In the interim, Stalin had conducted a retreat, since the situation had become critical for him. He ordered Ordzhonikidze to go easier on the Georgians and seek a compromise (7 March 1923). The same day, he wrote to Trotsky accepting his amendments as ‘incontrovertible’. Fotieva, Lenin’s secretary, had meanwhile sent him the latter’s memorandum on the nationalities, adding that Lenin (by now stricken) intended to have it published, but had not given her any formal instructions to this effect. Fotieva also wrote to Kamenev, with a copy to Trotsky, to tell him how important this text and the nationalities issue were to Lenin. Kamenev declared himself in favour of publication. Trotsky wrote to other Central Committee members, explaining how Lenin had sent him this text and inviting them to read it.
On 6 April 1923, Fotieva wrote to Stalin again, offering him an escape clause: Lenin did not consider the text finished and ready for publication and Maria Ulianova (Lenin’s sister) had advised her that Lenin had not given instructions for it to be published. All that could be done was to communicate it to participants in the forthcoming Twelfth Party Congress.
It is likely that Stalin ‘suggested’ this to one or other of the women, but it is ultimately irrelevant. He got what he wanted: there were to be no direct attacks on him at the congress. On 16 April he declared to Central Committee members: ‘as it turns out, Lenin’s article cannot be published’; and attacked Trotsky for having kept such an important document from the delegates who were gathering – an act he described as ‘disloyal’. In short, he lied, but had no hesitation about lying further: ‘I think it should be published, but unfortunately, as Fotieva’s letter indicates, the text cannot be published because it hasn’t yet been revised by comrade Lenin.’
The Presidium of the Twelfth Party Congress made all Lenin’s notes on the national question available to members of the very restricted ‘council of elders’ (sen’orenkonvent). It also informed them of the decisions of the Central Committee plenum on the Georgian question. But participants in the session dealing with these questions, although deeply involved with them, were not to see these materials.
The Presidium also declared that the Central Committee had only learned of the content of Lenin’s notes on the eve of the congress, not as a result of the action of any its members but solely on account of Lenin’s instructions and his deteriorating health. The rumour that someone on the Central Committee had blocked their publication was sheer slander. Trotsky was thus exonerated from Stalin’s charge of keeping the text from congress delegates.
This bickering about what to do with the texts, and about whom to show them to, were so many petty intrigues. But the stakes were high: who would stay in power and what was the shape of that power to be. Was the dictatorship to pursue (or resume) the populist and social orientation of Bolshevism? Or was it going to adopt, in theory and practice, a deeply conservative great-power orientation (velikoderzhavnost’) directed against Bolshevism, whose cadres were still socialists and opposed to the perpetuation of a form of state harking back to past models?
Astonishingly, in his note to Kamenev Trotsky lost his sense of reality. If Stalin’s orientation represented such a threat, was it really sufficient, in order to fight it, to offer the partisans of great-power chauvinism (velikoderzhavniki) a feeble compromise, asking them to demonstrate more loyalty and call a halt to their intrigues and posturing? Asking Stalin for loyalty? The episodes reveals how little Lenin’s closest collaborators understood Stalin’s ability to manipulate and outmanoeuvre them at will. The ‘old man’ was not just very irate, as Kamenev seemed to think. For him, removing Stalin and co. meant exorcizing the spectre of an ideology and political orientation that was alien to Bolshevism and represented a mortal danger for Russia’s future. As subsequent developments were to demonstrate, Lenin proved truly prophetic.
The decision to leave Stalin and his supporters in power indicates that at this fateful moment Trotsky understood neither Lenin nor Stalin. Known for his many brilliant analyses, historical and conjunctural, Trotsky was at the nadir of his political vigilance in 1923. Stalin had never been so vulnerable. A Leninist coalition, or a majority supporting Lenin’s positions, was still possible. Revealing the whole of Lenin’s testament to the Twelfth Congress and provoking a debate, rather than playing the game of ‘re-educating Stalin’, was the last serious chance for a new course. But Trotsky let it slip, even though we know that he soon moved into outright opposition to Stalin. The other two supposed Leninists in the Politburo, Zinoviev and Kamenev, were also deeply confused; deprived of Lenin’s leadership, they lost their bearings. Subsequently, they would form a ‘triumvirate’ with Stalin against Trotsky.
Was illness or extreme fatigue a factor in this massive failure of political acumen on Trotsky’s part, of which there were to be further examples? No doubt this is a possible explanation.[4] But broader configurations of social and political forces, and the available alternatives at a given moment, are the framework in which leaders can win or lose, with the outcome sometimes seeming fortuitous. Yet ‘accidents’ happen when the factors in play are developing, are fluid, or are in a temporary stalemate.
It was utterly symptomatic that the ‘national question’ – i.e. the way in which the USSR and its government were to be constructed – should lead to a huge battle over the form and future of the Soviet state. Its outcome indicates that what was called ‘Bolshevism’ (or ‘Leninism’) was at this point vulnerable and in disarray, as it confronted both the enormous postwar task of putting the country on its feet again and, at the same time, the regime’s hitherto invisible negative features. The situation called for a good deal of rethinking, regrouping and adaptation. In other words it was a classic situation where the personalities of leaders can make an enormous difference in the choice of direction.
Lenin’s performance here was unique. Impressive at a political and human level amid this extraordinary imbroglio, it was the action of a dying, semi-paralysed man who remained lucid until the last fatal stroke.
For Stalin, of course, the issue was not so much the nationalities as the choice of strategic orientation: his project of ‘autonomization’ indicated one alternative for the regime and the character of state power. A careful reading of Lenin’s texts demonstrates that his priorities were different. Power considerations were not foreign to Lenin, but in this instance the way that the nationalities were treated was an issue in its own right – one that the state must supply an adequate response to. Thus, in both versions what was at stake was the soul of the dictatorship. In Lenin’s eyes, Stalin’s project basically harked back to an old-style imperial autocracy. And he intended to take advantage of the next session of the Supreme Soviet to rewrite the legislation on the USSR that had just been adopted and to restore to the republics the ministerial prerogatives befitting their independent status, retaining only foreign affairs and defence for the centre.
In fact, the numerous Union-level ministries proposed by Stalin were a bone of contention and source of resentment. The republics were in no doubt that they would merely be confiscated by Russia. And this was precisely Stalin’s goal. His clear and simple vision was inspired by the Civil War. Military power had settled the issue then. Now that peace had been restored to the country, a yet more powerful instrument must be forged: an untrammelled, unfettered, ultra-centralized and self-serving power – a war machine in peacetime. The role Stalin intended to play at the summit and the way in which he intended to set about reaching it – including the type of party he envisaged (if any) – were at the heart of his jigsaw puzzle.
4
RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 304, no page number, dated 26 June 1922. Five doctors, members of a concilium convened to examine and probably treat Trotsky – Ramonov, Voitsik, Semashko, Professor Klemperer and Professor Ferster (the latter two German doctors invited to treat Lenin) – signed the following diagnosis: Trotsky suffers from ‘a chronic functional colitis, a slight hypertrophy of the heart and a tendency to fainting fits, due to anaemia’. In their judgement, Trotsky required a special diet (feeding up) and should avoid physical and intellectual exertion. (The copy of the report was difficult to read; I have carefully transcribed it.)