on the question of stalin's role in the bolshevik revolution

Canadian Slavonic Papers

On the Question of Stalin's Role in the Bolshevik RevolutionAuthor(s): ROBERT M. SLUSSERSource: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 19, No. 4 (December1977), pp. 405-416Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40867140 .

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ARTICLES

ROBERT M. SLUSSER

On the Question of Stalin's Role in the Bolshevik Revolution

Historians have long recognized that Stalin's behaviour in the Bolshevik Revolution raises some puzzling questions. To put it bluntly, he seems to have done nothing significant during the final days and hours when the crucial actions were being taken which led to Bolshevik victory. This is all the more surprising since at the time he was one of the party's most influential if not best-known leaders. He was a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee and its inner circle, the so-called uzkii sostav, as well as senior editor of the central party organ, Rahochii put'. In addition to these high party positions, Stalin had been assigned to two bodies which the Central Committee had set up in preparation for the seizure of power: a seven-man "Political Bureau," which the Committee voted to establish at the historic session of 10 October (O.S.), where the basic decision was taken to prepare for an uprising; and a five-man "Military Revolutionary Centre," which the Committee decided to set up at its session on 16 October as part of the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC). The latter body, in turn, was an offshoot of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and like the Soviet was headed by Leon Trotskii.1

Before attention can be focussed on Stalin's role in the October events, it is essential to look briefly at the hotly-debated question of the nature of Bolshevik strategy for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the seizure of power. Three conflicting interpretations of this question have been advanced by historians, each of which can be supported to a greater or lesser degree by the available evidence. The current official Soviet position, represented for example by articles in the Sovetskaia istoricheskaia entsiklopediia, is that the sole architect of Bolshevik victory was Lenin. It was he, in this view, who not only supplied the requisite vision, drive, and will power but who also provided day-to-day guidance to those who carried out the specific measures which gained the Bolsheviks their triumph.2

1. For an impassiorted but unconvincing denial by a leading Soviet historian that Trotskii was head of the Military Revolutionary Committee, see 1. 1. Mints, fstoriia ve/ikogo Oktiabria ν trëkh tomakh (Moscow, 1968), II, 1007.

2. For an example of the Lenin-centred historiography of the encyclopedia, see the



406 I Canadian Slavonic Papers

A second explanation centres on the Military Revolutionary Committee and sees the strategy which brought victory as a well- concerted sequence of measures by the MRC, under Trotskii's guidance, to weaken the Provisional Government's bases of support. This offensive strategy was, however, masked as the defence of the revolution against its enemies on the right, including Kerenskii and his cabinet. This interpretation enjoyed extensive though by no means universal acceptance in the Soviet Union in the first decade after the revolution, and still commands assent among many Western scholars. In its most lapidary formulation, by West German historian Dietrich Geyer, it holds that "Kerensky's fall was undoubtedly a result of the brilliant technique of power seizure as developed by Trotsky."3 Similar views have been expressed recently by Alexander Rabino witch4 and E. H. Carr.5

Differing from both these views, which between them have dominated Soviet and Western historiography on the Bolshevik Revolu- tion, is a third interpretation, offered by the American historian Robert V. Daniels in his book, Red October. Daniels recognizes the importance of Lenin's leadership and drive to power, but holds that the final Bolshevik victory owed more to chance than to design or careful planning. The Bolshevik Party, in Daniels' view, "was tacitly violating [Lenin's] instructions and waiting for a multi-party and semi-constitu- tional revolution by the [Second] Congress of Soviets." Only an "ill- conceived counter-move" by the Kerenskii government - its last- minute attempt to ward off the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks - stirred Lenin's followers (including Trotskii) into a belated flurry of activity which carried them into power "with undreamed of ease, and no intention before the fact."6

Of these three interpretations, it is the second which provides the basis for the present article. It is, in fact, only when seen in the context of this interpretation that Stalin's behaviour in October seems puzzling. If Lenin were the master-mind behind the Bolshevik coup, then neither Stalin nor any of the party's other second-rank leaders could have played truly significant roles. If, on the other hand, all the Bolsheviks

chronology in its article, "Velikaia Oktiabr'skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia," Sovetskaia istoricheskaia entsiklopediia, III (Moscow, 1963), columns 58-64.

