The Russian editors of the collection that constitutes our main source on this subject1 write in their introduction that Lenin’s ideas on the place and role of nationalities in the state underwent a major transformation. He moved from a firm belief in the virtues of centralism to a ‘recognition of the inevitability of federalism’. At the outset, he believed that national specificities should be accommodated inside a unitary state, but then he proceeded to defend the creation of states on an ethnic basis which would enter into contractual relations with one another. He switched from outright rejection of cultural autonomy to acknowledging the territorial and extraterritorial aspects of such autonomy. The opinions of Trotsky, Rakovsky, Mdivani, Skrypnik, Makharadze, Sultan-Galiev and other people close to Lenin developed in a similar direction, usually independently of each other (with the exception of Lenin, none of them would die of natural causes).
Stalin was a consistent supporter of what his opponents called ‘unitarism’. His report on problems of federalism, delivered as early as January 1918 to the All-Russian Soviet Congress, was an ardent plea for this doctrine. Later, in a note to Lenin dated 12 June 1920 which does not feature in his Collected Works, he wrote: ‘Our soviet form of federation suits the nations of Tsarist Russia as their road to internationalism … These nationalities either never possessed states of their own in the past or, if they did, long ago lost them. That is why the soviet (centralized) form of federation is accepted by them without any particular friction.’ On numerous occasions during 1918–20 Stalin stressed the centralized character of the Soviet Federation, which was manifestly the direct heir of the Tsarist federation ‘one and indivisible’. It included such ‘autonomies’ as Poland, Finland, the Ukraine, Crimea, Turkestan, Kirgizia, Siberia and the Transcaucasus, which might one day tend to become separate entities. But Stalin firmly underlined that ‘autonomy does not mean independence and does not involve separation’. The central power should retain all key functions firmly in its own hands. According to the editors of the collection we are using, for Stalin granting autonomy was mainly an administrative device en route to a ‘socialist unitarism’. Stalin’s argument was nothing but an expression of the Russian notion of a ‘super-state’ (derzhava, a term we shall often have to employ) – the product of an expansion based on Russia’s messianic role. In this conception, incorporating other nations served the cause of progress. The Russian editors, we might interject, may not have realized that other imperialisms suffered from comparable messianism. What was new was Stalin’s emphasis on the ‘supra-Russian’ (sverkhrusskost’) dimension of his own imperial policy when contesting Lenin’s conceptions, which were now presented by Stalin as a nationalist deviation harmful to the interests of the Soviet state.
On 10 August 1922, the Politburo decided to create a commission to examine the relations between the Russian Federation and the other republics, which for now enjoyed the status of independent states. Stalin, the nationalities expert since before the revolution, who became party general-secretary in the same year, declared himself ready to present his plan the very next day. The five independent Soviet states, linked by a form of contractual agreement, were the Ukraine, Belorussia and the three Transcaucasian states: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaidzhan. What Stalin proposed for them was ‘autonomization’, which simply meant that the republics would formally become part of the Russian Federation. The status of the remaining areas – Bukhara, Khorezm, the Far Eastern Republic – was to be left open for the time being. Treaties should be signed with them on customs, foreign trade, foreign and military affairs, and so on. The governing bodies of the Russian Federation – the Central Executive Committee, the Council of Commissars, the Council of Labour and Defence – should formally encompass the central soviet institutions of the republics being incorporated. Their own commissariats of foreign affairs, foreign trade, defence, railways, finance and communications should merge with those of Russia. The remainder – justice, education, internal affairs, agriculture, state inspection – would remain under their jurisdiction. And, not surprisingly, the local political police were to be merged with Russia’s own GPU.
Stalin explained that these proposals should not be published yet; they should be debated by the party’s national central committees and later translated into formal legislation by the soviets of the republics – their executive committees or congresses of soviets. In the most straightforward manner imaginable, the principle of ‘independence’, which was in any case nothing more than ‘verbiage’ as far as Stalin was concerned, would be eliminated, with these republics becoming mere administrative units of a centralized Russian state.
