Stalin

118. VKP (b) v rezoliutsiiakh (1933), II; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 631. During the plenum, Stalin angrily challenged a published account by Volodomyr Zatonsky concerning Lenin’s dealings with the Left SRs. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 735, l. 11–3, 15–7; Zatonskii, “Otryvki vospominanii,” 128–41. See also Zelenov, “Partiinyi kontrol’ za izdaniem sochinenii Lenina.”

119. Danilov and Ivnitskii, Dokumenty svidetel’stvuiut, 23. See also Avtorkhanov, Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party, 159–60.

120. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 157–74; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 643.

121. The CER linked the Soviet cities of Chita and Vladivostok as well as the Chinese cities of Manzhouli, Harbin, Tsitsihar, and Suifenho. Tang, Russian Policy, 193–241. In the Soviet consulate the Chinese found high-quality imitations of American and Japanese seals, evidently used to reseal letters that had been perlustrated and to mail secret Soviet correspondence under the guise of American or Japanese packages. Lensen, Damned Inheritance, 34 (citing FRUS, 1929, II: 196–7; FO, 317/13931–F2692, F-2960).

122. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, III/iii: 895–910. Relations were severed on Aug. 16, 1929. Kārlis Baumanis boasted to the Moscow province party conference (Sept. 1929) that the “Chinese aggression had woken up [Soviet] workers,” who pledged their readiness to take up arms rather than “surrender to the imperialists.” Pervaia moskovskaia konferentsiia VKP (b): stenpograficheskii otchet, 39, 42.

123. Sovetsko-kitaiskii konflikt 1929, 37, translated in Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, II: 391; Krasnoznamenyi Dal’nevostochnyi, 91; Slavinskii, Sovetskii Soiuz i Kitai, 176.

124. Stalin had asked Molotov to think about staging a revolutionary uprising to invade and occupy Harbin “and establish a revolutionary power (massacre the landlords, bring in the peasants, create soviets in the cities and towns).” Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 167–8 (Oct. 7, 1929); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 182.

125. Litvinov, Notes for a Journal, 113; Stephan, Russian Far East, 182. Soviet military intelligence had surmised in spring 1929 in an internal memorandum that “despite the strengthening activeness of anti-Soviet and fascist elements in Japan, Japanese policy regarding the USSR has had a more or less steady character.” Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, VII/i: 29–31.

126. Krivosheev, Grif sekretnosti sniat, 66.

127. Slavinskii, Sovetskii Soiuz i Kitai, 178–81; Erickson, Soviet High Command, 240–4; Dushen’kin, Proletarskii marshal, 98–100; Krasnoznamenyi Dal’nevostochnyi, 115–24. Blyukher was awarded a Buick automobile and use of the former Chinese consulate in Khabarovsk as his residence. Kondrat’ev, Marshal Bliukher, 271–3; Kartunova, Bliukher v Kitae, 12; Blyukher, “Vospominania o lichnom,” 81, 85.

128. Walker, War Nobody Knew, 328 (citing North China Daily News, Nov. 28, 1929), 334–5.

129. Degras, Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, II: 434–6; Antonov, “Nekotorye itogi konflikta”; Tang, Russian Policy, 242–67; Chuikov, “Konflikt na KVZhD.” See also Elleman, Emergence of Communist Power, 192–205; and Patrikeef, Russian Politics, 85.

130. The Japanese also noted the apparent indifference of the League of Nations to questions of Chinese sovereignty. Lensen, Damned Inheritance.

131. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 169–71; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 183–4.

132. Pravda, Dec. 11, 1929. See also Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 131, citing Kuibyshev, Brigady sotsializma: doklad na I Vsesoiuznom s”ezde udarnykh brigad (1930), 13–4, 17; Rezoliutsii i postanovlenii; and Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd udarnykh brigad.

133. Sutton, Western Technology, I: 347–8; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 192, citing Na agrarnom fronte, 1930, no. 1: 62–3, and RGAE, f. 7620, op. 1, d. 22, l. 65–1.

134. There would be 124 technical assistance contracts by 1931, compared with 17 contracts in 1927–28. Payments to foreign specialists perhaps consumed one-quarter of Soviet grain export revenues. By 1933, in an effort to save on scarce foreign currency, and with experience and (illegally) replicable blueprints now in hand, just 46 such contracts remained in force. Lewis, “Foreign Economic Relations,” 209–10. Foreign technical assistance was codified as the strategy for military industry on Dec. 5, 1929. Simonov, Voenno-promyshelnnyi kompleks SSSR, 78.

135. Tsarist gold reserves had been lost in war and revolution, and though the OGPU confiscated precious metals and foreign banknotes in private hands, this amounted to only 10 million rubles in a year. But the gold extraction industry would be revived, using prison labor. Aizenberg, Valiutnaia Sistema SSSR, 8, 63; Budnitskii, Den’gi russkoi emigratsii; Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 260 (APRF, f. 4,5 op. 1, d. 170, l. 62: Yagoda, Jan. 7, 1931).

136. Kennan, Russia and the West, 195.

137. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 85, d. 531–5; Stalin: Sbornik statei; Heizer, “Cult of Stalin,” 61, 80.

138. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 768, l. 131.

139. Stalin: sbornik statei; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 85, d. 531–5 (assembled congratulations). Stalin: sbornik statei, 2nd ed. (1930), 10, 44.

