Stalin: A Biography

Yet the other leading figures succeeded in persuading their comrades that they too were of exceptional cultural significance. Stalin before the Great War made no such claim for himself. Nor in subsequent years did he suggest that he had made an original contribution. He always claimed to have been merely a loyal Leninist.² He called himself a praktik, meaning that he was more a practical revolutionary than a theoretician. When he published ‘Anarchism or Socialism’ in 1906–7, many readers thought he could hardly have been the authentic author. His school friend Davrishevi assumed that another Bolshevik, perhaps Dzhughash-vili’s comrade Suren Spandaryan, had written it. But Spandaryan put Davrishevi right. It really was Stalin’s article.³ ‘Anarchism or Socialism’ was not a coruscating work. Stalin privately admitted this after the Second World War (when his comment was treated as extraordinarily modest).⁴ It was nevertheless a work of practical importance at the time of publication. This has been overlooked by his biographers, who have ignored the fact that anarchists were active in Tbilisi after the turn of the century. Georgia was recognised as a place where a fundamental challenge to the Imperial monarchy would take place. émigré anarchist leaders had sent propagandists on missions to Tbilisi. Stalin flung himself on the available literature on Marxism before writing his urgent reply.⁵

In fact he kept to Bolshevism’s general line before the Great War. He endorsed the precepts of strict party discipline as formulated in Lenin’s What Is To Be Done?; he also shared the Leninist viewpoint on revolutionary stages, dictatorship and class alliances in 1905. Rival versions of Marxism in the Russian Empire, he declared, were betrayals of the faith. He accentuated the need for leadership and a revolutionary vanguard and for the avoidance of ‘tailism’. The vanguard should organise insurrection and seize power. He was also unafraid to oppose projects put forward by Lenin himself and to do this in open debate. On most matters, though, he agreed with Lenin; and Lenin for his own part badly needed Dzhughashvili’s contributions on the national question. Whereas the Mensheviks had several theorists who wrote about the nationalities in the empire, the Bolsheviks had only Dzhughashvili (or Stalin, as he was invariably known in public from this period onwards). No wonder Lenin warmed to him.

Although several aspects of his thought surfaced only in his years of power, it is unlikely that they did not already exist. Stalin had grown up when imperial countries around the world were applying naked military force. Force based upon technological and organisational superiority ruled supreme. The British Empire covered a fifth of the world’s land surface. The age of blood and steel had arrived. Capitalism was triumphant. Marxists believed that socialism would achieve a further victory and that capitalism itself was destined for defeat. A new stage in the history of humankind was believed imminent. Radical Marxists anticipated civil war between the middle classes and the working classes on a global scale. From such conflict there would come good for following generations. Marxism justified the sacrifice of millions of human beings in the pursuit of revolution.

The perfect society was anticipated once the military conflict was ended. The poor would inherit the earth. This would be achieved through ‘proletarian dictatorship’. The need for repressive methods would persist until the resistance of the old propertied classes had been crushed. Although the dictatorship would be ruthless, Stalin and other Bolsheviks expected little trouble. The numerical and organisational weight of the proletariat, they believed, would soon crush all opposition. The old society would be eliminated and class privileges would be eradicated. The state would embed ‘modernity’ in all sectors of life, and it would be a modernity superior to the existing capitalist variants.⁶ Universal free schooling would be established. Material production would be standardised; the wastefulness of capitalism would be surmounted. Every citizen would enjoy access to work, food, shelter, healthcare and education. This militant set of ideas suited Stalin. He lived for conflict. He constantly wanted to dominate those around him. He had also found an ideology that suited this inclination. Everything about Bolshevism fitted his purposes: struggle, repression, proletarian hegemony, internal party rivalry, leadership and modernity; and already he saw himself as a true leader within a party which itself sought to lead the ‘proletarian masses’ into the brave new world.