Waves of protest soon mounted against this policy. On 15 September 1922 the Georgian Central Committee rejected ‘autonomization’ as ‘premature’. Ordzhonikidze, Kirov, Kakhiani and Gogoberidze voted against this decision. They were all of them Stalin’s men from the ‘Transcaucasian Party Committee’ – a body imposed by Moscow to oversee the three republics that was a source of endless friction with national party leaderships. On 1 September 1922, Makharadze, a leading Georgian communist, complained to Lenin: ‘We are living in confusion and chaos.’ In the name of party discipline, the Transcaucasian Committee was imposing all sorts of decisions on the Georgian party that undermined the country’s independence. ‘Georgia’, he stressed, is ‘neither an Azerbaidzhan nor a Turkestan.’
In a letter addressed to Lenin on 22 September 1922, Stalin likewise complained about the ‘total chaos’ in relations between the centre and the periphery, with its train of conflicts and grievances. But all fault now lay with the other side. Stalin railed against the small republics ‘playing the game of independence’. According to him, ‘the unified federal national economy is becoming a fiction’. The alternatives were as follows. Either full independence, in which case the centre would withdraw and not meddle in the affairs of the republics, leaving them to run their own railways, trade, and foreign affairs. Common problems would require constant negotiations between equals and the decisions of the Russian Federation’s supreme bodies would not be binding on other republics. Or they should opt for genuine unification in a single economic unit, with the other republics submitting to the decisions of the Russian Federation’s higher instances. In other words, an imaginary independence would be replaced by an authentic internal autonomy for the republics in the spheres of language, culture, justice, internal affairs and agriculture. And Stalin lectured his colleagues:
In four years of Civil War, we were obliged to display liberalism towards the republics. As a result, we helped to form hard-line ‘social-independentists’ among them, who regard the Central Committee’s decisions as simply being Moscow’s. If we do not transform them into ‘autonomies’ immediately, the unity of the soviet republics is a lost cause. We are now busy bothering about how not to offend these nationalities. But if we carry on like this, in a year’s time we’ll be verging on the break-up of the party.
In his text, Stalin reiterated the main lines of his ‘autonomization’ project. He did not anticipate Lenin’s reaction.
The least that can be said is that Lenin was not content with Stalin’s memorandum; he sensed trouble. In a note to Kamenev dated 26 September 1922, he asked the latter to examine the proposals for the integration of the republics into the Russian Federation. He had already discussed the issue with Sokolnikov, would be seeking a meeting with Stalin, and was tomorrow seeing Mdivani, the Georgian leader accused of the deviation of ‘independentism’ (nezavisimstvo) by Stalin’s supporters. He added that in his view, ‘Stalin tends to rush things too much’, and that amendments would be required. Lenin had already sent some to Stalin and the latter had accepted the first and most important of them, replacing his formula – ‘joining the Russian Federation’ – by Lenin’s – ‘a formal unification with the Russian Federation in a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of Europe and Asia’. And Lenin explained: we must not destroy their independence; we must construct a higher tier, consisting in a federation of independent republics enjoying equal rights. There were further amendments Lenin wanted to discuss with Stalin and he also wished to meet with other leaders. The amendments he had proposed thus far were just preliminary; more would be sent out to all members of the Politburo. This note was simply a first draft: after discussing matters with Mdivani and other leaders, he would suggest new changes. But he requested that the text in its current form be communicated to the whole Politburo.
Stalin’s reaction to Lenin’s proposals was acerbic. In a note he sent to members of the Politburo on 27 September 1922, he professed himself in agreement with the changes to paragraph one suggested by Lenin. He had no choice. But he rejected all the others with snide remarks like ‘premature’, ‘absurd’, ‘pointless’, and so on. He sought to turn the accusation of undue haste back against Lenin: ‘His haste risks encouraging the independentists’ and demonstrated the error of Lenin’s ‘national liberalism’. The argument is not very coherent. Stalin was furious because he had to retreat from his project of ‘autonomization’. Unable to contain himself, he sought to retrieve the initiative by pointing to a ‘deviation’ (‘national liberalism’) that could rally his own supporters against Lenin. Defeat was not something that Stalin could easily live with. But it was just around the corner.
