Stalin, Volume 1

by Stephen Kotkin

  218. Lubianka: Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, 158–61 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 329, l. 32–7: April 25, 1928).

  219. Lubianka: Stalin i VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD, 156–8 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 329, l. 28–31).

  220. Carr and Davíes have argued of April 1928 that “It would be premature to assume that at this time a majority of the leaders, or Stalin in particular, was committed to coercion, or had decided to abandon the methods of the market for a policy of direct action.” But the full scope of Stalin’s actions indicates otherwise. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I: 65–6.

  221. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh [1984], IV: 315–6; Manning, “The Rise and Fall of ‘the Extraordinary Measures,’” 13.

  222. As Bukharin would point out in a report on the plenum to the Leningrad party organization: Bukharin, Put’ k sotsializmu, 284.

  223. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, II: 6 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 38, l. 30).

  224. Campbell, who was in high demand globally, was brought to the Soviet Union twice, the first time in January 1929, when he met Stalin, then in June 1930. He was shown large mechanized farms in the North Caucasus. Campbell, Russia: Market or Menace.

  225. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, II: 462–5.

  226. Pravda, April 18, 1928, reprinted in Sochineniia, XI: 54 (at 46, 48). See also Fitzpatrick, “The Foreign Threat During the First Five Year Plan.”

  227. Zima, Chelovek i vlast’ v SSSR, 77–8 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 89, d. 11, l. 94–5: F. Cherepanov).

  228. Manning, “The Rise and Fall of ‘the Extraordinary Measures,’” 22 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 165, d. 13, l. 5).

  229. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 683, l. 89.

  230. Moskovskie b’olsheviki, 251 (citing Ob”edinennyi plenum MK i MKK VKP (b), 23–25 aprelia 1928 g.: doklady i rezoliutsii. Moscow, 1928, 34–5).

  231. Danilov, Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, I: 236 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 683, l. 1–2), 261–2 (d. 684, l. 18–20), 255–62. On April 21, the regime had replaced the poll tax with a progressive tax on farm income that included an “individual” tax on high incomes and a wealth surtax on the absolute top stratum or kulak elites, in line with the sentiment to press the kulak by economic means. Atkinson, End of the Russian Land Commune, 329. Pyotr Wrangel, the former White Guard officer, died suddenly on April 25, 1928, aged forty-nine, in Brussels, of a severe form of tuberculosis, which by most accounts he had not contracted before. Family members believed he had been poisoned by a suspected Soviet agent, either in the household or in the guise of a former orderly who visited him ten days before his death. Bolezn’, smert’ i pogrebenie general-leitenanta barona Petra Nikolaevicha Vrangelia.

  232. Ugrovatov, Informatsionnaia deiatel’nost’ organov bezopasnosti, 82–4; Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, II: 7–8, 21, 38, 46; Krasil’nikov, Shakhtinskii protsess, I: 242–83.

  233. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 1921–1928, 420–1 (citing TsA FSB, f. 66, op. 1, d. 187, l. 227ob). That same day, Stalin told a Communist Youth League congress, “No, comrades, our class enemies exist. And they not only exist but are gaining strength and trying to act against Soviet power.” He urged them to “organize mass criticism from below.” Pravda, May 17, 1928, in Sochineniia, XI: 66–77 (at 69).

  234. Izvestiia, May 19, 1928. There had been some trials in the interim: in 1925, some engineers and former employees of once foreign-owned metallurgical plants had been tried and convicted of espionage. Pravda, June 4–16, 1925. In 1926, perhaps 50 percent of the technical staff in the Donbass coal basin were put on trial as a result of industrial accidents. Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror, 143 (citing GARF, f. 5459, op. 7, d. 2, l. 139, 150), 144–5.

  235. Ivanovich, “Finliandskie shpioni,” 193–7; Vozrozhdenie, January 6, 1928; Pravda, January 1, 1928.

  236. Markova, “Litso vraga,” 79–99 (at 80–1).

  237. Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 42.

  238. Bailes, Technology and Society, 90.

  239. One scholar speculated that Stalin aimed to undermine their technocratic ethos and possible political solidarity. Bailes, “Politics of Technology,” 464.

  240. Bailes, Technology and Society, 91–2.

  241. Reswick, I Dreamt Revolution, 247.

  242. Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 219–20. Hilger attended the trial. Bashkin had been educated in Germany.

  243. Mozokhin, VChk—OGPU, 274–75 (TsA FSB, f. ugolovnoe delo N-3738). The Soviets also discovered that the German technical director of the Junkers concession was listed in tsarist-era archives as the former head of intelligence for the German eastern army during the Great War. This prior history, akin to unchangeable physical attributes, was taken as prima facie evidence of ongoing espionage activity on his part.

