Abstract
On his return from Nizhnii Novgorod, Molotov asked to be transferred to party work. Initially, Nikolai Krestinskii, the head of the Secretariat, proposed to relocate him to Bashkiriya, a remote republic, but, Molotov claimed, Lenin helped him in to obtain an appointment in an industrial raion. He was reassigned to the Donbass in September 1920, an area in which he was well content to serve, and became secretary to the Artemovskii (Donets) guberniya committee.1 This appeared to be a dangerous mission, for the White general Wrangel was still active in the Donbass, but Molotov soon became preoccupied with administrative matters. As a representative of the guberniya committee at the Fifth Ukrainian Party Conference in Khar’kov in November 1920, he was nominated to the Central Committee, and at the plenum after the Conference, he was appointed first secretary of a two-man secretariat of the Ukrainian Central Committee.2 In his memoirs, Molotov again attributed his good fortune to Lenin.3
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Notes
RGAS-PI, 82/2/1495, 25; Yurchuk, V. I. et al. eds, Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Ukrainu v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh s”ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, t. 1, 1918–1941, Kiev: 1976, p. 99.
Borys, J., The Sovietisation of the Ukraine 1917–1923: the Communist Doctrine and Practice of Self—Determination, Edmonton: 1980, pp. 88, 159, 295; Gill, G., The Origins of the Stalinist Political System, Cambridge: 1990, p. 48.
Duranty, W., Stalin & Co., the Politburo — the Men who Run Russia, New York: 1949, pp. 92–3. Schapiro, ComunistAutocracy, p. 320, identifies those promoted at this time as Stalin supporters, but there is no evidence of a growing association between Molotov and Stalin before 1921.
Tucker, R. C., Stalin as Revolutionary 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality, London: 1974, p. 240, notes that it may have been at this time and not a year later that Lenin made his famous remark of Stalin ‘This cook will concoct nothing but peppery dishes.’ Cf. Schapiro, L., The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, London: 1970, p. 242.
Service, R., Lenin: a Political Life, vol. 3, The Iron Ring, Basingstoke: 1995, pp. 220–222. Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution, p. 176; Daniels, R. V. ‘ The Secretariat and the Local Organisation of the Russian Communist Party, 1921–1923’, The American Slavic and East European Review, vol. XVI, 1957, no. 1, pp. 32–3.
Bazhanov, B., trans. Doyle D. W., Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, Athens: 1980, p. 14.
See Sotheby’s Catalogue, Catalogue of Continental and Russian Books and Manuscripts, Science and Medicine, April 1990, p. 255.
Zalesskii, K. D., Imperiya Stalina: biograficheskii entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ Moscow: 2000, p.166. Claims in other authorities that she originated from the Ukraine seem to derive from the fact that she was based there from 1919. For her manners see Mikoyan, A., Tak bylo, Moscow: 1999, p. 299.
Medvedev, All Staiin’s Men, p. 97; Vasilieva, L. trans. Porter, C., Kremlin Wives, London: 1994, p.127. Bromage, Molotov, pp. 138–9 appears to be in error in claiming that Molotov met her in the Ukraine. Molotov, in old age, seems to have confused Petrograd with Moscow as the place where they met, Chuev, Molotov, p. 231.
Ibid., p. 284.
Venturi, F. et al., eds, Bol’shevistskoe rukovodstvo perepiska 1912–1927, Moscow: 1997, pp. 235, 241; Lenin, PSS, vol. 44, pp. 121, 243, vol. 45, pp 17–21.
Pipes, R., ed., The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive, New Haven: 1997, pp. 127, 130–1.
Meijer, J. M. ed., The Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, The Hague: 1971, pp. 446–7.
Leeds Russian Archive, Lomonosov Papers, 716/2/1/8, 386. I am most grateful to the Lomonosov family for allowing me to consult these papers, for the assistance of Mr. Richard Davies of the Leeds Russian archive, and to Dr. A Heywood for drawing my attention to this material.
It is interesting, for instance, that Molotov is often not included as a member of Stalin’s first ‘general staff.’ See Hughes, J., ‘Patrimonialism and the Stalinist System: the Case of S.I. Syrtsov’, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 48, no. 4, 1996, p. 554.
RGAS-PI, 82/1/137, 1. Liquidation of women’s sections seems to have occurred as a result of confusion when local party organisations implemented instructions to establish Agitprop departments. See Wood, E. A. The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolurionary Russia, Bloomington: 1997, p. 133.
Ibid., p. 252; Pipes. R., The Formation of the Soviet Union, Cambridge, MA: 1964, pp. 265–74; Lewin, M., Lenin’s Last Struggle, New York: 1968, pp. 43–63; Lenin, PSS, vol. 45, pp. 556–560.
Carr, E. H., A History of Soviet Russia: The Interregnum 1923–1924, Harmondsworth: 1969, p. 273.
Trotsky, L, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923–1925), ed. Allen, N., New York: 1975, p. 62; Rees, E. A., Rabkrin and the Soviet System of State Control, 1920–1930, University of Birmingham PhD. thesis, 1982, pp. 83–137; Valentinov, N., ed. Bunyan, J. and Bytenko, U., Novaya ekonomicheskaya politika i krizis partii posle smerti Lenina, Stanford: 1971, pp. 204–7.
Izvestiya, 24 January 1924. The commission was chaired by Dzerzhinskii and the other members were N. I. Muralov, M. M. Lashevich, V. D. Bonch-Bruvich, Voroshilov, V. D. Zelensky and A. S. Enukidze.
Molotov, V.M., ‘O proizvoditel’nosti truda’, Bol’shevik, no. 11–12, 20 October 1924, pp. 3–9.
Davies, R. W., ‘Peaches from our Tree,’ London Review of Books, 7 September 1995.
Viola, L., The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivisation, New York: 1987, pp.18–22.
See for instance RGAS-PI, 17/2/125, 2. For a full account of the position of the Soviets and the campaign for their ‘re-vitalisation’ see Carr, E. H., A History of Soviet Russia: Socialism in One Country, vol. 2, Harmondsworth: 1970, pp. 325–96.
Rees, E. A., ‘Ukraine under Kaganovich, 1925–1928,’ unpublished paper, CREES: University of Birmingham, 1997 quoting Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Obshestvennykh Organizatsii Ukrainy, 1/6/60, 39; Shapoval, Yu., Lazar Kaganovich, Kiev, 1994, p. 5; Kaganovich, L., Pamyatnye zapiski rabochego kommunista-bol’shevika, profsoyuznogo, partiinogo i sovetsko-gosudarstvennogo rabotnika, Moscow: 1996, p. 373.
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Watson, D. (2005). Party Secretary. In: Molotov. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514522_4
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