The history of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the twenty years that followed might well be called the modern New Testament of Marxism. The Communists present it as their historic proof that the theories of Marx can be carried out successfully. Interestingly enough, however, some of the strongest proof against Communism is also revealed in this same epic of history. All of the pertinent facts have been brought together in this chapter so that the student might judge for himself.
A review of the following questions may help to identify some of the problems which frequently arise when this period history is discussed:
• Who forced the Tsar to abdicate? Where were the Communist leaders at the time? In what way was the Russian revolution of March, 1917, identical with the Russian revolution of 1905? How did Lenin get back into Russia? Why did the German officers want to help him?
• When the national elections were held on November 25, 1917, what percentage of the people voted against Lenin’s regime?
• What was Lenin’s motive in taking Russia out of World War I? Why the treaty he signed with the Germans was called “a great catastrophe for Russia”?
• What happened when Lenin applied the theories of Marx to the Russian economy? Why did Lenin order the execution of the Tsar and his family?
• What were the circumstances which forced Lenin to abandon many of Marx’s favorite theories?
• Why did Lenin write from his deathbed that he hoped Joseph Stalin would never be allowed to seize power? What was the purpose of Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan?
• Why did the Communist Party in Russia try to depose Stalin in December 1932? What saved Stalin?
• Why did Stalin execute nearly all the leaders of the Communist Party? By 1938, what did Stalin say he was ready to do?
It was March 8, 1917, when the swelling spirit of revolution in Russia burst its banks and sent a flood of political indignation streaming after the Tsar and his regime. There was comparatively little violence. The feeling of revolt was so universal that as soon as the signal was given, a quarter of a million demonstrators appeared in the streets of the capital. When the masses of demonstrators had taken over the capital, the revolution automatically swept across the Empire.
This revolution was of vast significance to the entire world. It will be recalled that the spring of 1917 was a highly critical stage of World War I. The United States was just getting into the fight, and France, Britain and Italy were almost exhausted. Because the Western Front was barely holding together against the onslaught of Germany and her Central Powers, the collapse of the Eastern Front with its war machine of several million Russians could have meant unequivocal disaster for the Allies.
The Russian revolution also held great significance for Germany. The Kaiser knew that if Russia withdrew from the war the large German forces in the East could be transferred to the West. This would have given him a vastly superior force capable of smashing all resistance.
But the people behind the Russian revolution never intended to allow the Eastern Front to collapse. Their revolt against the Tsar was to save Russia, not destroy her. As soon as the Provisional Government had been set up, it announced an all-out program to create a democratic, constitutional form of government and to press for vigorous continuation of the war. This restored hope to the western Allies. The United States, England, France and Italy immediately recognized the new regime and the hearts of free people everywhere went out to the new star of freedom which seemed to be rising over the jubilant people of Russia.
As for the Tsar, it was difficult for him to realize just what had happened. At the beginning of the revolution, Nicholas II categorically refused to admit that his government had disintegrated. When the demonstrations first began he dissolved the Duma (the people’s assembly) and ordered the troops to disperse the crowds. Within a week, however, his own ministers were urging him to abdicate since his cause was hopeless.
Not until his generals also urged abdication did he finally capitulate. He and his family were then placed under house arrest at the imperial palace outside of Petrograd. Although the people had suffered greatly under his rule, it was not the intention of the Provisional Government to kill the Tsar but to send him and his family to England as soon as war conditions would permit.
With the Tsar taken care of, the Provisional Government then launched into the double task of initiating widespread domestic reforms and, at the same time, reassembling Russia’s military strength. At the front the troops began responding by exhibiting a new fighting spirit, and within a month remarkable progress was made in providing domestic reforms on the home front. For the first time in their history, the Russian people had the prospect of a liberal democratic regime to govern them. Prince Lvov, who had joined the people’s revolt, confidently declared: “We should consider ourselves the happiest of men, for our generation finds itself in the happiest period of Russian History.”
