During the ten years of my present exile the Kremlin's literary agents have systematically relieved themselves of the need to answer pertinently anything I write about the U. S. S. R. by alluding to my "hatred" of Stalin. Yet Stalin and. I have been separated by events so fiery that they have consumed in flames and reduced to ashes everything personal. Stalin is my enemy. But Hitler, too, is my enemy, and so is Mussolini, and so are many others. Today there remains in me as little personal feeling toward Stalin as toward General Franco or the Mikado.
I present in this article startling facts from the story of how a provincial revolutionist became the dictator of a great country. Every fact I mention, every reference and quotation, can be substantiated either by official Soviet publications or by documents preserved in my archives.
The last period of Lenin's life was filled with intense conflict between him and Stalin, which culminated in a complete break between them. As always, there was nothing in any way personal about Lenin's hostility toward Stalin. But as time went on, Stalin took increasing advantage of the opportunities his post presented for revenging himself upon his opponents. Little by little, Lenin became convinced that certain of Stalin's traits were directly inimical to the party. From that matured his decision to reduce Stalin to a rank-and-file member of the Central Committee.
Lenin's health took a sudden turn for the worse toward the end of 1921. The first stroke came in May, 1922. For two months he was unable either to move, to speak, or to write. In July he began to convalesce slowly. In October he returned from the country to the Kremlin and took up his work again. In December he opened fire against Stalin's persecutions. He came out against Stalin on the question of foreign trade monopoly and was preparing for the forthcoming party congress an address which would be "a bombshell against Stalin."
"Let us speak frankly," wrote Lenin on March 2. "The Commissariat of Inspection does not today enjoy the slightest authority.... There is no worse institution among us than our People's Commissariat of Inspection." At the head of the Inspection was Stalin. He well understood the implications of such language.
In the middle of December, 1922, Lenin's health obliged him to absent himself from conference. Stalin at once hid from Lenin much information. Measures of blockade were instituted against persons closest to Lenin. Lenin was aflame with alarm and indignation. His chief source of worry was Stalin, whose behavior became bolder as the reports of physicians about Lenin's health became less favorable. In those days Stalin was morose, snarling, his pipe firmly clenched between his teeth, a sinister gleam in his jaundiced eyes. His fate was at stake.
Several lines dictated by Lenin on March 5, 1923, to a trusted stenographer announced dryly the severance of "all personal and comradely relations with Stalin." That note is the last surviving Lenin document. The very next night he again lost his power of speech.
The so-called Lenin "testament" was written in two installments during his second illness: on December 25, 1922, and on January 4, 1923. "Stalin, having become secretary General," declares the testament, "has concentrated an enormous power in his hands, and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution." Ten days later Lenin added: "I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position and appoint to it another man" who would be "more loyal, less capricious," etc.
When Stalin first read the text he broke out into billingsgate against Lenin. The testament not only failed to terminate the internal struggle, which was what Lenin wanted, but enhanced it to a feverish pitch. Stalin could no longer doubt that Lenin's return to activity would mean his own political death. Only Lenin's death could clear the way for him.
I followed the course of Lenin's second illness day by day through the physician we had in common, Dr. Gaitier.
"Is it possible, Fedor Alexandrovich, that this is the end?" my wife and I would ask him time and again.
"That cannot be said at all. Vladimir Ilyich can get on his feet again. He has a powerful organism."
"And his mental faculties?"
"Basically, they will remain untouched. Not every note, perhaps, will keep its former purity, but the virtuoso will remain a virtuoso."
Yet at a meeting of the Politburo members, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and myself, Stalin informed us, after the departure of the secretary, that Lenin had suddenly called him in and had asked him for poison. Lenin was again losing the faculty of speech, considered his situation hopeless, foresaw the approach of a new stroke, did not trust his physicians. His mind was perfectly clear and he suffered unendurably.
I recall how extraordinary, enigmatic, and out of tune with the circumstances Stalin's face seemed to me then. A sickly smile was fixed on it, as on a mask. I see before me the pale and silent Kamenev, who sincerely loved Lenin, and Zinoviev, bewildered, as at all difficult moments. Had they known about Lenin's request? Or had Stalin sprung this as a surprise on his allies in the triumvirate as well as on me?
"Naturally, we cannot even consider carrying out this request!" I exclaimed. "Gaitier has not lost hope. Lenin can still recover."
"I told him all that," Stalin replied, not without a touch of annoyance. "But he wouldn't listen to reason. The old man is suffering. He says he wants to have the poison at hand. He'll use it when he is convinced that his condition is hopeless."
"The old man is suffering," Stalin repeated, staring vaguely past us. No vote was taken, since this was not a formal conference, but we parted with the implicit understanding that we could not even consider sending poison to Lenin.
"Anyway, it's out of the question," I insisted. "He might succumb to a passing mood and take the irrevocable step."
Only a few days before, Lenin had written his pitiless postscript to the testament. Several days later he broke off all personal relations with Stalin. Why should he turn to Stalin, of all people, with his tragic request? The answer is simple: He saw in Stalin the only man who would grant it, since Stalin was directly interested in doing so. At the same time, it is possible that he wanted to test Stalin: just how eagerly would Stalin take advantage of this opportunity? In those days Lenin thought not only of death but of the fate of the party.
