iv-Stalin's SSSR; 5Year Plans & Terror

!!!" !#$%&'$
Stalin’s SSSR

session iv-Socialism in One Country and the Great Terror; 1928-1939

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

this session’s major topics

I. the Debate

II. Five-Year Plans

III. Collectivization of Agriculture

IV. Kirov’s Assassination

V. the Show Trials

VI. the Great Terror


The Debate


SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY-Stalin
S
R KER -
E R
P OW WO LIST ION
A T
HE S OF OCI PETI
T N S M
L LIO D IN CO
MI AGE ION
OF NG UCT
E TR
S
C ON

Gustav Klutsis
(1930)

LET’S TURN THE 5-YEAR-PLAN INTO A 4-YEAR-PLAN


“Trotskyism or Leninism?” 24 November 1924

• in this lecture Stalin used his favorite debating technique. He argued that he was the
true interpreter of Lenin’s “infallible” thought

• he argued that Trotsky’s “Permanent Revolution” denigrated the Soviet peoples when
he stated that socialism could only come after the World Revolution

• still, most of the Bolsheviks had believed that this was the case. They had all hoped for
the Revolution’s spread in the early 1920s

• but by 1924 the revolutionary ﬁres burned low, capitalism was beginning to “recover”

• and Lenin had said in 1915 that “it might be possible to achieve the victory of Socialism
in one country”

• Stalin had just compiled a grab-bag of such quotes for his Fundamentals of Leninism


PERMANENT REVOLUTION-Trotsky

begun 1933 at Rockefeller Center, NYC


PERMANENT REVOLUTION-Trotsky

Annick Bureaud, 1998


an enduring dream on the Left


coined at the end of the 1905 Revolution

Alexander Helphand (Parvus) and Trotsky had coined the slogan as
a response to the seeming victory of tsarist repression in December,
1905. Trotsky was often its lone champion from 1905 to 1917.
Then it became Bolshevik orthodoxy.


Indeed, as we have seen, Lenin and the
whole party, including Stalin, were
positively giddy in the summer of 1920.
They believed that Poland would be “the
bridge to Europe” and the uprisings in
Germany and Hungary, which had failed
the previous year, would re-ignite.

But by 1925 there had been a string of
disappointments

The opening line of the Communist Manifesto (1848)


in 1925

• US Treasury Secretary Dawes was negotiating a Plan to end hyperinﬂation,
stabilize Germany’s economy and revise downwards the reparations burden

• the French had left the Ruhr. Their presence had sparked both Communist and
Nazi uprisings

• 1924-1929-Germany experienced “stabilization,” let the good times roll…

• the “imperialists” seemed to have dodged the bullet of World War I

• the “Spirit of Locarno” and the seeming recovery of the League of Nations after
a rocky start, still without Russia or the US, seemed to point to good times

• and, as with the Nazis, good times were bad times for the Communists


The Bolsheviks had by now grown accustomed to running an enormous
state ‘one-sixth of the whole world’. They gradually acquired the self-
conﬁdence and the sense of self-importance that comes from the
privileges and responsibilities of power….They needed an idea or slogan
that would fully express their newly won self-conﬁdence. ‘Socialism in one
country’ did it….Whoever, like Trotsky, and later on Zinoviev and
Kamenev, dwelt on the dangers to the revolution inherent in all those
circumstances, offended the complacency of the party.

Deutscher, Stalin, p. 289


The central ‘ideological’ issue between them had been socialism
in one country--the question whether the Soviet Union would or
could achieve socialism in isolation, on the basis of national self -
sufﬁciency, or whether socialism was conceivable only as an
international order of society. The answer events have given
[written in 1963] is far less clear-cut than were the theoretical
arguments, but it comes much closer to Trotsky’s view than to
Stalin’s. Long before the Soviet Union came anywhere near
socialism, revolution had to spread to other countries.

Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, “Postscript: Victory in Defeat,” pp. 515-516


Five Year Plans
the Great Turn


Five Year Plans
the Great Turn

FULFILLMENT OF THE PEOPLE’S DREAMS !

Director

Cameraman and “Star”
Mikhail Kaufman

D
z
i
g
a

V
e
r
t
o
v FELLOW WITH K
I
APPARATUS N
O
Man with a Movie Camera (1929)


1929 was the year when the five year plan was announced so in
every film or novel of this period you’ll find a sequence or two
celebrating labor enthusiasm…’to stimulate the enthusiasm of the
somewhat lazy population in a certain part of the vast Soviet
Union’

Yuri Tsivirian, audio commentary
DVD of Man with a Movie Camera


In addition to laziness, the Nanny State
had to combat alcoholism. Having seen
the tribulations of America’s prohibition,
the Soviets tried persuasion instead.

With no more success.

ALCOHOL


By 1932 the industrial labor force grew from 10
million to 22 million. Urban population rose
from 30 million to 60 million. A huge social
transformation.


wnHwith
Do KITC EN
Slavery!

