Russian Revolution and The Bolshevik Dictatorship, Shubin PDF

Journal of Russian & East European Psychology
ISSN: 1061-0405 (Print) 1558-0415 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrpo20
Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik Dictatorship
A. V. Shubin
To cite this article: A. V. Shubin (2001) Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik Dictatorship,
Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 39:6, 41-97
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/RPO1061-0405390641
Published online: 08 Dec 2014.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 37
View related articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=mrpo20
Download by: [University of Bath] Date: 16 March 2016, At: 20:51

Journal of Russian arid East European Psychology
vol. 39, no. 6, November-December 2001, pp. 41-97.
02003 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1060-0405/2003 $9.50 + 0.00.
A.V. SHUBIN
Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik

Dictatorship
Downloaded by [University of Bath] at 20:51 16 March 2016
World War and Revolution
Russia is the country in which the “classic” totalitarian regime was

formed. Was the victory of totalitarian forces inevitable there? What
were the alternatives to such a direction of development? How, specifi-
cally, did this system establish itself in Russia? From the very begin-
ning, researchers opposed to Bolshevism pointed out factors that
facilitated the success of the authoritarian alternativein the Russian revo-
lution. Among such factors were the low level of democratic culture, the
schism between the masses of population and the ruling elite, the isola-
tion of the intelligentsia both from the people and the authorities, the
weakness of the bourgeois classes, and the peasants’ adherenceto a com-
munal system.’ Not all of these circumstances can be recognized as fac-
tors that brought about Bolshevism’s victory. The communal system,
for example, provided the peasants with democratic skills in solving
their problems and contributed to the search for consensus among the
peasants.* Much more conducive to a totalitarian alternative was the
transition from a traditional society, a part of which was communal self-
governance, to new industrial relations based on the principles of total
control and rationalization of the social structure.
Translation 8 2003 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text Q 1996 Institut
Vseobshchei Istorii, Rossiiskaiia Akademiia Nauk. “Rossiiskaia revolutsiia i
bol’shevistskaia diktatura,” in Totalitarizm v Evrope X X veka: iz istorii ideologii,
dvizhenii, rezhirnov i ikh preodoleniia, ed. 1a.S. Drabkin and N.P. Komolova.
Translated by Valentina Zaitseva.
41
42 A.KSHUBlN
Some of the factors mentioned above emerged as the result of the

“catching-up” type of development that, at the end of the nineteenth and
beginning of the twentieth centuries, became predominant in Russia.
New social and economic forms were introduced much faster than in
the West and had no time to mature. Furthermore, Stolypin’s govern-
ment, while trying to establish the corresponding economic structures
without damage to the interests of the landowner elite, collided with the
traditional communal system. As a result, Stolypin’s reform aggravated
social conflicts in the villages; it weakened the traditional mechanism
of social regulation, i.e., the village community, and also caused a con-
centration of marginal elements in the ~ i t i e s . ~
The most important factor contributing to the success of the totalitar-

ian alternative was the existence in Russia of a powerful tendency to-
ward authoritarian psychology tied to the autocracy. This sometimes is
responsible for the conclusions about the immanent ties between Rus-
sian culture and authoritarianism, about the Russian people’s inherent
predisposition to totalitarism as the ultimate development of
authoritarianism.
N. Berdiaev was one of the first to write about this in connection with
the Russian revolution: “Professing some orthodox faith always remains
the most important thing; it is what determines one’s belonging to the
Russian nation. . . . The Russians are prone to perceive everything in two;
the skeptical criticism of Western people is alien to them.”4 These state-
ments ignore both the widespread orthodoxy in other cultures (including
Western ones) and the nonorthodox way of thinking of many representa-
tives of Russian culture (from A. Pushkin to N. Berdiaev himself).
Although authoritarian traditions left their imprint on the social psy-
chology of the peoples of Russia, democratic traditions were also strong
there. Such traditions included both communal self-government and re-
publican political forms in the period of isolation. These were traditions
from which the Russian liberation movements, especially the populist
Narodniks? drew their strength.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, not a single prominent po-
litical movement in the country was totalitarian. Within each party there
burned an internal political struggle; one’s right to a personal opinion
was universally recognized, even if in varying degrees.At the same time,
Russian social democracy supported the Marxist ideal of a nonconsumer
society organized according to a single plan. Economic centralism and
liquidation of the market under the conditions of an industrial society
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 43
meant total control not only over production but also over consumption.
The aim of a radical transformation of society in accord with such an
ideal required extremely rigorous organization and was conducive to a
tendency within the social-democratic movement to be ready to give up
adherence to democracy for the sake of an authoritarian model of politi-
cal organization. This tendency found its realization in Bolshevism. In
his comments on the Bolsheviks’ organizational suggestions, G.
Plekhanov wrote: “This is simply a noose around the neck of our party;
this is Bonapartism, if not absolute monarchy in the old, prerevolutionary
‘manner’. . . ,The late Sergey Nechaev probably would have loved it.”6
Nevertheless, the presence or absence of radical organizations in
Russia would not have had any significance had the crisis of the Russian
Empire not coincided with World War I. It caused broad militarization
and state control (i.e., additional state control of the economy) that de-
formed the economic structures.
The tsarist government failed to cope with emerging problems through
governmental regulation of the economy. It sharpened the already grow-
ing crisis; and in E’ebruary 1917, catastrophe struck. Mutinies grew into
revolution, which brought the fall of the monarchy. The process that
began in February 1917 can be characterized as a sociopolitical revolu-
tion since the very principles of organization and power became the
focus of the struggle of broad social strata.
Real power in the capital temporarily fell into the hands of the organs
of the workers’ and soldiers’ unions, the soviets. Their leaders acted
according to the principle of moral influence on the masses represented
in the soviets. In the provinces, power initially was consolidated in the
hands of more elitist social committees.
The soviets depended on the workers’ plant organizations and trade-
unions and self-formed organs of self-government, factory and plant
committees and on a broad network of other worker and soldier organi-
zations (the soldiers’ self-government was made legal by Order no. 1 of
the Petrograd Soviet).
The autocratic regime was broken, but democratic elements now co-
existed along with structures of the collapsed militarized system. A huge
role was played by the soldier masses freed from government control
and striving for rapid demobilization.
The Bolsheviks became a force that took upon itself consolidation of
the radically oriented soldiers’ and workers’ masses.
The return to the country of the Bolsheviks’ leader, V. Lenin, had
44 A.KSHUB1N
special significance for the further course of the revolution. Lenin, de-
spite the resistance of the local Bolshevik leaders, achieved acceptance
of a new orientation toward the socialist rev~lution.~
Moderate socialist forces, opposing the restoration of the agrarian
regime and believing that it was impossible to solve all the problems the
country was facing immediately and radically, were represented by the
Populist Party of the socialist-revolutionaries (the SR) and the Russian
social-democraticparty (the Mensheviks). The prestige these movements
gained in the years of struggle with tsarism increased in the course of
the intelligentsia’s massive influx into socialist organizations. The
Mensheviks and the socialist-revolutionaries spawned a great number
of agitators who advocated their political line at numerous meetings in

the first months of the revolution.
In the spring of 1917, it was the moderate socialist parties that be-
came a leading force in the soviets. Their relatively realistic view of the
situation in the country made them search for a compromise between
the radical masses of the working people and “the elements with elec-
toral qualifications,” i.e., the affluent intelligentsia and entrepreneurs
without whom, they felt, effective functioning of the economy seemed
doubtful. In the difficult circumstances of 1917, they undertook the task
of consolidating society. That was also the political line of their rninis-
ters who represented them in the Provisional Government after the April
crisis and after the formation of the liberals’ and socialists’ coalition on
4 May. However, under pressure from the masses organized in the sovi-
ets, the direction the social-revolutionaries and the Mensheviks took
drifted away from the interests of the affluent elite. They planned mea-
sures for social regulation of the economy and the use of land.*But the
nonsocialist part of the cabinet impeded realization of these plans. The
liberal-socialist coalition grew less and less capable of introducing so-
cially oriented reforms.
The increasing economic problems and the lack of reforms pushed
new groups of workers into the ranks of the radicals, i.e., the Bolsheviks
and the Anarchists. The All-Russian Congress of Soviets that took place
in June gave the moderate socialists a powerful instrument capable of
creating the all-national “back-channel” system that the government
lacked after the factual dissolution of the State Duma. Although the con-
gress did not represent all the people of the country, it doubtless spoke
for the majority of the active population.
It is not surprising that transformation of the Congress of Soviets into
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION A N D THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 45
a temporary revolutionary parliament did not please the social demo-

crats, because electorally qualified groups had no representation in the
soviets. The moderate socialists, for their part, were afraid of losing
their alliance with the bourgeoisie and intellectual elite; such a break,
they felt, was fraught with economic sabotage and loss of support from
the right in the struggle against Bolshe~ism.~ As a result, the leaders of
the democratic parties lacked the courage to substitute social democrats
for Bolsheviks and to form “a homogeneous socialist government” that
would include the soviets and would be capable of introducing reforms
without looking for support from the electorally qualified groups.
When on 3 June 1917 the government attempted to dispatch part of a
garrison to the battlefront where an attack had just begun, thousands of

people took to the streets, aroused by a slogan proclaiming transfer of
power to the soviets and led by anarchists and Bolsheviks who were
acting contrary to decisions of their parties.
Lenin was afraid to take radical actions without sufficient prepara-
tion. Evaluating the strength of the Bolsheviks Party realistically, its
leaders were prepwed to play the role of the left opposition; they were
not planning immediate seizure of power. They tried to keep the upris-
ing within limits. After the beginning of the demonstration, however,
the Bolsheviks could not miss joining it in order to transform it into a
peaceful, organized declaration of the will of Petrograd’s soldiers, work-
ers, and peasants.””
The Bolsheviks’ most important programmatic demand was power
for the soviets. Its realization would make them one of the ruling parties
and would give them the opportunity to strive for radical politics with-
out looking to the socialist-democrats. Their adherence to the soviets
followed not just from specific party interests in its struggle for power.
Some years later, when already existing soviets seemed useless as a step
to the power ladder, Lenin described his credo in his work The state and
the revolution. The concept of this work is closely related to the idea of
the soviets.
With references to K. Marks and F. Engels, Lenin formulated his own
vision of the future social structure in the following way: “Democracy
introduced with maximal completeness and all conceivable consistency
is transformed from a bourgeois democracy into a proletarian one, from
the state (i.e., a special force for the suppression of a certain class) into
something that is not the state proper.”ll
Such a democracy meant transfer of power directly to the organs of
46 A.V SHUBlN
the workers’ and peasants’ self-government and liquidation of the bu-

reaucratic superstructure: “Full electivity, removability of all officials,
without exception, at any time, reduction of their salary to the regular
‘wages’of a worker-all these simple and ‘self-explanatory’ democratic
measures, while uniting the interests of the workers and the majority of
the peasants, at the same time serve as a bridge leading from capitalism
to socialism.”12Lenin thought that it would be not a state of government
officials, but rather a state of armed workers who would control the
process of governing through their organization.
Lenin imagined control as something very simple:
Capitalist culture has created large industry, factories, railroads, the
postoffice, telegraph, telephone, etc. Based on this, a huge number of the

functions of the old “state power” becomes simplified to such a degree
and can be reduced to such primitive operations of registration and veri-
fication that these functions will become perfectly accessible to all liter-
ate people; and it will be possible to perform these functions for a regular
worker’s salary and will be possible (and necessary) to rid these func-
tions of the slightest trace of privilege and of “bos~iness.”~~
Lenin thought that it was precisely industrial society (which, in fact,
greatly complicated the governing process) that was to simplify it. His
hopes rested on the technological level available early at the time, and
their realization would be achievable at the level of civilization’s devel-
opment by the end of the twentieth century. It was precisely this epoch,
however, that created the worst conditions for control from below over
the governing process though, at the same time, it formed the best con-
ditions for a separation of the governmental process from local, bottom-
of-society interests.
Striving to neutralize the independent will of the bureaucracy through
the control of organized workers and some of the peasants, Lenin did not
abandon maximization of the power of the state itself, i.e., of the central-
ized state structure. He demanded “strictest control on the part of society
and the state over measures of labor and measures of cons~mption.”~~
Lenin emphasized K. Marx’s centralism (as opposed to an anarchic
doctrine presupposing the transfer of power to local organs). A strong
governing center had to be based on an apparatus that would consist of
flexible working organs of the soviets’ type rather than of government
officials. According to Lenin, the program of immediate measures to be
taken right after the revolution included the following: “expropriation
of the capitalists, transformation of all the citizens into workers and em-
RUSSIAN REVOLUTlON AND THE BOLSHEVIK DlCTATORSHlP 47
ployees of one large ‘syndicate,’that is, the entire government, and com-
plete subordination of this syndicate to the state democracy in its very
essence, i.e., to a state of soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ dep~ties.”’~
Thus, Lenin strove to create a new socium in which the whole eco-
nomic structure (including control of consumption) would be subordi-
nated to the governing center. The center would be based on a
self-governing system that would oust the bureaucracy and keep the re-
mainder of government officials under control. The achievements of the
industrial society were to facilitate rapid coordination of interests within
this system. The Bolsheviks’ experience proved Lenin’s program for
internal reforms wrong as early as 1918. The failure to build the Soviet
democracy conceived by Lenin resulted in the dominance of the old (by

its structure) bureaucracy and a return to the extreme forms of
authoritarianism.
Creation of a republic of the soviets in July 1917 had failed. The
tactic of pressuring moderate socialists to move in this direction did not
succeed. The Petrograd Soviet leaders, along with the ministers-social-
ists closely allied with them-had decided not to resist. Furthermore,
they considered the armed demonstrations of the radical soldiers and
sailors an attempt of the Bolsheviks. The authorities had obtained a con-
venient excuse for weakening the radical opposition, accusing it of or-
ganizing mutiny in the rear of the battling army. Such a position of the
Soviet majority forced the Bolsheviks’ party to go underground and to
begin revising of its attitude toward the soviets.
From that point on, Lenin began to incline toward the necessity of
transferring power to his party, along with the organizations it con-
trolled, through armed uprising. Nevertheless, Lenin still did not aban-
don the idea of the soviets, expressing the hope that in the course of
the revolutionary upsurge, new soviets would appear that would oust
“the existing ones.”16
But by fall 1917, the situation had changed sharply. Kornilov’s insur-
rection of 26-3 1August activated the masses: the soviets, trade unions,
army committees, and leftist parties and movements (among them, the
Bolsheviks, anarchists, and nationalist organizations)immediately mo-
bilized scores of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and workers to fight
against Kornilov. Most of the soldiers and the workers were against of-
fensive actions on the front associated with Kornilov’s name. The troops,
moving in the direction of the capital, were surrounded “by swarms of
agitators”17who explained to Kornilov’s soldiers the counterrevolution-
48 A.KSHUBlN
ary nature of their actions. At the same time, the socialists’ supporters
took control over the General Headquarters and the headquarters on a
number of fronts. Kornilov’s revolt had failed.
These events yet again destabilized the sociopolitical balance and
brought about new vacillation between authoritarian and democratic al-
ternatives among the Provisional Government leaders. Attempts were
made to form a surrogate of the representativepower (Democratic Coun-
cil, Soviet of the Republic) before the Constituent Assembly took place.
Their refusal to build authority on the basis of the soviets and other
mass organizations, however, caused the government to lose the support
of the society precisely at the moment when its leaders considered their
position most stable. The head of the Provisional Government, A.

