Ii Great Stalins Great October

!!!" !#$%&'$Stalin’s SSSR

session iiGreat Stalin’s Great October; 1917-1921

Saturday, March 20, 2010

this session’s major topics

I. introduction: the February Revolution

II.Spring

III.Summer

IV.Autumn

V.Great October Socialist Revolution

VI.Stalin in power

VII.Civil War


February Revolution


This amazing event was the only true revolution of 1917. The more famous Bolshevik “Revolution” of October/November was, as Richard Pipes writes, more correctly styled a coup.

Its immediate causes were (1)a break in the abnormally cold weather in Petrograd which filled the streets with crowds (2) a demonstration protesting food shortages on 8 March (New Style)/23 Feb (O.S.) International Women’s Day (3) thousands of workers locked out because of fuel shortages (4) inconsistent policing (5) mutiny by a minority of the Petrograd garrison and “neutrality” by the majority (6) a power play by the Duma politicians and (7) vacillation by the tsar

Its long range causes were (1) the stage of economic development: state capitalism for 20% of the population but peasant agriculture for 80% (2) repressive policies inefficiently and inconsistently applied and, most importantly, (3) World War I -- suffering at the front and on the home front, loss of the leadership cadres, rotten morale, desertions which broke the only tool capable of restoring order


PETROGRAD


PETROGRAD


PETROGRAD


the Winter Palace

Kseshinskaya’s mansion Tauride Palace Smolny

Peter and Paul fortressNevsky Prospekt

ZnamenskayaSquare

Vyborg Rayon(district)

Kazan Cathedral




26 February 1917-demonstration on Znamenskaya square





The masses poured into the Soviet as though into the triumphal gate of the revolution--Leon Trotsky



Thus ended a reign which had been a continuous chain of ill luck, failure, misfortune, and evil-doing, from the Khodynka catastrophe during the coronation, through the shooting of the strikers and revolting peasants, the Russo-Japanese War, the frightful putting-down of the Revolution of 1905, the innumerable executions, punitive expeditions and national pogroms--and ending with the insane and contemptible participation of Russia in the insane and contemptible world war.

Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, p.88


Molotov-born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skriabin,1890-1986

• son of a shop clerk, no relation to the composer

• 1906-joined the RSDLP (b)-pseudonym, “Hammer man”

• 1909-exiled to Vologda, served there two years

• 1912-a rich childhood friend funds Pravda through him,he becomes co-editor with Stalin

• 1913-1915-exiled to Irkutsk, escapes

• 1916-becomes member of the Petrograd Bolshevik Bureau

• March 1917-after the revolution takes Pravda “to the left,” opposes the Provisional Government

photo from the 1930s


Kamenev-born Lev Borisovich Rosenfeld, 1883-1936

• his father, a rich Jewish engineer, built the Batumi-Baku railroad

• thus he attended the Tiflis Gymnasium and met Stalin in 1901 while both were beginning their revolutionary careers

• “reddish hair and watery blue eyes,” he became part of Lenin’s inner circle

• 1914-he, as editor of Pravda, and five Bolshevik Duma deputies were tried for treason and exiled to Siberia

• 1915-17-met up with Stalin and returned to Petrograd with him


“There were meetings and speeches everywhere,” remembered Molotov,”the first experiences of freedom in the full sense.” Even the whores and thieves held meetings and elected soviets. Everything was reversed: soldiers had their caps [reversed]...women borrowed military headgear and breeches. People felt suddenly unrestrained in this febrile carnival: “Sexual acts...were openly performed on the streets in the euphoria.”

[Upon arriving]Stalin and Vera [Shveitzer] headed directly to the centre of power. “While chatting with us, Comrade Stalin without realizing it reached the Taurida Palace,” where they bumped into Elena Stasova and Molotov. That night, Stalin, Molotov, ...Shveitzer, Stasova and the Russian Bureau discussed the situation. No one was sure about the next move.

Montefiore, p. 308


the Tauride Palace,home to both the Provisional Government

and the Petrograd Soviet


Tauride Palace


• there were fewer than 1,000 Bolshevik activists in all of Russia

• the leadership in Petrograd was divided over Lenin’s advice from abroad, “fight the Provisional Government, end the war”

• Stalin moved in with his friends, the Alliluyevs, others, shifting from night to night

• as a !" man, he forced his way into the leadership at Party Headquarters in “the sin-drenched mansion of ‘that tsarist concubine’ Mathilde Kseshinskaya”

• he and Kamenev gained control of Pravda and joined the presidium of the Russian Bureau

• he was Bolshevik representative to Executive Committee of the Soviet at the Tauride Palace


