Opinion in Bolshevism turned definitively in Lenin’s favour as he gathered support from those who had been pushed aside by Kamenev and Stalin in March. Lenin achieved this by imposing his status and personality on listeners and readers, and he had the advantage that many veteran Bolsheviks, although they had not developed exactly his ideas on strategy, felt uneasy about offering even conditional support to the liberal-led Provisional Government.7 Kamenev too aligned himself with him. Lenin for his part abandoned some of his more outrageous slogans. He no longer demanded the transformation of ‘the imperialist war into a European civil war’. He temporarily ceased in public to urge ‘dictatorship’ and ‘revolutionary war’.8 Although Lenin had not yet made all the adjustments required by the Russian political environment, Kamenev believed that he was not the revolutionary fanatic he had seemed at the Finland Station. Stalin formed the same opinion. Putting aside his previous conciliatory attitude to the Provisional Government, he became an unequivocal advocate of Leninism. Milyukov completed the job for Lenin; and when the Bolshevik Party Conference started on 24 April, he knew that victory would be his.
There was a coming together of Lenin and Kamenev at the Conference to advocate unconditional opposition to the Provisional Government. They also demanded drastic measures to end the Great War. Lenin continued to promote his policy of land nationalisation and the Conference voted in his favour. Stalin, despite having put an opposing case in Pravda, held his tongue. He soon felt vindicated: Lenin became convinced in midsummer that the land should be handed over to the peasantry through ‘land socialisation’.
Stalin and Lenin had been allies on the national question since before the Great War and it was Stalin who gave the report to the Conference. Both sought to make the Bolsheviks attractive to non-Russians in the former Russian Empire. The result, though, was the Conference’s most contentious debate. The majority in the preparatory commission voted against Stalin and for Georgi Pyatakov. Most Bolsheviks did not like the commitment of Lenin and Stalin to national self-determination, including even the possibility of secession from the former Russian Empire. It seemed that official policy ignored internationalist principles and indulged nationalism; this appeared to neglect both global economic trends and the interests of the world’s working classes. Bolshevik policy supposedly ought to give proletarian revolution precedence over national self-determination. According to Lenin, Pyatakov underestimated the hatred for Russia and Russians in the borderlands. Hostility would be dissipated only if the Ukrainians and Finns were told they had the right to independence. He predicted that such an offer would allay anti-Russian feelings and reconcile not only Ukraine and Finland but also other non-Russian territories to continued union with Russia.
Stalin picked up these themes and added another. Whatever policy was formulated for the former Russian Empire, he maintained, would have implications abroad. If the Bolsheviks were seen to treat their national minorities decently, they would encourage movements of national liberation around the world. The policy would act as a ‘bridge between West and East’. Stalin’s stirring contribution won the day.9 He had needed support from Lenin and Zinoviev. Nevertheless he had acquitted himself well in the first report he had delivered to a party conference. He had not flinched when picked out for personal criticism. This had come from the veteran Georgian Bolshevik Pilipe Makharadze, who queried how Stalin would handle the ‘separatist aspirations’ of nations in the south Caucasus. Makharadze also wondered whether the establishment of local administrations on a national-territorial basis could solve the problem of the complex national intermingling in Georgia and elsewhere.10 At the very moment Stalin was enjoying himself as the party’s expert on the national question, another Georgian had got to his feet to challenge him. Stalin did not let his irritation show. He concentrated his fire on Pyatakov and Dzierżyński and ignored Makharadze’s barbed questions. Pyatakov was a young Bolshevik theorist who had criticised Lenin’s revolutionary strategy throughout the Great War; Dzierżyński had only recently joined the Bolsheviks from the Polish Marxist organisation and had never accepted Bolshevik official policy on the national question.
Without Lenin’s support, however, Stalin might still not have been elected to the Central Committee. Most delegates hardly knew him; it had to be spelled out that one of his other pseudonyms was Koba: not everyone yet knew him as Stalin. But his basic problem was the possibility that someone might repeat the objections made about him in March. Lenin stepped in: ‘We’ve known com[rade] Koba for very many years. We used to see him in Kraków where we had our Bureau. His activity in the Caucasus was important. He’s a good official in all sorts of responsible work.’ With this recommendation he could breathe again and did not have to face the opposition confronting lesser-known but still controversial candidates such as Teodorovich, Nogin, Bubnov and Glebov-Avilov. Nor did Lenin have to make quite the lengthy speech of defence he had to devote to Kamenev’s candidature. Stalin had climbed to the party’s summit: he came third after Lenin and Zinoviev in the votes for the Central Committee.11
The intensity of political work had been hectic from the moment Stalin had reached Petrograd. A typical day would involve meetings at the Central Committee’s offices at the Kseshinskaya mansion. Often these would last into the night. Stalin was not one of the party’s orators; according to one of his associates, ‘he avoided making speeches at mass meetings’.12 His failings were obvious. His voice did not carry without a microphone13 and he spoke with a thick accent. He did not declaim or swagger like a natural actor. If a speaker from the Central Committee was required, the choice would usually fall upon Grigori Zinoviev (or Lev Trotski and Anatoli Lunacharski who joined the Bolsheviks in summer). Occasionally Lenin, too, turned out for an open meeting after conquering his own initial diffidence. Stalin steered clear of such functions unless specially requested by the Central Committee. Policy-making and organisation were his preferred activities. He also liked tasks associated with the editing of Pravda. Although his work was done behind the scenes, it was not limited to the internal administration of the party. That role fell to Yakov Sverdlov, who headed the Central Committee Secretariat. Stalin was rising in the party without the rest of the party yet noticing. But those who concluded that he was a ‘grey blank’ simply demonstrated their ignorance of central party life.14
He did not get round to moving in with the Alliluev family as agreed in March.15 Yet they had kept the room free for him, and the Alliluev youngsters — especially Anna and Nadya — were eagerly looking forward to his coming. Like other Bolshevik leaders, he slept where and when he could. He was making new friends. He also took out women he fancied. It was a disorderly, exhausting existence, but it was not one without its social pleasures.
Meanwhile the Provisional Government failed to keep clear of trouble after April. Among its problems was conflict between its liberal and socialist members. The Mensheviks Irakli Tsereteli and Mikhail Skobelev and the Socialist-Revolutionary Viktor Chernov insisted that regional self-rule should be granted to Finland and Ukraine. The Kadets walked out on 2 July rather than accept cabinet responsibility. The Socialist-Revolutionary Minister of Military Affairs, Alexander Kerenski, had started an offensive against the Central Powers a few days earlier. Political crisis ensued. The Bolsheviks, having embarrassed the Provisional Government in spring, wanted to test the political waters again. They organised a massive protest demonstration on 4 July. Their slogan was ‘All Power to the Soviets!’ and they aimed to supplant the government. Kronstadt garrison sailors were invited to participate with their weapons in hand. The Provisional Government, supported by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, banned the demonstration. But such was the popular discontent that crowds went on gathering in Petrograd. At the last moment the Bolshevik Central Committee feared the use of superior force by the authorities and strove to call off the demonstration. Yet the Provisional Government had had enough. Lenin’s financial connections with the German government were exposed and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Petrograd Bolsheviks went into hiding as leading figures such as Lev Trotski, Lev Kamenev and Alexandra Kollontai were taken into custody.