CHAPTER 8
MARCH 1917: STALIN RETURNS
The collapse of the tsarist regime in February 1917 freed the thirty-seven year old
Stalin from his Siberian exile. He returned on March 12 to Petrograd—as St. Petersburg
1
had been patriotically renamed in 1914—eager to rise with the revolutionary tide. The
downfall of the tsarist autocracy had loosened the bonds which had constrained political
and social dynamics, and the resulting wave of freedom and enthusiasm created
unprecedented opportunities for a would-be revolutionary hero. Though two major new
institutions quickly emerged—the Provisional Government, composed of members of the
last Duma and dominated by the propertied classes, and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’
and Soldiers’ Deputies—the situation in the capital and in the country remained unstable
and fluid. Within Bolshevik ranks the state of affairs was particularly unsettled, with Party
officials and organizations sharply divided about the course they should follow. Perhaps
most important, Lenin was absent, in exile in Switzerland, cut off from Russia by the war.
His absence and the lack of clear direction among the Bolsheviks gave Stalin a rare—but
brief—chance to prove himself as a revolutionary leader.
First, however, Stalin had to win acceptance from the highest ranking Party organ
in the capital, the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee. Despite having been a
member of the Bureau and of the Central Committee itself before the war, when he
appeared at a meeting of the Bureau on March 12 he was restricted to a consultative voice
in the group’s affairs because of what the record of the meeting describes—with
2
3
tantalizing vagueness—as “several personal traits.” Whatever these traits were —and it
may be significant that they were not described as political shortcomings—Stalin quickly
overcame the objections. The next day the Bureau restored him to membership and
named him an editor of Pravda. At about this time he was also appointed as a
representative of the Bolsheviks on the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. By
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overcoming the opposition of his critics, Stalin quickly moved into position to play a
leadership role.
A variety of serious and inter-related problems faced the Bolsheviks in March.
What should be their attitude toward the World War and Russian participation in it?
Should they support the new Provisional Government, which was keeping Russia in the
war, or should they oppose it? What stance should they adopt toward the Petrograd
Soviet and the dozens of local soviets that were springing up throughout the country?
Should the Bolsheviks seek closer relations with other socialist elements in order to
strengthen the revolutionary ranks? What kind of revolution had begun in Russia? What
should be the aims of the Party, and should it try to push the revolution forward rapidly or
adopt a more cautious and patient approach? These were complex and tangled issues,
and developing a set of coherent and politically effective responses to them was a
challenge of the first order.
Different Bolsheviks answered these questions differently.
4
On the right, the
5
Petersburg Committee favored tolerating the Provisional Government as long as it
advanced the interests of the workers and the democratic masses, though the committee
promised to fight any counter-revolutionary steps. Stalin’s senior co-editor at Pravda, Lev
6
Kamenev, openly favored supporting the war effort. In opposition, the Party committee in
the heavily working-class Vyborg district called for an immediate uprising to oust the
Provisional Government and proposed that the country’s Soviets establish a provisional
revolutionary government to promulgate a parliamentary republic and convene a
constituent assembly. By contrast, the Central Committee’s Russian Bureau rejected the
call for an immediate insurrection, believing that a period of preparation was needed. But
it, too, envisioned a provisional revolutionary government that would introduce
democratic reforms and convene a constituent assembly. In the Bureau’s plan, however,
the Petrograd Soviet, not the Soviets scattered throughout the country, would establish
this government. The Russian Bureau also called for turning the World War into a
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European civil war against the propertied classes—an idea that had originated with Lenin.
On every question confronting them, then, Bolsheviks in the capital were of at least two
minds.
What Lenin thought about the revolutionary situation in Russia was not known in
Petrograd in early March 1917. He himself remained poorly informed about recent events
in Russia, and virtually no word of his thinking about the new situation had then reached
the Russian capital. What was known was that since the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 he
had campaigned stridently in total opposition to the war, which he saw as wholly
imperialist in nature. In his opinion, there could be no possible justification for socialists
to support the war. Those in the Social Democratic movement who supported their
countries’ governments on the grounds of national self-defence—hence the sobriquet,
“defencists”—were not socialists at all, he said, and they should be expelled from the
Socialist International. If socialist opposition to the tsarist war effort should contribute to
Russia's defeat, he saw his country’s defeat as the lesser evil compared to continuing the
war. For Lenin it was not enough, however, that socialists withhold support from their
governments. They should also strive to turn the imperialist war into a revolutionary civil
war, a class war “against the bourgeoisie of all countries for the capture of political power,
7
for the triumph of socialism.” Thus might the imperialist war be made to serve the
socialist cause. But, encountering powerful nationalistic sentiments among socialists
both in Russia and in Europe, Lenin’s ultra-radical position commanded little support,
even among Bolsheviks.
