William Tyler
The Life of Stalin
William Tyler | The Life of Stalin | 06.08.21
- I’m very well, thank you.
I’m fine.
I’m on my way to see my other two kids.
Oh, how lovely.
In LA.
How lovely. I’m so pleased.
Actually my daughter’s… Yeah, thank you.
That’s fantastic.
[Wendy] Sorry, you were saying?
We’re so lucky to have the grandchildren now living just down the road. It’s fantastic, it’s really nice.
You are so, so lucky. I’ve got one in New York.
Yeah.
My kids are laughing at me, because, we all flying to see, it’s my daughter’s birthday tomorrow, so, my parents and my daughter, and the grand, my other grandchild, we’re all going to LA too to celebrate with her.
Oh, that’s lovely. It’s all opened up-
I haven’t seen her for two years.
[William] Oh, how awful.
Yeah, they haven’t all been together for two years.
It’s opened up in California, has it? Obviously. California’s all opened up.
It’s been open for a while actually. I was surprised that people were quite fair. Not like Florida. I mean, Florida was unbelievable. You wouldn’t have thought it was COVID when I was there in, you know, in January, it was free for all. It was quite scary, actually. ‘cause I hadn’t had my vaccine then. So how are we doing? Oh, it’s just 12:30 now. And William, have you been well?
Yes, yes. Very well, thanks. Yeah, no, no. Normal aches and pains. , but other than that, fine.
I know.
No, no, no. Fine-
That’s good. You’re looking cheery.
Well, we’ve been swimming in the sea in the last week. We’ve been in every day, so that makes a real difference. We feel much better. I was saying to Judi-
Is the water very cold?
No, it’s 13 and a half at the moment, which is okay. We’re used to it.
[Judi] I know, Wendy, it’s really hard to hear us, we should probably just hand over.
Oh yeah, go on. Please do, please do. Thank you.
[Judi] Okay, William, over to you.
Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. And welcome to everyone who’s Zoomed in this evening. Well, it’s this evening here in southern England, and I hope the weather is as good with you as it is here. And I was just saying to Wendy and Judi, my wife and I had been in the water, in the sea swimming every day now for a week. So we hope the good weather’s going to stay with us.
Now, my subject this evening is Stalin, and that’s quite a task really to do in an hour. You understand that I cannot go into massive detail. What I’m hoping to do is to give you an introduction, a flavour to the man and the times, and perhaps encourage you to read some of the books that I put on the blog or other books you come across, to just extend your knowledge about this man. Interestingly, less has been written about him in English, but then about Hitler and the Nazi regime, much less about the Soviet regime. And yet, it’s very important to understand Stalin, because without understanding Stalin, where it’s come from, then I think it’s difficult to understand Putin in our modern world. And that is, of course, exactly what many of us are trying to do, and people who are paid and professional are trying to do in places like Washington and London to try and second-guess Putin’s intentions and Putin’s future actions.
But my opening scene is not Russia. My opening scene is Spain. Spain of the Spanish Civil War period of 1936-1937. Many English men and women on the left of politics went to Spain to fight in the international brigades against Franco’s Fascists. And one who went to Spain to fight was the writer George Orwell. And his experience in Spain would change his outlook on politics. It was whilst in Spain that Orwell had his eyes opened regarding Soviet communism and the reign of Joseph Stalin. Stalin was supporting the left in all sorts of ways in Spain, but in ways that Orwell found disturbing. And it was in Spain that a germ of an idea for a novel came to Orwell. And in that novel “1984,” which I’m sure all of you have read, Orwell laid out the horror of Marx’s authoritarianism. The book was published in 1949, and the novel is not just a great, perhaps a greatest novel of the last century in English, but one of the greatest European novels of all time.
May I just say at this moment that although I’ve read “1984” more than once, I’m always attracted to any play version, any theatre, theatrical version of “1984.” And I saw one about five years ago, and it was quite disturbing, because you felt you were actually there with Winston, the hero of the novel. So if you haven’t seen a theatrical production of “1984,” I would strongly encourage you to do so if a chance comes along. In “1984” Orwell dissects and lays bare Stalin’s Russia. And in doing so, he lays bare for us for all time all Marxist dictatorships, and even, you might argue, totalitarianism, whether of the left or the right.
Now, I had a friend in adult education in Europe who was a Slovak. His name was Vladimir. And Vladimir once told me that he had always opposed, he was when I knew him, a minister of education, but he had been, in his real life, if I put it like that, a scientist, a chemist. But he had never been able to leave what was then Czechoslovakia to attend international conferences, because he refused to become a member of the party, of the Communist Party. And I said, “I thought academics who didn’t particularly believe in communism, nevertheless joined the party in order to take part in international seminars.” And he said, “Well, yes, you are right, but I couldn’t.” And I said, “Well, why couldn’t you? You must have had a Marxist education at school.” He said, “Yes, I did.” But he said, “When I was a young teenager, I read a book that I wasn’t meant to read. And as I read this book, I saw that it painted a picture of the society in Czechoslovakia, the Marxist society that I lived in.” And he said, “It was an English book, and it was '1984’ by George Orwell. And I had a copy, which was illegal to have, and I read it, and I was then convinced of what I sort of knew as a young teenager, that all this was dreadful. Here, it was laid out for me.”