E
Y OU GIV

A NEW
BEING


“Wrecker” NEPman kulak

trubka Stalina
Stalin’s pipe


“Wreckers” (()*+&#*%&-vrediteli )
Today it seems impossible that virtually every factory and railway line
was being sabotaged by Trotskyite terrorists within their
management, but Soviet industry was riddled with mistakes and
cursed with thousands of accidents thanks to poor management
and the breakneck speed of the Five-Year Plans….How could this
happen in a perfect country? “Enemies” among the corrupt elite had
surely caused the failures. The arrest of saboteurs and wreckers in
the industrial factories and railways spread.

Monteﬁore,Stalin; The Court of the Red Tsar, p. 211
• Stalin’s suspicion of the bourgeois “management specialists” led to their premature
replacement by ill-trained proletarian managers

• new “proletarians” on the floor, fresh from the rural village were often unskilled and
dangerous. And the best among them had been “kicked upstairs” as managers

• Stalin’s pre-1917 experiences in the world of Konspiratsia led him to be paranoid


ГПУ
GPU
Gosudarstvennoye
Politicheskoe
Upravlenie

KONTRREVOLUTIONER
VREDITEL’

COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY
WRECKER

REVOLUTIONARY LIGHTNING


WE GAVE FOR THE BUILDING
OF SOCIALISM
IN 1931

Despite many of the targets being unbelievably high (a
250% increase in overall industrial development, with a
330% percent expansion in heavy industry), remarkable
results were achieved:
■ Pig iron: 6.2 million tons (compared to 3.3 million tons
in 1928, and a prescribed target of 8.0 million tons)
■ Steel: 5.9 million tons (compared to 4.0 million tons in
1928, and a prescribed target of 8.3 million tons)
■ Coal: 64.3 million tons (compared to 35.4 million tons
in 1928, and a prescribed target of 68.0 million tons)
■ Oil: 21.4 million tons (compared to 11.7 million tons in
1928, and a prescribed target of 19.0 million tons)
■ Electricity: 13.4 billion kWh (compared to 5.0 billion
kWh in 1928, and a prescribed target of 17.0 billion
kWh)

8 MILLION TONS OF !"#!"$


MAP OF THE ELECTRIFICATION OF RUSSIA (According to the plan GOELRO)


MAP OF THE ELECTRIFICATION OF RUSSIA (According to the plan GOELRO)

DneproGES
Dnieper Government Electric Station
(under construction; 1930)


L AN
TIC P
E G ION
HMETIN AT
IT ME IZ
AR OF IAL
TR
US
I ND
T HE

PLUS
ENTHUSIASM
OF THE WORKERS


Primitive Socialist Accumulation

...constitutes the most critical era in the life of the socialist state after
the conclusion of civil war….To go through this period as rapidly as
possible and to reach as soon as possible the stage at which the
socialist system develops all its advantages vis a vis capitalism is for
the socialist economy a matter of life and death.

Preobrazhensky, The New Economics, quoted in
Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, p. 349


The ancient technique of competition to spur
productivity was not invented in the USSR. But the
Soviets certainly raised it to new heights.

In the second pyatiletka (ﬁve year plan) the example
of a Donbass coal miner would be held up as an
example to all.


Stakhanovism


Stakhanovism
Alexey Grigoryevich Stakhanov (Russian: Алексе́й Григо́рьевич
Стаха́нов; 3 January 1906– 5 November 1977) was a miner in the Soviet
Union, Hero of Socialist Labor (1970), and a member of the CPSU (1936). He
became a celebrity in 1935 as part of a movement that was intended to
increase worker productivity and demonstrate the superiority of the socialist
economic system.


When the evil capitalist [with a
Jewish nose(?) and top hat] is
shown the FIVEYEAR PLAN in
1928, he responds scornfully:
“fantasy,” “delirium,” “utopia”.
Then we see his dismay when
the reality of Soviet
industrialization emerges.


,&)- & ./%/#
serp i molot

Stainless steel sculpture
for the Paris World’s Fair
1937
by
Vera Mukhina

)$0/1&2 & 3/%4/5'&6$
rabochii i kolkhoznitsa

TRAIN GOES
FROM STATION SOCIALISM
TO STATION COMMUNISM

TESTED
ENGINEER
OF THE LOCOMOTIVE
REVOLUTIONARY

T. STALIN

[Stalin] seemed to live in a half-real and half-dreamy world of
statistical ﬁgures and indices, of industrial orders and
instructions, a world in which no target and no objective
seemed to be beyond his and the party’s grasp. He coined the
phrase that there were no fortresses which could not be
conquered by the Bolsheviks, a phrase that was in the course of
many years repeated by every writer and orator and displayed
on every banner and poster in every corner of the country.

