Stalin continued to plan for ‘autonomisation’. His associates Sergei Kirov and Sergo Ordzhonikidze successfully put pressure on the communist leaderships of Azerbaijan and Armenia to approve his scheme in September 1922. So did the Transcaucasian Regional Committee.28 But the Georgian Central Committee, which had always disliked the scheme and knew it would diminish its low popularity in Georgia still further, rejected it. There were also signs that the Ukrainian and Belorussian communist leaderships — and even, in its quiet way, the Armenian one — accepted it only with great reluctance.29 Stalin struck back, claiming that failure to follow his proposals would lead to a continuation of ‘sheer chaos’ in Soviet governmental affairs.30 He pushed the scheme through a commission of the Party Orgburo on 23 September.31 News of this reached Lenin, who spoke with Stalin directly on 26 September.32 Lenin insisted that changes should be made to the draft accepted by the Orgburo commission. He called for an abandonment of ‘autonomisa-tion’. Lenin again demanded a Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia; he continued to insist that Russia (in the form of the RSFSR) should join this federation on an equal basis with the other Soviet republics.33
Lenin had got his information from Budu Mdivani and other Georgian communists. Stalin was losing his grip. Mdivani had previously been in his good books; it was Stalin who had arranged for him to become Chairman of the Georgian Revolutionary Committee in July 1921 instead of Stalin’s internal party critic Pilipe Makharadze.34 Lenin began to take the side of the Georgian communist leaders when they disagreed with Stalin. Yet Lenin did not go all the way with Mdivani. He still supported Stalin on the need for a Transcaucasian Federation as a device to damp down the manifestations of nationalisms in the south Caucasus; and Stalin, from his side, retracted his demand for the RSFSR to ‘autonomise’ the other Soviet republics. He did this reluctantly: when Kamenev advised compromise, he replied: ‘What is required, in my view, is firmness against Ilich.’ Kamenev, who knew his Lenin, demurred and argued that this would merely make matters worse. Stalin at last conceded to Kamenev: ‘I don’t know. Let him do as he thinks sensible.’35 The agreed name of the state was to be the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (or USSR). Stalin did not like the idea but he ceased to raise objections.
He had cause to feel let down by Lenin. The matters dividing them were not of primary importance despite what was said by Lenin at the time (and despite what was written by historians ever after).36 Stalin and Lenin agreed about basic politics. Neither questioned the desirability of the one-party state, its ideological monopoly or its right to use dictatorial and terrorist methods. They concurred on the provisional need for the NEP. They had also reached an implicit agreement that Stalin had an important job in the central party apparatus to block the advance of the Trotskyists and tighten the whole administrative order. Lenin had trusted him with such tasks. Stalin had also been the comrade in whom he had confided when he wanted to commit suicide. Whenever toughness or underhandedness was needed, Lenin had turned to him. Not once had there been a question of basic principle dividing them, and they had worked well together since the trade union dispute. Lenin had been behaving bizarrely in summer 1922 before he fell out with Stalin. But it was Stalin who had to deal with him. His difficulties with Lenin would have tested the patience of a saint.
Their quarrels about Georgia and about the state monopoly of foreign trade touched matters of secondary importance. Lenin was not demanding independence for Georgia; his pleas on behalf of Georgian communists related to the degree of autonomy they should be permitted: it was almost a dispute about political cosmetics. Stalin also had a reasonable case that the Georgian communist regime had been far from even-handed in its treatment of the non-Georgians. The Transcaucasian Federation was a plausible scheme to prevent national oppression in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The foreign trade dispute, too, was nowhere near as clear-cut as Lenin claimed. The state monopoly had failed to thwart the growth of smuggling and currency speculation; and Stalin and his supporters had a point that this led to a loss of state revenues. Yet although Stalin resented Lenin’s intervention, he could not stop the Old Man of Bolshevism carrying on as he liked to the extent that his physical condition permitted.