And that has stuck with me that that short conversation of how important novels are to open people’s eyes to the truth. And many people wouldn’t bother to read academic tomes about Stalin or about the USSR, but they might just read “1984,” or they might just go to a play to see “1984.” And I’ve got one critique of George Orwell where the critic writes this: “Orwell was one of the few literary voices on the left to recognise and speak out against the human rights abuses of the Soviet Union, the food shortages, government control of the press, militarization of culture, spying on citizens and mass arrests and torture of supposed ‘enemies’ were all part of the novel and of life in Soviet Russia.”
So who was this Big Brother, Joseph Stalin, who oversaw this empire of fear and brutality? Well, first Stalin was not his family name, but merely a pseudonym he’d adopted whilst the Russian revolutionary in Nicholas czar, Nicolas II’s Russia. Literally translated Stalin means Man of Steel. And that’s how he saw himself. He wasn’t, of course, ethnically Russian at all, but a Georgian born in December, 1879 and born a subject of the Russian czar. His family was poor, but his mother had a dream that her bright son, he was bright at school, that her bright son would one day become a priest, because that was an opportunity to rise up the ladder in Imperial Russia. And in 1895, Stalin, and I’ll call him Stalin, it’s just easier to do so, in 1895, Stalin began studying for the Russian Orthodox priesthood. But when he went to the seminary, he discovered a group of Marxists, and he joined that group, illegally, an illegal group, and secretly began studying “Das Kapital” rather than the Bible.
In 1899, he was thrown out of the seminary because he was now expressing atheistic beliefs. They didn’t describe them as Marxist, but that’s what they were. He then joined the Bolshevik party officially. Well, he officially joined the Bolshevik party, and took part in the ill-fated Russia Revolution of 1905, following Russia’s defeat in the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905. The revolution came to nothing, but clearly Imperial Russia was on its last legs. He met Lenin in Finland. Finland was then part of the Russian Empire. And he became a ruthless, well, we would say in the 21st centric, terrorist. He robbed banks in order to fund an underground terrorist network, rather like the IRA raided banks to find money. He married his first wife in 1907 and had a son. His wife died of typhus, and he abandoned his son. Well, abandoned is perhaps too strong word. He left his son with his wife’s parents to bring up. And he threw himself into the revolutionary activities of the Bolsheviks.
In 1910, the czar’s government exiled him to Siberia. Seven years later, 1917, Russia is convulsed in the middle of the First World War by not one but two revolutions. The first established a democratic republic, arguably the only democracy Russia has ever had in all its history. Then came the October Revolution, which was more of a coup d'etat than a revolution. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had been really sidelined by the first revolution. They didn’t see it coming. It was a revolution from the floor, simply because people didn’t have enough to eat in the middle of the war. But now, in the October revolution as a coup d'etat and the communist seized control and established the world’s first Marxist communist state. Stalin became Lenin’s right hand man as general secretary of the Communist Party. Lenin died in 1924, and Lenin had not planned for his succession.
It’s always interesting, either in a democracy or not in a democracy where political leaders do not plan for their succession. In Britain Prime Ministers think they will go on forever. And in Russia, anyone like Lenin, who is running an authoritarian state, has no intention ever of giving it up. Think about Putin. Do you think Putin’s going to say one day, “I actually, I think I’ll retire to the Crimea and spend my life like William Tyler swimming in the sea, in the Black Sea”? No, he won’t do that. He’ll go on until the very end. So Lenin made no provision for his successor. Now, of course, if you do make provision for a successor, the danger is that that successor will act before you want them to take over. In other words, whilst you’re still living, and they might plot against you. And so you land up, as in Georgian Britain, with a king and the Prince of Wales, with politicians behind each of them.
Lenin ruled supreme. And he made no provision, except what he did leave, which they found afterwards, was a will. Now he in the will… Well, let me just read you. When Lenin suffered his first stroke, and he died of a stroke, eventually, in May, 1922, he dies in 1924, when Lenin suffered his first stroke in 1922, there was no obvious way to replace him and no one person in a position to do so if there had been a way. This was made more complex by Lenin’s testament, we might say political will. This was produced between December 22 and January 23. It was Lenin’s last message to Party. In it, he criticised every leading candidate for running the party after his death.
Basically what he’s saying is this, “Look, there’s no one like me. I’m just wonderful. And I’m afraid when I die, you’ll have to work it out for yourselves. And I suggest you have a whole group of you running it, because none of you marry up to me,” is basically the message. But in it, he criticised each of the potential leaders, and he wrote about Stalin as, quote, “not being able to use power with sufficient caution.” Well, that is a damning comment on Stalin. And one, the history is to prove to be correct. Lenin’s judgement was right. Prescient is the word to use. Stalin manoeuvred himself to be the supreme leader. You remember he sent Trotsky into exile, and subsequently Trotsky was assassinated.
By 1929, he has secured power and he remained in full control of the Soviet Union until his death, just what I’ve been saying, until his death in the coronation year of 1953. So what was Stalin’s policies? Now, unlike Hitler and Nazis, Hitler’s policies, as I said when we were speaking about Hitler, was really on a war footing from the beginning, a wartime economy and so on. But Stalin… And, well, let’s have a look at Stalin. Stalin during the 1920s and 1930s, his policy can be itemised under three headings. One, the collectivization of agriculture. In other words, agriculture will be held by the community, the party and not by the individual, the collectivization of agriculture. Secondly, he introduced what we might now describe as notorious Five-Year Plans for industry. Notorious, because they basically never worked. People rode a coach and horses through the Five-Year Plans.
