Joseph Stalin - Man and Legend

528 Pages·1974·36.552 MB·English

by  Ronald Hingley

.
it
A vital addition to the burgeoning litera-
ture on Stalin, this major new biography
encompasses more than the life of one
man. It is an equally compelling study of
political process, an anatomy of power,
and an examination of the tactics of rule
by subtle manipulations as well as by con-
scious tyranny.
Ronald Hingley believes that if most
politicians do harm, the most intelligent
politicians do most harm. And Stalin was
the most intelligent politician of all.
Stalin presents thorny problems to
the biographer. The man who rose from
humble origins to Supreme Ruler of
Eastern Europe, on a scale never dreamed
of by ardent Pan-Slavicists, killed virtually
everyone who had furthered his rise to
power. Among his victims were his con-
temporary Soviet biographers, slaugh-
tered as part of a campaign to destroy the
truth and to substitute a glossy pseudo-
biography: the Stalin Legend.
The Stalin who emerges here is more,
then, the usual pedestrian bureaucrat who
glumly perverted the Russian revolution
from the course destined by Lenin, but
who instead “improved” on Lenin’s
methods to institutionalize the power
Lenin had seized. The disasters provoked
by Stalin are not allowed to obscure his
genius in imposing so vast a burcen of
inhumanity on man.
(continued on back flap)

