Stalin

448. On April 24, 1933, the Japanese ambassador to Moscow (Ota) inquired of Karakhan about purchasing the Chinese Eastern Railway, and on May 2 the Soviets agreed to negotiations quickly, but the Kwantung Army had no intention of buying what they could seize, the NKVD reported to Stalin. DVP SSSR, XVI: 831–2 n114; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 83, l. 39. Litvinov favored a sale, to take the wind out of the sails of the pro-war party in Tokyo, while Karakhan viewed such an act as an invitation to Japanese aggressors to increase their demands; Stalin backed Litvinov. Izvestiya, May 1 and 12, 1933; DVP SSSR, XIII: 736–42, XIV: 320 (May 7, 1931), 786–9n76, 533–5, 544–8; XV: 790–1n229, 794n245; XVI: 831–2n114, 115.

449. Japanese Interior Minister Goto Shinpei had characterized the United States as “a great hypocritical monster clothed in justice and humanity.” Tooze, Deluge, 143. Japan formally quit the League on March 27, 1933. Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations. Eight days before Japan withdrew, Mussolini announced a desire to create a “four-power pact” between Britain, France, Italy, and Germany to arbitrate European and world affairs in place of the League. It was classic nineteenth-century balance of power, imagining Italy as one of the powers. A diluted version amounting to nothing was signed in Rome on July 15, 1933. Jaurusch, Four Power Pact.

450. International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo: 1946–48), exhibit 193; Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy, 185.

451. Harris, “Encircled by Enemies,” 534 (citing RGVA, f. 9, op. 39/5c, l. 2–21, 76–82, 109–116).

452. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 185, l. 97–102.

453. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 791, l. 33–8; Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 235–6 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 17, l. 38–9: Karakhan to Yenukidze, June 4, 1933); DVP SSSR, XVI: 837–8.

454. Kuznetskii [pseudonym], “Kakov smysl tokiiskikh peregovorov o prodazhe KVZhD,” Bol’shevik, 1933, no. 14: 65–71.

455. The pair wrote disapprovingly that collective farm chairmen and county and district plenipotentiaries were being arrested “according to the rule: ‘first arrest, then figure it out.’” Their directive also set an upper limit of inmates for the Union, excluding labor camps and colonies, of 400,000—half the number then imprisoned. (Another 500,000 were in camps.) Afanas’ev et al., Istoria stalinskogo Gulaga, I: 609. Krylenko reported (July 19, 1933) the prison population to Stalin and Molotov as 397,284, so on paper the objective was met, in very short order. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 87 (citing GARF, f. R-5446, op. 15a, d. 1073, l. 35).

456. Goliakov, Sbornik dokumentov po istorii ugolovnogo zakonodatel’stva SSSR, 335–6 (May 8, 1933); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 746–50 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 981, l. 229–38); Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 63; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 185–8; Krasil’nikov, Serp i molokh, 94–107; Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, 54–82. In the military, too, arrests were being made by anyone. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 62. Stalin wrote in notes to himself (May 13, 1933): “(1) Who can arrest? (2) What to do about the former White military people in our economic organs? (3) decrease the prison population in a lawful way (by accelerating cassation) (what to do about quarantine) (accelerate the work of courts). (4) What to do about different groups of arrested people? (5) allow expulsion, deportation?” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 27, l. 69. See also Béládi and Krausz, Stalin, 169–70.

457. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 46, 140. “It is a small thing to win power, it is no small thing to drive out the capitalists,” Kaganovich told Moscow party activists on May 22, 1933, contrasting 1917 with the Stalin revolution. “What is necessary is to destroy the root from which capitalism grows.” Rees, Iron Lazar, 115 (citing Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 1933, no. 11: 10).

458. Dolot, Execution by Hunger, 155.

459. A similar fate sometimes met adult interlopers: one man had his ear cut off, then his fingers put in a door and smashed; he was still alive when the farmers threw him down a well, into which they dumped dirt. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 774 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 1047, l. 212–8: July 15, 1933).

460. The politburo discontinued grain exports in April 1933, after Mikoyan, among others, lobbied Stalin to reduce them. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 68 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 8, l. 5). Forestry exports (logs, lumber, plywood, cellulite, paper) in 1933 brought in nearly four times as much (119 million gold rubles), oil and petroleum products almost twice as much (60.4 million), and furs nearly as much (30.2 million) as grain. Total export revenues in 1933 were 388.7 million, versus 812.7 million in 1930. Even the 1933 level represented a high-water mark compared with what would follow (239.7 million in 1940). Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR, 1918–1966, 18–22.

461. Davies, “Soviet Military Expenditures,” 586–9, 593, 598.

462. Pravda, April 29, 1933; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (9th ed.), VI: 46–7; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 221–2; Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 201–4; Thorniley, Rise and Fall, 141. Stalin had Kaganovich chair the all-Union purge commission. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 910, l. 2. Initially, the purge targeted the provinces of Moscow, Leningrad, Urals, Donetsk, Odessa, Kiev, and Vinnitsa, as well as Belorussia and Eastern Siberia and Far Eastern regions. From May 15, 1934, it would be extended to the provinces of Gorky, Western Siberia, Azov-Black Sea, the North Caucasus, Crimea, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Chernigov, and Uzbekistan. Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, 1934, no. 14: 2. The seventeen remaining provinces or republics would undergo a purge during a Union-wide party card verification campaign in 1935. Iaroslavskii, “K chistke partii,” 18; and Iaroslavskii, “o chistke partii”; Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 52; Gill, Origins, 201–218; Getty, Origins of the Great Purges, 22, 38–48. Two previous “general” party purges had taken place (1921 and 1929).