And then thirdly, and horrifically, he ruled by terror. By terror. The problems faced at the Revolution in 1917 by Russia, and then again when Russia withdrew from the First World War before it ended, the problems were legion. But the greatest problem of all was agriculture, how to feed the people. And the second problem was industry. Now, industry, interestingly, had been on a rise from the 1890s in czarist Russia. But as ever with Russia, it was failing to catch up with the West, with Britain, with Germany, with France, and of course the United States. Since the age of Peter the Great in the 18th century, Russia has sought to play catch-up with the West. And every time the West has soared ahead and left Russia in a worse state. The easiest example would give us the Cold War when Russia attempted to match America in terms of space flight, and pretty well bankrupted itself in the process only for the States to go further ahead. They’ve always tried to play catch-up and they’ve always failed.
And so the industrial policies in the 1890s, and I question to answer, this is a sort of subject for a PhD or a doctorate, is if the czar, if czarism hadn’t been overthrown in 1917, would Russian industry have managed to catch up with the West or near enough catch up with the West by, shall we say, 1940? Or was it always doomed to failure? I’m not sure that it was. I’m sure many of you can remember the film “Doctor Zhivago.” And in that film that you see the great engineering works. And in those engineering works, you could see the workers meeting to plot revolution. And they did have major works. And there were lots of Welsh who went to Russia to help the mining, that Russia was moving forward. But nevertheless, at the end of the first World War, Russia had problems. Russia had spent a lot of money in the war. Its industry was fractured. Moreover, moreover, Poland escapes Russian control, and Poland was the very heartbeat of the Russian industrial economy pre-1914.
So he’s got two problems. Let’s a look at agriculture. This is a little rhyme that circulated in czarist Russia, A czar rules the world, a czar without mercy, and hunger is his name. Famine, which we had not known in England since the 17th century, here in the 20th century is rampant on a regular basis in Russia. Something had to be done about the whole problem of agriculture. And what did they do? Well, they collectivised agriculture. And did everyone accept it? No, they didn’t. And a large number of previous peasants, who had been serfs up until 1861, the serfdom only ended in Russia in 1861. And now having had some land, have the land taken away from them. There’s no incentive. This is a capitalist argument, which seems to me a very strong one.
There’s no incentive to improve your land if you don’t get anything from it. Why produce extra gallons of milk from your cows if it simply goes into a central point and you don’t get any financial benefit from doing that? Why put in those extra hours? There’s a great deal of problems with agriculture, not least later when Stalin sells off the grain from the Ukraine in the West in order to raise foreign capital for Russia in order to buy goods from the West. It’s an appalling example. Selling grain that would’ve fed his own people in order to help the financial economy of Russia to buy from the West.
Russia was bust, and they thought, in truth, they really thought that communism was the answer. Collectivization of the farms and government control of industry and manufacture in every way would lead to the perfect world. Well, we’ve seen how that has not worked out in the world of the 20th century. It failed to work out. The Five-Year Plans for industry likewise failed. They were given targets. But people manoeuvred the targets. People changed the information they sent in. Now, some was direct fraud, other was massaging the figures, shall we say? I’m sure many of you in the jobs that you’ve done, have helped in situations to massage the figures to give the best light on the situation. I certainly did as a principal when I was a principal of college of adult education in Manchester, and I inherited a college which was in severe damage. I got out, I had to show how much work we were doing. And so I didn’t… All my figures were correct, but they included a whole range of things that had never been included by anyone before.
And so Stalin’s industrial policies didn’t work. They were partially successful, but they had ingrained failure as it were built into the system. And for a start, the people who had to work, who were brought into the cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg to work in the factories were peasants. They weren’t educated. They didn’t know what they were doing. And there’s a very interesting observation by an American visitor to Stalin’s Russia, who said, he was an American engineer, in fact, called John Scott, and Scott went to Russia and he worked in Russia as an engineer, and his comment was, quote, “I would wager,” said Scott, “that Russia’s battle of ferrous metallurgy alone involved more casualties than the battle of the Marne.”
There were so many accidents. Health and safety, forget it, because there’s other peasants you can bring in. “How many died this week, Mr. Tyler in your factory?” “Well, 10. Their own fault, of course.” “Well, don’t worry, we’ll get 10 more to come in.” Nobody bothered. It’s a terrible society that treats its citizens in such a way. But Russia had always treated its citizens in such a way. There’s always more peasants ready to die for Mother Russia. They might not care to die for Mother Russia, but they will die for Mother Russia. And they did in the 1930s in Stalin’s factories. It simply didn’t work. Moreover, they weren’t used to the discipline of factory life. This is an industrial revolution instigated by Stalin instantly.
And people who led a rural, peasant life up to 1861, a serf’s life, are suddenly thrown in to the industrial world of the 20th century. And they couldn’t cope. They arrived late for work. They left early, they took days off, and the system had to cut down hard on that. And in 1932, they introduced the death penalty to punish those guilty of theft from factories. And they introduced internal passports, so that you couldn’t leave. You had to show a passport as you left St. Petersburg. And if you didn’t have one, you couldn’t leave. And theft, I don’t know if any of you worked in big industries where theft was always a problem. I’m a Bristolian by birth, and we had the big cigarette factories in Bristol of Wills, and people were always stealing from Wills. We also had the aircraft industry in Bristol. And the last large post-war passenger plane, which was a non-jet plane, was a plane called the Brabazon. And it was a beautiful plane, but it was, by the time it was finished, it was totally superseded by jet passenger planes. But it was said in Bristol that there were enough parts of the Brabazon to build another 10 Brabazons around people’s homes in Bristol. But fortunately, Bristol did not introduce a death penalty. But in Russia, they did. In Russia, the problems were severe.