Mathilde Kseshinskaya1872-1971





Her Serene Highness Princess Romanova-Kresinskayaprima ballerina assoluta















A contemporary photo


Kseshinskaya’s mansion


Bolshevik confusion--waiting for “the Old Man”

• early March 1917-in Petrograd, Molotov and the Left Bolsheviks oppose the Provisional Government, the Right Bolsheviks preached support, “defensism,” and reunion with the Mensheviks

• when Kamenev arrived, he sided with the Right

• Stalin cautiously tried to find a middle ground, pressure not opposition to the Provisional Government; along with Kamenev, pulling seniority, they took Pravda away from Molotov

• for about the last three weeks in March Stalin took over effective leadership of the Party, he was acceptable to both wings

• as a former underground fighter, he was unknown to most of the “legal Party” when he attended meetings of the Petrograd Soviet in the Tauride Palace


Stalin’s report to the Bolshevik conference; 29 March

• the central thought of this speech: “The power has been divided between two organs [the Provisional Government & the Petrograd Soviet] of which neither one possesses full power”

• Trotsky summarizes Stalin’s “division of labor” between the two as:

• the Provisional Government “fortifies the gains of the Revolution”

• the Soviet “mobilizes the forces [of the masses] and controls [the Prov. Govt.]”

• “In so far as the Provisional Government fortifies the steps of the revolution, in so far we must support it, but in so far as it is counter-revolutionary, support to the Provisional Government is not permissible”


SpringLenin addressesRed Guards at

Smolny


SmolnyThe Finland Station







Lenin’s arrival changes everything

• 4 April- the day after the “Sealed Train” brought the émigré Bolsheviks to Petrograd, Lenin confounded the Party with his April Theses:

• the period of dual power (dvoyevlasti) between the bourgeois Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet must end--”All power to the soviets!”

• the war must end: abolition of the bureaucracy, police and army!

• nationalization of land, banks and the distribution economy

• passing from the bourgeois democratic to the socialist revolution

• in a rare admission, Stalin acknowledged that the younger Molotov had been closer to Lenin than he had been. Stalin would become Lenin’s ally and protégé


the Party’s April crisis

• “As for the general scheme of Comrade Lenin, it seems to us unacceptable in that it starts from the assumption that the bourgeois-democratic revolution is ended, and counts upon an immediate transformation of this revolution into a socialist revolution”

• The central organ of the Party thus openly announced before the working class and its enemies a split with the generalized recognized leader of the Party upon the central question of the revolution…

• That alone is sufficient to show the depths of the April crisis in the Party, due to the clash of two irreconcilable lines of thought and action.

• Until it surmounted this crisis the revolution could not go forward.

Trotsky, end of vol. i, p. 239


Stalin stood by his differences

• he believed that Lenin would come to realize that the peasants would never accept giving back the land which they had just “expropriated” from the landlords

• Stalin also avoided Lenin’s slogan “Turn the imperialist war into a European civil war!” He emphasized that most of the soldiers only wanted to hear about peace

• also condemned was the phrase, “dictatorship of the proletariat”

• “Stalin defended his ideas -- and it was not he but Lenin who eventually had to amend his position” --Service, p. 128


Zinoviev, Grigori Y.-born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky, 1883-1936

• born in Ukraine to Jewish dairy farmers, educated at home

• 1901-joined RSDLP; 1903, RSDLP(b)

• worked both within Russia and with the exiles, in Switzerland became Lenin’s aide de camp, his #2 man

• 1907-elected to !" (Central Committee)#$%#&(')

• April 1917-returned with Lenin on the “sealed train”

• “the outstanding master of the spoken word that we know today”--Lunacharsky vs “lacking inner discipline, his mind is completely incapable of theoretical work and his thoughts dissolve into the formless intuitions of the agitator” --Trotsky


fall of the first Provisional Government

• 18 April-the liberal Kadet Foreign Minister, Paul Milyukov, issued a note announcing that Russia continued to expect her “payoff” for continuing to fight, the annexation of Ottoman territories

• a popular outburst followed. The Petrograd Soviet had supported the war so long as it was only defensive.