3. Dietrich Geyer, "The Bolshevik Insurrection in Petrograd," in Richard Pipes (ed.), Revolutionary Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 178. See also W. H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921, 2 vols. (New York, 1935), I, 300.

4. Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 191 7 in Petrograd (New York, 1976), p. 313.

5. E. H. Carr, "The Revolution from Below" (review of Marc Ferro, La Revolution de 1917: Octobre. Naissance d'Une Société), Times Literary Supplement, No. 3,925 (3 June 1977), p. 683.

6. Robert V. Daniels, Red October: The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 (New York, 1967), p. 216.



Stalin's Role in the Bolshevik Revolution | 407

except Lenin lacked the will to fight for power, then Stalin's apparent inactivity differed only in degree, not in kind, from the behaviour of, say, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, A. S. Bubnov, I. M. Sverdlov - or Trotskii.

It is a matter or record, however, that the question of Stalin's role in the October Revolution did become a subject of sharp and heated intra-party debate in the struggle for power after Lenin's death. A cogent reason, therefore, for preferring the second interpretation is that it is the only one which explains why this happened. There are, of course, other reasons to prefer the second interpretation; in my view it is supported by the main weight of the evidence. Given the controversial nature of the evidence and the absence or destruction of some of the key source materials, however, it will probably never be possible to achieve complete certainty on the question. For the purposes of this article, it is sufficient to note that historians' opinions on the question have differed sharply and to recognize that the problem with which the present article deals would appear neither puzzling nor especially significant to an historian who accepts one of the other interpretations.

Since the question of Stalin's role centres around the period immediately preceding the Bolshevik seizure of power it will be useful to begin by summarizing briefly the known facts about his actions and words on 24 October, the eve of the revolution. Characteristically, he missed the opening action of the insurrection, and equally characteristically he later tried to falsify the record in order to disguise this fact. At 5:30 a.m. a detachment of military cadets led by a government commissar carried out a raid on the Trud printing plant where Rabochii put

' and its sister publication Soldat were being published. They ordered the shop closed, smashed the matrixes, seized copies of the already printed issues, and sealed the premises, leaving a police guard to prevent their reopening. Two of the press workers thereupon dashed off to the Smolny, less than half a mile away, and alerted Trotskii and the MRC, which responded by sending a detachment of troops from a nearby barracks on whose loyalty they could rely.7 Within a few hours the press had been reopened and was turning out the day's issue of Rabochii put ', which featured an unsigned editorial by Stalin entitled, "What Do We Need?"

7. On the government's raid on the Trud printing shop, see Velikaia Oktiabr'skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia. Khronika sobytiiv chetyrekh tomakh, IV (Moscow, 1957-61), 564-65, (hereafter cited as Khronika sobytii). See also Chamberlin, I, 308; Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, 3 vols. (New York, 1936), III, 200-207; Daniels, pp. 132- 33; and Rabinowitch, pp. 248-50. The Stalinist version of this episode asserts that the government's attack was mounted not only against the Bolshevik printing plant (on the south side of the Neva) but also on its editorial offices (north of the river), and that it was on Stalin's instructions, evidently from the latter location, that pro-insurrection forces were called out to beat off the government attackers, described as armoured cars. See History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Short Course (New York, 1939), p. 207. Nothing in the contemporary record, however, supports this version, which was evidently fabricated in an effort to provide Stalin with a suitable role in the opening clash of the insurrection (this is,



408 I Revue Canadienne des Slavistes

This editorial, probably composed late on the 23rd, is one of the key pieces of evidence with regard to Stalin's concept of the revolution.8 Written at a time when the MRC's preparations were already well- advanced, the editorial spoke in terms of the traditional armed uprising of the masses. It called on the workers and soldiers to organize meetings, to elect delegates, and through them to present their demands to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which was scheduled to open on 25 October. "If all of you act in a firm and comradely way," Stalin wrote, "no one will dare to oppose the will of the people. The old government will give way to the new one the more peacefully, the more strongly, the better organized, and the more powerfully you act."

This editorial, which Stalin published on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, is so out of key with the actual course of events that attempts have been made to interpret it as a deliberate effort to camouflage the real strategy of the seizure of power. Isaac Deutscher, for example, writes that Stalin "did not, of course, openly call for insurrection. Like Trotsky in the Soviet, Stalin in his newspaper gave defensive cover to an essentially offensive policy - this was the cautious camouflage of the revolution."9 All things considered, however, it seems more likely that the editorial expressed Stalin's genuine concept of the revolution and represented not a deliberate cover-up but a simple failure to understand the strategy being pursued by the Military Revolutionary Committee. Other actions and statements by Stalin on 24 October tend to strengthen this view, as will be seen.