The most significant thing about the abdication of the Tsar and the setting up of the people’s Provisional Government in Russia is the simple historical fact that the Bolsheviks, or Communists, had practically nothing to do with it! This revolution had been initiated by the same kind of people as those who started the revolt against the Tsar in 1905. They represented Russia’s best people—the liberal aristocrats, the intellectuals, the businessmen, the millions of peasants and the millions of workers. But the Bolshevik leaders were nowhere in sight. Lenin was in exile in Switzerland, Trotsky was in exile in New York and Joseph Stalin was in prison in Siberia. Unfortunately for their future propaganda, the Bolsheviks would never be able to take credit for the revolution Of March, 1917, which brought about the overthrow of the Tsar.
It was the generosity of the Provisional Government which permitted the Bolshevik leaders to return. All political prisoners were released from Siberia and all political exiles abroad were invited to come home. When the British heard that Lenin was being allowed to return, they warned their Russian ally that this was a serious mistake. As a matter of fact, the only way Lenin was able to get back into Russia was through the assistance of German agents. The reason for this German cooperation is readily apparent.
The Germans had become alarmed at the prospect of a comeback among the Russian people, and they were looking about for some opportunity to create a spirit of confusion and disunity within Russia’s Provisional Government. A brief conversation with Lenin in Switzerland convinced them that he was the man to accomplish it. They, therefore, transported Lenin and his wife and a number of Russian exiles across Germany into Sweden. It was simple for Lenin to proceed immediately to the Russian capital.
When Lenin arrived in Petrograd (the new name for St. Petersburg, later changed to Leningrad), he was welcomed by the crowds of people as a sympathetic colleague of the revolution. A military escort helped him to the roof of an armored car where the vast throng waited expectantly for his commendation of their success. But when Lenin’s lip-clipped words began to stream forth, they were far from commendatory. His inflammatory declamation literally amounted to a new declaration of war!
He bitterly denounced the efforts of the Provisional Government to set up a republic. He demanded a Communist dictatorship of the proletariat and called for a struggle to take over the landed estates and immediately subject the Russian people to the economic discipline of full socialism. He denounced all further efforts to continue the war and said an immediate peace with Germany should be negotiated. (He was later accused of trying to take Russia out of the war to repay his obligation to the Germans.)
It was only a matter of weeks until all Russia began hearing the propaganda of the Bolshevik leaders as they echoed the program which Lenin had laid down in his Petrograd speech. Stalin, who was back from Siberia, wrote articles in the new Communist paper urging counterrevolution. Trotsky, who had returned from New York, used his brilliant oratory to incite the labor unions and the military forces to overthrow the Provisional Government. “Peace, Land and Bread,” was the Bolshevik slogan. Under the circumstances, this propaganda was bound to have some appeal.
The Provisional Government tried to warn the people against the tempting promises of the Bolsheviks, but the government was beginning to lose prestige because the masses had been demanding reforms faster than the new regime could provide them. This tended to discredit the warning voices of government leaders. In fact, during July, 1917, the outbreaks among the peasants, workers and troops were again beginning to crop out and Lenin concluded that the time to strike was ripe. He assumed that since the Russian Army was desperately involved in trying to hold back the German forces at the front it would not be difficult to overcome the home guard of old men and young boys. However, in this he miscalculated. When Lenin struck out with his Bolshevik forces, the Provisional Government not only suppressed the uprising, but forced Lenin to flee to Finland to save his life.
From then on Lenin proceeded more cautiously. He allowed his subordinates to organize fresh revolutionary forces while he directed the work from abroad. One of these subordinates was Trotsky who had now openly identified himself with the Bolsheviks and was rapidly rising to the number two position. He was assigned the task of organizing the “Red Guard” of armed insurrectionists among the labor unions, the Army, the Navy and the peasants.
By early October, Lenin felt it was safe to return to Russia and on November 7, he made the fateful decision to commence an all-out revolution against the Provisional Government. The revolution began when Lenin ordered Trotsky to have the Red Guard open fire on the Winter Palace and try to seize all other strongholds of the government. Under fierce attack, these centers soon surrendered, and nearly all the officials of the Provisional Government were captured. This was the beginning of what Communist writers call “the ten days that shook the world.”
