Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents

by Lewis Siegelbaum, Andrei Sokolov, Thomas Hoisington

Overview

In this unique book, an abridged edition of an earlier highly praised work, we hear the poignant voices of those who experienced firsthand the complex and perilous world of the Soviet Union under Stalin. Praise for the earlier edition "This remarkable collection of documents from the Soviet Union in the 1930s provides a wide-angle lens on the decade's dizzying events. Through citizens' letters to newspapers and party officials, the reader is made aware of the confused and often contradictory nature of Russian politics and society under Stalin."-Leonard Benardo, New York Times Book Review "Siegelbaum provides an excellent introduction as well as informative commentary throughout the book."-Harold J. Goldberg, History

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300101270
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	04/10/2004
Series:	Annals of Communism Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

Read an Excerpt

Stalinism as a Way of Life

A Narrative in Documents

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By Lewis Siegelbaum Andrei Sokolov

Yale University Press

Copyright © 2000 Yale University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-300-08480-3

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Chapter One

The Socialist Offensive

THE YEAR 1929 marked the beginning of the full-scale collectivization of agriculture, the key element of what was, in the terminology of official propaganda, a "full-scale socialist offensive on all fronts." The slogan, with its connotations of attack and advance, was absolutely typical of Communist rhetoric at this time. It eclipsed more gradualist and organic metaphors, such as growing into (vrastanie) socialism, which N. I. Bukharin and others had employed during the heyday of the New Economic Policy (NEP). Impatience with compromises, fear that the country was growing into capitalism rather than out of it, and disgruntlement among rank-and-file workers who bore the brunt of rationalization, economization, and other efficiency drives were only part of what constituted the crisis of NEP. Politically, the crisis followed upon Stalin's consolidation of power as general secretary and his faction's successive victories over the Left and Joint Oppositions within the party. Toward the end of 1927 the Stalinist "center" lurched leftward: it appropriated the recently silenced opposition's agenda for rapid industrialization based on massive investments in heavy industry, promoted campaigns for self-criticism and against bureaucratism within party and state organs, and otherwise intensified class-war rhetoric. Efforts by Bukharin, A. I. Rykov, and M. P. Tomsky to tone down this rhetoric and minimize the danger of a "capitalist offensive" earned them the opprobrium of the Stalinists and the sobriquet of right opportunists.

The new policy was doomed to constant failures for which excuses had to be sought, for which the desired had to pass for the real. Trotsky called this "the policy of half-shut eyes," one that involved the application of the term socialist to everything that occurred inside the Soviet Union. But it is doubtful that anyone, including Trotsky, knew just what that new order should be, and what might result from naked ideas thrown onto the soil of a society bearing the burden of many years' trials and suffering from many evils and vices.

The Socialist Offensive began in accordance with all the rules of military operations. Battlefronts were declared: the Industrialization Front, Collectivization Front, Tractor Front, Ideological Front, Cultural Front, Antireligious Front, Literary Front, and so forth. Each front had its "armies," "bases," heroes, and "saboteurs." Every ton of coal or iron produced, every village collectivized, every individual converted to godlessness, every "bourgeois" writer exposed was a victory for socialism. Thus could a young worker in the Moscow subway construction project write verses with the refrain: "As we fought then, in 1918, not sparing our young years / So we must fight now for each meter built."

For storming the fortresses that the Bolsheviks could not fail to take, they needed mass support. At the beginning of 1929 a campaign was launched to develop nationwide mass socialist competitions in factories and plants, and among transport and construction workers. Socialist competition was declared to be one of the main battlefronts in the class struggle and a prerequisite for fulfilling the goals of the First Five-Year Plan. The competition's main form was the shock worker and shock brigade movement. As V. V. Kuibyshev, chairman of VSNKh (Vyshii Sovet Narodnogo Khoziaistva [supreme council of the national economy]) and one of Stalin's close comrades in arms, said at the first All-Union Congress of Shock Brigades in December 1929, the chief task of shock brigades was to create a new type of worker. Correspondingly, newspaper articles propagandizing the shock worker movement appeared with such titles as "A New Man Is Being Born" and "A New Society Is Being Forged." According to Kuibyshev,

