還原一個真實的斯大林

Can we ever understand the mind of a mass murderer and dictator?

我們能夠理解一個殺人如麻的劊子手和獨裁者的想法嗎？

The question was raised by Martin Amis at a recent FT event when talking about his latest novel on the Holocaust, The Zone of Interest. In the case of Hitler, Amis argued, it was near-impossible to grasp what lay behind the Nazi leader’s crimes. The killing of millions of innocents for no reason other than blind hatred hovers at the outer edges of – if not beyond – human comprehension. Amis referred to the writings of Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz, who was told by one camp guard: “Hier ist kein warum” (There is no why here). “[T]here is no rationality in the Nazi hatred; it is a hate that is not in us; it is outside man . . . ” Levi wrote.

最近在英國《金融時報》舉辦的一次活動中，馬丁•埃米斯(Martin Amis)在談及他關於納粹大屠殺的最新小說《利害之畿》(The Zone of Interest)時，提出了這個問題。埃米斯認爲，就希特勒而言，幾乎不可能理解是什麼使這位納粹頭子犯下諸多罪行。只因爲盲目的憎恨就屠殺數百萬無辜的人，這若非超出人類理解能力之外，也至少達到了人類理解能力的極限。埃米斯提到了奧斯維辛集中營(Auschwitz)倖存者普里莫•萊維(Primo Levi)的著作。集中營的一位看守曾告訴萊維：“這兒沒有爲什麼(Hier ist kein warum)”。萊維寫道，“納粹的憎恨沒有理性可言；這種憎恨不屬於人類的心靈；它已超出了人性的界限……”

That problem, however, becomes a lot more complex when dealing with the other mass-murdering tyrant of Europe’s 20th century: Stalin. Amis suggested that it was possible to understand Stalin’s actions, no matter how monstrous his regime may have been. His hatred was inside man.

然而，談及20世紀另一個手上沾滿鮮血的歐洲暴君斯大林(Stalin)，問題就變得複雜多了。埃米斯認爲，不論斯大林政權如何殘暴，理解斯大林的行爲還是可能的。他的憎恨並沒有脫離人的範疇。

Stephen Kotkin’s monumental biography of Stalin could be presented as Exhibit A for the Amis thesis. Arguably, Kotkin knows as much about Stalin as any historian: he has already written an important work on Stalinism viewed from the ground up and has taught Russian history at Princeton University for many years. It is a measure of Kotkin’s powers of research and explanation that Stalin’s decisions can almost always be understood within the framework of his ideology and the context of his times – at least during the early days of power covered by this first book in a projected three-volume biography. There was more often than not a Why in Stalin’s Russia.

斯蒂芬•科特金(Stephen Kotkin)這部規模宏大的傳記《斯大林》(Stalin)可以作爲埃米斯觀點的最佳佐證。可以說，科特金對斯大林的瞭解不輸給任何歷史學家：他已經寫過一本探究斯大林主義來龍去脈的重要著作，並且多年來一直在普林斯頓大學(Princeton University)教授俄羅斯歷史。歸功於科特金出色的研究和解釋能力，斯大林的所有抉擇幾乎都可以在他的意識形態框架下和他所處的時代背景下得到解釋——至少第一卷敘述的斯大林掌權早期是這樣（傳記計劃用三卷完成）。在斯大林主政下的蘇聯，事情在多數情況下是有原因可循的。

That is not to say that Stalin’s story is anything but fantastical: how a Georgian cobbler’s son born in an outpost of the Tsarist empire could help shatter the shackles of a 300-year dynasty, emerge as the supreme leader of one-sixth of the world’s landmass, and reshape the destiny of millions. Nor is it to deny the irrationality of the entire Leninist project: that violence, murder and mass repression are permissible today to build a more peaceful and just tomorrow. As Kotkin puts it, Stalin “intensified the insanity inherent in Leninism” – but his actions were mostly sanctified by that ideology.

這並不是說斯大林的人生算不上了不起：他出生於沙皇俄國邊緣地帶的格魯吉亞，父親是個鞋匠，而他居然推動俄羅斯擺脫了帝俄持續300年的桎梏，他自己成爲一個佔世界六分之一面積的國家的最高領袖，改寫了數百萬人的命運。本書也不是要否認整個列寧主義事業的不合理之處：現在的暴力、殺戮和大規模鎮壓是可以容許的，只要是爲了構建更和平、更公正的未來。正如科特金所寫的，斯大林“強化了列寧主義中固有的荒謬之處”，但這種意識形態卻基本上讓他的行爲神聖化了。

Soviet historians used to present their past as the onward march of vast, impersonal forces (albeit with some erroneous detours). But Kotkin, building on the recent western historiography of Russia, emphasises the role of accident in Stalin’s times and the primacy of human actors.

