Trotsky immediately got to work and telephoned Kamenev, who told Stalin about the call. Stalin refused to carry out Lenin’s instructions to put Trotsky’s speech on the schedule of the Congress of Soviets. He also called Krupskaia and reprimanded her for taking down and sending the letter to Trotsky. Apparently the reprimand was rather indelicate, or at least it seemed so to the overburdened and high-strung Krupskaia. In theory, Stalin had a legitimate grievance against Krupskaia. Just a few days previously, on 18 December, the Central Committee plenum had voted to limit contact with Lenin, who had suffered another health setback. “Personal responsibility shall be placed on Com. Stalin to isolate Vladimir Ilyich both in regard to face-to-face dealings with officials and correspondence.”62 Krupskaia had violated this directive. But Stalin had also crossed the line with his emotional outburst. The troika saw Lenin’s appeal to Trotsky as dangerous and provocative.
Realizing his mistake, Stalin apologized to Krupskaia. Judging by Maria Ulianova’s memoirs, he also made an attempt to reconcile with Lenin. He met with Ulianova and told her how upset he was about being estranged from him:
I couldn’t sleep at all last night.… What does Ilyich think of me, how does he feel about me! As if I were some sort of traitor. I love him with all my heart. Find a way to tell him that.
But Lenin was implacable. Ulianova offers the following description:
Ilyich called me in to see him for something, and I told him, among other things, that his comrades send their respects.… “And Stalin asked me to send you his heartfelt regards and asked me to say that he truly loves you.” Ilyich grinned and remained silent. “So should I send him your regards?” I asked. “You can send them,” Ilyich replied rather coldly. “But Volodia,” I continued. “He is, after all, very smart, Stalin.” “He’s not smart at all,” Ilyich replied firmly, wincing.63
Ulianova does not say exactly when this conversation with her brother took place, but it was almost certainly in late 1922 or early 1923, when relations between Lenin and Stalin were deteriorating and threatened to rupture completely. On 24 December Lenin dictated a document to his secretary—the well-known “Letter to the Congress”—in which he expressed apprehension about divisions within the party’s top leadership. Regarding Stalin, this document states, “Com. Stalin, now that he is general secretary, has concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of exercising this power with sufficient caution.”64 In another letter, dictated on 4 January, Lenin was even more categorical. He proposed removing Stalin from the post of general secretary because he was “too rude.”65
Lenin’s growing irritation was the backdrop against which the “Georgian Affair” unfolded. This episode involved a dispute between a group of Georgian Bolsheviks and the leadership of the Transcaucasian Federation, which comprised Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The conflict was not with the entire federation leadership but with its head, Ordzhonikidze. The friendship between Stalin and Ordzhonikidze would certainly have influenced the general secretary’s stance on the matter. The Georgian Bolsheviks, with variable success, were inundating Moscow with complaints about Ordzhonikidze’s heavy hand. In late 1922 Ordzhonikidze gave his opponents more ammunition against him: in a fit of anger, he struck one of his adversaries. A commission headed by Feliks Dzerzhinsky was sent from Moscow to investigate.66 Lenin took a great interest, and when the commission turned in a report favorable toward Ordzhonikidze, he was not pleased. He believed that Dzerzhinsky and Stalin were covering for Ordzhonikidze and being unfair to his beleaguered accusers.
If it had not been for the clash between an ailing Lenin and his increasingly powerful followers, the Georgian Affair would have remained a bureaucratic squabble of the sort that was commonplace within the Bolshevik party, especially early on, when their government had yet to achieve a stable footing. In Transcaucasia, infighting among competing groups continued for many years. It was Lenin who elevated this incident—artificially, one could argue—to the level of fundamental political principles since it gave him a pretext for attacking his ambitious associates. Though ill, Lenin was still prepared to fight for control of the party and was obviously looking for a way to quell the dissent that threatened to undermine his power. He saw Stalin as the symbol of that dissent.
All the evidence suggests that Lenin spent the winter of 1923 preparing to launch an attack against Stalin at the Twelfth Party Congress, scheduled for March. On 5 March 1923, having assembled the necessary materials, he again approached Trotsky with a proposal that they collaborate: “Dear Com. Trotsky! I would like to ask you to take on the defense of the Georgian Affair within the party’s TsK. This matter is currently being ‘pursued’ by Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, and I cannot rely on their impartiality. Quite the contrary. If you agreed to defend it, I could rest assured.”67 That same day, 5 March, Lenin dictated a note addressed to Stalin in regard to an old matter—the reprimand Stalin had made against Krupskaia in December 1922. The note was curt. Lenin threatened to sever their relationship: “Dear Com. Stalin! You were so ill-mannered as to call my wife to the telephone and scold her.… I have no intention of so easily forgetting what has been done against me, and it goes without saying that what has been done against my wife is also done against me. I therefore ask you to weigh whether you are amenable to taking back what was said and apologize or you prefer to break off relations with me.”68
The appearance of this letter, written two and a half months after Stalin’s reprimand, has generated many hypotheses among historians. Perhaps Lenin had only just learned of Stalin’s telephone call to Krupskaia. It appears more likely, however, that Lenin saw the incident as an excuse for removing Stalin from the post of general secretary, a possibility proposed by Robert Tucker.69 All of Lenin’s objections to Stalin emphasized the same point: he was too rude. Such a charge was much more persuasive and clear-cut than any of the other possible complaints he might have lodged. Rudeness toward party comrades was completely inappropriate for someone holding the post of general secretary.
The following day, 6 March, Lenin again wrote about Stalin’s abrasive manner. He dictated several lines to the beleaguered Georgian Bolsheviks, instructing that copies of the note be sent to Trotsky and Kamenev. Kamenev was scheduled to travel to Georgia and was asked to deliver the note personally. “Dear Comrades!” Lenin wrote. “With all my heart I am following your case. I am outraged by Ordzhonikidze’s rudeness and the connivances of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. I am drafting a memorandum and speech for you.”70
To the Politburo, the meaning of Lenin’s actions was clear: he had declared war on Stalin. Shortly before leaving for Georgia, Kamenev wrote to Zinoviev that Lenin wanted not only reconciliation in Transcaucasia, “but also certain organizational expulsions at the top”—Soviet administrative jargon for firings.71 Stalin could sense the approaching storm. On 7 March he received Lenin’s ultimatum threatening to sever relations. He immediately responded with a half-hearted apology: “Although if you feel that to maintain ‘relations’ I have to ‘take back’ the words that I said … I can take them back, but I really can’t understand what the point is, where my ‘guilt’ lies, and just what it is they want from me.”72 That same day Stalin sent a strictly confidential letter to Ordzhonikidze. He warned him that Lenin had sent a letter of support to Ordzhonikidze’s opponents. Stalin urged caution: “Reach a compromise … that is natural, voluntary.”73 This letter to Ordzhonikidze clearly shows that Stalin appreciated the seriousness of the situation and was maneuvering to deprive Lenin of ammunition.