no end of “details.” All of them bear Stalin’s ineradicable imprint. The work is basically his. Pacing up and down his office, he painstakingly considers sundry schemes wherewith he might reduce anyone who displeases him to the utmost degree of humiliation, to lying denunciations of his dearest intimates, to the most horrible betrayal of his own self. For him who fights back, in spite of everything, there is always a little vial. It is only Yagoda who has disappeared; his poison chest remains.

At the 1938 trial Stalin charged Bukharin, as if incidentally, with having prepared in 19118 an attempt on Lenin’s life. The naïve and ardent Bukharin venerated Lenin, loved him with the love of a child for its mother and, when he pertly opposed him in polemics, it was not otherwise than on his knees. Bukharin, “soft as wax,” to use Lenin’s expression, did not have and could not have had personal ambitious designs. If in the old days anyone had predicted that the time would come when Bukharin would be accused of an attempt on Lenin’s life, each of us, and above all Lenin, would have laughed and advised putting such a prophet in an insane asylum. Why then did Stalin resort to such a patently absurd accusation? Most likely this was his answer to Bukharin’s suspicions, carelessly expressed, with reference to Stalin himself. Generally, all the accusations are cut to this pattern. The basic elements of Stalin’s frame-ups are not the products of pure fantasy; they are derived from reality –for the most part, from either the deeds or designs of the chef of the peppery dishes himself. The same defensive-offensive “Stalin reflex,” which was so clearly revealed in the instance of Gorky’s death, disclosed its full force in the matter of Lenin’s death as well. In the first case, Yagoda paid with his life; in the second –Bukharin.

I imagine the course of affairs somewhat like this. Lenin asked for poison at the end of February, 1923. In the beginning of March he was again paralyzed. The medical prognosis at the time was cautiously unfavorable. Feeling more sure of himself, Stalin began to act as if Lenin were already dead. But the sick man fooled him. His powerful organism, supported by an inflexible will, reasserted itself. Toward winter Lenin began to improve slowly, to move around more freely; listened to reading and read himself; his faculty of speech began to come back to him. The findings of the physicians became increasingly more hopeful. Lenin’s recovery could not, of course, have prevented the supersedure of the Revolution by the bureaucratic reaction. Krupskaya had sound reasons for observing in 1926, “if Volodya were alive, he would now be in prison.”

For Stalin himself it was not a question of the general course of development, but rather of his own fate: either he could manage at once, this very day, to become the boss of the political machine and hence of the Party and of the country, or he would be relegated to a third-rate role for the rest of his life. Stalin was after power, all of it, come what may. He already had a firm grip on it. His goal was near, but the danger emanating from Lenin was even nearer. At this time Stalin must have made up his mind that it was imperative to act without delay. Everywhere he had accomplices whose fate was completely bound to his. At his side was the pharmacist Yagoda. Whether Stalin sent the poison to Lenin with the hint that the physicians had left no hope for his recovery or whether he resorted to more direct means I do not know. But I am firmly convinced that Stalin could not have waited passively when his fate hung by a thread and the decision depended on a small, very small motion of his hand.

Some time after the middle of January, 1924, I left for Sukhum, in the Caucasus, to try to get rid of a dogged, mysterious infection, the nature of which still remains a mystery to my physicians. The news of Lenin’s death reached me en route. According to a widely disseminated version, I lost power because I was not present at Lenin’s funeral. This explanation can hardly be taken seriously. But the fact of my absence at the mourning ceremonies caused many of my friends serious misgivings. In a letter from my oldest son, who was then nearing eighteen, there was a note of youthful despair: I should have come at any price! Such were my intentions, too. The coded telegram about Lenin’s death found my wife and me at the railway station in Tiflis. I immediately sent a coded note by direct wire to the Kremlin: “I deem it necessary to return to Moscow. When is the funeral?” The reply came from Moscow in about an hour: “The funeral will take place on Saturday. You will not be able to return in time. The Politburo thinks that because of the state of your health you must proceed to Sukhum. Stalin.” I did not feel that I should request postponement of the funeral for my sake alone. Only in Sukhum, lying under blankets on the verandah of a sanatorium, did I learn that the funeral had been changed to Sunday. The circumstances connected with the previous setting and ultimate changing of the date of the funeral are so involved that they cannot be clarified in a few lines. Stalin maneuvered, deceiving not only me but, so it appears, also his allies in the triumvirate. In distinction from Zinoviev, who approach every question from the standpoint of its immediate effectiveness as agitation, Stalin was guided in his risky maneuvers by more tangible considerations. He might have feared that I would connect Lenin’s death with last year’s conversation about poison, would ask the doctors whether poisoning was involved, and demand a special autopsy. It was, therefore, safer in all respects to keep me away until after the body had been embalmed, the viscera cremated and a post- mortem examination inspired by such suspicions no longer feasible.

When I asked the physicians in Moscow about the immediate cause of Lenin’s death, which they had not expected, they were at a loss to account for it. I did not bother to question Krupskaya, who had written a very warm letter to me at Sukhum, which questions on that theme. I did not renew personal relations with Zinoviev and Kamenev until two years later, after they had broken with Stalin. They obviously avoided all discussion concerning the circumstances of Lenin’s death, answering in monosyllables and avoiding my eyes. Did they know anything or were they merely suspicious? Anyway, they had been so closely involved with Stalin during the preceding three years that they could not help being apprehensive lest the shadow of suspicion should fall on them as well.

Over Lenin’s bier Stalin read from a scrap of paper his oath of fealty to his master’s legacy, couched in the style of the homilectics he had studied at the Tiflis theological seminary. In those days that oath was scarcely noticed. Today it is in all the textbooks, having superseded the Ten Commandments.

[In Leaving us, Comrade Lenin commanded us to hold high and pure the great calling of Party Member. We swear to Thee, Comrade Lenin, to honor Thy command.
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin commanded us to keep the unity of our Party as the apple of our eye. We swear to Thee, Comrade Lenin, to honor Thy command.
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordered us to maintain and strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. We swear to Thee, Comrade Lenin, to exert our full strength in honoring Thy command.
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordered us to strengthen with all our might the union of workers and peasants. We swear to Thee, Comrade Lenin, to honor Thy command.
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordered us to strengthen and expand the Union of the Republics. We swear to Thee, Comrade Lenin, to honor Thy command.
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin enjoined us to be faithful to the Communist International. We swear to Thee, Comrade Lenin, that we shall dedicate our lives to the enlargement and reinforcement of the union of the workers of the whole world, the Communist International.]

The names of Nero and Caesar Borgia have been mentioned more than once with reference to the Moscow trials and the latest developments on the international scene. Since these old ghosts are being invoked, it is fitting, it seems to me, to speak of a super-Nero and a super-Borgia, so modest, almost naïve, seem the crimes of that era in comparison with the exploits of our own times. It is possible however to discern a more profound historical significance in purely personal analogies. The customs of the declining Roman Empire were formed during the transition from slavery to feudalism, from paganism to Christianity. The epoch of the Renaissance marked the transition from feudal to bourgeois society, from Catholicism to Protestantism and Liberalism. In both instances the old morality had managed to spend itself before the new one was formed.

Now again we are living during the transition from one system to another, in an epoch of the greatest social crisis, which, as always, is accompanied by the crisis in morals. The old has been shaken to its foundations. The new has scarcely begun to emerge. When the roof has collapsed, the doors and windows fallen off their hinges, the house is bleak and hard to live in. Today gusty draughts are blowing across our entire planet. All the traditional principles of morality are increasingly worse off, not only those emanating from Stalin.

But historical explanation is not a justification. Nero, too, was a product of his epoch. Yet after he perished his statues were smashed and his name was scraped off everything. The vengeance of history is more terrible than the vengeance of the most powerful General Secretary. I venture to think, that this is consoling.

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Trotsky's 'Stalin' Chap 11 From Obscurity to the Triumvirate

Chapter 11
FROM OBSCURITY TO THE TRIUMVIRATE


Part One: Beginnings of centralization in Party and State

[The end of the Civil War found Stalin still in the shadows politically. The Party wheelhorses knew him, of course, but did not regard him as one of the important leaders. To the rank and file of the Party he was one of the least known members of the Central Committee, notwithstanding his membership in the all-powerful Politburo. The country at large had scarcely heard of him. The non-Soviet world did not even suspect his existence. Yet within less than two years his hold on the Party’s political machine had become so formidable and his influence was deemed so injurious by Lenin that in early March, 1923, Lenin broke all “comradely relations” with him. Another two years passed, and Trotsky, next in eminence only to Lenin in the leadership in the October Revolution and the Soviet government, had been relegated by Stalin’s machine to a recarious political position. Not only did Stalin become a member of the triumvirate that led the Party in place of the sick Lenin, but the most powerful of the triumvirs and subsequently Lenin’s sole successor. Moreover, with the years he acquired far greater power than Lenin had ever enjoyed –indeed, more abolute than any Tsar in Russia’s long history of absolutist rule.

[How did this come about? What were the causes and steps in Stalin’s rise from political obscurity to political pre-eminence?]

Every stage pf development, even such catastrophic stages as revolution and counter-revolution, is an outgrowth of the preceeding stage, is rooted in it, bears a resemblance to it. After the victory of October, there were writers who argued that the dictatorship of Bolshevism was merely a new version of Tsarism, refused ostrich-like to take into consideration the abolition of the monarchy and the nobility, the uprooting of capitalism and the in troduction of planned economy, the abolition of the State Church and the education of the masses in the principles of atheism, the abolution of landlordism and the distribution of the land to the actual tillers of the soil. Similarly, after Stalin’s truimph over Bolshevism many of the same writers –such as the Webbs, the Wellses and the Laskis, who have previously been critical of Bolshevism and had now become fellow-travelers of Stalinism –closed their eyes to the cardinal and stubborn fact thatm, notwithstanding the measures of repression resorted to under the duress of extraordinary circumstances, the October Revolution brought about an upheaval of social relations in the interests of the toiling masses; whereas, the Stalinist counter-revolution has initiated social upheavals that are steadily transforming the Soviet social order in the interests of a privileged minority of thermidorian bureaucrats. Equally immune to elementary facts are certain renegadesof Communism, many of them erstwhile henchmen of Stalin’s who, their heads buried deep in the sands of their bitter disillusion, fail to see that, notwithstanding the survace similarities, the counter-revolution led by Stalin varies in certain definitigve fundamental essentials from the counter-revolutions of the Fascist leaders; they fail to see that the difference is rooted in the dissimilarity between the social base of Stalin’s counter-revolution and the social base of the reactionary movements headed by Mussolini and Hitler, that it runs parallel to the difference between the dictatorships of the proletariat, however distorted by thermidorian bureaucratism, and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the difference between a workers’ state and a capitalist state.

Moreover this fundamental dissimilarity is illustrated –and in a certain sense, even epitomized –by the uniqueness of Stalin’s career by comparison with the careers of the other two dictators, Mussolini and Hitler, each the initiator of a movement, each an exceptional agitator, a popular tribune. Their political rise, fantastic though it seems, preceeded on its own momentum in full view of all, in unbreakable connection with the growth of the movements they headed from their very inception. Altogether different was the nature of Stalin’s rise. It is not comparable with anything in the past. He seems to have no pre-history. The process of his rise took place somewhere gehind an impenetrable political curtain. At a certain moment his figure, in the full panoply of power, suddenly stepped away from the Kremlin wall, and for the first time the world became aware ofr Stalin as a ready-made dictator. All the keener is the interest with which thinking humanity examines the nature of Stalin, personally as well as politically. In the peculiarities of his personality it seeks the key to his political fate.

It is impossible to understand Stalin and his latter-day success without understanding the mainspring of his personality: love of power, ambition, envy –active, never-slumbering envy of all who are more gifted, more powerful, rank higher than he. With that characteristic braggadocio which is the essence of Mussolini, he told one of his friends: “I have never met my equal.” Stalin could never have uttered this phrase, even to his most intimate friends, because it would have sounded too crude, too absurd, too ridiculous. There were amy number of men on the Bolshevik staff alone who excelled Stalin in all respects but one –his concentrated ambition. Lenin highly valued power as a tool of action. But pure love of power was utterly alien to him. Not so with Stalin. Psychologically, power to him was always something apart from the purposes which it was supposed to serve. The desire to exert his will as the athlete exerts his muscles, to lord it over others –that was the mainspring of his personality. His will thus acquired an ever-increasing concentration of force, swelling in aggresiveness, activity, ranke of expression, stopping at nothing. The more often Stalin had occasion to convince himself that he was lacking in very many attributes for the aquisition of power, the more intensely did he compensate for each deficiency of character, the more subtely did he transform each lack into an advantage under certain conditions.

The current official comparisons of Stalin to Lenin are simply indecent. If the basis of comparison is sweep of personality, it is impossible to place Stalin even alongside Mussolini or Hitler. However, meager the “ideas” of Fascism, both of the victorious leaders of reaction, the Italian and the German, from the very beginning of their respective movements displayed initiative, roused the masses to action, pioneered new paths through the political jungle. Nothing of the kind can be said about Stalin. The Bolshevik Party was created by Lenin. Stalin grew out of its politicla machine and remained inseparable from it. He has never had any other apprioach to the masses or to the events of history than thriough this machine. In the fist period of his rise to power he was himself caught unawares by his own success. He took his steps withiout certainty, looking to right and left and over his shoulder, aways ready to slink back and run for cover. Used as a counterweight against me, he was bolstered and encouraged by Zinoviev and Kamenev, and to a lesser extent by Rykov, Bukharin and Tomsky. No one thought at the time that Stalin would some day loom away above their heads. In the first triumvirate Zinoviev treated Stalin in a circumspectly patronizing manner; Kamenev with a touch of irony. But more of this later.

The Stalinist school of falsification is not the only one that flourishes today in the field of Russian history. Indeed, it derives a measure of its sustenance from certain legends built on ignorance and sentimentalism; such as the lurid tales concerning Kronstadt, Makhno and other episodes of the Revolution. Suffice it to say that what the Soviet government did reuctantly at Kronstadt was a tragic necessity; naturally, the revolutionary government could not have “presented” a fortress that protected Petrograd to the insurgent sailors only because a few dubious Anarchists and Essars were sponsoring a handful of reactionary peasants and soldiers in rebellion. Similar considerations were involved in the case of Makhno and other potentially revolutionary elements that were perhaps well-meaning but definitely ill-acting.

Far from sprning the co-operation of revolutionists of all the currents of Socialism, the Bolsheviks of the heroic era of the revolution eagerly sought it on every occasion and made every possible concession to secure it. For eample, Lenin and I seriously considered at one time allotting certain territories to the Anarchists, naturally with the consent of the local population, and letting them carry on their experiment of a stateless social order there. That project died in the discussion stage through no fault of ours. The Anarchist movement itself failed to pass the test of actual events on the proving ground of the Russian Revolution. Many of the ablest and sanest of the Anarchists decided that they could serve their cause best by joining the ranks of our Party.

Although we alone seized power in October, we demonstrated our willingness to co-operate with other Soviet parties by engaging in negotiations with them. But their demands were fantastically outrageous; they wanted no less than the decapitation of our Party. We then formed a coalition government with the only other Soviet party with which co-operation seemed possible at the time, the Party of the Left Essars. But the Left Essars resigned from the government in protest against the Peace of Brest-Litovsk in March, 1918, and in July they stabged the Soviet government in the back by confronting it with the fait accompli of the assassination of the German Ambassador Mirbach and an attempted coup d’etat. What would the Messieurs Liberals have had us do under the circumstances: let the October Revolution, the country and ourselves be devastated by our treacherous former partners in the coalition government and be trampled under the marching boots of the German Imperial Army? Facts are stubborn things. History records that the Party of the Left Essars crumbled to dust under the impact of impending events and many of its bravest members became stalwart Bolsheviks, among them Blumkin, the assassin of Count von Mirbach. Were the Bolsheviks merely vengeful or were they “liberal” when they perceived the revolutionary motivations behind Blumkin’s studidly disastrous act of provocation and admitted him to full-fledged membership of the Party and to highly responsible work? (Blumkin was far from the only one. His case is merely better known than others.) Far from hurting us, the rebellion of the Left Essars, which deprived us of an ally and a fellow-traveler, strengthened us in the final reckoning. It put an end to the defection of the Left Communists. The Party closed its ranks tighter than ever. The influence of Communist cells in the Army and in the Soviet institutions rose tremendously. The policy of the government became considerably firmer/

The Bolsheviks began the heroic period of revolution by erring on the side of tolerance and forbearance in the treatment of all non-Bolshevik political parties. The bourgeois, Essar and Menshevik newspapers turned from the first days of October into a harmonizing chorus of howling wolves, prowling jackals and baying mad dogs. Only Novoye Vremya [The New Times], the shameless organ of darkest Tsarist reaction. Attempted super-subtle maneuvering by trying to maintin a “loyal” tone, wagging its tail. Lenin saw through them all and saw the danger of tolerating the whole pack of them. “Are we going to let this rabble get away with it?” Vladimir Ilyich demanded on every occasion. “Good Lord! What kind of dictatorship have we!” The newspapers of these hyenas pounced upon the phrase “plunder the plunderers” and made the most of it in editorials, in verse, in special articles. “What aren’t they doing to that ‘plunder the plunderers,’” Lenin exclaimed once in jocular despair. “Who really said it?” I asked, “Or is it pure fabrication?” –“Not aat all!” Lenin retorted. “I did actually use those words. Said them and then forgot about them. And here they’ve made a whole program of them!” He waved his hand humorously.

Yet we did not interfere with public expression of dissident views, although the Mensheviks deliberately sabotaged vital defense activity through their hold on the railway unions, and others elswhere –until the assassination of Volodarsky and Uritsky and the murderous attempt on the life of Lenin, August 30th, 1918. It was in those tragic days that something snapped in the heart of the revolution. It began to lose its “kindness” and forbearance. The sword of the Party received its final tempering. Resolution increased and, where necessary, ruthlessness, too. At the front the Army’s political departments, hand in hand with the shock troops and the revolutionary tribunals, put a backbone into the immature body of the Army. The same process was in time reflected behind the lines. At the front we then recaptured Kazan and Simbirsk. Throughout the country we sefured a new lease of life. When Sverdlov and I went to visit Lenin in Gorki, where he was convalexceing from his wounds, he showered us with detailed inquiries about the organization of the Army, its morale, the role of the Communists in it, the growth of discipline, interjecting happily, “Now, that’s good, that’s fine! The strengthening of the Army will be immediately reflefted throughout the country in the growth of discipline, the growth of a sense of responsibility . . .” And indeed, by autumn the effects of a great change were evident on every hand. The hslplessness we had sensed during the spring months was definitely a thing of the past. Something had happened. It was no longer a respite, a breathing spell, that had saved the Revolution, but the imminence of a new and great danger which had opened in the proletariat hitherto unplumbed subterranean springs of revolutionary energy.

Having deprived the parties of the Mensheviks and the Essars of the Right and Cventre of Soviet legality in June, 1918, after their direct participation in the Civil War against the Soviet government had been established not only through acts of individual terrorm, but sabotage, diversion, conspiracy and other overt acts of war, the Bolsheviks were compelled to add the Left Essars to the proscription list after the latter attempted their treacherous coup d’etat in July. But the June 14th decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviet, which expelled the Mensheviks and Essars from that body and recommended similar action to other Soviet institutions, was reconsidered five months later, after those parties returned to the class-struggle position axiomatic for professing Socialists. In October, 1918, the Central Committee of the Mensheviks acknowledged in a resolution that the Bolshevik Revolution of October, 1917, was “historically necessary,” and repudiating “every kind of political collaboration with classes hostile to the Democracy,” refused “to participate in any governmental combinations, even those covered by the democratic flag, that are based on ‘general national’ coalitions of the democracy with the capitalistic bourgeoisie or which depend on foreign imperialism or militarism.” In view of these declarations by the Mensheviks, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at ist session of Noevember 30th, 1918, decreed to regard as void its resolution of 14th of June “insofar as it refers to the party of the Mensheviks.” Several months later the process of “going left” began among a section of the Essars. The conference of the representatives of the various organizations of the Essar parties on the territory of Soviet Russia, which took place on the 8th of February, 1919, in Petrograd, “resolutely repudiated the attempt to overthrow the Soviet Government by way of armed struggle.” Whereupon, the All-Russian Central Exective Committee on the 25th of February, 1919, decreeed to void its decree of 14th of June, 1918, “with reference to all groups of the party of the Essars which consider obligatory upon themselves the above-mentioned resolution of the conference of the parties of the Essars.”

But in the spring the outbreak of Kulak uprisings in a number of provinces and the successful advance of Kolchak induced these parties, with the exceptiohn of a few of their representatives, to return to their old positions. In view of that the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks in May 1919, issued a directive “concerning the arrest of all prominent Mensheviks and Essars about whom it is not personally known that they were ready actively to support the Soviet Government in its struggle against Kolchak.” It thus became obvious that the earlier professions of loyalty to the Soviet “democracy” were mere maneuvers by the Mensheviks and the Essar parties. Their constant agitation for the abolition of the Cheka and the death penalty even for spies and counter-revolutionists played into the hands of the White Guards and spread demoralization in the rear of the Red Army.

[Between the arrests by the Soviet government and defections from the ranks of party members sympathetic to the Bolshevik regime, the parties of the Mensheviks and the Essars were reduced to mere skeletons by the end of 1919. Their leaders we4re either under the constant threat of arrest, imprisoned or in exile. The vounted democracy of the Soviets –which gegan as the popular assemblies of the anti-Tsarist and anti-capitalist elements of the country, purporting to represent the vast majority of the common people, and which assumed at first dual and then sole authority over the country – succumbed a year before the end of the Civil War to the absolute rule of the one-party State.

[But meantime the trend toward centralization, that sure precursor of totalitarianism, went on within the Bolshevik Party itself. Although, true enough, it was due in a measure to the ante-Bolshevik activities of the other Socialist parties, which in their effort to become effective were actually anti-Soviet by virtue of the overpowering control of the Soviets by the Bolsheviks, no less important as contributing factors were the disastous economic condition of the country, aggravated by the devastation of War Communism and the Civil War, and the “rule or ruin” attitude of the Bolsheviks. The line of development of Soveit democracy and democratic centralism withih the Bolshevik Party itself to totalitarianism in both sphere is not always clearly traceable. But it is sufficiently clear thyat after t6he seizure of power in October, 1917, in the name of the All-Russian Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, by the Bolshevik Party machine, the Party Central Committee and provincial committees, which had prepared and co-ordinated the coup d’etat, yielded priority to the Soviet, in whose name and under whose ostensible auspices the insurrection had been carried out. Within the Soviet itself, the Council of People’s Commissars asumed immediate priority of actual power over the Soviet Central Executive Committee, from which it derived its authority. Within the Council itself the Bolshevik majority held the dominant power. When, furthermore, early I March 1918, the Seventh Party Congress officially apparoved the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the Left Essar members of the coalition government withdrew in protest from the Council of Peoples’ Commissars, while the Left Communists for the same reason became an organized oppostion within the Party and boycotted its Central Committee, the ideal of “democratic centralism” suffered further reverses, for in effect the power within both the government and the Party became concentrated in the hands of Lenin and the immediate retinue of Bolshevik leaders who did not openly disagree with him and carried out his wishes.

[An unfortunate precedent had been set in November, 1917, when Sverdlow, already Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, and an outstanding organizer, succeeded L.B. Kamenev as Cheirman of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet. Thus, in the person of Sverdlov the Party-State machine found its initial expression in post-October Europe. Unwittingly –and only potentially, of course –the political administration Sverdlov headed was the precursor of the contemporary one-party State.

[Note: Cf. The resolution adopted in 1904 by the Amsterdam Congress of the Second International, which reads in part: “In order that the working class may put forth all its strength in the struggle against capitalism, it is necssary that in egery country there exist vis-à-vis the bourgeois parties only one socialist pasrty, as there exists only one proletariat . . .” Experience, particularly the coalitionwith the Left Essars, convinced the Bolsheviks of the validity of this ideal. Speaking on behalf of the routed Opposition at the Fifteenth Party Congress (Dec. 2019, 1927), Kamenev declared: “We have to choose between two roads. One of these roads is that of a scond party. That road, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, is fatal for the revolution. It is the road of political degeneration and class deviation. This road is closed to us, forbidden by the whole system of our ideas, by all the teachings of Lenin on the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . There remains, consequently, the second road. This road means . . . that we submit completely to the Party. We chose that road, for we are profoundly convinced of the fact that a correct Leninist policy can be realized only inside our Party, not outside the Party and against it . . . But if in addition we are to renounce our point of view (which is what this Congress demands), that would not be . . . Bolshevik. This demand for the renunciation of one’s own opinions has never before been posed in our Party. If we were to declare that we had renounced opinions which we defended only a week or two ago, it would be hypocrisy, and we would not deserve your confidence . . . you would not believe it . . . it would merely introduce decay into the very foundation of the reconciliation . . .” and so forth. The key to the difference between the Leninist and Stalinist views on party discipline us in the sentence italicized by me. The Stalinist Congress replied to Kamenev by expelling the Oppositionists and by demanding of them “complete ideological disarmament, the firm condemnation of the views of the Opposition as anti-Leninist and Menshevik.” The very next day the same Kamenev and Zinoviev led a procession of twenty-three converts from Leninism to Stalinism up to the praesidium of the Congress with the following words of contrition and moral suicide: “ . . . harsh as may be for us the demands of the Congress . . . we . . . bow our will and our ideas to the will and the ideas of the Party . . . the sole supreme judge of what is useful or harmful to the victorious progress of the revolution.” They then accepted the ultimatum of the Congress and petitioned for readmission into the Party. This was the beginning of their end. – C.M ]

[Lenin’s prestige was so overwhelming that he had to resort to an exaggeratedely meticulous observance of the forms of collegialism to avoid becoming a personal dictator. Notwithstanding his unaccommodating disposition and bulldog tenacity in defense of his ideas, and his passion for getting things done as quickly and efficiently as possible, he was strongly inclined to be patient with oppositionists in the Party and in the Soviet. He made an earnest effort to meet his opponents on parliamentary grounds. Had it not been for the withdrawal of the Trotsky faction from the contest, Lenin would have gone down in defeat at the hands of Bukharin in the Central Committee debates on the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Nor did he bear a grudge against Bukharin and the other Left Communists for waging a vigorous campaign against him and the Party majority in the press and from the resotrrum during the exeedingly critical months of 1918. And on the very day that the Left Essars staged their abortive coup d’etat Lenin was answering arguments of their leader, Maria Spiridonova, on the floor of the Fifth Soviet Congress. But he was no fetishist about parliamentarism. He had written in 1915: “The slogan ‘Constituent Assembly’ as an independent slogan is incorrect, since the question is, who is to call it.” Accordingly, in 1918 he made short shrift of it.}

During the very first days, if not hours, after the Insurrection Lenin posed the question of the Constituent Assembly. “We must postpone it,” he insisted, “w must postpone the elections. We must broaden our electoral rights by diving them to the eighteen-year olds. We must make it possible to revamp the lists of candidates. Our own are no good: too many untried intellectuals, when what we need are workers and peasants. The Kornilovites and the Kadets [Constitutional Democrats] must be deprived of legal status.” Tot hose who argued: “It is not politic to postpone it now; it will be construed as liquidation of the Constituent Assembly, especially since we ouselves had accused the Provisional Government of putting it off,” Lenin replied: “Nonsense! Facts are important not words. As against the Provisional Government, the Constituent Assembly was or could have been a step forward, but in relation to the Soviet Government, it can only be a step backward. Why is it not politic to postpone it? And if the Constituent Assembly will prove to bge Kadet-Menshevik-Essar,will that be politic?”

“But by that time we shall be stronger,” others argued, “while now we are weak. The Soviet Government is practically unknown in the provinces. And should it become known there that we postponed the Constituent Assembly, our position would become even weaker than it is.” Sverdlov was particularly energetic in his opposition to postponing it, and he was more closely connected with the provinces than any of us. Lenin proved to be alone in his position. He would shake his head in disapproval and reiterate: “It’s a mistake, and obvious mistake, that may cost us dear! I hope that this mistake will not cost the revolution its head . . .” Yet once the decision was made against postponement, Lenin concentrated his entire attention on measures for bringing about the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.

Meantime it became clear that we sould be in a minority, even with the Left Essars, who ran on the same ticket with the Right Essars and were fooled at every turn. “Of course, we shall have to disperse the Constituent Assembly,” Lenin said. “But what about the left Essars?” However, old man Natanson
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[Note: Mark Andreyevich Natanson, alias Bobrov (1849-1919), one of Russia’s great revolutionists and a leading Populist, was one of the organizers of te4h Chaikovsky Circle, which played a very important revolutionary party in the “khozheniye v narod” (“going to the people”) movement. Afer exile in Archangel Province, he organized the stongly conspirative Obshchestvo Severnykh Norodnikov (Society of Northern Populists) in 1876 and that summer initiated and managed a group which effected the escape of Kropotkin. One of the founders of the Zemlya I Volya (Land and Freedom) Party, he became a leader of the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) after the split and a leading protagonist of its terrorist policy. Arrested in 1881, in connection with the assassination of Tsar Alexander 11, he was sentenced to 10 years’ exile in Siberia. In 1891 he organized with Victor Chernov the Noradnoye Pravo (People’s Rights) Party. Arrested in 1894, he served his sentence in Peter and Paul Fortress and Eastern Siberia. He was one of the founders of the Essar (Social-Revolutionary) Party, member of its Central Committee, leader of its Left Wing since 1905. During World War 1 he was a consistent internationalist and one of the leading spirits of the Zimmerwald Conference. He became a leader of the Left Essars after the split in 19178, and in July, 1918, after the abortive Left Essar coup against the Bolsheviks, headed a group of Left Essars opposed to the coup and known as the Revolutionary Communists. He was a member of the praesidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviet. He died abroad in 1919. ]
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reassured us on that score. He dropped in to “consult” us, but his very first words were, “I daresay we’ll have to disperse the Constituent Assembly forcibly.” Lenin exclaimed: “Bravo! What’s right is right! But will your people go that far?” Natanson replied: “Some of us are wavering, but I think that in the end they’ll all agree to it.” The Left Essars were then going through the honeymoon of their extreme radicalism: they actually did consent to it. Lenin devoted himself passionately to the problem of the Constituent Assembly. He was thoroughgoing in all preparations, thining through all the details and subjecting Uritsky, who to his great distress had been appointed Commissar of the Constituent Assembly, to the rack of pitiless cross-examination. Incidentally, Lenin attended personally to the transfer of one of the Latvian regiments, preponderantly proletarian in complexion, to Petrograd. “The muzhik might waver in case of something or other,” he observed, “And here we must have proletarian decisiveness.”

The Bolshevik delegates to the Constituent Assembly who foregathered from all parts of Russia were –under Lenin’s pressure and Sverdlov’s management –distributed through all the factories, plants and military units. They were an important element in the organizational machine of the “supplementary revolution” of January 5th. As for the Right Essar delegates, they deemed it incompatible with their high calling to engage in a fight: “The people elected us, let the people defend us.” Essentially, these provincial burghers had not the slightest idea what to do with themselves, and most of them had a yellow streak. But to make up for that, they worked out the ritual of the first session most meticulously. They brought alohg candles, in case the Bolsheviks were to turn out the electric lights, and a large quantity of sandwiches, in the event they were deprived of food. Thus, Democracy came to do battle against Dictatorship – fully armed with sandwiches and candles. It did not even occur to the people to defend those who considered themselves the elect of the people but actuallky were mere shadows of a period of the revolution gone beyond recall.

I was in Brest-Litovsk during the liquidation of the Constituent Assembly. But as soon as I came for a conference to Petrograd, Lenin told me concerning the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly: “It was of course very risky of us not to have postponed its convocation –very, very incautious of us. But in the final reckoning it was better that it turned out that way. The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly by the Soviet government is a frank and complete liquidation of the formal democracy in the name of the revolutionary dictatorship. Henceforth the lesson will be clear-cut.” Thus, theoretical generalization went hand in hand with the utilization of the Latvian Rifle Regiment. It was undoubtedly then that Lenin must have become consciously aware of the ideas he later formulated at the First Congress of the Comintern in his remarkable theses on democracy.

As is generally known, the criticism of formal democracy has its own long history. Both we and our predcessors explained the transitional nature of the Revolution of 1848 by the collapse of political democracy. “Social” democracy had come to replace it. But the bourgeois social order was able to force the latter to taketh4e place which pure democracy was no longer able to hold. Political history then passed through a prolonged period during which social democracy, battening upon its criticism of pure democracy, actually carried out the functions of the latter and became thoroughly permeated with the latter’s vices. What happened had occurred more than once in history: the opposition was called upon to solve conservatively the very tasks with which the compromised forces of yesterday were no longer able to cope. Beginning as the provisional state of preparation for proletarian dictatorship, democracy became the supreme criterion, the last controlling resort, the inviolable holy of holies, i.e., the ultimate hypocrisy of the bourgeois social order. It was even so with us. After receiving a moral knock=out in October, the bourgeoisie attempted its own resurrection in January in the phantom sacrosanct form of the Constituent Assembly. The subsequent victorious development of the proletarian revolution after the frank, manifest, blunt dispersal of the Constituent Assembly struck formal democracy the beneficient blow from which it will never again recover. That is why Lenin was right when he said: “In the final reckoning, it was better that it turned out this way!” In the person of he Essarist Constituent Assembly the February Republic had merely achieved the opportunity to die a second time.

[When, during Kamenev’s brief tenure as the First President of the Republic –in his capacity as Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet – and upon his initiative] the death penalty law against soldiers introduced by Kerensky was repealed, there was no end to Lenin’s indignation. “Tommy rot!” he stormed. “How can you expect to conduct a revolution without executions? Do you really think you can deal with all these enemies after disarming yourself? What other measures of repression are there? Imprisonment? Who attaches any significance to it during civil war, when each side hopes to win?” Kamenev tried to argue that it was only a matter of repealing the death penalty which Kerensky had intended especially for deserting soldiers. But Lenin was irreconcilable. It was clear to him that behind this decree was a frivolous attitude toward the unprecedented difficulties we wer facing. “A mistake,” he reiterated, “unpardonable weakness, pacifist illusions,” and the like. He proposed an immediate repeal of the decree. It was objected that this would produce an unfavorable impression. Someone suggested hat it would be better to rsort to executions when it became clear that there was no other way out. Finally, we let the matter rest there.

“And what,” Vladimir Ilyich asked me once quite unexpectedly, “if the White Guards should kill both of us? Will Bukharin and Sverdlov be able to cope with the situation?” [At first, it was Sverdlov rather than Stalin on whom Lenin relied for centarlization with a firm hand. Sverdlov it was who first attempted to define the division of functions between the Party and the Soviet political machines. It was Sverdlov who was elected chairman of the first constitutional committee (of which Stalin was a member). It was Sverdlov who incorporated in that first Soviet Constitution not only the theoretical principles of Leninism but the initial practical experience of administration in such matters as the inter-relation of central and local organs of the Soviet government, the Committees of the Poor and the Soviets of the villages, the borders and functions of the constituent republics and autonomous regions, and numerous other specific matters that no amount of theorizing could encompass concretely. “Sverdlov,” according to an aulogy by Stalin, “was one of the first, if not the first, who skillfully and painlessly solved . . . the complex organizational task . . . of building the new Russia . . . the government of Soviets, the government of workers and peasants,” which arose “for the first time in the history of mankindm,” the task of effefcting the transition of “the party, hitherto illegal, to new tracks, creating the organizational forms of interrelation between the Party and the Soviets, securing the leadership of the Party and the normal development of the Soviets . . .”] Sverdlov was truly irreplaceable: confident, courageous, firm, resourceful, he was the finest type of Bolshevik. Lenin came to know and appreciate Sverdlov fully in those troubled months. How many times was it that Vladimir Ilyich would telephone Sverdlov to suggest one or another urgent measure, and in most cases would receive the reply, “Already!” This meant that the measure had already been undertaken. We often joked about it, sayingm “With Sverdlov it is no doubt –already!”

[The process of centralization gained such momentum by the spring of 1919 that the Soviet Central Executive Committee had lost all of its actual power to the Cental Committee of the Party, the transfer having been made as it were from Sverdlov’s Government office to his Party office, while locally the Soviet committees were entirely subservient to the corresponding Party committees. The latter in turn were under the thumb of the Central Committee in Moscow, which was dominated by Lenin. However, this process had not yet crytallized and was not to achieve completion until years later during Stalin’s incumbency.

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Part Two: From Politburo to General-Secretary

[At the eighth Party Congress this process of increasing centralization at the expense of the Party democracy was further stimulated by certain formal proposals of Zinoviev’s, who acted ostensibly upon his own inititiative but actually as Lenin’s instrument. Zinoviev proposed on the one hand that for the sake of efficiency the Central Committee should delegate certain of its functions to three other bodies appointed by it –the Political Bureau, the Organizational Bureau and the Secretariat; on the other hand, that a new Commissariat be organized, to be known as the People’s Commissariat of Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection. The oppositionists at the congress did not take kindly to these proposals. Ossinsky objected most vehemently to the institution of the Political Bureau:

Permit me to refer to Comrade Zinoviev’s theses, according to which . . . the Politburo . . . is to decide all urgent questions. The plenary session of the Central Committee is to meet only twice a month and , as Comrade Zinoviev put it circumspectly, is to discuss questions of general policy . . . In other words, the plenum of the Central Committee merely discusses. What it all comes down to, is that the Political Bureau of five people decides all the important questions, while the plenary session meets for general conversation, for discussion. All the other fourteen members are thus reduced to the status of second-rate members.

[Ossinsky was right of course. That was precisely that eventually did happen. The Politburo came to pass not only on urgent questions but on all questions and merely informed the Central Committee of its decisions. In 1919 the Politburo consisted of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Kamenev and Bukharin. The following year at the Ninth Party Congress it was expanded to seven members –the five of 1919 plus Preobrazhensky and Serebryakov. Moreover, after the Tenth Congress in 1921, the relative share of the Central Committee in the function of governing was further limited by statute: that Congress decreed that the Central Committee was to meet no longer semi-monthly but bi-monthly; moreover, the All-Russian Party Conferences, instead of meeting quarterly were to meet semi-annually. This made the Politburo the actual governing body of the Party and ipso facto of the Soviet government and the Communist International.

[At the same Eighth Congress the Organizational Bureau, likewise of five members was created. Its function was personnel work –the appointment and removal of Party members to and from jobs –with the approval of the Politburo. However, at the Party Congress, upon Kamenev’s motion, its functions were broadened: the Orgburo was accorded the right “independently without the sanction of the Politburo to decide questions of an organizational character and questions of personnel with reference to workers not above provincial status . . .” Stalin was the only original member of the Politburo who was likewise a member of the Orgburo. Preobrazhensky and Serebryakov, who also became members of both bureaus in 1920, were both too ethical to stoop to the garden variety of machine politics. Thus, after the Ninth Party Congress, i.e., beginning in 1920, Stalin secured practically a free hand in appointing his own candidates to the key posts of provincial Party secretaries without any interference from the other members of the Politburo. Potentially he became the most powerful member of the most powerful governing body in the Party and the country, the Politburo.

