Bolshevik Doodles

After an avalanche of revelations in recent years about the intimate and public lives of the Bolshevik leaders, the well of historical information seemed to have gone dry. But all is not what it seems ... History has a few tricks up its sleeve ...

In 1995, the Fund (Collection) of Kliment Voroshilov of the Russian Center of Storage and Study of Documents was presented with some fresh new documents from Russia’s presidential archives, including three “top secret” files. These humble-looking files contained a real treasure – 532 drawings, the bulk of them political cartoons.

During long and numerous sessions of the Politburo, the Council of People’s Commissars, permanent and temporary commissions, etc., members of the Soviet nomenklatura relaxed by drawing satirical portraits of their comrades, along with somewhat vulgar scenes rendering the essence of the events taking place.

Most often, the cartoons were drawn in blue or red pencil – the tools for scribing visas and resolutions in Stalin’s time. Quick sketches and meticulously executed compositions were accompanied by short, explanatory notes stressing the humanity – at once naive and sinful – of these political players. The doodlings present a new, human aspect of Russian political history during the largely unknown period between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of mass repression.

Historians have managed to determine the authors of some of the drawings – namely, the well-known Soviet figures Nikolai Bukharin and Valery Mezhlauk, both of whom would be forced under Stalin’s bloodthirsty guillotine in the years ahead.

The drawings from the Voroshilov collection were made in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the last drawings was marked with a notorious date – March 3, 1937, the date of Stalin’s fateful speech to a Central Committee plenum that unleashed the Great Purge.

Not surprisingly, the beginning of the Great Purge did not create much of a mood for drawing. What is more, by this time, the power structures were also changing. The Politburo was liquidated as a regular body of political leadership, having been transformed into what was at best a toothless advisory body for Stalin.

In a sinister twist, the omnipresent NKVD (secret police) boss Lavrenty Beriya, who knew about People’s Defense Commissar Voroshilov’s penchant for collecting caricatures and cartoons, made sure to send him one of Mezhlauk’s confiscated drawings (perhaps with a view to replenishing  Voroshilov’s collection, perhaps to show how Beriya had everything under control) once the “people’s enemy” Mezhlauk had been arrested. “Klim,” – said Beriya’s note – “you will find enclosed V. Mezhlauk’s work. L. Beriya.”

Despite Beria’s implications, Voroshilov proved remarkable for surviving the entirety of the party purges in the 1930s and the subsequent annhilation of the Red Army officer corps. Close to Stalin from the early 1920s on, he was a Politburo member from 1926-1960. This despite the fact that he bungled the WWII defense of Leningrad and was actually dismissed from command for insubordination to Stalin. He went on to command the partisan forces for part of the war and to serve in a number of diplomatic and military capacities in the post-war period. He was a member of the group that sought to oust Khrushchev in 1957, but again proved his staying power through contrition and self-criticism. He was finally forced out of the halls of power in 1961 and died in 1969.

Some of these drawings can be attributed and dated exactly, and one can juxtapose them with historical dates and events chronicled in protocols and transcripts. If one considers the historical, cultural and political context, as well as the political atmosphere in which the cartoons and drawings were executed, a number of interesting and unexpected discoveries emerge. The penciled portraits of the speakers complement and enhance the protocols.

The collection features a number of unique series of drawings which stand alone. For example, the series entitled “All the Senate Commanders and City Bosses. 1923,” where we see the caricatured images of both the political elite and mid-level apparatchiks who would later take key positions in the power structure.

It is curious to note that Stalin’s portrait is missing from one cartoon. On the blank first sheet of the series, someone has made the eloquent inscription: “Place left vacant for the General [Secretary]. (For now!)”

One can only guess at whether Stalin’s portrait appeared later or whether the cartoonist was intending the post of general secretary for someone else.

In these cartoons, history appears in all its incompleteness and unpredictability, offering alternative paths of development that Soviet Russia might have traced. The past remains the same in terms of concrete events, but it acquires a new dimension. And, if Russia must, as it is said, part with its tragic past, it would be hard to find a more amusing pretext. RL