463. Thorniley, Rise and Fall, 145–7; Armstrong, Politics of Totalitarianism, 9–10. As of Jan. 1934, the party would number 1.826 million members and 874,000 candidates, or 2.7 million total. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, 52.

464. Kolpakidi and Seriakov, Shchit i mech, 357–61 (Sept. 9, 1933). Back on Nov. 5, 1924, the politburo had formed a commission for political crimes; the commission forbade local organs from issuing sentences without Central Committee authorization. Mozokhin, VChK-OGPU, 130–31 (citing APRF, f. 3, op. 57, d. 73, l. 9, 23, 37, 112, 123–4, 128–9; d. 60, l. 11).

465. Katzenellenbaum, Russian Currency and Banking, 9.

466. Robbins, Famine in Russia; Simms, “Crop Failure of 1891”; Simms, “Economic Impact of the Russian Famine”; Miller, Economic Development, 49; Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 158.

467. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 412–5; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 67–77.

468. At least half a million Kazakhs resettled permanently outside the republic, including 200,000 beyond Soviet frontiers. Ohayon, La sedentarisation des Kazakhs, 264–8; Maksudov, “Migratsii v SSSR”; Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 463–6; Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 408 (citing RGAE, f. 1562, op. 329, d. 143: Jan. 14, 1937); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 420–7 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 1449, l. 106–18: July 20, 1932); Cameron, “Hungry Steppe.” See also Jasny, Socialized Agriculture, 323. The Soviet census of 1926 gave a Kazakh ASSR population of 6.2 million, of whom 3.6 million were ethnic Kazakh, some 2 million were Slavs, some 230,000 Uzbeks and 62,000 Uighurs. The 1939 census gave a figure of 1.321 million fewer ethnic Kazakhs. On this basis, one scholar estimated the catastrophe at 2 million lives lost. The local ethnic Ukrainian population in Kazakhstan declined from 859,000 to 658,000. Tatimov, Sotsial’naia obuslovlennost’ demograficheskikh protsessov, 122–4; Abylkhozhin et al., “Kazakhstanskaia tragediia,” 67. In the neighboring Kyrgyz autonomous republic, the catastrophe was less pronounced. Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 377–81.

469. Sel’skoe khoiziastvo SSSR, 517; Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 321–2; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 289. Even the data supplied to Kazakh party bosses severely underestimated the losses of human and animal life, partly because of fear of reporting the truth, and partly from logistical difficulties of surveying such a vast and sparsely populated territory. Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 468.

470. The regime managed to begin to rebuild Kazkah herds by allowing (in Sept. 1932) artel collective farms to be replaced by so-called TOZ (“association for the joint cultivation of land”), in which only some land was worked in common, and most implements and all animals, including even draft animals, were held by households. Aitiev and Ishmukhamedov, Torzhestvo leninskogo kooperativnogo plana, 36–7. On March 29, 1933, Mirzoyan asked Stalin to purchase more livestock from western China and release more food aid (16,500 tons) for the region, to allow him to sell significant nationalized livestock back to the Kazakh herders, and to stop Uzbekistan, Siberia, and the Volga from returning Kazakhs who fled. Aldazhumanov et al., Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia, 220–3 (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 5287, l. 33–8); Ăbdīraĭymūly et al., Golod v kazakhskoi stepi, 196–200 (at 199). The livestock losses were still hurting agricultural productivity in 1940. In the USSR as a whole, the cattle and sheep population did not recover to the 1914 level until the late 1950s. Hunter, “Soviet Agriculture”; Millar and Nove, “Debate on Collectivization.”

471. Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 424; Chamberlain, Russia’s Iron Age, 88–9; Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, 257. See also Bright-Holmes, Like It Was; Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, 118. Thomas Walker, in a series of five articles in 1935, asserted that not crop failure but “a planned process of extermination by Moscow, is what caused the terrific loss of life in this district in the past year.” Walker, “Children Starve.” Walker offered no evidence; he purported to be an eyewitness, but visited in 1934, after the mass famine had subsided. Fischer, “Heart’s Russian ‘Famine’”; Tottle, Fraud, Famine, and Fascism, 9. See also Mace, “Man-made Famine,” 86–90.

472. Ellman, “Role of Leadership Perceptions,” 824. P. Blonskii, a doctor from Kiev province, wrote in a letter to the health commissar of Ukraine, which the police intercepted and excerpted, that “the politically harmful ‘theory’ that the starving people themselves are responsible for the famine is prevalent among leaders and rank-and-file workers; it is claimed that they did not want to work, so in that case, let them die—no pity there.” Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 384–6 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 56, l. 203–5).

473. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 75 (citing Molot, March 10, 1933); Zelenin, “Kolkhoznoe stroitel’stvo v SSSR,” 28–9 (citing GARP, f. 3316, d. 815, l. 4; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 21, d. 2415, l. 1181ob.); “Kollektivizatsiia: istoki, suchnost’, posledtsviia,” 46–56.

474. Davies and Wheatcroft persuasively refute Ellman’s assertions that Stalin intentionally starved peasants, concluding: “We regard the policy of rapid industrialisation as an underlying cause of the agricultural troubles of the early 1930s, and we do not believe that the Chinese or NEP versions of industrialisation were viable in Soviet national and international circumstances.” Davies and Wheatcroft, “Reply to Ellman,” 626. Robert Conquest wrote the principal book on the supposedly intentional famine—Harvest of Sorrow (1986)—but in a letter to Davies (Sept. 7, 2003), he acknowledged that Stalin did not intentionally cause the famine. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 441n145. Kuromiya noted there was no evidence to support intentionality. “Stalin does not appear to have anticipated the deaths of millions of people,” he concluded. “The millions of deaths de-stabilised the country politically and generated political doubt about his leadership even within the party (most famously the Ryutin Platform).” Kuromiya, “The Soviet Famine of 1932–1933 Reconsidered,” 667.

