Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle by Oleg V. Khlevniuk, translated by Nora Seligman Favorov, (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009).

Reviewed by Dr Martin McCauley.

Oleg Khlevniuk has spent fifteen years in Soviet party and state archives.  His tome on the rise of Stalin and the mechanisms he used to acquire supreme power is unrivalled in the literature of the period.  This is the definitive study of Stalin and his team until more archives become available.

Khlevniuk distinguishes between oligarchic and dictatorial rule.  Power during the Soviet period was always oligarchic, he claims, except for the period from 1935 to 1953 when Stalin exercised dictatorial power.  He traces, in meticulous detail, the debates in the Politburo and seeks to answer many questions.  Were there factions in the supreme party body?  May one divide its members into radicals and moderates?  Was Sergei Kirov murdered on Stalin’s orders?  Did the Great Terror assume its own momentum?  Were there times when Stalin lost control?

He finds no evidence in the archives to support the view that there were factions.  His view is that it all depended on the issue being discussed.  A key conflict zone surrounded Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Stalin.  As Commissar for Heavy Industry, Ordzhonikidze fought for more investment and to protect ‘his’ people from the ravages of the NKVD.  Ordzhonikidze’s suicide was a turning point.  Had he lived, would he have taken on Stalin and condemned the excessive growth rates demanded by the vozhd?  On balance no, thinks Khlevniuk.

It follows from the above that the author does not support the view that there were moderates and radicals in the Politburo: Molotov and Kaganovich, the radicals, against Ordzhonikidze and Kuibyshev, the moderates.  Khlevniuk points out that Ordzhonikidze and Kaganovich were close friends; Molotov and Kuibyshev worked closely together and discussed important issues before announcing initiatives.

The author finds no evidence that Stalin had a hand in Kirov’s murder.  He is also sceptical of the view that Kirov represented an alternative to Stalin.  He points out that Kirov was party boss in Leningrad and hence did not attend many Politburo meetings.  There is nothing in the archives to support the assertion that Kirov received more votes than Stalin in elections to the Politburo at the XVII Party Congress in 1934.  Likewise, it is impossible to corroborate or refute the statement that Kirov informed Stalin that he had been approached to replace him as leader.

What is remarkable about the Great Terror is that it was turned on and off as if it were a tap.  Khlevniuk thinks that ‘Team Stalin’ really believed that there was a fifth column in the country.  The military could not be trusted to carry out orders and might do a deal with the enemy.  There is no doubt that Stalin and his sidekicks knew that many of the confessions, beaten out of the accused by torture, were false.  Stalin also used the terror to settle scores with Old Bolsheviks.  If there is a rationale behind this cruelty, it is that he feared that their voices might undermine his legitimacy in an emergency.  It follows that he never lost control of the terror.

Khlevniuk regards Stalin as having the last word from 1930 onwards.  There were vigorous debates about policy in the Politburo, but his fellow oligarchs accepted that he was top dog.  This changed in 1935 when he abolished the position of ‘second’ party secretary, then held by Kaganovich, and distributed the duties among other secretaries.  Stalin was also careful to ensure that Molotov did not accrue too much power.

Stalin turned down the chance of becoming chair of the Sovnarkom in 1930 and proposed Molotov for the post.  Khlevniuk thinks that the vozhd wanted to continue concentrating on personnel policy.  He took over Lenin’s position on 6 May 1941.

Khlevniuk traces the evolution of decision making during the period of dictatorial rule.  Politburo meetings became fewer and fewer and most decisions were reached by polling members by telephone or in small groups.

The war saw three dominant institutions: the Politburo, the Sovnarkom Bureau and the State Defence Committee.  The membership of all three was almost exactly the same, and often it was difficult to decide which institution was meeting.  Decisions could be issued in the name of any of them.

Khlevniuk does not mention it, but the Stalinist system’s greatest achievement was to defeat Hitler’s Germany.  It is difficult to imagine the Soviet Union winning the contest without the forced industrialization of the 1930s.  Stalin always gave priority to defence industries in the five year plans.  This saved the Russian nation.

Luck was on his side.  Had Hitler been willing to arm volunteers from the North Caucasus and Ukraine, it might have been a different story.

The paradox of Stalinism is that it was brilliantly successful in mobilising a developing country to defeat a technically superior enemy.  When the planned economy had evolved to a certain level, it failed dismally to reform itself and compete successfully with technologically advanced capitalist economies.  The Stalinist model failed to promote innovation and initiative. Politically it achieved a level of control over the population which was unprecedented in Russian history.  However, when political reforms were introduced under Gorbachev, the country imploded.

The translation reads smoothly.  There was only one slip I noticed: Klara Tsetkin should read Klara Zetkin.  She was the oldest member of the Reichstag in 1914 and a left-wing social democrat.