STALIN CALLS HIMSELF LENIN’S DISCIPLE
 
"Lenin," Stalin told me, "differed from the rest of us by his clear Marxist brain and his unfaltering will.  Lenin from the outset favored a hard boiled policy and even then was picking men who could stick it out and endure."  To the Stalin of today Lenin is so far above him that, when I wrote he was Lenin's "successor," he made me change it to Lenin's "disciple."  It was not modestly but a statement of fact.  Stalin is a great man now as the world reckons greatness, but Lenin was different--he knows it--one of the very rare and greatest men.
            So Stalin set himself to follow Lenin's star, from which he never waived in the worst uglyness of defeat or in the darker days when Lenin had a bare handful of followers in Switzerland....
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 169
 
            Stalin forced the transformation of Russia in exactly the same way as Peter the Great had done.  When I therefore asked him whether he did not feel himself to be the successor of the latter, he denied it peremptorily:
             "These historic parallels are always dangerous.  But, if you insist on it, I can only say the following: Peter--he purposely omitted “the Great’--only brought one stone to the temple; Lenin built it.  But I am only Lenin's disciple, and my only desire is to be known as his worthy successor."
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 123
 
            Stalin has written a great number of important books.  Several of them have a classic value in Marxist literature.  But if one asks him what he is, he replies: "I am only a disciple of Lenin, and my whole ambition is to be a faithful disciple."  It is curious to observe how, in many of the accounts of work accomplished under his direction, Stalin systematically gives credit for all the progress made to Lenin, whereas the credit has been in very large measure his own,...
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York:  The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 280
 
            When the Kerensky revolution took place, in March 1917, Stalin was liberated.  Though most of the other political prisoners were welcomed with public demonstrations on their return home, Stalin came back to Petrograd alone and practically unnoticed.  He immediately became an editorial writer on the Pravda.  The first articles which he published were moderate and conciliatory.  But two months later, when Lenin came to Petrograd and immediately put an end to liberalist and moderate socialist tendencies in the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, Stalin took Lenin's side and was a passionate follower of his to the end.  I once asked him if he did not look upon himself as a sort of follower of Peter the Great.  He brusquely pooh-poohed the suggestion and answered: "I am a disciple of Lenin.  And my only wish is to be a worthy follower of his.  Historical parallels such as that you have mentioned are always somewhat risky, but if you insist upon suggesting this parallel with Peter the Great, then I should say that Peter brought only a brick to the building of the temple but Lenin constructed the edifice himself.  I am only his disciple."
Ludwig, Emil.  Leaders of Europe. London: I. Nicholson and Watson Ltd., 1934, p. 357
 
            That Stalin has the disciple of Lenin rather than of Marx we can tell by his writings.  It is even possible that he loved Lenin.  In any case today, when his power far exceeds any that Lenin ever had, Stalin feels that he is the second of a line.  When I spoke to him of the succession of Peter the Great, he answered simply: "I am a disciple of Lenin.  My only wish is to become a worthy one.  If a comparison must be found, the only man to compare with Lenin is Peter the Great.  But I, for my part, am merely Lenin's disciple."
            Since I have no doubt of the truth of this confession, I can only explain this unusual modesty in a dictator, this voluntary retreat to the second place, by a personal veneration which seems otherwise alien to Stalin's nature and is unique in his life.
Ludwig, Emil. Three portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin. New York Toronto: Longmans, Green and Company, c1940, p. 97
 
            [In a May 13, 1933 talk with Colonel Robins the following dialogue occurred]
ROBINS: I consider it a great honour to have an opportunity of paying you a visit.
STALIN: There is nothing particular in that.  You are exaggerating.
ROBINS: What is most interesting to me is that throughout Russia I have found the names Lenin-Stalin, Lenin-Stalin, Lenin-Stalin, linked together.
STALIN: That, too, is an exaggeration.  How can I be compared to Lenin?
Stalin, Joseph.  Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 13, p. 267
 
STALIN STAYED AND FOUGHT RATHER THAN FLED LIKE OTHER BOLSHEVIKS
 
... when one after another of the Bolshevik leaders escaped from exile or prison to an easier life abroad, Stalin "stuck it out and endured" in Russia, passing from one alias to another, one prison to another exile.
            Because always, deep down underneath, he thought of them half disdainfully as "emigres," who had fled before disaster while he and those like him stayed and stuck it out.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 169
 
But when the Bolshevik cause crashed in the bloody repression which followed the abortive Revolution of 1905-1906, Stalin alone of the prominent Bolsheviks stuck the game out in Russia, while the others fled abroad.  He spent years in jail, hiding under a dozen aliases, escaping and being recaptured, yet indomitable.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 234
 
Stalin became, and has always remained, the Russian Patriot.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 14
 
            Still another source of power is his early career.  Almost alone, Stalin had the guts to stay and work inside Russia after the collapse of the revolution of 1905.  The other revolutionaries scattered into exile, and lived, like Lenin, in libraries or coffee-houses till 1917.  Stalin remained within Russia the whole time.  He did the dirty work; he was "the hall sweeper."  Thus he built up an immense acquaintance with submerged revolutionaries,...
Gunther, John.  Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 520
 
STALIN HATES THE WORD STALINISM
 
... but Stalinism--to use a word which Joseph Stalin deprecates and rejects.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 186
 
            The Dominant principle in Russia today is not Marxism or even Leninism, although the latter is its official title, but Stalinisn--to use a word which Joseph Stalin deprecates and rejects.
            Duranty, Walter,  “Red Russia of Today Ruled by Stalinism, not by Communism,” New York Times, June 14, 1931.
 
            According to Khrushchev, Kaganovich urged Stalin to replace 'Leninism' with 'Stalinism', only to be rebuffed by the Boss, who in fact never sanctioned the use of this term, so honorific in a highly ideological culture.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 153
 
SU SELLS GOODS BELOW WORLD PRICES
 
But nothing short of a world embargo will prevent Soviet Russia from selling her goods--at a lower price than any capitalist country can meet--in order to buy the equipment she requires.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 194
 
SMALL PEOPLE CAN CRITICIZE BIG ONES
 
Some cub reporter on the Communist youth Pravda or an illiterate worker sling a pebble at the railroad commissariat and get away with it if he only has facts to back his charge.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 204
 
            Perhaps the administrators of industry are protected from criticism by the cowed masses?  Heaven knows what Trotskyists and other critics of the Soviet Union would do if they were.  For many hostile criticisms are based on the open public criticism directed against the organs of government and industry in the USSR, by the workers of the Soviet Union, both in the wall newspapers and the trade union press.  In what other country of the world is it possible for the workers to establish in every department of the factory a wall newspaper exposing the shortcomings of the management on a whole variety of technical and social questions?
Campbell, J. R.   Soviet Policy and Its Critics. London: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1939, p. 156
 
            Indeed nothing would be more interesting than for some of the people who talk about lack of freedom of criticism in the Soviet Union to make a six months' comparison of the British and Soviet press.
            They would find in the Soviet press many criticisms of the poor functioning of certain factories in the Soviet Union.  Are there factories which function poorly in Britain?  There are, but even if the proprietors of the British press had any inclination or interest in criticizing these factories, there is one all-sufficient deterrent--the law of libel.  They would find factories in the Soviet Union criticized for neglecting to improve the working conditions.  There are many such factories in Britain, but again the law of libel prevents any possibility of pillorying the owners of such factories.
            The fact is that not only are the officials in the State, the Party, and industry, removable, but they are subjected to a floodlight of criticism that is without parallel in any capitalist State.
Campbell, J. R.  Soviet Policy and Its Critics. London: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1939, p. 157
 
            One of the chief revelations to come from the opening of Soviet archives is the sheer volume of letters received by newspapers, as well as party and state leaders and institutions.  We now know that in the not atypical month of July 1935, Krest'ianskaia Gazeta (the peasants' newspaper) received approximately 26,000 letters.  Kalinin, who as president of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets was one of the most frequent recipients of letters, received an average of 77,000 a year between 1923 and 1935.  Throughout 1936 Zhdanov, Leningrad party secretary, received 130 letters a day.  The regional party secretary in Dniepropetrovsk, Khataevich, reported, perhaps with some exaggeration, that he received 250 letters a day.  Letters also poured into other newspapers, municipal soviets, procurators' offices, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), party and state control commissions, and offices of Politburo members and government leaders, including Stalin.
            These letters contained complaints, petitions, denunciations, confessions, and advice.... The majority were sent by individuals who signed their names, for anonymous and collectively signed letters were frowned upon by the authorities.  Regardless of their motivations for sending letters, authors expected a response, and archives indicate that some kind of response usually was forthcoming.  Newspapers published only a tiny fraction of the letters.  More often, staffers forwarded them to the appropriate agencies or wrote replies themselves.  Individual leaders who received letters responded directly to some and forwarded others with comments and queries.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov.  Stalinism As a Way of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, c2000, p. 7-8
 
            The spring of 1936 seems to have been punctuated by warnings sent down from the top leadership, concerning the lack of interest so often shown by the authorities when they received letters of complaint in protest from ordinary working people.  During March a decree went out from the Central Committee denouncing the "political blindness" of two regional newspaper editors and criticizing their attitude to this sort of readers' letters as "bureaucratic" and " feudal."  It ordered newspapers to publish the "politically most important" correspondence and to examine any allegations contained in it.  In addition the decree contained a sharp attack on the current practice of forwarding letters of complaint to the people complained about.  Later, the leadership of the Western Region ordered that complaints received by various bodies of the Party or of the soviets should be looked into carefully, and the archive material of this region gives evidence of an unprecedented zeal in analyzing information coming up "from below."...
            In May 1936 a decree from the Commission of Soviet Control, approved by the Council of People's Commissars and receiving wide press coverage, severely condemned the abuse of power by officials of "soviet institutions"--that is the cadres running the administrative and economic apparatus of the whole country.  Pointing out that most of the complaints received were about cadres overstepping their powers, the decree laid an increased responsibility on officialdom in the whole matter of examining and rectifying without delay the errors or faults that people wrote about....
            This decree constituted nothing less than a forthright condemnation of the "soviet apparatus," that is of the state apparatus itself, on account of its negligence in carrying out the repeated directives of the Party and the government, over taking into account objections and complaints by the public.  The decree did more than order that complaints must not be passed on to the official concerned, it set time limits on investigating and dealing with them, and specified the individual responsibility of cadres at every level of the apparatus.  It even made provision for officials to be brought to court if they should be guilty of slowness or failure in carrying out action to remedy faults brought to their attention in letters.
            The letters and complaints in the archives of the Western Region cover virtually all the problems of daily life, from collective farms to industrial enterprises.  They denounce the practices of the heads of these organizations, as well as the behavior of cadres of local soviets and even Party officials.  With each letter go the papers showing what investigations were made, the reports and the evidence obtained, and other such documents.  One can find that complainants were not always objective in their criticisms and that at times the allegations were false;...
Rittersporn, Gabor. Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 1933-1953. New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, c1991, p. 66-68
 
DURANTLY ADMITS HE IS A CAPITALIST REPORTER IN SU
 
June 22, 1931--being a capitalist reporter in Soviet Russia is a strange business, though not devoid of charm.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 205
 
SOVIET CENSORSHIP IS SENSIBLE AND BALANCED
 
Among the many difficulties, censorship, which is generally supposed to rank highest, is less terrible than is thought abroad.  Though strict in a certain direction, it is usually applied with intelligence and moderation.  Unlike most censors whom the writer has known in the past seventeen years, the Bolsheviks are always willing to discuss matters with the correspondent before a cable message is sent and meet him halfway in modifying a sentence so as not to break the thread of his message or even to convey in more moderate form the item disapproved.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 206
 
During the past two or three years there has been no censorship of news sent by mail, but it is always understood the responsibility for such news will fall on the correspondent if the authorities object later, whereas for cable messages the censor himself must bear the brunt of subsequent official ire.
            It cannot be said, however, that the Soviet press department is equally satisfactory in giving news to foreign reporters.  Contrary to what generally is believed abroad--perhaps for that very reason--far from the Soviet government pumping propaganda into resident correspondents, the latter generally have to extract it drop by drop.  When the writer contrasts the admirable mechanism of the French press bureau--that is, propaganda department--during and shortly after the world war with the aloof inertia of the "scratch-for-yourself" attitude of the Soviet foreign office, it becomes positively infuriating to hear people abroad say: "Of course, Moscow correspondents write just what the authorities want."
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 206
 
            The censorship, though strict in a certain direction, is usually applied with intelligence and moderation.  Unlike most censors whom the writer has known in the past seventeen years, the Bolsheviki are always willing to discuss matters with a correspondent before a cable message is sent and meet him half way in modifying a sentence so as not to break the thread of his message or even to convey in more moderate form the item disapproved.
            During the past two or three years there has been no censorship of news sent by mail, but it is always understood that the responsibility for such news will fall on the correspondent if the authorities object later, whereas for cabled messages the censor himself must bear the brunt of subsequent official ire.
            ...Contrary to what generally is believed abroad--perhaps for that very reason--far from the Soviet Government pumping propaganda into resident correspondents the latter generally have to extract it drop by drop.   When the writer contrasts the admirable mechanism of the French press bureau--that is, propaganda department--during and shortly after the World War with the aloof inertia of the “scratch-for-yourself” attitude of the Soviet Foreign Office, it becomes positively infuriating to hear people abroad say:
            “Of course, Moscow correspondents write just what the authorities want.”
            Far from knowing what they want, it is a labor of Hercules to drag scraps of official information from the omnivorous monopoly of Tass, the Soviet Government press agency....
            Duranty, Walter. “Soviet Censorship Hurts Russia Most,” New York Times, June 23, 1931.
 
            The Foreign Office maintains that its censorship is solely in the interests of "fairness and accuracy," and that it never censors opinion.  According to the correspondents, this general principle is usually observed.  They have little complaint of the censorship, which they describe as "the lightest possible."  Dispatches are not blue-pencilled.  If a change is desired the censor usually telephones the correspondent, asking if he would mind changing a phrase or sentence; or in serious matters he may ask the correspondent to discuss the point in person.
            One correspondent who sent a dispatch on the night of the big police raids in Moscow in June, 1927, following the murder of the Soviet ambassador at Warsaw, alleged that "thousands were being arrested."  He was told that the censor could not approve such an exaggerated statement, but would let him say "over a 1000."  Subsequent estimates showed that the censor was nearer right than the correspondent.
Baldwin, Roger. Liberty under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 150
 
            The Foreign Office keeps close watch on correspondents through reading the foreign press.  It also sizes up their point of view.  One type of correspondent, of whom there have been a number in Moscow, is the man who "lies by telling the truth."  He selects from the Russian press for his dispatches all the damaging articles he can find, omitting anything favorable to the Soviet regime.  The censor cannot call him to account for inaccuracy, but he is warned that if his paper's policy is to print only damaging news his leave to stay will not be renewed.  Since the civil war ended in 1921 there have been only two actual expulsions of correspondents from the country--one English, one American.  But some have not been readmitted after going out.
Baldwin, Roger.  Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 151
 
 
SU RANK IS BASED ON MERIT, NOT WEALTH OR BIRTH
 
Rank may replace class in the Bolshevik cosmogony to satisfy human needs, but rank based on merit, not on wealth or birth.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 210
 
            ... for in Russia the highest incomes go to the big engineer and the great writer.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 143
 
 
STALIN ADOPTED TROTSKY’S AGRARIAN PROGRAM BECAUSE TIME WAS RIGHT
 
Instead, in 1927-1928, Stalin astonished everybody by adopting much of the Trotskyist agrarian program he had recently denounced, less, he explained afterward, because it was wrong, than because it was untimely (and Stalin has a keen nose for the psychological moment),....
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 222
 
            The Left Opposition, for example, held that the time had come for a decisive assault on the kulaks.  It proposed that at least 150 million poods of grain be taken by force from the kulaks and prosperous middle peasants.  In a resolution dated August 9, 1927, a plenary meeting of the Central Committee rejected this proposal as "absurd and demagogic, calculated to create additional difficulties in the development of the national economy."
            The opposition's proposals were also unhesitatingly rejected at the 15th Party Congress in December 1927, when the grain crisis was in full effect.  Stalin's report to the Congress carefully evaded the underlying difficulties, but he did speak plainly on the party's policy toward the kulaks:
            "Those comrades are wrong who think that we can and should do away with the kulaks by administrative fiat, by the GPU: write the decree, seal it…  That's an easy method, but it won't work.  The kulak must be taken by economic measures, in accordance with Soviet legality.  And Soviet legality is not an empty phrase.  Of course, this does not rule out the application of some administrative measures against the kulaks.  But administrative measures must not replace economic ones."
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 217
 
 
STALIN SAYS THAT IN CAPITALISM STRONG PREY ON THE WEAK
 
Stalin said, "it is a law of capitalist society that the strong must prey on the weak; you are right if you are strong; if weak you are wrong!'"
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 236
 
STALIN SUPPORTS TRADE WITH CAPITALISTS
 
I [Duranty] said to Stalin, “...many Americans say, “Why help build up a country whose avowed aim is to overthrow our Constitution and upset everything which we believe made the greatness of the United States." 
            Stalin refused to be drawn out. 
            "They provide equipment and technical help, don't they?" he said rather sharply.  "And we pay them, don't we, for everything--pay top prices, too, as you and they know.  You might as well say we are arming Americans and helping to maintain their capitalist system against ours.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 238-39
 
            By 1932 Russia was taking 30.5% of German machinery exports.  Hundreds of German technicians and engineers were working and instructing in Russia, and German officers were training Russian troops.
            The launching of the First Five-year Plan brought further changes in emphasis in Soviet policy.  Reporting in July 1930 to the 16th Party Congress, Stalin declared that "our policy is a policy of peace and of strengthening trade relations with all countries."  Trade had been regarded merely as an instrument of foreign policy in attacking the markets and influence of the capitalist powers.  Now trade was recognized as essential in obtaining the machinery, technical assistance, and capital for industrialization.
            Fundamental to Stalin's policies, internal and external, was the conviction that war was imminent and might devastate Soviet Russia before she was able to gather strength.  It was with this thought that he had demanded immediate collectivization and headlong industrialization.  There was no time to lose.  The Treaty of Versailles was no more than a truce between two wars.  He followed events closely in the last, seeking early signs of the coming conflict.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 295
 
            Stalin's new policy alignment was reflected strikingly in Soviet foreign trade.  In 1932 Germany had supplied 46.5% of Russia's total imports.  By 1935 the figure had dropped to 9%.  Britain had displaced Germany, and imports from the United States were increasing.  Germany extended massive credits in seeking to recover this vital trade.  In 1936 the German share of the Soviet market rose 22.8% but it soon dropped again.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 300
 
            You know that a certain influx of capital into our country from abroad has already begun.  There is hardly any reason to doubt that with the continued growth and consolidation of our national economy, this influx will increase in volume....
Stalin, Joseph.  Stalin's Kampf.  New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 152
 
            I think that the existence of two opposite systems, the capitalist system and the socialist system, does not exclude the possibility of... agreements.  I think that such agreements are possible and expedient in conditions of peaceful development.  Exports and imports are the most suitable ground for such agreements.  We require equipment, raw material (raw cotton for example), semi-manufactures (metals, etc.) while the capitalists require a market for their goods.  This provides a basis for agreement.  The capitalists require oil, timber, grain products, and we require a market for these goods.  Here is another basis for agreement.  We require credits, the capitalists require good interest for their credits.  Here is still another basis for agreements in the field of credit.  It is known that the Soviet organs are most punctual in their payments.
            The limits to these agreements?  The limits are set by the opposite characters of the two systems between which there is rivalry and conflict.  Within the limits permitted by these two systems, but only within these limits, agreement is quite possible.  This is proved by the experience of the agreements concluded with Germany, Italy, Japan, etc.
            ... Finally, it depends upon the terms of the agreement.  We can never accept conditions of bondage.  We have an agreement with Harriman who is exploiting the manganese mines in Georgia.  That agreemen­t extends for 20 years.  As you see, not a brief period.  We also have an agreement with the Lena Goldfields Co., which is extracting gold in Siberia.  That agreement has been signed for 30 years--a still longer period.  Finally, we have an agreement with Japan concerning the exploitation of the oil and coal fields in Sakhalin.  We would like these agreements to have a more or less solid character.  But that depends of course not only upon us, but upon the other parties.
Stalin, Joseph.  Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 270-271
 
            At that time [1928], the cooperation between Russia and Germany was very strong; the Russians had hired hundreds of German experts to help them set up their industrial enterprises and were buying all sorts of materials in Germany for new factories and industries and transportation lines.  The arrangement worked out very well for both countries, and I am sure many Germans were disappointed--and some Russians too--when Hitler's rise to power broke up these relations.
Littlepage, John D.  In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 12
 
            I wasn't at all sure that this Soviet-made automobile would stand up under such a severe test.  It was modeled after the first Ford Model A. open cars, and the plant had been installed at the Russian city of Nizhny-Novgorod (later named Gorky) with the permission and assistance of Ford.
Littlepage, John D.  In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 182
 
            Nevertheless the Belgians did buy from us both minerals and wood, for business is business.  They bought also butter and tinned fish, both of which we sold cheap.
Barmine, Alexandre.  Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat. London: L. Dickson limited, 1938, p. 254
 
            I signed contracts for the sale to Belgium of asbestos and manganese.  Timber exports reached such high figures that I was given an assistant, who worked with the title of Director of the Timber Department.
Barmine, Alexandre.  Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat. London: L. Dickson limited, 1938, p. 256
 
            The full extent of Western economic and technological aid to the Soviet Union will not be known until the Soviet archives are opened up.  The Western firms that collaborated with Moscow have concealed the information almost as carefully as their Soviet partners.  Nevertheless, the American historian Anthony Sutton has come to the conclusion, on the basis of German and English archives, that 95 percent of Soviet industrial enterprises received Western aid in the form of machines, technology, and direct technical aid.
            The Soviet Union made skillful use of the competition among capitalist firms.  "In the realm of technical assistance," wrote Economic Life, "we have neither an English, nor a German, nor an American orientation.  We maintain a Soviet orientation....  When we need to modernize our oil, automobile, or tractor industries, we turn to the United States because it is the leading country in these industries.  When we speak about chemistry, we approach Germany."... The capitalist firms, who were competing bitterly with each other, rushed to offer their services: they gained concessions, supplied the latest equipment and technology, sent engineers and technicians, and took on Soviet trainees.  The myth about a "blockade," "economic isolation," and the hostile attitude of the capitalist "sharks" toward "the socialist homeland" falls apart in the face of the facts.
Nekrich and Heller.  Utopia in Power. New York: Summit Books, c1986, p. 213
 
            American and German technology was bought with revenues which accrued from the rise in grain exports.  Foreign firms were contracted to establish new plants and help train Soviet personnel.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 265
 
            Stalin made it plain in an instruction to Molotov: “Force up the export of grain to the maximum.  This is the core of everything.  If we export grain, credits will be forthcoming.’
                The state needed to seize grain for export in order to finance the expansion of mining and manufacturing output.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 272
 
5 YEAR PLAN IS THE PARTY TRAINING THE MASSES TO MATURE
 
To understand the Five-year Plan and its relation to the USSR today one must grasp the underlying fact that the Communist Party regards itself in a sense as tutor and guardian of the Russian masses, who have not yet reached the stage where they are fit for independent self-government.  I say "in a sense," because from another angle the Communist Party regards itself as the expression of the Russian people and as the representative quintessence of the peoples will....  ...it may be assumed that the party is indeed the guardian of the "infant" masses of its fellow countrymen, whom it is training for adult life and citizenship.  The form this training takes is the Five-year Plan.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 253
 
CAN CRITICIZE RUNNING OF SYSTEM BUT NOT THE SYSTEM ITSELF
 
The public is taught to know and recognize all three “class enemies” and to welcome action against them.  On the other hand, the press, while mercilessly exposing the defects in the present system, is careful never to suggest that a different system--that is, the previous system--might be better. 
            The press concentrates public attention upon defects and ways to improve them, upon enemies and ways to defeat them, but it rigidly excludes the implication that there is anything wrong with the system itself.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 282
 
            While public opposition to the basic program of communism is impossible in the Soviet Union, criticism of all aspects of Soviet life is encouraged and rewarded.  Stalin not only urges every worker to criticize publicly whatever is not sound in factory, mine, and mill, but he has pointed the way in his public addresses....  In its appeal of June 2, 1928, the Central Committee gave final shape to the campaign of self-criticism, calling upon all forces of the Party and the working-class to develop self-criticism 'from top to bottom and from bottom to top,' without respect of person."  The result is a perpetual stream of criticism in the papers attacking instances of inefficiency or wrong-doing.
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 67
 
 
PURGE REVEALS EXTENT OF WHITE PENETRATION OF GOVT
 
January 7, 1933--These results [of purging in the North Caucasus] are published today in the newspaper Pravda.
            Detailed investigation...revealed what is literally an appalling state of affairs from a Bolshevik point of view.  Not merely had kulaks or their sympathizers crept into the party ranks, but such important posts as secretaryships and presidencies of local committees were held by former staff officers of Admiral Kolchak, General Denikin, and other counter-revolutionary forces.
            The sons and daughters of landowners and merchants who had concealed their social origin had risen to high communist offices.  In some cases the whole organization was "rotten with treason" and kulak resistance to the Soviet agrarian policy, while peasants, workers, and communists were eliminated or brow-beaten.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 289-90
 
WHAT PERCENT OF POPULATION SUPPORTED AND OPPOSED COLLECTIVIZATION
 
The richer peasants hated collectivization.  They were five percent of the total.  But the poorest peasants liked it, and they were 30 percent of the total.  Of the others, half -- the poorer half -- were rather for it.  The other half were rather against it.  But both sections did not care much, provided that collectivization benefited them.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 297
 
Yet always the communists had on their side half or more than half of the total peasant population and against them only a small minority, while the remainder just judged by the results.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 298
 
            ...In short, Stalin was not forcing lines of development on a system in which there was no support for such developments.  Rather he was pursuing policy lines for which there was significant support within some sections of the regime.  Under such circumstances, the interpretation that Stalin was in part responding to other forces in the system seems to have as much validity as that which attributes an initiating role solely to the leader.
Gill, Graeme. Stalinism. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1990, p. 64
 
            The peasant question is one of the most important questions in our politics.  In the conditions prevailing in our country, the peasantry consists of various social groups, namely, the poor peasants, the middle peasants and the kulaks.  It is obvious that our attitude to these various groups cannot be identical.  The poor peasant is the support of the working-class, the middle peasant is the ally, the kulak is the class enemy--such is our attitude to these respective social groups.
Stalin, Joseph.  Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 164
 
            Stalin is giving the Russian people--the Russian masses, not Westernized landlords, industrialists, bankers and intellectuals, but Russia’s 150,000,000 peasants and workers--what they really want, namely joint effort, communal effort.  And communal life is as acceptable to them as it is repugnant to a Westerner.
            Duranty, Walter.  “Red Russia of Today Ruled by Stalinism, not by Communism,”  New York Times, June 14, 1931.
 
              Finally, what about the other 90% of peasants who did not rebel?  Some peasants did not reject collectivization and even supported it.  In March 1929 peasants suggested at a meeting in Riazan okrug that the Soviet government should take all the land and have peasants work on it for wages, a conception not too distant from the future operation of kolkhozy.  An OGPU report quoted one middle peasant in Shilovskii raion, Riazan  okrug, in November 1929 to the effect that 'the grain procurements are hard, but necessary; we cannot live like we lived before, it is necessary to build factories and plants, and for that grain is necessary'.  In January 1930, during the campaign, some peasants said, 'the time has come to abandon our individual farms.  It's about time to quit those, [we] need to transfer to collectivization.'  Another document from January reported several cases of peasants spontaneously forming kolkhozy and consolidating their fields, which was a basic part of collectivization.  Bokarev's analysis summarized above suggests a reason why many peasants did not rebel against collectivization: the kolkhoz in certain ways, especially in its collectivism of land use and principles of egalitarian distribution, was not all that far from peasant traditions and values in corporate villages throughout the USSR.  In any case, this example, and the evidence that the vast majority of peasants did not engage in protests against collectivization, clearly disproves Graziosi's assertion cited above that the villages were 'united' against collectivization.
            Tauger, Mark.  “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 75.
 
            For the same reasons, all such anecdotal citations from OGPU documents of peasants refusing to work are at best problematic and often meaningless as overall indicators of their actions and the consequences of them, and no generalizations or conclusions that most or all peasants resisted work in the farms, are valid if drawn from such evidence.
            In such extreme versions, the “resistance interpretation” would lead one to expect that the kolkhoz system could not have functioned: peasants would have avoided work, committed sabotage and subterfuge, and produced little or nothing.  Writings in this interpretation rarely indicate that peasants actually performed any agricultural work; from these studies, it appears that virtually all that peasants ever did was show resistance....                    The harvest data for the 1930s, however, demonstrate that this interpretation is not compatible with the results of the system's work.  Many if not most peasants adapted to the new system and worked hard in the crucial periods every year.  When conditions were favorable, harvests were adequate and sometimes abundant; when unfavorable, the results were crop failures, and famine if harvests were especially low.  Most notably, harvests were larger in the years after natural disasters and crop failures (1933, 1935, 1937), indicating that many peasants worked under very difficult conditions, even famine, to produce more and overcome the crises.  This means that in addition to its problems of evidence, the “resistance interpretation,” at least in its extreme versions, is one-sided, reductionist and incomplete.  Peasants' responses to the kolkhoz system cannot be reduced to resistance without serious omissions and distortions of actual events.  A more complete and accurate interpretation has to take more than resistance into account. 
            Tauger, Mark.  “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 78.
 
            When one reads that peasants refused to work 'in certain kolkhozy' or 'in a series of kolkhozy', sometimes one begins to think that those phrases are euphemisms or a code for 'everyone', 'everywhere' and 'always'.  In fact, of course, OGPU personnel did write 'everywhere' and 'always' when they meant it.  This focus can also lead the researcher to inflate the concept of resistance to include actions and attitudes that were understandable and temporary responses to natural disaster, mismanagement or other problems, and not attacks on the system.
            Tauger, Mark.  “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p.  79.
 
            First we need to address the meaning of resistance.  Scholars often cite OGPU reports of peasants not going out to work, or of only a few kolkhozniki working..  These reports have to be understood in the context that in 1930, and for years afterwards, most collective farms had a labor surplus.  An investigation in April 1930 found that kolkhozy in the North Caucasus would employ only 60% of their available labor, and those in the Urals only 50%;... and Ukraine even lower, from 25 to 31%....  This low labor use in 1930 does not appear to have reduced farm work done: for example, a nearly complete survey in mid-1930 in the Middle Volga found that sowings in kolkhozy increased more than six-fold over 1929, and included one-third of the region's sown area even though kolkhozy had only 22% of the region's households.  Farms could increase crop areas despite low labor turnout because collectivization eliminated the traditional inter-stripping of allotments, the typical pattern of landho­lding in Soviet villages.  This pattern constrained many peasants’ capabilities, particularly because the population growth in the 1920s resulted in smaller allotments.  Once this basically medieval system was eliminated, many fewer peasants could cultivate all the village land.  For years farms had more labor than they could employ, despite dekulakization and recruitment of peasants for industrial labor.  A low turnout for work, therefore, may not have been a sign of resistance as much as a result of the real demands of work in the kolkhozy.
            Tauger, Mark.  “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 79.
 
            Then, often kolkhozniki would not show up for work because of the income distribution plans in the kolkhoz.  Apparently most kolkhozy in 1930 and many in 1931 distributed income in an equalizing manner, despite directives to distribute by work done (in 1931 according to the labor-day system)....  When some kolkhozy began work with plans to distribute jobs and remuneration on an equal basis, peasants stopped showing up for work.  Then the farms announced that they would remunerate on the basis of the amount each member worked, and everyone showed up for work, even (in one case) members who had submitted doctors' notes that they were not labor-capable.  Admittedly, these are anecdotal sources, but they do suggest an alternative interpretation of some of the other anecdotal sources used to document resistance.
            Tauger, Mark.  “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 80.
 
            Based on these sources, however, the peasants' most frequent form of 'resistance' was to divide up kolkhozy into individual fields to harvest.  These actions were stimulated in some cases by a rumor of a secret state decree to dissolve the kolkhozy; one North Caucasus peasant urged division of his kolkhoz because (he thought) kolkhozy in Ukraine had been dispersed.  In this case as in many others, however, peasants' actions did not have the quality of opposition or sabotage, of a clandestine attempt to undermine the state.  Their demands were open, sometimes formalized in a petition to higher authorities, and honest: to be allowed to work in the way they thought best.  In several cases peasants urged division of the kolkhozy to save the harvest and to provide higher procurements for the government.  These demands and actions do not fit easily into the “resistance interpretation,” because peasants explicitly stated that they intended their actions as a means to fulfill the government's demands to produce more and to meet the procurement quotas.
            Even besides these cases, and despite or because of the crisis conditions in summer and autumn 1932, many peasants tried to work within the system.  During early 1933 OGPU and other personnel investigated villages to determine the extent of the famine for relief efforts.  Invariably their reports showed that while famine affected mostly peasants who did not earn many labor-days, it often struck peasants who had earned hundreds of labor-days, and highly productive, successful kolkhozy.  Clearly, since many kolkhozniki were hard-working and successful until the procurement campaign of autumn 1932, resistance is far from the whole story.
            By early 1933, the USSR was in the throes of a catastrophic famine, varying in severity between regions but pervasive.  After efforts in January to procure more grain, the regime began desperate efforts in February to aid peasants to produce a crop.  The political departments, which the regime introduced into the state arms (sovkhozy) and the machine tractor stations (MTS) in early 1933, played a crucial role in these efforts.  These agencies, composed of a small group of workers and OGPU personnel in each MTS or sovkhoz, removed officials who had violated government directives on farm work and procurements, replacing them with kolkhozniki or sovkhoz workers, who they thought would be more reliable, and organized and otherwise helped farms to produce a good harvest in 1933.  They were supported by draconian and coercive laws enforcing labor discipline in the farms in certain regions, but also by the largest allocation of seed and food aid in Soviet history, 5.76 million tons, and by special sowing commissions set up in crucial regions like Ukraine, the Urals, the Volga and elsewhere to manage regional-level aspects of organization and supplies to the farms.
            Tauger, Mark.  “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 82.
 
            To focus so exclusively on resistance, especially as extreme versions of the resistance interpretation do, in light of Soviet peasants' repeated production of good harvests in the wake of serious crop failures and famines, misrepresents most peasants' actions and omits their accomplishments, and therefore presents an incorrect interpretation of Soviet rural life....
            Collectivization was thus fundamentally ambivalent as a policy, with good sides and bad.  Peasants' responses to this were also ambivalent; including of course significant resistance but also many other attitudes including significant adaptation and support.  And in the peak of crisis, peasants repeatedly demonstrated their ability to put aside their objections, to overcome adversity even at great cost, and to produce harvests that ended famines.
            In other words, the 'trope' that I propose here to encompass and understand all of the peasants' responses to collectivization is not that of heroic but futile resistance against a totally wrong system, the noble peasants fighting with the weapons of the weak, which refers only to a fraction of the peasants, but rather one of bitter and ambivalent heroism, desperate but often successful efforts by some peasants despite natural disasters, the ineptitude and harshness of the regime, and the scorn and hostility of some of their neighbors.  This conception corresponds much better to the concrete results that in most years fed the growing population of the USSR.
                 The “resistance interpretation” seems to be an example of theory-driven or even politically motivated scholarship, in which scholars selected evidence to fit preconceived theoretical assumptions or express their hostility to the Soviet regime, but did not consider how representative and realistic their evidence actually was.  The “resistance interpretation,” in its extreme versions at least, is actually deeply unrealistic: peasants, like other people, had different attitudes and responses to the events that affected them.  Just consider the wide array of views of some former peasants who came to positions of prominence in the early 20th century Russia and the USSR:...  Given such a spectrum of perspectives from former peasants, we should expect and seek out a variety of views in the evidence, rather than assume that all peasants were resistant and attribute to all of them the views of a minority.
            Tauger, Mark.  “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 88.
 
BOLSHEVIKS CLAIM SYSTEM HAS PROVEN SUPERIORITY WHEN THERE IS NO SABOTAGE
 
The Bolsheviks contend, apparently with justice, that where the new system has received proper trial without sabotage it has already amply proved its superiority and has greatly increased both food production and the actual happiness of the peasant producers.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 308
 
NO RED TERROR
 
March 1, 1933--the outer world is beginning to talk about a new red terror in Russia, but, as explained previously, neither the Bolsheviks themselves nor leading sections of the Russian people consider it anything but "repressive measures" against class enemies and opponents of the socialization program.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 309
 
 
UPROOTING IS WORSE IN THE US
 
March 1, 1933--To Americans it doubtless sounds atrocious that any authority should thus uproot and disrupt homes.  But the Bolsheviks reply sarcastically, "And what about your economic system, which suddenly and mercilessly cuts jobs and savings from under millions of families and throws them literally into the street or at the mercy of charity?  Don't you know that there have been more American homes thus disrupted in the past four years than in all of our removals of kulaks and other enemies?  And, remember, we uproot enemies; you break the hearts of your own supporters."
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 309
 
CLASS ENEMIES ARE NOT KILLED BUT RELOCATED
 
They [those opposing collectivization] are class enemies, and anyway we [the Bolsheviks] do not kill them; we take and put them to work somewhere else because their opposition where they are hampers the development of our socialist system.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 310
 
DURANTY SEES NO FAMINE IN 1933
 
Kharkov, September 1933--I have just completed a 200 mile auto trip through the heart of the Ukraine and can say positively that the harvest is splendid and all talk of famine now is ridiculous....  The population, from the babies to the old folks, looks healthy and well nourished.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 318
 
PEASANTS HAVE ACCEPTED COLLECTIVIZATION
 
One thing, however, is sure--the peasants have accepted collectivization and are willingly obeying the Kremlin's orders.  The younger peasants already understand that the Kremlin's way will benefit them in the long run, that machines and mass cultivation are superior to the old "strip system" and individual farming.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 318
 
            Beyond all question, the new kolkhoz statute was Stalin's greatest success in his whole political life.  The collectivization of agriculture in the new form satisfied the peasants, and it had the most far-reaching historical consequences.  The problem of the development of agricultural technique and of the restoration of large-scale farming had been solved.  More still, for a long time to come this new reform attached most of the peasants in loyalty to the regime.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 190
 
            It is widely supposed that the Russian peasant is against the kolkhozy.  That is not so.  It may confidently be said that it was just the reform of 1933 that brought victory to Russia in the Second World War, and that in spite of initial failures it was just this happily formulated kolkhoz statute that prevented the collapse of the regime....
            It may safely be said that it was thanks to collectivization that the Soviet Union survived the Second World War.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 191
 
            Collectivization now protected the peasant from his rightful primeval enemies: drought, hail, pests, and cattle disease.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 193
 
            Now a new life was introduced, and, need it be said, it seemed marvelous to the peasant.  Hence his eagerness to fight for his country in the Second World War, in contrast to the first.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 194
 
            I saw collectivization break like a storm on the Lower Volga in the autumn of 1929.  It was a revolution that made deeper changes than did the revolution of 1917, of which it was the ripened fruit.  Farmhands and poor peasants took the initiative, hoping to better themselves by government aid.  Kulaks fought the movement bitterly by all means up to arson and murder.  The middle peasantry, the real backbone of farming, had been split between the hope of becoming kulaks and the wish for machinery from the state.  But now that the Five-Year Plan promised tractors, this great mass of peasants began moving by villages, townships, and counties, into the collective farms....
            A few months earlier, people had argued calmly about collectives, discussing the grain in sown area, the chances of tractors..  But now the countryside was smitten as by a revival.  One village organized as a unit then voted to combine with 20 villages to set up a cooperative market and grain mill....  Then Yelan united four big communes into 750,000 acres.  Learning of this, peasants of  Balanda shouted in meeting: "Go boldly!  Unite our two townships into one farm of a million acres."...
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era.  New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 35
 
            What would they [Middle Volga Nationalists] do with the kolkhozes, Belinsky asked.  The nationalist's reply was stereotyped: they would disband them at once.  And if the majority of the peasants were against this?--No matter, they would still be disbanded.  They conflicted with “national sentiments,”  Other industries would remain in State hands; but there was no need to plan all this in detail, all these problems would settle themselves once there was national independence.
            We were by no means so sure.  We found this to be the prevalent attitude; and yet--the truth must be faced--though we revolutionary democrats detested the kolkhoz system, we were not sure that it was any longer true to say this of the majority of the land workers.  The generation who had known the world of independent holdings was dying out.  Even those who as small children had witnessed scenes of bloodshed when the farms were being collectivized could hardly remember the earlier order; they had grown up in a different world, with public day nurseries, state schools, state food supplies, state newspapers, magazines, books, films, plays, state training at every stage of mind and body.  They had their dissatisfactions but not consciously with the social structure.  To them kolkhoz life was normal, not an innovation.
            In this and in other ways, plans for the overthrow of Stalinism and for what was to replace it took a different form from earlier days.  The revolution had been made in the name of the workers and peasants against other social classes; today the whole ruling class of the USSR was of worker and present origin.  Nor could be the Red Army be regarded as a workers' and peasants' army in opposition to rulers of some other class origin.  Both our friends and our enemies were workers and peasants, and the Red Army had become an amorphous, classless, or rather “inter-class” mass, with an altogether different mentality.  The new program had to be planned for the whole of society, not for one section.  The old worker and peasants slogans have lost their validity in the USSR.
Tokaev, Grigori. Comrade X. London: Harvill Press, 1956, p. 161
 
            The peasants turned more and more in favor of collective farming as a result of seeing the state farms and the machine and tractors stations.  The peasants would visit the state farms and the machine and tractor stations, watch the operation of the tractors and other agricultural machinery, admire their performance and there and then resolve to join the collective farm.  It was in this manner that the collective farm movement developed, i.e., the peasants were persuaded by superior state farms and agricultural machinery to join collective farms--not my arm-twisting or use of force as is asserted by the paid and unpaid agents of the bourgeoisie--the Trotskyites, the 'learned' bourgeois professors, and bourgeois intellectuals.
Brar, Harpal.   Trotskyism or Leninism. 1993, p. 176
 
            When in the year 1924 Stalin recognized and proclaimed that the Russian peasant had within him the possibility of socialism, that he could, in other words, be national and international at the same time, his opponents laughed at him and decried him as a Utopian.  Today [1937] practice has proved Stalin's theory to be correct: the peasant has been socialized from White Russia to the Far East.
Feuchtwanger, Lion.   Moscow, 1937. New York: The Viking Press, 1937, p. 80
 
            The poor peasants saw emancipation in the collective; the richer ones saw the merging of their small fortune and position.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 114
 
 
COLLECTIVIZATION HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL
 
December 16, 1933--in the latter respect it is noteworthy that the proportion of wheat in this year's collections is half as large again as that of last year.
            This result fully justifies the optimism expressd to me by local authorities during my September trip through the Ukraine and North Caucasus--optimism that contrasted so strikingly with the famine stories then current in Berlin, Riga, Vienna and other places, where elements hostile to the Soviet Union were making an 11th hour attempt to avert American recognition by picturing the Soviet Union as a land of ruin and despair.
            Second, it is a triumph for Joseph Stalin's bold solution a year ago of the collective farm management problem--namely, the establishment of political sections in the tractor stations, a step that future historians cannot fail to regard as one of the major political moves in the Soviet Union's second decade.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 324
 
            Collectivization is nevertheless Stalin's life's achievement, and probably his greatest. It solved Russia's age-long agrarian problem.  Collectivization prevented hostile economic forces from springing ever anew from the soil of the countryside to attack the Soviet economic system.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 195
 
            In a December 5, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “The collective farm movement is growing by leaps and bounds.  Of course there are not enough machines and tractors--how could it be otherwise?--but simply pooling the peasant tools results in a colossal increase in sown acreage (in some regions by as much as 50 percent!)....  The eyes of our rightists are popping out of their heads in amazement....”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 183
 
            In four earth-shaking years, the Soviet Union changed from a country of tiny, badly tilled holdings, worked with wooden plow and hand sickle, to the largest scale farms in the world.  The initiative was taken by the poorer peasants and farm hands, urged and organized by the Communists, and assisted by government credits and machines.  When the five-year plan swiftly increased the farm machinery available, the new collective farm proved able to attract ever wider and wider groups of farmers.  The movement was bitterly fought by the small rural capitalists known as kulaks, who farmed with hired labor, lived by money-lending, or owned small mills, threshers and other means of production and used these facilities to exploit their neighbors.
            [Footnote]: Writers unacquainted with Russian rural life often confuse kulaks with peasants generally, which leads them to describe the whole collectivization movement as an attack on the peasants.  But for half a century students of Russian rural districts have spoken of kulaks.  In 1895 Stepniak wrote that "hard unflinching cruelty" was their main characteristic; in 1904 Wolf von Schierhand wrote of the kulak as a "usurer and oppressor in a peasant's blouse."  In 1918 Dr. E. J. Dillon, in The Eclipse of Russia, said: "Of all the human monsters I have ever met in my travels, I cannot recall any so malignant and odious as the Russian kulak.
Strong, Anna Louise.   This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 178
 
            But anyone in a position to compare a Russian farmstead of 1910 with one of 1930 must confess that the latter guarantees more of two all-important elements: human happiness and dignity.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 147
 
            Despite all the bourgeoisie's hue and cry about the repression suffered by the rich peasants during the collectivization, in less than one decade, the Russian peasants left the Middle Ages and joined the twentieth century.  Their cultural and technical development was phenomenal. 
            This progress properly reflected the sustained rise in investment in agriculture.  It increased from 379 million rubles in 1928, to 2,590 million in 1930, to 3,645 million in 1931, stayed at the same level for two years, reaching its highest levels at 4,661 million in 1934 and 4,983 million in 1935.
            Charles Bettelheim.  L'Economie sovietique (Paris: editions Recueil Sirey, 1950), p. 74.
Martens, Ludo.    Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27  2600, p. 86 [p. 77 on the NET]
 
            After the success of the collectivization of 1932--1933, Bukharin's defeatist theories were completely discredited.
Martens, Ludo.    Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27  2600, p. 136 [p. 117 on the NET]
 
             I heard incredible stories of the hopes raised among peasants by collectivization.  With collectivization, technical civilization penetrated into the backward rural districts of Russia.  Wireless and cinema came to villages that were without a school the day before; where the plough was still unknown and the earth was broken with the aid of the ancestral hoe, tractors made their appearance.  The people were dazzled.  Countless factories were rising, armies of tractors, cars, unheard-of agricultural machines were to make their appearance in the village, along with piles of artificial manure.  Postal and telephone service, medical service, agrarian experts, machinery and tractor stations, all sorts of courses and schools were introduced.  All this could not fail deeply to impress the creative instinct of the masses, to fan the ancient hope of a better life in those villages that had suffered so much during the NEP.
Ciliga, Ante.  The Russian Enigma. London: Ink Links, 1979, p. 100
 
 
12 YEAR ADVANCE BY ALTRUISTIC BOLSHEVIKS HAS BEEN REMARKABLE
 
October 1, 1933--when I came to Russia 12 years ago I was prejudiced against the Bolsheviks for a variety of reasons.  And in that year of famine I found conditions terrible enough.  But I also found, which I had not known before, that the Russian masses had been enslaved by the tsarist regime, whose corruption and incompetence had been the chief levers of its own downfall.  I found the Soviet leaders were in the main altruists--fanatical altruists, if you like--honestly trying to make a disciplined and self respecting nation out of this horde of newly liberated slaves.
            During twelve years I had had no reason to change this opinion.  Without holding a brief for socialism I have watched a steady progress--by zigzags, as Lenin said, but progress, nonetheless--toward the development and practice of a working socialist system.  When I compare the Moscow of 1933 with the Moscow of 1921 I am amazed by what has been accomplished, and the change in the position of Soviet Russia as a factor in world affairs is no less striking than Russia's advance from a backward agrarian state, economically dependent upon the industrial West, to a stage of industrial autonomy and the solid foundations of economic self-sufficiency.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 330
 
            One cannot, I think, judge the Communist achievement fairly without taking full account of the stupendous obstacles which stood in the way of its realization.  In a backward, semi-Asiatic peasant country, shattered by war and social upheaval, the Communists introduced a completely new system of economic administration, bound, in its first stages, to be accompanied by costly and discouraging blunders.  And they installed as the ruling class of this complicated new social order the Russian workers, who were to a large extent shut out from the limited cultural opportunities afforded under the Tsarist regime and who, while full of militant revolutionary spirit, were inferior to West European and American workers in general and technical education.
            If one keeps a firm mental grasp on these two facts and their manifold implications, it will be recognized that the real cause for wonder in Soviet Russia is not that so much is amiss but that so much has been achieved.
Chamberlin, William Henry.   Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 424
 
            Let us make a few comparisons with foreign countries so as to fix these ideas in our minds.
            In 1933 the United States figures were 110.2% of the pre-war figures, France 107.6%, England had reached 85.2%, Germany 75.4%, and the USSR 391 percent.
            In agricultural machinery and locomotive construction the USSR today (1935) holds the world record (in agricultural machinery alone her annual production represents a value of 420 million gold rubles, against that of 325 million in the United States).
            If we endeavor to visualize the titanic highway that would be made by the great factories of the world placed end to end, we would see in that evocation of the supernatural: Magnitogorsk (metallurgy), not yet quite completed, and which, when it is completed, will equal the American Gary Works which holds the record for size at the moment, Cheliabinsk (heavy tractors), the Stalin Automobile Works in Moscow, Kramatorsk, in the Dombass region, (heavy machinery), the Kaganovich factory in Moscow (ball bearings)--which are giants of their species in a world of giants.  The Lugansky locomotive factory is the most powerful in Europe, and masses of other factories (machinery which makes machinery and works metal) bear the numbers two or three in world magnitude.
            Some other comparisons with foreign conditions:
            Unemployment-- During the period of the Plan, when unemployment was eliminated from the USSR, the number of unemployed rose, in England from 1,290,000 to 2,800,000 and in Germany from 3,376,000 to 5,500,000....  In the United States, according to the Alexander Hamilton Institute, the number of unemployed in March 1933 was 17 million.  In Italy there were 1,300,000 unemployed.  In Spain, there were 6,500,000 unemployed in September 1934.
            We are told that in many of these countries unemployment has decreased.  Let us observe that in the same places in which they talk of the reduction of unemployment they also talk of the reduction in the total amount of wages.  But it should be particularly observed that there is no bluff or deception in the world more shameless than those which surround the official figures of unemployment in all capitalist countries.  It is impossible to humbug the public more deliberately than the competent authorities do in juggling with words and figures to disguise the true situation.  No capitalist country admits its unemployed.  Entire categories of workers, and of industries not having a certain proportion of workers, are "forgotten," and whole districts are "neglected."  After performing the operation which consists in cutting working hours in two so as to give the half-day obtained to an unemployed man, this unemployed man is removed from the list, whereas no change has really taken place at all, for twice 1/2 still makes 1.
            Let us pass over the enormous assistance given to scholars and to scientific institutes and to their many-sided activities, and let us merely say a few words on the subject of public education....  Every enterprise is a center of culture, every barracks is a school, every factory a factory for molding men's minds--let us merely observe that in the USSR there are 60 million pupils of all sorts whose education is financed by the State--one-person out of every three in the Union.  As for the Republics, I will quote one or two among the many: in Tatary the number of schools, which was 35 in 1913, was 1730 in 1933.  The Cherkesses possessed 94 percent of illiterates in 1914; nowadays there is not a single one--0%.  There were 26 times as many schools in Daghestan in 1931 as there were in 1914 and 38 times as many in Kazkistan.  Seventy different languages are cultivated in the USSR.  Twenty of these were not written and had to be stabilized by being given alphabets.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York:   The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 201-205
 
            The increase in fixed assets between 1913 and 1940 gives a precise idea of the incredible effort supplied by the Soviet people.  Starting from an index of 100 for the year preceding the war, the fixed assets for industry reached 136 at the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan in 1928. On the eve of the Second World War, twelve years later, in 1940, the index had risen to 1,085 points, i.e. an eight-fold increase in twelve years. The fixed assets for agriculture evolved from 100 to 141, just before the collectivization in 1928, to reach 333 points in 1940.
            L'Office central de statistique prs le Conseil des ministres de l'U.R.S.S. Les Progrs du pouvoir soviEtique depuis 40 ans en chiffres: Recueil statistique (Moscow: ƒditions en langues Etrangres, 1958), p. 26
            For eleven years, from 1930 to 1940, the Soviet Union saw an average increase in industrial production of 16.5 per cent.
            L'Office central de statistique prs le Conseil des ministres de l'U.R.S.S. Les Progrs du pouvoir soviEtique depuis 40 ans en chiffres: Recueil statistique (Moscow: ƒditions en langues Etrangres, 1958), p. 30
Martens, Ludo.     Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoor 2straat 25-27  2600, p. 51 [p. 42 on the NET]
 
            In the early 30s it [Moscow] was a rapidly expanding modern city, as well as the traditional capital of the Soviet empire.  Its growth was indeed spectacular.  At a pace unthinkable in other countries it changed physically, clearing slums, expanding; whole blocks of old houses were replaced by splendid buildings, narrow winding lanes were straightened and broadened into magnificent thoroughfares.  Today Moscow has no less than 2260 libraries (with a total of 65 million books), sixty museums, 100 colleges, 30 theaters--some of them world-famous--the largest Academy of Science in the world, an Academy of Medicine with 25 large research centers, an Academy of Agricultural Science with 13 research stations, an Academy of Architecture, an Academy of Pedagogy and, among many others, an Academy of Ballistics.
Tokaev, Grigori.    Betrayal of an Ideal.  Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1955, p. 127
 
            We could also boast some remarkable accomplishments in our lives.  In spite of muddles, mistakes, and blunders, tens of millions of people became literate, general secondary education was introduced, higher education and health care were provided free of charge, formerly backward peoples on the outskirts of the czarist empire were introduced to the best in the national and world cultures.  And the low rents, cheap city transport, low crime, and full employment--all this was taken for granted.
Berezhkov, Valentin.    At Stalin's Side. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Pub. Group, c1994, p. 387
 
COLLECTIVIZATION OPPOSED ONLY BY A MINORITY
 
To the London Times correspondent collectivization is one of the blackest spots in his gloomy picture.  He writes: "During the last two years 70 million peasants have been driven from 14 million holdings onto 200,000 collective farms.  Those who have proved themselves successful farmers, that is the kulaks, are hunted down, exiled to labor and timber camps in the North, massacred, and destroyed."  For anyone who knows the situation here, as well as the writer in question clearly does, this is a deliberate and ingenious perversion of fact.  The truth is that during the past five (not two) years some 60 percent of the peasant population, which include about 70 million souls, have adopted the new system of combining their individual holdings (nearer 18 million holdings than 14 million) for collective working on modern lines.  The kulaks naturally opposed the new system, which if successful would eliminate all their privileges.  Generally, it is true they were the best and most productive farmers, but they were trying to hold back the clock of progress as obstinately as the "homeweavers" in England a century ago, who started riots to break the new power driven machines which ushered in the industrial age of England and gave her economics supremacy and great wealth for many decades.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 336
 
COMMUNISTS ARE THE MOST ENERGETIC AND SACRIFICING
 
The Party Purge (Chistka)--Lenin's rule that no drones or sluggards might remain in the party has not been forgotten, and it is not always pleasant to pay the heavy party dues and give up any salary over 225 rubles monthly. 
            One often hears a man or woman, even communists themselves, say:
            “I would never marry a communist.  They are so busy that home life scarcely exists."
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 359
 
SU CHILDREN AND PIONEERS ARE THE GREATEST
 
The Pioneers have a sort of honor system of self-government and discipline at school and are the freest, most upstanding, and intelligent children I have ever met anywhere.  They are clean, which Russians used not to be; they play games for fun and think their country is the greatest ever.  They know about sex at an early age and it does not worry them--in this respect all Russians are singularly natural and matter of fact--and they think it is a disgrace to be rich and have other people work for you.  They do not care a rap about what Americans call comfort, but they know the joy of united effort and have an opportunity to take part in national life in drives or campaigns or investigations or what not to a degree enjoyed by no other children in the world.  The girls are just the same as the boys and they are "swell," and hard as life is here in Russia this correspondent is willing to go on record that no youngsters anywhere have a better time or are likely to make more useful citizens.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 361
 
SU WORKERS ARE TOO FREE TO MOVE AROUND WHICH CAUSES PROBLEMS
 
April 8, 1932--It is your correspondent's opinion--which recent edicts from the Kremlin would indicate is fully shared by Soviet leaders and which certainly is shared by American engineers who have worked in Russia--that one of the principal reasons for the present difficulties, as an American expressed it, is that "labor here is too darn free and too darn talkative."  If other proof were needed, the terrific amount of "floating labor" noticeable here is sufficient.  People hear there are better wages, food, or housing at such and such a mine or factory or construction camp, and they chuck their jobs and get there somehow.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 366
 
            The regime found it almost impossible to regulate workers, who were able to skirt laws repeatedly, often with the help and understanding of managers.  Shortages of labor, especially of skilled people, compelled industrial executives to accommodate workers whenever possible.  Repeated efforts to control the flow of proletarians around the country failed each time.
            Workers could influence their environment and take part in decision-making by leaving one job for another, slowing down their work when it was time to set new norms, denouncing managers, or simply by voicing their opinions.  Managers, desperate to fulfill their production plans and facing grave danger if they did not, had to listen.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 184
 
            The industrial labor force continued to enjoy its most basic freedom, the ability to move and change jobs, on a broad scale until the war.  Curtailment of this right resulted primarily from military needs, not from some fundamental imperative of the regime.
            Far from basing its rule on the negative means of coercion, the Soviet state in the late 1930s fostered a limited but positive political role for the populace.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 193
 
            Under the NEP labor policy had been characterized by a high degree of laissez-faire: workers had been free to choose their jobs, even though the scourge of unemployment made that freedom half-illusory; managers had been more or less free to hire and fire their men.  But rapid industrialization at once created an acute shortage of labor, and that meant the end of laissez-faire.  This was, in Stalin's words, the 'end of spontaneity' on the labor market, the beginning of what, in English-speaking countries, was later called direction of labor.  The forms of direction were manifold.  Industrial businesses signed contracts with collective farms, by which the latter were obliged to send specified numbers of men and women to factories in the towns.  This was the basic method.  It is an open question whether the term 'forced labor' can fairly be applied to it.  Compulsion was used very severely in the initial phase of the process, when members of collective farms, declared redundant and deprived of membership, were placed in a position not unlike that of the unemployed man whom economic necessity drives to hire himself as a factory hand.  Once in town, the proletarianized peasant was free to change his job.  Stalin aimed at securing by decree the reserve of manpower for industry which in most countries had been created by the chronic and spontaneous flight of impoverished peasants to the towns.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 335
 
 
KILLING OF PRIEST WHO SUPPORTED COLLECTIVIZATION
 
April 4, 1930--The following is an authentic case which recently occurred in a Volga village:
            The local priest was up-to-date and enthusiastic, which is not always so in Russian villages.  He did not fast like many of his colleagues, despair of the church in a communist state, or attempt to engage in futile opposition, but tried to reconcile his congregation to the facts of their present existence.
            One Sunday he chose as the theme of his sermon the story of Ananias and Sapphira who fell dead before Peter because they had sold a piece of land, lied about its price, and withheld part of the money from the common fund.  This, the priest said, was like the peasant who before joining a collective sold his cow or his horse instead of contributing it for the common weal.  He enlarged upon the communism of the early Christians and quoted texts to show the duty of obedience to authority.
            The following night the priest was shot dead by an unknown person as the clergyman was entering a barn to see whether it was suitable for the storage of newly collected seed grain.  A week later the church "caught fire" and burned to the ground....
            No legal proceedings have followed, and the murder of the priest remains unpunished, but it is common gossip in the village that the killing was inspired by kulaks.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 381
 
            Our situation, especially after Lenin was gone, became very dangerous.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 246
 
 
STALIN OPPOSES EQUAL WAGES
 
July 5, 1931--Stalin's "PROGRAM SPEECH"
            "In many of our factories the wage system is such as to leave no difference between the skilled and unskilled worker and between hard and easy labor," he said.  "This leads to unskilled workers showing no interest in raising their qualifications, and skilled workers move from factory to factory in search of a place where their qualifications will be more valued.  To give this shifting a free hand would undermine our industry, wreck our plan of production, and stop improvement in the quality of manufactured goods.  We must destroy such equal wages.  It is unbearable to see the locomotive driver receiving the same wages as the bookkeeper.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 387
 
But, it may be asked, why did Stalin stress greater wages for greater service?...
            What Stalin saw and wished to correct was an overhasty tendency to equalize wages in pursuit of "100 percent" communism at a time when, in fact, the collectivist system could not yet assure the masses of an adequate return for their labor or assure dominant individuals adequate recognition.
            Stalin said there was no communism yet and even the penultimate step to communism--namely, socialism--was barely established.  It is, therefore, necessary to maintain for some time to come direct monetary rewards to stimulate individual effort.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 390
 
            At the same time as the new peasant policy in 1933, the official class came clearly and unmistakably to the fore in the State and in all official life.  Now it was explained that the old principle of the revolution requiring equal distribution of all necessaries and luxuries, and the attempt to give the same payment to all occupied persons, were simply a Trotskyist heresy.  With the completion of the first Five-year Plan, Socialism had been built up in the Soviet Union.  But that did not mean equal pay for all and universal equality.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 211
 
            Piece-work, bonuses, Taylorism and individual competitive stunts were organized by factory directors throughout the USSR under different names and with different objectives....
            The murmured complaints of those who condemned this process, because it enabled some workmen to earn more than others, received a sharp rebuke from the General Secretary himself: "By equality we do not mean the leveling of personal requirements and conditions of life, but the suppression of classes; that is to say, equal enfranchisement for every worker after the overthrow and expropriation of the capitalists.  It is the duty of everyone to work according to his capacity, and the right of everyone to be paid according to the work he does.  Marxism starts from the fact that the needs and tastes of men can never be alike, nor equal either in quantity or quality."
            As usual, in spite of Stalin's eminently sane way of looking at such controversial points, many of his subordinates carried the schemes to such excesses....
Cole, David M.    Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 77
 
            Three reproaches have been leveled at Stalin and his Soviets: that they are antipatriotic, that they take away everyone's property, and that they repress every individual's intelligence in a universal equalization.  All three are false.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 153
 
