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87th Congress, 1st Session

House Document No. 1 39

Communism

VOLUME II

THE SOVIET UNION,
FROM LENIN TO KHRUSHCHEV

87th Congress, 1st Session House Document No. 139

FACTS ON
COMMUNISM

VOLUME II

THE SOVIET UNION,
FROM LENIN TO KHRUSHCHEV

COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

EIGHTY-SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

DECEMBER 1960

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
68491 O WASHINGTON : 1961

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington 25, D.C. - Price $1.25

COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES

United States House of Representatives

FRANCIS E. WALTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
MORGAN M. MOULDER, Missouri DONALD L. JACKSON, California

CLYDE DOYLE, California GORDON H. SCHERER, Ohio

EDWIN E. WILLIS, Louisiana WILLIAM E. MILLER, New York

WILLIAM M. TUCK, Virginia AUGUST E. JOHANSEN, Michigan F

Frank S. Tavenner, Jr., Director [i

H. Con. Res. 51 Passed April 13, 1961

Bghtgsetoenth Congress of the lEnitefl States of 2merica

AT THE FIRST SESSION

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday, the third day of
January, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-one

Concurrent "Resolution

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concm^ring) .
That the publication entitled "Facts on Communism — Volume II, The
Soviet Union, From Lenin to Khrushchev" prepared by the Com-
mittee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-
sixth Congress, second session, be printed as a House document ; and
that there be printed fifty thousand additional copies of said document
of which fifteen thousand shall be for the use of said committee and
thirty-five thousand copies to be prorated to the Members of the House
of Representatives for a period of ninety days after which time the
unused balances shall revert to the Committee on Un-American
Activities.

Sec 2. There shall be printed ten thousand three hundred additional
copies of such document for the use of the Senate.

Ralph R. Roberts,

Attest :

Clerk of the House of Representatives.
Attest:

Felton M. Johnston,
Secretary of the Senate.

CONTENTS

Page

Preface 3

Introduction 5

The Soviet Union, from Lenin to Khrushchev 7

Chapter I. The Bolshevik Party 7

1 . The Predecessors of Bolshevism 7

2. Vladimir Lenin and the Origins of Bolshevism 10

3. The End and the Means 15

4. The Great Rehearsal 18

5. Receding of the Tide (1906-12) 22

6. Moral Decay and Disintegration 26

7. Stalin's Emergence 29

8. World War I and Lenin's Defeatism 31

Chapter II. The Revolution of 1917 (March to November) 35

1 . All Power to the Soviets 35

2. Leon Trotsky in 1917 41

3. Socialism and Dictatorship as Immediate Goals 43

4. The Unstable Regime 47

5. Staging the Upheaval 50

6. Lenin's Offensive 53

7. The November Upheaval 58

8. The Constituent Assembly and Its Dispersion 66

Chapter III. The Program of the First Soviet Regime 70

1 . Peace, Land, Equality 70

2. Dictatorship and the Principles of Morality 78

3. The First Stages of the Social Upheaval 82

4. No Coexistence Possible 83

Chapter IV. The Civil War 87

1 . The Years of Terror 87

2. The Red Army 91

3. The Communist International 92

4. The Cheka 9i

5. Lenin and Terrorism H3

6. Secession and Reannexation of National Areas 1M

7. The Civil War Ends 116

Chapter V. The NEP Era HI

1 . The Peasant Movements 118

2. Petrograd and Kronstadt 119

3. Mushrooming of Factions 123

4. Lenin's State Capitalism 125

5. The Famine 1 30

6. The Police System 1 35

7. Lenin's Death and the Stalin-Trotsky Fight 141

8. The End of Opposition: Stalin as Autocrat 152

III

The Soviet Union, from Lenin to Khrushchev — Continued Page

Chapter VI. The New Economic Upheaval 158

1 . Collectivization of Farming 158

2. The Famine of 1933 164

3. Industrialization and Rearmament 169

4. Police and Terrorism 175

5. Forced Labor 184

Chapter VII. Trials and Purges 187

1 . Assassination of Kirov 1 87

2. The Great Purge 190

Chapter VIII. The Era of the Soviet-German Pact 200

1. The New Soviet Areas 200

2. The Military Forces 206

3. On the Eve of the War 210

Chapter IX. The War Years 218

1. The Commander-in-Chief 218

2. Home Policy 220

3. The Siege of Leningrad 224

4. Defeatist Trends 227

5. Stalin's Concessions 230

6. The NKVD in Wartime 238

7. Defense and Offense 240

8. The Balance Sheet 244

Chapter X. The Postwar Era and Stalin's Death 247

1. The Main Trends 247

2. The Communist Party After the War 252

3. International Communism 255

4. Relinement in Literature, Art, and Science 257

5. Economic Trends at the End of Stalin's Era 262

6. Stalin's Last Year 271

Chapter XI. The Post-Stalin Era 278

1 . The Malenkov Regime 278

2. The Advance of Nikita Khrushchev 285

3. The New Agrarian Policy 290

4. Competition with the United States 297

5. Soviet Industry and Finance 300

6. Social Conditions 303

7. The Thaw and Its Limit3 309

8. Forced Labor in the Post-Stalin Era 314

Chapter XII. Khrushchev in Power 321

1 . The De-Stalinization 321

2. Ferment Within Communist Ranks 329

3. Ferment Among Russian Intellectuals 333

4. End of Collective Leadership 337

5. Changes in Ideology 346

6. Sputniks, New Ambitions, and the New Offensive. . . . 353

Bibliography 359

Index i

Public Law 601, 79th Congress

The legislation under which the House Committee on Un-American
Activities operates is Public Law 601, 79th Congress [1946]; 60 Stat. 812,
which provides:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States
of America in Congress assembled, * * *

PART 2— RULES OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rule X

SEC. 12 1. STANDING COMMITTEES
*******

17. Committee on Un-American Activities, to consist of nine Members.

Rule XI

POWERS AND DUTIES OF COMMITTEES
*******

(q) (1) Committee on Un-American Activities.

(A) Un-American activities.

(2) The Committee on Un-American Activities, as a whole or by subcommit-
tee, is authorized to make from time to time investigations of (i) the extent,
character, and objects of un-American propaganda activities in the United States,
(ii) the diffusion within the United States of subversive and un-American propa-
ganda that is instigated from foreign countries or of a domestic origin and attacks
the principle of the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitution, and
(iii) all other questions in relation thereto that would aid Congress in any necessary
remedial legislation.

The Committee on Un-American Activities shall report to the House (or to the
Clerk of the House if the House is not in session) the results of any such investi-
gation, together with such recommendations as it deems advisable.

For the purpose of any such investigation, the Committee on Un-American
Activities, or any subcommittee thereof, is authorized to sit and act at such times
and places within the United States, whether or not the House is sitting, has
recessed, or has adjourned, to hold such hearings, to require the attendance of such
witnesses and the production of such books, papers, and documents, and to take
such testimony, as it deems necessary. Subpenas may be issued under the signature
of the chairman of the committee or any subcommittee, or by any member desig-
nated by any such chairman, and may be served by any person designated by any
such chairman or member.

Rule XII

LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT BY STANDING COMMITTEES

Sec 136. To assist the Congress in appraising the administration of the laws
and in developing such amendments or related legislation as it may deem neces-
sary, each standing committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives
shall exercise continuous watchfulness of the execution by the administrative
agencies concerned of any laws, the subject matter of which is within the jurisdic-
tion of such committee; and, for that purpose, shall study all pertinent reports and
data submitted to the Congress by the agencies in the executive branch of the
Government.

(1)

RULES ADOPTED BY THE 86TH CONGRESS

House Resolution 7, January 7, 1959
*******

Rule X

STANDING COMMITTEES

I. There shall be elected by the House, at the commencement of each Con-
gress,

*******
(q) Committee on Un-American Activities, to consist of nine Members.
*******

Rule XI

POWERS AND DUTIES OF COMMITTEES
*******

18. Committee on Un-American Activities.

(a) Un-American activities.

(b) The Committee on Un-American Activities, as a whole or by subcommittee,
is authorized to make from time to time investigations of (1) the extent, char-
acter, and objects of un-American propaganda activities in the United States,
(2) the diffusion within the United States of subversive and un-American prop-
aganda that is instigated from foreign countries or of a domestic origin and
attacks the principle of the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitu-
tion, and (3) all other questions in relation thereto that would aid Congress in
any necessary remedial legislation.

The Committee on Un-American Activities shall report .to the House (or to the
Clerk of the House if the House is not in session) the results of any such investi-
gation, together with such recommendations as it deems advisable.

For the purpose of any such investigation, the Committee on Un-American
Activities, or any subcommittee thereof, is authorized to sit and act at such times
and places within the United States, whether or not the House is sitting, has
recessed, or has adjourned, to hold such hearings, to require the attendance of
such witnesses and the production of such books, papers, and documents, and
to take such testimony, as it deems necessary. Subpenas may be issued under the
signature of the chairman of the committee or any subcommittee, or by any member
designated by any such chairman, and may be served by any person designated by
any such chairman or member.

*******

26. To assist the House in appraising the administration of the laws and in
developing such amendments or related legislation as it may deem necessary, each
standing committee of the House shall exercise continuous watchfulness of the
execution by the administrative agencies concerned of any laws, the subject matter
of which is within the jurisdiction of such committee; and, for that purpose, shall
study all pertinent reports and data submitted to the House by the agencies in the
executive branch of the Government.

(2)

PREFACE

The Committee on Un-American Activities herewith presents the
second volume in a series entitled Facts on Communism.

The series aims toward a comprehensive treatment of communism in
both its theoretical and practical aspects, and is the result of collabora-
tion between the Committee's research staff and eminent scholars who
are specialists on various phases of communism. Succeeding volumes
which are now in process will be published when completed.

In issuing Volume II, which focuses on the history of the Soviet
Union from Lenin to Khrushchev, the Committee makes special
acknowledgment to Dr. David J. Dallin, author and lecturer, for his
leading role in the preparation of this massive compilation of material
on the Communist regime in the Soviet Union.

Francis E. Walter, Chairman.

(3)

INTRODUCTION

In a comprehensive study of communism, the Soviet Union requires
special attention in regard to its past and present, its doctrines and
practices, its domestic and foreign affairs, for three major reasons:

Russia was the first country in the world to fall under Communist
rule.

Second, since the time of the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviet Union
has unquestionably been the directive base of the world Communist
movement.

Third, for the preceding two reasons, the Soviet Union serves the
adherents of communism — today, as during the past forty years — as a
pilot state.

The present volume, accordingly, is devoted to the emergence and
growth of bolshevism-communism in Tsarist Russia, its seizure of
power there, the transformation of the old regime into the Soviet
government, and the history of the Soviet Union during the past
four decades. It deals, in the main, with Soviet domestic affairs,
leaving the subject of Soviet international relations to a later
volume.

Since there exists no stronger weapon against communism than the

simple truth, this volume is a factual presentation of developments in
Russia. Great stress is placed on original statements by the founders of
communism as well as pertinent comments by scholars in the free world.
All quotations have been carefully checked and their sources are given
for those readers encouraged to pursue further study.

Prior to February 14, 1918, Russia used the old-style Julian calendar
which was 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar used in the Western
World. Volume II of Facts o?i Communism presents all events in
Russia between 1900 and February 14, 1918 according to our own
Western calendar. Many old-style Russian calendar dates denoting
events in the crucial period leading up to the Bolshevik revolution of
1917, however, have become familiar to Western readers; for example,
the Bolsheviks' "October" revolution of 1917 occurred in October (on
the 25th), only according to the Russian calendar; the corresponding
date on our own Western calendar was November 7, 1917. For that
reason, this volume will frequently give the reader the corresponding
old-style Russian calendar date in brackets when referring to pre-
revolutionary and revolutionary events in Russia.

(5)

This volume is basically the work of Dr. David J. Dallin, whose broad
knowledge of Soviet history particularly qualified him for the task of
compiling and arranging the extensive quotations and for preparing
the explanatory text.

Born hi Russia and an eye witness to the Bolshevik revolution, Dr.
Dallin was educated at the Universities of St. Petersburg, Berlin, and
Heidelberg. He obtained a doctorate in philosophy at the University
of Heidelberg. A resident of Germany and France in the 1920's and
1930's, he emigrated to the United States in 1940 and became a United
States citizen.

In this country, Dr. Dallin has engaged extensively in lecturing and
writing on the subject of Russian history and Soviet international
relations. He is presently teaching a course in political science at the
University of Pennsylvania.

Among his numerous books are: The Changing World of Soviet
Russia; Soviet Espionage; Soviet Russia's Foreign Policy 1939-1942 ;
Russia and Postwar Europe; The Big Three — The United States, Britain
and Russia; The Real Soviet Russia; Soviet Russia and The Far East;
The Rise of Russia in Asia; and The New Soviet Empire. His treatise,
Soviet Foreign Policy After Stalin, will be published in January, 1961.

THE SOVIET UNION, FROM LENIN
TO KHRUSHCHEV

Chapter I. The Bolshevik Party
1. The Predecessors of Bolshevism

There has never been in Russia, or perhaps anywhere else, a political
party whose birth, growth, and maturity were so closely tied to the per-
sonal history of a single leader as in the case of the Bolshevik Party and
its creator, Vladimir Lenin. For about two decades, from its inception
to the start of the First World War, Lenin was not only the supreme,
but the only enduring and authoritative, leader. Others came and
went; some associated themselves with him for a time only to turn against
him afterward, or they were very young men of small stature who made
no impact on the philosophy, literature, or strategy of their movement.
From the very start Lenin wielded almost unlimited power in his party.
This was a phenomenon so unique and unprecedented that many ob-
servers have come to the conclusion that without Lenin there would
have been no Communist regime in Russia.

We must know Lenin if we are to understand the Soviet Communist
system. Lenin himself was an heir of Russia's long revolutionary tradi-
tion and, like all the others who played a prominent role in the Bolshevik
revolution of 1917, he took over ideas and philosophies from a long line
of predecessors of earlier generations.

Revolutionary movements in Russia aimed at the overthrow of the
autocratic political system had been in existence for 90 years before they
achieved their goal in 1917. Up to about the end of the 19th century
the movements had been restricted to the circles of the "intelligentsia,"
among whom university students played a substantial role; rarely were
other groups of the population attracted in large numbers. The revolu-
tionary movement was clandestine and operated in the underground ; it
spread antigovernment propaganda by means of books, pamphlets,
leaflets, and verbally. Some groups of the underground called for popu-
lar uprisings and the assassination of the Tsar and members of his gov-
ernment. The government retaliated by imprisoning, deporting, and
sometimes executing the revolutionists.

The movement did not advance on a steady course; it had ups and
downs, failures and disappointments. From low points it would flare
up again, each time with new leaders, a new philosophy and a new pro-
gram and strategy. The most important revolutionary trend during the

(7)

second half of the 19th century was represented by the Populist groups
(Narodniki), which tried to arouse the peasantry against the political
system and thus achieve a socialist transformation of Russia before other
countries even entered on the path of socialism. A part of the Populists,
disappointed in the lack of popular support of the movement, turned to
the strategy of "individual terror," that is, attempts on the lives of the
Tsar and his aides. The most notorious terroristic act of these Populists,
who called themselves Narodnaya Volya (The People's Will), was
the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on March 1, 1881. An attempt
on the life of Tsar Alexander III, son of Alexander II, was prepared in
1887, but the group was arrested before it could carry out the plot. One
of the group, Lenin's elder brother Alexander, was hanged on May 8,
1887.

Mention must be made of two predecessors of later bolshevism, groups
of revolutionaries of the period around 1870, whose emergence and in-
fluence are proof that the tendency toward a terroristic Communist
dictatorship was a product of Russia's political history. These two
groups, the Nechaev and Tkachev groups, were not Marxist and they
did not seek the support of the working class. They believed in well-
knit organizations of revolutionists, strict discipline, and activities of a
conspiratorial type. Their goal was the overthrow of the monarchy and
the establishment of a minority rule.

Sergei Nechaev, who was active around 1870, was the head of the
small People's Retribution group, or Society of the Axe, whose slogan
was "Everything for the revolution. The end justifies the means."

Sergei Nechaev, a teacher in a parish school in Petersburg, emerged un-
expectedly during the February and March student disorders in 1869. . . .
*******

. . . He was a man of great energy an: 3 could subjugate to his will not only
people of his own age but older people as well. . . .

*******

Each of the students he recruited was expected in turn to organize a
circle . . . which was not let into the ultimate aims of the conspiracy; at the
top there was supposedly a mysterious (actually fictitious) committee, of
which Nechaev claimed to be the agent. To heighten the mysteriousness he
told people, in confidence, that all Russia was covered with a network of
secret societies. . . .

*******

. . . the rules of the organization were very strict and detailed ; the mem-
bers were designated by numbers in order to hinder the uncovering of the
conspiracy.1

_ * A. Thun, Istoriya Revolyutsionnykh Dvizhenii v Rossii (The History of Revolu-
tionary Movements in Russia) (St. Petersburg: Biblioteka dlya Vsekh (Library for
Everybody), n.d.), pp. 106-108. Taken from the report of court proceedings of the
trial of the Nechaev group of July 1871.

The Revolutionist [according to Nechaev's program] is a doomed man.
He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even
a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one
thought, one passion — the revolution. . . . Heart and soul, not merely by
word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with
the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and
morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit
it with only one purpose — to destroy it. . . . He despises public opinion.
He hates and despises the social morality of his time, its motives and mani-
festations. Everything which promotes the success of the revolution is
moral, everything which hinders it is immoral. . . . The nature of the true
revolutionist excludes all romanticism, all tenderness, all ecstasy, all love.2

When a student member of the group, one Ivanov, turned unruly,
Nechaev persuaded four other members to carry out an alleged order of
the "committee" to get rid of the dangerous enemy. On November 21,
1869, Ivanov was killed in the cellar of the Petrov Academy. The
society was soon apprehended, and 67 men were brought to trial.
Nechaev himself escaped to Switzerland, where he lived illegally for
several years until he was extradited to Russia as a common criminal.
In Russia he was tried in 1872 and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment.

The leader of the second revolutionary group was Peter Tkachev, a
Russian emigre and outstanding political writer of the 1870's. Tkachev
took up residence in Switzerland after spending over a year in prison.

Neither in the present nor in the future [he wrote] can the people, left
to their own resources, bring into existence the social revolution. Only we
revolutionists can accomplish this. . . . Social ideals are alien to the
people; they belong to the social philosophy of the revolutionary minority.3

We should not deceive ourselves [said Tkachev] that the people, by
its own might, can make a social revolution and organize its life on a better
foundation. The people, of course, is necessary for a social revolution.
But only when the revolutionary minority assumes the leadership in this
revolution.

. . . Then, utilizing its authority, the minority introduces new progres-
sive and Communist ideas into life. In its work of reformation, the revo-
lutionary minority need not rely upon the active support of the people. The
revolutionary role of the people ends the instant they have destroyed the
institutions which oppressed them, the instant they have overthrown the
tyrants and exploiters who ruled over them. . . .4

The first Russian Marxist group emerged among Russian emigres in
1883. This was the "Liberation of Labor," whose outstanding leaders
were Georgi Plekhanov and Paul Axelrod. For a long time, however,

* S. Nechaev and M. Bakunin, Catechism of a Revolutionist, as quoted in David
Shub, Lenin (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1948), p. 11.

* Peter Tkachev, as quoted in Bertram D. Wolfe, Three Who Made a Revolution
(New York; The Dial Press, 1948), p. 156.

* Tkachev, as quoted in Shub, op. cit., pp. 54 and 14.

the group exerted little influence upon Russian intellectuals, and it was
not until the early 1890's that it began to achieve its first successes in
the revolutionary underground. Putting their hopes and expectations
in the industrial workers, the Marxists had to oppose the old Populist
philosophy. "The revolutionary movement [Plekhanov wrote] can
triumph only as a revolutionary movement of the working class. There
is not, nor can there be, any other way."

The Marxists were able to win numerous followers in Russia and, by
the end of the 1890's, to constitute themselves a political party. A
small conference held in Minsk in March 1898 (later called the First
Party Congress) announced the formation of the Russian Social-Demo-
cratic Labor Party (RSDLP).5 One of the pioneers of Marxism inside
Russia was a young man by the name of Vladimir Ulyanov, known to
history as Lenin.

2. Vladimir Lenin and the Origins of Bolshevism

Vladimir Ulyanov was born on April 22, 1870, into the family of a
school inspector in Simbirsk, on the Volga. The five children — three
boys and two girls — received a good education. Vladimir, an able and
industrious student, had been imbued with revolutionary ic'cas from
early youth, as had his two brothers and two sisters. The execution of
his brother Alexander in 1887 was a strong factor in the development
of his extreme revolutionary inclinations. At the age of 17, within a
few months after he had entered Kazan University, he was arrested and
expelled because of his political activity. For the next few years he
lived at home. In 1891 he was permitted to take the examinations in
law at the St. Petersburg University ; he passed the examinations and was
thereafter admitted to the bar. Two years later he joined a pio-
neer Marxist ("Social-Democratic") circle in the capital. In April
1895 he went abroad for several months. In Switzerland and France
he met a number of political emigres, among them the two founders of
Russian Marxism, Plekhanov and Axelrod. When he returned to Russia
in the fall of the same year, the 2 5 -year-old Lenin was a mature political
leader of considerable stature.

The years that followed witnessed a large wave of strikes of Russian
industrial workers; the strikes were unprecedented. Small socialist
groups emerged — students' and workers' organizations for propaganda
and Marxist education. Lenin was active in these circles until he was
again arrested. He spent 14 months in prison and on his release was de-
ported to Siberia and did not return to Europe until 1900, when a new

° The Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party is also referred to in this work as the
RSDRP, the initials of the Russian name of the party, Rossiiskaya Sotsial-Demo-
kraticheskaya Rabochaya Partiya.

wave of the oppositionist and revolutionist movement was in prog-
ress. After a short period in Russia, Lenin left for Germany and Switzer-
land, where, with a few friends (Plekhanov, Axelrod, Martov, Potresov,
Zasulich), he started the newspaper Iskra (The Spark) in December
1900. The paper was intended for illegal distribution in Russia and to
serve to link the emerging underground groups there with the leading
group abroad.

Lenin and the other Russian Marxist leaders took over from Marx the
philosophy of the great "social revolution" which would put an end to
the era of capitalism and inaugurate the epoch of socialism-communism.
The main force in this revolution would be the industrial working class,
and the leaders would be the Marxist party. The victory of the social
revolution would establish a temporary "dictatorship of the prole-
tariat"— another slogan taken over from Marx. Suppression of ad-
versaries by every means, although never emphasized, was part of the new
philosophy.

In its application to Russia, this theory was modified by its Russian ad-
herents. Backward Russia, unlike the advanced nations, was suffering
"not so much from capitalism as from its insufficient development" ; Rus-
sia must first experience a capitalist phase, develop new industries, in-
crease the size of its "proletariat" and go through the motions of a
"bourgeois democracy" before the social revolution could come about.
Russia was "to boil in the capitalist kettle." Lenin vehemently disputed
the thesis of the Populists that the Russian peasantry could serve as the
basis of a socialist transformation. His main work (actually his only
serious economic work) entitled Development of Capitalism in Russia,
written in 1896-99 attacked the Russian "utopian" socialists; it de-
picted a long course of economic growth under capitalist conditions, the
formation of new classes, differentiation of the peasantry into various
strata, etc.

In July 1903 a new convention (officially termed the Second Con-
gress) of the RSDLP was held. It opened in Brussels, but was trans-
ferred to London when the Belgian police requested the delegates to
leave. The conference, which lasted about a month, is generally viewed
as marking the birth of bolshevism. Of the two factions which opposed
one another at the Congress, the extreme leftist (Leninist) group, had
a relative numerical though unstable advantage and was therefore called
Bohheviki (a word coined by Lenin from Bolshinstvo, meaning the
majority). The other faction were the Mensheviks (minority). More
or less in accord in their political philosophy and long-range aims, the
two groups were violently opposed in regard to ways and means of
action, that is, "tactics" and organizational issues.

In the political strategy of the emerging Bolshevik movement the cen-
tral role was to be that of the "professional revolutionist" — the revolu-

tionist who devotes himself entirely to his political and party work. The
party itself must be a strictly disciplined small union of adherents acting
on orders from the supreme body, the party's Central Committee.

. . . the organisation must consist chiefly of persons engaged in revolu-
tionary activity as a profession ... in a country with an autocratic govern-
ment, the more we restrict the membership of this organisation to persons
who are engaged in revolutionary activities as a profession and who have
been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the
more difficult will it be to catch the organisation. . . .

*******

. . . The most grievous sin we have committed in regard to organisation
is that by our primitiueness we have lowered the prestige of revolutionaries
in Russia. A man who is weak and vacillating on theoretical questions,
who has a narrow outlook, who makes excuses for his own slackness on the
ground that the masses are awakening spontaneously, who resembles a trade
union secretary more than a people's tribune, who is unable to conceive of a
broad and bold plan, who is incapable of inspiring even his opponents with
respect for himself, and who is inexperienced and clumsy in his own profes-
sional art — the art of combating the political police — such a man is not a
revolutionary but a wretched amateur! *

And then Lenin proceeded to formulate a slogan whid best expressed
his belief in the power of an underground conspiracy to overturn the
political system of a great country :

. . . "Give us an organisation of revolutionaries, and we shall overturn
the whole of Russia!" 7

We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult
path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all
sides by enemies, and are under their almost constant fire. We have com-
bined voluntarily, precisely for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and
not to retreat into the adjacent marsh, the inhabitants of which, from
the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into
an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of
the path of conciliation.8

Lenin's concepts of the role of the party in a sense forecast the party's
assumption of dictatorial power after the revolution had been accom-
plished.

In its development up to the revolution of 1917, bolshevism followed
Leninist theories and endowed the party leaders with dictatorial power.
In 1904, long before the revolution, young Leon Trotsky, then a violent
opponent of Lenin, had complained in a pamphlet, Our Political Aims,
that in Lenin's scheme:

8V. I. Lenin, "What Is To Be Done?" (1901-02), Selected Works (New York:
International Publishers, 1943), vol. II, pp. 139, 141.
'Ibid., p. 141.
' Ibid., p. 33.

. . . the party organization takes the place of the party, the Central Com-
mittee replaces the party organization and finally the "dictator" replaces
the Central Committee.9

After the successful Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the party's Central
Committee did indeed become the new government, while Lenin, the
supreme leader of the party, took on the stature of a dictator.

To understand the Communist conception of the role of the party, we
must draw —

... an analogy between the Bolshevik party and the officer corps of an
army. The rank-and-file soldiers, comprising at times millions of men, are
merely the material in the hands of the commanders. A few thousand
officers, trained from youth and making it their career, constitute the
nucleus of a modern army, which, when necessary, is transformed, through
mobilization, into a vast force of many millions. When this army is again
contracted to a minimum, a great part of the officer cadres may be main-
tained. The rebirth of the German army after Versailles became possible
only because the army was given the right to maintain four thousand officers.

Such has always been the Bolshevik concept of a party: an officer corps
which organizes its army; not a party according to the Western idea, which
chooses its commanders. Soldiers do not choose their own generals.

The Bolshevik idea of a party is akin to the steel framework in modern
architecture. The framework is erected first; then it is covered with
bricks. Sometimes, even, the brickwork may be removed and a new build-
ing erected upon the old steel framework. To be sure, it is impossible
to attain the objective without support from the masses, just as it is im-
possible to live in a structure consisting only of steel girders and rafters.
But everything rests upon a framework. The party is the framework and
the people are the necessary, but secondary, element.10

In this Bolshevist view of the relationship of party and people there
was implied the development of bolshevism into a secluded order of
"professional revolutionaries" guided by a single aim and recognizing
no legal or ethical barriers to achieving the good of the party:

Fifty years ago . . . the Bolshevik party ( at that time termed the Bolshe-
vik faction) consisted of a few thousand men and women, devoted K> their
cause. The great majority were not workers — in all probability there were
more members from the ranks of nonworker families than manual la-
borers. As the revolution developed, however, tens of thousands flowed
into the various revolutionary parties, including that of the Bolsheviks.
When the revolution had attained its high point — October-December,
1905 — these parties, among them the Bolsheviks, had enrolled masses of
people, with scores of organizations and countless sympathizers. Then,

*N. Trotsky [Leon Trotsky], Nashi Politicheskie Zadachi, Takticheskie i Organ-
izatsionnye Voprosy (Our Political Aims, Tactical and Organizational Questions)
(Geneva: published by the RSDLP, 1904), p. 54.

"David J. Dallin, The Changing World of Soviet Russia (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1956), pp. 226, 227.

68491 O-61-vol. 11—2

with the end of 1906, came the reaction; the revolution was soon crushed,
and the years from 1907 to 1917 marked the last stable period of the tsarist
monarchy. The masses deserted the revolutionary parties, and the Bolshe-
vik party was reduced, too. In March, 1917, the tide of popular support
began to rise again, once more filling the readymade party mold with human
material, and by October, 1917, the Bolshevik party was the strongest of
all the Russian parties.

As Bolshevism conceives it, a party is not a popular mass, and a popular
mass is not a party. A party is solid, constant, a backbone; the people are
unstable, changing, flesh and muscle. A party has a clear theory, a revolu-
tionary conception; the people are subject to moods and hesitations. The
party leads, the people follow. A party is a minority directing the majority.
A party must not be too big; when it numbers millions it loses its stability
and spiritual quality. It is possible to find a few thousand, perhaps a few
score thousand firm, unbending enthusiasts, but millions cannot sustain
this enthusiasm. From this flow all the difficulties of the present period,
when the Bolshevik party has become an organization of millions.11

Later, Stalin accepted and emphasized this view of the party :

. . . The Party is not merely an organized detachment, but "t he highest
of all forms of organization" of the working class, and it is its mission to
guide all the other organizations of the working class. As the highest form
of organization, consisting of the finest members of the class, armed with
an advanced theory, with knowledge of the laws of the class struggle and
with the experience of the revolutionary movement, the Party has every
opportunity of guiding — and is obliged to guide — all the other organizations
of the working class.12

Like his predecessors in the 1870's, Lenin denied the ability of the
working class to produce, out of its own midst, a theory and practice of
socialism. Rather socialism was to be elaborated by intellectuals from
among the "bourgeois intelligentsia," while "the masses" were expected
to adopt, follow and obey.

. . . The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively
by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., it
may itself realise the necessity for combining in unions, for fighting against
the employers and for striving to compel the government to pass necessary
labour legislation, etc. The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the
philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the
educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. ... the
founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves be-
longed to the bourgeois intelligentsia. Similarly, in Russia, the theoretical
doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous
growth of the labour movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable out-
come of the development of ideas among the revolutionary socialist
intelligentsia.18

uJbid.,PP. 227,228.

a History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union {Bolsheviks), Short Course
(New York: International Publishers, 1939), p. 48.
" Lenin, "What Is To Be Done?" (1901-02), Selected Works, vol. II, p. 53.

15
3. The End and the Means

By this time (1903-05) Lenin's personality and methods of work
had been definitely established. One of his early collaborators, and
later antagonist, Alexander Potresov, says about his former friend:

The aim justifies the means! In his personal life Lenin was a modest,
unpretentious, virtuous family man, who daily quarreled good-naturedly —
and not without humor — with his mother-in-law — she was the only person
of his immediate circle who dared to rebuke him and assert her personality.
In politics he was the strict follower of Machiavellian principles.

. . . Within the social democratic party as well as outside it . . . Lenin
knew only two categories of people and events : his own and the strangers.
His own people were those who were within the sphere of influence of his
organization ; the strangers were those who did not enter into this sphere and
who thus — and because of this fact alone — were considered enemies. The
intervening gamut of social and individual human relationships between
these opposite poles — between the comrade-friend and the heretical
enemy — did not exist. . . .

*******

It was in these "Iskra" years that Lenin laid the theoretical foundation for
the conception of the revolutionary movement and of the revolution, accord-
ing to which the masses are only the obedient tool of a group of revolution-
ists, the conscious minority, the bearers of the truth. . . .14

Lenin possessed the traits and qualities of a dictator, says his former
friend :

It must be said that no one was better fitted than Lenin to carry out the
function of a sovereign head of a dictatorial group.

Because no one could better instill enthusiasm for his plans, so impress by
his will, so captivate by his personality,' than this man who at first glance
seemed to be insignificant, somewhat coarse and without charm. . . .

Actually Lenin represented, especially in Russia, a rare combination of
iron will, unbounded energy, and fanatical belief in the movement, the
cause, and to a not lesser degree in himself. If the French King Louis XIV
could say: "L'etat — c'est moi!" Lenin . . . felt that the party was he,
that he was the will of the movement concentrated in one person. And he
acted accordingly. . . .

***** * *

He knew how to surround himself with efficient, capable, vigorous peo-
ple like himself who had an infinite belief in him and who obeyed him un-
questioningly, but people who had no independent personalities, who were
incapable of differing from Lenin's opinions or of holding views of their
own.13

UA. N. Potresov, Posmertnyi Sbornik Proizvedenii (Posthumous Collection of
Works) (Paris: no pub., 1937), pp. 300-303.
"Ibid., pp. 301, 302.

This intransigency toward his political adversaries was confirmed
somewhat later by Lenin himself. When he was cited before a party
tribunal on accusations of slander after he had used untruths in assail-
ing his adversaries, the Mensheviks, he expounded his principles on how
to fight a political adversary: the adversary must be represented to the
public in the worst possible colors in order to arouse disgust and hatred.
This principle set forth by Lenin is important because it became, and has
remained, a standard method of the Soviet press and propaganda.

. . . The wording [of our press campaign against our political foe] is
calculated to provoke in the reader hatred, disgust, contempt. . . . The
phrasing must be calculated not to convince but to destroy the ranks [of the
enemy]- — not to correct the adversary's mistake, but to annihilate, to raze to
the ground, his organization. This wording must really be of such a kind as
to provoke the worst notions, the worst suspicions about the adversary; it
must sow discord in the ranks of the proletariat and be the opposite of
phrasing which would convince and correct. . . .

*******

I am intentionally sowing discord in the ranks of that part of the Peters-
burg proletariat which followed the Mensheviks. ... In regard to such
political enemies I conducted at that time — and in case of a repetition
or development of the split, / will always carry out — a fight of extermina-
tion. . . .

*******

They say: fight but not with a poisoned weapon. No doubt this is a beau-
tiful and effective expression, but. . . .1G

From 1903 on, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks lived separate lives,
without, however, formally breaking their alliance. From time to time
for about nine years they made efforts at collaboration, only to separate
again after a violent fight. Lenin was never prepared to submit to a
majority if it was not his majority; "coexistence" was possible on his
terms only. Great political events developed in the years from 1 903 to
1906, and on almost every issue bolshevism had its own policy, one
strictly opposed to that of all other parties.

The war with Japan, which was started by the Russian government in
1904, proved, from the very beginning, an unpopular war. Losing bat-
tles as well as prestige both at home and abroad, the regime faced opposi-
tionary trends and a growing revolutionary movement. "Peace at any
price" became a slogan of both liberal groups and socialist parties.

^ " Lenin, "Doklad V S"ezdu RSDRP po Povodu Peterburgskogo Raskola i
Svyazannogo s nim Uchrezhdeniya Partiinogo Suda" (Report to the Fifth Congress of
the RSDLP in Regard to the Petersburg Split and the Setting up in Connection with
it of a Party Court), Sochineniya (Works) (4th ed. ; Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for Political Literature),
1941-58), vol. XII (1947), pp. 382, 383, 385. The Fifth Congress took place
May 13-June 1, 1907.

Lenin, however, refused to adopt such a slogan. To him, the war, which
was destroying the people's confidence in the regime, was beneficial :

. . . The cause of Russian freedom and the struggle of the Russian (and
international) proletariat for socialism depend to a great extent on military
defeats of the autocracy. This cause has gained a lot from the military rout
which inspires fear in the European custodians of order. . . .

It was not the Russian people, but the Russian autocracy that started this
colonial war which has developed into a war of the old and the new capitalist
worlds. Not the Russian people but the autocracy has suffered an ignomin-
ious defeat. The Russian people has gained from the defeat of the au-
tocracy. The capitulation of Port Arthur is the prologue to the capitula-
tion of tsarism. The war is still far from ended, but each step in its con-
tinuation immensely enlarges the discontent and indignation of the Russian
people, brings nearer the moment of a new great war, of a war of the people
against autocracy, a war of the proletariat for freedom.17

Defeatism was an outstanding and constant element of Lenin's strat-
egy; it was not restricted to issues of war and peace. To him, what was
bad for the government was good for the revolution, even if it meant
privation and death for the people. On another occasion Lenin had
applied his defeatism to a situation caused by a great famine which broke
out in the Volga region in 1892; the citizens were anxious to help the
destitute. However,

Only Vladimir Ulyanov with his family and group that completely agreed
with him in everything took another stand. . . . "the famine," he asserted,
"is the direct consequence of a particular social order; so long as this order
exists, such famines are inevitable; they can be abolished only by the aboli-
tion of this order of society.

"Being in this sense inevitable, famine today performs a progressive
function. Destroying the peasant economy it forces peasants from the vil-
lage into the city, thus forming the proletariat and speeding the industrial-
ization of the nation. . . . Famine will cause the peasant to reflect on the
fundamental facts of capitalist society, it will destroy his faith in the Tsar
and Tsarism and consequently will in time facilitate the victory of the rev-
olution. It is easy to understand the desire of the so-called 'society' to come
to the assistance of the starving, to ameliorate their sufferings. This 'so-
ciety' is itself flesh and blood of the bourgeois order. . . . The famine
threatens to create serious disturbances and possibly the destruction of the
entire order. Therefore the efforts of the well-to-do to mitigate the effect
of the famine are quite natural. . . . Psychologically this talk of feeding
the starving etc. is nothing but an expression of the usual sugary senti-
mentality so characteristic of our intelligentsia." 18

"Lenin, "Padenie Port Artura" (The Fall of Port Arthur) (January 14 [1], 1905),
Sochineniya,vo\. VIII (1947), pp. 37, 38.

18 V. Vodovozov, "Moe Znakomstvo s Leninym" (My Acquaintance with Lenin),
Na Chuzhoi Storone (In a Foreign Land), Prague, December, 1925, pp. 176-178.

18
4. The Great Rehearsal

In Russia, the revolutionary movement of 1905 is often called the
"first revolution." Although the movement was soon thereafter de-
feated, it had nevertheless been a movement of unprecedented force:
between October and December 1905 the government had been forced
to make substantial concessions and introduce political reforms.

The year began with a procession, on January 2 2 [9], of thousands
(estimates went up to 140,000) of striking St. Petersburg workers to the
Tsar's Winter Palace under the leadership of the priest, Georgi Gapon;
the intention was to submit to the Tsar a petition expressing loyalty but
demanding improvements and reforms. A military squad opened fire
on the peaceful marchers, killing and wounding thousands.

A wave of economic and political strikes followed which soon en-
gulfed the whole country. In some provinces the peasants joined in the
general movement. In June the sailors on the battleship Potemkin
mutinied (the war with Japan was still on) . On October 30 [1 7], in the
midst of a general strike, the Tsar's government issued a Manifesto
promising essential political reforms: civil liberties; protection of the
inviolability of the individual ; freedom of conscience, speech, assembly,
and association. A far-reaching amnesty for political prisoners was
announced and, as a matter of fact, all political prisoners were set free.
The formation of a Duma, a kind of elected legislature, was promised.

The first "Soviets of Workers' Deputies" in Russia emerged sponta-
neously during those months. On the initiative of the socialist parties,
mainly the Mensheviks, industrial workers in the city's factories pro-
ceeded to elect representatives to non-partisan bodies called Soviets. (At
a later stage, in 1917, there also emerged "Soldiers' " and "Peasants' "
Soviets. ) The Soviet (council) was to serve as a leader in economic and
political strikes. At that time there existed in Russia neither trade unions
nor political associations able to cope with these tasks ; the Soviet was to
be the first mass organization in a country where associations and parties
were prohibited. The chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet was a non-
party lawyer, Khrustalev-Nosar; the vice chairmen were Leon (Lev)
Trotsky, a non-Bolshevik Social-Democrat, and Nikolai Avksentiev, a
member of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks at first looked
with suspicion upon this new "nonparty" formation.

Meantime Lenin's party had made great strides; local committees of
the party had emerged in all important cities, and thousands of new
members joined its organizations; hundreds of thousands of party leaflets
were distributed. In May 1905 the "Third Congress" (at which only
Bolshevik delegates were present) was convened in London. The theme
of the congress was "the tactics of the Social-Democracy in a democratic
revolution." Despite the fact, Lenin told the congress, that the current

movement must not be viewed as a socialist revolution, the working class
must try to lead it and should act in alliance with the peasants' revolu-
tionary parties. As for the emerging non-socialist liberal groups ("the
liberal bourgeoisie" ) , they must be fought to the end. The fight against
the "liberal bourgeoisie" became the main political thesis of bolshevism
in 1905 (the strategy was repeated in 1917). The decisions of the con-
gress, discussed by Lenin in "Two Tactics," called for: political strikes
on a mass basis; an eight-hour working day .to be introduced by the
workers with or without agreement on the part of the employers; crea-
tion of peasants' committees; arming of the workers; a general armed
uprising as the next stage; overthrow of the government and establish-
ment of a revolutionary regime which would serve as the "dictatorship
of workers and peasants." 19

Lenin returned to Russia in November 1905, at the height of the
fight in St. Petersburg. It was obvious — and was felt on the right
as well as on the left — that, essentially, two forces were fighting each
other — the government and the Soviet; if the old government should
be defeated, power would be inherited by the Soviet. Now bolshe-
vism changed its attitude toward the non-Bolshevik Soviet and en-
thusiastically accepted it as. the nucleus of the future regime.
Lenin's slogan, "All Power to the Soviets," which was to triumph 12
years later, was born at this moment in November 1905.

. . . the Soviet of Workers' Deputies should be considered the embryo of
a provisional revolutionary government. I think that the Soviet has to
proclaim itself, the sooner the better, the provisional revolutionary govern-
ment of the whole of Russia or it must create a provisional revolutionary
government. . . .

*******

. . . The Soviet ought to proclaim itself a provisional revolutionary gov-
ernment or organize such a government; to this end new deputies must be
added not only from among the workers but also, first, from among the
sailors and soldiers who are everywhere striving for freedom, second, from
among the revolutionary peasantry, third, from among the revolutionary
bourgeois intellectuals. The Soviet must elect a strong core to act as a
provisional revolutionary government and supplement it with representa-
tives of all revolutionary parties and all revolutionary (but, of course, only
revolutionary, not liberal) democrats.20

The 7 weeks from November 8 to December 29 [October 26 to
December 16], 1905, that the St. Petersburg Soviet was in existence
marked the highest point of the revolutionary movement of that era.

"Lenin, "The Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution"
(June-July 1905), Selected Works, vol. Ill, pp. 39-133.

30 Lenin, "Nashi Zadachi v Sovete Rabocbikh Deputatov" (Our Tasks in the Soviet
of Workers' Deputies) (November 2-4 [15-17], 1905), Sochineniya, vol. X (1947),
pp. 5, 7.

The Soviet published an official organ, Izvestia (News) and a multitude
of leaflets, including appeals to the army; it introduced an eight-hour
working day in St. Petersburg industries, started to organize armed
workers' brigades, and guided a number of workers' strikes. When its
chairman, Khrustalev, was arrested on December 10, Trotsky the actual
head of the Soviet, took over officially. But on December 29 [16] Trotsky
himself was arrested, along with the entire Soviet.

Strikes, uprisings, and mutinies continued; the elements of political
freedom still prevailed, and rightists as well as leftists expected a new
onslaught against the regime. Peasant uprisings occurred all over the
country; in the army, which on the whole did not turn disloyal, dis-
obedience grew and mutinies occurred. Soviets patterned on the St.
Petersburg Soviet emerged in provincial cities.

The most significant of these revolutionary developments was the
December uprising in Moscow which had been prepared and initiated
by the Bolshevik organization (although the other leftist parties partici-
pated). The workers' strikes in Moscow turned into a real civil war,
with barricades and grenades; loyal army units fought with rifle and
artillery fire. By mid-January 1906 the wave of strikes receded, and
a few days later the uprising was suppressed.

The Bolshevik conference convened in January 1906 and was attended
by 41 delegates representing 26 organizations with a total membership of
about 4,000; even considering the fact that not every Bolshevik unit could
be represented, "The figure seems insignificant for a revolutionary party
contemplating the overthrow of tsarism and the assumption of its place
in the impending revolutionary government." 21

The tiny size of the minority group was from the very beginning an
important characteristic of a movement destined to assume power twelve
years later.

The particular tactic of bolshevism during that period was the em-
phasis on armed fighting. An armed uprising as the necessary means
to overthrowing the regime was the goal. The plan of preparation for
the uprising was conceived in the most primitive technical sense : procur-
ing of arms, manufacture of bombs, training of small groups in the use
of guns and rifles, instruction in building of barricades. The underlying
assumption was that "the people" were burning with revolutionary zeal;
all they needed was tactical and organizational leadership.

In the preparation for the uprising [Lenin said in a letter] I would suggest
to propagate immediately, as widely as possible, the formation of a multi-
tude, of hundreds and thousands of autonomous fighting units, very small
ones (of three persons) which would arm themselves with everything they
can get hold of and prepare in every possible way.22

nLcon Trotsky, Stalin (New York: Harper & Bros., 1941), p. 69.
"Lenin, "M. M. Essen" (Letter to M.M. Essen of October 2, 1905), Sochineniya,
vol. XXXIV (1950), p. 312.

In a letter of October 16 [3], 1905, to the Military Organization of the
St. Petersburg Committee of the Social-Democratic Party, Lenin wrote:

... If the Fighting Organization does not have at least two hundred to
three hundred squads in Petersburg in one or two months, then it is a dead
Fighting Organization. Then it must be buried. . . .

. . . Let the squads begin without delay to train for immediate operations.
Some can undertake to assassinate a spy, blow up a police station, others can
attack a bank to expropriate funds for an insurrection, a third — maneuvers
or drawing up plans, etc. But it is imperative to start immediately to train:
don't be afraid of these experimental attacks. They can, of course, degen-
erate into extremes, but this will be the trouble of the future.23

At a meeting of workers in Tiflis on the day the Tsar's Manifesto was
announced, Stalin said :

What do we need in order to really win? We need three things: first —
arms, second — arms, third — arms and arms again! 24

These "military organisations," if one may so call them [Lenin wrote],
must strive to rally the masses not through the medium of elected persons,
but to rally the masses who directly participate in street fighting and the
civil war. The nuclei of such organisations should be very small, voluntary
units of tens, fives, perhaps even of threes. We must most emphatically
proclaim that a battle is approaching in which it will be the duty of every
honest citizen to be ready to sacrifice himself and fight against the op-
pressors of the people. Less formality, less red tape, more simplicity in
organisation, which must be as mobile and as flexible as possible.

... A detachment that can shoot will be able to disarm a policeman,
suddenly attack a patrol and thus procure arms. A detachment which
cannot shoot, or which has no arms, will assist in building barricades, in
reconnoitering, organising liaisons, setting ambushes for the enemy, burning
down the houses where the enemy has taken up his position, occupying
apartments to serve as bases for the insurgents — in a word, thousands of the
most diverse functions can be performed by free associations of people who
are determined to fight to the last gasp, who know the locality well, who
are most closely in contact with the population.25

From his previous writings Lenin was known as an opponent of
"individual terror," that is, assassination of government leaders or
members of the police. He now explained his turning toward terrorism :
this is "mass action," he said, not deeds of individuals:

. . . We think that to compare them [the guerrilla actions of the "fighting
squads"] with the terror of the old type is wrong. Terror was vengeance

33 Lenin, "V Boevoi Komitet pri Sankt-Peterburgskom Komitete" (To the Fighting
Committee of the St. Petersburg Committee (October 16, 1905), Sochineniya, vol.
IX (1947), pp. 316, 317.

14 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union {Bolsheviks) , Short Course,
p. 81.

88 Lenin, "The Dissolution of the Duma and the Tasks of the Proletariat" (July
1906), Selected Works, vol. Ill, pp. 380, 381.

toward individuals. Terrorism was a conspiracy of intellectual groups.
Terrorism was in no way connected with the frame of mind of the masses.
Terrorism did not prepare militant leaders of the masses. Terrorism was
a result — as well as a symptom and accompaniment — of a disbelief in an
uprising, lack of conditions for an uprising. . . .

♦ ******

. . . We must encourage and not hold back the guerrilla activities of the
fighting squads if we really want to prepare an uprising and not give only lip
service to it, if we seriously consider the proletariat ready for an uprising.23
Military technique has made new progress recently. The Japanese war
produced the hand grenade. The small arms factories have placed auto-
matic rifles on the market. . . . We can and must take advantage of im-
provements in technique, teach the workers' units to make bombs in large
quantities, help them and our fighting units to obtain supplies of explosives,
fuses and automatic rifles.27

Beginning in the last months of 1905, "fighting squads" emerged in
considerable numbers and, while mass movements subsided, a kind of
guerrilla war continued.

5. Receding of the Tide (1906-12)

Elections to the first State Duma were to take place in February and
March 1906. The leftist parties had to decide whether or not to par-
ticipate in an election which, because of the nondemocratic features
of the constitution, could not result in the emergence of a Western-
type parliament. The Bolsheviks, still certain of the imminence of a
popular uprising, decided to "boycott" the elections. On Lenin's
initiative a conference of the St. Petersburg organization of the RSDLP
( March 1 906 ) adopted a resolution which said :

( 1 ) Renounce absolutely any participation in the State Duma.

(2) Renounce absolutely any [participation in] elections to the State
Duma at any stage.

(3) Organize a propaganda drive to explain the real character of the
Duma, to counteract any attempt at deceiving public opinion in Russia
and Europe, and to demonstrate the inevitable disappointment of those
peasants who expect positive results from the Duma.28

** Lenin, "Sovremennoe Polozhenie Rossii i Taktika Rabochei Partii" (The Present
Situation of Russia and the Tactics of the Workers' Party) (published February 7
[201, 1906), Sochineniya, vol. X (1947), pp. 99, 100.

"Lenin, "The Lessons of the Moscow Uprising" (September 1906), Selected
Works, vol. Ill, pp. 352, 353.

"Lenin, "Rezolyutsiya Peterburgskoi Organizatsii RSDRP o Taktike Boikota"
(Resolution of the Petersburg Organization of the RSDLP on Tactics of Boycott)
(late February or early March 1906), Sochineniya, vol. X (1947), p. 114.

"Should We Boycott the State Duma?" was the title of a leaflet writ-
ten by Lenin in January 1906 and distributed by the St. Petersburg
Bolsheviks. It concluded :

Down with the Duma! Down with the new police deception ! Citizens !
Honour the memory of the fallen Moscow heroes with fresh preparations for
an armed uprising! Long live the freely elected national constituent
assembly! ^

Lenin's opponents stressed the possibilities of speaking to the people
in a countrywide election drive. The Bolshevik leadership, however,
rejected this suggestion because it would only "detract attention from
the main task," which was preparation for an uprising. In the end,
a small group ( 17 ) of Social-Democrats (Mensheviks), but not a single
Bolshevik, were elected. The majority in the Duma was the liberal
opposition (the Constitutional-Democrats) . The Duma was too liberal
to suit the Czar and it was dissolved on July 21 [8], 1906; new elections
were to be held, and the second Duma was to convene in seven months,
on March 5 [February 20], 1907.

While they remained inside the Social-Democratic Party, Lenin's Bol-
sheviks never ceased to carry out their own policy; as a minority they
never submitted. This was particularly so during and after the con-
gress of the Social-Democratic Party which gathered in Stockholm April
23-May 8 [April 10-25], 1906. Though taking part in a conclave with
his enemies, the Mensheviks, Lenin did not intend to follow the decisions
of the majority if it was not his majority. His follower and disciple, the
future People's Commissar Anatoli Lunacharski, asked Lenin on this
occasion about his plans. Lenin said :

. . . "If we have a majority in the Central Committee and in the central
organ we will demand the strictest discipline. . . ."

I asked Lenin : "But what if we will finally remain in the minority? Shall
we be forced to agree to unification?"

Lenin smiled enigmatically and said : "It depends on the circumstances.
In any case we will not allow unity to become a noose around our necks
and we shall under no circumstances let the Mensheviks lead us by the
chain." 30

The 113 delegates to the congress represented a total of about
34,000 party members, of whom less than 14,000 were Bolsheviks. In
the new Central Committee, elected to lead the party, they were a mi-
nority (three Bolsheviks among the ten members). Lenin, however,

'•Lenin, "Should We Boycott the State Duma?" (January 1906), Selected Works,
vol. Ill, p. 364.

"A. V. Lunacharski, Vospominaniya o Lenine (Reminiscences about Lenin
(Moscow: Partiinoe Izdatelstvo (Party Publishing House), 1933), pp. 21, 22.

promptly organized his own small committee within the RSDLP to carry
out the Bolshevik political course; ostensibly inside the "unified" party,
this clandestine group did not care for the party's decisions and discipline.
"Preparation for the uprising" was then still the main aim of Lenin's
group. It meant procuring arms and money and organizing "guerrilla

actions."

The small guerrilla groups which sprang up in 1905 and 1906 were
promptly embraced by Lenin's disciples. In the absence of a real revo-
lution, they turned to killing and robbing for the sake of "the party" —
the Bolsheviks. Unprecedented demoralization ensued.

. . . "The activists" were subordinated to the so-called "Military-
Technical Bureau" created by the Central Committee to coordinate the
activities of the Fighting and Military Organization; the Bureau was com-
pletely taken over by the Bolsheviks. Contrary to the interdiction of the
[non-Bolshevik majority of the] Central Committee, the Bureau convoked
an All-Russian Conference of the Military and Fighting organizations in
order to create a constantly operating Center.31

... By the very nature of their activities members of the Bolshevik fac-
tion were obliged to observe strict secrecy not only toward the Tsarist police
but also toward the party they formally belonged to. In those years char-
acteristic traits of the Bolshevik organization developed which later came so
glaringly to the fore: rigid unity and strictest discipline inside their own
groups and complete lack of moral restraint toward all outsiders.82

A secret committee of three, unknown even to other members of the
Bolshevik faction, concentrated on financial problems; its members were
Lenin, Leonid Krassin, and Aleksandr Bogdanov. Utter secrecy was
necessary because procuring of funds for revolutionary activities was
tied up with criminal affairs, namely armed robberies of trains, railway
ticket offices, and banks. These robberies organized by the Bolsheviks
were termed "expropriations" (in slang, "ex's") .

. . . Among the unrestrained and politically immature elements there
grew the trend to impose their will on disobedient history, to counteract the
growing force of the counter-revolution by concentrated "revolutionary"
action, to substitute for the lack of mass support the energy of a "revolution-
ary minority." The numerous fighting and guerrilla groups which emerged
under these conditions directed their terroristic acts and armed robberies not
so much against the middle-rank and petty state officials or police officers as
against capitalists and factory management. (Of 367 terroristic acts com-
mitted in January and February 1906, 237, or 65 percent, were in the nature

L. Martov, Istoriya Rossiiskoi Sotsial-Demokratii (History of the Russian Social
Democracy) (3rd ed.; Moscow: "Kniga" publishers, 1923), p. 187.

M Th. Dan, Die Sozialdemokratie Russlands nach dem Jahre 1908, in J. Martov's
Geschichte der Russischen Sozialdemokratie (Berlin: J. H. W. Dietz Nachfolger,
1926), pp. 233, 234.

of factory or agrarian terrorism.) These hold-ups called "expropriations"
were at first motivated by the need to provide means for the party organiza-
tions, which no longer received financial support from workers and "sympa-
thizers" among the bourgeoisie; later, however, these hold-ups turned more
and more into ordinary robberies for the sole purpose of providing means of
existence for the perpetrators of them; this created a terrible demoralization.
It wiped out the boundary line between honest revolutionaries guided by
idealistic motives and criminals eager for plunder.33

Having recognized the failure of the "boycott" of elections, the Bolshe-
vik group in 1 907 decided to participate in the new elections and organ-
ize a Bolshevik faction in the new Duma. Because of the complexities
of the election procedures it appeared sensible for the leftist parties to ally
themselves with other political groups ; Lenin rejected, however, any col-
laboration with the liberals (the "Kadets") and restricted his circle of
allies to the "leftist bloc" (Social-Revolutionaries and "Trudoviks" ) .
When the elections were over, of a total of 5 1 8 deputies, 65 belonged to
the Social-Democrats (both factions) , 141 to the other two leftist groups,
and 99 to the "Kadets," popular name for members of the Constitutional-
Democratic Party. The majority of the Duma being definitely op-
posed to the government, the Duma was dissolved on June 16 [3]. A
new election law was promulgated, without the sanction of the Duma,
and the majority of the Social-Democratic deputies were arrested, tried,
and deported.

While the Duma was still in session a new congress of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labor Party convened in London (May 1907). It
was the best attended of all the congresses of that era. The Bolsheviks had
a certain numerical superiority and won a decisive position in the "joint"
Central Committee. At this congress the younger generation of Bolshe-
viks started to assert itself : Grigori Zinoviev, Lev ( Leo ) Kamenev, Niko-
lai Bukharin, and Kliment Voroshilov were present as Lenin's lieutenants.
Leon Trotsky, though present, was still opposed to Lenin and the
Bolsheviks.

The Lenin group, although it held key positions in the new Central
Committee, deemed it necessary in addition to continue the operations of
a purely Bolshevik Center which would not be inhibited by the presence
of non-Leninists and would be free to make decisions on delicate issues
such as "expropriations," guerrillas, financial operations, etc.

. . . the victory of the Bolsheviks at the London Congress by no means led
to their factional disarmament; on the contrary, the "Bolshevik Center" for-
mally dissolved by the Congress, continued its clandestine existence and acted
as the only real Central Committee of the Bolsheviks. The official Central
Committee of the united party was in reality sabotaged by them. Financial
means procured by them were not delivered to the treasury of the united
party but to the clandestine Bolshevik Center; the decisions of the Central

Ibid.,pp. 229, 230.

Committee were ignored and only orders issued by the Bolshevik Center
were followed.34

In this way —
. . enormous financial means were concentrated in the hands of the
Bolshevik Center at a time when the party organization had lost the majority
of its members and was fighting for bare existence. This made it possible
for the Bolshevik Center to support party committees which were in sym-
pathy with it, to starve out others, to maintain the group of professional
revolutionists connected with them, to issue illegal publications, and to sus-
tain the spirit of solidarity and severest discipline among its adherents.35

6. Moral Decay and Disintegration

Unscrupulousness in money affairs started to prevail in the leading
Bolshevik group of the time.

The following will serve as an illustration of the conditions then prevail-
ing in the party: Whereas the budget of the Central Committee of the
entire party amounted (in the first year after the London Congress) to less
than 100 rubles a month, the Petersburg organization of the Bolsheviks
received from the Bolshevik Center monthly support of 1,000 rubles, the
Moscow organization 500 rubles, etc. The Bolshevik press now often admits
that the Bolsheviks at that time, contrary to an official party decision, used
to "expropriate" money for the purposes of their faction. The Bolshevik
Sulimov, of the Urals, for instance, writes in his memoirs, published in the
magazine Proletarskaya Revolyutsia (Proletarian Revolution), No. 7/42,
about the use to which the stolen money was put in the Urals: "In the
years 1906 and 1907, about 40,000 rubles was turned over to the regional
party committee and about 60,000 rubles to the Central Committee (which
means into the Bolshevik Center). With these funds the Ural Regional
Committee published three newspapers: the Russian paper "Soldat"
(Soldier) and "Proletarii" (Proletarian) and a paper in Tartar. Money
was furthermore spent to finance the trip of the delegates to the London
Congress, maintain a school of fight instructors in Kiev, and the bomb-
throwing school in Lemberg (Lvov) , as well as to secure free frontier passage
for the smuggling of literature and escapees.36

In these robbing operations for the benefit of bolshevism a number of
future leaders took an active part. The most important "expropriation,"
the one that occurred in Tiflis on June 25, 1907, was organized, under
Stalin's guidance, by a group of Caucasian Bolsheviks, among whom the
most outstanding was Semen Ter-Petrosyan (nicknamed "Kamo").
The loot exceeded 300,000 rubles.

At ten forty-five in the morning of the 12th [25th] of June [1907], in the
Erivan Square of Tiflis, an exceptionally daring armed attack took place on

84 Ibid., p. 232.
■ Ibid., p. 233.
" Ibid., pp. 233, 234.

a convoy of Cossacks that accompanied an equipage transporting a bag of
money. The course of the operation was calculated with the precision
of clockwork. Several bombs of exceptional strength were thrown in a
set rotation. There were numerous revolver shots. The bag of money
(341,000 rubles) vanished with the revolutionists. Not a single one of the
fighters was caught by the police. Three members of the convoy were left
dead on the spot; about fifty persons were wounded, most of them
slightly. . . .

. . . The bombs came from [Leonid] Krassin's laboratory. A chemist
by education, Leonid, when still a student, dreamed of bombs the size of a
nut.37

. . . Having successfully accomplished the Tiflis robbery . . . "Kamo"
went to Finland, where the Bolshevik Center was located, and delivered part
of the money to them; he stayed [in Finland] with Lenin. In September,
"Kamo", under the name of Mirsky, was already abroad, where, on instruc-
tions of the Center, he and Wallakh-Litvinov [eventually People's Com-
missar for Foreign Affairs] acquired arms to be smuggled into Russia. In
November he was arrested in Berlin; a large quantity of explosives was
found in his possession. In prison "Kamo" feigned insanity, was examined,
found insane, and extradited ... to the Russian government. He was
sent to a mental hospital in Tiflis, but he escaped, resumed his revolutionary
activities, was arrested and sentenced to a term at hard labor. . . .

In the same year [1907] the Military-Technical Bureau of the Central
Committee undertook to deliver to the Perm revolutionary guerrilla squad,
better known as Lbovskaya Druzhina — Lbov Brigade, a shipment of arms
at a price of six thousand rubles. The money was received in advance
but the arms were never delivered. This characteristic example of the
party's activities would hardly have become known to anyone not involved
in the affair had not one of the Lbov people come out, while abroad in
1909, with a statement accusing the Bolsheviks of misappropriation of six
thousand rubles received as advance payment for ordered arms. After
an investigation the money had to be returned to the former Lbov people.88

In another case, bank-note counterfeiting operations were planned
and prepared. Watermarked paper, ordered by Krassin in Germany,
had arrived, but the Prussian police discovered it and arrested several
persons connected with the project. In still another case a Bolshevik of
the Lenin group married a rich heiress, a Miss Shrnidt, in order to get
money "for the party."

... In the course of 1906 a wealthy student, one N. P. Shrnidt, of social
democratic leanings, then in prison, bequeathed a large fortune to the social
democratic party, and shortly afterwards committed suicide. Since the
party was at that date nominally united, the Bolsheviks were not solely

" Medvedeva (Kamo's widow), as quoted in Trotsky, Stalin, pp. 104, 105.
88 A. I. Spiridovich, Istoriya Bolshevizma v Rossii (History of Bolshevism in Russia)
(Paris: no pub., 1922), pp. 169, 170.

entitled to this inheritance. However, since the executrices of Shmidt were
two young sisters it proved comparatively easy to exert pressure on them.
Each was in due course wooed by a Bolshevik, the elder in marriage, the
younger outside wedlock. When the husband of the elder sister broke with
the Bolsheviks, and proved obstinate over handing over more than a portion
of the estate, the lover of the younger eventually succeeded, by methods
which (according to Martov, confirmed from Bolshevik memoirs) included
threats of violence, in diverting the whole of the estate to the Bolshevik
exchequer. The man who played the useful part of the lover was a new-
comer in the Bolshevik Centre since the Fifth Congress, Victor Taratuta.
He had also been since that date, 1907, a candidate member of the Central
Committee. All these operations took some time. But in the course of
1908 part of this money became available to Lenin, and since his corre-
spondence shows that by mid- 1909 the Bolsheviks were once again in
possession of ample funds it would appear that the whole of the Shmidt
inheritance had by that time been realized. The total sum received by the
Bolsheviks is stated by a Communist historian to have amounted to "about
280,000 roubles." 39

Moral degeneration, uninhibited because of Lenin's personal patronage
of all these affairs, reached low depths.

The years 1907-12 were a period of rapid decline and disintegration.
Arrests decimated the party's ranks. Agents-provocateurs, posing as
the most extreme revolutionary zealots, penetrated all important party
bodies. Thousands of sympathizers turned their backs on bolshevism
and revolution in general. Most important, party leaders and theoreti-
cians began to deviate from the strict party line. Among them were
Anatoli Lunacharski, Aleksandr Bogdanov, Nikolai Rozhkov, and a
number of others; Maxim Gorki became cooler, too. Since the end of
1907 Lenin had again been living abroad.

By 1909-10 almost all party groups and cells had been destroyed;
actually, except for the small circles of emigres, the party had ceased to
exist.

The elections to the third Duma in 1907 marked another step in the
disintegration of bolshevism. Lenin insisted — and in the end, as al-
ways, he had his way — on taking part in the elections as well as in the
sessions of the "counter-revolutionary Duma." Most of the other lead-
ers, on the contrary, wanted a boycott of the Duma. Some (the Otzo-
visty) demanded the "recall" (otozvat) of the elected deputies after the
elections; others, the "ultimatists" (Ultimatisty), wanted the deputies to
submit a revolutionary ultimatum to the Duma and to resign after its
rejection by the majority. Bogdanov, Kamenev, and Lunacharski
were the best-known leaders of "boycottism." Lenin was almost iso-
lated; his main support from among the party leaders came from Grigori

"Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York:
Random House, 1960), pp. 107, 108.

Zinoviev and a few younger Bolsheviks. To fight the ideological aber-
rations of his comrades, Lenin concentrated for a time on pure philos-
ophy; in 1909 he wrote a critical essay, "Materialism and Empirio-
Criticism."

The squabble among the remnants of the Russian Social-Democratic
Labor Party abroad reached its last stage in 1912 ; a small Bolshevik con-
ference, convened in Prague in January 1912, put an end to coexistence
with the Mensheviks.40 Of the 15 delegates who attended, 3 were police
agents. But the Central Committee elected at the conference was,
finally, a pure Bolshevik body. Among the members elected at the con-
ference were Grigori Zinoviev and the police undercover agent, Roman
Malinovski; on Lenin's suggestion, Stalin, still little known in Bolshevik
ranks, was admitted ("co-opted") to the leading body after the con-
ference ended.

The eight Bolshevik deputies in the State Duma constituted the only
"legal" representation of the party in Russia but, their intellectual hori-
zon being limited, the level of their political pronouncements was prim-
itive. The few trade unions still existing, remnants of the revolution-
ary years, were another field of Bolshevik activity in Russia. Though
organized mainly under Menshevik leadership, the unions were "uti-
lized" to some extent by the Bolsheviks as a legal cover for political ac-
tivity. The Bolshevik attitude toward the trade union movement
tended to subordinate it to the party's committees; these tactics had been
elaborated by Lenin in 1906-07. Lenin opposed the independence of
the trade unions from the party; he advocated "as close as possible and
lasting ties between the trade unions and the Social-Democratic [Bolshe-
vik] party." "Closest rapprochement between trade unions and the
party is the only correct principle," he said in 1907.41

7. Stalin's Emergence

A degree of political revival, after 5 years of recess, began in 1912,
especially after the strike of gold miners in the Lena fields in Siberia.
Local troops had opened fire on the striking workers, killing more than
200. As the news spread over the country, political strikes broke out
for the first time since the revolutionary era. This new upsurge of the
revolutionary movement, however, remained limited.

The Bolsheviks took part in the elections to the fourth Duma in 1912.
Six of the deputies of the Duma (which was to last until the revolution
of 1917) belonged to the Bolshevik faction. Among the Bolshevik

40 From 1912, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had separate organizations, each
claiming to be the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party.

tt Lenin, Predislovie k Sborniku "Za Dvenadtsat Let" (Preface to the Collection of
Articles "For Twelve Years") (September 1907), Sochineniya, vol. XIII (1947),
p. 92.

68491 O-61-vol. II— 3

deputies, Roman Malinovski was the most active. An undercover agent
of the police, he had entered the legislature with the approval of his
police superiors. His fiery speeches against the government, often
written or edited by Bolshevik leaders abroad, were made with the con-
sent of the chiefs of police. A large number of revolutionaries of vari-
ous groups, known to Malinovski, among them Stalin and Bukharin,
were betrayed, arrested, and deported. When a new chief of police de-
cided that an end must be put to this situation, Malinovski was ordered to
quit the Duma. He resigned. Rumors about the agent-provacateur
began to spread. Lenin refused to believe that one of his best men in-
side Russia was a traitor, and he protected Malinovski by his authority.
It was not until 1917, when the police archives were opened by the new
regime, that the truth came out. Malinovski was executed in 1918.

In the years 1912-13 a new leader was rising who was eventually to
reach the summit of party power — Iosif (Joseph) Dzhugashvili (alias
Stalin ) , who had belonged to the Bolshevik movement since its very begin-
nings but was little known beyond Social-Democratic circles in the Cau-
casus and did not become a member of the central party bodies until Feb-
ruary 1912. Dzhugashvili, who was born in December 1879 in Gori,
Georgia, was the son of a cobbler; his mother was the daughter of a former
serf. He entered a parochial school in 1 888 and a Greek-Orthodox semi-
nary in 1 894. This seminary, like other Russian colleges and universities,
was a nursery of revolutionary activity and propaganda. Within a few
years Dzhugashvili was a member of a Marxist group (his official biogra-
phers claim that as a boy of fifteen he had already belonged to a Marxist
circle). His real activity dated from about 1901, with his collaboration
in Brdzola (an illegal Georgian periodical) and his membership in the
Tiflis Social-Democratic Committee. He was arrested in the fall of
1903 and exiled to Siberia, but he escaped a few months later and re-
turned to the Caucasus in February 1904.

Stalin was not a great thinker, speaker, or writer, but he possessed a
strong personality embodying traits suited to the emerging Bolshevik
movement. A passionate hater of his enemies, he exercised neither re-
straint nor mercy. Heir to age-old Caucasian traditions of vendetta and
disdain for human life, he conceived the revolution in the most violent
and bloody contours. He was taken over completely by a passionate
fight against all political moderation, and especially against the Men-
sheviks (his native Georgia was a Menshevik stronghold). To him
any means were good if they led to the "lofty goal"; he took part, as
an organizer, in the Tiflis robbery described above. The Caucasian
Committee of the Social-Democratic Party expelled him because of his
participation in this "expropriation."

In April 1908 Stalin was arrested, kept in prison for eight months,
and then exiled. From then on, until 1913, there were intermittent epi-
sodes of arrests and "illegal work." From 1911 on he was active in St.

Petersburg; in February 1912 he became a member of the Central Com-
mittee. In early 1912 Pravda (Truth) emerged as a Bolshevik news-
paper in the capital; Stalin and the young Vyacheslav Molotov were
anions: its first editors. In November and December 1912 Stalin made
visits to Lenin in Cracow, where, under Lenin's guidance, he wrote his
"Marxism and the National Question."

In March 1913, betrayed by Malinovski, Stalin was arrested for
the last time. This time he was deported to the village of Kureika, in
the Arctic Circle, from which no escape was possible, and he spent the
next few years as an exile ; he did not return to St. Petersburg until after
the upheaval in 1917.

The guiding role in the Bolshevik movement during these last prewar
years was played by three Russian emigres — Lenin, Zinoviev, and
Kamenev. In 1909 Lenin moved from Geneva to Paris, where he
lived with the Zinovievs. In 1912 he and Zinoviev moved to Cracow
(Austrian Poland), to be near the Russian frontier: this made it easier
to organize transportation of printed materials and crossings from Russia
and back. Kamenev returned to Russia in 1913.

8. World War I and Lenin's Defeatism

It was not until the World War broke out, in August 1914, that bol-
shevism acquired its definitive traits. The break with the socialist parties
of Europe and the Socialist International paralleled the generation of a
new set of ideas about war, revolution, defense, and defeat which in the
following decade became tenets of the Bolshevik-Communist movement.

Lenin and Zinoviev, having been expelled from Austria after the war
started, moved to Switzerland. The political line of the Western socialist
parties, which proclaimed, as their course in war, defense of their re-
spective countries, and which voted appropriations for war in their par-
liaments, aroused passionate protests from Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
Defeatism became the Bolshevik slogan. Each socialist party, Lenin said
and wrote, must strive for the defeat of its country's armies. Defeat in
war was the road to revolution. As far as Russia was concerned —

... by far the lesser evil would be the defeat of the Tsar's armies and
the Tsar's monarchy, which oppresses Poland, the Ukraine, and a number of
other people of Russia. . . .42

Among the slogans formulated by Lenin at the beginning of the war
were the following:

. . . struggle against the tsarist monarchy and the Great-Russian, Pan-
Slavist chauvinism, and advocacy of a revolution in Russia as well as of

"Lenin, "The Tasks of Revolutionary Democracy in the European War" (Septem-
ber 1914), Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1927-45), vol.
XVIII (1930), p. 63.

the liberation and self-determination of the nationalities oppressed by Rus-
sia, coupled with the immediate slogans of a democratic republic, the con-
fiscation of the landowners' lands and an eight-hour work-day.43

The crime of war, Lenin reiterated, is the inevitable product of capi-
talism at its highest and final stage, "imperialism." A nonbelligerent
capitalism is impossible. To prevent wars, capitalism must be over-
thrown; the overthrow of capitalism is a social revolution. Pacifism,
which implies the illusion of a peaceful capitalism, must be attacked;
the foreign war must be transformed into a civil war — a revolution :

Turning the present imperialist war into civil war is the only correct
proletarian slogan.44

The first steps towards transforming the present imperialist war into
civil war are: 1) absolute refusal to vote for war credits and resigna-
tion from bourgeois Cabinets; 2) complete rupture with the policy of
"national peace" (bloc nationale, Burgfrieden) ; 3) creation of an illegal
organisation wherever the governments and the bourgeoisie abolish consti-
tutional liberties by introducing war emergency laws; 4) support of frater-
nisation among the soldiers of the belligerent nations in the trenches and
in the theatre of war in general; 5) support of every kind of revolutionary
proletarian mass action in general.

*******

One of the forms of deception of the working class is pacifism and the
abstract preaching of peace. Under capitalism, particularly in its impe-
rialist stage, wars are inevitable. . . .

Propaganda of peace at the present time, if not accompanied by a call
for revolutionary mass action, is only capable of spreading illusions, of
demoralising the proletariat by imbuing it with belief in the humanitarian-
ism of the bourgeoisie, and of making it a plaything in the hands of the
secret diplomacy of the belligerent countries. In particular, the idea that
a so-called democratic peace is possible without a series of revolutions is
profoundly mistaken.4'

Propaganda of revolution must be carried to the armies: the troops
must be urged to turn their arms against their own officers :

. . . The slogans of Social-Democracy must now be: First, an all-
embracing propaganda of the Socialist revolution, to be extended also to
the army and the area of military activities; emphasis to be placed on the
necessity of turning the weapons, not against the brother wage-slaves of
other countries, but against the reaction of bourgeois governments and
parties in each country. . . J*

i3 1 bid., p. 64.

41 Lenin, "The War and the Russian Social-Democracy" (October 1914), Collected
Works, vol. XVIII (1930), p. 82.

"Lenin, "Conference of the Sections of the R.S.D.L.P. Abroad" (March 1915),
Selected Works, vol. V, pp. 134, 135.

*• Lenin, "The Tasks of Revolutionary Social-Democracy in the European War"
(September 1914), Collected Works, vol. XVIII (1930), p, 63.

. . . Life is marching, through the defeat of Russia, to a revolution in
Russia, and through that revolution and in connection with it, to civil war
in Europe. Life has taken this direction.47

With violent passion the Lenin group turned against the "Social
Patriots" ("Social Traitors," "Social Chauvinists") — the moderate
socialists, and against their general "illusion" that under capitalism wars
could be avoided, in particular civil wars :

. . . Socialists cannot, without ceasing to be Socialists, be opposed to all
war.

* * * * * # *

. . . civil wars are also wars. Anyone who recognizes the class struggle
cannot fail to recognize civil wars, which in every class society are the
natural, and under certain conditions, inevitable continuation, development
and intensification of the class struggle. All the great revolutions proved
this. ...

. . . the victory of Socialism in one country does not at one stroke
eliminate all war in general. . . . Socialism. . . . will achieve victory first
in one or several countries, while the others will remain bourgeois or pre-
bourgeois for some time. . . .

Only after we have overthrown, finally vanquished, and expropriated the
bourgeoisie of the whole worlds and not only of one country, will wars be-
come impossible. And from a scientific point of view it would be utterly
wrong and utterly unrevolutionary for us to evade or gloss over the most
important thing, namely, that the most difficult task, the one demanding
the greatest amount of fighting in the transition to Socialism, is to crush the
resistance of the bourgeoisie. . . .

*******

. . . Our slogan must be : The arming of the proletariat for the purpose
of vanquishing, expropriating and disarming the bourgeoisie.48

. . . False, senseless, and hypocritical are all the phrases about a war of
defence or about the defence of the fatherland on the part of the great
powers (read: the great beasts of prey) that are fighting for domination
over the world, for markets and "spheres of influence," for the enslavement
of peoples! 49

Lenin turned repeatedly against those who supported the cause of the
Allies against Germany because Germany had started the war. This was
of no importance, Lenin emphasized; and by refusing to consider this
phase of the history of the war, he tended to disregard Germany's guilt :

. . . The question as to which group dealt the first military blow or first
declared war is of no importance in determining the tactics of the Socialists.

*T Lenin, "The Defeat of Russia and the Revolutionary Crisis" (October 1915),
Selected Works, vol. V, p. 153.

48 Lenin, "The War Program of the Proletarian Revolution" (1916), The Essentials
of Lenin (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1947), vol. I, pp. 741-744.

"Lenin, "Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International" (1915),
Collected Works, vol. XVIII (1930), p. 387.

Phrases about the defence of the fatherland, resistance to enemy invasion,
war of defence, etc., are, on both sides, nothing but a means for the whole-
sale deception of the people.60

With Lev (Leo) Kamenev in Russia, the Lenin group was certain to be
able to guide the Bolshevik Duma faction in the right direction. When
the war broke out Lenin advised Kamenev to have the Duma faction make
a defeatist declaration "in the name of the Russian proletariat." But the
Bolshevik deputies, along with Kamenev himself, having been denounced
by agents working from the inside of the party, were arrested at a confer-
ence near St. Petersburg on November 17 [4], 1914. They were tried
and sentenced to exile. At the trial Kamenev defended himself by re-
pudiating Lenin's defeatism; Lenin attacked Kamenev in his Sotsial-
demokrat (No. 40, March 29, 1915) :

It has proven, first, that this advance detachment of revolutionary Social-
Democracy in Russia did not show sufficient firmness at the trial. . . . How-
ever, to attempt to show solidarity with the social-patriot, Mr. Yordansky, as
did Comrade Rozenfeld [Kamenev. — Ed.], or to point out one's disagree-
ment with the Central Committee, is an incorrect method ; this is impermis-
sible from the standpoint of revolutionary Social-Democracy.61

In the early years of the war, mainly on Bolshevik initiative, there
emerged the embryo of the future Third International. In September
1915 a conference of leftist socialists convened in Zimmerwald, Switzer-
land; among the 38 participants were socialists from 11 countries. The
Bolsheviks, under Lenin, formed a "leftist Zimmerwald" faction which,
though in a minority, proved most active and aggressive. The Zimmer-
wald conference was followed by a conference in Kienthal (also in
Switzerland) in April 1916, at which 12 delegates (out of a total of 43)
belonged to the "extreme left" group. Lenin and his party took the
most extreme position. Among Lenin's supporters, the Polish delegate,
Karl Radek, an able writer and speaker, who was to achieve some promi-
nence in the Soviet government in the following decade, played a
substantial role.

M Lenin, "Conference of the Sections of the R.S.D.L.P. Abroad" (March 1915),
Selected Works, vol. V, p. 132.

61 Lenin, "What Has the Trial of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Faction
Proven?" (March 29, f9l5), Collected Works, vol. XVIII (1930), p. 151.

Chapter II. The Revolution of 1917
(March to November)

1. All Power to the Soviets

The political upheaval in Russia which occurred between March 12
\ [February 27] and March 16 [3], 1917, came unexpectedly for all parties,
including the Bolsheviks. Popular unrest, heightened by the Russian
military defeats, the deterioration in the food situation, and the Rasputin
scandals, culminated in disloyalty among groups in certain army units
and, finally, in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the formation of
the Provisional Government. The government consisted of liberal
groups, of which the "Kadets" were the most important; the socialist
. parties were represented by the moderate socialist Alexander Kerensky,
who took over the Ministry of Justice.

The first Petrograd Soviet of Workers' Deputies was elected during
. the first days of the revolution. The provinces followed suit. Repre-
sentatives of the garrisons were added to the Soviets soon afterward.

In these first Soviets of 1917 the Bolsheviks, who remained disoriented
for some time, constituted a tiny, uninfluential minority. The impor-
tant leaders — Lenin, Zinoviev, Bukharin — were abroad and did not re-
turn to Russia until a month later; others, like Kamenev and Stalin, were
in Siberia. In Petrograd (the new name of the capital) the Bolsheviks
were led by party officers of lower rank. Carried away by the general
elation over the newly won freedom, almost none of them was violently
opposed to the new regime. Pravda, which had reappeared, although it
expressed opposition was in no way insurrectionist. On their way from
Siberia, Kamenev and Stalin took part in a local popular meeting which
sent a telegram to Grand Duke Mikhail (brother of the Tsar) congratu-
lating him on having renounced the throne after the Tsar's abdication;
the telegram was signed by Lev Kamenev, who was bitterly to regret this
act a few years later.

"Defeatism" — the Bolshevik attitude toward "imperialist war" — was
likewise unpopular; "Lenin's ideas," wrote Trotsky, "did not have a
single champion." a In Pravda, Kamenev wrote that as long as the

1 Leon Trotsky, Stalin (New York: Harper & Bros., 1941), p. 188.

(35)

German army remained loyal to the Kaiser, the Russian soldier should —
. staunchly stand at his post, answering bullet for bullet and salvo for
salvo.2 '

Pravda itself declared :

... All defeatism, or rather what the venal press stigmatized by that
name under the aegis of tsarist censorship, died the moment the first revo-
lutionary regiment appeared on the streets of Petrograd.8

Stalin, whose stand deviated widely from Lenin's, wrote:

... it is undeniable that the bare slogan, "Down with War!" is utterly
inapplicable as a practical solution. . . .

The solution he suggested was :

. . . pressure on the Provisional Government with the demand that it
immediately express its readiness to start peace negotiations. . . .4

At the first all-Russian conference of the Bolshevik party since the
revolution, which convened before the emigre leaders had returned,
Stalin suggested cautious tactics in order "not to accelerate the secession
of the bourgeois strata." He also advocated collaboration with the
Mensheviks of the Tseretelli (initially the leftist) trend. This attitude
was due not to any real moderation of bolshevism, but to the widespread
satisfaction with the victory of the upheaval. It did not, however, last
very long.

Lenin was not able to return to Petrograd until April 1 6 [3] . Germany
and the war fronts lay between Switzerland and Russia, and the road
through France and England was barred because the Allied governments
refused to let the Russian revolutionaries pass. During his last five weeks
abroad, Lenin elaborated his theses on war and revolution, which were
to become the guiding ideas of bolshevism in 1917 and the ideology of
the Bolshevik upheaval in November [October].

The Russian revolution, Lenin said and reiterated, was a "bourgeois"
revolution; in a backward country like Russia a socialist revolution was
impossible. Lenin's notion of a "bourgeois-democratic revolution,"
guided by a revolutionary peasant party in alliance with a workers'
party, did not imply the transformation of Russia's social set-up on
socialist bases. It was likely, however, that the revolution in Russia
would inaugurate a series of socialist revolutions in the West.

The great honour of beginning the series of revolutions caused with ob-
jective inevitability by the war has fallen to the Russian proletariat. But the
idea that the Russian proletariat is the chosen revolutionary proletariat
among the workers of the world is absolutely alien to us. We know full

3 Ibid., p. 187.

1 Ibid.

4 1 bid., p. 189.

well that the proletariat of Russia is less organised, less prepared, and less
class-conscious than the proletariat of other countries. It is not its special
qualities but rather the special coincidence of historical circumstances that
has made the proletariat of Russia for a certain, perhaps very short time,
the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat of the whole world.

Russia is a peasant country, it is one of the most backward of European
countries. Socialism cannot triumph there immediately. But the present
character of the country in the face of a vast reserve of land retained by
noblemen landowners may, to judge from the experience of 1905, give a
tremendous sweep to the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, and
may make our revolution a prologue to the world Socialist revolution, a
step forward in that direction.

*******

The Russian proletariat single-handed cannot bring the Socialist revolu-
tion to a victorious conclusion. But it can give the Russian Revolution a
mighty sweep such as would create most favourable conditions for a So-
cialist revolution, and would, in a sense, start it. It can help create more
favourable circumstances for its most important, most trustworthy and most
reliable collaborator, the European and the American Socialist proletariat,
to join in the decisive battles.5

On this occasion Lenin stressed his hope and expectation of a revolu-
tion in Germany, which to him was the signal for a worldwide revo-
lution.

The German proletariat is the most trustworthy, the most reliable ally
of the Russian and the world proletarian revolution.8

Lenin's attitude toward arms and armaments (which later developed
into a consistent opposition to effective disarmament) was expressed in
the following words:

. . . For the only guarantee of liberty and of a complete destruction of
tsarism is the arming of the proletariat, the strengthening, broadening,
and developing of the role, and significance, and power of the Soviets of
Workers'- and Soldiers' Deputies. . . .

*******

Help the arming of the workers, or, at least, do not interfere with it, and
the liberty of Russia is invincible, the monarchy incapable of restoration, the
republic secured.

*******

"Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution," say we Marxists, "therefore
the workers must open the eyes of the people to the deceptive practices of
the bourgeois politicians, must teach the people not to believe in words, but

"V. I. Lenin, "Farewell Letter to the Swiss Workers" (April 8 [March 26], 1917),
Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1927-45), vol. XX (1929),
pp. 85-87.

Ubid.,p. 87.

to depend wholly on their own strength, on their own organisation, on their
own unity, and on their own arms." 7

Lenin was prepared violently to oppose the new government. He
saw its shortcomings as its refusal or inability to turn over the land to
the peasantry, set up a "real democracy," convene a constitutional as-
sembly, and, most important, renounce "imperialist aims" in the war
(territorial gains and indemnities) and conclude peace. The Provi-
sional Government must be replaced by the Soviets. From the "di-
archy" (the government and the Soviets) which had existed in Russia
since the fall of tsarism the correct path is toward a "Soviet govern-
ment." "All power to the Soviets!"

Our conditions for peace are as follows:

1. The Soviet of Workers' Deputies, being a revolutionary government,
declares forthwith that it does not regard itself bound by any treaties made
by the Tsar or the bourgeoisie.

2. It publishes forthwith all these predatory treaties.

3. It openly proposes to all the belligerents the immediate cessation of
military operations.

4. As a basis for peace it suggests the liberation of all the colonies and
all the oppressed nations.

5. It declares that it has no confidence in all the bourgeois governments.
It calls upon the workers of the world to overthrow their governments.

6. The war loans contracted by the bourgeoisie must be paid exclusively
by the capitalists.

. . . The confiscation of the noblemen's lands would be assured; this,
however, would not yet be Socialism.8

Early in April, Lenin, Zinoviev, and a group of other Russian revo-
lutionaries obtained German consent to cross the country on their way
from Switzerland to neutral Scandinavia. (Swiss leftist friends had
served as intermediaries in this venture. ) They reached Petrograd from
Stockholm.

When he arrived in Russia, on April 16 [3], 1917, Lenin had with him
a prepared text of "theses" for his party. His "defeatist" program re-
jected collaboration with the Provisional Government and other parties;
its most sensational feature — even to the Bolsheviks — was the idea of a
Soviet state which was to replace the generally accepted pattern of a
democratic republic. These "theses," read to a Bolshevik audience on
April 17 [4], have assumed great .importance in the history of
communism.

1. In our attitude toward the war not the smallest concession must be
made to "revolutionary defencism," for under the new government of

'Lenin, "Letters From Afar" (First Letter, March 20 [7], 1917), Collected Works,
vol. XX (1929), pp. 33, 34.

8 Lenin, "Report on the Tasks of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in
the Russian Revolution" (March 1917), Collected Works, vol. XX (1929), pp. 80, 81.

Lvov and Co., owing to the capitalist nature of this government, the war on
Russia's part remains a predatory imperialist war.

*******

2. The peculiarity of the present situation in Russia is that it represents
a transition from the first stage of the revolution, which, because of the in-
adequate organisation and insufficient class-consciousness of the proletariat,
led to the assumption of power by the bourgeoisie — to its second stage which
is to place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest strata of
the peasantry.

*******

3. No support to the Provisional Government; exposure of the utter fal-
sity of all its promises, particularly those relating to the renunciation of an-
nexations. Unmasking, instead of admitting, the illusion-breeding "de-
mand" that this government, a government of capitalists, cease being im-
perialistic.

4. Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers'
Deputies our party constitutes a minority. . . .9

Despite his awareness that the Bolsheviks constituted a minority group
in the Soviets Lenin adhered to his program of "all power to the
Soviets," obviously expecting to assume a stronger position and then to
be able to overthrow the democratic system.

5. Not a parliamentary republic — a return to it from the Soviet of
Workers' Deputies would be a step backward — but a republic of Soviets of
Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies, throughout the
land, from top to bottom.

Abolition of the police, the army, the bureaucracy.

All officers to be elected and to be subject to recall at any time, their sal-
aries not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.

6. In the agrarian programme, the emphasis must be shifted to the
Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies.

Confiscation of all private lands.

Nationalisation of all lands in the country, and management of such lands
by local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies.

7. Immediate merger of all the banks in the country into one general
national bank, over which the Soviet of Workers' Deputies should have
control.

8. Not the "introduction" of Socialism as an immediate task, but the im-
mediate placing of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies in control of social pro-
duction and distribution of goods.10

Lenin did not advocate an uprising against the new government. He
realized that, being a small minority even in the Soviets, his party would
be easily crushed if it took up arms at once. At the Bolshevik party
conference in May [April] 1917, Lenin took exception to the views of a

9 Lenin, "On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution" (printed in
Pravda, April 20 [7], 1917), Collected Works, vol. XX (1929), pp. 106, 107.
w76r'i.,p. 108.

few impatient "leftists" and advised against armed street demonstrations
and use of arms against the other parties.11

On Lenin's initiative, the conference adopted a resolution stating that :

. . . extreme caution and prudence must be displayed, a solid majority of
the population and their conscious conviction in the practical preparedness
of such measures must be assured. . . ,12

Lenin suggested, and the conference adopted, a resolution against an
unpopular separate peace with Germany. This resolution is of his-
torical importance in view of the separate peace signed by Lenin less
than a year later. On the other hand, the conference endorsed the
Bolshevik attempts at encouraging "fraternization" among Russian and
German soldiers at the front, despite the harmful effects of this on the
army's morale:

The war cannot be ended by a refusal of the soldiers of only one side
to continue the war, merely by a one-sided cessation of war activities by one
of the belligerents.

Again and again the conference reiterates its protest against the base
slander circulated by the capitalists against our party to the effect that we
are in favor of a separate . . . peace with Germany. We consider the Ger-
man capitalists to be robbers no less than the capitalists of Russia, England,
France, etc., and Emperor Wilhelm II to be a crowned murderer no less
than Nikolai II and the monarchs of England, Italy, Rumania, and all the
rest. • . .

*******

. . . our party will support the mass fraternization at the front of soldiers
of all belligerents which has already started, aiming at the transformation of
this spontaneous display of solidarity by the oppressed into a conscious arid
possibly more organized movement for the transition of full government
power in all belligerent countries into the hands of the revolutionary
proletariat.18

A special resolution on the involved agrarian question was adopted by
the conference. The agrarian program was among the problems that
had aroused major controversies in the Bolshevik ranks. Now the party,
while in principle advocating nationalization of the land, in effect urged

"Lenin, "Report on the Political Situation," Delivered May 7 [April 24], 1917 to
the Seventh All-Russian Conference of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party,
Collected Works, vol. XX (1929), p. 278. This conference, frequently referred to
as the "April" Conference, was held May 7-May 12 [April 24-29], 1917.

""O Tekushchem Momente" ([Resolution] On the Present Situation), adopted at
the Seventh Ail-Russian or "April" Conference of the RSDLP (b) in 1917, KPSS v
Rezolyutsiakh i Resheniyakh S"ezdov, Konferentsii i Plenumov TsK (CPSU in Reso-
lutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Com-
mittee) (7th ed.j Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury
(State Publishing House for Political Literature), 1953), part 1, p. 352.

"'O Voine" ([Resolution] On the War), adopted at the Seventh All-Russian or
"April" Conference of the RSDLP (b) in 1917, KPSS v Rezolyutsiyakh i Resheni-
yakh . . ., part 1, pp. 337, 338.

the peasants, without waiting for new laws and reforms, to take over the
landlords' estates by sheer force:

(1) The party of the proletariat fights with all its forces for the im-
mediate and total confiscation of all land owned by landowners in Russia
(as well as ecclesiastical lands, lands belonging to the state and the court,
etc. ) .

(2) The party categorically demands the immediate transfer of all land
to the peasantry organized in Soviets of Peasants' Deputies or other munici-
pal institutions elected in a real democratic way and completely independent
of landlords and officials.

(3) The party of the proletariat demands nationalization of all land
in the state; this means transfer of the right of property on all lands to
the state. Nationalization transfers the right of disposition of the land to
the local democratic institutions. . . .

*******
(5) The party advises the peasants to take the land in an organized way,
tolerating not the slightest damage to the property, and to take care of
increasing production.14

2. Leon Trotsky in 1917

Early in May 1917 there arrived from the United States a man who
was to side with Lenin, as leader No. 2 of bolshevism, during the era
of revolution — Leon Trotsky-Bronstein.

The son of a well-to-do though uneducated Jewish farmer, Lev (Leon)
Davidovich Bronstein was born in October 1879 in the small village of
Yanovka in the southern Ukraine. Unlike Lenin, he had not had the
advantage of early systematic education. In 1888 he was sent to live
with friends of his family in Odessa, where he entered a high school,
completing the course in 1896. He never studied at a university. At
the early age of 17 he joined revolutionary groups in Nikolaiev, first the
Populists and soon after, the Marxists.

In 1898 Lev Bronstein was arrested and after more than two years
in prison was exiled to Ust-Kut, on the Lena River in Siberia. He
began to contribute tc a local newspaper and soon showed himself to be a
gifted writer. In 1902 he fled from Siberia to Europe under a false
passport in the name of Trotsky. Soon afterward he crossed to Austria,
and then came to Lenin in London. A few lectures and articles written
for Iskra (which was issued abroad by the leading group of Russian
Marxists) revealed Trotsky's gifts as a speaker and writer; it was not
long before he was admitted to the party's highest circles.

His close friendship with Lenin did not last long, however. Their
paths parted in 1903, when Trotsky began to side with the Mensheviks.
Trotsky returned to Russia in 1905 and was elected vice chairman of

u "Po Agrarnomu Voprosu" ([Resolution] On the Agrarian Question), adopted at
the Seventh Ail-Russian or "April" Conference of the RSDLP (b) in 1917, KPSS v.
Rezolyutsiyakh i Resheniyakh . . ., part 1, p. 341.

the first St. Petersburg Soviet. Arrested and exiled, he again escaped
from Siberia and lived as an emigre in Western Europe from 1906 to
January 1917. Expelled from France, he emigrated to New York.
Soon after his arrival in the United States the Russian upheaval occurred
and he returned to St. Petersburg.

Trotsky vacillated between the various Social-Democratic factions;
he was never, at least until 1917, a full-fledged Bolshevik; he had his own
small following and occupied a position between the factions, advocating
their reunification. Although a man of talents, he remained a lone
leader almost all his life; he had few personal friends. A certain haugh-
tiness was one of his traits; he often stressed his superiority and influence
over others; he was reproached for being self -enamored and self -pre-
occupied. At the height of the revolution he was by far the best of the
Bolshevik orators.

In Petrograd, in 1917, Trotsky's small organization ("Mezh-
raiontsy"), under his influence, stretched out its hand to the Bolsheviks
and began a close cooperation with them. On July 15 [2], 1917,
Trotsky wrote in Pravda :

At present, I think there are no differences between the "United"
[Trotskyites] and the Bolshevik organizations, either in principle or tactics.

This means there are no motives which would justify separate existence
of their organizations.16

The "unification" between Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Trotsky group,
announced at the Bolshevik congress in August 1917, was at the time a
formality. There remained divergent views on issues which did not
involve current tactics, and in the following years these differences were
to become very important.

Trotsky was more international-minded than most of the Bolshevik
leadership; to him the "imminent" world revolution was more of a
reality than to them; the slogan of a "United States of Europe," which
had been discarded by Lenin some time before, was still adhered to by
Trotsky, who saw a union of a revamped United States of America with
a "United States of Europe" into one world socialist commonwealth.
Of course, Trotsky admitted, Marx's expectation of a social revolution
in the West in the 19th century had not materialized; Marx's timing had
proved to be wrong, but —

If Marx was premature in predicting the social revolution, this does not
mean that our predictions, too, will be premature. After all the commo-
tion of war, after fifty years of socialist cultural education, after all that
people have gone through — what conditions could be more favorable for

14 Trotsky, "Nuzhno Nemedlenno Ob"edinyatsya na Dele, Otvet na Zaprosy" (It Is
Necessary to Unite in Practice Immediately, Answer to Inquiries) (July 2 [15],
1917), Sochineniya (Works) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo (State Publish-
ing House), n. d.), vol. Ill, part 1, p. 149.

a social revolution? And if the war, which has forced all peoples to shake
off hypocrisy, falsehood and the tarnish of chauvinism, will not lead Europe
toward the social revolution, this will mean that Europe is destined for eco-
nomic stagnation, that it will perish as a civilized country and will serve
only the curiosity of tourists; the center of revolutionary movements will
switch to America or Japan. . . ,16

The United States of Europe — without monarchy, standing armies and
secret diplomacy — are therefore the most important component part of the
proletarian program of peace. . . .

*******

... we have all reason to hope that during this war there will develop
in the whole of Europe a mighty revolutionary movement. It is obvious
that it will be able to grow successfully and achieve victory only as an all-
European movement. Remaining isolated within national boundaries, it
would be doomed. Our social-patriots are pointing to the dangers to the
Russian revolution presented by German militarism. This danger certainly
exists, but it is not the only danger. British, French, Italian imperialism
is a no less ominous enemy of the Russian revolution than the military
machine of the Hohenzollerns. The salvation of the Russian revolution
lies in extending it over the whole of Europe. . . .

*******

It goes without saying that the United States of Europe will become
only one of two axes of the worldwide organized economy. The other
axis will be the United States of America ....

*******

To perceive the perspectives of the social revolution within a national
framework would mean to become a victim of the same national narrow-
ness which represents the essence of social-patriotism. . . ."

The last sentence contained an implied condemnation of "Socialism in
one country" — as well as the seeds of the future conflict with Stalinism.

3. Socialism and Dictatorship as Immediate Goals

This issue of socialism in Russia occurring without a prior revolution
in the West haunted most of the Bolshevik leaders. At the beginning
of 1917, Lenin, the Marxist and anti-Populist, was adhering to his old
view that backward Russia was not ripe for a social and economic trans-
formation on socialist bases. On these issues Lenin was not always
consistent, often amending his strategy and even his theories in accord

M Trotsky, "Rech na Obshchegorodskoi Konferentsii Ob"edinennoi S.-D. Po Dok-
ladu t. Uritskogo ob Otnoshenii k Vremennomu Pravitelstvu 7 Maya 1917" (Speech
at the All-City [Petrograd] Conference of the United Social-Democrats On the Report
by Comrade Uritsky Regarding the Attitude Toward the Provisional Government)
(May 7 [20], 1917), Sochineniya, vol. Ill, part 1, p. 48.

"Trotsky, "Soedinennye Shtaty Evropy" (The United States of Europe),
Sochineniya, vol. Ill, part 1, pp. 86, 88-90.

with the changing political situation; he frequently followed the temper
of the revolutionary tide. At the start of the century he had viewed the
forthcoming revolution as "bourgeois," in 1905 he accentuated its
"bourgeois-democratic" (meaning peasant) essence, in March 1917 the
revolution was to him still a violent social upheaval without, however,
abolition of the system of private economy. In the following months,
moving more and more to the left, he was still expecting to be prodded
and guided by the West. Interaction of Russian and Western revolu-
tions— Trotsky's "permanent revolution" — was actually (though not in
so many words) accepted by Lenin as the prospect of his November
upheaval.

In the early stage of the revolution Lenin wrote :

The proletariat of Russia, operating in one of the most backward coun-
tries in Europe, surrounded by a vast petty-peasant population, cannot
make its aim the immediate realization of a Socialist transformation.18

Stalin, on the other hand, less a thinker and philosopher than a man
of practice, pushed aside the hard questions concerning advanced and
backward countries. He was the first among the Bolsheviks to proclaim
that Russia might be the first to enter the path of socialism. In August
1 9 1 7 he told the congress of the Bolshevik Party :

Some comrades say that since capitalism is poorly developed in our coun-
try, it would be Utopian to raise the question of a socialist revolution. They
would be right if there were no war, if there were no economic disruption,
if the foundations of the capitalist organization of the national economy
were not shaken. ... It would be rank pedantry to demand that Russia
should "wait" with socialist changes until Europe "begins." That country
"begins" which has the greater opportunities. . . .19

. . . The possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the country that
will lay the road to socialism. No country hitherto has enjoyed such free-
dom in time of war as Russia does, or has attempted to introduce workers'
control of production. Moreover, the base of our revolution is broader
than in Western Europe, where the proletariat stands utterly alone face
to face with the bourgeoisie. . . . We must discard the antiquated idea
that only Europe can show us the way. There is dogmatic Marxism and
creative Marxism. I stand by the latter.20

" "O Tekushchem Momente" ([Resolution] On the Present Situation), adopted at
the Seventh Ail-Russian or "April" Conference of the RSDLP (b) in 1917, KPSS v
Rezolyutsiyakh i Resheniyakh . . ., part 1, p. 351.

18 J. V. Stalin, "Report on the Political Situation," Delivered July 30 [August 12Ji
1917 at the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks), Works (Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1952-55), vol. Ill (1953), pp. 185, 186. The Sixth
Congress was held August 8-16 [July 26-August 3], 1917.

M Stalin, "Reply to Preobrazhensky on Clause 9 of the Resolution 'On the Political
Situation,'" Speech Delivered August 3 [16], 1917 at the Sixth Congress of the
RSDLP (Bolsheviks), Works, vol. Ill (1953), pp. 199, 200.

Other problems of his movement were discussed by Lenin in a small
book written in Finland in the summer of 1917, while he was in hiding
after his arrest had been ordered by the Provisional Government. The
book, "The State and Revolution," has attained a prominent place in
the library of basic works on communism. The most important sub-
jects dealt with were dictatorship, democracy, and the "withering
away" of the state.

All states, including democracies, are organized violence, Lenin said ;
"dictatorship of the proletariat" is likewise organized violence.

