Stalin. Part 3: Unity of opposites
For seven years of party work, Iosif Dzhugashvili from yesterday's seminarian has turned into an experienced organizer and practitioner. Getting people to fulfill the demands of the moment is truly an outstanding ability of the inconspicuous Koba.
Part 1 - Part 2
1. Meeting with Lenin
The Third Congress of the RSDLP in April 1905 establishes a new party headed by V. I. Lenin and sets a course for an armed uprising. The need to create armed groups is one of the decisions of the congress. In the Caucasus, Stalin is doing this. To get weapons, he organizes a dig into an army tseikhhauz. In order to raise money for the party, he expropriates funds in battle form wherever there is the slightest opportunity. He is a delegate from the Caucasian Union at the IV Congress of the RSDLP. For seven years of party work, Iosif Dzhugashvili from yesterday's seminarian has turned into an experienced organizer and practitioner. Getting people to fulfill the demands of the moment is truly an outstanding ability of the inconspicuous Koba.
Under the pseudonym Ivanovich - JV Stalin speaks at the congress with a report "Concerning the events in the Caucasus." VI Lenin immediately singled out the speaker as one of the best party functionaries. For Lenin, a reliable person in the region, who is able to quickly establish a network of contacts with party functionaries in the field and who is fluent in conspiracy skills, is a real gift. For all the differences, these two people have much in common: both went through prisons and exile, both have personal scores for power, both are ready to mercilessly fight the existing regime until the complete and final victory of the proletarian revolution.
The antipodes from within the psychic, Lenin and Stalin at one point united for a common struggle for the present and future of the new Russia. They had disagreements. But nature united them with bonds stronger than the difference in worldviews: the power of animal egoism of smell is equal to the power of the four-dimensional altruism of the urethral leader, together these two forces preserve the integrity of the pack and guarantee its advance into the future.
An interesting controversy unfolds between Lenin and Stalin over the peasant question, the cornerstone of the moment. The proletariat is few in number. The outcome of the revolution depends on whom the peasantry turns to. Lenin's position: to confiscate the land from the landlords and transfer it to the state. The peasants should not be given land, because, having become owners, they will immediately overstep into the camp of enemies.
Stalin is more categorical. The fate of each individual peasant does not bother him. Therefore, he is for the direct transfer of land to the peasants. The sooner independent farmers go bankrupt (and they will inevitably go bankrupt, having no experience in exchange of goods), the better for the proletariat, whose small ranks will be replenished with impoverished peasants, the Bolshevik flock will grow significantly. Despite his ideological disagreement with Stalin, Lenin joined the same group, just not to consolidate with the Mensheviks, who are in the majority at the congress.
2. He who is not with us is against us
On December 3, 1905, the entire St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies was arrested - a recognized or almost recognized alternative government in the country. The tsarist government suddenly decided to show will. The workers respond with widespread strikes, the post office and telegraph office are paralyzed, and an organized all-Russian political strike is taking place. In Moscow, troops from cannons are firing at the barricades in Presnya.
Miraculously not arrested in St. Petersburg, Stalin returns to Tiflis, where, after the defeat of the popular uprising by General Gryaznov, he prepares new workers' detachments, writes a number of strategic articles and leaflets-directives, the main idea of which is to arm and organize, boycott the elections to the "bastard" Duma. "The task of the proletariat is to bring the system and spirit of organization into its struggle" [1].
The defeat of the Baku secret printing house did not make a visible impression on Stalin. Failures, like victories, do not evoke emotion in the melancholic mental olfactory. General Gryaznov was killed with the organizational participation of Stalin. General Min, a firing squad of the Moscow workers, was shot dead by the teacher Konoplyannikova. Routine work of the olfactory "clerk", no more. Everything is in action, everything is at the limit. From the terror in May 1906, 122 people died, in June - 127. The "bastard" Duma, which could not find a common language with the authorities, was dissolved.
"He who is not with us is against us" [2], - writes Stalin in his article "The Modern Moment and the Unification Congress of the Labor Party." The country is divided into two camps, the bridges between which have been burned: "Either the camp of the revolution, or the camp of the counter-revolution." Biblical allusions and categorical judgments are characteristic of Stalin's writing style. Subsequently, these meanings will be transferred to another plane - they will become oral slogans for the whole country for many years to preserve a social system unprecedented in history.
In the meantime, the congress rejects the Bolshevik idea of the hegemony of the proletariat, leaning towards bourgeois democracy. Pyotr Stolypin enters the political arena with his agrarian reform, which threatens to knock out the peasant soil from under the feet of the ripening proletarian revolution and nullify the agrarian program of the Bolsheviks. The revolutionary intensity of passions is declining, the RSDLP is rapidly losing people, and a calm life ensues. P. Stolypin dreams of twenty years of such a life in order to carry out economic reforms.
