Stalin: A Biography

What the Central Committee had not bargained for was that Lenin had ceased to believe — if ever he had believed — in the possibility of peaceful revolutionary development. On 15 September the Central Committee discussed a letter from him demanding the start of preparations for armed insurrection.³⁸ He said nothing about an all-socialist coalition. The thing for him was to overthrow Kerenski and set up a revolutionary administration. His frustrations in hiding were poured into writing. Articles flowed from his pen in Helsinki, each stipulating that the Bolshevik caucus should make no compromise at the Democratic State Conference: the time for talking had ended. In ‘Marxism and Insurrection’ he called for ‘the immediate transfer of power to the revolutionary democrats headed by the revolutionary proletariat’.³⁹ His summons to uprising caused consternation among several Central Committee members. At the same Central Committee meeting there was heated discussion, and Stalin confirmed his support for Lenin by proposing that the letter be sent to the most important party organisations for discussion; but the Central Committee in the end decided to burn the letter and keep only one copy for the records. This was agreed by a vote of six to four.⁴⁰

Bolshevik party policy on the central question of governmental power was in flux. Radical opinion was strengthened by Trotski’s return to open activity. Throughout the country, moreover, there were many socialist leaders and activists who sought the Provisional Government’s removal. More and more city soviets, trade unions and factory-workshop committees were acquiring Bolshevik majorities in late September and early October. Sooner or later the question had to be answered: were the Bolsheviks going to seize power? If so, when would they do it? And if they did it, would they act alone or in some kind of socialist alliance? Stalin, though, had made his choice. He no longer saw the point of compromise of any kind with the Mensheviks. (Trotski had made the same transition.) His future lay with the Bolsheviks and with them alone. His position in the Bolshevik Central Committee was firmly held but he had next to no political authority outside its framework. He was one of the most influential yet one of the most obscure of Bolsheviks. If he had died in September 1917, no one — surely — would have written his biography.

13. OCTOBER

Petrograd in October 1917 was more placid than at any time since the fall of the Romanovs. The schools and offices functioned without interruption. Shops opened normally. The post and tram systems operated smoothly. The weather was getting brisk; people were wrapping up well before going outdoors but as yet there was no snow. Calm prevailed in the Russian capital and heady mass meetings were a thing of the past. Leading Bolsheviks who plotted insurrection had reason to worry. What if Lenin was wrong and the popular mood had turned away from supporting a revolutionary change of regime?

Yet the subterranean strata of politics were shifting. Lenin, holed up in Helsinki since mid-July, was frustrated by the Bolshevik Central Committee’s refusal to organise an uprising against the Provisional Government. Instinct told him the time for action had arrived, and he decided to take a chance and return secretly to Petrograd. Bolshevik leaders who met him secretly in the capital had to weather the anger of his demands for an insurrection. He was softening them up for a confrontation at the Central Committee on 10 October. Twelve members attended. Everyone knew there would be trouble. The minutes of the meeting were skimpily recorded — and this means that no trace survives of Stalin’s contribution. At any rate the crucial statements appear to have been made by Sverdlov and Lenin. Sverdlov as Central Committee Secretary was keeper of information on the party’s organisational condition and political appeal across the country. Convinced by Lenin’s arguments in favour of an uprising, he put a positive gloss on his report by stressing the rise in party membership. This gave Lenin his chance: ‘The majority of the population is now behind us. Politically the situation is entirely mature for a transfer of power.’¹

Two Bolshevik Central Committee members opposed Lenin. One was Kamenev, who had never been a radical among Bolsheviks either in 1917 or earlier in the war. The other, surprisingly, was Zinoviev, who had been Lenin’s adjutant in the emigration before the February Revolution.² Kamenev and Zinoviev together carried the dispute to Lenin. They dismissed his extreme optimism and pointed out that many urban soviets had yet to be won by the Bolsheviks. They stressed that the party’s electoral following was all but confined to the towns. They cast doubt on the assumption that the rest of Europe was on the brink of revolution. They feared the outbreak of civil war in Russia.³