Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

The First World War broke out a year after Stalin was exiled to Turukhansk. It caused a split in the international socialist movement, with many parties rallying to their country’s defence. As radical and intransigent as ever, Lenin not only opposed the war but called for socialists to work for the defeat of their own country. Lenin’s idea was to turn the international war into a civil war and into a class war that would trigger revolution in Russia and in all the warring states.

Stalin’s exile, scheduled to end in summer 1917, was cut short by a dramatic and unexpected event: the fall of the Tsar, Nicholas II. Forced to abdicate by a garrison mutiny and popular uprising in the Russian capital of Petrograd (formerly St Petersburg), the Tsar had also been under pressure from Duma politicians seeking democratic reform and from military leaders who hoped a dramatic gesture would stabilise the home front. The Tsarist administration was taken over by a Provisional Government intending to hold free elections to a constituent assembly charged with adopting a new, democratic constitution. Also vying for power were the Soviets, organs of popular mobilisation that had first appeared during the 1905 revolution and were rapidly revived in 1917. Dominated by socialists, they consisted of worker, peasant and soldier delegates and claimed to represent the population at large, unlike the elitist Duma, which, in any event, had not sat since December 1916.

When Stalin returned to Petrograd in March 1917, the most pressing political issue facing the Bolsheviks was their attitude to the Provisional Government: should they support it or not? Should they continue to oppose the war against Germany and its allies now that the Tsar was gone? Some Bolsheviks wanted to support the Provisional Government as the embodiment, together with the Soviets, of the ongoing democratic revolution in Russia and to moderate the party’s anti-war position. Others wanted to have nothing to do with the new government and to continue with Lenin’s ‘defeatist’ position. Initially, Stalin opted for a centrist stance that entailed supporting the Provisional Government as long as it fulfilled the demands of the Soviets while at the same time pressing the new regime to end Russia’s participation in the war.

Lenin returned to Russia from exile in Switzerland in April to demand outright opposition to the war and to the Provisional Government. He wanted the Soviets to take power and effect a rapid transition to a socialist revolution. Stalin initially resisted Lenin’s radical stance but was soon persuaded by him to change his position.

While Stalin did not go along with everything Lenin said or proposed in 1917, he sided with him at every major turning point. However, Stalin stood his ground on the question of land distribution to individual peasants as against the socialisation of agriculture.⁵⁵ Bolshevik support for peasant land seizures in 1917 was crucial to gaining a foothold of popular support in the countryside.

Like Lenin, Stalin thought the Russian Revolution could be the catalyst for European and world revolution: ‘The possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the country that will lay the road to socialism. . . . We must discard the antiquated idea that only Europe can show us the way. There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter.’⁵⁶

Stalin did oppose Lenin on one important matter: the expulsion of Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev from the party because of their public opposition to Lenin’s call for a Bolshevik insurrection in Petrograd in October 1917 – a proposal they believed was adventurist and would result in defeat and counter-revolution. Stalin was quite close to Kamenev before the revolution, having spent time in exile with him. On grounds of party unity, Stalin insisted that both men remain in the organisation and retain their membership of the Bolshevik central committee, as long as they agreed to abide by CC decisions. That was another attitude of Stalin’s that derived from his long experience in the revolutionary underground, one that was not shared by some ‘émigré’ Bolsheviks or many of the newer members of the rapidly expanding party – the importance of central control and member discipline in carrying out decisions: ‘Once a decision of the Central Committee is made, it must be carried out without any discussion.’⁵⁷ This was the basis of the so-called ‘democratic centralism’ that governed the operation of the party.