3. "Pravda" - collective organizer
In conditions when the revolution is going through difficult times, the parties, more than ever, need a special solidarity to continue the struggle and … money, without them there could be no question of any kind of management. To strengthen the party organization in the Caucasus, JV Stalin was sent to Tiflis and Baku, and soon Baku became one of the strongest Bolshevik centers in Russia, where Stalin managed to push the Mensheviks away from the leadership and become a member of the party committee. Despite the blow that befell him - the death of his young wife, Stalin did not leave his job for a minute, and at the beginning of 1908 he left for Switzerland to visit Lenin. It is necessary to convince the leader of the need for militant expropriations, which arouse the strongest rejection among the European Social Democrats and in the Central Committee among the Mensheviks.
The visit was successful. Upon his return to Baku, Stalin organizes two major cases: the robbery of a four million-ruble steamer, sailing from Astrakhan, and a raid on the naval arsenal. Four participants in the attack were arrested, Stalin managed to escape. Miraculously, he was not taken at the city party conference.
The “wonderful Georgian” [3], who in the most incredible way manages to carry out active party work in Russia, in spite of the open and secret police supervision, is very much needed by Lenin, who is in exile. At a party conference in Prague, where Stalin did not go because of another exile, he was co-opted into the Central Committee at the suggestion of Lenin. The congress highly appreciates Koba's proposals for improving party work. All this is undoubted recognition of the scale of his personality.
Stalin's escape from exile in Vologda was personally sanctioned by Lenin. It is urgently necessary to address the issues of stimulation, and hence the financing of revolutionary activities. This became Stalin's task. He organizes and heads the financial commission under the Central Committee, finally securing the role of the chief financial inspector, the specific role of the olfactory advisor to the leader in the modern flock, where the role of pheromones is played by money.
The absolute immunity of Stalin himself to money is noted by everyone who has ever dealt with him. The deep melancholy of the olfactory person completely excludes the excitement of profit. Ranking within the pack through emotionless, which means, error-free management of people - that's what set in motion the powerful intuition of a sluggish "clerk", an intuition aimed at survival at all costs. Money was just a handy tool for ranking others for him.
Overgrown with a beard, in a black jacket over a crumpled shirt, in worn-out shoes and a shabby cap, Stalin did not stand out at all from the everyday mass of the St. Petersburg population. Who would have thought that in the hands of this "proletarian" the fund of the RSDLP? On the personal order of Lenin, Stalin is leading the election campaign in a situation where, after mass arrests, the capital's party committee is almost completely paralyzed.
It is interesting that in St. Petersburg Stalin lived in the apartment of a member of the State Duma, N. G. Poletaev. The deputy immunity of the landlord perfectly protected the Bolshevik functionary and financier from searches and gave him the opportunity to quietly publish in the Zvezda newspaper, and then in the new Pravda newspaper. In this regard, one cannot but recall the enormous significance that the newspaper had then.
Here is what VI Lenin wrote about this: "The role of the newspaper is not limited … to the dissemination of ideas … The newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and collective agitator, but also a collective organizer." It was not by chance that JV Stalin became, according to SV Rybas, the "midwife" of the Pravda newspaper. Organization of uninterrupted work within the flock for the sake of preserving its integrity is the specific role of the olfactory person. To fulfill this role, the post of editor of the main party newspaper came in handy. Now, no longer in the Caucasus or in Siberia - in the capital of the empire, in the apartment of a State Duma deputy, Lenin's first assistant in St. Petersburg, JV Stalin, works. “Where it was necessary to rally the commissioners and lead them from behind the scenes, relying on the illegal apparatus, Stalin was more in place than anyone else” [4].
Continue reading.
Other parts:
Stalin. Part 1: Olfactory Providence over Holy Russia
Stalin. Part 2: Furious Koba
Stalin. Part 4: From Permafrost to April Theses
Stalin. Part 5: How Koba became Stalin
Stalin. Part 6: Deputy. on emergency matters
Stalin. Part 7: Ranking or the Best Disaster Cure
Stalin. Part 8: Time to Collect Stones
Stalin. Part 9: USSR and Lenin's testament
Stalin. Part 10: Die for the Future or Live Now
Stalin. Part 11: Leaderless
Stalin. Part 12: We and They
Stalin. Part 13: From plow and torch to tractors and collective farms
Stalin. Part 14: Soviet Elite Mass Culture
Stalin. Part 15: The last decade before the war. Death of Hope
Stalin. Part 16: The last decade before the war. Underground temple
Stalin. Part 17: Beloved Leader of the Soviet People
Stalin. Part 18: On the eve of the invasion
Stalin. Part 19: War
Stalin. Part 20: By Martial Law
Stalin. Part 21: Stalingrad. Kill the German!
Stalin. Part 22: Political Race. Tehran-Yalta
Stalin. Part 23: Berlin is taken. What's next?
Stalin. Part 24: Under the Seal of Silence
Stalin. Part 25: After the War
Stalin. Part 26: The Last Five Year Plan
Stalin. Part 27: Be part of the whole
[1] I. V. Stalin. "Class Struggle", November 14, 1906, newspaper "Akhali Droeba" ("New Time")
[2] The expression goes back to the Gospel "He who is not with me is against me, and who does not gather with me, he scatters" (Jesus to the Pharisees)
[3] This is what Lenin called Stalin.
[4] L. Trotsky