• Prince Lvov dropped the Kadets and formed a new government with socialist ministers. He made Socialist Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky Minister of War

• from now on the Bolsheviks were the only party who couldn’t be blamed for the government’s troubles. They postured as the true defenders of the revolution against the bourgeois government and their Menshevik and SR dupes


In those days the joint activity of the Executive Committee [Ispolkom of the Petrograd Soviet] and the ministry [of the Provisional Government] seemed to have for its goal to demonstrate that the art of government in time of revolution consists of a garrulous waste of time. With the liberals [the bourgeois Prov. Govt.] this was a consciously adopted plan. It was their firm conviction that all measures demanded postponement except one: the oath of loyalty to the Entente.



continuation of the war: the Kerensky Offensive

• 16 June-the offensive opens against Lwow and Galicia, the weaker Austrian army

• the Eighth Army under Kornilov makes good initial gains ( )

• once again, the Germans come to the aid of their weaker ally ( )

• the Russian gains were erased and they fell back to the dotted blue line position ( )

• the June offensive was the dying gasp of the Russian army

• this military failure further weakened the reputation of Kerensky and his government


before the offensive as “Persuader in Chief”--Pipes


after the offensive still hailed, but obviously under pressure


Summer

“July Days” on the NevskyProspect, Petrograd


July Days


Stalin’s role during the “July Days”

• 3 July-on the evening of the first planned soldiers’ demonstrations, he was sent by the !" to inform Ispolkom (the Exec. Comm. of the Petrograd Soviet) that the Bolsheviks were telling the soldiers NOT to demonstrate

• later that night the Bolshevik !" reversed itself. Lenin’s role is unclear. He later claimed that he convinced them they needed to take responsibility for the demo and steer it into peaceful channels

• 4-6 July-the soldiers and workers marched on the Tauride Palace demanding the Soviet disown the Provisional Government and assume power themselves

• Stalin acted in good faith trying to calm the demonstrators and the Soviet

• when the government moved to arrest Lenin and other !" members, Stalin was not molested


It also fell to him to carry out the final act in the winding up of this semi-insurrection, the surrender by the rebels of the powerful Peter and Paul fortress. Accompanied by a Menshevik member of the Soviet Executive, Stalin went to the fortress, which was situated on an island opposite the Bolshevik headquarters, just at the moment when those headquarters were being occupied by government troops. The garrison of the fortress consisted of fiery Kronstadt sailors, the machine gunners who had initiated the revolt, and civilian Red Guards, all refusing to surrender and preparing for a long and bloody siege. it is easy to imagine how difficult and delicate was Stalin’s mission. He was helped by official assurances that the rebels would not be penalized; but they still persistently refused to surrender. In the end Stalin shrewdly persuaded them to capitulate to the Executive of the Soviet, which sounded more honorable than a surrender to the Government. A bloodbath was averted.

Deutscher, pp. 150-151



V.I. LENIN’S SUBSEQUENT [GOING] UNDERGROUND(IN PETROGRAD AND IN FINLAND)

The green arrows show his route to Helsingfors (modernHelsinki) and the red, his return. The numbered “books” show

articles and pamphlets he wrote while in hiding.

V I Lenin; Istoriko-biograficheskii Atlas, p. 28


All Power to the Soviets!


All Power to the Soviets!

At present the soviets remained under the control of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and Lenin --still hiding in Finland-- wanted to drop the slogan, “All Power to the Soviets!” Stalin quietly resisted this move. He understood that if the Party was going to gain popularity it needed to project itself as the eager agent of the ‘mass organizations’.

Service, p. 136


Trotsky returns from exileIn those days Bolshevism acquired a new tribune in Leon Trotsky, who by his courage, political élan, and oratorical brilliance soon outshone the gifted leaders who day after day spoke to the country from the platform of the Petersburg Soviet. Trotsky returned to Russia straight from a Canadian internment camp a month after Lenin. He was anxious to close his long controversy with the founder of Bolshevism and to join hands with him. The war had in part changed his outlook. He gave up his long cherished ambition to unite Bolsheviks and Mensheviks….He was willing to admit that in the controversy…,not he but Lenin had proved right.....while Stalin continued to do his job in the twilight.

Deutscher, pp. 144-145

Lev Davidovich Bronstein, 1879-1940


LENIN IN MAJOR PREPARATIONS FOR THE ARMED UPRISING (JULY-OCTOBER 1917)

• note Riga in German hands and the suggested attack on Petrograd

• the blue vertical hatch marks in Finland, Byelorussia and Ukraine indicate areas where there was strong sentiment for national independence

• the salmon colored areas were where peasant uprisings were seizing land from the former landlords

• the red dots are Bolshevik-controlled local soviets, the red pennants are local Bolshevik party organizations

• the blue and red dotted line in the west represents the military front at this time

• the black boxed names and flags are “counter-revolutionary” generals

KORNILOV

DENIKIN

KRASNOV

KRIMOV


In order to realize the Soviet state, there was required a drawing together and mutual penetration of two factors belonging to completely different historic species: a peasant war--that is, a movement characteristic of the dawn of bourgeois development--and a proletarian insurrection, the movement signalizing its decline. That is the essence of 1917.



the Kornilov affair 14.viii-hailed as a hero of the Right


Misunderstanding or Kerensky Plot?

