The Imperious Chairman-A TL
- Thread starter Napoleon IV
- Start date
I certainly look forward to the plausible ATL where the Marxists win the day entirely by inspiration and good example. Seriously I do, because I'm that kind of romantic.
But I certainly don't see a clear path from Leninism to a strongly industrialized USSR run by Bolsheviks, that doesn't involve some version or other of the massacre of the kulaks.
The terrible thing is, the most important reason the Party was likely to do something like this is, political. The peasants, according to Marxist orthodoxy, are not after all proletarians; insofar as class determines political consciousness, one would hardly expect peasants to voluntarily act in the interest of the development of a proletarian worker's state. Conflict is all too predictable.
If the Party were to respect the basic human rights of all peasants without class distinction (the Party certainly did try, OTL and here, to define "good peasants" who were not capitalistic in mentality--pretty much equating them with poor peasants) then the ones who are least interested (according to the simplistic "materialist" psychology of Lenin) in the success of the proletarian state will become, if they are allowed to freely choose how much agricultural product to produce and sell it on anything resembling a free market, the richest and most powerful of the peasants; they will become the leadership in the countryside and hence a constant irritation, if not downright counterrevolutionary.
The way to square this circle with some human dignity it seems to me is to limit and humble the Bolsheviks, to make them believe that there are limits to what they can get away with, and that conscience is not something that should be reasoned away by arguments of class interest. Kirov should not have been able to give the answer he did to the Central Committee and still remain in power--of course here all three Troika members stand by Kirov, they are in the same boat morally and politically. Obviously this is the same boat Stalin took OTL, and it is what Trotsky wanted to do OTL as well, more or less. (Trotsky's version, if I understand it correctly, was to foster class warfare among the peasants, setting poor against rich, to achieve the same outcome).
I like to think there could be some way for political power to have evolved in the Soviet Union--either by the peasants retaining their own party (the Social Revolutionaries) in coalition with the Bolsheviks (which was the case for some months--the "Left" SRs did participate in the October Revolution--but if you read Trotsky's OTL praise of the late Sverdlov (forget if I already provided this link, if not, here it is, if so--here it is again!
) you can see that they split with the Bolsheviks halfway through 1919 (and Sverdlov was resolute in driving them out).
The evil the Bolsheviks did, it sadly seems to me, was the weakness of their strength. I wouldn't be as sympathetic to the Reds of OTL if I weren't impressed with the analytic machinery of Marxism, but the ruthlessness comes from committing to being guided completely by that analysis without letting any kind of sentiment "get in the way."
According to Bolshevik ideology, stuff they believed in quite seriously, after the revolution there would no longer be families, after all. They figured that proletarians would cheerfully evolve to live in dormitories where the housework would be centralized and done professionally, as just another set of industrial jobs. They figured prostitution would vanish, and women and men would achieve equality because they would all be industrial workers alike.
They just didn't have the patience to try a program of "let's right what wrongs we can without stepping on anyone's toes, let's just take the wealth of the rich and invest it more wisely than they can to achieve maximum growth." They figured they had a plan to achieve the next level of society, and they recognized people would get hurt along the way. After all, the development of capitalist wealth was also a process that hurt huge categories of people and did not consult them for permission to do so; I don't think we should dismiss the argument that after all the worker's state faced choices between evils, not a simple and clear choice between absolute good and absolute evil. Had the Bolsheviks abdicated power, I don't know how good or bad it would have been for the Russians generally, but I don't think there is tremendous grounds for optimism either. The weaker Russia was industrially, the weaker it would be militarily, and also the poorer, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility of the Germans or some other Western power deciding to invade and run parts of it their way, for their benefit. Even if the sheer size and an adequate degree of arming of the potentially vast Russian army would deter all foreign adventurers from trying their hand at carving this or that swathe of land off, we don't know how benign or cruel a possible alternative Russia would have been.
I would guess if the SRs could have ruled, the outcome might have been a rather benign but slow rate of growth--if the Bolsheviks did not reckon they could just run the country on their own and had to work with the SRs, they might have humbled themselves enough to make carefully reasoned cases for a certain amount of subsidy for industry derived from taxing, somehow or other, wealth produced on the land by free peasants, and the SR party as agent of those free peasants might be persuaded to set up mechanisms representing their willingness to make these donations. Maybe.
Certainly I've seen the case that the Stalininst form of industrialization was accomplished so inefficiently that one guesses the level of terror and dislocation could have been scaled back considerably, and still match or exceed the actually achieved rate of real progress.
But the deep reason the Soviet Union never did achieve an efficient agrarian policy is that the Bolsheviks conceived the peasantry as a class of the past, irrelevant to the socialist future and needing massive reconstruction. They never produced any solid examples of the post-bourgeois, properly industrial-socialist farm that would efficiently produce the goods the industrial sector and the populace needed, not beyond a few model state farm, certainly not creating an appealing career path for proletarians ambitious to raise their fortunes and those of their children. Indeed they'd hardly want to make life in the country very attractive, since the countryside was the source of the surplus population they wanted to channel into the expanding industries.
I still look forward to the day when someone can write a serious and plausible alternate development of Leninism that would accept certain moral limits on just how high-handedly the Party could act toward people who had not individually shown themselves to be serious and deliberate enemies of the Soviet state.
But I certainly don't see the way to achieve that.:
But I certainly don't see a clear path from Leninism to a strongly industrialized USSR run by Bolsheviks, that doesn't involve some version or other of the massacre of the kulaks.
The terrible thing is, the most important reason the Party was likely to do something like this is, political. The peasants, according to Marxist orthodoxy, are not after all proletarians; insofar as class determines political consciousness, one would hardly expect peasants to voluntarily act in the interest of the development of a proletarian worker's state. Conflict is all too predictable.
If the Party were to respect the basic human rights of all peasants without class distinction (the Party certainly did try, OTL and here, to define "good peasants" who were not capitalistic in mentality--pretty much equating them with poor peasants) then the ones who are least interested (according to the simplistic "materialist" psychology of Lenin) in the success of the proletarian state will become, if they are allowed to freely choose how much agricultural product to produce and sell it on anything resembling a free market, the richest and most powerful of the peasants; they will become the leadership in the countryside and hence a constant irritation, if not downright counterrevolutionary.
