Russia's Century of Revolutions: Parties, People, Places. Studies Presented in Honor of Alexander Rabinowitch

Contending with Stalin: Smolny's Policy Differences with the Kremlin during the Darkest Days of the Leningrad Blockade

Russia’s Century of Revolutions: Parties, People, Places. Studies Presented in Honor of Alexander Rabinowitch. Michael S. Melancon and Donald J. Raleigh, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2012, 133–51.       Contending with Stalin: Smolny’s Policy Differences with the Kremlin during the Darkest Days of the Leningrad Blockade Richard Bidlack Alexander   Rabinowitch’s   pioneering   research   has   highlighted   the   profound   political   differences   that   existed   among   Bolshevik   leaders   during   the   1917   Revolution.1   Publication   of   The   Bolsheviks   Come   to   Power   shattered   the   myth   that  the  Bolshevik  Central  Committee  followed  Vladimir  Lenin’s  direction  in   lock-­‐‑step  conformity.  Indeed,  divergent  views  among  the  Bolshevik  elite  and   the  fact  that  Lenin  did  not  always  get  his  way  contributed  to  the  Bolsheviks’   success  in  overthrowing  the  Provisional  Government.  In  his  masterfully  writ-­‐‑ ten   and   exhaustively   researched   follow-­‐‑up   volume,   The   Bolsheviks   in   Power,   Rabinowitch   further   delineates   differences   within   the   Bolshevik   leadership   over  key  issues,  such  as  the  Brest-­‐‑Litovsk  Peace  of  March  1918,  which  ended   hostilities   between   Soviet   Russia   and   the   Central   Powers.   Rabinowitch’s   method  of  meticulously  analyzing  enormous  amounts  of  primary  source  doc-­‐‑ umentation  in  order  to  define  precisely  and  dispassionately  the  attitudes  and   policies  of  key  political  figures  and  to  establish  their  connections  with  society   at  large  set  the  standard  for  training  a  generation  of  political  historians.   Following  Lenin’s  death  in  1924,  a  bitter  power  struggle  ensued  among   the  party’s  elite.  Joseph  Stalin  gained  supremacy  within  the  Politburo  by  late   1929  largely  through  his  control  over  recruitment  into  the  party  as  its  General   Secretary  and  his  skill  in  isolating  prominent  political  rivals.  Stalin’s  position,   however,  was  not  unassailable,  primarily  because  his  policy  of  brutal  collecti-­‐‑ vization  of  agriculture  in  the  early  1930s  resulted  in  the  deaths  of  millions  of   peasant  farmers.  Collectivization  devastated  the  rural  economy.  Stalin’s  fear   of   dissent   within   the   party   grew   during   the   Seventeenth   Party   Congress   in   January   and   February   of   1934,   months   after   the   worst   period   of   starvation.   According  to  a  few  sources,  delegates  at  the  congress  asked  Leningrad’s  party   leader,  Sergei  Kirov,  to  replace  Stalin  as  General  Secretary,  and  Kirov  appar-­‐‑ ently  divulged  this  information  to  Stalin.  Kirov  was  assassinated  under  mys-­‐‑ terious  circumstances  the  following  December  at  Leningrad’s  party  headquar-­‐‑ ters  in  the  former  Smolny  Institute.                                                                                                                               1  The  ideas  expressed  in  this  essay  are  developed  in  greater  detail  in  chapter  2  (“Who   Ruled  Leningrad?”)  of  my  forthcoming  book,  written  with  Nikita  Lomagin,  The  Lenin-­‐‑ grad  Blockade,  1941–1944:  A  New  Documentary  History  from  the  Soviet  Archives.   134 RICHARD BIDLACK Kirov’s   murder   represented   a   pivotal   event   in   Soviet   history.   In   its   aftermath,  conflict  among  Communist  leaders  conformed  to  some  extent  to  an   age-­‐‑old   pattern   in   Russian   history:   fear   by   Moscow’s   rulers   in   the   fifteenth   and  sixteenth  centuries  of  potential  disloyalty  in  the  country’s  northwestern   periphery,  which  was  transformed  into  rivalry  between  Moscow  and  the  cap-­‐‑ ital  city,  St.  Petersburg,  in  the  Imperial  era.  (Tension  between  the  Bolshevik   Central  Committee  in  Moscow  and  Petrograd’s  party  leaders  over  the  fren-­‐‑ zied  flight  of  the  national  government  from  Petrograd  to  Moscow  in  1918  is   one  of  the  subthemes  of  The  Bolsheviks  in  Power.)  It  remains  unclear  whether   Stalin  ordered  Kirov’s  murder,  although  Stalin  had  reason  to  be  wary  of  his   junior   associate’s   growing   popularity   within   the   party.   In   either   case,   the   crime  served  as  a  partial  catalyst  for  a  vast  purge  of  Leningrad’s  political,  eco-­‐‑ nomic,  and  intellectual  elite.  Leningrad’s  former  party  chief  Grigorii  Zinov’ev   was  charged  with  complicity  in  Kirov’s  murder  and  executed.  Tens  of  thou-­‐‑ sands  of  people  in  Leningrad  and  its  surrounding  regions  were  eliminated  in   the   Great   Terror   of   1937–38.   Stalin’s   close   associate   and   successor   to   Kirov,   Andrei  Zhdanov,  carried  out  the  purge.     The  magnitude  of  political  persecution  throughout  the  USSR  during  the   Terror   has   drawn   many   historians   to   study   it.   According   to   official   Soviet   data,   some   1.5   million   people   were   arrested   in   1937–38,   of   whom   almost   700,000   were   executed.2   Through   the   course   of   this   bloodletting,   Stalin   achieved   immense   power,   and   he   cultivated   a   pseudo-­‐‑religious   cult   of   his   own  personality.  Just  how  powerful  he  became  by  the  late  1930s  is  a  matter  of   continuing   debate   among   historians.   Oleg   Khlevniuk   recently   stated   flatly   that  Stalin  achieved  “the  total  subjugation  of  the  Politburo”  through  the  Ter-­‐‑ ror,  and  that  “all  important  questions  were  decided  by  Stalin  alone.”3  Arch   Getty,  on  the  other  hand,  describes  a  more  complicated  political  landscape  in   which  Stalin  became...