At first, Stalin was praised, and after his death, the cult of his personality was debunked. As a result, one myth was replaced by another. And what was the real Stalin - a man and a politician? The author of the book “Stalin. The life of one leader" Oleg Khlevnyuk.
Joseph Stalin single-handedly ruled a vast country for nearly three decades. Many of his decisions still evoke polar feelings: someone bows before the "leader of the peoples", someone throws curses at him. At the same time, he himself did not leave any diaries or memoirs, and therefore it is possible to understand the true motives of his actions only on the basis of indirect data.
"He was not permanently cruel"
- As a historian, I don't really like questions related to the mental state of any historical figure, not only Stalin. Although I certainly understand why they arise. This is due to the cruel decisions that Stalin often made. However, it is quite difficult to separate the cruelty of the system itself and the cruelty of the leader personally. Moreover, in many cases he demonstrated relative moderation within the framework of the system that was formed by him, among other things. He was not permanently cruel, which could really indicate a real diagnosis.
On the other hand, Vyacheslav Molotov, who knew Stalin better than anyone else, said that in last years he was not in complete control of himself. The leader had such enormous power, Molotov believed, that this inevitably affected his mental state. When you have a lot of something, you are afraid to lose it, you become overly suspicious, you see more enemies around you than you can even imagine. There are now published statements by Stalin's guards that he was very suspicious, especially in the last years of his life, about the routes of his car, demanded to change routes and accused the guards of taking him "under the bullets."
The doctor Alexander Myasnikov, who did the autopsy of Stalin's body, drew attention to very advanced atherosclerosis, which, in his opinion, could not but affect the mental state of the leader. Myasnikov believed that much of what we know about the last period of Stalin's life could well have been provoked, including by the state of his health.
Although, speaking in general, I would answer your question rather in the negative. I do not think it is productive to consider everything that happened under Stalin in the USSR - and some, you are right, do so - only from the angle of mental disorders Stalin himself.
— That is, in your opinion, it is historically not quite correct to consider terror, repression as a consequence of the characteristics of the personality of the leader himself?
- Yes and no. There were not so many democracies in Europe at that time. Authoritarian regimes existed in a significant part of the states, and all of them relied to some extent on systemic terror. Moreover, any dictator, of course, tried to suppress his environment, because only if his environment is suppressed, that is, absolutely obedient, can he be considered a dictator. But at the same time, the character, scope, level of cruelty, specific forms of realization of this systemic feature naturally depend on the personality of the leader. In my opinion, the formula of one very famous historian who said that Stalinist repressions were redundant, even in terms of the needs of the system itself. And this redundancy can already be explained based on the characteristics of a particular leader.
“I don’t think Stalin was that naive”
- What do you think: did Stalin really sincerely believe that those who were subjected to repressions, especially from his inner circle, were guilty? Or was there a sophisticated Machiavellian calculation behind this?
“It certainly was a reckoning. The management of the mass repressions of 1937-1938, for example, which fell upon one and a half million ordinary citizens and affected only a few tens of thousands of officials, came from Moscow. They were aimed (initially at least) at the elimination or isolation in the camps of "enemies" and "suspicious". At a certain point, in the face of a growing military threat, Stalin decided to destroy the imaginary "fifth column". This was the logic of the pre-war purge. However, in these actions we also observe political paranoia.
Just imagine that in two years - 1937 and 1938 - more than 260 thousand "spies" of foreign states were arrested. Of course, there were real scouts, as well as existed Soviet intelligence officers abroad. But they are “piece goods”. In the USSR, "spy mania" went beyond all limits of reason. And so on all charges (of terror, sabotage, sabotage, rebellion, etc.).
As for the Stalinist entourage and nomenclature workers, these people were repressed not on the basis of orders for mass operations, but individually. Stalin brought to power a new generation of officials, more energetic and, as he rightly believed, more devoted to him personally, because he gave them this power. From this point of view, of course, it was also a thoughtful, rational action, but also carried out with a significant amount of political paranoia, when more than half of the nomenclature workers fell under repression. This dealt a severe blow to the management system and the economy.
- But when someone from his inner circle was executed, did he really believe in the accusations that were made against them? The fact that they worked for a dozen intelligence services, that they dreamed of restoring capitalism? What were the counter-revolutionaries already in 1917?
- Complex issue. Rather, he did not believe. It is unlikely that he believed that Nikolai Bukharin, Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev could pose a threat to him. After all, by that time such people were already nobody in reality. They were expelled from wherever possible, or sent to prisons and exile. They repented, were absolutely discredited. But you had to start somewhere. In order to carry out a broader nomenklatura purge, the leaders of the past oppositions should first be declared enemies. The rest were accused on the principle of connection with them. It was not difficult to do this: the party in early years was small, everyone once worked together. In a word, if they had not started with Bukharin and the others, then the general mechanism for cleaning up the nomenklatura would not have worked. In my opinion, there was more such a calculation than Stalin's real belief in the essentially ridiculous accusations that were brought against his former colleagues. I do not think that Stalin was so naive as not to understand how such accusations are fabricated.
Between Lenin and Trotsky
—Is it true that Stalin envied Leon Trotsky?
— Correct Definition their relationship is “political competition”, “ political struggle". It must be understood that Trotsky was really a stranger to the Bolshevik Party. He, in essence, never joined Bolshevism, he constantly fought with the Bolsheviks. Trotsky was attracted to the leadership of the party and the revolution by Vladimir Lenin, because he understood that he was a super-energetic person who was ready to go ahead with his political goals.
And for the main part of the leaders of the Bolsheviks, not only for Stalin, Trotsky remained a stranger who surfaced due to certain circumstances. That is why, as soon as the first opportunity arose, Lenin's real comrades-in-arms in the many years of struggle hurried to get rid of Trotsky, especially since he considered himself not just an assistant or right hand of the leader of the world proletariat, but an equivalent figure to him. And initially, in the fight against Trotsky, not even Stalin played the main role, but the same Zinoviev.
