1920 and 1922 analyses of Stalin

A stereotype used in Western anti-communist and Trotskyist narratives of Stalin's life is that he was someone of no particular importance to the Bolsheviks or to Lenin personally, as well as being a "mediocrity." These two early English-language accounts contradict these claims.

From a British parliamentary "Report (political and economic) of the Committee to collect information on Russia," American printing on July 12, 1921 (report itself was completed in November 1920), p. 37:

Stalin is undoubtedly the ablest of the many Georgians who are working under the soviet government, and there is reason to believe that, as an organizer and a man of action Stalin is second only to Trotsky. He was formerly one of the principal organizers of the bolshevik section of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and a close collaborator with Lenin. He was twice exiled to the Vologda Province and once to Siberia. After the outbreak of the Russian revolution in February, 1917, he became a member of the Petrograd Soviet and after the bolshevik coup d'etat of October, 1917, he became people's commissary for State control and people's commissary for nationalities, i.e., dealing with the affairs of the non-Russian nationalities of Russia of which he is a representative himself. In this latter capacity he was associated with the endeavors of the soviet government to set on foot a subversive propaganda in the east. He was also for some time military commissar of the southwestern Russian front during 1918-19. In August, 1920, he attended the Muhammadan communist congress at Baku, and thence proceeded at Erivan, in Armenia, and Angora, the headquarters of Mustapha Kemal Pasha in connection with the negotiations proceeding between the latter and the soviet government. He has a reputation for remarkable force of character and considerable ability.

From "And after Lenine?" by Ernestine Evans, from the November 1922 issue of The Century Magazine, pages 263-264:

Stalin, who is Lenine's closest friend, has never lived in western Europe. A peasant from Tiflis, his real name is Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, born in the village of Didi-Lolo of Greek Orthodox parents. It is interesting that from this pious Christian stock came the Bolshevik who is to-day the most powerful and the most popular among the Mohammedans of southern and eastern Russia. Stalin began his working life as a bookkeeper. Shortly after 1905 the police picked up his trail, and the young Georgian was exiled to Vologda Province, in the far North. Like a Russian friend of mine, he could explain: "The czar's police gave me my education. Thanks to them, I knew all parts of Russia, and found misery everywhere." He disappeared from Vologda in 1908, and was exiled under another name to Siberia, escaped, was exile again in midsummer two years before the war, and by September was back in European Russia, where 'his work' lay.

What time Stalin has spent outside Russia has been in the Near East. He looks like a Kurd chief, but for all his fierceness is a shy man. No foreign journalist has ever interviewed him. He is seldom seen even by his own colleagues in the Commissariat of Nationalities, of which he is chief. Most of his time is spent at the deliberations of the Council of Labor and Defense, the highest organ of the Soviet Government. When the Denikin advance wrought chaos in southern Russia, Stalin was appointed president of the Revolutionary Military Soviet of the southern front. With no army experience, he developed a remarkable talent for military tactics. The White press called him their most dangerous enemy.

Not all Russians admire Stalin. "A savage man," a devoted Bolshevik said of him to me, "a bloody man. You have to have swords like him in a revolution, but I don't like that fact, nor like him."

Ruthless though he is reputed to be, Stalin directs one of the least coercive and most successful Bolshevik policies, the liberal treatment of small nationalities within the Soviet Federation. With Lenine, he believes that nationalist revolutionary movements must be encouraged and utilized, and he carries this idea to its application even within the borders of the old Russian Empire, where the aspirations of a score of small peoples, suddenly released from czarist tyranny, clash with the communist plans of the more dogmatic Bolsheviks.

The Stalin policy is one of adroit coalition of the communist nuclei within the small nations with the party in Russia for the building of a friendly federation along the southern and eastern borders of Russia. He thus manœuvered politics in Georgia and Azerbaijan and saved to the Federated Soviet Republics their greatest prize in international bargaining, the gushing oil of the Caucasus, coveted by the fleets of the world. Within the Communist party Stalin's personality gives him special influence. His way of life, his sobriety, and his intense industry, in which his wife, who was formerly his secretary, joins him, have attracted to him an almost religious adherence from the faithful, a kind of following which the merrier Karahan, for example, with his petty and frivolous actress wife, need never expect.

From the January 18, 1923 issue of The New York Times, page 3, an article by Walter Duranty on Lenin's possible successors.

Finally, there is the Georgian, Stalin, little known abroad, but one of the most remarkable men in Russia and perhaps the most influential figure here today. Stalin is officially the head of the Ministry of the nations that constitute the Russian Union and, more important still, General Secretary of the Communist Party....

In the present critical days, when the future of Europe may depend upon decisions by the Governments in Paris, London, Berlin and Moscow, real directing strength is needed. Trotsky is a great executive, but his brain cannot compare with Lenin's in analytical power. Djerjinsky goes straight to his appointed goal without fear or favor and gets there somehow, no matter what are the obstacles, but he also is inferior to Lenin in analytical capacity. Rykoff and Kameneff are first-class administrators, and hardly more.

