by Will Podmore
Tauger explained, “The evidence that I have published and other evidence, including recent Ukrainian document collections, show that the famine developed out of a shortage and pervaded the Soviet Union, and that the regime organized a massive program of rationing and relief in towns and in villages, including in Ukraine, but simply did not have enough food. This is why the Soviet famine, an immense crisis and tragedy of the Soviet economy, was not in the same category as the Nazis’ mass murders, which had no agricultural or other economic basis.”40 He summed up, “Ukraine received more in food supplies during the famine crisis than it exported to other republics. … Soviet authorities made substantial concessions to Ukraine in response to an undeniable natural disaster and transferred resources from Russia to Ukraine for food relief and agricultural recovery.”41
Hans Blumenfeld pointed out that famine also struck the Russian regions of North Caucasus and Lower Volga: “This disproves the ‘fact’ of anti-Ukrainian genocide parallel to Hitler’s anti-semitic holocaust. To anyone familiar with the Soviet Union’s desperate manpower shortage in those years, the notion that its rulers would deliberately reduce that scarce resource is absurd … Up to the 1950s the most frequently quoted figure was two million [famine victims]. Only after it had been established that Hitler’s holocaust had claimed six million victims, did anti-Soviet propaganda feel it necessary to top that figure by substituting the fantastic figure of seven to ten million …”42
In 1933, rainfall was adequate and the 1933 harvest was good. In 1936, when the weather was again dreadful, the government averted a famine by organising food stocks and grain collections to ensure that food got to the people. By 1940, Ukraine’s industrial capacity was seven times greater than it had been in 1913. Its productive capacity equaled France’s.
The Second Five-Year Plan (1932-37)
The Soviet Union financed industry from the national budget – direct subsidies to restore fixed capital, and advances of working capital, to buy raw materials – the approach that favoured heavy industry. Borrowing and spending served industrialisation. The banking system gave long-term credit for industry, electrification, agricultural improvements, and for financing foreign trade. Industry’s requirements, not finance, dictated policy. The national economic plan determined the state budget and the credit plan, removing financial limits on industrialisation.
Industry and its trusts and factories had to meet their production targets, couched mainly in terms of physical output, and their financial targets, particularly their targets for cutting costs. The increased investment spending did not have to be matched by a corresponding increase in revenue. The Soviet Union rejected the option of financing industry through credit from banks on the basis of tangible security and potential profits, the approach that favoured light industry. But consumers’ needs were not ignored: Stalin urged in July 1935, “everything that increases the production of consumer goods for the mass market must be given more emphasis from year to year.”43 National income grew by 56.4 per cent between 1932 and 1937.44
In the Russian republic alone, the number of kilowatt hours of energy generated increased from 3.2 billion in 1928 to 31 billion in 1940. Between 1929 and 1937, the Soviet Union moved from 15th to 2nd in Europe in electricity production. It went from importing natural gas to exporting it, producing 560 million metric tons by 1932. Between 1928 and 1938, its oil output nearly tripled. Coal production increased from 10 to 73 million tons per year, iron ore from 1 to 5.5 million tons, steel from 2 to 9 million tons. The productive capacity of major capital goods industries doubled between October 1928 and January 1934. Blast furnace capacity rose by 111 per cent and open-hearth capacity by 63 per cent. Production of high-quality steel more than quadrupled between 1934 and 1936. Soviet machinery output increased ninefold between 1927-28 and 1937. In 1930, it had 34,000 tractors and 1,700 combine harvesters, but by 1938, it had 483,500 and 153,500 respectively. The Soviet Union became the world’s largest producer of tractors and railway engines.
Soviet aircraft were among the world’s best and Soviet pilots set many world aviation records in the 1930s, for flight altitude, distance and endurance. Between 1933 and 1937, labour productivity rose by 65 per cent in industry, 83 per cent in construction and 48 per cent in railway transport. Workers improved their skills: by the end of 1937, three-quarters of workers in industry and transport reached the ‘technical minimum’.
Developing Central Asia
In the Central Asian republics, the Soviet government planned and built new industrial enterprises to provide work for the peoples of the republics. It also raised education and health services to the level of the more advanced areas. Investment in the Soviet Far East was eight times higher in the Second Five-Year Plan than in the First. By 1934, the region was receiving nearly half of all Soviet investment. Investments per person in the Central Asian republics grew more swiftly than in the Russian republic and so industrial production did too. So did education.