Socialist competition and shock brigades constitute the most effective attack on the petty bourgeois psychology still strong in certain strata of the working class. They mark the end to the old rule of "Every man for himself and God for everyone." They deal a crushing blow to old work traditions, old habits, the old psychology cultivated for decades under capitalism. Precisely this makes socialist competition and shock brigades a unique front in the class struggle.... The lack of uniformity in the working class, naturally, adds extreme urgency to the task of the shock brigades, gives it a special importance because we must reeducate by means of the finest examples possible those strata of workers now pouring into the factories who are removing themselves from agriculture.

Kuibyshev also pointed out that socialist competition and shock brigades were meeting opposition from bureaucratic staff in the form of quiet sabotage and scornful attitudes.

There can be no doubt that a substantial part of the working class was imbued with the competitive spirit, especially, as statistical information about shock workers testifies, young people and Komsomol members. At the First Congress of Shock Brigades more than 30 percent of the participants were people under age twenty-two, while those over forty made up only 15 percent.

The sizable scope of the movement was achieved through clever use of exaggerated claims, healthy rivalry, the eagerness of the young to take part in anything new, and their desire to stand out, to appear in displays, on the pages of newspapers, at rallies, meetings, and assemblies. Hence the notion of competition as holiday and parade was constantly fanned by the press. Hence rush work, the race for figures, mass calls for and mobilization of shock workers. Shock brigades were formed to eliminate hitches in production. At many plants "antireligious shock brigades," Komsomol "light cavalry" detachments, and the like were active. In the Subway Project the women's "reformatory" shock brigade became famous for "reforming" men who were drunkards, absentee workers, and loafers. To fall behind women in work was something even the most inveterate rowdies could not suffer. The form of this work-collective shock work-was also characteristic of the spirit of the time, as it was of the working traditions of the Russian peasant commune (obshchina) and the artel: all together, all at once, all in one stroke, "One, two-heave! Once more-heave!"

Soviet historians created a large corpus of literature on the topic of socialist competition and published a great number of documents about work achievements, heroism, and worker self-sacrifice for maximal output during the first Five-Year Plans. Quite a few of the published documents clearly smack of journalistic cant, contain political twaddle, and repeat hackneyed expressions. In as much as they have already been published, there is no sense in citing them again. But we would like to pay heed nonetheless to several that convey the "aroma" of the epoch.

Here, for example, is an excerpt from the address of worker A. N. Voronin, speaking in the language of a "metalworker" to the First Congress of Shock Brigades:

Document 1

Speech by A. N. Voronin to First Congress of Shock Brigades, December 1929. Pervyi Vsesoiuznyi [first all-Union congress of shock brigades (for its thirtieth anniversary)], Moscow, 1959, pp. 127-128.

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The worker-peasant government has decided to build on the remote steppes of Kazakhstan a railroad in order to connect Turkestan and Siberia. For this the government has allocated approximately two hundred million rubles and has given us the task of trying our best to build a railroad in five years, which will be called the Turkestan-Siberian Line.

We, the workers and the engineering and technical staff, taking into account the warlike and urgent need for this line, have decided that we will build it not in five years but 3.5. Accordingly we will shorten construction by eighteen months. We have said that we will build it at little cost, and build it well and solidly. Some hysterical persons have told you that we will not be able to build it quickly and solidly.

I will give you an example, Comrades. The example is a very important one. In the eighth construction section, at one time the fifth construction section, at the Alma-Ata station is Poganka Brook. Here was built a reinforced concrete bridge. Now when they finished constructing it and got it completely ready, a locomotive was brought up and stood six hours on this bridge, and in the final analysis it turned out that the bridge settled one thousandth of a meter. So the words of the hysterical ones were not justified.