Deutscher, pp. 321-322


ﬁnally, National Security was at stake

• 1927-Britain had ended diplomatic
relations over Soviet and Comintern
shenanigans

• France continued to demand
repayment of Russian Imperial
bonds

• Japan greedily eyed Russia’s Far
Eastern possessions

• although industrial development was
proceeding, the gap between Soviet
and West’s most advanced
economies was growing


Will the Capitalist Powers invade?

• the gigantic Red sailor is looking
down on Russia’s enemies

• in 1919 the Kronstadt sailors had
defended Skt Peterburg from the
British Navy and the White forces of
General Yudenich

• the Entente politicians are greedily
looking at a map of Russia again,
threatening to intervene, as they had
in 1919

We don’t forget 1919

This cartoon from 1934 has
been making its way around the
internet. It compares FDR’s
“hope and change” expansion of
government to Stalin’s 5-year
plans.


Collectivization of Agriculture
famine and genocide


WE KEEP OUT

Collectivization of Agriculture
famine and genocide

KULAKS
FROM THE COLLECTIVES

Stalin was acting craftily. He breathed not a word to Bukharin
about the war on the countryside he was about to start. On
arrival in Novosibirsk, he ordered arrests of ‘anti-Soviet’ kulaks.
Grain procurement quotas were to be fulﬁlled. The campaign
started to ‘expand the establishment’ of collective farms….As in
1918-20, Bolsheviks entered villages, summoned peasant
gatherings and demanded immediate compliance at gunpoint.

Stalin returned to Moscow on 6 February 1928 with wagons of
grain seized from ‘hoarders.’

Service, pp. 257-258


the dynamic

owned livestock,

kulaks 1.5-2 million larger land holdings,
employed or loaned to
other peasants

also the target for

middle peasants 15-18 million forced conﬁscation of
“hoarded” grain

still used the wooden plow,
poor peasants 5-8 million pulled it themselves! had
little land, near to starvation


“What does kulak mean?”--J Stalin, in a scribbled note

One peasant revealed how kulaks were selected: ‘Just between the three
of us, the poor peasants of the village get together in a meeting and
decide: “So and so had six horses….” They notify the GPU and there you
are: so-and-so gets ﬁve years.’

During 1930-1931 about 1.68 million people were deported to the east
and north. Within months, Stalin and Molotov’s plan had led to 2,200
rebellions involving more than 800,000 people.

Monteﬁore, p. 46


the origins of this brutal drive
• underlying it was the classic conﬂict of farmers wanting higher prices for their produce versus cities and industry
wanting cheap food

• 1917 on--the breakup of larger farms to satisfy the peasants land hunger plus civil war and “the war against the
village” had led to declining productivity, even after peace and the NEP

• 1928--some of the richer farmers might have wanted to see the fall of the regime and more NEP-like capitalism,
but that wasn’t the major factor behind the “grain withholding.” Most of the farms didn’t produce enough to meet
their own demand for subsistence.

• so the output fell a few million tons below what the cities needed and, once again, famine loomed

• furthermore, if Russia were to industrialize, she must sell grain abroad to ﬁnance capital formation

• by 1929, Stalin had either to press the farmers for more or disappoint the workers and managers of industry and
risk the sort of food riots experienced in 1917

• his choice: forced collectivization


Even in the spring of 1929….Stalin still maintained that
‘individual … farming would continue to play a predominant part
in supplying the country with food and raw materials.’

A few months later, ‘all round’ collectivization was in full swing
and individual farming was doomed. Before the year was out
Stalin stated: ‘We have succeeded in turning the bulk of the
peasantry...away from the old capitalist path of development.’

Deutscher, p. 319


The kulaks, Stalin elaborated his point [in a speech he gave to
the party’s rural agents in December 1929], must not only be
expropriated; it was ridiculous to suggest, as some Bolsheviks
did, that...they should be allowed to join collective farms. He did
not tell his audience what should happen to the two million or so
kulaks, who with their families may have numbered eight or ten
million people, after they had been deprived of their property
and barred from the collective farms.

Deutscher, p. 324


Famine in the Ukrainian countryside
John Goto, “the Commissar of Space,” 1992/94


Kulaks as “white coal”


White Sea canal, Alexander Rodchenko, 1933


The White Sea to Baltic Canal


Rodchenko harnessed photography to greatest effect in an issue of 'USSR in
Construction' devoted to the White Sea Canal, trumpeted at home and abroad as
a triumph of Soviet engineering and enlightened Soviet penal policies. The canal
would be built by criminals and other social undesirables who would be
rehabilitated through labour. Rodchenko travelled to the canal to take the
photographs that would provide the raw material for this masterpiece of political
propaganda….

But Rodchenko's virtuoso post-production conceals a grim truth. These
determined-looking workers were mostly political prisoners and the White Sea
Canal, a 140 mile long gulag. And far from being rehabilitated through their
labour, 200,000 of them would die as a result of it, a reality that can still be
glimpsed in the unsmiling faces of the untouched original.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/images/
rodchenko.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/


Arbeit macht frei
KANALOARMEETS!

