Stalin Read online

  PROLOGUE

  1: FIRST YEARS 1879-88

  2: THE GEORGIAN SCHOOLBOY 1888-94

  3: THE SEMINARIST 1894-99

  4: KOBA THE REVOLUTIONARY 1899-1902

  5: BATUM, PRISON, AND EXILE 1902-4

  6: KOBA THE BOLSHEVIK 1903-4

  7: OVERTURES TO REVOLUTION 1904–5

  8: REVOLUTION IN RETREAT 1905-12

  9: THE CAUCASIAN CHAPTER CLOSES 1907-12

  10: STALIN EMERGES 1912-13

  11: THE LAST EXILE 1913-17

  12: 1917

  13: BREST-LITOVSK 1918

  14: CIVIL WAR 1919-20

  15: THE NEW ERA BEGINS 1920

  16: LENIN IN DECLINE 1921-22

  17: LENIN’S LAST MONTHS

  18: LENIN’S TESTAMENT

  19: OVERTHROW OF THE OPPOSITION 1924-27

  20: THE LEADER EMERGES 1926-29

  21: THE NEW LEADER 1929-34

  22: THE NEW REVOLUTION 1928-34

  23: THE TERROR 1934-39

  24: PRELUDES TO WAR 1939-41

  25: THE MONTHS OF DISASTER JUNE 1941-NOVEMBER 1942

  26: RUSSIAN RECOVERY NOVEMBER 1942-DECEMBER 1943

  27: CONFERENCE IN TEHERAN NOVEMBER 28-DECEMBER 1, 1943

  28: ADVANCE INTO GERMANY JANUARY 14, 1944-MAY 9, 1945

  29: THE POTSDAM BETRAYAL AND THE END OF THE GRAND ALLIANCE JULY 1945-MARCH 1946

  30: THE GREAT RESURGENCE 1946-53

  31: DEATH MARCH 5, 1953

  COPYRIGHT

  Certain features of Joseph Stalin’s rule, alien to Western concepts, have been rooted in the Russian people for centuries. They are part of the Russian tradition he inherited and maintained for the same reasons as his predecessors.

  The most important of these traditions have been the supremacy of the state; the absolute power of the autocrat over the lives, property, and thoughts of all subjects from highest to lowest; the feeling of vulnerability; the secretiveness and mistrust, especially of foreigners from the West; the sense of superiority and of messianism; the sensitivity to criticism; and the brutalized exercise of authority. Western travelers during the reign of Ivan the Terrible and observers of Stalin’s Russia, have noted the same features. Their observations convey a sense of the continuity, even changelessness, of Russia’s history.

  The history of Russia is an epic of the unending struggle to settle the vast Eurasian plain. An extreme climate of long cold winters and short hot summers, an expansive plain with no natural defense barriers, and a network of mighty rivers dictated the conditions in which the nation was established. But it has been a beleaguered nation, existing on the frontiers between Europe and Asia, between settled and nomadic peoples, and under constant attack.

  Westerners have striven after wealth and political and economic rights; Russians have struggled for the defense of their country and their families against invaders. Invasion and war have shaped their outlook and their political system. They have accepted complete subordination to the state and the absolute power of their autocrat because their national survival depended on the rapid defense mobilization that type of government could provide.

  Kievan Rus, the first step toward nationhood, endured for some three and a half centuries. But it could not stand against the destructive waves of Pechenegs, Cumans, and other nomadic tribes from Asia, or against the pressures of the Germanic tribes, driving the Lithuanians and Letts before them in the north. In search of security, the Russians moved into Galicia and Belorussia, but their main migration was to the forest lands of the upper Volga and Oka rivers. There Moscow became the center of the new Russian nation. Then in the thirteenth century came the Mongol invasion.

  The horde of Genghis Khan swept across the Eurasian plain, destroying all in its path. The shock of Mongol ferocity and the experience of Mongol rule over the following two centuries made a profound and lasting impression on the Russians and on the emerging state of Muscovy. The authority of the great khan was enforced mercilessly. The Yasa, embodying the military and civil laws of the Mongol Empire, prescribed death as the penalty for most breaches of the law. Failure to pay taxes or to provide the required number of recruits and, worst of all, rebellion, brought prompt and savage retribution. Servile obedience was demanded of the Russians and other subject peoples.

