The Red Flag: A History of Communism

by Priestland, David

  7. R. Suny, ‘Stalin and the Making of the Soviet Union’, unpublished manuscript, ch.1, p.16. My thanks to Ron Suny for showing me this draft.

  8. I. Stalin, Sochineniia (Moscow, 1946–51), vol. xiii, pp.113–14.

  9. P. Makharadze, quoted in S. Jones, Socialism in Georgian Colours. The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883–1917 (Cambridge, Mass., 2005), p.51.

  10. Jones, Socialism, pp.22–8.

  11. Suny, ‘Stalin’, pp.11–13.

  12. R. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: a Study in History and Personality (London, 1974), pp.80–1

  13. For this point, see Suny, ‘Stalin’, pp.22–3.

  14. Jones, Socialism, ch.2.

  15. M. Kun, Stalin. An Unknown Portrait (New York, 2003), pp.31–2.

  16. A. Rieber, ‘Stalin, Man of the Borderlands’, American Historical Review 106 (2001), pp.1674–6.

  17. E. Van Ree, ‘Stalin’s Bolshevism: the First Decade’, International Review of Social History 39 (1994), pp.361–81.

  18. R. Service, Stalin. A Biography (London, 2004), p.112.

  19. See, for instance, R. Pipes (ed.), The Unknown Lenin. From the Secret Archive (New Haven, 1998). For the argument that Lenin was a quasi-liberal, see M. Lewin, Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates (London, 1975), pp.46–7, 96.

  20. For Lenin’s emphasis on organization, see A. Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom (Stanford, 1995), p.300. Lenin did compare the party with an army, though again it was the army’s organization he admired. See V. Lenin, Collected Works (47 vols.) (Moscow, 1960–70), vol. xxi, pp.252–3.

  21. For Stalin and nationalism, see E. Van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin. A Study in Twentieth Century Revolutionary Patriotism (London, 2002).

  22. For organic metaphors, see ibid., ch.10.

  23. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. i, pp.64–7.

  24. Ibid., vol. v, p.71.

  25. For Stalin’s geopolitical attitudes, see Rieber, ‘Stalin’, pp.1651–91. See also Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. iv, pp.286–7.

  26. Service, Stalin, p.167.

  27. For similarities between the methods of the two, see A. Graziosi, ‘At the Roots of Soviet Industrial Relations and Practice. Piatakov’s Donbass in 1921’, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 36 (1995), pp.130–2.

  28. F. Gladkov, Cement (London, 1929), p.55.

  29. Ibid., pp.98–9.

  30. Ibid., p.302.

  31. For notions of the party and the state in the period, see D. Priestland, Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization. Ideas, Power and Terror in Inter-war Russia (Oxford, 2007), pp.226–8.

  32. G. Vinokur, cited in I. Halfin, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), p.237.

  33. I. Kallistov, quoted in E. Naiman, Sex in Public. The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology (Princeton, 1997), p.183.

  34. For a discussion, see S. Morrissey, Heralds of Revolution: Russian Students and the Mythologies of Radicalism (New York, 1998), pp.3–8.

  35. Cited in Halfin, Terror in My Soul, p.57. For a discussion of this theme in autobiographies, see ch.2.

  36. M. David-Fox, Revolution of the Mind: Higher Learning among the Bolsheviks, 1918–1929 (Ithaca, 1997), p.127.

  37. Ibid., p.177; Jane Price, Cadres, Commanders and Commissars: The Training of the Chinese Communist Leadership, 1920–1945 (Boulder, Colo., 1976), p.36.

  38. J. Cassiday, The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen (DeKalb, Ill., 2000).

  39. Halfin, Terror in My Soul, pp.260, 283–315.

  40. Ibid., p.32; Van Ree, Political Thought, p.131.

  41. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. viii, p.121.

  42. V. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom. The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official (London, 1947), p.51.

  43. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. xi, p.58.

  44. Ibid., vol. xiii, pp.29–42.

  45. Paul Gregory, The Political Economy of Stalinism. Evidence from the Soviet Archives (Cambridge, 2004), pp.111–22.

  46. See, for instance, S. Strumilin, Na Planovom Fronte, 1920–1930 gg. (Moscow, 1958), pp.395–405. For the Marxist ‘teleological’ school in economics, see E. H. Carr and R. W. Davies, Foundations of the Planned Economy 1926–1929 (London, 1971), vol. i. pt ii, ch.32.

  47. L. Siegelbaum, ‘Production Collectives and Communes and the “Imperatives” of Soviet Industrialization’, Slavic Review 45 (1986), pp.65–84; H. Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution. Politics and Workers, 1928–1932 (Cambridge, 1988), pp.115–35.

  48. For this theme, see S. Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934 (Cambridge, 1979).

  49. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. xi, p.37. For the meaning of ‘democracy’ in this context, see Priestland, Stalinism, pp.200–10.

  50. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, p.56.

  51. J. Scott, Behind the Urals. An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel (Bloomington, 1973), pp.5–6.

  52. For workers’ attitudes, see J. Rossman, Worker Resistance under Stalin: Class and Revolution on the Shop Floor (Cambridge, Mass., 2005), pp.127–33.