140. At this time the censor (Glavlit) laid down strict guidelines for the publication of Stalin photographs. Blium, Za kulisami, 128 (RGALI St. Petersburg, f. 31, op. 2, d. 40, l. 3).

141. Stalin, “Vsem organizatsiiam i tovarishcham, prislavshim privetstviia,” Pravda, Dec. 22, 1929. Sochineniia, XII: 140. See also Davies, Socialist Offensive, 118–9, 174–5.

142. RGAKFD, ed. khr. 6633, 6 parts. Some of the footage is raw (multiple takes being shot).

143. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 125 (citing arkhiv INO OGPU, f. 17548, d. 0292, t. 1, l. 106–7). The letter was among those later stolen with Trotsky’s archives by the NKVD. Following not one but two fires, Trotsky would return to his original rented villa on Prinkipo only in Oct. 1932. Cherniavskii, Lev Trotsky, 488–9.

144. Voroshilov, “Stalin i krasnaia armiia,” Izvestiia, Dec. 21, 1929, reprinted in Stalin: sbornik statei, and in Voroshilov, Lenin, Stalin, i krasnaia armiia, 41–61. Stalin himself crossed out the words that had offended him with red pencil: Voennye arkhivy Rossii, 77 (Voroshilov’s adjutant Khmelnitsky). Stalin had not been prominent in the press materials on the 9th anniversary of the Red Army’s founding (Feb. 23, 1927), but in the three-volume Civil War of 1918–1921, published in 1928–30, A. S. Bubnov wrote a forty-page introduction without mentioning Trotsky’s name while celebrating Stalin. Bubnov et al., Grazhdanskaia voina 1918–1921, III: 10. Avel Yenukidze, in a private birthday letter to Stalin (Dec. 30, 1929), shrewdly captured Stalin’s self-image while managing to quote Pushkin: Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 108–10 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 16, l. 4–6).

145. Émigré sources produced a blunter version. “Stalin is the only man we must obey, for fear of getting worse,” Pyatakov was said to have remarked privately. “Bukharin and Rykov deceive themselves in thinking that they would govern in Stalin’s place; Kaganovich and such would succeed him, and I cannot and will not obey Kaganovich.” Whether Pyatkaov actually said that, or Trotsky’s supporters reported it so, to please their master, the statement reflected a widespread sense that Stalin stood far above the members of his faction. Souvarine, Staline, 450 (no citation); Souvarine, Stalin, 489.

146. Popov further distinguished Stalin’s leadership by the claim that in difficult situations, he did not succumb to panic. Popov, “Partiia i vozhd’.” For a broader discussion, see Aron, Sociologie des sociétés industrielles.

147. Graziosi, “Stalin’s Anti-Worker ‘Workerism’ 1924–1931,” 253–4; “Iz perepiski A. M. Gor’kogo,” 183–8 (Nov. 27, 1929), translated in Political Archives of the Soviet Union, 1/2 (1990): 177–80.

148. As Syrtsov had put it, echoing Stalin, “in those places where we broke kulak resistance, a strong flow of grain immediately commenced, as if a cork had been removed.” XVI konferentsiia VKP (b), aprel’ 1929 goda, 322–3.

149. Rationing had emerged haphazardly and varied by locale. By Feb.–March 1930, towns were prioritized based upon size and significance. Local trading agencies welcomed rationing as a better way to obtain supplies they were tasked with getting into workers’ hands; factories welcomed rationing, too, lobbying to raise the status of their enterprises for better rations. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 289–300; Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I: 700–4.

150. Back at a July 4, 1929, politburo meeting, Molotov had proposed the formation of a USSR land commissariat, and Mykola Skyrnyk, the enlightenment commissar of Ukraine, immediately understood that this would put the country’s land under Union (not republic) ownership and objected, pointing out that such a move would violate the USSR constitution (in terms of republic prerogatives). Stalin, maneuvering, suggested the matter be postponed until a Central Committee plenum, and in the meantime, he prepared a fait accompli. Khlevniuk et al., Stenogrammy zasedanii politbiuro, III: 11.

151. Pravda, Jan. 27, 1930; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (9th ed.), V: 39–42, 72–5; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 771, l. 3; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 35–84 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1876, l. 8; f. 558, op. 11, d. 38, l. 1, 4, 7; RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 40, l. 5–5ob., 58–53, 174–69, 73–72, 41, 197–87, 211–06, 205, 218, 217–12, 220–220ob.; d. 50, l. 40–39; d. 49, l. 27–24), 85–6; Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, VII/ii: 114.

152. Sochineniia, XII: 141–72. To those who reasoned that given collectivization’s universal nature, kulak exclusion would be unnecessary, he replied, “dekulakization represents a component part of the establishment and development of collective farms,” adding that “when a head has been cut off, no one cries over the hairs” (170). See also Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, 487; Izvestiia, Feb. 2, 1930; and Pravda, April 3, 1930.

153. Solomon, “Rural Scholars,” 148 (quoting S. M. Dubrovsky). Hearsay has Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov showing up uninvited on New Year’s Eve 1929–30 at Stalin’s Kremlin apartment, carrying Georgian wine, with Stalin letting them in. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 206 (no citation); Medvedev, Nikolai Bukharin, 25 (no citation).

