Lenin’s position, however, was based on meticulous political calculations. Kamenev’s and Stalin’s moderate positions opened the door to cooperation among the main socialist parties, but the cooperation never materialized. From the standpoint of the country’s well-being, cooperation in a joint effort to keep radicalism at bay was the only correct course. From the standpoint of the ultimate goal of a Bolshevik takeover of sole power, it was ruinous. Taking part in a coalition, even as oppositionists, would tie the Bolsheviks’ hands and deprive them of support from radical segments of the population. This was not what Lenin had in mind, and his disapproval ultimately sealed the fate of “rightist” Bolshevism.
When news of revolution in Russia reached Lenin, he was ready with a plan of action, carefully worked out in light of past political struggles. Lenin was gambling on being able to grab power before the revolutionary situation stabilized. His historical moment would be the period of revolutionary radicalization, a period he knew well based on the experience of other revolutions. Even at the early, relatively moderate stage of the revolution, Lenin advanced an extreme program for which the revolution was not quite ready. To put it another way, knowing that a tendency toward radicalization would come, he was playing a waiting game. This strategy had obvious advantages for a party whose ultimate goal was to seize power. The advancement of radical goals that many saw as reckless put the party in a class all its own. That nobody wanted to enter a coalition with it allowed it a certain freedom. A radical program also served as a means of crushing moderate forces within the party and mobilizing its more decisive elements. Finally, such a program, despite being initially rejected by the masses, would eventually gain wider acceptance as mounting despair and impatience fostered a greater acceptance of extremism.
Once he heard about the revolution, Lenin hastily prepared to leave Switzerland for Russia. Eager to enter the fray, he negotiated an agreement with the German authorities allowing him to travel to Russia across enemy territory. In so doing, he was taking a serious risk and opening himself up to accusations of collusion with the enemy or even espionage. But the ends justified the means: he needed to get to Petrograd. As soon as he stepped off the train, he publicly announced his plan of action.
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Lenin proclaimed that the Bolsheviks must refuse to support the Provisional Government and fight for socialist revolution and the transfer of power “into the hands of the proletariat and the poorest segments of the peasantry”—in other words, into the hands of the Bolshevik party. The fledgling democracy that had come about after the February Revolution was never given a chance to establish itself, but for Lenin, it had already outlived its usefulness. The parliamentary republic had to be replaced with a soviet republic that, under Bolshevik leadership, would introduce socialist changes. For now, Lenin mentioned just a few of the most important changes: the nationalization of land, the transformation of large estates into model farms under the control of the soviets, and the nationalization of banks or even their merger into a single national bank. In accordance with these new objectives and to clearly distinguish the Bolshevik party from other socialist parties, Lenin proposed changing its name from the Social Democratic Party to the Communist Party.
This platform met with serious opposition, both from outside the party and within. Lenin was, in essence, proposing a vaguely articulated program for the seizure of power. How would that power be used if his plan succeeded? What would socialism mean under Russian conditions? What guarantee was there that revolution in Russia would be followed by revolution in more developed countries (without which Russia would find itself isolated)? Instead of answers, these questions were met with brazen demagoguery. For now it was clear that the Leninist course was kindling civil war.
According to contemporary memoirs, during one of Lenin’s speeches after his arrival in Petrograd, a party comrade who had once been close to him cried out from his seat, “That’s nonsense, the ravings of a madman!”
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Lenin’s Bolshevik associates could not abide such an outcry, even if they more or less agreed with it. Yet in early April, at meetings of the leading Bolshevik organizations, Lenin’s ideas were voted down by the majority. Not only did Kamenev continue to publicly oppose Lenin’s ideas, but so too did Stalin.
