The Soviet Century

Moshe Lewin, Gregory Elliott

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781784786502
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: History

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution the Soviet Union remains the most extraordinary, yet tragic, attempt to create a society beyond capitalism. Yet its history was one that for a long time proved impossible to write.In The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin follows this history in all its complexity, guiding us through the inner workings of a system which is still barely understood. In the process he overturns widely held beliefs about the USSR's leaders, the State-Party system and the powerful Soviet bureaucracy.Departing from a simple linear history, The Soviet Century traces all the continuities and ruptures that led from the founding revolution of October 1917 to the final collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, passing through the Stalinist dictatorship, the impossible reforms of the Khrushchev years and the glasnost and perestroika policies of Gorbachev.

PART ONE

A REGIME AND ITS PSYCHE

INTRODUCTION

The 1930s occupy a very special place in the relatively short history of the Soviet system. First, because they took the form of a high-intensity drama in a country that had not yet fully recovered from the aftermath of the First World War and the Civil War of 1918–21. Second, because the short-lived New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s, although quite successful in restoring the country to minimal levels of physical (biological) and political viability, still left it short of what was required to confront the internal, and especially external, challenges that were looming on the horizon. The sudden launch of the five-year plans (piatiletki) triggered a chain of utterly unexpected, startling events. The first surprise was the Stalinist ‘big drive’, which occurred against the backdrop of the deep economic recession that engulfed the US and Europe but stopped short at the borders of the USSR. The second was a series of internal upheavals consequent upon this new policy. The unprecedented national effort dictated and executed by a determined elite and a ruthless supreme leader, heavily reliant on the state’s coercive machinery, generated a spate of radical changes in all directions, which had a significant rebound effect on the regime itself. They shaped it in a way that amounted to the formation of a new, sui generis, state system, which, at least in its early stages, seemed to some actors, but also to outside observers, to embody the aspiration to a higher form of social justice. Others – especially some years later – regarded it as a new form of state slavery.

It might legitimately be asked how one and the same system could elicit such incompatible judgements in these years. But one fact is undeniable: the country was undergoing extremely rapid changes. A (hypothetical) party or government official, who for some purpose or other had been on a foreign mission during the first years of the plan, would certainly have been struck on his return by the astonishing changes that had occurred in the interim. Much more so, at any rate, than a White Russian returning to the country in the 1920s (there were such cases) and comparing Russia under the NEP with Tsarist Russia. However irritated by the novelties introduced by the regime, the latter would still have seen all around him the ‘Mother Russia’ he knew. He might even have felt quite reassured. By contrast, the Soviet official returning to Moscow in the 1930s would have found virtually none of the institutions he was familiar with in the 1920s. The press, the nepmen, the stores, the supply system, the political debates, most cultural life – all this had gone. The workplace, the pace of life, the slogans, and also (on closer inspection) the party itself – all were transformed. Political life and the policies adopted were different and impetuous. Stalin’s image and slogans extolling him now covered the walls of towns and village squares alike. Initially portrayed alongside Lenin, he soon invariably came to be represented alone. The meaning of these iconographic switches would not as yet have been readily apparent.

This state system early on received the name of ‘Stalinism’, and the man at the helm was manifestly and unambiguously in control. This does not mean that the system’s characteristics are to be ascribed exclusively to its head. In many ways, they transcended the leader’s way of running things. The considerable changes that occurred in the way the regime was managed after Stalin’s death indicate this. But the converse is also true: many basic characteristics remained in place. Determining what actually did change, and what endured, is a key problem in understanding the country’s history. But it also presents the historian with a recurrent obstacle, which pertains to the philosophy of history: how much can be attributed to an individual leader? Is he an independent agent, i.e. an autonomous factor? If so, all we need is a biography. Or is he a product of historical circumstances and conditions, of the country’s traditions, of its potential and limitations? In that case, we need a work of history.