154. This was Nov. 20, 1929. On Nov. 28, Stalin received Kamenev; on Dec. 11, Zinoviev. Na prieme, 31. Trotsky soon warned in an article dated Feb. 13, 1930, of the danger of kulaks infiltrating collective farms, which might become “a new form of social and political disguise for the kulaks.” But his proposed solution was a vague “industrial and cultural revolution,” not mass deportation. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 1930, no. 9: 4–5. Tucker, who lacked access to these sources, nonetheless understood that “Stalin placed his own regime before a fait accompli.” Tucker, Stalin in Power, 145.

155. Pravda, Jan. 6, 1930; Kommunisticheskaia partiia sovetskogo soiuza, III: 667; Ivnitskii, “Istoriia podgotovki postanovleniia TsK VKP (b),” 265–88; RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 385, l. 1–5 (letter to Orjonikidze: Jan. 3, 1930); Vyltsan et al., “Nekotorye voprosy,” 13. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 177–80, 237. For a chronology, see Viola, “Collectivization in the Soviet Union,” 71.

156. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 103–4 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 21, l. 393–4).

157. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 108–9.

158. Sochineniia, XII: 173–4. Stalin was deferential to Gorky, explaining in a letter in Feb. 1930 to an editor about the republication in Gorky’s Collected Works of his essay about Lenin from 1925 that “if comrade Gorky expresses doubts or—more than that—does not agree to introduce the changes, . . . then it will be necessary to publish the articles without any changes.” Gorky refused to make the changes. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tseznura, 173–4 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 822, l. 7, 8–9), 183 (l. 10: Feb. 28, 1930), 183–4 (f. 4, op. 2, d. 474, l. 29–30: A. A. Strunov, 1957).

159. On Feb. 2, 1930, an OGPU secret instruction to the special departments watching over the Red Army instituted a registry of soldiers found to have connections to “kulak elements.” Soldiers observed in anti-Soviet activities were to be arrested. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 61; GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 1944, l. 17–25. Stalin also, yet again, dispatched grain plenipotentiaries. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 267.

160. He added of the brave new world of anti-market statization: “If we do not put an end to the flood of paperwork, it will drown us. We conquered Denikin and Yudenich, Wrangel and various counterrevolutionary scoundrels, but paper will asphyxiate us.” Ikonnikov, Sozdanie i deiatel’nost’, 212 (citing RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 27, l. 9).

161. A politburo decree of Jan. 30, 1930, divided the “kulaks” into three categories: “active counterrevolutionaries,” estimated at 60,000 people, were to be “sentenced” extrajudicially either to execution or internment in camps by “troikas” consisting of the local OGPU chief, provincial party boss, and local procurator; those in the second category, around 1.5 million people, were to be dispossessed and deported to uninhabited or sparsely inhabited places; and those in the third, some 2 million, were to be left in place, for now, but expropriated and not allowed to join collective farms. Danliov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 126–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 64–9). See also Viola, Best Sons, 216. Messing had asked Molotov to explain the party’s policy to the OGPU collegium on Jan. 30–31, 1930, but Stalin rejected the request: a Central Committee directive to the OGPU was not a matter of discussion. Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 259–61 (no citation); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 151–5 (TsA FSB, f. 2os., op. 8, d. 35, l. 2–8).

162. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 528. A volunteer’s employer was supposed to pay for transportation, top off the lower collective-farm wages, and accept the worker back in the future. Many factories resisted releasing their workers. Pravda, Dec. 30, 1929; Viola, Best Sons, 35, 41, 56–7.

163. In Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Siberia, the regime deployed OGPU border guards as well (both groups inflicted and took casualties). Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 405–9 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 329, l. 59–65: May 3, 1930). Officials had propagated the notion that collectivization would produce a “sharp improvement in the qualities of the human material available for the army.” But soon the army political directorate warned (Sept. 8, 1930) of “sharpening kulak moods in the army” and a flood of peasant letters “asking the soldiers ‘to defend the peasantry, to turn their guns against Soviet power.’” Gaevskii, “Kolkhoznoe stroitel’stvo”; Romano and Tarchova, L’Armata Rossa, 354–8 (RGVA, f. 9, op. 28, d. 161, l. 80–4). See also Tarkhova, “Krasnaia armiia,” 114. The families of soldiers would eventually be exempted from dekulakization. But the Red Army political administration would not pronounce the political atmosphere among the soldiery stable until the end of 1932 (a time of famine). By the end of 1933, discharges would rise to at least 37,000. Tarkhova, Krasnaia armiia, 131, 204; Zdanovich, Organy, 313–4 (citing TsA FSB, f. 66, op. 1 d. 208, l. 111), 314n134.

164. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 52 (citing GASO, f. 1148, op. 148 r/2, d. 65, l. 39).

165. The 23–29 age cohort accounted for just 28.6 percent of the industrial work force. Kuromiya, “Crisis of Proletarian Identity,” at 296n101, citing Politicheskii i trudovoi pod”em rabochego klassa SSSR, 1928–1929 gg. (Moscow, 1956), 545; Meyer, Sozialstruktur sowjetischer Industriearbeiter, 139.

166. Dubbed 25,000ers and “the best sons of the fatherland,” they were celebrated in the Vladimir Mayakovsky march “Onward 25!/Onward 25!” and Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel, Virgin Soil Upturned. Rabochaia gazeta, Jan. 28, 1930; Litsom k derevne, 1930, no. 4: 3; Viola, Best Sons, 65. A regime official would boast that more than 100,000 factory workers had taken part in forcing through regime policy in the countryside as of June 1930. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 66; Ivnitskii and Ezerskii, “Dvadtsatipiatitysiachniki i ikh rol,’” 462, 489; Selunskaia, Rabochie-dvadtsatipiatitysiachniki, 67, 76–7; Davies, Socialist Offensive, 168, 208, 210–11; Viola, Best Sons, 43. The mobilization officially ended on March 25, 1931: Savel’ev and Poskrebyshev, Direktivy VKP (b), 844.

