STALINISM IN A RUSSIAN PROVINCE

Transcription

1 STALINISM IN A RUSSIAN PROVINCE

2 Also by James Hughes STALIN, SIBERIA AND THE CRISIS OF THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY

3 Stalinism in a Russian Province A Study of Collectivization and Dekulakization in Siberia James Hughes Lec/urer in Russian Polilics, Department of Government London School of Economics and Political Science in association with Palgrave Macmillan

4 * james Hughes 1996 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Totten ham Court Road, London W1 P OLP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act Published by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin's Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN DOI / ISBN (ebook) This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Transferred to digital printing 2001

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7 Contents List of Tables viii Preface List of Abbreviations Map of the Siberian Krai in 1930 IX xii xiii Introduction 1 Capturing the Peasantry 7 2 Mobilizing Social Influence 33 3 The Search for a New Method 52 4 The Ural-Siberian Method 73 5 Volynki: The Russian Jacquerie 92 6 A Prologue of Repression Stalin's Final Solution Barshchina and Maroderstvo The Great U-turn 183 Conclusion 204 Notes 217 Appendix: Documents 249 Bibliography 258 Glossary 264 Index 266

8 List of Tables 4.1 The piatikratniki: compulsory registrations and compulsory auctions of peasant property in Siberia (March-May 1929) A comparison of procurement levels in Siberia in March-April 1928 and Compulsory grain quotas on peasants in Siberia in 1928/9 and 1929/ Punishment policy under Article 61 in Siberia in 1929/ Siberian OGPU statistics on dekulakization, to 24 February The level of collectivization in Siberia, 1 July 1929 to I May Siberian OGPU statistics on the deportation of Category Two kulaks, to 24 February

9 Preface Stalin designated 1929 the year of the 'great breakthrough' in Russian history. The cataclysm of the self-declared 'revolution from above' marked the decisive turning point where Stalin propelled the country into a dash for growth: a planned 'great leap forward' that would stake out the construction of the Stalinist state. It articulated and released the pressures for change to the status quo of the New Economic Policy (NEP) that had been building up in the Communist Party during the 1920s. The Stalinist revolution was an attempt to smash a conjuncture of economic, political and contingent constraints obstructing the realization of the Bolshevik ideal of a modernizing transformation of the Soviet Union. After the grain crisis of 1927/8, the Stalinists had come to view the existence of a market oriented free peasantry under NEP as the main constraint on the building of socialism. The success of a modernizing crash industrialization programme hinged on a resolution of the question of who would control the countryside, the peasant or the state. For, given the Soviet Union's backwardness, whoever won this battle would dictate the nature and pace of the development of the country. This study is a continuation of the author's previous work, Stalin, Siberia and the Crisis of the New Economic Policy, that investigated the relationship between contingency, Stalin's personal experiences of Siberian conditions and the abandonment of NEP during the grain crisis. In this book the focus of analysis has been taken forward to examine the aftermath of the grain clisis and the evolution of the primary programmatic pillar of the Stalin revolution: the formation and implementation of the policies of forced collectivization and dekulakization. It was the resolution of the peasant question which shaped the entire modernization process in Soviet Russia, for collectivization subordinated the peasant economy to the demands of the state-led rapid industrialization which was the foundation of the Stalinist state. In preparing this book I have sought to build on the strengths of my expertise on one Russian province, Siberia, as well as attempting to be responsive to criticisms of structural faults in my earlier work that focused on its non-archival source base. The revolution in historical investigation in Russia that has occurred following the disintegration of communism has been driven not only by much freer access to archives previously closed to foreign scholars, but also by the unbrokered exchange of ideas and materials through personal, scholar-to-scholar contacts. The new environment