Now, if you look at it from the point of view of the Russian government, in their belief about Marxism, they were prepared to take extraordinary efforts. Now, I’m not a Marxist or anything like a Marxist, but if a Marxist was giving this lecture, he might well refer you to the iniquities of the capitalist system in its dealings with the people that worked for it. In the British press today, the opposition leader has said that if he gains power, he will stop the practise of firing of people and then rehiring them on bad-worse conditions and less pay. So you can make an argument at all systems, but there is a difference. And the difference is what steps you are prepared to take. And Stalin and Stalin’s system, nothing to do with the theory of Marxism, Stalinism is prepared to take ultimate sanctions, death, against people that are not pulling their weight or are abusing the system.
That’s the difference. This is a totalitarian society. And that’s why we refer to Stalinism, because Stalinism isn’t really Marxist Leninism. It’s a… How shall I put it? It’s a corruption of Marxist Leninism. Had Lenin lived, there are indications that Russia would’ve gone down a different path, more of a path like Boris Yeltsin was trying to do. Or Gorbachev perhaps is a better example of trying to make Marxist Leninism acceptable to people, to soften its edges. Stalin, as a dictator, hardened its edges. Wow, what a man. But it gets worse. It gets worse because in the 1930s we have the so-called Terror or Purges.
You remember that Winston in the novel, “1984,” said he lost his parents in the purges, and Orwell is referring to Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. And just to start us off on that, I just wanted to read a little piece here. If I find it, I will read it. During the mid to late 1930s, Russia experienced a mounting terror. The secret police were responsible for arresting, imprisoning, and executing huge numbers of Soviet citizens. Secret police is an indicator of totalitarianism of the left or the right. Their imprisonment or death was not due to their guilt, but instead to a deliberate attempt by the government to control society through the use of fear. That’s what I’ve just been saying. This is Stalinism. This isn’t Marxist Leninism, a deliberate attempt by the government to control society through the use of fear. And that is the message that Orwell gets over in “1984.”
Winston becomes fearful. He can’t trust anybody. He can’t say what he thinks. And everyone is a potential spy for the state. Exactly the position in East Germany after the war with the Stasi, where wives reported on husbands, husbands on wives, and worst of all, children were encouraged to spy and report on their parents. And I dunno about any of you who had children, I would’ve been very fearful of what my son and daughter might have said about me. Gosh, it’s bad enough what they said in school on a Monday morning when they are asked what they did over the weekend. I can’t imagine what it would be in a state like East Germany or in a state like Stalin’s Russia.
Now, it’s true that Russia had seen such activities before, secret police under the czar, all of that. But here in Stalin’s Russia, it’s made worse. One historian is written, Stalin became increasingly paranoid, and he purged the Communist party and the army of anyone who might oppose him. His paranoia is not Marxist Leninism in practise, his paranoia is the man himself, the man himself. How much is the man and not the system was Stalin? Good question. Good essay question if you were to university. The truth is that a lot of it is Stalin himself. Stalin became increasingly paranoid and purged the Communist party and army of anyone who might oppose him. 93 of 139 central committee members were killed and 81 of 103 generals and admirals were executed. Hence a problem when World War II comes.
“Well, send the general.” “I’m sorry. You killed him two months ago.” “Well, send general sec…” “I’m sorry, he was killed a month ago.” 81 of 103 generals and admirals were executed. Well, why? Well, because if there’s going to be a coup d'etat, you need a force to enable it to happen. And the army is an obvious force. And Putin, of course, knows that. And it’s why Putin gives so much money to the armed forces, because if revolution is going to come against Putin, then it may well come from the army. That does not mean if that was to happen that Russia would swerve to democracy. It could swerve further right with a military coup d'etat.
Let me read on about Stalin. Stalin’s secret police strictly enforced his Stalinism, and people were encouraged to inform on one another. Just what I’ve said. 3 million people were accused of opposing communism and sent to the Gulags, to the concentration camps in Siberia. Around three quarters of a million people were summarily killed. Not the enemy. Your own people. Your own people. This is a nightmare. Stalin’s Russia is an example to the world of where totalitarianism can lead. It’s different from the lessons we learned from Nazi Germany, but it is nevertheless as equally important.
And in a European and Western world in 2021, when populism is moving and has moved in Poland, in Hungary, and potentially is moving elsewhere, populism will move to totalitarianism and all the consequences of that. And we’ve seen an example in Belarus, but it’s Hungary in Poland, members of the European Union, are the most disturbing. And France and Germany, where the right is, I don’t mean the Democratic right, I mean a right, that’s a populist right, a neo-fascist right. Some people would call it to power. And if we think in Britain and the United States that, well, we’re different. Well, there’s lots of American academics writing about the danger of Trumpism along that path of populism and further. And in Britain there are people very concerned about the present conservative government in that respect.
Of course, war comes to Russia in 1940, despite the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, which neither country really thought would last, war comes. Hitler employs operation Barbarossa to pile through Russia. I can’t, I said before we began that I’m limited in the amount of time that I have in an hour, but this Simon Sebag Montefiore’s book, which I put on the blog. This is his book called “Titans in History.” It’s absolutely brilliant, ‘cause it gives snapshots of fascinating people in history. I’ve got his other book here on the table, “Stalin, the Court of the Red Czar.” Now that is solid and very, very readable. But I wanted to use his short essay on Stalin to read this about the Second World War, because it helped me mention it without having to go into a lot of detail, and to remind you of a story that you all know so well.
