Stalin

From the Caucasus to the Kremlin

Christopher Read

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315527635
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

This new biography of Stalin offers an accessible and up-to-date representation of one of the twentieth-century's defining figures, as well as new insights, analysis and illumination to deepen our understanding of his actions, intentions and the nature of the power that he wielded.

Christopher Read examines Stalin's contribution to and impact on Russian and world events in the first half of the twentieth century. The biography brings together the avalanche of sources and scholarship which followed the collapse of the system Stalin constructed, including the often neglected writings and speeches of Stalin himself. In addition to a detailed narrative and analysis of Stalin's rule, chapters also cover his early years and humble beginnings in a small town at a remote outpost of the Russian Empire, his role in the revolution, his relationships with Lenin, Trotsky and others in the 1920s, and his rise to become one of the most powerful figures in human history. The book closes with an account of Stalin's afterlife and legacy, both in the immediate aftermath of his death and in the decades since.

This concise account of Stalin's life is the perfect introduction for students of modern Russian history.

1 From Djugashvili to Stalin

‘The child is father of the man.’¹ Many biographers have taken Wordsworth’s insight to heart and spent considerable time and effort unearthing the character and actions of their subject when young. Stalin is no exception. Three large accounts of the ‘young Stalin’ have emerged since the year 2000.² However, even a cursory examination shows that all three books are longer than the total amount of reliable primary source material we have on the boyhood and youth of Soso (Joseph) Djugashvili – his family name before he adopted the conspiratorial name Stalin.³ In the polarized, Cold War-dominated world of Stalin biographies, a variety of childhoods have been invented consistent with the authors’ interpretations of the adult Stalin. At one extreme, the adult ‘monster’ has a monstrous childhood caused by a physically abusive drunken father, an escape into brigandage, notably armed robbery, dressed up as revolutionary activity and a side line in informing for the tsarist secret police. At the other, the adult beacon of humanity has an exemplary, ‘heroic’ childhood of hard work, devotion to his mother and a growing revolutionary conscience leading him inexorably into the Bolshevik Party and self-sacrificing commitment to the cause of liberating the working class. In neither case is there sufficient direct evidence to prove the majority of those judgements. However, what biographers at both extremes have done is to reverse Wordsworth’s concept – the man has become father of the child. Not for the last time we enter a negative feedback loop in interpreting Stalin. Because he was considered to be, let’s say, a ‘monstrous’ adult he must have been a monstrous child, and as a monstrous child, he obviously became a monstrous adult. The same lack of proof works for the opposite argument as well. There is also a tendency for absence of evidence to be taken as proof. In entering the murky and uncharted waters of the life of the young Djugashvili, care will be taken to minimize speculation and build as much as possible on the flimsy evidence. Much of the ‘evidence’ itself reflects the same negative loops. ‘Memoirs’ by ‘friends’ and ‘acquaintances’ of the young Stalin tend to recall a subject with characteristics very similar to the writer’s own interpretation of the adult – that is, a young monster or a young hero.

The Georgian background

Despite these unpromising features, there are some points that can be made with a high degree of certainty. The basic contours of Stalin’s early life are known and we also know a great deal about the background in which Soso grew up.⁴ In the first place, had Georgia not been annexed to the Russian Empire in 1801, after its king threw off the rule of the Persian Empire, Russia (though not necessarily Georgia) might have been spared the travails of Stalin’s rule. To cement the new relationship with Russia, an ancient route was used as the basis for the Georgian Military Highway. It passed through the Caucasus from the southern Russia city of Vladikavkaz (a name meaning ‘Lord of the Caucasus’), continued under the shadow of the 15,000-foot (5000-metre) Mount Kazbek and descended to the Georgian capital Tiflis (today known as Tbilisi). Started in 1799 it was still not finished by 1860, not surprising given the scarcity of surfaced roads in Russia and the difficulty of the terrain. But it did symbolize and embody certain enduring features of the tangled relationship between Georgia and Russia. In the first place the alliance quickly turned into Georgia losing its brief independence and being sucked into the Russian Empire. At the same time this was not entirely regrettable for Georgia because Russia was a powerful Christian protector against the encroachment of Islam, notably in the form of Turkey and its Ottoman Empire. Georgia and its neighbour Armenia were the only Christian enclaves in the otherwise Muslim-dominated area south of the Caucasus.

But Russian rule did not wipe out other lasting features of Georgian history. As a mountain kingdom which stretched from the peaks of the Caucasus to the fertile shores of the Black Sea, Georgia was itself composed of a variety of ethnicities, not to mention a Muslim minority in Abkhazia. As a result, Georgia had the feel not only of a fighting frontier state where Christian confronted Muslim and vice versa, but also endured severe internal conflicts between its own inhabitants, one valley often turning against another. Banditry also thrived given the existence of the many high valleys and hideouts more or less inaccessible to outsiders. Conflict within and without has continued down to the present day. Two zones of historic Georgia – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – today remain outside Georgia’s grasp. They, ironically, look to Russia for protection as Georgia itself once did. As recently as 2008, Georgia’s rash attempt to regain South Ossetia by invasion rebounded spectacularly. In other words, Georgia has been a somewhat wild and unsettled country since its origin.