The sharp reaction of political opponents outside the party apparently suited Lenin’s purpose. He was intentionally setting up a confrontation that would distance the Bolsheviks from the country’s other political forces. Within the party, however, he would have to calm the discord. It was not possible to do so by the methods Stalin would employ later. The Bolsheviks were not yet that party. The situation in the country—buffeted by the turmoil of revolution and fledgling democracy—was also different. And Lenin was a different sort of leader. He used a combination of hard-line intransigence and conciliation. A particularly important maneuver was the recruiting of “rightist” Bolsheviks, especially Stalin and Kamenev, to his side. Lenin moved cautiously, always allowing his opponents to save face. Instead of driving them into a corner, he promoted them to top party positions. In Stalin’s case, this approach worked. Whatever may have been going on in Stalin’s head, he quickly threw his support behind Lenin.
The endorsement that Lenin gave Stalin during Central Committee elections at the April 1917 party conference clearly reflects their close working relationship: “We have known Com. Koba for very many years.… He handles any responsible job well.”
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This recommendation earned Stalin a spot on the Central Committee, yielding him more votes than anyone except Zinoviev and Lenin himself.
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Stalin saw, very directly, Lenin’s huge influence within the party. After some wavering, he made a firm decision to align himself with strength.
Was Stalin merely advancing his own career, or did he actually understand and accept what Lenin stood for? Identifying the source of Stalin’s initial inclination toward “moderate” Bolshevism is of fundamental importance for anyone seeking to understand the workings of his mind. Clearly, the flexibility he exhibited in March–April 1917 does not fit the image of an uncompromising, power-hungry radical. Was his apparent moderation due to Kamenev’s influence? Or was he swayed by the other socialists in the Petrograd soviet, where many of the Mensheviks were fellow Georgians? Perhaps he had not yet developed the confidence to act as an independent political figure and felt he needed someone to follow. In that case, why did he not immediately fall in line behind Lenin after receiving his letter from Switzerland? Perhaps Stalin was genuinely “moderate” in early 1917 but, like many others, changed under the force of circumstances. Historical sources offer no clear-cut answers to these questions. What we do know is that Stalin was not always a radical Bolshevik. His “moderation” and “rightism” would emerge again after Lenin’s death, when the party leaders were choosing the path toward socialism, down which they would lead their vast and isolated country.
STALIN IN LENIN’S REVOLUTION
The escalation of Russia’s February Revolution followed a typical pattern. The moderate revolutionaries who found themselves in power after the tsar’s overthrow sought mainly to avoid civil war. But while these moderates vacillated, stumbled, and missed opportunities to consolidate their position, the increasingly impatient masses began looking to those who promised radical and immediate change. In this environment, Bolshevik propaganda found fertile ground. Calls for immediate withdrawal from the war, immediate expropriation of large estates and the turning over of land to the peasants, and immediate worker control of industry had broad appeal. As often happens in times of revolution, few demanded that the Bolsheviks spell out just how their program would be put into practice. The masses were inspired by a new faith. Among the Bolshevik rank and file, fewer and fewer were asking their leader the difficult question: What would come next? Lenin led the party with amazing energy, promising that socialism would somehow solve all problems. The banners of the Leninist party—“Most important—engage the enemy”; “We’ll see what happens”; and “Things couldn’t be any worse”—sum up the folk wisdom that guided millions to put their faith in Bolshevik promises.
Stalin was among the Bolshevik leaders who supported Lenin without demanding detailed explanations. Having cast off doubts about the suitability of socialism for a predominantly agrarian country, Stalin now proclaimed that “It is entirely possible that Russia will prove to be the country that paves the way toward socialism.… We must reject the obsolete notion that only Europe can show us the way. There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand on the ground of the latter.”
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The ground of “creative Marxism” proved so accommodating to Stalin’s political needs that he settled there permanently. In 1917, having cast aside the apprehensions of “rightist” Bolshevism, Stalin set out on Lenin’s radical course toward the seizure of power and the introduction of socialism. He never wavered in this decision. The occasional inconsistencies that scholars have noted between Lenin’s and Stalin’s pronouncements are quite superficial and probably show only that Stalin had trouble keeping up with Lenin’s frequent tactical twists and turns. Lenin himself had trouble keeping up with them.
