Stalin's Genocides by Norman M. Naimark Page B

lot about Stalin’s methods from reading the recently declassified internal debates of the Politburo and Central Committee plenums in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the crucial period for Stalin’s “seizure of power.”20
    These debates are fiercely polemical, with no holds barred.
    Yet Stalin remains aloof from the worst of the recrimina-tions and poses as the arbiter of party unity. His is a voice of relative restraint, while others slug it out. Molotov, in particular, serves as Stalin’s attack dog. Initially, Trotsky is the scapegoat, constantly on the defensive, yet also speak-ing too often and too aggressively himself. Once Trotsky is effectively removed from the scene in 1927, the “Right Opposition,” Rykov, Tomsky, and, a bit later, Bukharin, become the lightning rods for failed policies and party intrigues surrounding the “Second Revolution,” collectivization and the First Five-Year Plan. All the while, Stalin continues his pose as the rock-solid defender of the revolution and its accomplishments, though periodically he does ask hard questions and make sarcastic remarks about those under attack. His interventions are laconic and terse, those of a judge rather than of the prosecutor.
    But he could also slug it out and attack his opponents with cynical vitriol if he felt it necessary.
    Stalin’s posture in these party wrangles was, like so much else in his public life, an assumed one. He was an emotional man, who seethed with anger and resentment against his rivals beneath his calm surface, and he took great pains to keep his emotions in check.21 Yet in his pri-the making of a genocidaire 49
    vate letters and in conversations with his closest confederates he revealed how deeply he was riddled with down-right hatred. In a letter to Molotov of September 1930, he uses language about Bukharin that he generally would rarely use in public, calling him a “ rotten defeatist ” and a
    “ pathetic opportunist .” In the same letter, he advises Molotov: “If Rykov and Co. try to stick their noses in again, beat them over the head. We have spared them enough. It would be a crime to spare them now.”22
    While the struggle for supremacy in the party itself did not immediately lead to violence, Stalin’s methods were those of a determined conspirator and a skilled dissimu-lator. His ability to adopt many poses and personae, depending on the needs of the moment, were characteristic of his career to the very end. At the same time, his Georgian habits, tastes, and personal characteristics never completely left him. After all, he wrote exclusively in Georgian until he was twenty-eight years old.23
    Who was Comrade Stalin? Very few really knew the answer to that question, even when they thought they did.
    Stories abound about Stalin’s evasiveness when it came to his person. Later in his life he would point to stylized, imposing portraits of himself and tell his interlocutors that the image in the picture frame was Stalin, not the small, unimpressive figure with sallow skin and a pockmarked face that stood before them. When the actor Aleksei Dikii was cast as Stalin in a movie, Stalin asked him how he planned to play the role. The actor answered, “As the people see him.” Stalin supposedly said “Right answer” and gave him a bottle of brandy.24 At the height of his power, 50
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    Stalin reportedly once yelled at his son Vasilii about exploiting his father’s surname: “You’re not Stalin and I’m not Stalin! Stalin is Soviet power!”25
    The real Stalin—suspicious, vindictive, capable, cold, brutal, angry, self-possessed, and small, both physically and morally—eventually created the image of the imperial and grand Stalin. He lived within the magnanimous version of himself, while convincing those around him that it was real. By bullying, force, and manipulation, he attained enormous powers. Those who doubted or resisted the alchemy of Stalin’s power and vainglory were demoted, stripped of their