Chapter 2: Stalin’s Standing Trump Card
For this court session, it is just the beginning. It was to be. There were also a series of mass trials aimed at eliminating almost all of the founders of the Bolshevik Party and leaders of the October Revolution. From then on, the charge of assassinating Kirov was to be brought in every major political trial, and in every case it was to be imposed on all the accused.
Many critics of this so-called Moscow trial argue that Stalin’s decision to cut out the Old Bolsheviks was rooted in his hatred of them. The root of his evil lies in his uncontrollable desire for revenge against them. He wanted to avenge their non-adherence to his political line and their insistence on carrying out Lenin’s will, which recommended that Stalin be removed as General Secretary of the Party Central Committee. Stalin’s term “thrill of revenge” came out of a seemingly friendly conversation he had with Gaminev and Dzerzhinsky. This conversation took place one summer night in 1927. Many years elapsed before the series of trials took place. At that time, Stalin put on a pushy face and said, “Keep an eye on the enemy, study every detail of the strikes, and have fun with the inevitable revenge. Then rest and relax. …… Hey, what could be more pleasurable than to do this? ……”
It is not surprising that Stalin was conscious of this ferocity. In the Caucasus, the land of his birth and upbringing, bloodshed and revenge have been commonplace for centuries, even today. Undoubtedly, the desire for revenge played a significant role in Stalin’s plot to cut out the Bolshevik “Old Guard. But there was more at stake than just revenge. In fact, Stalin was above all a political pragmatist. He was cool and calculating. It is well known that he restrained his emotional actions many times out of tactics. In the struggle for power, he more than once sacrificed his dignity to praise his opponents, and sometimes even his own worst enemies. Moreover, he could turn his back on his closest friends and relatives as long as it was to his advantage. For example, despite his bitter hatred of Trotsky, he glorified his opponent out of personal need on the first anniversary of the victory of the October Revolution. In an article in Pravda, he touted Trotsky as the main leader of the October uprising, and that the party should take credit for prompting the Petrograd garrison to defect to the Bolshevik front almost without firing a shot. As we have seen, Stalin so cleverly harbored a bitter hatred for his bitter rival at the time. Later, this hatred was unleashed with ferocity, leading to Trotsky’s complete demise.
Moreover, the years of friendship had no effect on Stalin’s killing of Budu Mudivani and Sergei Kavtaladze, simply because they had once stood in political opposition to him.
Bukharin understood Stalin’s political ambitions better than anyone else. He also emphasized Stalin’s particular grudge-holding. He believed, however, that Stalin’s insatiable appetite for power was his main characteristic. One night in 1928, Bukharin, a member of the Politburo and chairman of the Communist International, secretly visited Gaminev to show his support for his stand against Stalin and his despicable conspiracy. During his conversation with Gaminev, Bukharin described Stalin in these words: “He is an unprincipled conspirator and everything in the world is subject to his lust for power. …… He is always ready to change his views if it will help him get rid of you and me. …… He is obsessed with seizing power. In order to consolidate power, he gives in to us temporarily, but later he will strangle us all to death …… Stalin only knows how to take revenge, and he always carries a dagger in his bosom. Let’s not forget what he meant by the phrase ‘the thrill of revenge’!
Bukharin’s assessment is factual, because it was not prepared for a mass meeting, nor was it intended to demagogue, but was made solely to someone who himself knew Stalin well.
Logically, Stalin’s decision to destroy the Bolshevik “Old Guard” was the inevitable result of his entire history of usurping party power. At first, he was content to banish the opposition leaders to Siberia and imprison them in concentration camps. But this was only temporary, as he was busy consolidating his own autocratic regime. Having achieved this goal, he considered his own position secure and began to unscrupulously poison potential rivals. One by one, these men were killed and withdrawn from the political scene completely and forever.
For Stalin, the assassination of Kirov was an essential step in the trial and suppression of the old Bolsheviks. And it is no coincidence that the conspiracy took place in 1934. In that year, the country had just emerged from the deep economic crisis into which it had fallen because of Stalin’s blindly aggressive policies on the road to industrialization and collectivization. Few people now know that the idea of a comprehensive economic transformation was first put forward by Trotsky. At that time, Stalin was strongly opposed to this idea. He even claimed at a meeting of the Central Committee that the construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric power plant would be to Soviet Russia what a Russian yokel would do if he tried to sell his cows to buy a phonograph. But later, after he declared that the opposition was not protected by law, he changed his mind about the idea and, what is more, he actually took it for granted. Moreover, since Trotsky insisted on the gradual collectivization of agriculture according to the ability of industry to provide the machinery necessary for large-scale collective farm production, he, Stalin, simply launched a “total collectivization” campaign. In this, as in many other issues, Stalin tried to present himself as a more thoroughgoing and uncompromising revolutionary than Trotsky!
Stalin used the same old methods of terror and coercion in his agricultural collectivization campaign. He refused to acknowledge one simple truth: the whip was no substitute for the tractor and the kombine. The peasants’ resistance to collectivization brought the country to the brink of economic collapse. Stalin responded to the peasants’ resistance with massive repression. But this repression forced the peasants in many provinces to take up arms and fight. In some provinces of the North Caucasus and the Ukraine, the government moved to suppress riots. In order to suppress the riots, the government used armed forces and even military aircraft.
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