We know that bureaucracies, whether efficient or sloppy, are not that pliable a tool. Stalinism hoped to solve its problems by ‘mastering the masters’ – i.e. the summits of the bureaucracy. Yet this endeavour was to be complicated by an unanticipated trap, which the top leadership fell into. They had concentrated enormous power in their hands, which they justified on the basis of their tasks. Strong pressure from above was their strategy and it had its logic. The fact that so many crucial decisions depended on the capacities and psychological make-up of a small ruling group, and each of its members personally, might on the face of it have served to unify and consolidate the group. But amid the turmoil of the 1930s, the more the leadership reinforced its control and grip on power, the deeper was its sense that things were escaping its control. As they read reports or visited factories, villages and towns, they realized how many people were not carrying out their orders, were concealing the reality as best they could, or were quite simply unable to maintain the stipulated pace. They noted that thousands of their directives and decrees were not even properly filed. All this helped to spread a perception among the top ranks that their power was actually more fragile than it seemed. They shared a sense of insecurity and disorientation, leading some to doubt the validity of the whole line.
This phenomenon might be called ‘systemic paranoia’ – a term that encapsulates the condition of the precariousness of power. It constitutes one of the core elements of Stalinist autocracy and its ‘self-beatification’.
Overwhelmed by problems and undermined by doubts, the top echelon became more vulnerable to the influence of the one of its members who seemed sufficiently strong and determined to face this historical flood tide. His toughness – even ruthlessness – seemed like the requisite qualities for the tasks of the day. It was a classically auspicious moment for a master of intrigue and backstage manipulation to gather all power in his hands, including the power to decide the fate of every other leader. It was at this point that autocratic power reached its peak. The country’s destiny largely found itself at the mercy of one psyche, a personality prone to paranoia, a figure on whose shoulders the whole weight of the 1930s now came to rest. This is the conjuncture that explains the title of Part One, ‘A Regime and Its Psyche’. Had a collective leadership existed, it might have attenuated the effects of such tensions. But once power was allowed to become so deeply personalized, outbursts of irrationality – including murderous outbursts – were bound to occur. ‘Systemic paranoia’ (at the political level) was going to crystallize in the paranoid tendencies (at the psychic level) of an individual. Spite, malice, deviousness, fury – all became components of the system’s modus operandi.
But this is also the moment to point out that the system Stalin created was inherently recalcitrant to being ‘mastered’, even though the image of ‘master’ was the one he projected at home and abroad. Certainly, the objective of an extreme centralization of power was attained. Henceforth, however, there was nowhere else to go but to cling compulsively to the summit of power. This situation generated its own tensions and side-effects: the less power you delegate, the more it imperceptibly flows into the hands of local ‘little Stalins’; the more you monopolize information, the more it is kept from you; the more you control institutions, the less you master them. As we have indicated, such a configuration was intrinsically unstable and perceived as menacing. No wonder, then, that a central dimension of Stalinism consisted in fighting hordes of enemies. It was obviously not in a position to overcome the effects of this patent over-concentration of power, for that was its very essence. And yet these ‘enemies’ were not individuals and the dictator’s personal safety was never threatened. The real enemies were objective limitations (which Stalin had declared non-existent ‘for us’ in 1924): social trends and changes, institutional attrition, psychological and cultural structures. Later, we shall have the chance to see such limitations at work.
Meanwhile, if it is accepted that the essence of Stalinism consisted in accumulating all power in Stalin’s own hands, we can turn to the issue of how he ruled Russia. Had he not been obsessively preoccupied by this solitary exercise of power, we might have borrowed the title of our next chapter from Merle Fainsod’s How Is Russia Ruled? But our own research leads us to formulate the question rather differently.
8
HOW DID STALIN RULE?
Let us start with a simple, surprising discovery: the same man for whom family life meant so little (in fact, he took no interest in it), and whose personal life was a terrible mess (but did this really affect him?), chose as a ruler to personalize and privatize institutional power. No wonder: this – and not much else – was his life. To effect this strange project, he employed the method of fragmenting key political institutions and emptying them of their substance.
We can start with the party, which is where things are clearest. As an autonomous organization, which is what it had been under Bolshevism, the party was liquidated, transformed into a bureaucratic apparatus, and treated as such – i.e. with some considerable disdain. Symptomatically, the old party principle of ‘party maximum’ (whereby a member, whatever his position in the hierarchy, could not earn more than a skilled worker) was abandoned as early as 1932, along with other remnants of the initial egalitarianism, and was contemptuously referred to as uravnilovka (levelling down). The reason was obvious: an ‘egalitarian apparatus’ is as realistic as a square circle. To motivate and control the apparatchiks, they now had to climb a ladder of responsibilities and privileges. Lower-level bosses in the party and state administration (who were mostly party members) no longer played the game of ‘proletarian fraternity’. The call from above was for tough, authoritarian task-masters (Stalin called them ‘commanders’), forming a ruling stratum (nachal’stvo) whose structural hierarchy covered the whole system. They were supported and flattered, but not allowed to settle down and stabilize their position. This was something peculiar to the Stalinist dictatorship, which would be abandoned after it. As Stalin tightened his grip on power, we find him dismantling the many erstwhile party-state consultative bodies, which the Politburo used to convene systematically. He emasculated all institutions of any weight, including (surprisingly for those not already aware of it) the Politburo itself.
THE POLITBURO (1935–6)
This core institution remains little understood, and it is therefore worth taking a look at its operation in 1935–6 – years of violent tremors preceding the veritable earthquake of 1937.
On 1 February 1935, the Central Committee plenum elevated Mikoyan and Chubar to the rank of full members of the Politburo, while Zhdanov and Eikhe became candidate members. No juggling of ‘moderates’ and ‘radicals’ was involved here – just a formal procedure for filling empty posts. Mikoyan and Chubar replaced Kirov (assassinated) and Kuibyshev (deceased), because they had long been candidate members and had held high-level jobs since 1926. Eikhe, leader of an important remote region (Western Siberia), was not able to participate in meetings regularly. As for Zhdanov, it was impossible to deny him candidate membership: he had been a Central Committee secretary since 1934, worked as a de facto Politburo member, and was going to replace Kirov as Leningrad party secretary.
The redistribution of functions and responsibilities within the Politburo (27 February 1937), probably decided during a pre-meeting between some Politburo members and Stalin, was significant. Andreev left his job as Railways Commissar and became a Central Committee secretary. Kaganovich took over railways and kept his position as Central Committee secretary, but gave up his duties on the party’s Central Control Commission and the Moscow party committee. Andreev joined the very powerful Orgburo (which prepared dossiers for the Politburo) and became its head. But preparation of the Orgburo’s agenda was to be done in collaboration with Ezhev, who now headed the Control Commission. Andreev was also put in charge of the Central Committee’s industrial department (where he replaced Ezhev) and assigned to supervise the Central Committee’s transport department and its current affairs department. For his part, Ezhev was given the important post of head of the department of ‘leading party organs’. All the other departments, particularly culture and propaganda, remained under Stalin’s personal supervision. Kaganovich retained oversight of the Moscow regional and city party committees, but he was requested to prioritize his work at the Railways Commissariat. He was a trusted trouble-shooter and this sector required a firm hand.