The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System 9781501725517, 1501725513

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Acknowledgments (page vii)
Introduction (page 1)
1. Regional Interests (page 9)
2. Regional Influence (page 38)
3. The Great Urals Plan (page 70)
4. The Gulag (page 105)
5. Breakdown (page 123)
6. The Terror (page 146)
7 The Origins of the Urals Republic (page 191)
Conclusion (page 209)
Glossary (page 215)
A Note on the Sources (page 217)
Bibliography (page 219)
Index (page 231)

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The Great Urals

BLANK PAGE

THE GREAT URALS Regionalism and the Evolution

of the Soviet System JAMES R. HARRIS

Cornell University Press

Copyright © 1999 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca,

New York 14850. | : First published 1999 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America , , Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Harris, James R., b. 1964 The Great Urals : regionalism and the evolution of the Soviet system / James R. Harris

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8014-3478-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Ural Mountains Region (Russia)—Economic conditions. 2. Regionalism—Russia (Federation)—Ural Mountains Region—History—zoth century. 3. Regional planning— Russia (Federation)—Ural Mountains Region—History—zoth century. 4. Soviet Union—Economic policy —1933-1937. I. Title

HC3 40. 12.Z7U7232 1999 330.947'43—dc21 99-10063

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Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 65 432 1

Contents

Introduction I

Acknowledgments Vil rt. Regional RegionalInfluence Interests38 9 2. 3. The Great Urals Plan 70

4. The Gulag 105 5. Breakdown 123 6. The Terror 146 7. The Origins of the Urals Republic 191 Conclusion 215 2.09 Glossary

Index 231

A Note on the Sources 217 Bibliography 219

y

BLANK PAGE

Acknowledgments

Many people and institutions have contributed to this book. My largest debt is to Sheila Fitzpatrick who has been an unfailing source of incisive criticism and advice. More than any other, she pushed me to look deeper and to think harder. This book, whatever its failings, has benefited immeasurably from her assistance. Several others also deserve special acknowledgment. Gennadii Shaposhnikov, a historian from Ekaterinburg, gave generously of his immense knowledge of the oblast’ archives. Lynne Viola shared her materials, her contacts, and her ideas and always had the time to meet and talk. Terry Martin was a patient listener who, when IJ allowed him to get a word in, contributed enormously to my knowledge of Soviet politics in the 1920s and 1930s. And conversations with Arch Getty have always given me new energy and inspiration. I am grateful to a large group of scholars who have given me helpful comments on all or part of the manuscript, especially Daniil Aleksandrov, Bill Chase, R. W. Davies, Sarah Davies, Jonathan Harris, Richard Hellie, Yoshiko Herrera, David Hoffmann, Peter Holquist, Kristin Hunter, Oleg Khlevniuk, Alexei Kilin, Stephen Kotkin, Hiroaki Kuromiya, Lars Lih, Roberta Man-

ning, Jane Ormrod, Gabor Rittersporn, Peter Solomon, Peter Stavrakis, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Ronald Suny, and Nancy Wingfield. I would also like to thank Cornell University Press and John Ackerman, Joel Ray, and Teresa Jesionowski. The material and financial support of several institutions made this work possible: the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, the MacArthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Vi

viii | Acknowledgments Chapter 4 appeared in a somewhat different version in Russian Review. I am grateful to the editors for their permission to republish this material. Finally I would like to thank my parents. They have helped me in countless ways and without hesitation. It is to them that I dedicate this book.

, JAMES R. HARRIS

| University of Leeds

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Introduction When regional representatives come to us and brag that they’ve established a plan, I tell them that the plan will be valued only in so far as it is not a projection of fantasy, but rather an expression of the real situation and resources in industry at the present time. ... When you read the regional three- and five-year plans, [you see that] they are based on a healthy appetite, on pure fantasy... . They are not production plans, but plans of demands. F. Dzerzhinskii (VSNKh USSR) to a conference of regional representatives, December 1924 We still lack elementary plan discipline, particularly in the regions, where the spontaneous drive to industrialize has resulted in the execution of a large number of projects without the permission or even knowledge of the center. I. Kosior (VSNKh RSFSR) to A. Rykov (Sovnarkom), 22 October 1928 Local patriotism can occasionally do a lot of damage. S. Khrennikov (Glavmetall) to his OGPU interrogators, October 1929

This book grew out of a paper on the attitudes of regional leaders to the first Soviet five-year plan. The paper attempted to deal with a striking, intuitive problem. As Moscow turned its attention to long-term economic planning

in the mid-1920s, regional leaders pushed central party and state authorities to increase the size of their plans. Their proposals for construction consistently exceeded the maximal targets set by Moscow. When the center rejected their demands, the regions often proceeded with construction in the absence of formal approval. Despite Moscow’s persistent criticism of “local-

ism” (mestnichestvo) and “local patriotism,” regional pressure to expand plan targets continued into the 1930s. The behavior of regional leaders seems baffling. We are accustomed to think of the Soviet planning system as the quintessential expression of central control and of the industrialization drive so key to Stalin’s “Revolution from Above.” Why would the regions ask to

I

2 | The Great Urals | take on the absurd construction and production targets of the first five-year

plan—targets that they were uniformly unable to meet? What were the sources and essence of the “local patriotism” which drove regional demands? The investigation of these issues was conducted in central archives, and the archives of Sverdlovsk oblast’, the historical center of the Urals region. Many of these archives—including those of state and party organs, and of the KGB—had only recently been opened to Western scholars. For the first time it was possible to construct an image of the Soviet political process— to trace the flow of decision-making from the Politburo to the factory shop floor. As the research progressed, it became apparent that an adequate explanation of regional behavior could not be developed solely in the context of | the first five-year plan. As the chronological span extended backward to the early history of the Urals and forward to the present day, the nature of the project expanded with it. It grew from a limited study of the industrialization drive to an attempt to rethink the nature of politics and policy-making

in the Soviet Union from the October Revolution to the formation of the Stalinist system. The interest of the regions in the center’s industrialization plans had arisen

long before the fall of the old regime. The development of Russian heavy . industry had always been closely tied to state policy. As a backward, agrarian country, Russia lacked a strong internal market capable of supporting metallurgy and machine-building. Heavy industry relied on the flow of state orders and investment. Metallurgy in the Urals was established by Peter the Great in order to support his campaign against Sweden. On the basis of state demand, the Urals became one of the world’s largest producers of metal, and factory owners, such as the Demidovs and Striganovs, amassed enormous fortunes. Until the mid-nineteenth century the Urals was a near monopoly supplier of heavy industrial production in the Russian Empire. By the 1860s, however, it had fallen behind advances in metallurgical technology. English metal producers had decisively shown that the use of coal, versus wood, as fuel in blast furnaces made possible huge increases in efficiency. When Russia initiated a vast program of railway construction under finance minister

Sergei Witte, state orders shifted from the Urals to Ukraine. At the time, Ukraine possessed vast reserves of ores and coal but virtually no industrial infrastructure. Nevertheless, within two decades state demand for rails had made Ukraine the leading producer of metal and machines in the Empire. As | orders—and profits—shifted west, the Urals economy fell into a profound

crisis. ,

At the time of the October Revolution interregional competition for state orders and investment was growing. The railroad construction initiated under Witte had permitted the expansion of industry in other regions with ores and fuel sources. The construction of the Great Siberian Railway had linked the Urals to a potential source of coal fuel in Siberia’s Kuznetsk Basin. The Urals was desperate to effect a transition to coal fuel and to reestablish itself

Introduction | 3 as a center of heavy industry. However, Ukraine was determined to retain its position of dominance, and the Caucasus, the Northeastern region, the Central Industrial region, Siberia, the Far East, Kazakhstan, and other regions were vying for a share of production as well. The Revolution did little to change this situation. There were no more Demidovs, Striganovs, or shareholders in mining and metals companies, but Bolshevik officials in the regions had the same desire to expand industrial production. Personal profit was obviously not their motivation, but neither was the abstract notion of “building socialism.” Rather, they were responding pragmatically to the colossal task of ruling the regions. In the context of economic ruin the challenge was virtually impossible to meet. Building the local economy meant building local authority, and this involved making production efficient and competitive. Under the New Economic Policy inefficient and unprofitable enterprises were being shut down. Regional leaders were aware of the lessons of the prerevolutionary past. Central orders and investment were the only sources of profit and capital sufficient to modernize the local capital stock rapidly. This was particularly true in the Urals region. Without a transition to coal fuel and a thorough modernization of its capital stock, the Urals could not hope to compete with Ukraine. Without new capital—which only Moscow could provide—Urals industry would decline further. The potential source of new capital was obvious: the first fiveyear plan, which promised a magnitude of central investment comparable

to that which had established Urals industry in the eighteenth century and | Ukrainian industry in the late nineteenth century. The plan would determine which regions would supply Soviet Russia in the twentieth century, so the regions did everything in their power to convince Moscow to increase investment and production targets. Did regional pressure on the center have an impact on policy? The question has not yet been raised in the historiography. Soviet economic policy in the 1920s, and in particular the industrialization debates, has attracted considerable scholarly attention over the years. Bolsheviks generally agreed that the development of large-scale industry was necessary for the construction of a socialist society, but they differed on the means most appropriate to that end. The development of industry in the predominantly agrarian economy of Soviet Russia required a massive program of capital investment, but the process of capital accumulation was limited by the backwardness and poverty of the rural economy; it also strained the resources of the countryside and set the peasantry against the regime. At the same time, inadequate investment threatened to result in the further “agrarization” of the economy. The liter-

