Stalin: A Biography полностью

Stalin had worked closely with the GPU since returning from the Soviet–Polish War.⁵ This reflected the interdependence of party and police as well as his personal preoccupation with considerations of security. The Soviet dictatorship was maintained by repression, and no Bolshevik — not even ‘softer’ ones like Kamenev and Bukharin — failed to appreciate the regime’s dependence on the GPU. As Stalin began to show his confidence, Lenin’s widow Krupskaya temporarily changed her behaviour towards the General Secretary. She no longer said what she thought of him. Nor could she prevent historical confections about his career from appearing in print. Her authority in the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment was on the wane.⁶ In order to reassert herself she presented herself as the prime annalist of Lenin in his time. She undertook this also as a means of coping with bereavement: she had written a sketch for Lenin’s biography within weeks of his death. In May she sent it to Stalin asking what he thought of her project.⁷ Stalin, who had his own reasons to build a bridge towards her, wrote back approvingly. Certainly he read the piece carefully since he took the trouble to correct a mistaken date.⁸

Stalin and Krupskaya were setting themselves up as the high priest and priestess of the Lenin cult. Lenin’s image was ubiquitous. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad and books and articles on him were produced in vast quantities. Paradoxically this new cult required the censoring of Lenin’s works. Comments by Lenin at variance with Stalin’s policies were banned. Lenin could not be allowed to appear as having ever made mistakes. An example was the speech to the Ninth Party Conference in which Lenin admitted that the Polish War had been a blunder and declared that ‘Russian forces’ alone were insufficient for the building of communism in Russia.⁹ It was withheld from publication. Stalin also censored his own works so as to enhance his reputation for consistent loyalty. At Lenin’s fiftieth-birthday celebration in 1920 Stalin’s eulogy had included a reference to past failures of judgement. A decade later when Stalin was approached for permission to reprint the speech, he refused: ‘Comrade Adoratski! The speech is accurately transcribed in essence although it does require some editing. But I wouldn’t want to publish it: it’s not nice to talk about Ilich’s mistakes.’¹⁰ Christianity had to give way to communism and Lenin was to be presented to society as the new Jesus Christ. He also had to be displayed as quintessentially Russian if communism’s appeal was to spread among the largest national group. Stalin forbade mention of Lenin’s mixed ethnic ancestry — the fact that Lenin’s great-grandfather had been Jewish was kept secret.¹¹

Meanwhile Stalin was eager to put himself forward as a theorist. He had had no time to write a lengthy piece since before 1917; and no Bolshevik leader was taken seriously at the apex of the party unless he made a contribution on doctrinal questions. Despite the many other demands on his time and intellect, he composed and — in April 1924 — delivered a course of nine lectures for trainee party activists at the Sverdlov University under the title Foundations of Leninism.

Quickly brought out as a booklet, it was a work of able compression. Stalin avoided the showiness of similar attempts by Zinoviev, Trotski, Kamenev and Bukharin, who in private liked to disparage him. The rumour was also put about that, in so far as Stalin’s words had merit, he had plagiarised the contents of a booklet by a certain F. Xenofontov. In fact Stalin was a fluent and thoughtful writer even though he was no stylist. His exegesis of Lenin’s doctrines was concise and to the point and his lectures were organised in a logical sequence. He was doing what Lenin had not undertaken on his own behalf, and by and large he succeeded in codifying the ragbag of writings, speeches and policies of Lenin’s lifelong oeuvre. He denied that Bolshevik ideas were applicable exclusively to ‘Russian reality’. For Stalin, Lenin had developed a doctrine of universal significance: ‘Leninism,’ he proclaimed,¹²

Stalin contended that Lenin was the sole great heir to the traditions of Marx and Engels.