| LECTURE#19 |
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What was NEP? What were the costs of the collectivization & industrialization? The New Economic Policy (NEP) (1921 - 1928): the tactical retreat. The first phrase of militant Stalinism: the liquidation of the kulaks as a class. An undeclared war between the peasantry & Stalin. The First Five Year Plan completed before time & the second great Soviet famine (1932). The industrialization. The White Sea canal. The dictators cult. The early trials (1928). Reading Zoshenko, Ilf & Petrov satirizing the Soviet society.
Stalinist development __________________ 1.Planning At the fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in December 1927, Stalin attacked the left by expelling Trotsky and his supporters from the party and then moving against the right by abandoning Lenin''s New Economic Policy which had been championed by Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Ivanovich Rykov. Warning delegates of an impending capitalist encirclement, he stressed that survival and development could only occur by pursuing the rapid development of heavy industry. Stalin remarked that the Soviet Union was "fifty to a hundred years behind the advanced countries" (the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, etc.), and thus must narrow "this distance in ten years." In a perhaps eerie foreboding of World War II, Stalin declared, "Either we do it or we shall be crushed." To oversee the radical transformation of the Soviet Union, the party, under Stalin''s direction, established Gosplan (the State General Planning Commission), a state organ responsible for guiding the socialist economy toward accelerated industrialization. In April 1929 Gosplan released two joint drafts that began the process that would industrialize the primarily agrarian nation. This 1,700 page report became the basis the first Five-Year Plan for National Economic Construction, or Piatiletka, calling for the doubling of Soviet capital stock between 1928 and 1933. Shifting from Lenin''s NEP, the first Five-Year Plan established central planning as the basis of economic decision-making and the stress on rapid heavy industrialization. It began the rapid process of transforming a largely agrarian nation consisting of peasants into an industrial superpower. In effect, the initial goals were laying the foundations for future exponential economic growth. The new economic system put forward by the first Five-Year plan entailed a complicated series of planning arrangements (see Overview of the Soviet economic planning process). The first Five-Year plan focused on the mobilization of natural resources to build up the country''s heavy industrial base by increasing output of coal, iron, and other vital resources. At a high human cost, this process was largely successful, forging a capital base for industrial development more rapidly than any country in history. 2. Industrialization in practice Early Soviet poster: The Smoke of chimneys is the breath of Soviet Russia The mobilization of resources by state planning augmented the country''s industrial base. From 1928 to 1932, pig iron output, necessary for development of nonexistent industrial infrastructure rose from 3.3 million to 10 million tons per year. Coal, the integral product fueling modern economies and Stalinist industrialization, successfully rose from 35.4 million to 75 million tons, and output of iron ore rose from 5.7 million to 19 million tons. A number of industrial complexes such as Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk, the Moscow and Gorky automobile plants, the Urals and Kramatorsk heavy machinery plants, and Kharkov, Stalingrad and Cheliabinsk tractor plants had been built or were under construction. Based largely on these figures the Five Year Industrial Production Plan had been fulfilled by 93.7 percent in only four years, while parts devoted to heavy-industry part were fulfilled by 108%. Stalin in December 1932 declared the plan a success to the Central Committee, since increases in the output of coal and iron would fuel future development. While undoubtedly marking a tremendous leap in industrial capacity, the Five Year Plan was extremely harsh on industrial workers; quotas were extremely difficult to fulfill, requiring that miners put in 16 to 18-hour workdays. Failure to fulfill the quotas could result in treason charges. Working conditions were poor, even hazardous. By some estimates, 127,000 workers died during the four years (from 1928 to 1932). Due to the allocation of resources for industry along with decreasing productivity since collectivization, a famine occurred. The use of forced labor must also not be overlooked. In the construction of the industrial complexes, inmates of labor camps were used as expendable resources. From 1921 until 1954, during the period of state-guided, forced industrialization, it is claimed 3.7 million people were sentenced for alleged counter-revolutionary crimes, including 0.6 million sentenced to death, 2.4 million sentenced to labor camps, and 0.7 million sentenced to expatriation. Some other estimates put these figures much higher. Much like with the famines, the evidence supporting these high numbers is disputed by some historians, although this is a minority view. 2. Collectivization In November 1928 the Central Committee decided to implement forced collectivization. This marked the end of the NEP, which had allowed peasants to sell their surpluses on the open market. Grain requisitioning intensified and peasants were forced to give up their private plots of land and property, to work for collective farms, and to sell their produce to the state for a low price set by the state itself. Given the goals of the First Five Year Plan, the state sought increased political control of agriculture, hoping to feed the rapidly growing urban areas and to export grain, a source of foreign currency needed to import technologies necessary for heavy-industrialization. By 1936 about 90% of Soviet agriculture was collectivized. In many cases peasants bitterly opposed this process and often slaughtered their animals rather than give them to collective farms. Kulaks, prosperous peasants, were forcibly resettled to Siberia (a large portion of the kulaks served at forced labor camps). However, just about anyone opposing collectivization was deemed a "kulak." The policy of liquidation of kulaks as a class, formulated by Stalin at the end of 1929, meant executions, and deportation to forced labor camps. Despite the expectations, collectivization led to a catastrophic drop in farming productivity, which did not regain the NEP level until 1940. The upheaval associated with collectivization was particularly severe in Ukraine, and the heavily Ukrainian adjoining Volga regions, a fact which has led many Ukrainian scholars to argue that there was a deliberate policy of starving the Ukrainians. The number of people who died in the famines is estimated at between three and to ten million in Ukraine alone, not counting the adjoining regions. Cannibalism wasn''t uncommon. Soviet sources vary between denying the existence of the famine and estimating much smaller numbers of dead. The actual number of casualties is bitterly disputed to this day. In 1975, Abramov and Kocharli estimated that 265,800 kulak families were sent to the Gulag in 1930. In 1979, Roy Medvedev used Abramov''s and Kocharli''s estimate to calculate that 2.5 million peasants were exiled between 1930 and 1931, but he suspected that he underestimated the total number. 