Kerensky, thought he could attack and defeat the Bolsheviks. Later he
explained that this mistake was based on misinformation on the part of
staff officers.l8
The August events had restored the influence of the soviets and pro-
moted their radicalization. Since the Bolsheviks had been the most radi-
cal organization among those participating in the struggle against
Kornilov, their position was restored. Moreover, the Bolsheviks’ con-
siderable influence had spread to the large industrial centers through the
worsening of the economic situation, the government’s refusal to intro-
duce any reforms before the Constituent Assembly, and the effective-
ness of the Bolsheviks’ propaganda. After the socialist-revolutionaries
and the Menshevik leaders left the Petrosoviet as a protest against the
Bolshevik orientation that had gained strength there, L. Trotsky became
chair of the soviet in the capital.
Answering the moderate Bolsheviks’doubts concerning the possibil-
ity of using the situation for armed seizure of power, Lenin, in his book-
let Wi22 the Bolsheviks retain state power? argued: “Our revolution is
invincible if it will stop being afraid of itself, if it will pass all the power
it possesses to the proletariat; for there is standing behind us the immea-
surably larger, more developed, more organized worldwide forces of the
proletariat, which is just temporarily suppressed by the war; it is sup-
pressed, but not destroyed. On the contrary, it has been strengthened by
it.,’ 19
In the process of the tense internal party struggle, the radical move-
ment prevailed, but did not become the only one. In these conditions,
the Bolsheviks pursued a course of “peaceful” and to some extent “con-
stitutional” uprising, stemming from the Congress of the Soviets. The
RIJSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 49
Congress was a felicitous political cover for the coup since the slogan
“All power to the soviets” gained great popularity.
Continuing to overestimate his strength, Kerensky made an attempt
to deal the Bolsheviks a preventive blow on 24 October. In response, on
24-25 October, the Bolshevik+xiented troops occupied the capital‘s most
important objectives. At the same time, the Second Congress of the So-
viets opened (represented by a number of organizations fewer by half
than at the First Congress). Initially, the Bolsheviks had half of the man-
dates. But the Mensheviks and the socialist-revolutionaries’representa-
tives left the congressas a sign of their protest against the coup in progress.
Those who left with them constituted not half, but rather less than a
third of the entire number of delegates, since the leftist social-revolu-

tionaries stayed. This was the composition of the congress when it re-
sumed its work. 2o
According to the opinion of an American historian, ‘The uprising
that took place on 24-25 October was of great historical significance
since it caused the majority of the Mensheviks and social democrats to
leave the Second Congress of the Soviets and prevented formation of a
coalition government in which the moderate swialists could have taken
strong positions. Hecause of that, the uprising paved the way for the
formation of a Soviet government under full control and governance of
the Bolsheviks.”21
The following problem arose before the Bolsheviks: Will Petrograd
remain the “Paris Commune” or will the coup acquire an All-Russia
character? In other cities the struggle had intedttent success. Kerensky
still made attempts to gather his strength for a counterattack. Only at the
beginning of November did his march end in failure because of the
Premier’s low popularity in the army. 22
On 29 October, the All-Russian Executive Committee of the railroad
trade union (Wkzhel), under the leadership of the social-democrats and
the non-Party workers, threatening a political strike, declared a need to
conduct talks between the hostile sides in order to prevent civil war and
to provide “a wider base” for the new power. Trying to stop military
actions, Wkzhel halted railroad transportation of troops. The railroad
workers planned to form a homogeneous socialist government without
social democrats and with the participation of the Bolsheviks. It was
clear that the head of such a government would be, first of all, socialist
revolutionaries and their leader V. Chernov. This variant of the course of
events, based on a compromise between the most influential forces at
50 A.X SHUBIN
the moment, gave Russia a chance to turn from a authoritarian path of

development that in the end brought it to totalitarianism.
Such conditions, however, evoked categoricalrejection on the part of
Lenin and Trotsky-they had no place in the new government. “Our slo-
gan now is: No agreements, i.e., we are for a homogeneous Bolshevik
government,”Lenin proclaimed.23 This meant refusal to collaborate with
a considerable part of the working people, represented by the socialist-
revolutionaries and other moderate socialists. Over time escalation of
the conflict between mass-population parties threatened to end in a civil
war. Opposing Lenin, A. Lunacharsky said: “We are beginning to love
war, as if we were no longer workers but rather soldiers or a military
party. We have to create, but we do nothing. In our party we keep debat-

ing and will debate until only one person is left-a dictator.”24Little did
the author of these words suspect how far into the future he saw.
Despite the fact that “conciliators” were supported by the old Bolshe-
viks who had not completely severed their ties with the social-demo-
cratic tradition, Lenin received the support of the majority in the Central
Committee. 2J In November-December 1917, with the support of the
garrisons in the rear, the Bolsheviks won in most of the cities in Russia.
That was how the political forces both within and outside the Bolshe- ,
viks’ party were defeated in the course of the events of October and the
beginning of November 1917. Those were the forces that supported the
broad, left-centered coalition representing the majority of the active
population of the country.
The Bolsheviks, however, were not yet ready to rule single-handedly:
they still lacked sufficient ties with the peasant majority of the country.
This caused restoration of a multiparty system already in December 1917.
Actively participating in the local coups along with the Bolsheviks
were the members of a new party, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries
whose leaders were expelled from the socialist-democratic party on 27
October for their participation in overturning the Provisional Govern-
ment. With the help of the leftist social-revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks
managed to get the support of a part of the peasant soviets. On 10 De-
cember, on the basis of the soviets under the leadership of the Bolshe-
viks and the leftist social-revolutionaries, the united worker-peasant
All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTs1K)was formed.26The
coalition of the Bolsheviks and one of the socialist parties gave the dic-
tatorship a sort of union between the proletariat and the peasantry. The
leftist social-revolutionariesentered the government as a junior partner.
One of the most important problems the Soviet of the People’s Com-
missars faced became the supply of provisions to the cities. The food-
supply apparatus still continued functioning while gradually
disintegrating. In November, 33.7 million poods of grain were collected;
in December, 6 million poods; in January, 2 million; in April, 1.6 mil-
lion; in May, 0.1 million; and in June of 1918,21 thousand. For com-
parison: in January 1917, 32. 5 million poods; in April, 18 million; in
May, 52.7 million; and in June, 33.3. 27Thepeasants did not want to give
away grain in exchange for “pieces of paper,” especially from a prole-
tarian party. The exchange of an industrial product for grain was com-
plicated since industry kept degrading.
In the business of food-supply, the Bolsheviks decided to depend on

the force of the military food-detachments. Already on 25 October
Podvoisky instructed his subordinates as follows: “Vladimir Ilich ad-
vises us to send two or three thousand regular sailors, Red Guards, and
soldiers to loot the grain in warehouses, railroads, in grain-producing
districts, anywhere possible.” ** The navy detachments headed in search
of grain in various directions. According to the words of the outstanding
economist N. Kondratiev, “thus began a nightmarish period of war be-
tween central Russia and its peripheries, its granaries.” 29
As early as 25 October capital punishment was abolished on the battle-
front (its introduction by the Provisional Government served at the time
the Bolsheviks’antigovernmentpropaganda). Lenin was displeased with
its abolition: “Nonsense,” he said. “How can one make a revolution with-
out a sentence of being shot? Do you really intend to win over your
enemies by disarming yourselves? What other repressive measures are
there? Imprisonment?Who cares about imprisonment during a civil war,
when each side hopes to win?” 30
On 7 December, an All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK)
was formed that combined the functions of judicial investigation and
trial. Describing his tasks, its head, F. Dzerzhinsky, said: “Don’t think I
am in search of forms of revolutionary justice; we don’t need justice
right now. . . . I suggest, I demand, the organization of revolutionary
reprisal against the counterrevolutionaries.”31
On 10 December, there was the first trial in the history of the new
regime, a trial against Countess S. Panina, who hid Ministry of Educa-
tion funds from the Bolshevik government. There were no repressions:
all ended in a “public reprimand.” On 18 December, several leaders of
the moderate socialists were arrested. At this point, the minister of jus-
52 A.VSHUBIN
tice, I. Shteinberg, twarted the Bolsheviks. He released the arrested

people, which marked the beginning of a lengthy struggle between two
governmental parties around the question of the VChKs competence.
Meanwhile, the elections for the Constituent Assembly brought dis-
appointment to the Bolsheviks: they collected only 24 percent of the
votes whereas other socialist parties received 59.6 percent. Although
the split of the socialist-revolutionary party deprived them 40 of 259
bills, they nonetheless remained the largest parliamentary faction. The
Bolsheviks were losing support even among the Petrograd workers.
Having sensed the change in the public mood, the Bolsheviks sabotaged
the reelections, counting on the support of the former majority: “The
Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies act as if they are afraid of

the workers: they would not allow reelections, they barricaded them-
selves; they turned into just government organizations and no longer
expressed the views of the working masses,”32stated the meeting of the
deputies from Petrograd factories and plants. Such meetings of “the rep-
resentatives” threatened to remove the working class from the Bolshe-
viks’ influence.
5 January, on the day of the convocationof the Constituent Assembly,
the workers and the intelligentsia came out into the streets to support the
people’s representatives. The convocation of the parliament gave rise to
a hope that a nationwide agreement would finally be reached. But that
was exactly what the party of class struggle did not like about it, since in
such a parliament it could lay claim only to a role of leftist opposition.
Despite the fact that the Bolsheviks marched to power under the slogan
of the Constituent Assembly, Trotsky stated:
The Constituent Assembly answers best to elements headed by the con-
ciliator parties, corresponding to their notions and their interests;it gives
the petty-bourgeoisieintelligentsia a disproportionally large role because
of its well-placed voices, whereas with regard to talk in the parliament,
the darkest and most retarded masses are still tongue-tied. That is why,
having placed itself between the affluent classes and the working masses,
the Assembly will continue to play its role of a conciliator, of a broker, of
an intermediary. And the Constituent Assembly will become a great con-
ciliating establishment of the Russian revolution. 33
As an alternative to the Constituent Assembly, a Republic of the So-
viets was proposed. In Russia, there was no power of the soviets, in the
proper sense of the word, neither before nor after 1918. In 1917, the
soviet system had just been born and did not have any unified forms,
norms of representations and procedures, which created ideal condi-

tions for various manipulations. After the workers’ displeasure with the
Bolsheviks became apparent, elections to the soviets were aborted. Later,
the disagreeing soviets were either dissolved or subjected to purges. Con-
trary to the Constitution, approved in June 1918, soviet organs under the
Communists turned into a screen for party power, similar to the parlia-
mentary organs in Western totalitarian regimes.
The Bolsheviks struggled with parliamentarism not in the name of a
more democratically structured society, but rather for the sake of preser-
vation of their own power, which would allow them to introduce radical
social reforms. A demonstration of the workers and intelligentsia in sup-
port of the Constituent Assembly was met with Red Guards’ bullets.
The public’s emotional reaction to this event was well expressed by M.
Gorky, who earlier had sympathized with the Bolsheviks:
On 5 January the unarmed Petersburg democracy-workers and office
employees-held a peaceful demonstration to honor the Constituent As-
sembly. The best Russian people have, for almost a hundred years, lived
with ideas of a Constituent Assembly, a political organ that would pro-
vide an opportunity for all of Russian democracy to express its will. . . .
Pruvdu lies when it writes that the demonstration on 5 January was
organized by the bourgeoisie. . . . It knows perfectly well that “the bour-
geois” have no reason to be happy about the opening of the Constituent
Assembly: they have no business being among 246 socialists from one
party and 146 Bolsheviks.
Pruvdu knows that it was workers who participated in this demonstra-
tion-workers from Obukhovsky, Patronny, and other plants; that under
the red banner of the Russian social-democratic party walked toward
Tavrichesky palace workers from the Vasilievsky Island district, from
Vyborgsky and other districts. . . . So, on 5 January, the Petrograd work-
ers were shot. 34
In response to the Assembly’s refusal to recognize the Soviet of the

People’s Commissars [Sovnarkom], the government that had been ap-
proved by the Congress of the Sovietsthe Bolsheviks-first obstructed
the proceedings and later, together with the leftist social-democrats, left
the parliament, thus creating lack of a quorum. The remaining deputies
discussed and approved ten paragraphs of Fundamental Law regarding
land that corresponded to the principles of the SR party, which summa-
rized the peasants’ mandate and drew on the principles of the Populists’
ideology. When the deputies gathered again the next day near Tavrichesky
54 A.VSHUBIN
palace, they found the doors closed-the Bolsheviks declared dissolution

of the Assembly and took the building from the organ of supreme power.
Indignant about this, workers from the Semiannikovsky factory of-
fered to let the deputies continue their session on the premises of their
plant. The Bolsheviks threatened them with bombardment by the fleet.
A general strike grew in the city; it affected more than fifty enterprises.
The leaders of the socialist-revolutionaries,however, stopped short be-
fore the vision of a civil war. The deputies left the capital, fearing ar-
rest~.~~
The Bolsheviks’ regime, having proved its viability, held sway.
The civil war and “military communism”
In January 1918, the contradictions between the allies in the ruling block
deepened. Though frequently supporting the Bolsheviks’ authoritarian
actions, the leftist socialist-revolutionariesdid not always go along with
them. They opposed their repressive politics and their attempts to con-
solidate all the power in the hands of the Sovnarkom rather than in the
supreme organ of the soviets, the VTsIK. The leftist social-revolutionar-
ies opposed the disorderly nationalization of enterprises; they were
against subordinatingthe main organ of economic control-the Supreme
Soviet of the People’s Economy-to the government; and they were
against bread requisitions and arbitrary arrests. The disagreements in-
creased during implementation of the agrarian policy and during the
conclusion of the peace treaty with Germany, a treaty that the leftist
social-revolutionariesand a considerablepart of the Bolsheviks thought
unacceptable from the standpoint of the interests of world revolution.
Having encountered resistance, Lenin threatened to retire (which, under
the circumstances, was the equivalent of a schism in the Bolsheviks’
party) if the “offensive” (the expression of the chair of the Sovnarkom
himself) conditions of the treaty were not accepted. The opponents of
the treaty yielded before such threats. This predetermined the conclu-
sion and subsequent ratification of the peace treaty by the Extraordinary
Congress of the RSDRP(b) and also by the majority of the Congress of
Soviets.
The adopted decisions on peace with Germany were a new and im-
portant step in the genesis of the Bolsheviks’ dictatorship. First of all,
coalition with the leftist social-democrats became impossible, since on
3 March they left the government. Second, the occupation of the Ukraine
by Germany (with subsequent expansion to the Don) broke the country’s

ties with the bread-producing regions. That deepened the food-supplies
problem and sharpened the tensions between urban and rural popula-
tions. The representatives of the peasantry who supported the power of
the soviets, i.e., leftist social-revolutionaries, launched a propaganda
campaign against the Bolsheviks in the soviets. And third, capitulation
before Germany touched the deepest layers of the national psyche, ori-
enting against the Bolsheviks millions of people, regardless of their so-
cial origin. Only the most severe dictatorship could stand against such
sentiments.
The peace with Germany did not signify rejection of the idea of world
revolution as such. The Bolsheviks’ leadership was aware of the fact

that without a revolutionary explosion in Germany, isolated Russia would
not be able to begin building socialism. Realization of the democratic
program described in The state and the revolution also was impossible
without (if ever!) the support of the Western European proletariat, more
culturally advanced and therefore better prepared for democracy. One is
left wondering whether the Bolsheviks would have accepted broad-scale
democratization if their like-minded comrades in Germany and other
European countries had succeeded. Taking into consideration the fact
that the German population proved to be prone to support a totalitarian
alternative in the 1930s, the democratic potential of world revolution in
its Bolshevik variant seems doubtful. While world revolution remained
just a dream, it was necessary to organize the power capable of “with-
standing” the conditions of a “backward” country. Having overcome
three crises of their power (November 1917, January 1918, January-
February 1918), the Bolshevik leadership, while waiting for world revo-
lution, set off on a new course. Its basis was described in Lenin’s work
“The immediate tasks of Soviet power.”
Lenin and his party faced the problem of creating a unified economic
mechanism whose divisions (like workshops in a factory) would par-
ticipate in common, “balanced” processes of production and consump-
tion. On the agenda was “the creative work of establishing an extremely
complicated and subtle network of new organizational relations, em-
bracing balanced production and distribution of products necessary for
tens of millions of people.”36
Is this utopia? Surely it is utopian to imagine a certain “balanced”
mechanism that would take into consideration all of people’s potentials
and needs (provided that ideally, intelligent and honest people would
56 A.V SHUBIN
control them). But Lenin was not an utopian, since he never adhered to
dogmas. He was prepared to make considerable changes in program-
matic goals for the sake of keeping his party in power up to the moment
when a radical transformation of society, the creation of a unified
economy with “balanced production and distribution of the products
necessary for scores of millions of people,” would become possible.
Lenin was not to live to see that time, but his work helped to create the
preconditions for the totalitarian experiment of the 1930s. He had al-
ready planned the first attempt of this kind in 1918.
First, it was necessary to stabilize the situation with regard to indus-
try, which was experiencing chaos in the aftermath of “the Red Guards’
attack on capital,” which was supported by the Bolsheviks. Lenin called

