This paranoiac system of government had an additional twist. There was no reason to wait for the danger actually to materialize. That would have been imprudent. Great leadership involved ‘preventive medicine’. Our initial analysis of the ‘cadre philosophy’, but also the disruption and human suffering we observe towards 1933 – consequent on the failures of the ‘collectivization’ of the peasantry and breakneck industrialization, not to mention the famine that struck the Ukraine and parts of Russia – mean that we are not in the least surprised to find massive recourse to such ‘preventive medicine’, in the form of large-scale bloody purges. A storm of protest was brewing against the government’s policy, especially in the countryside, and Stalin risked becoming the focus of it. This was quite unacceptable to him, and a spectacular campaign was launched to shift the blame elsewhere. Repressive measures were adopted and there were signs that something more was in the offing. In his speech to the Central Committee meeting of January 1933 on the state of the country, Stalin referred to a host of enemies undermining the regime’s foundations like termites. And yet, despite these ominous signals, the policy actually adopted in May 1933 took the opposite course, making the unanticipated ‘interlude’ of 1933–4 all the more remarkable. A country in the throes of famine may not buy the idea that the supreme leader has nothing to do with it. So the economic situation had to improve, and Stalin’s prestige be restored, before the mass terror was unleashed and took on the appearance of a manifestation of strength. Stalin was in the process of planning his killing frenzy, but he was doing it very methodically.
THE ‘INTERLUDE’
The Seventeenth Party Congress was held in April 1934. Dubbed the ‘Congress of the Victors’, it sang the praises of the main victor among them: Stalin. But it also epitomized the line of internal appeasement initiated a year earlier. It offered oppositionists the chance to appear before it, mainly to repent their errors in public. Just as remarkable were the decision substantially to reduce the growth rates fixed for the second five-year plan (1933–7) and an appeal for greater respect for legality in the country. The new line was proclaimed with much fanfare, and signals were sent to the effect that the regime finally had its feet firmly on the ground. A Writers’ Congress took place the same year, which seriously discussed literary issues and celebrated the passing of the sectarian Writers’ Union. Less noticed at the time was a short speech by one Andrei Zhdanov – a party secretary, not a writer – laying down, almost sotto voce, the line of ‘socialist realism’ in all the arts. If it went largely unremarked, it was because it was overshadowed by spectacular interventions from Bukharin, Radek and Ehrenburg, and many others, which were much more open and intellectually stimulating.
These moves were important ingredients of the ‘new line’. In a letter to Stalin of 13 September 1934,[8] Ehrenburg took it seriously. His hopes were raised by the USSR’s new foreign policy, with entry into the League of Nations and ‘common fronts’ between communists and social-democrats in response to the rise of fascism. But he complained about the Soviet organization responsible for relations with foreign writers, denouncing its sectarianism and taste for petty quarrels which repelled internationally renowned writers. Only a few writers of such stature, like André Malraux and Jean-Richard Bloch, had been invited to the congress. As for the others, it would have been better not to invite them. Amid the mounting power and aggressiveness of fascism, Ehrenburg believed that it was possible to create an anti-fascist writers’ association in the West, which would rally leading literary figures and help defend the Soviet Union. Such an initiative was now more realistic: foreign participants had been impressed by the serious open exchanges between communists and non-communists and persuaded of the flourishing state of culture and literature in the USSR. But the new organization must not, he insisted, be run by sectarians.
In a handwritten note to Kaganovich, Stalin registered his agreement with Ehrenburg. Such an organization should be established and organized around the two themes he had suggested: anti-fascism and defence of the USSR. He was proposing some names and awaited a response. Here we see a businesslike Stalin, quite different from the one sniffing out ‘termites’ everywhere. The 1934 interlude was still under way. Kaganovich, number two in the Politburo at the time, was vigorously promoting the ‘new line’ aimed at strengthening respect for the law: ‘We can now punish people via the legal system without resorting to extra-judicial means as in the past. Many cases that went exclusively through the GPU will now be handled by the courts.’
Kaganovich made this statement on 1 August 1934 during a special conference convened by the Prosecutor General’s Office, whose sphere – when it received authorization at least – was precisely ‘legality’. Kaganovich also reminded his audience that the GPU itself would be undergoing changes and merged into a new ministerial department, the NKVD (Commissariat of Internal Affairs). He explained that the Prosecutor General’s Office was the central institution in the legal system, and that with the creation of the NKVD it would have many more cases to process. Henceforth the main task was to educate the population and legal personnel to respect the law. Such, he said, was the line decided by Stalin. A major obstacle to surmount was the lack of education within the legal system itself. Judges were supposed to operate on the basis of codes, but all too often their pronouncements were unclear. Everyone now had to learn the text of the law: ‘Citizens have to know that there are laws and that they also apply to the apparatus.’
We might mention in passing that on the basis of this new enhanced role, the legal apparatus requested a significant salary increase. Kaganovich stalled, suggesting that the new line should not be ushered in with such a selfish move…
These outpourings of moderation, level-headedness and good sense contained not the slightest hint as to what was brewing, and which would explode after Kirov’s assassination at the end of 1934. Sometimes attributed to other leaders, the ‘liberal interlude’ was in fact Stalin’s own – just like what was to follow.
As the evidence available to us today indicates, Stalin never forgot or forgave past critics. Take the case of Bukharin. On the face of it he was forgiven, became editor-in-chief of Izvestiia, and kept up a friendly correspondence with Stalin. He felt entitled to print all manner of opinions on industrialization, collectivization, and the NEP. He often presented analyses or assessments that differed from official pronouncements. For example, he laid firm stress on the fact that the high rate of investment fixed for heavy industry was having pernicious economic effects, at a time when other, more promising alternatives were available. Whereas the Bukharin of 1928 had seen Stalin for what he was, in 1934 he was playing with fire, probably in the belief that the lull of that year derived from a sincere desire to rectify a policy whose negative results he had anticipated. He regarded it as legitimating his opposition to Stalin in 1928–9. Moreover, this is precisely how Stalin read the situation. Bukharin never suspected that Stalin was setting a trap for him, encouraging other leaders to write articles against him and circulating all sorts of acerbic remarks about him in the Politburo, while concealing what he really had in mind.
Stalin enjoyed this game. He was absolutely convinced that everyone, including his current entourage, had ‘offended’ him at some point, had belonged to a different faction, spoken disparagingly about him, or said a good word about Trotsky. All this remained engraved in his rancorous memory. In the case of Bukharin, it cannot be excluded that his speech to the Writers’ Congress and the impressive agenda he set there had rekindled Stalin’s resentment.[9]
9
RGASPI, f. 56, op. 1, d. 198 (Molotov’s papers). On 16 May 1934, at Stalin’s behest, two memos ‘for your information’, written by Stetsky (a former Bukharin supporter) and Mekhlis, were circulated to Politburo members and Zhdanov. In them, the two apparatchiks attacked an article by Bukharin published in