THE death of Stalin, like the death of Lenin 29 years ago, marks an epoch in Russian history. Rarely have two successive rulers of a great country responded so absolutely to its changing needs and piloted it so successfully through periods of crisis. Lenin was at the helm through five- years of revolution, civil war, and pre- carious recovery. Stalin, coming to power in the aftermath of revolution, took up the task of organizing and disciplining the revolutionary state, and putting into execu- tion the revolutionary programmes of planned industry and collectivized agri- culture. He thus equipped the country to meet the gravest external peril which had threatened it since Napoleon, and brought it triumphantly through a four years' ordeal of invasion and devastation. The characters of the two men present a contrast which corresponds to the dif- ferent tasks confronting them. Lenin was an original thinker, an idealist, a superb revolutionary agitator. Stalin neither possessed, nor required, these quali- ties. He was essentially an administrator, an organizer and a politician. Both were ruthless in the pursuit of policies which they regarded as vital to the cause they had at heart. But Stalin appeared to lack a certain element of humanity which Lenin generally maintained in personal relations, though allied statesmen who dealt with him during the war were unanimous in finding him approachable, sympathetic, and readily disposed to moderate the in- transigence of his subordinates. As the war drew to its close Stalin, whether for reasons of health or for reasons of policy, .became less and less accessible to repre- sentatives of the western Powers and so the rift began which was to widen in the counsels of the United Nations and in the policies towards the west of Russia's satellites, until the open warfare broke out in Korea which still festers and poisons the whole international scene.
A MAN OF AUTHORITY
PUBLIC ENTHUSIASM
In Russia and the adjacent Communist States Marshal Stalin at the time of his death ocupied a position of personal eminence almost without parallel in the history of the world. His rare public appearances provoked scenes of tre- mendous enthusiasm; his speeches and writings on any subject-linguistics, the art of war, biology and history, as well as on the theory of Communism-were treated as virtually inspired texts and analysed in meticulous detail by hundreds of commentators. A quotation from the works of Stalin was the irrefutable end to any argument. The mere mention of his name at a political conference in any of the satellite States was sufficient to bring all present to their feet by a pro- longed ovation. The Stalin legend became an integral part of the chain which united orthodox Communists all over the world. In appearaffce Stalin was grey; his hair grey and stiff as a badger's; his nostrils and lower cheeks greyish white; his moustache, too, though in youth it had been richly brown and still showed some traces of that colour, was grey. He spoke softly, moved slowly, but his expression was quizzical, like a man enjoying a hidden joke, at times softening into a broad smile. Often as he spoke his look was oddly remote and withdrawn, the look of a man thinking through two or three processes at once. His expression was above all confident, without a trace of nerves; strong, calm or suddenly watchful in an amused kind of way. Tough, yet unathletic, dignified yet self- conscious, he dominated any group of which he formed a part for all his small stature. Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvlli, known to the world as Stalin, one of his many revo- lutionary noms de guerre, was born at Gori, in Georgia, on December 21, 1879. His father, a cobbler of peasant origin, died when he was 11. Joseph waS sent to the church school in his native town, where he remained until 1893. It was here that he learned to use Russian as an instrument of expression, since all ecclesiastical schools in Georgia at that time were the implements of the Tsarist policy of Russification. He emerged from the school at Gori sharply conscious of the suppression of Georgian nationalism and not unaware of the social inequalities and injustices prevailing in his native Georgia. Such feelings were never revealed however to the school staff, and in view of the fact that be was invariably the best pupil in his form, the head master and the local priest had no hesitation in recommending him for a scholarship at the seminary in Tiflis following upon his matricu- lation there in the autumn of 1894.