In early March 1917, then, there was no one to serve Stalin as an authoritative
guide to correct revolutionary tactics. But he was not without a mentor of sorts. In 1920,
looking back on the Revolution, Stalin praised two works by Lenin as having provided the
correct basis for Bolshevik tactics in 1917.
8
These were not pieces Lenin had written in
1917, but much older writings: Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic
Revolution (1905) and The Victory of the Cadets and the Tasks of the Workers’ Party
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(1906). These were works by the “good” Lenin, the pre-Stockholm Lenin, and in 1907
9
Stalin had cited both of them as defining examples of Bolshevism. In 1921 he scaled
back the praise he had conferred on these pieces the year before, noting that the February
Revolution had achieved two-thirds of the strategic objectives of Two Tactics, but he still
credited Lenin’s teachings of 1905-1906 with providing the correct basis for Bolshevik
tactics up to April 1917.
10
Because these works influenced Stalin’s thinking early in
1917—and indeed through the whole year—a brief summary of them is necessary.
In Two Tactics, Lenin characterized the revolution then under way in Russia as a
bourgeois-democratic (capitalist) one.
11
Because the development of capitalism brought
closer the eventual coming of socialism, he welcomed bourgeois political successes
against the old order, particularly the establishment of a revolutionary provisional
government which would institute democratic reforms and convene a constituent
assembly.
12
He was keenly aware, however, that the bourgeoisie would try to monopolize
power for itself to the disadvantage of the masses. To protect the rights of the working
class and guard against inevitable counter-revolutionary threats, Lenin argued that Social
Democracy must arm and organize the proletariat so that it could exert pressure on the
revolutionary provisional government. Toward the same end, it was even permissible for
Social Democrats to participate in the revolutionary provisional government.
13
But Social Democracy was not restricted, as Lenin saw it, to a merely defensive
role. The self-serving policies of the governing bourgeois elite would tend, he expected,
to alienate the great mass of the peasantry and other petty-bourgeois groups. If and only
if the proletariat could rally around itself disaffected petty-bourgeois elements “which are
capable of marching side by side with us” in a common struggle against the big
bourgeoisie and the landowners, Lenin argued that it might seize leadership of the
revolution. To attract these elements, the proletariat would have to avoid focusing on its
own narrow class interest and instead become “the tribune of the people,” the leader of
“all the toilers and the exploited,” the leader of “the people’s revolution.” In particular, the
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proletariat would have to attract the peasants into a firm alliance against the old order.
Social Democrats were thus obliged to champion the slogan “land and freedom," which
Lenin called "that most widespread slogan of the peasant masses, downtrodden and
ignorant, yet passionately yearning for light and happiness.” Lenin acknowledged that
this was “a bourgeois slogan,” but he insisted that
we Marxists should know that there is not, nor can there be, any other path to
real freedom for the proletariat and the peasantry than the path of bourgeois
freedom and bourgeois progress. We must not forget that there is not, nor
can there be, any other means of bringing socialism nearer than complete
political liberty, than a democratic republic, than the revolutionary dictatorship
of the proletariat and the peasantry … we must confront the whole of the
people with the tasks of the democratic revolution as extensively and boldly
as possible and with the utmost initiative. To disparage these tasks … means
placing the course of the revolution in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which will
inevitably recoil from the tasks of consistently carrying out the revolution …
Revolutions are the locomotives of history, said Marx. Revolutions are
festivals of the oppressed and exploited. At no other time are the masses of
the people in a position to come forward as creators of a new social order so
actively as at a time of revolution. At such times the people are capable of
performing miracles.
Thus would Lenin bring to completion the revolution against tsarism and the vestiges of
the feudal order by uniting diverse popular elements to make not a proletarian revolution
but rather “a Russian revolution of the whole people.”
14
To organize and lead the people, the workers and the revolutionary peasantry,
Lenin called upon his fellow Social Democrats to recognize “the necessity of
systematically setting up integral, methodical and dynamic organs of insurrection, organs
of revolutionary power.” These organs did not need to be invented; they had already
sprung into being spontaneously from the mass movement in 1905. They were
the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, Railwaymen’s and Peasants’ Deputies, new
rural and urban authorities … set up exclusively by the revolutionary sections
of the people … formed irrespective of all laws and regulations, entirely in a
revolutionary way, as a product of the native genius of the people, as a
manifestation of the independent activity of the people which had rid itself, or
was ridding itself, of its old police shackles … they were indeed organs of
authority, for all their rudimentary, spontaneous, amorphous and diffuse
character, in composition and in activity. They acted as a government … Yes,
they were undoubtedly the embryos of a new, people’s, or, if you will,
revolutionary government. In their social and political character they were the
15
rudiments of the dictatorship of the revolutionary elements of the people.
