■ ■ ■
The Stalin revolution began to slow down in early 1933 (with the lowering of production plans, reduction in the number of forced laborers, cessation of mass deportations, and promise to help each peasant household purchase a cow). But the solemn inauguration of a new age and final redefinition of the ideological substance took place in 1934 at the Seventeenth Party Congress, also known as the “Congress of Victors,” where it was officially announced that the prophecy had been fulfilled, the old world destroyed, and the new one founded and reinforced. In the words of the head of the Central Control Commission, Yan Rudzutak (Jānis Rudzutaks),
Whereas Marx provided the general, theoretical guidelines for the historical development of society, the inevitability of the demise of capitalism, and the inevitability of the creation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents a transition toward a classless society; and whereas Lenin further developed Marx’s teachings relative to the age of imperialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat; Stalin provided both the theoretical framework and practical methods for applying the theory of Marx-Lenin to certain historical and economic conditions in order to guide the whole society toward socialism by way of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Under the guidance of Comrade Stalin, our Party, in fulfilling its plan of great construction, has created a firm foundation for socialism.25
This steel-and-concrete foundation rested on solid bedrock, permanently drained of the idiocy of rural life. In the words of the Leningrad Party boss and Politburo member, Sergei Kirov, “the socialist transformation of the petit bourgeois peasant economy was the hardest, most difficult, and most complicated problem for the dictatorship of the proletariat in its struggle for a new socialist society. It is this problem, this so-called peasant question, that engendered, in the minds of the oppositionists, doubt in the possibility of a victorious construction of socialism in our country. This central question of the proletarian revolution has now been solved completely and irreversibly in favor of socialism.”26
It had not been easy (“one must say candidly and completely unequivocally,” said Postyshev, referring to Ukraine, “that, in those difficult years, repressions were the main form of ‘governance’”), but the victory had been won, the victors could only be judged by history, and history’s whole point consisted of that victory’s inevitability. The task for the next five years included “the final liquidation of capitalist elements and classes in general, the complete elimination of the causes of class differences and exploitation, the overcoming of the survivals of capitalism in economic life and in people’s consciousness, and the transformation of all the working people of the country into conscious and active builders of a class-free socialist society.”27
Pavel Postyshev (right) and G. K. Ordzhonikidze at the Seventeenth Party Congress
Some of the repentant oppositionists were allowed to join in the celebration by making public confessions. All claimed to have been born again. “If I have the courage to present to you, from this podium, my chronicle of defeats, my chronicle of errors and crimes,” said Kamenev, “it is because I feel within myself the realization that this page of my life has been turned, that it is gone, that it is a corpse that I can perform an autopsy on with the same equanimity and personal detachment with which I dissected, and hope to be able to dissect again, the political corpses of the enemies of the working class, the Mensheviks and Trotskyites.”28
All echoed Voronsky by claiming that they had been born again by witnessing the miracle of universal rebirth. Evgeny Preobrazhensky, who had stood next to Smilga during the opposition’s protest on November 7, 1927, was now a new man filled with the right ideological substance. “I remember that sad date in my biography. For a long time, I stood on the balcony of the France Hotel shouting in a hoarse voice at the passing columns of demonstrators: ‘Long live the international leader of the world revolution, Trotsky!’ (laughter). It was a moment, comrades, that I am ashamed to remember, ashamed not in the everyday sense, but in the political sense, which is much worse.” The reason he was not ashamed in the everyday sense was that the non-Party part of him was now dead, and the reason it was dead was “the miracle of the fast revolutionary transformation of the millions of small-peasant households along collective lines. It was something, comrades, that none of us had foreseen, it was something done by the Party under the leadership of Comrade Stalin.”29
This was the crux of the matter and the main theme of the congress. The miracle performed by the Party had been performed by Comrade Stalin. There was no other way to define the Bolshevik ideological substance. Everyone understood this, but it was the former oppositionists who, as part of their confessions, attempted to reflect on what it meant. “As far as Comrade Stalin is concerned, I feel the most profound sense of shame—not in the personal sense, but in the political sense, because here I probably erred more than in any other matter,” said Preobrazhensky.