"A MODEL PUPIL "
CLANDESTINE SOCIALIST
In his early period at the seminary Dzhugasbvili was a model pupil, able and diligent at his work, but towards the q&d of his first year, unbeknown to his tutors. he was already in contact with opposition groups in Tiflis and published some patriotic radical verses in the Liberal newspaper Iberya. His contact with radical groups in Tiflis, headed by former seminarists, continued to develop until finally in August, 1898, he joined the clandestine Socialist organization known as Mesame-Dasi. Thenceforward he began to lead a kind of dual existence. His few leisure hours were spent in lecturing on Socialism to smail groups of working men in Tiflis; discus- sion in a secret debating society, formed by himself inside the seminary, and the reading of radical books. This state of affairs eventually came to the notice of the seminary authorities and in May, 1899, the 20-year-old Dzhugash- vili was expelled. He then mbarked on a revolutionary career, but was faced with the immediate problem of employment. For a few months he made a little money giving lessons to the children of mniddle class families and at the end of 1899 found a job as a clerk in the observatory at Tiflis-an occupation which, seems to have afforded him much free time for political activity. He remained in this employment until March, 1901, when his political activities forced him to go under- ground completely. In November, 1901, he was elected to membership of the Social Democratic com- mittee of Tiflis and a few weeks later was sent to Batum, where he proceeded with the establishment of a vigorous clandestine organition and an illegal printing press. The influence of this organization, under his leadership, on the oil workers of Batum was so rernarkable in its manifestations that Koba (as Dzhugashvili was then known) was arrested. and imprisoned in the spring of 1902 as a dangerous agitator. From his exile in Siberia he escaped a few weeks later and reappeared in Tiflis to find that the great schism which divided the Social Democratic Party in 1903 had left the Mensheviks in virtual control of the Caucasian party. A few. months after his return, with some hesita- tion, " Koba " took the side of Lenin and the Bolsheviks and proceeded to agitate energetically against the Mensheviks and other political groupings.
FIRST MEETING WITH LENIN
Koba's" role during the "general rehearsal " of 1905 was a local rather than a national one. Apart from organizing the " fighting squads " (later to be a subject of considerable controversy within the party) and the editing of the newspaper Kavkaski Rabochl Listok (Caucasian Workers' News- sheet), which enjoyed temporary legality, he continued to conduct a vigorous onslaught against the Mensheviks. When he attended the party conierence in Tammerfors in Decem- ber, 1905, as a delegate of the Caucasian Bolsheviks (a group of uncertain credentials, since most of the local leaders were Men- sheviks), " Koba " emerged for the first time from the provincial arena of Caucasian politics into the atmosphere of a truly natidhal gather- ing. Here, too, he first met Lenin. In the following year he attended the Stockholm Congress and in 1907 the London Party Con- gress as a Caucasian delegate, where he encountered Trotsky. Soon after his return from the Londori Congress he was elected to membership of the Baku Committee, and it was in the oil wells of Baku that Stalin, on his testimony, first learned to lead great masses of workers. He was arrested in November, 1908, and deported to Vologda province. A few months later, however, he escaped and appeared again in the south, under the name of Melikyants. His period of freedom was brief, for he was re-arrested in March, 1910, and sent back to Vologda to complete his sentence of 1908. Released in June, 1911, he settled in Petersburg at the home of his future father-in-law, Alliluyev, although he had been forbidden to live in most large towns. In consequence, he was again arrested. Reaction was now at its height and the party fortunes at their lowest ebb. A small con- ference of Bolshevik stalwarts in Prague in January, 1912, coopted Stalin as a member of the central executive committee of the party; and on his escape a few weeks later he helped to found the new party journal Pravda in Petersburg.
A TURNING-POINT
LENIN'S " WONDERFUL GEORGIAN "
It was in the winter of 1912-13 that Stalin made his only extended visit abroad, spending some months with Lenin in Cracow and some time in Vienna. This was a turning-point in his career. Ten years earlier Lenin, in his famous pamphlet What is to be Done? had first stated the case, on which he never ceased to insist, for a centrally directed party of professional revolutionaries, organized and disciplined in thought and deed, as the essential instrument of social revolution. Stahn had all the marks of Lenin's ideal pro- fessional revolutionary: he was intrepid, orderly and orthodox. It was a further asset that though born a Georgian and a member ot one of the " subject races" Stalin had had no truck with separatist or federalist " ideas within the party and was an out-and-out centralist." Not for nothing therefore did Lenin at this time refer to Stalin in a letter to Maxim Gorky as " a wonderful Georgian " who was writing an essay on the national ques- tion. The essay, eventually published under the title " Marxism and the National Ques- tion" in a party journal, was an attack on the "national " heresies of the Austrian Marxists Bauer and Renner and a statement ot accepted Bolshevik doctrine, steering a cautious middle course between those who re- garded any kind of nationalism as incompatible with international socialism and those who re- garded nationalism as an essential element iii it. It was the first of his writings to be signed by the name under which he was to become famous. Back in Russia, Stalin underwent in Febru- ary. 1913, his sixth and last imprisonment and exile. The revolution of February, 1917, released him, and he was probably the first member of the central com- nnittee of the party to reach Petersburg. In this capacity he temporarily took over the editorship of Pravda. This was the occasion of a short-lived deviation to which Stalin after- wards frankly confessed. In common with the other leading Bolsheviks then in the capital- excluding Molotov and Shlyapnikov-Stalin believed that the right tactics for the Bolsheviks were to support the provisional Government and rally to the defence of the fatherland; and this line, which would have assimilated the policy of the Bolsheviks to that of the Social-Democratic parties of the Second International, was taken editorially in Pravda. Lenin, chafing inactively in Switzerland, denounced in his Letters from Afar the weak-kneed Bolsheviks of the capital. When later he reached Petrograd in the sealed train and propounded his famous ' April theses " of no cooperation with the provisional Government or with any policy that would keep Russia in the war, he quickly rallied his faltering party, and geared it for the second revolution. Thereafer Stalin remained a faithful and undeviating disciple. 1917
REVOLUTION ENHANCED.
