The Great Terror

In April, too, the principles of crash industrialization and of collectivization were adopted at the XVIth Party Conference. After their views had been condemned, the Rightists submitted. On 26 November 1929 they published a very general recantation of their views on “a series of political and tactical questions.” Bukharin now lost his Politburo post.

Stalin’s political problem was not yet solved. Although he had beaten the Right, there was no true guarantee against a revival of its fortunes. But with the launching of the Party into the bitter adventure of sudden collectivization, the effect on any wavering section might be calculated to be a swing to more solidarity. The effect on the Leftists, already opposed to Bukharin’s views, would be further to disarm their complaints against Stalin’s policies and to make them start thinking of the old Party loyalty in the presence of the enemy. As for the just-defeated Rightists, how could they rock the boat during the crisis?

Whenever the Party had been unpopular, this sort of solidarity had been demonstrated. At Kronstadt, all the oppositionists—even the Workers’ Opposition—had rallied to the leadership for the critical period.

The last serious pretense that persuasion, or even economic pressure, was to be the method of enforcing the Party will on the peasantry had disappeared. Pure force, a frontal assault, was the chosen method. Without any serious preparation or planning on the economic side, the Party was launched into a civil war in the rural areas. It was the first great crisis of the Stalin regime, and it marks the beginning of a whole new era of terror.

On 5 January 1930 the Central Committee issued a decision, switching from the original plan of collectivizing 20 percent of the sown area during the Five-Year Plan to the complete collectivization of the more important regions by the autumn of 1930 or at the very latest the autumn of 1931, and in other areas by the autumn of 1931 or at the very latest the autumn of 1932.⁴⁵ In one way or another, everything got out of hand, and in a few weeks the Party had been carried to the brink of disaster. Between January and March 1930, the number of peasant holdings brought into the collective farms increased from 4 million to 14 million. Over half the total peasant households had been collectivized in five months. And in the countryside the peasants fought back with “the sawed-off shotgun, the axe, the dagger, the knife.”⁴⁶ At the same time, they destroyed their livestock rather than let it fall into the hands of the State.

Kalinin, Ordzhonikidze, and other members of the Politburo visited the provinces and seem to have reported realistically about the disaster. But Stalin is said not to have bothered to obtain Politburo permission for his key article “Dizziness with Success,” published in Pravda on 2 March 1930.⁴⁷ The article put most of the blame on excesses committed by local Party workers, and this, it is said, came as a shock to local enthusiasts. It was followed on 14 March by a condemnation of “distortions” of the Party line in the application of compulsion to the peasantry—which, the statement said, was a Leftist deviation which could only help to strengthen right-wing elements in the Party. Bauman, who had replaced Uglanov as First Secretary in Moscow and candidate member of the Politburo, was now made a scapegoat on charges of Left deviation, removed from his post, and sent to a lesser position in Central Asia.⁴⁸

Defeat had been accepted. The peasants left the kolkhozes. Stalin’s policy lay in ruins.

In any other political system, this would have been the moment for the opposition to stand forward. They had been proved right. And support for the Rightist leadership sprang up spontaneously in Party branches all over the country. Among the people as a whole, they were of course stronger still. But to this vast potential support, Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov gave no lead. On the contrary, they went out of their way to say that to come out against “the Party,” especially with the support of peasants, was unthinkable. So Stalin’s policy defeat was accompanied by a political victory. Tomsky was removed from the Politburo in July 1930, and Rykov in December. Henceforth, it was purely Stalinist.

The Rightist leaders privately regarded Stalin’s leadership as catastrophic and hoped for his fall, but advised their closest adherents to wait in patience for a change in the Party mood. Bukharin favored working up a general support of the idea of a change without any direct organized struggle for the time being. He is described as having counseled the younger oppositionists to rely on the masses, who must sooner or later realize the fatal consequences of the Stalin line.⁴⁹ Patience would be necessary. So he accepted defeat in the vague hope of some improvement later on.