Stalin: A Biography полностью

Stalin, however, argued that the construction of socialism was entirely feasible even while no fraternal socialist state existed. The great codifier had to engage in subterfuge here. He had to misquote Lenin’s published texts and, using his organisational authority, prevent embarrassing unpublished speeches and writings from appearing. Such was the contempt in which his enemies held his writings that they did not deign to expose his unorthodoxy; and indeed it is only in retrospect that his heretical teaching came to have any practical significance. In the 1920s it had no direct impact on practical politics. All supporters of the NEP took it for granted that the USSR had to get on with ‘socialist construction’ on its own at a time when no other socialist state existed. The question of how far the Bolsheviks would be able to succeed in this seemed unnecessarily abstract.

The other contenders for the leadership also produced books explaining Leninism to the rest of the party: Trotski, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin. Each invoked the authority of Lenin and claimed to have produced a coherent Leninist strategy. There was nothing intellectually astounding in any of these works, but each author had the knack of giving the impression of being an outstanding intellectual. Trotski, when bored in the Politburo, would pull out a French novel and read it to himself ostentatiously. He was arrogant even by the Politburo’s standards. But his contempt for ‘ignorant’ and ‘ill-educated’ Stalin was universally shared. What they failed to understand was that Problems of Leninism, apart from the heretical point on ‘socialism in one country’, was a competent summary of Lenin’s work. It was well constructed. It contained clear formulations. It was a model of pedagogical steadiness: ideas were introduced and carefully explained from various angles. Nearly all the main themes of Lenin’s life’s work were dealt with. The book’s succinct exposition was recognised at the time, and it went into several subsequent printings.

Stalin’s rivals quite underestimated his determination to prove them wrong in their low opinion of him. He understood where his deficiencies lay. He knew little German, less English and no French. He therefore resumed his attempt to teach himself English.⁷ He had no oratorical flourish. He therefore worked hard on his speeches and let nobody write them for him or edit his drafts. His Marxism lacked epistemological awareness. He therefore asked Jan Sten to tutor him on a weekly basis in the precepts and methods of contemporary Marxist philosophy.⁸

Stalin was meanwhile marking out a distinct profile for himself at the apex of the party. His idea about ‘socialism in one country, taken separately’ was poor Leninism; but it struck a chord with many party committee members who disliked Trotski’s insistence that the October Revolution would wither and die unless socialist seizures of power took place in other powerful countries on the European continent. Stalin, steady advocate of the NEP, contrived to suggest that he deeply believed in the basic potential of progress in the USSR without foreign assistance. Socialism in one country was an exposition of ideological inclination.⁹ Equally important were certain tendencies in Stalin’s thought. His commitment to the NEP was increasingly equivocal. He never followed Bukharin in giving it a rousing endorsement; and increasingly he stipulated the need for higher levels of investment in state industry and for ever heavier taxation of the more affluent peasants. He also continued to insist that workers should be promoted from the factory into administrative posts; his detestation of ‘bourgeois specialists’ remained constant.¹⁰ In line with official party policy he made appointments to party posts on the basis of demonstrable allegiance to Bolshevism before 1917.¹¹

The point is that this configuration of tendencies in ideology and policy had growing appeal for party leaders in Moscow and the provinces. Stalin did not rise to supreme power exclusively by means of the levers of bureaucratic manipulation. Certainly he had an advantage inasmuch as he could replace local party secretaries with persons of his choosing. It is also true that the regime in the party allowed him to control debates in the Central Committee and at Party Congresses. But such assets would have been useless to him if he had not been able to convince the Central Committee and the Party Congress that he was a suitable politician for them to follow. Not only as an administrator but also as a leader — in thought and action — he seemed to fit these requirements better than anyone else.