Despite rationing the number of his public appearances, Stalin could not avoid giving speeches and having them recorded for Soviet newsreels. The party’s customs could be emasculated but not entirely abandoned. In order to confirm his legitimacy as Lenin’s successor he had to get up at Party Congresses and deliver the keynote addresses just as he was obliged to write articles and booklets explaining the latest versions of Marxist–Leninist doctrine. He never became an outstanding orator. He lacked a sense of timing; often he seemed to quicken up or slow down without a feeling for what he was saying.34 When he emphasised something, he did this with clumsy severity. Yet his primitiveness as a speaker also worked for him. Stalin wrote his own words; his message was always carefully considered. He delivered a speech with brusque directness. He was more like a general addressing his troops than a politician — or at times he was akin to a priest reading out a piece of liturgy whose details had ceased to engage his whole attention. Efforts to enliven such occasions were few. If ever there was humour, it was heavily sarcastic; and anecdotes drawn from his direct experience were notable for their rarity.
Nor indeed did he adopt a paternalistic manner. No Romanov, not even the wilder ones such as Peter the Great, was so lacking in the social graces on public occasions. Stalin to the end of his life preserved the unrefined demeanour of the stereotypical veteran Bolshevik. No Bolshevik was more tsar-like than he; but he was still a Bolshevik.
Stalin frequently lied to the world when he was simultaneously lying to himself. If ever he called somebody a traitor, it was not only the minds of others he was manipulating. Needing to believe the worst of specific individuals or groups, he let his language slip from established fact to desired reality. This is detectable in the message he sent to Kaganovich in August 1934 after an abortive mutiny by the divisional artillery commander Nakhaev:1
He is, of course (of course!), not on his own. He should be shoved against a wall and forced to tell — to divulge — the whole truth and then punished with total severity. He — he has to be — a Polish– German agent (or a Japanese one). The Chekists are becoming ridiculous when they discuss his ‘political views’ with him (and this is called
Stalin was on vacation by the Black Sea at the time, hundreds of miles from Moscow. His sole knowledge of the Nakhaev incident had come through telegrams. He had been told that Nakhaev had tricked his troops into an insurrection; there was no evidence to incriminate Nakhaev in a wider plot. As for Nakhaev’s operating as a ‘Polish–German agent’, this was fanciful speculation. Stalin had confected a story for himself and others and then tried to apply a coating of feasibility.
He seldom exposed his mental processes in public. He did not keep a diary, and the letters to his wife Nadya add little to what is known about his innermost thinking: at most he would refer briefly to his health, mood or the weather. More clues to his calculations emerge from his correspondence with Molotov, Kaganovich and other politicians. Often the contents were suspicious, conspiratorial and vengeful.2 He disbelieved that trouble happened by accident or by mistake. Plotters were at work everywhere, he assumed, and had to be discovered and punished.3 Stalin’s correspondence showed him imperious in pursuit of his purposes. When issuing instructions to Politburo members, he rarely asked for their opinions but always demanded total compliance. While believing in communism, he did not trust or respect communists.