For obvious political reasons, this was beneficial to Stalin, because Trotsky was too strong a competitor. However, at a certain stage, he even slowed down the growing opposition to Trotsky, fearing an aggravation of the struggle with the Politburo, for which he was not yet ready. In general, the attacks against Trotsky were not subject to logic interpersonal relationships, but the logic of the development of political relations, the struggle for power. Therefore, I do not agree that Stalin simply envied him, somehow especially hated him, at least in the 1920s.
It is more difficult to understand why a real hunt was then announced for Trotsky, because, strictly speaking, he did not pose a significant threat to Stalin. Apparently, this was influenced by Trotsky's well-aimed anti-Stalinist speeches, his attempts to discredit Stalin in the international communist movement. Here the personal motive has already prevailed.
—Do you think that Stalin really sincerely revered Lenin?
- By many signs, one can judge that it was really sincere. And I think it's easy to explain. First, Stalin felt the intellectual superiority of Lenin, similar to that which his associates then felt in relation to himself. Secondly, I think he was attracted by those qualities of Lenin that Stalin himself valued above others and subsequently used: toughness, perseverance, readiness to take drastic measures without hesitation, according to the principle "first we will do it, and then we'll see what happens." Let us not forget that this principle, which united them both, provided obvious political results.
And finally, Stalin, like any person, needed some kind of teacher and model. Later, of course, he himself became equivalent to Lenin (at least in our propaganda), but, from my point of view, for many years, and perhaps until the end of his life, he still considered him his teacher.
For me, the most important indicator that Stalin really treated Lenin with great respect and even, probably, with love, is how he finally reacted to the political troubles that Lenin brought him in the last years of his life. I have in mind the numerous accusations against Stalin set out in the so-called Lenin's testament, or "Letter to the Congress", and a number of other texts. The fate of Stalin the politician at that moment hung in the balance, and yet he did not allow himself any harsh statements and demarches. Rather, he tried to calm Lenin during his lifetime and did not take revenge after his death. Stalin simply closed this topic and never returned to it. Of course, there was a certain calculation here too: Stalin's political legitimacy was largely based on proximity to the founder of the party. But personal feelings also seemed to play a role.
Examples and Samples
—Did Stalin really admire such historical figures like Ivan the Terrible and Peter I?
- Undoubtedly. Their activities provided, if you will, a historical justification for his own cruelty. He was well aware that he was cruel, and he, like any person, could have hesitations and doubts about the expediency of this cruelty. Or at least thoughts. In this context, the Russian tsars were the best justification for his own mission and methods.
—How deeply did Stalin know history?
- He loved history. His library contained historical books, including an old educational literature. However, judging by a number of testimonies, Stalin still had general and not very accurate ideas about historical facts, which he acquired while studying at the theological seminary. Of course, then Stalin also read new books, although here, I must say, he fell into a certain trap, because these works were mostly written “under him” in order to confirm his ideas.
—Many blame the seminary education he received for Stalin's dogmatism. Do you agree with this?
No, it doesn't seem true to me. By the way, the further he went to the seminary, the worse he studied. And least of all he paid attention to precisely those subjects that could form a dogmatic style of thinking. In my opinion, his dogmatism, like the dogmatism of any revolutionary, was much more influenced by revolutionary doctrines, in his case, Marxism, which became a kind of religion.
However, even with the Marxist theory, Stalin treated freely. It began in 1917, when the Bolsheviks took power to build socialism in a relatively undeveloped country in the capitalist sense. This was followed by the rejection of the idea of a world revolution in favor of the imperial idea of building a great power, from the ideas of product exchange in favor of the formation of bourgeois commodity-money relations, etc.
The only dogma that Stalin adhered to to the end and which was of decisive importance was that the Soviet system should not be capitalist, the emergence of a class of owners is unacceptable. But even here, I think, a purely pragmatic consideration was at the forefront, because the owners are independent people.
Stalin and the national question
—Who did Stalin feel like? Russian, Georgian, "worldwide" revolutionary? And when he raised a toast after the victory over fascism "For the great Russian people", did he drink for "us" or for "them"?
- Of course, we must be aware that we will never answer this question - we can only speculate. Recall that Stalin began his career as a young rebel, if you like, of a nationalist persuasion. He, like many other young Georgians, was not satisfied with discrimination. They understood that their homeland was not among the priorities of the vast empire. Stalin even wrote naively nationalist poetry.
He broke with these sentiments when he joined the ranks of the absolutely internationalist Bolshevik Party. During this period he wrote works on national question in which he proceeded from the fact that the proletarians have no fatherland. Did you completely break with Georgia? No, because even in the last years of his life, Stalin succumbed to nostalgia, contacted childhood friends, sent them money, wrote something in Georgian.
However, as the leader of the state, he could not but have a special attitude towards the Russian people, which only strengthened during the years of the Great Patriotic War. After all, Stalin was well aware that it was the Russians, for many reasons, who made the most significant contribution to the victory - if only because they were numerically larger. And I think that the toast he raised was sincere in a high degree. Although, again, there was a political calculation hidden in this. One can see here signs of a turn towards nationalism, towards a subsequent struggle against cosmopolitanism.
One way or another, for me, Stalin's national self-awareness is an unobvious subject. I, for one, do not believe that he was a born anti-Semite.
- That is, the post-war campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitans" was also dictated by political calculation?
- Judge for yourself. Before the war, Stalin calmly relied on the Jews, who were many in the party apparatus, in the Soviet leadership, in the NKVD. It didn't bother him. However, after the war there was a different political situation. The Nazis were defeated, the kulaks were finished off even earlier, the counter-revolutionaries were defeated a long time ago, the “fifth column” was shot or sent to camps. Who remains as an “object of hatred” necessary for the system? Jews. Moreover, after the war - it is known - a surge of anti-Semitism occurred not only in the Soviet Union. America in the USSR was represented as a stronghold of world Jewish domination. In general, it turned out that this is a convenient way to direct discontent on a new enemy. In this sense, Stalin was a rather cynical politician and could easily manipulate various national phobias in order to strengthen his power and the entire state system he was building.
