Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle (Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War) [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Oleg Khlevniuk's new work focuses on the tip of the
Soviet iceberg, on the Politburo in the 1930s - the crucial point when
Stalin was cementing his grip on power, when the political system slid
from oligarchy into dictatorship. It is a masterful, extremely readable tome
(bias alert: the book's translator is Nora Favorov, a regular translator for
Russian Life and Chtenia) that debunks theories about moderate vs.
conservative factionalism during this period, and uses access to previously
closed archives to provide incomparable insight into Kremlin court politics.
Khlevniuk shows that the top leaders did not have entrenched ideological
differences that crystallized into factions (i.e. conservatives and
liberals), but that their policy differences depended in larger part on
which institutions they headed and represented. In addition, he shows
that the Soviet Union was a true dictatorship by this era, that "there is no
sign of a single important decision taken in the 1930s that did not
belong to Stalin and certainly no sign of any that were taken against his
will." As reviewed in Russian Life

This is a fascinating study of the Soviet government in the 1930s. Khlevniuk presents evidence that refutes Khrushchev's claim that during the Stalin years there was always a split in the leadership, between the good guys, pre-eminently Khrushchev himself, and the bad guys.

So, as Khlevniuk writes, "New versions of events, countenanced from above, entered into circulation through a variety of channels. There were new accounts of meetings of high-level party functionaries, who purportedly were hatching plans during the 17th Party Congress to replace Stalin with Kirov as general secretary of the Central Committee; a new notion that Kirov was killed by order of Stalin, who saw in the Leningrad party secretary a political rival; a new version of the circumstances of Ordzhonikidze's death and allegations that it resulted from conflict with Stalin; and a new suggestion that Postyshev spoke out against repression during the February-March 1937 Central Committee plenum, among others.

"None of these accounts were backed up with documentary evidence. Even Khrushchev, who had the entire party archive at his disposal, preferred to rely on the recollections of old Bolsheviks returning from the camps. This did not faze historians. The complete inaccessibility of Soviet archives and the lack of candidness, to put it mildly, of Soviet political leaders were both taken for granted. Given the unavailability of hard evidence, for many historians the slightest hint in a speech by Khrushchev or in the official Soviet press took on the weight of fact. As a result, every scrap of evidence that there was conflict within the Politburo was stitched together into a confused patchwork in which it was hard to distinguish rumor from hard fact or opportunistic falsification from mistaken recollection."

Khlevniuk concludes, "Archival sources do not back up widely held beliefs about the reformist role of Kirov and his supporters within the Politburo. ... Historians have yet to offer a single solid piece of evidence to sustain or develop the hypothesis that Kirov was seen as an alternative to Stalin. Analogous conclusions can also be drawn in regard to other suppositions about a struggle within the Politburo between moderates and radicals."

Further, Khlevniuk presents much evidence that refutes claims that Stalin worked as a solitary dictator. For example, he cites Stalin's letter to Ordzhonikidze in September 1931, "I don't agree with you about Molotov. If he's giving you or VSNKh [Supreme Economic Council] a hard time, raise the matter in the PB [Politburo]. You know perfectly well that the PB will not let Molotov or anyone else persecute you or the VSNKh. In any event, you're just as much to blame as Molotov is. You called him a `scoundrel'. That can't be allowed in a comradely environment.

"... Do you really think that Molotov should be excluded from this ruling circle that has taken shape in the struggle against the Trotsky-Zinoviev and Bukharin-Rykov deviations? ... To isolate Molotov and scatter the ruling Bolshevik circle ... no, I won't go for that `business', however much that might upset you and however close our friendship might be.

"Of course Molotov has his faults, and I am aware of them. But who doesn't have faults? We're all rich in faults. We have to work and struggle together - there's plenty of work to go around. We have to respect one another and deal with one another."

And again, on 4 October, "We work together, come what may! The preservation of the unity and indivisibility of our ruling circle! Understood?"