You know that neither Marx nor Engels, who wrote a great deal about the question of socialism in the countryside, knew the specifics of how the rural transformation was going to occur. You know that Engels tended to think that it would be a fairly long evolutionary process. It has been Comrade Stalin’s tremendous insight, his tremendous courage in setting new goals, his tremendous firmness in accomplishing them, his profoundest understanding of the age and of the correlation of class forces that have made it possible to achieve this great task in the way in which the Party, under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, has done it. It has been the greatest transformation in the history of the world.30
Rykov—who had fought against Preobrazhensky when Preobrazhensky was on the left while he was on the right but thought he was at the center—felt the same way. His opposition to Comrade Stalin filled him with “an enormous sense of guilt before the Party,” a guilt he would “try to expiate, come what may. I would like to stress that the main guarantee that the cause of the working class will prevail is the leadership of our Party. I state with absolute sincerity and with the profoundest conviction based on what I have lived through during these years, that this guarantee is the present leadership and the unswerving defense of Marxism-Leninism that this leadership ensures. I state that this guarantee is Comrade Stalin’s contribution to the practical application and theoretical development of the teaching of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.”31
Stalin had become, as Bukharin put it, “the personal embodiment of the mind and will of the Party.” The mind and will of the Bolshevik Party had been formed around Lenin. Lenin’s death and the NEP retreat had produced great disappointment, dissention, and doubt. The revolution from above had restored faith and unity by performing the miracle of rebirth. The man who had presided over that revolution was a new Lenin—a reincarnation of what Koltsov had called “not a duality, but a synthesis,” a human being who embodied the fulfillment of the prophecy. As Zinoviev said at the congress, “we can see how the best representatives of the advanced collectivized peasantry yearn to come to Moscow, to the Kremlin, yearn to see Comrade Stalin, to touch him with their eyes and perhaps with their hands, yearn to receive from his mouth direct instructions that they can pass on to the masses. Doesn’t this remind you of pictures of Smolny in 1917 and early 1918, when the best people from among the peasants … would show up at Smolny Palace in order to touch Vladimir Ilich with their eyes, and perhaps with their hands, and hear from his mouth about the future course of the peasant revolution in the village, about how things will be?”32
Stalin was even greater than Lenin—not only because Lenin was “more alive than the living,” whereas Stalin was both more alive than the living and actually alive—but because Stalin was at the center of a society where peasants had been collectivized and souls had been recast: a society that had become a sect. The most important outcome of the Stalin revolution was the expectation of absolute unity and cohesion beyond the Party; the assumption that all Soviet citizens—with the exception of various enemies to be redeemed or cast aside—were Bolshevi
ks by definition (Party or “non-Party”). Stalin represented that unity, guaranteed its permanence, and stood for its cause and effect. It had been Stalin’s leadership, according to Preobrazhensky, that had made it possible to achieve the great victory in the way in which the Party, under Stalin’s leadership, had done it; and it would be Stalin’s leadership, according to Rykov, that would guarantee the unswerving defense of Marxism-Leninism that his leadership guaranteed. Stalin had become fully sacralized.33
This gave greater urgency and consistency to the traditional sectarian belief that any internal sectarianism was a form of blasphemy. As Tomsky explained in his speech, not only did any attack against Stalin constitute an attack against the Party, but—even worse—any attack against the Party constituted an attack against Stalin, “who personified the Party’s unity, provided the Party majority with its strength, and led the rest of the Central Committee and the whole Party.” Rykov called his former self a “secret agent” of the enemy, and Bukharin said that the success of their opposition would have led to foreign intervention and the restoration of capitalism. What was needed now was “cohesion, cohesion, and more cohesion … under the leadership of the glorious field marshal of the proletarian forces, the best of the best, Comrade Stalin.”34
But how could more cohesion be achieved? How could one resist doubt, heterodoxy, and subsequent perdition? Preobrazhensky’s solution was a stripped-down version of Voronsky’s (the fact that both were priests’ sons may or may not be a coincidence):
What should I have done if I had returned to the Party? I should have done what the workers used to do when Lenin was still alive. Not all of them understood the complicated theoretical arguments with which we, the “clever ones,” used to oppose Lenin. Sometimes you’d see a friend voting for Lenin on one of these points of theory, and you’d ask him: “Why are you voting for Lenin?” And he would say: “Always vote with Ilich, and you can’t go wrong” (laughter). It is this proletarian wisdom, which conceals great modesty and a capacity for disciplined fight—for you cannot win otherwise—it was this that I did not understand in the beginning, after I had rejoined the Party….
