From Stalin’s viewpoint, this was very unsatisfactory. He had had his chance to make his case and at the last moment he had thrown it away. And the lasting effect was to fix the primary responsibility for the disastrous campaign in Poland solely on himself. There had been searing controversies in the past. The October 1917 decision to seize power and the November 1917 rejection of a broad socialist coalition government had caused uproar in the Central Committee, and for some weeks a number of Central Committee members refused to sit in government with Lenin. The Brest-Litovsk dispute had been still more raucous: Bukharin and his supporters had seriously contemplated forming a government without Lenin. But the controversy over the Soviet–Polish War introduced a fresh element. Stalin, a leading member of the ruling group, was accused of insubordination, personal ambition and military incompetence. It was a remarkable list of faults.
Stalin’s half-cocked reaction is difficult to explain. He was an extremely proud man. He was jealous too — jealous to an inordinate extent. He deeply resented criticism and was easily slighted. He was also very pugnacious. So why did he decide to mumble a few words about the prehistory of the invasion and then go back to his seat? If the boot had been on the other foot, neither Lenin nor Trotski would have failed to give a lengthy speech of self-justification.48 Probably Stalin felt himself on weak ground and had suffered a last-minute collapse of confidence. The evidence was incontrovertible that he had behaved badly, and in any case it was not the first time that his contumacy had been mentioned. At the Eighth Party Congress he had been reprimanded by Lenin for using tactics that led to far too many Red Army soldiers being killed.49 The difference at the Ninth Party Conference was that nothing positive was said about him to balance the negative. He had been disgraced; none of his friends had taken the trouble to speak on his behalf. He saw no point in prolonging his misery by dragging out the discussion. He hated to be seen whingeing.50 His constant need was to appear tough, determined and practical.
Yet he did not intend to forgive and forget. Trotski’s accusation had added yet another grievance to the list of things for Stalin to brood about. The only wonder about this episode is that he did not cultivate a grudge against Lenin. Stalin continued through to the end of his days to express admiration for him. It has been mooted that Stalin regarded Lenin not just as a hero but also as a substitute father to be emulated.51 This is going beyond the evidence. There were many occasions before and after October 1917 when Stalin clashed virulently with Lenin. But about his fundamental esteem for Lenin there is no serious doubt. There was no deference, still less servility; but Stalin exempted Lenin from the treatment he reserved for the rest of the human race — and he was biding his time to take his revenge on Trotski.
17. WITH LENIN
The contretemps between Lenin and Stalin vanished like snow in the sun. The reason was political. In November 1920 Trotski attacked the Soviet trade unions, and suddenly Lenin needed Stalin’s assistance. Conventional trade unionism, according to Trotski, had no place in the revolutionary state; his case was that Sovnarkom safeguarded workers’ interests and that trade unions should be constitutionally subordinated to its commands. This suggestion riled the Workers’ Opposition, which was campaigning to enable the working class to control factories, mines and other enterprises. Lenin objected to the Workers’ Opposition and in practice expected the trade unions to obey the party and government. Yet Trotski’s demand for the formal imposition of this arrangement would affront workers unnecessarily. Lenin vainly tried to get Trotski to back down. Factions gathered around Trotski and Lenin as they wrote furious booklets and addressed noisy meetings. Although Bukharin formed a ‘buffer group’ between the two sides, this group too became a faction. Not only the Workers’ Opposition but also the Democratic Centralists (who, since 1919, had campaigned for a restoration of democratic procedures in party life) entered the fray. The party was enveloped in a bitter conflict lasting the long winter of 1920–1.
Lenin enlisted Stalin to organise supporters in the provinces. Stalin was carrying out the function discharged by Sverdlov in the Brest-Litovsk dispute in 1918. A particular effort was made to discredit the other factions. Party rules were bent but not broken; Lenin knew that Stalin, whom he teased as a ‘wild factionalist’, would do whatever was necessary for victory.1 The Central Committee Secretariat was led by Preobrazhenski, Krestinski and Serebryakov, who were sympathisers of Trotski and Bukharin. Stalin therefore sent trusted supporters of Lenin into the provinces to drum up a following for him and indicate how to organise the campaign against Trotski. While Stalin arranged things in Moscow, Zinoviev travelled the country giving speeches on Lenin’s behalf. Trotski made a similar tour; but as the time of the Tenth Party Congress approached in March 1921, it was clear that victory would lie with the Leninists. Stalin co-ordinated the faction as its delegates assembled in Moscow. The Leninists drew up their own list of candidates for election to the Central Committee. This was gratifying for Stalin. Trotski, who had been in Lenin’s good books in the Soviet–Polish War, had fallen into disfavour.
Factionalism had distracted the Bolsheviks from recognising a fundamental menace to their power. Garrisons of troops were mutinying. Factory workers in the main Russian industrial cities went on strike. And across the entire state there was trouble with the peasantry. Whole provinces in Ukraine, the Volga region and west Siberia rose against the Bolshevik party dictatorship. The demands of mutineers, strikers and village fighters were broadly the same. They wanted a multi-party democracy and an end to grain requisitioning. The revolt of the Tambov province peasantry at last brought the Politburo to its senses, and on 8 February 1921 its members decided on a momentous change in policy. Grain requisitioning would be replaced by a graduated tax in kind. Peasants would be left to trade the rest of their harvest on local markets. This New Economic Policy would take the sting out of rural discontent and allow the Red Army to mop up rebellions. There would be no political concessions: the objective was to save the Soviet state in its existing form from destruction. A commission was established to draft a full policy for consideration at the Tenth Party Congress. There was no dispute in the Politburo. Measures needed to be changed for disaster to be avoided.
The Party Congress, starting on 8 March, was surprisingly quiet. The New Economic Policy (or NEP) in its rudimentary form was approved almost on the nod and the Leninists won the debate on the trade unions without difficulty. Stalin organised the faction as supporters arrived in Moscow. Criticism from the Workers’ Opposition was easily rebuffed; neither Alexander Shlyapnikov nor Alexandra Kollontai managed to stir the Congress with pleas for the working class to have greater direct influence on policy in the Kremlin and on conditions in the workplace. The reason for the easy victory of Lenin’s faction had little to do with Lenin’s eminence or Stalin’s cunning.2 On 28 February the Kronstadt naval garrison, thirty-five miles off the Petrograd coast, had started a mutiny. These sailors in 1917 had been among the party’s most eager supporters. The mutiny shocked the Congress into recognising that the entire Soviet regime was under fundamental threat. Congress delegates volunteered to join the troops sent to suppress the Kronstadters. Trotski led the military offensive on Kronstadt. Unity was everything. Lenin was virtually unopposed when stating that the NEP — a retreat from the economic system of the Civil War years which was becoming known as ‘War Communism’ — should be accompanied by a political clampdown. No factional activity in the party would be permitted and all factions were required to dissolve themselves.