Stalin: A Biography

By the start of the clandestine Sixth Party Congress in late July there was no doubt about Stalin’s eminence among Bolsheviks. He was chosen by the Central Committee to give its official report as well as another ‘on the political situation’. Frissons of past mutual hostility no longer bothered Stalin and Sverdlov. As Central Committee Secretary, Sverdlov did not represent a proper rival to Stalin. Indeed Sverdlov was an administrator par excellence and although could also be called upon to give rousing speeches in his booming bass voice, he had no aspirations to an independent political persona: he left it to others to think up policies. This was a partner after Stalin’s own heart as he sought the limelight in the Bolshevik party.

The July Days in Petrograd had had a damaging impact on the party in the provinces, and delegates from the provinces grumbled that the Central Committee had mishandled affairs in the capital and overlooked the needs of the rest of the party. Stalin stood up undaunted. The criticism, he noted:

comes down to the comments that the Central Committee kept no contact with the provinces and concentrated its activity in Petrograd. The charge of isolation from the provinces is not without foundation. But there was no chance of covering the entire provincial network. The charge that the Central Committee really turned into a Petersburg Committee has partial validity. That’s how it was. But it was here in Petrograd that Russia’s politics were swirling.

Having dealt with the objections, he insisted that the Congress should focus on future strategy. At present the soviets remained under the control of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, and Lenin — still hiding in Finland — wanted to drop the slogan of ‘All Power to the Soviets!’ Stalin quietly resisted this move. He understood that if the party was going to gain popularity it needed to project itself as the eager agent of the ‘mass organisations’.

Stalin also made a notable contribution to the debate ‘on the political situation’. Yevgeni Preobrazhenski, a promising young delegate (who was to join the Central Committee in 1919), wanted a greater emphasis on the need for revolutions elsewhere in Europe. Stalin disagreed:³¹

The possibility is not excluded that Russia may prove to be the very country that paves the way to socialism. Until now not a single country enjoys such freedom as Russia and has tried to establish workers’ control of production. Moreover, the base of our revolution is wider than in Western Europe where the proletariat directly confront the bourgeoisie in complete isolation. Here the workers are supported by the poorest strata of the peasantry. Finally, the apparatus of state power in Germany functions incomparably better than the imperfect apparatus of our bourgeoisie which is a dependency of European capital. We must reject the outmoded idea that only Europe can show us the way. There is dogmatic Marxism and there is creative Marxism. I stand on the ground of the latter.

This statement acquired significance several years later when Stalin, by then the Party General Secretary, demanded that the focus of party policies should be directed at constructing ‘socialism in a single country’.³²