The Complex and Contradictory Course of the Stalin Era
From a New Attempt at “Soviet Democracy” to “Saint Bartholomew's Night”
In any case, It’s important to stress―as one of the authors of the Black Book of Communism ironically recognizes―the need for the “contextualization of Bolshevik political violence at first, and Stalin’s violence later on, within the ‘long duration’ of Russian history”: it’s important not to lose sight of “Stalinism’s ‘matrix’ which was the First World War, the revolutions of 1917, and the civil wars as a whole."385 And therefore, emerging when no one could yet predict Stalin’s rise to power, and even before the Bolshevik Revolution, “Stalinism” isn’t the result of an ideology or an individual’s thirst for power, but more precisely the result of the permanent state of emergency which consumes Russia in 1914. As we’ve seen, from the start of the nineteenth century a number of very different personalities didn’t miss the troubling signs of a gathering storm over the country that sits between Europe and Asia; the storm manifests itself in all its violence with the outbreak of the First World War. One must start from here, and from the incredibly long duration of the Second Time of Troubles. It’s not by chance that we’re dealing with a phenomenon that unfolds in a totally non- linear manner: we see it ease in moments of relative normalization and we see it manifest in all its severity when the state of emergency reaches its zenith.
Let’s start with a preliminary question: at what point could we refer to Soviet Russia as a personal and absolute dictatorship? Respectable historians appear to be in agreement on an essential point: “At the start of the 1930s Stalin was not yet an autocrat. He was not free from criticism, dissension, and authentic opposition within the communist party." The absolute power of a leader shielded by a cult of personality had not yet emerged: the Leninist tradition of the “dictatorship of the party” and oligarchic power persisted.386 The historians cited here use the two terms interchangeably; by all measures the second poorly describes a regime that encourages an incredibly strong level of social mobility for the subaltern classes and that opens political and cultural life to social strata and ethnic groups that were totally marginalized up until then. It seems evident that, at least starting from 1937, and starting with the outbreak of the Great Terror, the dictatorship of the party gives way to autocracy.
Should we then identify two phases within “Stalinism”? Despite questioning the traditionally “monolithic” interpretation, this periodization doesn’t represent a genuine step forward in the comprehension of those years. In any case, the transition from the first phase to the second, and the concrete configuration of both, require explanation.
To understand the problem, let’s see what happened in the middle of the 1920s, at a time in which, having survived the severe crisis represented by foreign intervention and civil war, NEP has achieved significant results: not only is there no autocracy, but despite the communist party’s continued dictatorship, the management of power tends to become more “liberal." Bukharin appears to go as far as encouraging a rule of law, of sorts. “The peasantry should have before them Soviet order, Soviet rights, Soviet legality and not arbitrary Soviet authority moderated by a ‘complaints office’ whose location is unknown." “Solid legal norms” are required, obligatory for communists as well. The state must now commit itself to “peaceful organizing work” and the party, in its relations with the masses, must “apply persuasion and only persuasion." Terror no longer makes sense: “it now belongs to the past."387 In its place, the task is making space for the “initiative of the masses”; in this context, it’s necessary to look positively on the flourishing of “popular associations” and “voluntary organizations."388
Before us are not merely personal opinions. These are the years of the “duumvirate."389 Bukharin manages power alongside Stalin, who in 1925 constantly seeks the “liquidation of the remnants of war communism in the countryside” and condemns the “deviation” which denounces an imaginary “restoration of capitalism” and “risks inciting the class struggle in rural areas” and “civil war in our country”;390 they must realize that “we are in the phase of economic development."391
The shift in emphasis from the class struggle to economic development carries important consequences for the political sphere as well: the primary responsibility for communist students is to “become masters of science."392 Only this way can they aspire to carry out a leadership role: “competence” matters; “solid, practical management is now required." And therefore: “to truly lead it’s necessary to understand your own work, it’s necessary to study it conscientiously, patiently, and with perseverance."393 The centrality of economic development, and therefore of competence, makes the party monopoly less rigid: “it’s critical that a communist act as an equal to those outside the party”, especially because “the control of party members” over the work of those “outside the party” could produce very positive results.394
Overall, a radical political change is unavoidable according to Stalin: “Today it’s no longer possible to lead through military methods”; “it’s not maximum pressure that’s needed now but maximum flexibility, both in policy and in organization, maximum flexibility in both policy direction as in organizational management”; what’s needed is dedication in receptively capturing “the aspirations and needs of the workers and peasants." And with respect to the peasants, who often prove to be more backward than the workers, the task of communists and cadres is “to learn how to convince them, sparing neither time nor effort for this purpose."395
It’s not just a matter of embracing a more sophisticated political pedagogy. What’s necessary is doing away with merely formal elections conducted from above, and bad practices which included “lack of rigor, abuse of power, and arbitrary behavior by administrators." A radical shift is required: “the old electoral practices were a remnant of war communism which should be liquidated as a harmful practice, rotten from top to bottom."396 Now it’s a matter of “reactivating the soviets, transforming the soviets into true elected bodies, and establishing in rural areas the principles of soviet democracy."397
Even before October, the soviets had started to transform into “bureaucratic structures”, with an observable decrease in “the frequency and consistency of the assemblies”;398 but now, returned to their original function, the soviets are called upon to guarantee “the participation of the workers in the daily work of state administration."399 How does this take place?