Having set his sights on seizing power, Lenin faced a changeable and complicated situation that made it hard to choose the right moment to strike. The Bolsheviks’ strategy was to maintain revolutionary momentum while awaiting the right moment to cross the line of legality. Overt action against the Provisional Government and the soviets would undoubtedly trigger a confrontation. The time for action had to be chosen carefully, but holding back also had its risks. The only way to gauge the opposing side’s strength was to probe its weaknesses. Furthermore, the Bolsheviks needed to demonstrate to the radical workers and soldiers on whom they were counting that they were capable of action, not just words. Bolshevik forces had to maintain a constant state of combat readiness through “war games,” one of which would turn into a real battle.
In early July 1917, armed soldiers, sailors, and workers took to the streets, marching under Bolshevik banners calling for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Blood was spilled. The Bolsheviks did not overtly take charge of the rebels, but few were fooled. It was crystal clear to virtually everyone that they were working behind the scenes to overthrow the government. The only question—and historians continue to debate it—was the extent of their involvement in planning the demonstrations. The Provisional Government was able to crush these disturbances, but its efforts at counterstrikes proved haphazard and ineffective. The authorities launched an investigation into allegations that Lenin was a spy being financed by Germany to foment revolution. Charges that the Bolsheviks had organized the riots provided grounds for certain actions against them. The Bolshevik newspaper offices and headquarters were laid waste and shut down, and a few activists were arrested. The “moderate” Kamenev was among those arrested, while Lenin and Zinoviev remained free and went underground.
Stalin, less well known to the government, was not on the list of targeted revolutionaries. He felt so secure that he even proposed that Lenin hide out where Stalin was living at the time, in the apartment of his old friends, the Alliluevs. Stalin’s friendship with the Alliluevs was long-standing and strong. In 1919 he married their daughter Nadezhda, still a teenager at the time.
Stalin accompanied Lenin and Zinoviev as they traveled from Petrograd to the suburban town of Razliv, where the two fugitives were concealed by the family of a worker, Nikolai Yemelianov, a Bolshevik sympathizer. They lived in a loft above Yemelianov’s shed. Later, disguised as farm workers, they made their way to a more sparsely populated area where they took shelter in a hut. In August, Lenin moved to Finland, and from July to October Stalin did not meet with him. Nevertheless, during Stalin’s dictatorship several assertions appeared claiming that he had met with Lenin not once but twice during this period. The main witness of these supposed meetings was Yemelianov.
Like many other revolutionaries, Yemelianov met a tragic fate. He and three of his sons were arrested in the 1930s. Two sons were shot, and one was released after Stalin’s death. The elder Yemelianov was sent into exile in Siberia. In June 1945, apparently grasping that offering an appropriately hagiographic episode for Stalin’s biography represented his best chance for leniency, he appealed to Stalin for permission to return to his village: “In 1917 you saved the life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin by arranging for me to hide him in a hut.”
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The appeal was shown to Stalin, and soon afterward Yemelianov was permitted to return to Razliv and even to work in the Lenin Museum established there. There is no doubt that his release was decided by Stalin personally. Yemelianov’s “recollection” that Stalin twice visited Lenin became part of Stalin’s official biography.
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While Lenin was in hiding in Finland, Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders continued to strengthen the party ranks. In late July 1917 they convened the Sixth Party Congress, at which Stalin delivered speeches and generally played a prominent role. The political winds were starting to favor the Bolsheviks. Having fully recovered from the Provisional Government’s ineffective efforts at suppression, they began to strengthen their position, helped by Prime Minister Aleksandr Kerensky’s frequent missteps. In August, Kerensky provoked a confrontation with the commander in chief of the Russian Army, General Lavr Kornilov. With Kerensky’s consent, Kornilov had sent some of his most reliable units to Petrograd to help secure the city after the unrest in July. Soon, however, Kerensky began to doubt Kornilov’s loyalty to the Provisional Government. In a pivotal moment of anti-Bolshevik dysfunction, he proclaimed Kornilov to be a mutineer. This conflict distracted attention from the Bolshevik threat. When the Bolsheviks sided with Kerensky against Kornilov, they obtained the release of several of their activists from prison. Lenin remained in hiding.