“In 1939,” says Simon Sebag Montefiore, “faced with a resurgent Nazi Germany and distrusting the western democracies, Stalin put aside his anti-fascism and signed the Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler. Poland was partitioned between Germany and the USSR, and 28,000 Polish officers were murdered in the Katyn Forest on Stalin’s orders. Stalin also seized and terrorised the Baltic states and launched a disastrous war against Finland.” Remember that Finland and the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania had all been part of the Russian Empire pre-1917. Stalin ignored constant warnings that Hitler was planning to attack the USSR. The invasion came in June, 1941, and within days the Soviet armies were retreating. Well, he’s killed off the generals! “Stalin’s inept interference in military matters led to colossal losses, some 6 million soldiers.”
Well, there’s a various interpretations of what happened when he learnt of the Hitler’s invasion of Russia. One is that he couldn’t cope. He lost it for a few days. Others that he planned what he might do. I think he lost it. And when he came back, he wanted to run it all, Shades of Nicholas II. Shades of Nicola… No experience, like Nicholas II in the First World War. “It led to colossal losses, some 6 million soldiers in the first year of the war, 1941. But by late 1942 Stalin had finally learned to take advice,” unlike Nicholas II, “and his generals scored a decisive victory over the Germans at Stalingrad. This was the turning point in the war.” Not just the war against Russia, but in the war as a whole. Stalingrad was an extraordinary story that is.
Now, one of the questions we need to ask is why did the Russians fight so fiercely for Stalin? And the answer is, they did not fight for Stalin. They fought for Holy Mother Russia. Their land was invaded. They fought for their wives, for their children, for their parents, for the very idea of Russia itself. They did not fight for Stalin. The Russians have subsequently called the Second World War, the Patriot War. And that’s a very good description, because these were patriots fighting not for Stalin, but for Russia, a Holy Mother Russia. And that I think is a really important point to seize on.
So I’ve got a note here which says, “Stalin the monster.” Stalin the monster. And I’m using again, Simon Sebag Montefiore’s essay, because I can’t go into too much detail, but I’m using just some of the stuff that he wrote. And first of all, to share this little piece here if I can. Here we are. This is Trotsky, said this in 1936 about Stalin: “Stalin sought to strike not at the ideas of his opponent, but at his skull.” Isn’t that a horrendous statement. Stalin sought to strike not at the ideas of his opponent, but at his skull. This is Simon Sebag Montefiore writing. And he writes this, Stalin told Churchill with characteristic gallows humour, “One dead is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” Stalin, said Sebag Montefiore, had no illusions about his brutality. He said, quote, “The advantage of the Soviet model is that it solves problems quickly, by shedding blood.” 10 to 20 million died at his hands and 18 million passed through his Gulag concentration camps. And you might say, any fool can rule at least for a time, by blood.
To lighten the mood, because I find Stalin quite a difficult topic in some ways to talk about, 'cause it’s such a horror. When I was a principal, again, in Manchester a long, long time ago there, I needed to sort the budget out and everyone was complaining how hot it got in the afternoons and in the evenings, and particularly in the afternoons. And I decided that I would turn the heating off at one o'clock and put it on at six o'clock. And in doing so, I saved a great deal of money. And at a governor’s meeting, we had the people from the council who dealt with heating. And the chair of governors said to me, “I think we should congratulate you, Mr. Tyler, on making this saving and having absolutely no complaints in doing so. In fact, having letters of facts that you’ve done so.”
And the chap from the councils said, I’ll never forget it, said, “Well, chairman, any fool can turn the heating off.” And I thought, “Well, actually, if any fool can do it, why the hell isn’t it happening in every college and every school in Manchester?” Any fool can rule by blood and fear. But there’s an end to that. There’s always an end to that. It doesn’t ever continue historically. How long it takes, who can tell? 100 years. In most of our lives, Soviet Union was a very real presence, and we couldn’t really conceive for most of our lives it ever ending. And then suddenly it’s all all over. In 1989-1990, it came down like the proverbial pack of cards. It was an extraordinary moment in history. But Stalin by then was well dead, 1953.
So he didn’t suffer the consequences of his rule. There was others who attempted to continue that up until Gorbachev. And then Gorbachev who tried to ameliorate it, and there could be no amelioration, and then Putin, who went the whole hog the other way, simply lost control. Another question, if Yeltsin hadn’t been a drunk, would it have worked out differently? I think it might. I have a lot of time for Yeltsin, but of course, Yeltsin made a classic mistake. He had totally underestimated the man that he put forward to succeed him, Putin. And unlike the story I was saying at the beginning, Yeltsin actually organised his succession very cleverly, so that there would be no opposition to Putin.
Now, Putin was his protege, his little man on the side, his little boy who would become his successor. And Yeltsin got it wrong, because Putin, Putin resembles Stalin more than he resembles Yeltsin. And isn’t it interesting because Putin begins as a member of the Communist Party, a member of the KGB in East Germany, then he ends up without a communist party, but he didn’t need it. Stalin is the authoritarian leader for whom communism was merely a means to keeping him in office. Putin has this form of corrupt capitalism, you might call it, to keep him in power, and ruthless with opponents. Think about Navalny at the moment. So really, Russia has never, never politically moved on. I see Putin in a direct line of relationship.
