Stalin

Stalin directed talks to restore diplomatic relations with Britain (severed in mid-1927). The negotiations, supported by British industrialists, were launched after the Labour party won elections and the Labourite Ramsay MacDonald was returned as prime minister (in June 1929). “No haste should be displayed on the British question,” he instructed Molotov, denigrating deputy foreign affairs commissar Maxim Litvinov. “Remember we are waging a struggle (negotiations with enemies is struggle) not with England alone, but with the whole capitalist world, for the MacDonald government is the vanguard of the capitalist governments in the work of ‘humiliating’ and ‘bridling’ the Soviet government with ‘new,’ more ‘diplomatic,’ more ‘masked,’ in a word, more ‘valid’ methods. The MacDonald government wants to show the whole capitalist world that it can take more from us (with the help of ‘soft’ methods) than Mussolini, Poincaré, and Baldwin, that it can be a greater Shylock than the capitalist Shylock himself. And it wants this because only in this way can it win over the trust of its own bourgeoisie (and not only its bourgeoisie). We would be the bottom of the barrel if we could not manage to reply to these arrogant bastards briefly and to the point: ‘You won’t get a friggin’ thing from us.’”⁸⁸

Stalin was assiduously courting Maxim Gorky, the Russian writer, to return permanently from Italy, and in 1929, for the second year in a row, he visited the USSR. “I heard Gorky evidently went to Sochi,”—Stalin’s wife, Nadya, wrote to him on August 28.⁸⁹ “He will probably visit you, a pity, without me.” After traveling down the Volga, Gorky made it to Tiflis and, apparently, Sochi, but soon began spitting blood and cut his trip short.⁹⁰ Nadya was in Moscow to sit entrance exams for the Industrial Academy. “I send you a big kiss, like the kiss you gave me when we parted,” she wrote to her husband in the August 28 letter, delivered by airplane. He wrote the next day about how “I have already managed to take two medicinal baths. I think I’ll take ten.” On September 1, he wrote that he had evidently “been close to pneumonia,” and still suffered from a persistent cough. “As soon as you get 6–7 free days, get down here to Sochi. How are things with the exam? I kiss you, my Tatka.”⁹¹

Nadya wrote the next day of daily life in the capital, “I must say that the mood about food supplies, among students and teachers, is only so-so; everyone is worn out by the queues.” She added knowingly, “Do not be angry at such details.”⁹² She had the further audacity to intervene on behalf of a member of Pravda’s editorial collegium, the secretary of its party cell, Kovalev, who had fallen afoul for publishing a critical article about the need for criticism, without seeking prior authorization from the Central Committee. But Kovalev had received authorization from higher-ups at Pravda. “I cannot be indifferent about the fate of such a good worker and comrade of mine,” Nadya wrote to Stalin, revealing that she knew a politburo meeting had been scheduled to adjudicate the matter. (Nadya also wrote, “And, if you can, send 50 rubles, I do not have a kopeck left.” Stalin sent her 120 rubles.) He accepted her account of Kovalev’s scapegoating (“I think you are right”) and sent a telegram to Molotov that same evening asking to delay any decision. The next day, Stalin instructed Orjonikidze and Molotov to establish firmer control over Pravda. Orjonikidze wrote to Stalin that “Kovalev has so far not been touched even though he committed a mass of idiocies. I agree with you that the leaders of Pravda are more at fault.” (Kovalev would be fired from Pravda all the same.) Orjonikidze pointedly added, “I must say, the sooner you return, the better.”⁹³

Molotov and Orjonikidze had just written a joint letter to Stalin (September 13, 1929), pleading for newspaper criticism of leading officials to be reined in, but that same day, Stalin wrote back, “I consider your proposal risky in that it could objectively lead to curbing of self-criticism, which is unacceptable.” The next day, he added that “full-on self-criticism activates the mass and creates a state of siege for all and all kinds of bureaucrats. This is a great achievement.”⁹⁴