Stalin, Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928, Stephen Kotkin, 2014

 I first encountered Stephen Kotkin and his work in passing with his first appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast. At the time, I didn’t pay much mind, although I do think the video was presented to me in my YouTube subscriptions feed. Later on, I did listen to the conversation which I found very compelling both due to the content and the delivery style of Kotkin. That is the first thing I’ll mention, is that Kotkin has a very distinct New York sarcastic, deadpan, comedic, incisive style in his speaking. He takes meaningful pauses and uses powerful metaphors as a speaker, and at times in his writing his literary voice comes through more strongly than any other author (especially nonfiction) that I can think of. 

The first podcast (Stephen Kotkin: Stalin, Putin, and the Nature of Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #63) focused on Stalin, but also on Russian geopolitics now and in the past. Kotkin discussed Stalin, but also Putin and the challenges that face modern Russia, such as brain drain, kleptocracy, etc. The comment that stuck with me was the claim that Stalin had the single greatest concentration of power of any person at any time in history. Personally, I reacted with surprise since I thought maybe an ancient figure like Cyrus or Alexander was more personally powerful in a time of godly personification, or a recent American president could claim the spot simply due to the unprecedented power of the military and nation he leads. But this claim is probably right, since Stalin was in a sweet spot position where both those things were true - his own godlike authority over hundreds of millions and his control over a military and state with nuclear weapons. Lex invited Kotkin as part of Lex’s interests in power (like that of Hitler’s, etc), Soviet history, and socialism, and Kotkin was with Lex to spread the word about his monumental biographical project on Stalin. I believe I was either still reading or just had read the first volume of the Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro, so this similar work piqued my interest. I added the books (two volumes out of a planned set of three) to my Amazon wish list, but didn’t pull the trigger for several reasons. This was a conversation I thoroughly enjoyed and I planned to revisit this work at some undefined later date, but the subject and the author faded from my attention. 

In February 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine commenced and the war in the Donbas went white hot (the war continues as of the time of this writing, late July 2022). This event sharply struck Lex due to his roots in that area, his personal family connections, and his fascination with Putin. Lex has talked about wanting to interview Putin and produce a full-bodied presentation of the man and leader. But Putin’s decision to kill at least thousands of people for very little reason or gain was a blow to Lex. In the process of digesting this event and this war, Lex brought back Kotkin to speak more about Russia, this time more on Putin and contemporary Russia, obviously with the Ukrainian war front of mind. 

This second podcast (Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Stalin, Hitler, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine | Lex Fridman Podcast #289) was a longer discussion, over two hours compared to about one for the first, and Kotkin was more impassioned and more direct, but still extremely clear-eyed and incisive. He for example went on a slow buildup explaining the mindset that allowed Putin to think he would succeed with this outrage - Putin has literally been getting away with murder for years with barely a slap on the wrist. Kotkin described how Putin killed journalists, political opponents, annexed parts of Georgia, etc, and only “the little people” suffered. So why would Ukraine be any different? In this vein, he counteracted the arguments that others make (such as Lex’s previous russophile guest, Oliver Stone) that it is in fact NATO’s provocations, its threatening expansion into Russia's traditional sphere of influence, that force Putin and Russia to react. Kotkin asked, is it the clothes the woman wears that justifies that she should be raped? Kotkin asked, is it the alliances the country wishes to join that justifies that it should be invaded? While maybe shocking, there is a reason to be shocking - this is a high stakes situation of life and death for the Ukrainians and a geopolitical test for the West. On that note, Kotkin lays out clearly the argument for why this may or may not be an inflection point moment - the West may either be strengthened in its newfound collective resolve, or it may peter out and abandon Ukraine due to the economic pressures stemming from Russia’s energy leverage and costs associated with funding Ukraine’s war effort and reconstruction. Kotkin revealed, at least to me, how the Biden administration was very close to a repeat of its Afghanistan debacle, saved by Zelensky’s willingness to stay in Kyiv and put his life on the line, and be the TV star personality the country needs in its war and international propaganda. 

It was Kotkin’s appearance on the podcast and his analysis of Russia, the West, the War, etc, that reminded me of his existence and that of his book on Stalin. I immediately decided to purchase the first volume (from Politics and Prose, rather than from Amazon), and later purchased the second volume as well, which I don’t plan to read for some time to allow some distance to digest and rejuvenate. 

