The Stalinist Hall of Mirrors

The leaders of today’s Communist Party of the Russian Federation claim that it is a democratic-federalist organisation, but in reality it is a nationalist and imperialist empire, so the CPRF tries to cover its roots, not least by failing to release historical documents. Around 700 letters signed by Lenin were first published in 2011, [1] but up to 7,000 documents he signed reportedly remain unpublished, [2] as do many of those written by his wife, Krupskaya, his sisters Anna and Maria, and many more Old Bolsheviks. [3] In 2005 422 previously unpublished documents signed by Lenin were published; [4] but Katy Turton, who worked in the party archives in the early 2000’s, recalls that while ‘Almost all the documents I received were complete’, Lenin’s sisters and Krupskaya had ‘exercised careful self-censorship’ long after his death. [5] Similarly, in the 1990s Tovah Yedlin was unable to see all the papers of one of the original Bolsheviks’ main financial supporters, Maxim Gorky. [6]

The CPRF was founded in 1993 and claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; yet the CPSU had been banned after a failed coup in 1991, during a crisis mainly caused by the unmanageable internal economic and political consequences of over 40 years of military competition with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, led by the USA. The CPSU had recently dissolved the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance (the ‘Warsaw Pact’), but its hegemony over its satellite states had been under serious pressure for decades. In 1981 the Red Army suppressed the Independent Self-governing Trade Union ‘Solidarity’ in Poland, and it crushed the ‘Prague Spring’ in Czechoslovakia in 1968. In 1965 the Lenin’s ‘complete’ works in English included over 4,300 letters, [7] but some were incomplete, and it included only one of the pieces he wrote to defend Roman Malinowsky, the police spy. [8] In 1961 the Communist Party of China denounced the CPSU as ‘revisionist traitors’, and in 1960 the Communist Party of Albania left the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

In autumn 1956 the Red Army massacred Hungarian revolutionaries, even though the CPSU had hoped to appease the Communist Party of Yugoslavia by dissolving the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties (the ‘Cominform’) in spring. Nikita Khrushchev, the CPSU’s First Secretary, acknowledged the ‘cult of personality’ around his predecessor, Stalin, and listed some of his crimes, [9] but not those in which he had been personally complicit. In 1955 the CPSU formed the ‘Warsaw Pact’ to counter NATO, but in 1953 Khrushchev oversaw the repression of a workers’ revolt in East Berlin, days after he became First Secretary, following the death of the Stalin, the last survivor of the late 1917 Central Committee. In 1952 the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) became the CPSU, after Stalin reportedly declared that ‘There are no more Mensheviks. Why should we call ourselves Bolsheviks?’ [10]

In 1949, as the Cold War set in between the former wartime Allies who had defeated Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, the USA and 27 of its satellite states in Europe, plus Turkey, formed NATO. In 1948 the Communist Party of Yugoslavia distanced itself from the AUCP (B), even though the Cominform’s headquarters had been in Belgrade since 1947. When the Allies partitioned Germany in summer 1945, East Germany, including East Berlin, joined the USSR. By then 10.6 million Red Army troops were dead or missing, and 22.6 million were sick or wounded, while 10 million Russian civilians had died during military actions and six million from malnutrition or disease. Albania, Poland, Romania and Hungary had joined the USSR in 1944; but in 1943 Stalin dissolved the Third International (the ‘Comintern’), hoping to appease the wartime Allies, and dropped the Internationale in favour of the State Anthem of the USSR. He gave his granddaughter a flat in the Kremlin, on condition that her Jewish husband never visited him, since he was convinced that the ‘entire older generation’ of Jews was ‘contaminated with Zionism’. [11] World War 2 began for the USSR in 1941 when Adolf Hitler broke the Treaty of Non-Aggression, and Stalin’s agent assassinated his main rival, Trotsky, in 1940.

