Stalin: A Biography полностью

The continued austerity of the Stalin cult invites comment. One possibility is that he recognised that most aspects of his past and present life were unlikely to commend him to others — and so he drew the curtains across them. This is conceivable but unlikely. Stalin was a maestro of historical fabrication, and mere facts would not have inhibited him from inventing a wholly fictional biography. Another possibility is that Stalin was simply unimaginative; and since he, unlike Hitler who had Goebbels, was his cult’s main artificer, this may explain the situation. But Stalin was surrounded by associates who yearned to prove their usefulness to him. It is not credible that alternative ideas were not proposed to him. The most plausible explanation is that Stalin still believed that austerity was what best suited Russia’s cultural ambience as well as the sensibilities of the world communist movement. After the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934, he had stopped being called General Secretary but instead was designated Secretary of the Party Central Committee. Until 6 May 1941, furthermore, he resolutely refused to become Sovnarkom Chairman despite the fact that this had been Lenin’s job. He could not even be tempted to create the post of Chairman for himself in the Party Politburo. Nor was Stalin head of state. That position continued to be held by Mikhail Kalinin as Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets. Letters to the ascendant communist leadership were often addressed not to Stalin but to Kalinin or to both of them.²⁷

Yet he dominated the central public life of the USSR. People lived or died according to his whim. Political, economic, social and cultural activity was conditioned by his inclinations of the day. He was the masterful guide of men and manager of affairs in the Soviet state. But Stalin had always been cunning. He had learned of the advantages of a display of modesty. Better, he concluded, to let it be thought that he was thirsty neither for power nor for prestige. Did his interest in the career of Augustus, first of the Roman emperors, influence him? Augustus would never accept the title of king despite obviously having become the founder of a dynastic monarchy.²⁸

Stalin of course wanted adulation and the cult was extravagant in his praise; the restrictions imposed by him were pragmatically motivated. He discerned that he would gain more admirers if he stopped himself — and was seen to stop himself — short of making the very extreme claims put forward by Kremlin sycophants. Control of the process was crucial to him. He remained alert to the danger of letting people praise him on their own initiative and — bizarre as it might seem — banned discussion circles (kruzhki) from looking at either the Short Course or his official biography. The reason he gave was that he did not want citizens, tired after a day’s labour, to have to turn out in the evening. In an exchange with a Leningrad party propagandist he ordered: ‘Let them have a quiet life!’²⁹ But this was disingenuous. Party members had to go to post-work meetings as a political duty. Stalin’s real aim was surely to restrict debate altogether. The texts of the two books were fairly straightforward in themselves and could quickly be studied by individuals reading alone. And once they had read and digested the texts, they could join in the ceremonies and festivals which were organised by the authorities with scrupulous care on the streets, in factories and at offices.

The cult certainly had its successes. A seventy-one-year-old woman textile worker was invited to the October Revolution celebrations on Red Square in 1935 but because of short-sightedness did not catch a glimpse of Stalin. Bumping into Ordzhonikidze, she cried: ‘Look, I’m going to die soon — am I really not going to be able to see him?’ Ordzhonikidze told her she was not going to die and, as she walked on, a car drew up and out got Stalin. She clapped her hands: ‘Hey! Look who I’ve seen!’ Stalin smiled and said modestly: ‘What a good thing! A most ordinary human being!’ The old woman burst into tears: ‘You are our wise one, our great one… and now I’ve seen you… now I can die!’ Stalin, thinking on his feet, replied: ‘Why do you need to die? Let others go and die while you go on working!’³⁰