Stalin

by Ian Grey

  The production of large-scale industry showed a remarkable increase of 113 percent. This fell short of the target of 133 percent, set for the final plan year, but it was a real achievement. The main failures were in iron, steel, and coal output. Special production campaigns were mounted to make sure that these targets were realized early in the next plan period.

  The campaign, relying initially on the foundations laid by the industrial policies first launched in the 1880s, had soon run into difficulties. The enormous increase in the industrial labor force meant the intake of new workers from the villages who knew nothing of machinery and were strange to factory life. At every stage of production, the shortage of trained workers was acute. Engineers and technicians were engaged from the United States, Germany, and France. In March 1931, a director of the Supreme Council of National Economy stated that about 5,000 foreign specialists were employed in Soviet industry. Hundreds of Soviet engineers and students were trained abroad, especially in the United States, and returned to their country to act as instructors and leaders of industry.

  Such hurried measures were but small contributions to the problem, which, like the plan itself, was on an immense scale. Numerous technical schools were set up at university and secondary school levels as well as in factories themselves. By 1933, some 200,000 students were studying in higher technical colleges and some 900,000 students were attending secondary technical schools, while factory schools and specialist courses were training 1 million workers a year. By the end of the plan period, these schools and courses were easing the shortage of engineers and skilled workers, and the second plan, which was launched without delay, benefited.

  Soviet imports of machinery were limited by lack of capital, difficulty in raising foreign loans, and discrimination against Soviet exports. The fact that the plan coincided with the great world economic depression added to Soviet difficulties.

  In this time of dramatic growth, attention was not limited to industry and agriculture. The transport system was antiquated, and a massive expansion was launched. Railway construction was hampered by shortages of iron and steel and only got under way during the second plan period. But spectacular attempts were made to improve the waterways, and work started on the building of a system of arterial highways.

  The nation was caught up in a ferment of reconstruction and expansion, affecting every branch of life. The educational system was reformed. Special emphasis was given to discipline in schools and to inculcating respect for authority. The revolutionary tradition of defiance of the government and its officials was no longer acceptable. Stalin’s new Russia demanded an obedient and disciplined people, and the young generation, which had known the anarchy of the post-revolutionary years, must be trained.

  A campaign was mounted to eradicate illiteracy, which had been reduced by 1929 to 48.9 percent of the population between the ages of eight and fifty years. Local committees were set up in January 1930 to conduct the campaign, and by 1939, the percentage of illiterates had been reduced to 18.8 percent. Numerous social reforms were also introduced. Appalling mistakes and waste were commonplace in all of these undertakings, but the building of a new nation had started and continued on an epic scale.

  Stalin was in command through the Politburo, and he closely supervised every new development. His responsibilities were immense, but he could see real progress, justifying the efforts of the people and vindicating his policies. The nation was at the start of a mighty resurgence. But threats to its continuance troubled him. With his unresting suspicion, he was sure that within the party, some were plotting to sabotage this great advance. He saw them as an evil negative force which must be destroyed. His chief fear was still that Trotsky would somehow rise like a phoenix from the ruins of his political career to reverse all that he was doing. Throughout the 1930s, he maintained an intensive propaganda campaign, damning Trotsky as the most hateful and dangerous enemy of the party and the Soviet regime.

  Three small groups are known to have conspired after the Sixteenth Congress to bring about changes in policy. The first group comprised a number of fairly young members, close to Stalin, who kept up a pretense of loyalty to him. T. I. Syrtsov, the leader of the group, was a candidate member of the Politburo and prime minister of the RSFSR. His idea was to bridge the gulf between the left and right oppositions with a group to be known by the incongrous title of the “right-wing leftist bloc.” The OGPU was quick to unmask Syrtsov and his associates. All were removed from their offices, but nothing further happened to them at the time.