The way to square this circle with some human dignity it seems to me is to limit and humble the Bolsheviks, to make them believe that there are limits to what they can get away with, and that conscience is not something that should be reasoned away by arguments of class interest. Kirov should not have been able to give the answer he did to the Central Committee and still remain in power--of course here all three Troika members stand by Kirov, they are in the same boat morally and politically. Obviously this is the same boat Stalin took OTL, and it is what Trotsky wanted to do OTL as well, more or less. (Trotsky's version, if I understand it correctly, was to foster class warfare among the peasants, setting poor against rich, to achieve the same outcome).
I like to think there could be some way for political power to have evolved in the Soviet Union--either by the peasants retaining their own party (the Social Revolutionaries) in coalition with the Bolsheviks (which was the case for some months--the "Left" SRs did participate in the October Revolution--but if you read Trotsky's OTL praise of the late Sverdlov (forget if I already provided this link, if not, here it is, if so--here it is again!
) you can see that they split with the Bolsheviks halfway through 1919 (and Sverdlov was resolute in driving them out).The evil the Bolsheviks did, it sadly seems to me, was the weakness of their strength. I wouldn't be as sympathetic to the Reds of OTL if I weren't impressed with the analytic machinery of Marxism, but the ruthlessness comes from committing to being guided completely by that analysis without letting any kind of sentiment "get in the way."
According to Bolshevik ideology, stuff they believed in quite seriously, after the revolution there would no longer be families, after all. They figured that proletarians would cheerfully evolve to live in dormitories where the housework would be centralized and done professionally, as just another set of industrial jobs. They figured prostitution would vanish, and women and men would achieve equality because they would all be industrial workers alike.
They just didn't have the patience to try a program of "let's right what wrongs we can without stepping on anyone's toes, let's just take the wealth of the rich and invest it more wisely than they can to achieve maximum growth." They figured they had a plan to achieve the next level of society, and they recognized people would get hurt along the way. After all, the development of capitalist wealth was also a process that hurt huge categories of people and did not consult them for permission to do so; I don't think we should dismiss the argument that after all the worker's state faced choices between evils, not a simple and clear choice between absolute good and absolute evil. Had the Bolsheviks abdicated power, I don't know how good or bad it would have been for the Russians generally, but I don't think there is tremendous grounds for optimism either. The weaker Russia was industrially, the weaker it would be militarily, and also the poorer, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility of the Germans or some other Western power deciding to invade and run parts of it their way, for their benefit. Even if the sheer size and an adequate degree of arming of the potentially vast Russian army would deter all foreign adventurers from trying their hand at carving this or that swathe of land off, we don't know how benign or cruel a possible alternative Russia would have been.
I would guess if the SRs could have ruled, the outcome might have been a rather benign but slow rate of growth--if the Bolsheviks did not reckon they could just run the country on their own and had to work with the SRs, they might have humbled themselves enough to make carefully reasoned cases for a certain amount of subsidy for industry derived from taxing, somehow or other, wealth produced on the land by free peasants, and the SR party as agent of those free peasants might be persuaded to set up mechanisms representing their willingness to make these donations. Maybe.
Certainly I've seen the case that the Stalininst form of industrialization was accomplished so inefficiently that one guesses the level of terror and dislocation could have been scaled back considerably, and still match or exceed the actually achieved rate of real progress.
But the deep reason the Soviet Union never did achieve an efficient agrarian policy is that the Bolsheviks conceived the peasantry as a class of the past, irrelevant to the socialist future and needing massive reconstruction. They never produced any solid examples of the post-bourgeois, properly industrial-socialist farm that would efficiently produce the goods the industrial sector and the populace needed, not beyond a few model state farm, certainly not creating an appealing career path for proletarians ambitious to raise their fortunes and those of their children. Indeed they'd hardly want to make life in the country very attractive, since the countryside was the source of the surplus population they wanted to channel into the expanding industries.
I still look forward to the day when someone can write a serious and plausible alternate development of Leninism that would accept certain moral limits on just how high-handedly the Party could act toward people who had not individually shown themselves to be serious and deliberate enemies of the Soviet state.
But I certainly don't see the way to achieve that.
:That's horrifiying.
I thought this guy was supposed to be better than Stalin morally, not pull off unmarxist bullshit like this.
Sverdlov is better than Stalin morally. Of course that's like saying something is better for your health than drinking cyanide.
For instance there won't be a Great Purge and several of the deportations won't happen. As for unmarxist I can't really judge what all of the various different Marxist tendencies would do with the kulaks but this is entirely how the Bolsheviks would do this. During the Civil War Lenin had ordered the Red Terror, which killed anywhere from 50,000 to a million people. Tortures were used such as putting rats in iron tubes with wire mesh on one side and the prisoner's body on the other. The tubes were then heated until the rats escaped by gnawing through the prisoner's body. Sverdlov announced the Red Terror at Lenin's behest. (Source: Wikipedia: Red Terror; Political Repression in the Soviet Union)
Then of course there is Lenin's Hanging Order with regards to a kulak rebellion. (Quotes from Wikipedia: Lenin's Hanging Order)
"1. Hang (and make sure the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than 100 known landlords, rich men, and bloodsuckers.
2. Publish their names
3. Seize all their grain from them
4. Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday's telegram.
Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometers around people might see, tremble, know, shout: 'they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks'."
From the beginning one of the Bolsheviks' goals was the destruction of the kulaks.
Of course we should bear in mind, the definition of "Kulak" was slippery and shifting. The word literally means "fist" and doing searches for it, I get the impression that it was originally used by less well-off, resentful peasants but quickly appropriated by various leftist parties.