3.Changes in Soviet society Endorsed by the Constitution of the USSR in 1924, the State Emblem of the Soviet Union (above) was a hammer and sickle symbolizing the alliance of the working class and the peasantry. Ears of wheat were entwined in a scarlet band with the inscription in the languages of all the 15 union republics: "Workers of All Countries, Unite!" The grain represented Soviet agriculture. A five-pointed star, symbolizing the Soviet Union''s solidarity with socialist revolutionaries on five continents, was drawn on the upper part of the Emblem. Stalin''s industrial policies largely improved living standards for the majority of the population, although the debated mortality levels resulting from Stalinist policies taints the Soviet record. Employment, for instance, rose greatly; 3.9 million per year was expected by 1923, but the number was actually an astounding 6.4 million. By 1937, the number rose yet again, to about 7.9 million, and in 1940 it was 8.3 million. Between 1926 and 1930, the urban population increased by 30 million. Unemployment had been a problem during the time of the Tsar and even under the NEP, but it was not a major factor after the implementation of Stalin''s industrialization program. The mobilization of resources to industrialize the agrarian society created a need for labor, meaning that the unemployment went virtually to zero. Several ambitious projects were begun, and they supplied raw materials not only for military weapons but also for consumer goods. The Moscow and Gorky automobile plants produced automobiles that the public could utilize, although not necessarily afford, and the expansion of heavy plant and steel production made production of a greater number of cars possible. Car and truck production, for example, reached 200,000 in 1931. Because the industrial workers needed to be educated, the number of schools increased. In 1927, 7.9 million students attended 118,558 schools. This number rose to 9.7 million students and 166,275 schools by 1933. In addition, 900 specialist departments and 566 institutions were built and functioning by 1933. The Soviet people also benefited from a degree of social liberalization. Females were given an adequate, equal education and women had equal rights in employment, precipitating improving lives for women and families. Stalinist development also contributed to advances in health care, which vastly increased the lifespan for the typical Soviet citizen and the quality of life. Stalin''s policies granted the Soviet people universal access to health care and education, effectively creating the first generation free from the fear of typhus, cholera, and malaria. The occurrences of these diseases dropped to record-low numbers, increasing life spans by decades. Soviet women under Stalin were also the first generation of women able to give birth in the safety of a hospital, with access to prenatal care. Education was also an example of an increase in standard of living after economic development. The generation born during Stalin''s rule was the first near-universally literate generation. Engineers were sent abroad to learn industrial technology, and hundreds of foreign engineers were brought to Russia on contract. Transport links were also improved, as many new railways were built. Workers who exceeded their quotas, Stakhanovites, received many incentives for their work. They could thus afford to buy the goods that were mass-produced by the rapidly expanding Soviet economy. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Soviet_Union_%281953-1985%29 ________________________________________________________________________ The International (English lyrics) Arise ye workers from your slumbers Arise ye prisoners of want For reason in revolt now thunders And at last ends the age of cant. Away with all your superstitions Servile masses arise, arise We''ll change henceforth the old tradition And spurn the dust to win the prize. So comrades, come rally And the last fight let us face The Internationale unites the human race. So comrades, come rally And the last fight let us face The Internationale unites the human race. No more deluded by reaction On tyrants only we''ll make war The soldiers too will take strike action They''ll break ranks and fight no more And if those cannibals keep trying To sacrifice us to their pride They soon shall hear the bullets flying We''ll shoot the generals on our own side. So comrades, come rally And the last fight let us face The Internationale unites the human race. So comrades, come rally And the last fight let us face The Internationale unites the human race. No saviour from on high delivers No faith have we in prince or peer Our own right hand the chains must shiver Chains of hatred, greed and fear E''er the thieves will out with their booty And give to all a happier lot. Each at the forge must do their duty And we''ll strike while the iron is hot. So comrades, come rally And the last fight let us face The Internationale unites the human race. So comrades, come rally And the last fight let us face The Internationale unites the human race. The international was used by the Soviet Union until from 1921 until 1944. It is a worker''s hymn written by Frenchman Pierre Degeyter in 1888. http://www.soviet-empire.com ________________________________________________________________________ Lenin & Stalin For the Leninist far left the collapse of the USSR has thrown up more questions then it answered. If the Soviet Union really was a ''workers state'' why were the workers unwilling to defend it? Why did they in fact welcome the changes? What happened to Trotskys political revolution or bloody counter revolution? Those Leninist organisations which no longer see the Soviet Union as a workers state do not escape the contradictions either. If Stalin was the source of the problem why do so many Russian workers blame Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders too. The mythology of Lenin, creator and sustainer of the Russian revolution is now dying. With it will go all the Leninist groups for as the Soviet archives are increasingly opened it will become increasingly difficult to defend Lenin''s legacy. The Left in the west has dodged and falsified the Lenin debate for 60 years now. Now however there is a proliferation of articles and meetings by the various Trotskyist groups trying to convince workers that Lenin did not lead to Stalin. Unfortunately much of this debate is still based on the slander and falsifications of history that has been symptomatic of Bolshevism since 1918. The key questions of what comprises Stalinism and when did Stalinism first come into practice are dodged in favour of rhetoric and historical falsehood. Stalinism is defined by many features and indeed some of these are more difficult then others to lay at the feet of Lenin. The guiding points of Stalin''s foreign policy for instance was the idea of peaceful co-existence with the West while building socialism in the USSR (socialism in one country). Lenin is often presented as the opposite extreme, being willing to risk all in the cause of international revolution. This story like many others however is not all it seems. Other points that many would consider characteristic of Stalinism include, the creation of a one party state, no control by the working class of the economy, the dictatorial rule of individuals over the mass of society, the brutal crushing of all workers action and the use of slander and historical distortion against other left groups. SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY The treaty of Brest-Livtosk of 1918, which pulled Russia out of World War I, also surrendered a very large amount of the Ukraine to the Austro-Hungarians. Obviously, there was no potential of continuing a conventional war (especially as the Bolsheviks had used the slogan Peace, bread, land to win mass support). Yet, the presence of the Makhnovist (Nestor Makhno) movement in the Ukraine, clearly demonstrated a vast revolutionary potential among the Ukrainian peasants and workers. No attempt was made to supply or sustain those forces which did seek to fight a revolutionary war against the Austro-Hungarians. They were sacrificed in order to gain a respite to build socialism in Russia. The second point worth considering about Lenin''s internationalism is his insistence from 1918 onwards, that the task was to build state capitalism, as if we introduced state capitalism in approximately 6 months time we would achieve a great success...(1) He was also to say Socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people. (2) This calls into question Lenin''s concept of socialism. ONE PARTY STATE Another key feature many would associate with Stalinism was the creation of a one party state, and the silencing of all opposition currents within the party. Many Trotskyists will still try to tell you that the Bolsheviks encouraged workers to take up and debate the points of the day, both inside and outside the party. The reality is very different for the Bolsheviks rapidly clamped down on the revolutionary forces outside the party, and then on those inside that failed to toe the line. In April 1918 the Bolshevik secret police (The Cheka) raided 26 Anarchist centres in Moscow. 