475. Merl, “Entfachte Stalin die Hungersnot?”

476. For Ukraine, the initial procurement target had been 5.83 million tons (May 6, 1932), which was lowered to 5.17 million (Aug. 17, 1932), then to 4.22 million (Oct. 30, 1932), and finally to 3.77 million tons (Jan. 12, 1933); actual collections amounted to 3.59 million. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 123, 137 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 11, l. 131–5), 478. For the North Caucasus, the quota was reduced overall from 2.52 to 1.59 million tons.

477. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 478; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 290 (table 22). See also Lewin, Making of the Soviet System (1985), 151.

478. Tauger, “1932 Harvest,” 74 (table 2).

479. Davies and Wheatcroft, “Reply to Ellman,” 627–8; Gintsburg, “Massovyi golod,” 124, 126.

480. One Ukrainian scholar correctly conceded that in Ukraine, ethnic Russians and Jews died in lesser proportion than ethnic Ukrainians partly because the former lived in greater proportion in cities. Kul’chyts’kyi, “Skil’ky nas zahynulo pid holodomoru 1933 roku?,” 15. A decree of Dec. 14, 1932, enjoined the authorities in Soviet Ukraine “to direct serious attention to the correct implementation of Ukrainianization, eliminate a mechanical implementation, chase out Petlyura-ites and other bourgeois-nationalists elements from party and soviet organizations, thoroughly select and rear Ukrainian Bolshevik cadres, furnish systematic party leadership and control over the implementation of Ukrainianization.” A follow-up decree of Dec. 26 ended Ukrainianization in the neighboring Kuban region of the RSFSR. Brian Boeck has demonstrated that Ukrainianization in the Kuban was opposed by the populace, who preferred a Cossack or Kuban identity, and by local officials. He also shows that Kaganovich seized upon, and twisted, a single report by a local official about a single Cossack settlement (Poltavskaya) that blamed supposedly successful Ukrainianization as a cause of resistance. “Thus,” Boeck concludes, “there is no compelling evidence that the success of Ukrainianization, or the Central Committee’s perceptions of the success of Ukrainianization, led to the decree of 14 December.” Boeck, “Complicating the National Interpretation,” 31–48; Pyrih et al., Holod, 291–4 (Tsentral’nyi gos. Arkhiv obshchestvennykh obedeinenii Ukrainy, f. 39, op. 4, d. 1, l. 8–10); Trapeznikov, Istoricheskii opyt KPSS, 262. A related decree was issued for Belorussia: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 917, l. 7 (Dec. 19, 1932).

481. “In the archives of Russia, in the archives of the republics of the former USSR, millions of documents have been preserved [of] the famine in the USSR at the beginning of the 1930s of the last century in various regions of the large country,” wrote V. P. Kozlov, the head of the Russian archival service, in the preface to a collection of declassified materials. “Not a single document has been found confirming the conception of a ‘Holodomor-genocide’ in Ukraine or even a hint in the documents about ethnic motives of what occurred, including in Ukraine.” Antipova, Golod v SSSR, 6–7 (the collection consists entirely of facsimiles of original documents). Klid and Motyl define the Holodomor (or Ukrainian Holocaust) as “the murder by hunger of millions in the 1932–33 famine in Soviet Ukraine and the Kuban region of the North Caucasus, where Ukrainians formed a large percentage of the population.” This becomes “genocide” when the authors include the executions of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, poets, musicians, artists, church officials. They offer no evidence of intentional starvation or of ethnic targeting. They do not dwell on the ethnic Ukrainian agency in the alleged genocide against Ukrainians (in regions where lots of Russians lived and died). They do not include the Volga Valley, Kazakhstan, the Urals, Western Siberia, and other famine-wracked regions where Ukrainians did not form a large percentage of the population. Klid and Motyl, Holodomor Reader, xxix–xxx.

482. Rudich, Holod 1932–1933 rokiv, 441–4 (at 443: March 15, 1933).

483. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 238 (GARF, f. 5446, op. 82, d. 19, l. 66–8: Feigin, April 12, 1933).

484. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 799, l. 24–5, 30–1; Kurliandskii, Stalin, vlast’, religiia, 88–9. Stalin did not refer to “enemies” or “wreckers” in his explanations to Robins. The conversation was severely edited when originally published: Sochineniia, XIII: 260–73. See also Salzman, Reform and Revolution, 355–6. See also Postyshev’s public comments about “teaching” the peasants: Izvestiia, June 22, 1933.

485. Davies et al., “Stalin, Grain Stocks, and the Famine of 1932–33,” 653.

486. The threat of attack by Japan, the need for grain stockpiling, and the fact that an overwhelmed transport network had had to carry military and industrial equipment, troops, and deported kulaks to Siberia and the Soviet Far East, would be another way the regime would explain the severe domestic hardships to the party. Duranty, USSR, 190–2; Dalrymple, “Soviet Famine of 1932–1934,” at 273; Stone, Hammer and Rifle, 206 (citing RGAE, f. 7297, op. 41, d. 33, l. 23–4: directive sent by Stalin and Molotov: March 31, 1932). RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 514, part 1, l. 9 (Stalin to CC plenum, Jan. 7, 1933); Sochineniia, XIII: 182–3. But Davies, rightly, discounts militarization and instead blames absurd plan targets. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 176ff; Davies, “Soviet Defence Industries,” 266.