At any rate the Wikipedia and wiktionary entry in Russian give the impression that the term was mainly circulated by the radical parties; interestingly it is The Encyclopedia of Marxism entry that gives the most impression that the term had any usage at all by anyone but left-wing party polemics. There, it is implied that the term was first used by peasants themselves in the wake of the terms under which they were emancipated from serfdom; the catch was that while peasant communities were given the land they did cultivate (though I believe they had to pay a quit-claim over time to their former lords even for that) they did not get all the land they had been using--as for pasture, or forests for firewood. Therefore (presumably by the design of the Tsarist reform that abolished serfdom) leverage existed for the opportunity of those who could get control of these necessary lands to charge rents and thus prosper by exploitation. If in fact it was the peasants themselves who coined the term, it was in resentment of this.
Again it goes to the roots of the various revolutionary ideologies of Russia and their conflict with the basic tenants of capitalism itself. An American like myself raised to respect the capitalist system as the epitome of fairness and rationality would assume that a prosperous farmer is an individual who achieved wealth mainly by hard work and intelligent planning, and thus not only should their acquired wealth be respected, but they themselves should be admired as exemplary and natural leaders of the countryside. If we look at it as the outcome of a game played with a stacked deck, of course the picture changes! Even if it is true that the Tsarist reformers did not care which of the peasants would rise to prosperity and thus acquire a stake in the conservative order, if it is the case that they guaranteed that a few would at the expense of others, we can see their prosperity as the outcome of a desire and design to impose a hierarchy to achieve social control, and not merely the "natural" outcome of people of more merit winning out against people with less.
Looking at that Marxist encyclopedia (bearing in mind it is probably a biased source) the Social Revolutionaries were apparently no champions of the dignity of the "tight-fisted ones" either; their ideology was based on the Slavicist notion that the Slavs in general, and Russians in particular, had developed a different sort of society, fundamentally morally superior to the Western development, where the peasant commune (as it had evolved under serfdom) was the ideal form. Their enmity to the Tsar was based precisely on opposition to the Tsarist reforms that appeared to Western eyes to represent progress toward freedom and enlightenment--because of course as capitalists we regard private enterprise for profit in all spheres as the natural and logical order of things, we tend to assume that any discontent that arises from privatizing formerly collective landholding is first of all an unfortunate temporary transition period, and finally the outcome of the more talented winning out over the less so. The SRs did not see it that way, and they retained and expanded the doctrine of terrorism against the Tsarist regime that the Marxists generally denounced in favor of mass mobilization--to the SRs the peasants were basically all right and they just needed to kill off the Tsarist incubus to achieve a good society--but the division of the villages between richer and poorer peasant was an outcome of invidious Tsarist policy, not the natural development of freedom. Therefore some of the SRs went beyond the notion of killing off individual Tsarist officials to the idea that they'd have to exterminate the bourgeoisie en masse, having indeed developed more or less Social Darwinist notions that people who prospered under capitalism were genetically predisposed to do so, so no amount of reform or persuasion could be expected to settle things as long as they or their children lived.
Meanwhile if I am to believe the Encyclopedia of Marxism on the Left SRs who did join with the Bolsheviks, their reason for breaking with them was not a matter of disagreements on policy toward the peasants of the countryside, but rather their patriotic hatred of the costly terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that the Bolsheviks made with the Germans; apparently the SRs wanted Russia to continue to fight on as an Ally in the war, which the Bolsheviks had resolved Russians had seen quite enough of already--they won over the soldiers of the Army, who were of course overwhelmingly from a peasant background, by ending the war.
So anyway, it seems that using the word "kulak" at all is a politically charged act; the people called "kulaks" would probably not use that word to describe themselves and resent being called that. But discontent against them was not just a Bolshevik plank; it addressed deep and live resentments in the countryside. None of the revolutionary parties involved in tossing out the Tsar championed the cause of prosperity based on private wealth, or even being middling well-off. One should note that the definitions the Bolsheviks offered boiled down to the idea that anyone who was in a position to hire other people to work their lands, or even rent out capital equipment of any kind, was therefore exploiting others capitalistically, which is in accordance with Marx's labor theory of value after all.
All this does imply to me that probably a gentler path was available to them; positive development of collective institutions would offset and countervail the private power of the more fortunate peasants, and perhaps attract them to join the collectives, if they could be invited to run shared resources on behalf of the general good. But with quasi-racist ideas in the air that those who were successful thanks to their tight fists were naturally, by genetic predisposition, sociopathic and would pass those traits down to their children not just by training and example but in their very blood, it seems unlikely to me such a gentle solution would be offered or trusted.
Fundamentally, the Bolsheviks had reason to be desperate to get control of the countryside, and believe that the prosperous stratum of peasants stood in their way, and had no interest in assisting the rise of a new form of collective farming.
With no common ground in terms of long-term goals, only the notion that human beings should not be harmed without just cause stood between the "kulaks" and their fate, and most activist Marxists would bow to the argument such sentiments should be brushed aside for the "greater good."
GiantMonkeyMan
Banned
I think there's a massively different context between the suppression during the midst of the Civil War of the kulaks, who were essentially the rich, pro-White segment of the peasant population, by Lenin in 1918 and the political decisions of Stalin regarding the kulaks. There's a whole argument to be had about Stalin dismissing the kulaks as a problem up to as late as 1928 before doing a complete u-turn once the Opposition had been expelled, meaning there was little in the way of apparatus or preparation for dealing with the 'economic rebellion' of the kulaks who numbered just 6% of the peasant population but held 53% of the corn stocks, but besides all that you have Sverdlov almost arbitrarily executing anyone over the age of 50. Why? It's almost a caricature.
I think there's a massively different context between the suppression during the midst of the Civil War of the kulaks, who were essentially the rich, pro-White segment of the peasant population, by Lenin in 1918 and the political decisions of Stalin regarding the kulaks. There's a whole argument to be had about Stalin dismissing the kulaks as a problem up to as late as 1928 before doing a complete u-turn once the Opposition had been expelled, meaning there was little in the way of apparatus or preparation for dealing with the 'economic rebellion' of the kulaks who numbered just 6% of the peasant population but held 53% of the corn stocks, but besides all that you have Sverdlov almost arbitrarily executing anyone over the age of 50. Why? It's almost a caricature.