In an exchange of notes between Kamenev and Stalin during a Politburo meeting on 28 September 1922, Kamenev scribbled that Lenin had ‘decided to go to war on the issue of independence’ and had asked him to ‘go to Tbilisi to meet the leaders offended by Stalin’s supporters’. In response Stalin wrote: ‘We should get tough with Hitch [Lenin]. If a few Georgian Mensheviks can influence some Georgian Communists, who in turn influence Lenin, one can ask: what does all this have to do with “independence”?’ But Kamenev warned him: ‘I think that if V. I. [Lenin] persists, opposing him [Kamenev’s emphasis] would only make things worse.’
What was Kamenev up to? Was he not being duplicitous in doing Lenin’s bidding, while informing Stalin? Or did he think that Lenin would not be around much longer?
Stalin responded to the last note as follows: ‘I don’t know. Let him do as he sees fit.’ This was a practice in which Stalin excelled: manoeuvring to present his retreat in the best possible light. He wrote to all members of the Politburo to inform them that ‘a slightly abridged, more precise version’ was in the process of being prepared, and that he and his committee on relations between the republics would be submitting it to the Politburo. But the revised text was Lenin’s: all the republics (including Russia) were joining to form a common Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but retained the right to leave it. This state’s highest body was to be the ‘Union Executive Committee’, on which all republics would be represented in proportion to their populations. This Committee would nominate a Union Council of Commissars.
Since Stalin’s game is what interests us here, we shall not linger over the details of the government constitution. Compelled to give way on his project of autonomy, Stalin did not give up on attaining his main objective by roundabout means, manipulating the language that defined the prerogatives of the Moscow-based future commissariats (i.e. ministries) so as to nip any desire for independence in the bud, whatever the constitutional niceties. For their part, the republics were all too aware of what was at stake: without proper, clearly stated constitutional guarantees, the ministries based in Moscow would in fact be in the hands of the Russian Federation or, in plain language, in Russian hands.
This point was broached in a lengthy memorandum to Stalin from Christian Rakovsky, the head of the Ukrainian government, on 28 September 1922. In essence, this is what he said: Your draft refers to independent republics deferring to the centre. But it says nothing about their own republican rights, executive committees, or councils of commissars. The new nationalities policy would deal a blow to efforts to revive local economies, since it would significantly hamper their room for initiative. They had no material means and were being deprived of the rights required to develop their wealth and acquire what they currently lacked.
While Rakovsky appreciated the need for a federal government that was in a position to act, he thought that this could be achieved provided republican interests were secured by clearly formulated rights. He saw in Stalin’s proposals not so much the project of a federation as the liquidation of the republics. This, he thought, could only harm the USSR internally and internationally. Lenin had the same concerns and was now ready for a fight. It was the so-called ‘Georgian incident’ that sounded the final alarm in his mind.
During the Georgian Central Committee’s struggle against forcible incorporation into the Transcaucasian Federation, Stalin’s irascible representative Ordzhonikidze had slapped one of the Georgian leaders.2 Following this incident, the Georgian Central Committee collectively resigned, while vigorously criticizing the new project for the USSR in its entirety. There was a danger of the affair turning into a prolonged scandal. Lenin initially misunderstood what had occurred, but he rapidly made inquiries and learned that Stalin had sent Dzerzhinsky, accompanied by two other non-Russians, to investigate the conflict. Stalin’s envoys sided unambiguously with Ordzhonikidze. Deeply disturbed by this incident, Lenin arrived at the conclusion that on the national question Stalin and his associates were behaving as ‘representatives of a domineering great power’ (velikoderzhavniki) – the term used by Lenin, but possibly inspired by the Georgians who were in constant touch with him. On 6 October 1922 he wrote a letter to Kamenev that began half-jokingly and ended in deadly earnest: ‘I am declaring war on great-Russian chauvinism: it is necessary to insist absolutely that the Union’s Central Executive Committee be chaired in turn by a Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, etc. Absolutely.’