In 1939 the AUCP(B) claimed 1,588,812 members and 888,814 candidate members. [12] In autumn Russian troops invaded Poland, days after Vyacheslev Molotov had signed the Treaty of Non-Aggression with the Nazis. By then between 950,000 and 1.2 million people had died in purges in the USSR. [13] In 1938 Khrushchev joined the AUCP (B)’s leading Politburo, soon after he purged Old Bolsheviks in his native Ukraine. In 1938 and 1937 two million people were condemned to death, over 681,000 executed and over one million deported to the Main Administration of Corrective Labour Camps and Labour Settlement (the ‘Gulag’). Over 114,000 died there, [14] or in prison, including 43 of the 60 members of the 1922 CC, [15] while 98 of the 139 members and candidate members of the 1934 CC were executed, and 1,108 of that year’s 1,966 Congress delegates were imprisoned. [16] All but two of those who were shot had become party members well before 1917. [17]

In 1935 the CC controlled the publication of ‘Old Bolshevik’ memoirs. [18] According to the official encyclopaedia, the All-Union Society of Old Bolsheviks dissolved itself because it had ‘completed its tasks’. [19] In reality, Stalin had ordered its dissolution because these ‘fault-finding old men’ had not grasped ‘the needs of the times’, [20] and had protested against the Moscow show trials. [21] The Association of Former Political Exiles and Prisoners also ceased to function, [22] since it had been organising a petition against executing oppositionists. [23] In 1934 the All-Union Society of Old Bolsheviks had over 2,000 members, but stopped publishing its periodical, Stary bolshevik (Old Bolshevik), [24] after it drew the Politburo’s attention to Lenin’s injunction not to execute comrades. [25] The purge got underway after the assassination of Sergey Kirov, Stalin’s main domestic rival, and soon after Khrushchev’s election to the CC. [26] In 1933 over 1.4 million people were arrested; [27] and the first conference of what had become the All-Union Society of Old Bolsheviks’ elected Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, the leader of the League of Militant Atheists, and of the failed Moscow rising in 1905, as chair of its leading Presidium. [28] Applicants had to prove that they had had a continuous party membership of at least 18 years, though the Presidium and Council could grant exceptions. [29] In 1931 the Association of Former Political Exiles and Prisoners had 2,759 members. [30] The Society of Old Bolsheviks’ first Stary bolshevik appeared in 1930, [31] but Stalin ordered Georgians he had known for decades not to visit him, and angrily sent them away if they arrived. [32] The bureaucracy and leadership had been considerably expanded. By summer 1,268 Congress delegates had votes, and there were 891 ‘alternates’ (probationary candidates) without a vote. [33]

In 1929 the official encyclopaedia contained biographies of 246 people, or under 0.02 percent of the membership, who were deemed to have been ‘personalities’ during the October 1917 revolution; but 237 were men and nine were women. Of the 231 whose birth date was recorded, 12 were born before 1868, 35 in 1868–1873 and 34 in 1877–1880, but 103 (44 percent) in 1882–1891. Of the 226 with a named birthplace, 27 were from St. Petersburg or Moscow, or their provinces, but 99 (43.8 percent) were from subject nations or border provinces, including 50 from Ukraine and New Russia. Of the 178 whose father’s status can be deduced, 23 percent were workers, artisans or day labourers, 23 percent were engaged in agriculture, and 13 percent were traders and merchants. Of the 211 whose status can be identified more precisely, 67 had humble or modest origins, including ten children of artisans, 12 of proletarians and 16 of poor peasants, but 144 (68.2 percent) were from comfortably-off, wealthy or aristocratic families. Of the 246 with an identifiable ethnicity, up to 127 (51.6 percent) were (or were probably) Russian, while the 119 from ethnic or national minorities included at least 41 Jews and 15 Germans. Of 225 entries about formal education, nine men and women (including eight Russians) received none, 45 attended primary schools, 25 elite classical gymnasia, eight realschulen with a broader curriculum, while 12 had some form of vocational training, 11 attended other educational establishments and three women had been privately educated. Ten of those with some form of secondary education did not complete their course, but 114 (51 percent) had some form of higher education. Of the 83 who attended a named university, 50 did so in Moscow or St. Petersburg, while six, or possibly eight, studied in Kyiv, and 17 attended foreign universities, mainly in Switzerland. Of the 58 who stated the faculty, 20 studied law, ten medicine, nine mathematics and physics, seven history and languages and six natural science. In addition 18 attended higher institutes of technology, notably in St. Petersburg, but around 15 percent did not complete their course. [34]