Within this troubled framework a fierce and independent culture continued to develop. Not surprisingly it had a warrior base. Male chauvinism and patriarchy were very strong. Sexual dual standards of male ‘virility’ and female virginity and fidelity were fundamental. Georgian men were brought up to be adept in martial skills. The gun, the dagger and horsemanship were highly prized. Lavish banquets accompanied by consumption of vast quantities of local wine (among other things the Georgians, like a number of other peoples, claim to have been the first to produce wine) marked clan, tribal and national festivals. Women were the mothers and providers. On ceremonial occasions their festive role was to dress elaborately, look beautiful (especially if young) and be adept at the traditional Georgian dance, the kartuli, which symbolized the gender roles. In such dances the men maintained a rigid upright back and circled the woman, gazing into her eyes but never touching her while women kept their eyes downcast and wore long, stiff dresses which reached the ground and concealed the feet, the movements of which were confined within the area covered by the skirt. The effect produced was that, instead of stepping, the dancers appeared to glide across the floor. Apart from drinking, eating and not infrequently fighting, the role of men at these festivities also included outdoing one another in singing and joining in all-male dancing, often in lines kept together by the dancers putting their arms on each other’s shoulders. At the root of this culture was the family, better described as a clan, and the tribe, which associated clans together on the basis of kinship. Within the clan, like the very similar but more familiar Sicilian mafia culture, honour was the highest value. Duelling remained prominent well into the nineteenth century despite it being illegal. Stains on one’s personal or family honour could lead to feuds which would never be forgotten if not avenged. Life itself had to be put on the line and a dishonourable man, or occasionally a wayward woman, would suffer its loss by unofficial execution or enforced suicide. Cowardice was the most despised of weaknesses. Within the informal laws of family and honour, state law, and even the much deeper and older laws of the Georgian church (an Orthodox church), had lesser significance so that technically illegal and sinful acts, including robbery and murder, were often sanctioned in the real, informal culture of feud and vengeance. As a result, what the modern state considered to be outlaw activity and banditry was rife throughout Georgia. As the modern, industrial, educated world gradually encroached, so the violent edge was taken off these fierce customs. Cities, like the capital, Tiflis, took on a veneer of bourgeois sophistication, but the violent undercurrents were not far away, even in 1900.

Soso’s childhood 1878–1894: Gori

For the modern visitor as well as for earlier predecessors, visiting Georgia remains a fascinating activity. The remnants of its colourful history can be found not only in the life and activity of its contemporary inhabitants, but also in a vast legacy of objects, curiosities and monuments. One of the most curious and unique of all its monuments can be found in the provincial mountain town of Gori (the name is derived from the word for ‘hill’ in both Georgian and Russian). In this unlikely backwater the traveller is confronted not only with an unexpectedly vast town hall, a massive hotel and a giant museum, but also what looks like the misplaced colonnaded entrance to a Moscow metro station. Closer inspection reveals a single, modest, traditional, artisanal house beneath the archway. It was in this house that Soso was born to Beso (Vissarion) and Ketevan (Ekaterina) Djugashvili.

But even as simple a statement as this is not without contention. Some writers claim it is not the Djugashvili home at all but a neighbouring house or even a reconstruction. Others claim, with no evidence (but, as we shall see, that often makes little difference) that his father was the explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky or even Tsar Alexander III, not Beso Djugashvili. Even more bizarre, in his mature years Stalin changed his date of birth. Local parish records confirm that it was 6 December 1878. However, in the 1920s, Stalin, for reasons unknown but perhaps it simply amused him that he could, not only changed the date to 21 December, he also altered the year to 1879. From 1925 on this became his official birthday, stimulating national celebrations in his later years. As we progress through his life, we will find many similar complications. Welcome to the world of Stalin studies.