487. Barmine, One Who Survived, 101–2.

488. Trotskii, “Nuzhno chestnoe vnutripartiinoe soglashenie.” See also Deutscher, Stalin, 352.

489. When Kaganovich demonstrated a bit of leniency toward procurements in Ukraine in Sept. 1933, Stalin rebuked him. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 479 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 85, l. 44–5), 479–80 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 76–82).

490. Additional arrests were carried out by the various grain procurement plenipotentiaries and the regular police. In Ukraine, OGPU arrests totaled 124,463 in 1933 (compared with 74,859 people in 1932); OGPU arrests in Ukraine would fall to 30,322 in 1934. Vasil’ev, “Tsena golodnogo khleba,” 144. When Kaganovich demonstrated a bit of leniency toward procurements in Ukraine in Sept. 1933, Stalin rebuked him. Khlevniuk, Stalin i Kaganovich: perepiska, 479 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 85, l. 44–45), 479–80 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 76–82).

491. Zelenin, “O nekotorykh ‘belykh piatnakh,’” 15. The regime issued numerous decrees to provide food aid to orphaned children in the tens of thousands in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 428 (RGAE, f. 8043, op. 11, d. 74, l. 97: June 13, 1932), 487 (d. 75, l. 255; d. 61, l. 155: Aug. 20, 1933).

492. Penner, “Stalin and the Ital’ianka,” 45–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 166, op. 1. d. 12, 1. 4 and “Golod 1932–1933 godov na Ukraine: svidetel’stvuiut arkhivnye dokumenty,” 79. See also Kondrashin and Penner, Golod, 214–5.

493. Stalin would later boast in a discussion of five historical turning points—1905, 1917, the Brest-Litovsk peace of 1918, the Russian civil war, “and especially collectivization”—that the latter entailed “a completely novel, historically unprecedented event.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 69 (Nov. 11, 1937).

494. The figure officially reported was 89.8 million tons (as of Oct. 1933), 20 million more than the wildly inflated 1932 official figure of 69.8 million. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 446. The degree to which the regime contributed to the bumper harvest, by the distribution of tractors, seed aid, and food relief, remains a matter of intense controversy. Some of it was improvisation by local officials. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, 117–30. Tauger, seeking to place the Soviet story in a broader one of agricultural modernization, emphasizes how the collective farm system facilitated Soviet relief efforts and the peasants’ ability to generate the harvest that saved them and the country. Tauger, “Soviet Peasants”; Tauger, “Stalin, Soviet Agriculture, and Collectivization,” 109–42.

495. Famine conditions persisted into late fall 1933 and, in some places, would last through summer 1934. Ammende, Human Life in Russia, 80–4. In fall 1933, the regime was pressing for workers to cultivate gardens to grow their own food, on the example of Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 71 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 19, l. 125–6). Kazakhstan would be given 18,000 tons of food aid by decree on Nov. 28, 1933. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 507 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 142, 145, 148).

496. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 240–1 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 16, l. 7–9); Khromov, Po stranitsam, 158. Voroshilov, too, sent a letter to Yenukidze that month, doubtless aware the OGPU perlustrated his correspondence and the contents could get to Stalin. “A remarkable man, our Koba,” he wrote. “It is simply incomprehensible how he can combine the great mind of the proletarian strategist, the will of a statesman and revolutionary activist, and the soul of a completely ordinary kind comrade who bears in mind every detail and cares for everything that concerns the people he knows, loves, and values.” Kvashonkin, Sovetstskoe rukovodstvo, 241–2 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 17, l. 5–7: Voroshilov to Yenukidze, June 29, 1933). See also Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 186.

CHAPTER 3. VICTORY

1. Lunacharskii, “Puti i zadachi sovetskoi ramaturgii,” Literaturnana gazeta, Feb. 28, 1933, retitled (and not abridged) as “Sotsialisticheskii realism,” Sovetskii teatr, 1933, no. 2–3; reprinted in Lunacharskii, Sobranie sochinenii, VIII: 491–523 (at 497). Lunacharskii, in a draft text from around the same time, explained: “The socialist realist . . . may resort to all manner of hyperbole, caricature and utterly improbable comparisons, not to conceal reality but, via stylization, to reveal it.” Or, as he put it, “A Communist who cannot dream is a bad Communist,” Lunacharskii, Sobranie sochinenii, VIII: 615–6: RGASPI, f. 142, op. 1, d. 318, l. 15–21, Feb. 10, 1933. See also Louis Fisher, in Crossman, God that Failed, 205–6.

2. Hunter, “Optimal Tautness in Development Planning”; Hunter, “First Soviet Five-Year Plan”; Cheremukhin et al., “Was Stalin Really Necessary?”

