Stalin dictated to historians what they must do and how they must work. Their first mission was to alter the history of the party, then the history of Russia. The core of the new history of the party was the absolute infallibility of Lenin and the existence of two party leaders. Robert Tucker has observed that, in a certain sense, Lenin evolved after his death. He continued to be infallible, but "attached to his successor like a Siamese twin, he became inevitably smaller in many areas. Only the facets of his life and activities that were connected with Stalin were idealized on a grand scale."132 As for methodology, Stalin announced that only "archive rats" and "hopeless bureaucrats" could research documents and facts. The main point was a correct purpose. Interpreting Stalin's speeches in an address to the Institute of Red Professors, Kaganovich emphasized that in creating the history of the party the key task was to employ "flexible Leninist tactics." It is not important what an "authentic Bolshevik" has or has not done in his time: facts and documents must be interpreted from the point of view of the present moment.133 Stalin "interpreted" Trotsky from the point of view of the present. 'Trotskyism," he wrote, "is the vanguard of the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie"; consequently, Trotsky always was an agent of the counterrevolution.
The doctrine became firmly established, distinguishing itself in both versatility and cruelty. It could change instantaneously, switching to its antithesis, but in the interval between the changes it remained immobile. The doctrine could be expressed only in the exact words of the Leader, without even a comma changed. Stalin's letter to Proletarskaya revolyutsiya (and this was the first of many such occasions) was immediately echoed in all areas of Soviet life. The journal Proletarian Music (January 1932) dedicated an editorial to it with the headline: "Our Tasks on the Music Front," while a lead article in the journal For Soviet Accounting (February 1932) bore the title "For Bolshevik Vigilance on the Bookkeeping Front," and the Journal of Neuropathology and Psychiatry (February 1932) published an article "For a Bolshevik Offensive on the Neuropathology Front." Stalin's letter was studied by economists, naturalists, and technicians. Maxim Gorky added his voice to the chorus: "It is vital that we know everything that has happened in the past, not as it has already been recounted, but in the light of the doctrine of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin."134
From Gorky to workers on the bookkeeping front, everyone responded the same way (in public, at least), not only in the territories of the Soviet Union, where Stalin's power had become absolute, but also wherever Communist parties, sections of the Comintern, existed. Arthur Koestler relates that in January 1935, when the Saar was preparing to vote on a referendum that would decide whether it would remain under French administration or become part of the German Reich, the Communist party ordered people to vote for "a Red Saar in a Soviet Germany."
"But there is no Soviet Germany as yet, so what do we stand for?" a miner asked the leader of a Communist cell in despair. "We stand, comrade," the
latter answered, "for a Red Saar in a Soviet Germany." "But there is no Soviet Germany, so do you mean we should vote for Hitler?" "The Central Committee," objected the secretary of the cell, "did not say you should vote for Hitler. It said you should vote for a Red Saar in a Soviet Germany." "But, comrade, until there is a Soviet Germany, would it not be best to vote for the status quo?" "By voting for the status quo," explained the secretary, "you would align yourself with the social fascist agents of French imperialism." 'Then who the bleeding hell are we to vote for?" cried the miner. "You are putting the question in a mechanistic manner," the secretary reproached him. 'The only correct revolutionary policy is to fight for a Red Saar in a Soviet Germany."135
After the elections, in which Hitler received more than 90 percent of the vote, the organ of the Saarland Communists bore this front-page headline: "Defeat of Hitler in the Saar." According to the laws of Marxist- Stalinist dialectics, the Hitlerities, who had expected 98 percent, had suffered a defeat.
The letter to Proletarskaya revolyutsiya marked a turning point in the official attitude toward Russian history. Stalin pointed out that a history of European Marxism should be written from the point of view of the Russian Bolsheviks. They were, as Lenin had predicted in 1902, the vanguard of the international proletarian movement. The Russian revolution was the beginning of the world revolution, and it was not for the Western Marxists to give lessons to their Russian comrades, but vice versa.
On February 4, 1931, Stalin presented his view of Russian history: "The history of old Russia," said Stalin, consisted, among other things, in her constantly being beaten for her backwardness. "She was beaten by the Mongol khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She was beaten by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish-Lithuanian pans. She was beaten by the Anglo-French capitalists. She was beaten by the Japanese barons. She was beaten by everyone because of her backwardness."136 This interpretation of Russian history was still partly in accordance with the (until then) orthodox Marxist views of Pokrovsky. On May 15, 1934, a resolution "On the Teaching of the Nation's History in Soviet Schools" marked a break with the old policy regarding Russian history and the beginning of a new policy. In 1936 the Soviet press published a letter by Stalin, Zhdanov, and Kirov which was a critique of projected textbooks on the history of the Soviet Union and gave new instructions for teaching Russian history.
In 1934 Stalin, the victor, the creator of collectivization and industrialization, state builder, and Supreme Ideologue, took up the weapon of
Russian nationalism. In a certain sense this confirmed the predictions of Ustryalov and Dmitrievsky, but only in a certain sense. Stalin used Russian nationalism as he had used a great number of other bricks for building his empire. He needed Russian nationalism to legitimize his authority. He could not, and probably did not want to, stress continuity with the revolution and the destructive elements of the past while he was in the process of building a new state and social system. That is why he chose a new line of ancestors, the Russian princes and tsars, the builders of a mighty state. After 1934 Stalin—and all Soviet historians after him—stopped saying that "everyone had beaten" Russia. They began to say that Russia had beaten everyone. The signal was given to crush Pokrovsky's historical school. The history of Russia, which after 1917 had been revised from the point of view of the class struggle, was being revised in light of the struggle for the creation of a strong state. The people remained at the center, but for the Pokrovsky school the people wanted liberty, whereas for the Stalin school they wanted strong authority.
One of the key aspects on the "ideological front" was literature. In the first year of the First Five-Year Plan, its situation reflected, with a certain belatedness, the complex twists and turns of the intraparty struggle. Representatives of leftist views, supporters of Trotsky, were still present on the staffs of literary journals and in literary associations, and adherents of the "right" still held important posts. Bukharin, who was a specialist on the intelligentsia, was subjected to increasingly violent attacks, and Stalin began to express his own literary views more and more frequently. RAPP, the Association of Russian Proletarian Writers, assumed greater and greater control over literary life. In the summer of 1928 the Central Committee issued a new resolution on cultural questions. In its opening sentences, its most soothing passage, it cited the resolution of 1925, but further on it declared war on any "backsliding from a class position, eclecticism, or benign attitude toward an alien ideology." The resolution declared that literature, theater, the cinema, painting, music, and radio had to take part "in the struggle... against bourgeois and petit bourgeois ideology, against vodka and philistinism," as well as against "the revival of bourgeois ideology under new labels and the servile imitation of bourgeois culture."137