Stalin: A Biography

Escaping at last from Novaya Uda, he returned to his Bolshevik comrades in a mood to impose his vision.⁴¹ In his absence there had been fundamental changes in the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party and Lenin, for a while, emerged the victor. At the Second Party Congress, which was held in Brussels and London from July to August 1903, Lenin’s Iskra group had trounced the other trends. But at the moment of their triumph the Iskraists fell apart. Lenin’s supporters advocated a particularly exigent set of conditions for party membership. His erstwhile associate Yuli Martov, who had helped him to drive out the Bund, found himself in a minority. Martov agreed on the need for clandestinity, centralism, discipline and ideological unity. But, like Zhordania in Georgia, he frowned on policies designed to restrict the number of party members. It was Martov’s belief that Lenin had gone over to an authoritarian and counter-productive organisational campaign. They and their supporters voted against each other. Lenin won and called his followers the Majoritarians (bol’sheviki or Bolsheviks), and Martov in a fit of self-abnegation allowed his men and women to be known as the Minoritarians (men’sheviki or Mensheviks).

Detailed news of the dénouement at the Second Party Congress took time to filter back to Georgia. The split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks among the exiles was not reproduced in Tbilisi. The same was true in most Russian cities. But two general trends nevertheless emerged across the Russian Empire, and Georgia was no exception. Misha Tskhakaya was among the first to declare himself a Bolshevik. Dzhughashvili too sided with Lenin. But having fled from Novaya Uda, he was not met warmly in Tbilisi. The reason was his oft-repeated call for an autonomous Georgian party. A vigorous rebuke was prepared for him and he faced the threat of being drummed out of the Bolshevik faction before it was properly formed. He was given a choice: if he wanted to stay with the Bolsheviks, he had to write out a statement of his beliefs to be vetted by leading comrades for orthodoxy.⁴² This was a humiliating experience for a man as proud as Dzhughashvili. But he was realistic. He had to prove himself a disciplined, orthodox Bolshevik. If he wanted to regain acceptance, he had to recant, to engage in what later, when he ruled the USSR, became known as self-criticism. Seventy copies of his ‘Credo’ were produced and sent to other radical Marxists in Georgia. The ‘Credo’ definitively repudiated the campaign for Georgian Marxists to have their own autonomous party — and his recantation was a success: he survived the expected censure.

In the 1920s he was to send emissaries to the Caucasus to trace the copies made of the ‘Credo’ he had written in 1904.⁴³ Almost certainly he had them all destroyed. (In the preface to the first volume of his collected works, writing in 1946, the editors claimed that every single copy had been lost.)⁴⁴ But the unpublished memoirs of Sergei Kavtaradze, who was a Tbilisi Bolshevik and was associated with Stalin after the October Revolution, broadly indicate what had been in Dzhughashvili’s ‘Credo’.⁴⁵ After he had recanted, a cloud of suspicion still swirled around his head. Even his promise to avoid repeating his mistakes failed to quieten criticism. He was called a ‘Georgian Bundist’⁴⁶ (which was a peculiar appellation for a person whom many subsequently branded as an antisemite). Tskhakaya went the rounds of the radical Marxists and pleaded on Dzhughashvili’s behalf.⁴⁷ He survived and went on to flourish in the Bolshevik faction. He was energetic, determined and ambitious. He was quirky: he did not accept ideas just on the say-so of others; he changed his policies only when extreme pressure was put upon him. He was cantankerous and conspiratorial. He retained a strong feeling that the national sensitivities of the Georgians and other peoples should be respected. He had started out in Lado Ketskhoveli’s shadow but had begun to distinguish himself by his own opinions and activity. No one among Georgian Marxists doubted his talent.