. . . the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for class society
in general, not only for the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie,
but for the entire historical period between capitalism and "classless so-
ciety," communism. The forms of the bourgeois state are extremely varied,
but in essence they are all the same: in one way or another, in the last
analysis, all these states are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The transition from capitalism to communism will certainly create a great
variety and abundance of political forms, but in essence there will inevitably
be only one: the dictatorship of the proletariat.21

At this time Lenin did not pretend that dictatorship would be tan-
tamount to political democracy; he honestly defined its eventual role as
power based on armed force :

The doctrine of the class struggle, as applied by Marx to the question of
the state and of the socialist revolution, leads inevitably to the recognition
of the political rule of the proletariat, of its dictatorship, i. e.} of power
shared with none and relying directly upon the armed force of the masses.
The overthrow of the bourgeoisie can be achieved only by the proletariat
becoming transformed into the ruling class, capable of crushing the inevi-
table and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and of organising all the
toiling and exploited masses for the new economic order.

The proletariat needs state power, the centralised organisation of force,
the organisation of violence, for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the
exploiters and for the purpose of leading the great mass of the population —
the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the semi-proletarians — in the work of
organising socialist economy.22

Speaking of the state, Lenin had in mind the state machinery only — ■
police, army, officialdom ; the party of a proletarian revolution, he said,
cannot take over and reform the existing state; it must break it up, de-
stroy it completely, and replace it by a new one :

. . . Revolution means that the proletariat will destroy the "administra-
tive apparatus" and the whole state machine, and substitute for it a new one
consisting of the armed workers. . . .

■ Lenin, "The State and Revolution" (August-September 1917), Selected Works
(New York: International Publishers, 1943), vol. VII, p. 34.
"Ibid., p. 26.

68491 O-61-vol. II— 4

The point is not whether the "Ministries" will remain, or whether "com-
missions of specialists" or other kinds of institutions will be set up; this is
quite unimportant. The point is whether the old state machine (connected
by thousands of threads with the bourgeoisie and completely saturated with
routine and inertia) shall remain, or be destroyed and superseded by a new
one. Revolution must not mean that the new class will command, govern
with the aid of the old state machine, but that this class will smash this
machine and command, govern with the aid of a new machine.28

To Lenin the state was an evil; but, in contrast to the anarchists, he
insisted on its being conquered, taken over, and used by the victorious
class (meaning the Communist Party) to establish the socialist type of
society.

. . . Under socialism much of the "primitive" democracy will inevitably
be revived, since, for the first time in the history of civilised society, the
mass of the population will rise to independent participation, not only in
voting and elections, but also in the everyday administration of affairs.
Under socialism, all will take part in the work of government in turn and
will soon become accustomed to no one governing.24

We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state i.e., all organised
and systematic violence, all use of violence against man in general. We
do not expect the advent of an order of society in which the principle of
the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. But
in striving for socialism we are convinced that it will develop into com-
munism and, hence, that the need for violence against people in general,
the need for the subjection of one man to another, and of one section of the
population to another, will vanish, since people will become accustomed to
observing the elementary conditions of social life without force and without
subordination.26

Only at a later stage will the state begin to wither away :

Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists has been
completely broken, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are
no classes (i.e., when there is no difference between the members of so-
ciety as regards their relation to the social means of production) , only then
does "the state . . . cease to exist," and it "becomes possible to speak of
freedom." Only then will really complete democracy, democracy without
any exceptions, be possible and be realised. And only then will democracy
itself begin to ivither away owing to the simple fact that, freed from capi-
talist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities and infamies
of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to
observing the elementary rules of social life that have been known for cen-
turies and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims;
they will become accustomed to observing them without force, without com-

Ibid., pp. 106, 107.
Ibid., p. 108.
Ibid., p. 75.

pulsion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for compul-
sion which is called the state.

The expression "the state withers away" is very well chosen, for it indi-
cates both the gradual and the spontaneous nature of the process. Only
habit can, and undoubtedly will, have such an effect; for we see around
us millions of times how readily people become accustomed to observing the
necessary rules of social life if there is no exploitation, if there is nothing
that causes indignation, that calls forth protest and revolt and has to be
suppressed.26

4. The Unstable Regime

In this initial period of the revolution the Bolsheviks were a minor,
almost an insignificant, party. At the first All-Russian Congress of the
Peasants' Soviets which convened in May, Lenin's group mustered
fourteen delegates out of a total of 1115; the great majority belonged
to the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The congress supported the Provisional
Government, though not without reservations.

These were months of growing unrest and accelerated political crises.
The situation at the front was deteriorating, economic conditions
worsened. Bolshevism, on the rise, bitterly criticized the foreign policy
of the government, in particular its adherence to the former secret agree-
ments with Russia's allies about the annexation of certain German,
Austrian, and Turkish territories to Russia ; though the text of the agree-
ments remained unknown, the war was viewed by the extreme left as
"predatory" and "annexationist," and the antiwar propaganda was
highly successful.

The first major crisis developed with the publication on May 3 [April
20] of Foreign Minister Milyukov's note to the Allies emphasizing Russia's
determination to carry on the war and fulfill its obligations to the Allies.
Soldiers, sailors, and workers marched in demonstrative protest under
banners bearing such inscriptions as "Down with Milyukov," "Down with
the Provisional Government," and "Down with the War." . . . Guchkov,
the Minister of War, and Milyukov resigned from the cabinet. After pro-
tracted negotiations with the leaders of the Soviet in the course of which
the Executive Committee first pronounced against participation in the cabi-
net and then reversed itself, Prince Lvov announced a new cabinet on
May 18. . . .27

While the moderate ministers quit, six socialists entered the cabinet,
among them Viktor Chernov, the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionaries,
and Irakli Tseretelli, a Menshevik leader. Alexander Kerensky now
served as Minister of War. Soon afterwards, on July 25, the moderate
Prince Lvov was replaced as premier by Kerensky.

29 Ibid., pp. 81,82.

37 Merle Fainsod, How Russia Js Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1953), pp. 66,67.

In June the Bolsheviks achieved a majority in the powerful Petrograd
Soviet, although they still remained in a minority in the provinces.

... At the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which met in Petrograd
on June 16 [3], the Bolsheviks were still in a definite minority. Of the 777
delegates who declared their political affiliations, 285 were SR's, 248
Mensheviks, 105 Bolsheviks, and 32 Menshevik-Internationalists. . . .

. . . the Bolshevik Party continued to gather its forces and strengthen
its organization.28

The attempt of the government to resume the offensive on the Western
front ended in a military debacle which promptly shattered its stability.

On July 16-17 [3-4] the Bolsheviks staged another demonstration —
a step toward possible seizure of power — which ended in clashes and
casualties. The government countered by ordering the arrest of a num-
ber of Bolshevik leaders, among them Lenin and Trotsky. For several
weeks there was a growing wave of anti-Bolshevik sentiment which cul-
minated in the attempt of General Lavr Kornilov to put down the Bol-
shevik movement and abolish the Soviets by military force. The at-
tempt, to which non-Bolshevik parties offered opposition, failed, and
resistance to the growing subversive forces petered out. Kornilov's
movement was also followed by an outbreak of lawlessness and brutal
excesses against army officers, who in many places were beaten up, shot,
drowned. In a report on events that occurred in Viborg, for example,
the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets stated :

. . . The picture of the lynching was dreadful. First three generals and
a colonel, just arrested by the combined Executive Committee and the Army
Corps Committee, were dragged from the guardhouse, thrown off the bridge,
and shot in the water. Then the regiments took the law into their own
hands. The troops brought out the commanders and some of the other
officers, beat them, threw them into the river, and beat them again in the
water. About eleven officers were killed in this manner. The exact num-
ber has not yet been established, since some of the officers fled. The mur-
ders went on till night.29

In these last few months before the upheaval, the Bolshevik party,
growing in numbers, employed the strategy of defeatism in its crassest
form : whatever was bad for the government was approved by the Lenin-
Trotsky movement. Disintegration in the army, though obviously in
the interests of Germany, was fostered by the propaganda of fraterniza-
tion and the peace slogans. Strikes, including strikes in war industries,
were organized. Despite the Bolsheviks' own inclination toward strict
centralism, national movements for separation from Russia, especially

Ibid., p. 68. (Note: The All-Russian Congress of Soviets was a conference of
representatives from all the local Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Soviets.)
29 As quoted in David Shub, Lenin (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1948), p. 227.

in the Ukraine and Finland, were supported because such movements
were weakening the government. On the latter question Lenin wrote :

Why should we, Great-Russians, who have been oppressing a greater
number of nations than any other people, why should we repudiate the right
of separation for Poland, the Ukraine, Finland? . . .

*******

... If Finland, if Poland, if the Ukraine break away from Russia, it is
nothing terrible. Wherein is it bad? One who says so, is a chauvinist.
One must be insane to continue the policy of Tsar Nicholas. Norway has
separated from Sweden. . . .80

In his projected new program for his party (drafted in May 1917)
Lenin advocated :

9. The right of all nationalities which are now part of the Russian state
freely to separate and to form independent states. The republic of the Rus-
sian people should draw to itself other peoples or nationalities not through
violence, but through voluntary and mutual agreement to build a common
state. The common aims and brotherly union of the workers of all coun-
tries are incompatible with either direct or indirect violence practiced upon
other nationalities.*1

In newspaper articles and in a booklet entitled "The Political Parties
in Russia and the Tasks of the Proletariat," Lenin put his policy in the
form of questions and answers:

[Q:] . . . Does the State need a police of the usual type and a standing
Army?

*******

[A:] . . . Absolutely unnecessary. Immediately and unconditionally in-
troduce universal arming of the people, merge them with the militia and the
army. Capitalists must pay the workers for days of service in the militia.
*****->:*

[Q:] . . . Must officers be elected by the soldiers?
*******

[A:] . . . Not only must they be elected, but every step of every officer
and general must be subject to control by special soldiers' committees.

*******
[Q:] . . . Are arbitrary removals of superiors by the soldiers desirable?

*******

[A:] . . . They are in every respect useful and indispensable. The
soldiers will obey only superiors of their own choice; they can respect no
others.

*******

30 Lenin, "Speech on the National Question," delivered May 12 [April 30], 1917,
at the Seventh All-Russian or "April" Conference of the RSDLP, Collected Works,
vol. XX (1929), pp. 311,313.

81 Lenin, "Materials Relating -to the Revision of the Party Program" (1917), Col-
lected Works, vol. XX (1929), p. 338.

[Q:] . . . In favor of or against annexations?

*******
[A:] . . . Against annexations. Any promise of a capitalist government
to renounce annexations is sheer fraud.

*******
[Q:] . . . Shall the peasants at once take all the land of the landowners?

*******
[A:] . . . All the land must be taken at once. Order must be strictly
maintained by the Soviets of Peasants' Deputies.

*******
[Q:] . . . Must fraternisation between soldiers of the warring countries,
at the front, be encouraged?

*******
[A:] . . . Yes, it is good and indispensable. It is absolutely necessary in
all warring countries to encourage all attempts at fraternisation between the
soldiers of both warring groups.32

5. Staging the Upheaval

During the summer and fall of 1917 the political situation continued
to deteriorate. Food was scarce, discipline weakened, the government's
authority decreased markedly; the army, torn between loyalty to the
government and sympathy with the peace propaganda, was becoming
unreliable both at the fronts and at home.

The July street demonstrations, which were made up in the main of
industrial workers, had proved too weak to shatter the government's
position. Since then, the sizable and well-armed local garrison of Petro-
grad was coming over more and more to the Bolshevik side ; to them, the
Bolshevist "peace policy" meant all the difference between fighting and
waiting, between possible death and relatively quiet life in the capital.
Every hint on the part of the government that the garrison might be
shipped out of Petrograd aroused "revolutionary" sentiments which were
strengthened by the Bolshevik slogans. Trotsky wrote later :

. . . The first Provisional Government . . . gave an obligation not to
disarm and not to remove from Petrograd those military units which had
taken part in the February [March] overturn.83

A few regiments were sent to the front in July-August, but :

. . . On September 8th [21] the soldiers' section of the Soviet put forward
a demand that the regiments transferred to the front in connection with the
July events be returned to Petrograd. This while the members of the

"Lenin, "Political Parties in Russia and the Tasks of the Proletariat" (July 1917),
Collected Works, vol. XX (1929), pp. 161-167.

Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, Max Eastman, tr. (Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press, 1932) , vol. Ill, p. 88,

Coalition were tearing their hair about how to get rid of the remaining
regiments.

*******

The soldiers approached the question more brusquely. Take the offen-
sive at the front now, in the middle of autumn? Reconcile themselves to a
new winter campaign? No, they simply had no room in their heads for
that idea. The patriotic press immediately opened fire on the garrison:
the Petrograd regiments, grown fat in idleness, are betraying the front. The
workers took the side of the soldiers. The Putilov men were the first to
protest against the transfer of the regiments. . . .

*******

Two years after the events described above, the author of this book
[Trotsky] wrote in an article dedicated to the October revolution : "As soon
as the order for the removal of the troops was communicated by Head-
quarters to the Executive Committee of the Petrograd soviet ... it be-
came clear that this question in its further development would have deci-
sive political significance." The idea of an insurrection began to take form
from that moment.3*

Since the failure of General Kornilov in his attempt to suppress the
defeatists movements, the tide had turned and the chances of a success-
ful Bolshevik upheaval improved. In one after another of the local
Soviets, among them the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, the Bolsheviks
gained majorities; Trotsky was elected chairman of the powerful
Petrograd Soviet. Sensing the favorable turn of events, Lenin began, in
early September, to prod his Central Committee to make preparations
for an uprising. Though in hiding and isolated, he exerted strong pres-
sure and great influence upon his lieutenants in the capital. In the prep-
aration for the uprising he displayed skill, energy, and unscrupulousness.
In a letter to the Central Committee of his party Lenin wrote, from
Finland, on September 25 [12], 1917:

Having obtained a majority in the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers'
Deputies of both capitals, the Bolsheviks can, and must, take over the power
of government.

They can do so because the active majority of the revolutionary elements
of the people of both capitals is large enough to carry the masses, to over-
come the resistance of the adversary, to smash him and to conquer power
and retain it. For, by immediately proposing a democratic peace, by im-
mediately giving the land to the peasants and by re-establishing the demo-
cratic institutions and liberties which have been mangled and shattered by
Kerensky, the Bolsheviks will create a government which nobody will be
able to overthrow.36

84 Ibid., pp. 89, 90, 92.

** Lenin, "The Bolsheviks Must Assume Power," Letter to the Central Committee
and to the Petrograd and Moscow Committees of the Russian Social-Democratic
Labor Party (September 1917), Selected Works (Moscow: Co-operative Publishing
Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1935), vol. VI, p. 215.

But who should organize the uprising? The Central and local com-
mittees of his party would be arrested before the uprising started. When
Bolshevik doubters argued that there was no machinery for an uprising,
Lenin answered :

There is no apparatus? There is an apparatus: the Soviets and the
democratic organisations. The international situation just now, on the eve
of the conclusion of a separate peace between the British and the Germans,
is in our favour. If we propose peace to the nations now we shall win.

Power must be assumed in Moscow and in Petrograd at once (it does
not matter which begins; even Moscow may begin) ; we shall win absolutely
and unquestionably.™

But what if Germany should refuse to sign an armistice and should con-
tinue its offensive? Whatever his real opinion of the situation, Lenin
tried to convince his party that a Bolshevik Russia would be better able to
fight Germany than a tsarist or Kerensky government :

... if our proposal for peace is rejected, if we do not secure even an
armistice, then we shall become "defencists," we shall place ourselves at the
head of the war parties, we shall be the "war party" par excellence, and we
shall fight the war in a truly revolutionary manner. We shall take all the
bread and shoes away from the capitalists. We shall leave them only
crusts, we shall dress them in bast shoes. We shall send all the bread and
shoes to the front.

And we shall save Petrograd.

The resources, both material and spiritual, for a truly revolutionary war
in Russia are still immense; the chances are a hundred to one that the
Germans will grant us at least an armistice. And to secure an armistice
now would in itself mean beating the whole world.

*******

... By immediately proposing a peace without annexations, by break-
ing immediately with the Allied imperialists and with all imperialists, either
we shall immediately obtain an armistice, or the entire revolutionary pro-
letariat will rally to the defence of the country, and a truly just, truly revo-
lutionary war will then be waged by the revolutionary democracy under the
leadership of the proletariat.37

In taking a course toward an armed uprising and seizure of power,
Lenin wanted his party to relinquish all normal activity in the regular
state agencies, for example in the national conferences, assemblies, and
the like which the weakening government was arranging in an attempt
to find support for its policies. Against Lenin's advice, however, the
Central Committee decided to participate in one of these conferences,
the "Democratic Conference", which opened in Petrograd on September

"Ibid., p. 217.

"Lenin, "Marxism and Insurrection," Letter to the Central Committee of the
Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (September 26-27 [13-14], 1917). Selected
Works ( 1935 ed.), vol. VI, pp. 221-223.

27. Lenin, having advocated a "boycott", was infuriated. And he
demanded that the Bolsheviks admit their mistake and boycott the
Council of the Republic, a consultative body organized in October by
the Provisional Government to function until elections could be held
creating a Constituent Assembly :

We should have boycotted the Democratic Conference; we all made a
mistake in not doing so. . . .

We must boycott the Pre-parliament [the Council of the Republic]. We
must turn to the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, to
the trade unions, to the masses in general. We must call upon them to fight.
It is to them we must issue the correct and definite slogan: Disperse
Kerensky's Bonapartist gang and his spurious Pre-parliament, this Tseretelli-
Bulygin Duma. . . ."

6. Lenin's Offensive

The Bolshevik party was, however, divided by profound divergencies;
the idea of seizing power by force was rejected by so many leaders that it
is hard to say whether the majority was really on Lenin's side. Among
the best-known leaders of that era only the new adept of bolshevism,
Trotsky, and the less important Stalin sided with Lenin ; top leaders like
Zinoviev and Kamenev consistently fought Lenin's strategy and tactics,
and among the second tier of leaders, Kalinin, Rykov, Milyutin, Lashe-
vich, Frunze, Podvoiski, Nevski, Chudnovski, Tomski, Volodarski,
and many others likewise opposed him.

... In public discussion the opponents of insurrection repeated the same
arguments as those of Zinoviev and Kamenev. "But in private arguments,"
writes Kisselev [an old worker-Bolshevik], "the polemic took a more acute
and candid form, and here they went so far as to say that 'Lenin is a crazy
man; he is pushing the working-class to certain ruin. From this armed in-
surrection we will get nothing; they will shatter us, exterminate the party
and the working class, and that will postpone the revolution for years and
years, etc' " 39

The months of September and October were filled with this internal
struggle. Zinoviev and Kamenev wrote in an address to the party :

Before history, before the international proletariat, before the Russian
revolution and the Russian working-class, we have no right to stake the whole
future at the present moment upon the card of armed insurrection.40

Kamenev, in a declaration to a non-Bolshevik Russian newspaper,
stated :

. . . Not only Zinoviev and I, but also a number of practical com-
rades, think that to take the initiative in an armed insurrection at the present

*" Lenin, "From a Publicist's Diary, The Mistakes of Our Party" (Entries of October
6, 7 [September 23, 24], 1917), Selected Works (1935 ed.), vol. VI, p. 238.
w Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, vol. Ill, p. 152.
" Ibid., pp. 153, 154.

moment, with the given correlation of social forces, independently of and
several days before the Congress of Soviets, is an inadmissible step ruinous
to the proletariat and the revolution. ... To stake everything ... on the
card of insurrection in the coming days would be an act of despair. And
our party is too strong, it has too great a future before it, to take such a
step. . . .4I

Those in his party who opposed Lenin referred to Marx and Marxism,
pointed to the backwardness of Russia, stressed the numerical inferiority
of the Bolshevik party and the small size of the working class. Lenin
replied :

There is not the slightest doubt of a vacillation among the leaders of our
Party, vacillation which may become fatal; for the struggle is developing,
and, under certain conditions, at a certain moment, vacillation may be
fatal to the cause. We must mobilise all our forces in the struggle before
it is too late; we must insist that the party of the revolutionary proletariat
conduct a correct line.

Not all is well among the "parliamentary" leaders of our Party; more at-
tention must be paid to them, more vigilance must be exercised over diem
by the workers; the sphere of competence of parliamentary fractions must
be more rigidly defined.

The mistake committed by our Party is obvious. The fighting party of
the advanced class is not afraid of mistakes. The danger is when one per-
sists in one's mistake, when false pride prevents recognition of one's mistake
and its correction.42

A few days later Lenin again took the offensive against the less ex-
treme part of the leadership.

Doubt is out of the question. We are on the threshold of a world pro-
letarian revolution. And since we, the Russian Bolsheviks, alone of all the
proletarian internationalists of the world, enjoy a comparatively large meas-
ure of freedom, since we have a legal party and a score or so of papers,
since we have the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of the capitals
on our side, and since we have the support of a majority of the masses of
the people in a time of revolution, to us indeed may the saying be applied:
to whom much has been given, of him much shall be demanded.

*******

What, then, is to be done? We must aussprechen was ist, state the facts,
admit the truth that there is a tendency, or an opinion, in our Central Com-
mittee and among the leaders of our Party which favours waiting for the
Congress of Soviets, and is opposed to the immediate seizure of power and
an immediate insurrection. That tendency, or opinion, must be overcome.

Otherwise the Bolsheviks will cover themselves with eternal shame and
destroy themselves as a party.

n Ibid., p. 161.

41 Lenin, "From a Publicist's Diary, The Mistakes of Our Party" (October 7 [Sep-
tember 24], 1917), Selected Works (1935 ed.), vol. VI, p. 239.

For to miss such a moment and to "wait" for the Congress of Soviets
would be utter idiocy, or sheer treachery.

It would be sheer treachery towards the German workers. Are we to
wait until their revolution begins? 43

Lenin proceeded to use against his Bolshevik opponents a weapon that
would have had little effect in any other party but which proved to be of
decisive force in the>unique political formation of the Bolshevik party.
In an effort to subdue everybody, he handed in his resignation to the
Central Committee.

In view of the fact that the Central Committee has even left unanswered
the persistent demands I have been making for such a policy ever since the
beginning of the Democratic Conference, in view of the fact that the central
organ is deleting from my articles all references to such glaring errors on the
part of the Bolsheviks as the shameful decision to participate in the Pre-
parliament, the presentation of seats to the Mensheviks in the presidium of
the Soviet, etc., etc. — I am Compelled to regard this as a "subtle" hint of
the unwillingness of the Central Committee even to consider this question,
a subtle hint that I should keep my mouth shut, and as^ proposal for me
to retire.

I am compelled to tender my resignation from the Central Committee,
which I hereby do, reserving for myself the freedom to agitate among the
rank and file of the Party and at the Party Congress.44

On October 14[1], Lenin wrote an article in which he tried to convince
the vacillating comrades that the Bolshevik party, a microscopic quantity
a few months before, would be able to retain state power in its hands.
This was to serve as an answer to those critical and thinking minds
among the Bolsheviks who had been educated in the belief that a "mass"
party, a much larger socialist party, was needed if the social and eco-
nomic system of the vastcountry was to be transformed.

Russia after the 1905 Revolution was ruled by 130,000 landlords. They
ruled by the aid of unremitting violence perpetrated on 150,000,000 people,
by subjecting them to endless humiliation, and by condemning the vast ma-
jority to inhuman toil and to semi-starvation.

And yet we are told that Russia cannot be governed by the 240,000 mem-
bers of the Bolshevik Party, governing in the interests of the poor and against
the rich. These 240,000 already have the support of not less than 1,000,000
votes of the adult population, for that is the proportion between the number
of members of the Party and the number of votes cast for it, as established
both by the experience of Europe and by the experience of Russia, as, for
instance, in the August elections to the Petrograd. Duma. And here we
already have a "state apparatus" of one million persons, devoted to the

48 Lenin, "The Crisis Has Matured" (October 12 [September 29], 1917), Selected
Works (1935 ed.), vol. VI, pp. 225, 230.
44 Ibid., p. 232.

socialist state not for the sake of a fat sum every twentieth of the month, but
for the sake of an ideal.

Moreover, we have a magic means of increasing our state apparatus
tenfold at one stroke, such as no capitalist state possessed or could ever
hope to possess. This magic means is to get the toilers, the poor, to share in
the day-to-day work of governing the state.45

"Delay is criminal," Lenin said the same day in a letter to his Central
Committee. Some of his comrades wanted to wait until the Second Con-
gress of Soviets, expected to convene about November 4 [October 20],
and then in the name of the congress to start the seizure of power.
Lenin, the shrewd strategist, having no faith in a large congress, pre-
ferred to have it face a fait accompli:

To "wait" under such conditions is a crime.

The Bolsheviks have no right to wait for the Congress of Soviets; they
must take power immediately. Thus they will save both the world revolu-
tion (for otherwise there is the danger of an agreement between the im-
perialists of all countries who, after the shooting in Germany, will be more
agreeable to each other and will unite against us) and the Russian revolu-
tion (else a wave of real anarchy may become stronger than we are) : thus
they will also save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people engaged in
the war.

To hesitate is a crime. To wait for the Congress of Soviets means to play
a childish game of formality, a shameful game of formality; it means to
betray the revolution.46

On October 21 [8], Lenin wrote:

Our three main forces — the navy, the workers and the army units — must
be so combined as to occupy without fail and to hold at the cost of any
sacrifice: (a) the telephone exchange; (b) the telegraph office; (c) the
railway stations; (d) above all, the bridges.

The most determined elements (our "storm troops" and young workers,
as well as the best of the sailors) must be formed into small detachments to
occupy all the more important points and to take part everywhere in all
decisive operations, for example:

To encircle arid cut off Petrograd; to seize it by a combined attack of the
navy, the workers, and the troops — a task which requires art and triple
audacity.47

Lenin's "resignation" was not taken in earnest by either himself or
his colleagues. (He actually continued to be both a member and leader

"Lenin, "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?" (October 14 [1], 1917),
Selected Works ( 1935 ed.), vol. VI, pp. 271, 272.

" Lenin, "Letter to the Central Committee, Moscow Committee, Petrograd Com-
mittee, and the Bolshevik Members of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets" (October
1917), Lenin and Stalin, The Russian Revolution (New York: International Pub-
lishers, 1938), pp. 204, 205.

4T Lenin, "Advice of an Onlooker" (October 21 [8], 1917), Lenin and Stalin, The
Russian Revolution, pp. 207, 208.

of the Central Committee. ) Impatient and irritated, he appeared at the
meeting of the Central Committee on October 23 [10] :

"Twelve of the twenty-one members of the Central Committee were pres-
ent. Lenin came in wig and spectacles without a beard. The session
lasted about ten hours— deep into the night. ... it was a question of
seizing the power in the former empire of the tzars.48

In his speech Lenin stressed the fact that a certain indifference toward
the uprising had recently become apparent :

. . . this [indifference] is inadmissible, if we earnestly raise the slogan of
seizure of power by the Soviets. It is, therefore, high time to turn attention
to the technical side of the question. Much time has obviously been lost.

Nevertheless, the question is very urgent and the decisive moment is
near.

The international situation is such that we must take the initiative.
*******

To wait for the Constituent Assembly, which will obviously not be for
us, is senseless, because it would make our task more complex.49

He castigated Zinoviev and Kamenev in the sharpest terms because
they had publicly (in a non-Bolshevik newspaper) disclosed the Bolshevik
schemes. To him, Zinoviev and Kamenev were deserters.

I should consider it disgraceful on my part if I were to hesitate to con-
demn these former comrades because of my former close relations with
them. I declare outright that I no longer consider either of them com-
rades and that I will fight with all my might, both in the Central Com-
mittee and at the Congress, to secure their expulsion from the Party.
*******

Let Messrs. Zinoviev and Kamenev found their own party from the
dozens of disoriented people, or from the candidates to the Constituent As-
sembly. The workers will not join such a party. . . .*°

Lenin was supported by Trotsky and Stalin. Stalin said :

Here are two lines . . . one is headed for the victory of the revolution
and leans on Europe: the other does not believe in the revolution and
counts only on being an opposition. The Petrograd Soviet has already
taken its stand on the road to insurrection by refusing to sanction the re-
moval of the armies.81

** Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, vol. Ill, p. 146.

• Lenin, "Meeting of the Central Committee of the R.S.-D.L.P." (October 23 [10],
1917), Excerpts from the Minutes, Lenin and Stalin, The Russian Revolution, po.
214,215.

M Lenin, "A Letter to the Members of the Bolshevik Party" (October 31 [18], 1917),
Selected Works (1935 ed.), vol. VI, p. 326.

51 As quoted in Edward Hallctt Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 (Lon-
don: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1950), vol. I, p. 96.

Lenin had a majority in this fateful meeting of the Central Commit-
tee, which actually ended with a decision in favor of the uprising.

The resolution, written hastily by Lenin with the gnawed end of a pencil
on a sheet of paper from a child's note-book ruled in squares, was very
unsymmetrical in architecture, but nevertheless gave firm support to the
course towards insurrection. "The Central Committee recognizes that both
the international situation of the Russian revolution (the insurrection in
the German fleet, as the extreme manifestation of the growth throughout
Europe of a world-wide socialist revolution, and also the threat of a peace
between the imperialists with the aim of strangling the revolution in Rus-
sia)— and the military situation (the indubitable decision of the Russian
bourgeoisie and Kerensky and Co. to surrender Petersburg to the Ger-
mans)— all this in connection with the peasant insurrection and the swing of
popular confidence to our party (the election in Moscow), and finally the
obvious preparation of a second Kornilov attack (the withdrawal of troops
from Petersburg, the importation of Cossacks into Petersburg, the surround-
ing of Minsk with Cossacks, etc.) — all this places armed insurrection on the
order of the day. Thus recognizing that the armed insurrection is inevitable
and fully ripe, the Central Committee recommends to all organizations of
the party that they be guided by this, and from this point of view consider
and decide all practical questions. . . ." 62

A remarkable thing here as characterizing both the moment and the
author is the very order in which the conditions of the insurrection are
enumerated. First comes the ripening of the world revolution; the insurrec-
tion in Russia is regarded only as the link in a general chain. That was
Lenin's invariable starting-point, his major premise: he could not reason
otherwise.'3

At this same session of the Central Committee the first "Politburo" was
elected. Among its seven members were not only Lenin, Trotsky, and
Stalin, but also the two "deviationists," Zinoviev and Kamenev.

7. The November Upheaval

With Lenin restricted in his activity because he still feared arrest, the
main task of organizing the insurrection fell upon Trotsky. Between
the 22d [9th] and 26th [13th] of October the "Military Revolutionary
Committee of the Petrograd Soviet" was elected and its election publicly
announced; its task was the seizure of power. The Committee con-
sisted of:

. . . the presidiums of the Soviet and of the soldiers' section, representatives
of the fleet, of the regional committee of Finland, of the railroad unions, of
the factory committees, the trade unions, the party military organizations,
the Red Guard, etc.64

"Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, vol. III. pp. 148, 149.
M/Ju<f.,p. 149.
64 Ibid., pp. 93, 94.

With these large bodies as members, the Military Revolutionary Com-
mittee embraced people from various political groups. "In essence,
however, the Committee, whose president was Trotsky, and its chief
workers Podvoiski, Antonov-Ovseenko, Lashevich, Sadovski, and Mek-
honoshin, relied exclusively upon Bolsheviks." M Trotsky played the
leading role. In the absence of Lenin and with Zinoviev and Kamenev
vacillating, the sole organizer of the Soviet seizure of power was the de-
voted partisan of the worldwide "permanent revolution." His eventual
antagonist and executioner, Stalin, wrote, on the first anniversary of the
November upheaval :

All the work of practical organization of the uprising was carried out
under the direct leadership of Trotsky, chairman of the Petrograd Soviet.
It can be said with certainty that, as regards the garrison's rapid going-
over to the Soviet and the skilful organization of the work of the Military
Revolutionary Committee, the Party is above all and in the main indebted to
Comrade Trotsky.66

The headquarters of the Military Revolutionary Committee was the
large old Smolny Institute (before the revolution it had been an educa-
tional institution for girls; in August 1917 it was taken over by the All-
Russian Central Executive Committee — VTsIK 67 — and the Petrograd
Soviet as the site of their offices and meetings) ; in October-November all
Soviet orders and instructions of a military and political character ema-
nated from the Smolny. The well-guarded rooms of the Bolshevik faction
of the Soviet were the actual center of the operations.

On November 3 [October 21] the Soldiers' Committee of the Petro-
grad garrison convened a meeting which set in motion the upheaval of
November 7 [October 25]. Following Trotsky's address, the meeting
decided that it would follow only the instructions of the Military Revolu-
tionary Committee; thus the entire military force assigned to defend the
(government, and kept in the capital for that purpose, resolved to recog-
nize the Bolshevik-controlled Soviet as its sole authority:

In essence the overturn took place at the moment when the Petersburg
garrison, which was supposed to be the real support of the Provisional Gov-
ernment, recognized the Soviet as its supreme authority and the Military
Revolutionary Committee as its immediate superior. . . .

* * * * * * *

The significance of this occurrence of October 21 [November 3] was not
only not apparent to the man in the street and the outside observer; it was
not even clear to the leaders of the upheaval. . . .

■76irf.Jpp.l09,110.

M Stalin, in Pravda, November 6, 1918.

87 The VTsIK was the Central Executive Committee elected by the Congress of So-
viets and assigned to act on its behalf until the next Congress. Subsequently in the
Soviet constitutions (1918-36) the Central Exectuive Committee served as the supreme
power in the Soviet land. Until 1924 it was the CEC of the All -Russian Federative
Soviet Republic; from 1924 on it was the CEC of the USSR (All-Union Soviet
Republic).

. . . neither Smolny, nor Zimnii [the Winter Palace, headquarters of the
Provisional Government] could ever realize the full significance of the event.
It was obscured by the historical position of the Soviet in the revolution.88

On November 6 [October 24] the government, in an attempt to
take the offensive against the expected insurrection, tried to close down
certain Bolshevik press organs and suppress the Military Revolutionary
Committee. It was much too late; the government was impotent.
Trotsky's Committee easily went over to the counterattack, and the next
day all power was in its hands. "A piece of official sealing-wax on the
door of the Bolshevik editorial-rooms — as a military measure that is not
much. But what a superb signal for battle !" M

. . . The battle rapidly extended to bridges, railway stations, post offices,
and other strategic points; all were occupied without a shot by the troops
under Trotsky's command. The only real fight developed in the course of
the assault of the insurgents upon the Winter Palace. . . .*°

Early on November 7 [October 25] the telephone, post, and telegraph
offices, as well as the State Bank, were occupied, and the small military
force still loyal to the regime was decimated and demoralized. The Mili-
tary Revolutionary Committee announced the seizure of power even
before it had been completed. It issued the following statement (written
by Lenin ) :

The Provisional Government is deposed. All state authority has passed
into the hands of the organs of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and
Soldiers' Deputies — the Military Revolutionary Committee — standing at
the head of the Petrograd proletariat and the garrison.

The cause for which the people has struggled: immediate offer of a
democratic peace, abolition of the landlords' ownership of the land, labor
control of industry, and creation of a Soviet form of government, are now
all guaranteed.

Long live the revolution of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants! fll

All attention was focused on the Winter Palace, where the government
had its headquarters, and on the Smolny, where an All-Russian Con-
gress of Soviets was to assemble and take over the state power. The
Provisional Government, assembled in the Palace, was guarded by a
small military force of disoriented and wavering Cadets, Cossacks, and
other units. Trotsky's aides prepared an elaborate military operation to
capture and, if necessary, destroy the Winter Palace. Naval units,

"Nikolai Sukhanov, Zapiski o Revolyutsii (Notes on the Revolution) (Berlin:
Grzhebin, 1923), vol. VII, pp. 94, 96.

' Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, vol. Ill, pp. 207, 208.

80 1. Deutscher, Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 166.

n Lenin, "K Grazhdanam Rossii" (To the Citizens of Russia) (October 25
[November 7], 1917), Sochineniya (Works) (4th ed.; Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Litcratury (State Publishing House for Political Literature),
1941-58), vol. XXVI (1949), p. 207.

among them the cruiser Aurora, entered the Neva and pointed their
guns at the Palace; the artillery of the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul
was to join in the operation. There was no real resistance, however, to
the onslaught: Kerensky himself departed unobserved to look for loyal
military forces stationed in Gatchina (30 miles from Petrograd) or at
the front; in his absence the members of his government recognized that
resistance was futile. The Aurora fired only one shot.

A Bolshevik detachment with Antonov-Ovseenko at the head ap-
proached the room where the members of the Provisional Government
were sitting:

Suddenly [Minister Malyantovich related later] a noise arose somewhere
and began to grow, spread, and roll ever nearer. And in its multitude of
sounds, fused into a single powerful wave, we immediately sensed some-
thing special, unlike the previous noises — something final and decisive. It
suddenly became clear that the end was coming. . . . The noise rose,
swelled, and rapidly swept toward us in a broad wave. . . . And poured
into our hearts unbearable anxiety, like a gust of poisoned air. ... It was
clear : this is the onslaught, we are being taken by storm. . . .

*******

The room was jammed with soldiers, sailors, Red Guards, some carrying
several weapons — a rifle, two revolvers, a sword, two machine-gun ribbons.

When it was learned that Kerensky had fled, vile oaths were heard from
the crowd. Some of the men shouted, inciting the rest to violence. . . .
*******

Antonov raised his head and shouted sharply:

"Comrades, keep calm! All members of the Provisional Government are
arrested. They will be imprisoned in the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.
I'll permit no violence. Conduct yourself calmly. Maintain order!
Power is now in your hands. You must maintain order! . . ." 62

There was little bloodshed on this day in Petrograd. Kerensky, hav-
ing approached General Krasnov as well as loyal "front commanders,"
found no real military force to march on the capital. In Moscow, on
the contrary, the struggle was long and severe; the Soviet victory,
achieved only after a whole week of street fighting, had cost hundreds
of lives.

The Second Congress of Soviets opened in the Smolny late that eve-
ning, when the victory of the insurrection was already apparent. To
Lenin and Trotsky the congress represented the highest of triumphs.
Of the 650 delegates, about 390 supported the Bolsheviks; the other two
socialist parties — the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks —
deeply split, offered no strong opposition. A sizable group of "Left

* P. Malyantovich, "V Zimnem Dvortse 25-26-go Oktyabrya, 1917 goda" (In the
Winter Palace October 25-26 [Nov. 7-8], 1917), as quoted in Shub, op. cit., pp. 248,
250.

68491 O-61-vol. II— 5

Socialist-Revolutionaries" had split from the party's main body; though
opposing the Bolsheviks, they entered a path of collaboration and, as we
shall see, later joined the Soviet government as a second party. Promi-
nent among the leaders of this group were Maria Spiridonova, Boris
Kamkov, Isaak Steinberg, and Mark Nathanson-Bobrov. The Men-
sheviks and the right Socialist-Revolutionaries left the Soviet congress,
which from then on was entirely dominated by Lenin and his party.

After a long period of hiding, Lenin on this day reappeared in public.
He addressed the congress and was greeted by an ovation. In a "Proc-
lamation on the Assumption of Power," the congress said :

Supported by an overwhelming majority of the workers, soldiers, and
peasants, and basing itself on the victorious insurrection of the workers and
the garrison of Petrograd, the Congress hereby resolves to take governmental
power into its own hands.

The Provisional Government is deposed and most of its members are
under arrest.

*******

The Kornilovists — Kerensky, Kaledin and others — are endeavoring to
lead troops against Petrograd. Several regiments, deceived by Kerensky,
have already joined the insurgents.

Soldiers! Resist Kerensky, who is a Kornilovist! Be on guard!

Railwaymen! Stop all echelons sent by Kerensky against Petrograd!

Soldiers, Workers, Employees! The fate of the Revolution and demo-
cratic peace is in your hands !

Long live the Revolution! 63

A new government, nominated by Lenin and his group, was voted into
office by the congress. To distinguish it from the old, it was, on Trot-
sky's suggestion, named "Council (i.e. Soviet) of People's Commissars."
Lenin was appointed Chairman of the Council ; Trotsky, People's Com-
missar for Foreign Affairs; Stalin, President of the Commission on
Nationalities; twelve others were appointed to the Sovnarkom (Russian
abbreviation of Council of People's Commissars) .

Following the upheaval, the powerful railwaymen's union came out
with a demand for a coalition government which would embrace all so-
cialist parties (in the main, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and
Bolsheviks) ; the same idea was propagated by a large number of Lenin's
co-leaders, for example, Sokolnikov, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Nogin,
Milyutin. To Lenin and Trotsky a concession of this kind would be a
"retreat," a compromise With the defeated forces. There was the threat,
however, of a refusal of the railways to transport Bolshevik armed guards
to Moscow, where they were needed to quell the considerable re-
sistance. The Bolshevik leaders resorted to a maneuver intended to de-

" James Eunyan and H. H. Fisher, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918 (Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press, 1934), pp. 121, 122.

ceive their friends and foes : in order to win time they agreed to negotia-
tions. The negotiations, in which Kamenev played the leading role,
proceeded. Then, when the opposition had been suppressed and Mos-
cow was well in hand, Lenin broke off the negotiations. On November
14 [1] he told the Central Committee:

. . . There is now no point in negotiating with the Vikzhel [All-Russian
Executive Committee of the Union of Railway Employees]. Troops must
be dispatched to Moscow. . . .

. . . the negotiations were intended as a diplomatic screen for acts of
war. . . ®*

A prolonged period of strife followed.

A multitude of state employees refused to continue working under the
new regime; this development followed immediately upon the Novem-
ber revolution. Calling it "sabotage," and offering no concessions,
Lenin announced :

. . . We say : we need a strong power, we must use coercion and compul-
sion, but we will direct it against a group of capitalists, against the class of
the bourgeoisie. We on our part will always follow up with compulsive
measures in answer to attempts — insane, hopeless attempts — to resist the
Soviet power.66

After a time the striking state employees had to give in and return to
their jobs except for a few who left for the south to join the Cossack
armies. Cossack armies under General Kaledin were being formed in
the Don region. Embryos of the future White (anti-Bolshevik) Army,
these formations were not yet strong enough to resist infiltration. Early
in 1918 the Kaledin army was dispersed and its general committed
suicide.

In the winter of 1917 the economic chaos reached unprecedented pro-
portions and the political situation was growing tense. Many industrial
units, abandoned by their owners and directors, had ceased operations;
unemployment grew; food was scarce; railway service was irregular.
The central Soviet government wielded little authority in the country.
Local Soviets seized power and acted on their own; a number of small
local "republics" emerged ; the Ukraine was about to secede, and similar
trends were growing in the Caucasus. Lenin blamed the "bourgeoisie"
for the terrible razrukha (paralysis) and threatened to fight his internal
foes to the end.

" Lenin, "Speeches at a Meeting of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. (Bol-
sheviks)" (November 14 [1], 1917), Extract from the Minutes, Lenin Stalin 1917,
Selected Writings and Speeches (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1938), p. 634.

"Lenin, "Rech na Pervom Vserossiiskom S"ezde Voennogo Flota 22 Noyabrya (5
Dekabrya) 1917 g." (Speech at the First All-Russian Congress of the Navy, November
22 [December 5], 1917), Sochineniya, vol. XXVI (1949), p. 307.

One of the first places -where the Soviet government proceeded to
abrogate freedom was the press. On November 8 [October 26] a num-
ber of liberal and democratic papers were closed down. A decree of
November 9 [October 27] of the Sovnarkom (Council of People's
Commissars) on "Freedom of the Press," while empowering the gov-
ernment to ban press organs which "are spreading discord by an ob-
viously slanderous distortion of facts," or by "inciting to criminal acts,"
promised, however, to restore freedom of the press in time:

As soon as the new order has been consolidated all administrative meas-
ures in regard to the press will be discontinued; full freedom of the press
will be established within the limits of responsibility before the court in
accordance with the broadest and most progressive law.66

Lenin planned to have the armistice negotiations with Germany
conducted by the acting commander-in-chief of the army, Gen. Nikolai
Dukhonin, whose headquarters was located in Mogilev. The pa-
triotic army leader, however, refused to obey Lenin's orders. On No-
vember 22 [9], 1917, Lenin conversed with Dukhonin by telephone and,
receiving an evasive answer, dismissed him:

In the name of the government of the Russian Republic and at the be-
hest of the Council of People's Commissars, we are dismissing you from the
post occupied by you for refusing to comply with the orders of the govern-
ment and for conduct that entails untold hardship for the toiling masses of
all countries and for the armies in particular. We order you, under penalty
of the war laws, to carry on pending the arrival at the Headquarters of a new
Supreme Commander or of a person empowered by the latter to take over
affairs from you. Ensign Krylenko has been appointed the new Supreme
Commander.67

General Dukhonin was killed by a mob of soldiers. The armistice ne-
gotiations then proceeded.68

Arrests of political opponents started soon after the seizure of power
by Lenin's party. Without denying the facts, Lenin promised that his
"terrorism" would be milder than the terrorism, for example, of the
French revolution. Almost apologetically, he told the Petrograd Soviet,
on November 1 7 [4] , 1 9 1 7 :

. . . Yes, we do arrest, and today we arrested the director of the State
Bank. We are being reproached for applying terror, but we don't do it as it

-Istoriya Sovetskoi Konstitutsii (v Dokumentakh) 1917-1956 (History of the
Soviet Constitution (in Documents) 1917-1956) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izda-
telstvo Yuridicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for Juridical Literature),
1957), p. 52.

"Lenin, "Razgovor Pravitelstva so Stavkoi po Pryamomu Provodu 9 (22)
Noyabrya 1917 g." (Conversation of the Government with Army Headquarters by
Direct Wire, November 9 [22], 1917), Sochineniya, vol. XXVI (1949), p. 278.

** See ch. III.

was done by the French revolutionists, who guillotined unarmed people ; I
hope we will not have to apply it, because force is on our side.69

Later that month on December 11 [November 28], 1917, a special
decree not only outlawed the liberal Kadet (Constitutional-Democratic)
party, but prescribed the arrest of its leaders (the rightist parties had
already submerged or disappeared ) .

MEMBERS of leading bodies of the Kadet Party, which is a Party con-
sisting of enemies of the people, are liable to arrest and trial by revolution-
ary tribunals.

The Soviets in the various localities are enjoined to exercise special
surveillance over the Kadet Party in view of its connection with the Kor-
nilov-Kaledin civil war against the revolution.

This decree enters into effect from the moment of signature.70

The only political party that Lenin was able to win over to his side
was the party of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Defecting from the
mother organization, the official Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Left So-
cialist-Revolutionaries succumbed to the radicalizing trends of the time.
With no experienced political leaders, this shortsighted party believed
that it would help to improve the political course by joining Lenin's
regime. It delegated four of its members to serve in the government.
This experiment of a coalition with the Communists in a govern-
ment, one of the first in a long line of similar experiments outside of
Russia, proved entirely futile. The influence of the Left Socialist-Revo-
lutionaries on Soviet policy was insignificant. They tried to curtail the
powers of the new political police, but failed; they unsuccessfully op-
posed the signing of a peace treaty with Germany. When the Brest-
Litovsk Treaty was signed, they quit the government on March 15, 1918.

Contrary to Communist claims, the victory of the Bolsheviks in 1917
was not the result of a popular uprising, nor did the new regime enjoy
the overwhelming support of workers and peasants ; actually it was and
remained a minority government. The strongest factor in its emergence
was the support of the demoralized and tired army, in the first place of the
garrisons of the large cities. On this point a number of Soviet writers
are unanimous, and Trotsky himself acknowledged that this was so.

... A revolutionary situation cannot be preserved at will. If the Bol-
seviks had not seized the power in October and November, in all proba-
bility they would not have seized it at all ... . A part of the workers

68 Lenin, "Rech na Zasedanii Petrogradskogo Soveta Rabochikh i Soldatskikh Depu-
tatov Sovmestno s Frontovymi Predstavitelyami 4 (17) Noyabrya 1917 g." (Speech
at the Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies Along
With the Representatives of the Front, November 4 [17], 1917), Sochineniya, vol.
XXVI (1949), p. 261.

TO Lenin, "Decree for the Arrest of the Leaders of the Civil War Against the Revolu-
tion" (December 11 [November 28], 1917), Lenin and Stalin, The Russian Revolution,
p. 276.

would have fallen into indifferentism, another part would have burned up
their force in convulsive movements, in anarchistic flareups, in guerrilla
skirmishes, in a Terror dictated by revenge and despair. The breathing-
spell thus offered would have been used by the bourgeoisie to conclude a
separate peace with the Hohenzollern, and stamp out the revolutionary or-
ganizations. Russia would again have been included in the circle of capital-
ist states as a semi-imperialist, semi-colonial country.71

"A good detachment of five hundred men," wrote Nikolai Sukhanov,
"would have been entirely sufficient to liquidate Smolny and everyone
there."

Boris Souvarine, a French Communist leader of Lenin's time, now an
opponent of the Communists, said:

What the Bolsheviks now call the "proletarian revolution" of October
1917 was an armed coup against a defenseless government, led by a military
committee on behalf of a minority party. Thereupon, this "revolution
from above" was imposed on the peoples of the Empire, who unquestionably
desired peace, and on the peasants, who unquestionably wanted the land,
but neither of whom wanted either socialism or communism.72

8. The Constituent Assembly and Its Dispersion

Both as a slogan and a program, the Constituent Assembly had been
popular in Russia since 1905. The government that took over after the
fall of the monarchy was viewed as, and called itself, Provisional, be-
cause it was expected to turn over all authority to a Constituent Assembly,
the convening of which was one of the Provisional Government's pri-
mary duties. In the demand for a Constituent Assembly Lenin's party
was no less insistent than other political groups. To organize elections,
however, in a large country and in a time of war was a difficult task, and
the Kerensky government had had to postpone them more than once.
The Bolsheviks protested vehemently against the delay.

Lenin accused Kerensky 's government of sabotaging the Assembly:

. . . Our Party alone, having assumed power, can secure the convocation
of the Constituent Assembly: and, having assumed power, it will accuse
the other parties of procrastination and will be able to substantiate its
accusations.78

In a similar vein, Trotsky, on October 20 [7], said: "the bourgeois
classes have set themselves the goal of obstructing elections to the Con-

71 Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, vol. Ill, pp. 154, 155.

"Boris Souvarine, "'October': Myths and Realities," The New Leader, vol. XL,
No. 44 (November 4, 1957), p. 17.

7a Lenin, "The Bolsheviks Must Assume Power," A Letter to the Central Committee
and to the Petrograd and Moscow Committees of the Russian Social-Democratic
Labor Party (September 25-27 [12-14], 1917), Selected Works (1935 ed.), vol. VI,
p. 216.

stituent Assembly." And on November 3 [October 26] Pravda wrote:
"Comrades ! By your blood you have assured the convention in time of
the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, master of the Russian land." u

A number of the Soviet decrees of this era noted that definitive de-
cisions on various problems would be made by the future Constituent
Assembly.

Having assumed power, Lenin kept to the plan laid down by the
Provisional Government, and the elections took place on November 25-
27 [12-14], 1917; the voting procedures were fair and the balloting
was conducted, on the whole, without disturbances.75 A total of 4 1 ,686,-
876 votes were cast of which about 11,000,000 were for local parties or
parties of national minorities (the Ukrainian parties obtained 4,957,000
votes). The votes for the Russian parties were, in round figures, as
follows :

Democratic parties:

Socialist-Revolutionaries 15, 848, 000

Mensheviks 1, 365, 000

Smaller groups 505, 000

Total 17, 718, 000

Liberals and Rightists:

Kadets 1, 987, 000

Cossacks 663,000

Total 2,650,000

Bolshevik Party 9,845,000

Lenin's party obtained 25 percent of the vote and continued a minor-
ity; the moderate socialists had almost double the vote of the Bolsheviks.
In the large cities the ratio of Bolshevik votes, while better, did not
represent a majority. The Bolsheviks achieved their greatest successes
in certain of the front armies. In the Western Front Army, for example,
the vote in round figures was :

Bolsheviks 653, 000

Socialist-Revolutionaries 181, 000

Kadets 17, 000

Others 125, 000

Total 976, 000

'* As quoted in M. V. Vishniak, Vserossiiskoe Uchreditelnoe Sobranie (A1I-
Russian Constituent Assembly) (Paris: Izdatelstvo "Sovremennye Zapiski" (Con-
temporary Notes Publishing House), 1932), p. 87.

76 The figures that follow are taken from Oliver Henry Radkey, The Elections to
the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1917 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1950), pp. 16,36.

Where votes cast by local garrisons were counted separately, the results
were similar. In Kozlov, for example, the army units cast 4,045 votes,
3,006 of them for the Bolsheviks.

In the end, of the 707 members elected to the Constituent Assembly,
370 (more than a majority) were of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party
and 175 were Bolsheviks; the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, allies of the
Bolsheviks, won 40 seats.

. . Apparently the Bolsheviks, or at least some of their leaders, expected
to come out ahead with the help of the Left SR's until they saw the handwrit-
ing on the wall as returns from the black-earth zone began pouring in during
the second week of the balloting. They realized then that most of the SR
deputies would adhere to the centrist or right-wing factions of that huge
but disintegrated party; they were seized with alarm and, shrilly accusing
the Commission of falsification and other abuses, decreed its arrest on
November 23, only to release it a few days later without having substantiated
the charges.76

The Soviet government could not, however, simply forbid the Constit-
uent Assembly; it had to convene it at least once. Lenin's tactic, which
was approved by the party's leadership, was to submit to the Constit-
uent Assembly a resolution approving the actions of the Soviet regime
and acknowledging that all power must belong to the Soviets; if the
resolution was rejected, the Constituent Assembly was to be dissolved.

The Constituent Assembly convened on January 18 [5], 1918. The
Bolshevik faction submitted a "Draft Declaration of the Rights of the
Toiling and Exploited People," the first paragraph of which read :

1. Russia is hereby declared a republic of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers'
and Peasants' Deputies. All power centrally and locally belongs to the
Soviets.

*******

. . . the Constituent Assembly considers that its own duty must be limited
to establishing a fundamental basis for the socialist reconstruction of
society.77

The January 18 [5] session of the Constituent Assembly was its first
and last. The spokesmen of the two socialist parties were Viktor Cher-
nov and Irakli Tseretelli; Lenin, through present, did not address the
Assembly.

. . . After much debate the Constituent Assembly majority rejected the
Bolshevik platform and voted to record their stand on the war, the agrarian
problem, and Russia's form of government. Thereupon the Bolshevik depu-
ties rose in a body and marched out.

" Ibid., p. 49.

" Lenin, "Draft Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People"
(January 1918), Lenin and Stalin, The Russian Revolution, pp. 298, 300.

Dawn was already breaking when the remaining deputies, representing
the elected majority, started to read their decrees. . . . Chernov was read-
ing the decree on land when a sailor seized him by the arm and said, "It's
time to finish. We have an order from the People's Commissar."

*******

. . . The guards continued to shout: "Come on, time to finish. We'll
turn off the lights." . . . When the chair finally recessed the meeting, it
was morning.

*******

Before noon, when the Assembly was slated to reconvene, the deputies
found the entrance to the Tauride Palace barred by a detachment of troops
with rifles, machine guns, and two fieldpieces. On the same day — January
19, 1918 — a decree of the Sovnarkom abolished the Constituent Assembly.78

,8 Shub, op. cit., pp. 287, 288.

Chapter III. The Program of the First Soviet Regime

1. Peace, Land, Equality

The numerous public announcements, decrees, and orders issued
during the first few weeks of the new government contained a grandiose
program for the political and economic transformation of Russia. They
were also intended to appeal to leftist movements in the West; the
outbreak of the world revolution (starting in Germany) was expected
in a matter of weeks. The most important of the initial Soviet reforms
are mentioned below; they are significant because they furnish a stand-
ard to measure the extent to which the actual course of the Soviet gov-
ernments in subsequent decades deviated from the pledges and plans of
its initial era.

Turning its attention first to the war situation, Lenin's government
denied that it would conclude a separate peace with Germany. On the
government's initiative, the Second Congress of Soviets adopted a
"Decree on Peace," which contained an appeal to all the warring peoples
to conclude "a just and democratic peace," and to begin by declaring
an immediate 3-month armistice.

The workers' and peasants' government created by the revolution of
November 6-7 [October 24-25] and backed by the Soviets of Workers'.
Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies calls upon all the belligerent peoples and
their governments to start immediate negotiations for a just and democratic
peace.

By a just, or democratic, peace, for which the vast majority of the working
and toiling classes of all belligerent countries, exhausted, tormented and
racked by the war, are craving, a peace that has been most definitely and
insistently demanded by the Russian workers and peasants ever since the
overthrow of the tsarist monarchy — by such a peace the government means
an immediate peace without annexations (i.e., the seizure of foreign lands,
or the forcible incorporation of foreign nations) and indemnities.1

1 V. I. Lenin, Decree on Peace contained in "Report on the Peace Question,"
Delivered November 8 [October 26], 1917 at the Second All-Russian Congress of
Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, Selected Works (Moscow: Go-Operative
Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1935), vol. VI, p. 401. The
Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was held
November 7 and 8 [October 25 and 26], 1917.

(70)

On the subject of annexation by force of foreign lands and independent
nations, the decree (written by Lenin) contained the following state-
ment:

In accordance with the sense of justice of the democracy in general, and
of the toiling classes in particular, the government interprets the annexa-
tion, or seizure, of foreign lands as meaning the incorporation into a large
and powerful state of a small or feeble nation without the definitely, clearly
and voluntarily expressed consent and wish of that nation, irrespective of
the time such forcible incorporation took place, irrespective of the degree
of development or backwardness of the nation forcibly annexed to, or
forcibly retained within, the frontiers of the given state, and finally, ir-
respective of whether the nation inhabits Europe or distant, overseas
countries.2

Violently opposed to "secret diplomacy," the new government prom-
ised to make public and to void all "predatory" international treaties
signed by Russia; by implication this meant, of course, that no secret
treaties would be concluded in the future.

The government abolishes secret diplomacy and, for its part, expresses
. its firm determination to conduct all negotiations quite openly before the
whole people. It will immediately proceed to the full publication of the
secret treaties ratified or concluded by the government of landlords and
capitalists during the period March [February] to November 7 [October
25], 1917.3

The "Decree on the Land" was promulgated at the same session.
This decree shrewdly followed the outline of reforms that had been
proposed by Lenin's main adversaries, the Socialist-Revolutionaries —
a fact that Lenin openly acknowledged. In his effort to win the support
of the peasantry and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Lenin incor-
porated in his decree such ideas (rejected earlier by Russian Marxists)
as equalitarian land tenure, "socialization" of the land, and abolition
of private land property. The decree stated :

The question of the land in its full scope can be settled only by a Na-
tional Constituent Assembly.

The most just settlement of the land question is as follows:

1) The right of private property in land shall be abolished in perpetuity;
land shall not be purchased, sold, leased, mortgaged, or otherwise
alienated.

All land, whether state, appanage, tsar's, monastic, church, factory,
primogenitory, private, public, peasant, etc., shall be taken over without

1 Ibid.

• Ibid., p. 402. Concerning subsequent developments in the war and in the peace
negotiations, see ch. IX.

compensation and become the property of the whole people, to be used
by those who cultivate it.

*******

2) All mineral wealth, e.g., ore, oil, coal, salt, etc., as well as forests
and waters of state importance, shall be reserved for the exclusive use of
the state. . . .

*******

7) Land tenure shall be on an equality basis, i.e., the land shall be dis-
tributed among the toilers in conformity with either the labour standard
or the consumption standard, as local conditions shall warrant.

There shall be absolutely no restriction as to the forms of land tenure:
household, farm, communal, or co-operative, as shall be determined in
each individual village.4

In his speech before the congress Lenin said :

I hear voices stating that the decree itself and the Instructions were
drawn up by the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Be it so. Does it matter who
drew it up? As a democratic government, we cannot ignore the decision
of the rank and file of the people, even though we may disagree with it. . . ."

A few days later, in an official statement, Lenin indicated the essence
of his agrarian upheaval :

... all landed estates pass wholly and entirely into the hands of the
Soviets of Peasants' Deputies.

The rural area Land Committees must immediately take all landed
estates under their control, keeping a strict inventory. . . .

*******

The Council of People's Commissars calls upon the peasants themselves
to take the whole power in their localities into their own hands.6

The first steps toward organization of a "Socialist national economy"
were the decrees7 of December 14 [1] concerning the creation of a
Supreme Council of National Economy, and December 27 [14] con-
cerning the "nationalization of banks" :

1. The Supreme Council of National Economy is established [as an organ]
attached to the Soviet of People's Commissars.

2. The work of the Supreme Council of National Economy is to organize
the national economy and state finances. . . .

* Lenin, "Report on the Land Question," Delivered November 8 [October 26],
1917 at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies,
Selected Works, vol. VI, pp. 407, 408.

• Ibid., p. 409.

•Lenin, "Reply to Peasants' Questions" (November 18 [5], 1917), Lenin Stalin
1917, Selected Writings and Speeches (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1938), pp. 643, 644.

1 These decrees were issued by the Central Executive Committee, elected by the
Congress of Soviets; see ch. II, p. 59, note 57.

3. The Supreme Council of National Economy has the right to confis-
cate, requisition, sequester, and consolidate various branches of industry,
commerce, and other enterprises in the field of production, distribution,
and state finance.8

The decree on banking read as follows :

1 . Banking is hereby declared a state monopoly.

2. All existing private joint-stock banks and other banking houses are
to become a part of the State Bank.

3. Assets and liabilities of establishments in the process of liquidation
will be assumed by the State Bank.

*******
6. The interests of small depositors will be fully protected.9

In addition to these two socializing measures, "Workers' Control" 10
was introduced by the Council of People's Commissars on November
27 [14], 1917. It tended toward elimination of private enterprise.

1. In the interests of a systematic regulation of national economy, Work-
ers' Control is introduced in all industrial, commercial, agricultural [and
similar] enterprises which are hiring people to work for them in their shops
or which are giving work to take home. This control is to extend over the
production, storing, buying and selling of raw materials and finished pro-
ducts as well as over the finances of the enterprise.

2. The workers will exercise this control through their elected organ-
izations, such as factory and shop committees, Soviets of elders, etc. The
office employees and the technical personnel are also to have representation
in these committees.

*******

8. The rulings of the organs of Workers' Control are binding on the
owners of enterprises and can be annulled only by decisions of the higher
organs of Workers' Control.11

On February 10 [January 28], 1918, the Central Executive Com-
mittee promulgated a decree annulling all state loans, both internal and
external. The decree read in part:

1. All state loans made by the governments of the Russian landowners
and bourgeoisie. . . . are hereby annulled (abolished) as from December
1917

*******

3. All foreign loans without exception are unconditionally annulled.12

8 James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1918 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1934), p. 314.

9 Ibid., p. 323.

w The word "control" in Russian implies less power than does the word in English;
its meaning in Russian is approximately "check," "revision," "supervision."
u Ibid., pp. 308, 309.
"Ibid., p. 602.

Long before trade at home was taken over by the state, all foreign
trade had been nationalized. The decree by the Council of People's
Commissars on April 22, 1918 prescribed:

All foreign trade is to be nationalized. Contracts with foreign countries
and foreign commercial houses for buying or selling of all kinds of products
(raw, industrial, agricultural, etc.) are to be made in the name of the
Russian Republic by specially authorized organs. Aside from these organs
all export and import agreements are forbidden.13

The decree of April 27, 1918 abolishing the right of inheritance was a
sweeping one:

Inheritance both by law and by testament is abolished. After the death
of the owner the property which belongs to him (movable and immovable)
becomes state property of the R[ussian] S[oviet] Federative] Socialist]
Republic].14

The decree of November 1 1 [October 29], introducing the eight-hour
working day, was one of the very first decisions of the Council of Peo-
ple's Commissars: "The working time . . . should not exceed 8 working
hours a day and 48 hours a week"; however, "until the end of the war"
operations, the new regulation of overtime may not be applied in war
industries.15

Other decrees did away with personal titles and the division of the
population into estates. The decree confirmed by the Central Execu-
tive Committee on November 23 [10], 1917 read:

1. All classes and class distinctions which have hitherto existed in Russia,
class privileges and class limitations, class organizations and institutions,
as well as all civil ranks are abolished.

2. All estates (noble, merchant, commoner, peasant, etc.), . . . are
abolished and in their places the inhabitants of Russia are to have one
common name to all— citizens of the Russian Republic.16

The new government was just as radical in regard to titles and priv-
ileges in the army. The very terms "general," "major," "captain,"
"officer," and others were forbidden. The decree of December 29 [16],
1917 by the Council of People's Commissars said:

Carrying out the desire of the revolutionary people for the speedy and
determined abolition of all remnants of former inequality in the army, the
Council of People's Commissars resolves:

( 1 ) All ranks and titles in the army, starting with that of corporal and
ending with that of general, are abolished. The Army of the Russian

u Ibid., p. 611.

34 Izvestia, May 1, 1918. The decree was issued by the Central Executive
Committee.

" Bunyan and Fisher, op. cit., pp. 304-308.
M Ibid., p. 279.

Republic henceforth consists of free and equal citizens, bearing the honor-
able rank of soldier of the revolutionary army.

(2) All privileges connected with former ranks and titles, as well as all
external distinctions, are abolished.

(3) All addressing by title is abolished.

(4) All orders and other insignia are abolished. . . ."

A proclamation dealing with the problem of Russia's nationalities
was among the first public statements of the new regime. An end must
be put, the Council of People's Commissars said in its declaration of
November 15 [2], 1917, to the old policy.

An end must be made to this unworthy policy of falsehood and distrust,
of cavil and provocation.18

From now on all nationalities, large and small, were to enjoy equality
and freedom, including the privilege of secession from the Russian state.
In view of the strong secessionist movements of the time, especially in
the Ukraine and Finland, this pledge went far to satisfy the wishes of
these nationalities:

... In compliance with the will of these [Soviet] Congresses, the Soviet
of People's Commissars has resolved to adopt as the basis of its activity on
the problem of nationalities in Russia the following principles:

1. Equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia.

2. The right to free self-determination of the peoples of Russia even to
the point of separating and forming independent states.

• 3. Abolition of each and every .privilege or limitation based on nation-
ality or religion.

4. Free development of national minorities and ethnographic groups
inhabiting Russian territory.19

The first decree on religion, promulgated by the Council of People's
Commissars February 5, 1918, separated the church from the state
but did not yet accord any privileges to antireligious or atheistic
propaganda:

1. The church is separated from the state.

2. Within the territory of the Republic the passing of any local laws
or regulations limiting or interfering with freedom, of conscience or grant-
ing special rights or "privileges to citizens because they belong to a certain
faith is forbidden.

" "Ob Uravnenii v Pravakh Vsekh Voennosluzhashchikh" (On the Equalization of
Rights of All Military Personnel), Istoriya Sovetskoi Konstitutsii (v Dokurnentakh)
1917-1956 (History of the Soviet'Constitution (in Documents') 1917-1956) (Mos-
cow: Gosudarstvennoe Izchtelstvo Yuridicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House
for Juridical Literature), 1957), p.. 90.

18 Bunyan and Fisher, op. cit., p. 283.

19 "Deklaratsiya Prav 'Narodov Rossii" (Declaration of the Rights of the People
of Russia), Istoriya Sovetskoi Konstitutsii . . ., p. 58. The Council of People's.
Commissars issued this decree oh November 15 [2], 1917.

3. Every citizen has a right to adopt any religion or not to adopt any
at all. Every legal restriction connected with the profession of certain
faiths or with the non-profession of any faith is now abolished.

* * * * * * *

9. The school is separated from the church. The teaching of religion
in state and public schools, as well as in private schools where general
subjects are taught, is forbidden.20

A new army, the Workers5 and Peasants' Red Army, was created.
A new task for the traditionally antimilitarist Bolshevik movement, it
was several months before Lenin's group learned the rules of effective
military organization. The first orders following the November up-
heaval were propagandist^ and unrealistic. The decree of December
29 [16], 1917 provided for election of commanders by the troops; the
decree of January 28 [15], 1918, was intended to create an army on
a voluntary basis; applicants for enlistment in the army required "recom-
mendations," and only "toiling" people (meaning no members of
families of privileged classes) would be accepted.

Political asylum, which had been enjoyed by most of the Bolshevik
leaders abroad, was provided for ( Central Executive Committee decree
of March 28, 1918) ; at this stage it was not stressed that only foreign
Communists or pro- Communists would be able to take advantage of
this privilege:

Any foreigner persecuted in his native country for crimes of a political
or religious nature is entitled to asylum if he comes to Russia.

Extradition of such persons at the demand of the countries whose subjects
they are may not be effected.21

In his first comments on the draft of a Soviet constitution Lenin
wanted to incorporate the idea that the new state would grow in the
future and expand to embrace other "Socialist nations" :

8. As a socialist soviet system is established in other countries, the
R.S.F.S.R. joins with them in an integrated Union of socialist Federations
of soviet republics.22

These were the declaratory acts of the new government, intended at
this moment as propaganda rather than actual policy. "Our govern-
ment," Lenin said, "may not last long, but these decrees will be part of
historv." 23

* Eunyan and Fisher, op. cit., pp. 590, §91.

51 "O Prave Ubezhishcha" (On the Right of Asylum), Istoriya Sovetskoi Konsti-
tutsii . . ., p. 58.

^"Popravki k Proektu Konstitutsii RSFSR [Ranee 28 Iyunya 1918 goda]" (Cor-
rections to the Draft of the Constitution of the RSFSR [Before June 28, 1918]),
Istoriya Sovetskoi Konstitutsii . . ., p. 132.

" Simon Liberman. Building Lenin's Russia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1945), p. 8.

. . . even if the Russian Soviet Government is crushed by world imperial-
ism tomorrow, as a result of an agreement between German and Anglo-
French imperialismj for example — even in this worst possible case, Bolshe-
vik tactics will still have brought enormous benefit to Socialism, and will
have assisted the growth of the invincible world revolution.24

The system of government established in November 1917 has become
known as the "Soviet system." The first Soviet Constitution of July 10,
1918 embodied the ideas of a "Soviet democracy," which is different
from both the old Russian autocracy and Western democracy. Its basis
was the local Soviet, elected by the "toilers" (workers, peasants and in-
tellectuals) ; regional conferences of local Soviets elected the governments
of their areas; All-Russian Soviet congresses, according to the constitution,
wielded supreme power and elected the Central Executive Committees.
The latter appointed the Soviet governments. Since over 90 per cent of
the population was entitled to vote in the election of local Soviets, and
since the program of the Soviet government emphasized abolition of the
privileges of the rich in favor of the poor, the Soviet leadership claimed
for this system superiority over every other system of government; it was
"the most democratic" in the world, even if the political freedoms which
were viewed abroad as an element of democracy were practically
abolished.

The Soviet state assumed at first the name "Russian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic," often abbreviated into RSFSR. In this name, Fed-
eration referred, according to the constitution, to various supposedly self-
governing areas inhabited by non-Russian national minorities. (The
Soviet government claimed to be the only authority for all of the terri-
tory of pre-revolutionary Russia but in early 1918 its control over much
of the territory was limited by German occupation, local independence
movements and the like. In 1924 the RSFSR became part of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics, along with the newly reacquired areas in
the Caucasus in the South and West.)

This formal structure did not reveal the actual system of government,
however. Along with the structure of Soviets there existed and grew the
structure of the Bolshevik (Communist) party. The party also possessed
its units ("cells") in cities and towns; its "committees" actually domi-
nated the Soviets and wielded power in their areas; its provincial con-
ferences elected "committees" which controlled all Soviet agencies in
their areas. The congresses of the Bolshevik party elected a Central
Committee, which appointed its Political Bureau ("Politburo"). The
Politburo actually wielded unlimited power over the country, also ap-
pointing and dismissing ministers ( "peoples' commissars" ) ; its power.

"Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (November 10
1918), Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1943), vol. VII, p. 184

68491 O-61-vol. II— 6

unlimited by law, was tantamount to an unlimited dictatorship. The
group ruling in the Politburo, strong enough to perpetuate itself, con-
sisted first of Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Grigori Zinoviev, Lev
KanjeHev and Nikolai Bukharin.

2. Dictatorship and the Principles of Morality

"Transition to Socialism," the aim of the new government was, ac-
cording to Lenin, possible only in dictatorial forms ; Lenin gave a correct
definition of dictatorship as a ruling power which is above the law,
which defies law, and' which can have recourse to any means.

. . . The scientific concept "dictatorship" means nothing more nor less
than unrestricted, power, absolutely unimpeded by laws or regulations and
resting directly upon force. This is the meaning of the concept "dictator-
ship" and nothing else.26

The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is power won and
maintained by the violence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, power
that is unrestricted by any laws.26

But Communist dictatorship, identified with Soviet dictatorship, was
at the same time, according to this theory, the highest form of democracy
because it served the interests of the poor, who constitute the majority
in every nation:

What is the difference between socialists and anarchists? Anarchists
don't recognize authority, whereas socialists, including Bolsheviks, are in
favor of authority for the transition period from our present status to
socialism, toward which we are striving.

We bolsheviks are for a stern rule; but for a rule which would be the
rule of the workers and peasants.27

Lenin, the undisputed leader, could, unlike his successors, state openly
that the dictatorship in Russia was his personal dictatorship; he did not
try to emphasize "collective leadership" because, in his eyes, his personal
rule was democracy. More than once did he stress this paradoxical
view:

The irrefutable experience of history has shown that in the history of
revolutionary movements the dictatorship of individual persons was very

"Lenin, "A Contribution to the History of the Question of Dictatorship" (October
20, I920)j Selected Works (1943 ed.), vol. VII, p. 254.

49 Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (November 10,
1918), Selected Works ( 1943 ed,), vol. VII, p. 123.

17 Lenin, "Zaklyuchitelnoe Slovo 18 Noyabrya (1 Dekabrya) na Chrezvychainom,
Vserossusk'orn S"ezde Soyetov Krestyanskikh Deputatov" (Concluding Speech at the
Extraordinary All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Peasants' Deputies, November 18
(December 1) [1917]), Sochineniya (Works) (4th ed.; Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for Political Literature),
1941-58), vol. XXVI (1949), p. 294.

often the vehicle, the channel of the dictatorship of the revolutionary
classes.3*

. . . that Soviet socialist democracy is not contradictory to individual
management and dictatorship in any way; that the will of a class may
sometimes be carried out by a dictator, who at times may do more alone
and who is frequently more necessary.29

The relationship between ultimate political aims, meaning the estab-
lishment of communism, and the means used to achieve them were
frankly stated. Communist morality, contrary to the ethics of other
political systems, subordinated means to ends and approved the Use of
any means if they promote Communist objectives :

. . . When people talk to us about morality we say: For the Communist,
morality consists entirely of compact united discipline and conscious mass
struggle against the exploiters. We do not believe in eternal morality, and
we expose all the fables about morality.

*******

... At the basis of Communist morality lies the struggle for the con-
solidation and consummation of communism. That also is the basis of
Communist training, education and tuition.30

We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the
class struggle of the proletariat. Our morality is deduced from the class
struggle of the proletariat.31

Advising Communists abroad (to penetrate trade unions), Lenin
frankly stated his strategic principles :

... It is necessary ... to resort to all sorts of stratagems, manoeuvres
and illegal methods, to evasion and subterfuges in order to penetrate the
trade unions, to remain in them, and to carry on Communist' work in them
at all costs.32

Guided by their own special concept of morality, Communists viewed
an act as evil if committed by its enemies, and the same act as. good if
carried out by itself. In foreign affairs, for example, the view was ac-
cepted that a treaty is only a formality and may be violated by the Soviet
government if such a violation is advantageous :

... In war you must never tie your hands with the considerations of
formality. It is ridiculous not to know the history of war, not to know

"Lenin, "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" (March-April 1918),
Selected Works (1943 ed.), vol. VII, p. 341.

" Lenin, "Economic Development," Speech Delivered March 31, 1920 at the Ninth
Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Selected Works (1943 ed.)
vol. VIII, p. 222.

" Lenin, "The Tasks of the Youth League," Speech delivered October 2, 1920
at the Third All-Russian Congress of the Russian Young Communist League, Selected
Works (1943 ed.), vol. IX, pp. 478, 479.

"Ibid., p. 475.

M Lenin, " 'Left-Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder" (April 27, 1920),
Selected Works (1943 ed.), vol. X, p. 95.

that a treaty is a means of gaining strength. . . . the history of war shows
as clearly as clear can be that the signing of a treaty after defeat is a means
of gaining strength.33

Secret treaties concluded by the pre-Soviet governments of Russia
were made public by Trotsky in his capacity of People's Commissar for
Foreign Affairs; every Soviet leader condemned "secret diplomacy" con-
ducted "behind the backs of the people" and promised that never, under
Soviet conditions, would secret diplomacy be revived.

. . . The Soviet Government in a revolutionary manner has torn the
veil of mystery from foreign politics. ... in the present era ... it is a
question of life and death for tens of millions of people.3*

The Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party ( 1 9 1 8 ) 35 gave
the Central Committee authority to break treaties not only with Germany
but with any "bourgeois" government. In a secret resolution, it said:

. . . the Congress emphasizes that special authority is given the Central
Committee at any time to annul all peace treaties with imperialist and
bourgeois states as well as to declare war on them.86

In the summer of 1918, however, the first Soviet-German secret
negotiations started, and secret agreements were concluded;37 sub-
sequently secret diplomacy was abundantly used.

Proceeding from the same principles, Communists did not condemn
wars in general; in particular, it was said, wars are good when they are
waged in the interests of the Communist movement :

... If war is waged by the exploiting class with the object of strengthen-
ing its class rule, such a war is a criminal war, and "defencism" in such
a war is a base betrayal of socialism. If war is waged by the proletariat after
it has conquered the bourgeoisie in its own country, and is waged with the
object of strengthening and extending socialism, such a war is legitimate and
"holy."38

M Lenin, "Speech in Reply to the Debate on the Report on War and Peace,"
Delivered March 8, 1918 at the Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party
(Bolsheviks), Selected Works (1943 ed.), vol. VII, p. 309.

** Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (November 10,
1918), Selected Works (1943 ed.), vol. VII, pp. 133, 134.

wThis Bolshevik Congress, held in March 1918, renamed the party — Russian Com-
munist Party (Bolshevik), usually abbreviated into RCP(B).

** Lenin, "Dopolnenie k Rezolyutsii o Voine i Mire" (Addition to the Resolution
on War and Peace), Introduced at the Seventh Congress of the All-Russian Com-
munist Party, March 6-8, 1918, Sochineniya, vol. XXVII (1950), p. 99.

"See David J. Dallin, Russia and Postwar Europe (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1943), pp. 68, 69.

M Lenin, " 'Left- Wing* Childishness and Petty-Bourgeois Mentality" (May 3-5,
191S), Selected Works ( 1943 cd.), vol. VII, p. 357.

It does not matter who the aggressor is: if a war is initiated by a Com-
munist government it signifies progress and must be assisted. There-
fore, the division of wars into aggressive and defensive ones must be
rejected ; the only correct division is between "revolutionary" wars, which
are good, and "reactionary" wars, which are evil:

. . . The character of the war (whether reactionary or revolutionary) is
not determined by who the aggressor was, or whose territory the "enemy"
has occupied ; it is determined by the class that is waging the war, and the
politics of which this war is a continuation.86

The role of the Red Army as a means of socialist transformation be-
came evident in the Soviet-Polish war of 1920. On Lenin's initiative,
and against the advice of Trotsky and others, the Red Army, having
first repelled the Polish forces, crossed into Poland and marched on War-
saw; a revolutionary committee of five Polish-Russian Communists was
set up in Bialystok as a nucleus of the future Polish government.

... in Lenin's eyes Warsaw and, for that matter, all Poland, held a
secondary place. The center of his interest was Germany. If Warsaw
fell, Soviet troops would have reached the German border; a German
Soviet Government would have been formed and kept in readiness, and
Communist and semi-Communist forces inside Germany would have been
able, in view of the widespread dissatisfaction with the terms of the
Versailles Treaty — so it was reasoned in Moscow — to overthrow the weak
government in power.40

Lenin announced that the basis of the Versailles Treaty had become
shaky. He was looking forward to a Soviet-German military coalition
with its own invincible Soviet-German Red Army. Said Zinoviev:

The future development of the world revolution will proceed at the
same pace as the march of our Red Army. The Russian proletarian revo-
lution has become the mightiest sovereign state in the world. Menacing
the aristocratic white Warsaw, we by that very action tear to scraps the
treaty of Versailles.41

In the end the Soviet campaign failed. The Red Army was thrown
back from Warsaw and retreated into Soviet territory and the
attempt at expanding the Soviet system by military means ended. It
was not the last experiment of this kind, however; it was to be repeated
the next year in Mongolia with a better success, and then, between
1939 and 1948 in Eastern and Central Europe.

" Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (November 10,
1918), Selected Works (1943 ed.), vol. VII, p. 177.

"David J. Dallin, Russia and Postwar Europe (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1943), p. 54.

a Petrograd Pravdat August 13, 1920, p. 2.

3. The First Stages of the Social Upheaval

Civil war,42 which broke out in Russia in the summer of 1918, was
accompanied and aggravated by a number of economic upheavals of
which the most important was Lenin's offensive against the peasantry.
This action became known as the drive of the Committees of the Poor
against the well-to-do elements of the peasantry. At the root of this
policy lay Lenin's mistrust, even fear, of the peasants as embodying the
greatest support of private economy and of capitalism in a Soviet land.

. . . unfortunately, very, very much of small production still remains
in the world, and small production engenders capitalism and the bour-
geoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously and on a mass scale.*8

Socialism means the abolition of classes.

In order to solve the second and most difficult part of the problem, the
proletariat, after having defeated the bourgeoisie, must unswervingly con-
duct its policy towards the peasantry along the following fundamental lines :
the proletariat must separate, demarcate the peasant toiler from the peasant
owner, the peasant worker from the peasant huckster, the peasant who
labours from the peasant who profiteers. In this demarcation lies the
whole essence of socialism.44

Lenin tried to discover a duality — pro-Communist and anti-Com-
munist— in the peasant:

The peasant as a toiler gravitates towards socialism, and prefers the dic-
tatorship of the workers [meaning Communist regime] to the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie. The peasant as a seller of grain gravitates towards
the bourgeoisie, to free trade, i.e., back to the "habitual" old "primordial"
capitalism.45

By decree of June 11, 1918, Committees of the Poor were created
all over the country; among their official tasks was the "distribution of
food" and "confiscation" of food "surpluses" from the local "kulaks
and rich." The idea was to carry the Soviet revolution into the villages
and set up a "dictatorship of the poor peasants," who were assumed to
sympathize with the Communists. Actually, of course,

a See ch. IV.

"Lenin, "'Left- Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder" (May 12,1920),
Selected Works (1943 ed.), vol. X, p. 60.

u Lenin, "Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"
(October 30, 1919), Selected Works (1943 ed.), vol. VIII, pp. 8, 9.

44 Lenin, "Privet Vengerskim Rabochim" (Greetings to the Hungarian Workers)
(May 27, 1919), Sochineniya, vol. XXIX (1950), p. 359.

. . . Little distinction was made among different social strata of the
peasantry in carrying out the requisition policy. The response of the
peasants to this type of forced confiscation was what might be expected.
Peasants reduced their plantings to meet only their own consumption
needs, did their utmost to conceal their reserves from the requisitioning
authorities, and occasionally responded to seizures by violent attacks on
the food collectors. The catastrophic decline in production caused severe
food shortages in the cities as well as in many rural areas. Grumbling
mounted as food became increasingly scarce, and the Bolsheviks stood in
danger of completely alienating the countryside. The Kronstadt revolt
in March 1921 and the peasant rising in Tambov and other provinces in
the winter of 1920-21 marked the height of the crisis.46

Another economic measure of the same kind was the wholesale
nationalization of all large industrial, trade, and banking units. The
measure was contained in the decree of June 28, 1918, which gave a
long list of enterprises taken over by the state. Carried out without
preparation, it led immediately to a mass defection of owners, engi-
neers, and part of the workers in defiance of the threat contained in
the decree :

The entire employee, technical and working personnel of the enter-
prises, without exception, as well as the directors, members of the board
of management and responsible administrators, are declared to be in the
service of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and are to
receive supplies according to the scales which prevailed before the nation-
alization of the enterprises, from the income and turnover capital of the
enterprise.

In case members of the technical and administrative personnel of the
nationalized enterprises leave their posts they are liable to prosecution be-
fore the court of the revolutionary tribunal in accordance with the strin-
gency of the law.47

Industrial production dropped rapidly. By 1 9 1 9 the Russian economy
was almost completely paralyzed.

4. No Coexistence Possible

World events of that time did not justify the expectations or confirm
the predictions of the Soviet leadership in regard to revolutionary devel-
opments outside of Russia. Lenin and his group, however, were reluc-
tant to revise their views. In the first 3 years of the Soviet era Lenin
repeatedly stated that the civil war in Russia marked the beginning of a
worldwide social revolution; that Russia's new setup, representing an
attempt to socialize one backward country, was doomed unless other na-
tions joined Russia. Russia would cede her leading place to another

■ im Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1953), p. 444.

** "Dekret Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov" (Decree of the Soviet People's Com-
missars) (June 28, 1918), Istoriya Sovetskoi Konstitutsii . . ., p. 138.

nation (Lenin had in view Germany) once the revolution expanded to
the West. Peaceful coexistence of capitalism and socialism was not
possible.

... As long as capitalism and Socialism exist, we cannot live in peace:
in the end, one or the other will triumph — a funeral dirge will be sung
either over the Soviet Republic or over world capitalism.48

. . . International imperialism, with its mighty capital, its highly organ-
ised military technique, which is a real force, a real fortress of international
capital, could not under any circumstances, on any condition, live side by
side with the Soviet Republic. . . . Here lies the greatest difficulty of the
Russian revolution, its great historical problem, viz., the necessity of solving
international problems, the necessity of calling forth an international revolu-
tion, of traversing the path from our strictly national revolution to the
world revolution.*9

. . . there is no other alternative : either the Soviet government triumphs
in every advanced country in the world, or the most reactionary imperialism
triumphs, the most savage imperialism, which is throttling the small and
feeble nationalities and reinstating reaction ail over the world — Anglo-
American imperialism, which has perfectly mastered the art of using the
form of a democratic republic.

One or the other.

There is no middle course.80

... Of course, the final victory of socialism in a single country is
impossible.61

. . . We are living not merely in a state, but in a system of states, and the
existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with imperialist states for a long
time is unthinkable. One or the other must triumph in the end, And be-
fore that end supervenes, a series of frightful collisions between the Soviet
Republic and the bourgeois states will be inevitable.6*

The "frightful collisions" — civil wars and foreign wars in which Russia
would be involved — made a strong Red Army imperative:

. . . That means that if the ruling class, the proletariat, wants to hold
sway, it must prove its capacity to do so by its military organisation
also. . . ,63

** Lenin, "Speech Delivered at a Meeting of Nuclei Secretaries of the Moscow
Organisation of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)" (November 26, 1920),
Selected Works (1943 ed.), vol. VIII, p. 297.

** Lenin, "War and Peace," Report Delivered March 7, 1918 at the Seventh
Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Selected Works (1943 ed.),
vol. VII, p. 288.

80 Lenin, "Valuable Admissions by Pitirim Sorokin" (November 21, 1918), Selected
Works (1943 ed.), vol. VIII, pp. 148, 149.

61 Lenin, "The Activities of the Council of People's Commissars,'* Report Delivered
January 24 [11], 1918 at the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Selected Works
(1943 ed.),vol. VII, p. 280.

" Lenin, "Report of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party
(Bolsheviks) at the Eighth Party Congress" (March 18, 1919), Selected Works
(1943 ed.), vol. VIII, p. 33.

" Ibid.

Lenin rejected the "illusion" that Russia could, in the long run, serve
as the leader of the socialist world.

. . . We are very far from having completed even the transitional period
from capitalism to socialism. We have never consoled ourselves with the
hope that we could finish it without the aid of the international proletariat.
We never had any illusions on that score, and we know how difficult is the
road that leads from capitalism to socialism. . . ."

When the war between Germany and the Allies ended, political up-
heavals occurred in Germany and Austria, but not in the West; and the
upheavals resulted only in the overthrow of the monarchy, not of the
social system (except in Hungary and Bavaria, where Soviet Republics
actually existed for a short time in 1919). Despite the slow pace of its
development, however, Lenin still expected the early outbreak of a
world social revolution :

. . . the rate, the tempo of development of the revolution in the capital-
ist countries is far slower than with us. It was obvious that when the people
secured peace, the revolutionary movement would inevitably slow down.
Therefore, without prophesying as to the future, we cannot now rely on this
tempo becoming more rapid.5*

Communists everywhere were convinced that a revolution in the West
was imminent. Elated, proud, and enthusiastic, the Soviet leadership
predicted, in 1919, a great Communist upheaval in the West within a
year:

. . . The movement advances at such dizzy speed that it may be said
with confidence: Within a year we will already begin to forget that there
was a struggle for communism in Europe, because within a year all Europe
will be Communist.56

The notion that a Communist-ruled Russia could exist side by side
with the "capitalist nations" was still alien to the Soviet leadership. As
late as 1921, Lenin still maintained:

. . . There is no military invasion at present; but we are isolated. . . .
Until the final issue [capitalism or socialism] is decided, the state of awful
war will continue.57

84 Lenin, "The Activities of the Council of People's Commissars," Report Delivered
January 24 [11], 1918 at the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Selected Works
(1943 ed.), vol. VII, p. 275.

88 Lenin, "Speech Delivered at a Meeting of Nuclei Secretaries of the Moscow
Organisation of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)" (November 26, 1920),
Selected Works ( 1 943 ed. ) , vol. VIII, pp. 282, 283.

89 Grigori Zinoviev, "Pod Znamya III Internatsionala" (Under the Banner of the
Third International), in Dvadtsat Pyat Let R.K.P. (6) 1898-1923 (Twenty-five Years
of the Russian Communist Party, 1898-1923) (Moscow: Gosizdat (State Publishing
House), 1923), p. 286.

"Lenin, "The TacUcs of the R.C.P. (B.)," Report Delivered July 5, 1921 at the
Third Congress of the Communist International, Selected Works (1943 ed.), vol.
IX, p. 242.

The Soviet leaders contemptuously rejected the principle of "nonin-
terference" in the affairs of other nations; it was announced that the
duty of the Soviet government (and not only of the Communist party)
was to fight capitalism abroad. The draft of the new program of the
party (1918) stressed the task of the Soviet dictatorship "to carry the
revolution to the more advanced as well as, in general, to all countries." 68

Impossibility of peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world was
also expressed in a resolution of the Congress of Soviets :

. . . The Congress expresses its unshakable confidence that the Soviet
government . . . will also in future do everything in its power to assist the
international Socialist movement to secure and accelerate the development
leading humanity to deliverance from the yoke of capitalism and hired
slavery, to building a Socialist society, and to a durable, just/ peace among
the peoples.59

88 Sedmoi S"ezd Rossiikoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii, Stenograficheskii Otchet
(Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Stenographic Report) (March
6-8, 1918) (Moscow: Gosizdat (State Publishing House), 1923), p. 204.

68 "O Ratifikatsii Brestskogo Mirnogo Dogovora" ([Resolution] On the Ratification
of the Brest Peace Treaty), Adopted March 15, 1918 by the Fourth Extraordinary
All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Istoriya Sovetskoi Konstitutsii . . ., p. 116.

Chapter IV. The Civil War

1. The Years of Terror

By signing the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty the Soviet leadership
expected to gain temporary relief — a "breathing spell," in Lenin's
words. Actually there was no relief, and the situation continued to
deteriorate rapidly.

In the summer of 1918, as the war in the West continued and the
Germans were still occupying large Russian areas, the civil war broke
out and soon assumed gigantic proportions. It lasted for over 2 years.

. . . After the repressions of the risings of [General] Kaledin on the
Don, and of Dutov in the Urals, the mobile "Cossack Vendee" was con-
sistently in revolt. In the north the Finnish counter-revolution, supported
by German troops, threatened Petrograd. Presently, English and French
forces were to occupy Archangel, and the Murmansk coast. On the
middle Volga detachments of Czechoslovak prisoners of war on their way
home raised armed revolt. On the lower Volga, Krasnov's Cossacks were
approaching Tsaritsyn. In the Kuban the first volunteers of Denikin's
future army were assembling to the south of the Caspian ; Whites with some
English officers from Persia threatened the Baku Commune, then in the
hands of the Reds. On the Roumanian frontier Bessarabia was invaded.
In the Far East the Japanese were landing at Vladivostok. . . .

In rural Russia groups of "partisans" of all colours were operating. . . .
In the starving towns industrial production fell almost to zero, commerce
was dying. . . .*

The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries

. . . devised a plan for an armed uprising coupled with terrorist acts
against Gennan diplomatic representatives in Russia. On July 6, 1918,
[Yakov] Blumkin, a Left Socialist Revolutionary, who was armed with
credentials of the Cheka, assassinated Count Mirbach, the German
Ambassador in Moscow.

With the support of several squads of soldiers and a rebel Cheka
detachment, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries arrested Dzerzhinsky and
seized a number of public buildings, including the Moscow Telegraph
Office. Telegrams were at once dispatched throughout the country,
summoning the people to revolt.2

1 Boris Souvarine, Stalin (New York: Alliance Book Corp., Longmans, Green and
Co., 1939), pp. 219,220.

* David Snub, Lenin (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1948), p. 316. For a descrip-
tion of the Cheka, which was headed by Dzerzhinski, see sec. 4 of this chapter.

(87)

The revolt was suppressed by harsh measures. Expecting a bellig-
erent reaction on the part of Germany to the assassination of the German
ambassador, Lenin instructed Stalin, in Tsaritsyn, to act "ruthlessly";
Stalin answered: "You may rest assured, our hand will not flinch."3
About the same time (early in July), another revolt, this one led by the
(Right) Socialist-Revolutionaries, broke out in Yaroslavl. The revolt
was put down and the insurgents were summarily executed.

Anti-Soviet committees sprang up in various places. In Moscow,
a Right Center, a National Center, and a more liberal League for the
Regeneration of Russia emerged; their aim was to prepare for an over-
throw of the regime. An attempt on Lenin's life was made by Dora
Kaplan, a Socialist-Revolutionary, on August 30, 1918; Lenin was
wounded, but he recovered. On the same day the head of the Petro-
grad Cheka, Moisei Uritski, was assassinated. A large area from the
Volga to Siberia fell to a Committee of the Constituent Assembly.

A "Czechoslovak Legion," which had been organized in Russia in the
first years of the war, and which embraced Czech and Slovak soldiers
of the Austrian-Hungarian army taken prisoners by Russia, was per-
mitted to leave the country inasmuch as almost all of them were pro-
Allied, anti-German and were prepared to fight on the Western front.
The Legion tried to get to Vladivostok, from which they could be shipped
to Europe.

Trotsky, the Commissar of War, ordered the legion disarmed. On May
26, when an attempt was made to carry out this order, the Czechs, then
in the Volga region, rebelled and arrested the local Soviet officials.
*******

On June 8, workers and soldiers allied with the Socialist Revolutionary
Party joined the Czechs. And a Committee of "Members of the All-
Russian Constituent Assembly" was formed which began to organize a
volunteer People's Army. Cossacks from the Urals joined forces with the
Czechs and the People's Army.4

After the March revolution the Tsar and his family were at first con-
fined to residence in Tsarskoe Selo; in July 1917 they were transferred
to Tobolsk in western Siberia where they were lodged in a former gov-
ernor's house. The situation changed, however, soon after the Soviet
upheaval, and in April 1918 the family, along with its servants, was re-
moved to Ekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk) in the Urals, where they were
placed in a house in the center of the city. The family received rough
treatment from its Red guards.6

3 J. V. Stalin, "Letter to V. I. Lenin" (July 7, 1918), Works (Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1952-55), vol. IV (1953), p. 120.

* Shub, op. cit., p. 315.

* William Henry Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution 1917-1921 (New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1957), vol. II, p. 89.

In Moscow the plan of a public trial of the Tsar was being discussed;
such a trial would certainly have ended in the execution of the former
monarch.

The unforceen course of the civil war, however, led to a simpler, more
expeditious and more ruthless decision: to exterminate the entire family.
No court could well have passed capital sentences on young children;
but they could easily be disposed of in a secret and more or less unofficial
killing. Early in July Ekaterinburg was threatened from two sides by the
advancing Czechs and the Russian anti-Bolshevik forces who were fighting
on their side. . . .

The decision to kill all the members of the family, together with the
Tsar's personal physician, Botkin, and three servants, was taken at a meet-
ing of the Ural Territorial Soviet on July 12. The military authorities
reported that Ekaterinburg could not hold out more than three days.6

Officially, the central government was not asked for orders by the
Ekaterinburg Soviet ; allegedly, it was the local Soviet which reached the
decision. There can be no doubt, however, that at least Lenin and
Trotsky, informed well in advance, had given their consent or their
orders.

About midnight on the night of July 1 6, a member of the local Soviet,
Yakov Yurovski, ordered the members of the Tsar's family to go to
the cellar. After an hour the family and all servants were assembled in
the cellar.

The Tsar stood in the middle of the room, at his side the Tsarevitch sat
in a chair; on his right stood Doctor Botkin. The Tsarina and her daugh-
ters stood behind them near the wall; the three servants stood in corners
of the room. Yurovsky told the Tsar (there is no clear record of the
precise words which he used) that he was to be put to death. The Tsar
did not understand and began to say "What?" whereupon Yurovsky shot
him down with his revolver. This was the signal for the general massacre.
The other executioners, seven Letts and two agents from the Cheka, emp-
tied their revolvers into the bodies of the victims. The Tsar fell first, fol-
lowed by his son. The room was filled with shrieks and groans; blood
poured in streams on the floor. The chambermaid, Demidova, tried to
protect herself with a pillow, and delayed her death for a short time. The
slaughter was soon ended; Yurovsky fired two additional bullets into the
body of the Tsarevitch, who was still groaning and the Letts thrust bayonets
into any of the victims who still showed signs of life.7

On July 19, the Moscow press carried a short official report of the
execution. However, it falsely stated that "the wife and son of Nicholas
Romanov were sent to a safe place."

. . . Apparently the extermination of the former Czarina, the Czarevich,
and his four sisters, was too unsavory for the public. Moreover, no code

• Ibid., p. 90.
'Ibid., p. 91.

of laws, even summary revolutionary justice, could admit the "execution"
of the former Czar's physician, cook, chambermaid, and waiter.

The night following the death of the former Czar seven other members
of the Romanov family were executed in a town in the Urals. Earlier,
Grand Duke Mikhail had been shot in Perm. •

After the surrender of Germany in November 1918 the civil war in
Russia, which was being fought since the end of 1917, took on even
greater proportions. Communist detachments tried to occupy the Baltic
countries; in the Ukraine several governments fought for supremacy.

"Volunteer Armies" were organized in the south, mainly in the Don
region, and in the east, beyond the Volga. General Mikhail Alekseev,
who had served as the actual head of the General Staff during the World
War, had been organizing anti-Bolshevik forces since November 1917.
Leadership of the White armies was taken over by General Anton Deni-
kin, commander-in-chief of the south-western front in the war with
Germany. Also outstanding among the anti-Bolshevik military leaders
was General Petr Krasnov, organizer of the Cossack troops along with
General Aleksei Kaledin. In the east, the White armies stood under
Aleksandr Kolchak, Admiral of the Russian Navy before and during
the revolution. In 1918-19 Kolchak headed the anti-Soviet govern-
ment in Siberia; he was proclaimed "Supreme Ruler" of Russia and
he received support from the Allies.

In the course of the civil war Soviet troops

. . . penetrated into the Urals, after having dislodged the Committee
of the Constituent Assembly from Samara and the Directory of the Social
Revolutionaries from Ufa, but they had to retreat before [Admiral] Kol-
chak's White Army under the orders of the Omsk dictatorship protected
by the Allies.9

In the course of 1919 the civil war was to be intensified

. . . with the concentric advance of the armies of Kolchak and Denikin
on Moscow, and the march of [General] Yudenich on Petrograd. The
Soviet Republic, cut off from its natural resources, was for a moment re-
duced, in the current expression, almost to the grand duchy of Moscow.10

The situation of the Whites, however, was, in a way, worse than that
of the Moscow government. Divided into political groups which fero-
ciously fought one another, without supplies and sufficient food, with
only feeble help from the Allies, they were doomed. The turn of the
tide came in the second half of 1919. Kolchak was the first to be
repulsed.

8Shub, op. cit.,p. 319.

• Souvarine, op. cit., p. 234.

"Ibid., p. 237

2. The Red Army

After a rapid demobilization of the old army, the new Red Arm)
was organized by Trotsky in the spring and summer of 1918. Universal
conscription was introduced, but special measures had to be taken to
obtain commanders for the army and insure their loyalty to the one-party
regime.

Simultaneously with the introduction of compulsory military training for
the workers and poorer peasants the practice of electing officers was abol-
ished. The Bolshevik military authorities now began to talk about the
harmful and disruptive influence of army committees very much as Kor-
nilov, Denikin and the old officers had spoken in 1917; and strict obedience
to the orders of the officers gradually became embedded in the discipline
of the Red Army.11

The reintroduction of compulsory military service helped to create an
army of large dimensions. In August 1 9 1 8 it

. . . numbered 331,000; this figure increased to 550,000 on September 5
and to 800,000 by the end of the year. . . . "We decided to have an army
of a million men in the spring. Now we need an army of three million.
We can have it and we will have it" [declared Lenin on October 4, 1918.]

Lenin's desired figure of 3,000,000 was reached on January 1, 1920; and
during 1920 the Army continued to grow until it amounted to about five
and a half million.12

Discipline in the new army was weak and loyalty doubtful. Deser-
tions reached huge proportions despite the severe punishment meted out
to deserters.

According to official Soviet figures there were 2,846,000 deserters during
the years 1919 and 1920. Of these 1,543,000 appeared "voluntarily" in
response to proclamations promising them immunity if they joined the
ranks before specified dates, while about a million were caught in raids
which were regularly organized in towns and on the railroads. . . .

. . . During the last seven months of 1919, 4,112 deserters were sen-
tenced to death, but only 612 were actually executed, according to official
figures. During the same period 55,000 deserters were sent to punishment
units, where they were subjected to a very severe disciplinary regime.13

It was questionable, however, whether the officers of the old army, if
ordered into the new military force, would be loyal to the Soviet govern-
ment. A number of party leaders wanted the Red Army to be led by
Communists or "proletarians"; Lenin and Trotsky disagreed with this
view:

Trotzky insisted that without the old officers no regular army worthy
of the name could be formed. . . .

11 Chamberlin, op. cit.,vo\. II, p. 28.
u Ibid., p. 29.
18 Ibid., p. 30.

However, Trotzky insured the loyalty of the majority of the former offi-
cers by an adroit mixture of cajolery and terrorism. He did not resort to
the coarse abuse of the officers with which some of the cruder Petrograd
Communists, such as Zinoviev, Volodarsky and Lashevitch, endeavored to
reconcile the proletariat to the necessity of employing them.14

"Between June 12, 1918, and August 15, 1920, 48,409 former offi-
cers were taken into the Red Army." 15

A number of former officers who refused to join the Red Army, or who
deserted after joining, were shot. The families of the deserters were
often arrested. Many former officers who refused to support the Com-
munists succeeded in escaping to the South, however, where a White
Army was being organized.

A very important role in the Red Army was played by the political com-
missars, who were supposed simultaneously to watch out for the political
loyalty of the officers, to take charge of Party work in the units and to carry
on political propaganda and educational work among the peasant recruits.
The commissar was not supposed to interfere with the operative orders of
the commander; but he was empowered to take drastic action if he
suspected treason. As the civil war went on, an elaborate Communist
Party organization was built up in the Army; so-called political departments
were formed on every front and in every army. . . .ie

3. The Communist International

The years 1919-20 witnessed the founding of the Communist Inter-
national. Heir of the "Left Zimmerwald" faction,17 the new Inter-
national had a base in a large country (Russia) and abundant help
from its government. On the other hand, that government then placed
all hope for its survival as a government on the success of the revolution
abroad.