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Though the tsarist regime had managed to suppress the Soviets at the end of 1905, Lenin
looked to these revived local councils of representatives chosen by the revolutionary
masses as the future institutional expression of the “revolutionary dictatorship of the
proletariat and the peasantry.” This dictatorship, he hoped, eventually would achieve “a
real and decisive victory,” “a really great revolution,” “the people’s complete victory over
tsarism.”
16
The aggressive popular strategy that Lenin prescribed was intended above all to
make the destruction of tsarism and the achievement of a democratic revolution
irreversible. But he also cherished the hope that creation of the revolutionary dictatorship
of the proletariat and the peasantry and “the people’s complete victory over tsarism”
might lead to an even greater transformation. By championing a broad popular revolution,
Lenin did not intend to shelve the goal of a socialist society. Rather, his strategy would
“extend the … class struggle to make it include not only all the aims of the present
democratic Russian revolution of the whole people, but also the aims of the subsequent
socialist revolution." Lenin was not expecting a quick leap to socialism: he attacked the
idea of trying to conquer power to build a socialist society straight-away as “absurd and
semi-anarchist,” and he stressed that the revolutionary dictatorship would “be a
democratic, not a socialist dictatorship.” But he did believe that a democratic revolution
in Russia would “carry the revolutionary conflagration into Europe” and “usher in the era
of socialist revolution in the West.” “Such a victory,” he cautioned,
will not yet by any means transform our bourgeois revolution into a socialist
revolution; the democratic revolution will not immediately overstep the
bounds of bourgeois social and economic relationships. Nevertheless, the
significance of such a victory for the future development of Russia and of the
whole world will be immense. Nothing will raise the revolutionary energy of
the world proletariat so much, nothing will shorten the path leading to its
compete victory to such an extent, as the complete victory of the revolution
that has now started in Russia.
Whether “such a victory is probable is another question,” Lenin added, claiming that he
was “not in the least inclined to be unreasonably optimistic.” There were “immense
difficulties,” he acknowledged, but he was hopeful because “revolution unites rapidly and
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enlightens rapidly” and “rouses the masses and attracts them with irresistible force to the
side of the revolutionary program.”
17
The expectation that the Russian revolution might spark upheavals in the West
was probably far from Stalin’s mind in March 1917. He was urgently concerned with the
immediate problems of how to protect and advance the revolution within his own country.
Between March 14 and 18 he addressed these issues in four articles he wrote for Pravda.
These brief articles were intended for a popular readership, and they do not provide full
explanations of his views on the range of problems facing the Party. They do, however,
make reasonably clear the central elements of his thinking, in which both the influence of
Two Tactics and a measure of originality are evident.
Notwithstanding a confident assertion that “The chariot of the Russian revolution
is advancing with lightning speed,” Stalin’s Pravda articles emphasize his wariness about
the situation facing the revolution. “The forces of the old power,” he warned readers, “are
only lying low, waiting for a favorable moment to raise their heads and fling themselves on
free Russia.” The “dark forces” of the “tsarist-landlord reaction” and the “financial
bourgeoisie” were “carrying on their sinister work incessantly, rallying forces from all
sections of the population, not excluding the army,” in an effort to “grow stronger and
mobilize against the revolution.” This threat of “incipient counter-revolution” was the
greater because of weaknesses within the revolutionary ranks. One of these was the gap
between Petrograd, which was in the forefront of the revolution, and “the immense
provinces,” which lagged behind, content with “accepting the fruits of victory and
expressing confidence in the Provisional Government.” (Stalin's train trip back from
Siberia had given him an opportunity to learn something of provincial attitudes toward the
revolution and thus gain a perspective broader than the local Petrograders had.)
18
Another weakness was that the alliance between “the insurrectionary workers and the
soldiers”—that is, “the peasants clad in soldiers’ uniforms”—which Stalin said had
brought down the old regime, was still only “a temporary alliance.” In order “to preserve
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8
the rights achieved and to develop the revolution further, a temporary alliance between the
workers and the soldiers is far from enough.” The “alliance should be made conscious
and secure, lasting and stable,” he stressed, and to achieve this the workers must rally
around Social Democracy and the peasants and soldiers must rally around the
revolutionary proletariat. “Therein lies the guarantee of complete victory over the dark
forces of old Russia,” Stalin assured. “Therein lies the guarantee that the fundamental
demands of the Russian people will be achieved: land for the peasants, protection of labor
for the workers, and a democratic republic for all the citizens of Russia!”