STATUS IN THE PARTY
The difficulty for the biographer of this as of the earlier period of Stalin's life is to dis- entangkl the authentic contemporary evidence from the mass of more recent and largely apocryphal accretions. It seems that he first became a figure familiar to party cadres, at the time of his election to a new central com- mittee of nine members in April, 1917, and after the difficult July days, when Lenin and Zinoviev were compelled to retreat to Fin- land and Kamenev, Trotsky and others were arrested, Stalin emerged to lead the party. On their return to the political scene, he retired again into the shadows. While there is but little information relating to any participation by him in the work of the Revolutionary MiiLtary Committee during the actual rising, he nevertheless undoubtedly performed an i nportant function in the editorial office of Prav4da. He supported Lenin against Zinoviev and Kamenev in the contro- versy over the preparation and timing of the October revolution and against Trotsky over Brest-Litovsk ; and though his interventions recorded in the minutes of the central com- mittee were on both occasions brief and incon- spicuous, his fidelity to Lenin in these troubled times must have won the gratitude of the leader and greatly enbanced his status in the party. He was appointed People's- Commissar for Nationalities in October, 1917, and in this capacity one of his first measures was to pro- claim Finland's .ndependence from Russia, at a conference in Helsinki. In spite of the opposition of elements within the party, who regarded this as an unwarranted concession to bourgeois nationalism, the decree was officially signed by Lenin and Stalin in December. He also played an active part in the drafting of the 1918 constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic and he was still more closely concerned four years later in framing the federal constitution of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.
BREACH WITH TROTSKY
The civil war provided fresh scope for Stalin's unflagging energy and undoubted administrative talents. That the civil war pro- vided the occasion of Stalin's first open breach with Trotsky; that Stalin and Voroshilov intrigued busily against rrotsky, criticizing both his disposition of his armies and his use of former Tsarist officers; that recriminations flared up to a dangerous point over the defence of Tsaritsin (renamed Stalingrad some years later) against Denikin; that Lenin tried to smooth over these aninosities and to retain the services of two invaluable though quarrel- some lieutenants-so much is clear. But the historian of the future may weD find it a super- human task to extract the grain of truth from the chaff of subsequent controversy and the haystack of misrepresentation beneath which Trotsky's achievements have been hidden. For the rest Stalin's name figures little in the literature of the period. At any time up to 1922 the general inpression which he made on his colleagues was apparently one of un- distinguished competence; though admitted to the first rank of Bolshevik leaders he seemed the least remarkable of them, the most lacking in personality. But his capacity for hard and regular work more than balanced the more spectacular talents of his rivals, and indeed it could not have escaped the notice of a few that Stalin's influence in the state and his hold on the party machine had grown enormously. At the end of the civil war he filled three significant posts: membership of the Polit- buro, Commissar of Nationalities, and Com- missar for Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (Rabkrin). N In March, 1922 he was appointed Secretary-General or the party-a newly created post obviously suited to his rather pedestrian gifts. Though not regarded by any- one as a potential stepping-stone to supreme power, nevertheless this post, considered in conjunction with his other spheres of influence, rendered his personal position most formid- able. Although Lenin still held the reins, Stalin's influence was becoming comparable to that of Lenin. In May of the same year Lenin had a first stroke from which he recovered, temporarily and incompletely, to be finally stricken by a second in March, 1923. From this moment, though Lenin lingered on, totally incapacitated, till January, 1924, the succession was open. Had anyone seriously canvassed Stalin's chances, a letter from Lenin to the central committee of the party-commonly, though