Stalin knew that some of his colleagues would raise objections to the strong-armed measures he instigated in Siberia. He was provoking conflict with careful calculation. The Siberian trip allowed him to confront his fellow leaders from a position of strength, as an energetic leader who had succeeded by applying revolutionary methods to pressing problems. The results cast moderation in an unflattering light and made radicalism look more effective. Fissures in the Politburo started to show immediately after he returned to Moscow in February 1928. But he was apparently not quite ready for all-out war. To an outside observer it might seem that by failing to force a showdown, he was letting an exceptional opportunity slip by, but Stalin probably did not see it that way. At the time, there was no clear evidence that he would emerge victorious. This was a pivotal moment in his campaign for sole power, and he turned it into a guerrilla operation, using deceit, patience, and subversion.
Circumstances prevented Stalin from quickly and openly asserting primacy over his Politburo colleagues—and preventing them, in turn, from calling him to account for his recklessness. From the standpoint of his political interests, the leadership could be divided into two groups. The first consisted of potential adversaries, leaders who enjoyed a degree of independent power and influence and would oppose his rise to power. This group included Aleksei Rykov, chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (the country’s premier); Nikolai Bukharin, the party’s chief ideologue and editor of Pravda; Mikhail Tomsky, the leader of Soviet trade unions; Nikolai Uglanov, Moscow party secretary; and Mikhail Kalinin, chairman of the Supreme Soviet, the country’s parliament.8 These leaders, proponents of collective leadership and a gradual transformation of the NEP, were not happy about Stalin’s ambitions or his extreme policies. The second group—only a minority of the Politburo—had close personal ties to Stalin: Vyacheslav Molotov, Central Committee secretary; Kliment Voroshilov, chief of the military commissariat; Grigory Ordzhonikidze, head of the party’s Central Control Commission; and Anastas Mikoyan, head of the trade commissariat. They had looked up to Stalin and followed his lead since the revolution and Civil War. Even his friends, however, were not likely to unquestioningly support his efforts to break down the party’s collective leadership and proclaim himself sole leader. In early 1928 the “Stalin faction” could be rallied and counted on only in time of war.
Waging such a war would be complicated and risky. The fevered four-year standoff with the opposition had created a deep desire for unity. The oppositionists had been castigated as schismatics who had put their personal political ambitions before the interests of the party. Any leader who openly threatened the party’s newfound unity would find himself in an unpopular position. How could Stalin fight for dominance without undermining unity? There was only one solution: to surreptitiously provoke a split and then cast himself as an injured adherent of unity and his enemies as schismatics. That is the script Stalin followed.
Another concern was that the radical measures Stalin was proposing, measures close to the hearts of party leftists, had huge destructive potential. Two dangers were immediately evident. First, the peasants, knowing that their harvest would be confiscated, might simply plant less. Second, there were worrisome signals coming from the Red Army. Letters from relatives back home complaining of mistreatment were stoking anti-government sentiment in the barracks. Young peasant recruits underwent military training at bases not far from home, and emissaries streamed from the villages to the bases pleading for help.
Lacking sufficient political strength to simply sweep such realities under the rug, Stalin was forced to bide his time. Evidence from the period after his return from Siberia shows him ready for compromise. Resolutions adopted around that time, while expressing approval for the extreme measures already taken, condemned “distortions and excesses.” Stalin’s handling of objections to tactics used in Siberia foreshadowed the brand of political warfare he would favor in subsequent years, before he achieved complete victory. In essence, his approach was to “agree and ignore.” Wishing to avoid a showdown, he put his faith in stealthy manipulation of the bureaucratic machine and a strategic reshuffling of personnel.
Everything depended on the alignment of forces within the Politburo. In 1928, with help from political intrigues, Stalin managed to weaken the Rykov-Bukharin group and strengthen unity among his friends. He also benefited from the foolish mistakes of his opponents—especially Bukharin—and likely from the use of blackmail. He may have made use of recently discovered compromising evidence against Mikhail Kalinin and Yan Rudzutak, unearthed in prerevolutionary police records in 1928 but never brought to light. A transcript of a February 1900 police interrogation has Kalinin stating: “Having been called in for interrogation as a result of a request I submitted, I wish to give frank testimony on my criminal activities.” The transcript shows that Kalinin gave the police detailed information about the operations of his underground organization. Police records also showed that Rudzutak, who was sentenced to ten years’ hard labor in 1909, apparently gave interrogators the names and addresses of members of his organization. The police then conducted searches and seized weapons and propagandistic literature.9 Similar compromising materials Stalin could have used against other members of the top leadership may remain to be found.
Although there is no hard evidence to show that Stalin used these discoveries in his quest for loyal supporters, his relationship with the secret police was such that he would almost certainly have been informed about them, and his using the crude but powerful tool of blackmail would have been entirely in character. Even his friends on the Politburo understood the reasons for the split within its ranks. Stalin’s pontification on the “rightist threat” did not mask his intention of achieving dominance within the Politburo. The war he was waging was starkly personal. In an attempt to reconcile the sides, Stalin’s old friend and loyal follower Ordzhonikidze wrote a frank letter to Rykov amid clashes in the fall of 1928:
Any more fighting within the party is bound to lead to unbelievably bitter upheavals. That has to be our starting point. I am absolutely convinced that we’ll get over this. In terms of grain and other such issues, we can argue and decide, but it shouldn’t lead to fighting.… There are no fundamental disagreements, and that’s the most important thing. … It seems that the relationship between Stalin and Bukharin has really deteriorated, but we need to do everything possible to reconcile them. It can be done.10