  53. N. Jasny, The Soviet 1956 Statistical Handbook. A Commentary (East Lansing, Mich., 1957), p.41.

  54. L. Kopelev, The Education of a True Believer, trans. Gary Kern (London, 1981), p.226.

  55. D. Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithaca, 1998).

  56. Cited in L. Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin. Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York, 1996), p.59.

  57. For the role of women in rebellions, see Viola, Peasant Rebels, ch.6.

  58. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, pp.99–100.

  59. A. P. Nikishin to VTsIK, 1932. In L. Siegelbaum and A. Sokolov (eds.), Stalinism as a Way of Life (New Haven, 2000), p.67.

  60. N. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i Raskulachivanie: Nachalo 30-kh godov (Moscow, 1996), pp.203–25.

  61. This story is told in An American Engineer in Stalin’s Russia. The Memoirs of Zara Witkin, 1932–1934, ed. Michael Gelb (Berkeley, 1991), pp.211–12.

  62. For an analysis that stresses these problems in Soviet-type economies, see J. Kornai, The Economics of Shortage (Amsterdam, 1980).

  63. Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, p.180.

  64. Gregory, Political Economy, p.118.

  65. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. xiii, p.57.

  66. S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia. Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941 (Cambridge, 1997), p.24.

  67. For the change in policy, see S. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants. Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (Oxford, 1994), pp.121–2.

  68. Aleksandr Nevskii (1938), dir. S. Eisenstein.

  69. Though these issues remained controversial, and were opposed within the party. See Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, pp.240–1.

  70. E. Van Ree, ‘Heroes and Merchants. Stalin’s Understanding of National Character’, Kritika 8 (2007), pp.41–65.

  71. S. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford, 1999), pp.106–9.

  72. J. Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, 2000), pp.126–7.

  73. This is the argument of T. Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, 2001).

  74. P. Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917–1953 (Cambridge, 1992), pp.202–4.

  75. For this term, see D. Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).

  76. Cited in ibid., p.24.

  77. Cited in ibid., pp.101–3.

  78. L. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1941 (Cambridge, 1988), p.228.

  79. Pravda, 15 November 1935.

  80. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvenn
yi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii [RGASPI], 558/11/1121, 27 (17 March 1938).

  81. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism, pp.230–1.

  82. For these arguments, see S. Fitzpatrick, ‘Ascribing Class: the Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia’, in Fitzpatrick, Stalinism. New Directions (London, 2000), pp.20–46; T. Martin, ‘Modernization or Neo-traditionalism? Ascribed Nationality and Soviet Primordialism’, in Fitzpatrick, Stalinism, pp.348–67.

  83. Nicholas Ostrovsky, The Making of a Hero, trans. A. Brown (London, 1937).

  84. J. Baberowski, Der rote Terror: die Geschichte des Stalinismus (Munich, 2003), p.162.

  85. Cited in Davies, Popular Opinion, p.169.

  86. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, p.101.

  87. ‘Diary of L. Potemkin’, in V. Garros, N. Korenevskaya and T. Lahusen (eds.), Intimacy and Terror. Soviet Diaries of the 1930s, trans. C. Flath (New York, 1995), pp.274–5. For this diary, see J. Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), ch.6.

  88. ‘Diary of L. Potemkin’, p.277.

  89. See, for instance, Stepan Podliubnyi, in Hellbeck, Revolution, ch.5.

  90. A. Inkeles and R. Bauer, The Soviet Citizen. Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1959).

  91. A. Rossi, Generational Differences in the Soviet Union (New York, 1980), pp.295–7. See also D. Bahry, ‘Society Transformed? Rethinking the Social Roots of Perestroika’, Slavic Review 52 (1993), pp.512–15.

  92. Scott, Behind the Urals, p.43.

  93. For Magnitogorsk workers’ integration into the system, see S. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995), ch.5.

  94. Scott, Behind the Urals, pp.47, 46.

  95. Davies, Popular Opinion, p.139.

  96. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism.

  97. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, p.288.

  98. The famous song from the film Circus (1936).

  99. ‘The Diary of Arzhilovsky’, in Garros et al., Intimacy and Terror, p.131.

  100. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, p.323.

  101. O. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag. From Collectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven, 2004), p.328.

  102. Complaint from a special settler to the Political Red Cross, before 8 August 1930. Cited in Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, pp.15–16.

  103. Sarah Davies stresses the discourse of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Davies, Popular Opinion, ch.8.

  104. RGASPI 558/11/1118, 101–2.

  105. J. Harris, The Great Urals. Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System (Ithaca, 1999), ch.5.

  106. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. xiii, p.232.

  107. Partiinyi billet (1936), dir. I. Py’rev.

  108. Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, p.145.

  109. L. Kaganovsky, ‘Visual Pleasure in Stalinist Cinema. Ivan Pyr’ev’s Party Card’, in C. Klaier and E. Naiman, Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia. Taking the Revolution Inside (Bloomington, 2006), pp. 35–6, 53–4.