19
For Stalin,
then, the way to protect against the serious danger of counter-revolution and also to
prepare to move the revolution forward was to develop a durable revolutionary alliance of
workers and peasants and achieve the revolution of the whole people as outlined in
Lenin’s Two Tactics.
Stalin also followed the Lenin of Two Tactics in calling for “the immediate arming
of the workers—a workers’ guard.” He noted that the tsar’s vast mobilization of
manpower for the war had “given the army the character of a people’s army, and thus
facilitated the work of uniting the soldiers with the insurrectionary workers,” which in turn
had contributed to the quick triumph of the February Revolution. But because the army
had to locate itself “in conformity with the requirements of war,” it could not always be
counted upon to “protect the revolution from counter-revolution. Consequently, another
armed force is needed, an army of armed workers who are naturally connected with the
centers of the revolutionary movement.” Stalin's concern was sensible enough, and his
readers surely were aware that "the requirements of war" might serve as a mask for
counter-revolutionary intentions.
20
It may be that in calling for establishment of a workers’ guard Stalin was looking
even further ahead. “If it is true," he reasoned, "that a revolution cannot win without an
armed force that is ready to serve it at all times, then our revolution too must have its own
force.”
21
In writings throughout his career Stalin sometimes almost imperceptibly shifted
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9
from describing the group to describing our group, a technique by which he discreetly
signified that the situation or point of view of our group—with which he identified—
conflicted with that of the (usually dominant) group.
22
Thus, in speaking of our revolution
Stalin may have been referring to the workers’ revolution and to the ultimate goal of
socialism which the workers' current allies—the great mass of petty-bourgeois peasants—
could be expected to oppose. Though Stalin urged the workers to work together with the
peasantry against the old order today, Two Tactics also taught that this alliance would
break asunder once the old order was fully defeated. Then the peasants and the urban
workers would become free to pursue their separate and conflicting class interests.
23
But
realizing that the army was largely peasant in composition, by calling for arming of the
workers Stalin was perhaps explaining to the urban workers—tactfully, so as not to offend
their peasant-soldier allies of the moment—why they (the workers) could not in the long
run rely on the overwhelmingly peasant army to protect proletarian interests. Without
bombast, Stalin perhaps was looking forward to the development of the people’s
revolution into the proletarian revolution.
For the present, however, making the people's revolution was the goal, and the
task of the Bolsheviks was to strengthen the alliance between the workers and other
revolutionary elements. To this end, Stalin also adopted—and built upon—Lenin’s view of
the Soviets as the institutional form of the revolutionary alliance. On March 14 he pointed
out that
The organs of this alliance are the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies.
And the more closely these Soviets are welded together and the more
strongly they are organized, the more effective will be the revolutionary power
of the revolutionary people which they express, and the more reliable will be
the guarantees against counter-revolution.
To “consolidate these Soviets,” he suggested that “revolutionary Social Democrats must
work … to link them together under a Central Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies as
the organ of revolutionary power of the people.” The idea of a superior Soviet to integrate
local ones was sensible and innovative, but Stalin’s proposed remedy of a “Central Soviet
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10
of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies” rather carelessly seemed to overlook peasant Soviets.
So four days later he returned to the topic, pointing out that as the revolution spread
throughout Russia the Petrograd Soviet—though "an organ of revolutionary struggle of
the workers and the soldiers"—was “becoming inadequate for the new situation.” “What
is needed,” he now proposed,
is an all-Russian organ of revolutionary struggle of the democracy of all
Russia, one authoritative enough to weld together the democracy of the
capital and the provinces and to transform itself at the necessary moment
from an organ of revolutionary struggle of the people into an organ of
revolutionary power, which will mobilize all the vital forces of the people
against counter-revolution.
Only an All-Russian Soviet of Worker’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’
Deputies can be such an organ.
24
This is the first condition for the victory of the Russian revolution.
Stalin’s proposal addressed a central practical and institutional requisite of continued
revolutionary progress. Though his “All-Russian Soviet” never came to be, his idea
foreshadowed the All-Russian Congresses of Soviets which were convened later in 1917,
the second of which did transform itself in October into the official “organ of revolutionary
power.”
The hope to see an All-Russian Soviet become the “organ of revolutionary power”
implied a concomitant desire to see the Provisional Government toppled. This desire is
evident elsewhere in Stalin’s Pravda article of March 18. Stressing that the Provisional
Government was not revolutionary, having arisen “not on the barricades, but only near
them,” Stalin described it as “being dragged along in the wake of the revolution,
unwillingly and getting in its way,” and he forecast that it might become an accomplice to
counter-revolution. To forestall such a development, he urged the speediest convocation
of a democratic constituent assembly to frame a new government.