unwarrantably, 4nown as Lenin's testament- might have seeme6d a decisive obstacle. Writing at theend of December; 1922, with a postscript of January 4, 1923, Lenin who evidently knew chat his days- were numbered, passed in re- gress elected a new Politburo of nine and in the new line-up Stalin had a majority of votes among them Kaganovich and Mikoyan. The Aaring up of contlcting forces inside the Politburo did not come until 1928, when in view of the grain famine " emergency mea- sures " were instituted by the Politburo, result- ing in Stalin's call for " the elimination of the kulaks as a class." Although in the councils of the Politburo these measures were opposed by Bukharin and his group, it was not until April, 1929, that Stalin openly de- nounced Bukharin as the leader of the " right " opposition to his policy in the countryside. Soon after, Bukharin Rykov, and Tomsky were excluded from the Politburo and other significant posts. Stalin's ascendancy in the Politburo was now complete, and from this moment he was recognized as the virtual ruler of the Soviet Union-a position consecrated by the unusual demonstrations with which his fiftieth birthday was celebrated in December, 1929. At the very moment of Trotsky's expulsion Stalin was preparing a powerful swing-over towards indus- trialization. The first Five-year Plan was launched by him in 1928. Its inevitahle con- comitant, the collectivization of agriculture, though not seriously taken in hand till 1931, had been on the party agenda since the end of 1927. Throughout this period, though mis- takes were made (notably in the estimate of the pace at which collectivization could be carried out), Stalin's sense of timing was on the whole superb. Few, if any, of the policies which he applied were original to himself; but view the principal party leaders. He noted that Stalin since he had become Secretary- General had "concentrated in his hands an tmmense power," and expressed the fear that he might not always use it prudently. He de- scribed Stalin as " too rough," and proposed that he should'be replaced by someone " more patient, more loyal, more polite, more atten- tve to the comrades, less capricious, &c." Fortunately for Stalin, the letter also treated Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin with scant respect, so that there was a powerful interest in lmiting its 'circulation. Though it was familiar to all members of the central com- mittee, and its authenticity has never been contested. But Stalin must be credited with extraordinary skill in surmounting so formid-1 able an obstacle. When the twelfth party con- gress met in April, 1923, Lenin was known, though not yet publicly admitted, to be past recovery. The talk was of a group of three (" troika ") to take over his authority; and the names of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin were freely mentioned. Stalin, with consum- mate tact, defended Zinoviev and Kamenev rather than himself from attacks made jointly on aU three of them. Trotsky was gradually edged on one side. Attacks on him for under- mming the unity of the party began in the autumn of that year. The year 1924 was decisive for Stalin's ascent to power. During this year he for the first time exhibited to the full that amazing political dexterity which made all his rivals look like bunglers and amateurs. In the'first place he brought about what may not unfairly be called the "canonization" of Lenin. From the moment of Lenin's death, and almost entirely as the result of Stalin's initiative, every word that Lenin had uttered or written came to be treated as sacrosanct-as Lenin himself had treated the works of Marx and Engels; and everyone who had differed from him was now suspect not merely as a heretic in the past, but as a potential heretic in the future. This weapon was aimed primarily at Trotsky, whose impetuous character and long record of past 'ickerings vith Lenin made him highly vul- nerable. But it could also serve against Zinoviev and Kamenev, who had more than once been severely castigated by Lenin for their backslidings. Stalin had been too prudeut or not conspicuous enough to come under the lash-except in the unofficial " testament " now being gradually consigned to oblivion. This was a negative asset. But immense pains were taken, both at this time and afterwards, to build up a positive picture of Stalin as Lenin's ablest coadjytor, most faithful disciple, and chosen political executor.