on workers and office employees to “keep money accounts conscien-
tiously and neatly, to manage the economy frugally, not be idle, not steal
and observe the strictest work di~cipline.”~~ If a worker did not want to
work for a new master-the party-state-with enthusiasm, then he was no
longer a worker, but rather a hooligan, an enemy to the same degree as
an exploiter: “Dictatorship is iron-clad power; it is bold and swift in a
revolutionary way, and it is merciless in suppression of both exploiters
and hooligan^."^^ To leave no room for doubt, Lenin wrote “about catch-
ing and executing bribe-takers, swindlers, etc.” 39
Lenin suggested stopping “the Red Guard attack on capital.” Cha-
otic nationalization would not create an orderly system for easy gov-
erning. But it was impossible to halt progress in the “war against
capital.”40One should implement nationalization in a more orderly
fashion. The huge economy needed someone to manage it. The sabo-
tage of office employees was quieting down, and the bureaucracy kept
growing and inflating. By the year 1921, VSNX alone employed thou-
sands of officials. 41
According to Lenin, “In comparison with the advanced nations, Rus-
sians are poor workers.” What can teach them to work is “in fact, a
Taylor system (a conveyor system that maximizes the alienation of man
in the process of production). The Soviet republic must, at any cost,
adopt everything of value from the advances of science and technology
in this
Commenting on the social model of Bolshevism, V. Chernov wrote:
“This is a colossal machine in which history conquers available people
along with their weaknesses, habits, passions, and opinions as human
‘raw material,’ subject to merciless processing. They will come out of it,
RlJSSlAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 57
certified as ‘personally fit,’ each onto his special living shelf, stamped
with the visible mark of factory production. Some of them are assigned
to the division for recycling; the rest are subject to merciless destruc-
t i ~ n . Clearly,
” ~ ~ such a model has little to do with socialism-the soci-
ety, the socium-except for the control of the privileged minority.
On 13 May 1918 yet another step leading to creation of the “ma-
chine” Chernov wrote about was taken. That day a decree was issued
“On the Powers of the People’s Commissar for Food,” known as the
Decree on Food Di~tatorship.4~ Formally, the decree ratified the deci-
sion on introducing the government food monopoly that had been made
by the Provisional Government some time earlier, but it also pursued
noneconomic purposes. Thus, Ia. Sverdlov stated: “Only if we manage

to split villages into two irreconcilable hostile camps, if we manage to
kindle there the same civil war that took place not so long ago in the
cities. . . . only in that case will we be able to say that we have done for
villages what we did for In order to rule, the civil war party had
to divide. Now it used force to “separate” food from the peasants for a
symbolic price. Food requisition detachments were formed. Hungry
workers had to wage war against villages, kindling there the fire of class
struggle. A “class brother,” the pauper (in actuality, urban underclass
elements), who could not create a viable household even after obtaining
land, became the main support for the “proletariat.” Later, having united
into “cornbeds” in June 1918, the paupers obtained half of the bread
expropriated from the peasants.
Attempts of the Soviets of Saratov, Samara, Simbirsk, Astrakhan,
Viatka, Tambov, and Kazan’ provinces to resist food dictatorship were
suppressed. Purges of the soviets increased, and they began to be dis-
persed. On 2 May was adopted a decree of VTsIK SNK (All-Russian
Central Executive Committee) that became a step toward liquidation of
the authority of local soviets. Local food administration was handled by
the People’s Comrnissariat for Food. Later, other organs of the soviets
became subordinated to people’s commissariats. Society was losing le-
gal ways of resisting the government’s actions. Large-scale civil war
became inevitable.
After conclusion of the Brest peace treaty, the gravity of the food
dictatorshipreached the peasants of the Volga Region, North Caucasus,
and Siberia. Having received land, they were losing its fruit. At the same
time, the corps of former Czechoslovak prisoners of war (whose leaders
were close in their views to social democrats) was being evacuated to
58 A . K S H U B l N
France through Siberia. At the end of May, local Bolshevik authorities

made an attempt to disarm some Czech troops, who responded with an
uprising. The combat detachments of socialist revolutionaries, who
mobilized thousands of peasants into an insurgent army, joined the
Czechs. Siberia and the Ural Mountain region accepted the authority of
the “Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly” [Komuch].
From the onset of the civil war, a system that later was called “mili-
tary communism” began to be formed. The ruling group’s drive for total
control over society in sociopoliticaland economic spheres, its onslaught
on political and economic subjects refusing to comply with the regime
reached a scale that would permit one to evaluate “military commu-
nism” as a type of totalitarian regime. In the period of widespread civil

war, however, totalitarian institutions were unstable. The war was the
main motivation for mobilization of considerable social forces behind
the Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, its continuation was dangerous for the
regime since it deepened economic dislocation. Totalitarian structures
were losing the industrial foundation without which they could not be-
come stable.
In the period of “military communism,” the regime had a special fea-
ture, that of preserving some pluralism in the ruling party-a phenom-
enon characteristic of a number of totalitarian regimes in the early stages
of their development-and a relative tolerance in the cultural sphere.
Political pluralism on the Russian territory under the Bolsheviks’con-
trol was crushed by the act of destroying the leftist socialist-revolution-
ary party that took place on 5-7 June 1918, following the assassination
of the German ambassador. The assassination was organized with the
participation of Cheka members who belonged to the leftist socialist revo-
lutionary party (one of the ambassador’sassassins, Ia. Bliumkin, still served
in the VChK-OGPU in the 1920s). The Central Committee of the leftist
socialist-revolutionaryparty seized this provocation as an opportunity to
renew the war with Germany, with the Bolsheviks’ support; but the Bol-
shevik government announced that the PLSR was guilty of mutiny. The
conflict ended in total destruction of the leftist SRs in Moscow. 46 As for
the national republics and regions, the Bolsheviks still “suffered” the
existence of opposing revolutionary parties there, and sometimes, for
tactical considerations, even included them in the government.
Meanwhile, having accepted Komuch’s leadership, the “People’s
Army” headed toward Moscow. In order to stop its advance, the authori-
ties had to form their own army. The old army, whose pacifist impulse
had helped the Bolsheviks come to power, had self-demobilized. Red

Guard troops, along with international detachments of supporters of the
ruling party, were busy not only on the battlefront but also in the rear,
maintaining the dictatorship. The new divisions, mobilized in haste, were
amorphous and unstable. “At times, one felt that everything was fall-
ing apart, dispersing, that there was nothing to grasp at, nothing to
lean Trotsky later recalled.
The Bolsheviks nevertheless managed to form a new army, the RKKA
(Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army). In Trotsky’s words, “Right there,
on the battlefield, battalions, fresh regiments, sometimes entire divi-
sions were formed-from the partisan troops, from refugees escaping
the White Guards, from peasants mobilized in the nearest districts, from
workers’ detachments sent by the industrial centers, and from groups of
Communists and professional^."^^ A person with civic sentiments awak-
ened by the revolution had to adopt the psychology of a soldier of the
revolution- its master, the force that establishes and overthrows gov-
ernments, a soldier who “writes history with his bayonet.” This senti-
ment united them into a military fist. “I tried,” said Trotsky, “to elevate
them in their own eyes, and in the end asked them to raise hands as a
sign of loyalty to the revolution. New ideas captured them before my
very eyes. True enthusiasm seized them.”49
At the same time, it was necessary to make the soldiers feel that their
material situation was better than in the hungry cities and the ruined
villages. “Get boots for the barefooted, provide them with baths, con-
duct a vigorous agitation campaign, feed them, give them underclothes,
tobacco, matches”50was Trotsky’s formulation of the tasks for building
the army. But terror still remained the main condition for stability both
on the battlefield and in the rear: “One can’t build an army without re-
pression. You can’t. lead masses of people to death without having resort
to control through capital punishment.”5’
Although the Bolsheviks made gigantic efforts to stop retreat at the
front, a critical situation arose in the rear: the working class began to
break out from under their control. In the second half of June, strikes
seized scores of cities. Unrest grew in the navy crews. On 20 June, an
anti-Bolsheviks Conference, convened by an All-Russian workers’ con-
gress, opened in Moscow. Everyone expected that the congress would
declare a general strike. The next day all the delegates were arrested.
Later, one of the conference delegates recalled the words of his guard:
“Under the tsar, the workers were imprisoned; now let the bourgeoisie
60 A.VSHUB1N
take their place.” He would have refrained from such a remark had he
known that the person before him was one of the participants in the
“Conferenceconvened by an All-Russian workers’ congress, all of whom
went through the Bolshevik torture chambers in the season of 1918-
1919.”52
In response to suppressionof the working-class legal movement, some
of the workers took to arms. On 7-8 August 1918 in Izhevsk, a workers’
uprising headed by the Mensheviks and the SRs began. The most hated
Bolsheviks were killed in the very first days; but later, the Izhevsk Sovi-
ets took control of events and forbade capital punishment, transferring
authority to the Committee of the Constituent Assembly.
The situation became heated. And again, the tradition of individual

terror reared its head. On 20 June, V. Volodarsky, a commissar in propa-
ganda matters, was killed. Lenin used this as a fortuitous excuse for
mass reprisals against the enemies of the regime: “Comrade Zinoviev!
Only today we in TsK heard that in Peter[sburg] the workers wanted to
respond to Volodarsky’s murder with mass terror, and you. . . .restrained
them. I protest strongly. We have to encourage the energy and mass
expressions of the terror against counterrevolutionaries.”53 Although at
this time mass terror had not been declared, Lenin implemented it de
facto: “In Nizhni, preparation for a White Guard uprising is clearly un-
der way. You have to gather all the forces, form a troika of the dictators,
and institute mass terror immediately;shoot and deport hundreds of pros-
titutes (who make drunkards out of the soldiers), former officers, and so
stated Lenin’s telegram, dispatched on 9 August. Another tele-
gram he sent to Penza: “Conduct merciless mass terror against the kulaks,
priests, and the White Guards; lock the suspicious ones in a concentra-
tion camp outside the city.”” On 22 August, Lenin gave orders “to shoot
the conspirators and the wavering ones, never asking for anyone’s per-
mission and without bureaucratic delays.” Thus, not only “enemies” but
even “wavering ones” became subject to destruction.s6
The Bolsheviks’ acts triggered more and more acts of individual ter-
ror. On 30 August, L. Kannegiser killed the leader of the Petrograd Cheka
M. Uritsky. On the same day, at a meeting Lenin was wounded. F. Kaplan,
a former member of the SR, was declared guilty of the assassination
attempt.
At that point, the specific culprits were of no importance, because
entire classes were to answer for assassination attempts. On 5 Septem-
ber, “red terror” was declared. This date marked the beginning of open
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION A N D THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 61
and systematic mass destruction of the people. In the very first month,
thousands were executed; most of them were guilty only of belonging to
“counterrevolutionary”classes and social movements. M. Latsis, one of
the Cheka leaders, expressed his view of the red terror, also characteris-
tic of a considerable part of other executioners of the terror: “Do not
search for evidence in each case-whether he [i.e., the accused-A.Sh]
has opposed the Soviet [regime] by arms or by words. First of all, you
have to ask him to what class he belongs, what are his origins, educa-
tion, and profession. Those are the questions that should decide the fate
of the acc~sed.”~~L,enin criticized Latsis for those words. But that did
not stop the bacchanalia of murders rolling throughout the territory un-
der the Bolsheviks’ control.

It is now difficult to establish the scale of the terror. Materials col-
lected by a prominent Russian historian of the terror, S. Melgunov, al-
low one to estimate the number of victims as involving at least hundreds
of thousands. All the inventions of despotic civilizations had been used:
torture, hostages, and use of the omnipotence of the secret service in the
interests of its servants. 58 The Cheka arrested, and that same Cheka con-
ducted investigations, trials, and executions. Arbitrariness was total; it
was important not so much to find culprits as to instill fear in the entire
nation. In fact, the red terror was not a class terror: its blows fell on all
strata of the population.
Meanwhile, progression toward an authoritarian regime was taking
place within the Komuch, which became an anti-Bolshevik resistance
center. Such factors as militarization of life, the increased influence of
the officers’ group, and consolidation of conservative sociopolitical
groups led to passing the power to a Directorate-a liberal socialist coa-
lition similar to the Provisional Government. On the night of 18 No-
vember 1918, a military group overturned the Directorate and handed
the power to Admiral Kolchak. The military group, supported by poli-
ticians from the party of the Russian liberalism (ConstitutionalDemo-
crats or Cadets) headed the dictatorship that soon dispersed the remnants
of the Constituent Assembly. Some of the members of the Assembly
were executed by Kolchak’s men. These events once again give ample
evidence of the fact that slogans “liberal” in their essence can nonethe-
less combine with an ultra-authoritarian regime.
Could the White Guard movement have become an alternative to the
Bolsheviks and prevent the establishment of a totalitarian regime in
Russia? Speaking of the evolution of the “Whites, “ one of their ideolo-
62 A.V SHUBIN
gists, V. Shulgin, wrote: ‘The White ‘cause’ was initiated by the almost
saintly; but how did it end? My God! . . . Initiated by the ‘almost saintly,’
it fell into the hands of ‘almost bandits’”s9V.Shulgin pointed to the fact
that the “Whites” treated Jews in the same way the Bolsheviks treated
the “bourgeois,” that they had applied terror to peasants and had estab-
lished an open dictatorship of militarization. Shulgin saw a similarity
between the two forms of political movements. One was the “red,” which
staked its future on formation of its own new elite, capable of governing
a country rebuilt in a military fashion that would make it a military base
for international revolutionary war. The other movement, the “white”
one, strove for dictatorship of the old elite that had been degraded under
the influence of war and was infected with racism. The authoritarianism
of the “white” movement gravitated toward forms of early fascism.
The battle between the Bolsheviks and the Whites was waged against
a backdrop of constant uprisings of workers and peasants under anti-
authoritarian slogans. Sometimes this gave rise to the formation of
sociopolitical systems capable of defending their territory for a long
time. The largest of such formations was the “Makhno region.” Their
self-governing bodies were established within peasant communes, in-
surgent detachments, and collectives of workers and were developed by
the Makhnovians in the form of soviets.
As early as in February 1919, Makhnovian congresses of soviets be-
gan to criticize the Bolsheviks’ dictatorship openly, even though the
“Whites” remained their main enemy. Demanding from the Bolshe-
viks restoration of civic freedom and real rather than abstract Soviet
power, Makhnovian congresses introduced democratic order in their area.
The Cheka was not admitted in the region; there was no food dictator-
ship, and no monopoly on power was held by any one party. With all
that, even V. Antonov-Ovseenko, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian
front, had to admit that the region was one of the best among the flour-
ishing regions of the Ukraine.
Nevertheless, the military situation led to an increase in
authoritarianism there as well. The Makhnovians, however, neither dis-
banded the socialist organizations that opposed the leaders of the move-
ment nor strove to “organize” by force the lives of the citizens. 62 In his
relationship with the Bolsheviks, Makhno proceeded from the necessity
of maintaining a joint “revolutionary front.” Addressing his allies in 1919,
Makhno stated: “Comrades, drop the partisan disagreements.They will
ruin you.” Despite the strong conflicts with the Bolsheviks, the
Makhnovians and other powerful peasant organizationscontinued wag-

ing war with the “Whites,” whom they saw as the main threat to their
rights to land.
The existenceof the “Makhnovian”region and other territories where
various non-Bolshevik socialist movements had considerable influence
and the peasants’ support allows one to speak of the existence of a so-
cialist and democratic alternative to the Bolsheviks’ totalitarism. But
this surely does not mean that the peasant movements were not authori-
tarian. Under conditions of broad-scale civil war, authoritarianism was
inevitable. But this process did not go as far there as in the Red and
White zones and did not bring about the destruction or atrophy of the
democratic organs. In the “Soviet” republic, the process of stripping the