"He was a typical dictator"
- There is an opinion that Stalin treated with some irony what was later called the cult of his personality, and even considered such manifestations an excess. Do you agree?
- This is perhaps the easiest riddle associated with the figure of Stalin. If he did not want something, then this would not have happened, especially when it comes to political events, institutions, practices. Yes, from time to time Stalin demonstrated an emphatic rejection of his cult, but this demonstration was also part of the cult, since modesty should be an obligatory quality of a great leader.
We have a lot of materials that prove that the leader personally had a hand in the creation of his cult. Most characteristic example- this is his own short biography, in which he himself entered entire fragments, and with all the laudatory clichés.
—Did Stalin have real friends?
Yes, of course he had friends. Apparently, he was sincerely friends with Sergei Kirov. He was also friendly with Sergo Ordzhonikidze, which, however, did not prevent him from having a hand in his death. Whatever happened there, whether Ordzhonikidze was shot or he committed suicide, in any case it happened under pressure from Stalin. And they clashed just on the topic of terror, because Ordzhonikidze, unlike other members of the Politburo, showed integrity, fought, tried to prove something.
—How did Stalin treat his family members?
He loved, I think, both of his wives. He loved children, Svetlana and Vasily, but did not really love his eldest son Yakov. When he was born, Stalin had no time for him at all, Yakov was brought up in Georgia, far from his father. When Stalin got to know his eldest son better, he was an angular young man, and even with habits, not all of which his father liked.
Stalin was devoted to his family in his own way. Even after the death of his wife Ekaterina Svanidze, he spent a lot of time with relatives along her line. In particular, Stalin was grateful to them for the support they provided him before the revolution. In 1937, everything changed: his suspicion began to concern family members, many were repressed. And this continued until the death of Stalin. He authorized the arrests and persecution of relatives of both wives. Apparently, the leader saw in them a source of foreign influence, believed that they were trying to get close to him through them.
Indicative has become tragic fate favorite children of Stalin - Svetlana and Vasily. The absence of a normal family hearth played a role in this. In a word, the Stalin family is a vivid example of how the people around the leader became unhappy.
—Is it true that he treated the servants very well?
- I would compare the life of Stalin's dacha, where he lived for many years, with the arrangement of a landowner's estate, in which Stalin was a zealous owner. It was a closed world. The "master" treated the servants mostly loyal and friendly. Together they gardened and planted trees. From a certain point on, these people generally replaced Stalin's family. But they had to treat him with great reverence, because he was a leader. By the way, this profession itself implies a high degree of devotion and confidence in the exceptional qualities of its patron, otherwise it will simply be difficult to work.
Although Stalin was not cruel to his employees in general, the repressions certainly affected them as well. For example, it is widely known that Nikolai Vlasik, the head of the Stalinist guard, was arrested in 1952 and imprisoned. There have been arrests before.
—Stalin believed that he was bringing good to his people?
“He was a typical dictator. The essence of any dictator is the conquest and retention of power, this determines everything. However, Stalin had to believe that he was bringing good to his people, that getting rid of the exploiters, landlords and capitalists was a great achievement, that the collective farm system was what was needed both for the peasantry and for the country as a whole. It is impossible to live, and even more so to manage a huge country, if you do not believe in anything.
Ostrovsky A.V. Who stood behind Stalin. Secrets of the revolutionary underground. - SPb., 2002.
Khlevnyuk O.V. Stalin. The life of a leader - M., 2015.
© O. Khlevnyuk, 2015
© A. Bondarenko, artistic design, 2015 © LLC AST Publishing House, 2015 CORPUS ® Publishing House
To my wife Katya (1961–2013)
Introduction
This book will not be of interest to the authors of The Other Stalin, The Vile Myths About Stalin, The Great Stalin, Russia for Stalin, The Handbook of a Stalinist, The Assassination of Stalin, and others, as well as their admirers. I wrote this book for those who (like myself) would like to understand Stalin and his era, the nature and logic of the actions of the Soviet dictator, who had such a significant impact on the development of our country.
The number of publications about Stalin and his policies is too great. Even a specialist is not ashamed to admit that he has not read a fair amount of them. In the ocean of thoughts and nonsense coexist peacefully and there is almost no overlap between serious, strictly documented research and cheap one-day, hastily tailored from anecdotes, rumors and fictional sensations. Both camps - scientific historiography and primitive journalism - have long ago given up on each other. Only occasionally will any serious scientist be publicly indignant at yet another fake. Even more rarely, modern Stalinists and hunters of "sensations" look into serious books or documents. It is more and more difficult for the reader to navigate in the world of falsifications, "free" interpretations and fantasies of excited minds.
The scientific biographies of Stalin in their development went through the same stages as the historiography of the Soviet period as a whole. For political reasons, there was no place for a scientific biography of Stalin in the Soviet Union. The case was limited to officialdom “Joseph Stalin. short biography” and formal references in encyclopedias. Western and Soviet informal historians, bit by bit collecting available sources, created several biographies of Stalin, which have now become classics.
The situation could not help but change after the avalanche-like opening of the archives. We were literally buried under a mass of new documents. It took time to get out from under these rubble. Evidence of relative historiographic stabilization was, among other things, new scientific biographies of Stalin and other studies on his personality and activities, written with the involvement of archival materials.
The opening of the archives is associated with the emergence of another popular genre of Stalinist biographies. I would call it archival journalism. There is reason to consider the famous Soviet leader of the Gorbachev perestroika D. A. Volkogonov as the founder of this genre. To some extent, the Russian playwright E. Radzinsky took up his banner. The methods of selecting documentary evidence and presenting the material in these books have a pronounced journalistic character. The particular attention of these authors is attracted by documents of personal origin, and not by "boring" statistics and office work of power structures. As a result, a characteristic feature of such biographies of Stalin is a weak study of the historical context, a special attention to attractive but secondary details.
