The book outlines several supposed heresies to be avoided by Soviet Marxists. First and foremost, Stalin argued against those who thought that economic transformation could be effected by the mere application of political will. Stalin maintained that ‘laws’ of development conditioned what was possible under socialism as much as under capitalism.33 Stupendous hypocrisy was on display here. If ever there had been an attempt to transform an economy through sheer will and violence, it had been at the end of the 1920s under Stalin’s leadership.
But in 1952 Stalin was determined to avoid further tumult. He very much wanted to end speculation that the kolkhozes might soon be turned into fully state-owned and state-directed collective farms (sovkhozy). For the foreseeable future, he insisted, the existing agricultural organisational framework would be maintained. Ideas about the construction of ‘agrotowns’ were also to be put aside. Similarly he continued to insist that investment in the capital-goods sector of industry had to take precedence in the USSR state budget. Although an increase of goods produced for Soviet consumers was a priority, it still had to take second place to machine tools, armaments and lorries and indeed to iron and steel in general. Stalin was writing exclusively about economics. His was not a general treatise on political economy. Yet while recommending steady maturation rather than any sharp break in economic policies and structures, he offered a firm implicit rationale for the existing system of politics. Stalin was content with his labours in the past few decades. The political institutions, procedures and attitudes which already existed were to remain in place while the Leader was alive and long afterwards.
In international relations, though, he anticipated a more dynamic development. Stalin posed two questions:34
a) Is it possible to assert that the well-known thesis expounded by Stalin before the Second World War about the relative stability of markets in the period of the general crisis of capitalism remains in force?
b) Is it possible to assert that the well-known thesis of Lenin, as expounded by him in spring 1916, that, despite the rotting away of capitalism, ‘on the whole, capitalism is growing immeasurably faster than previously’ remains in force?
As theorist-in-chief of the world communist movement, Stalin answered as follows: ‘I don’t think it is possible to make this assertion. In the light of the new conditions arising in connection with the Second World War, both theses need to be regarded as having lost their force.’35 He looked east for his explanation:36
But at the same time there has occurred a breaking away from the capitalist system by China and other popular-democratic countries in Europe, which together with the Soviet Union have created a single, powerful socialist camp confronting the camp of capitalism. The economic result of the existence of two opposed camps has been that the single, all-embracing world market has fallen apart with the consequence that we now have two parallel world markets also opposing each other.
Stalin asserted that the world had been changed by the numerical increase in communist states. The territorial contraction of the global capitalist market would not end but instead would intensify the rivalries among capitalist economies.37 Although Germany and Japan had been militarily humbled, they would recover industrially and commercially to compete fiercely with the USA, the United Kingdom and France. The victors themselves had conflicting interests. The USA aimed to be the globe’s dominant capitalist power and sought an end to the empires of its Western allies. A Third World War was to be expected. Stalin put it dogmatically: ‘In order to eliminate the inevitability of war it is necessary to annihilate imperialism.’38 In old age he cleaved to the credo that capitalism was doomed. He also continued to believe that socialism had an inherent capacity to nurture technological advance. This was an old Marxist idea. For Marx and Lenin it was axiomatic that capitalist development would eventually enter a cul-de-sac and would actively prevent the development of industrial products of general human benefit.39
The aspect of Stalin’s thought that has captured the greatest attention, however, is his attitude to Jews. No irrefutable evidence of anti-semitism is available in his published works. His denial before the First World War that the Jews were a nation was made on technical grounds; it cannot be proved that he defined nationhood specifically in order to exclude Jews.40 He did not refuse to allow Jewish people the right to cultural self-expression after the October Revolution; indeed his People’s Commissariat for Nationalities’ Affairs gave money and facilities to groups promoting the interests of Jews.41 Yet the charges against him also included the accusation that his supporters highlighted anti-semitic themes in the struggle against Trotski, Kamenev and Zinoviev in the 1920s.42 Within his family he had opposed his daughter’s dalliance with the Jewish film-maker Alexei Kapler.43 Yet the fact that his followers exploited anti-Jewish feelings in internal party disputes does not make him personally an anti-semite. As a father, moreover, he had much reason to discourage Svetlana from having anything to do with the middle-aged, womanising Kapler.
His campaign against ‘rootless cosmopolitanism’ cannot be automatically attributed to hatred of Jews as Jews. He moved aggressively against every people in the USSR sharing nationhood with peoples of foreign states. The Greeks, Poles and Koreans had suffered at his hands before the Second World War for this reason.44 Campaigns against cosmopolitanism started up when relations between the Soviet Union and the USA drastically worsened in 1947.45 At first Jews were not the outstanding target. But this did not remain true for long. A warm reception was accorded by twenty thousand Jews to Golda Meir at a Moscow synagogue in September 1948 after the foundation of Israel as a state.46 This infuriated Stalin, who started to regard Jewish people as subversive elements. Yet his motives were of Realpolitik rather than visceral prejudice even though in these last years some of his private statements and public actions were undeniably reminiscent of crude antagonism towards Jews.
Yet Beria and Kaganovich, who was Jewish, absolved their master of anti-semitism.47 (Not that they were moral arbiters on anything.) Certainly Kaganovich felt uncomfortable at times. Stalin’s entourage were crude in their humour. One day Stalin asked: ‘But why do you pull so very gloomy a face when we’re laughing at the Jews? Look at Mikoyan: when we’re laughing at the Armenians, Mikoyan laughs along with us at the Armenians.’ Kaganovich replied:48
You see, comrade Stalin, you have good knowledge of national feelings and character. Evidently what was expressed in the character of the Jews was the fact that they were often given a beating and they reacted like a mimosa. If you touch it, it instantly closes up.
Stalin relented and Kaganovich, hardly the most sensitive of men, was allowed to stay out of the banter. The episode by itself does not exculpate Stalin; and it must be added that some of his remarks to others in the early 1950s were vicious in the extreme about Soviet Jews. Perhaps he turned into an anti-semite right at the end. Or possibly he was using violent language in order to drum up political support. He was too inscrutable to allow a verdict.
What is clear is that the mind of Stalin is irreducible to a single dimension. Some see him as a Russian nationalist. For others the driving force of his ideas was anti-semitism. A further school of thought postulated that in so far as he had ideas they were those of a Realpolitiker; this version of Stalin appears in various guises: the first is a leader who pursued the traditional goals of the tsars, the second is an opportunistic statesman yearning to stand tall alongside the leaders of the other great powers. And there are some — nowadays remarkably few — who describe him as a Marxist.