Read Online Stalin's Genocides by Norman M. Naimark - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Norman M. Naimark
Tags: General, History, Military, 20th Century, Europe, Other, Modern, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, 9780691147840
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rapidly industrial-ize the country by pursuing improbably high growth rates.
According to Soviet economists of the period, industrialization could be financed by “forced savings,” meaning that the peasants would be required to sell their grain at low prices, paying higher prices for necessary industrial goods and consuming much less of their own production.
The state would procure the grain and sell it abroad for the purposes of investing in industry.
Stalin regularly used the genuine fear of war and foreign invasion as the justification for his extraordinary measures in both industry and agriculture during the Second Revolution. “We have fallen fifty to one hundred years behind the developed countries,” he lamented in a speech 54
chapter 3
to leading industrial workers in February 1931. “We must make up this distance in ten years. If we fail we will be crushed.”2 Of course, Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist ideology predicted war and intervention; capitalism and imperialism would inevitably strike at the socialist usurper. Therefore the Soviet Union was to be placed on a constant war footing. But under Stalin, the war craze reached a new height, in part because of his own xenophobia and belief in the threats of invasion and in part because it provided a marvelously handy justification for ignoring common sense in economic matters and eliminating alleged political enemies, including the kulaks. During the Central Committee plenum in November 1929, at the outset of the collectivization campaign, Molotov returned to the theme of imminent foreign invasion as the motivation for Soviet policies. “We still have November, December, January, February, and March, four and a half months in which, if the imperialists attack us head-on, we can make a decisive breakthrough in the economy and collectivization.”3
Given the peasants’ unwillingness to part with their agricultural goods at lower prices—they would rather consume what they had or destroy it—Stalin embarked in 1929 on an accelerated program to collectivize the countryside. In the first two months of 1930, half of the Soviet peasantry, some sixty million people in over 100,000
villages, was forced into the hastily assembled collective farms.4 No one should be mistaken about the essentially political goal of this program: to break the back of the independent peasantry. Never again would the “accursed peasants” be allowed to blackmail Soviet policy by with-dekulakization 55
holding grain from the market. But through collectivization, Stalin would also implement the Bolshevik vision of a Soviet socialist countryside that had animated party veterans since the time of the revolution.
The vicious attack on traditional peasant agriculture was accompanied by Stalin’s complete break with Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky, who opposed such irresponsibly violent “economic” measures, and by the introduction of Stalin’s dictatorship. But we also need to recognize that Stalin was not alone in his maniacal disdain for the Russian peasantry and advocacy of collectivized agriculture: many Bolsheviks were nervous about NEP and unwilling to compromise with the countryside. They harbored a deep disdain for the so-called Nepmen, small-scale traders and entrepreneurs, who emerged during this period, as well as for the peasants who were able to hire labor and develop markets for their agricultural production. Many members of the Central Committee and Politburo supported Stalin’s policies and found his arguments compelling.
The primary means by which the countryside would be transformed into collective farms was a radical—one could maintain—genocidal attack on the so-called kulaks, the supposed rich farmers who impeded the socialization of the land and exploited the poor and middle peasants, forcing them to work for little gain and depriving them of the land. (Kulak means fist; these peasants ostensibly were tightfisted and cheap with their supposed stashes of money
According to Soviet economists of the period, industrialization could be financed by “forced savings,” meaning that the peasants would be required to sell their grain at low prices, paying higher prices for necessary industrial goods and consuming much less of their own production.
The state would procure the grain and sell it abroad for the purposes of investing in industry.
Stalin regularly used the genuine fear of war and foreign invasion as the justification for his extraordinary measures in both industry and agriculture during the Second Revolution. “We have fallen fifty to one hundred years behind the developed countries,” he lamented in a speech 54
chapter 3
to leading industrial workers in February 1931. “We must make up this distance in ten years. If we fail we will be crushed.”2 Of course, Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist ideology predicted war and intervention; capitalism and imperialism would inevitably strike at the socialist usurper. Therefore the Soviet Union was to be placed on a constant war footing. But under Stalin, the war craze reached a new height, in part because of his own xenophobia and belief in the threats of invasion and in part because it provided a marvelously handy justification for ignoring common sense in economic matters and eliminating alleged political enemies, including the kulaks. During the Central Committee plenum in November 1929, at the outset of the collectivization campaign, Molotov returned to the theme of imminent foreign invasion as the motivation for Soviet policies. “We still have November, December, January, February, and March, four and a half months in which, if the imperialists attack us head-on, we can make a decisive breakthrough in the economy and collectivization.”3
Given the peasants’ unwillingness to part with their agricultural goods at lower prices—they would rather consume what they had or destroy it—Stalin embarked in 1929 on an accelerated program to collectivize the countryside. In the first two months of 1930, half of the Soviet peasantry, some sixty million people in over 100,000
villages, was forced into the hastily assembled collective farms.4 No one should be mistaken about the essentially political goal of this program: to break the back of the independent peasantry. Never again would the “accursed peasants” be allowed to blackmail Soviet policy by with-dekulakization 55
holding grain from the market. But through collectivization, Stalin would also implement the Bolshevik vision of a Soviet socialist countryside that had animated party veterans since the time of the revolution.
The vicious attack on traditional peasant agriculture was accompanied by Stalin’s complete break with Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky, who opposed such irresponsibly violent “economic” measures, and by the introduction of Stalin’s dictatorship. But we also need to recognize that Stalin was not alone in his maniacal disdain for the Russian peasantry and advocacy of collectivized agriculture: many Bolsheviks were nervous about NEP and unwilling to compromise with the countryside. They harbored a deep disdain for the so-called Nepmen, small-scale traders and entrepreneurs, who emerged during this period, as well as for the peasants who were able to hire labor and develop markets for their agricultural production. Many members of the Central Committee and Politburo supported Stalin’s policies and found his arguments compelling.
The primary means by which the countryside would be transformed into collective farms was a radical—one could maintain—genocidal attack on the so-called kulaks, the supposed rich farmers who impeded the socialization of the land and exploited the poor and middle peasants, forcing them to work for little gain and depriving them of the land. (Kulak means fist; these peasants ostensibly were tightfisted and cheap with their supposed stashes of money
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