40 Anarchists were killed or injured and over 500 imprisoned (3). In May the leading Anarchist publications were closed down(4). Both of these events occurred before the excuse of the outbreak of the Civil War could be used as a ''justification''. These raids occurred because the Bolsheviks were beginning to lose the arguments about the running of Russian industry. In 1918 also a faction of the Bolshevik party critical of the party''s introduction of ''Talyorism'' (the use of piece work and time & motion studies to measure the output of each worker, essentially the science of sweat extraction) around the journal Kommunist were forced out of Leningrad when the majority of the Leningrad party conference supported Lenin''s demand that the adherents of Kommunist cease their separate organisational existence. (5) The paper was last published in May, silencedNot by discussion, persuasion or compromise, but by a high pressure campaign in the Party organisations, backed by a barrage of violent invective in the party press.... (6) So much for encouraging debate!! A further example of the Bolsheviks ''encouraging debate'' was seen in their treatment of the Makhnovist in the Ukranine. This partisan army which fought against both the Ukrainian nationalists and the White generals at one time liberated over 7 million people. It was led by the anarchist Nestor Mhakno and anarchism played the major part in the ideology of the movement. The liberated zone was ran by a democratic soviet of workers and peasants and many collectives were set up. ECHOS OF SPAIN The Makhnovists entered into treaties with the Bolsheviks three times in order to maintain a stronger united front against the Whites and nationalists. Despite this they were betrayed by the Bolsheviks three times, and the third time they were destroyed after the Bolsheviks arrested and executed all the delegates sent to a joint military council. This was under the instructions of Trotsky! Daniel Guerin''s description of Trotskys dealings with the Makhnovists is instructive He refused to give arms to Makhno''s partisans, failing in his duty of assisting them, and subsequently accused them of betrayal and of allowing themselves to be beaten by white troops. The same procedure was followed 18 years later by the Spanish Stalinists against the anarchist brigades (7) The final lid was put on political life outside or inside the party in 1921. The 1921 party congress banned all factions in the communist party itself. Trotsky made a speech denouncing one such faction, the Workers Opposition as having placed the workers right to elect representatives above the party. As if the party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers democracy. (8) Shortly afterwards the Kronstadt rising was used as an excuse to exile, imprison and execute the last of the anarchists. Long before Lenins death the political legacy now blamed on Stalin had been completed. Dissent had been silenced inside and outside the party. The one party state existed as of 1921. Stalin may have been the first to execute party members on a large scale but with the execution of those revolutionaries outside the party and the silencing of dissidents within it from 1918 the logic for these purges was clearly in place. THE WORKING CLASS UNDER LENIN Another key area is the position of the working class in the Stalinist society. No Trotskyist would disagree that under Stalin workers had no say in the running of their workplaces and suffered atrocious conditions under threat of the state''s iron fist. Yet again these conditions came in under Lenin and not Stalin. Immediately after the revolution the Russian workers had attempted to federate the factory committees in order to maximise the distribution of resources. This was blocked, with Bolshevik ''guidance'', by the trade unions. By early 1918 the basis of the limited workers control offered by the Bolsheviks (in reality little more then accounting) became clear when all decisions had to be approved by a higher body of which no more than 50% could be workers. Daniel Guerin describes the Bolshevik control of the elections in the factories elections to factory committees continued to take place , but a member of the Communist cell read out a list of candidates drawn up in advance and voting was by show of hands in the presence of armed ''Communist'' guards. Anyone who declared his opposition to the proposed candidates became subject to wage cuts, etc. (9) On March 26th 1918 workers control was abolished on the railways in a decree full of ominous phrases stressing iron labour discipline and individual management. At least, say the Trotskyists, the railways ran on time. In April Lenin published an article in Isvestiya which included the introduction of a card system for measuring each workers productivity. He said ..we must organise in Russia the study and teaching of the Talyor system. Unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of the labour process...the revolution demands, in the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process (10) Lenin declared in 1918. This came before the civil war broke out and makes nonsense of the claims that the Bolsheviks were trying to maximise workers control until the civil war prevented them from doing so. With the outbreak of the Civil War things became much worse. In late May it was decreed that no more than 1/3 of the management personnel of industrial enterprises should be elected (11). A few highlights of the following years are worth pointing out. At the ninth party congress in April of 1920 Trotsky made his infamous comments on the militarization of labour the working class...must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded just like soldiers. Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps (12) The congress itself declared no trade union group should directly intervene in industrial management. (13) ONE MAN MANAGEMENT At the trade union congress that April, Lenin was to boast how in 1918 he had pointed out the necessity of recognising the dictatorial authority of single individuals for the purpose of carrying out the soviet idea. (14) Trotsky declared that labour..obligatory for the whole country, compulsory for every worker is the basis of socialism(15) and that the militarisation of labour was no emergency measure(16). In War Communism and Terrorism published by Trotsky that year he said The unions should discipline the workers and teach them to place the interests of production above their own needs and demands. It is impossible to distinguish between these policies and the labour policies of Stalin. WORKERS REVOLTS Perhaps the most telling condemnation of the Stalinist regimes came from their crushing of workers'' revolts, both the well known ones of East Berlin 1953, Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 and scores of smaller, less known risings. The first such major revolt was to happen at the height of Lenins rule in 1921 at Kronstadt, a naval base and town near Petrograd. The revolt essentially occurred when Kronstadt attempted to democratically elect a Soviet and issued a set of proclamations calling for a return to democratic soviets and freedom of press and speech for socialist parties (17). This won the support of not only the mass of workers and sailors at the base but of the rank and file of the Bolshevik party there as well. Leninist response was brutal. The base was stormed and many of the rebels who failed to escape were executed. Kronstadt had been the driving force for the revolution in 1917 and in 1921 the revolution died with it. There are other commonly accepted characteristics of Stalinism. One more that is worth looking at is the way Stalinist organisations have used slander as a weapon against other left groups. Another is the way that Stalin re-wrote history. Yet again this is something which was a deep strain within Leninism. Mhakno for example went