10 X Preface in allowed me to collect and incorporate in this book a massive amount of new materials, the bulk of which are from Siberian and central party archives. I would like to acknowledge my debt to the Siberian historians, Nikolai Gushchin and Vladimir Il'inykh, whose work on this period acted as an intellectual stimulus for me. I am obliged to single out for special recognition and warmest thanks Vladimir Zhdanov, formerly of the Institute of History in Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk, who was employed as a research assistant for two years during my investigations of Siberian archives. The best scholar of his generation in the region, Vladimir guided me through the labyrinthine academic Hades that exists in post-communist Russia. His friendship and our constant disagreements over the interpretation of documents enthused and undoubtedly enriched my work. There are many other Russians, whose names I would rather not cite, to whom thanks are due: from archive assistants, administrative and clerical staff at institutes, to journalists, business people, pensioners and others who made specific and sometimes vital contributions to my work. This book has endured a long intellectual ferment, originating with concepts and ideas first encouraged and developed by a brilliant teacher at Queen's University Belfast, the late Frank Wright, when I was an undergraduate there in the late 1970s. My ideas have been nurtured by the work of scholars whose names are too numerous to mention. I hope it is sufficient to express my appreciation of this intellectual debt by the citations in footnotes. I am especially grateful to the series editors Bob Davies and Arfon Rees of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham, who read the manuscript and offered invaluable suggestions for changes which have considerably enhanced the finished work. I could not have written this book without the financial assistance of several sources to whom I am profoundly grateful. The British Council had the foresight to provide me with a small short-term visit grant to conduct a preliminary survey of Siberian archives in September The Nuffield Foundation awarded me a social science research grant in 1992, and the British Academy followed this with a small personal research grant in , which enabled me to carry out without interruption the collection and investigation of the new archival materials on which the work is based. The efforts of Chai Lieven, Bob Davies and Bob Service in helping me to obtain these grants is deeply appreciated. I would also like to acknowledge the support for this research by Keele University, where I was employed as lecturer in Russian politics from Keele greatly assisted my work by the award of a special sabbatical leave in 1992: an

11 Preface xi award that freed me from teaching and administrative duties to concentrate on writing and also provided some financial assistance for my research. Parts of Chapters 3 and 4 previously appeared in a somewhat different version in Slavic Review, to the editors of which I am obliged for their kind permission to draw from this piece. I warmly appreciate the efforts of all those at Macmillan involved in the publication of this book, with a special thanks to Anne Rafique who skilfully and efficiently prepared the typescript. Finally, the greatest debt of all is due to my wife Julia, to whom the book is dedicated. For she has tolerated my long absences, whether in my study or in Siberia, and provided the companionship and partnership that sustains me and my work through good times and bad. James Hughes April 1995

12 List of Abbreviations GAAK GANO 1 GANO 2 IS NLP RTsKhlDNI zs State Archive of Altai Krai State Archive of Novosibirsk Oblast (archive of former Siberian Krai) State Archive of Novosibirsk Oblast, Corpus 2 (former regional party archive) Izvestiia sibkraikoma vkp(b) (Novosibirsk) Na leninskom puti (Novosibirsk) Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Modem History (former CPSU central archive, Moscow) Zhizn' sibiri (Novosibirsk)

13 The Siberian Krai in SCALE 0 kilometres 500 Kansk ~...,.. IIA ' - IV/ ON -... GOLIA 100 Macmillan Press Ltd.

14 Krai Capital Okrug Centre Trans-Siberian Railroad and Branch Lines Okrug Boundaries Krai Boundary - - International Frontier Location of the Sibkrai in the U.S.S.R. Main zone of resettlement for category two kulaks G) (]) OKRUGS West Siberia Omsk Tarsk Barabinsk Slavgorod Rubtsovsk Biisk Barn au I Kamensk Novosibirsk East Siberia Tomsk Kuznetsk Khakassiya Achinsk Krasnoyarsk Minusinsk Kansk Tulunovsk ) Irkutsk Kirensk AUTONOMOUS OBLAST Oirotiya AUTONOMOUS REPUBLICS Tannu-Tuva Buryat-Mongolia

15 The past year was the year of the great breakthrough on all the fronts of socialist construction. Opening line of Stalin's article commemorating the twelfth anniversary of the October revolution, Pravda, 7 November Eikhe (citing Lenin): It might seem that this is a struggle for grain, but in fact, it is a struggle for socialism. Stalin: Correct! From the stenogram of the November 1929 Central Committee plenum. Who stole from his neighbours, set fire to property, and bore false witness at court for a bottle of vodka? The peasant. Who is the first to denounce peasants at village and other meetings? The peasant. Chekhov, Muzhiki.