by Ludo Martens
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Karl Kautsky, Bolshevism at a Deadlock (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931), pp. 97--98.
He hoped for a `victorious peasant revolt against the Bolshevik rйgime' in the Soviet Union.
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Ibid. , p. 150.
He wrote of the `degeneration of Bolshevism into ... Fascism ... in the last twelve years'!
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Ibid. , pp. 139--140.
Hence, starting from 1930, social democracy was already toying with the theme `'. This was the same social-democracy that upheld colonialism, that did its utmost to save capitalism after the 1929 crisis, that sustained and organized anti-worker and antipopular repression and, most significantly, that later collaborated with the Nazis!
Kautsky made a `claim for democracy for all'.
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Ibid. , p. 124.
He called for a wide united front with the Russian right for a `democratic, Parliamentary Republic', claiming that `middle-class democracy in Russia has less interest in capitalism than Western Europe'.
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Ibid. , p. 173.
Kautsky perfectly summarized the social-democratic line of the 1930s, struggling against the Soviet Union: a `democratic revolution' against the `Soviet aristocracy', against the `fascist disintegration of Bolshevism', for `democracy for all', for a `democratic, Parliamentary Republic'. Those who followed the debates in 1989 will recognize the program and the slogans used by the right-wing forces in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
`Dizzy with success'
By March 1, 1930, 57.2 per cent of all peasant families had joined kolkhozy. In the Central Black Earth Region, the figure reached 83.3 per cent, in the North Caucasus 79.4 per cent and in the Ural 75.6 per cent. The Moscow Region counted 74.2 per cent of collectivized families; Bauman, the Party Secretary, called for complete collectivization for March 10. The Lower Volga counted 70.1 per cent collectivized families, Central Volga 60.3 per cent and Ukraine 60.8 per cent.
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Davies, op. cit. , pp. 262--263, 442.
This impulsive development of the kolkhozian movement, as well as the violent reaction of the kulaks, who were followed by some of the middle peasants, once again provoked violent discussions and encouraged opposing opinions within the Party.
No later than January 31, Stalin and Molotov sent a telegram to the Party bureau in Central Asia, instructing, `advance cause of collectivization to extent that masses really involved'.
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Ibid. , p. 239.
On February 4, on orders from the Central Committee, the Central Volga Committee sent instructions to local organizations, stating that `collectivization must be carried out on the basis of the development of broad mass work among poor peasants and middle peasants, with a decisive struggle against the slightest attempts to drive the middle and poor peasants into the kolkhozy by the use of administrative methods'.
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Ibid. , p. 240.
On February 11, during the Central Committee conference of leading party officials from Central Asia and Transcaucasus, Molotov warned against `kolkhozy on paper'. Following that conference, the administrative methods used in Uzbekistan and in the Chechen region were criticized, as was the lack of preparation of the masses.
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Ibid. , p. 265.
On February 13, the North Caucasus Committee replaced a number of heads of districts and village soviets, accusing them of `the criminal use of administrative methods, distortion of the class line, completely ignoring directives of the higher organs of power, impermissibly weak work of the soviets and complete absence of mass work, crudeness and a high-handed attitude in dealing with the population'. On February 18, the Committee criticized the complete and forced collectivization of cows, chickens, gardens and child daycare centers, as well as the disobedience to instructions about dekulakization. These criticisms were approved by Stalin.
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Ibid. , p. 264.
Stalin corrects
On March 2, 1930, Stalin published an important article entitled, `Dizzy with success'.
Stalin affirmed that in certain cases, an `anti-Leninist frame of mind' ignored the `voluntary character of the collective farm movement'. Peasants had to be persuaded, through their own experience, `of the power and importance of the new, collective organization of farming'.
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Stalin, Dizzy with Success: Problems of the Collective Farm Movement. Leninism, p. 170.
In Turkestan, there had been threats of using the army if the peasants refused to enter the kolkhozy. Furthermore, the different conditions in different regions had not been taken into account.
`(N)ot infrequently efforts are made to substitute for preparatory work in organizing collective farms the bureaucratic decreeing of a collective farm movement from above, paper resolutions on the growth of collective farms, the formation of collective farms on paper --- of farms which do not yet exist, but regarding the ``existence'' of which there is a pile of boastful resolutions.'
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Ibid. , p. 171.
In addition, some had tried to `socialize' everything, and had made `ludicrous attempts to lift oneself by one's own bootstraps'. This `stupid and harmful precipitancy' could only `in practice bring grist to the mill of our class enemies'.
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Ibid. , pp. 171--172.
The main form of the kolkhozian movement should be the agricultural artel.