ature on the policy debates has focused on conflicts within the Politburo, among L. D. Trotsky, G. E. Zinoviev, L. B. Kamenev, N. I. Bukharin, and J. V. Stalin. It has examined in great detail their theoretical positions and the policies that they promoted, but not the audience to whom they spoke, so the motivations and actions of the senior party officials outside the Politburo

| 4 | The Great Urals and their influence on the outcome of the struggles has remained largely a matter of conjecture. As if by default, the initiation of wholesale collectiv-

ization and rapid industrialization that followed Stalin’s victory has often , been perceived as a product of his will alone. Such a view is not entirely without merit. The Soviet political system was highly centralized. And yet, central executive organs such as the Politburo were not closed to outside influence. Central leaders wanted to control everything, but physically they could not. As they sought to extend their control over the economy, replacing market forces with all-encompassing economic plans, the quantity and complexity of decision-making increased dramatically. The executive organs were quickly overwhelmed, and forced to rely on

lower levels of the apparatus to “pre-package” issues in order to simplify and speed up the decision-making process. In particular, the center relied on

the regions to compile the information on which annual and longer-term

| plans were based. In theory, central organs issued directives setting target rates for investment, construction, and production, thereby limiting the regions’ ability to manipulate the process. In practice, however, the directives were sufficiently vague and the determination of the regions to attract investment and expand production so great that regional proposals consistently and massively exceeded central targets. Regional proposals proved difficult to cut. Reductions in funding and construction often created more problems than they solved. Since plans were calculated to balance the needs of suppliers and producers in the various branches of the economy, cutting a single project could render the whole plan senseless. By padding their plans the regions did not compel the center to adopt the program of “high-tempo” industrialization, but rather tested its will to restrain tempos. Pressure from the regions had significant implications for the leadership conflicts. Regional leaders constituted the single largest group in the Central Committee—the body which, by party rules, was superior to the Politburo and appointed its members. In reality, the Politburo presented its decisions, including decisions on its membership, for the “approval” of the Central Committee. But because the Politburo was itself divided, appeals to the authority of the Central Committee were possible. In part to gather support in the Central Committee, the members of the Politburo “Left,” including Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, proposed to accelerate industrial invest-

, ment on the basis of increased taxation of the peasantry. Stalin and the Politburo majority warned of the dangers of such an approach, but they did not

| dare to promote restraint alone. Rather they proposed to generate a similar expansion of investment within industry. Their proposals were not based on especially sound economic logic, but logic was less important than the im-

, pression of the forward movement of industrialization. As investment and

Politburo majority. , , ,

construction grew with each passing year, so did support for Stalin and the In Stalin’s hands this support was soon transformed into intolerance of all

Introduction | 5 opposition. His claim that the party needed a “unity of will” to forward the cause of industrialization had great resonance among regional leaders. As investment and construction increased, the regions promoted ever more ambitious local plans. But the upward spiral of the rate of industrialization also provoked skepticism among specialists, economic managers, and party officials. Were the plans realistic? For the regions these doubts were dangerous. The Urals, for example, needed a massive program of capital investment in order to reestablish itself as a leading center of heavy industry. If Ukrainian industry were to receive the lion’s share of investment in the impending five-

year plan, the backwardness of the Urals economy would be reinforced. Unity at the local level was crucial to the promotion of regional plans, and campaigns against resistance to high-tempo industrialization, which were initiated by Stalin, were therefore pursued with determination in the regions. In the aftermath of the Shakhty trial—a trial of “bourgeois” specialists accused of trying to undermine Soviet industrialization—the regions witnessed a wave of arrests of specialists and managers who questioned regional plans. The subsequent campaign against the “Right danger” was used by the regions to silence “doubters” in the party. In the process of crushing resistance to local plans, the regional leaders effectively established Stalin’s control over the Politburo. Bukharin, A. I. Rykov, and M. P. Tomsky, the so-called Politburo “Right,” no longer had a political base from which to challenge Stalin’s authority. Stalin’s victory seemed to constitute a victory for the regions. Once resistance to high-tempo industrialization had been crushed, regional proposals

were again reviewed. Projects previously cut were restored and new ones accepted. Urals leaders requested, and received, a thorough revision of their five-year plan. Capital investment in Urals industry was raised from less than two billion to almost six billion rubles, thus assuring the future of Urals industry. However, for the regions generally, the increase of investment and construction was a Pyrrhic victory. The five-year plan had been expanded to absurd proportions and could not be realized, and the Soviet economy stumbled from crisis to crisis. The regions continued to press for high investment and construction targets in the second five-year plan, but the central leadership changed its approach to planning. Targets were reduced, but nothing less than roo-percent plan fulfillment would be accepted. The “com-

mand economy” was born. |

Regional leaders had not anticipated these changes. For over two hundred years they had pressed the center to implement colossal plans, assuming that this was the road to economic growth and wealth. Instead, the five-year plans had brought impossible pressures and grave responsibilities. Worse, regional

leaders could not protest the change. The destruction of all opposition, to which they had so actively contributed, left them with no recourse to influ-

ence central decision-making. |

Unable to question Stalin’s rule, regional leaders evaded their responsibil-

6 | The Great Urals ities and protected their personal authority. While publicly professing their support for central policy and their devotion to Stalin, they privately acted to resist pressures from above. They attempted to hide evidence of underfulfillment and other failures, and when this was not possible they found scapegoats. They also undermined the center’s efforts, as in the Stakhanovite movement, to further increase production demands. Ultimately, however, the regional leaders’ tactics of resistance were doomed. They were overwhelmed by the pressures of central plans, as well as by the center’s, or perhaps more accurately Stalin’s, growing obsession with counterrevolutionary conspiracies. The revelation of the regions’ tactics played a key role in the initiation

and evolution of the Terror. |

The Terror did not bring an end to the propensity of regional leaders to defend local interests in the center. They understood that they could not chal- |

lenge the command structures or reject central plans. Rather, they sought to maximize regional control over resources and economic administration. They

aimed to lessen the pressures inherent in Soviet planning, but their tactics brought them into conflict with the central economic organs, particularly Gosplan and the commissariats (ministries), which had no interest in seeing their own powers diluted. In the post-Stalin period the battles among these institutions formed the topography of central politics. Nikita Khrushchev promoted regional interests and used the support of local leaders to achieve political supremacy in the 1950s. In the 1960s, when Khrushchev offended them, Leonid Brezhnev and his colleagues took advantage of their anger to depose him. The so-called stagnation of the 1970s was intimately connected to a compromise of institutional interests which inhibited political change. But throughout this period and into the 1990s, regional leaders continually

pushed the center to extend their control over the local economy. In the few : years since the collapse of the Communist dictatorship this pressure from regional leaders has become a constant threat to the survival of the fledgling Russian state.

Thirty years after the publication of Merle Fainsod’s Smolensk under Soviet Rule, regional studies have experienced a renaissance.' Their sudden reappearance reflects changes within the discipline. Fainsod’s work was a classic representation of the totalitarian model. He was interested in the process by which central control was extended to the regions. The new genera| 1 Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Cambridge, Mass., 1958); Donald J. Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986); James Hughes, Stalin, Siberia, and the Crisis of the New Economic Policy (Cambridge, 1991); Catherine Merridale, Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin: The Communist Party in the Capital, 1925-1932 (New York, 1990); Roberta Manning, “Government and the Soviet Countryside in the Stalinist Thirties: The Case of Belyi Raion in 1937,” in Carl Beck Papers in Soviet and East European Studies no. 301 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Center for Russian and East European Studies, 1984); David R. Marples, Stalinism in Ukraine in the 1940s (New York, 1992); Stephen Kotkin,

Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995).