soviets of their power continued. But the main reason for resentment
among the broad masses of peasants and workers was primarily the
Bolsheviks’ economic dictatorship.
The regime of “military communism,” existing in Russia in 1918-
1921, concentrated all the resources for waging war in the hands of the
RKP(b) leadership. In January 1919, a colossal food tax was introduced-
prodruzverstku [surplus-appropriation system]. In the very first year of
the food dictatorship and since implementation of prodruzverstka (be-
fore June 1919), this tax helped the Bolsheviks deprive the peasants of
44.6 million poods of bread, and in the second year (before June 1920),
113.9 million poods. Recall that in November 1917 alone the still func-
tioning apparatus of the Provisional Government collected 33.7 million
poods. 64
Where did all that food go? A considerable part of it simply rotted.
The bread that was saved went to the troops. This was supposed to pre-
vent degradation of the Red Army, whose condition is illustrated in the
lines below: “The disorganized troops deserted the front, wandered in
packs near the front line, robbing and killing each other and hunting
down the communists and the commissar^."^^ One of the researchers of
the civil war, N. Kakurin, wrote: “With full development of the armed
forces of the country, the role of the army as the primary consumer of
the country’s production. became especially evident.” The army con-
sumed 60 percent of all fish and meat, 40 percent of the bread, and 100
percent of tobacco. 67 Workers and peasants were starving. But the Krem-
lin inhabitants were provided regualarly with three nourishing meals,
high in calories.
In the places where the peasants managed to deceive the
64 A.VSHlJBIN
prodruzverstka, they tried to exchange bread for some industrial goods

from the urban population, including the workers. Such “bag-draggers”
filled the railroads and were persecuted by special blocking troops whose
task was to prevent any exchange that went beyond government control.
According to a fair remark of the authors of the book [Our Fatherland],
the government “was concerned not only with feeding the cities but also
with the task of feeding them from the government’s own hands.” In @
19 19-1920, under pressure from the workers’ and peasants’ uprisings,

some attempts were made to soften the regime. Those attempts invari-
ably failed.
In 1920, despite much help from abroad that provided the White move-
ment with arms and equipment, and despite direct military intervention
by some foreign countries in some regions of the former Russian Em-
pire, the White movement was routed by the joint efforts of the RKKA
(Workers’ and Peasants’Red Army) and peasant detachments. The coun-
try was entering a new stage in its development. Why did the Bolshe-
viks’ alternative win in Russia-the alternative that predetermined the
significant features of specifically “Soviet” totalitarism in comparison
with other regimes?
As European experience showed, nationalistic totalitarian movements
not supported by related regimes were more subject to appropriation of
power during a period of peace. Early forms of national-socialism were
more constitutional and less aggressive than later ones. The early form
of a communist movement in Russia (unlike its next stage, Stalinism)
was, on the contary, better suited for a war situation. It mobilized enor-
mous masses of soldiers. The general destruction and social cataclysms
accompanyingthe Bolshevik revolution gave rise to irrational hopes that
fed on despair and on opportunities for sudden changes in social status
for those at the bottom of society. The Bolsheviks’ radical slogans dis-
oriented other revolutionary forces, which first failed to see that the goals
the RKP(b) pursued were the opposite of the ones set by the anti-au-
thoritarian wing of the Russian revolution.
The defeat of the Whites was also predetermined by their elitism, by
their great-power chauvinistic slogans, which mobilized the national
minorities against them, and by the fears of the peasants that they would
lose their land if the “Generals” won. Under these conditions, the Reds
seemed to the masses “a lesser evil.”
Victory over several armies supported from abroad (led by Denikin,
Yudenich, Vrangel, Kolchak, and others) rendered the state as a “united
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVIK DlCTATORSHlP 65
military camp” senseless. At the same time, the peasant war flared up in
the territories of Russia and Ukraine, involving hundreds of thousands
of people. The workers’ unrest kept increasing. For many Communists,
the victory over the White Guards meant an opportunity to introduce
anti-authoritarianreforms in the spirit of ideas of “extinction of the state.”
The opposition made up of the workers, headed by A. Shliapnikov and
A. Kollontai, in accordance with the Party program suggested handing
authority over to the congresses of the producers and giving up the dic-
tatorship of the Sovnarkom, Central Committee, and punitive organs.
The idea of transferring authority to the trade unions was also suggested
by the group “Democratic Socialism,” although in a different version. 70
Simultaneously with this, Trotsky suggested turning the trade unions

into government organs after first subjecting them to a “shake-up” (i.e.,
purges). This caused protests by the trade-union leaders. A heated dis-
cussion began about trade unions. In fact, the discussion grew into a
debate about the form the regime should assume after the war.
While the factions were busy discussing details of a future worker
democracy, the influence of party apparatchiks grew; they cared more
about their careers than ideological debates. Skvortsov, a delegate to the
10th Congress of the RKP(b), talked about them as follows: “There are
no people left to work in the provinces. Instances can be observed in
which provinces are afraid to delegate comrades to the center for as
soon as a comrade i s sent to the center, he goes to the Central Commit-
tee and presents there his reasons why he must stay at the center, after
which they allow him to remain there.”71At the 10th Congress, these
“Party soldiers” supported Lenin, a recognized leader. Later, the
apparatchik masses would become Stalin’s support.
While the Bolsheviks were engaged in debates, the peasants’ war never
stopped. Demands grew concerning terminating the prodruzverstka, trade
freedom, and abolishing the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks. The culmi-
nation of this stage in the revolution became the workers’ unrest in
Petrograd and the Kronstadt uprising of the navy and workers of 28
February-18 March 1921.The resolution adopted by the Kronstadt meet-
ing stated: “In view of the fact that the existing soviets do not express
the will of the workers and peasants, it is necessary to elect the soviets
by secret vote. Before the elections, it is necessary to conduct a prelimi-
nary, free agitation campaign among all the workers and peasants.”72
Kronstadt participants believed it was necessary “to give full rights over
all the land to the peasants to do with it as they see fit.”73
66 A.V SHUBIN
These demands, while not infringing upon the idea of the soviets,
threatened to undermine the Bolsheviks’monopoly of power. Lenin con-
sidered that event the greatest internal political crisis in Soviet
The possibility of a foreign intrusion into Russia at any moment was
still felt. Under such circumstances, the Bolsheviks reinforced their de-
nial of pluralism; and the tenth congress of the RKP(b) took a decision
to forbid all factions and groups within the party.
Despite the fact that the Kronshtadt uprising was suppressed, it was
impossible to preserve “military communism” any longer. It had the po-
tential to bring total catastrophe to the regime and the economy. The tenth
congress of the RKP(b) took a decision to abolish the prodruverstka,hav-
ing initiated a series of measures that later became known as the “new
economic policy”-the NEP. The first totalitarian spurt was completed.
The Bolsheviks preferred to move on to an agrarian system that admit-
ted some independence of society rather than to lose power completely.
The NEP and Stalinism
The system formed in 1921 was more stable than “military commu-
nism.” As before, the ruling elite strove for eventual total control of
society; these plans, however, lost their immediacy as a practical policy
task for several years. The Bolsheviks’ inability to preserve their power
in a situation of nonviolent political struggle predetermined their incli-
nation to get rid of any social institutions their party could not control.
During the period of March-May 1921, the authorities yielded to
almost all of the socioeconomic demands of the people’s uprisings. The
surplus-appropriation system was replaced by a considerably smaller
food tax. Control of industry was decentralized. Relatively free trade
and private enterprise were permitted. But the Bolsheviks continued to
keep in their hands the “key components” of the economy- the larger
part of heavy industry, transportation, and the like. Giving up “military
communism,” however, did not save the country from economic catas-
trophe. The surplus-appropriation system and mobilizations had under-
mined agriculture in a number of provinces. These circumstances were
made worse by a drought; and in the summer of 1921, famine broke out,
its epicenter being in Povolzhie (the Volga Region). In connection with
this calamity, the Orthodox Church became especially dangerous to the
Bolsheviks. The top clergy, headed by Patriarch Tikhon, was hostile to
the Bolsheviks’ authority. Lenin decided to deal the church a smashing
blow. At the beginning of 1922, the press was flooded with articles de-
manding use of church gold for the purchase of food. This wealth en-
tailed not only a priceless cultural heritage but also sacred religious items.
For believers, their confiscation constituted unprecedented sacrilege. On
23 February 1922, without waiting for the outcome of negotiations with
Tikhon, the government issued a decree about confiscation of church
valuables. During February and March, there were mass conflicts around
churches. Force prevailed. New trials began for the church patriarchs.
As early as 1918, some of the clergy had rebelled against Tikhon with
demands to support the revolution and ideas of “Christian socialism.”
Under these circumstances, Tikhon repented his sins before the Soviet
power and stated: “I completely and decisively dissociate myself from

both the foreign and internal monarchist and White-Guard counterrevo-
lution.” 75 Having regained their control over the political sphere, the
Bolsheviks were prepared to tolerate the existence of the humiliated
church.
Their tolerance, however, did not extend to the political sphere. In
May 1922,Lenin wrote a letter to D. Kursky, Narkom of Justice [people’s
commissar], regarding the project for enacting a clause to the criminal
code: “I think we need to extend the application of execution (which
may be replaced by exile) . . . to cover all kinds of activities performed
by the Mensheviks, SRs, and the like. The law must legitimize terror
rather than eliminate it; to promise otherwise would mean deceit or self-
deception. The law must substantiate and legitimize it in a principally
clear way, without falseness and embellishment^."^^ Lenin suggested
using execution and exile for offences that included “counterrevolution-
ary” (i.e. oppositional)propaganda.
On 25 May 1922 the code was accepted, and on 8 June a trial began
dealing with a socialist revolutionaries’ case. This trial was conducted
with such violation of procedural norms that on 13 June the foreign
defense lawyers (admitted under pressure from the Sotsintern [Socialist
International], left the courtroom. The prosecution could not prove the
charge that the SR Central Committee organized a series of attempts to
assassinate the leaders of the Bolshevik state. The court failed to find
facts supporting the SR’s terrorism against the Bolsheviks after the am-
nesty of 1919. As a result, the sentence was formulated in extremely
vague terms: “The party of the socialist-revolutionaries supports, nur-
tures, and organizes movements against the Soviet regime, disregarding
the Black-Hundred-like origins of such movements and never openly
68 A.V:SHllBIN
claiming re~ponsibility.”~~Twelve of the accused were sentenced to death.

Execution of the sentence, however, was postponed and later replaced
by more lenient punishment. In 1922-23 several more trials were con-
ducted-over leftist socialist-revolutionaries, Petliura’s followers, and
others.
For a brief period, the situation was stable. The authorities allowed
the development of nonpolitical areas of culture. Works of fiction full of
caustic hints about the Soviet regime appeared.
The NEP model was based on food-taxation of the peasants, who had
to provide the material support for industrial development and for the
colossal bureaucratic apparatus “regulating” the economy. The follow-
ing party directive was typical of such “regulation”: “Require the man-
ager of the Izhorskii plant, Comrade Korolev, to conclude within 24
hours an agreement with Petrooblasttop (Petrograd Regional Heating)
concerning the delivery of one million puds of coal on the following
conditions: Izhorskii plant pays in advance 10 percent of the total cost,
while Oblasttop grants to Izhorskii plant five-months’ credit, counting
from the day of signing the agreement. The deadline for delivery of said
quantity of coal is after a two-month period.”78As we see, the indepen-
dence of economic organizations was purely fictional.
Despite the official declarations, the society created in Russia was
not a proletarian dictatorship. All power was concentrated in the hands
of a bureaucracy that grew considerably during the civil war period.
Under new circumstances, the Bolsheviks’ ideas that had facilitated the
establishment of the dictatorship of the bureaucracy needed consider-
able adjustment in order to further stabilization of the regime. Hence,
the stalwarts of former ideas among the Bolshevik leaders had to be
eliminated. This defined the dynamics of the internal party struggle.
In May 1922, Lenin fell seriously ill. His illness allowed him to with-
draw from the torrent of everyday work in the Sovnarkom and to con-
sider what was going on. Lenin had an opportunity to realize that the
revolution caused domination by a bureaucracy rather than by the prole-
tariat or the top Bolsheviks leaders, a bureaucracy that sabotaged a num-
ber of orders from the “leaders.”This irritated Lenin: “For Christ’s sake,
throw someone responsible for bureaucratic delays in prison! I swear to
God,you’ll get nowhere without that, damn it.”
Lenin was going to use the party members to crush bureaucratism:
“Communists must initiate a struggle against bureaucratism at their
workplaces.” 79
But a whip directed against executives did not solve the problem, for
the bureaucratic system hinged on party leaders. An ideal bureaucratic
organizer was J. Stalin, elected in 1922for the newly established post of
general secretary of the Central Committee. He seemed a perfect execu-
tor of joint decisions. The party leaders, however, did not take into con-
sideration one particular feature of Stalin’spersonality, which later ruined
them all: “One cannot understand Stalin,” Trotsky wrote later, “nor his
subsequent success without understanding the main feature of his per-
sonality, i.e., his love of power.”80Forsuch a person, the regime created
by the Bolsheviks provided ideal conditions for victory over his enemies.
In his last articles and letters, Lenin, having sensed danger, sharply criti-
cized Stalin; but Stalin’s influence was already too great to let the dying
leader stop the rise of the general secretary.
Analyzing political outcomes of the revolution in his last articles,
Lenin wrote that the apparatus of the new state “in essence is inherited
from the old regime. . . . and only slightly anointed with soviet He
spoke of the apparatus ruling the country.
Having secured its political monopoly, the bureaucracy aimed to fix
its privileges. Thus, Joffe, Trotsky’s comrade, complained to him: “YOU
are not fully aware: of the degeneration the party has suffered. Its over-
whelming majority, in any case, decisive majority are but petty offi-
cials; they are much more interested in appointments, promotions,
benefits and privileges than in issues of socialist theory or events of the
international revolution.”82After a failed attempt at enforcing the revo-
lution in Germany in 1923, N. Bukharin and J. Stalin began talking about
the possibility of building socialism in an individual country. This meant
a revision of the official ideology on the most important issue of the
world revolution. Such a change was agreeable to a bureaucracy that did
not strive for participation in future revolutionary calamities. The radi-
cal wing of the VKP(b), headed by L. Trotsky and G. Zinoviev, defend-
ing the former course, was ousted from the political arena.
At the same time, the discussions of 1923-1927 showed that although
the VKP(b) remained solely a legal political organization, it became the
focus of application of diverse social forces. This stimulated the emer-
gence of various movements within the party bureaucracy and under-
mined its unity-the foundation of its power. In order to preserve that
unity, it was necessary to put an end to a contradiction that permitted
relative democracy for the Bolsheviks while forbidding it for the rest of
the population.
70 A.VSHllBIN
After the destruction of the last faction within theVKP(b) in 1927, any
opposition to the political elite could exist only in illegal forms. This, of
course, did not mean that cliques or movements no longer existed within
the party (they existed even under conditions of totalitarianism); but the
internal struggle was thereafter clothed in secrecy, with temporary ex-
ternal episodes necessary for unmasking the loser and declaring him
first a dissenter and subsequently a conspirator. Both notions quickly
became synonymous. Thus, by the end of 1927, premises were created
for transition from the authoritarian regime to the totalitarian one.
The monopolist bureaucracy produced an inefficient system of gov-
ernance. The leader of the Supreme Soviet of the people’s economy,
Dzerhinsky, wrote: “From my trip . . . I gathered a firm conviction of the
present unfitness of our system of government: it is based on general

mistrust, demands of the subordinated organs, all sorts of reports, cer-
tificates, information, . . . [it] destroys any vital issue, and wastes colos-
sal means and energ~.”*~He also discovered a strong connection between
political control of the economy and its inefficiency; but party disci-
pline allowed sharing such ideas with only a narrow circle of comrades-
in-arms.
Inability to produce enough goods suitable for the peasants brought
the state purchases campaign of 1927 to a dead end because the peas-
ants did not want to sell bread. The Bolsheviks saw a natural solution to
the problem in industrialization-building modem and easy-to-mange
industries (such was their view of large-scale industry). Economic mod-
ernization, however, required funding.
The failure regarding state purchases of bread convinced Stalin that
the NEP model, which worked for a brief period in 1924-1925, could
no longer produce sufficient means to build the gigantic industry that
the bureaucracy saw as the foundation of its power. The industrial break-
through required bread, and Stalin decided to take it by old methods
tested in “military communism.”
In January 1928, “extraordinary directives” to local organizationswere
issued. Special detachments blocked the bread-producing regions and
began to confiscate bread. All attempts to sell bread on the market were
subject to a criminal code article on “speculation” with bread. These
measures produced food, but completely ruined the peasants’ desire to
produce bread.
Despite the fact that this decision was approved by the Politburo, the
way Stalin implemented it caused sharp conflict in the leadership (as if
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHlP 71
one could expect anything different from him). The main arguments of
Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky in opposing Stalin’s methods were the
peasants’ uprisings that had occurred immediately following the activi-
ties of the food-requisition detachments. It also became clear that the
peasants would not let the government catch them by surprise again,
and that they would produce less bread and hide their surpluses better.
The transition to extraordinary measures was in accord with the sen-
timents of the party masses. Although, as before, they preferred a peace-
ful situation to revolution and civil war, the party cadres were eager to
participate in the battle with the “kulaks.” This was not a risky external
political conflict, but rather, an attack on an “internal enemy.”
The party leaders supported the militant spirit of the party-govern-