`In the agricultural artel the principal means of production, chiefly those used in grain growing, are socialized; labor, the use of the land, machines and other implements, draught animals, farm buildings. But in the artel, household land (small vegetable gardens, small orchards), dwellings, a certain part of the dairy cattle, small livestock, poultry, etc., are not socialized. The artel is the main link of the collective farm movement because it is the most expedient form for solving the grain problem. And the grain problem is the main link in the whole system of agriculture.'
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Ibid. , p. 172.
On March 10, a Central Committee resolution took up these points, indicating that `in some districts the percentage of `dekulakized' has risen to 15 per cent'.
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Davies, op. cit. , p. 273.
A Central Committee resolution examined the cases of `dekulakized' sent to Siberia. Of the 46,261 examined cases, six per cent had been improperly exiled. In three months, 70,000 families were rehabilitated in the five regions for which we have information.
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Ibid. , pp. 280--281.
This figure should be compared with the 330,000 families that had been expropriated, in the three categories, by the end of 1930.
Rectify and consolidate
Hindus, a U.S. citizen of Russian origin, was in his native village when Stalin's article arrived. Here is his testimony:
`In the market places peasants gathered in groups and read it aloud and discussed it long and violently, and some of them were so overjoyed that they bought all the vodka they could pay for and got drunk.'
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Ibid. , p. 271.
`Stalin became a temporary folk hero with the appearance of his ``Dizzyness with success''.'
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Viola, op. cit. , p. 116.
At the time that Stalin wrote his article, 59 per cent of the peasants had joined kolkhozy. He obviously hoped that most would remain. `Hence the task of our party: to consolidate the successes achieved and to utilize them systematically for the purpose of advancing further'.
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Stalin, Dizzy with Success, p. 169.
A decree dated April 3 included several special measures destined to consolidate the existing kolkhozy. The collective farmers could keep a certain number of animals and work a plot of land for themselves. Credit of 500 million rubles was set aside for the kolkhozy for that year alone. Some debts and payments of kolkhozy and kolkhozians were dropped. Tax reductions were announced for the next two years.
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Davies, op. cit. , p. 281.
In the end of March, Molotov warned against retreat. He insisted that, as far as possible, the level of collectivization be retained while the errors were rectified: `Our approach ... is to manoeuvre, and by securing a certain level of organization not entirely voluntarily, consolidate the kolkhozy'. Molotov underlined that the `Bolshevik voluntary principle' differed from the `SR-kulak voluntary principle', which presupposed equality of conditions for the kolkhoz and for individual peasants.
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Ibid. , p. 276.
But it was necessary to firmly correct leftist and bureaucratic errors. On April 4, Bauman, the Moscow Committee Secretary, one of the bastions of `leftism', resigned from the Politburo. His replacement, Kaganovich, then replaced 153 district and okrug leaders.
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Ibid. , p. 280.
Right opportunism rears its head
In a rural world dominated by small producers, Stalin's criticism of such blatant errors was clearly dangerous. Enthusiasm easily transformed itself into defeatism, and right opportunism, always present, reared its head when leftist errors were criticized. For many local leaders, there was a feeling of panic and disarray; their morale and their confidence was severely shaken. Some claimed that Stalin's article had destroyed several viable kolkhozy, that he made too many concessions to the kulaks and that he was taking a step backwards towards capitalism.
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Ibid. , pp. 319--320.
Within the party as a whole, right-opportunist tendencies, beaten in 1929--1930, were still present. Some, afraid of the bitterness and the violence of the class struggle in the countryside, took advantage of the criticism of the excesses of collectivization to start criticizing, once again, the very concept of collectivization. Syrtsov had belonged to Bukharin's right-opportunist group in 1927--1928. In July 1930, he was promoted to the rank of substitute member of the Politburo. On February 20, 1930, he wrote of the `production apathy and production nihilism which have appeared with a considerable section of the peasantry on entering the kolkhozy'. He attacked the `centralization and bureaucratism' prevalent in the kolkhoz movement, called for `developing the initiative of the peasant on a new basis'.
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Ibid. , p. 300.
This capitulationist position favored a change of course that would help the kulaks. In August 1930, Syrtsov warned against further collectivization and stated that the kolkhozy were not worth anything if they did not have a solid technical basis. At the same time, he stated his skepticism about the perspectives of the Stalingrad tractor factory. In December 1930, he was expelled from the Central Committee.
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Ibid. , p. 375.
The anti-Communists attack
All the anti-Party and counter-revolutionary elements tried to change the criticism of the excesses into a criticism of Stalin and the Party leadership. Alternately attacking the Leninist leadership with right-wing and `leftist' arguments, they tried to put forward anti-Communist positions.