The Bolshevik decision to contest the government's action in closing Bolshevik press headquarters was taken at an early morning session of the Central Committee at Smolny on 24 October.10 Not all the members of the Committee were present at this historic session: Lenin, for example, was missing, as was Stalin. Lenin's absence presents no problem: the Central Committee, determined to prevent the party leader from falling into the hands of its enemies, had not yet sanctioned his emergence from hiding. Stalin's absence is another matter entirely. No convincing explanation for it has thus far been provided, though a number of attempts have been made.

Whatever the reason, the fact remains that Stalin missed participat- ing in the crucial policy-making session of the Central Committee at

in fact, the only action attributed to Stalin on 24 October in the Short Course). It is true that government forces did attempt to capture Bolshevik editorial offices on the night of 25 October: see Khronika sobytii, IV, 570. For a statement that Stalin generally spent his time "in the editorial offices of the central organ," see Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, 111,210.

8. I. V. Stalin, "Chto nam nuzhno?," first published in Rabochiiput', 24 October 1917, reprinted in his Sochineniia, 13 vols. (Moscow, 1946-51), III, 387-90.

9. Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: Λ Political Biography (rev. ed., New York, 1967), p. 168. 10. Institut Marksizma-Leninizma pri TsK KPSS, Protokoly Tsentral'nogo Komiteta

RSDRP [b]: Avgust 1917 - fevral' 1918 (Moscow, 1958), pp. 119-21 (hereafter cited as Protokoly 75*[1958]).




which the final dispositions and assignments were made for the seizure of power. For example, at Trotskii's suggestion, tasks were assigned to three members of the "Military Revolutionary Centre" which the Central Committee had voted to establish on 16 October. Bubnov was given responsibility for the railroads, Dzerzhinskii for the postal and telegraph services, and Sverdlov for observing the actions of the Provisional Government. These assignments make it clear that the "Military Revolutionary Centre" of which Stalin had been named a member had no independent existence but functioned as part of the MRC. As to Stalin's unexplained absence, Trotskii's mordant comment is fully justified: "All the most important decisions on conducting the insurrection were made without Stalin, without even the slightest indirect participation by him. When the posts were being assigned to the various actors in that drama, no one mentioned Stalin or proposed any sort of appointment for him. He simply dropped out of the game."11

Not that Stalin remained at newspaper headquarters during the entire day: in the afternoon, together with Trotskii, he addressed a caucus of the Bolshevik fraction to the impending Second Congress of Soviets. The text of Stalin's speech has not been preserved but its contents are known from a summary of it written at the time by one of the delegates present.12 Like his editorial, "What Do We Need?," Stalin's speech shows a complete failure to grasp the strategy being followed in the seizure of power. He is reported to have told the delegates that the Central Committee of the Left Socialist Revolution- aries had asked the Bolsheviks whether the Military Revolutionary Committee was aiming at an uprising or at the defence of order. If the goal was an uprising, the Left SR's said, they would pull their representatives out of the MRC. In reply, Stalin asserted that the MRC's goal was the preservation of order and defence. Stalin's answer could be explained as part of the deception under cover of which the seizure of power was going forward except that he then went on to state that there were "two tendencies" in the MRC: "Ί) immediate uprising, 2) first concentrate forces,'" and to assert that the Central Committee supported the latter.13

A final glimpse of Stalin on the eve of the revolution is provided by Anna Allilueva in the memoirs she published in 1946. Allilueva portrays a calm and confident Stalin returning to the Alliluev apartment on the evening of 24 October with the words, "'Yes, everything is ready. We

1 1 . Leon Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence (New York, 1946), pp. 233-34.

12. "Pis'mo M. Zhakova k VasiPchenko," Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1922, no. 10, pp. 88-93.

