Stalin (24 page)

Sholokhov’s letter describes how suspected hoarders were coerced into handing over their grain: mass beatings, the staging of mock executions, branding with hot irons, and hanging by the neck to induce partial asphyxiation during interrogations, among other methods. The writer did not attempt to whitewash the fact that the criminal abuses being perpetrated in the Veshensky District were part of a purposeful campaign by the regional authorities—not “deviations” by local zealots. But for obvious reasons, he did not press this point.

Stalin took the news in stride. He ordered that the Veshensky District be given additional grain assistance and that an investigation be conducted into the abuses Sholokhov described. Overall, however, he supported the local authorities. In a response to Sholokhov he accused the writer of taking a one-sided view and of covering his eyes to sabotage by peasants. The local leadership, some of whom were at first condemned to harsh punishment for abuses, were ultimately acquitted. On Stalin’s orders they were simply removed from their posts and given reprimands. They were not even expelled from the party.
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Stalin had no intention of retreating from his war against the peasants, however many innocent lives were taken in the process.

The victory over the peasants had all the hallmarks of defeat. Despite the campaign’s extreme ruthlessness, the grain procurement plan was not fulfilled. And the 20 percent decline in grain collections between the meager harvest of 1931 and the disastrous one of 1932, bad as this was, paled in comparison to the decimation of the livestock sector. If ruthless measures could not squeeze food out of the countryside, what should be done next? Continuing a policy of confiscation—
prodrazverstka
—would only kill off the population. Furthermore, the policy of forced industrialization was proving untenable. The mad surge of capital investment in heavy industry had reached its limit. Trotsky’s call to make 1933 “a year of capital repair” resonated with Stalin’s opponents, who called on him to reduce the pace of growth.
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Even the relentless terror machine was beginning to falter. By 1933 the large network of camps and prisons could not handle the growing flood of arrestees. The government took urgent steps to create remote settlements capable of accommodating 2 million internal deportees, but this program failed because of a lack of resources. In the end, only about 270,000 people were sent into internal exile.
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The seemingly limitless capacity for destroying and isolating “enemies” apparently had its limits. And while the execution, arrest, and deportation of vast numbers helped the government maintain control, even Stalin could see that these tactics were doing as much to undermine the smooth running of the system as to bolster it.

All this dysfunction weakened the USSR at a time of escalating international tension. One of the first signs of looming war was Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in late 1931. “The Japanese are certainly (certainly!) preparing for war against the USSR, and we have to be ready (we must!) for anything,” Stalin wrote to Ordzhonikidze in June 1932.
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An urgent buildup of military forces was begun in the Soviet Far East. But trouble was also brewing in Europe. In January 1933, while the Soviet Union was in the throes of famine, the Nazis came to power in Germany. The Bolsheviks’ European strategy, which was centered on building relations with Weimar Germany, had to be immediately revamped. Faced with growing threats from east and west, Stalin was forced to seek alliances with Western democracies. On 19 December 1933 the Politburo adopted a top secret resolution concerning the USSR’s possible entry into the League of Nations and conclusion of a regional mutual defense pact against Germany with a number of Western countries, including France and Poland.
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Stalin understood that this new foreign policy would not be possible unless he sent clear signals that the Stalinist USSR was a “normal” country and not simply a convenient enemy of fascism. The Soviet regime would need to improve its reputation. Soviet leaders did not have to exchange their military service jackets for tailcoats, but they at least needed to button up.

Stalin had led the Bolsheviks into a dead end. The resources that had made the First Five-Year Plan possible had been used up. Too late for countless victims of his policies, he agreed to measures that could and should have been taken years before.

First among them were some minor but critical concessions to the peasantry. Although the Stalinist state continued to rely primarily on compulsion in the countryside, there were important changes. Essentially recognizing the tremendous harm done by limitless confiscations, in January 1933 the government introduced set quotas for grain deliveries (a food tax or
prodnalog,
in official Soviet parlance). The peasants were promised that predictable quotas would be set for the amount of produce to be taken and that they would have the right to sell the surplus. The resolution mandating this change was never put into practice, but it was a milestone in the transition from the Stalin-era War Communism of the First Five-Year Plan to the Stalin-era NEP of the Second. It was within the framework of this transition that other, more practical and effective, decisions were adopted.