That’s a lot of background, but now I will discuss the work itself and the subject it addresses. Stalin is a big book, over 700 pages, and it is just one volume out of three. This volume covers Stalin’s birth in 1878 through the cementing of his personal dictatorship via the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party in the USSR right up until before the beginning of collectivization of agriculture. Therefore, the volume in question is not concerned with Stalin in the famines and collectivization of the 1930s, the Great Depression in the West, or World War II, or the Cold War, etc. I saw in other reviews the comment that the book “tends to history rather than biography,” which I would agree with, and I think Kotkin would agree with as well. A major share of the book hardly concerns itself with Stalin at all, but rather the historical trends and backgrounds that create the Russian Revolution, at which time Stalin himself begins to take a larger role. Perhaps the broadest takeaway and broadest historical theme that Kotkin considers in this work is the roles of chance and will in history. I may have written a bit about this somewhere before, but there are many takes on the place of people in history - are we byproducts of our place and time, or are there “great men” (so-called during a less progressive time in historiography) that personally change the world? Kotkin adds to the mix the point that there is immense contingency in history. We humans find it uncomfortable, but pure chance plays an inarguable role in our lives and in history generally. Contingency finds its greatest role in this story in the event of Lenin’s poor health and his early death, opening the opportunity (and not the inevitability) of Stalin’s gradual seizure of power. 

Since Stalin’s life and career is so correlated with major world events these are described more than Stalin is himself. Two sections that wrestle with periods that essentially predate the story of Stalin, specifically tsarist Russia and the Russian Revolution, were excellent in terms of new (to me) information, compelling narrative style, and usefulness. I think these were my favorite parts of the book. Kotkin begins the book with an extensive discussion of the tsarist government and society in Russia in historical and geopolitical terms. Many of the same challenges that confronted tsarist officials confronted their stalinist successors, the main one being the backward position of Russia (with respect to economic development, societal and state organization, and military and technological power) with respect to its would-be peers in Western Europe contrasted with its self-view as a “civilization onto itself” in the Eurasian space with a special mission in the world and a rightful position in the first rank of great powers, perhaps as the greatest power. The tsarist regime is described as a disorganized and non centralized authoritarian regime in which the tsar’s personalized authority was the only acceptable locus of power - not even a formal council of ministers or aristocrats could be allowed, let alone a parliament. Nonetheless, the tsarist regime needed to modernize in order to keep up and avoid being colonized by its European neighbors (namely Germany) or Asian neighbor, Japan. 

In tsarist Russia, the empire ranged over an immense area that had steadily expanded since the foundation of the modern iteration of tsarist Russia with Peter the Great’s wins against the Scandinavians. Russian geopolitics included these immense borderlands and buffer areas, none of which enjoyed clear or defensible lines, necessitating a “defensive” push outward to improve the security of previously conquered areas. This defensive expansion is clearest in Central Asia where the Russian military expanded as far as Persia and Afghanistan and where Russia battled with Britain in the so-called Great Game. Within the empire, there were arrayed a huge multitude of nations such as Ukrainians and Belorussians (Little Russians), (Great) Russians, Poles, Finns, Baltic peoples, Turkic peoples, Muslim peoples, Koreans, Mongols, Cossacks, Armenians, Georgians, Jews, Orthodox, Catholics, Baltic Germans, and the list goes on and on. The vast majority of the people were peasant farmers, with most Russian peasants organized in commune mutual aid organizations in the villages. Russia exported wheat from its abundant breadbaskets in Ukraine and Siberia, feeding Western Europe and fueling some industrialization and urbanization. 

Part of modernization, beyond the machines and the administrative methods, was the geopolitics and the mass mobilization of the people for political, military, and economic reasons. Kotkin described how there was great potential in tsarist Russia for a monarch-led fascist-like movement to harness mass mobilization, with groups such as the Black Hundreds, but the tsarist fear of any authority centers outside the person of the tsar short circuited these. There were great administrators or ministers like Witte and Stolypin, who wanted to create a class of yeoman farmers (the future kulaks) to become a social base for the regime (more on this later). It was left instead to the various socialist groups and movements to engage in the first creation of mass participatory politics in Russia.