CONTROL OF PARTY MACHINE
POWER STRENGTHENED
Secondly, Stalin, well aware of the prestige attaching in the party to the master of Marxist theory, set out to establish his-credentials in that field. In the spring of 1924 he delivered at the Sverdlov University in Moscow a course of lectures on " The Foundations of Leninism "-a competent exposition of the development and application by Lenin of Marxist doctrine. ie went on to take the offensive against Trotsky. In the lectures themselves he had followed the usual view that the ultimate success of the Russian revo- lution depended on the spread of revolution elsewhere in Europe. But the revolutionary! failures of 1923 in Germany suggested that this consummation was remote; and the new international status of the Soviet Union, which had been recognized in 1924 by all the princi- pal Powers except the United States, made the encouragement of world revolution an increas- ingly inconvenient policy. At the end of 1924 Stalin issued a revised edition of his lectures in which he proclaimed the doctrine of " Socialism in one country." Trotsky could thus be branded as an internationalist, a cham- pion of the outmoded slogan of " permanent revolution." Thirdly, Stalin strengthened his control of the party machine and discovered how to use it for the discomfiture of his enemies. As Secretary-General he was already master of all promotions and appointments to key positions in the party. Lenin's memory was now honoured by the admission of a large number of new members; and this admission, managed by Stalin and his supporters, brought a mass of recruits to the new orthodoxy. Whatever opinions were held among the leaders the weight of numbers must begin to tell. Before long Trotsky was being shouted down at party meetings by enthusiastic young Stalinists.
TROTSKY'S EXPULSION
By January, 1925, the campaign against Trotsky had gathered sufficient momentum to permit of his deposition from his office as People's Commnissar for War. Before the end of the year Zinoviev and Kamenev, taking fight at Stalin's growing power, were seeking a rapprochement with Trotsky. But the move came too late to save them. In 1926 Stalin secured a condemnation of Trotskyites and Zinovievites alike both by a party conference and by the Comintem; and in November, 1927, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev were formally expelled from the party. Two months later Trotsky was forcibly removed from Moscow and sent to Alma-Ata in central Asia. He was finally expelled from Russia in January, 1929. In the struggle thus concluded personal rivalries had been intertwined not only with the issue of foreign policy already referred to but with internal political controversies. Trotsky had always been an advocate of industrializa- tion and planning. Stalin opened the cam- paign against him with the NEP slogans of conciliating the peasant and with the charge, repeated and illustrated ad. nauseamn,, that Trotsky was guilty of " underestimating the peasant." -But Stalin soon saw the dan ers of going too far, and from the end or 1925 onwards cleverly steered a mniddle course be- tween the " left " opposition of Trotsky and Zinoviev, who were accused of ignoring the peasant, and the " right " opposition of Rykov and Bukharin, who exaggerated the policy of appeasing the peasant. I After the rout of Tyotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, Stalin's position was not yet supreme in the Politburo. He 'still had to deal with the " right " opposition of Bukharin, Rykov, and Tornsky. Contrary to the pro- phecies of the recently defeated opposition, the influence of the Bukharin group did not overshadow that of Stalin. The fifteenth Con- he was unique in his sense of when to act and when to wait. In the middle thirties, with industrialization well on the way and collectivization a fait accompli, the Soviet Union may well have seemed to be sailing out into smoother waters. The second Five-year Plan promised an increased output of consumer goods. Stalin's "ub"L pronouncements assumed a more optimistic tone, and he may well have originally conceived the " Stalin constitution," pro- mulgated in 1936, as the crown of his work. Socialism had been achieved; the road to Communism, however distant the goal, lay open; increased material prospenty and broader constitutional hberties were a vision of the immediate future. These expectations, if they were entertained, were not fulfilled. In the middle thirties the Soviet Union entered a new period of storm and stress. The murder of Kirov at the end of 1934 was the symptom or starting-point of a grave internal crisis; and in international affairs Germany regained her power in a form particularly menacing to the Soviet Union. The internal crisis was obscure, the evidence relating to it contentious, and it was dealt with by methods which left a lasting cloud on Stalin's name. The growing-pains of collective farming, the liquidation of the kulaks, the need-in face of the Nazi menace-to increase the pace of industrialization had all imposed severe strains on the population and bred discontent, sometimes in high places. Stalin decided to strike hard. In the panic which followed old scores were paid off and new grudges indulged, and things probably went a good deal farther than Stahn or anyone else intended at the start. TREASON TRIALS In 1935 and 1936 successiv^ trials were held in which all those prominent Bolsheviks who had at one time or another been implicated in " Trotskyism " or other forms of opposi- tion to the regime-Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin among them-were condemned and shot for self-confessed treason. In 1937 a number of the leading generals were shot on similar charges without public trial. Of the leading Bolsheviks of the first generation hardly any survived except Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov. In 1938 the purge was at last stayed. Yagoda, long the head of the G.P.U. and its successor the N.K.V.D.. who had been removed from office at the end of 1936, was now himself executed; and Yezhov, his successor, formerly an influential party leader, d>isappeared from the scene about the same time. Judgment on the purge will depend partly on rue amount of credence given to reports and confessions of active treason on the part of the accused; and it has to be admitted that the Soviet polity afterwards survived the almost intolerable strains of war with fewer breaks and fissures than most observers haa been prepared to predict. Nevertheless it is certain that the damage done by the purges to Soviet prestige in the west was a fatal handicap to the foreign policy of a common defensive front with the western Powers to which Soviet diplomacy was at that time committed. This was probably the gravest and most disastrous miscalculation of that period.