Educationists Hessen and Hans concluded in 1930, “The achievements of the Soviet Government in the field of national education are very considerable. … These results were possible through a special system of financial subvention from central funds to the minorities. Thus whereas the Russians in the RSFSR receive from the treasury about 1-2 chernovetz rubles per head for educational needs, the autonomous republics and regions receive from the same source about 3.8 chernovetz rubles per head. Without this central help the autonomous territories, usually the most backward … would not have been able to undertake the enormous task. This policy of the Soviet Government may be just and generous, being the only way to repay Russia’s debt to these original inhabitants of territories conquered during the centuries by Russians, and left neglected by the Imperial Government. In spite of the partisan character of education imparted, the national renascence of all Russian minorities is an actual fact which brings within itself immense possibilities in the future.”45
The Soviet Union raised tens of millions of former colonial subjects to full practical equality with the Russian people. Martin summed up, “New national elites were trained and promoted to leadership positions in the government, schools, and industrial enterprises of these newly formed territories. In each territory, the national language was declared the official language of government. In dozens of cases, this necessitated the creation of a written language where one did not yet exist. The Soviet state financed the mass production of books, journals, newspapers, movies, operas, museums, folk music ensembles, and other cultural output in the non-Russian languages. Nothing comparable to it had been attempted before ...”46 Ellman noted, “The enormous expansion of urban employment opportunities in Soviet Central Asia during the period of Soviet power is a major achievement of Soviet power.”47
Party workers launched a campaign against customs of female inequality and seclusion. By the early 1960s, veils were an exception, not the rule. In 1937, the government launched a campaign to attract female settlers to Central Asia. Hundreds of thousands of women volunteered. As historian Elena Shulman commented, “Such volunteers made explicit offers to put patriotic undertakings above familial duties. These were not victims appealing for aid. Rather, these women assumed that they were needed to defend the frontier and to ‘bring everything to life that will win patriotism’. The presence of such strategies belies the notion that a Great Retreat pushed women into the confines of the domestic hearth. These sentiments also indicate a fervent current of support for the Soviet regime.”48 As a result of all these efforts, there was a relative calm in interethnic relations in what are today ethnic and religious trouble spots.
The Soviet government, being committed to equality, opposed all forms of racialism. Article 123 of the Soviet Constitution made discrimination of all kinds ‘on account of nationality, as well as the advocacy of racial exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, punishable by law’.49 Stalin said in 1931, “National and racial chauvinism is a survival of the misanthropic cust
oms characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous survival of cannibalism.”50 In 1934, the Soviet government established a Jewish Autonomous Region, known as Birobidzhan, as the national homeland of Soviet Jewry. It still exists today.
In 1939, the Soviet Union was the only country willing to admit Jews fleeing the Nazis.51 As Stephen Cohen pointed out, “the Soviet Union saved more European Jews from Nazism than any other country, first by providing sanctuary for hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing eastward after the German invasion of Poland, in 1939, and then by destroying the Nazi war machine and liberating the death camps in Eastern Europe.”52
‘An unexampled achievement’
The Soviet working class, with power in its hands, achieved much in the 1920s and 1930s. They changed the Soviet Union from the backward, semi-savage, semi-colonial land of the tsars to the second industrial, scientific and military power in the world. The Soviet Union built a viable modern industrial base in just a decade. From 1928 to 1940, industrial output grew by 17 per cent a year, agriculture by half a per cent, and overall income by 15 per cent, an unequalled rate of income growth. Eric Johnston, President of the US Chamber of Commerce, after visiting the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan, declared that Soviet progress since 1928 was ‘an unexampled achievement in the industrial history of the whole world’.53
Recent scholars agreed. Davies showed how the working class transformed the Soviet Union into a major industrial power. He concluded that the Soviet industrial revolution was unique in its speed and scale.54 Suny pointed out that Soviet and Western economists agreed that Soviet industrial growth in these years was exceptional.55
American historian David Hoffmann confirmed that the Soviet Union succeeded beyond all other countries in mobilising its human and natural resources, in creating an economic system driven by a common purpose, and in creating a united society without an exploiting class. He pointed out that the Soviet Union also provided for the welfare of the working class, offered workers free, universal health care and education, and guaranteed every worker a job, housing and subsidised food.56
Girsh Khanin noted that the Soviet Union’s dynamic efficiency enabled it to mobilise centralised financial resources to develop the economy and to ensure high rates of economic development (in the 1930s the highest in the world). He explained that this was due to the high growth rates of fixed capital, the rapid growth of education and health care, planned geological exploration and the Soviet working class’s effective use of Western countries’ scientific and technical achievements. He observed that the third five-year plan created most of the industrial organisational and personnel that enabled the Soviet Union to win the Second World War and to recover so swiftly after the war.57
