Stalin: A Biography

Stalin’s life calls up questions of historical approach. Most accounts have fallen into one of two categories. Some have been focused on his personality and motives and the effect of these on politics and society; others illuminate the general history of the USSR and elsewhere and take for granted that we already know most of what we need about him as an individual. Neither category is adequate by itself and I offer a synthesis in the following chapters. Thus while it is vital to examine Stalin’s peculiar personality, it is equally necessary to analyse the environment in which he grew up and the political and other pressures under which he operated. Accounts are also divided between those which highlight the specificity of a given period and those which pick out the more durable factors in his career and his party’s history. This book is intended to bridge that artificial dichotomy. Thus, while detailed investigations of the Great Terror are essential, so too is a consideration of the whole set of circumstances produced by the October Revolution (and indeed by earlier situations). The aim is to bring together what are usually called intentionalism and structuralism as well as to combine what may be termed synchronic and diachronic approaches.

Several sections of the book have involved examination of records from archival files and recent documentary collections: on Stalin’s childhood in Gori; on his education; on his 1904 ‘Credo’; on his armed robbery campaign; on his time in Siberia; on his activity in 1917, in the Civil War and in the Soviet–Polish War; on the politics of 1922–3; on his marriages; on his motives in the Great Terror; on his leadership in the Second World War; and on his speeches and manoeuvres in 1952–3. Significant factual data have been unearthed in this process. The chapters also reinterpret certain important aspects of his life: the Georgian national background; his cultural development; the political authority of Stalin before, during and soon after the October Revolution; the rupture with Lenin in 1922–3; the origins and consequences of the Great Terror; the oddly impersonal ‘cult’; the style of rulership and the constraints on his despotic power; and the multidimensionality of his political career. A final point is that the book is intended as a general depiction and analysis. From his birth in 1878 to his death in 1953 Stalin was a human earthquake. Each episode in his lifetime of impact requires careful attention. But sense also has to be made of the interconnectedness of him and his times across a long — altogether too long — existence.

One personal experience in the course of the research stands out from the others. In December 1998 I interviewed Kira Allilueva, Stalin’s niece, in her flat in north Moscow for a radio programme I was making with Sheila Dillon of the BBC. Kira Allilueva’s refusal to be embittered by her uncle’s imprisonment of her — and her zest for life and fun — is a vivid memory. On that occasion she presented me with a copy of her uncle’s poetry. (The early chapters show why Stalin’s verses are important to an understanding of him.) It was the first time I had met someone who had known Stalin intimately. (An attempt in 1974 to interview Lazar Kaganovich, whom I spotted in Moscow’s Lenin Library, met with a curt refusal. Still, it was worth a try.) Kira Allilueva’s insistence that all the many sides of Stalin need to be understood before he can be comprehended is a principle that informs this book.

Oxford, June 2004

A Note on Renderings

Stalin changed his name many times before the Great War and only started consistently calling himself Stalin in 1912. In the interests of clarity I have called him Dzhughashvili until 1912 and Stalin thereafter even though many acquaintances knew him by nicknames (Soso, Soselo and Koba) and by pseudonyms (including Ivanovich and several others) both before and after that year. And although he was christened Yoseb Dzhughashvili, I have mainly used the more familiar Joseph Dzhughashvili. The names of other Georgians are given by a conventional transliteration into English but without the diacritic signs. The territory to the south of the Caucasus mountain range presents a nomenclatural difficulty. In order to emphasise its intrinsic significance, especially in part one of the book, I refer to it as the south Caucasus rather than — as in Russian geographical and administrative parlance — the Transcaucasus; the exceptions to this are official Soviet designations such as the Transcaucasian Federation. As for transliteration from Russian, I have used a simplified version of the Library of Congress system with the qualification that endnotes are given in line with the full system. Dates are given according to the calendar in official use at the time in Russia. The authorities employed the Julian calendar until 1918, when they switched to the Gregorian one.

Maps