Agitprop poster used to motivate
prison laborers during the
construction. The writing on the poster
says: 'Canal Army soldier! The heat of
your work will melt your prison term!'


GULAG

"Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerej", or
The Chief Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps

BBLag=
Belomorskoye-Baltiskoye Lager’
White Sea to Baltic Camp


There was, indeed, a benevolent model for Ispravitelno-trud
(corrective labor). Anton Makarenko, a young teacher, was
concerned during the Civil War about the rise of orphans and
juvenile delinquents who turned to crime because they faced
starvation. He formed a collective called Gorky Colony in 1920.
Here he combined work with traditional “book learning” to enable
his students to survive. They “rehabed” abandoned buildings and
grew their own food. The Pedagogical Poem he wrote describing
the colony became a Soviet educational classic. He was then
sponsored by the OGPU to create another such penal farm
called Dzerzhinsky Commune (1927-1935).

Of course, the GULAG was never such a benevolent project,
despite the rhetoric.


LET’S ELECT WORKERS
TO THE NATIVE SOVIET

NOT
SELECT
SHAMANS
OR KULAKS


Here’s the pretty
ON DE face of Stalin’s
C’M RA drive for the

C OM collectivization
of agriculture

E
OL S IN
IV
CT
EC U
LE
TH TO

Feast at a Kolkhoz


tractors slowly replace (slaughtered) horses
1,500,000 tractors are needed for the full collectivization of Soviet agriculture--Pravda 15 Jan 1930
(that ﬁgure would not be reached until 1956!)

Zaporozhets 1923
the ﬁrst Soviet-built tractor


TO THE PROSPEROUS CULTURED LIFE!

KOLKHOZNITSA, GUARD THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE KOLKHOZ, AS THE APPLE OF YOUR EYE


LITERACY

Any peasant, collective farmer
or individual peasant has now
the capability to live in a human
manner, if he only wants to
work honestly, and not to be
idle, not to wander and not to
plunder collective farm goods.
J Stalin


Here’s its real face


Голодомор (holodomor, Russian & Ukrainian for death by hunger)


Holodomor: tragedy or genocide?
• political debate:

• Ukraine-2006 the parliament passed by a narrow vote a resolution declaring it genocide

• Russia-2008 “there was no evidence that the 1933 famine was an act of genocide against the Ukrainian
people”

• Israel-2008 echoing the Russian conclusion, the Israeli ambassador stated his country’s position

• scholarly debate:

• 1950s-Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word “genocide” put the charge “on the map” with his History of
Genocide

• 1986-Robert Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow; the Terror-Famine furthers the charge

• since then the traditional “to-and-fro” continues to this day, see Wiki for the details.


7-8 November
1932
celebrating the 15th
anniversary
of the
October Revolution


was she a casualty of the holodomor?

• 8 November 1932-Stalin’s second wife shot herself the night of
the celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the Great
October Socialist Revolution

• she had mental and physical problems which predated the last
few months

• but Montefiore makes no effort to conceal how much he
believes the tension generated by the terror famine put both
Joseph and Nadya under pressure

• although the party bosses continued to travel to their Black
Sea dachas for vacations, their trains passed through
appalling scenes of suffering in Ukraine

• their private correspondence reflects both awareness and
anxiety over the grim sights they saw and the reports of the Nadezhda Alliluevna Stalina
death tolls 1901-1932


Kirov’s Assassination
the end of “the vegetarian years”--Anna Akhmatova


Kirov’s Assassination
the end of “the vegetarian years”--Anna Akhmatova

Sergei Kirov with Josef and Svetlana Stalin, 1934

“After Nadya’s tragic death Kirov was the closest person who managed to approach Joseph
intimately and simply, to give him that missing warmth and cosiness”--Maria Svanidze

Monteﬁore, p.112

• small, handsome, brown hair and eyes, pock marked

• married without children, womanizer

• workaholic, avid outdoorsman, enjoyed hunting and
camping with his best friend Sergo, mountaineer

• 1905-joined RSDLP (b)

• 1917-established the Bolsheviks in North Caucasus,
in the Civil War “swashbuckling commissar with
Sergo and Mikoyan”

• 1921-with Sergo, engineered the seizure of Georgia Sergei Kostrikov
Kirov
1886-1934

He had probably met Stalin in 1917 but got to know his patron
in 1925….Kirov was a family favorite. Stalin inscribed a copy of
his book On Lenin and Leninism: “To SM Kirov, my friend and
beloved brother.” In 1926 Stalin removed Zinoviev from his
Leningrad power base and promoted Kirov to take over Perer
the Great’s capital, now the second largest Party in the State.
He joined the Politburo in 1930.

