THE BOLSHEVIK TRADITION

RoBERT H. McNEAL is currently Chairman of the Department of His

tory of the Universi ty of Massachusetts at Amhers t. He received his
Ph.D. from Columbia Universi ty. His books and essays on the history
of the Communist Party of the Sovi et U n ion include a biography of
i
Lenin's wi fe, Bride o the Revolution. Krupskaya and Lenin, and a
three-volume edition of Stal in's works from the years 1934-1953. He i s
also general edi tor o f a four-vol ume work entitled Resolutions and
Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
THE
BOLSHEVIK
TRADITION
LENIN
STALIN
KHRUSHCHEV
BREZHNEV

Second Edition

Robert H. McNeal

!'a\
A SPECTRUM BOOK

PRENTICE-HALL, INC.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
LibTary of CongTeu Cataloging in PubUcation DOIIJ
McNEAL, RoBERT HATCH
The Bolshevik tradition.

(A Spectrum Book)
First ed. published in 1963 under title: The
Bolshevik tradition: Lenin, Stalin, Khruhchev.
Include bibliographical reference and index.
I. Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich, 187o-1924. 2. Stalin,
Ioif, 1879-1953. 3. Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich,
1894-1971. 4. Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906--
5. Russia-Politics and government-1917- 6. Com
munism-Russia. I. Title.
DK268.AIM3 1975 335.43'0947 74-20922
ISBN Q-13-{}79772-3
ISBN Q-13-{}79764-2 pbk.

@ 1975 by PRENTICE-HAIL, INC,

Englewood Cliffs, New jersey

A SPECTRUM BOOK

All righ ts reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by any means
without permission in writing from the publisher.

10 9 8 7 6 5

Printed in the United States of America

PRENTICE-HALL INTERNATIONAL, INC. (London)

PRENTICE-HALL OF AUSTRALIA PTY. LTD. (Sydney)
PRENTICE-HALL OF CANADA, LTD. (Toronto)
PRENTICE-HALL OF INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED (New Delhi)
PRENTICE-HALL OF }APAN, INC. (Tokyo)
CONTENTS

Preface ix

Part One LENIN

The Young Intelligent I

The Quest for a Party II

The Crucible of Revolution 25

Fai lure in Triumph 44

Lenin and the Bolshevik Tradi tion 67

Part Two STALIN

From Cottage to Kremlin 71

Preserving the Monolith 81

The Age of Stalin

The Myth and the Machine 98

The Age of Stalin

Terror and Utopia I07

The Age of Stalin

Security and Imperialism 119

Stalin and the Bolshevik Tradi tion 129

vii
viii CoNTENTS

Part Three KHRUSHCHEV

The Education of a Stalinist 132

The Triumph of the First Secretary 137

Khrushchev's Communism 153

Khrushchev and the Bolshevik Tradition 162

Part Four BREZHNEV

The Ungrateful Protege 164

Dekhrushchevization 169

The Primacy of the General Secretary 181

The Bolshevik Tradition in Perspective 192

Suggestions for Further Reading 196

Index 205
PREFACE

In the eleven years since the original publication of this book a good
deal of additional wri ting about the hi story of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union has appeared. It has been one of the most actively
researched fields of study in all of political science and hi story. This is
particularly true of the early years of Russian M arxism, generally true
of the pre-Stalin years of Soviet power, and signi ficantly less true of the
Stali n era. And, of course, there is a continuing stream of publication
on more or less current Soviet affairs. In the light of this substanti al
increment to the library of m ateri als on Russian Communism, I was
obliged to ask myself if it was desirable to reissue, with only minor
changes, the 1 963 edition of thi s book. I concl uded that it was desir
able, because the work is not i ntended as a comprehensive text but
rather as an extended argument concerni ng the problem of continuity
and change in this movement. It seems to me that the large volume of
new writing since 1 963, for all i ts many merits, does not dimi nish the
pertinence of the arguments advanced in this book. Questions of this
sort are never "settled," and grounds for disagreement with my opin
ions were equally present in 1 963 and at the present writi ng. All that
I would claim for the interpretations in this book is that they represent
a school of thought (not by any means my invention) that deserves a
heari ng as much, i f not more, today as it did in 1 963.
As for the increment of ten years to the history of Russi an Commu
nism since the fall of Khrushchev, I suggest that it fits very well into
the older tradi tion. In the early period of the supposedly transitional
Brezhnev-Kosygi n administration, there was cause to wonder about the
fate of authority in the Soviet poli tical system. Would one man be able
to establish substanti al personal control? Was the supremacy of the
party in the system in decline? For some time I suspected that my argu
ment was too schematic and failed to take into account the forces for
change in the Soviet Union. It now seems to me that these apprehen
sions were unnecessary, that the nature of the institution of the party
is such that the role of individual leadership within the party, and of
the party within the entire system, is fairly stable. The Brezhnev ad
ministration and its coming to full bloom has its share of peculiari ties,
 PREFACE

but I was impressed, in trying to write the new chapters of this book,
with how readily the main lines fell into place as an extension of the
previous six decades of the Bolshevik tradition.

Robert H. McNeal

Leverett, Massachusetts
March, 1974

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

In 1 952 the "All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks)" changed its

name to " Communist Party of the Soviet Union," j ust about half a cen
tury after the designation " Bolshevik" had come into use. Nonetheless,
the term remains serviceable today as an alternative to " Russian Com
munist," partly because there is no equally handy label, partly because
the claim of lineal descent from the first Bolshevik, Lenin, was never
more ardently stressed than at present. Moreover, the name " Bolshevik"
probably evokes a more vivid image in both friend and foe of the
movement Lenin set on foot.
This is a book about the Bolsheviks, not about Communists or
Marxists in general ; it is an attempt to interpret the history of Bolshe
vism . It is not, however, a general history of the Bolshevik Party, much
less of twentieth century Russia. Rather it traces the tradition or con
tinuing theme of the party through the careers of three principal pro
tagonists: Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev. The essay does not pretend
to literal chronological balance; the twenty-three years of Stalin's per
sonal ascendancy are treated as a comprehensible phase of the evolu
tion of the Bolshevik tradition, as are the eight months of the Revolu
tion of 1 9 1 7. Such an approach has its limitations, but it follows from
the Bolshevik view that their party is always characterized by a unique
degree of unity and continuity. This approach is also consistent with
an axiom of Bolshevism that the party has not usually acknowledged;
the party depends upon the leadership of an individual dictator.
Although this essay makes considerable use of primary sources on the
history of Bolshevism, it could not have been written without the sub
stantial body of secondary scholarly works in this field, and it is a
pleasure to acknowledge my debt to the authors of many of the works
listed in the bibliography appended to this book.
It is a pleasure to thank my friend, Professor Warren Lerner, for
reading the manuscript; its shortcomings, of course, remain mine.
Preface xi

I am happy to acknowledge the kind penni ssion of Professor D i m i tri

von Mohrenschi ldt, edi tor o f The Russian Review, to use the recollec
tions of N. Valentinov as quoted in Chapter II of this book. T h i s mate
rial first appeared in Engl ish in The Russian Review, J u ly, 1 954 (Vol.
1 3 , no. 3) as an excerpt from Mr. Valentinov's book Vstrechi s Leninym
(New York : Chek.hov Publi sh ing House, 1 954).