  In the winter and spring of 1932–33, a terrible famine gripped the country, causing thousands of deaths. Late in the summer of 1932, when the famine was beginning to spread through the Ukraine and the North Caucasus, and the people were in a mood of savage desperation, another opposition group was uncovered. It was led by M. Ryutin, a former secretary of the Moscow Party Committee and a supporter of Bukharin. He drew up a 200-page document, known as the “Ryutin platform,” in which he denounced Stalin as “the great agent-provocateur, the destroyer of the party” and as “the gravedigger of the revolution and of Russia.” He pledged himself to fight for Stalin’s overthrow. His policy was to slow down the pace of industrialization, to end collectivization and return to individual farming, and to restore party democracy. He sent copies of his platform to many prominent party members and to former oppositionists, including Zinoviev and Kamenev. Again the OGPU struck promptly, arresting Ryutin and his small faction, as well as many who received copies of the platform.

  Stalin had hardly taken Syrtsov seriously, but he was infuriated by Ryutin’s platform. The denunciation of himself was intolerable, and his proposals were the negation of all that Stalin believed in and was convinced would save Soviet Russia. But Ryutin’s ideas were dangerous. In appealing for the slackening of the pace of industrialization and the abandoning of collectivization, he might rally the many members who could not stomach the violence in the countryside and the sacrifices which were inevitable at this stage of the nation’s development.

  In the Politburo, Stalin demanded the execution of Ryutin. It was an exceptional demand: For the first time, he was calling for the death penalty to be passed on a party member. Opposition within the party had been treated as mistaken, even dangerous. Opposition members had been persecuted, expelled, imprisoned, and exiled, but never formally condemned to death. It was acceptable to execute nonparty members, and thousands had, in fact, been killed. There were no inhibitions whatsoever about the death penalty except when applied within the party. Lenin had warned about such drastic action against members, for this meant following in the steps of the French Revolution, which had devoured its own children, the Jacobins. Now Stalin demanded that in these critical times, any form of opposition must be treated as a treasonable act, punishable by death. And to him, the Ryutin platform was treason.

  Stalin suffered a shock when the Politburo rejected his demand. Of its ten members, Molotov and Kaganovich would have supported him. Voroshilov and Kalinin probably wavered, but would also have voted with him. Kirov, Ordzhonikidze, Stanislav Kossior, Janis Rudzutak, and Kuibyshev probably voted against him. This division among his closest colleagues demonstrated that, notwithstanding his supreme position, the acclamation of the Sixteenth Congress, and the nationwide adulation, he had opponents even within the Politburo, and he considered them to be as dangerous as Ryutin.

  A few months after the Ryutin affair, the OGPU uncovered another opposition group. It was led by A. P. Smirnov, who had been elected to the Central Committee in 1912. His group included a number of old Bolsheviks and trade-unionists, who had roughly the same program as Ryutin. All were found guilty, but probably on grounds of their ineffectiveness and old age, they were treated leniently. It was Ryutin whom Stalin could not forget.

  A wave of persecution had begun during the First Five-year Plan; it was intensified after the discovery of these opposition groups. The first of the show trials had been staged in 1930. A number of economists and engineers w
ere arrested in August. All had held high office in Gosplan or in the trade, finance, or agriculture kommissariats, and had presumably expressed doubts at some time about the feasibility of the plan. They were tried in three groups, and two of the trials were staged under the full glare of publicity. The charges were that they had plotted in the interest of capitalist enemies and that they were “wreckers” and “saboteurs.” The purpose of these trials was apparently to arouse the patriotism of the people and to alert them to the dangers of enemies in their midst, who were responsible for the decline in their living standards and the failures in the industrial program. The trials were also a warning to the intelligentsia and especially to engineers, technicians, and administrators that they must serve without question. The propaganda media hammered home these lessons and warnings. The accused who had confessed were found guilty and sentenced to terms of imprisonment.