Monteﬁore, p. 113


The Politburo after Kirov joined,
13 July 1930

the Khozyain
Klim Iron Lazar
Narkom for War supervised “collectivization”
Sergo
Narkom for Valya the “All Union Peasant Elder” my Kirich
Heavy Industry Gosplan Chairman of Sovnarkom Leningrad boss

Kirov, Boss of the Leningrad Party apparatus

• 26 January 1934-The XVII Party Congress opens, the “Congress of Victors” to celebrate
the end of the famine and the “success” of the First Pyatiletka (Five-Year Plan)

• publicly, “Our Stalin” was hailed as never before, the indispensable leader

• secretly, a cabal of disgruntled Old Bolsheviks met and talked about replacing him with
Kirov

• when approached by them, Kirov went to Stalin, condemned and disavowed them

• but on the last day, when the Congress voted in reverse for the !", Stalin received a
shock. Kirov received 1 or 2 “blackballs”; Kaganovich and Molotov, over 100 each; Stalin, 292!

• over the next four years, 1,108 of the 1,966 delegates would be arrested. Few survived


Stalin devised a plan to deal with Kirov’s dangerous eminence,
proposing his recall from Leningrad to become one of the four
Secretaries, thereby cleverly satisfying those who wanted him
promoted to the Secretariat: on paper, a big promotion; in
reality, this would bring him under Stalin’s observation, cutting
him off from his Leningrad clientele...a promotion to the center
was a mixed blessing...Kirov protested...vigorously….Kirov’s
request to stay in Leningrad for another two years was
supported by Sergo and Kuibyshev. Stalin petulantly stalked off
in a huff.

Sergo and Kuibyshev advised Kirov to compromise with Stalin:
Kirov became Third Secretary but remained temporarily in
Leningrad.

Monteﬁore, p. 130


the death of Kirov


the assassination

• 1 December 1934- as he entered Smolny, Kirov’s NKVD bodyguard fell behind

• Kirov was shot in the back of the neck by Leonid Nikolaev, a young Party
activist

• Stalin himself came to interrogate the killer, who was then sentenced and shot
that night

• Nikolaev’s wife and other ﬁgures who could give evidence also died or were
executed

• 104 jailed prisoners were also executed as part of a “fascist plot” linked to
Kirov’s death


Instantly the rumor spread that Stalin had connived in Kirov’s
liquidation….In fact all the evidence is circumstantial and no proof
has ever been found. What is undeniable is that Stalin had no
compunction about drastic measures. He had not yet killed a
close associate but the assassination of Kirov could have been
the ﬁrst such occasion; and even if he did not order the killing, it
was he who most beneﬁtted from it. Kirov’s death permitted him
to treat the former oppositionists as he had implied he wanted to
in his Central Committee report to the Seventeenth Party
Congress.

Service, p. 315


The Show Trials
“the meat-eating years” begin--Anna Akhmatova


the beginnings--The Shakhty Affair

• January 1928-a coal mine in the Don Basin (Donbass) falls behind its quotas

• Stalin orders publicized trials of the engineers and ‘industrial specialists’,
including several foreigners

• those arrested by Yagoda’s OGPU are beaten into confessing deliberate
sabotage, being so-called ‘wreckers’

• Stalin resets the machinery of Soviet politics. Fear becomes widespread

• no longer could managers, engineers or planners safely resist unreasonable
demands--numbers had to be fudged, dangerous shortcuts, shoddy products,
worker’s lives, whatever it took

• quotas would be “met”; better, “over-exceeded”


A succession of such trials occurred in 1929-30. These involved much
political inventiveness with Stalin supplying the main momentum….the
so-called Academy of Sciences Affair which led to the condemnation of
the non-existent All-People’s Union for the Struggle for Russia’s
Regeneration in July, 1929. The ﬁctitious Industrial Party…. The
Labouring Peasant Party, also non-existent….The so-called Union
Bureau of the Mensheviks….Outside the RSFSR there were trials of
nationalists….Torture, outlandish charges, and learned-by-rote
confessions became the norm. Hundreds of defendants were either
shot or sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment.

Service, p. 268


the Opposition

• January 1928-after being expelled from the Party, Kamenev and Zinoviev
repented publicly and were readmitted. Trotsky refused and was sent to
internal exile at Alma Ata in Kazakstan

• February 1929-Trotsky was exiled to Prinkipo, Turkey according to an
agreement with Turkey’s strongman, Mustafa Kemal. Here he publishes Bulletin
Oppozitsii

• as the crisis around collectivization and the First Five-Year Plan developed,
more and more of the Left/Trotskyite Opposition were sent to prison or the
GULAG

• Stalin used the “carrot” of amnesty to extract humiliating confessions from
many of the weaker Opposition members. Trotsky scorned them as
‘capitulators’

• many justiﬁed their acceptance of Stalin’s pardon because his Great Turn away
from Bukharin and the right wing meant that he now was following the Left’s
Trotsky sailing into exile agenda


the Blumkin Affair

• born to a Jewish family, orphaned early in life, raised in
Odessa

• 1914-joined the Left SRs, became a Chekist after 1917

• 1918-assassinated German Ambassador Mirbach as
part of the LeftSR revolt

• continued to rise in the Cheka, GPU, OGPU

• 1929-visited the exiled Trotsky, took a message from
him to Karl Radek

• became the ﬁrst Party member to be executed Yakov Blumkin
1895-1929


On 30 June [1934--ﬁve months before Kirov’s death] Adolf Hitler,
newly elected Chancellor of Germany, slaughtered his enemies
within the Nazi Party, in the Night of the Long Knives--an exploit
that fascinated Stalin.