Before many weeks the use of force and violence permitted the Bolsheviks to seize power in nearly all important cities. The regular army could not come to the assistance of the Provisional Government and consequently the people found themselves attacked by the Bolshevik anarchists at a time when they had practically no forces whatever with which to resist. By the middle of December the Bolsheviks were putting down the last remnants of stubborn resistance, although long before this the masses of the people knew that their dreams for a democracy were dead.
Before the Provisional Government had been overthrown it had set November 25 as the date for a national election in order to create a people’s assembly or congress. The Bolsheviks themselves had made the most noise in demanding this election and therefore Lenin did not dare postpone it even though it came while he was still consolidating his power. The election was held as scheduled.
The results were catastrophic insofar as Lenin’s dream of popular backing was concerned. Over 75 percent of the population voted against him. Obviously this meant that the people’s elected representatives would be opposed to the Bolshevik regime; therefore when these representatives convened on January 18, 1918, Lenin had already decided what to do.
He demanded that the people’s congress turn over all their legislative functions to the Bolshevik-controlled “Congress of the Soviets” and then vote to dissolve themselves. This, of course, was so illegal and ridiculous, that they would not hear of it. Lenin therefore invoked his “means of last resort”—force. Early the next morning, armed guards entered the meeting hall and ordered the delegates to adjourn. As the delegates looked at the bristling rifles, they knew there was no alternative. Reluctantly, they left.
This illegal act sounded the death knell for democracy in Russia. Nevertheless, Lenin knew this act of ruthless expediency had given his enemies potent propaganda to discredit him. It was resolved that all future coups by Red forces would provide the illusion of being achieved through normal democratic processes. For the moment, however, the damage was done. The Communists had overthrown the nearest thing to representative government the Russians had ever known. Now the people would learn something about the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
It was one of Lenin’s first ambitions to wipe out the Eastern Front and take Russia out of the war. In addition to fulfilling any promises he might have made to the Germans, Lenin had a highly important reason of his own for this action. He believed that the strain of the war would make it possible to set off a series of Communist revolutions in every major capitalist nation. Therefore, he wanted to disentangle Russia from the conflict in order to get her prepared for her role as the “Motherland of Communism.” This would give him a chance to consolidate his power in Russia and then to supervise the revolutions in the war-weary capitalist nations so as to bring the whole world under the dictatorship of the proletariat within a very short time.
However, getting Russia out of the war did not prove to be an easy task. For months the Russian armies had been retreating in the face of superior military forces. Consequently, when Lenin finally obtained an armistice with the Central Powers and offered to negotiate a peaceful settlement, they treated him as the defeated leader of a conquered nation. The demands which Germany made upon Russia were outrageous. Lenin hesitated. To further persuade him, the Germans marched even deeper into Russian territory, and were soon threatening the very precincts of Petrograd. Lenin hurriedly moved his government to Moscow and then did something which was deeply humiliating to a Communist revolutionary; he appealed to Russia’s old capitalist allies—France, England and the United States—for help.
He was further humiliated when these countries completely ignored him. Lenin had destroyed the balance of the Allied defense when he pulled the Russian armies out of the conflict. Now these nations were so busy preparing to defend themselves against the all-out German offensive being planned for the spring that they had neither the desire nor the means to help Lenin out of his self-inflicted predicament.
Like the shrewd political gambler that he was, Lenin now weighed his chances for survival in the balance and decided to force his own party to support him in accepting the indecent demands of the Central Powers. Even the iron-disciplined members of the ruling committee of the Bolshevik Party balked at Lenin’s proposal, but, nevertheless, he finally forced it through with a vote of seven to four.