By 1929 Stalin and his allies controlled the party and state bureaucracies. In 1928, in exile, Trotsky published Lenin’s four-year-old letter to Congress, his Testament, [35] which demanded that Stalin be sacked. [36] (The CC had previously prevailed on him to deny its existence. [37]) In 1927 party membership had risen to 1,200,000; [38] but less than a third were industrial or transport workers, and 100,000 had left in 18 months. Ten percent of the members of leading bodies had once been proletarians, but over 75 percent were also full-time bureaucrats. [39]

In 1925 the party reportedly had 1,025,000 members in a population of 147 million, [40] but fewer than 2,000 had joined before 1905. [41] That year the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (Bolsheviks) became the AUCP (B), soon after Stalin and his allies denounced Max Eastman’s publication of extracts from Lenin’s Testament. [42] From 1924 biographical articles of selected party members began to appear; [43] but around 540,000 out of 600,000 had joined after 1917, less than 54,000 during 1917, 12,000 in 1906–1916, and 3,600 (0.6 percent) before 1905; [44] and many had opposed Lenin from 1908 to 1914. [45] Lenin died early in 1924, after the revolution failed to spread to Germany, and Russia was isolated. [46] He had his third stroke in spring 1923 and his second at the end of 1922, [47] days after the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and its Caucasian, Ukrainian and Belorussian counterparts formed the USSR. [48] Reportedly there were 44,148 pre-1917 party members, [49] but only 68 of the 522 Congress delegates had joined the party before 1905, [50] while the bureaucracy had grown to 15,000. [51] By late autumn the Red Army, led by Trotsky, had defeated the White Army and 14 armies from capitalist states, though 800,000 Red soldiers had been killed or had died from wounds or disease. [52] In May Lenin had his first stroke, soon after the Politburo appointed Stalin as General Secretary. [53] In February Stalin addressed the inaugural meeting of the Society of Old Bolsheviks, [54] and the 64 present elected Mikhail Olminsky as their chair, [55] even though he had once been a terrorist. [56] The Society was accountable to Istpart, the Commission on the Study of the History of the October Revolution and the RCP (B). Applicants had to have joined before 1 January 1905, but other social democrats who had been active for the time could apply, if they had later joined the party. [57] By the end of 1921 136,386 members, a fifth of the total, had been expelled. [58] In December Istpart became directly accountable to the CC, which appointed its nine leading members, and another commission, led by the Pole Feliks Dzierzynski, would study the history of the Polish revolutionary movement. [59] During that year Lenin reportedly acknowledged that when the Politburo was ‘faced with a problem which needed a lot of sorting out’, Stalin was ‘our nutcracker’. [60] By the end of 1920 1,400,000 people had joined the party since 1917, and two-thirds had peasant origins, but 30 percent had left. [61] In summer Lenin claimed that as ‘a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since 1903’. [62] In spring the newly-formed Association of Former Political Exiles and Prisoners had 200 members. [63]