[When, moreover, the People’s Commissariat of Workers’ and Peasants’ Instpection was originated, Stalin was appointed its head. In proposing the creation of this new commissariat at the Eighth Party Congress in 1919, Zinoviev described it as “a commissariat of socialist control that will control all the units of our Soviet mechanism, sinking its feelers into all branches of Soviet constructive effort.” Lenin made no bones about his support of Stalin in that ministry of the ministries, when, replying to the objections of oppositionists, he said:

. . . Now about Workers’-Peasants’ Inspection. It’s a gigantic undertaking . . . It is necessary to have at the head of it a man of authority, otherwise we shall sink in a morass, drown in petty intrigues. I think that even Preobrazhansky could not name any other candidature thatn that of Comrade Stalin.

[The function of this new commissariat was to root out bureaucracy and red tape in all Soviet institutions. However, under Stalin it seen became a hotbed of political intrigue and one of the chief instruments with which he built his political machine. In a secret memorandum dated April 18, 1922, Trotsky wrote about it:

It is impossible to shut one’s eyes to the fact that the Rabkrin [Note: A Russian portmanteau word for the Commissariat of Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection/ -C.M.] is filled chiefly with persons who had failed in various other spheres.Hence incidentally the extraordinary development of intrigue in the . . . Rabkrin, which has long ago become a by-word throughout the country. There is no reason to assume that this institution (not its small ruling circles only, but the entire organization) can be restored to health and strengthened, because in the future the efficient workers will continue to be assigned to the actual job itself, not to its inspection. Hence, the fantastic nature of the plan to improve the machinery of the Soviet State through the leverage of the Rabkrin is obvious.

[To this criticism Lenin replied on May 6th”

Comrade Trotsky is radically wrong about the Radkrin. With our outrageous “departmentalism” even among the best Communists, the low cultural level of our functionaries, the intra-departmental intrigues . . . it is impossible to get along now without the Rabkrin. We can and must work on it systematically and persistently, in order to make of it the machinery for the inspection and improvement of all government activities.

[But before long Lenin was to change his opinion on this subject and to grow even more alarmed than Trotsky about the bureaucratization and political corruption of this commissariat especially designed by him to fight bureaucracy.

[The creation of eh Secretariat by decision of the Eighth Congress as the third sub-committee of the Central Committee proved far more portentous than anyone at the time had foreseen. It was in that office that Stalin was later to entrench himself. In time the Secretariat was to supersede the Politburo as the seat of power. The Central Committee had a Secretary in Sverdlov but no Secretariat. Between his appointment as President of the Soviet Republic in November, 1917, and the split between the Bukharinists and the Leninists at the Seventh Party Congress in March, 1918, Sverdlov had been more concerned with his governmental duties than his secretaryship of the Party, so that the function of appointing members to jobs was shared indiscriminately by him with other members of the Central Committee and Central Executive Committee and with the various members of the Council of People’s Commissars acting both individually and as a body. As for the technical work, it was actually performed by persons who were not members of the Central Committee. The records of the officer were kept largely in Sverdlov’s personal notebook and in his head. The man had a phenomenal memory. Although with the emergence of the Party crisis at the Seventh Congress, Sverdlov shifted the emphasis of his attention from the Presidency of the Republic to the Secretaryship of the Party, he continued to conduct his Party office in much the same manner as hitherto, so that he was literally the indispensable hub of the political machine. His death, soon after the opening of the Eighth Congress, placed the Party machine in jeopardy. When the Secretariat was created in March, 1919, Krestinsky was placed at the head of it. He, too, was a man with a phenomenal memory, but he was not allowed to rely on it, and he proceeded to deparmentalize his office and to institute the keeping of records. However, the new Secretariat proved ineffectual to the double task of ferreting out oppositionists from important Party and Soviet positions and replacing them with members willing and able to carry through the official policy of centralization. The Ninth Party Congress, held in 1920, therefore carried out a reform of the Secretariat itself. It decreed:

. . . 1.) to reinforce the Secretariat by enlarging it to three members of the Central Committee constantly employed therein; 2.) to transfer to the jurisdiction of the Secretariat . . . the current organizational and executive problems, reserving for the Orgburo . . . the general management of the Central Committee’s organizational activities . . .

[The object was to increase the authority and prestige of the Secretariat, the better to enable it to cope with oppositionists and forestall the airing of their heretical views at Party congresses, conferences and meetings.

[But the three leading Bolsheviks (Krestinsky, Serebryakov and Preobrazhensky) selected for this high office proved too humane and tolerant of Party police work. Under their administration, oppositionist activities increased instead of subsiding. The three members of the Secretariat became themselves suspected of sympathy for the advocates of democracy. At the Tenth Party Congress, held in March, 1921, they were not only removed from the Secretariat but from the Orgburo, the Politburo and even the Central Committee. Their places were taken by second-raters destined to figure as the rising luminaries of neo-Bolshevik leadership: Molotov, Yaroslavsky, Mikhailov. It is not hard to deduce whose influence figured most potently beind the new “election”, when you consider that of the five members of the Orgburo, three were the aforementioned members of the Secretariat disqualilfied in the eyes of Lenin, the fourth was Rykov, until recently in obloquy for his stubborn opposition to Lenin immediately before and after the October Revolution, and the fifth was thast mastser of political wire-pulling and intrigue, Stalin.

[Nor were these three the only rising stars of what was later to become Stalinism. Yoroslavlsky was elected alternate member of the Central Committee as early as the Eighth Congress in 1919, Molotiv and Petrovsky at the Ninth in 1920. These three plus Mikhailov and Ordzhonikidze were elected full-fledged members of the Central Committee at the Tenth Congress in 1921. Gussev, Andreyev, Kirov, Kuibyshev, Uglanov and Chubar’ were other local leaders or minor officials at the Center whom Stalin pushed into political limelight. On the surface relatively a second-rater himself among the Bolshevik leaders, he had already begun convincing a growing group of Bolshevik politicians eager or advancement that he was able to reward the faithfull with political plums. At least that attribute of leadership was his].

Stalin found the most loyal of his first collaborators in Ordzhonikidze and Dzerzhinsky, both of whom were at the time in disvaor with Lenin. Ordzhinikidze, who was decidedly gifted with forcefulness, courage and firmness of character, was essentially a man of little culture, irascible and utterly incapable of self-conrol. As long as he was a revolutionist, his daring and his resolut self-sacrific predominated. But when he became a high official, his uncouthness and crudity overshadowed his other qualities. Lenin, who had ha a warm feeling for him in the past, avoided him more and more. Ordzhonikidze felt it. Their unsatisfactory relationship came to a head when Lenin proposed that Ordzhonikidze be excluded form the Party for a year or two, for misusing his power.

Similarly, Lenin’s friendly regard for Dzerzhinsky cooled off. Dzershinsky was distinguished by profound inherent honesty, a passionate character and impulsivness. He reamined uncorrputed by power. But he did not always measure up in ability to the tasks imposed on him. He was invariably re-elected to the Central Committee. But as long as Lenin lived, it was out of the question to include him in the Politburo. In 1921, or it may have been in 1922, Dzerzhinsky, an exceedingly proud man, complained to me, with a note of resignation in his voice, that Lenin did not consider him a political figure. Of course, I tried as best I could to dispel that impression. “He doesnot consider me an organizer, a statesman,” Dzerzhinsky insisted.
“What makes you think so?”
“He stubbornly refuses to accept my report as People’s Commissar of Ways of Communication.”

Lenin was apparently not enthusiastic about Dzerzhinsky’s record in that position. As a matter of fact, Dzerzhinsky was not an organizer in the broad sense of the word. He would call his collaborators together and organize them around his personality, not according to his method. This was obviously no way to bring order into the Commissariat of Ways of Communication. By 1922 Ordzhonikidze and Dzerzhinsky felt thoroughly dissatisfied withi their position and in considerable measure hurt. Stalin immediately recruited both of them.

[Another Party institution which played a prominent role in establishing the ascendancy of Stalin was the so-called Control Commissions, first proposed at the All-Russian Party Conference of September, 1920. According to the text of the resolution, the Control Commission was established “in addition to” the Central Committee, not as part of the latter, like the Politburo, Orgburo and Secretariat. It was invested with the right to consider all complaints and to adjudicate them “by agreement with the Central Committee,” arranging “whenever necessary, joint sessions” with the latter or appealing to the Party congress for solution of certain knotty problems. Similar control commissions, independent of the one elected at the All-Russian Party Conference of September, 1920, were elected at provincial Party congresses. Eventually, but not in the beginning, they were to become merely branches subsidiary to the former, which became known as the Central Control Commission.

[At the Tenth Congress, in March 1921, the objectives of the control commissions were defined as follows:

For the purpose of reinforcing the unity and authority of the Party, Control Commissions are established, within whose competence are the task of extirpating the insinuating evils of bureaucratism, careerism, misuse by Party members of their Party and Soviet positions, the violation of comradely relations within the Party, the spread of unfounded and unverified rumors and insinusations and similar information that reflect upon the honor of the Party and any of its members, damaging the unity and authority of the Party.

[This was sufficiently broad to make any member of the Party in disfavor with the ruling group liable to investigation by a control commission. It is no mere coincidence that at the same Party congress the rescript against factions was promulgated. Both were obviously weapons for getting rid of oppositionists. And so was a third resolution –to institute a Party purge.

[At the Eleventh Party Congress in the spring of 1922, the original Control Commission was officially designated as the Central Control Commission and empowered to centralize the activities of the local Control Commissions, which in turn definitely took over punitive functions over recalcitrant Party members from the local and provincial Party committees. Moreover, each constituent republic acquired its own Central Control Commission directly responsible to the one in Moscow. A further proposal to reinforce each Control Commission with a department of investigation and a staff of Party sleuths was also approved. Of the seven members of the top Central Control Commission elected at the Tenth Congress, only Soltz, an Old Bolshevik, was re-elected bgy the Eleventh Congress. Three of the new members of that body elected along with him –Shkiryatov, Korostelev and Muranov –were, like Soltz, political allies of Stalin, who was elected General Secretary for the first time at the same Party Congress. Thus, in the spring of 1922 Stalin secured the support of four out of seven members of the collegium of the supreme Central Control Commission.

[Meantime a subtle but deep-running change had taken place in the Party itself. The struggle for inner-party democracy had been open on the floor of the Tenth Congress. It had revolved principally around the subject of proper relations between the State, the Party and the Trade Unions. The so-called Workers’ Opposition, led by Shlyapnikov and Kollontai, proposed a program which the ruling circles had denounced as “an anarcho-syndicalist deviation.” Accoring to official historians, this program called for the trade unions as the organizers of production to take over not only the functions of the State but of the Party as well. Trotsky, on the other hand, contended that while it was essential to pursue a policy of equalitarianism in the field of consumption, it was still necessary to some time to come to insist on “shock methods” in the field of production, which according to Trotsky meant “harnessing the trade union machinery to the administrative system of economic management” and according to his opponents, the conversion of trade unions into State institutions. Lenin maintained that the trade unions should remain under Party control and should become more than ever a vast “school of Communism.” In this controversy Stalin supported Lenin’s position. There were also other opinions of the subject expressed on the floor of the Congress, but the matter was reduced principally to a three-cornered controversy between the groups whose chief spokesmen were Lenin, Trotsky and Kollontai. The discussion was moreover not confined to the floor of the Party congress. It was carried out publicly and invaded all sorts of Soviet institutions.

[This atmosphere of free discussion had changed radically by the time the Party met for its Eleventh Congress, held between March 27th and April 2nd, 1922. During the intervening year, factions having been officially proscribed at the Tenth Party Congress, the oppositionists had gone “underground” and had organized clandestinely so well that a number of the resolutions sponsored by the ruling group at the Eleventh Congress were voted down overwhelmingly enough to preclude any fraudulent “revisions” of the ballot.

[Not only did the oppositionists show their mettle secretly, but there were turbulent expressions of approval when the oppositionist Ryazanov upbraided the ruling group openly in one of his speeches and when the delegates stubbornly refused to expel from the Party the leaders of the Workers’ Opposition, Shlyapnikov, Medvedev and Kollontai, in open defiance of Lenin’s demand for their expulsion. This open opposition was, moreover, symptomatic of a far more widespread secret opposition. The ruling group refarded the secret dissenters as the more dangerous of the two because their machinations were pregnant with painful surprises. It was clear that the system of divided responsibility between three equal members of the Secretariat, each disclaiming full responsibility, was inadequate to cope with the Secretariat’s function of appointing “loyal” comrades to key positions and of selecting “loyal” delegates to Party congresses. Lenin and his entourage therefore decided to reinforce the Secretariat in two ways –by establishing the office of General Secretary, with the other two members acting as his assistants rather than equal colleagues, and by selecting for the position of General Secretary the man most capable of strong-arm work, Joseph Stalin. Two of his most loyal henchmen, Molotov and Kuibyshev, were elected as his assistants.

[Stalin was elected General Secretary on the second of April, 1922. Two months later Lenin fell seriously ill. By that time, through a lucky combination of circumstances as much as his own conniving, Stalin was already in a potentially strategic position. Had Lenin recovered rapidly, the chances are that Stalin would have slunk back into obscurity –the chances, not absolute certainty. But Lenin’s illness went from bad to worse.]

Lenin’s relations with Stalin are officially characterized as a close friendship. As a matter of fact, these two political figures were widely separated not only by the ten year’s difference in their ages, but by the very size of their respective personalities. There could be no such thing as friendship between the two. No doubt, Lenin came to appreciate Stalin’s ability as a practical organizer during the parlous times of the reaction of 1907-1913. But during the years of the Soviet regime Stalin’s coarseness repelled him again and again, and increasingly militated against smooth collaboration between them. Owing largely to that, Stalin continued his clandestine opposition to Lenin. Envious and ambitious, Stalin could not help growing restive as he sensed at every step Lenin’s crushing intellectual and moral superiority. [In constantly varying degree, this unstable] relationship persisted [satisfactorily enough for all practical purposes] until Lenin fell so seriously ill [that he retired from active participation in affairs of State], when it became transformed into an outright struggle that culminated in the final break.

[As early as the spring of 1920] at the celebration in honor of Lenin’s fiftieth birthday Stalin went to the length of delivering a speech about Lenin’s errors. It is hard to say what impelled him to do it. In any event, the speech seemed so incongrous to all that on the following day, the 24th of April, [in their report of the celebration] both Pravda and Izvestiya stated merely that “Comrade Stalin spoke of several episodes of their work together before the revolution,” and that was all.
But at about the same time Stalin also put himself on record in print as to what he had learned and wanted to learn from Lenin, in his general article written for the same occasion under the title, “Lenin as Organizer and Leader of the Russian Communist Party.” It would be hardly worth the effort to examine this piece because of its theoretical and literary value. Suffice it to say that the article opens with the assertion:

While in the West –in France, in Germany –the labor party grew out of the trade-unions under conditions permitting the existenc of unions and parties . . . in Russia on the contrary the formation of a proletarian party took place under the cruelest absolutism . . .

His assertion is, of course, true of Great Britain, which he fails to mention as an example, but it is not true of France and monstrously untrue of Germany, where the party had built the trade-unions practically from scratch. To this day, as in 1920, the history of the European labor movement is a closed book to Stalin, and hence it is still useless to expect theoretical guidance from him in that sphere.

The article is interesting because not only in the title but in his whole conception of him, Stalin acclaims Lenin primarily as an organizer, and only secondarily as a political leader. “The greates credit to Comrade Leninm,” which Stalin puts first, was “his furious assault upon the organizational formlessness of the Mensheviks.” Lenin is accorded credit for his organizational plan because he “generalized like a master the organizational experience of the best practical workers.” Furthermore:

Only in consequence if such organizational policy could the Party have achieved that internal unity and amazing solidarity which enabled it to emerge effortlessly from the July Crisis and Kerensky, bear on its shoulders the October Revolution, live through the crisis of the Brest period without cracking, and organized the victory over the Entente . . .

Only after that did Stalin add: “But the organizational value of the Russian Communist Party represents only one side of the matter,” and turn to the political content of Party work, its program and tactics. It is no exaggeration to say that no other Marxist, certainly no other Russian Marxist, would have so constructed an appraisal of Lenin. Surely, organizational questions are not the basis of policy but rather the inferences that follow from the crystallization of the theory, program and practice. Yet it is no accident that Stalin looked upon the organizational lever as basic; whatever deals with programs and policies was for him always essentially an ornament of the organizational foundation.

In the same article Stalin formulated for the last time, more or less correctly, the Bolshevik ivew, rather new at the time, of the role of the proletarian paty under the conditions of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of our epoch. Ridiculing the Mensheviks, Stalin wrote that to those who had poorly digested the history of the old revolutions it seemed that

. . . the proletariat cannot have the hegemony of the Russian Revolution; the leadership must be offered to the Russian bourgeoisie, the very same bourgeoisie that was opposed to the revolution. The peasantry must likewise be placed under the patronage of the bourgeoisie, while the proletariat should be relegated to the position of an extreme left opposition. These disgusting echoes of bad liberalism were offered by the Mensheviks as the latest workd of genuine Marxism . . .

It is remarkable that a mere three years later Stalin applied this very conception of the Mensheviks, word for work, letter for letter, to the Chinese bourgeois-democratic revolution, and subsequently, with incomparably greater cynicism, to the Spanish Revolution of 1931-1939. Such a monstrous reversal would have been utterly imposible lif at the time Stalin had really assimilated and thoroughly understood the Leninist conception of revolution. But what Stalin had assimilated was merely the Leninist conception of the centralized Party machine. The moment he got hold of that, he lost sight of its roots in theoretical considerations, its programmatic base became essentialy unimportant, and it consonance with his own past, his own socila origin, training and education, he was naturally inclined toward a petty-bourgeois conception, toward opportunism, toward compromise. In 1917 he had failed to realize fusion with the Mensheviks only because Lenin would not let him; in the Chinese revolution he fully achieved tha Menshevik conception under the banner of Bolshevism. Far more expertly, with a prefected efficiency truly deadly, he carried out the same policy in the Spanish Revolution.

Thus, in Stalin’s article on Lenin, which has been republished since them innumerable times in innumerable quantities and in innumerable languages, was a rather simple-minded characterization of its subject, it does give us the key to the political nature of its author. It even contains lines which in a certain sense are auto-biographic:

Not infrequently our own comrades (not only the Mensheviks) accused Comrade Lenin of being unduly inclined towards polemics and toward splits in his irrreconcilable struggle against the compromisers . . . There is no doubt that both took place in their time . . .

In 1920 Stalin still considered Lenin unduly inclined to polemics and splits, as he had deemed him in 1913. Furthermore, he justified this tendency in Lenin without removing the stigma of the accusations that Lenin was given to exaggerations and to extremism.

[Lenin guarded every useful official as the apple of his eye. He was tender with all of them. We find him chatting “for 10-15 minutes” at the bedside of Sverdlov dying from Spanish influenza, notwithstanding the danger of infection; we find him chiding Tsuryupa, “Dear A.D.! You are becoming utterly insufferable in yoiur treatment of government property. Your orders: three weeks’ cure! And you must obey the medical authoriteis who will send you to the sanatorium. So help me, it’s unproductive to be careless with poor health. You must get well!” Similarly, when Stalin was laid up with an operation at the Soldatenkovsky Hospital in Moscow in December of 1920, Lenin, according to the testimony of Stalin’s attending physician, Dr. Rosanov],

* Called me by telephone every day, twice a day, morning and evening, and not merely inquired about his health but insisted upon the most thoroughgoing and extensive report. Comrade Stalin’s operation was a very difficult one. A wide incision had to be made around the appendix at that time of the appendectomy, and we found it hard to guarantee results. It was obvious that Vladimir Ilyich was worried. “If anything should happen,” he said to me, “telephone at once –and time, night or day.” When on the fourth of fifth day after the operation it became clear that there was no longer any danger and I told him about it, he exclaimed straight from his heart, “Thank you ever so much! . . .But I am going to pester you with my daily phone calls anyway.”
Once while calling at Comrade Stalin’s apartment, I happened to run into Vladimir Ilyich there. He greeted me cordially, took me aside and again plied me with innumerable questions about Comrade Stalin’s illness and cure. I said that it was necessasry to send him away for a rest, so that he might properly recuperate from the difficult operation. He chimed in: “That’s just what I told him! But he won’t listen to me! However, I’ll take care of that. But not in one of the sanitoriums. I am told they are good now, but I haven’t seen anything good about them yet.” I suggested: “Why doesn’t he go straight into his native hills?” To which Vladimir Ilyich resplied: “You’re right! There he’ll be further away from everything and no one will bother him. We’ll have to see to that.”

[But Stalin deferred his visit to his native Georgia until the following July. In the midst of that re-entry of Georgia, where he was confronted with militant opposition, Stalin fell ill again. On July 25, 1921, Lenin telegraphed Ordzhonikidze, Stalin’s lieutenant and chief executor of the policy and program of “pacification” in Georgia:

Received your 2064. Send name and address of doctor attending Stalin, also how many days Stalin kept from work. Awaiting your reply to coded telegram. Will you attend plenum of August 7? #835 Lenin

[And on December 28, 1921, Lenin jotted down the following note to one of his secretaries:
Remind me tomorrow, I must see Stalin and before that (exec. 29/xii 21) connect me by telephone with OBUKH (Dr.) about Stalin.

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Part 3: Stalin crosses Lenin in Georgia

[Less than three months later Lenin himself was too ill to attend a Central Committee plenum, but rallied for the Eleventh Party Congress. Two months later, Lenin’s speech was impaired as well as the functioning of his right arm and leg, in consequence of his first acute attack of arteriosclerosis on May 26, 1922, news of which was not made public until June 4th. After recurrent inmprovements and relapses throughout the summer, Lenin returned to his duties in October, and the following month even addressed the Fourth Congress of the Communist International on the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution. He was, however, too ill to attend the Tenth Soviet Congress of the Russian Republic and the First Soviet Congress of the newly-constituted Soviet Union at the end of December, for he suffered his second stroke, which paralyized his entire right side, on December 16. His active participation in the affairs of the U.S.S.R. was over. Like Moses on Mt. Nebo, he viewd the promised land of the world proletariat from afar, and during intervals of improvement between recurrent attacks dictated his last commandments –his Testament, which he completed on January 4th, 1923; his essays On Cooperation; Our Revolution; How the Workers’-Peasants’ Inspection Should be Reorganised; Better les, But Better; and Pages From a Diary. These months encompassed the last of Lenin’s creative effort. It culminated on the night of March 5th-6th, when he dictated his last letter to Stalin, breaking off all comradely relations with him. On March 9th he suffered his third and most devastating stroke, which flung him into an agony of frightful suffereing, aggravated by insomnia and nervous excitement. His power of speech was gone, one half of his body in the vice of complete paralysis. But his will to live and function was indomitable.

[Toward the end of the following summer his health improved slightly, the continual nightmare of insomnia came to an end, he began to walk, learning all over again, like a child, and in the autumn he began to learn to speak again. In October, able already to walk by himself with the aid of a cane, he had himself driven to Moscow, where he revisited the Kremlin office, and on the return trip to Gorki stopped at the agricultural exibition then under way. Daily he chose books and articles he wanted read to him. His speech was gradually returning. The day of his recovery seemed not too far off. And then, awaking out of sorts on January 20th, 1924, he complained of a headache, loss of appetite and of feeling generally unwell. The following day he was again out of sorts and ate a little breakfast and dinner under the persuasion of his entourage. After dinner he lay down to sleep. At six in the afternoon a severe attack set in, his breathing became increasingly more labored, his face blanched, his temperature mounted by leaps and bounds, he lay unsconscious, dead within fifty minutes. Hemorrhage of the brain paralyzed his respiratory organs and life burned out of him. Fifteen years and seven months later to the hour, the life of his partner in what the world know as the Lenin-Trotsky Government was to be also snuffed out by hemorrhage of the brain, induced less subtly this time by the blow of an assassin’s pickaxe. Lenin was three months short of fifty-four when he died; Trotsky seven years older. Stalin, whom his most devoted apologists among American journalists, after seventeen years of patient service, was to describe as, “an animal of prey which first paws its victim to feel out its strength, then strikes to cripple and steps back to watch the effect and finally kills,” had survived both of them/ He had planted the means of that survival during Lenin’s illness.

[When Lenin suffered his fist stroke, the public the world over, including Soviet Russia, was led to believe that his illness was not serious and he would soon return to his duties. He was a man of bulldog tenacity in body and spirit, and only in his early ‘fifties. At first the members of the Politburo sincerely shared that conviction. They merely did not bother to disabuse the public –not even the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union or the rank-and-file comrades in the Party –when later it became clear to them that the contrary was true. With Lenin temporarily ill, it was taken for granted that the Politburo would carry on. Although to the public at large Trotsky seemed the most likely successor to Lenin, and although the younger Party members shared that view, the political wheelhorses of the Party machine did not see a fitting successor to Ilyich either in Trotsky, who not so many years ago had been a factional opponent, or in any other member of the Politburo, all of whom seemed mere armor-bearers by comparison. The only conceivable successor to Lenin, temporarily ill or definitely removed, was a Directory of the top Party leaders, members and alternates of the Politburo and the Central Committee. This was assumed to have happened as soon as Lenin fell ill.

[But actually a variant of this took place. The succession passed to a triumvirate, of which Zinoviev was the leader, Kamenev his alternate and Stalin the junior partner. Zinoviev thus became, for better or for worse, Lenin’s successor by virture of his plurality inside the Politburo, and he secured that plurality not because his fellow-members deemed him the ablest and most deserving, but on the contrary, because they considered him the least capable of leadership and politically the most vulnerable. Of the seven members of the Politburo, Lenin was ill; Trotsky was alone in his opinion that he was the natural successor to Lenin, a widespread opinion outside the Party machine that med him the most feared and hated fellow-member inside the Politburo and among the Party wheelhorses; Zinoviev had the solid support of Kamenev and Bukharin, who felt freest in expression and action and in the opportunity to extend their sphere of influence under his nominal leadership, the grudging support of Stalin, who was not yet ready to assert himself, and the passive support of Tomsky. It was tacitly understood by all but Zinoviev, not only in the Politburo, but on the Central Committee as well, where he likewise enjoyed a plurality, that he was merely a dummy in place of a leader, and that only for as long as he behaved himself in accordance with the secret expectation of each of the others, which was to let him enjoy the glory until the real leader felt ready to reach out for it.

[Whom did Lenin favor as his successor? Until his second stroke, which telled him on December 16, 1922, he had not given the matter serious consideration, fully expecting to recover and resume the leadership. His Testament, written several days later, was patently an effort to offer his own frank opinion of the various candidates rather than to dictate his decision. Precisely because of tha power at his command due to his overwhelming prestige,he was reluctant to impose his will. He state his preferences and his objections, he made recommendations, particularly about the removal of Stalin from the post of General-Secretary because of “rudeness” and “disloyalty,” but he did not venture beyond advice on how his successors could work best together and beyond the warning that a serious contest between Trotsky and Stalin would be calamitous for the Party and for the Bolshevik cause. However, within two months he found it necessary to take the very definite and irrevocable step of formally severing comradely relations –which meant breaking off all political as well as personal ties –with only one of his lieutenants, Stalin. This “excommunication” took place during preparations for the Twelth Party Congress, which Lenin, prostrated by his third serious stroke, was unable to attend. It was the first congress without Lenin and the first one packed with delegates hand-picked by the General-Secretary. It marked the beginning of the end of the Leninist regime and the dawn of Stalinism as a new political orientation.

[The break between Lenin and Stalin came to a head after patient efforts by Lenin to avert it. When] at the Eleventh Congress, toward the end of March, 1922, Zinoviev and his closest allies were backing Stalin for the post of General-Secretary, in the hope of utilizing the latter’s hostility toward me for their own ends, Lenin demurred to the candidacy [in an off-the-record discussion among his intimates] with the observation,”That cook will concoct nothing but peppery dishes.” Lenin was apprehensive about the recurrence of his illness and was anxious to utilize the period until his next attack, which might prove fatal, to establish a harmonious collective leadership by common agreement and particularly his own agreement with Stalin. [Hence the earnest effort he made to co-ordinate his own work with that of the Secretariat. He was most meticulous about upholdinig Stalin’s authority. As late as October 21, 1922, Lenin rebuffed the highly indignant protest fot he Georgian opposition against Stalin and Ordzhonikidze with a scathing telegram. Similarly, he contined to tuphold h9im or to tonoe down criticism of him to mild reproof on other issues. Matters came to a head only when Lenin became convinced that Stalin was inncorrigible. The Georgian question was only one of the issues which led to the final break.]

The only piece of serious Marxist writing Stalin had ever contributed to the arsenal of Bolshevik theory had been on the national question. That was back in 1913. It contained presumably the summa summarum of his own observations in the Caucasus, the results of conclusions from practical revolutionary work, and a number of broad historical generalizations, whichm, as we had earlier indicated, he had cribbed from Lenin. Stalin had made them his own in a literary sense, i.e., by tying them up with his own conclusions, but without completely completely digesting them as certainly without assimilating them. This was fully exposed during the Soviet period, when the problems resolved in black and white reappeared as administrative tasks of paramount importance, and as such determined all the other aspects of policy. It was then that the the vaunted agreement of Stalin with Lenin in all things and especially their slidarity of principles on the national question, the guarantee of which was Stalin’s essay of 1913, proved in large measure to be fictitious.

At the Tenth Congress in March, 1921, Stalin had again read his inevitable report on the national question. As often happens with him because of his empiricism, he proceeded to draw his generalizations not from the living material, not from experience of the Soviet Government, but from unrelated and unco-ordinated abstractions. In 1921, as in 1917, he still repeated the general argument that the bourgeois contries could not solve their national questions while the land of t4he Soviets had every possibility of doing so. The report aroused dissatisfaction, even perplexity. In the course of the ensuing debate the delegates most interested in the question, chiefly representatives of the national minority parties, expressed their dissatisfaction with it. Even Mikoyan, alread one of Stalin’s close political allies and subsequently one of hismot devoted armor-bearers, complained that the Party was in need of instructions as to “what changes should be made in the system, what type of Soviet system should be established in the borderlands . . . Comrade Stalin failed to point that out.”

Principles never exerted any influence over Stalin –and on the national question perphaps less than on any other. The immediate administrative task allways loomed before him as greater than all the laws of history. In 1905 he came to notice the swelling mass movement only with the permission of his Party Committee. In the years of reaction he defended the underground movement because his nature craved a centralized political machine. After the February Revolution, when that machine was smashed along with illegality, Stalin lost sight of the difference between Menshevism and Bolshevism and was getting ready to unite with Tseretelli’s party. Finally, after the conquest of power in October, 1917, all tasks, all problems, all perspectives were subordinated to the needs of that apparatus of apparatuses, the State. As Commissar of Nationalities, Stalin no longer approached the national question from the point of view of the laws of history, to which he had paid his full tribute in 1913, but from the point of view of the convenience of the adminisrative office. Thus he necessarily found himself at loggerheads with the needs of the mopst backward and most oppressed nationalities and secured undue advantages for Great-Russian bureaucratic imperialism.

The Georgian people, almost entirely peasant or petty bourgeois in composition, resisted vigorously the sovietization of their country. But the great difficulties thus engendered were considerably aggravated by the manner and method of militaristic arbitrariness wherewith Georgia was sugjected to sovietization. Under these conditions a double cautiousness toward the Georgian masses was required of the ruling party. It was on precisely this that the sharp disagreement developed between Lenkin, who insisted on an especially resilient, circumspect, patient policy toward Georgia and in Transcaucasia generally, and Stalin, who felt that, since the machinery of the State was in our hands, our position was secure. Stalin’s agent in the Caucasus was Ordzhonikidze, the hot-headed, impatient conqueror of Georgia, who regarded every manifestaion of resistance as a personal affront. [Stalin seemed to have forgotten that not so long ago] we had recognized the independence of Georgia and had concluded a treaty with her. [That was on May 7th, 1920. But on February 11th, 1921,] detachments of the Red Army had invaded Georgia upon Stalin’s orders and had confronted us with a fait accompli. Stalin’s boyhood friend, Iremashvili writes”

Stalin was opposed to the treaty. He did not want to let his native land remain outside the Russian State and live under the free rule of the Mensheviks he detested. His ambition pushed him toward rulership over Georgia, where the peaceable, sensible population resisted his destructive propaganda withi icy stubbornness . . . Revenge against the Menshevik leaders, who had persistently refused to countenance his utopian plans and expelled him from their ranks, would not let him rest. Against Lenin’s will, upon his own egotistical initiative, Stalin achieved the Bolshevization or Stalinization of his native land . . . Stalin organized the expedition to Georgia from Moscow and led it from there. In the middle of July, 1921, he himself entered Tiflis as a conqueror.

In 1921 Stalin visited Georgia in quite a different capacity from the one in which they had been accustomed to see him in his native land when he was still Soso and Later Koba. Now he was the representative of the government, of the omnipotent Politburo, of the Central Committee.Yet no one in Georgia saw in him a leader, especially in the upper tiers of the Party, where he was accorded recognition not as Stalin but as a member of the highest leadership of the Party, i.e., not on the basis of his personality, but on the basis of his office. His former comrades inillegal work regarded themselves at least as competent in the affairs of Georgia as he, freely disagreed with him, and wshen they were compelled to submit, did it reluctantly, offering sharp criticism and threatening to demand a review of the entire question in the Politburo of the Central Committee. Stalin was not yet a leader even in his own [native haunts. That touched him to the quick. He would never forgive such an affront to his authority] as a representative of the Central Committee of the Party and of the Soviet Government, as People’s Commissar of Nationalities. He considerred himself with full justification more competent than all other members of the Party Central Committee on all matters pertaining to Georgia. If in Moscow he rested his authority on the fact that he was a Georgian familiar with local conditions, in Georgia, where he appeared as the representative of Moscow independent of local national sympathies and preconceptions, he tried to behave as if he were not a Georgian but a Bolshevik delegated by Moscow, the Commissar of Nationalities, and as if to him the Georgians were just one of many nationalities. He assumed a know-nothng attitude about the national conditions of Georgia –an obvious bit of overcompenstaion for the strong national feelings of his youth. [He behaved like a Great-Russian Russifier, riding roughshod over the rights of his own people as a nation]. That was what Lenin meant by Russifying foreigners. This referred as mucn to Stalin as to Dzerzhinsky, [a Pole turned Russifier. According to Iremashvili, who obviously overstates the case]:

* The Georgian Bolsheviks, who in the bgeginning were included in the Russian Stalinist invasion, pursued as their aim the independence of the Georgian Soviet Republic, which should have had nothing in common with Russia except the Bolshevik point of view and political friendship. They were stilll Georgians to whom the independence of their country was more important than anything else . . . But then came the declaration of war by Stalin, who found loyal assistance among the Russian Red Guardsmen and the Cheka he sent there.

Iremashvili tells us that Stalin met with general hostility in Tiflis. At a meeting in a theater convoked by Tiflis Socialists Stalin became the object of a hostile demonstration. Presumably, the old Menshevik Iremashvili himself seized control of the meeting and flung accusations in Stalin’s face. Other orators denounced Stalin similarly, we are told. Unfortunately, no stenographic record of these proceedings has been preserved and no one is obliged to accept this part of Iremashvili’s recollections too literally:

For hours Stalin was forced to listen in silence to his opponents and to admit the accusations. Never before and never after did Stalin have to endure such open courageous indignation.

[Following developments can be told briefly.] Stalin again betrayed Lenin’s confidence. In order to build solid political support for himself in Georgia he instigated there behyind the back of Lenin and the entire Central Committee, with the aid of Ordzhonikidze and not without the support of Dzerzhinsky, a vertiable “revolution” against the finest members of the Party, while perfidiously covering himself with the authority of the Central Committee. Taking advantage of the fact that meetings with the Georgian comrades were not accessible to Lenin, Stalin attempted to surround him with false information. Lenin smelled a rat and instructed his private secretariat to collect complete data on the Georgian question; after studying it, he decided to come out into the open. It is hared to say what shocked Lenin most: Stalin’s personal disloyalty or his chronic inability to grasp the gist of Bolshevik policy on the national question; most likely a combination of both.

[Gropingfor the truth, the bedridden Lenin undertook to dictate a programmatic letter that would outline his fundamental position on the national question, so that there would be no misunderstanding among his comrades as to where he stood on the issues currently under dispute. On December 30th he dictated the following note:

I think that here the hastiness and adminnistrative impulsiveness of Stalin played a fatal role, and also his spitefulness against the notorious “social nationalism.” As a rule, spitefulness plays the worst possible role in politics.

[And the following day he dictated in the programmatic letter itself]:

* It is of course necessary to hold Stalin and Dzerzhinsky responsible for all this out-and-out Great-Russian nationalistic campaign.

[Lenin was on the right track. If he realized the full seriousness of the situation, his understatement of it was monstrous, for what had actually taken place behind his back, as Trotsky characterized it eight years later, was that] Stalin’s faction routed Lenin’s faction in the Caucasus. This was the first victory of the reactionaries in the Party. It opened the second chapter of the Revolution [ -the Stalinist counter-revolution.

[Lenin was finally constrained to write to the Georgian oppositionists on March 6, 1923]:

* To Comrades Mdivani, Makharadze and others: (Copes to Comrades Trotsky and Kamenev).
Esteemed Comrades,
I am with you in this matter with all my heart. I am outraged by the arrogance of Ordzhonikidze and the connivance of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. On your behalf I am now preparing notes and a speech.
With esteem, Lenin

The day before he had dictated the following note to me:
* Strictly Confidential. Personal
Esteemed Comrade Trotsky,
I earnestly ask you to undertake the defense of the Georgian matter in the Party Central Committee. It is now being “persecuted” by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, so that I cannot rely on their impartiality. Indeed, quite the contrary! Should you agree to undertake its defense, I would rest easy. If for some reason you do not agree, please return all the papers. I shall consider that a sign of your disagreement.
With the very best comradely greetings, Lenin

[He also sent word by two of his personal secretaries that he wanted Trotsky to see it through at the forthcoming Twelfth Congress as well. Lenin’s request was sent by telephone, and the papers –the letter on the national question and the notes –were brought to Trotsky by Misses Glyasser and Fotieva along with a note from Misws Volodicheva, who had taken the dictation, informing him that Kamenev, who substituted for Lenin as Chairman of the Politburo as well as in the Soviet cabinet, was “going to Georgia on Wednesday, and Vladimir Ilyich asked me to find out whether you have any message of your own for him.” Lenin’s secretaries has called on Trotsky on Wednesday, March 7, 1923].

“Having read our correspondence with you,” Glyasser told me, “Vladimir Ilyich brightened up. That makes things different. He instructed me to transmit to you the manuscript material which was supposed to have made up his bombshell for the Twelfth Congress.” Kamenev had informed me that Lenin had just written a letter breaking off all comradely relations with Stalin, so I suggested that since Kamenev was leaving that day for Georgia to attend a Party congress, it might be advisable to show him the letter on the national question so that he might do whatever was necessary. Fotieva replied: “I don’t know. Vladimir Ilyich did not instruct me to transmit the letter to Comrade Kamenev, but I can ask him.” A few minutes later she returned with the following message: “Absolutely not. Vladimir Ilyich says that Kamenev would show the letter to Stalin, who would make a rotten compromise, in order later to double-cross us.”

