Biography of Stalin -5 - Molotov

APRIL 3, 1917, after a long period of foreign exile, Lenin returned to Russia. The news of the arrival of the beloved leader of the revolution was hailed with enthusiasm by the advanced workers of Petrograd. Stalin, at the head of a delegation of workers, went to meet him at Byelo-Ostrov. The welcome accorded to Lenin upon his arrival at the Finland Railway Station in Petro- grad turned into a mighty revolutionary demonstra- tion. On the morrow of his arrival, Lenin announced his famous April Theses, which provided the Party with a brilliant plan of action for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic to the Socialist revolution. They gave the Party the new orientation it needed in the new conditions of the struggle that followed the overthrow of tsardom. On April 24, 1917, the Sev- enth (April) Conference of the Bolshevik Party assem- bled. Lenin's theses formed the basis of its delibera- tions. .The Conference directed the efforts of the Party to the struggle for the transition from the bourgeois- democratic revolution to the Socialist revolution. 

At this Conference Stalin vigorously supported Lenin's policy of working for the Socialist revolution

and exposed the opportunist, anti-Leninist line of Kamenev, Rykov and their scanty supporters. Stalin also made a report on the national question. Devel- oping a consistent Marxist-Leninist line, he laid down a Bolshevik national policy, advocating the right of nations to self-determination, even to the point of secession and the formation of independent states*.

It was the national policy of Lenin and Stalin that was to secure for the Party the support of the op- pressed nationalities in the Great October Socialist Revolution.

After the Conference, in May 1917, a Political Bureau of the Central Committee was instituted, to which Stalin was elected and to which he has been successively re-elected ever since. 

On the basis of the decisions of the April Con- ference, the Party set energetically to work to win over the masses, and to train and organize them for militant action. 

In this complex period of the revolution, when events moved at breakneck speed, demanding skilful and flexible tactics of the Party, it was Lenin and Stalin who guided the struggle of the masses. 

"I recall the year 1917," says Stalin, "when, after my wanderings from one prison and place of exile 

to another, I was transferred by the will of the Party to Leningrad. There in the society of Russian work* ers, and in contact with Comrade Lenin, the great teacher of the proletarians of all countries, in the midst of the storm of mighty conflicts between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, in the midst of the imperialist war, I first learnt what it meant to be one of the leaders of the great Party of the working class. There, in the society of Russian workers the liber- ators of oppressed nationalities and the pioneers of the proletarian struggle in all countries and among all peoples I received my third revolutionary baptism of fire. There, in Russia, under Lenin's guidance, I became a master of the art of revolu- tion."* 

Stalin was at the centre of the practical activities of the Party. As a member of the Central Committee 

he took a direct and leading part in the work of the Petrograd Committee of the Party, edited the Pravda, wrote articles for it and for the Soldatskaya Pravda, and directed the Bolshevik campaign in the Petrograd municipal elections. Together with Lenin, he took part in the All-Russian Conference of the Party Organizations in the Army, where he delivered a report on "The National Movement in the National Regiments." Together with Lenin, he organized the historic demonstration of June 18, which marched under the slogans of the Bglshevik Party; and he drew up the Manifesto of the Central Committee to the workers and revolutionary soldiers of Petro- grad. On June 20 the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets elected Stalin to the Central Executive Com- mittee. 

* Pravda No. 136, June 16, 1926. 

After the events of July 1917, when Lenin, hounded and persecuted by the counter-revolutionary Provisional Government, was forced to go into hid- ing, Stalin directly guided the work of the Central Committee and the Central Party Organ, which at that time appeared under a succession of different names (Rabochy i Soldat, Proletary, Rabochy, Ra- bochy Put). It was Stalin who saved the previous life of Lenin for the Party, for the Soviet people and for humanity at large, by vigorously resisting the 

proposal of the traitors Kamenev, Rykov and Trotsky that Lenin should appear for trial before the courts of the counter-revolutionary Provisional Government. 

The brutal suppression of the July demonstration marked a turning point in the development of the revolution-. Lenin worked out new tactics for the Party in the new conditions of the struggle. Together with Sverdlov, Stalin steered the work of the Sixth Party Congress (July-August 1917), which had to meet secretly. At this Congress Stalin made the report on the work of the Central Committee and a report on the political situation, in which he gave a clear-cut formulation of the aims and tactics of the Party in the struggle for the Socialist revolution. He refuted the arguments of the Trolskyites, who considered that Socialism could not be victorious in Russia. 

Opposing the attempt of the Trotskyites to make the Party's course of steering for a Socialist revolution contingent on a proletarian revolution in the West, Stalin declared: "The possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the very country that will lay the road to Socialism. . . . We must abandon the antiquated idea that only Europe can show us the way. There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter."* Stalin's words were prophetic. Russia was the first to show the way to Socialism. 