A kind of "third way" was outlined in his works by the English writer and historian S. Montefiore. He tried to make dry archival research more popular and overcome the shortcomings of archival journalism. The result obtained turned out to be widely demanded, first of all, by the Western reader.
quantitatively in modern Russia, however, the genre of pseudoscientific apology of Stalin prevails. Most different people for various reasons, myths about the leader and his era are replicated. The authors of such publications are distinguished by ignorance. The lack of elementary knowledge is replaced by aggressive judgments, the use of false "sources" or the distortion of real documents. The impact of this ideological attack on the minds of readers is multiplied by difficulties Everyday life, corruption and outrageous social inequality in contemporary Russia. Not accepting the present, people tend to idealize the past.
Stalin's Russian apologists no longer dare (as they did quite recently) to deny mass repression and the obvious failures of Stalin's policy, paid for with a lot of blood. Now more sophisticated methods of "correcting history" are being used. Soviet officials (heads of the NKVD, secretaries of regional party committees), who allegedly got out of control and deceived Stalin, are declared to be the culprits of mass terror. Fables about a “different”, potentially “democratic” Stalin, limited in his power by malicious officials, are the fruit of politically biased fantasies; they are not supported by a single document.
Essentially just as speculative and unsubstantiated is the widespread conception of an inevitable "modernizing Stalinism." Formally referring to the numerous victims of terror and negative consequences leap strategy, it proceeds from the notion of the unconditional organicity and lack of variance of the Stalinist model as a method of "modernization" of post-revolutionary Russia. Stalin is the mouthpiece of an objective need, a pawn in the game of historical forces. His methods, if deplorable, are necessary and even effective, since the flywheel of history is always smeared with a lot of blood. In these judgments, we can easily read the rooted prejudices of the Russian public consciousness - about the absolute priority of the interests of the state and the insignificance of the individual, about the rigid conditionality of the course of history by laws of a higher order.
Of course, it would be absurd to deny that both Bolshevism and Stalinism, which came to replace it, were to a certain extent due to the “long waves” Russian history. A strong state and authoritarian traditions, weak institutions of private property and civil society, and finally, the colossal size of the colonizing power, which made it possible, in particular, to create a huge “Gulag archipelago”. However, the absolutization of these factors to the scale of "Russian rock" leads to a dead end theory of "inevitable Stalin". It is no coincidence that its adherents avoid thinking about specific facts and prefer to replicate Stalin's schemes. Soviet history, sometimes in new wrappers, and often without them. They furiously brush aside questions about the price of transformation and military victories, about the options for the development of the country and the role of the individual in Soviet history. The evidence base for the concept of the inevitability of Stalin and Stalinism tends to zero. In fact, it is based on the dubious postulate of “common sense”: everything that happens must happen without fail, there is no other way.
The dissolution of history in a viscous and formless historical necessity is the simplest and most uncomplicated way of presenting the past. The historian, however, does not have to deal with simple diagrams and political speculations, but with concrete facts. Working with documents, he cannot fail to notice the close relationship and interdependence of objective and subjective factors, typical and random. Under the conditions of dictatorship, the role of personal prejudices, prejudices and the obsession of the leader increased many times over. And where, if not in the biography of Stalin, it is appropriate to think about the complex interweaving of these problems.
At the same time, biographies are a special genre of research that is easy to dry up with the details of the historical context, but just as easy to fill to the brim with piquant descriptions of everyday life. The context outside the hero and the hero out of context are the main dangers that, as we see in many examples, lie in wait for biographers. This problem was one of the most difficult for me as well. Ultimately, I realized that I could not fit into the book even mentioning all the events of any significance. Stalin period. Restoring the historical context, I was forced to skip many facts and details, especially if they repeated each other. The main processes and phenomena that most clearly and clearly characterize Stalin, his time and the system associated with his name remained at the center of the study. Such a restriction was all the more appropriate because over the past twenty years there have been too many new sources about Stalin and the Stalinist period. About them, at least briefly, it is necessary to say separately.
Khlevnyuk O. V
Master. Stalin and the establishment of the Stalinist dictatorship
INTRODUCTION
“We still receive regular and frequent directives from the owner, which gives us the opportunity not to miss,” wrote L. M. Kaganovich to his friend and colleague in the Politburo G. K. Ordzhonikidze on August 2, 1932. It was about Stalin’s directives, who directed the work of the Politburo from the south, where he went on a traditional long vacation. More than four years later, during Stalin's next vacation, Kaganovich again reported to Ordzhonikidze: “As for common affairs, they are going well with us. We are very well connected with the owner.” Both Kaganovich and Ordzhonikidze were Stalin's closest associates and, formally, as members of the collective governing body Politburo almost equal to him in status in the hierarchy of the Bolshevik power. Despite this, Kaganovich, who addressed Stalin as “You”, just like Ordzhonikidze, Molotov, Voroshilov and others who were considered friends of Stalin, at a certain stage recognized him as the “master”. Stalin himself, judging by the fact that this wording has become commonplace among the Kremlin elite, did not mind. Playing with his daughter, he called her "mistress" and himself "secretary", reinterpreting the real world in which he was the master, and his associates were "secretaries". Adult games of "master" were no joke. Having carried out his bloody "revolution from above", which broke the already broken country and destroyed many millions of people, completely disposing of the lives of even his comrades-in-arms, formal members of the "collective leadership", Stalin concentrated in his hands such power that not all dictators known to history possessed.
As one of the key phenomena of recent world history, the Stalinist dictatorship is of great interest and numerous not only scientific but also political disputes. Even half a century after Stalin's death, in conditions when the Stalinist system barely survives in only one country in the world - North Korea, the problems of Stalinism did not turn into a purely scientific subject. Despite this, the issues of modern political and real relevance of the Stalinist legacy are not considered in this book. It is an attempt historical research following in line with scientific historiography.
A few other preliminary explanations will also be helpful in understanding the essence of this work.
