One sign of the unhealthy political situation was the noisy campaign waged under the banner of fighting foreign threats. In 1927, a series of international crises was used to pump up war hysteria: a note from Britain’s foreign secretary, Austen Chamberlain, objecting to Soviet anti-British propaganda in February; a raid on the Soviet embassy in Beijing in April; the breaking off of diplomatic relations with Great Britain in May; the June murder of the Soviet ambassador to Poland, Petr Voikov, who had helped organize the 1918 execution of Russia’s royal family; and repression against Communists in China. Calls for vigilance and military readiness spawned rumors and panic buying of manufactured goods and food supplies “in case of war.” The government’s fanning of martial passions was largely an attempt to counter criticism from the left, which was using foreign policy difficulties as fodder for attacks against the majority.
All of the Bolshevik leaders, both those still in power and those who had been expelled from office, took part in fanning militaristic passions. Stalin was no exception. News of Voikov’s murder found Stalin vacationing in the south. In an 8 June coded telegram to Moscow he offered his take on the situation: “Received about murder of Voikov by monarchist. Sense England’s hand here. They want to provoke conflict with Poland. They want to repeat Sarajevo.” By comparing Voikov’s murder with the event generally seen as the trigger for World War I, Stalin showed that he felt war was imminent.98 In the coded message he urged “maximal caution” in regard to Poland but recommended conducting ruthless reprisals and purges within the USSR:
Without delay, all prominent monarchists in our prisons or labor camps should be proclaimed hostages. We should immediately shoot five or ten monarchists and announce that with every assassination attempt, new groups of monarchists will be shot. We should give the OGPU a directive about house-to-house searches and arrests of monarchists and any sort of White Guardists throughout the entire USSR in order to completely liquidate them using all measures. Voikov’s murder gives us grounds to take revolutionary measures to completely crush monarchist and White Guard cells in all parts of the USSR. The task of fortifying our own rear demands this.99
These statements foreshadow some of the hallmarks of Stalin’s policies in the coming years. Relative prudence in foreign policy (“maximal caution”) always went hand-in-hand with exceptional ruthlessness at home. The idea of “fortifying our own rear” through repression would be a cornerstone of Stalin’s policy in the 1930s.
The Politburo members who had remained in Moscow adopted Stalin’s recommendation. A wave of repressions swept the country. On 10 June 1927, Pravda reported that twenty former members of the nobility—“hostages”—had been shot. The barbaric executions of innocent people severely damaged the Soviet government’s reputation. The bloodthirsty behavior of the collective leadership suggested that all the top Bolsheviks were cut from the same cloth, but this is true only up to a point. On many key issues, Politburo members were capable of independent judgment. That the members of this body did not think in lockstep offered a kernel of hope that the Bolshevik authorities could govern with a degree of rationality.
One of the last glimmers of true collective leadership could be seen in the summer of 1927. This was a time of escalating crisis, and the Politburo reached its decisions on important political matters through genuine debate. A series of short letters from Molotov to Stalin, who spent that June and July vacationing in the south, offer a window onto these debates. The main points of conflict were the nation’s policies toward China and Great Britain and the question of expelling Trotsky and Zinoviev from the Central Committee. Politburo members were still conducting themselves rather independently and forming surprising (in light of subsequent events) tactical coalitions. For example, Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov, Rykov, and Rudzutak100 were critical of the policy toward China, where Moscow insisted, without success, on cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists. (Voroshilov “has reached the point of groundless name-calling toward ‘your leadership over the past few years,’” Molotov complained in a letter to Stalin dated 4 July 1927.) Molotov and Bukharin, who enjoyed Stalin’s support, defended the correctness of the policy.101 Opinions were evenly split on the fates of Trotsky and Zinoviev. Kalinin,102 Rykov, Ordzhonikidze, and Voroshilov believed that their expulsion from the Central Committee should be delayed until the party congress that fall. In telegrams from the south, Stalin unsuccessfully objected. Only after he demanded that his vote be counted in absentia and Kalinin joined those in favor of immediate expulsion did the Politburo resolve in late June to advance the timetable.103 Nevertheless, the implementation of this decision was delayed. The opposition leaders were not expelled during the Central Committee plenum in late July–August but in October. Molotov, fresh from a contentious Politburo meeting on 4 July 1927, sent Stalin an anxious letter:
The most unpleasant thing is the situation within the Seven.104 In terms of questions concerning the opposition, China, and the ARK [Anglo-Russian Unity Committee], you can already see more or less distinct divisions, and over and over we’re split down the middle with one deciding vote.… I’m increasingly wondering whether you’ll need to come to Moscow earlier than scheduled. As undesirable as that might be in health terms, judge for yourself what the situation is.… The symptoms are bad; you can’t count on stability. I haven’t talked to anyone about this, but I feel the situation isn’t good.105
How justified were Molotov’s expressions of alarm? Judging from the correspondence, Stalin took these reports in stride: “I am not afraid of the situation in the group. Why—I’ll explain when I come.”106 He had every reason for optimism. The clashes in the Politburo did not pose a serious threat to any of the Bolshevik oligarchs, including him. A stable balance of power was taking hold within the collective leadership. The summertime disputes Molotov described showed that the conflict within the Politburo was not among combating groups bent on crushing one another. As Stalin’s follower, Molotov acted in conjunction with Bukharin. Rykov, who was close to Bukharin, was acting in coordination with Stalin’s old friend Voroshilov. Kalinin, who had no strong alliances, moved from camp to camp. This sort of debate and formation of blocs was usual and helpful to the Politburo’s functioning. The future of the collective leadership depended on the extent to which Bolshevik leaders were prepared to follow the rules of the oligarchy. Stalin was the weakest link in this chain.
Once the very ambitious Trotsky and Zinoviev were removed, only one power-hungry member remained in the Politburo: Stalin. The others, for a variety of reasons, were not capable of pretending to supreme power. In the pivotal post of general secretary, Stalin used the battle against the left opposition to strengthen his position. The schism within the party permitted him to play the role of preserver of Lenin’s legacy and strengthened his control over the party apparat and state security. These advantages did not assure him victory, but they shifted the odds in his favor.