from being hailed by the Bolshevik newspapers as the Nemesis of the whites (18) to being described as a Kulak and a bandit . SLANDER Modern day Trotskyists are happy to repeat this sort of slander along with describing Mhakno as an anti-Semite. Yet the Jewish historian M. Tchernikover says it is undeniable that, of all the armies, including the Red Army, the Makhnovists behaved best with regard to the civilian population in general and the Jewish population in particular (19). The leadership of the Makhnovists contained Jews and for those who wished to organise in this manner there were specific Jewish detachments. The part the Makhnovists played in defeating the whites has been written out of history by every Trotskyist historian, some other historians however consider they played a far more decisive role then the Red Army in defeating Wrangel (20). Kronstadt provides another example of how Lenin and Trotsky used slander against their political opponents. Both attempted to paint the revolt as being organised and lead by the whites. Pravda on March 3rd, 1921 described it as A new White plot". Lenin in his report to the 10th party congress on March 8th said White generals, you all know it, played a great part in this. This is fully proved. (21) Yet even Isaac Deutscher, Trotskys biographer said in the Prophet armed The Bolsheviks denounced the men of Kronstadt as counter-revolutionary mutineers, led by a White general. The denunciation appears to have been groundless (22). RE-WRITING HISTORY Some modern day Trotskyists repeat such slander others like Brian Pearce (historian of the Socialist Labour League) try to deny it ever occurred No pretence was made that the Kronstadt mutineers were White Guards(23) In actual fact the only czarist general in the fort had been put there as commander by Trotsky some months earlier! Lets leave the last words on this to the workers of Kronstadt Comrades, don''t allow yourself to be misled. In Kronstadt, power is in the hands of the sailors, the red soldiers and of the revolutionary workers (24). There is irony in the fact that these tactics of slander and re-writing history as perfected by the Bolsheviks under Lenin were later to be used with such effect against the Trotskyists. Trotsky and his followers were to be denounced as Fascists and agents of international imperialism. They were to be written and air-brushed out of the history of the revolution. Yet to-day his followers, the last surviving Leninists use the same tactics against their political opponents. The intention of this article is to provoke a much needed debate on the Irish left about the nature of Leninism and where the Russian revolution went bad. The collapse of the Eastern European states makes it all the more urgent that this debate goes beyond trotting out the same old lies. If Leninism lies at the heart of Stalinism then those organisations that follow Lenins teaching stand to make the same mistakes again. Anybody in a Leninist organisation who does not take this debate seriously is every bit as blind and misled as all those communist party members who thought the Soviet Union was a socialist country until the day it collapsed. 1. V.I. Lenin Left wing childishness and petty-bourgeois mentality, h2. V.I. Lenin The threatening catastrophe and how to fight it, u3. M. Brinton The Bolsheviks and workers control page 38 4. M. Brinton page 38, 5. Brinton, page 39,s 6. Brinton, page 40,t 7. D. Guerin Anarchism, page 101, r8. Brinton, page 78,i 9. Guerin, page 91, 10. Brinton, page 41, 11. Brinton, page 43, 12. Brinton, page 61, o13. Brinton, page 63, f14. Brinton, page 65, 15.1981 for politic a, 16. I. Deutscher, The Prophet Armed pages 500-07, 17. Ida Mett,The Kronstadt Uprising, page 38, 18. A. Berkman, Nestor Makhno, page 25, 19. quoted by Voline The Unknown Revolution, page 572, 20. P. Berland, Mhakno, Le Temps, 28 Aug, 1934, 21. Lenin, Selected Works, vol IX, p. 98, 22. Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, page 511. 23. Labour Review, vol V, No. 3. 24. I. Mett, page 51. ON QUOTES AND MISQUOTES The problem when writing an article covering this period of history is where you select your quotations from. Both Lenin and Trotsky changed their positions many times in this period. Many Leninists for example try to show Lenin''s opposition to Stalinism by quoting from State and Revolution (1917). This is little more then deception as Lenin made no attempt to put the program outlined in this pamphlet into practice. In any case it still contains his curious conception of Workers control. I have only used quotes from the October revolution to 1921 and in every case these quotes are either statements of policy, or what should be policy at the time. As socialists are aware governments in opposition may well say Health cuts hurt the old, the sick and the handicapped. It is however in power that you see their real program exposed. Original material is taken from: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2419/lensta.html ________________________________________________________________________ THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY Just before the X Congress of the Party in early 1921, Lenin declared that socialism could be built in Russia only on one of two conditions: if there was an international socialist revolution, or if there was a compromise with the peasant majority within the country. The essence of the New Economic Policy which he adopted soon afterwards was acceptance of a compromise with the peasantry. The Bolshevik theoretician Riazanov labeled the NEP "the peasant Brest," that is to say, a temporary truce was concluded with the peasant adversary, as with the German Empire at Brest-Litovsk. In reluctantly accepting the terms of Brest-Litovsk, Lenin had not given up hope that a revolutionary situation would still develop in the West. In 1919, when Communist regimes appeared briefly in central Europe and in 1920, when Red armies were approaching Warsaw and hoping to reach Berlin, such hopes revived. However, even though the Comintern tried twice more to foment a revolution in Germany, by 1921 it was plain enough that the Russian Communists could not count on their foreign brethren to solve their immediate problems. These problems were domestic. Peasant risings had erupted in the south and east of Russia, for centuries the regions from which jacqueries had sprung. As demobilization of the Red Army got under way in September 1920, rural riots, the most serious led by Antonov in Tambov, broke out and continued to smolder despite punitive measures. Tambov was in fact not pacified until 1924, and months after the promulgation of the NEP, the army general staff reported that twenty thousand ''''bandits'''' were operating throughout south Russia and the Ukraine. The climax of anti-Communist unrest'' involving as Lenin himself admitted ''''discontent not only among a considerable part of the peasantry but among the workers as well,'''' came with the uprising in Kronstadt in March 1921. Kronstadt had been a great Tsarist naval base, but during 1917 its sailors had become one of the strongest bulwarks of the Bolshevik cause. Its location on an island in sight of Petrograd made the political orientation of its garrison most important. During the Civil War, many of the most active leaders during the 1917 events had gone off to become Red political and military officers in various districts, and in 1921 most of its personnel consisted of new peasant recruits. The uprising in March fleetingly threw off Communist rule and proclaimed the slogan'' ''''Soviets without Communists.'''' Opposition elements of all kinds, in Russia and among the emigres, from Mensheviks to monarchists, pricked up their eras. Red forces moved in, shot down thousands, and quelled the revolt. But Lenin understood well enough that Kronstadt was no isolated or accidental outbreak, but evidence of widespread popular discontent. He appeared before the x Congress of the Party in March 1921 and proposed a far-reaching measure, that the requisitioning of agricultural surpluses, which had been part of War Communism, be abandoned in favor of a tax in kind set at a fixed percentage of production. Only a year earlier Trotsky had proposed just