Introduction | 7 tion of regional studies has emerged in a wave of reaction against the total-

itarian model as historians head to the regions in order to examine the influence of “grass roots” forces in shaping the revolution. In analyzing the sources of social, economic, and political change in the

first decades of the Bolshevik dictatorship and the influences exerted both | “from above” and “from below,” historians have yet to focus on the role of regional leaders—the very actors who linked the center to the “grass roots.” For many years it has been argued that Stalin controlled regional leaders by means of the power of appointment vested in the Secretariat of the Central Committee, and thus it was thought that regional secretaries became detached from their constituencies: “Party secretaries owed their positions to their superiors rather than to their colleagues or their rank and file electorate, and thereby effectively became, in many instances, the representatives of the center in the local organization.”* This argument, first outlined by R. V. Daniels in the 1950s, has dominated the historiography, though there have been a few dissenting voices.* For decades, political scientists have observed the agendas and lobbying patterns of regional leaders, but they have assumed that these were exclusive to the post-Stalin period.* In fact, the attempts of regional leaders to influence central policy have been a part of Russian political life for centuries. Thus the present work concentrates on patterns of regional influence in order to develop a fuller understanding of central policy-making. It contends that many of the key events of the Soviet period—rapid industrialization, collectivization, the growth of the camp system, the Terror, the rise and fall of Khrushchev, the “stagnation” of the 19708, the collapse of the communist system—cannot be properly understood without reference to the impact of the regions. The choice of the Urals region as the case study was both a fortunate coincidence and an imposition of necessity. The archives of the region proved to be extraordinarily rich. But no matter how rich the material, generalizing to all regions from a single case is problematic. Regional interests each have their own historical evolution and identity. Fortunately it has been possible *’T. H. Rigby, “Early Provincial Cliques and the Rise of Stalin,” Soviet Studies 1 (1981):

3-28. 3R. V. Daniels, “The Secretariat and the Local Organizations in the Russian Communist Party, 1921-1923,” American Slavic and East European Review 1 (1957): 32-49. The most recent expression of the view can be found in Graeme Gill, Origins of the Stalinist Political System (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 315-16. For dissenting views, see, e.g., Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888~—1938 (New York, 1973), p. 327; J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 (Cambridge, 1985), p. 198; Lynne Viola, “The Campaign to Eliminate the Kulak

as a Class, Winter 1929-1930: A Reevaluation of the Legislation,” Slavic Review 3 (1986): 650-72; Gabor Tamas Rittersporn, Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications: Social Tensions and Political Conflicts in the USSR, 1933-1953 (Chur, Switzerland, 1991), p. 20. 4 George W. Breslauer, “Regional Party Leaders’ Demand Articulation and the Nature of Center-Periphery Relations in the USSR,” Slavic Review 4 (1986): 650-72; Jerry Hough, The Soviet Prefects (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 256-71; Donna Bahry, Outside Moscow: Power Politics and Budgetary Policy in the Soviet Republics (New York, 1987), pp. 158-64.

8 | The Great Urals , to compare the actions of Urals leaders with those of other regional leaders on the basis of central archives in order to identify what is unique to the Urals and what is common across regions. Of course, there is no such thing as a “representative” region. As an industrial region the Urals had a particularly strong desire to draw central investment to its aging capital stock. But even the main agricultural regions shared the Urals’ concerns. The North Caucasus, the Lower Volga, Siberia, and Ukraine all sought to develop regional industrial production. In any case, it is not essential that the regions shared the same interests. This book seeks to show that in the pursuit of their

| separate interests, the regions cumulatively exerted a significant influence on Soviet policy-making and on the evolution of the Soviet system.

I Regional Interests

Economic policy was the source of the intense political infighting that characterized Soviet politics in the 1920s. All Bolsheviks agreed, as Alexander

Erlich put it, that “industrialization was both the synonym of economic progress and an indispensable basis for a fully developed socialist society in the future.” ' The controversy over economic policy concerned the tempos and patterns of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy,

and was the subject of constant discussion at meetings of state and party organs. The controversy was not limited to leading Bolshevik figures and the “factions” that they represented. Central organs, including the Supreme Economic Council (VSNKh), the State Planning Commission (Gosplan), the

Commissariat of Finance (NKFin), and the Commissariat of Agriculture (NKZem), fought over various visions of the evolution of the Soviet economy. The regions (respubliki, kraia, and oblasti) were also vigorous participants in the controversy, struggling to ensure that the outcome of the battle over economic policy would conform to their interests. Regions with an industrial base such as the Urals oblast’ and the South (an area dominated by Ukraine but which included regions of southern Russia) unambiguously supported maximum levels of state investment, construction, and production. Regional support for a policy of rapid industrialization had its roots in the prerevolutionary period. Russia had sufficient natural resources to support industrial growth, but as a predominantly agricultural country it lacked the strong internal market necessary for industry to flower. Rural poverty limited the purchasing power of the tens of millions of peasants. Russian industrial enterprises were forced to rely on state demand, whether for defense or 1 Alexander Erlich, The Soviet Industrialization Debate, 1924-1928 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. XVU.

9

to | The Great Urals | for railroad construction, as under finance minister Count Witte in the late nineteenth century. Large state orders for industrial goods could bring enormous profits and industrial growth; without those orders industries were condemned to stagnation and poverty. Thus industrial enterprises pushed for state support and competed fiercely for state orders. The Bolsheviks’ efforts to encourage industrialization rekindled this competition. Particularly in the context of the “market economy” of the New Economic Policy (NEP) period, the regions perceived state orders and investment to be the key to renewing the growth of heavy industry, which had been severely battered in the years of war and revolution.

Perhaps the starkest example of this regional rivalry was the competition , between the Urals and the South for domination of the market for the products of heavy industry, particularly metals. For more than a century and a half from the reign of Peter the Great, the Urals had been a near monopoly supplier of metals and machines to the Russian state. This status had brought hundreds of millions of rubles in profits to factory owners, and had shaped the regional economy. Toward the end of the nineteenth century the Urals’ monopoly was shattered by the meteoric rise of southern metallurgy under Count Witte’s industrialization program. On the basis of colossal state orders for the production of rails, southern industry attracted huge investment in new plants with the latest technology, combining the coal supply of the Don basin with the iron ores of Krivoi Rog. At the same time, the Urals continued to produce metal with wood fuel, using methods similar to those employed in the time of Peter the Great. As a consequence the Urals’ share of the market plummeted. In the early twentieth century Urals metallurgy was in a profound crisis. There was even talk of its wholesale extinction. But at the same time, Urals industrialists were developing a plan for the reconstruction of metallurgy on the basis of the coal of the Kuznetsk basin in Siberia. The plan was very ambitious, promising to bring Urals metallurgy up to contemporary technological standards and prevent its extinction, but it required massive financial support from the state. Such support was delayed first by the economic depression of 1901-10, and then by war and revolution. But as the political situation in Russia stabilized, the managers of Urals industry under the Bollsheviks returned to the “Ural-Kuznetsk project.” Ukrainian officials reacted to the project with scorn both before and after the revolution. Keenly aware that state financing and state orders were the keys to the wealth and suc-

| cess of the regional economy, they attacked the Urals proposals on the grounds that state funds would be much more efficiently invested in Ukraine. Peter the Great had created Urals metallurgy, and Count Witte’s industri-

alization program was responsible for the rise of Ukrainian metallurgy. The 1920s promised to clarify who would be the beneficiaries of Bolshevik industrialization.

Regional Interests | x1 The Rise and Decline of Urals Metallurgy, 1700-1900 For almost two millennia prior to Russian colonization the various inhabitants of the Urals region had produced weapons and implements from local iron and copper ores, but large-scale production came only at the turn of the eighteenth century. The Urals was uniquely poised to support mass industrial production according to the demands of contemporary technology. The region was known to have vast reserves of accessible ores, huge expanses of virgin forest to fuel furnaces, extensive river systems for hydraulic power

and transportation, and a ready labor force made up mostly of peasants who had fled the violence associated with the church schism or the conditions of serfdom in central Russia. The necessary investment from the state was forthcoming as part of Peter the Great’s plans to open a “window on the West.” In the last years of the seventeenth century Peter was planning to wage war on Sweden. At the time, central Russian reserves of ores and forests were in decline, and much of Russia’s metal was being imported from Sweden. In

1699, as part of an effort to provide a steady domestic supply of metal for military campaigns, Peter approved the construction of two large metallurgical plants in the Urals. The significance of the Urals as a center of metal production increased substantially after the Russian defeat at Narva in 1700, when the Swedes captured the whole of the Russian artillery. To meet Russia’s military needs, another two factories were constructed in 1703-4. Within five years the Urals had become a major metal producer. Between 1702 and 1709 the newly

_ constructed Kamensk factory produced 854 pieces of artillery and almost 500 tons of ammunition. In the same period the Nevianskii factory received orders for 260 tons of metal for cannons per year.* The growth of Urals metallurgy did not end with Peter’s campaigns. Between 1752 and 1762 fiftyfive new metallurgical plants were constructed. By the end of the eighteenth century there were 176 metallurgical plants in the Urals, most of which were in private hands. Metallurgy was a very profitable enterprise. In the early eighteenth century a pood (approximately 36 pounds) of iron ore in the Urals cost a third of a kopek. A pood of iron at the factory cost just over ten kopeks. Shipping the iron to St. Petersburg—about thirteen hundred miles—more than doubled its cost, to over twenty-two kopeks, but that pood of iron could be sold for up to sixty-five kopeks, for a profit of almost 200 percent.’ Such margins proved to be quite durable: despite a massive expansion of production, the profits of Urals metal producers hovered around 160 percent almost a cen2S. G. Strumilin, Ocherki ekonomicheskoi istorii Rossii i SSSR (Moscow, 1966), p. 321. 3Thid., p. 320.

