On the Genesis of Stalinism (Power and the Soviet Elite: "The Letter of an Old Bolshevik" and Other Essays, by Boris I. Nicolaevsky)
Cohen, Stephen F.
POWER AND THE SOVIET ELITE: "THE LETTER OF AN OLD BOLSHEVIK" AND OTHER ESSAYS, by Boris I. Nicolaevsky; edited by Janet D. Zagoria. New York: Praeger. 275 pp. $6.95. In the 1930's, when it...
...The extent of Nicolaevsky's influence and the impact of his research is immense...
...the "Letter" provides a clue as to its fatal miscalculation...
...Until 1929, opposition included the mobilization of large organizations against the prevailing policy...
...Kirov's place in the Secretariat was filled by Yezhov...
...He has a weakness for such adulation and his vengefulness can be appeased only by huge doses of flattery...
...Nor does it explain how an opposition of such magnitude could have failed, or how Stalin managed, in almost leisurely fashion, to eliminate his imagined enemies...
...Successful opposition in the Riutin affair was led by Kirov, head of the Leningrad Party organization and an important member of the original Stalinist majority...
...That it is possible is due to a large extent to Mr...
...The struggle for Kirov's grand plan still continued, and there were still some tense moments, but Stalin's victory was already assured...
...That eventually he would have decided in their favor is doubtful, particularly in light of Kirov's inclination towards a pro-Western, antifascist orientation...
...As with all profound social transformations, the old order, in this instance old Bolshevism, was not easily erradicated...
...Everyone emphasized tirelessly his devotion to Stalin...
...Stalin's defeat was not decisive, but it symbolized the growing consensus that a change in policy was needed...
...He writes: "The duel between Stalin and Kirov was over...
...The second and third issues concerned domestic and foreign policy...
...Stalin finally resolved the matter irrevocably, with the purges...
...Kirov was appointed to the Party Secretariat, previously Stalin's stronghold, and returned to Leningrad scheduled to take up soon his new duties in Moscow...
...Now the arena of conflict was confined to the central organs...
...It is still possible to read in otherwise instructive histories that with his victory over Bukharin's Right Opposition in 1929 Stalin emerged a virtually unchallenged leader, and that from this time Stalinism as a political and social phenomenon developed without serious interruption...
...We must resolutely dissociate ourselves from such abuses...
...Nicolaevsky's efforts...
...It is reflected in dozens of Western studies, many of which owe a large part of their achievement to his knowledge and private archives...
...Another section consists of Nicolaevsky's essays on the murder of Kirov and events leading to the purges...
...Kirov argued that Hitler's rise posed a new threat of war against the Soviet Union and that for this contingency the Soviet government must normalize its relations with the peasantry as well as with former Party oppositionists...
...During the following two years, this outlook of "reconciliation with the people" gained increasing support...
...He spoke of the "mass annihilation" of collectivization, the "dehumanization" of the Party, the descent of an "iron heel," and of systems of "permanent coercion...
...All that was necessary...
...From Nicolaevsky's materials there emerges a radically new concept of opposition within the Soviet leadership...
...Furthermore, by 1929 opposition platforms had explicitly called for Stalin's removal...
...This volume is a small selection of his writings on Soviet politics, or, more properly, on Stalinism, its rise and departure...
...Nicolaevsky presents, in masterly detail, the case for Stalin's complicity in the murder...
...It called for a moderate increase in collectivization and industrialization, and at the outset commanded genuine enthusiasm within the Party...
...Its policies were in the interests of the Soviet Union and not, by definition, anti-Stalinist...
...The public trials continued from 1936 to 1938, the purges up to the outbreak of war...
...In this context, their opposition is more properly seen as a form of resistance to Stalin's growing power over the Party and his style of rule by faits accomplis...
...Prior to Kirov's murder, Stalin himself did not indiscriminately reject them...
...The greatest representative of the exiled historiography is Boris I. Nicolaevsky —historian, journalist, archivist, and Social Democrat (Menshevik...
...What then happened is well-known...
...This is not yet true of the materials concerning the thirties...
...The other essays deal with Stalin's last years, the purging of the purgers, and de-Stalinization...
...Nicolaevsky's findings on the postStalin era have passed into our general knowledge of these years...
...The 17th Party Congress and the following plenum represented a tentative victory for the new policy...
...The groupings were not for or against Stalin...
...1933 brought a good harvest...
...Instead, he was "very reserved...
...Even after Kirov's assassination this attitude continued...
...Whereas formerly all forms of opposition had been opposition against Stalin and for his removal from the post of Party chief, there was now no longer any question of such removal...
...Simultaneously, Kirov's stature and popularity grew...
...The first serious division in the new Stalinist majority occurred in 1932...