Is there really that much difference in context? To the Bolsheviks they were at war with "class enemies" from the start of the Revolution until Communism could be established. The kulaks also never really launched economic rebellion during the Stalin years. The shortfalls in grain were caused by insanely high quotas and the overpriced goods. The peasants couldn't earn the money to buy these goods so they instead ate what they grew and caused problems in the cities. They also didn't grow grain or killed their livestock to protest against grain seizures and collectivization that was the result of the need to meet these quotas.
GiantMonkeyMan
Banned
By 'economic rebellion', I meant exactly that. Stalin's bureaucracy made ridiculous quotas and levied ridiculous taxes which made the profitability for the peasants unfeasable so the peasants killed their livestock and hid away their grain in defiance. Here's what Victor Serge had to say about the situation:
Three months after our expulsion, the grain crisis that we had forecast broke out, endangering supplies to the towns and the army. The peasants, having paid off their taxes, now refused to deliver their grain to the State because they were not being paid enough for it. The Central Committee decreed requisitions, applying, quite improperly, Article 107 of the Penal Code on concealment of stocks. Detachments of young Communists scoured the countryside, stripping the fields of their grain, flax, tobacco, or cotton, depending on the district. Just as in the years of the Civil War, Communists were found at the roadsides with their skulls split open. The stacks of confiscated grain were set on fire. There was no fodder at all; the country folk besieged the bakeries in the towns so that they could feed their livestock with black bread bought at the regulation price.
The requisitioning was no more than an expedient. The real policy had been outlined by Molotov at the Fifteenth Party Congress: the development of collective agricultural cultivation (kolkhozes) or of State grain factories (sovkhozes). A slow development was envisaged, spread over many years, since collective agriculture could only replace piecemeal cultivation stage by stage as the State supplied the farms with the equipment that was indispensable to mechanized cultivation. But, as it was, war had been declared on the peasantry through the requisitioning. If the State confiscates the grain, what is the use of sowing? In the following spring, statistics will show that the area under wheat has shrunk: a peasants’ strike. There is only one way of forcing them: compulsory cooperatives, administered by the Communists. Will persuasion succeed? The independent farmer who has resisted the agitation, or rather coercion, turns out to be freer and better fed than his fellows. The Government draws the conclusion that collectivization must be total and abrupt. However, the folk of the soil are putting up a bitter defence. How can their resistance be broken? By expropriation and mass deportation of the rich peasants or kulaks and of any that may be classified as kulaks. This is what is called “the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.”
Will it ever be known how terrible was the disorganization of agriculture that resulted? Rather than hand over their livestock to the kolkhoz, the peasants slaughter the beasts, sell the meat, and make boots out of the leather. Through the destruction of its livestock the country passes from poverty to famine. Bread cards in the cities, the black market, a slump in the ruble and in real wages. Internal passports have to be issued, to keep the skilled manpower in the factories against its will. Since total collectivization is heading towards disaster, its completion is declared when it has reached sixty-eight percent, and even then too late, in March 1930, when famine and terror are at their height.
The requisitioning was no more than an expedient. The real policy had been outlined by Molotov at the Fifteenth Party Congress: the development of collective agricultural cultivation (kolkhozes) or of State grain factories (sovkhozes). A slow development was envisaged, spread over many years, since collective agriculture could only replace piecemeal cultivation stage by stage as the State supplied the farms with the equipment that was indispensable to mechanized cultivation. But, as it was, war had been declared on the peasantry through the requisitioning. If the State confiscates the grain, what is the use of sowing? In the following spring, statistics will show that the area under wheat has shrunk: a peasants’ strike. There is only one way of forcing them: compulsory cooperatives, administered by the Communists. Will persuasion succeed? The independent farmer who has resisted the agitation, or rather coercion, turns out to be freer and better fed than his fellows. The Government draws the conclusion that collectivization must be total and abrupt. However, the folk of the soil are putting up a bitter defence. How can their resistance be broken? By expropriation and mass deportation of the rich peasants or kulaks and of any that may be classified as kulaks. This is what is called “the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.”
Will it ever be known how terrible was the disorganization of agriculture that resulted? Rather than hand over their livestock to the kolkhoz, the peasants slaughter the beasts, sell the meat, and make boots out of the leather. Through the destruction of its livestock the country passes from poverty to famine. Bread cards in the cities, the black market, a slump in the ruble and in real wages. Internal passports have to be issued, to keep the skilled manpower in the factories against its will. Since total collectivization is heading towards disaster, its completion is declared when it has reached sixty-eight percent, and even then too late, in March 1930, when famine and terror are at their height.
And I very much see it as a different context. The rebellion in the midst of a civil war threatened the very existence of the nascent soviet government. White Generals threatened Petrograd, Imperialist intervention saw the forces of Britain, Germany, the US, and others intervening on behalf of anti-communist forces in order to smash the soviets and rich landowning peasants refusing the authority of the soviet government would be seen as much the same as Tsarist civil servants refusing the soviet government in the cities.
Stalin's decisions came after nearly a decade of refusing to engage with the idea of collectivisation, of denouncing the idea that the kulaks could ever be a problem. In fact, to counter the plans of the Joint Opposition he and Bukharin actually advocated working with those rich peasants. As late as 1928, the same year the Joint Opposition was expelled from the party, his commissar of agriculture, Yakovlev, declared that collective farming would for years to come “remain little islets in the sea of private peasant farms”. And Rykov, during the 15th party Conference, when the Opposition was expelled, can be paraphrased as having asked "If the Kulak is so strong why hasn't he played us some trick or other?"