3. Instead of an anticipated 5.426 billion gold rubles of revenue from all exports (grain, timber, oil) over the course of the Five-Year Plan, the Soviets managed to bring in 3.283 billion. Industry was short 1.873 million rubles, including 832 million just in 1932. The Soviets ran out of convertible currency even for purchases of foreign military technology. Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/i: 46 (citing RGAE, f. 1562, op. 329, d. 4, l. 2–4). A key source of foreign currency revenue were the shops designed for “trade with foreigners” (Torgsin), which in fact placed no restrictions on who could enter and buy and sell: around 80 percent of their trade involved Soviet inhabitants. In 1933, during the worst of the famine, Torgsin stores had their best year, expanding deeply across the countryside to sell flour, cooking oil, and sugar for the population’s valuables. That year, family-heirloom revenue exceeded foreign grain sale revenues. After 1933, with the population’s closets tapped out, Torgsin revenues declined. Still, sales from 1932 until the shops were closed in early 1936 totaled 287.2 million, which paid for imports for Magnitorgorsk worth 44 million rubles; Gorky Auto Plant, 42.3 million; Stalingrad Tractor, 25 million rubles; Stalin Auto factory, 27.9 million rubles; Cheliabinsk Tractor, 23 million; Kharkov Tractor, 15.3 million; and Uralmash, 15 million. Aizenberg, Valiutnaia sistema SSSR, 65; Osokina, Zoloto dlia industrializatsii.

4. Robert Allen argues that per capita consumption, after falling in the early 1930s, increased significantly, being perhaps a fifth higher in 1937 than a decade earlier, but he has rightly been taken to task separately by Davies and Ellman. Allen, Farm to Factory, 147–50, 185–6; R. W. Davies (http://eh.net/book_reviews/farm-to-factory-a-reinterpre tation-of-the-soviet-industrial-revolution); Ellman, “Soviet Industrialization.”

5. Millar, “Mass Collectivization”; Barsov, Baslans stoimostnykh obmenov; Ellman, “Agricultural Surplus”; Davies et al., Economic Transformation, 11–3. See also Barsov, “NEP i vyravnivanie ekonomicheskikh otnoshenii,” 93–102. Even a Stalinist publication, with exaggerated figures, admitted that industrial exports constituted the primary source of export revenues during the Five-Year Plan (2 billion of 3.5 billion gold rubles total). From 1932, all Soviet exports declined in physical terms, not just in revenue, but agricultural exports declined faster than industrial ones. Ginzburg, Vneshniaia torgovlia SSSR, 67, 72. Prices changed favorably toward agriculture, when one takes into consideration more than grain and the legalized markets for selling “surpluses.”

6. E. H. Carr, writing in the wake of the Soviet Union’s World War II victory, concluded that Stalin’s collectivization and industrialization “were imposed by the objective situation which Soviet Russia in the later 1920s had to face.” Well, yes, if Bolshevik monopoly and anticapitalism were to be retained. There are multiple ways to modernize, but not multiple ways to modernize without the rule of law, political pluralism, private property, and the market. Carr, “Stalin Victorious.” In later years, Carr’s position shifted slightly. Davies, Introduction to Russian Revolution, xxxiv–xxxv; Nove, “The Peasants,” at 389. See also Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta, 54.

7. As Alec Nove pointed out, something is a necessity, although not inevitable, if it follows logically from the objective circumstances and the values of the decision maker(s). Nove, “Was Stalin Really Necessary?” reprinted in Nove, Was Stalin Really Necessary?, 17–39; Grossman, Review. See also Millar and Nove, “Debate on Collectivization”; and Brown and Cairncross, “Alec Nove.” The otherwise trenchant Millar incorrectly averred that collectivization was “an unmitigated policy disaster,” failing to distinguish between economic and political outcome. See Swianiewicz, Forced Labor, 91.

8. Maksimenkov, Sumbur, 52. Another scholar has asserted that Stalin spent as much time on culture as foreign policy and military affairs. Gromov, Stalin, 6. On formalization of Stalin’s role in culture, see Khlevniuk, Stalinskoe politbiuro, 112–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 113 d. 818, l. 10), 141, 143; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 67, 112.

9. Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 218.

10. Trotsky supported establishment of a non-party literary journal to focus and multiply their efforts in favorable directions, and proposed that the censorship organ, Glavlit, compile a register of artists, in order to track them. Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 36–7 (APRF, f. 3, op. 34, d. 185, l. 8–10: June 30, 1922).

11. Pravda, July 1, 1925; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 506, l. 4, 31–7: June 18, 125; Kemp-Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 21–67 (esp. 34); Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 74 (Moscow: Nauka, 1965): 29–37; Ermakov, 376–7.

12. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 633, l. 3–4: May 5, 1927; Artizov and Naumov, Vlast’, 84 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 697, l. 10). Non-party though it might have been, the weekly Literaturnaya gazeta was going to be overseen by the apparatus.

13. See also Fitzpatrick, Cultural Front, 145.

14. One scholar observed that “writers embroiled in controversy sought to use Stalin against their adversaries and were therefore themselves to some extent responsible for establishing the pattern of authoritarian control.” Brown, “Year of Acquiescence,” 57.

15. Krivenko, “Solovetskii ITL OGPU.” In April 1930, the OGPU system was organized under a “Main Administration of Camps”—in Russian “Gulag,” a bureaucratic moniker that soon changed but would stick in popular reference. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, II: 359–60, 373; Wheatcroft, “Assessing the Size,” at 287; Ivanova, Gulag; Upadyshev, “Ot Solovkov k GULAGu,” 93; Kokurin and Petrov, “OGPU, 1929–1934 gg.,” 100. The Main Administration of the Construction of the Far North, centered in Magadan, lasted from 1931 to 1957; and the Karaganda Camp Complex, which at its height would reach 80 camps, lasted from 1931 to 1959. Kokurin and Petrov, Gulag; Krivenko, “Karagandinskii ITL”; Sigachev, “Glavnoe upravlenie stroitel’stva Dal’nego Severa”; Krivenko, “Belomoro-Baltiiskii ITL.”

