This Trotskyist logic was brilliantly confirmed by Stalin's victory in all his endeavors and Trotsky's defeat. Trotsky must have taken some consolation, however, in the fact that Stalin had adopted his line.
THE DAWN OF A NEW CIVILIZATION
In 1928 the "rusty times" came to an end. After the Shakhty trial, which culminated in five executions, things got redder and redder.
During the years of the NEP the worst of the war-inflicted wounds were healed, the economy was restored despite the many difficulties, and life assumed a semblance of normality. But these accomplishments were paid for dearly. The population lived in uncertainty, fearful of breaking the law, afraid of what was to come. Paradoxically, those who were considered the victors (the workers) lived in poverty, although without fear, while those who knew they were the vanquished (the middle peasants, Nepmen, intellectuals) enjoyed material comfort, but lived in fear.
Existence under the NEP was measured by various yardsticks. On the one hand, the party knew what the ultimate goal was, but its leaders were locked in bitter internecine warfare over the right to lead the country to that goal by each leader's "only correct path." Meanwhile, on another level, the United States became a universal model and object of adoration. Stalin spoke of combining "American efficiency with Russian revolutionary scope." Aleksei Gastev, a proletarian poet and founder of the League of Time, issued this calclass="underline" "Let us take the hurricane of revolution, the USSR; add the pulse of America; and we will do the job as steadily as a chronometer." Lev Sosnovsky, a writer for Pravda and a Left Oppositionist, announced a search for "Russian Americans," people who would know "how to work with a rhythm, an ardor, and a doggedness, the likes of which old Russia never knew." The peasant poet Petr Oreshin exclaimed: "And every rural cottage dreams a wondrous dream—a New York of steel." The writer N. Smirnov turned out a popular novel, Jack Vosmerkin the American, about a Russian-American who returned to his homeland to transplant American know-how onto Soviet Russian soil. The peasants of the village where Jack Vosmerkin settled regarded him with hostility, not only because the peasant is a backward type but also because as soon as the peasant begins to apply progressive methods—however admirably American they are—he begins to grow rich. And immediately becomes an enemy of the Soviet government.
Although life seemed to be returning to normal, a mounting antireligious campaign was cause for concern. For example, a peculiar hybrid—the "Red" church service, along with "Red" baptisms and "Red" Easters— was introduced. Non-Christian names were recommended. The civil registry offices hung up lists with such suggestions for girls' names as Atlantide, Brunhilda, Industriya, Octobrina, Februarida, Idea, Kommuna, and May- ina, and for boys, Chervonets, Spartak (Spartacus), Textile, Styag (Banner), and Plamenny Vladilen ("Fiery Vladimir Lenin"). On the back page of Izvestia a certain Demyan Kasyanovich Mironov announced he was changing his name to Dekamiron. In the rural areas, however, most marriages were still held in churches and children's names were chosen from the Christian calendar of saints.
Schools were expected to wither away, along with the family, but a German historian visiting the Soviet Union made this observation: "The Bolsheviks have organized public education in such a way that no one can exceed the limits of the officially authorized level of knowledge and education, so that the proletarian state will not be threatened by a superfluous exchange of information which would transform the citizens into 'subversive elements.'"45 The American writer Theodore Dreiser, who spent seventy-seven days in the Soviet Union in 1927, said much the same thing to Bukharin: "You take a child and you drum limited concepts into his head. He does not know anything more than what you teach him, and he will never know anything—you just watch. The success of your revolution, then, depends on the education of the children, does it not? 'In part, yes,' agreed Bukharin."46
From 1921 to 1928 Soviet literature flourished, but a peculiar kind of writer, unknown before then, appeared on the scene. It seemed that Bukharin's idea of standardizing the intellectuals, turning them out "as though from a factory," was being taken literally. Writers became increasingly aware that the traditional calling of Russian literature, the defense of the humble and the abandoned, did not correspond to the new reality. The writers themselves began to plead with the authorities, as Ilya Selvinsky did: "Comrade! ... Do our thinking for us, switch on our nerves, and get us going, just like a factory." Mayakovsky declared a fait accompli: "I feel I'm a Soviet factory." To the population, Stalin was still a chief like any other, much less famous than Trotsky. But having taken the party apparatus in hand long before and having involved himself more and more in the economy and foreign affairs, he began to express his views on literature as well. This took the form at first of personal letters, but these were circulated in all literary, editorial, and censorship circles and were looked upon as directives. For example, Sholokhov, whom a number of "proletarian" writers accused of being a plagiarist and a champion of the White Cossacks, was declared by Stalin to be an "illustrious writer of our time."47
Revolutionary slogans were still alive, as were hopes for a world revolution, the advent of a classless society, and the withering away of the state once all class enemies had been defeated. But the newspapers dealt with more mundane topics as well. They made much of the search for the mysterious Tungus meteorite by the courageous Soviet geologist Leonid
Kulik. Universal attention was paid to the daring Arctic explorations of the Norwegian Amundsen and the Italian Nobile, but of course the Soviet Arctic explorers on the icebreaker Krasin and the Soviet Arctic fliers who saved them from certain death on the polar ice received the most attention of all. These were the first Soviet heroes not connected with war or revolution.
Soviet justice came into being as a form of revolutionary class justice. It was not ashamed of terror, for it was clearing the way for a better future. In a separate room of the Moscow Museum of the Revolution, relics of tsarist "hard labor" were assembled, including instruments of torture and models of the torture chambers. "Prisons have existed and still exist," Bukharin explained, "and a system of coercion exists, but these are directed at new and different goals." "We have merely turned the concept of 'freedom' inside out," he added.48 He meant that freedom had been for landowners and capitalists, but now it was for workers and peasants. But according to official data, no less than 40 percent of the Soviet prison population was made up of workers and peasants, and their numbers continued to increase. A simple comparison of the figures shows that ten years after the revolution the number of those in Soviet prisons exceeded the largest number of prisoners at any time in the tsarist era. In 1925, 144,000 persons were serving sentences in Soviet prisons; in 1926, the figure was 149,000; and in 1927, 185,000.49 In 1912 the population of the tsarist prisons was 183,864. Then the number dropped steadily, reaching 142,399 in 1916.50 The population of Soviet prisons and camps would later grow at rates no one could have imagined.