. . . The work of preparing the new international was done, quite naively
at that time, by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chicherin [People's Com-
missar of Foreign Affairs] launched a wireless appeal for an international
conference.18

The first congress, convened in March 1919, included, in addition
to the Russian participants, representatives of small left socialist groups
from a number of other countries.

. . . Most of the thirty-five delegates and fifteen guests had been hand-
picked by the Russian Central Committee from so-called "Communist par-

11 Ibid., p. 31. ,
v Ibid., p. 32.
" Ibid., pp. 32, 33.
1T See chapter I.

aF. Borkenau, The Communist International (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd,,
1938), p. 162.

ties" in those smaller "nations" which had formerly comprised the Russian
Empire, such as Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Finland ; or they
were war prisoners or foreign radicals who happened to be in Russia at
this time. . . . England [was represented] by a Russian emigre named Fein-
berg on Chicherin's staff; Hungary by a war prisoner who later escaped
with a large sum of money.19

Grigori Zinoviev, Lenin's right-hand man, was elected President of
the Communist International. In this capacity he exercised great influ-
ence, over a period of about five years, upon Communist movements in
both the East and the West.

... He [Lenin] knew that he had in Zinoviev a reliable and docile tool
and he never doubted for a moment his own ability to control that tool to
the advantage of the Revolution. Zinoviev was an interpreter and execu-
tor of the will of others, and his personal shrewdness, ambiguity, and dis-
honesty made it possible for him to discharge these duties more effectively
than could a more scrupulous man.20

. . A brilliant speaker and debater, he [Zinoviev] had the gift of dealing
with various sorts of people, but an innate duplicity and love of double-
dealing and intrigue very soon disgusted the most enthusiastic. He was
notoriously anything but courageous, but, as is so often the case with
excitable types, was capable of the wildest overrating of chances and unable
to admit failure.21

Angelica Balabanoff, at the time a member of the supreme body of
the Comintern (Communist International), described the machinery
of the new organization as follows :

I was most disturbed at this time [1919] and during the coming year to
find how many of our agents and representatives were individuals long
discredited in the labour movement abroad. They were chosen because
they had nothing in common with the labour movement and could, there-
fore, obey the most contradictory and outrageous orders quite mechanically
and with no sense of responsibility. Adventurers, opportunists, even former
Red-baiters, all were grist to Zinoviev's mill. They departed on secret
missions, supplied with enormous sums — and as emissaries of Moscow to
the revolutionary workers abroad, they moved in the reflected glory of
the October Revolution.22

The regular work of the Comintern was carried out by a small group of
Russian leaders :

Simovjev [Zinoviev], Bukharin, and Radek formed the real day-to-day
leadership of the Comintern. Occasionally Trotsky, while burdened with
immense labours, lent a hand, especially in matters concerning France,23

w Angelica Balabanoff, My Life as a Rebel (New York and London: Harper & Bros.,
1938), p. 213.
■J6uf.,p.221.
" Borkenau, op. cii., p. 163.
* Balabanoff, op. eit., p. 223.
" Borkenau, op. cii., p. 164.

68491 O-61-vol. II— 7

The "second" congress, held in the summer of 1920, was actually
the first large and effective congress of the Communist International;
it was this congress that adopted Lenin's strict "21 demands" for mem-
bership in the new International and embraced his philosophy of bour-
geois and proletarian democracy, "dictatorship of the proletariat," social
revolution, and all his other tenets.

The parties affiliated to the Communist International must be built
on the principle of democratic centralism. In the present epoch of acute
civil war the Communist Party will be able to perform its duty only if it
is organised in the most centralised manner, only if iron discipline bordering
on military discipline prevails in it, and if its party centre is a powerful organ
of authority, enjoying wide powers and the general confidence of the mem-
bers of the Party.24

The main idea of the Communist International, in contrast to the
"weak," "impotent" Socialist International, was that the Communist In-
ternational should be a strictly centralized "army" obeying orders and
waging its wars with all the means at its disposal. Lenin told the Sec-
ond Congress of the Communist International :

Everywhere we have a proletarian army, although sometimes badly
organised, needing reorganisation; and if our international comrades now
help us to organise a united army, no shortcomings will hinder us in the
pursuit of our cause. And this cause is the world proletarian revolution, the
cause of creating a worldwide Soviet Republic.25

As to the importance of the achievements of the congress, Lenin said :

The congress created a solidarity and discipline of Communist Parties the
world over such as has never existed before, and which will enable the van-
guard of the workers' revolution to march forward to its great goal, the
overthrow of the yoke of capital, with seven-league strides.26

The new International instructed its parties not to place great hopes in
democratically elected parliaments; and especially in view of an expected
imminent outbreak of uprisings and revolutions, a network of under-
ground cells should be organized everywhere, especially in the army and
among the police :

communism rejects parliamentarism as the form of the future; it
rejects it as a form of the class dictatorship of the proletariat; it rejects the
possibility of winning over the parliaments permanently; its fixed aim is to

** V. I. Lenin, "The Conditions of Affiliation to the Communist International"
(July 1920), Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1943), vol. X,
p. 204.

* Lenin, "The International Situation and the Fundamental Tasks of the Commu-
nist International," Report Delivered July 19, 1920 at the Second Congress of the
Communist International, Selected Works, vol. X, p. 199.

" Lenin, "The Second Congress of the Communist International" (August-Septem-
ber 1 920 ) , Selected Work:, vol. X, p. 1 60.

destroy parliamentarism. Therefore there can be a question only of utilizing
bourgeois state institutions with the object of destroying them. .27

it is necessary, immediately, for all legal Communist Parties to form
illegal organisations for the purpose of systematically carrying on illegal
work, and of fully preparing for the moment when the bourgeoisie resorts
to persecution. Illegal work is particularly necessary in the army, the navy
and police. 28

No equality of national groups ever existed in the Communist Inter-
national, contrary to all pretenses and claims. From its very beginnings
the Comintern, dominated and controlled by the Russian leadership,
rapidly developed into a tool of Soviet foreign policy.

the leadership of the International was entirely in the hands of the
Russians, Radek being regarded as a Bolshevik and being a member of the
Russian party. The Russians sincerely believed that they were work-

ing for world revolution and regarded their own revolution as part of it.
But the choice of the men they delegated for this task proved that, un-
known to themselves, they were Russian nationalists who regarded — al-
ready!— the other parties as auxiliaries in their cause.

. . Trotsky, in the gazette of his armoured train, wrote an article in
which he claimed to see the Red Army, after defeating the Whites, conquer
Europe and attack America.29

One of the first acts of the new International was to call a "Congress
of the Peoples of the East" in Baku in September 1920. Although
the emphasis at this congress was on antiwesternism rather than on a
"proletarian" revolution, the leaders were Comintern figures : Zinoviev,
Radek, Bela Kun. About 2,000 easterners were present, including 235
Turks, 192 Persians, 157 Armenians, and a few Chinese.

. Zinoviev brought a long speech to a passionate oratorical climax
with the following outburst :

"The real revolution will blaze up only when the 800,000,000 people who
live in Asia unite with us, wrhen the African continent unites, when we see
that hundreds of millions of people are in movement. Now we must
kindle a real holy war against the British and French capitalists. . We
must say that the hour has struck when the workers of the whole world are
able to arouse tens and hundreds of millions of peasants, to create a Red
Army in the East, to arm and organize uprisings in the rear of the British,
to poison the existence of every impudent British officer who lords it over
Turkey, Persia, India, China."

At this moment the audience, mostly clad in colorful oriental costumes,
sprang up. Swords, sabres, and revolvers were flourished in the air, while

r Ytcroi Kongress Kommunisticheskogo Intematsionala, Stenograficheskii Otchet
(Second Congress of the Communist International, Stenographic Report) (July-
August 1920) (Moscow: Partizdat (Party Publishing House), 1934), pp. 587, 588.

" Lenin, "Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Commu-
nist International" (July 4, 1920), Selected Works, vol. X, p. 173.

M Borkenau, op. cit., pp. 164, 165.

the vow of a jehad, or holy war, was pronounced. Radek endeavored to
conjure up the spirit of Tamerlane and Genghiz Khan. After saying that
the East, under capitalist oppression, created a philosophy of patience, he
added:

"We appeal, comrades, to the spirit of struggle which once animated the
peoples of the East when they marched against Europe under the leadership
of their great conquerors. And when the capitalists of Europe say that
there is the menace of a new wave of barbarism, a new wave of Huns, we
reply : Long live the Red East, which, together with the workers of Europe,
will create a new culture under the banner of communism." 80

Although the immediate results were limited, the congress showed
the direction and trend of the Comintern's drive in the Orient.

4. The Cheka

The new government, which represented rule by a small minority,
could not assert itself and establish order without recourse to violence
and oppression. A new police system was set up, the so-called Cheka
(later Vecheka), which, after several reorganizations and changes of
name, and having come to be a constant element of the Soviet govern-
ment, still exists today under the title "Committee for State Security."

At the session of the Central Executive Committee on December 14,
1917, only a few weeks after the November upheaval, Leon Trotsky
warned the opponents of the dictatorship that

. in not more than a month's time terror will assume very violent
forms, after the example of the great French Revolution. The guillotine
and not merely the jail will be ready for our enemies.81

On January 24 [11], 1918, Lenin told the Congress of Soviets that

. . . When violence is exercised by the toilers, by the masses of the ex-
ploited against the exploiters — then we are for it. S2

December 1917 marked the beginnings of the new secret police in
Russia which rapidly grew to assume great powers :

. . The Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-revolution
and Sabotage (usually known from its Russian initials as the Cheka) was
established by a decision of the Council of People's Commissars on De-
cember 20, 1917 . . . six weeks after the October [November] Revolution.
To head the Commission the Council named Feliks Dzerzhinski, a veteran

80 Chamberlin, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 392, 393.

81 As quoted in James Bunyan, Intervention, Civil War and Communism in Russia,
April-December, 1918 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1936), p. 227.

** Lenin, "The Activities of the Council of People's Commissars," Report Delivered
January 24 [11], 1918 to the Third All-Russian Congress of Workers', Soldiers', and
Peasants' Deputies, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 269. The Third All-Russian Con-
gress of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies took place in Petrograd on
January 23-31 [10-16], 1918.

Bolshevik who had taken an active part in the uprising as a member of
the Military Revolutionary Committee. Even before the establishment of
the Cheka, Dzerzhinski had been named head of a section of the Military
Revolutionary Committee to deal with cases of counterrevolution.

No formal legislation establishing the Cheka was published during its
existence. It was not, in fact, until 1924 that a document was published
which has sometimes been regarded as a founding decree. This document
defined the functions of the Cheka as follows :

" ( 1 ) To hunt out and liquidate all counterrevolutionary [and] sabotage
attempts and actions throughout Russia, no matter what their origin; (2) to
hand over all saboteurs and counterrevolutionaries to the Revolutionary
Tribunal and prepare measures for combating them. . . ." S3

The secret police at this initial phase was assigned to make only
"preliminary investigation," and it could not mete out punishment,
according to the founding decree:

... (3) the commission is to carry out preliminary investigation only, to
the extent necessary for suppression.84

Somewhat later the jurisdiction of the Cheka was widened, yet

. . . Penalties to be imposed by the Cheka in the fulfillment of its
tasks were "confiscation, deprivation of ration cards, publication of lists of
enemies of the people, etc."

The actual functions and powers of the Cheka became clear only in the
course of time, by practice rather than by statute. The most important
function did not find expression in the draft decree, although it may have
been clear to Lenin and Dzerzhinski : the Cheka's main task was to act as
the investigative and punitive arm of the dictatorship, answerable only to
the top leadership of the Party and government. Experience was to dem-
onstrate that whatever actions the Cheka considered necessary to defend
the dictatorship, including arrest, imprisonment and execution, would be
approved by the Party leadership, notwithstanding any formal or legal
limitations on its power.

During the first half-year of its existence the Cheka established a cen-
tralized administrative network, headed by the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission (known from its Russian initials as the VCheka, VChK or
Vecheka) . At first located in Petrograd, the VCheka moved to Moscow in
March 1918, following the transfer there of the Soviet Government. A
strong and nearly autonomous Cheka remained in Petrograd, however,
directed by M. S. Uritski. It soon acquired particular notoriety for the
severity of its repressive measures.35

In all provinces, on the initiative of the local Bolshevik leadership, and
certainly on instructions from Petrograd and Moscow, provincial and

w Simon Wolin and Robert M. Slusser, eds., The Soviet Secret Police (New York:
Frederick A. Praeger, 1957), pp. 3, 4.
"Ibid., p. 4.
uIbid.

city Chekas emerged which arrogated to themselves the same powers
as those held by the Cheka in the capital.

Despite the absence of any legislation authorizing it to make arrests, the
Cheka soon assumed this power. . . .

The Cheka soon added to its powers the right to carry out summary
executions, although it was clear to leading Cheka officials that such
actions had no justification in law. In February 1918 the VCheka an-
nounced that it saw "no other way to combat counterrevolutionaries, spies,
speculators, burglars, hooligans, saboteurs and other parasites than their
merciless annihilation at the scene of the crime," and warned that its organs
would cany out summary executions of all such persons. A companion
proclamation called on the local Soviets to shoot "enemy agents, counter-
revolutionary agitators, speculators, organizers of uprisings" and other
opponents of the Soviet dictatorship, and to organize local Chekas.36

The initial, in a way a preparatory, stage in the history of the Cheka
ended after 6 or 7 months, in the summer 1918. The start of the civil
war meant a huge increase in terrorism and a widening of the Cheka's
jurisdiction.

The change from sporadic acts of terrorism and violence to a deliberate
and openly acknowledged policy of mass terrorism took place in the summer
of 1918. The immediate cause of the change was a series of actions directed
against the Bolshevik regime, beginning in June with the assassination of
[M. M.] Volodarski, a Bolshevik leader, and continuing during July and
August with uprisings in Moscow, Yaroslavl' and elsewhere. After an abor-
tive uprising in Penza in August, Lenin telegraphed instructions to "put into
effect a merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards"
and to put suspects into concentration camps outside the city. A month
later the chairman of the Penza soviet reported that 152 Whites had been
executed in reprisal for one Communist, and promised that "in the future
firmer measures will be taken in regard to the Whites."

On August 30, 1918, Lenin was wounded in Moscow by a young woman
and [Moisei] Uritski, chief of the Petrograd Cheka, was assassinated.
Gripped with fear, the Soviet government unleashed a policy of mass terror
which continued with varying degrees of intensity throughout the Civil
War. On August 31, the day after the attempt on Lenin's life, the VCheka
v arned that "representatives of the bourgeoisie must begin to feel the heavy
hand of the working class"; on September 2 the VTsIK (All-Russian Cen-
tral Executive Committee) adopted a resolution threatening "mass red ter-
ror" against the "bourgeoisie and its agents"; on the 3rd it was announced
that five hundred persons had been shot in Petrograd in reprisal for the mur-
der of Uritski; on the 4th the Commissar of Internal Affairs issued a proc-
lamation calling for the taking of hostages from the bourgeoisie and the un-
wavering application of "mass terror"; and on the 5th the Commissariat
of Justice issued a decree "On The Red Terror" in which the Cheka was
empowered to put "class enemies" into concentration camps and execute

"Ibid., pp. 4,5.

"all those involved in White Guard organizations, conspiracies and in-
surrections." 8T

The method of suppressing the political opposition by "mass terror,"
introduced by Lenin in 1918, became a standard system of the Soviet
government and subsequentiy was widely used by Stalin. The execution
of hundreds of avowedly innocent persons without trial was "to teach a
lesson" and stop the anti-Bolsheviks from committing terroristic acts.

Authentic reports on the Cheka's part in carrying out the Red Terror
during the early autumn of 1918 are contained in its Ezhenedel'nik
[Weekly], six numbers of which were issued during September and October.
Each issue contains reports on arbitrary arrests and executions and the mass
murder of hostages, persons admittedly innocent of any crime but marked
by the Bolsheviks for extermination because of their social origin. These
actions were approved by the VCheka and the Party leaders, as was the
use of torture for the extraction of information and confessions.

The Cheka's methods and the character of its personnel soon made it
the object of criticism, not only among opponents of the Soviet regime but
in the government and Party as well. That work in the Cheka attracted
criminals, sadists and degenerates was openly admitted by the Cheka itself.
Its Weekly candidly noted that "reports are coming in from all sides that
not only unworthy but outright criminal individuals are trying to penetrate
the . . . Chekas." A high-ranking Chekist, Martin Latsis, later complained
that "work in the Cheka, conducted in an atmosphere of physical co-
ercion, attracts corrupt and outright criminal elements which, profiting
from their position as Cheka agents, blackmail and extort, filling their own
pockets. . . . However honest a man is, however crystal-clear his heart,
work in the Cheka, which is carried on with almost unlimited rights and
under conditions greatly affecting the nervous system, begins to tell. Few
escape the effect of the conditions under which they work.'* 38

Lenin always approved the Cheka's activities, if only because he him-
self was its creator; he prodded and incited the head of the Cheka,
Feliks Dzerzhinski, to severity and mercilessness.

Replying to criticisms of the Cheka directed against just these features
of its work, Lenin told a conference of Cheka representatives in November
1918 that notwithstanding the presence of "strange elements" in its ranks,
the Cheka was "putting into practice the dictatorship of the proletariat, and
in this respect its role is invaluable, there is no other path to the freeing of
the masses than the suppression of the exploiters by force. The Cheka is
engaged in this, and in this consists its service to the proletariat." 89

In almost all cases — and there were plenty of them — of a conflict be-
tween a state agency and the Cheka the latter won out.

More serious, because they raised fundamental questions of the structure
and function of the government and because they were made by prominent

87 Ibid., pp. 5, 6.

88 Ibid., p. 6.
" 'bid.

100

Party leaders, were criticisms of the Cheka's unbridled claims to autonomy.
Typical of such claims was a VCheka order of September 20, 1918, which
declared, "In its activities the VCheka is absolutely autonomous, carrying
out searches, arrests and executions, and reporting ex post facto to the
Council of People's Commissars and the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee." Claims of this kind inevitably brought the Cheka into conflict
with other agencies of the Soviet government, particularly the Commissariat
of Justice, which naturally claimed a leading role in determining who should
be arrested and under what conditions. During the early period of Soviet
rule the Commissariat of Justice was headed not by a Bolshevik but by a
Left Socialist Revolutionary, [Isaac] Steinberg. As was to be expected,
Steinberg's repeated protests against the Cheka's arbitrary arrests and execu-
tions were rejected or ridiculed by Lenin. The protests continued, however,
under Steinberg's Bolshevik successors, reaching a climax at a conference of
jurists in November 1918.40

The few Bolsheviks appointed by the Central Committee of Lenin's
party to head the Cheka were so sure of themselves and felt so superior
to other leaders and agencies that they dared to defy any attempt to
check their activities or curtail their powers.

In an effort to settle the dispute and define the place of the Cheka in the
Soviet system the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree on Novem-
ber 2, 1918, prescribing that representatives of the Commissariats of Justice
and Internal Affairs should be members of the collegium (central board) of
the Cheka. This attempt ended in failure, however, for the representatives
of the Commissariat of Justice soon walked out in protest against the treat-
ment they received in the Cheka, with the result that there was a permanent
rupture of "diplomatic relations" between the two bodies.41

However, not every non-Communist party of the great country could
be entirely and definitely suppressed within the short period of a year or
even two of the Soviet regime. Opposition did sometimes emerge in the
Soviets; across the frontiers of the civil war information penetrated to the
population of Soviet Russia. As if making a concession Lenin's
government pretended to be turning to legality.

The campaign of criticism of the Cheka grew in intensity during late 1918
and early 1919, leading to the promulgation on February 17, 1919, of a
decree which transferred to the Revolutionary Tribunals the right to impose
sentences in cases initiated by the Cheka. Unlike the trials conducted by
the Cheka, the sessions of the tribunals were to take place in public and in
the presence of the accused. The curbs which the decree appeared to place
on the Cheka were of slight avail, however, for the Cheka retained the
approval of the Party leadership for its exercise of full freedom of action in
all cases which it considered to involve a threat to the Soviet regime. The
real position of affairs was made clear a few weeks before the February 17

M Ibid., pp. 6, 7.
"I bid., p. 7.

101

decree in an open letter from the Central Committee of the Party, "To the
Communist Workers of All the Chekas," in which critics of the Cheka in the
Party were reminded that the organs of the Cheka were "established, exist
and work only as direct agencies of the Party, under its directives and under
its control." 42

Actually the new legality was a pretense: there were no legal codes,
either prerevolutionary or newly introduced, to serve the courts, the
tribunals or the Cheka. Rather, under the guise of "in the interests of
the revolution" they were free to indict, sentence and mete out any
punishment :

The law of February 17 was not permitted in any case to curb the Cheka
in its task of defending the dictatorship. This fact was graphically dem-
onstrated by a law passed in October 1919, establishing a 3-man Special
Revolutionary Tribunal under the VCheka to deal with major cases of
speculation and economic malfeasance. The tribunal was to be guided
"exclusively by the interests of the revolution" and was specifically ex-
empted from "any judicial forms whatsoever." Its decisions were not
subject to appeal.

In January 1920, in a propaganda move designed mainly to influence
foreign public opinion, the VCheka sponsored a decree abolishing the death
penalty, but the decree made no essential difference in its methods and
powers.43

By that time the Cheka, initially presented as an "extraordinary,"
rather temporary institution, had stabilized, becoming, contrary to all
promise, one of the pillars of the Soviet system.

Under Dzerzhinski's energetic direction the Cheka rapidly extended its
controls into the most diverse fields. No significant aspect of Soviet econ-
omy and administration escaped its scrutiny, or was safe from its extra-
legal methods of repression. It was particularly active in the fields of trans-
portation and industry. By 1921 it had assumed responsibility for guard-
ing the Soviet frontier. It built up its own armed force. In the regular
army it established its "Special Sections" — secret representatives to spy and
hunt out potential disloyalty or disaffection, a practice which initiated the
traditional hatred of the secret police by the army.

A task of major importance assumed by the Cheka during the Civil
War was the detection and frustration of anti-Soviet plots. During this
period the Cheka initiated a practice which later became characteristic, the
fabrication or inflation of plots by provocation.

It was during the Civil War period also that the foundations were laid
of an extensive and powerful espionage and subversion network abroad,
manned not only by Communists and Communist sympathizers, but by
professional spies, adventurers and persons over whom the Cheka exerted
a hold.

" Ibid., pp. 7, 8.
*• Ibid., p. 8.

102

Wherever the Soviet power spread — to the Ukraine, the Transcaucasus
and elsewhere — the Cheka was one of the first governmental organs to be
established. Strictly subordinated to the central VCheka in Moscow, the
Chekas of the outlying republics played an essential role in establishing and
maintaining Soviet power there.4*

It is impossible to indicate the number of victims of the Cheka during
the early period, 1917-21. Reporting on the first 19 months (January
1918 to July 1919) of the Cheka's operations, Martin Latsis, one of
its then ranking leaders, gave the following data: 344 uprisings were
suppressed in which 3,057 persons were killed; 412 "counter-revolu-
tionary" organizations were uncovered; 8,389 persons were executed;
9,496 persons were sent to concentration camps; 34,334 were impris-
oned. The total number of arrests was 86,893."

However,

. . . The figures of Cheka shootings and imprisonings given by Latsis
are obviously far too small. He did not even bother to add them up
correctly, and they are contradicted by other official figures. The figures
produced by the Whites are even more obviously far too large. According
to Denikin [The White Army, London, 1930, p. 292], "the Special Judiciary
Commission of Inquiry into the Bolshevik atrocities" reckoned the number
of victims of the Bolshevist terror in 1918-19 at 1,700,000. "But," ad-
mitted Denikin, "their actual number is known to God alone." . . . The
savagery increased as the civil war went on, and the Cheka was its chief
agent on the Bolshevik side. Latsis already in August had announced that
there were no laws in civil war except one, according to which enemy
wounded should be shot and no prisoners should be taken. Countless
victims fell to the special Cheka troops ("Vokhr" or "Vnus") which
carried out punitive expeditions and raids throughout the war, and also
assisted in suppressing the Kronstadt rebellion, and, later, the Antonov
peasant rising in Tambov. . . .

According to all accounts the Tribunals had a far smaller share than the
Cheka in the terror, yet the available evidence (which is probably more
reliable than that concerning the Cheka) concerning their activity is im-
pressive. Even after the end of the Civil War, during the first half of
1921, the Tribunals are stated [N. K. Yustitsii, Otchet IX-omu Vserossis-
komu S'ezdu Sovetov — Report to the Ninth All-Russian Congress of So-
viets— 1921, p. 23] to have been passing death sentences at the rate of
over 100 a month, and prison sentences at the rate of nearly 1,600 a month.
Nearly 150,000 arrests were made by the organs of the Commissariat of
Justice (i.e. by the Tribunals and the People's Courts) in the first half
of 1919. The prisons of the Commissariat in February 1919 held 22,000
persons, 16,794 of whom still had their cases under investigation. Nearly

u Ibid., pp. 8, 9.

rtM. [Martin] Ya. Latsii (Sudrabs), Dva Goda Borby na Vnutrennem Fronte (Two
Years of Fighting on the Internal Front) (Moscow: Gosizdat (State Publishing
House), 1920), pp. 75-76.

103

half of these cases were being investigated by the Cheka, and the rest by the
Tribunals or People's Courts. [Sovetskaya Yustitsiya (Soviet Justice) —
edited by Dimitri Kursky, 1919, p. 22.] *•

Among the Cheka's methods of investigation, a widely used one was
torture of arrested persons; the Cheka leaders considered this a neces-
sity in many cases. When the British diplomat R. Bruce Lockhart, who
was suspected of counter-revolutionary activities, was arrested in the
fall of 1918 and then released, a group of Bolsheviks and Cheka leaders
from Nolinsk submitted a joint protest which appeared in the official
Cheka Weekly.

"The Cheka has still not got away from petty-bourgeois ideology, the
cursed inheritance of the pre-revolutionary past. Tell us, why didn't you
subject Lockhart to the most refined tortures, in order to get information
and addresses, of which such a bird must have had very many? Tell us
why you permitted him to leave the building of the Cheka 'in great con-
fusion,' instead of subjecting him to tortures, the very description of which
would have filled counter-revolutionaries with cold horror?

"Enough of being soft; give up this unworthy play at 'diplomacy' and
'representation.'

"A dangerous scoundrel has been caught. Get out of him what you
can and send him to the other world."

The reply, for which the central organization of the Cheka is responsible,
is even more significant than the outburst of a remote country Cheka, which
was apparently well versed in the practise of "refined tortures." It read :
"Not at all objecting in substance to this letter, we only want to point out
to the comrades who sent it and reproached us with mildness that the 'send-
ing to the other world' of 'base intriguers' representing 'foreign peoples'
is not at all in our interest." 4T

5. Lenin and Terrorism

There is no doubt that the real ideologist and initiator of terrorism
was Lenin himself. His notion of a popular revolution, which followed
very much the pattern of France in 1793, implied a wide use, only on
a greatly enlarged scale, of all means of terrorism. He not only created
the Cheka, but constantly and publicly rationalized the use of extreme
violence, and instigated and prodded the Cheka leadership to greater
activity.

To Lenin, the role of the Communist party, being the same as the
dictatorship of the working class, meant

. . . power based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws.48

E. J. Scott, "The Cheka," Soviet Affairs, Number One, St. Antony's Papers,
No. 1 (London: Chatto & Windus Ltd., 1956), pp. 11, 12.

*TChamberlin, op. cit., vol. II, p. 71.

48 Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (November 10,
1918), Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 123.

104

In previous revolutions, Lenin said, violent suppression of the over-
thrown powers was insufficient ; the Russian revolution would go deeper
and continue the process of violence for a longer time.

. . . The misfortune of previous revolutions has been that the revolu-
tionary enthusiasm of the masses, which sustained them in their state of
tension and gave them the strength ruthlessly to suppress the elements of
disintegration, did not last long.4'

Lenin emphasized the high esteem in which he held the Cheka when
he appeared at a meeting of Cheka personnel on the first anniversary
of the November revolution. He praised highly the work of that agency.

. . . The important thing for us is that the Extraordinary Commissions
are directly exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in that re-
spect their services are inestimable. There is no way of liberating the
masses except by forcibly suppressing the exploiters. That is what the
Extraordinary Commissions are doing, and therein lies their service to the
proletariat.60

Lenin systematically advised and instructed his comrades, subordinates
and even foreign Communists (the Hungarian) to resort to executions
on a larger scale. In Petrograd, for example, the Communist leadership
hesitated to apply "mass terror" as retaliation for the assassination of
M. M. Volodarski. On June 26, 1918 Lenin wrote the following letter
to Petrograd :

Also to Lashevich and other members of the TsK [Central Committee].

Comrade Zinoviev! Only today we heard in the Central Committee that
the workers of Petrograd wanted to react to the murder of Volodarsky by
mass terror and that you (not you personally but the members of the Central
Committee living in Petrograd and the members of the Petrograd Com-
mittee) restrained them.

I protest categorically!

We are compromising ourselves: even in the resolutions of the Soviets we
threaten to apply mass terror, but when a situation really arises, we put
brakes on revolutionary mass initiative that is entirely justified.

This is im-poss-ible!

The terrorists will consider us milksops. The situation is warlike. We
must encourage the energy and the mass character of terror against the
counter-revolutionists, particularly in Petrograd, whose example is decisive.

Regards! Lenin.61

*• Lenin, "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" (March-April 1918),
Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 338.

40 Lenin, "Speech at a Meeting and Concert for the Staff of the AH-Rus3ian Extraor-
dinary Commission" (November 7, 1918), Collected Works (New York: Interna-
tional Publishers, 1927-45), vol. XX3II (1945), p. 289.

"Lenin.. "To G. Zinoviev" (June 20, 1918), Sochineniya (Works) (4th ed.;
Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing

105

On August 9, 1918, Lenin instructed the Soviet of Nizhni-Novgorod
( now Gorki ) as follows :

It is obvious that a white-guardist uprising is being prepared in Nizhni.
You must make an intense effort, appoint a troika [a -team of three] of dic-
tators, immediately proclaim mass terror, shoot and deport hundreds of
prostitutes who intoxicate soldiers, former officers, etc.

. . . You must act fast: mass perquisitions. Shooting for keeping of
arms. Mass deportations of mensheviks and unreliables. Change the
guard at the warehouses, appoint reliable ones. Yours Lenin.62

In Hungary, a Communist regime under Bela Kun was set up in 1919.
In an article entitled "Greetings to the Hungarian Workers" (Prauda,
May 29, 1919), Lenin advised the Communist government of Budapest:

... Be firm. If there is vacillation among the socialists who joined you
yesterday in their attitude to the dictatorship of the proletariat, or among
the petty bourgeoisie, put down the vacillation mercilessly. Shooting — that
is the rightful fate of a coward in war.53

Lenin criticized those of his comrades who invoked the laws abolishing
the death penalty to justify their reluctance to indulge in executions; he
spoke sarcastically of men who

. . . become hysterical and shout : I will leave the Soviets and invoke the
decrees abolishing the death penalty. But he is a bad revolutionary who
hesitates before the sanctity of the law in a critical situation. In a time of
transition laws have a temporary significance.64

A pattern of "revolutionary tactics" — which was the model for Stalin's
future Katyn affair — was established by Lenin when he advised E. M.
Sklyanski, ranking leader of the Red Army, to organize an assassination
of "kulaks [wealthy peasants], priests and landlords," and to place the
blame for it on an imaginary peasant guerrilla force. In a "Note to
Comrade Sklyanski," written in August 1920, Lenin said:

An excellent idea. Carry it out together with Dzerzhinski. Under the
guise of "greens" [peasant guerrillas] (we will later put the blame on them)

House for Political Literature), 1941-58), vol. XXXV (1951), p. 275. This
letter was not made public until 1931. ' Lenin referred, as he usually did, to "workers"
allegedly demanding "mass terror" ; no "workers' letters" making such demands have
been published and it appears more than doubtful that any existed.

" Lenin, "V Nizhegorodskii Sovdep" (To the Nizhni-Novgorod Soviet) (August 9,
1918), Sochineniya, vol. XXXV (1951), p. 286.

** Lenin, "Privet Vengerskim Rabochim" (Greetings to the Hungarian Workers)
(May 27, 1919), Sochineniya, vol. XXIX (1950), pp. 360, 361.

** Lenin, "Doklad Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov Pyatomu Vserossiiskomu S"ezdu
Sovetov" (R.eport of the Council of People's Commissars to the Fifth All-Russian
Congress of Soviets) (July 5, 1919), Sochineniya, vol. XXVII (1950), p. 478.

106

we will advance 10-20 versts and summarily hang the kulaks, priests, land-
lords. The premium: 100.000 rubles for each one hanged.56

Even after the end of the civil war, when anti-Soviet uprisings had al-
most ceased, Lenin continued to insist on the necessity of terrorism. In
a letter to Dmitri Kurski, People's Commissar of justice, dated May 17,
1922, he said:

... I am sending you the draft of an additional paragraph of the Crim-
inal Code. It is a first draft which needs, of course, polishing and re-
hashing. The main idea, I hope, is clear, in spite of the deficiencies of this
first draft: it is openly to proclaim the basis and politically truthful (and
not only in a narrow juridical sense) principle which explains the essence
and justification of terror, its necessity, its limits.

The court must not eliminate terror; to promise this would be self-
deception or fraud; it must explain and legalize it in principle, clearly,
without falsity and without embellishment. It must be formulated most
broadly, since only a revolutionary sense of justice and the revolutionary
conscience will create conditions for its application on a more or less wide
scope.

"With Communist greetings.

Lenin.
First version:

Propaganda and agitation or participation in an organization or help
to organizations which act (propaganda and agitation) in the direction
of assisting that part of the international bourgeoisie which does not
recognize the equality of the Communist system of property which will
replace capitalism and strives to overthrow it by force, by intervention,
blockade, or espionage, by financing of the press, or by similar means
is punishable by the supreme penalty, with the alternative, in case of
attenuating circumstances, of deprivation of liberty or deportation
abroad.56

Lenin's closest collaborators shared his views. Though not always
prepared to go to the lengths Lenin was prepared to go, they publicly
approved and defended the Cheka. Trotsky, for instance, wrote:

. . . Terror is helpless — and then only "in the long run" — if it is em-
ployed by reaction against a historically rising class. But terror can be
very efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the
scene of operations. Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both
internationally and internally.

*******

. . . The terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. The
gendarmerie of Tsarism throttled the workers who were fighting for the

" In Lenin's handwriting, August 1920, Trotsky's archives at the Houghton Library,
Cambridge, Mass., No. 565.

*°Lenin, "Pismo D. I. Kurskomu" (Letter to D. I. Kursky) (May 17, 1922, first
published in 1924), Sockineniya, vol. XXXIII (1951), pp. 321, 322.

107

Socialist order. Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords, capital-
ists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist order.67

Nikolai Bukharin, one of the most prominent Communist leaders,
eulogized the Cheka and its first head, Feiiks Dzerzhinski :

Many enemies were destroyed by Dzerzhinski, the iron warrior of our
party.68

And Zinoviev :

. . . The beauty and the glory of our party are the Red Army and the
Cheka.69

We have new ethics. Our humaneness is absolute because at its founda-
tion lie the glorious ideals of abolition of every kind of coercion and oppres-
sion. We are permitted to do everything because we are the first in the
world to lift the sword not for the sake of enslavement and suppression, but
in the name of universal liberty and liberation from slavery.60

Martin Latsis, mentioned above, not only accepted the Leninist
philosophy of terrorism but developed it further for the use of his

agency :

The Extraordinary Commission is not an investigating commission and
not a court.

And not a tribunal.

It is — a fighting organ operating at the internal front of the civil war,
acting as an investigation commission, a court, a tribunal and an armed
force.

It does not judge the enemy, it strikes. It does not forgive, it rather
reduces to ashes everyone who stands with his arms on the other side of the
barricade and cannot be of any use to us. . . .

*******

From the very beginning we must display extreme severity, implacability,
straightforwardness ; our every word is law ; if crime is followed by deserved
punishment, there will be far fewer victims on both sides.

* * * * . * * *

The VCheka at present is headed by a chairman and a board of twelve
persons. The established tradition is that only a member of the Central
Committee of the ruling party (R.K.P.) [Russian Communist Party]
can serve as chairman of the VCheka; only old party comrades are ap-
pointed as members of the board. . . .C1

87 Leon Trotsky, Dictatorship vs. Democracy [A Reply to Karl Kautsky's book,
Terrorism and Communism] (New York: Workers Party of America, 1922), pp.
58, 59.

"Pravda, December 18, 1927, p. 1.

69 Che-Ka, Materialy po Deyatelnosti Chrczvychainykh Komissii (Cheka, Materials
on the Activities of the Extraordinary Commissions) (Berlin: Published by the Cen-
tral Bureau of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1922) , p. 15.

40 Krasnyi Mech (Red Sword), No. 1, August 1919, as quoted in ibid.

91 Latsis (Sudrabs), Chreszvychainye Komissii po Borbe s Kontrrevolyutsiei
(Extraordinary Commissions to Fight Counter-Revolution) (Moscow: Gosizdat (State
Publishing House), 1921), pp. 8, 9, 27.

108

Do not ask for incriminating evidence, [wrote the same Latsis] to prove
that the prisoner opposed the Soviets either by deed or by word. Your first
question is to ask him what class he belongs to, what are his origin, educa-
tion and profession.

These questions must decide the fate of the prisoner.

This is the meaning and essence of the red terror/2

6. Secession and Reannexation of National Areas

During the years of the civil war, so-called separatist movements be-
came quite strong among the non-Russian nationalities of the former
empire, and almost all of the significant "national minorities" worked
toward independent statehood. The trend toward independence was
almost universal among certain national minorities who, in their terri-
tories, constituted the great majority.

To the Soviet government these developments, which went to the very
roots of bolshevisrn, presented a grave problem. In contrast to the
policy of the tsarist as well as the Kerensky governments, the program of
Lenin's party emphasized the "sovereign right" of every minority, large
or small, to self-government, and the right to secede from the Russian
state. In 1917, when powerful secessionist movements in the Ukraine
and Finland had met with stern opposition on the part of the Provisional
government, the Bolsheviks, still an opposition party, had vigorously
supported the secessionists.

The "right of the nationalities to self-determination" had from the
beginning been an important point in the program of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labor Party. Lenin had accepted this point and had
defended and interpreted it more than once. In articles written in 1914,
Lenin had defined the "right of self-determination" :

. . . The formation of national states, under which these requirements of
modern capitalism are best satisfied, is therefore the tendency of every na-
tional movement. The deepest economic factors urge towards this goal,
and for the whole of Western Europe, nay, for the entire civilised world, the
typical, normal state for the capitalist period is. therefore, the national state.
... it would be incorrect to understand the right to self-determination to
mean anything but the right to separate state existence.63

The "self-determination" of nations, in Lenin's view, was attainable
even in the framework of a "capitalist democracy." Lenin accepted
it for his party's program, too. In 1 9 1 6 he wrote :

The right of nations to self-determination means only the right to inde-
pendence in a political sense, the right to free, political secession from the

"Krasnyi Terror (Red Terror), October 1, 1918, as quoted in Che-Ka, Material)'
po Deyatelnosti Chrezvychainykh Komissii, pp. 15, 16.

"Lenin, "On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" (February 1914),
Selected Works, vol. IV, p. 251.

109

oppressing nation. Concretely, this political, democratic demand implies
complete freedom to carry on agitation in favour of secession, and freedom
to settle the question of secession by means of a referendum of the nation
that desires to secede.

*******

. . . The proletariat cannot but fight against the forcible retention of
the oppressed nations within the boundaries of a given state, and this is
exactly what the struggle for the right of self-determination means. The
proletariat must demand the right of political secession for the colonies and
for the nations that "its own" nation oppresses.64

Writing in October 1917, on the eve of his assumption of power,
Lenin not only confirmed this basic attitude of his party, but stressed
"the right to secede'5 as the most important component of the nationality
program :

. . . Instead of the term self-determination, which has caused many
misunderstandings, I use a quite precise notion: "the right of free seces-
sion." After the experience of the half-year revolution of 1917 it can
hardly be disputed that the party of the revolutionary proletariat of Russia,
the party that uses the Great Russian language, must recognize the right
of secession. On seizing power we would certainly immediately recognize
this right for Finland, the Ukraine and Armenia, and for every nation op-
pressed by tsarism (and the Great Russian) nationality.85

Lenin added that of course his party would like the non-Russian
nationalities to remain within the reformed multinational state, but only
if they did so of their own free will and not under duress:

. . . We want free union and therefore we are obliged to recognize the
right of secession (without the right of secession the union cannot be called
free). We are all the more obliged to recognize freedom of secession be-
cause tsarism and the Great Russian bourgeoisie, by their oppression, left
the neighboring nations with plenty of mistrust toward and anger against
the Great Russians in general ; this mistrust must be dispelled by deeds, not
bywords; . . .

. . . We desire that the republic of the Russian people (I would even
say the Great Russian people — this is more correct) should attract other
nations, but how? Not by violence, but exclusively by voluntary agree-
ment.69

. . . We demand the freedom of self-determination, i.e., independence,
i.e., the freedom of secession for the oppressed nations, not because we
dream of economic disintegration, or because we cherish the ideal of small
states, but, on the contrary, because we are in favour of large states and

u Lenin, "The Socialist Revolution and the Rierht of Nations to Self-Determination"
(March 19\6), Selected Works, vol. V, pp. 270-272.

"Lenin, "K Peresrnotru Partiinoi Programmy" (Toward the Revision of the Party
Program) (October 6-3 [19-21], 1917), Sochineniya, vol. XXVI (1949), p. 148.

"Ibid., p. 149.

68491 O-61-vol. 11—8

of the closer unity and even fusion of nations, but on a truly democratic,
truly international basis, which is inconceivable without the freedom of
secession.67

Stalin's definition was as follows :

Social-Democracy in all countries therefore proclaims the right of
nations to self-determination.

The right of self-determination means that only the nation itself has
the right to determine its destiny, that no one has the right forcibly to inter-
fere in the life of the nation, to destroy its schools and other institutions,
to violate its habits and customs, to repress its language, or curtail its rights.
*******

The right of self-determination means that a nation may arrange its
life in the way it wishes. It has the right to arrange its life on the basis
of autonomy. It has the right to enter into federal relations with other
nations. It has the right to complete secession. Nations are sovereign,
and all nations have equal rights.68

Subsequently (in 1919), the "self-determination" plank (which could
be interpreted in various ways) was eliminated from the Bolshevik
program ; but the right of secession remained and was constantly stressed.

The "right of secession" was incorporated in the first as well as all
subsequent Soviet constitutions. The constitutional declaration of De-
cember 1922 stated: "Each republic is guaranteed the right of free seces-
sion." The Soviet constitution of 1924 stated: "Each of the Union
Republics has the right freely to secede from the Union."

On the other hand, bolshevism since its very beginnings had con-
stituted a powerful trend toward a "big state," a multinational formation
on the pattern of all great empires. Its program of worldwide revolu-
tion, its dynamism, its fighting spirit, and its actual contempt for small
states proved to be the strongest impulse in its activity. "Big state" was
the term used by bolshevism to avoid the term "empire."

The proletarian party strives to create as large a state as possible, for that
is to the advantage of the toilers ; it strives to bring about closer ties between
nations and the further fusion of nations; but it desires to achieve this aim
not by force, but by a free, fraternal union of the workers and the toiling
masses of all nations.69

. . . We want as large a state as possible, we must have the closest union
with as many nations as possible living in the neighborhood of the Great
Russians; we desire it in the interests of democracy and socialism, in the
interests of attracting to the struggle of the proletariat the greatest possible

" Lenin, "The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Deter-
mination" (November 1915), Selected Works, vol. V, p. 289.

63 Stalin, "Marxism and the National Question" (January 1913), Works, vol. II
(1953), p. 321.

"Lenin, "The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution" (April 23 [10], 1917),
Selected Works (Moscow: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in
the U.S.S.R., 1935), vol. VI, p. 61.

Ill

numbers of toilers of other nations. We want a revolutionary-proletarian
unity, unification, not division.70

Of the two contradictory trends — one toward liberation of nation-
alities and the other toward the multinational "big state" — the second
proved to be the stronger. Reannexation of national states which had
become independent was carried out by force of arms. In not a single
case was a nationality asked to confirm by free ballot its willingness to
enter the new Soviet state.

The fate of the new national states varied : Some succeeded, for about
two decades, in maintaining their independence; others lost it after a
year or two and were incorporated into the Soviet state. TRe first
grourj — Finland, the three Baltic states, and the Polish-Belorussian
area — embraced new national formations at the western borders of
Russia, where they could get help from abroad; Bessarabia, too, re-
mained detached from Russia.

Finland's painful separation was the first case of the granting of in-
dependence by the Soviet government. On December 6, 1917, a few
weeks after the November revolution, the Finnish parliament proclaimed
Finland's separation from Russia and on December 31 the Soviet gov-
ernment confirmed the separation. At the same time, however, Russian
"Red Guards" were dispatched to Finland to join with Finnish leftist
groups in setting up another regime in Helsinki and on January 28, 1918,
a pro-Bolshevik government was established there. In the ensuing civil
war Finland obtained German military help, defeated the insurrection
and succeeded in maintaining her independence.

Similar efforts were made by the Soviet government to reannex Es-
tonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which had likewise separated themselves
from Russia. More than one pro-Bolshevik insurrectionist movement,
aided by Russia, appeared about to succeed. In the end, however, Brit-
ain and France helped to defeat the Russian forces and Lenin's regime
recognized the independence of the three nations in 1920. The peace
treaties signed by Moscow with each of the Baltic states contained
a paragraph which appeared paradoxical in view of the Soviet ef-
forts to reconquer and subdue the small nations. The peace treaty with
Estonia, for instance (the treaties with Latvia and Lithuania contained
the same provisions, differently phrased ) , read :

. . . On the basis of the right of all peoples freely~to decide their own
destinies, and even to separate themselves completely from the state of which
they form part, a right proclaimed by the Federal Socialist Republic of
Soviet Russia, Russia unreservedly recognizes the independence and
autonomy of the State of Estonia, and renounces voluntarily and for ever

70 Lenin, "K Peresmotru Partiinoi Programmy" (Toward the Revision of the Party
Program) (October 6-8 [19-21], 1917), Sothir.eniya. vol. XXVI (1949), pp. 148,

149.

112

all rights of sovereignty formerly held by Russia over the Estonian people
and territory by virtue of the former legal situation, and by virtue of inter-
national treaties, which, in respect of such rights, shall henceforth lose
their force.

No obligation towards Russia devolves upon the Estonian people and
territory from the fact that Estonia was formerly part of Russia.71

In 1918 a Belorussian Soviet Republic was created which remained
entirely dependent on Moscow until the Soviet- Polish war of 1920,
when the western part of the republic was incorporated into Poland.

A strong movement toward national independence had begun to de-
velop in the Ukraine in the summer of 1917, when a Rada — a body of
delegates with popular support — emerged as the supreme authority in
Kiev. In December of that year a Bolshevik counter-government was
set up in Kharkov. In 1918 the Germans, on the basis of the Brest-
Litovsk Treaty, abolished both regimes and set up a pro-German govern-
ment which did not survive Germany's defeat in World War I. Then :

... A Ukrainian Soviet Republic was proclaimed December 18, 1918,
when the German occupation regime was in an advanced state of disinte-
gration; all power was supposedly vested in the "Ukrainian workers and
the Ukrainian peasants."

Kharkiv [Kharkov] was designated as the capital of this Ukrainian So-
viet Republic. There was a special Council of Commissars, the Soviet term
for Ministers for the government of the Ukraine; for a time there was a
separate Ukrainian Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. . . .

The leading figures in the first years of Soviet rule in the Ukraine were
Christian Rakovsky, a cosmopolitan Rumanian revolutionary who acted as
Prime Minister, Gregory Petrovsky, a simple peasant, who was President,
and Mykola Skrypnik, who was Commissar for Internal Affairs.72

In the ensuing internal fights, the Ukrainian independence forces,
which had no real assistance from the outside, succumbed to the Red
Army and at the end of 1920 the Ukraine was annexed to Soviet Russia.
The technique of the annexation — the pattern for future similar opera-
tions— was the December 20, 1920 "treaty of alliance" signed by Lenin
on the one hand and his own loyal party member, the Rumanian Chris-
tian Rakovsky, in the name of the Ukraine, on the other.

The Government of R.S.F.S.R. on the one part, and the Government
of the Uk.S.S.R., on the other part, on the basis of the proclamation by
the great proletarian revolution that all peoples have the right to self-
determination; and recognizing the independence and sovereignty of each
of the Contracting Parties; and realizing the necessity to rally their forces

n Leonard Shapiro, ed., Soviet Treaty Series, A Collection of Bilateral Treaties,
Agreements and Conventions, etc., Concluded Between the Soviet Union and Foreign
Powers (Washington, D.G.: The Georgetown University Press, 1950), vol. I, p. 34.

Ta Chamberlin, The Ukraine, A Submerged Nation (New York: The Macmillan
Co., 1944), p. 53.

113

for the sake of defense and likewise in the interests of their economic devel-
opment; have decided to conclude the present Workers'-Peasants' Treaty
of Alliance. . . .

****•*■

I. R.S.F.S.R. and Uk.S.S.R. enter into a military and economic alliance.
*******

III. For a better realization of the aim indicated in Point 1, both Gov-
ernments proclaim the following Commissariats as unified: 1. Military and
Maritime Affairs; 2. Supreme Council of People's Economy; 3. Foreign
Trade; 4. Finances; 5. Labor; 6. Means of Communications; and 7. Posts
and Telegraphs.78

National secession movements likewise developed in Russian central
Asia. The reconquest of this area by Bolshevik forces, which met no
strong adversary, was extended to annex even the formerly semiautono-
mous Khiva and Bokhara. The first Soviet annexations of new terri-
tory occurred in those parts of the world which were the most remote.

With their [contingents of the Red Army] aid, the independent princi-
pality of Khiva was dissolved and replaced by the Soviet Republic of
Khorezm which soon signed a treaty yielding military and political control
to the RSFSR. Meanwhile, the Bolshevik forces also invaded Bokhara,
drove out the emir, proclaimed a Soviet Bokhara, and transferred effective
power to an embryonic and none too reliable Bokharan Communist
Party led by Faizulla Khodjayev. Soviet Bokhara followed the example
of Soviet Khorezm and subordinated its military and economic policy to
that of the RSFSR by a treaty of alliance signed on March 4, 1921,
which nominally guaranteed the complete "independence" of the new
republic.74

Another new acquisition was Outer Mongolia, which was overrun
in 1921; this area was rebuilt to become the first Soviet satellite, and
its name was changed to Mongolian People's Republic. Situated in the
desert part of Asia, between Russia and a weak China, Outer Mongolia
could be acquired only because of her remoteness from the West.

Fierce fighting accompanied the movements for national independ-
ence in the Caucasus, where the three main nationalities of the area —
Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaidjanians — proclaimed their separa-
tion and proceeded to build their own national states. For a short time
German, and later British and Turkish, forces were stationed in the
Caucasus; but they gradually withdrew. Then came the attack from
the Soviet side.

. . . The first casualty was Azerbaidjan. In the spring of 1920, a Com-
munist rising in Baku challenged the power of the Azerbaidjan government.

'* Shapiro, op. cit., p. 83.

'* Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1953), p. 302.

114

The Military Revolutionary Committee in charge of the rising addressed an
urgent appeal to Lenin: "Being unable to repulse the attacks of the united
bands of the internal and foreign counterrevolution by our own forces, the
Military Revolutionary Committee offers the government of the Russian
Soviet Republic a fraternal alliance for the common struggle against world
imperialism. We request . . . aid." Aid was quickly forthcoming. The
Red Army overran Azerbaidjan and established the Azerbaidjan Socialist
Soviet Republic.

Armenia came next. In late November of 1920 another Communist
rising was contrived on the border between Azerbaidjan and Armenia, and
again the Military Revolutionary Committee in charge invoked the aid of
tjie "heroic" Red Army. On December 2, 1920, the new Armenian Soviet
Republic was recognized by Moscow; it was badly shaken by a revolt in
mid-February 1921, in the course of which the anti-Bolshevik rebels seized
Erivan and a number of principal towns, but the Red Army again came to
the rescue and saved the new Soviet regime.76

The events in neighboring Georgia were even more instructive, be-
cause a number of treaties (embodying the slogan "peaceful coexist-
ence" ) had been signed with Moscow. In the elections to the Russian
Constituent Assembly, the Bolshevik party in Georgia had obtained
24,500 votes out of a total of 892,000 (about 3 percent). In 1918
Georgia constituted herself an independent nation with a democratic
political system, a free press, and free elections. In 1920 the Moscow
government recognized Georgia's independence, and on May 7 of that
year a treaty was signed by the two nations which started as follows:

R.S.F.S.R. on the one hand, and the Democratic Republic of Georgia on
the other, moved by a common desire to establish a firm and peaceful co-
existence for the good of the peoples inhabiting their lands, have decided
to conclude toward this end a special Treaty. . . .Ta

In this treaty Georgia's right of secession from Russia was elevated to the
status of a holy principle, "first proclaimed" by Soviet Russia:

I. On the basis that all peoples have the right to free self-determination,
even so far as a complete secession from the state of which they form a
part — first proclaimed by R.S.F.S.R. — Russia unequivocally recognizes the
independence and autonomy of the Georgian state and freely gives up all
the sovereign rights which belonged to Russia as regards thfr- Georgian
people and land.

II. On the basis of the principles proclaimed in Article I of the present
Treaty, Russia shall undertake to abstain from any interference in the in-
ternal affairs of Georgia."

"Ibid., pp. 300,301.
w Shapiro, op. cit., p. 44.
" Ibid., p. 45.

115

The Georgian government also signed a secret supplement — obviously
a precondition for the concluding of the peace treaty — which made
Communist activities easy :

I. Georgia undertakes to recognize the right of free existence and activity
of all Communist organizations throughout her territory, and in particular
the right of free assemblies and free press (including press production) .

In any case there shall be no judicial or administrative repression against
private persons as a result of public propaganda and agitation in behalf
of the Communist program or from the activity of persons and organiza-
tions working on a Communist basis.78

In May 1920 Georgia signed a treaty with neighboring Azerbaidjan,
which had already been reannexed to Soviet Russia. In the same year
foreign troops which had been occupying certain areas began to with-
draw. On January 27, 1921, the great powers gave de jure recognition
to Georgia.

Two weeks later the Red Army started its invasion. A Communist
"Revolutionary Committee" issued a proclamation to the "workers,
peasants, and all toilers of Georgia" in which it announced that it was
seizing state power in Georgia. The small Communist groups of Georgia,
which were not strong enough to overthrow the government, were aided
by Red Army troops. On February 25, 1921, the Soviet army entered
and occupied Tiflis, the capital. Sovietization of Georgia followed the
suppression of the political parties; in December 1922, after a few transi-
tional stages, Georgia was incorporated into the Soviet Union and the
general economic, political, and police system was extended to cover the
territory.

A strong popular uprising in Georgia which started in August 1 924 was
suppressed with exceptional severity and hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of insurrectionists were executed.78

This, then, was the area of Soviet Russia in the ensuing relatively
peaceful era, from 1 92 1 to 1 939. Having lost extensive areas in the West,
Soviet Russia was still able to keep a number of subjugated nations un-
der her rule and even to extend her realm in the East, at the borders
of China and at China's expense.

The traditional Bolshevik theory of "national independence" and
"right of secession" was not abrogated, however. Made ineffective in-
side Russia, it was to have a strong appeal for the nations of the East
against the West and was to help in the disintegration of the other
empires. Stalin was frank about this hypocritical course :

■ Ibid., p. 46.

79 D. Charachidz£, H. Bcrbusse, Les Soviets et la Giorgie, Preface de Karl Kautsky
(Paris: Editions Pascal, n.d.}.

116

. . . We are for the secession of India, Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and the
other colonies from the Entente, because secession in this case would mean
the liberation of those oppressed countries from imperialism, a weakening
of the positions of imperialism and a strengthening of the positions of the
revolution. We are against the secession of the border regions from Russia,
because secession in that case would mean imperialist bondage for the border
regions, a weakening of the revolutionary might of Russia and a strengthen-
ing of the positions of imperialism.80

... At the present time, however, when the liberation movement is
flaring up in the colonies, that is for us a revolutionary slogan. Since the
Soviet states are united voluntarily in a federation, the nations constituting
the R.S.F.S.R. voluntarily refrain from exercising the right to secede. But
as regards the colonies that are in the clutches of Britain, France, America
and Japan, as regards such subject countries as Arabia, Mesopotamia,
Turkey and Hindustan, i.e., countries which are colonies or semi-colonies,
the right of nations to secede is a revolutionary slogan, and to abandon it
would mean playing into the hands of the imperialists.81

The annexation of the non-Russian areas and their subjection to con-
trol by agents of Moscow aroused a new wave of Russian nationalistic
sentiment so strong that Lenin deemed it necessary to try to stop it. His
statements made in this effort and his conflicts over it with some of his
closest collaborators, Stalin among them, are referred to below.

7. The Civil War Ends

The civil war and the foreign military intervention came to an end in
the fall of 1920. Admiral Kolchak's forces in the east collapsed in the
latter part of 1919; General Denikin's armies in the south disintegrated
early in 1920; at the end of 1920 Denikin's successor, General Petr
Wrangel, had to evacuate his forces, along with thousands of civilians, by
sea. On the Petrograd front Trotsky repulsed the Yudenich offensive.

The intervention of the Allies in the Russian civil war which had
started in 1918, likewise came to a close (except in the Far East) in 1920.
Britain withdrew her forces from Siberia and the north before the end of
1919; she had earlier quit Russian central Asia. The Americans, too,
withdrew from Vladivostok, and the French withdrew from the south.
The Japanese stayed on in the Russian Far East for 2 more years, and the
independent new nations of the Caucasus, with some protection from
Britain and the United States, remained independent for a short time,
until the Red Army marched in. On the whole, the Allied intervention
in Russia had not been successful; it did not achieve its aim of subverting

80 Stalin, "Author's Preface," To a Collection of Articles on the National Question
(October 1920), Works, vol. IV (1953), pp. 385, 386.

" Stalin, "Report on the Immediate Tasks of the Party in the National Question,"
Delivered March 10, 1918 at the Tenth Congress of th R.C.P. (B.), Works, vol. V
(1953), p. 43.

117

the Soviet government. But it had another phase, namely, to prevent a
Soviet offensive against Poland, Germany, and Hungary and to assure
the independence of the Baltic States, and in this phase it was effective.

... A breathing space of inestimable importance was afforded to the
whole line of newly liberated countries which stood along the western
borders of Russia. . . . Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and above all
Poland, were able during 1919 to establish the structure of civilized States
and to organize the strength of patriotic armies."

... It was lack of strength, not lack of will, that prevented them [the
Bolsheviks] from supporting Bela Kun in Hungary and apostles of social
revolution in other countries as energetically as Great Britain supported
Kolchak and Denikin.

*******

. . . When Kolchak made his thrust toward the Volga in the spring of
1919 he unconsciously sealed the doom of the Soviet Republics which had
been set up in the Baltic States. When Denikin's Cossack cavalry pierced
the Red lines in May and June, 1919, they put an end to revolutionary
dreams of moving westward into Bessarabia, with a view to linking up with
Soviet Hungary. The issue of the battle before Warsaw in August, 1920,
might have been different if the large forces which were concentrated against
Wrangel had been available on the Polish front.

So, while intervention did not overthrow the Soviet Government, it did,
in all probability, push the frontier of Bolshevism considerably farther to
the East.83

The period of the civil war had coincided, as has been indicated,
with the experiment of a lightning-like and integral communization of
Russia in the economic sphere. Having brought about a terrible catas-
trophe, starvation, and misery, the leadership, viewing the state of affairs
at the end of 1920, was convinced of the necessity to retreat and make
concessions to private economy. The preceding period of sweeping
experiments was now officially termed "War Communism," to indicate
that detrimental effects were due not to communism as such but to the
"aggression" on the part of the enemies in the civil war and the interven-
tion of the "imperialists."

"Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, The Aftermath (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1929), vol. V, p. 276.
"Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution 1917-1921, vol. II, pp. 171, 172.

Chapter V. The NEP Era

1. The Peasant Movements

The turn from "War Communism" to the "New Economic Policy"
(NEP) early in 1921 was motivated by four factors: First, the peasant
uprisings all over the country; second, the mutiny in Kronstadt; third,
the threatening famine; and fourth, the growing disorder in the ranks of
the ruling Communist party.

The peasant movements in these initial phases of the Soviet regime,
after the political parties had been suppressed, were disorganized, lacking
in leadership, and without a definite political program, but, arising as
they did out of starvation, humiliation and despair, they were violent and
extensive. They took the form of a multitude of local guerrilla wars
against local Soviet officials and detachments dispatched to requisition
grain, meat, and dairy products for the cities and the army.

The largest and most typical of these uprisings was that which occurred
in the Tambov province under the leadership of Antonov.

. . . Antonov had spent many years in exile for some act of violence which
he committed during the 1905 Revolution. Set at liberty after the downfall
of the Tsar, he returned to his native Tambov Province, where he called
himself a Socialist Revolutionary and became head of the police in the town
of Kirsanov, a post which he continued to hold for some time after the
Bolshevik Revolution.

... by the autumn of 1919 Antonov was already head of a terrorist
band, recruited largely from deserters from the Red Army and from peasants
who resisted requisitions. In the beginning he confined himself to small
activities, such as assassinations of particularly unpopular local Soviet
officials and raids on state farms. His movement gained in strength during
1920; it is estimated that his bands killed about 200 food collectors in
Kirsanov County alone up to October.

A widespread uprising broke out in the southeast corner of Tambov
County in August 1920; and from this time until the spring of 1921 the
whole Province, along with some districts of the neighboring Saratov and
Penza Provinces, was the scene of fierce partisan warfare. A Chekist who
took part in the operations against Antonov estimates that at the height of
his movement, between January and April, 1921, about 20,000 insurgents
had taken up arms.1

1 William Henry Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution 1917-1921 (New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1957), vol. II, p. 437.

(118)

119

Cheka forces, fresh from the civil war, were sent! to suppress the
uprising and were extremely cruel toward the population. The gov-
ernment was aware of the inhuman Cheka methods of operation, but
stern measures to frighten the peasantry seemed the only way to maintain
the authority of the Soviet regime.

"In some villages," a Soviet description of the Antonov movement tells us,
"the families of the bandits began to leave their homes. . . . Then the
plenipotentiary commission decided to demolish or burn the homes of
bandits whose families were in hiding, to treat those who concealed bandits'
families as harborers of bandits, to shoot the oldest in such families." 2

Antonov's movement reached its climax early in 1921, by which
time Antonov had reduced the Soviet administration in many districts to
impotence. It was not until Lenin's retreat to a "New Economic Pol-
icy," which meant that requisitions would stop, that the uprising began
to abate ; they finally ceased in the fall of 1 92 1 .

. . . Antonov himself escaped capture for some time longer. But, like
most peasant leaders, he could not stay away permanently from his native
region. The Ghekists reckoned with this; and on June 24, 1922, they sur-
rounded a house in the village Nizhni Shibrai, in Eorisoglebsk County, where
Antonov and his brother had taken refuge. This house was set on fire and
the Antonovs were shot down as they fled from it.3

In other parts of the country similar, though less extensive, movements
were taking place about the same time. Unorganized, lacking ex-
perienced leaders, disunited, the local revolts and mutinies were not of
immediate danger to the Moscow government; however, in their en-
tirety they appeared ominous as an obvious proof of a profound dissatis-
faction and indignation of the great majority of the population.

After prompting Lenin to make significant concessions, the peasant
movements gradually abated in the subsequent era.

2. Petrograd and Kronstadt

In the latter part of February 1921 serious unrest, which grew into
spontaneous strikes, developed among the workers of Petrograd. Be-
ginning on February 22, meetings took place in industrial plants all over
the city. On February 24 strikes broke out at the Trubochnyi, Laferm,
Patronnyi, and Baltiiskii plants. The Trubochnyi plant took the lead in
the political movement against Soviet power.*

Though nonparty and nonpolitical, the sentiment behind the move-
ment— the first large popular movement since 1918, at least in the

■ Ibid., p. 439.
1 Ibid.

* Pravda o Kronshtadte (The Truth About Kronstadt) (Prague: Volya Rossii
(Russia's Will), 1921), p. 6.

120

former capital — was obviously anti-Communist. The unrest soon spread
to the fortress of Kronstadt, with its thousands of troops; the role played
by the Kronstadt sailors in the revolution — Trotsky had called them the
"pride and glory of the Revolution" — was fresh in the memory of the
people and their loyalty was beyond doubt. Now, 3 years later, how-
ever, they turned against the Communist regime.

The Kronstadt uprising, which started in late February 1921 and
lasted until March 17, was a distinctly leftist but at the same time anti-
Communist movement. At a meeting attended by 16,000 persons on
March 1, a resolution was adopted which announced the demands of
the insurrectionists :

1. Seeing that the present Soviets do not express the wishes of the
workers and peasants, to organize immediately re-elections to the Soviets
with secret vote, and with care to organize free electoral propaganda for
all workers and peasants.

2. To grant liberty of speech and of press to the workers and peasants,
to the anarchists and the left socialist parties.

3. To secure freedom of assembly, freedom of labor unions and of peasant
organizations.

*******

5. To liberate all political prisoners of Socialist parties, as well as all
workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors imprisoned in connection with the
labor and peasant movements.

*******

8. To abolish immediately all "zagraditelnye otryady" [special
armed detachments assigned to check the bundles and luggage of the
passengers on trains].

*******

10. To abolish the communist fighting detachments in all branches of
the army, as well as the communist guards kept on duty in mills and
factories. ...

11. To give the peasants full freedom of action in regard to the whole
land and also the right to keep cattle on condition that the peasants manage
with their own means; that is, without employing hired labor.

*******

15. To permit free artisan production which does not employ hired
labor.5

Only three persons voted against the resolution, and these three were
arrested. The next day another mass meeting took place at which a
Provisional Revolutionary Committee was elected, the leader of which
was Petrichenko, a senior clerk from one of the ships. The committee
established itself on the cruiser Petropavlovsk.

• "Rezolyutsiya Obshchego Sobraniya Komand 1-i i 2-i Brigad Lineinykh Korablci
Sostoyavshegosya 1 Marta 1921 goda" (Resolution of the General Meeting of the
Crews of the First and Second Brigades of Line-of-Battleships Which Took Place on
March 1, 1921), Pravda o Kronshtadte, pp. 9, 10.

121

By March 3 the Revolutionary Committee began to publish a daily
paper, Izvestia, which gave news of the rising :

The peaceful character of the Kronstadt movement is beyond doubt.

Kronstadt hasxraised demands in the spirit of the Soviet constitution.

In the fortress itself, and without a single shot, power has passed into
the hands of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee by the unanimous
decision of the sailors, Red army men, workers and Soviet employees.6

The Revolutionary Committee refused to take the offensive against
So\-iet forces :

All proposals of the military specialists to take the offensive, to open
military operations, to use the opportunity created by the initial confusion
of the bolsheviks, the Provisional Revolutionary Committee answered with
flat rejection.

"The basis of our insurrection was that we did not want to shed blood.
Why shed blood, if everybody understands anyway that our cause is just.
Despite the Bolshevik/ deceits it will be realized now that Kronstadt is
revolting for the people and against the Communists." 7

A number of hostages from among the families of the insurgent sailors
were taken in Petrograd. The government announced that :

If even one hair falls from the head of the detained comrades [in Kron-
stadt] . . . the named hostages will pay for it with their heads.9

Government airplanes dropped leaflets on Kronstadt informing the
rebelling sailors that hostages had been taken ; in its reply, the Kronstadt
radio termed this act shameful and cowardly, and refused to retaliate.

There were mass defections from the Communist party. The con-
sciences of the defectors made it impossible for them to "remain in the
Party of the executioner Trotsky." 9 Exaggerating the political unrest
in Petrograd and underestimating the ruthlessness of the regime, the
Kronstadt rebels hoped for an early victory. Under the heading "What
Are We Fighting For," the Kronstadt Izvestia wrote on March 8 :

With the October Revolution the working class had hoped to achieve its
emancipation. But there resulted an even greater enslavement of human
personality.

The power of the police and the gendarme monarchy fell into the hands
of usurpers — the Communists — who, instead of giving the people liberty,
have instilled in them only the constant fear of the Tcheka, which by its
horrors surpasses even the gendarme regime of Tsarism.10

* Pravda o Kronshtadtt, p. 13.
'Ibid., p. 15.
8 Ibid., p. 17.

*As quoted in Alexander Berkman, The Kronstadt Rebellion (Berlin: Der SyncI
kalist, 1922), p. 21.
36 Ibid., p. 26.

122

Meantime, having gathered military forces, the Soviet government was
preparing a military offensive against Kronstadt. Trotsky, the leader of
the operations, sent an ultimatum to Kronstadt on March 5 :

The Workers' and Peasants' Government has decreed that Kronstadt and
the rebellious ships must immediately submit to the authority of the Soviet
Republic. Therefore I command all who have raised their hand against
the Socialist fatherland to lay down their arms at once. The obdurate are
to be disarmed and turned over to the Soviet authorities. The arrested
Commissars and other representatives of the Government are to be liberated
at once. Only those surrendering unconditionally may count on the mercy
of the Soviet Republic.11

On March 7, the Soviet artillery went into action against Kronstadt.
The first attack was followed by an attempt to take the fortress by storm,
but this attack was unsuccessful. Hundreds of Red Army men perished
on the ice surrounding the island fortress. Next day the Kronstadt
Izvestia said :

Many of you perished that night on the icy vastness of the Gulf of Finland.
And when day broke and the storm quieted down, only pitiful remnants of
you, worn and hungry, hardly able to move, came to us clad in your white
shrouds.

Early in the morning there were already about a thousand of you and later
in the day a countless number. Dearly you have paid with your blood for
this adventure, and after your failure Trotsky rushed back to Petrograd to
drive new martyrs to slaughter — for cheaply he gets our workers' and
peasants' blood ! 12

During the next 8 days the Soviet offensive continued relentlessly :

Almost nightly the Bolsheviki continued their attacks. All through March
10 Communist artillery fired incessantly from the southern and northern
coasts. On the night of the 12-13 the Communists attacked from the south,
again resorting to the white shrouds and sacrificing many hundreds ofx the
kursanti [military students]. . . .

On March 16 the Bolsheviki made a concentrated attack from three sides
at once — from north, south and east. . .

On the morning of March 17a number of forts had been taken. Through
the weakest spot of Kronstadt — the Petrograd Gates — the Bolsheviki broke
into the city, and then there began most brutal slaughter."

The Kronstadt uprising was suppressed. The Soviet press stopped
reporting the tragic events as the Cheka went into action :

For several weeks the Petrograd jails were filled with hundreds of
Kronstadt prisoners. Every night small groups of them were taken out
by order of the Tcheka and disappeared — to be seen among the living no

n Ibid., p. 31.

"Ibid., p. 36. (Note: "White shrouds" refer to white garments which are used
for camouflage purposes in military operations in a northern country. )
u Ibid., pp. 37, 38.

123

more. Among the last to be shot was Perepelkin, member of the Fro-
visional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt.

The prisons and concentration camps in the frozen district of Archangel
and the dungeons of far Turkestan are slowly doing to death the Kronstadt
men who rose against Bolshevik bureaucracy and proclaimed in March,
1921, the slogan of the Revolution of October, 1917: "All Power to the
Soviets!" 14

3. Mushrooming of Factions

in the ranks of the Communist party, including the supreme leader-
ship, discord was growing. A number of Communist factions emerged,
but suppression of Communist groups by terroristic methods was out of
the question in this early period of the Soviet regime. At the root of
the discord and confusion was the widespread disappointment in the
"Socialist system" and "workers' state" as they appeared now in reality.
The main target of criticism was what the oppositionists called "bureauc-
ratism"— a term which comprises more than it does in English; in the
Russian sense it meant the resurrection of a huge state machinery, ego-
tistical and comparatively secure during a time of general debacle, and
deaf to the people's needs and worries ; it meant the emergence of a new,
relatively well-to-do class, after "landlords and capitalists" had been
abolished. The inefficiency of the new management was another source
of discontent. More freedom to propagate their views — but only in
the framework of the Communist party and not for other political
trends — was demanded by the leaders of the factions. Each faction
had its own program of reform, most of them consisting of petty demands
which could not rally the people. Many Communists arrived at the con-
clusion that trade unions, as purely workers' organizations, must be given
a greater role in order to reduce the power of the "bureaucracy." One
Communist faction, the Democratic Centralists, which emerged in
1919, achieved some importance in 1920-21. Speaking at the party
congress in 1920, its leader, T. V. Sapronov :

. . . described the Leninist Central Committee as a "small handful of
party oligarchs." Other members of the opposition complained that the
Central Committee "was banning those who hold deviant views." [I .A.]
Yakovlev was even more specific. "The Ukraine," he charged, "is being
transformed into a place of exile. Those comrades who for any reason are
not agreeable to Moscow are exiled there." [P.C.] Yurenev accused the
Central Committee of "playing with men" and spoke of the dispatching of
oppositionists to far places as a "system of exile." . . The disciplining of
oppositionists took the relatively mild form of transfer of work assignments
from the center to the periphery, and even such actions were not openly
acknowledged.18

" Ibid., p 38.

11 Merle Fainecd, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1953), pp. 132, 133.

124

Among the anti-Leninist Communist factions one of the most im-
portant was the Workers' Opposition. The very fact that a group in
opposition to Lenin's "workers' party" called itself Workers' Opposition
was significant.

. . . The program of the Workers' Opposition called for trade-union
administration of industry, democratic management of the Party, and re-
liance on the industrial proletariat to direct state affairs. The movement
was aimed largely against the tendency of the Party leadership to arrogate
all important decision-making to itself. In pressing for more autonomy
and more workers' control, the Workers' Opposition registered a growing
disillusionment with the failure to realize the Utopian, egalitarian slogans
under which the Party had marched to power. Under the leadership of
Madam [Alexandra] Kollontai and Alexander Shlyapnikov, a former metal-
worker and the first People's Commissar for Labor, the Workers' Opposi-
tion gathered considerable rank-and-file support, particularly in the trade
unions, but it found itself greatly handicapped in its bid for power by its
failure to attract any of the first-rank leaders of the Party.18

Trotsky became the proponent of a program of "statification" of trade
unions, meaning the granting to them of a leading role in state-owned
industry. The program attracted great attention because it represented
the first instance of disagreement since 1916 between the two men con-
sidered to be the supreme leaders of bolshevism. Among the members
of the Central Committee, Nikolai Bukharin was the only one who sup-
ported Trotsky. Lenin, the proponent of unlimited party rule, could
not agree to an increased role for trade unions which might limit the
party's (and his) powers. In this controversy between Lenin and
Trotsky, Lenin was the winner.

Another issue of importance which divided the Communist ranks
was the new army, in particular the part played in it by old "tsarist
officers." Many party members found it hard to endure the commands
of the "reactionaries."

More serious was the challenge offered by the so-called Military Opposi-
tion led by V. Smirnov, also a former Left Communist. The Military Op-
position was sharply critical of the policy of employing former Tsarist offi-
cers as military specialists in the Red Army and of organizing the army on
a basis of professional military discipline; it called, instead, for primary re-
liance on partisan detachments. In a test vote at the Party Congress
[1919] Smirnov's resolution mobilized 95 votes to 174 for the majority.
Again, no effort was made to invoke Party discipline against the opposi-
tion.17

These factional fights inside the party Lenin saw as symptoms of a
basically untenable situation. "The party is in a fever," he said ; funda-

"Ibid., p. 133
"Ibid., p. 132.

125

mental changes were necessary if Communists were to maintain power.
Lenin's remedy was the series of reforms known as the New Economic
Policy.

4. Lenin's State Capitalism

The New Economic Policy consisted, in the main, of four reforms:
First, the introduction of a land tax and the granting to peasants of per-
mission for free trade within certain limits; second, the permitting of
small-scale private industry; third, the granting of "concessions" to for-
eign industrial and mining firms; and fourth, permitting of small-scale
trade in the cities.

Admitting that the economic reforms meant a retreat from the achieved
level of integrated state economy and signified a substantial concession
to capitalism, Lenin told his party that the retreat was necessitated by
the slowed-up pace of the world revolution. He and his party had been
mistaken, he said, and the notion that capitalist and socialist nations
cannot exist at the same time was an error.

. . . Before the revolution, and even after it, we thought: Either revolu-
tion breaks out in the other countries, in the capitalistically more developed
countries, immediately, or at least very quickly, or we must perish. . . .

In actual fact, however, events did not proceed along as straight a line
as we expected. In the other big capitalistically more developed countries
the revolution has not broken out to this day. . . .

... It becomes clear from the very first glance that after the conclusion
of peace, bad as it was, it proved impossible to call forth revolution in other
capitalist countries, although we know that the signs of revolution were very
considerable and numerous, much more considerable and numerous than
we thought at the time.18

The new thesis was the theory of "coexistence," which was to replace
the preceding thesis of the impossibility of coexistence, and which has
prevailed to this day as an alleged principle of Soviet foreign policy.
Cautiously and timidly, Lenin limited the era of coexistence to a short
span of time:

. . . the socialist republic can exist — of course, not for a long time-^in
a capitalist surrounding.19

Lenin inferred that what Russia needed was the legalization of some
phases of capitalism: small trade, small industry, and "state capitalism";

"V. I. Lenin, "The Tactics of the R.G.P. (B)," Report Delivered July 5, 1921
at the Third Congress of the Communist International, Selected Works (New York:
International Publishers, 1943), vol. IX, p. 227.

u Lenin, "Tezisy Doklada o Taktike RKP na III Kongresse Kommunisticheskogo
Internatsionala, Pervonachalnyi Proekt" (Theses of the Report on the Tactics of the
Russian Communist Party at the Third Congress of the Communist International,
Initial Text) (June 13, 1921), Sochineniya (Works) (4th ed.; Moscow: Gosudarst-
vennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for Political
Literature), 1941-58), vol. XXXII (1951), p. 429.

68491 O-61-vol. II— 9

126

state capitalism to Lenin meant big industry in capitalist hands under
supervision of Soviet authorities.

. . . for our Russian Republic, we must take advantage of this brief
respite in order to adapt our tactics to the zig-zag line of history.*0

... we went too far along the road of nationalising trade and industry,
of stopping local turnover. Was this a mistake? Undoubtedly.

In this connection we did much that was simply wrong, and it would be
a great crime not to see and realise that we did not keep within proper
limits, that we did not know how to keep within proper limits. . . . We can
permit a fair amount of free local turnover without destroying, but on the
contrary strengthening, the political power of the proletariat.21

The first of the new measures was the abolition of requisitioning of food
products and the introduction instead of a tax in kind. Whereas the
state formerly requisitioned all produce except that required for the peas-
ants' personal needs, peasants hereafter would pay a fixed tax (paid in
produce). The remainder of his product he could use himself or he
could sell it to the state or on the private market. The most important
paragraphs of the pertinent decree read :

1. . . . requisitioning, as a means of state collection of foods supplies, raw
material and fodder, is to be replaced by a tax in kind.

2. This tax must be less than what the peasant has given up to this time
through requisitions. . . .

*******

8. All the reserves of food, raw material and fodder which remain with
the peasants after the tax has been paid are at their full disposition and may
be used by them for improving and strengthening their holdings, for in-
creasing personal consumption and for exchange for products of factory
and hand industry and of agriculture.

Exchange is permitted within the limits of local economic turnover, both
through cooperative organizations and through markets.22

"Exchange" meant selling on a free market; the term was used in
order to avoid too frequent use of the provocative term "private trade."
The admission of free small-scale trade in food products for the peasants
in their own provinces was the most important of Lenin's retreats.

Small trade was permitted in the cities, too, though only on a limited
scale; small industry was also permitted.

. . . Let small industry expand to some extent, let state capitalism
expand — the Soviet power need not fear that; it must look things straight in

30 Lenin, "The Tactics of the R.C.P. (B)," Report Delivered July 5, 1921 at the
Third Congress of the Communist International, Selected Works, vol. IX, p. 228.

21 Lenin, "The Tax in Kind," Report Delivered March 15, 1921 at the Tenth Con-
gress of the RCP (B), Selected Works, vol. IX, p. 113.

" Pravda, March 23, 1921, p. 3.

127

the face and call things by their proper names; but it must control this,
determine its limits.23

. . . The NEP industrial policy put initial emphasis on the development
of small industries, whether in the form of private enterprise or in the form
of industrial cooperatives, in the hope that they would most readily increase
the flow of consumer goods. New enterprises were promised freedom from
nationalization. Small enterprises which had been nationalized were leased
to their former owners or industrial artels (producers' cooperatives) for fixed
terms with the provision that rentals were to be paid in the form of a definite
proportion of the output of the enterprise.24

The least effective and the most controversial among the NEP meas-
ures were the "concessions" to foreign capitalists. To revive Russian
industry Lenin wanted to attract foreign capital, as other backward
countries were doing, by offering prospects of successful and secure invest-
ment in Soviet industry; Lenin hoped that the industrial possibilities of
the vast country would lure European and American capital. Lenin's
party had often denounced abuses by concessionaires, for instance in the
Middle East, Latin America, and China; to quiet these doubts, Lenin
declared that where supreme power belonged to a Communist party,
abuse would be impossible.

. . . What are concessions from the point of view of economic rela-
tionships? They are state capitalism. The Soviet government concludes
an agreement with a capitalist. According to that agreement the latter is
provided with a certain quantity of articles: raw materials, mines, hunting
and fishing territories, minerals, or, as was the case in one of the last
proposals for a concession, even a special factory (the proposal to grant the
Swedish ball-bearing plant as a concession) . The Socialist state grants the
capitalist means of production that belong to it : factories, materials, mines ;
the capitalist works in the capacity of an agent, as a leaseholder of Socialist
means of production, obtains profit on his capital and delivers to the Socialist
state part of his output.

Why do we need this? Because we immediately receive an increased
quantity of products, and this we need because we ourselves are unable to
manufacture them. . . .

. . . That is why we do not in the least close our eyes to the fact that,
to a certain extent, free trade means the development of capitalism, and
we say: This capitalism will be under the control, under the surveillance
of the state.23

The first decree on concessions appeared on November 23, 1920, even
before the other provisions of the NEP were promulgated. Within the

^ " Lenin, "Speech on the Food Tax," Delivered April 9, 1921 at a Meeting of
Secretaries and Responsible Representatives of Nuclei of the RCP (B) of Moscow
City and the Moscow Gubernia, Selected Works, vol. IX, p. 162.

** Fainsod, op. cit., p. 98.
^ "Lenin, "Speech on the Food Tax," Delivered April 9, 1921 at a Meeting of
Secretaries and Responsible Representatives of Nuclei of the RCP (B) of Moscow
City and the Moscow Gubernia, Selected Works, vol. IX, pp. 161, 162.

128

party, opposition to concessions to foreign capitalists was considerable.
Lenin himself referred to some of the numerous protests that had reached
him. His comrades, he said, were saying :

We expelled our own capitalists and now they want to call in the foreign
capitalists.28

After 4 months of negotiations, Lenin admitted that not a single con-
cession had been granted.

... It must be said that actually ... we have not succeeded in placing
a single concession. There is a dispute among us about whether we should
try to place concessions at all costs. . . .

. . . On February 1 of this year [1921], the Council of the People's
Commissars adopted another decision on the question of concessions. The
first point of this decision reads: "To approve in principle the granting
of oil concessions in Grozny, Baku and other functioning oilfields, and
to start negotiations, which shall be expedited."

This question did not pass off without a certain amount of controversy.
Some comrades thought that the granting of concessions in Grozny and
Baku was wrong and was likely to rouse opposition among the workers.
The majority of the C. C. [Central Committee], and I personally adopted
the point of view that probably there was no real cause for these com-
plaints.27

Only 14 concessions were granted in the years 1921-22. The
number subsequently increased somewhat.

... In 1921/22 14 concession agreements were signed, in 1922/23 — 32,
in 1923/24—34, in 1924/25—29, in 1925/26—26, in 1926/27—8, in
1927/28 — 4. Later almost no concession agreements were signed.28

On the whole the concessions policy was ineffective and was abro-
gated at the end of the NEP era.

The New Economic Policy signified a substantial retreat, but in the
economic field only. No political retreat was envisaged; the Soviet gov-
ernment made it clear that no attempts to liberalize the system or to
organize an opposition would be tolerated. A 90 percent private and
capitalist economy under a 100 percent Communist government — a
combination contrary to all precepts of Marxism— appeared absurd to
many a Russian Communist. But Lenin was not willing to cede or
share state power; there were to be no reforms except economic reforms.

The doubts which arose everywhere about this strange combination of
communism and capitalism paralyzed the beneficial effects of the NEP.

:a Lenin, "The Political Activities of the Central Committee," Report Delivered
March 8, 1921 at the Tenth Congress of the RCP (B), Selected Works, vol. IX,
p. 95.

* Ibid., p. 96.

" Bolshaya SovetskayaEntsiklopediya (Large Soviet Encyclopedia) (1st ed.; Mos-
cow: Gosudarstvennyi Institut Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (State Institute Soviet
Encyclopedia)), vol. XXXIV (1937), p. 182.

129

Foreign investors, as we have seen, were mistrustful ; retail traders were
ready at any moment to liquidate their small businesses and flee. In an
attempt to counteract this lack of confidence, caution, and reluctance,
Lenin publicly emphasized that the NEP would last for a long time:

. . . we have unanimously stated that we are carrying out this [new
economic] policy in earnest and for a long time, but, of course, as has been
correctly observed, not forever. It has become necessary because of our
poverty, our ruin, and the terrible weakening of our big industry.20

Lenin's words were hardly convincing in view of the general course
his government was taking. The terroristic climate, the general un-
certainty and fear, and the expectation of new twists and turns para-
lyzed the will of those whose support Lenin wanted to gain for the task
of reviving the Russian economy. Everybody, inside the country and
abroad, was doubtful.

The doubters proved to be right. Within a year a new wave of
"anticapitalism" swept the Communist party, and now Lenin had to
announce that the new course had reached its limits.

. . . "Enough! No more concessions!" If Messieurs the capitalists think
that they can procrastinate, and that the longer they procrastinate the
more concessions they will get, then we must say: "Enough! Tomorrow you
will get nothing." . . . The retreat has come to an end, and in consequence
of that the nature of our work has changed.30

A week after the above announcement, Lenin, explaining the new
turn in his policies, pointed to the discord in the ranks of international
communism caused by the Russian "retreat."

A retreat is a difficult matter, especially for revolutionaries who are ac-
customed to advance, especially when they have been accustomed to ad-
vance with enormous success for several years, especially if they are sur-
rounded by revolutionaries in other countries who are yearning for the time
when they can start the offensive. Seeing that we were retreating, several
of them, in a 'disgraceful and childish manner, shed tears, as was the case
at the last Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist
International.31

29 Lenin, "O Vnutrennei i Vneshnei Politike Respubliki, Otchet VTsIK i SNK IX
Vserossiiskomu S"ezdu Sovetov 23 Dekabrya 1921 g." (On the Internal and Foreign
Policies of the Republic, Report of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and
the Council of People's Commissars to the Ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets,
December 23, 1921), Sochineniya, vol. XXXIII (1951), p. 135.

80 Lenin, "The International and Internal Position of the Soviet Republic," Report
Delivered March 6, 1922 at a Meeting of the Communist Fraction of the All-Russian
Congress of the Metal Workers' Union, Selected Works, vol. IX, p. 316.

M Lenin, "Political Report of the Central Committee to the Eleventh Congress of
the R.C.P. (B.)" (March 27, 1922), Selected Works, vol. IX, p. 341.

130

While putting brakes on the NEP, Lenin did not, however, revert to
wholesale requisitioning of grain and other products, nor to the abolition
of free trade for peasants. These elements of the economic system
remained in force.

The economic system which, despite a multitude of changes and con-
stant revamping, prevailed during the NEP period (1921-28) em-
braced: an industry controlled by and run by government agencies; a
state monopoly of foreign trade, and what there remained of wholesale
trade in the country; a certain amount of small private trade, which
was, however, plagued by exorbitant taxation; an agriculture based on
small private economy but obliged to pay taxes in kind; an extremely
low standard of living for the peasantry and the workers.

5. The Famine

The famine that struck large areas, particularly on the Volga and
in the Ukraine, in 1921-23 was caused only to a small degree by drought
and other natural phenomena. In the main it was the consequence of
the political developments of the preceding few years — the ruthless
requisitioning of food, seed, and cattle; the creation of the Committees
of the Poor; and in general the drive against the peasantry conducted
under the slogan of fighting the kulaks. It was a man-made famine.

By the summer of 1921 the disaster had reached such proportions, and
the prospects for the future appeared so bleak, that the government was
forced to deviate from the accepted methods of propaganda and admit
the facts. On August 2, 1921, Lenin signed an "Appeal to the Inter-
national Proletariat" in which he asked for help :

Several provinces of Russia have been stricken by famine — a famine that
seems to be only a little less severe than the disaster of 1891.32

Even at a moment like this Lenin could not bring himself to ask the
Western nations for help; well aware of who was really in a position
to give aid, he shamefacedly appealed only to "workers and small
farmers" in other nations:

Help is needed. The Soviet Republic of workers and peasants expects
this help to come from the toilers, the industrial workers and small farmers.33

An International Workers' Relief Committee was set up to maintain
the pretense. Figures published later by the Soviet government proved
that the contribution of this relief committee was only a small one.

As the famine assumed huge proportions, the government proceeded
to publish factual reports and records gathered by its agencies. Photos

82 Lenin, "Obrashchenie k Mczhdunarodnomu Proletariatu" (Appeal to the Inter-
national Proletariat) (August 2, 1921), Sochineniya, vol. XXXII (1951), p. 477.
"Ibid.

131

of actual scenes from the famine-stricken areas were published, with such
captions as:

The black coffin is collecting corpses of children who died of starvation.

A boy from the village of Karemukhi, Buzuluk County, Samara Gu-
bernia,34 dying of starvation.

Remains of corpses taken from corpse-eaters, Buzuluk County, Samara
Gubernia.35

The balance sheet of the disaster, compiled after the famine ended,
was as follows :

. . . the population of the stricken Volga region and those in the Crimea
amounts to about 25 million, and in five famine-stricken gubernias of the
Ukraine, 9 million. Out of them about 23 million, i.e., about 70 per cent,
were starving.36

. . . out of a total population of 3 1,922,000 in the famine-stricken regions,
the number of starving was :

In January 1922: 15,162,300.

In April 1922: 20,113,800.

In July 1922 :22,558,500.37

In one of the famine districts of the Samara Gubernia :

According to the latest census, taken in 1920-21 (in the new boundaries
of the [Samara] gubernia, excluding a part of the Bugulminsk and Novou-
yensk counties), the entire population amounted to 2,806,000, of whom
about 350,000 lived in the cities. . . .

*******

... In August, 859,000, i.e., about half of the population of the villages
were starving; and in January almost the entire [village] population of
1,910,000 is starving.38 '

Thousands of children were left helpless after the deaths of their
parents ; in general children were the worst sufferers among the popula-
tion.

... In the fairiine-stricken regions of the Volga and Crimea there were
about 2,500,000 derelicts [bezprizornis] . . .39.

84 A gubernia was a large administrative territorial unit in Russia, which existed
until the second half of the 1920's.

* Kniga o Golode (Book on the Famine) (Samara: Samara Division of the State
Publishing House, 1922), illustrations following pp. 114, 120, 126.

** Na Borbu s Posledstviyami Goloda, Rukovodstvo k Provedeniyu Agitkampanii
Posledgol v Klubnykh Uchrezhdeniyakh Goroda i Derevni (On the Fight With the
After Effects of the Famine, Guidance for the Conduct of a Propaganda Campaign
on the After Effects of the Famine in City and Country Meetings) (Moscow: Glav-
politprosvet (Central Board of Political Education) Publishing House, 1923), p. 4.

81 Itogi Posledgol (Balance Sheet on the After Effects of the Famine) (Moscow:
Published by the Liquidation Committee of the Central Committee to Help the
Hungry, 1923), p. 15.

** Kniga o Golode, pp. 15, 16.

89 Na Borbu s Posledstviyami Goloda . . ., p. 6.

132

Some of the children were shipped in a "systematic" way from children's
homes to regions which were better off; others stayed in the overcrowded and
infested children's homes of the province. The bulk of them, however, left
by their parents to the mercy of fate, were indeed derelicts. The horror
of the children's homes — the freezing cold, the starvation, the filth, the lice,
and the illness — was terrible; and the measures taken to fight these condi-
tions were useless. It is obvious why children's corpses by the dozens were
daily carried away from the children's homes.40

Those who could move fled the famine-stricken areas; refugees num-
bered in the hundreds of thousands:

At the end of summer 1921 a real panic developed. Drought, fires,
cholera — all this aroused the population of the region as if an order had
been given : look for safety, those who can ! The wave of migrants, traveling
by cart roads, waterways, and railroads, spread widely. All who could travel
were on the move. They used any available means of transportation.

Trains were overcrowded, waterways overloaded ; on all cart roads of the
province, day and night, the creaking of vehicles and the sounds from nomad
tents covered with oxhides were heard; camels roared, cows mooed, sheep
bleated, and children cried and moaned.

Households Were Sold for Trifles

The migrants were giving up their entire belongings for a trifle; they
boarded up their izbas [huts] or sold them. In the fall of 1921 a well-
equipped peasant farm could be bought for two or three poods [a pood is
approximately 36 American pounds] of flour. Speculators and other obscure
"business men" who appeared in the villages took advantage of the
situation.41

. . . On the Volga, in the Crimea and in five gubernias of the Ukraine
the number of livestock declined in 1922 to 3,982,400 head compared to
6,395,400 in 1 92 1.42

The weakened population fell easy prey to cholera and typhus, and
epidemics raged in the famine-stricken areas.

Cholera, always present in the Samara gubernia, this year caused consid-
erable devastation. The cities suffered the most from the cholera.43

Numerous incidents of cannibalism were reported in official Soviet
documents.

Human Corpses Are Being Eaten
Cases of eating of human corpses are becoming more frequent. . . .
. . . Citizen Shishkanov stole during the night into a barn, chose the
corpse of an eight-year-old girl, cut off her legs, arms and head, and started

40 Kniga o Golode, p. 1 15.

** Ibid.

° Na Borbu sPosledstviyami Goloda . . ., p. 5.

u Kniga o Golode, p. 115.

133

to leave, but was detained. His explanation was that he was taking the
baby corpse to use it as food.

In general it has been established that corpses are eaten by :

(a) relatives of the family of the deceased, including mothers and fathers;

(b) outsiders; in these cases corpses are stolen.

In the vicinity of the Buzuluk store, 12 cases of eating of human corpses
were registered.

In the village of Andreevka, Buzuluk County, frequent cases have been
noted of stealing of corpses from warehouses where they were temporarily
stored while awaiting burial by subbotniks 44 in a common grave. The
corpses are stolen to be used as food.45

The following is a report of what happened on December 10, 1921
in the village of Blagodarovka, Buzuluk County :

... on the 9th of December a boy, Egor Vasilievich Pershikov, died;
on the same day his mother, Avdotiya Pershikova, also passed away. On
the morning of December 10 somebody informed [the authorities] that the
boy was being hacked to pieces and would be cooked. Pelageya Satishcheva
was the one who really wanted to cook the corpse. She said she was doing
it because of hunger, that the boy had died of hunger, and that the boy
was 1 1 years old.

When she started to hack the body to pieces, a little girl, Fedosya Kazya-
lina, ran to the neighbors and told them the story. The neighbor, Pelageya
Sinelnikova, went to report this to the Soviet, where the Chairman of the
Volost Executive Committee was present. ... It was established that an
arm had indeed been chopped off, the belly cut open and the entrails re-
moved, and that Pelageva Satishcheva had stated: "We will eat the boy,
later we will cook the woman. . . ."

The Blagodarovsky Village Soviet hereby confirms the record, affixing
its signatures and seal. The Chairman of the Soviet — Levkin.46

Of the foreign organizations active in relief efforts, the American
Relief Administration (ARA) was the most important. Headed by
Herbert Hoover, it furnished more aid than all the other leUef organiza-
tions put together; the total value of American relief to Russia was about
$60 million.47

44 Subbotniks were so-called labor enthusiasts who worked on their rest days.

u Kniga o Golode, p. 121.

"J6W.,pp.l21,122.

47 While visiting the United States in 1959 the Soviet First Deputy Premier Frol
Kozlov asserted that the Soviet Union had paid for American help during the famine
of 1921-22. His statements were wrong. Actually, "About one-fifth of the total
dollar costs, running to some sixty-two million dollars, were covered by the Soviet
Government itself which released some twelve million dollars from its gold reserve
for this purpose. Of the remainder, about one-half was put up by the American Gov-
ernment. The rest came from private donations in the United States. In addition,
the Soviet Government expended an estimated fourteen million dollars on behalf
of the program in local currency." (George Kennan in the New York Times Maga-
zine, July 19, 1959, p. 23.)

134

The American Joint Distribution Committee and the relief committee
headed by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen were also important
in the relief efforts. Soviet President 48 Mikhail Kalinin, in his report on
famine aid from abroad, indicated that ARA had contributed 85 percent
of the total relief :

Food
[In Russian poods*]

ARA 28, 763, 770

Nansen 4, 709, 000

International Workers Committee 689, 100

Trade Unions 243, 200

French Red Cross 217, 200

Others 487, 833

Total 34, 421, 003

*Pood — a Russian weight equivalent to approximately 36 American pounds.

The population receiving foreign assistance numbered 12,120,189; the
following organizations supported : Perse ns

ARA 10, 387, 688

Nansen 1, 496, 250

International Workers Committee 91, 209

Trade Unions 45, 094

Others • 99, 945

In general, of course, the disaster did not divert the government from
its course. A group of well-known Russian liberals organized a 63-
member Committee for Aid to the Hungry. After 1 month and 6
days the committee was disbanded by the police. Better no action than
action by non-Communists, the government felt. As usual the commit-
tee was accused of subversion :

. . . The Committee . . . carried on a wide underground activity di-
rected toward the seizure of power "at the moment of the inevitable fall of
the Bolsheviks as a result of the famine." 50

48 "President" is a term popularly applied by writers outside the Soviet Union to the
titular head of the Soviet state. The head of state under the Soviet set-up, however,
was the chairman of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress
of Soviets until 1936, and the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet since
that time.

49 Itogi Posledgol, p. 16. These tables of figures contain a number of discrepancies.
For example, the column of figures under the heading "Food" actually totals
35,100,103 rather than 34,421,003 as stated in the official Soviet publication. Fig-
ures listed under the heading "Persons" total 12,120,186 rather than 12,120,189.

w Itogi Borby s Golodom v 1921-22 gg., Sbornik Statei i Otchetov (Balance Sheet
on the Fight of the Famine in 1921-22, Collection of Articles and Reports)
'Moscow: Published by the Central Committee to Help the Hungry, 1922), p. 12.

135

The secret police made a public report on its own contribution which
read in part:

The V-Cheka [All-Russian Extraordinary Committee] has issued a num-
ber of instructions concerning the tasks of its agencies and directives for
the activities of [the] local commissions [the Chekas] to fight the famine. . . .
. . . the local commissions must work in two directions:
first, to intensify vigilance in regard to counter-revolutionary ele-
ments. . . .81

Another item in the activities of the police was the confiscation of
church valuables — gold, silver, and other jewelry — allegedly in order
to create a fund for the purchase of food abroad. Citizens all over the
country resisted the confiscation of church valuables and the drive was
accompanied by violence, arrests, and deaths. When the results of the
confiscation from the churches were published, the total amount realized
appeared strangely small— 1,344,824 gold rubles.52

The situation began to improve in 1922, but the famine was not over
until the end of 1923."

6. The Police System

The transition from civil war to the New Economic Policy meant less
direct fighting, fewer uprisings and consequently a reduction in the
number of arrests and executions. These quantitative changes did not,
however, mean that the political system had changed in essence. As
before, no political opposition was tolerated and no freedom of press,
assembly or religion was inaugurated. There was to be no doubt that
the dictatorship of the Communist party was as strong as it had been,
and statements to this effect were made publicly.

" Ibid., p. 171.

"I bid., p. 157.

M The help given by the "capitalists" at this, one of the most terrible moments in
Russian history, was not only officially overlooked, but was used to serve anti-American
propaganda. In a textbook published in 1946 under the editorship ol the ranking
Soviet historian Anna Pankratova, it was said:

"The Soviet government mobilized all means to help the starving. All over the
country voluntary donations were collected under the slogan: 'Ten well-off must
provide for one hungry.'

"The capitalist world tried to make use of these new difficulties. Diversionists
and spies set fires and arranged explosions in Soviet enterprises. The A.R.A., the
American Organization to Help the Starving, was used for this hostile undermining
work." (Istoriya S.S.S.R. Uchebnik dlya X Klassa Srednei Shkoly (History of the
USSR, Textbook for the Tenth Grade of High School) (Moscow: Cos. Uchebno-
Pedagog. Izd-vo Ministerstva Prosveshcheniya RSFSR (State Educational Pedagogical
Publishing House of the Ministry of Education of the RSFSR), 1946), Tart III,
p. 293.)

136

. . . These people [the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries] are
helping mutinies, are helping the White Guards. The place for Menshe-
viks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, open or disguised as non-party men, is
in prison. . . . We are surrounded by the world bourgeoisie, who are
watching every moment of vacillation in order to bring back "their own
folk," to restore the landlords and the bourgeoisie. We will keep the Men-
sheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, whether open or disguised as "non-
party," in prison."

Lenin spoke only of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries because
the other parties, the Kadets and the rightists, had been outlawed years
before; what he meant was absolute suppression of all non- Communist
political groupings. The principle was a strict one, and it remained in
force during the whole NEP era. In July 1926, for instance, the Cen-
tral Committee of- the Communist party adopted a resolution which
said:

. . . The Communist party and the Soviet government must as deter-
minedly and mercilessly as before suppress all sallies of the petty bourgeois
political groups whose policy, as before, means return to capitalism; it
tends toward turning the country back to bourgeois rule. . . ."

In two notes addressed in May 1922 to Dmitri I. Kurski, head of the
Soviet department of justice, in connection with the projected prepara-
tion of a criminal code, Lenin was quite outspoken. On May 15, 1922,
he wrote :

Comrade Kursky!

In my opinion it is necessary to extend the application of shooting (which
could be substituted by exile abroad) ... to all phases covering the ac-
tivities of Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc. ; to find a formula that
would place these activities in connection with the international bourgeoisie
and her struggle against us (by bribery of the press and agents, war prepara-
tions, etc.) . . .B6

The Cheka, however, which had become a symbol of terrorism, il-
legality and death, had to be abolished, if only in name; it was out of
place in the era of "free trade" and "concessions" to foreign capitalists.

** Lenin, "The Food Tax, The Significance of the New Policy and its Conditions"
(April 21, 1921 ), Selected Works, vol. IX, pp. 198, 199.

"" "Ob Itogakh Perevyborov Sovetov" ([Resolution] On the Results of the Rejec-
tions of Soviets), Adopted at the United Plenum of the Central Committee and
the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik),
July 14-23, 1926, KPSS v Rezolyutsiakh i Resheniyakh S"ezdov, Konferentsii i
Plenumov TsK (CPSU in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and
Plenums of the Central Committee) (7th ed.; Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo
Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for Political Literature), 1953),
Part II, p. 152.