“In other words, the matter has gone so far that Ilyich does not deem it possible to conclude a compromise with Stalin even along correct lines?” I inquired.
“Yes,” she confirmed, “Ilyich does not trust Stalin. He wants to come out openly against him before the whole Party. He is preparing a bombshell.”

Lenin’s intention now became utterly clear. Using Stalin’s policy as an example, he wanted to expose before the Party (and to do so ruthlessly) the danger of the bureaucratic transformation of the dictatorship. But almost immediately after that, possibly within half an hour, Fotieva returned with another message from Vladimir Ilyich, who, she said, had decided to act immediately and had written the [previously-quoted] note to Mdivani and Makharadze, with instructions to transmit copies to Kamenev as well as to me.

“How do you explain that change?” I asked Fotieva.
“Evidently,” she replied, “Vladimir Ilyich is feeling worse and is in a hurry to do everything he can.”
[Two days later Lenin had his third stroke.

[On the eve of the Congress, at the April 16th session of the Central Committee, Stalin apparently tried to protect himself with an undercover attack on Trotsky in connection with Lenin’s notes and letter on the national question and particularly the Georgian issue. The following two documents by Trotsky shed some light on the situation]:

* 1. Secret #200T
To the Members of the Central Committee
Re: Comrade Stalin’s Declaration of April 16th
1) Comrade Lenin’s article was sent to me secretly and personally by Comrade Lenin through Comrade Fotieva and, notwithstanding my expressed intention to acquaint the members of the Politburo with the article, Comrade Lenin categorically expressed himself against this through Comrade Fotieva.
2) Since two days after I received that article Comrade Lenin’s condition became worse, further communication with him on this question naturally terminated.
3) After some time Comrade Glyasser asked me for the article and I returned it.
4) I made a copy of it for my own use (for formulating corrections to Comrade Stalin’s thesis, for writing an article, and the like).
5) I know nothing abgout the instructions Comrade Lenin gave with regard to his article and other documents on the Georgian matter (“I am preparing speeches and articles”); I suppose that the proper instructions are in the possession of Nadezhda Konstantinova [Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife]. Maria Ilyinishna (Ulyanova, Lenin’s sister], or Comrade Lenin’s secretaries. I did not deem it proper to question anyone about it for reasons that do not require clarification.
6) Only from Comrade Fotieva’s communciation to me yesterday by telephone and from her note to Comrade Kamenev did I learn that Comrade Lenin had made no arrangements about the article. Since Comrade Lenin had not formally expressed his wishes on this matter, it had to be decided on the principle of political feasibility. It stand to reason that I could not personally assume responsibility for such a decision and therefore I referred the matter to the Central Committee. I did it without wasting a minute after I learned that Comrade Lenin had not given any direct and formal instructions as to the future fate of his article, and original of which is kept by his secretaries.
7) If anyone thinks that I acted improperly in this matter I for my part propose that this matter by investigated by the conflict commission of the congress or by some special commission. I see no other way.
17/IV/23

* 2. Personal, written without a copy
Comrade Stalin:
Yesterday in personal conversation with me you said it was perfectly clear to you that in the matter of Comrade Lenin’s article I did not act improperly and that you will formulate a written declaration in that sense.
Until this morning (11 o’clock) I have not received such a declaration. It is possible that you were delayed by your report of yesterday.
In any event, your first declaration remains until the present moment unrepudiated by you and gives certain comrades a justification for spreading a corresponding version among certain of the delegates.
Since I cannot permet even the shadow of vagueness in this matter –for reasons which, of course, you have no difficulty in understanding –I deem it necessary to expedite its termination. If in reply to this note I do not receive from you a communication to the effect that in the course of today you will send to all members of the Central Committee a declaration that would exclude the possibility of any sort of equivocalness in this matter, then I shall conclude that you have changed your intention of yesterday and will appeal to the conflict commission, requesting an investigation from beginning to end.
You can understand and appreciate better than anyone else that if I have not done this so far, it was not because it could have hurt my interests in any way.
April 18, 1923. Number 201.

Addressing the Congress on the 23rd of April, Stalin said in his concluding remarks on the national question:

Here very many referred to the notes and articles of Vladimir Ilyich. I shouldn’t like to quote my master, Comrade Lenin, since he is not here, for IO fear that I may be referring to him incorrectly and not to the point . . .

These words undoubtedly are a model of the most extraordinary Jesuitism on record. Stalin well knew how indignantly Lenin was opposed to his national policy, how his “master” was pregvented from blowing his “disciple” sky-high on this very issue only because of grave illness.

Trotsky's 'Stalin' - Chapt 10 Civil War Continued

Chapter 10
The Civil War (Continued)

In the spring of 1919 the Northwestern Volunteer Army under the command of General Yudenich unexpectedly assumed the offensive and threatened Petrograd. Presently the English Fleet steamed into the Bay of Finland. Colonel Bulak-Balakhovich, at the head of his unit, led the drive against Pskov, and at the same time the Estonian units came to life at the front. On the 14th of May the corpse of General Rodzyanko broke through the front of the Seventh Army, which had been considerably weakened by drafts against it for the more active fronts, occupied Yamburg and Pskov, and began a rapid simultaneous advance against Catchina, Petrograd and Luga. The Commander of the Seventh Army, stationed on the outskirts of Petrograd, entered into communication with Yudenich and organized a conspiracy among the garrisons surrounding the capital of the October Revolution –Kronstadt, Oranienbaum, Krasnaya Gor’ka, Syeraya Loshad’, Krasnoye Syelo. The conspirators, according to their complot with Yudenich, made ready to ocupy the capital simultaneously with the troops of his army. They hoped for the support of the disgruntled sailors and especially the active aid of the fleet. But the sailors of the Two Soviet dreadnaughts did not support the insurrection, which the English fleet [restricted itself for the time being to watchful waiting]. THe whole enterprise proved abortive. By the 12th of June, 1919, only Krasnaya Gor’ka [and Syeraya Loshad’ remained] in the hands of the conspirators, and for four days no attempt was made to capture them. Finally, after an exchange of shots with Kronstadt, Krasnaya Gor’ka was occupied on the 16th of June by a detachment of red sailors. [Syeraya Loshad’ feel just as easily.

[Zinoviev, the head of the Party and the government in the city and region of Petrograd, had become panicky in the face of the advancing enemy and the Politburo had sent Stalin to his rescue.]

With special powers from the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet Government, Stalin arrived in Petrograd in the latter party of May 1919. [His ruthlessness and resolution made themselves felt immediately. A couple of weeks after his arrival he telegraphed Lenin]:

* After Krasnaya Gor’ka, Syeraya Loshad’ was liewise liquidated. The guns there are in complete order. Lighting mopping up and reinforcement of the forts and fortresses now in full swing. The naval specialists assure me that the capture of Krasnaya Gor’ka from the sea turns upside down all naval science. All I can do about it is to weep over so-called science. The rapid capture of Gor’ka is explained by the rudest intervention by me and by other civilians in operational matters, which reached the point of cancelling orders on land and sea and imposing out own orders. I deem it my duty to declare that in the future I shall continue to proceed similarly nowithstanding all my respect for science.

Lenin was annoyed by this tone of provocative braggadocio. From Petrograd it was possible at any moment to communicate with the Kremlin and its staff, to replace incompetent or unreliable commanders, to strengthen the staff, i.e., to do all that everyone of the responsible military workers of the Party did time and time again at one front after another without violating the elementary rules of good taste, good manners, or the maintenance of correct relations, and without undermining the authority of the Army command and of the General Staff. But Stalin could not act in that way. He could feel his superiority over others only by insulting them. He could not derive any satisfaction from his work without giving violent vent to his contempt for all who were subordinate to him. Having no other resources at his disposal, he converted coarseness into a resource and flaunted his special tenius for contumely against institutions and persons that enjoyed the respect of others. His telegram ended with the words:

Quickly send two million rounds of ammunition at my disposal for six divisions.

In this postscript, so typical of Stalin, is a whole system. The Army had of course its own Chief of supplies. There was always a lack of bullets, and they were distributed upon the direct instructions of the Commander-in-Chief, depending on available reserves and the relative importance of fronts and armies. But Stalin skipped over all the intervening steps and violated every semblance of order. Ignoring the Chief of Supplies, he demanded bullets through Lenin, not even to be placed at the disposal of the Army command, but at his personal disposal, so that he might present them as a gift to a particular division commander whom he wanted to impress with his own importance.

[Ten years later this brief trip of Stalin’s to Petrograd in the late spring of 1919 was used by Voroshilov as the germinating element for another falsification of history. By now this seed has grown into a full-blown myth called, “Stalin, the Saviour of Petrograd.” It is a cunning myth, implanted, strangely enough, in a deliberate shifting of the seasons. The fact is that] Yedenich tried to capture [Petrograd] twice in the course of 1919 –in May and again in October.

The first raid by Yudenich with negligible forces was a mere sally, and passed practically unnoticed by the Party, which was absorbed by interest in the Eastern and Southern fronts. The Petrograd situation was brought under control in very short order, and again the entire attention of the Party and the country was transferred to the East and the South. In the meantime, Yudenich, under the cover of Estonia and with the highly intensified assistance of England, formed in the course of the next four months a fresh army provided with officers and amply equipped. This second attempt was the real campaign. It began very successfully for Yudenich. Feeling that we would not be able to manage all the fronts similtaneously, Lenin proposed to surrender Petrograd. I opposed it. The majority of the Politburo, including Stalin, decided to support me. After I had already gone to Petrograd Lenin wrote me on the 17th of October, 1919:

Spent last night at the Council of Defense and sent you . . . the decree of the Council of Defense. As you see, your plan has been accepted. But the removal of the Petrograd workers to the South has not been repealed of course. (It is said that you developed it in conversation with Krassin and Rykov) . . . Attached is an appeal which the Council of Defense assigned to me. It came out badly. Better put my signature under yours. Greetings.
Lenin

The struggle for apetrograd acquired an extremely dramatic character. The enemy was in full view of the the capital, which was prepared to fight in the streets and squares. When the defence of Petrograd was mentioned in the Soviet press without any further explanations, it was this second, the autumn campaign of Yedenich that was understood, not the spring campaign. But in the autumn of 1919 Stalin was at the Southern front and had nothing whatever to do with the real saving of Petrograd. The official documents pertaining to this basic operation against Yudenich were published years ago. Yet nowadays both Yudenich’s campaigns have been merged into one, and the famous defense of Petrograd is represented as Stalin’s handiwork.

[While still in Petrograd, Stalin took advantage of an opportunity to slander the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, and by implication its Chairman, as is evident from the following telegram he sent from Petrograd]:

* June 4, 1919.
To Comrade Lenin”
I am sending you a document taken from the Swiss. It is evident from the document that not only the Chief of Staff of the Seventh Army works for the Whites (remember the desertion of the 11th Division to the side of Krassnov in the autumn of last year near Borisoglebsk or the desertion of regiments at the Perm front), but also the entire staff of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, headed by Kostyayev. (The reserves are allocated and moved by Kostyayev.)
It is now up to the Central Committee to draw the necessary inferences. Will it have the courage to do it?
The analysis of the evidence continues, and new “possibilities” are opening up. I would write in greater detail, but I have not a minute to spare. Let Peters tell you.
My profound conviction is:
1. Nadezhin is not a commander.He is incapable of commanding. He will end up by losing the Western Front.
2. Workers like Okulov, who incite the specialists against our commissars, who are sufficiently discouraged anyway, are harmful, because they debilitate the vitality of our army.
Stalin

[Lenin received this telegram while in conference. Ignoring its obviously wild charges, he wrote the following not to the Vice-Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, Sklyansky]:

* Stalin demands the recall of Okulov who allegedly is preoccupied with intrigues and disorganizing work.

The ironic “allegedly” speaks for itself. Sklyansky replied on the same piece of paper:
Okulov is the only decent worker there.

[Lenin’s reaction to that, recorded immediately, was]:

* In that case, compose a text of a telegram (exact exposition of what Okulov accuses the Seventh Army) and I shall send it by code to Stalin and Zinoviev, so that the conflict will not grow and will be adequately settled.

[The matter was then referred to the highest Party Executive, and its decision was immediately communicated to Trotsky at Kharkov by direct wire]:

* In view of the conflict, which at any rate is growing, between all the Petersburg central-committeemen and Okulov, and recognizing as absolutely necessary the maximum of solidarity in Petersburg military work and the necessity of an immediate victory on that front, the Politburo and the Orgburo of the Central Committee have resolved temporarily to recall Okulov and to place him at the disposal of Comrade Trotsky.
June 4, 1919. #2995
For the Politburo and the Orgburo of the Central Committee, Lenin, Kamenev, Serebryakov, Stassova.

This was a necessary concession to Stalin and Zinoviev. There was nothing to do but accept it. [As to Kostyayev, that very] able general did not inspire me with confidence either. He gave the impression of an alien among us. However, Vatzetis stood up for him, and Kostyayev complemented that irascible and capricious Commander-in-Chief rather well. It was not easy to replace Kostyayev. [Besides] there were no facts against him. There was patently no sense in “taking the document from the Swiss,” because it never again figured anywhere. At any rate, obviously crude and forced was the attempt to link Kostyayev with the treason of any of the regiments, which had been organized under the vigilant eye of the Party itself. As for Nadezhin, he had occasion to command the Seventh Army, the army that [actually did save] Petrograd [at its most crucial moment]. As fo Okulov’s guilt, that consisted solely in his earnest endeavou to avide most faithfully by all orders and regulations and in his outright refusal to take part in any of the intrigues against the Center. [As for] Stalin’s provocatively bold and insistent tone, that is explained by the fact that he felt he had at last mustered real support in the Council of War on the Eastern Front, where dissatisfaction with the Commander-in-Chief was turning into dissatisfaction with me.

The disagreement about the strategy on the Eastern Front was between the Commander-in-Chief Vatzetis and the commanding officer of the Eastern Front, S.S. Kamenev. Both of them had been General Staff colonels of the Tsarist Army. No doubt there was rivalry between them. And the commissars became involved in that conflict. The Communists of our General Staff supported Vatzetis, while the members of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Eastern Front, Smilga, Lashevich, Gussev –sided wholeheartedly with Kamenev. It is hard to say which one of the two colonels was the more gifted. Both undoubtedly were endowed with first-rate talents for strategy, both had wide experience in the World War and both had decidedly an optimistic turn of mind, without which it is impossible to command. Vatzetis was the more stubborn and cranky and undoubtedly prone to yield to the influence of elements hostile to the Revolution. Kamenev was easier to get along with and yielded more readily to the influence of the Communists working with him. But although an able officer and a man of imagination fully capable of taking risks, he was lacking in depth and firmness. Lenin subsequently became disappointed in him and more than once characterized his repots very sharply. [On one occasion Lenin’s comment was], “his answer is stupid and in places illiterate.”

The Eastern Front was, so to speak, the first-born of the Red Army. It was more amply provided with all that was needed, including Communists, then any other front. [In the Autumn of 1918] Kolchak was quite justy regarded as our chief enemy. He hasd advanced as far as Kazan’, threatening Nizhni-Novgorod, from which he had a clear road to Moscow. It was natural then that the revolutionary country had skimmed the cream of everything for the Eastern Front.

On the 7th of September unites of the Fifth Army began to attack the approaches to Kazan’. [It was] as stubborn battle. Great losses were sustained. The Czechs did not hold out and retreated. On the 10th of September the Fifth Army took Kazan’. [It was] the first great [Soviet] victory. This was the break which saved the young Republic from a complete rout. It occurred before my eyes at Kazan’. Iw as a serious and terrifying moment. After the loss of Simbirsk we had surrendered Kazan’ practically without battle. Nizhni was next. Had the Whites taken possession of Nizhni-Novgorod, they would have had a clear road to Moscow. That is why the fight for Kazan’ acquired decisive significance. The Fifth Army, created in the course of this battle, covered itself with glory. We tore Kazan’ out of the grasp of the White Guards and the Czechoslovaks. That day was the turning point in the course of the Revolution. The capture of Kazan’ started the liquidation of the counter-revolution in the East. The toilers of the entire country celebrated the capture of Kazan’ as a great victory. Even greater was the significance of this victory for the Army.

[But in] March, 1919, with 3000 bayonets and 60,000 swords at his disposal, Kolchak moved quickly toward the Volga. The situation again became precarious. On the eve of the Eighth Party Congress it was Lenin’s opinion that I should personally supervice the operations on the Eastern Front. This detail has to be recalled now and substantiated by documentary evidence in rebuttal of the current falsification.

1. *April 10, 1919
To Sklyansky for transmission to Trotsky at Nizhni-Novgorod.
In view of the extremely difficult situation on the Eastern Front, I think it would be the best for you to remain there, especially since there will be no serious questions on the 13th. The Orgburo of the Central Committee decided to send y ou the same telegram yesterday, but I am afraid it did not so do because of Stassova’s departure. We are considering hurriedly a series of the most extraordinary measures for aiding the Eastern Front, of which Sklyansky will inform you. Let us have your opinion.
Lenin

2. * By direct wire from Nizhni-Novgorod to Moscow, to Lenin
Completely agree with the necessity of my remaining on the Eastern Front, I call the attention of the Central Committee to the Left-Communistic demagogic agitation in the Third Army, where afitation is carried on against military commanders and against an alleged order introducing saluting and the like. It is necessary to send strong Partymen, contralists. Extremely important that workers support Simbirsk, where the provincial committee is extremely weak, especially in the counties.
April 10, 1919. #1047 Trotsky

3. * Excerpt from the Protocol of the Session of the Politburo of the Central Committee, Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), April 18th 1919.
Present: Comrades Lenin, Krestinsky, Stalin, Trotsky.

Considered: 2. Declaration by Comrade Trotsky that the Southern Group of the Eastern Front, consisting of four armies, is under the command of Comrade Frunze, who is insufficiently experienced to manage such a great undertaking and that it is necessary to reinforce the front.

Decided: To propose to Commander-in-Chief Vatzetis that he go to the Eastern Front, so that the present commander of the front, Comrade Kamenev, may devote himself entirely to the leadership of the armies of the Southern Group.

4. * Excert from the Protocol of the Politburo of the Central Committee, Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of May 12, 1919.
Present: Comrades, Lenin, Stalin, Krestinsky.

Considered: 9. Telegram from Comrade Trotsky to Comrade Lenin about the need to devote special attention to Saratov, which due to the uprising of the [Ural] Cossacks is becoming an important strategic point.

Decided: a. Immediately recall from Saratov Comrades Antonov, Fedor Ivanov, Ritzberg and Plaksin.
b. Immediately send A.P. Smirnov to work in Saratov as Chairman o the Provincial Executive Committee and member of the fortress council . . .
The advance against Kolchak, after two periods of retreat, was now proceeding with complete success. Vatzetis considered that the chief danger was now in the South and proposes to keep the Army of the Eastern Front in the Urals during the winter, until the danger should subside sufficiently, in order to transfer a number of divisions to the Southern Front. My general position was expounded even earlier in the telegram of January 1st. I as in favor of assuring an uniterrupted offensive against Kolchak. However, the concrete question was determined by the relation of forces and the general strategic situation. If Kolchakhad serious reserves beyond the Urals, if our advance with uninterrupted battles had seriously exhausted the Red Army, then to engage in additional battles beyond the Urals would have constituted a danger, for it would have required new replacements of fresh Communists and Commanders, while all of that was at the present necessary for the Southern Front.

It must be added that I had, to a considerable extent, lost contact with the Eastern Front, now that it was quite safe, and that I lived with all my thoughts on the Southern Front. It was hard to judge at a distance to what extent the advancing armies of the Eastern Front had preserved their vitality, i.e. to what extent they were able to pursue a further offensive not only without the aid of the Center, but even with sacrifices to the advantage of the Southern Front, which needed the best divisions. To a certain extent, I permitted Vatzetis freedom of action, considering that if there should be resistance on the part of the Eastern Command and if it should develop that a further advance in the East was possible without harm to the Southern Front, there would then be time enough to correct the Commander-in-Chief with a decision of the government.

Under these conditions, a confict developed between Vatzetis and Kamenev. Objecting to a number of evasive replies by the Eastern Front, which tried to conduct its own policy, Vatzetis demanded the replacement of Kamenev by Samoilov, the former Commander of the Sixth Army. [This was done. But immediately it was protested by the Commissars friendly to Kamenev. Lenin appealed to Trotsky about this and about Stalin’s complaint against Kostyayev from Petrograd, and Trotsky replied by direct wire from Kiev]:

* I agree to the return of Kamenev to the Eastern Front in place of Somoilov, but I don’t know where Kamenev is at present. Neither am I opposed to the replacement of Kostyayev; have often raised that question myself, but the difficulty is to find someone to replace him who would not be worse. I don’t think that Lashevich is any firmer that Aralov. He simply has a different deviation of softness. Gussev is more suitable for the field staff. At any rate, in returing Kamenev, and moreover I replacing Kostyayev, it is necessary to discuss the matter beforehand with the Commander-in-Chief, so as not to disorganize the whole machinery. I suggest that a beginning should be made with the most urgent matters i.e. the return of Kamenev, and to accomplish that, first of all, to find him and call him immediately to Moscow. At the same time suggest possible substitutes for Kostyayev and Aralov, which is less urgent. Communicate the decision you make. Trotsky

P.S. I must say, however, that Kuzmin, Orekhov, Naumov, Vatoshin, have the same opinion of Samoilov as Lashevich, Gussesv, Smilga have of Kamenev, as Aralov has of Kostyayev. Theses loyalties at the front are our common misfortune.
May 21, 1919.

During the first months of 1919 the Red Army delivered a crushing blow to the Southern counter-revolution, which was composed chiefly of the Don Cossack Army under the command of General Krassnov covered by a curtain of cavalry. But behind Krassnov in the Kuban and the Northern Caucasus, the Volunteer Army of Denikin was being formed. In the middle of May our advancing and in large measure exhausted army clashed with the fresh troops of Denikin and began to roll back. We lost everything we had gained and over and above that all of the Ukraine, which had recently been liberated. Meantime, on the Eastern Front, where the former Colonel Kamenev was in command, with Smilga and Lashevich as members of the Revolutionary Council of War, the situation had improved to such an extent and matters were proceeding so well that I gave up going there altogether and almost forgot what Kamenev looked like. Intoxicated with success, Smilga, Lashevich and Gussev carried their commander on their shoulders, drank Bruderschaft with him and wrote the most enthusiastic reports about him to Moscow. When the Commander-in-Chief, I.e. Vatzetis, agreeing with me in principle, had suggested that the Eastsern Front remain for the winter in the Urals, in order to transfer several divisions to the South, where the situation was becoming threatening, Kamenev, supported by Smilga and Lashevich, had offered resolute resistance. [Kamenev contended that he could place several divisions under his command in the East at the disposal of the Southern Front, without stopping his offensive in the Urals. After that, his authority rose at the expense of Vatzetis’s, especially since the latter continued to be stubborn after his error had been completely exposed].

Stalin pounced upon the conflict between the Eastern front and the Commander-in-Chief. He treated Vatzetis, who had officially condemned his intervention in strategic matters, with hostility and lay in wait for an opportunity to wreak vengeance upon him. Now such an opportunity presented itself. Smilga, Lashevich and Gussev proposed, obviously with the co-operation of Stalin, to appoint Kamenev Commander-in-Chief. The success on the Eastern Front bribed Lenin and broke down my resistance.

Kamenev was appointed Commander-in-Chief, and at the morning session of July 3rd, 1919, the Central Committeed reconstituted the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic. It was now to be made up of Trotsky, Sklyansky, Gussev, Smilga, Rykov, and Commander-in-Chief Kamenev.

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Part Two: Conflict on the Southern Front


The first task of the new Commander-in-Chief was to work out a plan for grouping the forces on the Southern Front. Kamenev was distinguished by optimism and a quick strategic imagination. But his outlook was still comparatively narrow. The social factors of the Southern Front –the workers, the Ukrainian peasants, the Cossacks –were not clear to him. He approached the Southern Front from the point of view of the commander of the Eastern Front.The easiest thing to do was to concentrate the divisions removed from the East along the Volga and to strike against the Kuban’, the headquarters of Denikin. This had been the basis of his plan when he promised to supply the divisions in time without stopping his advance.

In matters of strategy I always yielded first word to the Commander-in-Chief. However, my familiarity with the Southern Front prompted me to believe that his plan was basically erroneous. Denikin had managed to transfer his base from the Kuban’ to the Ukraine. To advance against the Cossacks meant to drive them forcibly in the direction of Denikin. It was clear to me that, instead, the main blow should be delivered along the line of division between Denikin and the Cossacks, along the strip where the population was entirely against the Cossacks, against Denikin and for us. But my opposition to Kamenev’s plan was interpreted as a continuation of the conflict between the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic and the Eastern Front. Smilga and Gussev, with the collaboration of Stalin, made it look as if I were against the plan because I did not trust the new Commander-in-Chief on general principles. Lenin apparently had the same misgivings. But these misgivings were fundamentally wrong. I did not overestimate Vatzetis. I greeted Kamenev in a friendly fashion and tried in every way to lighten his burdens. But the error of the plan we so clear beyond any doubt that when it was confirmed by the Politburo, with everybody, including Stalin, voting against me, I submitted my resignation. [On the 5th of July, 1919, the highest Party executive ruled as follows] with reference to my resignation:

The Organizational and Poliltical Bureaux of the Central Committee, having examined Comrade Trotsky’s declaration and having considered it in all its aspects, have come to the unanimous conclusion that they cannot accept Comrade Trotsky’s resignation and they are absolutely unable to grant his petition. The Organizational and Political Bureaux of the Central Committee will do everything they can to make Comrade Trotsky’s work at the Southern Front – the most difficult, the most dangerous and the most important at the present time, which Comrade Trotsky has himself chosen –as convenient as possible for him and as fruitful as possible for the Republic. As People’s Commissar of War and Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, Comrade Trotsky is fully empowered to act also as a member of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Southern Front in concert with the very same Commander of the Front (Yegoryev), whom he himself has appointed and the Central Committee has confirmed.
The Organizational and Political Bureaux of the Central Committee offer Comrade Trotsky full opportunity to strive by any means for what he considers an improvement of the policy of the military question, and , if he so desires, will try to expedite the convocation of the Party Congress.
Firmly convinced that the retirement of Comrade Trotsky at the present moment is absolutely impossible and would be most detrimental to the interests of the Republic, the Organizational and Political Bureaux of the Central Committee insistently suggest to Comrade Trotsky not to raise that question again, and to carry out his functions in the future to the maximum, curtailing them in the event he so desires, while he concentrates his efforts upon the Southern Front.
In view of the aforesaid, the Organizational and Political Bureaux of the Central Committee likewise reject Comrade Trotsky’s resignation from the Politburo as well as from the post of Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic and People’s Commissar of War . . .

Lenin, Kamenev, Krestinsky, Kalinin, Serebryakov, Stalin, Stassova . . .

I withdrew my resignation and immediately went to the Southern Front.

Three days later, while at the front in Kozlov, I received a coded telegram from the Council of People’s Commissars, from the Kremlin, kto the effect that an officer, accused of treason, confessed and made depositions from which it was possible to infer that Vatzetis had knowledge of a military conspiracy:

R.S.F.S.R. Council of Peoples’ Commissars Strictly Secret
The Kremlin, Moscow July 8, 1919
To Trotsky at Kozlov:
Domozhirov, who had confessed and has been completely proved a traitor, has given factual testimony about a conspiracy in which an active part was played by Isayev, who was a long time attached on duty to the Commander-in-Chief and lived with him in the same apartment. Many other proofs, a whole lot of evidence, convict the Commander-in-Chief of knowing about the conspiracy. The Commander-in-Chief has to be arrested . . .

This telegram was signed by Dzerzhinsky [head of the Cheka]; Krestinsky [Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party]; Lenin; and my deputy Sklyansky. It was clear from the names mentioned in the telegram that the reference was to the recently removed Commander-in-Chief. Vatzetis was thus arrested almost immediately after his removal from his post on no less a charge then suspicion of treason. That invested the controversy over strategy with sinister implications. Relations inside the Politburo became more strained, the change of the Chief Command became considerably more complicated. To this very day the exact circumstances and implications of this episode are not altogether clear to me. Since Vatzetis was soon set free and even appointeda professor at the War College, it is safe to assume that his knowledge of any military conspiracy was less than infinitesimal. It is not unlikely that, dissatisfied with his removal from the post of Commander-in-Chief, he had engaged in reckless talk with officers close to him. [However, it is decidedly[ likely that Stalin played quite a role in his arrest. Stalin had a score of old slights to settle with Valzetis. Moreover, he derived a sense of impunity and safety from the friendly influence he exerted over the head of the Cheka and from the support of the leaders of the Eastern Front and the new Commander-in-Chief. He had the added satisfaction of striking an indirect blow at the Commissar of War. One was conscious of the obvious intrigue behind this episode and of the invisible presence of Stalin behind Dzerzhinsky.

[On the 27th of July], I was hastily called out to Kozlov by Sokolnikov “because of extraordinary circumstances.” There I discovered that the Commander of the Southern Front, Yegoryev, considered Kamenev’s plan of operations [for the South] incorrect and, although he was carrying it out, did not expect success. Such also was the attitude of the Chief of the Operational Department, Peremytov, and such also was the opinion held by Sokolnikov himself. At first I did no discuss the matter with anyone except Sokolnikov and did not ask Yegoryev to elaborate when he referred to the irrationality of the plan, [but immediately telegraphed to Lenin as Chairman of the Council of Defense]:

* Without going into an analysis of the controversy on its merits, I consider entirely inadmissible a situation under which a plan is carried out by a person who has no faith in its success. The only course is the immediate (before the beginning of operations) replacement of the Commander of the South by a person who recognizes the operative authority of the Commander-in-Chief and agrees with his plan. Perhaps Selivachev will agree with Kamenev. In that case he should be immediately appointed Assistand Commander of the South, so that a week later he may be appointed Commander of the South.
Awaiting instructions.
July 27, 1919 #277/s. L.D. Trotsky
[The reply to this telegram was made not by Lenin but in the name of the Politburo. It bore the sole signature of the Central Committee’s technical secretary, Helen Stassova –as if to underscore its impersonal nature]:

* To Comrade Trotsky in Penza: Secret
The Politburo of the Central Committee has considered your telegram No. 277/s and fully agrees with you concerning the danger of any sort of wavering in the firm execution of an accepted plan. The Politburo fully recognizes the operative authority of the Commander-in-Chief and requests that you jmake the necessary explanation to all responsible workers. The Politburo appoints as members of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Southern Front, in addition to the present members, Smilga, Serebryakov, Lashevich. By order of the Central Committee.
July 28, 1919 Stassova.

[The question of strategy on the Southern Front was crucial. Yet the controversy over it, aggravated by the Vatzetis episode, had reached such a pass that it was carried on by innuendo and along exaggeratedly official channels. The immediate acknowledgement of the above instructions was addressed to Trotsky’s deputy in Moscow for transmission to the Central Committee. It read]:
Secret
* To Comrade Sklyansky for transmission to the Central Committee:
Do not understand the sense of your telegram. In view of Yegoryev’s doubts, I suggested an assistant for him, who, if necessary could replace him. This is the least painful solution to the problem. While in Kozlov, I removed the Chief of Operations, Peremytov, who expressed disagreement with the plan of the Commander-in-Chief and replaced him with Berenda, whom I hastily summoned from the Military Inspection. Before I left, by agreement with Sokolnikov and in his presence, I bluntly confronted Yegoryev with the issue of unconditional execution of the Commander-in-Chief’s plan. He replied with the utmost categoralness and as far as I could judge without any mental reservations. Nevertheless, I consider the sending of Selivachev, as assistant, after the preliminary conversation the Commander-in-Chief had with him, extremely desirable. I have received no reply to this single proposal except the recommendation to instill (in whom?) the rule of discipline.
I think it is absurd to add to the Revolutionary Council of War, already overstaffed with six members (Yegoryev, Yegorov, Sokolnikov,Okulov, Vladimirov, Serebryakov) two new ones, and suggest that this decision be revoked, expecially since Lashevich has been appointed Commandant of Petrograd, while Smilga is a member of Shorin’s group.
Disastrous for the front is the absence of bullets and extreme lack of rifles. The Ninth Army has 20,000 fighters ready, but they are all without rifles, and only half of them expect to receive them. Bullets are issued in frightfully small quantities, which in the event of the slightest complication leads to disastrous consequences. On the basis of observing the situation in the four armies of the Southern Front and conversation with the Commander of the South, I warn you that the whole operation may fail because of lack of bullets.
#284
July 19, 1919 Trotsky

[Preparations for the offensive on the Southern Front according to the plan of the new Commander-in-Chief continued under difficulties. By the end of the first week in August –that is, about a week before the offensive was actually launched –the Politburo was confronted with] several problems of grave importantce. [It was perfectly] clear that Denikin was more than likely to direct his main drive agaisnt the Ukraine rather than Eastward, in order to establish contact with Rumania and Poland and transfer his base from Ekaterinodar to Odessa and Sebastopol. Irrespective of the measures undertaken by the Commander-in-Chief to obviate this danger, which was the most serious for the moment, it was necessary to decide at once how to proceed with the impending struggle for the Ukraine. First of all it was necessary to unite the 12th Army with the 14th Army, which, owing to the absence of telegraphic connections, was cut off from the Southern Front. Not only were the rears of the two armies already merged by then but both were increasingly obliged to act against one and the same enemy, Denikin. I, therefore, proposed the removal of the 14th Army from the juridiction of the Southern Front, fusing the command of the two armies in the person of the commander of the 14th Army, Yegorov, and his staff, calling this new group the Southwestern Front, with headquarters at Konotop, and placing it directly under the jurisdiction of the Commander-in-Chief and the General Staff. To maintain the fighting ability of [this proposed Southwestern Front at the barest minimum, it was necessary] to exert extraordinary effot to put a stop to banditry, the destruction of railway tracks, and the like, with the aid of Communist units temporarily transferred from more secure sectors, regional workers from Moscow and even certain absolutely reliable units of the Czech army. All available Red officers throughout the country were immediately sent to the Ukraine by special trains, irrespective of any prior assignments. All political workers, previously assigned to various other armies, had to be sent to the Ukraine, along with boots, bullets, rifles. The 12th Army was without bullets. For lack of them, it fought against the mutinous colonists in Odessa with hand grenades. The Councils of War of both armies were weak. By agreement between the Ukrainian Council of Defense and the Revolutionary Councils of War of both armies, Voroshilov was appointed to suppress the rebellion in the rears of both armies. All persons and institutions engaged in the suppression of insurrections in the Ukraine were placed under his command.

[Analogous difficulties, as varied as the localities in which they were met yet essentially the same in nature, were confronted everywhere and on every hand. Lenin grew restive. At the very outset of the offensive he wrote to Sklyansky:

*I am sick. Had to lie down. Therefore answer by messenger. The delay of the offensive in the direction of Voronezh (from the 1st of August to the 10th!!) is monstrous. Denikin’s success is tremendous.
What’s the matter? Sokolnikov said that there our forces were four times as large as theirs.
What then is the matter? How could we have missed the opportunity so badly?
Tell the Commander-in-Chief that things cannot go on like that. He must pay serious attention.
Hadn’t we better send this sort of telegram to the Revolutionary Council of War of the Southern Front (copy to Smilga) in code:
Utterly inadmissible to delay attack because such delay gives all Ukraine to Denikin and destroys us. You are responsible for every extra day and even hour of delaying the offensive. Communicate immediately your explanations and when at last you will begin a resolute offensive.
Chairman of the Council of Defense, Lenin

[The offensive on the Southern Front, according to the plan of S.S. Kamenev, began in the middle of August. Within six weeks, by the end of September], I wrote to the Politburo, which had voted against my plan, “The offensive along the line of greatest resistance has proved entirely to the advantage of Denikin, as was predicted . . . Right now our situation on the Southern Front is worse than it was when the General Staff began to carry out it’s a priori plan. It would be childish to shut one’s eyes to this.” By then the fatal error of the plan had become clear to many of its former proponents, including Lashevich, who had been transferred from the Eastern to the Southern Front. Some three weeks earlier, on the 6th of September, I had telegraphed from the front in code to the Commander-in-Chief and to the Central Committee that “the center of difficulty of the struggle on the Southern Front has shifted in the direction of Kurst-Voronezh, where there are no reserves.” I called [their] attention also to the following problems:

The effort to liquidate Mamontov has so far yielded practically no results. The motorized machine-gun units were not formed in consequence of the non-receipt of the machine-guns or even a small number of automobiles. Mamontov is obviously proceeding to unite with his own troops through the Kursk front. Our weak and scattered infantry units hardly disturb him. Lahsevich’s command is paralyzed by the absence of means of communication. Mamontov’s unification may be regarded as assured. The danger of a break through the front at the Kursk-Voronezh sector is becoming apparent. Lashevich’s next task is to pursue the enemy in an effort to plug that hole. An attempt will be made to harass Mamontov with guerrilla raids . . . The destruction of railways interferes with transfers from the Tsaritsyn direction to the Kursk. Yet the situation insistently demands the transfer of reserves to the West.It may be possible to transfer the mounted corps of Budenny bgy forced marches. It is necessary to add that the situation is becoming increasingly worse because of the complete breakdown of the apparatus of the front. The practical tasks appear to us in the following form:

1. Immediately appoint Selivachev commander of the Southern Front.
2. Selivachev’s place should be taken by the assistant commander of the Southern Front, Yegorov.
3. Send the reserves, including the 21st Division, after Mamontov in the direction of Kursk.
4. Turn the 9th Army from the direction of Novorossiisk to Starobelsk.
5. Transfer the corps of Budenny as far as possible to right center.
6. Hasten marching reserves and supplies for the 8th and 13th armies.

[In addition], I proposed a number of army regroupings which amounted to a liquidation of the plan that had failed. [That was hardly three weeks after the offensive was launched.] Serebryakov and Lashevich signed the telegram with me. But the new Commander-in-Chief was [as] stubborn [when in error as his predecessor], and the Politburo resolutely supported him. The very same day, on the 6th of September, I received this reply by direct wire at Oryol:

The Politburo of the Central Committee, having considered the telegram of Trotsky, Serebryakov and Lashevich, has confirmed the reply of the Commander-in-Chief and expressed its surprise with reference to efforts being made to reconsider the basic strategic plan decided upon.
September 6, 1919 By order of the Politburo of the Central Committee, Lenin

Within two months the course of military operations had nullified the original plan. Moreover, during these two months of continuous fruitless battles many of the roads were utterly wrecked and the concentration of reserves became incomparably more difficult than in June and July. The radical regrouping of forces was therefore all the more necessary. I suggested that Budenny’s mounted corps be sent by forced marches to the Northeast, and that several other units be transferred in that direction. [But the Politburo, including of course Stalin, throughout this period continued to reject these and other suggestions and persistently approved] the directives of the Commander-in-Chief, [who continued to reiterate that] “the basic plan for the advance along the Southern Front remains without alterations; in other words, the main attack is to be delivered by Shorin’s special group, its task being to destroy the enemy in the Don and the Kuban’.” [Yet] the offensive had utterly bogged down in the meantime. The situation in the Kuban’, where the best troops had been sent, became extremely grave, and Deniken was moving to the North.

