Stalin's Letters to Molotov was published by Yale University, USA, in 1995. Edited by Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, and Oleg V. Khlevniuk, the letters cover the period between 1925 and 1936, a period in the former Soviet Union which saw the switch from the New Economic Policy to collectivisation of farming and Stalin's great leap forward in industrialisation.

The book contains 276 pages, with a 63 page introduction by Lars T. Lih, which covers several themes, one of which is under the heading: Stalin's Antibureaucrat Scenario and deals with Stalin's views regarding the question of the soviet bureaucracy.

Lars T. Lih is described in the foreword as a specialist on the 1920s of Soviet history, who has the view that Stalin's letters to Molotov throw new light on how Stalin went about running the state.

Scholarly bourgeois writings on Stalin are not to be confused with the more crude, openly anti-Communist propaganda works, even if they share some similarities with the latter, and Lih's introduction certainly falls within the former category. In fact, this is so much so, that even the anti-Stalinist biographer of Stalin, R. Tucker, who provides the foreword to the book, argues and seems to agree with Lih's "reinterpretation" of Stalin on the basis of the letters, that Stalin "was neither the mediocrity that an old stereotype made him out to be, nor just a political boss and machine politician who rose to power by exploiting the authority to make appointments that he possessed as the party's central committee general secretary. Not that placement and replacement of cadres was a matter of small concern to him. But he was indefatigable in his striving to function as a leader". (P.10)

This view is nothing new. Most of the serious bourgeois scholars on the subject reject the "mediocrity" view of Stalin, first promulgated by his rival, Trotsky. In his foreword Tucker depicts Stalin as someone motivated by one desire only, supreme power, a view which, in my understanding, is actually the opposite to the argument Lih is trying to establish. Where for Lih, Stalin has to share the responsibilities of leadership with the other leaders in the party, Tucker's view of Stalin is that he was solely interested in his own personal power.

Lih argues from the letters that Stalin's intense involvement in the affairs of other countries belies the image of an isolationist leader interested only in 'socialism in one country'.This isolationist image was another view cultivated by Trotsky. Lih writes that "The letters show that Stalin did not make a rigid distinction between the interest of world revolution and the interest of the Soviet State. Both concerns are continually present in his outlook". (P.5-6)

Lih argues that the letters "give us an unparalleled look at Stalin as leader", (P. 9) And for Lih, Stalin cannot be properly understood outside of the context of the "antibureaucrat scenario", which goes to show that the more serious, more honest bourgeois scholarship is even superior to some crude leftist propaganda. We must ask the question, what was, in fact, Stalin's antibureaucrat scenario, and did Stalin originate it? For Lih, the antibureaucrat scenario was both an outlook and an approach to governing. For instance he writes: "My argument, in brief, is as follows: Stalin had a conscious and coherent approach to governing that I shall call the antibureaucrat scenario" (P.10)

For Lih the constructive side of the antibureaucrat scenario was that it allowed Stalin to use his undeniable leadership skills to get things done while maintaining politburo support. Lih explains that "the antibureaucrat scenario also defined governing as a continual struggle with class enemies of various types and hues". (P.10) In Lih's view, "the scenario thus gave expression to the angry and vindictive sides of Stalin's personality" (P.10)

Interestingly, Lih argues that Stalin's antibureaucrat scenario pushed him perilously close to destroying the administrative apparatus. This is interesting because, according to Trotsky, Stalin's essential role was the defence of the bureaucracy. For Lih the details of the antibureaucrat scenario "can be found in Stalin's published speeches; the letters to Molotov reveal how the scenario guided him in his day-to-day work" (P.10). Lib argues that Stalin followed Lenin in recognising two important task of leadership, which consisted in the "selection of officials" and "checking up on fulfilment" of policy directives. He writes that for Stalin, "The main threat here is Russia's low level of culture, which forces the worker-peasant state to rely on many 'class-alien elements' in its government bureaucracy. As a result vigilance is one of the basic duties of each party member". ( P.11)

Lih explains that "In order to understand the emotional power of this view, we have to recast it in the form of the dramatic anti-bureaucrat scenario that portrays well-intentioned but naive communists doing battle with sophisticated bureaucrats who try to fool and corrupt them"..