Stalin grudgingly allowed peasants to have small private plots that they were allowed to cultivate for their own benefit, a concession of great importance to the survival of the countryside and the country overall. At the first congress of “kolkhoznik-udarniks” (collective farm shock workers) in February 1933, he promised that the state would help each kolkhoz household acquire a cow over the coming two years.
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Laws guaranteeing ownership of farm plots were gradually put into place. This expansion of private agriculture was critically important, paving the way toward a new compromise between the state and the peasants. The peasants, who earned almost nothing working on collective farms, would now be able to make ends meet by farming their private plots. Despite being subject to exorbitant taxes, these plots were exceptionally productive. Although private agriculture took up a miniscule amount of land compared with the kolkhozes, official statistics from 1937 show that it provided 38 percent of the country’s vegetables and potatoes and 68 percent of its meat and dairy products.
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When yet another famine hit after the poor harvest of 1936, it was private agriculture that helped the country survive, once again underscoring how flawed the original collectivization plan had been. If the mad rush toward total collectivization had been adjusted to allow private plots, peasants (and Soviet agriculture) would not have been utterly ruined overnight.

Also long overdue and unavoidable were changes to industrial policy. The first limited signs that the state was being compelled to pull back from the destructive policy of forced industrialization and repression against those running the Soviet economy came in 1931–1932. During the Central Committee plenum of January 1933, Stalin provided a new set of slogans to go with the new policies. While proclaiming new class battles ahead, he nevertheless promised that the pace of industrial construction during the Second Five-Year Plan would be significantly reduced. Unlike many other slogans, this one did not prove empty. Alongside reduced growth for capital investment in industry, in 1934–1936 various experiments and reforms were introduced aimed at enhancing enterprises’ economic independence and reviving financial incentives for labor. By this time, the idea of an economy based on the exchange of goods had been definitively rejected as “leftist,” “money” and “commerce” were no longer dirty words, and the need to strengthen the ruble was a hot topic. That Stalin was reorienting the economic signposts became apparent in his remarks during a discussion on abolishing the ration system at the November 1934 plenum:

Why are we abolishing the ration system? First and foremost it is because we want to strengthen the cash economy.… The cash economy is one of the few bourgeois economic apparatuses that we, socialists, must make full use of.… It is very flexible; we need it.… To expand commercial exchange, to expand Soviet commerce, to strengthen the cash economy—these are the main reasons we are undertaking this reform.… Money will start to circulate, money will come into fashion, which hasn’t been the case for some time; the cash economy will be strengthened.

Underlying this liberalization was a recognition of the importance of personal interests and material incentives. The sermons on asceticism, calls for sacrifice, and hostility toward high salaries that had characterized the First Five-Year Plan were replaced by a focus on “culture and a prosperous life.” Instead of the mythic images of a future of abundant socialism that had been promoted with the First Five-Year Plan, the Soviet people, especially the urban population, were now offered the prospect of tangible creature comforts: a private room, furniture, clothing, a tolerable diet, and expanded leisure. The possibility of an improved standard of living was being deliberately used to motivate the workforce.

The improved quality of life after the successful harvest of 1933 was, of course, remarkable only in contrast with the previous years’ mass famine. The full store shelves seen in major cities came as some rural areas continued to starve. But compared to 1932–1933, these pockets of hunger were “nothing,” just as the ongoing arrests and deportations could be seen as “nothing” compared with previous years. For a while, state terror continued at a low and predictable pace. The pullback began with a special directive Stalin signed in May 1933 calling for the release of some of those arrested for “minor crimes” from overcrowded prisons and prohibiting the secret police from conducting mass arrests and deportations.
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Stalin continued to demonstrate adherence to “socialist legality.” It was on his instigation that in February 1934 the Politburo voted to abolish the odious OGPU and place the political police under the newly formed People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), blending it with the more innocuous branches of law enforcement and public safety. On paper, people’s rights in the regular judicial system were expanded, and the power of extrajudicial bodies—the instruments of mass terror—was reduced.
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The handling of certain legal matters in which Stalin clearly had a hand was especially significant. Within the Soviet political system, it was these signals from the
vozhd
that showed the way forward for government officials.