*" This note was omitted from Lenin's collected works. It was published in Bolshe-
vik, Moscow, January 15, 1937, p. 63 as a vindication of Stalin's purges and execu-
tions. It is still missing from the last (fourth) edition of Lenin's works, published
between 1941 and 1958.

137

It was replaced by the State Political Administration (Gosudarstvennoe
Politicheskoe Upravlenie — GPU),57 but it continued under its chief,
Feliks Dzerzhinski. On February 6, 1922, the Soviet government pub-
lished a decree which read in part :

1. The All-Russian Extraordinary Committee [V-Cheka] and its local
agencies are to be abolished.

*******

6. At the direct disposal of the Main Political Administration are special
troops the numbers of which are determined by decision of the Council of
labor and defense . . .68

Actually, and contrary to the so-called liberalization, the Collegium
of the GPU and its Judicial Board maintained, in all political cases,
all of the rights and functions of a court: they could try and sentence a
defendant to any form of punishment, including execution. Trials were
usually held with the defendant absent and no appeal was possible.

The death penalty, abolished in January 1920 and reinstated in May
of the same year, was widely applied by the GPU. No reliable records
of death sentences of the NEP era have been published; existing reports
are probably inaccurate.

The facts as to the number of persons executed for political and economic
crimes throughout the Soviet Union are impossible to get officially. The
nearest approach to an official statement was that made in conversation with
members of the American Labor Delegation in 1927, by Menjinski, the head
of the G.P.U. for the whole Union. He told them that about 1,500 persons
were shot by the G.P.U. in the five years from 1922 to 1927, either on its
own order or that of the courts. . . .

*******

How far the figure given by Menjinski can be relied upon as accurate,
nobody is in a position to say. ... I venture to guess that the figure does
not include executions of Socialists in Georgia after the 1924 uprising —
some hundreds of which were publicly announced and many more known.69

A system of Soviet courts and criminal codes was introduced during
the early NEP period.

Since 1922 there have been courts in the Soviet Union. However, by the
position of the judges, court organization and procedure the Soviet courts
are more akin to administrative agencies than to independent judicial bodies.

"In 1924 the GPU became the OGPU when the word Ob"edinennoe — United
was added to its name.

" "Dekret Vserossiiskogo Tsentralnogo Ispolnitelnogo Komiteta" (Decree of the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee) (February 6, 1922). Istoriya Sovetskoi
Konstitutsii (v Dokumentakh), 1917-1956 (History of the Soviet Constitution (in
Documents) 1917-1956) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Yuridicheskoi
Literatury (State Publishing House for Juridical Literature), 1957), pp. 333, 334.

m Roger N. Baldwin, Liberty Under the Soviets (New York: Vanguard Press,
1928), pp. 211, 212.

138

Moreover, heavy penalties are imposed not only by courts but also by the
Ministry of the Interior in an outright administrative action. . . . Al-
though independence is promised to judges by the constitution, the condi-
tions under which they hold their office do not guarantee such independence.
A Soviet judge docs not enjoy tenure for life on good behavior. He is
"elected," being nominated by the Communist Party in the lower courts for
three years, and in higher courts for five years, and may be prematurely
recalled. Such recall is not like impeachment in American law; it is simply
dismissal from office by a vote of an electoral body imposed by the
Communist Party.60

A number of concentration camps continued to exist. One of the
largest, situated on the Solovetski Islands in the far north, served to keep
prisoners of various political trends far from Russia's mainland.

The expectation and "scientific prediction" of the Communist
leadership that criminality would cease with the abolition of capitalism
proved wrong. Although the wais had ended and the NEP had been
inaugurated

. . . the number of murders, thefts, burglaries, briberies, and embezzle-
ments was growing rapidly and far exceeded prerevolutionary levels.

Criminality had reached an all-time high. In 1926 there were 162
criminal cases per 10,000 population, i.e., roughly 2,365,000 cases. In
1927 the number of cases in which defendants were found guilty reached a
million. Besides, about 1,600,000 persons were subjected to fines of a
disciplinary (administrative) nature. The enormous rise in the number of
new cases coming before the courts was the more alarming since, in Russia,
criminality had always, even under the old regime, rightly been considered
a revealing barometer of the moral and social state of the nation.'1

The population in the congested prisons was growing rapidly under
the new conditions:

January, 1924: 87,800
January, 1925: 148,000
January, 1926: 155.000
January, 1927: 198,000
IY> theso numbers, thousands of inmates of the concentration camps and
special prisons of the GPU must be added.62

A. A. Gertzenson, a high Soviet justice official, wrote:

The number of prisoners in the years 1922 to 1926 has risen at an annual
rate of 15 to 20 per cent and has doubled in the course of these five years.

*° Vladimir Gsovski, Report Delivered June 13, 1955 at the Second Plenary Session
of the International Congress of Jurists, Report of the International Congress of
Jurists (The Hatjue: International Commission of Jurists, 1956), p. 34.

™ David J. Dallin and Boris I. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), pp. 158, 159.

a Ibid., p. 160.

139

. . . For every person leaving a place of confinement upon completion of
his sentence, three others arrived.63

The first in the long series of the "Moscow trials" took place in 1922.
This was the trial of the leadership of the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

The Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which in November 1917 polled
the largest number of votes of all political groups in Russia, had taken
part in the civil war and been defeated. Subsequently, in 1920-21, it
changed its tactics, but under the systematic repression it had almost
entirely disintegrated. The trial of 1922, an aftermath of the Bolshevik
victor)', was an act of revenge in which the obedient and disciplined
"masses" were expected to show their turning away from the Socialist-
Revolutionary Party.

Of the 32 defendants tried, 22 were actually members of the Socialist-
Revolutionary Party, among them such widely known figures as Abram
Gots, Mikhail Vedenyapin, Evgeni Timofeev, Dmitri Donskoi, and
Evgeniya Ratner. The other 10, who had defected from the party, were
government witnesses, two of them agents-provocateurs against the first
named group. It was charged that the defendants had: ( 1 ) defended
by arms the provisional government (the defendants admitted this);
(2) defended by arms the Constituent Assembly (the defendants
admitted this, too) ; (3) led an armed fight against the Soviet power (the
defendants admitted this as an historical fact; in 1919, however, the
Soviet government had declared an amnesty for these offenses and, for
a time, had even legalized the Socialist-Revolutionary Party).

The fourth accusation was that the Socialist-Revolutionaries had taken
part in the attempt on Lenin's life and in the assassination of V. Volo-
darski. In support of this accusation, there was not a single proof ex-
cept statements of the agents-provocateurs.64

The impending trial of the Socialist-Revolutionary leaders was dis-
cussed at a conference of the then existing two Socialist and one Com-
munist Internationals in Berlin in April 1922. Soviet delegates Nikolai
Bukharin and Karl Radek agreed to sign a commitment that no death
sentences would be imposed at the Moscow trial:

The Conference [of the Executive Committees of the three Internationals
in Berlin] takes notice of the statement of the representatives of the Com-
munist International that at the trial against 47 [32] Socialist-Revolutionaries
all persons desired by the defendants as counsel for the defense will be ad-

63 Ibid.

** Vladimir Voitinski, "Sud nad Sotsialistami Revolyutsioncrami v Moskove" (Trial
of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in Moscow), in Dvenadtsat Smertnikov (Twelve
Condemned to Death) (Berlin: Published by the Delegation Abroad of the Socialist-
Revolutionary Party, 1922), p. 61.

140

initted; that, as mentioned in the Soviet press before the Conference
opened, there will be no death sentences at this trial.65

. . . Finally Vandervelde, Wauters, Kurt Rosenfeld and Theodor
Liebknecht (the first two were representatives of the Belgian Labor Party,
the latter two were representatives of the Independent Socialist Party of
Germany) left for Russia [to act as defense attorneys], relying on the Berlin
agreement. eG

The trial turned into a tragic farce. Wherever the attorneys went

. . . rabble crowds organized by the authorities, Chekist rogues, together
with all kinds of assigned Communists attacked the train of the defenders
under the guise of the "Russian proletariat" and demanded that they ac-
count for the counter-revolutionary act of defending the Socialist
Revolutionaries.07

When the trial started, the courthouse was surrounded by organized
crowds who shouted and demanded "death to the Socialist-Revolution-
aries." The mobs were permitted to enter the hall and make speeches;
the president of the court, Lenin's lieutenant, Georgi Pyatakov, did noth-
ing to defend the rights of the defendants. (Fifteen years later the same
Pyatakov, similarly accused and "exposed" by Vyshinsky, "confessed"
and was sentenced to death and executed.) Since no real defense was
possible:

On June 19 Vandervelde, Liebknecht, Rosenfeld and Wauters left Mos-
cow (they had had to go on a hunger strike to get permission from the
Bolshevik to leave.) 68

The sentencing of the defendants was a problem for the Politburo. It
was impossible openly to renege on the commitment made in Berlin that
no death sentences would be imposed ; on the other hand, "retreat" before
the "social traitors" would have been tantamount to a defeat. Trotsky
proposed a compromise : To impose the death sentence but not carry it
out immediately.69 The compromise was accepted; the decision was that
the defendants be held as permanent hostages, to be shot if they engaged
in any overt act against the Soviet leaders. This was, in fact, a death
sentence held in abeyance. On August 7, the Tribunal pronounced its
verdict: 12 of the defendants to be shot, 10 to be imprisoned for from
2 to 10 years; the others, the traitors, were freed.70

. . . The condemned Socialist-Revolutionary leaders thus remained in
prison [or exile] for many years, until they were executed by Stalin.71

Ibid., p. 36. On April 1 1 Lenin came out with an article, "We Paid Too High a
Price," protesting against the promise made by Bukharin and Radek.
" Ibid., p. 39.
" Ibid., p. 40.
<* Ibid., p. 53.

•"Leon Trotsky, My Life (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), p. 475.
" Voitinski, op. cit., p. 8 1 .
"David Shub, Lenin (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1948), p. 377.

141

A phenomenon of this first of the great Moscow trials was the fact that
the defendants did not "confess," nor did they repudiate or revile their
party. Facing the court with dignity, pride, and courage, they told the
judges :

. . . "If death is in store for us," said Gots, "we will die without fear;
if we stay alive, we will fight you after our liberation as relentlessly as we did
before." 72

"The state prosecutors Lunacharski and Krylenko," — said Timofeev —
". . . found it necessary, in order to facilitate their task, to propose that
we repent and repudiate our past activities. In answer to this proposal I
am authorized by all the defendants of the first group categorically to tell the
Tribunal and the state prosectuors: it is out of the question that we should
repent or give up; you will never hear frcm these benches anything of the
kind." 7'

"From the moment we fell into your hands we were sure that you would
sentence us to death. But from this bench you will never hear a request
for pardon." u

In accordance with the orders of the Politburo the Socialist-Revolution-
aries were sentenced to death and the sentence was not carried out.
However, most of them perished subsequently in the Stalin era.

7. Lenin's Death and the Stalin-Trotsky Fight

Lenin suffered his first stroke on May 26, 1922. He recovered and
was able to resume work, though only on a limited scale. In December
1922 he again became ill. Although he lived for another 13 months,
until January 21, 1924, his party and the Soviet government had
actually run without his leadership since the end of 1922.

Among the political actions of Lenin's last years were the first harsh
steps toward suppression of factions and "deviationists." At the same
Tenth Party Congress which proclaimed the NEP, a number of rigid
decisions were taken, on Lenin's initiative, to put an end to the dis-
cussions and fights which had shaken the party in the last years.75 The
following resolution was adopted :

6. The Congress orders the immediate dissolution of all groups, with-
out exception, that have been formed en the basis of one platform or
another, and charges all organizations strictly to see to it that no factional
actions take place. Non-compliance with this decision of the Congress will
result in unconditional and immediate expulsion from the party.

7. In order to effect strict discipline within the party and in all Soviet
work and to secure the greatest unity in removing all factionalism, the

73 Voitinski, op. cit., p. 79.
n Ibid., p. 80.
'* Ibid., opp. p. 78.
"Seep. 123.

68491 O-61-vo!. 11-10

142

Congress authorizes the Central Committee to apply all party penalties,
including expulsion, in cases of breach of discipline or of reviving or
engaging in factionalism; and in regard to members of the Central Com-
mittee to reduce them to the status of candidates and, as an extreme
measure, to expel them from the party.78

In this early period of expulsions, purges, and stern party rule, how-
ever, certain safeguards of the rights of accused persons were maintained:

... A necessary condition for the application of such an extreme meas-
ure (to members of the Central Committee, alternate members of the
Central Committee and members of the Control Commission) is the con-
vocation of the plenum of the Central Committee, to which all alternate
members of the Central Committee and all members of the Control Com-
mission shall be invited. If such a general assembly of the most responsible
leaders of the party, by a two-thirds majority, deems it necessary to reduce
a member of the Central Committee to the status of an alternate member,
or to expel him from the party, this measure must be put into effect
immediately.77

Party discipline was becoming more rigid, but factions and group-
ings found means of engaging in political activity. While some dissi-
dents were removed from their posts (arrests among party members were
rare), others appeared at party or Comintern congresses to protest and
enunciate their programs. At the Eleventh Party Congress in 1922,
for instance, V. Kossior could complain, without being expelled from
the party —

The administrative system of our Party has remained as authoritarian
and to a certain degree militaristic as it was in the war period. If anyone
had the courage or deemed it necessary to criticize or point out a certain
deficiency which exists in the area of Soviet and Party work, he was im-
mediately counted among the opposition, the appropriate places learned of
it, and the comrade in question was relieved of this office. . . . 78

. . . Madam Kollontai accused the Party leadership of suppressing
thought and of inadequate attention to the welfare of the workers.79

The privileged position of members of the Communist party was main-
tained under Lenin. Party penalties involved transfer to another job
or another city or an assignment abroad; arrests of party members did
not begin until after Lenin became ill.

. . . Despite violent threats and tirades, the most drastic penalty which
he [Lenin] imposed on dissenters was expulsion from the Party, and even

" "O Edinstve Partii" (On Party Unity), Resolutions and Decisions of the Tenth
Congress of the Russian Communist Party, March 8-16, 1921, KPSS v Rezolyutsiakh
i Resheniyakh . . ., part I, p. 529.

77 Ibid., pp. 529, 530.

78 E. Jaroslawski, Aus der Geschichte der Kommunistichen Partei der Sowjetunion
(Bolschewiki), as quoted in Fainsod, op. cit.,p. 137.

79 Fainsod, op. cit.,p. 137.

143

this penalty was rarely utilized against Party members of any prominence
who had rendered distinguished services in the past. If on occasion Lenin
seemed to equate dissent with treason, he still shrank from drawing the
practical consequences, at least so far as intra-Party struggles were con-
cerned.80

It was at this time that the system of periodic party "purges" was
introduced. The purges were aimed at two groups of party members:
first, the "careerists," "self-seekers," and criminals who flooded the party;
second, the former political opponents, former liberals and socialists
in whose new orientation the leaders of the party had no confidence.
In the purge of 1921 about 25 percent of the then membership of over
700,000 were expelled.81

An important innovation which attracted little attention at the time
was the establishment of the post of General Secretary of the party's
Central Committee, and the selection, on Lenin's suggestion, of Joseph
Stalin to fill it. No one foresaw the consequences of this appointment,
which occurred on April 2, 1922. The most important of the tasks of the
secretariat were to streamline the party organization, paralyze internal
opposition, and see to it that only loyal men were appointed to political,
and even nonpolitical, jobs. These tasks and the jurisdiction of the
secretariat were the source of the power which soon overwhelmed that
of the Central Committee itself. From that point on, the ascendancy
of Stalin, a man hitherto known only in party circles, proceeded rapidly.

. . . Stalin understood that in a highly centralized state controlled by
the party the General Secretary would be a key man after Lenin's death.
Meanwhile the position enabled Stalin to work assiduously and in the dark
gathering a band of henchmen who would be loyal to him because he ap-
pointed them and could dismiss them.82

The undesirable traits ascribed to Stalin by his adversaries have later
been confirmed by official Soviet spokesmen. According to Trotsky,
Nikolai Krestinski, a leading Bolshevik, said that Stalin was a "bad man
with yellow eyes." Nikolai Bukharin noticed Stalin's "implacable
jealousy of anyone who knows more or does things better than he."
"This cook," Lenin said of him, "will make only peppery dishes."
"Stalin," said Trotsky, "is the outstanding mediocrity of the party." 83

In general Stalin did not enjoy great prestige among or devotion from
his party comrades.

"Ibid., p. 138.

"History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course
(New York: International Publishers, 1939), pp. 258,259.

63 Louis Fischer, The Life and Death of Stalin (New York: Harper & Bros., 1952),
p. 12.

83 Trotsky, op. cit., pp. 449, 450, 467, 512.

144

When Lenin fell ill, 2 months after Stalin's appointment to the new
post, a group of three Bolshevik leaders emerged as a collective successor
to the leader: Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin. In the beginning, the
most influential among the triumvirate was not Stalin but Zinoviev.

. . . The only conceivable succession to Lenin, temporarily ill or definitely
removed, was a Directory of the top Party leaders, members and alternates
of the Politburo and the Central Committee. . . .

But actually a variant of this took place. The succession passed to a
triumvirate, of which Zinoviev was the leader, Kamenev his alternate and
Stalin the junior partner. Zinoviev thus became, for better or for worse,
Lenin's successor by virtue of his plurality inside the Politburo. . . .84

To many Communists in Russia, Trotsky appeared the logical suc-
cessor to Lenin; but this did not accord with personal relationships with-
in the party.

... Of the seven members of the Politburo, Lenin was ill ; Trotsky was
alone in his opinion that he was the natural successor to Lenin, a wide-
spread opinion outside the Party machine that made him the most feared
and hated fellow-member inside the Politburo and among the Party wheel-
horses. . . .85

Neither Zinoviev nor Kamenev had the qualifications needed in a
single supreme leader :

... In theoretical and political • respects, both Zinoviev and Kamenev
were probably superior to Stalin. But they both lacked that little thing
called character.88

There ensued a struggle between the two ambitious and capable men,
Stalin and Trotsky. The feud between them, which had started years
before and which now assumed bitter forms, filled the history of the
Communist party for the next 5 years. Personal animosity took on
ideological attire; divergencies on important political issues emerged;
"Trotskyism" and "Stalinism" developed into two opposing Communist
philosophies and strategies.

Sensing the growing danger of a possible split, Lenin wrote from his
sickbed, in December 1922, a letter of advice (usually referred to since as
his "Testament" ) to the party leaders in which he made some suggestions
for securing the stability of the party :

.' . . the fundamental factor ... is such members of the Central
Committee as Stalin and Trotsky. The relation between them constitutes,
in my opinion, a big half of the danger of that split. . . .

Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated an
enormous power in his hands; and I am not sure that he always knows how

84 Trotsky, Stalin (New York: Harper & Bros., 1941), p. 356.

"Ibid.

M Trotsky, My Life, p. 520.

145

to use that power with sufficient caution. On the other hand, Comrade
Trotsky, as was proved by his struggle against the Central Committee in
connection with the question of the People's Commissariat of Ways and
Communications, is distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities — per-
sonally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Commit-
tee— but also by his too far-reaching self-confidence and a disposition to be
too much attracted by the purely administrative side of affairs.

These two qualities of the two most able leaders of the present Central
Committee might, quite innocently, lead to a split; if our party does not
take measures to prevent it, a split might arise unexpectedly.87

In his letter Lenin mentioned, in addition to Trotsky and Stalin, four
other outstanding leaders — Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Pyatakov. A
few days later (January 4, 1923 ) he added a special postscript on Stalin:

. . . Stalin is too rude, and this fault, entirely supportable in relations
among us Communists, becomes insupportable in the office of General Secre-
tary. Therefore, I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin
from that position and appoint to it another man who in all respects differs
from Stalin only in superiority — namely, more patient, more loyal, more
polite and more attentive to comrades, less capricious, etc. This circum-
stance may seem an insignificant trifle, but I think that from the point of
view of preventing a split and from the point of view of the relation between
Stalin and Trotsky, which I discussed above, it is not a trifle, or it is such a
trifle as may acquire a decisive significance.88

In light of recent revelations, Trotsky's later statement that Stalin,
angered by Lenin's attitude, had proposed giving poison to his teacher,
may well be true. In February 1923, Stalin told the Politburo that
Lenin had asked him for poison.

I see before me [Trotsky recalled] the pale and silent Kamenev, who sin-
cerely loved Lenin, and Zinoviev, bewildered, as always at difficult mo-
ments. Had they known about Lenin's request even before the session?
Or had Stalin sprung this as a surprise on his allies in the triumvirate
as well as on me?

"Naturally, we cannot even consider carrying out this request!" I
exclaimed. "Guetier [Lenin's physician] has not lost hope. Lenin can
still recover."

"I told him all that," Stalin replied, not without a touch of annoyance.
"But he wouldn'-t listen to reason. The Old Man is suffering. He says he
wants to have the poison at hand . . . he'll use it only when he is con-
vinced that his condition is hopeless."

"Anyway, it's out of the question," I insisted — this time, I think, with
Zinoviev' s support. "He might succumb to a passing mood and take the
irrevocable step."

"The Old Man is suffering," Stalin repeated, staring vaguely past us
and, as before, saying nothing one way or the other. A line of thought

"The New Leader, vol. XXXIX, No. 29, sec. 2 (July 16, 1956), pp. S66, S67.
■ Ibid., p. S67.

146

parallel to the conversation but not quite in consonance with it must have
been running through his mind.89

Trotsky thought it possible that Stalin had not invented Lenin's re-
quest, but there

. . . naturally arises the question: how and why did Lenin, who at the
time was extremely suspicious of Stalin, turn to him with such a request,
which on the face of it, presupposed the highest degree of personal con-
fidence? A mere month before he made this request of Stalin, Lenin had
written his pitiless postscript to the Testament. Several days after making
this request, he broke off all personal relations with him. Stalin himself
could not fail to ask himself the question : why did Lenin turn to him of all
people? The answer is simple: Lenin saw in Stalin the only man who
would grant his tragic request, since he was directly interested in doing so.90

Among the specific issues which became a source of antagonism be-
tween Stalin and Lenin during the last months of Lenin's life was the
nationality policy. The misunderstandings and disputes started in con-
nection with the issue of Georgia as a member state of the prospective
Soviet Union. The prevailing trend among the Georgian Communists
was toward a Soviet Georgia independent of the Russian Soviet state;
Stalin, himself a Georgian, but now a strong power in the government of
a great country, strove for a "big state" in which Georgia would enjoy
only a degree of "autonomy." The term "autonomization" veiled the
drive for centralization under Russian leadership. In other national
areas, especially in the Ukraine, trends toward independence were strong
among Communists.

In his fight against the Georgian Communist majority Stalin was in-
sulting and rude; the conduct of his two lieutenants, Feliks Dzerzhinski
and Grigori Ordzhonikidze ("Sergo"), provoked indignation and pro-
tests. From his sickbed Lenin, who had earlier encouraged and sup-
ported a rapid and forcible extension of the Soviet state, came out with
significant statements directed at Stalin and his group, whom he accused
of reviving the methods of old Russian autocracy in regard to national
minorities :

. . . what we call ours is an apparatus that is still thoroughly alien to
us, representing a bourgeois Tsarist mechanism which we have had no
chance to conquer during the past five years, in the absence of help from
[a revolution in] other countries, and in view of the overriding pressure of
the "business" of war and the struggle against famine.91

89 Trotsky, Stalin, p. 377.

*° Ibid.

81 "Lenin's Article on the National Question" (first printed, in incomplete form, in
Sotsialisticheskii Vestnik, Berlin, December 1923), in Bertram D. Wolfe, Khrushchev
and Stalin's Ghost (London: Atlantic Press, 1957), pp. 271, 272.

147

Stalin's projected constitution of the Soviet Union contained, of course,
provision for the right of Soviet Union members "to withdraw from the
Union." On this point, Lenin said :

... it is quite obvious that the "freedom to withdraw from the Union,"
with which we justify ourselves, will prove to be nothing but a scrap of
paper, incapable of defending the minorities in Russia from the incursions
of that hundred percent Russian, the Great-Russian, the chauvinist, in re-
ality, the scoundrel and despoiler which the typical Russian bureaucrat is.
There can be no doubt that the insignificant percentage of Soviet and
sovietized workers will drown in this Great-Russian sea of chauvinist riff-
raff like a fly in milk.62

In an article prepared for the press, Lenin attacked Stalin :

I think that a fatal role was played here by Stalin's haste and admin-
istrative impulsiveness, and also by his spiteful attitude towards the much
talked of "social nationalism." Spitefulness in general plays the worst
possible role in politics.

I am afraid that Com. Dzerzhinsky also, when he went to the Caucasus
to investigate the case of the "crimes" of these "social nationalists," dis-
tinguished himself there only by his one-hundred percent Russian attitude
(it is common knowledge that the Russified non-Russian always likes to
exaggerate when it comes to 100% Russian attitudes) .93

The relations between a great nation and national minorities must be
based, wrote the dying leader, on new principles, different from the sys-
tem which had prevailed before the revolution. Internationalism, Lenin
said

. . . must consist not merely in a formal assertion of equality among
nations but in such inequality by which the oppressing great nation com-
pensates for that inequality which actually exists in life. . . .

A Georgian who adopts a scornful attitude towards this side of the matter,
who scornfully accuses others of "social nationalism" (when he is himself
not only a real and authentic "social nationalist," but also a brutal Great-
Russian Derzhimorda),94 that Georgian actually violates the interests of
proletarian class solidarity. For nothing so hinders the development and
consolidation of proletarian class solidarity as much as national injustice.95

In another move against the General Secretary, Lenin asked Trotsky
to take over the defense of the Georgians against Stalin:

Dear Com. Trotsky.

I ask you urgently to undertake the defense of the Georgia case in the
C. C. of the party. This case is at present "being shot at" by Stalin and
Dzerzhinsky and I cannot count on their objectivity. Quite the contrary.

M Ibid., p. 272.
" Ibid.

m A character in Gogol's Inspector General, whose very name is a symbol of a nar-
row and domineering police mentality.

H ti

Lenin's Article on the National Question," in Wolfe, op. cit., pp. 273, 274.

148

If you should agree to undertake the defense of that case, I would be at

ease.96

Lenin's suggestion for the removal of Stalin came too late, however;
Stalin was already firmly entrenched in the Secretariat.

With the public and even party members uninformed about the Lenin-
Stalin controversy, the General Secretary could assume the role of the
most loyal of Lenin's disciples; he maintained this claim for the rest of
his life. At Lenin's funeral he took an oath of eternal loyalty and
devotion to Lenin's policies :

Departing from us, Comrade Lenin enjoined us to hold high and guard
the purity of the great title of member of the Party. We vow to you,
Comrade Lenin, that we shall fulfil your behest with honour!

*******

Departing from us, Comrade Lenin enjoined us to guard the unity of our
Party as the apple of our eye. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that this
behest, too, we shall fulfil with honour!

*******

Departing from us, Comrade Lenin enjoined us to guard and strengthen
the dictatorship of the proletariat. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that
we shall spare no effort to fulfil this behest, too, with honour!

»*•**•*

Departing from us, Comrade Lenin enjoined us to strengthen with all
our might the alliance of the workers and peasants. We vow to you, Com-
rade Lenin, that this behest, too, we shall fulfil with honour!

Departing from us, Comrade Lenin enjoined us to strengthen and extend
the Union of Republics. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that this behest,
too, we shall fulfil with honour!

*******

Departing from us, Comrade Lenin enjoined us to remain faithful to the
principles of the Communist International. We vow to you, Comrade
Lenin, that we shall not spare our lives to strengthen and extend the Union
of the Working People of the whole world — the Communist International! 9T

Even before Lenin's death the elimination of Trotsky, who in the gen-
eral view was the likely successor to the post of the supreme leader, had
become the main preoccupation of Lenin's three lieutenants, Zino-
viev, Kamenev and Stalin. When Lenin died, Trotsky, ill himself, was
on his way to a resort in the Caucasus. The triumvirate in Moscow
advised him not to return to the capital :

. . ."The funeral takes place on Saturday. You will not be able to
return in time. The Politbureau thinks that because of the state of your

" Lenin, Letter of March 5, 1923 to Leon Trotsky, in Wolfe, op. cit., pp. 276, 277.

w J. V. Stalin, "On the Death of Lenin," Speech Delivered January 26, 1924 at the
Second All-Union Congress of Soviets, Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publish-
ing House, 1952-55), vol. VI (1953), pp. 47-53.

149

health you must proceed to Sukhum." The funeral actually took place on
Sunday, January 27. Trotsky could have been there. He has stated that
Stalin kept him away deliberately. Stalin wanted to weaken the association
in the people's minds between Lenin and Trotsky.88

While Trotsky was continuing his medical treatment, the Moscow
leadership was consolidating its power. Stalin saw to it that no friends
or supporters of Trotsky advanced to prominent position in the party or
government.

... it was a real conspiracy [Trotsky wrote]. A secret political bureau
of seven was formed ; it comprised all the members of the official Politbureau
except me, and included also Kuybyshev, the present chainnan of the
Supreme Economic Council. All questions were decided in advance at that
secret centre, where the members were bound by mutual vows. They
undertook not to engage in polemics against one another and at the same
time to seek opportunities to attack me. There were similar centres in the
local organizations, and they were connected with the Moscow "seven" by
strict discipline. For communication, special codes were used. This was
a well-organized illegal group within the party, directed originally against
one man. Responsible workers in the party and state were systematically
selected by the single criterion: Against Trotsky. . . .

. . . From the end of 1923, the same work was carried on in all the
parties of the Communist International; certain leaders were dethroned and
others appointed in their stead solely on the basis of their attitude toward
Trotsky.99

Zinoviev and Kamenev at first supported Stalin in the anti-Trotsky
drive. Soon, however, they became apprehensive about Stalin's growing
power and gradually moved toward opposition. Stalin

. . . took the initiative in breaking up the triumvirate : he refused to con-
sult his partners or to concert with them his moves before the sessions of the
Politbureau. To all intents and purposes he was the indisputable master of
the party, even though Kamenev was still entrenched in the organization of
Moscow, while Zinoviev still led the Bolsheviks in Leningrad.100

The two antagonists held different views of the ideological diver-
gencies between them. Trotsky, leader of the "Lefts," more extreme
in some respects than the rest of the leaders, felt that the ruling group
had lost its revolutionary fervor and developed into mediocre "bureau-
crats"; they hated him, he believed, for his adherence to old ideals, to
world revolution, to equality.

. . . the ideas of the first period of the revolution were imperceptibly
losing their influence in the consciousness of the party stratum that held the
direct power over the country.

M Fischer, op. cit,, p. 14.
" Trotsky, My Life, pp. 500, 501.
"I. Deutscher, Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 297.

100

150

In the country itself, processes were shaping themselves that one may
sum up under the general name of reaction. ...

*******

The visiting at each other's homes, the assiduous attendance of the
ballet, the drinking-parties at which people who were absent were pulled
to pieces, had no attraction for me. The new ruling group felt that I did
not fit in with this way of living, and they did not even try to win me over.
It was for this very reason that many group conversations would stop the
moment I appeared, and those engaged in them would cut them short with
a certain shamefacedness and a slight bitterness toward me.101

In Trotsky's view, the Stalinist group had become narrow-minded
nationalists, concerned only with the fate of their own state. To Trot-
sky, Stalin's course in the Comintern was nonrevolutionary; Stalin's in-
structions suggesting collaboration with the Kuomintang in China in
the middle 1920's were to Trotsky an act of treason; Stalin's scheme for
building socialism in Russia was, to Trotsky, a ridiculous effort to erect
"socialism in one country" ; the pace of "industrialization" under Stalin
was too slow; Stalin's rule in the party was contrary to the principles of
inner-party democracy.

... He blamed Stalin for the "absolutist bureaucracy" in power in
Russia, for the development of an "unbridled oligarchy." He protested
against the privileges enjoyed by the "higher-ups" and Stakhanovites.
He perceived in the social structure of Soviet Russia a "monstrous per-
version of the principles of the November revolution.102

Stalin's counterattack against Trotsky's vigorous criticism was like-
wise strong. Stalin adhered, of course, to the program of the world
revolution.

... To overthrow the bourgeoisie the efforts of one country are suffi-
cient,* this is proved by the history of our revolution. For the final victory
of Socialism, for the organization of Socialist production, the efforts of
one country, particularly of a peasant country like Russia, are insufficient;
for that, the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are
required.103

The theory of "socialism in one country," Stalin maintained, ema-
nated from Marx and Lenin, and Soviet Russia had no alternative but
to follow this road. The kind of "party democracy" that Trotsky ad-
vocated was contrary to the decisions of the party congresses. Trotsky,
the army leader, was a potential "Bonaparte." Trotsky had

101 Trotsky, My Life, pp. 502, 504.

1M David J. Dallin, The Changing World of Soviet Russia (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1956), p. 213.

1W Stalin, "The Foundations of Leninism," Problems of Leninism (Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1940), p. 153.

151

... set himself up in opposition to the C.C. [Central Committee] and
imagines himself to be a superman standing above the C.C, above its laws,
above its decisions. . . „104

In his fight against Trotsky, Stalin joined with a group of Politburo
members who constituted the emerging "right opposition," a faction
which insisted on concessions to private peasant economy; 105 the group
consisted of Nikolai Bukharin, Mikhail Tomski, and Aleksei Rykov.
Stalin's highhanded methods, however, alienated his former partners,
Zinoviev and Kamenev. Despite interdictions, organized factions con-
tinued to exist. Inner-party "discussions" and excited meetings took
place; polemics were aired in newspapers and pamphlets. The fight
reached a climax in 1926-27.

In January 1925, Trotsky was removed from his post as People's Com-
missar for War. In October 1926 he was expelled from the Politburo,
at the same time that Zinoviev was removed from the presidency of
the Communist International.

At the party's Fourteenth Congress in December 1925 :

. . . The resolution to approve Stalin's report on behalf of the Central
Committee [was] carried by an overwhelming majority of 559 to 65. The
Stalinist apparatus demonstrated itself in complete control of the pro-
ceedings.

***** * *

By the beginning of 1926, the Stalinist machine was so solidly entrenched
in all the key positions in the Party apparatus as to be virtually impervious
to attack. . . . The opposition could muster a brilliant coterie of generals,
but they were generals whose forces were scattered, disorganized, and im-
provised, and they confronted an enemy who securely controlled both the
local organizations and leading organs of the Party.106

Two former adversaries, the Trotsky group and the Zinoviev-Kamenev
faction, joined forces in 1926 to oppose Stalin's leadership. Despite
its sporadic vigorous attacks on the "apparatus," however, it did not gain
force. The political end of this opposition came in November 1927.

. . . On 7 November 1927, during the official celebration of the tenth
anniversary of the October revolution, Trotsky and Zinoviev led their fol-
lowers in separate processions through the streets of Moscow and Leningrad.
Though the processions were of peaceful character and the banners and
slogans carried by the demonstrators were directed against the ruling group
only by implication, the incident brought the struggle to a head. Trotsky

^Stalin, "Report on Immediate Tasks in Party Affairs," Delivered January 17,
1924 at the Thirteenth Conference of the RCP (B), Works, vol. VI (1953), p. 14.

105 For further discussion of the program and activities of the "right opposition,"
see pp. 152-155.

'Tainsod, op. cit., pp. 164, 165.

152

and Zinoviev were immediately expelled from the party. . . . On 18
December the congress expelled seventy-five leading members of the oppo-
sition, in addition to many others already expelled or imprisoned.

A day later the opposition split. Its Trotskyist section refused to yield
to the demands of the congress. Trotsky was deported to Alma Ata, Rakov-
sky to Astrakhan. Zinoviev, Kamenev, and their followers, however, issued
a statement in which they renounced their views. The opposition was de-
feated by this defection no less than by Stalin's reprisals.1"

Trotsky stayed in Turkestan until February 1929, when he was exiled
abroad. He lived successively in Turkey, France, Norway, and Mexico.
He was assassinated in Mexico by an agent of the Soviet secret police
in August 1940.

8. The End of Opposition; Stalin as Autocrat

No sooner had the "Leftist" groups (Trotsky's and Zinoviev's) been
suppressed and their leaders exiled than a new rift occurred in the ap-
parently solid majority of the party's leadership. A fight developed
between the "Rights" (Bukharin, Rykov, Tomski) and Stalin's faction.
Within a comparatively short time — less than 2 years — the "Rights"
were defeated, dispersed, and removed from leadership.

The essence of the "Rightist" program consisted in demands for con-
tinuation of the NEP, further concessions to the peasantry, no com-
pulsory collectivization, and consequently, a slower pace of industrial-
ization. The program was opposed to "liquidation of the kulaks" 108
except on a gradual and voluntary basis; "enrich yourselves" was a
slogan of Bukharin's addressed to the individual farmers. The "Rights"
protested the terroristic acts of the government against the peasantry.
They maintained that "the state," as embodied, in the first place, in the
police and army, must "wither away" (in accordance with the teachings
of the founders of the Communist movement) and a gradual liberaliza-
tion of the political system ensue. Some members of the "Rightist"
group advocated the admission of a second political party to activity.

Stalin, on the other hand, was for rapid industrialization and collec-
tivization of farming, goals which could be attained only by application
of tremendous pressure; terrorism was an inevitable part of this policy.
Despite his hatred of Trotskyism, Stalin maintained that "Right deviation
[is] the chief danger in the Party at the present time." 109 Stalin de-
nounced the right faction as pursuing a "liberal bourgeois policy."

In the fight between the factions, Stalin proved to be far shrewder,
more ruthless, and the better master of intrigue; his opponents lacked

107 Dcutschcr, op. cit., p. 31 1.

10* For further discussion of the drive against the so-called "kulalcs," see ch. VI, p.
159.

10* Stalin, "Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of
the C.P.S.U. (B.)" (June 27, 1930), Works, vol. XII (1955), p. 364.

153

the stamina for the life-and-death struggle with their formidable adver-
sary. Personal relations within the Politburo were disrupted; tension
mounted. In their despair, the "Rights" tried to make contact with the
recently removed "Leftist" group of Kamenev and Zinoviev, which in
itself was a crime in the eyes of the Stalinists.

On July 1 1, 1928, Bukharin and Kamenev had a secret interview arranged
by Sokolnikov. . . .

*******

. . . [Bukharin] gave the impression of being "at bay"; his lips "trembled
with emotion"; he was terrified of carrying on him anything "in writing."
Why? "Do not let anyone know of our meeting. Do not telephone; it is
overheard. The GPU is following and watching you also." n0

In his conversation with Kamenev, Bukharin described the essence
of Stalin's program and its shortcomings. Stalin, Bukharin said, pro-
ceeded on the following theory:

. . . "Capitalism has developed through its colonies, through loans, and
by exploiting the workers. We have no colonies and no loans, so our basis
must be tribute paid by the peasants.". . . According to Stalin, [Bukharin
said] "the more socialism grows, the stronger will grow the resistance"
(which Bukharin describes as "idiotic illiteracy") and as a result "a firm
leadership is necessary." . . . "This [Bukharin declared] results in a police

regime."

*******

. . . [Bukharin charged that] "He [Stalin] is eaten up with the vain desire
to become a well known theoretician. He feels that it is the only thing he
lacks."

. . . Stalin knows only vengeance . . . the dagger in the back. We must
remember his theory of sweet revenge." (One summer night in 1923, open-
ing his heart to Dzerzhinsky and Kamenev, Stalin is supposed to have said,
"To choose one's victim, to prepare one's plans minutely, to slake an implaca-
ble vengeance and then to go to bed. . . . There is nothing sweeter in the
world.")111

To inform Zinoviev of his conversation with Bukharin, Kamenev
made a written record of it, a copy of which fell into Stalin's hands.
This aggravated the situation in the extreme, and the fate of the "Rights"
was sealed.

Events now unwound toward a familiar denouement. In a speech before
a joint session of the Politburo and the presidium of the Central Control
Commission at the end of January 1929, Stalin announced the "discovery"
of a factional right-wing group led by Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov.
Bukharin, he pointed out, had engaged in .negotiations with Kamenev to
establish a bloc with the former Left Opposition. Bukharin's article, "Notes
of an Economist," was a veiled attack on the Politburo line. Stalin warned

110 Boris Souvarine, Stalin (New York: Alliance Book Corporation, Longmans,
Green & Co., 1939), pp. 482, 483.
m/H</.,pp.483,485.

154

that factionalism would not be tolerated. At the April plenum of the
Central Committee and the Control Commission, Stalin launched a full-
scale offensive against Bukharin and his colleagues. . . .

* # * * * * *

Stalin then pronounced the verdict of the plenum : to condemn the views
of Bukharin and his group and to remove Bukharin and Tomsky from their
official posts with a warning that they would be expelled from the Politburo
in the event of any future insubordination. Measures would also be taken,
Stalin promised, to prevent any member or candidate member of the Polit-
buro or any Party journals from giving expression to any views departing
from the Party line. On April 23, 1929, Bukharin was removed from the
leadership of the Comintern. On June 2, Tomsky lost his position as head
of the trade unions. On November 1 7, the plenum of the Central Commit-
tee approved the expulsion of Bukharin from the Politburo. . . .

S(I yp Sj! IJC 3f! JjC 1(S

... At the Sixteenth Party Congress (June 26 to July 13, 1930),
Tomsky was dropped from the Politburo. Toward the end of December,
Rykov was also removed from that body, as well as from his position as
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. The rout of the Right
Opposition was complete.112

Like the other anti-Stalinist factions after their defeat, the "Rights" not
only capitulated but publicly acknowledged that Stalin was right and
they were wrong. They promised, and appealed to their followers all
over the country, "to fight against all deviations including the Right devi-
ation." Their unworthy manner of submission did not soften the ire of
the new autocrat of Russia, nor did it save their lives.113 This self-
humiliation of the anti-Stalinist groups was one of the most tragic phases
of the Soviet period in Russian history.

Following the rout of the oppositions, many of the dissident and now
repentant Communists previously exiled to Siberia or Central Asia were
permitted to return and take jobs in governmental agencies. They did
not, however, try to become politically active again.

. . . For all the horror with which his [Stalin's] methods filled them, they
felt that they were all, Stalinists and anti-Stalinists, in the same boat. Self-
debasement was the ransom they paid to its captain. Their recantations
were therefore neither wholly sincere nor wholly insincere. On returning
from the places of their exile they cultivated their old political friendships
and contacts, but carefully refrained from any political action against
Stalin. Almost till the middle of the thirties nearly all of them kept in
touch with the members of the new Politbureau. Some of the penitents,
Bukharin, Rykov, Piatakov, Radek, and others, were either Stalin's per-
sonal advisers or members of the Government. If they had wanted to

^Fainsod, op. cit., pp. 146, 147.
m See Chap. VII, sec. 2.

155

assassinate either Stalin or his close associates they had innumerable oppor-
tunities to do so.114

The self-degradation was crowned by the attitude of the defeated
leaders at the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist party, which was
held in January 1934. The formerly famous leaders — Zinoviev, Kamc-
nev, Bukharin, Rykov — one after another took the floor to praise the wis-
dom of the party's leadership and condemn their own past. Stalin told
the congress:

The present congress is taking place under the flag of the complete vic-
tory of Leninism, under the flag of the liquidation of the remnants of the

anti-Leninist groups. . . .

*******

The majority of the adherents to these anti-revolutionary groups had
to admit that the line of the Party was correct and they have capitulated
to the Party.

At the Fifteenth Party Congress it was still necessary to prove that the
Party line was correct and to wage a struggle against certain anti-Leninist
groups; and at the Sixteenth Party Congress we had to deal the final blow
to the last adherents of these groups. At this congress, however, there is
nothing to prove and, it seems, no one to fight. Everyone sees that the
line of the Party has triumphed.115

Having vanquished all his opponents, Stalin held in his hands, not
only the reins of the state machinery, but of the economy of the nation
as well. As a totalitarian dictator he wielded greater power than did
his contemporaries Hitler and Mussolini. In the early 1930's, he
reached the summit of his power. Few Russian autocrats before him
had been as independent in their decisions and as ruthless in their actions.

Amoral, vengeful, suspicious, contemptuous of human life, conceited
and egotistical, Stalin triumphed mainly because in his personal traits
of character he embodied the main elements of communism — belliger-
ency, lack of humaneness, a taste for oppressing, and belief in a police
state. None of his coleaders embodied in their personalities these fea-
tures of communism as perfectly as did Stalin.

After his victory over the oppositions, Stalin no longer cared to ob-
serve party statut :s or listen to the opinions of the party's so-called lead-
ing bodies.

While he still reckoned with the opinion of the collective before the
Seventeenth Congress, after the complete political liquidation of the Trotsky-
ites, Zinovievites and Bukharinites, when as a result of that fight and social-
ist victories the party achieved unity, Stalin ceased to an ever greater degree

mDeutscher, op. cit.,p. 351.

1U Stalin, "Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central
Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.)" (January 26, 1934), Works, vol. XIII (1955), pp.
353, 354.

156

to consider the members of the party's Central Committee and even the
members of the Political Bureau. Stalin thought that now he could decide
all things alone and all he needed were people to fill the stage; he treated
all others in such a way that they could only listen to and praise him.116

In violation of the statutes, Stalin failed to convene a party congress
for 5 years (1934-39), and then again for 13 years (1939-52). The
Central Committee was often in the dark about important decisions of
the General Secretary.

Feeling the silent discontent around him, however, and aware of the
greater intellectual stature of some of the Communist leaders, Stalin
became a

. . . very distrustful man, morbidly suspicious. . . . He could look at
a man and say : "Why are your eyes so shifty today? . . . and why do you
avoid looking directly into my eyes?"

The sickly suspicion created in him a general distrust even toward eminent
party workers whom he had known for years. Everywhere and in every-
thing he saw "enemies/5 "two-facers" and "spies."

Possessing unlimited power, he indulged in great willfulness and choked
a person morally and physically.117

A servile attitude toward Stalin became obligatory and universal.
Stalin had to be acknowledged as the genius in politics, sociology,
Marxism, even military affairs, science and linguistics. He was dei-
fied; he could commit no error. Thus, his repulsive personal traits
became a fateful source of huge political blunders and a scourge for the
people. Stalin's heirs, in order to minimize and excuse their own des-
picable role in the history of the Stalin era, later gave to this obligatory
kow-towing the mild name of "cult of personality."

Stalin's closest collaborators of the time — Nikita Khrushchev,
Anastas Mikoyan, Nikolai Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar
Kaganovich and others — helped to create this image of a demi-god
in the Kremlin.

Khrushchev sometimes tried to outdo all others.

Long live the greatest genius of humanity, our teacher and leader, vic-
toriously guiding us toward Communism, our beloved Stalin.118

119 Nikita S. Khrushchev, "Secret Report," Delivered February 24, 25, 1956 at the
Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, printed in Wolfe,
op. cit.,-pv- 126, 128.

ivlbid.,p. 158.

111 Khrushchev, Speech Delivered March 13, 1939 at the Eighteenth Congress of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, XVIII S"ezd Vsesoyuznoi Kommu-
nisticheskoi Partii {b) 10-21 Marta 1939, Stenograficheskii Otchet (Eighteenth Con-
gress of the All-Union Communist Party, March 10-21, 1939, Stenographic Report)
(Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing
House for Political Literature), 1939), p. 174.

157

Ten years later Khrushchev said :

Comrade Stalin, the genius, the leader and teacher of our party, has de-
fended and developed Lenin's theory of victory of socialism in one coun-
try. . . .

The greatest service rendered by Comrade Stalin is that in his relentless
struggle against the enemies of the people, — the mensheviks, socialist-revolu-
tionaries, trotskyites, zinovievites, bukharinites, bourgeois nationalists he de-
fended the purity of Lenin's teachings and the iron bound unity in the
ranks of our party.119

Anastas Mikoyan said :

Like Lenin Comrade Stalin is a leader of a higher type. He is a moun-
tain eagle, without fear in the fight, who boldly leads the bolshevik party
on unexplored roads toward the total victory of Communism.120

In the same vein he spoke later, a few months before Stalin's end.
Stalin has

. . . educated and organized us, he led us through all obstacles and ordeals
and he will safely lead us to the full triumph of Communism. Praise to the
genius Stalin, the great architect of Communism.121

UB Khrushchev, in Bolshevik, Moscow, No. 24, December 1949, p. 80.

130 Anastas Mikoyan, Speech Delivered March 13, 1939 at the Eighteenth Congress
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, XVIII S"ezd Vsesoyuznoi Kommu-
nisticheskoi Partii . . . , p. 221.

121 Mikoyan, Speech Delivered at the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, Pravda, October 12, 1952, p. 5.

68491 O 61 -vol. II— II

Chapter VI. The New Economic Upheaval

1. Collectivization of Farming

Up to 1929 the attitude of the Soviet government toward private
peasant economy was that of acquiescence and toleration coupled with
the hope of its eventual transformation into the general Soviet type of
state economy. But a country in which private peasant economy pre-
dominates cannot, according to Communist theory, be termed socialist;
moreover, restoration of industrial capitalism remains a constant danger
under such conditions.

... As long as we live in a small-peasant country, there is a surer eco-
nomic basis for capitalism in Russia than for communism . . . we have
not torn up the roots of capitalism and have not undermined the founda-
tion, the basis of the internal enemy. The latter depends on small-scale
production, and there is only one way of undermining it, namely, to place
the economy of the country, including agriculture, on a new technical basis,
the technical basis of modern large-scale production.1

Lenin realized that abolition of a class of peasants, numbering millions,
was an operation much more difficult than the destruction of a relatively
small class of landlords and capitalists; a second revolution was needed
if the task was to be accomplished.

Socialism means the abolition of classes.

In order to abolish classes one must, firstly, overthrow the landlords and
capitalists. That part of our task has been accomplished, but it is only a
part, and moreover, not the most difficult part. In order to abolish classes
one must, secondly, abolish the difference between workingman and peasant,
one must make them all workers. This cannot be done all at once. This
task is incomparably more difficult and will of necessity be a protracted one.
This task cannot be accomplished by overthrowing a class. It can be solved
only by the organizational reconstruction of the whole social economy, by a
transition from individual, disunited, petty commodity production to a
large-scale social enterprise.2

1 V. I. Lenin, "The Work of the Council of People's Commissars," Report Delivered
December 22, 1920 at the Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Selected Works
(New York: International Publishers, 1943), vol. VIII, p. 276.

3 Lenin, "Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"
(October 30, 1919), Selected Works,\o\. VIII, p. 8.

(158)

159

Despite the compulsion and terror applied against the peasantry (be-
fore the introduction of the NEP), Lenin still envisaged the transforma-
tion of agriculture as a protracted operation :

. . . This transition must of necessity be extremely protracted. This
transition may only be delayed and complicated by hasty and incautious
administrative legislation. The transition can be accelerated only by afford-
ing such assistance to the peasant as will enable him to improve his whole
technique of agriculture immeasurably, to reform it radically.3

The NEP, introduced in 1921, had signified a truce in the Soviet war
on the peasantry. Until 1928-29, Stalin, allied with the "rightist" fac-
tion, had adhered to the half-hearted toleration of individual farming,
admitting that "so long as this danger [individual farming] exists there
can be no serious talk of the victory of Socialist construction in our
country." 4

The year 1929 was the year of the great upheaval. The Communist
urge toward a rapid establishment of socialism in Russia, and Stalin's
personal ambition to become the architect of the first socialist system
in the world, prompted the government to embark upon a program of
universal collectivization of farming. The program was to be pushed
by all possible means, including police action and terror, and was com-
pleted by 1932.

The drive was presented as an offensive against the "kulaks" — the
kulaks having originally been wealthy peasants who exploited their
hired labor. A campaign was launched to "liquidate the kulaks as a
class" — the kulaks being the last of the capitalist groups existing in
Russia. Collectivization was officially depicted as a voluntary move-
ment of a great majority of the peasantry toward collective farming,
in which the peasants would have to fight resistance on the part of
the kulaks. Actually the entire peasant population was opposed to
collectivization. All active opponents of the program were considered
"kulaks" (or "subservient to kulaks") and were severely repressed.

... we have passed from the policy of restricting the exploiting tenden-
cies of the kulaks to the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class. It
means that we have carried out, and are continuing to carry out, one of
the decisive turns in our whole policy. . . .

* ***** *

. . . To launch an offensive against the kulaks means that we must
smash the kulaks, eliminate them as a class. . . . To launch ah offensive

* Ibid., pp. 8, 9.

4 J. V. Stalin, "Grain Procurements and the Prospects for the Development of
Agriculture" (January 1928), Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1952-55), vol. XI (1954), p. 8.

160

against the kulaks means that we must prepare for it and then strike at the
kulaks, strike so hard as to prevent them from rising to their feet again.5
. . . On February 1, 1930, the Central Executive Committee [of the Con-
gress of Soviets] and the Council of People's Commissars gave the regional
and provincial executive committees the right to apply "all necessary meas-
sures to fight the kulaks, including confiscation of the entire property of the
kulaks and their eviction from the regions and provinces," and to transfer
the confiscated property to the "indivisible funds" of the kolkhozes [collec-
tive farms] as a contribution by the poor peasants and farm-laborers joining
the kolkhozes.6

The kulaks were to be divided into three groups:

. . . The first and most dangerous group, described as "the counter-
revolutionary kulak aktiv," was to be arrested by the OGPU. . . . The
second category consisted of "certain (separate) 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 re-
maining kulaks were to be removed from areas scheduled for "total col-
lectivization," but were not to be deported from the okrug [administrative
units]. For such kulaks the raion [county] executive committees were to
provide special land parcels carved out of "eroded" areas, "swamp-lands
in woods," and other soil "in need of improvement."

Families of Group I and II kulaks were to be deported from the okrug on
the approval of the okrug troika [the highest local police authority]. Prop-
erty of Group I households was to be confiscated immediately and handed
over to neighboring collective farms either in existence or in process of
organization.7

In November 1929 the Central Committee of the Communist Party
decided to dispatch 25,000 reliable workers to carry out the collectiviza-
tion; actually, 60,000 were sent, of whom about 79 percent were mem-
bers of the Communist party or the Communist Youth League [Kom-
somol].8 They were to do their job in cooperation with and with the
assistance of the local police.

Many of these workers did not know the peasant economy and none of
them knew the economic structure of a big agricultural enterprise. They

* Stalin, "Concerning Questions of Agrarian Policy In the U.S.S.R.," Speech De-
livered December 27, 1929 at a Conference of Marxist Students of Agrarian Ques-
tions, W orks, vol. XII (1955), pp. 173, 174.

' S. N. Prokopovich, Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR (National Economy of the USSR)
(New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1952), vol. I, p. 189.

1 Merle Fainsod, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1958), pp. 242, 243. These orders which, so far as they concerned the Smo-
lensk Oblast have been revealed in some detail, obviously following the general
instructions of Stalin's government.

• Bohhaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (Large Soviet Encyclopedia) (2nd ed.; Mos-
cow: Gosudarstvennoe Nauchnoe Izdatelstvo "Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya"
(State Scientific Publishing House "The Large Soviet Encyclopedia")), vol. XIII
(1952), p. 407.

161

were in no way prepared for the work that was entrusted to them by the
communist party. Some of them described openly in their statements
[reports] made to the party organs the absurd situation in which they found
themselves.9

Actually the kulaks included not only "exploiters of labor" but often
the intelligent, industrious, and thinking elements of the peasantry. One
of Stalin's purposes in pursuing the campaign for collectivization was to
eliminate political opposition in the village.

To break any future resistance, it was important to eliminate those peasants
who were about to lose most and were also most fit for leadership. An ad-
ditional consideration in favor of liquidating these groups was the desire
to use their property as a bait for the poorer peasants. . . .

In theory, only the kulaki and well-to-do were subject to liquidation as a
class, but in practice — even in legislative practice — everyone unwilling to
join was declared a kulak. . . .

* * * « * * *

. . . The Vlth Congress of the Soviets in March 1931, having declared
that "by that policy [collectivization] we have conquered hunger," continued:
"The poor and average individual peasant who helps the kulak to combat
the kolkhoz undermines the collectivization movement ... he is in fact
an ally of the kulak," and finally, "The poor and average peasant has only
oneway . . . joining the kolkhozy."10

This was a violent, bloody social revolution; though it did not affect
the nation's political system, the upheaval it caused in social conditions
was more profound than the upheaval of 1917.

Within a short time rural Russia became pandemonium. The over-
whelming majority of the peasantry confronted the Government with des-
perate opposition. Collectivization degenerated into a military operation,
a cruel civil war. Rebellious villages were surrounded by machine-guns and
forced to surrender. Masses of kulaks were deported to remote unpopulated
lands in Siberia. Their houses, barns, and farm implements were turned
over to the collective farms — Stalin himself put the value of their property
so transferred at over 400 million roubles. The bulk of the peasants decided
to bring in as little as possible of their property to the collective farms which
they imagined to be state-owned factories, in which they themselves would
become mere factory hands.11

An exact balance sheet of the repressions resorted to during the drive
has never been published. Thousands were shot, hundreds of thousands
arrested, and the "kulaks" exiled wholesale to the far north and east.

... As a direct consequence of this destruction, half the total head of
livestock was lost within a space of four years; probably not less than five

• Prokopovich, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 187, 188.

"Naum Jasny, The Socialized Agriculture of the USSR (Stanford: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1949), pp. 307-309.

u I. Deutscher, Stalin (.London: Oxford University Press, 1949), pp. 324, 325.

162

million peasants, including families, were deported to Siberia and the Far
North, and of these it is estimated that 25 per cent perished. Also, very
largely as a result of neglect of the land, growth of weeds, late sowing, etc.,
comparatively dry summers in 1931 and 1932 resulted in such poor harvests
that millions, variously estimated at four to ten, of persons died of direct
starvation or diseases induced by starvation.12

. . . They [the authorities] treat a brutal murderer, as a rule, with more
consideration than a small farmer who didn't want to turn his domestic
animals and house and garden into a common pool with his neighbors to
make a collective farm.13

Peasant households, which had increased from 24.5 million in mid- 1928
to 25.8 million in mid-1929, numbered only 20.1 million in mid-1935. The
kulaki must have made up a considerable proportion of the vanished house-
holds.14

Laptev, a highly official writer, said that "about 30 million hectares of
land [equivalent to about 74 million acres], taken from the liquidated kulaki
and, according to approximate computations, means of production valued at
about one billion rubles, expropriated from the kulaki, became the property
of the kolkhozy." 15

In addition to private land, now combined into big kolkhoz fields,
horses and cattle, too, were to be collectivized. (Eventually, each mem-
ber of the collective was permitted one cow and a tiny plot of land.)
The reaction of the peasants, not anticipated by the authorities, was
logical : They slaughtered their cattle rather than give it to the anony-
mous Communist collective. In a report made in January 1934, Stalin
admitted these facts.

The following table shows the number of head of cattle, sheep, goats,
and pigs in Russia for each year from 1 929 to 1 933 :

[In millions]

Year

Large
cattle

Sheep and
goats

Pigs

1929

68. 1

52.5
47.9
40.7
38.6

147.2

108.8

77.7

52.1

50.6

20.9

1930

13.6

1931

14.4

1932

11.6

1933

12.2

12 Leonard E. Hubbard, The Economics of Soviet Agriculture (London: Macmillan
& Co., Ltd., 1939), p. 117.

u John D. Littlepage and Demaree Bess, In Search of Soviet Gold (New York: Har-
court, Brace & Co., 1938), p. 135.

" Jasny, op. cit., p. 311.

"Ibid., p. 312.

163

The number of horses (the main draft power in Russian agriculture of
the time) fell from 34 million in 1929 to 16.6 million in 1933.16

. . . While most of the peasants joining the kolkhozy did not have
horses, the horses taken from the kulaki were dying from lack of food and
care. Since there were only a few tractors, the total supply of draft power
was greatly inadequate . . . .17

The peasants had no means of effective resistance, and quantitatively
the collectivization was a complete success. The following table shows
the fate of some 25 million individual peasant farms which existed in the
Soviet Union before the collectivization campaign which began in 1928:

[In Thousands]

Number of indi-
vidual farms
merged into
collectives

Number of farms

remaining

independent

1928

416.7
14,918.7
18. 448. 4
18, 847. 6

24, 573. 0

1932

9, 428. 0

1936

1, 936. 6

1938

is 1, 309. 9

The establishment of the kolkhoz system in the course of three or four
years and the transformation of Russian peasants into members of collec-
tives constituted the most radical upheaval known in history. . . . There
were, however, instances of resistance to an extent and in forms of which
neither Russia nor the outside world had any adequate conception. The
Soviet press, of course, did not report them, and the cities heard only frag-
mentary reports of riots, of their suppression, of mass exile. As a matter of
fact, there were a great many uprisings embracing whole regions, revolts,
ruthlessly suppressed by GPU troops. Tanks were let loose upon the peas-
ants, whole villages burned to the ground and even bombed by government
planes. The execution of captured rebels was resorted to with the object
of intimidating and terrorizing the population, and was therefore of a mass
character. . . . The instructions from Moscow demanded the complete
"liquidation of the kulaks as a class." These, with their families, numbered,
in 1928, according to official statistics, 5,859,000 human beings. Some
day we may learn how many of them were exiled. .

18 Stalin, "Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central
Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.)" (January 26, 1934), Works, vol. XIII (1955), p.
328.

17 Jasny, op. cit., p. 541.

18 Prokopovich, op. cit., p. 204.

M David J. Dallin, The Changing World of Soviet Russia (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1956), p. 109.

164

Some 250,000 collectives emerged ~° to replace about 25 million in-
dividual farms. The new situation made it easier for the state and the
Communist party to control agriculture a.nd husbandry, although Com-
munist cells existed in only a minority of the kolkhozes. The MTS's
(machine-tractor stations established by the state in the various districts
to serve the collective farms) and the "political departments" of the
MTS's (a party apparatus) became the masters and acted as collectors
of various levies; they often served also as the instrument for in-
fluencing and directing the kolkhoz economy in accordance with the
overall economic plans.

The kolkhoz system served the state as a pump for the extraction of
food and raw materials for the needs of the cities, the army, and indus-
try. The tiny plots of land and the single cow still permitted to be owned
individually therefore acquired great significance for the kolkhoz
peasants.

With the kolkhoz system established, Stalin proclaimed the Soviet
Union a socialist state. The new constitution (the so-called Stalin
Constitution) of 1936 provided, in articles 4 and 5 :

ARTICLE 4.

The economic foundation of the U.S.S.R. is the socialist system of econ-
omy and the socialist ownership of the instruments and means of produc-
tion, firmly established as a result of the liquidation of the capitalist system
of economy, the abolition of private < wnership of the instruments and
means of production, and the elimination of the exploitation of man by
man.

ARTICLE 5.

Socialist property in the U.S.S.R. exists either in the form of state prop-
erty (belonging to the whole people) or in the form of cooperative and
collective-farm property (property of collective farms, property of coopera-
tive societies).21

2. The Famine of 1933

A great famine, affecting the whole of Russia's south, was the inevitable
consequence of the enforced collectivization of peasant farms and the
"liquidation of the kulaks." Sown areas had diminished substantially.
Official statistics, which admitted a decrease of only 5 percent, were
obviously slanted.22 While the government continued to extract huge
quantities of food for the cities and the army, cattle were being
slaughtered en masse.

* No exact statistics were published at the time.

" Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, As
Amended by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on February 25, 1947 on the recom-
mendation of the Drafting Commission (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 1947), pp. 12, 13.

"William Henry Chamberlin, Russia's Iron Age (Boston: Little, Brown and Co.,
1934), p. 75.

165

. . . When supplies are short, livestock are sacrificed before men, although
the peasants are very reluctant to part with their last cow and especially their
last horse. Although the livestock herds had been considerably reduced
before the summer of 1931, an additional 15 percent of the cattle, 33 percent
of the sheep, 19 percent of the hogs, and one-fourth of the horses disappeared
during the crop year 1931-32. Most of the emergency slaughter occurred
before the beginning of 1932, thus releasing more grain for food use in 1932.23

Out of its greatly enlarged procurements the government saw fit to export
considerably more grain in 1932 than in 1927-28. It also used more grain
in distilling.24

... In 1932, climatic conditions were better; but the peasants, discour-
aged and in many cases already suffering from undernourishment, showed
little interest in reaping the crops which, as they felt, would be taken away
from them anyway. The stage was set for a climatic catastrophe.25

Russia still remembered the famine of 1921-22; 26 the new famine was
as severe, if not more so.

The first phase of the famine, which embraces more particularly the first
seven months of 1933, was undoubtedly a human tragedy of far greater
magnitude even than the famine of the years 192 1-22. 2T

. . . Under such slogans as the pursuit of "saboteurs," "counterrevolu-
tionists," "enemies of the State" and so on, stronger pressure was exercised
to extract from the peasants the grain they still possessed.28

There was, however, a substantial difference between the course taken
by the government in the famine of 1921-22 and that taken in 1933.
First, viewing the catastrophe as a component part of the collectivization,
Stalin correctly expected it to break the remaining resistance on the part
of the peasantry; in a way, the famine served as an instrument of his
policies. In its war on the kulaks,

. . . The government had in reserve and was prepared to employ the last
and sharpest weapon in the armory of class warfare: organized famine.
*******

Two noteworthy features of the famine were that far more men died than
women and far more edinolichniki (individual peasants) than members of
collective farms. If in many districts 10 percent of the collective farmers
died, the percentage of mortality among the individual peasants was some-
times as high as 25. Of course not all who died passed through the typical
stages of death from outright hunger, abnormal swelling under the eyes and
of the stomach, followed in the last stages by swollen legs and cracking

* Jasny, op. cit., p. 555.

* Ibid., p. 556.

m Chamberlin, op. cit., p. 82.
"Seepage 130.

■ Ewald Ammende, Human Life in Russia (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.,
1936), p. 54.
"Ibid., p. 56.

166

bones. The majority died of slight colds which they could not withstand in
their weakened condition; of typhus, the familiar accompaniment of fam-
ine; of "exhaustion," to use the familiar euphemistic word in the death
reports.29

The second deviation from the pattern of 1922 was the nonrecourse
to relief from abroad for the starving population. We have seen how
much food was sent from abroad in 1922; in 1933, when antagonism
toward Germany and Japan had greatly increased Western sympathy
toward Russia, help to an even greater degree would have been possible,
and millions of lives could have been saved. But a request by Stalin for
food would have destroyed his boastful claim of miraculous achievements
in the socialized economy. He preferred to sacrifice millions of lives
rather than Soviet prestige.

This was also the reason why the Soviet press, in contrast to its at-
titude in 1922, did not mention the famine, and why foreign corre-
spondents were not permitted to visit the starving provinces.

. . . Unfortunately the subject of the disaster of 1932-33 was and still is
taboo in the Soviet Union. Even the population statistics of those years
were withheld or distorted to conceal the heavy loss of life. Foreign cor-
respondents were strictly forbidden to visit hunger-stricken areas. In the
absence of reasonably dependable surveys, one is forced to rely on testimony
of later visitors and on inexact computations from very incomplete popula-
tion data. It would appear on the basis of that evidence that in the years
centered around 1932-33 at least 5.5 million people died in excess of
normal mortality. A large part of the excess deaths occurred in the
rural areas in the disastrous winter of 1932-33.30

According to Otto Schiller, . . . who was Germany's agricultural attache
in Russia for many years and also visited several starvation areas, "The
whole area south of the forest-steppe zone of European Russia, stretching
to the autonomous republics, parts of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, was
involved in the starvation." Schiller said, furthermore, "The figure of
5 to 10 million victim deaths mentioned by another writer is unlikely to
be excessive." 31

Mikhail Kalinin, the president of the Soviet Union, was the only
one to even hint, publicly, that famine conditions existed, but he did
so in a somewhat peculiar way :

"The collective farmers this year have passed through a good school.
For some this school was quite ruthless." In this cryptic understatement
President Kalinin summed up the situation in Ukraina and the North
Caucasus, from the Soviet standpoint. The unnumbered new graves in the
richest Soviet agricultural regions mark the passing of those who did not
survive the ordeal, who were victims of this "ruthless school." M

" Chamberlin, op. cit., pp. 82, 87.

M Jasny, op. cit., p. 553.

" Ibid., note 11.

■ Chamberlin, op. cit., p. 89.

167

The government even continued to export food during the famine
year.

... It would have been possible to save the starving people with the
cereals the government has shipped abroad.33

The famine struck hardest in the richest parts of Russia, in the first
place the Ukraine, and especially the Don areas, where the peasantry
was relatively well-to-do; there the "dekulakization" was carried out
in the most brutal manner.

There is an acute shortage of food in the whole country, but the follow-
ing regions are experiencing dire need :

Regions

Ukraine ,

Northern Caucasus

Lower Volga ,

Middle Volga

General black soil region

Population
[in millions]

Territory
[thousands

of square
kilometers]

An area of 1,507,300 sq. kilometers, with a population of 65.9 mil. is in
the grip of famine. This exceeds in area and population the disaster of
1 920-2 1.34

The famine was so severe that the government's efforts to conceal it
from foreign eyes or minimize it could not succeed. From private let-
ters, unauthorized travelers, and post-factum studies, the main facts
about the catastrophe became known. t

. . . Horrible things are happening, [a former commander of the Red Army
wrote from the Northern Caucasus to a relative in France on May 16, 1933.]
Entire villages are being completely depopulated by famine. One such
is U. Bodies of the dead lie for days in the houses because there is no one
to remove them. They are buried cofrmless in a common grave. In dark
corners of back streets one finds bodies partly devoured by dogs. Dogs and
cats are used for human food. Horse meat is considered a delicacy, and is
sold openly.

Human flesh has also been eaten. There have been cases where mothers
killed their children. These are not tales. There was such a case in Uss.
A woman killed the blind Bissatcha in order to eat him; Mara surely knows

"A. Markoff, Famine in Russia (New York: Committee for the Relief of Famine
in Russia, 1934), p. 6.
* Ibid., p. 6.

168

this man. Starving people grab food and money from one another at the
markets. One has to hold his purchases with both hands. The authori-
ties are inactive. They intervene only to confiscate flour and bread which
is sold illicitly.85

The above-mentioned Dr. Schiller, German agricultural attache in
Moscow, wrote:

. . . Villages have been depopulated. Politically the cossacks have
been exterminated. Cases of cannibalism were frequent. The inhabitants
of Temichbek have fallen in numbers from 15,000 to 7,000. In many places
the population has declined 15 per cent. The villages of Karnennobrod-
skaia, Lagovskaia and Sredne-Egorlytskaia are completely depopulated. In
some villages from 20 to 30 persons die daily.36

Migration from the rural districts to the cities in search of food became
a mass phenomenon. Arriving in the city, however, the hungry and
weakened peasants died in the streets.

In the countryside, where the misery was still greater and often passed
the bounds of imagination, thousands of starving men, women and chil-
dren thronged into the towns in defiance of the authorities, like migrating
peoples. They left their homes to their fate; their one aim was to seek
refuge in the city. Once arrived, the majority collapsed from sheer weak-
ness. . . .a7

... As time went on the number of starving persons lying in the streets
and squares of Kharkov, Kiev, Rostov and other cities increased. Most
of them were peasants who had summoned up the little strength left to them
in order to reach the town. In the streets and the courtyards scenes were
often witnessed which are hardly credible by European standards. While
at first passers-by would take some notice of these appalling pictures of
misery, this soon changed, and it was particularly shocking to see people
carelessly passing the corpses of those who had died of starvation. The
number of corpses was so great that they could only be removed once a
day. Often no distinction was made between the corpses and those not
yet quite dead; all were loaded on the lorries, to be flung indiscriminately
into a common grave.

This burial work was done by convicts from the local prison. From
morning until evening they were busy digging the graves. Fifteen bodies
were usually buried in one grave, and the number of graves is so great that
these famine cemeteries often recall a stretch of sandhills.88

The children suffered the most. Some had lost their parents; others,
brought by their parents into the cities, were left there in the hope they
would arouse pity for the starving.

... It was beyond my comprehension [said an eyewitness]. I would not
at first believe my own eyes. Some of the children dragged themselves to

M As quoted in ibid., p. 3.
*" As quoted in ibid., pp. 5, 6.
" Ammende, op. cit., p. 62.
m J bid., p. 61.

169

their feet for the last time and gathered their remaining forces to look for
something eatable in the streets. But they were so weak that they fell
down and remained lying where they fell. The poor children were the
strongest impression of any journey. At Kharkov I saw a boy wasted to a
skeleton lying in the middle of the street. A second boy was sitting near
a heap of garbage picking egg-shells out of it. They were looking for
eatable remnants of food or fruit. They perished like wild beasts. . . .
When the famine began to haunt the villages parents used to take their
children into the towns, where they left them in the hope that someone
would have pity on them. . . . Their lot was better in the towns than in
the country villages, because child murder in the towns is obviously more
difficult than in the country.39

The famine situation began to improve in 1933.

3. Industrialization and Rearmament

The end of foreign and civil war and the retreat from war communism
since 1921 helped to ease, though slowly, the worst effects of the eco-
nomic catastrophe. Then after a 5-year period of rehabilitation, Soviet
agriculture and industry were approaching the prewar level, and in the
second half of the 1920's a main problem of the regime were the issues
involved in the further development of the Soviet economy.

The Soviet government embarked on a policy of rapid industrializa-
tion of the country; detailed plans for economic growth were elaborated
in the late 1920's, usually for 5-year periods. A 5-year plan con-
tained the projected rise of industrial and agricultural production in
specific figures for every year.

As far as Soviet industry was concerned, two great issues, political
rather than purely economic, had to be resolved. The first was the scope
and pace of industrial development. Poor in capital even before the
revolution, having suffered great destruction since 1914, and with no
prospects of foreign loans, Soviet industrial growth was possible only at
the expense of the standard of living of the people, and in a country
where three-fourths of the population were peasants, industrialization
could proceed only at the expense of the wellbeing of the poverty-stricken
peasantry.

Given the situation in which the Soviet regime found itself in the twenties,
the only important source from which an industrialization fund could be
accumulated was the peasantry. Long-term foreign loans, the historical
instrument of industrial development in backward countries, were not avail-
able. The concessions policy of the Soviet regime met almost complete
frustration. The only remaining alternative was aptly described by V. M.
Smirnov and E. A. Preobrazhensky as "primitive socialist accumulation,"

** As quoted in ibid., p. 63.

170

the diversion of the output of the peasantry and the private sector of the
economy to finance investment in socialized heavy industry.40

While one faction of the ruling party, the Trotskyites, were strongly
in favor of accelerating the pace of industrialization despite the hardship
this would place on the peasantry, the majority of the party's leading
bodies, that is, the Stalin-Bukharin coalition, at first rejected such a pro-
gram as a threat to the stability of the Soviet system. In 1928-29, how-
ever, when Stalin broke with the right opposition (Bukharin, Tomski,
Rykov), and the Trotskyites had already been crushed, he embraced the
latter's industrial program in its most extreme form. The pace of in-
dustrialization was greatly accelerated, and the goal of completing "the
first 5-year plan in 4 years" was proclaimed. The scope of industrial
construction was greatly enlarged.

The burden of industrial expansion was becoming almost insupport-
able and strong resentment developed in the party. Stalin, however,
did not retreat.

It is sometimes asked [he said] whether it is not possible to slow down
the tempo somewhat, to put a check on the movement. No, comrades, it
is not possible! The tempo must not be reduced! On the contrary, we
must increase it as much as is within our powers and possibilities. This is
dictated to us by our obligations to the workers and peasants of the U.S.S.R.
This is dictated to us by our obligations to the working class of the whole
world.

To slacken the tempo would mean falling behind. And those who fall
behind get beaten. But we do not want to be beaten. No, we refuse to
be beaten! One feature of the history of old Russia was the continual
beatings she suffered because of her backwardness. She was beaten by
the Mongol khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She was beaten
by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish and Lithuanian
gentry. She was beaten by the British and French capitalists. She was
beaten by the Japanese barons. All beat her — because of her backward-
ness, because of her military backwardness, cultural backwardness, political
backwardness, industrial backwardness, agricultural backwardness. They
beat her because to do so was profitable and could be done with impunity.41

This digression into past history did not present the facts quite ac-
curately. Although she suffered defeats in some of her numerous wars,
Russia had emerged victorious from the great majority of her armed
conflicts; had this not been so she would not, in the course of a few
centuries, have expanded from a small principality into a world empire.
In his search for an argument in favor of rapid industrialization, Stalin

"Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1953), p. 100.

"Stalin, "The Tasks of Business Executives," Speech Delivered February 4, 1931
at the First All-Union Conference of Leading Personnel of Socialist Industry, Works,
vol. XIII (1955), pp. 40,41.

171

was cleverly appealing to the nation's longing for security. His pro-
gram atic speech continued:

In the past we had no fatherland, nor could we have had one. But now
that we have overthrown capitalism and power is in our hands, in the
hands of the people, we have a fatherland, and we will uphold its inde-
pendence. Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose
its independence? If you do not want this, you must put an end to its
backwardness in the shortest possible time and develop a genuine Bolshevik
tempo in building up its socialist economy. There is no other way. That
is why Lenin said on the eve of the October Revolution: "Either perish,
or overtake and outstrip the advanced capitalist countries."

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We
must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go
under.48

The second political issue of the era of industrialization was the
goal and direction of the industrialization: which industries should
have priority and which could be relegated to second or third place.
If the well-being of the people were the primary objective, then textiles,
the leather industry and housing should have priority; but if war in-
dustries and the prerequisites for rearmament were to be pushed, then
so-called heavy industry must have priority. In a fight with the "right
opposition," Stalin argued for the latter course.

Some comrades think that industrialisation implies the development of
any kind of industry. . . . Not every kind of industrial development is
industrialisation. The centre of industrialisation, the basis for it, is the
development of heavy industry (fuel, metal, etc.), the development, in the
last analysis, of the production of the means of production, the development
of our own machine-building industry. Industrialisation has the task not
only of increasing the share of manufacturing industry in our national
economy as a whole; it has also the task, within the development, of ensuring
economic independence for our country, surrounded as it is by capitalist
states, of safeguarding it from being converted into an appendage of
world capitalism.**

Stalin developed the theory of two types of industrialization. There
exist, he said, a "capitalist" and a "Socialist" industrialization. To
Stalin, every case of industrialization without natural or artificial expan-
sion of heavy industry was a capitalist type of industrialization.

Take India. India, as everyone knows, is a colony. Has India an
industry? It undoubtedly has. Is it developing? Yes, it is. But the kind
of industry developing there is not one which produces instruments and
means of production. India imports its instruments of production from

** Stalin, "The Economic Situation of the Soviet Union and the Policy of the Party,"
Report Delivered April 13, 1926 to the Active of the Leningrad Party Organization on
the Work of the Plenum of the GC, GPSU(B), Works, vol. VIII (1954), pp. 127, 128.

172

Britain. Because of this (although, of course, not only because of this),
India's industry is completely subordinated to British industry. That is
a specific method of imperialism — to develop industry in the colonies in
such a way as to keep it tethered to the metropolitan country, to imperialism.
... It follows from this that industrialisation is to be understood above
all as the development of heavy industry in our country, and especially of our
own machine-building industry, which is the principal nerve of industry
in general.44

"Heavy industry" became a cover for war industry; in particular,
Soviet "machine-building" embraced the production of arms. Except
for some confusing figures about machine-building combined with
production of tanks, military trucks, etc., no statistical or other details
of Soviet "machine-building" have been published.

... In the five-year plans of production of means of production there is
also included the war industry, production of means of mass destruction
and of annihilation of people.45

In its five-year plans, Stalin's government took the "heavy industry"

road.

. . . For the period from January 1, 1929 to July 1, 1941, capital invest-
ment in the industry amounted to 199.5 billion rubles, of which 169.5 bil-
lion rubles, i.e., 85 percent, were invested in heavy industry.48

In the end, having achieved little by way of improvement in the pop-
ulation's standard of living, Stalin had to justify his course to his party:

It is true that the output of goods for mass consumption was less than
the amount required, and this creates certain difficulties. But, then, we
must realise and take into account where such a policy of relegating the
task of industrialisation to the background would have led us. Of course,
out of the 1,500 million rubles in foreign currency that we spent during
this period on equipment for our heavy industries, we could have set aside
a half for importing cotton, hides, wool, rubber, etc. Then we would now
have more cotton fabrics, shoes and clothing. But we would not have a
tractor industry or an automobile industry; we would not have anything
like a big iron and steel industry; we would not have metal for the manu-
facture of machinery — and we would remain unarmed while encircled by
capitalist countries armed with modern technique.

*******

. . . The Party, as it were, spurred the country on and hastened its
progress.

***** * *

Finally, the Party had to put an end, in the shortest possible space of
time, to the weakness of the country in the sphere of defence. The condi-
tions prevailing at the time, the growth of armaments in the capitalist

Ibid., pp. 128, 129.
Prokopovich, op. cit., vol. II, p. 349.
1 Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, vol. XLIII (1956), p. 562.

173

countries, the collapse of the idea of disarmament, the hatred of the in-
ternational bourgeoisie for the U.S.S.R. — all this impelled the Party to
accelerate the work of strengthening the defence capacity of the country, the
basis of her independence.47

Calling for painful sacrifices on the altar of industrialization, the
Soviet government pointed to the acuteness of the war danger, although
actually peace reigned at the time and no government was menacing
the Soviet Union. But Stalin needed a war scare. Since the late 1920's
he and the Soviet press had not only exaggerated the anti-Soviet trends
in the West and East, but even pretended to know the dates of planned
military invasions of Russia :

The apprehensions of the masses are regularly kept alive by suggestive
reports of impending aggression from without. On one occasion I made
a collection of newspaper headlines on this subject, and within a short
time had collected the following typical samples (at that time the supposed
threat was believed to be in the West, rather than in the East) : —

"Programme of the Rumanian King: Enslavement of the Country and
War with the Soviet Union."

"Stages of Military Preparations against the Soviet Union."

"Rehearsal of the Attack on the Soviet Union."

"Conspiracy against the Soviet Union under the Flag of Union of
Europe."

"The Imperialists Are Anxious to Seize the Soviet Oil ; They Prepare a
Blow at the Oil Wells of Baku; Suspicious Journeys of British Agents."

"To Turn the Armed Attack on the Soviet Union into Revolutionary
Struggle for the Soviet Union."

The effect of the newspaper articles which are heralded by such head-
lines is, of course, intensified by the absolute uniformity of political opinion
which is imposed on the Soviet press. No suggestion that the war menace
is exaggerated, to say nothing of any pacifist propaganda, would be printed.
*******

Up to 1931, Soviet apprehensions of armed attack were primarily di-
rected to the West, with France and England alternately playing the role
of hypothetical aggressor. At no time does there seem to have been any
serious foundation for these continually expressed suspicions. . . .
*******

During the winter of 1933-1934 the most prominent Soviet leaders used
extremely strong and unqualified language in accusing Japan of offensive
designs against the Soviet Far East.48

The year 1928 marked the start of the era of the 5-year plans. The
system of elaborating 5-year plans has been maintained, with some

" Stalin, "The Results of the First Five-Year Plan," Report Delivered January 7,
1933 at the Joint Plenum of the CC and CCC, CPSU(B), Works, vol. XIII (1955),
pp. 184-187.

49 Chamberlin, op. cii., pp. 192-194, 196.

68491 O-61-vol. 11—12

174

modifications, up to the present. Like all other major Soviet acts they
were, in their essentials, discussed and prepared by various bodies of the
Communist party and then enacted into law by the government:

The 1st Plan was prepared by the Gosplan [State Planning Commission]
in 1928 and, after prolonged discussions, was approved by the Vth Con-
gress of the Soviets in April 1929. . . .

The expansion of industry proceeded with such rapidity that it became
possible to fulfill the goals for the output of heavy industry and for the
transportation of goods in less than five years. Although many item., such
as construction and light industry were far behind the goals, and some
others, especially agriculture and consumption levels were complete failures,
the 1st Five- Year Period was proclaimed successfully accomplished in four
years, and the last three months of that year were made into a special
period. . . .

*******

The 2d Plan, covering the five calendar years 1933-37, was approved by
the XVIIth Party Congress in January 1934 and by the government on
November 17, 1934. . . .

• * * * * * *

The 3d Plan, for 1938-42, was approved in the spring of 1939. War
broke out in Europe a few months later. Still, the first year and a half of
the 3d Plan Period were fully normal.49

Among the consequences of the industrialization, two were out-
standing. The first was a resolute and final rejection of the egalitarian
illusions of the revolutionary era. For rapid increase of production,
a far-reaching inequality proved to be necessary. Stalin scornfully
dubbed the time-honored trend toward equality "uravnilovka" (from
ravnyi, equal). In particular he decried the trend to equalize wages
of manual workers of various qualifications as well as employees ("white
collar" workers, professionals, etc. ) ; for the sake of industrial progress,
he insisted on stratification.

... In a number of factories wage scales are drawn up in such a way as
to practically wipe out the difference between skilled and unskilled labour,
between heavy and light work. The consequence of wage equalisation
is that the unskilled worker lacks the incentive to become a skilled worker
and is thus deprived of the prospect of advancement; as a result he feels
himself a "visitor" in the factory, working only temporarily so as to "earn
a little money" and then go off to "try his luck" in some other place. The
consequence of wage equalisation is that the skilled worker is obliged to go
from factory to factory until he finds one where his skill is properly
appreciated.

*******

In order to put an end to this evil we must abolish wage equalisation and
discard the old wage scales. . . . we must draw up wage scales that will

1 Jasny, op. cit., pp. 39-41.

175

take into account the difference between skilled and unskilled labour,
between heavy and light work. . . . But the equalitarians among our
business executives and trade-union officials do not agree with this an.!
believe that under our Soviet system this difference has already
disappeared.60

Thus one of the mightiest psychological and emotional elements of the
Bolshevik movement was done away with.

The second outstanding consequence of Soviet industrialization was
the rapid growth of the class of state employees to an upper level and
dominant force in Russian society.

The unprecedented expansion of employees in the government service is
rooted in the insolubility of the basic problem — the impossibility of con-
trolling from a single center the administration of the whole economic,
political, cultural and scientific, material and intellectual, urban and rural
life of a great country. The more the functions of the state expand, the
more difficult becomes their performance. When they become all-
embracing, the Soviet state makes gigantic efforts to cope with them. The
growing pressure finds expression in the recruiting of new cadres of em-
ployees and directors. The greater the burden upon the state, the more
numerous the bottlenecks and the more frequently does it seek extraneous
remedies.51

Contrary, therefore, to the government's intentions, the ranks of Soviet
bureaucracy were swelling more rapidly than was the labor force in
general :

. . . there was a big leap forward during the first Five-Year Plan,
when the total number of government employees increased from 4,000,000
to 8,000,000. The plan had modestly envisaged that the "number of
government employees will increase by 6 to 10 per cent during the five-
year period"; in reality, the increase was unprecedented. The second
Five-Year Plan provided for a reduction of 600,000 in the number of
government employees. Instead of the prescribed decrease, there was a
marked increase.52

4. Police and Terrorism

After the death of Feliks Dzerzhinski in 1926, his aide, Vyacheslav
Menzhinski, a colorless personality and a sick man, completely loyal to
Stalin since the latter's accession to power, became head of the OGPU.
Menzhinski did not leave a profound mark on the Soviet police system.
His aide and eventual successor, Genrikh Yagoda, became the actual
chief of the Soviet police.

10 Stalin, "New Conditions — New Tasks in Economic Construction," Speech Deliv-
ered June 23, 1931, Works, vol. XIII (1955), pp. 58, 59.
" Dallin, op. cit., pp. 62, 63.
"Ibid., p. 61.

176

A former pharmacist and a not very able man, Yagoda worked in
close contact with Stalin and was the latter's right hand in the carrying
out of repressions and persecutions.53

. . . Unlike Menzhinsky, who is courteous, well-educated, and cul-
tured, Yagoda is rough and brutal, and not much to look at, with his
greyish yellow complexion, watery eyes and pigeon breast. During the
War he fought at the front, fell into the hands of the insurgents, and was
flogged within an inch of his life. It was only after many m«'. nths of
careful nursing that the doctors succeeded in putting him on his feet
again. But no experience of this kind could possibly make him more
odious than he was before. Intrigues in the Political Bureau, envy of his
successful colleagues, a lively hatred of everybody and everything, and
sadistic orgies with Young Communist girls occupy his whole time.54

. . . The system of confessions to crimes that had never been com-
mitted is Yagoda's handiwork, if not his brainchild. In 1933 Stalin re-
warded Yagoda with the Order of Lenin, in 1935 elevated him to the
rank of General Commissar of State Defense, that is, Marshal of the Po-
litical Police, only two days after the talented Tukhachevsky was elevated
to the rank of Marshal of the Red Army. In Yagoda's person a nonentity
was elevated, known as such to all and held in contempt by all. The old
revolutionists must have exchanged looks of indignation. Even in the
submissive Politburo an attempt was made to oppose this.55

Of the 12 years of the OGPU's existence (1922-34), the first
half, which coincided with the NEP period, was relatively quiet com-
pared with the preceding civil war and subsequent "Socialist offensive"
era. Between 1922 and 1928

The operations of the OGPU . . . reflected the dominant preoccu-
pations of the Party leadership. Particular attention was devoted to
checking on church activities, persons of unfavorable social origins, and
former members of opposition parties. As the struggle of the Trotsky
opposition mounted in intensity, the OGPU concerned itself increasingly
with nonconformity and deviation within the Party itself. Its field of
supervision included the foreign embassies and foreign visitors. Through
its Economic Administration, it sought to restrain malpractices and sabo-
tage in industry; its Special Section penetrated the armed forces and kept
a watchful eye on their morale, loyalty, and efficiency. Its Foreign Section
conducted espionage abroad, observed the activities of Russian emigre
colonies, and reported on personnel in all Soviet foreign missions. Its
specially assigned troops were charged with guarding rail and water trans-

M It appears that for a short time in 1928 Yagoda had had some contact with the
"right opposition"; this was only an accidental deviation, but years later, when Stalin
decided to get rid of Yagoda, he recalled this crime of an earlier period.

w Essad-Bey, OGPU, The Plot Against the World (New York: The Viking Press,
1933). pp. 169, 170.

"Leon Trotsky, Stalin (New York and London: Harper & Bros., 1941), p. 378.

177

port, policing the borders of the Soviet Union, and suppressing any coun-
terrevolutionary risings which might take place.56

The year 1928 marked the end of the NEP and the start of the 5-year
plans, which were followed by the collectivization of farming. Pressures
mounted as industrialization was pushed with extreme intensity.

With the abandonment of the NEP and the decision to proceed with a
program of rapid industrialization and agricultural collectivization, the
OGPU began to play a much more prominent role. Its energies were
concentrated on three targets: the Nepmen or private traders, who had
been permitted to flourish under the NEP; the old intelligentsia, who were
made the scapegoats for early failures and difficulties in the industrializa-
tion drive; and the kulaks, who offered active or passive opposition to the
collectivization program.37

In their drive against dissidents of various kinds, non-Communist as
well as Communist, Stalin and the OGPU embarked on the series of
judicial "trials," which continued, with interruptions, for a decade
from 1928 to 1938. In the beginning it was members of the old Russian
"intelligentsia" who were the main target, Communists not yet appear-
ing among the defendants. "Wrecking," a newly invented criminal
offense, was the accusation leveled against old engineers, professors, and
agronomists; the standard crime was intentional sabotage and obstruct-
ing of Soviet economic development on instructions of Russian emigre
capitalists and non-Russian Western "bourgeoisie." "Wrecking" was
defined in paragraph 58(7) of the Soviet Criminal Code :

The undermining of state industry, transport, trade, currency, or sys-
tem of credit, or of the co-operative system, with counterrevolutionary in-
tent, by utilizing the state institutions or enterprises concerned or by work-
ing against the normal activities, or the utilization of state institutions or
enterprises, or opposition to their activities, in the interests of the former
owners or of interested capitalistic organizations, entails the measure of
social defense prescribed in article 58 (2) of the present code.58

The trials were intended to prove to the Soviet people that the eco-
nomic shortages, industrial chaos and privation were due not to the
course taken by the government but to conspiracies of capitalist organi-
zations. Among the defendants there were usually some actual, though
inactive, opponents of the regime; a number of frightened nonpoliticals;
and a few OGPU agents-provocateurs assigned to testify against and ex-
pose their co-defendants. The accusations were frequently absurd, but
the prosecution always won its case.

M Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled, pp. 361, 362.
. " Ibid., p. 362.

M Ugolovnyi Kodeks RSFSR, Ofitsialnyi Tekst s Izmeneniyami na 7 Marta 1957
(Criminal Code of the RSFSR, Official Text with Changes as of March 1, 1957)
(Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Yuridicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing
House for JuridfcaJ Literature), 1957), p. 30.

178

The first of the trials was that of the Shakhty engineers, held in April-
June 1928. Among the defendants were 50 Russian and three German
engineers and technicians. The accusation against them was as follows:

. . . Starting in 1925, this counter-revolutionary organization acted under
the immediate direction of the so-called Paris center, which embraced
members of different organizations, in particular the "Society of former mine
owners of the South of Russia," "Society of the Creditors of old Russia,"
etc. . . . They inundated mines, damaged mechanisms, caused explosions
and obstructions, set fires, etc. To provoke discontent among the workers,
they damaged ventilation systems and impaired working and living con-
ditions of the miners. Wrecking activities were also extended to leading
central organs of the coal industry.69

Of the defendants, 10 "confessed" to wrecking activities; 11 were
sentenced to death, of whom 5 were executed and 6 were reprieved; 38
were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

In November-December 1930 occurred the trial of the "Industrial
Party," 60 in which five of the eight defendants were sentenced to death,
the sentences later being commuted to 10 years in prison.

This spectacular trial was brilliantly staged to make a proletarian holi-
day— the courtroom rilled with loud-speakers and flashlights, the papers
full of resolutions from all sorts of bodies, from the members of the Moscow
bar to Young Pioneer school children, all demanding the shooting of the
prisoners, even the Young Communist son of one of the defendants duly
demanded the death of his father. But the reality of the scene was im-
paired when the head of the alleged Industrial Party, Professor Ramzin,
included in his confession some items which were obviously and even ab-
surdly untrue.61

Absurdities in the indictments, to which the defendants, in their own
interest, pleaded guilty, became a standard feature of the hastily con-
cocted affairs.

. . . For the man who was mentioned as the destined Premier of the coun-
ter-revolutionary government which the self-confessed plotters were pro-
posing to set up was one P. P. Ryabushinsky, a well-known pre-war Rus-
sian industrialist. And P. P. Ryabushinsky — very thoughtlessly, from the
standpoint of the organizers of the trial — had died in Paris several years
before the trial was held. A "conspiracy" of which the prospective chief
was a dead man would seem to be a more suitable subject for a comic
paper than for a serious trial, especially as another of the "proposed Min-
isters," Vishnegradsky, was also no longer among the living. There were
other amusing discrepancies in the testimony, as when Ramzin told of a

" Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, vol. XLVII ( 1957) , p. 559.
60 The various non-Communist parties mentioned on these pages refer to existing
or alleged underground groups in Soviet Russia,
" Ghamberlin, op. cit., pp. 162, 163.

179

"meeting" in London with Colonel Lawrence at a time when it was con-
clusively evident that Lawrence had been stationed, as an aviator, on the
northwest frontier of India, or when he spoke of meeting a certain "Sir
Philip," whose last name he did not know — because, he said, in England
lords are always called by the first name with the prefix "Sir." *2

The trial of the "14 Mensheviks" took place in March 1931. Al-
though only one was at the time of the trial a member of the Menshevik
party, the defendants

. . . admitted to having prepared armed uprisings and invoked foreign
military intervention against the Soviet government. . . . The highlight
of the framed trial was the alleged "trip of Raphael Abramovich to Mos-
cow in the summer of 1928." The prosecutor maintained that Abramovich,
a party leader living in Germany, had made a trip to Russia in order to
induce undecided members of the underground to organize armed uprisings
against the Soviet power. In their testimony before the court the defend-
ants "confessed" that Abramovich had been in Moscow at the time indi-
cated by the prosecution and had taken part in discussions. It happened,
however, that at the precise time that the Socialist leader had been "con-
ferring" with his friends in Moscow, an International Socialist Congress
was in session in Brussels, Belgium, and in addition to records and press
reports which belied the accusations of the Moscow prosecutor, a photo-
graph taken and published during the conference showed that Abramovich
had been present at the parley in Belgium. Neither the judges nor the
Soviet press, of course, mentioned this falsification.

Of the defendants, seven were sentenced to ten years in prison., four to
eight years, and three to five years.63

Another political group placed on trial about the same time was the
Party of the Toiling Peasantry. This trial was secret.

In the majority of cases the OGPU did not stage a public trial, and
itself sentenced the defendants. In one case, a group of employees of
the food industry was arrested and tried in camera; 48 food specialists
were shot.

The case of the "Academicians" occupied public attention from 1929 to
1931. This involved more than 150 scientists and professors, who were
scattered through various prisons, the case being concluded, without a pub-
lic trial, only in the summer of 1931. Many were executed and others
sentenced to various terms of exile.6*

"Ibid., pp. 163, 164.

" Dallin, "Crime and Punishment under the Soviet Regime," in Handbook on
World Communism, J. M. Bochenski and G. Niemeyer, eds. (New York: Frederick A.
Praeger, to be published in 1960).

" Dallin, The Changing World of Soviet Russia, p. 47.

180

At the end of 1931

. . . Stalin again thundered public threats against wreckers and sabo-
teurs, including those "professors who in their wrecking go to the length of
infecting cattle in collectives and on Soviet farms with plague germs and
the Siberian anthrax, spreading meningitis among horses, and so on." . . .
"Theft and plunder in plants, warehouses, and commercial enterprises—
these are the main activities of these people," he charged.65

In January 1933

. . . another show trial was staged, this time directed against six British
Mctro-Vickers engineers, ten Russian technicians, and a woman secretary
who had been associated with them. All were charged with sabotage of
power stations and the usual accompaniment of conspiracy and espionage.68

The collectivization drive imposed a huge and extraordinary task on
the OGPU, which now reverted to the "mass terror" of a decade before:

During the drive which began in 1928 to force the peasants to join the
collective farms, the OGPU troops were widely used to quell local rebellions
and round up dissident peasants. They formed the main punitive instru-
ment of the Party and government in enforcing the collectivization drive, a
policy which, as Stalin later admitted to Churchill, claimed ten million
victims.87

The drive toward collectivization was interrupted by a period of
modest relaxation in the spring of 1930, but it was soon resumed with
augmented fury. Not only the central OGPU but its small local
agencies as well made use of the wide powers entrusted to them. The
peak of the drive was reached with the enactment of a new law, on
August 7, 1932, which introduced the death penalty, along with long
terms in prison (or labor camps), for "plundering" of kolkhoz property.
If a peasant slaughtered his cattle instead of turning it over to the col-
lective, he was guilty of "plundering" ; if a hungry peasant child col-
lected a few spikes in the kolkhoz fields, he was guilty of "plundering."

The number of "special troops" of the OGPU trained and armed to
fight popular movements in cities and villages grew to about 300,000;
new regulations were issued to regiment the population of the cities,
especially the industrial workers. In December 1932 the government

. . . proceeded to introduce obligatory passports: now no one could
move about in Russia without one. In every job, the management had to
mark the dates of service in the passport. Thus increasing control over
the workers was becoming possible. Another decree issued in 1932 ordered
that workers dismissed for repeated failure to report to work were to be
evicted from their apartments.68

•5 Ibid., p. 48.
Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled, p. 364.

" Simon Wolin and Robert M. Slusser, eds., The Soviet Secret Police (New York:
Frederick A. Praef»er, 1957), p. 13.

"David J. Dallin and Boris I. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), p. 195.

181

Despite the fact that by that time terrorism had somewhat abated, a
measure of extraordinary severity against Soviet defectors fleeing abroad
was signed on June 8, 1934, under which members of the defectors'
families were made hostages.

1 8 In the case of escape or flight abroad of a member of the armed forces
adult members of that person's family are to be punished by deprivation
of liberty for a period of from five to ten years with confiscation of their
entire property, if they had assisted in any way the planned or committed
act of treason, or at least had knowledge of it and did not inform the authori-
ties.

The other adult members of the family of the traitor, who had been living
with him or were supported by him at the moment when the crime was
committed, are to be deprived of their right to vote and are to be exiled
for five years to remote districts of Siberia.

I4 Failure by a member of the armed forces to inform the authorities con-
cerning the prepared or perpetrated act of treason is punishable by depriva-
tion of liberty for ten years.69

There was, however, an additional, secret, clause in this decree which
prescribed that:

... if an officer of the NKVD fled the country or failed to return from
a mission abroad, his closest relatives were liable to imprisonment for ten
years, and in those cases when the officer had disclosed state secrets, they
were liable to the death penalty.70

A series of secret instructions and a secret periodical (Bulletin) were
issued during these years to control the press and the publication of books.
The proscriptions were drastic and comprehensive. For instance:

... In order "to prevent foreigners from drawing an analogy between
Osoaviakhim [the para-military Society for the Promotion of Defense and
Aero-Chemical Development] and the Red Army, ... all references to
Osoaviakhim as a fully armed and rigidly trained organization are for-
bidden." Stress was to be placed on its "voluntary character," expressing
the "voluntary" surge of people to "deepen their military and military-
political knowledge. . . ."

***** * *

The perechen [a list of forbidden items] in the economic field was
equally drastic. For the year 1934 no quantitative data on crop-yields in
any locality were to be published unless such data first appeared in Pravda
or Izvestia. All numerical data pertaining to grain deliveries and pur-
chases for the U.S.S.R. as a whole as well as localities were ordered with-
held. The prohibition extended to percentage as well as absolute figures,
except that raions [counties] were permitted to report percentage increases
in grain deliveries computed on a 1933 base. . . . Specific news on rail-

" Izvestia, June 9, 1934, p. 2.

"Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes (New York: Random
House, 1953), p. 228.

182

road construction in certain areas and on the hiring of labor for these
projects was also interdicted. . . .

. . . Detailed data on court cases, crimes, and convictions were to be
withheld, and description of the activities of the OGPU deleted. Special
care was to be exercised to stop the publication of "distorted" pictures of
Stalin and Lenin. Censors were to guard against exaggerating the inci-
dence of kulak terror, arson, the murder of Soviet officials, election disorders,
or other phenomena calculated to emphasize "internal instability" in the
U.S.S.R. or the activities of anti-Soviet elements.71

The terrorism diminished in 1933, as the main goals of the collec-
tivization drive were approaching realization and the famine was reach-
ing its apogee. A secret instruction, signed by Stalin and Molotov on
May 8, 1933, which ordered a slowing down of the "offensive," at the
same time contained a confirmation of the terrible cruelty of the
campaign when it was at its height :

The Central Committee and the Sovnarkom are informed that dis-
orderly mass arrests in the countryside are still a part of the practice of our
officials. Such arrests were made by . . . all who desire to, and who,
strictly speaking, have no right to make arrests. It is not surprising that
in such a saturnalia of arrests, organs which do have the right to arrest,
including the organs of the OGPU and especially the militia, lose all feeling
of moderation and often perpetrate arrests without any basis, acting accord-
ing to the rule: "First arrest, and then investigate." 72

A circular issued in Moscow on May 25, 1933 said:

. . . Information coming in to the Central Control Commission from the
localities still shows that mass arrests continue, that there is legal repression
on an extraordinary scale, which has led everywhere to intolerable over-
loading of the places of imprisonment, to inordinate burdening of all organs
of investigation, the courts, and the procuracy. . . ,73

. . . Under the terms of the [Stalin-Molotov] order, the 800,000 pris-
oners who were at that time confined in places of detention, aside from
camps and colonies, were to be reduced to 400,000 within a two-month
period, and a quota of 400,000 was established as the maximum number
of persons who could be kept in prisons. . . . The decree envisaged the
mass transfer of some categories of prisoners to forced labor camps, the
mass transfer of other categories, including kulaks sentenced to a term of
three to five years, to so-called labor settlements; and the release of the
remaining prisoners under bail or other forms of supervision.7*

Soon afterward, certain categories of kulaks were released from the
camps. Since early in 1934 rumors had spread that the dreadful OGPU
would be abolished altogether. Actually, by decree of July 10, 1934,

71 Fainsod, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule, pp. 364-366.
"Ibid., pp. 185, 186.
78 Ibid., p. 186.
M Ibid.