During a meeting of the Timiryazev Agriculture Academy in Moscow, a man cried out, `Where was the CC during the excesses?' A Pravda editorial dated May 27 `condemned as `demagogy' all attempts to `discredit the Leninist leadership of the party' '.
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Ibid. , pp. 322--323.
A man named Mamaev, during a discussion period, wrote: `the question involuntarily arises --- whose head got dizzy? ... one should speak about one's own disease, not teach the lower party masses about it'. Mamaev denounced `the mass application of repressive measures to the middle and poor peasants'. The countryside would only be ready for collectivization when mechanization was possible. He then criticized the `comprehensive bureaucratisation' in the party and condemned the `artificial inflaming of the class struggle'. Mamaev was correctly denounced as `an agent of the kulaks within the party'.
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Ibid. , pp. 325--327.
Expelled from the Soviet Union, Trotsky systematically chose positions opposed to those taken by the Party. In February 1930, he denounced the accelerated collectivization and dekulakization as a `bureaucratic adventure'. Attempting to establish socialism in one country, based on the equipment of a backward peasant, is doomed to failure, he cried out. `In March, he condemned Stalin for failing to admit that the `utopian reactionary character of ``100 per cent collectivisation'' ' lay in `the compulsory organisation of huge collective farms without the technological basis that could alone insure their superiority over small ones' '. He asserted that the kolkhozy `will fall apart while waiting for the technical base'.
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Ibid. , pp. 327--328.
Trotsky's `leftist' criticisms were no longer distinguishable from those of the right opportunists.
Rakovsky, the main Trotskyist who remained in the Soviet Union, in internal exile, called for the overthrow of the `centrist leadership' headed by Stalin. The kolkhozians would explode and would constitute one front of the campaign against the socialist state. The kulak should not be discouraged from producing by limiting his means. Industrial products should be imported for the peasants and the Soviet industrialization program should be slowed down. Rakovsky recognized that his propositions resembled those of the right-wing, but `the distinction between ourselves and the Rights is the distinction between an army retreating in order and deserters fleeing from the battlefield'.
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Ibid. , pp. 335--336.
Retreats and advances
Finally, the collectivization rate fell from 57.2 per cent on March 1, 1930 to 21.9 per cent on August 1, rising again to 25.9 per cent in January 1931.
In the Central Black Earth Region, the numbers fell from 83.3 per cent on March 1 to 15.4 per cent on July 1. The Moscow Region saw a drop from 74.2 per cent to 7.5 per cent on May 1. The quality of political and ideological work was clearly reflected in the number of peasants who withdrew from the kolkhozy. Lower Volga, starting from 70.1 per cent on March 1, dropped to 35.4 per cent on August 1 and rose again to 57.5 per cent on January 1, 1931. North Caucasus obtained the best results: 79.4 per cent on March 1, 50.2 per cent on July 1 and 60.0 per cent on January 1, 1931.
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Ibid. , pp. 442--443, Table 17.
However, for the most part, the gains of the first large wave of collectivization were remarkable.
The collectivization rate greatly exceeded what was planned for the end of the first Five-Year Plan, in 1933. In May 1930, after the massive departures from kolkhozy, there were still six million families, as opposed to one million in June 1929. The typical kolkhoz contained 70 families instead of 18 in June 1929. The collectivization rate was higher, and the kolkhoz were for the most part artels, instead of TOZy (Associations for the Joint Cultivation of Land). The number of dairy cattle increased from 2.11 million in January 1930 to 4.77 million in May 1930. In the kolkhozy, there were 81,957 Party members on June 1, 1929; they numbered 313,200 in May 1930. With the great collectivization wave, the kolkhozy consisted mainly of landless and poor peasants. However, a large number of middle peasants had joined. In May, 32.7 per cent of the leading members were former middle peasants.
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Ibid. , pp. 285--286, 288.
In May 1930, the fixed assets of the kolkhozes were valued at 510 million rubles, 175 million coming from the expropriation of the kulaks.
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Ibid. , p. 251.
Remarkable results
Despite the major upheavals provoked by collectivization, the 1930 harvest was excellent. Good climactic conditions had contributed, and these might have led the Party into under-estimating the difficulties still to come.
Grain production amounted to, depending on the figures, between 77.2 and 83.5 million tonnes, compared to 71.7 in 1929.
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Ibid. , p. 419.
Thanks to national planning, mechanized agriculture, particularly of cotton and beets, rose by 20 per cent. However, because of the slaughter of a large number of animals, animal production decreased from 5.68 million rubles to 4.40, a drop of 22 per cent.