In October 1919 20 percent of party members had joined before October 1917, but only eight percent before February. [64] In 1918 the party reportedly had around 200,000 members. [65] Early that year Lenin acknowledged that the revolution was ‘doomed’ unless it spread to Germany, [66] and late in 1917 he was clear that the ‘final victory of socialism in a single country is of course impossible’. [67] A few hundred people died during the October revolution in St. Petersburg. [68] During 1917 many Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had worked together, and in that summer’s CC elections all but one of the 134 Congress delegates voted for Lenin, and all but three for Trotsky, while Stalin came seventh. [69] When Lenin, Trotsky and other leaders were in hiding or prison, Stalin had been a spokesman for the CC; [70] but he had not been elected to the Presidium of the All-Russian Conference in spring, [71] after Lenin inveighed against ‘people who readily call themselves “old Bolsheviks”’, who more than once already have played so regrettable a role in the history of our party by reiterating formulas senselessly learned by rote, instead of studying the specific features of the new and living reality’. [72] In February the party had no more than 5,000 active members. [73]

By 1915 Lenin had forgotten Stalin’s real name, [74] He had been exiled to Siberia in 1913, [75] and in 1912 Lenin had co-opted him onto the CC, in spite of serious opposition, when the Bolsheviks split Rossyskaya Sotsial-Demokraticheskaya Rabochaya Partya (the All-Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party) and formed the RSDRP (Bolsheviks). [76] In 1910 Lenin noted that ‘Bolshevism as a tendency’ had taken ‘definite shape’ by summer 1905. [77]

By summer 1906 tsarist punitive detachments had killed over 14,000 revolutionaries and other people and wounded 18,000 across Russia, [78] but the total number of executions and deaths in prison and exile is unknown. [79] Early that year the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ fraktions (temporary groupings) of the RSDRP had failed to ‘fuse’, following the crushing of the Moscow uprising late in 1905, soon after the St. Petersburg Soviet elected Trotsky as a leader, even though he had been ‘outside the fractions’ for years. [80] By autumn the war with Japan had cost the lives of 12,000 Russian sailors, and 41,000 soldiers had been killed or died from disease or other causes, while 57,000 had been disabled, 148,000 wounded, [81] and around 75,000 captured. [82] The autocracy was extremely vulnerable, but the RSDRP was in disarray. By late 1904 hardened Bolsheviki and Mensheviki factions had formed in Russia, [83 ]following the split among the intelligenty who had formed the overwhelmingly majority of delegates at the RSDRP’s Second Congress in summer 1903, and who were referred to in the minutes by their underground klitchka. [84]

Late in 1902 Krupskaya greeted ‘Piero’ in London, [85] but he had reportedly used the passport of an Irkutsk man called Trotsky when he escaped from Siberia. [86] In summer 1901 a letter from ‘Lenin’ arrived at Iskra’s press in Munich. Nobody recognised the pseudonym, yet ‘Lenin’ used at least 160 others before and after that. [87] Iuly Tsederbaum used several pseudonyms, [88] but evidently not ‘Martov’ (March) before 1901. [89]

The RSDRP’s First Congress had taken place in 1898, but the tiny and overwhelmingly intelligenty leadership was soon decimated by arrests. The formation of the RSDRP was largely on the initiative of the General Jewish Labour Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, the Bund, which had been formed in 1897, and Jewish social-democrats in the Pale had developed a programme of propagandising and agitating workers. During the 1890s dozens of Russian intelligenty and workers had been imprisoned, deported or exiled, after intelligenty influenced by social-democratic ideas tried to lead organised workers, especially in St. Petersburg. During the 1880s social-revolutionary ideas and terrorism remained influential, especially among intelligenty, but there were pogroms, and no peasant uprisings, after social-revolutionary terrorists assassinated the tsar in 1881. By 1874 hundreds of young social-revolutionary intelligenty were in jail, after they had ‘gone to the people’ – the peasantry – to propagandise in favour of an uprising. The overwhelming majority of the population were peasant farmers, and only a tiny minority of migrant peasants and townspeople were proletarians. The first translation of the first volume of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital was into Russian in 1872, and the censors passed it, but to many of the few intelligenty who could get hold of such works, and could read German, the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels seemed irrelevant in an overwhelmingly peasant country, and a salutary warning about the consequences of proletarianisation.