For Stalin, engaging with the problem of the Kulaks, or not as it were, was an entirely political decision to curtail any influence of the Opposition. When you have people in 1926 (and earlier) pointing out that 6% of the peasantry own 53% of corn stock and up to 40% of the peasants are so poor they can't even afford horses or tools then you have an opportunity, a responsibility, to rectify that if you stand by your word that your nation is working towards socialism. Stalin's bloc chose not to, instead using it as a political opportunity to curtail the influence of the Opposition. People were predicting problems with the agricultural situation long before Stalin rammed collectivisation down the peasants' throats. That's why the context is so radically different to the situation forced upon the Bolsheviks in 1918 and why I can't see it playing out the same unless Sverdlov is exactly the same sort of callous and scheming individual as Stalin was.
You paint Sverdlov as being 'better' than Stalin but here you have him ordering the shooting of people older than 50, a concept as arbitrary as it is horrifying. The failures of OTL resulted in the fuck-ups of Stalin in failing to prepare for a monumental shift in agricultural practice - there were plenty of opportunities for the Soviet government to begin the process of curtailing the economic weight of the kulaks whilst mechanising and collectivising the agricultural sector but instead it comes as a sharp u-turn for political reasons. There was no groundwork laid for the process and as such was a massive failure. Would Sverdlov have made the same choices and the same mistakes? I'm not sure but you haven't convinced me.
Point taken about the shooting of people older than 50. I was thinking that they would just shoot people who were too old the work and I definitely set the age too low and will change that.
On the point of the kulaks as Shevek23 pointed out, the main ideological reason for killing the kulaks was that they were "class enemies" and thus could not just lose their power but had to be destroyed. As for collectivization itself there has been some groundwork laid (I'll talk about it in the next update) and, while it won't be easy or painless, it will go better than Stalin's collectivization since it will go on a longer timeline (no all animals being collectivized within a year for example) and will be more local, or at least run by the SSRs instead of from Moscow.
GiantMonkeyMan
Banned
Having the policy at all is almost as ridiculous as the worst policies of Nazism, so I would reject it outright as anything a sane individual would advocate.Point taken about the shooting of people older than 50. I was thinking that they would just shoot people who were too old the work and I definitely set the age too low and will change that.
I know that the justification that Stalin used in 1929 for his shift of policy against the kulaks was that they were 'class enemies' but they were, undeniably, class enemies that Stalin and his associates had created through their policies up until that point. As early as 1923 you had the people who would go on to become part of the Left Opposition criticising and warning about the future of the agriculture sector. Stalin's ruling faction ignored the advice, a political choice to abandon any principled Marxism, in order to essentially work with the emerging petite bourgeois layers of the peasantry.
Bukharin came up with a slogan which they disseminated out to the peasantry at this stage: "Get Rich!" and in 1925, the the hiring of labour power and the renting of land were legalized for agriculture. The taxes they levied on the peasants were blanket and received much harsher by the poorest peasants whilst allowing the richest to prosper. Stalin's faction created the kulak and then were forced to come to terms with the problem that they had forced into being but only after they had jettisoned any critical voices from the party.
In preparation for the 15th Congress, when the Left Opposition was expelled and then later imprisoned/exiled, Molotov said "We not slip down into poor peasants illusions about the collectivization of the broad peasant masses. In the present circumstances it is no longer possible." Stalin himself as late as July 1928 said "There are people who think that individual farms have exhausted their usefulness, that we should not support them ... These people have nothing in common with the line of our party."
What I'm trying to get at isn't that the kulaks represented a problem for the Soviet government (they did: when you have the richest 6% of peasants in control of roughly 60% of grain whilst the state barely has control of any grain to ship internally or export in trade, then you have a problem) it's that the entire situation of the kulaks could have been long avoided if someone that wasn't a politically manoeuvring monster was in charge of the ruling faction. I just don't see Sverdlov making the same callous choices as Stalin in regards to industry and agriculture, purely on the basis that it would slightly undermine his political opponents. And I especially don't see him advocating ridiculous policies like killing off anyone above 50. Even Stalin didn't do that.
I guess my criticism of your last piece is that you don't really explain where the problem of the kulaks emerged. Earlier you have Sverdlov agree with Rykov and Bukharin to keep the NEP despite his criticisms but that doesn't really delve into the consequences or why the NEP would be criticised in the first place. You have him expel Stalin and curtail the influences of Bukharin and Rykov, three people committed to agricultural policies that lead to the kulaks' growth, but don't really go into how that would change the policies of the Party. Then you suddenly introduce agricultural problems and then have masses of peasants executed. I don't think it's well thought out or offers any change to OTL.
Excerpt from Sverdlov by Robert Service
In 1932 New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief Walter Duranty traveled to Ukraine to report on the collectivization program. His reports were nothing less than laudatory. “As far as the eye can see amber waves of grain rustle in the wind. While many peasants still use primitive farming implements there are also plenty of machines such as threshers, tractors, and harvesting combines; which I have been told were not widely available before this program. Contrary to the rumors in the Western press the peasants are content and the Soviet Union is set to reach and even surpass its goals.” While Duranty was not deliberately lying in his article he only captured half of the truth. Besides the horrors of dekulakization the collectivization process had been long and difficult, and at times even violent.
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Ever since the fall of Stalin collectivization had been on the agenda. Although Sverdlov had agreed not to end the NEP until 1929 in 1926 he ordered Narkomprod (the People's Committee for Food) to start preparing for collectivization. This involved producing or importing mechanical farming equipment, stockpiling building more grain elevators and silos, stockpiling supplies such as artificial fertilizer and pesticides, and training people from urban, industrial areas to work in rural areas. These Thirty-Five Thousanders, as they were called, were organized in 1928 to help establish new kolkhozy (collective farms), get machines and supplies to the kolkhozy, and providing political education for the peasants. To become a Thirty-Five Thousander one had to have organizational experience and be politically reliable, thus many were recruited from the Komsomol (All-Union Leninist Young Communist League).