183

the OGPU was replaced by the People's Commissariat for Internal
Affairs, better known by its abbreviation NKVD (Narodnyi Kommi-
sariat Vnutrennikh Del). Genrikh Yagoda, head of the OGPU, be-
came chief of the NKVD; other leading officers of the police agency
also retained their posts.

... it seems reasonable to assume that the Commissariat for Internal
Affairs, in methods and personnel, will be very similar to the Gay-Pay-Oo
just as the latter organization, when it was created in 1922, took over to a
large extent the working apparatus of its predecessor, the Cheka, or Ex-
traordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution.75

It was expected, however, that the NKVD would assume a more
liberal course of action than its predecessor. In particular, it did not
have the right to pass summary death sentences.

. . . The Commissariat for Internal Affairs retains the right to inflict
the penalty of exile at hard labor up to a term of five years without trial
before a public court. It also retains the management of the numerous
large forced-labor camps which have grown up in Russia during the last
few years.76

The hopes and expectations that the NKVD would be more lenient
and liberal than the dreadful OGPU did not, however, materialize.

Along with the rise of the Stalinist wave of terror there proceeded the
preparation of the constitution in 1935 and 1936 (by a special Com-
mission in which the repentant oppositionists Bukharin and Radek col-
laborated with Stalin). Stalin's rapprochement with the West against
the Nazi menace and his temporary "anti-Fascist" course prompted
him to don democratic clothes, but for Russian internal affairs this new
constitution brought no new developments of significance.

The new constitution, the so-called Stalin Constitution, was adopted
in December 1936. Stalin pretended that the new "Fundamental
Law" was an important departure from previous enactments in fur-
therance of a real democracy in a socialist state.

The new constitution provided for direct general elections to the Soviet
parliament (Supreme Soviet) and conferred on the Supreme Soviet
the privileges of appointing the government, controlling it and interro-
gating its ministers. It insured Soviet citizens:

(a) Freedom of speech; (b) freedom of the press; (c) freedom of as-
sembly, including the holding of mass meetings; (d) freedom of street
processions and demonstrations. [Article 125]

. . . the right to unite in public organizations: trade unions, coopera-
tive societies, youth organizations, sport and defense organizations, cul-
turalj technical and scientific societies. . . . [Article 126]

n Chamberlin. op. cit., p. 175.
"Ibid., p. 176.

184

Citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed inviolability of the person. No
person may be placed under arrest except by decision of. a court or with
the sanction of a prosecutor. [Article 127]

The inviolability of the homes of citizens and privacy of correspondence
are protected by law. [Article 128] 77

Article 124 insured "freedom of conscience"; however, only anti-
religious "propaganda" was permitted: "Freedom of religious worship
and freedom of antireligious propaganda is recognized for all citizens."

Two articles contained a somewhat hidden curb on non-Communist
political activity: Article 126 mentioned only the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union as the admitted political organization :

. . . the most active and politically-conscious citizens in the ranks of
the working class and other sections of the working people unite in the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), which is the vanguard
of the working people in their struggle to strengthen and develop the
socialist system and is the leading core of all organizations of the working
people, both public and state.78

Article 141 gave a monopoly to the Communist party in nominating
candidates for election to the Soviets:

The right to nominate candidates is secured to public organizations and
societies of the working people: Communist Party organizations, trade
unions, cooperatives, youth organizations and cultural societies.79

Soviet propagandists claimed the new constitution was a great demo-
cratic achievement. Its adoption was followed by thousands of arrests,
executions, and framed trials.

5. Forced Labor

It was during this period (1929-34) that the system of so-called
Corrective Labor Camps was established and developed. Succeeding
the relatively small group of concentration camps of the preceding era,80
the network expanded rapidly. From a punitive measure, forced labor
developed into an important instrument of national economy.

... a measure was adopted which has remained in force ever since:
persons sentenced to more than three years must serve their terms in
corrective labor camps. This decree, dated April 7, 1930, in its first
paragraph specified two groups that were to be sent to these camps:

1. "Persons sentenced by a court to deprivation of liberty for not less
than three years," and

77 Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
pp. 96, 97.

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid., p. 106.

" See comparative statistics on p. 185.

185

2. "Persons sentenced by special decision of the OGPU." M

Hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of persons were shipped
to the newly opened camps in various parts of the country. One of
the first forced labor projects was the construction of a long canal
connecting the Baltic and White seas.

. . . For the first time, a project of this magnitude was entrusted not
to an economic agency but to the GPU, and in particular to Henrikh
Yagoda. At that time Yagoda was still "Deputy Chairman of the OGPU,"
but he was actually already in charge of the agency. Stalin had gained
faith in the abilities of Yagoda and in the effectiveness of forced labor in
1929-30, when the GPU had demonstrated its efficiency in the lumber
economy of the north.82

Other projects followed in rapid sequence — around Moscow, near
Leningrad, in Siberia, in Central Asia, and finally in the vicinity of
almost every large Russian city. In 1928 there had been six labor
camps with about 30,000 inmates; in 1930 the number of inmates was
662,000; in 1931 the number had grown to nearly 2 million; in subse-
quent years estimates varied from 5 to 10 million. By the end of the
1930's, 125 camps, large and small, were known to exist.83

The treatment of camp inmates was bad, especially in the beginning,
during the time of general privation and famine. The death rate was
extremely high and the living and working conditions of those who
survived were often unbearable.

... At least two punitive camps (for special punishment of prisoners
from other camps) are known to exist in the Far East: one on the Kolyma
River, the other on the lower Yenisei near the estuary on the Arctic Ocean.
The mortality rate there is reported to exceed 30 per cent per year. No
correspondence of the prisoners with their relatives and friends is permitted.

. . . The Stalinogorsk Women's Camp is known for extremely severe
living conditions, harsh punishment, and bad food. The women work in the
iron and coal mines of the Tula region.

*******

... In certain camps of the Pechora Camp Cluster, corporal punish-
ment, officially abolished in 1917-18, has been reintroduced.

. . . The Krasnoyarsk Camps, with about 10,000 prisoners, are con-
spicuous for their lack of medical facilities and hospitals.84

As for the numbers of prisoners, the late Professor Sergei Prokopo-
vich, a noted and cautious economist, stated :

. . . However much we may want to reduce the possible estimates (for
purposes of comforting ourselves and in order to reduce the shameful blot

M Dallin and Nicolaevsky, op. cit., pp. 206, 207.
"Ibid., p. 212.
u Ibid., pp. 49-72.

u Ibid., pp. 72,73.

186

on the new Russia), be it only five or seven million, one thing remains
clear beyond any doubt: in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics we
have a class of slaves of many millions, whose living and working condi-
tions are infinitely worse than those of the American Negroes in the South-
ern states. It is horrible to realize that for them, the Russian slaves, the
life of the American Negroes represents the ideal of well-being.85

To administer the labor camps, the OGPU established a special de-
partment, the GULAG (Glavnoe Upravlenie Lager ei — Chief Admin-
istration of Camps) ; the GULAG developed into a huge network.
However,

. . . Observing more discretion than the Commissariat of Justice and
the other agencies, the GPU has never made public any data or reports
concerning its economic activities and the personnel it employs. Gleb Bold,
who administered the camps of the GPU in the late 'twenties, was suc-
ceeded by M. D. Berman as the Chief of the GULAG, and Semion Firin
became Deputy Chief.6*

The Soviet system of forced labor, one of numerous forms of slavery
known in history, had several advantages: First, no capital investment
was needed for the primitive jobs carried out by the forced laborers;
second, the strictest discipline could be imposed on the personnel ; third,
the cost of labor was low. On the other side, however, it shared with
other slave labor systems the negative features of low productivity and
waste of human life.

An unusual disproportion exists in Russia between the number of males
and females. Even before the latest war there were about 8 million more
women than men in Russia. . . . The number of boys and girls born is
almost equal. The reason for the disproportion in peacetime is the great
mortality among adult males; and the existence of forced labor is one of
the most important causes of this unnaturally great mortality of men in
Russia, since women constitute no more than 10 to 15 per cent of the
population of the camps. . . .

* * * * * * ..*

Besides being unproductive and wasteful of human material, the forced
labor system has become a great cause of moral and political degradation.
Deceit, theft, corruption arc the natural and inevitable results of the in-
ternal conditions prevailing in the camps, and no human being could survive
there if he tried to go the straight and honest way all the time. The so-
called "corrective" labor camps have necessarily become corruptive labor
camps. There is no spot in the world where morals have sunk so low as
in the institutions of modern slavery. The effects of this alarming degrada-
tion are felt far beyond the walls of the concentration camps.87

85 Novoe Russkoe Slovo (New Russian Word), New York, September 14, 1946.
m Dallin and Nicolaevsky, op. cit., p. 208.
"Ibid., pp. 104,106.

Chapter VII. Trials and Purges

1. Assassination of Kirov

Stalin's uninhibited dictatorship dated from about 1930. If there
remained at that time a shadow of dissent among the leaders, this was
kept a secret within the party's Central Committee and the Politburo,
and was limited mainly to the issue of whether leading members of the
Communist party could be persecuted and executed in the same manner
as other citizens of the Soviet Union. Lenin had strongly advised
against such fratricidal acts.

In 1932, however, when a group of surviving "right oppositionists"
dared to formulate, secretly, a sharply worded anti-Stalinist "platform,"
Stalin, when he learned of it, demanded the death penalty for at least
some of them. The Politburo rejected this demand, and the culprits
were instead sent to prison and into exile. Stalin never forgot this de-
feat, and he waited for an appropriate moment to resume his offensive.

December 1, 1934, was the date that marked the end of the short-
lived era of political relaxation and the start of an unprecedented
avalanche of terrorism. On that day Sergei Kirov, member of the
Politburo and a rising star in the Communist party, was killed in Lenin-
grad by a young Communist, Leonid Nikolaev. Although perpetrated
by Nikolaev out of purely personal motives, the act was immediately
inflated into a great political event. On the evening of the same day,
December 1 , a decree was issued providing that :

I. Investigative agencies are directed to speed up the cases of those ac-
cused of the preparation or execution of acts of terror.

II. Judicial organs are directed not to hold up the execution of death
sentences pertaining to crimes of this category in order to consider the pos-
sibility of pardon, because the Presidium of the Central Executive Commit-
tee U.S.S.R. does not consider as possible the receiving of petitions of this
sort.

III. The organs of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs are directed to
execute the death sentence against criminals of the above-mentioned cate-
gory immediately after the passage of sentences.1

Pardons and appeals were thus no longer permitted.

1 As quoted in Nikita S. Khrushchev, "Secret Report," Delivered February 24, 25,
1956 at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, printed
in Bertram G. Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost (London: Atlantic Press, 1957),
p. 128.

(187)

188

The members of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee
of the Congress of Soviets, in whose name the decree was promulgated,
were not consulted concerning it; on Stalin's instructions it was signed
by the Secretary of the Presidium. Two days later it was reported to
the Politburo, the members of which, timid and frightened, did not dare
to oppose it.

Attributing the assassination of Kirov to emigre "whites," the NKVD
executed 104 "terrorists" selected at random, and deported to concen-
tration camps many thousands of innocent people arrested in the
provinces. Nikolaev and 13 others were executed on December 27,
after a secret trial. On January 22, 1 935, 1 2 leading NKVD officials in
Leningrad were tried on the charge that "having received information
about the preparations for the attempt on S. M. Kirov . . . they failed
to take the necessary measures to prevent the assassination." The sen-
tences imposed were extremely mild. Two years later, however, the
most important of the 12 defendants at this trial were executed. The
charge that Stalin must have played an active role in the assassination
of his friend Kirov was first made by Trotsky, who claimed that the
NKVD undoubtedly knew of Nikolaev's plans and reported them to
Stalin well in advance.2

The truth of this charge was confirmed later by two NKVD de-
fectors, Walter Krivitsky and Alexander Orlov, and, in 1956, Khru-
shchev gave some details of the plot:

A month and a half before the killing, Nikolayev was arrested on the
grounds of suspicious behavior but he was released and not even searched.
It is an unusually suspicious circumstance that when the Chekist
[member of the secret police] assigned to protect Kirov was being brought
for an interrogation, on 2 December 1934, he was killed in a car "accident"
in which no other occupants of the car were harmed.

After the murder of Kirov, top functionaries of the Leningrad NKVD
were given very light sentences, but in 1937 they were shot. We can as-
sume that they were shot in order to cover the traces of the organizers of
Kirov's killing.3

The official, but false, version of Kirov's assassination, given by Stalin,
was as follows :

The investigation established that in 1933 and 1934 an underground
counter-revolutionary terrorist group had been formed in Leningrad con-
sisting of former members of the Zinoviev opposition and headed by a so-
called "Leningrad Centre." The purpose of this group was to murder

' Leon Trotsky, "Vse Stanovitsya Postepenno na Svoe Mesto, Pismo k Ameri-
kanskim Druzyam" (Everything is Gradually Taking Its Proper Place, Letter to
American Friends), Bulletin of the Opposition (Bolsheviks-Leninists), printed in
Paris, No. 42, February 1935, p. 11.

* Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., p. 130.

189

leaders of the Communist Party. S. M. Kirov was chosen as the first vic-
tim. The testimony of the members of this counter-revolutionary group
showed that they were connected with representatives of foreign capitalist
states and were receiving funds from them.

* * * * * * *

Soon afterwards the existence of an underground counter-revolutionary
organization called the "Moscow Centre" was discovered. The preliminary
investigation and the trial revealed the villainous part played by Zinoviev,
Kamenev, Yevdokimov and other leaders of this organization in cultivating
the terrorist mentality among their followers, and in plotting the murder
of members of the Party Central Committee and of the Soviet Government.4

On the basis of this version, accepted by the members of the Politburo
and propagated by the Soviet press, a secret trial against the Zinoviev-
Kamenev group was staged in January 1935. The defendants were
accused of having organized an underground counter-revolutionary
group in Moscow and Leningrad. The Military Collegium of the Su-
preme Court in its sentence stated that the defendants "have known
about terroristic trends in the Leningrad group and themselves inflamed
these trends." Four of the defendants were sentenced to prison terms
of 10 years, 5 to 8 years, 7 to 6 years, and 3 to 5 years.6

In a letter to party organizations, the Central Committee gave the
gist of Stalin's philosophy of terrorism: the more definitely our enemies
are defeated, it said, the more they will fight back. Until the end of
Stalin's days this absurd theory was accepted and never questioned by
the Communist parties of the world:

. . . We must put an end to the opportunist complacency engendered
by the enormous assumption that as we grow stronger the enemy will
become tamer and more inoffensive. This assumption is an utter fallacy.
It is a recrudescence of the Right deviation, which assured all and sundry
that our enemies would little by little creep into Socialism and in the end
become real Socialists. The Bolsheviks have no business to rest on their
laurels; they have no business to sleep at their posts. What we need is not
complacency, but vigilance, real Bolshevik revolutionary vigilance. It
should be remembered that the more hopeless the position of the enemies,
the more eagerly will they clutch at "extreme measures" as the only re-
course of the doomed in their struggle against the Soviet power. We must
remember this and be vigilant.6

* History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course
(New York: International Publishers, 1939), p. 326.

6 Obvinitelnye Materialy po Delu Podpolnoi Kontrrevolyutsionnoi Gruppy
Zinovievtsev (Accusation Materials in the Case of the Underground Counter-Revo-
lutionary Group of Zinovievites) (Moscow: Partizdat ZK VKP (b) (Party Publishing
House of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, Bolsheviks),
1935), p. 42.

• History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course,
p. 327.

68491 O-61-vol. II— 13

190

2. The Great Purge

On May 13, 1935, the Central Committee ordered a general screening
of the party ranks ("renewal of membership cards"), which was tanta-
mount to a general purge of the Communist party. The purge
operation actually lasted for almost 4 years and resulted in thousands
of arrests, trials, and executions of party members as well as non-
Communists.

The bloody holocaust started with the appointment by the Politburo
of a special "Commission" to watch over the NKVD as well as over
the purge operation. The most active among the members of the
"Commission" was a new confidant of Stalin, Nikolai Yezhov, whose
meteoric career as the watchdog for Stalin over the NKVD now
started. Under no condition was the NKVD to transgress the limita-
tions of a tool in the hands of the party, personified in Stalin.

Yezhov's elevation to power was hardly due to his personality. A
slight, thin man, with no abilities or ambitions, he was remarkable only
for his devotion to Stalin; even in that era of universal adulation and
adoration, Stalin could hardly have found a more blindly obedient serv-
ant prepared to go to such lengths in crime on orders of The Leader.

Yezhov's earlier record was that of a mediocre "party worker." Born
in Leningrad in 1892, he had joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, taken part
in the civil war and, in 1922, after a short period in the War Commis-
sariat, had become a party official. At the Seventeenth Party Congress
in 1934, he was elected to the Central Committee.

... In these investigations a certain Yezhov, an ex-workman, particu-
larly distinguished himself. . . . His creed was quite simple: Stalin was
the greatest genius in all human history, and the Russian people were a
marvel — but anyone who came between Stalin and the people was entirely
worthless and must be shot.

He was filled with an almost morbid hatred of the intelligentsia, and he
had his reason for this. Poor Yezhov, who now became a gigantic incubus,
a blood-thirsty figure looming over all Russia, had one weak spot — his wife.
. . . To his misfortune the lady v/as something of a literary snob, moving
in all the literary circles of Moscow; here it was that she found her lovers.
These circles were closely associated with the intellectuals in the party,
and to Yezhov both sets were equally odious. The man was in torment,
and as time went on he became an embittered enemy of all educated people.
In his view they were capable of any wickedness and any treachery, filled
with infinite cunning.7

In the course of ttie purge, members of the party were invited to
''reveal" and "expose" their comrades; a flood of denunciations, often

TNikolaus Basseches, Stalin (New York: S. F. Dutton * Co., 1952), pp. 274,
275.

191

from persons seeking to save their own necks, inundated the party
committees as well as the NKVD.

The zeal with which young people and subordinates strove to "unmask"
and accuse their seniors was particularly noteworthy. Students "un-
masked" their professors, humble party members denounced those in official
positions, junior officials accused those above them. . . .

The usual first consequence of a denunciation was the loss of one's job.
A whole army of unemployed so-called "Leftists," "Rightists," "national-
ists," "Trotskyites," and "decadents" now appeared engaged in a hopeless
pilgrimage from office to office, seeking to appeal and to obtain justice,
to rehabilitate themselves and get back to their jobs. Most of them were
qualified, or fairly well qualified people. But nearly all their former friends
now turned their backs on them and could not or would not help them.
For to speak up on behalf of any such person was in itself a highly incrimi-
nating action.8

The spy network, which had been growing since the early Soviet years,
assumed unprecedented proportions: Thousands of so-called seksots
(sekretnyi sotrudnik, meaning secret collaborators) were recruited from
and planted in the Soviet government and economy. The seksots

. . . were to be found throughout the population. It was as good as
certain that the messengers, chauffeurs, secretaries, and translators of every-
body who occupied any sort of leading position in the political or economic
administration, the Army, or the NKVD, were seksots. They had to report
on their superiors and their superiors' families at regular intervals. The
opinions, the private life, the social contacts of every person of any impor-
tance in the Soviet Union were constandy spied and reported on from
several quarters at the same time, and the reports were checked with one
another. . . .

To make people become seksots the NKVD would appeal to their Soviet
consciences and represent the work as harmless, but in most cases the
inducement would be the promise of alleviation of the fate of an arrested
member of the prospective seksot*s family. If this failed, intimidation and
threats would be employed.

Many complied with the NKVD request without further ado, but some
did so only after long hesitation; and nearly all started with the idea that
the work could do no harm so long as they kept strictly to the truth and
reported nothing disadvantageous about the people concerned. But they
soon found out that incriminating material, and only incriminating mate-
rial, was required, whether or not there was anything incriminating to
report.9

* F. Beck and.. W. Godin, Russian Purge and the Extraction of Confession (New
York: The Viking Press, 1951), pp. 24, 25.
•Ibid., pp. 164, 165.

192

Young women and wives of officials were in a special category of
secret informants; they represented

. . . the only form in which practically undisguised prostitution existed
in the Soviet Union. Nearly every foreigner who has ever stayed in a Mos-
cow hotel has had strange adventures with NKVD girls. He might find
himself connected to a wrong number on the telephone and talking to a
girl who claimed to be an old acquaintance. If the foreigner fell into the
trap, the young lady would try to bring the conversation around to dan-
gerous topics; often an attempt would be made to compromise him socially.

This phenomenon was all the more remarkable in that not only did open
prostitution no longer exist in the Soviet Union, but it was regarded with
the deepest abhorrence and considered utterly incompatible with human
dignity.10

In September 1936 Stalin decided to part with his henchman Yagoda,
who had spent 16 years in the secret police, and to replace him with
Yezhov. On September 25, Stalin and Andrei Zhdanov, from the
resort where they were staying, sent a telegram to the other members
of the Politburo :

We deem it absolutely necessary and urgent that Comrade Yezhov be
nominated to the post of People's Commissar for Internal Affairs. Yagoda
has definitely proved himself to be incapable of unmasking the Trotskyite-
Zinovievite bloc. The OGPU [secret police] is four years behind in this
matter. This is noted by all party workers and by the majority of the
representatives of the NKVD.11

The servile Politburo acted accordingly. Yagoda was given another
post. He was later arrested, tried, and executed. A few months later
(February-March 1937), a plenary session of the Central Committee
likewise endorsed Stalin's course of unlimited terrorism. Yezhov be-
came its living symbol and his 26 months in office went down in history
as the era of "Yezhovshchina."

Yezhov's first act was to purge the NKVD itself. About 200 officers
were dismissed and replaced by Yezhov's obedient subordinates, and
numbers of officials were arrested and punished with extreme severity.

A partial list of Yezhov's victims includes almost all the eighty members
of the Soviet Council of War created in 1934; the majority of the members
of Stalin's own Central Committee and his Control Commission; most of
the members of the Executive Committee of the Soviets, of the Council
of People's Commissars, of the Council of Labor and Defense, of the leaders
of the Communist International; all the chiefs and deputy chiefs of the
Ogpu; a host of ambassadors and other diplomats; the heads of all the

10 Ibid. s pp. 166, !67.

11 As quoted in Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., p. 130.
The OGPU had been dissolved two years prior to the sending of this telegram; the
term here refers to its successor agency — GUGBEZ, a section of the NKVD. See
p. 310, note 106.

193

regional and autonomous republics of the Soviet Union; 35,000 members
of the officers' corps; almost the entire staff of Pravcla and Izvestia; a
great number of writers, musicians, and theater directors; and finally a
majority of the leaders of the Young Communist League, the cream of the
generation from whom the greatest loyalty to Stalin was expected.12

The universal aim of the arrests, interrogations and trials was to
extract "confessions" from the arrested persons. To the primitive minds
of the new legal personnel, including the heads of the police and
Stalin himself, a confession was irrefutable proof of guilt. Thus, every
person arrested had to be made to confess and plead guilty; for the
arrested person it was usually better to confess than to deny his guilt.
Fictitious confessions and so-called legends of self -accusation became
standard.

Everyone was required to denounce at least one other person who had
"recruited" him, i.e., had persuaded him to engage in counter-revolutionary
activity and had directed him. Everyone was also required to denounce
as many other people as possible whom he had himself recruited and induced
to commit political crimes, or who had worked with him in the same
counter-revolutionary organization. Again and again during the hour-
and often day-long interrogations the prisoner was asked, "Who recruited
you?" and "Whom did you recruit?" u

The tasks of the rechecked and "purged" NKVD, and in partic-
ular its corps of interrogating officials, were greatly increased; their
working hours were unlimited; interrogations often lasted through the
night. Among their responsibilities also was that of executing "sen-
tenced" prisoners. Many NKVD men suffered breakdowns; some
became mentally ill.

In the office of every prosecuting investigator the most important article
of furniture is his couch. For the character of his work is such that it often
keeps him going at consecutive stretches of twenty to forty hours. He is
himself almost asrnuch a captive as the prisoners. His duties know no
limits. They may extend from grilling prisoners to shooting them.

For it is one of the peculiarities of the Soviet judicial process that despite
the tremendous numbers of executions, there are no regular executioners.
Sometimes the men who go down cellar to carry out the death decrees of
the collegium of the Ogpu are officers and sentries of the building. Some-
times they are the investigators and prosecutors themselves. For an analogy
to this, one must try to imagine a New York District Attorney obtaining
a first degree murder conviction and rushing up to Sing Sing to throw the
switch in the death chamber.14

u W. G. Krivitsky, In Stalin's Secret Service (New York: Harper & Bros., 1939),
p. 177.

u Beck and Godin, op. cit., pp. 45, 46.
14 Krivitsky, op. cit., p. 145.

194

Khrushchev later admitted that in the years of the purge
... the only proof of guilt used, against all norms of current legal
science, was the "confession" of the accused himself; and, as subsequent
investigation proved, "confessions" were secured through physical pres-
sure against the accused.16

Confessions were extracted by threats, by torture and by promises,
rarely kept, of leniency or freedom. On the other hand, attempts by
accused persons to retract previously made confessions were obstructed
by all possible means. Torturing of prisoners, forbidden under Soviet
law, was not only introduced in 1937 by a special instruction, but was
made obligatory; referring to it, Stalin said later in a secret telegram:

... It is known that all bourgeois intelligence services use methods of
physical influence against representatives of the socialist proletariat and
that they use them in their most scandalous forms.

The question arises as to why the socialist intelligence service should be
more humanitarian against the mad agents of the bourgeoisie, against the
deadly enemies of the working class and kolkhoz workers. The Central
Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) considers that
physical pressure should still be used obligatorily, as an exception applicable
to known and obstinate enemies of the people, as a method both justifiable
and appropriate.19

Prisons became overcrowded; camps were filling up with hundreds of
thousands of newcomers. Estimates of the numbers of arrested and
deported went into the millions.

. . . Calculations of this kind were often made by prisoners, usually
with the help of State attorneys and NKVD officials confined in the same
cell. These showed that the number arrested during the Yezhov period
must have been from five to ten per cent of the entire population. Assum-
ing the population of the Soviet Union to have been about 150,000,000,
this points to a total of at least 7,000,000 to 14,000,000 prisoners and people
living in detention under the NKVD. The figure includes victims of
former purges, including kulaks not released up to 1938. . . . The propor-
tion also varied in different classes and occupation groups. The proportion
of arrests among the intelligentsia, railway workers, and Red Army officers
was substantially above the average.17

Actual trials were held only in rare cases and, when held, were staged
for propaganda purposes. Sentences were pronounced in camera, the
defendants being given only a short -statement concerning the term of
imprisonment. Death sentences were submitted to Stalin for approval.

14 Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., p. 106.

"As quoted in Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., p. 160.
Stalin's reference to torture resorted to by "all bourgeois intelligence services" could
apply only to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, not to other nations of the West.

* Beck and Godin, op. cit., pp. 70, 71.

195

The vicious practice was condoned of having the NKVD prepare lists
of persons whose cases were under the jurisdiction of the Military Col-
legium [of the Supreme Court] and whose sentences were prepared in ad-
vance. Yezhov would send these lists to Stalin personally for his approval
of the proposed punishment. In 1937-1938, 383 such lists containing the
names of many thousands of party, Soviet, Komsomol, Army and economic
workers were sent to Stalin. He approved these lists.18

Several of the show trials of those years were held in provincial cities,
but the most important were the four great "Moscow trials," held be-
tween August 1936 and March 1938, which ended in the physical de-
struction of most of the surviving old Bolsheviks and Soviet leaders of
the initial post-Lenin era. The standard accusations were espionage for
a foreign power, "diversion" and sabotage, conspiracy against the Soviet
regime, and attempts on the lives of Soviet leaders. The prosecutor in
the Moscow trials was Andrei Vyshinsky, a former Menshevik, servile
toward Stalin and intensely disliked by Communists. Well aware of
the falsity of the accusations, he demanded the death sentence in every
case.

The chiefs of the NKVD didn't dignify Vyshinsky with their confidence
and treated him with the same humiliating condescension with which
Stalin's influential bureaucrats treat non-party men. And even then, when
they were instructing Vyshinsky how cautious he should be with the weak
points of their judicial forgeries, they never openly used the word "falsifica-
tion," but instead employed hypocritical phraseology for their explana-
tions.

Vyshinsky had ground to hate his haughty bosses. He knew that he
would have to cover up at the trial their clumsy concocted forgeries and
outdo himself in eloquence in order to lend at least some plausibility to
their idiotic fabrications.19

During the first stage in this series of trials a new Zinoviev-Kamenev
trial was staged in August 1936, this time in public. The 16 defendants
were

. . . accused of treason, of espionage, of terrorist intrigues, of intel-
ligence with the enemy, of collusion with the fascists, of monstrous, unin-
telligible and impossible crimes. They confessed everything; they accused
instead of defending themselves; they denounced each other and ardently
vindicated Stalin.20

All 16 of the defendants were condemned to death and executed.

Exactly six days after Stalin had executed Zinoviev, Kamenev and all
other defendants of the first trial, he ordered Yagoda and Yezhov to

■

Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., p. 154.

Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes (New York: Random
House, 1953), p. 328.

*° Boris Souvarine, Stalin (New York: Alliance Book Corp., Longmans, Green & Co.,
1939), p. 626.

196

select five thousand of the more active members of the former opposition,
who were being kept in concentration camps and in exile, and have them
executed in secret.21

During the trial Mikhail Tomski, another old companion of Lenin
and head of the Soviet trade unions, committed suicide.

The trial of the "Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Center" took place in January
1937. The defendants, Georgi Pyatakov, Karl Radek, Grigori Sokol-
nikov and 14 others, were accused of treason, espionage, diversion,
wrecking activities, and preparation of terroristic acts.

. . . Once more were served up the delirious ravings about Trotsky-
ism, fascism, terrorism, treason, espionage, backed up with charges of
industrial sabotage and incredible intrigues aiming to provoke a war and
the dismemberment of the U.S.S.R. Still there was no proof, no plausible
presumption even, no tangible evidence, no witness for the defence, and
no possible defence. Those accused of this new witchcraft admitted, as
if with pleasure, the worst villainies and the least probable crimes. Their
foreheads in the dust, they did not even spare their praises of the most
genial Stalin.22

Thirteen of the defendants were sentenced to death, three to 10 years*
imprisonment and one to 8 years' imprisonment.

In the flood of suicides that accompanied the purge, a number of
prominent Soviet leaders and writers took their lives, probably to avoid
trial, prison, and execution.

. . . Two weeks after the execution of Pyatakov, Assistant Commissar
for Industry, but the real head of his department, his immediate superior,
Ordjonikidze, nominal Commissar, suddenly died. . . .

. . . On the last day of May, Ian Gamarnik, Assistant Commissar for War,
and Director of the Political Department of the Army, committed
suicide.28

A secret trial of the highest ranking Red Army leaders followed.

... In June reverberated the thunderbolt which decapitated the
Genera] Staff and struck terror into the country: under the unheard-of
charge of espionage, under the ridiculous pretext of having "violated their
military oath, betrayed their country, betrayed the peoples of the U.S.S.R.,
betrayed the Red Army," Marshal Tukhachevsky, Generals Yakir, Kork,
ITborevich, Eideman, Feldman, Primakov and Putna, all well-known
"heroes of the Civil War," all several times decorated with the order of
the Red Flag, all classed as adversaries of Trotsky and partisans of Stalin,
were tried in camera, condemned to death without witnesses or defence,
and executed within forty-eight hours.24

"Orlov, op. cit.,p. 170.
" Souvarine, op. cit., p. 627.
M Ibid., pp. 628, 629.
" Ibid., p. 629,

197

In March 1938, the leaders of the Rightist Opposition were put on
trial; despite the fact that the Trotskyites had already been tried and
sentenced earlier, the new proceedings were called, for purely propa-
ganda reasons, the trial of the "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites." The
most important among the 2 1 defendants were Nikolai Bukharin, Aleksei
Rykov, Nikolai Krestinski, and Genrikh Yagoda.

. . . To the monstrosities of the other trials was added the novelty
of "medical assassination." Yagoda, bringing pressure to bear on the
doctors of the Kremlin, and having at his disposal a very special pharma-
ceutical laboratory, was alleged to have shortened the life of Menzhinsky,
his predecessor, of Kuibyshev, of Gorky and of Gorky's son, Peshkov.
With that crescendo which is indispensable to these repellant machinations
in order to avoid the monotony which would make them inefficacious, the
managers went so far as to accuse Bukharin of having attempted to assas-
sinate Lenin in 1918, and to accuse Trotsky of having been in intimate
contact with the [British] Intelligence Service since 1926 and with German
spies since 1921, the other accused being more or less accomplices.25

All but three of the defendants were sentenced to death and executed.

By the middle of 1938 most of the "first party secretaries" of the
Soviet provinces and the majority of the membership of the Central
Committee, along with

Many thousands of honest and innocent Communists have died as a
result of this monstrous fabrication of such "cases," as a result of the
fact that all kinds of slanderous "confessions" were accepted, and as a
result of the practice of forcing accusations against oneself and others.
In the same manner were fabricated the "cases" against eminent party
and state workers — Kossior, Chubar, Postyshev, Kosaryev, and others.26

The organs of state machinery suffered badly from the purges; had
they continued for another year, unprecedented chaos would have en-
gulfed the country. Stalin had to put an end to the wave of terror and
ease the pressure. In July 1938, Lavrenti Beria was appointed dep-
uty to Yezhov; in December of the same year he took over the NKVD.
Yezhov, removed to another post, soon disappeared; he was probably
executed.

Lavrenti Beria, like Stalin a Georgian, and an official of the secret
police since 1921, rose in the early 1930's to become secretary of the
Georgian Communist Party. While still in this post he published a
history of the Bolshevik movement in the Caucasus ; the book, which con-
tained many inaccuracies, was in its tone extremely servile to Stalin.
When Stalin decided to get rid of Yezhov, he turned to his admirer and
experienced secret police leader, Beria. Now

. . . Arrests grew fewer and fewer, and the incubus of fear that lay over
the people gradually grew less. The government must have realized that

■ Ibid., p. 633.

K Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. ciL, p. 154.

198

further progress down the same path would lead to complete catastrophe.
. . . The people were convinced that a new era had begun. Prisoners
were released by the thousands, and many were restored to their old posi-
tions or even promoted. The percentage of those released is difficult to
estimate. Among the educated class of prisoners, about which we are most
competent to form an opinion, it may have been anywhere from ten to fifty
per cent, including the majority of those who had not yet been sentenced."

During the years of the great purge special measures were taken by
the NKVD jjn. regard to its departments and personnel abroad. On the
one hand, officers working outside of Russia were recalled, to be purged
and frequently executed for alleged ties with foreign intelligence services.
On the other hand, the NKVD built up its "Mobile Groups" for
operations on foreign soil.

During the summer of 1937 about forty officers were recalled from abroad
on various pretexts. Of that number only five refused to walk into Yezhov's
trap and preferred to remain abroad. Among those who refused to return
to the Soviet Union were: Ignace Reiss, an underground Resident of the
NKVD, Walter Krivitsky, the Resident of the NKVD in Holland, and two
secret agents who were known in the NKVD under the pseudonyms of
Paul and Bruno.

• •**•*•

When Stalin received the report about the "betrayal" of Reiss, he ordered
Yezhov to dispatch men abroad with instructions to wipe out Reiss and
his wife and child. . . .

Immediately a "Mobile Group" from the Administration of Special
Tasks left Moscow for Switzerland, where Reiss was hiding. . . .

*******

About two months after the liquidation of Reiss, another operative of
the NKVD refused to return to Moscow. He was the NKVD Resident in
Holland, Walter Krivitsky, who until 1935 worked at the Intelligence Ad-
ministration of the Red Army. He abandoned his post in The Hague and
arrived in Paris with his wife and their little boy.

Yezhov immediately dispatched to Paris special agents from the "Mobile
Group" with orders to murder 'Krivitsky and his family. Krivitsky's days
were numbered, and he would not have lived till the end of the month if
the French Government had not provided him with a police bodyguard
and made a strong representation to the Kremlin.28

The Foreign Department of the NKVD had had its agencies abroad
since the early 1920's; the tasks of this department consisted mainly of
espionage, kidnaping, etc. Now, "punitive operations" on foreign soil
became more important.

* Beck and Godin, op. cit., pp. 38, 39.
■ Orlov, op. cit., pp. 225-227.

199

The secret department which organizes such operations outside the Soviet
Union was at that time headed by Colonel Serebriansky, a quiet stooping
man with a brilliant planning brain. Later it was directed by Sudoplatov.
. . . Khokhlov has reported that the direction of Trotsky's assassination,
and the training of Mornard [agent of the NKVD who killed Trotsky in
August 1940], was actually carried out by Serebriansky's deputy, Eitington,
whom I remember seeing at N.K.V.D. Headquarters in Moscow." 29

The "Mobile Group" carried out a number of assassinations abroad.
The most important of them, however, occurred after the end of the
great purge: the "liquidation" of Leon Trotsky in Mexico in August
1940.

"Vladimir and Evdokia Pctrov, Empire of Fear (New York: Frederick A. Praeger,
1956); p. 222.

Chapter VIII . The Era of the Soviet-German Pact

1. The New Soviet Areas

Events in the field of international relations since August 1 939, which
are discussed elsewhere in a companion volume, had their effect on
Russia's internal affairs as well. The Soviet-German pact of August 23,
1939, allegedly signed to enable Russia to stand away from wars, was
followed, 3 weeks later, by a Soviet military campaign in eastern Poland ;
military occupation of the Baltic states; a 3-months' war with Finland;
and, in the middle of 1940, a military occupation of Bessarabia and
Bukovina.

These operations were carried out with the consent of Germany. The
"anti-Fascist" slogans which had filled the Soviet press and Soviet
propaganda in preceding years were discarded.

. . . News about internal conditions in Germany disappeared from the
pages of Soviet newspapers and the Nazi neighbor was no longer an object
of criticism. Reporting assiduously the tragic economic conditions in the
belligerent and even neutral countries, Russian newspapers maintained a
strict silence on Germany. Occasionally Soviet magazines gave facts about
the activities of Communist parties in other countries, but almost nothing
about the German Communist party. Favorite slogans such as "war-
mongers" were aimed solely against Germany's enemies.1

The turn from "anti-fascism" to friendship with the "main Fascist
government" remained a puzzle for the Soviet population, since no
plausible and frank explanation could be offered and certainly the
secret agreements which actually provided for Soviet invasion of the
neighboring countries could not be divulged.

. . . Even in the ranks of the Soviet Communist party there was much
confusion. Few of its members were aware that the Kremlin had laid its
plans for a large-scale military and diplomatic campaign. Collaboration
with Germany was generally discounted. ... It was against these mute
inquiries that Molotov thundered when he denounced with scorn those
"people who refuse to see farther than their noses and who let themselves
be taken prisoner by mere anti-Fascist propaganda." 2

1 David J. Dallin, Soviet Russia's Foreign Policy 1939-1942 (New Haven: Vale Uni-
versify Press, 1942), p. 68.
'Ibid.

(200)

201

The Soviet economy was mobilized for war. The workday in industry
was lengthened; severe disciplinary measures — against absence from
work, for instance — were introduced. Reorganization of the military
forces was accelerated. A new law providing for general military serv-
ice, which was adopted on September 1, 1939, read in article 3:

All male citizens of the U.S.S.R., without distinction of race, nationality,
religion, education, social origin and status are obliged to serve in the
armed forces of the U.S.S.R.8

This regulation marked a substantial departure from the principles
of the initial Communist era, when "class origin" was to determine
whether a person should bear arms. At the same time, terms of service
were substantially increased.

The Soviet prisons and "corrective labor camps," which had lost
quantities of inmates since the fall of Yezhov, were partly filled up again
by deportees from newly occupied areas. In eastern Poland, the Baltic
states, and Bessarabia, the NKVD, arriving in the wake of the Red
Army, inaugurated a comprehensive purge, the purpose of which was
to eliminate from public life in the new areas those classes and political
groups which were nonexistent in Russia. (The only exception, in this
realinement of classes, were the "kulaks," whose time was to come — and
indeed did — years later.) NKVD instructions for Lithuania, for ex-
ample, provided for the elimination of the following:

(1) Members of Russian pre-revolutionary political parties: Socialist-
Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Trotskyites, Anarchists;

(2) Members of Lithuanian contemporary political parties: Nationalists,
Valdemarasites (pro-German), Peasants, Christian Democrats, University
Students — members of Student Organizations, Shaulisists [members of a
military organization for civilians];

(3) Members of the State Police, Gendarmerie, and Prison- War dens;

(4) Officers of the former Tsarist Army, and other anti-Bolshevik
Armies of 1918-1920;

(5) Officers and Military judges of the Polish and Lithuanian Armies;

(6) Volunteers to all non-Bolshevik Armies;

(7) Persons removed from the Communist Party;

(8) Refugees, political Emigres, re-Emigres, and Smugglers;

(9) Citizens of Foreign States, representatives of Foreign Firms, etc.;

(10) Persons who had travelled abroad; who were in contact with rep-
resentatives of foreign powers; who were Esperantists and Philatelists;

(11) Officials of Lithuanian Ministries;

( 12) The Red Cross staff and Refugees from Poland;

(13) Persons active in local religious Organizations; Clergymen and
Secretaries, and "active members of religious communities";

'Istoriya Sovetskoi Konstitutsii (v Dokumentakh) 1917-56 (History of the
Soviet Constitution (in Documents) 1917-56) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
Izdatelstvo Yuridicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for Juridical Liter-
ature), 1957), p. 805.

202

(14) Aristocrats, Landowners, wealthy Merchants, Bankers, Industrial-
ists, Hotel and Restaurant Proprietors.4

The operations were guided from Moscow. On June 4, 1941, Ivan
Serov (later head of the Committee for State Security), in his then
capacity of Deputy Commissar of State Security, gave instructions to
the local agencies :

The operation should be commenced at daybreak. Upon entering the

home of the person to be banished, the senior member of the operative

group should gather the entire family of the deportee into one room,

taking all necessary precautionary measures against any possible excesses.

*******

The conveyance of the deportees from the villages to the gathering place
at the railway station should by all means be done in daylight; moreover,
efforts should be made that the gathering of each family should take not
more than two hours.

In all cases throughout the operations firm and decisive action should
be taken, without the slightest pomposity, noise and panic.

*******

In view of the fact that a large number of deportees must be arrested
and placed in special camps and their families settled at special points in
distant regions, it is necessary to execute the operation of deporting both
the members of his family as well as the deportee simultaneously, without
informing them of the separation confronting them.5

. . . About 25 per cent of the deported were sentenced by the NKVD to
labor camps, while the rest went to special migrants' settlements.6

No exact figures on the size of the operation have been revealed.
As far as Poland was concerned, one source estimated

. . . the number of persons deported as a result of sentences and as
"ordinary" deportees at 880,000; that of persons recruited for labor in the
USSR at 20,000; and that of prisoners of war captured in 1939 at 180,000;
i.e., a total of 1,080,000. Other Polish sources estimate the total of deportees
from Polish provinces somewhat higher, at 1,470,000, of whom the special
migrants accounted for 990,000, prisoners in labor camps for 250,000, and
Polish prisoners of war for 230,000.T

The operation in the Baltic states, carried out somewhat later, had
not been entirely completed when Germany attacked Russia in June
1941.

* Elma Dangerfield, Beyond the Urals (London: British League for European Free-
dom, n.d.), p. 89. The original lists of groups to be eliminated, revealed by the
Lithuanian Bulletin, New York, in 1946-49, contain scores of categories of suspects,
counter-revolutionists, etc.

*As quoted in Lithuanian Bulletin, New York, vol. IV, No. 1, January 1946,
pp. 25, 29, 31.

6 David J. Dallin and Boris I. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), p. 263.

T Ibid., pp. 263, 264.

203

It is a matter of public record that during one night alone, June 14, 1941,
more than 30,000 Lithuanians were seized in a manhunt of titanic propor-
tions and deported to the Russian wasteland. The same night, scores of
thousands were seized and deported from Latvia and Estonia. According
to an estimate based on evidence gathered by the Lithuanian Red Cross,
Lithuania during the first Soviet occupation suffered a total manpower loss
of 65,000 persons, most of whom were deported. Several hundred met
death outright, among them 16 R.G. [Roman Catholic] priests. The man-
power losses of other Baltic States reach approximately 62,000 for Latvia,
and 61,000 for Estonia.

The number of executed in Latvia and Estonia is approximately 1,500
for Latvia (mostly army officers), and 1,800 for Estonia. The number of
deported from Estonia reaches 55,000, including many members of Estonian
armed forces.8

Among the prisoners of war taken during the Polish operation and
among those arrested in the Baltic states were thousands of officers of the
national armies. In Stalin's view, these officers, who embodied the idea
of national independence, represented a special menace to the new powers
and had to be liquidated summarily. Army officers constituted the
majority of those executed in Latvia (total 1,500) and Estonia (total
1,800). The executions of Polish officers, when disclosed many years
later, created an international uproar known as the Katyn affair.

During its invasion of western Poland, the Red Army rounded up
250,000 prisoners of war. The officers captured were placed in three
camps in Russia.

. . . Between November, 1939, and the spring of 1940, the Kozielsk camp
held 4,500 officers and cadet officers; Starobielsk held 3,920 officers and
cadet officers; and Ostashkov held approximately 6,500 officers, military
police, frontier guards, and policemen.®

Of the total of about 15,000 prisoners in these camps, only 400 survived.
The bodies of those murdered in the Katyn forest were discovered in
1943.

Without exception all the victims whose bodies were found in the Katyn
graves were shot through the back of the head, an almost official Russian
form of liquidation. About two hundred fifty of the bodies had their hands
tied behind their backs. The heads of others had been covered with their
overcoats before the shootings. The ropes were Russian made. The men
were killed by German revolvers, manufactured by Gustav Genschow and
Company between 1922 and 1931. The guns were of a type exported to
Russia and to the Baltic States.10

* Lithuanian Bulletin, New York, vol. IV, No. 1, January 1946, p. 17.

• Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, The Rape of Poland (New York: Whittlesey House,
McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1948), p. 33.

10 Ibid., pp. 34,35.

204

The report of an investigation conducted in 1952 by a Select Com-
mittee of the United States House of Representatives stated :

This committee unanimously finds, beyond any question of reasonable
doubt, that the Soviet NKVD (Peoples' Commissariat of Internal Affairs)
committed the mass murders of the Polish officers and intellectual leaders
in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia.11

Facts revealed after the war proved that

The executions were led by six Russian officers of the NKVD at Minsk:
Lew Rybak, Chaim Fineberg, Abraham Bonsovich, Boris Kutsov, Ivan
Siekanov and Osip Lisak. In charge of the whole operation was a NKVD
leader from Moscow by name of Burianov. ... In each and every case
the victims were shot in the neck while standing on the edge of the mass-
graves into which they then were being pushed. In most cases one shot
had been sufficient, but some corpses showed skull injuries from two or
even three shots. The prisoners' hands had been tied behind their backs,
and stab wounds on many of the corpses by the typical Russian bayonets
indicate that while being brought to their death, many of the victims had
tried to offer resistance. Many had fractured jaws and other skull injuries
from blows by pistol butts.12

As a result of military and semimilitary operations along her western
frontiers in 1939-40, Russia's territory and population were substantially
increased. Between March and August 1940, the Supreme Soviet added
5 new republics to the 11 which, according to the constitution of 1936,
were then union members. This aggrandizement of the Soviet state was
the first since the end of the civil war in 1920. The new territories and
their populations were as follows : From Poland

. . . The U.S.S.R. received in all 76,500 square miles, with a population
of 12,800,000. Of these more than 7,000,000 were Ukrainians, 3,000,000
White Russians, more than a million Poles, and about a million Jews.13

The three Baltic republics

. . . embraced a territory of 61,185 square miles, with a total population
of 5,900,000—2,800,000 in Lithuania, 1,950,000 in Latvia, and 1,120,000
in Estonia.14

Bessarabia had a territory of 17,146 square miles and a population
of 3,200,000. Along with Bessarabia, the Soviet Union acquired north-
ern Bukovina, a territory of about 2,300 square miles and a population
of 500,000, from Rumania. Northern Bukovina was the first case of

" House Select Committee To Conduct an Investigation and Study of the Facts,
Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre, Interim Report (H. Rept.
2430), 82d Cong. 2d sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952),
p. 28.

12 Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, February 13, 1948, as quoted in The New Leader,
vol. XXXII, No. 38, Special Sec. (September 17, 1949), p. S-4.

" Dallin, Soviet Russia's Foreign Policy 1939-1942, p. 75.

"Ibid., p. 259.

205

incorporation into the Soviet Union of a country that had never be-
longed to Russia.

A total of about 23 million in population was added to the 170 mil-
lion of the Soviet Union, an increase of 13.5 percent. The realinement
of the new territories to bring the western areas into the political and
economic system prevailing in the rest of the Soviet Union was pushed
with force. As one of the first political operations, elections were held
everywhere in the new areas in accordance with the usual pattern of
voting in totalitarian countries; the Communist parties, small and weak
only a few months before, came out as the recognized leaders of the
people.

Total of

ballots
cast

Percent of
ballots cast
in relation
to eligible
votes

Total of votes

cast for the

"Union of

Toiling

People"

Percentage

of all votes

cast

Lithuania

1, 386, 569

1, 179, 649

591, 030

95.5
94.7
81.6

1, 375, 349

1,151,730

548, 631

92.2

97.6

is 92. 9

The elections in eastern Poland, which at this stage was divided
between the Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Belorussia, yielded a similar
result.

... In Western Ukraine 4,434,000, or 92.9 per cent of the eligible voters
participated in the elections. The official candidates approved by Moscow
ran on a single ticket as the "candidates of social organizations" and re-
ceived 90.9 per cent of the total vote cast. Thus 9 per cent of the voters
opposed the official candidates — a proportion which is not negligible under
the conditions. The picture is similar in White Russia, where 2,672,000 —
96.7 per cent of the voters — participated in the elections. The official
candidates received 90.7 per cent of the total vote cast, with 9 per cent
voting against them.16

In Moldavia the result was even better.

. . . 99.62 per cent of the voters took part in the elections; over 99
per cent voted for the candidates of the bloc of Communist and non-party

men

1S Ibid., p. 257. The "Union of Toiling People" was a puppet of the Communist
parties.

"Ibid., -p. 75.

"Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (Large Soviet Encyclopedia) (2nd ed.;
Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Nauchnoe Izdatelstvo "Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklope-
diya" (State Scientific Publishing House "The Large Soviet Encyclopedia")), vol.
XXVIII (1954), p. 91.

68491 O-61-vol. 11—14

206

How erroneous these pro-Soviet statistics were soon became clear.
When German armies invaded the newly acquired western areas of the
Soviet Union, they found far more sympathy and help than they would
had the political orientation of the people been what the Soviet
government pretended it was.

2. The Military Forces

After 18 years of peace along Russia's frontiers, the Red Army's
hour struck anew in 1939. In the almost two decades which had
passed since the Soviet-Polish war, it had undergone considerable change
and the last vestiges of visionary Communist experimentation gave
way to a prosaic, realistic approach. The general view of the army
as a tool for the transformation of the world on a Communist basis
was maintained, however, and even accentuated.

Stalin's "Three Distinctive Features of the Red Army," formulated
in 1928, were still taught and memorized as the quintessence of Soviet
ideology in respect to its armed forces. The first two "features" stressed
the army's position inside Russia.

The first fundamental distinctive feature of our Red Army is that it
is the army of the liberated workers and peasants, it is the army of the
October revolution, the army of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
*******

A second distinctive feature of our Red Army is that it is an army of
brotherhood among the nations of our country, an army of the liberation
of the oppressed nations of our country, an army of defence of the liberty
and independence of the nations of our country.18

The third "distinctive feature" hinted at the ties between the interna-
tional Communist movement and the Red Army.

Finally, the third distinctive feature of the Red Army is that the spirit of
internationalism is trained and fostered in our army. . . . And precisely
because our army is trained in the spirit of internationalism, trained to
understand that the interests of the workers of all countries are one,
precisely for this reason our army is an army of the world revolution, of the
workers of all countries.19

Future Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevski was even more explicit:
"Imperialist wars," he wrote, will be turned into "civil wars," while the

w J. V. Stalin, "Three Distinctive Features of the Red Army," Speech Delivered
February 25, 1928 at a Plenum of the Moscow Soviet Held in Honor of the Tenth
Anniversary of the Red Army, Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1952-55), vol. XI (1945), pp. 25, 27.

,B Stalin, in Pravda, February 28, 1928, p. 3. The words "of the world revolution"
in the last sentence were quietly eliminated in later editions of this speech, as Stalin
started to emphasize the national essence of his army. Needless to say, this was a
tactical maneuver.

207

Red Army will serve as a weapon of "international solidarity of the
proletariat,"

The political work conducted by the All-Russian Communist Party in
the Red Army makes it a powerful tool of international solidarity of the
proletariat. ... As the war of the imperialists against the Soviet Union
develops, it will change from an imperialist into a civil war. . . .

. . . The parliamentary system, coupled with a sharp class struggle, will
have to face a unified and single Communist Party which embodies the
dictatorship of the proletariat.20

Most definite was the programatic statement of Lev Mekhlis, chief of
the political administration of the Red Army, made before the Eight-
eenth Congress of the Communist Party in March 1939 (a statement
that could not have been made without the prior approval of Stalin) :

... If the edge of the second imperialist war should be turned against
the first socialist state in the world, we must carry military hostilities into
the enemy's territory, perform our international duty and increase the num-
ber of Soviet republics. . . ,Z1

This program, announced a few months before the start of the war
with Germany, described the aims of the Soviet government in the era
of conflict to come.

The role of the Red Army as fosterer of the socialist revolution was
part of the general view of the forthcoming "inevitable" military conflict
that would be waged against the Soviet Union. Convinced that the
great majority of the workers of the Western countries sympathized with
and supported Soviet Russia and her policy, Russian Communists ex-
pected that an attempt on the part of a Western Power, Germany for
instance, to attack Russia would provoke an uprising against the gov-
ernment of that power, which would be followed by the establishment
of a Communist or pro-Communist regime. Communist power would
be achieved in the West, it was thought, not so much by Soviet arms as by
popular revolutions. The war

... is sure to unleash revolution and jeopardise the very existence of
capitalism in a number of countries, as happened in the course of the first
imperialist war.22

*° Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (Large Soviet Encyclopedia) (1st ed.;
Moscow: Aktsionernoe Obshchestvo "Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya" (The Soviet En-
cyclopedia Joint-Stock Co.)), vol. XII (1928), p. 597. See M. Tukhachevski's
article on war.

a K. Voroshilov, L. Mekhlis, S. Budyonny, G. Stern, The Red Army Today, Speeches
Delivered at the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU (B), March 10-21, 1939 (Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1939), p. 42.

M Stalin, "Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central
Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.)" (January 26, 1934), Works, vol. XIII (1955),
p. 300.

208

Of all possible wars, Stalin said, the most dangerous "for the bour-
geoisie" would be a war against the Soviet Union. Such a war

. . . would be the most dangerous war, not only because the peoples of
the U.S.S.R. would fight to the death to preserve the gains of the revolu-
tion; it would be the most dangerous war for the bourgeoisie for the added
reason that it would be waged not only at the fronts, but also in the enemy's
rear. The bourgeoisie need have no doubt that the numerous friends of
the working class of the U.S.S.R. in Europe and Asia will endeavour to
strike a blow in the rear at their oppressors v/ho have launched a criminal
war against the fatherland of the working class of all countries. And let
not Messieurs the bourgeoisie blame us if some of the governments near
and dear to them, which today rule happily "by the grace of God," are
missing on the morrow after such a war. . . .

... It can hardly be doubted that a second war against the U.S.S.R.
will lead to the complete defeat of the aggressors, to revolution in a number
of countries in Europe and in Asia, and to the destruction of the bourgeois-
landlord governments in those countries.

*******

But while the bourgeoisie chooses the path of war, the working class in
the capitalist countries, brought to despair by four years of crisis and unem-
ployment, is beginning to take the path of revolution.23

The threat of a social revolution as the outcome of war, which was to
convince "capitalist regimes" that they should not attack Russia, was
coupled with another threat — the military prowess of the Soviet Union.
In this respect exaggeration verged on an immoderate boasting that was
hardly appropriate in the face of Germany's known superiority in every
area of war preparation. The Soviet line of propaganda was two-fold :

First, no enemy would be permitted to invade Soviet soil; no sooner
would the enemy attack than his forces would be thrown back and the
devastating war would be fought on his own soil.

More than once [said Kliment Voroshilov] have I stated and want here
to say again . . . that if the enemy should attack the Soviet Union, Soviet
Byelorussia or any other part of the Union, we not only won't let the enemy
into the bounds of our fatherland, but will beat him on the territory whence
he came. . . .

... all toilers must educate themselves in such a sense, must organize
the defence of our fatherland so that when the enemy appears, he must be
beaten on his territory without fail.24

83 Ibid., pp. 303, 304.

w K. E. Voroshilov, "S.S.S.R.— Oplot Mira vo Vscm Mire" (The USSR— Bulwark
of Peace in the Whole World), Speech Delivered September 16, 1936 at a meeting in
Kiev, in Voroshilov, Statii i Rechi (Articles and Speeches) (Moscow: Partizdat (Party
Publishing House), 1936), p. 656.

209

On another occasion, Voroshilov, at that time People's Commissar
for Defense, said:

... At present, when our strength is ten-fold, we don't even ask
the question whether we will defeat the enemy or not. We certainly
will. . . . The question is a different one: what price, what effort, what
sacrifice will the victory demand? / personally think — and so does Com'
rade Stalin, so does Comrade Ordzhonikidze, the whole of the Central
Committee and the government — that we must vanquish the enemy, if he
dares to attack us, with little blood-letting, with a minimum of expenditure
in means and the least possible loss of life of our glorious fighters.™

Second, the Soviet regime tried to convince the nation, as well as the
other powers, that its arms and military preparation in general were
superior to those of any other country. Since about 1936-37 this
pretense had been built up into a consistent propaganda line. Report-
ing to the Supreme Soviet on the progress made by Soviet military forces
during the decade 1930 to 1939, Voroshilov boasted:

Comparing the ten-year progress of the fighting techniques of the Red
Army and the Red Navy, we get the following picture :

As to tanks — we had in 1930, 100 per cent; now — I am embarrassed
to give the figures, therefore I won't give the percentage, but will say
how many times we have increased — we have forty-three times as many
tanks. . . .

As to airplanes — in 1930, 100 per cent; now, 656 per cent, i.e., a 6.5-fold
increase.

As to heavy, medium and light artillery — in 1930, 100 per cent; now,
692 per cent, or nearly seven times more.

As to small-caliber anti-tank and tank-artillery, against 100 per cent
in 1930, we have now seventy times more.

Submachine guns and machine guns — instead of 100 per cent in 1930
we have now 539 per cent, or almost a 5.5-fold increase.

Mechanical horsepower in relation to number of soldiers amounted to
3.07 in 1930. At present it is . . . fully 13 per soldier.

The tonnage of the Red Navy has increased from 100 per cent in 1930
to 130 per cent at present, i.e., we have now 230 per cent.26

B Voroshilov, "Za Moshchnoe Stakhanovskoe Dvizhenie v Strane i Krasnoi Armii"
(For a Powerful Stakhanov Movement in the Country and Red Army), Speech Deliv-
ered November 17, 1935 at the All-Union Conference of Workers and Working-
Women Stakhanovites, in Statii i Rechi, p. 641.

" Doklad Voroshilova na Vneocherednoi Chetvertoi Sessii Verkhovnogo Sovetc
. . . 31 Augusta 1939 goda, O Prokte Zakona o Vseobschchei Voinskoi Obyazan-
nosti (Report by Voroshilov to the Extraordinary Fourth Session of the Supreme
Soviet, August 31, 1939, On the Project of a Law on General Conscription)
(Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing
House for Political Literature), 1939), pp. 6, 7.

210

Addressing the Eighteenth Congress of the Communist Party in
March 1939, Voroshilov compared the equipment of the Soviet Union
with that of the two foremost military machines of the time, the German
and the French, and arrived at the conclusion that the Soviet Union
was stronger:

The aggregate artillery salvo of a French rifle corps (consisting of three
divisions) is 6,373 kilograms; that of a German rifle corps of the same
composition — 6,078 kilograms. The aggregate artillery salvo of a Red
Army rifle corps is 7,136 kilograms. . . .

Consequently, the artillery salvo of our rifle corps is heavier than that
of a German or French corps.

Further, the weight of shells that can be fired per minute by the rifle
corps mentioned is: French — 51,462 kilograms, and German — 48,769 kilo-
grams. Our rifle corps can deliver 66,605 kilograms of metal per
minute. . . .

In addition to artillery, a corps is equipped with rifles, machine guns,
mortars, grenade-guns, and the like, which increases the total weight of
metal that can be hurled by a corps per minute.

If we add together the weight of shells, mines, rifle grenades and bullets
that can be delivered per minute, we get the following figures:

French corps « — „ 60, 981 kilograms

German corps 59, 509 "

Our corps * 78, 932 "

If the situation were as Voroshilov described it, then he was entitled
to make his far-reaching pledge — a pledge that was put to the test 2
years later:

A pledge that the enemy will be crushed and destroyed at short order
is the political and moral unity of the Red Army with the entire Soviet
people. . . .

A pledge is the fact that our Workers' and Peasants' Red Army is a
rirst-class army, better than any other army, an army that is technically
equipped and splendidly trained.88

We shall see later 29 how grossly misleading these exaggerated state-
ments were and how harmful was the delusion — or pretense — of mili-
tary superiority over all potential enemies.

3. On the Eve of the War

The gradual relinquishing of initial illusions and fantasies about a
"new" military system to be created in the Soviet Union narrowed the
gaps between the Red Army on the one hand and the earlier Russian

■ Voroshilov, Mekhlis, Budyonny, Stern, op. cit., p. 17.

■ Ibid., p. 37.

* See pp. 218-220, 244-246.

211

types of armies and those of other military powers on the other. Not
all the gaps, however, were closed and important differences still existed
when the new era of war began in 1939.

Abolished and almost forgotten were the Bolshevik "red guards,"
voluntary detachments of troops organized by Lenin's party prior to and
during the Bolshevik seizure of power. The childish notion of a
"proletarian army" which had inspired the Bolshevik leadership for
many years was likewise found deficient. There had been in circulation

. . . odd theories about the special "proletarian military science"
which was held to be infinitely superior to its bourgeois counterparts; about
revolutionary armies whose artillery fire of a small weight of metal was
more destructive than the heavier artillery fire of its bourgeois opponents;
about the new form of relations between officers and soldiers. Many
Soviet enthusiasts were infected by these naivetes before they learned to
be practical and realistic.30

As "industrialization" progressed, it was found more reasonable to
base the military system on guns, planes, and destroyers rather than on
"proletarian spirit"; the Red Army turned to regular training with
new weapons. Military reconnaissance abroad in the field of pertinent
inventions was fostered. Lenin's dream and promise of building up a
territorial system of a small armed force like that of Switzerland had
gradually given way to the old pattern of a large, regular, centralized
army.

The territorial system, as the basis of our army, began to conflict with
the defensive requirements of the state. . . .

*******

As a consequence, it was found necessary to abolish the territorial system
as the structural basis of our army and to adopt the cadre system exclusively.
Today our whole army is uniformly built on the cadre principle. . . .31

Equality of soldiers and officers, another remnant of the revolutionary
era, had become a pretense in the new army, and between 1935 and
1940 even the pretense was discarded. Military ranks, which had ear-
lier been abolished,32 were reinstated:

. . . For the first time military ranks for all commanders of the military
forces were introduced in the U.S.S.R. by the decision of the Central Execu-
tive Committee and the Council of People's Gommissars of the U.S.S.R. of
September 22, 1935. By the same decision the rank of Marshal of the
Soviet Union was introduced; this rank is personally awarded by the
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. for outstanding services
in leadership of the army. The ranks of general and admiral for the
highest command of the Soviet Army and Navy were introduced by the

"Dallin, Russia and Postwar Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943),
P-22.
" Voroshilov, Mekhlis, Budyonny and Stern, op. eit., pp. 14, 13.
" See p. 74.

212

decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. on May 7,
1940.33

A new system of orderlies for military personnel was introduced.
Privileges of officers 34 were emphasized. To maintain and increase army
discipline, a number of measures were initiated and punishment for
offenses was made more severe. Differentiation of social status as be-
tween privates and officers, as it had existed before the revolution, was
again developing rapidly.

In two critical fields, however, the Soviet army retained important
vestiges of its Communist past and present. Because the Soviet gov-
ernment had never had full confidence in the loyalty of the hundreds
of thousands of peasants conscripted into the army, and especially of
its officers' corps, it surrounded this military force with a system of tight
control and checking; the aim was to subordinate the army, under
all circumstances, to the leadership of the Communist party, to prevent
any move toward independence in even purely military matters.

The army was surrounded, penetrated and controlled by two net-
works, one connected with the Central Committee of the Communist
party and the other with the NKVD, the secret police.

In order to ensure the loyalty of the Soviet armed forces the Party leader-
ship has developed a complex but highly integrated system of controls
which penetrates every aspect of army life. The system is composed of
two parallel hierarchies which operate independently of the military com-
mand. One, which may be called political, consists of the political workers
and the network of Party and Komsomol organizations in the Red Army.
It performs the function of infusing the army with Party spirit and posi-
tive indoctrination and agitation. The other, which may be described as
punitive, consists of security organs of the MVD,35 whose duties are to root
out disaffection and disloyalty in the army.30

The Central Committee of the party had a special department, the
so-called PUR (Political Administration of the Red Army), which had
existed since the civil war days. Its agents in the military units were
the "commissars" (or "military commissars") assigned to keep an eye
on the morale of the officers and men as well as take care of political
propaganda and the enlightenment of the military units.

The system of commissars was always a source of irritation and conflict
in the Red Army. Interference with and spying on commanders by

83 BolshayaSovetskaya Entsiklopsdiya, (2d ed.), vol. XVI (1952), p. 538.

84 The term "officer," however, was not officially reintroduced until 1943.

"The NKVD was renamed MVD in 1946. However, descriptions of the secret
police activities of the MVD on these pages apply to the period before and after the
war. For a detailed account of the various reorganizations of the Soviet secret
police apparatus, see ch. XI, p. 310, note 106.

** Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1953), pp. 408, 409.

213

incompetent persons endowed only with the confidence of the party
aroused resentment and had a bad effect on army morale. It lowered
the prestige of the commanding personnel and destroyed the initiative
essential to the proper prosecution of military operations. For these
reasons, in 1924 the system of commissars was substantially curtailed
and in many cases commissars were abolished altogether. The principle
of "single command" (officer alone) partly won out over "collegiate
control" (officer plus commissar). During the Great Purge, however,
when the conflict between party and army became aggravated, the
authority of the commissars was restored. A decree of August 15, 1937,
approved a system of military commissars which made commissars
coequal with commanding army personnel in both military and political
matters.

The activity of the commissars, unlike that of commissars in the initial
Soviet years, was directed against an officer corps which was in large
part Communist.

. . . By 1931, 51 per cent of all Red Army officers were Communists.
By 1934, the proportion of Party members had risen to 68.3 per cent. In
the higher strata of the officer corps, Party saturation was even more im-
pressive. By 1928, 53.6 per cent of all regimental commanders, 71.9 per
cent of all divisional commanders, and 100 per cent of all corps command-
ers were Party members.87

These high-ranking Communists were subjected to continuous screen-
ing and denunciation.

The growth in numbers of the political personnel was very rapid. In
the period from 1934 to 1939 it had increased from about 15,000 to 34,000,
or by 126 per cent. During the Civil War, in November 1918 there were
only 6,389 political workers in the army.88

The second Soviet lever for ensuring the loyalty and obedience of the
army was the ramified network of police agencies inside the military
units.

. . . The MVD [police] organization in the armed forces parallels the
military and political hierarchy and maintains its own independent chain
of command. All military installations and military formations down
through the battalion have their attached Special Sections, which are offi-
cered by MVD personnel especially chosen to keep an eagle eye open for
the slightest sign of disaffection in the armed forces. As elsewhere in
Soviet society, the MVD officialdom operates through a system of informers
who are strategically placed in each military unit. Denunciations are
encouraged, and incoming and outgoing mail of army personnel is periodi-
cally examined. MVD control is applied to the officer corps as well as to
the rank-and-file, to Party as well as non-Party personnel. Dossiers are
maintained on all members of the armed forces, and personal-history files

"Ibid., p. 401.

K D. Fedotoff White. The Growth of ths Red Army (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1944), p. 399.

214

are thoroughly checked for any evidence of past anti-Soviet activity. Pro-
motions depend on clearance from the special sections.89

The activity of these "Special Sections" of the secret police in military
units (known as OO's — Osobye Oidely — though they went through
changes of name and were subject to constant reshuffling) was a source
of antagonism between army and government. The army, despite the
proud position outwardly accorded it, in fact was a target of spying and
purges.

The GB has always had the right to "screen" all other Soviet agencies, re-
cruit informers from among their personnel, and plant its own men in them
whenever it deemed this necessary. When it suspects disloyalty it makes
arrests and metes out punishment. The Army has been no exception, and
its units are permeated with GB informers. . . . The Army does not have
equal rights with the GB; it cannot penetrate GB units or watch them, nor
can it arrest, try, or punish. It has always been subjected to terrorism
without having the right to take countermeasures. Clandestine military
agents daily risking their lives in underground work abroad live under the
relentless, harassing vigil of the rival agency.40

The NKVD was itself a huge military machine; in particular it had
command over a special and privileged army designated for "internal
security" operations. It, too, was an antagonist of the regular army.

As a result of the conflicts, tensions and purges, the commanding ele-
ments of the Soviet army were decimated, the level of military knowledge
and ability was lowered and the combat force of the military machine
was substantially reduced.

. . . According to "Pravda" of July 3, 1938, it often happens that junior
lieutenants are in command of companies; frequently junior lieutenants
who have just finished military school occupy posts as chiefs of staff of bat-
talions. ... In June [1938] Voroshilov issued an order accelerating the
promotion to the rank of junior lieutenants of 10,000 students of military
schools who were not to have graduated until October.

The order was motivated by the need to have those junior officers take
over command in the fall maneuvers. . . .

. . . Last summer the higher military schools in Kiev and Kharkov had
to close temporarily because up to 80 per cent of their teacher personnel
had been arrested. Only a few specialists of the Tsarist army remained.
A part of those appointed to replace the arrested were found absolutely
unqualified. . . .

The reinstatement of commissars further aggravated the atmosphere of
distrust and mutual fear. . . . The Soviet press mentions cases which

88 Fainsod, op. cit., p. 413.

"Dallin, Soviet Espionage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), pp. 5, 6.
(Note: The GB is used here as a general descriptive term for the secret police ap-
paratus. GB is an abbreviation of the Russian words gosudarstvennaya bezopasnost,
meaning state security.)

215

prove that the commissars, by their ignorance in military matters, often
impede the normal course of military service.41

The Soviet government and press, however, vigorously denied that
the combat force of the Red Army had suffered from the purge. Not
until 1956 was this officially acknowledged:

Very grievous consequences, especially in reference to the beginning of
the war followed Stalin's annihilation of many military commanders and
political workers during 1937-1941 because of his suspiciousness and
through slanderous accusations. During these years repressions were insti-
tuted against certain parts of military cadres beginning literally at the com-
pany and battalion commander level and extending to the higher military
centers; during this time the cadre of leaders who had gained military ex-
perience in Spain and in the Far East was almost completely liquidated.
*******

... we had before the war excellent military cadres which were un-
questionably loyal to the party and to the Fatherland. Suffice it to say
that those of them who managed to survive despite severe tortures to which
they were subjected in the prisons, have from the first war days shown
themselves real patriots and heroically fought for the glory of the Father-
land; I have here in mind such comrades as Rokossovsky (who, as you
know, had been jailed), Gorbatov, Maretskov (who is a delegate at the
present Congress), Podlas (he was an excellent commander who perished
at the front), and many, many others. However, many such commanders
perished in camps and jails and the Army saw them no more.42

The first test of its combat force came when the Soviet army attacked
Finland in November 1939. Despite the improved technique and
greater size of its forces, the Red Army's showing was a poor one.48

No sooner had the war with Finland ended than a revision of the mili-
tary set-up was inaugurated ; a number of military reforms were carried
out and the commissars were again abolished.

Experience during the Finnish War, stated Marshal Semen Timoshenko,
teaches us that our method of training Red Army men and commanders was
altogether wrong. Our Red Army is equipped with a first-class technique;
our people are loyal to their country to the very end. But we shall be able
to win battles with a minimum sacrifice of blood only when we learn to
master our technique.44

Therefore

. . . With the replacement of Voroshilov as People's Commissar of De-
fense by Marshal Timoshenko, the army reverted to unity of command.

tt Erich Wollenberg, "Krasnaya Armiya Pcsle 'Chistki' " (The Red Army After
"The Purge"), Russkie Zapiski (Russian Annals), Paris, January 1939, pp. 179-181.

**Nikita S. Khrushchev, "Secret Report," Delivered February 24, 25, 1956 at the
Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, printed in Bertram
G. Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost (London: Atlantic Press, 1957), pp. 174,
176.

tt See also ch. IX.

** Pravda, October 15, 1940, p. 1.

216

The decree of August 12, 1940, abolished the political commissars and re-
placed them with Assistant Commanders for Political Affairs (zampolits) ,
whose sphere of action was limited largely to political propaganda and
education.45

It was a half-hearted reform; there was inconsistency in the govern-
ment's attitude toward its army.

. . . The Party leadership was not ready to interpret unity of command
as meaning that the Party abandoned its supervision of the armed forces.
Although military initiative and leadership were stimulated by the abroga-
tion of the requirement that orders of the commander required the com-
missar's countersignature, the political workers still functioned as the Party's
eyes and ears in the army. The officer corps remained conscious of their
presence and of the authority which they represented.*6

The setbacks suffered by the Soviet army during the first phase of the
war with Germany were partly due to this system.

In the 5 years preceding the outbreak of the war the Red Army had
grown in size to become numerically one of the largest armies in the
world, if not the largest. In 1934 its size was increased from 562,000 to
940,000. In 1935 it reached 1,300,000; in addition there were about
150,000 men in the NKVD troops and 100,000 in the frontier guards.
By 1939 the number of rifle divisions had grown to 290 and the strength
of a division had been increased from 13,000 to 18,000 men. Terms of
military service were extended, as we have seen.47

In 1939, before the outbreak of the German-Polish war, the Red
Army had a strength of over 5 million men. On September 7 of that
year an order was issued for mobilization in the Ukraine, Belorussia
and four other military districts.48

Apart from the Red Army, there was growing the little publicized
Osoaviakhim (Society for the Defense of the Soviet Union and for the
Development of its Aviation and Chemical Industries) , a mass organiza-
tion for civil defense and military training on the basis of new military-
technical achievements. Ostensibly a voluntary society, it was actually
a subsidiary of the Red Army.

... By October 1, 1927, it embraced 2,950,000 persons. Two years later
it had almost doubled reaching 5,100,000 members. In 1931 there were
1 1,000,000. . . ,49

Every Komsomolets (member of the Communist Youth League) had
to join the Osoaviakhim. In 1939, on the eve of the war, over 12,000,-
000 members were enrolled.

48 Fainsod, op. cit., p. 407.
48 Ibid.

"Seep. 201.

*" White, op. cit., p. 359. Also: Dallin, Soviet Russia's Foreign Policy 1939-1942,
p. 67.

" White, op. cit., p. 209.

217

These high numerical levels were maintained throughout the period
of Soviet-German friendship. The army's technical equipment, how-
ever, contrary to the boastful statements of its leadership, was poor.
Soviet Premier Khrushchev later admitted that —

Soviet science and technology produced excellent models of tanks and
artillery pieces before the war. But mass production of all this was not
organized, and, as a matter of fact, we started to modernize our military
equipment only on the eve of the war.

As a result, at the time of the enemy's invasion of the Soviet land, we
did not have sufficient quantities either of old machinery which was no
longer used for armament production or of new machinery which we had
planned to introduce into armament production.

The situation with antiaircraft artillery was especially bad; we did not
organize the production of antitank ammunition. . . .

... At the outbreak of the war we did not even have sufficient numbers
of rifles to arm the mobilized manpower.30

Due to Stalin's policy "not to provoke" the Germans, fortification of
Soviet borders was likewise inadequate. General Kirponos, chief of the
Kiev military district, had —

. . . proposed that a strong defense be organized, that 300,000 people be
evacuated from the border areas and that several strong points be organ-
ized there: antitank ditches, trenches for the soldiers, etc.

Moscow answered this proposition with the assertion that this would
be a provocation, that no preparatory defensive work should be undertaken
at the borders, that the Germans were not to be given any pretext for the
initiation of military action against us. Thus, our borders were insufficiently
prepared to repel the enemy.51

Even after numerous warnings from Soviet sources abroad as well
as from foreign government quarters — in particular London and Wash-
ington— about the imminence of a German invasion of Russia, Stalin
refused to take the necessary measures:

Despite these particularly grave warnings, the necessary steps were not
taken to prepare the country properly for defense and to prevent it from
being caught unawares.

• ••••••

As you see, everything was ignored: warnings of certain Army com-
manders, declarations of deserters from the enemy army, and even the
open hostility of the enemy.82

w Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., p. 170.
nIbid.,p. 172.
"Ibid., pp. 168, 174.

Chapter IX. The War Years
1. The Commander in Chief

The war came unexpectedly to the Soviet Union, both for the people
and the government. The army was unprepared, arms were inade-
quate in quality and quantity, morale was low, the best military brains
of the country had been destroyed, no provision had been made for
the needs of the civilian population: there were no food reserves,
no shelters, no emergency housing. Pronouncements about the "trans-
fer of the war to the enemy's territory" proved to be empty bragging.1

To Stalin, the news that a shooting war had actually started came
as such a blow that at first he refused to believe it. To the short-
sighted leader, the war meant the failure of his foreign policy of coopera-
tion with Germany. The future looked bleak.

When the fascist armies had actually invaded Soviet territory and mili-
tary operation had begun, Moscow issued the order that the German fire
was not to be returned. Why? It was because Stalin, despite evident
facts, thought that the war had not yet started, that this was only a provoc-
ative action on the part of several undisciplined sections of the German
Army, and that our reaction might serve as a reason for the Germans to
begin the war.2

The German armies, which had invaded Russia on June 22, 1941,
advanced rapidly; resistance was ineffective. Stalin was disoriented; he
lost faith and hope.

. . . Stalin thought that this was the end. In one of his speeches in
those days he said : "All that which Lenin created we have lost forever." 8

Stalin did not even try to direct military operations. Aware of the
weakness of his military forces and with no expectation as yet of massive
shipments of arms from the West, he was pessimistic in the extreme. In
despair, he left it to Molotov to face the nation, while he remained silent.

. . . Stalin for a long time actually did not direct the military operations
and ceased to do anything whatever. He returned to active leadership

*This volume deals mainly with Soviet internal affairs. Issues of foreign policy
will be discussed in Volume III of Facts on Communism.

*Nikita S. Khrushchev, "Secret Report," Delivered February 24 and 25, 1956 at
the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, printed in
Bertram G. Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost (London: Atlantic Press, 1957),
p. 172.

•Ibid., p. 176.

(218)

219

only when some members of the Political Bureau visited him and told him
that it was necessary to take certain steps immediately in order to improve
the situation at the front.4

It was not until 1 1 days after the start of the war that Stalin made his
first public speech. His opening words were unprecedentedly humble :
"Brothers and Sisters!" He tried to convince the nation that "the best
divisions of the enemy and the best units of his air force have been
routed and have found their graves on the battle fields." He felt it
necessary to defend his 1939 pact with Hitler, but the defense was
unconvincing. He threatened those who spread panicky rumors and
appealed to the populations of the areas that had to be ceded to the
enemy to remove or destroy all reserves and all goods, cattle, railway
cars, etc. (the policy of the "scorched earth," as it was termed abroad),
and to organize guerrilla groups in the enemy's rear. Finally, he hailed
the new alliance with the nations of the West and referred to Churchill's
pledge of help and a declaration of the United States Government
unfreezing Soviet funds in the United States to permit Soviet purchases
in this country.

Now Stalin resumed active leadership. He became chairman of the
new State Committee of Defense ; later he took the title of marshal, and
finally generalissimo, in order to stress the superiority of his rank over
that of Soviet marshals and generals. As a commander in chief, how-
ever, Stalin proved totally inadequate.

. . . Even after the war began, the nervousness and hysteria which Stalin
demonstrated, interfering with actual military operations, caused our Army
serious damage.

Stalin was very far from an understanding of the real situation which
was developing at the front. This was natural because, during the whole
Patriotic War, he never visited any section of the front or any liberated
city except for one short ride on the Mozhaisk highway during a stabilized
situation at the front. . . . Stalin was interfering with operations and
issuing orders which did not take into consideration the real situation at a
given section of the front and which could not help but result in huge per-
sonnel losses.

* m * * * * *

. . . Stalin planned operations on a globe.

... he used to take the globe and trace the front line on it.8

Stalin became the curse of Russia in the Second World War. Numer-
ous military defeats could have been avoided, the German advance could
have been stopped at an earlier stage and millions of lives could have been
saved had it not been for Stalin's guidance of the war. Without the
help from the West, total defeat would have been certain. Stalin and

4 Ibid.

'Ibid., pp. 178, 180.

220

the Soviet regime were saved primarily by Britain and the United States,
acting in the interests of their own nations.

It was due to Stalin's poor military leadership that —

. . . The Germans surrounded our Army concentrations and conse-
quently we lost hundreds of thousands of our soldiers. This is Stalin's
"military genius"; that is what it cost us.

*******

The tactics on which Stalin insisted without knowing the essence of the
conduct of battle operations cost us much blood until we succeeded in
stopping the opponent and going over to the offensive.*

2. Home Policy

The Soviet police agencies, whose plans for action in the event of war
must have been made long in advance, increased their activity.

Two hours after the first German air raids on Russia, on the night of June
22, 1941, the government ordered many arrests, which were carried out
in accordance with previously prepared lists. Among those seized were
many suspect Communists who had been permitted to remain at liberty
and many nonpartisans who it was thought might become dangerous.7

Where it was not possible to evacuate prisoners in Soviet jails and
camps before the arrival of the Germans, the prisoners were ordered
summarily liquidated; trains evacuating prisoners were set on fire by
Soviet police if they were in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy.
The Defense Commissariat issued an instruction on August 28, 1941, to
the effect that prisoners sentenced under paragraph 58 of the criminal
code (relating to political offenses) were to be liquidated if they could
not be evacuated.

There was a ruthless purge of all prisoners. Those whose cases were
still being investigated were sent away, if there was time, to camps in re-
mote regions. But prisoners in towns close to the German advance were
executed without further inquiry, lest they should be captured and go over
to the service of the enemy. Punishment battalions were formed, in which
political prisoners and criminals were told that they could expiate their
crimes by death or glory; these battalions were sent wherever the fighting
was hottest.8

In the cities, all embryos of possible opposition were ordered eradi-
cated ; a special order prescribed execution on the spot of persons spread-
ing defeatist rumors. Another order was given "to shoot on the spot,

e Ibid., p. 182.

T David J. Dallin, The Changing World of Soviet Russia (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1956), p. 192.

8 Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, Empire of Fear (New York: Frederick A. Praeger,
1956), p. 98.

221

without investigation and trial, anyone heard in anti-government talk
on the streets of Moscow. . . ." 8

Among other deeds of the NKVD during this initial period of the
war was the execution of two Polish-Jewish leaders, Henryk Erlich and
Victor Alter. Erlich served on the Warsaw City Council and edited a
Polish- Jewish newspaper; he and Alter, a writer, were also leaders of
the General Jewish Workers Union in Poland. Although Socialist-
oriented rather than Communist, Erlich and Alter had been advocating
that Poland and the West collaborate with the Soviet Union in foreign
affairs in view of the Nazi danger. They were, nevertheless,

. . . arrested by the Soviet authorities late September, 1939, a few days
after the Red Army entered Eastern Poland — Erlich at the railway station
of Brzesc (Brest-Litovsk) , Alter at Kowel.10

The arrests were made by the Soviet police in the course of a mass opera-
tion in the newly-won territory of Poland.11 Alter and Erlich were
shipped to prisons in Russia. After the German attack on Russia,
Erlich and Alter were sentenced to death on the absurd charges of

. . . acts of terror against the U.S.S.R., support for the preparations
of an armed rising against the U.S.S.R., collaboration with the fascists,
etc.12

The death sentence was commuted to 10 years, but the sentence was
suspended and the two men were set free in September 1941.

Erlich and Alter were then approached, on behalf of the Soviet gov-
ernment, with the suggestion to form an "All-World Jewish Anti-
Hitlerite Committee" ; they consented and Erlich became the commit-
tee's chairman. He was scheduled to go to the United States as a
representative of the committee.

... As a result of the conversation with Beria [in the course of the
preparations for the setting up of the committee], Alter and Erlich sent a
letter to Stalin containing the draft of the programme and the mode of
procedure of the Committee.18

In the middle of October 1941, when the German army was approach-
ing Moscow, Erlich and Alter were evacuated to Kuibyshev. On De-
cember 3 they were again arrested. Nothing was heard of them until
early 1943 when a number of prominent Americans, among them Wil-
liam Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, Philip

•K. Kripton, Osada Leningrada (The Siege of Leningrad) (New York: Chekhov
Publishing House, 1952), p. 173.

10 The Case of Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter (London: Liberty Publications,
1943), p. 9. This pamphlet was published for the General Jewish Workers' Union
"Bund" of Poland.

a See ch. VIII.

u The Case of Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter, p. 12.

uIbid.,-p. 13.

69491 O-61-vol. 11—15

222

Murray, president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, Albert
Einstein, David Dubinsky, and others, sent an inquiry to Molotov con-
cerning the whereabouts of Erlich and Alter. Maxim Litvinov, the
then Soviet Ambassador in Washington, informed them, on Molotov's
behalf, that the two leaders had

. . resumed their hostile activities including appeals to the Soviet

troops to stop bloodshed and immediately to conclude peace with Germany.

For this they were rearrested and, in December [1941] ". . . sentenced

once more to capital punishment by the Military Collegium of the Supreme

Court. This sentence has been carried out in regard to both of them.18

The new accusation against Erlich and Alter was obviously a false
one. The real reason for their arrest and execution was Stalin's fear
of their political independence and their possible opposition to his
policies in the future. The draft of a manifesto of the All-World Com-
mittee, prepared by Erlich and Alter and sent to Stalin, predicted
victory for the allied coalition because of

"British and American bombs."

"American and British industry."

"the great continent of the USSR."

"the inexhaustible resources of men in the USSR." ie
Nothing was said about Stalin's guidance of the war, socialism, or Soviet
world leadership. Reference to Soviet-socialist superiority over other
nations — a thesis that Stalin was to proclaim as the source of his vic-
tories^— was conspicuous by its absence. Defying his allies and the public
opinion of the world, Stalin demonstrated his resolve to continue on
the path of terroristic dictatorship.

The farther the German armies advanced, the fewer the resources that
remained for the Soviet defense. The Ukraine had served both as
an industrial and an agricultural base; the western provinces had been
important industrial sites. There had been a huge loss of manpower,
since 40 percent of the population of the Soviet Union lived in the
German-occupied territories. In the territory occupied up to November
1941, 63 percent of the prewar output of coal, 68 percent of the pig iron,
58 percent of the steel, and 60 percent of the aluminum had been
produced; also 38 percent of the grain, 84 percent of the sugar, 38
percent of the catde, and 60 percent of the hogs.17

Soon after the start of the war, the Soviet government inaugurated a
large-scale eastward evacuation of Soviet industries, especially the war

"The quoted booklet gives the date of the sentence as December 1942; this is an
obvious misprint

u The Case of Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter, p. 5.

M Ibid., p. 19.

lfN. Voznesenski, Voennaya Ekonomika SSSR v Otechestvennoi Voine (The
War Economy of the USSR in the Period of the Patriotic War) (Moscow: OGIZ
(State United Publishing Houses), 1940), p. 42.

223

industries. As one Soviet leader has described it, the operation was
huge and successful.

The first six months (second half of 1941) of the Patriotic War is char-
acterized by the huge transfer of the productive forces of the U.S.S.R. to
the east under the guidance of Stalin's State Committee for Defense. Mil-
lions of people moved, hundreds of enterprises were shifted, tens of thou-
sands of machine tools, rolling mills, presses, beetles, turbines and motors.
In about three months in 1941 over 1,360 large enterprises, mainly military
ones, were evacuated to the eastern regions of the U.S.S.R. Of these,
455 were moved to the Urals, 210 to Western Siberia, and 250 to Middle
Asia and Kazakhstan.18

The evacuation of industry carried out in the early chaotic months
of the war, at a time when armies were also being moved, was hardly
as successful as it was officially proclaimed to be. The obvious purpose
of exaggerating the scope of the evacuation was to minimize the im-
portance of the military supplies coming from the West and to present
the victory over Germany as a purely Soviet achievement.19

The highly official Large Soviet Encyclopedia as late as 1952 likewise
disregarded foreign aid in its description of the Soviet economy during
the war:

. . . Thousands of kolkhozes and sovkhozes [state farms] were trans-
ferred to more distant regions. Millions of head of cattle were driven.
For the evacuation of the equipment, about 1,500,000 railroad cars were
used. Measures were taken to augment the output of coal, oil, and ore in
the eastern regions of the country, to increase the production of electrical
energy and ferrous and non-ferrous metals; new defense plants were built.
In the U.S.S.R. a well-organized and fast-growing war economy was or-
ganized— the material basis for the supply of the military forces. . . .
*******

The Soviet army, relying on the support of the entire people, regularly
received in increasing quantities, armaments, ammunition, food, and
equipment.20

Actually the United States lend-lease shipments to Russia, from the
start of the war to September 30, 1946, amounted to $11,200,000,000.

18 Ibid., p. 41.

18 In his book on the Soviet war economy, Nikolai Voznesenski, member of the
Politburo and a right-hand man to Stalin (he wa3 executed in 1950), omits specific
mention of the United States lend-lease operation and asserts only (p. 74) that
foreign supplies amounted to 4 percent of the total, a palpably false statement.

90 Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (Large Soviet Encyclopedia) (2d ed. ; Mos-
cow: Gosudarstvennoe Nauchnoe Izdatelstvo "Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya"
(State Scientific Publishing House "The Large Soviet Encyclopedia")), vol. VII
(1951), pp. 165, 179.

a President Harry S. Truman, 23d Report to Congress on Lend-Leass Operations
for the Period Ended Sept. 30, 1946, filed Dec. 27, 1946, Department of State Pub-
lication 2707 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office), p. 27.

224
3. The Siege of Leningrad

The German armies advanced along a broad front extending from the
Baltic to the Black Sea. They reached Leningrad in October 1941 and
Moscow in November. While they succeeded in laying siege to Lenin-
grad, they were forced to retreat by the battle at the gates of Moscow.
The offensive was resumed, however, in the spring of 1 942 and within a
few months German armies had reached the Caucasus and the Volga.
The battle of Stalingrad, which took place in the winter of 1942-43,
about 1 8 months after the start of the war, and after abundant supplies
from the West had reached Russia, was the turning point of the war.
The Germans were thrown back and, in the next 2 years, during which
they sustained enormous losses, retreated into Germany.

Having approached the city of Leningrad, the German armies did not
try to take it; Hitler's plan was rather to starve the city and then destroy
it by artillery fire. The German goal was to destroy all vestiges of Rus-
sia's former greatness. The first part of the German program was largely
attained in the winter of 1941-42, when supplies of food and fuel to this
city of 3 million population were almost completely cut off by the Ger-
man siege.

With the approach of cold weather industrial enterprises came to a
standstill. There were practically no transportation facilities in the city;
bath-houses were closed; during the 1941-42 winter seven or eight bath-
houses were occasionally heated. Food was scarce. In the majority of
houses window panes were smashed by the blasts, the windows were
boarded up with planks and plywood, inside the apartments it was dark
and cold. . . .

. . . Over 100,000 people from the Baltic states, Pskov, Luga, Petro-
zavodsk, the Karelian isthmus and the workers' settlements took refuge in
Leningrad. . . .

... In July-August [1941] not more than 400,000 were evacuated into
the interior, although two or three times that number should have been. . . .

... In the end 2,544,000 civilians lived in the blockaded city, among
them about 400,000 children. In addition, in the suburban regions (with-
in the blockade ring) there remained 343,000.22

Therefore the food rations had to be cut severely. The first reduc-
tion was put into effect on September 2, 1941 :

. . . From this day on workers were getting 600, employees 400,
dependents and children 300 grams [1 ounce =28.3 grams] of bread
daily. . . ."

13 D. V. Pavlov, Leningrad v Blokade, 1941 god (Leningrad Under the Blockade,
1941) (Moscow: Vcennoc Izdatelstvo Ministerstva Oborony SSSR (War Publishing
House of the Defense Ministry of the USSR), 1958), pp. 36, 41, 42.

uJbid., p. 45.

225

Ten days later

. . . Workers started to receive 500, employees and children 300, and
dependents 250 grams of bread.2*

On November 13 new rations were introduced:

. . . workers were allotted 300 grams of bread daily, employees, de-
pendents, and children up to 12 years, 150 grams. . . .M

A week later

. . . workers started to get 250 grams of bread daily, employees, de-
pendents and children, 125, the military of the first line, 500 and of the
rear lines 300 grams of bread.26

December was the worst month of the blockade

. . . Very little bread was distributed, almost no fats were allotted
to the adult population and it was not substituted by anything else.
Other food items were distributed in miniscule quantities.27

Within 3 months the inevitable starvation and famine set in.

The mass deaths started at the end of November. The outward signs
in the life of the city were the appearance in the streets of sleds of all
kinds, but mostly children's Finnish sleds, loaded with corpses. As a rule,
two sleds were bound together in order to provide sufficient length. . . .
The corpses were wrapped in sheets, blankets, mats, and rags. Every day
more and more of these sleds were seen: during one period (the end of
December and beginning of January) such sleds moved in unbroken lines
through the main streets. Leningrad was covered with snow in those
days. Nobody removed it.28

There were privileged groups in the city who enjoyed priority in the
distribution of food. These were the top leaders of the party and
police and military units. The rest of the population appeared doomed.

. . . People [in Leningrad] did everything they could to avert death,
but death came. . . . There was only one thing left: to die quietly in
their frozen dwellings. . . . The well-fed units of the NKVD were on
the alert, and arrests of suspects did not cease, not even at times when
there were 30,000 deaths a day.29

The starving population resorted to desperate measures:

... In November, all cats were consumed. Standing on a ration-
card line, I unintentionally overheard a conversation between some stu-
dents. They felt that cat's meat was pleasant, it reminded them of rabbit
meat, but one thing was painful, namely, to kill the cat: it defends itself

84 Ibid., p. 46.

25 Ibid., p. 106.

* Ibid.

" Ibid., p. 47.

83 Kripton, op. cit., p. 179.

"Ibid., p. 168.

226

desperately; if not carefully planned, the killing of a cat can result in
one's being badly scratched. Later I did not hear any such talk — there
were no more cats to be killed. In December, rats, mice, and street birds
were being eaten.80

In late December 1941 and January of 1942

... At the cemeteries and in the areas around them corpses were
.piled up; nobody had the strength to bury them. The grave-diggers, lured
by promises of bread, started digging the graves, but often died in the
process: they had miscalculated their strength. . . .

... In the streets women with hardly enough strength to move were
seen carrying corpses. Some never reached the cemetery; they died on
the way.81

In the subsequent months ways were found of bringing some food
into the city. Seme inhabitants had been evacuated and, as a result of
the deaths and the evacuations, the population had been substantially re-
duced. During 1942 and 1943 the daily ration of the civilian popula-
tion of Leningrad was 125 grams (4J4 ounces) of bread; in the Soviet
army stationed in and around the city the ration was 250 grams.

The siege continued until January 1944, when the Germans started
to withdraw. How many died during the siege remains a well-guarded
secret.

. . . Though official Soviet figures are lacking, it can be deducted from
unofficial estimates of evacuees and survivors that the total number of
deaths in Leningrad during this period was somewhere between 530,000 and
1,000,000.82

Other estimates and studies, however, arrive at higher figures. Pro-
fessor K. Kripton, who spent the worst period of the blockade in Lenin-
grad, states, on the basis of reports on food rationing, that "about
2,000,000 men died in the first year of the siege." S3

After the war the Leningrad Party Committee established a "Defense
Museum" to commemorate the blockade era and gather pertinent
material.

At present the city has opened an exhibition "The Heroic Defense of
Leningrad," unprecedented in its historical-military and psychological im-
portance. The most moving part of the exhibition is the section "The
Hunger Blockade of Leningrad," containing exhibits and statistics which
draw a picture of the life of the people of Leningrad during their most tragic
period. . . .**

"Ibid., p. 185.
nIbid., p. 193.

MLeon Gour6, Soviet Administrative Controls During the Siege of Leningrad
(Santa Monica: The Rand Corp., 1958), RM-2075, pp. 19, 20.

M Kripton, op. cit., p. 226.

^Konstantin Fedin, "Svidanie s Leningradom," Zapiski 1944 (Rendezvous with
Leningrad, Notes 1944), in Novyi Mir (New World), Moscow, No. 4-5, 1944, p. 45.

227

Although the fervent patriotism and self-sacrifice of the population
were presented, Stalin's alleged personal achievements in the Leningrad
episode were not and could not be emphasized, whereas the deeds of
some local Communist leaders were stressed.

. . . the museum was created at the time when the cult of personality
was at its apex, when many heroic deeds of the people of Leningrad were
undeservedly attributed to single individuals. It would not have been diffi-
cult to correct the errors generated by the cult of personality even then, in
1949, and to preserve the museum, but sad as it is, it was decided other-
wise. . . .S5

and the museum was closed.

In 1957 a new "Museum of the History of Leningrad" was opened
which, to some degree, rehabilitates its predecessor, victim of the "cult
of personality."

4. Defeatist Trends

Living conditions, which deteriorated in all the warring countries,
became especially hard in Russia because, first, the Germans occupied a
large agricultural area; second, the Soviet army had a priority on all
kinds of goods; and, third, millions of peasants had been drafted. With
an army to be fed and clothed, the civilian population suffered badly.

There is no doubt that most city dwellers in Russia are going hungry on
the rations they are getting. When ordinary people manage to buy a few
grams of bread, they often cannot resist the temptation to gnaw it long
before they get home — in street cars, trolley buses, along the sidewalks and
at the opera. . . . Even Government officials cannot control themselves
at the sight of food. At receptions they dive into the foods as if they had
not eaten for days. . . .

. . . Doctors . . . maintain that most adult civilians have lost about 15
lb. in the past year.36

It was only natural that the black market, with its high prices and
unhealthy competition, should flourish and expand everywhere :

Though barter is punishable by death, thousands of Russians have re-
sorted to it as one way of getting a few things they need, and the Govern-
ment has closed its eyes to most of the deals, A pound of bread is worth
a pair of half soles, while a bottle of Vodka can be exchanged for a peck
of potatoes.37

The Red Army was better supplied, especially after shipments of food,
clothing and shoes began to arrive from abroad. By the end of 1942

The Red Army man is as well equipped as any soldier in the world. His
uniform is made of pure wool and his heavy leather boots would last a

38 Pavlov, op. cit., p. 151.

89 Walter Graebner, "Moscow Today," Life. vol. XIV, No. 2 (January 11, 1943),
p. 84.

"Ibid.,?. 86.

228

civilian a lifetime. In winter every man is given greenish felt valenki to
replace his boots, quilted pants and vest, a heavy woolen overcoat and
plenty of warm blankets.38

These privileges accorded the army were accepted matter-of-factly
by the population as necessary. The general attitude of the people dur-
ing the first period of the war, however, was skeptical, negative, often
hostile. Lack of faith in the government's ability to resist the Germans,
and general dissatisfaction, often resulted in desertion, surrender and
defeatism. In the first year of the war the Germans took entire armies
as prisoners. The number of Russian prisoners of war ran into the mil-
lions. The Soviet government fought desertion by both stern punish-
ment and propaganda:

... He who forgets his duty is betraying his company, his unit, his
neighbors; he is betraying his Mother Country. There can be no mercy
for those who break discipline. It cannot be tolerated that individual
panic-mongers should determine the situation at the battlefield. Cowards
who forget their duty should be sent to the most dangerous sectors to ex-
piate in blood their guilt before their Fatherland.39

It had been an old Soviet principle never to surrender to the enemy,
and die rather than be captured. This principle was now revived (it
later served as the basis of accusations against Soviet soldiers taken
prisoner by the Germans and as an argument justifying the Soviet
regime's neglect of them).

Should the odds in favor of the enemy be too great, then our units and
detachments will accomplish the noble act, the aim of every battle — to
kill ten to twenty enemy soldiers and officers for every one of our soldiers.40

A defeatist trend of substantial proportions developed among large
sections of the Soviet population once they were out of the reach of the
authorities and the police. It was strongest in the German-occupied
areas and in the prisoner of war camps under German administration.
In many cities, especially in the earlier stage of the war, entering German
units were welcomed by the local population and thousands of Soviet
citizens declared themselves ready to collaborate with the enemy. In
fact, several semimilitary units were formed by the German command
out of the civilian population for "special functions," for instance, to
fight Soviet guerrillas. In the prisoner-of-war camps, the German
authorities looked for and found numbers of Soviet officers, many of
them Communists, prepared to challenge the Soviet regime and fight it

"ibid., p. 80.

*• "Distsiplina i Stoikost— Yazhneishie Usloviya Pobedy nad Vragom" (Discipline
and Staunchness — The Most Important Stipulations for Victory Over the Enemy),
Bolshevik, Moscow, No. 16, August 1942, p. 8.

'''Ibid., p. 7. The Criminal Code Paragraph 193 (22) says that surrender not
justified by the military circumstances is punishable by the supreme penalty.

229

in war as allies of Germany. The most important among these were
the group that comprised the so-called Vlasov movement.

Andrei Andreevich Vlasov was a well-known Soviet general. He was a
professional officer of peasant background, a Communist Party member
from 1930 on, who in 1938 was assigned as military adviser to Chiang
Kai-shek. Vlasov began his war-time service in the Ukraine, then com-
manded the 20th Army in the winter battle for Moscow, became famous as
one of its defenders, and after his promotion to lieutenant-general was
shifted in early 1942 to the Volkhov Front, where he assumed command of
the Second Assault Army. It was after the decimation of this army that
Vlasov, having hidden out for weeks, was captured by the Germans on
July 12, 1942.41

In September 1942, Vlasov, in agreement with the German authori-
ties, issued his first appeal from a prisoner-of-war camp. His message,
dated September 10, 1942, laid

. . . the blame for "the immeasurable suffering of our people in this
war" squarely upon the "Stalin clique," listing among its particular crimes
the ruination of the land through the kolkhoz system, the destruction of mil-
lions of honest people, the murder of the best cadres of the Red Army, and
the involvement of the country in an unnecessary and senseless war for
foreign interests.42

In a subsequent "Open Letter," Vlasov also attacked Stalin's alliance
with Anglo-American capitalists.

. . . Neither Stalin nor Bolshevism fights for Russia.