12 | The Great Urals tury and a half later. Owners had every advantage in controlling their costs. By imperial charter they controlled the lands on which the ores were mined and the wood fuel was collected, and they owned the labor of the serfs who | worked in the enterprises. Urals producers had a decided competitive advantage over other producers in Russia and the rest of the world. From the early 1700s to the second half of the nineteenth century, the Urals virtually monopolized metals production in Russia, consistently contributing over three quarters of the pig iron and dwarfing the production of its nearest competitors in Moscow oblast’, Western oblast’ (Poland), and Finland.° Urals metal not only supplied the domestic market, but also provided one of Russia’s most important exports, sufficiently competitive in cost and quality to be imported by England, France, America, and other countries. In 1750 Russia exported 22,000 tons of iron. © By 1797 the figure had risen to almost 70,000 tons. Already producing more iron than England in 1740, the Urals expanded production another sixfold by 1800, making it the largest iron producer in the world, ahead of Sweden.°® Paradoxically, many of the reasons for the success of Urals industry became the causes of its slow and steady decline. In the mid-eighteenth century the Urals had outstripped England in metals production because the latter had exhausted the forests that supplied its furnaces. But the crisis of En-glish metallurgy encouraged changes in technology that eventually undercut the Urals’ competitive advantage. The key change was the shift to coal as the

source of fuel. Coal could produce much higher furnace temperatures, increasing the size and thus the productivity of the furnace. In addition, unless

it had to be transported great distances, coal was a much less expensive source of fuel. Felling, shipping, and curing trees were expensive and labor-

intensive processes, and the cost increased as forests close to the plant were |

exhausted. |

The superiority of coal was not immediately understood, however, either in England or in the rest of the world. Even in England coal had been long considered inferior because combustion produces impurities such as sulphur and phosphorus, which make metal brittle. Wood fuel, on the other hand, © burns comparatively cleanly. Well into the nineteenth century English iron produced by coal was cheap but of an inferior quality. Almost a century of experimentation and technological improvements was required before the quality of English iron was recognized as equal to that of iron produced in 41. Kh. Ozerov, Gornye zavody Urala (Moscow, 1910), p. 4; R. S. Livshits, Razmeshchenie chernoi metallurgii SSSR (Moscow, 1958), p. 111.

5 For example, in 1860 the Urals produced 182,000 tons of ferrous metals. Moscow oblast’ | produced 28,500 tons, and Poland and Finland together produced approximately 20,750 tons. S. P. Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi promyshlennosti Urala (Sverdlovsk, 1936), p. 55; V. D. Belov, Istoricheskii ocherk ural’skikh gornykh zavodov (St. Petersburg, 1896), p. 59. 6 Strumilin, Ocherki ekonomicheskoi istorii, p. 324.

Regional Interests | 13 furnaces fired by wood. Not until the 1850s was coal used widely in iron

production outside of England and Scotland.’ The Urals was slow to react to technological advances associated with the use of coal in metallurgy. The Puddling furnace, for example, which eliminated contact between the ores and the coal, also increased the quantity of iron that could be produced in single batches. The steam engine, which was used to increase the blast of air necessary to make coal burn well, was soon applied to mechanize other processes in the factory. By the time the Puddling furnace had found widespread use in the Urals, the Bessemer process had made it obsolete. Fifty years after the hot blast process had demonstrated its superiority, only a third of Urals plants used it, and only in the 1890s did the steam engine replace the water wheel there as the dominant producer of energy for metallurgy.®

The owners of Urals metallurgical plants were not blameless for the failure to keep up with advances in technology. Despite the vast profits that their enterprises generated, they reinvested very little in improvements to the capital stock. The profits generally served to support their private and public

lives in St. Petersburg and abroad, and the money that did remain in the Urals was more likely to be spent on ornate administrative buildings than on the plants nearby.? The owners rarely visited their plants; few issues were considered sufficiently grave to warrant a thirteen-hundred-mile trip on the muddy roads of the Great Siberian Highway to the bleak Urals heartland. Consistent profits and a lack of domestic competition further weakened the incentive to take an active interest in the health of their enterprises.

: Plant owners were not unaware of the advances being made in metallurgical technology. They were well advised by Russian and foreign experts !° and many new technologies were tested in the Urals only a few years after their first use in England and Europe.!! The failure of these experiments can be attributed in part to the lack of trained engineers, an unskilled labor force, and inadequate funding. The durability of eighteenth-century technologies in the Urals was also due to their compatibility with local conditions. The abundance of forests and the absence of a practicable supply of coal— until the late nineteenth century —made a shift in fuel source unfeasible. The 7In the Ruhr valley and in Pennsylvania, both of which were close to rich supplies of coal. Sweden was much slower in making the transition. H. R. Schubert, “Extraction and Production of Metals: Iron and Steel,” in A History of Technology, ed. Charles Singer et al. (Oxford, 1958), 4: 105, III. 8 Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, pp. 89, 95. ? Ozerov, Gornye zavody, p. 4. 10 Perhaps the most famous investigations of Urals metallurgy sponsored by the owners were those that immediately preceded its precipitous decline. P. Tunner, Gornozavodskaia promyshlennost’ Rossii i v osobennosti ee zheleznoe proizvodstvo (St. Petersburg, 1872); I. A. Timme, “O prichinakh tekhnicheskoi otstalosti ural’skikh gornykh zavodov,” Gornyi zhurnal 2 (1878). 11 Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 93. 2 Belov, [storicheskii ocherk, p. 55.

14 | The Great Urals water wheel, though less powerful than the steam engine, was an inexpensive and effective means of mechanization, and the low cost of labor discour-

, aged attention to efficiency. Most of the new technologies that had emerged since the mid-1700s had been based on the use of the coal-fired blast furnace;

the potential benefits of applying them to wood furnaces were rarely obvious. Given the shaky reputation of English metals in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was not at all apparent that Urals metallurgy should reject the means of producing a high-quality product merely to reduce operating

expenses and improve efficiency. , , In addition to the steady erosion of their share of world production, Urals

metal producers endured two blows to their status and profit making in the second half of the nineteenth century. The first of these was a sudden and rapid increase in the cost of labor following the emancipation of the serfs. The increase was associated not with wage rates but with the cost of grain.

: In the majority of cases workers were paid in grain rather than money," and while grain prices were low, it had been in the factory owners’ interests to engage in a paternalistic labor arrangement in which pay rates were nominal but workers could demand employment whenever they needed it. At the same time, the owners, who controlled the land, discouraged peasants from engaging in agriculture in order to increase their dependence on the factory. The arrangement was perfectly suited to the labor-intensive metallurgy and the low grain prices of the pre-emancipation period. However, when the price of grain rose, and with it the cost of labor, owners were reluctant to mechanize the factories for fear that hungry laid-off workers would rebel against local authorities. The potential for violent uprisings was well known; workers had been freed from obligatory labor following their participation in the Pugachev rebellion, a popular uprising in th late eighteenth century. Land reform, which could have allowed excess workers to engage in agriculture, was pursued without vigor lest it increase labor costs further by decreasing the dependence of workers on the factory. Nevertheless, between 1860 and 1866 rising labor costs drove up the cost of metal at the factory by 60 to 80 per-

cent, and profits tumbled.4 | ,

The second blow was the emergence of a modern and efficient competitor in the domestic market: the South. The South was well situated for the development of coal-based metallurgy; the Don basin had been known to have | an excellent supply of coal since the early eighteenth century and in the 1860s vast reserves of iron ores were discovered at Krivoi Rog. These reserves were not developed for almost two decades due to a lack of demand," then radical change came with Sergei Witte’s program of industrialization in the 1880s. 13°V. P. Bezobrazov, Ural’skoe gornoe khoziaistvo i vopros 0 prodazhe kazennykh gornykh zavodovu (St. Petersburg, 1869), cited in Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 65.

14 Belov, [storicheskii ocherk, p. 55. , 15 Livshits, Razmeshchenie, p. 113. The limited machine building or railroad construction was based largely on imported metal.

Regional Interests | 15 Witte calculated that government spending, primarily on railroad construction, would stimulate the growth of heavy industry, which in turn would help light industry and then agriculture. The “Witte system” created a powerful Southern metallurgical industry, but barely affected Urals metallurgy. Between 1879 and 1908 the South received state orders for almost five million tons of rails, while the Urals received orders for little more than a fifth of that sum.!° The profits from these orders— over a hundred million rubles—were sufficient to underwrite the construction of a modern, efficient metallurgical industry. The South did not receive these orders out of favoritism or other noneconomic motive. Despite its long-established experience, Urals metallurgy, based as it was on wood-fueled furnaces, could not expand fast enough to meet demand. Between 1800 and 1880 pig iron production in the Urals had barely doubled.’” In the last two decades of the century, pig iron production throughout the Russian empire increased sixfold.!® Thousands of miles of railroads were built, and the output of Russian machine builders more than tripled.'? Faced with the alternative of increasing the importation of metal, the Russian government chose to support the construction of new coal-based metallurgical plants in Ukraine. Armed with government commitments to purchase rails, evidence of large coal and ore deposits, and credits from the

state bank, Ukrainian industrialists had no trouble attracting foreign investors.”° It took only ten years, from 1885 to 1895, to build sixteen new plants in Ukraine and equal the annual output of Urals metallurgy. Within another ten years production had tripled.*! By the end of the nineteenth century Urals factory owners were no longer in a position to question the superiority of modern coal-based metallurgy. In 1900 the Urals still had more than four times as many iron producing plants as Ukraine (seventy-four versus seventeen), but productivity per factory in Ukraine was eight times higher (97,236 tons per year versus 12,204 tons in the Urals).** Ukrainian blast furnaces not only produced more metal, they also required less labor. In 1900, Ukraine produced about 60 percent more metal than the Urals with less than a third as many workers.*3 At the turn of the century the Urals capital stock was showing its age. 16 Ozerov, Gornye zavody, p. 22.