But during the last year Stalin has shown judgment and analytical power not unworthy of Lenin. It is to him that the greatest part of the credit is due for bringing about the new Russian Union, which history may regard as one of the most remarkable Constitutions in human history.

From "Stalin - Russia's Leading Politician" by Anna Louise Strong, from the April 1924 issue of Hearst's International, pp. 64-65, 149-150.

As far as Lenin can be said to have any successor, Stalin inherits his place.

He is the man behind the scenes in Russian politics. He rarely speaks at public meetings, and in any large gathering his speeches fail of effect. For his voice is low, his style of delivery poor; he is hard to understand in a big meeting. But in more intimate party conferences he is a born fighter. He hurls at his critics a heavy blast that is withering and heartless. He lays bare their arguments; he denounces them as immature, as insignificant, as unworthy of being members of the party. Like Lenin before him, he takes no trouble to sugar-coat the pill that his defeated opponent must swallow. For his opponent, so far, is always defeated...

"If you hear Stalin at hand in a discussion," says a personal adherent, "step by step you are convinced. At last you are even interested, because what he says is so important. He is tiresome, but very wise." ....

"In all our political business," said Nogin, President of the Russian Textile Syndicate, to me, "the influence of Stalin is the largest." ...

Stalin confines his entire time to Communist Party members. He has no dealing with the actual details of industry or government; he never meets foreigners about concessions, or talks with non-Communist specialists and technical men about the conduct of business. It would be hard indeed for a non-Communist to see him, for he works all day and far into the night in the intimate details of party machinery and control.

It is easy for a Communist to see him, but if he came for an unimportant reason, he would certainly not get in a second time.

"When important Communists wish to see him," said Nogin to me, "he is more accessible than many other high officials. He keeps his time especially for such conferences with important Communists. Yet even so he is so busy that I have often had important business with Stalin when he wanted very much to see me, and the only time he could give me was two o'clock in the morning. He is overworked and not very healthy—like all the important makers in the Revolution."

Nogin interpreted for me still further the strength of Stalin, whom he has known for years, in the dangers of Siberian exile and escape, and throughout the Revolution. "He is a brave man, with a very strong will that fights down opposition rather than conciliates. It is not easy to get much information from him; he is very reticent. But he is a stronger personality in my opinion that any of his possible competitors, who all have their special strength and special weaknesses."

As a Georgian himself, he took an early interest in the problems of diverse nationalities, of which there are forty in Georgia alone. Even before the Revolution, he wrote much about these different nationalities. Later, as Commissar of Nationalities, he came to know the life of all parts of Russia. Very few know this as he knows it. Since Russia is composed of many national groups, this knowledge is important.

"He is neither of the right nor of the left wing," explained Nogin. "He is always of the center, as Lenin was, sometimes standing with propositions from the right and sometimes with views from the left. Stalin is not against foreign capital but he is not so anxious for it as Mr. Krassin is. In the recent Sinclair concessions in Baku and Grozny, Stalin was not against them." In fact, as Mr. Nogin failed to add, if Stalin had been against them, they would probably not have been adopted....

Even in those early days he was an organizer rather than a speaker. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Party shortly after its organization in 1898, and in 1903, when the party split, he followed Lenin into the group of Bolsheviks. He organized workingmen in Batum, Tiflis and Baku, editing several illegal publications and one legal paper. In 1902 he was arrested and sent to Siberia on the first of many exiles....

Always, in the periods between imprisonments and flights to freedom, he busied himself with problems of organization, forming socialist societies all over Russia and the Caucasus. In 1913 he was elected a member of the central committee of the Communist Party, and the scope of his work and power broadened. He became editor of several workingmen's periodicals and later of the famous revolutionary newspapers which were secretly distributed among the Russian soldiers on the eastern front and which undermined their discipline and their loyalty to the Tsar. By the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin was already a member of the committee of five which engineered with Lenin the overthrow of the Kerenski régime and the establishment of the soviet state.

In this state he held at first various high offices. He was at one time chief of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, which investigated and exercised state control over corruption, inefficiency, sabotage and other departmental irregularities. His chief government task, which he held from the beginning of the soviet rule until last June, was the Commissar of Nationalities. Only when this Commissariat was dissolved in accordance with Stalin's own plan for the creation of a Council of Nationalities which should rank as second chamber in the government, did he cease to occupy a government post....

It was among the prominent Communists, drawn mostly from the old-time revolutionists, that he came to be accepted as the chief man next to Lenin...

In [the political bureau] it is Stalin, the secretary of the party, upon whom in the last two years without any formal action, the mantle of Lenin has fallen. Part of his power has been based on his own skill in handling organizations and part on the general belief that he represented and expressed the views of Lenin.

Now that the great leader is dead, the power of Stalin depending upon himself alone will be increasingly tested. No single voice is sure today of having the final word as Lenin had; but the voice which in recent conflict has been most decisive is Stalin's.