Until this decade, the authenticity of Lenin’s dictated correspondence and accounts of the actions he took against Stalin have never been called into question. Recently, however, there have been attempts to demonstrate that evidence of a rupture between the two men was fabricated.74 With no real evidence beyond an assumption of Stalin’s infallibility, some revisionists have proposed that evidence of Lenin’s doubts about Stalin were manufactured and placed in Lenin’s archives by followers of Trotsky!
The strongest evidence of the authenticity of Lenin’s dictated correspondence from this period is that nobody among Lenin’s comrades-in-arms, including Stalin himself, had any doubts about it. Stalin certainly had both the cunning and wherewithal, given his control over the apparat and influence within Lenin’s inner circle, to avoid falling victim to a forgery. He understood the danger of Lenin’s “testament” and went to great pains to neutralize any evidence that he did not enjoy Lenin’s full confidence.
There is no question that Lenin took steps against Stalin during the final weeks of his active life. The reasons are another matter. We must consider not only the intentions and motives of a masterful politician, but also the role played by his sense of imminent death. “Lenin’s last struggle,” as Moshe Lewin has called it, is a clear manifestation of his single-minded will toward political domination and power—his primary personality trait.75 Illness did not break this will but, if anything, intensified it. One can only marvel at the persistence of Lenin, racked by agonizing physical and emotional suffering, as his dogged ascent to power was interrupted by forced intervals in the background. The struggle for power sustained him, energized him, and gave purpose to his battle against affliction. This was not the first time he had taken up a challenge from a comrade-in-arms, but the gravity of his illness in 1922–1923 lent any such challenge a new and urgent significance.
From the standpoint of “the technology of power,” Lenin’s maneuvers in late 1922 and early 1923 relied on the same sources of strength that had carried him through earlier clashes: his unquestionable authority among party functionaries and rivalries among party leaders (primarily between Trotsky and the troika). That Stalin bore the brunt of Lenin’s manipulations appears to be largely a matter of chance. The positions he took in regard to the organization of the USSR and the Georgian Affair represented political miscalculations and turned out to be poorly timed. Finally, he insulted the wife of the ailing leader, exhibiting behavior unbecoming a Bolshevik. Stalin had stepped under the sword himself and so provided Lenin a perfect opportunity to reassert his political authority and subdue other Bolshevik leaders. Lenin probably had no intention of removing Stalin from the party’s upper echelons. Such a move would have thrown a wrench in the mechanism he used to maintain power. Within that mechanism, Stalin was the perfect counterbalance to the ambitions of other Bolshevik leaders, as well as an irreplaceable administrator. Lenin’s actions were part of a rebalancing that required a dialing back of Stalin’s power.
This context is important in understanding Stalin’s reactions to the disfavor being shown him by his teacher. Stalin had every reason to feel genuinely hurt. When all was said and done, his sins were no worse than those he and other Soviet leaders had committed in the past. All Bolshevik leaders contradicted and argued with Lenin, and like Stalin, they all eventually relented. Sometimes Lenin punished these transgressions by removing their perpetrators from the center of power, but he later brought them back into the fold. Lenin usually punished his subordinates out of public view to avoid wounded pride. What was different now? What was behind such a provocative and demonstrative move against a man who had served Lenin so loyally? Stalin apparently found the most convenient explanation for this lashing out, both psychologically and politically, in Lenin’s illness.
As it turned out, the letter to the Georgian Bolsheviks was the last document Lenin dictated. Several days later, his health took a sharp turn for the worse. He did not speak at the party congress; the Politburo swept the Georgian Affair under the carpet and later abandoned the idea of removing Stalin as general secretary. These decisions were not charity on the part of Stalin’s “friends.” They were the outcome of a fierce power struggle that began during Lenin’s final months and continued into 1924.
Although he managed to avoid the more serious dangers posed for him by the political game Lenin was playing during his final months of leadership, Stalin found himself somewhat weakened and thus more dependent on his Politburo colleagues. It is a commonly held view that the Bolshevik oligarchs who inherited power after Lenin’s demise underestimated Stalin and believed him to be harmless and mediocre. This is not true. The members of the Politburo fully appreciated Lenin’s concerns about Stalin and the power he held as general secretary, and they tried to limit this power. But political happenstance and, to no small degree, Stalin’s skillful maneuvering undermined the plans of his rivals and enemies.
The first serious conflict that we know of within the Politburo’s tightly knit opposition to Trotsky occurred during the summer of 1923. After the party congress, the successful neutralization of Lenin’s attack, and the country’s return to relative stability after the horrific famine, Politburo members regained enough peace of mind to take a vacation. In July 1923, while resting in the North Caucasus resort town of Kislovodsk, Grigory Zinoviev came up with a scheme to shift the balance of power within the Politburo to limit Stalin’s influence. In a 30 July letter to Kamenev, who was in Moscow, he launched into a tirade against Stalin: “If the party is destined to go through a stretch (probably a very short one) of Stalin’s sole power—so be it. But I, for one, have no intention of covering up this swinishness.… In reality, there is no troika, there is only Stalin’s dictatorship. Ilyich was a thousand times right. Either a serious way out has to be found, or a long stretch of struggle is inevitable.”76
Although the letter contained no detailed plan, it charged that Stalin was manipulating the Politburo and essentially making unilateral decisions. It is important to note the line “Ilyich was a thousand times right”: Zinoviev was using Lenin’s letters as ammunition against Stalin. In Kislovodsk, he discussed joint action with Bukharin, who was also upset by some of Stalin’s moves, and with other prominent party figures who were vacationing in the south. No specific proposals were entrusted to paper, but Stalin was sent a “spoken letter” (Ordzhonikidze, who was leaving for Moscow, was supposed to convey a message). Because this communication was oral, we do not know in detail what was proposed. From statements made in subsequent years, it appears that the plan involved reorganizing the Central Committee secretariat. Stalin would remain a member, but Zinoviev and Trotsky would also be included. This reorganization would have created a new balance of power in Stalin’s fiefdom: the Central Committee apparat.