16. Solzhenitsyn would dub Dalstroi “the greatest and most famous island, the pole of ferocity of that amazing country of Gulag.” Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, I: ix. See also Kokurin and Petrov, Gulag, 72 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 11, l. 57, 63).

17. That year 9,928 of the approximately 16,000 prisoners reached Magadan alive; in 1933, 27,390 would survive the journey. Subsequently, 32,304 would survive the journey in 1934; 44,601 in 1935; and 62,703 in 1936—a labor force. About 20 percent of the workers were not prisoners. Stephan, Russian Far East, 225–32. Reported gold extraction rose from 511 kilograms of pure gold in 1932 to 5,515 kilograms in 1934; 14,458 kg in 1935; and 33,360 kg in 1936. Total gold mining across the entire Soviet Union had been 13,215 kg in 1928. Nordlander, “Economic History of Dalstroi,” 105–25.

18. Aizenberg, Valiutnaia sistema SSSR, 64; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 162–3 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 57, d. 18, l. 85–95: art. 234/45s, 138–9: art. 372/79ss). Roy Medvedev wrote that “there existed a system of examinations which allowed ten-year sentences to be reduced to two or three years, excellent food and clothing, a workday of four to six hours in winter and ten in summer, and good pay, which enabled prisoners to help their families and to return home with funds.” Medvedev, Let History Judge, 508. See also Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, 368–9.

19. Swianiewicz, Forced Labor. There were instances when Gulag labor was more productive than “free” labor.

20. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 363–4 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 11, d. 4, l. 58: Yagoda to Mężyński, June 27, 1933). See also Izvestiia, June 26, 1933; Pravda, June 29, 1933; and Leningradskaia pravda, June 23, 27, and 29, 1933. Stalin had rescued the canal from Rykov’s cost-cutting. Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 212. The Suez Canal, 117 miles long, was built in 15 years, without locks; the Panama Canal, 48 miles long, was built in 33 years, with locks.

21. Pazi, Nash Mironych, 447. Kirov first took a test drive to Moscow, with a single guard, to see if the route was safe, then did the trip again, to pick up the passengers. Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 406 (citing RGANI, f. 6, op. 13, d. 73, l. 96–132: Sveshnikov, 1966).

22. Stalin and Kirov likely first met in Oct. 1917, at the 2nd Congress of Soviets that had proclaimed a seizure of power (Kirov was a delegate of the Vladikavkaz-Kabardinya soviet). Their relationship is documented from May 29, 1918, when Stalin recommended Kirov as worthy of “complete trust.” Plimak and Antonov, “1 dekabria 1934–go,” 35.

23. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 149, l. 70 (March 6, 1929).

24. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 4554; Sochineniia, VI: 422.

25. In late 1929, during the party purge, several targeted Leningrad officials fought back, demanding Kirov be sacked for prerevolutionary work on behalf of what they called a “Cadet” (bourgeois-liberal) newspaper: Kirov’s signed articles—which his attackers dug up in the public library—had welcomed the Provisional Government. Orjonikidze defended Kirov, divulging that Stalin himself, at Pravda, had not been anti-Provisional Government in early 1917. Kirov’s denouncers were removed, but Stalin had Kirov’s prerevolutionary political “error” recorded in his party file. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 120 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 24–5: Dec. 11, 1929); Khlevniuk, Stalin i Orzhonikidze, 19–20; Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow, 26–9; Rosliakov, Ubiistvo, 108–10; Lenoe, Kirov Murder, 93–106. See also Ciliga, Russian Enigma, 120–1; and Tokaev, Betrayal of an Ideal, 109, 241.

26. Vladimir Loginov, Teni Stalina, 97. Artyom concurred: “Kirov after Nadezhda Sergeevna was the closest person to Stalin.” Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 59–60.

27. Molotov also noted of Kirov: “He was a weak organizer. He was a good mass agitator.” He dismissed the notions that Stalin could have killed Kirov (“odiousness”) or that Kirov could have taken Stalin’s place. (“Absurd! . . . look, pretty speeches of a secondary character. That was not enough.”) Chuev, Molotov, 377.

28. Kirov won the Order of Lenin (March 31, 1931) for helping fulfill the oil industry five-year plan in 2.5 years.

29. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 71–3.

30. Chukhin, Kanaloarmeitsy, 18 (no citation).

31. The canal laborers gave their name (“zek” or zakliuchennyi kanalstroia) to all Gulag prisoners. Chukhin, Kanaloarmeitsy, 189–209. Yagoda built a large number of critical objects, from the country’s first-ever stadium (Dynamo) in Moscow to new administrative buildings for the NKVD itself.

32. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiiakh, 44 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1552, l. 19).

33. Aug. 27, 1933.

34. Chigirin, Stalin, 84–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1482, l. 53: Aug. 25 to Sept. 2, 1933).

35. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 249–52 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 16, l. 8–12: Aug. 27, 1933), 252–3 (f. 74, op. 2, d. 41, l. 63–71: Aug. 30), 253–4 (l. 72–3: Sept. 7). See also Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 255 n1 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 41, l. 74; GARF, f. R-3316, op. 1, 3d. 18, l. 168).

36. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 80, l. 68.

37. In summer 1931, the first high-frequency phone lines were installed between Moscow and Leningrad and Moscow and Kharkov. The scramblers and encrypters were purchased in Germany from Siemens and Halske AG and AEG, copied and adapted. Moscow would soon be connected to Smolensk and Minsk (1932), Gorky and Rostov (1933), Kiev (1934). Other systems grew in parallel: the Kremlin self-dialing ATC (“vertushka”); the NKVD state security first directorate (bodyguard) telephone station; etc.

