believed that the right tactics for the Bolsheviks were to support the provisional Government and rally to the defence of the fatherland; and this line, which would have assimilated the policy of the Bolsheviks to that of the Social-Democratic parties of the Second International, was taken editorially in Pravda. Lenin, chafing inactively in Switzerland, denounced in his ‘Letters from Afar’ the weak-kneed Bolsheviks of the capital. When later he reached Petrograd in the sealed train and propounded his famous ‘April theses’ of no cooperation with the provisional Government or with any policy that would keep Russia in the war, he quickly rallied his faltering party, and geared it for the second revolution. Thereafter Stalin remained a faithful and undeviating disciple.
1917 Revolution
Enhanced Status in the Party
The difficulty for the biographer of this as of the earlier period of Stalin’s life is to disentangle the authentic contemporary evidence from the mass of more recent and largely apocryphal accretions. It seems that he first became a figure familiar to party cadres at the time of his election to a new central committee of nine members in April, 1917, and after the difficult July days, when Lenin and Zinoviev were compelled to retreat to Finland and Kamenev, Trotsky and others were arrested, Stalin emerged to lead the party. On their return to the political scene, he retired again into the shadows. While there is but little information relating to any participation by him in the work of the Revolutionary Military Committee during the actual rising, he nevertheless undoubtedly performed an important function in the editorial office of Pravda. He supported Lenin against Zinoviev and Kamenev in the controversy over the preparation and timing of the October revolution and against Trotsky over Brest-Litovsk; and though his interventions recorded in the minutes of the central committee were on both occasions brief and inconspicuous, his fidelity to Lenin in these troubled times must have won the gratitude of the leader and greatly enhanced his status in the party. He was appointed People’s Commissar for Nationalities in October, 1917, and in this capacity one of his first measures was to proclaim Finland’s independence from Russia, at a conference in Helsinki. In spite of the opposition of elements within the party, who regarded this as an unwarranted concession to bourgeois nationalism, the decree was officially signed by Lenin and Stalin in December. He also played an active part in the drafting of the 1918 constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic and he was still more closely concerned four years later in framing the federal constitution of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.
Breach with Trotsky
The civil war provided fresh scope for Stalin’s unflagging energy and undoubted administrative talents. That the civil war provided the occasion of Stalin’s first open breach with Trotsky; that Stalin and Voroshilov intrigued busily against Trotsky, criticizing both his disposition of his armies and his use of former Tsarist officers; that recriminations flared up to a dangerous point over the defence of Tsaritsin (renamed Stalingrad some years later) against Denikin; that Lenin tried to smooth over these animosities and to retain the services of two invaluable though quarrelsome lieutenants – so much is clear. But the historian of the future may well find it a superhuman task to extract the grain of truth from the chaff of subsequent controversy and the haystack of misrepresentation beneath which Trotsky’s achievements have been hidden. For the rest Stalin’s name figures little in the literature of the period. At any time up to 1922 the general impression which he made on his colleagues was apparently one of undistinguished competence; though admitted to the first rank of Bolshevik leaders he seemed the least remarkable of them, the most lacking in personality. But his capacity for hard and regular work more than balanced the more spectacular talents of his rivals, and indeed it could not have escaped the notice of a few that Stalin’s influence in the state and his hold on the party machine had grown enormously. At the end of the civil war he filled three significant posts: membership of the Politburo, Commissar of Nationalities, and Commissar for Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection (Rabkrin).
In March, 1922, he was appointed Secretary-General of the party – a newly created post obviously suited to his rather pedestrian gifts. Though not regarded by anyone as a potential stepping-stone to supreme power, nevertheless this post, considered in conjunction with his other spheres of influence, rendered his personal position most formidable. Although Lenin still held the reins, Stalin’s influence was becoming comparable to that of Lenin. In May of the same year Lenin had a first stroke from which he recovered, temporarily and incompletely, to be finally stricken by a second in March, 1923. From this moment, though Lenin lingered on, totally incapacitated, till January, 1924, the succession was open. Had anyone seriously canvassed Stalin’s chances, a letter from Lenin to the central committee of the party – commonly, though unwarrantably, known as Lenin’s testament – might have seemed a decisive obstacle. Writing at the end of December, 1922, with a postscript of January 4, 1923, Lenin who evidently knew that his days were numbered, passed in review the principal party leaders. He noted that Stalin since he had become Secretary-General had ‘concentrated in his hands an immense power’, and expressed the fear that he might not always use it prudently. He described Stalin as ‘too rough,’ and proposed that he should be replaced by someone ‘more patient, more loyal, more polite, more attentive to the comrades, less capricious, &c.’ Fortunately for Stalin, the letter also treated Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin with scant respect, so that there was a powerful interest in limiting its circulation – though it was familiar to all members of the central committee, and its authenticity has never been contested. But Stalin must be credited with extraordinary skill in surmounting so formidable an obstacle. When the twelfth party congress met in April, 1923, Lenin was known, though not yet publicly admitted, to be past recovery. The talk was of a group of three (‘troika’) to take over his authority; and the names of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin were freely mentioned. Stalin, with consummate tact, defended Zinoviev and Kamenev rather than himself from attacks made jointly on all three of them. Trotsky was gradually edged on one side. Attacks on him for undermining the unity of the party began in the autumn of that year.
The year 1924 was decisive for Stalin’s ascent to power. During this year he for the first time exhibited to the full that amazing political dexterity which made all his rivals look like bunglers and amateurs. In the first place he brought about what may not unfairly be called the ‘canonization’ of Lenin. From the moment of Lenin’s death, and almost entirely as the result of Stalin’s initiative, every word that Lenin had uttered or written came to be treated as sacrosanct – as Lenin himself had treated the works of Marx and Engels; and everyone who had differed from him was now suspect not merely as a heretic in the past, but as a potential heretic in the future. This weapon was aimed primarily at Trotsky, whose impetuous character and long record of past bickerings with Lenin made him highly vulnerable. But it could also serve against Zinoviev and Kamenev, who had more than once been severely castigated by Lenin for their backslidings. Stalin had been too prudent or not conspicuous enough to come under the lash – except in the unofficial ‘testament’ now being gradually consigned to oblivion. This was a negative asset. But immense pains were taken, both at this time and afterwards, to build up a positive picture of Stalin as Lenin’s ablest coadjutor, most faithful disciple, and chosen political executor.
Control of Party Machine Power Strengthened
Secondly, Stalin, well aware of the prestige attaching in the party to the master of Marxist theory, set out to establish his credentials in that field. In the spring of 1924 he delivered at the Sverdlov University in Moscow a course of lectures on ‘The Foundations of Leninism’ – a competent exposition of the development and application by Lenin of Marxist doctrine. He went on to take the offensive against Trotsky. In the lectures themselves he had followed the usual view that the ultimate success of the Russian revolution depended on the spread of revolution elsewhere in Europe. But the revolutionary failures of 1923 in Germany suggested that this consummation was remote; and the new international status of the Soviet Union, which had been recognized in 1924 by all the principal Powers except the United States, made the encouragement of world revolution an increasingly inconvenient policy. At the end of 1924 Stalin issued a revised edition of his lectures in which he proclaimed the doctrine of ‘Socialism in one country’. Trotsky could thus be branded as an internationalist, a champion of the outmoded slogan of ‘permanent revolution’.
Thirdly, Stalin strengthened his control