MUNICH AND AFTER
TREATY WITH THE NAZIS
Soviet foreign policy in the thirties, as much as Soviet domestic policy, was clearly Stalin's creation. He had long been by in- clination a Soviet nationalist rather than an internationalist; and now that he was firmly established in the seat of power he was un- likely to shrink from any of the implications of " Socialism in one country." Faced by the German menace, he executed without embar- rassment the ideological change of front necessary to bring the Soviet Union into the League of Nations and to conclude treaties of alliance with France and Czechoslovakia. In the end it was not lack of Soviet good will that defeated this project, but the weakness of France and what appeared to Soviet eyes as a dual policy on the part of Great Britain. So long as Great Britain could be suspected of hesitating between a deal with Germany and a common front against her, Stalin on his side would equally keep both doors open. Munich, though a severe shock to prospects of co- operation, was partly offset by Bntish rearma- ment, and the riddle of British policy was un- solved throughout the winter. On March 10, 1939, at the eighteenth party congress Stalin gave what was doubtless intended as a note of warning that Soviet policy was " not to allow our country to be drawn into conflicts by war- mongers." But his speech was overtaken by the march of events. It was Hitler's seizure of Prague in the middle of March which fired the train. Great Britain now prepared feverishly for war and sought for allhes in the east. Two alternatives were still open to her. Sh could have an alhianc with the Soviet Uriloti at tho priC4 of accepting Soviet policy in castem Europe-in Poland, in Rumania, in the Baltic States; or she could have alliances with the anti-Soviet Governments of these countries at the price of driving the Soviet Union into the hostile camp. British diplomacy was too simple- minded, and too ignorant of eastern Europe, to understand the hard choice before it. It plunged impetuously into the pacts of guarantee with Poland and Rumania; and within a few days, on May 3, 1939, the resigna- tion of Litvinov and his replacement by Molotov signalled a vital change in Soviet foreign policy. The British mission which had been sent to Moscow found itself unable to make any progress. Negotiations continued; but unless Great Britain was prepared to abandon the Polish alliance, or put severe pressure on her new ally, their eventual break- down was certain. When Hitler decided to wait no longer, Stalin for his part did not hesitate. Ribbentrop came to Moscow and the German-Soviet treaty was signed. It is fair to infer that Stalin regarded it as a pis aller. He would have preferred alliance with the western Powers, but could not have it on any terms which he would have found tolerable.
UNEASY NEUTRALITy
Twenty-two months of most uneasy neutrality followed. The German advance in Poland was answered by a corresponding Soviet move to reoccupy the White Russian territories ceded to Poland by the treaty of Riga in 1921. Thus, by the autumn of 1939 Soviet and German power already confronted each other in Poland, on the Danube, and on the Baltic. The war against Finland in the winter of 1939-40 was designed to strengthen the de- fences of Leningrad by pushing forward the frontier in a westerly direction. It eventually achieved this object, but at the cost of much discredit to Soviet prestige and the formal ex- pulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations. After the fall of France, Soviet fears of Ger- man victory and German predominance grew apace0; and military and industrial preparations were pressed forward. Stalin now probably foresaw the inevitability of conflict, but was determined not to provoke or hasten it. In November, 1940, he sent Molotov on a visit to Berlin without being able to mitigate the palpable clash of interests. On the other hand, Japanese neutrality was assured when Matsuoka was effusively received in Moscow in April, 1941. In the following month Stalin, hitherto only secretary-general of the party and without official rank, became President of the Council of People's Commissars-the Soviet Prime Minister. The appointment sounded a note of alarm at home and of warning abroad.
