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Stalin: A New History

The figure of Joseph Stalin has always provoked heated and often polariseddebate.Therecentdeclassificationofasubstantialportionof Stalinsarchivehasmadepossiblethisfundamentalnewassessmentof the Soviet leader. In this groundbreaking study, leading international experts challege many assumptions about Stalin from his early life in Georgia to the Cold War years with contributions ranging across the political, economic, social, cultural, ideological, and international historyoftheStalinera.Thevolumeprovidesadeeper understanding of the nature of Stalins power and of the role of ideas in his politics, presenting a more complex and nuanced image of one of the most important leaders of the twentieth century. This study is without precedentinthefieldofRussianhistoryandwillproveinvaluablereading forstudentsofStalinandStalinism. is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Durham.Sheistheauthorof PopularOpinioninStalinsRussia:Terror, Propaganda,andDissent19341941 (1997).SARAH DAVIES

is SeniorLecturerinHistoryattheUniversityofLeeds. Heis t heaut hor of TheGreatUrals:RegionalismandtheEvolutionofthe SovietSystem (1999).JAMESHARRIS

StalinA New HistoryEditedby

Sarah Davies and James Harris

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo Cambridge University Press TheEdinburghBuilding,Cambridge cb22ru,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9780521851046 Cambridge University Press 2005 Thispublicationisincopyright.Subjecttostatutoryexceptionandtotheprovisionof relevantcollectivelicensingagreements,noreproductionofanypartmaytakeplace withoutthewrittenpermissionofCambridgeUniversityPress. Firstpublishedinprintformat 2005 isbn-13 isbn-10 isbn-13 isbn-10 isbn-13 isbn-10 978-0-511-12921-6 eBook(EBL) 0-511-12921-1 eBook(EBL) 978-0-521-85104-6 hardback 0-521-85104-1 hardback 978-0-521-61653-9 paperback 0-521-61653-0 paperback

CambridgeUniversityPresshasnoresponsibilityforthepersistenceoraccuracyof urls forexternalorthird-partyinternetwebsitesreferredtointhispublication,anddoesnot guaranteethatanycontentonsuchwebsitesis,orwillremain,accurateorappropriate.

Contents

Notesoncontributors Preface Anoteontransliteration Glossary 1 2 3 4 JosephStalin:powerandideasSARAHDAVIESANDJAMESHARRIS

page vii ix x xi

1 18 45

StalinasGeorgian:theformativeyears ALF RE DJ . RIEBER StalinasCommissarforNationalityAffairs,19181922JEREMYSMITH

StalinasGeneralSecretary:theappointmentsprocess andthenatureofStalinspowerJAMESHARRIS

63 83 108

5 6 7

StalinasPrimeMinister:powerandthePolitburo J. A R C H G E T T Y Stalinasdictator:thepersonalisationofpower OLEGV. KHLEVNIUK Stalinaseconomicpolicy-maker:Sovietagriculture, 19311936 R. W . D A V I E S Stalinasforeignpolicy-maker:avoidingwar, 19271953 ALF RE DJ . RIEBER StalinasMarxist:theW esternrootsofStalins russificationofMarxismERIKVANREE

121

8

140

9

159v

vi

Contents

10

StalinasBolshevikromantic:ideologyandmobilisation, 19171939DAVIDPRIESTLAND

181

11

Stalinaspatronofcinema:creatingSovietmassculture, 19321936SARAHDAVIES

202

12

Stalinasproducer:theMoscowshowtrialsandthe constructionofmortalthreatsWILLIAMCHASE

226

13

Stalinassymbol:acasestudyofthepersonalitycultand itsconstructionDAVIDBRANDENBERGER

249

14

Stalinasthecoryphaeusofscience:ideologyand knowledgeinthepost-waryearsETHANPOLLOCK

271 289

Index

Notes on contributors

DAVID BRANDENBERGER

is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of NationalBolshevism:StalinistMassCultureandtheFormationofModern Russian National Identity, 19311956 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002) and numerous articles on the culture and politicsoftheStalinperiod. isProfessorintheHistorydepartmentattheUniversity of Pittsburgh. His most recent book is Enemies within the Gates? The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 193439 (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress,2001). is Professor (Emeritus) at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham. He has written extensively on Soviet history. His most recent book (written with Dr Stephen Wheatcroft) was the fifth volume of his history of Soviet industrialisation: The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 19311933 (Basingstoke:PalgraveMacmillan,2004). is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Durham and the author of Popular Opinion in Stalins Russia: Terror, Propaganda, and Dissent (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress,1997). is Professor of History in the Department of History at UCLA. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Stalinist terror and the politics of the Stalin era, including (with V. Naumov) The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 19321939 (NewHaven:YaleUniversityPress,1999).Heiscurrently completingabiographyofNikolaiEzhov. isSeniorLecturerintheSchoolofHistoryattheUniversity of Leeds. He is the author of The Great Urals: Regionalism and the EvolutionoftheSovietSystem (Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress,1999).vii

WILLIAMCHASE

R. W . D A V I E S

SARAH DAVIES

J. A R C H G E T T Y

JAMESHARRIS

viii

Notesoncontributors

OLEG K H L E V N I U K

is Senior Researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow. His most recent book is The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress,2004). isAssistantProfessorofHistoryattheMaxwellSchool ofSyracuseUniversity.Heiscurrentlycompletingamonographunder thetitle StalinandtheSovietScienceWars. is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Oxford andFellow of S t E d mu n d H a l l . H ei s t h e a ut h o r of Stalinand the Politics of Mobilization: Ideas, Power, and Terror in Inter-war Russia (Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,2005). is Lecturer at the Institute for East European Studies of the University of Amsterdam. His most recent book is The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism (London:RoutledgeCurzon,2002).R I E B E R is Professor of History at the Central European University in Budapest and also Professor (Emeritus) at the University of Pennsylvania. His many publications include Stalin and the French Communist Party, 19411947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962) and Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (ChapelHill:UniversityofNorthCarolinaPress,1981).

ETHANPOLLOCK

DAVIDPRIESTLAND

E R I K VAN REE

ALFRED

JEREMYSMITH

isLecturerinTwentieth-CenturyRussianHistoryatthe Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham. He is the author of The Bolsheviks and the National Question,19171923 (Basingstoke:Macmillan,1999).

Preface

Most of the chapters in this volume were presented to the twenty-ninth annualconferenceoftheStudyGroupontheRussianRevolutionheldat HatfieldCollege,UniversityofDurham,inJanuary2003.Wearegrateful that on the fiftieth anniversary of Stalins death, the Study Group was willingtostretchitsdefinitionoftheRevolutionasfaras1953.Thehigh standardofthepapersandofthediscussionamongtheparticipantsmade it a memorable event. While it has not been possible to publish all the paperspresentedtotheconference,alloftheparticipantscontributedto the success of the event, and the quality of this volume. Neither the conferencenorthisbookwouldhavebeenpossiblewithoutthegenerous financial support of the British Academy and the British Association of SlavonicandEastEuropeanStudies.Weareparticularlygratefultothose who have contributed chapters to the collection for their patience and rapid replies to our queries. Finally, we thank Michael Watson of CambridgeUniversityPressforhisunflagginginterestinthisproject.JAMESHARRIS SARAH DAVIES

ix

A note on transliteration

The Library of Congress system has been adopted except in the case of certain words which are commonly transliterated otherwise (Trotsky, Gorky, for example). Chapter 12 uses the transliteration system of the publishedtrialtranscriptsonwhichitisbased.

x

Glossary

Agitprop DepartmentofAgitationandPropaganda A rtel formofcollectivefarminwhichpeasantsretainsomelivestockand aplot ASSR AutonomousSovietSocialistRepublic C e n t r a l Co m m i t t e e decision-makingbodyoftheParty Central Control Commission department of Central Committee whichinvestigatedcomplaints C o mi n f o r m CommunistInformationBureau C o min te rn CommunistInternational Commissar HeadofCommissariat Commissariat equivalentofministry(till1946) Council of Ministers, Sovmin formal government of USSR (from 1946) C o u n c il of P e o pl e s C o mmi s s a rs , S o vn a rk o m formalgovernmentof USSR(till1946) Dzhugashvili Stalinssurname ECCI ExecutiveCommitteeofComintern GKO CommitteeforStateDefence Glavrepertkom Main Directorate for the Oversight of Spectacles and Repertoire Gorko m cityPartycommittee Gosplan StatePlanningCommission Gre a tRef o rms reformsinitiatedbyAlexanderII Great Retreat term used by N. Timasheff to describe turn towards conservativepoliciesin1930s G r e a t T e r r o r periodofmassarrestsandexecutions,19368 Guberniia province GU K F / GUK Main Directorate of the Cinematic and Photographic Industry/MainDirectorateofCinematography I M E L Marx-Engels-LeninInstitute Kinogorod Cinema-city;SovietHollywood Kolkhoz collectivefarmxi

xii

Glossary

Komsomol CommunistYouthLeague Komzag AgriculturalCollectionsCommittee Korenizatsiia indigenisation; a policy of promoting elites from within ethnicgroups KPG GermanCommunistParty KPK Party Control Commission, department of Central Committee responsibleforcheckingthefulfilmentofdecisions Kresy Polandspre-wareasternprovinces K u l t p ro p DepartmentofCultureandPropaganda K V Zh D ChineseFarEasternRailway L e n i n g r a d A f f a i r purgesofLeningradPartyorganisationin1949 mesame-dasi GeorgianMarxistOrganisation MVD MinistryofInternalAffairs Narkomnats PeoplesCommissariatofNationalityAffairs Narkompros PeoplesCommissariatofEnlightenment Narkomzem PeoplesCommissariatofAgriculture N a ro d , n a ro d y people,peoples Narodnosti nationalities Natsiia nation Neo-NEP referstopoliciesintroducedwithovertonesofNEPin1932 NEP NewEconomicPolicy,periodoflimitedfreemarket(1921 8) Nomenklatura listsofleadingposts,referstoSovietpoliticalelite NKVD PeoplesCommissariatofInternalAffairs Oblast province OGIZ UnifiedStatePublishingHouse OGPU UnifiedStatePoliticalAdministrationstatesecuritypolice Okrug district Opros/Oprosom poll/byapoll Orgbu ro OrganisationBureauoftheCentralCommitteeoftheParty ORPO DepartmentoftheLeadingPartyOrgansofCentralCommittee PeoplesW ill aterrorist,revolutionaryorganisationofpopulists Politburo PoliticalBureauoftheCentralCommittee Politotdel Politicaldepartment P O U M W orkersPartyofMarxistUnification Rabkrin WorkersandPeasantsInspectorate Raion district RKP(b) RussianCommunistParty(bolsheviks) RSDWP RussianSocialDemocraticWorkersParty RSFSR RussianSovietFederalSocialistRepublic Samizdat self-published(underground)literature Secretariat oftheCentralCommitteeoftheParty

