If it had not been for the clash between an ailing Lenin and his increasingly powerful followers, the Georgian Affair would have remained a bureaucratic squabble of the sort that was commonplace within the Bolshevik party, especially early on, when their government had yet to achieve a stable footing. In Transcaucasia, infighting among competing groups continued for many years. It was Lenin who elevated this incident—artificially, one could argue—to the level of fundamental political principles since it gave him a pretext for attacking his ambitious associates. Though ill, Lenin was still prepared to fight for control of the party and was obviously looking for a way to quell the dissent that threatened to undermine his power. He saw Stalin as the symbol of that dissent.
All the evidence suggests that Lenin spent the winter of 1923 preparing to launch an attack against Stalin at the Twelfth Party Congress, scheduled for March. On 5 March 1923, having assembled the necessary materials, he again approached Trotsky with a proposal that they collaborate: “Dear Com. Trotsky! I would like to ask you to take on the defense of the Georgian Affair within the party’s TsK. This matter is currently being ‘pursued’ by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, and I cannot rely on their impartiality. Quite the contrary. If you agreed to defend it, I could rest assured.”
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That same day, 5 March, Lenin dictated a note addressed to Stalin in regard to an old matter—the reprimand Stalin had made against Krupskaia in December 1922. The note was curt. Lenin threatened to sever their relationship: “Dear Com. Stalin! You were so ill-mannered as to call my wife to the telephone and scold her.… I have no intention of so easily forgetting what has been done against me, and it goes without saying that what has been done against my wife is also done against me. I therefore ask you to weigh whether you are amenable to taking back what was said and apologize or you prefer to break off relations with me.”
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The appearance of this letter, written two and a half months after Stalin’s reprimand, has generated many hypotheses among historians. Perhaps Lenin had only just learned of Stalin’s telephone call to Krupskaia. It appears more likely, however, that Lenin saw the incident as an excuse for removing Stalin from the post of general secretary, a possibility proposed by Robert Tucker.
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All of Lenin’s objections to Stalin emphasized the same point: he was too rude. Such a charge was much more persuasive and clear-cut than any of the other possible complaints he might have lodged. Rudeness toward party comrades was completely inappropriate for someone holding the post of general secretary.
The following day, 6 March, Lenin again wrote about Stalin’s abrasive manner. He dictated several lines to the beleaguered Georgian Bolsheviks, instructing that copies of the note be sent to Trotsky and Kamenev. Kamenev was scheduled to travel to Georgia and was asked to deliver the note personally. “Dear Comrades!” Lenin wrote. “With all my heart I am following your case. I am outraged by Ordzhonikidze’s rudeness and the connivances of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. I am drafting a memorandum and speech for you.”
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To the Politburo, the meaning of Lenin’s actions was clear: he had declared war on Stalin. Shortly before leaving for Georgia, Kamenev wrote to Zinoviev that Lenin wanted not only reconciliation in Transcaucasia, “but also certain organizational expulsions at the top”—Soviet administrative jargon for firings.
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Stalin could sense the approaching storm. On 7 March he received Lenin’s ultimatum threatening to sever relations. He immediately responded with a half-hearted apology: “Although if you feel that to maintain ‘relations’ I have to ‘take back’ the words that I said … I can take them back, but I really can’t understand what the point is, where my ‘guilt’ lies, and just what it is they want from me.”
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That same day Stalin sent a strictly confidential letter to Ordzhonikidze. He warned him that Lenin had sent a letter of support to Ordzhonikidze’s opponents. Stalin urged caution: “Reach a compromise … that is natural, voluntary.”
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This letter to Ordzhonikidze clearly shows that Stalin appreciated the seriousness of the situation and was maneuvering to deprive Lenin of ammunition.
Until this decade, the authenticity of Lenin’s dictated correspondence and accounts of the actions he took against Stalin have never been called into question. Recently, however, there have been attempts to demonstrate that evidence of a rupture between the two men was fabricated.
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With no real evidence beyond an assumption of Stalin’s infallibility, some revisionists have proposed that evidence of Lenin’s doubts about Stalin were manufactured and placed in Lenin’s archives by followers of Trotsky!