25
His evident hostility
toward the Provisional Government notwithstanding, in Pravda Stalin did not take an
explicit position on the question of whether to support or oppose the regime.
26
Like the
Central Committee’s Russian Bureau, he evidently thought the time was not yet ripe for an
insurrection to overthrow the Provisional Government. Given the evident inability of the
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11
weak and divided Bolsheviks to oust the Provisional Government, it is problematic what
purpose declaring no support for it could have served. The fact of not supporting it
mattered far more in March 1917 than words against supporting it.
The importance of the question whether to support the Provisional Government
was magnified and complicated by the war. If a desire to defend the country from foreign
attack led to support for the Provisional Government, this support helped to perpetuate
the horrors of the imperialist war and to strengthen an increasingly conservative regime.
But refusing to support the Provisional Government meant standing by and watching the
defeat of one's own country. For Lenin "defeatism" was the clear socialist answer. Many,
perhaps even most Bolsheviks could not accept Lenin's position. But many, perhaps even
most Bolsheviks also could not support the Provisional Government.
Stalin's articles in Pravda demonstrate clearly that he was no defencist. Arguing
that the World War was purely an imperialist war for territorial and economic goals, he
denied there was any danger that the imperialists might initiate an ideologically inspired
campaign to overthrow the revolution in Russia and restore the monarchy. Thus he
concluded that the defencist argument that the Provisional Government should be
supported because liberty was endangered was sheer nonsense. Maintaining that
defencists and anti-war socialists "cannot live together in one party," he hit hard at
Mensheviks who supported the war and favored participating in the Provisional
Government. Referring to the deliberations of two conferences of anti-war European
socialists in 1915 and 1916, Stalin asserted emphatically that the "Russian Social
Democratic Labor Party stands by the Zimmerwald and Kienthal resolutions, which
repudiate both defencism and participation in the present government, even if it is a
provisional one (not to be confused with a revolutionary provisional government!)."
Bolsheviks could not unite with defencists, he said, because the defencists' backing of the
Provisional Government "precludes unity with the Russian Social Democratic Labor
Party."
27
In effect, Stalin was reading defencists out of the Party.
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12
But neither could Stalin accept Lenin's defeatism. The Georgian's lack of
enthusiasm for Lenin's position was suggested in 1915 at the "trial" of Lev Kamenev by
Party activists in Siberia for having repudiated Lenin's policy earlier that year. At that time
the tsarist authorities had charged Kamenev, as Pravda editor and adviser to the
Bolshevik Duma deputies, with treason—not because of his own views but because as the
ranking Bolshevik figure in Petrograd he was held accountable for Lenin's advocacy of
defeatism. During his official trial, Kamenev distanced himself from Lenin's position on
the war, with which in fact he did not agree. Convicted nonetheless and sentenced to exile
in Siberia, once there Kamenev was denounced by loyal Leninists who sought to
excommunicate him from the Party. Stalin was among the Bolshevik exiles who heard the
case, and it seems clear—despite later Stalinist historical revisionism—that he declined to
join with Kamenev's attackers. Though Stalin's reasons remain matters for speculation,
the most likely explanation for his position is that he too did not agree with Lenin's
position on the war.
28
Stalin's March 1917 Pravda articles confirm his antagonism toward Lenin's
position. Lenin had repeatedly criticized the Zimmerwald and Kienthal resolutions as
insufficiently revolutionary, and Stalin's unequivocal endorsements of them—he referred
29
to their "correctness and fruitfulness" and declared that the RSDLP "stands by" them —
constitute a transparent rejection of Lenin's point of view. But Stalin did not leave the
matter to implication. Answering his own question about "the practical ways and means
capable of leading to the speediest termination of the war," Stalin wrote
First of all, it is unquestionable that the stark slogan, "Down with the War!"
[Lenin's slogan] is absolutely unsuitable as a practical means, because, since
it does not go beyond propaganda of the idea of peace in general, it does not
and cannot provide anything capable of exerting practical influence on the
belligerent forces to compel them to stop the war.
Stalin evidently found Lenin's approach ill designed to translate hatred of the war into
practical and effective steps to end it.
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13
Reasons for Stalin's rejection of Lenin's position may perhaps be glimpsed in
criticism he offered of a March 15 peace initiative by the Petrograd Soviet which called on
the peoples of the world to compel their governments to bring the war to its end. This
appeal, he said, could not be effective until it became "widely known among the peoples of
the warring countries," and even then "it is hard to believe that they would act on it,
considering that they have not yet realized the predatory nature of the present war." The
masses could not respond productively to generalized condemnations of war or appeals
for peace, Stalin seems to have been saying, until they learned why and in whose interest
the war was being fought, or, in other words, until they were able to focus their potential
political power effectively.