17 English pig iron production had expanded in the same period by a factor of 25. Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 53; B. V. Tikhonov, Kamennougol ‘naia promyshlennost’ i chernaia metallurgiia Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX v. (Moscow, 1988), p. 43. 18 Tikhonov, Kamennougol naia, pp. 43, 46. Between 1880 and 1900 pig iron production in the Urals expanded 2.7 times. 1° Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 10t.

20G. Kasperovich, Zheleznodatel’naia promyshlennost’ Rossii za poslednee desiatiletie (1903-1912) (St. Petersburg, 1913), p. 3. 21 Thid., p. 13.

22 Tikhonov, Kamennougol ‘naia, pp. 45, §2.

*3Tn r900 Urals metallurgy employed 171,425 workers, versus 52,900 in Ukraine. I. B. Glivits, Zheleznaia promyshlennost’ Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1911), p. 115.

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18 | The Great Urals 1900-1923: Extinction or Rebirth? The rapid industrial growth of the 1890s had not been especially heartening for the Urals. While the output of iron there had more than doubled, in Ukraine it had increased almost twenty times.?” And in the years of depression that followed, which affected the Urals more than Ukraine, the future seemed downright grim: in Ukraine production doubled again, while in the Urals it stagnated. As metal prices tumbled, Urals enterprises began to lose money, and many were reduced to bankruptcy.2® Between 1900 and 1909

seventeen Urals metallurgical plants were closed.*? , | For the first time, there was talk of the possible extinction of Urals metallurgy. No new construction was undertaken and there seemed to be no way

to reverse the decline. Ukraine, on the other hand, continued to receive a steady flow of government funding and foreign investment.*° Continued investment in mechanization and new construction further enhanced the region’s ability to improve productivity, reduce costs, and adapt quickly to the demands of the market. The advance of Ukrainian metallurgy seemed unstoppable, and southern producers were smugly confident of their dominance. A 1913 study of the Russian iron industry commissioned by southern producers proclaimed that “the mighty South . . . heartily looks to the future. ... One of the most immediate, impending tasks of our iron industry is to decisively conquer the internal market.” 3! This smugness angered Urals producers. They knew that the rise of southern metallurgy was a product of state orders and financing, and that if the Urals were to receive the same government support its problems would be solved. In his 1910 study of Urals metallurgy, I. Kh. Ozerov stated that “it was the State Treasury .. . which armed the South in its struggle against the Urals.” 3* According to S. P. Sigov, “the idea of the ‘artificial’ development of Southern metallurgy as being ex-

clusively the product of state orders . . . became increasingly widespread among the representatives of Urals interests at the beginning of the twentieth century.” 33 With this in mind, they persistently pressed for a greater share of state orders-and financing. And yet the government seemed indifferent to 27 Between 1887 and I900 Urals pig iron output rose from 427,000 tons to Over 900,000 tons. Ukrainian production rose from 76,000 tons to almost 1.5 million tons. Sigov, Ocherki

po istorii gornozavodskoi, pp. 100-101. :

28 The issue of bankruptcy was raised at the Eleventh Congress of Urals Mining Industrialists

: in 1903. Trudy XI s’ezda ural’skikh gornopromyshlennikov, 15-20 ianvaria 1903 (Ekaterinburg, 1903), p. 136. 2? M. P. Viatkin, Gornozavodskii Ural v 1900-1917 gg. (Moscow, 1965), p. 241. 9°07. F. Gindin, “Pravitel’stvennaia podderzhka ural’skikh magnatov vo vtoroi polovine XIX—nachale XX v.,” Istoricheskie zapiski 82 (1968): 121. 31 Kasperovich, Zheleznodatel ‘naia, pp. 45-46.

32 Ozerov, Gornye zavody, p. 22. | 33 Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 101.

Regional Interests | 19 the Urals’ decline. A 1910 conference of Urals representatives and officials of the Ministry of Trade and Industry acknowledged that “Urals industry is in

need of help, without which it will have difficulty surviving these difficult times.” *4 But little help was forthcoming. The Ministry of Finance objected to any expenditures by the State Bank on Urals metallurgy.** Much of the money that the center did direct to the Urals came from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was concerned that further factory closings might lead to rebellions of starving workers.°° The effect of this support was ultimately counterproductive in that it reinforced overemployment and kept the least efficient enterprises running. After the lack of state financing, overemployment was the most serious problem for Urals producers. In 1900 the Urals employed almost three times

as many workers as the South.?’” Labor constituted three-quarters of the cost of iron in the Urals, compared to one-quarter in the South.3® Overemployment was a terrible drain on profits, which had already declined from

160 percent in the mid-nineteenth century to less than ro percent for the healthiest of Urals enterprises in the early twentieth.%? It also continued to hinder mechanization and other improvements in the technology of production.*° In order to release excess workers, land reform was necessary to provide them a means of supporting themselves. Factory owners, who had earlier feared that independent workers would demand more for their labor, now understood that land reform would reduce costs. V. V. Zhelvatykh, the chairman of the Council of Congresses of Mining Industrialists of the Urals, referred to land reform as “a matter of life and death for Urals factories.” *! Still the Urals received no help from the government, which feared that layoffs would provoke unrest. The effect was to limit further the Urals’ ability to compete with the South. Without either state financing or significant internally generated income to support reconstruction, how was the Urals to stave off extinction? In light of this desperate situation, and under pressure from Urals metal producers, the State Duma commissioned two reports in 1909.47 The reports came to very different conclusions. One of them, undertaken by I. Kh. Ozerov, dis-

couraged Urals producers from attempting to compete with the South. Ozerov suggested that there was no way to gather the “well-known and vast sums” of financing necessary to rebuild and modernize Urals metallurgy,* 34 Viatkin, Gornozavodskii, p. 190. 35 Gindin, “Pravitel’stvennaia podderzhka,” 121. 36 Most of this support came after the Revolution of 1905. Ibid., 137. 37 Tikhonov, Kamennougol naia, p. 62; I. B. Glivits, Zheleznaia promyshlennost’, p. 115. 38 Ozerov, Gornye zavody, p. 241. 39 Viatkin, Gornozavodskit, p. 31. 40S. P. Farmakovskii, Gornozavodskie dela Urala (St. Petersburg, 1909), pp. 29-30. 41 Viatkin, Gornozavodskii, p. 185. 42 Thid., p. 181.

43 Ozerov, Gornye zavody, p. 8.

20 | The Great Urals and argued that Urals metallurgy, with its technological base of wood-fueled

| furnaces, was best suited to the production of consumer goods. Observing that the factories producing consumer goods “were doing well,” he called - for the production of wire, nails, hammers, pans, milk buckets and flasks as well as agricultural machines, in place of iron beams or rails.44 The greatest __ opportunity and the greatest difficulty lay with the development of the peasant market. Ozerov pointed to the rapidly expanding Siberian population *5

as a new market of great potential for consumer goods and agricultural implements: “Siberia currently requires up to 65,000 sowing implements as

| well as several thousand harvesting and threshing machines a year, and the numbers are rising.” 4° He recognized, however, that the production of consumer goods and agricultural implements was no guarantee of riches, since the buying power of the Russian peasantry was extremely limited. Ozerov’s recommendations were a bitter pill for the longtime monopolist

of Russian metallurgy. He told Urals producers to “embrace the Russian merchant. When I observed him, I saw how a new Russia was replacing the decrepit, titled Russia—a fresh Russia unafraid to dirty its white hands in

contact with the simple village milk pail.” 4” , In part, no doubt, Urals metal producers were resistant to Ozerov’s ideas because they preferred to keep their hands clean of the Russian muzhik and his milk pail, but also because they were obsessed with the previous and

| future greatness of Urals metallurgy. A shift toward the production of consumer goods, particularly given the overwhelming poverty of the peasantry,

, seemed destined only to confirm the status of the Urals as a second-rate

metal producer. !

A. N. Mitinskii, the author of the second report, reached conclusions the

Urals producers found more congenial. He argued that the Urals could and « should compete with southern producers, but that this would be impossible without a transition from wood to coal furnaces.*® Mitinskii’s support for the modernization of Urals metallurgy was more than a mere restatement of the producers’ “wish list.” Mitinskii was head of the Ministry of Transport _ department responsible for the distribution of state orders, and he promoted Urals interests at a series of “special conferences” on the future of Urals metallurgy attended by metal producers and central officials.4? He was an effec- |

tive advocate of Urals interests in the center. | | Mitinskii’s support and the increasing sympathy of the government were

— 44Tbid., pp. 10, 12. 45 Between 1897 and 1926 the population of Siberia almost tripled, from 5.8 million to

15.2 million. Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 112. 7 |

47 Tbid., p. 12. _ #9 Viatkin, Gornozavodskii, pp. 244-48. a , 46 Ozerov was quoting a stenogram of the St. Petersburg Conference on the State of Metal-

lurgy and Machine-building, May 1908. Ozerov, Gornye zavody, p.13. : 48 A. N. Mitinskii, Gornozavodskii Ural (St. Petersburg, 1909), p. 182.

