Stalin. Part 4: From Permafrost to April Theses
The twenty years of quiet life that P. Stolypin dreamed of did not happen. In the spring of 1912, the striking workers of the Lena mines were shot. "The river of the people's movement has started," Stalin wrote in the newspaper Zvezda.
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1. The national question is a military question
The twenty years of calm life that P. Stolypin dreamed of did not happen. In the spring of 1912, the striking workers of the Lena mines were shot. "The river of the people's movement has started," Stalin wrote in the newspaper Zvezda. One of the consequences of the Lena events was the extremely positive results of the elections to the Duma for the Bolsheviks: the Bolsheviks numerically won in the capital and six important industrial regions of Russia. When the authorities tried to annul the election results, strikes organized by Stalin took place at the largest factories in St. Petersburg. The elections were immediately recognized as legitimate.
At this stage, a serious disagreement between Lenin and Stalin on the issue of the Mensheviks is revealed. Lenin is for decisive disengagement from them, Stalin is sure that the Bolsheviks will eventually be able to politically beat the Mensheviks, but for now it is necessary to unite. Despite the leader's obvious dissatisfaction with Stalin's desire to "unite with the dead," Lenin displayed an uncharacteristic tolerance and, instead of a decisive rebuff, summoned Stalin to a conference.
Having restored the Petersburg party committee after the arrests, Stalin went to Lenin in Krakow, where he was again elected to the Russian Bureau. Lenin not only "forgiven" Stalin for his position on the Mensheviks, but also allocated a single cash rate of 60 rubles as his representative in Russia. The urethral chief is most tolerant of the olfactory advisor. Lenin's political instinct suggested that Stalin, with his inner desire to preserve the integrity of the core, was in great need of the revolution. He detains Koba in Krakow and persuades him to work on an article on the national question.
This need did not arise by chance. Within the RSDLP, “nationalist vacillations” were gaining strength: the Bundists advocated “the celebration of the Sabbath and the recognition of jargon,” the Caucasians demanded cultural and national autonomy. A wave of nationalism was approaching. There was an urgent need to dispel the “nationalist fog, wherever it came from” [1].
Stalin's article "Marxism and the National Question" pleased Lenin. In it, the author points out for the first time the danger of splitting "a single class movement into separate national streams." Replacing the principle of class struggle with the principle of nationality is unacceptable, Stalin believes, “nationalist vacillations” should be eliminated by the Social Democrats as harmful to the common cause of revolution and the integrity of the party. Here there is complete unanimity between Lenin and Stalin. “We will not surrender an iota of our principled position against the Bund bastards,” Lenin wrote to Kamenev.
2. Beyond the Arctic Circle
Soon after his return to St. Petersburg, Stalin was arrested on a denunciation and sent for four years to the Turukhansk Territory, Kureyka, 80 km north of the Arctic Circle. Nine months of a fierce winter, nine houses. In a side room in the Pereprygin's orphanage, Stalin isolated himself from Sverdlov, with whom he first tried to live together. In his personal ice-hole he caught fish on the Yenisei, helped the children with whom he lived with money and food.
People treated Stalin well. It was impossible to escape from Kureika, where a personal police guard was assigned to Dzhugashvili (the rest of the exiles were guarded by one policeman for 15 people), and the olfactory psychic inevitably built up a relationship with the flock, inside which it was necessary to survive. Receiving medicines and soap by mail, Stalin shared this with people who had never known such a luxury, made them wash, and when he got tired of the smells of human bodies he kept, he took a boat and set off on a lonely voyage along the Yenisei, swam 5 kilometers along the stormy waves on that shore for tobacco and food. Stalin always prepared food for himself only himself, he was not interested in visitors, he did not conduct conversations with them. The flock within which he survived was in Kureyka, the rest of the world did not matter at all.
The link, designed to physically kill or at least drive crazy any active person accustomed to the heap of affairs and the turmoil of phenomena, seemed to have absolutely no effect on Stalin, who until recently was in the thick of the country's political events. He did not fall into depression from the forced withdrawal from business, did not lament the monotony of the surrounding reality. There was no fear of hopelessly falling behind the kaleidoscope of revolutionary events. The time for the olfactory psychic, capable of simultaneously feeling in itself what is perceived by others as length, is conditional. Severe stress for others, exile for olfactory Stalin was just a training in basic survival skills at all costs. In exile, he developed his properties to the necessary level to one day become the head of the largest state in the world and make him invincible.
The world, meanwhile, was heading towards the catastrophe of the First World War, Russia was going through painful metamorphoses of militarization and revolution, and Stalin in Kureika melancholy leafing through Marxist literature, smoking and grilling fish. It seemed that time had stopped for him to throw it out in the right place at the right moment.
In three days, Stalin, who had just returned from exile, would be able to reach the main positions in the party structure of Petrograd, despite the fact that he was invited to the Central Committee Bureau "in view of certain personal features inherent in him" at first only with an advisory voice. Before Lenin arrived from Switzerland, Stalin was virtually the sole leader of the party.
3. April friction
The main issue on the agenda in April 1917 was the attitude of the RSDLP to the Provisional Government. Stalin adheres to the centrist position of control of the interim government by the Petrograd Soviet. Trotsky calls this position conciliatory, although it was quite realistic at that time. Lenin's Letters from Afar, which came from abroad, is written in the opposite key to Stalin: no support for the Provisional Government, which continues the imperialist slaughter. The urethral leaders Lenin and Trotsky sincerely believe in the victory of the world revolution and believe that ending the war on the part of Russia will push the peoples of other belligerent countries to revolutionary actions.
Stalin does not see the network of contacts of the RSDLP abroad sufficiently developed for a massive revolutionary movement in Europe; Lenin, in his opinion, thinks too globally, is in too much of a hurry. The ideas of the world revolution are dominated by leaders who are looking into the future. The sense of smell survives here and now in the reality of the unfinished bourgeois-democratic revolution and brings to the fore the function of controlling the situation. Stalin's "Pravda" dares to challenge the truth of Lenin's "April Theses": it is premature to speak of an immediate degeneration of the bourgeois revolution into a socialist one!
Acting as a defender and statesman, Stalin draws upon himself a flurry of accusations from Trotsky, a passionate adherent of the idea of "permanent revolution." A lifelong confrontation between two psychologically opposed people begins - the urethral Trotsky and the olfactory Stalin. Stalin chose his leader, this is Lenin, while Trotsky was considered by him exclusively among other figures of the political game. With the appearance of Lenin in Petrograd, Stalin quite naturally accepts his position on all issues, despite the recent disagreements. Before the genius of the eight-vector Lenin, everyone else fades. Stalin unmistakably chose his leader, became his loyal ally and a capable student.
It is interesting that Lenin, whose rules were to verbally destroy his enemies, sparing no offensive expressions - "harmful insects", "lice", "bloodsuckers", treated Stalin's "mistakes" with amazing tolerance and tact. Lenin appreciated Stalin's ability to instantly restore lost connections, perfectly navigate the underground environment, carry out everyday work, control the situation on the ground, and organize the "street." When nominating Stalin to the Central Committee and the Politburo, Lenin gave him a brief but comprehensive description: “A good worker in all important jobs. No against”. Were against. But they could be neglected, they did not play a role for the integrity of the pack.
Continue reading.
Other parts:
Stalin. Part 1: Olfactory Providence over Holy Russia
Stalin. Part 2: Furious Koba
Stalin. Part 3: Unity of opposites
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. Stalin. Marxism and the national question