Stalin offered an approach which he believed would accomplish this:
The solution is to bring pressure on the Provisional Government to
make it declare its consent to start peace negotiations immediately.
The workers, soldiers and peasants must arrange meetings and
demonstrations to demand that the Provisional Government shall come out
openly and publicly in an effort to induce all the belligerent powers to start
peace negotiations immediately on the basis of recognition of the right of
nations to self-determination.
Only then will the slogan, "Down with the War!" not run the risk of
being transformed into empty and meaningless pacifism, only then will it be
capable of developing into a mighty political campaign which will unmask the
imperialists and disclose the actual motives for the present war.
Should any of the warring sides refuse to agree to peace negotiations on these terms,
Stalin thought this would enable the people to "see for themselves the predatory nature of
the war" and the "annexationist ambitions" for which it was being fought, and finally to
recognize
the bloodstained countenance of the imperialist groups on whose rapacious
behalf they are sacrificing the lives of their sons.
Unmasking the imperialists and opening the eyes of the masses to the
real motives for the present war actually is declaring war on war and rendering
30
the present war impossible.
Stalin was drawing on his years of experience as a practical worker, as an agitator, to
frame a strategy for channeling the masses' generalized opposition to the war into
effective action to end the slaughter.
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14
Stalin's words indicate that he was not opposed to Lenin's position on the war per
se, but rather to the efficacy of Lenin's approach at the moment. Once the masses came
to understand the nature of the war and knew who was responsible for it—that is, knew
against whom to target their rage—Stalin thought that Lenin's slogan, "Down with the
War!" could be effective. But without first forcing the architects of the war to reveal their
aims, Stalin thought that Lenin's tactic—which itself did nothing to bring about the
requisite understanding—could not produce effective action to end the war. It seems a
reasonable criticism.
The differences between Stalin and Lenin on anti-war policy reveal a subtle but
significant underlying conflict between the two men. Stalin was trying to find a way to end
the war. His desire to declare war on war and to bring what he called "this inhuman war"
to the speediest possible end suggest not only his personal anger but also a sensitivity to
the suffering and the desires of the people. He also believed that "continuation of the war,
with the financial, economic and food crises that accompany it, is a submerged reef on
which the ship of revolution may be wrecked."
31
For Stalin, then, ending the war quickly
thus served the interests of the people and of the revolution, that is, of the people's
revolution. For Lenin, on the other hand, a speedy end to the war would not advance the
revolution. For him, it was precisely the prolongation of the war that would bring about
the greater suffering out of which he hoped the socialist revolution would spring. Surely
Lenin did not want the war to last longer than was necessary, but for him it was desirable
that it drag on long enough to give rise to class war against the ruling elite. Lenin put
socialist revolution first; Stalin, ending the war and achieving the people's revolution.
32
If
we are accustomed to think of Stalin as monstrously insensitive to human suffering—as
he subsequently became—we might consider that in this instance, at least, the shoe does
not fit him well. But it is Lenin's size.
Stalin's performance in the week following his return to Petrograd was modestly
impressive in several respects. First, he recognized that the conflicts within the Bolshevik
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15
Party could not easily be resolved and that this situation called for gradual consensus
building rather than efforts to impose policies from above. Accordingly, he avoided namecalling and other behaviors that might aggravate divisions within the Party, choosing
instead to put forward sensible if piecemeal analyses and proposals that might bring
Bolsheviks together. It was a patient and educative approach, rather surprising from a
man with an inner drive to prove himself a revolutionary hero and a past history of
flamboyantly radical rhetoric. Second, he recognized that the situation in the country
argued against rash revolutionary action. His personal distaste for the Provisional
Government notwithstanding, he realized that it had significant support in the provinces
and in the army. He understood too that the revolutionary forces were divided, confused
and relatively weak. Stalin was not at all timid about the preparations that he
recommended to protect and advance the revolution, but he saw that it was not yet time
for a test of strength. Here, too, he showed realism and restraint, avoiding dramatic and
incendiary language. Third, he capably adapted Lenin's revolutionary precepts of 1905 to
the new situation. He left no doubt about his opposition to the Provisional Government,
and if he did not take an explicit stand against supporting it he drew a line in the sand
separating Bolsheviks from those Mensheviks who openly backed the regime. He
stressed the need to strengthen the broad revolutionary alliance and to spread the
revolution throughout Russia, uniting the capital with the provinces. In proposing the
creation of an integral countrywide Soviet that could strengthen the revolutionary alliance
and develop into the instrument of revolutionary power, he showed noteworthy foresight
and originality. Fourth, he showed, especially in his approach to the problem of the war,
that he appreciated that tactics needed to be shaped by familiarity with popular concerns
and sentiments. In early 1917 at least, he understood that leadership requires listening.