13. ibid., p. 92. For a Soviet historian's recent criticism of Stalin's "mistaken position" at this point, see E. N. Gorodetskii, Rozhdenie sovetskogo gosudarstva 1917-1918 gg. (Moscow, 1965), p. 99.




take action tomorrow. All military forces are in our hands. We shall take power.'"14 Although the validity of this source is open to question, quite apart from the unlikelihood of Allilueva's remembering the exact words of Stalin after thirty years, her account of his mood agrees surprisingly well with other information dating back to the revolution. Not only does she portray a Stalin who still believed, as late as the evening of 24 October, that the decisive actions lay ahead, but she omits entirely any suggestion that Stalin made any contribution to the Bolshevik victory. No doubt this omission is one of the reasons why Stalin promptly suppressed her memoirs.

A different picture of Stalin "on the eve" is provided by Alexander Rabinowitch, who believes that an informal meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee took place on the evening of 24 October, with Stalin in attendance. Rabinowitch admits, however, that "no protocol of this historically important assembly was ever recorded - at any rate, none has been published, and the existing bits and pieces of information about what took place there are from a few sketchy memoirs."15 Leaving aside the question of whether or not such a meeting took place - and the evidence is far from conclusive - it can be affirmed fairly positively that Stalin could not have been present if it did. Allilueva's memoirs, for what they are worth, tend to rule out his having been at Smolny on the evening of 24 October. More telling is the fact that at no time during Stalin's lifetime did he try to modify the stark record of his non- participation in the revolution by claiming participation in what would have been the final meeting of the Central Committee before the seizure of power, nor have any Soviet historians since his death made a claim of this kind on his behalf.

It was Stalin himself who first raised the question of his role in the Bolshevik Revolution. As his contribution to the so-called "literary discussion," which took place in the party leadership in late 1924, Stalin delivered a speech on 19 November 1924 in which he asserted that the five-man "Military Revolutionary Centre," which the Central Com- mittee voted to set up at its session of 16 October 1917 and of which he was a member, had been charged with directing "all the practical organs of the uprising, in accordance with the directives of the Central Committee." The fact that Trotskii was not a member of the "Centre," Stalin said, showed conclusively that Trotskii, as "a relative newcomer in our party in the period of October, did not and could not have played any special role either in the party or in the October uprising."16

14. Anna Allilueva and Sergei Alliluev, The Alliluyev Memoirs (New York, 1968), pp. 211-12.

15. Rabinowitch, p. 272. 16. I. V. Stalin, "Trotskizm ili Leninizm?," in Za Leninizm: Sbomik statei (Mosco wand

Leningrad, 1925), p. 90.




Stalin's brazen attempt to rewrite the history of the October Revolution, in Deutscher's words, "was so crudely concocted that even the Stalinists received it at first with embarrassed irony."17 By the tenth anniversary of the revolution in 1927, nevertheless, the Stalinist version had won acceptance in an official history of the revolution written by Emelian Iaroslavskii.18 At this stage, however, neither Stalin nor Iaroslavskii was bold enough to claim a leading role for Stalin in the revolution; their efforts were directed primarily toward dislodging Trotskii from his commanding position as the strategist of the seizure of power.

In October 1927 Trotskii counterattacked by calling attention to Stalin's non-participation in the October Revolution. In his "Letter to the Bureau of Party History," Trotskii wrote: ". . . stretch my memory as I will, I cannot answer the question in just what consisted, during those decisive days, the role of Stalin. It never once happened that I turned to him for advice or cooperation. He never showed the slightest initiative. He never advanced a single independent proposal."19 It was easy enough for Stalin to prevent publication of Trotskii's letter. But unfortunately for Stalin, the damning protocols of the Central Com- mittee, with their revelation of his absence from the crucial session of 24 October 1917, were published in Proletarskaia revoliutsiia in the same month in which Trotskii wrote his letter;20 subsequently, in 1929, the protocols appeared in book form.21 Furthermore, Pravda, on 2 Novem- ber 1927, published an excerpt from the minutes of the Central Committee session for 16 October 1917, which showed that the "Military Revolutionary Centre" had been designed to function as a constituent part of the Military Revolutionary Committee.22 Thus, Trotskii's non-membership in the "Centre" was devoid of the signifi- cance which Stalin had tried to attach to it.

The problem of Stalin's role in the revolution was thus squarely presented, but it was some time before any serious effort was made to solve it. In his pioneering biography of Stalin published in 1935, Boris Souvarine was content to note that Stalin's name is seldom encountered in the historical literature of the October Revolution and to offer the

17. Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929 (London, 1959), p. 155.

