the position of Secretary General. The delegates declared themselves in favor of retaining Stalin in this post, hoping that he would heed the critical remarks of Vladimir Ilyich and would be able to overcome the defects which caused Lenin serious anxiety.
Comrades! The Party Congress should become acquainted with two new documents, which confirm Stalin's character as already outlined by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in his "testament." These documents are a letter from Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya to [Leo B.] Kamenev, who was at that time head of the Political Bureau, and a personal letter from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to Stalin.
I will now read these documents:
"Lev Borisovich![1]
"Because of a short letter which I had written in words dictated to me by Vladimir Ilyich by permission of the doctors, Stalin allowed himself yesterday an unusually rude outburst directed at me. This is not my first day in the party. During all these 30 years I have never heard from any comrade one
- ↑ This letter has first come to light now. It has never before been mentioned in the literature of this field. It sheds considerable light on Stalin's real relations with Lenin in the last months of the latter's life. It shows that Stalin started baiting Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, immediately after Lenin suffered his second stroke (December 16, 1922) and systematically continued doing so right up to Lenin's death.
Lenin at this time was forbidden by his doctors to concern himself with politics or even to read the newspapers. He refused to abide by this ban, and said that not receiving current Party news disturbed him more than receiving it. The doctors gave in and set up an appropriate reading schedule for Lenin, but Stalin continued to conceal from him important information about those Party matters which most troubled him, specifically the nationalities policy and the preparations for the 13th Party Congress.
Lenin, understanding that such concealment was part of Stalin's campaign to seize power, asked Krupskaya to keep him abreast of everything that was happening. In her attempts to obtain this information, however, Krupskaya often encountered rude and even insulting treatment from Stalin, although the latter knew that his behavior was being reported to Lenin, on whom it made a very painful impression.
To appraise Stalin's motives, one must remember that he possessed extraordinary self-restraint, knew how to conceal his true feelings when necessary, and could skilfully play whatever role he had decided to assume. If, nevertheless, Stalin was rude toward Krupskaya, knowing that this upset Lenin and might bring on another stroke, he did so deliberately.
Since the fall of 1922, before Lenin's second stroke, the latter's relations with Stalin had become so strained that Stalin well knew that Lenin's recovery and return to active work would mean the end of Stalin's high-level political career—something Stalin was not prepared to tolerate. Stalin could have behaved toward Krupskaya the way he did in the period between Lenin's second and third strokes (December 16, 1922 to March 9, 1923) only if he had consciously resolved to employ this method of hastening Lenin's death.