            As regards the fable of equalization, we find that it had been derided by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin alike.  In the land which has raised science to the status of a divinity, superior talent, higher education, and greater application are better rewarded in money and honor than anywhere else in the world.  As the Western world has taken pleasure in reproaching the Soviets successively that they applied too much or too little equalization, I asked Stalin how the newly introduced piecework, implying an uneven wage scale, could be reconciled with Marxian principles.  He answered:
            "A completely socialized state, where all receive the same amount of bread and meat, the same kind of clothes, the same products, and exactly the same amounts of these products--such a Socialism was not recognized by Marx....  So long, then, as the distinction of class is not entirely obliterated, people will be paid according to their productive efficiency, each according to his capacity.  That is the Marxist formula for the first stage of socialism.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 154
 
            Stalin is similarly undogmatic regarding Marxian theories.  They must stand the test of use.  For instance, in the early days of the Russian Revolution, wages were much more uniform than they are today.  It was found that bonuses to workers and managers brought better results.  Wide differentials in pay exist today....
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 12
 
            A different system has also brought different incentives into play in the Soviet Union.  The powerful profit motive does not exist.  Soviet citizens cannot dream of becoming millionaires through having others work for them.  This does not mean, however, that Sovietism makes no appeal to self interest.  Stalin believes that self interest is not harmful as long as it can be synchronized with the public welfare.  He has tried to build a system of rewards for achievement without private monopoly and private profit.
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 65
 
            Wages are determined by results.  The more a worker produces, the more he is paid.  A truck driver I met in Moscow in 1944 had been getting as high as $600 per month.  A certain norm is set for every job, and the more the worker exceeds this, the more he is paid.  This inequality has been greeted with cheers and groans, according to the point of view, as a departure from socialist principles.  Stalin has denied this when he said, "These people evidently think that socialism calls for equality, for leveling the requirements and the personal lives of all members of society.  Needless to say, such an assumption has nothing in common with Marxism....  By equality Marxism means not equality in personal requirements and personal life, but the abolition of classes, i.e. (a) the equal emancipation of all toilers from exploitation, after the capitalists have been overthrown and expropriated, (b) the equal abolition for all of private property in the means of production, after this has been transformed into the property of the whole society, (c) the equal duty of all to work according to their ability, and the equal right of all toilers to receive according to their requirements.  And Marxism starts out with the assumption that people's abilities and requirements are not, and cannot be, equal in quality or quantity, either in the period of socialism or of communism."
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 65
 
            This does not mean that in setting to work with these purely moral incentives there can be no exaggerations and no mistakes.  Stalin himself has emphasized this point insofar as concerns despotic measures-- too childishly despotic in a blissfully unconscious way at present--such as the mathematically equal distribution of salaries and the strict leveling of everyone--measures having a somewhat clumsy and demagogic character which make them more harmful than useful in the development, still so immature, of individual and collective social personality.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York:  The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 145
 
            In order to put an end into this evil we must get rid of equalitarianism and break down the old wage scales.  In order to put an end to this evil we must set up a wage scale that will take into account the difference between skilled labor and unskilled labor, between heavy work and light work.  It cannot be tolerated that the rolling mill hand in a steel mill should earn no more than a sweeper.  It cannot be tolerated that a locomotive driver on a railway should earn only as much as a copying clerk.  Marx and Lenin said that the difference between skilled and unskilled work would continue to exist even under socialism and even after classes had been abolished, that only under communism would this difference disappear and that, therefore, even under socialism "wages" must be paid according to labor performed and not according to need.  But our industrialist and trade union equalitarians do not agree with this and opine that that difference has already disappeared under our Soviet system.  Who is right, Marx and Lenin, or our equalitarians?  We may take it that Marx and Lenin are right.  But if so, it follows that whoever draws up wage scales on the "principle" of equality, and ignores the difference between skilled and unskilled labor, is at loggerheads with Marxism and Leninism.
Stalin, Joseph.  Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 131
 
            But the Socialist movement did not promise that immediately industry and agriculture became socially owned and controlled, the unskilled laborer, irrespective of the service he was rendering to society, would get the same wage as the works manager.  It promised to rid both laborer and manager of the necessity of carrying an exploiting class on their backs.  It did not promise that they would get the same wage in return for the service they were rendering.
Campbell, J. R.  Soviet Policy and Its Critics. London: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1939, p. 93
 
            Perhaps the most important aspect of his [Stalin] social policy was his fight against the equalitarian trends.  He insisted on the need for a highly differentiated scale of material rewards for labor, designed to encourage skill and efficiency.  He claimed that Marxists were no levellers in the popular sense; and he found support for his thesis in Marx's well-known saying that even in a classless society workers would at first be paid according to their labor and not to their needs.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 338
 
            Somewhat later I brought the conversation round to the surprising change of front that communism had made in abandoning the old theory of equality and introducing piece-work in its place, thus giving the energetic worker a chance to earn more than his companion.  "We were astonished," I concluded, "when you yourself characterized equalization as the remains of middle-class prejudice."  Stalin answered: "A completely socialized State where all receive the same amount of bread and meat, the same kind of clothes, the same products in exactly the same amount of each product--such Socialism was not recognized by Marx.  Marx merely says that so long as the classes are not entirely wiped out and so long as work has not become the object of desire--for now most people look upon it as a burden --there are many people who would like to have other people do more work than they.  So long, then, as the distinction of class is not entirely obliterated, people be paid according to their productive efficiency, each according to his capacity.  That is the Marxist formula for the first stage of Socialism.  When Socialism has reached the complete stage everyone will do what he is capable of doing and for the work which he has done he will be paid according to his needs.  It should be perfectly clear that different people have different needs, great and small.  Socialism has never denied the difference in personal tastes and needs either in kind or in extent.  Read Marx's criticism of Stirner and the Gotha programme.  Marx there attacks the principal of equalization.  That is a part of primitive peasant psychology, the idea of equalization.  It is not Socialistic.  In the West they look upon the thing in such a primitive way that they imagine we want to divide up everything evenly.  That is the theory of Babeuf.  He never knew anything about scientific Socialism.  Even Cromwell wanted to level everything."
            Although I thought him wrong in regard to Cromwell it was not my business to enter into a historical argument with Stalin. 
Ludwig, Emil.  Leaders of Europe.  London: I. Nicholson and Watson Ltd., 1934, p. 382
 
HOW INVENTORS SHOULD BE TREATED
 
November 13, 1931--the whole force of the dominant Bolshevik party, which in practice is intensely autocratic and organized with military discipline, is bent upon putting over collectivism and crushing individualism in the sense in which individualism implies personal gain by making others work for one, not, however, in the sense of personal reward for one's own good work.
            Take, for instance, the hypothetical case of Thomas Edison under the present Soviet system.  He would get from his own inventions not only honor but monetary award.  He would be placed in charge of an invention department at a high salary, receive quarters for his own use, an automobile, and the like on privileged terms and get credit for the work produced by his staff.
            He would be a figure of national prominence, but he would not be allowed to make a cent of personal profit from the inventions produced in his own office.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 389
            It is often said that under a socialist economy there will be no rewards for inventors.  Stalin, however, enacted a law providing that from the moment that an invention is recognized as useful the inventor will be paid.  He does not have to wait until it is actually utilized.
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 79
 
 
HOW ARE THE MOST ENERGETIC PEOPLE TREATED IN SU
 
What, then, it may be asked, becomes of the exceptions to the average in Russia, of the dominant type that is not content to except the lot of his fellows and wants and is able to get ahead?  I made bold to say that in no country in the world are there such opportunities for this type as in the Soviet Union; that is, to get what this type wants--leadership, power, and the esteem of others.
Duranty, Walter.  Duranty Reports Russia. New York: The Viking Press, 1934, p. 389
 
VILLAGES DETERMINE IF LOCAL ARMIES ARE RED OR WHITE
 
I am certain that the same was true of the Civil War in Russia, and I know, moreover, that when soldiers of any faction were reported in the neighborhood of the average Russian Village, the first act of its inhabitants was to drive their cattle off into Woods or some other place of refuge.  After that scouts were sent to report whether the soldiers were red or white.  If the former the local priest made himself scarce and the newcomers were "hailed with delight" by the village Soviet.  If the troops were white, they received an official welcome from the council of elders led by the priest bearing a holy icon.
Duranty, Walter.  I Write as I Please. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935, p. 195
 
 
TROTSKY COULD NOT FACE HIS DROP IN POPULARITY FOLLOWING LENIN’S FUNERAL
 
The truth of the matter was that Trotsky was prostrate and broken, not by “the smashing defeat” or even, as he himself suggests, by illness, but by the sickening realization of what his absence from Lenin’s funeral had done to him and his career.  They say that Hell is paved with good intentions, but the white-hot plowshares of opportunities missed and advantages lost make cruel treading for ambitious feet.  Trotsky lay on his balcony in Sukhumi facing the sun and the sea...reading letters or receiving friends.  Little comfort either brought him and no good medicine for distress of soul.  I have already suggested that the cause of his illness was psychological as well as physical.  In what torment Trotsky must have writhed when letter after letter, friend after friend, told him, albeit unwittingly, the plain and sorry truth.  At first, I have been informed, he refused to believe that his tremendous popularity had not only faded but was changed in no small degree to resentment....
Duranty, Walter.   I Write as I Please. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935, p. 231-232
 
 
LENIN AND STALIN WERE SHOW NO MERCY REALISTS
 
Stalin is no less of a Marxist than Lenin who never allowed his Marxism to blind him to the needs of expediency.  When Lenin brought in NEP, he jettisoned Marxist principles more thoroughly than Stalin ever did, and when Lenin began a fight, whether the weapons were words or bullets, he showed no mercy to his opponents.
Duranty, Walter.   I Write as I Please. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935, p. 274
 
STALIN’S SU WAS REAL SOCIALISM
 
Foreigners seem to think because Karl Marx demanded the possession and control of production and means a production for his Socialist state, that this was the beginning and end of socialism.  Theoretically of course, it is true, but in practise the thing which distinguishes a real working socialist system from a pseudo-socialist system is the abolition of the power of money and the profit motive and of the possibility for any individual or group of individuals to gain surplus value from the work of others.  This and this alone is the true foundation of socialism.  It does not exist in Germany and it does not exist in Italy, but in Soviet Russia today it is a cardinal principal which is absolute and definite and supported by the harshest of laws and rules and regulations.  No less an expert in foreign affairs than David Lawrence suggested in hand article in the Saturday Evening Post of July 20, 1935, that there was no great difference in the systems of the USSR, Germany, and Italy, and said, "in none of these countries is there any semblance today of socialism."  This is sheer ignorance.
Duranty, Walter.  I Write as I Please. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935, p. 339
 
(Sinclair’s comments only)
            I could go on at length to cite criteria and to pass such judgments.  I give you one simple method, as certain as litmus paper in a test-tube, to determine whether the Soviet Union has now become counter-revolutionary, as you claim.  I am sure that Hitler has better sources of information about Russian affairs than you or I have; and when Hitler learns that the Soviet Union has become counter-revolutionary, he will reduce the ardor of his crusade against it.  So also will the big business press of Paris, London, and New York.  When that happens I will admit that Stalin has sold out the workers.  In the meantime, I must hold to my position: not that the Soviet system is Socialism, not that it is a "utopia," but that it is one of history's great experiments, entitled to be studied and understood, and to be defended against those reactionary forces which are now arming and combining to destroy it.
Sinclair and Lyons.   Terror in Russia? Two Views.  New York : Rand School Press, 1938, p. 63
 
            Today, Stalin still calls the USSR a socialist state.   This it is, in the sense that the State, after absolutely abolishing all private property, has ended by appropriating, as its exclusive property, the factories, the subsoil, the means of transport, the mechanism of commerce, the land, and all that the Marxists, in their jargon, call "the means of production."
Delbars, Yves.   The Real Stalin. London, Allen & Unwin, 1951, p. 408
 
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM
 
It is no longer a question of what I do or what I get but of what we do and what we get.  I venture to suggest that there could be no simpler definition of the difference between socialism and individualism.
Duranty, Walter.  I Write as I Please. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935, p. 340
 
            The "Market" and the "Centrally Planned" economies--the terms used by the UN--have exactly opposite problems.  The great problem in the "West" is the threat of demand not keeping up with supply; for the entrepreneur or manager to sell his goods or services, and for the worker to sell his labor power; in the "East" the problem is supply not keeping up with demand.  In the "West" the managers fear bankruptcy of their firms because they cannot find a market, and the workers fear losing their jobs.  In the "East" managers fear their inability to fulfill the plan, because they cannot find the required inputs of goods and of workers, and the workers fear not finding the goods they need or want.  In the "East" the
lines form at the retail outlets; in the "West" they form at the labor office and the factory gate.
            Every person who has worked in both the "East" and the "West," mostly emigrants, to whom I have presented this definition of the difference between the two economic systems has immediately agreed with it....
            To me capitalism is unacceptable on moral grounds.  It is based on the principle of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market--which implies that the other fellow has to sell in the cheapest and buy in the highest market.  It is the exact opposite of the principle "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you".
Blumenfeld, Hans. Life Begins at 65. Montreal, Canada: Harvest House, c1987, p. 289
 
MASSES SUPPORT BOLSHEVIKS AND STALIN’S SU
 
Nothing that may be said abroad about the tyranny and high-handedness of the Bolshevik regime can alter the fact that the Russian masses think and speak of "our" Rodina," "our" technicians, "our" successes and "our" failures.
Duranty, Walter.  I Write as I Please. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935, p. 341
 
            Russian workers complain, and loudly, about many things--mainly bureaucracy and petty graft--but never that the entire system is run primarily in the interests of someone else.  In general there is to be found a genuine spirit of cooperation.
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 65
 
            But peasant sentiment as a whole supports the Soviet regime for the simple reason that the peasants know any other possible regime would bring back the landlords--just as did the White regime in the civil wars.
Baldwin, Roger. Liberty Under the Soviets, New York: Vanguard Press, 1928, p. 39
 
            Attempts to explain Stalin's popularity have often foundered on the obstacle of partisanship.  Everyone admits that, in some way or another, he enjoyed mass support: "Although its nature and extent varied over the years, it is clear that there was substantial popular support for Stalinism from the beginning and through the very worst.
Nove, Alec, Ed.  The Stalin Phenomenon. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993, p. 113
 
            ...yet the question still rises of why he [Stalin] was so popular?
            One reason may be that, despite the enormous moral failure and physical sacrifice, society as a whole did not become degraded, and quite a few achievements were accomplished in the economic, social and cultural spheres....
            Major changes were wrought in industrial development.  The statistics, though exaggerated, indicate that Lenin's electrification plan for industry was fulfilled.  By 1935 average gross output from heavy industry exceeded the pre-war level by 5.6 times.  Having lived through the industrial breakdown caused by the First World War and the civil war, the people could not but be amazed at the huge energy and creative drive unleashed by the October Revolution.  They could proudly tell themselves, "We can do a lot!  Let's complete the five-year plan in four!'  As if to confirm Stalin's words, 'Life has become better, life has become more joyful!', by the end of the 1930's hundreds of new factories and plants, roads, towns, palaces of culture, rest homes, hospitals, schools and laboratories had appeared, transforming the landscape.
            The statistics for education are more impressive.  There were nearly seven times more specialists [in the 1930’s] who had had higher education than in 1913, while those with secondary education increased by almost 28 times.  Illiteracy fell dramatically.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 263-264
 
            The great transformation that the country had gone through before the war had, despite all its dark sides, strengthened the moral fiber of the nation.  The majority was imbued with a strong sense of its economic and social advance, which it was grimly determined to defend against danger from without.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 485
 
            While the Russian government thus certainly is not a government by the people, it may claim that it is a government for the people, if not for the living then for the future generation.  It may also claim that it possesses, in fact, the consent of the people to this dictatorship and its aims.  For proof of this we do not rely on election figures and votes of confidence in the State and Party leadership, the value of which must be regarded as extremely doubtful.
            The real proof comes from Russia at war, Soviet Russia at her supreme test.  As we all know, Hitler was not the only one to be mistaken when he expected that the Stalin regime would crack up under the impact of the onslaught, that the Ukrainians and other nationals would cut loose and the Soviet State collapse.  Even the Nazi Front reporters admit now that they have never come across anything like the courageous and dogged defense of the Russian troops who went on fighting even when retreating or surrounded, men and women, soldiers and civilians alike.
Socialist Clarity Group. The U. S. S. R., Its Significance for the West. London: V. Gollancz, 1942, p. 41
 
 
BOLSHEVIKS AND MENSHEVIKS CLASH OVER PARTY MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS
 
The “Mensheviks” the minority in the party, were in favor of according membership to anyone who accepted the parties program and supported its finances by paying his membership subscription; the Bolsheviks, the majority, were for requiring a further condition: the member must actively co-operate in the work of one of the party groups.  In other words, the Mensheviks wanted a party on West European lines, in which anyone could be a member by virtue of paying his subscription; the Bolsheviks wanted a much smaller party, but one whose members would all be professional revolutionaries.  This raised already the substance of another theory which was later accepted.  The conception of the political purpose of democracy held by the Menshevik wing was that after an upheaval had won civil liberties for the great mass of the people, and especially for the workers, the party had to become the executor of the will of the people.  The Bolsheviks, the advocates of a party of purely professional revolutionaries, were virtually in favor of the opposite standpoint, that the revolution had to be made by a trained elite, and that elite had not to fulfil any and every wish of the people, but to lead the mass of the people in the people's own interest.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 22
 
 
STALIN MEETS LENIN AND TROTSKY FOR FIRST TIME
 
Thus, in Tammerfors Stalin first spoke to Lenin personally.  He also saw there for the first time his later mortal enemy, Trotsky.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 27
 
STALIN FIRMLY OPPOSED SECESSION BY NATIONALITIES
 
The Georgian Mensheviks were in favor of the secession of Georgia from Russia.  Stalin was naturally in favor of the autonomy of the Caucasian peoples in language and administration, but he was a fanatical opponent of the breaking up of the Russian Empire, and consequently of the secession of Georgia.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 28
 
What is certain is that Stalin was instinctively opposed to any splitting of Russia into its national components.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 54
 
            Stalin, needless to say, was entirely in agreement with Lenin that these populations [the minority peoples] should only be granted their apparent national independence if they accepted the Soviet regime, the regime of the dictatorship of proletariat.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 59
 
            Comrade Stalin combated the federalist tendencies of the bourgeois nationalists, which the Mensheviks shared.  He argued that the victory of the proletariat demanded the unity of all workers, irrespective of nationality, and that national partitions must be broken down and the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish and other proletarians closely amalgamated as an essential condition for the victory of the proletariat all over Russia.
Yaroslavsky, Emelian.  Landmarks in the Life of Stalin. Moscow: FLPH, 1940, p. 40
 
 
LENIN FIRMLY OPPOSED NATIONALISM
 
Lenin was as far as could be from being a nationalist.  It is quite clear that at that time he regarded any national feeling as a narrowness, a sort of superstition, almost as morbid....  It may be that he also felt that it would be inexpedient for him as a Russian, a member of the dominant nation, in whose name the other peoples were oppressed, to carry out this work himself.  Stalin, on the other hand, was not a Russian but a member of a people subjugated by the Russians.  Both from the political and the propagandist point of view it would be much more effective if he dealt with this subject.  He seemed, indeed, to be the very man for the job....  With his knowledge and experience, Stalin was obviously the very man that was wanted.  He had had years of experience through his political activity and his agitation among the motley nationalities of the Caucasian towns, and he must have been very successful in mastering the nationalities problem; for the Bolshevik organizations composed of the various nationalities had chosen him again and again as their delegate at various congresses and conferences.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 29
 
But Lenin himself, with his personal revulsion against any shade of nationalism….
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 30
 
To him [Lenin] nationalism, Russian nationalism included, was just an obsession, as senseless as any other superstition, and, after all, that is [as] intelligible.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 56
 
 
STALIN CHOSEN BY LENIN TO HEAD NATIONALITIES ISSUE
 
            The first part of the work is undeniably of permanent value.  It was concerned with finding a universally valid definition of the concept Nationality.  That problem Stalin solved brilliantly.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 30
 
This first considerable work of Stalin's bears all the marks of his character.  The first part shows already in the still young Stalin an extraordinary exactitude of thought.  His analysis of his subject is exemplary, the logic of the steps in his argument is faultless, and his formulations are models of precision.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 36
 
A People's Commissariat for Nationalities, that is to say a ministry, was set up within the government, to deal with the questions of national minorities.  Stalin was regarded from the first as the Party's expert on this subject, and became the Commissar.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 48
 
            In Cracow in 1912 Stalin unquestionably made a very good impression on Lenin.... Lenin's regular visitors in exile, whether at Cracow or Zurich, were almost all intellectuals.  Stalin, when he met him, shoemaker's son and pupil of a seminary (which to Lenin meant a man virtually without education), was naturally regarded by Lenin, consciously or unconsciously, as a representative man of the masses.  But Stalin was already well-read and energetically educating himself, and in conversation with him Lenin found that though he was a man of the lower class Stalin was able to discuss any political matter with him on equal terms.  Indeed, there was one subject on which this young man could give information to the party leader, for all the latter's wide knowledge and experience.  Stalin could not only tell him much that was of great interest about the real working-class environment, but, as a representative of a national minority, could tell him about the psychology of those minorities, about which Lenin knew next to nothing.  Lenin had never lived in any part of Russia inhabited by a non-Russian population.  Stalin was the first representative he had met of the masses of a non-Russian people under Russian rule, and he had much that was new and impressive to tell him.  Thus it is not surprising that in a letter to Maxim Gorky Lenin described Stalin as a 'remarkable Georgian'.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 102-103
 
            ...when they took power in 1917, they made Stalin, Commissar of Nationalities, in charge of the problems of non-Russian peoples in the new state.
Strong, Anna Louise.  The Stalin Era.  New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 15
 
            Stalin was an expert on nationalities and was therefore the head of this department for a period of six years under Lenin; he was thus dealing with one of the two main problems of the revolution....  The country which we today call the USSR...gives every one of its constituent peoples as much liberty in regard to its language as Switzerland gives to each of its 22 little cantons.  In this respect Russia is actually modeled on Switzerland.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 71
 
            Yenukidze states, "...Stalin wrote a great deal on the national question.  On this question, in particular, he is undoubtedly after Lenin the most competent theoretician in our party.
Life of Stalin, A Symposium. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1930, p. 94
 
            If a Leninist nationalities policy is not pursued now, republics might secede from us.  We have colossal experience in this regard....  It was none other than Lenin who made the appointment to one of the most important posts of the time, People's Commissar of Nationalities.  He appointed Stalin to head up this ministry!
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 194
 
            On most matters, though, he [Stalin] agreed with Lenin; and Lenin for his own part badly needed Dzhughashvili’s contributions on the national question.  Whereas the Mensheviks had several theorists who wrote about the nationalities in the Empire, the Bolsheviks had only Dzhughashvili.  No wonder Lenin warmed to him.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 93
 
STALIN IS ALWAYS CONSISTENT AND PERSISTENT
 
Any utterance of Stalin implies that he has thought out a problem and settled it, and anything he has once thought out and formulated he will continue to declare again and again.  It may be possible to point to inconsistencies in Stalin's policy (though even this is not so certain), but nobody will ever be able to trace inconsistencies in what he says.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 59
 
REDS HAD NO 5TH COLUMN AMONG WHITES DURING CIVIL WAR
 
The desertion of officers from the Red side to the White was an event of daily occurrence in the Civil War.  At Tsaritsyn, and again on the Ural front, the Fifth Column was particularly strongly represented among the staff officers of the Red Army and among the population.  There was treason everywhere.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 73
 
The "Reds", needless to say, had no such Fifth Column among the "Whites", the counter-revolutionaries.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 72
 
STALIN SAVES PERM AS HE SAVED TSARITSYN
 
Stalin's activities at Tsaritsyn and in the Urals, and later on other fronts, were not those of a strategist so much as of the sword of the revolution in the struggle against the Fifth Column.  This he himself admitted, half unconsciously, in a letter which will be referred to later.  Here in the Urals Stalin's energy came once more into play; and not only in the struggle against the Fifth Column, or in the reorganization of the staffs.  He restored the fighting capacity of the Third Army as an organization.  He secured from the central Government the dispatch of reinforcements, and Perm was re-taken by the Reds.  But in the course of his fulfillment of this task there came further friction with the actual head of the Red Army, Trotsky.  Once more Trotsky demanded Stalin's recall; and Lenin repeated his tactic of at first completely ignoring this quarrel between Trotsky and Stalin, sending no answer to Trotsky's demand, and then recalling Stalin when he had done his work.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 74
 
            In recognition of his activity in defending the town of Tsaritsyn, the so-called "Red Verdun" of the lower Volga, against the troops of the Cossack general Krasnov, the name Tsaritsyn was changed to Stalingrad.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 90
 
            Moreover at the very time that Stalin was recalled to Moscow he was, at Trotsky's suggestion, appointed a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic....
            On January 1, 1919, Stalin and Dzerzhinsky were sent to the Eastern Front to investigate setbacks suffered there by the Red Army, particularly the causes of the surrender of Perm.  After the situation on the Eastern Front improved, Stalin— and Dzerzhinsky returned to Moscow.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 59
 
            There is no question that Stalin contributed to the successful defense of Tsaritsyn from the Ataman Krasnov's Cossack bands in 1918, and thus an extremely important strategic bastion was preserved from the Whites.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 176
 
            Late in 1918 Stalin was sent on a fact-finding mission to Siberia, where he salvaged a collapsing wing of Trotsky's Red Army.
Richardson, Rosamond.   Stalin’s Shadow.  New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 70
 
STALIN WORKED WITH TROTSKY DEFENDING PETROGRAD
 
Stalin's next commission required actual collaboration with Trotsky...  It is difficult to tell who contributed the more to the defense of Petrograd, Trotsky or Stalin.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 75
 
Stalin evolved a plan for the use of the Red Navy to capture the two forts that threatened the city by an attack on them from the sea.  The Naval specialists declared that this was impossible.  Stalin nevertheless went on with his plan, and won.  His success was a first proof of his strategic gifts.  He was no longer simply the "purger", or the reorganizer of army commands; for the first time he had elaborated a strategic plan and won with it.
            Both Trotsky and Stalin were decorated for their defense of Petrograd.
            Lenin accordingly wanted to abandon Petrograd for the time.  Trotsky, the official commander of the Armed Forces of the Revolution, was against this plan.  Stalin at once supported Trotsky.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 76
 
            The White threat to Petrograd in May 1919 brought him [Stalin] there on a special mission, and, predictably, he discovered there a major plot of treason, found the directives of the commander-in-chief (Trotsky's protEgE) harmful, and saved the day by his initiative--all of which developments he communicated without inhibition to Lenin.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 182
 
            And what had saved the day in the field?   Stalin's "indelicate interference" had led to the Reds' recapture of the crucial forts of Red Hill and Gray Horse.  The naval specialists resisted his orders, protesting that they violated the rules of naval science.   But, said Stalin, "I feel bound to declare that for all my respect for science, I will act the same way in the future."
            ...Stalin displayed real talents in command.   He did not panic.   He immediately assessed the enemy's weak points: on the Northern Front the Whites had "neither sufficient rear space, nor adequate manpower, nor food."...
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 183
 
            It was Stalin who won the Battle of Petrograd; but he won it as an abrek not as a general.   On his return to Moscow he was welcomed as a triumphant conqueror.
Delbars, Yves.  The Real Stalin. London, Allen & Unwin, 1951, p. 114
 
            It began very successfully for Yudenich.  Feeling that we would not be able to manage all the fronts simultaneously, Lenin proposed to surrender Petrograd.  I opposed it.  The majority of the Politburo, including Stalin, decided to support me.
Trotsky, Leon, Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 308
 
IN THE SOUTH STALIN DEMANDS COMPLETE CONTROL AND TROTSKY’S EXPULSION
 
            There now remained only one threatened front in the civil war, the front held by Denikin's volunteer army, later commanded in the Crimea by General Wrangel.  On that front Stalin met old acquaintances from Tsaritsyn--Voroshilov, Budenny, Frunze, and other revolutionary army leaders.  They formed a group in which Stalin felt at home.  These commanders were not intellectuals, although Frunze, the son of a non--commissioned officer of the regular army, had studied for a time at a technical college.  It was, indeed, the robust lower middle-class environment in which Stalin could let himself go--his own class, among whom he had not to feel the unexpressed sense of superiority of the intellectuals.  Before undertaking this new task Stalin made conditions, or, rather, a condition.  He openly revealed his opposition to Trotsky.  After his successes in the Urals and at Petrograd, he was no longer prepared to put up with Trotsky's arrogance.  He demanded that it should be clearly understood that Trotsky must no longer interfere with his activities.  He went further: Trotsky must not even approach a front on which he, Stalin, was serving as special plenipotentiary of the central Government, lest he should upset Stalin's authority.  The whole southern front was to be withdrawn from Trotsky's sphere.  He also demanded the recall of a number of officials, and also the appointment of new commanders, of his own choice, on the southern front.  Stalin's new self-confidence proved to be well justified.  Lenin agreed to his demands.
 
STALIN’S SOUTHERN STRATEGY
 
            Here on the southern front Stalin's great strategic talent showed itself unmistakably.  For he was no longer content with carrying out his famous purges on the front placed under him: as in Petrograd, he had the military plans submitted to him.  His report to the Central Committee of the party was now that of a strategist.  He rejected and annulled the plan of the supreme command on the southern front.  The plan had provided for a breakthrough from west to east, through the Don basin.  As the Red troops had suffered a setback, this plan had not been carried out, but the supreme command had held to the plan.  One of the army commanders, Korin, had been ordered to advance over the Don steppes against Novocherkask.  Stalin rejected this plan, giving some military reasons for doing so: 'The steppes are not suited for a crossing by infantry and artillery.' But his main reason was that the military specialists had paid no attention to the political conditions.  In one of his reports to the Central Committee he pointed out that such a thrust would automatically have the effect of an attack on the villages of the Don Cossacks.  The advance as planned would lead through a region whose population was strongly opposed to the revolution and the Soviet power.  The Cossacks would naturally defend themselves, greatly strengthening the position of the enemy, as it would enable Denikin to assume the role of rescuer of the Don region.  Stalin demanded the immediate abandonment of the plan.  The attack must not be directed over the Don steppes against Novocherkask, but from Kharkov in the direction of Rostov.  The Red troops would then be marching through the Donetz basin, through an industrial, mining region, with a population friendly to Bolshevism.  Stalin foresaw that this advance would split the enemy armies into three groups, with a number of political results.  In the event, for instance, of a retreat the counter-revolutionaries would require the Cossacks to evacuate their villages, and in view of the mentality of those peasant soldiers this would undoubtedly lead to a conflict between Cossacks and the military leaders of the counter-revolution.
            The Central Committee accepted Stalin's view.  The old plan was thrown over, and Stalin's plan was carried through--to success.  Stalin, who had only recently spoken of himself as a 'civilian', had revealed his great strategic talent.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 77-79
 
            On another occasion he formulated conditions to Lenin: he wanted the original plan of operations dropped and his own substituted.  "If that is not done, my work on the southern front becomes pointless and criminal.  That gives me the right or rather imposes on me the duty, to go to the devil rather than remain here.  Yours,  Stalin."
            Similarly as in Tsaritsyn, Stalin threw back the Germans in the Ukraine, liberating Kharkov twice in the years 1918 and 1919.  To somebody listening today, in the summer of 1942, to the war reports on the radio, the recurrence of the same battles in the same place seems completely dreamlike....
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 65
 
            Denikin was routed and fled to the sea.  The great Southern fighting force of the Whites was destroyed and though out of its ruin emerged the puny, bedraggled army of general Wrangel occupying the Crimea, the menace to the Soviet State was definitely lifted.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 66
 
STALIN WAS A VERY GOOD MILITARY LEADER
 
            Not a little of Stalin’s strategic strength on the southern front lay in the fact that, consciously or unconsciously, he concentrated the troops he had and sent them in this or the other direction.  What he did was essentially to restrict the bluffing character of the operations in the south and to lead the attack in an entirely realistic fashion.  This was bound to give him superiority over the enemy’s thinned-out front.
            History shows over and over again how on the battlefield a clear-sighted amateur who possessed, as did Stalin, strategic ability and a certain courage facing the facts, was able to beat the professional strategists, who were handicapped by their traditional training.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 81
 
His success justified his ambition.  Tsaritsyn was a success, the Urals were another, and Petrograd and the southern front were yet greater successes.
            In Petrograd he had made his first attempt to be his own general as well.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 86
 
            Taking advantage of the preoccupation of the main Red Army with the pursuit and annihilation of Admiral Kolchak, his ally in the South, Gen. Denikin had commenced a rapid advance in the direction of Moscow.  The Soviet armies on this front were under the sole direction of Stalin and his immediate subordinates, Voroshilov and Minin. The campaign against Denikin therefore, serves as a practical illustration of Stalin's capacities in the military as well as the purely political sphere.  We have already seen indications of his inspiring leadership in the heroic defense of Tsaritsyn in face of overwhelming odds; now he was to deal with a problem involving the fate, not only of one city, but of the whole of Soviet Russia.
            Reinforced by sections of the victorious Siberian armies, Stalin and Voroshilov brought the advance of the Whites to a sudden halt and, as new divisions continued to arrive, the invader was slowly pushed back towards his base lines around Kiev. 
            As if to deny Stalin the victory he had so carefully planned, a new enemy appeared in the north.  Having recruited a powerful army of White Russians, French, and Poles, Gen. Yudenich crossed the Estonian border into Russia and finding no serious opposition, commenced an advance on Petrograd.
            This presented Stalin with a cruel choice at which a lesser man would certainly have balked; should he weaken his own forces by sending them against Yudenich or should he maintain his successful drive against Denikin?  Lenin, tremendously impressed by his lieutenant's military successes, seriously advised the abandonment of Petrograd until such time as Stalin had liquidated Denikin, proposing to eject Yudenich at a later date.
            This provoked the one recorded instance were Stalin opposed a decision of Lenin; he demanded that Petrograd be defended to the last as Tsaritsyn had been defended a few months before.  To assist in the defense of the city he undertook to detach half the effective strength of his own forces, leaving the remainder to resist Denikin's counter-offensive as best they might.  He found an unexpected ally in this debate in Trotsky who, for once, made no secret of his admiration for what he termed "Stalin's Revolutionary zeal."
            In face of this unusual combination, and impressed by Stalin's disinterested loyalty in placing the saving of Petrograd before his own military requirements, Lenin yielded, even going so far as to defend Stalin's views at the meeting of the Soviet Commissar's which discussed the problem.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 47
 
            Eleven days later Stalin entered Baku as a deliverer, while Denikin was hurriedly evacuating his broken armies at the Black Sea port of Novorosisk.  Having seen his grandiose schemes smashed by the genius of a man who had never received a single day's orthodox military training, Gen. Denikin gave up his command and fled to Constantinople, leaving his troops to try and reach the White army of Gen. Wrangel in the Crimea as best they could.
            On this note of personal triumph for Stalin, the liquidation of the Czarist forces from Russia was completed.  The Bolshevik Central Committee was loud in its praise of Stalin's remarkable achievement, he was twice decorated with the coveted Order of the Red Flag and was unanimously elected to the Supreme Revolutionary War Council.  Among the many tributes paid him was one from his old opponent, Karl Radek, who admitted in an article in Pravda of February 23, 1935: "Stalin was the leader of the proletarian army and the military genius of the civil war."
            ...it is certainly possible that the abilities of Wrangel might have brought success to Czarism even at this 11th hour, had he not been opposed by a man of the caliber of Stalin.
            ...with Stalin's entry into Sebastopol on November 15, 1920, the last vestige of Czarism disappeared forever.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 50
 
            It seems that Stalin also contributed to the decisions on the third and fourth fronts in 1919.  On the northern front he, in command of the army, hindered the union of Kolchak's troops with the Czechs.  When General Yudenich, with Finnish and British troops and ships, went against St. Petersburg, Stalin forced him to retreat.
            But during those days of the Civil War, Stalin never had the power which the Central Committee entrusted to Trotsky.  Lenin's confidence in a dozen instances gave Trotsky carte blanche by a general approval of all orders issued by Trotsky for a given date.  Stalin, on the other hand, was always restricted to specific tasks.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 66
 
            Voroshilov states, "As he became closer and closer in touch with the military apparatus, Comrade Stalin became convinced of its absolute helplessness, and in certain sections of its direct unwillingness to organize resistance to the ever more insolent counter-revolution.
Life of Stalin, A Symposium. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1930, p. 52
 
            Voroshilov states, "These were days of great trial.  You should have seen Comrade Stalin at that time.  Calm as usual, deep in thought, he literally had no sleep for days on end, distributing his intensive work between the fighting positions and the Army Headquarters.
Life of Stalin, A Symposium. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1930, p. 59
 
            Voroshilov states, "And one more characteristic was shown absolutely clearly on the Southern front--Stalin's way of working with 'shock troops,' his way of choosing the main direction for the army to take, concentrating the best sections of the army, and crushing the enemy.  In this respect, and also in the selection of the direction for the army to take, Stalin achieved great skill.
Life of Stalin, A Symposium. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1930, p. 76
 
            Voroshilov states, "What is most apparent is Comrade Stalin's capacity of quickly to grasping the concrete circumstances and acting in accordance with them.  The most relentless enemy of mental slovenliness, indiscipline, and individualism in warfare, Comrade Stalin, where the interests of the revolution so demanded, never hesitated to take upon himself the responsibility for exceptional measures, for radical changes; where the revolutionary situation so demanded, Comrade Stalin was ready to go against any regulations, any principal of subordination.
            Comrade Stalin was always an advocate of the most strict military discipline and centralization in conditions,...
Life of Stalin, A Symposium. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1930, p. 79
 
            Voroshilov states, "Comrade Stalin always insisted on personal responsibility for work undertaken, and was physically incapable of tolerating 'departmental red tape.'
            Comrade Stalin paid great attention to the organization of supplies to the troops.  He knew and understood the meaning of good food and warm clothes for the soldiers.  At Tsaritsyn and Perm, and on the Southern front, he left no stone unturned to guarantee supplies to the troops and thus make them stronger and steadier.
Life of Stalin, A Symposium. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1930, p. 80
 
            He knew the ways of winning men.  He has always been a good mixer, with personal qualities that make very few enemies and many loyal friends.  During the civil war, on the front near Petrograd, Stalin noticed that one of the soldiers did not cheer him as a commander, which is Red Army custom.  He halted and asked why.  The soldier said nothing but pointed to his feet.  It was December and he was wearing straw sandals.  Stalin took off his boots and gave them to the soldier, putting the sandals on his own feet.  He wore them for many days.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 49
 
            Stalin was not a military man.  Nevertheless he coped ably with the leadership of the armed forces.  Ably.  There was no people's commissar heading the air force but Stalin.  The Navy, led by Stalin, and the artillery, led by Stalin.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 202
 
CHUEV:  Golovanov, in his memoirs, writes that Stalin, and not the marshal of artillery Voronov, determined the main thrust of artillery at Stalingrad.
MOLOTOV:  That's right.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 202
 
            He (Stalin) made numerous visits to all the fronts at the request of the Central Committee, and his reports back to them and to Lenin and others show that the same organizational talents demonstrated in the pre-revolutionary period and in the revolution were applied to the war situation.  Everywhere he showed his characteristic common-sense realism, unerringly pointing to key weaknesses and proposing practical solutions.  He shuttled between the eastern front, against Kolchak, the southern front, against Denikin, and the Petrograd front, against Yudenich.  Nor was his role confined to that of organizational specialist.  It was his plan for the attack on Denikin--approved by the Central Committee--that resulted in the final defeat of his armies in the freeing of Kiev and Kharkov.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 35
 
            Is it true that Stalin really was an outstanding military thinker, a major contributor to the development of the Armed Forces and an expert in tactical and strategic principles?
            From the military standpoint I have studied Stalin most thoroughly, for I entered the war together with him and together with him I ended it.
            Stalin mastered the technique of the organization of front operations and operations by groups of fronts and guided them with skill, thoroughly understanding complicated strategic questions.  He displayed his ability as Commander-in-Chief beginning with Stalingrad.
            In guiding the armed struggle as a whole, Stalin was assisted by his natural intelligence and profound intuition.  He had a knack of grasping the main link in the strategic situation so as to organize opposition to the enemy and conduct a major offensive operation.  He was certainly a worthy Supreme Commander.
            Here Stalin's merit lies in the fact that he correctly appraised the advice offered by the military experts and then in summarized form--in instructions, directives, and regulations--immediately circulated them among the troops for practical guidance.
            As regards the material and technical organization of operations, the buildup of strategic reserves, of the organization of production of materiel. and troop supplies, Stalin did prove himself to be an outstanding organizer.  And it would be unfair if we, the Soviet people, failed to pay tribute to him for it.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, APPENDIX 1
Portrait of Stalin by Zhukov, p. 143
 
            "There were times, especially in October, 1919, at which the new Republic seemed to be on the point of succumbing.  But neither the White Armies, nor Poland's entry into the war, nor the peasant risings, nor famine could overcome its indomitable will-power, and, galvanized by Lenin, it's ragged battalions triumphed over fourteen nations."  These words appeared in a report by Monsieur Mallet, a reactionary journalist who had the capitalist cause at heart and was, in every respect, very much biased.
            At this point I want to reveal the personal part played by Stalin during this period.
            Wherever on the Civil War front the danger was greatest, there Stalin was sent.
            "Between 1918 and 1920, Stalin was the only man whom the Central Committee kept sending from one front to another, to the point at which the Revolution was in the gravest peril."  (Kalinin.)
            "Wherever the Red Army faltered, whenever the counter-revolutionary forces were piling success on success, when at any moment the excitement and confusion and discouragement might turn into panic, at that point Stalin would arrive.  He would not sleep a wink, but would take complete charge and would organize, smash, and drive until the turning point was reached and the situation was in hand."  (Kaganovich)
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York:  The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 61
 
            So that, in his own words: "I was turned into a specialist for cleaning out the Augean stables of the War Department."
            This is one of the most astonishing periods of Stalin's career, and one of which the least is known.  The way in which he behaved, and the success which he obtained on the battle fronts during two years, would have been sufficient to make a professional soldier famous and a popular hero.
            Here are a few glimpses which Voroshilov and Kaganovich give us into the "military work" during this turbulent time of the man whom Kaganovich calls: "One of the most famous organizers of the victories of the Civil War."
            In the course of two years, Stalin found himself on the Tsaritsyn front with Voroshilov & Minim, on the Third Corps front at Perm with Dzerzhinsky, on the Petrograd front (against Yudenich's first advance), on the western front at Smolensk (the Polish counter-offensive), on the southern front (against Denikin), again on the Polish front in the west, in the region of Jitomir, and again on the southern front (against Wrangel).
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York:  The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 62
 
            Increasingly Lenin had come to rely on Stalin, who was in most things the antithesis of Trotsky.  He rarely addressed the troops or meetings of any kind, but when he did he spoke in simple terms.  He was the realist, who coldly assessed men and situations, and was usually sound in his conclusions.  He remained calm and self-possessed.  He was difficult only in his antagonisms towards certain people and when his advice was rejected.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 140
 
            His [Zhukov] relations with Stalin were on occasions stormy, but they were based on mutual respect.  From many incidents related by Zhukov in his memoirs, written after Stalin's death, it is clear that he never questioned Stalin's authority and that he regarded him as a leader of profound wisdom and mastery of affairs, even in the military field.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 315
 
            Stalin dominated the [Tehran] conference.  He was brief and incisive in his comments, clear about his objectives, patient and inexorable in pursuing them.  Brooke considered that he had an outstanding military brain, and observed that in all his statements he never once failed to appreciate all the implications of a situation with quick, unerring eye, and "in this respect he stood out compared with Roosevelt and Churchill."  The head of the U.S. military mission in Moscow had noted that no one could fail to recognize "the qualities of greatness in the man."  Combined with this essential greatness, there was a charm and at times a human warmth....
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 388
 
            Taking care not to show surprise at the question, Konev replied after a little thought, "Stalin is universally gifted.  He is brilliantly able to see the war as a whole and this makes it possible for him to direct it so successfully."
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 395
 
            It was his victory, too, because he had directed and controlled every branch of Russian operations throughout the war.  The range and burden of his responsibilities were extraordinary, but day by day without a break for the four years of the war he exercised direct command of the Russian forces and control over supplies, war industries, and government policy, including foreign policy.
            As he himself acknowledged, he had made mistakes and miscalculations, some with tragic consequences and heavy casualties.  The first and perhaps the greatest of his mistakes was his political misjudgment of German plans to invade Russia.  He had obdurately refused to believe that Hitler would launch his invasion in June 1941, and, seeking to buy time by placating him, he had taken none of the obvious defense measures.
            Again he had been held solely responsible for the terrible Russian losses of 1941 and 1942, and criticized for not following the traditional Russian strategy of retreating into the vastness of the Russian plain....
            Defenses organized in depth, however, would hardly have halted the surge of the highly mechanized Wehrmacht in 1941.  It had effortlessly crushed the Polish Army, which some British military experts in 1939 had rated above the Red Army in efficiency and morale.  It had conquered France and expelled the British from the continent.  Acutely aware of the inadequacies of the Russian defenses and the weakness of the Red Army in 1941, Stalin knew that they could not withstand a German attack.  He gambled for time so that his urgent mechanization and training programs could build up the Red Army's strength.  He lost the gamble.
            Stalin knew the military history of his country and well understood the strategy of falling back and using its great spaces.  By temperament, however, he was positive and aggressive, eager to attack rather than defend, and this was characteristic of his conduct of Russian strategy throughout the war.  He was at the same time capable of tremendous self-control, as he demonstrated in waiting for the Germans to attack in the battle of Kursk, and in general during 1943-45 he was constantly on guard against premature and ill-prepared offensives.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 420
 
            From the first months of the war Stalin gathered around him able senior officers, rejuvenating the High Command.  He chose them on merit, and, an astute judge of men, he was constantly raising fairly junior officers to high rank.  By the time of the battle of Moscow, he had selected his key commanders in Zhukov, Vasilevsky, Rokossovsky, Konev, and Voronov.  To them were added by the time of the battle of Stalingrad Vatutin, Eremenko, Malinovsky, Meretskov, Cherniakhovsky, and others.
            Stalin was unchallenged as supreme commander.  His most able generals, like Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Konev, and others, who were outstanding among the generals of all countries involved in the war, accepted his authority unquestioningly.  In fact, he dominated them not by virtue of office but by force of character and intellect.  He inspired deepest respect and also affection.  At times he exploded in anger, demanding immediate action; at other times he spoke gently, encouraging and inspiring confidence.
            With his disciplined mind and tenacious memory he developed considerable military expertise and technical knowledge.  Western officers and engineers present at discussions with him were impressed by his quick and accurate understanding.  Alan Brooke, chief of the British general staff, remarked on several occasions on his mastery of military matters.  His own commanders considered their reports carefully before submitting them, for he would unfailing way put his finger on any weakness or loose thinking in their presentation....  Moreover, as Zhukov stated, he was always prepared to reverse his own opinions when presented with sound reasons.  But he made the final decisions.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 422
 
            It was his victory, above all, because it had been won by his genius and labors, heroic in scale.  The Russian people had looked to him for leadership, and he had not failed them.  His speeches of July 3 and November 6, 1941, which had steeled them for the trials of war, and his presence in Moscow during the great battle for the city, had demonstrated his will to victory.  He was for them a semi-mystical figure, enthroned in the Kremlin, who inspired them and gave them positive direction.  He had the capacity of attending to detail and keeping in mind the broad picture, and, while remembering the past and immersed in the present, he was constantly looking ahead to the future.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 424
 
            In examining Stalin's strategic thinking, I have to say right away that he was superior to many of his advisers in a number fields,....  As Supreme Commander-in-chief his strength lay in his absolute power.  But it was not this alone that raised him above the other military leaders.  Unlike them, he could see the profound dependence of the armed struggle on an entire spectrum of other, non-military factors: economic, social, technical, political, diplomatic, ideological and national.  Better than the other members of the Headquarters Staff, he knew the country's real possibilities in terms of its agriculture and industry.  His thinking was more global, and it was this that placed him above the others in the military leadership.  The military facet was only one of many.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 474
 
            It was while the military strength of the Soviets was at its nadir that the revolts of the Social Revolutionaries and the attempt on Lenin's life took place.
            At that moment of supreme danger, nearly all members of the government left Moscow and hurried to the most vital sectors of the front.  At the Kremlin Lenin with the few technical assistants directed the entire struggle, keeping in constant touch with the men on the spot.  Two men were sent to retrieve the position where it looked most menacing.  To try to save the capital from the military threat the Commissar of War, Trotsky, set out in his armored train, which was to become legendary in the civil war, to Svyazhsk, near Kazan.  Stalin, accompanied by an armed guard of nearly battalion strength, went to Tsaritsyn on the Volga to try to save the capital from the starvation that threatened it.  He was to arrange the transport of grain from the northern Caucasus to Moscow.  His assignment, which was essentially civilian, was expected to last a short time, after which he was to proceed further south to Baku.  But his stay at Tsaritsyn was prolonged by unforeseen circumstances; and the longer it lasted the deeper did it involve himself in the conduct of the civil war in the south and in a controversy with Trotsky, until in the end his trip to the Volga town became a landmark in his career.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 195
 
            The day after his arrival on June 7, 1918, he reported to Lenin on his first moves.  He found a 'bacchanalia of profiteering' in the Volga area and his first step was to decree the rationing of food and control of prices at Tsaritsyn.  The Soviet official in charge of trade would be arrested.  'Tell Schmidt [The Commissar of Labor] not to send such rascals any more.' This was the language of the energetic administrator with a penchant for control and repression--both, given all the circumstances, probably justified.  He had no liking for the ultra-democratic chaos that was left over from the Revolution.  'Railway transport has been completely disorganized by the joint efforts of a multitude of Collegium's and revolutionary Committees.'  After they had deposed the old managements in industry and administration, the Bolsheviks first tried control by committee.  They were now engaged in scrapping that ultra-democratic but unworkable system and re-establishing individual management and individual responsibility.  The left Communists passionately objected to the change.  Stalin left no doubt where he stood.  He appointed commissars to overcome the chaos in transport.
            After a month at Tsaritsyn he asked for special military powers on the southern front.  In view of the operations of Krasnov's Cossacks, the provisioning of Moscow had become primarily a military matter.  In reply to a communication from Lenin on the outbreak of the Social Revolutionary mutinies, he assured Moscow that 'everything will be done to prevent possible surprises here.  Rest assured that our hand will not tremble.'  The rail connection between Tsaritsyn and the farming land of the northern Caucasus 'has not yet been restored.  I am driving and scolding everybody who needs it.  Rest assured that we shall spare nobody, neither ourselves nor others, and that we shall deliver the bread....'  In his messages practical soberness mixed with a queer relish for expressions of ruthless determination.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 196
 
            The regeneration of the army, of its morale, and of its commanding staff was one of Russia's most remarkable achievements, for which credit was due to Stalin.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 497
 
            It must be admitted that Koba is a first-rate tactician....
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich.  Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 111
 
            At that time Lenin was continually receiving official military reports from both Trotsky and Stalin simultaneously.  Trotsky's reports are known to us from his published memoirs; but up to the present only a few of Stalin's reports have been seen in print.  One of these, which was sent in the autumn of 1919 and makes only 70 lines on the printed page, threw over the whole official strategic plan and introduced another.  This was accepted by the Government in Moscow.  The result of Stalin's 70 lines of print was to change the whole situation in Russia's favor.  Denikin was driven into the Black Sea and the Ukraine was liberated.  Here was another proof that successful strategy in war does not come from the plans thought out by the professors in military academies but rather from the practical man-on-the-spot who understands all the immediate circumstances and has the character and insight to seize the decisive moment.
Ludwig, Emil.  Leaders of Europe. London: I. Nicholson and Watson Ltd., 1934, p. 362
 
            In the message to Lenin of July 7 already quoted, Stalin had pressed to be given military as well as civilian authority.  Three days later, Stalin sent a further message:
            "For the good of the cause I must have military powers... but I have received no reply.  Very well.  In that event I myself, without formalities, will remove the army commanders and commissars who are ruining things.  That's what the interest of the cause bids me do, and naturally the absence of a piece of paper from Trotsky won't stop me."
Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf, 1992, p. 99
 
            Charged with restoring the passage of grain from this turbulent region, Stalin shouldered a weighty burden.  But he never flinched; he carried his responsibilities with pride and imparted his determination to his fellow travelers.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 165
 
                he [Stalin] spent the Civil War mainly on or near the fighting fronts.  Recalled to Moscow in October 1918, he resumed his work in the Party Central Committee and Sovnarkom.  But by December he was off again.  The White Army of Admiral Kolchak had swept into the Urals city of Perm and destroyed the Red Army units there.  Stalin and Dzerzhinsky were sent to conduct an inquiry into the reasons for the military disaster.  They returned and made their report at the end of January 1919.  Stalin stayed in Moscow again until being dispatched in May to Petrograd and the Western Front against the invasion by General Yudenich from Estonia.  In July he moved on to a different sector of the same front at Smolensk.  In September he was transferred to the Southern Front, where he stayed into 1920.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 172
 
            The Central Committee recognized his worth by its successive use of him on the Southern Front, the Western Front, again the Southern Front, the South-Western Front and the Caucasian Front.  Qualities which earned him praise were his decisiveness, determination, energy, and willingness to take responsibility for critical and unpredictable situations.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 173
 
            Avoidance of unnecessary risk was one thing, and Stalin took this to an extreme.  But it is scarcely fair on Stalin to claim that he was a coward.  Probably his behavior stemmed rather from an excessive estimate of his own indispensablility to the war effort.  He looked on his military and political subordinates and thought they could not cope without him.  Nor was he afraid of personal responsibility once he had got over the shock of 22 June 1941.  He lived or died by his success in leading army and government.  He exhausted every bone in his body for that purpose.  And Zhukov credited Stalin with making up for his original military ignorance and inexperience.  He went on studying during the fighting, and with his exceptional capacity for hard work he was able to raise himself to the level where he could understand most of the military complexities in Stavka [the Supreme military command].  Khrushchev later caricatured Stalin as having tried to follow the campaigns on a small globe he kept in his office, and this image has been reproduced in many subsequent accounts.  In fact Stalin, while scaring his commanders and often making wholly unrealistic demands upon them, earned their professional admiration.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 457
 
            I would only add that Stalin was just as categorical with other people.  He required similar discipline from every representative of the GHQ.  We were permitted to move as we thought fit only within the boundaries of the fronts whose actions we were to coordinate.  If we wished to move to other fronts we had to obtain special permission from Stalin.  My feeling is that the lack of any indulgence to a GHQ representative was justified in the interests of efficient control of hostilities.  Stalin very attentively followed the course of events at the front, quickly reacted to all changes in them and firmly held troop control in his own hands.
Vasilevskii, Aleksandr M.   A Lifelong Cause.  Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981, p. 285
 
            Pestkovsky writes that Stalin became "Lenin's deputy in the leadership of fighting revolutionary actions.  He was in charge of watching after military operations on the Don, the Ukraine, and in other parts of Russia.
Trotsky, Leon,   Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 246
 
            The front attracted him [Stalin], because here for the first time he could work with the most finished of all the administrative machines, the military machine.  As a member of the Revolutionary Council of War who was at the same time a member of the Central Committee of the Party, he was inevitably the dominant figure in every Council of War, in every army, on every front.  When others hesitated, he decided.  He could command, and each command was followed by a practically automatic execution of his order    .
Trotsky, Leon,  Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 295
            Not until 1941 was Stalin to participate again in military command.  His introduction to this art in 1918-20 had not been without its frustrations and defeats, but Stalin had emerged not only on the winning side, but also as a political-military chief whose contribution to the Red victory was second only to Trotsky's.  Stalin had played a smaller role than his rival in the overall organization of the Red Army, but he had been more important in providing direction on crucial fronts.  If his reputation as a hero was far below Trotsky's, this has less to do with objective merit than with Stalin's lack of flair, at this stage of his career, for self-advertisement.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 63
 
            Stalin, although not a trained soldier, absorbed military knowledge in the Russian Civil War, where he moved from one chaotic front to another.  His role in civil war strategy is documented in war records and memoirs.  In one operation, he mounted an unorthodox seaborne assault, which military professionals opposed, calling it too risky.  When it proved successful, Stalin told Lenin that he had lost faith in 'experts'.  He was deeply involved in a series of important military operations and dutifully telegraphed the results to Lenin. 
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.  London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 14
 
STALIN WAS A MEMBER OF THE FIRST POLITBURO
 
After the ending of the Civil War a party Congress assembled....  Stalin was also one of the eight members of the actual government of the Soviet state...   The Politburo.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 87
 
            Stalin's growing importance in the Party was shown when at its April 1917 Conference he was elected to the Central Committee by the highest number of votes after Lenin and Zinoviev.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 29
 
            Among members outside the party, Stalin's reputation was growing.  He was the practical leader with a capacity for work and for taking responsibility.  He was not a great orator, but he always spoke with good sense.  He was a man, too, who could cut his way through bureaucratic obstacles and make decisions.  The high regard in which he was held was demonstrated at the Eighth Party Congress in Moscow from March 18-23, 1919.  He was high on everyone's list for election to the Central Committee.  Two new subcommittees of the Central Committee were set up by the congress: the Politburo of five members to guide the party in political matters, and the Orgburo to advise in matters of personnel and administration.  He was appointed to both subcommittees.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 129
 
            He was a member of the Politburo from the moment of its creation, on October 10, 1917;...  Also he held two cabinet portfolios when the government was organized: commissar for workers and peasants inspection, and commissar for nationalities.
Gunther, John.  Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 523
 
            After the conference a narrow inner leadership called the Bureau of the Central Committee was elected.  It would later be known as the Politburo and would become the official ruling body of one sixth of the earth's land surface for many decades.  The first Bureau had four members: Lenin, his faithful assistant Zinoviev Kamenev, and Koba Stalin.  In May 1917 Koba was already a member of the Party's four-man leadership.
Radzinsky, Edvard.  Stalin. New York: Doubleday, c1996, p. 66
 
            Koba voted with the majority for the uprising, but did not speak.  A Political Bureau was set up for the political direction of the uprising and Lenin saw to it that Koba was included.
Radzinsky, Edvard.  Stalin. New York: Doubleday, c1996, p. 113
 
STALIN’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVIL WAR VICTORY ARE UNDENIABLE
 
            Stalin's contributions to victory in the Civil War are beyond dispute.
            He had had unqualified success in the tasks assigned to him.  In accordance with the tradition of the Bolshevik party, his resolution in action, his initiative in emergency, and his independence often to the verge of rebellion against discipline, were credited to him as high virtues.  He had been justified by success, and that was the thing that mattered above all.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 87
 
DESPITE SUCCESSES PARTY WILL NOT GIVE STALIN A MILITARY OR STATE ROLE
 
     It was plain, however, that in spite of all Stalin’s proved ability the intellectual nucleus of the party executive had not the least intention of giving him any high position in the State, or any high military post; and he himself seems to have made no effort to secure one.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 88
 
STALIN’S GOOD WAR RECORD HELPED GET GEN. SEC. POSITION
 
Stalin had given entire satisfaction, carrying out the orders and directives with care and accuracy and without any attempt to push himself forward.  This record stood in his favor in connection with the post of secretary of the party.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 90
 
STALIN TRIED TO GET ALONG WITH TROTSKY BUT NOT VICE VERSA
 
            The reader of the reports, subsequently published, from Stalin to Lenin and party headquarters will note that Stalin never ventured on any direct attack on Trotsky or criticism of him.  Trotsky's name never appears in Stalin's reports.  Such implicit criticism of Trotsky as it is to be found in the reports can only be read--and that by no means clearly--between the lines, in the form of attacks on certain army commanders and staff officers who had been appointed by Trotsky, and in criticism of their action.  Trotsky's outstanding position at that time may be seen from the simple fact that he imposes no such reserve on himself.  In his short telegrams he mentions Stalin by name, attacks him, and criticizes him as a superior may a subordinate.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 90
 
            Stalin had, indeed, made repeated attempts to improve their relations.  Observers of the first meeting between the two, at the party congress at Stockholm, said that Stalin, then delegate of the Caucasian organization, did all he could to make up to Trotsky....
            Trotsky spoke pretty openly of Stalin as a limited petty bourgeois, showing plainly thta he regarded him as far below himself.
            Until sometime after the February-March revolution of 1917 Stalin continued to regard Trotsky without animus.  It was, indeed, Stalin who officially moved that Trotsky should be admitted into the party, and into the party leadership.  Their enmity began later, and no small part of their enmity was due to the great, the vast difference between them.  The continual condescension and the social and intellectual arrogance with which Trotsky treated Stalin was bound before long to produce in the latter... hatred.  Stalin's steadily growing opposition to Trotsky's military measures, and his hostility to him, at first concealed and then open, during the execution of the tasks entrusted to him, were partly products of that feeling.  Trotsky's whole style and manner, his preference for ex-Tsarist officers or for intellectuals received in society over people like Stalin, his way of letting it be seen that he regarded himself, consciously or subconsciously, as belonging after all to those classes, got on Stalin's nerves.  But Stalin remained long under the influence of the social inhibitions due to his upbringing, and he did not venture on open opposition to Trotsky.  It was Trotsky, after all, who after the civil war, when his official duties no longer required that he should come into personal touch with Stalin, broke off all relations with him.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 127-128
 
The political duel with Trotsky was not started by Stalin, and it was a later invention that those who began the conflict had been induced to do so by Stalin.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 128
 
            Perhaps earlier than most, Stalin spotted Trotsky's strong and weak sides.  Taking Trotsky's enormous popularity into account, Stalin at first tried to establish if not friendly, then at least stable relations with him.  On one occasion, Stalin turned up unannounced at Trotsky's place in Archangelskoe outside Moscow to congratulate him on his birthday.  The meeting was not a warm one.  Each sensed the other's dislike.  On another occasion, with Lenin's assistance, Stalin tried to establish better relations.  This emerged in a telegram from Lenin to Trotsky dated October 23, 1918, in which Lenin gave an account of his conversation with Stalin.  As a member of the Defense Council, Stalin gave his assessment of the position in Tsaritsyn and expressed the desire to work more closely with the revvoensoviet of the Republic.  Lenin added:
            "In conveying Stalin's statements to you, Lev Davidovitch, I request that you think about them and say, first, whether you agree to discuss them personally with Stalin, for which purpose he would come here, and secondly, whether you consider it possible, in certain concrete circumstances, to set aside the existing friction and work together, which Stalin wants so much to do.  As for myself, I believe it is necessary to make every effort to work well together with Stalin."
            Nothing came of it, however.  Trotsky could not hide his superior attitude.
            Stalin even spoke highly of Trotsky's role in the revolution and Civil War in some of his speeches, but that did not improve Trotsky's aloof attitude towards him.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 56
 
            Soon after Stalin's arrival back in Moscow, he wrote a celebrated article in the issue of Pravda of November 6, 1918, celebrating the first anniversary of the seizure of power, in which he warmly praised Trotsky!  It contains such phrases as:
            'All the practical work of organizing the insurrection was done under the immediate direction of Trotsky, the Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet.  It can be safely asserted that for the rapid desertion of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and for the clever organization of the Military Revolutionary Committee, the party is above all, and primarily, indebted to Comrade Trotsky.'
            It seems that, as with his approach for a reconciliation a little earlier, Stalin was now, whatever his motives, really trying to effect a detente with Trotsky.  Plainly, in the years that followed, an alliance with Trotsky might have been a possible maneuver, one of the available political configurations.  Trotsky was never to be won over; but for the moment he seems to have been somewhat appeased.  He does not appear to have opposed Stalin's nomination to the Revolutionary Military Soviet.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 83
 
A few descriptions of scenes in the Politburo give a vivid glimpse of Stalin, the good soul:
            "When I attended a session of the Politburo for the first time [writes Bazhanov] the struggle between the triumvirs and Trotsky was in full swing.  Trotsky was the first to arrive for the session.  The others were late, they were still plotting....  Next entered Zinoviev.  He passed by Trotsky; and both behaved as if they had not noticed one another.  When Kamenev entered, he greeted Trotsky with a slight nod.  At last Stalin came in.  he approached the table at which Trotsky was seated, greeted him in a most friendly manner and vigorously shook hands with him across the table."
            During another session, in the summer of 1923, one of the triumvirs proposed that Stalin be brought in as a controller into the Commissariat of War, of which Trotsky was still the head.  Trotsky, irritated by the proposal, declared that he was resigning from the office and asked to be relieved from all posts and honors in Russia and allowed to go to Germany, which then seemed to be on the brink of a Communist upheaval, to take part in the revolution there.  Zinoviev countered the move by asking the same for himself.  Stalin put an end to the scene˜, declaring that 'the party could not possibly dispense with the services of two such important and beloved leaders'.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 274
 
            He [Stalin] repeatedly stated that the only condition for peace was that Trotsky should stop his attacks.  The repeatedly made the gesture that looked like he stretching out of his hand to his opponent.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 278
 
            Lenin appealed to both Trotsky and Stalin to set aside the friction between them and work together.  Stalin made an effort and in a number of speeches spoke highly of Trotsky's role; but Trotsky could not hide his sense of superiority.
Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf, 1992, p. 100
 
ZINOVIEV AND LENIN PROPOSE STALIN FOR GENERAL SEC.
 