As a result, a settlement was signed between Russia and the Central Powers on March 3, 1918, which has become known as the notorious treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
In it, Lenin accepted terms which took from the Russian Empire 62,000,000 people, 1,267,000 square miles of her arable lands, 26 percent of her railroads, 33 percent of her factories, 75 percent of her coal mines and 75 percent of her iron mines. In addition to this, Lenin promised that Russia would pay the Central Powers 1 ½ billion dollars in indemnities!
Such was to be the end of a war that had cost the Russian people 8 ½ million casualties.
With Russia out of the war, Lenin now felt sufficient confidence to subordinate the whole Russian economy to the theories of Communism. He confiscated all industry from private owners and set it up under government operation. He seized all land which belonged to the aristocracy, the Tsar and the church. He also seized all the livestock and implements which ordinarily served this land. He then abolished wages and replaced them with direct payment “in kind.” This saddled Russia with a sluggish and primitive barter system. He ordered all domestic goods to be rationed among the people according to their class. For example, a worker or soldier was allocated thirty-five pounds of bread, while a nonworker, such as a manager, received only twelve. Lenin also made all labor subject to mobilization. People with technical skills could be compelled to accept any work assigned to them. The selling of retail goods was taken over by the government.
As for the peasants, Lenin distributed the confiscated land to them, but required them to work the land without hiring any help and without selling any of the produce. It was all to go to the government. Furthermore, the land could not be sold, leased nor mortgaged.
In March, 1918, the Bolsheviks changed their name to the “Russian Communist Party.”
But from the very beginning the Russian people did not take well to the new order. Without any personal incentive among the workers, production on the farm and in the factory dwindled to a trickle. The factories were soon down to 13 percent of what they had been producing before the war started, and the farmers cut their production in half. Black markets began to flourish. Workers often stole goods from the factories to exchange for food which the peasants secretly withheld from the government. Before long, the peasants were holding back more than one-third of their crops.
As might have been expected, this decomposition of the Russian economy brought down upon the heads of the people all the wrath and frustration of the Bolshevik leaders. Every terror method known was used to force the people to produce. This led to retaliation.
During the summer of 1918, violent civil war broke out as the “White Guard” vowed they would overthrow the Reds and free the Russian people. The western Allied Nations, though hard-pressed themselves, were sympathetic to this movement and sent supplies, equipment and even what troops they could spare to help release the Russian people from the Bolshevik grip.
Lenin knew this was a crisis of the highest order. He therefore decided to strike back in three different directions simultaneously. To resist organized military groups, he authorized Trotsky to forcibly mobilize a Red Army which ultimately totaled five million. To resist the people’s anti-Bolshevik sentiment and refusal to work, he organized the secret police or Cheka. This body could investigate arrest, adjudicate and execute suspected persons. Authorities state that during the civil war, literally tens of thousands went down before its firing squads. Finally, Lenin struck out at the Tsar. To prevent any possibility of a new monarchial party being developed, he had the Tsar, the Empress, their children and all their retainers shot to death at Yekaterinburg and their bodies completely destroyed. This mass assassination occurred July 16, 1918.
Six weeks later the scalding vengeance of the White Russians nearly cost Lenin his life. The Bolshevik aristocracy was caught under vulnerable circumstances and a volley of rifle fire assassinated the Cheka chief and seriously wounded Lenin. To avenge itself, the Cheka summarily executed 500 persons.
When the end of World War I came on November 11, 1918, it had little effect on the situation in Russia. The civil war continued with even greater violence, and the Bolsheviks redoubled their efforts to communize Russia. Lenin continued to set up Soviets or workers’ councils, in every part of the empire, and these Soviets in turn sent delegates to the supreme Soviet at the capital. Through the channels of this Bolshevik-dominated labor-union empire, Lenin carried out his policies. Behind the Soviets stood the enforcing power of the Red Army, and the terror of the Cheka secret police.
In spite of all these coercive methods, however, Lenin eventually discovered he was fighting a losing battle. For a while he took courage from the fact that United States, England, France and Japan began withdrawing their troops and supplies under the League of Nations policy of “self-determination for all peoples,” but the ferocious fighting of the White Russians continued.