  244. Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 125–6.

  245. Torgovaia promyshlennaia gazeta, July 4, 1928.

  246. Kuromiya,”The Shakhty Affair,” 48–9 (citing GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 253, l. 106–16).

  247. Walter Duranty, New York Times, May 19, 1928.

  248. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 29–31 (RGASPI, f. 78, op. 7, d. 120, l. 1–3; f. 17, op. 162, d. 6, l. 100, 113).

  249. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I/ii: 702–4.

  250. Zima, Chelovek i vlast’ v SSSR, 78 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 89, d. 11, l. 110: A. Lesnikov).

  251. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 1921–1928, 420 (citing TsA FSB, f. 66, op. 1, d. 187, l. 8, 15, 280).

  252. Papkov, Obyknovennyi terror, 39 (citing GANO, f. P-2, op. 2, d. 289A, l. 69ob). Nikolai Zimin, the head of the Irkutsk regional party committee, under Syrtsov in Novosibirsk, had denounced Syrtsov to Moscow in March 1928 for failing to implement regime policy, sparking what would be called the Irkutsk Affair: Moletotov, Sibkraikom, 44; Hughes, “The Irkutsk Affair.”

  253. Gushchin, Sibirskaia derevnia, 187 (citing PANO, f. 2, op. 2, d. 279, l. 6); Il’inykh, Khroniki khlebnogo fronta, 165–6 (citing GANO, f. P-2, op. 2, d. 217, l. 738); Rosenfeldt, The “Special” World, I: 164.

  254. The harvest of 1927–28 came in at least 5 million tons below that of 1926–27, but by June 30, 1928, state procurements of wheat and rye equaled those of 1926–27. Carr, “Revolution from Above,” 321.

  255. Bordiugov and Kozlov, “The Turning Point of 1929.”

  256. The journal passed the letter to Rykov, head of the government. Zima, Chelovek i vlast’ v SSSR, 75 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 89, l. 12–15, 25, 56–64: V. Repin).

  257. Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, I: 67. Grain delivery quotas risked provoking what one scholar has rightly called “the two traditional replies of the peasant: the short-term reply of concealment of stocks and the long-term reply of refusal to sow more land than was necessary to feed his own family.” Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, II: 154.

  258. Avtorkhanov, Tekhnologiia vlasti, 7–11.

  259. Avorkhanov, Tekhnologiia vlasti, 11–2.

  260. Pravda, June 2, 1928, in Sochineniia, XI: 81–97.

  261. Carr, Socialism in One Country, II: 106–7 (citing Shokhin, Kratkaia istoriiia VLKSM, 115–6); Kenez, Birth of the Propaganda State, 168–9; Balashov and Nelepin, VLKSM za 10 let v tsifrakh, 21–2.

  262. Manning, “The Rise and Fall of ‘the Extraordinary Measures,’” 30 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 6, d. 599, 1. 385–7).

  263. Zima, Chelovek i vlast’ v SSSR, 81–2 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 89, d. 9, l. 9–10).

  264. Zdanovich, Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 306 (citing TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 6, d. 48, l. 15–6).

  265. Kun, Bukharin, 229–34, citing a copy of Frumkin’s letter in the Trotsky archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Sochineniia, XI: 116–23.

  266. In a published document collection, Bukharin’s letter is dated August 1928, but in April 1929, when B
ukharin would read this letter aloud at a plenum, he would date it to June 1–2, 1928. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 38–40 (RGASPI, f. 329, op. 2, d. 6, l. 58–60); Bukharin, Problemy teorii i praktiki sotsializma, 298–99.

  267. Stalin did respond to a letter (June 15, 1928) from Moisei “Mikhail” Frumkin, the deputy agriculture commissar, inveighing against Stalin’s coercive agrarian line, which he said was playing into the hands of the international bourgeoisie. Party rules specified that such a letter was to receive a collective answer from the politburo within a week. Stalin, in his fury, responded in his own name without waiting. Sochineniia, XI: 116–26.

  268. On June 27, 1928, Rykov received a letter from a well-known acquaintance from a village in Ukraine’s Chernihov province. “Alexei! Having received from Lenin such wealth in terms of experiments, you with your false apparatus are leading the country to ruin. . . . You know, us old revolutionaries need to go into the forest and start another revolution.” Zima, Chelovek i vlast’ v SSSR, 79 (citing GARF, f. 5446, op. 89, d. 9, l. 5–6: T. S. Tregubov).

