These cases of disillusionment among highly placed cadres close to the corridors of power must be supplemented by information on the way in which ordinary party members lost their enthusiasm. It was long assumed that under Stalin it was not possible to leave the party without inviting reprisals. But the opening of the archives led to the discovery that such cases were real enough – sometimes even numerous – but rarely ostentatious, which explains why the phenomenon remained invisible for so long. The available data indicate that between 1922 and 1935 approximately one and a half million members left the party, mostly by failing to pay dues and thereby letting their membership lapse. Others changed workplace and address without re-registering with the local party branch. In other words, they drifted away and many of them were subsequently expelled. There were many workplaces where the number of those who had left the party exceeded current membership levels.[6]
These former members, and those excluded during the wave of so-called ‘pre-purges’ in 1935–6 when membership cards were being checked, afforded an automatic target for the onslaught of 1937–8. The one and a half million people who had left the party represented a huge pool of self-declared ‘enemies of the people’ for the NKVD to cast their nets in.
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON THE PARTY AND STATE ADMINISTRATION
During the 1930s, the party apparatus grew ever larger and more complex. Stalin had the first and last word on everything, on every meeting and every institution. In one sense, this should have simplified decision-making and policy execution alike. But this simplification – it certainly seemed such to Stalin – was nothing but an illusion: the party apparatus continued to swell, which could only complicate things.
The number of People’s Commissariats also kept increasing – from ten in 1924 to eighteen in 1936 and then forty-one in 1940 – as did ‘state committees’ with Commissariat status like Gosplan, Grain Procurement, Higher Education and Artistic Affairs. Their staffs expanded at the same rate. The logic of party control as practised at the time dictated a corresponding adaptation. At every level, and especially at the centre, each party organization was instructed to create in its own apparatus branch departments, equipped with the appropriate personneclass="underline" heads, deputies, instructors, technical staff.[7] By 1939 the Central Committee apparatus contained large structural directorates for each branch of state administration, as well as a massive ‘directorate for cadres’ (upravlenie kadrov). When Malenkov was its secretary, the Central Committee was composed of forty-five departments – one for practically each branch of government activity. At republican district levels, the party apparatuses were also constantly expanding, with ever more rigid hierarchies.
The conduct of internal party affairs was strictly centralized. Virtually everything of any importance ended up on the agenda of the Politburo, which took the final decision. This amounted to hundreds of items which, in a less centralized system, would never have been dealt with at this level. Predictably, with such a vast number of items to get through, the Politburo did not have time to go into the genuinely important ones. It operated on the basis that they would have been thrashed out en route from the Secretariat to the Orgburo. The overload at the top, and the exponential expansion of the party apparatus and state administration, created a vicious circle; and the system’s efficiency was almost inevitably relegated to the lowest priority. As long as increased staffing was primarily a means of meeting the obvious need to control a sprawling, unruly reality, amid a constant shortage of supplies and very low living standards, this vicious circle could not be broken. The truth of this claim can be attested by glancing at how things looked to those at the bottom of the ladder.
In a very gloomy letter, written following a tour of inspection of the party organization in the Far Eastern Province (Dal’kraikom) accompanied by a Central Committee instructor, Shcherbakov, head of the Central Committee’s Cadres Department, reported that what he had discovered resembled a ‘railway station in total chaos’. In one year (1 January 1933 to 1 January 1934), party membership in the region had shrunk from 44,990 to 23,340: 7,651 members had been expelled, 1,892 downgraded to the status of ‘sympathizers’, 1,557 had left the area with authorization and 6,328 without (they had simply deserted). Among the last group were people with a solid party record, but also irreplaceable specialists who were urgently required. According to the two inspectors, the reasons for the exodus were as follows: ‘an excessively bureaucratic attitude’ towards members displayed by the provincial party committee; neglect of their recreational and cultural needs; and scandalous housing conditions for workers and specialists alike. Some of them were still living in dug-outs; one family was living in the toilets; other families were staying in disgusting dormitories; five people were crammed into one room of six square metres; and so on. Construction materials and builders were being sent to the province every year, but the housing situation remained lamentable and public services were completely neglected (public baths, crèches, hospitals, theatres). The food situation was very bad and the provincial party committee was doing nothing. It simply expelled those who had deserted and constantly shuffled cadres around from place to place. In fact, no one knew for sure how many party members there were.
The apparatchik who wrote this gloomy report requested that the situation be investigated by the Orgburo (the level below the Politburo), or even be put on the agenda of the party’s Control Commission, in order to remedy things.
This sorry state of affairs involved a remote, low-priority region that would anyway have been assigned second- or third-rate leaders. But malfunctioning in local party organizations and administrative agencies was endemic in many more central regions. The constant expansion in the number of tasks and difficult living conditions easily outstripped the ability of party cadres to handle such problems. These regions lived in something like a permanent state of emergency, which they coped with reasonably, badly, or not at all – as in the just-cited case of the Dal’kraikom. Itself expanding rapidly, the party’s control apparatus could make reports, but was probably overwhelmed by what it found.
We have already seen that any mess, often caused by the centre’s own policies, was arbitrarily imputed to lower-level cadres. This was inherent in the Stalinist method of government. Any mishap, catastrophe, tragedy or chaotic situation could readily be interpreted as an act of sabotage. In this respect, party cadres enjoyed no privileges; as cadres, they were potentially guilty – and the higher the rank, the more likely this was. At a higher level of responsibility, they were capable of inflicting more damage than lower ranks could and for this reason were ‘naturally’ under suspicion.
6
RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 278, containing material on the various pre – 1937 purges and the party ranks and apparatus.
7
V. G. Kolychev, in D. A. Volkogonov, otvet. red.,