Glossary

xiii

Short Course History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): ShortCourse Soiuzkino All-UnionAmalgamationoftheCinematicandPhotographic Industry Soso apetnameforStalinusedbysomeofhisclosefriends Sovkhoz statefarm Sovmin seeCouncilofMinisters Sovnarkom seeCouncilofPeoplesCommissars Stakhanovite a member of the movement in the 1930s, following the exampleofminerAlekseiStakhanov,intendedtoincreaseproduction Stanitsa village STO CouncilofLabourandDefence SupremeSoviet highestlegislativebodyintheUSSR(from1937) Vedomstva departments/institutions Vedomstvennost departmentalism VKP(b) All-UnionCommunistParty(bolsheviks) Vospitanie education Vozhd leader VSNKh SupremeEconomicCouncil VTsIK All-Union CentralExecutiveCommittee,till1937highestlegis lativebodyintheUSSR

1

Joseph Stalin: power and ideasSarah Davies and James Harris

Stalin,liketheotherevildictatorsofthetwentiethcentury,remainsthe 1 subject of enduring public fascination. Academic attention, however, hasshiftedawayfromthestudyofGreatMen,includingStalin,towards thelittlemenandwomen,suchasthenowcelebratedStepanPodlubnyi, 2 andtowardsStalinistpoliticalculturemoregenerally. Ironicallythisisat atimewhenwehaveunprecedentedaccesstohithertoclassifiedmaterial 3 on Stalin, the individual. The object of this volume is to reinvigorate scholarly interest in Stalin, his ideas, and the nature of his power. Although Stalin certainly did not single-handedly determine everything about the set of policies, practices, and ideas we have come to call Stalinism, it is nowindisputable that in many respects his influencewas decisive. A clearer understanding of his significance will allow more preciseanalysisoftheoriginsandnatureofStalinismitself.

1

Notetheinterestinseveralrecentpublicationsaimedprimarilyatapopularreadership: MartinAmis, KobatheDread:LaughterandtheTwentyMillion (London:JonathanCape, 2002);SimonSebagMontefiore, Stalin:TheCourtoftheRedTsar (London:Weidenfeld andNicolson,2003);DonaldRayfield, StalinandhisHangmen (London:Viking,2004). Podlubnyi has been made famous by Jochen Hellbeck in a number of publications, includingFashioningtheStalinistSoul:TheDiaryofStepanPodlubnyi,1931 1939, JahrbucherfurGeschichteOsteuropas 44(1996),344 73. Onthecult uralt urninSov iet history,seetheintroductionbySheilaFitzpatrickin Stalinism:NewDirections (London: Routledge,2000). M uc hof t his is int heSt alin fondintheRussianStateArchiveofSocio-PoliticalHistory (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsialno-politicheskoi istorii, henceforth RGASPI fond558,opis11),whichincludescorrespondencereceivedfromandsenttoeveryone from the members of his inner circle to peasants and foreign journalists; documents relatingtoStalinsactivitiesintheorganisationsinwhichheworked;speeches,articles, biographical materials, and so on. Some documents from this collection have been published,includingthet woimportantv olumes:LarsLih,OlegV.Naumov,andOleg V.Khlevniuk(eds.), StalinsLetterstoMolotov,19251936 (NewHaven:YaleUniversity Press, 1995); R.W. Davies, O. Khlevniuk, E.A. Rees L. Kosheleva, and L. Rogovaia (eds.), TheStalinKaganovichCorrespondence,19311936 (NewHaven:YaleUniversity Press,2003).

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SarahDaviesandJamesHarris

The cont ributors to the volum e do not subscr ibe to any single mode l. Inst ead, the y sha re a common agend a: to examine the new archival mat erials, as well as the old, with the aim of rethinkin g som e of the stere otypes and assumpti ons abou t Stalin tha t have accumul ated in the histo riography . The vast literat ure on St alin is of varyin g quali ty, inclu ding journalist ic specu lations, sensat ionali st potboil ers, an d polit ical diatrib es, as well as the importan t studies by Isaac Deut scher, Robert 4 Tuc ker, and othe rs. Much of the work to date has been affected by both limited access to primary sourc es an d the unusuall y int ense politicisa tion of the fie ld of Sov iet stu dies. The Soviet regime was obse ssed wi th secre cy. Histor ians had to rel y on a narro w group of use ful sources, inclu ding publ ished resolut ions and decis ions, stenographi c report s of some major Party meeti ngs, and publishe d speeches of pro minent offic ials. While the se sorts of sourc es could be quite useful , the y tended to reveal m ore abou t what was hap pening in thelowerechelonsofpower.TheydivulgedlittleornothingaboutStalin andhisinnercircle.Althoughthepost-Stalinperiodsawlimitedselected archi val acc ess, as well as the incre asing availab ility of m emoirs, samizdat, and emigre sources, the thoughts and actions of the political elite remainedlargelyamatterofspeculation.Inthepolarisedpoliticalclimate ofmuchofthetwentiethcentury,itwasnot uncommonforscholarsand otherobserverstoseewhatconfirmedtheirassumptionsandprejudices. The political context left a strong mark on both Soviet and western interpretations. Soviet historians were forced to conform to whatever happenedtobethePartyscurrentpoliticallineonStalin,andproduced whatwasessentiallypropagandafortheregime.Exceptionsincludedthe dissident Marxist Roy Medvedev, whose work, based primarily on Khrushchev-erareminiscences,went farbeyond whatwasofficiallypermissible in its criticism of Stalin for his distortion of Lenins original 5 project. While Western analysts were not under such overt pressure, their interpretations were also heavily dependent on changing political circumstances. For example, the politically charged 1930s saw the publicationinFranceof,ontheonehand,thesycophanticbiographyofStalin by the Communist Henri Barbusse, and on the other, the former

4

IsaacDeutscher, Stalin:APoliticalBiography,rev.edn.(London:Penguin,1984);Robert Tucker, StalinasRevolutionary,18791929.AStudyinHistoryandPersonality (NewYork: W .W . N ort on, 1 97 3) an d StalininPower:TheRevolutionfromAbove,19281941 (New York:W .W .Norton,1990);AdamUlam, Stalin:TheManandHisEra,2ndedn.(London: I.B.Tauris,1989);R.McNeal, Stalin:ManandRuler (London:Macmillan,1988). R.Medvedev, LetHistoryJudge:TheOriginsandConsequencesofStalinism (Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress,1989).Thiswasfirstpublishedin1971.

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Communist Boris Souvarines vitriolic anti-Stalin study. During the wartime alliance with Stalin, a spate of sympathetic evaluations appeared in the USA and Great Britain, which quickly evaporated as 7 the Cold War began. Academic Sovietology, a child of the early Cold War, was dominated by the totalitarian model of Soviet politics. Until the 1960s it was almost impossible to advance any other interpretation, intheUSAatleast.Itwasthechangingpoliticalclimatefromthe1960s, as well as the influence of new social science methodologies, which fostered the development of revisionist challenges to the totalitarian orthodoxy. Overthecourseoftheseyears,anumberofinfluentialstudiesofStalin appeared, whose interpretations hinged on particular understandings of therelationshipbetweentheindividualandhispolitical,social,economic, ideological, and cultural context. One of the earliest was that of Trotsky, who advanced the notion of the impersonal Stalin a mediocrity who lackedanyofhisownideasbutwhoactedastheperfectrepresentativeof 8 thecollectiveinterestsofthenewbureaucracy. TheTrotskyistsympathiser, Isaac Deutscher, writing after the war, was much more willing than Trotsky to credit Stalins achievements, yet his Stalin was also to a great extent a product of circumstances. In Deutschers view, the policy of collectivisation was dictated by the danger of famine conditions at the endofthe1920s.Stalinwasanecessaryagentofmodernisationamanof 9 almost impersonal personality. Likewise, E.H. Carr, while recognising Stalins greatness, nevertheless stressed the historical logic of rapid modernisation: collectivisation and industrialisation were imposed by the 10 objectivesituationwhichSovietRussiainthelater1920shadtoface. Whiletheseanalysesfocusedonthesocio-economiccircumstanceswhich produced the Stalin phenomenon, totalitarian theories accentuated the functioningofthepoliticalandideologicalsystem.In1953,CarlFrie drich characterisedtotalitariansystemsintermsoffivepoints:anofficialideology, control of weapons and of media, use of terror, and a single mass party6

H. Barbusse, Stalin: A New World Seen Through One Man (London: John Lane The BodleyHead,1935);B.Souvarine, Stalin:ACriticalStudyofBolshevism (London:Secker andWarburg,1939). For example, J.T. Murphy, Stalin 18791944 (London: John Lane The Bodley Head,1945). L. Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence (London: Harper and Bros.1941). Deutscher, Stalin,p. 275. E.H.Carr,StalinVictorious, TimesLiterarySupplement,10June1949.Inhisintroduction toaneweditionofTheRussianRevolutionfromLenintoStalin,R.W.DaviesnotesthatCarrs understandingofStalinsroleshiftedinlateryears.E.H.Carr, TheRussianRevolutionfrom LenintoStalin,19171929 (London:PalgraveMacmillan,2004),pp.xxxiv xxxv.

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usuallyunderasingleleader. Therewasofcourseanassumptionthatthe leader was critical to the workings of totalitarianism: at the apex of a monolithic, centralised, and hierarchical system, it was he who issued the orderswhichwerefulfilledunquestioninglybyhissubordinates.However, adherentsofthemodelwerenotgenerallyconcernedwiththeleaderexcept in his capacity as a function of the system and its ideology. There was certainly little empirical analysis of the significance of individual leaders: thepersonalitiesorideasofaLeninoraStalinwerenotconsideredcritical 12 toanunderstandingoftheinnerworkingsoftotalitarianism. ItwaspartlydissatisfactionwiththisapproachwhichlaybehindRobert Tuckersattempttoreassessthesignificanceoftheleader.Thefirstvolume of his Stalin biography argued that the personality of the dictator was central to understanding the development of Stalinism. Tucker distinguished between the impact of Lenin and that of Stalin, suggesting that the Stalinist outcomewas far from inevitable andwasdependent inlarge measure on Stalins own drive for power. Delving into the uncharted watersofpsychohistory,hesoughttherootsofStalinisminStalinsexperi 13 encesinchildhoodandbeyond. Thiswasan importantnewdeparture, whichcoincidedwithothereffortstofindalternativestoStalinism,notably 14 Stephen Cohens study of Bukharin. Yet the psychohistory on which it 15 depended was always rather speculative. The second volume of the biography was in many ways more rounded. Stalin in Power argued that Russiasauthoritarianpoliticalcultureandstate-buildingtraditions,aswell 16 asStalinspersonality,playedakeyroleinshapingStalinism. Tuckers work stressed the absolute nature of Stalins power, an assumptionwhichwasincreasinglychallengedbylaterrevisionisthistori ans. In his Origins of the GreatPurges, Arch Getty argued that the Soviet politicalsystemwaschaotic,thatinstitutionsoftenescapedthecontrolof thecentre,andthatStalinsleadershipconsistedtoaconsiderableextent 17 in responding, on an ad hoc basis, to political crises as they arose.