Lenin's first opening shots in the struggle against the bureaucratic malady led him to propose the establishment of the Workers and Peasants Inspection. A decree of 7th February, 1920, created the Peoples' Commissariat of Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, called Rabkrin for short, with the brief to combat the dysfunctional aspects of bureaucracy which the new communist regime had partly inherited from Tsarist times. Stalin was made head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection in 1920. Lenin placed great importance on Rabkrin; Lih argues that "Lenin had ambitious plans for the Worker-Peasant Inspection and saw it as an instrument of mass participation in government". (P. 12)

However, Rabkrin failed dismally in its designated role. The Workers' and Peasants' Inspection succumbed to the very disease which it had been established to reverse: i.e., the bureaucracy and intrigues in the state apparat. Nominally, Stalin was the head of Rabkrin when Lenin rounded on it, Stalin's supposed leadership of the Peoples' Commissariat of Workers' and Peasants' Inspection has been used by Trotskyists to discredit him. For instance, former Trotskyist P. Black (Blick -- Ed.), writes that "The three years that followed were for Stalin one long chapter of disaster and political degeneration, a process which culminated in his political disgrace in the estimation of Lenin, and finally, the ultimate ignominy of the severance of all relations between himself and the founder of the Bolshevik party" (R. Black, Stalinism in Britain, P.18)

Lenin had asked "Has Rabkrin carried out its task and done its duty? That is the main question. The reply to this must be negative". (Lenin, Vol. 33 Pp. 42-44) However, those who hurry to blame Stalin for the state of affairs in the Commissariat, should bear in mind Lars Lih's remark that "Although Stalin was nominally the head of the Workers-Peasant Inspection, his other duties during the civil war prevented him from giving much of his time to it", (P.12) R. Black tells us that "At the 11th Congress in the spring of 1922, Stalin was given added responsibility, that of General Secretary of the Party". (Black, Op. cit., P.22) And Lih fills in the picture when he explains that "Stalin left the Worker-Peasant Inspection in 1922 when he took over the post of General Secretary" (P.12)

In other words, no one can take seriously the claim that Stalin was responsible for the failures of this particular office, which was established to fight bureaucracy. Appointed to run this department in early 1920, Stalin was away on other duties. Stalin's leadership of the commissariat was titular only. Rabkrin showed that the Bolsheviks were beginning to grapple with the Problem of Bureaucracy, and Lih argues that in the Stalin scenario of class conflict, the 'bureaucracy', especially those at the top, were cast in the role of class enemies, in other words, the enemies of the people and of the revolution in state and party offices.

At the twelfth Party Congress in 1923, which was the last in Lenin's period, Stalin made a speech aimed at the bureaucrats, concerning Lenin's demand for an improvement of the machinery of government. Stalin had argued that Lenin "wanted to get to the point where the country contained not a single bigwig, no utter how highly placed, about which the man in the street could say 'that one is above control'." (P.13). Lih writes that "Years later, in the mid 1930s, a murderous version of this populist rhetoric dominated the mass media",.(P.13)

This is the period of the "red terror" of bourgeois political histories the purging of the party and state of class-alien elements, referred to as the enemies of the people. Trotsky was one of those who condemned the purges, instead of the mistakes made. He also misinterpreted the nature of the purges in the state, party, cultural organs and military organisations, in a manner which bolstered his own views about Stalin. In Trotsky's views and the views of his supporters the purges were right-wing. However, even in Lars Lih's theory of Stalin's antibureaucrat scenario, it is easy to see that essentially the purges were directed against the right. Before the series of purges in the 1930s, Stalin in a speech to the Central Committee Plenum, in April 1929 had said:

"Finally, the slogan of purging the Party. It would be absurd to think that it is possible to strengthen our Soviet and economic, trade union, and co-operative organisations. that it is possible to purge then of the evil of bureaucracy, without putting a fine edge on the Party itself. there can be no doubt that bureaucratic elements flourish not only in economic, co-operative, trade union, and Soviet organisations, but in the organisations of the Party itself. Since the Party is the controlling force of all these organisations, it is obvious that to purge the Party of undesirable elements is an essential condition for the reinvigoration and improvement of all the other working class organisations. Hence the slogan of purging the Party".

In any case, the view that Stalin operated mentally within an intellectual framework based on his antibureaucrat scenario, in which the bureaucrats are cast as the class enemies, is certainly a consensus reached in the serious bourgeois scholarly literature. Serious research establishes the main political orientation of the purges, i.e., that they were directed against the right. This includes all those who formed an anti-Stalin alliance with the rightists. This became known as the bloc of rights and Trotskyites. According to Lih, the rationale for Stalin's particular version of the anti-bureaucrat scenario was that the enemies of the revolution, all those favoured by the former arrangement of society, have, quoting Stalin, " 'wormed their way into our plants and factories, into our government offices and trading organisations, into our railway and water transport enterprises, and principally, into our collective farms'" (P.13).

