Was Stalin a Tsarist Agent?
ARONSON, GREGORY
Was Stalin a Tsarist Agent? Stalin's Great Secret. By Isaac Don Levine. Coward-McCann. 126 pp. $2.50. Reviewed by Gregory Aronson Veteran Russian Social Democrat; contributor, "Socialist...
...In those days, Stalin was known in underground circles as Soso, Koba...
...Is it conceivable, for one thing, that for more than 40 years no one should have disclosed the "great secret" of a man who was surrounded by hatred...
...Were all these men ignorant of Stalin's alleged activity as a police agent...
...At the same time, Boris Souvarine, biographer of Stalin, subjected the document to careful analysis in his Paris publication Est et Ouest and concluded that it was false...
...That Stalin was totally without moral scruple of any sort was long apparent...
...but Khrushchev was silent about the countless crimes of the entire Soviet system against the people of Russia, responsibility for which is borne not only by Stalin but by the whole pres-sent "collective leadership...
...Soviet Parly boss Khrushchev's "secret speech" confirmed much of what foreign opponents of the Soviet terror regime had been maintaining for decades...
...Wouldn't Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky et al...
...Surely it must have occurred to Mr...
...contributor, "Socialist Courier" With this little book, Isaac Don Levine has attempted to add a new page to Stalin's biography...
...The book was preceded by the publication of sensational articles in Life magazine by Mr...
...Before analyzing the document, we must touch upon the political aspect of the affair...
...If one questions the latter's authenticity, the whole thesis is problematical...
...That would be a disastrous blow to the entire cause of discrediting Stalinism...
...long an active foe of Communism, that his book diverts public attention from the central political task of our day into the realm of debatable trifles...
...Furthermore, what if the Tsarist document on which the book is based should turn out to be a clever forgery...
...7, The Fall of the Tsarist Regime, prepared by the Extraordinary Investigatory Commission of the Provisional Government, Moscow, 1927...
...Why didn't Stalin, if he was a police agent, vanish after the Revolution to avoid arrest, as so many other agents did, instead of living openly in Petrograd, serving as a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, writing for Pravda, etc...
...Trotsky once described Stalin as ""one-third Machiavelli and two-thirds Judas...
...Stalin is described as a member of the Central Committee of the party, without specifying which party...
...And, in particular, why would the former officials of the Tsarist police have concealed Stalin's service to them...
...149-160, and the recent report from Krasnoyarsk (Yeniseisk was located in Krasnoyarsk Province) by A. Baikalov in the Paris newspaper Russkaya Myst...
...Levine's document was allegedly sent to the Yeniseisk Section of the Okhrana...
...Cf...
...Levine and by the former Soviet secret-police operative Alexander Orlov...
...What place does this occupy in the overall picture of the vast crimes of the Soviet regime...
...From March to November 1917, the Extraordinary Investigatory Commission of the Provisional Government held its sessions, at which it established detailed lists of police agents and heard the most intimate testimony of leading Police Department officials: Makarov, Beletsky, Vissarionov and others...
...Today, the en-lire world is agog over the downgrading of Stalin launched so unexpectedly at the 20th Soviet Party Congress by the old dictator's closest co-workers...
...There is every reason to believe, however, that the Okhrana had no Yeniseisk Section.* Moreover, the signature on the document by Yeremin, head of the Special Section of the Police Department, is obviously a forgery, inasmuch as Yeremin had been chief of the Finnish Police Administration since June 11, 1913, a month before the alleged document was written (of...
...Levine seems convinced that, by shifting the focus from the historic crimes of Stalin and his system to the question of whether Stalin served the Okhrana, he is making the decisive contribution to the late dictator's "dethronement...
...He has written this book to prove his point, and it appears to stand or fall on the Tsarist police document...
...Let us assume that the author's document is authentic...
...For at this moment the introduction of any false note in the ahli-Stalin campaign might cast doubt even on the incontrovertible facts about the Stalinist terror...
...Ivano-vich and Vasiliev, but not as Stalin...
...Finally...
...Without going into fine points here, we can state that the style of the document is contrary to that customarily employed by the Tsarist Police Department...
...there were a number of parties, socialist and otherwise, legal and semi-legal...
...Levine would go further: Stalin was a "20th-century Judas" pure and simple...
...In Tsarist Russia in 1913...
...David J. Dallin and Bertram D. Wolfe wrote to Life, flatly declaring it a forgery...
...Levine's book...
...The document also refers to Stalin as an "agent," whereas agents of the Okhrana were actually denoted "secret collaborators...
...When the document was first published in Life, it aroused many doubts as to its authenticity...
...At just this time, Mr...
...Why wasn't Stalin mentioned by Gerasimov, chief of the St...
...Levine brings out his book on Stalin's "great secret...
...M. Moskalev's book, The Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, 1912 to March 1917, Moscow, 1947, pp...
...And why didn't other well-informed police officials like Spirido-vich and Zavarzin refer to him...
...Mark Weinbaum and this writer also published articles in the Russian-language Novoye Russkoye Slovo casting doubt on its reliability...
...Petersburg Okhrana (for which, according to the document, Stalin worked), who published his memoirs abroad...
...For that, more solid proof is required than is offered in Mr...
...I will tell you the ultimate truth about him: He was simply a Tsarist stoolpigeon...
...To all Khrushchev's revelations about Stalin a new item is added, namely, that he was a Tsarist police agent before the Revolution...
...Life also printed a photostat of the Tsarist Police Department document of July 12, 1913 which appears opposite the title page of Mr...
...For example, in this supposedly official paper the "St...
...Would it have been kept under lock and key by some Okhrana official and finally sold to a few old Russian emigres...
...Why did none of these men name Stalin...
...Furthermore, Stalin is mentioned not only by his real name, Djugashvili, but also by his pen-name, Stalin, although he had just recently adopted the latter and it was not generally known...
...is dropped from the name of St...
...The falsity of the Levine document could be shown by further data, but that is unnecessary, since logic weighs against it just as heavily...
...Levine's book—a document which is offered as the principal and decisive confirmation of the "great secret...
...It purports to show that, long before the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin was an agent of the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana...
...But this is not sufficient basis for maintaining that he 'was a Tsarist agent...
...Petersburg ?a usage unknown in 1913...
...Wouldn't the document, if it was genuine, have been given to Nazi or Japanese agents...
...It is now the task of the free world to turn the discrediting of Stalin into a discrediting of the entire Soviet dictatorship...
...have used this trump in their struggle with Stalin...
...In effect, he is saying to his readers: You accuse Stalin of having been a butcher, a master of the art of torture, a paranoiac...
Vol. 39 • August 1956 • No. 34