The 1930s do not present historians with an easy task, regardless of whether they are dealing with personal or objective factors. As has been suggested, these years contain enough contradictory elements for some people to depict them in glowing colours, while for others they were nothing but a Calvary. And many autobiographies reveal their authors oscillating between these extremes. The fact that so many people, at the time or subsequently, refused to believe in the image of Stalin as the criminal organizer of a regime of terror may have had much to do with those aspects of his policies that unquestionably served the country’s interests. As many Russian and non-Russian observers agree, the USSR’s victory in the Second World War was an epic that saved the country and had great international impact. But it could not have been achieved by Tsarism or a similar regime. On the other hand, ignorance – fruit of the secretive character of the Stalinist state – also certainly contributed to the successful propagation of the image of the ‘great Stalin’ as imposed by its subject.

A scholarly approach cannot ignore these ‘extremes’. But its purpose does not consist in wavering between such determinist notions as ‘There was no alternative’ and ‘Stalin was inevitable’, or contrary views stressing the fortuitous, usurpatory and arbitrary dimensions of the Stalinist phenomenon. It is preferable to concentrate on the actual course of history, analysing the context – i.e. the full interplay of relevant factors – that contributed to the making of a regime which abandoned the requisite rules of the political game – rules it still unquestionably possessed in the early years of the NEP. Stalinism was precisely the flip side of a party system that had lost control over its political existence. That many vital state functions continued to be taken in charge does not alter this fact. However, it is also an incentive to carry on exploring the way in which the various factors remained active. Stalin’s arbitrary power was never immune from the rebound of developments – from what was advancing or slowly decaying in the country, around him and, ultimately, inside him.

The period 1928–39 unquestionably stands out because, although brief, it condenses all the past and future problems of the Soviet system. Understanding the Stalinist period is indispensable. But this does not mean that we subscribe to the widespread cliche according to which that is all there is to know. It cannot be repeated too often that many features distinguished the Stalinist system both from the NEP and from the post-Stalinist system, and yet at the same time all three periods have much in common. Study of the 1930s should help to clarify not only this point, but also a series of other problems that constitute so many knots in the historical tangle of Russia.

We are now in a position to disclose one of our findings: it transpires that while history had rendered Stalin’s regime profoundly dysfunctional, it also prepared the factors and actors that would make it possible to proceed to the subsequent chapter in Soviet history.

1

STALIN KNOWS WHERE HE
WANTS TO GET TO – AND IS
GETTING THERE

Stalin died some fifty years ago. New sources have become available and fine books are in the process of being written. Notwithstanding this wealth of material, however, it remains difficult to get the full measure of his character inasmuch as assessments and first-hand testimony offer contrasting portraits and snapshots. Some present a matter-of-fact, well-informed, often polite, and even benevolent leader – in other words, a rational statesman. Others offer a cold, manipulative tactician. Yet others depict a control freak, distrusting everyone and everything, an irate, vindictive monster who could barely contain his fits of rage; or worse, a capricious madman who believed the massacres he committed were his greatest political invention. Ham actor on a grand scale or skilful organizer? For many, he was nothing but a pathetic figure who made a mess of everything. Was he talented, even a genius (however evil)? Or just a vulgar and perverse mediocrity?

This kaleidoscopic picture is further complicated by the fact that observers who had pronounced on the subject in one setting subsequently revised their judgement when they saw the same man in different situations.

Such diametrically opposed assessments (some of which do reflect the reality and nature of Stalin) are bewildering. Given, however, that we are dealing with a figure known for meticulously staging his appearances, a case can be made for the idea that all the various Stalins glimpsed by observers were authentic. At all events, we must state the obvious: the whole phenomenon had a beginning and an end, dictated not merely by the banal fact of mortality, but also because the phase of systemic aberration the USSR endured under Stalin had its natural limits. This obliges us to reinsert Stalin into the historical flux from which he emerged, to which he contributed, and from which he departed in dying a natural death. This tortuous, bloody, intensely dramatic and deeply personal path was also one component of a historical ‘motherboard’ – in other words, it was also an impersonal product. Some of these aspects will be clarified here; others will be broached in Part Three.