• 22-27 August-the details of the Kornilov affair are quite complex and involve third party players who remain unknown to the present day

• suffice it to say that Kerensky pretended to believe that Kornilov was demanding dictatorial powers to deal with a suspected Bolshevik coup

• he thereupon relieved him of command and ordered his arrest. he also armed the Petrograd Soviet and Bolshevik Red Guards to defend against a counter- revolutionary coup

• at this point Kornilov did rebel, “but only after being wrongly charged with rebellion”--Pipes, p. 134


outcomes of the affair

• Kerensky became estranged from both Liberals and Conservatives, but failed to solidify his position with the Socialists

• he formed a new five man government with himself at its head

• of the 40,000 guns distributed to the workers, a good part of them wound up in the hands of the Red Guards

• the Bolsheviks registered solid gains in the municipal soviet elections held nationwide

• most sinister was the break between Kerensky and the military. The officer corps despised this treatment of their popular commander and the pandering to the left. When, in late October, he would appeal to the army to help save his government from the Bolsheviks, he would meet with no response.


“We have at last a ‘new’ (brand new) five-man Government,” joked Stalin [in Pravda] on 3 September, “chosen by Kerensky, endorsed by Kerensky, responsible to Kerensky.” Bolshevik strength surged in the factories, and among the soldiers and Kronstadt sailors. “The army that rose against Kornilov,” wrote Trotsky, “was the army-to-be of the October Revolution.”

Montefiore, p. 330


Autumn

the view from Stalin’s toNadya Alliluyeva’s bedroom


Nadya at 16summer of 1917


Soso And Nadya

The teenager was, in her way, as neurotic, damaged, and dark as he, perhaps darker. Nadya’s strictness appealed to Stalin, but it would later clash disasterously with his own bedouin informality and wilful egotism. Worse, her sincere intensity masked the family’s mental instability, a bipolar disorder that would ultimately make her anything but the placid homemaker. “But he got a taste of her difficult character,” says Kira Alliluyeva [her niece]. “She answered back and even put him in his place.” The defiance of this pretty, devoted schoolgirl with the flashing Gypsy eyes must have then seemed attractive to Stalin. But ultimately theirs would be a fatal and ill-fated combination.

We do not know exactly when they became lovers. They became a public couple ten months later. But the relationship probably started at this time.

Montefiore, p. 329


LENINIST PLAN OF THE ARMEDUPRISING IN PETROGRAD

KEY

assembly points of armedworkers (Red Guards)

sections of RevolutionaryFighters (MRC)

strategic targets(necessary toseize initially) :

telephone, telegraph,train stations, bridges,

general staff headquarters,Winter Palace

Red sailors fromthe Baltic Fleet

based in Kronstadt,Reval, and

Finland

SMOLNYheadquarters

(marked with a red flag)



LENINIST PLAN OF THE ARMEDUPRISING IN PETROGRAD

KEY

assembly points of armedworkers (Red Guards)

sections of RevolutionaryFighters (MRC)

strategic targets(necessary toseize initially) :

telephone, telegraph,train stations, bridges,

general staff headquarters,Winter Palace

Red sailors fromthe Baltic Fleet

based in Kronstadt,Reval, and

Finland

SMOLNYheadquarters

(marked with a red flag)



Great OctoberSocialist Revolution

(mythic) storming ofthe Winter Palace

There was no storming of the Winter Palace. More people were hurt filming the staged scene in Eisenstein’s movie--Montefiore, p. 347


Trotsky and the MilRevKom

• 13 Sept (O.S.)--a majority of the Petrograd Soviet voted for a Bolshevik revolution

• this disowned the Menshevik-SR leadership for the first time

• soon after Trotsky was elected chairman

• 18 Sept--Bolsheviks gain control of the Moscow Soviet

• city after city followed

• 13 October--Petrograd established the Military Revolution Committee with Trotsky as its head


the peasant revolts--September 1917

Lenin with his sharp eye was the first to notice that the agrarian movement had gone into a decisive phase, and he immediately drew all the conclusions from this….”In the face of such a fact as the peasant insurrection,” writes Lenin at the end of September,”all other political symptoms, even if they were in conflict...would have absolutely no significance at all.” The agrarian question is the foundation of the revolution. A victory of the government over the peasant revolt “would be the funeral of the revolution….The crisis is ripe. The whole future of the international workers revolution for socialism is at stake. The crisis is ripe.”