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Finally on April 8th, 1929 collectivization started. The initial voluntary phase had seen somewhat anemic growth and several measures were quickly put in place to coerce farmers into joining the kolkhozy. Under the new laws the state would requisition a fourth of every private farmer's grain harvest and a fourth of their slaughtered livestock; the farmers received no compensation. To make matters worse if a kolkhoz fell short of their production goals officials would simply look the other way if they stole from the private farmers. The state was also the biggest buyer of grain as few were willing to use it for fear of being declare a kulak. Already the kolkhozy were paid well below market value for their grain, but private farmers were paid even less, in some areas up to 70% less. Additionally only the kolkhozy could own mechanical farming equipment. Many private farmers decided to give up and join a kolkhoz, but many fought until the bitter end. In protest some farmers set their crops alight and killed their animals. For a Soviet peasant this was as destructive as a modern day Englishman burning down his house and using his life savings as kindling. Particularly disturbing for the Bolsheviks was the killing of horses and oxen, which were needed to pull farming machines. Fearing a shortage of these beasts and a resulting famine they declared that anyone who destroyed their property would be sent to the Gulag along with their families. The Central Asian magnates also organized a mass breeding of horses in their SSRs to compensate for possible losses (the Central Asian breeding progam over performed and most of the horses were either used in local agriculture or given to the Red Army during its expansion in the mid '30s). [1]
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In March 1932 Sverdlov called the First Secretaries of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Communist Parties to Moscow. When Konstantin Gey (Byelorussia) and Stanislav Kosior (Ukraine) arrived in Moscow Sverdlov berated them for the poor growth of the kolkhozy. At the time 50% of households in Ukraine were collectivized and only 42% of Byelorussian households. Sverdlov feared that at this rate the goal of 80% collectivization by 1935 would not be reached. When he returned Kosior and the Ukrainan Central Committee organized a new policy: any private farmer on productive land was forced to move to more marginal areas or join a kolkhoz. The plan was poorly thought out and only succeeded in angering the peasants. Things came to a head when a peasant named Valentin Popov was ordered to move. In response he took a shotgun and shot up the local Party office, killing 5. Word spread of his actions and hundreds of angry peasants in his native Kharkov Oblast revolted. In addition to killing Party and OGPU men they also attacked the kolkhozy; they considered the kolkhozy to be either cowards who gave up or opportunists who profited off their misery. The air filled with smoke from the burning fields and the stench of dead men and animals. After the Red Army went in and restored order the policy was reversed and Kosior was replaced by Vlas Chubar. While Chubar refused to return the land already seized he organized a program to pay farmers who joined kolkhozy.
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For those who lived on the kolkhozy life was hard. Many hated the loss of their property; a feeling only slightly lessened by the fact that each family was allowed to own a 1 acre private plot. In theory the peasants were supposed to be paid part of the kolkhoz's product and profits but in practice the payment policies were confusing and often inadequate. The majority (60%) paid in grain or meat, generally about 500 grams of grain and 150 grams of meat per day worked. However most of the rest paid cash, which due to overpriced consumer goods and the low prices the state paid the kolkhozy meant that many peasants couldn't afford much. During times of famine (which happened in 1929 and 1930 due to the chaos that accompanied collectivization and the after effects of the famine of 1928) the pay was further reduced. The kolkhozy were also not the cooperatives that they were supposed to be. Although the members were allowed to elect their leadership there were several restrictions on who could serve. To be a member of the leadership one had to be a Party member, have good moral character (this requirement was rarely used except to stop former prisoners or former members of expelled factions of the Party to become leaders), and have organizational experience. The end result of these regulations was that most of the leaders were Thirty-Five Thousanders or Party officials. Another violation of the idea of a cooperative was that members had to sign contracts promising to stay with the kolkhoz for at least 5 years. After this time was up the members were allowed to leave, but they could only take the animals and profits from their private plots; forfeiting all of that year's profits for their labor on the kolkhoz. They also had to pay a small amount to the kolkhoz for the labor that it would lose. All of this made it difficult for members to leave and many peasants felt that it was a return to serfdom. On the other hand poorer farmers also found that that their quality of life improved. The kolkhozy provided the food and shelter needed at a low rate, which protected the peasants from bankruptcy and the loss of their farms. [2]
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[1] The OTL Holodomor famine was in part the result of the deaths of so many draft animals. This was the result of a decree that forced farmers to give up their animals in a 3 month period. Many farmers killed their animals and the animals that were left were quickly worn down and starved due to lack of forage. ITTL there is a ban on harvesting forage. ITTL there was also more preparation for collectivization so mechanical equipment was able to make up some of the difference and collectivization wasn't as chaotic.
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[2] In total the Breadbasket Policy led to 25-45,000 deaths (excluding kulaks). They were divided between starvation victims of the 1929 and 1930 famines, those killed in peasant revolts, people who died after being sent to the Gulag, and a smaller but significant number of suicides. By 1935 Ukraine was 83% collectivized and Byelorussia was 80% collectivized. The goal of 500 poods of grain by 1935 was not achieved (it wouldn't be done until after the Second Great War) but the 1935 harvest was 480 poods and this increased until the Second Great War.
And now for two "case studies" for lack of a better word, of the effects of Sverdlov's foreign policy. This update is about India, the next will be about Germany.
Excerpt from The Comintern and International Revolution by H.N. Turteltaub
During the struggle for power following Lenin's death Sverdlov tried to avoid foreign affairs as much as possible. He still had bitter memories of being denounced by Lenin and knew that it was his weak point. Stalin, Zinoviev, and Trotsky knew this too and they savagely attacked him over it. Having survived all of this Sverdlov tried to get his strategy through the Central Committee. However, with the exception of Frunze and Kirov, no one would support him. They also remembered what Lenin had said. Further hurting Sverdlov's case was insignificance of most Western Communist parties and that in 1927-1928, when the debates were taking place, the capitalist countries were experiencing a massive economic boom. After several failed attempts to get this policy through Sverdlov accepted the inevitable. "It is clear that this policy will never pass," he told Kirov, "and I've suffered to much for this idea." The new policy was much more in line with conventional Bolshevik thought; emphasizing revolution in Asia where, as Sverdlov put it, "the great mass of humanity is awaiting liberation."