The breaking point for Lenin came in 1921–22 when the economic inefficiency of the Bolshevik regime was compounded by a disastrous famine. There was a complete crop failure along the Volga—the bread basket of Russia. Nikolaus Basaeches wrote: “No one who was ever in that famine area, no one who saw those starving and brutalized people, will ever forget the spectacle. Cannibalism was common. The despairing people crept about, emaciated, like brown mummies…. When those hordes fell upon an unprepared village, they were apt to massacre every living person.”
Packs of wild, orphaned children roamed like hungry wolves through cities and country sides. It is estimated that during the year 1922, over 33 million Russians were starving, and 5 million died. The people of the United States were so shocked by this almost inconceivable amount of human suffering that they raised funds for the Hoover Commission to feed over 10 million Russians during 1922.
Even before this disaster, however, Lenin had forced himself to admit that he had assigned his country an impossible task. His Bolshevik revolution had not brought peace to Russia, but a terrible civil war in which 28 million Russians had lost their lives. The principles of socialism which Lenin had forced upon the people had not brought increased production as Marx had promised, but had reduced production to a point where even in normal times it would not adequately clothe nor feed half the people.
It was under these circumstances and in the light of these facts that Lenin acknowledged defeat and ordered a retreat. As early as 1921 he announced that there would be a “New Economic Program”—afterwards referred to as the NEP.
This humiliating reversal of policy was adopted by the Communists to keep from being dethroned. Lenin brought back the payment of wages to workers, which immediately generated the circulation of money in place of the old barter system. In place of the government trading centers, he allowed private concerns to begin buying and selling so that in less than a year three-fourths of all retail distribution was back in private hands. He violated the sanctity of Marx’s memory by even encouraging the peasants to lease additional land and hire other peasants to work for them. He also tried to encourage private initiative by promising the peasants they could sell most of their grain on the open market instead of having it seized by agents of the government as in the past.
In merely a matter of months, the pauperism and starvation of the old Communist economy began to disappear. The law of supply and demand began to have its effect so that private initiative commenced to provide what the people needed. In the cities an air of relative prosperity rapidly returned to the bleak streets and empty shops.
Lenin barely lived long enough to see the New Economic Program go into effect. He had his first stroke in 1922, and died January 20, 1924. As Lenin saw the end drawing near, he became alarmed over the possibility of Joseph Stalin becoming his successor. For many years Lenin had been using Stalin to perform tasks requiring the most ruthless methods, but now he became fearful of what might happen if Stalin used these same methods to take over the Communist Party.
On December 25, 1923, while lying speechless and half-paralyzed on his deathbed, Lenin wrote the following dramatic appeal to the members of the Politiburo (the supreme governing council of the Communist Party, and hence, of all Russia):
“Stalin is too rude, and this fault, entirely supportable in relations among us Communists, becomes insupportable in the office of the General Secretary. Therefore, I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position and appoint to it another man who in all respects differs from Stalin… namely, more patients, more loyal, more polite, and more attentive to comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may seem an insignificant trifle, but I think that from the point of view of preventing a split, and from the point of view of the relation between Stalin and Trotsky… it is not a trifle, or it is such a trifle as may acquire decisive significance.”
Time proved that Lenin knew whereof he spoke. Stalin’s whole attitude toward life may be caught in a statement which he later made as he was rising to power: “To choose one’s victim, to prepare one’s plans minutely, to stake an implacable vengeance, and then go to bed… there is nothing sweeter in the world.”
By 1927 Stalin had achieved precisely what Lenin feared he might—the outright control of the Russian Empire. He had not only unseated Trotsky, but had driven from the arena every formidable source of opposition. He had attained such complete victory in the battle for the control of world Communism that he now felt strong enough to try and satisfy one of his greatest ambitions. He determined to make a second attempt to communize Russia.