such a measure, but it had been blocked by his colleagues, including Lenin. However, Lenin now pushed it through, and thereby inaugurated the ''''New Economic Policy''''--although the actual phrase seems to have been first used in May, without capitals or quotation marks, and with them only several months later. Lenin had evidently decided that a serious and many- sided retreat from Communist objectives (although a conditional and temporary one) was essential if the regime was not to be endangered by revolt from within by the very elements who had adhered to the Red side during the Civil War. His own formulation was that the reason for the NEP was ''''the maintenance of the alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry, in order that the proletariat may keep that role of leadership and state power.'''' The economy was prostrate, and the food tax could reasonably be expected to revive agricultural production and trade by providing the peasant with an incentive and security hitherto lacking. Nevertheless the economic motive was not the crucial one; as Lenin said, the question of the new tax was ''''pre-eminently a political question, since it is essentially a question of the relation of the working class to the peasantry''''. The peasantry, he declared candidly, "cannot be driven out as we drove out and annihilated the landowners and the capitalists. It must be transformed with great labor and great privations." Maxim Gorky was blunter and more pessimistic in confiding to a French visitor, that same summer: "In the struggle which, since the beginning of the revolution, has been going on between the two classes, the peasants have every chance of coming out victorious. . . .The urban proletariat has been declining incessantly for four years. . . The immense peasant tide will end by engulfing everything. . . The peasant will become master of Russia, since he represents numbers. And it will be terrible for our future." Gorky thus asserted that there was a class struggle under way between the proletariat and the peasantry and had been since 1917, but that nevertheless the proletariat, instead of struggling, persisted in melting into its adversary. Obviously the real opponents of the peasantry were the Communists, not the proletariat, who were (as Lenin said) discontented with their urban situation--in fact, sufficiently so (as Gorky said'' to return to the villages from which many of them originally came. Lenin had long realized that the peasantry as a whole did not thirst for socialism, but he had counted on the ''''poor peasantry'''' to come to the Communists'' aid. In 1918 he had tried to use them in the Committees of Poor Peasants, but the device had been a resounding failure. In November 1918 the Committees had been abandoned, and the decision was taken to work temporarily with the ''''middle peasants'''' instead. At that moment Lenin had scarcely finished saying, ''''Things have turned out just as we said they would. . . .First, with the ''whole, of the peasantry against the monarchy, against the landlords, against the medieval regime (and to that extent the revolution remains bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic). Then, with the poorest peasants, with the semi-proletarians, with all the exploited, against capitalism, including the rural rich, the kulaks, the profiteers, and to that extent the revolution becomes a socialist one.'''' As he soon learned, those assertions were premature, to say the least. But they were no empty words; they represented Lenin''s basic solution to the dilemma posed by the attempt of the Communists to take power in an agricultural country. If ''''poor peasants'''' could not be found to perform their allotted tasks at the proper time, they must be found later. The stubborn refusal of the Russian peasantry to ''''split.'' and conduct its own civil war was a great blow to Lenin. However, he was prepared to wait for it, as he awaited the revolution in the West. For the moment, in any event, the ''''poor peasants'''' remained a mirage. Instead of a spit in the peasantry between rich and poor, there had occurred ''.a striking equalization of the size of the unit of production. . .the small-holding worked by the labor of the peasant and his family. . already typical in 1917, had become by 1920 the predominant unit in Russian agriculture.''. Therefore the Communists had to compromise with the ''''middle peasants''''--that is, the overwhelming majority of the Russian people. In March 1919 Lenin defended such tactics by declaring that the middle peasantry ..does not belong to the exploiters, since it does not draw profits from the labor of others,'''' but it was not exploited either, since it was self-employed. Lenin never came closer to an admission that a Marxian class analysis simply did not apply to the country where he had sought to lead the world''s first Marxist revolution. In fact Lenin did not ''''compromise with the middle peasant'''' in 1919; his talk of doing so was translated into action only in 1921 when he inaugurated the NEP. By that time he had largely ceased to talk about the ''''middle peasant''. and simply referred to ''''the peasantry.''. NEP, like Brest-Litovsk, was an admission of defeat; however, neither was intended as a surrender, but rather as a tactical maneuver to be pursued only until the inevitable change of conditions which would make victory possible. NEP was like Brest-Litovsk in another respect: the end of the compromise was not that foreseen by Lenin. What enabled him to tear up the treaty was not a Communist revolution in Germany, but Allied victory. What enabled Stalin (Lenin had died in the meantime) to abandon NEP was not a split of the peasantry into rich and poor--to which sanction for a capitalist development in the villages was supposed to lead--but the accumulation of sufficient power in the Communist state to do the job which the .''poor peasants'''' were supposed to do, namely, liquidate the kulaks and establish collective farms. In 1921 the economy of Russia lay in ruins. seven years of war and civil war had produced catastrophe. Industrial production stood at thirteen per cent of prewar volume; the grain harvest had fallen from 74 million tons in 1916 to 30 million tons in 1919 and continued to decline still further. Inflation was rampant, and although the Communists hated and feared it, they saw no alternative but to contribute to it by printing paper money. The immediate economic measures taken to meet the crisis could not be directly financial. nor could they involve any plans for extensive change in the structure of the economy. They aimed merely to persuade people to work and produce more, in the city or in the village, so that some kind of regular trade could be resumed, the urban masses fed, and the villages supplied with the goods for which they would willingly exchange their grain. Although as indicated the food tax was prompted by basically political motives, it also initiated the revival of the economy. The law provided that the peasant must pay the government a tax in kind consisting of a certain percentage, varying somewhat from region to region, of his produce; he could then dispose of the remainder on the free market. A year later the tax was fixed at a standard ten per cent. In 1922 also the peasant was permitted to lease and hire labor, although purchase and sale of land were still prohibited. By the Fundamental Law on the Exploitation of Land by the Workers, enacted in Hay 1922, the government guaranteed the peasant freedom of choice of land tenure, individual, communal, or other. Thus the villager was permitted, within rather broad limits, to manage his own economic life as he saw fit. The small businessman was also granted a measure of economic freedom. Although the state retained in its hands the ownership of the so-called ''''commanding heights''''--including the largest enterprises, railways, and banks--private entrepreneurs were permitted to resume management of smaller concerns, to hire labor, and to trade more or less freely with the goods produced'' The new class of small urban capitalists, who became known as ''''Nepmen,'''' suffered from social pressures from which the peasants were exempt. It was difficult for