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The Smolensk Scandal and the End of NEP

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Daniel R. Brower
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Extract

The events of the last years of NEP—the New Economic Policy—confront historians with two complex and still controversial issues: the effect of these “new” policies on the Russian economy, on society, and on methods of Communist rule in the country and the political conflict dividing the party leadership in the late 1920s. The first issue raises the question of the extent to which NEP was evolving in a direction compatible with the Communists' dream of a socialist society, with the short-term political needs of the Soviet state, and with the priorities of economic development. The second issue focuses on the political instability generated by the controversy over domestic policy and methods of rule, as well as by the personal antagonism between the two key political leaders, Nikolai Bukharin and Stalin. The debate on these questions, answers to which are crucial to our understanding of the origins of Stalinism, has for the most part relied on evidence drawn from central party and state activities, giving the discussion a panoramic view of the history of those years.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , Winter 1986 , pp. 689 - 706
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1986

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References

Research on this article was supported by grants from the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center and from the University of California.

1. The literature dealing with the subject is voluminous and continues to grow. Among recentworks are Robert, Tucker, ed., Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York: Norton, 1977 Google Scholar; Carr, E. H. and Davies, R. W., Foundations of a Planned Economy 1926–1929, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1969–1971)Google Scholar; Moshe, Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the History of Interwar Russia, trans. Porter, Catherine (New York: Pantheon, 1985 Google Scholar; Sheila, Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982 Google Scholar; Stephen, Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography 1888–1938 (reprint; New York: Vintage, 1980)Google Scholar; and idem, Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1985), esp.chaps. 2 and 3.

2. Brief discussion of the scandal is found in Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 48–51; Carr and Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy 2: 136–141; Olga, Narkiewicz, The Making of the Soviet State Apparatus (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1970), pp. 162–173 Google Scholar.

3. Tucker, “Stalinism as Revolution from Above,” in Tucker, ed., Stalinism, p. 79.

4. Pravda, 18 May 1928.

5. “Reshenie TsK i TsKK,” Rabochii Put', 13 June 1928.

6. Ibid., 29 May 1928.

7. Quoted (disapprovingly, yet cited at length) by V. Feigin, “Smolenskii signal,” Bol'shevik, 31May 1928, p. 18.

8. Stalin, , Works (Moscow, 1949) 11: 15–16 Google Scholar.

9. Cohen, Bukharin, pp. 250—251.

10. Thomas, Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R, 1917–1967 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 172 Google Scholar.

11. Feigin, “Smolenskii signal,” p. 16.

12. “Prigovor,” Smolensk archive, National archives, WKP 337 (“Bosiatskii komitet “), pp. 29–36. (Smolensk archive hereafter will be referred to as SA.) I am indebted to C. S. Shelly for discoveringthis file.

13. “Obvinitel'noe zakliuchenie,” SA, WKP 337, p. 80 r.

14. “Prigovor” SA, pp. 56–57.

15. Donald, Male, Russian Peasant Organization before Collectivization: A Study of Commune and Gathering, 1925–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 159, 161Google Scholar.

16. “V Kadrymovskoi volosti” Izvestiia TsKK, 25 May 1928.

17. “Ob “edinennoe zasedanie GubKK i Gubkom (6/1/1928)” SA, WKP 33, p. 412.

18. Feigin, “Smolenskii signal,” p. 16.

19. “Prigovor,” SA, pp. 53–54.

20. “Obvinitel'noe zakliuchenie,” SA, p. 70.

21. Stalin, Works 11: 6.

22. “Protokol volostnogo partiinogo sobraniia 17-go iiunia 1928,” ṠA, WKP 48, p. 14 r.

23. Feigin, “Smolenskii signal,” p. 16.

24. “Protokol partiinogo sobraniia 17-go iunia 1928,” SA, WKP 48, p. 43.

25. “Protokol ob “edinennogo plenuma Smolenskoi partorganizatsii,” 18–19 May 1928, SA, WKP 33, p. 384.