He [Zinoviev] accordingly proposed Stalin for the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the party.  Lenin agreed, and Stalin was appointed.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 91
 
            Indeed, it had been Zinoviev who, after the Civil War, had proposed Stalin as General Secretary of the party.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 144
 
            On Lenin's motion, the Plenum of the Central Committee, on April 3, 1922, elected Stalin, Lenin's faithful disciple and associate, General Secretary of the Central Committee, a post at which he has remained ever since.
Alexandrov, G. F.  Joseph Stalin; a Short Biography.  Moscow: FLPH, 1947, p. 74
 
            But Lenin, after all, at the 10th Congress had prohibited factionalism.
            And we voted with that note on Stalin in brackets.  He became general secretary....  Lenin...made Stalin general secretary.  Lenin was, of course, making preparations, for he sensed his ill health.  Did he perhaps see in Stalin his successor?  I think one can allow for that.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 105
 
CHUEV:  At the office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, I was told that Lenin did not nominate Stalin to the post of general secretary.  Rather, Kamenev did, and Lenin approved it....
MOLOTOV:  Well, well.  I know for sure that Lenin nominated him.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 166
 
In this connection it is interesting to note that the Congress ratified Lenin's appointment a few weeks earlier of Stalin as General Secretary of the Party.  This was a key position of authority and influence, and it is most significant that Lenin awarded it to Stalin, leader of the "underground" laborers in Russia's vineyards during the pre-war period of repression, rather than to the more spectacular Trotsky or any of the Marxian purists among the "Western" exiles.
Duranty, Walter.  Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 70
 
            When in 1923 I learned that Lenin could not long survive and began to wonder about his successor, I remembered a conversation in my office in Moscow two years before.  A Russian friend had said to me, "Stalin has been appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party."
            "What does that mean?"  I replied.
            "It means," said the Russian impressively, "that he now becomes next to Lenin, because Lenin has given into his hands the manipulation of the Communist Party, which is the most important thing in Russia."
Duranty, Walter.  Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 165
 
            On April 3, 1922, the plenum elected Stalin general secretary....
            A Biographical Chronicle of Lenin's life and work, published in recent years, gives the following account of April 3, 1922, based on materials from Party archives.
            "...The plenum makes the decision to establish the position of general secretary with two Central Committee secretaries.  Stalin is assigned to be general secretary; Molotov and Kuibyshev are the secretaries."
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 67-68
 
            [Footnote]: Trotsky and Medvedev attempt to absolve Lenin of responsibility for Stalin's appointment as General Secretary, but there is persuasive evidence that Lenin had entrusted Stalin with party affairs during Lenin's leave of absence and that he proposed him as General Secretary.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 344
 
STALIN DID NOT PACK PARTY WITH HIS SUPPORTERS
 
It has often been stated, especially by Stalin's opponents, that he busied himself at this time giving posts to his supporters throughout the party organization.  This, of course, was not so.  Stalin had spent most of the early years of the revolution at the fronts, and as yet had never come forward as a leader in any ideological current within Bolshevism: where could he have found all these personal supporters?....
            Certainly no such army of supporters of Stalin had existed.  On the other hand, he was the creator of the bureaucratic machinery of the party, and on the whole the members of the bureaucracy were loyal to its creator and controller.  Only on the whole, for the later conflicts showed that very many of the party officials whose names he had put forward were opponents of his.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 95-96
 
            ...As General Secretary of the Party Central Committee, he [Stalin] held a strategically dominating position in matters of organization; and his opponents, especially the Trotskyists, charge that he used to the fullest extent the opportunities which this post afforded of packing the provincial and city Party committees with his own partisans.  The Stalinites retort that these are slanderous accusations, put into circulation by disgruntled people who failed to capture control of the Party for their own ends.  They point to the unanimous votes registered at Party Conferences and Congresses as proof that Stalin's policies command the approbation of the solid masses of the Party members.
Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 91
 
 
LENIN HATED POMP BUT AFTER HIS DEATH BECAME A CENTER OF SHOW
 
After his death Lenin, who had hated and ridiculed all ceremony, all pomp, all showmanship, , himself became the center of a display of Byzantinism.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 98
 
ZINOVIEV BACKED UP STALIN FOR GEN. SEC.
 
The most powerful man in the party was then Zinoviev, and he was in favor of Stalin; it was he who had proposed him for the party secretaryship.  So Stalin remained secretary.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 109
 
            Perhaps they signified their real thoughts when they unanimously confirmed the election to the important post of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, of Joseph Stalin, friend and close confidant of the absent president.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 59
 
            When, at the April 1922 Plenum of the Central Committee, Kamenev proposed acceptance of Zinoviev's idea of making Stalin general secretary of the Central Committee, Lenin--although he knew Stalin all too well--had no objection.
Bazhanov, Boris.  Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, c1990, p. 27
 
 
STALIN CONSIDERED LENIN TO BE THE GREATEST AND USED THE WORD LENINISM
 
The term 'Leninism' was invented by the enemies of the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, the real Russian Social Democrats, who regarded themselves as the true inheritors of Marx's ideology; by their use of the term 'Leninism' they wished to place on record that Lenin was not a follower of Marx at all, but a heretic who had elaborated a doctrine of his own that was a deviation from Karl Marx....
            For Stalin, Lenin towered above everyone else.  He regarded him as the greatest figure not only of his own time but of all time.  In the attitude of the others to Lenin, Stalin saw nothing but almost unendurable presumption.  He was quite certain that none of them could take over Lenin's heritage, 'Lenin's cause', or even think of doing so.  He certainly regarded the people around Lenin as unworthy of that great man.  He himself stood on the fringe of that circle, with a firm belief that he alone had fully realized ”Lenin's personality and his overwhelming historical importance....
            But on April 3, 1920, Stalin published in Pravda an article on Lenin's birthday.  The very title of the article was a program: 'LENIN-- the organizer and leader of the All-Russian Communist Party.' In this short article Stalin described Lenin's theoretical controversy with the Mensheviks, and gave a clear account of the difference between the two tendencies in Russian socialism.  But the main feature of the article is that it represented Lenin as the sole creator of the Bolshevik doctrine, and the organizer of the party, to whom alone belonged the absolute leadership of the party.  Clearly 'Leninism' existed already for Stalin.
            Immediately after Lenin's death, Stalin went to work to create the Lenin legend, and the word 'Leninism' reappeared; this time, however, as an official party term.  It was followed before long by the publication of Stalin's book the Foundations of Leninism.  This book is of such great historical importance that it calls for consideration.  According to Stalin, Leninism is the direct and only true continuation of Marxism, the theory, strategy, and tactic, created by Lenin, of socialism in the age of imperialism.  For the age of imperialism is that of the dying capitalist society, and will be ended by the social revolution.  While Marxism held good for the labor movement in the pre-revolutionary, that is to say in the time of the development of the labor movement and the ripening and coming to fruition of the social revolution, Leninism is the doctrine of the theory and tactic of the proletarian revolution itself.  According to Lenin, therefore--as interpreted by Stalin--we are living in the age of the world-wide social revolution.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 111-113
 
STALIN INTERPRETS LENIN ON DESTROYING THE STATE
 
Lenin adds, according to Stalin: "The proletarian Revolution is impossible without the destruction by force of the machinery of the bourgeois state and its replacement by new machinery."
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 114
 
 
UNLIKE MENSHEVIKS AND SR’S LENIN SEEKS BOTH PEASANT AND WORKER SUPPORT
 
While the Mensheviks seek the support only of the relatively few industrial workers, Leninism in its tactical procedure takes account of the vast mass of the peasants....  Herein it rectifies the policy of the social revolutionaries.  That party seeks the support only of the peasantry,...
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 115
 
            To Trotsky it seemed that the only way out of our plight was the establishment of a bourgeois republic, because we were not supported by the working class of the West, and our alliance with the peasantry wasn't working.  That was his chief shortcoming.  Listen, unity of the proletariat alone is insufficient according to any theory of Marxism.  But Lenin--and herein lies his strength--was able to find an approach to the peasantry.  He criticized the petty bourgeois essence of the peasantry but also discerned its toiling side.  If a correct approach to the peasantry were applied, they would support us.  This is Lenin's innovation in Marxist theory, and in practice he proved to be right.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R­. Dee, 1993, p. 142
 
            On the contrary, it [the working-class] must put itself at the very head of the movement, striving to win a commanding influence over all sections of the Russian people, particularly of the peasantry who constituted the overwhelming majority of the population....
            Contrary to the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks saw that the closest ally of the working-class was the peasantry and not the capitalist class.  They did not envisage a democratic revolution and then a long period of capitalist development.
Campbell, J. R.   Soviet Policy and Its Critics.  London: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1939, p. 21
 
            Its founder and undisputed leader, Lenin, determined on the very day he learned of the outbreak of the February Revolution that the Bolsheviks would topple the Provisional Government by armed force.  The strategy consisted of promising every disaffected group what it wanted: to the peasants, the land; to the soldiers, peace; to t­he workers, the factories; to the ethnic minorities, independence.  None of these slogans were part of the Bolshevik program and all would be thrown overboard once the Bolsheviks were in power,...
Pipes, Richard.  Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1993, p. 4
 
            The stumbling block of the revolution, up to Stalin's dictatorship, has been the problem of the peasantry.  In a sense, Lenin overlooked the peasantry.  He did not include the peasantry in the proletariat.  If he had done so, a dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia must have meant a dictatorship by the peasantry since they outnumber the rest of the workers by 10 to 1.  In Lenin's view the peasantry must be made to support the proletariat but not control it.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 106
 
BOLSHEVIKS BELIEVE THE STATE MUST BE DESTROYED, NOT TAKEN OVER
 
The proletariat--and here comes the fundamental difference from the other Marxist tendencies--must not build further on the foundation of the old state, but, when the old state has been completely reduced to rubble, a new instrument a power must be constructed on its ruins for rule over the other classes.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 116
 
ONLY STALIN WROTE THEORETICAL WRITINGS CONTINUING LENIN
 
The question arises, why was it that Stalin, and he alone, published what at that time was the only book on the theory of Leninism?  At that time all party members, especially the leaders, were free to write, and within the party there was complete freedom of expression of opinion.  At that time Stalin was not accounted a theorist; after Lenin's death Bucharin was regarded as the best theorist in the Politburo.  The explanation is that probably none of the leading Bolsheviks would so have demeaned himself as to write a whole book simply as a commentator on Lenin.  Each of them regarded himself as an authority on theory and as part of the body of intellectuals who had created the Bolshevik Party and laid the intellectual foundations of the revolution.  They regarded themselves as original thinkers, quite competent to formulate their own theories, proceeding straight from Marxism, and not as mere loud-speakers for Lenin....
            ...He [Stalin] was much closer to the mass of the people than his opponents were....
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 116
 
LENIN LIVED ON PARTY MONEY WHILE TROTSKY SOLD ARTICLES
 
            Lenin lived on the money the party gave him.  He received nothing for his articles in the illegal or semi legal press.  But Trotsky became famous as a journalist at an early age.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 121
 
TROTSKY BETTER KNOWN THAN LENIN
 
At that time [before WWI], therefore, Trotsky was much more widely known than Lenin.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 122
 
TROTSKY WON’T ADMIT MISTAKES
 
            His lack of self-criticism prevented Trotsky from ever remedying his defects.  Typical of this was the following little-known incident.  A conference took place in 1921 in the Kremlin Palace between the foremost leaders of the Communist International.  At that time this 'Third International' was not merely the instrument of Russian policy.  The subject under discussion was whether a rising should be started in Germany.  The majority of those present were in favor of the idea.  Lenin came to the meeting, and in a lengthy speech opposed the suggested rising.  A rising was actually started in central Germany, ending in a disastrous defeat for Communism.  Subsequently another discussion took place in that hall.  Trotsky had not been present at the first discussion, but had set down his opinion in writing.  Some Russian leaders who had voted in favor of the rising admitted their mistake.  This time Trotsky was present, and he made a speech attacking those who had been in favor of the rising.  In astonishment his hearers pointed out that he himself had supported the proposal.  He denied this, and was reminded that he had actually set down his opinion in writing.  His letter was produced.  Meanwhile the discussion continued.  Trotsky read the letter, said not a word, and went away, with the document in his pocket.
            Such was the man who set out to fight his historic duel with Stalin.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 126
 
TROTSKY WAS DEPOSED BY THE POLITBURO, NOT STALIN
 
It had been Zinoviev who originally proposed Stalin as general secretary....  In his memoirs Trotsky describes the circumstances of his deposition as if they were entirely Stalin's work.  That is not true to history.  Trotsky was relieved of the supreme command over the Army by a majority decision of the Politbureau....  Bucharin was in the foreground of the public attacks on Trotsky.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 131
 
            Trotsky was now dismissed from the commander-in-chief of the army.  He remained a member of the Politburo, and he was also given two departments of State.  He became chairman of the Central Concessions Committee.  At the time this committee was one of great importance in the eyes of foreigners.  It carried on negotiations for the granting of economic concessions to foreign enterprises.  Lenin had introduced his policy....
            The other post which Trotsky received was that of head of the electro-technical department in the Supreme Council for Economic Affairs.... Neither of his two offices gave him any opportunity of intervening in home policy or influencing it.  He ignored both appointments....  As a member of the Politburo he kept his big personal secretariat.  But at the sessions of the Politburo, which he regularly attended, he took up a strange attitude.  He came in, sat down, and ostentatiously took no part in the discussions.  He usually had a book, preferably a French novel, and read it throughout the session.  Scarcely ever did he speak a word.  Meanwhile he proceeded, rather carelessly, with the building up in some shape of his own organization.  It all suggested a great master gathering his assistants round him to listen to him in ecstatic awe.  What seemed more serious was his continual association with a number of leading Bolsheviks who were not in the Politburo but were nevertheless holders of influential posts
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 133-34
 
            Stalin took no part in the effort to get rid of Trotsky. The articles and speeches attacking the latter came mainly from Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin.  Trotsky had made preparations for the publication of his collected works--obviously as a fighting move.  They were to be issued by the State publishing office....  The collection was not confined to Trotsky's past articles: each volume, containing a year's articles, was to have a newly-written introduction.  An explosion was produced by the publication of the volume for 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution.  In the introduction to that volume Trotsky gave a version of events that differed fundamentally from that of the party leadership.  He not only tried to destroy the Lenin legend; he belittled the part played in the Revolution by the Bolshevik party.  Needless to say, his own part received special attention.  A public campaign against Trotsky began.  Bukharin led the agitation in the press.  The book was to be had in the shops, and every subscriber had received a copy.  The question of his membership in the party was raised.  In addition to controverting his argument, his opponents charged him with trying to form a 'faction' within the party, an organized group to oppose the majority of the party.  He was denounced as a schismatic.  In accordance with party practice at the time, the controversy was fought out in full publicity....
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 135
 
            And there were several things which barred Trotsky from succeeding Lenin as Party Leader.  There was the taint of heresy about him in the eyes of the older Bolsheviks, who could not forget that he had only joined the party in 1917; there were the many enemies whom he had made through his vitriolic pen and through his ruthless administrative measures as Soviet War Lord; there was a widespread feeling that, while Trotsky was an invaluable leader in the active, destructive period of revolution, he was too mercurial and unstable to be a reliable guide in the slower and more prosaic work of economic reconstruction.
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 95
 
            Trotsky was kept without a post until May, 1925 when he was tested to see whether he would be content with a much smaller part in the government.  The army had been taken from him, how would he like to administer the department of Foreign Concessions?  It was found that he had become much humbler.  He accepted the chairmanship of the Concessions Board with readiness, and actually he obtained work which suited his abilities more than the control of the fighting forces.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 98
 
            So in the final struggle he [Trotsky] was deprived of power by the vote of the party.
            To me, however, there appears to be a deeper historical reason for this.  By the year 1927 the Revolution had come to that stage wherein the new state founded by it had to be ruled by a conservative and very careful progressive leader.  But Trotsky was a typical revolutionary and his fiery spirit was not what was wanted in the management of the consolidated Bolshevik state.  He was declared a dangerous man and was exiled with his friends to Siberia.
Ludwig, Emil.  Leaders of Europe. London: I. Nicholson and Watson Ltd., 1934, p. 367
 
            However, more objective sources suggest that Stalin triumphed largely because what almost the entire Party leadership feared above all was the possibility of Trotsky coming to power.  Stalin was the only real alternative to Trotsky and his plans for world revolution.
Medvedev, Roy & Zhores.  The Unknown Stalin. NY, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, p. 269
 
TROTSKY MERELY ATTACKED BUT HAD NO PRACTICAL PROGRAM
 
Among the outstanding political issues of the time, there was no clear Trotskyist policy.  In his articles Trotsky merely criticized whatever was the policy of the majority.  Such positive proposals as he did make were impracticable.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 132
 
TROTSKY PROPOUNDS PERMANENT REVOLUTION THEORY
 
            Later there arose another difference in theory.  It concerned the question whether Russia could set up a Socialist economic order without waiting for a world revolution.  Stalin held that it could; Trotsky denied it,....  He [Trotsky] coined the phrase 'permanent revolution'.  He was unable, however, to show just how the permanent revolution should be carried out.  Such men as Bukharin and Rykov vigorously combated Trotsky's anti-peasant attitude.  Later, however, they came over to Trotsky's idea that it was impossible to introduce Socialism into Russia until the revolution had gained the victory in the greater part of a world, and that the attempt to introduce it prematurely must lead to disaster.  This explains the later alliance between Trotsky and the Right-wing opposition, diametrically opposed to it, in the party.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 133
 
            ...This idea of revolution in one country, versus Trotsky's internationalism, advocating revolution of all working classes simultaneously, was the heart of the ideological struggle between Stalin and Trotsky.
Sudoplatov, Pavel.  Special Tasks. Boston: Little, Brown, c1993, p. 67
 
            The idea that new impulses for revolution would come from the West but not from the Soviet Union was the leitmotif of Trotsky's advocacy of the Fourth International.  Again and again he asserted that, while in the Soviet Union Stalinism continued to play a dual role, at once progressive and retrograde, it exercised internationally only a counter-revolutionary influence.  Here his grasp of reality failed him.  Stalinism was to go on acting its dual role internationally as well as nationally: it was to stimulate as well as to obstruct the class struggle outside the Soviet Union.  In any case, it was not from the West that the revolutionary impulses were to come in the next three or four decades.  Thus the major premise on which Trotsky set out to create the Fourth International was unreal.
Deutscher, Isaac.  The Prophet Outcast. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963, p. 212
 
HOW KULAKS AND PRIVATE TRADERS WERE TAKING OVER
 
            While, however, Russia had the appearance in 1924 of great prosperity, impressing foreign observers and assisting Russian foreign policy, the NEP faced the country with very serious new problems.  In spite of thriving trade and industry there was a certain amount of unemployment.  Still more serious was the competition between private and State enterprise.  Innumerable small traders, artisans, owners of businesses, and speculative builders, had resumed their past activities in private enterprise....
            Meanwhile, private industry was continually growing at the expense of state industry.  It was very useful that all these new employers brought gold and securities out of their hiding places in order to open a shop or a small factory.  But the capital and goods that thus reappeared were on a much smaller scale than had been expected.  And in spite of this the private capitalists were applying through the banks for credits from State resources.  These traders and owners of businesses knew just how to corrupt the government officials with whom they had to deal.  Their aim was to secure the flow of capital from the money bags of the State into the pockets of private individuals; yet all these traders and businessman made up the typical Russian middle-class, whose initiative and energy were of particular importance in economic life.  Even the Communists had to admit that there were capitalists who did good work; after all, the invitation to foreign countries had been inspired by the desire to get hold of capitalists of that sort.
            The grasping private traders, however, with their corruption and their speculative business activities at the expense of the State, activities that brought no real benefit to Russia, seemed altogether undesirable as a permanent element in Russian economic life.  But the more private enterprise grew fat at the expense of the State and with the resources of the State, the greater became its political demands.  It was evident that in the long run private enterprise would not rest content with its lack of formally established political rights, that it would seek to attain political influence, and that to some extent it had it already in the lower ranks of officialdom.  Its ambition was, of course, the breaking of its bonds....
            Where the Tsarist Government had not succeeded in forming a class of kulaks in the countryside as bastions of the tsarist regime, the conditions in the Russian market now produced a development of this sort.  'Kulak' means 'closed fist', and for hundreds of years this had been the name of the village money-lender, who was usually also the village shopkeeper.  The village usurer, generally a cunning and close-fisted peasant, knew no mercy, and had a whole village under his thumb.  Under the Soviets the meaning of the term was extended to include not merely money lenders or shopkeepers, but every substantial farmer who was prosperous enough to employ male and female labor.
            It was found after the Civil War that except for the distribution of the great estates there had been virtually no social revolution in the countryside.  The soviet system was to have begun with the village soviets, but for political purposes it really began in the towns.  For in the countryside sovietization had been merely a formality.  In a very short time the village was entirely under the political influence of the prosperous farmers.  They secured election to the Soviets and became their chairmen, thus ruling the village.  Party cells were established in villages, but the prosperous farmers smuggled their sons into the cells, so gaining influence there as well.  The villages threatened to fall more and more under the sole rule of the well-to-do farmers.  What was still worse for the regime was that as early as 1925 it became evident that the private enterprises in the towns were becoming economic allies of the well-to-do farmer class.  The peasants paid their income-tax in kind, but the prosperous farmer, the only one who had any surplus yield to sell, sold it to the private dealer, because he offered the highest prices.  He preferred also to buy his manufactured goods from the private trade rather than the State or the co-operatives.  This intercourse between town & country also promoted all sorts of deals and speculations which associated the private enterprises in the towns more and more closely with the villages.
            Moreover, the prosperous farmer was also a voter.  He had conquered local power in the village; and already he was demanding from the State not only a reduction of taxation but the abolition of taxes in kind and the introduction of a money tax, which would be greatly to his advantage and also make it more difficult to check his actual crops.  This check was always difficult.  Stalin said at this time that the village with individual farming bred capitalism and strengthened it every second, and there was some truth in this.  If it continued, it was obvious that in time the dictatorship of the party would come to an end.  Private enterprise would have achieved what all the armies of the White counter-revolutionaries had failed to achieve--the downfall of Bolshevism.  Many foreign observers in Moscow also thought that inevitable.  Very many Russians, even members of the Communist Party, hoped for it.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 153-156
 
            It happened in the following way.  The New Economic Policy involved a certain growth of the capitalist elements in town and country.  In the towns new capitalist middlemen began to appear.  In the villages the rich peasants waxed fat and kicked against the policy of the Soviet Government.  They began to penetrate into the village Soviets and to win a certain influence over the middle peasants.  In certain areas they passed over to the murder of Soviet officials and village correspondents.
Campbell, J. R.  Soviet Policy and Its Critics. London: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1939, p. 57
 
 
KULAKS OPPOSED COLLECTIVIZATION WITH TERROR AND DESTRUCTION
 
            At the time of the collectivization of agriculture, the liquidation of private trade and all private enterprise, and the pushing on with industrialization at an almost intolerable pace, a fearful political slogan was shouted throughout the country: 'Liquidation of the whole class of yeomen farmers.'  This at once provoked widespread consequences.  In the war on the prosperous farmers thus declared, resort was had to devices of the civil war.  At that time [during the civil war] Poor Peasants Committees had played an important part, and now these committees were called into being again.  The village party cells were to have control of them.  The committees were given vast powers.  The Government and the party declared quite officially that in each village 2 to 3 percent of the farms were big farms.
            ...this new war without visible fronts was much more gruesome and horrible.  The big farmers, men of a hard and cruel type, did not give up easily.  They, too, had open or secret supporters in the villages.  There came the first terrorist acts; Soviet officials, Communist agitators, leaders of the Poor Peasants' Committees, were murdered openly or in secret.  The weapons hidden after the First World War and in the civil war were brought out.
            A counter-terror began at once, radical and merciless....
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 163-164
 
            This was done and, as more tractors and supplies became available, more and more of the poor and middle peasants flocked to the collectives.  The wealthy peasant or kulak was bitterly hostile to the collectivization movement.  He was often a man who "lived off the backs of the other peasants" through granting loans, renting out machinery and implements, or by control of local trade.  The collective deprived him of these advantages.  A kind of civil war broke out between the kulaks and the collectives, the counterpart of the revolutionary battles which had been fought in the cities.  Communist leaders of the collectives were murdered or beaten.  The kulaks burned collective farm buildings and slaughtered livestock.  In some places overzealous communists used coercive measures and turned entire villages against collectivization.
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 59
 
 
            Another thing happened over and over again.  Big farmers, and others of those who were determined not to go into the kolkhozy, destroyed the whole of their property and fled.  They slaughtered their cattle, cut down their fruit trees, pulled their house to pieces, drove the horse away or killed it and departed.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 165
 
            The most difficult period was from the 1932 to the 1933 harvest when kulak sabotage, added to difficulties of inefficient organization, caused a grain shortage that put the whole country on short rations.
Strong, Anna Louise.  This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 180
 
            After this resolution, which announced the end of capitalist relations in the countryside, the kulaks threw themselves into a struggle to the end. To sabotage collectivization, they burnt crops, set barns, houses and other buildings on fire and killed militant Bolsheviks.
            Most importantly, the kulaks wanted to prevent collective farms from starting up, by killing an essential part of the productive forces in the countryside, horses and oxen.  All the work on the land was done with draft animals.  The kulaks killed half of them.  Rather than cede their cattle to the collectives, they butchered them and incited the middle peasants to do the same. 
            Of the 34 million horses in the country in 1928, there remained only 15 million in 1932.  A terse Bolshevik spoke of the liquidation of the horses as a class.  Of the 70.5 million head of cattle, there only remained 40.7 million in 1932.  Only 11.6 million pigs out of 26 million survived the collectivization period.
            Charles Bettelheim. L'Economie sovietique (Paris: editions Recueil Sirey, 1950), p. 87.
Martens, Ludo.   Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27  2600, p. 79 [p. 66 on the NET]
 
            Before joining the collective farms, many peasants slaughtered their livestock: cows, sheep, pigs, even poultry.  In February and March 1930 alone, approximately 14 million head of cattle, one-third of all pigs, and 1/4 of all sheep and goats were destroyed.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 225
 
            [Footnote: In 1928 on the entire territory of the RSFSR 1123 terrorist acts by kulaks were recorded.]
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 232
 
            No one doubts that acts of sabotage did take place.  Many who have been officers, manufacturers, or large farmers, but were now deposed, contrived to obtain important appointments and carry on sabotage.  If, today, the supply of leather for private citizens and of shoes in particular, is inadequate, it is without question the fault of these large farmers who, at the time, sabotaged cattle-breeding.  The chemical industry and the transport services, too, suffered for a long time from acts of sabotage.  If, today, there is an extremely strict supervision of factories and machines, it can be justified on very good grounds.
Feuchtwanger, Lion.  Moscow, 1937. New York: The Viking Press, 1937, p. 37
 
            The liquidation also caused many of the kulaks to destroy their domestic animals so that now, after almost 10 years, there is still a shortage of meat and dairy products in Russia.
Littlepage, John D.  In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 82
 
            The slaughter of the cattle by the peasants intent on sabotaging collectivization had placed leather at a premium from 1932 to 1935.  In 1935 the shortage of livestock had been almost filled.  The quantify of leather increased.
Edelman, Maurice. G.P.U. Justice. London: G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.,1938, p. 32
 
            A great deal of trouble is caused by the "kulaks" who not only try to cut down production but terrorize the middle (seredniaks) and poor (byedniaks) peasants in order to bring disaster to all government endeavors.  The Soviets are striving to put over a project never before undertaken--complete socialization of agriculture.  Every means possible, including large expenditures, is employed.  They are counteracting the menace of the "kulaks," who are withholding and lessening their production, by using every resource available for the completion of the collective and state farm projects.
Wright, Russell.   One-Sixth of the World's Surface. Hammond, Ind., The Author, c1932, p. 94
 
            The slaughter of cattle, the fall in grain production are all ascribed to administrative errors of the leadership.  That there were administrative errors is undoubted....
            But the difficulties of carrying through the first Five Year Plan were not difficulties due to administrative mistakes, they were difficulties created by the resistance of the capitalist elements whom the plan was threatening.  The aim of the plan was not merely the reconstruction of the technical basis of the country, but also the transformation of economic and social relations--the progressive elimination of the capitalist elements.  To expect the Five~Year Plan to proceed without class struggle, without sabotage, as if it was a question of the new housing estate, instead of the revolutionary transformation of a great country, is indeed to adopt a bourgeois administrative point of view, which ignores the class struggle.  To ascribe the relative temporary disorganization caused in certain branches of economy by the fiercely contested class struggle, to the administrative mistakes of the leadership or the lack of foresight, as Trotsky does repeatedly in his book, can hardly be called ignorance.  It is calculated misrepresentation.
            But because the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had won the confidence of the working class, because it could mobilize the great trade unions and co-operatives, because it had a firm alliance with the middle peasantry, it was able to lead the masses of the Soviet Union in the struggle to break down the class opposition, and to realize the plan.  Not by bureaucracy, not by slick administration, but by the struggle of the majority of the Russian people under Communist leadership, were the plans realized.
Campbell, J. R.  Soviet Policy and Its Critics. London: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1939, p. 80-81
 
            From 1931 till 1932, the struggle of the rich peasants in the Soviet Union grew in intensity, and all kinds of sabotage were resorted to in order to destroy the collective farms from within.  Here is a description, from the pen of a Ukrainian counter-revolutionary, of the sabotage that was practiced:
            "At first there were mass disturbances in the kolkhozy (collective farms) or else the Communist officials or their agents were killed; but later a system of passive resistance was favored, which aimed at the systematic frustration of the Bolshevik plans for the sowing and the gathering of the harvest.  The peasants and workers, seeing the ruthless export by their Bolshevik masters of all food produce, began to take steps to save themselves from starvation in the winter time and to grasp at any means of fighting against the hated foreign rule.  This is the main reason for the wholesale hoarding of grain and the thefts from the fields--offenses which if detected are punishable by death.  The peasants are passive resisters everywhere; but in Ukrainia the resistance has assumed the form of a national struggle.  The opposition of the Ukrainian population caused the failure of the grain storing plan of 1931 and still more so that of 1932.  The catastrophe of 1931-32 was the hardest blow that the Soviet Ukraine had to face since the famine of 1921-22.  The autumn and spring sowing campaigns both failed.  Whole tracts were left unsown.  In addition, when the crops were being gathered last year, it happened that, in many areas, especially in the South, 20, 40, or even 50 percent was left in the fields and was either not collected at all or was ruined in the threshing" (Isaac Mazeppa in Slavonic Review, January 1934).
            How leaving the harvest to rot in the fields squares with a desire to take steps to save oneself from starvation in the winter time, heaven and the Ukrainian counter-revolutionaries alone know.  But the description of the methods of sabotage, practiced not by the whole population as alleged, but by the kulaks with some misguided middle peasants supporting them, gives a sufficiently clear idea of the situation in some parts of the country, at the height of the resistance to collectivization.
Campbell, J. R.   Soviet Policy and Its Critics. London: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1939, p. 198
 
            The Ukraine and several of the more distant provinces were in the throes of famine [in 1932].  Drought had nothing to do with it.  Food shortage was due entirely to the breakdown of agriculture caused by collectivization, and by the policy of maximum exports.
Barmine, Alexandre.  Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat. London: L. Dickson limited, 1938, p. 264
 
            As a result of deliberations by a Politburo Commission chaired by Molotov, and under pressure from Stalin, in January 1930 the Central Committee passed a resolution "On Measures for Liquidating Kulak Farms in Areas of Full Collectivization"....  Correspondingly, kulak assaults on the Soviet regime rose, at times extending over wide areas.  Actions against the better-off section of the peasantry gave rise to a wave of protest, banditry, and armed risings against the authorities.
            Grain production immediately went into a slide, soon followed by a decline in stock breeding.  The peasants native enterprise was cut down at the root.... The mass order of animals began in many regions: compared to 1928, livestock fell to half or a third in number by 1933.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 169
 
            Rather than allow their cattle to fall into the hands of the state, they had slaughtered half the country's herd.  By March it was plain that disaster had overtaken the countryside.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 160
 
            In the case of full-scale collectivization, which commenced in late 1929, resistance was massive.  It ran the gamut from insurgencies and other acts of violence, to murders of collectivizers and their local collaborators, to vociferous protests by women, frequently in connection with raion soviet decisions to close churches and/or confiscate church property, to the razbazarivanie ("squandering") of livestock and other property through slaughter and sale, the destruction of collective farm buildings, the liberation of arrested kulaks, the reacquisition of confiscated property, and the disbandment of collective farms.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov.  Stalinism as a Way of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, c2000, p. 11
 
            Once implemented, collectivization had a catastrophic effect on agricultural production.  Animal husbandry suffered more than anything else because of the mass slaughter of cattle when peasants joined collective farms.
Siegelbaum and Sokolov.  Stalinism as a Way of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, c2000, p. 62
 
            ...Masses of kulaks were deported to remote unpopulated lands in Siberia.  Their houses, barns, and farm implements were turned over to the collective farms--Stalin himself put the value of their property so transferred at over 400 million rubles.  The bulk of the peasants decided to bring in as little as possible of their property to the collective farms which they imagined to be state-owned factories, in which they themselves would become mere factory hands.  In desperation they slaughtered their cattle, smashed implements, and burned crops.  This was the muzhik's great Luddite-like rebellion.  Only three years later, in January 1934, did Stalin disclose some of its results.  In 1929 Russia possessed 34 million horses.  Only 16.6 million were left in 1933--18 million horses had been slaughtered.  So were 30 millions of large cattle, about 45 percent of the total, and nearly 100 million, or two-thirds of all sheep and goats.  Vast tracts of land were left untilled.  Famine stalked the towns and the black soil steppe of the Ukraine.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 325
 
            ...Between January and March 1930, the number of peasant holdings brought into the collective farms increased from 4 million to 14 million.  Over half the total peasant households had been collectivized in five months.  And in the countryside the peasants fought back with "the sawed-off shotgun, the ax, the dagger, the knife."  At the same time, they destroyed their livestock rather than let it fall into the hands of the State.
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 18
 
            Passive resistance became the universal form of resistance.  The peasants refused to join kolkhozes as long as they had sufficient strength not to yield to threats and force, and they destroyed their livestock as a sign of protest.  Livestock transferred to the kolkhoz died from lack of shelter, fodder, and care.
            The statistics demonstrate the disaster that struck the Soviet livestock herd.  In 1928 there were 33.5 million horses in the country; in 1932, 19.6 million.  For cattle the figures were, respectively, 70.5 million and 40.7 million; for pigs, 26 million and 11.6 million; for sheep and goats, 146 million and 52.1 million.  In Kazakhstan the number of sheep and goats fell from 19.2 million in 1930 to only 2.6 million in 1935.  From 1929 to 1934 a total of 149.4 million head of livestock were destroyed.  The value of these animals and their products (milk, butter, wool, etc.) far exceeded the value of the giant factories built during the same period.  The destruction of horses meant a loss of 8.8 million horsepower.
Nekrich and Heller.  Utopia in Power. New York: Summit Books, c1986, p. 237
 
            The peasant thought that if the Government wanted him to go to the kolkhoz it was for the Government to look after him there and, if the stock was to be pooled, he would prefer to go in with as little as possible.  There followed all over the country a colossal slaughter of livestock.  There was nothing that the peasant regarded as more specially "property" than his cow; and indeed, whatever the advantages of brigades in agriculture, they can hardly replace the individual care of an owner for his cattle.  The livestock of the country was reduced to one-third; half the horses, sheep, and goats.  The general supply of meat and wool sank to one-third.  This was in itself a public catastrophe.
Pares, Bernard. Russia. Washington, New York: Infantry Journal, Penguin books, 1944, p. 162
 
            A few years of non-interference with ordinary normal farming had put money in the hands of the peasantry again, perhaps not very much but enough to be accounted wealth in impoverished Russia.  The village Hamptons of Russia refused to give money to the government they detested.  All the work of the Right faction of the Party was undone.  Stalin sent his underlings to collect contributions by force from the richer peasants and they reverted to boycott.  They cut the acreage under cultivation and sold their stock, bringing about in a very short time a food crisis in all the towns.  The peasants buried their grain and their potatoes and lived on their secret food hordes while the towns starved.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 109
 
            After collectivization was put into effect, agriculture was ruined, production fell off, and there was famine.
Bazhanov, Boris.  Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, c1990, p. 139
 
            The peasants reacted by killing practically all their livestock which, after 1930, resulted in a new period of famine for Russia.
Socialist Clarity Group.  The U. S. S. R., Its Significance for the West.  London: V. Gollancz, 1942, p. 35
 
            The kulaks responded--fighting against collectivization with an organized campaign of large-scale destruction.  The struggle swept through the countryside, approaching civil war scale in many areas, with devastating results particularly in Ukraine.
            Frederick L. Schuman, Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government at Williams College at the time of writing, states that he and thousands of other tourists traveled in Ukraine during the famine period.  He writes:
            "Their [kulak] opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized.  The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks.  Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30 million to less than 15 million; of horned cattle from 70 million (including 31 million cows) to 38 million (including 20 million cows); of sheep and goats from 147 million to 50 million; and hogs from 20 million to 12 million.  Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering lost by 1941.
            ... Some [kulaks] murdered officials, set the torch to the property of the collectives, and even burned their own crops and seed grain.  More refused to sow or reap, perhaps on the ´assumption that the authorities would make concessions and would in any case feed them.
            The aftermath was the Ukraine "famine" of 1932-33  ... Lurid accounts, mostly fictional, appeared in the Nazi press in Germany and in the Hearst press in the United States, often illustrated with photographs that turned out to have been taken along the Volga in 1921....  The "famine" was not, in its later stages, a result of a food shortage, despite the sharp reduction of seed grain and harvests flowing from special requisitions in the spring of 1932 which were apparently occasioned by fear of war with Japan.  Most of the victims were kulaks who had refused to sow their fields or had destroyed their crops."
Tottle, Douglas.  Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. Toronto: Progress Books, 1987, p. 93
 
            The struggle around collectivization was not limited to kulaks.  A considerable number of middle peasantry were wrongly treated as kulaks.  Instead of being won over to supporting collectivization, they resisted collectivization.  Louis Fisher observed: "In my book I quote a violently anti-Bolshevik source to the effect that the difficulty was due to the widespread passive resistance of the peasants, as a result of which “whole tracts were left unsown’ and between 20 and 50 percent of the crop deliberately allowed to rot in the fields.  I myself saw, all over the Ukraine in October 1932, huge stacks of grain which the peasants had refused to gather in and which were rotting.  This I write 'was their winter's food.  Then those same peasants starved.'  Mr. Chamberlain has falsely interpreted the famine and some Americans have accepted his interpretation.  If the famine was “man-made’ the peasants were the men who made it.”
Tottle, Douglas.  Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. Toronto: Progress Books,1987, p. 93
 
            Anna Louise Strong writes (New Republic, August 7, 1935), "There was a serious grain shortage in the 1932 harvest due chiefly to inefficiencies of the organizational period of the new large-scale mechanized farming among peasants unaccustomed to machines."...
            ... The point is that the Soviet government was engaged in a tremendous, epochal struggle to socialize the land, for what they claimed to be the eventual good of the peasants; the peasants, however, resisted and--terribly enough-- suffered.  To balk the government, they refused to harvest grain.  Therefore they did not have enough to eat.   And died.
            The real story of the famine is briefly this.  The Five-Year plan included "collectivization" of the peasantry.  Russia, overwhelmingly an agrarian country, contained in 1927 almost 25 million peasant holdings; Stalin's plan was to unite them into socialized collective farms.  The peasants would turn over implements and livestock to a farm manager, and work in common on comparatively large rather than very small holdings, assisted by tractors furnished by the state.  This was the idea.  On it, the future of socialism in the USSR depended.
            What happened was that the peasants, bitterly indignant, staged two major resistances to the immense forcible process of collectivization.  First, they slaughtered their livestock, rather than turn it over to the collectives.  It was an extraordinary and tragic event--though not so tragic as the human starvation later.  There was no organization among the peasants, no communication; yet in hundreds of villages, separated by hundreds of miles, a simultaneous destruction of animals began.  Rather than turn over their precious pigs, sheep, cattle, to the collective authorities, the peasants murdered them.
Gunther, John.  Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 527
 
[In the Introduction by Adam Ulam]
            Unable to counter force with force, the peasants turned to passive resistance.  One, and from the government's point of view the most dangerous, manifestation of it was the villagers slaughtering their livestock rather than surrendering it to the kolkhoz.  In 1928, the USSR had 32 million horses; by 1934 the figure stood at 15.5 million.  In January and February 1930 alone, 14 million head of cattle were destroyed.
            In 1930, with the harvest of 83.5 million tons, the regime extracted from the peasants 22 million and exported 5.5.  In the next year the country, largely for reasons already adduced, produced 14 million tons less [69.5], but the regime squeezed out of the... peasantry 22.8 million and exported 4.5.
Dolot, Miron.  Execution by Hunger. New York: W.W. Norton, c1985, p. ix-x
 
            A complete turnover of livestock ownership was affected by the collectivization of agriculture.  As the farmer joined the collective farm, he was expected to contribute his stock to it.  Naturally, he preferred to enter the collective farm with as few animals in his possession as possible.  Many, embittered by the policy of collectivization, slaughtered their livestock prior to their forced joining of the kolkhoz`.  Others attempted to trade or sell their animals.
Dolot, Miron.  Execution by Hunger. New York: W.W. Norton, c1985, p. 116
 
            The rich, and many abused (as well as paranoid) peasants in the winter of 1930 responded by fighting against the organized poor peasants and Party cadre; many Communists and poor peasant leaders were assassinated.  In the words of a leading anti-Soviet historian of the CPSU: "There was open war in the villages and the desperate peasants did not hesitate to kill any Communists, regarding them as natural enemies."  Other acts of violence were committed against government and Party buildings and personnel; and some riots and small-scale insurrections had to be suppressed by the Army.  In response to the massive economic sabotage which occurred over the course of a couple of years, as well as violence against the Party and its supporters in the countryside, the Party again adopted extraordinary measures--measures not seen since the Civil War period of 1918-20.
            Rich peasants were classified into three categories: (1) 'active counter-revolutionaries' who were subject to criminal proceedings, which sometimes resulted in execution; (2) 'counter-revolutionary elements' who were exiled and re-settled after the confiscation of most of their productive property; and (3) 'those who had to be drawn into socially useful labor and who were given the opportunity for re-education through socially useful production,' a category which covered most of the rich peasants.  The total percentage of those classified as kulaks was not to exceed 3-5% in grain areas and 2-3% in non-grain areas.  About 20% of kulaks were to be classified in categories (1) and (2).
            ... Economic sabotage by the rich peasants continued.  As a result of these serious problems the great promise of collectivization--the development of a modern efficient agriculture with a rapidly expanding output-- remained unfulfilled.  By 1932 'vast tracts of land were left untilled.  Famine stalked the towns and the black steppe of the Ukraine.'
Szymanski, Albert.  Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 223
 
            The kulaks, and many "middle" and even poor peasants, were implacable in their hatred of the "commissars."  Arson and killings of party agents and agitators were daily occurrences in the villages.
Deutscher, Isaac.  The Prophet Outcast. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963, p. 69
 
            While the peasants were being rapidly reduced to this state, they still took a fiercely insane plunge into dissipation.  In the first months of collectivization they slaughtered over 15 million cows and oxen, nearly 40 million goats and sheep, 7 million pigs, and 4 million horses; the slaughter went on until the nation's cattle stock was brought down to less than half what it had been.  This great shambles of meat was the main dish at the feast with which the smallholder celebrated his own funeral.  The kulak began the carnage and incited others to follow suit.  Seeing that he had lost all, that he, the nation's provider, was to be robbed of his property, he set out to rob the nation of its food supply; and rather than allow the collectivizers to drive away his cattle to communal assembly stations, he filled his own larders with the carcasses so as to let his enemies starve.  The collectivizers were at first taken aback by this form of "class warfare" and watched with helpless amazement as the "middle" presents and even the poor joined in the butchery, until the whole of rural Russia was turned into an abbatoir.
            ...an epidemic of orgiastic gluttony spread from village to village, from volost to volost, and from gubernia to gubernia.  Men, women, and children gorged themselves, vomited, and went back to the fleshpots.  Never before had so much vodka been brewed in the country--almost every hut became a distillery--and the drinking was, in the old Slav fashion, hard and deep.  As they guzzled and gulped, the kulaks illuminated the villages with bonfires they made of their own barns and stables.  People suffocated with the stench of rotting meat, with the vapors of vodka, with the smoke of their blazing possessions, and with their own despair.  Such was often the scene upon which a brigade of collectivizers descended to interrupt the grim carouse with the rattle of machine-guns; they executed on the spot or dragged away the crapulous enemies of collectivization....
Deutscher, Isaac.  The Prophet Outcast. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963, p. 118
 
            Since it was rapidly known that most of the crops and animals would be seized by the regime for its collective farms, most peasants who had such wealth ate as much as possible before it should vanish.  Even a kulak can only eat so much, so he often prepared breads from his grain, slaughtered many of his animals, and gave mad, hysterical, gargantuan feasts for family, friends, and often the whole village.  These feasts often combined elements of a potlatch, of Nero's banquet while Rome burned, and of an apocalyptic holy communion table.  To Stalin's men, however, not only the givers of the feasts but the poorest banqueters were saboteurs, knowing destroyers of the people's food supply.
            There was an enormous amount of intentional sabotage as well, especially after the collective farms had actually been formed.  Collective fields were fired, collective animals were murdered wholesale by enraged, vengeful, self-destructive peasants.  In many villages more than half the grain crops from 1929 to 1932 were destroyed.  In the whole USSR, collectivization meant the destruction by peasants of roughly 40 percent of the cattle and hogs, half the horses, and two-thirds of the sheep and goats.  The grain losses had a cumulative effect, since seed grains were also involved.  All this contributed mightily to the ghastly famine of 1933, which killed perhaps one million people in the Ukraine alone.
            Not all animals are merely economic assets to peasants.  Many are prized and beloved pets, fellow workers, and friends.  The pathos of the peasant who lost his dear horse to the kolkhoz, or who killed it to save it from the Communists, was repeated many thousand times, and often hurt as badly as starvation or arrest.
            The course of collectivization was wildly unsteady.  An often-published allegation in 1929 was that the regime planned to collectivize 20 percent of the villages during the First Five-Year Plan.  In October, 1929, after the harvest, when the big drive began, only some 4% of Russian agriculture seems to have been in any form of socialist farm.  By the end of January, 1930, almost 15 percent of the peasants of the USSR were already herded into kolkhozes.  In the next five mad weeks, more than another 40 percent of the peasants were gunned into forming collective farms--a rate far more intense than anyone had planned, and one that provoked the major peasant resistance and reprisals that Stalin and other high Communist had feared.
            On March 2, 1930, Stalin published his famous editorial in Pravda, "Dizzy with Success...," in which he blasted the Communist organizers of collective farms for using hasty, coercive, and violent methods when they should have persuaded the peasants to join voluntarily on a much slower schedule.  Stalin has often been accused by his enemies of blaming his agents for atrocities which he himself had secretly ordered.  Certainly Stalin had set forth no detailed schedules, and had made no effective administrative provisions against letting the collectivization drive get out of hand.  Yet he certainly felt himself sincerely aggrieved at the incompetence of his agents--he did not yet suggest treason as the explanation.  Stalin's dim view of the peasants had led him into authorizing the most forceful measures against them when necessary.  But his Bolshevik optimism had led him to expect that these measures would not be so invariably necessary....  He sincerely blamed others.
            Stalin's blast sent the entire collectivization drive into chaotic reverse.  By May Day, 1930, the percentage of Soviet peasants in collective farms has gone from 58 percent down to 24 percent.  Then this wild stampede out of the collectives was reversed by force.  Those who had left were made to return, and the formation of new kolkhozes was resumed.  The decollectivization of the spring of 1930 was more than made up for by the end of 1932, when roughly 60 percent of the peasants were supposed to be in collectives.
Randall, Francis.  Stalin's Russia. New York: Free Press, 1965, p. 159-161
 
            The answer turns on an ominous phenomenon that had already begun in the last quarter of 1929: the mass slaughter of livestock by peasants who were being pressured into joining collective farms....
            To various officials, both local and at the center, a logical countermeasure appeared to be to go at once to the "higher forms" of collective farm in which even small animals, poultry, and the family milk cow would be appropriated for the collective before they could be slaughtered by the peasants.
            ...the   peasants' already apparent tendency to slaughter their stock rather than turn it over to the collectives.   To strike out the Politburo commission's stipulation on retention of some animals was therefore the only course that Stalin could think of taking.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 144-145
 
            In this his [Stalin] revolutionary motivation was doubtless stiffened by a sense of desperation over incoming information on the spreading peasant slaughter of livestock.   By the beginning of 1930, for example, the number of horses in the country--and in the continuing absence of large numbers of tractors, horses were as essential to collective farming as they had been to private farming-- had sharply declined due to slaughter, disease, and lack of feeding.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 178
 
            More serious still, the livestock slaughter begun by the peasants in the last quarter of 1929 continued on a steeply rising scale in early 1930, and the regime's frantic effort to forestall it by preemptive seizure proved unavailing: it only turned the collective farm into the thrice-dreaded commune and hardened the peasant’s solemn resolve to enter it, if he must, without his livestock....
            I [a rural Communist leader] told the people that they had to join the collective, that these were Moscow's orders, and if they didn't, they would be exiled and their property taken away from them.   They all signed the paper that same night, every one of them.   Don't ask me how I felt and how they felt.   And the same night they started to do what the other villages of the USSR were doing when forced into collectives-- to kill their livestock.   According to the official account, it was during the two months of February and March 1930 that the great bulk of the slaughter of the following totals of livestock lost in the 1929-30 economic year took place: one quarter of all cattle, a third of the country's pigs, and more than a quarter of its sheep and goats.   Over the whole period of peasant collectivization (1928-33), the statistics of peasant livestock slaughter, revealed after Stalin died, are: 26.6 million head of cattle, or 46.6% of the total; 15.3 million head of horses, or 47% of the total; and 63.4 million head of sheep, or 65.1% of the total.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 182
 
            There were things the peasants could do in protest, and they were doing them.   They were slaughtering their livestock, consuming it, and giving it away rather than surrendering it to the kolkhoz.   In January and February alone 14 million head of cattle were destroyed.   In 1928 the USSR had 32 million horses; in 1934, after the regime had made some concessions on this issue and the situation improved, the figure stood at 15.5 million.   For cattle, the figures are 60 and 33.5 million; for pigs 22 and 11.5 million; for sheep 97.3 and 32.9 million.   The peasants' resistance assumed ominous proportions also in a more direct sense--riots and terrorist acts against officials were reaching epidemic proportions.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 331
 
            That many people died in the 1930s is of course certain, but by far the largest number died as a result not of the Stalin purges proper but of the collectivization of agriculture during the earlier part of the decade.   In the liquidation of the kulaks many were killed, since they desperately and often violently resisted collectivization, but a far greater number were deported, together with their families, to timber camps.   This deportation in itself would not have bought about many deaths had it not been for the deliberate slaughter by the peasants (and not only the kulaks) of an immense proportion of the country's livestock.   Together with the chaotic state of agriculture during the few years that followed the collectivization drive (aggravated moreover by some severe droughts), this produced perhaps the worst famine Russia had ever known.   It reached its peak in 1931-32 and as a result several million people died of hunger or acute undernourishment, and not just in the timber camps to which the kulaks had been deported, but in the country generally.   The consequences of the mass-slaughter of livestock were to be felt for many years after, and by the time the war broke out in 1941 meat and dairy produce were still lamentably short....
            Even long after the war, in 1959, there were many fewer cattle in the Soviet Union than there had been in 1916, before the Revolution, and today [1971] their number scarcely exceeds the 1916 figure.   This is, of course, in fantastic contrast with industrial production, which, since the Revolution, has increased about 70 times.   During the intervening period Russia had developed from a near-undeveloped country to the second-largest industrial power in the world.
Werth, Alexander.  Russia; the Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1971, p. 29
 
            The peasants believed they could force the government to stop by destroying their own livestock; the despair that could lead a peasant to kill his own animals, the equivalent in our world of burning down our own house, gives a hint of the scale of desperation; 26.6 million head of cattle were slaughtered, 15.5 million horses.   On 16 January 1930, the government decreed that kulak property could be confiscated if they destroyed livestock.
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 47
 
            And, in fact, the resistance of the kulaks became increasingly stubborn.  They refused en masse to sell to the Soviet state their grain surpluses, of which they had considerable hoards.  They resorted to terrorism against the collective farmers, against Party workers and government officials in the countryside, and burned down collective farms and state granaries.
Commission of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Ed. History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks): Short Course. Moscow: FLPH, 1939, p. 292
 
            Furthermore, the kulaks instigated the peasants to slaughter their animals before entering the collective farms, arguing that "they will be taken away anyhow."
Commission of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Ed. History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks): Short Course. Moscow: FLPH, 1939, p. 307
 
            The middle peasants, feeling themselves condemned to a merger that was repugnant to them, in many instances slaughtered, in 1929-1930, their cattle and horses, sheep and pigs, rather than bring them into the common stock.   So widespread was the outcry that the central committees were driven to instruct Stalin to issue his manifesto entitled "Dizzy with Success," in which the zeal of the government agents was rebuked; the voluntary character of membership of the collectives was emphasized; permission to withdraw was conceded; and proper consideration of the varying stock brought in by different members was insisted on.   Nevertheless the animals continued to be slaughtered and the total membership to fall off.   Partial failures of crop in 1931 and 1932 deepened the discontent.
            Footnote: The magnitude of this holocaust of live-stock is seldom realized.   The following table shows that in one year, 1929-1930, more than 60 million animals were slaughtered, being one quarter of the whole; and in the course of the next three years 1931-1933, over 80 million more.   In 1933 the total livestock was less than four ninths of the total in 1929.
 
            This colossal slaughter, repeated in successive years– has been subsequently excused as having been due to lack of wheat or oats for fodder, owing to government exactions.   But why did they slaughter sheep and pigs, and even goats?...
            The whole organized movement for an independent Ukraine was, we are told, from 1928 onwards, directed towards stimulating the peasants to resist collectivization.   The forms taken by this resistance, it has been frankly stated by one of the Ukrainian emigres, "have greatly varied.   At first there were mass disturbances in the kolkhosi, or else the communist officials and their agents were killed; but later a system of passive resistance was favored, which aimed at the systematic frustration of the Bolshevik plans for the sowing and gathering of the harvest....
            The peasants are passive resisters everywhere; but in Ukrainia the resistance has assumed the character of a national struggle.   The opposition of the Ukrainian population caused the failure of the grain-storing plan of 1931, and still more so, that of 1932.  The catastrophe of 1932 was the hardest blow that the Soviet Ukraine had to face since the famine of 1921-1922.   The autumn and spring sowing campaigns both failed.   Whole tracks were left unsown.   In addition when the crop was being gathered last year, it happened that, in many areas, especially in the South, 20, 40 and even 50% was left in the fields and was either not collected at all or was ruined in the threshing."
            Towards the close of 1932, when the extent of this continuous deliberate sabotage had become manifest; when the two persistent rains of the summer had ruined the prospect of an abundant harvest, even where the agricultural operations had been loyally carried out; and when it was realized that the reserves had been specially depleted owing to the measures taken in order to stave off a Japanese invasion, the food situation again looked desperate.   There is reason to believe that those in authority did not know where to turn.   Finally, in January 1933, Stalin announced an administrative campaign, designed to reach the nerve-centers of every one of the 225,000 collective farms; a campaign which for boldness of conception and vigor in execution, as well as in the magnitude of its operations, appears to us unparalleled in the peace-time annals of any government.  The desperate situation had to be saved.   And, aided fortuitously by good crops in 1933 and 1934, it was saved.   How this was accomplished will appear in the following pages.
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 189-191
 
            In 1930, the Soviet government was driven in its desperate quest for capital to export commodities badly needed at home and to issue paper currency, according to the official figures, six times the amount provided for in the Five-Year Plan.
Levine, Isaac Don.  Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 382
 
            During 1930, the country was stripped of its elementary food reserves, which were dumped abroad in the frenzied search for capital.  At the end of the year, the meager gold reserves of the state were being exported.
Levine, Isaac Don.   Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 390
 
            The peasants refused to be accommodating and preferred to slaughter their beasts rather than to deliver them up to the kolkhosi.  From the new arrivals we learned that both bread and meat were lacking in the towns, especially in Leningrad and Moscow.
Ciliga, Ante,  The Russian Enigma. London: Ink Links, 1979, p. 187
 
            Draft forces declined drastically directly or indirectly as a result of collectivization.  In response to collectivization and the socialization of their property in the kolkhosi, many peasants sold or slaughtered their livestock, for a variety of reasons: as a protest against collectivization; because they did not want to surrender their animals to the new collective farms without compensation; because of local officials' unrealistic promises about mechanization.  During the initial campaign of 1930, these actions most affected animals used for consumption, especially cattle and pigs.  Afterward, when most peasants had already been collectivized and subjected to the procurement demands of 1931, the number of draft animals, especially horses, declined rapidly.  Animals were the immediate victims of shortages in 1930-33 since starving peasants had no choice but to feed themselves first from the dwindling reserves, and because peasants frequently expressed their resentment of collectivization by neglect and abusive treatment of socialized livestock.  Also, as discussed above, the main grain forage for horses, oats, suffered substantial losses from rust in 1932.
            As a result, the number of horses declined drastically by 1932.  Soviet factories were producing tractors in the early 1930s, but not in sufficient quantity to compensate for the losses of horses.
Tauger, Mark.  Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1933 Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2001, p. 21
 
            On the other hand, in some actions peasants clearly expressed outrage and aimed to take revenge on the regime by reducing the harvest.  The most obvious such actions were arson attacks on kolkhoz buildings and fields.  In the Middle Volga, Nizhni Novgorod, Ivanovo, and Northern regions, arson destroyed thousands of hectares of unharvested grain and hundreds of tons of harvested grain, in addition to hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests, cut timber, housing, and fuel.  In some places peasants attacked officials and other peasants involved in harvest work and destroyed harvest machinery, according to the OGPU, with the goal of hindering the harvest.
Tauger, Mark.  Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1933 Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2001, p. 31
 
            I do not mean to imply that all the OGPU reports, such as those on agriculture cited above, were falsified.  Most of those descriptions can be confirmed in other archival and published sources.  Many sources, for example, document efforts by peasants to dismantle kolkhosi and restore traditional farming practices during the process of collectivization in 1929-1930 and repeatedly thereafter; the OGPU reports on this cited above confirm these reports and provide important details.
Tauger, Mark.   Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1933 Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2001, p. 41
 
            According to the research reports insofar as they deal with the kulaks, the rich peasants, there were 381,000 families, i.e., about 1.8 million people sent into exile.  A small number of these people were sentenced to serve terms in labour camps or colonies.  But what gave rise to these punishments?
            The rich Russian peasant, the kulak, had subjected poor peasants for hundreds of years to boundless oppression and unbridled exploitation.  Of the 120 million peasants in 1927, the 10 million kulaks lived in luxury while the remaining 110 million lived in poverty.  Before the revolution they had lived in the most abject poverty.  The wealth of the kulaks was based on the badly-paid labour of the poor peasants.  When the poor peasants began to join together in collective farms, the main source of kulak wealth disappeared.  But the kulaks did not give up. They tried to restore exploitation by use of famine.  Groups of armed kulaks attacked collective farms, killed poor peasants and party workers, set fire to the fields and killed working animals.  By provoking starvation among poor peasants, the kulaks were trying to secure the perpetuation of poverty and their own positions of power.  The events which ensued were not those expected by these murderers.  This time the poor peasants had the support of the revolution and proved to be stronger than the kulaks, who were defeated, imprisoned and sent into exile or sentenced to terms in labour camps
            Of the 10 million kulaks, 1.8 million were exiled or convicted. There may have been injustices perpetrated in the course of this massive class struggle in the Soviet countryside, a struggle involving 120 million people.  But can we blame the poor and the oppressed, in their struggle for a life worth living, in their struggle to ensure their children would not be starving illiterates, for not being sufficiently 'civilised' or showing enough 'mercy' in their courts?  Can one point the finger at people who for hundreds of years had no access to the advances made by civilisation for not being civilised?  And tell us, when was the kulak exploiter civilised or merciful in his dealings with poor peasants during the years and years of endless exploitation.
Sousa, Mario.  Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union, 15 June 1998.
 