Political maturity is also evident in Stalin's attitude toward the absent Lenin. Of the
contempt he had felt for Lenin since 1906 there was no discernable trace. Instead, Stalin
displayed a business-like attitude toward Lenin's thinking about the war, acknowledging
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16
some merit in it while noting its shortcomings. Stalin's readiness to correct, albeit at a
distance, what he saw as a mistake by Lenin also indicates that he had recovered from the
depression he seemed to feel in Siberia and had regained his personal and political
confidence.
Despite these several virtues, Stalin may be criticized on the ground that his vision
lacked a driving force, a dynamic tactic, by which the Party could move matters forward.
Though he had mapped out some things he thought should be done, he did not set forth a
clear program for action. He seemed content, in effect, to let events take their own course,
with the Party essentially reacting to opportunities to discredit the Provisional
Government as they appeared. Considering the division and the weakness of the
revolutionary forces at this time, this was a sensible approach. Not only would an
aggressive posture be unrealistic in view of the relative strength of the Provisional
Government vis-à-vis the Left, but trying to force a militant line on the Party would have
caused harmful dissention and splintering within the Party. If Stalin's failure to proclaim
an inspiring vision leaves doubts about his readiness for independent political leadership,
it also signifies his possession of the patience and wisdom necessary in a political leader.
He was no longer the firebrand he had been in 1905.
But Stalin's opportunity to show leadership was to be brief. The day after the last
of his Pravda articles appeared, Lenin began to intrude actively—though by long
distance—into the politics of the Russian Bolsheviks.
*
*
*
“I shared this erroneous position then with the majority of the Party and rejected it
completely in the middle of April when I associated myself with the ‘April Theses’ of
Lenin...” So wrote Stalin in the preface to a collection of his writings from 1917 which he
published in 1925. Stalin did not explain exactly what “erroneous position” he was
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17
referring to, though he did point out vaguely that attitudes toward the Provisional
Government, the power of the Soviets, and the war were problems at that time. March
1917, he said, had been a “period of a sharp break with old positions,” and it had been
difficult for Bolsheviks who had just returned from prison or internal exile to find the world
changed to adjust to these great changes “at one sitting.”
33
Some have seen in Stalin’s statement an admission of serious political error; for
example, Trotsky, with characteristic excess, read it as an acknowledgment that Stalin
“had spoken in favor of military defense, of conditional support to the Provisional
government and the pacifist manifesto of Sukhanov, and of merging with the party of
Tseretelli.”
34
The charge of political error possesses no scholarly merit, however; it was a
purely partisan and polemical weapon, an artifact of internal Soviet political warfare. It
attempted to disparage Stalin in the eyes of those who regarded Lenin’s views as law, and
who also thought it reasonable to condemn Stalin for not agreeing with Lenin’s views
before Lenin had voiced them. Trotsky’s charge is important for students of internal
Soviet political warfare, especially in the 1920s. So too is Stalin’s admission that he
“shared this erroneous position”—an acknowledgement which he evidently hoped would
defuse bombs that his enemies were hurling at him. But neither the charge nor the
admission add anything of consequence to our knowledge of 1917.
1
Anyone approaching the subject of Stalin in 1917 is fortunate to have numerous
excellent secondary works at their disposal. Several general works on 1917 stand out.
Robert V. Daniels' Red October, which appeared in 1967, offers an insightful critique of
and alternative to the standard Soviet view that the revolution sprang from Lenin's genius.
Two books by Alexander Rabinowitch (Prelude to Revolution. The Petrograd Bolsheviks
and the July 1917 Uprising [Bloomington, 1968], and The Bolsheviks Come to Power. The
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18
Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd [New York, 1976], cited hereafter as Prelude and Power,
respectively), offer more detailed and comprehensive assessments of the development of
Bolshevik approaches to the revolution. On Stalin's role, we are indebted to Robert M.
Slusser for Stalin in October, the first detailed inquiry into Stalin’s activities in the
revolutionary year (and in 1989 the first book on Soviet history by an American scholar to
be published in the Soviet Union). Slusser's work should be used with caution, however,
because of a number of factual errors and the author's strong biases against Stalin.
Although my analysis accords with Slusser's in some matters, I view the key issues of
Stalin's independence of mind and his relationship with Lenin quite differently from
Slusser. I also draw on several important post-1917 statements by Stalin about the
Revolution of which Slusser makes no use. An effective refutation of Slusser’s argument
that Stalin “missed the revolution” is Erik Van Ree, "Stalin's Bolshevism: The Year of the
Revolution," Revolutionary Russia 13, no. 1 (2000): 29-54.