26. Ibid., p. 379; the charge that Beika was guilty of “depravity and sexual licentiousness” with “a wife in every town,” repeated by Fainsod, deserves to be treated with the same scepticism as thosedirected against the cadres in place in 1928, for it came from his former chauffeur, participating inthe orchestrated campaign to blacken the former provincial leadership (ibid., p. 370).

27. The pervasiveness of provincial and local party “principalities” and “fiefdoms” at that time ismentioned briefly in Cohen, Bukharin, p. 214.

28. On the Katushka affair, see Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, p. 49, and Carr and Davies, Foundations 2: 138.

29. Feigin, “Smolenskii signal,” p. 19.

30. Ibid., pp. 14–15.

31. “Protokol plenuma,” SA, WKP 33, 19 May 1928, p. 385 r.

32. Feigin, “Smolenskii signal,” p. 18.

33. “Protokol plenuma,” 18–19 May 1928, SA, WKP 33, p. 334 r.

34. “Protokol soveshchaniia pri Smolenskom Gubkome,” 28 December 1927, SA, WKP 33, pp.45–46.

35. “Protokol soveshchaniia … po voprosu o zagotovkakh tovarov,” 20 January 1928, SA, WKP 33, p. 190 r.

36. The new “battle for grain” is discussed in Moshe, Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization, trans. Nove, Irene (Evanston III.: Northwestern. University. Press, 1968, p. 217–232 Google Scholar.

37. “Dokladnaia zapiska ob itogakh khoziaistvennoi kampanii 1927–28—po sostoianiiu do10/IV/28,” 3 May 1928, SA, WKP 33, p. 319.

38. “Protokol zasedaniia biuro Smolenskogo gubkoma,” 5 March 1928. SA, WKP 33, p. 300.

39. “Protokol plenuma,” 18–19 May 1928, SA, WKP 33, p. 379 r.

40. Stalin, Works 11: 22.

41. “Protokol plenuma,” 19 May 1928, SA, WKP 33, p. 377 r.

42. Ibid., p. 384. 43. Ibid., p. 384 r.

44. Ibid., p. 373.

45. Bailes, Kendall F., Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 73–75 Google Scholar.

46. Stalin, “Report to April Plenum,” Works 11: 67.

47. “Protokol plenuma,” 19 May 1928, SA, WKP 33, p. 380.

48. “Protokol obshchego sobraniia … Bokhotskoi volostnoi partorganizatsii,” 3 June 1928, SA, WKP 48, p. 12 and 12 r.

49. A brief discussion of Tseitlin and the other members of this “Bukharin school” is in Cohen, Bukharin, pp. 218–221.

50. The first public announcement of the policy occurred at the same time the Smolensk investigationwas getting under way ( “O samokritike,” Pravda, 23 March 1928); Cohen suggests the entirecampaign was conceived by Stalin as a “legitimate way to attack and mobilize support against theentrenched rightist leaderships” (Cohen, Bukharin, pp. 218–282).

51. Pravda, 19 April 1928.

52. His perceptive vision of this nightmarish future is discussed in Cohen, Bukharin, pp. 141–146.

53. “Protokol Plenuma,” 18 May 1928, SA, WKP 33, p. 363 r.

54. Sheila Fitzpatrick has uncovered evidence from a later discussion between Rykov and Urals officials that provincial leaders believed the Right was “out to get the [party] secretaries” (Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, p. 118).

55. “Protokol ob “edinennogo zasedaniia,” 1 June 1928, SA, WKP 33, p. 412 and 412 r; ibid., 30June 1928, pp. 507 and 507 r.

56. The Chinese Communist party appears in a better condition in the 1980s to implement agricultural policies similar to NEP, having exhausted much of its revolutionary zealotry during twenty-five years of Maoism. Though “leftist” opposition to the reforms did emerge, most cadres quickly accepted the new policies, some proving as adept as Soviet cadres of the 1920s in turning peasant enterprise to their own benefit (See Thomas Bernstein, “Reforming China's Agriculture,” paper prepared for the conference “To Reform the Chinese Political Order,” Harwichport, Mass., June 1984).