11

C.J. Friedrich, Totalitarianism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), pp.523. RobertTucker, TheSovietPoliticalMind (London:GeorgeAllenandUnwin,1972),p.28. Tucker, StalinasRevolutionary. S.Cohen, BukharinandtheBolshevikRevolution:APoliticalBiography,1888 1938 (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1973). AlthoughTuckersapproachwasalwaysmuchmorehistoricallygroundedthanthefar lessconvincingpsychoanalyticalaccountofferedbyD.Rancour-Lafferierein TheMindof Stalin (AnnArbor:Ardis,1988). Tucker, StalininPower. J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 19331938 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1985),pp.4 9.

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Gettys work was influenced by political science of the 1960s onwards, which, in a critique of the totalitarian model, began to consider the possibility that relatively autonomous bureaucratic institutions might 18 have had some influence on policy-making at the highest level. In the 1970s,historianstookuptheimplicitchallengeandexploredavarietyof 19 influencesandpressuresondecision-making. Thediscoveryofstrong institutionalinterestsandlivelybureaucraticpoliticsbeggedthequestion of whether Stalin did dominate the political system, or whether he was 20 embattled,asonekeystudyputit. During the new Cold War of the 1980s, the work of the revisionists becametheobjectofheatedcontroversy,accusedofminimisingStalins 21 role,ofdownplayingtheterror,andsoon. W iththethecollapseofthe SovietUnion,someoftheheathasgoneoutofthedebate.Aftertheinitial wave of self-justificatory findings, the opening up of the archives has stimulated serious work with sources. The politicisation of the field has become noticeably less pronounced, particularly amongst a younger generation of scholars in both Russia and the West for whom the legitimacy of socialism and the USSR are no longer such critical issues. Political history in general has attracted fewer students in favour of the moreintellectuallyfashionableculturalhistory.However,therearesigns of the emergence of a renewed interest in political history, of which this 22 volumeisoneexample. All the contributors to the volume represent the post-1991 wave of scholarship grounded in empirical work in the former Soviet archives. From North America and Europe, including Russia, they range from scholarswhohavebeenworkingontheseproblemsforoverhalfacentury to those who have recently completed doctoral dissertations. EachForexample,GordonSkilling,InterestGroupsinCommunistPolitics, WorldPolitics 3 (1966),43551. See for example, Moshe Lewin, Taking Grain: Soviet Policies of Agricultural Procurements Before the War, in C. Abramsky (ed.), Essays in Honour of E.H. Carr (London: Macmillan, 1974); Jonathan Harris, The Origins of the Conflict Between MalenkovandZhdanov,19391941, SlavicReview 2(1976),287303;DanielBrower, CollectivizedAgricultureinSmolensk:theParty,thePeasantryandtheCrisisof1932, RussianReview 2(1977),15166;SheilaFitzpatrick(ed.), CulturalRevolutioninRussia, 19281931 (Bloomington,Ind.:IndianaUniversityPress,1978);PeterSolomon,Soviet PenalPolicy,19171934:AReinterpretation, SlavicReview 2(1980),195217;Werner Hahn, PostwarSovietPolitics:TheFallofZhdanovandtheDefeatofModeration,19461953 (Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress,1982). W illiamO.McCagg,Jr, StalinEmbattled,19431948 (Detroit:WayneStateUniversity Press, 1978).See also GaborRittersporn, Letat en lutte contre lui-meme: Tensions socialesetconflitspolitiquesenURSS,19361938, Libre 4(1978). See,forexample,thedebatesin RussianReview 4(1986). FordiscussionsonTheNewPoliticalHistorysee Kritika (1),2004.

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considersaspecificfacetofStalinaspoliticianandthinker.Inthediscus sion which follows, we focus on what light these analyses shed on two importantquestions.Thefirst,thenatureofStalinspower,haslongbeen acentralissueinthehistoriography.Thesecond,StalinsMarxism,and the relationship between ideas and mobilisation, has received much less attention. The majority of what we know about Stalin concerns his years in power. While this focus of the historians attention is entirely logical, it is easy to forget that by the time he defeated Bukharin and became the uncontested leader of the Bolshevik Party, Stalin was fifty years old. He had lived two-thirds of his life. It would be surprising indeed if by this time Stalin was not fully developed as a personality, a thinker, and a politician. And yet somehow, few works on Stalin pay much attention 23 to his formative years. Alfred Riebers chapter on Stalins Georgian background shows why this has been the case. He explains why sources on Stalins early years were particularly subject to manipulation and censorship.Hemakesuseofpublishedandunpublishedmemoirstocut throughthemyth-makingandcastnewlightonStalinsearlylifeandthe formation of his identity. He shows how Stalin adapted his political persona, shaped by his frontier perspective to benefit his career as a revolutionary and politician. His early experiences left him with a preference for decision-making in small informal groups in place of large committees,aconspiratorialmentality,andanacceptanceofviolence. In his study of Stalin as Commissar of Nationalities, Jeremy Smith picksupthisstoryofStalinsformativeyearsintheperiodjustafterthe Revolution. He shows Stalin a l re a d yc onfident a nd c onsistent i n h is ideas on nationalities policy, willing and able to stand up to Lenin on questionsofpolicytowardsthenationalminoritiesandtherelationship between Russia and the other Soviet republics. The chapter by David PriestlandechoesthisimpressionthatStalinwasconfidentinhisideas and quite willing and able to engage other leading Bolsheviks on key issues. This is consonant with growing evidence that policy debates played a much stronger role in the Lenin succession than we had 24 imagined. Machine politics did, nevertheless, play a crucial role in Stalins ability to defeat his opponents. In his chapter, Smith also discusses Stalins early experiences of high politics within the Bolshevik Party in power, particularly as they developed his skills of factional23

OnerecentRussianstudybeginsLetusnotdetainourselveswithStalinsearlyyears,for theydonotcontributeanythingtoanunderstandingofhislaterattitudesandworldview. Iu.Zhukov, InoiStalin (Moscow:Vagrius,2003),p.8. See,forexample,Lihetal.(eds.), StalinsLetterstoMolotov,pp.256.

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struggle and institutional empire-building. In observing the failure of the Commissariat of Nationalities to provide an adequate power base, he anticipates Harris contribution on Stalins next post, as General SecretaryoftheParty. The idea that Stalin used his position as General Secretary to build a network of loyal political clients has long held a central place in our understanding of his rise to political supremacy. It has also shaped our senseofwhythesystemevolvedintoapersonaldictatorship,andhowthe systemworked,suggestingthatideasdidnotmatterasmuchasruthless political manipulation behind closed doors. James Harris study of CentralCommitteearchivesshowsthattheSecretariatplayedanimpor tant role in Stalins rise, but not as we have commonly understood it. HarrisarguesthattheSecretariatwasbarelyabletocopewithitstasksin the assignment and distribution of cadres. There is little evidence to suggest that Stalin was able to use it to build a personal following. The SecretariatwasneverthelessinvaluabletoStalinasasourceofinformation on the needs and wants of Party officialdom. In particular, he encouraged the common distaste for intra-Party democracy in order to harassandfrustratehisrivals,tolimitthedisseminationoftheirideas.In this way, the Secretariat played a critical role in Stalins rise to power, thoughnotasthesourceofthepersonalisticdictatorshipwhichemerged in the 1930s. A substantial part of Party officialdom voted for him because they felt he served their interests. Harris observes that they werelesssurethathedidwhenheimposedtheimpossibletargetsofthe First Five-Year Plan and the command-administrative system emerged. However,havingthemselvesunderminedintra-Partydemocracyandany prospect of questioning the Central Committee Line, there was little theycoulddo. Whilenewlyreleasedarchivalmaterialsonthe1920shaveyettoattract muchscholarlyattention,thereisalreadyaconsiderabl ebodyofworkon Soviet politicsinthe1930s.W ecan nowtracethestepsbywhichStalin achievedasteadyconcentrationandpersonalisationofpower.Fromthe protocolsoftopPartyorgansandothermaterials,wecanseeindetailthe steady decline in the consultative aspects of policy-making which characterisedthe1920s.WeknewthatPartycongressesandconferenceswere increasinglyrare,asweremeetingsoftheCentralCommittee.Themeet ingsthemselvesceasedtoinvolveanydiscussionofpolicy,butappearto havebeenorchestratedtopublicisemajorpolicys hifts.Wehavelearned thatthePolitburostoppedmeetingformallybythemiddleofthe1930sas powershiftedtoaninformalcoteriearoundStalin.Thelettersandother notes they exchanged has shown us that even with this group, relations were changing in the 1930s. The friendly informality that characterised

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the ir excha nges with Stalin in the early 1930s was replaced with a distin ctly sycophan tic to ne a decade late r. While the re is evid ence of debat e and disag reeme nts with Stalin in the early thirties, withi n a few years his word had beco me law . More sinister evid ence of the entrenc hment of perso nal dictators hip is his inc reasing relianc e on the Peoples 25 Comm issariat of Internal Affai rs (NK VD) as an instru ment of rule. This picture of the concentration of personal power can be misleading, however, if taken in isolation. The contributions to this volume examine the nature of Stalins power, but without losing sight of the context in which it was exercised. Even Khlevniuk, who most emphatically asserts the vastness of Stalins dictatorial powers, observes that neither in the early 1930s nor later in the decade could Stalin act alone. His inner circle and others close to the centre of power retained some influence and autonomy (though Getty and Khlevniuk, for example, disagree on just how much influence and autonomy they had). Nor could Stalin decide every matter of policy. His interventions were decisive, but there were substantial areas of policy that he left to others. Though Stalins power was great, he could not always translate his ideas into action. Political and social structures were not soft putty for him to mould to his will. Stalin may have been an extremely powerful dictator, but he may not have felt as though he was, for his personal dictatorship took shape against a backdrop of revolutionary change, economic crisis, bureaucratic chaos, and a fear of enemies. In his contribution on Stalin as Prime Minister, Arch Getty criticises those who regard the decline of formal decision-making structures as synonymous with the accretion of total power by Stalin. Rather, Getty sees the emergence of a decision-making process similar in key respects to a cabinet, which Stalin, as the Prime Minister, dominated. The reduction in regular, formal meetings constituted what he calls the normalisation of the Politburo as it adjusted to the great increase in decision-making in a centrally planned economy in the midst of a crash program of rapid industrialisation and collectivisation. Meetings were streamlined and made more frequent. Most issues were decided without discussion by m ean s o f a vo te (oprosom). Members of the Politburo were responsible forkeycommissariatsandareasofpolicy,thusretainingsubstantialpower basesandinfluenceoverdecisions.Considerableinfluenceoverdecision makingwouldalsohavebeenretainedbythoseindividualsandinstitutions 26 thatprovidedinformationonthebasisofwhichdecisionsweremade.25 26