38. Na prieme, 107–12.

39. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 330 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 80, l. 87).

40. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 315 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 741, l. 7–12: Aug. 26, 1933), 319 (f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 107–8: Aug. 29), 323 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 80, l. 66: Sept. 1), 325–7 (d. 741, l. 20–6: Sept. 2); Rees, Iron Lazar, 119 (citing RGASPI, f. 54, op. 1, d. 100, l. 107–8); Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 248–9 (Sept. 12, 1933), 247–8n2 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 929, l. 21; d. 930, l. 13); Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 234–5, 233n2; Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 261–3 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 214, l. 25–30: Sept. 30); Khlevniuk et al., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 133; Davies et al., “The Politburo and Economic Decision Making,” 110.

41. The dacha had been constructed in 1932–33 in a mad rush (the construction director, from the central executive committee of Abkhazia, begged for more labor power). Lakoba Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, 1–65. Lakoba, Yenukidze, his deputy N. I. Pakhomov, and Pauker conducted a final inspection in early July 1933.

42. Imperial Russia had annexed the Black Sea territory from Istanbul in 1864, which provoked a mass exodus to the Ottoman empire and a mass influx of settlers, especially Mingrelians from adjacent western Georgia, ethnic Georgians, Russians, and Armenians. The Abkhaz language belongs to a North Caucasus language group unrelated to Georgian or Russian, and the differences were strongly felt. Ethnic Abkhaz became concentrated in three districts: Gudauta, Kodor, and Samurzakan, while non-Abkhaz made up 90 percent of Abkhazia’s other districts. Voronov, Abkhazia.” See also Tardy, “Caucasus Peoples.”

43. Dzidzariia et al., Revoliutsionnye komitety Abkhazii, 253. See also Pritsker, Istoriia kurortov Abkhazskoi SSR; Orynianskii, Sovetskaia Abkhaziia; Grigoliia, Kurortnye bogatsva Abkhazii; Abkhazia had perhaps 150 available beds for patients and holiday-makers in 1922, which jumped to 3,680 by 1935, under Lakoba’s construction. Around 300 people took advantage in 1922, and 16,755 by 1935.

44. Tulumdzhian, S’ezdy Sovetov Abkhazii.

45. A party commission went after Lakoba, citing “the presence in the Abkhazia organization of elements of factionalism, degeneration, ‘private property-ism,’ nepotism and group cohesion reaching toadyism.” Stalin, vacationing on the Black Sea, got dragged into the intrigues and, in a letter co-signed by Orjonikidze (Oct. 19, 1929), faulted Lakoba for “sometimes not subordinating himself to the decisions of the provincial party committee.” The mild rebuke protected Lakoba from worse. Hoover Institution Archives, Lakoba Papers, box 1, folder 55, 56; Blauvelt, “Abkhazia Patronage,” 214 (citing Partarkhiv TsK KPG, f. 14, op. 7, d. 3516, l. 1–3).

46. Rikhter, Kavkaz nashikh dnei, 98; Blauvelt, “‘From Words to Action!,’” 243–4 (citing sakartvelos shss arkivi [II], f. 14, op. 2, d. 485, 49–56).

47. “When Stalin and I were there,” Orjonikidze had noted, “Comrade Lakoba made the best impressions of all the comrades present.” Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 58 (1925). See also Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 1–25, 1–26; and Kvashonkin, Bolshevistskoe rukovodstvo, 338–41.

48. Trotskii, “Yenukidze” [Jan. 8, 1938], in Portrety, 251–72 (at 264–6). “My ears hold me back, but so what,” Lakoba had written to Orjonikidze (March 12, 1922). Kvashonkin, Bolshevistskoe rukovodstvo, 237–8.

49. Khrushchev, Memoirs, I: 188–9. Lakoba has only a single recorded listing in Stalin’s office logbook, Nov. 20, 1933, and for just twenty minutes. Na prieme, 114.

50. Sergeev and Glushik, Besedy o Staline, 76–7. In 1929, a Lakoba confidant wrote to the Abkhaz leader that “being in Sochi I saw Stalin at the central executive committee rest house, and he asked the whole time, where are you, are you coming, Long Live Abkhazia and sang Abkhaz songs.” Lakoba, “‘Ia Koba, a ty Lakoba,’” 59–60 (Ladariya).

51. “Autobiography, December 12, 1936,” Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, box 1, item 2; Bgazhba, Nestor Lakoba; Argun, Stalin i Lakoba; Lakoba, “History: 1917–1989,” 89–101.

52. Whereas Georgia was undergoing vigorous Georgification, the ratio of ethnic Abkhaz in the enclave’s population of 146,000 had fallen, to under 30 percent in 1926 (from 55 percent as late as 1897). By 1939, the Abkhaz share would shrink to 18 percent. By comparison, the Ajarians, a Muslim people in Georgia, accounted for around 70 percent in Ajaristan, an autonomous republic in Georgia. The penurious Abkhaz administration issued circulars in three languages (Abkhaz, Georgian, Russian). Sagariia, Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Abkhazii, 115; Agrba, Abkhazskaia oblastnaia organizatsiia kompartii Gruzii v tsifrakh; Partarkhiv Abkhazskogo obkoma KP Gruzii, f. 1, op. 1, d. 180, l. 95–6: Lakoba at 7th province party conference. Abkhaz were almost never accepted at Georgia’s institutions of higher learning (where the instruction was solely in Georgian). Hoover Archives, Lakoba papers, 2–42.

