The Cave Meeting, or Zinoviev and Bukharin's attempt to limit Stalin's power, 1923

One odd thing about Stalin's rise to power is that as early as 1923 his future rivals were well aware of how dangerous his position of General Secretary was, now that Lenin was incapacitated--and that furthermore, they were in possession of Lenin's famous "remove Stalin" letter--yet they did nothing to remove him. But in all fairness, Zinoviev and Bukharin *did* devise a plan to limit Stalin's power. What killed it (apart from Trotsky's aloofness) was that Kamenev, who so often is grouped together with Zinoviev, would not go along with him and Bukharin on this matter. Here is some background from Stephen Kotkin's recent *Stalin, Volume One: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928*:

"On July 10, 1923, Zinoviev and Bukharin left Moscow for an extended holiday in Kislovodsk, the country's celebrated southern spa town of medicinal 'acidic waters' (kislye vody).204 Before departing, the pair had become privy to a sensational additional purported Lenin document, what was called 'Ilich's letter about the secretary.'

"This alleged dictation--perhaps the most momentous document of the entire regime's history until now--should have radicalized the political dynamic. But Zinoviev and Bukharin, in possession of knowledge of Lenin's ostensible instruction to find a way to remove Stalin as general secretary, did not do so. What the pair did do was to hold a 'cave meeting,' conspiratorially bringing together on the rock cliffs a few other officials who were also on holiday in Kislovodsk or nearby.210 Attendees, besides Zinoviev and Bukharin, were Grigory Yevdokimov, the trade union head in Petrograd and one of Zinoviev's closest allies; Mikhail Lashevich, the commander of the Siberian military and another close Zinoviev supporter; and Klim Voroshilov, a staunch Stalin supporter and the commander of the local North Caucasus military district headquartered in Rostov, who received a telegram to come to Kislovodsk, some 300 miles away.211 There were five 'cavemen' in total. An invitation had also gone to Mikhail Frunze, commander of the Ukraine and Crimea military district, who was on holiday at Zheleznovodsk, 25 miles away, but he arrived only the day after.212

"Trotsky also happened to be in Kislovodsk on holiday, but by all accounts he took no part in the cave meeting.213 He was, of course, no less unhappy than Zinoviev or Bukharin with how Stalin operated the party secretariat, but Trotsky, polemicizing against potential allies, holding himself at a distance, made it exceedingly difficult for anyone to ally with him. That summer he was mostly absorbed in writing..

http://nemaloknig.info/read-272699/?page=86

"Zinoviev would later explain that 'all the participants understood that the secretariat under Lenin was one thing, but the secretariat without Lenin altogether something else.' Bukharin, who may have spurred the cave process, proposed that they 'politicize' the secretariat, that is, turn it into a small politburo by adding (alongside Stalin) Zinoviev and Trotsky, or perhaps Trotsky and Kamenev, or Trotsky and Bukharin. 'There were great rows over this,' Zinoviev continued in his explanation, 'and many (myself included) considered that comrade Trotsky would work with us, and together we would succeed in creating a stable balance of power.'215

"A consolidated 'triumvirate' against Trotsky had yet to form in summer 1923; rather, the immediate concern generated by Lenin's three strokes was not Trotsky's power but Stalin's.

"Some days after the cave meeting, Sergo Orjonikidze, the head of the South Caucasus regional party committee in Tiflis, who had a previously scheduled trip to Berlin via Moscow for medical treatment, stopped over in Kislovodsk. Zinoviev briefed Orjonikidze, considered a Stalin loyalist, on the cave discussions and handed him a letter (dated July 29) for Stalin and Kamenev.216 Predictably, Stalin became infuriated. Zinoviev, in the meantime, had received two letters from Stalin (dated July 25 and 27) reporting various actions that Stalin, as general secretary, had taken.217 The most important, for Zinoviev, entailed Stalin's decision to countermand Zinoviev's Comintern directives for bolder actions by German Communists. This infuriated Zinoviev. On July 30, a white-hot Zinoviev dashed off an accusatory letter from Kislovodsk to Kamenev in Moscow, complaining of the latter's complicity in Stalin's peremptory, non-consultative decision making. 'You are in Moscow,' Zinoviev wrote. 'You have no small influence. And you are simply letting Stalin mock us.' Zinoviev cited various examples, then added, 'Did Stalin consult with anyone about these appointments? Not with us, of course.' Even at sessions of the Comintern, run by Zinoviev (and Bukharin), Stalin was dominant: 'Stalin arrives, glances about and decides. And Bukharin and I are 'dead bodies'--we are not asked anything.' Then Zinoviev delivered the punch line:

"We shall not tolerate this anymore. If the party is condemned to go through a period (prob. very brief) of Stalin's one-man-rule [edinoderzhavie], so be it. But at least I do not intend to cover up all this swinishness. In practice there is no 'triumvirate,' there is Stalin's dictatorship. Ilich was a thousand times correct." [obviously referring to Lenin's "remove Stalin" dictation]

"Zinoviev reminded Kamenev that 'you yourself said this more than once,' and appeared at once irate ('If you do not answer this letter, I will write no more') and hopeful: 'But what surprises me is that Voroshilov, Frunze, and Sergo think almost the same.' Here, however, Zinoviev may have been shaving the truth. Frunze's position on Stalin's exercise of power is unclear, though he could have tilted toward a 'balancing' strategy, while Orjonikidze, even though Stalin had just saved his political hide over the Georgian affair, was his own man and owed his high position in the party not only to Stalin but also to Lenin.219 But whatever the dispositions of Frunze and Orjonikidze, Voroshilov certainly opposed Zinoviev.220 Bukharin, meanwhile, wrote his own letter to Kamenev (on July 30), complaining that in his (Bukharin's) absence and without consultation, Stalin had named a temporary editorial collective to oversee Pravda. In fact, the politburo had appointed the Trotsky supporter Preobrazhensky as temporary editor, but he had resigned over the reintroduction of a vodka monopoly (the much-criticized tsarist practice of raising revenue from drunkenness), and this unexpected act compelled Stalin to take alternate temporary action, until Bukharin returned from holiday.221 Stalin's mundane power to act, in this instance and others, seems to have shocked both Bukharin and Zinoviev. They discovered that Stalin indeed had 'boundless power.'

"Zinoviev saw himself as behaving reasonably, given that there was dictation attributed to Lenin calling for Stalin's removal and Zinoviev was merely asking for Stalin to share power." He urged Stalin not to take the proposal personally. In a letter which Bukharin apparently drafted and Zinoviev signed (but was never sent to Stalin) he even argued that it was not Stalin's fault that the position of General Secretary had become so powerful: "There's no Ilich. The secretariat of the CENTRAL COMMITTEE, therefore, objectively (without evil intentions on your part) begins to play the role in the Central Committee that the secretariat plays in another provincial party organization, that is, in fact (not formally), it decides everything..."

(Bukharin, incidentally, had noted the power of the apparat even before Lenin had created the office of General Secretary. In 1921, he joked that "the history of humanity is divided into three periods: the matriarchate, the patriarchate, and the Secretariat." https://books.google.com/books?id=BUg-lWpZcsIC&pg=PA154 In other words, the power of provincial party secretaries, appointed from above, foreshadowed the future power of the General Secretary.)

Stalin's reaction can be imagined: "Orjonikidze wrote to Voroshilov (August 3, 1923) that Stalin viewed the Zinoviev-Bukharin proposals as akin to the appointment of 'political commissars' to watch over him, as if he were as untrustworthy as one of those former tsarist generals.."

http://nemaloknig.info/read-272699/?page=87#booktxt

Anyway, why was the proposal of Zinoviev and Bukharin to limit Stalin's power by turning the Secretariat itself into a collective body not adopted? (Instead, the Politburo adopted Stalin's proposal "to add two politburo members, Zinoviev and Trotsky, to the orgburo--not, as originally proposed, to the secretariat--as full members, along with two new candidate orgburo members, Ivan Korotkov (a regional party boss promoted to Moscow) and Bukharin (listed second). Predictably, Trotsky and Bukharin would never attend a single meeting of the labor-intensive orgburo; Zinoviev would claim he attended once or twice....")

"Part of the failure of the cave-meeting machinations derived from Trotsky's behavior. Bukharin would explain that 'I personally wanted to unify the biggest figures into an upper stratum of the Central Committee, namely Stalin, Trotsky and Zinoviev. . . . I tried with all my might to bring peace inside the party. . . . Comrade Zinoviev vacillated, and soon he took the position of a merciless attack against Trotsky, ruining this plan. Comrade Trotsky, for his part, did everything possible to aggravate relations.'246 True enough, but an even greater factor was Kamenev's position.247 Kamenev, because he ran meetings efficiently, developed a reputation for business-like practicality, but those who knew him better understood he was an inveterate intriguer. His thinking at this moment is undocumented. He knew Zinoviev well and perhaps did not have as high opinion of him as Zinoviev had of himself. Similarly, Kamenev had known Stalin a very long time, since the early 1900s, in Tiflis, and in 1917 the two had returned from Siberian exile to Petrograd together, then worked together. Kamenev certainly understood that Stalin was no angel--thin-skinned, two-faced, a nasty provocateur--but Kamenev clearly did not see Stalin as a *special* danger, for otherwise he would have joined the action against him. Here is an indicator that, in 1923 at least, the monstrous later Stalin either did not yet exist or was not visible to someone who worked with him very closely. On the contrary, Kamenev appears to have viewed Stalin as manageable. He told Orjonikidze that the complaints of Zinoviev and Bukharin were exaggerated...