SeeOlegKhlevniukscontributiontothisvolume. Such as the Council of Peoples Commissars, the Council of Labour and Defence, Commissariats and their commissars (including members of the Politburo, the Planning Commission, experts and advisors, temporary and permanent commissions

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Rieber, Khle vniuk, and R. W. Davies sha re Gettys view tha t in areas where St alin too k an int erest, he dominat ed polic y-making abso lutely. His views were rarel y que stione d. Particu larly in the later 1930s , m any of those around St alin came to fear autonomo us action, and merely tried to anticip ate the le aders prefe rences. Whe re Stalin dominat ed polic y, he could exhib it both flexibi lity and dogma tism. Ri ebers second cont ribution to this vol ume pro vides a nuanc ed analysis of the apparent par adox es of St alins se curity policy , show ing wh ere Stalin learned from his mista kes and wh ere his idea s remained unchange d. In refere nce to intra ctable issues of eco nomic polic y, such as the func tion of m oney in a soci alist econo my, R. W. Davies observes St alins flexibi lity and abili ty to learn from experi ence, but he also point s ou t occ asions on whic h Stalin abjectly failed to anticip ate the dis astrous consequen ces of major decisions , such as the impa ct of swingeing gra in coll ections in 1931 and 1932. Kh levniuk, in his cont ribution, refers to Stalins pro pensity to shift his posit ion in the face of such disasters as crisis pra gmatism . Whe re Stalin did not activ ely intervene in polic y, others filled the voi d. Workin g with St alins corre spond ence from his months on vacation in the mid-193 0s, Getty obse rves the large number of decisio ns (89 per cent) taken by the Politburo without St alins par ticipatio n. R. W. Davies work on agric ultural policy cont rasts Stalin s detailed manag ement of grain procu rement cam paigns with his relative lack of interest in livest ock issues. Sarah Davies contribu tion shows not only Stalin s ext raordinary perso nal influe nce over film producti on, but also his desire to have a reliable lieut enant to realise his will , as well as the great difficu lty of making ind ividuals and ins titutions respo nd effective ly to his will. Clearl y, there existed coheren t structure s that allowed the syst em to functi on in his abse nce. Those structure s served to impleme nt the dicta tors orders, but they coul d also act as a constrain t on Stalin s freedo m of actio n. The idea that St alin and the Sov iet leadership had to cont end with relative ly autonom ous ins titutions and groups is not new. In the 1950s, historians obse rved that techn ical spe cialists and m anagers did not always 27 behave in way s the regime wante d. In the 1970s an d 80s , socia l histo rians obse rved that society was not a blank slate eithe r, but only since the opening of the archi ves have we had the opportun ity to stu dy in depth theestablished by the Politburo, and so on). G. M. Adibekov, K. M. Anderson, and L. A. Rogovaia (eds.), Politbiuro TsK RKP(b)-VKP(b). Povestki dnia zasedanii, 19191952:Katalog,3vols.(Moscow:Rosspen,2000),I,pp.18 19. DavidGranick, ManagementoftheIndustrialFirmintheUSSR (NewYork:Columbia UniversityPress,1954);JosephBerliner, FactoryandManagerintheUSSR (Cambridge, Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress,1957).

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workings of institutions and officials higher up the administrative hierarchy. In this volume, Khlevniuk observes the strength of bureaucratic self-interest, or, as Stalin would have known it, departmentalism (vedomstvennost). Commissariats, planners, control organs, regional Party organisations, and other institutions were constantly angling to promotepoliciesfavourabletothemandtolimittheirobligations,fight 28 ing amongst each other where their interests conflicted. This can be viewed as an important source of Stalins power, given that he was viewed,andacted,assupremearbiter,butStalinspersistentfrustration with departmentalism suggests that he considered it anything but a sourceofstrength. In spite of his uncontested position and immense political power, it seemsthatStalinneverfeltentirelysecure.Thefailuretocontaininstitu tionalself-interesthassomethingtodowiththis,asdidtheconstantfear of war and of the infiltration of foreign enemies. Riebers chapter on Stalin as a foreign policy-maker makes a compelling argument that beneaththesurfaceofzigzagsandcontradictionsinSovietsecuritypolicy layStalinsenduringfearaboutthevulnerabilityoftheSovietborderlands inthecontextofwhathewasconvincedwouldbeaninevitablewarwith the capitalist world. Nor can the Great Terror (19368) be understood exceptasaresponsetoStalinsinsecurity.Inhischapteronthechanging imageoftheenemyinthethreeMoscowshowtrials,ChaseshowsStalin at his most powerful and powerless, shaping and directing popular opinioninamassiveanddevastatingcampaigntounmaskhiddenenemies, while lashing out at chimerical enemies who were largely the product of hisownconspiratorialmentality. How much did Stalins dictatorship change after the Terror? We still know almost nothing about the period from the curtailing of the mass 29 operations in late 1938 to the Nazi invasion in June 1941, and only somewhat more about the structure of the dictatorship in the Second World War. The post-war period, often labelled High Stalinism has generated morework and debate. As the label indicates, many historians arguethattheperiodfrom194553markedtheapogeeofStalinspersonal dictatorship,hispowerreinforcedbyterrorandvictoryinwar,imposedat 30 theexpenseofinstitutionalcoherence. Othershavequestionedtheimage of the disintegration of political structures in the post-war period,

28

SeealsoPaulGregory(ed.), BehindtheFacadeofStalinsCommandEconomy:Evidence fromtheSovietStateandPartyArchives (Stanford:HooverInstitutionPress,2001). Oneoft hev eryf ewwork s onthis periodis Harris ,TheOriginoft heConf lic t. See for example, Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (London: Hart-Davis, 1962), p.73; Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (London: Deutsch, 1971),

29 30

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observingconflictsamongpowerfulinstitutionalinterestsandfactionsthat 31 shapedpolicyintheperiod. Recent archival research has tempered this debate somewhat. It has become clear that Stalin was feeling his age after the war and began to reduce his work schedule. The Council of Peoples Commissars, renamed the Council of Ministers in 1946, was given almost exclusive controlovereconomicissues,andsomepoliticalissues,suchas nomenklatura appointments, were passed to other organs within the Central 32 Committeeapparatus. WhileStalinsinvolvementinday-to-daydecisionmakingdeclined,hecontinuedtokeepacloseeyeonthings,intervening 33 occasionally and often violently. His interventions remained decisive, but his withdrawal from day-to-day decision-making only strengthened institutional coherence and intensified struggles for power and for his 34 favour. Khlevniukarguesthat Stalinspersonaldictatorshiphadnever challenged institutional coherence. Though his power was limitless, the complexity of decision-making had consistently and inevitably reproduced elements of oligarchical rule. Put simply, Stalin had always neededaninnercirclewithclosetiestostrongbureaucraticinstitutions. According to Khlevniuk, Stalins power was at its height in his role as arbiter of conflicting institutional interests. His semi-retirement in the late 1940s made that role more difficult, and he was more inclined to resort to violence in his occasional interventions. In response, his inner circle adopted mechanisms of collective decision-making on the basis of which the system was able to work smoothly without him when hedied. While thenatureofStalinspowerhasbeenaconstantpreoccupation ofscholars,untilrecently,fewstudieshavepaidseriousattentiontoStalin asaMarxist.Onlyin2002didasystematicstudyofhispoliticalthought 35 appear. Heistypicallyviewedasthequintessentialpragmaticpolitician, interested primarily in power for its own sake, and only superficiallypp.298301.AlsoRogerPethybridge, AHistoryofPostwarRussia (London:Allenand Unwin,1966);RobertConquest, PowerandPolicyintheUSSR (London:Macmillan, 1961). In StalinEmbattled,W illiamO.McCagg wentsofarastoarguethatStalinspo wer was challenged by these groups. See also Timothy Dunmore, The Stalinist Command Economy: The Soviet State Apparatus and Economic Policy, 19451953 (London: Macmillan,1980);Hahn, PostwarSovietPolitics. Yoram Gorlizki, Ordinary Stalinism: The Council of Ministers and the Soviet NeopatrimonialState,19461953, JournalofModernHistory 4(2002),7059,715. Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 19451953 (Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,2004). IuriiZhukov,BorbazavlastvrukovodstveSSSRv1945 1952godakh, Voprosyistorii 1 (1995), 2339; O. Khlevniuk, Sovetskaia ekonomicheskaia politika na rubezhe 19401950-xgodoviDeloGosplana, Otechestvennaiaistoriia 3(2001),7789. ErikvanRee, ThePoliticalThoughtofJosephStalin (London:RoutledgeCurzon,2002).

31

32 33 34

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committed to Marxist ideology. In public heinvoked Marxistprinciples cynicallyandrepresentedhimselfasatheoristtolegitimatehispower.His dismissive attitude to these principles is evident in the many ways in which he apparently distorted and abandoned them when political exigency required. He is widely accused of having betrayed the original Marxist ideals in favour of inegalitarianism, social conservatism, and, especially, Russian nationalism, described by Carr as the only political 36 creedwhichmovedhimatalldeeply. Oneoftheadvantagesoftheavailabilityofnewarchivalsourcesisthe lighttheyshedonthisquestionofStalinsrelationshiptoideology.Ifone accepts the argument above, one would have expected Stalin to invoke Marxistlanguageinpublic,butnotinprivate.Yetwhatisstrikingist hat even in his most intimate correspondence with Molotov, Kaganovich, and others, Stalin did in fact continue to employ Marxist concepts and 37 frameworks. As Pollock points out in this volume, the USSR did not 38 keeptwosetsofbooks,atleastonideologicalquestions. Itappearsthat adherencetoMarxismwasmorethanjustasourceofpoliticallegitimacy for Stalin. But what was the nature of his Marxism? Marxism itself is a diverse and in some respects inconsistent body of ideas. Which of these didStalindrawon?Howdidhisideasevolve?Andwhatwastherelation ship between the ideology and his political practice? Several of the contributorstothisvolumeaddressthesequestionsdirectly. ErikvanReeistheauthorofthemostcomprehensivestudytodateof 39 Stalins political thought. He has carried out extensive research in Stalinsunpublishedpapers,especiallyhislibrary.WhatdidStalinread? How did this influence his thinking? Van Rees research shows that his (non-fiction) library consisted of overwhelmingly Marxist works, which 40 hecontinuedtostudyandannotateuntiltheendofhislife. VanRees conclusionisthattheseideasmatteredtoStalin,andthatheremaineda committedMarxist,ifMarxismisdefinedinitsbroadestsense. In his contribution to the present volume, van Ree grapples with the problem of the alleged Russification of Marxism under Stalin. He disagreeswithaprevailingperceptionthatStalinfundamentallyadaptedand 41 distorted Marxism to suit Russian conditions. Instead he concurs with suchscholarsasLeszekKolakowskiandAndrzejWalickithatStalindidnot

36 37 38 39

Carr, TheRussianRevolutionfromLenintoStalin,p.170. Lih et al. (eds.), Stalins Letters to Molotov; R.W. Davies et al. (eds.), The Stalin KaganovichCorrespondence. SeealsoJ.ArchGetty, TheRoadtoTerror:StalinandtheSelf-DestructionoftheBolsheviks, 19321939 (NewHaven:YaleUniversityPress,1999),p.22. VanRee, PoliticalThought. 40 Ibid.,pp.16,25861. 41 Tucker, StalininPower.