Lenin’s programmatic text on the national question, dictated on 30–31 December 1922, reflects this new perception of the state of the system.3 It was a unique – critical and self-critical – document, in which Lenin expressed his sense of guilt before the country’s workers for not having intervened sufficiently firmly and energetically on the ‘notorious problem of autonomy’, officially called the problem of the USSR. Illness had hitherto prevented him from doing so. The gist of what he said is as follows: The unity of the apparatus is a prerequisite, but what apparatus are we referring to? An apparatus borrowed from the Tsarist past, a mixture of Tsarist and petty bourgeois chauvinists, traditionally used to oppress the people. We should at least wait until this apparatus improves, since otherwise the much-bruited principle of the right to secede from the Union will be nothing but a piece of paper, offering the other nationalities no protection against the istinno russkii chelovek, biurokrat, nasil’nik, velikorusskaia shval’ – a set of derogatory epithets that is difficult to translate, but which basically refer to the brutish Russian nationalist oppressor. And Lenin pursued his indictment: Defenders of the project claim that administration deemed important for the preservation of local cultures and mentalities is being turned over to the republics. But is this really the case? And another question: What measures are being taken to defend the ethnic minorities (inorodtsy) from the authentically Russian bully (ot istinno russkogo derzhimordy)? The answer is: none.
It is important to understand the vehemence of Lenin’s condemnation of the oppressive characteristics of the Russian bureaucracy and Russian ultra-nationalists. Such oppression dated back centuries – hence the need to dispel the distrust of the ethnic minorities who had suffered so much injustice, and who were (Lenin insisted) particularly sensitive to any form of discrimination. And he proceeds: ‘In his haste and his infatuation with administrative methods, not to mention his animosity towards social nationalism, Stalin has played a fatal role. Animosity [ozloblenie] is the worst thing in politics.’ With these words, Lenin put his finger on something that should have disqualified Stalin from a position of power in the first place.
What was to be done? Lenin responded by stating that the creation of the USSR was necessary; the diplomatic apparatus (the best thing we have) should remain in the centre. The use of national languages should be firmly guaranteed. Ordzhonikidze should be punished. Stalin and Dzerzhinsky were responsible for this whole Russian nationalist campaign. More generally, the USSR project should be rethought in its entirety and, if necessary, redrawn. This could be done at the next Congress of the Soviets. Let the centre retain military and diplomatic functions; all other functions should revert to the republics. Lenin reassured his audience that there was no reason to fear a fragmentation of power. If deployed judiciously and impartially, the party’s authority would be sufficient to achieve the requisite unity. ‘It would’, Lenin wrote,
be unacceptable, just as the East is awakening, for us to undermine our prestige by bullying and committing injustices against our own national minorities. We must criticize foreign imperialism. But it is even more important to understand that when we ourselves adopt an imperialist attitude towards oppressed nationalities, if only on points of detail, we are reneging on our own principled commitments.
It should by now be obvious that Lenin’s attack on Stalin was part of an attack on what he regarded as a replica of the old great-Russian imperial ideology (velikoderzhavnichestvo). And there can be no doubt about it: Lenin was identifying and attacking political enemies. He sensed what was going to happen (we might speak of foresight, even inspiration). For this was indeed the direction in which Stalin was going and which, in due course, would become official policy.
It is no wonder, then, that in his ‘testament’ Lenin made it clear that Stalin should be removed from his party post. Aware of his physical debility, Lenin asked Trotsky in a note of 5 March 1923 to ‘please take upon yourself defence of the Georgian case in the Central Committee’. The same day, in a letter addressed to the Georgians Mdivani and Makharadze, he wrote: ‘I am following your case with all my heart.’ But his political activity ceased abruptly four days later, on 9 March. On that fatal day, a further extremely powerful stroke incapacitated him for good. Henceforth, until his death on 21 January 1924, he was incapable of doing anything except listening to Krupskaya read him press articles. He could understand what he was hearing, but bereft of speech he was able to react only by inarticulate sounds and by moving his eyes.
In the meantime, as requested, Trotsky had on 6 March 1923 written a strongly worded memorandum for the Politburo, in which he declared that ultra-statist tendencies must be resolutely and ruthlessly rejected and criticized Stalin’s theses on the national question. He stressed that a significant section of the Soviet central bureaucracy regarded the creation of the USSR as a way of beginning to eliminate all national and autonomous political entities (states, organizations, regions). This should be fought as an expression of imperialist and anti-proletarian attitudes. The party should be warned that, under the cover of so-called ‘unified commissariats’, the economic and cultural interests of the national republics were in fact being discounted.
