Loser Stalin. USSR

Each new mistake of the “father of nations” turned into a real disaster for the country

Continuation. Start: Loser Stalin .

Comrade Stalin was a complete loser, failing most of the things he took on. The previous article discussed how he unsuccessfully managed the military affairs of the Red Army during the Civil War. Now let's see how the leader of peoples understood the problems of peoples while serving as People's Commissar for Nationalities of the Leninist government.

The main question that had to be resolved at the dawn of Soviet power concerned the specific form of organization of the state. Or, more precisely, it consisted in how to revive the empire, if the monarchy was ordered to live long.

Theoretically, there were two options. The first is to include all peoples into the Russian Federation with autonomous rights. The second is to form a union of republics, in which, at least formally, the key peoples will be equal participants with the right to secede.

As we now know, the second approach was implemented in terms of form, while the first approach was implemented in terms of content. From 1922 to 1991, our country was called the Soviet Union, although the peoples did not have a real union and a real right to secede from the empire. Was there any meaning to such a complex design? Wouldn't it have been easier to take the first path, recreating Russia within the borders of the Tsarist Empire?

Stalin thought exactly so. But Lenin thought differently. It was Lenin who insisted on the formation of the Soviet Union. Perhaps it was the whim of a sick man who did not have long to live? Hardly. After all, after Lenin’s death and even in those years when Stalin actually became the sole ruler of the country, the USSR was not transformed into “big Russia”. And the new republics, “acquired” during the Second World War (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), replenished the number of union republics, and did not become autonomies, although in terms of population they were approximately the same as ordinary Russian regions.

It is clear that over time Stalin understood the essence of Lenin’s idea, but at first he did not understand the problem at all and was ready to act primitively. He was ready to put pressure on the republics and absorb them, despite any manifestation of national feelings of minorities.

Such a primitive approach could work to strengthen the state if the whole idea of the Bolsheviks was only to recreate Mother Russia, which they, in fact, destroyed. But in fact, the idea was to organize a world revolution. Or, more precisely, to help different peoples make a proletarian revolution, forming such a power, about which the poet of the Stalin era said: “But we will still reach the Ganges, but we will still die in battle, so that from Japan to England my homeland will shine.”

The stakes in this big game were greater than simply restoring “one and indivisible.” And in order to play professionally, it was necessary to form a picture of the world favorable to the world revolution. According to thinkers such as Stalin, it was necessary to fight through to Europe, helping the proletarian uprisings. And then everything will work out on its own. But Lenin apparently looked further. He understood that it was impossible to form an image of Russia as a state that annexes everything that is bad, since even the conscious proletarians of the West have some kind of national feelings. A union of equal republics will not scare anyone away, unlike a united and indivisible Russia. And when the proletarians figure out what kind of system we are actually offering them, it will be too late to resist.

Over time, Stalin learned the logic of the subtle political game. After World War II, he did not even begin to include Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and other countries into the USSR, although it is unlikely that anyone could have prevented this when our soldiers controlled all of Eastern Europe. Instead of expanding the USSR, we played people's democracy for a long time, trying to seduce the European proletariat with a Soviet showcase.

In 1922, Stalin did not understand all this. He was generally bored with heading the People's Commissariat of Nationalities. Instead of working in the government, he chose to receive the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). At that time it was an important post, but not a primary one. In fact, Joseph Vissarionovich became the head of organizational work in the party.

Bolshevik leaders usually sought to move mountains, but not to engage in painstaking menial work. And Stalin agreed to it, because he began to manage personnel in this way, which later turned out to be extremely important for his personal career.

Stalin had a full-fledged career instinct. And it was precisely this (and not at all his professional managerial qualities) that brought him to the top of the Soviet state hierarchy, where each of his new mistakes turned into a real disaster for the country. But this will be discussed in the next article.

Dmitry Travin invites you to his open course “Gaidar’s reform a quarter of a century later: a new look.” Lectures are given on Tuesdays from February 7 in the Conference Hall of the European University in St. Petersburg at Gagarinskaya St., 3 (free admission). At the second lecture (February 14) there will be a presentation of the new edition of the book “Modernization: from Elizabeth Tudor to Yegor Gaidar” (D. Travin, O. Margania).