Regional Interests | 21 not the only sources of optimism for Urals producers. By 1909 the economic depression was coming to an end and metal prices were on the rise. There was talk of another construction boom similar to that of the 1890s. Even though state orders and financing were not imminent, Russian and foreign investors

were exploring opportunities in the Urals.°° This new interest was a byproduct of the construction of the Great Siberian Railroad in the early 1900s, which not only provided Urals metallurgy with a new market for metal but also opened the possibility of linking Siberian coal (from the Kuznetsk basin) to Urals metallurgy. If these opportunities were to be realized, however, existing rail lines would have to be extended and expanded. To this end, consortia of Russian and European investors were established, and government approvals followed quickly.*! Construction of the new rail lines was barely underway at the outbreak of World War One. At first it seemed that the war, which brought vast increases in state orders and in metal prices, could only help Urals metallurgy. Depending on the category of production, prices rose between 70 and 300 percent, and Russian and foreign investors responded with increased investment.°? Vast sums were spent transferring production from civilian to military uses; by 1917, 75 percent of production was being devoted to the war effort.>°? But the potential profits from war production were never realized. Rather than encourage production, the mobilization for war disrupted it. Massive shipments of men and materials to the front starved Urals metallurgy of the means of transportation. In the fall of 1914 the main Urals rail line, the Perm railroad, had a deficit of thirty engines and two thousand cars. Only 30 percent of the demands for inter-enterprise shipments were being satisfied.°* The

war was also a terrible drain on the labor force. By the end of 1915 thirty thousand workers, or about 25 percent of the permanent labor force in Urals metallurgy, had been mobilized.*> An even greater number of seasonal migrant workers left the factories either because they had been called up in their home village or because their labor was needed at home.*¢ In an attempt to make up the difference, Urals producers made widespread use of the labor of prisoners of war,°” but continued shortages and the loss of experienced workers took their toll on productivity. Between 1913 and 1916 the output of iron ore mines fell from almost two million tons to 1.68 million tons. In 50 Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, pp. 163-64, 170; S. A. Zalesskii, “Chernaia metallurgiia v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny,” Istoricheskie zapiski 55 (1956): 169. 51 Viatkin, Gornozavodskii, p. 251. 52 Zalesskii, “Chernaia metallurgiia,” 142; Viatkin, Gornozavodskii, p. 396; Sigov, Ocherki

po istorii gornozavodskoi, pp. 163-64.

53 Zalesskii, “Chernaia metallurgiia,” 157.

54 Thid., 146; Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 261. 55 Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 270. 56 Zalesskii, “Chernaia metallurgiia,” 147-48. 57 At the end of 1916, prisoners of war made up almost a third of the labor force in Urals metallurgy. Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 271.

22 | The Great Urals

828,000 tons.°® |

the same period the production of pig iron dropped from a million tons to The decline in production levels accelerated in 1917. With the collapse of power in the center, the effectiveness of the transportation system was further reduced. The shortage of inputs forced many factories to shut down. At the same time, the dwindling supply of foodstuffs created the threat of famine and led to an exodus of workers to the countryside. Railroad construction ground to a halt, as did forestry collections (lesozagotovki) and mining. Between January 1917 and May 1918 the monthly production of pig iron dropped from 81,000 tons to 34,000 tons.°? The Bolshevik takeover dealt Urals industry yet another blow. The Bolsheviks had no clear strategy for the organization of industry, and were not sure what to do with the existing “bourgeois” economic structures. In Oc-

tober 1917 Lenin had written that “experience will tell us a lot more. ... Nationalize banks and syndicates . . . and then we shall see.” ®° Owners taught the Bolsheviks a quick and harsh lesson. On 15 November 1917, in response to the Bolshevik decree on workers’ control, the Congress of Urals Metal Producers recommended the complete cessation of financing to regional industry by banks and owners.*! Following a decree nationalizing enterprises, former owners cleared out existing supplies of cash and the banks did much the same. Urals metallurgy was left with no source of financing and no money to pay workers. Economic activity ground to a halt, includ-

ing the construction of the Ural-Siberian project.

In order to prevent the collapse of metal production, regional Bolsheviks resorted to printing their own Urals currency.®? The center made no immediate moves to take over the role of financier, despite the insistent requests of Urals Bolsheviks.** At the Second Oblast’ Congress of Soviets, in a discussion about organizing the administration of newly nationalized regional enterprises, Urals Bolshevik leader V. N. Andronnikov declared that “from

58 Ibid., p. 263.

5? Production was based primarily on existing reserves of fuel and other inputs at the factory.

The production figures are from ibid., pp. 276. ,

60'V. I. Lenin, PSS, 25: 172-73, quoted from Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR (London, 1990), p. 35. 61 Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 274. 62 The Ekaterinburg soviet did not immediately close the banks. Rather, it tried to get them to distribute money according to its instructions. For a threatening letter from the Ekaterinburg soviet to the Russko-Aziatskii Bank from December 1917 see Iz istorii Sverdlovskoi oblasti: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov. 1917-1975 gg., ed. A. G. Kozlov (Sverdlovsk, 1982), _ pp. 16-17. On the total absence of monetary resources other than “stocks and bonds, which had lost their value,” see Oshvintsev, “Desiat’ let,” 1. 63 Oshvintsev, “Desiat’ let,” 1. According to Sigov, the decision to issue a Urals currency was declared at the Second Oblast’ Conference in early 1918 by Urals Bolshevik leader V.'N. Andronnikov. Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 275. 64 The Bolshevik government as-yet had no resources with which to take on such a role. According to Oshvintsev, “the money demanded from the government did not come for obvious

reasons. ...” “Desiat’ let,” 1. |

Regional Interests | 2.3 the very beginning of our socialist revolution . .. there has been no issue more

painful than that of financing.” ® Nevertheless, there was little doubt that the central government would assume the role of financier, as that became possible. The survival of the regime depended on the survival of industry, not only for tactical reasons but also because the Bolsheviks had seized power in the name of the workers. Industrial development was the sine qua non of the construction of a socialist society. By the spring of 1918, two months after

| its creation, the Supreme Council of the Economy (VSNKh) had already engaged a team of engineers to plan the completion and expansion of the Ural-

Kuznetsk project. The Bolshevik’s initial planning for investment in heavy industry focused

primarily on the Urals, largely because of the havoc wreaked in southern Russia and Ukraine by the Civil War. Between the German offensive of early 1918 (which forced the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) and the ultimate Bolshevik victory in Ukraine in 1920, Russia received no metal from the South. Poland

and Finland, two of the other centers of modern metallurgy in the Russian empire, were permanently lost. These losses on the eastern and southern fronts severely weakened the economic and military potential of the fledgling Soviet state. The reconquest of the South in 1920 meant that Russia would

once again benefit from southern industry, but the extended battles with German, White, and Ukrainian forces had a lasting effect on Soviet economic

and military policy. The war had highlighted the danger of a southern monopoly on metal production. From the Russian perspective the South was vulnerable to foreign invasion and potential separatist forces. Although the Urals had also been a field of battle in the Civil War—for about a year after the summer of 1918 it was occupied by the anti-Bolshevik White Army — its

position in the heart of Russia made it as safe from invasion as industry could be. Accordingly, shortly after the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty the Bolsheviks began to turn their attention to the Urals. VSNKh directed its specialists to expand the productivity of Urals metallurgy “with the goal of the complete satisfaction of Russian demand for iron.” °” As the Civil War progressed and the survival of the Bolshevik regime

seemed more assured, plans for industrial construction became more ambi- : tious. Following the Ninth Party Congress in April 1920 the regions were drawn into active participation in the work of the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia (GOELRO).® On the basis of regional calculations the commission mapped out an investment plan, by no means limited to 65 Quoted from Sigov, Ocherki po istorii gornozavodskoi, p. 2.74. 66V. E. Grum-Grzhimailo, “Ural'skaia zheleznaia promyshlennost’ v ee proshlom 1 budushchem (1920),” in Sobranie trudov, ed. I. N. Bardin (Moscow, 1949), p. 178. 67 Ibid. Grum-Grzhimailo was one of the engineers on the project. 68 KPSS v rezoliutstiakh i reshentiakh s"ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1983), pp. 242-4331. A. Gladkov, Voprosy planirovaniia sovetskogo khoziaistva v 1918-1920

gg. (Moscow, 1951), pp. 299-305.

24 | The Great Urals electrification, for the next ten years.*? The plan set targets for pig iron, iron ore, and coal production nationwide that were double the 1913 levels, and

for the Urals, targets were set at triple those levels.” According to the plan, | “the interests of the economy as a whole make the Urals a top priority. The

, Urals’ position at the border of European Russia and Siberia with its boundless perspectives for development imperatively dictates the maximal use of its resources.” 7! The commission specifically stressed the importance of con-

, tinuing the Ural-Kuznetsk project.” The GOELRO plan was a promising statement of intent, but by no means a guarantee of the rebirth of Urals metallurgy. The plan projected the expenditure of seventeen billion rubles over ten years, but the planners were forced to admit that the current hyperinflation made the figure “extremely crude.” 7? The figure was not merely “crude.” The state of the economy in

the early 1920s was such that substantial real investment, as opposed to the | printing of money, was impossible.”4 Until the 1924-25 economic year, in- , vestment in new capital was exceeded by the depletion (iznos) of the old.7> | Further clouding the future of Urals metallurgy was the reconquest of | Ukraine and the renewal of competition for investment between the Urals and the South. VSNKh specialists debated the relative merits of building a new, modern Urals heavy industry from the ground up versus restoring the ©

| southern colossus.” In his address to the Eleventh Party Congress in 1922 Lenin agreed that the Donets basin in Ukraine “is the center, the real foundation of our industry. We cannot speak of the reconstruction of heavy industry in Russia, of any kind of real construction of socialism . . . unless we give appropriate priority to the Donbass.” ”’ D. E. Sulimov, head of the Urals Prombureau”® in the early twenties, complained that “the [financially] ex©? For Urals material used by the commission, see Plan GOELRO (Moscow, 1955), pp. 217— 18.