Yet the following day, in a letter to Kamenev, Trotsky adopted a rather puzzling position. He wrote: ‘Stalin’s resolution on the national question is worthless and a sharp turn is needed’ – which accorded perfectly with Lenin’s personal appeal to him. But thereafter, one has the sense that Trotsky, aware of Lenin’s second stroke, was unsure of the next step. He suddenly displayed great magnanimity and a conciliatory attitude towards Stalin. He declared himself opposed to perestroika and did not wish to punish anyone:
I am against liquidating Stalin and expelling Ordzhonikidze. But I agree with Lenin in principle: nationalities policy should be radically changed; persecution of the Georgians must cease; administrative methods of pressurizing the party must come to an end; industrialization should be pursued more resolutely; and we must establish a collaborative spirit at the top. The intrigues must stop. We need honest collaboration.
Was Trotsky daydreaming out loud?
On 7 March 1923, Kamenev informed Zinoviev that Lenin had disavowed Ordzhonikidze, Stalin and Dzerzhinsky; had expressed his solidarity with Mdivani; and had sent Stalin a personal letter breaking off personal relations on account of the latter’s mistreatment of Krupskaya. Kamenev adds that Stalin responded with a brief, sour-tempered apology that will hardly satisfy the starik (old man). Lenin ‘will not be satisfied by a peaceful settlement in Georgia, but obviously wants certain organizational measures to be taken at the top’ (Kamenev’s emphasis). ‘You should be in Moscow at this time’, Kamenev concludes.
In the interim, Stalin had conducted a retreat, since the situation had become critical for him. He ordered Ordzhonikidze to go easier on the Georgians and seek a compromise (7 March 1923). The same day, he wrote to Trotsky accepting his amendments as ‘incontrovertible’. Fotieva, Lenin’s secretary, had meanwhile sent him the latter’s memorandum on the nationalities, adding that Lenin (by now stricken) intended to have it published, but had not given her any formal instructions to this effect. Fotieva also wrote to Kamenev, with a copy to Trotsky, to tell him how important this text and the nationalities issue were to Lenin. Kamenev declared himself in favour of publication. Trotsky wrote to other Central Committee members, explaining how Lenin had sent him this text and inviting them to read it.
On 6 April 1923, Fotieva wrote to Stalin again, offering him an escape clause: Lenin did not consider the text finished and ready for publication and Maria Ulianova (Lenin’s sister) had advised her that Lenin had not given instructions for it to be published. All that could be done was to communicate it to participants in the forthcoming Twelfth Party Congress.
It is likely that Stalin ‘suggested’ this to one or other of the women, but it is ultimately irrelevant. He got what he wanted: there were to be no direct attacks on him at the congress. On 16 April he declared to Central Committee members: ‘as it turns out, Lenin’s article cannot be published’; and attacked Trotsky for having kept such an important document from the delegates who were gathering – an act he described as ‘disloyal’. In short, he lied, but had no hesitation about lying further: ‘I think it should be published, but unfortunately, as Fotieva’s letter indicates, the text cannot be published because it hasn’t yet been revised by comrade Lenin.’
The Presidium of the Twelfth Party Congress made all Lenin’s notes on the national question available to members of the very restricted ‘council of elders’ (sen’orenkonvent). It also informed them of the decisions of the Central Committee plenum on the Georgian question. But participants in the session dealing with these questions, although deeply involved with them, were not to see these materials.
The Presidium also declared that the Central Committee had only learned of the content of Lenin’s notes on the eve of the congress, not as a result of the action of any its members but solely on account of Lenin’s instructions and his deteriorating health. The rumour that someone on the Central Committee had blocked their publication was sheer slander. Trotsky was thus exonerated from Stalin’s charge of keeping the text from congress delegates.
This bickering about what to do with the texts, and about whom to show them to, were so many petty intrigues. But the stakes were high: who would stay in power and what was the shape of that power to be. Was the dictatorship to pursue (or resume) the populist and social orientation of Bolshevism? Or was it going to adopt, in theory and practice, a deeply conservative great-power orientation (velikoderzhavnost’) directed against Bolshevism, whose cadres were still socialists and opposed to the perpetuation of a form of state harking back to past models?