ment cadres: “Now we need to mold new regiment and brigade com-
manders, new commanders in economy and industry,”84Stalin said. “The
basic personnel of our party, whether in the officer ranks or higher, are a
part of our party army, and must know our leader^,"^' Bukharin echoed
him.
Bukharin’s group, however, remained the main obstacle to using this
army in practice. The internal party struggle went on with varying out-
comes until economic problems and party discipline doomed the oppo-
sition to failure. “Hukharin’s alternative” was also doomed because it
differed from Stalin’s, first with regard to the time both of the industrial
drive and of the attack on the affluent strata in villages. 86
But Stalin had already realized that one-time requisitions did not solve
the problem, since they caused the peasants to reduce their production.
It was necessary to switch to a party-governmental system of control
over agricultural production. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to
“nationalize,” collectivize the peasantry, to drive them into kolkhozes-a
semblance of cooperatives if judged by the sound of the term, but in fact
governmental establishments with management under the strictest gov-
ernment control. One could threaten the kolkhoz management with le-
gal liability and the kolkhoz management would readily supply as much
grain as requested, even at the expense of the peasants’ starvation.
In his speech at the plenary session of the TsK VKP(b) in April 1929
(the session that completely crushed “right-wing tendencies”), Bukharin
said: “Well, O.K. Suppose today we use all possible means of pressure
to stock enough grain to last for one day, but what about tomorrow, or
the day after tomorrow? One cannot devise a policy good for just one
day, can one? What kind of long-term solution is there?’*’
72 A.VSHUB1N
‘The long-term solution” was a transformation of the country into

something like a factory, creating a total government-controlled system
that extended to agriculture as well. By the end of 1929, party leaders
who supported acceleration of collectivization and industrialization had
triumphed. The defeat of Bukharin’s group meant that the last obstacle
to establishing a totalitarian regime had been eliminated. Stalin’s group
used all the political preconditions for totalitarianism that had formed in
the country by the end of 1928.With the support of the postrevolutionary
bureaucracy, Stalin’s group effected the switch to a policy of peasantry
expropriationas a basis for the industrial “great leap.” Beginning in 1929,
the USSR entered a long-lasting period of a totalitarian regime.
The industrial leap and terror
The 1920s were among the most mysterious pages of our country. The
unprecedented scale of mass destruction, social shifts, and economic
changes strikes one’s imagination and defies ordinary logical notions.
The formation of the system of maximal control over society from one
center (i.e., a totalitarian system) is often explained exclusively by sub-
jective factors, such as Stalin’s and his associates’ evil will, by pecu-
liarities of K. Mam and V. Lenin’s theoretical notions, or by an accidental
turn of events. The events of the 1930s are evaluated not so much as a
sociopolitical process as a crime casting millions of people-from the
well-to-do peasant to the marshall-as passive victims. But the dramatic
events in the 1930s, the visible conflict of social interests and groups,
suggest that there were forces opposing the regime, and that they ren-
dered noticeable resistance to the totalitarian reconstruction..
At each stage, Stalin’s leadershiphad to solve quite specific practical
problems without which the regime’s existence would have been im-
possible. Furthermore, the leadership could not afford to act differently
in Russia-a country whose sociopsychological structure opposed the
principle of total control and was oriented toward differentiation be-
tween the functions of a monarchic autocracy and those of communal
self-governance. The events of the 1930s can be explained not so much
by the absurdity of VKP(b) behavior as by the logical consistency in
realization of its goals. In our opinion, the real resistance of the “mate-
rial” to the creators of a “new reality” produced the drama of the struggle.
The world war and the revolution of 1917-1927 caused shifts in so-
cial strata (movement of those at the social bottom up to the elite), de-
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVlK DICTATORSHIP 73
struction of traditional institutions and moral norms, and atomization of

society. All that activated the utopian component of the social culture,
i.e., the hope for rapid improvement of the people’s material situation at
the expense of industrialization and redistribution of property.
As a result of the social explosion, the governmental apparatus was
flooded with underclass elements and revolutionary intelligentsia who
were seized by ideas of industrialization. In 1922-1927, the apparatus
had tripled and numbered 3,722,000 people (one and a half times more
than the number of workers in large industry).88This apparatus struc-
tured the social changes in the 1930s. According to the opinions of M.
Gorinov and E. Dotsenko, “The apparatus, which inherited all the short-
comings of the traditional Russian bureaucracy-its clumsiness, cor-

ruption, etc.-the regular administrative apparatus was poorly adjusted
for “revolutionary” actions. At the end of the 1920s and the beginning of
the 1930s, the focus was shifted to party, extraordinary . . . punitive . . .
organs.”89Extraordinary organs, however, were not novel at the begin-
ning of the 1930s.A considerableproportion of the administratorsat the
end of the 1920s had undergone schooling during the civil war.
In terms of sociocultural psychology, Russia’s officials consisted of
two strata. One of them, the specialists (in general, mostly former mem-
bers and supporters of social and liberal parties), played a stabilizing
role. The other stratum consisted of party cadres-a mobile and, in gen-
eral, the less-cultured part of the apparatus. This part believed in the
possibility and even necessity of “simple” revolutionary measures for
solving the problems the country was facing after the NEP. This stratum
occupied key posts in the governmental and party apparatus and was
concentrated in the extraordinary organs. At the beginning of the 1930s,
those organs absorbed a mass of marginal (underclass) strata, which
kept growing as the result of the NEP’s inefficiency (in particular, start-
ing from the civil war period, the village poor continued to play an ac-
tive role).
The policy of destruction of the traditional society caused a rapid
increase in the size of the explosiveunderclass masses (which only gradu-
ally became the bureaucracy and the working class) and also gave rise to
outbreaks of dissatisfaction in practically all social strata. Stalin’s group,
working on the reforms of the 1930s, had to make sure that the mass of
underclass elements, while lending support to radical actions by the party-
controlled government, did not reach a dangerous “critical mass” and
cause an explosion that might destroy the regime itself. These peculiari-
74 A.C!SHUBIN
ties of social strategy on the part of the VKP(b) leadership perfectly

explain its tactical “retreats” in 1930, 1933-34, and 1939. Each of these
retreats was replaced by advancement toward the bureaucratic ideal, an
absolutely centralized, industrial society in which all the social processes
were planned and controlled by one individual (in the USSR, this ideal
was associated with communism).
Creation of such a society in the twentieth century meant transfer of
industrial manageability principles into all spheres of social life and
building a powerful industy capable of providing not only a solution to
all social problems but also an increase in the USSR’s power in the
geopolitical struggle. The NEP experience, however, demonstrated that
not only an industrial leap but also any noticeable acceleration of indus-
trial growth was impossible without overcoming the social resistance of
peasants and without elimination of the independent peasant economy.
And the latter was impossible without social terror directed not against
individual representatives of the resistance, but rather against entire so-
cial strata that hindered the creation of a monolithic, totalitarian society
by the very fact of their existence. The beginning of such a terror in the
USSR and therefore the starting point of the history of the totalitarian
regime of the 1930s belongs to 1929.
The NEP crisis faced the ruling elite of the government with a choice-
either give up the prospect of industrial restructuring (and therefore the
creation of a superpower) and turn the USSR into a regular agrarian-
industrial country of Eastern Europe, or destroy traditional social struc-
tures. In this respect, L. Gordon’s and E. Klopov’s hypothesis that
“preservation of the primarily economic forms of government, i.e., un-
forced development, would have caused an industrial boom,’ygo does not
seem convincing, since the Bolsheviks’ power had already demonstrated
its inability to control the economy by economic means. There was one
more alternative left: transferring the power to more competent strata of
society, those capable of providing fluid industrial rise within the limits
of a government-monopolisticmodel of a controllable market. But that
would have meant ousting from the government apparatus the elements
that had filled it in 1917-1927. As soon as the very possibility of exist-
ence of opposition to the ruling party was destroyed, such evolution
became impossible. In any case, in 1927 the choice was between a po-
litical elite rather than a type of society, as L. Gordon and E. Klopov
claimed. The decision about forced industrialization was dictated not so
much by social needs as by the tasks the ruling elite set for itself. In this
RlJSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 75
respect, the “military threat” remained a key factor. In 1929-1930, there

was not a single state along the USSR borders that could realize a large-
scale intrusion into the USSR. Nevertheless, its leadership continued to
think in terms of a potential military encounter that would not necessar-
ily be defensive on the USSR’s part.
In order to secure success in such a confrontation, it was necessary to
sharply accelerate industrial growth. In 1929, the “optimal” five-year
plan for 1928-1933, itself presupposing unprecedented growth in in-
dustry, was changed to comply with Stalin’s request for a steep accel-
eration of the tempo. The big leap in industrialization had begun. Contrary
to official statements, Stalin’s plan did not concern building a rationally
planned economy. R. Conquest was the frst to point out this fact:
The goal was to “overfulfill”the plan, and the premium went to the direc-
tor who produced 120 percent of the set norm. But if he was trying to
achieve such “overfullfillment,”where did he get the raw material?Ap-
parently, it could be obtained only at the expense of other branches of
industry. Strictly speaking, such a method could hardly be called planned
economy. . . . This system brought about huge irregularities in develop-
ment. It resulted in a huge rise in production, especially in specific areas;
but the losses were at least as great as in the early, noncontrolled, capital-
ist period of its “Stunn und Drang.”9’
The task of this period was to accelerate development in certain in-
dustrial branches, under the guise of a frontal “rise in the industry,” and
to search for personnel capable of achieving steep increases in produc-
tion. The main attention (financing, supplies, etc.) was directed to 50 to
60 high-profile construction sites. These were also supplied through
massive imports of foreign machines.
An industrial market was costly for the country: capital investments
were three times higher than the national income. Meanwhile, the lead-
ership of the VKP(b) had at its disposal an extremely cheap workforce
since the workers’ standards of living were close to those of prison in-
mates. F. Gladkov, who visited the construction sites of the piutiletku
(five-year plan), wrote; “I drop by the workers’ soup kitchen, and I feel
sick at the very sight of the disgusting food. .. .This blue mash stinks of
rotting corpses and dumpsters. The workers prefer a diet of bread and
water.” 92
Despite such frugality, industrialization required huge expenditures in
technology imports and for maintaining minimal living standards of the
workers occupied both at construction sites and sites of extractiodoutput
76 A.V:SHUBlN
of raw materials. The problems of financial deficits were solved though

internal loans, increasesin vodka sales, monetary emission (in 1929-1932,
the volume of money increased four times)%,taxes, and export of lumber,
oil, furs, and grain, huge quantities of which were also needed within the
country.An increase in grain supplies for the growing urban areas became
the main problem of industrialization. Collectivization, which became an
integral part of the “Industrial Leap,” was to provide the solution to this
problem.
Official propaganda substantiated the necessity for collectivization
by the introduction of agricultural technology. But in 1929 only 3,300
tractors were produced.%When technological production was established,
the long-awaited technology turned out to be in the hands of govern-

mental MTSs (Machine and Tractor Stations)-yet another means of
control over the peasants. But the most important result of enlargement
of the agricultural economy after collectivization was more strict con-
trol of the production and distribution of grain. The rural areas were
restructured according to an industrial model. Before technology was
introduced, the kolkhozes resembled some sort of factory.
The close connection between collectivization and the industrial
leap predetermined its shocWacceleration tempo: “More and more of-
ten, they did not buy grain, meat, butter, etc, from a peasant but rather
‘took’ them from him, which caused reductions in production. . . . In
order to stop the overall reduction in agricultural production, they tried
to put villages under strict administrative control,”95M. Gorinov & E.
Dotsenko wrote. On 10 February 1930, Stalin publicly chastened “the
comrades of Sverdlo” with the seizure of the kulaks’ property, so that
the “class enemy” would not have time to “waste” it.96Despite losing
their independence, the peasants dealt blows to the forming kolkhozes
by destroying their property. Especially serious and long-lasting con-
sequences resulted from the mass slaughter of cattle. The production
of meat went down to 15-20 kg. per capita in 1940 (whereas in 1913 it
was 29 kg).97
In its struggle with the peasants, the party leadership turned to the
poor in the villages, who had become a new agrarian elite and begun to
wage a merciless war against the old elite-the kulaks. The government
fully supported the village poor, introducing an order of “dispossession”
of the kulaks (liquidation of their households, exile, and sometimes im-
prisonment), decisions that were made by the leaders of the local poor.
Such “dispossession” often fell not only on the affluent peasants but
RlJSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 77
also on the so-called “middle peasants,” and sometimes on the poor

ones?* who in such cases were labeled “kulaks’ underlings.”
Dispossessions solved not only agrarian but also industrial tasks of
the regime. The masses of the “dispossessed” turned into an almost free
workforce directed to the “construction sites of the five-year-plan.”Thus,
for example, on 30 July 1931, a special committee of the SNK (the
Soviet of the People’s Commissars) dealing with the issues of dispos-
session adopted the following resolution: “Comply with Vostokstal’s
request for 14 thousand kulak families, binding it to make suitable agree-
ments with OGPU within two days. . . .In accordance with these agree-
ments, suggest that the OGPU undertake the necessary regional
redistribution and eviction of the kulaks.’q9

Naturally, the attacks on the peasants produced resistance, which took
the form of unrest or terrorist acts. Some attacks were directed against
farms, from 8 percent (Ivanovskiiregion) to 38 percent (Northern Osetia).
What was especially important in the situation of a one-party system
was the appearance of underground organizations supporting one of the
wings of the ruling party (such wings were officially condemned, but
not disbanded physically). Thus, a flyer secretly distributed in Jukhanovka
stated: “All our peasantry, as well as our organization the Union of the
Newest Russia, expresses solidarity with the right wing. . . . With the
sensational invention of Stalin-the ‘five-year-plan’-you are choking
the ‘free’ Russia. She is already exhausted with painful wounds; she
cannot suffer any longer.”lWIn 1930 a peasant organization was dis-
closed that conducted its agitation in the best traditions of Russian
impostership-under the name of the . . . False Bukharin. Other typical
myths circulated among the peasants: “What it is all about-they want
to enslave us again, in the landlords’ slavery whichvladimir Iliich Lenin
overturned.” In the situation of great social mobility that prevailed in
19 17-1929, when representatives of the ruling elite had numerous rela-
tives and acquaintances at the bottom of society, the displeasure caused
by collectivization was especially dangerous. Another peasant leaflet of
that time directly points to this: “And meanwhile these little tsars set
one class against another, while muddying the waters and bringing us
under collectivization by force. But they will not manage to put a yoke
back on the peasants, because all the peasantry is suffocating in the same
atmosphere, and our children in the Red Army, too, realize that what
awaits them at home are hunger, cold, unemployment, and collectiviza-
tion, i.e., slavery under the lords.”1o2
78 A.C!SHUBIN
In order to avoid a social explosion, the leadership of the VKP(b)

decided to retreat in its struggle with the peasantry, having sanctioned
Stalin’s famous article “Dizzy with success” of 5 March 1930. The ar-
ticle and subsequent TsK resolution were used to strengthen the author-
ity of the party top, unmasking local “extremes”:
“The TsK thinks that all those distortions now present a major im-
pediment to further growth of the kolkhoz movement and direct assis-
tance to our enemies.”ImIt would be appropriate to italicize the word
now since over several months these “abuses” were renewed. In his ar-
ticle Stalin hinted that the cause of collectivization was in need of just a
respite; the general secretary called for “reenforcing the successes we
have achieved and systematically using them for further advancement.”lW