First of all, it should be said about the problem of the predetermination of the Stalinist dictatorship. The ideas of the inevitability and organic nature of Stalinism have become widespread. The reasons for this are seen in the authoritarian traditions of Russian history, in the Bolshevik revolution and the domination of state property and administrative planning generated by it, etc. These and other factors undoubtedly left a decisive imprint on the development of the USSR in prewar years. As a result of the First World War, the poorly tailored Versailles system, the world crisis that soon followed, etc., authoritarianism and dictatorships in one way or another infected most of Europe. In the Soviet Union, this general trend operated with particular intensity. To the destruction of the First World War, even more terrible consequences of the fierce Civil War, mass emigration, and famine were added here. Extremist in its essence, the Bolshevik Party, which had established itself in power, was created from the very beginning as a rigidly centralized organization aimed at violent social experiments. However, even the fact that the vector of the country's development, under the weight of historical circumstances, leaned towards the pole of authoritarianism and dictatorship, did not mean at all that it was necessarily a dictatorship of the Stalinist type. Ideas about inevitability are the product of schemes and simplifications. Real knowledge complicates the picture, demonstrating the variety of reasons for this or that phenomenon, the complex interaction of historical traditions, the logic of current events, political clashes at the top and social opposition from the bottom, the personal qualities of leaders (especially the dictator), and finally, accidents. This book proceeds precisely from such an understanding of the causes and essence of the events under consideration.
Coming out victorious from many years of struggle in the Politburo, Stalin turned into a dictator as a result of the implementation new revolution, no less cardinal and bloody than Lenin's. Once again, the universal pattern was confirmed: each dictator must carry out his own revolution, because without it he cannot become a dictator. Like many other dictators, through violence, Stalin sought, on the one hand, to carry out the overdue modernization of the country, and on the other, to establish himself as the master of this new, more powerful (primarily militarily) state. Closely intertwined and influencing each other, the modernization and political-doctrinal components of the second revolution predetermined the characteristic features of both the Stalinist model of "modernization" and the Stalinist dictatorship.
The book explores primarily the political aspects of the Stalinist revolution and the process of establishing the Stalinist dictatorship.
The main result of the struggle at the top of the party between the heirs of Lenin in the 1920s was the gradual Stalinization of the Politburo. Its essence was the nomination of Stalin to the role of leader in the system of "collective leadership", which retained a predominantly oligarchic character. The final point of Stalinization can be considered the adoption and beginning of the implementation at the turn of the 1920-1930s of the political course proposed by Stalin, namely: forced industrialization and forced mass collectivization. The victory over the group of A. I. Rykov, N. I. Bukharin and M. P. Tomsky in 1928-1929, which was of key importance for the Stalinization of the supreme power, required considerable efforts from Stalin and his supporters. Moreover, the growing crisis that accompanied the jump-start policy forced Stalin to act in the sphere of supreme power with more restraint than one would expect from an undisputed winner. Evidence of this can serve as backstage provocations against the "right" and some quite loyal members of the Politburo, the confrontation between the Stalinist Politburo and the Rykov Council of People's Commissars in 1930, the case of Syrtsov and Lominadze, and other facts about which will be discussed in the first section of the book.
Stalin's policy of the "Great Leap Forward" had a pronounced violent character. Despite the presence of a certain social support, it was opposed by the peasant majority of the country, which found a vivid expression in the mass uprisings and unrest that swept the village in early 1930 and continued, although not with such force, for the next few years. Less significant, as can be judged from the documents so far available, were the protests of the urban population, which was in a more privileged position compared to the peasants. However, individual speeches by industrial workers, as well as dissatisfaction with a certain part of the party in the early 1930s, were an alarming signal for the Stalinist leadership. highest point crisis and evidence of the depravity and criminality of the policy of the first five-year plan was the tragic crisis that engulfed the country in 1932-1933. Mass starvation, failures in industrial sectors, balancing on the verge of bankruptcy in international payments, extreme impoverishment of the majority of the population and a sharp increase in social tension on this basis were caused not just by "difficulties in growth", but to a large extent by the erroneous and criminal decisions of the country's top leadership headed with Stalin. The relative improvement in the situation immediately after the forced abandonment of the most odious elements of leftist politics at the turn of 1933-1934. (just like the introduction of NEP at one time) once again demonstrated how significant a role political factors and the actions of Soviet leaders played in the Bolshevik-Stalinist system.
The first monument to Joseph Stalin was erected in 1929 on the 50th anniversary of the leader. Since then, hundreds of monuments have appeared on the territory of the USSR and in the countries of the socialist camp. The latter were installed in 2016 in Surgut and Donetsk. Who is actually erected a monument to our contemporaries? The first scientific biography of Stalin "Stalin. The life of one leader" will help to understand this. We talk with its author.
Olga Orlova: The first monument to Joseph Stalin was erected in 1929 on the 50th anniversary of the leader. Since then, hundreds of such monuments have appeared on the territory of the USSR and in the countries of the socialist camp. The latter were installed in 2016 in Surgut and Donetsk. To whom do our contemporaries actually erect monuments? The first scientific biography of Joseph Stalin will help answer this. With its author, Dr. historical sciences Oleg Khlevnyuk, we are talking on the Hamburg account.
Hello, Oleg Vitalievich. Thanks for coming to our studio.
Oleg Khlevnyuk: Good evening. Thank you for the invitation.
Oleg Khlevnyuk. Born in 1959 in Vinnitsa. In 1980 he graduated from the historical faculty of the Vinnitsa State Pedagogical Institute. In 1985 - postgraduate studies at the Institute of History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1987 he defended his PhD thesis. In 1997 - doctorate.
Chief Specialist of the Department for the Study and Publication of Documents of the State Archives of the Russian Federation. Since 2011 - Professor of the Department of National History XX- XXI centuries of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University named after Lomonosov. Since 2014 - Professor of the School of Historical Sciences of the Faculty of Humanities high school economy. Specialist in Soviet history of the 1920s-1950s. His monographs have been translated into many languages and have won prestigious scientific awards.
O.O.: Oleg Vitalievich, a lot of publicistic books have been written about Joseph Stalin. Some even write fantasy books. When you decided to write a scientific biography of Stalin, what professional framework did you set for yourself?