Very few firm facts about the young Stalin are known. Many others are contested. Legends, rumours, half-truths, outright lies and false propaganda abound. Picking through these thickets is a hazardous operation at all stages of Stalin’s life but the empty canvas of his childhood and youth have been especially tempting for the conscious and unconscious elaborators of falsehood. What can we be reasonably sure of? His father was an artisan working with leather and usually described as a cobbler. At times he worked in a factory and was a genuine proletarian. At others he worked at home as a semi-artisan within the putting-out system.⁵ He does not appear to have been a dominant influence in Soso’s early life. By 1884, his father had retreated into alcoholism and separated from his mother. It was the latter who took Soso in hand. The couple had lost three children by the time Soso was born and even he had a near-fatal brush with smallpox when he was five. He also had two toes fused together and damaged his arm, probably in an accident involving a horse and carriage when he was ten years old. This resulted in his left arm being shorter and weaker than normal. His face also bore the marks of smallpox. All of this testified to the precariousness of life in poor, underdeveloped areas like the Georgian provinces. It may have contributed to Ketevan’s apparent protectiveness and determination to make something of her son and ensure he escaped provincial obscurity. In this endeavour she was helped, first of all, by Soso’s intelligence and dawning intellectual abilities. Second, there was the support of his local school, which, like most education for the ordinary inhabitant of Georgia, was under the influence of the church. Soso’s talents were recognized and, at the age of nine, he made the first decisive upwardly mobile step in his career. He was accepted into the Gori elementary clerical school. On graduation from there in 1894 he passed the entry exam into the best educational establishment in Georgia, the Tiflis Theological Seminary, primarily dedicated to training priests for the Georgian Orthodox Church.

The Tiflis years 1894–1899: Soso becomes Koba

While these facts are mercifully uncontentious, we know little about Soso’s specific talents, interests and personality.⁶ Despite the lack of reliable sources, as we have noted, many writers have not resisted the temptation to build psychological profiles of the young Stalin. During the Cold War especially, Stalin’s personality was often portrayed as psychopathic and efforts were made to trace the roots to his childhood. Leaning heavily on the unsupported account written in 1930 by Iakob Iremashvili,⁷ a contemporary schoolmate of Soso who later became a political opponent, many commentators construct a narrative of paternal beatings and drunkenness. Iremashvili’s remarks that ‘terrible beatings’ by his father made Soso ‘hard and heartless’⁸ have been enough to launch speculative psychoanalyses. Setting out from a paraphrase of Iremashvili, one such effort argued that ‘undeserved, frightful beatings made the boy as grim and heartless as his father. Indeed, his suppressed hatred against his father transferred itself to persons in power and to all authority’.⁹ Even more astonishing, as a leap from minimal information to maximum interpretation, is Daniel Rancour-Laferriere’s approach:

In adulthood, Stalin had to live with two affective extremes: he worshipped himself and he hated himself. The first he dealt with by promoting a narcissistic cult of personality. The second he dealt with by instituting a reign of terror, by turning the hatred outward, especially toward objects that reminded him of his own latent homosexuality.¹⁰

While few historians have pushed the evidence so far into fantasy, many have felt the need to give some psychological explanation of Stalin. The most sustained and, to some extent, convincing approach is probably that of Robert Tucker who stressed Soso’s tendency to identify with heroes such as Koba, roughly the Georgian Robin Hood, and later with Lenin. His adoption of the conspiratorial names Koba and Stalin, which is reminiscent of the name Lenin, are presented as testimony.¹¹

In a determined rebuttal of the extremes of the psycho-historical approach, Ronald Grigor Suny reminds us that:

Stalin is without doubt one of the least hospitable subjects for the psychohistorian. Not particularly introspective, he left no intimate letters, no secret diary, and few witnesses to his inner life. Moreover, Bolshevik political culture was hostile to open personal expression and imposed on Stalin and other adherents an enforced modesty. Denial of the importance of self was part of the Leninist tradition, and, even as a grotesque cult of Stalin’s personality grew to gargantuan proportions, Stalin would continue, disingenuously, to claim that he disliked all the fuss.¹²

Not only that but we also have evidence refuting claims of childhood mistreatment. In a famous and important interview with the German historian and journalist Emil Ludwig in 1931, Stalin brushed off suggestions he had had an unhappy childhood. Despite being uneducated people, Stalin said, ‘they treated me not badly at all’.¹³ The testimony of his daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, partly confirms and partly confuses the issue. According to her, it was her grandmother who was the stricter and stronger parent who chastised her son. Svetlana, also unable to resist the call of amateur psychoanalysis, claims her grandmother’s ‘firmness, obstinacy, her strictness towards herself, her puritan morality, her masculine character – all of this passed to my father’.¹⁴ While these testimonies also suffer from obvious potential bias it would seem reasonable to accept Suny’s conclusion that ‘the confusion in the sources about who actually beat the boy and the silenc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Chronology
• Map
• 1 From Djugashvili to Stalin
• 2 The Grey Blur: Stalin in revolution and civil war
• 3 Filling Lenin’s shoes
• 4 Storming fortresses
• 5 Nine circles of hell
• 6 Stalin, the Soviet Union and the world in the 1930s
• 7 The tenth circle of hell: invasion, occupation, victory – war without limits
• 8 World stage, final act
• 9 Stalin’s afterlife: an inconclusive conclusion
• Further reading: a brief guide
• Index