773Tbid., 209. Ibid., p.p.183. , , ., | 0 Tbid., p. 519.

— TTbhid., p. 518.

7 According to Alec Nove, H. G. Wells referred to the GOELRO plan as “senseless dreams amid the universal ruin.” Nove, An Economic History, p. 61. In the early 1920s there was considerable support among the regions for the printing of money to fund industry. See Rasshirennoe soveshchanie Prezidiuma VSNKh SSSR s mestnymi organami, 2-6 dekabria 1924 (Moscow, 1924), PP. 32, 40, 251. 75 A. N. Dolgov, “Dinamika promyshlennosti,” Sotsialisticheskoe khoziaistvo 1 (1923): 27;

, V. G. Groman, “Khoziaistvennoe polozhenie SSSR,” Sotsialisticheskoe khoziaistvo 10 (1923):

riografii (Moscow, 1975), pp. 98-99. a 76P, G. Matushkin, Uralo-Kuzbass: Bor’'ba kommunisticheskoi partii za sozdanie vtoroi 27; V. S. Lel’chuk, Sotsialisticheskaia industrializatsiia SSSR i ee osveshchenie v sovetskoi isto-

ugol ‘no-metallurgicheskoi bazy SSSR (Cheliabinsk, 1966), p. 134. ”7 Lenin, PSS 33:267. Lenin went on to comment on the uncertain reliability of Ukrainian

cadres: “That Ukraine is an independent republic is very good, but in a party sense, it occasionally takes—how can one put it politely?p—its own path, and we have to somehow bring it around. They are a clever [khitryi] people and—I wouldn’t say that they deceive the Central

Committee—but they somehow go their own way.” | 78 Industrial bureau: an organ of VSNKh in the regions.

Regional Interests | 25 hausted state, viewing the Urals as a secondary center of production compared to the South, could give the Urals only crumbs.” 7”? In fact, neither the Urals nor the South received any substantial investment

in the early twenties. Total investment in industry in 1923-24 was a mere 116.6 million rubles, or 1.5 percent of the value of the capital stock. Rather than press forward with the realization of the GOELRO plan in 1920, the center had been forced to restrict substantially its commitments to support industry. Under “War Communism,” nationalized enterprises had been supplied by the state with inputs and financing, but by 1921 the center recognized that it did not have the resources to do this. In his speech to the Tenth Party Congress, signaling the shift to the New Economic Policy (NEP), Lenin told the delegates: Russia has come out of the war in such a state that its condition resembles that of a man who has been beaten half to death. Seven years they pounded him, and God willing he can walk with the aid of crutches.*°

Following the Tenth Congress, state supply (gossnabzhenie) was restricted to “the commanding heights.” In September 1921 Lenin had sent regional economic organs instructions for the choice of enterprises: “only a minimum of the largest and best equipped factories, plants, and mines should remain on state supply.” °! The rest would be either closed or forced to live on their ability to make a profit. Some VSNKh officials recommended keeping only ten of eighty-six facilities on state supply,°* a move that would have left more

than half of Urals workers without a job. L. K. Martens, the chairman of Glavmetall, ultimately accepted a proposal from the Urals (with some modifications) that left thirty-three regional enterprises comprising about 6o percent of the labor force on state supply.*? The shift to NEP was not prompted merely by the shortage of state funds for investment. The collapse of the economy in 1920 had proven the hyper-

centralized control of production and distribution that characterized the War Communism period to have been a failure. In particular, the grain requisition policy (prodrazverstka) had had a disastrous effect on agricultural 7?Tsentr dokumentatsii obshchestvennykh organizatsii Sverdlovskoi oblasti (hereafter TsDOO SO), f. 1494 Uralbiuro TsK, op. 1, d. 191... Plany, predlozheniia 1 pis’ma o razvitii _ireorganizatsii promyshlennosti Urala, mai—noiabr’ 1923, |. 41 Konspekt doklada t. Sulimova ‘O sostoianii Ural’skoi promyshlennosti i merakh k eia vosstanovleniiu.’ 80 Desiatyi s“ezd Rossiiskoi Kommunisticheskoi Parti, stenograficheskii otchet. (8-16 marta 1921 g.) (Moscow, 1921), p. 225. 81 Quoted from V. S. Golubtsov, “Metallurgicheskaia promyshlennost’ Urala v period perekhoda k NEP’u,” Istoricheskie zapiski 67 (1960): 14. 82 $. P. Farmakovskii, author of Gornozavodskie dela Urala (St. Petersburg, 1909), who was working for VSNKh at the time, recommended against state supply in general. Golubtsov, “Metallurgicheskaia promyshlennost’ Urala,” p. 14.

83 Thid., p. 15. ,

26 | The Great Urals production, leaving the country on the doorstep of famine and rebellion. In order to create production incentives and appease the peasantry, the government replaced prodrazverstka with a tax-in-kind (prodnalog). The state’s withdrawal from the distribution of agricultural production necessitated the legalization of private trade in agricultural goods, which in turn necessitated

private trade in industrial production, so that peasants could receive manufactured goods in exchange for what they sold. In short, the “commanding heights” continued to receive supplies from the state, but enterprises were compelled to support themselves on the basis of sales and profits. For the Urals the situation was as unpleasant as it was familiar. Only ten years before, I. Kh. Ozerov, in his report to the State Duma, had recommended that the Urals cease to expect financial support from the state, because there was no money. “Embrace the merchant” was his phrase: learn to produce for the peasant market in order to support yourself. The message was as unpopular in 1921 as it had been in 1910. It did not conform to the Urals officials’ vision of the great potential of heavy industry. Officials in Ukraine did not like the policy change either. Ukraine’s capital stock had sustained considerable damage during the war, and a huge influx of capital investment was needed to restore it. Both regions preferred the GOELRO

plan with its projected seventeen billion rubles of investment. |

The Regional Agenda from Market to Plan, 1921-1926 In the summer and fall of 1921 the central government focused on the task

of developing the legislation for the transition to NEP. Once the party had accepted Lenin’s proposal at the Tenth Party Congress in March to institute _ a tax-in-kind in place of grain requisitions, the logic of offering material incentives to stimulate production was applied in stages to the rest of the economy. The disastrous state of the economy had shown the impossibility of pursuing the plan laid out by the GOELRO commission. The NEP “retreat” involved reliance on trade between agriculture and industry to fuel growth. Though Lenin continued to defend the GOELRO plan, almost no further

investment. |

| planning work was conducted because the state lacked the financial and political resources necessary to support grandiose schemes of centrally directed

Heavy industry derived little immediate benefit from the transition to the NEP economy. Its output in 1920 was at 6 percent of 1912 levels, and by 1922 the figure had risen by a single percentage point. State financing was insignificant, and market demand remained weak. The peasantry was still suffering the aftereffects of famine, and consequently did not generate much demand for the production of heavy industry. According to the calculations of Gosplan economist V. G. Groman, the combined spending of the peas-

Regional Interests | 27 antry in 1922 was 374 million rubles, of which only fifty million were spent on the production of heavy industry.*4 Throughout the regions heavy industry was forced nevertheless to support itself on the income from sales. While Ukrainian officials were com-

plaining about the absence of demand, the Urals had managed to arrange sales abroad. In 1922 Urals factories shipped 3,600 tons of iron to Mongolia in exchange for meat. A deal with a Chinese warlord brought gold in payment for 5,400 tons of iron. As peasant demand increased, Urals fortunes further improved. In January 1923 a Urals official projected sales of roofing iron for the current economic year at 45,000 tons— over eight times the sales of the previous year.*> By the summer of 1923 the Urals was producing half of all Soviet pig iron and twice as much as the South.*®* The Urals had moved ahead of the South in many categories of metal production because of the damage inflicted on southern metallurgy during the war. At the beginning of the NEP less than a quarter of Donbass mines were operative. Of forty-seven blast furnaces functioning in 1913, only one remained open in 1921.9” Urals metallurgy once again had the advantage, and the region was de-

termined to keep it for as long as possible. In order to do so, however, it was necessary to spend more money on repairs to existing capital and on workers’ wages. While struggling with the effects of the “scissors crisis” (see pp. 29-30), the government was determined to control and limit the spending of heavy industry.®® This angered Urals industrial managers, particularly when they already had commitments for sales. At a December 1924 VSNKh conference M. Oshvintsev of the Urals Oblispolkom complained that we must put the issue [of the extension of credit] on the agenda regardless of the STO decree on the reduction of production programs. ... We now have the capacity to enter the market more cheaply than the Southern Steel Trust [Iugostal’], or the Central Region. Are you going to stop us? ®? 84 From V. G. Groman’s speech to the 15 January 1923 plenum of Gosplan, Planovoe khozi- | aistvO 2 (1923): 6. 8° From the speech of the Urals delegate Guliaev to the January 1923 Gosplan plenum, ibid.,

8-9. 86 “Metallurgicheskaia promyshlennost’,” Sotsialisticheskoe khoziaistvo 4-5 (1923): 283. 87 Ocherki razvitiia narodnogo khoziaistva Ukrainskoi SSR (Moscow, 1954), p. 221; Livshits,

Razmeshchenie, pp. 133-34. 88 Central legislation in 1924 sought to restrict the ability of regional economic organs to spend beyond central targets without special approval. See, e.g., the SNK SSSR decree of 21 July

1924, “O poriadke raskhodovaniia rezervnogo fonda Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov Soiuza SSR,” Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenti raboche-krestianskogo pravitel’stva 1 (1924): 13 (hereafter SZ); STO directive of 24 September 1924, “O poriadke raskhodovaniia i khraneniia spetasial’nogo promyshlennogo fonda,” SZ 15 (1924): 215-18; TsIK SSSR directive of 29 October 1924, “O finansovoi politike Soiuza SSR,” SZ 20 (1924): 270-71. 89 According to Oshvintsev, the Urals had 72,000 tons worth of unrealized purchase commitments for roofing iron in December 1924. Rasshirennoe soveshchanie, p. 43.