One of the first such signals had to do with the conviction of Aleksei Seliavkin. During the witch hunt of the early 1930s Seliavkin, a senior heavy-industry official and decorated Civil War veteran, had been sentenced to ten years for selling classified military documents. In a petition sent from labor camp, Seliavkin stated that his interrogators had dictated a false confession and forced him to sign it under threat of being shot.
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This petition came at an opportune time. Stalin (without whose consent Seliavkin would never have been arrested in the first place) now signaled leniency. Not surprisingly, an investigation showed that the secret police had fabricated the evidence. On 5 June 1934 the Politburo annulled Seliavkin’s sentence and demanded “attention to serious deficiencies in the handling of the case by OGPU investigators.”
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The annulment of Seliavkin’s sentence was just the start. In September 1934 Stalin ordered the Politburo to establish a commission to investigate several other cases that had been brought against “wreckers” and “spies.” He called on the commission to free the innocent, purge the OGPU of perpetrators of certain “investigative techniques,” and punish them “without favoritism.” “In my opinion,” he wrote, “this is a serious matter and it has to be pursued to the end.” Surviving documents show that this commission actually took its work seriously, assembling evidence of secret police abuses. There was no shortage of cases.
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Then came the murder of Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov. The commission never completed its task.

Had it not been for Kirov’s murder, would there have been a serious effort to put an end to secret police abuses? The evidence suggests otherwise. Although there were fewer arrests in 1934, the victims of repression still numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Stalin himself sent contradictory signals. In September 1934, at the height of the campaign for “socialist legality,” the Politburo sanctioned the execution of a group of employees of the Stalin Metallurgical Factory in Siberia who were accused of spying for Japan. It was Stalin who instigated the roundup, writing: “Everyone caught spying for Japan should be shot.”
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There were other examples. The foundation of Stalin’s system of oppression was never dismantled. The “moderation” of 1934 was nothing more than a temporary adjustment in the level of terror.

Although this moderation was inconsistent and limited, it did imply recognition that the Great Leap policy had been misguided. In theory, this forced change-of-course might have cast an unfavorable light on Stalin and prompted dissatisfaction with him. Such apparently logical inferences have inspired historians to posit the existence of plots and intrigues against Stalin among the party ranks. One focus of these theories is Sergei Kirov, a close Stalin associate and the Leningrad party boss. The confusion surrounding the circumstances of Kirov’s murder and the crackdown that followed it have led some to conclude that Kirov was actually behind the new political moderation, making him someone an anti-Stalin movement might rally around. This speculation, of which there has been a great deal, is based solely on the memoirs of people with only a second- or third-hand knowledge of the central facts in the matter.
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Setting aside the many discrepancies in these “eyewitness” accounts, we are left with the following picture. During the Seventeenth Party Congress a number of senior party officials (various names are mentioned) discussed the possibility of removing Stalin as general secretary and replacing him with Kirov. Kirov rejected this proposal, but Stalin got wind of the plans. According to some accounts, Kirov himself told Stalin what others were plotting. During Central Committee elections at the congress, many delegates supposedly voted against Stalin. On learning about this, Stalin allegedly ordered the removal of any ballots where his name was crossed out. Ten months later, he organized Kirov’s murder in order to remove a dangerous rival. These contradictory accounts have never inspired much confidence, and now that the archives have been opened, they appear even less convincing. A number of painstaking searches have failed to turn up even circumstantial evidence of a plot against Stalin.