ALSO BY STEPHEN KOTKIN
Stalin:
Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928
Armageddon Averted:
The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000
Magnetic Mountain:
Stalinism as a Civilization
Steeltown, USSR:
Soviet Society in the Gorbachev Era
Uncivil Society:
1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment
PENGUIN PRESS
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Copyright © 2017 by Stephen Kotkin
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Photograph credits appear here.
Kotkin, Stephen.
Stalin / Stephen Kotkin. volumes cm
Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: Volume I. Paradoxes of power, 1878–1928.
ISBN 9781594203794 (hardcover)
ISBN 9780143127864 (paperback)
Volume II. Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941.
ISBN 9781594203800 (hardcover) / ISBN 9780735224483 (e-book)
1. Stalin, Joseph, 1879–1953. 2. Stalin, Joseph, 1879–1953—Psychology. 3. Heads of state—Soviet Union—Biography. 4. Dictators—Soviet Union—Biography. 5. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1917–1936. 6. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1936–1953. 7. Political culture—Soviet Union—History. 8. Soviet Union—History—1925–1953. I. Title.
DK268.S8K65 2014
947.084”2092—dc23 [B]
2014032906
Maps by Jeffrey L. Ward
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
Version_1
for Alex Levine and Joyce Howe
who, beginning with the rough patches in graduate school, held me together
Midway on life’s journey
I found myself in a dark wood,
for the straight path was lost.
DANTE ALIGHIERI,
The Divine Comedy, 1308–1321
It cannot be called virtue to kill one’s fellow citizens, betray one’s friends, be without faith, without pity, without religion; by these methods one may indeed gain power, but not glory.
NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI,
The Prince, 1513
CONTENTS
ALSO BY STEPHEN KOTKIN
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
PREFACE
MAPS
PART I
EQUAL TO THE MYTH
CHAPTER 1 | Triumph of the Will
CHAPTER 2 | Apocalypse
CHAPTER 3 | Victory
CHAPTER 4 | Terrorism
CHAPTER 5 | A Great Power
PART II
TERROR AS STATECRAFT
CHAPTER 6 | On a Bluff
CHAPTER 7 | Enemies Hunting Enemies
CHAPTER 8 | “What Went On in No. 1’s Brain?”
CHAPTER 9 | Missing Piece
PART III
THREE-CARD MONTE
CHAPTER 10 | Hammer
CHAPTER 11 | Pact
CHAPTER 12 | Smashed Pig
CHAPTER 13 | Greed
CHAPTER 14 | Fear
CODA
LITTLE CORNER, SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1941
SOVIET ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE
PHOTOGRAPHS
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CREDITS
INDEX
PREFACE
But if there isn’t a tsar, who’s going to rule Russia?
ALEXEI, 1917, when his father, Nicholas II, abdicated for both of them
THROUGH THE FIRST THIRTY-NINE YEARS OF HIS LIFE, the achievements of Iosif Stalin (b. 1878) were meager. As a teenager, he had abandoned a successful trajectory, with high marks in school, to fight tsarist oppression, and published first-rate poems in a Georgian newspaper, which he recited in front of others. (“To this day his beautiful, sonorous lyrics echo in my ears,” one person would recall.) But his profession—revolutionary—made for a “career” of hiding, prison, exile, escape, recapture, penury. It had gotten to the point, in far northern Siberia, that even escape had become impossible. He persevered, known only to the tsarist police and some of his fellow revolutionaries, who were dispersed in remote internal exile, like him, or in Europe. Only the world-shattering Great War, the shocking abdication of the tsar and tsarevich in February 1917, the return of Vladimir Lenin to Russia that April thanks to imperial German cynicism, the suicidal Russia-initiated military offensive in June, and a fatal pas de deux between Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky and Supreme Commander Lavr Kornilov in August had altered Stalin’s life prospects. All of a sudden, he had become one of the four leading figures in an improbable Bolshevik regime. He played an outsized role in the 1918–21 civil war and territorial reconquest, and a foremost role in the invention of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1922, five years removed from desolate isolation near the Arctic Circle, he found himself in the uncanny position of being able to build a personal dictatorship within the Bolshevik dictatorship, thanks to Lenin’s appointing him Communist party general secretary (April), followed by Lenin’s incapacitating stroke (May). Stalin seized that opportunity passionately and ruthlessly. By 1928, he had decided that 120 million peasants in Soviet Eurasia had to be forcibly collectivized. The years 1917–28 proved to be astonishingly eventful. But the years from 1929 through 1941—the period covered in this volume—would prove still more so.
This volume, too, examines Stalin’s power in Russia, recast as the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union’s power in the world. But whereas in the preceding volume he was offstage for long stretches as global developments unfolded around him, now the opposite and, in fact, more difficult challenge of narration awaits: Stalin is present on nearly every page. He is now deep into the violent reshaping of all Eurasia that he announced at the end of volume I, continuing to micromanage the ever-expanding party-state machinery, delving into the granular details of armaments production and grain collections, while also conducting a comprehensive foreign policy touching all corners of the planet and, for the first time, overseeing cultural affairs. But volume II takes place largely in his office, and, indeed, in his mind. Whereas right through 1927, he had not appeared to be a sociopath in the eyes of those who worked most closely with him, by 1929–30 he was exhibiting an intense dark side. As the decade progresses, he will go from learning to be a dictator to becoming impatient with dictatorship and forging a despotism in mass bloodshed. Volume I’s analytical burden of explaining where such power comes from remains, but volume II raises questions of why he arrested and murdered immense numbers of loyal people in his own commissariats, officer corps, secret police, embassies, spy networks, scientific and artistic circles, and party organizations. What could he have been thinking? How was this even possible?