. . . The interests of the Russian people are linked to those of the Ger-
man people. ... In alliance and in cooperation with Germany it must
create a new happy homeland in the circle of equal and free peoples of
Europe. ... In this struggle for our better future I enter openly and
honestly upon the road of alliance with Germany.43

The "Smolensk Manifesto" signed by Vlasov in December 1942 out-
lined a political and economic program which, among other demands,
included :

1 . Abolition of forced labor and guarantee to the worker of a real right
to labor leading to material welfare ;

2. Abolition of collective farms and planned transfer of land into private
peasant property;

* * * * • * *

7. Termination of the reign of terror and violence; introduction of actual
freedom of religion, conscience, speech, assembly, and press; guarantee of
the inviolability of person and personal residence;

41 Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945 (London: Macmillan &
Co., Ltd., 1957), pp. 553, 554.

45 Geonje Fischer, Soviet Opposition to Stalin (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press. 1952), pp. 32, 33.

a Ibid., pp. 35, 36.

230

8. Guarantee of freedom for subject nationalities;

9. The liberation of the political prisoners of Bolshevism . . .**

The manifesto appealed also to the Red Army to join Vlasov's (still
nonexistent) "Russian Army of Liberation," and "fight shoulder to
shoulder with the Germans."

Vlasov traveled in German-occupied Russian areas and won wide ac-
claim. In April 1 943 a large conference in Brest-Litovsk adopted a pro-
Vlasov resolution and approved his "Liberation Movement." Special
"schools" for the political retraining of Soviet officers were set up by the
German command.

A "Committee for Liberation of the Peoples of Russia" (KONR —
Komitet Osvobozhdeniya Narodov Rossii) was formed at a conference in
German-occupied Prague in November 1944.

Of the thirty-seven identified full members of the KONR, the follow-
ing categorization may be made: thirteen former members of the Red
Army . . . nine Soviet professors and docents; seven old-emigre" leaders;
and eight others, including one peasant and two workers.

. . . On the basis of very incomplete analysis — based partially en the
names themselves, partially on the testimony of surviving members — thir-
teen, or just above one-third of the original identified membership, were
non-Russian by nationality.45

In the "Prague Manifesto," Vlasov reiterated his program. Now
military units were permitted to emerge and arm, but in actual fact only
one division was formed. At this late hour, however, the significance
of this armed division was nil. The Soviet population and Soviet pris-
oners of war had become completely disillusioned by their experience of
Nazi rule ; fighting as allies of Germany no longer made any sense. The
KONR division made an effort to join the Czech uprising against the
German occupation, but with the Red Army advancing rapidly, the
KONR division was destroyed. Vlasov and a number of his coleaders
were arrested by Soviet authorities. They were tried and hanged in
Moscow in July 1946.

5. Stalin's Concessions

A number of political changes were made by the Soviet government
during the war, mainly as a concession to the army and the population,
but partially also as a concession to public opinion in the West. Some
of these changes proved to be lasting, others were only maneuvers and
stratagems. None aimed at a liberalization of the political system.

Among the more important concessions was the establishment of toler-
able relations with the Russian branch of the Greek Orthodox Church.

" Ibid., p. 59.
" Ibid., p. 90.

231

To counteract the anti-Soviet propaganda of the Greek Orthodox
Church dignitaries in the Germanroccupied areas and to appear in the
role of defender of Russian traditions, the Soviet government stopped
persecution of the clergy during the war. Antireligious propaganda and
the activities of the League of the Godless were curbed, at least
temporarily.48

Three months after the outbreak of the war the publication of
antireligious journals was discontinued, officially, because of paper short-
age. Antireligious museums were closed. Heavy taxes on the churches
were substantially reduced. . . .

*•*♦***
On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the October Revolu-
tion, Acting Patriarch Sergius "cordially congratulated Stalin, the God-
given leader of the military and cultural forces of the nation." The next
year, congratulations came on the part of Metropolitan Nicholas of Kiev.
In the meantime, Stalin used different opportunities to express his gratitude
to priests for their outstanding help to the Red Army.47

On September 4, 1943, Stalin received three high church dignitaries.

. . . With curious and characteristic cynicism he [Stalin] arranged a con-
ference in the Kremlin, to which he invited the robed and bearded patriarchs
and all the important dignitaries of the Russian Orthodox Church. At the
conference there was also a certain Karpov. Now Karpov was a perma-
nent career officer of the N.K.V.D. who, over a long period, had made an
assiduous and exhaustive study of Russian Orthodox ceremonies, ordi-
nances, and theological teaching, and was able to converse earnestly and
learnedly with the church dignitaries on their own ground. At this con-
ference Stalin suggested that the character and erudition of Karpov made
him an ideal man to represent the Church on the Soviet Council of Minis-
ters. His suggestion was applauded and Karpov was appointed.48

49 The leading church in pre-Bolshevik Russia was the Russian branch of the
Greek Orthodox Church (also called Russian Orthodox), headed by a patriarch.
Shortly after the November revolution, the Communist regime, as part of an effort to
wipe out the very idea of religion in the new Soviet state, embarked on a campaign
of religious persecution aimed at destroying, the Russian Orthodox and all other
churches.

This campaign, which was relaxed in severity at various periods when the Soviet
government found it expedient in order to cope with other domestic problems, in-
cluded the jailing of church dignitaries, closing of churches, and the promotion of
antireligious education and propaganda (handled through such instruments of the
government as the League of the Godless). Even before the actual outbreak of
war with Germany in 1941, the Soviet government had mitigated its persecution of the
churches by ending arrests of the clergy for political crimes, by allowing a few
churches to open, and by toning down antireligious propaganda.

"Nicholas S. Timasheff, The Great Retreat (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.,
1946), pp. 230, 231.

** Petrov, op. cit., p. 97.

232

At the reception, Metropolitan Sergi (Sergius) obtained Stalin's agree-
ment to the election of a patriarch by a Council of Orthodox Bishops.
The council elected Metropolitan Sergi "Patriarch of Moscow and All
Russia." 49

. . . Before separating, the Council addressed a message to the Soviet
government expressing the Church's gratitude for the government's friendly
attitude, and another message to all the Church members once more severely
condemning all those who would support Hitler and his armies.60

Subsequently the church supported the government in important
aspects of its foreign affairs program: The demand for a "second
front," opposition to the Vatican, and other matters. The help of the
clergy with regard to countries in which the Greek Orthodox Church was
strong, such as Rumania, Greece, Serbia, and some Middle Eastern
areas, made it politic to maintain the new status of the church even after
the war. Antireligious propaganda, however, was resumed by the
successor of the League of the Godless, the new Society for Dissemination
of Political and Scientific Knowledge, which was established in 1947.

Along with the concessions to the Russian branch of the Greek Ortho-
dox Church, emphasis on slavism became a new tactic, not only as a
concession to the national-minded sections of the population, but also for
reasons of foreign policy. It was thought that for non-Communist Slav
elements in the West (Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Bulgarians, and others)
blood ties to Russia would serve as one more reason for the extension of
Russia's influence on the prospective satellites; for this reason the new
pro-Slav trends were not abolished at the end of the war. "Slav meet-
ings" were held in Moscow during the war, and the magazine Slaviane
(Slavs), which first appeared in 1942, continued to be published after
the war.

Russian nationalism was likewise emphasized, along with the normal
non-Communist brand of patriotism. The war was pictured not only
as a fight against "fascism" but as a new phase of the historical struggle
between Russians and Germans. In one of his first wartime speeches,
Stalin appealed to the memory of old Russian heroes and military leaders:

. . . Let the manly images of our great ancestors — Alexander Nevsky,
Dimitri Danskoi, Kuzma Minin, Dimitri Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov,
Mikhail Kutuzov — inspire you in this war! B1

** The Communist regime, in its campaign against the churches, had forbidden
the Russian Orthodox Church to elect a new Patriarch after the death of Patriarch
Tikhon in 1925. Metropolitan Sergi (Sergius) of Moscow was "Acting Patriarch" of
Russia until this concession by Stalin.

60 Timasheff , op. c'xt., p. 232.

a J. V. Stalin. Speech Delivered November 7, 1 941 at the Red Army parade, printed
in Soviet Foreign Policy During the Pa'rioiic War, Documents and Materials, Andrew
Rothstein, tr. (London: Hutchins & Co., Ltd., 1946), vol. I, p. 34.

233

Three months later Stalin again stressed the defensive and purely
nationalist war:

. . . Our aim is clear and honorable. We want to free our Soviet land
from the German-fascist scoundrels. We want to free our brother Ukraini-
ans, Moldavians, White Russians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Kareli-
ans from the disgrace and humiliation to which they have been subjected
by the German-fascist scoundrels.82

The press, too, emphasized the revival of Russian nationalism:

National consciousness is in the air of our time. The cosmopolitanism
of the nineteenth century is a thing of the past, the dreamers who were
patriots of time and space have died out. Love for one's own village has
been resurrected. . . . We love Russia not because other lands are less
admirable, but because Russia is our country. . . . We are proud of our
people, and there is no purer sentiment in the world.53

A new national anthem, to coexist with the old "International," was
officially introduced throughout the USSR in March 1944. (The
"International" was to be used only at party meetings.) The term
"Russia" instead of USSR appeared for the first time in the new
anthem: "Great Russia has cemented forever the inviolable union of
free republics. . . . We will lead the fatherland to glory." M

Another wartime reform, at first glance a spectacular one, were the
amendments to the Soviet constitution which were adopted in February
1944. Greatly enlarging the jurisdiction of the individual Soviet Union
republics, the amendments provided for the organization of military
forces in each of the national units, and for separate foreign offices.
Molotov told the Supreme Soviet on February 1, 1944:

This transformation signifies the great expansion of activities of the
Union Republics which has become possible as a result of their political,
economic and cultural growth, or, in other words, as a result of their na-
tional development. One cannot fail to see in this a new, important step
in the practical solution of the national problem in the multi-national
Soviet State, one cannot fail to see in this a new victory for our Lenin-Stalin
national policy.55

The amendments to the constitution read as follows:

ARTICLE 18a

Each Union Republic has the right to enter into direct relations with
foreign states and to conclude agreements and exchange diplomatic and
consular representatives with them.

" Stalin, "Order to Armed Forces and Home Front," Pravda, May 1, 1942, p. 1.
63 Izvsstia, various issues quoted in Timasheff, op. cit., p. 180.
"Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, vol. XI (1952), pp. 384, 385.
" Pravda, February 2, 1944.

234

ARTICLE 18b

Each Union Republic has its own Republican military formations.66

Stalin's actual aim in this case was to acquire more than one vote
in the projected United Nations. Since the British dominions were
to be entitled to one vote each, Stalin tried to depict the Soviet's 16
Union Republics as sovereign states; the first attribute of sovereignty is
an armed force and a foreign office. In this way the Soviet government
obtained the agreement of its allies to the admission of the Ukraine and
Belorussia to the United Nations as separate units; in all other respects
the reforms stipulated in the constitution were a fiction.

The "broadening" of activity which Molotov saluted in 1944 failed to
develop. The Ukraine and Belorussia are represented in the United
Nations where they provide two additional votes for the USSR, but none
cf the sixteen republics has been permitted to exchange diplomatic repre-
sentatives with foreign states or enter into agreements with them. A British
proposal to establish diplomatic relations with the Ukraine, which was made
in August 1947, met a frigid rebuff. In retrospect, it seems clear that the
1944 amendments represented an effort to equip the union republics with
the external appurtenances of statehood in the hope that all sixteen could
gain admission into the United Nations as separate entities. When this
hope was defeated, the amendments lost most of their meaning, though
they remain on the books as a vestigial reminder of a diplomatic maneuver.67

Another concession was the dissolution of the Communist Interna-
tional after 24 years of existence. The Comintern, instrument of a world-
wide Moscow-guided revolution, was an eyesore to the democratic allies;
on the other hand, Stalin's hope and conviction that, under the guidance
of the Comintern, popular uprisings would break out in any country
that dared to wage war on the Soviet Union, had been deceived. In the
spring of 1943, when the German armies were beginning to retreat and
foreign emigre Communist leaders in Moscow were preparing to return
to their own countries to take over control of Soviet-satellite governments,
the open subordination of these leaders to the Comintern in Moscow was
only too obvious. In May 1943, on Soviet initiative, the Presidium of the
Executive Committee of the Comintern proposed to the member parties :

The Communist International, as the directing center of the interna-
tional working class movement, is to be dissolved, thus freeing the sections
of the Communist International from their obligations arising from the
statutes and resolutions of the Congresses of the Communist International.68

M Constitution (Fundamental Lew) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, As
amended by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on February 25, 1947 on the recom-
mendation of the Drafting Commission (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 1947), p. 10.

"Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1953), p. 322.

■ New York Times, May 23, 1943, p. 30.

235

The "proposal" was accepted by all the Communist parties.

But Stalin never really intended to dissolve this useful organization.
For a time it continued unofficially to exist, and remained highly active.59
One of its Spanish leaders, who had spent the war years in Russia, de-
scribed it after the "dissolution" :

. . . There was no doubt whatsoever that the dissolution was nothing but
a formality.

. . . Dimitrov [Secretary General of the Communist International] no
longer has his office in the building situated to the right of the Agricultural
Exposition where the Comintern was housed before its dissolution ; he has it
now on the third floor of one of the buildings of the Central Committee of
the Russian Communist Party. The other secretaries likewise have their
offices in different places. The offices of Dolores Ibarruri, [Mathias] Rakosi
and Ana Pauker are on the Place of the Soviet, in front of the building of
the Moscow Soviet, in a small house with a garden and a fountain. . . -60

The office of the huge organization continued to work uninterruptedly;
whatever changes were made were in the nature of technicalities, to give
the appearance of dissolution.

The rest of us, members of die editorial boards of the clandestine broad-
casting, no longer have to submit to the censorship of Togliatti, but to that
of Friedrich, who turns over our copy to Togliatti, who turns it over to
Dimitrov. Everything is just as it used to be.

The heads of the foreign parties' delegations, as the ex-secretaries, con-
tinue to consult Dimitrov, either meeting him personally or getting in-
structions from him through Stepanov. Everything is just as it used to be.

The cadre's section keeps its offices and its files, which grow with every
change in the direction of the parties. Ever/thing is just as it used to be.

The foreign press correspondents of the Comintern continue to send
information periodically on everything that is going on in the world to
the Section of Information and Propaganda of the "dissolved" Comintern.
Ever/thing is just as it used to be.

The secret apparatus of the "dissolved" Comintern keeps its offices on the
main floor of the former Comintern building. And it continues to receive
the secret reports of the parties, one copy of which is sent to Dimitrov and
another copy to the Foreign Section of the Russian Communist Party,
headed by Zhdanov. It continues to send out Dimitrov's instructions to
different Communist parties abroad, to organize trips of persons summoned
to the Soviet Union or to arrange their departure.

Everything is just as it used to be.61

58 Eventually the main functions of the Comintern, particularly liaison with foreign
Communist parties and supply of funds, were taken over by the Foreign Department of
the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist party.

* Enrique Castro Delgado, J'ai perdu la foi a Moscou (Paris: Gallimard, 1950),
p. 227.

91 Ibid., pp. 227, 228.

236

A young but ranking German officer of the Comintern in Moscow,
Wolfgang Leonhard, reported that in July 1943, when he returned to
Moscow from the East, the Hotel Lux, residence of the Comintern
leadership, was filled :

Most of the occupants of the hotel worked in what was called "Institute
No. 205," a sort of successor organisation to the Comintern, which was
established in a gigantic group of modern buildings hermetically sealed
from the outside world at Rostokino, in the neighborhood of the agricultural
exhibition. It was the same building in which the Comintern had had its
headquarters from 1940 to 1941.62

A time of great activity for the supposedly dissolved Comintern came
during the last phase of the war, when the Red Army began to cross
the borders into neighboring countries. The Communist leaders of the
respective neighboring countries, emigres in Moscow during the war,
followed the Red Army as "advisers" of the "Political Departments."
They were armed with instructions and plans of operation.63

In the Red Army, a number of reforms tended to revive the prerevolu-
tionary type of military organization as a concession to the feelings of
the majority of the commanders.

. . . Guards regiments and guards divisions — their very names recalled
Tsarist days — were created. Orders of Suvorov and Kutuzov were insti-
tuted. Cossack formations, once despised as symbols of Tsarist oppression,
were brought back to life and to the old glamour. Finally, on the eve of
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the revolution, epaulettes were re-introduced
as part of the officer's uniform, the epaulettes that had in one of the first
Bolshevik decrees been banned as marks of a reactionary caste system in the
army. Saluting was made obligator/ and strictly enforced. Exclusive
officers' clubs and strictly separate messes for junior and senior officers were
opened.04

The system of "commissars" assigned to watch and report on Red
Army officers 8S had been reintroduced in July 1941, at the start of the
war. "No officer or general was now able to issue an order, not even a
battle order, unless it was approved by the military commissar. The
decree was a vote of no confidence in the new officers." 66

Though intensely disliked by the officers' corps, the commissars ap-
peared necessary in view of the military catastrophe and the numerous
desertions and surrenders to the enemy. In 1942, as the situation im-

02 Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the Revolution (London: Collins, 1957), p. 242.

63 Ibid., chs. VI, VII.

64 1. Deutscher, Stalin (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 488.
68 See pp. 212, 213.

64 D. Dallin, Russia and Postwar Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1943), p. 31.

237

proved, and as a concession to officers and generals, the Soviet govern-
ment decided to partially abolish the system of commissar supervision :

... on October 9, 1942, a decree abolishing military commissars was
signed by Kalinin. "The commissar," the decree stated, "might have be-
come an obstacle in the way of improved leadership and have placed the
commanders in embarrassing positions." The official commentaries said
that the commissars had performed great services during the period of
retreat, but that now, on the eve of an offensive, they were no longer
needed. The principle of single command was thus restored. . . .
*******

The reform of October 9, 1942, which abolished the institution of mili-
tary commissars, was not as radical, however, as may have appeared at
first glance. . . .

* * * * * * *

Clause 3 of the decree of October 9 read as follows : "to introduce in the
Red Army deputy commanders in charge of political work," who were
now to wear military uniforms and receive military rank.

The order issued by Stalin simultaneously with the decree, on October 9,
1942, prescribed not only that "commissars be relieved of the posts they
occupy" but also "that they be appointed as deputies in charge of political
work to their respective military commanders." These deputies, although
in military uniform, had, in the main, to do the same kind of work as for-
merly. "They have to concentrate all their attention," wrote Pravda, "on
the political work among the troops. . . ." 67

In general, with the exception of Staiin, Commander in Chief of
the Red Army, Russian military leaders were given

. . . extremely little personal publicity in the Soviet press or on the
Soviet radio, in striking contrast to the publicity showered upon military
leaders of other countries such as Generals MacArthur, Montgomery, von
Keitel, or Rommel.68

Such is the structure of the Red Army as it has been shaped by the
progress of the war. Soldiers are kept under the incessant and watchful
control of the party cells which, though they embrace but a small percent-
age of the rank and file, are extremely active at the same time and are
themselves under the strict control of superior party organs. The middle
officer stratum is kept under the constant observation of the reorganized
military commissars, the Deputy Commanders in Charge of Political Work.
Finally, the generals work under the surveillance of resident representa-
tives of Moscow, the new generals from the Central Committee. In this
fashion the vast Russian Army lives and fights, held firmly in check by the
elaborate party machine.e9

« Ibid., pp. 43, 44.

48 Ibid., p. 47.

* Ibid., pp. 46, 47.

68491 O-61-vol. 11—16

238
6. The NKVD in Wartime

In turn, the NKVD agencies in the army (the OO's — Osobye Otdely,
meaning Special Sections) were checking on the loyalty of officers and
men. In wartime they were renamed Smersh (Smert Shpionam —
Death to Spies), and were greatly enlarged; they operated along with
the numerous newly-established military tribunals. The Smersh agen-
cies, dreaded for their ruthlessness, recruited informers in each army
unit. All oppositionist remarks or acts, which were viewed as products
of the influence of the enemy, brought severe punishment, often death.
When the Soviet army crossed over into the West, Smersh, in accord-
ance with instructions, carried out the purge of the local populations.
The head of Smersh during the war was Viktor Abakumov (later head
of the MGB, and executed by the post-Stalin government in December
1954).70

During the war the N.K.V.D. kept a strict watch over all the armed
forces through the organization known as "Smersh". ... its real task
was not the apprehension and punishment of foreign spies; it was the
detection of the slightest sign of disaffection, or even the expression of
discontent, among the Soviet soldiers, sailors and airmen. . . .

Every battalion, regiment and company of the Red Army had a Smersh
representative attached to it, as did all parallel units in the Navy and Air
Force. His position was quite open but he had to recruit and organize
a number of secret agents to spy and report on the rest of the unit: the
average number was ten to every hundred men. The Smersh representa-
tive had conspiratorial meetings with his agents as though he were running
a spy network on foreign soil. . . . Smersh agents furnished detailed
reports on their comrades, noting any defeatist talk, complaints about
conditions, or criticism of the authorities. These reports went through
Smersh channels, circumventing the Commanding Officer and staff of
the unit. No wonder that the professional soldiers detested Smersh —
though they had to pay lip service to the need for this relentless vigilance.71

Among the most significant mass operations of the NKVD inside
Russia during the war was the deportation of entire "disloyal" national-
ities from their areas and the abolition of their autonomous units.72 Col-
lective guilt of a nation for disloyalty of some of its members lay at
the basis of this policy; because of this attitude even "Communists and
Komsomols without any exception" 7S were deported.

TON. Sinevirski, SMERSH, God v Stane Vraga (SMERSH, A Year in the Enemy's
Camp) (Germany: published by Grani (Borders), November 1948). (Note: the
MGB is discussed on p. 310 of this volume of Facts on Communism.)

n Petrov, op. cit., pp. 98, 99.

n By "autonomous units," we refer to Autonomous Republics (ASSR — Autono-
mous Soviet Socialist Republics) and autonomous national areas located within some
of the 15 large Union Republics of the USSR. Inhabited by non-Russian nationali-
ties, these sub-Republics and areas were autonomous in name only.

n Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., p. 190.

239

The operation started with the Germans of the Volga German
Republic.

. . . The Soviet Government, charging that the Volga Germans were
disloyal, decreed that they were to be deported to the Provinces of Novo-
sibirsk and Omsk and to the Altai Region. At the same time the Volga
German A.S.S.R. [Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic] was abolished
and divided between the Soviet Russian Provinces of Stalingrad and
Saratov. Of the approximately 480,000 Volga Germans the Soviets de-
ported about 200,000. . . .7*

A similar fate befell small nationalities of the North Caucasus, which
had for a short time been under German occupation.

. . . Early in 1944 the Chechens, Ingush, Ealkars, and Karachay
were rounded up and deported to remote areas in Siberia. According to
the census of 1939, the Chechens numbered 407,600, the Ingush 92,074,
the Balkars 42,660, and the Karachay 75,737. The Soviets also abolished
the Chechen- Ingush Autonomous S.S.R. and the autonomous province of
the Karachay. Also liquidated as a community were the Kalmucks, and
their A.S.S.R. was absorbed by the Province of Astrakhan.75

The Crimean ASSR was abolished in 1945, after the Tatars of the
area had been deported.

. . . Accurate figures on the number deported are not, apparently,
easily accessible. However, an indication of the number can be ascer-
tained by the fact that, according to the 1939 census, the population of the
Crimean A.S.S.R. was 1,127,000. During the period from 1926 to 1936
the Tartar portion of the total population had fallen from 26.2 to 23.1
percent. ... By the end of 1944 all Tartar designations of localities had
been abolished and replaced by Soviet appellations.76

The task of deporting the populations was assigned to Col. Gen. Ivan
Serov (later, for a time chairman of the KGB).77 The operation was
carried out in a brutal and cruel way :

The freight trains with cattle cars stood motionless on the rails. Motor-
trucks kept bringing people. Guards kept driving the sobbing crowd on.
The Red guards had very severe rules. A few steps to one side was con-

74 Senate Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security
Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, The Soviet
Empire: Prison House of Nations and Races, A Study in Genocide, Discrimination,
and Abuse of Power (S. Doc. 122, August 18, 1958), Prepared by the Legislative
Reference Service of the Library of Congress, 85th Cong.. 2d sess. (Washington,
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1958), p. 21.

" Ibid.

,e Ibid., p. 23. From these figures it would appear that the number of Tartars in
the Crimea amounted to about 300,000. On the other hand, a report in the New
York Times (May 5, p. 16) estimated the number of Crimean Tartars at
200,000.

"Simon Wolin and Robert M. Slusser, eds., The Soviet Secret Police (New York:
Frederick A. Praeger, 1957), p. 325. (Note: the KGB is discussed on p. 310 of this
volume of Facts on Communism.)

240

sidered an attempt to escape, and in such cases the guards would usually
shoot without warning. No one can say exactly how many such fatal
steps were taken. All that is known is that the victims numbered many
thousands. . . .

The heads of the trains accepted the crowds like cattle, without any
lists of names, by counting the number of "heads," and then driving people
into cars indiscriminately. A mother would be sent to one place; her
children to another. A husband to one train; his wife to another. More
insults, humiliation and cruelty were inflicted. Women were beaten just
like the men.78

The deportations affected mainly small nationalities, but not because
of their exceptional disloyalty. The Ukrainians, for instance,

. . . avoided meeting this fate only because there were too many of
them and there was no place to which to deport them.79

The fate of the deported in their new places of residence was tragic
and many of them died. Those who survived were partly rehabilitated
after Stalin's death (in 1955-57) ; not all the deported, however, were
permitted to return to their former abodes.

During the last year of the war, when the Red Army was reoccupying
Soviet territories, a severe and sweeping purge of disloyal elements — col-
laborators, Soviet citizens freed from German prisoner-of-war camps,
and others — -was carried out.

. . . On the basis of various evidence and denunciations, the MVD
deported considerable groups of men and women to camps in the north and
east, the proceedings and sentences never being mentioned in the press.
This action was taken in accordance with a decree of April 1943 reintro-
ducing "penal servitude" for collaboration with the enemy.80

The mass purge also served the purpose of replenishing the "labor
camps," which had lost much of their manpower through the recruiting
of inmates into the army and because of the high death rate in the camps.
Another source of manpower for the camps was Soviet prisoners of war
returning from captivity abroad and German, Japanese, and other pris-
oners of war interned in Russian camps.

7. Defense and Offense

In the several addresses each year that Stalin made to the nation dur-
ing the war he emphasized his demand for a "second front" in the west
of Europe, meaning an Allied invasion of the Continent from the Atlantic

70 Colonel G. A. Tokaevj as quoted in Vassan-Ghiray Djabagui, "Soviet Nationality
Policy and Genocide," Caucasian Review, published by the Institute for the Study of
the USSR, Munich, vol. I, 1955, p. 79.

79 Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., p. 190.

M David J. Dallin and Boris I. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), p. 297.

241

side. "The absence of a second front in Europe," he said on November
7, 1941, "greatly relieves the German army," which was a fact. Until
1944, however, the Western Allies, who were righting Japan, Italy and
Germany on many other fronts all over the world, could not gather the
force necessary for such an invasion and this was interpreted as "reluc-
tance" on the part of the Allies and as help to the Nazis.
It is true that

. . . the absence of the "second front" during 1941-44 was another
reason why many millions of soldiers and civilians had to die on the fields
of Russia. The absence of the second front was, however, the result of
the Soviet policy of collaboration with Gennany between 1939 and 1941.
At the time of Hitler's attack, the Soviet government had maneuvered itself
into an impossible political situation. The "first front" in France had suc-
cumbed as a consequence of this policy. Because of the foreign policy
Russia had pursued, Germany was able for a period of eighteen months to
advance in Russia and ravage her lands. By political means the Soviet
government was destroying what its armies would have been able to defend
in warfare.81

After the German attack, however, Stalin reproached his allies for
postponing their invasion:

. . . history shows that Germany always won her wars if she fought on
one front, and, on the contrary, lost the war when she was obliged to fight
on two fronts. . . . The Fascist bosses are making desperate attempts to
introduce discord into the camp of the anti-Hitler coalition, and thereby to
prolong the war. Hitlerite diplomats careen from one neutral country to
another, striving to establish contacts with pro-Hitlerite elements, hinting
at the possibility of a separate peace, sometimes with our State, sometimes
with our Allies.82

Stalin denied any nonhumane aims or aims of conquest in regard to
Germany herself; on the contrary, he stretched out a hand to the German
people, as distinct from their government:

It is not our aim to destroy all organized military force in Germany, for
every literate person will understand that this is not only impossible in re-
gard to Germany, as it is in regard to Russia, but it is also inexpedient from
the point of view of the victor. But Hitler's army can and must be de-
stroyed.83

c D. Dallin, The Changing World of Soviet Russia, p. 35.

•■Stalin, "Order of the Day on Red Army Anniversary" (February 23, 1944),
printed in Soviet Foreign Policy During the Patriotic War, Documents and Materials,
Andrew Rothstein, tr. (London: Hutchins & Co., Ltd., 1947), vol. II, p. 20.

* Stalin, "Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution,"
Report Delivered November 6, 1942 as Chairman of the State Committee for
Defense before the Moscow Soviet Working People's Deputies, jointly with Party and
Jubilee organizations of Moscow City, printed in Soviet Foreign Policy During the
Patriotic War, Documents and Materials, vol. I, p. 49.

242

... it would be ludicrous to identify Hitler's clique with the German
people, with the German State. The experience of history indicates that
Hitlers come and go, but the German people and the German State re-
main.8*

Since the spring of 1943 the advance of the Red Army had been
making the defeat of Germany likely; by mid- 1944 a final rout appeared
certain. With the advance of the Soviet forces, the self-assurance of the
Soviet leadership grew and its attitude toward the Western Allies was
becoming independent, sometimes challenging. Emphasis on the Com-
munist party as the real factor in defeating the Nazi Reich was becom-
ing stronger. The philosophy that was taking shape held that the anti-
German coalition was winning the war only because one of its main ele-
ments, the Soviet Union, was a socialist nation ruled by a Communist
party and led by Stalin. The new Soviet ambition was tied up with a
conception of a postwar Europe in which Russia would play the pre-
dominant role.

The conduct of the Red Army in newly-occupied countries beyond
Russia's frontiers signified an ominous deterioration in Red Army morale.
The attitude of the supreme leaders toward this deterioration was
ambiguous. In Hungary, Austria, Yugoslavia, and, in the first place,
Germany, the advancing units of the Red Army drank, looted and raped
on a large scale. Their conduct left indelible impressions affecting the
postwar attitudes of Russia's neighbor populations towards the Soviet
Union. In Yugoslavia

. . . Wherever the units of the Red Army passed, the people complained
about their behavior. Many women were assaulted, many were raped,
there were cases of murder and robbery. At first we tried to explain these
things to the people as isolated instances, but the number of crimes steadily
grew. . . . Reports were received by our authorities that Red Army offi-
cers and men have committed 1,219 violations on Yugoslav, territory, 329
attempted violations, 111 violations with murder, 248 violations and at-
tempts at murder and 1,204 robberies with vioience.85

In April 1945, when Milovan Djilas, Tito's closest aide, talked to
Stalin about the behavior of the Russian soldiers, the Soviet leader pre-
tended never to have heard about it before.

"Stalin, "Order of the Day to the Red Army" (February 23, 1942), printed in
Soviet Foreign Policy During the Patriotic War, Documents and Materials, vol. I,
p. 37.

"Vladimir Dedijer, Tito (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953), p. 263.

243

. . . surprised by this account, Stalin said to Djilas: "Why did you not
write to me about all this? I did not know it. I consider the dispute now
settled." 86

In the first meetings of German Communists in Berlin after the libera-
tion an attempt was made to discuss the horrible fate suffered by so
many German women and their families. A local Communist leader
asked Walter Ulbricht, leader of the German Communist party:

... A question has been put to us by some doctors — men with an anti-
Fascist background — about what course they ought to take with women
who have been raped and come to them for abortions. I've promised the
doctors a reply. We need a clear definition of the proper attitude to this
question of abortion in such cases, from our own point of view."

He was immediately supported by another voice: "The question's very
urgent. It's being talked about everywhere. ... In my view, abortion
ought to be permitted officially in such cases."

Voices of assent could be heard from ail over the room, but Ulbricht
interrupted the discussion by saying sharply: "There can be no question of
it ! I regard the discussion as closed." 87

To Ulbricht and the other proclaimers of Russian moral leadership
the situation was embarrassing; to the rank and file German Communists
it was intolerable.

. . . For the first time in my life, I saw something happen which up
till then I had regarded as practically impossible; there were open cries of
protest against a senior Party official.

"You can't do that! We must discuss it!"

"We have a moral obligation to defend our attitude on the question."
"We must give working-class women the right of abortion."
"Wre can't just go on avoiding every unpleasant question."
Ulbricht stood facing them with an angry frown. One speaker followed
another. Before long it was no longer a question of simply permitting
abortion. What was demanded was more fundamental: it was that a
clear and public attitude should be taken towards the excesses of the
Soviet Army. There must be no more evasion of the subject. . . . Finally,
when the excitement had somewhat subsided, it was Ulbricht's turn to
speak.

M Ibid., p. 264. Three years later, when the conflict between Moscow and Belgrade
was developing, Stalin accused his former disciple of having slandered the Soviet
army. Dedijer relates (p. 264) :

"We imagined that the dispute was settled in this way [the Stalin conversation
with Djilas in 1945]. But in 1948, when the conflict began openly, one of the first
things with which Stalin charged us was ingratitude toward the Red Army and with
having insulted the memory of fallen Red Army fighters, accusing them of things they
never did. But the best witnesses, who were right in this case, were the people in
those parts of our country the Red Army had passed through in 1944 and 1945. "

■ Leonhard, op. cit., p. 311.

244

«i

'I repeat," he said sharply, "I regard the discussion on this subject as
closed. It is quite impossible for us to adopt the attitude that abortions are
permissible if the pregnancy results from these incidents.85

The Soviet officer Sabik-Vogulov ("son of peasants and myself a
worker" ) , who had moved with the Red Army all the way from Stalin-
grad to Berlin, published a pamphlet in which he described the events
of that time:

Unrestrained debauch engulfed the Russian occupation army. Dis-
turbed by the unprecedented increase in venereal diseases, the Army com-
mand issued every month from three to five orders devoted to this question.

And there really was reason for alarm.

Two huge army hospitals were overcrowded with people sick with
venereal diseases, to such an extent that not less than half of the patients
had to be placed in private apartments. The patients walked around, rode
in their own cars, went where they wanted, drank, and infected thousands
of healthy German women.

Many of the sick, despairing of recovery, apparently decided to live fast,
and turned to banditry . . . and excessive drinking. . . .

*******

. . . Nearly every day there were orders announced providing for punish-
ment by the military tribunal. Either officers or soldiers were punished
for raping German women; or a lieutenant was punished for stopping a
German car while he was walking on the highway, shooting the driver,
and then trying to escape. . . .

The debauchees were no longer content with German women and girls;
child prostitution started to grow.89

It will take at least a few decades before the traces of these memories
are deleted from the minds of Russia's neighbors.

8. The Balance Sheet

For Russia the war in Europe ended early in May, and in the Far
East in September 1945. The balance sheet drawn after the war
showed huge Russian losses, losses far in excess of those of any of the other
belligerent countries, including Germany.

About 25,000,000 persons were made homeless. The invaders totally or
partly destroyed 1,710 towns, more than 70,000 villages and 6,000,000 build-
ings. Forty thousand hospitals and medical institutions, 84,000 schools
and 43,000 public libraries were destroyed or looted.

Farm losses included 7,000,000 horses, 17,000,000 cattle, 20,000,000 pigs
and 27,000,000 sheep and goats.

Industrial losses included more than 31,000 industrial enterprises de-
stroyed and nearly 40,000 electric motors and 175,000 lathes destroyed or

w Ibid., pp. 311,312.

88 Sabik-Vogulov, V pobezhdennoi Germanii (In Conquered Germany) (Germany:
no. pub., February 1947), pp. 35, 35.

245

removed. Russia's great power stations on the Dniepr in the Donbas region
and in Leningrad, Kharkov, Krasnodar, Kiev, Voronezh, the Crimea and
White Russia were destroyed and valuable equipment removed from them
to Germany.

Coal mines with a capacity of 100,000,000 tons a year and oil wells with
a capacity of 5,000,000 tons annually were destroyed. The itemized bill
includes factories that produced tractors, railroad equipment, motor cars
and paper.

Railway losses were especially severe — 65,000 kilometers [40,365 miles]
of track, 13,000 bridges, 15,800 locomotives and 428,000 cars.90

The direct loss to the economy and private citizens was estimated by
the official State Commission at 679 billion rubles.

As for human losses, the Soviet government has never indicated the
number.

. . . Stalin, in his reply to Churchill's Fulton, Mo., speech, mentioned
that "the Soviet Union sustained irreparable losses of about seven million
men," but his figure included only "direct losses in battle, under German
occupation, and from forced labor in Germany." Kis total, in accordance
v/ith Soviet tradition, fails to take account of deaths among Soviet prisoners
of war as well as deaths from starvation during the siege of Leningrad and
the great number of those listed as "missing" in official reports. . . .

The available data make possible the approximate estimates. . . [of
losses]: military 6,000,000-8,000,000, military and civilian 12,000,000-
16,000,000.Si

The late Professor Evgeni Kulisher, an authority on population prob-
lems, estimated Russia's human losses at

. . . from 10,000,000 to 12,000,000. This tremendous loss includes
millions killed on the battle fields, millions of Jews and non-Jews tormented
to death by the Germans, and a considerable number of children and adults
who perished because of the harsh wartime living conditions. The num-
ber of war victims of the USSR is as large as the total of all of the other
countries of Europe.82

The census conducted in the Soviet Union in 1959 revealed the ap-
proximate size of the war losses. Although not all of the figures have
been made public, the most striking revelation was

. . . how severely the male population was decimated during World War
II. The loss was originally assessed at three million, but later seven million
came to be generally accepted in the West. The census indicates that a loss

*°New York Times, September 14, 1945, p. 15. The information given in this
quote was taken from Soviet sources.

■ D. Dallin, The Changing World of Soviet Russia, pp. 32, 33.

M Evgeni Kulisher, "Naselenie i Voennye Poteri SSSR." (Population and War
Losses of the USSR), Novoe Russkoe Slovo (New Russian Word), New York,
December 25, 1947, p. 2.

246

of 15 to 20 million males from all causes, is closer to the actual tragic

IdCto • • a

Projecting prewar population growth rates, it appears that the USSR
would now have 30 to 40 million more people, were it not for the grievously
heavy war losses and the lower birth rate during the war years.83

About one fifth of the adult population perished during the war.

. . . We come to the frightful conclusion that during the war more than
22 per cent of the population over fourteen years old (at the beginning of the
war) perished. But this is not all. Among those who were lost during the
war men represented the great majority and while over one fifth of the
total population over 14 years perished during the war, the loss of men over
14 years must have amounted to a third, maybe even more. . . .

*******

. . . the proportion of men to women within the adult population at the
end of the war reached an unheard of level — probably 100 men to not less
than 150 women. Not less than a quarter of a century must pass — without
war! — before this proportion would again approach the pre-war status.64

03 Population Bulletin, published by the Population Reference Bureau, Inc., Wash-
ington, D.C., vol. XV, No. 4, July 1954, p. 1.

91 S. Schwarz, "Chto my -oznali iz itogov perepisi naseleniya?" (What Did We Learn
From the Census?), Sotsialisticheskii Vestnik (The Socialist Courier), New York,
June 1959, pp. 108, 109.

Chapter X. The Postwar Era and Stalin's Death

1. The Main Trends

The victory in war solidified and magnified the trend toward Rus-
sian nationalism, a trend propagated and supported by the government.
The principle of equality of all Soviet nations, previously announced
as sacred and incorporated in the Soviet constitution, was now openly
put aside and the Russians, now proclaimed as superior to the other
peoples of the Union, were hailed as the real victor in the war. At a
reception of Soviet marshals and generals in the Kremlin on May 24,
1945, celebrating the armistice, Generalissimo Stalin raised his glass
"to the health of our Soviet people and, first of all, of the Russian peo-
ple." (Here the record notes "stormy, prolonged applause; shouts of
'Hurrah!'")

I drink in the first place to the health of the Russian people, because
it is the mosi; outstanding nation of all nations forming the Soviet Union.

I raise a toast to the health of the Russian people because it has won
in this war universal recognition as the leading force in the Soviet Union
among all the peoples of our country.

... it possesses a clear mind, staunch character, and patience.

... A different people could have said to the Government: You have
failed to justify our expectations; go away — we shall install another gov-
ernment which will conclude peace with Germany and secure for us a
quiet life. The Russian people, however, did not take this path because
it trusted the correctness of the policy of its Government and it made
sacrifices to insure the rout of Germany. And this confidence of the Rus-
sian people in the Soviet Government proved to be that decisive force
which insured a historic victory over the enemy of humanity— -over fascism.

Thanks to the Russian people for this confidence.1

Stalin spoke in the same vein after the airnistice in the Far East.
An avowed defeatist in 1904-05, when Japan emerged the victor in
the Far Eastern war, Stalin now referred to Russia's failure of that time in
a patriotic way : He was full of happiness about the reconquest of what
Tsarist Russia had lost. In his address over the Moscow radio on Sep-
tember 2, 1945, he said:

... the defeat of the Russian troops in 1904, in the period of the
Russo-Japanese War, left grave memories in the minds of our people. It

1 Information Bulletin, published by the Embassy of the USSR in the USA, Wash-
ington, D.C., vol. V, No. 55 (June 5, 1945), p. 3.

(247)

248

fell as a dark stain on our country. Our people trusted and awaited the
day when Japan would be routed and the stain wiped out.

For 40 years we, men of the older generation, have waited for this
generation, waited for this day. And now this day has come.

Today Japan has acknowledged her defeat and signed the act of uncon-
ditional surrender.2

This was still the glow of pride in the aftermath of a victory in war.
The embryos of opposition, however, which had not yet assumed dan-
gerous size, could grow quickly in the new climate. The ascendancy
of the army leaders, if not stopped, could obscure and subvert the
"dictatorship of the proletariat," that is, the omnipotence of the Com-
munist party and its supreme leader.

. . . Towards the end of the war the officers' corps represented the germ
of such an organization. . . . [It] was morally on top of the nation. It
had a leader to look up to in Marshal Zhukov, the defender of Moscow and
the conqueror of Berlin, whose popularity was second only to Stalin's. It
may have been by one shade more genuine, because it had owed less to offi-
cial publicity. This is not to say that Stalin's personal position was in any
danger or that Zhukov could have assumed the role of his rival. . . . Stalin
was only too anxious, just as he had been in the thirties, to suppress once
more, though in much milder fashion, the potentiality of an alternative
government, or rather of a successor to his government whom he himself
had not designated.8

Among the first acts of the Soviet government after the war, there-
fore, was the degradation of the military and the raising of the rank and
prestige of the army's mortal rivals, the leaders of the Soviet police
organization. Lavrenti Beria was elevated to the rank of marshal and
his closest collaborators to the rank of generals. Most of the venerated
army leaders gradually disappeared from the public eye. This was
especially the case with Marshal Georgi Zhukov, whose

. . . role in the defence of Stalingrad and even Moscow was gradually
blurred in the official accounts of the war, until, on the third anniversary of
the battle of Berlin, Pravda managed to commemorate the event without
mentioning Zhukov even once. . . .

. . . From everywhere, the household deities of Mother Russia, only
recently re-installed with so much unction, were quietly removed to the
lumber rooms, if not cast out altogether. It was no longer good patriotic
style to evoke the names of Kutuzov, Suvorov, Minin, and Pozharsky. It
was no longer fashionable to glorify the great Tsars, Ivan the Terrible and
Peter the Great, whom historians and writers had just treated with more
reverence than discretion as Stalin's spiritual forbears.4

' Information Bulletin, published by the Embassy of the USSR in the USA, Wash-
ington.. D.C., vol. V, No. 91 (September G, 1945), p. 2.

3 I. Deutscher, Stalin (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), p, 561.
* Ibid., p. 552.

249

Russian nationalism, in no way discarded, was coupled now with
communism in Stalinist garb. Russia has won the war, the new philos-
ophy held, because its economy is socialist, its policies are Communist
and its leader is Stalin. Stalin began to expand this theory almost
immediately after the end of the war. Belittling or totally disregarding
the role of his Western allies, Stalin attributed the victory to Russia
alone; and the Russian victory was tantamount to a victory of
the Soviet system:

. . . victory means, in the first place, that our Soviet social system has
won, that the Soviet social system successfully withstood the trial in the
flames of war and proved its perfect viability.

• ••••«*

. . . The war has shown that the Soviet social system is a truly popular
system, which has grown from the people and enjoys its powerful support,
that the Soviet social system is a perfectly viable and stable form of organi-
sation of society.

The point is that the Soviet social system has proved to be more viable
and stable than a non-Soviet social system, that the Soviet social system is a
better form of organisation of society than any non-Soviet social system.*

Stalin attributed the satisfactory supply of arms in the last years of
the v/ar solely to Soviet industrialization and the supply of food to the
existence of collective farms:

What was the policy which enabled the Communist Party to secure these
material possibilities in the country within such a short time?

In the first place, it was the Soviet policy of industrialisation of the
country. . . .

Secondly, it was the policy of collectivisation of agriculture.

In order to put an end to the backwardness of our agriculture and give
the country more marketable grain, more cotton, etc., it was necessary to
pass from small peasant farming to large-scale farming, because only a large
farm is able to use new machinery, to take advantage of all the achieve-
ments of agronomic science and to yield more marketable produce.

• •*•***

... It is to the Party's credit that it did not adapt itself to the backward
elements, was not afraid of swimming against the stream and always pre-
served its position of the leading force.6

A new extensive purge, carried out all over the country, affected not so
much the Communist party as the personnel of the administrative and
economic agencies. Deviations from the rigid control system that had
prevailed before the war were eliminated and their perpetrators were
removed and severely punished.

8 J. V. Stalin, "Speech Delivered in the Evening of February 9, 1946, in the Grand
Opera House, Moscow, at a Meeting of the Electors of the Stalin District of Moscow,"
Speeches by J. V. Stalin and V. M. Molotov Delivered at Election Meetings in
Moscow in February 1946 (London: Soviet News, 1946), pp. 6, 7.

'Ibid., pp. 12-14.

250

In September 1946 the government issued a decree against "pillage"
of kolkhoz lands which had occurred during the war (meaning the en-
larging of private agricultural property) and other kinds of "abuses."
The decree signified restoration of the earlier system in effect in the
kolkhozes.

The Bolshevik, the political organ of the central committee of the Com-
munist party, urges party workers on collective farms and in villages to
combat survivals of private ownership among farmers, especially in areas
occupied by the Germans during the war, where hostile propaganda against
the Soviet state structure and collective farming was carried out by the
enemy.

The magazine's editorial, with its emphasis on increased "political lead-
ership" in rural areas and the necessity for "mobilizing" farmers for the
five-year plan, may be viewed as yet another approach to the all-important
campaign of preparing the Russian people, from the standpoint of political
ideology and industrial agricultural efficiency, for the completion of that
plan. The Bolshevik said that it "must not be forgotten that, despite the
increased political consciousness of collective farmers, there are backward
elements among them in whose consciousness survivals of private ownership
are still strong." 7

The government took stern measures against private ("black mar-
ket") trade, which had assumed substantial proportions. Industrial
managers who supplied goods to illegal trade or in any other way
deviated from the strict system of regimentation were punished. On
June 26, 1946 the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times re-
ported as follows:

Widespread dismissals and fining of factory directors, engineers and ac-
countants as a result of the discovery of evidence that industrial-production
figures had been faked, bonuses had been distributed illegally and factory
funds had been misappropriated was announced by the Ministry of State
Control in all [Soviet] newspapers this morning.

The Ministry also charged that officials had been converting state prop-
erty to their own use and shipping goods that were unfinished or below
standard to customers. According to the announcement, purges . . . have
been distributed in . . . widely separated areas. . . .

Industrial officials have been removed from their jobs and fined and in
many cases they will be tried in court . . .8

The purge among captains of industry and trade continued for several
years. Their situation was desperate, almost tragic. The raw materials
supplied to them by other governmental agencies were often of a rather
low quality whereas the industrial plans had to be fulfilled; the result
was a poor quality of the products. The government tried to fight the
deterioration in the quality of food and consumer goods by severe re-

' New York Times, August 28, 1946, p. 2.
■ New York Times, June 27, 1946, p. 1.

251

pressions against the managers and engineers who were accused of de-
liberate falsification and spoiling of products. A number of frame trials
took place, involving administrators and technicians in various factories
and mines:

1 . In Saratov, director D. K. Ovchinski, as well as P. V. Kireev and
V. I. Podshivalov were sentenced, respectively, to 7 and 5 years' "depri-
vation of liberty" (meaning deportation to a concentration camp.)

2. In Leningrad, director V. B. Garibyan and chief engineer V. A.
Glinchikov were sentenced to 5 years' "deprivation of liberty."

3. In Moscow, director V. I. Tarachkov was sentenced to 5 years.

4. In Dnepropetrovsk, technical director G. K. Adartyan and the
head of the O.T.K. (Technical Control Division), A. V. Kozlov, were
sentenced respectively, to 5 and 7 years.

5. P. E. Anisimov, the manager of mine No. 4 of the Katykovski
region of the Stalin Oblast, was sentenced to 5 years.

6. N. Ya. Chudakov, chief engineer of the Makeev Mining Combine,
and P. A. Radchenko, head of the Technical Control Division, were
each sentenced to 5 years.

7. In Erevan, A. T. Avakyan, chief engineer of the First Sewing
Shop, and A. G. Manukyan, head of the Technical Control Division,
were each sentenced to 5 years' "deprivation of liberty." 9

In the areas which had been under German occupation, the purge
was total:

The personnel of the local administrations also underwent thorough
screenings and experienced great and systematic purges, especially in areas
the Germans had occupied during the war. In the Ukraine, for example,
over 70 per cent of the presidents of local Soviets were purged in
1945—47 and more than 40 percent of the party secretaries.10

Among the extensive police operations of the immediate postwar era
was the repatriation from the West (mainly from Germany) and
segregation of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens — prisoners of
war, laborers forcibly recruited for agricultural or industrial work in
Germany, refugees from the Soviet Union and others. With respect to
the many who, for various reasons, refused to return, the Soviet gov-
ernment insisted on forcible repatriation and, in general, had its way.

The mass repatriation of Soviet citizens — deportation might be a better
word — began at the end of May 1945 and continued for over a year. The
outside world was oblivious to the tragedy and terror which characterized
it; indeed, its lessons have hardly been learned even today. Sut those
Americans and British who were forced to act as accomplices of the
MVD in one of its most inhuman operations ■will never forget what they saw.
*******

* All of these cases were taken from Pravda, December 16, 1948.
"David J. Dallin, The New Soviet Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1951), p. 199.

252

. . . The MVD set up a number of transit camps in Eastern Germany,
where a preliminary screening of the returnees was conducted; a second,
more thorough check-up was held later inside the Soviet Union.

The MVD inquisition was based on a mass of reports received from
fellow-prisoners, especially Communists, on the repatriates' political be-
havior while in Germany. In a great many cases, prisoners of war were
immediately haled before courts-martial, while civilians were tried by
special MVD commissions. These were the alleged "traitor leaders,"
particularly men who had served in German uniforms. Their fate was
sealed, and there was no point in shipping them further east.

The MVD's instructions in these cases, judging from a multitude of re-
ports, were clear and unmistakable. Men and women accused of having
been "war criminals" (according to the Soviet definition of the term)
were lined up before the MVD officers of the screening camps, abused
in the most violent language, stripped of their insignia and decorations,
and then, in a matter of a few days, interrogated and condemned to death.
The sentences were carried out at once.11

The others were shipped to Russia, and, if they had been denounced
or suspected, were interrogated and then sent to corrective labor camps.
Members of the Vlasov and similar groups were tried and sentenced to
terms of up to 25 years.

Those who succeeded in their effort to remain abroad inhabited the
"displaced persons'5 camps in Germany and Austria for a number of
years, gradually finding jobs or ways of emigrating to the West. A
"hard core" of ill or invalided still remain in a few places.

The forced repatriation and the large contingents of Russians who re-
mained in the West served as an indication of the attitude of Soviet citi-
zens toward their government.

2. The Communist Party After the War

The Communist party continued to grow in numbers; it was easy to
gain admission to the party and millions of former soldiers and members
of the Communist Youth League joined its ranks. In the spring of 1 94 1 ,
just before the German invasion the party reported a membership of
approximately 3 million; in 1945, at the end of the war, membership was
reported as 5,700,000; at the time of Stalin's death in 1953 it was 7
million.

All party and government power remained, as before, in Stalin's hands
and the organs of "collective leadership," such as the party's Central
Committee and the Politburo, were practically impotent. The Central
Committee was being more and more neglected by its General Secre-
tary; meetings, when they took place (at intervals of several years),

"Dallin, "The Repatriation Crime of World War II," The New Leader, vol.
XXXV, No. 16 (April 21, 1952), pp. 4, 5.

253

served only to say "yes" to Stalin's proposals. Even the small Politburo
appeared too large to Stalin; to eliminate it, he created small "commis-
sions of the Politburo" to act on behalf of the Central Committee:

The importance of the Central Committee's Political Bureau was reduced
and its work disorganized by the creation within the Political Bureau of
various commissions — the so-called "quintets," "sextets," "septets" and
"novenaries." Here is, for instance, a resolution of the Political Bureau of
3 October 1946:

"Stalin's Proposal :

"1. The Political Bureau Commission for Foreign Affairs ('Sextet') is to
concern itself in the future, in addition to foreign affairs, also with matters
of internal construction and domestic policy.

"2. The Sextet is to add to its roster the Chairman of the State Commis-
sion of Economic Planning of the U.S.S.R., Comrade Voznesensky, and is
to be known as a Septet.

"Signed : Secretary of the Central Committee, J. Stalin." 12

The "card-player" commissions also served to eliminate those mem-
bers of the Politburo whom the suspicious Stalin distrusted. One of
them was Kliment Voroshilov, who became president of the USSR after
Stalin's death:

. . . For several years he was actually deprived of the right of participa-
tion in Political Bureau sessions. Stalin forbade him to attend the Political
Bureau sessions and to receive documents. When the Political Bureau was
in session and Comrade Voroshilov heard about it, he telephoned each time
and asked whether he would be allowed to attend. Sometimes Stalin per-
mitted it, but always showed his dissatisfaction.

Because of his extreme suspicion, Stalin toyed also with the absurd and
ridiculous suspicion that Voroshilov was an English agent

... A special tapping device was installed in his home to listen to what
was said there.13

As the years went by, the peculiar behavior of the aging leader was
making the situation more and more intolerable. Stalin's mania
grandiosa, meeting with no resistance, grew beyond all limits; it was
aided by the servile attitude of his lieutenants and his press and radio.
No public speech, on whatever subject, could be made that did not
mention the "genius" Stalin; no important newspaper article could omit
quotations from the infallible Stalin.

And was it without Stalin's knowledge that many of the largest enter-
prises and towns were named after him? Was it without his knowledge
that Stalin monuments v/ere erected in the whole country — these "memo-

"Nikita S. Khrushchev, "Secret Report," Delivered February 24, 25, 1956 at
the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, printed in
Bertram G. Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost (London: Atlantic Press, 1957),
pp. 240, 242.

*/&»<*., pp. 242, 244.

68491 O-61-vol. II— 17

254

rials to the living"? It is a fact that Staiin himself had signed on 2 July
1951 a resolution of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers concerning the erec-
tion on the Volga-Don Canal of an impressive monument to Stalin; on
4 September of the same year he issued an order making 33 tons of copper
available for the construction of this impressive monument.

Anyone who has visited the Stalingrad area must have seen the huge
statue which is being built there, and that on a site which hardly a.ny
people frequent. Huge sum: were spent to build it at a time when people
of this area had lived since the war in huts. Consider, yourself, was
Stalin right when he wrote in his biography that ". . . . he did not allow
in himself . . . even a shadow of conceit, pride, or self-adoration"?

At the same time Stalin gave proofs of his lack of respect for Lenin's
memory. It is not a coincidence that, despite the decision taken over 30
years ago to build a Palace of Soviets as a monument to Vladimir Ilyich,
the Palace was not built, its construction was always postponed and the
project allowed to lapse.14

Khrushchev also stated in his report to the Twentieth Congress:

. . . Staiin became even more capricious, irritable and brutal; in par-
ticular his suspicion grew. Kis persecution mania reached unbelievable
dimensions. Many workers were becoming enemies before his very eyes.
After the war, Stalin separated himself from the collective even more.
Everything was decided by him alone without any consideration for any-
one or anything.15

Two other ranking Russian Communist leaders, Vyacheslav Molo-
tov and Anastas Mikoyan, found themselves in the category of suspected
men; they suffered treatment similar to that accorded Voroshilov. In
a talk before the Central Committee after the Nineteenth Party Con-
gress (convened to "elect" the obedient Central Committee), Stalin- —

. . . characterized Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov and Anastas
Ivanovich Mikoyan and suggested that these old workers of our party were
guilty of some baseless charges. It is not excluded that, had Stalin re-
mained at the helm for another several months, Comrades Molotov and
Mikoyan would probably have not delivered any speeches at this [the
Twentieth] Congress.13

More tragic was the fate of the young and able Nikolai Voznesenski,
who had been included in the highest "sextet" on Stalin's suggestion in
October 1946. Voznesensky proved his loyalty and talents in a book
on Soviet economy in which he omitted reference to American aid to the
Soviet Union during the war and greatly exaggerated the pace of Soviet
rehabilitation under Stalin. But having permitted himself to disagree
with the leader in a discussion on some economic issues, he provoked

14 J bid., p. 224.
"Ibid., p. 194.
16 Ibid., p. 244.

255

Stalin's ire and suspicion. His removal, arrest and execution were car-
ried out on Stalin's orders and without consultation with the other
members of the Politburo, who faced an accomplished fact when they
learned of the arrest and execution of their colleague.

The sad fate of Political Bureau member, Comrade Voznesensky, who
fell victim to Stalin's repressions, is known to all. It is a characteristic thing
that the decision to remove him from the Political Bureau was never dis-
cussed but was reached in a devious fashion. In the same way came the
decision concerning the removal of Kuznetsov and Rodionov from their
posts.17

The Voznesenski case was part of the mysterious "Leningrad Affair"
(1949-50) which involved several other ranking leaders who were also
put to death.

Facts prove that the "Leningrad Affair" is also the result of willfulness
which Stalin exercised against party cadres.

Had a normal situation existed in the party's Central Committee and in
the Central Committee Political Bureau, affairs of this nature would have
been examined there in accordance with party practice, and all pertinent
facts assessed; as a result, such an affair as well as others would not have
happened.18

The "Leningrad Affair" apparently had a devastating effect on the
Politburo. Not one among its members could now feel secure; what
had happened to Voznesenski could as well become the fate of each of
them, including even Malenkov and Beria, the most docile and shrewd
of the supreme leader's lieutenants. The fear was so ovenvhelming that
not one dared to face the despotic ruler and mount a protest. At least
not for another few years.

3. International Communism

The return to prewar standards and tactics had an effect also on the
international Communist movement. Although the main functions of
the Comintern, in particular liaison with Communist parties abroad,
supply of funds, etc., were, since the announced dissolution in 1943,
actually being performed in Moscow by a department of the Central
Committee of the Communist party, the absence of an international or-
ganization operating in the open was felt. The resurrection of such a
body in one form or another had been envisaged since the last weeks
of the war:

Tito himself, in 1945, had submitted this idea to Stalin, who had wel-
comed it with open arms. . . .

The matter was also discussed in June, 1946. . . .

17 Ibid., p. 240.
"Ibid., pp. 192, 194.

256

During this visit Tito had several talks with Stalin, who on one occasion
asked Tito whether he still thought that a new International, but informa-
tive in character, should be founded. Tito agreed, and then Stalin sug-
gested, "It would be best if you Yugoslavs took the initiative." 18

The new international organization was founded in September 1947
at a conference in Sklarska Poremba ( Poland ) at which the Communist
parties of the following countries participated : the Soviet Union ; all the
European satellites; Yugoslavia; and, from the West, France and Italy.
To avoid any resemblance to the Comintern, only nine European Com-
munist parties were invited to take part; nor were parties from Asia or
America included. The Soviet Union was represented by two ranking
members of the Politburo, Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's right hand, and
Georgi Malenkov. Stalin's "two camps" idea was embodied in a mani-
festo issued by the conference :

. . . there arose two camps — the camp of imperialism and anti-demo-
cratic forces, whose chief aim is an establishment of a world-wide American
imperialists' hegemony and the crushing of democracy; and an anti-im-
perialistic democratic camp whose chief aim is the elimination of imperial-
ism, the strengthening of democracy and the liquidation of the remnants
of fascism.

*******

. . . The Truman-Marshall plan is only a farce, a European branch
of the general world plan of political expansion being realized by the
United States of America in all parts of the world. The plan of the eco-
nomic and political subjugation of Europe through American imperialism
is complemented by plans for the economic and political subjugation of
China, Indonesia and South America. The aggressors of yesterday — the
capitalist tycoons of Germany and Japan — are being prepared by the
United States of America for a new role — as tools of the imperialistic policy
in Europe and Asia of the United States of America.

*******

A separate place in this arsenal is reserved for the treasonable policy of
the Rightist Socialists.20

Only Communist parties could save Europe from subjugation by
American capitalism:

. . . They must grasp in their hands the banner of national independence
and sovereignty in their own countries.21

Therefore, the Communist parties must show more revolutionary
zeal and courage. A hidden reprimand to French and Italian Com-
munists for their reluctance and hesitation was contained in the follow-
ing paragraphs :

"Vladimir Dedijer, Tito (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953), p. 291.
" New York Times, October 6, 1947, p. 3.

"ibid.

257

The main danger for the working class at this moment lies in the under-
estimation of its own strength and overestimation of the force of the im-
perialist camp.

In the same way as the appeasement policy of Munich led to Hitler's
aggression, .today concessions to the United States of America and the
imperialist camp may cause its instigators to grow even more shameless
and aggressive.22

The new international organization assumed the modest-sounding
name Information Bureau (Cominform). Its headquarters were to be
in Belgrade. It was Stalin's intention to use Cominform pressure to
coerce Tito's rebellious party. In 1 948, strictly following Stalin's orders,
the Cominform condemned the Yugoslavs, and in 1949 it expelled them.
After the expulsion of the Yugoslavs, the headquarters were moved to
Bucharest.

4. Realmeinent in Literature* Art, and Science

An end had to be put to all non-Stalinist ideological trends that had
started to mushroom in the Soviet Union during the war. Nor was
Stalinism itself precisely what it had been before. A forceful campaign
was started in 1946 to brainwash Russian intellectual circles and their
leaders.23

Andrei Zhdanov, frequently viewed in those years as Stalin's heir-
apparent, became the main force in this ideological war on deviation.
In August 1946 the Central Committee of the Communist party pub-
lished a resolution attacking two literary magazines, Zvezda (Star) and
Leningrad, for their editorial policy; the two magazines were the scape-
goat for other Soviet writers and literary publications. An attack was
launched on the talented and popular Russian satirist, Mikhail
Zoshchenko:

. . . Zoshchenko presents the Soviet order and the Soviet people in the
form of an ugly caricature, slanderously depicting Soviet people as primi-
tive, uncouth, stupid, and narrow-minded in tastes and morals. His mali-
ciously h.ooliganistic portrayal of our society is accompanied by anti-Soviet
attacks.

a Ibid.

13 A skit in the form of extracts from the diary of a Soviet critic had appeared in
the Moscow publication Novyi Mir (New World) in 1946. The skit, written by Alex-
ander Raskin, contained the following "ten commandments" of a Soviet critic:

"1. Do not be the first to speak out! 2. Do not be the second! 3. Be the third!
4. Confess the mistakes of your fellow-critics! 5. Quote! 6. Avoid appraisals! A
cheap appraisal may cost you dear. 7. It is better to overblame than to underpraise.
8. If you have been smitten on your right cheek, protect the left." (As quoted in
Gleb Struve, Soviet Russian Literature, 1917-50 (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1 95 1 ), p. 34 1 , note. )

258

The placing of the pages of Zvezda at the disposal of such vulgarians
and dregs of literature is the more inadmissible because the editors of the
journal know well the physiognomy of Zoshchenko and his unworthy
behavior during the war. . . ,M

The same magazine was taken to task for publication of nonpolitical
poems by one of the best of contemporary Russian poets, Anna Akhma-
tova.

. . . Akhmatova is a typical representative of a form of poetry that is
empty, devoid of ideas, and alien to our people. Her poems are imbued
with the spirit of pessimism and decadence, and express the tastes of the
old drawing-room poetry, of bourgeois-aristocratic estheticism and deca-
dence of "art for art's sake.*' M

Zhdanov subsequently castigated Zoshchenko and Akhmatova in pub-
lic speeches:

. . . [Zhdanov] denounced Zoshchenko as a "vulgarian" who was
"accustomed to mocking at Soviet life, Soviet conditions, and Soviet
people. . . ."

From Zoshchenko, Zhdanov passed on to Akhmatova, whom he char-
acterized as an out-and-out individualist, a representative of the "reaction-
ary literary morass," a "cross between a nun and a whore." 26

The Central Committee restored the old principle that literature must
serve the party's purposes; no other trend could be tolerated and anyone
who resisted this course would be purged :

. . . They [Zvezda and Leningrad} have forgotten that our journals are
a mighty instrument of the soviet state in the cause of the education of
the Soviet people, and Soviet youth in particular. They must therefore be
guided by the vital foundation of the Soviet order — its politics. . . .

The power of Soviet literature, the most advanced literature in the
world, consists in the fact that it is a literature which has not and cannot
have interests other than the interests of the people, the interests of the state.
The task of Soviet literature is to aid the state to educate the youth correctly
and to meet their demands, to rear a new generation vigorous, believing
in their cause, fearing no obstacles and ready to overcome all obstacles.27

This resolution was the beginning of a comprehensive drive that soon (
extended to other fields of art and to science.

. . . the Central Committee of the Communist party followed up the
resolution on Zvezda and Leningrad by two others: one was entitled "On

2C Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of August 14,
1946, on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad, printed in Bolshevik, Moscow, No.
15, August 1946, p. 11.

20 Ibid.

" Struve, op. eit., pp. 329, 331.

97 Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of August 14,
1946, on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad, printed in Bolshevik, Moscow, No.
15, August 1946, p. 12.

259

the Repertoire of Dramatic Theaters and Measures for Its Improvement"
and the other "On the Motion Picture 'Big Life.' "

The resolution on the theaters signalized the unsatisfactory condition
of the Soviet theaters, whose main weakness was the almost complete ab-
sence of plays by Soviet authors on contemporary themes.23

The Soviet population, it was admitted, did not like the Communist
streamlined propaganda plays, preferring foreign and pre-revolutionary
Russian drama. The chief weakness of the situation, it was said :

... is the fact that plays by Soviet authors on contemporary themes
have actually been forced out of the repertoire of the great dramatic
theatres of the country. In the Moscow Art Theatre only three out of
twenty current productions are devoted to questions of contemporary Soviet
life, in the Little Theatre only tiiree out of twenty, in the Theatre in the
Name of the Moscow Soviet only two out of nine, in the Theatre in the
Name of Vakhtangov only two out of ten, in the Kamerny Theatre only three
out of eleven, in the Leningrad Theatre in the Name of Pushkin only two
out of ten, in the Kiev Drama Theatre in the Name of Franko only three
out of eleven, in the Kharkov Theatre in the Name of Shevchenko only
two out of eleven, and in the Sverdlovsk Dramatic Theatre only five per-
formances out of seventeen relate to contemporary Soviet issues. . . .

. . . The publishing house Iskusstvo, in accordance with instructions
from the Committee on Artistic Affairs, has published a volume of one-act
plays by contemporary English and American dramatists. These plays
are a model of base, vulgar, foreign drama, openly preaching bourgeois
views and morals.29

At the same time, a reorganization of censorship was ordered, but
only to strengthen it and make it more efficient.

6. The Central Committee of the Party notes that a serious obstacle
to the improvement of Soviet drama is the large number of instances
where different individuals are permitted to correct and select plays for
publication, and for presentation in the theatre, The reading of plays
is put in the hands of workers of local administrations on artistic affairs,
of republican committees on artistic affairs, of the Chief Committee of the
Repertoire, of the Chief Theatrical Administration of the Committee on
Artistic Affairs, of the Artistic Soviet of the Committee, of leaders of the
theatres, of workers in ediforial offices and publishing houses. This situa-
tion breeds harmful procrastination and irresponsibility and hampers the
swift advancement of plays to the stages of the theatres.30

The turn of Soviet composers came somewhat later. To discuss the
new opera, Great Friendship, by V. Muradeli,

* Struvc, op. cit., pp. 334, 335.

"Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of August 26, 1946,
Bolshevik, Moscow. No. 16, August 1946, pp. 45, 46.
S0Ibid.,vp. 48, 49.

260

... A conference took place in mid- January 1948, at the Centra!
Ccmmittee of the Communist Party. . . . The most prominent Soviet
composers and specialists in music participated in this conference. . . .
*******

The composers D. D. Shostakovich, V. Ya. Shebalin, V. I. Muradeli,
A. D. Khachaturyan, whose compositions were characterized by the con-
ference as formalistic and alien to the people, also took the floor at the
conference. However, their statements proved unsatisfactory because
they did not contain an analysis of the errors committed. . . .81

Soviet painters and their association were likewise taken to task:

. . . However much the formalists disguise and adapt themselves, how-
ever much they try to present themselves as genuine defenders of graphic
art, they remain, as before, alien to progressive Soviet art, the art of So-
cialist realism. . . .

It must be admitted that many of our artist-painters are not yet ac-
customed to listen to severe and consistent criticism by their colleagues
and try as far as possible to avoid it. This refers also to the Organizational
Committee of the Artists' Union. . . .

... A decisive struggle should be conducted against pseudo-scientific,
idealistic theories in the domain of esthetics. The achievements in this
field by the Academy of Arts are still lagging behind the creative practice,
behind the urgent tasks before our arts. . . .M

Nor was the circus forgotten. In 1949 it was denounced by the of-
ficial Soviet Art for its "bourgeois cosmopolitanism*' and "formalism."

Zoshchenko and Akhmatova were expelled from the Association of
Soviet Writers, some others were removed from their posts and a witch
hunt was unleashed in the course of which Soviet workers in the arts
.covered themselves with humiliation and false indignation. For ex-
ample, Valentin Kataev, a widely-read writer, told the Supreme Soviet
of the RSFSR:

. . . Iosif Vissarionovich [Stalin] has called the writers the engineers of
the human soul. This wise and perceptive characterization by Stalin has
indeed opened a new world for us. It at once became a fighting slogan,
a program for our entire literary and social activity. . . .

. . . An unhealthy, hostile frame of mind is permeating our solid literary
milieu. There have appeared decadent, apolitical works, full of nauseating,
bourgeois, over-esthetic pessimism. And sometimes there are even hooligan
thrusts against the Soviet people. This was bound to provoke sharp rebuff
from wide circles of our public8*

In the sciences, regimentation and compulsory streamlining extended
to biology, physiology, botany, and other fields. Philosophy was also an
area calling for official attacks and reprimands. By the end of the

* Previa, March 24, 1948, p. 2.
**Pravda, January 7, 1951, p. 1.
mPravdat June 27, 1947.

261

1940's, all kinds of ideological deviations had been summarily done
away with.

The postwar phase of the realinement of the arts and sciences was
coupled with a new nationalist slogan (and in this it differed from the
prewar standards) which was directed against the West: The claim
of general superiority over the West, including the right "to teach them
morals." This time, too, it was Zhdanov who was the herald of the
message:

. . . Some of our writers have come to look upon themselves not as
masters but as pupils of the bourgeois-philistine writers, adopting the tone
of servility and admiration toward philistine foreign literature. Does this
servility become us, Soviet patriots, us, who have built up the Soviet order,
which is a hundred times better than any bourgeois order? Does this ser-
vility before the narrow bourgeois-philistine literature of the West become
our progressive Soviet literature which is the most revolutionary literature
in the world? 34

Behind the campaign against "servility" and "kow-towing" before
the West stood Stalin and his government. Every leader was obliged to
support it. On the 30th anniversary of the November revolution, Molo-
tov said :

Not everybody has freed himself from servility and slavishness toward the
West, toward capitalist culture. Not without reason were the ruling classes
of old Russia frequently spiritually to a great degree dependent on the more
capitalistically developed countries of Europe. This permitted the culti-
vating among some circles of the old intelligentsia of a slavish sense of lesser
value and spiritual dependence on the capitalist nations of Europe. With-
out getting rid of these infamous survivals, one cannot be a real Soviet
citizen.35

The drive against the "decadent West" was aimed mainly against
American, British, and French literature.

. . . Jean-Paul Sartre and Henry Miller took the place of Joyce and
Proust as the incarnation of all that was evil in modern European culture.
But whereas in the thirties there were at least some more or less serious
studies of Joyce and Proust in Soviet magazines, sheer abuse was now the
only recognized method of polemic. Sartre and Henry" Miller and their
followers were described as "spiritual lechers," William Faulkner as "flesh
of the flesh of a decaying society." John Steinbeck's works were "putrid,
lurid, and antihuman." Eugene O'Neill was "a degenerate." And no
language was strong enough when it came to former Communists or former
Communist sympathizers. Arthur Koestler was described by Ivan Anisimov
as "a literary agent provocateur" whose writings "stank." George Orwell
was called "a charlatan," a "suspicious individual," a former police agent
and yellow-press correspondent who passed in England for a writer because

•* Andrei Zhdanov, Speech, August 1946, as quoted in Struve, op. cit., p. 332.
a Pravda, November 7, 1947, p. 3.

262

there was "a great demand for refuse there." Andre Gide and Andre
Malraux were also denounced as "renegades" and "American agents." 36

The claim of Russian superiority which, among other tendencies, in-
spired the new anti-Western trends in foreign policies also produced
hasty research into the history of Russian science and the claim that a
multitude of great inventions and discoveries made in the course of
human civilization and heretofore attributed to Western brains, had
actually been made by Russians and stolen by the W7est. The Russian
inventions included the steam engine, the airplane, the electric bulb, and
a long list of others. The Large Soviet Encyclopedia, in a special vol-
ume issued in 1948, said:

In the 18th century a self-taught man, Kulibin, constructed bridges with
remarkable mechanical qualities; the mechanic Polzunov invented the
steam-engine; in the 19th century a member of the [Russian] Academy,
Yakobi, created galvanoplastics and built the first motor boats; engineer
Yablochkov was the inventor of arc-lamps, and Lodygin of the incandescent
electric lamp; Popov invented and was the first to use the radio receiver;
N. E. Zhukovski was the greatest creator of the theory of air flights.37

5. Economic Trends at the End of Stalin's Era

The first postwar era. 1945-53, was marked by substantial rehabili-
tation of the Soviet economy. The economic course was subordinated,
however, to the goals of Soviet foreign policy; the program for main-
tenance of a large military force and improvement of arms determined
the pace and direction of the economic rehabilitation. The pace was
fast in the branches of so-called "heavy industry," slower in the pro-
duction of consumer goods, and very slow in agriculture and animal
husbandry.

The latter branches of the Soviet economy went through a period of
catastrophic depression in 1946, when to all the consequences of a 4-
year war there were added unfavorable climatic conditions. In addi-
tion, the government reverted to strict maintenance of the collective
farm system. The situation in that year was one of near famine; it
would have been worse had it not been for Western aid provided
through UNRRA.

. . . The full magnitude of the 1946 catastrophe has been hidden from
all outside the U.S.S.R., but a small group of the most careful Russian
specialists have penetrated the percentage jungles of Soviet statistics and
emerged with the figures the Kremlin has sought to keep secret. Suffice
it to say that in 1946 the U.S.S.R.. produced only half the grain and

M Struve, op. cit., pp. 347, 348.

" Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, Soyuz Scvetskikh Sctsialisticheskikh Respub-
lik (Special ed.; Large Soviet Encyclopedia. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)
(Moscow: OGIZ (State United Publishing Houses), 1948), p. 1255.

263

vegetable oil seeds it secured in 1940 and only about one- third the sugar
beets of that last pre-war year. But last year's population to be fed in the
U.S.S.R. was at least equal to that of 1940 and may have been several
million higher.

If large-scale famine and starvation have been averted in the U.S.S.R.
this crop year, it has been only because of United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration food supplies and because the Soviet gov-
ernment had drained its remaining food stocks and forced the utmost
economy of consumption. In such usually rich producing areas as the
Ukraine, Kursk and Saratov, the Soviet press has revealed, mass starvation
was averted only by large-scale government shipments of food and feed.
Throughout the cities of the U.S.S.R. rations were slashed and hundreds
of thousands were shifted from high to low food categories in the effort
to save every morsel. Even livestock felt the impact of this catastrophe,
the • feed shortage forcing such large-scale slaughter that none of the
government's planned livestock increases was achieved and the U.S.S.R.'s
already low hog population was reduced 20 per cent.38

Nevertheless, as had been the case in the famine of the early 1 930's
(see p. 167), the Soviet government found it necessary, in order to en-
hance its prestige in the now growing Soviet empire, to export abroad a
certain amount of grain. It shipped grain — and propagandized the
fact — not only to its new satellites but also to France, where the Commu-
nist party was part of the government and where Stalin expected an early
seizure of total power by the Communists. On May 18, 1946,

The Soviet commentator Peter Orlov, speaking in English, declared that
Russia had provided more than 1,000,000 tons of grain to Finland, Poland,
Rumania and France.

*******

"These nations," he said, "can see that after playing the leading role
in the defeat of fascism the Soviet Union marches today in the vanguard
of the struggle for the peaceful cooperation of nations."

Mr. Orlov contended that Poland's grain needs had not been met by
the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration but that Russia
had lent Poland 200,000 tons of seed grain for this year's crops since Poland
had been able to provide only 50,000 tons for sowing.

:;:**** # *

Russia, he said, averted a threat of famine in Rumania by lending her
20,000 carloads of wheat in addition to 300,000 tons of wheat and corn
and by postponing Rumania.n reparations grain deliveries to Russia.

The commentator noted that Soviet grain had begun to arrive in France
under the April 6 agreement to provide 500,000 tons and that "this timely
assistance" came when the French were menaced by a sharp cut in the
bread ration.39

■ New York Herald Tribune, June 17, 1947, p. 18.
w New York Times, May 19, 1946, p. 35.

264

The extent of the general rehabilitation of the economy, education and
social conditions was shown in precise statistics published by the Soviet
government. According to objective and scholarly analyses made
abroad, however, the Soviet figures depicting the economic and cultural
growth were greatly exaggerated. Some of the deliberate falsifications
perpetrated under Stalin were corrected later under Khrushchev, but
not all.

According to the Soviet sources, the numbers of workers and employees
in the national economy of the USSR amounted to :

1928 10, 800, 000

1932 22, 800, 000

1937 27, 000, 000

1940 31, 500, 000

1953 40 44, 800, 000

The index of workers and employees in the Soviet Union (using 1913
as 100) was:

1940 274

1954 "415

The above figures included workers, officials, employees, technicians,
teachers and others. In order to conceal the huge size of the bureau-
cratic apparatus under Stalin, Soviet sources did not specify the numbers
for the various components of the total labor force.

On the same basis (that is, 1913= 100), there was an unprecedented
growth in national income:

1913 100

1940 611

1953 1,367

and in total industrial production :

1913 100

1940 852

1953 422, 143

As for the standard of living of the people, the Soviet government
claimed fabulous achievements:

*° Politic heskaya Ekonomiya, Uchebnik (Political Economy, Textbook) (1st ed.;
Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing
House for Political Literature), 1954), p. 430.

^Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR, Statisticheskii Sbornik (National Economy of the
USSR, Statistical Abstract) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Statisticheskoe
(State Statistical Publishing House), 1956), p. 28.

43 Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR v 1958 Godu, Statisticheskii Ezhegodnik (National
Economy of the USSR in 1958, Statistical Yearbook) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
Izdatelstvo Statisticheskoe (State Statistical Publishing House), 1959), pt>. 95, 52,
53.

265

The real per capita income of the working people of the USSR, if calcu-
lated on the basis of an unchanging level of prices, increased, from 1913 to
1940, over three times for workers (if liquidation of unemployment is taken
into consideration) ; and for peasants about three and a half times; in 1952
the income of workers and employees rose, compared with 1940, by 68 per
cent, and the income of the peasants, about 72 per cent. In 1953 the total
income of workers, employees and peasants rose 13 per cent over 1952.43

Greatly exaggerated claims of improved living conditions under Stalin
are being maintained even at present. The official statistical abstract
for 1958 claims that real wages have increased (in 1958 compared to
1913) 3.7 times, and real income of peasants ("working peasants") has
risen in the same 45 years 4.5 times.44 A Soviet textbook also claims
that the living standard of the peasantry had improved spectacularly :

The income in money and in kind of the toiling peasants from their
collectives and individual farming increased in 1956, after deduction of
taxes and collections . . . four times compared with the income of toiling
peasants in 1913, and 5.4 times if payments and services by the Soviet
state are taken into consideration.45

The progress in Soviet agriculture was described by official sources as
follows :

Between 1926/27 and 1952/53 the amounts of marketed agricultural
products increased: grain, from 10,300,000 to 40,400,000 tons; potatoes,
from 3,000,000 to 12,500,000 tons; meat (live weight), from 2,400,000 to
5,000,000 tons; milk, from 4,300,000 to 13,200,000 tons.48

Georgi Malenkov, reporting to the Nineteenth Congress of the Com-
munist party (1952), indicated that the highly successful grain harvest
of that year had yielded 8 billion poods. Six years later he was accused
of having lied :

It must be openly stated that by 1953 the situation in our agriculture was
very difficult. . . . This was the result of serious shortcomings in the man-
agement of the kolkhozes and sovkhczes, as well as some distortions in the
Leninist policy of kolkhoz building. ... In those years [1948 to 1953]
the gross harvest and storage of grain did not increase. . . .

*******

Malenkov's statement [in 1952 before the Nineteenth party congress]
that the yield of grain had amounted to 8,000,000,000 poods was nothing
else but eyewash, a deception of the party and the people, an attempt to
hide the great failures in agriculture, the control of which was entrusted
to Malenkov.47

° Politicheskaya Ekonomiya, Uchebnik (1st cd., 1954), p. 408.

" Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR v 1958 Godu, Statisticheskii Ezhegodnik, pp. 98,
99.

45 Politicheskaya Ekonomiya. Uchebnik (Political Economy, Textbook) (3rd ed. ;
Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing
House for Political Literature), 1958), p. 575.

** Politicheskaya Ekonomiya, Uchebnik (1st ed., 1954), p. 479.

" Pravda, December 15, 1953.

266

Actually, Khrushchev further stated, the kolkhozes and sovkhozes
collected in 1952 not. 8 billion but 5.6 billion poods of grain, and stored
only 2.1 billion poods. Animal husbandry was particularly hard hit;
for a number of years the production of milk stayed at the same level;
production of meat was even lower than in the prewar years.

Comparing the living conditions of the Soviet peasants in the 1950's
with those of the "toiling peasants" of 1913 was a statistical trick.
On any scholarly and objective basis it would not be possible to sepa-
rate the "toiling" (probably the poorest) groups of 1913 from the
entire body of the Russian peasants.

Actually, the Soviet peasants lost much of their savings after the
end of the war as a result of the "monetary reform." Over a number
of years the peasants had accumulated certain amounts of cash re-
ceived for sales and deliveries made to governmental agencies. Under
the "monetary reform" their money was exchangeable at the rate of
10 old rubles to one of the new currency. Those who had kept their
money in savings banks (in large majority city officials and employees)
received more favorable treatment.

At the end of 1947 the Soviet Union carried out what is known as a
monetary reform. The terms of this reform were as follows: First, all
currency was called in as of December 15, 1947. . . . Second, the bank
accounts of Government enterprises were not affected, and withdrawals
from them could be made in the new currency without any complica-
tions, at a 1 to 1 rate. Third, personal savings accounts up to 3,000
rubles in value were converted at the rate of 1 to 1; amounts between
3,000 and 10,000 were converted at the rate of 3 to 2. . . . Fourth,
cash held by individuals was converted at the rate of 10 to 1. Fifth, a
refunding of the outstanding national debt took place, in which old bonds
were exchanged for new at the ratio of 5 to l.48

(When the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times wired his
newspaper that the currency reforms had "wiped out considerable
savings and hoarded profits," 49 this statement was deleted by the
censor.) The government continued to ask for "voluntary" loans from
the working population which were actually compulsory.

Five postwar state loans for the restoration and development of the na-
tional economy (1946-50) helped to fulfill successfully the fourth (first
postwar) Five Year Plan of the U.S.S.R. . . . Each of these 30,000,000,-
000-ruble loans was considerably oversubscribed within a few days. In
the postwar years the amounts realized from loans added 164,000,000,000

*• House Select Committee on Foreign Aid, The Soviet Union in 1947, Supplement
to Preliminary Report Twenty, April 22, 1948 (Washington, D.C.: Government Print-
ing Office, 1948), pp. 9, 10.

"C. L. Sulzberger, The Big Thaw [New York: Harper & Bros., 1956), p. 92.

267

rubles to the state budget of the U.S.S.R. The number of state loan sub-
scribers exceeded 70,000,000 in 1952.50

These loans were later actually repudiated.

Corrected figures on animal husbandry, announced after Stalin's
death, proved that in one of the main areas — raising of cows — the pre-
revolutionary level had not been reached :

[In millions]

Cows Pigs

1916 28.8 23.0

1940 22.8 22.5

1950 24.6 22.2

1953 24.3 6128. 5

At the 19th party congress in October 1952, Malenkov in his report on
the activities of the Central Committee, spoke with extreme optimism about
the state of Soviet husbandry. ... In the period July 1945 to July 1952
the total number of head of cattle increased many millions (Malenkov cited
many figures) . The new Five-Year Plan provides for "further increase of
husbandry". . . ,62

Actually the number of head of cattle per thousand inhabitants

amounted to :

1916 1953

Livestock, total 414 270

Cows 204 116

Sheep and goats 684 523

Pigs 163 136

Horses 271 53 73

In certain other respects, however, the Soviet Union had really made
substantial progress.

The number of working and teaching specialists was given as follows :

In scientific

institution: In universities

1914 4,200 6,000

1940 26,400 61,400

1955 96, 500 M 119, 100

1 Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (Large Soviet Encyclopedia) (2d ed.; Mos-
cow: Gosudarstvennoe Nauchnoe Izdatelstvo "Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya"
(State Scientific Publishing House "The Large Soviet Encyclopedia")), vol. XVI
(1952), p. 333.

51 Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR v 1958 Godu, Statisticheskii Ezhegodnik, pp. 445,
446.

n Sotsialisticheskii Vestnik (The Socialist Courier) , New York, No. 10-11, October-
November 1953, p. 183.

83 Ibid.

"Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR v 1958 Godu, Statisticheskii Ezhegodnik, p. 843.

268

Figures on specialists in all branches of economy ("with higher and
middle education") were given as follows:

1913 190,000

1941 2, 400, 000

1955 . M 5, 133, 000

The number of students in institutions of higher education (universi-
ties, technical schools, etc.) was:

1914 127,400

1940 811,700

1954 fe 1, 562, 000

The number of beds provided in hospitals was reported as follows :

1913 207,600

1940 790,900

1950- 1. 010, 700

and the number of physicians:

1913 23,000

1940 - 141,000

1950 " 247, 000

The proportion of female manpower in the total Soviet economy was
reported as follows:

Percent

1929 . 27

1940 38

1950 58 47

This huge increase in women's work, an indication of hard living
conditions, was officially interpreted as a boon :

. . . The woman occupied a more and more conspicuous place in the
economic and cultural life. 280,000 women are working in enterprises
as engineers, technicians and supervisors. Over 100,000 women manage
kolkhoz brigades and animal farms. Among specialists with higher edu-
cation, women represent 44 per cent.

No state has done as much for the woman as has the Soviet. In capital-
ist countries the woman is shackled by chains of slaver/. She has no politi-
cal rights and as to social conditions; she is oppressed even more than man,
since she is paid less for the same work.60

Ibid., p. 673.
Ibid., p. 831.

Ncrodr.oe Khozyaistvo SSSR v 1958 Godu, Statisticheshii Ezhegcdnik, pp. 879,
888, 889.

°*Pravda, January 31, 1950.

"Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR v 1958 Godu, Statisticheshii Ezhegcdnik. pp. 806,
807.

269

Figures on pupils and students in all educational institutions were
given as follows:

1914 9, 943, 000

1940 38, 056, 000

1953 eo 36; 394, 000

In general, Soviet statistics, in which there has been some improve-
ment in recent years, are viewed as incomplete or unreliable :

The idea that errors in Soviet statistics are not deliberate implies that the
Moscow central statistical office is staffed by infants. The people working
there are better statisticians than most of those analysing Soviet statistics
in the West. They know better than most Western analysts the v/eak spots
in their statistics, the great extent of falsifications, the immense contradic-
tions between them. Most Soviet statisticians would be only toe happy to
release honest statistics, but they operate on orders and have no choice.61

. . . most of the statistics relating to aggregate quantities, such as the
indices for national income and industrial production, are incorrect. Al-
though such data may not cover a large number of categories, they are pre-
cisely the figures to which a statesman, scholar or journalist would in the
first place turn.

Falsification reaches astronomical dimensions in statistics of real wages
and real incomes. The great achievements of the U.S.S.R. in industrial-
isation were obtained by imposing immense sacrifices on the population.62

The aim of these distortions is to conceal the great poverty of the peo-
ple under Soviet conditions:

. . . Soviet statistics are made to demonstrate immense increases in real
wages and real incomes of the peasants. For example, the fantastic claim
was officially made that in one year only (1948) real wages more than
doubled, although such an increase is physically impossible; the actual
growth is unlikely to have exceeded 1 5 percent.63

Since the statistics were intended to prove the superiority of the Soviet
system of economy over that of the West, the standard conclusion from
the falsified data was:

... In the postwar period the socialist economy of the USSR systemati-
cally develops on the basis of an uninterrupted increase of production,
but the capitalist countries, and first of all the United States, in these years
experienced a crisis in 1948-49. Starting with the second half of 1953 a
new slump and a rise in unemployment developed in the United States
industry.64

Ibid., p. 843.

Naum Jasny, "Interpreting Soviet Statistics," Soviet Survey, A Quarterly Review
of Cultural Trends, published by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Paris, No. 26,
October-December 1958, p. 11.
" Ibid., p. 10.
08 Ibid.
w Politicheskaya Ekonomiya, Uchebnik (1st ed., 1954), p. 425.

C8491 O CI -vol. II lb

270

This statement was the thesis of widely-used Soviet textbooks and of
propaganda in the press:

The income of the Soviet people is rising continuously. In 1 949 the in-
come of the average worker and employee rose 24 per cent over the prewar
year 1940.

Quite different is the situation of the toilers in the capitalist countries.
They have there now not less than 40,000,000 unemployed and partly em-
ployed. Under the conditions of the rising crisis the bourgeoisie is reducing
the standard of living of the toilers. Real wages are falling steadily.65

This comparison of the happy Soviet people with the poverty-stricken
Westerners was a favorite line :

The reduction of retail prices of goods of mass consumption in the period
1947-1954 . . . meant a gain to the population of several hundred billions
of rubles. In the same years, because of rising prices, the cost of living in
the capitalist countries went up, according to official information: in the
USA 21 per cent, and in England 40 per cent. Compared to the prewar
years the cost of living in the USA increased 189 percent, i.e., nearly three
times, and in England 125 per cent.66

In a book devoted to a systematic analysis of offipial Soviet statistics,67
Naum jasny reveals such a large number of "omissions," "arbitrariness
in selecting data," "ambiguities,"' and "false data" that the statistics
appear altogether unreliable.

According to official figures, military expenditures constituted about
20 percent of the total Soviet budget. In each of the years listed they
amounted to :

In billion
rubles

1946 73. 6

1950 82. 8

1951 93. 9

1953 C8 107. 8

But other budget items, too, included large appropriations for military
purposes. Preparedness for war remained a major factor in the Soviet
economy. ". . . we make no secret," wrote Red Star,69 of the fact that
Soviet economy "caji be in a short time transferred to a war basis."

Atomic weapons, first developed in Russia in 1949, were being per-
fected and manufactured; later, hydrogen v/eapons were added. Pos-

85 Pravda, January 31, 1950.
1 Politicheskaya Ekonomiya, Uchsbnik (1st ed., 1954), p. 460.
Jasny, The Soviet 1956 Statistical Handbook: A Commentary (East Lansing:
The Michigan State University Press, 1957).

"Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (2d ed.), vol. L (1957), p. 368; and
Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR v 1958 Godu, Statisticheskii Ezhegodnik, p. 900.
As quoted in New York Times, January 18, 1953, p. 19.

t»

271

session of atomic and hydrogen weapons by the Soviet Union was due,
to a considerable degree, to the successes of secret Soviet intelligence
operation? abroad, especially in Britain, Canada, and the United States.
Communist agents of the Soviet espionage service played a prominent
role in this respect ; without their help it would have taken Russia at least
several years longer to produce the first atomic weapons.

... If Russia had had to grope through the initial atomic darkness and
repeat for herself the experiments of other nations, she would have needed a
decade or more to achieve the level the United States attained in 1947-48.
In addition to the scientific output of her own laboratories, Russian research
had the help of another kind of laboratory, that situated at 19 Znamenski
Street in Moscow — the GRU [Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie —
Main Intelligence Department of the General Staff of the Red Army]. An
unprecedented enforced collaboration of science and espionage that con-
tinued throughout the war marked Soviet progress in the atomic field. The
Soviet A-bomb has been the product of the combined efforts of Russian
scientists and British, Canadian, German, Hungarian, Italian, and American
Communists. To the detriment of their own countries, the communist
parties of the West have in this way more than repaid the Soviet Union for
the political and financial assistance they had received from her for over
two decades.70

6. Stalin's Last Year

In 1952 Stalin decided, after a lapse of 13 years, to convene a party
congress; his goal was to replace the leading group of old Communists
by persons more devoted to him and more obedient.

Before the congress opened Stalin wrote his "Economic Problems of
Socialism," in which he confirmed his and his party's adherence to all
the old, patently obsolete tenets of bolshevism: the "inevitable" com-
ing war between the "imperialists"; the program of the total abolition
of collective farms in favor of a state economy ; the abolition of money
and markets; etc.

Some comrades affirm that, in consequence of the development of in-
ternational conditions after the second world war, wars among capitalist
countries have ceased to be inevitable. . . .

*******

The question is, what guarantee is "there that Germany and Japan will
not again rise to their feet, that they will not try to wrest themselves from
American bondage and to live their own independent lives? I think there
are no such guarantees.

But it follows from this that the inevitability of wars among the capi-
talist countries remains.

It is said that Lenin's thesis that imperialism inevitably gives birth to
wars should be considered obsolete since powerful peoples' forces have

"Dallin, Soviet Espionage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), p. 473.

272

now grown up which are taking a stand in defense of peace, against a
new world war. This is not correct. . . .

In order to eliminate the inevitability of wars, imperialism must be
destroyed.71

On collective farms, he wrote:

It is essential ... to raise collective farm property to the level of prop-
erty of the public as a whole, through gradual changes carried out in a
manner profitable to the collective farms and consequently to the whole
of society, and to replace commodity turnover with a system of exchange
of goods — likewise by gradual changes so that the central authority [the
government] or some other social-economic central agency might control
the entire output of socialist production in the interests of society.72

Total communism will be achieved, Stalin said, when the last ves-
tiges of the old monetary system are abolished. This thesis was taken as
a sacred tenet :

Unlike the situation under socialism, where two forms of common, so-
cialist property — the state and the cooperative kolkhoz — exist, where pro-
duction and marketing of goods continue, under communism complete
prevalence of Communist ownership of the means of production will be
established. . . . under Communism . . . there will be no production or
circulation of marketable merchandise, and consequently no money.73

By the publication of this "master w.ork" on the eve of the congress,
Stalin reduced the latter to a mere claque :

This Stalin achieved by issuing a few days before the delegates met in
Moscow a new "master work," a kind of Stalin gloss on Karl Marx'3
Das Kapital. It completely stole the thunder of the Congress, as it was
obviously intended to do. After this all the Congress had to do was to
make speeches praising Stalin's genius and quoting extensively from his new
Economic Theses. He succeeded in reducing the speeches of Malenkov
and Khrushchev to the customary level of Party hackwork.

It was an unusual display of contempt, even for Stalin. . . .74

The Nineteenth Communist Party Congress took place in October
1952. For the first time, Stalin was replaced as leading reporter by a
secretary of the Central Committee, Georgi Malenkov.

Before the Congress, there had existed a twelve-member Politburo of
Party leaders. It at least had the virtue of being a compact and recognized
body of leaders. Now in place of this well-known group there was substi-
tuted an amorphous Presidium with twenty-five full members and eleven

n Stalin, "Economic Problems of Socialism," Pravda, October 4, 1952.
72 Ibid.

" Politicheskaya Ekonomiya, Uchebnik (1st ed., 1954), p. 556.
74 Harrison E. Salisbury, American in Russia (New York: Harper & Bros., 1955),
p. 145.

273

alternates, so big a body that it obviously could play no role in government.
But an excellent screen behind which to confuse the leadership picture.

Stalin played the same trick with the Party Secretariat, which had
always been a tight little group and which was, in fact, the device which
he himself had utilized for his climb to power. In recent years, in so far
as Stalin ever let any strings out of his fingers, the Secretariat had been
run on a day-to-day basis by Malenkov.78

Stalin appeared at the closing session of the congress, and in a short
speech urged the Russian and foreign Communist parties to increase
their revolutionary zeal :

. . . After our party assumed power in 1917 and after the party took
effective measures to liquidate capitalist and landlord oppression, repre-
sentatives of the fraternal parties, in their admiration for the courage and
achievements of our party, gave it the title of "shock brigade" of the world
revolutionary and workers' movement. They were thereby expressing the
hope that the successes of the "shock brigade" would ease the situation of
peoples languishing under the yoke of capitalism. . . .

Of course, it was very hard to fill this honored role while the "shock
brigade" was the one and only one and as long as it had to fill this van-
guard role almost single-handed. But that was in the past. Now things
are quite different. Now, when new "shock brigades" have appeared in
the person of countries of people's democracy from China and Korea to
Czechoslovakia and Hungary — now it has become easier for our party
to fight, yes, and the work goes more merrily.76

Then Stalin proceeded to criticize "capitalism" and "capitalist de-
mocracy" in die old way, as if nothing had happened in the last hundred
years and the West were today a Fascist domain :

. . . The so-called "freedoms of the individual" no longer exist [in the
West] — the rights of the individual are now accorded only to those who
possess capital, while all other citizens are considered human raw material,
fit only for exploitation. . . . The banner of bourgeois democratic free-
doms has been cast overboard. I think that it is up to you, the representa-
tives of the communist and democratic parties, to lift this banner and to
carry it forward if you wish to gather the majority of the people around
you. There is nobody else to lift it. . . ,77

The 5 months between the Nineteenth Congress and Stalin's death
witnessed the first phase of a new purge which would certainly have at-
tained large proportions and destroyed thousands of suspected but inno-
cent persons if Stalin had remained alive. In many respects the new
purge was patterned on the memorable operation of the late 1930's;
in particular, false "confessions" had already been introduced as a step
toward condemnation and execution.

"Ibid., p. 146.

"Pravda, October 15, 1952.

"Ibid.

274

It was . . . apparent that the motivating factor in this was a new and
horrible dementiain Stalin's mind, a return of the plot psychosis which had
caused him to ravage Russia during the years of the thirties.

What was brewing within the secret walls of the Kremlin, clearly, was
a new massacre of the Streltzi— a blood purge of the men standing closest
to Stalin, similar to that of Peter the Great or to the demoniac slaughter
in which Ivan the Terrible struck off the heads of the boyars of Novgorod
and of thousands of men who had been his firmest supporters.78

The main novelty of the new purge was the fact that it was coupled
with an anti-Semitic drive of tremendous scope.

Stalin's anti-Semitic orientation had been strengthened when postwar
developments proved the sympathy of many Soviet Jews with the pro-
Western culture and way of life; the scope of this sentiment had become
manifest when the first envoy of the new State of Israel arrived in
Moscow.

. . . Her [Golda Meir's] arrival in the Metropole Hotel had touched
off unprecedented manifestations. Hundreds if not thousands of Jews, not
only from Moscow but from other Russian cities, came to the Metropole to
pay their respects. Many came, actually, to inquire about emigrating to
Israel. Some days there were long queues of people outside the temporary
Israeli offices, in a Metropole Hotel suite.79

The desire of thousands of Soviet Jews to emigrate from "Socialist"
Russia to a "capitalist" country contradicted the claim of freedom for
nationalities in the Soviet Union and of the satisfaction of Soviet citi-
zens with the prevailing system. As a measure of repression

. . . Jewish professors were quietly being dropped from their university
posts. Many Jewish writers, including a number who long since had
adopted Russian names, found that editors no longer desired their con-
tributions, and critical articles appeared in the press, attacking persons who
hid their true identity under pen names and giving lists of such Jewish
writers.80

We now know that a group of Yiddish writers, including Feffer and
Markish, was tried in camera in the summer of 1952. ... on trial with
them [were] — Lena Stern, member of the Soviet Academy of Science and
Stalin Prize recipient for her research in biochemistry, and Solomon A.
Lozovsky, former Deputy Foreign Minister and former chief of the Soviet
Information Bureau (known to foreign correspondents in Kuibyshev during
the war as the Kremlin's voice) .

*******

... On August 12, 1952, all defendants but Lena Stern, were exe-
cuted. . . .

78 Salisbury, op. cit., p. 142.

n Ibid., p. 23.

mIbid.

275

Ilya Ehrenburg, it is rumored, was the finger man in the case.81

In mid-January 1953 the Soviet government announced the dis-
covery of a plot of physicians against the leaders of the Communist
party ; almost all of the physicians involved were Jews.

The case of the "doctors' plot' was concocted on Stalin's orders in the
winter of 1952-53 by the then Minister of State Security, S. D. Ignatiev,
and his deputy, Ryumin. Several dozen of the leading doctors in Moscow
were arrested [the number crucially mentioned was 16], headed by the top
specialists of the Kremlin hospital who treated Stalin and all the Soviet
chieftains. They v/ere officially charged with using improper medical
techniques in order to murder their patients. Specifically, they were ac-
cused of having poisoned Andrei A. Zhdanov and Alexander S. Shcher-
bakov and of attempting to poison Marshals Konev, Vasilevsky, Govorov
and others.

The first official announcement of the case appeared on January 13. 1953
in Pravda and Izvestia, Two of the arrested doctors, Professor M. B.
Kogan and Professor Y. G. Etinger, died under torture. The stage was
being set for a major trial, with the doctors and their accomplices accused
of being agents of foreign intelligence (chiefly American). At the same
time, the former leaders of the MGB were accused of insufficient vigilance.
This was directed first and foremost at Beria himself.82

Meantime one blow after another struck a multitude of Jews all over
the country.

. . . Madame Molotov (a Jewess) had disappeared . . . banished to
Siberia. . . . Arrests in Moscow University . . . Arrests in the Academy
of Science . . . More Jews dismissed . . . Protectors of Jews arrested . . .
Arrests in the Central Committee . . . The Jewish jazz band leader,
Utiesov, arrested . . . Mekhlis, the Jewish security administratoi who had
been ill for several years, died. Kaganovich (a Jew) headed the funeral
procession.83

Jews, however, were merely "stage effects for a new and greater
Georgian Othello" :

... It was plain as could be that this wildfire would not halt with Beriya
and the Jews. They were stage effects for a new and greater Georgian
Othello. Every day the sickness was spreading. Each fresh batch of
provincial newspapers that was brought into my office reported new scan-
dals, new exposures, new arrests. At first the victims, almost invariably,
were Jews, usually in trade organizations but also in professional posts.
Doctors, lawyers, writers and actors were involved. Any Jew was a fair
target.