The attempt to avoid “personal responsibility” for collectivization
failures and to redirect it to the local party elite produced dissatisfac-
tion, reflected in the pages of the central party press: “Who, precisely,
was dizzy? In fact, it looked as though the policy directed against the
kulaks was applied to the middle peasants. . . . It looks as though ‘the
tsar is good but his local officials are bad.’ . . . One should admit one’s
own mistakes and not teach them to the local party masses at the bot-
tom. The cure depends on the wrong diagnosis, though it is necessary to
cure, and there is much to be cured.”1o5
The attack on the peasantry had already been renewed by the end of
1930-the “five-year-plan’s construction sites” needed bread. A con-
siderableamount of grain had been exported abroad. Meanwhile, in 1932,
the harvest was low. It seemed that the low harvest (partly caused by
sabotage of the peasants not wishing to work “for the kolkhoz,” i.e., for
the government) could serve as the foundation for reducing the rates for
State purchases. But at this point, the kolkhoz system showed its merci-
less power-their Chairs were forced to provide the exact amount of
grain requested of them. According to R. Conquest’s calculations, the
minimum number of starvation victims in 1932-1933 was about five to
six million people.lWThe loss of population in Ukrainian villages was
20 percent; in Kursk, 18 percent; and in Kazakhstan, 30 percent.
In 193&1932 the party encountered the greatest social crisis since
1921. In 1931, unrest began in the cities. According to D. Boffa:
It was obvious already in the second half of 1932 that this policy did not
lead to accelerationof progress: the growth rates fell rather than increased.
The increase in production volume was not 32 percent, as was needed,
but-according to contradictory official sources-only 22 percent and
only in industry, i.e., in the area where all efforts and means were concen-
trated. . . . In the same years, such grave and profound disproportions
appeared that they persisted for decades to come and would define the
development of the economy and society in the USSR. At the end of
1932, they reached such a scale that the very progress of industrialization
became threatened. Perhaps that was one of the motives behind turning
over a new leaf and declaring the five-year plan completed.108
And despite the,fact that the plan was not fulfilled, “huge investments
were made in industry (the size of investments in industry increased 3.5
times more than the national gross revenue).” N. Vert wrote: “True, it
was at the expense of the people’s living standards. The need to invest in
social and cultural areas was constantly ignored. Industrialization was

conducted by extensification [as opposed to intensification-Ed.] meth-
ods, with huge losses. It was accompanied by high-rate inflation. . . .
Labor productivity . . .had decreased 8 percent.”lW
Summarizing industrialization, D. Boffa wrote:
Light industry, group “B” in Marxist terminology, was sacrificed. Agri-
cultural production experienced a fall rather than a rise. Real wages and
the population’s income decreased. . . .Nevertheless, it would have been
a crude mistake to think that the five-year plan was a failure. The pride
with which this glorious deed is preserved in the collective memory of
the Soviet people is legitimate. . . . In the monstrously tense and chaotic
advancement, foundations for the further industrialization of the country
were laid. .. .Mechanical engineeringachieved striking successes,though
now there is no means of measuring them. Entire branches that never had
existed in Russia before appeared: airplane construction, tractor and au-
tomobile plants, machine-tool industry. The USSR turned from a country
importing equipment into a country that exported it. It was precisely then
that the foundations of Soviet might were laid. This is true especially
with regard to modem weapons.llo
One should note, however, that the ferrous metal industry, mechani-
cal engineering, motor-car construction, and aviation construction did
exist in the country even before the revolution, although on a more mod-
est scale. The technological leap was of a quantitative rather than a quali-
tative nature
In their destruction of the traditional mechanisms of social regula-
tion, the Communists created new ones, which involved primarily the
cities receiving the flow of the pauperized masses. In 1929it was claimed
that unemployment no longer existed. The gigantic demand for a
80 A.VSHUBlN
workforce indeed permitted a reduction in the number of people look-

ing for a job. A huge number of those with jobs not only worked in areas
other than what their professional training required but also were forced
to work. The demand for educated personnel stimulated realization of
mass education programs. In the middle of the 1930s, these processes
began gradually to unfold in the villages as well. All this was accompa-
nied by a tremendous propaganda campaign exaggerating and glorify-
ing every achievement of the Country of the Soviets. Considerablestrata
of the population (mostly urban) experienced improvement in their qual-
ity of life and sociopsychological comfort emanating from their sense
of belonging to the powerful community of the Soviet people.
The main positive outcome of the first five-year plan can be considered
the creation of a military-industrial complex-of a military industry and
its infrastructure that could serve the civilian population as well. In other
branches, manual labor still prevailed, which places in doubt the thesis
about the creation of an industrial society precisely in that period.
The cost of constructing an advanced military-industrial complex and
the attempt to build simultaneous a totally controlled society brought
about colossal social shifts. According to N. Vert,
For some time Soviet society turned into a gigantic “Gypsy camp of no-
mads” and became a “society of quicksand.” In the villages, social struc-
tures and the traditional order were completely annihilated. Simulta-
neously, a new type of urban population was formed represented by a
rapidly growing working class, consisting almost completely of former
peasants avoiding collectivization and a new technical intelligentsiaformed
of workers and promoted peasants, by the rapidly growing bureaucratic
sector. . .and, finally, by the power structures, with a still fragile, incom-
pletely formed hierarchy of ranks, privileges, and high posts.”’
One has to note, however, that while destroying the structures of the
traditional society, the party elite strove to keep the process under its
control and preserve (even in their transformed shape) the features of
those structures that facilitated the task of governing (such as mutual
guarantees, an authoritarian sociopsychological tradition, etc.). These
were the frames within which huge social masses were transformed.
These processes, however, followed patterns that were not always con-
trollable by the leadership of theVKP(b); and in the middle of the 1920s,
destructive tendencies began to overwhelm the ruling elite, seriously
threatening Stalin and his surroundings. The struggle against this threat
took the form of an unprecedented outbreak of terror.
The mass terror that broke out in the 1930s seems one of the most
irrational events in modern history. It is so tightly connected with the
name of Josef Stalin that at times it seems that it was the product of the
evil will of the VKP(b) leader. “In the end, the entire character of the
terror was determinedby the personal and political motivations of Stalin,”
wrote R. Conquest.ll*In the 1920s, the personal inclinations of the gen-
eral secretary, however, displayed moderation rather than anything else.
According to Conquest, Stalin conducted his coup d’6tat by very un-
usual methods, unknown in history, adding teaspoon doses and going as
far as slaughter but still producing the impression of a certain modera-
tion.lI3All this can be perceived as a result of the leader’s devilish calcu-
lations. More plausible, however, is another explanation: Stalin was not

a genius strategist capable of foreseeing all the turns of history decades
in advance. Rather, he was a talented tactician. At each specific moment
he evaluated the correlation of forces with precision and was always
ready to advocate a more powerful social movement and to use the most
effective methods in its interests. Under the conditions of the totalitar-
ian regime, it was hard to design a method more effective than terror.
An important cause, which produced tensions within the VKP(b), was
an intensive formation of bureaucratic cliques. The most powerful of
them were territorial groups (from Leningrad, Kiev, Rostov, and oth-
ers). At the same time, cliques of the economic bureaucracy formed,
along the lines of industrial branches; these enjoyed relative autonomy.
0. Khlevniuk wrote: “In the 1930s it [the Narkomat of heavy industry-
A.Sh.1 turned into one of the most powerful and influential departments,
capable of declaring and defending its interests. Among these interests,
a considerable place was occupied by the Narkomat personnel’s claims
to their relative independence and their desire to protect themselves from
the attacks of the party-state controllers and punitive organs.”l14
Within the party, the internal tensions grew; its cliques found them-
selves under the influence of diverse social forces. The “Big Leap” in
industrialization and the mass dissatisfaction with it (which included
cadres accused of extremes while they were following directives issued
by the center) were reflected in the sentiments of the party elite. Al-
though the opposition could not take the form of a legal group, it pre-
sented a special danger for the ruling oligarchy. Stalin and his supporters
never knew who was really on their side and who was ready for a sudden
attack. The number of the latter could only increase because of the prob-
lems in 1930-1933; and it all took place within a system ideally suited-
82 A.V SHUBIN
as any supercentralized system is-for palace coups. To change the po-

litical course it was enough to change a narrow circle of the ruling group.
The remaining informal contacts among party members presented a
huge danger for Stalin’s group. The stormy 1920s had forged a net of
most diverse ties among cadres belonging to very diverse levels. As a
result, even former participants of the opposition who now were con-
signed to the periphery of power still had a chance to communicate in a
friendly way with the leading party members and exert their influence
on them. Many of them were reappointed to leading posts, although in
secondary roles. Stalin could not exclude the possibility that the leaders
of the cliques forming within the party could fall under the influence of
his opponents, especially when the results of the policy initiated in 1929
became increasingly apparent.
In 1932 Stalin came across a discussion of his replacement held by
party workers who once had been loyal to him. On 19, 22 November
Saveliev, a candidate for a member of the Central Committee, informed
Stalin about a conversation between his acquaintance N. Nikolsky and
the Narkom for supplies of the RSFSR N. Eismont, who said, ‘Tomor-
row Tolmachev and I will visit A. P. Smirnov; and I know that the first
sentence he will speak with be, ‘How come there is not a single person
in the entire country who could remove him?’”’*5Almost simultaneously
with that, there circulated among the party workers a letter by M. Riutin
that contained a call for Stalin’s physical destruction. The general secre-
tary made an attempt to put an end to the spread of such terrorist tenden-
cies by demanding Riutin’s execution, but was opposed by a part of the
Politburo still clinging to an old tradition of refusing to destroy party
comrades. B. Nikolsky, basing his words on Bukharin’s account, wrote:
“Kirov spoke against the execution in the most definite terms and man-
aged to sway the majority of the Politburo members. Stalin was careful
enough not to turn the issue into a sharp conflict.”’16
For Stalin, it was a matter of political choice. He discovered that the
party had people who thought it necessary to remove him (perhaps,physi-
cally), but acted in secret. And the majority in the Politburo refused to
fight them in decisive ways. From Stalin’s perspective, he was facing a
terrorist conspiracy that had developed with the connivance of the party
leadership.
Was the threat real for the course he chose in 1929, and what was its
alternative? According to R. Conquest, “One can imagine a situation in
which Kirov, Kuibyshev, and Ordzhonikidze were sitting in the Polit-
bur0 together with Bukharin and Piatakov, perhaps even with Kamenev,
planning a moderate program.”l17 Such a perspective does not seem so
unrealistic if one recalls that in the 1950s, the Communist parties in
Hungary and Poland were headed by people who had been subjected to
repression. Comparing the intellectual levels of the opposition leaders
and the Politburo members at the beginning of the 1930s, one can pre-
sume that in case of Stalin’s removal from power (together with one or
two of his closest associates) or in case of their sudden deaths, the Polit-
buro would be hard pressed to do without the prominent opposition
members (especially in light of the fact that the catastrophic results of
collectivization in many respects supported the correctness of their posi-
tions). Furthermore, Stalin’s opposition to the formation of autonomous

cliques independent of the top leadership in the VKP(b) and his striving
to strengthen control over the party from a single center went against the
sentiments of the party bureaucracy, frightened by the crisis of 1930-
1933 and aiming first of all at fixing the status quo.
Being aware of all this, those in the opposition continued their dis-
cussions of current politics and ways of correcting it. In the eyes of the
ruling group this looked like a “shadow cabinet.” Later, L. Kaganovich
said:
You have to understand the situation in which Stalin found himself! All
those Mohicans-Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev. . . .You see, my dear, in
the situation of capitalist surroundings, we can’t afford to let so many
governments free. All these people were members of governments.There
was a government of Trotsky, a government of Zinoviev, a governmentof
Rykov. All this was very dangerous and impossible. Three governments
of Stalin’s enemies could arise. And indeed, they considered themselves
to be governments, underground governments. . . . Well, facing these-
they were large in size, real whales-Stalin could not stay passive. What
if they to grabbed him by the throat and annihilated him like Robespierre.118
Surely, those “governments” could not initiate anything on their own.
But if the party leaders of the second echelon ever found themselves in
need of the political experience of the former opposition leaders, then
the situation might become threatening. Whereas under polycentric sys-
tems a “shadow cabinet” struggles for power using more or less open
methods and its influence in the country is known to the authorities, the
opposition under a totalitarian regime lacks opportunities for open ac-
tivity, thus leaving the ruling group in the dark about the opposition’s
views and real potential.
84 A.VSHUBlN
What was the alternative to Stalin’s politics? Even many years later
the “boss’s” supporters continued to claim that the opposition’s victory
would have turned the country into a colony with a reigning fascist re-
gime.’19 In the 1930s, such a prospect seemed realistic, since Soviet
propaganda perceived the East European countries with authoritarian
(fascist) regimes as semicolonies of the West. Capitalist countries di-
vided the world into their spheres of interests, so the real independence
of the USSR was thought to be the greatest achievement.Further strength-
ening of autonomous cliques within the Communist party and the intro-
duction of more-tolerant policies toward peasants and capitalistic
elements could have produced a different scenario. The USSR could
have turned into an authoritarian state with strong control over an agrar-
ian and industrial economy, structurally close to a fascist government of
the Italian type, though with a different ideology. That might have been
the beginning of the end of the totalitarian regime, the starting point of
its erosion, similar to the one that began in Eastern Europe in the 1950s.
In connection with that, we have to disagree with a view, popular both in
domestic and foreign historiography, that “even within the limits of the
strategy chosen by Stalin’s group at the end of the 1920s, there existed
diverse variants of real politics, including less terrorist ones.”1mTerror
was the only means of preserving the 1929 strategy. Abandoning terror
in the middle of the 1930s would soon have brought the fall of Stalin’s
group, further strengthening the cliques and abandoning the monolithic
model of the party and society.
Events related to the seventh congress of the VKp(b) also presented a
threat to Stalin’s policy. The overwhelming majority of delegates at this
congress were later destroyed. This can be explained by the fact that scores
of delegates stated their opposition to Stalin by secret vote,121
and some of
them approached Kirov suggesting he become a party leader, about which
Kirov informed Stalin.ln According to Molotov, “Kirov . . . was not a
theoretician, and did not claim to be one. . . . For him to ideologically
defeat Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev-it could never happen!”123Such a
change in the leadership would make it easier for the opposition leaders
to return to power. After Kirov’s refusal to head the party, Stalin’s en-
emies did not dare to confront him openly. Many refused to vote against
him, although some of the delegates nevertheless did. As D. Boffa aptly
remarked, “They could act only through internal channels and resort to
whatever devices they could find at their personal disposal.”l” Stalin,
however, received the news that among the leaders of powerful party
cliques, there appeared scores, even hundreds, of people wishing to “re-

move” him.
The assassination of S. Kirov on 1December 1934-unsolved to this
day- became one of the key events in this complex struggle. Whoever
was the mastermind behind the Kirov’s murder, Stalin was the one who
took advantage of it. Admittedly, not at once. In 1935-1936, the “under-
the-carpet” struggle went into its decisive phase. After the wave of terror
in December 1934 and the trial in January 1935 (at which Zinoviev,
Kamenev, and other opponents “admitted” that their talks could motivate
young members to make assassination attempts), and after the “Kremlin
case” that made the general secretary feel relatively secure at least in
Kremlin territory, for some time there was a peaceful intermission.