167. Viola, Best Sons, 2 (citing Trud, Feb. 2, 1930).

168. Viola, Best Sons, 63 (citing GARF, f. 5470, op. 14, d. 204, l. 47).

169. Carr wrote that “policy determined class.” Carr, Socialism in One Country, I: 99.

170. “O meropriiatiiakh po ukrepleniiu sotsialisticheskogo pereustroistva sel’skogo khoziaistva v raionakh sploshnoi kollektivizatsii i po bor’be s kulachestvom: postanovlenie TsIK i SNK ot 1 fevralia 1930 g.”: http://www.defree.ru/publications/p01/p40.htm#0724.

171. Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 245. “All properties were seized, including women’s cut hair, children’s shirts, bowls for syringing, tea cups, spoons, and bed linen,” one report in Perm noted. “Confiscated kulak belongings were used as a dowry during some marriages.” Suslov, “‘Revolution from Above,’” citing PermGANI, f. 2, op. 7, d. 124, l. 112–5: not before March 2, 1930.

172. Hughes, “Capturing the Russian Peasantry,” 99, citing GANO corpus 2, f. 2, op. 2–1, d. 3506, l. 2; op. 2, d. 366, l. 189–98.

173. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/i: 746–63 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 53, l. 31–79: April 29, 1930), 764–71 (d. 655, l. 500–9: May 14, 1930).

174. Viola, Peasant Rebels, 117 (citing GARF, f. 5469, op. 9, d. 398, l. 23). In Smolensk province, as elsewhere, party members were warned “to stay away from the windows” at work, and not to walk village streets at night. Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 241.

175. One published account has only fifty 25,000ers being killed or seriously wounded, an improbably small number. Selunskaia, Rabochie-dvadtsatipiatitysiachniki, 145 (no citation).

176. Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 245.

177. Reports also were going to Stalin tracing speculation among European diplomats about a possible Soviet attack against a weak Romania. He wrote on the reports: “to my archive.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 184, l. 53–93; Khaustov et al., Glazami razvedki, 312–3 (l. 77–8: Feb. 11, 1930), 315–6 (l. 86–7: March 3, 1930).

178. For 1930, the OGPU would register 13,754 “group anti-Soviet protests” and 13,794 “terrorist acts,” about half against property. But a mere 176 actions were qualified as full-fledged “uprisings” and another 44 as involving arms. The police recorded around 5,000 cases of leaflets or anonymous declarations. These numbers are likely not comprehensive, but they indicate something less than civil war. Danilov, Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 787–808 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 679, l. 36–72 March 15, 1931). See also Viola, Peasant Rebels, 100–31. For the civil war argument, see Graziosi, Stalinism, 5–64. The secret police had recorded sixty-three riots and spontaneous localized rebellions over the two years 1926–27. Berelowitch and Danilov, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, I: 18 (TsA FSB, sekretno-politicheskii otdel OGPU, dokladnaia zapiska 1930: 32).

179. Vasil’ev, “Krest’iane vosstaniia” (quoting declassified local archives without citation); Vasil’ev and Viola, Kollektivizatsiia i krest’ianskoe soprotivlenie, 213–5 (TsGAOO Ukrainy, f. 1, op. 20, d. 3154, l. 39–40), 215–6 (l. 42–3), 21620 (l. 48–53); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 279, 324.

180. Sochinenii, XII: 188 (Feb. 9, 1930). On Soviet war fears, see also the telegram from Litvinov to Alexander Arosyev, Feb. 28, 1930: DVP SSSR, XIII: 118. Stalin had been cognizant not to aggravate tense relations with Poland (which had once ruled Ukraine), anxious that the Poles might take advantage of Soviet troubles. German-Soviet relations were on a knife’s edge as well. Ken and Rusapov, Zapadnoe prigranich’e, 173–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 53: Jan. 25, 1930), 538–43 (op. 162, d. 8, l. 114: March 11, 1930).

181. The article also took to task local officials who had lagged behind in implementing collectivization. Pravda, March 2, 1930; Izvestiia, March 2, 1930; Sochineniia, XII: 191–9. The politburo had voted to have Stalin “publish an article in the newspapers,” but it remains unclear whether he had discussed beforehand the specific content of his article and its self-exculpatory character. The politburo protocol was approved by telephone polling; Stalin’s signature on it is from a stamp. A secret report to Orjonikidze from Balytsky, OGPU chief in Ukraine, on Feb. 25, and another the next day from party officials in Kharkov to Molotov, detailed both massive peasant resistance and the idea that local officials provoked dangerous peasant rebellion in key border regions by improperly implementing collectivization, the very language Stalin would use in his article. Adibekov et al., Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b): povestki dnia zasedanii, II: 25; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 270 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 778, l. 5), 832–33n101 (APRF, f. 3, op. 30, d. 145, l. 138–44, 146–7). Syrtsov, who served on the key politburo commission on collective farms, in a speech to the Institute for Red Professors on Feb. 20, 1930, which was only published (March 15) after Stalin’s article, foreshadowed many of his themes: Bol’shevik, 1930, no. 5: 47, 51.

182. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1253–4 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 257, l. 18), 1257–8 (l. 15–7), 1258–1344 (d. 679, l. 181–319). Yagoda, a mere five days after Stalin’s “Dizzy” article, reported to him that many regions were engaged in “conciliatory approaches to the kulak . . . defense of the kulak.” Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 292–302 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 40, l. 6–17). Stalin met with Yagoda that same day. Na prieme, 32 (March 7, 1930).

183. In fact, Balytsky was in the field commanding the crackdown; Stalin on the phone had reached Balytsky’s deputy, Israel Leplyovsky. Vasil’ev and Viola, Kollektivizatsiia i krest’ianskoe soprotivlenie, 221–2 (TsGAOO Ukrainy, f. 1, op. 20, d. 3154, l. 11: March 19, 1930), 233 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/s, d. 125, l. 2–2ob.: no later than March 25, 1930).

184. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 10 (April 1930): 2–7.

185. Hindus, Red Bread, 147.

186. Davydenko et al., Put’ trudovykh pobed, 270–5; Viola, Peasant Rebels, 171–2 (citing RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 122, l. 104).

187. Storella and Sokolov, Voice of the People, 352 (RGAE, f. 7486s, op. 37, d. 102, l. 77–8). Bukharin, too, was undercut: he had just published yet another essay acknowledging the party was always right, while citing “kulak sabotage,” Pravda, Feb. 19, 1930. See also Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/i: 725, 730 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 92, l. 1–49).

188. Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/i: 722 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 92, l. 1–49: April 24, 1930). Stalin sent a secret circular (April 2, 1930) to party organizations asserting that had it not been for the tactical retreat—portrayed as fixing the incorrect implementation of the party line—“we would now have had a wave of peasant insurrections, a good half of our ‘lower’ functionaries would have been killed by the peasants, the spring sowing would have failed, the collective farm construction would have been beaten down, and our internal and external position would have been put under threat.” He also depicted his “Dizzy with Success” article as assigned to him by the Central Committee. On April 3, he felt compelled to publish a second article denying that he had written the first on his own initiative, calling it a directive of the Central Committee. Danilov and Ivnitskii, Dokumenty svidetel’stvuiut, 387–94. See also Zelenin, “Osushchestvlenie politiki,” 47n4.

189. The functionary added: “Our public was so stunned by the unexpectedness of it that they did not know to react.” “‘Nachalo razgroma profdzvisheniia’: dnevnik B. G. Kozeleva, 1927–1930 gg.,” 136–7. The diarist Boris Kozelev was accused of right deviationism and expelled from the party for two years when his diary was found. In Oct. 1930, he was mobilized to Magnitogorsk.

190. On April 21, the Siberian procuracy reported that 328 officials, mostly of rural soviets, had been sentenced to imprisonment or, in eleven cases, execution. One, in a drunken state, had murdered a peasant and raped his wife. Hughes, Stalinism in a Russian Province, 187–8 (citing GANO corpus 2, f. 2, op. 2, d. 465, l. 104–9; d. 459, l. 19–20, 32, 40), 190 (d. 460, l. 10, l. 31). In March 1930, the GPU district plenipotentiary in Western Siberia, F. G. Dobygin, had arrested eighty members of the soviet and party active and shot nine of them; he released kulaks from the county jail—they grabbed rifles and led an uprising of four hundred people. Danilov and Krasil’nikov, Spetspereselentsy v Zapadnoi Sibiri, 59 (GANO, f. p-1204, op. 1, d. 8, l. 68).

191. Kin’s original letter was dated April 2, 1930; Stalin’s response to him was returned as undeliverable, and on May 29, Tovstukha inquired of the Kherson party boss whether a Nikolai Kin existed—evidently Kin (whatever his real name) had given a false address. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tsenzura, 184–6 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 753, l. 114–7), 186 (l. 123), 188 (l. 121).

192. The idea of a rail link between Siberia and Russian Turkestan had first been bruited back in 1886; work had commenced in 1927. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I: 904–7; Payne, Stalin’s Railroad.

193. Izvestiia, April 27, 1930; Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 304–12 (quote at 304).

194. Another of the main arguments of Magnetic Mountain is that authoritarian state power is most effective when it is reproduced in people’s everyday lives and identities.

195. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 249–50.

196. Rassweiler, Generation of Power. The local factories slated to use the power supply made less progress. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 215.

197. The earliest reports of hunger seem to have emerged from the Russian republic in Jan. 1930, in the Volga Valley, Stalingrad county, where half the harvest failed, according to secret police reports. Peasants there formed groups to demand food from the authorities, who took no special actions, as people consumed food surrogates and children stopped going to school. Kondrashin, Golod v SSSR, I/i: 146 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 778, l. 394–8), 177–80 (d. 852, l. 296–302: July 26, 1930), 189–90 (d. 787, l. 992–3), 197–8 (op. 9, d. 546, l. 302–3: June 6, 1930), 198–9 (RGAE, op. 11, d. 17, l. 139–41: July 8, 1930).

198. Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/i: 228–30 (TsA FSB, f. 2m, op. 8, d. 834, l. 985–6), 230 (RGAE, f. 8043, op. 11, d. 17, l. 208–208ob.), 230–9 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 834, l. 1072–6).