In insisting on Lenin's doctrine that the victory of Socialism was quite possible in Russia, Stalin had the full support of the Congress. Guided by Stalin and by Lenin's instructions, the Sixth Congress inau- gurated the preparations for insurrection. The Con- gress headed the Party for armed insurrection and for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. 

In August 1917, General Kornilov launched his revolt with the aim of restoring tsardom in Russia. The Bolsheviks roused the masses to resist the at- lettipted coup, and Kornilov's revolt was* crushed. 

This ushered in a new phase in the history of the revolution: the phase in which the forces were massed for the grand assault. 

While Lenin was in hiding Stalin maintained a correspondence with his teacher and friend and kept in close contact with him. He visited him twice in hisi place of concealment near Razliv. 

* Lenin and Stalin, 1917, p. 309, Moscow, 1938. 

Baldly and confidently, firmly yet circumspectly Lenin and Stalin led the Party and the working class towards the Socialist revolution, towards armed insurrection. It was they who inspired and organized 

the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

Stalin was Lenin's right-hand man. He had direct charge of all the preparations for the insurrection. His articlesi in the central press laying down the guiding policy were reprinted in the provincial Bolshevik newspapers. He summoned representatives from the regional organizations to Petrograd, gave them instructions and outlined plans of campaign for the various regions. On October 16, the Central Committee elected a Party Centre, headed by Com- rade Stalin, to direct the uprising. This Centre was the leading core of the Revolutionary Military Com- mittee of the Petrograd Soviet and had practical direction of the whole uprising. 

At the meeting of the Central Committee of the Party on October 16, Stalin rebuffed the capitulatory proposals of the traitors Zinoviev .and Kamenev* who opposed armed insurrection. "Objectively," he de- clared, "what Kamenev and Zinoviev propose would enable the counter-revolution io organize. We wduld continue to retreat without end and would lose tbe revolution. Why should we not insure for ourselves the possibility of choosing the day and the conditions, so as to deprive the counter-revolution of the possibility of organizing?"* 

Early in the morning of October 24, Kerensky ordered the suppression of the central organ of the Party, Rabochy Put, and sent a number of armoured cars to the editorial and printing offices of the news- paper to effect the order. But by 10 a.m. a for^e of Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers, acting on Stalin's instructions, had pressed back the armoured cars and placed a strong guard over the printing and editorial offices. At eleven o'clock the Rabochy Put came out, with a leading article by Stalin entitled "What Do We Need?" calling upon the masses to overthrow the bourgeois Provisional Government. At the same time, on instructions of the Party Centre, de- tachments of revolutionary soldiers and Red Guards were moved to the Smolny Institute. The insur- rection began on October 24. On the evening of October 25 the Second Congress of Soviets met and turned over the government power to the Soviets. 

Stalin was elected to the first Council of People's Commissars, which, headed by Lenin, was set up by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets after the victory of the October Revolution. 

The Great October Socialist Revolution ushered ra changes of epoch-making importance. It split the world into two systems capitalist and Socialist. The Bolshevik Party was now faced with new conditions, with new gigantic tasks. And the forms of struggle of the working class had likewise undergone a funda- mental change. 

* Lenin and Stalin, 1917, p. 598, Moscow, 1938. 

From the inception of the Soviet Government and down to 1923, Stalin was the People's Commissar for the Affairs of the Nationalities. He personally directed all the measures taken by the Party and the 

Soviet Government to solve the national problem in the Soviet Republic. Guided by Lenin and Stalin, the workers and peasants began to turn the tsarist colonies into Soviet republics. There is not a single 

Soviet republic in whose organization Stalin did not take an active and leading part. He directed the fight for the creation of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, the Byelorussian Republic and the Soviet republics of Transcaucasia and Central Asia, and he helped the numerous nationalities of the Soviet Land to set up their autonomous republics and regions. Lenin and Stalin were the engineers and builders of the great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 

Lenin's closest assistants in the organization of the Soviet state were Stalin and Sverdlov. Stalin fought side by side with Lenin against Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov and the other scabs and deserters from the revolution. He took an active and leading part in all decisive measures and actions, such as the organization of the defeat of Kerensky and Krasnov, the suppression of the sabotage of the old government officials, the liquidation of the counter- revolutionary General Headquarters and the remov- al of the tsarist generate, the suppression of the bourgeois press, the action against the counter-revo- lutionary Ukrainian Rada, the dispersal of the Con- stitupnt Assembly, and the drafting of the first Soviet Constitution in 1918. 

In January 1918, on the instructions of the Central Committee, Stalin arranged a conference of  representatives of the revolutionary wings of the Socialist parties of Europe and America, which was 

an important step towards the formation of the Third, Communist International. 

In the trying days of the Brest-Litovsk negotia- tions, when the fate of the revolution hung in the balance, Stalin was at one with Lenin in upholding the Bolshevik strategy and tactics against the traitor Trotsky and hisi henchman Bukharin, who, in conjunction with the British and French imperialists, sought to expose the young and still weak Soviet Republic to the blows of German imperialism.

First page