OH.: The fact is that I generally came to the biography of Stalin, as it were, from the wrong side. I never wrote biographies. I dealt with a variety of problems of Soviet history, especially the Stalinist period: economic policy, the history of the Gulag, I was very involved in political history, for example, he studied the activities of the Politburo, when all the archives were opened and there was such an opportunity to deal with these subjects. And I never thought to write a special biography. But then circumstances developed, a variety of circumstances came together. And I decided - why not try on the basis of the knowledge that I have, adding, of course, some new facts about Stalin himself, and combining my approaches to the system and my knowledge and some feelings, if you like. , about a human. Because when you deal with an era, you still start to feel something about the characters that you work on, about which you write.
O.O.: Do you feel that the fact that he ended up in power at all and how he eliminated his opponents is how much a random historical choice? Were there, for example, figures surrounded by Stalin or surrounded even by Lenin, most likely in that period, who would have the same high chance be in power?
OH.: In general, I am not a supporter of any historical predetermination. In general, I believe that in history there are much more accidents than patterns. But if we talk all the more about leaders, then why did Lenin have to die at 54? Let's just imagine. This, one might say, is not at all such a significant age - 54 years. And imagine that he just lived for at least another 10 years. There is nothing unusual about this.
O.O.: And who, surrounded by Lenin, would you rate as a real leader?
OH.: The fact is that there were many real leaders in Lenin's entourage. You know, politics is such a thing: a person first gets into a certain chair, and then it turns out that he has certain abilities, he begins to use them. And everyone thinks that this was predestined ...
O.O.: What is he with kindergarten should have become the leader of the country by now.
OH.: The boy is the leader. So he was born as a leader. Or a boy commander, a boy leader, and so on. No, it doesn't happen like that. In politics, especially when it comes to personal appointments, there is much more random. In general, from my point of view, the most real alternative to Stalin, which, of course, he ruthlessly destroyed - it was some kind of collective leadership that existed under Lenin, there was a certain period under Stalin himself in the early 1930s, then Stalin completely eliminated it in result of the so-called great terror, when he a large number of his associates either destroyed or simply silenced. And then, as soon as he was gone, this collective leadership arose again. And there was no more dictatorship in our history.
And, in my opinion, this once again proves that we were not doomed precisely to a dictatorship of the Stalinist type.
O.O.: You know, there is interesting story. When I first saw your book, I started reading it. I didn't read the title carefully. I thought it was called "Stalin. The life of a lonely leader." I read it to the end, being sure that's what it's called. Why? Because the book is written in a very compositionally unusual way for scientific biography. It starts with last days Stalin's life, how he dies, and periodically these last few days of his death - you return to them throughout the book. At the same time, the most amazing thing is that he dies alone, and no one dares to enter him. That is, the guards are afraid to call a doctor, his inner circle is afraid to call a doctor, children appear at the very last moment, they are also not called, no one is invited. And this is such a metaphor for his loneliness, the result of his life.
And at the same time, you just spoke about the collective leadership that was before and after. When he dies and he is gone, how quickly… You reproduce literally by the day. How quickly everyone is guided by what needs to be done. That is, no fight for power, no panic. It's terribly unusual. If there were so many years of dictatorship, if, as you say, the collective leadership is destroyed, why did people immediately organize themselves.
OH.: First, thank you for the good headline - "The Life of a Lone Chief." It was his choice. And he was getting more and more lonely indeed. But, you see, despite the fact that he constantly feared for his power and tried, as they say, to trample down everyone around him who could be potential competition and could become a potential heir ... After all, it is very characteristic that he died, not leaving a formal heir. Although most often authoritarian leaders are very much concerned about this. Take modern Korea. On the contrary, he tried to create a situation where everyone would think that he had heirs.
O.O.: There is no one to replace him.
OH.: Someone to replace. Although this, of course, was very irrational, because then it was necessary to believe in one's own immortality. But, apparently, he, like so many people, thought: "Well, we'll see. Still, I'll live longer." He, of course, kind of suppressed his surroundings. But he was forced to delegate certain functions to them. Because otherwise the system would not work. He can't do everything himself. So, someone still needs to entrust. And if you charge someone and give certain powers, then these people, of course, have their own ideas about how to do it, they have a certain administrative power (if not political, then administrative). And when this deterrent in the form of a leader, in the form of a tyrant, does not become, it turns out that they are all ready to accept power and build it in accordance with the ideas that they have.
The experience of collective leadership was in the 1920-1930s. Collective leadership in its infancy, somewhere in the depths of the Stalinist dictatorship, was preserved both during the war and in the post-war period. And so when he was gone, they just got together and began to do what they were already used to doing in principle.
O.O.: You have said more than once that you do not really trust memoirs. And for a historian, memoirs are an unreliable source. And you even wrote that you blacklisted some memoirists around Stalin.
OH.: I have very little confidence in the memoirs of relatives and children.
O.O.: Do you mean the memories of Svetlana Alliluyeva?
OH.: No, Svetlana is just the best of these memories. These are, for example, the memoirs of Sergo Beria or people who were in some kind of family relationship with Stalin or lived in his family in childhood.
You understand, I absolutely do not believe that the children who lived at that time could have any information at all and somehow understand what was happening around them. It is they who are already coming up with something today that, from their point of view, should perhaps improve the image of this person, to whom they are probably grateful, grateful. Suppose one memoirist writes: "Here Stalin swam." And in other memoirs and some testimonial letters, we learn that he did not know how to swim. Even in such trifles one can see how carefully one should approach memoirs.
O.O.: Oleg Vitalievich, many reviewers of your book note how scrupulously you work with sources and how you try to objectively analyze what you can see. Many wrote that you do not attribute too much to Stalin. And some such anti-Stalinist myths - you treat them very carefully.
In particular, for example, the story about the murder of Kirov, that Stalin was a conspiracy. That is, it was an operation that Stalin initiated, the assassination of Kirov. You show that we do not have such data to think that this is really his development of some kind.