  At this time, too, the party membership was thoroughly purged. Members who came under any kind of suspicion were secretly interrogated, usually found guilty, and sentenced. Between mid-1930 and the end of 1933, the party control commission sentenced 611 members and candidates for counterrevolutionary activity. In the period from 1931 to mid-1933, regional organizations, embracing 62 percent of the party, examined nearly 40,000 allegations of political deviation, and 15,442 members were expelled.

  In his campaign to eliminate all real and potential opposition, three men whom he advanced in the early 1930s played a central role. A. N. Poskrebyshev became head of his personal secretariat in 1931. A Western observer described him as “sinister-looking . . . about five feet tall, tubby, with broad shoulders, a bent back, and large head, long crooked nose and eyes like those of a bird of prey.” His duties are not known precisely, but he was apparently omni-competent, and he certainly maintained close liaison with the security forces. He served Stalin faithfully behind the scenes throughout his career. The second man was A. I. Vyshinsky, a former Menshevik and professor of law, who became deputy state procurator in 1933 and chief procurator in 1935, and who was to play a prominent part in the political trials of 1936–38.

  Another of the new key men was N. I. Ezhov. He emerged in 1933 as a member of the purge commission. Stalin’s suspicions extended to the OGPU itself. Its first chief, Dzerzhinsky, had instilled in the security service his own fanatic devotion to the party. But Stalin was probably unsure whether the officers and agents of the OGPU would be sufficiently amenable to his will. Ezhov, as a member of the purge commission and later of the Orgburo, had full access to the secret files on all members, including the personnel of OGPU. This information and his experience fitted him well for the role of Stalin’s trusted agent and later as head of the security forces in place of Yagoda.

  The Seventeenth Party Congress, meeting from January 26 until February 10, 1934, was called by Kirov “The Congress of Victors,” and it aptly reflected the mood. The delegates were both relieved and exultant. The party had survived triumphantly through famine and through savage peasant opposition. The terrible famine of the winter of 1932–33 had been followed by a record harvest in 1933. Collectivization had been achieved to the extent of more than 90 percent of peasant households, and the peasants seemed to have given up the struggle and resigned themselves to life on the kolkhozi. The industrialization campaign had achieved outstanding results and had laid the foundations of heavy industry on which the second plan could build. The sacrifices in human lives and suffering were apparently behind them. They were looking hopefully to the future.

  The Congress was above all else a triumph for Stalin. He had led the party through the dangers and horrors of these tumultuous years. He had shown the strength, the unshakable confidence, and the determination of a great leader. The nation was in the midst of an upsurge of creative activity which he had inspired and was directing. Delegates vied in praising and worshiping him. He was “the father of the nation” and “the outstanding genius of the age.” Bukharin saluted him as “the field-marshal of the proletarian forces, the best of the best.” Kamenev declared: “This era in which we live . . . will be known in history as the era of Stalin, just as the preceding era had entered history as the time of Lenin.” There seemed no limit to the extravagance of the praise showered upon him. Finally, Kirov declared to the delegates that “it would be useless to think what kind of resolution to adopt on the report of Comrade Stalin. It will be more correct and more useful for the work at hand to accept as party law all the proposals and considerations of Comrade Stalin’s speech.” With unanimous acclaim, Stalin’s speech was adopted as “party law.”

  With mordant mistrust, however, Stalin disbelieved the acclamation that now invariably greeted him. He envisaged among the crowd of delegates innumerable pockets of opposition, each awaiting the opportunity to overturn his policies and to displace him. He took the efforts of Syrtsov, Smirnov, and above all of Ryutin as proof that his suspicions were justified. He reacted by purging the party. He must remove all whom he could not trust and at the same time tighten his personal control over the security organs. The terror had its roots in his phobia about the eradication of opposition and the need for absolute obedience to the party and to himself as its leader.