And you all know by now, many of you have been listening to me talk, you all know that I keep saying you don’t have to agree with me. It’s never my purpose to make you agree. Adult education, not like child education or university education. You are here to make your own minds up. I’m challenging you. You don’t have to agree. Think about it. Come to your own rational, adult decision and say, “Well, William was completely wrong,” but perhaps you might just say, “Yes, but William made me think about it in the first place. William told me to read that book, which totally undermines his argument, but he told me to read it.” That’s all I want to do, to get you to engage with this. And to remember that the past and the present are not disconnected. Are not disconnected. Putin and Stalin are linked.
Tell you another story. Shortly after the end of the USSR, a friend of mine, a Jewish friend of mine, set up a charity that was trying to help in Russia. And one of the things we were trying to do, I worked for her in the charity, was to help older people who’d been left stranded after the end of Marxism, abandoned. And we were putting money into things in Moscow and St. Petersburg that were trying to work with these folk in ways that would be very familiar in all the countries of those of you listening to this, activities for older people. And we had a contact in Russia who ran the programme, and she was asked by my friend, who’s sadly no longer with us, she was asked by Helena, Helena asked her and said, this was before Putin was elected the first time, “Who did you vote for?”, knowing that she’d been anti-communist, deeply anti-communist. And she said, “Well, I voted for Putin, of course.” And my friend said, “You voted for Putin? But how could you?” And her reply was, “He’s the czar, the only czar we have.”
And that, of course, is the problem with Russia. They’re always looking for a czar to tell them what to do. Looking for daddy, if you like. Now, one of the things that’s interesting about Stalin as an individual is this, and this is the death of his first wife, the wife he married in 1907 that died of typhus. And I wanted to read this, this is from Albert Marrin’s book on Stalin. It was really written for . It’s very good. He said this, “For the first time in his life, Stalin had lost someone he cared about deeply. It hurt. Although an atheist, he gave his wife a Christian burial out of respect for her faith. At the graveside, he pointed to the coffin and poured out his grief to his friend. He said, 'This creature used to suffer my stony heart. When she died, all my warm feelings for people died with her.’ Then he placed his hand on his heart and said, ‘It’s also desolate here. So unbelievably empty.’”
There are moments in all our lives where things have changed. I’ve been reading about Churchill recently, and Churchill talks about his marriage to Clemmie. And he said, this is at the end of his autobiography, “My Early Life.” And he says, “We then… I’d entered parliament, I became a minister, and I married Clemmie. And we walked happily on through life.” I bet she laughed. But Stalin did not. Stalin lost the one person who might have been able to keep him somewhere near normality. In terms of his sex life, he had large numbers of women. He married again, he might have married a third time, although that is in dispute. And a third time he might have married, interestingly enough, the wife was Jewish. And that leads me on, I mean, the second wide committed suicide ‘cause she couldn’t live with him anymore.
But this leads me to the question of Stalin and anti-Semitism. I’m quite reluctant, really, to talk much about that, because many of you will know more than I do. And it is a very complex issue. It’s complex, and that is explained by Simon Sebag Montefiore in his book “Stalin, the Court of the Red Czar.” Sebag Montefiore begins by explaining, there was a change of attitude by Stalin during his life, as there was a change in his attitude to life as a whole after the death of his first wife. So there was a change in his attitude after World War II. Before the war, Simon Sebag Montefiore argues that Stalin’s anti-Semitism was casual. Now, before people get very angry about word casual. We talk about casual racism in Britain and in America. Not thinking about it, just using it. And this was casual anti-Semitism.
As indeed there was casual anti-Semitism in Britain and in America. It was just part of being Russian, casual anti-German feelings, casual anti-Polish feelings expressed in jokes, and anti-Jewish feelings expressed in jokes. Now in our societies, casual anti-Semitism, casual racism, casual sexism is totally unacceptable. But we are talking about the 1920s, when in Britain, anti-Semitism was very strong in terms of casual anti-Semitism. This is what Simon Sebag Montefiore writes in his book on the Red Czar. He writes this, “Stalin was an anti-Semite by most definitions, but until after the war, it was more Russian mannerism than a dangerous obsession. He was never a biological racist like the Nazis.” He did not set out to exterminate the Jewish people. What he wanted was every Russian, Christian, Jew, Muslim, whatever, to accept communism and accept being Russian.
That’s what he wanted. Of course, many Jews were quite happy to accept communism. And the interesting thing is that many Jews were in positions of considerable power in what Simon Sebag Montefiore describes as the court of the Red Czar. There were many like Kaganovich who held senior positions, or Molotov, whose wife was Jewish, or Stalin and his Jewish mistress and child by her. Montefiore goes on to say this, “He enjoyed Jewish jokes, told by Pauker, himself a Jew. And he was amused when Beria called Kaganovich the Israelite. But he also enjoyed jokes about Armenians and Germans and shared the Russian loathing for Poles. Until the 1940s, Stalin was as Polonophobic, anti-Polish, as he was anti-Semitic.” Now that’s Simon Sebag Montefiore’s view, and that can’t be dismissed. He goes on to say, “He hated the intellectual Trotsky, a Jew, but had no problem with the cobbler Kaganovich. It’s not being a Jew that upsets Stalin before the war. It’s the attitudes that they might have towards Russia, and of course, intellectualism. Stalin being no intellectual.