Kotkin also goes into detail on the Russian loss to Japan in war and the connected 1905 Russian Revolution, with its resulting duma and tentative moves towards a reformed tsardom that could survive into the modern era. We see the first example in the lesson that Stalin would later take of the connectedness of revolution and war. I did not know that it was really the repression of the tsarist official Durnovo that crushed the revolution and bottled up the furies that were released, belatedly, in 1917. This is one of those contingencies, or one of those “great man” moments, where Durnovo may have been the only person who could be violent and capable enough to repress well enough and extensively enough to keep the lid on. 

It is in this milieu that Kotkin describes the youthful Joseph Stalin, the Georgian Ioseb Jughashvili, born to modest poverty to a cobbler. Kotkin is not a fan of the common biographical practice of applying psychological/psychotherapeutic techniques to the early lives of their subjects in order to explain the future actions. For example, apparently in other biographies of Stalin it is common to discuss alleged beatings he received at the hands of his father, which Kotkin both finds little evidence for and views and unimportant, citing the fact that there are many people who are beaten as children that don’t become someone like Stalin later in life. There is a similar importance attributed to reports that the young Stalin may have led a small band (or gang) of ruffian youths, and also a fateful near-death accident when Stalin was struck by a carriage. The description of the Caucasus region is really enjoyable and it is a region that is underappreciated for its cultural vibrancy. The major cities were chaotic clusters of Armenians, Georgians, and many others. One anecdote that I thought was funny was that apparently there was a popular festival where the different ethnic groups (and there were and are very many different ethnicities in the landscape of that region) would form teams and compete against each other in wrestling and other sports. 

In one of the major threads that Kotkin follows, which is Stalin as an ideologue and an autodidact rather than an uninterested, unread oaf, Stalin began his intellectual journey as a Georgian nationalist, unsurprising in imperial Russian controlled Georgia, which had only relatively recently been conquered and yet boasted a long history and distinct culture. Stalin’s own family was broken by separation of mother and father, and so there were neighborly patrons that helped support and raise Stalin. Stalin was an intelligent person but also apparently religious, since he gave up other scholastic options to attend the local seminary (the Caucasus region did not have a full-fledged university, and seminaries were significantly prestigious institutions of learning as well). It was at the seminary that Stalin developed his signature speechmaking style, that of the catechism, as well as much stronger political positions in the face of tsarist repressions. The students at the seminary took many actions, including violence, against restrictions such as those on Georgian-language materials, and the seminary had at one point been closed in a punitive measure. Stalin was exposed to Marx for the first time via other students - Marx had been translated into Russian much after its dissemination in Western Europe. 

One note on Marxism and Russia (much of the same can be said about China). Marxism, as many know, as seen in the writings of Marx, is primarily a critique of Capitalism within enterprises, only obliquely about government insofar as government acts as the policing mechanism for capital. The kind of industrial capitalist societies that Marx wrote about, with bulging proletarian worker classes, only existed in a handful of countries (primarily Western Europe and North America) from the mid 19th to the mid 20th centuries, and all of the intellectual energy and speculation centered around Germany, Britain, etc. Russia (and China) as agrian, largely pre-industrial societies, were unlikely settings for communist/socialist revolutions in the traditional Marxist thinking since they did not have either of the oppressed successor class (proletarians) or the oppressor class (bourgeoisie) that would be overthrown, and it hardly had moved from feudalism to capitalism at all. The end of serfdom in Russia, which was a mixture of feudalism and slavery for the bulk of the population, was only reformed and discontinued in the 1860s, ten to twenty years after the most prominent writings of Marx. Nonetheless, Marxism/socialism, especially in late tsarist Russia, represented a powerfully attractive movement for social justice against the unreformed, autocratic, repressive tsarist regime. Stalin left behind his Georgian nationalism and adopted socialism. His “speciality” in “the national question” remained, however. 

The socialist movements in Russia, which as I mentioned was an extremely expansive and diverse empire, were more diverse than average. Partly due to the fact that the western regions of tsarist Russia, such as Poland, were closer to the influence of more economically developed neighbors like Germany, many of the early socialists agitating in Russia were from those regions and therefore were more likely to be Polish, Jewish, ethnic Germans, etc. Those groups had their own socialist organizations, but in the end they represented large portions of the later broader Russian party. 

