Creating an urban culture and adapting to it is a protracted process. In the short period we are exploring here, the transition from one way of life to another would have been a very unsettling experience even in more favourable conditions. However basic they might have been, towns – particularly the larger ones – represented an enormously complex phenomenon for people who had just arrived from villages. A single point of contrast between the two worlds says it alclass="underline" whereas in large towns the number of professions exercised was approximately 45,000, the corresponding figure for the countryside was 120.
Shortage of food and accommodation, to cite only the most evident and onerous aspects of urban existence, pointed to a state of crisis that could only exacerbate the difficulties encountered by rural migrants in the urban-industrial world. In a village, everyone lived in the familiar universe of their home, their livestock and their neighbours, almost all of whom they knew personally; and such familiarity translates into a veritable psychological need. By contrast, the anonymous crowd in towns is readily seen as hostile by definition. Other features we have already mentioned made adapting yet more onerous. In addition, Soviet towns were largely inhabited by young people in these years and insecurity was prevalent (‘hooliganism’ was the name given to a phenomenon that plagued towns). But this also made it easier for young people who had arrived straight from their village to assimilate; and they rapidly abandoned the values of their elders.
For many peasants, the only way to cope with the challenges of a difficult environment lay in preserving as many village traditions as possible. This defensive behaviour revived the rural character of many towns inherited from Tsarist Russia, recreating within them a hybrid environment and way of life that remained an enduring feature of Soviet urbanization. We must therefore insist on something that should by now be obvious: when it went to war in 1941, Stalin’s Russia was not yet an important urban-industrial power, even though it was on the way to becoming one. Sociologically, but also culturally, it was in many respects an extension of its agrarian past, including in the very mould of its modernizing state.
7
BETWEEN LEGALITY AND BACCHANALIA
As yet, we have said nothing about the waves of criticism, expressions of dissent, and often harsh words issuing from the lower classes, which reached just about every government and party letterbox. The policy mix of pampering and badgering pursued with respect to administrators and the intelligentsia sought to make them a rampart for the regime and cadres in the state machinery. Any large-scale expression of popular discontent or sustained, sharp criticism was regarded as dangerous, even when not followed by disorder or demonstrations on the streets that could be dubbed ‘opposition’ or ‘counter-revolution’. Even the reactions of members working outside the apparatus were a matter of concern for party leaders. And such discontent did not begin with the five-year plans.
PARTY MEMBERS PARTICIPATE IN STRIKES (1926)
Reports from the GPU and the party’s information department noted that not all party members were strike-breakers, even if some were perceived as such and indeed were. Between January and September 1926, party members had participated in 45 of the 603 strikes recorded throughout the country.[1] Documents show some party members not only initiating, but also leading, the strikes. Reports also deplore the negative conduct of members in various factories and stress that economic difficulties are engendering what are described as ‘peasant’ attitudes: passivity in social and working life, religious and nationalistic prejudices, hostile reactions to the decisions of the party cell.
Examples are quoted of party members making highly critical statements – for example, ‘We’re now more exploited than we were before. Then we had the bourgeoisie; now we’ve got our managers.’ Another case is cited where the party cell demands that its members halt a strike, prompting this response from a female communist worker: ‘What do you want? Does the party feed me? It’s become impossible to survive.’ Another reaction is quoted: ‘We’re being squeezed to the last drop. Our union representatives have cosied up to the factory management and pay no attention to workers’ demands.’
In a glass factory in the Krasnoyarsk province, some workers go on strike demanding a pay rise from 42 to 52 roubles and a party member is among the leaders. All the strikers were fired, probably because there were so few of them. When strikes were on a larger scale, strikers’ demands were often met.
In the Nevsky shipyards in Leningrad, a strike breaks out that could have been prevented by two party members who are highly regarded by the workforce. But when asked to intervene by management, they refuse.
The reports quote copiously from the criticisms made by some party members of all aspects of party policy. To take an example, two of them come to see their cell secretary, put their membership cards on the desk, pay their dues for the last month, and announce that they are quitting the party: ‘Your cell works for the management; you’re helping it to oppress the workers.’
GPU reports on election campaigns in trade unions and other organizations register considerable passivity among workers, even when they are party members. Some workers want to leave a meeting. When stopped at the exit, they reply: ‘Why do you stop us leaving when party members are the first to be off?’
The reports also cite anti-Semitic statements by working-class party members. They sound familiar: ‘All power is in Jewish hands’; ‘The yids are in power and oppress the workers’; ‘You won’t find one decent person among the yids’; ‘I’ve been itching to have a go at this hateful tribe.’
We must be careful when interpreting these snippets. If such cases were frequent, the reports, which derive from the GPU or the party’s information department, do not permit us to assess the extent of the protests. Other documents maintain that the instructions or interdictions issued by cells were rarely disobeyed by party members. This does not mean that they did not express or share opinions only openly expressed by a minority, or did not tacitly sympathize with workers’ grievances. But they balanced their fear of reprisals at the hands of other workers, which were common when they evinced hostility to them or to strikes – against fear of being reprimanded by the party – which could end up with them losing their jobs. It is also clear now that rank-and-file party members, like everyone else in the workplace, were spied on by stukachi (unpaid informers) or secret agents.
If material from the base attests to demands for a ‘democratization’ of working conditions and party life alike, trends inside the regime were moving in the opposite direction and elicited a variety of reactions, including directly political ones, even among some apparatchiks. The problem was not just the emergence of criticism among these strata. Worse, dedicated old Bolsheviks or idealistic newcomers declared themselves deeply disappointed – even disgusted – with their work and no longer wanted to serve at the heart of the citadel. Some apparatchiks who had not chosen their jobs out of careerism found themselves inside a machine where their sense of vocation, political perspectives and the fate of the country were drowned in bureaucratic vermicelli – a term, picked up in Italy, that was often used by veteran revolutionaries. We have already cited documents to this effect. Even more negative expressions of rejection of the system and accusations of treason also circulated, invariably unsigned.
1
RGASPI, 17, 85, 170, LL. 69–80 (a lengthy, detailed GPU document for the period January-September 1926 on the behaviour and statements of workers from many factories and regions).