Astonishingly, in his note to Kamenev Trotsky lost his sense of reality. If Stalin’s orientation represented such a threat, was it really sufficient, in order to fight it, to offer the partisans of great-power chauvinism (velikoderzhavniki) a feeble compromise, asking them to demonstrate more loyalty and call a halt to their intrigues and posturing? Asking Stalin for loyalty? The episodes reveals how little Lenin’s closest collaborators understood Stalin’s ability to manipulate and outmanoeuvre them at will. The ‘old man’ was not just very irate, as Kamenev seemed to think. For him, removing Stalin and co. meant exorcizing the spectre of an ideology and political orientation that was alien to Bolshevism and represented a mortal danger for Russia’s future. As subsequent developments were to demonstrate, Lenin proved truly prophetic.
The decision to leave Stalin and his supporters in power indicates that at this fateful moment Trotsky understood neither Lenin nor Stalin. Known for his many brilliant analyses, historical and conjunctural, Trotsky was at the nadir of his political vigilance in 1923. Stalin had never been so vulnerable. A Leninist coalition, or a majority supporting Lenin’s positions, was still possible. Revealing the whole of Lenin’s testament to the Twelfth Congress and provoking a debate, rather than playing the game of ‘re-educating Stalin’, was the last serious chance for a new course. But Trotsky let it slip, even though we know that he soon moved into outright opposition to Stalin. The other two supposed Leninists in the Politburo, Zinoviev and Kamenev, were also deeply confused; deprived of Lenin’s leadership, they lost their bearings. Subsequently, they would form a ‘triumvirate’ with Stalin against Trotsky.
Was illness or extreme fatigue a factor in this massive failure of political acumen on Trotsky’s part, of which there were to be further examples? No doubt this is a possible explanation.4 But broader configurations of social and political forces, and the available alternatives at a given moment, are the framework in which leaders can win or lose, with the outcome sometimes seeming fortuitous. Yet ‘accidents’ happen when the factors in play are developing, are fluid, or are in a temporary stalemate.
It was utterly symptomatic that the ‘national question’ – i.e. the way in which the USSR and its government were to be constructed – should lead to a huge battle over the form and future of the Soviet state. Its outcome indicates that what was called ‘Bolshevism’ (or ‘Leninism’) was at this point vulnerable and in disarray, as it confronted both the enormous postwar task of putting the country on its feet again and, at the same time, the regime’s hitherto invisible negative features. The situation called for a good deal of rethinking, regrouping and adaptation. In other words it was a classic situation where the personalities of leaders can make an enormous difference in the choice of direction.
Lenin’s performance here was unique. Impressive at a political and human level amid this extraordinary imbroglio, it was the action of a dying, semi-paralysed man who remained lucid until the last fatal stroke.
For Stalin, of course, the issue was not so much the nationalities as the choice of strategic orientation: his project of ‘autonomization’ indicated one alternative for the regime and the character of state power. A careful reading of Lenin’s texts demonstrates that his priorities were different. Power considerations were not foreign to Lenin, but in this instance the way that the nationalities were treated was an issue in its own right – one that the state must supply an adequate response to. Thus, in both versions what was at stake was the soul of the dictatorship. In Lenin’s eyes, Stalin’s project basically harked back to an old-style imperial autocracy. And he intended to take advantage of the next session of the Supreme Soviet to rewrite the legislation on the USSR that had just been adopted and to restore to the republics the ministerial prerogatives befitting their independent status, retaining only foreign affairs and defence for the centre.
In fact, the numerous Union-level ministries proposed by Stalin were a bone of contention and source of resentment. The republics were in no doubt that they would merely be confiscated by Russia. And this was precisely Stalin’s goal. His clear and simple vision was inspired by the Civil War. Military power had settled the issue then. Now that peace had been restored to the country, a yet more powerful instrument must be forged: an untrammelled, unfettered, ultra-centralized and self-serving power – a war machine in peacetime. The role Stalin intended to play at the summit and the way in which he intended to set about reaching it – including the type of party he envisaged (if any) – were at the heart of his jigsaw puzzle.