Trotsky, p. 267


the Politburo

• although the caption suggests this graphic represents the rank of !" members in fall of 1917, the positions of Stalin and Trotsky suggest a later date for the graphic

• this “organ” is the peak of power within the !"

• Lenin needed to convince this group that his timing and strategy was correct

• he secretly returned to Petrograd from Finland in early October

• 23 October--he convinced all but Kamenev and Zinoviev of the need to act. Stalin would later use their “desertion” with devastating effect


V.I. LENIN IN THE MAIN OCTOBER ARMED UPRISING IN PETROGRAD

KEY

BRIDGES SEIZED ON 24.x.

KEY FACILITIES SEIZED ON 25.x.

RED FACTORIES OR BUILDINGS ARETHOSE CONTROLLED BY THE REDS

BLACK BY THE PROVISIONAL GOVT

NOTE THE CRUISER AURORA IN THENEVA RIVER



a pen-and-ink sketch ofSmolny, where Lenin

announced the capture of the Winter Palace to the

Second All-Russian Congressof Soviets

theannouncement



TO THE CITIZENS OF RUSSIA!

The Provisional Government has been deposed. Government authority has passed into the hands of an organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Military Revolutionary Committee, which stands at the head of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison.The task for which the people have been struggling--the immediate offer of a democratic peace, the abolition of landlord property in land, worker control over production, the creation of a Soviet Government--this task is assured.

Long Live the Revolution of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants!


Historians habitually follow Trotsky’s (totally prejudiced but superbly written) version of events in asserting that Stalin “missed the revolution,” but this does not stand up to scrutiny

Montefiore, p. 338


Historians habitually follow Trotsky’s (totally prejudiced but superbly written) version of events in asserting that Stalin “missed the revolution,” but this does not stand up to scrutiny

Montefiore, p. 338

• he was the communication link with Lenin

• he was fully engaged running the Bolshevik press


TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF SOVIET POWER

DECREE ON PEACE

DECREE ON LAND

KEY

II ALL-RUSSIAN CONGRESS OF SOVIETS AT WHICHIS DECLARED THE LENINIST DECREES ON PEACE AND LAND

PROVINCES WHICH SENT DELEGATES TO THE CONGRESS

RED FLAG INDICATES DATE WHEN SOVIET POWER IS ESTABLISHED

BLACK FLAG INDICATES CENTERS OF COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY POWER AND DATE WHEN IT IS “DECISIVELY DEFEATED”

25.X.-2.XI.-FROM THE PETROGRAD UPRISING TILL MOSCOW WAS CONQUERED

2.XI.1917-10.I.1918--FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SOVIET POWER IN MOSCOW TO THE III ALL- RUSSIAN CONGRESS OF SOVIETS

10.I.-14.III.1918--FROM THE III CONGRESS TO THE IV EXTRAORDINARY CONGRESS OF SOVIETS

AREAS ADDED AFTER MID-MARCH 1918


New translation--ComradeLenin cleanses the land ofevil spirits

nechisti literally translates as “unclean ones” but I discovered that in traditional folk religion the expression meant demonic spirits, devils


German and Russian troops fraternize

Lenin’s “breathing spell”


• Nov 1917-the German offensive which had just captured Riga, showed no sign of stopping

• Russian desertions skyrocket after the Bolshevik coup

• many of their officers began to seek centers of resistance to the new regime, others “caved”

• the Germans and Austrians promptly accepted Lenin’s offer of armistice talks

• 18 Nov /3 Dec-Russian delegation departed for German Headquarters in Brest-Litovsk

• 15/28 Dec-Armistice talks adjourned


• Moscow, “the heart of Russia”

• the Kremlin--fortress retreat of the Bolshevik Nachalstvo (leadership)

• 9 March 1918--fearing a German attack on Petrograd, Lenin and the rest of the leaders retreated stealthily to the ancient seat of power

• Stalin maintained his working residence there for the rest of his life



• Russia gives up Finland, Poland, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia

• this includes 26% of her population, 28% of her industrial plant, and three-quarters of her coal and iron deposits

• here grows 37% of the country’s grain

• she agrees to demobilize her armed forces

• the Left SRs withdraw their support in protest

• the Allies feel betrayed, now face the prospect of defeat, and begin to consider intervention

The Peace of Brest-Litovsk 3 March 1918


• some of the Left SRs turned to their pre-October tradition of “propaganda of the deed,” assassination

• they had been coalition partners with the Bolsheviks in the soviets and after “Great October”