In a major commonality with the later Soviet regime, the only effective institution in tsarist Russia was the secret police, which routinely disrupted the socialists and other groups. Stalin played a role of little importance in either the 1905 Revolution or the period preceding 1917, alternating between bandit actions, socialist punditry in underground newspapers, and Siberian exile. Despite the near collapse of the tsarist regime in 1905, the socialist movement was largely neutered during the time before the first world war. The 1905 revolution had managed to make progress towards a constitutional monarchy with the establishment of a Duma, but it was undercut by the tsar rather than used to restore legitimacy. 

Kotkin gave an excellent description of the so-called Great War, its beginning (on which he totally rejects the idea of “sleepwalking” into war, pointing out that the Kaiser and General Staff submitted thousands of preparatory orders such as moving feed for military horses, and posits that war is always an active choice, not a passive event), its course, etc. Kotkin points out that the regimes of the western countries (England and France) were not so moral as might be thought in the west today - not only did they brutalize the colonized peoples within their empires, they threw away their own people in war and showed little respect for human life of any kind, be they European, Asian, or African. Kotkin claimed generally that the disregard for human life showcased by the Nazi, Communist, and other regimes in the mid-20th century came directly out of these ancestors in the First World War, including ancestors in the West. He described the course of the war in Russia, with Russia’s successes and failures, particularly its major misguided late offensive that backfired and caused the loss of territory to the Germans, and the overwhelming push for peace that the people expressed (propelled by food insecurity due to the war), and which culminated in “establishment” (military high command) calls for abdication. Lenin, the leader with perhaps the most authority within the socialist community, was sent into Russia from European exile by the Germans as an act of sabotage. 

Perhaps the most narrative and thrilling portions of the book to read is that of 1917, the February and October revolutions. This was the first time that I have ever really studied the Russian Revolution. In the name of brevity, I will just say that Kotkin’s description is excellent, and he describes the facts and uses several analytical lenses (such as the geopolitical) to detail it. What I think is somewhat unique was his characterization of the different coups and revolutions (February and then its failing and replacement by the October Bolshevik coup). The main point was that the revolutionary activity in St. Petersburg, with the formation of soviet (councils), and other Red Army organizing (officers chosen by election) were parallel to the more significant but separate revolution in the countryside in a mass peasant land grab and destruction of the landed aristocracy de facto (not de jure, which would open the door for collectivization). Kotkin’s sense of humor comes through in a chapter likening Bolshevism and its regime to Dadaism, pointing to a fluke of history that Lenin’s same street in Swiss exile was also the location of an influential creator of dadaism. The Bolsheviks asserted that they controlled the country and destroyed their rival socialist groups in October 1917, but they hardly controlled any of the country, including the mass peasant revolution. The Russian Civil War and the development of Bolshevik authority was extremely chaotic, kind of a “wild west” situation, but it did culminate in a “monopoly” of violence for the Bolsheviks and their secret police/Red Army, allowing them to achieve the bare minimum of statehood. Along the way they negotiated the temporary Brest-Litovsk, releasing Poland and other outlying regions, committed unpopular regicide on the entire tsar’s family, including children, and through compromise and domination retained the Turkestan regions and the Caucasus. These compromises created the somewhat loose federative system of Soviet Russia itself and eventually the Soviet Union which was nonetheless kept together by the decidedly non-federal and highly centralized Communist party which held power above the state. 

The civil war has a cornucopia of colorful personalities, particularly in the military commanders and regional warlords, including the White Guard leaders, Red Army leaders, the would-be Khan in Mongolia, and others. 