them to obtain credit at the banks, the rentals for their apartments were often higher than their neighbors'' , their children had to pay higher tuition fees at schools. Many of them expressed their suspicion that their situation was precarious and temporary by free spending and high living. The new era of "free enterprise" benefited not only the peasants and small businessmen, but also the industrial workers. The trade-unions, organized under the leadership of Michael Tomsky, were permitted to strike against the private capitalists, and accordingly it was thought necessary that they be allowed to strike against state enterprises also, even though they were urged not to do so and reminded that by so doing they were by definition striking against themselves. Under the new dispensation, the economy began to revive. Lenin addressed himself to the disagreeable topic of gold, and he announced that in the future gold would be used to construct public lavatories in the streets of the great cities of the world, but that for the time being orthodox principles of finance, as well as of trade, must be taken seriously. He handed the slogan, ''''master trade," to the rank-and-file Communists, who picked it hp in a generally uneasy and gingerly fashion. State industries and state farms were now commanded to show profit and to operate on commercial principles generally. Financial stability was slowly recovered. By the end of 1922 a third of the government revenue was coming from the food tax, one third from a variety of direct money taxes, and one third from the issuance of bank notes. As a result of the growing tax yield, in 1924 a new currency (the unit was the chervonets, which means ''''red'''') could be introduced and the old note issue gradually abandoned. However, by this time a crisis had arisen in urban-rural trade. The new nationalized industry was producing again, but its costs were much higher than prewar levels and thus the prices of manufactured goods were high. As the marketing of agricultural produce was resumed, the greater supply drove grain prices down. The terms of trade thus moved against the countryside. Whereas the peasant had formerly been able to get a shirt for thirty-odd pounds of rye or the equivalent, by 1923 he needed two hundred and fifty pounds. The result was the ''''scissors crisis,'''' so called from a diagram Trotsky used in a speech, which showed the intersection of a falling rural price curve and a rising urban price curve. The curves intersected, said Trotsky, in September 1922. Thereafter the ''''scissors" continued to open until October 1923, when the gap was widest. The government took energetic action to force industrial prices downward. Direct pressure was exerted on that nationalized trusts to lower prices. Credit rationing, price regulation, and even that importation of lower-priced goods from abroad were employed. In consequence the gap began to narrow after October, and the crisis was surmounted, although many Party members resented the leaders'' firmness with the state enterprises. By 1923-1924 it was apparent that the regime was managing to stabilize itself, at least for the time being, as the economic revival made headway. The open although limited encouragement given to private enterprise led many in and out of Russia to conclude that "capitalism" had returned for good, and that the Communists had jettisoned their long-proclaimed ideological objectives, which might never have been seriously meant anyhow. The introduction of the NEP was the first in a long series of occasions in Soviet history when foreign observers decided that Communist doctrine was ceasing to be significant in influencing the Soviet Leaders. No doubt many of the peasants expected NEP to be permanent, and although the Nepmen had fewer such illusions, they too hoped the policy would last for some time. Many Communist Party members feared that NEP might be prolonged and fought to end it before it got out of hand. Perhaps indeed it might have lasted somewhat longer than it did, if it had not been for certain developments which restricted political freedom, in and out of the Party, at the very time when the regime was experimenting rather boldly with economic freedom. ________________________________________________________________________ COLLECTIVIZATION IN SMOLENSK We can get a good idea of how the process of collectivization worked from looking at the province of Smolensk. Smolensk on the eve of collectivization was an overwhelmingly agricultural province. More than 90 per cent of the population lived in the countryside. Less than l per cent of the land was collectivized. The private sector accounted for 98.7 per cent of the gross agricultural output. Out of a total of 393,523 peasant households registered in 1927, 5 per cent were classified as kulaks, 70 per cent as middle peasants, and 25 per cent as poor peasants. In tsarist days the Smolensk area had been one of the centers of flax and hemp culture. After the Revolution, however, the cultivation of flax and hemp declined sharply; population pressure and the expanding needs of home consumption led to a considerable shift to potatoes, grain and fodder groups, and livestock breeding. The NEP years registered significant gains in food output, but population increase outraced growth in production, and the percentage of marketed produce steadily declined. The decision of the Soviet authorities to abandon the NEP and embark on a policy of agricultural collectivization and rapid industrialization had its immediate repercussions in Smolensk as elsewhere. The first victims of the new campaign in the countryside were the kulaks. They controlled a substantial part of the agricultural surplus which was essential to feed the new factory centers. They could be counted on to resist collectivization most staunchly during 1927-28 when the noose was gradually tightened around their necks. The initial attack on the kulaks involved a sharp increase in their tax burden, designed to force them to disgorge their grain surpluses. At the same time up to a third of all poor-peasant households were freed from all agricultural taxes, and economic aid to poor-peasant groups in the form of agricultural credit and other assistance was increased. Measures were also taken to raise wages for hired laborers working in kulak households. Thus the regime sought to consolidate the support of the poor peasants and hired laborers in the villages while at the same time neutralizing and weakening kulak influence. Kulaks were denied agricultural credit and equipment, deprived of lands which had allegedly been improperly distributed to them, eliminated from the rural apparatus of soviets, agricultural credit and cooperative organizations, and prosecuted for speculation in grain and concealment of grain surpluses. The kulak reaction to this attack took a variety of forms. Official reports complained that kulaks were still ''''worming their way into" and "planting their own people" in leading organs of rural soviets and cooperatives, bribing soviet workers and even party members to obtain tax concessions, and taking advantage of the grain difficulties to agitate against the Soviet system and ''''to dissolve the union between the poor peasants and the middle peasants.'''' As the persecution of the kulak intensified, the kulaks replied in kind. The police records of the period are filled with reports of ''''terrorist acts.'' against zealous Party and soviet workers--the beating of chairmen of village soviets and other ''''public workers,'''' the killing of village correspondents, the murder of Party secretaries, the disruption of meetings of poor peasants and so on. The flare-up of violence testified to mounting kulak resistance. As the First Five Year Plan gathered momentum, the demands on the countryside intensified. The grain collection campaign of 1929 registered the pressure, and it fell with particularly crushing force on so-called well-to-do farmers. The Western Region (Oblast) , into which Smolensk Province (Guberniya) had been absorbed in 1929, lagged badly in meeting its quotas. The dissatisfaction of the center was reflected in a Politburo telegram of September 20, 1929, which demanded that the targets be met