It's all very well that the Turk-Sib builders succeeded in building the railroad fast, at little cost, and solidly, in spite of the doubts of the "hysterical ones." Often, though, accelerated production speeds were attained to the detriment of the quality of work completed. Frequent stoppages, production breakdowns, and difficulties putting newly completed projects into service are proof of this. As a matter of fact, the shock workers themselves inspired an ambiguous attitude on the part of other workers. This is the subject of an excerpt from G. B. Gelman's address to the First Congress of Shock Brigades on behalf of workers of the Proletariat's Victory (Pobeda proletariata) textile factory in the city of Yegorevsk. Criticizing management for not devoting enough attention to the problems of competition, he said, among other things:

Document 2

Speech by G. B. Gelman to First Congress of Shock Brigades, December 1929. Pervyi Vsesoiuznyi, Moscow, 1959, p. 100.

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... It's necessary that those agreements we put together be comprehensible to the workers so that each worker who signs an agreement will know that in doing so he takes upon himself such and such obligations. We have achieved at our factory some two hundred cases of reduced production costs, in some departments workers voluntarily increased their productivity per shift, etc. Thanks to this, we carried out our tasks and even more. If the delegates here say that they intend to fulfill the Five-Year Plan in four years, then our workers have adopted that rate of speed needed to fulfill their Five-Year Plan in three years, for we have already cut costs by 21 percent and reduced the number of rejects.

Working in the foremost lines of the economic battlefront, one must not forget that we find ourselves amid the fiercest class struggle. I wish to present as an example the following facts: the workers of the dyeing division changed from one type of jigger to another, raising labor productivity by more than 100 percent. On the night shift a shock worker fell into the machine, and when he was being beaten by this jigger, when his legs were being broken, when he was being boiled in the hot dye, a worker standing nearby did not stop the machine. When the matter was investigated, it turned out that [the latter] was a well-to-do kulak.

Another instance. When the boiler room firemen were to start increased work shifts, they nearly tossed our initiator into the furnace.

We're not afraid of battling with the enemy we see, but the enemy who works along side us at a machine, the enemy who is dressed in the same overalls as us, this enemy we're afraid of. We can't for a minute forget that the class enemy is mighty powerful, and we will be victorious only by the fiercest struggle with him.

Significantly, all remarks against competition, regardless of the motives for making them, were subject to ruthless class-related judgment and considered intrigues of secret enemies of the Soviet government. Just who were these "enemies," "hysterical persons," "bearers of the petty bourgeois mentality," "backward workers," "bureaucrats," and so forth? Why were they against competition, and why was it necessary to fight them in the fiercest manner? Gelman's speech makes it quite clear why workers spoke out against competition: the unavoidable reduction in labor costs, tightening of the work schedule, increase in the physical intensity of work. But not only this. Storming and campaigning ran counter to the requirements of modern industrial production, with its steady pace, monotony, and precision. No wonder that competition produced its best results in situations where only wheelbarrows and spades were required, where everything depended on applying physical effort. Thus, whether competition and opposition to it should be treated solely in the sense of a struggle between the new and the old is open to doubt. Gelman points to one of the "enemies" of competition as a "former kulak" who had managed to find work in a factory. It is not hard to understand why the "former kulak" dipped an industrial front-runner in hot dye, but it is highly unlikely that all the stokers at the Proletariat's Victory factory were "former kulaks."

Soviet publications did not include documents that set forth the arguments of those objecting to shock work, nor of people who doubted the benefit of the movement. Mention is made, of course, of the existence of "whiners and those of little faith," of bureaucratism and overrigid organization of the movement that damaged "the Great Cause." There is really no mention at all of the degeneration of socialist competition when there were observed-against a background of impressive growth in the number of shock workers, shock brigades, factory shock departments and sections, and even of entire shock plants-production stoppages, standstills, falls in productivity, and so forth, and a resultant slowing down of the indicators of growth in the economy.

Let us look at a letter by a young Leningrad worker who, responding to a Komsomol appeal, went off to work at one of the shock construction sites of the First Five-Year Plan, Magnitka. The letter was written in June 1931 and, after being subjected to a thorough examination, became an object of great attention on the part of political organs, never reaching the addressee:

Document 3

Personal letter by a young Leningrad worker from Magnitogorsk, June 1931. GARF, f. 7952, op. 5, d. 172, 11. 59-60. Typed copy.