The strongest evidence of the authenticity of Lenin’s dictated correspondence from this period is that nobody among Lenin’s comrades-in-arms, including Stalin himself, had any doubts about it. Stalin certainly had both the cunning and wherewithal, given his control over the apparat and influence within Lenin’s inner circle, to avoid falling victim to a forgery. He understood the danger of Lenin’s “testament” and went to great pains to neutralize any evidence that he did not enjoy Lenin’s full confidence.
There is no question that Lenin took steps against Stalin during the final weeks of his active life. The reasons are another matter. We must consider not only the intentions and motives of a masterful politician, but also the role played by his sense of imminent death. “Lenin’s last struggle,” as Moshe Lewin has called it, is a clear manifestation of his single-minded will toward political domination and power—his primary personality trait.
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Illness did not break this will but, if anything, intensified it. One can only marvel at the persistence of Lenin, racked by agonizing physical and emotional suffering, as his dogged ascent to power was interrupted by forced intervals in the background. The struggle for power sustained him, energized him, and gave purpose to his battle against affliction. This was not the first time he had taken up a challenge from a comrade-in-arms, but the gravity of his illness in 1922–1923 lent any such challenge a new and urgent significance.
From the standpoint of “the technology of power,” Lenin’s maneuvers in late 1922 and early 1923 relied on the same sources of strength that had carried him through earlier clashes: his unquestionable authority among party functionaries and rivalries among party leaders (primarily between Trotsky and the troika). That Stalin bore the brunt of Lenin’s manipulations appears to be largely a matter of chance. The positions he took in regard to the organization of the USSR and the Georgian Affair represented political miscalculations and turned out to be poorly timed. Finally, he insulted the wife of the ailing leader, exhibiting behavior unbecoming a Bolshevik. Stalin had stepped under the sword himself and so provided Lenin a perfect opportunity to reassert his political authority and subdue other Bolshevik leaders. Lenin probably had no intention of removing Stalin from the party’s upper echelons. Such a move would have thrown a wrench in the mechanism he used to maintain power. Within that mechanism, Stalin was the perfect counterbalance to the ambitions of other Bolshevik leaders, as well as an irreplaceable administrator. Lenin’s actions were part of a rebalancing that required a dialing back of Stalin’s power.
This context is important in understanding Stalin’s reactions to the disfavor being shown him by his teacher. Stalin had every reason to feel genuinely hurt. When all was said and done, his sins were no worse than those he and other Soviet leaders had committed in the past. All Bolshevik leaders contradicted and argued with Lenin, and like Stalin, they all eventually relented. Sometimes Lenin punished these transgressions by removing their perpetrators from the center of power, but he later brought them back into the fold. Lenin usually punished his subordinates out of public view to avoid wounded pride. What was different now? What was behind such a provocative and demonstrative move against a man who had served Lenin so loyally? Stalin apparently found the most convenient explanation for this lashing out, both psychologically and politically, in Lenin’s illness.
As it turned out, the letter to the Georgian Bolsheviks was the last document Lenin dictated. Several days later, his health took a sharp turn for the worse. He did not speak at the party congress; the Politburo swept the Georgian Affair under the carpet and later abandoned the idea of removing Stalin as general secretary. These decisions were not charity on the part of Stalin’s “friends.” They were the outcome of a fierce power struggle that began during Lenin’s final months and continued into 1924.
TRYING OUT COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP
Although he managed to avoid the more serious dangers posed for him by the political game Lenin was playing during his final months of leadership, Stalin found himself somewhat weakened and thus more dependent on his Politburo colleagues. It is a commonly held view that the Bolshevik oligarchs who inherited power after Lenin’s demise underestimated Stalin and believed him to be harmless and mediocre. This is not true. The members of the Politburo fully appreciated Lenin’s concerns about Stalin and the power he held as general secretary, and they tried to limit this power. But political happenstance and, to no small degree, Stalin’s skillful maneuvering undermined the plans of his rivals and enemies.
