What we are dealing with here is either a misunderstanding or a casual approach… I have interpreted today’s note from you to my name (to the Politburo) as you posing the question of my departure from the Agitprop Department. You will recall that this job in agitation and propaganda was
Stalin’s patience had snapped. This was obvious in his simultaneous request to step down from the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities’ Affairs.5 He wanted and needed to be appreciated. Asking to resign was his usual way of signalling this. Lenin understood the code and backed down. Stalin was too important a member of his team to be allowed to leave.
Lenin distrusted Trotski after the trade union dispute. What also worried him was that Trotski wished to raise the influence of state economic planning in the NEP. Trotski was not the only problem for Lenin; the entire central leadership made life difficult for him. When even the head of the Soviet trade union movement Mikhail Tomski refused to toe the party line, Lenin called for his expulsion from the Central Committee.6 The leading group had not been so fissiparous since 1918. When Lenin’s request was turned down, he was at his wits’ end and did not mind saying so. The ill health of several of his comrades, as the immense physical strain of recent years took its toll, aggravated the situation. Zinoviev had two heart attacks. Kamenev had a chronic cardiac condition. Bukharin had been very poorly and Stalin had suffered from appendicitis. In the absence of these strong supporters of the NEP, Lenin alone had had to implement the measures decided by the Politburo.7 He was eager to have Stalin back at his side. Having recruited him to the Leninist cause in the trade union dispute, Lenin supported a proposal to make him General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party.
Molotov’s year in charge of the Secretariat had not been a success;8 indeed no one since Sverdlov’s death in March 1919 had got on top of the job.9 Lenin was disappointed. He and Molotov had regularly conspired at Central Committee meetings. Passing a message to Molotov, he ordered: ‘You’re going to make a speech — well, speak out as sharply as possible against Trotski!’ He added: ‘Rip up this note!’ A furious row followed between Molotov and Trotski, who knew that Molotov had been put up to it.10 Lenin’s own health gave him trouble in 1921. He doubted Molotov’s ability to rein back Trotski in his absence. Lenin concluded that a firmer grip should be applied in the Party Orgburo and Secretariat.
It was in this atmosphere that Stalin’s candidature as Party General Secretary with Vyacheslav Molotov and Valeryan Kuibyshev as his Assistant Secretaries was informally canvassed at the Eleventh Party Congress in March–April 1922. Yevgeni Preobrazhenski, one of Trotski’s allies, saw what was coming. Taking the platform, he took exception to Stalin’s multiplicity of posts.11 Preobrazhenski was complaining about the way that Stalin was accumulating excessive central power; but above all he was arguing that someone with so many posts could not carry out all his functions effectively. At any rate there was no formal decision at the Congress about the General Secretaryship; and when the matter was discussed at the next Central Committee plenum, on 3 April, the complaint was made that Lenin and his close associates had preempted debate by agreeing to pick Stalin for the job. Apparently Lenin had written ‘General Secretary’ next to Stalin’s name in the list of candidates he put forward for election to the Central Committee.12 But Kamenev smoothed things over and Stalin’s appointment was confirmed on condition that he delegated much more to his deputies in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (or Rabkrin) and the Nationalities’ Affairs Commissariat. The party had to come first.13