The first Five-Year Plan began in 1928. It was aimed at wiping out the prosperous independence of businessmen and the peasant farmers who had been thriving during the New Economic Program. Once again there was widespread confiscation of property, and once again the secret police began executing masses of Russians who resisted. Stalin was determined that the Russian economy should be immediately forced into the confines of theoretical socialism and demonstrate to the world that it could out-produce and out-distribute the capitalistic industrial nations, such as the United States and Great Britain. Within weeks, however, the Five-Year-Plan had wiped out the warm glow of prosperity and comparative abundance which Russia had known under the NEP. Rationing was necessary and the hated revolutionary “starvation bread” made of birch bark had to be reintroduced.
The basic theme of the Five-Year-Plan was collectivized industry and collectivized agriculture. Stalin knew he would get resistance from the prosperous peasants (called Kulaks) and he therefore ordered a complete genocidal liquidation of the Kulaks as a class. Some of the Kulaks destroyed all their property, burned their homes, slaughtered their cattle and fled toward the Caucasus mountains, but most of them were caught or died on the way. Official reports tell how rebellious villages were leveled to the ground by artillery fire and in one area of the Don region, 50,000 men, women and children were destroyed, leaving a vestige of only 2,000 people who were shipped off to central Asia, while the land which they had cultivated for generations was taken over for collectivized farming.
Stalin also included in the Five-Year-Plan an acceleration of the Communist fight against religion. By 1930 the Union of Militant Atheists had an active membership of two-and-one-half million. Churches and cathedrals were turned into secular buildings. The Christmas festival was prohibited and the buying and selling of Christmas trees was a criminal offense. Sunday was eliminated as a day of worship, and workers were required to rotate their days off so that industry would continue day and night, seven days a week.
Stalin also attempted to follow Engel’s suggestion to break up the family. All the theories of Marx and Engels were coming to life under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.
By 1930 Stalin was beginning to realize that he may have pressed the long-suffering endurance of the people too far. He therefore came forth with an expression of deep anguish for the suffering masses. He blamed all the troubles on the government officers who, in their zeal, were overshooting the mark and imposing unreasonable demands upon the people, particularly the peasants. He wrote as though he had just heard of the terrible misery which had overtaken the people. But, having cleared himself for the record, Stalin then went firmly ahead with terror tactics which made conditions more frightful than ever.
By 1932 the situation had reached a crisis. The Russian people had suffered starvation, mass executions, ruthless liquidation of the Kulak class, suppression of all private enterprise, deportations to Siberia and long sentences to forced labor camps. The crimes against humanity were on a scale comparable to the Nazi atrocities subsequently committed at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Belsen.
In a recent biography of Stalin, Nikolaus Basseches states that during 1932 the leaders of the Communist Party knew they would have to dethrone Stalin or face revolution. Even the army was about to revolt. The Politburo held a secret meeting in December and Stalin made a number of proposals to further suppress the people, but this time even these men who owed their political existence to Stalin voted him down flatly. It is reported that Stalin was so amazed by this display of opposition that he admitted to Molotov that perhaps he should accept defeat and resign. Molotov, however, is said to have encouraged him to hold on a little longer to see if conditions might not improve.
Molotov was right. Future circumstances did offer Stalin a solution to his crisis. The first thing that happened was Hitler’s rise to power in January, 1933. Hitler’s strong anti-Communist policies led many Russians to believe that there might be a war between Russia and Germany, and they therefore began to forget their resentment against Stalin because of their worry over Hitler. The second factor which helped Stalin was the recognition of his Communist regime by the great leader of world capitalism—the United States. This last factor was a singular development.
For sixteen years the United States had refused to recognize Russia, and the U.S. Secretaries of State during that period were very precise in explaining why. For example, in 1923 Secretary Charles E. Hughes declared: “There can be no question of the sincere friendliness of the people toward the Russian people. And there is for this very reason a strong desire that nothing should be done (such as granting recognition) to place the seal of approval on the tyrannical measures that have been adopted in Russia, or to take any action which might retard the gradual reassertion of the Russian people of their right to live in freedom.”