It takes place through organisations based on mass initiative, all kinds of commissions and committees, conferences and delegate meetings that spring up around the Soviets; economic bodies, factory committees, cultural institutions, party organisations, youth league organisations, all kinds of co-operative associations, and so on and so forth. Our comrades sometimes fail to see that around the low units of our Party, Soviet, cultural, trade-union, educational, Y.C.L. and army organisations, around the departments for work among women and all other kinds of organisations, there are whole teeming ant-hills―organisations, commissions and conferences which have sprung up of their own accord and embrace millions of non-Party workers and peasants―ant-hills which, by their daily, inconspicuous, painstaking, quiet work, provide the basis and the life of the Soviets, the source of strength of the Soviet state.400
For all these reasons, it’s wrong to “identify the party with the state." Moreover, to do so “is a distortion of Lenin’s thinking." Further, once the position of the new state is consolidated, both internally and internationally, it’s necessary “to extend the Constitution to the entire population, including the bourgeoisie."401
At this moment, taking up some of the formulations used by Marx to celebrate the Paris Commune, Stalin takes an interest in the idea of the reduction and even the withering away of the state apparatus. The revitalization of the Soviets and political participation could be a step in that direction. It’s a matter of “transforming our state apparatus, linking it to the popular masses, and making it sound and honest, simple and inexpensive”;402 on top of this, associations that emerge from civil society should be encouraged: they “unite the soviets with the ‘rank and file’, they merge the state apparatus with the vast masses and, step by step, destroy everything that serves as a barrier between the state apparatus and the people.”403 In conclusion: “The dictatorship of the proletariat is not an end in itself. The dictatorship is a means, a way of achieving socialism. But what is socialism? Socialism is the transition from a society with the dictatorship of the proletariat to a stateless society."404 What’s on the agenda is certainly not the end of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the party, but rather their evident moderation.
If we exaggerate our possibilities, there then could arise a tendency ... ‘to spit’ on the international revolution; such a tendency could give rise to its own special ideology, a peculiar ‘national Bolshevism’ or something else in this spirit. From here it is a few small steps to a number of even more harmful ideas.414
When the United States government announced the results of the test, in other countries there were reactions of shock and terror. It’s obvious that a bomb of such extraordinary power couldn’t be used against military objectives. If it wasn’t a weapon of war, it could only be a weapon of genocide and political blackmail [...]. Stalin received a report on the American test in the middle of November, and it served only to confirm his conviction that the United States was seriously preparing itself for a war against the Soviet Union.435
Like many leaders of that era, Kirov genuinely believed in a bright future, for which he worked between eighteen and twenty hours a day: a convinced communist, like when he sang Stalin’s praises for strengthening the party and the Soviet Union, and for the country’s power and development. This zealous faith was perhaps the tragedy of an entire generation.438
[At least during the years of the war] Stalin worked fourteen or fifteen hours a day in the Kremlin or at the dacha [...]. In autumn of 1946, Stalin went to the south to enjoy a vacation for the first time since 1937 [...]. A few months before his death, and ignoring urgent recommendations from doctors, Stalin rejected the possibility of taking a break in the autumn or winter of 1952, despite the enormous amount of time and effort dedicated to organizing the XIX party congress in October.439
The years of 1928-1931 were a period of enormous upward mobility for the working class. The promoters of socialist emulation and Stakhanovites not only substituted ‘unfit’ cadre, but occupied en masse the available posts in the administrative apparatus and in the learning institutions undergoing massive expansion. They were not passively promoted, but were active protagonists in their promotion (samovy dvizhentsy). They had “a clear and defined objective for the present and the future” and “sought to acquire the greatest amount of knowledge and practical experience, in order to be as useful as possible to the new society."
[In Tsarist Russia] workers demanded more respectful treatment by their employers. They wanted them to call them by the polite “you” (vyi) instead of the familiar one (tyi), which they associated with the old serf regime. They wanted to be treated as “citizens." It was often this issue of respectful treatment, rather than the bread-and-butter question of wages, which fueled workers’ strikes and demonstrations.453
Gigantic achievements in industry, enormously promising beginnings in agriculture, an extraordinary growth of the old industrial cities and the building of new ones, a rapid increase in the numbers of workers, a rise in cultural level and cultural demands―such are the indubitable results of the October revolution, in which the prophets of the old world tried to see the grave of human civilization. With the bourgeois economists we have no longer anything to quarrel over. Socialism has demonstrated its right to victory, not on the pages of Das Kapital, but in an industrial arena comprising a sixth part of the earth’s surface [...]. thanks solely to a proletarian revolution a backward country has achieved in less than twenty years successes unexampled in history.”454
“In the schools of the Union, lessons are taught at present in no less than eighty languages. For a majority of them, it was necessary to compose new alphabets, or to replace the extremely aristocratic Asiatic alphabets with the more democratic Latin. Newspapers are published in the same number of languages ―papers which for the first time acquaint the peasants and nomadic shepherds with the elementary ideas of human culture. Within the far-flung boundaries of the tsar's empire, a native industry is arising. The old semi-clan culture is being destroyed by the tractor. Together with literacy, scientific agriculture and medicine are coming into existence. It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of this work of raising up new human strata.”455
Before the mausoleum, a long line of Russian peasants waited patiently to see Stalin’s mummified predecessor in his glass tomb. Judging by their behavior and facial expression, the Russians gave me the impression of devout pilgrims. “Those who have been to Moscow and haven’t visited Lenin―an embassy staffer tells me―are worthless to the people of the Russian countryside."460
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