Regional party organizations resisted the actions of Stalin’s investi-
gators. Thus, on 2 June 1935, the session of the Azovo-Chernomorskii
regional committee adopted the following resolution: “We declare that
the facts about groundless and mass repressions, established by a spe-
cially authorized person-repressions applied in the course of the last
three months to a quarter of the entire regional organization-those facts
mean that the party line concerned with uniting the active party mem-
bers, raising and educating the people, is now replaced by administra-
tive activities alien to the party.”125
Judging by Stalin’s reaction, some of the NKVD leadership also dis-
played resistance to unbridled repression. From the point of view of
pragmatists in the punitive and party organs, persons whose terrorist
intentions had been “exposed” had been properly isolated, and any fur-
ther repression against them was inexpedient. For Stalin’s group, on the
contrary, solving the Kirov assassination case would serve only as an
opportunity to crush their known and unknown enemies.
As a result, a certain equilibriumof forces appeared, which permitted
R. Conquest to call the period between June 1935 and August 1936
“something like an idyllic intermission.”’26In that period the structure
of the regime seemed fully formed. The managing oligarchy was orga-
nizationally connected to society through a multitude of social institu-
tions, such as institutionalized kolkhozes and sovkhozes, various
government establishments, trade unions, and other social organizations,
the principal one being-the party. The party was not only a ruling force
(after all, only a small part of it actually wielded power) but also a mo-
bilizing one. The role of the ordinary Communist in the workplace,
for example, was interpreted as follows: “Among the five other workers
86 A.VSHUBlN
you work with, you are the most advanced. You must turn them into
advanced workers. The way they work is your responsibility.”ln
The Communists of this period appealed to a Communist myth that
promised working people quick deliverance from their suffering. In this
respect, they continued the Leninism tradition. The authors of the mono-
graph Ourfatherland point out that the VW(b) ideals of Stalin’s period
were hostile to the “highest humanistic values.”128It is difficult to agree
with this. In contrast to the cynical propaganda of Hitler’s Germany,
Stalin’s propaganda machine operated with ideas of social justice, de-
mocracy, national equality, internationalism and the like. Propagandis-
tic manipulations with these lofty ideals instilled in a part of the
population the illusion of sharing in the “great accomplishments” in the

country and in the world, reinforcing the effect of “Soviet patriotism”
arising as a development of Russian patriotism. The main task of Stalin’s
agitators was to cover up the complete divergence between the VKP(b)’s
words and deeds, rather than to arouse the low instincts of the masses.
Beginning in 1935 the regime undertook to address traditional patriotic
values, primarily autocratic ones. The official propaganda turned to im-
ages of “progressive” tsars (principally Ivan the Terrible and Peter the
Great). A search began for some kind of compromise.withcultural tra-
ditions. Stalin openly declared: “Now we support national culture.”129
Creation of art and literature was under the strict control of the re-
gime personified in Stalin. The leader analyzed works of fiction pro-
duced both by “socially alien” M. Bulgakov and loyal D. Bednyi, going
so far as to accuse the latter of “slander of the USSR, its past and
The regime dealt a blow to the nihilism of revolutionary
times, demonstrating its effect on stabilizing society.
The ruling elite began to enjoy the fruits of victory: “Limousines for
the activists, nice perfume for ‘our women,’ margarine for the workers,
‘deluxe’ stores for the dignitaries, the sight of delicatessen reflected in
the windows of the stores for plebeians-such socialism could not but
seem to the masses a new adaptation of capitalism,” Trotsky,l3I one of
the creators of the revolution, wrote indignantly after he analyzed a speech
by the revolution’s heir, A. Mikoian. The party top had things to lose-
at that period, the wage ratio between 10 percent at the top and at the
bottom of the population was evaluated as 8:1 .132 Trotsky mentioned “the
supreme egotism of this sector [i.e., the Bolshevik elite-A.Sh.1, its strong
internal unity, its fear of dissatisfaction of the masses, its wild persis-
tence in suppression of any criticism.”133All that applied to 1935-1936.
RlISSIAN REVOLUTION A N D THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 87
In a year there would be no trace left of that “unity”-the Bolsheviks

would begin annihilating each other.
An important stage in the attack on the party elite was a public trial
against the former leaders of the VKP(b) Kamenev and Zinoviev, which
took place in August 1936. From that time on, public trials became a
symbol and an important element of the “great terror.”
Stalin tried to make the accused believe until the very last moment
that their voluntary repentance and collaboration with the prosecution
would give them a chance to survive. For the opposition leaders that
belief was important not only as a prospect of their survival but also as a
chance for their return to power at some later point. For a politician, the
second consideration could be more important than the first. Surely, the
chance of survival was low. But, according to a Russian proverb, “A
drowning man grasps at straws”; and Stalin was extending such a straw
to them. In his speech at the March session of theVKP(b) Central Com-
mittee, he said: “The Committee . . . believes that one should not throw
Bukharin and Rykov on the same pile with the followers of Trotsky and
Zinoviev since there is a difference, and that difference is to Bukharin’s
and Ry kov ’s advantage.”l 34
Even after the Kamenev-Zinoviev trial, the struggle concerning the
terror problem continued. The result of the trial, execution of L. Kamenev
and Zinoviev, was not conducive to the construction of new accusations.
The threads leading from people who had already admitted their guilt to
new accusations were broken. After Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s destruc-
tion, collaboration between the rest of the accused and the prosecution
became extremely problematic. Dissatisfaction with the behavior of G.
Iagoda, who managed to “hide all the leads,” was a possible reason for a
decision reached after the August trial. On 25 September 1936, Stalin
and Zhdanov sent the following telegram to the Politburo: “In our opin-
ion, it is absolutely necessary and urgent to appoint Comrade Ezhov to
the post of People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs [narbmvnudel].
Iagoda obviously has not reached the mark dictated by his task of un-
covering the Trotsky-Zinoviev bloc. In this affair, the OGPU was four
years behind.”’35In carrying out this decision, Stalin solved the problem
he could not solve before-he gained full control of the punitive organs
leadership. Apparently, earlier (before Kuibyshev’s death), Iagoda’s re-
moval was impossible because of the great influence of the moderate
part of the Politburo.
Replacement of Iagoda by Stalin’s candidate N. Ezhov provided the
88 A.VSHUBlN
General Secretary with an opportunity to aim his attacks against the

bureaucratic cliques laying claims to independence within the VKFYb).
In January 1937, Piatakov’s trial began. As 0. Khlevniuk justly noted,
“In fact, that was the trial of the NKTP (Narkomat of Heavy Industry),
i.e., the department of Politburo member G. Ord~honikidze.”’~~
Although the Communist elite was forced to recognize the results of
the trial, the influence of the group trying to stop terror at least at this
point grew stronger. The narkom of heavy industry G. Ordzhonikidze
was the leader of the “moderates.” They probably hoped to turn around
the situation at the February plenary session. Ordzhonikidze and other
leaders of bureaucratic cliques fought for immunity of their departments
against the central power, especially the punitive organs. That would
have made further totalitarian transformations of the society impossible
and would have predetermined the beginning of the regime’s erosion.
Ordzhonikidze tried to legitimize the NKTPs right to an independent
inspection of NKVD materials. The fact that Ordzhonikidze was ac-
tively preparing for the plenary session and had collected data refuting
the NKVD could be considered fully proved. According to Khlevniuk,’”
“The organization of independent inspection of the saboteurs was the
strongest move Ordzhonikidze could undertake under the circumstances
at that time.” Elimination of the Narkomat for Heavy Industry became a
necessity for Stalin, and it was eliminated. The rumor about
Ordzhonikidze’s assassination had thus far not received sufficient sup-
port; his death, however, was sudden and unexpected-even for
Ordzhonikidze him~e1f.l~~ The likeliest version is that of R. Conquest
who suggested suicide under Stalin’s pressure, such as, for example, the
threat of arrest.139
At the plenary session of the TsK VKP(b), which took place right
after Ordzhonikidze’sdeath, the General Secretary, proceeding from the
results of two anti-Bolshevik trials, laid a theoretical foundation for ter-
rorists a blow that was to fall on the party two months later. D. Boffa
writes: “Already in preceding years, Stalin’s attacks were directed against
two categories of Communists: regional party workers (including secre-
taries of regional committees) and first-generation Bolsheviks. This time
his fire gradually focused on them. The trials themselves in that sense
looked like propaganda-means directed at creating an atmosphere ap-
propriate for waging a broad attack.”lm The trials proved that any
member of the elite could be declared a saboteur or accomplice. And it
was necessary to fight those “conceited little tsars” using the “party’s
RLISSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 89
internal democracy.” “That was a signal for recent activists in the back
rows to step forward and to remove the entire stratum of commanding
cadres who had controlled the party until then.”141
Stalin’s criticism of clique formation within the VKP(b) structure was
especially severe: “What does it mean, to drag along a whole group of
one’s friends? . . . This means that one gains a certain independence of
local organizations and, if you wish, some independence of the TsK. He
has his group; I have mine: they are loyal personally to me.”142N. Ezhov’s
speech at the plenary session was also directed against local cliques’
sabotaging the work of the NKVD: “I must say that I know not a single
occasion when people would call me of their own accord and say: ‘Com-
rade Ezhov, so-and-so is a suspicious person; something is wrong with

him, deal with this person. . . .’ More often, when the issue of an arrest
arises, they, on the contrary, defend such people.”143One of the most
important results of the plenary session was the Central Committee’s
agreement to arrest Bukharin and Rykov.
This arrest gave a green light to the repression machine. The ma-
chine, however, needed some preparation for the “work” to be done. In
March 1937, the purges hit first the NKVD, then the procurator’s offices
and courts. In May-June, the leadership of the armed forces was de-
stroyed (waves of purges in the army went on until 1938, having com-
pletely freed Stalin’s group of the threat of a potential military coup).
The army and the party leaders were connected with each other and
could have discussions not to Stalin’s liking. Sparing the army while
initiating large-scale terror in the party meant increasing danger of a
military uprising.
The destruction of the party cadres began a little earlier than annihi-
lation of the commanders. In April, candidate for Politburo membership
Ya. Rudsutak was arrested. In May 1937, for the first time
“nonopposition” members of the TsK were targeted: mass arrests broke
out first in Leningrad and then throughout the country. In August Ukraine
party organizations (already subjected to thorough purges) resisted the
NKVD and Politburo organs.l4 But the new administrative cadres re-
placing the old ones came from the same ranks against which the re-
pressions had been directed; therefore, the repression machine had to
destroy several strata of leaders before the cliques could be considered
“nonexistent.” By the middle of 1938-only because of complex ma-
neuvers and fabrications in ramified cases-the resistance of groups
headed by Postyshev, Eikhe, and Chubar was broken. In order to win the
90 A.KSHUBIN
struggle against groups attempting to slow down the terror machine, a

show-trial was conducted-involving “right wingers” and the remnants
of Trotskyites. The party and nonparty masses were mobilized to par-
ticipate in campaigns in support of terror. Such campaigns gave the
masses an opportunity to “let off steam”-their dissatisfaction with the
low standard of living, difficult working conditions, etc. (a slowdown in
industry growth rates became yet another result of the “great terror”).
Apparently, Ezhov was planning a new broad trial of the party lead-
ers-“the first trial against Stalin supporters”--which would become a
foundation for an extensive attack on the remaining Politburo members.
“At that point, however, something happened,” wrote R. Conquest.*45
That “something” most likely was a decision to stop the flywheel of

terror that had begun to threaten Stalin’s closest surroundings and the
new generation of party leaders promoted during purges. The “great
terror” had achieved its goals and, on 28-29 June 1938, ended in mass
execution of former party and state leaders. This destruction without
trial was the culmination and the beginning of the end of the terror.
Why did the regional, economic and military elite, as well as the old
Bolshevik guards suffer such a defeat? Because of the totalitarian nature
of the regime, the political struggle of the 1930s had the character of a
secret war in which a more decisive and cynical adversary takes over. The
reason for Stalin’s victory was that he was always ahead of his enemy,
dealing his blow at the moment when contradiction had only begun to
develop and anti-Stalin plans had only begun to be discussed, undergoing
stages of the potential to the frst stages of preparation. The General Sec-
retary was not afraid to destroy those who in reality would never dare to
resist him. It was important to him to extinguish the very ground for a
potential conspiracy, and he crushed the guilty and the nonguilty in one
blow. He attacked “the territories,” and destroyed any threat to his power.
At the same time, the regime was concerned with potential doubts
about the correctness of Stalin’s course of action that could arise later.
This task could be solved through crushing the intelligentsia, espe-
cially the Communist one. It was important to the leader that alterna-
tive communism should have no chance of restoration. Stalin was not
threatened by the nonsocialist searches of nonparty intelligentsia.Thus,
he preserved the lives of Bulgakov, Akhmatova, Zoshchenko, and oth-
ers while destroying less-talented and more loyal to communism RAPP
leaders and others whom he found to be “too much on the left.” This
general orientation could not, however, protect any individual from
RllSSlAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 91
the terrorist apparatus, and any person expressing sedition could fall
under its wheels.
Attacking the nonparty sector of society, Stalin’s group hoped not
only to strengthen the regime but also to create a totally controllable
society. Perhaps they might have succeeded if not for the resistance of
the “environment” in which the Communist leaders had to operate. The
people opposed (mostly passively, but sometimes actively) the VKP(b)
leadership’s politics; but that opposition, under conditions of a totalitar-
ian regime, could take only a nonorganized form and take place inde-
pendently of anti-Stalin acts and the designs of the elite. As an example
we can provide a fragment of a NKVD report on discussion of the Con-
stitution project of 1936:

In the kolkhoz of Mikhaltsevo village at a general meeting of the
kholkhozniks on discussion of the new Constitution project, kolkhoznik
1a.S. Loginov stated: “What do we need your Constitution for? It would
contain whatever Stalin wrote in it, never our thoughts. . . .We have noth-
ing to eat ourselves, and they order us to give it to the government. .. .”At
the M. Gorky weaving factory, in order to provide a sufficient number of
workers at a meeting at the end of the working day, all the doors to the
courtyard were closed and a guard placed near them. The meeting went
on f0rma1ly.l~~
There were also more active forms of resistance, such as flyers with
the following content: “Medieval terror, hundreds of thousands of inno-
cent people, tortured to death and executed by the NKVD-this is only
part of what we are to face!”147Taking into account the peasants’ oppo-
sition to collectivization, discussions in bureaucratic circles of plans to
remove Stalin and numerous acts of resistance by ordinary people, we
can acknowledgethe fact that in the 1930s the regime waged war against
its own people, accompanied by a “civil war” within the elite. The num-
ber of victims was colossal. According to KGB statistics, in the period
1930-1931 in the USSR, 3,778,234 people were subjected to repres-
sion, of whom 786,098 were executed and the rest sent to the gigantic
economic structures of the Gulag system.148The majority of the con-
victs did not survive in Stalin’s camps.
At the end of 1938, Stalin’s leadership, following its victory in the
struggle for power and having achieved certain success in restructuring
society, decided to lessen the pressure. In December 1938 Ezhov was
fired from his post. Having “finished off” the doomed party leaders
who were considered dangerous while alive (Kosarev, Kosior), Stalin
92 A.C! SHUBIN
halted the mass destruction of the ruling stratum. In 1939 Ezhov’s suc-
cessor, L. Beriia, conducted a new purge of the NKVD (this time getting
rid of much-too-active Ezhov cadres) and introduced amnesty for a small
number of prisoners. Under pressure from the new party elite, fearing a
new wave of repression, the physical tortures permitted earlier were of-
ficially forbidden.149The dominance of NKVD organs over the party
structures-established during the terror period-had gradually been
eliminated. Both structures had only one master now-the Boss.
As a result of the sociopolitical changes in the 1930s, many features
of the social structure formed in the USSR at the time corresponded to
other regimes that today are called totalitarian (for example, Hitler’s
regime in Germany). The most important features of this system could

be described as follows:
-A ruling elite, having formed in a society weakened by military cata-
clysms, destroys the mechanism by which the socium could control it.
-Supercentralism, necessary for dominanceof the ruling body, brings
about analogical processes within, the analogical role of society being
played by the masses outside the narrow circle. The struggle for power
from time to time takes a bloody form.
-All the legal spheres of society are subordinated to the control of
the elite, and the majority incompatible with such subordination is
eliminated.
-Industrial growth is stimulated by extra-economic enforcement of
labor.
-Creation of large forms of governmenteconomy provides easier con-
trol over them; the orientation is that of a military-industrial complex.
-The policy is one of culturally national leveling, with destruction
or suppression of “hostile cultures.” Art is dominated by works of ap-
plied propaganda.
At the same time, one should not equate Stalinism with Hitlerism.
The ideologies of both forms of totalitarianism were based on different
principles. Stalinism, as a form of communist movement, was based on
class dominance, whereas Hitlerism was based on race dominance. The
total unity of the socium in the USSR was achieved through uniting the
entire society against “class enemies” potentially threatening to the re-
gime. This presupposed a more radical social transformation than in the
fascist structures, and the regime’s activity was directed at internal, rather
than external, goals (at least until the end of the 1930s). Stab’s politics
presupposed national consolidation, but it was not accompanied by ra-
cia1 purges (the prosecutions based on national identity began only in