18. Emelian Iaroslavskii, Partiia bol'shevikov ν 1917 goclu (Moscow and Leningrad, 1927), p. 90, as cited in Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879-1929 (New York, 1973), p. 360.

19. Leon Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification (New York, 1971), p. 14. 20. "Protokoly Tsentral'nogo Komiteta RSDRP(b) (sentiabr'-oktiabr' 1917 g.),"

Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1927, no. 10, pp. 246-98. 21. Institut Lenina, Protokoly Tsentral'nogo komiteta RSDRP, avgust 1917 - ferral'

1918 (Moscow and Leningrad, 1929) (hereafter cited as Protokoly TsK ΓΙ9291). 22. Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification, p. 15.




rather lame opinion that Stalin at this stage was still "merged in the collective authority of the Party."23

Thus it fell to Trotskii, who had been the first to call attention to Stalin's odd record in October, to offer the first attempt at an explanation. In the biography of Stalin which he was working on at the time of his assassination, he ruled out the possibility that Stalin's lapse was the result of cowardice and offered instead the suggestion that Stalin was "simply politically non-committed": "The cautious schemer preferred to stay on the fence at the crucial moment. He was waiting to see how the insurrection turned out before committing himself to a position. In the event of failure he could tell Lenin and me and our adherents: 'It's all your fault'."24

Trotskii's explanation, in turn, was weighed and found wanting by his biographer, Isaac Deutscher. Refuting Trotskii's picture of Stalin as non-committed, Deutscher pointed out that Stalin had in fact committed himself twice on the side of the insurrection: first, at the meeting of the Central Committee on 10 October at which the decision was taken to prepare for an insurrection, and a second time at the session of 16 October when the decision was reconfirmed in a broader setting. Having rejected Trotskii's explanation, however, Deutscher confessed himself unable to provide a better one. "It is not possible," he wrote, "to find any alternative explanation for Stalin's absence or inactivity at the headquarters during the rising. But the queer and undeniable fact remains."25

Stalin's more recent biographers have dealt with the problem in a variety of ways. H. Montgomery Hyde, having missed the report of Stalin's speech to the Bolshevik fraction of the Second Congress of Soviets, finds his movements on 24 October "shrouded in mystery." To reinforce this concept Hyde summons up Ν. Ν. Sukhanov's famous characterization of Stalin as a "grey blur,"26 overlooking the fact that the description pertains to Stalin's participation in the work of the All- Russian Central Executive Committee, and thus has no bearing on his membership in the Bolshevik Central Committee. Edward Ellis Smith shares with Hyde the mistaken belief that we lack information on Stalin's whereabouts on the 24th and explains this alleged obscurity as part of a general pattern: Stalin's "curious absence from places at which important events took place."27

23. Boris Souvarine, Staline: Aperçu Historique du Bolchévisme (Paris, 1935), p. 173. 24. Trotsky, Stalin, p. 245. 25. Deutscher, Stalin, p. 168. 26. H. Montgomery Hyde, Stalin: The History of a Dictator (New York, 1971), p. 141.

For the "grey blur" passage, see N. N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution, 1917: A Personal Record (London, 1955), p. 230.

27. Edward Ellis Smith, The Young Stalin: The Early Years of an Elusive Revolutionary (New York, 1967), p. 372.




For Robert C. Tucker, the problem of Stalin's failure to take an active part in the Bolshevik insurrection hardly exists. Like Hyde, Tucker cites the "grey blur" passage from Sukhanov, and like Sou- varine, he notes the absence of references to Stalin in the historical literature on the revolution. But in order to redress the balance, Tucker calls attention to Stalin's membership on the "Political Bureau" of 10 October and the "Military Revolutionary Centre" of 16 October, seeing in these appointments evidence of Stalin's "emergence as one of the party's leaders."28 Surprisingly, Tucker says nothing about Stalin's absence from the Central Committee session of 24 October or his failure to take an active part in the insurrection, even though these lapses on Stalin's part constitute striking examples of a factor which Tucker elsewhere analyzes brilliantly: the discrepancy between Stalin's self- image and the painful evidence of his failure to measure up to that image in real life.