Lih tells us that Stalin argued against those in the party leadership who "...thought that the class struggle was dying down, since the enemy had been defeated in open battle..." (P. 13) Lih argues that for Stalin, those who held this view had "...either degenerated or are two-faced; they must be driven out of the party and their smug philistine attitude replaced by revolutionary vigilance."(Pp.13-14) And, that Stalin's speeches on this matter "Give an idea of the emotions Stalin invested in the antibureaucrat scenario"(P.14).

This is a very interesting remark, which lends more weight to the view that opposition to bureaucracy, or at least to the negative sides of bureaucracy, was deep-seated and, therefore, fundamental to Stalin's general outlook. This is a view which Lih holds very firmly, although he is not a Marxist-Leninist. To speak of the negative sides of bureaucracy is also to show that Stalin's approach to bureaucracy was not one-sided and anarchistic, This is confirmed by Lih, because "In spite of an increase in the violence and obsessiveness of the rhetoric the fundamental outlook remains the same: the system is basically good; problems arise from hostile individuals within the system and their ability to fool otherwise dedicated revolutionaries; only a united leadership devoid of wavering can combat bureaucrats" (P.14)

Stalin was well aware of the problems of overcoming the negative side of bureaucracy. At the 15th Congress of the CPSU(B) in December, 1937, during the political report, Stalin observed "If we take into account that we have not less than 60,000 of the most active officials distributed among all sorts of economic, co-operative and state institutions, where they are fighting bureaucracy, it must be admitted that some of them, while fighting bureaucracy in those institutions, sometimes become infected with bureaucracy themselves and carry that infection into the Party organisation. And this is not our fault, comrades, but our misfortune, for the process will continue to a greater or lesser degree as long as the state exists". (J. V. Stalin, Vol. 10)

Returning to Stalin and the question of governance, what is clear to Lih is that "selection of officials", and "checking up on fulfilment" summed up Stalin's approach to government. That is, it was not enough to select the right cadres for the tasks, but it was also necessary to ensure that the directives of the centre were fulfilled, For instance, in letter No.70, Molotov is praised by Stalin for the results of his visit to the Donbass, a mining region, which he made in 1930, because, Stalin wrote, "Your work on the Donbass turned out well. You have achieved a sample of Leninist checking up on fulfilment. If it is required, let me congratulate you on your success" (P.221). In fact, toward the end of 1930 Stalin proposed the setting up of a fulfilment commission, arguing that. "… without such an authoritative and rapidly acting commission, we will not be able to break through the walls of bureaucratism and (improve) the slipshod performance of our bureaucracies…" (P.15). However, Lih tells us "..this commissariat was actually set up in late 1930, but nothing came of it". (P. 15) And Lih remarks that "According to Stalin's antibureaucrat scenario, however, class motivated hostility is the main reason bureaucrats do not follow directives" (P. 15), the conclusion being "If conscious or unconscious sabotage is the problem, repression is bound to be part of the solution" (P. 15).

Lih argues that selecting the right personnel went beyond choosing and promoting the most competent individual. There was, he says, a "moral dimension" involved. What was needed were officials who would regard the directives as their own and who could not be seduced by "bourgeois specialists". However, if such officials were not up to scratch, the moral dimension involved "could easily give rise to disappoint and vindictive anger" (P.16). Lih also examines the relation between the antibureaucrat scenario and Stalin the leader, concluding that "any politician trying to run an unwieldy bureaucracy is likely to develop some sort of antibureaucrat scenario". (P.16) He mentions Richard Neustadt's book, Presidential Power, which shows this process at work in the case of the U.S. Presidency. However, in Stalin's case "we have to add his position as top leader in a country undergoing a state-guided revolutionary transformation" (P.16). And also not forgetting that "Stalin had to run the country with officials whose trustworthiness was dubious and whose competence was perhaps even more dubious" (P.16).