The first serious conflict that we know of within the Politburo’s tightly knit opposition to Trotsky occurred during the summer of 1923. After the party congress, the successful neutralization of Lenin’s attack, and the country’s return to relative stability after the horrific famine, Politburo members regained enough peace of mind to take a vacation. In July 1923, while resting in the North Caucasus resort town of Kislovodsk, Grigory Zinoviev came up with a scheme to shift the balance of power within the Politburo to limit Stalin’s influence. In a 30 July letter to Kamenev, who was in Moscow, he launched into a tirade against Stalin: “If the party is destined to go through a stretch (probably a very short one) of Stalin’s sole power—so be it. But I, for one, have no intention of covering up this swinishness.… In reality, there is no troika, there is only Stalin’s dictatorship. Ilyich was a thousand times right. Either a serious way out has to be found, or a long stretch of struggle is inevitable.”
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Although the letter contained no detailed plan, it charged that Stalin was manipulating the Politburo and essentially making unilateral decisions. It is important to note the line “Ilyich was a thousand times right”: Zinoviev was using Lenin’s letters as ammunition against Stalin. In Kislovodsk, he discussed joint action with Bukharin, who was also upset by some of Stalin’s moves, and with other prominent party figures who were vacationing in the south. No specific proposals were entrusted to paper, but Stalin was sent a “spoken letter” (Ordzhonikidze, who was leaving for Moscow, was supposed to convey a message). Because this communication was oral, we do not know in detail what was proposed. From statements made in subsequent years, it appears that the plan involved reorganizing the Central Committee secretariat. Stalin would remain a member, but Zinoviev and Trotsky would also be included. This reorganization would have created a new balance of power in Stalin’s fiefdom: the Central Committee apparat.
Stalin, not surprisingly, was indignant, perhaps even furious. He responded to the grievances of his “friends” with a show of hurt feelings and accusations of their undermining unity. On 3 August 1923, immediately after meeting with Ordzhonikidze, he wrote to Zinoviev and Bukharin: “Evidently you’re not hesitant to make ready for a break, as if it were inescapable.… Do as you wish—there must be some people in Russia who will see that for what it is and condemn the guilty.… But what fortunate people you are: you’re able to dream up all sorts of fairy tales at your leisure … while I’m stuck here like a chained dog and turn out to be ‘guilty’ to boot. You can tell anyone you want. All that soft living has gone to your heads, my friends.”
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This half-angry, half-friendly letter attests to Stalin’s relatively limited options in opposing his colleagues. For their part, Zinoviev’s and Bukharin’s proposals signaled that they still felt they could limit Stalin’s influence. They were not impressed by Stalin’s expression of injury. Calmly but firmly they let him know that the matter was not settled. Soon they would be able to meet face to face in the south, where Stalin was planning to vacation in mid-August.
Stalin could not have relished this prospect. His opponents held all the cards. Their proposal to reorganize the secretariat so as to promote unity and cohesion seemed perfectly reasonable. Stalin’s objections would appear to confirm Lenin’s warnings that he did not want to work as part of a team. Zinoviev’s accusation that Stalin was violating the principle of collective leadership also put him in an awkward position. And another idea advanced by Zinoviev and Bukharin could prove particularly dangerous—that Stalin’s position on events in Germany was “incorrect.”
The political crises that had shaken Germany since early 1923 had reawakened Moscow’s dream of salvation through European revolution. For the Bolsheviks, who still had trouble imagining a future for the USSR if it remained the only socialist bastion, socialism in Germany would be a great relief. But they took warning from the European revolutionary movements’ recent defeats. Stalin was among the Bolshevik leaders who urged restraint, while Zinoviev and Bukharin were eager to do battle, as was Trotsky, for whom world revolution remained a precondition for the victory of socialism in Russia. Realizing that his cautious approach was becoming politically dangerous and gave his rivals ammunition against him, Stalin made an effective political move. On 9 August 1923, amid frantic letter writing with Zinoviev and Bukharin, he placed a resolution before the Politburo summoning Zinoviev, Trotsky, and Bukharin back to Moscow to discuss the prospects for revolution in Germany. Naturally, all three agreed. The meeting was set for 21 August.