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substantially modify basic Marxist tenets. Van Ree goes much further than his predecessors in tracing the influences upon and evolution of Stalins thought. Ideas such as revolution from above, socialism in one country,orthecontinuingneedforastrongstateandfortheflourishingof nationsundersocialismwerefarfromStalinistinnovations.Allhadante cedents in the thinking of Marx or his interpreters (including Engels, Vollmar,Bauer,Kautsky,Lenin),or,insomecases,otherWesternrevolu tionary traditions (such as Jacobinism) which themselves influenced the followersofMarx.Onlytheextremechauvinismandanti -cosmopolitanism of the post-war years are difficult to reconcile with Marxist thinking, yet eventhesehadanti-capitalistovertonesconsistentwithaMarxistapproach. It was precisely because Marxism was so elastic, encompassing such a varietyofsometimescontradictorytendenciesthatStalinwasabletoreject themoredemocratic,liberalstrandsinfavourofthosewhichseemedmost compatiblewithRussian/Sovietdevelopment.VanReeconcludesthatthe WesternrevolutionarytraditionwasitselfmorepermeatedwithStali nist elementsthanwewouldliketothink.Stalinsimplyelevatedmanyofthese elementstothestatusofdogma. Several authors follow van Ree in taking Stalins Marxism seriously. Alfred Rieber, however, reminds us that the young Stalins journey to Marxism was not as straightforward as its description in the official cult biographies discussed in David Brandenbergers chapter. Rieber casts doubt on Stalins claim to have become involved in underground Marxist groups at the age of fifteen. In the rich frontier situation of Georgia, the adolescent Stalin absorbed a variety of other intellectual influences: populism, nationalism, as well as a specifically Georgian nationalist-inclined strain of Marxism. He was also drawn to romantic literaturewithitsvividdepictionsofheroesdefendingthepoor.Allthese influences may have contributed not only to the obvious nationalist currents in his thinking, but also to the less obvious romantic, populist interpretationofMarxismtowhichhewasattracted. It is this Bolshevik romanticism which David Priestland emphasises. HischapterdrawsourattentiontotensionswithinMarxism-Leninismand howtheseplayedoutinStalinsownthinkingintheperiod1917 39.He distinguishesbetweenMarxismsscientisticanddeterministicsideand its more voluntaristic and romantic side. While the former accentuates the roleofeconomicforces,technique(tekhnika)andsoon,thelatterfocuses42

LeszekKolakowski,MarxistRootsofStalinism,inR.Tucker(ed.), Stalinism:Essaysin HistoricalInterpretation (NewYork:W.W .Norton,1977),pp.283 98;AndrzejW alicki, MarxismandtheLeaptotheKingdomofFreedom (Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1995),ch.5.

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on the active role of the proletariat, of politics and consciousness. Although, like many other Bolsheviks, he oscillated between these two approaches, Stalin seems to have been most consistently attracted to the quasi-romanticviewwithitsemphasisonheroismandwill. ThisvoluntarismleftastrongmarkonStalinsattitudetomassmobi lisation, which is examined in several of the contributions. Priestland highlights how the leaders populist, anti-bourgeois outlook made him a strong advocate of unleashing worker activism, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. In the later 1930s, he continued to stress the importance of ideological mobilisation of what were now more often termedthepeople,forexample,duringtheStakhanovitecampaign. Stalins conviction, highlighted by Priestland, that the production of souls is more important than the production of tanks explains his constant attention to cultural matters, which Sarah Davies examines in her chapteronStalinsroleaspatronofcinemainthemid -1930s.Sheshows howStalindevotedanextraordinaryamountoftimetowhathedescribed as helping to turn Soviet cinema into a truly mass art, capable of mobilising the people for the goals of socialism. Not only did he offer financial support and promote the prestige of cinema, but he also participatedactivelyinthemakingoffilms,tryingtoensurethattheyconvey suitableideologicalmessagespackagedinanentertainingway. Mass mobilisation was one important dimensionof the GreatTerror. DebatesabouttheTerrorhavetendedtofocusonmattersofpowerand security (see above). While these must of course be paramount in any explanation,theyshouldnotovershadowtheideologicalissues.VanRee has suggested that Stalins Marxist convictions led him to believe in thecontinuedexistenceofaclassstruggle,andthatthisbeliefshapedthe 43 formthattheterrorassumed. Thequestionofbeliefisacomplexone,but whatisabundantlyclearisthatStalinrecognisedthepotentialoftheterror tomobilisethepopulationagainstrealorimaginedenemiesofthepeople 44 andforStalinandtheSovietstate. SarahDaviesnotesthatStalinwasparticularlyconcernedtoshapethe image of the internal and external enemy in films. Like films, the show trials served as powerful didactic tools. Bill Chases chapter reveals the extent to which Stalin participated in the staging of the trials, both in Moscow and in the provinces. These performances provided an opportunityforthecarefullyorchestratedconstructionofthreatstothepublic. Stalin was personally involved in the crafting of these threats, which changed markedly over the period 19368, as did the intended43 44

VanRee, PoliticalThought,pp.1245. Onthequestionofbelief,seeGettysusefuldiscussionin RoadtoTerror pp.1524.

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audience. In 1936, the threat was defined as oppositionists turned enemy agents and terrorists, whose only aim was to seize power. The audience for this trial was primarily Party members. By 1937, the message had become more populist: the threat was now from Party officials who were engaging in terrorism, espionage, and wrecking in order to overturn the Soviet system and restore capitalism. This was designed to mobilise the little people, ordinary Soviet citizens, to unmasktheenemiesofthepeople scapegoatsforeconomicfailures. In 1938, the threat, and the audience, had turned truly global a conspiracyofrightistsandTrotskyistswereallegedlyintentondismem beringtheUSSRwiththeassistanceoffascistandcapitalistpowers. InStalinsmind,theuncoveringofsuchavastconspiracyhighlighted theneedforagreaterfocusontheMarxist-Leninisteducation(vospitanie) ofcadres.PriestlandarguesthatStalinattributedtheideologicalcontam ination of cadres to an excessive focus on tekhnika at the expense of politika. Henceforth ideas were to assume a much higher priority. The Short Course in Party history of 1938 was designed to be a primer in thetheoryandpracticeofMarxism -Leninismtoinspireandinstructthe intelligentsia,andtopreventthemfromgoingovertotheenemy. Stalin was sensitive to the limited appeal of the Short Course for the masses,however,appreciatingthatdifferentapproacheswererequired fordifferentaudiences.Inhischapter,DavidBrandenbergerarguesthat theStalincultoneofthemoststrikingfeaturesofStalinism waspart ofamobilisationalstrategydirectedprimarilytowardsthemasses.The cultappearstobeagrossaberrationfromsocialistideals(althoughvan ReehasarguedthateventhishadantecedentswithinMarxistthought), and many historians have interpreted it as a symptom of Stalins psy45 chological need for self-aggrandisement. While not denying that this may have played a role, Brandenberger maintains that Stalin himself waswellawareoftheproblematicstatusofthecultofpersonalitywithin Marxism.Hejustifiedthephenomenonasaneffectivewayofappealing to ordinary workers and peasants for whom a heroic, biographical narrative was more inspiring than undiluted Marxism-Leninism. So whilehedeliberatelyremovedfromthedraftofthe ShortCourse sections whichfocusedtoocloselyonhisownbiography,heallowedtheproduc tion of a separate Stalin biography for the simple people. This finally appeared relatively late, at the end of 1939, partly because of the ideological and political turmoil of the 1930s. In Stalins mind, the focus on personality was not incompatible with Marxist-Leninist

45

VanRee, PoliticalThought,ch.12;Tucker, StalinasRevolutionary and StalininPower.

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teachings:thetoilingmassesandsimplepeoplecannotbeginthestudy of Marxism-Leninism with Lenins and Stalins writings. They should startwiththebiography,heremarkedin1946. Far from abandoning Marxism, Stalin remained committed to the ideology and to its dissemination amongst Soviet citizens. This was equally true of the post-war years which are often associated with Stalins turn to extreme Russian nationalism. As van Ree has pointed out, the stress on nation in this period never replaced the emphasis on class. In his last years, Stalin spent much of his time intervening in academic disputes, from philosophy to genetics and linguistics. Ethan Pollock questions traditional assumptions that these interventions were simplytheultimateravingsofadyingmegalomaniac,partofacampaign tointimidatetheintelligentsia,anattempttoencourageconflictamongst his colleagues or to heat up the Cold War. Instead they represented StalinsconcernwiththehealthofideologyandSovietscience. Stalin recognised the existence of an ideological crisis in the post-war era.Hesoughttotacklethisbyreinvigoratingabodyoftheorywhichhe apparently recognised had become dogmatic. If Soviet science were to flourish,asitmustwiththedevelopmentoftheColdW ar,thenMarxist theory must be used creatively. Only then would scientific truths be uncovered.Hisforaysintolinguisticswereapparentlyintendedtocurtail theMarristmonopolyoverthediscipline,andtoencouragediscussionof otherapproaches,withStalinclaimingthatMarxismhadtodevelopand changeovertimeifitwastoremainrelevant.Likewisehismeetingswith politicaleconomistsaimedtostimulateagenuinelyfreshapproachtothe long-awaited textbook, rather than one which simply regurgitated Marxist-Leninistcliches.Theproblem,ofcourse,wasthatStalinsinter ventions tended to generate confusion rather than real debate, as everyonewaitedforanauthoritativeanswerfromonhigh.Thecrisiswasthus deepenedratherthanresolved. How is our image of Stalin changing following the opening up of the archives? We have only just begun to digest the extensive new materials alreadyreleased,andmorearelikelytofollow.Muchworkremainstobe done on both the nature of Stalins power, and the significance of his ideas.Therelatedquestionofhispoliticalpractices,touchedoninsome of the contributions to this volume, also requires more systematic 46 study. What is already clear is that the new materials do not paint a black-and-whitepictureofeitheranunbridledtyrantintheunprincipled46

Sheila Fitzpatrick offered some initial thoughts on the question of how to approach politicalpracticesinherpaperStalin,Molotov,andthePracticeofPolitics,presented

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pursuitofpoweroranembattledleaderreactingtouncontrollableforces. Stalin emerges as a far more contradictory and complex figure. As a leader, he ruthlessly destroyed his political rivals and built an unrivalled personal dictatorship, yet he was never secure in his power. He was obsessedwiththedivisionoftheformalstructuresofpower,butincreas ingly worked only in small informal groups. He wanted to delegate responsibilities, but never entirely trusted those who worked for him. He strove to be at the heart of every major political decision, and in the processdirectedsomepolicymattersingreatdetail,whileutterlyignoring others.Hewasaperceptivethinker,butalsocapableoffailingtoseewhat was right in front of him. He was genuinely driven by ideology, but flexible in his tactics. He was in some respects a conventional Marxist, but aggressively promoted the nation and the leader cult. He sought to disseminate Marxist ideas as a means of encouraging activism, but his methods often succeeded only in stifling initiative. Stalins personal influence on the development of the Soviet Union was extraordinary, yethedidnotoperateinavacuumandhisambitionswereoftenthwarted. Thestudiesthatfollowexplorethesecomplexitiesandcontradictions.

totheconferenceStalin:Power,PolicyandPoliticalValues,Durham,January2003. SeealsoherPoliticsasPractice.ThoughtsonaNewSovietPolitic alHistory, Kritika 1(2004),2754.