But did Lenin actually ask Stalin for poison? Was the whole version not invented by Stalin to prepare his alibi? He could have had no reason to fear a verification, for no one could question the sick Lenin.
More than ten years before the notorious Moscow trials Stalin had confessed to Kamenev and Dzerzhinski, his allies of that time, that his highest delight in life was to keep a keen eye on an enemy, prepare everything painstakingly, mercilessly revenge himself, and then go to sleep.
During the last big trial, staged in March, 1938, a special place in the prisoners' dock was occupied by Henry Yagoda. Some secret bound Stalin to Yagoda, who had worked in the Cheka and the GPU for sixteen years, at first as an assistant chief, later as the head, and all the time as Stalin's most trusted aide against the opposition. The system of confessions to crimes that had never been committed is Yagoda's handiwork, if not his brain child. In 1933 Stalin rewarded Yagoda with the Order of Lenin, in 1935 elevated him to the rank of Commissar General of State Defense — that is, Marshal of the Political Police. In Yagoda's person was elevated a nonentity, held in contempt by all. The old revolutionists exchanged looks of indignation.
At the time of the great "purge" Stalin decided to liquidate his fellow culprit who knew too much. In April, 1937, Yagoda was arrested, and eventually executed.
It was revealed at that trial that Yagoda, a former pharmacist, had a special poison cabinet from which he would bring out vials and entrust them to his agents. He had at his disposal several toxicologists, for whom he organized a special laboratory, providing it with means without limit and without control. It is, of course, unthinkable that Yagoda might have established such an enterprise for his own personal needs.
Suspicions that Stalin had somewhat aided the destructive force of nature in the case of Maxim Gorky sprang up directly after the great writer's death. A concomitant task of Yagoda's trial was to clear Stalin of that suspicion. Hence the repeated declarations by Yagoda, the physicians, and the other accused, that Gorky was "a close friend of Stalin," "a trusted person," an enthusiastic "Stalinist." If only half of this were true, Yagoda would not have taken it upon himself to kill Gorky, and still less would he have entrusted such a plot to a Kremlin physician, who could have destroyed him by simply telephoning Stalin.
During the days of the trial, the accusations, like the confessions, seemed phantasmagoric to me. Subsequent information and analysis forced me to alter that judgment. Not everything in the trials was a lie. Not all the poisoners were sitting in the prisoners' dock. The chief among them was conducting the trial by telephone. It is only Yagoda who has disappeared; his poison cabinet remains.
At the 1938 trial Stalin charged Bukharin with having prepared in 1918 an attempt on Lenin's life. The naïve and ardent Bukharin venerated Lenin, worshiped him, could not have had personal ambitious designs. All the accusations of the Moscow trials are cut to this pattern. Stalin sees the best means to dispel suspicions against himself in ascribing the crime to his adversary and forcing him to "confess."
Lenin asked for poison — if he really did — at the end of February, 1923. In the beginning of March he was again paralyzed. But his powerful organism, supported by his inflexible will, reasserted itself. Toward winter he began to improve slowly, to move about more freely; he listened to reading and read himself; his faculty of speech began to come back to him. The findings of the physicians became increasingly more hopeful.
Stalin was after power, all of it, come what might. He already had a firm grip on it. His goal was near, but the danger emanating from Lenin was even nearer. At his side was the pharmacist Yagoda.
The news of Lenin's death found me and my wife en route to the Caucasus, where I hoped to get rid of an infection, the nature of which still remains a mystery to my physicians. I immediately telegraphed to the Kremlin: "I deem it necessary to return to Moscow. When is the funeral?" The reply came in about an hour: "The funeral will take place on Saturday. You will not be able to return on time. The Politburo thinks that because of the state of your health you must proceed to Sukhum. Stalin." Why this hurry? Why precisely Saturday? But I did not feel that I should request postponement of the funeral for my sake alone. Only in Sukhum did I learn that it had been changed to Sunday.
It was safer in all respects to keep me away until the body had been embalmed and the viscera cremated.
When I asked the physicians in Moscow about the immediate cause of Lenin's death, which they had not expected, they were at a loss to account for it. The autopsy was carried out with all the necessary rites: Stalin took care of this himself. But the surgeons did not search for poison. They understood that politics stand above medicine.
I did not renew personal relations with Zinoviev and Kamenev until two years later, after they had broken with Stalin. They avoided all discussion of Lenin's death. Only Bukharin made now and then, tête-à-tête, unexpected and strange allusions. "Oh, you don't know Koba [Stalin]," he said with his frightened smile. "Koba is capable of anything."
When the roof has collapsed and doors and windows have fallen off, a house is hard to live in. Today gusty drafts are blowing across our entire planet. All traditional principles of morality are increasingly worse off, and not only those emanating from Stalin. But a historical explanation is not a justification. Nero, too, was a product of his epoch. But after he perished his statues were smashed and his name was scraped off everything. The vengeance of history is more terrible than the vengeance of the most powerful Secretary General.
Publication Date: August 10, 1940