“In order to evaluate the plan of operation,” I wrote at the end of September, “it would not be superfluous to consider its results. The Southern Front has received more forces than any other front has ever had; at the beginning of the offensive the Southern Front had no less than 180,000 bayonets and swords, a corresponding number of guns and machine guns. After a month and a half of battles, we are pathetically marking time in the Eastern half of the Southern Front, while in the Western half we have a difficult retreat, a loss of units, the destruction of organization . . . The cause of the failure must be sought entirely in the plan of operation . . . Unites of average resistance were directed . . . to localities populated entirely by Cossacks, who were not advancing, but were defending their villages and homes. The atmosphere of a national Don War is exerting a disintegrating influence upon our units. Under these conditions Denikin’s tanks, skillful maneuvering, and the like, give him a colossal superiority.”

[Soon] it was no longer a question of the plan but of its disastrous conequences, material and psychological. The Commander-in-Chief, in consonance with Napoleon’s maxim, had apparently hoped, by persisting in his error, to derive from it all possible advantages and in the end to secure victory. The Politburo, losing confidence, persisted in its own decision. On the 21st of September our troops abandoned Kursk. On the 13th of October Denikin took Oryol and opened for himself the road to Tula, where the most important munitions factories were concentrated and beyond which was Moscow. I confronted the Politburo with the alternatives: either to change our strategy or eveacuate Tula, destroying the war industries there, and resist the direct threat to Moscow. By that time the stubbornness of the Commander-in-Chief, who was himself already discarding part of the old plan, and the support of the Politburo were broken. In the middle of October the new grouping of troops for the counterattack was completed. One group was concentrated to the north-west of Oryol for action against the Kurstk-Oryol railway. Another group, east of Voronezh, was headed by Budenny’s mounted corps. This was tantamount to the plan upon which I had insisted. [In view of these facts it is instructive to consider the latter-day account of the period by Stalinist historiographers]:

* During September and the beginning of October Denikin achieved considerable success on the Southern Front. He captured Oryol on the 13th of October. In order to remedy the extremely difficult and dangerous situation which a rose in consequence of prolonged failures on the Southern Front, the Central Committee of the Party sent Comrade Stalin to the Revolutionary Council of War of the front. Comrade Stalin worked out the new strategic plan of the struggle against Denikin, which was confirmed by Lenin and by the Central Committee of the Party. The realization of this plan brought about the complete defeat and rout of Denikin.

[Stalin’s own versions vary from time to time as to who had proposed the right plan which had been rejected and who was to blame for the wrong plan that had proved so very costly. In 1923 Stalin told the story of the Southern Front in order, estensibly, to demonstrate certain political principles, but actually in order to settle certain political scores of his own]:

* . . . An analogy might easily be drawn between these principles of political strategy, and the principles of military strategy; for example . . . the struggle with Denikin. Everybody remembers the end of 1919, when Denikin was near Tula. At that time interesting arguments developed among the military on the question of from which direction the decisive blow against Denikin’s armies should be struck. Some of the military proposed . . . the line of Tsaritsyn-Novorossiisk . . . Others . . . the line Vornezh-Rostov . . . The first plan was . . . not advantageous because it presupposed our movement along regions . . . hostile to the Soviet Government and thus demanded heavy sacrifices; also it was dangerous, because it opened to Denikin’s armies the road to Moscow by way of Tula and Serpukhov. The second plan . . . was the only correct one, because it presupposed the movement of our basic groups along regions . . . that sympathized with the Soviet Government and therefore did not demand special sacrifices; and also, it disorganized the action of the main body of Denikin’s troops marching to Moscow. A majority of the miltary expressed themselves in favor of the second plan . . . Thus the fate of the entire war with Denikin was settled . . .

Stalin seemed to be using this story as a chance illustration of certain conceptions in the field of political tactics. As a matter of fact, the illustration was not accidental. 1923 was under way; Stalin was [on tenderhooks], expecting a terrible attack from Lenin, and therefore he systematically tried to undermine Lenin’s authority. In the leading circles of the Party it was very well known that behind the erroneous and costly plan had been not only certain members of the “military” (like Commander-in-Chief [S.S.Kamenev] but also the majority of the Politburo headed by Lenin. However, he preferred to speak abaout disagreements among the “military” without touching upon the struggle within the Politburo. He knew that the leading Party members remembered altogether too well that it was my plan, the plan I [had been advocating since early in July], which he came to suppot only at the end of October or the beginning of November, after the Commander-in-Chief himself in actual practice completely repudiated his own original project. But on November 19, 1924, tend months after Lenin’s death, Stalin [went further. He then] made the first attempt to create a deliberately fictitious version of the struggle on the Southern Front and to direct it against me:

* It happened in the autumn of 1919. The offensive against Denikin failed . . .Denikin takes Kursk. Denikin advances on Oryol. Comrade Trotsky is recalled from the Southern Front to a session of the Central Committee. The Central Committee recognizes the situation as alarming and decides to send new military workers to the Southern Front, recalling Comrade Trotsky. The new military workers demand “non-interference” by Comrade Trotsky in the affairs of the Southern Front. Comrade Trotsky retires from direct participation in the affairs of the Southern Front. Operations on the Southern Front all the way to the capture by us of Rostov-on-the-Don and Odessa take place without Comrade Trotsky. Let them try to deny these facts!

True, I left the Southern Front about the 10th of October and went to Petrograd. Our counter-attack on the Southern Front should have begun on the 10th of October. Everything was prepared; the concentration of units for the attack was almost completed, and my presence was much more necessary around Petrogad, which was in mortal danger of capture by Yudenich. Looking back over three years of Civil War and examining the journals and the correspondence of my trips along the various fronts, I see that I almost never had occasion to accompany a victorious army, to participate in an attack, directly to share its victories with others, My journeys did not have a holiday character. I went only to the sectors in distress after the enemy had broken through the front. My task was to turn fleeing regiments into an attacking force. I retreated with the troops, but never advanced with them. As soon as the routed divisions wsere restored to order and the command gave the signal to advance, I bade farewell to the Army and went to another unfavourable sector, or returned for several days to Moscow, in order to solve the accumulated problems of the Center. Thus, for three years I literally did not have the occasion even once to see the happy faces of soldiers after the victory or to enter with them into the captured cities. [That was why, as Stalin could not helop knowing], I did not visit the Southern Front even once throughout the entire period of our victorious [offensive there after the middle of October. Stalin’s falsification thus consists of investing an undeniable fact with an utterly false implication.

[But there is, as yet, no suggestion that Trotsky was the author of the plan responsible for the failure of the July-September offensive against Denikin. At this stage], everything comes down only to the hazy assertion concerning new military workers who demanded (from whom?) “non-interference” by Comrade Trotsky. As a matter of fact, the thirteen decrees issued by the Central Committee on the 15th of October were proposed by me in written form and unanimously approved by all, including Stalin, Lenin, I, Kamenev and Krestinsky, where on the Commission which, in accordance with my proposal, was charged with the task of sending new workers to the Southern Front to replace the old workers, who had grown altogether too tired in consequence of constant defeats. Stalin was not on it. Which of the new workers demanded my “non-interference,” and from whom, in particular, Stalin does not state. {In 1929. Voroshilov declared]:

* Stalin placed before the Central Committee three main conditions: 1) Trotsky must not interfere in the affairs of the Southern Front and must not cross beyond its line of demarcation; 2) a whole series of workers whom Stalin considered incapable of restoring the situation among the troops must be immediately recalled from the Southern Front; and 3) to the Southern Front must immediately be sent new workers selected by Stalin, who would be capable of carrying out this task. These conditions were accepted fully.

Where? How? When? By whom? [The answers to these questions concern neither Stalin nor his satellite. Yet even while] crediting Stalini with the revision of the erroneous plan, Voroshilov did not, in 1929, dare to affirm that the erroneous plan was mine. By his very silence on that point he admitted that I was an opponent of this plan. However, this oversight was likewise filled in by the newest historiography/ [We have it now on the authority of Zinaida Ordzhonikadize that]:

* Stalin . . . categorically rejected the old plan to smash Denikin, worked out by the General Staff, headed by Trotsky . . . “This insane proposed march through a roadless, hostile country, threatens us with complete collapse,” wrote Stalin in a note to Lenin . . . Instead of the plan already rejected by life itself, Stalin worked out a plan for the advance of the Reds through proletarian Kharkov and the Donetz Basin on Rostov . . . The strategy of the Great Stalin secured victory for the Revolution.

[There is a touch of sardonic humor in this insistance that the plan which finally brought victory on the Southern Front was Stalin’s. However, the author of this cynical prevarication is Stalin himself and the documentary evidence on which it is based is Stalin’s note to Lenin, in which] Stalin repeats almost word for word those arguments against the July-September plan which I had developed, at first orally and then in writing, and which he had rejected together with the majority of the Politburo. Since all the members of the Politburo were perfectly familiar with the development of the question, it could not, at that time, have even entered Stalin’s head to place the responsibility for the old plan on me. On the contrary, he blamed the Commander-in-Chief and the ‘strategic cockerel” attached to him, the very same Gussev on which he had relied in July, when the command was changed. [In that note Stalin argued]:

* . . . What then impels the Commander-in-Chief to defend the old plan? Evidently, sheer stubbornness, or if you wish factionalism, most stupid and most dangerous to the Republic, fostered in the Commander-in-Chief by the strategic cockerel attached to him . . .

Stalin’s telegram [reinforcing the note] came at the very moment that the Commadner-in-Chief himself went against his own plan, makingt a direct frontal attack with a group of shock troops instead of concentrating them in Denikin’s Cossack rear. There was nothing the Politburo could do except to sanction after the event the substitution of the new plan for the old. Whether such a decision was brought out, or whether the Politburo simply accepted the accomplished fact, rejoicing inwardly, it is impossible to establish on the basis of the published documents, nor is it of much significance. [However, there is the following document which speaks for itself]:

* Except
From the Protocol of the Session of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) of September 14, 1919.
Present: Comrades Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Krestinsky.

Considered:
5. Declaration by Comrades Stalin and Serebryakov concerning reinforcements for the Southern Front and concerning the transfer of certain persons, and Comrade Stalin’ telegram in support of this declaration as an ultimatum.

Decided:
5. (a) To commission Comrade Lenin to send Comrade Smilga a coded telegram with inquiry concerning one possible transfer in the opinion of the Politburo.
(b) To commission Comrade Trotsky to transmit to Commander-in-Chief Kamenev in the name of the Government the political-economic directive about the necessity to capture Kursk and to move upon Kharkov and the Donetz Basin, and aboaut the distribution of reinforcements on the basis of this directive between the Southern and Southeastern fronts, these reinforcements to be removed from the Eastern and Kazakhstan fronts (the exact text of the directive is herewith attached). Also, to suggest to Vladimir Illyich personally to talk matters over with the Commander-in-Chief in accordance with the contents of the above directive.
(c) To inform Comrade Stalin that the Politburo considers absolutely inadmissable the reinforcement of one’s business suggestions with ultimatums about resignation.


----------------------------------

PART THREE: STALIN BETRAYS IN POLAND

[On December 4, 1919, Ivan Smirnov reported from the Eastern Front that] “Kolchak has lost his army . . . There will be no more battles . . . I hope to capture the entire mobilis staff before Station Taiga . . . The tempo of the pursuit is such that by the 20th December Barnaul and Novonikolyavsk will be in our hands.” [Yedenich had been completely routed in the Northwest. Denikin was on the run in the South. Defeated in his efforts to win peasant wupport through equivocal “agrarian reforms” and deprived of support among the military and the landed gentry through his disastrous defeat at the front by the Red Army, Denikin lost the confidence of the Whites. On the 26th of March, 1920, he formally relinquished the office of Commander-in-Chief in favour of Baron Wrangel, who had been successful in reforming the scattered ranks of the White Guards in the Crimea.

[The Whites were still trouncing the Red cavlary and infantry uunite on the Caucasian Front. In the battles of the 1st and 2nd of February, 1920, Manontov repulsed the offensive of the Red Army and assumed the offensive himself in the vicinity of Novocherkassk. The ranks of the Red Army on the Caucasian Front, which included Budenny’s mounted army, had been thinned not only by losses in battles but by the typhus epidemic. The expected reinforcements and provisions had not arrived because of confusion on the railways. Strong-arm methods were needed to move reinforcements and supplies to the Caucasian Front. Lenin and Trotsky turned to Stalin, who was at the time on the Revolutionary Council of War of the Southwestern Front]:

* The Central Committee deems it necessary, or order to save the situation, that you journey immediately to the right wing of the Caucasian Front by way of Debaltsevo, where Shorin is at present. At the same time you will have to undertake extraordinary measures for the transfer of considerable reinforcements and workers from the Southwestern Front. To stabilize that situation, you are inducted into the staff iof the Revolutionary Council of War of the Caucasian Front, remaining at the same time on the Revolutionary Council of War of the Southwestern Front.
#9/sh
February 3, 1920. Lenin. Trotsky.

[The text of Stalin’s reply is not available, but he apparently raised objections to the new assignment, probably on the grounds of pressing duties in his present position. This drew the following rejoinder]:

* The Central Committee does not insist upon your journey, on condition that in the course of the next few weeks you will concentrate all your attention and all your energy upon servicing the Caucausian Front in preference to the interests of the Southwestern Front. Arzhanov is being sent to Voronezh to expedite the necessary transfers. Please show him the necessary cooperation and inform us accurately about the course of the transfers.
#512
February 4, 1920
Chairman of the Council of Defense, Lenin
Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, Trotsky.

[Two weeks later Lenin telegraphed Stalin]:

* The Politburo cannot ask you to come in person, since it considers the mopping up of Denikin as the most important and pressing task, which is why you have to expedite reinforcements to the Caucasian Front to the best of your ability.
#34
February 19, 1920 Lenin

[A day later Lenin elaborated further on the same theme]:

* The situation in the Caucasus is becoming increasingly serious in character. Judging by yesterday’s situation, the possibility of our losing Rostov and Novocherkassk is not excluded, as also the enemy’s attempt to develop his success further to the North with a threat against the Don Territory. Undertake extraordinary measures for expediting the transfer of the 42nd and the Latvian divisions and for reinforcing their fighting potential. I expect that, realizing the general situation, you will exert your energy to the utmost and will achieve impressive results.
#36/sh Lenin

[Stalin’s reply follows]:
Absolutely Secret In Code
Copy for the Central Committee of the Party
It is not clear to me why the concern abaout the Caucasian Front is imposed first of all upon me. In the order of things the responsibility for the strengthening of the Caucasian Front rests entirely with the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, whose members, according to my information, are in excellent health, and not with Stalin, who is overloaded with work anyway.
#970
February 20, 1920. Stalin

[Whereupon Lenin spanked Stalin with the following telegram]:

* The concern for expediting the shipment of reinforcements from the Southwestern Front to the Caucasian Front has been imposed upon you. Generally one must try to help in every way possible and not quibble about departmental jurisdictions.
#37/sh
February 20, 1920. Lenin

Kursk, January 19, 1920.
To the Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, Comrade Trotsky, Moscow.

I appeal to you with the urgent plea to free my from unemployment. For almost three weeks I have been for no good reason at the headquarters of the Soutwestern Front, and have done nothing for two months. I can find out neither the cause of delay nore can I secure a further appointment. If during the almost two years that I have commanded various armies I have demonstrated any merit at all, I beg you to give me the opportunity to apply my talents to actual work, and if none such can be found at the front, then please let me have something to do in transportation or in the Commissariat of War.
#2. Army Commander Tukhachevsky.

[Apparently, Stalin had found no application for the talents of Tukhachevsky on the Southwestern Front where he was practically the boss by virtue of his political authority as member of the Central Committee, the Orgburo and the Politburo. Tukhachevsky was still only in his middle twenties. Until the conquest of power by the Bolsheviks, he had been a lieutenant in the Tsarist Army. The October Revolution won him over heart and soul. He not only offered his services to the Red Army but became a Communist. He distinguished himself almost immediately at the front, and within a year had become a general of the Red Army. His brilliance as a strategist was acknowledged by admiring foes who were the victims of that very brilliance. Trotsky inscribed on his telegram: “Inform Comrades Lenin and Stalin.” What immediate steps were taken after that is not clear. But one thing is definitely recorded. Tukhachevsky was put in command of the Western Front and was placed in chargte of offensive operations against Warsaw.

[The Polish Republic was hostile to the Soviet Government from the moment of its inception. Having seized Wilno in defiance of its award to the Lithuanians by the League of Nations in 1919, the Poles invaded White-Russian territory and by the autumn occupied Minsk and considerable portions of Volhynia and Podolia. Then they froze into inactivity in the face of General Denikin’s success. They feared that the success of the White Armies, which were pledged to restore the territorial integrity of the Tsarist Empire, would prove inimical to Poland’s territorial ambitions not only in the Ukraine and White-Russia but in Poland proper as well. But as soon as the Red Armies began to deliver decisive blows against Denikin, the Polish Army sprang into activity again. Supported by the trooops of the recently-formed Latvian Republic, the Polish Armies occupied Dvinsk in January, 1920, forced the Red Army to surrent Latgalia, took Mozyr in March, and under the personal command of Poland’s Liberator, Josef Pilsudski, launched a vigorous offensive against the Ukraine in April in alliance with the forces of the defunct Petlura Government. Although the war had thus been imposed on the Red Army, the aim of the Soviet Government was not only to repulse the attack, but to carry the Bolshevik Revolution itself into Poland and thus force open a door for Communism in all Europe].

On the 30th of April, I wrote to the Central Committee of the Party: “Precisely because it is a struggle of life and death, it will have an extremely intensive and severe character.” Hence it was necessary “to evaluate the War with Poland not as merely the task of the Western Front but as the central task of all Worker-Peasant Russia.” On the 2nd of May, I issued a general warning through the press against overly-optimistic hopes for a revolution in Poland: “That the war will end with the workers’ revolution in Poland, there can be no doubt; but at the same time there is no basis for supposing that the war will begin with such a revolution . . .It would be extremely frivolous to think that the victory . . . will simply fall into our laps.” On the 5th of May, in a report to the Joint Session of All Soviet Institutions, I said: “It would be a grave error to suppose that history will begin by opening for our sakes the Polish workers’ revolution and therefore will free us frm the necessity to wage an armed struggle.” And I concluded: “Comrades, I should like you to carry away from this meeting as your chief conclusion the thought that tthestruggle still adhead of us will be a hard and intensive struggle.” All my military orders and public declarations of that time were permeated with this idea. “At the present time the Western Front is the most important front of the Republic,” states an order of the 9th of May, signed by me at Smolensk. “The organs of supply must be prepared for no easy and brief campaign but for a prolonged and stubborn struggle.” I was opposed to the march on Warsaw because, considering the weakness of our forces and resources, it could end successfully only on condition of an immediate insurrection in Poland itself, and there was absolutely no assurance of that. I have expounded the essence of the conflict in the most general terms in my autobiography.

The chief initiator of the campaign was Lenin. He was supported against me by Zinoviev, Stalin and even by the cautious L.B. Kamenev. Rykov was on of the Central Committee members who sided with me on the issue, but he was not yet a member of the Politburo. Radek was also opposed to the Polish adventure. All the secret documents of that time are at the disposal of the present ruling circles of the Kremlin, and if there were at least one line in these documents affirming the latter-day version of this venture, it would have been published long ago. It is precisely the unsupported character of the version, and moreover the radical contradiction of one assertion by another, which shows that there too we have to deal with the same Thermidorian mythology.

One of the reasons that the catastrophe near Warsaw assumed such extraordinary proportions was the behavior of the command of the Western group of the Southern Armies, directed agaisnt Lwow (Lemberg). The chief political figure in the Revolutionary Council of War of the group was Stalin. He wanted at any cost to enter Lwow at the same time that Smilga and Tukhachevsky were to enter Warsaw. The rapid advance of our armies toward the Vistula had compelled the Polish command to concentrate all efforts and, with the aid of the French Military Mission, considerable reserves in the regions of Warsaw and Lublin. At this decisive moment, the line of operations on the Southwestern Front diverged at right angles from the line of operations on the main Western Front: Stalin was waging his own war. When the danger to Tukhachevsky’s army became clearly evident and the Commander-in-Chief ordered the Southwestern Front to shift its direction sharply towards Zamostye-Tomashev, in order to strike at the flanks of the Polish troops near Warsaw, the command of the Southwestern Front, encouraged by Stalin, continued to move to the West: Was it not more important to take possession of Lwow itself that to help “others” to take Warsaw? For three or four days our General Staff could not secure the execution of this order. Only after repeated demands reinforced by threats did the Southwestern command change direction, but by then the delay of several days had already played its fatal role. On the 16th of August the Poles took the counter-offensive and forced our troops to role back.

During the secret debates on the Polish War at a closed session of the Tenth Congress of the Party, Stalin came ouit with the declaration, equally startling in its viciousness and untruthfulness, that Smilga, the leading member of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Western Front had “deceived the Central Committee” by “promising” to take Warsaw by a definite date and by failing to make good his “promise.” The actions of the Southwestern Front, i.e., Stalin himself, had presumably been determined by the “promise” of Smilga, on whom, therefore, lay the responsibility for the catastrophe. In silent hostility the Congress listened to the sullen orator with that yellow glint in his eye. With that speech of his Stalin hurt no one but himself. Not a single vote supported him. I protested on the spot against this startling insinuation: Smilga’s “promise” meant merely that he had hoped to take Warsaw; but that hope did not eliminate the element of the unexepected, which is peculiar to all wars, and under no circumstances did it give anybody the right to act on the basis of an a priori calculation instead of realistic development of operations. Lenin, terribly upset by the dissensions, joined in the discussion and expressed himself to the effect that we did not want to blame anybody personally. Why does Stalin not publish the stenographic record of this debate?

In 1929, A. Yegorov [Commander of the Southwestern Front during the Polish Campaign, made the first public attempt to justify his action in a special monograph entitled] “Lwow-Warsaw,” [in which he was constrained to admit]:

* . . . It is precisely in this respect that all our historians have criticized the campaign on the Southwestern Front. No one acquainted with this campaign on the basis of the writings now extant will consider it a secret that the explanation for the failure of the Western operations is directly connected with the actions on the Southwestern Front. Accusations made in this sense against the command of the front come down basically to this, that the Southwestern Front carried on a completely independent operational policy, without taking into consideration either the general situation on the entire Polish Front or the action of th4e neighboring Western Front; at the decisive moment did not rend to the latter the necessary co-operation . . . Such, in general outline, is the version reiterated in all works devoted more or less to the question of the mutual interaction of the front in 1920, without excluding excluding even those published in most recent times . . .We find, for example, in the serious and interesting work of M. Movchin, “The Subsequent Operations according to the Experience of the Marne and the Vistula” (published by the State Publishers in 1928) as direct reference to “the failure by the Southwestern Front to carry out the categorical directives of the Commander-in-Chief concerning the advance of the First Mounted Army upon the Zamostye-Tomashev” (page 74). The graduates of our War College have studied the history of the Polish Campaign on the basis of these and analogous statements, and continue to carry away with them into the ranks of our Army corresponding impressions. To put it more briefly, the legend about that disastrous role of the Southwestern Front in 1920 . . . apparently does not evoke at present any doubt and is recognized as a fact which the future generations of tacticians and strategists are supposed to study.

It is not at all surprising that Yegorov, who as Commander-in-Chief of the Southwestern Front, bore serious responsibility for the willful strategy of Stalin, proceeds then to minimize the gravity of his mistake by offering an interpretation of the military events of 1920 less unfavorable to himself. However, suspicion is at one evoked by the fact that Yegorov made his attempt at self-defense only nine years after the event, when “the legend about the disastrous role of the Southwestern Front” had already managed, according to his own words, to find definitive confirmation and even to become a part of military history. This tardiness is explained by the fact that the Army and the country, having suffered a great deal because of the failure of the Polish Campaign, would have indignantly resented any falsification, especially by those responsible for the failure. He had to wait and keep still.

As for me, guided by my concern for the prestige of the Government as a whole and the desire not to inject quarrels into the Army, which was sufficiently disturbed anyway, I did not remind them publicly about the sharp conflict preceding the campaign with so much as a single word. Yegorov had to wait for the establishment of the totalitarian regime before he could come out with a rebuttal. The cautious Yegorov, lacking in independence, was undoubtedly writing by direct assignment from Stalin, although that name, incredibly as it may seem, remains entirely unmentioned in the book. Let us remember that 1929 opens the first period of the systematic review of the past.

But if Yegorov tried indirectly to miminize Stalin’s guilt along with his own, he did not yet try to place the blame on the other side. Nor was this done by Voroshilov in the thoroughly apologetic article signed by him, “Stalin and the Red Army,” published the same year, 1929. “Only the failure of our troops near Warsaw,” Voroshilov states vaguely, “interrupted the advance of the Mounted Army which had made ready to attack Lwow and was at the time ten kilometers from it.” However, the matter could not rest with mere self-justification. In such questions Stalin never stops half-way. The moment finally arrived when the responsibility for the failure of the front could be placed on those who had interfered with the march on Lwow. [In 1935 the Red professor] S. Rabinovich [in his] “History of the Civil War” [wrote};

* The First Army, which became involved in the battle for Lwow, could not directly help the Western Front without taking Lwow. It could not have given greater aid to the Western Front because that would have entailed the transfer of large forces near Lwow. Notwithstanding that, Trotsky categorically demanded the retirement of the First Mounte Army from Lwow and its concentration near Lublin for a blow along the rear of the Polish armies advancing on the flank of the troops of the Western Front . . . In consequence of the profoundly erroneous directive of Trotsky, the First Mounted had to abandon the capture of Lwow without being able to at the same time to offer help to the armies of the Western Front.

[Or course], thast possibility was lost only because the Budenny-Voroshilov Cavalry, in agreement with the directives of Yegorov-Stalin and contrary to the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, turned toward Lublin several days late. [But the following year, the military journal] Krasnaya Konnitsa (Red Cavalry) [went even further in the article], “The Fighting Road of the First Mounted Army.” In this the author declared that the Mounted Army . . . “not only could not prevent the Polish Army from retreating behind the River Bug, but did not even break up the counter-attack of the Poles against the flanks of the Red troops marching on Warsaw.” Stalin and Voroshilov, concerned with the new occupation of Galicia, an objective of only secondary importance, sinmply did not want to help Tukhachevshy in the main task, the advance upon Warsaw. Now Voroshilov argued that only the capture of Lwow would have enabled him “to deliver a crushing blow in the rear of the White Guard Poles and their shock troops.”

It is quite impossible to understand how it would have been possible by the capture of Lwow, which was 300 kilometers distant from the main theater of war, to strike at the “rear” of the Polish shock formations, which in the meantime had already pursued the Red Army to within 100 kilometers east of Warsaw. In order to attempt to strike a blow at the Poles in the “rear” it would have been necessary to pursue them in the first place and therefore first of all to abandon Lwow. Why ini that case was it necessary to occupy it? The capture of Lwow, which in itself was not devoid of military significance, could have been invested with revolutionary significance only by raising an insurrection of the Galacians against Polish rule. But that required time. The tempos of the military and the revolutionary tasks did not coincide in the least. From the moment that the danger of a decisive counter-attack near Warsaw became apparent, the continuation of the advance upon Lwow became not only purposeless but downright criminal. However, at this point the jealously between the two fronts intervened. Stalin, according to Voroshilov’s [own admission], did not hesitate to violate rules and orders.

“Our situation seemed to me utterly hopeless,” wrote Pilsudsky. “I saw the only bright spot on the dark horizon in Budenny’s failure to launch his attack on my rear . . . the weakness which was exhibited by the Twelfth Army,” i.e. the army which upon the order of Commissar Stalin had failed to support Tukhachevsky’s army and had broken away from it. [Years later, justifying Stalin’s action, the “Red Star” excalimed indignantly]: “Covering up his disgusting defeatist maneuvers, the traitor Trotsky deliberately and consciously achieved the transfer of the Mounte Army to the north, presumably to aid the Western Front.” Unfortunately, I might add, I secured this transfer too late. If Stalin and Voroshilov and the illiterate Budenny had not “had their own war” in Galacia and the Red Cavalry had been at Lublin in time, the Red Army would not have suffered the disaster which forced upon the country the Peace of Riga, which by cutting us off from Germany exerted a tremendous influence on the future developments of both countries. After the hopes awakened by the determined drive on Warsaw, the defeat reverberated as an earthquake throughout the Party, upsetting its equilibrium and finding partial expression in the so-called Trade Union Discusion.

[Writing in Pravda of February 23, 1930, the Party historian N. Popov, acknowledging that the advance on Warsaw was a mistake of the Politburo, declared that] “Trotsky . . . was opposed to this advance as a petty bourgeois revolutionist who felt that it was inadmissable to carry the revolution into Poland from the outside. For the same reasons, Trotsky was opposed to the Red Army’s aiding the rebels in Georgia in February, 1921. Trotsky’s anti-Bolshevik, Kautskyist reasoning was emphatically rejected by the Central Committee, both in July, 1920, in the case of Poland, and in February, 1921, in the case of the Menshevik government of Georgia.” [Five years later Rabinovich in his “History of the Civil War” acribed Trotsky’s] “errors in the Polish War” [to] “the fundamental political” [position that] “on our part the war was to stimulate and hasten the revolution in Poland, bring the revolution to Europe on the bayonets of the Red Army . . . Otherwise, the victory of Socialism in Russia is impossible. That was why Trotsky in opposition to arguments of Lenin and Stalin, declared that ‘the Polish front is the front of life and death for the Soviet Republic.’” The old accusation thus reversed itself. As late as 1930 it was recognized that I was an opponent of the March on Warsaw, and the crime charged against me was disinclination to introduce Socialism on bayonets. But in 1935, it was proclaimed that I advocated the March on Warsaw, guied by my determination to bring Socialism into Poland on bayonets.

Thus, by degrees, Stalin solved the problem in his own peculiar way. He placed the responsibility for the Warsaw campaign on me. But I, as a matter of fact, was an opponent of the campaign. The responsibility for the disaster to the Red Army, predetermined by the absence of an uprising in the country and made worse by his own independent strategy, he again placed upon me, although I had warned them of the possibility of catastrophe and called for restraint of enthusiasm over ephemeral successes like the capture of Lwow.

To shift the blame bit by bit to his opponent is a fundamental method of political struggle with Stalin and reaches its highest development in the Moscow trials. Let us also note in passing that Stalin contributed no constructive effort to the Polish War that is worthy of any notice. The mail and telegrams of the time show with whom I had occasion to correspond from day to day in determining the daily policy in connection with the Polish War: Lenin, Chicherin, Karakhan, Krestinsky, Kamenev, Radek. Of these six persons, only Lenin managed to die betimes. Chicherin died in disgrace, in complete isolation; Radek is living out the end of his days under arrest; Karakhan, Krestinsky and Kamenev have been executed.

The end of the Polish Campaign enabled us to concentrate our forces against Wrangel, who in the spring emerged from the Crimean Penisular and, by threatening to take the Donetz Basin, placed the coal supply of the Republic in jeopardy. Several overwhelming attacks at Nikopol and Starkhovka disloged Wrangel’s unites from their positions, and the Red Army marched ahead, demolishing at the climax of the campaign the fortifications of Perekop and the Sivash Isthmus. The Crimea again became Soviet. [As might be expected, “the basic strategic idea in the impending operation was personally determined by Comrade Stalin.” Yegorov wrote in Pravda, of November 14, 1935, on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of Wrangel’s defeat]:

* Trotsky maintained the most harmful view that the Wrangel front was nothing else than a separate sector of third-rate significance. Against this most dangerous view Comrade Stalin was forced to come out most resolutely. The Central Committee headed by Lenin entirely supported Stalin.

Suffice it to say that S. Gussev, who was a genuine agent of Stalin’s in the Red Army, as Mekhlis is now, in his article, “The Rout of Wrangel” [published] in 1925, did not deem it necessary even once to mention the name of Stalin.

Throughout the period of the Civil War, Stalin remained a third-rate figure, not only in the Army but in the field of politics as well. He presided at the congresses of the Collegium of the Commissariat of Nationalities and at the congresses of certain nationalities. He carried on negotiations with Finland, with the Ukraine, with the Bashkirs, i.e. executing essential but nevertheless secondary commissions of the government. He had nothing to do with the matters of major policy presented at the congresses of the Party, of the Sovert or of the Third International. At the Eleventh Conference of the Russian Communist Party, held in December, 1921, Yaroslavsky, in the name of the Organizational Committee, proposed the following list of names for the Praesidium: Lenin, Zinoviev, Trotsky, Kamenev, Petrovsky, Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov, Yaroslavsky, Sulimov, Komarov, Rudzutak,I.N. Smirnov and Rukhimovich. The list is interesting both because of the composition and order of names. The authors of the list, Old Bolsheviks on the order of Yaroslavsky, placed Zinoviev in second place, so as to remind them that he was an Old Bolshevik, Outside of the first four figures, the remaining members, likewise Old Bolsheviks, were all regional leaders. There was no room for Stalin in the list, yet the calendar indicates the end of the year 1921. The Civil War was completely in the past. It had not made Stalin a leader.

Trotsky's 'Stalin' - Chapt 9 Civil War

CHAPTER NINE: THE CIVIL WAR

PART ONE: STALIN’S ROLE IN THE RED ARMY


There is a riot at every step as one goes through current historical publications: in Brest-Litovsk Trotsky did not carry out Lenin’s instructions; at the Southern Front Trotsky went against Lenin’s directives; on the Eastern Front Trotsky acted contrary to Lenin’s orders, and so forth and so on. In the first place, it should be pointed out that Lenin could not give me personal directives. Relations in the Party were not like that. We were both members of the Central Committee, which settled all differences of opinion. Whenever there was a disagreement between Lenin and me, and such disagreements occurred more than once, the question was automatically referred to the Politburo of the Central Committee, which made the decision. Hence, strictly speaking, it was never in any way a question of my violating Lenin’s directives. But this is only one aspect of the matter – the formal one. Getting down to essentials, one cannot help asking: was there any sound reason for carrying out the directives of the Lenin had placed at the head of the War Department a person who committed nothing but errors and crimes; at the head of the national economy – Rykov, a “self-confessed” restorer of capitalism and future agent of Fascism; at the head of the Communist International – that future Fascist and traitor, Zinoviev; at the head of the Party’s official newspaper and among the leaders of the Communist International – that future Fascist bandit, Bukharin?

All those who headed the Red Army during the Stalinist period –Tukhachevsky, Yegorov, Bluecher, Budenny, Yakir, Uborevich, Gamarnik, Dybenko, Fed’ko, [Kork, Putna, Feldman, Alksnis, Eidemann, Primakov, and many others]’ –were each in his time advanced to responsible military posts when I was the head of the War Department, in most cases advanced personally by me during my tours of the fronts and during my direct observation of their war work. However bad, therefore, my own leadership was, it was apparently good enough to have selected the best available military leaders, since for more than ten years Stalin could find no one to replace them. True, almost all the Red Army Leaders of the Civil War, all those who subsequently built our army eventually proved to be “traitors” and “spies.” But that does not alter the case. It was they who had defended the revolution and the country. If in 1933 it developed that it was Stalin and not anyone else who had built the Red Army, then it would seem that the responsibility for selecting such a staff of commanders should fall upon him. From this contradiction official historians extricate themselves not without some difficulty, yet with aplomb. The responsibility for the appointment of traitors to commanding positions is placed entirely upon me, while the honor of the victories secured by these very traitors belongs indisputably to Stalin. Today this unique division of the historical function is known to every school boy from a History edited by Stalin himself.

There are two aspects to military work in the epoch of the Civil War. One was to select the necessary workers, to make proper disposition to them, to establish the necessary supervision over the commanding staff, to extirpate the suspects, to exert pressure, to punish. All of these activities of the administrative machine suited Stalin’s talents to perfection. But there was also another side, which had to do with the necessity of improvising an Army out of human raw material, appealing to the hearts of the soldiers and the commanders, arousing their better selves, and inspiring them with confidence in the new leadership. Of this Stalin was utterly incapable. It is impossible, for example, to imagine Stalin appearing under the open sky before a regiment; for that he did not have any qualifications at all. He never addressed himself to the troops with written appeals, evidently not trusting his own seminarist rhetoric. His influence at those sectors of the front where he worked was not significant. It remained impersonal, bureaucratic and policemanlike.

I remember during the Civil War asking a member of the Central Committee, Serebryakov, who at that time was working with Stalin in the Revolutionary Council of War of the Southern Front, whether he could not manage without Stalin for the sake of economizing forces? Serebryakov replied: “No, I cannot exert pressure like Stalin. It is not my specialty.” The ability to “exert pressure” was what Lenin prized so highly in Stalin. The more the state machine for “exerting pressure” gained momentum and the further the spirit of the revolution was removed from this machine, the more confident Stalin felt.

If the front attracted Stalin, it also repelled him. The military machine guaranteed the possibility of issuing orders. But Stalin was not at the head of that machine. At first he headed only one of twenty armies; later he was at the head of one of the five or six fronts. He established severe discipline, held his hand firmly on all the levers, did not tolerate disobedience. At the same time, while at the head of the army, he systematically instigated other to violate the orders of the front. In command of the Southern or Southwestern Front, he violated orders of the Chief Command. In the Tsarist army, in addition to military subordination there existed an unwritten subordination: the Grand Dukes who held one or another commanding or high administrative post often ignored their superior officers and introduced chaos in the administration of the army and navy. I remember remaking to Lenin that Stalin, taking undue advantage of his position as member of the Central Committee of the Party, was introducing the regime of the Grand Dukes in our army. [Ten years later] Voroshilov [glibly admitted in his essay on] Stalin and the Red Army, “Stalin was ready to go counter to any regulation, any subordination.” Gendarmes are recruited from poachers.

Conflicts between the lower and higher orders are in the nature of things. The army is almost always dissatisfied with the front, the front is always agitating against the General Staff, especially when things do not go very happily. What characterized Stalin is that he systematically exploited these frictions and developed them into bitter feuds. Drawing his collaborators into dangerous conflict, Stalin thereby welded them together and placed them in dependence upon himself. Twice he was recalled from the front by direct order of the Central Committee. But at each new turn of events he was again sent out. Notwithstanding repeated opportunities, he acquired no prestige in the Army. However, those military collaborators who were under his command, once having been drawn into the struggle against the Center, remained in the future closely connected with him. The Tsaritsyn group became the nucleus of the Stalinist faction.

Stalin’s role in the Civil War may perhaps be measured best of all by the fact that at the end of it his personal authority had not grown in the least. It could never enter anyone’s head at that time to say or to write that Stalin “saved” the Southern Front or had played an important role on the Eastern Front or even that he had saved Tsaritsyn from falling. In numerous documents, reminiscences and anthologies devoted to the Civil War, Stalin’s name either is not mentioned at all or is mentioned among a lot of other names. Moreover, the Polish War placed on his reputation – at least, in the more well-informed circles of the Party –an ineradicable stain. He evaded participation in the campaign against Wrangel, whether actually because of illness or because of other considerations, it is difficult now to decide. In any event, he emerged from the Civil War as unknown and alien to the masses as he had from the October Revolution.