I wanted to ask you this. On the one hand, you, by analyzing his childhood, show that we have no reason to assume that he had some kind of cruel traumatic childhood, from which this future tyrant later grew. On the other hand, analyzing his last years and the medical information that remained, there is also no reason to assume that it was some kind of deep mental illness. That is, childhood seems to be no worse than others, and mother's care, and there is no such heavy medical legacy. And how did you then explain to yourself why he was so cruel and why these lists that are published, hundreds of names and Stalin's personal signature, "shoot". How do you explain this both as a scientist and as a human being for yourself.
OH.: You are absolutely correct. I have long, even when it was a common place, that Stalin killed Kirov. And I always opposed this version, they criticized me for it, they thought that I was almost such an inveterate Stalinist. But I always said: "You know, I need facts. It's impossible. It doesn't work, it doesn't work." Not a single fact that we have. It does not allow us to put forward and defend such a version. And now it has become common place. And I am very glad about this, because indeed the majority of historians, after analyzing all the available documents, have come to this conclusion. The same applies to the fact that Stalin was allegedly an agent of the tsarist secret police. The same applies to these ideas that Stalin was really traumatized from childhood.
No, this was a poor, but quite worthy family in terms of its existence. He was an only child, which is very important. Because, as a rule, of course, we know that those who had many children suffered and lived poorly. There was simply not enough money to feed and educate everyone. And he did not even work in childhood and in his youth. He had his first job somewhere, he was already quite a mature young man at that time. And then he did not last long on it and went completely into the revolution.
As for what happened to him afterwards. Even Molotov, who, of course, loved him very much, he said that, of course, to have such power, something must inevitably happen to the head. This is not a literal phrase.
O.O.: Are you saying that he was corrupted by absolute power?
OH.: Absolute power corrupts any politician. This is first. Secondly, the absolutely ruling politician breaks away from reality. He begins to perceive reality not adequately, and a certain feeling is instilled in him, as if something is above him, something like that is leading him from heaven. Take the brightest type in this sense - this is, of course, Hitler. He was absolutely convinced that some kind of providence had chosen and was leading him. Stalin also had such notes. Then comes the fear that you might lose power. And, realizing that you did so much while in power, a lot of injustice, you understand that this is dangerous for you. There is no mechanism for a normal change of power. That is, as they say, either I am in power, or myself. And then this fear gives rise to heightened suspicion. This, of course, affects the psyche of a person and his way of thinking and his behavior. The most important thing here is ... we are just getting to this problem. The problem of any dictatorship. Being fixated on one person, who is just a person, just a person, subject to illnesses, some kind of fears, anxieties, mistakes, and so on - the system cannot work if it is aimed at only one leader.
There must be mechanisms for the succession of power, adjustments of power, there must be mechanisms for counterweights and counteractions. Otherwise, it turns out what happened in Stalin's time.
O.O.: Oleg Vitalyevich, if we talk about the scale of the repressions that took place, you give such a figure about the years of great terror, which is about 1,600,000 in 1937-1938. Tell me, how to calculate this, if we take the entire period of Stalin's rule, how to calculate the total number victims of repression? What are the sources and what are the counting mechanisms?
OH.: Here's the thing. Of course our main source about how many people suffered - this is the departmental statistics of those bodies that carried out repressions. That is, the OGPU, the NKVD, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, various kinds of state security structures. These were the departments that arrested, shot and kept records.
O.O.: And it can be taken to scientific circulation?
OH.: She is absolutely one. For approximately the last 20 years, this official statistics has been intensively introduced into circulation and studied by historians.
The problem here is this. When, for example, we are talking about 1937-1938, which you mentioned, and we know that according to official data, in about 1.5 years, 1.6 million people were arrested, of which almost 700,000 were shot, these data are slightly underestimated, but not much. But, nevertheless, why can we say so firmly? Because during this period, the period of the so-called mass operations, accounting was carried out especially carefully. In other periods, unfortunately, this did not always happen.
Nevertheless, we operate with certain numbers that are basic for us. We know that during the period of Stalin's rule from the late 1920s to 1953, approximately 3.5 to 4 million people were arrested under Article 58, that is, for political crimes. Judging by the data that we have, probably about 15 million people, in addition, went through various kinds of imprisonment in camps, colonies, and prisons. Moreover, far from always they were even condemned. That is, they got there even without the verdicts of the courts. Therefore, it is very difficult for us to calculate all this.
Sometimes they say that they were criminals. This is wrong. There were many criminals, of course, in the camps. But they still made up a relatively small proportion of the prisoners. If we talk about repeat offenders, such hardened rapists, murderers and so on. The bulk were the so-called domestic criminals, who simply violated too strict Soviet laws. For example, a huge number of people were imprisoned for the fact that they arbitrarily left work, quit their jobs.
According to our today's concepts, it would be impossible to say that this is a criminal. But, nevertheless, then it was millions of people who were allegedly imprisoned for such crimes.
About 30 million people during this time ... They are not among those who ended up in camps, in exile, and so on. Or about 30 million convictions... Because there were also repeated convictions. These are people who were condemned conditionally. They, too, were subjected to various forms of discrimination. For example, they had to work in production and they took part of their wages, and quite a large one at that. It was a severe punishment because the general standard of living was very low. And when a certain amount of money was withdrawn from a person every month from a salary, this was also quite severe.
Not to mention the fact that when we talk about the millions of political prisoners sent to the camp, for example, we must remember that they all had families, wives, children, brothers and sisters. And, as a rule, all of them were subjected to some form of discrimination. They didn't necessarily end up in the camp. They were expelled from their apartments, evicted from the cities where they lived, if these cities belonged to the list of sensitive ones. And we have everything big cities at that time were regime. They lost their jobs. And they were often doomed to a half-starved existence. Children were taken to special boarding schools. It was also a great tragedy.
And so, you know, in fact, if you put it all together, then we will see a rather terrible picture. These statistics are needed not to calculate something on purpose, to prove something. From my point of view, the fact that 3.5 million people were innocently imprisoned or shot is already enough. But what are these calculations for? In order to understand the essence of the system. What was she really up to.
O.O.: One of the merits that is given to Stalin and the system that he created is that it was the system that won the Second World War. And the fact that Stalin won the war is very often used as a device that justifies everything that he did. Please tell me how you evaluate Stalin the commander.