2

Stalin as Georgian: the formative yearsAlfred J. Rieber

Thedevilknowswhatsinourheads.

AGeorgianProverb.

ThePersiansarebutwomencomparedwiththeAfghans, andtheAfghansbutwomencomparedwiththeGeorgians.APersianProverb

Stalinandhisenemiesappearedtoagreeaboutonesourceofhisidentity asapoliticalman.IamnotaEuropeanman,hetoldaJapanesejournal ist, but an Asian, a Russified Georgian. Trotsky cited Kamenev as expressingtheviewsoftheCentralCommitteein1925:Youcanexpect anything from that Asiatic, while Bukharin more pointedly referred to 1 Stalin as the new Ghenghis Khan. Although they employed the term Asiatic to mean different things, their point of reference was the same. Stalin was born, raised, educated, and initiated as a revolutionary in a borderland of the Russian Empire that shared a common history and a long frontier with the Islamic Middle East. In this context, borderland refers to a territory on the periphery of the core Russian lands with its own distinctive history, strong regional traditions and variety of ethnocultural identities. In a previous article, I sought to demonstrate how Stalinasamanoftheborderlandsconstructedasocialidentitycombining Georgian, proletarian, and Russian components in order to promote

TheresearchforthischapterwasmadepossiblebyagrantfromtheResearchBoardofthe CentralEuropeanUniversity.IamgratefultoBarryMcLoughlinforinvitingmetodeliver anearlierversionattheInstitutfu rOsteuropaischeGeschichtederUniversitatWien. 1 LeonTrotsky, Stalin:AnAppraisaloftheManandHisInfluence,2ndedn.(London:Hollis and Carter, 1947), pp.1, 2, 417, 420. After the Second World War Maxim Litvinov attributedStalinsinabilitytoworkwiththeWesttohisAsiaticmentality.VojtechMastny, TheCassandraintheForeignCommissariat:MaximLitvinovandtheColdWar, Foreign Affairs 54(19756),36676.EvenBeria,accordingtohisson,claimedthatStalinhad PersianbloodandcomparedhimtoShahAbbas.SergoBeria, Beria,MyFather (London: Duckworth,2001),pp.21,284.

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specific political ends including his vision of a centralised, multicultural 2 Sovietstateandsociety. Oneaimofthepresentessayistorefinethisperspectivebyinterpreting thesouthCaucasianborderlandasafrontiersocietywhereduringStalins earlyyearsboundarylinesbetweenculturalfieldswerecrossedandblurred 3 resultinginadynamic,interactiveprocessofchange. Asecondandrelated aimistorevisitthefirsttwenty-twoyearsofStalinslifeonthebasisoffresh archival material in order to illustrate how the cultural milieu of the Georgian borderland influenced his evolution from seminary student to professionalMarxistrevolutionary.Inthecourseofthisanalysisitwillbe necessary to expose his efforts to conceal or distort his rights of passage alongthisunusualtrajectory. There were four features of the South Caucasus frontier society that played a significant role in Stalins construction of his persona and the evolution of his political perspectives. Elements of all four may be found in other borderlands of the Russian Empire but not in the same formorinteractivecombination.Theyare:1)lengthytraditionsofrebel lion, conspiracies, and protest movements against foreign and domestic enemies exhibiting both social and ethno-religious, and later nationalist components; 2) kaleidoscopic patterns of population settlement and displacement that intermixed numerous ethno-religious groups within changing political boundaries; 3) multiple channels of external cultural and intellectualcurrents that permeated the region; 4) complexinteractionsamong craftsmen,workers,peasants,andintelligentsiaofdifferent ethnic groups, some still rooted in highly traditional societies, that were entering revolutionary movements during a period of rapid industrial growth. Throughout the South Caucasus a long history of the clash of empires, foreign conquest, and occupation gave rise to traditions of resistance and rebellion in which the Georgians featured prominently. Theylivedonanancientandcontestedfrontierbetweengreatempires. They had their own ancient state tradition, and periodically they were ablebytheirowneffortstothrowoffforeigndomination.Intheprocess, theyacquiredtheattributesofawarriorsocietyandearnedareputationas2

AlfredJ.Rieber,Stalin:ManoftheBorderlands, AmericanHistoricalReview 5(2001), 165191. For a recent attempt to summarise and synthesise the large literature on frontiers are Alfred J. Rieber, Changing Concepts and Constructions of Frontiers: A Comparative Historical Approach, Ab Imperio 1 (2003), pp.2346. For a revisionist work on the AmericanfrontierthathascomparativeimplicationsseeJeremyAdelmanandStephen Aron,FromBorderlandstoBorders:Empires,Nation -States,andthePeoplesinbetween inNorthAmericanHistory, AmericanHistoricalReview 3(1999),81441.

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fiercefighters. MostoftheGeorgianlandshadbeenpartoftheRussian Empire for almost eighty years when Stalin was born, though some districts to the south and southwest had been annexed only after the Russo-Turkish War of 1878. Peaceful integration had not proceeded smoothly.Throughoutthenineteenthcentury,periodicmanifestations of anti-Russian sentiment broke to the surface in rebellions and con5 spiracies. T he s pirit o f r esist ance w as a m ajor t hem e i n G eorgian folklore and the romantic revival in literature in the mid-nineteenth century that so deeply affected the young Soso Dzhugashvili. The cult ofviolenceintheSouthCaucasuspermeatedthewholerangeofsocial relations from the traditional tribal societies to urban youth. At one extreme, the masculine code of warriorhood and the blood feud pre6 vailed within the tribal regions to the north of Georgia. At the other extreme,urbanandruralviolenceduringtherevolutionof1905andits aftermath reached higher levels in the Caucasus than elsewhere in the 7 empire. Astride a strategic isthmus, the South Caucasus was exposed to frequent invasions, migrations, deportations, and colonisation that produced the second major characteristic of this frontier society, its complex multicultural texture. No other borderland of the Russian Empire contained such a mix and variety of ethnic, religious, and tribal societies. It was no wonder that as political parties began to make their appearanceintheregion,thecentralquestionthatpreoccupiedallofthem was the national question. From early childhood, Soso Dzhugashvili was exposed to the cross-currents of ethnic interaction. A scant thirty kilometrestothenorthofStalinsbirthplaceofGoristrechedthetribalregions4

For general treatments see W . E. D. Allen, A History of the Georgian People from the BeginningDowntotheRussianConquestintheNineteenthCentury (NewYork:Barnesand Noble,1971);DavidMarshallLang, TheGeorgians (NewYork:Praeger,1966);David Marshall Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 16581832 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957); Cyril Toumanoff, Studies in Christian Caucasian History (Washington, D.C., Georgetown University Press, 1963), and M.M. Gaprindashvili and O.K. Zhordaniia (eds.), Ocherki istorii Gruzii v vosmi tomakh (Tblisi:Metsniereba,1988),IIIandIV. RonaldGrigorSuny, TheMakingoftheGeorgianNation,2ndedn.(Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1994), pp.712, 825, 11920, 1667, I.G. Antelava, Obostrenie klassovoi borby, razvitie i rasprostranenie antikrepostnicheskoi ideologii nakanune otmenikrepostnogoprava,in OcherkiistoriiGruzii,V,pp.17083,21724. M.O. Kosven et al. (eds.), Narody Kavkaza (Moscow: Akademiia Nauk, 1960), pp.297304; Sh. Inal-Ipa, Abkhazy. Istoriko-etnograficheskie ocherki (Sukhumi: Abgosizdat,1960),pp.2768;I.L.Babich, PravovaiakulturaAdygov(Istoriiaisovremennost), avtoreferat (MoscowStateUniversity,2000),pp.13 14,n.21.Iamgratefultothe authorforbringingthissourcetomyattention. AnnaGeifman, ThouShaltKill.RevolutionaryTerrorisminRussia,18941917 (Princeton: PrincetonUniversityPress:1993),pp.234.

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of the Abkhazians, Svanetians, and Ossetians, traditional societies still 8 deeply rooted in a feudal-patriarchal way of life. Gori itself had a mixed populationofGeorgians,Armenians,andRussians.Thetownwaspoised, asitwere,betweentwoverydifferentworldsofthepatriarchal,tribal,and theurban,earlyindustrial.Accordingtocontemporaryaccounts,thesocial structure, architecture, and urban grids of the three main cities Tiflis, Batumi,andBakuthatformedthetriangleofStalinsearlyrevolutionary 9 activity were split along European and Asian lines. Stalin bore the stigmaofthisdiscoursethroughouthislifealthoughonatleastoneocca 10 sionhesoughttoturntheepithetofAsiatictohisadvantage. ThethirdcharacteristicoftheSouthCaucasusasafrontiersocietywas theexistenceofmultiplechannelsofcommunicationthatfilteredexternal ideasintotheregion.Inthesecondhalfofthenineteenthcentury,access to European thought produced a variety of cultural hybrids. The most powerful currents came from Russia channelled either through local ecclesiastical schools like those Stalin attended or else through small numbers of Georgian students who studied in Russian universities, mainly St.Petersburg.Asecond,narrower channel ledtoinstitutions of higher learning in Central Europe (including the Kingdom of Poland) andthenontothelargerf ieldof Europeasawhole.Th eimpo rtationof Russian literature, both in the original and in translation, and Russian translations of European works of literature, history, and politics fed these currents and left an indelible imprint on Stalin. Major Russian writersfromPushkinandLermontovtoMarlinskiiandTolstoyidealised aspectsofCaucasianlifealthoughtheydisplayedanambiguousattitude 11 toward Georgians. Thus, the resentment felt by so many Georgian nobles and intellectuals toward the administrative and bureaucratic insensitivities of Russian officials and clerics, shared by the young Soso Dzhugashvili, was mitigated by appreciation and even admiration of Russianhighculture.8

Many students from Ossetian schools came to study in Gori and Tiflis. M.D. Lordkipanidze and D.I. Muskhelishvili (eds.), Ocherki istorii Gruzii v vosmi tomakh (Tbilisi:Metsniereba,1988). K.N. Bagilev, Putevoditel po Tiflisu (Tiflis, 1896), pp.269 and especially Vasilii Sidorov, PoRossii.Kavkaz.Putevyezametkiivpechatleniia (St.Petersburg:M.Akifievi I. Leontiev, 1897), pp. 1425, 163, 270, 274, 276, 5956, 598, 605. There were similar descriptions of Stalins home town of Gori. Ibid., pp. 46077 and A. Azhavakhov, Gorod Gori, in Sbornik materialov dlia opisaniia mestnosti i plemen Kavkaza (Tiflis, 1883), cited inRossiiskiigosudarstvennyiarkhivsotsialno-politicheskoiistorii(henceforthRGASPI) f . 7 1, o p. 1 0, d . 2 7 3 , l. 1 4. Seen. 47. Cf.SusanLayton,RussianLiteratureaboutGeorgia, SlavicReview 2(1992),195213. SeealsoKatyaHokanson,LiteraryImperialism,NarodnostandPushkinsInventionof theCaucasus, RussianReview 3(1994),33652.