Stalin was,” says Simon Sebag Montefiore, “sensitive like Kaganovich’s Judaism. At dinners Beria tried to bully Kaganovich into drinking more.” So he would let something out of the bag. But Stalin stopped him. 'Leave him alone,“ said Stalin. "Jews don’t know how to drink.” Once Stalin asked Kaganovich why he looked so miserable during Jewish jokes. “Take Mikoyan,” he said, “we laugh at Armenians, and Mikoyan is an Armenian, and he laughs too.” “You see, comrade Stalin,” said Kaganovich, “suffering has affected the Jewish character. So we’re like a mimosa flower. Touch it and it closes immediately.” “And it so happens,” says Montefiore, “that the mimosa, that super sensitive flower that flinches like an animal, is Stalin’s favourite flower. He never again allowed such jokes in front of Kaganovich.”
But it all changes. It changes with the creation of the state of Israel. And Stalin’s post-war anti-Semitism focuses on a anti-Israel view. And Simon Sebag Montefiore finally says this later in his book: “After 1945, there was a change. Stalin emerges are vicious and obsessional anti-Semite. Always supremely political, this was partly a pragmatic judgement . It matched his new Russian nationalism. The supremacy of America with its powerful Jewish community made his own Jews with their American connections, restored during the war, appear a disloyal fifth column. His suspicion of the Jews was another facet of his paranoia, an inferiority complex towards America, as well as a symptom of his fear,” says Montefiore, “of the new assertive confidence of his own victorious people. There’s also a way to control his old comrades, whose Jewish connection symbolised their new cosmopolitan confidence after victory. Equally, he loathed any people with mixed loyalties. He noticed the Holocaust had touched and awakened Soviet Jewry even among the magnates. His new anti-Semitism flowed from his own seething paranoia.”
So again, we come back to Stalin and his paranoia as being the major problem. Stalin died of a stroke in 1953. There are still considerable doubts about whether it was a natural death. Beria was accused of putting warfarin to dilute the blood in his wine for days before his death. Maybe that’s true. And I wondered how to end this talk this evening. And in the end, I wrote various, and those who know me well, know I spend a lot of time with the ends of talks, and I’ve rejected quite a few. And in the end, this is the Russian poet, Yevtushenko. And Yevtushenko wrote about Stalin’s tomb. Double, triple the guard around the tomb, so the Stalin may never get out, nor the past with Stalin. Nor the past with Stalin.
But, and here I am, a recent opinion poll carried out by an independent organisation in Russia called the Levada-Center, which is based in Moscow. The opinion poll showed that approximately 70% of Russians approve today of Stalin and his policies, 70%. Partly because the school curriculum has been twisted by Putin, partly because of the way that Putin controls the media and glorifies the Patriotic War. 70% of Russians approve of Stalin and his policies. Now, if that doesn’t keep you awake at night, I don’t know what does. Thanks for listening. We probably got some questions and points. Judi, shall I go into that?
- [Judi] Yes, just go ahead, William.
Q&A and Questions
- What have I got here? Let me see. Put my glasses on, better than I can read them.
No, I haven’t read the American historians two volumes. I’ll keep that and write it down, and be on my next book list.
I’m not going to talk about the war, 'cause it takes me down a road I didn’t particularly want to go tonight.
“My uncle and family fled from Lithuania to Russia when the Nazis marched into Lithuania. In the 1970s, we found out that they had survived. My mother and I started to send parcels that was a difficult and extremely expensive, parcels we sent from a Russian agency. Parcels had to weigh exactly 25 pounds for all new merchandise. If the weight was low, we could go to the front of the store to add to the weight with expensive Russian items. We paid the post duty and mailing. Each parcel costs about $500.”
Oh yes, I am familiar with the Robert Conquest’s limerick. I didn’t use it, but you’ve given it to me. I don’t know what your first name is and I can’t tell, but let me read it. Thank you for sending it.
There was a great Marxist called Lenin Who did two or three million men in, That’s a lot to have done in But where Lenin did one in That grand Marxist Stalin did ten in. That’s really… And it is good, because it emphasises the point I’m making about Stalinism not being Marxist Leninism. Lenin would have, in my view, Lenin would have matured, would have calmed down in a post-revolutionary Russia.
Yeah, people are saying some of the things that I’ve said. There’s a nice personal message. I like that.
Yeah, somebody’s mentioned the film “Burnt by the Sun.”
Oh, this is an interesting point. “So poor was Soviet agricultural policy and management, that a date will be set to collect the apple crop, for example, irrespective of the ripening process. So the picking began and vast quantities of agricultural produce went to waste.” Yeah, it is the failure of a Marxist system and a system in which there’s fear, in which local managers are not able to make the sensible decision.
“You say that collectivization never works, but certainly in the early days, the kibbutzim were very successful. Oh, well that’s interesting. Yes, I know. No, no, I think that’s a point I wouldn’t want to… Yeah. Now, you actually did the answer to why. You end by saying… It’s Anna. Sorry, I see your first name, Anna. Anna says, "The major difference between the kibbutz movement and the forced collectivization in the Soviet Union, they had a dream of building a homeland.” Yes, that’s what’s different. It’s completely different.
If the motivation is internal to an individual and that individual’s motivation is shared by others, in Russia the motivation was on top and was not shared by the people doing it. That is the distinction. I’m trying to think of any other example other than kibbutz. Certainly in the English Civil War period, there were people arguing for that who were called the Diggers who wanted land to be held communally. But they were all, as is in the kibbutz, they were all as individuals committed to it. They were crushed because it was too much of a threat to the state, whether the state was a monarchy or a republic in the 17th century. But the point you make is good, but enables us to see the other point as well, that it’s the fear and it’s the top-down.