蘇聯歷史學家將過去的歷史描述成各種巨大的客觀力量推動的結果（儘管錯誤地走了一些彎路）。但科特金以近年來西方眼中的俄羅斯歷史爲基礎，強調斯大林時期一些偶然性事件的作用，認爲人是其中最重要的因素。

In this account, had Lenin and Trotsky been killed early in 1917 – in the same way that Germany’s Communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were assassinated in 1919 – there would have been no October revolution. “The Bolshevik putsch could have been prevented by a pair of bullets”, Kotkin writes. Had Stalin died of tuberculosis in the early 1920s then the Soviet Union would not have been brutally frogmarched through the collectivisation of agriculture and forced industrialisation.

從這個角度出發，如果列寧和托洛茨基(Trotsky)在1917年初，就像德國共產主義領袖卡爾•李卜克內西(Karl Liebknecht)和羅莎•盧森堡(Rosa Luxemburg)在1919年那樣遇刺身亡，十月革命(October revolution)就不會發生了。“兩顆子彈就可能阻止布爾什維克(Bolshevik)暴動，”科特金寫道。如果斯大林在20世紀20年代就死於結核病，那麼蘇聯就不會被野蠻地驅趕着被迫完成了農業集體化和工業化。

So much has been written about Stalin that one might doubt there is much new to say about the man. Library shelves groan with heavy tomes on the Russian revolutionary. But history, like science, advances one obituary at a time.

關於斯大林的著作如此之多，以至於我們可能會懷疑關於他的書已經寫不出多少新意。關於俄羅斯革命的大部頭著作汗牛充棟。但是和科學一樣，歷史也是隨着每次訃告的發表而一步步緩慢前進的。

Kotkin has burrowed deep into the archives that opened following the collapse of the Soviet Union and has absorbed much of the recent Russian research on Stalin. His book stretches to almost 1,000 pages; his compendious notes and index make up close to 20 per cent of the length. Describing his work as a marriage of biography and history, Kotkin subjects our previous understanding of Stalin to searing scrutiny and finds much of it wanting.

科特金深入挖掘了蘇聯解體後解封的檔案，並吸收了近年來俄羅斯有關斯大林的大部分研究成果。他這卷書將近1000頁，其中簡明的註解和索引幾乎佔到篇幅的20%。科特金稱自己的書是傳記和歷史著作的結合體，他將人們之前對斯大林的理解置於放大鏡下審視，發現大部分理解存在問題。

With a ferocious determination worthy of his subject, the author debunks many of the myths to have encrusted themselves around Stalin. First, Kotkin rubbishes the notion that Stalin was some kind of revolutionary superman, as later portrayed by Soviet propagandists. We learn all about Stalin’s human impulses and medical complaints, and his mass of personal contradictions. Stalin was “an uncanny fusion of zealous Marxist convictions and great-power sensibilities, of sociopathic tendencies and exceptional diligence and resolve”.

帶着和他筆下人物一樣的決絕，作者批駁了許多圍繞着斯大林的誤區。首先，一些人認爲斯大林是某種革命超人（正如後來蘇聯宣傳的那樣），而科特金稱這是胡說八道。在科特金的書中，我們看到了斯大林作爲人的衝動、病痛，和大量自我矛盾之處。斯大林身上“詭異地融合了狂熱的馬克思主義信仰、強烈的權力慾、反社會傾向、以及異乎常人的勤奮和毅力”。

Kotkin is equally dismissive of efforts to explain Stalin’s lust for power through cod psychology. Some historians have made much of the beatings that Stalin endured during his childhood, his early banditry and his sexual conquests. But Kotkin argues that Stalin’s childhood was no more traumatic than those of others of his time. When Stalin was born, the average lifespan for a Russian was just 30 years. His worldview was shaped more by the revolutionary mentality encapsulated by Sergei Nechaev: “Everything that allows the triumph of the revolution is moral.”