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New politic al currents permea ted the South Caucasus through the Ru ssian connecti on. In m id-centur y it was pop ulism (narod niche stvo) that stron gly appealed to Georgian intellectuals disappointed by the liberation of the serfs under much worse terms in the Caucasus than in 12 Central Russia. Almost all the Georgian intellectuals who ultimately embracedMarxismintheearly 1890spassed through aperiodof populism.W asStalinanexception?Uptonowtherehasbeenlittlediscussion ofhispre-Marxistviewsprimarilybecausehechosetoconcealthem. Modern forms of Georgian nationalism also owed much to Russian and European influences. Some local varieties favoured full independence;otherscombinedpoliticalgoalsforautonomyandself -government 13 with social reform. It was the issue of Georgias relations with Russia more than any other ideological dispute that set Stalin apart from the Georgian nationalists and the Georgian Mensheviks and put him on courseforhisownsolutiontothenationalitiesquestion. Finally,MarxismfounditswaytotheSouthCaucasusmainlyalongthe 14 Russian channel. Yet theparticular social andeconomic conditionsin Georgia shaped the contours of Marxism in three fundamental ways. First,CaucasianMarxistsboldlyconfrontedthequestionofovercoming 15 ethnicdifferenceinforgingarevolutionary movement. Secondly,they adhered more closely than their Russian counterparts to a belief in the peasantry as a revolutionary force; the program of the Georgian Mensheviksinparticularembraced thisviewcompellingtheBolsheviks, 16 Stalinamongthem,tocompetewiththeirrivalsonthisissue. Thirdly, theearlyGeorgianMarxiststookadifferentviewoftheroleoftheworker in the revolutionary movement, stressing the importance of spontaneity andtheequalityofworkersandintelligentsiainthemovement,aposition thatcreatedbothproblemsandopportunitiesforStalin.12

In contrast to the Georgians, Armenian revolutionaries were more concerned with national unification than the agrarian question. Suny, The Making, pp.13443; R. Suny, Looking toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress,1993),pp.6878. A.S.Bendianishvili,Gorodskoesamoupravlenievposledneitretiixixveka,in Ocherki istoriiGruzii,V,pp.24763. InadditiontoSuny, TheMaking,c h.7,seeS. T.Ark omed, Rabocheedvizhenieisotsialdemokratiia na Kavkaze, pt. 1, 2nd edn. (Moscow: Glavlit, 1923); F. Makharadze, K tridtsatiletiiu sushchestvovaniia Tiflisskoi organizatsii. Podgotovitelnyi period, 18701890,Materialy (Tiflis:SovetskiiKavkaz,1925);V.S.Bakhtadze, Ocherkipoistorii gruzinskoi obshchestvenno-ekonomicheskoi mysli (6090 gody XIX stoletiia) (Tblisi: IzdatelstvoTblisskogouniversiteta,1960). Sh.Davitashvili, NarodnicheskoedvizhenievGruzii (Tblisi:n.p.,1933),p.23,translated f rom t heGeorgianandc it edinRGASPI f . 71, op. 10, d. 273, l. 96. S.F.Jones,MarxismandthePeasantRev oltintheRussianEmpire:TheCaseofthe GurianRepublic, SlavonicandEastEuropeanReview 3(1989),40334.

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Linked to the influx of external cultural influences was the fourth characteristic of the frontier society. Industrialisation in the South Caucasusoccurred inaregionof widely divergentsocialgroupsranging fromthetribaltotheurbanised,andtoanequallyvariegatednumberof ethnicgroupsrubbingshoulder-to-shoulderinthemaincities.ForStalin, the most important social consequences arose from the multicultural profile of the working class and the peculiar relationship of the working classtotheintellectuals.SocialdemocracyintheCaucasuswasfromthe outsetamulticulturalpoliticalmovementunlikeanyoftheothersinthe 17 empire. InthesouthCaucasus,relationsbetweenworkersandintellec tualsalsoexhibitedregionalnuances.InGeorgia,andtovaryingdegrees throughout the region, the working class had grown from two major sourcestheoldcraftstructureandmodernindustrysuchasoil,railroad construction, and mining. Many of the craftsmen were literate, having attended the special crafts schools, and were among the first workers to getintouchwithstudentsandintelligentsiaofthepopulistsandlaterthe 18 Marxists. Modern industryattracted skilled Russian workers from the northandunskilledAzerifromRussianandIranianAzerbaidzhan,creat ingaformidableobstacletolabourorganisersbutofferinganopportunity tomenlikeStalinwhosawpersonaladvantagesinorganisingtheilliterate andpoliticallyunformed. InGeorgiaandelsewhereintheSouthCaucasus,thecombinationofthe traditional (mainly Georgian) crafts and newer (mainly Russian) worker solidarityledtoarelativelyearlydevelopmentofthestrikemovementinthe Russian empire. Runninginparallelwith and independentlyofthe strike movementinPetersburg,majorstrikeactivityintheSouthCaucasusbegan asearlyas1878andattractednationalattentionduringthestrikeofTiflis tobacco factories in 18945. That these strikes were all spontaneous, lacking an organisational centre or the guidance of a political party, did 19 notmeanthatallworkerslackedapoliticalconsciousness.

17

NoiZhordaniia, Moiazhizn(Stanford:HooverInstitution,1968),pp.38 9; Vtoroisezd RSDRP, iiul- avgust 1903 goda. Protokoly (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1959) p. 515; G.A.Galoian, RossiiainarodyZakavkaze(Moscow:Mysl,1976)pp.357 64;Suny, LookingtowardArarat,pp.902,260. Fortheschoolof remeslenniki seePrinceMasalskii,Tiflis, inF. A.BrokgauzandI.F. Efron(eds.), EntsiklopedicheskiiSlovar(St.Petersburg:IzdatelskoeDelo,1901),XXX, p.268;forpopulistcontactswiththemDavitashvili, Narodnicheskoedvizhenie,pp.605, 79; for revolutionary populist influence on the earliest strike movements, E.V. Khoshtaria, Ocherkisotsialno-ekonomicheskoiistoriiGruzii (Tblisi:Metsniereba,1974), pp.2048. F.Makharadze, OcherkirevoliutsionnogodvizheniiavZakavkaze (Tiflis:GosizdatGruzii, 1927),pp.4751.

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IntheseventiesandeightiesinthemaincitiesoftheSouthCaucasus, Tiflisinparticular,asocialstratumofworker -craftsmenbegantomake contact with the young generation of populist intellectuals. Most of the craftsmenhadattendedtheurbancraftsschools(remeslennoeuchilishche), where they had an opportunity to meet students from other institutions and to encounter the floating population of exiles and immigrants from Russia. The populist students from rural Georgia found them a more receptive audience and more in keeping with the familiar image of the toiler than the factory workers. The craftsmen produced their own writers such as the famous Iosif Davitashvili, the self-taught poet of the people. As early as the late seventies they formed their own mutual aid 20 societyin Tiflis,andin 1889published an illegal handwrittenjournal. According to a report of a police agent in 1900 there does not exist a singlefactory,plantorworkshopthatdoesnothaveitssecretcircles,the leaders of which are in constant contact with one another, and which gather in general meetings [skhodki]. According to the same report the intelligentsiahadnotyetpenetratedthesecirclesbutweretakingthefirst 21 stepstodrawclosertothem. ThiswasthesettingforStalinsdebutasa conspiratorialagitatorwithintheworkingclass. The rapid spread of Marxist ideas among the workers in Georgia was attributedbyFilippMakharadzetotheabsenceofanystrongcompetition fromotherideologies:amongustheMarxistorientationdidnothaveto strugglewithanyotherkindoftendencyforhegemonyamongthework ing class as took place in other countries by which he meant trade 22 unionism or economism inspired by a bourgeois world view. This was also true to a large extent in Russia as well. But in Georgia there wasnonaivemonarchismamongtheworkersandnoexperimentswith policesocialismthathadpenetratedtheworkingclassinRussia.Withthe decline of populism, or rather its cooptation, Marxism had the field all toitself. Stalinspoliticalevolutionasarevolutionaryhasnottakenfullaccount ofhisearlylifeinthisfrontiersociety.Theoccasionforareassessmentof Stalins Georgian background is the recent availability of unpublished sources.Importantinthemselves,theyalsoofferopportunitiestoreevalu atetheveracityofthepublishedmaterial,muchofithagiographicintone. In 1949, the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute received a bulky packet of documents, numbering 424 pages, entitled An Outline of the Years of20 21 22

Ibid.,pp.623. G.A. Galoian, Rabochee dvizhenie i natsionalnyi vopros v Zakavkaze, 19001922 (Erevan:Ayastan,1969),p.11. Makharadze, Ktridtsatiletiiu,p.29.