“At that difficult period, 1918-1920,” write the latest historians, “Comrade Stalin was transferred from one front to the another, to the greatest danger spots of the Revolution.” In 1922 the People’s Commissariat of Education published an “Anthology for Five Years,” made up of fifteen articles, among them one on “Building the Red Army,” and another, “Two years in the Ukraine,” both of them dealing with the Civil War. There is not one word about Stalin in either article. The following year a two-volume anthology entitled, “The Civil War” was published. It consisted of documents and other material on the history of the Red Army. At that time no one was yet interested in giving such an anthology a tendentious character. In the whole anthology there is not one word about Stalin. In the same year, 1923, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet published a volume of four hundred pages entitled, “Soviet Culture.” In the section devoted to the Army there are numerous portraits under the title, “The Creators of the Red Army.” Stalin is not among them. In the section entitled “The Armed Forces of the Revolution During the First Seven Years of October,” [“October” is synonymous with “October Revolution,” which is her viewed as having begun in 1917, and still continuing – C.M.] Stalin’s name is not even mentioned. Yet this section is illustrated not only with my portrait and those of Budenny and Blucher, but even with Voroshilov’s. And among the Civil War leaders named are not only Antonov-Ovseyenko, Dybenko, Yegorov, Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, Putna, Sharangovich, but many others, almost all of whom were subsequently proclaimed enemies of the people and shot. Of those [mentioned, only] two –Frunze and S. Kamenev – died f natural death [only, no doubt, because they managed to die before the great purge.] And a cloud still hangs over the circumstances of Frunze’s death. Among those mentioned in this volume, as commander of the Baltic Fleets during the Civil War, is Raskolnikov, [who refused to return to the Soviet Union when recalled from his post as Soviet Minister to Bulgaria in 1938, at the time that Stalin’s purge turned upon the diplomatic corps. After writing an open letter of accusation against Stalin, he died suddenly under mysterious circumstances, apparently poisoned.]

Voroshilov contends nonchalantly that “in the period 1918-1920, Stalin was perhaps the only man in the Central Committee sent from one fighting front to another.” The word “perhaps” is designed, no doubt, as balm for Voroshilov’s conscience, for while he wrote that statement he was fully aware of the fact that any number of members and agents of the Central Committee played no less a part in the Civil War than Stalin, and others an immeasurably greater part – among them, I.N. Smirnov, Smilga, Sikolnikov, Lshevich, Muralov, Rosenholtz, Ordzhonikidze, Frunze, Antonov-Ovseyenko, Berzin, Gussev. All of these, he knew, spent the entire three years at the various fronts either as members of the Revolutionary Councils of War of the Republic, of the fronts and of armies, or at the head of armies and fronts, and even (as in the case of Sokolnikov and Lashevich) as military commanders, while Stalin’s total sojourn at all the fronts was less than one year out of the three years of the Civil War.

In some of the official publications it is mentioned in passing, seemingly on the basis of some sort of evidence in the archives, that Stalin was at one time on the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic. No specific reference is made to the precise period of his participation in that highest military organ. In a special monograph, “The Revolutionary Council of War of the U.S.S.R. for Ten Years,’ composed by three authors in 1928, when all power was already concentrated in Stalin’s hands, it is stated:

On December 2nd, 1919, Comrade Gussev was included in the Revolutionary Council of War. Subsequently throughout the course of the entire period of the Civil War, Comrades Stalin, Podvoisky, Okulov, Antonov-Ovseyenko and Serebryakov were appointed to the Revolutionary Council of War at various times.

A history of the Communist Party edited by N.L. Meshcheryakov in 1934, after glibly repeating that lie that Stalin “spent the period of the Civil War principally at the front,” declares that Stalin “was a member of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic from 1920 to 1923.” In the twentieth volume of Lenin’s Miscellany (page 9) Stalin is referred to as a “member of the praesidium of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic . . . since 1920. One of these telegrams is from Stalin as a member of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic to Budenny and Voroshilov, dated June 3rd; and second – a routine report on the situation at the front from Budenny and Voroshilov to Stalin in his above capacity, dated June 25th. The third telegram is from Frunze, in command of the Southern Front, to Lenin, as Chairman of the Council of Defense, announcing termination of military operations against Wrangel –i.e., the end of the Civil War proper –date November 15th. On the basis of these documents, the only evidence so far published, it would seem that Stalin was actually a member of the Supreme War Council for the Republic at least from June 3rd to June 25th, or for slightly more than three full weeks in 1920. No evidence of his membership is adduced before or after these two dates in June of that year. Why not? True, the five volumes published by the War Department in which my orders, appeals, and speeches were gathered, were not only confiscated Ann destroyed, but mere reference to them, let alone quotations from them, were tabooed. The Proletarian Revolution, the official historical journal of the Party, in its issue of October, 1924, wrote of these five volumes, which contained nothing but documents of the Civil War: “In these . . . volumes the historians of out revolution will find a great quantity of tremendously valuable documentary material.”

But in the archives of the War Department remain stenographic transcripts of the sessions of the Council of War. The records of that institution were kept with scrupulous accuracy and preserved in complete security. Why are not these records cited to establish the actual period during which Stalin was a member of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic? The answer is simple enough: because Stalin is not mentioned in the minutes of its sessions as among those present, except once or twice as a petitioner on local matters, and never mentioned as an actual member of the Council, let alone its non-existent “praesidium.” Yet Stalin was appointed to membership on that body by order of the Party Central Committee in the spring of 1920.

The explanation of this puzzling circumstance, as far as I can remember it, is rather revealing of Stalin’s character. Throughout the years of Civil War, during every conflict with Stalin, I tried to put him in the position of having to formulate his views on military problems clearly and definitely. I tried to transform his sulking and surreptitious opposition into an open one, or to replace it with his articulate participation in a leading military organ. By agreement with Lenin and Krestinsky, Who wholeheartedly supported my military policy, I finally succeeded –I no longer remember under what pretext –in securing Stalin’s appointment to the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic. There was nothing left for Stalin to do but to accept the appointment. But he found a simple way out: under the pretext of being overloaded with work he did not even once appear at any session of [that supreme military body].

Now it may seem strange that no one in the course of the fist twelve years of the Soviet regime ever mentioned either the alleged “leadership” of Stalin in military affairs or even his “active” participation in the Civil War. Yet this is easily explained by the simple fact that there were still many thousands of military men about who knew what had actually taken place and how.

Even in the Red Army Anniversary issue of Pravda of 1930 the claim was not yet made that Stalin was the chief organizer of the Red Army as a whole but only of the Red Cavalry. Eight years earlier to the day, on February 23rd, 1922, Pravda had published a somewhat different account of the formation of the Red Cavalry in an article on the Civil War:

* Mamontov occupied Kozlov and Tambov for a time, wreaking great havoc. “Proletarians, to horse!” That slogan of Comrade Trotsky’s for the formation of the mount5ed masses was greeted with enthusiasm, and by the 19th of October, Budenny’s Army was striking blows at Mamontov under Voronezh.

[As late as] 1926, not only after my removal from the War Department, but after I had already been subjected to cruel persecutions, the War College published a work of historic research, “How the Revolution was Fought,” in which the authors, well-known Stalinists, wrote:

Comrade Trotsky’s slogan, “Proletarians, to horse!” was the stirring slogan for accomplishing the organization of the Red Army in that respect.

i.e. in regard to the creation of the Red Cavalry. In 1926 there was as yet no mention of Stalin as organizer of the cavalry.

[Voroshilov insists upon] Stalin’s great role in organizing the mounted army. “This was,” writes Voroshilov, “the first experiment in uniting cavalry divisions into a single unit as large as an army. Stalin foresaw the might of the mounted masses in the Civil War. He thoroughly understood their tremendous significance for a devastating maneuver. But in the past no one had had such a unique experience as action by mounted horse armies. There was nothing written about it in scientific works, and therefore such a measure evoked either amazement or direct opposition. Especially opposed to it was Trotsky.” [Arguing this, Voroshilov merely exposes his ignorance of military affairs, which is exceeded only by his aptitude for prevarication. The point is, that the question of whether to] unite two corps and a sharpshooting brigade into a special mounted army or to leave these three units at the disposal of the command of the front was a problem that had nothing whatever in common with the general appreciation of lack of appreciation of the significance of cavalry. The most important criterion was the question of the command: Will Budenny be able to manage such a mass of horsemen? Will he be able to rise from tactical tasks to strategic ones? Without an exceptional commander of the front, who knew and understood cavalry, and without reliable means of communication, the creation of a special mounted army would have been unwise, since an excessive massing of cavalry always threatens to lessen the unit’s basic advantage, [which is its] mobility. The disagreements on this matter had an episodic character, and if history were to repeat itself I would again repeat my doubts. [Nevertheless, the specific circumstances were such that] we did create the mounted army.

[As a matter of fact, the] campaign for the creation of the Red Cavalry made up the major portion of my work during many months in 1919. As I have said [elsewhere], the [Red] Army was built by the worker who was mobilizing the peasant. The worker had an advantage over the peasant not only in his general level of culture, but especially in his knack of using weapons of new technique. This secured a double advantage for the worker in the Army. With the cavalry it was quite a different matter. The homeland of the cavalrymen were the Russian steppes. The best horsemen were the Cossacks. Next to the best were the sons of the rich peasants of the steppes who owned horses and know horses. The cavalry was the most reactionary part of the old army and it supported the Tsarist regime longer than any other branch of the service. It was, therefore, doubly difficult to form a mounted army. It was necessary to accustom the worker to the horse. It was necessary that the Petrograd and Moscow proletarians actually get on horse back, if only in the role of commissars or rear rank privates. Their task was to create strong and reliable revolutionary cells in the cavalry squadrons and regiments. Such was the sense of my slogan, “Proletarians, to horse!” The whole country, all the industrial cities, were covered with placards bearing that slogan. I toured the country from end to end and assigned tasks concerning the formation of [cavalry] squadrons and [cavalry] regiments by reliable Bolshevik workers. One of my secretaries, Poznansky, was personally occupied –and with great success, I might add –in the formation of the Red Cavalry units. Only this work of proletarians who got up on horseback actually transformed the wobbly guerilla detachments into well-trained units [and made possible the formation of a reliable mounted army].



Three years of the Soviet regime were years of civil war. The War Department determined the government work of the entire country. All the other government activity was subsidiary to it. After it in importance came the Commissariat of Supplies. Industry worked chiefly for war. All the other departments and institutions were subjected to constant contraction or reduction and some were even completely closed. All who were active and courageous were subjected to mobilization. Members of the Central Committee, People’s Commissars, and other [leading Bolsheviks], spent most of their time at the front as members of Revolutionary Councils of War and sometimes as army commanders. The war itself was a hard school of governmental discipline for a revolutionary party which only a few months before had emerged from the underground. War with its pitiless demands, selected the wheat from the chaff within the Party and within the State machines. Very few member of the Central Committee remained in Moscow: Lenin, who was the political center; Sverdlov, who was not only President of the Central [Executive] Committee [of the Soviet], but also General Secretary of the Party, as editor of Pravda. Zinoviev, whom everyone including himself regarded as unfit for military affairs, remained in Petrograd as its political leader. Kamenev, the leader of Moscow, was several times sent to the front, although he, too, by nature was decidedly a civilian. Lashevich, Smilga, I.N. Smirnov, Sokolnikov, Serebryakov, [all leading] members of the Central Committee, were almost constantly at the front.

It would carry us too far afield to enumerate even briefly the careers in the revolutionary underground, in October and during the Civil War of these and many other militants. Any number of them were in no way inferior to Stalin and quite a few excelled him in those values that revolutionists prize most –political clarity, moral courage, ability as agitator, propagandist and organizer. It is suffici8ent to recall that when the Red Army was being organized, other men were considered better fitted than Stalin for the task. The Supreme Council of War, created on March 4th, 1918, consisted of Trotsky as chairman, Podvoisky, Sklyansky and Danishevsy as members; Bonch-Bru-yevich as chief clear and a staff of Tsarist officers as military specialists. When it was reorganized on September 2nd, 1918, into the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, it was made up of Trotsky, as Chairman, Vatzetis as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, and following as members: Ivan Smirnov, Resenholtz, Raskolnikov, Sklyansky, Muralov, and Yurenev. When on the 8th of July, 1919, it was decided to have a smaller and more compact staff, the Revolutionary Council of War was made up of Trotsky as Chairman, Sklyansky as Vice-Chairman, Rykov, Smilga, Gussev as members and Commander-in-Chief S. Kamenev. Like others, Stalin too found his place in the Army, and the Red Army found due application for his talents. What is contrary to the facts is the latter-day claim of Stalin’s pre-eminent role in the organization of the Red Army and in the conduct of the Civil War.

The army was built under fire. The methods of building it, in which improvisation predominated, were subjected to immediate trial in action. In order to solve each now battle problem, it was necessary to organize new regiments and divisions from scratch. The army –growing chaotically by leaps and bounds –was build by the worker, who mobilized the peasant and attracted the former officer to the cause and placed them under his control. This was no easy task. The material conditions were extremely difficult. Industry and transport were completely disorganized, there were no reserve supplies, there was no agricultural economy, and all the processes of industrial disintegration were constantly deepening. Under such conditions, there could be no question if compulsory military service and compulsory mobilization. Temporarily, at least, it was necessary to resort to the volunteer system.

Those who had military training were tired of fighting in the trenches, and to them the Revolution meant deliverance from war. It was no simple matter to mobilize them again for another war. It was easier to mobilize the youngsters who knew nothing about war, but they had to be trained, and the enemy did not allow us sufficient time for that. The number of our own officers, connected in one way or another with our Party and unconditionally trustworthy, was insignificant. They, therefore, played a great political role in the Army. But their military vision was myopic. When their knowledge proved insufficient, they often used their revolutionary and political authority unwisely and thus hampered the task of building the Army. The Party itself, with nine months ago had emerged from the Tsarist underground and several months later had been subjected to the persecution of the Provisional Government, found it difficult, after the brilliant victory of October, to adjust itself to the thought that the Civil War was still ahead. Altogether, insuperable difficulties accumulated in the way of creating the Red Army. At times it seemed that arguments were consuming all the energy spent. Will we or will we not be able to create an army? The fate of the Revolution rested on that question.

The transition from the revolutionary struggle against the old state to the creation of a new state, from the demolition of the Tsarist Army to the creation of a Red Army, was accompanied by a Party crisis, or rather by a series of crises. At each step the old methods of thought and the old ways came into conflict with the new tasks. Rearmament of the Party was indispensable. Since the Army is the most necessary of all the organizations of the state and since during the first years of the Soviet regime the center of attention was the defense of the Revolution, it is no wonder that all the discussions, conflicts and groupings inside the Party revolved around the questions of building the Army. An opposition appeared almost from the moment we made our fist efforts to pass from disjointed armed detachments to a centralized army. The majority of the Party and of the Central Committee in the end supported the military leadership, since victory after victory spoke in its favor. However, there was no lack of attacks and waverings. The Party enjoyed full freedom of criticism and opposition in the very thick of the Civil War. Even at the front at closed Party meetings the Communists often subjected the policy of the military command to merciless attacks. It never occurred to anyone in those days to persecute the critics. The punishments at the front were very stringent –and they included Communists –but they were imposed only for the non-fulfillment of military duties. Within the Central Committee, the opposition was a of a very much weaker character, since I enjoyed the support of Lenin. In general, it must be said that whenever Lenin and I were in agreement, and we were on the majority of occasions, the remaining members of the Central Committee invariably supported us, almost always unanimously; the experience of the October Revolution had entered the life of the Party as a potent lesson.

It must be said, however, that Lenin’s support was not unconditional. Lenin wavered more than once, and in several instances was gravely mistaken. My advantage over him was in the fact that I uninterruptedly traveled along the various fronts, came in contact with a tremendous number of people, from local peasants, prisoners of war, and deserters, to the highest Army and Party leaders at the front. This mass of varied impressions was of inestimable value. Lenin never left Moscow, and all the threads were concentrated in his hands. He had to pass judgment on military questions, which were new to all of us, on the basis of information which for the most part came from the higher-ups of the Party. No one was able to understand individual voices coming from below better than Lenin. But these reached him only on exceptional occasions.

In August, 1919, when I was at the front near Svyazhsk, Lenin asked my opinion concerning a proposal introduced by one of the prominent Party members to replace all officers of the General Staff with Communists. I replied sharply in the negative. “True,” I replied by direct wire from Svyazhsk to the Kremlin on 233rd of August, 1918, “of the officers, many are traitors. But there is evidence of sabotage during the movement of troops on the railways as well, yet no one proposes to replace railway engineers with Communists. I consider Larin’s proposal thoroughly worthless. We are now creating conditions under which we are carrying on a ruthless selection of officers: on the one hand, concentration camps, and on the other hand, the campaign on the Eastern Front. Catastrophic measures like Larin’s are dictated only by panic . . . Victories at the front will enable us to improve our present selections and will give us cadres of reliable General Staff men . . . Those who protest most against the use of officers are either panicky people, or those far removed from the work of the military mechanism, or those Party military workers who themselves are worse than any saboteur; they don’t know how to get things done, they behave like satraps, they don’t do anything themselves, and when they fail, they place the blame on the General Staff man.”

Lenin did not insist. Meantime, victories took their turn with defeats. Victories strengthened confidence in my military policy; reverses, multiplying inevitably the number of betrayals, evoked a knew wave of criticism and protest in the Party. In March, 1919, at the evening session of the Council of People’s Commissars, in connection with a dispatch concerning the treason of certain Red Army commanders, Lenin wrote me a note: “hadn’t we better kick out all the specialists and appoint Lashevich Commander-in-Chief?” I understood that the opponents of the policy of the War Department, and particularly Stalin, had pressed Lenin with special insistence during the preceding days and had aroused certain doubts in him. I wrote my reply on the reverse side of his query: “Childish!” Apparently the angry retort produced an impression. Lenin appreciated clear-cut formulations. The next day, with the report from the General Staff in my pocket, I walked into Lenin’s office in the Kremlin and asked him:

“Do you know how many Tsarist officers we have in the Army?”
“No I don’t,” he answered, interested.
“Approximately?”
“I don’t know.” He categorically refused to guess.
“No less than thirty thousand!” the figure simply astonished him. “Now count up,” I insisted, “the percentage of traitors and deserters among them, and you will see that it is not so great. In the meantime, we have built an army out nothing. This army is growing and getting stronger.”

Several days later at a meeting in Petrograd, Lenin drew the balance sheet of his own doubts on the question of military policy: “When recently Comrade Trotsky told me that . . . the number of officers runs into several tens of thousands, I got a definite idea of how best to make use of our enemy; how to compel those who are the opponents of Communist to build it; how to build Communism out of the bricks gathered by the capitalists for use against us . . . We have no other bricks.”

Pedantry and set patterns were alien to us. We resorted to all sorts of combinations and experiments in our pursuit of success. One army was commanded by a former non-commissioned officer with a general as chief of staff. Another army was commanded by a former general with a guerrilla fighter as second in command. One division was commanded by a former private, while a neighboring division was commanded by a colonel of the General Staff. This “eclecticism” was forced on us by the circumstances. However, the considerable percentage of educated officers exerted an exceedingly favorable influence on the general level of the command. The amateur commanders learned as they went along, and many of them became first-rate officers. In 1918, 76% of the whole command and administration of the Red Army was composed of former officers of the tsarist Army and only 12.8% consisted of fledgling Red Commanders, who naturally occupied the lower positions. By the end of the Civil War, the staff of commanders consisted of workers and peasants without any military education except direct battle experience, who had advanced from the ranks in the course of the Civil War; former soldiers and non-commissioned officers of the old army’ young commanders who had gone through the course of the Soviet military school, 34% were officers in the Tsarist Army.

From the old officer corps that entered into the Red Army, on the one hand, progressive elements who sensed the meaning of the new epoch (they were a small minority); a broad layer of those who were inert and talentless and who joined the Army only because they did not know how to do anything else; and on the other hand active counter-revolutionists who were awaiting a favorable moment to betray us. The non-commissioned officers of the old army were recruited by means of special mobilization. From among them came a number of exceptional military commanders, the most famous of whom was the former Cavalry Sergeant-Major, Simeon Buddeny. But they, too, were not any too reliable as a class, for before the Revolution non-commissioned officers were chiefly the sons of the wealthy peasantry and city bourgeoisie. From them came a small number of deserters who played an active role in counter-revolutionary uprisings and in the White Army. A commissar, usually a worker Bolshevik with experience in the World War, was attached to each commander. We were looking forward to preparing a reliable officer corps.

“This institution of commissars,” I declared when I was at the head of the War Department in December, 1919, “is to serve as a scaffolding . . . Little by little we shall be able to remove this scaffolding.” At that time on one foresaw that twenty years later the institution of commissars would again be revived, but this time for opposite purposes. The commissars of the Revolution were representatives of the victorious proletariat watching over commanders who had come mainly from the bourgeois classes; the latter-day commissars were representatives of the bureaucratic caste watching over officers who for the most part had come from the rank and file.

[On the 22nd of April, 1918, a decree was published concerning the centralization of village, regional, provincial and territorial commissariats of War.] In July I reported to the Fifth Congress of Soviets –[the Congress which ratified the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the plan for creating the Red Army] –that many of the lower commissariats had not yet been organized because of lack of competent military men. Our objective was to centralize the military-administrative organs for the purpose of mobilization and the formation of Regular Army units. Each military region was headed by a Revolutionary Council of War, of three members: a representative each from the Party and the government, and one military specialist. Since a considerable number of military specialists were appointed simultaneously to the front as well as to regional, provincial, territorial and township war commissariats, we were a of course to a large extent feeling our way in the dark. We organized a military attestant committee. But that did not have at its disposal the necessary information for an adequate appraisal of the old generals and officers from the point of view of their loyalty to the new revolutionary regime. Let us not forget that the job was undertaken in the spring of 1918 –that is, a few months after the conquest of power –and that the administrative machine was being built amid the greatest chaos with the aid of the improvisations of chance assistants taken largely upon accidental recommendations. Indeed, there could have been no other way under the circumstances. The verification of the military specialists, their definitive selection and the like took place gradually.

Among the officers there were many, perhaps a great majority, who did not know themselves where they stood. The outright reactionaries had fled in the very beginning, the most active of them to the peripheries, which were then building up the White Fronts. The rest hesitated, bided their time, could not make themselves abandon their families, did not know what would become of them, and by inertia found themselves in the military-administrative or commanding apparatuses of the Red Army. The further behavior of many of them was determined by the treatment they were accorded. Wise, energetic and tactful commissars –and such were in the minority – won over the officers at once, while they, who from force of habit had looked down on the commissars, were amazed by their resoluteness, daring and political definiteness. Such unions of commanders and commissars often lasted for a long time and were distinguished by great stability. When the commissar was ignorant and boorish and baited the military specialist, carelessly compromising him before the Red Army soldiers, friendship was out of the question, and the hesitating officer was finally inclined toward the enemy of the new regime.

The atmosphere of Tsaritsyn, with its administative anarchy, guerrilla spirit, disrespect for the Center absence of administrative order and provocative boorishness towards military specialists, was naturally not conducive to winning the good-will of the latter and making them loyal servants of the new regime. It would be, of course a mistake to think that Tsaritzyn got along without military specialists. Every one of the improvising commanders had to have an officer who knew about the routine of military affairs. But the Tsaritsyn sort of specialists was recruited from the dregs of the officers –drunkards or those who had other wise lost all semblance of human dignity, prideless men who were ready to crawl on their belly before the new boss, flatter him, refrain from contradiction him in anything, and the like. This is the sort of specialist I found in Tsaritsyn. Voroshilov’s Chief-of-Staff was precisely that type of specialist. The name of this insignificant officer was never mentioned anywhere else and I don’t know anything about his fate. [He was] a docile and submissive former captain of the Tsarist army irresistibly addicted to alcoholic beverages. Eye to eye with this Chief-of-Staff, the Tenth Army Commander was never obliged to lower his head in embarrassment.

In order to advance the commanders who were closest to the Soviet regime, a special mobilization of former Tsarist non-commissioned officers was made. Most of them had been promoted to non-commissioned ranks during the latter part of the war, so their knowledge of military affairs was of no great significance. However, the old non-commissioned officers, especially in the artillery and the cavalry, had an excellent comprehension of military matters and were really better informed and fare more experienced than the commissioned officers under whose command they served. To that category belonged people like Budenny, Blucher, Dybenko (a petty officer in the Navy) and a number of others. In Tsarist times these men were recruited from among the more literate, the most cultured, those more accustomed to command. Hence it was not surprising to find that these non-commissioned officers were almost exclusively the sons of rich peasants, of the petty gentry, or the city bourgeoisie, or petty officials, teachers, bookkeepers, and the like. Such types of non-commissioned officers gladly assumed command, but were not inclined to submit to and to tolerate the superior authority of commissioned officers.

They were just as little inclined to recognize the authority of the Communist Party, knuckle down to its discipline and sympathize with its aims, especially in the sphere of agrarian affairs. Purchases at fixed prices, not to mention the expropriation of grain from the peasants, was met by them with furious enmity. To that class belonged the cavalry man, Dumenko [Note: The Stalinist historian E. Genkina on p 109 of her book “The Fight for Tsaritsyn in 1918” published by the political publications section of the All-Union Communist Party in 1940, writes of Dumenko: “Dumenko himself was a kulak by origin, had a windmill, two houses, etc. But during the imperialist war his cattle and horses were confiscated, and the Whites appropriated a few things. That pushed Dumenko temporarily into the camp of the Reds, he began to organize a cavalry detachment, but not at home, in the Cherkass Region of the Don Territory, but in the Sal Region, where he was not known as a kulak.” - C.M] the corps commander at Tsaritsyn and Budenny’s immediate superior (Budenny at that time commanded a division). Dumenko was more gifted than Budenny. But he ended up with the insurrection, killed all the Communists of his corps, attempted to join the forces of Denikin, was seized and executed. Budenny and the commanders close to him likewise experienced a period of wavering. One of the Tsaritsyn commanders of a brigade, subordinate to Budenny, revolted; many of the cavalry men joined the Greens.

[Note: Although the Civil War was chiefly fought between the Reds and Whites, smaller groups were also involved in it. The most important of them were the Greens, peasant guerrilla detachments that would sally out of the green forests (hence, their name) to fight either the Reds or the Whites, but more often the Whites. The Greens regarded themselves as defenders of peasant democracy and were opposed to both Reds and Whites. The Green movement was most active in the Black Sea Basin, the Kuban Territory and the Crimea. As allies of the Reds in the winter of 1919-20, the Greens played an important part in the disintegration of General Denikin’s Army. The Green movement terminated about 1921, when limited freedom of trade was introduced and peasant insurrections generally were liquidated by the Soviet government – C.M.]

The treason of the former Tsarist officer, Nossovich, who occupied a purely bureaucratic administrative post, produced of course less harm than the treason of Dumenko. But since the military opposition –the breeding ground of the Stalin faction – depended at the front on elements of the Dumenko’s type, this mutiny is not mentioned at all nowadays. [The subject is carefully avoided even in the 217-page history of the Tsaritsyn episode cited above with reference to Dumenko – C.M.]


PART TWO: STALIN AND TSARITSYN

The reader who is not acquainted with the actual course of events and who at the present time cannot gain access to the archives will find it difficult to imagine the extent to which the proportions of events have been distorted. The whole world has heard by now about the defense of Tsaritsyn, about Stalin’s journey to the Perm front, or about the so-called Trade Union Discussion. These episodes loom today as the peaks on the historical range of events. But these alleged peaks have been artificially created. From the tremendous amount of material with which the archives are bulging, certain special episodes have been singled out, and these have been surrounded with imposing historical stage-effects. Subsequent works of official historiography piled up new exaggerations, based on the old exaggerations; to these, outright inventions have been added from time to time. The total effect is the product of stagecraft rather than of historic fact. Practically never does none meet reference to documents. The press abroad, and even learned historians, have come to regard these tall tales as original sources. In various countries one may now find specialists in history who know third-rate details of Tsaritzyn or the Trade Union Discussion but have practically no conception of events which were immeasurably more important and significant. Falsification in this matter has taken on the quality of an avalanche. [Yet it is simply] astonishing how very few documents and other authentic materials have been published concerning Stalin’s activity at the front and generally during the Civil War period.

In accounts published during the years of the Civil War, the story of Tsaritsyn was one of the many completely unconnected with the name of Stalin. His role behind the scenes, which was very short-lived at best, was known to only a small number of people and offered absolutely no occasion for many words. In the anniversary article on the Tenth Army by Ordzhonikidze, and old pal of Stalin’s who proved faithful to him to the point of suicide, Stalin is not even mentioned. It was the same with other such articles. The Bolshevik Minin, Mayor of Tsaritsyn at the time and subsequently a member of the Tenth Army’s Revolutionary Council of War, wrote a heroic drama in 1925 entitled “The Encircled City,” which had so few references to Stalin in connection with the Tsaritsyn events that Minin ended up eventually as “an enemy of the people.” The pendulum of history had to swing very far before Stalin was raised to the heights of a hero of the Tsaritsyn epic.

For years now it has become a tradition to represent matters as if in the spring of 1918 Tsaritsyn was of great strategic importance and Stalin was sent there to save the military situation. It was nothing of the kind. It was entirely a question of provisions. At a session of the Council of People’s Commissars on May 28, 1918, Lenin discussed with Tsuryupa, then in charge of supplies, the extraordinary methods then in vogue for supplying the capitals [Moscow and Petrograd] and the industrial centers with provisions. At the close of the meeting Lenin wrote to Tsuryapa: “This very day get in touch with Trotsky, by telephone, so that by tomorrow he can get everything started.” Further in the same communication, Lenin informed Tsuryupa of the Sovnarkom’s [a portmanteau world for the Russian equivalent of Council of People’ Commissars – C.M.] decision that People’s Commissar of Supplies Shlyapnikov was to leave immediately for the Kuban’ to co-ordinate the provisioning activities in the South for the benefit of the industrial regions. Tsuryaupa replied in part: “Stalin agrees to go to the Northern Caucasus. So send him. He knows local conditions there and Shlyapnikov will find it useful to have him around.” Lenin agreed: “Send them both off today.” During the next few days several additional decisions were made about Stalin and Shlyapnikov. Finally, as recorded in Lenin’s Miscellany, “Stalin was sent to the Northern Caucasus and to Tsaritsyn as general manager of provisioning activities in the South of Russia.” There was no mention whatever of military tasks.

What happened to Stalin was what happened to many other Soviet officials, to droves of them. They were sent to various provinces to mobilize the collection of grain surpluses. Once there, they ran into White insurrections. Whereupon their provisioning detachments turning into military detachments. Many workers in the commissariats of Education, of Agriculture or other departments were thus sucked into the maelstrom of the Civil War in outlying regions, and, in a manner of speaking were obliged to change their various professions for the profession of arms. L. Kamenev, who next to Zinoviev was the most unmilitary member of the Central Committee, was sent in April, 1919, to the Ukraine to accelerate the movement of supplies to Moscow. He found that Lugansk had been surrendered and that danger threatened the entire Don Basin; moreover the situation in the recently-won Ukraine soon became increasingly less favorable. Just exactly as Stalin had in Tsaritsyn, Kamenev in the Ukraine found himself drawn into military operations. Lenin telegraphed to Kamenev: “Absolutely necessary that you personally . . . should not only inspect the expedite matters, but that you, yourself, should bring the reinforcements to Lugansk and to the entire Don Basin, because otherwise there is no doubt that the catastrophe will be tremendous and scarcely remediable; we will most surely perish, if we do not completely clear the Don Basin in a short time . . .” This was Lenin’s customary style in those days. On the basis of such quotations it is possible to prove that Lenin regarded the fate of the Russian Revolution as dependent on the military leadership of Kamenev in the South. At different times the very unmilitary Kamenev played a very prominent role at various fronts.

[Note: The reference is to Lev Borisovich Kamenev, the Bolshevik leader, Trotsky’s brother-in-law, deputy chairman under Lenin in the Council of People’s Commissars and the Council of Labor and Defense (since 1922), appointed by Lenin himself as Lenin’ literary executor and editor of Lenin’s Collected Works, founder and first president of the Lenin Institute, Lenin’s successor as Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense, etc. who in 1919 was at the front as an extraordinary representative of the Council of Defense. This Kamenev was shot by Stalin’s order as a self-confessed traitor in 1936. He is not to be confounded with Sergei Segeyevich Kamenev, scion of a tsarist military family, who was a colonel in command of the 30th Poltlava Regiment at the time of the Revolution of 12917, was one of the tsarist officers drawn into the Red Army during Trotsky’s tenure as Commissar of War, appointed by Trotsky to the command of the Eastern Front in September, 1918, and made Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Republic in July, 1919, in succession to Joachim Joachimovich Vatzetis. S.S. Kamenev remained Commander-in-Chief until April, 1924, when the office was abolished. He subsequently became a member of the Communist Party and died a natural death. C.M,.]

Under totalitarian concentration of all the means of oral and printed propaganda, it is impossible to crate as false a reputation for a city as for a man. Nowadays many heroic episodes of the Civil War are forgotten. Cities where Stalin played no part are scarcely remembered, while the very name of Tsaritsyn has been invested with mystic significance. It is necessary to bear in mind that our central position and disposition of the enemy in a large circle made it possible for us to act along internal operational lines and reduced our strategy to one simple idea: the consecutive liquidation of fronts depending on their relative importance. In that profoundly mobile war of maneuvers, various parts of the country acquired exceptional significance at certain important moments, and later lost it. However, the struggle for Tsaritsyn could never have attained the same significance, for example, as the struggle for Kazan’, from where the road to Moscow opened, or the struggle for Oryol, from where the was a short road by way of Tula to Moscow, or the struggle for Petrograd, the loss of which would have been a dire blow in itself and would have opened the road to Moscow from the north. Moreover, notwithstanding the assertions of latter-day historians the Tsaritsyn “was the embryo of the War Cikkegem where the cadres of the commanders for other numerous fronts were created, commanders who today are at the head of the basic units of the army,” the fact is that the most talented organizers and army leaders did not come Tsaritsyn. And I do not mean simply central figures, like Sklyansky, the real Carnot of the Red Army; or Frunze, a most talented military leader, who subsequently was placed at the head of the Red Army; or Tukhachevsky, the future reorganizer of the army; or Yegorov, the future Chief-of-Staff; or Yakir or Uborevich, or Kork, but many, many others. Every one of them was tested and trained in other armies and on other fronts. All of them had an extremely negative attitude toward Tsaritsyn, its know-nothing smugness, its constant extortions; on their lips the very word “Tsaritsynite” had a derogatory meaning.

On May 23rd, 1918, Sergo [Ordzhonikidze] telegraphed to Lenin:

The situation here is bad. We need resolute measures . . . The local comrades are too flabby. Every desire to help is regarded as interference in local affairs. Six trains of grain ready to move for Moscow are standing at the station and not being sent . . . I repeat again that what we need are the most resolute measures . . .

Stalin arrived in Tsaritsyn in June, 1918, with a detachment of Red Guards, with two armored trains and with unlimited powers, in order to arrange for provisioning the hungry political and industrial centers with grain. Soon after his arrival several Cossack regiments surrounded Tsaritsyn,. The Cossack villages of the Don and the Kuban had risen against the Soviet Government. The Volunteer Army [of the Whites], which had been wandering and meandering through the steppes of the Kuban, had grown strong. The Soviet Army of the North Caucasus –the only granary of the Soviet Republic at the time –suffered heavily under the blows.

Stalin was not supposed to stay in Tsaritsyn. He was supposed to [organize the dispatch of provision to Moscow and] proceed to the North Caucasus. But within one week of his arrival in Tsaritsyn, i.e., on June 13th, he wired to Lenin that the situation in Tsaritsyn “has sharply changed, because a detachment of Cossacks have made a sally at a point some forty versts away from Tsaritsyn.” From Stalin’s telegram of June 13th it is clear that he had been expected by Lenin to go to Novorossiisk, and take charge of the crucial developments in connection with the scuttling of the Black Sea Fleet. For at least the next two weeks he was still supposed to go to Novorossiisk. In his speech of June 28th, 1918, at the Fourth Conference of the Trade-Union and Factory Committees of Moscow [Lenin said]:

* Comrades! I shall now . . . reply to the question about the Black Sea Fleet . . .I am going to tell you that it was Comrade Raskolnikov who acted there . . .Comrade Raskolnikov will be here himself and will tell you how he had urged that we should rather stand for the destruction of the fleet than let the German troops use it against Novorossiisk . . . This was the situation, and the People’s Commissars, Stalin, Shlyapnikov and Raskolnikov will soon come to Moscow and will tell you how everything happened.

[However, instead of proceeding to the Northern Caucasus or, when the plans were altered by the change in the military situation, to Novorossiisk,] Stalin remained in Tsaritsyn until the latter was surrounded in July by the Whites.

Stalin had expected to find little trouble and great glory in forwarding millions of bushels of grain to Moscow and other centers. But all he managed to send, notwithstanding his ruthlessness, was a shipment of three barges, referred to in his telegram of June 26th. Had he sent more, other telegrams to this effect would have been published and commented on long ago. Instead of that, there are inadvertent admissions of his failure as grain-deliverer in his own reports, culminating on August 4th in his statement that it was useless to expect any further provisions from Tsaritsyn. Unable to make good on his boastful promise to supply food to the Center, Stalin turned form the “food front” to the “military front.” He became dictator of Tsaritsyn and of the North Caucasian Front. He acquired extremely broad and practically unlimited powers, as the authorized representative of the Party and the Government. He had the right to carry through local mobilization, requisition property, militarize factories, arrest and try, appoint and dismiss. Stalin exercised authority with a heavy hand. All efforts were concentrated on the task of defense. All of the local Party and workers’ organizations were taken in hand, were supplemented with the new forces; the freebooting guerrillas were harnessed. The life of the entire city was suddenly squeezed in the vise of a ruthless dictatorship, “On the streets and at crossings were Red Army patrols,” writes Tarassov-Rodionov, “and in the middle of the Volga on an anchor, raising its black belly high out of the water, was a large barge, and looking askance at it was a flabby official in a faded uniform cap whispering anxiously to the little old women on shore: ‘There , , , is the Cheka!” But that was not the Cheka itself. That was only its floating prison. The Cheka was working in the center of the city, next to the Army headquarters. It was working . . . full blast. Not a day passed without bringing to light all sorts of conspiracies in what seemed the most reliable and respectable of places.”

[on the 7th of July, approximately one month after his arrival in Tsaritsyn, Stalin wrote to Lenin (on the letter is the notation, “Hurrying to the front –writing only on business.”)]:

* The line south of Tsaritsyn has not yet been re-established. I’m hurrying them, scolding everyone I should. I hope that soon we shall have it re-established. You may be sure that I will not spare anyone, neither myself nor others. But we will get you the grain. If our military “specialists” (the shoemakers!) were not asleep, the line would not have been broken and if the line is restored it will not by thanks to the military, but in spite of them.

[On the 11th of July Stalin again telegraphed Lenin]:

* Matters are complicated by the fact that the staff of the North Caucasian Military Region ;proved to be utterly unadapted to the conditions of fighting against counter-revolution. It is not only that our “specialists” are psychologically incapable of resolute struggle with counter-revolution, but also because, being staff men who know only how to sketch blueprints and how to propose plans for reformation, they are utterly indifferent to operative action . . . and generally feel themselves to be outsiders . . . I do not think that I have the right to regard this with indifference, when Kaledin’s front has been separated from the provisioning point and the north from the grain region. I will continue to straighten out these and many other deficiencies, wherever I find them; I am undertaking a number of measures and will continue to do so, even if I have to remove all the ranking men and commanders who are inimical, notwithstanding difficulties of formalities, which I will break when necessary. Let it be understood that I assume all responsibility before all the highest institutions.

