Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

by Stephen Kotkin

But during these years, his power was gravely threatened by a sheet of paper calling for his removal. Volodicheva’s and Fotiyeva’s memoirs, composed after Stalin’s death (for obvious reasons), contain a number of implausible or outright impossible details. Lenin’s doctors also never clarified the origins of the dictation.318 Krupskaya, as far as the record indicates, never publicly explained the specific circumstances of the dictation’s generation. Molotov would recall that “Krupskaya had a big grudge against Stalin. But he had a grudge against her, too, because Lenin’s signature to his Testament was supposedly affixed under Krupskaya’s influence. Or so Stalin believed.”319 This was an odd formulation because the dictation lacks Lenin’s signature, but it indicated that Stalin believed Krupskaya was complicit in the content, and possibly even the very existence, of the documents.