Abstract
For many years, study of the Soviet political leadership usually took the form of Stalin biographies.1 This was natural, both in view of the comparative paucity of sources and Stalin’s unchallenged authority within the leadership from the end of the 1920s. It meant, however, that as far as the historiography was concerned, the Leader seemed to exist in a vacuum. There was a political ‘system’, usually described in mechanistic terms (the ‘totalitarian model’) with little reference to contingency or individual actors; and at the top of the system stood Stalin — a more or less human figure (thanks to the biographies) alone in an otherwise mechanical landscape. One of the many new ideas that T.H. Rigby introduced into the study of Soviet politics was that Stalin did not exist in a vacuum. He was a ‘boss’ with ‘lieutenants’, a gang leader, the most powerful of all political patrons, operating in a system in which, as Rigby disclosed, patronage was a key element and whose clients were themselves powerful men.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Among many biographies published before 1991, the most distinguished are Robert C. Tucker (1973), Stalin as Revolutionary 1879–1929 (New York: Norton);
Robert C. Tucker (1990), Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1929–1941 (New York: Norton);
Adam B. Ulam (1973), Stalin. The Man and His Era (New York: Viking Press). Tucker, in particular, set himself the task of understanding the man in terms of his background and psychological makeup.
T.H. Rigby (1986), ‘Was Stalin a disloyal patron?’, Soviet Studies, XXXVIII, 3, 311–24.
See also Rigby’s first path-breaking articles on patronage, ‘Early provincial cliques and the rise of Stalin’, Soviet Studies, XXXIII, 1, 1981, 3–28, and ‘Political patronage in the USSR from Lenin to Brezhnev’, Politics, XVIII, 1, 1983, 84–9.
See the excellent article by Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, ‘Stalin and his circle’, in Ronald Grigor Suny (ed.) (2006), The Cambridge History of Russia, vol. III: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.243–67.
The publications are L. Kosheleva et al (comp.) (1995), Pis’ma I. V. Stalina V.M. Molotovu 1925–1936 gg. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Rossiia molodaia);
O.V. Khlevniuk et al (comp.) (2001), Stalin i Kaganovich. Perepiska. 1931–1936 (Moscow: ROSSPEN);
A.V. Kvashonkin et al (comp.) (1996), Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska. 1912–1927 (Moscow: ROSSPEN);
A.V. Kvashonkin et al (comp.) (1999), Sovetskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska 1928–1941 (Moscow: ROSSPEN).
The first two are available in English as Lars T. Lih et al (eds) (1995), Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 1925–1935 (New Haven: Yale University Press)
and R.W. Davies (ed.) (2003), The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven: Yale University Press).
‘They [the letters] were personal, half official, when he was on leave and I replaced him [and] prepared the materials for the Politburo’, Molotov told Feliks Chuev (1991), Sto sorok besed s Molotovym. Iz dnevnika F. Chueva (Moscow: Terra), p.277.
See Iu.N. Amiantov et al (comp.) (1999), V. I. Lenin. Neizvestnye dokumenty 1891–1922 (Moscow: ROSSPEN).
Quoted from Feliks Chuev (ed.) (1992), Tak govoril Kaganovich (Moscow), p.129,
in Simon Sebag Montefiore (2005), Stalin. The Court of the Red Tsar (New York: Vintage Books), p.64.
Quotations from O. V. Khlevniuk, ‘Stalin i Molotov. Edinolichnaia diktatura i predposylki “oligarkhizatsii”’, in G.Sh. Sagatelian et al (eds) (2000), Stalin. Stalinizm. Sovetskoe obshchestvo: K 70-letiiu V. S. Lel’chuka (Moscow: Institut Rossiiskoi istorii RAN), p.272, and Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, ‘Stalin and his circle’, pp.246–7.
See Sheila Fitzpatrick (2000), Everyday Stalinism (New York: Oxford University Press), pp.22–3.
Letter to Allilueva, 24 September 1930, in Iu.G. Murin (comp.) (1993) Iosif Stalin v ob”iatiiakh sem’i. Iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow: Rodina), p.33.
He seems to have been responsible for bringing a locally-generated case from the North Caucasus to Moscow and national prominence. See Stephen G. Wheatcroft (2007), ‘Agency and terror: Evdokimov and mass killing in Stalin’s great terror’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, LIII, 1, 30.
For the local story, see S.A. Kislitsyn (1993), Shakhtinskoe delo: Nachalo stalinskoi repressii protiv nauchno-tekhnicheskoi intelligentsia v SSSR (Rostov on Don: ‘Logos’).
See Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Cultural revolution as class war’, in Sheila Fitzpatrick (1992), The Cultural Front (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), pp.119–22.
See Sheila Fitzpatrick (1985), ‘Ordzhonikidze’s takeover of Vesenkha: A case study in Soviet bureaucratic politics’, Soviet Studies, XXXVII, 2, 160–2, and Fitzpatrick, Cultural Front, pp.162–5.
Undated letter from Stalin to Menzhinskii, published in Diane P. Koenker and Ronald D. Bachman (eds) (1997), Revelations from the Russian Archives. Documents in English Translation (Washington: Library of Congress), p.243. This advice was heeded. See the sentencing of the accused in the Prompartiia trial, December 1930, quoted in Kosheleva, Pis’ma (editorial introduction), pp.186–8.
Stalin to Molotov, 2 August 1930, in Kosheleva, Pis’ma, p.192. This was done, as proposed by Stalin, by order of the Politburo on 10 August and 6 September 1930. O.V. Khlevniuk (1996), Politbiuro. Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930-e gody (Moscow: ROSSPEN), p.35.
T.H. Rigby (1979), Lenin’s Government: Sovnarkom 1917–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Stalin held the job from 1941 to 1946. However, the correctness of his original judgement that this was not the job for him is indicated by the fact that he almost never attended its meetings. Robert Service (2004), Stalin: A Biography (London: Macmillan), p.526;
Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk (2004), Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p.263. On the cooling of Stalin’s attitude to Molotov at the beginning of the 1940s, see Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, ‘Stalin and his circle’, p.235.
Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, p.79; O.V. Khlevniuk et al (comp.) (1995), Stalinskoe Politbiuro v 30-e gody. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: AIRO-XX), p.93.
On Ordzhonikidze’s defence of his subordinates, see O.V. Khlevniuk (1993), Stalin i Ordzhonikidze. Konflikty v Politbiuro v 30-e gody (Moscow: Rossiia molodaia), pp.37–8 and passim; on his brother’s arrest, see pp.76–82.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Sheila Fitzpatrick
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fitzpatrick, S. (2010). The Boss and His Team: Stalin and the Inner Circle, 1925–33. In: Fortescue, S. (eds) Russian Politics from Lenin to Putin. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230293144_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230293144_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36586-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-29314-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)