Lest the foreign participants in socialist construction begin to feel too independent, or Soviet citizens forget who the enemy was, a few foreigners were arrested from time to time. In April 1933 one more "wreckers" trial was staged, featuring five British engineers from Metropolitan-Vickers among the eighteen defendants. The fact that the British firm, which had been equipping Soviet power plants since 1923, was virtually in a monopoly position was undoubtedly a factor behind these indictments. In spite of many hours of interrogation, the Britishers refused to plead guilty and got off with light sentences. Thornton, the leader of the group, was sentenced to three years, Cushny to two, two were deported, and the other acquitted. The Soviet citizens in the case received sentences ranging from eighteen months to ten years.
It is impossible to sum up the results of the first five-year plan strictly in terms of industrial successes (or failures). From 1928 to 1932 significant strides were made in the industrialization of the country. But the main arena of the "Great Rupture," or the "great backbreaking," as Solzhenitsyn called it, was agriculture. The main object of this all-out offensive—and its main victim—was the peasantry, that is, the overwhelming majority of the population.
FULL STEAM AHEAD—INTO THE SWAMP
Stalin's article "A Year of Great Change" appeared in Pravda on November 7, 1928. It spoke of "the radical change that has taken place in the development of our agriculture from small, backward individual farming to large-scale advanced collective agriculture."30 The article ended: "We are advancing full steam ahead along the path of industrialization." This might have seemed just a metaphor, but within seven weeks it became reality.
Stalin announced the start of a new revolution on December 27, 1929, at a conference of "Marxist students of the agrarian question." The Soviet Union had just celebrated Stalin's fiftieth birthday, December 21. The country discovered for the first time that Stalin had been its Great Leader (Veliky Vozhd) all along, organizer of the October revolution, creator of the Red Army, victorious commander against the Whites and foreign invaders, guardian of Lenin's "general line" and vanquisher of all its opponents, leader of the world proletariat, and great strategist of the five-year plan. Portraits of the Leader were printed in unbelievable numbers, his bust appeared in all prominent places, and a pamphlet containing "birthday materials" about him was circulated everywhere. The most enthusiastic article, which set forth the main lines for the future cult of Stalin, was written by Karl Radek. Since 1921 the National Socialists in Germany had been on a campaign to build up a cult around Hitler. By 1929 they had accumulated considerable experience. This was the model Radek drew on for his trend-setting article. Stalin responded to all the homage paid him on his birthday by pledging to shed "all of his blood, to the last drop if necessary," for the cause, and he gave the credit for all his accomplishments to "the great party of the working class, which nurtured me and reared me in its image."31 Using a figure of speech from the as yet unforgotten Bible, Stalin described his origins with astonishing accuracy. The party had made Stalin what he was, but as sometimes happens, the child turned against its parent, killed it, and in turn sired a new offspring, a party fashioned in Stalin's image.
On December 27 the Leader announced the end of NEP and the start of a new era. The problem was as follows, he declared: "Either we go backward to capitalism or forward to socialism."32 In exact conformity with Bolshevik tradition, the problem was presented so as to allow only one response. It was necessary to go on the offensive. "What does this mean?" Stalin asked, and answered himself: "It means that after a policy that consisted in limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks, we have switched to a policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class."33 The path forward was the path of "complete collectivization." To those who questioned whether dekulakization was necessary for complete collectivization, Stalin replied: "The question is absurd!" A great lover of Russian proverbs, he added, "When the head is cut off, why cry over a few hairs?"34
The next sixty-five days shook the country more than the ten days in October 1917 that "shook the world." Those nine weeks convulsed the lives of the Soviet Union's more than 130 million peasants, transformed the country's economy, and changed the very nature of the state.
Two processes went on simultaneously: the creation of collective farms (kolkhozes), and the liquidation of the kulaks. Above all, dekulakization was necessary to provide the "material base" for the collective farms. From the end of 1929 to the middle of 1930,
more than 320,000 kulak faramers were dekulakized. Their property (worth more than 175 million rubles) was transferred to the indivisible funds of the kolkhozes and used for the entrance fees of poor peasants and unpropertied farmhands. Former kulak property amounted to more than 34 percent of the total value of the indivisible funds of all the kolkhozes taken together.35
The liquidation of the kulaks deprived the countryside of the most enterprising and independent-minded peasants and broke the spirit of resistance. Moreover, the fate of "dekulakized persons," deportation to Siberia or the north of Russia, served as an example for anyone who thought of not joining the kolkhoz. It was necessary to join immediately. A commission of the Politburo formed on December 8, 1929, under the direction of Yakov Yakovlev, commissar of agriculture, proposed that "complete collectivization" be carried out in the lower Volga region by autumn 1930, the central Black Earth region and the Ukrainian steppes by autumn 1931, the left bank of the Ukraine by spring 1932, and the north and Siberia by 1933.
Stalin and his "close comrade-in-arms" Molotov insisted that the pace be even faster. On December 10 the Kolkhoztsentr, the central office established to administer all kolkhozes, sent a directive by telegraph to local organizations in the regions slated for complete collectivization: "Implement 100 percent collectivization of draft animals and cattle, 80 percent of hogs, and 60 percent of sheep and poultry.n36 Joining the kolkhoz meant surrendering your property, all of it, to the collective.
Party members (25,000 of them) were sent to the villages to force the peasants to join kolkhozes. It was announced that whoever did not join would be considered an enemy of the Soviet state. On July 1, 1928, only 1.7 percent of the peasantry belonged to kolkhozes; by November 1929 the figure had risen to 7.6 percent; in March 1930 it was 58 percent.
There had not been a final decision on the exact form the kolkhoz should take, whether all land, implements, and animals should be collectivized or some left in individual hands. There was still a lack of personnel capable of administering collective farms. The necessary tractors and other machinery were not available. Lenin, who never stopped hoping for miracles, once said: "If tomorrow we could supply 100,000 first-class tractors—you know very well that at present this is sheer fantasy—the middle peasant would say, 4I am for the kommuniycC (i.e., for communism)."37 Stalin fully shared Lenin's steadfast faith in the direct and inseparable connection between the material base and the spiritual superstructure (100,000 tractors equals "I am for communism"), but he acknowledged that he did not have the tractors. He promised 60,000 by the spring of 1930 and the magical 100,000 for the following year. In 1928, according to official Soviet figures, there were only 26,700 tractors.
Unfazed by such problems, Stalin simply cracked the whip harder at the local party officials, who in turn drove the rank-and-file activists (the "twenty-five-thousanders") harder. The number of collective farmers steadily increased, and the number of kulaks dwindled. The term kulak had never been defined. Anyone who employed hired labor was considered a kulak, but so was anyone who owned two horses or two cows or a nice house. Since there was no clear notion of what a kulak was, overall quotas for dekulakization and collectivization were assigned for each region. The quota for collectivization was the same everywhere, 100 percent. The dekulakization quota varied, averaging 5—7 percent.