In the spring of 1933, officials gave the famine a self-justifying pedagogical gloss. Ukrainian party leader Kosior wrote that “the unsatisfactory preparation for sowing in the worst affected regions shows that the hunger has not yet taught many collective farmers good sense.”482 In the same vein, an official report to Stalin and Molotov from Dnepropetrovsk claimed that collective farmer attitudes had improved as a result of “the understanding that . . . bad work in the collective farm leads to hunger.”483 Such reports followed Stalin’s lead. He admitted privately to Colonel Raymond Robins of the American Red Cross (May 13, 1933)—who had met with Lenin during the acknowledged Soviet famine of 1921–23—that “a certain part of the peasantry is starving now.” Stalin claimed that hardworking peasants were incensed at the indolent ones who caused the famine. “The collective farmers roundly curse us. It is not right to help the lazy—let them perish. Such are the morals.” It was ventriloquism.484
Once Stalin had caused the horror, even complete termination of exports would not have been enough to prevent famine. The regime had no strategic grain reserves left, having released them.485 Only more aggressive purchases of food abroad and open appeals for international assistance could have averted many (and perhaps most) of the deaths. The world had plenty of food in 1933—indeed, the glut was depressing global prices for grain—but Stalin refused to reveal vulnerability, which, in his mind, would incite enemies. Admission also would have been a global propaganda debacle, undermining the boasts about the Five-Year Plan and the collective farms.
• • •
STALIN HAD CAUSED A DOMESTIC CALAMITY and rendered the Soviet Union vulnerable in the face of Japan’s expansionism, while contributing significantly to the ascent in Germany of Hitler, who threatened expansionism, and provoking blistering internal critiques.486 But his faction felt compelled to rally around him. “Loyalty to Stalin,” wrote a military official who later defected, “was based principally on the conviction that there was no one to take his place, that any change in the leadership would be extremely dangerous, and that the country must continue in its present course, since to stop now or attempt a retreat would mean the loss of everything.”487 A correspondent wrote to Trotsky on Prinkipo, in early spring 1933, that “they all speak about Stalin’s isolation and the general hatred of him, but they often add: ‘If it were not for that (we omit the strong epithet), everything would have fallen to pieces by now. It is he who keeps everything together.’”488
Resolute in extremis, Stalin ordered the forced return of peasant escapees, the blacklisting of entire counties (they would suffer the highest mortality), and the banning of fishing in state waters or even private charity—anything that would have made it possible to avoid the collectives.489 The OGPU arrested 505,000 people in 1933, as compared with 410,000 the year before.490 Some farmers were still refusing to sow crops, since the regime would only take the harvested grain away.491 But most weeded the fields, sowed, and brought in the harvest. “All the collective farm workers now say: ‘We understand our mistakes and we are ready to work,’” one local report noted. “‘We will do everything expected of us.’”492 Officials concluded that they had broken the peasants’ will, indirectly suggesting the regime had partnered with famine to achieve subjugation.493 Indeed, it was the famished peasants who would lift the regime and the country out of starvation, producing between 70 and 77 million tons of grain in 1933, a bumper crop comparable to the miracle of 1930.494 The peasants, in their land hunger and separate revolution, had made possible the advent of a Bolshevik regime in 1917–18; now enslaved, the peasants saved Stalin’s rule.495
Through it all, he had revealed escalating rage and pathological suspicion, to the point that not only bourgeois specialists or former tsarist officers were considered as enemies, but many workers and party loyalists. At once self-righteous and self-pitying, the aggressor who somehow was always the victim, full of rage, Stalin could display affection as well. He wrote (June 25, 1933) to Avel Yenukidze, the overseer of Kremlin affairs, who had gone to Germany for treatment of a heart condition, recommending he avoid fats. “Try to observe a diet, move about more, and get fully healthy,” Stalin wrote. “We extended the length of your holiday by a month, and now it’s up to you.” The dictator exhibited his own good spirits. “We have ramped up agriculture and coal,” he added. “Now we’re going to ramp up rail transport. Harvest gathering in the south has already begun. In Ukraine and the North Caucasus, the harvest is taken care of. This is the main thing. In other regions, the outlook so far is good. I’m healthy. Greetings! Your Stalin.”496
CHAPTER 3 VICTORY
Imagine that a house is being built, and when it is finished it will be a magnificent palace. But it is still not finished, and you draw it in this condition and say, “There’s your socialism”—and there’s no roof. You will be a realist, of course—you will be telling the truth. But it is immediately apparent that this truth is in actual fact an untruth. Only the person who understands what kind of house is being built, how it is being built, and who understands that it will have a roof can utter socialist truth.
ANATOLY LUNACHARSKY, former commissar of enlightenment, 1933 1
MARXIST IMPERATIVES OF transcending capitalism—combined with inordinate willpower—brought apocalypse. During the first Five-Year Plan, the volume of investment quadrupled, to 44 percent of GDP by 1932 (measured in 1928 prices), but none of the massive net increase in investment came from higher agricultural surpluses.2 Grain exports did not end up paying for imports of machinery.3 Soviet agriculture made no net contribution to industrialization; on the contrary, it was a net recipient of resources during the plan. True, a key driver of the industrial spurt was new labor power from villages, but the statist system used those workers grossly inefficiently. Another key driver of the spurt was brutally suppressed consumption (reinforced by that thief called inflation).4 Should we view peasant starvation as a source of “investment”? Even if we did, collectivization and dekulakization lowered agricultural output dramatically.5 Stalin’s policies did expand state procurement of grain, potatoes, and vegetables, but at breathtaking economic, to say nothing of human, cost. Collectivization involved the arrest, execution, internal deportation, or incarceration of 4 to 5 million peasants; the effective enslavement of another 100 million; and the loss of tens of millions of head of livestock. The industrialization and accompanying militarization began to revive the Soviet Union as a great power, a necessity for survival in the international system, but collectivization was not “necessary” to “modernize” a peasant economy or industrialize.6