  In the fifteenth century, the grand princes of Moscow threw off the Mongol yoke, but then needed to establish the new Russian nation. They had to defend their lands, while reconquering the territory inhabited by Orthodox Russians under foreign rule, and colonize the vast lands to the south and east. Muscovy was under constant attack by the Khanate of Kazan, until Tsar Ivan IV conquered it in 1552, and by the Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians, and Germans in the west.

  During these years, however, the most constant and debilitating drain on the young Russian nation was the unceasing war against the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate, behind whom stood their suzerain, the mighty Ottoman Empire. In their frequent, sometimes annual attacks, the Tatars appeared suddenly from the steppes, plundering and destroying, but concentrating mainly on taking captives to sell as slaves in the markets of the Mediterranean. Regularly the Russians manned their defenses, which in places were no more than 100 miles south of Moscow. Gradually they established defense posts and fortified towns along this southern frontier and pressed southward.

  This struggle against the Tatars dominated Russia’s history for nearly three centuries. The Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky observed: “If one thinks of the amount of time and the material and spiritual forces consumed in this wearying, violent, and painful pursuit of the steppe predator, one can hardly ask what the people of Eastern Europe were doing while Western Europe was achieving its triumphs in industry and commerce, in social life, in the arts and the sciences.”

  The Crimean Khanate was finally conquered and in 1783 incorporated into the Russian Empire. The invasions and wars which had characterized Russia’s history became more intermittent. But early in the nineteenth century, Napoleon invaded Russia. A terrible battle was fought at Borodino, and the French occupied Moscow, which was partially destroyed by fire. In the twentieth century, Russia has experienced two devastating invasions by the Germans.

  The tragedies of war have been alive in the memories of all Russians throughout their history. It is doubtful whether any other nation has suffered so constantly from the horrors of invasion. The long experience has implanted in the people a sense of vulnerability and of menace to their homelands. It is, indeed, difficult for Anglo-Saxons, whether in Britain or America, who have long enjoyed security, to understand the pressures of military service and the unending terror and tragedy of such a history.

  “No people in the world have a greater veneration for their prince than the Muscovites who from their infancy are taught to speak of the Tsar as of God Himself,” observed Adam Olearius, a seventeenth-century visitor.

  The tsar was surrounded with the magnificence and ceremonial of Byzantium. He was not merely an object of worship. He was vested with the same absolute power as the Mongol khans. His subjects were his slaves who owed him service and obedience. The Mongol heritage was reinforced and in some ways transformed by the influence of Byzantium and the Orthodox Church, which inculcated the doctrine of Caesaropapism. The tsar stood as head not only of the nation but also of the Church, and was God’s vicar on earth. Briefly during the Time of Troubles (1605–13), when the Rurikid dynasty became extinct when the Poles invaded the country and occupied Moscow, and Muscovy was reduced to anarchy, the faith of the people in the divine authority of their tsars was shaken. But it revived quickly with the establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613. The tradition of veneration, servility, and absolute obedience to the tsar was to endure without basic change until the Revolution in 1917. In this tradition were rooted the deification of Lenin an
d the power and worship of Stalin.

  The chief function of the tsar was to mobilize men and resources for defense. The people had to be organized on military lines to ensure that forces were ready on the southern frontiers and against enemies in the west. The country was vast and the process of colonizing the lands to the east and south meant that the population was scattered. A system evolved whereby everyone was in complete bondage to the autocrat. It was based on what was in effect the nationalization of the land, which was granted to the serving nobility on the condition of their service. It followed from the granting of these pomestie, or service estates, that the peasants, too, were bound to the land. Serfdom developed during the seventeenth century into a system of bondage, akin to slavery. All including the nobility were the slaves, or kholopi, of the tsar.

  In enforcing service and tax-paying obligations in a country so immense and sparsely populated, the state applied savage methods, derived from the Mongols. Execution, flogging with the knout or batogi, which could cause death, and other cruel punishments were commonplace. All subjects of the tsar were liable to the same treatment. Only in the later eighteenth century were the nobility and the priesthood granted immunity from flogging. Exile and hard labor in Siberia became common sentences in the nineteenth century.