  269. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 558–63 (RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 40, l. 2–11); Larina, This I Cannot Forget, 117.

  270. Storella, Voice of the People, 235–6 (RGAE, f. 396, op. 6, d. 114, l. 747–8).

  271. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, II: 184–7, 448. See also “Foreign Trade,” 225–6.

  272. Aaron Solts, a member of the Central Control Commission presidium, wrote to Orjonikidze on July 1 regarding the launching of emergency measures at the beginning of the year that “the trips of Molotov and Stalin, whether they desired this or not, were a comprehensive summons to arbitrariness and spitting on the law.” Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 31–4 (RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1/s, d. 156, l. 2–15: July 1, 1928).

  273. Scheffer, Sieben Jahre Sowjetunion, 323. Brockdorff-Rantzau died in Berlin on September 8, 1928.

  274. Unpublished transcripts in GARF, f. 9474sch, op. 7s, d. 181–261.

  275. Krumin, Shakhtinskii protsess. Krumin (1894–1943), shortened from Kruminsh, a graduate of the Petrograd University history department (1916), edited the newspaper Ekonomicheskaia zhizn’ and, in 1928, joined the editorial board of Pravda.

  276. Sochineniia, XI: 47. For evidence of working-class enthusiasm for the Shakhty trial and the 1928–31 terror against “class enemies” see Kuromiya, “The Shakhty Affair,” 51, 56.

  277. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, I: 361; Sochineniia, XI: 158–87. On the transcript given to him for editing his remarks, Stalin inserted: “Is it not a fact that the grain collection crisis was the first attack of capitalist elements in the village against Soviet policy.” He then invoked Lenin, using a rhetorical question: “Should not Lenin’s slogan about reliance on the poor peasant, alliance with the middle peasant, and battle with the kulak be the basis for our work in the countryside?” (I: 360).

  278. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, II: 354, 513.

  279. Sochineniia, XI: 159, 188–9 (first published in 1949).

  280. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, 354–5. Later in the discussion, Stalin stated that an increase in the grain price of 40 percent, to induce peasant grain sales, would cost 300 million rubles annually, and “in order to get this money it would be necessary to take something from either industry or trade” (II: 519, the uncorrected typescript).

  281. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, II: 360–1; Sochineniia, XI: 170–1.

  282. In notes for a pamphlet on the dictatorship of the proletariat that he jotted down September–October 1919, Lenin wrote of a “special (higher) ferocity of class struggle and new forms of resistance in connection with capitalism and its highest stage (conspiracies + sabotage + influence on the petty-bourgeoisie, etc. etc.) . . . The resistance of the exploiters begins before their overthrow and sharpens afterwards from two sides.” “O diktature proletariata,” PSS, XXXIX: 261–3. Similarly, a joint circular by Dzierzynski and Molotov (February 1921), for example, asserted that “having lost the battle on the external front, the counter-revolution is focusing its efforts on overthrowing Soviet power from within. It will use any means to attain this goal, drawing on all of its experience, all of its techniques of betrayal.” Lauchlan, “Young Felix Dzerzhinsky,” 1–19 (citing RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 228, l. 52).

  283. Van Ree, Political Thought of Joseph Stalin, 114–5.

  284. Sochineniia, XI: 45; Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 6 (citing Trotsky archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University, T-1835).

  285. Kun, Bukharin, 233–4.

  286. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, II: 380.

  287. On April 19, two thousand unemployed people smashed the Leningrad labor exchange; on May 3, ten thousand revolted at the Moscow labor exchange, bloodying the regular police (militia) and attacking trading stalls; and on May 15 in Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan), three thousand people forced their way into the town hall and looted stores. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, II: 5–6 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 85, d. 307, l. 28–31, 41–5).

  288. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, II: 382–7.

  289. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, II: 460–1.

  290. Fel’shtinskii, Razgovory s Bukharinym, 43. See also Lewin, Russian Peasants, 306.

  291. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, II: 516–7.

  292. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh [1984], IV: 351; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh [1984], II: 516–7.

  293. Pravda, August 5, 1928 (Molotov).

  294. At the same time, procurator general Krylenko instructed the judicial machinery to be ready for mass application of article 107 against speculators and those trying to corner the grain market. Pravda, July 20, 1928; Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, III: 6. Fainblitt’s amnesty for arrested peasants was belatedly passed and on August 7, justice commissar Yanson ordered all poor and middle peasants sentenced under article 107 to be released from prison. Manning, “The Rise and Fall of ‘the Extraordinary Measures,’” 41 (citing TsA FSB, f. 66, op. 1, d. 243, l. 243). Fainblitt, Amnistiia i sudebnyi prigovor.