For Lih, this led to the obsession with the shuffling of personal and the intense suspicion of appointees, was built into the situation, so that "The antibureaucrat scenario reflected these structural realities". (P.16) This is an important observation to make. It undermines the view, held by some writers, that the purges under Stalin were irrational. In the perspective favoured by Lih, the purges were the class-based exasperation against those who were constantly undermining the smooth running of the government apparat. Stalin's hostility to the bureaucrats, and therefore his antibureaucrat scenario was the inevitable outcome of the hostility of sections of the bureaucracy to the aims of socialism itself. There seems little correspondence between this reality and the fanciful views encouraged by Trotskyism that the essential relation between the Stalinist

leadership and the Soviet State bureaucracy was one of harmony, a view encouraged by Trotsky when be was trying to set himself up as the champion of the struggle against bureaucracy.

In fact, contrary to the view of Trotskyists, the bureaucracy, or rather parts of it, had to be, in a sense, terrorised into compliance with the essential goals of socialism. The notion of the 'Stalinist bureaucracy', although a useful propaganda device for anti-Stalin theorists on the left, was a myth created by Trotsky. The reality was that the bureaucracy and the bourgeois specialists were no more pro-Stalin than they had been pro-Lenin. Lih argues that Stalin "…did not create his particular version of the antibureaucrat scenario in a vacuum, and so we have to consider Stalin as a Bolshevik". (P.16) Stalin's views about bureaucracy originated in the early days of the revolution, This is because even before the October Revolution, and after, the Bolsheviks had blamed the sabotage of the economy on both the capitalists and the bureaucrats (even though before the revolution this was in the interest of the rise of the Bolshevik party). At a later stage the workers began to blame the "Soviet bourgeoisie" for their problems-a term that Stalin was to employ in the situation he faced later. Lih explains that "Stalin could plausibly claim Lenin's authority for his scenario, since Lenin also viewed public administration as a dramatic struggle against the class enemy. (P.16)

So Stalin's antibureaucrat scenario, or his particular version of it, was grounded in Bolshevik tradition, particularly in Lenin's view concerning the nefarious influence of bureaucrats on communists, thus "When Lenin insisted on the slogan "checking up on fulfilment" and the "selection of officials" in 1922, he emphasised that they were part of "the struggle between two irreconcilably hostile classes (that) appears to be going on in all government offices" (P.17). Clearly, Lenin definitely had an antibureaucrat scenario himself, taken over by Stalin, but there is not much in Lenin's post-revolutionary writings which goes beyond the understanding of bureaucracy in terms of routinism and bureaucratic red-tape although Lenin saw a link with the petty-bourgeois environment of the Soviet regime. Lenin's remark about the struggle between the two irreconcilably hostile classes that appears to be going on in the administrative organs, is very significant. Stalin was later to make this view his own.

The important word here is the phrase "appears", which implies that Lenin had not yet got to the heart of the matter, and arguably did not because the problem was still too vague, because at this stage bureaucracy had yet to consolidate itself significantly. Lih argues that "The antibureaucrat scenario was thus derived from the experience that all the Bolshevik leaders had lived through" (P.17). It was this shared experience, he argues, which gave legitimacy to Stalin's views. The antibureaucrat scenario was an important element when Stalin attempted to obtain support from the other members of the politburo: and also in the mobilisation of the party ranks against the bureaucrats.

"The letters show the use that Stalin made of the scenario whet exhorting his politburo colleagues". (P.17). Lih argues that "In spite of its links with Bolshevik political culture, the antibureaucrat scenario must also be considered from the point of view of Stalin as an individual", ( P.17)

This was because, according to Lih, one of the preoccupation of Stalin which singled him out from the others, was the problem of how to control the state. "Stalin's antibureaucrat scenario arose out of his reflections on that problem". (P.19) The antibureaucrat scenario viewed government as a drama in which there is an eternal battle between good intentions which are continually undermined by the ill-will of saboteurs. To Lars Lih, this is a view which would particularly recommend itself to someone like Stalin who was "predisposed to see the world in angry, punitive terms" (P.17). But since he has already argued that Stalin's response in terms of views and actions reflected structural realities, there seems to reason to labour this point. At the end of the 1920s, the abandonment of NEP, and the problems engendered by the general offensive, for industrialisation and collectivisation, the attempt to modernise the Soviet Union in the shortest time possible, certainly would have made the question of bureaucracy seem more urgent. Consequently, according to Lih "The intensity of the emotions he invested in the scenario rose to a murderous pitch" (P.17).