Many such statements over a period of years placed Stalin on notice that if the United States were to recognize Russia, it would require many changes in Communist policies and Communist tactics. Therefore, early in 1933, when Stalin sent his old comrade in arms, Maxim Litvinov, to Washington to negotiate for U.S. recognition, he knew what the terms would have to be. In written statements, Litvinov promised that henceforth the USSR would not attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the United States; he said the USSR would not allow its officials to use propaganda or agitate for the overthrow of the United States Government, and furthermore, he promised that the USSR would not permit any group to organize in Russia for the purpose of agitating for the overthrow of the United States Government.
At the moment it looked as though the Communists were going to repudiate the Communist International and world revolution. On the basis of these solemn promises by an official of the Russian government, recognition was extended by the United States to the USSR late in 1933. Such were the circumstances which led the U.S. to change its policy toward Communist Russia from one of co-resistance to co-existence.
But within ten months, officials of the United States knew this nation had been defrauded. William C. Bullitt, the first U.S. ambassador, reported from Moscow that world revolution was on the tongue of every Soviet official. Plans were already under way for the Communist International (an organization to promote world revolution) to hold its seventh conference in Russia, even though this violated both the letter and the spirit of the promises made by Litvinov.
The U.S. vigorously protested to Litvinov, but he merely shrugged his shoulders and said the USSR had absolutely no “obligations of any kind with regard to the Communist International.” It was obvious that conditions in Russia had changed. Stalin once more felt secure in his dictatorship. The prestige of U.S. recogniton had served its purpose, and the promises of the USSR were now scraps of paper.
When the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International convened, the United States was denounced along with all other capitalistic countries, and plans were openly advocated for the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government. In fact, as we shall see in the next chapter, at the very time Litvinov was promising not to interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States, Soviet intelligence officers were busy in Washington setting up elaborate spy rings in various agencies of the government.
There were political authorities who believe the United States should have broken off diplomatic relations with the Soviets the very moment it was discovered that the Communist leaders were brazenly violating their promises. But this did not happen. Diplomatic strategists at the time advocated that we treat the Bolsheviks like big blustering boys and overlook their delinquencies. They further rationalized that at least we would have a listening post in Russia by maintaining an ambassador there. It was on the basis of this recommendation that the U.S. policy of coexistence fell another notch. Our diplomats decided to eat humble pie made out of apathetic tolerance for broken promises and abject submissiveness to Communist abuse. This boosted Stalin’s political stock in Russia tremendously.
When Stalin saw the outward signs of public resentment in Russia disappearing, he felt he could once more assume a bolder front. But a deep-seated hatred continued to fester in the minds of the Communist Party leaders. They secretly admitted among themselves that Stalin must be removed “for the good of the Party.” Therefore, the top revolutionaries of Russia surreptitiously combined their ideas on how best to do away with Stalin. Finally, they decided the best plan was to first destroy those immediately around him and then effect a coup. The initial attempt was against Sergei Kirov—a favorite of the Man of Steel who had been officially designated by the Politburo as Stalin’s successor.
Kirov was shot and killed gangster style December 1, 1934. It is said that nothing had ever so deeply affected Stalin as this murder. It was perfectly clear to him what his enemies were up to and he therefore struck back with a viciously effective blow. Lists were published of more than one thousand persons selected from every district in Russia and all these were summarily shot.
Stalin then directed the secret police to plunge into every devious crevice of the party and dig and prod until they had found out who was behind the murder of Kirov. This was not difficult. Even many of the most insignificant members of the Party were aware that some of the biggest names in Russia were involved in the conspiracy. To save their own skins they quickly confessed. Stalin ordered the arrest of every suspect together with their families, associates, friends and even their correspondents.
Tens of thousands went down before firing squads in secret executions while the more prominent officials were exhibited before the world at Stalin’s famous purge trials. In these trials Stalin’s former comrades of the revolution sought to win mercy for their families by confessing in the most self-degrading language to all the crimes of which they were accused, But it gained them nothing.
