The Bolshevik Dictator
THE original of this biography of Stalin by a French writer, an ex-Russian and an ei-Communist, first appeared in French in 1935—a fact of which its present publishers do not con- descend to remind us. This English version is enriched with a supplementary chapter and some other additions ; and its appearance is more timely than can have been guessed when it was planned. The events of the last few weeks have devastated the ranks of the Stalin-worshippers in this country. The story of perfidy and cynicism unfolded in these pages will seem more credible after the recent achievements of Stalinist diplomacy than in the days when M. Litvinov dis- coursed to admiring League enthusiasts on resistance to Fascist aggression and the indivisibility of peace.
The author, having been himself an official of the French Communist Party and of the Executive of the Third Inter- national, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the personalities and events of the last twenty years of Soviet history ; and he writes of them with the bitterness of the disillusioned idealist. The controversial tone adopted by M. Souvarine should, however, not mislead the reader into dismissing him as a mere political pamphleteer. This is the work of a writer who has investigated every source with scholarly precision, and who could give chapter and verse (though he does not always do so) for his statements. What makes it a not altogether satis- factory biography is that the reliable sources for Stalin's life are amazingly slender, and that it is impossible to write in any detail about this astonishing career without constant resort to speculation and hearsay. Even when these secondary aids have all been exploited, it must be admitted that a good many of the 67o pages which this volume contains are devoted not to Stalin, but to the history of Bolshevism. The sub-title of the. English version, " A Critical Survey of Bolshevism," gives a better idea of its scope.
The main theme of the first half of the book is, indeed, that down to the time of Lenin's death there really is little or nothing to be said about Stalin. The simple facts of his origin—he was the son of a peasant, who was also the village shoemaker—are traced. His youthful escapades, including the famous Tiflis bank robbery, in which his personal share remains somewhat problematical, are recorded. Then came his imprisonments and banishments, his one journey abroad, his first meetings with Lenin, and his appearance as Com- missar for Nationalities in the first Council of the People's Commissars after the November revolution. He owed this post not so much to his outstanding qualifications as to the fact that he was the only member of the Bolshevist oligarchy who belonged to one of the subject races of the Russian Empire. He was at this time merely one of the small Bolshevik group of professional revolutionaries, undis- tinguished by any special services, and not much noticed even within the group. M. Souvarine quotes with glee the scanty and unimpressive comments on the future leader which appeared in Party publications before 1924, and even after that date.
It was in the years of Lenin's illness and incapacity that Stalin, in the hitherto not much esteemed post of Secretary of the Party, began to show his strength. The successive stages by which he eliminated group after group of potential rivals, playing off one against the other until he was left supreme and sole master of the State and Party machine, are traced by M. Souvarine with a wealth of detail. Finally comes the revival of an absolutism which finds a closer parallel in that of Ivan the Terrible than in the I sarism of the modern age, and the personal exaltation of Stalin to a status which recalls that of the " divine " Roman Emperors.
But not even M. Souvarine can really explain this phenomenon. He can quote one of the early Bolsheviks who described Stalin as " a colourless personage acting sometimes in a dull and evasive way." He can ridicule Stalin's literary style and his alleged scholarship which consists of nothing more than the unintelligent repetition of tags from the writings of Lenin. He can show how Stalin's tactics were always to strike by the hand of others," himself avoiding both the risk and the odium. He can prove that Stalin changed his mind and flatly contradicted himself, all within a few months on vital issues of policy. But no verbal analysis can explain the rise of this unattractive and apparently undistinguished man to
a position of absolute personal power scarcely paralleled in modern history. Stalin possesses a gift for politics—using the term in no very elevated sense—which amounts to genius ; and genius always eludes definition.
The frank opportunism of Stalin's attitude has been stamped on Soviet foreign policy. Was he ever a sincere believer in world revolution? Did he ever really believe that the regime which he was establishing in Russia was " socialism in a single country "? Had he his tongue in his cheek when he allowed Soviet Russia to join the League of Nations and M. Litvinov to talk about the indivisibility of peace? What lay behind that cryptic smile as he was photographed side by side with Herr von Ribbentrop after the signature of the German-Soviet Pact -f M. Souvarine does not help us much to answer any of these questions which are none the less vital for the full under- standing of the European situation at the present time. He depicts for us a politician infinitely cum-ung, infiniteh, resourceful in his handling of men, and infinitely changeable in his policies and slogans. The most probable answer to the riddle is that Stalin loves the game of politics, and seeks the power which is the prize of the winner, simply for their own sake. Political power is for Stalin an end in itself, not a mean, to achieve some ulterior end. But if this is the answer we are still left guessing. So long as the power which he sought was power over Russia and the Russian people, the rest of the world could afford to treat his policy as " pacific." But has his appetite for power now definitely overleapt the Russian frontiers? If so, the consequences are probably incalculable— even for Stalin's own position. JOHN Hamm.
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