DESPITE EVERYTHING INDUSTRIALIZATION MADE RAPID PROGRESS
 
            But in spite of everything industrialization made rapid progress.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 168
 
            I have lived through 15 years of incredibly rapid progress which have almost wiped out all memory of the past.  To dwellers in the Soviet Union, the pre-war period seems already prehistoric, and even 1921 seems a century ago.  We have seen in these 15 years a more than tenfold increase in industrial production; we have seen a leap in farming from the 16th century into the 21st.  We have lived through a series of epochs sharply distinct from each other in the regulations affecting our daily existence, but all these periods have been characterized by one continuous fury of energetic endeavor.
Strong, Anna Louise.  This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 116
 
            At the Congress of 1929 a speaker submitted from the platform the First Five-Year Plan, and as he indicated on a large map of the Union the places where new power centers were to be erected, small electric lights sprang out one after another.  As he touched on the planned foundries, mines, oil wells, textile factories, lights of different colors illustrated each enterprise.  With the speaker finally pointed to the glowing map and said softly and as if incidentally, "This is what we're fighting for," a storm of enthusiasm swept through the audience.  Tears came into the speaker's eyes.
            What must have been Stalin's emotions when he had the map lit up once more four years later!  In every spot where a lamp glowed, there was now real light.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 156
 
            Rapid development of the nation could only come through seizure of natural resources for the benefit of all.
Davis, Jerome.   Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 32
 
            Planning on such a scale is enormously complex, yet it has enabled a country to decide what kind of country it wants to be.  In a period of less than a quarter of a century, Russia has Leaped from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth century.
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 46
 
            The first five-year plan was a resounding success.  Production indexes in mining, steel, and chemicals increased severalfold in four years.  Factories and mines materialized everywhere, and the country was proud of the new giant dams, plants, and railroads whose construction contrasted so sharply with the industrial doldrums of the Great Depression in the West.  Unemployment disappeared, and although real wages actually fell (another casualty of capital accumulation), education, opportunity, and mobility were available to everyone willing to work.  In the lives of the rapidly increasing urban masses, on the factory wall charts of production, and in the rapidly growing network of educational institutions, everything was onward and upward.
Getty & Naumov,  The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 43
 
            Now the real facts are these.  The most poverty-stricken state in Europe (in spite of its vast size), ignorant, fettered, ill-treated, starved, bleeding, and shattered, has, in 17 years, become the greatest industrial country in Europe, and the second in the world--and the most civilized of all, in every respect.  Such progress, which is unequalled in the history of the world, has been achieved--and this too is unequaled--by the sole resources of the country of which every other country has been the enemy.  And it has been achieved by the power of an idea, an idea which was directly opposed to the ideas of the rulers of all other national societies--the idea of fraternal and scientific justice.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York:  The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 214
 
            Industrial workers were a fast-changing group under Stalin.  Between 1926 and 1939, the number of urban dwellers increased by about 29.6 million.  Where there had been 14.6 million industrial workers and members of their families in 1913, there were 33.7 million in 1939.  The number of workers doubled between 1928 and 1932 alone, and increased from 3,124,000 in the first of those years to 8,290,000 in 1940.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 165
 
 
TIKHON AND CHURCH ACCEPTED SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
 
            After the issue in 1922 of the famous manifesto of the Patriarch Tikhon there was a diminution of the struggle.  In that manifesto the first post-revolution Patriarch recognized the regime, was reconciled with it, and ordered the priests of the Russian Orthodox Church to include the Government in their prayers, as they had included the Tsar and the royal family in the past.  Needless to say, the clergy of all confessions were disfranchised.  The law separating Church and State, and the exclusion of the Church from public life, remained in force; but on the whole the Church was left in peace from 1922 to 1928.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 168
 
OUTLINES OF THE SHAKHTY, INDUSTRIAL PARTY & METRO-VICKERS TRIALS
 
            In 1928 came the trial of the engineers of the Shakhty mining area in the Donetz Basin.  There's no need to go into the details of the trial.  These engineers had never lost touch with their former chiefs, the directors and large shareholders of the Donetz mines, who had fled abroad during the revolution.  It was natural that those former Russian captains of industry should have many connections with influential circles in their countries of asylum, particularly France and England.  From these former owners the engineers received instructions in regard to sabotage, and especially requests to flood certain mines to preserve them for the former owners.  That these things had been done was fully confirmed at the trial; other charges remained unproved.  But the trial showed clearly that part of an important group of educated Russians, the engineers, were absolutely opposed to the Soviet regime.
            This was not the first and not the last such trial in this period of Russian history.  Two years later came the case against the illegal Industrial Party.  It showed plainly the lines along which the thoughts of the leading technical experts in Russia were running.  The chief defendant in that case was a professor Ramzin, a prominent engineer who had played an important part during the First World War as an organizer of the heating industries and also as leader of the bourgeois Democratic Party.  Later, with a number of leading engineers, he had entered the Soviet service.  These engineers, with Ramzin at their head, were firmly convinced of the disastrousness of Stalin's policy.  In order to ward off chaos and to form a government, they had founded the illegal Industrial Party.  Their ideology was that of the Technocrats, who hold that in our day the state should be ruled and administered by trained technicians--a sort of dictatorship of the engineers....  Ramzin had formed a secret Cabinet of engineers for the future, in which he was to be Prime Minister.  They wanted to arrest the coming catastrophe.  Rykov, Stalin's more moderate opponent, who had already been removed from the Office of Prime Minister, was to become Prime Minister again after the fall of Stalin, but to yield the office to Ramzin after a period of transition.  What was fatal for Ramzin and his colleagues was that they all considered it essential to enter into relations with persons abroad.  His Industrial Party actually tried to get in touch with the British and French Governments, but only came into contact with the intelligence services of those countries, which showed great caution.  These contacts, however, led to the discovery of the plot.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 173
 
            In a...trial in Moscow in April 1933, engineers "of the old school" were accused of espionage and sabotage on behalf of Great Britain.  This "Metro-Vickers" trial was the latest in a series of open proceedings against engineers and technicians of the old regime that included the Shakhty trial of 1928, and the trial of the Industrial Party in 1930....  Several of the defendants were released on bail before the trial.  No death sentences were handed out, and two of the defendants received no punishment at all.
Getty & Naumov,  The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 110
 
            The trial of the Metro-Vickers engineers and their Russian colleagues in January 1933 revealed (though only in some of the defendants) not only cases of mild bribery and the systematic collection of information coming within the legal definition of espionage, but also a negligence that was hardly to be distinguished from sabotage, which was visited by the court with sentences of discriminating moderation.   There promptly followed a renewed campaign of incitement by the emigres of Prague and Paris, with which was apparently connected the illegal and secret entry into the USSR, across its western land frontier during 1934, of more than 100 emissaries, bearing arms (and some of them bombs), nearly all of whom were, without publicity, promptly arrested, and held for interrogation.   It will be recalled that it was during this period that Hitler was proclaiming his intention of annexing the Ukraine, and of securing forced concessions of much-needed minerals from the Urals--a threat which, it might be argued, implied that he was aware of there being allies within the USSR who would help him to overcome Stalin's government, just as he later became aware of confederates in Spain among the army officers bent on overthrowing the Republic Government, and installing a Fascist regime in alliance with the Fascist Powers.
            In December 1934 the head Bolshevik official in Leningrad (Kirov) was assassinated by a dismissed employee, who may have acted independently out of personal revenge, but who was discovered to have secret connections with conspiratorial circles of ever-widening range.   The Government reaction to this murder was to hurry on the trial, condemnation, and summary execution of the hundred or more persons above referred to, who were undoubtedly guilty of illegal entry and inexcusably bearing arms and bombs, although it was apparently not proved that they had any connection with Kirov's assassination or the conspiracies associated therewith.
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 926
 
            The Shakhty trial case was the first signal.  The Shakhty case showed that the Party organizations and the trade unions lacked revolutionary vigilance.  It showed that our business managers were disgracefully backward in regard to technique, that some of the old engineers and technicians, who work without being controlled, slide more easily towards the path of wrecking activities, especially as they were constantly besieged by "offers" from our enemies abroad....
Stalin, Joseph.  Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 123
 
            The first major political trial to have the effect of seriously aggravating the internal political situation in the Soviet Union was the so-called Shakhty case.  The defendants were engineers and technicians in the coal industry of the Donetz basin.  They were accused of "wrecking," deliberately causing explosions in the mines, and maintaining criminal ties with the former mine owners, as well as less serious crimes, such as buying unnecessary imported equipment, violating safety procedures and labor laws, incorrectly laying out new mines, and so on.
            At the trial some of the defendants confessed their guilt, but many denied it or confessed to only some of the charges.  The court acquitted four of the 53 defendants, gave suspended sentences to four, and prison terms of one to three years to 10.  Most of the defendants were given four to 10 years.  Eleven were condemned to be shot, and five of them were executed in July 1928.  The other six were granted clemency by the All-Union Central Executive Committee.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 258
 
            From November 25 to December 7, 1930, a new political trial was held in Moscow, this time an open one.  A group of prominent technical specialists were accused of wrecking and counter-revolutionary activities as members of an alleged Industrial Party....
            Their alleged gains were to organize wrecking, diversionary actions, sabotage, and espionage and to prepare for the intervention of the Western powers and the overthrow of the Soviet government.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 263
 
            At a trial the defendants confessed their guilt and willingly gave the most improbable detailed testimony about their wrecking and spying, their connections with foreign embassies in Moscow, even with Poincare, the president of France.  A wave of meetings swept the country, with the speakers demanding that the leaders of the Industrial Party be shot.  The court obligingly sentenced most of them to death, but a decree of the Central Executive Committee granted clemency, reducing the sentences to various terms of imprisonment.  [The president of France denied any involvement and] It is significant that the complete text of Poincare's declaration was published in Pravda and entered in the court record.  Evidently this was done to show the court's objectivity....  The bulk of Soviet citizens regarded Poincare's declaration as proof of a real plot.
            In March 1931, a few months after the trial of the Industrial Party, another open political trial was held in Moscow, that of an alleged Union Bureau of the Central Committee of the Menshevik Party.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 264
 
            The "Union Bureau" was accused of wrecking, especially in the drafting of plans for economic development.  If the indictment is to be believed, the accused systematically lowered all the draft plans, trying thereby to slow down the development of Soviet industry and agriculture.  The Mensheviks were also supposed to have formed a secret block with the Industrial Party and the Toiling Peasant Party to prepare for armed intervention from without and insurrection from within.  Each contracting party was assigned a certain function: the Industrial Party was to conduct preliminary negotiations with representatives of the countries that were supposed to inspire or take part in armed intervention, to organize flying brigades of engineers for diversionary and terrorist actions, and to arrange for military conspiracies with certain individuals in the high command of the Red Army; the Toiling Peasant Party was to organize peasant revolts, supply the rebels with weapons and munitions, and create disturbances in Red Army units; and the Union Bureau was to prepare a citizens' guard in the cities, which could seize government institutions and provide the initial support for a new counter-revolutionary government.
            At the trial all the defendants [of the Union Bureau] confessed, giving highly detailed accounts of their wrecking activities.  As prosecutor, Krylenko tried at one session to demonstrate the objectivity of the court by reading a special declaration from the emigre leaders of the Menshevik Party.  They [the emigre leaders] categorically denied any connection between the Menshevik Party and the defendants, who had quit the party in the early twenties or had never belonged to it at all....  In any case, none of the accused had ever been in touch with the emissaries of the Menshevik Party.  After this declaration had been read, the accused, at the suggestion of the presiding judge, refuted it and reaffirmed their guilt.  A few days later the court sentenced all 14 defendants to terms of imprisonment ranging from 5 to 10 years.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 265-266
 
            The subsequent fate of these people [scholars in the humanities] worked out in different ways.  Many of them were freed after a few years and went on to brilliant scholarly careers; such was the case for Tarle, Lorkh, Vinogradov, and Talanov.  In the '40s and '50s they headed the most important scientific institutions in the Soviet Union, enjoyed great respect, and were awarded the highest honors.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 288
 
            Eleven death sentences were announced [in the Shakhty case], of which six were commuted because of the prisoners' co-operation.  [Conquests distorts]
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 154
 
 
STALIN WARRED AGAINST ISLAM FORCING WOMEN TO WEAR VEILS [BURQA]
 
            There came also a sharp conflict with Islam; for Stalin now attempted to make an end of the old forms of existence even in that fanatically Mohammedan region.  Particularly sanguinary, and accompanied by many murders, was the campaign for the equality of rights of women.  Women who allowed themselves to be persuaded by the communist agitators to throw away the veil were murdered almost without exception by their fellow villagers.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 177
 
BUKHARIN WAS WEAK AND UNBALANCED
 
            Bukharin had a special love of animals.  His flat was filled with caged birds, and there were more in his country residence, a simple wooden datcha near Moscow.  No greater pleasure could be offered him than the gift of a bird of a species of which he had no specimen.  But he was also a sufferer from neurasthenia.  His irresolution and infinite softheartedness--he would never have accepted an office in which he must sign death warrants--did not prevent him from suddenly making inflammatory speeches in the party or at meetings of the Politburo and demanding the death penalty.  He was obviously weak and unbalanced.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 180
 
            ...But both [Bukharin & Zinoviev] were arrogant.  Bukharin comported himself with great self-confidence, though he was extremely unstable politically.
            ...Lenin valued Bukharin, but he placed him last among the three candidates to the Politburo, after me and Kalinin....  I have said that Bukharin was very muddleheaded.  Not only Lenin but others too recognized this.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 116
 
            I didn't take part in the early years, but after 1921, after the transition to the NEP, I sat almost next to Trotsky at the Politburo.  I sat next to Lenin, with Trotsky in front of me.  Trotsky was the first and constant opponent of Lenin.  But he was flexible at that time and worked as part of the team.  That's why Lenin still valued him.  But after Lenin, of the four Politburo members only Stalin remained.  Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev deviated.  And Bukharin, the third candidate to the Politburo, also deviated....  You see, he [Lenin] used to say that Bukharin was a wonderful person, a party favorite, but he was devilishly unstable in politics.  In politics!  And politics was the most important thing!  Struggle was everywhere, relentless struggle.  We were pressed first from one side, then from another.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 125
 
 
BUKHARIN WELCOMED NEP FROM THE START
 
            Both Rykov and Bukharin had enthusiastically welcomed Lenin's policy of 1922 in favor of the peasants.  It may be suspected that Bukharin would have been glad to see Russia slowly develop in this way into a bourgeois democracy.  At the time of the New Economic Policy he had not only welcomed that policy in a series of articles, but written again and again of the 'strong and capable farmer' as the destined guarantor of Russia's economic progress.  In one of his articles which later was brought up against him, he had advised the farmers, in those very words, to 'Enrich yourselves!'
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 180
 
            The social struggle to come was reflected inside the Party. Bukharin, at the time Stalin's main ally in the leadership, stressed the importance of advancing socialism using market relations.  In 1925, he called on peasants to `enrich themselves', and admitted that `we shall move forward at a snail's pace'.  Stalin, in a June 2, 1925 letter to him, wrote: `the slogan enrich yourself is not ours, it is wrong ....  Our slogan is socialist accumulation'.
Martens, Ludo.   Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27  2600, p. 55 [p. 49 on the NET]
 
            There was disagreement on which way to go.  Bukharin and Rykov, based on their practical experiences, believed Lenin's NEP should be pursued.  In April 1925, at a meeting of Moscow militants, Bukharin made his famous declaration according to which "collectivization is not the high road leading to socialism."  He said that the economy of the peasants should be developed, even proposing that the peasants should be told to enrich themselves.
Bazhanov, Boris.  Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, c1990, p. 119
 
            There was therefore a peculiar realism and consistency in Bukharin's conclusion that the party must allow the wealthy farmer to grow wealthier.  The purpose of NEP, he argued, was to use private enterprise in Russia's reconstruction; but private enterprise could not be expected to play its part unless it obtained its rewards.  The overriding interest of socialism lay in increasing national wealth; and that interest would not be harmed if groups and individuals grew wealthier together with the nation--on the contrary, by filling their own coffers they would enrich society as a whole.  This was the reasoning which induced Bukharin to address to the peasants his famous appeal: "Enrich yourselves!"
            What Bukharin overlooked was that the wealthy peasant sought to enrich himself at the expense of other classes: he paid low wages to the laborers, squeezed the poor farmers, bought up the land, and tried to charge them and the urban workers higher prices for food.  He dodged taxation and sought to pass its burden on to the poor.  He strove to accumulate capital at the expense of the state and thereby slowed down accumulation within the socialist sector of the economy.
Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Unarmed. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959, p. 233
 
            But Bukharin's slogan [Enrich Yourselves] was obviously a revelation of his deep-seated right-wing deviation, and he was not alone.   A whole school around him was trying to substitute state capitalism for socialism, to perpetuate the NEP and worse.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 250
 
            Lenin had branded Bukharin as a champion of the profiteers, Nepmen, and kulaks.
Commission of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Ed. History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks): Short Course. Moscow: FLPH, 1939, p. 262
 
BUKHARIN OPPOSED STALIN’S MAJOR PROGRAMS
 
            Neither of these two leaders [Bukharin and Rykov] could agree with the radical policy which Stalin had introduced in 1928; it was against their whole mentality and temperament.... Moreover, Bukharin was one of those who did not believe in the possibility of establishing a socialist economic system in the Soviet Union with capitalism still ruling in the rest of the world.  He was also against accelerated industrialization, and especially against agricultural collectivization and the persecution of the big farmers.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 181
 
            Regardless of his intentions, Bukharin's platform, like Trotsky's earlier, would have undermined the construction of socialism.  If the NEP had continued for "many decades," capitalism would have become dominant.  Without industrialization the Soviet Union would, as Stalin said and subsequent events demonstrated, have been crushed in war; the continuation of individual farms, with their kulak "nests," would in time have undermined proletarian rule.  When we examine the platforms of Trotsky & Bukharin, the strength of Stalin, with his stubborn practicality and firm socialist perspective, becomes increasingly obvious.
            Once again, Stalin, as General Secretary, gave the answer of the majority of the Central Committee to the new opposition:
            “Those who support Comrade Bukharin's group hope to persuade the class enemy that he should voluntarily forgo his interests and voluntarily surrender his grain surplus.  They hope that the kulak, who has grown, who is able to avoid giving grain by offering other products in its place and who conceals his grain surplus, they hope that this same kulak will give us his grain surplus voluntarily at our collection prices.  Have they lost their senses?  Is it not obvious that they do not understand the mechanism of the class struggle, that they do not know what classes mean?  Do they know with what derision the kulak's treat our people and the Soviet Government at village meetings called to assist the grain collections?  Have they heard of facts like this, for instance: one of our agitators in Kazakhstan for two hours tried to persuade the holders of grain to surrender that grain for supplying the country.  At the end of the talk a kulak stepped forth with his pipe in his mouth and said: "Do us a little dance, young fellow, and I will let you have a couple of poods of grain"....  Try to persuade people like that.  Class is class, comrades.  You cannot get away from that truth.”
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 63
 
            Stalin and Bukharin differed profoundly over many aspects of socialism.  Bukharin wanted to go slowly with the peasants, and delay the ending of the NEP; he was against subordinating the interests of the working-class movements in other countries to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; he also held that the Revolution need not take place everywhere by armed uprising and force....  Stalin believed his socialism should be the pattern for all countries; Bukharin did not.  Stalin wanted more and more centralization of power in the USSR “in the name of world Revolution”; but Bukharin's views were diametrically opposed to his on this point.
            Stalin...made it extremely difficult for Buryto to put forward their program; nevertheless they succeeded in publishing its main points: (1) Not to end NEP but to continue it for at least ten years; (2) to limit the compulsory sale of farm produce to the State and allow free market prices; (3) To curtail the State monopoly of trade; (4) While pursuing industrialization, to remember that the Revolution was made for the ordinary man, and that, therefore, far more energy must be given to light industry--socialism is made by happy, well-fed men, not starving beggars; (5) To halt the compulsory collectivization of agriculture and the destruction of kulaks.
Tokaev, Grigori. Comrade X. London: Harvill Press, 1956, p. 86
 
            Stalin and Bukharin clashed every time they met.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 261
 
BUKHARIN OPPOSED THE IDEA OF SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY
 
            There was therefore formed, under Bukharin's and Rykov's leadership, a small opposition group, which became known as the Right-wing Opposition.... The party congress had long-ago raised the formula 'It is possible to build up Socialism even in a single country' to a principal of the party which no one must question.  Bukharin and Rykov had questioned it; they were therefore undeniably heretics.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 182
 
 
PUNISHMENT OF THE RIGHT OPPOSITION WAS TOO LIGHT
 
            The members of the Right-wing Opposition, however, were not severely dealt with.  Rykov had to resign as head of the Government, but remained People's Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs.  Bukharin, too, was not banished from Moscow.  After a time he began to write again in newspapers, and later he became once more editor of Pravda.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 184
 
STALIN’S SUPPORTERS TOOK THE OPPOSITION TOO LIGHTLY
 
            All the hostile elements outside the party, all the old parties, thinking that their opportunity had come [with the Rightist defeat], now took up the struggle again from abroad; and in Russia, especially among the remote national minorities and among the intellectuals, secret groups were formed to work to bring down the regime.  It was remarkable thing that in spite of this the Stalinist group did not consider that the defeated opposition in the party--with the exception, perhaps of the open Trotskyists--would attempt a conspiracy.  Actually it was precisely in these years that the conspiracy started.  There had already been opposition, discussion in the party, personal conflicts, and attempts to bring down one person or another.  But Stalin and his supporters had no idea that the opposition now defeated would actually proceed to a new and real struggle and to a conspiracy, an attempt to bring down the regime.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 184
 
            ...[Stalin also said]... we Bolsheviks must always keep our powder dry.
            Naturally, these survivals cannot but be a favorable ground for a revival of the ideology of the defeated anti-Leninist groups in the minds of individual members of our party.  Add to this the not very high theoretical level of the majority of our party members, the inadequate ideological work of the party bodies, and the fact that our party functionaries are overburdened with purely practical work, which deprives them of the opportunity of augmenting their theoretical knowledge, and you will understand the origins of the confusion on a number of questions of Leninism that exists in the minds of individual party members, a confusion which not infrequently penetrates into our press and helps to revive the survivals of the ideology of the defeated anti-Leninist groups.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 131
 
 
STALIN LOSES VOTES AT TIMES
 
            In 1932 events seem to be coming to a climax, with Stalin's most loyal supporters at their wits' ends.  There was a dramatic meeting in the Politburo that must have taken place about the end of 1932.  The actual date is not known, but there's no question that at that meeting Stalin suffered a painful reverse.  The most credible account of the meeting is as follows:
            The situation at the moment was under discussion.  A dramatic speech was made by Voroshilov, who was then Commander-in-Chief in the army....  Voroshilov is said to have given, in the utmost agitation, a report of a disastrous state of feeling in the Army; he is said to have thrown whole packets of soldiers letters on the table and demanded that something should at once be done.  Stalin's proposals-- their nature is not known--were rejected,....
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 188
 
            In a letter of June 8, 1929, Voroshilov said to Ordzhonikidze, "...But in reality Bukharin begged everyone not to appoint him to the Commissariat of Education and proposed and then insisted on the job as administrator of science and technology.  I supported him in that, as did several other people, and because we were a united majority we pushed it through (against Koba).”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 149
 
            In a September 9th 1929 letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “Poliudov absolutely must be removed from the Commissariat of Transport.  This is the same nut-case that kept confusing the Central Committee and Transport with new railroad constructions and has nothing communist about him (nothing left).  Now he's sitting at Transport as head of (new) construction.  Come on, what kind of builder is he?  He's the reason construction of the new tracks between Siberia and European Russia hasn't moved an inch forward.  Get that anti-party man out of Transport.  He's been systematically violating the Central Committee's resolutions and also systematically mocking the Politburo.”
            [Footnote]: on December 30, 1929, the Orgburo relieved Poliudov of his work in the Commissariat of Transport and confirmed him as a member of the Soviet trade delegation in Berlin.  On January 5, 1930, approximately a week later, the Politburo reversed this decision and kept Poliudov at Transport.  On March 5, 1930, he was given editorial work in connection with the training of executives and in September, he was appointed director of the Belorussian-Baltic Railway.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 179
 
            In a September 1930 letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “I propose Kaganovich from the Worker-Peasant Inspection as the candidate for head of civil aviation.”
            [Footnote] On October 15, 1930, Goltsman was confirmed by the Politburo as head of the Civil Aviation Association.
                        [Stalin lost out.  Some dictator--ED.]
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 208
 
            ...Until the spring of 1937 no Central Committee member had ever been arrested; until 1938 no Politburo member had fallen....  In one of the very few glimpses we have of actual discussions in the Politburo, Stalin in 1930 had been outvoted by a Politburo majority that took a more aggressive stance than he did on punishment of oppositionists.  It may have been about this time, as Kaganovich later recalled, that younger members of the Central Committee asked Stalin why he was not tougher on the opposition.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 582
 
            Within a few weeks after the 13th Congress Pravda published Stalin's report....  Stalin's report also contained an attack on Zinoviev, though without naming him:
            "It is often said that we have the dictatorship of the party.  I recall that in one of our resolutions, even, it seems, a resolution of the 12th Congress, such an expression was allowed to pass, through an oversight of course.  Apparently some comrades think that we have a dictatorship of the party and not of the working class.  But that is nonsense, comrades."
            Of course Stalin knew perfectly well that Zinoviev in his political report to the 12th Congress had put forward the concept of the dictatorship of the party and had sought to substantiate it.  It was not at all through an oversight that the phrase was included in the unanimously adopted resolution of the Congress.
            Zinoviev and Kamenev, reacting quite sharply to Stalin's thrust, insisted that a conference of the core leadership of the party be convened.  The result was a gathering of 25 Central Committee members, including all members of the Politburo.  Stalin's arguments against the "dictatorship of the party" were rejected by a majority vote, and an article by Zinoviev reaffirming the concept was approved for publication in the Aug. 23, 1924 issue of Pravda as a statement by the editors.  At this point Stalin demonstratively offered to resign, but the offer was refused.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 144
 
(R. W. Davies)
            In my own work on the early 1930s, it has become increasingly clear that members of the Politburo argued with "Koba" (Stalin), particularly on issues where they had a special competence.  In economic affairs, there is strong evidence that opposition developed within the Politburo to the course of collectivization sanctioned by Stalin.  At one meeting nearly all of the members may have opposed him.
Nove, Alec, Ed.  The Stalin Phenomenon. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993, p. 43
 
            However, there is now abundant evidence that Stalin's lieutenants represented and spoke for distinct policy alternatives.  The policy positions are well documented in studies covering the years 1920-50.  The studies frequently portray a Stalin who preferred not to decide important questions unless forced.  His role seems to have been that of moderator or referee, choosing from among numerous policy possibilities, although R.W. Davies is right to emphasize the differences in this condition at different periods.  Many things went on without him or despite his wishes and plans.
Nove, Alec, Ed.   The Stalin Phenomenon. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993, p. 119
 
            But I was glad to learn later, when I read Serebrovsky's [the Russian mining expert who hired Littlepage] book on the gold industry published in 1936, that Joseph Stalin also evaluated the importance of our prospectors correctly, and was probably undesirous of giving them up at this time.  It will be recalled that Stalin said in 1927, according to this book, that prospectors must be retained in the gold industry and would be very useful.
            Why, then, were they given up in 1929?  I suspect that Stalin couldn't insist upon his own way in the matter at that time.  He was not nearly so strong a figure then as he is now [1937], and was still battling with some of the Communist leaders about certain theories.  It seemed logical to give up the prospectors if one also gave up the kulaks and similar groups.  I judge from Serebrovsky's book that Stalin surrendered a point to his Communist opponents in this case.
Littlepage, John D.  In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 69
 
            ...Yezhov was attacked by other Politburo members despite Stalin's support of him and that Yezhov's replacement, Beria, was forced upon Stalin (whose candidate was Malenkov),...
Getty and Manning.  Stalinist Terror. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 5
 
            Yezhov's primary crime, however, consisted in the fact that he had not informed Stalin of his actions.
            In the fall of 1938, when the question arose of removing Yezhov from his position at NKVD, Stalin proposed the candidacy of Malenkov as the new Commissar of Internal Affairs.  But the majority of the Politburo recommended Beria for the post.
Getty and Manning.  Stalinist Terror. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 38
 
            The Russian historian Boris Starkov has recently written that in Politburo meetings during August 1938 Zhdanov and Andreev stressed the poor quality of party cadres promoted during the mass repressions.  Soon Kaganovich and Mikoyan joined them "against Yezhov."  Then in the fall, according to Starkov, Stalin proposed replacing Yezhov with Malenkov.  But the rest of the Politburo blocked the Gensec and insisted on Beria, though why is not clear.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 131
 
            Stalin treated the 'Ryutin Platform' as the worst embodiment of everything hostile to his rule.  Over the rest of the decade it was represented again and again as the great focus of opposition plotting and villainy.  When Ryutin was rearrested Stalin made a strong personal effort to have him sentenced to death.
            This was a crucial moment, the first serious dispute between Stalin and his closest personal clique on the one hand, and those members of the Politburo who had supported him out of conviction but were not ready to agree to intra-party killings.  In Ryutin's case (and in several other lesser instances including that of Stalin's own personal secretary of Nazaretyan), Kirov, with Ordjonikidze, Kuibyshev, Kossior, Rudzutak and, apparently, Kalinin, formed a solid majority against execution.  Ryutin was sentenced only to 10 years imprisonment.  Another case, a few months later, involved the Old Bolshevik Smirnov and others who had never been associated with any opposition.  Stalin commented: 'Of course, only enemies could say that to remove Stalin would not affect matters.'   This time, again, his attempt to shoot the offenders was blocked by a Politburo majority.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 162
 
            It [a Soviet article of the Khrushchev.] represents Stalin attempting at this time to purge the Armenian Communist Nazaretyan, but being unable to do so because Ordjonikidze defended him and Stalin knew that "Kirov & Kuibyshev would also speak out in the Politburo on the same lines."  For the first time, in fact, Stalin was faced with powerful opposition from his own allies.
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 25
 
            [In 1931] Koba suggested to the Instantsia that Voroshilov should be given a three months' leave to rest and "cure his nerves"....  The Instantsia rejected Koba's suggestion with a majority of one.  Kalinin voted with Voroshilov against the proposed leave....  It's said that Koba was much upset by the vote... but if so he didn't show it.  His self-control is amazing.  This, I think, is his strength and the secret of his victories....
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich.  Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 158
 
            Because there were often police agents among the oppositionists, the Ryutin initiative soon became known to Stalin.  The case went first to the party control commission, which referred the case to the Politburo, where Stalin demanded Ryutin's head.  But he was overruled by the majority.
Laqueur, Walter. Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations. New York: Scribner's, c1990, p. 5. 74
 
            It must be noted that the strength of the 'call to personality' by no means indicated that no major differences of opinion existed at the center of Soviet society, or that Stalin had absolute personal power.
Szymanski, Albert.  Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 255
 
            One of the readers of the Riutin Appeal was Stalin.   It aroused him to such fury that the expulsions and Riutin's arrest could not appease him.   He confronted the Politburo with the demand that it sanction Riutin's execution as a terrorist.   Amid silence around the Politburo table, Kirov spoke up saying: "Can't do that.   Riutin is not a lost man but an errant one.   Devil only knows who had a hand in this letter.   People won't understand us."   Stalin, perhaps sensing the majority's opposition to his demand, let the matter rest, and Riutin got off with a 10-year term--for the present.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 212
 
            However, Stalin realized that the Politburo could easily unite to dismiss him.   Rykov, the Rightist Premiere, did not believe in his plans, and now, Kalinin too was wavering.   Stalin knew he could be outvoted, even overthrown.   The new archives reveal how openly Kalinin argued with Stalin.
            [Footnote]: They frequently disagreed with him, certainly on small matters such as a discussion about the Kremlin military school....   Having defeated Bukharin in 1929, Stalin wanted to appoint him Education Commissar but as Voroshilov told Sergo in a letter, "Because we were a united majority, we pushed it through (against Koba)."
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 55
 
            He [Zinoviev] exaggerated the power of the General Secretary.  A simple vote in the Politburo, chaired by Kamenev, could still restrain Stalin;   
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 215
 
            There were, it was said, grave dissensions within the Politburo when the penalties to be applied were discussed.  Stalin had insisted on the execution of the principal prisoner, Ryutin; the majority of the Politburo were opposed to it, probably considering the charges insufficiently proved, and hesitating to open yet another chapter of bloody repression in the inside history of the Communist Party.
Ciliga, Ante, The Russian Enigma. London: Ink Links, 1979, p. 293
 
MOST RUSSIAN PEASANTS BY NATURE OPPOSE PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND
 
            Owing to this historical development it has always been the deepest conviction of the Russian peasant that private ownership of land is a sin.  'The earth belongs to the dear God, and to take possession of it is a grave sin.'
            ...There were individual peasants who wanted to become independent.  But in not a few cases they were murdered by their fellow-villagers; for the peasants regarded private ownership as a betrayal of their primeval community, based purely on custom, the mir.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 192
 
            The hatred felt for the kulak was the factor in the rural community not only linking the middle layers of the village, but also the poorest layers and the day-laborers, the immediate victims of the kulak.  The latter farmed the land of the poorest and took the day-laborers into his service.  The anti-kulak feelings of the latter element weighed heavily in the issue of the struggle between kulaks and bureaucracy, especially in those regions where community life was little developed and where kulak capitalism had made great strides and as a result the resistance to the bureaucratic collectivization was particularly bitter (the Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus and Siberia).
Ciliga, Ante, The Russian Enigma. London: Ink Links, 1979, p. 101
 
STALIN BEST REPRESENTED THE PARTY LOWER LEVEL LEADERS
 
            Thus the original Bolshevik leaders not only came from the upper social classes, but included people who have long lived abroad....
            Stalin was one of the few real men of the people who had succeeded in making their way into the party leadership before the revolution.  It was thus no mere coincidence that he was dominated by the same instinct and so became the leader of the tacitly rebellious mass of the subordinate leaders and the representative in the party of their aspirations and aims.  It was not surprising, therefore, that although at the beginning of his conflicts with his opponents Stalin was not yet in possession of power, he ended nevertheless with the majority on his side at all the party conferences and congresses.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 202
 
COMMUNISTS LED A VERY RIGOROUS, SPARTAN LIFE
 
            ...another division faded within the official class, the division between party members and the so-called nonparty, which until lately and been sharply defined; it had existed since the revolution.  The Communists had been morally and in power and prestige far above their nonparty colleagues; but they had also been subject to a far more rigid discipline.  The party had interfered extensively even in their private life.  They had been materially at a disadvantage as compared with the others.  A Communist had had to take a sort of vow of poverty, and there was a 'party maximum'.  An engineer, for instance, who did not belong to the party could keep the whole of his income and spend it as he liked.  Not so the Communist.  Not only had he a party tax to pay, but his income was limited.  He was paid his salary in full, like the nonparty man, but he had to hand over to the party whatever he earned above the party maximum.  Even what he had left he could not spend as he liked; he must not live in 'bourgeois' style, but was restricted to a Spartan existence. 
            Periodical 'purges' took place, and every Communist had to face them.  The whole of the workers, whether party members are not, could take part, and everyone was free to criticize.  Then it would be found that one of the Communists had too many suits, another had a carpet in his dwelling, a third fed too well, and the wife of the fourth wore some simple article of jewelry.  All these things were 'unproletarian', and might bring a Communist into serious trouble.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 213
 
STALIN’S WIFE SHOWED NO SIGNS OF VIOLENT DEATH
 
            It must be said, however, that as she lay in state Madame Alleluieva's corpse showed not the slightest trace of a violent death.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: St. Maples Press, 1952, p. 228
 
            Years later, in 1919, Stalin again met Nadya.  They were soon married and live happily together.  On November 8, 1932, she died of peritonitis following an operation for appendicitis.  In her memory Stalin erected an impressive memorial designed by a famous woman sculptor, Mukhino.  It is a rough shaft of white marble with the lovely head of his wife hewn out of the rock.... The statute is located at the Novo Devitchi (New Maiden) cemetery, which is at the site of the most beautiful convent in Moscow....
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 10
 
            "I was a bad husband.  I had no time to take her to the movies," Stalin said.
            People started a rumor that he had killed her.  I had never seen him cry, but at Allilueva's coffin I saw tears running down his cheeks....
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 173
 
            And yet, according to my aunts (my mother's sister, Anna Redens, and her brother's wife, Yevgenia Alliluyeva), Father was more shattered than anyone else, for he fully realized that this was a challenge and a protest against him.  He couldn't even force himself to go to the funeral.  He was a broken, drained man.  He had considered Mama his most faithful, devoted friend.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Only One Year. New York: Harper & Row, 1969, p. 146
 
            A death of Nadezhda Allilueva was not, in all probability, murder, and it did not lead quickly to a morbid deterioration of Stalin's dealings with his political associates.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 168
 
            Moreover, Trotsky, respected in the West as a presumed expert on Soviet politics and surely a man with a motive to blacken Stalin, did not accuse Stalin of arranging this murder.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 169
 
STALIN IS SHAKEN AND DEPRESSED BY HIS WIFE’S DEATH
 
            Later, when I was grown up, I was told that my father had been terribly shaken.  He was shaken because he couldn't understand why it had happened.  What did it mean?  Why had such a terrible stab in the back been dealt to him, of all people?...
            The first few days he was in a state of shock.  He said he didn't want to go on living either.  I was told this by Uncle Pavel's widow, who with Aunt Anna stayed with us day and night.  My father was in such a state that they were afraid to leave him alone.  He had sporadic fits of rage.  The reason is that my mother had left him a letter....  It was a terrible letter, full of reproaches and accusations.  It wasn't purely personal; it was partly political as well.  After reading it, it would have been possible for my father to think that my mother had been on his side only outwardly, but that in her heart she had been on the side of those who were in political opposition to him.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana.  Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 112
 
            He was shocked and incensed.  At the civil leavetaking ceremony he went up to the coffin for a moment.  Suddenly he pushed it away from him, turned on his heel and left.  He didn't even go to the funeral....
            It was a longtime before my father regained his equilibrium.  He never went to visit her grave at Novo-Devichy.  Not even once.  He couldn't.  He thought my mother had left him as his personal enemy.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana.  Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 113
 
            His daughter Svetlana asserted that he [Stalin] did not join in the funeral procession.  The fact remains that many people saw him walking behind the coffin.
Radzinsky, Edvard.  Stalin. New York: Doubleday, c1996, p. 289
 
            ...I remember this well.  Stalin approached her coffin at the moment of farewell, his eyes filled with tears.  And he said so sadly, "I didn't save her."  I heard that and remembered it: "I didn't save her."
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 174
 
            My father moved to a different apartment because he couldn't bear to stay in the one my mother had died in.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana.  Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 122
 
            My mother's death was a dreadful, crushing blow, and it destroyed his faith in his friends and people in general.  He had always considered my mother his closest and most faithful friend.  He viewed her death as a betrayal and a stab in the back.  He was embittered by it.  Probably whenever he saw any member of her family it was a painful reminder of her.  So he started avoiding them.   
Alliluyeva, Svetlana.  Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 136
 
            Whatever the truth on this point might have been, Stalin was obviously overcome by the death of his second wife.  After appearing at the elaborate funeral ceremonies upon which he had himself insisted, he retired to Gorinka and shut himself up there for a week, refusing to receive anyone--even Molotov.  He made only one exception to this rule.  Lisa Khazanova.
            This circumstance naturally set tongues wagging.  It was for many a confirmation of the story that my Aunt Nadia had committed suicide because of a love affair between Stalin and her best friend.  This I never believed myself for a number of reasons--first of all because I knew how great my uncle's affection for Nadia had been.  Another reason for discounting the scandal was that Lisa Khazanova had a fiance, Division Commander Ivan Lepa of the Far East Army, a Latvian from Riga.  Finally there was Stalin's evident great grief at Nadejda's death.  All of these indications led me to accept the more charitable interpretation of Stalin's choice of a consoler, which attributed it solely to his desire to talk with his late wife's closest friend and to learn from her any last wishes which Nadia, if she had really intended to take her own life, might have expressed to Lisa Khazanova.
Svanidze, Budu. My Uncle, Joseph Stalin. New York: Putnam, c1953, p. 98
 
            The death of his wife caused untold feelings in Stalin.  He followed her casket to the Novodevichi cemetery all the way on foot.  Thereafter, for a long time, Stalin at night used to visit her grave at the cemetery.  Guards saw him talking sometimes to her while smoking his pipe, one after another....
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 9
 
            Stalin walked beside it [his wife’s casket], wearing no gloves in the freezing cold, clutching at the side of the coffin with tears running down his cheeks.
            Stalin was weeping.   Vasili left Artyom and ran forward toward Stalin and "hung on to his father, saying, "Papa don't cry!"
            "I'd never seen Stalin cry before," said Molotov, "but as he stood there beside the coffin, the tears ran down his cheeks."
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 107-108
 
            That Joseph was shaken by her [his first wife] death, though, is beyond dispute.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 71
 
            Indisputably Stalin was deeply shaken.  “I was a bad husband,’ he admitted to Molotov: “I never had time to take her to the cinema.’
            ...Within a few weeks he was blaming her directly and worrying about the fate of their children.  The attempt on his own life by young Yakov [Stalin’s son] came back to mind, and at a dinner with his friends he blurted out: “How could Nadya, who so much condemned Yakov for such a step, go off and shoot herself?  She did a very bad thing: she made a cripple out of me.’
            ...Steadily he came to take a less charitable view of Nadya’s suicide:
            “The children grew up without their mother; that was the trouble.  Nannies, governesses, however ideal they might have been,could not replace the mother for them.  Ah, Nadya, Nadya, what did you do and how much I and the children needed you!”
            ...For some weeks there were worries that he too might do away with himself.  He was pale and inattentive to his daily needs.  His characteristic earthy sense of humor disappeared.  It was weeks before he started to pull himself around.  Seeking companionship, he turned to his Politburo associates.  Kirov was a particular chum.
            ...The Soviet Union’s ruler was a lonely widower.  According to Kaganovich, he was never the same man again. 
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 294-295
 
            They later said that he changed a lot after Nadya‘s death.  But the same works emphasize what made him exceptional: will power, clarity of vision, endurance, and courage.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 297
 
            'It was a terrible shock to my father.  He said to his sisters-in-law, "I can't go on living after this," and became deeply depressed.  That frightened my two aunts, Anna and Eugenia, who stayed on for two weeks in our apartment because they were afraid to leave him alone.  They tried to make things easier for him, not holding him responsible, trying to console and support him-- "We all feel terrible about it."  Eugenia would take his side against Nadya.  He was in a shambles, he was knocked sideways.  Saying that he didn't want to live anymore was something they had not heard before.  They were shaken by that.
Richardson, Rosamond.   Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 129
 
            'He wanted to resign from the General Secretaryship,  He felt he could not continue.  But the politburo said, "Oh no no no, you have to stay!"  Molotov and others near to him saw to it that he carried on working and that he wouldn't resign.  They convinced him that he would be all right. 
            'For my father it was a matter of trust betrayed.  For this very strong, unsentimental man, trust was extremely important.  When somebody betrayed trust, be it a colleague in business, or in the family, it really hit him.  He had trusted her, and what did he get?  A stab in the back; that was how he saw it.  He couldn't get over that.  He felt deceived and betrayed.
Richardson, Rosamond.  Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 130
 
            "Father felt betrayed by Mother's suicide: he kept asking Eugenia what was missing in him: he could not understand it."
Richardson, Rosamond.   Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 133
 
            "What was more disturbing to me was that my father never visited my mother's grave--it was in Moscow, after all.  He could not excuse her for what she did.  It completely shocked him, he was bouleverse.  He never visited it, never once, not even towards the end of his life when he began to talk about her for the first time, and to 'forgive' her."
Richardson, Rosamond.   Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 202
 
STALIN IS KIND, DECENT, FORGIVING AND NOT REVENGEFUL
 
            All foreign visitors to Stalin, without exception, describe him as an attractive personality.  The American Ambassador, Joseph Davis, has written of him that he gives the impression that any child would be glad to snuggle up to him.  An American journalist who was expelled from Russia, and who since then has been in the front rank of the haters of Russia, makes an exception for Stalin.  He, too, describes him as full of charm, as a man radiating energy, but full of good nature.
            All this is countered by the venomous descriptions given by Trotsky.  Many of Stalin's other adversaries also speak of his revengefulness.  He has steadily pursued, they say, all who at any time offered any sort of opposition to him.
            This judgment is certainly too harsh.  An inquiry into the facts supplies no evidence that Stalin is more revengeful than other people.  It is very easy to start such a legend: mountain races in general and Caucasians in particular are described as revengeful....  But the shoemaker's son [Stalin] does not seem to share that quality.  Stalin and Marshal Tukhachevsky, for instance, were more or less rivals in the Polish War, and Stalin could not endure Tukhachevsky's aristocratic manners; but he did nothing to interfere with the marshal's career.  Tukhachevsky not only attained the highest rank in the Russian army, but was also proposed by Stalin as Deputy People's Commissar for War, the so-called Head of the Army, responsible if War should come for taking over the supreme command.
            There is another incident that shows that Stalin himself can pass over an insult.  There was an old Bolshevik, a man of great learning, who had been living for many years in England as an emigre.  After the revolution he became one of the leading Soviet diplomats, an Ambassador, and finally a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.....  He was very outspoken by nature, and could be rather too direct.  The fearful excesses of the collectivization campaign became more than he could stand, and in a talk with Stalin he grew decidedly rude.  He brought up everything for which Stalin could possibly be blamed, and roundly condemned his policy.  Stalin replied very quietly: 'you may, of course, be right; still, I think I am right.' The old professor came to no harm.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 233
 
            There is, in fact, nothing to show that Stalin is particularly revengeful....
            There have been many public instances, or instances that have become known to the public, of Stalin's good nature.  Petitions addressed to Stalin have often been handled with the utmost goodwill.  In the great trials that will be referred to later, it was common knowledge that Stalin exerted himself to save the lives of some of the defendants, against the opposition of the other members of the Politburo; this applied especially to Radek, and also to Christian Rakovsky and Gregory Sokolnikov.  In the end these three were not executed.
            It was a tactical move when, at the end of 1938, Stalin caused the maximum period of imprisonment to be extended from 10 to 25 years....  Stalin explained that the lengthening of the sentences that could be imposed would make it possible to restrict the death sentences and ultimately to do away with them entirely.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 234
 
            And now that I was a candidate member of the Politburo, I had an opportunity to watch Stalin in action at close quarters, regularly.  My admiration for him continued to grow.  I was spell-bound by the patience and sympathy for others that he showed at Politburo meetings in the middle 30s.
            I can think of various examples of what I mean, but I'll single out just one.  It was a fairly unusual case, involving a young diplomat who had gone to some Latin American country with one of our trade missions and let himself be compromised by the local press.  He was brought in to testify during a Politburo meeting and was obviously very embarrassed and upset.  Stalin opened the discussion.
            "Tell me, please, everything that happened.  Don't hold anything back."
            The young diplomat explained that just after he arrived in the Latin American country, he went to a restaurant to get something to eat.  "I was shown to a table, and I ordered dinner.  A man came up and sat down at my table.  He asked me if I were from Russia.  I said, yes, I was.  Then he started asking all sorts of questions--what did I come to buy, had I served in the Army, did I know how to shoot?  I told him that I'd been in the cavalry, that I wasn't a bad shot--things like that.  Then, to my horror, an article appeared in the newspaper the very next day.  It was full of all kinds of nonsense about how I was a real Caucasian cowboy and a crack shot; it was also full of lies about why I'd come, what I was going to buy, what prices I was going to pay, and so on.  Shortly afterward the embassy told me I'd better return to the Homeland and report to you.  That's what happened.  I only ask you to take into account that I committed this blunder out of inexperience, and without any malicious intent."
            I felt very sorry for this young man.  He had obviously been a victim of his own naivete.  Everyone squirmed in his seat and whispered to his neighbor--we were all waiting to see what would happen.
            Suddenly Stalin said, "Well, as far is I can see, a trusting fellow was taken advantage of by a bunch of rascals.  Is there anything more to it than that?"
            "No."
            "Then the incident is closed."  Stalin looked the young diplomat in the eye and said, "See that you're more careful in the future."  The poor fellow just sat there with his mouth open as the meeting was adjourned.  He was so surprised by his good fortune that he couldn't move.  Then he grabbed his briefcase and scurried out.
            I was very impressed by the simplicity and compassion with which Stalin had handled the case.  So was everyone else.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 50
 
            ...here was a man not of this world, laughing and joking like the rest of us!  After a while I began to admire him not only as a political leader who had no equal, but simply as another human being.
Talbott, Strobe, Trans. and Ed. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston: Little Brown, c1970, p. 62
 
            Yet it is a mistake to see in this some sort of grand plan for terror....  The cases of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov, Yenukidze, Postyshev, Yagoda, and especially Bukharin were hardly handled in such a way as to suggest a plan.  In each of these cases, there were false starts and abrupt "soft" but apparently "final" resolutions that had to be contradicted later when the defendants' fates were otherwise decided.  Had there been a plan, it would have been much easier and more convincing not to have let them off the hook so repeatedly and publicly.
Getty & Naumov,  The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 578
 
            In each case the final fatal texts had to explain previous embarrassing contrary decisions.  An authoritative 1935 text exonerated Zinoviev and Kamenev of Kirov's murder; the next year's discourse maintained that, after all, they were guilty.  Yenukidze was expelled and then readmitted, both apparently on Stalin's initiative and amid considerable confusion, then finally arrested a year later.  The Politburo criticized Postyshev, fired him, re-hired him, denounced his critics, fired him again.  In January 1938 it decided to keep him in the Party and in days later expelled him.  Yagoda was kept on at the NKVD long after he had been discredited, then removed but casually kept on the central committee.  After several months he was kicked off the central committee and arrested in a sudden panic about his being at liberty "even one day."  Bukharin was denounced at the 1936 trial and then publicly cleared in the press.  He was denounced again in December but saved by Stalin at a plenum that remained secret for decades.  Finally, in February 1937 he was expelled and arrested in a flurry of paperwork that raises enormous doubts about who wanted what.  He was brought to trial an entire year later, and more than six months after he began to confess to the monstrous charges brought against him.  Why all this delay and confusion?
            ...Our reading of the Central Committee plena from the 1930s, along with other documents, has convinced us that the usual explanations for support for the terror--that Stalin secured cooperation from his senior officials through fear, cunning, intimidation, and blackmail, and by forcing them to become accomplices--are in themselves inadequate.  Not only are there no signs that Stalin was feared in the early phase when the terror was engendered, but there is no evidence of any reluctance or protest among senior party leaders about the terror at any point.  Instead, there seems to have been a broad consensus at various stages on the need for repression of particular groups and on cleansing the party of unreliable elements.  At several key junctures Central Committee members advocated repressive measures that defied and went beyond those prescribed by Stalin's closest [supporters]....
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 579
 
            Vasilevsky had a very interesting encounter with Stalin.  Alexander Mikhailovich told me about it.  Stalin asked him to come over to his dacha and started questioning him about his parents.  His father was a village priest, and Vasilevsky had been out of touch with him for a long time.  "One shouldn't forget one's parents," said Stalin.  "And it will be a long time before you pay off your debt to me!"  He then walked over to his safe and took out a stack of money order receipts.  It turns out that Stalin mailed money orders to Vasilevsky's father regularly.  The old man believed the money came from his own son.  "I couldn't find any words.  I was just stunned," said Vasilevsky.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 303
 
            My "watchdog" Klimov was also taken off the job in the autumn of 1943, when I started at the university.  I begged my father to abolish this kind of protection because it made me feel ashamed in front of the rest of the students.  To my surprise, my father understood and agreed.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana.  Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 186
 
            There was only one person who didn't like her [Granny] and that was my governess Lydia Georgiyevna, who tried to get her fired and later paid for it.  My father thought highly of "Granny" and had nothing but respect for her.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana.  Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 226
 
  He [Stalin] had fought his political opponents without mercy or compunction, but had repeatedly shown himself willing to except their flimsy promises to mend their ways.  On one occasion he had reminded Zinoviev and Kamenev that expulsion from the Party was worse than death for a Communist.  When, after long forbearance, he had applied this extreme measure to them and others, he had rescinded it at their request.  Kirov, perhaps his closest friend, had encouraged Stalin's generosity, which made the murder of Kirov all the harder to forgive....
Duranty, Walter.  Story of Soviet Russia.  Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 212
 
            Hoxha, then fresh from leading the Albanian revolution, meeting Stalin in the 1940s, had the same impression: a "modest, kindly, wise man" who "loved the Soviet people wholeheartedly...his heart and mind worked for them."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 124
 
            ...Stalin, however, was not an egocentric individualist--as Khrushchev implies--but a disciplined communist who, like all such communists, subordinated personal interest to those of the Party.  In 1937, before he had met Stalin, U.S. Ambassador Joseph Davies reported to the Secretary of State: "He is generally considered to be a clean-living, modest, retiring, single-purposed man, with a one-track mine, devoted to communism and the elevation of the proletariat."  On meeting Stalin these impressions were reinforced: "His demeanor is kindly, his manner almost deprecatingly simple, his personality and expression of reserve strength and poise very marked....  He gave me the impression of being sincerely modest."  "Free of affectation and mannerisms," wrote Marshall Zhukov, "he won the heart of everyone he talked to.  His visitors were invariably struck by his candor and his uninhibited manner of speaking, and impressed by his ability to express his thoughts clearly, his inborn analytical turn of mind, his erudition and retentive memory."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 124
 
 
            The other thought is that to me, a small cog in the machinery of negotiations, he [Stalin] was always amiable, friendly, and considerate, even more so than Molotov or Vyshinsky, with whom I had most to do.  True, I belonged to the opposite side in the talks, and common decency demanded a certain amount of courtesy; he could be very sharp with his own interpreters.  His recognition of obvious attempts to do the work as well as possible, which he acknowledged more than once, and of the smoothness of the talks, thanks to my being able to think in Russian as well as speak it, indicated the existence of a spark of human feeling.  And there was more than a spark in his intelligence and skill as a negotiator....
Birse, Arthur Herbert.  Memoirs of an Interpreter. New York: Coward-McCann, 1967, p. 212
 
            Undoubtedly the members of the [Soviet] Delegation were friendly and Churchill thought it was typical of all Russians, except the leaders, though he thought Stalin the most human of them all.  He said he had liked Vyshinsky, but Molotov was only a first-class civil servant who obeyed orders.
Birse, Arthur Herbert.  Memoirs of an Interpreter. New York: Coward-McCann, 1967, p. 223
 
            ... there is the case at the Zinovievite Central Committee member Kuklin, serving a sentence of 10 years' imprisonment.  When assured that Kuklin, a sick man, was at the point of death, Stalin permitted his immediate release.
            There are several such stories.  But the one most obviously due to a caprice was his sudden release from a labor camp in 1940 of the Georgian (Communist Kavtaradze, who was brought straight from prison to Stalin, and after a friendly conversation was immediately made Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs--Stalin adding at the end of the interview, in a gloomier tone, 'Still, you planned to kill me.'  What can this signify about Stalin?  That he knew Kavtaradze to be innocent and just made his last remark as some sort of justification for his earlier treatment?  Or that he still thought Kavtaradze to be guilty, and was explaining, even to himself, the extraordinary extent of his forgiveness?
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 205
 
            An even more extraordinary example is that of another Georgian, Kavtaradze.  He had been Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars in Georgia from 1921 to 1922, and had fallen with the rest of the Georgian leadership during Stalin's clash with them before and after Lenin's death.  He was expelled from the party as a Trotskyite in 1927, and was among those not readmitted during the following years.  He was arrested and sentenced in connection with the Ryutin affair, and is reported in Maryinsk and Kolyma labor camps in 1936, thoroughly disillusioned.  In 1940, he was still in camp.  One day the commandant called him, and he was sent off to Moscow.  Much to his surprise, he was taken directly in his prison clothes to see Stalin, who greeted him affably, asking him where he had been all these years.  He was at once rehabilitated, and sent to the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, where he shortly became Assistant People's Commissar.  After the war, he was ambassador to Rumania for a time.  In his biography, as given in various Soviet reference books, a bare mention is made of the 13 year gap in his Party membership between December 1927 and December 1940!
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 68
 
            All are familiar with the demands for the good of the people by Stalin.  But not too many are familiar with the goodness, humility, and dedication of Stalin.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 26
 
            Going with our car among the ruins [of Stalingrad], we somehow collided with another car with a woman chauffeur in a Red Army uniform.  The chauffeur, seeing that her car crashed into that of Stalin, got out, started to cry.  Stalin came up to her, made her feel at ease by saying:
            Don't cry...our car is bullet-proofed, and you will be able to fix your car soon.
            Soon, the militia came to the scene, ready to pounce on the unlucky lady chauffeur.  Stalin intervened:
            Do not touch her.  She is not to blame.
            We then went on our way.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 45
 
            After returning to Moscow, Stalin went to the steam bath which was built for him, since it was the only cure that seemed to have helped Stalin with his feet.  The steam bath was locked.  Stalin waited and the poor bodyguard who was not supposed to be there, but thinking that Stalin was away, just went in.  When he heard Stalin's voice, he practically jumped wet into his uniform, apologizing.  Stalin told Dubinin [the bodyguard] that it's fine, stay awhile and wished him:
            May you have a light steam bath, Comrade Dubinin!
            That is the kind of leader we had.  He made everyone feel at ease.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 54
 
            We were returning to Moscow, a very heavy rain was falling, and Stalin saw on the highway some collective farmers standing, waiting for a bus.  He made us stop the cars and told us to shuttle all the people to their village, so that they would not get soaked to the skin.  But the collective farmers did not move when they were asked to by Sokolov.  Stalin himself got out of the car, went over to the collective workers, explained and invited them to the cars.  They talked about problems, about the last war and the deaths of loved ones.  Stalin sighed and said:
            I also lost my son....
            Hearing about the wonderful event of riding with comrade Stalin, in the village square, more than 100 people gathered, hoping to also get such a privilege... but we were almost out of gas and we nearly did not make it to Moscow.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 56
 
            At the Kremlin, Stalin, on his nightly walk before going back to work in his office, asked the guard Melnikov:
            How many hours do you stand here?
            Every six hours I stand three here without moving.
            When do you receive new uniforms?
            Once per year, comrade Stalin.
            How much do you get paid?
            600 rubles, comrade Stalin.
            That is not much at all....
            After this, all the guards received new uniforms twice a year and a raise in their pay.  Stalin was always concerned about others.  He always demanded that prices on goods be lowered.  He always thought about these problems.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 57
 
            Met face-to-face, Stalin is not by any means the unattractive personality which some writers have depicted.  Indeed, he has genuine charm when he chooses to exercise it.
            I scarcely noticed the pockmarks which some American writers have emphasized.  The most attractive feature of Stalin's face is his fine dark eyes, which light up when he is interested.  They did not impress me either as "gentle," as one observer thought, or "cold as steel," as others have remarked, but they are alert, expressive and intelligent.  His manner is calm, slow and self-assured, and when he wishes to warm up during a conversation he seems at times actually benign.
Smith, Walter Bedell. My Three Years in Moscow. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1950, p. 59
 
            "I do not know Stalin sufficiently well to have a strong personal opinion of him," Dmitrievsky writes.  "But I do know that all those who have come in contact with him intimately hold that he is a very decent man.  He lives like an ascetic.  He works like a giant."
Levine, Isaac Don.  Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 315
 
            In the fall of 1927, an American trade-union delegation, consisting of half a dozen liberal labor leaders, a dozen advisors holding various Ph.D. degrees, and a secretarial staff of college graduates, altogether about 25 men and women, went to the Soviet Union to conduct an inquiry into the entire system of government there.  An unusual interview was arranged with Stalin.  It lasted about five hours.
            "I have never seen a politician so anxious to be explicit, so little inclined to be cryptic or laconic, as the proverbially taciturn head of the most powerful party in the world," writes Anne O'Hare McCormick, who was in Moscow at the time and who was present at the session.
            ...The rudeness Lenin complained of is probably the roughness of his steamroller methods.  His manner as he greeted us was affable and self-possessed, almost gentle; and in contrast to the carelessness affected by many Bolsheviks, he was trim and well-groomed in his neat khaki uniform....
            He was the steadiest and most assured of all the Soviet leaders I saw.  In the thick of the last bitter battle with the opposition he was unworried, under the tedious ordeal of the long pauses in a translated interview he was not fidgety....  His smile was frequent and genuine, and it was the reserved smile of the East rather than the open smile of the West....  Lacking brilliance, Stalin gives an impression of craft and suppleness.  He is the shrewd manipulator, quite obstinate, ruthless without passion.  Trotsky is the agitator, bold and vivid, and Stalin is the organizer, composed and wary....  The Bolshevik chief answered questions like a teacher.  He was bland and patient."
            ...Stalin in the course of the lengthy interview showed, as far as the unpublished minutes are concerned, his unmistakable superiority to the entire American delegation.
            ...But when Stalin turned the tables and interviewed his guests, the conference assumed an illuminating aspect.  It was not only that the replies he received were a pathetic commentary upon the intellectual paucity of the Americans who endeavored to enlighten him.  Stalin's probing questions, which follow, show a stubborn and honest desire to penetrate and understand the American scene.
Levine, Isaac Don.  Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 341-343
 