• but the dismissal of the Constituent Assembly, presided over by SR Viktor Chernov in January, follower by the Brest treaty drove them into opposition

• Fanni Kaplan had been in prison and katorga since 1906 for involvement in a bomb plot

• 30 August 1981- she wounded Lenin critically as he left a rare public speech at a Moscow factory

SR violence and Red Terror

Fanni Kaplanmugshot

1890-3 Sept 1918


() (che•KAH) the Red political police

• 7/20 Dec 1917-the All-Russian Extraordinary (Cherezvechainie) Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage, (", was established

• 30 August 1918- after Kaplan’s failed attempt and a successful assassination, on on the same day, of the head of the Petrograd (", Moisei Uritsky, the reaction was swift and terrible

• 2 September- officially announced by Iakov Sverdlov, the Red Terror arrested and executed 10-15,000 people

• Five hundred "representatives of overthrown classes" were executed immediately by the Bolshevik communist government after the assassination of Uritsky. The first official announcement of Red Terror, published in Izvestiya, "Appeal to the Working Class" on September 3, 1918 called for the workers to "crush the hydra of counterrevolution with massive terror! ... anyone who dares to spread the slightest rumor against the Soviet regime will be arrested immediately and sent to concentration camp”

• this, coupled with the murder of the Romanovs, began the official “Red Terror” It was justified as a reaction to the White Terror. The names originated during the French Revolution.

Feliks Dzherzhinski


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernaean_Hydra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernaean_Hydra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterrevolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterrevolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_democracy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_democracy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp

not entirely new policy

While recovering from his wounds, Lenin instructed: "It is necessary - secretly and urgently to prepare the terror". Even before the assassinations, Lenin was sending telegrams "to introduce mass terror" in Nizhny Novgorod in response to a suspected civilian uprising there, and "crush" landowners in Penza who protested, sometimes violently, to requisition of their grain by military detachments:

Comrades!... You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram."

Wikipedia


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizhny_Novgorod

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizhny_Novgorod

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penza

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penza

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostage

Lenin’s handwritten notes demanded the shooting, killing, hanging of “bloodsuckers...spiders...leeches.” He asked, “How can you make a revolution without firing squads?” He demanded they “find tougher people.” But Stalin and Trotsky were tough enough. “We must put an end once and for all,”said Trotsky,”to the Papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life.” Stalin showed a similar taste for Terror. When Estonian Bolsheviks proposed liquidating “traitors…” he replied swiftly: “the idea of a concentration camp is excellent.”

Montefiore, p. 352


Stalin in PowerCommissar of Nationalities

at age thirty-eight


Sovnarkom(Council of People’s Commissars)

STALIN

TROTSKY


first meeting of the new government

STALINLENIN


Borderlands breakaway and the “Nationalities Question”

• March 1918-the Brest treaty stripped away most of the non-Russian “nationalities” of the west and south, Finns, Baltic peoples, Poles, and most importantly, Ukrainians

• as Narkom for National Affairs, Stalin was dispatched to Kursk to try to negotiate with the Ukrainian Rada (the Ukr. name of their deliberative body) which had been formed in Nov 1917 and was trying to create an independent Ukraine

• he arrived just as the German occupiers were replacing the Rada government with their puppet, Hetman Skoropadsky, a military strongman with monarchist aspirations

• May 1918-Stalin then tried to negotiate with another breakaway group in the eastern steppe, the Bashkir and Turkmen Republic, hoping to add them to the RSFSR

• but this group was also being pulled away from Moscow by the outbreak of the Civil War, the creation of the KOMUCH government and the conquests of the Czech Legion


WHAT HAVE YOUDONE TO AIDTHE FRONT?


*+ ,"-*./! (To the Front!)

On 31 May 1918 Stalin was given an important fresh assignment. Food supplies for Russia had reached a critically low point and Sovnarkom was close to panic. The decision was to send two of the party’s most able organizers, Stalin and … Shlyapnikov, to procure grain in the south of the Soviet republic. The Volga region and the North Caucasus were traditional areas of agricultural abundance, and Stalin and Shlyapnikov were given full powers to obtain food wherever it could be found. Stalin was to make for Tsaritsyn, Shlyapnikov for Astrakhan.

His Alliluev assistants in the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities’ Affairs would accompany him. Fyodor would come as his aide and Nadya as his secretary….

A month later he informed Lenin:

The food-supplies question is naturally entwined with the military question. For the good of the cause I need full military powers. I’ve already written about this and received no answer. Very well, then. In this case, I myself, without formalities will overthrow those commanders and commissars who are ruining the cause. That’s how I’m being nudged by the cause and of course the absence of a scrap of paper from Trotsky won’t stop me.