[On the 4th of August, Stalin wrote from Tsaritsyn “to Lenin, Trotsky and Tsuryaupa”]:

* The situation in the South is not one of the best. The Council of War has received a heritage of utter disorder, due partly to the inertness of the former military leader, partly to the conspiracy of persons brought by the military leader into the various departments of the military region. We had to begin all over again . . . We repealed what I would call the old criminal order, and only after that our advance began . . .

Similar, communications were received in those days from all parts of the country, because chaos reigned everywhere. What is surprising are the words about the “heritage of utter disorder.” The military regions were established in April and had hardly started working, so that it was rather premature to speak of a “heritage of utter disorder.”

The task of provisioning on any sort of wide scale proved to be insoluble because of the military situation: “Contacts with the South and with its load of provisions are broken,” wrote Stalin on the 4th of August, “and the Tsaritsyn region itself, which connects the Center with the Northern Caucasus, is cut off in its turn, or practically cut off from the Center.” Stalin explained the cause of the extreme aggravation of the military situation on the one hand by the turn of the strong peasant, “who in October had fought for the Soviet government, against the Soviet government (he hates with all his heart the grain monopoly, stable prices, requisition, the struggle with the baggers); on the other hand, by the poor condition of our troops . . . In general it must be said,” he concluded, “that until we reestablish contact with the Northern Caucasus we must not rely . . . upon the Tsaritsyn sector for provisions.”

Stalin’s assumption of the functions of manager of all the military forces at the front had obtained the confirmation of Moscow. The telegram of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, which bore the notation that it was sent by agreement with Lenin, expressly delegated Stalin “to establish order, unite all detachments into regular formations, establish proper command, after expelling all insubordinates.” Thus the rights given to Stalin were signed, and as far as one is able to judge from the text, were even formulated by me. Our common task at the time was to subordinate the provinces to the Center, to establish discipline, and to subordinate all sorts of volunteer and guerrilla units to the army and to the front. Unfortunately Stalin’s activity at Tsaritsyn took an altogether different direction. At that time I did not know that Stalin had inscribed his resolution, “to be disregarded” on one of my telegrams, since he himself never mustered sufficient courage to report the matter to the Center. My impression was that Stalin did not fight resolutely enough against local self-rule, the local guerrillas and the general insubordination of the local people. I accused him of being too lenient toward the wrong policy of Voroshilov and others, but it never entered my head that he was the actual instigator of that policy. This became evident somewhat later from his own telegrams and from admissions of Voroshilov and others.

Stalin spent several months at Tsaritsyn. His underhanded work against me, which even then made up an essential part of his activity, went hand in hand with the homespun opposition of Voroshilov who was his closest associate. However, Stalin bore himself so that at any moment he would be able to jump back, his skirts clear. Lenin knew Stalin better than I and apparently suspected that the stubbornness of the Tsaritsynites could be explained by Stalin’s activity behind the scenes. I made up my mind to set things right at Tsaritsyn. After a new clash with the command there I decided upon the recall of Stalin. This was accomplished through the good offices of Sverdlov, who went himself in a special train to bring Stalin back. Lenin wanted to reduce the conflict to a minimum, and was of course right in that respect.

At the time, while the Red Army had already managed to win big victories on the Eastern Front, almost completely clearing the Volga, matters continued to go badly in the South, where everything was in chaos because orders were not carried out. On the 5th of October, at Kozlov, I issued an order concerning the unification of all armies and groups of the Southern Front under the command of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Southern Front, consisting of the former General [Sytin and three Bolsheviks –Shlyapnikov, Mekhonoshin and Lazimir]: “All orders and instructions of the Council are subject to unconditional and immediate execution.” The order threatened the insubordionates with dire punishments. Then I telegraphed Lenin:

I insist categorically on Stalin’s recall. Things are going badly at the Tsaritsyn Front in spite of superabundant forces. Voroshilov is capable of commanding a regiment, not an army of 50,000. However, I shall leave him in command of the Tenth Army at Tsaritsyn, provided he reports to the Commander of the Army of the South, Sytin. I have required reports of reconnaissances and operations sent twice daily. If that is not done by tomorrow, I shall remand Voroshilov and Minin to court martial and shall publish the fact in an Army Order. According to the statutes of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, Stalin and Minin, as long as they remain in Tsaritsyn, are nothing more than members of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Tenth Army. We have only a short time left for taking the offensive before the autumn mud sets in, when the local roads will be impassable for either infantry or mounted troops. No serious action will be possible without coordination with Tsaritsyn. There is no time to lose on diplomatic negotiations. Tsaritsyn must either submit or take the consequences. We have a colossal superiority of forces, but there is utter anarchy at the top. I can put a stop to it in twenty-four hours, provided I have your firm and clear-cut support. At all events, this is the only course I can see.

[This was followed the next day by this direct wire to Lenin]:

* I have received the following telegram: “Stalin’s military order #118 must be cancelled. I have issued full instructions to the Commander of the Southern Front, Sytin. Stalin’s activities undermine all my plans . . . Vatzetis, Commander-in-Chief; Danishevsky, member of the Revolutionary Council of War.”

[Stalin was recalled from Tsaritsyn in the second half of October. This is what he] wrote in Pravda (30th October, 1918) [about the Southern Front]:

* The point of the greatest attack by the enemy was Tsaritsyn. That was understandable, because the capture of Tsaritsyn and the interruption of communications with the South would have assured the achievement of all the tasks of the enemy. It would have united the Don counter-revolutionists with the upper layer of the Cossacks of the Astrakhan and the Ural armies, creating a united front of the counter-revolution from the Don to the Czecho-Slovaks. It would have secured the South and the Caspian for the counter-revolutionists, internally and externally. It would have left the Soviet troops of the Northern Caucasus in a state of helplessness . . .

[Was Stalin “confessing” that he was guilty of having aggravated the situation by his intrigues and insubordination? Hardly. However, on his way back to Moscow from Tsaritsyn, Sverdlov inquired] cautiously about my intentions and then proposed to me that I have a talk with Stalin, who it developed was on his train.

“Do you really want to dismiss all of them?” Stalin asked me in a tone of exaggerated subservience. “They’re fine boys.”
“Those fine boys will ruin the Revolution, which can’t wait for them to grow up.” I answered him. “All I want is to draw Tsaritsyn back into Soviet Russia.”

Thereafter, whenever I had occasion to tread on the corns of personal predilections, friendships or vanities, Stalin carefully gathered up all the people whose corns had been stepped on. He had a lot of time for that, since it furthered his personal ends. The leading spirits of Tsaritsyn became from that time on his principal tools. As soon as Lenin fell ill Stalin, through his henchmen, had Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad.

[The Tsaritsyn oppositionists were a curious lot. The man who most detested the military specialists was Voroshilov –“the locksmith of Lugansk,” as he came to be called by latter-day chroniclers –a hearty and impudent fellow, not overly-intellectual but shrewd and unscrupulous. He never could make head or tail of military theory, but he was a gifted browbeater and had no compunction about unitizing the ideas of brighter subordinates and no false modesty about taking full credit for them. His intellectual naivete in both military theory and Marxism was to be amply demonstrated in 1921, when,] following uncritically the lead of some obscure ultra-Leftist, he argued that aggressiveness and the tactic of the offensive was a consequence of “the class nature of the Red Army,” at the same time offering “proof” of the necessity of the offensive in the form of the quotations from the French military regulations of 1921.

His “loyal right hand” was Shchadenko [the political commissar of the Tenth Army, a tailor by trade, whom later chroniclers were to immortalize they]; “Angrily frowning under his eagle-like eyebrows, his militant eyes squinting, he ran around the front, burning up with the effort to be Klim’s loyal right hand.”

Equally zealous but quite different from both was Sergei Minin. [He was a curious mixture of poet and demagogue who had given himself heart and soul to the cause and suffered from a blinding phobia of all tsarist officers.] Popular among the workers of Tsaritsyn since his participation as a young student in the Revolution of 1905, Tsaritsyn was proud of him as its leading and most impassioned orator. He was by far the most honest of the lot, but also perhaps the most unreasonable. Sincere in his intransigence, he contributed his full share of earnest mischief to the aggravation of the military situation in Tsaritsyn. [He was an innocent but all the more effective tool of Stalin’ s Tsaritsyn intrigue and was cast aside as soon as his usefulness came to an end.]

Then there was the engineer Rukhimovich, former “People’s Commissar of War of the Donetz-Krivorog Republic” –[one of the mushroom Red republics of the early days of the Revolution –who had given Voroshilov his first mandate to organize a proletarian army. Placed in charge of supplies, the provincial-minded] Rukhimovitch could conceive of no needs except the needs of the Tenth Army. No other army swallowed as many rifles and bullets, and at the fist refusal he yelled about the treason of the specialists in Moscow. [He, like the youngest member of the Council of War, Valerii] Mezhlauk, rose subsequently to second-rank heights in the Stalinist hierarchy, to disappear from view [for reasons unknown. There were] Zhloba, Kharchenko, Gorodovik, Savitsky, Parhomenko and others, whose contributions to the Red Army and the Soviet State did not rank above that of hundreds of thousands of others, but whose names were saved from utter oblivion only because of their early association with Stalin at Tsaritsyn.

“Trotsky,” [Tarassov-Rodionov wrote later], “spoke at the Revolutionary Council of War haughtily and irritably. He let loose a hail-storm of stinging rebukes for the tremendous waste of material . . . Trotsky was not interested in explanations . . .” On November 1st I telegraphed to Sverdlov and Lenin from Tsaritsyn:

The situation with the Tenth Army is as follows: There are many forces here but no operational leadership. The staff of the Southern Front and Vatzetis are inclined to favor changing the commander. I would not consider it possible to keep Voroshilov by giving him an experienced operational staff. He objects to that, but I don’t doubt that the question could be settled. . . The only serious obstacle is Minin, who carries on an extremely harmful policy. I insist in every way on his transfer. When will the medals be ready?

After inspecting all the sectors of the Tsaritsyn Army, in a special order of November 5th, 1918, I recognized that services of many of the units and their commanders, at the same time noting that parts of the army consisted of units calling themselves divisions which actually were not such in substance; that “political work in certain units has not even been started yet”; that “the disposition of military reserves does not always proceed with military caution”; that “in certain instances the commander, not wishing to carry out an operational order, would pass it on for the consideration of a meeting . . .” and the like. “As citizens,” the order stated, "the soldiers are free during their leisure hours to hold meetings on any question. As soldiers, they must carry out military orders without any objections.”

After visiting the Southern Front, including Tsaritsyn, I reported to the Sixth Congress of Soviets on the 9th of November, 1918: “Not all Soviet workers have understood that our administration has been centralized and that all orders issued from above must be final . . . We shall be pitiless with those Soviet workers who have not yet understood; we will remove them, cast them out of our ranks, pull them up with repressions.” This was aimed at Stalin to a much greater extent than at Voroshilov, against whom these words were ostensibly directed at the time. Stalin was present at the Congress and kept silent. He was silent at the session of the Politburo. He could not openly defend his behavior. All the more did he store up his anger. It was in those days – recalled from Tsaritsyn, with deep anger and a thirst of vengeance in his heart –that he wrote his piece on the First Anniversary of the Revolution. The purpose of the article was to strike a blow at my prestige, turning against me the authority of the Central Committee headed by Lenin. In that anniversary article, dictated by suppressed anger, Stalin was nevertheless forced to write:

All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was conducted under the immediate leadership of the President of the Petrograd Soviet, Comrade Trotsky. It was possible to declare with certainly that the swift passing of the garrison to the side of the Soviet, and the bold execution of the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee, the Party owes principally and first of all to Comrade Trotsky.

On the 30th of November, acting on the proposal of the Commissariat of War to organize a Council of Defense, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, which had already proclaimed the Soviet Republic to be a military camp, passed a resolution calling for the convocation of the Council of Defense, composed of Lenin, myself, Krassin, the Commissar of Ways of Communication, the Commissar of Supplies and the Chairman of the Praesidium of the Central Executive Committee, Sverdlov. By agreement with Lenin I proposed that Stalin be also included. Lenin wanted to give Stalin some satisfaction for removing him from the Army in Tsaritsyn; I wanted to give Stalin the chance to formulate openly his criticisms and proposals, without wetting the powder in the War Department. The first session, which outlined our tasks in a general way, was held in the daytime of the first of December. From Lenin’s notes at the session, it appears that Stalin spoke six times. Each orator was allowed no more than two minutes. The leadership in the work of the Council of Defense, not only on major questions, but even on details, was concentrated entirely in the hands of Lenin. To Stalin was assigned the task of formulating a thesis on the struggle against regionalism and another on fighting red tape. There is no evidence that either thesis was ever composed. Moreover, in the interest of expediting the work, it was decided that “the decrees of the commission appointed by the Council of Defense, signed by Lenin, Stalin and the representatives of the appropriate department, will have the force of a decree by the Council of Defense.” But as far as Stalin was concerned the whole matter boiled down to another title instead of actual work.

[Notwithstanding these concessions, Stalin continued to support the Tsaritsyn opposition secretly, nullifying the efforts of the War Department to enforce order and discipline in that sector. At Tsaritsyn, his principal tool was Voroshilov; in Moscow, Stalin himself exerted all the pressure he could must upon Lenin. It therefore became necessary to send the following telegram from Kursk on December 14th]:

* To the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Lenin. The question of recalling Okulov cannot be decided by itself. Okulov was appointee as a counterbalance to Voroshilov, as guarantee that military orders would be carried out. It is impossible to let Voroshilov remain after he has nullified all attempts at compromise. Tsaritsyn must have a new Revolutionary Council of War with a new commander and Voroshilov must go to the Ukraine.
Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, Trotsky.

[Voroshilov was then transferred to the Ukraine. The fighting capacity of the Tenth Army rose by leaps and bounds. Not only the new commander but Stalin’s successor on the Council of War, Shlyapnikov, proved immeasurably more efficient, and the military situation at Tsaritsyn soon improved.]

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PART THREE: STALIN AGAIN CAUGHT IN THE ACT!

[Several days after Voroshilov’s removal, and after the months of enforced abstention from the extremely tempting business of intervening in military affairs following upon his own removal from Tsaritsyn, Stalin go another opportunity to work at the front –this time, for a couple of weeks. He utilized it for sticking a knife into Trotsky’s back. The incident began with the following exchange of telegrams between Lenin and Trotsky]:

1. * Coded Telegram to Comrade Trotsky at Kursk or any other place where the Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic may be:
Moscow, December 13, 1918.
Extremely alarming news from vicinity of Perm. It is in danger. I am afraid we have forgotten about the Urals. Are the reinforcements to Perm and the Urals being sent with sufficient energy? Lashevich told Zinoviev that only units that had been under fire should be sent. Lenin.

2. * To Trotsky at Kozlov or wherever the Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic may be:
Moscow, December 31, 1918.
There are several Party reports from around Perm about the catastrophic condition of the Army and about drunkenness. I am forwarding them to you. They ask that you come there. I thought of sending Stalin. I am afraid Smilga will be too soft with Lasevich, who it is said drinks himself and in unable to restore order. Telegraph your opinion. Lenin
#66847

3. By direct wire in code to Moscow, Kremlin, for the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Lenin.
Reply to #66847
Voronezh, January1, 1919, 19 o’clock [7.pm]
From the reports of the operations of the Third Army I concluded that the leadership there is completely at a loss and proposed a change of command. The decision was postponed. Now I deem replacement unpostponable.
I completely share your misgivings concerning the excessive softness of the Comrade who has gone there. I agree to Stalin’s journey with powers from both the Party and the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic for restoring order, purging the staff of Commissars, and severely punishing the guilty. The new commander will be appointed upon agreement with Serpukhov. I propose that Lshevich be appointed a member of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Northern Front, where we do not have a responsible Party man, and the front may soon acquire greater significance.
#9. Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, Trotsky.

[The matter was then referred to the Central Committee, which decided[]:

* to appoint a Party investigating committee of the Central Committee members Stalin and Dzerzhinsky to conduct a detailed investigation into the reasons for the surrender of Perm and the latest defeats on the Ural Front, and also to elucidate all the circumstances surrounding the above facts.

[The Third Army had surrendered Perm to the advancing troops of Admiral Kolchak and took up its position at Vyatka, where it held its ground precariously. Stalin and Dzerzhinsky reached Vyatka while the Third Army was holding it against the attacks of the enemy. On the day of their arrival there, January 5th, 1919, Stalin and Dzerzhinsky telegraphed to Lenin]:
[Note: The following three excerpts, found in Trotsky’s notes for this book, are from the works of S. Dmitrievsky, whom Trotsky quotes in other places. They tell the story. How accurately, is another question. The possibility that Trotsky might have challenged some of the statements Dmitrievsky ascribes to Stalin is not excluded – C.M.]

* The investigation begun. We shall inform you from time to time about the course of the investigation. Meantime we deem it necessary to inform you about such needs of the Third Army as do not bear postponement. The point is, that out of the Third Army of more than 30,000 men, there remain only 11,000 weary, exhausted soldiers, who can hardly withstand the pressure of the enemy. The units sent by the Commander-in-Chief are unreliable, partly even hostile to us, and are in need of serious filtering. In order to save the remnants of the Third Army and to prevent the rapid movement of the enemy upon Vyatka (according to information secured from the commanding staff of the front and of the Third Army, the danger is quite real), it is absolutely necessary at once to transfer from Russia and place at the disposal of the army commander at least three entirely reliable regiments. We insistently urge that you exert the proper pressure in this direction upon the corresponding military institution. We repeat: without this measure the fate of Perm awaits Vyatka.


[On the 15th of January Stalin and Dzerzhinsky informed the Council of Defense]:

* 1200 reliable bayonets and swords were sent to the front; the next day two squadrons of cavalry. On the 10th and 62nd Regiment of the4 3rd Battalion (previously thoroughly filtered) was sent. These units made it possible for us to check the advance of the enemy, to raise the morale of the Third Army and to begin our advance upon Perm, so far successful. A thorough purge of Soviet and Party institutions is going on in the rear of the Army. Revolutionary committees have been organized in Vyatka and at county seats. Strong revolutionary organizations have begun to be set up and continue to be set up in villages. The entire Party and the Soviet work is being reconstructed along new lines. The military control has been cleaned up and reorganized. The provincial Cheka has been purged and staffed with new workers . . .

[After investigating the causes of the catastrophe, Stalin and Dzerzhinsky reported to Lenin that these were]:

* The fatigue and exhaustion of the army at the moment of the enemy’s advance, our lack of reserves at that moment, the staff’s lack of contact with the army, the mismanagement of the army commander, and inadmissibly criminal methods of administering the front by the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic, which paralyzed the possibility of offering timely aid to the Third Army, the unreliability of reinforcements sent from the rear due to old methods of recruitment, absolute unsteadiness of the rear due to the complete helplessness and inability of Local Soviet and Party organizations.

[Almost every statement in this report was a blow at Trotsky. Had Lenin, the Council of Defense, the Central Committee and its Politburo taken these charges against Trotsky seriously, they would have had no alternative but to remove him from office. However, Lenin knew Stalin well enough to consider this report by him and his associate in Vyatka as less factual than recriminative –and act of revenge for the recall from Tsaritsyn, and for Trotsky’s refusal to give him another chance at the Southern Front, where he could rejoin Voroshilov and the other Tsaritsynites.]

[Meantime in the Ukraine, utilizing his political prerogatives and his rank as Army Commander, Voroshilov continued to antagonize the military specialists, disrupted staff work and interfered with directives from General Headquarters. With the support of Stalin and others, he soon made his presence at the Southern Front to intolerable that on the 10th of January, 1919, it was necessary to telegraph]:

* To Moscow
To the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee, Sverdlov.
. . . I must state categorically that the Tsaritsyn policy, which has led to the complete disintegration of the Tsaritsyn army, cannot be tolerated in the Ukraine . . .Okulov is leaving for Moscow. I propose that you and Comrade Lenin give the utmost attention to his report on Voroshilov’s work. The line of Stalin, Voroshilov and Rukhimovich means the ruin of everything we are doing.
Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic. Trotsky.

{While Stalin with the aid of Dzerzhinsky was conniving in Vyatka], Lenin insisted that it was necessary for me to conclude a compromise with Stalin:

* Stalin would very much like to work on the Southern Front . . .Stalin hopes that on the job he will succeed in convincing us of the correctness of his views . . . In informing you, Lev Davidovich, about all these declarations of Stalin, I beg you to give them your most thoughtful consideration and to answer me: in the first place, whether you agree to let Stalin explain the matter to you in person, for which he is willing to report to you, and in the second place, whether you deem it possible on the basis of certain concrete conditions to adjust the previous conflict and to arrange to work together, which is what Stalin desires so very much. As for me, I think that it is necessary to make every effort for joint work with Stalin. Lenin.

Lenin’s letter was obviously written under the influence of Stalin’s insistence. Stalin was seeking agreement, conciliation, further military work, even at the cost of temporary and insincere capitulation. The front attracted him, because here for the first time he could work with the most finished of all the administrative machines, the military machine. As a member of the Revolutionary Council of War who was at the same time a member of the Central Committee of the Party, he was inevitably the dominant figure in every Council of War, in every army, on every front. When others hesitated, he decided. He could command, and each command was followed by a practically automatic execution of his order –not as in the collegium of the Commissariat of Nationalities, where he had to hide from opponents in the commandant’s kitchen.

On the 11th of January I replied by direct wire to Lenin:

Compromise is of course necessary, but not a rotten one. The fact of the matter is, that all the Tsaritsynites have now congregated at Kharkov. You can gather what the Tsaritsynites are from Okulov’s report, which throughout consists solely of factual material, and the reports of commissars. I consider Stalin’s patronage of the Tsaritsyn tendency a most dangerous ulcer, worse than any treason or betrayal by military specialists . . . Rukhimovich is only another name for Voroshilov. Within a month we shall again have to choke on the Tsaritsyn mess, only this time we will not have the Cossacks against us but the English and French. Nor is Rukhimovich the only one. They firmly hang on to each other, raising ignorance to a principle. Voroshilov plus the Ukrainian guerrillas plus the low cultural level of the population plus demagogy –we cannot tolerate that under any conditions. Let them appoint Artem, but not Voroshilov or Rukhimovich . . . Once again I urge a careful reading of Okulov’s report on the Tsaritsyn Army and how Voroshilov demoralized it with Stalin’s cooperation.

Concerning this first period of Stalin’s work on the Southern Front no materials have been published. The point is that this period did not last very long and ended up quite sadly for him. It is a pity that I cannot rely on any material to supplement my memory of this episode, for it left no traces whatever in my personal archives. The official archives have naturally remained in the Commissariat of War. On the Revolutionary Council of War of the Southern Front, with Yegorov commanding, were Stalin and Berzin, who subsequently devoted himself entirely to military work and played a prominent if not a leading role in the military operations of Republican Spain. Once, at night –I regret I cannot state anything with regard to the exact date –Berzin called me to the direct wire and asked me whether he was “obliged to sign an operative order by the Commander of the Front Yegorov.” According to the rules, the signature of the commissar or political member of the Council of War on an operative order meant merely that the order did not have any hidden counter-revolutionary significance. As for the operative meaning of the order, that was entirely the responsibility of the commander. In this particular case, the order of the Front Commander was merely a matter of passing on an operative order of the Commander-in-Chief, a transmission and interpretation of that Army order to the army under his command. Stalin declared that Yegorov’s order was not valid and that he would not sign it. In view of the refusal of a member of the Central Committee to sign the order, Berzin did not dare to place his own signature on it. At the same time, an operative order signed only by the officer in command had no actual force.

What argument did Stalin advance against an order which, as far as I remember, was of secondary importance and the nature of which I cannot now recall? No argument at all. He simply would not sign it. It would have been quite possible for him to have called me to the direct wire and explained his reasons to me, or, if he preferred, to have called Lenin to the direct wire. The Commander of the Front, if he were in disagreement with Stalin, by the same rule could have expressed his own considerations to the Commander-in-Chief or to me. Stalin’s objection would have been immediately discussed in the Politburo, and the Commander-in-Chief would have been requested to submit supplementary explanations. But just as in Tsaritsyn, Stalin preferred a different form of action: “I won’t sign it,” he declared, in order to show off his importance to h is collaborators and to his subordinates. I replied to Berzin: “The order of the Commander-in-Chief certified by a commissar is obligatory for you. Sign it immediately: otherwise, you will be turned over to the Tribunal.” Berzin immediately attached his signature to the commander’s order.

The question passed to the Politburo. Lenin said, not without embarrassment: “What can we do about it? Stalin again caught in the act!” It was decided to recall Stalin from the Southern Front. This was his second important misfire. I remember, he came back sheepish but apparently not resentful. On the contrary, he even said that he had achieved his purpose, that he had wanted to call attention to improper relations between the chief command and the command at the front, that although the order of the Commander-in-Chief contained nothing inimical, it was issued without previously sounding out the opinion of the Southern Front, which was not right. That, he said, was what he was really protesting against. He felt quite satisfied with himself. My impression was that h e had bitten off more than he could chew. Caught in the trap of a chance swaggering remark, he had been unable to extricate himself. At any rate, it was perfectly obvious that he was doing everything possible to cover up his t races and to make believe that nothing had happened. [To save his face, it was then proposed, probably upon Lenin’s initiative, to shift him to the Southwestern Front. But Stalin replied]:

* February 4, 1919.
To the Central Committee of the Party.
To Comrades Lenin and Trotsky.
. . .My own profound conviction is: no change in the situation can possibly be effected by my going there . . . Stalin.

[For three or four months after that he held on leash his eagerness to work in the military machine and resumed his contributions to The Life of the Nationalities.

[The liquidation of the Tsaritsynites was less real than apparent. Actually, Stalin and his allies had merely changed the field and methods of attack. The new field was the Party, and the methods were adapted accordingly.] As in 1912-13 with reference to the Conciliators and as during the pre-October days with reference to the opposition of Zinoviev and Kamenev, so at the Eighth Congress [of the Party, Stalin, ostensibly in no way connected with the Military Opposition, worked hard on building it up, and used it as leverage against Trotsky].

The military opposition consisted of two groups. There were the numerous underground workers who were utterly worn out by prison an exile, and who now could not find a place for themselves in the building of the Army and the State. They looked with great disfavor on all sorts of upstarts –and there was no lack of them in responsible posts. But in this opposition there were also very many advanced workers, fighting elements with a fresh reserve of energy, who trembled with political apprehension when they saw yesterday’s engineers, officers, teachers, professors, once again in commanding positions. This Workers’ Opposition reflected, in the final analysis, lack of confidence in its own powers and uncertainty that the new class which had come to power would be able to dominate and control that broad circles of the old intelligentsia.

During the first period, when the Revolution was spreading from the industrial centers toward the periphery, armed fighting detachments were organized of workers, sailors and soldiers, to establish the Soviet regime in various localities. These detachments frequently had to wage minor wars. Enjoying as they did the sympathy of the masses, they easily became victorious. They received a certain tempering, and their leaders a certain authority. There was no proper liaison between these detachments. Their tactics had the character of guerrilla raids, and as far as they went that was sufficient. But the overthrown classes, with the aid of their foreign protectors, began to take the offensive. Accustomed to easy victories, the guerrilla detachments at once displayed their worthlessness; they did not have adequate intelligence sections; they had no liaison with each other; nor were they ever able to execute a complex maneuver. Hence –at various times, in various parts of the country –guerrillaism met with disaster. It was no easy task to include these separate detachments in a centralized system. The military ability of the commanders was not high, and they were hostile to the old officers, partly because they had no political confidence in them and partly to cover up lack of confidence in themselves. Yet as late as July, 1918, at the Fifth Congress of Soviets the Left Essars still insisted that we could defend ourselves with guerrilla detachments and has no need of a centralized army. “This is tantamount to being told,” I replied to them, “that we don’t need railways and can get along with horse-carts for transportation.”

Our fronts had a tendency to close into a ring of more than eight thousand kilometers in circumference. Our enemies themselves selected the direction, created a base on the periphery, received aid from abroad and delivered the blow in the direction of the center. The advantage of our situation consisted in this, that we occupied a central position and acted along internal operational lines. As soon as the enemy selected his direction for the attack, we were able to select our direction for the counter-attack. We were able to move our forces and mass them for thrusts in the most important directions at any given moment. But this advantage was available to us on the sole condition of complete centralization in management and command. In order to sacrifice temporarily certain of the more remote or less important sectors for the sake of saving the closer and more important ones, we had to be in a position to issue orders and have them obeyed instead of arguing about them. All of this is too elementary to require explanation here. Failure to understand this was due to those centrifugal tendencies which were aroused by the Revolution, the provincialism of the vast land of isolated communities, the elemental spirit of independence that had not yet had the time or the opportunity to mature. Suffice it to say that in the beginning not only provinces but even region after region had its own Council of People’s Commissars with its very own Commissar of War. The successes of regular organization induced these scattered detachments to adapt themselves to certain norms and conditions, to consolidate themselves into regiments and divisions. But the spirit and the method often remained as of old. A chief of a division, not sure of himself, was very easy-going with his colonels. Voroshilov, as an army commander, was very indulgent with the chiefs of his divisions. But all the more resentful was their attitude towards the Center, which was not satisfied with the outward transformation of the guerrilla detachments into regiments and divisions, but insisted on the more fundamental requirements of military organization. In an argument with one of Stalin’s guerrilla partisans I wrote in January, 1919:

In one of our armies, it was considered a mark of the highest revolutionism not so very long ago to jeer rather vulgarly and stupidly at “Military specialists,” i.e., at all who had studied in military schools; yet in this very same army practically no political work was carried on. The attitude there was no less hostile, perhaps more so, toward Communist commissars than toward the specialists. Who was sowing this hostility? The worst kind of the new commanders –military know-nothings, half-guerrillas, half-Party people who did not want to have anyone around, be they Party workers or serious military workers . . . Hanging on for dear life to their jobs, they fiercely execrated the very mention of military studies . . . Many of them, getting finally into a hopeless mess, ended up by simply rebelling against the Soviet Government.

At a moment of grave danger, the Second Petrograd Regiment, occupying a crucial sector, abandoned the front upon its own initiative and, headed by its commander and commissar, seized a river steamer and sailed down the Volga from the vicinity of Kazan in the direction of Nizhni-Novgorod. The boat was stopped by my order and the deserters were placed on trial. The commander and commissar of the regiment were shot. This was the first instance of the shooting of a Communist, Commissar Panteleyev, for violation of military duty. In the Party there was a lot of talk and gossip about this incident. In December, 1918, Pravda published an article which, without mentioning me by name but obviously hinting at me, referred to the shooting of “the best comrades without a trial.” The author of the article, a certain A. Kamenesky, was in himself a figure of little importance –obviously, a mere pawn. It seemed incomprehensible that an article containing such dire and weighty accusations could appear in the central organ. Its editor was Bukharin, a Left Communist and therefore opposed to the employment of “generals” in the Army. But, especially at that time, he was utterly incapable of intrigue. The riddle was solved when I discovered upon investigation that the author of the article, or rather the man who signed it, A. Kamensky was on the staff of the Tenth Army and at the time under the direct influence of Stalin. It is beyond doubt that Stalin surreptitiously assured the publication of the article. The very terminology of the accusation: the brazen reference to the shooting of “the best” comrades, and moreover, “without a trial,” was astonishing because of the monstrosity of the fabrication as well as its inherent absurdity. But it was precisely this crude exaggeration of the accusation that revealed Stalin, the organizer of the future Moscow trials. The Central Committee settle the matter. I recall that Kamensky and the editorial board were reprimanded, but Stalin’s manipulating hand remained invisible.

[Later, while at the Southern Front, Stalin continued to utilize this disecredited story through his tools at the Party Congress. When news of this reached Trotsky, who was away at the front during the sessions of the Eighth Congress, he was obliged to appeal to the Central Committee a second time with the request “to institute an investigation in the case of the shooting of Panteleyev,” as the minutes of the Central Committee session for April 18, 1919, state, “in view of the fact that the matter was again brought up at the Party Congress.” With Stalin present at the Central Committee session, the request was unanimously referred to the Orgburo, where again with Stalin present (he was a member of both bodies), the Orgburo once more unanimously] appointed a commission composed of Krestinsky, Serebryakov and Smilga, all three members of both the Orgburo and the Central Committee, to look into the entire question. The Commission reached, of course, the conclusion that Panteleyev was shot after a trial and not as a Communist and a [commissar], but as a vicious deserter –“not because his regiment abandoned its position, but because he abandoned the position together with his regiment,” [in the words of Army Commander Slavin, commanding officer if the Army to which Panteleyev’s regiment belonged]. Ten years later this episode would again play a part in Stalin’s campaign against me under the very same title: “The Shooting Of The Best Communists Without A Trial.”

The Eighth Congress of the Party as in session from the 18th to the 23rd of March, 1919, in Moscow. On the very eve of the Congress we received a strong blow from the White near Ufa. I decided, regardless of the Congress, to go immediately to the Eastern Front. After suggesting the immediate return to the front of all the military delegates, I made read to go to Ufa. Part of the delegates were dissatisfied; they had come to the capital for a few day’s furlough and did not want to leave it. Someone started the rumor that I wanted to avoid debates on military policy. That lie surprised me. I introduced a proposal in the Central Committee on March 16, 1919, to repeal the directive about the immediate return of the military delegates, assigned the defense of the military policy to Sokolnikov and immediately went East. He discussion of the military question at the Eighth Congress, notwithstanding the presence of quite a significant opposition, did not deter me; the situation at the front seemed to me much more important than electioneering at the Congress, especially since I had no doubt that the policy I considered the only correct one was bound to win on its own merits. The Central Committee approved the thesis I had previously introduced and appointed Sokolnikov its official reporter. The opposition’s report was to be presented by V.M. Smirnov, an Old Bolshevik and a former artillery officer of the World War. Smirnov was one of the leaders of the Left Communists, who were determined opponents of the Brest-Litovsk Peace and had demanded the launching of a guerrilla war against the German regular army. This continued to be the basis of their platform even as late as 1919, although true enough, they had somewhat cooled off in the interim. The formation of a centralized and regular army was impossible without military specialists and without the substitution of proper and systematic leadership for improvisation. The Left Communists, having managed to cool off to some extent, tried to adapt their views of yesterday to the growth of the State machine and the needs of the regular army. But they retreated step by step, utilizing all they could out of their old baggage, and camouflaging their essentially guerrilla tendencies with new formulas.

A minor but very characteristic episode took place at the beginning of the Congress with regard to the composition of the praesidium. It indicated to a certain extent the nature of the Congress, if only in its preliminary stage. On the order of the day was the trying military question. It was no secret to Lenin that behind the scenes Stalin was in fact at the head of the opposition on that issue. Lenin had come to an agreement with the Petrograd delegation concerning the composition of the praesidium. The oppositionists proposed several supplementary candidatures under various pretexts, naming not only oppositionists but others as well. For example, they proposed the candidature of Sokolnikov, the chief spokesman of the official point of view. However, Bukharin, Stassova, Oborin, Rykov and Sokolnikov declined, honoring as a personal obligation the agreement that had been concluded unofficially concerning the praesidium. But Stalin did not decline. That flagrantly revealed his oppositionist status. He seemed to have been hard at work trying to pack the Congress with his partisans, and electioneering among the delegates. Lenin was aware of this, yet to forestall embarrassment he did his utmost to spare Stalin the test of a vote either for or against him. Through one of the delegates Lenin put the preliminary question: “Are supplementary candidates for members of the praesidium necessary at all?” And without an effort he secured a negative answer to that question. Stalin suffered a defeat, which Lenin had made as impersonal and inoffensive as was humanly possible. Today the official version is that Stalin supported Lenin’s position on the military question at the Eighth Congress. Why then are not the protocols published now when there is no longer any need to preserve [such] military secrets?

At the Ukrainian conference in March, 1920, Stalin formally defended me, appearing as the reporter representing the Central Committee; at the same time, through trusted people, he exerted no little effort to achieve the failure of his theses. At the Eighth Congress of the Party such a maneuver was difficult, since all the proceedings were directly under the observation of Lenin, several other members of the Central Committee and responsible military workers. But essentially, here too Stalin played quite the same role as at the Ukrainian conference. As a member of the Central Committee he either spoke equivocally in defense of the official military policy or kept quiet; but through his closest friends –Voroshilov and Rukhimovich and other Tsaritsynites, who were the shock troops of the opposition at the Congress –he continued to undermine not so much the military policy, it is true, as its chief spokesman. He incited these delegates to the vilest kind of personal attack against Sokolnikov, who had assumed the defense of the War Commissariat without any reservations. The nucleus of the opposition was the Tsaritsyn group and most prominent among them was Voroshilov. For some time preceding the Congress they were in constant contact with Stalin, who instructed them and held in leash their premature hastiness, at the same time centralizing the intrigue against the War Department. This was the sum of the substance of his activity at the Eighth Congress.

“A year ago,” Sokolnikov reported to the Eighth Congress of the Party, “at the moment of the complete collapse of the Army, when there was no military organization to defend the proletarian revolution, the Soviet Government resorted to the system of voluntary army formations, and in its day this volunteer army played its part. Now, looking back at this period, as at a stage we have passed, we should take into consideration both the positive and the negative aspects. The essence of the positive side was that the best elements of the working class participated . . . But in addition to these bright aspects of the guerilla period there were also the dark sides, which in the end outweighed whatever was good in it. The best elements left, died, or were taken prisoner . . . What remained was a conglomeration of the worst elements . . . These evil elements were supplemented by those who chose to enlist in the Volunteer Army because they had been cast out in the street in consequence of the catastrophic collapse of the entire social order . . . These were, finally, supplemented by the demobilized riffraff of the Old Army. That is why during the guerrilla period of our military organization such forces developed as compelled us to liquidate this guerrilla system. In the end it has resulted in a system in which small, independent detachments grouped themselves around separate leaders. These detachments in the final reckoning were devoted not only to the struggle in defense of the Soviet Government, in defense of the victories of the Revolution, but also to banditry and marauding. They turned into guerrilla detachments that were the bulwark of adventurism . . .” On the other hand, “in the present period,” Sokolnikov continued, “the building of the State . . . the Army . . . goes forward.”

“A great deal of heated discussion,” Sokolnikov said, turning to another phase of his report, “arose around the question of military specialists . . . Now this question has been essentially solved both theoretically and practically. Even the opponents of the use of military specialists themselves admit that this question is out of date . . . Military specialists were used in the reorganization of the guerrilla army into the regular army . . . Thus we achieved the stability of the front, thus we achieved military success. Conversely, where the military specialists were not used, we frittered away our forces to the point of utter disintegration . . . In the problem of the military specialists, we are confronted not with a purely military problem but with a general special problem. When the question was brought up of inviting engineers to the factories, of inviting the former capitalist organizers, do you remember how the ultra-Red Left Communists taunted us with their merciless ‘super-Communist’ criticism . . . that to return the engineers to the factories meant to return the commanding staff of the bourgeoisie? And here we have an analogous criticism, applied now to the building of the Army. We are told that by returning former officers to the Army we will restore the former officer class and the former army. But these comrades forgot that side by side with these commanders there are commissars, the representatives of the Soviet Government; that these military specialists are in the ranks of the army which is entirely at the service of the proletarian revolution . . . This Army, which has tens of thousands of old specialists, has shown in practice that it is the army of the proletarian revolution.”