53. A few days after the letter to Lenin and Stalin (dated March 26, 1921), Lakoba was one of three people to sign a telegram addressed to Lenin, Stalin, Chicherin, Kirov, all Soviet republics, the whole world, proclaiming the new Abkhaz Soviet Socialist Republic, which Lenin approved, and on May 21, 1921, the Georgian SSR signed an agreement recognizing the separate Abkhaz SSR. But on Dec. 16, 1921, under pressure, the Abkhaz signed a treaty with Georgia providing for a confederal structure. Sagariia, “K istorii obrazovaniia Abkhazskoi avtonomnoi respubliki”; Bor’ba za uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Gruzii, 58–9 (Gosarkhiv Abkhazskoi SSR, f. 38, d. 74, l. 176). Golos trudovoi Abkhazii, 1921, no. 134, reprinted in Bor’ba za uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Gruzii, 80; Sagariia, Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Abkhazii, 58.

54. A partial census in 1920 had listed 55 nations, but the 1926 census allowed for 190; in the 1930s, the number would fall to around three score, then climb to 106 (1937 census). Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 284, 327–30.

55. If a nation got a Union republic, members of that nation who lived outside it—Russians in Ukraine, Tajiks in Uzbekistan—did not receive an autonomous republic there. In an exception, there was a predominantly ethnic Armenian autonomous republic in Azerbaijan, Karabakh (“Black Mountain”). Armenians there had sought inclusion in Armenia. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 133, l. 28–31.

56. Haugen, Establishment, 195–7 (citing RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 87, l. 73–6; d. 101, 68–9, 76; d. 107, 29, 55, d. 104, l. 165; GARF, f. 1235, op. 26, d. 28, l. 4). See also Aworth, Modern Uzbeks; Haugen, Establishment, 206–10. Uzbekistan also got Tashkent, which the Kazakhs had wanted despite its population of 96,000 Uzbeks and 172 Kazakhs, because they insisted it was surrounded by Kazakh nomads who needed a city to rise out of backwardness. Fedtke, “How Bukharans Turned into Uzbeks and Tajiks,” 19–50; Slezkine, “USSR as a Communal Apartment,” 428; Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 452; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 776, l. 1.

57. Soviet Uzbekistan accounted for 60 percent of Central Asia’s arable lands and perhaps 70 percent of its GDP. But in carving out Tajikistan, Stalin perhaps wanted to blunt a too strong Uzbek entity, stabilize the border with Afghanistan, and curry favor with Iran. Berge, Birth of Tajikistan; Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 174–86. The Tajiks were shunted into the Pamirs: some 90 percent of Tajikistan’s landmass consisted of high mountains, and its “capital” was the village of Dushanbe, which was renamed Stalinabad. Perhaps 60 percent of Soviet Tajiks ended up outside the Tajik republic. Iurkevich, U vorot Indostana, 16. See also Teichman, “Red Man’s Burden,” 177 (citing RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2542, l. 155–7); and Teichman, “Canals, Cotton.” On the occasion of Tajikistan’s inaugural party congress, in June 1930, the Tajik party boss, Mirza Davud Huseynov, an ethnic Azeri, proposed sending greetings to the toilers of India, but Stalin objected, evidently concerned not to raise outcries of interference in British India. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 63, l. 58. See also Baberowski, Der Feind, 230–5, 279–82, 620; Kangas, “Faizulla Khodzhaev”; and Norling, “Myth and Reality,” 114 (citing RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 154, l. 79–92: Jan. 25, 1931).

58. There had been more than 26,000 mosques in Turkestan in 1912 under the tsarist regime, but there would be a mere 1,300 by 1942. The remnants of the Islamic legal and educational systems would be closed down, as were most of the places where mullahs were trained. Between 1927 and 1930 local alphabets were changed from Arabic script to Latin (as was done in Turkey), which cut future generations from the past and the Quran. The pilgrimage to Mecca would be prohibited from 1935. Later the regime would shift the languages to Cyrillic. Gatagova et al., TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i natsional’nyi vopros, II: 128–9 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 588, l. 3, 4), 191–6 (d. 751, l. 38–47; d. 607, l. 4–5).

59. Wohlforth, “Russian-Soviet Empire,” 225. The success of the coercive Soviet project is all the more remarkable when one examines the depth of the challenges faced by national activists in mixed-language regions. Judson, Guardians of the Nation.

60. This was where the peasantry in Abkhazia had been most receptive to original Bolshevik revolutionary demands for radical land reform against local nobles. Dzidzariia, Ocherki istorii Abkhazii, 62–6, 108–9.

61. The status change was formally approved at the 6th Congress of Soviets of Abkhazia on Feb. 11, 1931, although it had not been included on the agenda. Dzhonua et al., Sovety Abkhazii, 227–8; Sagariia, Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Abkhazii, 142–6.

62. Blauvelt, “Abkhazia Patronage,” 227–8 (citing Arkhiv TsK KPG, f. 14, op. 6, d. 267: “Informsvodki Abkhaz. GPU: dokladnaia zapiska raikoma o rukovodstve obkoma vo antosovetskikh vystupleniakh krest’ian v Gudautskom raione, 177–9).

63. Mamiya Orakhelashvili and Beria arrived, but peasant delegations insisted on speaking to Lakoba. They wanted permission to emigrate to Turkey, like many of their nineteenth-century forebears. Blauvelt, “Abkhazia Patronage,” 227 (citing secret police reports). Danilov, “Tragediia Abkhazskogo naroda.”