immediately. Pressed by the center, the regional Party authorities embarked On shock tactics. Special emissaries, appointed by the Party and armed with full power to extract grain wherever they could find it. were dispatched to spur deliveries. In theory, the main thrust of the grain collection campaign was directed against the kulaks, and the special emissaries were under instructions to enlist the aid of police and middle peasants in carrying the battle to the kulaks, In practice, the problem was not so simple. Many of the kulaks were village leaders respected by their fellow-villagers, frequently related by ties of blood to poor and middle peasants, and occupying positions of influence which ramified into the local soviet and even Party apparatus. The villages refused to fall neatly into categories of poor, middle, and well-to-do peasants and frequently insisted on maintaining a group solidarity that the special emissaries found frustrating and impenetrable. Even more aggravating was the extent to which the local soviet and Party apparatus identified with the peasants and even shielded the kulak against the emissaries'' demands. The solidarity of the villages presented Ad formidable obstacle to the success of the grain collection campaign. Middle and even poor peasants joined the kulaks in resisting the exactions of the emissaries and openly attacked Party and Soviet workers at village meetings as ''.thieves and bandits.'''' While some poor peasants applauded the regime''s pressure on the kulaks, others were quoted as asserting, ''''There are no kulaks in our village. Why do we have to fight them?'''' ''''Now they are confiscating bread from the kulak; tomorrow they will turn against the middle and poor peasant.'''' As reliance on "voluntary" contributions failed to yield results, the tactics of the emissaries became harsher. Under the law, grain quotas were imposed on all peasant households subject to taxation with the proviso that these quotas be delivered in a period of two to five days. Failure to deliver the grain quota was subject to a fivefold penalty on the first offense. The penalty for a second offense was a year of prison or forced labor. The same offense if carried out by a group with collective premeditation to resist Soviet orders was punishable by two years of prison or forced labor with deportation and seizure of all or part of the property of the convicted. The actual procedure in dealing with kulak households was more summary. If the kulak failed to fulfill his assessed quota, ..workers. brigades'''' or village soviet forces, under the emissary''s supervision, simply raided the household and confiscated any grain ''''surpluses.. which could be located on the premises. Some emissaries were more implacable than others. The stern measures directed against the kulaks produced a variety of reactions. Where possible, the kulaks hid their grain, or sought to escape sequestration by bribery or other subterfuges. As repressive measures intensified, some kulaks replied in kind. The reports of the emissaries contain numerous references to kulak attacks on village ''''activists'''' who were engaged in grain seizures. A pall of terror enveloped the villages.#As reports of killings and arson multiplied, Party members were warned to ''''stay away from the windows.'' when working in soviet institutions and not to walk the village streets after dark. The grain collection campaign of 1929, as it turned out, was merely a prelude to a far more drastic operation, the decision to liquidate the kulak as a class and to lay the groundwork for total collectivization. The signal for the all-out drive was given at the end of 1929, and soon after the turn of the year the operation was launched in various parts of the Western Region. The Party began to deport kulaks and to confiscate their property. The state and police apparatus was enlarged and fortified with additional funds. Local militia forces were mobilized and used in the dekulakization campaign. Special district troikas were set up to direct activities. In each case the troika consisted of the first secretary of the Party committee, the chairman of the soviet executive committee and the head of the OGPU (Unified State Political Administration) . Regional party men were sent to the different localities to assist local officials. The first and most dangerous group, described as ''''the counterrevolutionary kulak active,''. was to be arrested by the OGPU. The second category consisted of ''''certain elements of the kulak Aktiv,.'' especially from among the richest peasants and ''''quasi-landowners,.'' who were to be deported to ''''far-off'''' parts of the Soviet Union. The remaining kulaks were to be removed from areas scheduled for .''total collectivization,.. but were not to be deported from the locality. For such kulaks the local executive committees were to provide special land parcels carved out of ''''eroded areas, ''''swamp lands in woods,'''' and other soil in need of improvement.'''' The orders "unconditionally prohibited'''' the deportation or resettlement of poor and middle peasants. A firm class line was to be prepared. A wedge must be driven between the kulaks- the class enemy--and the rest of the peasants, and the latter must be mobilized to help in annihilating the class enemy. Confusion and disorganization soon resulted. Despite apparently precise directives and instructions, many village authorities went their own way, interpreting the kulak category broadly to embrace middle and even poor peasants who were opposed to collectivization, evicting kulak families with Red Army connections, (which was forbidden.) , and rarely bothering to supply the troika with supporting data to justify their decisions. In the first flush of the dekulakization campaign, ''''excesses.'' were commonplace. These excesses were later curbed, but the deportation of kulaks continued. The deportations brought an atmosphere of panic to the towns as well as to the villages. Some workers ''''do not sleep nights,'''' waiting to be taken away, or expecting some of their relatives to be taken. "All my acquaintances have already been taken away," one commented, ''''the most terrible thing is that no one knows where he is taken to; people have been brought to the verge of complete passivity; no matter what one does to them, they don''t care any more; earlier an arrested man was led by two militiamen; now one militiaman may lead groups of people, and the latter calmly walk and no one flees.'''' A report cited a ''''characteristic'''' case where one citizen came to the local procuracy and begged to be deported together with the kulaks, reasoning that he would at least have a chance to start a ''''less hectic life.'''' There was a sharp upsurge in collectivization which came in the wake of the deportations. This, in the eyes of the regime, was the ultimate rationale of the entire dekulakization program. Prior to the application of this pressure, the kolkhoz movement was slow to take root in the Western Region. Indeed, the First Five year Plan for the region contemplated that only 8.6 per cent of the peasant households would be enrolled in kolkhozes by 1932-3. on October 1, 1928, the actual percentage of collectivization was an almost infinitesimal 0.8 per cent. By October 1, 1929, it had increased to only 2.5%. From that point on, in accordance with directions from the center to liquidate the kulak and intensify the organization of kolkhozes, the tempo of collectivization mounted swiftly. On March l, 1930, the Western Region reported that 38.8 per cent of all hired-labor, poor-peasant, and middle-peasant households were collectivized. What happened in the intervening five months is perhaps best portrayed in the language of the peasants themselves. Here, for instance, is a vivid description by one peasant written to the editors of the regional peasant newspaper: For a long time I have wanted to write you about what you have written on collectivization in your newspaper Nasha Derevnya. In the first place I will give you my address so that you will not suspect that I am a kulak or one of his parasites. I am a poor peasant. I have one hut, one barn, one horse, 3 dessyatins of land, and a wife and three children. Dear