By the time of the Eighth Congress, the disagreement on the military question was considerably less pronounced than it had been previously. The opposition no longer put the question as frankly as it had the year before. Then the centralized army was proclaimed to be characteristic of the imperialist State and in its place the opposition advocated the system of guerrilla detachments, rejecting the utilization of contemporary technical means of struggle, such as airplanes and tanks. This time they came out against the “imperialistic” principle of maneuverability: the corps, the division, even the brigade, were declared to be units too heavily weighted. It was proposed to reduce all of the armed forces of the Republic into distinct units of the combined services, each unit about the size of a regiment. This was essentially the ideology of guerrillaism slightly masked. The use of the old officer corps, especially in commanding positions, was declared incompatible in action with loyalty to the revolutionary military doctrine.

The actual work of organizing the military forces of the workers’ government proceeded along entirely different lines. We tried, especially in the beginning, to utilize as much as possible the experience, method, knowledge and means remaining from the old army. We built the revolutionary Army from the human and technical material at hand, striving always and everywhere to secure in it the dominance of the proletarian vanguard. The institution of commissars was under the circumstances an indispensable instrument of proletarian control. We combined the old commanding staff with the new, and only thus were we able to achieve the required results. This had become crystal-clear to a majority of the delegates by the time the Congress convened. No one any longer dared to reject in principle the foundations of the military policy. The opposition turned to criticism of occasional errors and excesses, regaling the Congress with all manner of sad anecdotes.

The reporter of the opposition, Smirnov, replying directly to Sokolnikov’s statement that “some presumably stand for a guerrilla army and others for the regular army,” pointed out that on the question of using military specialists “there was no disagreements among us over the dominant trend in our military policy.” He basic disagreement was over the necessity of broadening the functions of commissars and members of the Revolutionary Council of War so as to ensure their greater participation in the management of the Army and in decisions pertaining to operational matters, and thereby reduce the role of the commanding staff. The Congress met this criticism about half way. It was decided to continue the recruiting of the old military specialists in full force, but on the other hand, it was emphasized that it was necessary to prepare a new commanding staff as an absolutely reliable instrument of the Soviet system. That this and all the other decisions were adopted unanimously with one abstaining vote is explained by the fact that the opposition had in the meantime repudiated most of its principal prejudices. Powerless to counterpose its own line to that of the majority of the Party, it had to join in the general conclusion. Nevertheless, some of the effects of the guerrillaism of the preceding period were evident throughout all of 1919, particularly in the South –in the Ukraine, in the Caucasus and in Transcaucasia, where the elimination of the guerrilla tendency proved no easy task.

In 1920 a prominent military worker wrote: “Notwithstanding all the pain, outcries and noise raised concerning our military policy, concerning the recruitment of military specialists in the Red Army and so forth, the head of the War Department, Comrade Trotsky, proved to be right. With an iron hand he carried through the indicated military policy, disdaining all threats . . . The victories of the Red Army on all the fronts is the best proof of the correctness of the military policy.” Yet to this very day in innumerable books and articles that hoary tales of the treason of the “generals” whom I appointed persist without abating. These accusations sound particularly silly when one remembers that twenty years after the October Revolution Stalin accused of treason and exterminated almost the entire commanding staff appointed by himself. It might also be added that Sokolnikov, the official reporter, and V.M. Smirnov, the oppositionist co-reporter, both active participants in the Civil War, subsequently fell victims of the Stalinist purge.

A special military conference was held during the Congress, the minutes of which were kept but never published. The purpose of this conference was to give an opportunity to all participants, especially the dissatisfied members of the opposition, to express themselves fully, freely and frankly. Lenin delivered an energetic speech at this conference in defense of the military policy. What did Stalin say? Did he speak in defense of the Central Committee’s position? It is hard to answer this question categorically. There is no doubt that he acted behind the scenes, inciting various oppositionists against the Commissariat of War. There can be no doubt of that because of the circumstances and the recollections of the participants of the Congress. A flagrant piece of evidence is the very fact that the protocols of the military conference of the Eighth Congress have not yet been published –either because Stalin did not speak at it, at all, or because his speech on that occasion would be too embarrassing for him now. [Stalin, along with Zinoviev, was also a member of a] special commission of conciliation for working out the final resolutions. What he did there remains unknown beyond the bare fact that a satellite of his, Yaroslovsky, was advanced at its reporters.

Soon after the Eighth Congress I replied to the declaration of Zinoviev, who, undoubtedly by agreement with Stalin, had taken it upon himself to defend the “insulted” Voroshilov, in a letter to the Central Committee. I said: “The only guilt that I can charge against myself with reference to him [Voroshilov] is that I spent too long, notably two or three months, on the effort to act by means of negotiations, persuasions, personal combinations, when in the interests of the cause, what was necessary was a firm organizational decision. For, in the end, the task in connection with the Tenth Army did not consist of convincing Voroshilov, but in attaining military successes in the shortest possible time.” [And that of course depended on the maximum co-ordination of plans throughout the] country, which was divided into eight military districts composed of 46 provincial and 344 regional military commissariats.

[Stalin did his utmost to poison the mind of the Congress on the position taken by the Commissariat of War on the military question.] All documents on hand fully prove that by virtue of his position in the Central Committee and in the Government, Stalin headed the opposition. If I had previously suspected it, now I am fully convinced, that Stalin’s machinations with the Ukrainians, his wire-pulling in the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, and the like, are directly connected with the maneuvers of the military opposition. [Having] reaped no laurels at Tsaritsyn, he tried to reap his revenge [in the dark].

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Next Chapter 10 The Civil War (Continued)

People's Commissar - Chapter 8 of Trotsky's 'Stalin'

Stalin : An appraisal of the man and his influence.

Chapter 8

PEOPLE’S COMMISSAR

[The Bolsheviks had laid the groundwork of winning over the armed forces of the country so thoroughly that their final victory on November 7th was achieved practically by default. The October coup was “easier than lifting a feather” –to us Lenin’s own words. Not a single regiment rose to defend Russian democracy. With the former police force scattered, the Kerensky Government in Petrograd had practically no one other than the military students and the very amateurish women’s battalions to oppose the detachments of armed workmen, soldiers and sailors under the command of Bolshevik professional revolutionists. The struggle for supreme power over an empire that comprised one-sixth of the terrestrial globe was decided between amazingly small forces on both sides in the provinces as well as in the two capital cities.

[The civilized democratic West, heading into its forth year of war, refused to believe the accomplished fact. After the Bolsheviks had been in power for nearly a week, Kerensky sincerely assured the astonished world that Bolshevism “as an organized force . . . no longer exists, even in Petrograd.” The Bolshevik victory had been easier and more secure in Petrograd than in Moscow and in the provinces. The Cossacks stationed in Petrograd were “neutral” –even as General Headquarters and all the avowed reactionaries –refraining from extending aid to the Provisional Government and reserving the right to act at their own discretion, while General Krasnov was marching upon the capital with an unknown number of troops. The officials and clerks of the banks, the ministries, and practically all public administration institutions had walked out on strike. The Menshevik-led railway, telephone, telegraph and postal workers’ unions threatened to strike and tie up all communication and transportation services unless the victors agreed to a coalition government of all the socialist parties, but without the participation of Lenin and Trotsky. That threat produced a crisis more apparent than real in the leadership of the Bolshevik Party itself.]

Immediately after the insurrection, upon the insistence of the Bolshevik Right Wing –Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Lunacharsky and others – negotiations were begun with the Mensheviks and the Populists concerning a coalition government. Among the conditions, the parties overthrown by the uprising demanded a majority for themselves, and over and above that, the removal from the government of Lenin and Myself as the persons responsible for the October “adventure.” The Rightist members of the Central Committee were inclined to accept this demand. The question was considered in the Central Committee during the session of the first (the 14th) of November. This is what the protocol states: “Proposed to expel Lenin and Trotsky. This is a proposal to behead our Party, and we do not accept it.” The readiness of the Rightists to go as far as an actual surrender of power was condemned by the Central Committee as “fear of the Soviet Majority to utilize its own majority.” The Bolsheviks did not refuse to share their power with other parties, but would share it only on the basis of the proper relations of forces in the Soviets. Lenin declared that the negotiations with the petty bourgeois parties had sense only as a cover for military actions. [As far as Lenin was concerned the negotiations were not in earnest and were meant rather as a political decoy.]

My motion to terminate the negotiations with the Compromisers was passed. Stalin took no part in the debates. But he voted with the majority. In protest, the representatives of the Rightists resigned from the Central Committee and the Government. The majority of the Central Committee addressed the minority with the demand to submit unconditionally to the discipline of the Party The ultimatum was signed by ten members and candidates of the Central Committee: Lenin, myself, Stalin, Sverdlov and others. Concerning the origin of the document, one of the members of the Central Committee, Bubnov, states: “After writing it he (Lenin) invited into his office individually each of the members of the Central Committee, acquainting them with the text of the declaration and suggesting that they sign it.” The story is interesting in so far as it enables us correctly to evaluate the significance of the order of the signatures. Lenin first of all showed the ultimatum to me, having secured my signature, called out the others, beginning with Stalin. It was always thus, or almost always. Had the document not been directed against Zinoviev and Kamenev, their signatures would probably have stood before Stalin’s signature.

Pestkovsky tells how during the October days “it was necessary to select from among the Central Committee the leadership of the insurrection. Selected were Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky.” In assigning the leadership to these three, let us note in passing Stalin’s collaborator definitely buries the practical “center,” of which neither Lenin or I were members. In Pestkovsky’s testimony there is this time a kernel of truth. Not during the days of the uprising but after its victory in the important centers, yet before the establishment of any kind of stable regime, it was necessary to create a compact Party staff, that could enforce locally all the necessary decisions. As the protocol states, on the 29th of November, (12th of December) 1917, the Central Committee elected for the solution of pressing questions a bureau composed of four persons: “Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky and Sverdlov.” This foursome was given the right to decide all extraordinary affairs, but with the obligation of drawing into the decision all members of the Central Committee who were present at the time at Smolny.” Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, because of their sharp disagreement, had resigned from the Central Committee. This explains the composition of the foursome. Sverdlov, however, was absorbed by the Secretariat of the Party, spoke at meetings, settled conflict and was seldom at the Smolny. The foursome practically came down to a threesome.

[On the night of February 19th-20th, 1918, the coalition Bolshevik-Left Essar Council of the People’s Commissars] elected an executive committee [made up of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Proshyan and Karelin, which was authorized to carry on all current work in the interim between the sessions of the Council. [This executive committee of the Government was made up of the same three Bolsheviks and the two Left Essars. Nevertheless, there is no ground for imagining that these three made up] a “triumvirate.” The Central Committee met frequently and decided all the important and particularly debatable questions. The threesome was necessary for unpostponable practical decisions in connection with the course of the uprising in the provinces, Kerensky’s attempts to enter Petrograd, food supply for the capital, and the like. This threesome existed, at least nominally, only until the transfer of the government to Moscow.

Lashing out against the policy of the Bolsheviks in 1917, Iremashvili writes: “The triumvirate, filled with unappeasable vengeance, began to exterminate with inhuman cruelty everything living and dead,” and the like. In the triumvirate Iremashvili includes Lenin, myself and Stalin. It maybe said with assurance that this idea of the triumvirate arose in the mind of Iremashvili only considerably later, after Stalin had advanced to the first plane of importance. There is, however, a grain of truth –or, at any rate, a semblance of truth –in these words of Iremashvili’s. In connection with the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, Lenin’s words, “I’ll consult Stalin and give you an answer” are cited time and time again. The point is that such a threesome did actually exist at certain moments, although not always with the participation of Stalin. Dmitrievsky likewise refers to this threesome, although in a somewhat different tone and point of reference:
Even Lenin at that period felt the need of Stalin to such as extent that when communications came from Trotsky at Brest and an immediate decision had to be made while Stalin was not in Moscow, Lenin would inform Trotsky: “I would like first to consult with Stalin before replying to your question.” And only three days later Lenin would telegraph: “Stalin has just arrived. I will consider it with him and we will at once give your our joint answer.”

The most important decisions of that period were not infrequently arrived at by Lenin in agreement with me. But in this case, when such agreement was not reached, a third person was needed. Zinoviev was in Petersburg, Kamenev was not always in Moscow. Besides, he, like other members of the Politburo and the Central Committee, devoted a considerable portion of their time to agitation. Stalin had more free time that all the other members of the Politburo from agitation, leadership of the Soviets, and the rest. That was why prior to his departure from Tsaritsyn he usually carried out the duties of the “third one.” Lenin was a stickler for form and therefore naturally did not take it upon himself to reply in his own name alone. Generally, the not infrequent remarks in recent literature to the effect that Lenin directed, ordered and the like, are inspired solely by analogy with the Stalinist regime. As a matter of fact, such a state of affairs didn’t exist at all. Directives were actually given, and moreover orders issued, only by the Politburo, and during the absence of the complete staff, by the threesome, which made up the quorum of the five members of the Bureau. When Stalin was away, Lenin would consult with Krestinsky, Secretary of the Central Committee, with the same scrupulousness, and in the archives can be found any number of recorded references to such consultations.

But at the time there was far more talk of a “duumvirate.” During the Civil War the Soviet “poet laureate” Demyan Byedny wrote verses about “our twosome.” No one then spoke of a triumvirate. At any rate any one using that term then would have selected as the third person not Stalin, but Sverdlov, who was the very popular Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, and who signed all the more important decrees. I remember speaking to him several times about the insufficient authority of certain of our directives in the provinces. On one such occasion Sverdlov remarked: “Locally, they accept only three signatures: Ilyich’s, yours and to a small extent mine.” [Sverdlov was a person of truly remarkable organizational talents and a prodigious capacity for hard work –head and shoulders above Stalin.] “No one could so unite in himself alone organizational and political work as Sverdlov as able to do,” Lenin said at the Party Congress in 1920, “and we had to try to replace his activity with the work of a collegium.”

When I arrived in Petrograd at the beginning of May, I hardly remembered Stalin’s name. I probably ran across it in the Bolshevik press, signed to articles which hardly held my attention. My first meetings were with Kamenev, Lenin, Zinoviev. With them were carried on negotiations about fusion. Neither at the sessions of the Soviets, nor of its Central Executive Committee, nor at the numerous meetings which consumed a considerable part of my time, did I meet Stalin. Upon arrival, I immediately came into close contact with all the leading figures by virtue of my work in the Central Executive Committee, but I did not notice Stalin even among the second-rate members of the Central Committee, such as Bubnov, Miliutin, Nogin and others. [After the fusion of the Inter-districters (Mezhraiontsy) with the Bolsheviks, Stalin continued to remain an obscure figure.] “In the Praesidium of the Pre-parliament,” state the protocols of the Party Central Committee, “Trotsky and Kamenev represented the Bolsheviks.” [When the time came to send leading representatives of the Party to the repeatedly deferred Constituent Assembly, which was supposed to determine in a democratic parliamentary manner the future government of Russia, Stalin was used as the spokesman of the Party Central Committee to nominate them. As the record shows, Stalin’s words were:] “Comrades, I propose as candidates to the Constituent Assembly Comrades Lenin, Zinoviev, Kollontai, Trotsky and Lunarcharsky.” These were the five persons who were put forth in the name of the entire Party. Let us recall that [according to the official historiography] only two weeks before I, together with the Mensheviks and the Essars, had presumably demanded Lenin’s appearance in court.

In the complete list of Bolshevik delegates to the Constituent Assembly headed by Lenin, Stalin’s name stands in eighth place. The twenty-five nominees were first official candidates of the Central Committee. The list was worked over by a commission under the leadership of three members of the Central Committee: Uritsky, Sokolnikov and Stalin. Lenin sharply protested against the list: there were too many doubtful intellectuals on it, too few reliable workers.

*Utterly inadmissible also was the disproportionate number of candidates from insufficiently-tested persons who had joined our party quite recently (like U. Larin). Filling the list with such candidates who should have really worked months and months in the Party, the Central Committee opens the door wide for careerism, for the seeking of places in the Constituent Assembly. It is necessary to have an extraordinary review and correction of the list . . . It is self-evident that from among the Inter-districters [Meshraiontsy] altogether little tested in proletarian work and the direction of our Party no one would contest, or example, such a candidature as that of L. D. Trotsky, for in the first place, Trotsky immediately upon arrival assumed the position of the internationalists; in the second place, he fought among the inter-districters for fusion; in the third place, during the difficult July Days he proved fully equal to the tasks and was loyal champion of the Party of the revolutionary proletariat. It is clear that this cannot be said about many of the members who joined the Party yesterday, whose name appears on the list . . .*

Of the twenty-five [Bolshevik representatives], thirteen were subsequently meted out punishment by Stalin or were condemned after death.

After the conquest of power, Stalin began to fell more sure of himself, remaining, however, a figure of the second rank. I soon noticed that Lenin was “advancing” Stalin, valuing in him his firmness, grit, stubbornness, and to a certain extent his slyness, as attributes necessary in the struggle. He did not expect of him any independent ideas, political initiative or creative imagination. Stalin proceeded slowly and cautiously; wherever possible he kept still. But the victory in Petrograd and later in Moscow convinced him. He began to accustom himself to power. “After October,” writes Alliluyev, “Stalin moved into the Smolny and settled there in two small rooms on the ground floor.” [He was a member of the first Council of People’ commissars as Commissar of Nationalities.] After the Revolution the first session of the Bolshevik Government took place in Smolny, in Lenin’s office, where an unpainted wooden partition segregated the cubbyhole of the telephone girl and the typist. Stalin and I were the first to arrive. From behind the partition we heard the thick basso of Dybenko. He was speaking by telephone with Finland, and the conversation had a rather tended character. The twenty-nine-year-old, black-bearded sailor, a jolly and self-confident giant, had recently become intimate with Alexandra Kollontai, a woman of aristocratic antecedents who know half a dozen foreign languages and was approaching here forty-sixth year. In certain circles in the Party there was undoubtedly a good deal of gossip about this. Stalin, with whom until then I had not carried on a personal conversation, came up to me with a kind of unexpected jauntiness and, pointing with his shoulder toward the partition, said, smirking: “That’s he with Kollontai, with Kollontai!” His gestures and his laughter seemed to me out of place and unendurably vulgar, especially on that occasion and in that place. I don’t remember whether I simply said nothing, turning my eyes away, or answered dryly, “That’s their affair.” But Stalin sensed that he had a mistake. His face changed, and in his yellow eyes appeared the same glint of animosity that I had noticed in Vienna. From that time on he never again attempted to engage me in conversation on personal themes.

At the end of January, 1018, as a representative of the Party, Stalin participated in a conference of representatives of several foreign Left Socialist parties. That conference, which decided to convoke the Left Internationalist Conference, came to the conclusion that “an international Socialist conference . . . should be convoked under the following conditions: firstly, that the parties and organizations agree to take the path of revolutionary struggle against ‘their own governments’ or immediate peace; and secondly, that they support the Russian October Revolution and the Soviet Government.

At the time of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved. The initiative was Lenin’s, who also took the lead in working out the corresponding device. During the same days was published “The Declaration of the Rights of Toilers and the Exploited Peoples.” On the text of these historical documents are corrections introduced by Bukharin and Stalin. “Most of there corrections,” states a footnote to the Works of Lenin “do not have a principled character.”

The posts that Stalin occupied during the first years after the Revolution and the sundry assignments, predominantly of an organizational and diplomatic character, which he carried out, were exceedingly varied. But such was the portion of the majority of responsible functionaries of those times. Directly or indirectly, everybody was occupied with the Civil War; routine duties were usually placed on the shoulders of the closest assistants. Stalin was listed as a member of the editorial board of the central organ, but as a matter of fact had practically nothing to do with Pravda. He carried out more systematic work, interrupted by journeys to the front, in the Commissariat of Nationalities. The Soviet state was just forming itself, and it was not easy to determine in the new fashion this inter-relationship of the various nationalities. The general guidance of this work, not to mention the initiative, was completely Lenin’s, who since time immemorial had accorded to the national question a tremendous significance, second in importance only to the agrarian question. It is evident from the diary of his secretariat how often he received all sorts of national delegations and addressed letters, inquiries and instructions with reference to one or another national group. All the more principal measures had to pass through the Politburo; the less important ones were considered by telephone with Lenin. On the Commissariat of Nationalities was imposed the technical performance of decisions already made.

Information concerning the work of this Commissariat can be found in the memoirs of Pestkovsky, published in 1922 and 1930. He was Stalin’s closest assistant during the first twenty months of the Soviet regime. An old Polish revolutionist who had been condemned to hard labor in Siberia, and a participant of the October insurrection who held the most varied positions after the victory, including among them the post of Soviet Minister to Mexico in 1924-26, Pestkovsky was for a long time in one of the oppositional groups, but managed to repent in time. The brand of recent repentance lies on the second edition of these memoirs, but it does not deprive them either of freshness or interest.

The initiative in their collaboration was taken by Pestkovsky, who knocked on various doors, seeking and not finding application for his modest talents.
*“Comrade Stalin,” said I, “are you the People’s Commissar for the affairs of the nationalities?”
“Yes.”
“But have you a Commissariat?”
“No”
“Well then, I will make you a Commissariat.”
“All right, but what do you need for that?”
“For the present, merely a mandate.”
At this point Stalin, who hated to waste words, went to the executive offices of the Council of People’s Commissars and several minutes later returned with a mandate.

In one of the rooms of the Smolny already occupied Pestkovsky found a vacant table and placed it against the wall, pinning above it a sheet of paper with the inscription: “People’s Commissariat for the Affairs of the Nationalities.” To all this two chairs were added.
*“Comrade Stalin,” said I, “we haven’t a farthing to our name.” In those days the new government had not yet taken possession of the State bank.
“Do you need much?” asked Stalin.
“To begin with a thousand roubles will do.”
“Come in an hour.”
When I appeared an hour later Stalin ordered me to borrow three thousand roubles from Trotsky. “He has money. He has found it in the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” I went to Trotsky and gave him a formal receipt for three thousand roubles. As far as I know, the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities has not yet returned this money to Comrade Trotsky.

[Stalin was at the side of Lenin] on the 9th (22nd) of November, 1917, from two to half past four in the morning, when Vladimir Ilyich, carrying on negotiations by direct wire with Commander-in-Chief General Dukhonnin, issued orders about the immediate beginning of peace negotiations with all countries at war. After Dukhonnin’s refusal, he wrote the order for his removal and the appointment of N. V. Krylenko, as Commander-in-Chief. [Apropos of incidents such as this] Pestkovsky writes that Stalin became “Lenin’s deputy in the leadership of fighting revolutionary actions. He was in charge of watching after military operations on the Don, the Ukraine, and in other parts of Russia.” The word “deputy” does not fit here; it would be more correct to say “technical assistant.” Since observation of the course of the Civil War in the country was carried on principally through the intermediacy of direct telegraphic wire, this function too was carried on by Stalin, because he had more time from his duties than any other member of the Central Committee.

Stalin’s conversations by direct wire were essentially semi-technical, semi-political in character. He was carrying out instructions. Extremely interesting is one of his very first conversations by direct wire on the 17th (30th) of November, 1917, with the representative of the Ukrainian Rada, Porsh. The Ukrainian Rada was similar to the government of Kerensky. It was supported by the top layer of the petty bourgeoisie. No doubt it also had the support of the upper bourgeoisie and the Allies against the Bolsheviks. The Ukrainian Soviets were at the same time falling under the influence of the Bolsheviks and were in direct opposition to the Rada. A clash between the Soviets and the Rada was unavoidable, especially after the October Revolution in Petrograd and Moscow. Porsh, in the name of the Rada, asked what was the attitude of the Petrograd government toward the national question in general and the fate of the Ukraine and its internal regime in particular. Stalin answered with generalities. “The power in the Ukraine, as in other regions,” said Stalin, “should belong to the entire totality of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, including in it also the organization of the Rada. In that sphere there is a broad field of agreement between the Central Rada and the Soviet of People’s Commissars.” This was precisely the combination that the Mensheviks and Essars demanded after the October Revolution, and it was on this question that the negotiations conducted by Kamenev had broken down.

At the direct wire in Kiev, alongside the Ukrainian Minister Porsh, was the Bolshevik Sergei Bakinsky, who likewise demanded answer to questions. They controlled one another. Bakinsky represented the Soviets. He stated that the Central Rada did not deem it possible to transfer the power locally to the Soviets. Replying to Bakinsky, Stalin said that if the Central Rada should refuse to convoke a Congress of Soviets with the Bolsheviks, then “convoke it without the Rada.” Further: “The government of the Soviets must be accepted locally. This is the one revolutionary commandment we cannot repudiate, and we do not understand how the Ukrainian Central Rada can argue against an axiom.”

A quarter of an hour earlier Stalin had declared that it was possible to combine the Soviets with the democratic organizations of the Rada; now he was declaring for the government of the Soviets without any sort of combination as an axiom. How to explain this contradiction? We have no documents to hand. But the mechanics behind the conversation are quite clear. During the negotiations Stalin was sending the tape from the lower story of the Smolny to the upper story, to Lenin. Having read Stalin’s proposal about combining the Soviets with the organizations of the Rada, Lenin could not have done otherwise than to send him a severe note. Perhaps he even ran downstairs into the telegraph room in order to tell Stalin what he thought about it. Stalin did not argue, and in the second part of his conversation gave an instruction directly opposed to the one which he had given in the first part.

As a member of the Politburo, Stalin was included in the delegation from the Russian Communist Party to the Congress of the Finnish Socialist Party. But this inclusion was purely nominal in character. Stalin did not take part in the work of the Congress. “When at the end of December, 1917, the Congress of the Finnish Socialist Party took place,” writes Pestkovsky, “there arose the question as to whom the working class of Finland would follow. The Central Committee of the Bolsheviks sent to that Congress as its representative, Stalin.” Neither Lenin nor I nor Sverdlov could leave Petrograd; on the other hand, Zinoviev and Kamenev were not suitable at that period for the task of raising an insurrection in Finland. Stalin’s candidature appeared the most suitable. It was at that Congress that Stalin evidently met for the first time Tanner, with whom 22 years later he was to carry on negotiations on the eve of the Soviet0-Finnish War.

The same Pestkovsky refers to close collaboration between Lenin and Stalin. “Lenin could not get along without Stalin even for a single day. Probably for that reason our office in the Smolny was ‘under the wing’ of Lenin. In the course of the day, he would call Stalin out an endless number of times, or would appear in our office and lead him away. Most of the day Stalin spent with Lenin. What they did there, I don’t know, but on one occasion, upon entering Lenin’s office, I discovered an interesting picture. On the wall hung a large map of Russia. Before it stood two chairs. And on them stood Ilyich and Stalin, moving their fingers over the northern party, I think across Finland. At night when the commotion in the Smolny subsided a bit, Stalin would go to the direct wire and spend hours there. He carried on the longest negotiations either with our military leaders (Antonov, Pavluovsky, Muravyov, and others) or with our enemies, with the War Minister of the Ukrainian Rada, Porsh. Occasionally, when he had some pressing business and he was called out, he would send me to the wire.”

The facts here are given more or less correctly; the interpretation is one-sided. At that period, Lenin had great need of Stalin. There can be no doubt about that. Zinoviev and Kamenev had been waging a struggle against Lenin; I spent my time either at meetings or in Brest-Litovsk, principally in Brest-Litovsk; Sverdlov carried the responsibility for the entire organizational work of the Party. Stalin really had no definite duties. The Commissariat of Nationalities, especially in the beginning, took very little of his time. He, therefore, played the role of chief-of-staff or a clerk on responsible missions under Lenin. The conversations by direct wire were essentially technical, although very responsible, and Lenin could entrust them only to an experienced man who was fully informed of all the tasks and cares of Smolny.

[Even after the removal from Petrograd to Moscow, Lenin continued to abide by the axiomatic rule of not issuing personal orders. Practically three years later, when] on the 24th of September, 1920, Ordzhonikidze by direct wire from Baku asked for his permission to send a destroyer to Enzeli (Persia), Lenin wrote over the dispatch: “I’ll ask Trotsky and Krestinsky.” Actually there is a countless number of such inscriptions on telegrams, letters and reports. Lenin never decided himself, always turned to the Politburo. Two of three of its members, and sometimes no more than two, were usually in Moscow. From these hundreds of notations about asking members of the Politburo, only those have been extracted which bore the inscription to “ask Stalin,” and these interpreted to mean that Lenin did not take a step without Stalin.

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PART TWO

[With reference to the Brest-Litovsk negotiations] Stalin’s historiographers have had a veritable holiday. ]They had genuine documents to quote in support of their myth-making, documents from the archives of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, presided over at the time by Trotsky. Thus, in 1935, a certain Sorin wrote]:
*In a letter to Lenin from Brest, Trotsky proposed the following essentially profoundly adventuristic plan: not to sign an annexationist peace, but not to continue the war, while demobilizing the army. On the 15th (2nd) of January, in a conversation by direct wire with Trotsky, who asked for an immediate reply, Vladimir Ilyich characterized Trotsky’s plan as “disputable” and postponed the final answer until the arrival of Stalin, who at that time was not in Petrograd and whom Vladimir Ilyich wanted to consult. We quote the complete record of these conversations:

15 (2) January –the following conversations by direct wire took place between Trotsky and Lenin: Trotsky asks Lenin whether he received a letter sent to him through a Latvian soldier. Trotsky must have an immediate answer to that letter. The answer should be expressed in words of agreement or disagreement.
“Lenin at the apparatus. I have just now received your special letter. Stalin is not here, and I have not yet been able to show it to him. Your plan seems disputable to me. It is not possible to postpone taking the final decision until after a special session of the Central Executive Committee here? As soon as Stalin returns I will show the latter to him. Lenin”
“We shall try to postpone the decision as long as possible, awaiting communication from you. Please try to hurry. The Rade delegation is carrying on a flagrantly treacherous policy. The consideration of the plan in the Central Committee seems to me inconvenient, since it may evoke a reaction before the plan is carried out. Trotsky”
Reply to Trotsky: “I should like to consult first with Stalin before replying to your question. Today a delegation of the Kharvov Ukrainian Central Executive Committee, which assures me that the Kiev-Rada was breathing its last, has departed to visit you. Lenin”
When the negotiations of the 18th (5th) January reached a critical moment, L.D. Trotsky asked for a directive by direct wire and received one fate the other the following two notes:
1. “To Trotsky –Stalin has just arrived. I shall consider with him and we shall give you our joint answer. Lenin”
2. “Inform Trotsky he is requested to set a recess and come to Petrograd. Lenin. Stalin”

[The official History of the Bolshevik Party, published in 1939, goes completely overboard. It declares]:
* On the 10th of February, 1918, the peace negotiations of Brest-Litovsk were interrupted. Notwithstanding the fact that Lenin and Stalin in the name of the Central Committee of the Party insisted on signing peace, Trotsky, who was the Chairman of the Soviet delegation in Brest, treacherously violated the explicit directives of the Bolshevik Party. He declared that the Soviet Republic refused to sign peace on the basis of the conditions proposed by Germany and at the same time informed the Germans that the Soviet Republic would not carry on the war, and would continue to demobilize the army.
This was monstrous. The German imperialists could ask for no more from this traitor to the interests of the Soviet fatherland.

[Turning from page 207 to 208 of the same book, we find the following elaboration]:
* Lenin called this decision “strange and monstrous.”
At this time it was not yet clear to the Party that was the real reason for this anti-Party behavior of Trotsky and of the “Left Communists.” But as has been recently established by the trial of the Anti-Soviet “Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” (beginning of 1938), Bukharin and the group of “Left Communists,” headed by him, jointly with Trotsky and the “Left” Essars, were already then in a secret conspiracy against the Soviet Government. Bukharin, Trotsky and their fellow-conspirators, it has developed, aimed to annul the Brest Peace Treaty, to arrest V.I. Lenin, J.V. Stalin, Ya.M. Sverdlov, kill them, and form a new government of Bukharinites, Trotskyites and the “Left” Essars.

[Now let us examine the record. Sixty-three Bolsheviks were present at the conference of January 21st (8th), 1918, of whom an absolute plurality (32) voted in favor of waging a revolutionary war. Trotsky’s position –neither war nor peace –received 16 votes; Lenin’s –peace with Imperial Germany –15 votes. The question was considered again three days later by the Party Central Committee. The protocols recording the session of January 24th (11th), 1918 read as follows]:
* Comrade Trotsky moves that the following formula be put to the vote:
“We terminate the war, we do not conclude peace, we demobilize the army.”
This is put to the vote. Ayes 9, Nayes 7.
Lenin’s proposition was put to the vote: “we drag out the signing of the peace in every way” (Ayes 12, Nayes 1). L.D. Trotsky’s “do we intend to issue a call for a revolutionary war?” (Ayes 2, Nayes 11, not voting 1); and “we stop the war, do not conclude peace, demobilize army: )Ayes 9, Nayes 7).

At that session Stalin based the necessity to sign a separate peace on this argument: “There is no revolutionary movement in the West; there are no facts: there are only potentialities, and we cannot take into account potentialities.” “Cannot take into account?” Lenin at once repudiated Stalin’s support; it is true that the revolution in the West has not yet begun’ “however, if we should change our tactics because of that, we would be traitors to international socialism.”

The following day, the 25th (12th) of January, the question of peace was considered at the joint session of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks and the Left Social Revolutionaries [Left Essars]. By a majority of votes, it was resolved to propose for the consideration of the Congress of Soviets the formula: “Not to wage war, not to sign peace.”

What was Stalin’s attitude towards this formula? This is what Stalin declared a week after that session at which the formula was accepted by nine votes against seven:
Session of February 1 (January 19) 1918; Comrade Stalin: . . . “The way out of this difficult situation was provided us by the middle point of view –the position of Trotsky.”

Stalin’s words will become wholly comprehensible if one takes into consideration that throughout that entire critical period the preponderant majority of Party organizations and Soviets stood for revolutionary war and that consequently Lenin’s position could only be carried through by way of a party and state revolution (which of course was utterly out of the question). Thus, far from being mistaken, Stalin merely acknowledged an indisputable fact, when he said that my position was at that time the only way out of the situation for the party.

[On the 10th of February] the Soviet delegation at the Peace Conference in Brest0-Litovsk made public the official declaration of the refusal of the Soviet Government to sign the annexationist peace and of the termination of the war with the powers of the Quadruple Alliance. [Two days later there was published] the order of Supreme Commander-in-Chief, N.V. Krylenko, for the termination of military activity against the same powers and for the demobilization of the Russian Army.
[Referring to these events a year later, Lenin wrote:]

* How did it happen that not a single tendency, not a single direction, not a single organization of our party was not opposed to that demobilization?
What was the matter with us –had we completely lost our minds? Not in the least. Officers, not Bolsheviks, were saying even before October that the Army cannot fight, that it cannot be kept at the front another few weeks. After October this became self-evident to everyone who wanted to look facts in the face, who wanted to see the unpleasant bitter reality, and not hide himself or pull h is hat over his eyes and be satisfied with proud phrases. There was no army. It was impossible to hold onto it. The best that could be done was to demobilize as soon as possible.
This was the sick part of the Russian State organism that could not endure any longer the burden of war. The sooner we demobilized it, the sooner it was dissolved among parts which were not yet sick, the sooner would the country be able to get ready for its new difficult tasks. This is what we felt when unanimously, without the slightest protest, we passed the resolution, the decision which from the point of view of outward events was absurd –to demobilize the army. It was the right thing to do. We were saying that to keep the army is a frivolous illusion. The sooner we demobilize the army, the sooner will begin the convalescence of the entire social organism as a whole. That is why the revolutionary phrases, “the German cannot advance,” from which followed the second, “We cannot declare the state of war terminated; neither war nor the signing of peace,” was such a profound error, such an overestimation of events. But suppose the German advances? “No, he will be unable to advance.”

Actually the advance of the German troops lasted fourteen days, from the 18th of February to the 3rd of March. The whole of the 18th of February the Central Committee devoted to the question of how to react to the German advance that had begun.

After the breaking off of negotiations in Brest on the 10th of February and the publication by the Russian delegation of the declaration of the termination of the war and the refusal to sign peace with Germany, the “military party” –the party of extreme annexation –had finally won out. At a conference in Hamburg on the 13th of February, which took place under the chairmanship of Emperor Wilhelm, the following statement proposed by him was accepted: “Trotsky’s refusal to sign the peace treaty automatically leads to the termination of the Armistice.” On the 16th of February the German military Kommando officially informed the Soviet Government of the termination of the Armistice with the Soviet Republic, beginning at twelve noon of the 18th February, thus violating the stipulated agreement that notice of termination of the Armistice must be given seven days before the beginning of military action.

The question of how to react to the German advance was first broached at the session of the Central Committee of the Party on the evening of the 17th of February. Germany’s immediate proposal to enter into new negotiations for the signing of peace was rejected by six votes against five. On the other hand, no one voted “for revolutionary war,” while N.I. Bukharin, G.I. Lomov, and A.A Joffe “declined to vote on such a posing of the question.” By a majority of votes a resolution was passed “to postpone the renewal of peace negotiations until the advance shows itself in a sufficient degree and until its influence on the labor movement becomes evident.” With three not voting, the following decision was passed unanimously: “When the German advance is as a fact, and yet no revolutionary upsurge begins in Germany and Austria, we shall conclude peace.”

On the 18th of February, with the Germans advancing, the Central Committee of the Party was in session throughout the day, with brief interruptions (in one of the Protocols the time indicated is “in the evening,” the two others are not dated more precisely). At the first session, after speeches by Lenin and Zinoviev in favor of signing peace, and by me and N.I. Bukharin against, the motion: “to offer immediately a proposal to renew peace negotiations,” was voted down by seven to six. At the second, or evening session, after speeches by Lenin, Stalin Sverdlov and Krestinsky in favor of renewing peace negotiations, Uritsky and Bukharin against, and a speech by me proposing that we do not renew negotiations but ask the Germans for their formulated demands, the following question was put to the vote: “Shall we immediately offer the German Government a proposal to conclude a peace at once?” This proposal passed by seven votes (Lenin, Smilga, Stalin, Sverdlov, G. Sokolnikov, myself, Zinoviev) against five (Uritsky, Lomov, Bukharin, Joffe, Krestinsky), with one not voting (Stassova). Then it was decided immediately to make out a precise statement of the accepted decision and to work out the text of the communication to the German Government. Lenin’s proposal about the points of which the telegram should be composed was put to the vote. All but two abstainers voted for registering and referring to the extortionism of the peace terms; for readiness to sign the old conditions, with the indication that there was no refusal to accept worse conditions: Ayes seven; Nayes four; not voting, two. The task of working out the text itself was delegated to Lenin and me. The radiogram was then and there written by Lenin, and, with minor corrections which I made, approved at the joint session of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks and the Left Essars, and sent over the signatures of the Council of People’s Commissars to Berlin on the 19th of February.

