Stalin: A Biography

The position of Stalin and Kamenev was soon to be a matter of shame for them, and Stalin apologised for his failure to take a more radical view; but he had not been as moderate as his later enemies, especially Trotski, liked to suggest. It is true that he refused to attack the Mensheviks in public. Equally undeniable is Stalin’s espousal of a policy of mere ‘pressure’ upon the Provisional Government.²⁵ Yet he consistently denounced those Mensheviks who advocated straightforward defence of the country. Stalin demanded more; he proposed that Bolsheviks should co-operate only with Mensheviks who accepted the line of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal Conferences and actively campaigned for an end to the Great War. He did not want unity at any cost.²⁶ Moreover, he wanted the Petrograd Soviet to go on intimidating the Provisional Government. The Soviet, he declared, should work to bind ‘metropolitan and provincial democracy’ together and ‘turn itself at the necessary moment into an organ of revolutionary power mobilising all the healthy forces of the people against counter-revolution. The immediate objective was to ensure that the Provisional Government did not go over to the side of the counter-revolution. The speedy convocation of a constitutional assembly was essential.²⁷

Nor did Stalin fail to introduce a theme untouched by Pravda before he returned: the national question. He demanded linguistic equality for the non-Russian nations. He called for regional self-rule. More than any other Bolshevik in Petrograd in March 1917 he understood that Bolshevism had to appeal to the peoples of the borderlands. Deliberately he opposed talk of federalism.²⁸ Orthodox Bolsheviks aimed at forming a unitary state and Stalin agreed with this; but ‘self-determination’ was possible within the framework of the policy he and Lenin had proposed before the war. ‘National oppression’ had to be eradicated, and the Provisional Government as a cabinet pursuing the interests of capitalism had not shown the necessary sympathy.²⁹

Kamenev and Stalin continued with their combative programme at the unofficial gathering of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks from across the country which was held at the end of March 1917. The Russian Bureau selected him to speak to the joint debate on the Provisional Government. His criticism of the post-Romanov regime was a damning one:³⁰

The elites — our bourgeoisie and the West European one — got together for a change in the décor, for the substitution of one tsar for another. They wanted an easy revolution like the Turkish one and a little freedom for the waging of war — a small revolution for a large victory. Yet the lower strata — workers and soldiers — deepened the revolution, destroying the foundations of the old order. Thus there were two currents in motion — from below and from above — which put forward two governments, two different forces: 1) the Provisional Government supported by Anglo-French capital, and 2) the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Power was divided between these two organs and neither of them has the fullness of power. Tensions and conflict between them exists and cannot but exist.

Stalin finished by saying that political rupture with the ‘bourgeoisie’ was desirable and that ‘the sole organ capable of taking power is the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on an All-Russia scale’.³¹