The NKVD played an important part in the Soviet economy. With the most inexpensive labor supply in the world, the prison and camp population, the NKVD functioned as a cornerstone of the economic system, as is shown by official Soviet documents. According to the "State Plan for the Economic Development of the USSR in 1941,"14 the NKVD was responsible for 50 percent of the lumber production and export in the Far East and in the Karelian and Komi autonomous republics, more than one-third in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk provinces, and between one-fifth and one-fourth in Yaroslavl, Gorky, Molotovsk, and Sverdlovsk provinces and in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The NKVD was also involved in hauling, delivering, and exporting timber in thirty-two other provinces, autonomous republics, and union republics.15
NKVD enterprises produced bricks in the Khabarovsk Territory and oil on the Ukhta River (250,000 tons according to the 1941 plan).16 Its prisoner labor brought in 40 percent of the chrome ore extracted in the Soviet Union as a whole for the same year (150,000 tons out of a total of 370,000).17 NKVD economic components likewise produced cement, lumber for construction and other commercial uses, steam-powered tugboats, motor launches, barges, tractor trailers, scrapers, heavy graders, steamrollers, farming equipment, furniture, knitted fabric for underwear, socks and stockings, shoes, and so on.18 From other sources we know that prison labor was also used for uranium, coal, and gold mining.19
The fullest picture of the NKVD's place in the Soviet economy may be derived from the plan for capital construction in 1941. The total sum to be allocated for such construction was 37,650 million rubles (not including the amounts for the commissariats of defense, the navy, and roads). The NKVD was allotted 6,810 million rubles, that is, 18 percent, much more than any other commissariat. As for installations that were expected to begin operations in 1941, their total value was 31,165 million rubles, of which the NKVD accounted for 3,860 million rubles' worth, or more than 12 percent.20
In view of the fact that the capital equipment (tools and machinery) available to prisoners was on a level incomparably lower than that used by free workers, we can state with assurance that on the eve of the war with Germany forced labor constituted more than 20 percent of all labor in the Soviet Union. The scanty information that we have concerning wages in one of the divisions of the NKVD, the Main Highway Construction Administration (Gushossdor), indicates that the average yearly wage in this division was half of that for industrial workers in other commissariats (2,424 rubles as opposed to 4,700).21
According to figures that are far from complete, the deployment of this slave labor force in 1941 was as follows: mining, 1 million; hired out to various state enterprises, 1 million; general construction, 3.5 million; construction and maintenance of camps and manufacture of camp necessities, 600,000; logging, 400,000; agriculture, 200,000.22 An unprecedented economic and administrative power was thus concentrated in the hands of the NKVD. Even the party apparatus, not to mention the state, was to one degree or another under its control.
In "free" enterprises, events proceeded in their own way. "Storming" (shturmovshchina) flourished. When the plan could not be met during the initial weeks, efforts were made to meet it "by storm" during the last ten days. Many Soviet firms still practice this rush job method today. Very often factories had to stop work because the prerequisite raw materials or semifinished goods were not delivered on time. In Leningrad in 1940, for example, in the heavy machinery industry, 1.5 million work hours were lost for this reason.
There was a constant search for scapegoats, a completely sterile task, because no particular Comrade X or Y was to blame; the fault lay with the defective planning system and party leadership as a whole.
Unable to cope by normal methods with the existing inefficiency and waste or with such plagues as shturmovshchina, absenteeism, and drunkenness, the government decreed a number of harsh new labor laws in June— July 1940. A system of "work books" (trudovye knizhki) had been introduced in 1938, in effect tying the worker to a particular enterprise, where this book containing his work record was kept. Without it he could not take a new job. Then on June 26, 1940, a new law changed the workday from six or seven to eight hours and the work week from six to seven days. Workers were now denied the right to change jobs without a permit. Absenteeism and lateness became criminal offenses, with penalties ranging from a fine to outright imprisonment. In July 1940 tractor and combine drivers were forbidden by law to leave their jobs without authorization.23 In October 1940 a system of "state labor reserves" was established, including young people from the age of fourteen up. Children who ran away from factory schools (to which they were assigned) could be punished with up to six months' imprisonment.
In 1936 Stalin had announced to the world that socialism had essentially been built in the USSR. Then the party announced that a new kind of human being had emerged in the process—Soviet man. At the same time the party and state decreed a return to the most archaic social relations in production, long since left behind by all of the more advanced countries— that is, the binding of the worker to the place of production. This was not a very surprising development, however, because the overwhelming majority of the population, the peasantry, had been tied to the kolkhoz since collectivization and to the local village since the internal passport system was introduced in 1932.
Now workers and peasants became equals, as it were, in their social rights relative to production. Both classes found themselves in absolute subservience to the state, the only employer. The new labor laws created a situation highly reminiscent of war communism, with its compulsory labor service and other draconian measures.
One of the main arguments for introducing such drastic laws in industry was the need for iron discipline in view of the war threat, an argument used throughout Soviet history. The siege mentality created by repeated war scares, in 1927, again in 1931, again in 1937, and so on, allowed the party leadership to justify its arbitrary and repressive acts as necessary against foreign agents, who were "everywhere."
Throughout the mid-1930s no government in the world was actually in a position to launch a major war, even if one had wanted to. It is well known that Nazi Germany, despite its great military-industrial potential, the intensely chauvinist atmosphere prevailing within it, and the favorable international situation it enjoyed, still required six years before it was ready to attack Poland. The real danger of war for the USSR began with Nazi aggression in Europe.
ON THE WAY TO THE MOSCOW-BERLIN AXIS
The entire second half of the 1930s was overshadowed by constantly accumulating military and political conflicts. Events were moving swiftly toward a new world war.
In 1935 Germany repudiated the military provisions of the Versailles treaty and introduced the draft. To this measure Stalin responded with understanding, even approval. At the end of March 1935 he told Anthony Eden: "Sooner or later the German people are bound to free themselves from the chains of Versailles. ... I repeat, a great people like the Germans are bound to break loose from the Versailles chains." And he added, "The Germans are a great and courageous people. We never forget that."24 What impressed Stalin about the Germans was not their cultural achievements but their "greatness" and "courage." Little did it matter that the Germany he was talking about was Nazi.
There was a certain logic in Stalin's position. He had long dreamed of an alliance with Germany. Now that the Versailles system had collapsed, its two opponents, Russia and Germany, could work together openly. The fact is that Stalin repeatedly expressed his desire for a general political accord with Nazi Germany, as an examination of the events leading up to the Stalin-Hitler pact of August 23, 1939, demonstrates.