            One cannot live in the shadow of Stalin's legend without coming under its spell.  My pulse, I am sure, was high [as I prepared to interview him].  No sooner, however, had I stepped across the threshold than diffidence and nervousness fell away.  Stalin met me at the door and shook hands, smiling.  There was a certain shyness in his smile, and the handshake was not perfunctory.  He was remarkably unlike the scowling, self-important dictator of popular imagination.  His every gesture was a rebuke to the thousand little bureaucrats who had inflicted their puny greatness on me in these Russian years.
            We followed him to the extreme end of a long conference table, where he motioned us affably to chairs and sat down himself.  His personal interpreter, a young man with bushy black hair, was there.  Stalin pushed over a box of cigarettes, took one himself, and we all lighted up.  The standardized photographs of Stalin show him smoking a pipe and I had a feeling of faint disappointment that he was not measuring up to the clichEs, even in this regard. 
            In my letter the previous day, I had specifically asked for "only two minutes" and I had assumed that the interview was to be no more than a brief formality to enable at least one reporter to testify that Stalin was still fully alive.  But I saw him stretch out his feet and lean back in leisurely fashion as though we had hours ahead of us.  With that natural gesture of relaxing in his chair, Stalin turned a straitjacketed interview into an unhurried social call.  I realized that there would be no time limitations.
            And here was I, unprepared for this generosity, with only one question ready--the superfluous question whether he was alive or not!  I cursed myself inwardly for a bungler not to have mapped out an organized campaign of interrogation that would probe to the very center of the Soviet situation.
            "Tell Mr. Lyons," Stalin addressed his interpreter, "that I'm sorry I could not receive him before.  I saw his letters, but I cannot easily find the opportunity for interviews."
            ...To this day I do not know precisely why, among the score of permanent correspondents in his capital--many of them less outspoken in their criticism of the regime and more amenable to the discipline of the Press Department--he had selected me for this first interview since his rise to supreme power.  Any one of a dozen other correspondents would have served Moscow's purpose just as well.  But unquestionably my letters over more than a year played a part in the selection.
            "Comrade Stalin," I began the interview, "May I quote you to the effect that you have not been assassinated?"
            He laughed....such close range, there was not a trace of the Napoleonic quality one sees in his self-conscious camera or oil portraits.  The shaggy mustache, framing a sensual mouth and a smile nearly as full of teeth as Teddy Roosevelt's, gave his swarthy face a friendly, almost benignant look.
            "Yes, you may," he said,
            The room in which we sat was large, high-ceilinged, and furnished simply almost to bareness.  Its only decorations were framed pictures of Karl Marx, Lenin, and Engels --there was no portrait of Stalin:...  Stalin wore the familiar olive -drab jacket with stand-up collar, belted at the waist, and his trousers were tucked into high black boots.  The negligent austerity of his attire was of a piece with that room.
            For over an hour I asked questions and answered them.  Again and again the talk debouched into argument; I was aware afterwards, though not at the time, that I did not hesitate to interrupt him: another proof of the essential simplicity of a powerful ruler who could put a reporter so completely at his ease.  The "ethics of bourgeois journalism" came in for considerable discussion; though at the moment he had sufficient cause to be indignant with that journalism, there was no bitterness in Stalin's comments.
            I asked him about Soviet-American relations, about the chances for world revolution, the progress of the Piatiletka [Five Year Plan], and such other obvious matters as came to my mind.  He listened without the slightest sign of impatience to my labored Russian and repeated sentences slowly when he thought I might not have grasped the meaning.  Often I reached a linguistic impasse from which Charlie and the other interpreter retrieved me.  Stalin never once spoke impetuously, never once resorted to mere cleverness or evasion.  Sometimes he thought for many seconds before he replied, his forehead furrowed in lines of concentration, and the answers came in a strangely stigmatized array:...
            "I don't want in any way to interfere with what you may write," Stalin said, "but I would be interested to see what you make of this interview."
            "On the contrary," I said, "I am anxious that you read my dispatch before I send it.  Above all things I should hate to misrepresent anything you have said.  The only trouble is that this is Saturday night and the Sunday papers go to press early.  Getting the story to you and back again may make me miss the early editions."
            "Well, then, never mind."  He waved the matter aside.
            I thought quickly.
            "But if I could get a Latin-script typewriter," I said, "I could write my story right here and now and show it to you immediately."
            Stalin thought that was a good idea.  With Charlie and myself at his heels, he walked into the adjoining room, where several secretaries were standing around chatting and asked whether they couldn't dig up a Latin typewriter.  The relation between Stalin and his immediate employees was entirely human, without so much as a touch of restraint.  To them, obviously, he was not the formidable dictator of one-sixth of the earth's surface but a friendly, comradely boss.  They were deferential without being obsequious.
            The typewriter was found and I was installed in a small room to do my stuff.  I could hear Stalin suggesting that they send in tea and sandwiches as he returned to the conference room.  I was nearly an hour in writing the dispatch.  Several times Stalin peeked in, and inquired whether we were comfortable and had everything we needed.
            Voroshilov was still with Stalin when I took in the typewritten sheets.  Both leaders smiled as the dispatch was translated, particularly at my detailed description of Stalin's looks and manner, Voroshilov's boyish exuberance and the references to Stalin's family.  Four or five times Stalin interjected minor corrections and suggestions, none of them of a political character.  That finished, I said:
            "Would you be good enough to sign this copy for me?  It may simplify matters in getting the story by the censors.  You know, there is a censorship on news here."
            He wrote: "More or less correct, J. Stalin."  That autographed copy is still in my possession.
            Then I wrote a few words of thanks for his patience on one of the carbon copies, signed it, and left it with him.
            The unthinkable interview was over.  The two minutes had stretched to nearly two hours.  As we left the building and hailed a droshky, I said to Charlie:
            "I like that man!"
            Charlie agreed, but in a lower emotional key.
            But in the years that followed, with ample time to reassay my impressions, I did not change my mind about his essential reaction to Stalin's personality.  Even at moments when the behavior of his regime seemed to me most hateful, I retain that liking for Stalin as a human being.  I could understand thereafter the devotion to the man held by certain writers of my acquaintance who had come to know him personally.  There was little in common between the infallible defied Stalin fostered as a political myth and the Stalin I had met.  In the simplicity which impressed me more than any other element in his make-up, there was nothing of make-believe, nowhere a note of falseness or affectation.  His friendliness was not the back-slapping good-fellow type of the politician, but something innate, something that rang true.  In his unpretentiousness there was nothing pretentious
            Subsequently another American correspondent was received by Stalin.  We compared notes, and it was as if we had met totally different men, our impressions were so completely at variance.  He carried away the imprint of a ruthless, steel-armored personality, with few of those human attributes which I had seen to relieve its harshness: a picture more consistent with Stalin's public character.  For years I wondered which of us was closer to the truth, or whether there were two truths.  Then I read the autobiography of H. G. Wells, where he gives a vivid word picture of his interview with Stalin.  His reactions to the man were so close to my own that he used almost the same words to convey his impression of Stalin's essential humaneness and simplicity.  It was reassuring to know that if I was wrong, I had eminent company in my error.
            My description of Stalin as a likable human being seemed to touch the world's imagination.  "Congratulations to the United Press," said an editorial in the New York Daily News, "on the most distinguished piece of reporting of this year, if not of the last four or five years."
Lyons, Eugene.  Assignment in Utopia. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, c1937, p. 384-391
 
            [At a We-Have-Been-to-the-USSR Dinner] a microphone was brought to the table and for 15 minutes I read into it on a coast-to-coast broadcast.  The subject I had chosen was Stalin.  My pleasant impression of the man in personal contact was still fresh in my mind and the talk was consequently in a key of appreciative analysis of his character.
            In my peroration, therefore, I drew a parallel between Stalin and Abraham Lincoln--the same humble origin, the same readiness to make costly decisions in the interest of their social faith, etc.  The comparison was far-fetched and I am not too proud of it.  A number of professional patriots were scandalized, perhaps not unjustly, and protested against the blasphemy in vigorous language in the course of the next few days.  Certain communists, on the other hand, professed to be no less scandalized.  "Why must you drag Stalin down to Lincoln’s level?" one of them complained.
Lyons, Eugene.  Assignment in Utopia. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, c1937, p. 407-408
 
            When he came back from Siberia, acquaintances had warned of the unpleasant features in his character, and these had been discussed at the April Party Conference.  But he had gained a better reputation in the following months.  Not once did he come to notice for insensitivity, or egocentrism..  If anything was held against him, it was that he was too supportive towards Lenin on the national question.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 147
 
            This is what a Amakyan Nazaretyan wrote about working “under Koba’s firm hand”:
            “I can’t take offense.  There’s much to be learned from him.  Having got to know him at close hand, I have developed an extraordinary respect towards him.  He has a character that one can only envy.  I can’t take offense.  His strictness is covered by attentiveness to those who work with him.
On another occasion Nazaretyan added:
            He’s very cunning.  He’s hard as a nut and can’t be broken at one go.  But I have a completely different view of him now from the one I had in Tiflis.  Despite his rational wildness, so to speak, he’s a soft individual; he has a heart and knows how to value the merits of people.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 225-226
 
            For all his denigration of Stalin, Khrushchev found him a man who was 'incorruptible and irreconcilable in class questions.  It was one of his strongest qualities and he was greatly respected for it.'
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 312
 
AUTHOR: Did you ever meet Stalin?
MARSHAL RUDENKO: Yes.  I remember being summoned to Stalin's office after I had made some mistakes.  So I was prepared to take the consequences.  I have to admit that when I was on my way--and I knew I had made some real blunders--I thought I would be severely punished.  As the Japanese put it, I was in a 'hara-hiri situation'.  And in the presence of our chief commanders, Stalin was kind enough to listen to my report and, instead of hara-hiri, of punishing me, I actually got a promotion and was assigned to another post.  That is, everything said by Zhukov --about Stalin giving you a chance to explain your side of the question-I think is true....
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.   London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 50
 
STALIN TRIED TO RAISE HIS CHILDREN WELL
 
            They told my father that my nurse was "untrustworthy" and that her son had undesirable friends.
            My father had no time to go into these things himself.  He liked having the people whose job it was to go into such matters thoroughly and only bring them to his attention when they had "closed their case."  When I heard there was a plot afoot to get rid of my nurse, I set up an outcry.  My father couldn't stand tears.  Besides, maybe he, too, wanted to express some inner protest against all this insanity.  In any case, he got angry all of a sudden and commanded them to leave my nurse in peace.
Alliluyeva, Svetlana.   Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 124
 
            My father seemed very remote from all of us.  Once in a while he gave our unofficial guardian Vlasik overall directives on how we were to be brought up.  We were to be fed, clothed, and shod at state expense, not luxuriously or with frills, but solidly and well.  No one was to spoil us;...
Alliluyeva, Svetlana.  Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 131
 
            Stalin is a stern father.  He son Yasha has been giving him considerable trouble.  When he was 20, after a poor record in the technological institute, he announced that he did not want an education.  Stalin engaged a tutor for the youth, but the teacher was compelled to give up Yasha as a hopeless case.  He was then placed in a manual training school to learn a trade.
Levine, Isaac Don.  Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 325
 
 
STALIN AGREES WITH LENIN THAT THE STATE MUST USE FORCE
 
            Stalin has never denied his belief in the ruthless use of force.  He openly agreed not only with Lenin's view that the State exists always in order to enable one class to dominate another, but also with Lenin's opinion that dictatorship is a use of force unrestricted by any law.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 235
 
            Without their resolve to take extreme measures, neither Lenin nor Stalin can be understood.  No, without their resolve we might not be alive today, much less trying to understand.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 278
 
 
STALIN ARGUED WITH SECRET POLICE OVER THEM HAVING MORE POWERS
 
            Not all the details are yet known of the strange struggle which Stalin carried on for years against his own secret police....
            The leading members of the secret police, which had become a separate caste, were bound neither to any ideology nor to any party policy.  What they wanted--in the name, of course, and for the benefit of, the party--was far-reaching powers and also certain material advantages.  They wanted to remain what they had been in the civil war, a privileged class in the matter of power and of material conditions.  They therefore kept up a continual struggle against any limitation of their authority.  When Stalin sought to impose certain restrictions on their right to pronounce death sentences, they simply secured that the new courts which were to hear certain cases with the public excluded, should be formed from their own members, that is to say members of the police caste.  Stalin's continual pressure for more rigid supervision by organs of the party was just what drove Yagoda and his colleagues into opposition and later into conspiracy.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 236
 
STALIN EXERCISES MODESTY AND OPPOSES THE CULT OF THE INDIVIDUAL
 
            What distinguished Stalin...was the way he came before the public.  It would be difficult or impossible to find in any speech of Stalin's the little word 'I'.   When he spoke, he did so always in the name of the party, in the name of the Soviet Union, or, in recent years, as Prime Minister, in the name of the Soviet Government.  His appearances in public were as modest as his clothing.  He had long been the foremost man in the great realm, but when in the past, for instance, he attended a meeting of the Central Executive Committee, of whose Presidium he was a member, he invariably appeared when the meeting had already begun, and sat down modestly in one of the back rows.  He would be seen for all that.  There would be long ovations.  When the applause was dying away, some woman would jump up and shout in a shrill, hysterical voice: 'long live the great Stalin!' And there would be a "further storm of applause.  Stalin would sit there as if it all had nothing to do with him.  Later on it would often be necessary for him to sit in the front row of the Presidium; but he never appeared alone, but always among some dozens of other people, just as he never takes the salute alone at a military parade and at the parades in the Red Square he always stands in the midst of some dozens of other people.  When he appears in the Supreme Council or at a festivity on the stage of the Great Theater in Moscow, and the audience starts wild acclamations in the Russian fashion, Stalin remains seated.  He behaves as if the ovation was not for him, and he also joins in the applause.  That has been interpreted as applauding himself, but it is not that; it is the attitude he has adopted in order to ignore the ovation.  He neither stands up nor bows as he sits; he simply joins in the applause as if the ovation were for somebody else.  In this way he becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the people present.  He tries to become one of a collectivity.
            This was also the style of his speeches.  The party had long been described in official language as the party of Lenin and Stalin, as if Lenin and Stalin had founded it and had been its sole organizers.  On one occasion at a meeting of the Central Executive Committee Stalin was speaking and had to read letters from young Communists.  In one of the letters he came to a mention of the party of Lenin and Stalin.  After those words he put down the letter for a moment, turned to his hearers, and added: 'As people put it!' indicating disagreement with the phrase.
            From time to time Stalin repeats that he does not approve the wild propaganda in his personal favor....
            He certainly warns the party and the Government, indeed the whole country, continually against extravagance of outlook, against being led by successes into a loss of the sense of proportion.  One gets the impression that Stalin is warning himself against presumption.  It may be that this is one of the secrets of his success; this may be the moral he has drawn from observation of his opponents.  For they have all had too good an opinion of themselves, and Stalin has no intention of making that mistake.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 237
 
            She [Aunt Anna] never judges or condemns.  She's beside herself when people talk about the "cult of personality."  She gets worked up and talks on and on.  "They're exaggerating.  They always exaggerate in this country," she'll say indignantly.  "Now they're blaming everything on Stalin.  But he didn't have an easy time either.  We know his life wasn't easy.  It wasn't as simple as all that.  Think of all the time he spent in Siberia.  We mustn't forget that.  And we mustn't forget the good things he did!"
Alliluyeva, Svetlana.  Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 63
 
            Svetlana tells us that her father used to let his salary checks pile up unused on his desk and that he hated public adulation.  Applause for his speeches at a Party Congress he would except as directed at the Party leadership and not at himself as a person.  The development of the "cult" was not his doing....
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 124
 
            Stalin was not a stupid man....  He tried to convey the impression... that relations based on personal loyalty were not worthy of state affairs.  For instance, replying to a letter from party member Shatunovsky, he wrote:
            "You speak about your 'devotion' to me.  Maybe the phrase just slipped out.  Maybe....  But if it didn't just slip out, I would advise you to discard the 'principle' of devotion to individuals.  It is not the Bolshevik way.  Be devoted to the working-class, to its party, its state.  That is what is needed and what is good.  But don't get it mixed up with devotion to people, which is just an empty and superfluous fad of intellectuals."
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 201
 
            Occasionally Stalin would indicate to the party and the people that he was against all the glorification and idolatry....  There is, for instance, the following letter in the archives:
            "To Comrades Andreyev and Smirnova.
            I am decisively against publishing Tales of Stalin's Childhood.  The book is full of factual errors.  But that's not the main thing.  The main thing is that the book has the tendency to instill in the minds of the Soviet people (and people in general) a cult of personalities, of leaders and infallible heroes.  That is dangerous and harmful.  The theory of 'heroes' and the 'crowd' is not a Bolshevik one, but is SR [Socialist Revolutionary]....  The people make heroes, the Bolsheviks reply.  I advise you to burn the book.  Feb. 16, 1938.  J. Stalin
 
            It pleased him [Stalin] most to hear others remark on his modesty.  At the February-March 1937 plenum, Mekhlis said that 'as early as 1930, Comrade Stalin sent me the following letter for Pravda.  I will allow myself to read it out without his permission:
            "Comrade Mekhlis.  There is a request to publish the enclosed instructive work of a kolkhoz.  I have deleted what it says about 'Stalin' as the 'vozhd of the party', the 'leader of the party' and so on.  I think such laudatory embellishments can only do harm.  The letter should be printed without these epithets.  J. Stalin.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 241
 
            He had told Feuchtwanger that adulation was distasteful to him, but forgivable in the circumstances....  More privately, he prevented publication of a book called Tales of Stalin's Childhood as not only 'full of factual errors' but also as instilling a 'cult of personalities of leaders': but in this case perhaps the 'errors' loomed largest.  Similarly he stopped Malenkov and Poskrebyshev from sponsoring a Russian translation of his youthful poems; here too, he may have wished not to lay himself open.  On a slightly different note, early in 1938, citing 'workers' suggestions', Yezhov proposed to the Politburo that Moscow should be renamed Stalinodar.  Stalin pronounced against this.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 214
 
            Then Stalin asked:
            "Don't you think we should celebrate the defeat of Fascist Germany with a victory parade in Moscow and invite the most distinguished heroes from among the soldiers, NCO's, officers, and generals?"
            I cannot recall exactly the day, but I think it was somewhere around June 18 or 19, that I was summoned by Stalin to his dacha.  He asked whether I had not forgotten how to ride a horse.  I replied:
            "No, I haven't, in fact I still ride even now."
            "Good," said Stalin, "you will have to take the salute at the Victory Parade.  Rokossovsky will command it."
            I replied:
            "Thank you for the honor, but wouldn't it be better for you to take the salute?  You are Supreme Commander-in-Chief and by right you should take the salute."
            Stalin countered:
            "I am too old to review parades.  You do it, you are younger."
            On June 22 the newspapers carried the following order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief:
            "To mark the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War I hereby order a parade of troops of the active army, navy, and the Moscow garrison, a Victory Parade, to be held on June 24, 1945, in Red Square, Moscow....
            The salute at the Victory Parade shall be taken by my deputy, Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov; the parade shall be commanded by Marshal of the Soviet Union Rokossovsky."
Zhukov, Georgii.  Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 652-653
 
            On July 16 a special train was to bring Stalin, Molotov, and others of Stalin's party.
            The day before, Stalin called me on the phone and said:
            "Don't try and bring up any honor guards with bands to meet us.  Come to the station yourself and bring along those you feel necessary."
Zhukov, Georgii.  Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 668
 
            He [Beria] had spoken to Stalin about the objections to the cult of his personality, and Stalin had expressed agreement.   Nevertheless, his [Stalin] whole entourage encouraged him in that direction--then, later, declared him guilty of everything.
Beria, Sergo. Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin's Kremlin. London: Duckworth, 2001, p. 159
 
            Footnote: a very critical and even unfriendly, biographer gives the following characterization of him: "Stalin does not seek honors.   He loathes pomp.   He is averse to public displays.   He could have all the nominal regalia in the chest of a great state.   But he prefers the background....   He is the perfect inheritor of the individual Lenin paternalism.   No other associate of Lenin was endowed with that characteristic.   Stalin is the stern father of a family, the dogmatic pastor of a flock.   He is a boss with this difference: his power is not used for personal aggrandizement.   Moreover, he is a boss with an education.   Notwithstanding general impressions, Stalin is a widely informed and well-read person.   He lacks culture, but he absorbs knowledge.   He is rough towards his enemies but he learns from them."
            [Stalin: A Biography, by Isaac Don Levine, 1929, pages 248-249]
Webb, S. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. London, NY: Longmans, Green, 1947, p. 333
 
            Stalin does not seek honors.  He loathes pomp.  He is averse to public displays.  He could have all the nominal regalia in the chest of a great state.  But he prefers the background....  He is the perfect inheritor of the individual Lenin paternalism.  No other associate of Lenin was endowed with that characteristic.  Stalin is the stern father of a family, the dogmatic pastor of a flock.  He is a boss with this difference: his power is not used for personal aggrandizement.
Levine, Isaac Don.  Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 301
 
            "I am resolutely against the publication of Tales of Stalin's Childhood.  The book abounds in a mass of factual improbabilities, distortions, exaggerations, undeserved eulogies.  The author has been led astray by story-lovers, by fabulists, by sycophants....  But that is not the main point.  The main point is that the book tends to instill in the consciousness of Soviet children (and people in general), the cult of personalities, of leaders, of infallible heroes.  This is dangerous [and] harmful.  The theory of 'heroes' and the masses is not a Bolshevik theory....  Any book such as this... will harm our common Bolshevik cause.  I recommend you burn the book.  I.  Stalin."
Rittersporn, Gabor. Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 1933-1953. New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, c1991, p. 208
 
            There was, for example, an immense special effort to teach children the benign stories of their ultimate father.  Stalin personally determined that this myth should not emphasize one of the obvious devices at the disposal of the propagandists: didactic legends about the young Soso.  In 1938, the editors of the state publishing house sent Stalin a book manuscript entitled Stories of Stalin's Childhood, which he rejected, observing that it was harmful 'to inculcate in the consciousness of Soviet children (and people in general) a cult of personality, of leaders, of flawless heroes'.  This, he said, was not Bolshevik but Socialist-Revolutionary, meaning non-Marxist, in its concept of historical determination.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 227
 
            Sometimes, though, he aimed his ridicule at himself.  Writing to Voroshilov in March 1929, he mocked his own grandiose image: “World Leader [Vozhd]?  Go fuck his mother!’
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 280
 
            “No, individual persons cannot decide.  Decisions of individuals are always, or nearly always, one-sided decisions.  In every collegium, in every collective body, there are people whose opinion must be reckoned with.  In every collegium, in collective body, there are people who may express wrong opinions.  From the experience of three revolutions we know that out of every 100 decisions taken by individual persons without being tested and corrected collectively, approximately 90 are one-sided.”
Stalin, Joseph.  Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 13, p. 109
 
            “Dear Comrade Bazhanov,
            I have received your letter ceding me your second Order as a reward for my work.
            I thank you very much for your warm words and comradely present.  I know what you are depriving yourself of in my favour and appreciate your sentiments.
            Nevertheless, I cannot accept your second Order.  I cannot and must not accept it, not only because it can belong only to you, as you alone have earned it, but also because I have been amply rewarded as it is by the attention and respect of the comrades and, consequently, have no right to rob you.
`           Orders were instituted not for those who are well known as it is, but mainly for heroic people who are little known and who need to be made known to all.
            Besides, I must tell you that I already have two Orders.  That is more than one needs, I assure you.  I apologize for the delay in replying.”
Stalin, Joseph.  Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 13, p. 241
 
            Lenin, a connoisseur of power, had the best opportunity to evaluate Stalin in this respect, and he rendered his judgment in a debate in 1922.  Replying to a complaint about the concentration of power in general and in particular Stalin's responsibility for two peoples' commissariats, Lenin called Stalin 'a person of authority'.  On what did this aura of authority rest?  Not on a heroic image.  Stalin was not a highly visible hero of the Revolution and Civil War in these years.  The fame of Trotsky, the organizer of the Red Army and eloquent speaker and writer, was far greater, and a number of others--such as Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin --probably received more attention in the Soviet media than did Stalin.  This incidentally, suggests that he was in these years, at least, much more concerned with getting on with his practical work than in preening himself in public.  An unbalanced thirst for popular glory, a 'cult' could more easily be attributed to some of his comrades than to him.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 48
 
            Stalin seated himself at the head of the banquet table, and the rest of us took our places in the order determined by that moment’s prestige-exchange quotation.  Tensely we waited to see what would happen next.  Careful preparations had been made in the Politburo and the Comintern's Presidium for long thorough speeches extolling the virtues of the great Stalin, who then was approaching the zenith of his power.  We considered it only natural that these festivities had been arranged for the glorification of Stalin.  Four or five Politburo man had speeches tucked away in their pockets, while in the Comintern's Presidium we had agreed that Dimitrov and Manuilsky would express our most heartfelt sentiments.
            As soon as we were seated, Stalin, to our surprise, clinked his glass for silence, rose and spoke ceremoniously in this manner:
            "Comrades!  I want to propose a toast to our patriarch, life and sun, liberator of nations, architect of socialism, omniscient genius (he rattled off all the appellations applied to him in those days) and great leader of our peoples, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and I hope that this is the first and last speech made to that genius this evening."
Tuominen, Arvo,  The Bells of the Kremlin: Hanover: University Press of New England, 1983, p. 162
 
            After salutations had been exchanged, he [Leon Feuchtwanger] asked whether Stalin was not disgusted with the phenomenal Stalin-worship that was practiced throughout the Soviet Union.  Stalin's portraits were everywhere, and his praises were sung, but the height of everything was seeing, amidst the great old art at the Tretiakov Gallery, some propaganda painter’s version of Stalin staring out from almost every wall.
            Stalin was absolutely flabbergasted and asked whether it was really true even in the Tretiakov.
            "Yes.  You can send your men to take a look."
            "That's strange," said Stalin.  "That's downright sabotage."
            And he jotted down something on the paper before him, obviously a notation ordering the removal of his portraits from that gallery.
            Feuchtwanger related that Stalin declared himself to be as disgusted as any foreigner with the ubiquitous pictures and their worship.  But there was an explanation for them: over the centuries the Russian people had become accustomed to thinking concretely.  Such things as the Soviet state, the Communist Party, and everything pertaining to it were an abstraction to the ordinary peasant and worker, a purely abstruse concept, whereas Comrade Stalin was concrete, a tangible fact.
            In the old days, Stalin continued, the Russian people had God and the Czar.  Both were concrete in that even the most wretched hovel had a picture of the Holy Virgin, and a picture of the Czar in a corner and, if the means permitted, a candle burning before them, at least on holidays.  When God and the Czar were removed from the corner the people had to have something as a replacement, and so one must bear with the fact that Stalin's picture was put there and that a candle is lighted before it if the means permit in.  They know that such a person exists, have heard his voice over and the radio, perhaps a few have even seen him with their own eyes and can attest to his existence.  Thus, idolatry is a necessity from the standpoint of governing and the socialist building of Soviet power, and for such a great cause personal antipathy must be overcome.
            As we can see, this explanation seems quite logical and natural and makes one doubt whether he actually believed in his semi-divinity as his closest colleagues and friends subsequently claimed.
Tuominen, Arvo,  The Bells of the Kremlin: Hanover: University Press of New England, 1983, p. 164
 
CLERGY ARE MOSTLY REACTIONARY
 
            ... the clergy had been nothing but loyal servants of the Tsar.  It was pointed out that the clergy had blessed guns and troops and had incited soldiers to attack although their religion said 'Thou shalt not kill'.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 244
 
            The Bolsheviks had three reasons for hostility towards the Church, two of which were obvious but the third more subtle.  First, they regarded it as one of the principal pillars of the Tsarist regime, to which it was bound by ties that were centuries-old.  It was also owner of vast wealth, and therefore by interest and tradition opposed to the Bolsheviks and their system.
            Second, religion itself advocated the exact antithesis of Bolshevik teaching.  The Bolsheviks wished to stir up the masses, to spur them to revolt, to make them think for themselves and to capitalize their discontent.  Religion, they thought, was, as Marx put it, "opium for the people," to keep them satisfied "in that state of life in which it pleased God to place them" here on earth, so that their submission and obedience would later win them a place in Heaven, as the parable of Lazarus and Dives suggests.  But it was precisely this apathetic acceptance of misery and oppression that the Bolsheviks were most anxious to destroy, so that on these two counts they and the Church were immediately locked in conflict.
Duranty, Walter.  Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 45
 
 
RELIGION IS BEST FOUGHT BY IMPROVING THE LIVES OF PEOPLE
 
            Stalin launched a new slogan: 'Life has become easier and more cheerful!'  This was to define the style of living from then on.  In the same speech Stalin declared that all opposition to religion was purposeless.  Life had not yet been made so good or so carefree that men and women no longer needed to seek for consolation.  So long as there continued to be distress and anxieties, there would always be people who hoped to find consolation in religion.  If it was desired to combat religion, the way to do it was to work harder and to provide better satisfaction for human needs.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 245
 
STALIN DEFENDED THE CLERGY’S RIGHT TO VOTE IN 1936
 
            Stalin himself proposed the draft constitution of 1936 at the Congress of Soviets....  There were several motions proposing that the clergy should not be entitled to civil rights or the franchise; it was urged that there was a danger that the clergy would carry on anti-Soviet agitation.  The proposer of one of these motions contended that the granting of the franchise to the clergy might result in anti-Soviet members gaining admittance to the representative bodies.  Stalin defended the grant of the franchise to the clergy.  It was impossible, he contended, to make exceptions; all must have equal rights.  It did not matter so very much if the clergy agitated; that would merely spur on the local Communist organizations to work harder and improve their propaganda.  They had to learn to combat hostile propaganda.... Stalin's defense of the rights of the clergy actually brought him popularity among the peasants.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 272
 
  It is a fact that many leading Communists opposed granting secret and universal suffrage.  They feared that the backwardness among certain sections of the people might make this dangerous.  Stalin strongly supported the voting provisions and they were adopted.  So far they have proved to be dangerous only to officials who were neglecting their duties--and this is what Stalin had hoped for and wants more of in the future.
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 34
 
 
STALIN BELIEVED IN A CENTRALIZED STATE
 
            Stalin made an end of all that [local soviets setting up their own administrative organization without consulting the centre].  He declared his belief in the centralized State, and on one occasion actually said: 'Only a centralized State can get anything done.'
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 276
 
            Though the charges of Russian nationalism have since been laid against Stalin more than once, he was not, either then or even in later days, prompted by any of the ordinary emotions and prejudices that go with nationalism.  What he represented was merely the principal of centralization, common to all modern revolutions.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 240
 
 
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION LED TO CAPITALISTS LIGHTENING UP EVERYWHERE
 
            The Russian Revolution led after the First World War to an accelerated development of social legislation in most countries and to an easing of the pressure on colonial­ peoples.  That reduced the likelihood of revolution.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 281
 
STALIN CONTENDS NATIONS CAN PASS CAPITALISM AND GO STRAIGHT TO SOCIALISM
 
            In 1926, however, Stalin put forward his own theories about Asia.  He held that there was no need for all countries still in the pre-capitalist era to pass through the capitalist stage.  Since the dictatorship of the proletariat ruled in the Soviet Union, those peoples could evade that stage with Russian help and proceed directly to socialism.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 282
 
POLITBURO CHOSE KIROV AS STALIN’S SUCCESSOR
 
            Kirov, one of Stalin's closest collaborators, was regarded at the time as his probable successor.  After the last of the old Bolsheviks, Rykov and Bukharin, had been thrown overboard by the Politburo, the party leaders decided that steps ought to be taken without delay to make sure that in the event of Stalin's sudden death there should be no doubt as to who should succeed him.  There must not be another struggle for power as after Lenin's death.  The members of the Politburo and the most influential secretaries of provincial party organizations accordingly agreed upon the choice of Kirov.
            This assassination [of Kirov] was thus a heavy blow for Stalin and the party leadership....  Nothing had so affected Stalin as this news since the death of his wife....
            Stalin was no friend of Yagoda, and did not trust the secret police; and he broke into one of his most fearful outbursts of rage [over the killing of Kirov].
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 284
 
LENINGRAD SECRET POLICE PROSECUTED FOR NEGLECT
 
            The responsible leaders of the Leningrad secret police were, of course, dismissed and prosecuted for neglect of their duties; they were sentenced to three years imprisonment.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 286
 
            Finally, several high officers of the Leningrad GPU were charged with "neglect of duty" and sentenced, with surprisingmildness, to two or three years.
Deutscher, Isaac.  The Prophet Outcast. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963, p. 279
 
            The trial of the chiefs of the Leningrad section of the People's Commissariat for Home Affairs took place in even greater secrecy.  It was held, however, in a different atmosphere.  The charges were more mildly formulated.  The accused admitted their guilt, but blamed it on the orders that had been issued by Kirov.  The sentences were astonishingly mild, especially when it is recalled how severely mere negligence in the guarding of the persons of our "leaders" is usually punished.  Balzevich, who was responsible for the guard service at Smolny, was charged only with "criminal negligence" in the exercise of his official duties, and sentenced to 10 years in a concentration camp.  The chiefs of the Leningrad section of the Commissariat for Home Affairs and their deputies received only two or three-year sentences, and were, at the same time, given responsible posts in the administration of the concentration camp to which they were sent.  Actually, therefore, the punishment meant nothing more than a reduction in rank.
Nicolaevsky, Boris.  Power and the Soviet Elite; "The letter of an Old Bolshevik." New York: Praeger, 1965, p. 53
 
DESCRIPTION OF 4 MAIN GROUPS AGAINST STALIN AND WHO KILLED KIROV
 
            Nearly a year passed before it was discovered who had been at the back of the outrage.  Slowly the tangle of the conspiracy was unraveled, and it was found that the assassination had been the work of the opposition within the party.  Neither Stalin nor the other members of the Politburo had dreamt for a moment of this: the opposition had been regarded as politically dead.  Its members had publicly recanted all their earlier views, admitted the error of their activities, sought readmission to the party, and been given subordinate posts.
            The trials revealed the political background of the assassination and of a good many other political events.  Stalin had had to deal in succession with three groups of opponents-- Trotsky's extremist group, the Left wing opposition led by Zinoviev, and a Right-wing opposition under Bukharin.  In the past those three groups had been mutually hostile, but now that they had lost influence they had begun to come together.  Before long they had united.  During the first five-year plan, when Stalin seemed to be leading Russia to disaster, the three groups set up in great secrecy the so-called Right-Left Block.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 287
 
            Spied on and smelt out as it was this Right-Left coalition was, of course, incapable of any real political work....and under Russian conditions...the conspirators were bound inevitably to come sooner or later to the conclusion that there was only one road to their end: the physical extermination of Stalin and his entourage.  If they could not reach Stalin himself, the next best thing seemed to be to get rid first of his intended successor.
            Such were broadly the plan and course of this conspiracy.  Later there began a military conspiracy.  Various marshals, generals, and senior officers, who in the past had been supporters of Trotsky, Bukharin, or Zinoviev, or who later had come to regard Stalin's policy as dangerous, came together in a fourth group, planning a military rising.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 288
 
FIRST GROUP OF CONSPIRATORS DISCOVERED WERE ZINOVIEV AND KAMENEV
 
            The first victims were Zinoviev and Kamenev.  The traces had at last been discovered that led from the assassination to the Zinoviev group.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 289
 
TOMSKY COMMITTED SUICIDE WHEN BEING ARRESTED TAKING HIS SECRET
 
            It was now proved that before the assassination Tomsky had several times gone secretly to Leningrad [where Kirov’s killing occurred].  At the moment of his arrest he committed suicide, taking his secret with him into the grave.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 290
 
WHY ZINOVIEV AND KAMENEV CONFESSED
 
            In this trial Zinoviev and Kamenev not only confessed their guilt in everything with which they were charged, but made long speeches of exaggerated penitence, filled with self-denunciation and recantation of all the ideas for which they had stood in the past--an unexampled self-abasement.
            While these first trials seemed quite simply inexplicable, those that followed made the self-accusations and self-recriminations rather more intelligible.  The confession of guilt is easy to understand.  Certain facts had been established by the preliminary interrogation, and nothing could be gained by denying those facts.  But at that moment Zinoviev and Kamenev knew that the majority of the conspirators were still at large and their groups and headquarters were still undiscovered; they knew also from the preliminary inquiry that the authorities had as yet found out relatively little.  Their volubility in self-abasement was a sort of smoke-screen, a clouding of the issue.  They wanted the trial to remain confined to themselves and to bring no fresh revelations; they wanted to create the impression that they were the only persons at work in the conspiracy and that they now saw how hopeless it had been.  They saw death approaching, and beyond the cloud of self-abasement they could already see the avenging hand of their fellow conspirators.  With death looming above them, they believed that the others, warned by the trial, would now make haste.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 291
 
            Although in retrospect it seems easy to check the interplay between the trials and events abroad, foreign observers in Moscow were slow or even loath to perceive it at the time.  They did not realize that the trials really represented the Kremlin's effort to stamp out Fifth Column activities in the USSR, an effort which was only one of several measures,...taken to prepare the country for the expected Nazi attack.  As far as foreigners in Moscow were concerned, the issue was obscured by the extraordinary nature of the first trial.  The accused behaved in so hysterical a manner, heaping reproaches, accusations, and tears upon themselves and upon each other, that foreign diplomats and newspapermen who heard them were led to conclude that there was something fishy about the whole affair, that such abject confession and self-denunciation could not be genuine and must have been produced by some form of pressure.  Reports were circulated and given considerable credence in America and Britain, that the accused had been hypnotized or tortured or terrorized by threats against their relatives, even dosed with a mysterious "Tibetan drug" which destroyed their will power and made them as wax in the hands of the prosecution.  All of which really meant that the Anglo-Saxon mentality simply could not understand the masochistic eagerness of the accused not only to admit their guilt, but to paint it in the blackest terms.
Duranty, Walter.  Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 218
 
TROTSKY’S REASONS AND TACTICS FOR OPPOSING STALIN
 
            There is no psychological problem underlying the other trials, against the organization of the Trotskyists and against Bukharin's Right Opposition group.  These trials and the psychology of the defendants offered no difficulty.  This does not mean that the course of justice was impeccable.  Especially in the trial of the Trotskyists, everything is quite clear; in this trial Trotsky's ideas and plans found vivid and quite lucid expression.  To Trotsky, Stalin was the man who had carried out a counter-revolution; Stalin and his followers were called by Trotsky, by analogy with the French Revolution, 'Thermidorians'.  In his political passion he looked upon Stalin just as in the past revolutionaries had looked upon the Tsar, and accordingly he considered every means of combat permissible.  To him it was obvious that Stalin was leading the Soviet Union to disaster; it was bound, he thought, inevitably to be involved in a great war, a war on two fronts, to be waged simultaneously against the Germans and the Japanese.  Trotsky was convinced that Stalin would lose that war.  From this he drew two conclusions: that the war might bring down Stalin and his regime; and that it was his, Trotsky's, duty to prevent Russia's total destruction.  He intended to assume power, in order to maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat and the achievements of the revolution at least in part of the Soviet Union.... There had been repeated cases in history of revolutionaries coming to terms with the enemies of their country; they regard their own people's worst evil as its own government, and not the external enemy.  Similarly in 1904 the Russian revolutionary parties of all shades of opinion entered into relations with Japan during the war with Russia, in order to obtain from Japan weapons with which to combat Tsarism....
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 291
 
LENN AND THE GERMANS USED EACH OTHER
 
            [As in Trotsky’s opposition to Stalin] Lenin, too, during the First World War, declared that he hoped for Russia's defeat; for only that could liberate Russia from the Tsarist regime and bring a revolution, and that mattered more to Russia than any victory.  A victory, indeed, would place Tsardom in security for decades to come.  At that time there were negotiations of some sort between Lenin and the Germans.  The negotiations were not carried on directly, but through neutral intermediaries, and were concerned simply with the return of Lenin and his circle from Switzerland to Russia.  That, after all, was all that was needed.  The German army command was well aware that Lenin had written against the war; it knew also that he wanted to carry the revolution further, and that if he came into power he would at once conclude peace.  That was enough.  Nobody in Berlin worried at the time about what would happen next.  The first thing was to win the war, and to that end it was necessary first of all to demolish the eastern front.  Once victory had been achieved all over the world, there would certainly be time enough to deal with the Russian revolutionaries!
            For Lenin, too, the one thing was to get back to Russia; then he must seize power and, in order to establish his hold of power, conclude peace.  Once that first task had been achieved, there would be time to consider what to do next.  Lenin had most carefully avoided compromising himself in any way; nothing could be proved against him.  There was nothing wrong about wanting to return to Russia and, without being required to give any express undertaking in return, being allowed through by the Germans.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 292-93
 
            Lenin was not, of course, a German agent.  But he had certainly received German funds (the whole matter was publicly aired in the Soviet press in the 1920s).  At this point the Germans and Lenin had a common interest-- the defeat of Russia.  From the German point of view it was the same calculation which had allowed the 'sealed train' with Lenin and his colleagues to pass through Germany on the way to Petrograd in April.
            But if Lenin was not in fact a German agent, the story of the German funds certainly made him appear one.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 67
 
 
TROTSKY ALSO WORKED WITH THE GERMANS BUT SOLD OUT HIS FOLLOWERS
 
            Trotsky, in 1934, in his impatience to recover the power he had lost, was less discreet [than Lenin].  He entered into negotiation with the Germans, and tried at the same time to start negotiations with the Japanese.  He had to have something to negotiate with, and so he offered territorial concessions to both those probable adversaries of Soviet Russia.  Rather a reduced Russia than a Russia ruled by Stalin!  Being an autocrat with an exaggerated notion of his own importance, he did not ask any of his supporters in Russia whether they agreed with him.  To show the support he had in Russia, he gave away the names of his supporters in the course of his negotiations, and the information was promptly used, particularly by the Japanese, in the interest of their intelligence service.  Trotsky's supporters in Russia found themselves in an appalling situation, for they did not share his view of the future.  It is, moreover, extraordinarily difficult to fulfill one's duties during the day to the best of one's abilities and then to undo it all secretly at night.  Consequently, most of Trotsky's followers disregarded his orders.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 293
 
BUKHARIN WAS CLEARLY GUILTY
 
            Some of the charges were repudiated very energetically by the defendants.  Bukharin, for instance, admitted complicity in the conspiracy, but put up a determined fight throughout the trial against the charge made by the public prosecutor that he had engaged in espionage.  The defendants' attitude is easy to understand.  As the trials went on, everything became known to the Soviet authorities, down to the smallest details.  There was nothing whatever to gain by denying the facts.  Dozens, if not hundreds, of the lesser members of the organization had been able to save themselves by giving full information.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 294
 
TRIALS OCCURRED AT THE BEST TIME FOR STALIN
 
            The time when the trials took place was, moreover, particularly favorable for Stalin.  When the conspiracy was been organized, the opposition was expecting the absolute failure of Stalin's policy.  But in the end he had made a success of collectivization and had not brought the country to ruin: the conditions of existence were manifestly improving.  There was nothing the defendants could do but admit the error of their policy if they did not want to seem ridiculous.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 295
 
DEFENDANTS WANTED TO BE DICTATORS THEMSELVES
 
            The defendants [in the Moscow trials] had no desire at all to bring down the dictatorship, but only to become dictators themselves in Stalin's place.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 295
 
FOREIGN SPIES WORMED THEIR WAY INTO SOVIET GOVERNMENT
 
            Yet more: in this great purge the fact was established that the German, Japanese, and Polish espionage services had wormed their way far into Russia, gaining access to the highest circles.  The Deputy People's Commissar for Agriculture, a Galacian Ukrainian, proved to have been for many years a Polish spy.  The Soviet ambassador in Turkey, Karakhan, was shot as a German spy....  Karakhan fell into the hands of a beautiful German woman, and as a result into the hands of the Hitlerist intelligence service.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 304
 
            Another important personality, though not so famous, was Boris Steiger, the official head of the foreign section of the Fine Arts Department.  In reality he was an important representative of the secret police for liaison with the foreign diplomats, and an influential adviser of the Foreign Ministry.  The Japanese had found out something compromising in his past, and had blackmailed him.  He became a Japanese spy.  He, too, was shot.
            Thus there had been discovered a whole series of high officials who had been carrying out espionage for foreign Powers.  A morbid fear of espionage spread over Russia.  Large numbers of foreigners, the remainder of the foreign specialists in the Soviet Union, and Communist refugees from Hitler, were arrested, some on suspicion of espionage, others because they were supposed to be in close touch with members of the Russian opposition.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 305
 
MANY HIGH GOVT OFFICIALS WERE FOREIGN AGENTS
 
            It has not been realized in the world outside the Soviet Union that in these trials of 1936 to 1938 the most widespread conspiracy in the world's history came to judgment.  In that conspiracy were involved not only ex-leaders of the party and a former head of the government, but also fully a dozen members of the Government who were still in office, and the supreme commander of the army, the Chief of Staff, almost all the army commanders, and in addition a considerable number of senior officers; the Minister of Police and the highest police officials; the Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, almost all the ambassadors and ministers representing the Soviet Union abroad, almost the whole of the diplomatic staff of the ministry in Moscow; and also highly-placed judges and members of the governments of the federal republics.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 308
 
            ... but power was passing altogether from Stalin to a still somewhat nebulous motley of adventurers, militarists, and political police bosses and imperialists.  They already were sufficiently strong to hold up a decision of the Government.
            When we had all returned to Karlshorst, I was visited in my office by a comrade standing very high indeed.  For though powerless still to overthrow the regime, we revolutionary Democrats were by this time strong enough to have our men in many key places.
Tokaev, Grigori. Comrade X. London: Harvill Press,1956, p. 354
 
            At least in the official rhetoric of the day, not a great deal distinguished "spies" from White Guards, kulaks, Trotskyites, and Zinovievites.  From the Stalinist viewpoint, they may have operated from different perspectives, but they were all seen as threats to the USSR.
            Considered this way, the 43,072 discovered in these categories up until December 1935 was large, especially considering that many of these people had held responsible posts.  Imagine the outcry, and the fear, if in 1948 the FBI had announced that more than 40,000 enemies of the United States had been discovered operating inside the country's ruling bodies.  The allegation that one person, Alger Hiss, had been a Soviet agent was enough to send America into a minor frenzy, even though our enemies were on the other sides of the oceans.  Forty thousand real and desperate foes, all presumably busy recruiting others, could inflict tremendous damage on any country.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 31
 
            There is one important earlier case generally recognized as that of a genuine spy-- Konar, who became Assistant People's Commissar of Agriculture until accidentally exposed.  He was a Polish agent who had been given the papers of a dead Red Army soldier in 1920, and in ten years had thus risen high in the hierarchy, until exposed by someone who chanced to have seen the real Konar.
Conquest, Robert. he Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 270
 
[At the Feb. March 1937 Plenum Stalin stated]: Comrades!  From the reports and discussions held previously at the plenum, it is obvious that we have here a problem that could be characterized by three basic facts.
            First--the harmful and diversionary espionage of foreign country agents, in whose ranks the Trotskyites played a very active part.  They managed to involve practically all of our organizations to a greater or lesser degree industrial, administrative, and party organizations.
            Secondly--agents of foreign countries, including Trotskyites, have managed to worm themselves not only into the lower party organs, but also they managed to get some top ranking posts in the government and party.
            Thirdly--some of our leading comrades, in the Central Committee and in regions of the country, not only were not able to expose these agents, diversionists, spies, and assassins, but they became unwilling tools in this anti-State work and even unknowingly appointed some of these agents to responsible positions.  These are undeniable facts, according to the reports and documents that we heard during this plenum.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed.  Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 227
 
 
WHY DID THE VAST INTERNAL CONSPIRACY FAIL
 
            This is by no means a complete list.  How was it that this vast conspiracy was entirely unsuccessful?  It failed simply because its membership was too exalted.  There were generals, but they had no army.  There were persons in high office, but nobody to execute their orders.  Around the conspirators, and, still more important, beneath them, were everywhere the members of the new official class.  Thus the conspiracy had no solid basis and could not grow into an effective movement.
            The conspirators might have sent one of their members to Stalin to shoot him down during an audience.  They actually discussed this, but no one had the courage to make the attempt.  Thus all they did was to come together in groups at long intervals, and talk and whisper, without any practical result--until, after several years, the first attempt was made, much too late.  The first attempt at once betrayed everything.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 308-09
 
 
TROTSKY WAS RUTHLESS DURING THE CIVIL WAR AND INTERVENTION
 
            Had not Trotsky ordered every tenth man in his troops to be shot when the troops fell back in the civil war?
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 309
 
            Trotsky shot down those sailors whom he had previously called the pride of the revolution.  This is why, in his autobiography, he devotes only two lines to this ghastly incident.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 75
 
            Also Trotsky, though more of a philosopher, did not recoil from terrorism.  Trotsky, had he been in Stalin's place, would have concluded the pact with the Germans, forseeing that one of the parties would break it.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 111
 
            As the struggle progressed, it was easily dramatized and personified as a fight between Stalin and Trotsky, who did indeed represent opposite poles and had moreover been long on unfriendly terms.  I spoke earlier of their clash at the siege of Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad), and other contemporary stories illustrate their mutual hostility.  For instance, Trotsky once was holding a meeting of army commanders at the front, and had given orders to the sentry that no interruptions were permitted on pain of death.  Stalin arrived from Petrograd as representative of the Supreme War Committee, brushed the sentry aside and interrupted Trotsky's conference.
            Trotsky greeted him quietly, but when the council was over he had the sentry condemned to death for disobeying the orders.  The next day the local Red forces held a parade in honor of Stalin and his colleagues of the Committee.  When it was over a firing squad appeared on the parade ground, and sentence of death was read over the unlucky sentry.
            Before Stalin could protest, Trotsky made a Napoleonic gesture.  "This soldier," he said, "deserves death for disobedience to orders, because obedience, no matter what be the circumstances, is a soldier's first duty.  But he has a splendid record of courage and devotion, therefore I have decided to exercise my powers as Commissar of War to cancel the verdict of the court-martial and dismiss him with a warning."
            The troops roared applause, but Stalin went back to Petrograd with a sour report for Lenin about Trotsky's "aping the arrogance of a Tsarist general."
Duranty, Walter.  Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 104
 
            As Joel Carmichael writes:
            "Trotsky also gave full expression to the ferocity inherent in civil war; in the nature of things anything short of the death penalty can be thought rectifiable by the victory of one's own side.
            Trotsky's wholehearted identification with an Idea made him implacable--"merciless" was a favorite word of his own.  He had a certain admiral (Shchastny) executed on an indictment of sabotage.  This admiral had been appointed by the Bolsheviks themselves; he had saved the Baltic Sea Fleet from the Germans and with great difficulty brought it from Helsingfors to Kronstadt and the mouth of the Neva.  He was very popular among the sailors; because of his strong position vis-a-vis the new regime he behaved quite independently.  This is what annoyed Trotsky, who was, in fact, the only witness to appear against him, and who denounced him without itemizing any charges; he simply said in court that [Shchastny] was a dangerous state criminal who ought to be mercilessly punished....
            Trotsky also instituted a savage general measure-- the keeping of hostages: he had a register made up of the families of officers fighting at the fronts."
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 105
 
            Suffice it to say that what the Soviet government did reluctantly at Kronstadt was a tragic necessity; naturally, the revolutionary government could not have "presented" the fortress that protected Petrograd to the insurgent sailors only because a few dubious Anarchists and Social Revolutionaries were sponsoring a handful of reactionary peasants and soldiers in rebellion.  Similar considerations were involved in the case of Makhno and other potentially revolutionary elements that were perhaps well-meaning but definitely ill-acting.
            Far from spurning the cooperation of revolutionists of all the currents of Socialism, the Bolsheviks of the heroic era of the revolution eagerly sought it on every occasion and made every possible concession to secure it.  For example, Lenin and I seriously considered at one time allotting certain territories to the Anarchists, naturally with the consent of the local population, and letting them carry on their experiment of a stateless social order there.  That project died in the discussion stage through no fault of ours.  The Anarchist movement itself failed to pass the test of actual events on the proving ground of the Russian Revolution.  Many of the ablest and sanest of the Anarchists decided that they could serve their cause best by joining the ranks of our Party.
Trotsky, Leon,  Stalin.  New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 337
 
            Another well-known incident was his taking of harsh reprisals against a regiment that abandoned its position without orders.  Trotsky ordered not only the commander and the commissar but also every tenth Red Army man in the regiment to be shot.
            Through such severity Trotsky accumulated many enemies among party and military workers.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 105
 
            After the battle [with Wrangel], Trotsky is said to have ordered the execution of the surviving 5000 Makhno followers.
Pipes, Richard.  Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1993, p. 134
 
            Trotsky had not shrunk from using terror in the Civil War; but he can be said to have been as little fond of it as a surgeon is fond of bloodshed.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 292
 
            During the period when Trotsky held power, he was, whatever his personal magnetism, a ruthless imposer of the Party's will who firmly crushed the democratic opposition within the Party and fully supported the rules which in 1921 gave the ruling group total authority.  And the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion was as much his personal battle honor as the seizure of power had been.  He was the leading figure among the doctrinaire Leftist Bolsheviks who were finding it hard to stomach Lenin's concessions to the peasantry, and preferred a far more rigorous regime, even before Stalin came round to the same view.  Trotsky might have carried out such policies less crudely than Stalin.  But he would have used, as ever, as much violence as he thought necessary--and that would not have been a small amount.
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 412
 
            ... He [Trotsky] had shown himself no less ruthless than Stalin.  Indeed, at the time of the Civil War, he had ordered executions on a greater scale than Stalin or anyone else....
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 413
 
            After the fall of Kazan, Trotsky left for the front and signed an order with the following warning: no mercy for the enemies of the people, the agents of imperialism, or the lackeys of the bourgeoisie....  Showing his fist of steel, he ordered the commander and the commissar of a regiment shot because they had retreated without orders.  The execution of the commander did not produce any commentary; that of the commissar (a man named Panteleev) was a real sacrilege in the eyes of the Communists because one of their own had been shot.  The incident was discussed throughout the civil war;...
Nekrich and Heller.  Utopia in Power. New York: Summit Books, c1986, p. 81     
 
            (The recollection that Trotsky had had a Communist commissar, Panteleev, shot was also very much alive among the Old Bolsheviks.)
Nekrich and Heller.  Utopia in Power. New York: Summit Books, c1986, p. 161
 
            Trotsky was also reviled for shooting political commissars for disobedience or cowardice.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 169
 
            To add to the beauty of this system, Trotsky proposed the idea of vast labor camps to build socialism.
Richardson, Rosamond.   Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 69
 
            Now that Trotsky was no longer in power, my informant had no reason to hide his feelings.  It was astonishing to find so much hatred towards Trotsky in a man so profoundly demoralized.  Yet his hatred was as violent as it had been on the first day.  To him, Trotsky was neither the hero of the October revolution nor the chief of the victorious Red Army, but only the bloody executioner who had subdued the popular revolt of Kronstadt.  He did not like the Trotskyists and had no great liking for me.
Ciliga, Ante,  The Russian Enigma. London: Ink Links, 1979, p. 182
 
PEOPLE UNJUSTLY ACCUSED AND DENOUNCED OTHERS TO GET AHEAD
 
            In the capitals of almost all the federal republics there were further trials, but in the inverse direction.  Everywhere now there were prosecutions of people who during the purge had denounced other people, traducing them out of excess of zeal or in order to advance themselves.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 312
 
            Unbalanced by the relentless propaganda and by exhortations to show vigilance and fearing for their own safety, people denounced neighbors, colleagues, even members of their own families.  Lines formed outside NKVD offices, as people waited patiently to file their denunciations.  Terror degraded the whole nation.
Grey, Ian. Stalin, Man of History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979, p. 272
 
            ... various kinds of careerists and adventurers took advantage of the spy-and wrecker-phobia.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 437
 
            Of course different prisoners behaved in different wayss.  Some immediately complied with the desires of the investigators; without any sort of resistance they gave false testimony not only about themselves but about dozens and hundreds of their comrades....  Some of these weak-willed people went even further than the investigators demanded; they gained cruel satisfaction out of voluntarily denouncing co-workers and friends, demanding their arrest, though they had no doubt about their innocence.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 493
 
            A denunciation to the NKVD was an easy way to get rid of athletic rivals.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 611
 
            Under these conditions all sorts of careerists and scoundrels tried to use slander to destroy their enemies, to get a good job, an apartment or a neighbor's room, or simply to get revenge for an insult.  Some pathological types crawled out of their holes to write hundreds of denunciations....  The usual NKVD response to a denunciation was to arrest the victim and only later to bother about "checking" the charges made against him.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 612
 
            The assertion is sometimes made that people denounced others to settle personal scores, to advance in their careers, or to gain their apartments.  Inevitably such behavior did take place.  But the evidence presented here, and a good deal more besides, shows that much more commonly people acted to denounce others because they believed in danger from saboteurs.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 151
 
            "I have seen," says Ehrenburg, "how in a progressive society people allegedly dedicated to moral ideas committed desirable acts for personal advantage, betrayed comrades and friends, how wives disavowed their husbands and resourceful sons heaped abuse upon hapless fathers."...
            Individual denouncers operated on an extraordinary scale.  In one district in Kiev, 69 persons were dennounced by one man; in another, over 100.  In Odessa, a single Communist denounced 230 people.  In Poltava, a Party member denounced his entire organization.
            At the 18th Party Congress, when the "excesses" of the Purge period were being belatedly and peripherally criticized, one was now made to confess his methods, which had involved removing 15 local Party Secretaries.
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 253
 
            Such prodigious denouncers must have been a rarity compared to the far larger number who denounced but not in a wholesale way.   Among these, motives varied widely.   Some denounced for fear of being denounced if they failed to turn in someone who had told a political anecdote in a group conversation.  Some denounced persons they disliked.   Some wanted to gain possession of the room or apartment of the person they denounced, whose family would likely be evicted once he was arrested.   Some wanted to eliminate rivals for athletic glory or other desired goals.   And not a few were actuated by career ambition to denounce persons senior to them who stood in their way.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 460
 
            Beck and Godin note the zeal with which many students denounced their professors, junior officials those higher up, rank-and-file party members those in responsible posts; and describe this ambition-driven "revolt of subordinates" as a most significant feature of the period.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 461
 
STALIN AND LENIN SHARE SAME KEY BELIEFS
 
            Stalin shares Lenin's conviction that the world will not permit the Soviet Union to develop in peace, because the mere example of that development would be bound to bring capitalism to its end....
            He also shares Lenin's belief in the irreconcilable differences in the imperialist world, 'which guarantee the safety of the Soviet and the victory of the world revolution'....
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 320
 
            It is the general fashion among Stalin's official biographers to give him little credit for original thinking, probably because their subject himself invariably insists: "I am only the interpreter of Leninism."  "I followed the directives laid down first by Comrade Lenin."  On the rare occasions when we can test the reactions of the two men to the same set of circumstances before they have had time to compare conclusions, it invariably turns out that Stalin was not behind his leader in thinking out a line for himself; his policy subsequently proved on every occasion to be confirmed by the decision of Lenin.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 36
 
STALIN’S VIEWS OF NAZISM AND FASCISM
 
            Lenin did not live into the period of Fascism.... Threatened by the Revolution, the decaying capitalism, in the countries in which the danger of revolution is greatest, throws off the mask of bourgeois democracy and sets up an undisguised dictatorship.  According to Stalin, Fascism and Nazism are nothing but the form of State set up by capitalism when it is in mortal danger.  As it is a matter of life and death, the powerful capitalist groups can give no further consideration to their fellow-capitalists.  The center of the capitalist class, 'monopoly capital', assumes all economic and political power, against the smaller capitalists as well as the other classes.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 320-321
 
            “I am referring not only to fascism in general, but, primarily, to fascism of the German type, which is wrongly called national socialism--wrongly because the most searching examination will fail to reveal even an atom of socialism in it.”
Stalin, Joseph.   Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 13, p. 299
 
            Many try to take advantage of the ideas and slogans of socialism, which are popular among the masses.  Leaders of petty-bourgeois movements are especially given to this tactic.  German fascism, for example, masked its archreactionary content with the term "National Socialism."  Of course there was not a grain of socialism in either the "Christian Communist Republic" in Paraguay or the "National Socialist" state in Germany.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 854
 
            "But today?  Where is the German sense of order today?  Where is the respect for the law?  The National Socialists break the law whenever they find it in their way.  They shoot and bludgeon all round.
Ludwig, Emil.  Leaders of Europe. London: I. Nicholson and Watson Ltd., 1934, p. 380
 
            And so they called to power the fascist party--which in order to hoodwink the people calls itself the National-Socialist party--well knowing that the fascist party, firstly, represents that section of the imperialist bourgeoisie which is the most reactionary and most hostile to the working-class,...
Commission of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Ed. History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks): Short Course. Moscow: FLPH, 1939, p. 302
 
UNLIKE KERENSKY THE BOLSHEVIKS ALLOWED FINLAND TO BE INDEPENDENT
 
            The Kerensky Government refused even to recognize the independence of Finland, though Finland had always been an independent State, bound to Russia only by a single constitutional bond, that of a common dynasty.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 331
 
            Finland's independence was a direct gift from the Bolshevik Revolution.  When the Tsar fell, Finland, then part of the Russian empire, asked for independence.  The Kerensky government refused.  Neither Britain, France, nor the USA then wanted Finland's independence, which implied the breakup of the tsarist empire, their ally in the first world war.  As soon as the Bolsheviks took power, Stalin, then Commissar of Nationalities, moved that Finland's request be granted, saying: "Since the Finnish people... definitely demand... independence, the proletarian state...cannot but meet the demand."
Strong, Anna Louise.   The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 74
 
 
POLISH CLAIMS T____O EASTERN REGIONS ARE NOT VALID
 
            It has been contended that the territorial gain assured to the Soviet Union in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact represented the commencement of Russian neo-imperialism.  That is not so, at least in regard to the Polish territories.  There were four Polish regions which the Soviet Union claimed: Eastern Galicia (formerly Austrian), Volhynia, Polish White Russia, and the Vilna region.  Volhynia had a purely Ukrainian population; it had been torn way from Soviet Russia by the Treaty of Riga, without the population being consulted, after the Polish-Russian war of 1921.  Eastern Galicia was also mainly Ukrainian.  Its capital, Lemberg, had the appearance of a Polish city, but only because a large proportion of the Jewish intelligentsia of Lemberg had been culturally Polonized in the preceding half-century.  Eastern Galicia, which in Russia was called Red Russia, was an old Russian demand; it had been one of the Russian objectives in the First World War.  Its Ukrainian population had offered armed resistance to Polish rule in 1918 and 1919; the West Ukrainian Republic had been proclaimed there, and had been given international recognition.  In the end the Poles subjugated Galicia by armed force.  The Ambassadors Conference in Paris, which then had to decide the future of the region, permitted Poland to retain it, but stipulated that it should be granted autonomy under a Ukrainian governor-general, a condition which Poland never fulfilled.  Again and again the Ukrainians attempted risings, which ended in a sanguinary Polish pacification of the region.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 336
 