  Rumors, reported some thirty years later, that there was a conspiracy to remove him from the office of general secretary to some other post have been published, but are unsupported by evidence. It is possible, however, that Stalin himself considered at this time vacating the office of general secretary. He was nearing fifty-five and had borne heavy responsibilities without a break for seventeen years. It would have been reasonable for him to lay aside the administrative burdens, assuming some new position as executive head of the party and the government. If he was considering this possibility, it would explain why the Central Committee, newly elected by the congress, did not make the usual formal declaration that it had confirmed Stalin in office as general secretary. Moreover, the fact that he was listed at this time as “Secretary” rather than “General Secretary” of the Central Committee suggests he was downgrading the office so that his successor would not be seen to occupy the same high position.

  Much has been made of these points. It has been alleged, too, that he was almost defeated in the new committee. Nothing was further from the truth. His grip on the party and on its Central Committee had never been stronger. One indication was that the members of the Politburo and the Secretariat were no longer listed in alphabetical order, but in order of seniority, and his name headed the list. Such matters of protocol were of great significance in the Soviet world. Also, the newly elected committee contained several men, like L. Z. Mekhlis, N. I. Ezhov, and G. G. Yagoda, who were then trusted Stalinists, while others of whom he disapproved were dropped.

  If, in fact, Stalin was considering laying down the office of general secretary, he would probably have chosen Kirov as his successor. Kaganovich had been ruthless in enforcing collectivization and was not popular. He was, moreover, a Jew, and anti-Semitism was never far below the surface among members. Molotov had served earlier in the Secretariat and had not been a success. Kirov was a Russian with typical broad face and stub nose, a good speaker, and generally popular. He had first met Stalin in May 1918 and possibly accompanied him in July to Tsaritsyn. Subsequently, he was sent, probably at Stalin’s instigation, to restore party rule in Astrakhan. There, in the following year, he came into direct conflict with Trotsky, who had ordered the evacuation of Astrakhan before it was captured by Denikin’s White forces. Kirov opposed the order and appealed to Lenin, who reversed Trotsky’s decision and directed that Astrakhan should be defended to the end.

  This successful defiance of Trotsky brought Kirov into association with Stalin, Ordzhonikidze, and Voroshilov, and he supported them strongly in the dispute with Trotsky over the timing of the invasion of Georgia. Again, he worked closely with Stalin as a member of the commission of congress which drafted the resolution on the nationalities question. In 1926, he was posted to Leningrad, where he won praise for his work in purgi
ng the local party organs of left-wing elements. He had, in fact, shown himself at every stage to be a wholly dependable Stalinist.

  It has been stated that after the Seventeenth Congress, which had elected him to the Central Committee, Kirov received a proposal from Stalin that he should move to Moscow. He declined this advancement and asked to be left in Leningrad. He may have preferred to be independently in charge rather than be in Moscow under Stalin’s watchful eye, and the object of the jealousy of Kaganovich, Molotov, Voroshilov, and others to whom he might be senior in status. Evidently, he was allowed to stay in Leningrad until the end of the Second Five-year Plan. After a brief vacation in Sochi with Stalin and his daughter, and then a spell in Kazakhstan, dealing with famine conditions and difficulties over collectivization, he traveled back to Moscow and thence to Leningrad.

  Following the Seventeenth Congress, there was a feeling in Moscow and elsewhere that the worst was over, and Stalin himself may have sensed the possibility of easing the pressure. Bread rationing was abolished in November 1933. Another encouraging sign was that the OGPU, feared throughout the country, was renamed the People’s Kommissariat of Internal Affairs, known as the NKVD, which seemed, at least at the time, less threatening. The powers of the political police were also restricted. Opposition members were allowed to write for the press, but not to criticize party policy. Another reason for the apparent relaxing of repression was that the Soviet government was trying to present a more liberal face to the West. Trade, access to Western expertise, and loans were desperately needed, especially from Britain, France, and America, where public opinion had been antagonized by reports of repression and violence. Other minor concessions to Russian and to world opinion may have been contemplated. But then a decree imposing on every family collective responsibility for the treason of any one of its members warned that the party was maintaining its repressive vigilance.