RUSSIA AT WAR
HEAVY BURDEN OF RESPONSIBILITY
The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and the almost immediate threat to the capital placed on Stalin's shoulders an enormous weight of anxiety and responsibility. From the outset, the supreme direction of the war effort and defence organi- zation became vested in the State Defence Committee consisting of five members-Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Beria. and Malenkov, with Stalin as chairman, though it was not till March, 1943, that he assumed the rank of marshal, and later of generalissimo. During the war his customary public speeches on May I and on the eve of November 7 took the form of large-scale reviews of military operations and war policy. He was also active in a diplomatic role. Before the war Stalin had been almost entirely inaccessible to foreigners. Now, apart from regular conversations with the allied Am- bassadors, he received a constant flow of dis- tinguished visitors. Lord Beaverbrook and Mr. Harriman were in Moscow in August, 1941, to organize supplies from the west; Mr. Churchill came m August, 1942, and again, with Mr. Eden, in October, 1944. In December, 1943. Stalin met President Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill at Teheran, and in February, 1945, at Yalta. The last meeting of the Big Three, with Mr. Truman succeeding Roosevelt and Mr. 'Attlce replacing. Mr. -Churchill in- the middle 'of .the 'proceedings, took 'place at Potsdam in July, 1945. Among his.diplomatic activities Stalin was particularly concerned with the perennial problem of Soviet-Polish relations. By dint of much patience he eventually secured the recognition of the. new Polish Government by his allies,.and the acceptance by them as the frontier, between the Soviet Union and Poland of the so-called " Curzon line " originally drawn by the Allied and Associated Powers at the Paris peace conference of 1919. He worked untiringly to secure for his country'that place of undisputed equality, with the other Great Powers to which its achievements and sacrifices in the war entitled it.
DOMESTIC POLICY
COMINTERN AND CHURCH
Two striking decisions of domestic policy during the war-the disbandment of Comm- tern and the renewed recognition of the Orthodox Church-were undoubtedly taken by Stalin out of deference for allied opinion; but they were in line with this long-standing in- clination, accentuated by the war, to give precedence to national over ideological considerations. The reforms of 1944 which accorded separate armies and separate rights of diplomatic representation abroad' to the major constituent republics of the Soviet Union were perhaps partly designed to secure to the Ukraine and White Russia independent membership and voting power in the United Nations. When the war ended Stalin -was in his sixty-sixth year. A holiday of two-and-a- half months in the autumn of 1945 at Sochi on the Black Sea produced the usual crop of rumours, but was no more than a merited and necessary respite from the burden of pubEc affairs. In December he was back in Moscow for the visit of Mr. Bevin and Mr. Byrnes. Thenceforward there were few personal contacts between Stalin and representatives of the western Powers. In February, 1946, he took part in the elections to the Supreme Soviet, making the principal campaign speech, in which he forecast an early end of bread rationing-a hope which was defeated by the bad harvest. He also declared that it was the intention of the Soviet Com- munist Party to organize a new effort in the economic field, the aim of which would be to treble pre-war production figures. Although advanced in years, Stalin still continued to hold the reins of power and in March, 1946, he was again confirmed as Secretary of the central committee of the party. In the same year the State Publishing House began pub-, lication of a collected edition of his works.