            One final point: circles hostile to the Soviet Union have always equated the Soviet march into Poland east of the Curzon Line with the Nazi invasion and occupation of the rest of Poland.  The two are qualitatively different.  First, the Soviet forces moved only into territory which was theirs before it had been snatched by Poland after the October revolution.  Second, and much more importantly, the Soviet Union waited for 16 days after the Nazi invasion of Poland.
            "When, on September 5th [1939], Ribbentrop began to press the Russians to march into their share of Poland, Stalin was not yet ready to issue the marching orders...  He would not...lend a hand in defeating Poland, and he refused to budge before Poland's collapse was complete beyond doubt."  (Deutscher, op. cit. page 432).
Brar, Harpal.  Trotskyism or Leninism. 1993, p. 571
 
 
STALIN SOUGHT SENSIBLE, ETHNICALLY BASED WESTERN BORDERS
 
            Undoubtedly the population of Eastern Galicia had no desire to be under Polish rule; what is not known is whether it was ready to join Soviet Ukraine.  Nevertheless when Stalin marched into Eastern Galicia, claiming that he must protect from the Germans, on national grounds, a population that was identical with that living in the Soviet Union, these were not empty words.  As a matter of prudence he had halted along the Curzon Line, the line drawn by the Western Powers in 1919, almost exactly following the ethnographic dividing line between Poles and Ukrainians;....
            Polish White Russia was also taken from the Russians in the Polish-Russian war in 1920.  There is no doubt about the feeling of the population, who are Orthodox White Russians.  These peasants always wanted to belong to Soviet White Russia.
            The Vilna region was inhabited by Lithuanians and the White Russians.  Only the city of Vilna was regarded as Polish.  That city had actually a Jewish majority, but was even closer to Polish hearts than Lemberg.  The Vilna region had also been annexed by armed force by the Poles.  In its peace treaty with Lithuania in 1920 the Soviet state had recognized the Vilna region as belonging to Lithuania and the city of Vilna as the Lithuanian capital.  The result was that from 1922 right up to the outbreak of the Second World War there had never been a reconciliation and resumption of normal diplomatic relations between Lithuania and Poland.  Throughout the period the Soviet Union had steadily refused to recognize the region as Polish and had always recognized the Lithuanian claim to it.  Now, when the Polish State seemed to have come to an end, it was only natural that Moscow should not abandon the Vilna region to the Germans.  It turned it over to the then formally independent Lithuania, in conformity with the treaty of 1920.  Barely a year later, however, Lithuania became a Soviet State and a part of the Soviet Union. 
            This policy of Stalin's is quite intelligible.  In his distrust of Hitler he had obviously, for reasons of military security, to push forward his frontier as far as possible.  He chose the ethnographic frontier, the frontier that in 1919, in fact, had been internationally assigned to Russia.  In his view, moreover, he had finally solved the Ukrainian and White Russian question by uniting those two peoples in a single State.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 337-338
 
            And 1939-1940 hardly anyone was concerned about abiding by international legal standards.  The Soviet Union hastened to take advantage of the situation in Western Europe to establish more favorable borders and better strategic positions before it's inevitable entry, sooner or later, into the world war.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 732
 
            On Sept. 17, 1939 prime minister Molotov spoke on the radio:
            "No one knows the present whereabouts of the Polish government.  The Polish population has been abandoned to its fate by its unfortunate leaders....  The Soviet government regards it as its duty to proffer help to its Ukrainian and Byelorussian brothers in Poland....  The Soviet government has instructed the Red Army command to order its troops to cross the border and to take under its protection the life and property of the population of the western Ukraine and western Byelorussia."
            Stalin had a note of similar content delivered to the Polish ambassador in Moscow.  With hindsight and from the Soviet point of view, this step was largely justified: the territory entered by Soviet troops was indeed inhabited by Ukrainians and Byelorussians.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 358
 
 
STALIN’S TREATMENT OF THE BALTIC STATES WAS FAIR AND SENSIBLE
 
            Stalin's treatment of the Baltic states is also intelligible.  As already said, no Russian Government will ever voluntarily renounce the Baltic provinces.  The majority of the Russian revolutionaries, including the Bolsheviks, had always recognized the right of the Poles and Finns to secede from Russia.  No one dreamed of according a somewhere right to the three Baltic peoples.  Until 1917 the Latvians and Estonians had had no idea of demanding it.  Until then not one of the revolutionary parties among those peoples had put forward any such claim.  They had all fought side-by-side with the Russian revolutionaries, contenting themselves with the promise that in the hour of victory the Russian revolution would secure equal rights for all the peoples within the Russian Federation.  As for Latvia, national feeling awakened there very late and first showed itself in the war of 1914-18.
            In regard to the Baltic states, Stalin acted entirely in accordance with the views of Lenin.  It was his opinion, as it had been Lenin's, that the independence acquired by the Baltic states in 1918 was not the outcome of any popular demand.  The capitalists and the big farmers, they considered, had started the demand for independence, with the support first of the Germans and then of the British, simply in order to avert social revolution.  Certain facts seemed to confirm that view.  The new Estonian Government met with considerable difficulties in the raising of an army.  Only after a number of Estonian peasants had been hanged at Dorpat for refusing military service did the organization begin to make progress.  In 1919, however, there were further plain indications that the Estonian peasants were fighting only unwillingly against Bolshevism.  With the aid of anti-Bolshevik Russian troops, the Reds had been expelled from Estonia.  The White Guard General Yudenich began his offensive against Petrograd with the aid of the Estonian Army.  It was barely an hour's journey by rail from the Estonian frontier to the former capital of the Russian empire.  At the frontier the Estonian regiments mutinied, and had to be sent home.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 339
 
            I have been told by people in Russia, who ought to know what they are talking about, that the Soviet police have been deliberately clearing out almost all the border regions between Europe and Soviet Russia, moving whole towns and villages from these regions out into Siberia or some other pioneer section where they begin life over again.  The Russians are thus creating a vast no man's land along the European borders, which can be heavily fortified, strung with electrified wires and barbed wires and made as nearly impassable as modern science will permit.
            The government thus seeks to insure itself against an invasion from the west.  But at the same time it also reassures European nations, especially the little border nations, who had more reason to fear Russia than Russia had to fear them.  Noting that the borders are being sealed tight, the neighboring governments are pleased, being desirous only of being left alone so far as Russia is concerned.
            But out in Asia the Russians are establishing no such quarantine along the borders.
Littlepage, John D.  In Search of Soviet Gold.  New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 282-283
 
            In late September-early October 1939, Stalin ordered Molotov to propose to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that they sign a treaty of mutual assistance.  After brief hesitation, some internal struggle and consultation with Berlin, the Baltic governments signed treaties permitting the entry of Red Army units.  At the request of the Baltic governments, the number of Soviet troops was less than the armies of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.  The Soviet military contingents were to remain in their quarters and not interfere in the internal life of these countries, although Stalin was perfectly aware that the presence of the Red Army was bound to affect the political climate.
            Despite some inevitable friction, the sides on the whole followed the spirit and the letter of the treaties.  Sometimes the Baltic partners went further.  For instance, when the Soviet-Finnish war broke out, the military attache in Riga, Col. Vasiliev, reported to Moscow: 'On December 1 General Hartmanis declared: "If because of the circumstances of the war you need any landing strips for your air force, you can use all our existing airdromes, including Riga airport".' The Lithuanian government informed Moscow that 'a committee has been formed for securing food products and forage for the armed forces [of the Red Army] in Lithuania.' During the visit to Moscow in early December 1939 of the commander-in-chief of the Estonian army, General Laidoner--a former lieutenant colonel on the tsarist General Staff--an impression was gained that friendly relations were developing between both states and their armies.
            When Hitler took Paris in June 1940, Stalin felt that if he did not at once invade England he was bound to turn his gaze to the east, and Stalin, aware of being unprepared and making sporadic efforts to make up for lost time, now took a new step.  In the middle of June 1940, Moscow requested permission from the governments of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to deploy additional contingents of troops on their territory.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 362
 
            While the moral aspect of the annexation of the Baltic states was distinctly negative, the act itself was a positive one, given the threats looming over both the USSR and the Baltic states....  Dekanozov nevertheless reported to Stalin and Molotov in early July 1940:
            "A large meeting and demonstration took place in Vilna on July 7.  Some 80,000 people took part.  The main slogans were 'Long live the 13th Soviet republic!'.  'Proletarians of all lands, unite!'.  'Long live comrade Stalin!' And so on.  The meeting passed a vote of greeting to the Soviet Union and the Red Army.  A concert was given by the band of the Lithuanian Army, attended by the president and several members of the government and general staff...."
            It is reasonable to suggest that, had Soviet troops not been there, the Germans would have marched into the Baltic states before June 1941, since they already had a plan to 'Germanize' part of the population and liquidate the rest, as a 1940 memorandum by Rosenberg shows.  The overwhelming majority of the Baltic population was favorable to their countries' incorporation into the Soviet Union in August 1940....
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 363
 
            To save appearances, he falsified the popular will and staged plebiscites, in which Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians begged to be absorbed into the Soviet Union.  His conduct was not more reprehensible than that of any other leader of a great power holding fast to or seizing strategic bases.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 447
 
            While the acquisition of Bessarabia was proceeding, albeit cautiously, Stalin could afford to act more decisively in the Baltic.  In fact, he could scarcely afford not to.  As seen from the Kremlin, the Baltic states offered Hitler a most convenient springboard for an attack on the Soviet Union.  What was worse, ideologically they looked to Berlin rather than to Moscow, in spite of having effectively become client states of the Soviet Union.  True, there were now sizable Soviet garrisons in all three countries, but those troops were there to hold down the population during what Stalin had hoped would be the gradual process of Sovietization, rather than to protect the frontier with Germany.  The Baltic states were beginning to look like the weak link in his defensive chain.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher.  The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 465
 
LATVIANS AND LATVIAN TROOPS SUPPORTED THE BOLSHEVIKS
 
            Still more ambiguous was the situation at that time in Latvia.  Latvia had in the past harbored the most radical of Socialist movements.  The revolution of 1905 had there been exceptionally sanguinary.  After the fall of the Tsardom, Kerensky had permitted the Latvian soldiers in the Russian army, together with the new volunteers, to form regiments of their own under Latvian officers.  These Latvian guards soon became specially well disciplined, first-class troops.  When the Bolshevik revolution broke out, these were almost the only units that did not disintegrate but remained disciplined.  Nor did they obey the order from Latvia to return there; on the contrary, they unanimously declared their support of the Bolsheviks, and remained in Russia.  They were fanatical followers of the revolution.  In the first two years of the revolution they were almost the only disciplined troops on which the new Soviet government could count.  For a long time they formed the principal protection of the Government itself, and they were also the troops of the new terrorist authority, the Cheka.  In that terrorist organization the Latvians occupied the principal key positions.  Very soon the whole of the senior staff of the organization were Latvians.
            The Red Army that marched against Latvia in 1918, captured Riga, and proclaimed the Latvian Soviet Republic, consisted almost exclusively of Latvians.  They were not opposed by Latvians but by the hated Germans.  Riga was not reconquered by Latvian troops but by German bands of adventurers, whom the Latvian commander, Ullmanis, had recruited, and by the Baltic Militia, the troops of the Baltic barons, so hated by the Latvians.  It is significant that these formations wrecked a sanguinary terror against all the Latvians; they regarded all Latvians as Bolsheviks....
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 340
 
SU RECOGNIZED EARLY-ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF ESTONIA AND LATVIA
 
            When in 1920 and 1921 the Soviet Government concluded treaties of peace with Latvia and Estonia, and recognized the independence of those States, this, in the eyes of the Moscow politicians, was not really a conclusion of peace with those two States themselves, but primarily with the European Western Powers--part of the steps intended to bring to an end the foreign intervention in the Russian revolution and to give the young Soviet State a 'breathing space'.
            In the minds of the Bolsheviks, including Lenin and Stalin, the circumstances of the birth of those States governed their whole existence.  They were always regarded as the creations of the anti-Bolshevik Powers, and not of  the Latvian and Estonian peoples.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 341
 
STALIN INVADED THE BALTIC STATES ON VERY VALID GROUNDS
 
            The question for Stalin in August 1939 was quite clear.  He distrusted Hitler.  The Baltic states neither would nor could resist a German lightning invasion.  That would face him with an accomplished fact, but it would be difficult to declare war on that account against the Baltic States; and, of course, he had no desire to do so.  If, however, he placed Russian garrisons in the Baltic States, it would be known in Berlin that any invasion would bring immediate fighting with Soviet troops.  That would be a deterrent for Berlin.
            Stalin went to work very cautiously.  The Russian troops sent into the Baltic States were stationed in encampments of their own, far away from any settlement, and nowhere did they come into contact with the population.  They were hardly seen.  The Soviet State in no way interfered in the affairs of the three Baltic States; it did not even attempt to influence their armies.  The regime remained as it was in all three states; and they retained their own diplomatic representation abroad.  Even their communists, particularly in Latvia, still remained in prison.
            Probably it will never be known how Stalin expected this to end.  But he was overtaken by events.  He seemed to have judged well; indeed, when war came the Western Powers seemed even weaker than he had assumed.  France collapsed, and the British troops returned to their island.  Hitler was virtually master of the whole of Europe outside Russia.  Stalin had to safeguard his country.  It proved that the garrisons in the Baltic states were insufficient.  President Ullmanis, in Latvia, began to move.  He was in intimate personal touch with Berlin.  It seemed to him [Ullmanis] to be possible to bring about a German-Russian conflict.  He no longer contented himself with dealing through the Latvian minister in Berlin, but sent men in his confidence as his personal representatives, to persuade the Germans to intervene.  Naturally the Russians did not remain unaware of this.  A pretext was given them by a small incident with a British warship in Estonian territorial waters.  Moscow declared that the Baltic states were much too weak to be able to defend their neutrality.  Such a breach of neutrality as had occurred might bring the Soviet Union into the war.  On this ground, further Soviet troops marched into the Baltic States, and by a coup d' etat completed the sovietization of the three States and their incorporation into the Soviet Union.
            From Stalin's point view, this policy was no abandonment of the old principles; indeed, it was the fulfillment of an injunction of Lenin's.  Lenin had not had any hesitation about bringing particular peoples of the Russian Empire back into the Russian Federation by force.  An example had been Stalin's own native country, Georgia.... Thus, in 1917 Georgia proclaimed its independence.  It had a social democratic government, and soon established diplomatic relations with a number of European States.  It even became a Member State of the League of Nations; but every effort to interest the great powers in its fate came to grief.  When Azerbaijan and Armenia were sovietized, Georgia, too, was compelled to conclude peace with Soviet Russia.  The peace treaty seemed entirely normal.  In it Soviet Russia unreservedly recognized Georgian independence and bound itself not to interfere in internal Georgian affairs.  But this treaty had a secret clause, which was published later.  Under this clause the Georgian Government bound itself not only to amnesty all the imprisoned Georgian communists but to grant legal existence and freedom of propaganda to the Communists.  Scarcely had this clause been given effect when the Communists provoked rioting in one of the public gardens of Tiflis.  It was a trifling incident, but Lenin at once declared that the Georgian Government was unable to guarantee law and order in its own territory, thus endangering the neighboring states.  Russian troops marched into Georgia, and the country was sovietized.  Stalin had entirely concurred.  In 1923 there was a new rising in Georgia, on an important scale; it was brutally crushed, with a great deal of bloodshed.  Thus it cannot be said that Stalin's policy toward the Baltic states was an innovation; it was entirely in line with the Leninist policy.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 342
 
            A new and important shift thus occurred in Stalin's foreign policy.  His first move in the Baltic lands, the establishment of bases, had been dictated solely by strategic expediency.  He had apparently had no intention of tampering with their social system.  His sense of danger, heightened and intensified by the collapse of France, now impelled him to stage revolutions in the three small countries.  For the first time he now departed, in a small way, from his own doctrine of socialism in one country, the doctrine that he had so relentlessly inculcated into a whole Russian generation.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 446
 
            Of course, Hitler said, the Soviets were determined to exact a price for their cooperation with the Third Reich.  But as far as Hitler could see, their principal aim was merely to extend Soviet access to the Baltic via Latvia and Estonia - a modest enough demand in all conscience.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher.  The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 192
 
 
STALIN’S INVASION OF FINLAND WAS NECESSARY BUT NOT ETHNICALLY JUSTIFIED
 
            The Finnish-Russian frontier came almost up to the suburbs of Leningrad.  Stalin now went so far as to demand from Finland, among other things, the cession to Russia of the Karelian Isthmus with the town of Viborg.  It was impossible for Finland to submit to that.  Finnish Karelia was one of the richest provinces of the country.  A large part of the Finnish industries was concentrated there; Viborg was the second city of Finland.  The population of the province was entirely Finnish.  The Russian demands were inspired not only by strategic considerations but also by nationalist instincts.  Lenin had long been criticized on this matter by party leaders; it had been pointed out that the Karelian isthmus had been conquered by Peter the Great and had for 80 years been a Russian province.  When in 1809 Alexander the First captured Finland from the Swedes, he negotiated with the Finnish estates about the new Constitution.  Finland became an independent State, whose Grand Duke was the Russians Tsar.  Alexander I then returned the province of Viborg to the Finns.  Now it was declared to be a mistake of Lenin's when in 1917, in recognizing Finnish independence, he failed to demand the return of that province to Russia.      
            This demand was, of course, a breach with the Leninist and the whole Bolshevik tradition.  The Bolsheviks, like all Marxist, condemns such arguments from so-called 'historical rights' as reactionary and a pretext for imperialistic claims.  Only the actual ethnographic facts counted for them.  Lenin had therefore acted entirely consistently in 1917.  In putting forward the new demand, Stalin departed from the line of argument on which he had relied in the past in annexing Polish and Romanian territory; in those cases he had relied on the ethnographic conditions.
            The Soviet Union nevertheless declared war on Finland.  This was Stalin's first real breach with all past tradition, in three respects: it was a breach with Lenin's past policy toward Finland; it was also definitely a preventive war, a sort of war which until then all Bolshevik theorists had condemned; and finally it was impossible, from the standpoint of Bolshevism itself, to reconcile the action against Finland with that against the Baltic states....
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 346
 
            Even though today we rightly condemn Stalin, we should also recognize that, given the situation at the time, many of the measures he took to delay the war and strengthen the USSR's western defenses were to a large extent forced on him.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 366
 
            We doubt whether Stalin had any more illusions about the value of this Pact than Hitler had.  That is best proved by the Russian invasions of Poland, Finland, and Bessarabia which--tragic and indefensible though they were when judged by any moral standards, particularly in view of the hypocritical propaganda that accompanied these acts of aggression--were clearly and unambiguously measures of strategic protection against a threatening German attack.  They were nothing more, certainly nothing in the nature of a "red imperialism," as many people suggested.
Socialist Clarity Group. The U. S. S. R., Its Significance for the West.  London: V. Gollancz, 1942, p. 59
 
SU CLOSELY ADHERED TO THE RUSSO-GERMAN PACT
 
            It was obvious that the Soviet Union must be ready to supply Germany's economic requirements.  Especially at must be ready to supply strategic raw materials.  This was the price not only of the peace enjoyed by the Soviet Union, but of its territorial gains.  And Stalin delivered the supplies, carefully keeping to the agreements.  Only in this way could he keep war away from his frontiers.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 348
 
            Stalin was clearly determined, from the very start of the alliance, that nothing should be done which might in the slightest agree offend or upset his new partner.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher.  The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 296
 
STALIN WAS A GOOD WWII SUPREME COMMANDER
 
            Stalin as supreme commander of the Russian forces in the Second World War would be a theme for a special work.  His great gift of military organization showed itself here again.  Without any question, streams of energy proceeded from him throughout the war, and that energy halted the Germans before Leningrad and Moscow.  They had to seek the road to victory in another direction-- toward the Volga.  Strategically they fell into exactly the same situation as the counter-revolutionary generals of the civil war.  As then, Stalingrad had once more to become the battlefield on which the outcome of the war would be decided.  Stalin had already won one victory there, at the outset of his career; once already he had prevented the enemy from crossing the Volga.  The strategic problem was familiar to him.  For the second time in his life he achieved his strategic triumphs on the same spot.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 365
 
            "Hitler fooled us," he [Stalin] said, in a calm but somewhat harsh voice.  "I didn't think he was going to attack now."
            He was silent.  The launch still floated beside us, and Captain Karazov still stood at attention.
            "We did all we could to avoid war," Stalin said.  "We did all we could to avoid the ruin it causes.  But now we no longer have any choice.  We have to accept the battle, for life or for death; and we can only win if the whole people rises as one man against the Germans."
Svanidze, Budu. My Uncle, Joseph Stalin. New York: Putnam, c1953, p. 169
 
            After dinner, before taking his leave, Rokossovsky shook my uncle's hand, and said, "You have thanked us for what we did.  Let me say that without your constant support, the victory would have been impossible.  I will never forget the phone call you put through to me at my command post that night in November when the Germans were entering Istra and threatening to encircle Moscow.  After I put down the phone, I ordered an attack and our troops re-occupied Istra."
Svanidze, Budu. My Uncle, Joseph Stalin. New York: Putnam, c1953, p. 179
 
            Stalin knew there was no hope of bringing the war to an early end but he had to bolster the morale of his people.  The second battle of Moscow had begun, and Soviet Intelligence reported that the Fuehrer had given his Generals a fortnight in which to take the city.
            Soon the Germans took Khimky, the small port on the Moscow-Volga-Canal, four miles from Moscow, and connected by trolley-bus to the city, and at this point Stalin personally took command of the defense operations.  He urged the Soviet troops at all costs, to hold out for a few days to enable reinforcements, maneuvering their positions, to complete their reconcentration.  To give his Generals and troops new strength, Stalin applied the right psychology, and frequently telephoned the field headquarters of his different Generals.
            "Hello, here is Stalin, make your report," he would say.  After listening to their reports, he would urge encouragingly: "Hold out.  We shall be coming to your assistance in three to four hours time.  You will have your reinforcements"!
            And the over-tired defenders of Moscow, near to collapse, held-out, and the Soviet counter-offensive was opened.
            Then came a communique Signed by Marshals Timoshenko and Zhukov which announced the "crushing defeat of the Wehrmacht before Moscow."
Fishman and Hutton.  The Private Life of Josif Stalin. London: W. H. Allen, 1962, p. 144
 
            In all, the State Committee for Defense adopted some 10,000 resolutions on military and economic matters during the war.  Those resolutions were carried out accurately and with enthusiasm....
            Stalin himself was strong-willed and no coward.  It was only once I saw him somewhat depressed.  That was at the dawn of June 22, 1941, when his belief that the war could be avoided, was shattered.
            After June 22, 1941, and throughout the war Stalin firmly governed the country, led the armed struggle and international affairs together with the Central Committee and the Soviet Government.
Zhukov, Georgii.  Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 268
 
            I can only repeat that Stalin devoted a good deal of attention to problems of armament and material.  He frequently met with chief aircraft, artillery, and tank designers whom he would question in great detail about the progress achieved in designing the various types of equipment in our country and abroad.  To give him his due, it must be said that he was fairly well versed in the characteristics of the basic types of armament.
            Is it true that Stalin really was an outstanding military thinker, a major contributor to the development of the Armed Forces and an expert in tactical and strategic principles?
            From the military standpoint I have studied Stalin most thoroughly, for I entered the war together with him and together with him I ended it.
            Stalin mastered the technique of the organization of front operations and operations by groups of fronts and guided them with skill, thoroughly understanding complicated strategic questions.  He displayed his ability as Commander-in-Chief beginning with Stalingrad.
            In guiding the armed struggle as a whole, Stalin was assisted by his natural intelligence and profound intuition.  He had a knack of grasping the main link in the strategic situation so as to organize opposition to the enemy and conduct a major offensive operation.  He was certainly a worthy Supreme Commander.
            Here Stalin's merit lies in the fact that he correctly appraised the advice offered by the military experts and then in summarized form--in instructions, directives, and regulations--immediately circulated them among the troops for practical guidance.
            As regards the material and technical organization of operations, the build-up of strategic reserves, the organization of production of material and troop supplies, Stalin did prove himself to be an outstanding organizer.  And it would be unfair if we, the Soviet people, failed to pay tribute to him for it.
Zhukov, Georgii.  Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 284-285
 
            The Second Front dawdled, but Stalin pressed unfalteringly ahead.  He risked the utter ruin of socialism in order to smash the dictatorships of Hitler and Mussolini.  After Stalingrad the Western World did not know whether to weep or applaud.  The cost of victory to the Soviet Union was frightful.  To this day the outside world has no dream of the hurt, the loss and the sacrifices.   For his calm, stern leadership here, if nowhere else, arises the deep worship of Stalin by the people of all the Russias.
Statement by W.E.B DuBois regarding COMRADE STALIN on March 16, 1953
 
            The modern Stalin was instantly recognizable.  Harriman, who saw a great deal of Stalin during the war as Roosevelt's emissary and then ambassador, was deeply impressed by him: "his high intelligence, that fantastic grasp of detail, his shrewdness... I found him better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic and Churchill... the most effective of the war leaders."...  At Tehran the British Chief of the General Staff, General Brooke, thought that Stalin's grasp of strategy was the fruit of "a military brain of the highest caliber."  At Tehran Stalin did not, in Brooke's view, put a foot wrong. 
Overy, R. J. Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow. New York: TV Books, c1997, p. 348
 
            For his part, Harriman rated Stalin 'better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic than Churchill, in some ways the most effective of the war leaders'.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 252
 
            Stalin possessed, all western observers in the Hitler war agreed, excellent strategic judgment.
Snow, Charles Percy.  Variety of Men. New York: Scribner, 1966, p. 258
 
            He [Stalin] spent whole days, and often nights as well, at headquarters.  Zhukov wrote: "In discussion he made a powerful impression....  His ability to summarize an idea precisely, his native intelligence, is unusual memory.... his staggering capacity for work, his ability to grasp the essential point instantly, enabled him to study and digest quantities of material which would have been too much for any ordinary person.... I can say without hesitation that he was master of the basic principles of the organization of front-line operations and the deployment of front-line forces....  He controlled them completely and had a good understanding of major strategic problems.  He was a worthy Supreme Commander."
Radzinsky, Edvard.  Stalin. New York: Doubleday, c1996, p. 486
 
            He [Stalin] was never a general let alone a military genius but, according to Zhukov, who knew better than anyone, this "outstanding organizer...displayed his ability as Supremo starting with Stalingrad."   He "mastered the technique of organizing for operations...and guided them with skill, thoroughly understanding complicated strategic questions," always displaying his "natural intelligence...professional intuition" and a "tenacious memory."   He was "many-sided and gifted" but had "no knowledge of all the details."   Mikoyan was probably right when he summed up in his practical way that Stalin "knew as much about military matters as a statesman should--but no more."
Montefiore, Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Knopf, 2004, p. 439
 
            Like most people with whom I associated, I connected the turnabout in the course of the war with Stalin, and stories of him as a human being encouraged the magnification of his charisma.  Therefore, though I had begun the war with doubts about the "wisdom" of Stalin's leadership, I ended it believing that we had been very lucky, that without Stalin's genius, victory would have taken much longer to achieve and would have entailed far greater losses, had it come at all.
Grigorenko, Petro G. Memoirs. New York: Norton, c1982, p. 139
 
            Could Russia have won without Stalin?  Was Stalin indispensable to the Soviet war effort?  An expert on Russia, Dr. Bialer, has written: 'It seems doubtful that the Soviet system could have survived an extraordinary internal shock, such as the disappearance of Stalin, while at the same time facing the unprecedented external bowl of the German invasion.'
            Another expert, America's wartime Ambassador to Moscow, Harriman, says: 'We became convinced that, regardless of Stalin's awful brutality and his reign of terror, he was a great war leader.'  (Replying to a question I [the author] put to him on his visit to Moscow in May 1975, Harriman called Stalin 'one of the most effective war leaders in history'.)  Harriman is categorical: 'Without Stalin, they never would have held.'
            Giving full support to Harriman, but going a step further is Joseph McCabe, who has been described by eminent historians as 'one of our deeper thinkers' and 'one of the most learned men' of the 20th century.  McCabe has recorded that when Hitler's armies fell upon Russia in 1941 Stalin became the West's leader in the gravest crisis through which the world has passed since the fall of Rome.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.  London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 195
 
 
            And Stalin, as a commander-in-chief, had no equal either among our allies or among our enemies.  To the present moment [1982] , Europe is the way Stalin left it.  Even now the knots tied in the Far and Middle East remained untied.
Grigorenko, Petro G. Memoirs. New York: Norton, c1982, p. 212
 
            The criticism of Stalin as a military leader in Khrushchev's report at the closed session of the 20th Party Congress is on the level of small-town gossip.  The one serious criticism of Stalin it contained was that he did not call a halt to the operation near Kharkhov when a threat to our flanks arose, and this criticism misses the point.  In the case of Kharkhov, Stalin acted as the serious military leader.  During the moment of crisis, persistence was what was most required.  Stalin's conduct, his unwillingness to come to the telephone, was geared toward calming his nervous subordinates, and it underlined the fact that he was convinced of the operation’s success.  Khrushchev acted like a child.  He was frightened by the prospect of being encircled and he failed, along with his commander, to provide any protection for his threatened flanks....
            (Such is the truth.  I can and I do hate Stalin with all the fibers of my soul.)
Grigorenko, Petro G. Memoirs. New York: Norton, c1982, p. 212
 
            Stalin was convinced that in the war against the Soviet Union the Nazis would first try to seize the Ukraine and the Donets Coal Basin in order to deprive the country of its most important economic regions and lay hands on the Ukraine grain, Donets coal and, later, Caucasian oil.  During the discussion of the operational plan in the spring of 1941, Stalin said: "Nazi Germany will not be able to wage a major lengthy war without those vital resources."
            ...Stalin was the greatest authority for all of us, and it never occurred to anybody to question his opinion and assessment of the situation.  Yet his conjecture as to the main strike of the Nazi invader proved incorrect.
Zhukov, Georgi.   Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 250
 
            During the war, Stalin had five official posts.  He was Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General Secretary of the Party's Central Committee, Chairman of the USSR Council of People's Commissars, Chairman of the State Defense Committee, and People's Commissar for Defense.  He worked on a tight schedule, 15 to 16 hours a day.
Zhukov, Georgi.   Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 349
 
            Stalin made a great personal contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany and its allies.  His prestige was exceedingly high, and his appointment as Supreme Commander was wholeheartedly acclaimed by the people and the troops.
            Mikhail Sholokhov was quite right in saying in an interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda during the celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Victory that "it is wrong to belittle Stalin, to make him look a fool.  First, it is dishonest, and second, it is bad for the country, for the Soviet people.  And not because victors are never judged, but above all because such 'denouncements' are contrary to the truth."
Zhukov, Georgi.  Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 363
 
            I am often asked whether Stalin was really an outstanding military thinker and a major contributor to the development of the armed forces, whether he was really an expert in tactical and strategic principles.
            I can say that Stalin was conversant with the basic principles of organizing operations of Fronts and groups of Fronts, and that he supervised them knowledgeably.  Certainly, he was familiar with major strategic principles.  Stalin's ability as Supreme Commander was especially marked after the Battle of Stalingrad.
            The widespread tale that the Supreme Commander studied the situation and adopted decisions when toying with a globe is untrue.  Nor did he pour over tactical maps.  He did not need to.  But he had a good eye when dealing with operational situation maps.
            Stalin owed this to his natural intelligence, his experience as a political leader, his intuition and broad knowledge.  He could find the main link in a strategic situation which he seized upon in organizing actions against the enemy, and thus assured the success of the offensive operation.  It is beyond question that he was a splendid Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
            Stalin is said to have offered fundamental innovations in military science--elaborating methods of artillery offensives, of winning air supremacy, of encircling the enemy, splitting surrounded groups into parts and wiping them out one by one, etc.
            This is untrue.  These paramount aspects of warcraft were mastered in battles with the enemy.  They were the fruit of deep reflections and summed up the experience of a large number of military leaders and troop commanders.
            The credit that is due here to Stalin is for assimilating the advice of military experts in his stride, filling it out and elaborating upon it in a summarized form--in instructions, directives, and recommendations which were immediately circulated as guides among the troops.
            Besides, in the matter of backing operations, building up strategic reserves, organizing arms production and, in general, the production of everything needed in the war, the Supreme Commander proved himself an outstanding organizer.  And it would be most unfair if we failed to pay tribute to him for this.
Zhukov, Georgi.   Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 367-368
 
            I would like additionally to say a few words about Stalin as Supreme High Commander.  I would hope that my service position during the war, my constant, almost daily contact with Stalin and, finally, my participation in sessions of the Politburo and the State Defense Committee which examined all the fundamental issues concerning the war, give me the right to say a few words on this topic.  In doing so I shall not discuss his Party, political and state activity in wartime, inasmuch as I do not consider myself sufficiently competent to do so....
            Was it right for Stalin to be in charge of the Supreme High Command?  After all he was not a professional military man?
            There can be no doubt that it was right.
            At that terribly difficult time the best solution, bearing in mind the enormous Leninist experience from the Civil War period, was to combine in one person the functions of Party, state, economic and military leadership.  We had only one way ou___"t: to turn the country immediately into a military camp, to make the rear and the front an integral whole, to harness all our efforts to the task of defeating the Nazi invaders.  And when Stalin as Party General Secretary, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and Chairman of the State Defense Committee also became the Supreme High Commander and the People’s Defense Commissar, there opened up more favorable opportunities for a successful fight for victory.
            This combining of Party, state. and military leadership functions in the figure of Stalin did not mean that he alone decided every issue during the war....
            It is my profound conviction that Stalin, especially in the latter part of the war, was the strongest and most remarkable figure of the strategic command.  He successfully supervised the fronts and all the war efforts of the country on the basis of the Party line and he was able to have considerable influence on the leading political and military figures of the Allies in the war.  It was interesting to work with him, but at the same time extremely taxing, particularly in the initial period of the war.  He has remained in my memory as a stern and resolute war leader, but not without a certain personal charm....
            Stalin possessed not only an immense natural intelligence,but also amazingly wide knowledge.  I was able to observe his ability to think analytically during these sessions of the Party Politburo, the State Defense Committee and during my permanent work in the GHQ.  He would attentively listen to speakers, unhurriedly pacing up and down with hunched shoulders, sometimes asking questions and making comments.  And when the discussion was over he would formulate his conclusions precisely and sum things up.  His conclusions would be brief, but profound in content    .
            I have already noted that during the first few months of the war Stalin’s inadequate operational and strategic training was apparent.  He rarely asked the advice of the General Staff officers or front commanders.  Even the top Operations Department men in the General Staff were not always invited to work on the most important GHQ operations directives.  At that time decisions were normally taken by him alone and not always with complete success....
            The big turning point for Stalin as Supreme High Commander came in September 1942 when the situation became very grave and there was a special need for flexible and skilled leadership in regard to military operations.  It was at that time that he began to change his attitude to the General Staff personnel and front commanders, being obliged constantly to rely on the collective experience of his generals.  “Why the devil didn’t you say so!
            From then on, before he took a decision on any important war issue, Stalin would take advice and discuss it together with his deputy, the top General Staff personnel, heads of chief departments of the People’s Defense Commissariat and front commanders, as well as people’s commissars in charge of the defense industry....
            The process of Stalin’s growth as a general came to maturity.  I have already written that in the first few months of the war he sometimes tended to use Soviet troops in a direct frontal attack on the enemy.  After the Stalingrad and especially the Kursk battles he rose to the heights of strategic leadership.  From then on Stalin would think in terms of modern warfare, had a good grasp of all questions relating to the preparation for and execution of operations.  He would now demand that military action be carried out in a creative way, with full account of military science, so that all actions were decisive and flexible, designed to split up and encircle the enemy.  In his military thinking he markedly displayed a tendency to concentrate men and material, to diversified deployment of all possible ways of commencing operations and their conduct.  Stalin began to show an excellent grasp of military strategy, which came fairly easily to him since he was a past master at the art of political strategy, and of operational art as well....
            I think that Stalin displayed all the basic qualities of a Soviet general during the strategic offensive of the Soviet Armed Forces.  He skillfully supervised actions of the Fronts    .
            Stalin paid a great deal of attention to creating an efficient style of work in the GHQ.  If we look at the style from autumn 1942, we see it as distinguished by reliance on collective experience in drawing up operational and strategic plans, a high degree of exactingness, resourcefulness, constant contact with the troops, and a precise knowledge of the situation at the Fronts....
            Stalin as Supreme High Commander was extremely exacting to all and sundry; a quality that was justified, especially in wartime.  He never forgave carelessness in work or failure to finish the job properly, even if this happened with a highly indispensable worker without a previous blemish on his record....
            As Supreme High Commander, Stalin was in most cases extremely demanding but just.  His directives and commands showed front commanders their mistakes and shortcomings, taught them how to deal with all manner of military operations skillfully....
            I deliberately leave untouched the expressions used by Stalin so as to give the reader the usual flavor of Stalin’s talk.  He normally spoke succinctly, pithily, and bluntly....
Vasilevskii, Aleksandr M.   A Lifelong Cause. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981, p. 447-451
 
            It would be quite wrong, however, to look at Stalin from only one point of view.  I have to say that he was an extremely difficult man to deal with, liable to fly off the handle and unpredictable.  It was hard to get on with him and he took a long time to get used to    .
            If Stalin was ever unhappy about something, and the war, especially at the beginning, certainly gave plenty of causes, he could give a dressing down unjustly.  However, he changed noticeably during the war.  He began to be more restrained and calm in his attitude to us officers of the General Staff and main departments of the People’s Defense Commissariat and front commanders, even when something was going wrong at the front.  It became much easier to deal with him.  It is clear that the war, its twists and turns, failures and successes had an effect on Stalin’s character....
            Joseph Stalin has certainly gone down in military history.  His undoubted service is that it was under his direct guidance as Supreme High Commander that the Soviet Armed Forces withstood the defensive campaigns and carried out all the offensive operations so splendidly.  Yet he, to the best of my judgment, never spoke of his own contribution.  At any rate, I never happened to hear him do so.  The title of Hero of the Soviet Union and rank of Generalissimus were awarded to him by written representation to the Party Central Committee Politburo from front commanders.  In fact, he had fewer military orders than did the commanders of fronts and armies.  He told people plainly and honestly about the miscalculations made during the war when he spoke at a reception in the Kremlin in honor of Red Army commanders on 24 May 1945:    .
Vasilevskii, Aleksandr M.   A Lifelong Cause. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981, p. 452
 
            This nationalist revival and Stalin's strong leadership, were extremely significant in the eventual victory of Russia over Germany.
Richardson, Rosamond.   Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 163
 
            "The only really military man in the family was my father," says Svetlana.  "He really had this talent.  He really liked it, and the best performance he gave in his life was as organizer of the Red Army during the Second World War.  He did what he was born for."
            ...The fact that our country managed to get through the war was to Stalin's huge merit.  And then the economy was restored, and atomic weaponry was created, which to this day has maintained the peace.
Richardson, Rosamond.   Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 170
 
            According to Zhukov, Stalin 'mastered questions of the organization of front operations [there being about a dozen large sectors, or "fronts", at any given moment]  and groups of fronts', a point sustained by chief-of-staff Vasilevsky.  Lest this be dismissed as mere post-Khrushchev propaganda aimed at rehabilitating Stalin's image as a war leader, consider that General Alan Brooke, who encountered Stalin in 1943, judged him 'a military brain of the very highest order'.  And Brooke was arguably the keenest British military mind of the war, a professional who held in contempt politicians who dabbled in strategy, and also the one western general whom Stalin accused to his face of being unfriendly to Russia.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 242
 
            After British Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke met Stalin he commented: 'Never once in any of his statements did Stalin make any strategic error, nor did he ever fail to appreciate all the implications of a situation with a quick and unerring eye.'
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.  London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 165
 
            Like many Russian generals, Krivoshein respected Stalin as Commander-in-Chief, calling him a 'worthy commander'.  He said that he agreed with British Field Marshal Alanbrooke's estimate of Stalin as a man with a 'military brain of the finest order'.  But Krivoshein added a proviso.  'Stalin', he said, 'had very good assistants in the armed forces, and they managed to tell him which way was the right way.  But Stalin was able to use his formidable strength to manage military affairs and achieve victory--which was no small achievement.'
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.  London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 55
 
Author: Admiral, how do you assess Stalin's role in the war?
Admiral Gorshkov: Stalin's good point was that he could choose very talented military leaders.  Stalin was of course also an outstanding political, state and military leader.  This is not only my opinion, but that of Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook and many other prominent foreign personalities.  Stalin had a broad understanding of military matters.  And he was able to find solutions and make decisions in the most difficult situations.
Author: So, you would say that Stalin was the Supreme Commander not just in name?
Gorshkov: Yes.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.   London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 124
 
Author: Actually, many persons in the West do not give Stalin credit for his role in the defeat of Hitler's Germany; and there are books by experts, and an encyclopedia or two, that say that Stalin 'interfered' with his commanders in the field....
Admiral Gorshkov and General Pavlovsky: That is not correct.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.  London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 124
 
            At the conclusion of his memoirs, Marshal Vasilevsky asks: 'Was it right for Stalin to be in charge of the Supreme High Command?  After all, he was not a professional military man.'  And Vasilevsky's answer: 'There can be no doubt that it was right.'
            ...The stocky Marshal, who had frequent, almost daily contact with Stalin throughout the war, held some of the highest posts in the Armed Forces: Chief of Operations of the General Staff; Chief of the General Staff; Deputy Defense Minister.  In the summer of 1945 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Forces in the Far East in the war against Japan....
            Looking back on the war Vasilevsky mentions 'Stalin's growth as a general', although he does not fail to mention miscalculations by the Supreme Commander in the early months of the invasion.  He points out that after a year or two Stalin 'successfully supervised the Fronts and all the war efforts of the country'.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.  London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 180
 
            When Marshal Konev was asked his impression of Stalin by the Yugoslav writer and political activist, Djilas (the year was 1944), he replied: 'Stalin is universally gifted.  He was brilliantly able to see the war as a whole, and this made possible his successful direction.'
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.  London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 181
 
            A perusal of memoirs, speeches and articles leads one to conclude that there is virtual consensus among Russia's wartime generals and admirals that Stalin was a military leader of extraordinary insight, that he was an exceptional Commander-in-Chief.  This is apparent in the recollections of many Marshals, including Meretskov, Vasilevsky, and Bagramyan.  According to these men there was nothing synthetic about Stalin's name as Marshal and Generalissimo.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.  London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 181
 
            In his book, Reminiscences and Reflections, Zhukov sums up his views about Stalin:
            'I am often asked whether Stalin was really an outstanding military thinker and a major contributor to the development of the armed forces, whether he was really an expert in tactical and strategic principles.  I can say that Stalin was conversant with the basic principles of organizing the operations of Fronts and groups of Fronts, and that he supervised them knowledgeably.  Certainly he was familiar with major strategic principles.  His ability as Supreme Commander was especially marked after the Battle of Stalingrad.'  He adds that Stalin had 'rich intuition and ability to find the main point in a strategic situation', which is high praise indeed from a soldier of Zhukov's stature.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders.  London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 182
 
EACH ALLY TRIES TO GET THE OTHER TO DO THE HARD WORK
 
            The situation of the Soviet Union after the outbreak of war was perfectly clear.  The relations between allies in a coalition war show certain fixed characteristics.  Each ally tries more or less to carry on the war at the cost of the other allies.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 366
 
STALIN CONTENDS ALLIES WANT SU BLED WHITE AND THEY AVOID SECOND FRONT
 
            Stalin became convinced that the Anglo-Saxon Powers were pursuing a policy of prolonging the war, so that not only should Germany be brought low, but the Soviet Union should be so bled white that after the war it would be a weak country.  This Stalin repeatedly and plainly declared, and again and again he pressed for the creation of the 'Second Front'.  It was this front above all that began to poison the relations between the allies.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 367
 
            Until the middle of 1944 this question [the second front] occupied center-stage in his [Stalin] diplomatic efforts.  True, as the wind of victory filled his sails, he became less insistent, and indeed the front in western Europe was only opened when it had become obvious that the Soviet Union was capable of destroying Nazi Germany on her own.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 485
 
            Stalin's tactics, of rudeness punctuated by warmth, were sometimes counter-productive.  But his general strategy was sound....  And though Churchill at least was alienated by Stalin's offensive attitude, even he was still susceptible to the feeling that Stalin had a genuine grievance while the Soviet Union was bearing the brunt of the war.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 253
 
            According to Eisenhower, they could not open a second front in 1942-43 allegedly because they were unprepared for such a large-scale combined strategic operation.  That was certainly far from the truth, for they could have opened a second front in 1943.  They deliberately waited till our troops would inflict greater damage on Germany's military force.
Zhukov, Georgii.  Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 681
 
            Stalin made it painfully clear that the Soviet government took no interest in the TORCH operation [code-name for the North African landings].  He spoke caustically of the failure of the Western Allies to deliver the promised supplies to the Soviet Union. He spoke of the tremendous sacrifices that were being made to hold 280 German divisions on the Eastern Front.
Sherwood, Robert E.  Roosevelt and Hopkins. New York: Harper, 1948, p. 620
 
            Roosevelt, whose judgment of affairs was objective, and who was not unfavorably prejudiced against the Soviet leader, nor against the Russians as a whole, recognized the reasonable nature of Stalin's demands [for a second front].   But he replied that the British operations against Rommel in Africa already constituted, in a certain measure, a second front, and they were holding up the crack German formations.   Stalin did not accept this explanation, which seemed to him a mere excuse or evasion.   Rommel's African Corps consisted of two armored divisions and one division of light infantry.   Such a front was not a center of fixation; it was merely a slight diversion.
Delbars, Yves.  The Real Stalin. London, Allen & Unwin, 1951, p. 323
 
            The plan for an assault across the Channel was finally agreed upon with the British in April 1942, but even after that Churchill repeatedly attempted to persuade Roosevelt to undertake a landing across the Mediterranean.  According to Eisenhower, they could not open a second front in 1942-1943 allegedly because they were not prepared for this major combined strategic operation.  That was certainly far from the truth.  They could have opened a second front in 1943, but they wittingly did not hurry to do so, waiting for our troops to inflict greater damage on Germany's armed forces, and, consequently, to become more exhausted.
Zhukov, Georgi.  Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 2, Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 457
 
 
STALIN FELT STALINGRAD VICTORY MEANT SU COULD WIN ALONE
 
            In particular, the battle of Stalingrad had brought the decisive turning-point in the whole world war.  From that moment on the German armies streamed homewards.  The second front in Europe came only after the Battle of Stalingrad.  It was natural for Stalin to think that the allies had landed in Europe only because of his victory, in order to forestall him, and that he could have been victorious alone, without the second front.  From that moment he was convinced that the Soviet Union alone had conquered the strongest military Power in all history, the Third Reich, and without really effective aid from the Allies, who now were merely reaping the fruit of that victory.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 369
 
STALIN UNITED A LARGER AREA THAN THE CZARS EVER CREATED
 
            In the matter of foreign relations it is obvious that Stalin will leave behind him a great and splendid realm.  If we consider him simply as a Russian statesman, and apply the old historical measure of values to his life's work, he is actually, in the nationalist sense, the greatest Russian statesman in all history.  He is not only won back for Russia all that the Russian Tsars were compelled to cede at the beginning of this century, but has secured almost all the territories claimed by the Tsars since Catherine The Great.  All that was ceded to Japan by the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, after the defeat in the Russian-Japanese war, was Russian again, with a little added.  The Karelian Isthmus, conquered by Peter the Great but ceded to Finland at the beginning of the last century, has been recovered by Stalin.  The Baltic provinces, and Bessarabia, lost in 1918--Volhynia and western White Russia, Lithuania and Vilna--in a word, the 1914 frontier, has been won back and extended.  Of the old Russia, only two small districts on the Russo-Turkish frontier, Kars and Ardahan, ceded to the Turks in 1919, are missing.  The Russian revolution voluntarily renounced Congress Poland.  It is Russian once more; and Eastern Galicia, the northern Bukovina, and Carpatho-Ukraine, the regions for which Russia fought in 1914-17, regions which had never been under Russian rule, are now Russian.
            The dream of all the Tsars has been attained, all the 'Five Russias' are united under a single sceptre: Great Russia, Little Russia (Ukraina), White Russia, Red Russia (Galicia), and sub-Carpathian Russia.  For the first time in history, all the eastern Slavs are united in a single realm.  It was the ambition of all the rulers of Russia, attained by none --until now, by Stalin.
            Nor is that all.  Since the 18th-century Russia had regarded herself as the protector of all the Slavs.  Panslavism provided the modern ideology for that claim.  Now the inclusion of all Slav States under Russian leadership and guidance has been achieved.  During the war Stalin resuscitated Panslavism as a political instrument, and actually created organs for that policy, such as the Committee of the Slav Peoples, in Moscow, and the Pan-Slav Congresses.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 391-92
 
            In the Far East, too, Stalin has fulfilled the political ambition of  the Tsars.  The small region of Tannu Tuva, quietly striven for by Russian policy during the last 20 years of the Tsardom, with no apparent prospect of wresting it from Chinese sovereignty, is today Russian territory.  The Tsars also laid claim to Mongolia; Stalin has made it a vassal State....
            While Russia's 1914 frontier has not been reached in the Middle East, and the old Russian dream of dominance of the Dardanelles has still not been fulfilled, the Stalinist foreign policy has at least attained more than even the Treaty of San Stefano of 1877, which was subsequently revised to Russia's disadvantage at the Congress of Berlin.  Russia is now, in any case, at the gates of Byzantium.
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 393
 
STALIN AND THE BOLSHEVIKS HAVE GREATLY REDUCED CLASS DIFFERENCES
 
            Nevertheless, the Stalinist era has achieved something permanent for Russia herself--and this is interesting because Stalin himself, like all the other Russians, has helped to achieve the general advance.  The division of the Russian people into two unequal classes, aristocrats and the common people, has entirely disappeared, so much so that today in Russia a man or woman of 30 can no longer recall it.  All social barriers have fallen,....
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 399
 
LENIN SHUT DOWN FACTIONALISM AND HAD MAJOR PURGE
 
            The controversies engendered by the adoption of the NEP caused Congress X (March, 1921) to order the dissolution of all factional groups and the expulsion from membership, on the order of the Central Committee, of all deemed guilty of reviving factionalism, infringing the rules of discipline, or violating Congress decisions.  During 1921 some 170,000 members, about 25% of the total, were expelled in a mass purge which continued throughout 1922.  So drastic was this cleansing that Congress XII (April, 1923) was attended by only 408 delegates representing 386,000 members, as compared with 694 and 732,000 in March, 1921.  The Congress rejected proposals by Krassin and Radek for large scale concessions to foreign capital, by Bukharin and Sokolnikov for abandoning the State monopoly of foreign trade, and by Trotsky for reversing Lenin's policy of conciliating the peasantry.  In the autumn of 1923 Trotsky issued a "Declaration of the 46 Oppositionists," criticizing the NEP, predicting a grave economic crisis and demanding full freedom for dissenting groups and factions.  Immediately after Congress XI (March, 1922) the Plenum of the Central Committee, on Lenin's motion, had chosen Stalin as General Secretary of the Committee.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 198
 
            The 1921 Purge was so severe that the party membership was reduced from 732,000 (at the time of the Tenth Congress in March, 1921) to 532,000 at the Eleventh Congress in March, 1922.
Duranty, Walter.  Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 71
 
            In March 1921 there was a serious mutiny of sailors of the Kronstadt naval base near Petrograd, previously noted for their ardent radicalism.  This was not the doing of the Bolshevik dissenters, but at the party congress of March 1921 Lenin used it as an example of what dissent could lead to thanks to the machinations of the Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, and imperialists.  The Congress passed a resolution forbidding intra-party factions, with a secret article that permitted the Central Committee to discipline, even to expel from the party (that is, remove from political life), any factionalists, including Central Committee members.  Those who wish to portray Lenin as a pluralist at heart have observed that this was an exceptional measure during a crisis at the end of a devastating civil war and that it was not intended to be a permanent feature of Bolshevism.  But Lenin never suggested in the two years following this resolution that he thought it might be rescinded, even though the crisis had passed.
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 83
 
STALIN DID NOT CAUSE TROTSKY’S FALL
 
            The decline and fall of Trotsky, however, are not at all explicable in terms of a selfishly ambitious scheme developed by Stalin to thwart Lenin's purposes.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 200
 
            In fact, however, Trotsky was alone on the Politburo, and in the decisive slots of the party apparatus he had few supporters.  This greatly weakened his position and made it impossible for him to automatically become the party's new top leader.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 111
 
HAVING BEEN RUTHLESS TROTSKY DECIDED TO BE SO AGAIN
 
“We were never concerned,” wrote Trotsky, “with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the “sacredness of human life.’  We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him.  And this problem can be solved only by blood and iron.”  Under the conditions of the 1930’s the Oppositionists having no other effective weapons at their disposal, concluded that assassination might prove effective.
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 267
 
            At the Central Committee's plenum of November 1927, where Stalin eventually proposed his [Trotsky] expulsion from the party, Trotsky said, inter alia, addressing the Stalin group (I'm giving the gist of his words), "You are a bunch of bureaucrats without talent.  If one day the country should be threatened, if war breaks out, you will be totally incapable of organizing the defense of the country and of achieving victory.  Then, when the enemy is 100 kilometers from Moscow, we will do what Clemenceau did in his time: we will overthrow this incompetent government.  There will be one difference in that whereas Clemenceau was content to take power, we, in addition, will shoot this band of contemptible bureaucrats who have betrayed the Revolution.  Yes, we'll do it.  You too, you'd like to shoot us, but you dare not.  We dare to do it because it will be an absolutely indispensable condition for winning."
Bazhanov, Boris.  Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, c1990, p. 114
 
STALIN PERMANENTLY FOLLOWED LENIN FROM THEIR FIRST MEETING
 
            While serving this particular sentence, Stalin took one of the most important steps of his life.  Eagerly devouring the smuggled copies of the party organ Iskra (The Spark), which arrived by devious means, Stalin found himself increasingly impressed by those articles which carried the initials of Lenin.  Hesitating no longer he wrote a letter to Lenin in London.  In December 1903 after a lapse of almost six months, he received a reply which, in his own words, "contained an amazingly clear explanation of the tactics of our Party and a brilliant analysis of our future tasks."  From that day he became Lenin's man and never for an instant deviated from his allegiance.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 19
 
            Stalin made it clear to me that at his first meeting with the Master--at Tammerfors, Finland, in 1905--he decided to hitch is wagon to Lenin's star.  "Lenin," he told me, "differed from the rest of us by his clear Marxist brain and his unfaltering will.  From the outset he favored a strong policy and even then was picking men who could stick it out and endure."
Duranty, Walter.  Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 171
 
            Kaganovich says, "The most remarkable and most characteristic feature of all Stalin's political activities is that he never drifted apart from Lenin and never swerved to the Right or to the Left."
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York:  The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 46
 
            Between 1901 and 1917, right from the beginning of the Bolshevik Party until the October Revolution, Stalin was a major supporter of Lenin's line. No other Bolshevik leader could claim as constant or diverse activity as Stalin. He had followed Lenin right from the beginning, at the time when Lenin only had a small number of adherents among the socialist intellectuals. Unlike most of the other Bolshevik leaders, Stalin was constantly in contact with Russian reality and with activists within Russia. He knew these militants, having met them in open and clandestine struggles, in prisons and in Siberia.  Stalin was very competent, having led armed struggle in the Caucasus as well as clandestine struggles; he had led union struggles and edited legal and illegal newspapers; he had led the legal and parliamentary struggle and knew the national minorities as well as the Russian people.
Martens, Ludo.   Another View of Stalin. Antwerp, Belgium: EPO, Lange Pastoorstraat 25-27  2600, p. 25 [pp. 15-16 on the NET]
 
 
STALIN’S BANK EXPROPRIATIONS ARE NECESSARY AND SUCCESSFUL
 
            Whatever Lenin and Krassin calculated on obtaining as a result of the new tactic, they certainly were not prepared for the tremendous results of the efficacy of Stalin's methods which soon appeared.  It is customary in most biographies of Stalin to omit all mention of his directing part in the celebrated "expropriations," or at best to gloss over them hurriedly as a rather discreditable episode.  To take this course is to fail to understand the character Stalin, who never hesitated to call a spade a spade and never feared to except responsibility for his actions, irrespective of whether or not they met with general approval.  If Lenin agreed and the ultimate success of the revolution was brought nearer, no other factors had any bearing on the problem.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 28
 
LENIN’S RISE IS PARTLY ATTRIBUTABLE TO SELFLESS STALIN
 
            To the selfless devotion of men of the caliber of Stalin and Kamo, Lenin owed much of his rise to power.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 30
 
BOLSHEVIKS WERE AS MORAL AS WAS REALISTIC TO BE
 
            Much of what has been said about the "lack of morality" of the Bolsheviks gives evidence of a mental narrowness and inability to appreciate the real reasons for the lawlessness which was admittedly used.  Lenin, Stalin, Krassin, and many a hundred others gained nothing for themselves from the escapades of their subordinates.  Kamo allowed his comrades a mere 50 kopeks a day.  Their whole lives were governed by the hope that, by their efforts, a new and better system should sweep the Romanovs into oblivion.  Who will lightly condemn the steps they took to achieve that end?  Lenin himself summed up the position with admirable fairness: "That man who is afraid to soil the whiteness of his hands should not go into politics."
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 31
 
            The strength of the government is in fact determined by the strength of this group of leaders....
            Their private lives are reputedly clean.  It is generally admitted that there is no graft in high places.  Their habits are relatively simple.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 404
 
            In one, perhaps unsuspected, respect, many Americans find the Russians a bit stuffy.  That is in their moral outlook.  This may come as something of a surprise after the deluge of false propaganda, when the Soviets first came to power, about "free love" and "nationalization of women".  There were certain excesses among Russian young people, particularly intellectual groups, after the Revolution, but this was frowned upon by the Communist leaders, who are often almost puritanical in their private lives and attitudes.  I saw recent examples of this when I was last in the Soviet Union.  Some American relief shipments contained playing cards.  The Russians did not like this at all.  Cards are, I found out, associated with gambling in their minds.
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 84
 
            One of the big surprises in these documents is that the Stalinists said the same things to each other behind closed doors that they said to the public: in this regard their "hidden transcripts" differed little from their public ones.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 22
 
 
CONTRARY TO TROTSKY’S CLAIMS STALIN PERFORMED WELL BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
 
            During the years of reaction following upon 1905, Stalin may be said to have won for himself a universally recognized reputation and to have laid the foundations of his later rise to a leading position in the Party.  In one of his many embittered polemics against Stalin, Trotsky has since sought to prove that his rival's name was unknown to the Russian masses until long after the successful 1917 revolution.  Trotsky's purpose in this slander is to infer that Stalin owed his advance to wire-pulling and backstage tactics, rather than to proven ability.  Detailed study of the period 1906 to 1914 effectively gives the lie to this accusation, which could never have been made at all but for the fact that from 1913 to 1917 Stalin was prevented from adding to his fame because he was imprisoned and under the strictest possible surveillance.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 31
 
STALIN SET A GOOD EXAMPLE IN PRISON AND WAS BRAVE
 
            Prison had long ago ceased to hold any terrors for Stalin, who offered the perfect example of how a revolutionary should conduct himself in such conditions....  Lenin prepared a series of letters to be sent to young and inexperienced comrades in jail, enjoining them to devote their time to the study of economic theory or to writing on political subjects.  "Avoid inactivity, for when a man allows itself to become utterly bored with prison life he is most likely to weaken and lose faith in his cause" was the theme of these remarkable missives.  While confined at Baku, Stalin resumed his old routine of proselytising and study, making the most of all opportunities to gain assistants against the time he should return to his interrupted work.
            As regards this particular confinement we are more fortunate than usual, for a fellow prisoner, the Menshevik Vereschak, in a book attacking Bolshevism, makes detailed mention of Stalin's tactics in jail.  Vereschak condemns Stalin because he refused to limit himself to association with the other politicals, preferring to maintain friendly relations with all the prisoners, including many convicted of robbery, forgery and other crimes....
            in the same book we find a striking passage showing one more facet of Stalin's character.  It appears that a new company of soldiers arrived to act as temporary guards at the Baku jail and began their work by compelling the despised "politicals" to run the gauntlet of two lines of soldiers who belabored the unfortunate men with rifle butts.  "When it came to the turn of Koba Djugashvili, he walked slowly down the line, his eyes fixed on a book.  Not one of the soldiers struck him."  Even the critical Vereschak felt compelled to pay tribute to the personal courage of an adversary.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 32
 
            Vereshchak was surprised by Koba's stamina.  A cruel game was played in that prison, the purpose of which was by hook or crook to drive one's opponent frantic: this was called "chasing into a bubble."  "It was never possible to drive Koba off his balance...." states Vereshchak, "nothing would get his goat...."
            All the prisoners suffered from the nervous strain.  "Koba slept soundly," says Vereshchak, "or calmly studied Esperanto (he was convinced that Esperanto was the international language of the future)."
Trotsky, Leon,  Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 117-118
 
            He was decisive, ruthless, and supremely confident.  Yet he was also brave.  This is usually overlooked by those who seek to ascribe every possible defect to him.  Even his detractor Vereshchak conceded that Dzhughashvili carried himself with courage and dignity in the face of the authorities.  On Easter Day in 1909 a unit of soldiers burst into the political block to beat up all the inmates. Dzhughashvili showed no fear.  He resolved to show the soldiers that their violence would never break him.  Clutching a book in his hand, he held his head high as they laid into him.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 79
 
            The Russian leader [Stalin] is a general who received the highest military decoration from Lenin in 1919 with the following testimony: "In a moment of great danger, near Krassnaja, Joseph Stalin, through his untiring energy, saved the tottering Red Army.  Fighting himself in the frontline, he inspired the soldiers through his example."
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 233
 
            It is said that he knows no fear, and it is certain that he never had any doubt that his side would win.  Close intimates told me that all through the days of civil war and intervention he had absolute disregard for his own comfort and contempt for danger.  No matter how dark the outlook, or how depressed his coworkers, he always believed that victory was attainable.  In World War II, Stalin refused to worry even when the Germans were knocking on the gates of Moscow.  He never left the city, and was certain that the Red Army would not fail in its task.
Davis, Jerome.  Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 11
 
            Stalin's own coolness did somewhat inspire confidence at the nadir of Russian morale, after the loss of the Ukraine and during the battle for Moscow.  When the Germans were on the edge of the capital Stalin stayed on in the Kremlin....
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 161
 
            Stalin frequently visited him [Orbeliani] at the Winter Palace.  I admired his audacity.  He was not only living in the capital of Russia with a forged passport, after four imprisonments and five escapes from Siberia, but he had the cheek to walk calmly into the carefully guarded precincts of the Palace of the Emperor of all the Russias.
            But that was by no means the most audacious of his exploits; and in the one I am about to report he was aided again by a Georgian Prince attached to the court.  Prince Tchavtchavadze was an officer in the personal guard of the Czar --and also a secret member of the Bolshevik Party.  Stalin asked him for the loan of a uniform, in which he thought he would be safe from the attentions of police spies, and Tchavtchavadze gave him one.
            There were other Georgians in the service of the Czar who might have recognized my uncle in his illicitly acquired uniform; but he was confident that no Georgian would give him away.  Since there was no one else likely to be able to unmask him, Stalin wore the Czar's uniform in confident tranquility--a fact which was to give rise later to a legend that Stalin had once served in the Imperial Personal Guard.
            The legend is false, but the reality seems to me even more astonishing.  Wearing a uniform of a colonel in the Czar's Guard, my Uncle Joe moved calmly through St. Petersburg attending to his secret activities designed to throw the Czar from his throne.  In full daylight he walked down the Nevsky Prospect, in the heart of St. Petersburg, receiving and returning the respectful salutes of police officers charged with arresting Josef Djugachvili, criminal against the state, perennial escaper from the wastes of Siberia!
Svanidze, Budu. My Uncle, Joseph Stalin. New York: Putnam, c1953, p. 27-28
 
            Another anecdote of this period shows him in a different mood.  He was reviewing troops near Petrograd.  A sullen soldier refused to salute.  Stalin questioned him and the man pointed first to his own feet, wrapped in course burlap, soaked in snow and dirt, then at Stalin's substantial boots.  Without a word Stalin took his boots off, tossed them to the soldier, insisted on donning the soldier's wet and stinking rags--and continued to wear them till Lenin himself made him resume normal footgear.
Gunther, John.  Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 524
 
            In the morning, order was restored.  The First Company of the brutal Selyansk Regiment had been called out to quell the rebels.  The soldiers were lined up into rows, and commanded to use their rifle-butts.  All the political prisoners were forced, in single file, to run the gauntlet of the punitive company.  Stalin, holding his head erect, with a book under his arm, proudly marched under the reign of blows.
            This picture of Stalin as a heroic figure was drawn by a political enemy of his, Semyon Verestchak, a fellow prisoner of his in Baku.
Levine, Isaac Don.  Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 78
 
            Vereshchak tells how in 1909 (obviously, he means 1908), on the first day of Easter, a company of the Salyan Regiment beat up all the political prisoners, without exception, forcing them to run the gauntlet.  "Koba walked, his head unbowed, under the blows of rifle butts, a book in his hands.  And when the free-for-all was let loose, Koba forced the doors of his cell with a slop bucket, ignoring the threat of bayonets."
Trotsky, Leon,  Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 119
 
            Later enemies overlooked the nerve he showed in the Civil War.  He was not a physical coward; he put Lenin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin in the shade by refusing to shirk wartime jeopardy.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 165
 
            Not that he was a coward.  There is no basis for accusing Stalin of cowardice.  He was simply politically non-committal.  The cautious schemer preferred to stay on the fence at the crucial moment.  He was waiting to see how the insurrection turned out before committing himself to a position.
Trotsky, Leon,  Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 234
 
LENIN HONORS STALIN WITH PROMOTIONS BEFORE WWI
 
            1912 opened in a more hopeful key, each month producing further proof that the long period of ebb was drawing to a close.  For Stalin personally, 1912 also brought a most welcome decision.  In February of that year Lenin proposed to the Bolshevik leaders in session abroad, that they recognize the devotion and achievements of Stalin by co-opting him onto the Central Committee.  The news of his election reached Stalin a month later and stimulated him to even greater effort....
            Further honors were conferred upon Stalin here in Cracow; Lenin agreed that events were moving so rapidly that the emigre Central Committee might find itself acting as a break upon the initiative of the Party if it retained in its own hands the entire direction of policy.  To avoid this possibility it was decided to delegate the immediate tactical direction of the struggle within Russia to an "executive bureau," of which the principal figures were Stalin and his countryman, Sergo Ordjonikidze.  Except for major strategical decisions, Lenin voluntarily handed over control of the Party's work within Russia to the "wonderful Georgian."  With what impressive results was soon to be made clear.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 33
 
TROTSKY ERRS AS COMMISSAR OF WAR
 
            Because of his acknowledged success as a propagandist and his ability to inspire crowds, Trotsky was given the job of "Commissar for War," with complete power, subject to the approval of Lenin and Stalin.  The drawbacks to this choice were very soon demonstrated.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 45
 
STALIN DOES AN EXCELLENT JOB WITH THE NATIONALITIES DEPT.
 