The list of those publicly condemned with their families and friends is described by Nikolaus Basseches as involving “not only ex-leaders of the party… but also fully a dozen members of the Government who were still in office, and the supreme commander of the army, the Chief of Staff, almost all the army commanders, and in addition a considerable number of senior officers; the Minister of Police and the highest police officials; the Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, almost all the ambassadors ministers representing the Soviet Union abroad, almost the whole of the diplomatic staff at the Ministry in Moscow; and also highly placed judges and members of the governments of the federal republics.”
Even Whittaker Chambers who was an American Communist spy at the time suspected that a horrible crime against humanity was being enacted in Russia. He later wrote: “The great purge was in the most literal sense a massacre…. This great massacre, probably the greatest in history was deliberately planned and executed…. Those killed have been estimated from several hundred thousand to several million men and women. The process took about three years, 1935–1938.”
At the very end of the process came the execution of the executioners. Since time immemorial it has been a favorite trick of political pirates and brigands to use a hand-picked band of followers to commit murder and then murder the murderers to cover up the original crime. Stalin followed the same procedure. He selected a pathological personality named Yeshov to set up the secret police machinery for the purge and then drew certain judges into the conspiracy. Both police and judges faithfully performed their miserable missions on the assumption that they were basking in the radiant light of Stalin’s affection and trust.
Only when they found themselves being flung into dirty dungeons or facing firing squads did they realize that Stalin’s supposed affection and trust was nothing but the figment of their own imaginations. By the hundreds, the chiefs of secret police units, the heads of forced labor camps and the examining judges who had conducted the purge in every district of the USSR found themselves sharing the fate of their victims.
Even Yeshov, whose unbalanced mind had not only heaped cruelty and violence on Stalin’s enemies but upon their wives and children as well, now faced extinction. He was swept up in the great final dragnet of terror and disappeared into oblivion along with those who had served under him.
Once Stalin had skirted the brink of political disaster he immediately determined to consolidate his power by the innovation of a Communist spoils system. Prior to this time, the Communist leaders had recognized only two classes—the workers and the peasants. Stalin now decided to give recognition to a new class—the Communist bureaucracy or official class. He bestowed special favors on them by allowing them to shop in “closed” distribution centers. These centers had great quantities of items which were never distributed to the workers. And Stalin arranged it so that his party appointees received other favors—dwellings, luxuries, special holidays, and special educational opportunities for their children. This was Stalin’s way of building a new Communist Party with members who owed absolute allegiance to him.
He likewise protected them in the new constitution which he presented to the Congress of Soviets in 1936. It provided for the protection of “occupational property.” Thus the official class could not be deprived of wages, articles of consumption, houses nor savings. It even provided that this “occupational property” could be bequeathed. Substantial estates could, therefore, be accumulated by the official class and passed on to a selected beneficiary. These gifts of inheritance (which Communist propaganda had denounced with vehemence for over a century) could also be given to non-relations and in any amount without restrictions.
To further illustrate the whole change in Stalin’s attitude, he adopted a series of “reforms” which were purely capitalistic in nature. These included payment of interest on savings, the issuing of bonds to which premiums were attached and the legalizing of a wider disparity in wages. A laborer, for example, might receive only one hundred rubles a month while a member of the official class could now get as high as six thousand rubles per month!
All of this clearly illustrated one simple fact concerning developments in Russia. The “have nots” of yesterday had taken possession of the realm. Their policy was likewise simple: to stay in power permanently and enjoy the spoils of their conquest.
By 1938 Stalin was supremely confident of his position. He announced that the regime had no enemies left inside of Russia, and there was no longer a need for terrorism or suppression. He made it clear, however, that there must be undeviating prosecution of the Communist program abroad and that the acts of terrorism against the outer world of capitalism should be accepted as necessary and unavoidable.
Russia was now asserting herself as a world power. Stalin was clearly manifesting a determination to enter the next phase of his dictatorship—the expansion of world Communism.