the 1940s). Dictatorship in the Soviet Union was forced to mask itself
under lofty ideals inherited from socialist thought. Hitler’s regime was
open in its expression of the aggressive goals of its politics.
From our point of view, the USSR in the 1930s went through the
same stage as did Germany in the development of an industrial state-
controlled society (state-monopolisticindustrialism), but with essential
differences. Judging by the experience of Western countries, that stage
was truly “zigzag” in its development, rather proceeding in a single,
compulsory way.lSo
Notes
1. See I.G. Tsereteli, Krizis vlasti (Moscow, 1992), p. 223; N.A. Berdiaev, lstoki
i smysl russkogo kommunizma (Moscow, 1990).
2. See M.M. Gmmyko, Mir russkoi derevni (Moscow,l991), pp. 55-169.
3. See A.B. Shubin, Garmoniia istorii, (Moscow, 1992), pp. 243-248.
4. H.A. Berdiaev, Istoki i smysl, pp. 9, 18.
5. See, for example, S.M. Stepniak-Kravchinskii,Rossiia pod vlast ’iu tsarei
(Moscow, 1965).
6. G.V. Plekhanov, Tsentralizm ili bonapartizm? Vozvrashcheniepublitsistiki,
1900-1917 (Moscow, 1991),p. 43
7. H.H. Sukhanov,Zapiski o revoliutsii (Moscow, 1991),Vol. 2, pp. 20-24.
8. V.M. Chernov, Pered burei (Moscow,1993), pp. 321,326.
9. Ibid., p. 326.
10. Cit. from I.G.Tsereteli, Krizis vlasti, p. 152.
11. V.I. Lenin, Poln. Sobr: Such., Vol. 33, p. 42.
12. Ibid., p. 44.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., p. 97.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., Vol. 34, p.17.
17. A. Rabinowitch, Bol ‘shevikiprikhodiat k vlasti (Moscow, 1989), p. 172.
18. A.F. Kerenskii, Gatchina (Moscow, 1990), p.6.
19.V.I. Lenin, Pobr. Sobr: Such., Vol. 34, p. 330.
20. S e e Istoriia Velikoi oktiabr ’skoisotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (MOSCOW,
1967),
pp. 91,206-207.
21. A. Rabinowitch, Bol ‘shevikiprikhodiat,pp. 333-34.
22. A.F. Kerenskii, Gatchina, p. 28.
23. Lev Trotsky, Stalinskuia shkola fal’sijkztsii (Moscow, 1990), p. 121.
24. Ibid., p. 123.
25. See Iu. Fel ‘shtinskii. Krushenie mirovoi revoliutsii. Ocherk pervyi. Brestskii
mir (Moscow,1992),pp. 108-1 19.
26. See V.M. Chernov, Pered burei, pp. 340-343; Iu. Fel’shtinskii, Krushenie,
pp. 125-127.
94 A.C(SHUBlN
27. H. D. Kondrat'ev, Rynok khlebov i ego regulimvanie YO vremia voiny i

revoliutsii (Moscow, 1991). p. 366.
28. Cit. from1.P. Leiberov, S.D. Rudachenko, Revoliutsiia i khleb (Moscow, 1990),
p. 188.
29. N.D. Kondrat 'ev, Izbrannye sochineniia (Moscow,1993), p. 35 1.
30. Lev Trotsky, K istorii russkoi revoliutsii (Moscow, 1990). p. 213.
31. V. Bonch-Bruevich, Nu boevykhpostakhfevral 'skoi i oktiabr 'skoi revoliutsii
(MOSCOW, 1931),pp. 191-92.
32. Cit. from M. Geller, A. Nekrich. Utopia with power (London, 1986). p. 55.
33. Lev Trotsky, Soch. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926)
34. M. Gor 'kii, Nesvoevremennye mysli (Moscow. 1990), pp. 110-1 1.
35. See V.M. Chemov, Pered burei. pp. 359-60.
36. V.I. Lenin, Poln. Sobs Soch., Vol. 36, p. 171.
37. Ibid., p. 174.
38. Ibid., p. 196.

39. Ibid., p. 182.
40. Ibid., p. 176.
4 1. T.P. Korzhikhina, Istonia gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii SSSR (Moscow,
1986),p. 67.
42. V.I. Lenin, Poln. Sobs Soch., Vol. 36, pp. 189-90.
43. Che-Ka (Berlin, 1922),p. 14.
44.1.1. Mints, God 1918 (Moscow, 1982), p. 366.
45. Cit. from Nashe Otechestvo. Opyt politicheskoi istorii (Moscow, 1991),Vol.
2, p. 49.
46. See Kmsnaia kniga VChK. T.1 (Moscow,l990),pp.185-310; Iu. Fel 'shtinskii,
Krushenie,pp. 384-5 12;M.A. Pis'mo, Spiridonovoi iz kremlevskogo zakliucheniia
4-muvserossiiskomu s "ezdu partii 1.s.r. (intematsionalistov).NeizvestnaiaRossiia.
X X vek. Vol. 2 (Moscow,1992), pp. 34-36.
41. Lev. Trotsky, Moia zhizn (Moscow, 1990),Vol. 2, p. 123.
48. Ibid., p. 145.
49. Ibid., p. 142.
50. Ibid., p. 145.
51. Ibid., p. 141.
62. Che-Ka, p. 69.
53. V.I. Lenin, Poln. Sobs Soch.. Vol. 50, p.165.
64.Ibid., p. 142.
55. Ibid., p. 143.
56. Ibid., p. 106.
57. D. L. Golinkov, Krushenie antisovetskogopodpol 'ia v SSSR. Kniga I (Mos-
cow, 1986). pp. 224-225.
58. See S.P. Me1 'gunov, Krasnyi terror v Rossii (Moscow. 1990).
59. V. Shul'gin, Dni. 1920g. (Moscow, 1990), pp. 291,292,295-296.298.
60. Pmtokoly s "ezda krest 'ian, rabochikh i povstantsev Guliai Pol 'skogo raiona
(Guliai-Pole, 1919),pp. 24-25.
61. V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko,Zapiski o grazhdanskoivoine (Moscow- Leningrad,
1932),Vol. 4, p.116.
62. See A. Shubin, Makhnovskoe dvizhenie na Ukraine 1917-1921 gg. Druzhba
narodov. 1993, Nos. 3 4 .
RlISSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP 95
63. Telegramma iz shtaba N. Makhno v shtab 2 Ukrainskoi armii. TsGASA f.

199. op. 2., 1.68.
64.H.D. Kondrat 'ev, Rynok khlebov, p. 366.
65. N.E. Kakurin, Kak srazhalas revoliutsiia (Moscow, 1991),Vol. 2, pp. 217-
218.
66. Ibid., pp. 121.
67. Ibid., p. 21-22.
68. Neizvestnaia Rossiia. X X vek., Vol. 2 (Moscow, 1992),pp. 265-267.
69. Nashe Otechestvo,Vol. 2, p. 57.
70. See X s'ezd VKP(b). Stenograjicheskiiotchet (Moscow, 1963), pp. 819-
826; V.I. Lenin, Poln. Sobr. Soch., Vol. 42, pp. 264-302.
71. X s "ezd VKP(b). Stenograjicheskiiotchet, p. 70.
72. Cit. from Obshchina, 1938, No. 18, p. 9.
73. Ibid.
74. V.I. Lenin, Poln. Sobr. Soch., Vol. 45, p. 282.

75. R.Iu. Plaksin, Tikhonovshchina i ee krakh (Leningrad, 1987), p. 199.
76. V.I. Lenin, Poln. Sobr. Soch, Vol. 45, pp. 189-190.
77. Prigovor Verwlovnogo moliutsionnogo tribunalapo delu Partii sotsialistov-
revoliutsionerov (Moscow. 1922). p. 31.
78. Cit. from V.I. Sekushin, Ottonhenie. NEP i komandno-administrativnaia
sistema (Leningrad, 1990), p. 67.
79. V.I. Lenin, Poln. Sobr. Soch, Vol. 54, pp. 161, 157.
80. Lev Trotsky, Stalin (Moscow, 1990),Vol. 2, p. 159.
81. V.I. Lenin, Posledniepis'ma i stat?, (Moscow, 1981),pp. 6, 16.
82. Lev Trotsky, Stalin, p. 266.
83. Cit. from Kommunist, 1989. No. 8, p. 85.
84. I.V. Stalin, Sochineniia,Vol. 8 (Moscow, 1948). p. 139.
85. Cit. from V.I. Sekushin, Ottorzhenie, p.73.
86. N.I. Bukharin, Pmblemy teorii ipraktiki sotsializma (MOSCOW, 1989),p. 301.
87. Ibid., p. 254.
88. Istoriia otechestva: liudi, idei, resheniia. Ocherki istorii Sovetskogo
gosudurstva (Moscow, 1991),p. 197.
89. Ibid.
90. L.A. Gordon 8c E.V. Klopv, Chto eto bylo? Razmyshleniia opredposylkukh
i itogakh togo, chto sluchilos 's nami v 20-e - 40-e gg. (Moscow, 1989). p. 40.
91. R. Conquest, Bol 'shoi terror (Riga, 1991),Vol. 1, p. 40.
92. F. Gladkov, Energiia (Moscow, 1936). p. 375.
93. A.N. Malafeev, lstoriia tsenoobrazovaniiav SSSR (1917-1963 gg.) (Mos-
cow, 1964). p. 404.
94. D. Boffa, Istoriia Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow, 1994),Vol. I, p. 354.
95. Istoriia Otechestva,pp. 177-178.
96. I.V. Stalin, Sochineniia (Moscow, 1949),Vol. 12, p. 188.
97. L.A. Gordon, E.V. Klopov, Chto eto bylo? p. 105.
98. See Dokumenty svidetel'stvuiut. Iz istorii derevni nakunune i v khode
kollektivizatsii 1927-1932 (Moscow, 1989),pp. 360-361.
99. Nashe otechestvo. Opyt politicheskoi istorii (Moscow. 1991), Vol. 2, pp.
266-267.
100. Golosa istorii (Moscow, 1990), p. 148.
96 A.V SHVBIN
101.Ibid., p. 149.
102.Ibid., p. 150.
103. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s "ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK
(Moscow, 1984),Vol. 5 , p. 103.
104. I.V. Stalin, Sochineniia, Vol. 12, p. 192.
105. Pmvda, 9 June 1930.
106. Conquest,Bol 'shoi terror. p. 38.
107. Rossiia v X X veke. Istoriki mira sporiat (Moscow, 1994), p. 387.
108. Boffa, Istoriia, pp. 337-38.345.
109. See N. Werth, Istoriia sovetskogo gosudarstva. 1900-1 991 (Moscow, 1994),
pp. 222-223.
110. Boffa, Istoriia, pp. 343-345.
111. Werth, Istoriia, p. 253.
112. Conquest,Bolshoi terror, p. 97.
113.Ibid., p. 112.
114. O.V. Khlevniuk, Stalin i Ordzhonikidze. Konfikty v Politbium v 30-e gg.
(Moscow, 1993), p. 141.
115. Neizvestnaia Rossiia. X X vek (Moscow, 1992),Vol. 1, p. 75.
116. Sotsialistichmkii vestnik, 1936,No. 23-24, p. 21; S. Cohen,Bukharin (Mos-
cow, 1988), pp. 410-41 1.
117. Conquest,Bol 'shoi terror, p. 66.
118. F. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich. Zspoved'stalinskogo apostola (Moscow,
1992),pp. 81, 138-140.
119. See, for example, ibid., p. 59.
120. O.V. Khlevniuk, Stalin i Ordzhonikidze, p. 140; A. Nove (Ed.), The Stalin
phenomenon (New York, 1993), pp. 24-29.
121. See V. Rogovin, Stalinskii neonep (Moscow, 1995). pp. 54-55.
122. Sto sorok besed s Molotovym. Iz dnevnika E Chueva (Moscow, 1991), p.
478.
123. Ibid.
124. Boffa, Istoriia, p. 423.
125. O.V. Khlevniuk, 1937-i: Stalin, NKVD i sovetskoe obshchestvo (Moscow,
1992),pp. 59-60.
126. Conquest,Bol 'shoi terror, p.137.
127. A. Kruglov, Partgruppa-boevoi organizator rabochikh (Moscow, 1934),
p. 4.
128. Nashe Otechestvo, p.377.
129. See K. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia: razmyshleniia o
1.K Staline (Moscow, 1989),p. 200.
130. I.V. Stalin, Sochineniia, Vol. 13, p. 24.
131. Lev Trotsky, Chto takoe SSSR (Paris,[n.d.]), p. 133.
132. Istoriia Otechestva, p. 207.
133. Lev Trotsky, Chto takoe SSSR, p. 150.
134. Materialy fevral'sko-martovskogoplenuma TsK VK.P(b) 1937 g. Vopmsy
istorii, 1994,No. 1, p. 13.
135. lzvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989,No. 9, p. 39.
136. O.V. Khlevniuk, Stalin i Ordzhonikidze, p. 89.
137. Ibid., pp. 96,102-103.
138. Ibid., pp. 116, 123.

139. Conquest, Bol'shoi terror, pp. 277-279.
140. Boffa, Istoriia, p. 505.
141. Ibid., p. 507.
142. O.V. Khlevniuk. 1937-i, p. 77.
143. Materialy fevral'sko-martovskogoplenuma TsK VKF'(b) 1987 g., Voprosy
istorii, 1994, No. 2, p. 21.
144. Conquest, Bol 'shoi terror, p. 382.
145. Ibid., p. 263.
146. Cit. from Neizvestnaia Rossiia (Moscow, 1992), Vol. 2, pp. 273-274.
147. O.V. Khlevniuk, Stalin, p. 245.
148. Istoriia Otechestva, p. 208.
149. O.V. Khlevniuk, Stalin, p. 248.
150. See A.B. Shubin, Ganoniia istorii (Moscow, 1992), pp. 26-3 1,61.

Russian Revolution and The Bolshevik Dictatorship, Shubin PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Russian Revolution and The Bolshevik Dictatorship, Shubin PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Journal of Russian & East European Psychology

ISSN: 1061-0405 (Print) 1558-0415 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrpo20

Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik Dictatorship

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/RPO1061-0405390641

Published online: 08 Dec 2014.

Submit your article to this journal

View related articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

Download by: [University of Bath] Date: 16 March 2016, At: 20:51

Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik

World War and Revolution

Russia is the country in which the “classic” totalitarian regime was

Some of the factors mentioned above emerged as the result of the

The most important factor contributing to the success of the totalitar-

of agitators who advocated their political line at numerous meetings in

a temporary revolutionary parliament did not please the social demo-

garrison to the battlefront where an attack had just begun, thousands of

the workers’ and peasants’ self-government and liquidation of the bu-

postoffice, telegraph, telephone, etc. Based on this, a huge number of the

democracy conceived by Lenin resulted in the dominance of the old (by

position most stable. The head of the Provisional Government, A.

third of the entire number of delegates, since the leftist social-revolu-

the moment, gave Russia a chance to turn from a authoritarian path of

party. We have to create, but we do nothing. In our party we keep debat-

In the business of food-supply, the Bolsheviks decided to depend on

tice, I. Shteinberg, twarted the Bolsheviks. He released the arrested

Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies act as if they are afraid of

norms of representations and procedures, which created ideal condi-

In response to the Assembly’s refusal to recognize the Soviet of the

palace, they found the doors closed-the Bolsheviks declared dissolution

The civil war and “military communism”

by Germany (with subsequent expansion to the Don) broke the country’s

revolution as such. The Bolsheviks’ leadership was aware of the fact

attack on capital,” which was supported by the Bolsheviks. Lenin called

noneconomic purposes. Thus, Ia. Sverdlov stated: “Only if we manage

France through Siberia. At the end of May, local Bolshevik authorities

nism” as a type of totalitarian regime. In the period of widespread civil

had helped the Bolsheviks come to power, had self-demobilized. Red

The situation became heated. And again, the tradition of individual

der the Bolsheviks’ control.

Makhnovians and other powerful peasant organizationscontinued wag-

democratic organs. In the “Soviet” republic, the process of stripping the

prodruzverstka, they tried to exchange bread for some industrial goods

19 19-1920, under pressure from the workers’ and peasants’ uprisings,

Simultaneously with this, Trotsky suggested turning the trade unions

The NEP and Stalinism

power and stated: “I completely and decisively dissociate myself from

claiming re~ponsibility.”~~Twelve of the accused were sentenced to death.

present unfitness of our system of government: it is based on general

The party leaders supported the militant spirit of the party-govern-

‘The long-term solution” was a transformation of the country into

The industrial leap and terror

struction of traditional institutions and moral norms, and atomization of

comings of the traditional Russian bureaucracy-its clumsiness, cor-

ties of social strategy on the part of the VKP(b) leadership perfectly

respect, the “military threat” remained a key factor. In 1929-1930, there

of raw materials. The problems of financial deficits were solved though

the long-awaited technology turned out to be in the hands of govern-

also on the so-called “middle peasants,” and sometimes on the poor

redistribution and eviction of the kulaks.’q9

In order to avoid a social explosion, the leadership of the VKP(b)

have achieved and systematically using them for further advancement.”lW

social and cultural areas was constantly ignored. Industrialization was