I must say that at this moment I feel more than ever before and understand more than ever before the wisdom of that worker who told me: “even if you don’t understand everything, go with the Party, vote with Ilich.” And so today, comrades, now that I understand everything and can see everything clearly and have realized all my mistakes, I often repeat that worker’s words to myself, only now in a different stage of the revolution, saying: “vote with Comrade Stalin, and you can’t go wrong.”35
Not everyone agreed. One delegate interrupted Preobrazhensky, saying: “we don’t need someone who thinks one thing but says another,” while another (Ivan Kabakov, head of the Urals Party Committee and peasant’s son who never made it beyond the parish school) said: “It is not true that the program set forth by Lenin and Stalin has ever been accepted blindly by the workers who have voted for them. Then and now, the workers have voted for the Lenin-Stalin theses with great enthusiasm and conviction; they accept the program outlined by Comrade Stalin at the Seventeenth Congress because it is a proletarian program, which expresses the hopes and desires of the working class of the entire world.” Toward the end of the proceedings, Radek congratulated the audience on rejecting his “friend” Preobrazhensky’s remarks. “For if having been taught for a number of years, we still cannot come to the Congress and tell the Party, ‘thank you for teaching us a lesson; we have learned it very well and will never sin again’ (laughter), then things really do look bad. I am going to hope that this was just a slip of the tongue on Preobrazhensky’s part.”36
But was it? And how did things look for Radek, his friend Preobrazhensky, the rest of the former oppositionists, and all those who might sin in the future? The delegates knew that the lesson Radek had learned was a harsh one. “I was sent by the Party, a little involuntarily (laughter), to relearn Leninism in some not-too-distant parts…. And, sadly, I have to admit that whatever did not enter my brain through the head had to enter it from the other direction (burst of laughter).” The Party’s way of making sure that lost members thought what they said and said what they should might have to begin with an act of blind obedience.37
Finally, there was the question of whether the hard-won cohesion was genuine and whether Radek and the people he called his “fellow sinners” actually meant what they said. “Comrade Zinoviev spoke with sufficient enthusiasm,” said Solts’s former son-in-law, Isaak Zelensky, “but whether he spoke sincerely is, I think you will all agree with me, something that only time will tell.” Kirov devoted a whole section of his speech to an extended metaphor of a disciplined army waging a mortal battle, while a few cowards and doubters, some of them former commanders, fall behind, hide in the supply train, sow indiscipline and confusion, and enter increasingly into the enemy’s calculations:
And now imagine the following scene. The army has won several decisive battles against the enemy and taken some key positions; the war is not over, far from it, but there is something like a brief breathing space, if I can put it that way, and the whole great victorious warrior host is singing its powerful victory song. At this point, what are all the ones who have been back in the supply train all this time supposed to do? (applause, laughter).
They come out, comrades, and try to insert themselves into the general celebration, they try to march in step, to the same music, and participate in our festivities.