It is to the credit of Adam Ulam that he recognizes the problem of Stalin's role in the October Revolution and feels the need to provide a more adequate explanation for it. In his biography of Stalin, Ulam contends that Stalin, in remaining passive during the Bolshevik insurrection, was simply following party orders. "Each Bolshevik leader," Ulam writes, "had a specific task assigned to him. Stalin's was to stay away from the fighting, to be held in reserve."29 Ulam frankly admits that there is no direct evidence to support his concept of a "reserve centre," but the real weakness of his explanation lies not so much in the absence of supporting evidence as in its failure to fit the known facts. Instead of staying away from the fighting, Stalin remained at Bolshevik press headquarters, an obvious target for the repressive action of the Provisional Government. Instead of keeping a low profile, he published an editorial calling for a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Far from remaining uncom- mitted, he cast his vote for insurrection on 10 October and reaffirmed his commitment on the 16th.

Ulam's "reserve centre" thus has even less historical substance than the "Military Revolutionary Centre" of 16 October, and takes us no further toward a solution of the problem. That solution, I suggest, can be found in a re-examination of the events of the period immediately preceding the seizure of power, seen in the light of recent advances in the understanding of Stalin's psychology.

Thanks to the publication of the official protocols of the Bolshevik Central Committee for the period from August 1 9 1 7 to February 1 9 1 8, we have an accurate record of Stalin's participation in the work of the central party body for the period just before the revolution. The official record makes it clear that Stalin was not a particularly faithful attendant at

28. Tucker, pp. 179-80. 29. Adam B. Ulam, Stalin: The Man and His Era (New York, 1973), p. 154.




Central Committee meetings, a fact to which Trotskii had already called attention. In the period from the beginning of August to the first week in October, as Trotskii pointed out, Stalin was absent six times from twenty- four sessions of the Committee. To account for this rather spotty record, Trotskii offered two contradictory explanations: first, that Stalin apparently did not attach great importance to participation in the sessions of the Central Committee; and second, that "In a number of cases his absence was undoubtedly explained by hurt feelings and irritation; whenever he cannot carry his point he is inclined to sulk in hiding and dream of revenge."30 Rather oddly, Trotskii breaks off his analysis with the session of 1 0 October and thus fails to take into account the crucial meeting of the 24th. He has, however, provided a valuable clue in his suggestion that Stalin stayed away from meetings of the Central Committee as the result of "hurt feelings and irritation." Bearing these suggestions in mind, let us look more closely at the record of the session of 20 October, which Stalin did attend, but at which he was subjected to repeated rebuffs, one particularly painful one being at the hands of Trotskii.

To understand what took place on 20 October, it will be useful to look briefly at the immediate background. Our point of departure is the well- known fact that two leading members of the Central Committee - L. B. Kamenev and G. E. Zinoviev - voted against the decision to prepare for an uprising at the meeting of 10 October.31 Out-voted in the Committee, Kamenev and Zinoviev took their case to the party membership by sending a letter to the major party organizations explaining their position. At the meeting on the 16th, Kamenev and Zinoviev again found themselves isolated in their opposition to immediate preparations for an uprising, and Kamenev thereupon submitted his resignation from the Central Com- mittee.32 Following the meeting, Lenin wrote a lengthy "Letter to Comrades," in which he criticized the position taken by Kamenev and Zinoviev, though without naming them directly.33

Just as Lenin was about to send off the letter, he obtained a copy of the 17 October edition of Maksim Gor'kii's newspaper, Novaia zhizri, which contained an article by V. A. Bazarov, a former Bolshevik, which stated that "two prominent Bolsheviks" were opposed to an immediate armed uprising.34 Bazarov's article not only revealed the split in the Bolshevik leadership but also constituted the first public confirmation of the widely spread rumour that the Bolsheviks were preparing for an insurrection.

30. Trotsky, Stalin, p. 224. 31. E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 3 vols. (London, 1950), 1,94. For the official

protocol, see Protokoly Ts Κ (1958), pp. 83-86. 32. Protokoly TsK (1958), pp. 93-105. Kamenev's letter of resignation is printed

on p. 105. 33. V. I. Lenin, "Pis'mo k tovarishcham," Sochineniia, 30 vols. (3rd ed.; Moscow, 1929-

37), XXI, 334-49. 34. V. Bazarov, "Marksistskoe otnoshenie k vosstaniiu," Novaia zhizn', no. 155 (17

October 1917), cited in ibid, XXI, 536.