The heaviest run of cases was in the Ukraine — that old seedbed of anti-
Semitism. It was also Khrushchev's territory. First came the exposure

R Judd L. Teller, The Kremlin, the Jews, and the Middle East (New York and
London: Thomas Yoseloff, 1957), pp. 78-80.

"The New Leader, vol. XXXIX, No. 29 (July 16, 1956), sec. II, p. S495 note.
" Salisbury, op. cit., p. 153.

276

and arrests of the Jews. Then the drumfire was laid down against the
Party organizations which had permitted the "corruption." The target
quickly broadened out. Khrushchev was involved because his Party chiefs
were being attacked. Benya was involved because of the security angle.
Mikoyan was involved deeper and deeper because of the alleged scandals
in the trade organizations. And Malenkov was dragged in because in one
city after another his Party lieutenants were implicated.

But implicated most deeply and most dangerously of all was that dry
and pedantic little man who had survived so much before, Viacheslav
Molotov.84

At the height of the new purge Stalin fell ill. He died on March 5,
1953. His death was officially ascribed to a brain hemorrhage; the ill-
ness and death bulletins were signed by a number of doctors and min-
isters. Although there appeared to be nothing unnatural in the death of
a 73-year-old man, the news spread rapidly that Stalin had been killed
by his closest collaborators. Of the various versions, the most plausible
is the following (because it comes from the Soviet Ambassador to War-
saw, Panteleimon Ponomarenko, himself a ranking member of the
Central Committee) :

. . . Stalin summoned the members of the Communist party's Pre-
sidium to the Kremlin late in February 1953, shortly after the revelation
of the "doctors' plot" against top Soviet leaders.

At this conference ... he announced his plan to send all Russian
Jews to Birobidzhan, in the Jewish autonomous area nearly 3,800 miles
east of Moscow. Stalin explained that he was taking the action because
of the "Zionist and imperialist" plot against the Soviet Union and himself.

• • •

'.* V T* H* *f ■<• ^

... a heavy silence fell until Lazar M. Kaganovich, the "only Jewish
member," hesitantly asked if the measure included every single Jew in the
country.

Stalin replied that a "certain selection" would be made, after which
Mr. Kaganovich said no more. . . .

Vyacheslav M. Molotov . . . suggested in a "trembling" voice that the
measure would have a "deplorable" effect on world opinion. . . .

... as Stalin was about to reprimand Mr. Molotov, Marshal Voroshilov
rose, threw his Communist party card on the table and cried:

"If such a step is taken, I would be ashamed to remain a member of our
party, which will be completely dishonored!"

An enraged Stalin . . . then ... shouted into Marshal Voroshilov's
face:

Ibid., p. 152.

277

"Comrade Kliment! It is I who will decide when you no longer have
the right to keep your membership card!"

Then, with the meeting in an uproar, Stalin fell to the floor.88

He did not regain consciousness, and died a few days later.

Stalin's death marked the end of an era in the history of Russia
as well as in international relations.

88 France-Soir, June 7, 1957, as quoted in New York Times, June 8, 1957, p. 8.

Chapter XI. The Post-Stalin Era
1. The Maleakov Regime

'&*

With the death of Stalin came a modicum of political relaxation,
especially for the ranking strata of the Communist party. The Damocles
sword that had hung over their heads so long was no more. The
autocratic rule had to give way to another type of government which
was, however, still an orthodox Communist one. Power, which had
belonged to one man, aided by a "sextet" or "septet," was now to
be vested in the Central Committee of the Communist party, a body
of 125 members and 110 alternates, a total of 235 men and women.

The Central Committee was once more important and its decisions
effective. This was viewed as a return to Leninist traditions. Mem-
bers of the Central Committee were now free to utter their opinions
and to vote in accord with their orientation; discussion and disputes,
though strictly limited to this group, became possible.

Alongside this blotting out of the name of Stalin there was conducted
a new glorification of Lenin, who had been allowed by Stalin to sink
to a rather secondary position in the iconostasy. And it was repeatedly
insisted that "collective leadership" and colleagialnost or "colleaguality"
was the guiding principle of the Communist Party.1

... So by the middle of 1953 theoretical works and treatises had
shifted over to Lenin rather than Stalin as their principal source of
quotation. And Pravda even advanced the heterodoxical thought that
it was possible to write articles without citing a quotation from the
founding fathers in each paragraph.2

At first it appeared natural and logical, at least to the party's rank
and file, that the Malenkov-Molotov-Beria trio, who for a long time
had been viewed as the outstanding leaders after Stalin, would assume
the most important posts. In fact, Malehkov, for a long time a secre-
tary of the Central Committee and the best-informed man on current
affairs, was made premier; Molotov replaced the despised Vyshinsky
in the Foreign Office; and Beria again concentrated in his hands the
police ministries. Molotov, however, proved to be not sufficiently
dynamic and for several months the most important roles were played
by Malenkov and Beria.

1 Harrison E. Salisbury, American in Russia (New York: Harper & Bro&., 1955),
p. 233.

*Ibid.,9. 234.

(278)

279

Under the Malenkov-Beria regime (March-June, 1953) the relaxation
extended to many fields of Soviet policy. Measured by Western standards
this was modest, but by Soviet standards it appeared the inauguration of a
new era. The arrested doctors were released and vindicated; a partial
amnesty was proclaimed; the nationality policy took a more liberal course
in regard to the minorities. . . . the term "collective leadership/' indicating
a change from the personal dictatorship of a severe and suspicious leader,
sounded appealing.8

Only in the early days after his death was homage paid to the dead
leader. Soon a new trend, unannounced, came to the fore. This was
the beginning of the process of de-Stalinizat ion which extended over a
period of several years and marked a new chapter in the history of the
world Communist movement.

This banishing of the name of Stalin occurred within two weeks of the
coming to power of his successors. Beginning about March 23, 1953,
Stalin's name, which I had often counted as many as 150 or 160 times on
Pravdcts front page began to disappear and by April 1 I was able to write a
dispatch (which the censorship killed) saying mat Stalin was no longer
being quoted or mentioned in Soviet publications.

There were, of course, exceptions to that rule and it took a little time for
word to get around. After all, the Soviet is a big place and the habit of
speaking of the Stalin Era, the Stalin Constitution, or the Great Construc-
tion Projects of the Stalin Era is hard to break.

But within a reasonable period the Russian editors all got in line.

This was probably the first and most dramatic means by which the new
group sought to disassociate themselves from the old regime.4

One of the great worries of the new regime was the economic situa-
tion; to improve it appeared imperative, if only to strengthen the position
of the new group of men at the helm of the vast country.

... as the first and most impressive earnest of the Government's promise
of plenty the old trading rows had been cleaned out, refurbished, stocked
with the greatest agglomeration of consumer goods which had been seen in
Moscow since the Revolution and reopened under the aegis of Minister of
Trade Anastas Mikoyan as the State Department Store, or GUM, as it was
familiarly known in Moscow from its Russian initials.6

The old formula of priority of "heavy industry" and "means of pro-
duction" over consumer goods had to be discarded, at least for a time;
purchase of food abroad, prohibited under Stalin, became necessary.

. . . Four billion rubles ($1 billion) of food and consumers' goods were
to be bought abroad, one-third of it from outside the "people's democ-
racies." Industries controlled by the defense and aviation ministries were
ordered to produce a quantity of metal bedsteads, refrigerators, and bicycles.

•David J. Dallin, The Changing Woild of Soviet Russia (New Haven t Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1956), p. 324.
4 Salisbury, op. cit., p. 232.
* Ibid., j>. 221.

280

"The Soviet people are entitled," Malenkov stated in August, 1953, "to
demand from us, and in the first place from the industries of mass consump-
tion, goods of high quality." °

In general, an economic detente was considered the most important

task.

The spirit of detente found expression in a new program, approved by the
party's leading bodies in the summer of 1953, a few months after Stalin's
death, and announced by Malenkov on August 8: all attention was to be
focused on His Majesty the consumer. There was to be less heavy indus-
try and less armament, more light industry and more food; taxes levied on
the peasants were to be cut. "Two or three years," said Malenkov, "are
required to fulfill the program of a considerably improved standard of liv-
ing." "Two or three years" became a slogan that was repeated almost
daily in the schools, in articles, and over the radio, a slogan to which
Malenkov's career was closely tied.

For the kolkhoz peasants Malenkov promised concessions to their
"bourgeois instincts." 7

In the political arena, the amnesty for common criminals, announced
in March, was actually extended to embrace numbers of Communist and
non-Communist political prisoners. Among those released, amnestied
and rehabilitated, army leaders constituted an important element.

Over the years of Stalin's mass murder and blunders, many pressures were
built up for the rehabilitation of his victims. Of these, pressure from the
Soviet army undoubtedly was, and remains, the greatest. Russian armed
forces lost many millions of dead, wounded, and prisoners in the Second
World War, and Hitler penetrated further into Russian territory than any
invader in Russian history.8

Marshal Georgi Zhukov was one of the best-known Russian army
leaders to return to Moscow after Stalin's death :

. . . Zhukov's popularity with the masses in Russia was genuine and con-
siderable. There is no doubt that it was this popularity and Zhukov's great
influence with the top leaders of the Army which caused Stalin to banish
him to the hinterland.

The fact that he immediately emerged into the public spotlight within
twenty-four hours of Stalin's death indicates not only the depth of his hold
on the Army leadership and the stability which his association with the
new Government would suggest to the public.9

The political climate softened. Far from democratic, the new trends
were markedly less severe, less oppressive, and less terroristic.

Ilya Ehrenburg, the highly official, praised, and decorated Soviet writer,
significantly called Iris new novel The Thaw [Ottepel, published in Moscow

? Dailin, op. cit., p. 326.
'Ibid., pp. 325, 326.

E Louis Fischer, Russia Revisited (Garden City: Doublcday & Co., 1957), p. 83.
'Salisbury, op. cit., p. 134. The last sentence, although incomplete, is exactly as
it appears in the original text.

281

in 1954] — spring has not arrived but is approaching. One of Ehrenburg's
characters was general manager Ivan Zhuravlev, an efficient man of the
Stalin era bent on 100 percent fulfillment of industrial plans but uncon-
cerned about the poor living conditions of his workers. At the end of the
story Zhuravlev is removed from his post. Another character in the novel
is Vera Sherer, a physician who had been persecuted during the anti-doctor
campaign but was now happily vindicated. (At the height of that cam-
paign a group of workers, Ehrenburg relates, sent her a pot of flowers.)
"In my youth," recalls another character, "I read an article by Gorki in
which he said we must have our own, Soviet, humanism. The term has
somehow disappeared, but the task remains. ... It is time to fulfill the
task. . . .

"These are the last of the winter days. On one side of the street there
is still frost, and on the other heavy drops are falling from the icicles." 10

As a component part of the "thaw," the powers of the police were
substantially curtailed. Scores of its leaders were removed and im-
prisoned; some were tried and executed. The first incident in this line
of development was the arrest of Beria and a group of other police lead-
ers in the summer of 1953. According to an official Soviet version,
Beria had been exposed as an agent of the "imperialists." In December
1953 it was announced that Lavrenti Beria, Vsevolod Merkulov,
Vladimir Dekanozov, and three other ranking police leaders had been
sentenced by a military court to death and immediately executed.11

. . . Police Chief Beria's rapid aggrandizement of power immediately
after the passing of Stalin convinced all his comrades how urgent this
wing-clipping process was. The Soviet army, which hated the secret
police for honeycombing it with spies and outranking it in political influ-
ence, gladly lent a hand in the arrest of Beria on June 26, 1953, and in
the downgrading of his police system that brought relief at all levels.12

Another version of Beria's death was given in May 1956 by Khru-
shchev to a visiting French senator: Beria had refused, Khrushchev said,
to follow the instructions of the Presidium and was striving tobuild
up his own power. After a 4-hour session of the Presidium in the
Kremlin, Beria admitted his plot. He left the room together with the
others, and in an adjoining circular hall, Anastas Mikoyan fired a bullet
from behind and killed him.13

The purge of the Soviet police continued over the next 2 years. In
July 1954, the GB (State Security) officer M. D. Ryumin, after a trial

10 Dallin, op. tit., pp. 326, 327.
aPravda, December 24, 1953.
u Fischer, op. cit., p. 86.

M Sotsiaiisticheskii Vestnik (The Socialist Courier), Jtfew York, No. 7-8, July-
August 1956, p. 146.

282

before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, was sentenced to
death and executed.14 In December of the same year, six GB leaders,
among them Viktor Abakumov and A. G. Leonov, were tried in Lenin-
grad by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court; four, including
Abakumov and Leonov, were sentenced to death and executed; two
received long corrective camp terms.15 In November 1955, six GB
leaders and two prosecutors of the Georgian Soviet Republic were tried
by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court in Tiflis. Six were
sentenced to death and executed; two received prison terms.16

Before Beria's fall a new grouping of leaders in the framework of the
Central Committee had been taking place; the fight in the committee
was to engender bitterness, hatred, and passion, and lead to the elimina-
tion of the best-known old leaders from the ruling bodies of the party
and the government.

One group, at first the stronger, headed by Malenkov, counted among
its members Molotov and Kaganovich; in a way they were the "con-
servatives," the cautious and hesitating elements, not prepared to deviate
too far from tradition in internal and foreign affairs. To the other
group, which was headed by the rising Khrushchev, belonged Mikoyan
and Bulganin; more aggressive, they were inclined to make substantial
changes in politics and economics and carry out the "de-Stalinization"
in a more vigorous way.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born April 17, 1894, in Kalinovka,
a little village in Kursk Province on the borders of the Ukraine. The son
of a miner, he received little or no elementary education, and was sent
to work as an apprentice pipe-fitter in the coal mines of the Bonbass.

... He entered the Bolshevik Party in 1918 at the age of 24 and
participated, without distinction, in the Ukraine.17

Of the line of supreme leaders of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev
was the first worker to become head of the party and the government.
His predecessors — Lenin and Stalin — as well as the outstanding leaders
(and his adversaries) in the post-Stalin Presidium — Malenkov, Molo-
tov, Kaganovich — were intellectuals of middle-class or "bourgeois"
origin.

. . . Around 1922 he was admitted to one of the newly formed Rabfaks
(schools established to prepare uneducated adult workers for subsequent
higher training) ....

u Pravda, July 23, 1954.

^Pravda, December 24, 1954.

"Official radio broadcast, Tiflis, November 22, 1955, New York Times, November
23, 1955, pp. 1, 4; November 25, 1955, p. 5.

"Soviet Affairs, Notes, published by the State Department, Washington, D.G.,
No. 167, February 18, 1955, p. 1.

283

From the Ukrainian Party organization Khrushchev was transferred
in 1929 to study in Moscow. Here he attended the Industrial Academy
of Heavy Industry, one of the newly established institutes for training in-
dustrial technicians.18

Khrushchev's party assignments alternated between Moscow and the
Ukraine.

... In 1931 Khrushchev began his assignments in the capital with
two minor secretarial posts. His success was immediate. The following
year he advanced to the position of second man in the city Party organiza-
tion, then headed by Lazar Kaganovich. A scant two years later, in 1934,
Khrushchev occupied the posts of First Secretary of the City and Second
Secretary of the Oblast [Moscow province] Party Committees.

. . . Concurrent with Party assignments, he was designated in 1935
to serve on the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee, a
forerunner of the present Supreme Soviet.19

As far as is known, Khrushchev never belonged to, nor even sympa-
thized with, any of the dissident groups — Trotskyites, rightists, or others;
he was 100 percent loyal to Stalin and it goes without saying that he
believed in suppression of all Communist opposition.

As a result of the extensive purges in the mid-1930's, Khrushchev reached
the topmost Party ranks. He was accepted by Stalin in januaiy 1938
as candidate member of the Politburo in place of the purged veteran
Party boss Stanislav Kossior. Simultaneously he was sent to Kiev to
assume the latter's duties as First Secretary of the Ukrainian Party or-
ganization. A year later Khrushchev gained full membership in the
Politburo and was ranked among the first 10 Soviet leaders. In the
Ukraine he not only assumed entire direction of the Communist Party
on the republic level, but also took personal control of the Kiev Party
organizations.

. . . During the war Khrushchev remained in the Ukraine and con-
tiguous areas helping to organize and direct the military and partisan
efforts against the Germans. In 1942^4-3 he was at the front in Stalingrad
and later at Voronezh. He returned to the capital city of Kiev with ad-
vancing Russian troops in late 1943 and resumed his political duties. In
February 1944 he assumed the chairmanship of the [Ukrainian] Council
of People's Commissars, thereby bringing under his direct control the en-
tire state as well as Party apparatus. For the next three years Khrushchev
exercised a virtual one-man dictatorship in the Ukraine, subject; only
to the control of Stalin in Moscow.

... By March 1947 Khrushchev's fortunes began to change, ostensibly
as a result of Ukrainian agricultural difficulties. In that month, Stalin
sent Kaganovich down from Moscow to take over Khrushchev's job as
Party First Secretary of the Ukraine. Khrushchev continued to hold the

18 Ibid.
"Ibid., pp. 1,2.

284

post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, but was seen in public less
frequently than had been his custom. . . .

Khrushchev remained in the Ukraine until December 1949. . . .20
... on December 18, 1949, Khrushchev himself went to Moscow,
where at the age of 55 he was appointed one of the secretaries of the All-
Union Central Committee to replace Georgi Popov. He also resumed his
old duties as first party secretary of the Moscow region, while L. G. Melni-
kov took over his position in the Ukraine. The other members of the
secretariat at this time were Stalin, Malenkov, Andreyev, Alexei Kusnetsov
and Suslov. Of these only Suslov remains on the secretariat today.21

Khrushchev concentrated on issues of collective farming, husbandry,
sovkliczes, etc. Some of his ideas were approved, others rejected, by
Stalin. It was Khrushchev who set off the opening gun in the drive for
collective farm mergers.

... in an election speech on March 7 [1950] Khrushchev advocated
both the merging of collective farms into larger units, a policy which was
not entirely new, but which v/as now to be carried on in a widespread
campaign, and in connection with this the transfer of the peasants into
agricultural cities, agrogoroda, at a pace so rapid that old dwellings would
be moved to central locations rather than waiting for new dwellings to be
erected. It was the latter policy which got Khrushchev into trouble.22

The "agro-cities" were ultimately rejected; they were criticized by
Malenkov (in Stalin's time), who had jurisdiction over rural affairs.
Khrushchey had publicly to bow and "admit" his error. The Malen-
kov-Khrushchev feud, it appears, dates from those years.

On the other hand,

One of the paramount objectives of the merger campaign — left unstated
by Khrushchev — was the regime's desire to tighten its control over the
collective-farm structure. The merger of small collective farms resulted
in a substantial increase in the number of kolkhozes with primary Party
organizations and an intensification of Party influence. The reduction
in the number of collective farm chairmen meant that those who were re-
tained were likely to be the most politically reliable, as well as technically
proficient. . . .

... By the end of the year [1950], Minister of Agriculture I. A. Bene-
diktov reported that the number of kolkhozes had been reduced from
252,000 to 123,000. In October 1952 Malenkov indicated that only 97,000
were left.23

90 Ibid., p. 2.

nNikita S. Khrushchev (Biographical Sketch), Report No. 1695, United States
Information Agency, New York, September 18, 1953, pp. 4, 5.

23 Ibid.

88 Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Frcm,
1953), p. 457.

285

2. The Advance of Nikita Khrushchev

In the early 1950's, Khrushchev, although a member of the Politburo,
did not occupy a place comparable to that of Stalin's lieutenants. His
rise to power did not occur immediately after the death of the dictator.
From March (the month of Stalin's death) to September 1953 he served
as one of the "secretaries" of the Central Committee, although his in-
fluence, already considerable, was probably a paramount factor in the
ouster of Beria. With his elevation to the rank of "First Secretary" in
September 1953, Khrushchev assumed leadership of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union.

In Lenin's time and in Stalin's, leadership of the Communist party
was tantamount to rule over the government and the country. But
Khrushchev at the time he became First Secretary was not yet strong
enough to overshadow his rivals, among whom the strongest was Georgi
Malenkov. Consequently the era was one of "collective leadership,"
that is, rule by a group of Stalin's heirs. (More than a year was to pass
before Khrushchev assumed undisputed power over the government and
the country.)

In the role of First Secretary, Khrushchev made himself felt by fre-
quent speeches, which were reported in full in the press, and by engaging
in discussion of all subjects bearing on both internal and foreign affairs.
Little known before, his role in war, and especially in the battle of Stalin-
grad, was now abundantly stressed and became a standard part of his
biography; it was also made another stepping-stone to supreme power.
At first he concentrated on economic affairs, but about a year after his
elevation he turned to international politics. By that time (mid- 1954)
he had begun to attract attention abroad. The world looked at

. . . the thickset, round-headed, unconventional, bear-like and energetic
first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with his hardly
mastered fierceness. . . .24

and felt that the personal traits and attitudes of the First Secretary would
soon be exerting great influence on world affairs.

. . . Direct and down-to-earth, cheerfully direct or brutally direct, ac-
cording to the exigencies of the occasion as appraised by him, this one-time
shepherd-boy and coal-miner got his education in a night-school. . . . Im-
mensely confident — perhaps over-confident — brash and contemptuous in
his approach to delicate problems, ebulliently vital, he is the man who
rushes in when the more circumspect think twice. ... It is all a bewilder-
ing mixture of clown and bully, blunt self-made tycoon and ingratiating
flatterer, cold calculation and irrepressible vitality. You can make what you

** Klaus Mehnert, Asien, Moskau und Wir (3d ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-
Anstalt,1957),p. 174.

68491 O-61-vol. 11—19

286

like of it when the man is in motion. But when he is completely relaxed
you are aware of enormous natural authority and power. He sits, and his
chair is the seat of power. He withdraws himself naturally and absolutely,
creating by some magic a physical gulf between himself and those around
him.25

Among his coleaders, Khrushchev did not enjoy the position of an
undisputed leader, a person superior in political strategy and shrewdness;
they looked at him with condescension — a fact that eventually was to be
a factor in his fights with his internal opponents.

His [Khrushchev's] is an aggressive, forceful and extrovert personality.
He spoke a great deal and preached at us more forthrightly than the
others. . . .

. . . Although he is the most forceful, he did not impress us as the ablest
leader. He lacks subtlety, and on one or two occasions seemed unable to
follow the argument.

His colleagues listened to his speeches with an amused tolerance, far
removed from the deference due to the inheritor of Stalin's mantle.26

Khrushchev's views on world affairs, while orthodox-Leninist, are
somewhat oversimplified and primitive. Capitalists, the evil, are being
fought by Communists, the good; Communists will inevitably win out.
The "imperialists" dislike the Soviet Union because she is a "Socialist
country," but are afraid of her power, etc.

. . . You are against communism and socialism, and we are against
capitalism. We afe building and developing our economy on socialist
principles. You want your economy built on capitalist principles. . . .
You believe that capitalism is immutable, that the future lies with the
capitalist system. We, on our part, believe that communism is invincible
and that the future lies with the communist system. These are two anti-
thetical points of view. . . .

. . . Who could say what course developments would take in other coun-
tries, in the United States, for example? There is a powerful working class
in America, and sooner or later it would raise its voice.27

Likewise primitive is Khrushchev's notion of the political system in
democratic countries.

. . . "they say that they have a free press . . . That is, the capitalists
have freedom of the press. They say that the workers are allowed to have
a free press according to their constitutions. They can have a few news-
papers, magazines, radio stations, later television stations — only they have
not got the money for it."

Radio, telegraph and similar agencies "are in the hands of the monop-
olies." . . . press and radio were used to "exploit the people."

28 Edward Crankshaw, Russia Without Stalin (New York : The Viking Press,
J 956), pp. 177, 178.

u Aneurin Bevan, "Kremlin Personalities," London Tribune, October 1, 1954, p. 2.

27 Khrushchev, Interview with William Randolph Hearst, Jr., J. Kingsbury Smith
and Frank Conniff, Pravda, February 1 1, 1955.

287

"They shear them like sheep." 28

Khrushchev's antagonism toward "capitalism" and capitalist leaders
implies also antagonism toward the Social-Democrats and the British
Labor Party. Khrushchev bluntly demonstrated his attitude at a dinner
meeting with leaders of the British Labor Party in London in April
1956. Labor Party leader Hugh Gaitskell suggested to Khrushchev the
freeing of socialists from Soviet prisons.

. . . Khrushchev told Gaitskell in the most offensive terms that he would
have to look elsewhere to find agents who would protect "the enemies of the
working class."

Khrushchev did not attempt to hide his contempt both for Britain and
for the Labor party.29

Khrushchev has more than once expressed his contempt for demo-
cratic institutions such as parliaments, free elections, and a free press.

. . . Khrushchev has little respect for Congress, and I gathered from the
sneer in his voice that he also has very little respect for representative leg-
islative organs in general.30

At a reception at the British Embassy in Moscow, Khrushchev illus-
trated his attitude toward parliaments by an anecdote. A Russian, while
riding in a taxicab, had an accident

. . . which sent him sprawling in the street. His head cracked against
the curb, and his brains fell out on the road. He thought nothing of it,
left his brains on the gutter, and marched off. An old lady ran after him
and said : "Sir, you lost your brains." "That's all right," he answered, "I
am a member of the Duma" [the pre-revolutionary Russian Parliament].31

Aggressive and often outspoken, Khrushchev, despite his ostensible
adherence to the principle of "peaceful coexistence," sometimes sur-
prises the West and its governmental leaders and diplomats by his
bellicose attitude. "We will bury you," he told a group of foreign
diplomats.32

On June 15, 1954, Khrushchev, in one of his first ventures into the
international field, delivered an extremely aggressive speech at the Prague
Party Congress:

We always knew that to live with the enemy one must be strong. We
have done everything possible. We created atomic energy in our country;
we created the atom bomb; we outstripped the capitalist class and created
the hydrogen bomb before them. . . . We know the bourgeois politicians

"New York Times, July 18, 1956, p. 5.

"Denis Healey, M.P., "Labor Unmasks Khrushchev," The New Leader, vol.
XXXIX, No. 19 (May 7, 1956), p. 3. The sentences quoted have been inverted
from the order in which they appear in the original.

30 Marvin L. Kalb, Eastern Exposure (New York: Farrar, Straus and Gudahy,
1958), p. 76.

n As quoted in ibid., p. 76.

M New York Times, November 20, 1956, p. 15.

288

are chattering idly. . . . They think they can intimidate us. But nothing
can frighten us because if they know what a bomb means, so do we.83

Khrushchev could not be classed as either a "rightist" or a "leftist"
Communist; 34 he combined political traits of both. The curb on the
powers of the police, the relaxation of terrorism and the rehabilitation of
a large number (though not all) of Stalin's victims were combined with
strict adherence to the collective farms system and even a program for
abolishing the remnants of individual farming (private plots, the pri-
vately-owned cow, etc.).

In foreign affairs, "coexistence," in Khrushchev's conception, was
combined with vigorous efforts to strengthen the "Socialist camp." In
economic affairs he opposed Malenkov's trend toward a rapid rise in the
standard of living, which was the reverse side of a peaceful foreign pol-
icy. Khrushchev insisted rather on accelerating the development of
"heavy industry" which, as we have seen,35 was tantamount to increased
development of war industries at the expense of living standards.

Improvement of living standards "in two or three years" was a formula
often heard in 1953-54; it was a promise on the part of the government.
The promise might have been fulfilled if a bold course of concessions to
the peasantry had been coupled with an expansion of nonmilitary
industries and large imports of consumer goods from abroad. However,

Malenkov's pledge to show results in "two or three years" could not be
fulfilled, least of all in the field of food and agriculture. His concessions to
the peasantry were timid ones (timidity has always been the curse of
"rightist" Communism). . . .

Yet "rightist" Malenkov and his group were not prepared for great leaps
forward. Afraid of criticism, charges of "rightism" and breaking with
Communist tradition, they made only minimum concessions, which proved
to be ineffectual. The reputation of the leadership suffered; the national
economy did not improve. By the end of the first of Malenkov's "two or
three" years his star had begun to dim. At the same time the more
orthodox Nikita Khrushchev was embarking on a grand-scale counter-
offensive.36

The obvious inability of the government to fulfill the promise of im-
provement in "two or three years" helped Khrushchev, with his aggres-
sively anti-Western attitudes, to defeat Malenkov and replace the latter's
"consumer goods" program with the old program of "first place to heavy
industry." The decisive fight behind the scenes continued into the
second half of 1954.

... on September 25, 1954, Khrushchev, in a conversation with Pro-
fessor Bernal, particularly emphasized the importance of heavy industry.

38 New York Times, June 25, 1954, p. 5.

84 About "rightist" and "leftist" communism, see ch. V, sec. 7, and ch. VI, sec*. 1-3.

88 See pp. 171, 172.

*• Dallin, op. cit., p. 328.

289

He stated that in the development of the Soviet economy "heavy industry
will in future also be granted priority." 37

On December 28, 1954, obviously after the issue had been discussed
in the Presidium, Pravda stated that "the consistent growth of heavy
industry remains our main goal."

Khrushchev, attacking Malenkov's program at the January 25, 1955,
session of the Central Committee, said that to him the program was a
"regurgitation of the right deviation, regurgitation of views hostile to
Leninism, views which Rykov, Bukharin, and their like once preached.38
He then proceeded to develop his industrial-militaristic conceptions:

The chief task to the solution of which the party is lending all its efforts
has been and remains strengthening the might of the Soviet state, and conse-
quently rapidly developing heavy industry, which constitutes the firm foun-
dation of the entire national economy and of the indestructible defense
capacity of the country, the source of constant growth in the people's
wealth. . . .

... A struggle must be waged against those who consider that we can be
satisfied with the level of development of heavy industry so far achieved and
can concentrate our main energies on the task of developing the light and
food industries. It must be understood that propagation of such anti-
Leninist views is particularly nonpermissible in present circumstances, when
our party is directing all efforts of the Soviet people to the solution of the
great tasks of communist construction, when the imperialist states are
carrying on feverish preparations for war.39

These, Khrushchev's theses, were adopted by the Central Commit-
tee; Premier Georgi Malenkov, actually in a subordinate position since
the spring of 1954, resigned officially on February 8, 1955. In an
extraordinarily self-humiliating statement in the form of a letter ad-
dressed to the President of the Supreme Soviet, Malenkov said:

Please inform the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics of my request to be released from the post of Chairman of
the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R,

My request is due to the necessity to strengthen the leadership of the
Council of Ministers and the expediency of having a comrade who possesses
better experience in state work in the post of Chairman of the Council of
Ministers of the U.S.S.R. I clearly see that my inadequate experience
in local work and in the direct supervision of particular branches of the
national economy has had a detrimental effect upon the fulfillment of the
complicated and important duties of the Chairman of the Council of
Ministers. . . .

37 Boris Meissner, Sowjetrussland zwischen Revolution und Restauration (Koln:
Verlagfur Politik und Wirtschaft, 1956), p. 103.

"Khrushchev, Report Delivered January 25, 1955 at the Plenary Session of the
Party Central Committee, Izvestia, February 3, 1955, p. 1.

" Ibid.

290

... I see particularly clearly my fault and responsibility for the un-
satisfactory state of affairs in agriculture because for a number of years
I had been entrusted with the duty of controlling and guiding the work
of the central agricultural bodies and of the local party and government
organizations in the sphere of agriculture. On the initiation and under
the leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party [mean-
ing Khrushchev], a general program has been worked out to overcome
the lag in agriculture and to achieve its rapid development.40

To salvage what could be salvaged of his high rank, Malenkov reversed
his stand and pledged loyalty to the government:

In requesting to be released from the post of Chairman of the Council
of Ministers, I want to assure the Supreme Soviet that in the new field
placed in my charge I shall, under the . . . leadership of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, fulfill most
conscientiously those responsibilities with which I shall be entrusted.41

Malenkov was replaced by Nikolai Bulganin, who pledged himself
to comply with the directives of the Communist party, which meant,
already at that early moment, of Nikita Khrushchev.

3. The New Agrarian Policy

Long before Khrushchev achieved total power, his influence was
becoming decisive in agriculture, a field of national economy with
which he was more familiar than with any other branch. His general
course in agriculture was toward greater "socialization," meaning
abolition of the remnants of private economy; though carried out
gradually and not without some zig-zagging, the new course implied
even abolition of kolkhozes (cooperatives) in favor of sovkhozes (state
farms).

To make sure of success, pressure was put on the village population to
discourage them from spending an undue amount of their time and
effort on their private plots. These had always been a bone of conten-
tion for Party doctrinaires, who considered them expendable rudiments of
capitalism.42

A statement published on behalf of the Central Committee of the
Communist party and the government read as follows :

... It is essential that collective farmers' personal garden plots be of
subsidiary importance until the communal sector has been sufficiently de-
veloped to satisfy fully both the collective farms' public needs and the collec-
tive farmers' personal requirements. ... It is therefore essential that

*°Pravda, February 9, 1955.
41 Ibid.

43 Soviet Survey, A Quarterly Review of Cultural Trends, published by the Con-
gress for Cultural Freedom, Paris, No. 26, October-December 1958, p. 24.

291

... his garden plot and the income received from it should be of truly sub-
sidiary nature, chiefly satisfying his needs for fresh vegetables, fruits and
berries. . . .*3

Khrushchev presented his program of abolishing the peasants' private
plots as a measure dictated not by Communist ideology but rather by the
interests of the peasants themselves.

. . . Collective farmers who own large private plots are forced to invest
a great deal of time and labor in the cultivation of their land. If the col-
lective farm sets up a good communal vegetable garden and mechanizes
vegetable gardening, much less labor will be needed for growing vegetables
and potatoes than is required on the private plots. Potatoes and vegetables
will be cheaper, and it will be to the farmers' advantage to obtain them from
the collective farm rather than expend their own labor in raising the
produce on their personal plots. Once they are convinced of the advan-
tages of obtaining vegetables and potatoes from the collective farm gardens,
the collective farmers will relinquish their private gardens of their own free
will.44

As the conviction grew in Khrushchev's circles that the Soviet so-
cialist economy could and must rise from its poor level to the stage of
Communist perfection within 7 to 10 years, the war on the private
peasants' plots developed at a faster tempo.

. . . The size of the plot has been reduced from 1}4 acres before the
war to less than % acre per family now. Simultaneously the private rear-
ing of livestock has been handicapped by the increase in the minimum num-
ber of labour-days that have to be worked — by men, women, and children —
in the collectives. The 1956 decree on the Agricultural Artel [association
for common work] left no doubt that in important respects the regulations
of the Model Collective Farm Statute of 1935 "ran counter to the tasks of
the organisational-economic strengthening of the collective farms" and
that in future "private plot husbandry must be of a subsidiary nature."
(Pravda, March 10, 1956) ,45

Abolition of private husbandry in favor of collectives was becoming a
new slogan. The peasants were advised — and sometimes compelled —
to sell their cows to the kolkhoz. Khrushchev maintained that the pro-
gram would be voluntary and would serve the interests of the peasants
themselves. An extremist Communist measure, and a proof of the
predominance of orthodox ideology over the real interests of the popula-
tion, the abolition of the "private cow" was hypocritically explained as
a service to the women kolkhoznik :

Women work during the day in the fields, come home tired, have to feed
their children, and rush to milk the cow; they have to get up early in the

43 Prav d a, March 10, 1956.

44 Pravda, December 16, 1958, p. 5.

* Soviet Survey, A Quarterly Review of Cultural Trends, published by the Con-
gress for Cultural Freedom, Paris, No. 26, October-December 1958, p. 24.

292

morning, feed the cow, wash, etc. This means much trouble for the women.
Maybe the woman likes the cow so much that she is willing to go to all this
trouble? But she doesn't need the cow, she needs the milk. If she gets
milk from the kolkhoz and saves herself labor, why does she need the cow?
So I told my fellow countrymen in Kalinovka: hasn't the time arrived to sell
the cow to the kolkhoz, but on the condition that the kolkhoz provide milk
for all its members.46

The enlargement of kolkhozes, another point in Khrushchev's pro-
gram, was tantamount to the restriction of the role of the individual
peasant in the community in favor of a large, sometimes huge, unit.
The enlargement of kolkhozes carried out after the war is illustrated
by the following figures :

1940

Number of kolkhozes (in thou-
sands)

Peasant families in one kolkhoz
(average)

Average size of a kolkhoz (in hec-
tares) 492

1950

123.7

165

967

1953

1955

93.3

220

1,407

87.5

229

47 1,699

By March 1958 the number of kolkhozes was reduced to 78,00c).48
The most spectacular of Khrushchev's reforms was the opening up
and cultivation of huge areas of "virgin" and idle land, mainly in
Kazakhstan, Central Asia. Because of climatic conditions and recur-
rent droughts, private peasant economy was not possible in those areas;
now the risks were assumed by the state and the new lands cultivated
in the framework of sovkhozes.

. . . Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly (since Malenkov had announced
that the grain situation was well in hand), the government came out with
a decree calling for the immediate ploughing up and sowing down to grain
of 32 million acres of waste and virgin land in Kazakhstan and southern
Siberia — an area rather more than the total acreage under crops in England,
Wales, and Scotland. Before the scheme had got fully into its stride the
acreage was increased to a total which was more than half the cultivated
area of Germany, France, Italy, and Spain combined. And it was done.
By the autumn of 1955 that vast acreage had been ploughed up, to be
harvested by the autumn of 1956. The first harvest, on a limited acieage

41 Pravda, January 25, 1958, p. 3.

■ Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR, Statisticheskii Sbornik (National Economy of the
USSR, Statistical Abstract) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatclstvo Statisticheskoe
(State Statistical Publishing House), 1956), pp. 128, 129.

49 Pravda, March 1, 1958, p. 2.

293

in 1954, was successful — and compensated for crop failures in the
Ukraine.4*

"Tselina" (accent on the a, from tselyi — whole, unhurt) — is the Russian
word for the new land. For the people now working on this Tselina the
Russians invented the word Tselinnik.50

The huge operation was carried out in the shortest possible time and
many mistakes were made, which Khrushchev admitted. Otherwise,
and officially, the campaign was proclaimed a success.

By decision of the February-March Plenum of the Central Committee
of the CPSU (1954). . . the goal was set: to add not less than thirteen
million hectares of virgin and idle land to the grain-sowing areas in 1954—55.
To carry out the program, a series of measures were projected: organiza-
tion of new MTS's [Machine Tractor Stations] and sovkhozes, supplying
them with modern machines, dispatching skilled technicians, creation of
normal living and cultural conditions, organizing planned migration. . . .
A total of about 19 million hectares of virgin and idle lands were cultivated
in 1954. . . . In two years (1954-1955) 33,005 thousand hectares of virgin
and idle lands were ploughed. . . .

By November 7, 1956, 35.5 million hectares of virgin and idle land were
virtually ploughed.51

To organize the manpower necessary for work on the new virgin lands,
Khrushchev turned to the Young Communist League with its millions
of members. The league was instructed to recruit the necessary hundreds
of thousands of workers. Quotas were set for local Komsomols of re-
quired workers and "cadres" (organizers and technicians) ; the opera-
tion was similar to recruitment into the army. Contrary to Soviet
claims, the operation was in no way a voluntary, patriotic one. It was
hard on the young men and women selected to migrate to a barren land
with almost no housing accommodations, not to speak of other comforts.

... At the call of the Communist party over 350,000 persons migrated
to work on the virgin and idle lands. Among them were many skilled
specialists from industrial enterprises in the cities, from the MTS's and
the sovkhozes of different regions of the entire country.52

... I saw these Tselinniks at work and in their homes. To my ques-
tion, what brought you to the Tselina, they all gave the stereotyped an-
swer: "We followed the appeal of the Party and the Komsomol"; they
tried to sound heroic. It is impossible to learn what they really thought,

49 Crankshaw, op. cit., pp. 166, 167.

60 Mehnert, op. cit., p. 183.

61 Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (Large Soviet Encyclopedia) (2nd ed.; Mos-
cow: Gosudarstvennoe Nauchnoe Izdatelstvo "Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya"
(State Scientific Publishing House "The Large Soviet Encyclopedia"), vol. XLVI
(1957), pp. 487,488.

a Ibid., p. 488.

294

and I can't really tell to what extent they were idealistic jTie/ma-volunteers.
But according to the latest Soviet literature there are also many other
motives in the decision to become a Tselinnik.53

Khrushchev's effort to recruit manpower through the Youth League
was his substitute for Stalin's methods of forced labor of inmates of
concentration camps, but the new methods were still a kind of compul-
sion, although of a less severe character. The persons recruited by the
Komsomol were rarely in a position to refuse.

When Khrushchev sent down the orders to convert this virgin land into
wheat fields, there was a frenzy of activity. The Komsomol (the Young
Communist League) moved into action and established many farms, one
of them being the Komsomolsky farm at Barnaul. The director of the
farm, L. J. Pyjikov, told me that all of the men and women who came
there did so voluntarily. That may well be. But when I reached Moscow,
I learned that labor was in effect often drafted for these new farms. For
example, when the appeal was made to one government agency in Mos-
cow for farm laborers, only thirty volunteered their services. The quota,
however, was sixty. So thirty others were assigned by that agency to farm
work. (I got my story from one of the latter groups) .S4

The actual conduct of this operation passes all imagining. A quarter
of a million "volunteers" were picked up by their roots and pitch-forked
into the empty steppe. . . . During all the first winter there was nowhere
to live. "Pre-fabs" and tents were ordered in vast quantities, but they
failed to arrive — or else the walls for a hundred pre-fabs would be sent to
one location, and the roofs to another location two hundred miles away.
The volunteers got through that winter somehow, living mainly in the
traditional Russian dugouts — sunken pits with an earth roof over wood
or iron, and a bit of stovepipe for a chimney. . . .

***♦**»

. . . Only Khrushchev knows how many people died, or suffered irrep-
arable injury to health, in those first two winters when there was nowhere
to live.55

Life on the Tselinas was hard :

But already these new settlements are succumbing to the disease of all
Soviet industrial towns. The hard core of volunteers can be relied on ; but
the draftees, and the demobilized service-men, are causing problems. . . .
There is nothing to do after work but drink. Theatres are lacking, cinemas
are lacking, clubs are lacking, even Party pep-talkers are lacking (it takes
a devoted agitator to leave his family and settle down in the desert wastes
of Kazakhstan) . And so the young men drink and gamble and generally
carry on as anyone but Mr. Khrushchev would expect them to carry on in
such conditions.56

a Mehnert, op. cit., p. 183.

"William O. Douglas, Russian Journey (Garden City: Doublcday & Co., 1956),
pp. 94, 95.

88 Crankshaw, op. cit., pp. 167, 168.
"Ibid., p. 169.

295

In the spring of 1954 I followed closely the reports of the press about the
transplanting of hundreds of thousands of people from European Russia
to southern Siberia. From the point of view of recruiting of manpower and
transport of the masses as well as the machines necessary for their work,
the operation of that year could be compared to a large-scale war operation,
something like the Normandy invasion by the Allies ten years ago. . . .

Of the Tselinniks of the first groups, over 10 per cent returned home the
first year; 60 were mobilized into the army, but new arrivals replaced
these. At the time of my visit [to a sovkhoz in the spring of 1956] the
sovkhoz had a manpower force of 760. Of these, 150 were occupied with
construction.07

As a result of the Tselina operation and of Khrushchev's tendency
toward integrated state economy, the number and size of sovkhozes con-
tinued to grow rapidly. Their development during the period from
1940 to 1955 may be seen in the following figures:

Acreage under crops of sovkhozes and
other state enterprises (in thou-
sands of hectares)

Number of persons employed in state
agricultural enterprises (in thou-
sands)

Persons employed at MTS's (in thou-
sands)

Total persons employed (in thou-
sands)

1940

13, 259

1,760

537
2, 297

1953

18, 236

2,552
1,167
3,719

1955

29, 371

2,054

3,120

68 5, 174

By 1957 the state economy was further advancing, gradually sup-
planting both private and kolkhoz agriculture and husbandry :

... In them [the sovkhozes] is concentrated over a quarter of the entire
acreage under crops of the whole country and almost 30 per cent of all kinds
of grain sowing. In 1957 the sovkhozes delivered to the state 21 per cent of
the entire supply of meat, 32 per cent of pork, 21 per cent of milk, 27 per
cent of wool and 2 1 per cent of eggs.59

A personal preference of Khrushchev (many have considered it a
whim) began to influence Soviet agriculture after his elevation: the

"Mehnert, op. cit.,pp. 182, 185.

™Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR, Statisticheskii Sbornik, pp. 134, 135, 138.

89 Ezhegodnik Bolshoi Sovetskoi Entsiklopedii 1958 (Yearbook of the Large Soviet
Encyclopedia W58) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Nauchnoe Izdatelstvo "Bolshaya
Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya" (State Scientific Publishing House "The Large Soviet
Encyclopedia"), 1958), p. 53.

296

cultivation of corn. According to official data, the acreage planted in

corn amounted to :

[In million hectares] *°

1913 2.2

1940 3.6

1950 4.8

1953 3.5

1956 9.3

1957 5.8

The substantial decrease of areas under corn in 1957 proved that
Khrushchev's directives were in this case neither expert nor wise. The
corn issue is still in question.

Gradual abolition of the MTS's (machine-tractor stations serving the
collective farms of their district) was another reform in the Soviet system
of agriculture under Khrushchev. Having served, since its initiation in
the late 1920's, as a means of Communist party control over the kol-
khozes and their members, the network of MTS's appeared, in the 1950's,
unnecessary; other methods had by that time become more effective.
Independent political movements of the peasantry were no longer pos-
sible under the overriding power of the police, and the numbers of
Communists appointed to leading posts in the collective farms had
increased to such an extent that they could be entrusted with the political
tasks heretofore performed by the MTS's.

At present the MTS's have ceased to play the political role assigned to
them during the first stage of kolkhoz building. . . .

*******

. . . The number of Communists in the kolkhozes increased by over
230,000 in the years 1954-58. With the transfer of a huge army of
mechanics and specialists from the MTS's to the kolkhozes, the kolkhoz
party organizations will become even stronger and their influence on all
phases of kolkhoz life will increase. . . .C1

The Party has sent several thousand Communists — Party and Soviet
workers, engineers from industrial enterprises, agronomists, zootechnicians 62
and other specialists — to occupy leading posts in the kolkhozes. At the
beginning of 1957 over 90 per cent of kolkhoz chairmen were Communists.63

While more than 20 per cent of the collective farms had no Party organi-
zations before the Central Committee's September plenary session, almost
all the collective and state farms now have full-fledged and vigorous Party
organizations. The average collective-farm Party organization now has 20
Communists, or almost twice as many as five years ago. The total number
of Communists in the collective-farm Party organizations is more than

"Ibid., p. 51.
81 Pravda, March 1, 1958.

63 Zootechnicians is a Soviet term which means the science of breeding, feeding and
correct utilization of cattle.
83 Pravda, February 28, 1958.

297

1,350,000. This is a large and active force, with whose help the assigned
tasks can be successfully accomplished.64

The transfer of machinery to the kolkhozes was in particular made pos-
sible because, in the course of the "aggrandizement" drive, the average
size of a kolkhoz had increased considerably. "The number of regular
workers of the MTS's amounted to over 2,000,000 in 1957." M It
would appear that the transfer of MTS shops and machinery to the
kolkhozes would strengthen and consolidate the collective farm system.
But Khrushchev insisted that, in the final analysis, this reform would be
only a step toward their transformation into a "higher type" of national
property, the sovkhoz system.

. . . with the rise in kolkhoz wealth, kolkhoz property will advance to
reach the level of national property. The sooner we develop the productive
forces of socialist agriculture, the sooner the moment will arrive when there
will be practically no difference between national and kolkhoz property.66

4. Competition With the United States

In the spring of 1957, Khrushchev came out with the slogan of catch-
ing up with the United States in production of meat, butter, and milk.
This was more than a mere economic program.; its acceptance by the
Central Committee was achieved in the face of the resistance of the
Malenkov-Molotov group. Khrushchev's opponents maintained that
it was unrealistic to try to achieve such a level of production in the near
future; they were obviously refusing to challenge the United States at its
strongest point — its economy. They were skeptical as to whether all-out,
bitter competition was opportune or promising. Khrushchev, however,
won out. In one report, he said :

. . . The successes achieved in agriculture and the good prospects for
its development permit us to set and accomplish a task which is of great
importance for the state : to catch up in the next few years with the United
States of America in butter and milk, per capita.

... In 1956 the per capita production of these products [in kilograms]
was as follows :

U.S.S.R.

U.S.A.

Meat

32.3

24S.0

2.8

102.3

Milk

343.0

Butter

3.8

64 Pravda, December 16, 1958, p. 7.
"Pravda, March 1, 1958, p. 1.
"Ibid., p. 2.

298

. . . [In 1957] we will already have as much butter or even a little more
than the U.S.A. had last year [1956]. This means that we will have a total
amount of butter that is equal to or greater than the amount produced in
the U.S.A. But because our population is bigger than that of the U.S.A.
we will have to make an effort. In per capita production of milk we can-
not only catch up with the U.S.A. but even surpass it as early as 1958.67

... As far as meat is concerned, things are difficult, more difficult, true
enough. Therefore, as far as the production of meat is concerned, we
hope to catch up with the United States, say, in 1960 or 1961. 6S

American experts, Khrushchev reiterated, are skeptical as to the possi-
bility of the Soviet Union's reaching this goal. Some Soviet economists,
he said (mentioning no names), share the view of the Americans:

Your specialists who say that that is impossible have allies among the ranks
of our economists, too, because some of our economists have been telling me
that their task will only be solved in 1975. But we laugh at these prophets
among our people as well as among your people.69

Increasing the scope of his program, Khrushchev soon arrived at the
plan — of the feasibility of which he had no doubt — of catching up with
the United States in all other branches of economy within 15 years.
The following colloquy is from an interview with the American journal-
ist, Henry Shapiro:

H. Shapiro: In your speech at the recent Supreme Soviet session you
said that the Soviet Union will overtake and outstrip the United States
in production in the next fifteen years. You then furnished figures on
output of the principal branch — heavy industry. Does this also apply to
the material living standards of the Soviet people?

N. S. Khrushchev: Yes, unquestionably.

H. Shapiro: Does this mean that in fifteen years the Soviet Union will
have the same standard as the United States?

N. S. Khrushchev: In production of foodstuffs, it will be much sooner.
What is a living standard, what constitutes it? The satisfaction of man's
material and spiritual requirements. Let us consider first the satisfaction
of man's food needs. The Soviet people's requirements of bread and vege-
tables have been fully met now. Everything is being done to ensure com-
plete satisfaction of the Soviet people's needs of butter, meat and milk
within the next few years.

We have already achieved a considerable rise in the living standards
of the Soviet people. But we are aware that the Soviet Union's per capita
production is lower than that of the United States.70

87 Pravda, May 24, 1957, p. 1.

48 Khrushchev, CBS television interview, New York Times, June 3, 1957, p. 6.

88 Ibid.

70 Pravda, November 19, 1957, p. 2.

299

A few months later, Khrushchev foresaw a rapid outstripping of the
United States:

Now everyone sees that our economy is advancing, our labor produc-
tivity is increasing, and per capita output is growing. The time will soon
come, American gentlemen, when you yourselves will become convinced
of the superiority of the Soviet system. (Applause). We will secure a
higher per capita output of consumer goods than that in the leading
capitalist countries. We are now summing up and can say that it will
not be long before we will scale the highest barrier in the capitalist coun-
tries and surpass the level of production achieved by the United States
of America. What will you gentlemen be able to say then? (Applause).

The imperialists are trying to frighten the working people with com-
munism. But when we reach the highest level of production and material
wellbeing of the working folk, people who visit us from the capitalist coun-
tries will say: so this is communism, so this is Soviet rule. How could we
have been so naive as not to realize this before? This is exactly what the
working people need. (Applause).71

Khrushchev was right when he referred to skepticism in the West
regarding his sensational programs.

In the spring of 1957 Khrushchev launched a super-great campaign for
reaching, by 1960, the United States level in per capita output of meat
(the American level for milk had been promised for 1958). For meat
this implied a 3.5-fold rise in output from the 1956 level. Scholars who
cautiously gave warning that the target was unattainable were ridiculed
in the crudest possible manner. Collective farms all over the country were
forced to accept programmes for a development of their livestock herds
that would raise the meat output by the required amount in the three years
remaining.

The average American does not just eat close on 200 lbs. of meat per
year. He also has a good house or apartment, consumes plenty of other
foodstuffs, and is adequately provided with clothes. The citizen of the
"socialist" state had every reason to expect something comparable on the
basis of Khrushchev's meat target. This campaign made sense only in
connection with a great improvement in living standards generally.72

A careful analysis of official figures on the Five- and Seven- Year
Plans, control figures, etc. proved how fantastic Khrushchev's promises
were.

. . . Steel output increased by 9.4 per cent in 1955, by 7.3 per cent in
1956, and by 4.9 per cent in 1957. The insufficient expansion of steel
output adversely affected the output of machinery, which accounts for
close on 40 per cent of total Soviet industrial output. The underfulfillment
of targets for machinery unfavorably affected the operation of other in-

71 Pravda, April 11, 1958, p. 2.

n Naum Jasny, "Soviet Economy: Target for Tomorrow," Soviet Survey, A Quar-
terly Review of Cultural Trends, published by the Congress for Cultural Freedom,
Paris, No. 26, January-March 1959, p. 58.

300

dustries and other sectors of the economy. This is a really startling
phenomenon — a dictatorship of unheard of severity apparently unable to
control the operations of its own ministries, located right there in Moscow.73

5. Soviet Industry and Finance

Though devoting great efforts to the field of agriculture, Khrushchev
did not relinquish the principle of priority for "heavy industry." Heavy
industry was developed at a faster pace than any other branch of the
economy ; Moscow claimed at least quantitative superiority in this field
over all other countries of Europe, including England. A most spec-
tacular achievement and a mighty propaganda weapon was the first
Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, launched on October 4, 1957; other
Soviet satellites followed.

The ability of the Soviet Union to launch the series of Sputniks —
a combination of scientific research and industrial achievements — was
variously interpreted in the East and West. Soviet propaganda pro-
claimed the launching of the Sputnik as an indication of the superiority
of the Communists' system over capitalism, and used it as an appeal to
the nations of Asia and Africa to join, in one form or another, the
"peace front," or the Soviet bloc, and turn their backs on the United
States.

The West, while acknowledging the Soviet achievement, denied that
Russian science and economy had reached a higher level than that of
the West. True,

. . . the Soviet Union has overtaken the great countries of Western
Europe in output of pig-iron, and petroleum, in production of steel and
in some other fields, and continues to move forward. . . .

But there is another side to this picture of the Soviet economy. . . .
that the standard of living of the overwhelming majority of the Russian
people is far below that of Western Europe, not to speak of the United
States; that Soviet progress in this respect has been far too slow if the
Russian aim is to catch up with and compete with the West.

Thus we get the contradictory picture of great progress in certain areas
of production and a serious lag in popular consumption: sputniks, but no
thermometers; atomic energy, but no steam; magnificent subways and
impassable dirt roads. As a Moscow joke has it: a naked man in a silk
hat.74

The term "advanced country" should not be used, as it often is.
carelessly.

What, then, is the real meaning of the term "advanced country?" We
normally define an advanced country as one in which there is a high degree

nIbid., p. 61.

7*Dallin, "Russia: Advanced Nation?", The Sign, published by the Passionist
Fathers, Union City, N.J., vol. XXXVIII, No. 5, December 1958, pp. 19, 20.

301

of scientific, technological, and economic achievement and a high standard
of living for the masses of the population. In the Soviet Union we see
a nation in which these elements have been divorced from one another.
We see a country which has successfully developed science, technology,
and economy insofar as they affect the nation's military strength, but which
has relegated to second place the factor of the well-being of the people.
Fifty years ago, measured by the yardstick of the standard of living
of the general population, the six greatest nations of the modern world
ranked as follows: the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany,
Italy, Russia. The same order would still be valid today (perhaps with
the addition of Japan between Italy and Russia) ; the Soviet Union still
occupies last place, a fact never seriously disputed by Moscow.78

Sometimes Khrushchev himself acknowledged the backwardness of
present-day Russia, without, however, drawing all the logical inferences
from the facts; for instance:

You probably have seen many times how men and women chip ice from
the sidewalks with scrapers. This is unproductive labor. When you see
such a picture, you simply feel embarrassed. So much has been done in
our country to mechanize complex production processes, so many machines
have been made that ease work, and the first artificial earth satellites have
been developed, yet we have not got around to replacing the scraper and
shovel with a machine. . . . What is it that we lack? I think the main
thing is that we give too little attention to such questions, considering them
trifles. But is this a trifle? 76

In the spring of 1957 the Soviet government carried out another
reform in the organization of Soviet industry. The highly centralized
system of ministries in Moscow was replaced by a large number of
local agencies in economic districts, which now had a higher degree of
autonomy than before. The decision to enter upon this path was taken
against the opposition of the old leaders, Malenkov, Molotov and
Kaganovich.

. . . out of the fifteen areas of the Gosplan there finally emerged a
hundred and five, of which seventy were in the Russian Federative Republic,
eleven in the Ukraine, nine in Kazakhstan, four in Uzbekistan and one
in each of the other Union Republics.77

The rationale of this reform was to save the expenses which were an
inevitable part of the bureaucratic system that prevailed.

In such a form of organization substantial shortcomings in planning and
management were inevitable, the most serious being long distances. Fre-
quently transports even went in a wrong direction. All this allegedly led
to additional expenses of 2,000,000,000 rubles a year.

n Ibid., p. 20.

"Khrushchev, Campaign Speech at Voters' Rally, Pravda, March 15, 1958, p. 2.
" Jasny, "Chruschtschow und die Sowjetwirtschaft", Osteuropa, Stuttgart, No. 10,
October 1957, p. 715.

€8491 O-61-vol. 11—20

302

But is is absolutely wrong to blame all these shortcomings of the former
planning system on excessive centralization. The most absurd projects
were initiated and partially carried out.78

The real intent of the reform was to achieve strict centralization of
Soviet economy under the Central Committee of the Communist party
and its head, Nikita Khrushchev. Soviet leaders of industry and trade,
having striven for a modicum of independence, were now, as Khru-
shchev's power was rising, to be put under the direct control of local
Communist party units instead of the huge ministries.

It is becoming more and more obvious that the intent behind the reor-
ganization of industry and the building trades was to subordinate these
branches directly to the party apparatus. According to information which
cannot yet be verified, in many cases the second party secretary and other
officials of the provincial party organizations were appointed as chairmen of
the [new] Councils of the People's Economy. An improvement in the
management of industry and building could hardly be expected from an
apparatus organized in this way.79

It is still too early to evaluate the results of this reorganization of Soviet
industry.

A painful financial operation was carried out in 1957 when the gov-
ernment practically wiped out citizens' savings in the amount of 260
billion rubles. Since 1947, when a monetary reform had devalued sav-
ings, the government continued yearly to collect large sums through
domestic loans; subscription, ostensibly free, was actually obligatory in
the amount of 1 month's salary every year, tantamount to an 8 percent
reduction in salaries. The payment of interest on these loans (usually
3 percent) was an ever growing burden on the treasury. The total
number of subscribers to the loans exceeded 70 million citizens in 1952.80

At present [Khrushchev said in April 1957] we must pay back every year
large sums on the loans in lottery winnings and redemptions. In this year
we will have to pay back about 16 billion rubles; in the next year this will
come to 18 billion rubles and in 1967 to 25 billion rubles, or almost as much
as the revenue from the loans in the present year. The result is a vicious
circle, the state puts in one pocket the money it receives from loans, and
pays out of the other pocket the same amount in winnings on the loans.
What can we do? 81

The government decided to put an end to both compulsory loans, pay-
ments and repayments. Khrushchev

. . . announced that the Soviet Government v/as defaulting on 260 bil-
lion rubles ($260 million) borrowed from the people. This was the amount

"Ibid., p. 714.

"Ibid., p. 716.

80 Bohhaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, vol. XVI (1952), p. 333.

B1Pravda, April 10, 1957, p. 2.

303

of money Russians had spent to purchase government bonds, on the promise
that their money would be returned in twenty years. Khrushchev said, in
effect, that the government could not afford to redeem the bonds now and
would postpone payments for twenty to twenty-five years. Russians knew
this meant forever.82

This amounted to bankruptcy of the state, but the operation had to
be clothed in a highly democratic garb: it was allegedly the Soviet
people, not the government, who initiated and insisted on the default.

. . . The people were told to stage a marionette ritual of asking the gov-
ernment to renege on its payments to them. . . .

*******

. . . Several days previously Khrushchev had spoken at a factory in
Gorki where, at his suggestion, the workers had voted a resolution in favor
of renouncing any claim on their loans to the government.

Now Khrushchev told the agricultural conference :

"If you agree and support us you will perhaps adopt a corresponding call
(resolution). We would then publish your call; and in your call it should
be stated, however, that the initiative springs from the workers." M

On April 13, 1957, the government's suggestion was announced

... to discontinue floating of loans, except of the 3 per cent freely cir-
culating loan, and to defer for twenty to twenty-five years payment on pre-
viously launched loans, which were circulated among the population by sub-
scription.84

6. Social Conditions

A new stratification of Soviet society into upper and lower classes
has been in process since the end of the war, and especially since Stalin's
death. All efforts of the government to conceal this fact and to resolve
the appalling "class contradictions" by readjustment of wages have
proved futile. A new aristocracy has emerged whose contempt for the
working people is greater even than that of the aristocracy toward the
people before the revolution. The disdain of the wives and children of
administrators, technicians, and the new intelligentsia for the masses

... is even more self-conscious and acute than that of the children of
the really great, because they are closer to the masses. Their parents are
determined that, come what may, the advantages they have won shall be
handed on to their children. These youngsters sooner or later have to work.
Their parents have not accumulated fortunes. But they can afford to
choose their work. And their parents can afford to keep them in idleness
until they choose — until, that is, a suitable opportunity arises.85

"Irving R. Levine, Main Street U.SS.R. (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1959),
p. 268.

63 Ibid., pp. 268, 269.
61 Pravda, April 13, 1957.
86 Crankshaw, op. cit.. p. 91.

304

The way of life of the new aristocracy is parasitic to a high degree;
it is a way of life that was supposed to have been abolished in the "land
of toilers" :

. . . They have all the money they can want and all the opportunities
the Soviet Union offers for spending it. That is to say, they spend most of
their lives in one another's villas in the Moscow countryside or on the
Black Sea, according to season. They wear Western clothes, and they get
their entertainment from private cinemas and imported gramophone rec-
ords. Their life is a round of parties — and they are bored ! There is only
one thing they want to do, and that is to travel abroad. They are seen
rarely if at all in public. They regard the government, even when their
husbands belong to it, as a sort of joke in rather poor taste. They regard
the masses, not unkindly, as cattle. They will attend gala performances at
the Bolshoi Theatre (closed performances, that is), and an occasional
Kremlin reception. Their shopping is done for them by servants.86

The following figures are revealing of the social transformation and
the new stratification: Of the total members of the Supreme Soviet in
1937, 42 percent had come from the working class; in 1954 only 23.6
percent had come from that class. In 1937 the percentage of members
of the Supreme Soviet who had been of the peasant class was 29.5; in
1954, it was 16.3. On the other hand, the so-called intellectual:., that is,
the sons and daughters of nonworkers and nonpeasants, constituted,
respectively, 28.5 percent and 60.1 percent.87

Of this new elite, those who had belonged to the higher echelons of the
party and government and survived Stalin's purges constitute a sig-
nificant part:

. . . They [the survivors of Stalin's purges] still form an elite of individ-
uals, and not a class; but their children are intermarrying; and there we
have the makings of a perfectly distinguishable class. Their children, now
in the nursery, will, if life goes on as it promises, know nothing at all of life
as it is lived in Soviet Russia by the masses, will start with immense ad-
vantages and comparative luxury behind them, assuming high positions
or a leisured existence as their right. I am speaking now of the uppermost
drawer. For example, the two daughters of Marshal Zhukov have mar-
ried the sons of Marshal Voroshilov and Marshal Vassilevsky. I could
name plenty of other examples. The result is the birth of a new aristocracy.
♦ * * * * * *

... in casual conversation with members of the new Soviet intelli-
gentsia, one hears charming, highly- educated youngsters speaking of the
masses, of the proletariat to whom the country is supposed to belong, with
a callousness and a brutality which has not been met with in the countries
of Western Europe for many decades. It is the new respectability.88

"Ibid., p. 90.

" Ostev.ro pa, Stuttgart, No. 3, June 1954, p. 215.

a Grankshaw, op. cit., pp. 90, 93.

305

This is the rule, not the exception. A young Russian girl, reports Marvin
Kalb,

. . . told me that she had been dating a general's son, but his father
and her mother had put an end to this affair. When I asked her what
the objections were, she told me that it is a rare thing for a general's son
to marry out of his class. For this reason, the general opposed the relation-
ship. Her mother objected, because she wished to save her daughter heart-
ache. "Your father is a truck driver," her mother had cautioned. "A
general's son will not marry you." 89

A feeling develops among those in the upper circles of the Soviet
intelligentsia that they are not part of the people. "The people," to
them, are those who do physical labor and who are poor — peasants and
workers.

. . . My Russian friend spoke of the people as though he were not a part
of the people. He was in fact a teacher, and he considered himself a
member of the Russian intelligentsia. The people (narod) were the masses,
the intellectuals stood above the masses, their political and ideological
vanguard. It is true that the peculiar place of the intellectual in Russian
society, which he carved for himself throughout the nineteenth century, has
been carried over into the Soviet period. I have heard students and
teachers refer to the "inert Russian masses," and I have heard peasants refer
to their Communist masters with the same reverence, born of subservience,
which the peasants once reserved for the landowning masters.60

In a way, the Soviet "hipsters," called stilyagi in Russia ("Teady
boys" in Britain), are another product of the class stratification; in their
unusual garb, haircuts, manicures, language, and manners there is also
a great deal of protest against the dullness and uniformity of Soviet life
and imitation of America.

The stilyagi form only a part of disoriented youth, but it is the most spec-
tacular part, and so far authority has been able to do nothing about them,
although they parade themselves publicly with all their flaunting eccentrici-
ties : the long draped jackets in loud checks of yellow or green, the painted
"American" tie, patch pockets, padded shoulders, turned-back cuffs, peg-top
trousers, and — pride of the whole outfit — yellow or light tan shoes, with
thick crepe soles, worn a size too big so that they turn up the toe. Their
haircuts are works of art, and they favour side- whiskers. They are not
attractive, and they spend their evenings in bars and billiard saloons, or
dancing where dancing may be had. You can see them any night in any
Soviet hotel that has a dance-band; but they prefer dancing to hoarded
records of American jazz. And with them are the girl stilyagi, "whose
dresses are stretched over their figures to the point of indecency. They wear
slit skirts. Their lips are painted with bright colours. In the summer they

" Kalb, op. cit., p. 81.
*° Jbid.>P. 320.

306

wear 'Roman' sandals. They do their hair in the style of 'fashionable'
foreign cinema actresses" (Soviet Culture, January 18, 1955). 91

Under Stalin the stilyagi would have been severely dealt with; hun-
dreds of youth would have been deported to corrective labor. Now only
a press campaign is being waged against them. Although the stilyagi
trend abounds in obvious anti-Soviet and pro-American components, no
punitive measures have been taken (as yet) against it.

. . . They [the stilyagi] like calling towns and streets by their pre-revolu-
tionary names: Petrograd for Leningrad, Tsaritsyn for Stalingrad, neither
of which are at all well thought of. They call Gorki Street in Moscow
"Broadway." "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!" they call out on
meeting their friends, even if there is only one lady and gentleman present.
There is no nonsense about "Comrade"; "Hello, Mister!" is preferred.
Kopeks are cents; roubles are dollars. . . .

. . . They find hair dressers to satisfy their peculiar and exacting needs,
and tailors to make up bizarre materials into their remarkable outfits. The
barbers and the tailors are not proceeded against.92

It would be wrong to assume that the stilyagi constitute a prevailing
trend among Russian youth. What is significant about the phenomenon
is that it is only in this paradoxical form that a protest against the gov-
ernment appears possible.

. . . The part of the youth that is not satisfied with the regime embraces
a much bigger circle than that of the stilyagi.03

Among industrial workers, hard living conditions, coupled with the
easing of the police system, have produced the phenomenon of strikes,
which are viewed in Russia as a symptom of growing unrest and a sharp
political tool. The strike of October 1956 at the Kaganovich plant in
Moscow developed into a contest between the workers and the Commu-
nist organization.

... It all started in the forging workshop of the plant, where 459 men,
underpaid for the last four or five weeks, arrived at work on October 23,
checked in, and sat down. They did not work. Local plant managers
raved and ranted, threatened and shouted, but the men did not budge.
They wanted to be heard. On October 24, they continued simply to sit
and not work. A party leader, who has been unidentified, came to the
plant to talk to the rebellious workers. He told them to return to work
immediately. The workers insisted on being heard. The party leader
succumbed. ... A man arose and related that he had been released from
a corrective-labor camp only six months ago and that for the past three
months the manager of the workshop had held back on wages, had given
but 200 or 300 roubles a month to his men and squandered the rest of the

01 Crankshaw, op. cit., pp. 96, 97.
" Ibid., p. 98.

w David Burg, "Oppositionclle Stimmungen in der Akademischen Jugcnd der
Sowjetunion," Osteuropa, Stuttgart, No. 9, September 1957, p. 626.

307

money on himself. The labor spokesman demanded that this manager be
released from his job. He warned that until such time as this happens,
the workers will not go back to work. . . . The party leader said he would
consider the situation. He was about to leave, when this same man arose
again and repeated his warning that the workers would not go back to work
until this manager was removed. Within hours, he was. The following
day, the workers checked in, as they had done on the two previous historic
days, and went to work. The manager was replaced, and for the next two
weeks, the workers received double and triple pay in compensation.94

It is safe to assume that at least one former inmate of a Soviet
concentration camp attained the prestige and rank of a leader of
independent labor.

Poor living conditions are also the cause of strikes among students.

. . . Within the past two or three weeks [November 1956], students
at Moscow University who lived in a dormitory near the Sokolniki Park
in Moscow, went on a kind of hunger strike. They were objecting to the
low quality of food. They wanted to eat and live better. They refused
to eat in the dormitory lunchroom. Chinese students, who lived in the
same dormitory, continued to eat in this lunchroom. Some of the Russian
student strikers strongly suggested that the Chinese stop eating there. They
refused. The next day, they stopped. The previous evening, they had
been severely beaten by a group of striking students.95

Corruption and bribery, products of economic regimentation and their
sister, the illegal free market, flourish.

... In the state store, you take it or leave it.

Not so on the private markets. They are lively, interesting, and exciting.
The price is whatever the seller can get; and if the buyer is a foreigner,
the asking price is always higher. Bargaining and haggling go on from
stall to stall. Russia's private markets are private enterprise in its simplest,
most basic form.93

In central Asia, for example:

In early morning the stalls are filled and competition is stiff. Prices
level off. By noon some stalls are closed, and if the supply is not so great,
prices rise. By late afternoon, some produce has wilted; and vendors of
such perishable commodities as milk do not want to cart them back to
the farms that night. So prices fall. Here on the private markets of
Soviet Russia one gets not only color and romance; he also sees the actual
operations of the law of supply and demand, more dramatic than any
textbook can show it.87

The Soviet press is filled with accounts of the trial and conviction of
"profiteers" or "speculators" who bought goods from a state store and

" Kalb, op. cit., pp. 263. 264.
88 Ibid., p. 264.
" Douglas, op. cit., p. 75.
w Ibid., p. 76.

308

took them to another city to sell at a higher price. Thus, one man was
recently convicted for attempting to resell 336 zippers and 36 tablecloths;
another for reselling 200 silk scarves at a 400 per cent mark-up; another
for trafficking in yeast. The cases are almost legion. For the opportuni-
ties are numerous and the temptations great.88

Another "remnant of capitalism," drunkenness, has become a perma-
nent element of Soviet life and the Soviet government has been making
strenuous efforts to eradicate it, but so far the efforts have been in vain.
On July 4, 1958, Khrushchev told a public meeting:

The domination of bourgeois ideology and morality was liquidated in the
Soviet Union. However, we have not yet done away with the survivals of
the past. One of these harmful survivals of the past is the abuse of alcohol
by some people. Whereas in the old society one of the reasons for this
phenomenon was oppression by the exploiters and the absence of possibili-
ties for organizing cultural relaxation for the toiling, we now have different
social and economic conditions. Under the Soviet power the material well-
being and cultural level of the people has improved immeasurably. Hard
drinking is now first of all a result of bad education. There are also cases
of drunkenness and unworthy behavior among a part of our youth. There
are young people who think that by using alcohol they display a kind of
heroism; our youth despises such "heroes." Drinking is not a display of
heroism, but a display of weakness and lack of will power.89

Three months later Khrushchev announced stern measures against
drunkenness.

We will institute strict order in the streets. If a drunkard insults pass-
ersby and acts like a hooligan, if this is a first offense he will be taken to a
special place where hooligans are set straight, sobered up and fined accord-
ing to the offense. If it is a case of more flagrant hooliganism, the agencies
of public order will apply sterner measures. One cannot allow individuals
to disgrace the socialist state and our society by their unworthy acts. One
must know how to behave.100

These efforts and their prospects of success will be better understood
if viewed against the background of the four-decade history of a "fight
against drunkenness" initiated under Lenin and Trotsky. Khrushchev
now describes the harmful effects of excessive drinking in almost the
same terms as did Soviet leaders of previous decades, indicating that
the situation has not improved in the meantime.

The party and the government have been leading a persistent fight against
drunkenness because it harms the interests of our society, undermines the
health of the toilers, negatively affects family life, leads to commission of
crimes and causes considerable damage to production.101

"Ibid., p. 78.

" Pravda, July 5, 1958, p. 3.
wPravda, October 21, 1958, p. 2.
m Pravda, July 5, 1958, p. 3.

309

7. The Thaw and Its Limits

A less oppressive policy in Soviet internal affairs, particularly in the
police system, was inaugurated after Stalin's death. Since it was a reac-
tion to Stalin's terrorism and cruelty, to the purge Stalin had been carry-
ing out during the last few months before his death, and to the abject
poverty of the people, the changes were at first a matter of self-preserva-
tion for Stalin's heirs rather than a well-considered new political
program.

... In the first months after Stalin's death, the new regime initiated
a series of measures which appeared to portend an easing of living stand-
ards for Soviet citizens, a "liberalization" of the dictatorship, and an allevia-
tion of tension between East and West. Price cuts were put into effect for
food and consumer goods. An amnesty was declared for minor offenders
in prisons and forced labor camps. The release of the arrested Kremlin
doctors was accompanied by a declaration that high secret police officials
had fabricated evidence and abused their authority, that they had sought
to stir up national animosities, and that the new leadership was prepared
to guarantee the "constitutional" rights of its subjects against any form of
arbitrary action.102

The most important measure provided for abolition of the judicial
privileges of the secret police.

... the Special Board of Review inside the MVD was abolished after
Stalin's death and Beria's execution. . . . The injustices which that Special
Board inflicted on the people are so enormous that the Chief Prosecutor
has undertaken an investigation of its verdicts. That has led to the release
of some prisoners and to the prosecution of some officials. How far he will
go and how thorough his investigation will be are yet to be known. More-
over, the slave labor camps are being transferred to the Ministry of Justice.
It is one of the steps taken since Stalin and Beria to diminish the power
of the MVD.103

There were a number of additional minor measures, but on the whole
the reforms were limited :

These proposed reforms are not of course fundamental in the sense that
they repudiate the Communist regime. They are not, in other words,
seeds of revolution against the government like the complaint of James
Otis against the British search wan-ants in our early days. But they are
significant trends. They show genuine ferment in the Communist system
and a growing sense of due process.104

A number of police leaders were arrested and tried.

. . . Late in June [1953] he [Beria] himself was arrested, on charges
which included that of attempting to set the MVD "above the Party and

104 Fainsod, op. cit., p. 499.
1W Douglas, op. cit., p. 149.
mJbid.

310

the government," and in December he and six close associates were
executed, following a closed trial.

After Beria's arrest the MVD was assigned to his former close associate
S. N. Kruglov, with I. A. Serov as Deputy Minister. Beria's fall gave new
impetus to the policy of announcing apparent curbs on the power of the
secret police. . . .

*******

. . . Ryumin's execution was announced in July 1954, that of Abakumov
and associates in December. A year later the trial and execution were re-
ported of a number of Georgian secret police officials, and in April 1956
M. D. Bagirov, former Party boss and secret police chief in Azerbaidzhan,
was executed along with a number of associates.105

As the powers and privileges of the secret police were being curbed,
the reforms found symbolic expression in another renaming of the police
agency; MGB (Ministry of State Security) now became KGB (Com-
mittee for State Security) .106

108 Simon Wolin and Robert M. Slusser, eds., The Soviet Secret Police (New York:
Frederick A. Praeger, 1957), pp. 28, 29.

109 Since the dissolution of the OGPU in July 1934, the Soviet secret police has been
repeatedly reorganized and renamed. This constant reorganization complicates any
discussion of secret police agencies after 1934.

Readers should bear in mind that, whereas the old Cheka and OGPU were separate
Soviet government agencies solely assigned to "secret police" or "state security" work,
starting in 1934 such work was periodically assigned to a subdivision of a larger gov-
ernmental apparatus dealing with Soviet "internal affairs" in general.

Thus, after the OGPU was dissolved in July 1934, its tasks were assigned to
"GUGBEZ", a section of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs).
The NKVD was a ministry which included, in addition to a secret police section,
many other departments dealing with routine police work (e.g., crime investigations),
as well as fire protection, and the recording of birth and death certificates. Although
from 1934 until February 3, 1941, secret police tasks were assigned only to the
GUGBEZ section of the NKVD, Westerners commonly used the term "NKVD" to
apply to the Soviet secret police apparatus.

From 1941 until March 1954, the secret police functions in the Soviet Union
alternated between a separate agency solely devoted to security work and a sub-
division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

On February 3, 1941, the GUGBEZ section of the NKVD became a separate
agency under the new name: NKGB (Narodnyi Komissariat Gosudarstvennoi
Bezopasnosti — People's Commissariat for State Security). On July 20, 1941, it
reverted to a department of the NKVD but in April 1943, it once more emerged as
a separate organization — the NKGB.

The independent NKGB was renamed MGB (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoi Bezo-
pasnosti— Ministry of State Security) in March 1946. At the same time, the NKVD
was renamed MVD (Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del — Ministry of Internal Affairs).
On March 15, 1953, the MGB reverted to a subordinate position as a department
of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). Westerners, however, now popularly
applied the term "MVD" to the activities of one of its branches assigned to security
work.

On March 13, 1954, the MGB once more became independent of the MVD, leav-
ing the latter ministry with only routine internal affairs duties. The secret police
agency, MGB, was at the same time renamed KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezo-
pasnosti— Committee for State Security) . This is the present status of the secret police
agency in the Soviet Union.

311

... In March 1954 a new title was devised for this body [MGB], that
of "Committee for State Security" (KGB) under the Council of Ministers
of the U.S.S.R. I. A. Serov, Kruglov's former deputy, an old associate of
Khrushchov and a participant in some of the secret police's most brutal
actions, was named to head the KGB. By law the chairman of the KGB
is a member of the Council of Ministers.107

With regard to the victims of Stalin's purges, the Central Committee
of the Communist party instituted an investigation, which was kept
secret, probably because the revelations would have reflected unfavorably
on the leaders of the post-Stalin era.

Having at its disposal numerous data showing brutal arbitrariness toward
party cadres, the Central Committee has created a party commission under
the control of the Central Committee Presidium ; it was charged with inves-
tigating what made possible the mass repressions against the majority of the
Central Committee members and candidates elected at the Seventeenth
Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) .

The commission has become acquainted with a large quantity of mate-
rials in the NKVD archives and with other documents and has established
many facts pertaining to the fabrication of cases against Communists, to
false accusations, to glaring abuses of socialist legality, which resulted in the
death of innocent people.108

At the same time the supreme court was reviewing old cases and re-
habilitating those of the defendants whom they found to have been
innocent; many of these, however, were dead; the survivors received
some modest money payments from the government.

A large part of these cases are being reviewed now and a great part of
them are being voided because they were baseless and falsified. Suffice it
to say that from 1954 to the present time the Military Collegium of the
Supreme Court has rehabilitated 7,679 persons, many of whom were rehabil-
itated posthumously.109

Military leaders executed by Stalin now were given special praise.

. . . Marshal Vasily K. Bluecher, who commanded the Far East Army
after the Revolution, and who was executed on Stalin's orders in 1939, was
formally rehabilitated in April, 1957, and is now a hero again. A few weeks
later the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda listed Marshal Mikhail N.
Tukhachevsky, who was shot in 1937, as a Soviet "hero." He had not been
mentioned in the Soviet press for twenty years, except as a spy and traitor.110

1W Wolin and Slusser, op. cit., pp. 28, 29.

108 Khrushchev, "Secret Report," Delivered February 24, 25, 1956 at the Twentieth
Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, printed in Bertram G. Wolfe,
Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost (London: Atlantic Press, 1957), p. 122.

™Ibid., p. 154.

"" John Gunther, Inside Russia Today (New York: Harper & Bros., 1957), p. 233.

312

With the powers of the police curbed, the general political climate
mellowed ; fear and tension were not as great as before.

. . . Scarcely a day passes in Moscow now without the return to his fam-
ily, if the family has survived, of a man who may have been locked up
beyond the Arctic Circle for ten, fifteen, or even twenty years — during which
period, quite possibly, no word was ever heard from him. ... A professor
of classics has resumed his chair in Moscow University after twenty-two
years away — as if nothing at all had happened ! — and one case I came across
concerns a youth who, arrested at the age of eighteen for no reason whatso-
ever except that he was the son of an anti-Stalin editor, has been released
after no fewer than twenty-six years of obliteration.111

. . . Police no longer line the Arbat when ministers drive out to their
country villas, and people dance at Kremlin receptions. Can one imagine
Stalin dancing? Youngsters hold hands in cafes, and kiss in movies.112

For all the reforms and relaxation in the Soviet police system, the popu-
lation still does not feel free to oppose the government's policy or openly
criticize it; there is no free press, nor has freedom of assembly or free-
dom of religion been introduced. There is still general apprehension
about possible repressions or at least loss of rank and income. Russia
remains a land of Communist dictatorship.

. . . Russian citizens are now allowed to travel within limits, and can
buy a railway or airplane ticket to all but a few closed areas in the Soviet
Union. On arrival at a new city, however, registration is compulsory, and
nobody without a job is allowed to stay for longer than a month in certain
big cities like Moscow, because of the housing shortage. Soviet citizens are
now permitted to marry foreigners. This reform went into effect in No-
vember, 1953. But if a Soviet citizen married a foreigner years ago and
the husband or wife is outside the country, permission will almost certainly
not be granted for the Soviet citizen to get out, or the husband or wife to
come in. In the realm of law, there have been substantial ameliorations
and reforms. As to politics, certain alterations in the structure of govern-
ment are supposed to be impending whereby the Supreme Soviet will get
some vestige of legislative power, and more freedom given to the Union
republics. Stalinist contributions to economic theory are being attacked
and revised, and his foreign policy revamped.113

The greater leeway has produced anti-Communist activity, and some-
times the free expression of anti-government feelings, but such expres-
sions are met with stern reaction on the part of the government.

... to cite one instance typical of several — when a speaker at a public
lecture on international affairs at Leningrad University attempted to explain
the Hungarian events, Hungarian and Polish students in the audience rose
to contradict him — something almost unprecedented — and then addressed
the audience themselves. Wall newspapers appeared in factories, some

m Ibid.

113 Ibid., p. 229.

m Ibid., pp. 230, 231.

313

mimeographed, some even handwritten, asking for enlightenment. Lec-
turers at the Lenin Library in Moscow were interrupted by listeners who
said that they did not believe what they were being told. Most important
of all, Moscow University had to expel something like one hundred students,
and was obliged to give up several of its courses, because persistent boycotts
emptied the halls. . . .

Khrushchev. . . . dryly reminded students that "if they did not ap-
prove of the regime they had no right to be studying at the expense of the
factory workers." He told them that there was plenty of room for them
in the factories, and that others were ready to replace them in the class-
room.114

A component part also of the rehabilitation were the new measures
taken in regard to the national groups which, as we have seen,"5 were
summarily deported during the war as punishment for the disloyalty of
some of their members. It was a long time before the post-Stalin regime
turned its attention to this phase of the Stalin heritage.

In their new regions — later it became clear that these were chiefly
Kazakhstan and Kirgiziya — the deported Chechens and Ingushs led the
life of poor outcasts. From the date of their deportation to the beginning
of 1955 they had neither political nor cultural rights. They had no
schools, no press, no libraries, nor any kind of cultural facilities.116

The government's approach was reluctant and hesitant in this, one
of the most tragic areas of Stalin's arbitrariness and cruelty.

The rehabilitation of . . . five resettled peoples took place a year after
Khrushchev's speech [of February 1956], which did not contain a straight
promise of restitution but only exposed the brutality of the measures taken
and admitted that they were not dictated by military considerations. . . .
In his speech before the Supreme Soviet, Gorkin [Secretary of the Supreme
Soviet] condemned these measures as a "gross violation of the Leninist
nationality policy" (Izvestia, February 12, 1957), characterized them as
"unfounded" and confirmed that the deported peoples were also subjected
to a "number of restrictions of rights" in their new places of residence.
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Gorkin stated, had examined the
situation of these peoples and decided fully to redress the injustice com-
mitted.117

There are, however, certain nationalities which have been able to im-
prove their status under the post-Stalin regime, namely the pariah nations
of the Stalin period, the Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean
Tatars, Kalmuks, and Karachay. These people were rehabilitated not
so much as a result of a revision in Soviet nationalities policy, but as an
unavoidable sequel to the reform of the Soviet penal system and the post-

114 Ibid., p. 246.
™ See pp. 238-240.

m Walter Kolarz, "Die Rehabilitierung der Liquidierten Sowjetvolker," Osteuropa,
Stuttgart, No. 6, June 1957, p. 415.
wlbid., p. 417.

314

Stalin amnesties. There were other reasons, too, which prompted a change
of Soviet policy towards the outlawed peoples, for instance the demoral-
izing effect of their plight on other Soviet nationalities, and its adverse
repercussions on Soviet prestige abroad-118

The rehabilitation of these nationalities was not uniform, however;
there were differences in the approach to individual cases.

It is worthy of special note that the Crimean Tartars and the Volga
Germans have been overlooked in this post-Stalin rehabilitation. ... In
handling the problem of the Crimean Tartars and Volga Germans the
Soviet government was led mainly by practical considerations. The former
areas of the Tartars in the Crimea as well as those of the Volga German
A.S.S.R., with their excellent soil, were now more densely populated bv
settlers than the mountainous and foothill regions of the Chechen-Ingush
Republic and the Karachai region or the Kalmyk steppes. Though Stalin's
heirs give lip service to "proletarian internationalism," it could hardly be
expected that they would really apply this principle to the disadvantage
of the new Russian and Ukrainian settlers, especially in favor of the peas-
ants of German descent. In the case of the Crimea it must also be taken
into consideration that ... in January 1954 it became a province of the
Ukrainian S.S.R. instead of the R.S.F.S.R.119

Rehabilitation which involved the return of the exiles to their former
lands proved to be a difficult problem :

The resettlement of the five nationalities of the Northern Caucasus has
turned out to be difficult enough. The Soviet authorities wanted to take
the credit for righting a wrong, but they also wanted this to happen without
much damage to the Soviet economy and without any undue strain on
the budget. Resettlement was therefore to be implemented in stages; that
of the Chechens and Ingush was to be spread over four years, to protect
the interests of the factories and state-farms of Kazakhstan where the two
peoples worked. For the Chechens and Ingush, on the other hand, the
return to their homeland was the only thing that mattered; so they ignored
official schedules and repatriation plans, and left Kazakhstan on their own
initiative. Although only 100,000 Chechens and Ingush were supposed
to be repatriated in 1957, in fact 200,000 went back to their ancestral homes
in the Caucasus.150

8. Forced Labor in the Post-Stalin Era

Another field in which a process of rehabilitation and revamping set
in was the Soviet forced labor system.

"■Kolarz, "The Nationalities Under Khrushchev," Soviet Survey, A Quarterly
Review of Cultural Trends, published by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, Paris,
No. 24, April-June 1958, p. 59.

"9 Kolarz, "Die Rehabilitierung der Liquidierten Sowjetvolker," Osteuropa, Stutt-
gart, No. 6, June 1957, p. 419.

""Kolar*, "The Nationalities Under Khrushchev," Soviet Survey, A Quarterly
Review of Cultural Trends, published by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, Paris,
No. 24, April-June 1958, p. 60.

315

The first post-Stalin era was marked by a wave of strikes and bloody
/ conflicts in corrective labor camps throughout the Soviet Union.

The political earthquakes which shook the Soviet Union during the post-
Stalin era had their impact on the most sensitive area of today's Russia —
her concentration camps. The amnesty of March 1953 aroused great
hopes, made the prisoners more demanding and increased their self-confi-
dence. The execution of the supreme police leader heightened the expecta-
tions and the improvements introduced in the "regime" of the camps
stimulated an increase of protests and demands. The result was a wave
of strikes in the corrective labor camps at various times in 19535 1954 and
1955. A strike at Norylsk started in May 1953, was broken off, and then
resumed in August of the same year; it was suppressed by military force.
According to reports from Norylsk, the number of dead and wounded
reached 1,500 out of a total of 2,500 prisoners. In the camps of Karaganda
the first strikes occurred in 1952 and others between the 15th and 17th of
May, 1954; about 200 were killed and 140 wounded. In Kinguir (Kazakh-
stan) strikes broke out in the summer of 1954. On the island of Sakhalin,
too, strikes broke out during 1953-1955; in the camps of Taishet (Siberian
railroad) in May 1955. Of great importance were the repeated strikes
in the extensive Vorkuta camps, where a large mass of political prisoners
had been concentrated; the strikes occurred in the summer of 1953, the fall
of 1954 and the summer of 1955; large numbers of Vorkuta prisoners were
killed by guards in the fighting. The Kolyma camps, with more than
150,000 inmates, revolted in May 1954; 200 were killed and 180 wounded
by guards.121

Although they were suppressed by armed force, the strikes obviously
produced much uneasiness in Moscow; while they fought the outbursts
of the desperate prisoners, the authorities decided to make some improve-
ments in the living conditions of the camps.

The changes made in camp regulations as a result of this unrest and other
conditions were not insignificant. The old filthy barracks were replaced
by new ones. Beds are clean, and the elite among the inmates have the
privilege of separate beds. Food of the relatively "well-paid" male working
population is satisfactory. The working time has been reduced to ten hours
a day, with three or four days off a month. Medical care and medications,
while insufficient, are available in the larger camps. The attitude of the
administration has improved, too; as a rule inmates are not beaten and
punishment by confinement to dungeons is not as frequent as before. In
the majority of the camps loudspeakers broadcast news from Moscow, and
Moscow and local papers are available. The prisoners, some of whom are
politically intelligent, are in general aware of world events."2

Forced labor was not abolished, however; the modest improvements
indicate, on the contrary, that it was intended to maintain the system

mDallin, "Crime and Punishment under the Soviet Regime," in Handbook on

World Communism, J. M. Bochenski and G. Niemeyer, eds. (New York: Frederick
A. Praeger, to be published in 1960).
™ Ibid.

316

in the future. In July 1953, before he was liberated from a corrective
labor camp, the Norwegian former Communist Otto Larsen was told by
one of the Russian inmates :

"When you get home," he said, "the Russians may easily announce that
all political prisoners have been freed and that this kind of thing" — his hand
swept round the prison camp — "and that this kind of thing has ended.
Don't believe it. Don't let anyone believe it.

"You can only believe it if and when the workers of the capitalist coun-
tries are allowed to travel here, and to go about this country. And — even
more important," he said, shaking my arm, "when the ordinary Russian
workers are allowed to travel anywhere inside the capitalist countries.
That's the only way the world can learn the truth about Russia.

"And don't you listen either," he said, "to the rubbish delegations will
tell you after they have been in Russia — wining and dining and being
treated to the best. They are the most dangerous people of the lot. . . ." m

The gradual reorganization of the labor camps which took place in
subsequent years was due mainly to economic reasons, in the first place
to the realization by the government that forced labor is unproductive
and that manpower is wasted in the process.

. . . Exploitation of human beings was the system used exclusively and
successfully by Stalin for a long time, but Stalin was dead. Furthermore,
methods appropriate for forcibly raising a nation from a backward, agrarian
economy no longer achieved the same results once that nation became a
technologically advanced industrial power. Khrushchev himself must have
doubted, even if he had inherited Stalin's means of power, whether tight-
ening the grip on the people could squeeze out the added human effort
needed to accomplish his projects.124

In addition to these considerations, improvement of conditions in the
camps, where the death rate was so high and productivity so low, was
also seen as a means of conserving manpower, of which there was a
shortage in Russia during the second half of the 1950's created by the
low wartime birthrate.

By an unpublished decree of October 25, 1956, a new system of corrective
labor institutions was introduced, but this did not, in essence, represent
any substantial change from the old system. "Labor camps" were abolished
and replaced by (or merely renamed) "colonies." The camp administra-
tion, GULAG, was accordingly renamed GUITK (Glavnoe Upravlenie
Ispravitelno Trudovykh Kolonii — Main Administration of Corrective
Labor Colonies) . . . . In accordance with the October 1956 decree, prison
sentences must be served in the area of residence.

Deputy Prosecutor-General Kudriavtsev has stated that 70 per cent of
all camp inmates were released since Stalin's death; that two- thirds of

"■Otto Larsen, Nightmare of the Innocents (New York: Philosophical Library,
1957), p. 213.

Levine, op. clt., p. 34.

317

all labor camps in Siberia were abolished; that the number of political
prisoners amounts to less than two per cent of all prisoners; that revision
of all forced-labor sentences of the last twenty-five years was carried out;
and that a multitude of prisoners were rehabilitated. In an interview in
the United States in January 1959, Vice-Premier Anastas Mikoyan stated
that there are no political prisoners in Russia at all. . . . Both statements
were made to foreigners; they were not reported in the Soviet press, and
cannot be considered entirely reliable.

On the other hand, the authoritative Soviet jurist, Professor S. Utevski,
says that "special corrective labor institutions of a closed type," with a harsh
regime, must be maintained for habitual prisoners, parasites, and the like;
moreover, the term "habitual" must not be applied "mechanically" to sec-
ond offenders only, but must include first offenders who are "dangerous"
because of their former activities.

In many labor camps, whether they are now called "camps" or "colonies,"
work continues, if only because forced labor is still of economic sig-
nificance.125

At the end of 1958, Prosecutor-General Roman Rudenko announced
that a new "Code for Corrective Labor Colonies and Prisons" would
be put into effect. It has not been made public so far; it is likely that
it will, like its predecessors, be kept secret.

The claim of the Soviet authorities that forced labor has been entirely
abolished — a claim made only in conversations with foreigners is doubted
by many experts.

Millions were released from slave-labor camps, and effort was made to
find them work and a place to live. (Other millions remain in camps.) 126

Actually there is no reason to believe that the system of concentration
camps is on the way to being abolished, although the numbers of inmates
have diminished. ...

( 1 ) Sentences to be served in concentration camps are still being meted
out in the U.S.S.R. . . .

* * * * * * *

(2) Recently repatriated prisoners have reported that even in the zones
where the number of inmates has been substantially reduced, new inmates
continue to arrive, though on a smaller scale. . . .

* * * * ' * * *

. . . reports about the period in question [1953-57] indicate that none of-
the large complexes of concentration camps has been dissolved. Three
Japanese, who returned in 1956 from Kolyma to Maizuru, have even de-
clared that the authorities did not stop sending new contingents of prisoners
to the concentration camp system of that region. They estimate that at
present 1,300,0CJ0 inmates are in the "grave of slaves" — this is the term

,=sDallin, "Crime- and Punishment under the Soviet Regime," in Handbook on
World Communism.
v* Levine, op. cit., p. 46.

68491 O-61-vol. 11—21

318

that the victims themselves use. The prisoners of war repatriated to Ger-
many at the beginning of 1957 have seen with their own eyes the camps
in the Archangel region, in the region between Taishet and Bratsk, in the
vicinity of Inta, Makariev, Solikamsk, Berezniki, Kizel and Potma.

*******

. . . There are "colonies" which correspond to the old "camps" and
there are others which are the equivalent of the old "colonies," 12? where
only a change of name has been made.128

Improvements made have not always been maintained. The great
mass of criminals were removed to sections separated from political pris-
oners, but a number of criminals remained behind :

Although since 1948 there has been a separation of the two categories
[criminal and political offenders], the camp authorities have not ceased
using the criminals to terrorize the political prisoners. Moreover, state-
ments confirm that since 1954 large groups of "criminals" have been sent
to the camps which until then had been reserved for "political prisoners"
only.129

A number of Soviet republics, among them the Russian Soviet Fed-
erative Socialist Republic, have promulgated new laws which provide for
deportation, without court trial and by a simple majority vote (which
can be easily arranged by the police), of certain citizens considered by
their communities "anti-social" or "parasitic."

... by the spring of 1957, several Soviet republics had already intro-
duced the legislative texts which, in new forms, again put into effect the
summary procedures.130

The new law has been put into effect in Uzbekistan, for example,
where

... an assembly of citizens has unanimously decided on the banishment
for five years of a kolkhoz peasant who "took advantage of all the rights
of a kolkhoz peasant, had a private plot, but systematically avoided taking
part in the socially useful work" ; the verdict was confirmed by the execu-
tive committee of the soviet. It is obvious that in this case a peasant was
doing more work on his private plot than on the collective farm and his
deportation was part of a campaign launched at the beginning of 1956 to
force the rural population to work less on their own plots.

131

127 "Corrective Labor Colonies" have existed as a milder form of punishment since
the 1930's.

mPaul Barton, L'Institution Concentrationnaire en Russie 1930-57 (Paris:
Librairie Plon, 1959), pp. 376, 377, 383, 385.

™Ibid.,p. 378.

^ I bid., p. 379.

m Ibid., p. 381.

319

Because of the acute manpower shortage, the camp administrations
try to engage the labor of released prisoners; in many cases they achieve
their goal by force, threats or promises. Part of the population of the
"colonies" (former camps) consists of this hybrid of free workers and
slaves:

... a large part of those who were liberated from the camps in the last
years found themselves obliged, let us not forget it, to remain in the distant
regions where they had been detained; others, who had been permitted to
leave the region where they had been imprisoned, were not permitted to
return to the places of their previous residence.132

"Socialist legality," which again became a slogan, was ostensibly the
essence of the new criminal code that was promised soon after Stalin's
death but which was not promulgated until December 25, 1959. On
that date

. . . the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a series of laws, the most
important of which were the "Foundations of the Criminal Legislation of
the USSR and the Soviet Republics" and "The Law on Criminal Respon-
sibility for Crimes Against the State."

During the period since Stalin's death certain Stalinist tenets were abol-
ished as contrary to the system of "Socialist legality." Among them was the
thesis that "remnants of the capitalist classes" are becoming more and
more aggressive and that measures of extreme terrorism are therefore appro-
priate. Another repudiated thesis was that of convicting defendants "by
analogy," namely, by applying provisions of the criminal code to cases not
specifically provided for in the laws (a practice adopted by Nazi Germany) .
Once defended by Andrei Vyshinsky, "analogy" was now rejected, the
more so since Vyshinsky's stature as a jurist diminished markedly during
the post-Stalin years.

One of the basic principles of the new code is that "criminal punishment
may be applied only upon a court sentence." The apparent differentiation
between criminal and non-criminal (administrative) punishment reopens
the door to the allegedly abolished system of sentencing of defendants by
the police. This may also explain why the government refused to accept
the universally recognized formula that a person is innocent until proved
guilty in a court.

The term of confinement in a prison or corrective labor colony in the
Soviet Union is now limited to ten years, or, "in exceptional cases," to
fifteen years. (The limit was initially ten years, but was increased to
twenty-five years in 1937). 133

132 Ibid., p. 384.

^Dallin, "Grime and Punishment under the Soviet Regime," in Handbook on

World Communism.

320

The death penalty, abolition of which was promised more than once
since the Soviet revolution of 1917, is retained in the new law and is
applicable to a large number of political crimes. However,

The new law describes execution (to be carried out by shooting) as an
"exceptional measure of punishment, until its complete abrogation." There
is no indication as to when abrogation may be expected; capital punish-
ment has been applied almost without interruption throughout the existence
of the Soviet realm. Under the new law, in peacetime it is almost exclu-
sively reserved to political crimes; the only other crime punishable by
death is murder, and then only in grave cases specified by law.134

131

Ibid.

Chapter XII. Khrushchev in Power
1. The De-Stalinization

The program of repudiation of various elements of Stalin's system,
carried out at first in a tentative and groping way, assumed considerable
proportions in 1955 and reached a peak in February 1956, at the
Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party. Addressing a closed
session of the congress on February 24, Nikita Khrushchev, in a 4-hour
speech, re-evaluated Stalin's personality and methods of government.
The text of his address was communicated confidentially to the central
committees of non-Soviet Communist parties and via this source found
its way to the United States. The U.S. Department of State made it
public early in June 1956.

Khrushchev's "de-Stalinization speech" produced an unprecedented
crisis in Communist ranks all over the world. While it confirmed ac-
cusations that had been leveled against Stalin by numerous anti-Com-
munists and former Communists, the denunciatory speech by the leader
of Soviet Communists precipitated confusion, disagreements, protests,
and defections. It became a landmark in the history of the international
Communist movement. For the non-Communist world it became im-
portant as a document showing the narrow and artificial limits of
anti-Stalinist criticism when it emanates from a Communist leader.

Khrushchev started and finished his secret speech with an attack on
the "cult of the individual" (or "cult of personality") which, to him,
was contrary to the tenets of Leninism. He did not condemn either
terrorism or dictatorship as such, but only branded as evil the concen-
tration of excessive power in the hands of one individual.

The questioning of Stalin's terror, in turn, may lead to the questioning
of terror in general. But Bolshevism believes in the use of terror. Lenin
held that no one was worthy of the name of communist who did not
believe in terror. . . .

*******

... To use the word dictatorship in the indictment would lead to
calling in question dictatorship in general as a method of ruling a great
country. It would call in question "the dictatorship of the proletariat,"
which in practice means the dictatorship of a single party, the dictatorship
over that party of its leaders, and ultimately the dictatorship of a single

(321)

322

leader, based on the leader's being the authoritative expounder of doctrine
and the man in control of the party machine.1

Khrushchev, however, pictured Lenin as the embodiment of Com-
munist wisdom and, at least in regard to the party's leaders, even
humaneness. He mentioned Lenin's critical references to Stalin ; 2
Lenin's abolition of the death penalty in January 1920 (it was re-
stored in October 1920) ; the conferences and congresses which in
Lenin's time were convened to deliberate and decide (actually Lenin
carried out his own plans always and under any conditions) ; and
Lenin's lenient attitude toward oppositionists like Zinoviev, Trotsky,
Bukharin and others ( actually Lenin introduced the severe statutes that
eventually developed into the terroristic measures used against "de-
viationists," "traitors," and "enemies of the people"). Contrary to
Leninist traditions, Khrushchev said, >

Stalin originated the concept "enemy of the people." This term auto-
matically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man
or men engaged in a controversy be proved; this term made possible the
usage of the most cruel repression, violating all norms of revolutionary
legality, against anyone who in arry way disagreed with Stalin, against
those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had
bad reputations.8

Khrushchev acknowledged that Lenin had preached and applied
terroristic measures against other political groups, and this Khru-
shchev approved ; Stalin's crime was only that he applied these measures
to Communists:

. . . Vladimir Ilyich demanded uncompromising dealings with the ene-
mies of the Revolution and of the working class and when necessary resorted
ruthlessly to such methods. You will recall only V. I. Lenin's fight with
the Socialist Revolutionary organizers of the anti-Soviet uprising, with the
counterrevolutionary kulaks in 1918 and with others, when Lenin without
hesitation used the most extreme methods against the enemies. Lenin used
such methods, however, only against actual class enemies and not against
those who blunder, who err, and whom it was possible to lead through
ideological influence and even retain in the leadership. Lenin used severe
methods only in the most necessary cases. . . .