Service, pp. 163-164


A “Food Detachment” prepares to departfor “the Village”


Civil War1918 poster

Trotsky/St Georgeslays the

counter-revolutionarydragon


V I LENIN IN THE MAJOR DEFENSE OF THE SOCIALIST FATHERLAND


Czechs &KOMUCH

1918

Entente & Whites

1918-19

VolunteerArmy

1918-19

Yudenich,Estonians &

British1919

Ukrainians &Poles

1917-1920


EITHER THE DEATH OF CAPITAL OR DEATH UNDER THE FOOT OF CAPITAL!



The War against the Village

Peasant! Red Army, FROMVERMIN HARVEST YOUR PROTECTS



“ L I B E R A T O R S ”

DENIKIN

Red poster

A DAY URGING THE SOVIET CAUSE


Peace and Freedom in Sovietland.

White poster

Trotsky’s “Star of David” is actually 5- rather than 6-pointed, making the poster’s intent satanic as well as anti-Semitic


War Narkom Trotsky and creation of the Red Army

• with the success of the Czech Legion and the growing fear of the White Guards in Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus, Red Guards and the voluntary urban militia principle seemed inadequate

• Lenin and the left Bolsheviks resisted both a draft and using the former tsarist army officers:

• the draft, because it would add peasants to their proletarian Red Guard base

• the former officers, because they were “class enemies,” The Bolsheviks had promised to break up and discard the tsarist army along with the police

• June, 1918-with reluctance and much suspicion, former officers, “military specialists,” under the watchful eye of communist commissars, their families as hostages, were compelled to lead a draft army

• often the fear of treason was justified by desertions to the Whites




Tsaritsin

“White Guards”--Denikin’s Volunteer Army and the Don Cossacks

KOMUCH, the Czech Legion, and the Orenburg Cossacks


Trotsky’s man--former tsarist general Andrei Efimovich Snesarev

• graduate of the prestigious Imperial General Staff College

• Orientalist, spoke 14 languages, leading expert in Russian Central Asia

• tsarist general during the 1914-1918 war in staff positions

• joined the Red Army

• Trotsky gave him command of the Southern Front

• Stalin despised him, accused him of sabotaging the war effort and arrested him with many others


“the N.C.O.s opposition”--Trotsky

Klim Voroshilovsergeant in the tsarist army

now Commander, 10th Army

Semyon Budyonnysergeant-major in the tsarist cavalrynow Commander, 1st Cavalry Army

Sergo Ordzhonikidzenow Commissar to the

10th Red Army

both Klim and Sergo had been with Kobain Baku, 1907-1908


the Whites missed opportunity

• Spring 1918-White General Alekseev wants to join the Don Cossacks in attacking Tsaritsin. Its capture would have allowed a link-up with the KOMUCH forces

• Deniken chose instead to march southward into the grain-rich North Caucasus steppe, eliminating Reds in his rear and recruiting more Kuban Cossacks

• Summer and Fall 1918-the Don Cossacks attack Tsaritsin with weak support from other cossack bands, but none from the Volunteer Army

• several times it appeared that Tsaritsin would fall to them

• but a stout defense within was aided by attacks by relieving forces. Trotsky was expelling the Czech Legion from Samara, 200 miles up the Volga, but he also dispatched Red Army units to lift the siege where his disobedient rival was challenging his authority


the Reds costly victory

• Stalin claims that he and the Red Tenth Army, along with Budyonny’s First Konya (Horse) Army gained the victory. Voroshilov later claimed that without their action the Whites would have gained all the Ukraine

• Stalin defied his military superiors, Snesarev and Trotsky. He unleashed terror on the surrounding villages, burning those which failed to meet his grain quotas. Threw outmatched units into combat regardless of casualties.

• He arrested “wreckers,” civilian and military, including Snesarev, imprisoned them in a barge on the Volga, threatened to drown them all. He sincerely believed that failure or incompetence = conspiracy, therefore “treason,” therefore the death penalty

• September 1918-Lenin had to make peace between him and an enraged Trotsky

• after a flurry of telegrams, Lenin recalled “the victor of Tsaritsin” to Moscow, gave him a public “triumph,” and sent him off to a different front, the defense of Petrograd against Yudenich

• 1925- Tsaritsin was renamed Stalingrad


Montefiore’s caption


C O S S A C K ,W H O ’ R E Y O U W I T H ?

WITH US OR WITH THEM?Saturday, March 20, 2010

CLEMENCEAU WILSON LLOYD GEORGE


B E O N G U A R D !