  The tsar’s special police, who began in 1565 with the Oprichniki of Tsar Ivan IV and developed as the Okhrana and the Third Section of His Majesty’s Own Chancery, were ubiquitous. Throughout their history, the Russians, acknowledging their complete subservience to the tsar, accepted the punishments meted out in his name. The methods of enforcing authority brutalized the nation, but aroused no protest. Indeed, the Russians felt a fervent patriotism and an exalted love for their country and its regime, believing it was superior to those of other countries. It was an outlook which astonished Western travelers, who were appalled by the bondage, brutal treatment, and impoverished conditions endured by the mass of the people.

  Nikolai Karamzin, the leading Russian historian of the early nineteenth century, wrote: “Our ancestors, while assimilating many advantages which were to be found in foreign customs, never lost the conviction that an Orthodox Russian was the most perfect citizen and Holy Rus was the foremost state in the world. Let this be called a delusion. Yet how much it did to strengthen the patriotism and the moral fibre of the nation.” Karamzin himself did not consider this idea of superiority a delusion, nor did the great mass of the Russian people.

  The Russians of Kiev and Novgorod had had close ties of trade and culture with the West. Then for nearly 250 years (1240–1480) they were under the yoke of the Mongol khans, and were isolated. They knew nothing of the Renaissance, the Reformation, the explorations, and the scientific discoveries which transformed the West. Painfully in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the tsars awakened to Russia’s backwardness, especially in the arts of war. The English merchants who made their way to Muscovy were welcomed by Tsar Ivan IV, because he needed Western military expertise. Peter the Great (1682–1725), who fought against Russia’s backwardness and isolation throughout his reign, was primarily interested in Western naval and military techniques. He recognized, however, that Russia’s security could not rest on military might alone, but must be rooted in economic strength and efficient government.

  The Western influence, which swept into Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, disturbed the people. They regarded all that came from the West with the deepest suspicion. They knew nothing about the countries beyond their frontiers and were not allowed to travel. The Western experts, engaged in the tsar’s service, were obliged to live in the “Foreign Quarter” outside Moscow, so that they would not contaminate Orthodox people. Staunchly conservative Muscovites held to their practices and traditions, believing them to be superior.

  The Orthodox Church strengthened them in this conviction. The Russians received Christianity from Byzantium toward the end of the tenth century. The new faith took deep root among them and profoundly influenced their outlook. The Mongol khans had been tolerant of Christianity, and during their occupation, the Russian church had developed vigorously. It played a momentous role in the founding of the Russian nation, and while acknowledging the primacy of Constantinople as the center of Orthodox Christendom, it became strongly nationalistic.

  In 1453, Constantinople fell to the infidel Turk. Already independent, the Russian church assumed the role of heir. The legend of Moscow as the Third Rome was fostered and became for the devout Russians an article of faith. This legend enhanced the authority and standing of the autocrat and the renown of Moscow. It also gave expression to the Russian sense of mission. Their church was the sole guardian of the true Christian faith. They would lead the nations of the world, and specifically of the West, to unity, brotherhood, and salvation.

  In the twentieth century, this messianism could no longer be expressed in terms of Orthodox Christianity or of Moscow - the Third Rome. Marxism-Leninism became the creed of which the Russians purported to be the guardians for the peoples of the West and of the world.

  Along with their claim to possession of the true dogma, the Russians have continued to regard themselves as bearing a mission to lead and protect Western civilization. Russia, they have long asserted, shielded the West against the Mongol horde of Genghis Khan, against the Tatars of the Crimea, and the Turks.

  This sense of mission is as strong today as in the past. In World War II, Russia saved the West by defeating the fascist powers. According to Soviet pronouncements, Russians were fighting not only to defend their own country “but to free the peoples of Europe from fascism, to save the world from its barbarism and bestiality.” Claims of this kind are characteristic, and they express the sense of messianic mission to lead and convert, which has been embedded in the Russian outlook since the fifteenth century.

