Stalin's Genocides by Norman M. Naimark Read Free Book Online Page B

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    bativeness; and Lenin’s willingness to countenance labor violence and even terrorism if they forwarded the cause of the party of Social Democrats. Lenin was the founding father of Bolshevism. Young Koba, putting aside all of the hyperbolic rhetoric of the later cult of Stalin, quickly fell into step with the faction’s ideology and its revolutionary tactics. In the name of the party, Stalin engaged in a series of bank robberies and “expropriations,” the most spectacular taking place in Tiflis in 1907. Stalin’s biographers sometimes cite these robberies as a sign of his law-lessness and violence; more appropriately, they should be seen as an example of his dedication to the welfare of the party and his lack of interest in traditional morality, something he shared with a number of Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
    It would be wrong to think of Stalin as nothing more than a violent and conspiratorial Bolshevik, though he was certainly that. He was also an ideologist, and in his role as editor of Pravda , Stalin took on the important task of explaining the evolving platform of Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership to their followers. Stalin was an excel-lent editor, and he only got better over time. Though his Russian was not perfect, Stalin had a good understanding of the importance of punchy, agitational prose, and he was not averse to rewriting his comrades’ contributions in that spirit. This was a talent he nurtured and exhibited until the very end of his life.12
    Like many radicals of his day, Stalin spent time in tsarist exile for his revolutionary activities. His first experience of exile—1903–04 in the northern Irkutsk region—
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    proved to be relatively benign. He was able to read and write, to meet with fellow revolutionaries, and to develop friendships among the exiles. The same could be said of his exile to the Vologda region from 1909 to 1912. Especially compared to the conditions of those deported in the Soviet 1930s, Stalin’s initial terms in exile seem down-right luxurious. More difficult and serious for the development of his character was his exile in Kureika (in the Turukhansk region), north of the Arctic Circle, from 1914
    until shortly before the revolution. Here Stalin lived in the extremely harsh and frigid circumstances of a tiny, isolated settlement. Less hardened men would have suffered terribly from the cold, the loneliness, and the company of the small native population. Stalin seemed to thrive, or at least to master his environment, finding comfort with local families (and women), and enjoying the solitude of hunting and fishing in the Far North. He emerged from this harsh environment even more controlled and sure of his ability to survive than earlier. When he joined the revolutionary upheaval in Petrograd in the early spring 1917, Stalin was a hardened and focused Bolshevik leader, capable of working long hours and carrying out designated tasks—and those he initiated himself—with efficiency and determination.
    Stalin’s role in the Great October Revolution was generally that of a follower and not a leader. Yet he was always there near Lenin, ready to take on the tasks that were assigned to him. On the one hand, he was Lenin’s facto-tum; on the other, he made himself indispensable to many of his comrades by successfully accomplishing logistical the making of a genocidaire 43
    and political assignments without complaint or hesitation.
    With so many self-important intellectuals involved in the revolution—Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Bukharin among them—Stalin was content to be a party leader who spoke little but got things accomplished. It would be a mistake to think about Stalin as no more than a thug and messen-ger boy, an image that Trotsky successfully but mislead-ingly imparted to posterity. Stalin made things happen and created the circumstances in which he was destined to succeed.
    During the Russian Civil War, 1918–21, Stalin