199. Schoolteachers in Akmolinsk province of Kazakhstan deserted their schools en masse and signed on for work at the railroad, which had some food to distribute. Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/i: 207–8 (GA Kustanaiskoi obl. Respubliki Kazakhstan, f. 54–p, op. 1, d. 784, l. 14), 220–7 (TSA FSB, f. 2m, op. 8, d. 744, l. 570–6), 227–8 (l. 612). Kazakhstan went from 2 percent collectivization of households as of 1928 to 50 percent as of April 1, 1930, by official statistics. Kozybaev et al., Kollektivizatsiia v Kazakhstane, 4.

200. As trade negotiations with Britain continued over Soviet obligations for tsarist and Provisional Government debt, the Soviet envoy to London, Sokolnikov, was receiving wide praise in the British press as one Communist who kept his word. A Russian émigré periodical edited by Paul Miliukov, the former leader of the Constitutional Democrats, praised Sokolnikov as “the sole Soviet administrator who has demonstrated with deeds that he is capable of learning state affairs.” Mischievously, the article posed the question, “Stalin or Sokolnikov?” Miliukov, Poslednie novosti, May 16, 1930; see also Vozrozhdenie, May 17, 1930; Genis, “Upriamyi narkom s il’inki,” 235. Sokolnikov is said to have fretted to his wife, “Stalin will never forgive me this and will necessarily exact revenge.” Serebriakova, “Iz vospominanii,” at 242. On Sept. 17, 1930, Yaroslavsky wrote a denunciation to Orjonikidze (party Control Commission) of Sokolnikov’s alleged expenditure in London of 4,000 gold rubles on sleeping quarters for his mistress. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 134–5 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 267, l. 1–2). Sokolnikov would serve as envoy to Britain through Sept. 14, 1932. He was replaced by Jan Lachowiecki, from a Russified Polish family, who had taken the name Ivan Maisky, a confidant of Litvinov.

201. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 115 (no citation). “We are facing a combat situation here,” one soldier in Bashkiria noted, according to a spring 1930 police report with many such examples. “I see how they are driving the peasants, and my heart is broken. Nothing can be done, I’ll have to keep silent.” Sevost’ianov et al., “Sovershenno sekretno,” VIII/ii: 1219–24 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, por. 653, l. 305–7).

202. Ivnitskii, Sud’ba raskulachennykh, 24. See also Jasny, Socialized Agriculture, 308.

203. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 153.

204. Viola, Best Sons, 157–8. Peasants, too, were getting promoted by the hundreds of thousands into positions of rural authority, taking ad hoc study courses. Aruntiunian, Mekhanizatory sel’skogo khoziaistva SSSR.

205. Rozenfel’d, Dvadtsatipiatitysiachniki, 31, 158–9.

206. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 292, citing Sotsialisticheskoe zemleutsroitsvo, 1930, no. 3–4: 56–9. Individual peasants received the new land allocations last in line and in smaller allotments, which were less conveniently located and often marshy or infested, but they persevered.

207. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 160, citing Resheniia partii i pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam (1967), II: 196 (March 14, 1930). No single decree had introduced the NEP, and no single decree would abolish it—in fact, technically, NEP would be “transcended” in the Hegelian, dialectical sense.

208. Decisions on how to distribute income from the 1930 harvest would be made locally. There would be wide variation, but also a basic calculation such that collective farmers would receive compensation out of what remained after expenses and tax payments on a “per eater” basis, meaning farmers would get a portion of the harvest irrespective of how much work they had done, a disincentive to work harder. Davies noted that “perhaps the most remarkable feature of the spring of 1930 is that the sowing took place quite successfully in the kolkhozy even though the collective farmers were working on credit for an unknown amount of payment, often not knowing by which system they would be paid.” The original compensation idea—that collective farmers would be paid factory-style wages based on a piece rate system (in line with a vision of gigantic farms)—failed, and not only because cash was in short supply: a guaranteed wage promised to shift the financial burden of any crop failures to the state. Davies also shows that only in June 1930, by which time sowing had been completed, did the regime decide upon remuneration on the basis of “labor days,” a system that treated work accomplished as a dividend to be paid from what was left over from the collective farm’s income (in kind and money) after state deliveries and taxes. Record keeping remained sporadic, however. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 140, 140–67; S”ezdy sovetov Soiuza Sovetskikh SSR, III: 189.

209. Partiinoe khoziaistvo, 1930, no. 7–8: 8 (Wolf).

210. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 310, citing Sotsialisticheskoe zemledelie, June 3, 1930.

211. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 29 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 30), 41n17.

212. Trapeznikov, Kommunisticheskaia partiia, 38–9; Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 178–9; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 211–2, 218. Because some were later rehabilitated, or because incomplete figures were initially reported, sometimes the figure is reported as 130,000, including 14,000 who quit voluntarily: Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 1930, no. 10 (12): 14–9; Schapiro, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 435. Cf. Pravda, April 23, 1931. A comprehensive study of rural Communists in the RSFSR in 1929 had shown that one in four owned property worth more than 800 rubles, compared with one in six of the overall peasant population. Communist peasants were also more likely to employ hired labor. Gaister and Levin, “O sostave sel’partorganiztsii.”

213. Gill, Origins, 137; Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 420; Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 48; Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 132. Tsarist-era officials comprised 10 percent of the staff in commissariats, albeit a mere 2 percent had been ministers or high officials. This was after sweeping purges of the state apparatus. Izvestiia, Aug. 10, 1930.

