Stalin

Already by early December 1929, the Soviet state had procured 13.5 million tons of grain—more than twice as much as in any preceding year of the regime.¹⁴⁸ But the state had to feed many more rural folk (who had previously purchased or traded for food on the market), set aside grain for ambitious surges in export, and meet the rationing norms for the industrial cities and construction sites, as well as the Red Army.¹⁴⁹ In that connection, the November 1929 plenum had created a new USSR land commissariat. Stalin appointed Yakov Epstein, known as Yakovlev, the editor of Peasant Newspaper and a member of the disciplinary Central Control Commission, as commissar.¹⁵⁰ He presided over a commission on the tempos of collectivization and forms of collectives, which decided not on the kommuna—full socialization of everything—but on an intermediate form, the artel, with socialization of land, labor, draft animals, and fundamental implements, but private ownership of cows, other livestock, and some everyday tools. Collectivized peasants were also to be allowed to retain household plots. The commission’s thorniest question was whether the “class enemy” kulak would be permitted to join the new socialist agriculture. Disposition of kulaks had largely been left to locals, and many collective farms were admitting them. The Yakovlev commission warned against any blanket approach.¹⁵¹

Suddenly, however, in a speech on the last day (December 27, 1929) of a weeklong Congress of Agrarians-Marxists, Stalin preempted the commission, thundering in words Pravda carried two days later that “we have gone over from a policy of limiting the exploiting tendencies of the kulak to a policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class.” Liquidating an entire class? “Is it possible to accelerate tempos of our socialized industry more while having such an agricultural base as small peasant farms, incapable of expanding production and yet predominating in our economy?” he asked rhetorically. “No, not possible. Is it possible to continue for a more or less long period to base Soviet power and socialist construction on two different foundations—on the foundation of the largest and most consolidated socialist industry and on the foundation of the most subdivided and backward small-scale peasant economy? No, not possible.” He continued: “What’s the solution? The solution is to make agriculture large-scale, make it capable of accumulation, of expanding production, and in this way transform the agricultural base of our economy.”¹⁵² Stalin had a famously soft voice, but one audience member called his ultra-class-war speech “electrifying.”¹⁵³

Once again, the dictator had enacted a conspiracy within the regime: at Old Square, more than a month before, he had received the OGPU hierarchs—Yagoda, Messing, Yevdokimov, and others—as well as Georgy Blagonravov, the former head of the secret police transport department and now first deputy commissar of railroads.¹⁵⁴ This would be the kulak liquidation team.

Stalin also used his pencil to hand victory to the more rabid members of the Yakovlev commission: the partially socialized artels were no longer to be allowed as the main form of collectives indefinitely, but would be superseded by a leap to the “higher-form” kommunas. Stalin also crossed out mention of farmers retaining minor implements, chickens, or a milk cow and wrote in that collectivization was to be completed in just one to two years (depending on region), using dekulakization. All this became a politburo resolution approved on January 5, 1930.¹⁵⁵ Six days later, Yagoda asked his top subordinates how many people could be interned in existing labor camps and where new camps might be quickly established, encouraging them to “think creatively.”¹⁵⁶ The upshot was that each territory would have a deportation quota.¹⁵⁷ “Not everyone has the nerves, strength, character, and understanding to appreciate the scenario of a tremendous breakup of the old and a feverish construction of the new,” Stalin exulted in a letter to Gorky in Sorrento (January 17). “Naturally, with such a ‘baffling turmoil,’ we are bound to have those who are exhausted, distraught, worn out, despondent, and lagging—and those who go over to the enemy camp. These are the inevitable ‘costs’ of revolution.”¹⁵⁸

Stalin issued secret circulars to local party machines on the dekulakization of more than 2 million peasants, using every available instrument: the procuracy, courts, regular police (militia), secret police, party activists, urban workers, and, if necessary, soldiers.¹⁵⁹ Orjonikidze let slip the recklessness at the Central Control Commission on January 18: “Do not forget that in our conditions, what yesterday was considered correct today might already be incorrect.”¹⁶⁰

BUILDERS OF THE NEW WORLD