GROWING MISTRUST
The unparalleled popularity in the non- C~ommunist world with which the Russian people in general, and Marshal Stalin in particular, had emerged from the war thus early gave place to mistrust. It had been hoped that the pre-war doctrine which was associated with Stalin's name, of " socialism in one country," would provide the basis for peaceful coexistence in the post-war period. Stalin's own comments on inter- national affairs sometimes tended to con- firm, and sometimes to deny, this prospect. Thus in answer to questions put to him by the M4oscow correspondent of the Sunday Times in September, 1946, Stalin declared that, in spite of ideological differences, he believed in the possibility of lasting cooperation between the Soviet Union and the western democracies, and that Comnmunism in one country was perfectly possible. This p)rovoked world-wide interest and was regarded as a welcome state- ment, contributing much to the teasing of growing international tension. A month later, however, in reply to questions sent to him by the United Press of America, he asserted that in his opinion " the incendiaries of a new war," naming several prominent British and American statesmen, constituted the most serious threat to world peace, and thus destroyed the earlier good impression. .Russia's post-war policy towards her neigh- bours did nothing to confirm Stalin's peaceful protestations. The independent Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, had already been incorporated in Russia in 1940. Finland Iand Bulgaria were compelled to surrender Iterritory to Russia as the price of defeat, and IPoland suffered even greater- amputations as Ithe reward of victory. In the Far East Russia Iclaimed North Sakha'an and the Kurilles Islands as her price for taking part in the war lagainst Japan. In all the countries which had been overrun by the Red Army it was only a question of time before a Communist regime had been set up and its opponents liquidated. By the- middle of 1948 the borders of Com- munism stretched from the Elbe to the Adriatic. A year later Communism had triumphed in China. Stalin controlled the destinies of an empire far larger than any Tsar had ever dreamed of. It was the coup d'Etat in Prague in February, 1948, which finally forced westem Europe and North America-into action for their common defence. The North-Atlantic Treaty was signed in April,4.949. But even before then the west had successfully met another outward thrust by Russia. It was in June, 1948 that the air-lift began which nulli- fied the effects of the blockade of Berlin. Stalin-remained, as always, in the back- ground during this period of dynamic Russian expansion. It was only rarely that he received a foreign diplomat, though leaders of the satellite States naturally had readier access to him. From time to time the sqggestion was made for a new conference between Stalin, the American President and the British Prime Minister, but none of them came to anything. It was in 1946 that President Truman disclosed thai he had invited Stalin to Washington. for a social visit, but that Stalin had found it necessary to decline for reasons of health. In the last interview which he gave, to a foreign correspondent (to the representative of the New York Times in December last year) he indicated that he held a favourable view of proposals for talks between himself and the ead of the new American Administration, President Eisenhower, and that he was inter- ested in any -new diplomatic move to end hostilties in Korea. President Eisenhower declared his willingness last month to hold a meeting with Stalin in certain circumstances, and Mr. Churchill subsequently told the House of Commons that he did not rule out the possibility of three-cornered discussions.
STALIN'S NEW ROLE
ECONOMIC THEORIST
It was in the last year of his life that Stalin appeared in a role which would have sur- prised former colleagues, such as Lenin and Trotsky, but which therefore may well have given him most pride-as an economic theorist in the tradition of (and not less important than) Marx, Engels and Lenin. Shortly before the nineteenth congress of the Russian Com- munist Party, which was held in Moscow in October, 1952-the first congress since 1939- Stalin published his Economic Problems of Socialism in thwe USS.R.. which has since become the definitive text-book for Commun- ists in all countries. In this work he wamed his readers that, for all Russia's successes in building a new society, it was wrong to think that the natural economic laws did noL. apply as much in Russia as else- where. He also forecast a deepening crisis of capitalism, that west European countries would dissociate themselves from the United States, and that war between these capitalist countries was inevtable. He also outlined a programme of basic preliminary conditions necessary for the transition to Com- munism in the Soviet Union. At the Congress there was a reorganization of party organs- the Politburo and the Orgburo being brought together in a single body, the .Praesidium of the Central Committee, of which Stain became chairman. On the occasion of his seventieth birthday in December, 1949, there were widespread celebra- tions throughout the Soviet Union and busts of Stalin were erected on 38 of the highest peaks in the Soviet Union. It marked, too, the inauguration of intemational Stalin peace prizes, to be awarded each year on his birth- day. On March 3, 1953, it was announced by Moscow radio that Stalin was gravely ill as the result of a haemorrhage, that he had lost consciousness and speech, and that he would take no part in leading activity for a prolonged period. Only a few-details are known of Stalin's personal life. In 1903 he married Yekaterina Svanidze, a profoundly religious woman and the sister of a Georgian comrade, who left him a son Yasha vhen she died in 1907 of ppeumonia. His second wife, whom he married in 1918-Nadezhda Alhluyeva-was 20 years younger than himself and was the daughter of a Bolshevik worker, with whom Stalin had contacts in both the Caucasus and St. Petersburg. She was formerly one of Lenin's secretaries and later studied at a tech- nical college in Moscow. This marriage, too, ended with the death of his wife in November, 1932. She left him two children-a daughter, Svetlana, and a son, Vassili, now a high ranking officer in the Soviet Air Force. Late in life he married Rosa Kaganovich, tho sister of lazar Kaganovich; a" member of the Politburo.
MARSHAL JOSEPH STALIN - I I .~~~~~~~~~~ DICTATOR OF RUSSIA FOR 29 YEARS
'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