“Did you hear what happened in Germany?” he asked Mikoyan.
“Some fellow that Hitler! Splendid! That’s a deed of some skill!”
Mikoyan was surprised that Stalin admired the German Fascist
but the Bolsheviks were hardly strangers to slaughter
themselves.

Monteﬁore, p. 131


CADRES RESOLVE ALL

Another signiﬁcation of the term “cadre” is the Party.

Stalin in a speech in 1920 had made the analogy of
the Bolshevik party’s relationship to the people as
that of the General’s staff to the army.

This poster makes clear who the General is.


Stalinism and Trotskyism [were left] as the sole contenders for Bolshevik allegiance. But
now, by a strangely parallel...development, these two factions were disintegrating, each in
its own way, the Trotskyists through endless defections and the Stalinists through doubt
and confusion in their own midst. And just as Stalinism, in victory, was being reduced to
Stalin’s autocracy, so Trotskyism, in defeat, was becoming identiﬁed with Trotsky alone….
Even before the terror mounted to the climax of the great purges, the Trotskyists were
unable to use the prisons and the places of exile as bases for political action in the way
revolutionaries had used them in Tsarist times: their ideas did not reach the working class
and intelligentsia….[Trotsky] had no choice but to substitute himself for the Opposition at
large….His voice alone was the voice of the Opposition; and the immense silence of the
whole of anti-Stalinist Russia was his sounding board.

Thus, against Stalin, the sole trustee of Bolshevism in ofﬁce, Trotsky stood alone as the
proxy of Bolshevism in opposition. His name, like Stalin’s, became something of a myth…

Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, pp.123-124


the ﬁrst “Blockbuster” show trial; “The Trial of the Sixteen”
August 1936

• Jan 1935-Kamenev & Zinoviev refused to confess to
involvement in Kirov’s assassination

• but faced with long prison terms, they “cracked” and pled
“political and moral responsibility” for the act

• Zinoviev received 10 years imprisonment, Kamenev, 5

• 20 Nov 1935-both were charged, along with Trotsky, with
espionage on behalf of hostile foreign powers

• 29 Jun 1936- discovery of “terrorist activities of the
Trotskyist-Zinovievite block” led to the August show trials
of the two broken men in Stalin’s hands. All were executed

• Budyenny even suggested trying to kidnap Trotsky and
bring him back for trial


The Trial of Radek, Piatikov and Sokolnikov; “The trial of the seventeen”
January, 1937

• Radek had led the German attempted revolution,
served in the Comintern, accused of Trotskyism

• spared the death penalty because he “snitched” (falsely)

• sentenced to ten years in the GULAG, supposedly killed in a
ﬁght there, actually executed by the NKVD in 1939

• Piatikov, a Ukrainian,had headed a Donbass coal
mine and was Deputy Director of Gosplan

• charged with planning a German-sponsored coup, executed

• Sokolnikov, former Finance head, “Trotskyist”

• suffered Radek’s fate in the GULAG


LET’S ERADICATE
SPIES AND SABOTEURS
THE TROTSKYITE-BUKHARINIST AGENTS OF FASCISM!


Bukharin’s Trial; “The Trial of the Twenty-one”
March 1938

• the fact that Yagoda was one of the accused showed
the speed at which the purges were consuming their
own

• it alleged that Bukharin and others had sought to
assassinate Lenin and Stalin, poison Maxim Gorky,
partition the Soviet Union and hand over territory to
Germany, Japan and Great Britain, among other
preposterous charges

• even sympathetic observers who had stomached the
earlier trials found it hard to swallow the new charges
as they became ever more absurd

• the purge had now expanded to include virtually
every Old Bolshevik except Stalin

• for some prominent former communists the Bukharin
trial marked their ﬁnal break with communism

WAR
THEY MARCH TO THEIR OWN DESTRUCTION

THE JEW TROTSKY


In 1937 Trotsky’s American
admirers convinced John
Dewey to head a legal inquiry
into the fantastic Moscow
trials for the purpose of
vindicating him from the
more and more fantastic
charges.