            ... no such comprehension prevailed in Russia, where at least 80 adults out of every hundred could neither read nor write, living and dying according to the customs and practices of their ancestors, customs which had scarcely altered since the Middle Ages.
            This was the situation which Stalin faced in 1921, with the additional handicap of having no assistants of outstanding ability, no officials except those trained in the tradition of the Romanovs, for whom the subject peoples had been merely a source of revenue and cannon fodder.  There was no spectacular fanfare, no trumpetings and self-advertisement about the way Stalin set about his task.  Trotsky had already discovered an easy way to recruit staffs by the simple expedient of offering jobs to the displaced officials of the old regime, who were at least able to muddle through without making too obvious errors.  How valuable these "hired Bolsheviks" really were was later revealed, for when Trotsky's prestige fell and his influence grew correspondingly weaker, his assistants and confidants had no compunction in transferring their allegiance to whoever could guarantee their salaries.
            This was not Stalin's way; by careful hand-picking the Commissariat for Nationalities slowly acquired a staff whose qualities and technical achievements made their department justly famous as the most efficient of the multitude of bureaus and subcommittees which were generated by the early years of reconstruction.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 55
 
            We find Stalin in the years before the World War developing the exact definition of "nation" as a "historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture."
Strong, Anna Louise.   This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 77
 
            No matter what has been said about the Soviet Union, it has never exploited the small national groups within its boundaries.  Where, under the Tsar, a thousand hates and animosities were kept at fever pitch, equality has brought harmony and eager co-operation.  Today there is no country which has less racial discrimination than the Soviet Union.  Joseph Stalin devised and carried out the policy which not only provides a humane and admirable example for the world, but which also has made the Soviet Union internally strong.
Davis, Jerome.   Behind Soviet Power.  New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 72
 
            In a number of republics, rather large groups of enemies of the Soviet state were revealed....  No one mastered the national question, no one organized our national republics more sagaciously than Stalin.  The formation of the Central Asian Republics was entirely his doing, a Stalinist cause!  He skillfully mastered the matter of borders and the very discovery of entire nations....  I regarded and still regard him as having accomplished colossal and difficult tasks that were beyond every one of us in the party at that time.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 196
 
            About 10 years ago, in very solemn circumstances, Stalin observed that although the main basis of the Soviet Republic was the alliance of the workers and the peasants, the subsidiary basis of the Republic was the alliance of all the different nationalities existing in Russia....
            And today he is looked upon as the man who understands it most thoroughly in the whole Union.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York:  The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 88
 
            "The Declaration of the Peoples of Russia" was one of the first legislative Acts of the Soviet Government.  Conceived and drawn up by Stalin, it enacted:
            The equality and sovereignty of all the peoples of Russia.  The right to do what they wished with themselves, even to the extent of separation and the formation of independent States.  The suppression of all national (Russian) and religious (Greek Orthodox) restrictions and privileges.  The free development of national minorities and of racial groups finding themselves in the territory of the former Russian Empire.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 94
 
            But the men of October, who succeeded in bringing about their Revolution in the midst of an extremely diversified juxtaposition of races and of countries--and one into which, moreover, long traditions of oppression had in many cases inculcated an exaggerated idea of nationalism, these men, for the first time in history, put forward a reasonable and serious solution of this age-old antagonism all over the planet, a logical formula which combined the two irreducible essentials, national individuality and practical federation, and placed patriotism not against but in Socialism.
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 96
 
            Stalin was not a man of conventional learning; he was much more than that; he was a man who thought deeply, read understandingly and listened to wisdom, no matter whence it came.  He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy and balance; nor did he let attack drive him from his convictions nor induce him to surrender positions which he knew were correct.  As one of the despised minorities of man, he first set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality.
Statement by W.E.B DuBois regarding COMRADE STALIN on March 16, 1953
 
            ...under Stalin's "nationalities policy" the Uzbeks, Tadjiks, Bashkirs, Kazahks and the rest became equal partners of the Russians and Ukrainians.   Better still, the Soviet regime took special pride in improving the lot of these backward people, and making them feel genuinely grateful to the Russians: and it is, of course, perfectly true that if, under the Tsarist regime, as much wealth as possible was pumped out of the Russian "colonies" of Central Asia, the Soviets pumped wealth and money into them.   If there was, at times, resistance, even violent resistance, against the Soviets in Central Asia, it was not for economic reasons, but almost exclusively for religious reasons, the Soviets' atheism being wholly unacceptable to certain traditional Moslem communities.
Werth, Alexander. Russia: The Post-War Years. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1971, p. 40
 
                He [Stalin] maintained that if ever the message of Marxism was to be accepted in the borderlands of the former Russian empire, it had to be conveyed in languages which were comprehensible and congenial to the recipients.  The idea that Stalin was a “Great Russian chauvinist” in the 1920s is nonsense.  More than any other Bolshevik leader, including Lenin, he fought for the principle that each people in the Soviet state should have scope for national and ethnic self-expression.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 202
 
            During his 10 months sojourn abroad Stalin wrote a brief but very trenchant piece of research entitled "Marxism and the National Problem."
Trotsky, Leon,  Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 154
 
WHAT DOES THE TESTAMENT SAY
 
            In the last few weeks of 1922, Lenin completed the letter to the party which is now generally known as the "Testament of Lenin."  The name conveys a wrong impression, it was in no sense a Will, for Lenin never regarded his position as something to be bequeathed to another, he knew that he occupied the President's chair because of his abilities alone; it was his dearest wish that his successor should do likewise.
            How wrong he was, how tragically optimistic, can be clearly seen from the fate of the Testament itself.  The party leaders, each one of whom knew its contents, first decided not to publish it while its author was alive and later postponed publication indefinitely.  Trotsky, who was later to make much of the "Testament," concurred in this decision which was broken finally by accident.  A copy had been received by a visitor to the USSR, the American left-wing journalist, Max Eastman, who promptly gave it worldwide publicity in the Press of the United States.  Sad reflection that the last words of so great a leader should reach the Russian people from a back-stage newspapers scoop in New York.
            In the testament, Lenin gave a brief characterization of the leading figures of the Party.  Trotsky, brilliant but too diverse in his interests; Zinoviev and Kamenev, indecisive and untrustworthy in a crisis; Bukharin, clever but not a confirmed Marxist; Stalin also received his share of criticism as being "too rude" to fill the office of General Secretary to everybody's satisfaction.  In spite of this, Lenin's rebuke to Stalin is the least severe of all; the faults of the others lay in fundamental weaknesses, Stalin was simply too brusque to smooth over the trivial personal frictions of his subordinates.
            Stalin himself as always regarded Lenin's reference to him as more of a compliment than otherwise.  In an address to a later congress he repeated the words, adding: "Yes, comrades, I am rude to those who seek to weaken the Party by their activities and I shall continue to be rude to such people."
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 60
 
            I am rude towards those who traitorously break their word, who split and destroy the Party.  I have never concealed it and I do not conceal it now.
Stalin, Joseph.  Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 244
 
            [In 1927 Stalin stated], "Yes, comrades, I am rude towards those who rudely and treacherously wreck and split our party," Stalin continued.  "I did not and do not conceal it.
Levine, Isaac Don.  Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 281
 
            When Comrade Molotov sent me that article (I was away at the time), I sent back a blunt and sharp criticism.  Yes, comrades, I am straight-forward and blunt; that's true, I don't deny it.
Stalin, Joseph.  Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 7, p. 385
 
            Krupskaya handed Stalin a sealed envelope which bore the inscription in her husband's writing "To be opened after my death."  Stalin guessed the envelope contained important instructions and called a meeting of the Politburo.  He took advantage of Zinoviev's suggestion that the letter should be opened immediately.  This was done.
            Lenin's notes were not flattering to the majority of the Soviet leaders.  Mekhlis, who was present and saw the Testament, has recorded the following:
            "Zinoviev and Kamenev were described as 'hole and corner politicians,' Bukharin was 'scholastic, not a Marxist, weak in dialectic, bookish and lacking in realism but sympathetic,' Pyatakov was 'a good administrator, but, like Bukharin, not fit for political leadership.'  Trotsky was 'not a Bolshevik but this fact must not be held against him, just as one must not blame Zinoviev and Kamenev for their attitude in October, 1917.'  As for Stalin, the Old Man found no political fault in him.  But--and his judgment must have been to some extent inspired by his retort to Krupskaya--'he is inordinately coarse and brutal, and also capable of taking advantage of his power to settle personal disputes.'
Fishman and Hutton.   The Private Life of Josif Stalin. London: W. H. Allen, 1962, p. 56
 
            Zinoviev, who felt himself especially maligned, declared: "These notes have no political value.  They must be put in the archives.  That's all they're fit for."
            Because Lenin had criticized almost every single member of the Politburo, they all supported the suggestion.
Fishman and Hutton.   The Private Life of Josif Stalin. London: W. H. Allen, 1962, p. 57
 
            In his [Lenin] testament he made no choice of a successor but instead offended each of the leaders in turn.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 88
 
            "Friendship," he [Stalin] said, "counts for nothing when the Party and its interests are at stake.   I am extremely fond of Sylvester, and I am ready to offer him my personal apologies.   But whenever he adopts an attitude that is contrary to the interests of the Party I shall oppose him with the same violence, the same energy.   The absolute refusal to compromise is the most effective weapon in the revolutionary conflict.   People may say that I'm rude and offensive; it's all one to me.   I shall continue to fight all those who threaten to destroy the Party."
Delbars, Yves.   The Real Stalin. London, Allen & Unwin, 1951, p. 36
 
            His Testament, written several days later, was patently an effort to offer his own frank opinion of the various candidates rather than to dictate his decision.
Trotsky, Leon.  Stalin. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941, p. 357
 
STALIN WAS CRUEL TO THOSE WHO DESERVED IT
 
            Those who accused Stalin of brutality in the execution of the State Plans cannot ignore the fact that he has never denied the suffering and the pain, answering the charge as Ivan answered it before him: "Many among you say that I'm cruel; it is true that I am cruel and irascible, I do not deny it.  But toward whom, I ask, am I cruel?  I am cruel toward him who is cruel toward me."        
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 72
 
            Stalin is not wantonly cruel, but he is not soft or sentimental, nor just nor legalistic.
Graham, Stephen. Stalin. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1970, p. 124
 
 
NEP MEN ONLY WANT QUICK PROFITS
 
            In the midst of this economic chaos, Stalin was quick to point out that the backbone of a strong industrial state was still lacking.  Heavy industry, which had suffered most during the years of upheaval, was still in a parlous condition.  Since it would be necessary to expend large sums over a period of years before profits began to be made, the Nepmen made no effort to improve the situation but concentrated on a system of "quick returns."
Cole, David. .  Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 75
 
            Nepmen made fortunes while manufacturing little.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 256
 
UNDERGROUND FINANCED BY NEP MEN
 
            Underground organizations, liberally supplied with funds by their wealthy Nepmen sympathizers, endeavored to spread confusion by acts of sabotage and machine wrecking.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 78
 
STALIN ONLY OPPOSED NEPMEN AS A CLASS, NOT INDIVIDUALLY
 
            In justice to Stalin it must be recognized that his appeal was directed against the kulaks, not as individuals but as "a class whose interests were inimical to those of the proletariat."  To break the political and economic power of the "agrarian capitalist" was all that was required.  That a movement of much greater magnitude developed was not his fault.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 82
 
KULAKS OPPOSED THOSE BRINGING IN COLLECTIVIZATION
 
            When the harbingers of such revolutionary ideas arrived in the villages, their observations soon aroused the opposition of the kulaks, who had formerly, by virtue of their wealth, exercised much authority in local affairs.  They endeavored at first to smooth out the difficulties, on the ground that Collectivization was a step forward to true Socialism, but soon became aware that the kulaks were far more concerned with defending their own privileged position than pursuing abstractions for the general good.
            In many districts the local proprietors took the offensive against the proposals of the Five Year plan and used their money to obstruct the scheme as much as possible.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 83
 
            [A May 8, 1933, decree by Stalin and Molotov halting mass arrests states]  ...the class struggle in the countryside will inevitably become more acute.  It will become more acute because the class enemy sees that the kolkhozy have triumphed, that the days of his existence are numbered, and he cannot but grasp--out of sheer desperation--at the harshest forms of struggle against Soviet power.  For this reason there can be no question at all of relaxing our struggle against the class enemy.
Getty & Naumov.  The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 115-116
 
            Contradicting all his recent statements, Stalin now asserted that, by withholding grain from the government, the 'kulak was disrupting the Soviet economic policy'.  In June 1928 new emergency measures were announced; and in July Stalin called upon the party 'to strike hard at the kulaks'.  Such injunctions were not willingly followed by Bolsheviks in the countryside: for in the last three years the importance of the 'alliance with the peasantry' had been impressed upon them and they had been taught that hostility toward the muzhik was the distinctive mark of the Trotskyist heresy.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 313
 
            The cost was terrible.  Stalin--four years late--admitted it.  The agrarian economy of the Soviet Union suffered a blow from which it cannot fully recover till about 1940; it'll take till then to replenish the slaughtered stock.  For, once the killing began, it progressed till about 50 percent of the animals in the Soviet Union were killed.  Official figures admit that the number of horses in the country diminished from 33,500,000 in 1928 to 19,600,000 in 1932; the number of cattle from 70,500,000 to 40,700,000; sheep and goats from 146,700,000 to 52,100,000; pigs from 25,900,000 to 11,600,000.
            The peasants, stunned by this catastrophe, sank into temporary stupor.  The government--when the worst of the damage was done--retreated hastily.  Probably Stalin had not realized the formidable extent of the slaughter until it was too late....  The tempo of collectivization had been far too rapid.  The plan called for full collectivization only after 10 years, but within two years, in 1930, 65 percent of all the farms had been collectivized.  So the pace was toned down.
            Even so, in 1932, the peasants, stiffening into a final vain protest, rebelled again.  As if by government agreement, another psychic epidemic spread through the rich fields of the Caucasus and Ukraine.  The farmers, those still outside the collectives, were paid miserable prices; either they could buy no manufactured goods at all, or goods only of indifferent quality.  They hit on a plan.  They had sowed the crop, which was abundant; but they decided not to harvest all of it.  They harvested exactly what they calculated they would themselves need during the winter, and left the rest to rot.  "What was the use of slaving to produce a handsome crop, if the state simply seized it all?"
            This was, of course, mutiny.  But it was not only defiance of Stalin; it was a threat to starve him into submission.  The Soviet government needed grain to distribute to the industrial regions, the great cities; it needed grain for export, to pay for the machinery it had to import for the Five-Year plan.
            Even the farmers already in the collectives let their grain rot.  There were few communist overseers, few trained and loyal farm managers.  Word got to Moscow that the harvest, which should have been handsome, was largely lost.  Stalin saw that this was a major crisis.  If the peasants were permitted to get away with this, the revolution was beaten.  ("Obsolete classes don't voluntarily disappear," he told Wells).  He had to act.  And he acted.
            Government grain collectors descended on the farms, tall with weeds, and seized that small share of the crop that the peasants had saved for their own use!  One by one, they visited every holding, and took every lick of grain due the government in taxes.  If a man's normal crop was, say, 60 bushels, the tax might be 20 bushels.  But the farmer had only harvested, say, 25 bushels.  So when the government took 20, the farmer and his family had only five--instead of 25--to live on the whole winter and spring.
            Russian economy is still extremely primitive.  The question of grain, of bread, is a matter of life and death.  When there was no grain left, the people began to die.  The government might have diverted some grain from the cities--though that was a pinched, hungry year everywhere--to feed the peasants.  But the government did not do so.  Stalin decided that the peasants must pay the penalty for their rebellion.  They had refused, blindly, stupidly, to provide grain; very well, let them starve.  And they starved....
            The famine broke the back of peasant resistance in the USSR....
            The peasants killed their animals, then they killed themselves.
Gunther, John.  Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 528-529
 
 
STALIN ONLY REACTED AGAINST THOSE OPPOSING COLLECTIVIZATION AS A LAST RESORT
 
            Guerrilla bands roamed the country districts robbing the new Collectives, destroying their buildings and burning their crops.  Without any clear objective they descended into thinly disguised banditry, raiding and killing in the way their Mongolian and Tatar ancestors had done under Tamerlane.
            For a long time Stalin remained patient.  He knew from bitter experience in Georgia, how difficult it is to bring new ideas to a backward people, and he had a sympathetic regard for the sturdy individualism which resists any active authority by force.  When finally action was forced upon him, he moved with his usual firmness but not until every other avenue had been exhaustively explored.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 84
 
 
STALIN HAD GREAT PATIENCE BUT IT WAS FINALLY EXHAUSTED BY ANTI-COLLECTIVISTS
 
            Where resistance persisted in spite of all efforts, the State began the wholesale deportation of treasonous elements and, if necessary, did not hesitate to remove whole villages to Siberia and the northern wastes.
            As had been done many times before, Stalin's training gave him strength to carry on through this period.  The man who could pardon Zinoviev and Kamenev, who had three times betrayed him; the leader who let Bukharin live in freedom, though Bukharin had openly proclaimed a determination to kill him, would stop at nothing where his faith was concerned.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 85
 
STALIN HAD AN EFFECTIVE ANTI-RELIGIOUS PROGRAM
 
            The old reactionary control which the church maintained on spiritual and intellectual life, had been broken officially in 1917, by 1934 it was being replaced by modern educational methods directed at both children and adults.
            With such stirring events going on around them, it becomes understandable why the provincial peoples lauded Stalin to the skies.  For them he was, in sober fact, a deliverer and a savior.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 91
 
            "Nevertheless," Stalin went on, "the question of religious beliefs must be kept well in mind, must be handled with great care, because the religious feelings of the people must not be offended.  These feelings have been cultivated in the people for many centuries, and great patience is called for on this question, because the stand towards it is important for the compactness and unity of the people."
Hoxha, Enver.  The Artful Albanian. London: Chatto & Windus, 1986, p. 130
 
            Reviving some Russian traditions, Stalin slightly curbed party efforts to combat another: religion.
            ...The anti-religious campaign was relaxed in 1934.   The League of Militant Atheists went into decline, its newspaper Bezbozhnik (The Atheist) closed down, and its membership dropped precipitously in numbers.   At Easter time in 1935 the government authorized renewed sale in the markets, and later in state stores, of the special ingredients needed for the traditional Russian Easter cake.   Toward the end of that year, the traditional Russian Christmas tree, proscribed after the revolution, made--unquestionably with Stalin's approbation-- an officially sponsored comeback as "New Year's tree."   Since Russian Christians observe Christmas according to the Orthodox Church calendar, on 7th January, the eve of the new year was an appropriate time for the religiously inclined to set up the tree.   Stalin wanted the populace to identify him with the policy of easing up a little on religion.   That became clear when Komsomol delegates met in Moscow in April 1936 for the organization’s Tenth Congress.   One principal speaker, Fainberg, revealed in his report that Stalin, in preliminary discussion of a draft of the new bylaws, rejected a clause that would have obliged the Komsomol to combat religion "decisively, mercilessly."   All it should do was to "explain patiently the harm of religious prejudices."
            ...Soon afterward, in his speech before the Eighth Congress of Soviets on the draft new Constitution, Stalin opposed two suggested anti-religious amendments.   One, which would have prohibited religious worship outright, was "not in accord with the spirit of our Constitution."   The other would have deprived  not only ex-White Guardists and "former people" not engaged in useful work, but also clergyman, of voting a rights, or, alternatively, of the right to be elected.   In opposing this proposal (in both forms) Stalin said the time had come to repeal the long-standing Soviet law depriving nonlaboring and exploiter elements of voting rights.   "In the first place, not all former kulaks, White Guardists, or priests are hostile to the Soviet regime," he said.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 327
 
 
STALIN WAS NOT FOOLED BY FALSE PRAISE
 
            ...Stalin is quick to detect false praise from the genuine article.  No one indulged in more extravagant flattery than Zinoviev and Kamenev.  Each time they were caught out in treachery, they burst into paeans of praise in order (as Zinoviev put it) "to crawl back into the party on our bellies."  They were even foolish enough to imagine that, because Stalin forgave them time after time, they were successfully hoodwinking him.  It needed the Treason Trials of 1936 to 1938 to show them the real truth.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 92
 
            Did Stalin believe (and if so, in what sense) all this adulation?  His daughter puts it in this way: 'Did he perceive the hypocrisy that lay behind "homage" of this sort?  I think so, for he was astonishingly sensitive to hypocrisy and impossible to lie to.'  A veteran Soviet diplomat and soldier wrote: 'Anyone who imagines that Stalin believes this praise or laps it up in a mood of egotistical willingness to be deceived, is sadly mistaken.  Stalin is not deluded by it.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 213
 
            He [Stalin] could be snared by neither flattery nor threats, neither favors nor trickery.
Lyons, Eugene.  Assignment in Utopia. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, c1937, p. 263
 
STALIN WAS TOLERANT AND NOT BLOODTHIRSTILY ELIMINATING HIS ENEMIES
 
            The animosity of the world press has created a picture of a ruthless and bloodthirsty Stalin murdering his erstwhile colleagues, presumably for no better reason than to strengthen his own personal power....
            In reality, Stalin hesitated for many months before embarking on the famous "Purges."  He was too deeply conscious of the seriousness of Lenin's deathbed warning as to the dangers which would arise if one section of the Party condemned its opponents to death.  Even when Zinoviev had whispered his plan to assassinate Trotsky, Stalin had refused to embark on that fatal policy of self-murder which had destroyed the French revolutionary Jacobins.... 
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 98
 
            Many embittered attacks have been made against Stalin for his treatment of the Opposition leaders and the blood-letting which followed the treason trials.  He has been accused of seeking personal aggrandizement by eliminating his colleagues in the Bolshevik Central Committee and of treachery towards those who gave him their support in his campaign against Trotsky.
            Impartial study of the years 1936 to 1938, however, disproves this thesis.  Stalin was never the friend of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and the others.  He worked with them for his own purposes and because they shared his views on the danger of Trotskyism.  He did so with full knowledge that they were planning to turn against him when he had served their purpose.  He regarded them as they regarded him and dealt with them as they would have dealt with him in different circumstances.
            Whenever the Opposition confined its activity to attacks upon the views of the majority, Stalin permitted them to do so.  They brought destruction upon themselves when they passed from attacks on Stalin to subversive maneuverings against the foundations of Soviet rule.
            To those who have served Russia faithfully, Stalin has always been a loyal friend and generous colleague.  He does not remove a man at the first sign of heterodoxy like Hitler did Roehm nor does he kill by stealth as Mussolini destroyed Balbo.
            Kalinin still stands beside Stalin though he supported the pro-kulak theories of Bukharin in 1936.  Voroshilov was in error on the question of Army discipline in 1937, but he lives in freedom and devotes his life to the defense of Russia.  Ordjonikidze opposed Stalin on several occasions and did not hesitate to say so, but he occupied high office in the Government until Yagoda's poisoners murdered him.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 128-129
 
GOLOVANOV:  Some people believe he [Stalin] was a sadist.
            But I knew him well.  He was no bloodthirsty tyrant.  A struggle was raging.  There were various political currents and deviations.  The building of socialism required firmness.  Stalin had more of this firmness than anyone else.  Was there a fifth column?  There was no question about that.  And they were prominent leaders, not underlings....
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 295
 
            The most common explanation of the police atrocities in that infamous year [1937] points to a well-planned action by the NKVD, at the instigation of Stalin who wanted to eliminate all his real, potential, or imagined opponents on a national scale, whatever their position in the socio-political hierarchy.  But having examined the decidedly tortuous meanderings of political maneuvers and counter-maneuvers during 1936, we must conclude that the likelihood of such an undertaking is very low....
            In the last chapter we saw how improbable it is that the political moves which ushered in the crescendo of terror could have been the product of a single strategy put into effect by an absolute controlling and decision-making centralized power.  Similarly, the fact that the police action of 1937 continued for so long, in company with equally self-contradictory political acts, makes it unlikely that we are dealing here with a victorious punitive expedition being carried through by the praetorian guard of an all-powerful dictator.
Rittersporn, Gabor. Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 1933-1953. New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, c1991, p. 113
 
NIKOLAYEV SYMPATHIZED WITH TROTSKY AND KILLED KIROV
 
            On December 1, 1934, a young Communist named Nikolayev, politely requested an interview with the Leningrad Party chief.  Kirov apparently imagined his subordinate had some personal trouble to discuss and admitted him to his private office.  Without a word, Nikolayev produced a revolver and Kirov fell with a bullet between his eyes.
            At first the incident was thought to be the work of Czarist plotters, until the secret police began to check back along Nikolayev's career.  From a remarkable diary, in which he had recorded his mental reflections over a period of several years, it became evident that the assassin was one of those young Communist students in whose support Trotsky had so much faith.  As a result of the ex-War Commissar's attacks on the alleged "incompetence of the Old Bolsheviks," coupled with subtle flattery of the student youth, Nikolayev came to regard himself as a potential leader of the Russian millions, prevented from taking his rightful place by the machinations of the older Party heads....
            Early in 1935, Henry Yagoda, chief of the GPU placed full details of the crime before his chief, demonstrating beyond doubt that the general ideas of the Trotskyist Opposition had been the cause of Nikolayev's deed and also that Zinoviev and Kamenev had actually been aware that some such murder was being planned.
            In face of overwhelming evidence, Stalin hesitated no longer.  Zinoviev, Kamenev and 95 other responsible leaders of the Opposition were brought from prison or from the subordinate positions they had occupied since their last betrayal, and put on trial on charges of moral responsibility for the murder of Kirov....
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 98
 
            ... the assassination of Kirov proved the stupidity of part of the opposition....  Nikolayev had merely carried out the decision of others.  Kotolynov, another man who was inculpated, was also merely a subordinate; he had given Nikolayev his instructions, but neither of them was an organizer.
Tokaev, Grigori.   Betrayal of an Ideal. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1955, p. 242
 
 
SCHEMERS ZINOVIEV AND KAMENEV SHIFTED BLAME TO TROTSKY FOR KILLING KIROV
 
            Once again the schemers saved their skins by shifting the blame to the absent Trotsky and by swearing solemnly to cease all future activity against the government.  For the fourth time Stalin accepted their recantation with a magnanimity that must have seemed misplaced to the millions of Russian citizens, who vociferously demanded the execution of the traitors.  Smiling secretly, the accused returned to their places of exile to resume the old game of waiting for a more suitable chance to strike.  Surely some such opportunity would arise; perhaps the next Nikolayev would succeed in killing the hated general secretary and so prepare their way back to power.
            For a further year the scheming continued uninterrupted, but in August 1936 Yagoda announced the completion of his investigation and disclosed full proof of new and even more despicable treason.  Even Stalin's patience was exhausted.  Zinoviev and Kamenev were brought from their confinement and confronted with the evidence contained in the GPU dossiers.  As usual, the two admitted the charges and threw themselves on Stalin's mercy, which had saved them on so many previous occasions.
            In the interval Stalin had been forced to listen to the arguments of Yagoda, who had none of his Chief's reverence for the "old associates of Lenin."  To continue to pardon such perjured liars was, in Yagoda eyes, not strength but blind sentimentality and would assuredly lead to more plots and more assassinations of indispensable leaders.
            As proof of the real worth of the repeated servilities and confessions, the GPU presented extracts from the celebrated "Letter of the old Bolshevik."  This document, comprising some 200 pages of minute handwriting, was intercepted by the police in transit from its author, an exiled Oppositionist to sympathizers in Moscow.  In one remarkable passage the writer deals with the confessions and the promises of future loyalty, in a manner illustrative of the moral and physical degradation to which the enemies of Stalin had descended....
            With such materials to his hand, Yagoda convinced Stalin that an example must be made of the wretched Zinoviev and Kamenev as a deterrent to their supporters.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 99
 
STALIN SAID THE OPPOSITION HAD DESCENDED FAR IN 7 YEARS
 
            With deep disgust, Stalin gave his personal view of the tragic demoralization which had degraded the Opposition from a more or less honest political programme to the gutter tactics of Fascism and primitive murder.  "From the political tendency which it showed six or seven years earlier, Trotskyism has become a mad and unprincipled gang of saboteurs, of agents of diversion, of assassins acting on the orders of foreign States."
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 101
 
            But in the course of the 1920s and particularly in the late 20s and early 30s, when the Trotskyite line had been overwhelmingly defeated inside the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, they ceased to be a political trend.  Those who remained in the Soviet Union pretended in public to accept the line of the Party, but secretly began to work against the Party, against the Revolution.  They degenerated into secret agents of capitalism, began to work for the various capitalist Intelligence services, plotted the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and the defeat of the Soviet Union in the course of the aggression which was being prepared by the great capitalist powers, organized the sabotage of Soviet industry and agriculture and the assassination of leading Communists.  Trotsky himself, in exile, maintained close contact with the secret groups inside the CPSU, and became the center of a world-wide network of anti-Soviet sabotage and espionage, attempting to organize similar secret groupings inside the Communist Parties and militant labor, progressive, and national liberation organizations all over the world.
Klugmann, James.   From Trotsky to Tito. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1951, p. 74
 
            [At the Feb. March 1937 Plenum Stalin stated]...Before, these elements [Trotskyists] argued for their political tendency among the working class, not afraid to show their political orientation among the workers.  Seven or eight years ago, Trotskyism was such a political tendency among the Bolsheviks.
            Can we say that the Trotskyism of 1936 is the same as before among the working-class?  No, we cannot say this.  Why?  Because today's Trotskyites are afraid to show their activity to the workers,...they hide their political outlook from the masses, because the people would curse them as traitors.  The modern Trotskyites are not propagating their political tendencies openly, they hide their true identity.  They try to be more Bolshevik than real, dedicated Bolsheviks--meanwhile, doing their anti-State activity.
            If you will recall the trial of Kamenev-Zinoviev in 1936, they had a perfect opportunity to promote their political tendencies... but they refused and kept mum.  Now, even the blind can see that they DID HAVE a political program.  Then why did they not take the opportunity to espouse their ideas?  Because they were afraid to expose their political face, thus trying to save others who were still active, but well hidden.  They were afraid to officially state that they wanted to restore capitalism.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed.   Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 232
 
            In carrying on a struggle against the Trotskyite agents, our Party comrades did not notice, they overlooked the fact, that present-day Trotskyism is no longer what it was, let us say, seven or eight years ago; that Trotskyism and the Trotskyite have passed through a serious evolution in this period which  has utterly changed the face of Trotskyism;...  Trotskyism has ceased to be a political trend in the working class, it has changed from a political trend in the working class which it was seven or eight years ago, into a frantic and unprincipled  gang of wreckers, diversionists, spies and murderers acting on the instruction of the intelligence services of foreign states.
Stalin, Joseph.  Mastering Bolshevism. San Francisco: Proletarian Publishers, 1972, p. 9
 
            "Political figures" hiding their views and their platform not only from the working class but also from the Trotskyite rank and file, and not only from the Trotskyite rank and file, but from the leading group of Trotskyites--such is the face of present-day Trotskyism.
            Such is the indisputable result of the evolution of Trotskyism in the past seven or eight years.
            Such is the difference between Trotskyism in the past and Trotskyism at the present time.
Stalin, Joseph.  Mastering Bolshevism. San Francisco: Proletarian Publishers, 1972, p. 12
 
            The only weapon left to them [the Opposition] [by the early thirties] was terrorism--the assassination of Stalin and his close supporters.  There were many psychological reasons against this.  Used against the Tsarist regime, it had been condemned by the Bolsheviks as an individual (not a mass) weapon and as wasteful, difficult to control and politically ineffective.  Their whole training and tradition were against it.  This is perhaps the most important clue to an understanding of their defeat.
Berger, Joseph.  Nothing but the Truth.  New York, John Day Co. 1971, p. 163
 
STALIN WAS FAIR IN CHECKING CHARGES AGAINST PEOPLE
 
            It speaks highly of Stalin's sense of justice that he did not hesitate to double check the charges made against the accused, lest place-seeking politicians should seek advancement by falsely informing against an inconvenient superior.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 101
 
CHUEV:  So Stalin treated people altogether mercilessly?
MOLOTOV:  What do you mean, mercilessly?  He got reports; they had to be checked out.
CHUEV:  People would slander one another....
MOLOTOV:  We would have been complete idiots if we had taken the reports at their face value.  We were not idiots.  We could not entrust accused individuals with jobs of responsibility, because they could have reverted to type any time.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 276
 
CHUEV:  If Stalin knew everything and did not rely on bad advice, he bears direct responsibility for the executions of the innocent.
MOLOTOV:  That conclusion is not entirely correct.  Understanding the idea is one thing, applying it is something else.  The rightists had to be beaten, the Trotskyists had to be beaten, so the order came down: punish the vigorously.  Yezhov was executed for that.  If tough measures are rejected, the great risk is always that at the critical moment the nation may be torn apart and the devil knows how it may end--leading only to greater losses.  Millions may die, and that may mean total collapse or at least a very deep crisis.
CHUEV:  That's true.  Yezhov was executed, but the innocent were not released.
MOLOTOV:  But, when all is said, many of the verdicts were justified.  The cases were reviewed and some people were released....
MOLOTOV:  A commission on Tevosian was set up after he was arrested.  Mikoyan, Beria, myself, and someone else worked on that commission.  Tevosian was a Central Committee member, a most upright man, an excellent specialist in metallurgy.  An extremely competent man.  A report came in that he was a saboteur and that he was working to damage our steel industry.  He had intensive training in Germany with the Krupp works, and upon returning home he most perseveringly and effectively worked in our steel industry.  But soon a lot of evidence given by specialists and managers was received.  At Stalin's initiative, a special commission was set up to review his case thoroughly.  We went to the NKVD building to examine the evidence.  We heard out one engineer, two, three.  Each one insisted Tevosian was a wrecker because he had issued such and such instructions.  Tevosian was in the same room and listened to all those accusations.  He easily exposed and rejected all the charges.  We compared the evidence with the facts and concluded that the charges were absurd.  Sheer slander.  Tevosian was acquitted.  He remained a member of the Central Committee, and then he continued to do his job.  We reported to Stalin, and he agreed with our conclusion.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 294
 
GOLOVANOV:  Stalin also tried to find out from me who had me expelled from the party.  I realized that if I indicated that person to him, the next day the man would be out of the Politburo.  I never divulged the name to him....
MOLOTOV:  Khrushchev brought his lists of enemies of the people to Stalin.  Stalin doubted the numbers reported--"They can't be so many!"  "They are--in fact, many more, Comrade Stalin.  You can't imagine how many they are!"
GOLOVANOV:  I have a friend who used to work with me as a flight engineer when I was a pilot in civil aviation.  He studied at the political academy, switched to research work, and taught at the general staff academy.  As the campaign of exposures and denunciations was launched, he was transferred to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism to pour over documents in search of execution orders and so forth signed by Stalin.  He did not find a single paper of that kind bearing Stalin's signature.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 296
 
MOLOTOV:  The Central Committee was also to blame for running careless checks on some of the accused.  But no one can prove to me that all those actions should never have been undertaken.  That claim could only come from someone who had never been a Bolshevik with prerevolutionary experience....
            ...Not all the lists were signed by the Politburo members.  In many cases the verdicts arrived at by the security agencies were taken on trust.
GOLOVANOV:  On trust, of course.
MOLOTOV:  Not all the cases could be checked out....
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 297
 
            Wholesale expulsions based on this "heartless attitude" alienated party members and therefore served the needs of the party's enemies.  According to Stalin, such embittered comrades could provide addit___Yional reserves for the Trotskyists "because the incorrect policy of some of our comrades on the question of expulsion from the party and reinstatement of expelled people... creates these reserves."
            Large numbers of members have been incorrectly expelled "for so-called passivity."  Such passives were expelled because they hadn't mastered the party program.  "If we were to go further on this path, we should have to leave only intellectuals and learned people in general in our party."  Acceptance of the program is sufficient, especially for those working on mastering the program.
            Stalin stated, "It is necessary to put an end to the present blockheaded interpretation of the question of passivity....  The fact is that our comrades do not recognize the mean between two extremes.  It is sufficient for a worker, a party member, to commit some small offense...and in a flash he is thrown out of the party.
            No interest is taken in the degree of his offense, the cause of his non-appearance at the meeting...the bureaucratism of this is simply unparalleled....  And was it impossible, before expelling them from the party, to give them, or administer a reprimand...or in the extreme case to reduce to the position of candidate, but not to expel them with a sweep of a hand from the party?
            "Of course it was possible.
            But this requires an attentive attitude toward people....  And this is exactly what some of our comrades lack.
            It is high time to put a stop to this outrageous practice, comrades."
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 147
 
 
            Lastly, one more question.  I have in mind the question of the formal and heartlessly bureaucratic attitude of some of our Party comrades towards the fate of individual members of the Party, to the question of expelling members from the Party, or the question of reinstating expelled members of the Party.  The point is that some of our Party leaders suffer from a lack of concern for people, for members of the Party, for workers.  More than that, they do not study members of the Party, do not know what interests they have, how they are developing; generally, they do not know the workers.  That is why they have no individual approach to Party members and Party workers.  And because they have no individual approach in appraising Party members and Party workers they usually act in a haphazard way: either they praise them wholesale, without measure, or roundly abuse them, also wholesale and without measure, and expel thousands and tens of thousands of members from the Party.  Such leaders generally try to think in tens of thousands, not caring about "units," about individual members of the Party, about their fate.  They regard the expulsion of thousands and tens of thousands of people from the Party as a mere trifle and console themselves with the thought that our Party has two million members and that the expulsion of tens of thousands cannot in any way affect the Party's position.  But only those who are in fact profoundly anti-Party can have such an approach to members of the Party.
            As a result of this heartless attitude towards people, towards members of the Party and Party workers, discontent and bitterness is artificially created among a section of the Party, and the Trotskyite double-dealers cunningly hook onto such embittered comrades and skilfully drag them into the bog of Trotskyite wrecking.
Stalin, Joseph. Works, Vol. 14, Speech in Reply to Debate, 1 April 1937, Red Star Press, London, Pravda 1978, pp. 292-296.
 
            Taken by themselves, the Trotskyites never represented a big force in our Party.  Recall the last discussion in our Party in 1927.   That was a real Party referendum.  Of a total of 854,000 members of the Party, 730,000 took part in the voting.  Of these, 724,000 members of the Party voted for the Bolsheviks, for the Central Committee of the Party and against the Trotskyites, while 4,000 members of the Party, i.e., about one-half per cent, voted for the Trotskyites, and 2,600 members of the Party abstained from voting.  One hundred and twenty-three thousand members of the Party did not take part in the voting. They did not take part in the voting either because they were away, or because they were working on night shift.  If to the 4,000 who voted for the Trotskyites we add all those who abstained from voting on the assumption that they, too, sympathised with the Trotskyites, and if to this number we add, not half per cent of those who did not take part in the voting, as we should do by right, but five per cent, i.e., about 6,000 Party members, we will get about 12,000 Party members who, in one way or another, sympathised with Trotskyism.  This is the whole strength of Messieurs the Trotskyites.  Add to this the fact that many of them became disillusioned with Trotskyism and left it, and you will get an idea of the insignificance of the Trotskyite forces.  And if in spite of this the Trotskyite wreckers have some reserves around our Party it is because the wrong policy of some of our comrades on the question of expelling and reinstating members of the Party, the heartless attitude of some of our comrades towards the fate of individual members of the Party and individual workers, artificially creates a number of discontented and embittered people, and thus creates these reserves for the Trotskyites.
            For the most part people are expelled for so-called passivity.  What is passivity?  It transpires that if a member of the Party has not thoroughly mastered the Party program he is regarded as passive and subject to expulsion.  But that is wrong, comrades.  You cannot interpret the rules of our Party in such a pedantic fashion.  In order to thoroughly master the Party program one must be a real Marxist, a tried and theoretically trained Marxist.  I do not know whether we have many members of our Party who have thoroughly mastered our program, who have become real Marxists, theoretically trained and tried.  If we continued further along this path we would have to leave only intellectuals and learned people generally in our Party.  Who wants such a Party?  We have Lenin's thoroughly tried and tested formula defining a member of the Party.  According to this formula a member of the Party is one who accepts the program of the Party, pays membership dues and works in one of its organizations.  Please note: Lenin' s formula does not speak about thoroughly mastering the program, but about accepting the program.  These are two very different things.  It is not necessary to prove that Lenin is right here and not our Party comrades who chatter idly about thoroughly mastering the program.  That should be clear.  If the Party had proceeded from the assumption that only those comrades who have thoroughly mastered the program and have become theoretically trained Marxists could be members of the Party it would not have created thousands of Party circles, hundreds of Party schools where the members of the Party are taught Marxism, and where they are assisted to master our program.  It is quite clear that if our Party organizes such schools and circles for the members of the Party it is because it knows that the members of the Party have not yet thoroughly mastered the Party program, have not yet become theoretically trained Marxists.
            Consequently, in order to rectify our policy on the question of Party membership and on expulsion from the Party we must put a stop to the present blockhead interpretation of the question of passivity.
            But there is another error in this sphere.  It is that our comrades recognise no mean between two extremes.  It is enough for a worker, a member of the Party, to commit a slight offence, to come late to a Party meeting once or twice, or to fail to pay membership dues for some reason or other, to be kicked out of the Party in a trice.  No interest is taken in the degree to which he is to blame, the reason why he failed to attend a meeting, the reason why he did not pay membership dues.  The bureaucratic approach displayed on these questions is positively unprecedented.  It is not difficult to understand that it is precisely the result of this heartless policy that excellent, skilled workers, excellent Stakhanovites, found themselves expelled from the Party.   Was it not possible to caution them before expelling them from the Party, or if that had no effect, to reprove or reprimand them, and if that had no effect, to put them on probation for a certain period, or, as an extreme measure, to reduce them to the position of candidates¸ but not expel them from the Party at one stroke?  Of course it was.  But this calls for concern for people, for the members of the Party, for the fate of members of the Party.  And this is what some of our comrades lack.
            It is time, comrades, high time, to put a stop to this disgraceful state of affairs. (Applause.)
Stalin, Joseph. Works, Vol. 14, Speech in Reply to Debate, 1 April 1937, Red Star Press, London, Pravda 1978, pp. 292-296.
 
            The Central Committee gathered in yet another plenum at the end of February 1937....
            But once again Molotov specifically and firmly disdained a campaign aimed at everyone who had ever opposed the party line, including Trotskyites.  He cited a telegram that Stalin had sent the previous December to the municipal party committee in Perm.  There the director of an aviation motor factory, a former Trotskyite, was being persecuted "because of his former sins."  But in view of the fact that he and his subordinates, who were also suffering, "now work with a good conscience and enjoy the full confidence of the Central Committee," Stalin asked the city secretary to protect them and "create around them an atmosphere of complete trust."  He requested the secretary to let the Central Committee know quickly of measures taken to help the group.  It is hard to imagine a more direct and forceful statement that every oppositionist was to be evaluated on his or her merits and record; there was to be no witch-hunt.
            Molotov's recommendations for action were along the same lines.  More Bolshevik tolerance for objections was needed: "We must prove our ability to cope with criticism," even the unpleasant sort.  The way to deal with enemies was through selection of employees, and methods of leadership.  In short, Molotov did not assign a prominent role to the police.
            Stalin was mild and supportive toward Kossior, first secretary of the party in Ukraine.  Kossior admitted that in his area there had been a lot of "familyness," meaning that he had created a network of people connected directly to himself and had sometimes resisted central directives.  Such practices were now condemned as likely to let in enemies.  Kossior regretted not having enough "Bolshevik sagacity and decisiveness."  Stalin interjected: "If you had told us, we would have helped."  When Kossior dwelled further on his errors, Stalin said, "No matter, people learn from mistakes."
KOSSIOR: That's true.  But the price is too high.
STALIN: A good product is not bought cheaply.  (General laughter).
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 43-44
 
            At last Stalin took the floor.  On March 3 he presented an address entitled "On Shortcomings of Party Work and Measures of Liquidation of Trotskyite and Other Double-Dealers."  He began by charging that sabotage and espionage, in which "Trotskyites have played a fairly active role," had occurred in almost all government and party organizations.  The agents of this nefarious work had reached not just lower levels but "some responsible posts" as well.  Many leaders at the center and in the provinces had been "complacent, kindhearted, and naive" toward the wreckers, which had help them get into high positions.  Often the enemies were masked as Bolsheviks.
            Still, Stalin did not call for massive purges of the party, even for those guilty of complacency and indirect aid to the wreckers.... Stalin's emphasis in coping with the danger was on reeducation, not on mass arrests.  There was no point in retraining anyone not deemed basically trustworthy.
            On the same day Stalin spoke, the central committee resolved that, at a minimum, Bukharin and Rykov knew of the terrorist activity of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite center and hid it from the party, thereby aiding terrorism.  They also knew of other terrorist groups organized by their "pupils and followers."  Far from struggling with the terrorists, the two rightist leaders encouraged them.  The Central Committee voted to expel Bukharin and Rykov from the party and to turn their case over to the NKVD.
            Stalin now changed his tone, though why is not clear.  His speech of March 5 was considerably milder than his first remarks,...
            It was necessary to hunt down active Trotskyites but not everyone who had been casually involved with them, Stalin announced.  In fact, such a crude approach could "only harm the cause of the struggle with the active Trotskyist wreckers and spies."  Even more surprising given his first set of remarks, but paralleling his December 1936 telegram in defense of a former Trotskyite, Stalin allowed that some people had long ago left their fellows and now "conduct the fight with Trotskyism no worse, but even better than some of our respected comrades....  It would be stupid to discredit such comrades."  Each case of expulsion from the party for connections with the former oppositions should be dealt with carefully.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 47-48
 
            [At a January 1938 meaning of the Central Committee] Malenkov emphasized that the Commission of Party Control, still headed by Yezhov, had discovered that "very many" of the appeals for reinstatement "correctly objected" to expulsion.  In the majority of cases the commission examined from 40 to 60 percent of those thrown out of the party had been reinstated.  Malenkov reminded the Central Committee of Stalin's objection in March 1937 to a "heartless bureaucratic" approach to communists.
Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 107
 
            Several episodes recounted by Khrushchev show how the selection of candidates took place at the Moscow conferences.  The first episode was connected with the head of one of the departments of the Moscow Committee, Brandt, who before the conference told Khrushchev that he always was having to explain whether he was the son of the colonel in the tsarist army named Brandt who headed the anti-Soviet uprising in Kaluga in 1918.  Although Brandt would always say that his father had truly been a colonel, but another, who had never disgraced himself before the Soviet regime, he was sure that this time they would begin to slander him with particular cruelty, and therefore he was entertaining thoughts of suicide.  Imagining all too well the atmosphere which would dominate at the conference, Khrushchev understood that it "might prove to be fatal for Brandt," and decided to tell Stalin himself about this case, in order to save his comrade and colleague.  After he had received assurances from Khrushchev that Brandt was "a person who had been tested," Stalin ordered that "he not be subjected to insults."  As a result, Brandt was selected a member of the Moscow committee.
Rogovin, Vadim. 1937: Year of Terror. Oak Park, Michigan: Labor Publications, 1998, p. 300
 
            After the break, Kaganovich delivered a brief but vicious speech.  Evidently, he had "reconsidered" and begun to believe not only the "whore" Sokolnikov instead of Bukharin but also the forced testimony of Zinoviev and Kamenev.  Molotov competed with Kaganovich in the ardor of his attacks on Rykov and Bukharin....
            No one rose to defend the two.  Ordzhonikidze did interrupt Yezhov to ask questions, trying to make sense out of the ongoing nightmare, thereby becoming the one person to indicate a certain distrust in the new people's commissar [Yezhov]....
            Finally, Stalin took the floor.  I report from memory what Bukharin told me:
            "No need to make a hasty decision, Comrades.  Look, the investigative organs also had material against Tukhachevsky, but we sorted it out, and Comrade Tukhachevsky may now work in peace....
            I think Rykov might have known something about the counterrevolutionary activity of the Trotskyists and did not inform the Party.  But in respect to Bukharin, I still doubt this.  [Here, he was purposely splitting Bukharin off from Rykov.]  It is very painful for the Party to speak of the past crimes of comrades as authoritative as Bukharin and Rykov were.  Therefore, we will not hurry with the decision, Comrades, but continue the investigation.
Larina, Anna. This I Cannot Forget. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993, p. 301
 
ZINOVIEV TRIAL REVEALS THE EXTENT OF TERRORIST PLOTTING
 
            Immediately the accused realized that for once their promises were to have no effect, they frantically tried to purchase their miserable lives by implicating others, revealing in the process a carefully organized plot against the sovereignty of the Soviet State.  By these means they succeeded only in hardening the resolution of Stalin, who saw them at last for what they really were.
            Armed with the new disclosures, and with Stalin's approval, Yagoda opened the "Trial of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center," better known to the Western reader from the newspaper headline, "The trial of the 16...."
            As the trial progressed, searching cross-examination by Vyshinsky brought to the surface a veritable maze of underground plots.  Not only Kirov but also the entire personnel of the Politburo, with the unexplained exception of Molotov, were scheduled for the knife or the bullet of an assassin.  Regular channels of communication with the exiled Trotsky, whose advice was to be obtained on all points, were exposed.  Letters from the former War Commissar were produced as proof that he had given the actual order to assassinate Stalin....
            With deadly insistence, Vyshinsky beat down the feeble protests of the accused.  One after another the men who had set personal ambitions above their country and had boldly planned to take the lives of others, confessed their part in the conspiracy and begged the state to spare their lives.
            If Stalin needed further proof of the security of his Government, he received it in the universal outcry against the projected attempt on his life.  From factories and villages came thousands of resolutions demanding death for the traitors, while hostile crowds besieged the court, screaming insults whenever the accused appeared.  One of the principal Opposition leaders, the ex-Trade Union President, Tomsky, was so staggered by the volume of protest and universal condemnation that he committed suicide.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 100
 
ELIMINATING TRAITOROUS GENERALS WAS WISE AND THEY WERE SENSIBLY REPLACED
 
            Though the purge had deprived the Red Army of many capable soldiers, Stalin had retained the services of the best known.  They were eventually to justify his faith by their devotion to the USSR in its war against Hitlerite Germany.
            Prominent among them are: Voroshilov,... Budenny,…Yegorov,... and Shaposhnikov,... To this core of tried and reliable soldiers, the post revolutionary military academies have added many younger figures whose worth was proved for the first time in action against the Nazis.  Best known of these is the 46 year old Timoshenko.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 107
 
            On July 4, 1937, Ambassador Davies wrote in his diary, "Litvinov was very frank.  He stated that they had to 'make sure' through these purges that there was no treason left which could co-operate with Berlin or Tokyo; that someday the world would understand that what they had done was to protect their government from 'menacing treason.'  In fact, he said they were doing the whole world a service in protecting themselves against the menace of Hitler and Nazi world domination, and thereby preserving the Soviet Union strong as a bulwark against the Nazi threat.  That the world someday would appreciate what a very great man Stalin was.
Davies, Joseph E. Mission to Moscow. New York, N. Y.: Simon and Schuster, c1941, p. 167
 
            Everything was strained to the breaking point.  In that period it was necessary to act mercilessly.  I believe our actions were fully justified....  But if the Tukhachevskys and the Yakirs, with the Rykovs and the Zinovievs, had started an opposition during the war, there would have been cruel internal strife and colossal losses.  Colossal!
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 275
 
            In June, 1919, an important fort called "Krasnaya Gorka" (The Red Hill), in the Gulf of Finland, was captured by a detachment of Whites.  A few days later it was recaptured by a force of Red marines.  Then it was discovered that the chief of the staff of the Seventh army, Colonel Lundkvist, was transmitting all information to the Whites.  There were other conspirators working hand-in-glove with him.  This shook the army to its very core.
Trotsky, Leon.  My Life. Gloucester, Massachusetts: P. Smith, 1970, p. 423
 
 
DESPITE HARD TIMES STALIN AIDED CHINA REPEATEDLY
 
            In 1931 Japan delivered the first armed blow at the system of Versailles by occupying Manchuria.  Stalin openly assisted the Chinese in every way possible, short of a declaration of war.  He did this in spite of the fact that the whole of his country's energies were directed towards the fulfillment of the first Five Year Plan and that widespread famine and sabotage were decimating the land.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 111
 
            In September, 1931, on a trumped-up pretext the Japanese seized the Manchurian capital, Mukden, and within a few months extended their conquest over the whole of Manchuria, including the Chinese Eastern railroad, jointly owned and operated by the Russians and Chinese.  Russia and Japan were brought to the verge of war because the Russians were convinced early in 1932 that Japan proposed to follow its Manchurian action by a drive through Outer Mongolia to the Russian area south of Lake Baikal, with the purpose of cutting off the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Siberia from the Soviet Union.  The Russians faced this threat alone; far from having confidence in the Western Powers to check Japanese aggression, they believed that London at least was encouraging Japan to invade Siberia.
Duranty, Walter.  Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 183
 
            Between 1919 and 1926 Sun Yat-Sen and and his followers turned definitely to the Soviet Union for help in their independence struggle.  After repeated attempts to obtain aid from the United States and from various European governments, Sun Yat-sen became convinced that his best source of support was the Soviet Union.  At the request of his government, and of the People's party which he headed, the Soviet Union sent to China a core of technical assistants that at one time numbered approximately 300.  The titular head of this group was Borodin.
Nearing, S.  The Soviet Union as a World Power. New York: Island Workshop Press, 1945, p. 54
 
            No figures are available showing the exact amount of material assistance sent by Russia into China during the 20 years that ended in 1937.  In the first decade the material aid was probably considerable.  In the second decade it diminished sharply.  From the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 until the German invasion of Russia in 1941 Soviet aid to China again increased.  Military necessity forced Soviet supplies to follow old caravan routes converted into extemporized truck roads across the Gobi desert.
Nearing, S.  The Soviet Union as a World Power. New York: Island Workshop Press, 1945, p. 55
 
 
            With minor exceptions Soviet Russia has extended consistent help to the movement for a Chinese Republic in the hope that a China directed by a Chinese Soviet government would be able to win its independence from the western empires, industrialize China, raise the standard of well-being of the Chinese masses and by so doing blaze the trail toward a Soviet Asia.
Nearing, S.  The Soviet Union as a World Power. New York: Island Workshop Press, 1945, p. 56
 
            On the question of the Sino-Soviet treaty of 1945,… the Russians would withdraw their troops from Port Arthur when the Chinese wished, and also yield up control of the trans-Manchurian railways.  On other practical matters, Mao requested Soviet credits of 300 million U.S. dollars, as well as help developing domestic air transport routes and developing a navy, to all of which Stalin agreed.
Spence, Jonathan D. Mao Zedong. New York: Viking, 1999, p. 111
 
SU FULFILLED LEAGUE EFFORTS AGAINST AGGRESSORS
 
            On September 18, 1934, in order to identify herself absolutely with the idea of European stability and peace, the USSR entered the League of Nations.  Alone of all the members, she gave practical proof of a readiness to contribute more to the cause of peace than words and sympathy.  When Mussolini sent his legions into Abyssinia, Moscow loyally fulfilled her obligations and welcomed the application of sanctions.  Abyssinia was not Russia's concern, she had no interest in arresting Italian designs in the Mediterranean and no African colonies to protect.  She acted because she had no desire to see aggression elevated into a successful principle.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 112
 
TO GET HELP THE OPPOSITION PROMISED THE NAZIS LAND LIKE THE UKRAINE
 
            Also leading the Germans into war, was their belief in the internal weakness of Russia and the alleged widespread disaffection against Stalin.  Much of this fantastic idea may have resulted from the conversations which Stalin has always insisted took place between Trotsky and the opposition leaders and the Nazi Party heads.  Among the principal accusations leveled against Trotsky had been the treacherous liaison with Hitler, to whom the minority groups were said to have promised the Ukraine and certain districts in Western Russia in return for military help against Stalin.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 119
 
STALIN KNEW NAZI ATTACK WOULD RESULT IN MAJOR LAND LOST AT FIRST
 
            Stalin and the Soviet general staff were aware that the first shock of the Nazi attack would certainly result in considerable territorial loss.
Cole, David M.   Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 121
 
TROTSKY WAS NOT DEFEATED BECAUSE STALIN UNDERMINED HIM
 
            Trotsky was not defeated because of Stalin's growing power.  As the Russian historians Valerii Nadtocheev and Dimitri Volkogonov have pointed out, the reverse is true: Stalin gained power because he was able to provide leadership in the Politburo's effort to neutralize Trotsky.
            ... (with Zinoviev taking a harder line against Trotsky than Stalin did).
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 23
 
TROTSKYITE EASTMAN UNDERMINED TROTSKY
 
            The battle over the construction of the Dnieper station played a far less important role in Trotsky's political destiny, however, than did the Eastman affair.  The Eastman affair grew out of a book published in the West by Max Eastman, an American Communist and journalist.  Eastman had traveled to Russia numerous times, knew Russian, was married to a Russian woman, and was thus able to gather a great deal of material about the struggle within the Soviet political leadership during the last months of Lenin's life and following his death.  Eastman met several times with Trotsky and was his ardent supporter.  In Eastman's betrayal, Trotsky was one of the few true leaders of the Russian Revolution, who, after its culmination, fell victim to the scheming of unprincipled Kremlin intriguers.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 69
 
