The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: a Study in Twentieth-Century

The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the political thought of Joseph Stalin. Making full use of the documentation that has recently become available, including Stalin’s private library with his handwritten marginal notes, the book provides many insights into Stalin and also into Western and Russian Marxist intellectual traditions. Overall, the book argues that Stalin’s political thought is not primarily indebted to the Russian autocratic tradition but belongs to a tradition of revolutionary patriotism that stretches back through revolutionary Marxism to Jacobin thought in the French Revolution. It makes interesting comparisons between Stalin, Lenin, Bukharin and Trotskii and explains a great deal about the Stalinist era’s many key problems, including the industrial revolution from above, socialist cultural policy, Soviet treatment of nationalities, pre-war and Cold War foreign policy, and the purges. Erik van Ree is a lecturer at the Institute for East European Studies of the University of Amsterdam. His main fields of interest are the history of the USSR and of world communism. He is the author of Socialism in One Zone: Stalin’s Policy in Korea, 1945–1947 (1989) and co-author of The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Politburo (1992). The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin A study in twentieth-century revolutionary patriotism Erik van Ree First published 2002 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2002 Erik van Ree All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-22163-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-27620-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–7007–1749–8 (Print Edition) Contents List of illustrations vii Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 Jacobinism 18 2 Marxism, Leninism and the state 25 3 Proletarian revolution in a backward country 37 4 Marxist nationalism 49 5 Stalin: the years before October 58 6 The years under Lenin 73 7 Socialism in one country 84 8 Stalin’s economic thought 96 9 The sharpening of the class struggle 114 10 Total unity 126 11 Stalin and the state 136 12 The cult of personality 155 13 Stalin on society, culture and science 169 vi Contents 14 Socialist in content, national in form 190 15 Did Stalin “betray the world revolution?” 208 16 Revolutionary patriotism 230 17 The philosophy of revolutionary patriotism 255 Conclusion 273 Notes 288 Bibliography 335 Index 359 Illustrations 1 I.V. Stalin: from his 1947 Short Biography 2 2 Il’ia Chavchavadze: Stalin’s first teacher in nationalism 59 3 V.I. Lenin: Stalin’s greatest teacher 74 4 N.I. Bukharin: economic autarky 86 5 L.D. Trotskii: the speed of accumulation as the fundamental criterion 87 6 A.A. Bogdanov: total unity 128 7 Karl Marx: “better than Engels” 137 8 Ivan the Terrible: Stalin’s favourite tsar 143 9 N.G. Chernyshevskii: socially useful art 176 10 V.G. Belinskii: healthy patriotism 177 11 Peter the Great: “good ideas, but there came in too many Germans” 178 12 Otto Bauer: flourishing nations under socialism 192 13 G.V. Plekhanov: influenced Stalin’s understanding of history 256 14 Friedrich Engels: “only idiots can doubt that Engels remains our teacher” 257 Acknowledgements This book has been in the making for a very long time. Joseph Stalin has been with me for so many years that I have almost forgotten what life would be without him. Much of the time, too long, I have been working like a hermit, burying myself ever deeper and ever more desperately in a mountain of books, articles and documents of and about the Soviet dictator. I have often doubted whether I would ever be able to climb back to the surface again. Many people have given me the courage to persist in this enormous project. Among them are my wife, my two children, my parents and my colleagues and friends. Without them I could not have completed the book. My special thanks go to Michael Ellman and Evan Mawdsley for reading the complete typescript and providing their insightful comments, which I hope I have used sufficiently. Parts of the typescript have been read and commented upon by Meindert Fennema, André Gerrits, Marc Jansen, Bruno Naarden and Evert van der Zweerde. I thank them too for their time and valuable remarks. Of course, all mistakes of fact and interpretation remain my exclu- sive responsibility. I want to thank John Löwenhardt and Jan Mets for their encouragement and help in bringing this project to completion. During my stay in Moscow in 1994 at the former Central Party Archive I was given great help in tracing documents and reading Stalin’s marginal notes by L.P. Kosheleva and L.A. Rogovaia. I could not have done it without them. I want to thank the library staff of the International Institute of Social History and of my own Institute for East European Studies in Amsterdam for their much appreciated assistance throughout the years. The book could not have been completed without a grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), which allowed me one and a half years of full-time paid leave of absence from the university in 1997–9. I thank Bruno Naarden and Wim Roobol for their support. Should I have forgotten to mention anyone who helped me, I sincerely apologise. The authors and publishers would like to thank the following for granting permission to reproduce material in this work: Collection International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam for Figure 12 ‘‘Otto Bauer’’. Acknowledgements ix Publishing House Respublika, Moscow for Figure 1 ‘‘I.V. Stalin’’ and Figure 6 ‘‘A.A. Bogdanov’’. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow for Figure 3 ‘‘V.I. Lenin’’, Figure 8 ‘‘Ivan the Terrible’’, Figure 9 ‘‘N.G. Chernyshevskii’’, Figure 10 ‘‘V.G. Belinskii’’ and Figure 11 ‘‘Peter the Great’’. Every effort has been made to obtain permission for the use of copyright items. Author and publisher would be glad to hear from any copyright holders not so acknowledged. Erik van Ree September 2001 Introduction To write a book about Stalin’s political thought is a risky project. During the many years when I was occupied with it I was routinely treated to the ironic question: “Did he, then, have any political thought at all?” Decades after his leader’s death, Lazar Kaganovich said: “before anything else, Stalin was an ideological person. For him the idea was the main thing.”1 But the faithful Kaganovich, one of the Soviet leaders most responsible for the cult of Stalin’s personality, is not exactly an impartial witness. Few would agree with him that his boss had been a man of ideas. To focus a study of Joseph Stalin on his ideas is, therefore, a project of which the very relevance should be more or less shown in advance. That the Soviet dictator was not a stupid man is generally taken for granted, but that political doctrine was essential for him is open to general doubt to no lesser degree. For most, including the present author, Stalin was above all a criminal and a mass murderer. There are admittedly a small number who still admire the great leader, but even they do not find his ideas his most significant heritage. Their idol was above all a great war leader under whose iron hand the Soviet Union was transformed into a superpower. Stalin is mostly believed to have been a man of naked power who adapted his ideas at will whenever it suited him. From this perspective, he was a cynic, an opportunist and a shrewd pragmatist – perhaps a tactician of genius – but never a man of principle. To attempt to understand the logic of Stalin’s broader doctrines is therefore not worth the trouble. The effort is allegedly based on a fundamental misunderstanding, namely that Stalin’s thought had some kind of inner logic instead of being an accumulation of ad hoc adaptations. Stalin’s ideas were determined by the interaction of circumstance and his own power hunger rather than being an active element of their own, shaping actual policies. These ideas counted for little if it comes to understanding what actually happened in the USSR between 1928 and 1953, for they were determined by Stalinist reality instead of deter- mining that reality. For example, is it not silly to assume that Stalin put into practice the idea of the kolkhoz because he was attracted to the idea of the socialist mode of production? Was his real point not rather to exercise better control over the peasantry? 2 Introduction Figure 1 I.V. Stalin: from his 1947 Short Biography To counter such objections, one could argue that the Soviet dictator did believe in the Marxist principles avowed by him. But even if this could be convincingly argued – as I believe it can be – it might still not shake the doubters, for Stalin’s beliefs might be little more than self-deception. His convictions might represent formulas to legitimise his actions to his own conscience instead of being held in advance of these actions and providing a guideline for them.

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