Take Bukharin, for example. He sang according to the score, from what I could tell, but he was a bit off key (laughter, applause). And I haven’t even mentioned Comrade Rykov and Comrade Tomsky.
ROIZENMAN. Yes! Yes!
KIROV. In their case, even the tune was wrong (laughter, applause). They sing out of key and can’t keep step either.
I must admit, comrades, that, in human terms, it is not easy; we can appreciate the plight of these people who have spent long years, the decisive years of the toughest battles waged by the Party and the working class, sitting in the supply train.
ROIZENMAN. Supply-train warriors, supply-train warriors.
KIROV. It is hard for them to identify with the Party’s platform. And it seems to me—I do not want to be a prophet, but it seems to me that it will take some time before this supply-train army fully joins the ranks of our victorious Communist host (applause).
ROIZENMAN. Bravo, bravo.38
Words of repentance were “meaningless, ephemeral, hot air.” Six-fingers could not be trusted; the other Klim could not be trusted; Tomsky could not be trusted; and, since no one’s soul was fully transparent, the undoubting Bolshevik Makar Hardbread could not be trusted, either. Four years after Tomsky first asked whether his lot was to “repent, repent without end, do nothing but repent,” the answer still seemed to be “yes.” Words had to continue to be spoken, for there were few other windows to thoughts. To become meaningful, they had to be backed up by virtuous acts. Virtue—Bolshevik or any other—is obedience to the Eternal Law. To make sure that obedience arose spontaneously, it had to be cultivated and, if necessary, enforced. Kirov’s chorus, Boris Roizenman, received one of the first Orders of Lenin ever awarded for his achievements “in carrying out sensitive assignments of special state importance concerning the purge of the state apparatus in the foreign legations of the USSR.”39
But “enough about them, already,” as one delegate shouted during Zelensky’s speech. The supply-train army was marginal, and, as Kirov put it, “the Congress had listened to those comrades’ speeches without particular attention.” What mattered was the celebration of the great victory, the continued cohesion of the glorious host, and the “implementation of the program designed for us by Comrade Stalin.” Rather than passing a formal resolution, the Congress of Victors, on Kirov’s suggestion, pledged “to fulfill, as Party law, all the theses and conclusions contained in Comrade Stalin’s report. (Voices: That’s right! Prolonged, tumultuous applause. Everyone rises, while conti
nuing to applaud.)”40
■ ■ ■
The task of reflecting on the implications of the theses and conclusions of the Congress of Victors fell to the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, which opened on August 17, 1934, more than a year behind schedule. The Congress of Victors had announced the victory of the Stalin revolution and formally identified the Bolshevik ideological substance with the person of Stalin. The job of the writers’ congress was to explain what this meant on the cultural front.
The original head of the organizing committee and secretary of its Party cell was the editor in chief of Izvestia and Novyi mir, Ivan Gronsky (Fedulov). The son of a peasant migrant to St. Petersburg, Gronsky went through the usual stages of proletarian awakening, from the reading of Oliver Twist to apprenticeship in prisons and underground circles and work as an itinerant propagandist. After the Revolution, Gronsky served as a Party official in Yaroslavl, Kursk, and Moscow, and, in 1921–25, studied at the Institute of Red Professors (while working at the Karl Liebknecht Pedagogical Institute and, as part of the “Lenin mobilization” of 1924, secretary of the Kolomna District Party Committee). After graduating, he joined Izvestia as head of the economics department and married Lydia Vialova, an amateur actress and painter and the daughter of an expropriated drugstore owner. Before proposing, he asked her whether she wanted to have more children (she had a two-year-old son by a previous marriage) and what she thought about the relative merits of work and family. Her answers proved satisfactory, and they moved in together. She had two more children (Vadim, born in 1927, and Irina, born in 1934) and stayed at home, taking painting lessons. In 1931, they moved into the House of Government, first into Apt. 144 and then into Stetsky’s Apt. 18, with a large dining room and a view of the river.41
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