214. Stalin also told the congress, “we are in favor of the state dying out, and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” He acknowledged the contradiction, but called it Marxist dialectics. In 1933, he would reiterate the point. Sochineniia, XIII: 211, 350. Engels had written in Anti-Dühring (1878) that “the interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself . . . The state is not ‘abolished,’ it withers away [es stirbt ab].” Engels, Unwälzung der Wissenschaft, 291–2.

215. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 17–57; Sochineniia, XII: 235–373. See also Davies, Socialist Offensive, 330–6. Stalin ridiculed “the complete absurdity of chatter about NEP being incompatible with an attack” on capitalist elements. Sochineniia, XII: 306–7. Select workers had been invited to deliver personal narratives to the congress, which became the first with no speeches against the leadership. Szamuely, “Elimination of Opposition.” Even after the opening of the archives, Szamuely’s article remains the most incisive on the problem of opposition to Stalin.

216. Shitts, Dnevnik, 195; Pavlova, Stalinizm, 68–9 (citing GARF, f. 1235, op. 133, d. 11, l. 28, 30). Shitts, born (1874) in Tambov, studied history with the medievalist P. Vinogradov at Moscow University, where he eventually got a position teaching Latin. In 1928 he became the editor of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. He would be arrested in 1933.

217. These words were omitted from Sochineniia, XII: 233, 234.

218. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 250–1, 372–5; Za industrializatsiiu, June 19, July 5, Oct. 8, 1930. On June 16, 1930, in his recognition of the newly opened Rostov Agricultural Engineering Works, Stalin also thanked “all those foreign specialists—engineers and technicians—who have helped.” Stikh, Zavod griadushchikh urozhaev, 22; Pravda, June 17, 1930.

219. Glan, Iakov Il’in, 235. See also Il’in, Bol’sheviki dolzhny ovladet’ tekhnikoi; Il’in, Liudi stalingradskogo traktornogo; and his incomplete posthumous novel Bol’shoi konveier (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1934). Il’in (b. 1905) died in Dec. 1932. Margaret Bourke-White, the photographer, observed at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory how “one Russian is screwing in a tiny bolt and twenty other Russians are standing around watching him, talking it over, smoking cigarettes, arguing . . . They are like children marveling over new toys. More than that, they are religious fanatics worshipping before a new shrine.” Bourke-White, Eyes on Russia, 118–9.

220. Boris Sheboldayev remarked at the congress (June 29): “In many party organizations we have witnessed demonstrations, both of the most straightforward right-wing opportunist and of the ‘leftist’ Trotskyite type, that for sheer boldness and effrontery surpass anything seen even at the height of our struggle with the rights.” XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 135–6.

221. While Mikoyan ripped into the “right deviation,” Rudzutaks told the delegates the rightists had engaged in “direct slander of the party, direct slander of comrade Stalin.” XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 39–44. The exiled Trotsky wrote that “the plebiscite regime has been established conclusively,” without acknowledging the root cause. Trotsky, “Preliminary Comments on the Sixteenth Congress” [July 25, 1930], II: 335–6.

222. Bukharin had known Larina since she was four. She had grown up in her stepfather Yuri Larin’s apartment in the Metropole, which was visited by top party officials, including Stalin. Bukharin lived one floor below. On the Black Sea he was still involved with Alexandra Travina—a lover planted on him (it seems she had miraculously appeared in the same coupé on the overnight train from Moscow to Leningrad). Larina and Bukharin would marry in 1934. “‘No ia to znaiu, chto ty prav’: pis’mo N. I. Bukharina I. V. Stalinu iz vnutrennei tiur’my NKVD,” 49 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 301, l. 129–33).; Gregory, Politics, Murder, and Love, 57–60, 67–9, 72–4; Larina, This I Cannot Forget, 107–12.

223. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 142–8. Rykov was no coward: when criticized in person at a Urals party gathering in June 1930, he had responded forcefully and received an ovation.

224. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 29–30 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 31–2).

225. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 63; XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 26 iiunia–13 iiulia 1930 g., I: 122. Tomsky was eventually replaced by the Stalin favorite Nikolai Shvernik (b. 1888), whom the dictator had promoted from Leningrad in 1926 to the central apparatus, then assigned to the Urals. When Shvernik had reported in 1929 that his Urals party organization had failed to fulfill assigned targets, Stalin wrote back, “There are no grounds to complain, you did all you could.” Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 42 (citing RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 36, l. 103); Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 141–44.

226. Kirov, Izbrannye stat’i rechi, 539.

227. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 117–29 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 397, l. 2–7). Pyatakov had been inspired to set out his thoughts in writing by a conversation with Orjonikidze, as noted in a letter to the latter (129n4: l. 1, July 20). See also Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 187–9.

228. Vechernyi klub, Dec. 22, 1992 (interview with Poskryobyshev from 1964). The secretariat had a “bureau, which in March 1926 was replaced by a ‘secret department.’” RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, 85, 86. See also Rosenfeldt, “Special” World. Stalin had posted his former top aide, the Marxist scholar Ivan Tovstukha (b. 1889), who had only one lung and tuberculosis, to the Lenin Institute; another long-standing top aide, the high-strung Lev Mekhlis, who hankered after Tovstukha’s intellectual authority, browbeat Stalin into allowing him, finally, to take leave to bootstrap a Marxist education at the Institute of Red Professors. This opened the way for Poskryobyshev, who eventually became Stalin’s top aide. His wife was the sister of the wife of Trotsky’s son Lev Sedov. See also Bazhanov, Damnation of Stalin, 34–40.