  110. For two very different interpretations, see J. Getty and O. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 (New Haven, 1999); O. Khlevniuk, Master of the House. Stalin and his Inner Circle (New Haven, 2009). For an elaboration of the approach here, see Priestland, Stalinism, ch.5.

  111. For Ezhov’s role, see J. Getty and O. Naumov, Yezhov, The Rise of Stalin’s ‘Iron Fist’ (New Haven, 2008), ch.8.

  112. Cited in Van Ree, Political Thought, p.134.

  113. For this point, see Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain.

  114. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, p.107.

  115. E. Ginzburg, Into the Whirlwind, trans. P. Stevenson and M. Harari (London, 1967), p.44.

  116. Hellbeck, Revolution, pp.318–19.

  117. Scott, Behind the Urals, p.195.

  118. Historians disagree over Stalin’s plans, and we still lack evidence. Khlevniuk argues that Stalin was planning to destroy the regional bosses from at least mid-1936. See O. Khlevniuk, ‘The First Generation of Stalinist “Party Generals”’, in E. Rees (ed.), Centre–Local Relations in the Stalinist State, 1928–1941 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp.59–60; Getty and Naumov argue he did not plan it. See Getty and Naumov, The Road to Terror. For economic issues, see Harris, The Great Urals, pp.182–5.

  119. Molotov, among others, argued this. Sto sorok besed s Molotvym. Iz dnevnika F Chueva (Moscow, 1991), p.390.

  120. For a discussion of these figures, see Getty and Naumov, The Road to Terror, pp.587–94.

  121. Ivan Groznyi, parts I and II (1944 and 1946), dir. S. Eisenstein.

  122. For these films, see Bordwell, The Cinema of Eisenstein, pp.223–53; M. Perrie, The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia (Basingstoke, 2001), ch.7.

  POPULAR FRONTS

  1. Golomstock, Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the People’s Republic of China, trans. R. Chandler (London, 1990).

  2. For contrasts, see C. Lindey, Art in the Cold War. From Vladivostok to Kalamazoo, 1945–62 (London, 1990), p.25.

  3. See D. Ades, ‘Paris 1937. Art and the Power of Nations’, in D. Ades et al. (eds.), Art and Power. Europe under the Dictators, 1930–45 (London, 1995), pp.58–62; K. Fiss, ‘In Hitler’s Salon. The German Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition Internationale’, in R. Etlin (ed.), Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich (Chicago, 2002), pp.316–42; S. Wilson, ‘The Soviet Pavilion in Paris’, in M. Cullerne Bown and B. Taylor (eds.), Art of the Soviets. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-party State, 1917–1992 (Manchester, 1993), pp.106–20.

  4. Cited in James Herbert, Paris 1937. Worlds on Exhibition (Ithaca, 1998), p.36.

  5. See M. Daniel, ‘Spain: Culture at War’, in Ades et al., Art and Power, pp.64–7.

  6. Herbert, Paris 1937, ch.3.

  7. T. Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia. The Formative Period (New York, 1986), p.419.

  8. K. McDermott and J. Agnew, The Comintern. A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin (Basingstoke, 1996), p.105.

  9. C. Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries. The German Communists and their Century (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), pp.40–1.

  10. Cited in R. Boyce, British Capitalism at the Crossroads. 1919–1932: A Study in Politics, Economics and International Relations (Cambridge, 1987), pp.115–16.

  11. For this point, see R. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London, 2008), p.286.

  12. Tsirk (1936), dir. G. Aleksandrov.

  13. McDermott and Agnew, The Comintern, pp.125–6.

  14. See Dimitrov to Stalin, 1 July 1934, in A. Dallin and F. Firsov (eds.), Dimitrov and Stalin 1934–1943. Letters from the Soviet Archives (New Haven, 2000), pp.13–14.

  15. I. Stalin, Sochineniia (Moscow, 1946–51), vol. xii, p.255.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ibid., vol. x, p.169. For the comparison, see E. Van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin. A Study in Twentieth Century Revolutionary Patriotism (London, 2002), pp.18–24.

  18. For an exploration of this theme, see S. Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War 1936–1941 (London, 2002).

  19. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. vii, pp.26–7.

  20. K. Denchev and M. Meshcheriakov, ‘Dnevnikovye zapisi G. Dimitrova’, Novaia i noveishaia istoriia 4 (1991), pp.67–8.

  21. For the debate and decisions, see McDermott and Agnew, The Comintern, pp.121–30. For socialist thinking, see G. R. Horn, European Socialists Respond to Fascism. Ideology, Activism and Contingency in the 1930s (New York, 1996), ch.6.

  22. J. Degras (ed.), The Communist International, 1919–1943. Vol. iii, (London, 1971), pp. 361–5.

  23. M. Denning, The Cultural Front. The Labouring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London, 1996), pp.7–11; I. Katznelson, ‘Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?’, in S. Fraser and G. Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 (Princeton, 1989), p.186.

  24. Maurice Thorez, Fils du peuple (Paris, 1949), pp.27–8.<
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  25. J. Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–38 (Cambridge, 1988), p.120.

  26. M. Torigian, Every Factory a Fortress. The French Labor Movement in the Age of Ford and Hitler (Athens, Ohio, 1999), p.86.