Poland


war with Poland, 7 May-18 October 1920

• although border scuffles occurred as early as Feb 1919, neither side considered themselves at war until the next year

• May 1920--Poland’s President Josef Pi#sudski, in alliance with Ukrainian nationalist Semyon Petlura, invaded the Ukraine and captured Kiev. Kamenev was appointed overall commander of the Red defense.

• 10 June--Budyonny’s 1st Cavalry Army retook Kiev and expelled the invaders

• a northern counterattack, in alliance with Lithuania, met little resistance

• Britain, alarmed at the Soviet threat to Poland intervened diplomatically. Foreign Secretary Curzon proposed a compromise border, the Curzon Line.

• July--Lenin, his blood up, was having none of it. He set up a Polish Revolutionary Committee and told the Second Congress of the Comintern that the European Revolution had begun. Poland would be the first western communist conquest.


KEYPolish-Soviet-Lithuanian front line, May,1920

Polish-Soviet front line, August,1920

the Curzon Line


Stalin was unenthusiastic. He had been warning all summer about the resurgence of White military capacity in the Crimea, and he questioned the wisdom of taking on the Poles while Wrangel remained a threat….[His] objections were not confined to his chronic skepticism about European socialist revolution and his concern about Wrangel. He doubted that the Red Army was adequately co-ordinated and organized. He worried about the length and strength of the lines of supply. From his base with Red forces in the Ukraine he had reason to think he knew what he was writing about. Plans for a military breakthrough to Poland and Germany were unrealistic. He also reminded Lenin not to underestimate the strength of nationalism among the Polish working class.

Service, p.177


WRANGEL STILL LIVES

STRIKE HIM RELENTLESSLY


the Polish war moves forward

• Stalin’s objections were overruled. He was made sort of “Commissar-in-Chief” of the South-Western Front forces under General Yegorov

• attached were his crony from Tsaritsin, Budyonny, and the First Cavalry Army

• initially the attack into Galicia went well. Stalin became sanguine;

• “The Polish armies are completely collapsing, the Poles have lost their communications and administration… in short, the Poles are experiencing a collapse from which they will not soon recover.”

• Stalin became focused on capturing the district capital, Lwow

• August 1920-ordering a ruthless policy towards Wrangel in the Crimea, he “took his eye off the ball” and moved west


KAMENEVTUKHACHEVSKY

YEGOROV

SMIGLA

STALIN

BUDYONNY


Soviet overconfidence creates a Polish opportunity

• Kamenev failed to coordinate the two advances

• 22 July-Yegorov points out the gap developing between his forces and those of Tukhachevski

• the Politburo ordered Kamenev to move forces from the South-Western Front back to guard Wrangel in the Crimea

• Stalin dug in his heels and refused to counter-sign the orders weakening his attack on Lwow

• he also resisted shifting forces north to support Tukhachevski’s left flank

• the stage was set for a Polish counter-attack


KAMENEVTUKHACHEVSKY

YEGOROV

SMIGLA

STALIN

BUDYONNY

Warsaw

Pi!sudski’scounter-attack


Miracle at the Vistulaoil on canvas (1930) by Jerzy Kossak


[Stalin] was soon accused...of an obsession with military glory [that] caused him to withhold forces from Tukhachevski. He therefore appeared to be the culprit for the defeat….Returning to Moscow for the Politburo meeting on 19 August, he was raging to justify himself….he castigated the entire campaign….Lenin and Trotsky continued to blame him….[Stalin] refused to forget what he took to be the slights he had suffered….Trotsky and the Supreme Command were in his eyes co-responsible for the war’s mismanagement….The Politburo was revealed as a nest of jealousies and criticism….Stalin, a leading member of the ruling group, was accused of insubordination, personal ambition and military incompetence. It was a remarkable list of faults.

Service, pp. 181-184

Trotsky tries to make Stalin the scapegoat


The personalities and patronage of a minuscule oligarchy were the essence of politics under Lenin and Stalin...just as they are today under the “managed democracy” of twenty-first century Russia


...he came to power as that rare thing--both a man of violence and of ideas, an expert in gangsterism, as well as a devout Marxist; but above all, he believed in himself and in his own ruthless leadership as the only way to govern a country in crisis and to promote a mere ideal into a real utopia

Montefiore’s conclusion to Young Stalin, p. 354


Montefiore’s concluding anecdote: Mme Kol lonta i and People’s Commissar for the Navy, Pavel Dybenko “knoodling” behind a screen at a Politburo meeting in the Kremlin


Education

Ii Great Stalins Great October