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Childhood and Youth of Stalin. The compiler, Vladimir Kaminskii, presenteditastheworkoftenyears.Hedescribedthecontentsassimilar to the material that he and I. Vereshchagin had edited and published in 1939intheorganoftheCentralCommitteeoftheKomsomol, Molodaia Gvardiia. But Kaminskiis second collection never saw the light of day. BuriedinthearchivesoftheInstitute,itwasonlyrecentlymadeavailable 23 to researchers in the Russian Archive for Social and Political History. Asuperficialreadingdoesnotelicitanystartlingrevelations.Butacloser analysisturnsupvaluablecluesandevenmoresuggestivecontradictions initsvarioustestimonies.Theseleadtoacomparisonwiththe Molodaia Gvardiia collection, and a re-examination of pre-Stalinist and postStalinist memoirs and monographs primarily published in Tblisi, Erevan, and Baku during the period of de-Stalinisation. This revised view of Stalins Georgian background takes shape around three specific themes that reflect the frontier experience of the region: the towns of Gori, Tiflis,and Batumi as the cultural spacein whichStalin passed his earlyyears;themultipleculturalchannelsthatshapedhispoliticalviews frompopulismtoMarxism;thepaceandextentofhisinvolvementwith workersandintellectualsintherevolutionaryactivity. W henStalinwasborn,ineither1878or1879,Goriwasbynomeans 24 an insignificant or obscure town. Its history reproduced in miniature the characteristics of the frontier society of which it was a part. History lingeredonintheshapeofthedominantman -madefeatureofthetown, thefortress(Goris-tsikhe),withitsthickandhighcrenellatedwallsandthe legends attached to it. The fortress image subsequently occupied a prominent place in the mature Stalins imagery. In the centre of the court there was alarge depression, possibly an ancient burial mound, and not far away a strangely shaped spherical yellow stone. Popular fantasy attributed to it a special meaning and linked it to the mythical figure of Amiran,thelocalPrometheus.Ithadbeenhisswordthathehurledinto thegroundbeforehewaschainedtoacliffoftheCaucasus.Inacustom ary rite still practised at the end of the nineteenth century, the local23

RG AS PI f . 7 1, op. 10, d. 2 73, l. 1. Kam ins k i ih adt ak en as h is m od elt het ec h ni que of literary montage exemplified by V.V. Versaev, Pushkin v zhizni (Moscow: Sovetskii pis at el, 1936). Thematerialgot am ixedrev iewf romS.Poznerwhonot edthatt here waslittleofvalueontheearlyyearsalthoughsomeusefulmaterialhadbeenprovidedon howStalinestablishedtieswithpeasants,thepenetrationofrevolutionaryideasamong thepeasantsandhowheacquiredgreatinfluenceoverpeasants.Thesecommentswere dated9May,1950. Ibid.,ll.25. TheexactdateofStalinsbirthhaslongbeendisputedduetoaconfusionforwhichheis responsible. For the most recent analysis based on archival sources see Miklos Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003), pp.810.

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blacksmiths went to their workshops at midnight on Maundy Thursday andsimultaneouslyhammeredtheiranvilsasasignthatthechainsbind ing Amiran still held him firmly. Otherwise the hero would break loose 25 andavengehimselfonthosewhohadforgedhisbonds. Theseandother tales of treachery, revenge, and embattlement were the stuff of Sosos 26 childhood. Goriprovincehadareputationforbeingrebelliousaswellasacentreof conspiracies.Throughoutalmosttheentirenineteenthcentury,thepeas antry, especially in the region of Ossetia, repeatedly rose against their landlords.Theliberationoftheserfsin1864didnothingtoimprovetheir lot. On the contrary, it reduced most of them to landless labourers or smallholdersekingoutalivingonwretchedparcelsoflandburdenedwith 27 heavytaxesandexposedtothearbitraryviolenceoflocalofficials. The peasants also suffered from the depredations of bandits, a persistent problem in the countryside. The bandits began to come down from the mountains in the northern part of Gori province in the post-liberation period and raided the big estates of Machabeli and Eristavi, as well as peasantvillages.Theruralpoliceofferedlittleassistancetothepeasants, equatingthemwiththebandits.Somebanditchiefsachievedbriefnotori ety, but their fame was overshadowed by popular avengers like Tarasei AndreevichMgaloblishvili,alocalnoblewithmilitarytrainingwhoorgan isedhis own small posse to hunt down bandits or protect villagers with28 outextractinganypaymentfromthem. Theheroicandromantictales that absorbed Georgian youth like Soso Dzhugashvili had their real equivalents in living memory. Subsequently, the role of the bandit becameequivocalinStalinsmind;asarevolutionaryandexpropriator he identified with it, but once in power he used it to stigmatise popular 29 resistancetohisrule. By the time Stalin was born the population of Gori had exceeded ten thousand, but despite its rail link to Tiflis, the physical appearance of

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RGA SPI f . 71, o p. 1 0, d. 27 3, l l. 1 5, 4 4. Foradditionalins ightsint otheroleof folkloricimagesinStalinswritingseeMikhail Vaiskopf, PisatelStalin (Moscow:NovoeLiteraturnoeObozrenie,2001),andthedis cussioninRieber,Stalin,pp.165862. S.V.Machabeli,EkonomicheskiibytkrestianGoriiskogouezda,Tifliskoigubernii,in Materialy dlia izuchenii ekonomicheskogo byta gosudarstvennikh krestian Zakavkazskogo kraia ( Tif lis : M era ni , 18 87 ), VI , p. 2 01, c it e di nR GAS PI f . 7 1, o p. 1 0, d. 27 3, l. 80. Sofron Mgaloblishvili, Vospominaniia o moei zhizni. Nezabyvaemye vstrechi (Tbilisi: Merani,1974),pp.356,379. Forthe psychological significance of KobaseeRobertTucker, Stalinas Revolutionary 18791929: A Study in History and Personality (New York: W.W. Norton, 1973), pp.7982 and Philip Pomper, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin: The Intelligentsia in Power (NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress,1990),pp.158 63.

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the town had changed little, with its narrow, crooked, and dirty streets, its great market, the ruins of its past glories. The social structure of Gori remained highly traditional, even feudal. The local merchants and landowners had made common cause with the Russian bureaucrats in order to retain their dominant position. The town craftsmen, of whom Stalins father was one, conserved their hard-working but old-fashioned 30 methods. Public life was limited to the celebration of holidays when historical and popular carnivals mingled with Christian ceremonies. On Holy Monday the Armenian and Georgian inhabitants commemorated the expulsion in 1634 of the Persians who had occupied the town for two decades and deported more than twenty-five thousand people to Iran. Replaying the event, the citizens of Gori divided into two groups who, following a ceremonial dinner, clashed in a mass fist fight. More than a thousand fighters were involved, with the children starting it and the adults then joining in. According to some stories, Soso Dzhugashvili was a partisan of the upper town boys and distinguished himself in the 31 fighting. But there was another side to Gori as well. The introduction of the Great Reforms in the 1860s opened the way for a Georgian national 32 revivalandgreaterculturalinteractionwithRussia. Gorisoonbecame animportantculturalcentreandahotbedofpoliticalactivity.Thekeyto its renaissance was the connection with Tiflis, about seventy-two miles away,andespeciallytherelationshipbetweentheGoriparishschooland theTiflisseminary.AgenerationbeforeStalinwastofollowtherouteto enlightenment,thetopstudentsfromGoriwentontoTiflis,whichserved asatransmitteroffreshandboldideasfromRussia.Theyreturnedhome as kulturtragers.Inthisway,Goribecameinthelate1870soneofthemain centresofpopulisminGeorgia. At the end of the Crimean War, the Gori parish school was still conducted along the harsh disciplinary principles of Nicholaevan Russia. After 1862 physical punishment declined and the following year the subsequently famous Georgian social activist and pedagogue Iakob GogebashvilibrieflytaughtatGoribeforemovingontotheTiflisparish school. The graduates of Gori who entered the Tiflis seminary encounteredanaltogetherdifferentspirit.GogebashvilihadstudiedinKievwith30 31

Mgaloblishvili, Vospominaniia, pp. 11, 14. V. Kaminskii and I. Vereshchagin, Detstvo i iunost vozhdia, Molodaia gvardiia 12(1939),4950basedoncontemporarysources.ThestoryofSososparticipationin thefistfightwasomittedfromthepublishedaccount.SeeRGASPIf.71,op.10,d.273, ll.868. OntheGeorgiannationalrevivalseeSuny, TheMaking,pp.12443.

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PirogovandintroducedhismethodsinTiflis.His students inspiredand helped the boys from Gori. The libraryof the seminary was surprisingly good for the time and appeared to have made available more political literaturethantheyoungSosoDzhugashviliwouldfindtwentyyearslater. Aside from spiritual, philosophical, and literary works (Shakespeare, Byron, Schiller in Russian translation) all the issues of Chernyshevskiis Sovremennik were available, as well as critical articles by Belinskii, Pisarev, the poems of Nekrasov, and even several issues of Herzens Kolokol. There were no Georgian books, but the library subscribed to the few,oftenshort-livedGeorgian literary journals that werebeginning toappearinthelatesixtiesandearlyseventies.Informalstudentdiscus sion groups appeared and met with leading Georgian intellectuals to debateforbiddentopicsinartandpolitics.ReturningGeorgianstudents from Russia were greeted with enthusiasm, especially those who had come into direct contact with Russian populists and participated in student demonstrations. Gogebashvilis rooms on the top floor of the Tiflis seminary were for the Georgian intelligentsia what Stankevichs 33 homehadbeenforRussianwriters. Theprovinceswerestillsunkintorporwhentheyoungseminaristgradu ate, Sofron Mgaloblishvili, returned to Gori in the early seventies bringing withhimasmanyGeorgianbooksashecould.Hispersonallibrarybecame a haven for young Georgian readers. By the mid-seventies the intellectual life of the town had quickened. The town became the first after Tiflis to createanamateurtroupeofactorsthatbytheendofthedecadeestablished a theatre that attracted performers and writers from Tiflis. A flow of ideas andpeoplebetweenGoriandTiflistookonamarkedpoliticalcharacter. In1873,Mgaloblishviliandseveralfriendsformedaclandestinecircle and founded an illegal press dedicated to awakening the political consciousness of the peasantry. They translated into Georgian, and read to peasantsinthecountrysidearoundGori,illegalRussianp opulistpamphlets. They kept in touch with similar circles in Tiflis, particularly with AntonPurtseladze,theirasciblecriticofGeorgianliberals,whogaineda greatreputationamongTiflisworkersandcraftsmenforhissimplywrit ten appealing stories and plays. According to Mgaloblishvili it was impossible to find a simple person who had not read The Bandits, a tale ofmendriventobanditrybymaterialconditions.ButtheGoricirclewas infiltratedbypolicespiesandbrokenup,Mgaloblishvili,Purtseladze,and 34 othersarrested.33

Mgaloblishvili, Vospominaniia, pp.447, 54, 55; Iakov Mansvetashvili, Vospominaniia (Tblisi:Literaturadakhelovneba,1967),pp.79,1216,2058. Mgaloblishvili, Vospominaniia,pp.10921(quotationp.120).

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The work of the populists in Gori did not end in 1878 with the police sweep.Oneofitsactivists,ShoDavitashvili,hadbeendisappointedbythe responseofthepeasantsandleftforTiflistoworkinafactory.Buthesoon returnedtoGoriandestablishedtheTranscaucasianTeachersSeminary inordertospreadpopulistideas.Herapidlyfellundersuspicionandwas dismissed. However, the seminary acquired a reputation among a later generationofrevolutionaries.AmongthemwasNarimanNarimanov,the AzeriBolshevikwhoregardeditasamodelforAzerbaidzhan;Fortwenty sevenyearsofitsexistencetheseminarypreparedstudentsforourruraland townelementaryschools.ThemajorityofteachersteachinginRussianand Muslim schools in Baku and also in other elementary schools in the 35 Cauc