  295. Stalin told the Leningrad party organization, in a summary report on the plenum, that “all the same, the grain had to be got.” Pravda, July 15, 1928, in Sochineniia, XI: 204–18.

  296. Kumanev and Kulikova, Protivostoianie, 142–4.

  297. “In early 1927,” Trotsky would write, “Zinoviev had been ready to capitulate,” until events in China rescued him from his fecklessness, but only temporarily, for whereas Trotsky and his supporters had refused to recant at the 15th Party Congress, Trotsky pointed out that Zinoviev and Kamenev had gone begging back to Stalin. Trotskii, Moia zhizn’ [1991], 502.

  298. Nazarov, Stalin i bor’ba za liderstvo, 119–20 (citing RGASPI, f. 326, op. 1, d. 99, l. 12). In January 1928, Zinoviev stated that there had been a “struggle” inside his bloc with Trotsky. Nazarov, Stalin i bor’ba za liderstvo, 119 (citing RGASPI, f. 324, op. 1, d. 363, l. 7).

  299. Medvedev, Let History Judge, 196–8.

  300. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 558–63 (RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 40, l. 2–11). See also Daniels, Documentary History of Communism [1960], I: 308–9 (from the Trotsky archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University, T-1897); and Kun, Bukharin, 251–61.

  301. Larina, “Nezabyvaemoe,” 120; Larina, This I Cannot Forget, 118.

  302. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 561.

  303. “He’s lost his mind,” Bukharin is said to have remarked of Stalin, in the presence of Trotsky, before the latter’s exile to Kazakhstan. “He thinks that he can do it all, that he alone can shoulder everything, that all others are only a hindrance.” Trotsky, “Iz chernovikov nezakonchennoi Trotskim biografii Stalina” [1939?], in Trotskii, Portrety revoliutionerov [1991], 180–1 (at 181); [1988], 141.

  304. Kamenev was evidently frustrated by Trotsky’s continued scolding of him and Zinoviev for “capitulation,” and in September 1928 would tell a few Trotsky supporters outside the Bolshoi Theater that Trotsky was
a “stubborn person,” adding that Trotsky would never ask to be summoned back to work in Moscow, like Kamenev and Zinoviev, “and will sit in Alma-Ata until they send a special train for him, but they’ll send that train only when the situation in the country is such that Kerensky will be standing on the threshold.” “Vstrecha i razgovor tt. K. i P. s Kamenevym 22 sentiabria 1928 goda,” in Fel’shtinskii, Razgovory s Bukharinym, 51–4 (at 53).

  305. Stalin’s alleged remarks circulated in many forms: Trotsky’s Diary in Exile [1958], 64; Ioffe, Odna noch’, 33–4; Serebriakova, “Oni delali v chest’ idee,” 3.

  306. Kamenev would be forced to insist that he and Zinoviev were upholding the conditions of their reinstatement to the party. RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 40, l. 12–3.

  307. Bukharin added that “as a whole, the document is not reliable and false.” Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, III: 572–6 (RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 40, l. 25–31: letter to Orjonikidze, January 30, 1929).

  308. Sokolnikov added that Bukharin had not sought a bloc with Kamenev and Zinoviev, but their neutrality in the struggle against Stalin. Danilov, Kak lomali NEP, IV: 564–5 (RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 40, l. 14–5: letter to Orjonikidze, January 28, 1929).

  309. Larina, This I Cannot Forget, 115–7. Larina was fifteen years old at the time of the incident.

  310. Danilov, Kak lomali, NEP, II: 531, 535.

  311. McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 70.

  312. Budnitskii, “Sovershenno lichno i doveritel’no!,” III: 404–10 (August 16, 1928).

  313. Vatkin, “Goriachaia osen’ dvadtsat vos’mogo,” 103.

  314. Trotsky sent a critique of the draft program to the congress from Alma-Ata supported by nearly two hundred oppositionists in exile. Degras, The Communist International [London], II: 446–55.

  315. Adibekov and Shirinia, Politbiuro TsK RKP (b)—VKP (b) i Komintern, 541–3 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 700, l. 1–2), 551–2 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 19, d. 228, l. 129); McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 68–90.

  316. According to Bukharin’s third wife, Anna Larina, Stalin once said to Bukharin’s father, “How did you make your son? I want to adopt your method. Oh, what a son, what a son!” Larina, This I Cannot Forget, 221–3.