Comrades as a subscriber to your newspaper. . .I found in No. 13/85 for Feb. 15 a letter from a peasant who writes about the life of kolhoz construction. I, a poor peasant, reading this letter, fully agreed with it. This peasant described life in the kolkhoz completely correctly. Isn''t it true that all the poor peasants and middle peasants do not want to go into the kolkhoz at all, but that you drive them in by force? For example, I''ll take my village soviet of Yushkovo. A brigade of soldiers came to us. This brigade went into all the occupied homes, and do you think that they organized a kolhoz? No, they did not organize it. The hired laborers and the poor peasants came out against it and said they did not want corvee, they did not want serfdom. . .I''ll write more of my village soviet. When the Red Army brigade left, they sent us a kolhoz organizer from Bryansk okrug. And whom do you think this Comrade signed up? Not poor peasants, not hired laborers, but kulaks, who, sensing their own ruin, enter the kolhoz. And your organizer takes to evil deeds. At night, together with the Komsomolites, he takes everything away from the peasants, both surpluses and taxes, which you fleece from the peasants. Of course agricultural taxes are necessary, self-taxation is necessary, fire taxes are necessary, tractorization is necessary. But where can the toiling peasant get this money if not from the seeds of his products? And these Party people stay up all night and rob the peasants. If he brings a pud, if he brings 5, it''s all the same. I would propose that you let the peasant live in greater freedom than he does now, and then we won''t beg you to get rid of such a gang, for we ourselves will eliminate them. Another peasant wrote: Comrades, you write that all the middle peasants and poor peasants join the kolhoz voluntarily, but it is not true. For example, in our village of Podbuzhye, all do not enter the kolhoz willingly. When the register made the rounds, only 25% signed it. while 75% did not. They collected seeds by frightening the peasants with protocols and arrests. If any one spoke against it, he was threatened with arrest and forced labor. You are deceived in this, Comrades. Collective life can be created when the entire mass of the peasants goes voluntarily, and not by force'' . .I beg you not to divulge my name, because the Party people will be angry. (signed) Polzikov. These extracts, which are culled largely from the letters of poor peasants, underline the role that force played in accelerating the tempo of collectivization. Nor was the opposition to collectivization confined to verbal protests. In some instances, at least, violence was met with violence, and the reports of the procurator and the OGPU for this period are replete with examples. The story of the first great collectivization drive (1929-1930) as it unfolds in the Smolensk Area is a record of ''.storm''. tactics and stubborn peasant opposition, of grandiose projects and .''paper.'' victories. The regime in many cases could not trust its local soviet functionaries to carry the brunt of the drive, and as a result workers were mobilized from the factories to organize the kolkhozes. The "25,000''ers" as they were called, did not find their task easy. Yet. despite many difficulties, the collectivization drive was resumed during the spring of 1931 in accordance with a telegram of February 15, l93l, signed by Stalin and urging implementation of the ''''decisions of the Sixteenth Party Congress'''' with regard to an ''''intensification of the kolhoz movement.'''' By April 21, l93l, 64.8 per cent of the households of Roslavl district, for instance, had been collectivized. But criticism of the poor performance of the kolkhozes continued to be voiced and Party agitators appearing at meetings were treated to bitter complaints of sharp rises in food prices and inadequacies in the food supply. The food situation continued to deteriorate during the year 1932, and the kolhoz movement itself showed signs of disintegration. On July 5, 1932, a top-secret letter to district Party committees instructed them on how to deal with ''''cases where kolhozes fall apart and kolhoz property is illegally appropriated. . Every effort should be made to hold the kolhozes together by reviewing the complaints of kolkhozniks and punishing those who ''''caused the economic deterioration of the kolhozes.'''' But despite drastic sanctions invoked against departing kokhozniks, the flight from the kolkhozes continued. The year 1932 was a bitter one in Soviet agriculture, and the Smolensk area had more than its share of tribulations. The failure of the Western Region to fulfill its grain delivery plan from the 1931 harvest had stern repercussions. In the spring of 1932 the regional Party authorities were informed that Moscow was counting all undelivered grain as part of the grain available for regional consumption, and that the supply of grain from the centralized funds would be substantially curtailed during the second quarter of 1932. Meanwhile, preparations for grain deliveries from the 1932 harvest proceeded apace. Despite stern commands from above the food shortage continued to be acute. There were many reports of kolhozes falling apart and kolhozniks abandoning the kolhozes. There were even more numerous reports of widespread pilfering of kolhoz property and crops both by kolhozniks and those entrusted with the management of the kolhozes. Even the introduction of the death penalty for thievery failed to stop this trend. Thus the grain delivery campaign for 1932 yielded worse results than that of the preceding year. The food crisis in the Smolensk Region reached a climax of desperation during the bitter winter of 1932-33. But the 1933 harvest marked a turning point. Perhaps the most notable step in placating discontent in the kolkhozes was the central decree of Jan. 19, 1933, revising the procurement system to provide for fixed deliveries to the state based on acreage planted instead of the largely arbitrary quotas which had previously been assessed in the guise of ''''contracts.'''' The new system provided inducements to increase production since the obligations to the state were definite and any surplus the kolkhoz accumulated could be distributed to the members in proportion to the workdays which they earned. This concession to the self-interest of the collective farmers provided an incentive to work in the kolkhoz which had previously been lacking, and its effects soon became apparent. Soon thereafter the central leadership itself ordered that ''.the center of gravity.'' of work in the villages turn from .''mass repression'''' to ''.mass political and organizational work.'''' In a dramatic secret circular of May 6, 1933, signed by Stalin and Molotov and distributed to all Party and soviet officials and all organs of the OGPU, the courts, and the procuracy, orders went out that mass deportations and indiscriminate arrests ''''be immediately stopped.'''' Henceforth, said that circular, ''''deportation may be permitted only on a partial and individual basis and only with regard to those households whose head are carrying on an active struggle against collective farms and are organizing resistance to sowing and state purchasing of grain.'''' Helped by good harvest, grain collections mounted and the kolkhozes began to take on life. Collectivization percentages again began to increase. On December 15, 1932, 60.6 per cent of all peasant households were collectivized in the Smolensk district. By July 1, 1934, the collectivization ratio had increased to 66.2 per cent; by December 15, 1934, it mounted to 77.8 per cent. As the economic pressure on the individual peasants intensified, more and more of them were forced to seek refuge in the collectives. How they felt we may guess, but so far as the Party records go, they become mere digits recording the steady triumph of collectivization in percentage terms. Both essays about NEP and COLLECTIVISATION are by Professor Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College from: http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/stalin/lectures/NEP.html Also strongly recommend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Soviet_Union_%281985-1991%29 |