We shall begin by querying what is usually regarded as incontestable. Stalin was a member of the Bolshevik Party, a Leninist like everyone else in the leadership. Or so it appeared. He did indeed belong to the leading circles, was a member of the Central Committee, and later of the Politburo. Especially during the Civil War, he served as Lenin’s man on special assignments. And yet, intellectually and politically Stalin was different from most of the historical figures in the Bolshevik movement. The other Bolshevik leaders were often political analysts, who knew the West well because they had lived there. More ‘European’, easier to ‘read’, they were interested in theoretical questions and intellectually superior to Stalin. He was less well-educated, with little experience of the outside world. Capable of leading discussions and conducting arguments, he was no orator. He was secretive, intensely self-centred, cautious and scheming. His highly sensitive ego could be soothed, if by anything, only by a sense of his own greatness, which had to be unreservedly acknowledged by others.

Acquiring personal power seemed to Stalin the surest way to compel others to bow to him. Despite his high position (he entered the Politburo on its creation in 1919), he was overshadowed not only by Lenin and Trotsky – the two top-ranking leaders – but also by a pleiad of others who did not know – and could not have conceived – that they would one day have to yield to him completely. Stalin must have compensated for this relative inferiority by mobilizing his own fantasies of greatness and assigning himself a much larger part than he actually played. He did it by gathering around him an expanding group of insignificant acolytes and sycophants like Voroshilov or Budenny; the abler but still uncouth Ordzhonikidze; the skilful but very young Mikoyan; and, somewhat later, Molotov, who became, perhaps unwittingly at the outset, the future dictator’s main support and a high priest of his cult.

These features of a profoundly authoritarian personality were given free rein during the Civil War – an experience that contributed considerably to Stalin’s vision of the form that the new state emerging from its ravages should take and of how it should be governed. At the same time, such ideas represented an ingredient of the psychological urge for self-aggrandizement. In short, one cannot but be struck by the difference between his personality and what we know about the other members of the ‘old guard’, Lenin included. Stalin’s world was initially quite naturally shaped by the traditions of his native Caucasus, and subsequently by his experience of the depths of popular Russia. By contrast, the impact on him of the Second and Third Internationals was minimal, if not non-existent. Accordingly, it was no wonder that he and his intimates emerged from the Civil War with a quite different approach to what should be done in Russia from that of Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev and their ilk, whether the issue was their conception of socialism or the kind of state that should run the country. Thus, two very different political and cultural universes coexisted within what was presented as ‘Bolshevism’, and this coexistence endured as long as everyone shared the same key objective. Once the regime defeated the ‘Whites’, the two divergent orientations surfaced and clashed: one concentrated on equipping Russia with a state that defended the interests of the majority of the population; the other focused its strategy on the state itself – an approach shared by many in Russia, not least in the ranks of Civil War veterans.

At this stage, dictatorship was the only available option. The Civil War had temporarily concealed the fact that the term did not denote a single unequivocal reality. This is far from being the case: dictatorial regimes come in different shapes and colours, just like other political regimes – including democracies, which all too often fluctuate, and sometimes dangerously, between authoritarian, liberal and social-democratic variants. Once peace had returned, and the issue was to construct a peacetime state, two antagonistic models came to the fore. The differences revolved around representations of Russia, the type of state power required to handle the nationalities problem, cooperation, the peasantry, party structure, development strategies, and the kind of social transformation to aim at. Two politically opposed camps found themselves within what was supposedly the same party. Predictably, the one that ended up winning preserved the old name for a time. But we know what it became – and how rapidly.

Because for the most part Stalin kept his goals concealed, other party leaders were outmanoeuvred. By the time they realized the trap they had set for themselves, it was too late. Lenin himself was fooled for quite a while. When he finally understood what he was dealing with, again it was too late for effective remedial action. Stalin’s rise was greatly facilitated by the fact that Lenin was seriously ill from late 1920 onwards. On and off medication, subject to extensive treatment, for long periods he had to abandon political activity – especially for much of 1922 and part of 1923. As we have stressed, however, the problem went deeper than ‘deciphering’ Stalin’s personality, for with the latter went a whole vision of the political line to be pursued in future years. Implicit in his political behaviour, this had not yet been explicitly formulated. Even so, the two different programmes emerged very clearly during ‘Lenin’s last struggle’, as attested mainly (but not exclusively) in his so-called ‘testament’. Stalin’s position became evident in his plans for the constitutional form of the USSR, which were debated and adopted in 1922–3 under his rule (he had become party general-secretary in 1922). The documents relating to the construction of the USSR contain the most revealing material about the clash between Lenin and Stalin, even though the polemic went much further and deeper than the nationalities problem in the Soviet state. It ran virtually the whole gamut of system-building: ideology, the respective roles of party and state, economic policy, and especially the strategically crucial issue of policies towards the peasantry.¹