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Hello, Uncle Fedia. Greetings from Magnitogorsk. Uncle Fedia, we arrived at the place here safe and sound. They did a poor job of meeting us at Magnitogorsk. We sat and waited a very long time for the bus to take us to the place we were going. Toward evening the bus came for us. Brought us to open country and left us. They showed us a tent in which there was nothing except the tent itself. The first night we slept on the bare ground, for the second they made sawhorses and paneling for us. We slept on the bare boards. The third day they sort of knocked together a floor in the tent for us out of boards.

Continues...

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Editorial Reviews

"An extremely valuable contribution to the study of Stalinism."

From the Publisher

Though the voices from below were very faint in the Stalinist Soviet Union, the 157 documents from that period compiled for the present volume speak very loudly indeed. Letters, petitions, denunciations, despairing descriptions of lives and living conditions--each one is "a cry from the heart." They are taken from the 1930s, the decade of forced collectivization, the Stalin Constitution, and the dictator's horrific Great Terror. The tone of the documents is somber, yet there is also evidence of patriotism as well as pride in Soviet achievements. In uncovering these primary materials from Soviet archives, editors Siegelbaum (history, Michigan State Univ.) and Sokolov (history, Inst. of Russian History at the Russian Academy of Sciences) have given us a treasure trove of great usefulness to historians of Stalinist Russia. They note that "initiative, enterprise, [and] personal judgment became extremely dangerous qualities" in the USSR, qualities that are also in desperately short supply in contemporary post-Soviet Russia. Strongly recommended for academic libraries and as a valuable source for students of communism and Soviet history.--Robert H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This remarkable collection of documents from the Soviet Union in the 1930's provides a wide-angle lens on the decade's dizzying events. Through citizens' letters to newspapers and party officials, the reader is made aware of the confused and often contradictory nature of Russian politics and society under Stalin...By complicating the one-dimensional account of a country terrorized into submissiveness, Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, main researcher of the Institute of Russian History at the Russian Academy of Sciences, have performed a worthwhile service
—New York Times Book Review

Steven Benardo

The opening of some Soviet archives continues to deepen our understanding of that closed society—including the main revelation here, the latest in the Yale Annals of Communism series, of the mass of popular resistance to Soviet rule. The documents, edited with commentary by Siegelbaum (History/Michigan State) and Sokolov (History/Russian Academy of Science), include letters to the press and to high officials, summaries of such correspondence, reports on conditions for the party leadership, and others for some of its lower echelons. They are grouped around specific subjects like"The Socialist Offensive" (the use of war imagery to get better results), the"Stalin Constitution," and life in rural areas. Although the editors note that information on doubters and malcontents"was meted out only in small doses," and almost all of the correspondents put their complaints in the context of their own professed belief in the system, many of the comments are, by implication, devastating: one official reports back that a Komsomol member had been heard to observe that"they built the [White Sea-Baltic] Canal on human bones." Some of the sharpest remarks are prompted by the Stalin Constitution, which purported to establish conventional liberal freedoms. Other criticisms arise from the fall of the NKVD Chief Yezhov. Some correspondents seem naïvely to believe that the authorities will welcome information on the corruption of the system:"who have we built the damn five-year plan for?" asks one; exiles are living"in horrible, nightmarish conditions, worse than cattle," complains another; thousands of people taking shelter near railroad stations, says a third. There are cold reportsfromthebureaucracy to the leadership, noting that by July 30, 1938, 72,000 people were scheduled for execution. The theme is too large and the variety of opinion too diverse to be usefully generalized about; still, this is a salutary exposure of scarifying material that until now has lain concealed in the archives.

Kirkus Reviews

". . . not only a source of documents indispensable for scholars who study society and politics of the early years of the USSR, but also a fair read for people interested in the social dynamics of the post-Soviet Russian state."—Bozena Karwowska, The Sarmatian Review

— Bozena Karwowska

The Sarmatian Review