Stalin: A Biography

The months between the February and October Revolutions were momentous for Russia. Politics became free and visible. Petrograd was festooned with red flags and devoid of police. Its festivals were those of the socialist leadership of the capital’s Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet. The ‘Internationale’ was sung on ceremonial occasions. There was bravado everywhere and socialism was at a peak of popularity. The Provisional Government under the liberal Georgi Lvov ruled only by leave of the Petrograd Soviet. The political far right vanished after the fall of the monarchy. Order on the streets was maintained by ‘mass organisations’ such as the Red Guard. Military officers learned to consult their troops. Public life was dedicated to the service of the people. Camaraderie was demanded on all official occasions. If decisions had to be taken, the assumption was that they would be preceded by debate and that workers, peasants and soldiers should have influence over what was resolved. Soviets sprang up in towns across the country. Elected by the lower social orders, they intervened in public affairs whenever their leaders — the Mensheviks and the Social-Revolutionaries — felt that the bodies of central or local government contravened the agreement with the Provisional Government on universal civil freedom and defensive war.

Stalin worked with Lenin to prepare a conference of Bolsheviks later in April. He was one of many leading Bolsheviks in Petrograd and the provinces shifting their opinions under the impact of the debate started by Lenin. They were joining those other Bolsheviks who had always resented giving the slightest support to the Provisional Government. Several Mensheviks even converted to Bolshevism in disdain for their official leadership’s policy, and the entire Inter-District Organisation, which had previously been anti-Bolshevik, joined the Bolsheviks in May.¹ The gap between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had always been wide but the original émigré split in 1903 had been followed by several attempts at reunification; and although the Prague Conference of 1912 had divided the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party yet again, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in many Russian cities continued to co-operate with each other for many weeks after the February Revolution. But steadily the radical difference in policies counted and the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions definitively became entirely separate parties.

Stalin, even after accepting Lenin’s April Theses, did not adopt all the leader’s policies. Lenin demanded state ownership of the land. Stalin continued to argue that it would alienate the peasants who wished to have total control over the countryside.² The land, he insisted, should be transferred to the peasantry without conditions,³ and perhaps he thought that once Lenin gained direct experience of Russian conditions he would see the point. Stalin also shunned the more provocative of Lenin’s slogans on the war. Like Kamenev, Stalin omitted to call on soldiers and workers to turn the existing ‘imperialist war’ into a ‘European civil war’ between Europe’s proletariats and its bourgeoisies.⁴ Kamenev and Stalin understood that if the Bolsheviks were to increase their popularity, they had to stress that they were the only party in Russia which could bring about peace. Equally noteworthy was Stalin’s avoidance of terms such as ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’.⁵ He had his ears open to attitudes in society. Workers and soldiers saw the downfall of the monarchy as inaugurating an order of freedom and democracy. Ideas of dictatorship were regarded as characteristic of the monarchy overthrown in February 1917. Stalin defended his ideas — and it was not he but Lenin who eventually had to amend his position.⁶