RONALD HINGLEY
Foseph Stalin:
Man and Legend
SMITHMARK
eee iS SSRs
TALIRg
S30 2026
AY e0y 7a C 899i°gh t © 1974 by Ronald Hingley
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form by any means electronic,
mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without first
obtaining written permission of the copyright owner.
This edition published in 1994 by SMITHMARK Publishers Inc.,
16 East 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016
SMITHMARK books are available for bulk purchase for sales
promotion and premium use. For details write or call the
manager of special sales, SMITHMARK Publishers Inc.,
16 East 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016; [phone].
This edition published by special arrangement
with W.S. Konecky Associates, Inc.
ISBN: 0-8317-5869-4
Printed in the United States of America
10.9°8:57-6 5.4321
. .. dove l’argomento de la mente
s’aggiugne al mal volere ed alla possa,
nessun riparo vi puo far la gente
DANTE, Inferno, Canto xxxi
Contents
Preface xi
Names, Dates, Acknowledgements XV
Introduction: The Sources, the Legend and the Cult xvii
The Child Joseph I
Caucasian Rebel 19
Northern Underground 62
Nineteen Seventeen 79
Civil Warlord 102
Shadow over Lenin 133
More Equal than Others 157
The Dictator Emerges 202
Licence to Kill 236
CND©FHNA O WMN
Hitler’s Friend 291
Back to Stalingrad 313
Generalissimo 344
Stalinism Reasserted and Defied 368
Peacemonger 390
His Last Plot 412
Life after Death 426
bHONWPH N n
+F+H++AHteH
Reference Notes 438
Select Bibliography 454
Index 469
Vii
List of Illustrations
Picture research by Angela Murphy
Frontispiece: Stalin on his fiftieth birthday, 1929 [Staadtsbibliothek]
Between pages 106 and 107
Legend-Stalin in boyhood, 1880s [SCR: photo by John Freeman]
Stalin at Gori Ecclesiastical School, c. 1888 [Sueddeutscher Verlag]
Stalin the seminarist, 1894 [Staadtsbibliothek]
Tiflis Orthodox Theological Seminary [Photo by John Freeman]
Stalin at Kutaisi Prison, 1903 [Snark International]
Stalin’s first wife, Yekaterina Svanidze, c. 1905 [Popperfoto]
Legend-Stalin receives Lenin’s ‘letter’, 1903
Legend-Stalin first meets Lenin, 1905 [Mansell Collection]
Legend-Stalin as Lenin’s closest comrade-in-arms, 1917 [SCR]
A larger-than-life Stalin addresses railway workers, 1926 [Planet News]
Stalin ‘at the front’, 1941 [Photo by fohn Freeman]
Police record, St Petersburg Okhrana files, c. 1913 [Hulton Picture Library]
‘Mug shot’ from Okhrana files, c. 1910 [Archiv Gerstenberg]
Stalin at Kureyka, central Siberia, during his last period of exile (1913-17)
[Snark International]
Stalin and Trotsky, October 1917 [Popperfoto]
Stalin as People’s Commissar for Nationalities [Topix]
Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Molotov, Stalin and Dimitrov as Lenin’s pall-
bearers, 1924 [Hulton Picture Library]
Between pages 234 and 235
Voroshilov and Budyonny, 1920 [Archiv Gerstenberg]
Stalin with Rykov, Zinovyev and Bukharin, early 1920s [Archiv Gerstenberg]
Stalin with Mikoyan and Ordzhonikidze: Tiflis, 1926 [Suweddeutscher Verlag]
Stalin and Kirov: Leningrad, 1926 [SCR: photo by John Freeman]
Trotsky in exile with his wife and son: Alma Ata, 1928 [Archiv Gerstenberg]
List of Illustrations
Stalin and his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, picnicking with the
Voroshilovs : Sochi, 1929 [Snark International/Colonel Emmanuel D’A stier]
Stalin and Gorky [SCR: photo by Fohn Freeman]
Industrial Party trial: Moscow, 1931 [Archiv Gerstenberg]
Industrial Party trial: the accused hear the sentence [Archiv Gerstenberg]
Kalinin, Stalin, Voroshilov and Molotov follow Kirov’s coffin, 1934 [Archiv
Gerstenberg]
Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, Stalin, Voroshilov and Kirov, early 1930s
[Archiv Gerstenberg] ©
The agricultural front: collectivized Uzbek farmworkers [Archiv
Gerstenberg]
Heads of the secret police: Dzerzhinsky (1917-26) [Hulton Picture Library];
Yagoda (1934-6) [Sweddeutscher Verlag]; Yezhov (1936-8) [Sueddeut-
scher Verlag]; Beria (from 1938) [Hulton Picture Library]
Zinovyev and Kamenev (d. 1936) [Archiv Gerstenberg]
Pyatakov (d. 1937) and Radek (d. 1939) [Archiv Gerstenberg]
Bukarin and Rykov (d. 1938) [Archiv Gerstenberg]
Tomsky (d. 1936) and Ordzhonikidze (d. 1937) [Archiv Gerstenberg;
Hulton Picture Library]
May Day Parade: Red Square, Moscow [Camera Press]
Trotsky on his death-bed: Mexico City, 1940 [Archiv Gerstenberg]
Between pages 362 and 363
Stalin, 1920 [Camera Press]
Stalin, 1927 [Planet News]
‘Candid camera’ shots which escaped the vigilance of Stalin’s censors
[Imperial War Museum; IIlustrationsfoto]
Stalin’s mother, Yekaterina Dzhugashvili (d. 1936) [Sueddeutscher Verlag]
Stalin with Svetlana: Kuntsevo, 1935
Stalin’s elder son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, as a German prisoner [Keystone]
Stalin’s younger son, Vasily Stalin, as an air force commander [Popperfoto]
Supreme Soviet, January 1938: Bulganin, Zhdanov, Stalin, Voroshilov,
Khrushchev [Staadtsbibliothek]
Molotov signs the Treaty between the USSR and Germany, 4 October
1939, watched by Ribbentrop and Stalin [Popperfoto]
Churchill and Stalin at the Kremlin, 1942 [SCR]
Teheran (1943); Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin and Major Birse celebrate
Churchill’s sixty-ninth birthday [Camera Press]
Yalta (1945): Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin [Camera Press]
Potsdam (July-August 1945): Attlee, Truman and Stalin [Archiv
Gerstenberg]
ix
List of Illustrations
Mao Tse-tung, Ulbricht, Stalin and Khrushchev on Stalin’s seventieth
birthday, 1949 [Sueddeutscher Verlag]
Stalin lies in state, 10 March 1953
Soviet leaders (including Voroshilov, Malenkov, Molotov, Beria,
Khrushchev) follow Stalin’s glass coffin [Popperfoto]
The Red Square Mausoleum during the period when it bore Stalin’s name
as well as Lenin’s; and the same monument destalinized [Sueddeutscher
Verlag]