The Dewey Commission published its findings in the form of a 422-page book titled Not
Guilty. Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow
Trials. In its summary the commission wrote: "Independent of extrinsic evidence, the
Commission finds:
■ That the conduct of the Moscow Trials was such as to convince any unprejudiced
person that no attempt was made to ascertain the truth.
■ That while confessions are necessarily entitled to the most serious consideration,
the confessions themselves contain such inherent improbabilities as to convince the
Commission that they do not represent the truth, irrespective of any means used to
obtain them.
■ That Trotsky never instructed any of the accused or witnesses in the Moscow trials
to enter into agreements with foreign powers against the Soviet Union [and] that
Trotsky never recommended, plotted, or attempted the restoration of capitalism in
the USSR."
The commission concluded: "We therefore find the Moscow Trials to be frame-ups."

Wikipedia


the Army purge; 22 May 1937- Sept 1938
• former aristocrat, Mikhail Tukachevsky, had had a spectacular career



• 1935-hero of the Civil War, he rose to command the Red Army at the young
age of 42

• sent to the West on diplomatic and military missions, some began calling him
the Red Napoleon



• 1935-hero of the Civil War, he rose to command the Red Army at the young
age of 42

• sent to the West on diplomatic and military missions, some began calling him
the Red Napoleon

• 22 May 1937-he and seven other top generals were secretly arrested and
charged with “right wing Trotskyist” conspiracies

• convicted by a “confession” which bore stains of his own blood, he and the
others were immediately and secretly shot, their convictions and crimes
announced only afterwards to avoid a possible army revolt

• September 1938- Narkom for Defense Voroshilov reported the dismissal of at the secret trial
37,761 ofﬁcers and commissars, the arrest of 10,866, and the condemnation
of 7,211 for anti-Soviet crimes


Stalin’s possible motives

• a “disinformation” by Heydrich’s Nazi counter-espionage apparatus?

• did Tukachevsky and the others really conspire? Trotsky thought so

• Stalin’s anti-Semitism. Half of the accused were Jews:Yakir, Primakov, Feldman
and Gamarnik.

• Stalin harbored long-standing resentments against Red Army commanders with
heroic Civil War military records that Stalin, as a mediocre military tactician and
war commissar, could never equal

• the majority consensus today. Stalin had removed virtually every other possible
threat to his power. Only that of a military coup remained. He was still paranoid.


The Great Terror


The Great Terror

Seance (commemorating
the death of Kasimir Malevich)


To the left: the perpetrators; to the right: the victims


The French Reign of Terror vs Stalin’s Great Terror
SIMILARITIES DIFFERENCES

• shocking, brutal • the French Terror came soon after
the Revolution began, 1789-1793
• designed for public effect
• for almost 20 years the Bolsheviks
refused to murder their comrades
• “the Revolution devours its own”

• the mystifying and absurd Stalinist
• Robespierre and Stalin both “confessions” of the “guilty”
defeated the left with help from the
right, then turned on their former
allies and defeated them • Robespierre’s Terror ended in one
year with his own death
• each was ﬁnally the triumphant
leader of his faction, in sole
possession of power


The French Reign of Terror vs Stalin’s Great Terror
SIMILARITIES DIFFERENCES

• shocking, brutal • the French Terror came soon after
the Revolution began, 1789-1793
• designed for public effect
• for almost 20 years the Bolsheviks
refused to murder their comrades
• “the Revolution devours its own”

• the mystifying and absurd Stalinist
• Robespierre and Stalin both “confessions” of the “guilty”
defeated the left with help from the
right, then turned on their former
allies and defeated them • Robespierre’s Terror ended in one
year with his own death
• each was ﬁnally the triumphant
leader of his faction, in sole • Stalin died in bed, his regime was
possession of power only slowly modiﬁed


the instruments of oppression


1922: Cheka transforms into GPU (State Political Directorate), a department of the NKVD (Peopleʼs Commissariat
for Internal Affairs) of the Russian SFSR.
1923: GPU leaves the NKVD and becomes all-union OGPU under direct control of the Sovnarkom of the USSR.
■ OGPU - "Joint State Political Directorate"
■ Genrikh Yagoda 1934 - 1936
■ Nikolai Yezhov 1936 - 1938
■ Lavrenty Beria 1938 - 1945
1941: The GUGB of the NKVD was brieﬂy separated out into the NKGB, then merged back in, and then in 1943
separated out again.
■ NKGB - "People's Commissariat for State Security"
1946: All People's Commissariats were renamed to Ministries.
■ MGB - "Ministry for State Security" (The East German secret police, the Stasi, took their name from this
iteration).
1947: Ofﬁcial decision with the expressed purpose of "upgrading coordination of different intelligence services and
concentrating their efforts on major directions". In the summer of 1948 the military personnel in KI were returned to
the Soviet military to reconstitute foreign military intelligence service (GRU). KI sections dealing with the new East
Bloc and Soviet emigres were returned to the MGB in late 1948. In 1951 the KI returned to the MGB.
1953: MVD and MGB are merged into the MVD by Lavrenty Beria.
■ MVD - "Ministry of Internal Affairs"
■ Lavrenty Beria March, 1953 - June, 1953
1954: Newly independent force became the KGB, as Beria was purged and the MVD divested itself again of the
functions of secret policing. After renamings and tumults, the KGB remained stable until 1991.
■ KGB - Committee for State Security
■ In Russia today, KGB functions are performed by the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) and the FSB
(Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation). The GRU, Main Intelligence Directorate,
continues to operate as well.


