Stalin: A Biography

The Leninists did not gain a majority in the Central Committee until 23 February. By that time the German terms had hardened. The separate peace would require Sovnarkom to disclaim sovereignty over the western borderlands of the former Russian Empire. It was, in Lenin’s phrase, an obscene peace. Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were to be allowed to fall into the grasp of the Central Powers. Half the human, industrial and agricultural resources of the domains of Nicholas II were to be forsworn at the little frontal town of Brest-Litovsk if Sovnarkom wished to avoid being overthrown by the Germans. No other political party in Russia would accede to such terms. The Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, already annoyed by the forcible local expropriations of peasant-produced grain, walked out of the Sovnarkom coalition and organised an unsuccessful coup d’état against the Bolsheviks in July 1918. Nevertheless Lenin and his followers pressed forward with their chosen strategy. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3 March 1918. For Lenin, the peace offered a ‘breathing space’ for the Bolsheviks to strengthen and expand the Revolution at home and to prepare the revolutionary war in central Europe that had hitherto been impractical. A Red Army started to be formed; and Trotski, who had condemned the separate peace, agreed to become People’s Commissar for Military Affairs. Other Bolshevik opponents of the treaty drifted back to the Central Committee and Sovnarkom.

Stalin’s assignments in spring 1918 confirmed his high status in the ascendant party leadership. In internal and external affairs he had stuck by Lenin. He had not done this subserviently. In the Brest-Litovsk dispute he had taken an angle of argument different from Lenin’s; and, contrary to the conventional stereotype of him, this continued to be true after the signature of the treaty. When the German armies overran the agreed demarcation line between Russia and Ukraine in May, he reconsidered the whole peace deal. Unlike Lenin, he suggested a resumption of armed hostilities. He put this case at the Central Committee and Sovnarkom.³⁷ But Lenin won the discussion without Stalin by his side, and the dissension between them faded. Lenin, in the light of future events, should have learned from the episode that his People’s Commissar for Nationalities’ Affairs was a politician who knew his own value and was determined to stand up for himself. Stalin fought his corner in the Central Committee and dominated his People’s Commissariat. His competence and adaptability had been tested in the fire of an October Revolution which had yet to be secured. His advocacy of ruthless measures was as ferocious as anything put forward by Lenin, Trotski or Dzierżyński. He expected others to recognise what he could offer for the good of the cause.

15. TO THE FRONT!

On 31 May 1918 Stalin was given an important fresh assignment. Food supplies for Russia had reached a critically low point and Sovnarkom was close to panic. The decision was to send two of the party’s most able organisers, Stalin and his previous Bolshevik opponent Alexander Shlyapnikov, to procure grain in the south of the Soviet republic. The Volga region and the north Caucasus were traditional areas of agricultural abundance, and Stalin and Shlyapnikov were given full powers to obtain food wherever it could be found. Stalin was to make for Tsaritsyn, Shlyapnikov for Astrakhan.

His Alliluev assistants in the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities’ Affairs would accompany him. Fëdor would come as his aide and Nadya as his secretary. They arrived with their luggage at the Kazan Station in Moscow two days later. Chaos awaited them and their Red Army guards. Beggars and pickpockets swarmed in the booking hall and on the platforms. There were also the many ‘sack-men’ who travelled to Moscow to sell flour, potatoes and vegetables on the black market. Sometimes passengers had to sit around for days before they could board a train. The atmosphere was frantic. When announcements of departure were made, a rush occurred to get a seat or a space in the corridor. Every compartment would be crammed with people and it was common for the disappointed ticket holders to clamber to the tops of carriages and ride unsheltered from summer heat or winter cold. Stalin had a sheaf of documents indicating his priority over other passengers. But the People’s Commissar for Nationalities’ Affairs had to lose his temper before the station officials granted a compartment to him and his party. He was being given yet another display of the extreme disorder of revolutionary Russia.¹