Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books

Stalin’s actions during the Polish campaign became a cause of considerable controversy. An early contributor to the debate was Boris Shaposhnikov, who later served as Stalin’s chief of the General Staff. In his 1924 book, Na Visle: K Istorii Kampanii 1920 (On the Vistula: Towards a History of the 1920 Campaign), a copy of which may be found in Stalin’s library, he concluded that while Budenny’s delay did have a negative impact on the Red Army’s march on Warsaw, his army would not, in any event, have arrived in time to save the Soviets’ West Front from defeat by the Poles.⁶⁹ In his study of Stalin as a military commander, British military historian Albert Seaton arrived at a similar verdict:

The extent to which Stalin’s refusal or delay in carrying out orders was indirectly responsible for the defeat of the West Front and the consequent loss of the Russo-Polish war is a question which can only be examined by considering the . . . war as a whole. Many other factors contributed to the defeat: political misjudgement, military misdirection, poor training and organisation, indiscipline in the West as well as the South-West Front, over-confident and inexpert commanders and inadequate signals communications. It seems probable, however, that . . . [the West Front] might have been saved from so overwhelming a defeat.⁷⁰

Stalin responded to the unfolding Polish debacle by submitting a memorandum to the Politburo that argued the defeat resulted from a ‘lack of effective fighting reserves’ (Trotsky thought that supplies were the main problem). Stalin also called for a high-level investigation of the reasons for the defeat in Poland.⁷¹ This created tension with Lenin as well as Trotsky, both of whom had a vested interest in avoiding too deep a discussion of the failed Polish adventure. Together with Trotsky, Lenin successfully manoeuvred within the Politburo to stymie Stalin’s proposed investigation.

At the Bolsheviks’ 9th party conference in September 1920, Stalin was criticised by Lenin and Trotsky for his ‘strategic errors’ during the Polish campaign. He responded with a dignified statement which pointed to his publicly expressed doubts about the ‘march on Warsaw’ and reiterated the call for a commission to examine the reasons for the catastrophe.⁷²

By this time Stalin had, at his own request, been relieved of military responsibilities. The civil war was nearly over and he had plenty of other work to do. Throughout the conflict he had remained nationalities commissar and in March 1919 was appointed head of the People’s Commissariat of State Control, later renamed the Worker-Peasant Inspectorate, whose job it was to protect state property and to keep wayward officials in line.

Stalin played little direct role in the day-to-day operations of either commissariat, which he delegated to officials. But he kept his finger on the policy pulse in relation to the national question. Lenin’s was still the dominant Bolshevik voice on this matter, and Stalin did not always agree with him. He favoured a future confederation of socialist states rather than the more tightly knit world federation proposed by Lenin. Stalin argued that advanced and well-established nations would want to have their own independent states for the foreseeable future. Their new socialist rulers would not accept Lenin’s proposal to universalise the federal relations between nationalities that prevailed within Soviet Russia. Of more practical import, though, was Stalin’s preference for a highly centralised Soviet state. When the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was created in 1922 it reflected a compromise with Lenin in which behind a façade of the federalism there was the highly centralised state preferred by Stalin.

Georgia was the most serious source of tension between Stalin and Lenin. Stalin’s native land was ruled by a Menshevik government headed by Noe Zhordania, an old adversary of his from the underground days. The Georgian Menshevik state was recognised by the Bolsheviks in May 1920, who pledged non-interference in its internal affairs in return for the legalisation of communist party activity. Lenin favoured a more conciliatory approach to Georgia than Stalin and Trotsky, who both wanted to occupy the country militarily. In February 1921 the Red Army marched in.

In the early weeks of the Bolshevik takeover in Georgia, Stalin was ill and he spent the summer recuperating at a spa in the North Caucasus. In July he crossed the mountains to support the Georgian Bolsheviks in rallying the masses to their new regime. Appalled by the nationalist fervour he encountered, he ordered the Cheka to quell resistance to Bolshevik rule. Among the more than 100 arrestees was Stalin’s childhood friend Joseph Iremashvili.⁷³