有人試圖通過僞心理學解釋斯大林的權力慾，科特金對這種解釋同樣不屑一顧。一些歷史學家在斯大林童年時期遭受的毒打、他早期的匪徒生涯以及他的風流韻事上面大做文章。但科特金認爲，斯大林童年時期遭受的痛苦和他的同時代人並無二致。斯大林出生時，俄羅斯人的平均壽命僅爲30年。斯大林的世界觀更大程度上是由謝爾蓋•涅恰耶夫(Sergei Nechaev)概括的革命思維所塑造的：“一切有利於革命取得勝利的事情都是道德的。”

Finally, and most substantively, Kotkin dismisses the Trotskyite theory that Stalin betrayed the revolution. In Kotkin’s view, Stalin was Lenin’s faithful pupil. One of the few constants in Stalin’s life was his faith in – and adherence to – Marxist-Leninist theory. A fellow prisoner in a Baku jail in 1908 described Stalin: “Looking at that low and small head, you had the feeling that if you pricked it, the whole of Karl Marx’s Capital would come hissing out of it like gas from a container.”

最後，也是最具實質意義的一點是，科特金駁斥了托洛茨基關於斯大林背叛了革命的理論。在科特金看來，斯大林是列寧忠誠的學生。斯大林一生中爲數不多的始終堅守的東西就是對馬列主義的信仰和忠誠。1908年與斯大林一同被關押在巴庫監獄的一名獄友曾這樣描述斯大林：“看着那低垂的小小的頭顱，你就會有一種感覺，如果用針刺一下，卡爾•馬克思(Karl Marx)的整部《資本論》(Capital)都會像瓦斯從瓦斯罐裏漏出來一樣，嘶嘶地從裏面跑出來。”

The disciple was true to his teacher. In Kotkin’s view, “Pitiless class warfare formed the core of Lenin’s thought.” Or, as Maxim Gorky wrote, “His [Lenin’s] love looked far ahead, through the mists of hatred.”

斯大林這個學生忠於他的老師。在科特金看來，“殘酷無情的階級鬥爭組成了列寧思想的核心”。或者就像馬克西姆•高爾基(Maxim Gorky)所寫的那樣，“他（列寧）的愛，穿透了仇恨的迷霧，望向遙遠的未來”。

A similar impulse was evident in Stalin’s decision in 1928 to attack Russia’s richer peasants – or kulaks – and collectivise agriculture. This action, which could only be explained within the “straitjacket of Communist ideology” according to Kotkin, led to the deaths of between 5m and 7m in a horrific famine. Had Stalin’s only concern been to amass personal power – as some have it – he would not have launched such a ruinous campaign. “Right through mass rebellion, mass starvation, cannibalism, the destruction of the country’s livestock, and unprecedented political destabilisation, Stalin did not flinch,” Kotkin writes. That tragic episode in Soviet history is the focus of Volume Two.

類似的衝動也明顯體現在斯大林在1928年作出的抉擇中：打擊富農並推行農業集體化。這個造成500萬到700萬人死於可怕大饑荒的舉動，在科特金看來，只能用“共產主義意識形態的思想桎梏”來解釋。如果斯大林像一些人那樣只顧謀權，他就不會發動這樣一場毀滅性的運動。“在大規模叛亂、大規模饑荒、人吃人現象、全國範圍的屠宰家畜潮、以及前所未有的政治不穩定面前，斯大林還是沒有退縮，”科特金寫道。蘇聯歷史上這悲劇的一幕是第二卷的重點。

So keen is Kotkin to explain the historical context in which Stalin rose to power that the main protagonist is – at times – strangely absent from the narrative in Volume One. But by the end of the book, Stalin has emerged as the dictator of the Kremlin and will doubtless dominate proceedings throughout the rest of this magnificent biography. This reviewer, at least, is already impatient to read the next two volumes for their author’s mastery of detail and the swagger of his judgments.

科特金急於解釋斯大林掌權過程中所處的歷史背景，以至於在第一卷中，斯大林本人有時會從敘述中消失，這顯得有些怪異。但在這卷書的末尾，斯大林已經成爲執掌克里姆林宮的獨裁者，毫無疑問將是這部宏偉傳記接下來敘述的主角。至少，作者駕輕就熟的細節把控和自信的論斷，已經讓筆者本人迫不及待地想要閱讀接下來的兩卷。