The latter portions of the book are more of a slog as the broad narrative history gives way to the details of Stalin’s eventual implementation of his personal dictatorship. Kotkin’s thesis on contingency in history is strongest in the handling of Lenin’s death. After Stalin’s takeover, it came to be seen as more or less inevitable (as often happens in history). Furthermore, the loser in this takeover, Trotsky, who was exiled and able to stand on his illustrious international reputation as a socialist leader (won during the civil war) and intellectual, wrote extensively on Stalin and the regime. In the West, it was a startling example of the failing of the rule of thumb that “the winners write the history” and Stalin came to be viewed as an unthinking, power-hungry schemer who corrupted Lenin’s vision. In fact, before his death Lenin had created a new position for Stalin (general secretary and leader of the party) that gave Stalin all of the authority that he later supposedly usurped. Trotsky was likewise offered a significant position in the state (deputy to Lenin, who was head of state) that may have been intended to set up Trotsky as either the successor or part of a duumvirate power-sharing agreement between party (Stalin) and state (Trotsky). Due to another contingency of history, Trotsky was not politically astute, was not likable, and was so obstinate and proud that he rejected this offer from Lenin and failed to take advantage of several openings later to prevent Stalin’s rise. Stalin also had an extensive library of books that he really did use and notate on topics of history, political theory, etc. While Trotsky had the reputation as an intellectual, Stalin was probably at least Trotsky’s intellectual equal, with the notable exception for public speaking.

A prominent issue for Stalin was the alleged “Testament” of Lenin that arrived during the period of Lenin’s incapacitated state through dictation. In this, Lenin allegedly summarizes and critiques many of the significant leaders, including a warning about Stalin and his rudeness and overconcentration of power, with a call for his removal as general secretary. While the document was likely a forgery, it was never properly used by Stalin’s rivals in the wake of the power-vacuum that followed Lenin’s death to remove or circumscribe him. In fact, Stalin offered his resignation multiple times at party congresses, perhaps to neutralize the testament. But Stalin had over time used his power over appointments and his general political gifts to get more and more of his people in positions throughout the party and the state, and was never pulled. But there were times when he was weaker and his rivals never showed the skills that Stalin did. 

Prior to Stalin’s position as General Secretary, his main portfolio was the point person dealing with the various nationalities of the forming Soviet Union (which was very diverse, just like tsarist Russia). To Kotkin, Stalin showed his ideological belief - he was a true believer in international communism - but also his acceptance of practical or compromise means to achieve the transcendent ends - such as the NEP or allowing nationalist movements in some areas in place of traditional international-minded communist movements. Stalin was one of the most involved individuals in the creation of the structure of the Soviet Union as a collection of national communist/soviet states. Stalin’s idea of building socialism in one country was for example ridiculed as proof of lack of understanding of the theory of communism and its necessary international aspirations, but Stalin’s actual writings (some of which was plagiarized and some was authentic) were full of real understanding coupled with little “Brest-Litovsks,” strategic/intentional temporary retreats and compromises for the end goal. Stalin also positioned himself as the successor to Lenin ideologically via carefully studying Lenin's works, creation of institutionalized versions of Leninism (Stalin’s sanctioned version) through institutes and publications, and repeated invocations in public speeches. 

Kotkin details the major characters and institutions of the party and state (too many to name here) as well as the geopolitics and the foreign policy and economic policy of the regime (Comintern on one hand, thirst for technology transfers, hard currency from grain sales, and industrialization through the NEP on the other). The Russians kept thinking that revolution would happen in Germany. One episode that I found really interesting that wasn’t detailed too much was the only general strike in the UK, which the Soviets supported and in so doing helped scuttle negotiations with the British. 

The above description of the book is totally inadequate - there is so much content in Kotkin’s work. I think overall, the latter sections do get a bit harder to get through, especially if the reader is not already familiar with the personalities and events. The author’s writing is clear, his sense of humor and narrative style come through brilliantly, and the research is unassailable. I plan to read the second volume after giving Stalin and the region of Eastern Europe a bit of a rest. In summary, I don’t think Stalin’s rise to power is actually comparable to the takeover by Hitler or Mussolini or many of the other famous dictators. Lenin did the coup that brought the party to power, and Stalin was eventually made structurally the head of the party, putting him in control. In some ways, Stalin in power up until collectivization was not so different to a figure like FDR - someone who in a system wielded unprecedented power and wanted to change society in the name of social justice.2 Kotkin stressed that beginning with collectivization, Stalin began to push and achieve things in the world through his will and power that were otherwise impossible, and that these things were done in spite of millions of resulting deaths. That is where Stalin as an unparalleled figure of power and will comes out, but that was only briefly touched on in the closing remarks in this volume.