At the session of the Council of People’s Commissars on the 21st of February, the representatives of the Left Essars voted against utilizing the help of the Entente for counteraction the German advance. Negotiations with the Allies about military and technical help had begun soon after the October Revolution. They were carried out by Lenin and me, with General’s Lavergne and Colonel Raymond Robbins representing the Americans. On the 21st of February, in connection with the continued advance of the Germans, the French Ambassador Noulens telegraphed to me: “In your resistance to Germany you may count on the military and financial cooperation of France.” Of course, the difference between German militarism and French militarism was not for us a question of principle. It was only a question of securing the necessary neutralization of certain forces antagonistic to us in order to save the Soviet Government. [But the French Government did not keep its word.] Clemenceau proclaimed a holy war against the Bolsheviks. Then we were forced to conclude the peace of Brest-Litovsk.

The reply to the Soviet radiogram which outlined the German conditions of peace was received in Petrograd at 10.30 in the morning [of February 23rd.] By comparison with the conditions of peace presented on the 10th of February, these terms were considerably worse. Livonia and Estonia had to be cleared immediately of the Red Army, and the German police was to occupy them; Russia obligated itself to conclude peace with the bourgeois Ukrainian and Finnish governments; and the like. The question of accepting the German terms of peace was discussed [the same day], first at the session of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, then at the joint session of our Central Committee and Central Committee of the Left Essars, and finally at the Plenary Session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee itself.

At the session of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, Lenin, Zinoviev, Sverdlov and Sokolnikov spoke in favor of accepting these conditions and signing the peace. Bukharin, Dzerzhinsky, Uritsky and Lomov spoke against it. I declared that “if we had unanimity, we could have taken upon ourselves the task of organizing our defense. We could have managed it . . . But that would require the maximum of unity. Since that was lacking, I will not take upon myself the responsibility of voting for war.” The Central Committee resolved by seven votes to four, with four not voting, immediately to accept the German proposal, prepare for a revolutionary war and (unanimously, with three not voting) carry out a poll of the Soviet electors of Petrograd and Moscow, in order to determine the attitude of the masses toward the conclusion of peace.

At the session of the Central Committee on the 23rd of February Stalin declared: “We need not sign, but we must begin peace negotiations.” To which Lenin replied. If you do not sign them, then you will sign the death sentence of the Soviet Government within three weeks.” [And the protocol further states]: “Comrade Uritsky argued against Stalin that the conditions had either to be accepted or rejected, but that it was no longer possible to carry on negotiations.”

To everyone familiar with the state of affairs at that moment –[even to an ardent Ann consistent advocate of a revolutionary war against Imperial Germany like Uritsky] it was clear that resistance was hopeless. Stalin’ statement was due entirely to the utter lack of any kind of thought-out position. As far back as the 18th of February the German [Army had taken] Dvinsk. Its advance was developing with extraordinary rapidity. The policy of holding back had been exhausted to the very dregs. [Yet] Stalin proposed [five days later], on the 23rd of February, not to sign peace, but . . . to carry on negotiations.

Stalin spoke a second time at the session of the 23rd of February, this time in defense of the necessity to sign the peace treaty. He took advantage of the occasion to correct himself likewise on the question of the international revolution, [in view of] Lenin’s [criticism of him. Said Stalin] “We, too, place out bets on the revolution, but you reckon in weeks, while we reckon in months.” This fully corresponded to the moods of those days and to the words of Sergeyev (Artem) [at the session of January 24th, 1918] that all members of the Central Committee were agreed on one thing, that without the victory of the international revolution in the nearest possible time (according to Stalin during the next few months) the Soviet Republic would perish. Thus, “Trotskyism” at that time prevailed unanimously in the Central Committee of the Party.

Essentially, Stalin did not assume any kind of independent position in the period of the Brest negotiations. He hesitated, bided his time, kept his mouth shut – and schemed. “The Old Man is still hoping for peace,” he said to me, quite probably he went to Lenin and made the same sort of remarks about me. Stalin never really came into the open. True, no one was particularly interested either in his view or his contradictions. I am sure that my main task, which was to make our attitude toward the question of peace as understandable as possible to the world proletariat, was a secondary consideration with Stalin. He was interested in “peace in one country,” just as subsequently he was to become interested merely in “socialism” in one country. During the decisive balloting he joined with Lenin. It was only several years later, in the interests of the struggle with Trotskyism, that he took the trouble to work out for himself a certain semblance of a “point of view” about the Brest events. [Compare his attitude with that of Lenin who, addressing he Seventh Congress of the Party on the 8th of March, immediately after the bitter struggle of factions, said]:
* Further I must touch upon the position of Comrade Trotsky. It is necessary to distinguish two aspects of his activity; when he began negotiations at Brest, splendidly utilizing them for agitation, all of us were in agreement with Comrade Trotsky . . . Trotsky’s tactic in so far as it aimed at procrastination, was correct. It became incorrect when the state of war was declared to be terminated while peace had not been signed. . . But since history has swept this aside, it is not worth while to recall it.

There was of course a profound difference between the policy of Lenin throughout the Brest-Litovsk crisis and the policy of Stalin, who stood closer to Zinoviev. It must be said that Zinoviev alone had the courage to demand the immediate signing of the peace, prophesying that putting off the negotiations would increase the severity of the peace conditions more truly, frightening us with it. None of us doubted that from the “patriotic” point of view it would have been more advantageous to sign the conditions immediately, but Lenin thought that the procrastination of the peace negotiations was revolutionary agitation and that the tasks of the international revolution stood above patriotic considerations – above the territorial and all other conditions of the peace treaty. To Lenin it was a question of securing a breathing spell in the struggle for the international revolution. Stalin felt that the international revolution was a “potential” with which we could not reckon. True, later he did amend these words, in order to set himself up against others, but essentially the international revolution in those days, just as considerably later, remained for him a lifeless formula which he did not know how to use in practical politics.

It was precisely at the time of this crisis that it became clear that the factors of world politics were so many unknown quantities to Stalin. He did not know anything about them, and he was not interested in them. In the German working class passionate debates were raging among the progressive layers as to why the Bolsheviks had entered into negotiations and were preparing to conclude peace. There were not a few who voiced the opinion that the Bolsheviks and the government of Hohenzollern were playing a comedy in which the cues were pre-arranged. The struggle for the revolution required that we make clear to the workers that we could not act other wise, that the enemies were walking all over us, that we were forced to sign the peace treaty. Precisely for that reason, the German advance was our best proof of the forced character of the treaty. An ultimatum from Germany would hot have been enough; an ultimatum might likewise have been part of a rehearsed play. Quite a different matter was the actual movement of German troops, the seizure of cities, of military property. We were losing tremendous wealth, but we were winning the political confidence of the working class of the whole world. Such was the sense of the disagreement.

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PARTY THREE: COMMISSAR FOR NATIONALITIES

According to the text of the Constitution, a People’s Commissariat was made up of the chairman (the People’s Commissar) and of the collegium, which in turn consisted of a half dozen and sometimes even a dozen members. It was no easy task to guide a department. According to Pestkovsky, “all members of the Collegium on the National Question were in opposition to Stalin, frequently leaving their People’s Commissar in the minority. The repentant author hastens to add: “Stalin decided to re-educate us and worked at it persistently. In this he displayed a lot of gumption and wisdom.” Unfortunately Pestkovsky does not go into details on this aspect of the matter. But we do learn from him about the original manner in which Stalin would terminate conflicts with his collegium. “At times he would lose patience,” relates Pestkovsky, “but he never made it evident during the sessions. On these occasions, when in consequence of our endless discussions at conferences his patience would be exhausted, he would suddenly disappear, doing it with extraordinary skill; ‘just for moment’ he would disappear from the room and hide in one of the recesses of the Smolny, and later the Kremlin. It was impossible to find him. In the beginning, we used to wait for him. But finally we would adjourn. I would remain alone in our common office, patiently awaiting his return, but to no avail. Usually at such moments the telephone would ring; it was Vladimir Ilyich calling for Stalin. Whenever I replied that Stalin had disappeared, he would invariably tell me: ‘Find him at once.’ It was no easy task. I would go out for a long walk through the endless corridors of the Smolny and the Kremlin in search of Stalin. I would find him in the most unexpected places. A couple of times I found him in the apartment of the sailor, Comrade Vorontsov, in the kitchen, where Stalin was lying on a divan smoking a pipe and thinking over his thesis.”

Since the best forces of the Party had gone in for military or economic work, the Collegium of the Commissariat of Nationalities consisted of people of minor importance. Nevertheless they indulged in the practice of marshalling arguments to counter Stalin’s contentions and putting questions to him to which he could not find answers. He had power. But that power was utterly insufficient for compulsion; he had to convince or persuade. Stalin could not cope with that situation. The contradictions between his overbearing nature and his insufficient intellectual resources created an insufferable situation for him. He did not enjoy authority in his own department. When his patience would be exhausted he would simply hide “in the most unexpected places.” It may be doubted that he was thinking over his thesis in the kitchen of the commandant. It is more likely that he was nursing his hurt inside of himself and brooding on how good it would be it those who disagreed with him would not dare to object. But in those days it did not even enter his head that a time would come when he would merely command and all others would obey in silence.

No less colorful is Pestkovsky’s description of the search for the Commissariat’s quarters in Moscow, where the government moved the following March from Petrograd. A fierce struggle for the private houses of merchants raged between the departments. The People’s Commissariat of Nationalities had absolutely nothing in the beginning. “I brought pressure to bear on Stalin.” On whom Stalin brought pressure to bear, I don’t know. “After a while, the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities was in possession of several private houses. The Central Office and the Byelo-Russians were located on the Povarskya, the Latvians and Estonians on the Mikitskaya, the Poles on the Arbat, the Jews on Prechistenka, while the Tartars were somewhere on the Moscow River Quay. Besides that Stalin and I had offices in the Kremlin. Stalin proved to be quite dissatisfied with this situation. ‘Now it is quite impossible to keep an eye on you at all. We ought to find one large house and get eve3ryone together there.’ This idea did not desert him for a single minute. Several days later he said to me: ‘We have been given the Great Siberian Hotel, but the Supreme Council of National Economy has willfully taken possession of it. However, we shall not retreat. Tell Alliluyeva to type out the following on several pieces of paper: “These quarters occupied by the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities.” ‘And take along some thumb tacks.’”

Alliluyeva, Stalin’s future wife, was a typist in the Commissariat of Nationalities. Armed with the magic bits of paper and the thumb tacks, Stalin and his assistant went by automobile to the Zlatoustensky Lane. “It was already getting dark. The main entrance to the hotel was closed. The door was decorated by a piece of paper which read –“This dwelling occupied by the Supreme Council.’ Stalin tore it off, and we fastened our decoration in its place. ‘All we have to do now is get inside,’ Stalin said. It was no easy task. With great difficulty we found the back-door entrance. For some inexplicable reason the electricity was not working. We lighted our way with matches. On the second floor we stumbled into a long corridor. We fastened our notices on a number of doors at random. When it was time to go back, we had no more matches. Going down in pitch darkness, we landed in the basement and nearly broke our necks. At long last we did manage to make our way to the automobile.”

It takes a certain effort of imagination to visualize the figure of a member of the government under cover of darkness breaking into a building occupied by another ministry, tearing off one set of notices and posting another. It may be said with certainty that is would not have occurred to any of the other People’s Commissars or members of the Central Committee to anything like that. Here we recognize Koba of the Baku prison days. Stalin could not fail to know that the debatable question of a building would be decided in the final reckoning by the Council of People’s Commissars or in the Politburo. It would have been simpler in the very beginning to apply to one of these institutions. Apparently Stalin had reason for supposing that the contest would be decided not in his favor, and tried to confront the Council of People’s Commissars with an accomplished fact. The attempt failed; the building was assigned to the Supreme Council of National Economy, which was a more important ministry. Stalin had to hid another grudge against Lenin.

[Footnote: By 1930 Stalin’s power was no longer challengeable. But the State Cult of his personality was just then beginning to be established. Thus is to be explained the circumstances that in these memoirs, notwithstanding their general panegyric tone, one still hears a note of familiarity, and even a shade of good-natured irony is permitted. Several years later, when the purges and executions would establish the necessary sense of distance, tales of how Stalin hid in the kitchen of the commandant or took possession of a house at night, would already sound unseemly and render the document taboo. It is likely that this author paid a cruel penalty for violating etiquette. – L.T.]

The majority of the Collegium reasoned, according to Pestkovsky’s story, in this fashion: every oppression was merely one of the manifestations of class oppression. The October Revolution had destroyed the basis of class oppression. Therefore, there was no need to organize in Russia national republics and autonomous regions. Territorial division should be exclusively along economic lines, “ . . .The opposition to the Leninist policy was, strange though it may seem at first glance, especially strong among the non-Russian Bolsheviks (Letts, Ukrainians, Armenians, Jews and the like). The Bolsheviks in the borderlands that suffered oppression had been brought up in a struggle with local nationalistic parties and were inclined to reject not only the poison of chauvinism but even progressive social demands. The Collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities consisted of these Russified non-Russians, who counterposed their abstract internationalism to the real needs of development of the oppressed nationalities. Actually this policy supported the old tradition of Russification and was in itself a special danger under the conditions of civil war.”

The People’s Commissariat of Nationalities was created to organize all the formerly oppressed nations of Russia through national commissariats –such as the Armenian, the Byelo-Russian, the Jewish, the Latvian, the Mussulman (which was later renamed the Tataro-Bashkir), the Polish –and the departments of the Mountaineers of the Caucasus, the German, the Kirghiz, the Ukrainian, the Chuvash, the Estonian, the Kalmyk, the Southern Slavs, the Czechoslovaks (for serving the Czech military prisoners), the Votyak and the Komi. The Commissariat tried to organize the education of the nationalities on a Soviet basis. It published a weekly newspaper, The Life of the Nationalities, in Russian and a number of publications in various national languages. But it devoted itself chiefly to organizing national republics and regions, to find the necessary cadres or leaders from among the nationals themselves, to general guidance of the newly-organized territorial entities, as well as to caring for the national minorities which were for the first time called upon by the Revolution to lead an independent existence the Commissariat of Nationalities had an undoubted authority. It opened to them the doors leading to an independent existence within the framework of the Soviet regime. In that sphere Stalin was an irreplaceable assistant to Lenin. Stalin knew that life of the aboriginal people of the Caucasus intimately –as only a native could. That aboriginality was in his very blood. He loved the society of primitive people, found a common language with them, was not afraid they would excel him in anything, and therefore with them behaved in a democratic, friendly way. Lenin valued these attributes of Stalin’s, which were not shared by others, and in every way tried to bolster Stalin’s authority in the eyes of all sorts of national delegations. “Talk it over with Stalin. He knows that question well. He knows the conditions. Discuss the question with him.” Such recommendations were repeated by him scores and hundreds of times. On all those occasions when Stalin had serious conflicts with the national delegates, or in his own collegium, the question was referred to the Politburo, where all the decisions were invariably brought out in favor of Stalin. This should have reinforced his authority even more in the eyes of the ruling circles of the backward nationalities; in the Caucasus, on the Volga, and in Asia. The new bureaucracy of the national minorities later became a not unimportant bulwark of Stalin’s power.

On the 27th November, 1919, the Second All-Russian Congress of Mussulman Communist Organizations and Peoples of the East was held in Moscow. The Congress was opened by Stalin in the name of the Central Committee of the Party. Four persons were elected honorary members: Lenin, myself, Zinoviev and Stalin. The president of the Congress, Sultan-Galiyev, one of those who subsequently ended up badly, proposed that the Congress greet Stalin as “one of those fighters who burned with a flame of hatred for international imperialism.” Yet it is extremely characteristic of the gradation of leaders at that time that even at this Congress the report of Sultan-Galiyev on the general political revolution concludes with the greeting: Long Live the Russian Communist Party! Long Live Its Leaders, Comrades Lenin and Trotsky.” Even this Congress of the Peoples of the East which was held under Stalin’s direct leadership did not deem it necessary to include Stalin among the leaders of the Party.

Stalin was People’s Commissar of Nationalities from the moment of the Revolution until the liquidation of the Commissariat in 1923 in connection with the creation of the Soviet Union and the Council of Nationalities of the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R. It may be considered firmly established that at least until May, 1919, Stalin was not very busy with the affairs of the Commissariat. At first Stalin did not write the editorials in The Life of the Nationalities, but later, when the journal began to come out in large format, Stalin’s editorials began to appear in one issue after another. But Stalin’s literary production was not great, and it decreased from year to year. In 1920-21, we find only two or three articles by him. In 1922 not even a single article. By that time Stalin had completely gone over to machine politics.

In 1922 the editorial board of the journal stated: “In the beginning of the publication of The Life of the Nationalities Comrade Stalin, the People’s Commissar for the Affairs of the Nationalities, took an active part. He wrote during that period not only editorial articles, but often made up the informational review, contributed notes to the department of Party life and the like.” Reading these contributions, we recognize the old editor of the Tiflis publications and the editor of the Petersburg Pravda of 1913.

Thus, in a number of issues he devoted his attention to the East. This was Lenin’s guiding idea. It may be followed in a number of his articles and speeches. No doubt Stalin’s interest in the East was in large measure personal in character. He was himself a native of the East. If, before representatives of the West, he, who was familiar neither with the life of the West nor with its languages, felt himself always at a loss, with representatives of the backward nations of the East, he, the Commissar who in large measure decided their fate, felt himself incomparably more confident and on firmer ground. The basic idea was Lenin’s. But with Lenin both the Eastern and Western perspectives were closely inter-related. In the foreground in 1918 were the problems of the West, not of the East; the war was coming to an end, there were upheavals in all the countries, revolutions in Germany and Austro-Hungary and elsewhere. Thus, Stalin’s article entitled “Don’t Forget the East” appeared in the issue of the 24th of November, 1018, i.e. at the very time of the Revolution in Austro-Hungary and Germany. All of us had regarded these revolutions as forerunners of the socialist revolution of Europe. At that time Stalin wrote that “without the revolutionary movement in the East, it is useless even to think about the final triumph of socialism impossible not only in Russia, but even in Europe without a revolutionary awakening of the East. This was a repetition of Lenin’s guiding idea. However, in this repetition of ideas, there was a division not only of labor, but also of interests. Stalin had absolutely nothing to say with reference to the revolutions in the West. He did not know Germany, did not know its life or its language, and other wrote about it with much greater knowledge. Stalin concentrated on the East.

On the 1st of December, 1918, Stalin wrote in The Life of the Nationalities an article entitled “The Ukraine is Being Freed.” It as the same old seminarist rhetoric. Repetition takes the place of other resources: “We do not doubt that the Ukrainian Soviet Government will be able to offer proper resistance to the new unwelcome guests, the enslavers from England and France. We do not doubt that the Ukrainian Soviet Government will be able to expose their reactionary role,” and so on ad nauseam. In an article in the same magazine on December 22nd, 1918, Stalin wrote: “With the help of the best Communist forces, the Soviet state machine (in the Ukraine) is being re-established. The members of the Central Committee of the Soviets in the Ukraine are headed by Comrade Pyatakov . . . The best Communist forces which composed the government of the Ukraine were: Pyatakov, Voroshilov, Sergeyev (Artem) Kviring, Zatonsky, Kotsubinsky.” Of these only Voroshilov remained alive and became a Marshal. Sergeyev (Artem) died in an accident; all the others were either executed outright or disappeared without a trace. Such was the fate of “the best Communist forces.”

On the 23rd February, he published an editorial entitled “Two Camps,” in which he said in part: “The world has divided itself resolutely and irrevocably into two camps –the camp of imperialism and the camp of socialism . . . The waves of the socialist revolution are growing without restraint, assailing the fortresses of imperialism . . . Their resonance resounds in the land of the oppressed peoples . . . The ground under the feet of imperialism is catching fire . . .” Notwithstanding the waves, the images are cliches and not in agreement with each other. In all of this there is the unmistakable ring of insincerity under the bathos of bureaucratic fishiness. On the 9th of March, 1919, The Life of the Nationalities published an article by Stalin entitled “After Two Years,” which expressed his conclusions: “The experience of the two years’ struggle of the proletariat has completely confirmed what Bolshevism had foreseen . . . the inevitability of the world proletarian revolution . . .” In those days the perspective of Bolshevism had not yet been reduced to socialism in a separate country. Of the same type were all the other articles, all of them utterly devoid of originality of thought or attractiveness of form. The articles were formally education in character, dry, flabby, and false.

The first Congress of the Chuvash Communists took place in April, 1920, and therefore, more than two years after the establishment of the Soviet Government. The h honorary praesidium consisted of the same four persons: Lenin, myself, Zinoviev and Stalin. Describing the opening of the congress, the journal of the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities pointed out that the walls were decorated with portraits of the leaders of the world revolution –Karl Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev. At that time there were as yet no portraits of Stalin in existence; they were not hung anywhere and it never occurred to anyone to decorate even the Hall of the Congress with one of them. Yet this occasion was wholly in Stalin’s own sphere of activity.

On the 7th of November –that is, on the third anniversary of the October Revolution – we find Stalin in Baku, where he spoke at the solemn session of the Soviets, delivering a report entitled “Three Years of the Proletarian Dictatorship.” At the Congress of the People of Daghestan on the 13th of November, Stalin proclaimed the autonomy of Daghestan, “Comrade Stalin’s speech,” as the journal of the Commissariat of Nationalities informs us, “was in many places interrupted by thunderclaps of applause, the Internationale, and ended in a stormy ovation.” On the 17th of November at the Congress of the People of the Terik Territory at Vladikavkaz, Stalin personally “proclaimed the Soviet autonomy of the Gurian people” and appeared with a report about the aforementioned autonomous Gurian Republic. Between the 18th and 21st of December, 1920 there took place the first All-Russian Conference of Representatives of Autonomous republics, territories and regions. Kaminsky transmitted to the Conference greetings in the name of Stalin, who could not be present because of illness. The motion to send greetings to Stalin was adopted unanimously. But at that Congress of the Peoples of the East the record reads: “. . . Honorary Chairmen of the Congress were elected: Comrades Lenin, Zinoviev and Trotsky . . . storms of applause . . .Honorary members of the Praesidium were elected . . . and Djugashvili-Stalin . . .” Again in the last place!

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PART FOUR STALIN INVADES GEORGIA TO CREATE SOVIETS

In Vienna, under the guidance of Lenin, Stalin had written a valuable work on the national problem, but his attempt to continue this work independently in Siberia produced such a result that Lenin deemed it impossible even to publish his article. At the March conference of 1917 Stalin was developing the view that national oppression is the product of feudalism, utterly losing sight of imperialism as the main factor of national oppression in our epoch. In 1923 he was to place on the same plane with Great-Russian nationalism, which had behind it age-old traditions and the oppression of weak nations, the defensive nationalism of these latter nations. These crude errors, Stalinist errors, taken together, are explicable, as has already been pointed out, by the fact that not on a single question does he rise to a systematic conception. He utilizes disjointed propositions of Marxism as he needs them at the moment, selecting them just as shoes are selected according to size in a shoe store. That is why at each turn of events he so easily contradicts himself. Thus, even in the field of the national problem, which became his special sphere, Stalin could not rise to an integrated conception.

“Recognition of the right to secede does not mean the recommendation to secede,” he wrote in Pravda of October 10, 1920. “The secession of the borderlands would have undermined the revolutionary might of Central Russia, which stimulated the liberation movement of the West and the East. The seceded borderlands would have inevitably fallen into slavery to international imperialism. It is enough to take a look at Georgia, Armenia, Poland, Finland, etc., which have separated from Russia, and which have preserved merely the appearance of independence, while actually having become transformed into unconditional vassals of the Entente. It is sufficient to recall the recent history of the Ukraine and of Azerbajan, the former ravished by German capitalism and the latter by the Entente, in order to understand fully the counter-revolutionism of the demand for the secession of a borderland under contemporary international conditions.”

“The revolutionary wave from the north,” wrote Stalin on the first anniversary of the October Revolution, “has spread over all of Russia, pouring over one borderland after another. But at this point it met with a dam in the form of the ‘national councils’ and ‘territorial governments’ (Don, Kuban, Siberia) which had been formed even before October. Bourgeois in nature, they did not at all desire to destroy the old bourgeois world. On the contrary, they deemed it their duty to preserve and fortify it with all their strength . . . They naturally became the hearths of reaction, drawing around themselves all that was counter-revolutionary in Russia . . .But the struggle of the ‘national’ and territorial ‘governments’ (against the Soviet Center) proved to be an unequal struggle. Attacked on both sides, from the outside by the Soviet Government and on the inside by their own workers and peasants, the ‘national governments’ had to retreat after the first battle . . . Completely routed, the ‘national governments’ were obliged to turn for help against their own workers and peasants to the imperialists of the West.”

Thus began the wave of foreign intervention and the occupation of the borderlands, populated predominantly by non-Russian nationalities, which could not help hating Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel, or their imperialistic and Russifying policy. In a report Stalin made at Baku on the 8th of November, 1920, under the title, “Three Years of the Proletarian Revolution,” we find the following concluding words: “There is no doubt that our road is not one of the easiest, but there is equally no doubt that we are not afraid of difficulties . . .” Paraphrasing certain words of Luther, Russia might have said: “Here I stand on the border between the old capitalistic and the new socialistic world; here on this border I unite the efforts of the proletarians of the West with the efforts of the peasantry of the East, in order to demolish the old world. May the God of History help me in this!”

[According to Pestkovsky:
* In the strong of 1918 the Central Committee decreed to create the Tartar-Bashkir Republic. In order to work out this decision more concretely, a special conference was convoked in May at Moscow, composed of representatives of Party and Soviet organizations of the Ural Territory, representatives of the Tartar and Bashkir nationalities, and officials of the People’ Commissariat of Nationalities.
The delegates to this conference from the Ural Territory were Comrades Syromolotov and Tintul, and they brought with them a “real” Bashkir Communist, Comrade Shamigulov. All three were resolute opponents of the creation of the Tartar-Bashkir Republic, regarding it as something in the nature of a concession to Pan-Islamistic nationalism. Having received such unexpected support, we “Leftists” in the collegium of the Commissariat of Nationalities perked up in spirit and resolved on firm resistance to Stalin’s “opportunism.” In this way those who were in favor of creating a republic found themselves in a minority. The only one who resolutely supported Stalin was Nur-Vakhitov, leader of the Tartar Communists, and Ibragimov, a Left Essar and representative of the Ufa Tartars. The one Bashkir Communist, Shamigulov, expressed himself against the Republic, considering it an unnecessary concession to nationalism. Even worse was the action of another Bashkir, Manatov. At the session he voted for the republic, not wishing to “quarrel with his superiors,” but in the hall he urged us to fight resolutely against its establishment because according to him the Bashkirs did not want to be in the same republic with the Tartars.
After that Stalin convoked a session of the conference and declared that in view of the fact that the question had already been decided beforehand by the Central Committee, we must vote in favor of organizing a republic. But we did not yield, and, making a protest against the decision of the question before the convocation of the conference, we left the fraction meeting and refused to participate in the further deliberations of the council. At the same time we teased Stalin, saying that he “was left with a Left Essar.” For that we subsequently received a written reprimand from the Central Committee.

After the proclamation of the Bashkir Autonomous Republic in November, 1917, sympathy for the Soviet Government sprang up among the masses. The leadership of these Bashkir masses passed into the hands of the nationalistic elements headed by Zak-Validov who represented the interests of the bourgeois-kulak portion of the population. Gradually this group degenerated into an outpost of anti-Soviet activity and established contact with Dutov and Kolchak. However, under the pressure of the masses, after the liquidation of Bashkir autonomy by Kolchak, Zak-Validov was compelled to begin negotiations with the Soviet Government. In February, 1919, after the liquidation of Kolchak, the Bashkir government went over to the side of the Soviet Government and toward the end of the same month at Simbirsk, at the staff headquarters of the Eastern Front, the delegation of the Bashkir government signed a preliminary agreement which guaranteed autonomy to the Bashkir people on condition that it establish a government on the basis of the Soviet constitution, open common action of Bashkir detachments with the Red Army against the Whites, and the like.

In the beginning of March, 1919, Stalin commenced negotiations in Moscow with the Bashkir delegation about the formation of the Bashkir Soviet Republic. The result of these negotiations was the agreement of the Central Soviet Government with the Bashkir Government concerning Soviet Autonomous Bashkiria, concluded on the 20th of March, 1919. In the beginning of March, I was obliged to leave Moscow, having declined to participation in the Eighth Congress of the Party in view of military reverses near Ufa. Stalin calmly remained in Moscow at the Congress and until the 20th of March carried on the negotiations with the Bashkir delegation. Nevertheless, Stalin is hardly remembered in connection with the matter by contemporary historians of Bashkiria. [The two quotations below –the first by Antagulov, the second by Samoilov –are typical]:

* The struggle between the Russian and the Bashkir comrades deepened; complete anarchy began. In one place Russians were arrested in the name of the Bashkir government; in another, Bashkirs were arrested in the name of the local government. Comrade Trotsky’s journey to Ufa happened to coincide with this movement (March, 1920). The Bashkir officials again began to carry on negotiations with the Soviet Government in the person of Comrade Trotsky achieved a degree of agreement.

* Meanwhile, as a result of information received from Bashkiria, the Center accorded no little attention to the Bashkir question. In the middle of March Comrade Trotsky, who had arrived in Ufa with special powers, called us there for a conference on Bashkir affairs. To that conference from Sterlitamak, representing the Bashkirs, came Validov, Tukhvatulin, Rakhamatuvin, and Kaspransky; representing the Territorial Committee and the officials of the Center, Dudnik, Samoilov, Sergeyev (Artem), Treobrazhensky, and the Chairman of the Ufa Provisional Executive Committee, Eltsin.

During the initial years of the Soviet regime Bolshevism in the Ukraine was weak. The cause of it is to be sought in the national and social structures of the country. The cities, the population of which consisted of Great-Russians, Jews, Poles, and only to a small extent of Ukrainians, were to a considerable extent colonies in character. Among the industrial workers of the Ukraine, a considerable percentage were Great-Russians. Between the city and the village lay a yawning, almost impassable abyss. Those Ukrainian intellectuals who interested themselves in the village, the Ukrainian language and culture, met with semi-ironical treatment in the city, and that of course pushed them resentfully in the direction of chauvinism. The non-Ukrainian Socialist factions in the cities had no sense of kinship with the life of the masses in the villages. In the Ukrainian cities they represented the culture of the Great-Russians with which most of them, especially the Jewish intellectuals, were not any too well acquainted. Hence, to a considerable extent, the exotic character of Ukrainian Bolshevism, the absence of it during the period when it should have been sending down deep roots, its profound independence, and the multitudinous conflicts, quarrels and constant internal factional struggles.

It was Stalin’s duty as People’s Commissar of Nationalities to keep the development of the nationalist movement in the Ukraine under constant observation. By virtue of that alone, he was more closely connected than other with the Ukrainian Bolshevik Party. That closer connection began as far back as 1917, soon after the October Revolution, and continued for several years. In the Ukraine, Stalin represented the Russian Central Committee of the Bolsheviks. On the other hand, at certain general Party congresses he represented the Ukrainian organizations. This was customary at that time. He took part in the conferences of the Ukrainian Communist Party as one its actual leaders, and since the life of the Ukrainian organization was wasted on considerable part on constant squabbles, conflicts, factional groupings, Stalin felt in this atmosphere like a fish out of water.

His Ukrainian period was full of failures, and therefore remains completely unrevealed. [Official Stalinist histories, compelled to record failure after failure in the effort to put across the Party line in the Ukraine throughout Stalin’ tenure as People’s Commissar of Nationalities, carefully avoid mention of his name in connection with this epidemic of failures. They do not state that in the final reckoning “the errors on the peasant and national questions which had been committed in the Ukraine in the beginning of 1919, and which contributed to the fall of the Soviet Government there” were due to Stalin’s wholly inadequate defense of the policy laid down by the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party. In castigating that failure, Lenin said: “Only a very small part of the well-managed farms ought to be turned into Soviet farms, otherwise we will not get a bloc with the peasantry . . . We need a policy similar to the one we needed at the end of 1917 and during many months in 1918 . . .We must therefore now assign a large number of Soviet farms for general land distribution.”

[Appearing at the Fourth All-Ukrainian Party Conference on March 16, 1920, as the fully-empowered representative of the Central Committee, armed with the explicit resolution of that body on the Ukrainian question, Stalin was again confronted with a motley opposition, the spearhead of which were the followe3rs of Sapronov’s “Democratic Centralism” tendency, which had been routed in debate at the All-Russian Party Conference the previous December. This time all the arguments of that opposition were know beforehand, and the People’s Commissar of Nationalities set forth the rebuttals written out for him in advance by Trotsky, that task having been assigned to the latter by the Politburo. Yet he suffered defeat on the floor of the Ukrainian Conference. The Central Committee had to intervene by dissolving the Ukrainian Central Committee elected by the Fourth Conference and by recalling from the Ukraine a number of officials addicted to Great-Russian chauvinism, before it could introduce its policy, which insisted on unswerving enforcement of the principle of “the self-determination of nations.” The cardinal point of the Central Committee’s resolution adopted at the All-Russian Conference in December, 1919, declared]:

In view of the fact that Ukrainian culture . . . Has for centuries been suppressed by Tsarism and the exploiting classes of Russia, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party makes it obligatory for all members of the Party to help in every way to get rid of all obstacles to the free development of the Ukrainian language and culture. Owing to the centuries of oppression, nationalist tendencies are to be found among the backward sections of the Ukrainian masses, and in view of this fact, it is the duty of members of the Party to treat them with the utmost forbearance and discretion, putting before them a comradely explanation of the identity of interests of the toiling masses of the Ukraine and Russia. Members of the Party . . .must actually enforce the right of the toiling masses to study in the Ukrainian language and to use it in all Soviet institutions . . . striving . . . to render the Ukrainian language a weapon for the Communist education of the toiling masses. Steps must immediately be taken to assure a sufficient number of employees in all Soviet institutions who know the Ukrainian language and to see that in the future all employees should be able to speak Ukrainian.

This should have proved an extremely easy thesis to defend. Even though as a rule Stalin was not a successful debater, considering the relation of forces, his defeat still seems surprising. It is quite possible that, having felt previously that the mood of the conference was unfavorable to his thesis, Stalin decided to play at he who loses wins, letting it be understood through intermediaries that he was defending the thesis not from his own conviction, but only from a sense of discipline. He could count in this way of killing two birds with one stone –acquire the sympathy of the Ukrainian delegates and transfer the odium of defeat to me as the author of the thesis. Such an intrigue was quite in the spirit of the man!

The Georgian Social-Democracy not only led the impoverished peasantry to little Georgia, but aspired also, and not without a measure of success, to the leadership of the movement “of the revolutionary democracy of the whole of Russia.” During the first months of the Revolution, the leading circles of the Georgian intelligentsia regarded Georgia not as a national father land but as a Gironde, a chose southern province called upon to supply leaders to the whole country. But this continued only as long as there was s till hope of harnessing the revolution within the framework of bourgeois democracy. When the danger that Bolshevism would win became definitely clear, the Georgian Social-Democracy immediately broke its ties with the Russian Compromisers and united with the reactionary elements of Georgia itself. When the Soviets won, the Georgian champions of a single indivisible Russia became equally ardent champions of separatism . . .

[The following documents of the time shed new light on the Sovietization of Georgia]:

(1) * To the Revolutionary Council of War of the Caucasian Front. For Ordzhonikidze.
Received your complaining letter. You were mistaken in regarding my inquiry, which is my duty, as lack of confidence. I hope that before a personal meeting between us, you will abandon this unbecoming tone of injury. #96 April 3, 1920. Lenin

(2) * To Baku via Rostov.
To the Member of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Caucasian Front Ordzhonikidze:
(To be delivered through responsible persons and the delivery reported toy Sklyansky of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic.)
The Central Committee orders you to remove all units from the territory of Georgia to the border and to refrain from incursion into Georgia. After negotiations with Tiflis, it is clear that peace with Georgia is not excluded.
Immediately report all the most accurate facts about the rebels.
By order of the Politburo: Lenin. Stalin #004/109 May 5, 1920.

(3) [A letter typed on stationary of the commander-and-chief of all the armed forces of the Republic dated Moscow, February 17, 1921, #864, superscribed “Secret, Personal,” addressed to the Vice-Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of War of the Republic. It bore two inscriptions on the margin – one by Sklyansky, forwarding it to Lenin; the other by Lenin, returning it to Sklyansky. The essence of the text was]:

* Upon the initiative of the command of the Second Army, we are confronted with the accomplished fact of incursion into Georgia: the borders of Georgia were crossed and the Red Army has already clashed with the Army of Georgia . . .
Commander-in-Chief, S. Kamenev,
Military Commissar of the Staff, [S.] Danilov.
Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Council of War, [P.] Lebedev.


(4) Ekaterinburg, Secret

*To Moscow, To Sklyansky.
Please write me a brief memorandum on the question of military operations against Georgia, when these operations began, by whose order, and the rest. I need the memorandum for the plenum. Trotsky.
#16 February 21, 1921.

(5) * (written by Lenin; copy of a secret document)
(typed, signed by Comrade Sklyansky)
Absolutely Secret.
The Central Committee was inclined to permit Army II to support actively the uprising in Georgia and the occupation of Tiflis, while maintaining the international norms, and on condition that all the members of the Revolutionary War Council II, after seriously considering all the evidence, are certain of success. We warn you that we are sitting without bread, because of the transport, and therefore we will not give you a single train or a single car. We are compelled to obtain from the Caucasus only grain and oil. We demand an immediate reply by direct wire under the signature of all the members of the Revolutionary War Council II, as well as Smilga, Sytin, Trifonov, Frumkin. Until our reply to the telegrams of all these persons, do not undertake anything decisive.
By order of the Central Committee: Krestinsky. Sklyanksy.

(6) * Comrade Sklyansky, immediately in your own presence have this coded arch-carefully, after photographing the original, and send to Smilga, so that he should personally stand at the direct wire and personally decode it. (Tell the Commander-in-Chief about it without showing it to him.)
Stalin himself will send Ordzhonikidze.
And so, a threefold and manifold carefulness. Under your responsibility.
Lenin. (written in the hand of Comrade Lenin)
February 14, 1921

Menshevik Georgia could not hold out. That was clear to all of us. However, there was no certainty as to the movement and methods of sovietization. I stood for a certain preparatory period of work inside Georgia, in order to develop the uprising and later come to its aid. I felt that after the peace with Poland and the defeat of Wrangel there was no direct danger from Georgia and the denouement could be postponed. Ordzhonikidze, supported by Stalin, insisted the Red Army should immediately invade Georgia, where the uprising had presumably ripened. Lenin was inclined to side with the two Georgian members of the Central Committee. The question in the Politburo was decided on the 14th of February, 1921, when I was in the Urals.

The military intervention passed quite successfully and did not provoke any international complications, if one does not take into account the frantic campaign of the bourgeoisie and the Second International. And yet, the method of the sovietization of Georgia had tremendous significance during the next few years. In regions where the toiling masses prior to the Revolution had managed in most cases to go over to Bolshevism, they accepted subsequent difficulties and sufferings as connected with their own cause. This was not so in the more backward regions, where the sovietization was carried out by the Army. There the toiling masses considered further deprivations a result of the regime imposed form the outside. In Georgia, premature sovietization strengthened the Mensheviks for a certain period and led to the broad mass insurrection in 1924, when, according to Stalin’s own admission, Georgia had to be “replowed anew.”