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The Indian and Chinese Communist Parties were perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of this new policy. [1] Together these 2 countries contained around 800 million people in 1934 and vast amounts of resources. As Sverdlov told Anastas Mikoyan “If India and China were liberated then Communism would be unstoppable. By 1934 the Chinese Communist Party was already well establish and in the middle of the famous Long March, but the Communist Party of India was tiny, having only joined the Comintern in 1934. However the Party had scored a victory with the Meerut Conspiracy Case. The British authorities had arrested several Indian Communists and labor activists after they organized a railway strike. The accused used the trial as a forum to spread their ideas and show their resistance to British rule. The leadership was also reorganized, with local leaders gaining power over the expatriates who had founded the Party. The one exception was M.N. Roy. Originally a nationalist revolutionary Roy had converted to Communism in New York City. In 1920 he traveled to Russia, where he impressed Lenin enough that he was allowed to write supplements to Lenin's own writings. Roy could not return to India due to an arrest warrant from 1924 but he was, as Chairman of the Secretariat P.C Joshi put it, “The guiding light of Indian Communism.” His writings were incredibly influential, especially The Indian Question (1931) and Colonialism: The Cornerstone of Capitalism (1935). [2]
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Sverdlov knew that if a Communist revolution in India was ever going to happen the CPI would need plenty of aid. To that end he directed the Comintern to “spare no expense in making sure that Communism takes root in India.” To that end the Comintern sent plenty of money and, more importantly, several agents. The most important of these agents was American Communist Whittaker Chambers. Chambers had converted to Communism in 1925 and soon proved himself to be a strong writer and superb organizer; writing and editing for various CPUSA newspapers and magazines. In 1928 CPUSA head William Z. Foster recommended that Chambers go to Moscow to work with the Comintern. [3] In 1934, after a few years in Spain and Greece, Chambers was sent to India. He spent the next 3 years living in cheap motels or the homes of Indian Communists; always having to move and change his name to avoid the authorities. Despite these challenges Chambers threw himself into his work. He reorganized the Party, expelling several members who advocated working with Gandhi's Congress Party; he also sent Party cadres to form cells in every state and major city. But his biggest contribution was the establishment of the Jogelkar Spy Ring. Sanjay Jogelkar was a servant to the Nizam of Hyderabad and after Chambers recruited him Jogelkar recruited the servants of other royals, those of the British, and even a few sympathetic policemen. As the CPI became more violent during the late 1930s the Jogelkar Spy Ring was essential in helping them plan attacks and keeping Party leaders out of jail.
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To capitalize on their victory in the Meerut Conspiracy Case the CPI began recruiting the Untouchables. In the Indian caste system the Untouchables were those who did dirty work such as butchery, waste disposal, and sewer maintenance. They were not allowed to associate with other castes and thus lived in wretched poverty in slums or shacks outside of villages. One Untouchable described the slums as “a place where filth was everywhere. Streams of human and animal waste flowed past piles of garbage. Often one could see those who were too old or sick to go on lying in the street, surrounded by swarms of flies and rats.” The decision to reach out to the Utouchables was made by Joshi, Roy, and Chambers. Roy had opposed the caste system for several years. As he wrote in The Indian Question: “The caste system as practiced to day is a creation of the British. They realized that if they can convince the Indian people that the differences between them are not just the result of economic forces but are religious laws, as fundamental as the law of gravity, then they will never united to break their oppression.” Chambers and Joshi were not as invested in destroying the caste system, but they realized that the Untouchables were a large group that would probably be very receptive to Communist ideology.
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CPI cadres went to the slums to preach. Layak Mehed, then a butcher and small time thief, remembered one such speech: “A man in a suit was standing in the street surrounded by a crowd of people, and I went over to see what the fuss was about. The man told us that our poverty was the result of British imperialism and the caste system. He told us that under Communism we would be equal with the priests, that we would have clean beds, and be able to get free medical care. His words struck me like a thunderbolt. The next day I joined the Party.” To gather further support the CPI opened schools to teach people to read and write, built and staffed clinics, and even dispensed justice. Some people deserted the Party, unable to stomach the idea of working with the Untouchables, and in conservative areas this position made it difficult for the Party to gain traction. However, the Untouchables more than made up for this and, combined with recruitment in other demographics, made the CPI the 3rd biggest movement in India by 1940.
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[1] Chinese politics doesn't really change from IOTL until 1937. There will be a future update on this.
[2] IOTL Roy was expelled from the Comintern by Stalin in 1929, an event which led to his disillusionment with Communism. Obviously this doesn't happen ITTL.
[3] Chambers became a spy IOTL sometime between 1931 and 1934.
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India is going to be a huge thorn in the side of the British (not that it wasn't IOTL). However in addition to all the changes in India Chamber's arrival is going to create some butterflies. Without Chambers to implicate them people like Alger Hiss might be caught later, or never caught at all.
I said earlier that the next update would focus on Germany. For a teaser let's just say that the term Social Fascist won't be in vogue during the 1930s.
This sounds rather like what happened in North Vietnam in 1954-1956.
I still look forward to the day when someone can write a serious and plausible alternate development of Leninism that would accept certain moral limits on just how high-handedly the Party could act toward people who had not individually shown themselves to be serious and deliberate enemies of the Soviet state.
But I certainly don't see the way to achieve that.
The fundamental spirit of Bolshevism is the creation of a perfected society by ruthless social engineering, unfettered by any sort of conventional moral restrictions. It attracts men who aspire to godlike authority and think that they are achieving transcendental goals - therefore they can do whatever they see fit. Mass terror and mass murder are features, not bugs - they demonstrate how committed the rulers are to the cause, and the exercise of absolute powr is gratifying in itself.
A "kindler, gentler" Communism is possible (Yugoslavia sort of managed it), but unlikely. The natural tendency of the beast is viciousness.
There will be an update about that but for now let's just say persecution of the religious and the korenzatsiya will continue.
Good to know.
I like the mood of this TL - death of Stalin doesn't suddenly turn the USSR into a liberal socialist utopian Candyland, but there are still major and plausible butterflies.
GiantMonkeyMan
Banned
Regarding various ethnicities and religions in the USSR, a good book that might give you a few ideas on where to to take things is William Mandel's Soviet But Not Russian: The 'Other' Peoples of the Soviet Union.
