Stalin: A Biography

The Kamenevs and Baikalov had prejudices that disabled them from appreciating that Stalin was no ignoramus. They were fluent conversationalists. They came from well-to-do families in which such exchanges were normal: Kamenev’s father was an engineer and businessman, Baikalov’s the owner of a gold mine. Both Kamenev and Baikalov had been educated in gimnazias.⁹ They were culturally confident in public whereas Stalin still spoke haltingly in Russian,¹⁰ and four years among the Ostyaks had done nothing to enhance his linguistic facility. Baikalov deplored Stalin’s failure to be witty. (Intellectuals were meant to be scintillating conversationalists.) Kamenev and Baikalov also underestimated the virtues of silence. When listening to Kamenev, Stalin felt he was learning. All his life he devoted himself to accumulating knowledge. His attentiveness, memory and analytical skill were razor-sharp even if he did not brag about this to others; and although his Marxism lacked the range of other Bolshevik leaders, he was working to extend himself. At any rate when Stalin was among individuals who encouraged him to relax, he was a delightful purveyor of jokes and mimicry. He also understood Russian perfectly on the page and was an excellent editor of Russian-language manuscripts.¹¹ He was undervalued, and quietly he resented the fact.¹²

This would not have mattered in the annals of Russian and global history if a second event had not spun him around in the winter of 1916–17. The cause was political tumult in Petrograd. Nicholas II spent an unhappy Christmas. The one bright spot was Brusilov’s December 1916 offensive, which pushed the Germans back several miles. It was a long-overdue Russian military success. But the rest of the news was grim. Leaders of the conservative and liberal parties in the Fourth State Duma murmured ever more openly about the need for a change of regime if the armed forces were ever to defeat the Central Powers. One of them, Alexander Guchkov, sounded out the generals for a coup d’état. The dynasty’s reputation was in tatters. Rasputin, the ‘holy man’ who had helped to alleviate the effects of the haemophilia of the heir to the throne Alexei, had been assassinated in December but the stories about him — his gambling, philandering, blaspheming and political venality — continued to cling to Nicholas and Empress Alexandra. In fact it is doubtful that the liberals or conservatives could have done much better. The prolongation of the war put immense and inevitable strain on transport and administration; it also made unavoidable the printing of money to finance the war effort, and this was bound to cause inflation. Nicholas II dispersed the Duma on 26 February 1917. He was determined to keep hold of the situation.

This might have worked if popular opinion had not been so hostile to the Romanovs. Peasants were complaining about fixed grain prices and about the deficit in industrial goods as the result of the priority given to the production of armaments and military equipment. Garrison soldiers disliked the possibility that they might be mobilised to the front. Workers were angry about the deterioration of living and working conditions. Even if they had gained higher wages, the effect was ruined by the devalued currency. Factory strikes occurred in December 1916 and were put down with severity. Yet the grievances remained.

Unbeknown to the revolutionaries in Achinsk, industrial conflict recurred in Petrograd in the last week of February 1917. Trouble erupted among female textile workers on International Women’s Day and quickly spread to the workforces in the Putilov armaments plant. The dispatch of garrison troops to control the crowds was counterproductive because soldiers took the side of the strikers and either joined them or handed over their weapons. Order collapsed in the capital. Police fled, generals panicked. The politicians in the dispersed Fourth State Duma sensed that an opportunity to settle accounts with the Romanov monarchy had at last arrived, but lacked the nerve to take action. Even the revolutionary parties were in a quandary. The suppression of the December strikes made them pause for thought. The clandestine networks of Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had not yet been repaired and morale was still at a low ebb. But the fervour of the strikers was unquenchable, and soon there were demands for the formation of a Petrograd Soviet.