Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

The much-quoted observation that in 1917 Stalin was a ‘grey blur, looming up now and then dimly and without leaving without any trace’ comes from the 1922 memoirs of the Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov. Often counterposed to Sukhanov’s perception of Stalin as a drab and uninteresting individual is Trotsky’s dramatic impact after he returned to Russia in May 1917. Elected to the Petrograd Soviet, he joined up with the Bolsheviks in July and in September was elected chairman of the Soviet’s Executive Committee. He supported Lenin’s call for a Bolshevik insurrection and established a Military-Revolutionary Committee as the armed wing of the Petrograd Soviet. It was this body that carried out the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd in November 1917 when it forcibly seized control of key buildings and communications infrastructure. The following day Trotsky told delegates to the Second Congress of Soviets that the Provisional Government had been overthrown, and jeered the moderate socialists who opposed the seizure of power as belonging ‘in the dustbin of history’.

Lenin’s Soviet-based government was a coalition of the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who represented militant peasants. Its ministers were called commissars because Lenin thought that sounded more revolutionary. Lenin was chair of the Council of Commissars, Trotsky was people’s commissar for foreign affairs and Stalin filled the entirely new post of commissar for the nationalities. Upon taking office, Trotsky famously said: ‘I will issue a few revolutionary proclamations to the peoples of the world and then shut up shop.’⁵⁸

Though overshadowed by Trotsky in historical memory, there were few Bolsheviks more important than Stalin in 1917. One of the first Bolshevik leaders to reach Petrograd from exile, he was a member of the editorial board of the party’s newspaper Pravda, contributing numerous articles to the Bolshevik press. When Pravda was supressed by the authorities, he edited the paper issued by the party as a substitute. When the Provisional Government clamped down on the Bolsheviks in summer 1917 and Trotsky was gaoled, while Lenin fled to Finland, Stalin remained at large. He spoke at all the party’s major meetings and in Lenin’s absence presented the main report to the 6th congress of the Bolshevik party in July–August 1917. This was a tough assignment, coming as it did in the wake of the party’s setbacks following the radical demonstrations of the July days that had provoked the Provisional Government’s crackdown. Stalin supported Lenin’s proposal for an insurrection and was one of seven party leaders entrusted with overseeing its preparation. As Chris Read puts it, ‘If Stalin was a blur it might seem to be a result of his constant activity rather than indistinctiveness!’⁵⁹

Having grabbed power, Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky were determined to retain it at all costs. At stake, they believed, was not just the fate of the Russian Revolution but also the socialist future of all humanity. Scheduled elections to a Constituent Assembly were permitted at the end of November but when they produced an anti-Bolshevik majority the first democratically elected parliament in Russian history was not allowed to function. The Bolsheviks claimed the Soviets, which they and their allies controlled, were more representative of public opinion and better placed to protect the interests of the people.⁶⁰

In March 1918 Lenin’s government signed the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The treaty negotiations provoked a deep split in the Bolsheviks’ ranks and broke up the alliance with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.

One of the very first acts of Lenin’s regime had been the proclamation of a Decree on Peace which called for a general armistice and negotiations for ‘a just and democratic peace’. When the fighting continued, Lenin agreed a separate ceasefire with the Germans and started the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. Foreign Commissar Trotsky, who led the Soviet negotiations, had no intention of actually concluding a peace treaty. Instead, he aimed to spin out the negotiations and to use them as a platform for propaganda, the hope being that the revolutionary situation in Europe would mature and the war could be stopped by mass action. The Germans played along with this charade for a while but in January 1918 issued an ultimatum that demanded the annexation of large chunks of the western areas of the former Tsarist Empire in return for a peace deal.