  “Russia is a European power,” declared Catherine the Great, and she went on to state that Russia had always been a European country. The statement was frequently debated in the nineteenth century and remains a matter of contention. Whether true or not, the fact is that Russia has always differed strikingly in social values and traditions from the West. Visitors have always expressed astonishment and horror at the bondage, brutality, secretiveness and suspicion, the messianism, and other aspects of Russian life. Also they have usually shown a sense of superiority and at times an arrogant condescension, while George F. Kennan and other twentieth-century writers have displayed a lofty moral disapprobation toward many Russian practices.

  The Russians have always been sensitive to criticism and to being patronized. Indeed, Stalin complained about the superior attitude of British naval officers, serving in North Russia during the war, toward the Red Navy. Western attitudes of moral superiority have helped intensify the mistrust, secretiveness, and even hostility of Russians toward foreigners. Moreover, as Klyuchevsky observed, they believe Westerners have never appreciated the long bitter struggle for survival and the other factors that have hampered Russian development. Western attitudes have, in fact, helped fortify the Russian sense of their own special strength and mission.

  In their attitude to the West, though, the Russians have been divided. The Westernizers, represented by Peter the Great and symbolized by his city of St. Petersburg, have sought to discard most of the conservative Muscovite traditions, to reform Russia, and to join fully in the Western community of nations. The Slavophiles, sometimes known as the Muscovites, the great mass of the nation, have cherished the old traditions and asserted their belief in the innate superiority of the Russian people in their strength and their moral values. They have sought minimal relations with the West, convinced that Russia would develop in its own way to strength and world leadership. The conflict between these views has been consistently reflected in the rivalry between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

  In adopting Russia as his country, Stalin absorbed the outlook and traditions of the Muscovites and their faith in the destiny of the Russian nation.

  Joseph Vissarionov
ich Dzhugashvili, known in history as Joseph Stalin, was born on December 18, 1878, in the ancient Georgian town of Gori. Situated on the banks of the swift-flowing Kura River and surrounded by hills, Gori is the center of a beautiful district of the Tiflis province, in which the valleys are renowned for vineyards, wheat fields, and orchards. It is part of the region, known to the ancient Greeks as Colchis, where Jason and the Argonauts quested for the Golden Fleece. In these idyllic surroundings, Joseph spent his boyhood.

  Vissarion, his father, came from the village of Didi-Lilo, near Tiflis, where his parents, like their forebears, had been peasant serfs. For Vissarion, emancipation meant he was free to follow his trade as a cobbler. Around 1870, he moved to Gori, where in 1874 he married Ekaterina Georgievna Geladze, daughter of a serf family from a nearby village. She was about eighteen, some five years younger than her husband. They were humble working people, poor and illiterate. They set up home in a modest domik in Soborovaya Street near the main cathedral in Gori. It comprised a front porch and two rooms with brick floors and also a basement. The main room was about fifteen feet square and poorly lit by one window. It was furnished with a small table, four stools, a small buffet with a samovar, a mirror, a trunk holding their belongings, and a plank bed with straw mattress. Steps led down to the cellar, where Ekaterina probably cooked on an open fire. By Russian standards of the day, it was the normal accommodation for a poor family.

  In this house, Ekaterina bore three children, all of whom died in infancy. The fourth child was Joseph, and on him, her Soso or Soselo, the affectionate diminutives of Joseph, she lavished her love and care.

  Information about Vissarion is scanty. He was apparently unsuccessful as a cobbler. In 1885, he returned to Tiflis, taking a job in a shoe factory belonging to an Armenian named Grigory Adelkhanov, where he had worked for a time before his marriage.

  Stalin referred only once publicly to his father when he pointed out that as a cobbler his father was not a true proletarian since he still had a petty bourgeois mentality. He made one other public mention of his childhood and his parents. This was in December 1931 when he gave an interview to Emil Ludwig, the popular biographer of the time. To the question “What impelled you to become an oppositionist? Was it perhaps bad treatment by your parents?” Stalin answered, “No. My parents were uneducated, but they did not treat me badly by any means.” This statement conflicts with other accounts of his childhood.