            After the appearance of Eastman's book, Trotsky found himself in a difficult situation.  Almost immediately the heads of several Western Communist parties addressed inquiries to him, asking whether the facts reported by Eastman about Trotsky's persecution corresponded with reality.  Submitting to party discipline (because the facts cited by Eastman were considered secret), Trotsky was forced to answer that Eastman was lying.  But this meant that Trotsky himself was now lying, because much of what Eastman wrote was the truth.  Initially, wishing to extract himself from an unpleasant situation with the least damage, Trotsky tried to simply offer several general rebuttals.  Stalin, who had a vested interest in this incident, however, decided to publicize it as widely as possible and to exploit it vigorously to discredit Trotsky.  On June 17, 1925, Stalin sent the following lengthy memorandum:
            "TO ALL MEMBERS AND CANDIDATES OF THE POLITBURO AND PRESIDIUM OF THE CENTRAL CONTROL COMMISSION
            On May 8th of this year, the Politburo received a statement from Comrade Trotsky addressed to 'Comrade Verney at the periodical Sunday Worker in reply to Eric Verney's inquiry about a book by Eastman, Since Lenin Died.  Published and widely quoted in the bourgeois press, Since Lenin Died depicts Comrade Trotsky as a 'victim of intrigue,' and readers of the book are given to understand that Trotsky regards [bourgeois] democracy and free trade in a favorable light.  In view of this presentation, Verney asked Comrade Trotsky to provide an explanation that would be published in the Sunday Worker.
            Comrade Trotsky's statement, as is known, was printed in Pravda, on May 9, 1925. 
            I personally paid no attention to Comrade Trotsky's statement at the time because I had no notion of the nature of Eastman's book.
            On May 9, 1925, Comrade Trotsky received an inquiry from the Central Committee of the British Communist Party signed by Comrade Inkpin in connection with Eastman's book.  Inkpin asked Comrade Trotsky to make a statement concerning Eastman book, because “the enemies of the Communist International in our country exploit your position in relation to the Russian Communist party’."
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds.  Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 70
 
 
            Here is the full text of the letter from Inkpin:
            May 9, 1925.  To Comrade Trotsky. 
“Dear Comrade Trotsky!  The Central Committee of the British party has assigned me to send you the attached copy of the book by Max Eastman, Since Lenin Died, and the issues of the New Leader, Lansbury's Weekly, and the Labor Magazine containing reviews of the book.  These reviews will show you how enemies of the Communist International in our country exploit your position in relation to the Russian Communist Party.
            Our Central Committee considers that it would be very useful if you would write and send an answer to these reviewers.  Such an article would be of good service to the Communist movement in our country, and we for our part would do everything possible to give it the widest publicity.  With Communist greetings,  General Secretary Inkpin.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 71
 
 
            Comrade Trotsky wrote the following letter in reply to Inkpin's letter:
            “Dear Comrade Inkpin: Your letter of May 9 was evidently written before my answer to the inquiry from the Sunday Worker was received in London.
            My brochure: “Where Is England Headed?” will be, I hope, a sufficient reply to all the attempts of the Fabian pacifists, the parliamentary careerists, the Philistines, and McDonalds to use various events in our party as proof of the advantage of reformism over communism and of democracy over the dictatorship of the proletariat.
            As soon as my brochure is received by the Central Committee of our party, I will not delay in sending you the manuscript.
            With Communist greetings,  L. Trotsky.  May 21, 1925.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 71
 
 
            At the same time, Comrade Trotsky's sent to the Politburo in care of Comrade Stalin a letter dated May 19, 1925, wherein Comrade Trotsky, without providing a direct reply to the questions raised by Comrade Inkpin, attempts to get by with a reference to his brochure 'Where Is England Headed?' which has no relationship to Comrade Inkpin's inquiry.
            Here is the text of Comrade Trotsky's letter:
            "To Comrade Stalin.   Dear Comrade!  In order to avoid any misunderstandings whatsoever, I consider it necessary to provide you with the following information regarding the English book by Max Eastman,  (I have just received this book and have managed to leaf through it quickly).”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 71
 
 
            “In a private conversation, I told you that for half a year I have not received any Comintern documents.  In particular, I have no idea whatsoever what the 'inquiry' Treint raised about me involves.  To this day I do not know why Rosmer and Monatte were expelled from the party, I do not know what their disagreements are with the party, and I do not know what they are publishing or even whether they are publishing anything at all.”
            With Communist greetings.  L. Trotsky, Moscow, May 19, 1925.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 73
 
 
            “I became acquainted with Eastman as an American Communist at one of the first international congresses of the Comintern.
            Three or four years ago, Eastman asked for my assistance in writing my biography.  I refused, suggesting that he do some other work of more general interest.  Eastman replied in a letter in which he argued that the American worker would become interested in communism not in response to the expounding of theory or history but in response to a biographical story; he and other American writers wanted to fashion a weapon of Communist propaganda out of the biographies of several Russian revolutionaries.  Eastman asked me to give him the necessary facts and subsequently to review the manuscript.  I replied that in view of his explanation I did not feel I could refuse to tell him the necessary facts, but I definitely refused to read the manuscript and thus accept direct or indirect responsibility for the biography.
            Subsequently I gave Eastman information relating to the first 22 years of my life, before I arrived in London in 1902.  I know that he visited my relatives and schoolmates and collected information about that same era.  These materials are what gave him, apparently, the opportunity to write the book Lev Trotsky: Portrait of a Youth, the announcement of which is printed on the cover of the book Since Stalin Died.
            The last time I saw Eastman must and been more than a year and a half ago; I lost track of him altogether after that.  I had no notion of his intention to write a book devoted to the discussion in our party.  And even he, of course, did not have this intention during that period when he met with me to collect facts about my youth.
            It goes without saying that he could not have received any party documents from me or through me.  Eastman, however, did speak and write Russian well, had many friends in our party, was married to a Russian Communist, as I was recently told, and consequently had free access to all our party literature, including, evidently, those documents that were sent to local organizations, distributed to members of the 13th Party Congress, etc.  I have not verified whether he has cited these documents accurately or from rumor.
            The press of the British Mensheviks is trying to use Eastman's book against communism (the secretary of the British Communist Party sent me, along with Eastman's book, three issues of Menshevik-type publications that included articles about that book).  Meanwhile, my telegram was supposed to appear in the Sunday Worker (there is mention of this in the Daily Herald).  I think that my pamphlet 'Where Is England Headed?' will be quite timely under these circumstances and will dispel many illusions and much gossip spread by the Menshevik and bourgeois press.  I intend to do an appropriate supplement for the English edition.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 72
 
 
            “Only after this letter from Comrade Trotsky and only because Comrade Trotsky stubbornly refused to reply directly to Comrade Inkpin's questions about the Eastman book did it become clear to me [Stalin] that I had to familiarize myself immediately with the contents of that book.
            Acquaintance with Eastman's book convinced me that this book was not written naively, that its purpose is to discredit the government of the USSR and the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, and that for these purposes Eastman indulges in a whole range of slanders and distortions, referring to Trotsky's authority and to his 'friendship' with Trotsky and to some secret documents that have not yet been published.  I was particularly surprised by Eastman's statements concerning his 'chats' with Comrade Trotsky about Lenin's so-called testament and about the 'main figures in the Central Committee,' and also by his statement that the authenticity of [his text of] Lenin's so-called testament was confirmed by' three responsible Communists in Russia,' whom 'I [that is, Eastman) interviewed separately and who had all recently read the letter and committed its most vital phrases to memory.
            For me it became clear that, given everything I had just related, it would be not only intolerable but outright criminal to hush up the question of Comrade Trotsky's relationship with Eastman and his book Since Lenin Died.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 73
 
 
            “In view of that, after discussing the matter with the secretaries of the Central Committee, I ordered Eastman's book translated into Russian and sent the translation to Politburo members and candidates for their review.
            I was also moved to act because, meanwhile, all and sundry bourgeois and social democratic parties have already begun to use the Eastman book in the foreign press against the Russian Communist Party and Soviet rule: they take advantage of the fact that in their campaign against the leaders of the Soviet government they can now rely on the 'testimonies' of the 'Communist' Eastman, a 'friend' of Comrade Trotsky who has 'chats' with him, to the effect that Russia is ruled by an irresponsible bunch of usurpers and deceivers.
            I have no doubt whatsoever that Eastman's book is libelous, that it will prove enormously profitable to the world counterrevolution (and has already done so!), and that it will cause serious damage to the entire world revolutionary movement.
            That is why I think that Comrade Trotsky, on whom Eastman occasionally claims to rely in his book when speaking against the leaders of the Russian Communist Party and the Soviet revolutionary authority, cannot pass over Eastman's book in silence.
            I'm now thinking at present of proposing to Comrade Trotsky that he substantively respond in the press to the fundamental issues covered in Eastman's book, which are the fundamental questions of our disputes as well.  Let the party and the International judge who is right and whose political position is correct, the position of the Central Committee or the position of Comrade Trotsky.
            But certain minimum obligations rest on party members; a member of the Central Committee and Politburo, such as Comrade Trotsky is at this moment, has a certain minimum moral duty that Comrade Trotsky cannot and should not refuse.  This minimum requires that Comrade Trotsky speak out in the press unequivocally against the crude distortions of facts that are known to everyone, distortions permitted in Eastman's book for the purpose of discrediting the Russian Communist party.  Obviously the silence of Comrade Trotsky in this case may be construed only as a confirmation or an excuse for these distortions.
            I think that Comrade Trotsky should rebut at least the following distortions:
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 74
 
 
            1) In the section, 'Attacking the Old Guard,' Eastman's little book says that 'Trotsky's letter [the reference is to an appeal to the local committees in 1923 in connection with the Politburo's resolution on internal party democracy--Stalin] and some supplementary articles in pamphlet form were practically suppressed by the Politburo' [53].
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 74
 
 
            Further, in chapter 9 of Eastman's book, it says that 'Trotsky's book [the reference is to volume three of Trotsky's works and Lessons of October--Stalin] was practically suppressed by the Politburo until they [that is, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party--Stalin] were sure of the success of their maneuver' [80-81].
            Finally, chapter 14 of Eastman's book says that 'Trotsky's true texts do not appear in public to refute their [that is, the Central Committee's--Stalin] statements.  These texts are read privately, conscientiously, by those minds who have the courage and penetration to resist the universal official hysteria stimulated and supported by the State' [125].  I think that Comrade Trotsky should refute these statements by Eastman as malicious slander against the party and the Soviet government.  Comrade Trotsky cannot help but know that neither during the party discussions of 1923 or 1924, nor at any time whatsoever, did the Central Committee obstruct the printing of Comrade Trotsky's articles and books in any way.
            In particular, Comrade Trotsky must recall that during the 1923 discussion he himself refused in his well-known statement in the press to reply to the arguments of representatives of the party majority.  He must also remember the following statement 'From the editors' of Pravda, the central party organ:
            'From the editors.  In reply to the question posed by a number of comrades concerning why Comrade Trotsky is not responding to the criticism of Trotskyism, the editors of Pravda report that so far neither Comrade Trotsky nor his close supporters have submitted any articles in response to the criticism of Trotskyism' (see Pravda, December 13, 1924).
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 75
 
 
            2) The second chapter of Eastman's book speaks of the Russian Communist Party leaders as 'suppressing the writings of Lenin himself,' [20] and in chapter 9 it says that they, that is, the party leaders, 'clapped the censorship on his [that is, Lenin's--Stalin] own last words to his party' [92].
            I think that Comrade Trotsky should also refute these statements by Eastman as a lie and as libel against the leaders of the party, the Central Committee, and its Politburo.  Trotsky knows quite as well as do all other members of the Central Committee that Eastman's reports do not correspond with reality to the slightest degree.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 75
 
 
            3) In the second chapter of his book, Eastman states that 'all those present at the meeting, including the secretaries, were not only against the policies proposed by Lenin, but they were against the publication of the article' [25] [the reference is to Lenin's article 'How We Should Reorganize Rabkrin--Stalin].
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 75
 
 
            I think  that Comrade Trotsky should also refute this statement by Eastman as an obvious slander.  He cannot help but recall, first, that Lenin's plan as set forth in his article was not discussed substantively at this time; second, that the Politburo was convened in connection with the statements in Lenin's article about the possible schism in the Central Committee--statements that could have provoked misunderstanding in the party organizations.  Comrade Trotsky could not help but know that the Politburo then decided to send to party organizations, in addition to Lenin's printed article, a special letter from the Orgburo and the Politburo of the Central Committee stating that the article should not provide grounds for any perception of a schism in the Central Committee.  Comrade Trotsky must know that the decision to publish Lenin's article immediately, and to send a letter from the members of the Orgburo and Politburo about the absence of a schism within the Central Committee, was passed unanimously; any notion that the Politburo's decision on the publication of Lenin's article was passed under pressure from Comrade Trotsky is a ridiculous absurdity.
            Here is the text of the letter:
            Letter to the Provincial and Regional Committees. 
            Dear Comrades, Pravda No. 16 of January 25 carries Lenin's article 'How We Should Reorganize Rabkrin.'  One part of this article speaks about the role of the Central Committee of our party in the need to take organizational measures that will eliminate the prospect of, or make as difficult as possible, a schism in the Central Committee if mutual relations between the proletariat and the peasantry become complicated in connection with the changes ensuing from NEP.  Some comrades have directed the Politburo's attention to the fact that the comrades in the provinces may view this article by Comrade Lenin as an indication of a recent internal schism within the Central Committee that has prompted Comrade Lenin to advance the organizational proposals outlined in this article.  In order to eliminate the possibility of such conclusions--which do not at all correspond with the real state of affairs--the Politburo and the Orgburo consider it necessary to notify the provincial committees of the circumstances surrounding the writing of Comrade Lenin's article.
            The return of Comrade Lenin to highly pressured work after his illness led to exhaustion.  The doctors pronounced it necessary to prescribe for Comrade Lenin a certain period of absolute rest without even reading newspapers (since for Comrade Lenin reading newspapers is, of course, not entertainment or a means of relaxation but an occasion for intense contemplation of all the current political issues).  It goes without saying that Comrade Lenin does not take part in the Politburo sessions, and he is not even sent--again, in strict accordance with his doctors' advice--the transcripts of the sessions of the Politburo and the Orgburo.  The doctors believe, however, that because complete mental inactivity is intolerable for him, Comrade Lenin should be allowed to keep something like a journal, in which he notes his thoughts on various issues; when authorized by Comrade Lenin himself, moreover, a portion of this journal may appear in the press.  These external conditions underlying the writing of 'How We Should Reorganize Rabkrin' demonstrate that the proposals contained in this article are suggested not by any complications inside the Central Committee but by Comrade Lenin's general views on the difficulties that will face the party in the coming historical epoch.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 76
 
 
            In this strictly informational letter we will not consider the possible long-range dangers that Comrade Lenin appropriately raised in his article.  The members of the Politburo and Orgburo, however, wish to state with complete unanimity, in order to avoid any possible misunderstandings, that in the work of the Central Committee there are absolutely no circumstances that would provide any basis whatsoever for fears of a 'schism.'
            This explanation is provided in the form of a strictly secret letter, rather than being published in the press, to avoid giving enemies the opportunity to cause confusion and agitation through false reports about the state of Comrade Lenin's health.  The Central Committee has no doubt that if anyone in the provinces has drawn the alarming conclusions noted in the beginning of this letter from the article by Comrade Lenin, the provincial committees will not delay in correctly orienting the party organizations.
            Available Members of the Politburo and Orgburo of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party:
            Andreev, Molotov, Bukharin, Rykov, Dzerzhinsky, Stalin, Kalinin, Tomsky, Kamenev, Trotsky, Kuibyshev, Moscow, January 27, 1923.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 77
 
 
            4) Chapter 3 of Eastman's book talks about Lenin's 'Testament.'
            “One of the most solemn and carefully weighed utterances that ever came from Lenin's pen was suppressed--in the interests of 'Leninism'--by that triumvirate of 'old Bolsheviks,' Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev....  They decided that it might be read and explained privately to the delegates--kept within the bureaucracy, that is to say,--but not put before the party for discussion, as Lenin directed' [28-29].’
            I think that Comrade Trotsky should also refute this statement by Eastman as a malicious slander.  First of all, he cannot help but know that Lenin's 'testament' was sent to the Central Committee for the exclusive use to the Party Congress; second, that neither Lenin nor Comrade Krupskaya 'demanded' or in any way proposed to make the 'testament' a subject of 'discussion before the entire Party'; third, that the 'testament' was read to all the delegations to the Congress without exception, that is, to all the members of the Congress without exception; fourth, that when the Congress presidium asked the Congress as a whole whether the 'testament' was known to all the members of the Congress and whether any discussion of it was required, the presidium received the reply that the 'testament' was known to all and that there was no need to discuss it; fifth, that neither Trotsky nor any other member of the Congress made any protest about possible irregularities at the Congress; sixth, that by virtue of this, to speak of suppressing the 'testament' means to slander maliciously the Central Committee and the 13th Party Congress.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 78
 
 
            5) The second chapter of Eastman's book says that the 'article [the reference is to Lenin's article on the nationalities question--Stalin] which Lenin considered of 'leading importance,' and which he designed to have read at a party convention, but which constituted a direct attack upon the authority of Stalin, and a corresponding endorsement of the authority of Trotsky, was not read at the party convention, the triumvirate deciding that it was for the welfare of the party to suppress it [23].
            I think that Comrade Trotsky should also refute this statement by Eastman as clearly libelous.  He must know, first, that Lenin's article was read by all members of the Congress without exception, as stated at a full meeting of the Congress; second, that none other than Comrade Stalin himself proposed the publication of Lenin's article, having stated on April 16, 1923, in a document known to all members of the Central Committee, that 'Comrade Lenin's article ought to be published in the press'; third, that Lenin's article on the nationalities issue was not published in the press only because the Central Committee could not fail to take into consideration that Lenin's sister, Maria, who had Lenin's article in her possession, did not consider it possible to publish it in the press.  Comrade Fotieva, Lenin's personal secretary, states this in a special document dated April 19, 1923, in reply to Stalin's proposal to print the article: 'Maria [Lenin's sister--Stalin] has made a statement,' writes Comrade Fotieva, 'to the effect that since there was no direct order from Lenin to publish this article, it cannot be printed, and she considers it possible only to have the members of the Congress familiarize themselves with it....' and, in fact, Comrade Fotieva adds that 'Vladimir Ilyich did not consider this article to be finished and prepared for the press'; fourth, that Eastman's statement that the Congress was not informed of Lenin's article therefore slanders the party.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 78
 
 
            6] In the second chapter of his book, Eastman, among other things, writes the following about Lenin's 'testament': 'There is no mystery about my possession of this and the foregoing information; it is all contained in official documents stolen by the counter-revolutionists and published in Russian, at Berlin, in the Socialist Herald' [26].
            Here Eastman once again distorts the truth.  Not Lenin's 'testament' but a malicious distortion of it was published in The Socialist Herald.
            I think that Comrade Trotsky should make a declaration about this distortion.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 79
 
 
            7) In the second chapter of Eastman's book, Comrade Kuibyshev is incorrectly portrayed as an opponent of Lenin's plan set out in the article about the Worker-Peasant Inspection: 'The degree to which the policies outlined by Lenin have been followed may be inferred from the fact that Kuibyshev...is now the People's Commissioner of Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, and the head of the Central Control Committee of the party' [25].
            In other words, it seems that when the Central Committee and the Party Congress appointed Kuibyshev commissar of Worker-Peasant Inspection and chairman of the Central Control Commission, they intended not to implement Lenin's plan but to sabotage it and cause it to fail.
            I think that Comrade Trotsky should also make a declaration against this libelous statement about the party, for he must know that, first, Lenin's Plan, developed in the article about the Worker-Peasant Inspection, was passed by the 12th Party Congress; second, Comrade Kuibyshev was and remains a supporter and promoter of this plan; third, Comrade Kuibyshev was elected chairman of the Central Control Commission at the 12th Congress (re-elected at the 13th Congress) in the presence of Comrade Trotsky and without any objections on the part of Comrade Trotsky or other members of the Congress; fourth, Comrade Kuibyshev was appointed head of Worker-Peasant Inspection at the Central Committee plenum of April 26, 1923, in the presence of Comrade Trotsky and without any objections on his part.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 79
 
 
            8) Eastman states in the first chapter of his book: 'When Lenin fell sick and was compelled to withdraw from the Government, he turned again to Trotsky and asked him to take his place as President of the Soviet of People's Commissars and of the Council of Labor and Defense' [16].
            Eastman repeats the same thing in the second chapter of his book: 'He [that is, Comrade Trotsky--Stalin] declined Lenin's proposal that he should become head of the Soviet Government, and thus of the revolutionary movement of the world' [18].
            I do not think that this statement by Eastman, which, by the way, does not correspond at all to reality, could harm the Soviet government in any way.  Nevertheless, because of Eastman's crude distortion of the facts on a matter concerning Comrade Trotsky, Comrade Trotsky ought to speak out against this undeniable distortion as well.  Comrade Trotsky must know that Lenin proposed to him, not the post of chairman of the Council of Commissars and the Labour Defense Council, but the post of one of the four deputies of the chairman of the Council of Commissars and Labour Defense Council, having in mind already two deputies of his own who had been previously appointed, Comrades Rykov and Tsiurupa, and intending to nominate a third deputy of his own, Comrade Kamenev.  Here is the corresponding document signed by Lenin:
            To the Secretary of the Central Committee, Comrade Stalin.  Since Comrade Rykov was given a vacation before the return of Tsiurupa (he is expected to arrive on September 20), and the doctors are promising me (of course, only in the event that nothing bad happens) a return to work (at first very limited) by October 1, I think that it is impossible to burden Comrade Tsiurupa with all the ongoing work, and I propose appointing two more deputies (deputy to the chairman of the Council of Commissars and deputy to the chairman of the Labour Defense Council), that is, Comrades Trotsky and Kamenev.  Distribute the work between them with my clearance and, of course, with the Politburo as the highest authority.  September 11, 1922.  Vladimir Ulianov (Lenin).
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 80
 
 
            Comrade Trotsky must be aware that there were no other offers then or now from Comrade Lenin regarding his appointment to the leadership of the Council of Commissars or the Labour Defense Council.  Comrade Trotsky thus turned down, not the post of chairman of the Council of Commissars or the Labour Defense Council, but the post of one of the four deputies of the chairman.  Comrade Trotsky must be aware that the Politburo voted on Lenin's proposal as follows: those in favor of Lenin's proposal were Stalin, Rykov, Kalinin; those who abstained were Tomsky, Kamenev; and Comrade Trotsky 'categorically refused'; (Zinoviev was absent).  Comrade Trotsky must be aware that the Politburo passed the following resolution on this matter: 'The Central Committee Politburo with regret notes the categorical refusal of Comrade Trotsky and proposes to Comrade Kamenev that he assume the fulfillment of the duties of deputy until the return of Comrade Tsiurupa.'
 
            The distortions condoned by Eastman, as you can see, are glaring.  These are in my opinion, the eight indisputable points, Eastman's crudest distortions that Comrade Trotsky is obliged to refute if he does not wish to justify through his silence Eastman's slanderous and objectively counter-revolutionary attacks against the party and the Soviet government.
            In connection with this, I submit the following proposal to the Politburo:
            PROPOSE TO COMRADE TROTSKY THAT HE DISASSOCIATE HIMSELF DECISIVELY FROM EASTMAN AND MAKE A STATEMENT FOR THE PRESS WITH A CATEGORICAL REBUTTAL OF AT LEAST THOSE DISTORTIONS THAT WERE OUTLINED IN THE ABOVE-MENTIONED EIGHT POINTS.
            As for the general political profile of Mr. Eastman, who still calls himself a Communist, it hardly differs in any way from the profile of other enemies of the RCP [Russian Communist party] and the Soviet government.  In his book he characterizes the RCP Congress as nothing but a 'ruthless' and 'callous bureaucracy,' the Central Committee of the party as a 'band of deceivers' and "usurpers,' the Lenin levy (in which 200,000 proletarians joined the party) as a bureaucratic maneuver by the Central Committee against the opposition, and the Red Army as a conglomerate 'broken into separate pieces' and 'lacking defense capability,' and these facts clearly tell us that in his attacks against the Russian proletariat and its government, against the party of this proletariat and its Central Committee, Eastman has outdone run-of-the-mill counter-revolutionaries and the well-known charlatans of White Guardism.  No one, except the charlatans of the counter-revolution, has ever spoken of the RCP and the Soviet government in such language as the 'friend' of Comrade Trotsky, the 'Communist' Eastman, permits himself.  There is no question that the American Communist Party and the Third International will properly evaluate these outstanding exploits of Mr. Eastman.”
            Stated by Stalin on June 17, 1925.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 81
 
 
            The following day, June 18, the Politburo affirmed Stalin's proposal about Trotsky's statement of rebuttal in the press.  Trotsky himself promised that within three days he would submit the text of his statement.  On June 22, Trotsky in fact sent Stalin material entitled "On Eastman's Book ‘Since Lenin Died’."  Without citing any accusations, Stalin replied with a brief note:
            “If you are interested in my opinion, I personally consider the draft completely unsatisfactory.  To do not understand how you could submit such a draft regarding the counter-revolutionary book by Eastman, filled with lies and slander against the party, after you accepted a moral obligation at the Politburo session of June 18 to disassociate yourself resolutely from Eastman and to rebut categorically the factual distortions.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 82
 
 
            In an appeal to the Politburo, Trotsky tried to defend himself, attempting to prove that Stalin's accusations were nonsense.  After meeting the usual rebuff, however, he began to revise the text of his statement for the press.  Oversight of his revision was assumed by Bukharin, Zinoviev, Rykov, and Stalin.  They demanded from Trotsky harsher accusations against Eastman and a categorical denial of the facts cited in Eastman's book.  Trotsky conceded to all demands.  The final text of his statement, which had satisfied the censors from the "seven," was ready by July 1, 1925.
            Now Stalin and his supporters decided to take the affair outside the framework of the Politburo by first briefing a broad circle of Party functionaries about it and then publicizing it generally.  In early July, Central Committee members Kaganovich, Chubar, and Petrovsky submitted a statement that contained a request that "all members of the Central Committee be sent all materials on the publication of Eastman's book" and that members of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party be briefed.  On 7 July 1925 after a poll of Politburo members, this request was fulfilled.  The materials on the Eastman affair were typeset, published in the form of a small book (containing Stalin's letter, the Politburo's resolutions, Trotsky's correspondence with Stalin and with other members of the Politburo, and drafts of Trotsky's statement), and sent to Central Committee members.  But Stalin had further plans to publish, both in the West and later in the USSR, the following documents: Trotsky's statement, a letter specially prepared by Krupskaya, in which she, as Lenin's widow, refutes Eastman, and the letter from Stalin himself that demonstrates his role in the struggle for Party interests.  But these plans, to which Stalin repeatedly referred in his letters to Molotov, were never fully realized.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 82
 
 
            Soon after the materials on the affair were sent to Central Committee members, Trotsky had occasion to take the offensive.  On 16 July 1925 the French Communist newspaper, L'Humanite, published the original version of Trotsky's statement.  On 27 July, Trotsky addressed a letter to Bukharin, who at that time was acting as chairman of the Comintern's Executive Committee.  Trotsky expressed his puzzlement and protest over the French publication and demanded that the circumstances of the leak be investigated, hinting that publication had deliberately been arranged even after he, Trotsky, had made all the necessary concessions and had demonstrated his readiness to co-operate with the Politburo majority in defending the party's interests.  That day, after a poll of Politburo members, the following resolution was passed:
            a) To request L'Humanite to publish [a notice] that the text of Comrade Trotsky's letter regarding Eastman's book that appeared in L'Humanite is incomplete and distorted.
            b) To request L'Humanite to publish the full (final) text of Comrade Trotsky's letter about Eastman's book.
            Bukharin, in turn, ordered an investigation into the circumstances of the incident and informed Trotsky of this decision.
            Soon it became clear that the original version of Trotsky's article had been given to L'Humanite by Manuilskii, a member of the Comintern's Executive Committee presidium, during his trip to France.  The documents that remain do not enable us to determine the real circumstances behind Manuilskii's initiative.  Nevertheless, as can be seen from the published letters, Stalin was involved in this conflict, and he was even forced to deny categorically that Manuilskii had acted in concert with him.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 83
 
 
            As the letters testify, Stalin was also unable to get the "seven" to agree to publish his own letter.  The affair ended in a compromise.  Only Trotsky's and Krupskaya's statements were published, first abroad, then in the USSR (in the journal Bolshevik, 1925, No. 16).  As for the documents on the Eastman affair, it was decided that only a relatively small group of party officials should see them.  After attaining the approval of the “seven,’ on 27 August 1925 the Politburo decided to turn over all materials on the Eastman book to the Comintern's Executive Committee so it could “brief the central committees of the most important Communist parties.’  The Politburo also sent the documents, along with Eastman's book itself, to all the party's provincial committees and to members and candidate members of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission; these items were given the status of a restricted distribution letter.  At Trotsky's insistence, the correspondence concerning the L'Humanite incident was included in the package of documents sent to the Comintern's Executive Committee.
            The publication and dissemination of documents on the Eastman affair had highly unfortunate consequences for Trotsky.  Once again, to the mass of party bureaucrats at various levels, he appeared humbled and defeated, hanging his head before Stalin.  The rank-and-file party members, especially his supporters, were shocked at Trotsky's recantation in Bolshevik.  By declaring Eastman a slanderer, Trotsky seemed to be withdrawing from further struggle, disallowing his former accusations against the party leadership.  Furthermore, by denying many well-known facts, Trotsky looked like a liar.  "It's terrible, simply terrible!  It's incomprehensible why Lev Davidovitch [Trotsky] would do that.  Surely he has put his head on the block with such a letter.  He has made himself despicable...." [Stated by Valentinov (Volsky) in The New Economic Policy and the party crisis after Lenin's death, Moscow, 1991, page 295].  Trotsky himself was loath to recall this episode of his political biography.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 84
 
 
            In an August 1925 letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “Kamenev and Zinoviev want to establish the preconditions for making Trotsky’s removal from the Central Committee necessary, but they will not succeed in this because they don’t have supporting facts.  In his answer to Eastman’s book Trotsky determined his fate, that is, he saved himself.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 94
 
TROTSKY THINKS HE CAN TAKE OVER
 
            In a June 15, 1926, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “If Trotsky tells Bukharin that he soon hopes to have a majority in the party, that means he hopes to intimidate and blackmail Buharin.  How little he knows and how much he underestimates Bukharin!  But I think pretty soon the party will punch the mugs of Trotsky and Zinoviev along with Kamenev and turn them into isolated splitters, like Shliapnikov.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 114
 
            In a September 23, 1926, letter to Molotov Stalin said, "If Trotsky 'is in a rage' and thinks of 'openly going for broke,' that's all the worse for him.  It's quite possible that he'll be bounced out of the Politburo now--that depends on his behavior.  The issue is as follows: either they must submit to the party, or the party must submit to them.  It's clear that the party will cease to exist as a party if it allows the latter (second) possibility.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 129
 
ZINOVIEV BECAME THE LEADER OF THE SPLITTERS
 
            In a June 25, 1926, letter to Molotov, Rykov, Bukharin, and other friends, Stalin said, "Before the appearance of the Zinoviev group, those with oppositional tendencies (Trotsky, the workers opposition, and others) behaved more or less loyally and were more or less tolerable; with the appearance of the Zinoviev group, those with oppositional tendencies began to grow arrogant and break the abounds of loyalty; the Zinoviev group became the mentor of everyone in the opposition who was for splitting the party; in effect it has become the leader of the splitting tendencies in the party."
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 115
 
KRUPSKAYA WAS A SPLITTER ALSO
 
            In a September 16, 1926, letter to Molotov Stalin said, "Krupskaya is a splitter (see her speech about “Stockholm’ at the 14th Congress).  She has to be beaten, as a splitter, if we want to preserve the unity of the party.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 127
 
 
STALIN CRITICIZES THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY
 
            Stalin has paid particular attention to the Chinese Communist Party and the heroic efforts of the Chinese Soviets.  He personally undertook the stiffening of the line of the Chinese Party at the Chinese Commission of the Comintern in 1926.  His intervention, which has become famous in the annals of the Communist international, contended against the errors and faults resulting from diffidence with regard to the Workers' and Peasants' Revolution, and a certain tendency to consider the Chinese Revolution as having to remain a middle-class democratic revolution.  Well, "all the measures which he recommended have been ultimately justified by events."
Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York:   The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 107
 
            In a July 9, 1927, letter to Bukharin and Molotov Stalin stated, "I believe that such a danger is more real (I mean the danger of the disintegration of the Chinese Communist Party) than some of the seeming realities so abundant in China.  Why?  Because unfortunately, we don't have a real or, if you like, actual Communist Party in China.  If you take away the middle-ranking Communists who make good fighting material but who are completely inexperienced in politics, then what is the current Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party?  Nothing but an 'amalgamation' of general phrases gathered here and there, not linked to one another with any line or guiding idea.  I don't want to be very demanding toward the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.  I know that one can't be too demanding toward it.  But here is a simple demand: fulfill the directives of the Comintern.  Has it fulfilled these directives?  No.  No, because it did not understand them, because it did not want to fulfill them and has hoodwinked the Comintern, or because it wasn't able to fulfill them.  That is a fact.  Roy blames Borodin.  That's stupid.  It can't be that Borodin has more weight with the Chinese Communist Party or its Central Committee than the Comintern does.  Roy himself wrote that Borodin did not attend the Chinese Communist Party Congress since he was forced to go into hiding.... Some explain this by the fact that the bloc with the Kuomintang is to blame, which ties the Chinese Communist Party down and does not allow it to be independent.  That is also not true, for although any block ties down the members of the bloc one way or another that doesn't mean that we should be against blocs in general.  Take Chiang's five coastal provinces from Canton to Shanghai, where there's no bloc with the Kuomintang.  How can you explain that Chiang's agents are more successful at disintegrating the 'army' of the Communists, than the Communists are at disintegrating Chiang's rear guard?  Is it not a fact that a whole number of trade unions are breaking off from the Chinese Communist Party, and Chiang continues to hold strong?  What sort of Chinese Communist Party 'independence' is that?....  I think the reason is not in these factors, although they have their significance, but in the fact of the current Central Committee (it's leadership) was forged in the period of the nationwide revolution and received its baptism by fire during this period and it turned out to be completely unadaptable to the new, agrarian phase of the revolution.  The Chinese Communist Party Central committee does not understand the point of the new phase of the revolution.  There is not a single Marxist mind in the Central Committee capable of understanding the underpinning (the social underpinning) of the events now occurring.  The Chinese Communist Party Central committee was unable to use the rich period of the bloc with Kuomintang in order to conduct energetic work in openly organizing the revolution, the proletariat, the peasantry, the revolutionary military units, the revolutionizing of the army, the work of setting the soldiers against the generals.  The Chinese Communist Party Central Committee has lived off the Kuomintang for a whole year and has had the opportunity of freely working and organizing, yet it did nothing to turn the conglomerate of elements (true, quite militant), incorrectly called a party, into a real party.... Of course there was work at the grassroots.  We are indebted to the middle-ranking Communists for that.  But characteristically, it was not the Central Committee that went to the workers and peasants but the workers and peasants who went to the Central committee, and the closer the workers and peasants approached the Central Committee, the farther away from them went the so-called Central Committee, preferring to kill time in behind-the- scenes talks with the leaders and generals from the Kuomintang. The Chinese Communist Party sometimes babbles about the hegemony of the proletariat.  But the most intolerable thing about this babbling is that the Chinese Communist Party does not have a clue (literally, not a clue) about hegemony--it kills initiative of the working masses, undermines the 'unauthorized' actions of the peasant masses, and reduces class warfare in China to a lot of big talk about the 'feudal bourgeoisie'.
            That's the reason why the Comintern's directives are not fulfilled.
            That is why I now believe the question of the party is the main question of the Chinese revolution.
            How can we fix the conglomerate that we incorrectly call the Chinese Communist Party?...  Both Borodin and Roy must be purged from China, along with all those opposition members that hinder the work there.  We should regularly send to China, not people we don't need, but competent people instead.  The structure has to be set up so that all these party advisers work together as a whole, directed by the chief adviser to the Central Committee (the Comintern representative).  These 'nannies' are necessary at this stage because of the weakness, shapelessness, political amorphousness, and lack of qualification of the current Central Committee.  The Central committee will learn from the party advisors.  The party advisors will compensate for the enormous shortcomings of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and its top regional officials.  They will serve (for the time being) as the nails holding the existing conglomerate together as a party....  As the revolution and the party grow, the need for these ' nannies' will disappear.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 140
 
            On July 11, 1927, Stalin sent a letter to Molotov stating, “I read the Politburo directives on the withdrawal from the national government in China.  I think that soon the issue of withdrawing from the Kuomintang will have to be raised.  I'll explain why when I come.  I have been told that some people are in a repentant mood regarding our policy in China.  If that is true, it's too bad.  When I come, I will try to prove that our policy was and remains the only correct policy.  Never have I been so deeply and firmly convinced of the correctness of our policy, both in China and regarding the Anglo-Russian Committee, as I am now.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 143
 
            Stalin, despite what is implied in the Trotskyite literature on the subject, did not love or trust Chiang; he simply underestimated him.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 277
 
            ... Stalin was to claim, and there is a hard-core of common sense in his argument, that though the Chinese policy failed, the premises under which it had been conducted could not be faulted.   The Communists had to take the risk inherent in collaboration with the Kuomintang.   Certainly the latter's successes curtailed the influence of imperialist powers on China and set the stage for Communist successes some time in the future.   The Chinese Communists could never have grown so impressively in membership and influence without collaborating with the Kuomintang, and it would have been sheer fantasy to imagine that in 1923 or 1927 they could have conquered a sizable part of China by themselves.   There were occasions, he implied, when ideological incantations and citations from Marx and Lenin are powerless to change the disposition of class forces.   Was it wrong to have the Revolution of 1905? he asked.   It had ended in disaster, but it had also set the stage for 1917.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin: The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 277
 
            In-substance the Trotsky-Zinoviev charges about China were absurd.   To visualize how much so, we may compare them to the outcry of the American right wing a little more than 20 years later about how Truman and Acheson "lost China."   Those charges were unfair enough: how can one nation in peacetime determine the course of events in another vast and distant country?   But at that time the United States was unquestionably the most powerful nation in the world, its industry producing more than half the entire global output.   The American protEgE, Chiang, was until well into 1947 in control of most of mainland China, and it was his own policies as much as the Communists' clever ones that brought about his doom.   But here was a weak and impoverished Soviet Union, with its clients, the Chinese Communists, mustering a strength of only about 60,000.   Could the most brilliant understanding of dialectic, the most "correct" directives sent to the Chinese comrades, have affected the issue of the struggle?   Suppose that by some miracle the Chinese Communists had seized southern China: would the imperialist powers have tolerated their attempt to conquer the whole country?   In his memoranda throughout 1926 Trotsky himself stressed the absolute necessity of not provoking Japan, of respecting her sphere of influence in Manchuria and north China.   Any likely Communist conquest would have brought the capitalist powers together, would have presented the Soviet Far East with the danger of Japanese invasion, an invasion which everybody recognized, the Soviet Union was in no position to defeat.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; The Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 278
 
STALIN ATTACKS ZINOVIEV’S WRITING
 
            On July 11, 1927, Stalin sent a letter to Molotov stating, "I received Zinoviev's article 'The contours of the Coming War.  Are you really going to publish this ignorant piece of trash?  I am decidedly against publication.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 143
 
            In a September 9, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “Besides, I resolutely protest against the fact that, despite the Politburo resolution, Zinoviev has become one of the permanent staff members (and directors?) of Pravda.  Can't an end be put to this outrage?”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 178
 
            As to Zinoviev and Kamenev, I [Stalin] despise them for lack of principle in their tactics.  I know that they have directed their supporters to dissimulate in order to remain in the Party, and to go for me in the event of international complications.  These are the tactics of treachery; we shall have to strike first, before they can carry into effect their plan of treason...."
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich.  Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 56
 
RIGHTISTS ARE DEFEATED BUT RETAIN HIGH GOVERNMENT POSITIONS
 
            Among Stalin's concerns in 1929, the struggle with the Bukharin group figured prominently.  In spite of the political defeat of the "rightists" in April 1929 at both the plenum of the Central Committee and the 16th Party Conference, Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky preserved some authority in the party-state apparat.  All of them remained members of the Politburo.  In addition, Rykov occupied the high government posts of chairman of the Council of Commissar's and chairman of the Labor Defense Council.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 148
 
            Addressing a plenary session of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party on October 19, 1928, Stalin declared, "The victory of the Right Deviation in our party would mean an enormous strengthening of the capitalist elements in our country.  And what will a strengthening of the capitalist elements of our country mean?  It will mean a weakening of the proletarian dictatorship and increased chances for the reestablishment of capitalism."
Chamberlin, William Henry.  Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 79
 
            Although some of the rightists were expelled from the party and its leaders lost their highest positions, Bukharin and his fellow leaders remained members of the Central Committee.  They had, after all, played according to the terms of the unwritten gentleman's agreement not to carry the struggle outside the nomenklatura.
Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 60
 
            But you must remember that quite a few right-wingers were operating within the NKVD.  Yagoda was a right-winger through and through.  Yezhov was different.  I knew Yezhov very well, much better than Yagoda....  There was a difference, a political one.  As concerns Yagoda, he was hostile to the party's policies.  Yezhov had never been hostile, he just overdid it because Stalin demanded greater repression.  That was somewhat different.  Yezhov had no ulterior motives.  The machinery rolled--stop it where?  Sort everything out properly?  But the sorting out was often done by rightists or even by Trotskyists.  Through them we obtained a lot of incriminating materials.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 263
 
            The Politburo knew about what was out in the open.  But it was impossible to know everything as long as no opportunity arose to find out.  In order to throw some light on this question, let me ask you: what do you consider Khrushchev to have been back then, a rightist, a leftist, or a Leninist, or what?  Khrushchev sat on the Politburo under Stalin through the '40s and the early '50s.  And Mikoyan, too.  We purged and we purged, yet it turns out that rightists still sat in the Politburo!  Look how complicated all this is!  It is impossible to understand this if you judge only by facts and figures and formal criteria.  Impossible.  There were such profound changes in the country and in the party too, that even given all the vigilance of Stalin to liberate ourselves of Trotskyists and rightist....  Even in Stalin's time they served continuously in the Politburo, especially the rightists most adaptable and skilled in time-serving.  Our rightists, so flexible, so closely and strongly connected with our own dear peasantry, resembled the muzhik in his ability to adapt himself ideologically to every twist and turn.  Determining where Trotskyism begins and especially where rightism begins is a most complex subject, most complex.
            In many cases the rightists import themselves no worse than genuine Leninists--but up to a point.  Like Khrushchev.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 314
 
            As the Five Year Plan began to unfold, a new opposition group arose within the Party, a "right" opposition led by Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky.  Unlike Tomsky all were old Bolsheviks; and all belonged to the Central Committee and held high public office.  Rykov was Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissar's (the equivalent of "Premier"), Tomsky was chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, Bukharin was editor of Pravda and General Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Communist International.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 61
 
            In 1926 Bukharin became General Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Communist International.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 64
 
            At the time (1928-30), the conflict between Bukharin and the Party majority appeared to be an honest disagreement between leading Party members.  Bukharin, although removed from the Politburo, retained his seat on the Central Committee and was appointed to the Presidium of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry.  In 1934 he was made editor of Izvestia.  Rykov, removed as premier, was appointed Peoples Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs; Tomsky, removed from his post in the trade unions, retained his seat on the Central Committee, as did Rykov.  All three signed a declaration admitting the errors of their program;
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 65
 
            [In 1928] Bukharin and Tomsky now offered their resignation from the Politburo.  Stalin is reported receiving it 'with trembling hands', and they were induced to withdraw.
            ...At the Central Committee plenum in April 1929 he [Stalin] accused the three men [Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky] of dangerous deviations and lack of party discipline.  The Central Committee then, finally, removed Bukharin and Tomsky from their posts--editorship of Pravda and chairmanship of the Comintern in Bukharin's case, leadership of the trade unions in Tomsky's.  It allowed Rykov to remain as head of the government, and demanded that all three remain on the Politburo, and that the matter not be publicized, though Stalin had spoken of Bukharin's 'treacherous behavior'.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. New York, New York: Viking, 1991, p. 150
 
            [Bukharin]... was dismissed from the office of editor-in-chief of Pravda, lost his party rank, and was expelled from the executive of the Communist International.
Levine, Isaac Don.  Stalin.  New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, c1931, p. 293
 
 
            ... So, for example, he [Stalin] allowed Bukharin to assume the editorship of Izvestia after the party congress, and went on making good use of Radek's journalistic talents and expertise in German affairs.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 283
 
            Radek became one of the editors of Izvestia, working under Bukharin.  The Boss had made Bukharin chief editor of that newspaper, the second most important in the country, and shortly afterward delegated to him the task of drafting a new constitution.
Radzinsky, Edvard.  Stalin. New York: Doubleday, c1996, p. 299
 
            Yezhov presented the main report against these two [Bukharin and Rykov] who, in 1928-29, had led the Right deviation and opposed Stalin's radical policies of collectivization and rapid industrialization.  Since then, both had held responsible state positions and remained candidate Central Committee members.
Chase, William J., Enemies Within the Gates?,  translated by Vadim A. Staklo, New Haven: Yale University Press, c2001, p. 217.
 
STALIN ATTACKS BUKHARIN WITH VICIOUS WORDS
 
            In a letter of June 8, 1929, Voroshilov said to Ordzhonikidze, “At the last of Politburo meeting, a rather nasty affair broke out between Bukharin and me.  The Chinese affair was being discussed.  Some favored a demonstration of military force on the Manchurian border.  Bukharin spoke out sharply against this.  In my speech I mentioned that at one time Bukharin had identified the Chinese revolution with ours to such an extent that the ruin of the Chinese revolution was equivalent to our ruin.  Bukharin said in reply that we have all said different things at different times, but only you, Voroshilov alone, had advocated support for Feng & Chiang Kai-shek, who are presently slaughtering workers.  This unpardonable nonsense [against you] so infuriated me that I lost my self-control and blurted out in Bukharin's face, 'you liar, bastard, I'll punch you in the face,' and other such nonsense and all in front of a large number of people.  Bukharin is trash and is capable of telling the most vile fabrications straight to your face, putting an especially innocent and disgustingly holy expression on his everlasting Jesuitical countenance; this is now clear to me, but still, I did not behave properly."
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 149
 
 
            In a September 16, 1926, letter to Molotov Stalin said, “Bukharin is a swine and perhaps worse than a swine because he considers it beneath his dignity to write even two lines about his impressions of Germany.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 127
 
            In an August 21, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “You're right when you say that Bukharin is going downhill.  It's sad but a fact.  What can you say?--it must be 'fate.' It's strange, though, that he hopes to trick the party with petty, underhanded 'maneuvers.' He is a typical representative of the spineless, effete intelligent in politics, leaning in the direction of a Kadet lawyer.  The hell with him....”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 168
 
            In an August 23, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “Just as I thought, Bukharin has slid into the swamp of opportunism and must now resort to gossip, forgery, and blackmail: he doesn't have any other arguments left.  Talk of 'documents' and 'land nationalization' and so forth is the fraud of a petty lawyer who has gone bankrupt in his 'practice.' If his disagreements with the present Central committee are explainable in terms of Stalin's 'personality,' then how does one explain his disagreements with the Central Committee when Lenin lived?  Lenin's 'personality'?  But why does he praise Lenin so much now, after his death?  Isn't it for the same reason that all renegades like Trotsky praise Lenin (after his death!)?”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 173
 
            In a letter around September 15, 1930, Stalin said to Molotov, “It is very good that the Politburo has opened fire on Rykov & Co.  Although Bukharin, so it seems, is invisible in this matter, he is undoubtedly the key instigator and rabble-rouser against the party.  It is quite clear that he would feel better in a Sukhanov-Kondratiev party, where he (Bukharin) would be on the “extreme left,’ than in the Communist Party, where he can only be a rotten defeatist and a pathetic opportunist.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 216
 
            [In a letter to Kaganovich on 30 August 1931 Stalin stated] I read Bukharin's speech (the transcript).  It is an empty, non-Bolshevik speech that is out of touch with real life.  At the same time, it is and an inept, amateurish attempt to "outline" a platform for the former rightists against the Central Committee of the All-Union of the Communist Party with regard to a host of economic issues and worker supply.  A strange person, this Comrade Bukharin!  Why did he have to put on this act?
Shabad, Steven, trans. The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 69
 
WHEN THE RIGHTISTS WERE REMOVED FROM THE POLITBURO
 
            Bukharin was removed from the Politburo in November 1929; Tomsky, in July 1930; and Rykov, in December 1930.
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 150
 
            They [the rightists] recanted their "mistakes" in party forums and with good party discipline affirmed their support for Stalin's line.  Although they were removed from the Politburo, they remained on the central committee and were not expelled from the party.
Getty & Naumov, he Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 42
 
            Therefore, Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky declared that "the disagreements between us and the majority of the Central Committee have been eliminated."  But even this statement was called "unsatisfactory."  The November 1929 plenum therefore removed Bukharin from the Politburo and issued a warning to Rykov, Tomsky, and Uglanov.
            ... After the 16th Party Congress Tomsky was removed from the Politburo, and at the December 1930 plenum of the Central Committee Rykov was likewise removed.  In 1931 Rykov was replaced by Molotov as chairman of the Sovnarkom and reassigned to the job of people's commissar of posts and telegraph.  Bukharin was appointed leader of the scientific research planning sector of the Supreme Economic Council, and a few years later also became chief editor of Izvestia.  The 16th Party Congress again elected Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky to the Central Committee, but after the Seventeenth Congress all three were reduced to the rank of candidate members of the Central Committee.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 206
 
            Stalin's success in organizational detail now bore fruit.  The Rightists were supported in the Central Committee by a mere handful of members.  That body meeting in April 1929, condemned the right wing's views, removed Bukharin from his editorship of Pravda and chairmanship of the Comintern, and dismissed Tomsky from the trade union leadership.
            In April, too, the principles of crash industrialization and of collectivization were adopted at the 16th Party Conference.  After their views had been condemned, the Rightists submitted.  On Nov. 26, 1929 they published a very general recantation of their views on "a series of political and tactical questions."  Bukharin now lost his Politburo post.
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 18
 
            Tomsky was removed from the Politburo in July 1930 and Rykov in December.  Henceforth, it was purely Stalinist.
Conquest, Robert.  The Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 19
 
 
BUKHARIN IS A SPLITTER
 
            On August 13, 1929, the Politburo passed the following resolution by voice vote.  "The two recent letters from Comrade Bukharin of July 22, 1929, addressed to the Central Committee, testify that Comrade Bukharin continues to use the method of struggle with the party and its Central Committee chosen by him of late, making indirect sorties against decisions of the Central Committee...and permitting himself further masked attacks on the party line in speeches and articles....  Furthermore, each time the party catches Comrade Bukharin at this, he squirms out of a direct answer and an admission of his mistakes and in reality covers them up....
            Thus, instead of helping to mobilize the broad masses of workers under the Communist banner of the working class, in this speech, Comrade Bukharin completely violates the Marxist method of dialectics; furthermore, he continues to struggle against the party leadership.... he is using any excuse to continue the battle against the party's policy."
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 154-155
 
RYKOV HAS WRONG POSITIONS
 
            On September 6, 1929, the Politburo passed a resolution by voice vote.  "It is easy to see that in an attempt to find at least some sort of principled reason for his erroneous position, Comrade Rykov has, in the end, lost his way completely....
            Turning to questions of principle, not only do Comrade Rykov's claims have nothing in common with Bolshevism, but they are completely identical to the previous attempts by the Trotskyists to see the Central Control Commission and the Central Committee as in opposition.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 158
 
            In a September 30, 1929, letter to Molotov, Voroshilov, and Ordjonikidze Stalin stated, “Did you read Rykov's speech?  In my opinion, it's the speech of a nonparty soviet bureaucrat pretending to take the tone of a “loyal’ person, “sympathizing’ with the soviets.  But not a single word about the party!  Not a single word about the right deviation!  Not a single word to say that the party's achievements, which Rykov underhandedly ascribes now to himself, were attained in struggle with the rightists, including Rykov himself!  All our officials who give speeches usually consider it their duty to speak about the rightists and to call for struggle against the rightists.  But Rykov, it seems, is free from such an obligation!  Why?--I might ask--on what basis?  How can you tolerate (meaning cover-up as well) this political hypocrisy?  Don't you understand that in tolerating such hypocrisy, you create the illusion that Rykov has separated from the rightists and you thus mislead the party, because everyone can see that Rykov has never had a thought of leaving the rightists?  Shouldn't you give Rykov an alternative: either disassociate openly and honestly from the rightists and conciliators, or lose the right to speak in the name of the Central Committee and Council of Commissars.  I think this should be done because it's the least the Central committee can demand--less than that and the Central Committee ceases to be itself.
            I learned that Rykov is still chairing your meetings on Mondays and Thursdays.  Is that true?  If it's true, why are you allowing this comedy to go on?  Who is it for and for what reason?  Can you put an end to this comedy?  Isn't it time?”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 181
 
            In an October 7, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “I read the Politburo resolution about Rykov.  A correct resolution!  This resolution is binding on us, of course.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 182
 
            [Concluding speech by Kuibyshev at the joint plenum of the CC & CCC December 19, 1930]
            ...Can ones say that Comrade Rykov, after deviating from the party, has demonstrated the slightest effort to march in step with those who are leading the party ahead?  Can one say that in his struggle with a class-alien ideology, which he [himself] once mistakenly preached, Comrade Rykov has demonstrated so much as an iota of the passion necessary for a leader?  No, one cannot say any such thing.  For this reason, you're forced to conclude that it is apparently hopeless at the present time to see in Comrade Rykov a steadfast comrade-in-arms in these battles.
Getty & Naumov,  The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 51
 
 
STEN’S ARTICLE CONTINUES TRADITION OF UNDERMINING PARTY DISCIPLINE
 
            On July 29, 1929, Stalin wrote the following in a letter to Molotov, "I strongly protest publishing Sten's article in Komsomolskaia Pravda which is similar to Shatskin's article, several days after the Politburo's condemnation of Shatskin's article.  This is either stupidity on the part of the editors of Komsomolskaia Pravda or a direct challenge to the Central Committee of the party.  To call the subordination of Komsomols (and that means party members is well) to the general party line “careerism,’ as Sten does, means to call for a review of the general party line, for the undermining of the iron discipline of the party, for the turning of the party into a discussion club.  That is precisely how any opposition group has begun its anti-party work.  Trotsky began his 'work' with this.  Zinoviev got his start that way.  Bukharin has chosen the same path for himself.  The Shatskin-Averbakh-Sten-Lominadze group is embarking on his path, demanding (essentially) the freedom to review the general party line, the freedom to weaken party discipline, the freedom to turn the party into a discussion club.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 162
 
STALIN ADVOCATES GETTING HELP FROM FOREIGN COMPANIES
 
            In an August 23, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “Meanwhile, there is no greater need for foreign technical assistance than in this complex business....  Why, for example, couldn't we bring in Austin & Co. or some other firm on a contract basis to build the new plans?....”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 172
 
            Stalin's position had gradually become so strong that he could announce the erection of 60% new collective farms, and then reduce the number to 21%.  Following Lenin's example, he also made other concessions, tolerating at times even an open market where goods could be privately bought at a twentyfold price and a black stock exchange where the dollar bought 40 rubles instead of two.
            Though Stalin, in spite of all reverses, refused to take up foreign loans, he was beleaguered by the big banks abroad who recognized that the Russians purchased a tremendous amount of goods and honored their drafts more punctually than democratic Europe.  At that time the depression in America stood the Russians in good stead:....  The old states had crisis on crisis, the new socialistic one forged steadily ahead.
Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 131
 
            In 1924 the general industrial production of Russia was between 10 and 15 percent of the level of 1913.  For the next four years the country struggled back to its feet with the help of the New Economic Policy.  Foreign concessions and the partial development of private enterprise and industry and commerce facilitated this recovery.
Scott, John. Behind the Urals, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, p. 62
 
            Foreign concessionaires were growing rich under our eyes from the manufacture in Russia of pencils, pens, cardboard, drawing-pins, pliers, etc..  The biggest of them was an American company run by a Mr. Hammer.  The State Mospolygraph Trust began making cheap pencils, but the quality was so bad that they could not compete with Mr. Hammer's more expensive goods.
Barmine, Alexandre.   Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat. London: L. Dickson limited,1938, p. 219
 
            The State departments continued to prefer the products of private enterprise and foreign concessionaires, even though they were more expensive than ours, for the industrialist offered commissions to the badly paid State servants in return for their orders.  This form of corruption was, for several years, a regular scourge, as long indeed, as private enterprise was allowed to compete with the state factories.
Barmine, Alexandre.  Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat. London: L. Dickson limited,1938, p. 220
 
 
CHIANG’S GOVT IS AN IMPERIALIST LACKEY
 
            In an August 29, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “The point is really to use our tough position to unmask completely and to undermine the authority of Chiang Kai-shek's government, a government of lackeys of imperialism, for attempting to become the model of 'national government' for the colonial and dependent countries.  There can be no doubt that each clash between Chiang Kai-shek's government and the Soviet government, just as each concession Chiang Kai-shek makes to us (and he is already starting to make concessions), is a blow against Chiang Kai-shek exposes Chiang Kai-shek's government as a government of lackeys of imperialism and makes it easier to carry out the revolutionary education of the workers in colonial countries (and the Chinese workers above all).  Litvinov and Karakhan (and they are not the only ones) don't see that.  So much the worse for them.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 174
 
STALIN ADMITS HIS MISTAKES AND SOMETIMES RETREATS
 
            In a September 1, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “From NKVD reports published in the press, it’s obvious that my approach on the Chinese question was unfair.  It turns out that I didn’t read the fine print in the coded report.  Well, what of it, I am glad I was mistaken and ready to apologize for the undeserved reproach.  That, of course, doesn't mean that Litvinov, Bukharin, and Karakhan have ceased to be opportunists.  Not a whit!”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 176
 
            To make so prodigious a change in such a country in so short a time required iron will, unflinching courage, and ruthlessness.  Stalin possessed all three of these qualities, but he had learned from Lenin the rarer courage of daring to retreat, and the willingness to admit that he might not always be right.  The world has grown accustomed to regard dictators as masters of tide and thunder, who can say, "Do this," or "Make that," and their orders must be obeyed.  This was never the case in Soviet Russia, where even Lenin was only "first amongst equals," and despite his moral ascendancy was more than once forced to tell his followers, "All right, this is how I see it, and this is what we must do.  If any of you can prove that I am wrong or show me good reason why we shouldn't do it, I am willing to listen.  In the meantime I'm tired, so let me sleep."
Duranty, Walter.  Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 163
 
            Just as it seemed that the question of a customs union, that is, the Bulgarian-Rumanian agreement, had been settled, old Kolarov, as though recalling something important, began to expound.  "I cannot see where Comrade Dimitrov erred, for we previously sent a draft of the treaty with Rumania to the Soviet government and the Soviet government made no comment regarding the customs union except with regard to the definition of the aggressor."
            Stalin turned to Molotov: "Had they sent as a draft of the treaty?"
            Molotov, without being confused, but also not without acrimony: "Well, yes."
            Stalin, with angry resignation: "We, too, commit stupidities."
Djilas, Milovan.  Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 178
 
            Someone mentioned the recent successes of the Chinese communists.  But Stalin remained adamant: "Yes, the Chinese comrades have succeeded, but in Greece there is an entirely different situation.  The United States is directly engaged there--the strongest state in the world.  China is a different case; relations in the Far East are different.  True, we, too, can make a mistake!  Here, when the war with Japan ended, we invited the Chinese comrades to reach an agreement as to how a modus vivendi with Chang Kai-shek might be found.  They agreed with us in word, but in deed they did it their own way when they got home: they mustered their forces and struck.  It has been shown that they were right, and not we.
Djilas, Milovan.  Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962, p. 182
 
STALIN:  "True, we (Stalin and his associates), too, can make a mistake!  Here when the war with Japan ended, we invited the Chinese comrades to reach an agreement as to how a modus vivendi with Chiang Kai-shek might be found.  They agreed with us in word, but in deed they did it their own way when they got home: they mustered their forces and struck.  It has been shown that they were right, and not we."
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 97
 
            He [Stalin] always admitted his mistakes, no matter to whom.
Rybin, Aleksei. Next to Stalin: Notes of a Bodyguard. Toronto: Northstar Compass Journal, 1996, p. 107
 
            [In a speech delivered on August 5, 1927 at a joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the CPSU Stalin stated] I have never regarded myself as being infallible, nor do I do so now.  I have never concealed either my mistakes or my momentary vacillations.  But one must not ignore also that I have never persisted in my mistakes, and that I have never drawn up a platform, or formed a separate group, and so forth, on the basis of my momentary vacillations.
Stalin, Joseph.  Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1952, Vol. 10, p. 64
 
 
STALIN SAYS HE IS NOT TOLERANT OF MEMBERS WHO HAVE DONE GRIEVOUS ERRORS
 
            In a letter of September 6, 1929, Stalin stated, “You know that I’m not a supporter of the policy of “tolerance’ regarding comrades who have committed grievous errors from the perspective of the party’s interests.”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 177
 
 
STALIN ATTACKS HIS OWN FOREIGN MINISTER
 
            In an October 7, 1929, letter to Molotov Stalin stated, “Things didn't turn out so badly with England.  Henderson was shown up.  Rykov, along with Bukharin and Litvinov, was also shown up....”
Naumov, Lih, and Khlevniuk, Eds. Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925-1936. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1995, p. 182
 
            Litvinov was kept on as ambassador to be United States only because he was known worldwide.  He turned out to be very rotten.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 67
 
LITVINOV TALKS LIKE A SECRET TRAITOR TO THE SU
 
MOLOTOV:  Litvinov was utterly hostile to us.  We bugged his talk with an American correspondent, an obvious spy,...  What did Litvinov say?
            He said, "You Americans won't be able to deal with this Soviet government.  Their positions preclude any serious agreement with you.  Do you think this government, these hard-liners will meet you halfway in any sense?  Nothing will come of your dealings with them.
            ...For the people have no tanks, but the government has....  The government has party officers in such numbers that the people cannot exert their own will to change things.  Only external pressure can help, that is, a military campaign.  Only Western intervention can change the situation in the country."
            He said nothing to me personally.  That too was unconscionable.  Utter treason.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 68
 
CHUEV:  They write a lot about Litvinov these days.  I remember you saying you didn't trust him.
MOLOTOV:  He was, of course, not a bad diplomat--a good one.  But at heart he was quite an opportunist.  He greatly sympathized with Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, and thus couldn't enjoy our absolute confidence.
            I believe at the end of his life he turned rotten politically.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 69
 
            I [Litvinov] do not like Koba and consider his policy pernicious....
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich.  Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 89
 
            For once I am in full agreement with the Instantsia.
            [This is the Foreign Minister speaking?]
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich.  Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 269
 
            My own view is that we need no security measures at all....  Foreigners don't understand anything about our affairs in any case... except the Poles, who understand only too well all that is happening here....  They have the only real information network in the USSR....
Litvinov, Maksim Maksimovich.  Notes for a Journal. New York: Morrow, 1955, p. 278