Materials that became available after perestroika enable us to appreciate not only how far-reaching the differences were, but also the profound personal hostility that had developed between Lenin and the figure he had himself selected as general-secretary – a post that at the time was not meant to have the importance it subsequently acquired. Stalin’s hostility towards Lenin and Lenin’s growing irritation with Stalin – a deepening personal and ideological divide that was concealed from all but a few insiders – can be sampled, or rather guessed at, from a previously unknown letter by Stalin to Lenin, written some time in 1921.² This letter, which deals with the party apparatus, Lenin’s wife Krupskaya, and the Politburo, offers a rare insight into how Stalin’s political mind worked. As it transpires from the text, the story began with a complaint from Krupskaya to Lenin (she kept her ailing husband informed on many subjects): Stalin had created a large party agitprop department that ‘looks like a full-blown new commissariat’, with virtually the same tasks and objectives as the political education department she headed in the education commissariat, thus undermining it. After carefully reading her memo, Lenin forwarded it to Stalin with his remarks, requesting him not to concern himself with agitprop. Stalin’s reply was that of a kinto – Georgian for ‘street-urchin’ (the nickname he had been given in his youth). He behaved like a petty, insolent intriguer, exploiting the fact that his correspondent was not in the best of health. He denied the figures Krupskaya had given for the number of officials recruited to the department. He claimed that he had been forced to take on this department, but now refused to give it up, ‘explaining’ to Lenin that it was in his interests for him to stay on since, if not, ‘Trotsky will conclude that Lenin is only doing this because of Krupskaya’. In short, Stalin refused to knuckle under.

The ruse is obvious. It was not, of course, a question of what Trotsky would say. It was Stalin’s way of telling Lenin that he knew the story came from Krupskaya; and of giving him to understand that faced with the formidable Trotsky, who at the time was in conflict with Lenin on a series of issues, the latter, weakened by illness, could not be certain of commanding a majority in the Politburo without Stalin’s help.

Nineteen twenty-one witnessed more of these skirmishes, which are just as revealing. The Trotsky card that Stalin played to contain Lenin emerged during this period, which was dominated by a rather sterile dispute about the role of trade unions between a Trotsky-led minority and Lenin’s majority in the Politburo. Trotsky, who had been rebuffed that year when he proposed a change of course to an NEP-type system, could see no other way of handling the economic devastation than by temporarily persisting with quasi-military methods for mobilizing manpower. For his part, Lenin could not as yet envisage a new economic policy, but wanted to allow the unions, rooted in the working class, greater autonomy. The two factions manoeuvred to win over a majority of delegates to the upcoming Eleventh Party Congress. As Mikoyan testified in his autobiography Tak Bylo (‘It happened like this’), if Lenin participated in some of the meetings held to refine tactics to counter Trotsky, it was Stalin who conducted the whole operation.

Making common cause with Lenin against his bête noire – Trotsky – seemed to Stalin a good way of manipulating the former. And this is what he was also up to in the ‘Krupskaya affair’. But it is possible that these machinations – and Stalin’s grudge against Lenin himself – developed even earlier, during the Civil War, but had passed unnoticed because of urgent military tasks and the fact that the chief target of Stalin’s intrigues at the time was Trotsky. Stalin’s total lack of respect and, soon, hatred, for Lenin – this is my point here – were indirectly fed by his...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One: A Regime and its Psyche
• Part Two: The 1960s and Beyond: From a New model to a New Impasse
• Part Three: The Soviet Century: Russia in Historical Context
• Notes
• Glossary of Russian Terms
• Appendices
• Note on Sources and References
• Index