■ Genrikh Yagoda 1934 - 1936
■ Nikolai Yezhov 1936 - 1938
■ Lavrenty Beria 1938 - 1945


“...a taste for French wines and sex toys” --Monteﬁore

• real ﬁrst name Enoch, son of a jeweler

• 1907-joined RSDLP (b)

• “devious, short, balding, always in full uniform”

• 1929-swapped sides from Bukharin and the
Rightists to Stalin

• his huge dacha bloomed with “2,000 orchids and
roses,” spent almost 4 million rubles decorating

• his great accomplishment was the creation by
Genrikh Yagoda slave labor of the vast economic empire of the
Russian: Генрих Григорьевич Ягода
Gulags
1891-1938


“Blackberry” (yezhevika)--the bloody dwarf (4’11”)
• “born to a forest warden, who ran a tearoom-cum-brothel,
and a maid in a small Lithuanian town”

• after a few years in primary school he went to Petersburg’s
Putilov Works

• “obsessive autodidact, ‘Kolya the book lover’ “

• drive, hardness, organizational talent and an excellent
memory, popular, ladies’ man

• 1933-headed the !" Personnel Department, helped his
patron, Kaganovich, purge the Party

• humor “oaﬁshly puerile,” bread balls, farting contests
Nikolai Yezhov
Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов
• 1936-presided over the Kamenev-Zinoviev trial prep
1895-1940


“our Himmler”--Stalin
• “...brandished the exotic flattery, sexual appetites and
elaborate cruelty of a Byzantine courtier in his rise to
dominate first the Caucasus, then Stalin’s circle and
finally the USSR itself.”--Montefiore

• trained as an architect at the Baku Polytechnik

• Chekist, double agent during the Civil War

• 1926-Sergo, his Caucasian boss, introduced him to
Stalin

• athletic, coldly competent, fawning, had a genius for
cultivating patrons (but ill-stared Nadya hated him)
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria
Georgian: ,
Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria • 1938-Deputy head of the NKVD under Yezhov, carried
Russian: Лаврентий Павлович Берия out the Great Purge
1899-1953


GULAG (Glavnoye Upravlyeniye Ispravityel'no-Trudovih Lagyeryey i koloniy) of the NKVD
(Chief Administration of the Corrective Work Camps and Colonies)

Entering the Gulag--Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya --the courtesy note should be displayed stating that this reproduction of the Eufrosinia
Kersnovskaya work was made available by the courtesy of Kersnovskaya foundation


Camp guards

Kalinin
Khrushchev
Kaganovich Mikoyan Yezhov
Stalin
Molotov

In 1937, at the height of the Great Terror, two young magnates join the leadership:
Yezhov, now NKVD boss...and his friend Nikita Khrushchev, newly appointed
Moscow boss….Stalin trusted the ruthless bumpkin Khrushchev, who later described
himself as the Leader’s “pet.” He idolized Stalin.
Montefiore


Monteﬁore

Uzhasnii Dom
Horrible House
The House on the Embankment
Home to the Second Tier of the Party Elite

the Commissar vanishes

A famous technique of this
period is the doctored
photograph. When
“Blackberry’s” turn came to be
dispatched to the
“Meatgrinder,” voila!


people “scratched out”


Industrialization and collectivization had thrown society into the
maelstrom of hunger, migration and the Gulag.

Service, p. 312


The situation brought out the worst in him. In fact he had plenty
of badness in him to be brought out long before he held despotic
power. To explain is not to excuse: Stalin was as wicked a man
as has ever lived. His was a mind that found terror on a grand
scale deeply congenial. When he had an opportunity to
implement his ideas, he acted with a barbaric determination with
few parallels in world history.

Service, p. 345


Altogether, it would seem that a rough total of one and a half
million people were seized by the NKVD in 1937-8. Only around
two hundred thousand were eventually released….The
impression got around--or was allowed to get around--that Stalin
used nearly all of the arrestees as forced labourers in the Gulag.
In fact the NKVD was under instructions to deliver about half of
its victims not to the new camps in Siberia or north Russia but to
the execution pits outside most cities. Roughly three quarters of a
million persons perished under a hail of bullets in that brief period
of two years.

Service, p. 356


Epilog
Trotsky’s end
21 August 1940


cover of the original 1949 edition


iv-Stalin's SSSR; 5Year Plans & Terror

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