This is not surprising, since Yezhov, appointed head of the purge commission was notorious for his hatred of the bureaucrats. Stories are retold of how Yezhov took the precautionary measure of barricading himself at the NKVD before the mass purges started. The antibureaucrat scenario arose from real life, and not real life from the scenario, For Lih, the antibureaucrat scenario became an automatic response on the part of Stalin, because "…as soon as anything went wrong or otherwise irritated Stalin, the antibureaucrat scenario would come into play and Stalin would see his former comrades as infected by the class enemy, as a source of rot, and as an unclean spirit that had to be exercised" (P.59).

The question which Lih raises is whether Stalin's response to bureaucracy was highly individualised, and therefore unnecessary, because later when the Soviet political leadership faced the problems of bureaucratic dysfunction, they reacted in a way different from that of Stalin, thus "Leonid Brezhnev confronted the same structural tensions Stalin faced but reacted quite differently". (P.59)

But this was not surprising, since obviously the Soviet Union had changed. One of the reasons would be that, although certain features of the structural realities had remained essentially the same, the goals of the leadership was no longer the same. The revisionist agenda was not the same as Stalin's agenda, and Lih also argues that different people will interpret the same structural realities differently in their minds, and that for the source of Stalin's interpretation, individual psychology and political culture must be taken into account. In Lih's view "Stalin defined the problems he faced with the aid of the antibureaucrat scenario, he did not make this scenario up by himself: some version of the scenario, and even much of the imagery of infection, was canonical within Bolshevik political culture" ( p59).

So much so in fact that, even when Rykov, who was regarded as a rightist, found it necessary to defend specialists, "...he had to admit that there were bad ones requiring police attention..." (Pp. 59-60) And, although others in the leadership shared or understood Stalin's concern about the role of the bureaucrats in undermining the decisions of the government, Lih argues that "…not every Bolshevik would invest the scenario with the same emotional intensity and so we must look at Stalin's own psychological makeup" ( P. 60).

At this stage, the reader may wonder if Lars Lih is returning to the views of those bourgeois writers who, on the basis of the purges, put forward the "Stalin had gone mad" thesis. However, it seems fruitless to turn to Stalin's psychological makeup unless we include in this his political awareness. Perhaps it was lack of sufficient political awareness, in comparison to Stalin, which led his colleagues into not investing the antibureaucrat scenario with the same "emotional intensity" as Stalin.

Lih's view is that "The antibureaucrat scenario provides an essential key to understand Stalin's outlook". (P.60) On the one side was the party, on the other the bureaucrats and the bourgeois specialists, and for Stalin "The bureaucracy represented the petty-bourgeoisie and, as such, provided a source of infection for the party officials" (P.60). This meant that Stalin "…interpreted the frustrations of his job as the result of sabotage, and therefore lashed out with murderous rage" (P.60). In other words, according to Lih, guided by the antibureaucrat scenario of Bolshevik political culture, Stalin sought and obtained be backing of his close colleagues to 'lash' out at real or perceived enemies. Lit also explains that "The antibureaucrat scenario also formed a bridge between the Stalin of the NEP and the Stalin of the general offensive". (P.60) This was because in both periods Stalin fought against those who undermined the policy directives of the centre, but in the period of the general offensive, the scenario was invested with even more "emotional intensity", or, put in another way "The cognitive framework stayed pretty much the same; the emotional intensity became much fiercer" (P.61).

Thus for Lih, the antibureaucrat scenario unites three dimensions of Stalin's political leadership, i.e., Bolshevik political culture applied to a particular situation by a particular individual. Lih's view is that "most top executives will come up with some form of antibureaucrat scenario, but Stalin's version arose from the revolutionary experience of the Bolshevik party and its collective reflections on them". (P. 61) Perceiving the bureaucracy as a real or potential enemy, sabotaging the political or economic directives of the government was certainly not a view held by Stalin alone, and this explains why his colleagues to one degree or another found his arguments compelling enough. This in turn enabled him to mobilise sufficient support in the leadership and in the party, to strike against selected bureaucrats.

Lars Lih's interpretation of Stalin on the basis of the letters to Molotov leads him to the a theory of Stalin's antibureaucrat scenario, a view radically at odds with some more well-known conceptions of Stalin in certain left circles, and no doubt part of his conclusions we cannot deny, which is that "The picture of Stalin that emerges from the letters will have a profound effect on a number of scholarly debates". (P.61) Lih should have said bourgeois scholarly debate, since Marxist-Leninists should be familiar with Stalin as an anti-bureaucrat, although Stalin against the Soviet bureaucracy is a theme unfamiliar to large sections of the Left.