isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSAR 343
been right and to warn the party, in his will, that it ought not
to hold his non-Bolshevik past against Trotsky.
The two other men in the 'Bureau of the Central Committee'
were of quite different stuff. Sverdlov was Stalin's actual predecessor
as the party's General Secretary-nominally the office
had not yet been created. Like Stalin, he had spent all his
political life in the underground. He had the same gift for
organization, the same flair for handling men, the same empirical
mind, and the same firmness of character. 1 More happy
than Stalin in his role of organizer, cherishing no ambition to
shine as an authority in matters of doctrine, Sverdlov possessed,
however, if one may judge from his few writings and speeches,
an intellect broader, more cultivated and flexible than Stalin's;
and he was vastly more articulate. 2 It was he who, in Lenin's
absence, had introduced Trotsky to the inner life of the party,
had made him aufait with its military organization and facilitated
Trotsky's co-operation with the various grades of the Bolshevik
caucus. Sverdlov, we know, had also proposed Trotsky's
appointment as Commissar of Foreign Affairs. While Trotsky's
relations with Svcrdlov were those of an easy comradeship, his
first closer contacts with Stalin were quite different. He himself
wrote later that he was hardly aware of Stalin's existence
until after the October Revolution. 3 Yet Stalin had been the
editor of the party's paper and one of the most important
members of the Central Committee. If it was true that Trotsky
overlooked him, as it were, this would point not so much to the
unimportance of Stalin's role, which Trotsky was out to prove,
as to Trotsky's own lack of interest in the personal influences
that were at work in the party he had joined. Stalin was not a
spectacular personality. Reserved, inarticulate, at times vulgar,
he did not catch Trotsky's eye, because Trotsky was inclined to
look in other people for the qualities which distir.guished himself:
With more excuse he repeated a mistake he had once made
about Lenin: Stalin's 'greyness' concealed from him Stalin's
strength. He continued to treat his future rival with an unintentional
yet all the more hurtful haughtiness, even after Stalin
1
Sadoul mrntions that the Bolshrviks nicknam~d Svrrdlov 'laferme gueu/e', op.
cit., p. 266.
2
This emerges clt·arly from Svcrdlov's private correspondence published in
Pechal i Rewlutsia, vol. ii, 1924.
3
Trotsky, Stalin, pp. 242-3 and passim.