Stalin: A Biography полностью

It did not come easily to Stalin to offer a reasoned critique. In fact it did not come to him at all. He was a political streetfighter: no holds were barred. He believed this was what the situation required. Although he confected a risible image of his enemies, his worries about the position of himself and his associates were not entirely unrealistic. They had jerked the rudder of policies away from the NEP and set a course for rapid and violent economic transformation. The gang had to take responsibility for the consequences. They could expect no mercy unless they could guarantee an increase in economic and military capacity. It made sense to blackguard the critics in case things went wrong. Citing Lenin’s words at the Tenth Party Congress in 1921, Stalin told Kaganovich that factional dissent from the ascendant leadership’s line would result in the emergence of ‘White Guard’ tendencies and ‘the defence of capitalism’.²⁴ Lenin had said no such thing. But this did not matter to Stalin: he wanted to sharpen the siege mentality already experienced by his fellow Politburo members and the repetition of outlandish accusations suited this desire.

While rehabilitating several repentant members of the United Opposition, Stalin showed no indulgence to the unapologetic Trotski. In January 1929 the Politburo discussed what to do with the man who was capable of causing them most trouble. From exile in Alma-Ata, Trotski was producing ripples in Moscow. His remaining supporters tended his memory in hope that his restoration to power would not long be postponed. Even members of Stalin’s entourage urged him to bring Trotski back since the basic official economic orientation was what Trotski had long recommended (and Aaron Solts said to Ordzhonikidze that Trotski would bring greater intelligence to the policies).²⁵ Trotski offered no word of compromise to Stalin, who for his part feared that until he got rid of his old enemy there would always be a danger that Trotski would exploit whatever difficulties arose in the First Five-Year Plan.

Yet Stalin did not yet call for his physical liquidation. No veteran Bolshevik had been executed for political dissent. The alternative to Alma-Ata was deportation from the USSR. Already in summer 1927 Stalin had considered sending him to Japan.²⁶ The Politburo came to its decision on 10 January 1929 and Trotski was expelled for ‘anti-Soviet work’.²⁷ Turkey was the destination chosen. Trotski and his family set sail across the Black Sea on the steamship Ilich. The Politburo calculated that he would be shunned by the parties of the Comintern (as he was) and ignored by the world’s capitalist powers (as he was). But Trotski was not finished. He started to publish a regular Bulletin of the Opposition from abroad. Expelled from party and country, he had nothing to lose. What was disconcerting to Stalin was that Trotski’s contact with the USSR remained unbroken. The Bulletin reported on controversies in the central party leadership. Trotski knew the Moscow political gossip; he also dredged his memory for instances of Stalin’s stupidity and nastiness and described them in his autobiography²⁸ — and he knew that Stalin hated being ridiculed or criticised. Distribution of the Bulletin was clandestine, but this had also been the case with the Bolshevik faction before 1917. Deportation was not the cure for the ills of Trotskyism.

Stalin did not repeat the gaffe of letting an oppositionist leader out of his clutches. In summer 1929 he learned that Vissarion Lominadze and a few other second-rank Bolsheviks were criticising the style and policies of his leadership. In the following year there was further trouble. Lominadze had been talking also to the Chairman of the RSFSR Sovnarkom, Sergei Syrtsov. Stalin drew the worst possible conclusion, writing to Molotov:²⁹

Stalin’s suspicions were too fantastic even for Molotov, and Lominadze and Syrtsov were simply dismissed from the Central Committee.