There was still worse to come, however. On the 18th, Novaia zhizri published a statement by Kamenev confirming his and Zinoviev's opposition to an uprising.35 Furious, Lenin dashed off two additional letters in which he demanded the expulsion of Kamenev and Zinoviev from the party as "strike-breakers."36

Lenin's comparatively restrained "Letter to Comrades" was published in three issues of Rabochii put' beginning on 19 October. Appended to the second installment, on 20 October, was an unsigned editorial note deploring the vehemence of Lenin's criticism of the opponents of insurrection and asserting that "fundamentally we remain of one opinion."37 The same issue carried a letter by Zinoviev replying to Lenin and minimizing their differences.38

It was against this complex and troubled background that the Central Committee met on 20 October.39 Lenin was not present, nor were Kamenev and Zinoviev, but both Stalin and Trotskii attended, and both took an active part in the proceedings. In regard to Lenin's demand for the ouster of Kamenev and Zinoviev from the party, Stalin proposed deferring a decision until a plenum of the Central Committee could be held, but this proposal was rejected. The meeting then took up the question of Kamenev's resignation from the Committee, voting five to three to accept it, with Stalin in the minority. He was out-voted a third time on a proposal to require Kamenev and Zinoviev to refrain from any further opposition to decisions of the Central Committee.

Even more humiliating for Stalin was the sharp controversy which broke out at the session over the unsigned editorial note in Rabochii put' glossing over the differences between Lenin's position and that of Zinoviev. Trotskii, furious at what he called an "intolerable" situation, demanded to know who had written the note, whereupon G. I. Sokol'nikov, the junior editor, stated that he had not been consulted in its preparation and considered it a mistake. Stalin thus stood revealed as the author of the note which had aroused Trotskii's anger.40 Thanks to Trotskii's persistence, Stalin had been smoked out and humiliated in the eyes of the Central Committee. It is little wonder that he thereupon submitted his resignation as editor of Rabochii put' only to encounter a

35. Robert V. Daniels. The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), p. 62, citing "Iu. Kamenev o 'vystuplenii'" in Protokolv TsK ('929). pp. 136-37.

36. "Pis'mo k chlenam partii boPshevikov," Lenin, XXI, 350-52; and "Pis'mo ν tsentraTnyi komitet R.S.-D.R.P," //>/</., pp. 353-56. Both letters remained unpublished until 4 November 1927, when they appeared in Pravda.

37. Protokoly TsK (1958), p. 115. See also Deutscher, Stalin, p. 164. 38. Reprinted in Protokoly 7λΛ (1958), ρ. 144. 39. For the official record of the 20 October session see //>/</., pp. 106-108. 40. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, I, 97, states that "The note does not appear in

Stalin's collected works, but its authorship is not disputed." For Stalin's tacit acknowledg- ment of the note's authenticity, see Robert H. McNeal (comp.), Stalin's Works: An Annotated Bibliography (Stanford, 1967), p. 56.




final rebuff: the Central Committee rejected his resignation (i.e., refused to accept it) and passed on to more urgent business.

Let us recall Trotskii's comment: "In a number of cases [Stalin's] absence was undoubtedly explained by hurt feelings and irritation; whenever he cannot carry his point he is inclined to sulk in hiding and dream of revenge." These words are obviously appropriate to Stalin's situation at the Central Committee session on 20 October where he had not only been repeatedly out-voted but exposed as a covert supporter of the "strike-breaker," Zinoviev. Furthermore, as Ε. Η. Carr has pointed out, the 20 October session marked the first open clash between Trotskii and Stalin.41 Was it to be expected that Stalin would then, in line of duty as a member of the "Military Revolutionary Centre," report for orders to Trotskii, the chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee? That, after all, was what was done by three other members of the "Centre" - Dzerzhinskii, Bubnov and Sverdlov - each of whom was given a responsible assignment at the 24 October session from which Stalin was missing.

Taken together, and viewed in the light of our knowledge of Stalin's psychology, the protocols of the Central Committee sessions of 20 and 24 October go far toward answering the question of why Stalin failed to make any significant contribution to the Bolshevik Revolution. That is not, of course, the whole story. Stalin's failure to take an effective part in the Bolshevik Revolution reflected complex pressures on him which can only be fully understood in the light of his emergence as one of the party's leaders in 1917, his own concept of his position, and his relationship with Lenin and other party leaders.

41. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, I, 98.



on the question of stalin's role in the bolshevik revolution

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