Michael Kort noted that the Soviet Union improved its transport significantly in the 1930s, mainly by adding to the canal and rail networks. It expanded the light industries that produced consumer goods, although these remained a poor relation to heavy industry. The industrialisation drive, because it was planned and controlled by a central authority, brought economic and strategic benefits. Much of this industrial development was in the previously backward central and eastern regions of the country, so it both contributed to their advance and made the new industrial plants and resources safer from foreign attack. Planning also brought economic benefits since the new plants were closer to their essential raw materials. By 1941 the industries built during the 1930s were producing a full range of modern weapons, including some of the world’s best tanks, artillery and tactical rockets. After the Second World War, those industries provided the basis for even greater growth that made the Soviet Union an industrial power second only to the USA until Japan overtook it in the 1980s.58
David Kotz and Fred Weir remarked that the full employment that resulted from economic planning was another socialist feature of the Soviet system. There was virtually no unemployment in the Soviet Union after the early 1930s. In fact, there was usually an overall labour shortage. It was easy for workers to find a job quickly, and once in work they had a high degree of job security. Workers were rarely laid off or fired. This meant that they had good personal income security and enjoyed significant bargaining power on the job. Because there was a labour shortage and also because there was this tradition of almost never firing workers, managers had to take account of workers’ needs and wishes. This resulted in a more relaxed pace of work than was typical of capitalist enterprises.59 Labour experts Tim Pringle and Simon Clarke pointed out that in the 1930s Soviet workers’ resistance to incompetent or unjust management was constant and widespread and that strikes were usually settled in the traditional Soviet way, with immediate concessions to meet the needs of the striking workers.60
British historian Kevin McDermott concluded that the Soviet Union “was fundamentally and implacably anti-capitalist. Beyond a few disgruntled Trotskyists, Stalinism represented socialism.”61
Chapter 3
Towards world war
Threats of war
Russia has no natural borders to protect it from invaders from Asia and Europe. In 1237 the Mongols conquered Russia. Kiev and other cities were burnt to the ground; a tenth of the people were enslaved. Between 1250 and the early 1400s, Russia was invaded every year, by the Tatars in 45 wars, by the Lithuanians in 41, by German crusading orders in 30, and by the Swedes, the Bulgarians and others in 44 more. Russia regained her independence only in the 15th century. But in 1571, the Tatars burnt down most of Moscow. 112 of the next 200 years were spent in six wars with Sweden, four with the Ottoman Empire and 12 with Poland. Russia was at war for 48 of the years 1740 to 1815, fighting eight wars. Then followed the three great defeats of the Crimean war (1854-56), the war with Japan (1905) and World War One. After the revolution came the War of Intervention.
In the early 1930s, international relations were increasingly fraught with war. In September 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, posing a threat to the Soviet Union. So the Soviet Union had to move fast to defend itself. Stalin said in 1931, “To slacken the tempo would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten. But we do not want to be beaten. No, we refuse to be beaten! One feature of the history of old Russia was the continual beatings she suffered because of her backwardness. She was beaten by the Mongol khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She was beaten by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry. She was beaten by the British and French capitalists. She was beaten by the Japanese barons. All beat her - because of her backwardness, because of her military backwardness, cultural backwardness, political backwardness, industrial backwardness, agricultural backwardness. They beat her because it was profitable and could be done with impunity.
“You remember the words of the pre-revolutionary poet: ‘You are poor and abundant, mighty and impotent, Mother Russia.’ Those gentlemen were quite familiar with the verses of the old poet. They beat her, saying: ‘You are abundant,’ so one can enrich oneself at your expense. They beat her, saying: ‘You are poor and impotent,’ so you can be beaten and plundered with impunity. Such is the law of the exploiters – to beat the backward and the weak. It is the jungle law of capitalism. You are backward, you are weak – therefore you are wrong; hence you can be beaten and enslaved. You are mighty – therefore you are right; hence we must be wary of you. That is why we must no longer lag behind.”1
So the Soviet Union hastened to collectivise and industrialise. Collectivisation was a battle which cost many lives. But in the long run it saved many more lives, Soviet, British and American. In World War One, the feudal countryside had failed to feed the cities and the army, but in World War Two the collective farms fed Soviet cities and the Red Army. As Life magazine observed on 29 March 1943, “Whatever the cost of farm collectivization … these large farm units … made possible the use of machinery … which doubled output … [and] released millions of workers for industry. Without them … Russi
a could not have built the industry that turned out the munitions that stopped the German army.”
Without collectivisation the Soviet Union could not have industrialised. Without industrialisation the Soviet Union could not have had a modern army. Without a modern army it could not have beaten the Nazis. If the Nazis had defeated the Soviet Union, even more Soviet people would have been killed. Then with no two-front war to worry about and with the Soviet Union’s resources at his disposal, Hitler could have turned West and killed even more Allied soldiers and civilians.
Fifth columns
After Hitler seized power in 1933, pro-Nazi fifth columns grew in almost every country and came to power in 16 countries. The German, Japanese and Polish governments all carried out Contra-style raids into the Soviet Union, to kill and destroy. The Nuremberg trials confirmed that the Nazis sent armed teams of White Russians on missions to kill Soviet leaders.2