No, Joseph Stalin isn’t Jewish. No. His family were Orthodox Russian. Russian Orthodox Christians.
Yes, “Chairman Mao repeated the errors of Stalin agricultural collectivization and forced industrialization by gathering all metal objects such as ploughs, for industrial development. Millions starved in China.” Yeah, I mean, you can look at the processes in Stalin’s Russia and look at places like Cambodia, North Korea, China, where the same mistakes are made. But we must remember that the same mistakes are made in democracies time and time again as well.
Oh, somebody, that’s nice, somebody says, “You’ve explained,” well, I’m glad I had, because I didn’t know I was, “you have explained wonderfully why the South African economy just limps along.”
No, I’ve not read the book about disinformation tactics. And you know, the older I get, the more worried I become. I’ve got so many books even around me here in my study, which I bought during the lockdown period that I absolutely must read. And there are so many books I haven’t read. I’m only alone in being so desperate in my mid-70s that there are so many things I should have read and hadn’t read. And I don’t read quickly. Having read law, lawyers read very slowly, and I seem to be one of the slowest.
Oh, I no, I won’t get involved with… What people concerned about the conservative party. Yes, as a lawyer, it’s attack on democracy. It’s attack on the rule of law. It’s attack on the judiciary. That’s what’s worrying. Not necessarily the private life. And in terms of populism, the flying of the flag, the building of this new ship, the painting of the aircraft. It’s all to many people and to me, who was a natural voter on the right of politics, but won’t vote because this is not a party, this is not the conservative party that I voted for in the past. Oh, that will annoy lots of people.
“You are talking so much rubbish.” Oh, I often do that, Paul. Don’t worry. Typical type of Corbin comment or even Stalin. “I’m a right winger. I’m not a left winger.” No, obviously. No, no. If you are British, talk to any lawyers you know about this government and they will explain to you why lawyers in particular are so deeply worried. No, he didn’t make…
Q: “Did Stalin make a distinction between Georgian and Russians?” A: No he didn’t.
Yes, tens of thousands starved to death in Ukraine when they could have lived, because the grain was exported, as I said, to raise money in the West. The Battle of Kharkov examples Stalin’s military inaptitude. And I think we don’t disagree on that.
Q: “Is Stalin popular in Russia today?” A: Well, I answered that question. Sadly, yes.
And you are right, totalitarianism can come from both the right and the left. At the moment, in terms of Europe and the West, the threat comes from the right and not from the left. That of course can change. But at the moment, liberal democracy is threatened from the right. Oh, that’s a good question from Bev.
Q: “How do you think political currents allude interfacing with the medical model, i.e are not withdrawn…” Sorry, I’ve lost it. “Are not withdrawn from public and certified as mentally ill?” A: Well, that’s a very good question. In a totalitarian regime, they simply will refuse to… What we need in a democracy is, the previous British labour foreign secretary David Owen, wrote a book not just dealing with British politicians, but with politicians from other countries, about fitness for office, fitness for office physically or fitness for office mentally. And we all know that Mrs. Woodrow Wilson was the first female president of the United States, because her husband became incapable through physical ill health. And she, when somebody came to the White House and said, “What does the president think of a paper that I handed in yesterday?” She said, “I’ll just go and talk to the president.” And she will just go to the next room, sit down for a few minutes, then come back and give her own opinion.
In Britain, there is the tragedy of Anthony Eden high on drugs at the time of Suez. What we need in modern democracies is regular physical and mental tests of our leaders, and for those to be made public. That issue was raised over Trump, for example. But it’s one that applies right across the board. And it’s something that we should seriously look at. If you were employed by one of these big international firms, like Shell or whatever, or even in public service, you are required often, if you’re in a senior position, to undergo a medical every year. And if that medical showed physically or mentally that you are unable to continue, you would be pensioned off. And so I totally agree, Bev, that that’s something that we should do.
William, I’m going to jump in and say thank you for an outstanding presentation. Thank you very, very much. We have another presentation in 40 minutes, in 45 minutes. Have Jeremy Rosen, who’s going to be talking about life after death. And that’s a big topic that we’re just discussing, Stalin, it’s astonishing that he’s so popular to this day.
Yes.
Incredible. What did you say? 72%.
70%. 70% in this poll.
70%. That’s horrific.
It is. But it’s how views are manipulated by the system, by Putin.
Yes. Yes. But it also indicates a thought process and a narrative, and the line of thinking and a vision.
It does.
That people are following, and it’s global.
Wendy, let me finish our session with the quotation from Orwell again.
[Wendy] Thank you.
And the quotation is from “1984.” Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past. Think of that in terms of Putin. Putin controls the present and controls the past, and in controlling the past, he controls the future. Frightening.
Well, let’s end on that note, and loads to think about. And I’d like to take you up on that. And I’d also like to suggest that we continue this theme of Stalin in a couple of weeks when you come back from your holiday. I spoke to Judi about that, you know, I just said, “Who talk about Stalin in one session, such a complex man, such a complex thought process and different tracks that were initiated and normalised?” So on that note, a million thanks for another brilliant presentation and loads to think about. Thank you very much.
Bye. Have a nice-
[Wendy] Bye-bye. Thank you.
Have a nice time with your family. By-bye!
Oh, thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks everybody for joining us. Thanks, Judes. Bye-bye.
[Judi] Thanks, Wendy. Bye-bye.