2
“Protokoly i rezoliutsii Biuro TsK RSDRP(b) (mart 1917 g.),” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 3
(1962): 143; Medvedev, Judge, 41.
3
For a compendium of speculations, see Slusser, 10-12.
4
On the divisions among the Bolsheviks see especially David A. Longley, “The Divisions
in the Bolshevik Party in March 1917,” Soviet Studies 24, no. 1 (1972): 61-76, and “Some
Historiographical Problems of Bolshevik Party History (The Kronstadt Bolsheviks in March
1917),” Jahrbuecher fuer Geschichte Osteuropas 22, no. 4 (1975): 494-513; Rabinowitch,
Prelude, 32-36; and T. A. Abrosimova, “The Composition of the Petersburg Committee of
the RSDRP(b) in 1917,” Revolutionary Russia 11, no. 1 (1998): 37-44.
5
Though the capital was now known as Petrograd, the local Bolshevik committee
continued to call itself the Petersburg Committee.
6
Stalin is often lumped together with Kamenev as supporting the government and the war
effort. See, among many examples, Tucker, Stalin 164-65. The most frequently cited
evidence for this view is the recollections of A. Shliapnikov (Semnadtsaty god [ Moscow,
1923]), a radical Petrograd Bolshevik who charged that new editors Stalin, Kamenev and
M. K. Muranov had staged an editorial coup at Pravda, abandoning the previous militantly
anti-government line and instituting a more moderate policy. Mikhail Kalinin also noted a
major shift in the direction of Pravda (quoted in Trotsky, History, 3:141). There certainly
was a change in Pravda’s editorial line, especially from the perspective of radicals, but the
extent of Stalin’s responsibility for this is not known: even flimsy evidence about how and
by whom the paper’s editorial line was determined is lacking. The notion that Stalin
agreed with Kamenev’s positions is pure assumption, and equating Stalin’s calls to
pressure the government toward peace with Kamenev’s support for the war effort is not
justified.
7
See almost any page in LCW, vols. 21-23, which concern 1914-1917; the earliest
expressions of these views are at LCW, 21:15-41 (the quotation is from p. 41).
8
SW, 4:324-26.
9
SW, 2:3-11.
10
SW, 5:68-70.
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19
11
Two Tactics is at LCW, 9:17-140.
12
Though Lenin recognized that a constituent assembly was a goal of the revolutionary
provisional government, he argued that Social Democrats should not support the call for a
constituent assembly because monarchists already used the slogan to devitalize the
forces of revolution; moreover, if the power to act was already in the hands of the
revolutionary provisional government, he doubted whether a constituent assembly had a
significant role to play in the revolutionary process (LCW, 10:32-33, 45, 90).
13
LCW, 9:29-31. Later, in The Victory of the Cadets, Lenin made clear that participating in
a revolutionary provisional government established by the bourgeois could not entail
cooperating with bourgeois parties (LCW, 10:276).
14
Two Tactics; quotations are from LCW, 9:46, 111-14, 120 (emphases in the original).
15
The Victory of the Cadets, LCW 10:201-76; quotations are from pp. 203 and 243-45
(emphases in the original).
16
LCW, 9:18, 47, 122.
17
LCW, 9:28-29, 56-57, 122 (emphases in the original); 10:276.
18
The Trans-Siberian took Stalin through Perm and other cities, where crowds greeted the
returning revolutionaries and speeches were exchanged. See Smith, Young Stalin, 324.
19
SW, 3:1-3, 12-13 (emphases in the original).
20
SW, 3:14-15.
21
SW, 3:14-15 (emphasis added).
22
Examples of this practice are found in chapters xxxx, following.
23
LCW, 9:136.
24
SW, 3:2, 13-14.
25
SW, 3:13, 15-16.
26
Deutscher, Stalin, 132-33, recognizes that Stalin's views "were a good many degrees
more to the left" than those of Kamenev, who favored support for the Provisional
Government.
27
SW, 3:4-7, 10-11 (emphasis in the original).
28
On the trials and for speculation about other possible reasons for Stalin's tacit support
for Kamenev, see Slusser, 13-15.
29
SW, 3:6-7,11.
30
SW, 3:7-9 (emphases in the original).
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20
31
SW, 3:16.
32
Slusser, 31, notes that Stalin's position revealed his "complete disregard for Lenin's
writings on the war."
33
Text in McNeal, Stalin’s Works, 185-86. This section was deleted from subsequent
editions of the collection and was not included in Stalin’s collected works.
34
Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (hereafter cited as Trotsky,
History), 3 vol. (New York, 1932), 3:142.
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