OH.: The paradox of the situation lies in the fact that we still do not have a single serious scientific work about Stalin the commander. The most difficult period for me when I was writing this book was during the war. Because I had absolutely nothing to rely on. We don't have studies to explain to the reader. In this particular operation, Stalin acted in the best way. But in this he made such and such a mistake. Therefore, I relied on the developments that we have. But mainly, of course, on archival sources and mainly on the assessments of our famous marshals - Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Konev and others, who at one time presented a completely clear concept that Stalin was an unsuccessful commander at the beginning of the war, he gradually learned. And thanks to the fact that he studied, thanks to the fact that he began to listen more to the opinion of professionals, things went, as they say, in order. And it all ended with a victory, which, of course, was of tremendous importance for the history of our country.
O.O.: You yourself said that a lot of the materials of the Stalinist period related to repressions have already been put into circulation, they are available. And many people can see them. Here is written a scientific biography of Stalin. But monuments to him continue to be erected and erected. What do you think about it?
OH.: I don’t think it’s necessary to erect monuments at all, to be honest. Especially monuments to controversial personalities. In general, each monument, before erecting, you need to think very carefully, because it already becomes insulting. What kind of a country are we, where we only set and then shoot. Apparently, in our life today there are a lot of things that we do not like. Many people don't like it. And when things don't go well in people's lives, they don't look ahead very well. They always prefer to look back, to come up with some kind of bright past. They are not looking for a bright future, and even more so they do not see a bright present, but they are very willing to look for a bright past, in which, as it seems to them, or they want to inspire themselves, everything was great, everything was without conflicts, everyone was equal, everything is fine lived...
O.O.: There was order.
OH.: There was order. There was no crime. Although these are all myths. Everything was - there was corruption, there were thieving officials. Everything was. Moreover, a person's life was worth nothing. But people believe that it was good then, and if we do it again today as it was then, we will be fine today.
O.O.: Thanks a lot. Our program included a doctor of historical sciences, the author of the book "Stalin. The Life of a Leader" Oleg Khlevnyuk.
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Today, Stalin's precepts are followed only in North Korea, clearly demonstrating to unbiased observers what the real possibilities of Stalinism are in modern world. Nevertheless, political clichés about unparalleled greatness Stalin era, about equality and the fight against corruption, about the joy and purity of that distant and ruined life by "enemies" are exploited by unscrupulous publicists and politicians and fall on fertile ground. How dangerous is this mixture of historical ignorance and social discontent? Will the Russian 21st century repeat the fate of the 20th century?
Stalin did not have the opportunity to see in what conditions the Soviet people lived, what and where they bought, where they were treated and studied. His knowledge of the existence of the "masses" was mostly armchair. Until now, two main sources are known from which Stalin could draw his knowledge of everyday life: state security reports on the situation in the country and mass moods, as well as letters and complaints from ordinary citizens, which were received in significant numbers by all power structures, including addressed to leader.
Collectivization is one of the key achievements of Stalin, on which his dictatorship was largely based. All other features of the Stalinist system can be seen as derivatives of collectivization. Mass violence against the largest class of the country required the creation of a significant punitive apparatus, a system of camps and special exile, and finally turned terror into the main method of control. Collectivization abruptly and almost immediately destroyed numerous traditional social ties, increased the atomization of society and facilitated ideological manipulation. Arbitrary and merciless siphoning of resources (both material and human) from the village made it possible to adopt thoughtless economic plans, to squander “easy” money and lives with impunity.
Another reason for social stability and support for the dictatorship was the war factor. The memory of the horrors of the First World War and civil wars, victory over Nazism, paid for by twenty-seven million lives, fears of a third world nuclear war - all this had a huge impact on the worldview of millions of people, and not only in the USSR. For many, the Stalinist government acted as the savior of the world from a terrible enemy. The victory of 1945 for decades to come, up to the present day, served as the most important basis for the legitimacy of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist regimes.
The enumeration of historical circumstances favorable for the Stalinist system can be continued. However, all of them, even in combination with permanent repressions, could not completely suppress social contradictions And mass discontent. From the very beginning, the power of the Bolsheviks as a radical revolutionary party was based on a strict division of society and suppression, up to the physical destruction of that part of it, which, by birth and social essence, was considered hostile to socialism. Stalin's revolution from above gave these purges the strongest impetus. To the former nobles, bourgeoisie, officers, tsarist officials, etc., stigmatized after 1917, a huge mass of the main population of the country, the peasants, was added. Many of them were declared "kulaks" during collectivization, shot, expelled or expelled from their native villages. Realizing the presence of "offended" and "enemies" generated by this policy, the dictatorship intensified preventive purges, which was especially pronounced in 1937-1938. Repression breeds repression. By the end of Stalin's rule, a significant part, if not most, of the citizens of the USSR in different periods of their lives were subjected to arrest, imprisonment in camps, deportations or other milder discriminatory measures.
On December 15th it all ended. The routine operation of exchanging money and revaluing deposits began. Within eight days, from December 16 to 23, 1947, Stalin received visitors in his office 5 times, and each time Zverev was among them. Zverev's visits on December 16 and 17, that is, in the first days of the reform, lasted two hours. On January 3, 1948, Zverev sent Stalin a report on the results of the monetary reform. The note recorded its results - successful for the state and disappointing for the population. If on December 1, 1947, the population had 59 billion rubles in their hands, then as a result of rush purchases and monetary reform, 4 billion remained. Deposits in savings banks as a result of the exchange decreased from 18.6 billion old rubles. up to 15 billion new. Quite different were the proportions of price cuts due to the abolition of the rationing system. Bread fell in price by 20%, and meat only by 12%. Some items have even gone up in price. For example, woolen fabrics - by 27%, and clothes - by 11%. In general, the index of state retail prices after the reform was 83% in relation to pre-reform prices. Having received instead of ten old rubles one new one and went to the store with it, it was possible to buy goods eight times less than before. The state seized the lion's share of the population's savings free of charge.