229. Already by the next day he was said to be feeling fine. The drivers of the two vehicles went unpunished. Gosudarstvennaia okhrana Rossii, 47 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 107).

230. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 700, l. 4. OR l. 47.

231. Chigirin, Stalin, 79–83 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1482, l. 44-51).

232. Valedinskii, “Organizm Stalina vpolne zdorovyi,” 69. Kaganovich, too, got a new apartment, and was said to be “very satisfied” and “touched by Stalin’s attention.” Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 33 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 46–7). Kaganovich’s apartment was in the so-called children’s wing of the Grand Kremlin Palace, also known as the tsarevich’s quarters.

233. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 196–7; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 207–8.

234. The regime had rechristened the peasant commune, whose origins went back deep into the mists of ancient Russia, a “land society.” But in the RSFSR, a decree of July 30, 1930, stipulated that land societies were to be liquidated wherever 75 percent of households belonged to the new collective farms. (Unlike collective farms, the commune entailed working land individually while holding it in common.) Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 34–5; Davies, Socialist Offensive, 227–8; Atkinson, End of the Russian Land Commune, 369–70. In Ukraine, where communes did not predominate, they had been abolished by decree already in Jan. 1930.

235. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 250 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 16, 20). As of Oct. 1, 1930, the OGPU apparatus consisted of 22,180 employees. That included around 2,000 in the central apparatus, 5,067 on transport, 1,425 at the OGPU central school, 612 at the transport school, 97 at the Lubyanka inner prison, and 270 at the Butyrka prison; more than 10,000 were deployed in localities. Yagoda complained in a directive, however, that operatives preferred to remain in provincial towns and administrative centers, refusing to be deployed in counties or villages. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 34–5 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 183), 36n1 (Nov. 12, 1930).

236. Most other crops also did well. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 337–8, 419 (table 1).

237. Procurements were 6 million more than in 1929–30 (and double the total of 1928–29). The MTS were entrusted with scarce heavy equipment, which they leased to collective farms in exchange for part of the crop. Miller, One Hundred Thousand Tractors. At the end of 1930, the 158 machine tractor stations controlled more than 31,000 tractors but only about 200 trucks and 17 cars. Davies, Soviet Collective Farm, 31, citing Sotsialistichekoe zemledelie, Dec. 20, 1930.

238. Rakovski gave a similar incisive analysis from exile that was also published abroad. Braginskaia, “Pobeda plana i rekord besplannovosti”; Rakovski, “Na s”ezde i v strane”; Filtzer, Soviet Workers, 39–41. See also Lewin, “Disappearance of Planning.”

239. Filtzer, Soviet Workers, 37, citing Severenyi rabochii, April 15, 1930, and Za industrializatsiiu, July 20, 1930.

240. Filtzer, Soviet Workers, 38, 43.

241. He instructed Molotov (Aug. 6, 1930) to “pay attention to the Stalingrad and Leningrad [Putilov] tractor factories. Things are bad there.” Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 200–1, 201n8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 793, l. 3).

242. Stalin singled out by name Ivan Klimenko. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 202, 203n2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 793, l. 21–3, 7).

243. In Stalin’s absence the politburo had twice examined the South Caucasus party infighting; he demanded that a damning politburo decree be published in full. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 202, 203n3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 790, l. l. 8; d. 791, l. 23, 24: July 20, Aug. 3, 1930).

244. In 1929 and the first half of 1930, Kalinin’s central executive committee had received an astonishing 172,500 petitions of wrongful dekulakization (337,563 households would be dekulakized in 1930); Kalinin’s secretariat managed to adjudicate just 785 of them (ruling in the plaintiff’s favor 519 times). “Rol’ OGPU v raskulachivanii krest’ianskih khoziaistv”: http://helion-ltd.ru/ogpu-role.

245. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 7 (RGASPI, f. 85, recent acquisitions, d. 2, l. 1–11, 28–30); Khlevniuk, Khoziain, 31.

246. In a follow-up letter of Sept. 2, Stalin put Kalinin on the same plane as Rykov. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 198–202, 211–3; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 203–4, 210–1.

247. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 198–202; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 203–4. The next day, on the basis of Mikoyan’s reports on successful procurements, Stalin demanded still more exports, writing to Molotov, “Otherwise we risk being left without our new iron and steel and machine-building factories (Nizhny Novgorod auto factory, Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, etc.).” Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 200–1, 201n8 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 793, l. 3: Aug. 6, 1930).

248. Dohan, “Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky,” 615–6; Tracy, Agriculture in Western Europe, 127; Davies, Socialist Offensive, 107. See also Course and Phases of the World Economic Depression, 167ff.

249. Stalin also felt that Mikoyan was not coping as trade commissar (“a job that is difficult, if not impossible, for one person to handle”), and proposed he be removed or given an outstanding deputy, suggesting Arkady Rozenholz, a member of the Central Control Commission. The politburo formally appointed Rozengolts deputy trade commissar for foreign trade on Sept. 10. On Nov. 15, 1930, trade was redivided into two commissariats, and Rozenholz became commissar for foreign trade. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 202–6; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 204–6, 206n7 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 796, l. 9; d. 804, l. 6). Prices for other Soviet exports fell by 20 percent.