LIQUIDATION OF THE KULAKS AS A CLASS
Already by early December 1929, the Soviet state had procured 13.5 million tons of grain—more than twice as much as in any preceding year of the regime.148 But the state had to feed many more rural folk (who had previously purchased or traded for food on the market), set aside grain for ambitious surges in export, and meet the rationing norms for the industrial cities and construction sites, as well as the Red Army.149 In that connection, the November 1929 plenum had created a new USSR land commissariat. Stalin appointed Yakov Epstein, known as Yakovlev, the editor of Peasant Newspaper and a member of the disciplinary Central Control Commission, as commissar.150 He presided over a commission on the tempos of collectivization and forms of collectives, which decided not on the kommuna—full socialization of everything—but on an intermediate form, the artel, with socialization of land, labor, draft animals, and fundamental implements, but private ownership of cows, other livestock, and some everyday tools. Collectivized peasants were also to be allowed to retain household plots. The commission’s thorniest question was whether the “class enemy” kulak would be permitted to join the new socialist agriculture. Disposition of kulaks had largely been left to locals, and many collective farms were admitting them. The Yakovlev commission warned against any blanket approach.151
Suddenly, however, in a speech on the last day (December 27, 1929) of a weeklong Congress of Agrarians-Marxists, Stalin preempted the commission, thundering in words Pravda carried two days later that “we have gone over from a policy of limiting the exploiting tendencies of the kulak to a policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class.” Liquidating an entire class? “Is it possible to accelerate tempos of our socialized industry more while having such an agricultural base as small peasant farms, incapable of expanding production and yet predominating in our economy?” he asked rhetorically. “No, not possible. Is it possible to continue for a more or less long period to base Soviet power and socialist construction on two different foundations—on the foundation of the largest and most consolidated socialist industry and on the foundation of the most subdivided and backward small-scale peasant economy? No, not possible.” He continued: “What’s the solution? The solution is to make agriculture large-scale, make it capable of accumulation, of expanding production, and in this way transform the agricultural base of our economy.”152 Stalin had a famously soft voice, but one audience member called his ultra-class-war speech “electrifying.”153
Once again, the dictator had enacted a conspiracy within the regime: at Old Square, more than a month before, he had received the OGPU hierarchs—Yagoda, Messing, Yevdokimov, and others—as well as Georgy Blagonravov, the former head of the secret police transport department and now first deputy commissar of railroads.154 This would be the kulak liquidation team.
Stalin also used his pencil to hand victory to the more rabid members of the Yakovlev commission: the partially socialized artels were no longer to be allowed as the main form of collectives indefinitely, but would be superseded by a leap to the “higher-form” kommunas. Stalin also crossed out mention of farmers retaining minor implements, chickens, or a milk cow and wrote in that collectivization was to be completed in just one to two years (depending on region), using dekulakization. All this became a politburo resolution approved on January 5, 1930.155 Six days later, Yagoda asked his top subordinates how many people could be interned in existing labor camps and where new camps might be quickly established, encouraging them to “think creatively.”156 The upshot was that each territory would have a deportation quota.157 “Not everyone has the nerves, strength, character, and understanding to appreciate the scenario of a tremendous breakup of the old and a feverish construction of the new,” Stalin exulted in a letter to Gorky in Sorrento (January 17). “Naturally, with such a ‘baffling turmoil,’ we are bound to have those who are exhausted, distraught, worn out, despondent, and lagging—and those who go over to the enemy camp. These are the inevitable ‘costs’ of revolution.”158
Stalin issued secret circulars to local party machines on the dekulakization of more than 2 million peasants, using every available instrument: the procuracy, courts, regular police (militia), secret police, party activists, urban workers, and, if necessary, soldiers.159 Orjonikidze let slip the recklessness at the Central Control Commission on January 18: “Do not forget that in our conditions, what yesterday was considered correct today might already be incorrect.”160
BUILDERS OF THE NEW WORLD
There were more than 500,000 settlements in just the European part of the Soviet Union. Newspaper articles and decrees made their way to the county level and even below, but the party-state lacked rural cadres that could see through consistent implementation.161 Stalin, however, had an ace in his deck: a decision to recruit urban workers to build socialism in the countryside had been announced at the November 1929 plenum. Trade unions (“Time does not wait!”) were recruiting “politically literate” workers who were to inject their superior “consciousness” into the vast “spontaneity” of the petit bourgeois countryside.162 Worker volunteers were backed by considerable force. Red Army men would be used sparingly—the OGPU was warning of “kulak” moods even among poor peasant soldiers—but thousands of OGPU internal troops were deployed.163 “Those who are joining the collective farm, sign up with me,” one activist announced. “Those who do not want to join, sign up with the police chief.”164
Of Stalin’s many instruments, however, none was greater than the enchanted vision of building a new world. The regime had planned to mobilize up to 25,000 urban workers; more than 70,000 were said to have volunteered, and around 27,000 were accepted. More than two thirds were party members, and more than four fifths were from industrial regions. The vast majority had between five and twelve years’ factory experience, but nearly half belonged to the 23–29 age cohort.165 Only one in fourteen were female. “Your role is the role of the proletarian leader,” Kaganovich told a group of Moscow and Leningrad “25,000ers” about to depart for villages. “There will be difficulties, there will be kulak resistance and sometimes even collective farmer resistance, but history is moving in our favor. . . . Either we destroy the kulaks as a class, or the kulaks will grow as a class of capitalists and liquidate the dictatorship of the proletariat.”166 Semyon Budyonny, the civil war cavalry hero, and Voroshilov had appeared at Moscow train stations to conduct send-offs to “the grain front.”167 One worker recruit was quoted as saying, “It has been necessary for a long time to carry out such a firm policy, the sooner to catch up to capitalist countries.”168
The 25,000ers descended on the countryside in late January/early February 1930, in advance of the spring sowing drive.* They discovered that the regime-instigated class war was eliciting both social solidarity—poor peasants hiding or aiding kulaks—and peasant eagerness to benefit from expropriating those betteroff.169 Peasant property, seized in the name of the state without compensation, was supposed to be turned over to the new collectives after settlement of outstanding debts of the household in question, and its value counted toward the joining fees for poor peasant members.170 But activists (or onlookers) who evicted “kulaks” could take their possessions. One OGPU report stated that members “of lower echelons of the party-soviet apparatus deprived members of kulak and middle peasant households of their clothing and warm underwear (directly from their body), ‘confiscated’ headwear from children’s heads, and removed shoes from people’s feet.”171 A favored trick was the “auction”: one new village party secretary managed to obtain a four-room house, valued at 700 rubles, for 25.172