Stalin remained uneasy about factional regrouping. His operational code was: once an oppositionist, always an oppositionist. If given reason to re-expel adversaries from public life, he was unlikely to take a kindly approach.
This tendency to see conspiratorial linkages among those who were not on his side was detectable in a note he sent to Ordzhonikidze in 1930. The OGPU had conducted interrogations of a large number of former Imperial Army officers and discovered that several had put their political hopes in Mikhail Tukhachevski. Although not a scintilla of proof was found that Tukhachevski planned a
At any rate, Tukhachevski has turned out to be captive to anti-Soviet elements and has been especially worked over by anti-Soviet elements from the ranks of the Rightists. That’s what comes out of the materials [of the interrogations]. Is this possible? Of course it’s possible once it has failed to be excluded. Obviously the Rightists are ready to go to the lengths of a military dictatorship if only this would free them from the C[entral] C[ommittee], from kolkhozes and sovkhozes, from Bolshevik rates of development of industry.
Stalin was in no doubt: Tukhachevski, Kondratev and Bukharin were leading figures in this disloyal ‘camp’ of the Rightists.15 Only after the OGPU had done its work did he allow himself to believe that Tukhachevski was ‘100% clean’.16
He drove his ideas like iron bolts into the minds of his associates. Molotov, Ordzhonikidze, Kaganovich, Voroshilov and a few others were his confidants, and his implicit objective was to form a fanatical Kremlin gang devoted to himself as boss. Anyone who got in his way was expelled. In October 1930 he took offence at the People’s Commissar for Finances. He wrote to the Politburo ordering: ‘Hang Bryukhanov by the balls for all his present and future sins. If his balls hold out, consider him acquitted in court; if they don’t hold out, drown him in the river.’17 Stalin drew a picture of Bryukhanov suspended in the air and attached to a pulley by a rope which was tugging his penis and testicles back through his legs. Sometimes, though, he aimed his ridicule at himself. Writing to Voroshilov in March 1929, he mocked his own grandiose image: ‘World Leader [
Yet although Stalin could chaff himself in this fashion, he let no gang members do the same to him: his dignity mattered a great deal to him. So too did his authority. It was he who decided who could join and who should leave the gang. He also told the gang who its enemies were. He cajoled the members to regard their critics as the worst renegades. Indeed by 1932 he told Kaganovich to get
Stalin turned all criticism of himself into a drama. Slight divergence from his wishes was treated as personal betrayal and political treason. He transmitted this attitude to his followers and got them to gang up on those whom he wished to topple. On vacation in September 1929, he sent a furious note to Politburo members Molotov, Voroshilov and Ordzhonikidze:20