Excerpt from Hitler's Germany by Ian Kershaw
The elections of 1930 showed just how far Wiemar democracy had fallen. The Nazis had risen from one of the smallest parties in the Reichstag to the second largest, and the only larger party was the traditionally strong Social Democratic SPD. Furthermore the third largest party was the Communist KPD; like the Nazis a party that hated the democratic process. Worse still the government of Chancellor Heinrich Bruning was supported only by his own Centre Party and President Paul von Hindenburg. In such as situation Bruning was forced to govern through Hindenburg's power of executive decree, or as he euphemistically put it: “authoritative democracy.” Hindenburg was himself no fan of democracy, instead pining for the days of the Hohenzollern Monarchy.
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It was against this backdrop the Bruning ruled. He decided that the most pressing economic issue was paying off reparations. To this end he cut wages and social programs, and raised taxes. Germany, like the rest of the world, was in the grip of the Great Depression and Bruning's policies caused massive hardship. Prices were rising and people were unemployed and those that were employed found their salaries cut and taxes taking some of the rest. As the economy got worse many Germans joined the Nazis or the Communists; while the Social Democrats became increasingly critical of Bruning. Violence surged as brownshirts and members of the Red Front Fighter's League attacked each other in the streets. The Jews had it the worst. Angry (and often drunk) brownshirts would beat them and burn their stores, often screaming obscenities and racial slurs. In response to all of these problems Bruning did nothing.
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Moscow's reaction to the 1930 elections was panic. Yakov Sverdlov was particularly worried. Ever since 1929 Comintern agents in Germany had sent him reports on the right, particularly the Nazis. Sergei Kirov tried to comfort him by pointing out that “even if Hitler takes power the Western powers will never let him rearm.” Sverdlov replied “But they hate us just as much, if not more than Germany. Why should they care if Germany rearms if those arms are used against the Soviet Union?” Here, in a nascent form, was the conspiracy theory that would shape Sverdlov's policy towards Europe: that Hitler was just a puppet of the Capitalist powers, who were using him to destroy the Soviet Union and Communism. To prevent this Sverdlov wrote to KPD head Ernst Thalmann, “Forget the Social Fascists (a Communist term for the Social Democrats), it is your prerogative to stop that madman Hitler.” In a series of meetings following this letter Thalmann and the KPD Central Committee decided that the only way to stop Hitler was “to drink from the poison bottle” (as Thalmann put it) and ally with the Social Democrats. This was not unprecedented: the KPD had originally been the left wing of the SPD before they split over supporting the First Great War. Many Communists blamed the Social Democrats for the defeat of the Spartacist revolt in 1918-1919 and the murders of the Communists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Still, the Social Democrats were the only large party sufficiently left-wing enough to ally with the KPD. On August 17th, 1931 the KPD offered the SPD an alliance where the two parties would merge and place a nationwide list of candidates that was one third Communists two thirds Social Democratic. SPD leader Otto Wels would become Chancellor if they won an election and the SPD would have the majority of the Cabinet posts. All they had to do was join the KPD in passing a motion of no confidence against Bruning. The Social Democrats were suspicious (the Communists had a history of using United Front politics to undermine Social Democrats) but they realized that this was their chance to overthrow Bruning and defeat Hitler. As for the KPD Otto Wels commented “we are much larger;we can manage them.” On August 23rd the KPD announced a motion of no confidence. They realized that in addition to the Social Democrats the Nazis and the far-right German National People's Party (DVNP) would support the measure since they also disliked Bruning and wanted new elections. For his part Bruning was not overly worried: the SPD-KPD alliance was still a secret and he though he had the SPD's support. So he was shocked when the bill passed by a landslide. No matter what happened next Heinrich Bruning was finished as Chancellor.
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As per the Constitution elections were scheduled for December 20th. The new SPD-KPD coalition and the Nazis were the main contenders. Both sides pulled out all the stops. Hitler rented a plane and flew out to every region of Germany. One citizen described a rally: “The crowd stood, waiting. On stage Rudolf Hess gave a speech. Finally, when the tension became unbearable he stopped and said “Seig Heil.” That was the cue. Hitler came out on stage whiled the crowd saluted. He took in the energy and adulation of the crowd; releasing it in a whirlwind of sound and fury. As he reached the end of his speech the crowd turned into a single animal, each person giving up their individuality so that they could, in a way, be one with their leader.” The Goebbels propaganda system organized an equally impressive campaign. Everywhere there were posters of Hitler, underneath of which were messages such as “Germany's last defense against Bolshevism” and “Building a new, stronger Germany.” Millions of leaflets were printed, the most popular of which featured a cartoon portraying Otto Wels and Ernst Thalmann kissing the feet of Yakov Sverdlov, drawn as a crude Jewish stereotype. The caption read: “A vote against Hitler is a vote for Jewish-Bolshevism.”
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But the elections were also a time of violence. The Reichsbanner and Red Front Fighter's League paramilitaries were now united against the SA. Both sides deliberately held marches and rallies in areas where the other was popular. These quickly turned into riots, but then again so did all meetings. Whenever groups of SA and RFB men met they would fight, using whatever tools were available. After a particularly bloody battle SA leader Ernst Rohm declared “For every one of ours they kill we will kill three of theirs.” Soon both sides were burning offices and kidnapping and torturing enemy fighters. In an attempt to stop the violence President Hindenburg banned all paramilitary groups, but they just stopped wearing their uniforms.
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On the day of the election the Nazis won big. There were 599 seats up for grabs in the Reichstag and the Nazis won 39% of the vote, giving them 234 seats and making them the largest party in the Reichstag. The SPD won 149 seats and the KPD won 72;for a combined total of 221 seats. The next largest party was the Centre Party with 75 seats, then the DNVP with 30 seats, and finally the German People's Party with 10 seats. The final 7 seats were divided between 6 different parties. The Chancellorship was in Hitler's reach and the game for power began.
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(more on Germany next update)
(more on Germany next update)
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