...Also, we should recall Bukharin's observation that Stalin possessed a genius for administering the right political dosage at the proper time...
...It was rather a fight for influence over Stalin, a fight for his soul, so to speak...
...The mood found support in the Politbureau and again its spokesman in Kirov...
...An alliance with the Nazi regime was not viewed as a legitimate alternative, and again Kirov's group stood for an important Bolshevik tradition—antifascism...
...Stalin's motives, as Robert C. Tucker pointed out in these pages (DISSENT, Spring 1965), were more complicated...
...These "trifles" proved to be the decisive factor...
...The process by which Russian Bolshevism was transformed into Stalinism has yet to be fully and properly studied...
...Some writers, going beyond the limits of the evidence, find Stalin confronted with a vast, irreconcilable opposition which eventually included a majority of the Party and military leadership...
...Always a man of private fears and public optimism, Bukharin revealed his fear that developments in Soviet Russia might come to parallel the rise of "antihumanist Nazism" in Germany...
...Finally, Nicolaevsky's talks with Bukharin give us a rare glimpse into the last years of this tragic figure...
...Its companion piece is a new interview with Nicolaevsky, explaining the circumstances of his meetings with Bukharin, the exact origins of the "Letter," and containing additional information...
...First was the recurring question of using the death penalty against oppositionists within the Party...
...As a result, by 1932 his majority had eroded...
...He did not strike in the dark of a single night, as did Hitler, but with ample forewarning over a period of years...
...differed very greatly from similar conflicts in the past...
...Advocates of change concentrated on three major issues...
...By seeking to restrain and limit him, rather than to depose him, they seriously misjudged their man...
...The appearance of opposition in the Politbureau is surprising only if Stalin's victory of 1929 is seen as an ab solute triumph giving the victor a policymaking carte blanche...
...The original program had been abandoned almost immediately and replaced by one of total collectivization...
...It seemed a favorable time to consider a new orientation...
...We must learn to forgive these trifles...
...At issue was Stalin's demand that the death penalty be applied to Mikhail Riutin, an old Bolshevik, who had circulated a clandestine program describing Stalin as "the evil genius of the Revolution" who "had brought the Revolution to the verge of ruin...
...The Politbureau members were willing to allow Stalin to be "the Lenin of today," as long as he was that and no more...
...Stalinism did not come to Russia in a single act...
...Bukharin's prediction of 1928—"he will have to drown the rebellions in blood"—became a reality...
...In the 1930's, when it became unwise— even dangerous—for Soviet historians to concern themselves with Russian revolutionary history, the custodianship of this profession passed to a dwindling group of emigres...
...In fact Stalin had obtained a mandate of sorts to inaugurate a specific program, which as defined in 1928-29 was neither unreasonable nor overly adventurous...
...In this version, Stalin faced constant threats of a coup d'etat...
...Stalin, as Nicolaevsky points out, ruled by faits accomplis...
...One is "The Letter of an Old Bolshevik," a narrative describing events within the Soviet leadership between 1932 and 1936, written on the basis of conversations with Nikolai Bukharin in Paris in 1936, and reprinted here after almost thirty years...
...But this does not alter the fact that by 1934 the mode of decisionmaking showed signs of approximating that which had prevailed under Lenin...
...As they understood it, and rightly so, the status of Primus inter pares did not convey unlimited and arbitrary power...
...the new group defended this tradition...
...for almost a decade a muted contest ranged within the Soviet leadership...
...conditions in the country improved and Stalin's position was strengthened...
...It was as the last Bolshevik that he told Nicolaevsky, "Throughout the history of mankind many evil deeds have been committed in the name of humanism...
...What does this account of the 193234 period tell us more generally about the rise of Stalinism...
...By 1932 the government was at war with the peasantry, discontent and rebellion were rampant...
...A cardinal assumption of Bolshevism had been that this should be avoided at all costs...
...It is important to recognize that this new form of opposition, under normal circumstances, should have been tolerable in a way that the opposition of the twenties was not...
...was for Stalin's acute crisis of morbid distrust to pass...
...On December 1, 1934, he was assassinated...
...The situation now was quite different, as the "Letter" explains: "The struggle...
...Here, however, was the rub...
...Nicolaevsky's materials indicate otherwise...
...Two of the items are really historical documents...
...On different occasions the Leningrad and Moscow Party machines, as well as the trade union leadership, had done battle with central Party organs...
...A symbol of Bolshevik ideals in the final resistance to Stalinism, his guarded remarks indicate what it was that distinguished the original revolutionary vision from the new order...
...But the evidence fails to support this view...
...he conducted the purges in order to survive...
...edited by Janet D. Zagoria...
Vol. 13 • July 1966 • No. 4