"Zinoviev and Bukharin had misjudged Kamenev, who in turn misjudged Stalin, but Zinoviev's behavior is the grand mystery. Everyone understood that Zinoviev had designs on being number one.250 And in that summer of 1923, Krupskaya had handed him a letter from Lenin advising that they remove Stalin. But Zinoviev did no such thing. He had been afforded an opportunity to alter the course of history, and did not seize it. To be sure, the views of Rykov, Kalinin, and Tomsky, as well as Molotov, remained to consider; and Kamenev's siding with Stalin--even on a proposal well short of removal--had been a ghastly surprise for Zinoviev. Trotsky, moreover, had been his usual aloof self in connection with the admittedly inchoate feelers Zinoviev appears to have delivered via Bukharin. Nonetheless, Zinoviev could have forced the issue to remove Stalin from the pivotal position of general secretary by demanding that Lenin's will be enforced. He could have demanded a Central Committee plenum on the subject, even an extraordinary party congress. Instead, Zinoviev had called a meeting in a cave, then signed his name to some letters to Stalin Bukharin wrote, then did not even send one of them. Given the fact that Stalin's personality would prove to have momentous consequences, Zinoviev's failure to act upon his own blatant ambition and force the issue of Stalin's removal--even more than Kamenev's hesitation merely to curb some of Stalin's powers--was arguably the most consequential action (or inaction) by a politburo member after Lenin had become irreversibly sidelined."

http://nemaloknig.info/read-272699/?page=88#booktxt

So two questions here:

(1) What if Kamenev had supported the three-man Secretariat idea? I think it could probably have passed the Politburo; apart from the candidate member Molotov, there were few full-fledged "Stalinists" there in 1923, There were people who were generally aligned with Stalin but who might accept this kind of compromise, especially if the alternative were a fight over removing Stalin altogether. If Trotsky doesn't want to serve on the new collective secretariat, it could consist of Stalin, Zinoviev, and Bukharin. (In OTL, Trotsky as Kotkin writes "had been his usual aloof self in connection with the admittedly inchoate feelers Zinoviev appears to have delivered via Bukharin." But I am not sure he would actually reject serving on a revamped Secretariat.)

It could of course be argued that Stalin would dominate the revamped Secretariat just as in practice he dominated the allegedly collective leadership of the Party as a whole. A counterargument is that the *reason* he was able to dominate the "triumvirate" in the Party (Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev) was largely the very fact that he did have total control of the Secretariat, and he would not have that in this ATL. And yet, in practice, it does seem that one member of the three-member revamped Secretariat would become dominant, and that was most likely to be Stalin. First of all, he had already appointed many of his followers to major positions, and the other two secretaries would have to bury their differences to outvote him and replace those Stalinists--and it is hard to see Zinoviev and Trotsky, for example, agreeing on *who* should replace the Stalinists. Second, the most powerful Secretary is likely to be the one who is willing to do the boring and disagreeable administrative work that others shun--and Stalin had no peer in that respect, certainly not in Zinoviev, who was really more an agitator than anything else.

(2) Could Zinoviev have forced the issue of Lenin's Testament, as Kotkin suggests? I doubt it. With Kamenev opposed to even limiting Stalin's powers, an attempt to remove Stalin could not get a majority in the Politburo--and as for taking it to the Central Committee, even if it was not as totally a Stalin preserve as it would soon be, outright Stalinists combined with those who did not want to take action that drastic (and to wash the party's dirty linen in public by taking up the Lenin "Testament") would together almost certainly constitute a majority.

OTOH, pressing the issue--even without Kamenev's support--could not have turned out *worse* for Zinoviev than what actually happened...
 
Last edited:
The problem is that Kamenev and Zinoviev were very much afraid of a "Red Napoleon"(a famous general seizing the state) as a hypothetical. And Trotsky, who by all accounts was just plain unpleasant to the entire Politburo, was a very real example of the number one candidate for that fear. Stalin seemed like the guy to back. A tried-and-true Bolshevik whose policies were very balanced between the two wings of the party and who people just liked in general. Don't forget his considerable supporter base in the party.

Zinoviev was being cutthroat and paranoid with his distrust of Stalin, and while his paranoia turned out to be justified, he followed his head and allied with the number one candidate. Stalin's ascension wasn't a close-cut thing, he had broad support. Zinoviev would lose this battle alone and I bet Trotsky would take this as an opportunity to remove one of his worst rivals and get in on a different Triumvirate.
 
Top