Stalin, on the other hand, used extreme methods and mass repressions
at a time when the Revolution was already victorious, when the Soviet
state was strengthened, when the exploiting classes were already liquidated

1 Bertram D. Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost (London: Atlantic Press,
1957), pp. 93,95.

2 See pp. 144-148.

3Nikita S. Khrushchev, "Secret Report," Delivered February 24, 25, 1956 at the
Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, printed in Wolfe,
op. cit., p. 106.

323

and socialist relations were rooted solidly in all phases of national economy,
when our party was politically consolidated and had strengthened itself both
numerically and ideologically.

It is clear that here Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his in-
tolerance, his brutality and his abuse of power.4

Khrushchev told the congress that the Presidium had studied docu-
ments pertaining to the Seventeenth Party Congress (1934) and the
Central Committee elected at that congress:

It was determined that of the 139 members and candidates of the party's
Central Committee who were elected at the Seventeenth Congress, 98 per-
sons, i.e., 70 per cent, were arrested and shot (mostly in 1937-1938) ....
*******

The same fate met not only the Central Committee members but also the
majority of the delegates to the Seventeenth Party Congress. Of 1,966
delegates with either voting or advisory rights, 1,108 persons were arrested
on charges of revolutionary crimes, i.e., decidedly more than a majority.
This very fact shows how absurd, wild and contrary to common sense were
the charges of counterrevolutionary crimes made out, as we now see, against
a majority of participants at the Seventeenth Party Congress."

Reviewing the events chronologically, Khrushchev told the true story
of the murder of Kirov,6 the trial of Nikolaev, the strange conduct of the
NKVD leaders, the suspicious role of Stalin in the affair, the appoint-
ment of Nikolai Yezhov in 1936,7 the liquidation of the ranking leader
Pavel Postyshev, and the orgy of the purges of 1937-38:

... It should suffice to say that the number of arrests based on charges
of counterrevolutionary crimes grew 10 times between 1936 and 1937.
*******

Now, when the cases of some of these so-called "spies" and "saboteurs"
were examined, it was found that all their cases were fabricated. Confes-
sions of guilt of many arrested and charged with enemy activity were
gained with the help of cruel and inhuman tortures.

At the same time, Stalin, as we have been informed by members of the
Political Bureau of that time, did not show them the statements of many
accused political activists when they retracted their confessions before the
military tribunal and asked for an objective examination of their cases.
There were many such declarations, and Stalin without doubt knew of
them.8

Khrushchev dealt in greater detail with the trial and execution of
Robert Eikhe, a Soviet leader of the time.

4 7 bid., pp. 114, 116.

6 1 bid., pp. 124-126.

•See pp. 187-189.

'See p. 192.

' Khrushchev, "Secret P.eport," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., pp. 138, 140.

324

Comrade Eikhe was arrested on 29 April 1938 on the basis of slanderous
materials. . . .

*******

Eikhe was forced under torture to sign ahead of time a protocol of his
confession prepared by the investigative judges, in which he and several
other eminent party workeFS were accused of anti-Soviet activity.9

In October 1939, Eikhe twice wrote to Stalin, in whom he still firmly
believed :

. . . On 25 October of this year I was informed that the investigation in
my case has been concluded and I was given access to the materials of this
investigation. Had I been guilty of only one hundredth of the crimes with
which I am charged, I would not have dared to send you this pre-execution
declaration ; however, I have not been guilty of even one of the things with
which I am charged and my heart is clean of even the shadow of baseness.
I have never in my life told you a word of falsehood and now, finding my
two feet in the grave, I am also not lying. My whole case is a typical
example of provocation, slander and violation of the elementary basis of
revolutionary legality. . . .

*******

. . . Not being able to suffer the tortures to which I was submitted by
Ushakov and Nikolayev [the investigating judges] — and especially by the
first one — who utilized the knowledge that my broken ribs have not properly
mended and have caused me great pain, I have been forced to accuse myself
and others.

*******

... I am asking and begging you that you again examine my case, and
this not for the purpose of sparing me but in order to unmask the vile provo-
cation which, like a snake, wound itself around many persons in a great
degree due to my meanness and criminal slander. I have never betrayed
you or the party. I know that I perish because of vile and mean work of
the enemies of the party and of the people, who fabricated the provocation
against me.10

On February 2, 1 940, Khrushchev reported, Eikhe was brought before
a "court." Eikhe told the judges :

"In all the so-called confessions of mine there is not one letter written by
me with the exception of my signature under the protocols which were
forced from me. I have made my confession under pressure from the
investigative judge who from the time of my arrest tormented me. After
that I began to write all this nonsense. . . . The most important thing for
me is to tell the court, the party and Stalin that I am not guilty. I have
never been guilty of any conspiracy. I will die believing in the truth of party
policy as I have believed in it during my whole life."

"Ibid., pp. 140, 142.

* As quoted in ibid., pp. 142, 144, 146.

325

On 4 February Eikhe was shot [Khrushchev related].
(Indignation in the hall.) "

Khrushchev proceeded to tell the story of Ian Rudzutak, chief of the
Communist party's Central Control Commission, which on paper existed
to check on all party agencies and leaders. Rudzutak had made the fol-
lowing statement to the Supreme Military Tribunal :

". . . there is in the NKVD an as yet not liquidated center which is
craftily manufacturing cases, which forces innocent persons to confess;
there is no opportunity to prove one's nonparticipation in crimes to which
the confessions of various persons testify. The investigative methods are
such that they force people to lie and to slander entirely innocent persons
in addition to those who already stand accused. . . ."

. . . he [Rudzutak] [Khrushchev continued] was not even called before
the Central Committee's Political Bureau because Stalin did not want to
talk to him. Sentence was pronounced on him in 20 minutes and he was
shot.

(Indignation in the hall,) 12

Khrushchev mentioned the names of the most evil members of the
NKVD, aides of Stalin, and their methods of inquisition. One of these,
Zakovski, told the prisoner Rozenblum :

You, yourself, (said Zakovsky) will not need to invent anything. The
NKVD will prepare for you a ready outline for every branch of the center;
you will have to study it carefully and to remember well all questions and
answers which the Court might ask. This case will be ready in four-five
months, or perhaps a half year. During all this time you will be preparing
yourself so that you will not compromise the investigation and yourself.
Your future will depend on how the trial goes and on its results. If you be-
gin to lie and testify falsely, blame yourself. If you manage to endure it,
you will save your head and we will feed and clothe you at the Govern-
ment's cost until your death.13

Turning to the events of the war, Khrushchev accused Stalin of dis-
regarding all the warnings given him by other governments about Hit-
ler's preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union. He mentioned
Winston Churchill and Stafford Cripps (and also a number of Soviet
agents in the West), but omitted Sumner Welles, who twice had fore-
warned the Soviet government about Hitler's plans. This omission of
mention of a friendly gesture on the part of the United States was
another example of the limitations of Khrushchev's criticism of his pred-
ecessor. In a side attack on deposed Premier Georgi Malenkov,
Khrushchev told the congress how during the early days of the war he

11 Ibid., p. 146.
"Ibid., p. 148.
u As quoted in ibid., p. 152.

68491 O-61-vol. 11—22

326

had tried, through Malenkov, to contact Stalin to discuss strategic
issues with him :

... I telephoned to Comrade Malenkov from Kiev and told him, "Peo-
ple have volunteered for the new Army and demand arms. You must
send us arms."

Malenkov answered me, "We cannot send you arms. We are sending all
our rifles to Leningrad and you have to arm yourselves." 14

Citing several examples, Khrushchev deprecated Stalin as a strategic
leader; some of the Soviet defeats and retreats were due to the "genius"
of Stalin, he said.

On one occasion after the war, during a meeting of Stalin with members
of the Political Bureau, Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan mentioned that
Khrushchev must have been right when he telephoned concerning the
Kharkov operation and that it was unfortunate that his suggestion had not
been accepted.

You should have seen Stalin's fury! How could it be admitted that he,
Stalin, had not been right! He is after all a "genius," and a genius cannot
help but be right! Everyone can err, but Stalin considered that he never
erred, that he was always right. He never acknowledged to anyone that
he had made any mistake, large or small, despite the fact that he *iiade not
a few mistakes in the matter of theory and in his practical activity.15

After the war Stalin turned against Soviet marshals and generals who
had won fame on the battlefields. Defending Marshal Zhukov (tins
was still 1956), Khrushchev reported:

Stalin was very much interested in the assessment of Comrade Zhukov
as a military leader. He asked me often for my opinion of Zhukov. I told
him then, "I have known Zhukov for a long time ; he is a good general and
a good military leader."

After the war Stalin began to tell all kinds of nonsense about Zhukov,
among other things the following, "You praised Zhukov, but he does not
deserve it. It is said that before each operation at the front Zhukov used
to behave as follows : He used to take a handful of earth, smell it and say,
'We can begin the attack,' or the opposite, 'The planned operation cannot
be carried out.' " I stated at that time, "Comrade Stalin, I do not know
who invented this, but it is not true."

It is possible that Stalin himself invented these things for the purpose of
minimizing the role and military talents of Marshall Zhukov.18

Khrushchev then reviewed the summary deportation of "disloyal"
nationalities," and gave some details of the mysterious "Leningrad
affair." 18 Next he turned to the conflict with Tito in 1947-49, accus-
ing Stalin of unnecessary aggravation of relations. To show Stalin's

"Ibid., pp. 170, 172.

"Ibid., p. 182.

M/«rf.,p, 184.

"See pp. 238-240,313,314.

See p. 255.

327

almost abnormal self-assurance, Khrushchev described his own discus-
sion with Stalin of the Yugoslav affair:

. . . Once when I came from Kiev to Moscow, I was invited to visit
Stalin who, pointing to the copy of a letter lately sent to Tito, asked me,
"Have you read this?"

Not waiting for my reply he answered, "I will shake my little finger — and
there will be no more Tito. He will fall."

We have dearly paid for this "shaking of the little finger." This state-
ment reflected Stalin's delusions of grandeur, but he acted just that way:
"I will shake my little finger — and there will be no Kossior" ; "I will shake
my little finger once more and Postyshev and Chubar will be no more";
"I will shake my little finger again — and Voznesensky, Kuznetsov and many
others will disappear."

But this did not happen to Tito. No matter how much or how little
Stalin shook, not only his little finger but everything else that he could
shake, Tito did not fall. Why? The reason was that, in this case of dis-
agreement with the Yugoslav comrades, Tito had behind him a state and
a people who had gone through a severe school of fighting for liberty
and independence, a people which gave support to its leaders.19

Khrushchev shed some light on the "doctors' plot." Members of
the Politburo, he admitted, were shown some false "documents" — yet
they backed Stalin;

Shortly after the doctors were arrested, we members of the Political
Bureau received protocols containing the doctors' confessions of guilt.
After distributing these protocols, Stalin told us, "You are blind like young
kittens; what will happen without me? The country will perish because
you do not know how to recognize enemies."

The case was so presented that no one could verify the facts on which
the investigation was based. There was no possibility of trying to verify
facts by contacting those who had made the confessions of guilt.20

Khrushchev dwelt in great detail on Stalin's conceitedness and self-
adulation. In a biography of himself published by the party, Stalin
inserted the following words about himself:

Although he performed his task of leader of the party and the people
with consummate skill and enjoyed the unreserved support of the entire
Soviet people, Stalin never allowed his work to be marred by the slightest
hint of vanity, conceit or self -adulation.21

On other occasions Stalin wrote :

. . . Stalin is the worthy continuer of Lenin's work, or, as it is said
in our party, Stalin is the Lenin of today. . . .

" Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., p. 200.

»/&M.,p.204.

* As quoted in ibid., p. 216.

328

... At the various stages of the war Stalin's genius found the correct
solutions that took account of all the circumstances of the situation.
♦ **#♦**

Stalin's military mastership was displayed both in defense and offense.
Comrade Stalin's genius enabled him to divine the enemy's plans and de-
feat them. The battles in which Comrade Stalin directed the Soviet
armies are brilliant examples of operational military skill.22

Khrushchev pointed out that the new national anthem contained
the following words :

Stalin brought us up in loyalty to the people, he inspired us to great
toil and acts.23

Finally, Khrushchev approached the crucial question:

Some comrades may ask us: Where were the members of the Political
Bureau of the Central Committee? Why did they not assert themselves
against the cult of the individual in time? And why is this being done only
now? 2*

Khrushchev's answers were unconvincing: Differences in the ap-
proach of the leaders to current issues and to Stalin's personality, Stalin's
"popularity," his violent reaction to criticism.

Stalin evidently had plans to finish off the old members of the Political
Bureau. He often stated that Political Bureau members should be replaced
by new ones.25

Khrushchev could hardly give a correct answer to the question:
Where were the Communist leaders when Stalin was committing his
crimes? Khrushchev was one of those who had praised and adored
Stalin, approved his policies, and joined in the chorus against the
"enemies of the people." They were equally guilty with Stalin.

Because they [the other leaders] are so deeply involved in his despotism,
they exculpate him of the charge of having been a "giddy despot." And
indeed the crimes were really not the acts of a giddy despot so much as
those of a despotic dogma and a despotic system., of which the despot him-
self is but a product.

That is why they are able to identify themselves in their hearts with
their dead leader whose dogmas, whose system, and whose crimes they
shared and justified and benefited by and believed in. Only by virtue of
this identification with the tyrant can Khrushchev bring himself to speak
of the latter's motives as those of "defense of the interests of the working
class and the toiling people." Only by virtue of this identification can

a As quoted in ibid., pp. 216, 218.
" Ibid., p. 222.
** Ibid., p. 236.
■ Ibid., p. 244.

329

Khrushchev have hit upon tliis mealy mouthed term for all the crimes: "the
cult of the individual." M

The limitations of Khrushchev's attack on Stalin were also seen in his
circumspect avoidance of discussion of the trials of the Communist
"deviationists" — Zinovicv, Bukharin, and others. Khrushchev empha-
sized his agreement with Stalin on the "de-kulaldzation," in which mil-
lions of peasants were uprooted and large numbers died; he approved
Stalin's course against the "leftists" and "rightists." He spoke in
Stalinist language when he said :

The party led a great political-ideological struggle against those in its
own ranks who proposed anti-Leninist theses, who represented a political
line hostile to the party and to the cause of socialism. This was a stubborn
and a difficult fight but a necessary one, because the political line of both
the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc and of the Bukharinites led actually toward
the restoration of capitalism and capitulation to the world bourgeoisie.
Let us consider for a moment what would have happened if in 1928-1929
the political line of right deviation had prevailed among us, or orientation
toward "cotton-dress industrialization," cr toward the kulak, etc. We
would not now have a powerful heavy industry, we would not have the
kolkhozes, we would find ourselves disarmed and weak in a capitalist
encirclement.

It was for this reason that the party led an inexorable ideological fight
and explained to all party members and to the non-party masses the harm
and the danger of the anti-Leninist proposals of the Trotskyite opposition
and the rightist opportunists. And this great work of explaining the party
line bore fruit; both the Trotskyites and the rightist opportunists were
politically isolated; the overwhelming party majority supported the Leninist
line and the party was able to awaken and organize the working masses
to apply the Leninist party line and to build socialism.27

2. Ferment Within Communist Ranks

When Khrushchev's "secret speech" was read before closed sessions
of Communist party organizations, it Was received in a matter-of-fact
way and with the standard approval given all pronouncements coming
from above. In the ensuing process of de-Stalinization, busts and statues
of Stalin began to disappear, publication of his books ceased, quotations
from his speeches and writings were no longer used, and mention of him
in the daily press became rare; some of his tenets, up to then obligator/,
were abolished or revised.

. . * For years a group of galleries in the Pushkin Museum was stuffed
with gifts he [Stalin] had received, particularly those which arrived from
ail over the world on his seventieth birthday; these have been relegated
inconspicuously to back rooms in the Museum of the Revolution. Ke has

* Wolfe, op. cit., pp. 251, 253.

* Khrushchev, "Secret Report," printed in Wolfe, op. cit., pp. 102, 104.

330

been cut from die name of the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute (also
for same reason Engels has been dropped) and, even if actual cities have
not been renamed, many lesser entities like factories and institutes are now
known by some other name. In at least one airport, where enormous
frescoes of Lenin and Stalin stood on opposite walls of the reception hall,
that of Stalin has been ripped out; nothing replaces him, and the whole
wall is an angry scar. Perhaps most interesting of all, the Stalin Peace
Awards have been renamed the International Lenin Prizes for Strengthen-
ing Peace Among Peoples. . . .

. . . Above all, Soviet history itself is being revised. The army in par-
ticular has insisted on describing events during World War II more truth-
fully, and scarcely a day passes without news of some historian or other
being given the sack for clinging, despite the contemporary enlightenment,
to Stalinist hallucinations.28

The de-Stalinization measures of the government were kept within
limits lest criticism spread to other political fields and personalities.

. . . Numerous Soviet equivalents of counties and provinces, factories
and educational institutions bearing Stalin's name were changed. (How-
ever, Stalingrad and Stalinabad, Mount Stalin and others have re-
mained.) . . .

Svetlana's Breath, a perfume named after Stalin's daughter, fell into bad
odor and disappeared from cosmetic counters.29

The Soviet anthem, adopted during the war, contains Stalin's name.80
Now only the stirring music was played and the words were not sung —
an odd thing for a national anthem.

... In the Tretyakov Gallery old Russian classics by Shishkin, Repin,
and Kramskoi have replaced portraits of Stalin. (However, Stalin re-
mained in lobbies of the Metropole and National Hotels and stone statues
of Stalin continued to dominate Moscow's Gorki Park and Agricultural
Exhibition and countless thousands of Soviet enterprises throughout the
land.)

The name of the Moscow Stalin Auto Works was changed to the Likh-
atchov Auto Works. (But Stalin's body still lies next to the revered Lenin's
in the mausoleum in Red Square.) w

In the far-off provinces de-Stalinization was carried out reluctantly
and at a slower pace. In Tashkent, for example,

In between the old city and ballet theater is Stalin Square, which fronts
on Stalin Park, whose entrance is adorned with busts and pictures of
Stalin. . . .

28 John Gunther, Inside Russia Today (New York: Harper & Bros., 1957), pp. 230,
231.

19 Irving R. Levine, Main Street, U.S.S.R. (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1959),
p. 46.

80 See p. 328.

" Levine, op. cit.t pp. 47, 48.

331

. . . Stalin remains at least a visual god. His statues far outnumber
those of Lenin, and most of the major streets and thoroughfares still bear
his name.8*

In Uzbekistan, in the Samarkand Historical Museum,

. . . Stalin was all over — in every picture, every painting, every wall
statement.83

Immediately after the congress and before the new official anti-Stalin-
ist course had assumed large proportions, a movement of protest against
the dethroning of Stalin developed among the Communist youth of
Stalin's native Georgia. The pro-Stalin agitation was* intermingled
with Georgian nationalist emotions and strong anti-Russian feelings.

. . . Under them [Stalin and Beria], Georgia was highly favored. It
got big appropriations. . . . The only overt political disturbance in the
USSR in many years occurred in Tiflis in March, 1956, on the third anni-
versary of Stalin's death. Stalin was not mentioned in the press — not a
word — and citizens resented this; the next day students demonstrated all
over the town, carrying Stalin portraits. This was, it is important to point
out, not so much an anti-Soviet as an anti-Russian demonstration.3*

The true story of the disturbances was withheld from the Russian
public; the press did not mention them. Foreign observers were able,
however, to restore the picture.

... on March 4th, a group of students asked the Rector of the State
University in Tbilisi for permission to stage a demonstration the following
day to commemorate the third anniversary of Stalin's death. This request
was refused, on the basis of a 1955 state decree which sanctions such
demonstrations only on the birthdates of great figures, but not on death-
dates. The following day, hundreds of students lined up in front of
the enormous statue of Stalin in the central park of Tbilisi. Similar
gatherings took place for the next three days, with each day more and more
people participating. . . .

On the 9th, the Communist Party staged its own demonstration in
honor of the unveiling of a statue of Lenin. On this day troops, army
troops — not security troops — took over the city, lining the streets with
machine guns and tanks. . . . Young students, many of them apparently
still in our equivalent of high school, stoned cars, disrupted communica-
tions and transportation. . . . close to 11:30 in the evening, several
thousand young students marched "in a human wave." ... A conserva-
tive estimate of casualties is 100 dead, many of them shot in the back
trying to rush ofT.85

"Marvin L. Kalb, Eastern Exposure (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy,
1958), pp. 139, 140.
u Ibid., p. is:
** Gunther, op. cit., p. 443.

w Kalb, op. eit., pp. 61-63.

332

As 1956 — the year of de-Stalinization — was approaching its end, the
effects of the dangerous operation were becoming evident. Stalin was
dragging down with him into the abyss many Russian institutions and
doctrines and many Russian leaders. Severe criticism became loud
in the Italian Communist Party; American and Canadian Commu-
nists, too, were among the vociferous critics. Tito could point to
Khrushchev's revelations as proof of how right he had been in his
anti-Stalinist moves. In the satellites, where so many "Titoists" had
been imprisoned and executed, the new trends, it appeared, were open-
ing up a path toward emancipation from Moscow's dictatorship. The
Soviet bloc, it seemed, was tottering and beginning to disintegrate. The
Communist parties were moving away from Russia. The new trends
found expression in the slogan of "national" or "separate" paths to
socialism: adherence to the Russian pattern, which was essentially
Stalinist, was no longer obligatory. The danger to the Soviet empire
inherent in the de-Stalinization prompted Khrushchev to put brakes on
the new drive. Stalin was partially restored to an honorable place.

At a New Year's reception in the Kremlin in 1957, Khrushchev

. . . warmly praised Stalin as "a great fighter against imperialism" and
"a great Marxist."

*******

"I grew up under Stalin." . . . "Stalin made mistakes but we should
share responsibility for those mistakes because we were associated with
him." 86

The magazine Voprosy Istorii (Problems of History) stated:

Despite the gravity of J. V. Stalin's mistakes we cannot view his activity
solely through the prism of these mistakes. This would be a distortion
of actual party history, in which J. V. Stalin figures as an outstanding
Marxist-Leninist. . . ,37

The same article quotes Khrushchev as saying :

. . . the chief and most important matter for Marxist-Leninists is the
defense of the interests of the working class, the cause of socialism, and the
struggle against the enemies of Marxism-Leninism — in this main and most
important respect, may God grant, as the saying goes, that ever)' communist
could fight as Stalin fought.88

Events in Poland and the uprising in Hungary marked the crisis of
the de-Stalinization. (These events will be discussed in a subsequent
volume of this Facts on Communism series dealing with Soviet foreign

?0 New York Times, January 2, 1957, p. 1.
"Za Leninskuyu Partiinost v Istoricheskoi Nauke" (For Lenin's Principle of the
Party's Predominance in the Field of History), Voprosy Istorii (Problems of His-
tory), Moscow, No. 3, June-July 1957, p. 10.

"Ibid., p. 11.

333

affairs.) In Moscow, these developments strengthened the position of
the "conservative" Soviet leaders and prompted Khrushchev, in his
fight to remain in power and conserve the Soviet bloc and Russia's
leadership of it, to put an end to a development which, known as "the
Thaw," had brought a degree of liberalization in post-Stalin policies.

3. Ferment Among Russian Intellectuals

"The Thaw," the phrase used to describe the political climate of the
early post-Stalin era, came from the title of a novel by Ilya Ehrenburg.
Ehrenburg, a writer sensitive to the changing course and usually playing
a semiofficial role, depicted, in his otherwise undistinguished novel, the
new, milder climate and the end of repressions. The Thaw was followed
by a number of other books written in a freer spirit and sometimes con-
taining bold criticism of the conditions that had prevailed under Stalin's
"Socialism." Even the tenet of "Socialist realism" seemed to be coming
in question. Similar developments prevailed during the years 1954-56
in the fields of history and philosophy.

The politically significant literary event of 1956-57 was a new novel
by Vladimir Dudintsev, Not By Bread Alone. The unfavorable recep-
tion of the book by the press and its condemnation by the Communist
party marked the end phase of the "thaw," In the book

... A school teacher turned inventor, by name Lopatkin, invents a new
method for casting drain pipes. . . . Lopatkin, a lone wolf, is frustrated at
every turn in trying to get his invention adopted, although it will save the
government millions of rubles. His bureaucratic boss, Drozdov, blocks his
way, as do the ministries involved. But Drozdov's wife falls in love with
Lopatkin and helps him; so does an elderly crackpot individualist inventor.
Lopatkin almost starves, but against a variety of gross obstacles pushes
doggedly ahead with his invention. He is eventually accused of betraying
state secrets, and is packed off to a labor camp in Siberia.38

Mention of Siberian "labor camps" in Soviet novels, up to then taboo
(except when the writer was to praise the humanitarian setup of the
camps) was now permitted; it served to stress the improvement in the
general atmosphere.

. . . But one of the judges on the military court that convicted him
[Lopatkin] is an honest man, and helps to clear his name. He is released
from imprisonment, and at last his invention is adopted and put to use, after
a rival machine, supported by Lopatkin's bureaucratic rivals, is proved to be
a failure. . . . Lopatkin and the former Madame Drozdov marry and
presumably live happily ever after, but Drozdov, the villain, becomes a vice
minister. Even so, this ending is apt, artistically effective, and true to Soviet
life.40

a Gunther, op. cit., p. 288.
"Ibid.

334

The significance of the novel and the boldness of its author were seen
in the fact that

. . . The hero is an individualist, who, when down on his luck, calmly
lives on borrowed money instead of working. Moreover (horror of Soviet
horrors) he sleeps with another man's wife, and other women express inter-
est in his person. The thesis that a good Communist has no room for a
personal life is challenged, and the hero wins through in the end, without
being forced to give up his principles. One of the most significant lines of
the book is spoken by Lopatkin toward the end, when he emerges from
incarceration. "Somebody who has learned to think can never be deprived
of freedom." Also the presentation of Drozdov shows up a familiar Soviet
type for what it is — the man who makes unscrupulous use of Communism to
satisfy and expand his own ruthless ego and ambition.41

Published at the end of the "thaw" era, Dudintsev's novel provoked
conflicts in Soviet literary circles and Communist-controlled writers'
organizations :

Hundreds of literary meetings took place to discuss Not By Bread Alone,
and thousands of agitated words were printed about it. In the end Dudint-
sev was rebuked, but was not otherwise punished as far as I know. . . .
Dudintsev, who must be a resolute character, refused to accept rebuke.
One report of the meeting condemning him said that "he brushed aside all
criticism in a demagogic speech." People can (sometimes) express them-
selves in the Soviet Union. Then an astonishing thing happened. No
other personage than Mr. Khrushchev leaped into the struggle, and attacked
the book for being "slanderous." 42

In three speeches before meetings of Soviet writers in May and July
1958, Khrushchev tried to restore the predominant role of the Commu-
nist party in literature and art — a Stalinist principle that was assailed
and negated by many during the "thaw" era. Though repudiating
Stalin's extremes, Khrushchev said :

. . . The Soviet people reject equally such an, in effect, slanderous work
as Dudintsev's book "Not By Bread Alone" and such cloyingly sweet films
as "Unforgettable 1919" and "Kuban Cossacks."

Unfortunately, there are among our workers in literature and the arts
advocates of "creative freedom" who desire us to pass by, not to notice, not
to subject to principled appraisal and not to criticize works that portray the
life of Soviet society in a distorted fashion. It appears to these people that
the guidance of literature and the arts by the party and the state is oppres-
sive. They sometimes oppose this guidance openly; more often, however,
they conceal their feelings and desires behind talk of excessive tutelage, the
fettering of initiative, etc.

We assert openly that such views run counter to the Leninist principles
of the party's and state's attitude to questions of literature and the arts.4*

41 Ibid., pp. 288, 289.
" Ibid., p. 289.

' Provda, August 28, 1957, p. 4.

335

The tenet that independence of literature from the Communist party
is an evil was emphasized by the Soviet leader :

. . . One of the primary principles is that Soviet literature and art must
be indissolubly linked with the policy of the Communist party, which consti-
tutes the vital foundation of the Soviet system. . . .

*#*♦*##

It is impossible to tolerate such grave shortcomings in the work of the
Moscow branch of the Writers Union, which should set an example for
the unions of creative workers in other cities. We hope that the writers
themselves, with the aid of the party organizations, will probe the causes of
these shortcomings and take steps to correct matters.44

These principles were applied in the case of Boris Pasternak and his
novel, Doctor Zhivago. A strictly independent writer, known as a non-
Communist, the Soviet poet, translator and novelist quietly wrote this
major work during the last Stalin and early post-Stalin years. The
novel dealt with the civil war era in Russia, the fighting, horror, and
chaos; but the author was objective in picturing the "Whites," the guer-
rillas, the everyday life, and the prevailing misery and want; his implicit
appeal was for a return to Christian ethics. Soviet publishers, accus-
tomed to presenting anti-Bolsheviks as vicious creatures, were uncertain
whether or not to publish the book. The magazine Novyi Mir rejected
it in 1956. Still expecting that his novel would be published in Russia,
Pasternak submitted it also to an Italian publisher, Feltrinelli. When
the Union of Soviet Writers condemned the novel, it requested Feltrinelli
to hold up publication. The novel was published in Italy in 1958 and
was translated into many languages. In October 1958 the Swedish
Academy awarded it the Nobel Prize for Literature. The author's first
reaction was one of gratitude in his message to the Academy he said he
was "immensely thankful, touched, proud, astonished, and abashed."

A storm, initiated by various Communist party groups, began to brew
in Moscow :

Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders sat near by as
Vladimir Y. Semichastnyi, chief of the Young Communist League, called
on the poet to emigrate to his "capitalist paradise."

Television showed more than 12,000 youngsters at a mass rally cheering
as Mr. Semichastnyi described Mr. Pasternak as a "pie:" who, by "dirtying"
the place in which he eats and lives, has done what "even pigs do not do."

Mr. Pasternak, he said, is the proverbial "bad sheep" that appears "even
in the good herd." 4S

44 Ibid.

45 New York Times, October 30, 1958, pp. 1, 2.

336

If he wanted to emigrate, said the speaker,

... I am sure that neither our public nor the Government would
create any obstacles.46

The campaign against Pasternak continued for a certain time.

The Moscow section of the Soviet Union of Writers has petitioned the
Government to strip "the traitor Pasternak" of his citizenship and expel
him from the country. . . .

*******

. . . Eight hundred critics and writers were said to have approved the
petition unanimously.

Among other things they said: "No honest person, no writer, none who
are loyal to the ideals of peace and progress will ever shake the hand
of him who has betrayed his homeland and his people." 4T

Pasternak decided to renounce the Nobel Prize. In his second mes-
sage to the Swedish Academy, he said :

In view of the meaning given to this honor in the community to which
I belong, I should abstain from the undeserved prize that has been awarded
to me. Do not meet my voluntary refusal with ill-will.48

On November 1, the government, disregarding Pasternak's new mes-
sage to Stockholm, announced :

In the event that Pasternak should wish to leave the Soviet Union per-
manently, the Socialist regime and people he has slandered in his anti-
Soviet work, "Doctor Zhivago," will not raise any obstacles. He can
leave the Soviet Union and experience personally "all the fascinations of
the capitalist paradise." 49

Pasternak then wrote a letter to Khrushchev :

I am tied to Russia by birth, by life and by work. I cannot imagine
my fate separated from and outside of Russia.

*******

Whatever my mistakes and errors, I could not imagine that I should
be in the center of such a political campaign as has started to be fanned
around my name in the West.

Having become conscious of that, I informed the Swedish Academy of
my voluntary renunciation of the Nobel Prize.

Leaving my motherland would equal death for me. And that is why
1 ask that you do not take this final measure in relation to me.

With my hand on my heart, I can say that I have done something for
Soviet literature and can be useful to it in the future.80

*• Ibid., p. 2.

*' New York Times, November 1, 1958, p. 1.

* New York Times, October 30, 1958, p. 3.

*• New York Times, November 2, 1958, p. 2.

"Ibid.

337

The violent anti-Pasternak campaign continued, however, and the
author decided to make a retreat. In a letter to Pravda, dated Novem-
ber 6, he said :

I accepted the award of the Nobel Prize as a literary distinction. I re-
joiced at it and I expressed this in the telegram addressed to the secretary
of the Swedish Academy.

But I was wrong. I had reason to make such a mistake because I had
already been nominated as candidate for it approximately five years ago,
i.e., before my novel existed.

After the end of the week when I saw the scope of the political cam-
paign around my novel, I realized myself that this award was of a political
measure, which has now resulted in monstrous consequences, and on my
own initiative, without being compelled by anybody, sent my voluntary
refusal.

*******

I have never had the intention of causing harm to my state and my
people.51

At the same time the author had to say, "I regret : "

The editorial office of Novy Mir warned me that the novel might be
understood by readers as a work directed against the October Revolution
and the foundations of the Soviet system. I did not realize this, and I now
regret it.

Indeed, if one were to take into consideration the conclusions emanating
from a critical appraisal of the novel, it would appear that in my novel I
am allegedly maintaining the following erroneous principles. I am sup-
posed to have alleged that my revolution is a historically illegal phenomenon,
that the October Revolution was such, and that it brought unhappiness to
Russia and the downfall of the Russian intelligentsia.

It is clear to me that I cannot endorse such clumsy allegations. At the
same time, my work, which has received the Nobel Prize, gave cause to this
regrettable interpretation, and this is the reason why I finally gave up the
prize.83

The letter, a painful sacrifice for this proud and independent Soviet
writer, was accepted as a sign of repentance on the part of Pasternak
and no repressive measures were taken against him.

Boris Pasternak died at home on May 30, 1960.

4. End of Collective Leadership

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union continued to grow in size
after Stalin's death. From a reported 6,882,145 members at the time of
the Nineteenth Congress (October 1952), the membership grew to
7,215,505 in February 1956, the date of the Twentieth Congress, and

n New York Times, November 6, 1958, p. 4.
91 Ibid.

338

to 8,239,000 in January 1959, when the Twenty-First Congress took
place.53 By January 1, 1960 the membership reached 8,708,000.54

In addition to the two congresses held during the post-Stalin era,
plenary sessions of the Central Committee (the so-called plenums),
more regularly convened, attained some importance. Expression of
divergent views, banned at the congresses, was permitted in the
plenums of the Central Committee; the fights between the Malenkov
and Khrushchev factions took up part of the sessions. Only some of
the proceedings of the plenums, in the main those dealing with eco-
nomic issues, were made public; the record of discussions of internal
political affairs or foreign policies remained secret. It was the "secre-
tariat" of the Central Committee, which Khrushchev had controlled
since mid-March 1953, that proved to be the strongest of the party bodies
and agencies and, as had been the case under Stalin, the victor over all
oppositionist factions and leaders. The Presidium of the Central Com
mittee now met weekly.

The Presidium, which is the party's high command meets regularly at
least once a week, he [Khrushchev] added. Similarly the Council of Minis-
ters, which is the cential body of the Government, meets at least once
weekly, he said. Questions of high policy are settled by a simple majority
vote, but "usually there is unanimous decision," he continued.85

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union remained a member of the
Cominform; it was, in fact, the leading member of that body. How-
ever, the Cominform itself, which had never been of great importance in
the international Communist movement, had been on the decline since
1955 as a result of the rapprochement of Soviet Communists with Tito's
party in Yugoslavia. Expelled from and vilified by the Cominform, Tito
not only refused to rejoin its ranks, but demanded its dissolution as a
component element of a worldwide de-Stalinization ; nor did the Comin-
form enjoy great prestige in the satellites. To the Soviet Communist
leadership the abolition of the Cominform was no great loss inasmuch as
the Foreign Department of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union had long before assumed all the functions of
a leading international Communist body.

M Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (Large Soviet Encyclopedia) (2nd ed.;
Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Nauchnoe Izdatelstvo "Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklo-
pediya" (State Scientific Publishing House "The Large Soviet Encyclopedia") ), vol.
L (1957), p. 271; and Vncocherednoi XXI S"ezd Kommunisticheskoi Fartii Sovets-
kogo Soyuza 27 Yanvarya — 5 Fevralya 1959 Goda, Stenograficheskii Otchet (Ex-
traordinary Twenty-first Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
January 27-February 5, 1959, Stenographic Report) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for Political Literature),
1959), vol. I, p. 112. The figures given above include both full members in the
Communist Party and candidates for membership.

64 Partinaya Zhizn (Party Life), as quoted in New York Times, March 17, 1960,
p. C-8.

■ New York Times, May 11, 1957, p. 3.

339

In April 1956 the eight Communist parties comprising the Cominform
published a statement announcing its dissolution :

The Central Committees of the Communist and Workers' Parties com-
prising the Information Bureau, having exchanged views regarding its work,
recognized that the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers'
Parties, founded by them in 1947, had fulfilled its function, in view of which
they unanimously agreed to dissolve it and to cease the publication of its
journal "For a Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy!" M

In its final issue, the Cominform's newspaper made some statements
that were a concession to ideas of emancipation from Moscow, labeled as
"national communism" :

. . . each Communist and Workers' Party has its own concrete practical
tasks which arise from the diversity of conditions in different countries,
conditions which determine the variety of forms of struggle for the interests
of the working class and the entire toiling people.57

Creation of a new international organization, suggested by various
Communist parties in the following year, was rejected because such an
organization, which, it was obvious, would be controlled by Moscow,
would be contrary to the pretense and claim of "complete independence"
and "sovereignty" of the "people's democracies." Instead, it was de-
cided to hold frequent bilateral and multilateral meetings of the leader-
ship of various Communist parties, grouped regionally or otherwise.
The existing cooperative arrangements, including exchange of informa-
tion and preparation of meetings, between the foreign departments of
the central committees of the individual Communist parties were
maintained.

Of the meetings subsequently convened, the most important were
those held in Moscow in November 1957, during the celebration of the
40th anniversary of the Soviet revolution. In the 18 months between
the dissolution of the Cominform and the Moscow meetings there had
occurred the uprising in Hungary, the Soviet-Polish conflict and renewed
intensification of trends toward "national communism" in various coun-
tries. One outcome of the meetings was that the Yugoslav Communists
again turned against Moscow, and Soviet ire was now directed at "na-
tional communism." Under the label of "revisionism," "national com-
munism" was assailed as the "main danger," while Stalinism (now
labeled "dogmatism") was viewed as an error of only secondary mag-
nitude.

The meetings in Moscow were tantamount to an international Com-
munist congress. A great majority of 83 Communist parties (with
a membership of 33 million) was represented. In the "Manifesto"

"For a Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy, Bucharest, No. 16 (389), April
17, 1956, p. 1.
n Ibid.

340

signed by 65 parties, they reiterated the old slogans: Adherence to
Marxism-Leninism, "struggle for peace," "peaceful coexistence," etc.68
At the same time the 12 Communist parties of the Soviet bloc of Euro-
pean and Asian nations signed a sharply worded "declaration" against
"revisionism" and in favor of the orthodox "proletarian (or "socialist")
internationalism." The Yugoslavs refused to sign the declaration.

In condemning dogmatism, the Communist parties believe that the
main danger at present is revisionism or, in other words, right-wing oppor-
tunism, which as a manifestation of bourgeois ideology paralyzes the rev-
olutionary energy of the working class and demands the preservation or
restoration of capitalism. . . .

Modern revisionism seeks to smear the great teachings of Marxism-
Leninism, declares that it is "outmoded" and alleges that it has lost its
significance for social progress. The revisionists try to exorcise the revo-
lutionary spirit of Marxism, to undermine faith in socialism among the
working class and the working people in general. They deny the historical
necessity for a proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat
during the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, deny the lead-
ing role of the Marxist-Leninist party. . . .69

The leading role of the Soviet Union in the "Socialist camp" was
proclaimed a supreme principle; the Warsaw Pact, which sutjrdinated
the military forces of the satellites to a Soviet marshal, was approved :

The Conference has also found it necessary to stress in its Declaration
the leading role of the Soviet Union'in the socialist camp. . . .

. . . The tremendous successes of the soviet people in communist con-
struction, in the development of the economy, science and culture, as well
as the peace-loving foreign policy of the Soviet state represent an inspiring
example for the working class, for all toilers, for progressive people of the
entire globe. The Soviet Union has become the center and bulwark of
peace, world progress and international socialism.60

From the Moscow meetings Khrushchev emerged a recognized leader
of the international Communist movement except among those parties
and groups which belonged to dissident factions. A new international
monthly Communist magazine appeared in Prague in September 1958
under the title World Marxist Review: Problems of Peace and Socialism.
It is now being issued in 26 languages.

Until the summer of 1957, inasmuch as the Presidium consisted of
divergent Communist factions and personalities, both the slogan and the
practice of "collective leadership" were maintained. One of these fac-
tions, headed by Khrushchev, enjoyed the support not only of the Cen-
tral Committee but of the ramified party "apparat" in the provinces.

M Pravda, November 23, 1957, p. 2.

M New York Times, November 22, 1957, p. 6.

•" Kommunist, Moscow, No. 1 7, December 1957, p. 28.

341

The other faction, led by the veterans Malenkov, Molotov, and Kagano-
vich, though its leaders were not unanimously in agreement on all issues,
claimed rank and prestige as the living heir to Lenin and actual builder
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during its 40-year history.
The members of the Malenkov-Molotov-Kaganovich faction were never
permitted, however, to state their views in public or in the press; in order
to stay in the party they had to remain silent. Actually they strove for
the overthrow of Khrushchev as leader of the Communist party; a vic-
tory by them would have meant a different political course for the Soviet
government, since the faction was the nucleus of a different Communist
trend.

The sharp controversy came to a head. in June-July 1957. Molotov
and his group intended to seize a moment when only eight members
were in Moscow for a meeting of the Presidium. The meeting

. . . was extremely agitated, and Khrushchev was not able to hold the
chair. It seems that Molotov had engineered this meeting for a time when
he knew that several outright Khrushchevites would be away from town,
vacationing. Only seven members, aside from Khrushchev himself, were
present. The lineup te remove Khrushchev was four to three — some ver-
sions say five to two. Apparently Bulganin deserted Khrushchev when it
appeared certain that he was beaten, and then came back. Only Mikoyan
stood by his side right through.

So, it seemed, Khrushchev was out. Malenkov was to become prime
minister again, and Shepilov party secretary. Khrushchev would be rele-
gated to the comparatively minor post of Minister for Agriculture. But
Khrushchev did not admit defeat.61

Khrushchev did not submit to the decision of the Presidium; instead
he turned to the members of the (in theory at least) higher-ranking
Central Committee; within 24 hours 70 full members of the Central
Committee (out of 133) demanded an immediate meeting of the
committee to consider the situation. Helped by the planes at Marshal
Zhukov's disposal, the majority of the Central Committee members
were able to reach Moscow. The session opened on June 22.

. . . the meeting lasted eight full days, from June 22, and was stormy.
Suslov was in the chair. There were 309 delegates present, including alter-
nates and others. The Soviet account of all this, which does not by any
means tell the full stop/, stresses above all the extraordinarily "democratic"
nature of the proceeedings. Two hundred fifteen of those present asked
to speak; sixty did make speeches, and the others submitted written memo-
randa. Molotov, Kaganovich, and Malenkov each spoke twice, defending
their attitude. At the end the vote was unanimous in favor of Khrushchev,
with one abstention. Molotov — considerable tribute to his inflexibility and

■ Gunther, op. cit., p. 248.
68491 O-61-vol. 11—23

342

courage — refused to go through with the usual hypocritical business of
agreeing to his own condemnation, and abstained.63

The official communique on the meeting of the Central Committee,
published a week later, said that the three members of the "anti-
party group" (as well as Dmitri Shepilov, who had sided with them)
were excluded from the Central Committee and the Presidium; instead
Marshal Zhukov and several others were elevated to full membership
in the Presidium. The "anti-party" men were not, however, expelled
from the party, nor were they arrested. They were given various jobs
in distant provinces.

Perhaps the most significant thing about the whole affair was that none
of those dismissed were shot. This, needless to say, marks a momentous
change in Soviet techniques. The culprits, far from being executed, were
given jobs, and, although disgraced, were still made use of and in fact
allowed to play roles in the national activity. True, they were put in
posts a long way from Moscow. Molotov became ambassador to Outer
Mongolia — not an unimportant post. Malenkov was made manager of
a hydroelectric installation, one of the biggest in the Soviet Union, at
Ust-Kamenogorsk, in Kazakhstan. Kaganovich is supposed to be running
a cement factory in the Urals, and Shepilov v/as appointed to the faculty of
an institute in Kirghizia. As always, the Soviet people were not told
about these developments for a considerable time, and even now have
not been told everything.63

For a time the names of the dissidents were frequently mentioned in
public meetings, where abuse was heaped on them. Although this cam-
paign gradually calmed down, the ideas and political program of the
Communist opposition remained a potential and subversive force.

The main accusations leveled against the "anti-party" group in the
official statements and by the Khrushchev faction, which were of course
anything but objective, depicted the opposition and its program as
follows :

1 . In the area of international relations the opposition, and Molotov in
particular, refused to accept the new idea that it was possible to achieve
communism without armed revolutions and bloody wars.64 He rather

(a) adhered to the old doctrine that war remains inevitable and

(b) refused to agree to the principle of "national roads" to socialism;

. . . He [Molotov] opposed the fundamental proposition worked out by
the party on the possibility of preventing wars in the present condition, on
the possibility of different ways of transition to socialism in different coun-
tries, on the necessity of strengthening contacts between the C.P.S.U.
[Communist Party of the Soviet Union] and progressive parties abroad

w Ibid., p. 249.

"Ibid., pp. 250, 251.

M Izvestia, July 12, 1957, p. 1.

06 Pravda, July 4, 1957, p. 2.

343

For a long time, Comrade Molotov, in his capacity of Foreign Minister,
far from taking, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, measures to
improve relations between the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia, repeatedly came
out against the measures which the Presidium of the Central Committee was
carrying out to improve relations with Yugoslavia. . . .

Comrade Molotov raised obstacles to the conclusion of the state treaty
with Austria and the improvement of relations with that country, which lies
in the center of Europe. . . . He was also against normalization of rela-
tions with Japan.66

(d) Finally, Molotov opposed the new policy of visits of Russian
leaders to other countries :

... In particular he denied the advisability of establishing personal
contacts between the Soviet leaders and the statesmen of other coun-
tries. . . ."

2. In Soviet internal affairs the opposition was adhering to old notions
and policies (the term "Stalinism" was not used but the sense of this
indictment was that the opposition disagreed with the anti-Stalinist
course) :

Comrades Malenkov, Kaganovich, and Molotov put up a stubborn re-
sistance to the measures which the Central Committee and the whole of
our party were carrying out to do away with the consequences of the per-
sonality cult, to eliminate the violations of revolutionary law that had been
committed, and provide such conditions as would preclude their recur-
rence. . . .

. . . they set out to change the policy of the party, to drag the party back
to the erroneous methods of leadership condemned by the Twentieth
Party Congress. . . .

. . . they were and still are shackled by old notions and methods, they
have drifted away from the life of the party and country, failed to see the
new conditions, the new situation, they take a conservative attitude, stub-
bornly cling to obsolete forms and methods of work that are no longer in
keeping with the interests of the advance towards communism. . . .

. . . they are sectarian and dogmatic, and they use a scholastic inert
approach to Marxism-Leninism.68

In particular, the "anti-party" group opposed the rehabilitation of
the deported nationalities — the Balkars, Chechens, Ingushs, Kalmuks,
and Karachais:

. . . The [Communist] party has corrected this mistake that was one of
the results of the personality cult. . . .

■ Ibid.
" Ibid.
68 Ibid.

344

. . . The anti-party group of Malenkov, Kaganovich and Molotov
opposed this Leninist policy.6*

Malenkov was also accused of complicity with Beria in the bloody
Leningrad affair.

It is now established that the "Leningrad affair," which was organized
with the active assistance of Malenkov, was falsified.70

Much of the blame lies with Comrade Malenkov, who fell under the
complete influence of Beria and acted as his shadow and tool. Holding
a high position in the party and state, Comrade Malenkov not only failed
to restrain J. V. Stalin but made skillful use of his weaknesses and habits
in the last years of his life. On many occasions he urged him to actions
that deserve the strongest condemnation.71

3. In economic affairs they opposed the reforms carried out on the
initiative of the Khrushchev group :

They were against the extension of the rights of the Union Republics in
the sphere of economic and cultural development and in the sphere of legis-
lation and against enhancing the role of the local Soviets in the fulfillment
of these tasks. Thereby, the anti-party group resisted the party's firm course
towards the more rapid development of economy and culture in the national
republics, a course ensuring the further promotion of Leninist friendship
between all the peoples of our country. Far from understanding the
party's measures aimed at combating bureaucracy and reducing the inflated
state apparatus, the anti-party group opposed them. On all these points, it
came out against the Leninist principle of democratic centralism being im-
plemented by the party.

The group persistently opposed and sought to frustrate so vastly important
a measure as the reorganization of industrial management and the setting
up of economic councils in the economic areas, approved by the whole of
the party and the people.72

Accusing Khrushchev of a "pro-peasant," or "populist" deviation
they opposed his appeal to the self-interests of the peasantry and the
kolkhozes :

. . . They would not recognize the necessity of increased material incen-
tives for the collective farm peasantry in expanding output of agricultural
products. They objected to the abolition of the old bureaucratic system of
planning on the collective farms and the introduction of a new system of
planning, such as would release the initiative of the collective farms in
carrying on their economy, a measure which has already yielded positive
results. They drifted so far away from reality as to be unable to see the

98 M. Tsameryan, "Leninskaya Politika Rasshireniya Prav Respublik" (Lenin's
Policy of Expanding the Rights of the Republics), Trud (Labor), Moscow, July 13,
1957, p. 2.

TO N. M. Shvernik, Speech, Pravda, July 7, 1957, p. 4.

n Khrushchev, Speech, Pravda, August 28, 1957.

n Pravda, July 4, 1957, p. 1.

345

actual possibility of abolishing at the end of this year obligatory deliveries
of farm produce by collective farmers from their individual plots.73

The program of catching up with and overtaking the United States
in the production of milk, meat, and butter met with opposition on the
part of this group; the Malenkov group considered that such a slogan
could lessen the interest in the increase of steel, pig iron and coal produc-
tion. "It is a rightist peasant deviation," said Malenkov.74 The cultiva-
tion of virgin lands also called forth protests:

They carried on an entirely unwarranted struggle against the party's ap-
peal, vigorously supported by the collective farms, regions and republics, to
overtake the U.S.A. in the next few years in per capita output of milk, but-
ter and meat. . . .

It cannot be considered accidental that Comrade Molotov, a member
of the anti-party group, who manifested a conservative and narrow-minded
attitude, far from realizing the necessity of making use of virgin lands,
resisted the cultivation of 35,000,000 hectares of virgin lands, an enterprise
which acquired such tremendous importance in the economy of our
country.75

A few months after the removal of the "anti-party" men from the
supreme bodies, the pro-Khrushchev minister, Marshal Georgi Zhukov,
was likewise ousted. A new "plenum" of the Central Committee, held
at the end of October (1957), accused Minister of Defense and Presid-
ium member Zhukov of striving for greater autonomy of the military
forces — a sin of which a long line of Soviet military leaders had been
accused and for which some had been executed under Stalin.

... the Central Committee found [Khrushchev said] that the former
Minister of Defense, Comrade Zhukov, had violated the Leninist principle
of leadership in the Armed Forces and had pursued the dangerous line of
curtailing the work of party organizations, political agencies and Military
Councils and of cutting off the army from the party, which is very harmful
to the defense of our Fatherland and to the building of socialism and
communism.

The resolution of the Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of die Soviet Union aims at a further increase of the role
of the party in guiding the Armed Forces. Ta

"He [Zhukov] asked for leave and it was granted," Mr. Khrushchev said.
"He deserves a leave."

"He did not turn out well as a political figure." "

" Ibid.

"New York Times, July 10, 1957, p. 3.

18 Prav da, July 4, 1957, p. 2.

"Khrushchev, Speech Delivered November 25, 1957 at the Reception in the Krem-
lin for Graduates of the Moscow Military Academy, Pravda, November 26, 1&57,
p. 1.

* New York Times, November 14, 1957, p. 23.

346

Unlike the "anti-party" leaders, Zhukov was not given a new appoint-
ment and he retired to private life.

He [Marshal Zhukov] has "learned to fish quite well/' is drawing his
pension and is writing his memoirs, the present Defense Minister, Marshal
Rodion Y. Malinovsky, said. . . .78

Premier Nikolai Bulganin, otherwise a supporter of Khrushchev, had
sided for a brief moment with the "anti-party" group in crucial June
1957. He was forced to resign on March 27, 1958. Nikita Khru-
shchev became Premier.

With the summit posts of both the party and the government now
concentrated in his hands, Khrushchev reached full power. "Collective
leadership" was no longer discussed, no longer mentioned in the press
or in public speeches; the leadership was again personal, as it had been
under Stalin, although up to now Khrushchev has net used his personal
power in the terroristic way that Stalin did.

5, Changes in Ideology

At the Twentieth and Twenty-first Congresses of the Communist
party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev announced certain modifica-
tions of some general principles guiding Soviet policy. Prepared in ad-
vance at closed sessions, and often violently opposed by the "anti-party
group," the new tenets reflected in the main the new trends that had
begun to prevail under Khrushchev.

Mikoyan, second highest leader after Khrushchev, considered the
Twentieth, the first post-Stalin, Congress as more important than any
of the congresses held in the three decades between 1924 and 1956:

It would be no exaggeration to say that the 20th party congress is the
most important congress in the history of our party since Lenin. The
Leninist spirit and Leninism permeated all our work and all our decisions,
just as if Lenin were alive and with us.78

In his report at the open sessions of the congress, Khrushchev pro-
ceeded to refute the Leninist-Stalinist doctrine that wars are "inevitable"
as long as the capitalist system prevails in the major countries.

Millions of people all over the world are asking whether another war
is really inevitable, whether mankind, which has already experienced two
devastating wars, must go through still a third one? Marxists must answer
this question, taking into consideration the epoch-making changes of the
last decades.80

78 New York Times, June 10, 1959, p. 10.
w Pravda, February 18, 1956, p. 6.
n Pravda, February 15, 1 956, p. 4.

347

Lenin and Stalin were not wrong, Khrushchev announced ; the situa-
tion, he said, has changed since the founding fathers conceived their
theory :

As we know, there is a Marxist-Leninist precept that wars are inevitable
as long as imperialism exists. . . .

For that period, the above-mentioned thesis was absolutely correct. At
the present time, however, the situation has changed radically. Now
there is a world camp of socialism which has become a mighty force. . . .

. . . War is not a fatalistic inevitability. Today there are mighty social
and political forces possessing formidable means to prevent the imperialists
from unleashing war and, if they try to start it, to give a smashing rebuff
to the aggressors and frustrate their adventurist plans.81

In this connection, Anastas Mikoyan declared that the notion of
capitalism and imperialism inherited from Stalin was no longer cor-
rect; Soviet sociology and political science are inadequate:

We are seriously lagging in the study of capitalism's contemporary stage;
we do not study facts and figures deeply; we often restrict ourselves for
agitation purposes to individual facts about the symptoms of an approach-
ing crisis or about the impoverishment of the working people, rather than
making an all-round and profound evaluation of the phenomena of life
abroad. Our economists, in studying the economies of the Soviet Union
and the people's democracies, often skim the surface and fail to plumb the
depths; they produce no serious analysis or generalizations and avoid
elucidating the peculiarities of the development of individual countries.82

Stalin's predictions, Mikoyan continued, that capitalism would lose
markets and was already entering an era of decay were false :

Stalin's well-known pronouncement in "Economic Problems of Socialism
in the U.S.S.R." concerning the U.S.A., Britain and France, to the effect
that after the world market had been split up "the volume of production
in these countries will contract," can hardly help us in our analysis of the
condition of the economy of contemporary capitalism and is hardly cor-
rect. This assertion does not explain the complex and contradictory
phenomena of contemporary capitalism and the fact that capitalist pro-
duction has grown in many countries since the war.83

This apparent concession to a more moderate trend was not tanta-
mount, however, to the inauguration of a consistent peaceful policy, a
renunciation of Communist territorial expansion. Communism's
progress, Khrushchev repeated, will continue; it may, however, be
achieved without war.

. . . Wars, Khrushchev told the 20th Congress of his Party. . . . can be
avoided because the "imperialists" will be sensible enough to abstain from

"Ibid.

" Pravda, February 18, 1956, p. 6.

"Ibid.

348

military operations. Not that the Soviet Union will abstain from vigor-
ously assisting "anti-imperialist" and Communist upheavals abroad, or the
territorial expansion of "Socialist nations," but the opponents, recognizing
the superior power of the Soviets, will retreat and give in. . . .

*******

. . . Khrushchev expects to be able to augment the "Socialist" realm
without a war because he is certain that his adversaries, being sensible men,
are aware of their inferiority. They will not even tiy to face the Soviet
ground forces, which are several times larger than theirs; and they will not
use atomic weapons, if only because this would solve nothing. . . .

Communism is superior to capitalism, Khrushchev frankly told the Cana-
dian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, because "Communists are
tougher and more patient." They can stand up to sacrifice better than the
Westerners, he asserted. The West "will not accept the sacrifices that
prolonged defense preparations involve." 84

Another old tenet, also inherited from Lenin and Stalin, was that the
transition from capitalism to socialism is marked by bloody revolutions
and civil wars; this tenet takes a dim view of parliaments. In the de-
Stalinizing mood which prevailed at the time of the Twentieth Congress,
Khrushchev proceeded to refute the "inevitability" of such prospects;
consideration for the newly-won friendship with the "neutralist," though
non-Communist, nations of Asia and Africa ( India, Burma, Indonesia,
Egypt, Syria, and some others) prompted Khrushchev to soften, at least
in words, the Communist attitude toward democratic constitutions:

. . . the question arises of whether it is possible to go over to socialism
by using parliamentary means. No such course was open to the Russian
Bolsheviks, who were the first to effect this transition.85

Yes, Khrushchev answers,

. . . this institution [the parliament], traditional in many highly de-
veloped capitalist countries, may become an agency of genuine democracy,
of democracy of the working people.

The winning of a firm parliamentary majority based on the mass revolu-
tionary movement of the proletariat and of the working people would
create conditions for die working class of many capitalist and formerly
colonial countries to make fundamental social changes. . . .E8

Violent revolutions are not generally rejected.

. . . There is no doubt that in a number of capitalist countiies violent
overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the sharp aggravation
of class struggle connected with this are inevitable. But the forms of social
revolution vary. And it is not true that we regard violence and civil war
as the only way to remake society. . . .8T

84 David J. Dallin, "Khrushchev's Berlin Campaign," The New Leader, vol. XLII,
No. 14 (April 6, 1959), p. 9.

85 Pravda, February 15, 1956, p. 4.
"Ibid.

"Ibid.

349

Khrushchev stressed, however, his adherence to the old principle that
development toward socialism, even in parliamentary form, is possible
only under the leadership of the "working class," meaning the Com-
munist party.

In all the forms of transition to socialism, an absolute and decisive
requirement is political leadership of the working class, headed by its van-
guard. The transition to socialism is impossible without this.88

The third innovation in ideology was represented by Khrushchev's
attempt at collaboration with nations and political parties which, in the
Communist concept, occupy a middle position between imperialism and
communism : first, the ruling parties and governments of former colonial
countries, and second, the socialist parties of the West. Not exactly
novel, these ideas were now considered more than a passing tactical
maneuver. We have to work untiringly, Khrushchev said,

... to strengthen the bonds of friendship and cooperation with the
Republic of India, Burma, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria and other
countries which stand for peace; to support countries which refuse to be
involved in military blocs; to cooperate with all forces seeking to preserve
peace.89

This policy prevailed for a number of years; it had its first crucial
test in the Soviet-Egyptian conflict over Iraq in 1959 and the Tibetan
uprising in the same year. These events proved that Communist gov-
ernments did not respect the principle of non-interference in another
nation's affairs and the sanctity of treaties.

Collaboration with the socialist parties was believed a step toward
the "unity of the working class."

. . . Unity of the working class, of its trade unions, unity of action of
its political parties, the communists, the socialists and other workers' parties,
is acquiring exceptional importance.

Not a few of the misfortunes harassing the world today result from the
fact that in many countries the working class has been split for many years
and its various detachments do not present a united front — which only
plays into the hands of the reactionary forces. Yet today, in our opinion,
a prospect of changing this situation is opening up. . . .

. . . Cooperation is possible and essential with those circles of the
socialist movement which have different views from ours on the forms
of transition to socialism. Among them are many who are honestly mistaken
on this question, but this is no obstacle to cooperation.90

In the same year Khrushchev had occasion to test his new strategy in
his talks with the Labor Party in London and the French Socialists in

88 ibid.
"Ibid.
"Ibid., p. 3.

350

Moscow. His attempts failed. The Socialist International likewise
rejected his bid.

In the 3 years between the Twentieth and Twenty-first Congresses of
the Communist Party (1956 and 1959), Khrushchev's trend toward
moderation ended. Although theories and policies rejected in 1956
were never revived, modifications in program and theory took another
direction. Reinstated in the role of leader of the worldwide Communist
movement, the Communist party of the Soviet Union tried to visualize
and forecast the development of the Soviet Union toward communism as
a social setup. The goal, it declared, would be reached in the next 10
or 15 years.

... we now have every basis for declaring that communism is no longer

in the distant future. . . .

*•••■#■*"*'•••-•

. . . The Soviet people have set themselves a very realistic aim — to catch
up in the coming few years with the USA per capita output of meat, miik
and butter. . . .

. . . The estimates of our planning staff show that the Soviet Union can
in the next fifteen years not only catch up with the USA in the production
of basic items but also outstrip it.91

Khrushchev's main thesis at the Twenty-first Congress in 1959 was
that

. . . The Soviet people, under the guidance of the party, has reached
heights and accomplished a grandiose reorganization in all fields of economic
and social-political life that make it possible for our country to enter a new,
most important period of development — the period of full-scale building of
a communist society.92

This was the main idea of the 7-year plan adopted by the Twenty-first
Congress, which was proclaimed the "decisive step" toward communism.
Concluding his address, Khrushchev told the congress :

. . . Many generations dreamed of a happy future, of an organization of
society in which there will be no rich or poor, where there will be no
oppression of toiling people. They dreamed of Communism. . . .

The seven-year period which we are entering now is a new, important, it
might be said decisive, rtage on the road of the historical development of
our country. The communist party, the entire Soviet people are firmly
convinced that they will take this boundary and will enter the wide plateau,
and then new horizons will open, then it will be easier to go forward.93

The notion of communism as a social and political structure that
would be attained "in our time" was made more precise in Khrushchev's
report. It was an immutable Soviet principle that "socialism" in

81 Pravda, November 7, 1957, p. 4.
"Pravda, January 28, 1959, p. 2.
"Ibid., p. 10.

351

Russia had been attained in the 1930's and that the subsequent decades
were a period of transition from socialism to communism. The issue
was one of great importance because to sincere Russian Communists
and to Communist youth the new "Socialist" setup, with its class dis-
tinctions, its inequality and the abject poverty of the mass of the popu-
lation, was still a disappointment. It had to be replaced by another,
better, social system — communism.

According to Khrushchev, no more than 10 or 15 years lie between
"our time" and the era of accomplished communism; transition will
be gradual and smooth; the Soviet Union is actually already entering,
in one area after another, the radiant mansions of communism. De-
scribing the Communist system on the threshold of which Russia stands,
Khrushchev wisely warned that not too much must be expected; the
standard of living he projected was indeed modest:

... it must be borne in mind that man's requirements of the means
of existence are not limitless. A person cannot, for instance, consume more
bread and other food than his organism needs. There are also definite
limits to the amounts of clothing and housing that can be used. Of course,
when we speak of satisfying people's requirements, we have in mind not
whims or claims to luxuries, but the wholesome consumption of a cultured
person.94

He stressed the "limits" of the future standard of life:

Full satisfaction, within necessary and reasonable limits, of all the Soviet
people's requirements of food, housing, and clothing can probably be
attained in the near future.85

On the other hand, the obligation of every citizen to work at full
capacity was also emphasized:

. . . Communist construction will be completed when we shall have
provided a complete abundance of everything needed to satisfy the re-
quirements of all the people, when all the people learn to work according
to their ability, so as to multiply and accumulate communal wealth.06

In this context, what communism promised to the average Soviet
citizen was a standard of life that now prevails in the United States
for at least 80 percent of the population and has probably been sur-
passed by 50 percent. The other elements of future Russian commu-
nism, as Khrushchev envisioned it, were equally simple and earthy,
for example, a modest reduction in working hours:

Reduction of the working day has always been regarded by the Communist
party as one of its propagandistic goals. The draft control figures call for
completing in 1960 the change-over of workers and employees to a seven-

"Ibid.^.Z.
* Ibid.

'Ibid.

352

hour working day, and of workers in leading underground occupations in
coal and ore mining to a six-hour day. The change-over of workers and
employees with a seven-hour working day to a forty-hour week is envisaged
in 1962.97

Other elements, too, of Khrushchev's socialism and communism had
actually been component parts of the "capitalist syztem" for a long time:

It must be borne in mind, of course, that even under socialism a con-
siderable and ever-increasing portion of material and cultural products
will be divided among members of society independently of the quantity
and quality of their work — that is, gratis. Society carries immense costs
of free education, free health service, pensions, grants to large families, free
club services, free libraries, etc.98

Gradual transition from socialism to communism does not, Khru-
shchev said, imply abolition of inequality in the foreseeable future :

In articles and lectures, some social scientists voice the view that distri-
bution according to work signifies application of bourgeois law to socialist
society. They ask whether the time has not come to shift from this principle
to equalitarian distribution of the social product among all personnel. One
cannot agree with this view.99

In the "first period of communism" the old wage system, termed
"Socialist" by Khrushchev, but actually inherited from "capitalist" times,
will prevail:

. . . Inasmuch as different people have different skills, talents and work-
ing ability and different sized families, it is natural that with equal pay for
equal work they have in fact unequal incomes. But this system is inevitable
in the first phase of communist society.100

Equality of income would unjustly benefit shirkers :

. . . One cannot fail to see that leveling would lead to unjust distribu-
tion: the bad worker and the good would receive an equal share, which
would be to the advantage of the slackers only. The material incentive
for people to work better, to raise productivity and produce more, would
be undermined. Leveling would signify not transition to communism, but
discrediting of communism.101

Khrushchev repeated the old doctrine that the state and its machin-
ery will "wither away" in the era of transition from socialism to com-
munism, but compulsion akin to that which prevailed under the pre-
revolutionary system will remain. "Our army, which has the function
of protecting the Soviet state against attack from without," Khrushchev

"Ibid., p. 5.
M Ibid., p. 9.
"Ibid.
100 Ibid.
™Ibid.

353

said, "will remain; nor will the militia and 'the courts' or even the state
security agencies (secret police) disappear soon" :

. . . We have said and we say, that the state agencies of compulsion
will gradually wither away and will ultimately die out altogether, as will
the state itself. But, naturally, this will not happen abruptly, but gradually,
at some stage of the development of Communist society. It would be a
gross mistake, a leftist blunder, to weaken our state administrative agencies
now, to abolish the agencies of compulsion which, as I have already said,
are now mainly agencies of defense against the machinations of external
enemies.102

Definite functions will remain, of course, with the courts, the militia and
the prosecutor's office. These agencies will continue to function in order
to exert influence on persons who maliciously refuse to submit to socialist
society's standards of behavior and are not amenable to persuasion.103

Moreover, the state security agencies need strengthening. Though
claiming "political indictments" were no longer being made in the Soviet
Union, Khrushchev said:

. . . The state security agencies, which direct their spearhead primarily
against agents sent into the country by imperialist states, must be strength-
ened, as must other agencies which have the mission of blocking the pro-
vocative actions and intrigues of our enemies from the imperialist camp.104

6. Sputniks, New Ambitions, and the New Offensive

The last months of 1957 marked the beginning of a new period in the
policies of the Soviet government. By that time Khrushchev had vir-
tually eliminated his opponents from leadership and asserted a well-knit
system of personal rule. In the ranks of the international Communist
movement, after years of vacillation, disputes and defections, the guiding
position of the Soviet party was again recognized. Some progress had
been achieved in Soviet industry and agriculture. These developments
brought a new rise in Soviet ambitions and a new self-assurance.

The self-assurance was in particular enhanced by the launching from
Soviet bases of the first artificial satellites and by Soviet progress in the
production of ballistic missiles.

... on October 4, came the successful launching of the first Soviet
earth satellite, or artificial moon. Once again the world was stirred —
and doubly shocked. The Sputnik has major importance in all sorts of
fields, including its propaganda value and usefulness in pure scientific
research, but perhaps the most vital and significant thing about it is its
launching mechanism, which is of a weight and thrust far beyond anything

m Pravda, November 19, 1957, p. 1.
M Pravda, January 28, 1959, p. 9.
"Ibid.

354

in possession of the free world at the moment; it staggered scientists every-
where that such a mechanism could have been developed by anybody. . . .
On November 3 came the launching of the second Sputnik, complete
with dog.106

The success of the Soviet Sputniks contrasted with the comparatively
small achievements of the West in this field in the beginning. As a re-
sult, the Soviet feeling of backwardness in regard to technics and science
began to give way to a new pride and sense of superiority:

What was left for the Americans to do? [Khrushchev asked.] They
said:

We will also launch our own satellite. They announced that on a certain
date they wanted to launch an American artificial Earth satellite the size
of an orange and weighing about 1.5 kilograms. They also said that their
satellite would be so small that it would not be visible. They actually did
try to launch an artificial satellite but nothing came out of it. A film is
now being shown which reveals how their satellite, without rising into
the air, exploded on the spot and burned up along with the rocket.

Then there was nothing left for them to do but admit: Yes, the Soviet
Union has indeed surpassed the U.S.A. in the development of science and
technology, that the Soviet Union is training three times as many engineers
every year as the U.S.A.108

Soviet leading circles were convinced that Russia had finally reached
the stage of "catching up with and overtaking America" :

. . . We can double and more than double the weight of the satellite
because the Soviet intercontinental missile possesses enormous capacity
which would make it possible for us to launch an even heavier satellite
to a still greater height. And we shall probably do so! 107

The success of the Sputniks was part of the Soviet progress in pro-
duction of weapons, especially intercontinental ballistic missiles, which
are able, Moscow asserted, to reach the United States and which, if
carrying atomic warheads, would have tremendous destructive power.

On August 26, 1957, the Soviet government announced the suc-
cessful launching of its "ultimate weapon" :

. . . The rocket flew at a very high, unprecedented altitude. Covering
a huge distance in a brief time the rocket landed in the target area. The
results obtained show it is possible to direct rockets into any part of the
world.108

The notions and estimates of American military experts had to be re-
vised and Russia's widely increased power recognized :

For a long time it was thought that the principal Soviet handicap was
its vulnerability to American air attack. It is much easier for the United

108 Gunther, op. cit., p. 387.

"■ Pravda, January 26, 1958, p. 1.

1W Ibid.

m Soviet communique, as quoted in Gunther, op. cit., p. 386.

355

States to attack Russia by air than vice versa, by conventional means.
Using long-range bombers, we have been in a position to envisage assault
on key targets in the Soviet Union almost with impunity. . . . But Soviet
development in the ICBM has seriously altered this strategical picture.189

The Western governments, the leaders of NATO, military writers and
experts, especially in the United States, categorically denied the superi-
ority of Soviet military power taken as a total. The Soviet advance,
mainly limited to intercontinental missiles, was temporary and would not
last more than another 2 or 3 years. These Western statements re-
mained, however, unknown to the Soviet people and Khrushchev tended,
contrary to facts known to him, to minimize the role of military avia-
tion, in which the United States was superior, and to emphasize instead,
missiles, in which the Soviet Union had surpassed America :

The present period [Khrushchev said in an interview] is something like a
turning point. Military specialists believe that planes, whether bombers or
fighters, are in their decline. Bombers have such speeds and altitudes that
they are vulnerable to attack by modern rockets [missiles]. Fighters, on
the other hand, now have such a great speed that their use against fighters
is becoming difficult, while against bombers they are also insufficiently ef-
fective. Moreover fighters are manned by people, whom of course we do
not want to lose.110

In an interview with the American editor, William Randolph Hearst,
Jr., Khrushchev said :

I also want to tell you, Mr. Hearst, that in the creation of new types of
weapons we have outstripped your country. We now possess the absolute
weapon, perfected in every respect and created in a short period of time.
I say this not to intimidate, there is no need for that, I am simply stating
a fact! Our scientists, engineers, technicians and workers have produced
the most modern armament. The Soviet Union possesses intercontinental
ballistic missiles. It has missiles of different systems for different purposes;
all our missiles can be fitted with atomic and hydrogen warheads. Thus,
we have proved our superiority in this matter.111

From the success of the Sputniks and the ICBM Khrushchev drew
far-reaching conclusions as to the allout competition of the Soviet Union
with the United States. He emphatically rejected the theory that Rus-
sian progress was due to the help of German scientists brought to Russia
after the war; he insisted that the missile was a purely Soviet product
and a measure of Russia's scientific achievements :

. . . Some public figures in the United States say now that we were
helped by German specialists captured during the second world war. This
of course is nonsense. . . .

"■ Gunthcr, op. cit., pp. 389, 390.

n0New York Timss, October 10, 1957, p. 10.

m Pravda, November 29, 1957, p. 2.

356

The development of rocket technology in the U.S.S.R. is a result of the
development of Soviet science and technology, of our industry. These
achievements are a source of pride of our Soviet people and our socialist
state.

Our designers also have developed rockets that could, in the event of
an attack on our country, strike any base in Europe, Asia, and Africa. On
the first try our missile fell exactly on the target area.112

The Soviet intercontinental missile, the Soviet military experts con-
cluded, makes the network of American military bases outside the coun-
try vulnerable and possibly useless. Said Khrushchev :

. . . Let us not play hide-and-seek with the facts; let us look them in the
face. Can it be supposed that military bases are known only to those who
established them? But if their location is known, then, given the present
level of missile and other technology, they can speedily be rendered
ineffective.

We are convinced that very soon the peoples of those countries in which
American military bases have been set up many thousands of kilometres
from America herself, will come to realize more fully what a terrible danger
these bases constitute for their countries and will resolutely demand the
immediate abolition of foreign bases on their territory.113

Thus, as a result of the ICBM, Soviet foreign policy greatly increased
its offensive toward abolition of "military bases in foreign lands," and
the offensive assumed large proportions in the subsequent period.

In the sphere of economic competition, the drive toward rapid over-
taking of the United States set in motion the new 7-year plan and a
long-range plan of transition to a definite Communist system within the
next decade or two:

In this stage of competition the Soviet Union intends to surpass the
United States of America economically. The United States production
level is the ceiling that the capitalist economy has been able to reach. We
know that favorable historical and natural conditions played their part in
it. To surpass the level of the U.S.A. is to surpass capitalism's highest
indices.

The fact that we have now set ourselves this task shows how much our
strength and capacity have grown. . . .

* ***** »

. . . Fast tempos are a general law of socialism, now confirmed by the
experience of all the countries of the socialist camp. . . .

The world socialist system has the advantage of superior rates of economic
growth. The average annual industrial production increase for the social-
ist camp as a whole in the past five years (1954-1958) has amounted to
1 1 per cent, whereas in the capitalist world as a whole it was less than 3
per cent.114

*" Pravda, November 19, 1957, p. 2.

"* International Affairs, Moscow, No. 1 1, November 1957, p. 15.

™* Pravda, January 28, 1959, p. 6.

357

These new ambitions and exaggerated notion of successes prompted
the Soviet government to start its new offensive in the international field,
namely, the drive against the independence of West Berlin, begun in
the fall of 1958. Convinced of its superiority in military matters, and
minimizing the West's capacity to stand up to the Soviet Union with
firmness and consistency, the Soviet government expected the West to
yield, thereby losing face, and to retreat all along the line.

. . . the Soviet Union [is] soon to become [Khrushchev told a public
meeting in East Germany on March 7] the most powerful nation in the
world, economically as well as militarily. . . ,115

More than four decades have passed since the seizure of power in
Russia by the Bolshevik, the eventual Communist, party. In this space
of time Russia has undergone a multitude of changes, lived through
severely repressive eras as well as through periods of some relaxation,
has seen a succession of leaders, awful wars as well as some progress.
However, the basic elements of Leninism have been maintained to this
day — a stern one-party rule, negation of political freedoms to the popu-
lation, emphasis on military power, antagonism to democracy as a sys-
tem and to the democracies as nations, and consequently — a permanent
threat of a terrible conflict in the world. Soviet "Communism" has
remained the greatest danger of our days.

116

New York Times, March 15, 1959, p. 5.

6849! O-61-vol. II— 2£

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Volume II of Facts on Communism has presented excerpts and
quotations from the following sources:

Books and Pamphlets in the Russian Language

Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (Large Soviet Encyclopedia).
Moscow: 1st ed., published by Aktsionernoe Obshchestvo "Sovets-
kaya Entsiklopediya" (The Soviet Encyclopedia Joint-Stock Co.)
and other companies, 65 vols., 1926-47; 2d ed., published by
Gosudarstvennoe Nauchnoe Izdatelstvo "Bolshaya Sovetskaya
Entsiklopediya" (State Scientific Publishing House "The Large
Soviet Encyclopedia"), 51 vols., 1949-58; special ed., published
by OGIZ (State United Publishing Houses), 1948.

Che-Kaf Materialy po Deyatelnosti Chrezvychainykh Komissii (Cheka,
Materials on the Activities of the Extraordinary Commissions).
Berlin: Published by the Central Bureau of the Socialist Revolu-
tionary Party, 1922.

Ezhegodnik Bolshoi Sovetskoi Entsiklopedii 1958 (Yearbook of the
Larger Soviet Encyclopedia 1958). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
Nauchnoe Izdatelstvo "Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya."
(State Scientific Publishing House "The Large Soviet Ency-
clopedia"), 1958.

Istoriya Sovetskoi Konstitutsii (v Dokumentakh), 1917-1956 (History
of the Soviet Constitution (in Documents) 1917-1956). Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Yuridicheskoi Literatury (State
Publishing House for Juridical Literature), 1957.

Istoriya S.S.S.R. Uchebnik dlya X Klassa Srednei Shkoly (History of
the USSR, Textbook for the Tenth Grade of High School). Mos-
cow: Gos. Uchebno-Pedagog. Izd-vo Ministerstva Prosveshcheniya
RSFSR (State Educational Pedagogical Pubhshing House of the
Ministry of Education of the RSFSR), 1946.

Itogi Borby s Golodom v 1921-22 gg., Sbornik Statei i Otchetov (Balance
Sheet on the Fight of the Famine in 1921-22, Collection of Articles
and Reports). Moscow: Published by the Central Committee to
Help the Hungry, 1922.

Itogi Posledgol (Balance Sheet on the After Effects of the Famine).
Moscow: Published by the Liquidation Committee of the Central
Committee to Help the Hungry, 1923.

Kniga o Golode (Book on the Famine). Samara: Samara Division
of the State Publishing House, 1922.

KPSS v Rezolyutsiakh i Resheniyakh S"ezdov, Konferentsii i Plenumov

TsK (CPSU in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences
and Plenums of the Central Committee). 7th ed.; Moscow: Gosu-
darstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing
House for Political Literature), 1953.

(359)

360

Kripton K. Osada Leningrada (The Siege of Leningrad). New
York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1952.

Latsis (Su drabs), Martin. Chrezvychainye Komissii po Borbe s Kon-
trrevolyutsiei (Extraordinarily Commissions to Fight Counter-
Revolution). Moscow: Gosizdat (State Publishing House), 1921.

. Dva Goda Borby na Vnutrennem Fronte (Two Years of

Fighting on the Internal Front). Moscow: Gosizdat (State Pub-
lishing House), 1920.

Lenin, V. I. Handwritten Note to Comrade Sklyanski, August 1920.
Trotsky's archives at the Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass.

. Sochineniya (Works). 4th ed.; Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe

Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for
Political Literature), 38 vols., 1941-58.

Lunacharski, A. V. Vospominaniya o Lenine (Reminiscences about
Lenin). Moscow: Partiinoe Izdatelstvo (Party Publishing House),
1933).

Martov, L., Istoriya Rossiiskoi Sotsial-Demokratii (History of the Rus-
sian Social Democracy). 3rd ed.; Moscow: "Kniga" publishers,
1923.

Na Borbu s Posledstviyami Qoloda, Rukovodstvo k Provedeniyu Agit-
kampanii Posledqol v Klubnykh Uchrezhdeniyakh Ooroda i Derevni
(On the Fight With the After Effects of the Famine, Guidance for
the Conduct of a Propaganda Campaign on the After Effects of
the Famine in City and Country Meetings. Moscow: Glavpolit-
prosvet (Central Board of Political Education) Publishing House,
1923.

Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR, Statisticheskii Sbornik (National Econ-
omy of the USSR, Statistical Abstract). Moscow: Gosudarst-
vennoe Izdatelstvo Statisticheskoe (State Statistical Publishing
House), 1956.

Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR v 1958 Oodu, Statisticheskii Ezhegodnik
(National Economy of the USSR in 1958, Statistical Yearbook).
Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Statisticheskoe (State Sta-
tistical Publishing House), 1959.

Obvinitelnye Materialy po Delu Podpolnoi Kontrrevolyutsionnoi Oruppy
Zinovievtsev (Accusation Materials in the Case of the Underground
Counter-Revolutionary Group of Zinovievites) . Moscow: Partiz-
dat ZK VKP (b) (Party Publishing House of the Central Com-
mittee of the All-Union Communist Party, Bolsheviks), 1935.

Pavlov, D. V., Leningrad v Blokade, 1941 god (Leningrad Under the
Blockade, 1941). Moscow: Voennoe Izdatelstvo Ministerstva
Oborony SSSR (War Publishing House of the Defense Ministry
of the USSR), 1958.

Politicheskaya Ekonomiya, Uchebnik (Political Economy; Textbook).
Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury
(State Publishing House for Political Literature), 1st ed., 1954;
3d ed., 1958.

Potresov, A. N., Posmertnyi Sbornik Proizvedenii (Posthumous Collec-
tion of Works) . Paris: no pub., 1937.

Pravda o Kronshtadte (The Truth About Kronstadt). Prague: Volva
Rossii (Russia's Will), 1921.

Prokopovich, S. N., Narodnoe Khozyaistvo SSSR (National Economy
of the USSR). New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1952.

361

Sabik-Vogulov. V pobezhdennoi Oermanii (In Conquered Germany).
Germany: no pub., February 1947.

Sedmoi S"ezd Rossiiskoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii, Stenogrqficheskii
Otchet (Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Steno-
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1923.

Sinevirski, N., SMERSH, Qod v Starve Vraga (SMERSH, A Year in
the Enemy's Camp). Germany: published by Orani (Borders),
November 1948.

Spiridovich, A. /., Istoriya Bolshevizma v Rossii (History of Bolshevism
in Russia). Paris: no pub., 1922.

Sukhano, Nikolai, [vol. VII], Zapiski o Revolyutsii (Notes on the
Revolution). Berlin: Grzhebin, 1923.

Thun, A. Istoriya Revolyutsionnykh Dvizhenii v Rossii (The History
of Revolutionary Movements in Russia). St. Petersburg: Biblio-
teka dlya Vsekh (Library for Everybody), n.d.

Trotsky, Leon. Nashi Politicheskie Zadachi, Takticheskie i Organ-
izatsionnye Voprosy (Our Political Aims, Tactical and Organiza-
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. Sochineniya (Works). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel-

stvo (State Publishing House), 3 vols., n.d.

Ugolovnyi Kodeks RSFSR, Ofitsialnyi Tekst s Izmeneniyami na 1
Marta 1957 (Criminal Code of the RSFSR, Official Text with
Changes as of March 1, 1957). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Iz-
datelstvo Yuridicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for
Juridical Literature), 1957.

Vishniak, M. V. Vserossiiskoe Uchreditelnoe Sobranie (All-Russian
Constituent Assembly). Paris: Izdatelstvo "Sovremennye Za-
piski" "Contemporary Notes" Publishing House, 1932.

Vneocherednoi XXI S"ezd Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo
Soyuza 27 Yanvarya — 5 Fevralya 1959 Ooda, Stenogrqficheskii Otchet
(Extraordinary Twenty-first Congress of the Communist Party of
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eratury (State Publishing House for Political Literature), 1959.

Voitinski, Vladimir. "Sud nad Sotsialistami Revolyutsionerami v
Moskove" (Trial of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in Moscow), in
Dvenadtsat Smertnikov (Twelve Condemned to Death). Berlin:
Published by the Delegation Abroad of the Socialist-Revolutionary
Party, 1922.

Voroshilov, K. E. Statii i Rechi (Articles and Speeches). Moscow:
Partizdat (Party Publishing House), 1936.

. Doklad Voroshilova na Vneocherednoi Chetvertoi Sessii Ver-

khovnogo Soveta Pervogo Sozyva 31 Avgusta 19S9 goda, 0 Proekte
Zakona o Vseobshchei Voinskoi Obyazannosti (Report by Voro-
shilov to the Extraordinary Fourth Session of the Supreme Soviet,
August 31, 1939, On the Project of a Law on General Conscription).
Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury
(State Publishing House for Political Literature), 1939.

XVIII S"ezd Vsesoyuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b) 10-21
Marta 1939, Stenogrqficheskii Otchet (Eighteenth Congress of the
All-Union Communist Party (B), March 10-21, 1939, Stenographic
Report). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Lit-
eratury (State Publishing House for Political Literature), 1939.

362

Voznesenski, N. Voennaya Ekonomika SSSR v Otechestvennoi Voine
(The War Economy of the USSR in the Period of the Patriotic
War). Moscow: OGIZ (State United Publishing Houses). 1948.

Vtoroi Kongress Kommunisticheskogo Intematsionala, Stenograficheskii
Otchet (Second Congress of the Communist International, Steno-
graphic Report). Moscow: Partizdat (Party Publishing House),
1934).

Zinoviev, Grigori. "Pod Znamya III Intematsionala" (Under the
Banner of the Third International). In Dvadtsat Pyai Let R.K.P.
(b) 1898-1928 (Twenty-five Years of the Russian Communist
Party, 1898-1923). Moscow: Gosizdat (State Publishing House),
1923.

Periodicals and Newspapers in the Russian Language

Bolshevik (Bolshevik), Moscow.

Bulletin of the Opposition (Bolsheviks-Leninists), Paris:

Trotsky, Leon. "Vse Stanovitsya Postepenno na Svoe Mesto,
Pismo k Amerikanskim Druzyam" (Everything is Gradually
-Taking Its Proper Place, Letter to American Friends). No.
42, February 1935.
Izvestia (News), Moscow.
Kommunist (Communist), Moscow.
Na Chuzhoi Storone (In a Foreign Land), Prague:

Vodovozov, V. "Moe Znakomstvo s Leninym" (My Acquaint-
ance with Lenin). December 1925.
Nome Russkoe Slovo (New Russian Word), New York:

Kulisher, Evgeni. "Naselenie i Voennyi Poteri SSSR" (Popula-
tion and War Losses of the USSR). December 25, 1947.
Novyi Mir (New World), Moscow:

Fedin, Konstantin. "Svidanie s Leningradom," Zapiski 1944
(Rendezvous with Leningrad, Notes 1944). No. 4-5, 1944.
Petrograd Pravda (Truth), Petrograd.
Pravaa (Truth), Moscow.
Russkie Zapiski (Russian Annals), Paris:

Wollenberg, Erich. "Krasnaya Armiya Posle 'Chistki' " (The
Red Army After "The Purge"). January 1939.
Sotsialisticheskii Vestnik (The Socialist Courier), New York.
Trud (Labor), Moscow:

Tsameryan, M. "Leninskaya Politika Rasshireniya Prav Res-
publik" (Lenin's Policy of Expanding the Rights of the Re-
publics). July 13, 1957.
Voprosy Istorii (Problems of History), Moscow:

"Za Leninskuyu Partiinost v Istoricheskoi Nauke" (For Lenin's
Principle of the Party's Predominance in the Field of History) .
f No. 3, June-July 1957.

Books and Pamphlets in Languages Other Thax Russian

Ammende, Ewald. Human Life in Russia. London: George Allen &

Unwin, Ltd., 1936.
Balabanoff, Angelica. My Life as a Rebel. New York and London :

Harper & Bros., 1938.
Baldwin, Roger N. Liberty TTnder the Soviets. New York : Vanguard

Press, 1928.

363

Barton, Paul. L' Institution Concentrationnaire en Russie 1930-57.
Paris: Librairie Plon, 1959.

Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1952.

Beck, F. and W. Godin. Russian Purge ami the Extraction of Confes-
sion. New York: The Viking Press, 1951.

Borkenau, F. The Communist International. London: Faber and
Faber, Ltd., 1938.

Bunyan, James. The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1934. Co-author, H. H. Fisher.

. Intervention, Civil War and Communism in Russia, April-
December, 1918. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1936.

Carr, Edward Hallett. The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1928. Lon-
don: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 3 vols., 1950.

The Case of Henry k Erlick and Victor Alter. London: Liberty Publi-
cations, 1943.

Castro Delgado, Enrique. J'ai perdu la foi a Moscou. Paris:
Gallimard, 1950.

Chamberlin, William Henry. Russia's Iron Age. Boston: Little,
Brown & Co., 1934.

. The Russian Revolution 1917-1921. New York: The

Macmillan Co., 2 vols., 1957.

The Ukraine, A Submerged Nation. New York: The

Macmillan Co., 1944.

Charachidze, D. H. Barbusse, Les Soviets et la Giorgie. Preface de
Karl Kautsky. Paris: Editions Pascal, n.d.

Churchill, Winston S. The World Crisis, The Aftermath. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929.

Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, As amended by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on
February 25, 1947 on the recommendation of the Drafting Com-
mission. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1947.

Crankshaw, Edward. Russia Without Stalin. New York: The
Viking Press, 1956.

Dallin, Alexander. German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945. London:
Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1957.

Dallin, David J. The Changing World of Soviet Russia. New Haven :
Yale University Press, 1956.

. "Crime and Punishment Under the Soviet Regime," in

Handbook on World Communism. J. M. Bochenski and G. Nie-
meyer, eds. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, to be published in
1960.

. Forced Labor in Soviet Russia. New Haven : Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1947. Co-author, Boris I. Nicolaevsky.

The New Soviet Empire. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1951.

Russia and Postwar Europe. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1943.

. Soviet Espionage. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1955.

Soviet Russia's Foreign Policy 1989-1942. New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1942.
Dan, Th. Die Sozialdemokratie Russlands nach dem Jahre 1908, in
J. Martov's Geschichte der Russischen Sozialdemokratie, Berlin;
J.H.W. Dietz Nachfolger, 1926,

364

Dangerfield, Elma. Beyond the Urals. London: British League for

European Freedom, n.d.
Dedijer, Vladimir. Tito. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953.
Deutscher, I. Stalin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.
Douglas, William O. Russian Journey. Garden Citv: Doubleday &

Co., 1956.
Essad-Bev. OGPU, The Plot Against the World. New York: The

Viking Press, 1933.
Fainsod, Merle. How Russia Is Ruled. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1953.
. Smolensk Under Soviet Rule. Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1958.
Fischer, George. Soviet Opposition to Stalin. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1952.
Fischer, Louis. The Life and Death of Stalin. New York: Harper &

Bros., 1952.

. Russia Revisited. Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1957.

Goure, Leon. Soviet Administrative Controls During the Siege of

Leningrad. Santa Monica: The Rand Corp., 1958, RM-2075.
Gsovski, Vladimir. Report Delivered June 13, 1955 at the Second

Plenary Session of the International Congress of Jurists, Report

of the International Congress of Jurists. The Hague : International

Commission of Jurists, 1956.
Gunther, John. Inside Russia Today. New York: Harper & Bros.,

1957.
History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks),

Short Course. New York: International Publishers, 1939.
Hubbard, Leonard E. The Economics of Soviet Agriculture. London:

Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1939.
Jasny, Naum. The Socialized Agriculture of the USSR. Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 1949.
. The Soviet 1956 Statistical Handbook: A Commentary. East

Lansing: The Michigan State University Press, 1957.
Kalb, Marvin L. Eastern Exposure. New York: Farrar, Straus &

Cudahy, 1958.
ELrivitsky, W. G. In Stalin's Secret Service. New York: Harper &

Bros., 1939.
Larsen, Otto. Nightmare of the Innocents. New York: Philosophical

Library, 1957.
Lenin, V. I. Collected Works. New York: International Publishers,

vol. XVIII, 1930; vol. XX, 1929; vol. XXIII, 1945.
. The Essentials of Lenin. London: Lawrence & Wishart,

2 vols., 1947.

Selected Works. Moscow: Co-Operative Publishing Society

of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 12 vols., 1935.

selected Works. New York. International Publishers, 12

vols., 1943.

and Joseph Stalin. Lenin Stalin 1917, Selected Writings

and Speeches. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1938.

and Joseph Stalin. The Russian Revolution. New York:

International Publishers, 1938.
Leonhard, Wolfgang. Child of the Revolution. London: Collins, 1957.
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& Co., 1959.

365

Libernian, Simon. Building Lenin's Russia. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1945.

Littlepage, John D., and Demareo Bess. In Search of Soviet Gold.
New York: Harcourt, Brace <fc Co., 1938.

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Relief of Famine in Russia, 1934.

Mehnert, Klaus. Asien, Moskau und Wir. 3d ed.; Stuttgart:
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1957.

Meissner, Boris. Sowjetrussland zwischen Revolution und Restaura-
tion. Koln: Verlag fur Politik und Wirtschaft, 1956.

Mikolajczyk, Stanislaw. The Rape oj Poland. New York: Whittle-
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Orlov, Alexander. The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes. New York:
Random House, 1953.

Petrov, Vladimir and Evdokia. Empire of Fear. New York: Fred-
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Radkey, Oliver Henry. The Elections to the Russian Constituent
Assembly oj 1917. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.

Rothstein, Andrew, tr. Soviet Foreign Policy During the Patriotic War,
Documents and Materials. London: Hutchins & Co., 2 vols.,
1946-47.

Salisbury, Harrison E. American in Russia. New York: Harper &
Bros., 1955.

Schapiro, Leonard. The Communist Party oj the Soviet Union. New
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Shapiro, Leonard, ed. [vol. I], Soviet Treaty Series, A Collection oj
Bilateral Treaties, Agreements and Conventions, etc., Concluded Be-
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Souvarine, Boris. Stalin. New York: Alliance Book Corp., Long-
mans, Green & Co., 1939.

Stalin, J. V. Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House,
13 vols., 1952-55.

■ ■, and V. M. Molotov. Speeches Delivered at Election Meetings

in Moscow in February 1946. London: Soviet News, 1946.

Struve, Gleb. Soviet Russian Literature, 1917-50. Norman: Uni-
versity of Oklahoma Press, 1951.

Sulzberger, C. L. The Big Thaw. New York: Harper & Bros., 1956.

Teller, Judd L. The Kremlin, the Jews, and the Middle Exist. New
York and London: Thomas Yoseloff, 1957.

Timasheff, Nicholas S. The Great Retreat. New York: E. P. Dutton
& Co., 1946.

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U.S. Congress. House. Select Committee to Conduct an Investi-
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the Katyn Forest Massacre. Interim Report. H. Rept. 2430, 82d
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Voroshilov, K. and others. The Red Army Today. Speeches
Delivered at the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU (B), March
10-21, 1939. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1939.

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Princeton University Press, 1944

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Press. 1957.

>. Three Who Made a Revolution. New York: the Dial Press,

1948.

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Periodicals and Newspapers in Languages Other Than Russian

Caucasian Review, published by the Institute for the Study of the

USSR. Munich:

Djabagui, Vassan-Ghiray. "Soviet Nationality Policy and

Genocide," vol. I, 1955.

For a Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy, Bucharest, Rumania.

Information Bulletin, published by the Embassy of the USSR in the

USA, Washington, D.C.
International Affairs, Moscow.

Graebner, Walter., "Moscow Today," vol. XIV, No. 2, Janu-
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Lithuanian Bulletin, New York.
London Tribune:

Bevan, Aneurin. "Kremlin Personalities." October 1, 1954.
The New Leader, New York:

Dallin, David J. "Khrushchev's Berlin Campaign," vol. XLII,
No. 14, April 6, 1959.

. "The Repatriation Crime of World War II," vol.

XXXIV, No. 16, April 21, 1952.
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No. 19, May 7, 1956. __

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New York Times.

367

New York Times Magazine:

Kennan, George. "Our Aid to Russia, A Forgotten Chapter."
July 19, 1959.
Osteuropa, Stuttgart, Germany:

Burg, David. "Oppositionelle Stimmungen in der Akademischen

Jugend der Sowjetunion." No. 9, September 1957.
Jasny, Naum. "Chruschtschow und die Sowjetwirtschaft."

No. 10, October 1957.
Kolarz, Walter. "Die Rehabilitierung der Liquidierten Sowjet-
volker." No. 6, June 1957.
Population Bulletin, published by the Population Reference Bureau,

Inc., Washington, D.C.
The Sign, published by the Passionist Fathers, Union City, N.J.:
Dallin, David J. "Russia: Advanced Nation?" vol. XXXVIII,
No. 5, December 1958.
Soviet Affairs, Notes, published by the State Department, Washington,

D.C.
Soviet Affairs, Number One, St. Antony's Papers, London:

Scott, E. J. "The Cheka." No. 1, 1956.
Soviet Survey, A Quarterly Review of Cultural Trends, published by the
Congress for Cultural Freedom, Paris:

Jasny, Naum. "Interpreting Soviet Statistics." No. 26, October-
December 1958.

. "Soviet Economy: Target for Tomorrow." No. 26,

January-March 1959.
Kolarz, Walter. "The Nationalities Under "Khrushchev." No.
24, April-June 1958.

INDEX

[EXPLANATORY NOTE: A great variety in the spelling of proper names
appears in this volume of Facts on Communism, due to the use of numerous
quotations from works in English and other languages. This index does not
attempt to reflect every spelling variant. Russian names appearing in the index
follow a transliteration system which corresponds closely to the original
Russian, with the exception of widely-known Russian personages and organiza-
tions which retain the popular Western spelling.]

Pag«

Abakumov, Viktor 238, 282, 310

Abramovich, Raphael 1 79

Academicians, trial of 179, 180

Afro-Asian Neutrals 300, 348, 349

Agriculture :

Bolshevik program . 40, 41, 71, 72

requisitioning of food 82,83, 130

Kronstadt mutineers' program 120

under NEP . 119, 125, 126, 130

collectivization {kolkhozes) _ 158-165, 177, 180, 182, 249, 262, 272, 288

program of right opposition 152

World War II, losses 244

in postwar period 250, 262, 263, 265-267

private plots 250, 288, 290-292, 318

sovkhozes 223, 284, 290, 293, 295, 297

cultivation of tselina 292-295, 345

production statistics 162, 163, 263, 265-267, 296, 297

See also Committees of the Poor; Kulaks; Land Committees; Land tax;
Machine Tractor Stations.

"Agro-cities" ( agrogoroda ) 284

Akhmatova, Anna 258, 260

Alekseev, General Mikhail 90

Alexander II, Tsar . 8

Alexander III, Tsar 8

Allied intervention 87, 111, 113, 116, 117

Alter, Victor 221, 222

American Joint Distribution Committee 134

American Labor Delegation 137

American Relief Administration (ARA)i 133, 134, 135n

Andreev (Andreyev), A. A 284

Anti-Semitism . 274-276

"Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Center," trial of 1 96

Antonov, A. S 118, 119

Antonov-Ovseenko, Vladimir 59, 61

Antonov uprising 102, 118, 119

Armaments:

Lenin on 37

in Soviet industry and economy 171-173, 262, 270, 280, 288

prewar Soviet strength in 208-210, 217, 218

atomic and hydrogen weapons 270, 271, 287, 288

ballistic missiles 353-356

Ji INDEX

Pajre

Armenia 109, 113, 114

Army, Red:

role in "revolutions" outside Russia 81, 206, 207

Bolshevik reforms 74—76

reversion to prerevolutionary type 91, 206, 210-212, 236, 237

Tsarist officers 91, 92, 124

conscription 91, 201

Party supervision 92, 212-216, 236, 237, 345

secret police penetration 101, 176, 213, 214, 238

purged 193, 196, 214, 215, 311

in World War II 218, 227, 228, 236, 237

in occupied territories 242-244

postwar „ 248

post-Stalin 280

size „ 91, 216

See also Commissars in Red Army; PUR; "Special Sections".

Avksentiev, Nikolai 1 8

Axelrod, Paul 9-1 1

Azcrbaidjan 113-115

Bagirov, M. D 310

Balabanoff, Angelica 93

Balkars 239, 313, 343

See also National groups: deportation, rehabilitation.

Banks, nationalization of 39, 72, 73, 83

Belgian Labor Party 140

Belorussia (Byelorussia) 111, 112, 205, 216, 234

Benediktov, I. A 284

Beria, Lavrenti 197, 221,

248, 255, 275, 276, 278, 279, 281, 282, 285, 309, 310, 331, 344

Berlin crisis 35 7

Berman, M. D 186

Bernal, John Desmond 288

Bessarabia 200, 201, 204

"Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites," trial of 197

Bluecher, Marshal V. K 3 1 1

Blumkin, Yakov 87

Bogdanov, Aleksandr 24, 28

Bokhara 113

Boki, Gleb , 1 86

The Bolshevik 250

Bolsheviks. See Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party; Communist Party
of the Soviet Union ; Central Committee.

Botkin, Dr 89

Brdzola 30

Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of 65,87, 112

British Labor Party 287, 349, 350

Bronstein, Lev. See Trotsky, Lev ( Leon ) .

Bukharin, Nikolai 25, 30, 35, 78, 93, 107, 139, 140n, 143, 145, 151-155,

170,183,197,289,322,329

Notes of an Economist 153

Bukovina 200, 204

Bulganin, Nikolai 282, 290, 341, 346

Bulygin 53

Bureaucracy, Soviet 123, 150, 175, 264, 344

Capital punishment 101, 105, 106, 137, 180, 195, 320

Central Committee (of RSDLP, later Communist Party) :

Lenin's concept of 12

Bolsheviks in minority on 23

conflict with Bolshevik Center . 24-26

INDEX Hi

Central Committee — Continued Page

Military Technical Bureau of 24, 27

Bolsheviks in majority on 25

entirely Bolshevik 29

Lenin pressures for revolution 52-58

role in Soviet government 13, 77

and factions in party 142

Secretariat 143-145, 273, 284, 285, 338

decline in power under Stalin 156, 252, 253, 255

endorses terror 192, 194

purged 192, 197, 323

Foreign Department 235n, 338

increased effectiveness of 278, 338

membership 278

struggle for power in 282, 289, 338

supports Khrushchev 340-342

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