28 | The Great Urals | | Indeed, VSNKh was not able to stop them. Urals enterprises and the enterprises of other regions spent from their working capital in violation of cen-

| tral directives,” and in the process of expanding production they built up huge debts to workers in the form of unpaid wages. The South was not prepared to play by the rules while the Urals built on its market share. Both Iugostal’ and the Don Coal Trust (Donugol’) undertook extensive capital re-_ pairs and construction without Moscow’s approval. At the December 1924 VSNKh conference Felix Dzerzhinskii was particularly critical of regional representatives for their “excessively commercial point of view” from which they saw “the work of the center in contradiction to their own.” °! Nevertheless, “spontaneous construction” and the unapproved expansion of pro-

, duction programs in the interregional “struggle to capture the market” continued unabated.” Despite the Urals’ initial success in capturing the largest share of the mar- | ket for the products of heavy industry in the early NEP period, there was little cause for celebration. In the 1922-23 economic year, when Urals factories were producing almost half of Soviet pig iron, production represented only 15 percent of the 1913 level.?? In the same year the South had not even reached 4 percent of its 1913 levels.?* The Urals had captured the largest share of an extremely small market; its success did not demonstrate the potential of Urals heavy industry so much as it illustrated how far Soviet heavy industry had fallen behind prewar production levels. Between 1920 and 1924 the size of the capital stock of heavy industry actually declined because of the lack of investment in repairs and construction.?* The resolutions of the Twelfth Party Congress (April 1923) had asserted that “agriculture will long remain the foundation of the economy of the Soviet Union,” *° but as late as 1924 the immediate prospect was of continued “agrarization” of the economy. This worried the Bolsheviks, who considered the construction of so-

cialism impossible without industrial development. While the regions con- | tinued to push for increased financing, the determination of central organs

, 20 KPSS v rezoliutstiakh, 3: 62, 69-70. i

71 Rasshirennoe soveshchanie, p. 293. See also his criticism of the “disastrous” unapproved

construction at Donugol’, p. 17. |

*2 For complaints about “spontaneous (that is, unapproved) construction” see, e.g., Torgovopromyshlennaia gazeta, 27 June 1926; 19 November 1926; 1 September 1927. See also A. I. Rykov’s comments to the April 1926 Central Committee Plenum on Moscow’s inability to put an end to the phenomenon. Rossiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (hereafter RTSKhIDNI), f. 17 Central Committee, op. 2 Plenums, d. 211 Stenogramma s avtorskimi popravkami Plenuma TsK 6 aprelia 1926, Il. 31-32. The phrase “struggle to capture the market” comes from the resolutions of the Thirteenth Party Conference (January 1924),

“On the Upcoming Tasks of Economic Policy,” KPSS v rezoliutstiakh, p.164. | °3 Livshits, Razmeshchenie, p. 140; V. V. Fel’dman, Vosstanovlenie promyshlennosti na :

Urale, 1921-1926 gg. (Sverdlovsk, 1989), p. 81. : |

4 Livshits, Razmeshchenie, p. 140. , ae ,

75 According to (unnamed) contemporary sources quoted by V. S. Lel’chuk, the size of the . capital stock declined between 7.4 and 12 percent from the 1920-21 to the 1923-24 economic

years. Lel’/chuk, Sotsialisticheskaia industrializatsiia, p. 98. | 76 KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 3:52.

Regional Interests | 29 to sustain the concessions to the peasantry at the expense of heavy industry | was beginning to crack. The center had reason to be wary of expanding financing to heavy industry despite growing concerns about its decline. Simply put, the government had no money. It could print more paper money as so many regions recommended, but the hyperinflation of the early 1920s*” had shown that the positive effects of printing money were temporary and the damage lasting. As the paper currency decreased in value, workers began to strike in protest at the decline in their real wages, peasants refused to accept money for their production, and the ability of the government to regulate the economy was severely challenged. By fall 1922 the goal of the Commissariat of Finance to stabilize the currency dominated economic policy despite frequent attacks from the regions.”® A second option for increasing government income, supported by Trotsky, was a steeper tax on the peasantry. A 20-percent increase was proposed at the Twelfth Party Congress,?? but this proposal and others like it were rejected on the grounds that they threatened grain marketings and violated the spirit of the “alliance of the peasantry and working class” that was the essence of the NEP.’ The third option involved the continuation of government support for agriculture and the reinforcement of the NEP principle that the growth of agriculture would, in time, provide a source of government income adequate to fund heavy industry.

Hopes for stable and healthy trade between industry and agriculture were continuously frustrated. In 1921 the peasants began to reap the benefits

of the right to sell the products of their labor, while industry endured the shock of losing state financing. The prices of agricultural goods, which were in very short supply, rose rapidly. The prices of industrial goods, on the other hand, fell with similar speed. Under pressure to make a profit or face being shut down, enterprises quickly unloaded existing stocks and, in many cases, equipment, in order to generate income. After the bumper harvest of 1922

the relationship between agricultural and industrial prices reversed itself, creating the “scissors crisis” of 1923. Industry had promoted high prices in order to generate profits for reinvestment, but peasants refused to sell grain °7 See P. Liashchenko, Istoriia narodnogo khoziaistva SSSR (Moscow, 1956), 3: 190. °8 See E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 (London, 1952), 2: 317. »? Duenadtsatyi s"ezd Rossiiskoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (bol’shevikov), stenograficheskii

otchet, 17-25 aprelia 1923 (Moscow, 1923), pp. roI-2. 100 Tt is likely that Trotsky’s support for such ideas was the main reason they were rejected at the Twelfth Congress and for some time after. It was at this congress that Trotsky raised Preobrazhenskii’s idea of “Primitive Socialist Accumulation,” that is, support for planned industrial construction out of funds accumulated in the agricultural sector. Despite widespread support for planned industrial construction, the proposals were rejected. The proposals were premature in that they challenged the essence of the NEP “retreat” before it was clear that the government had the political resources to take a more interventionist position in the economy, but they were rejected in large part because the majority of the Politburo was opposed to Trotsky for personal or political reasons. Delegates were unlikely to translate hesitant support for such ideas into votes for Trotsky when such votes were likely only to heighten political conflict. For a more de-

tailed description, see Chapter 2. :

30 | The Great Urals at unfavorable prices. The impasse threatened to choke off trade with the countryside. Despite the sorry state of industry, the government stuck to NEP principles, further cutting existing credits and forcing industry to lower prices in order to ensure that the harvest would be brought to market. Paradoxically, the resolution of the scissors crisis in the peasants’ favor marked the beginning of a shift in government policy in favor of industry. The shift was made possible by the resolution of the crisis and signs of economic growth, but it was driven by a concern over “agrarization.” In the political

report of the Central Committee to the Thirteenth Congress (May 1924) Grigorii Zinoviev announced, “Next in line is metal. Next in line is the im-

: provement of the means of production. Next in line is the improvement of heavy industry.” He suggested that up to two hundred million gold rubles would be invested in industry over the next five years.!°! The prospect of an increase in central investment encouraged the regions to propose ambitious spending plans. These plans were not new, but rather were based on the regions’ contributions to the GOELRO plan. In July 1923, ten months before the Thirteenth Congress and two months before the peak | of the scissors crisis, the Urals presented three versions of a five-year plan for local industry to a Gosplan plenum. The plans called for the construction of three large new plants fueled by coal to produce between 3.2 and 6.8 million tons of metal a year. The lower figure was over three times the prewar production in the Urals, and the higher was well above the prewar level for the

country as a whole (just over 4.2 million tons).'°* Gosplan’s response was noncommittal, but the regional planning organs felt encouraged to continue developing plans for new construction.!° It was with these plans in hand that they tried to push for more central spending in the Urals after the Thir-

teenth Congress. |

The Urals drive to win central investment took on a greater sense of urgency in 1924, when the productivity of southern metallurgy began to grow exponentially. Third-quarter figures for pig iron in the 1923-24 economic year showed that while Urals production was up by 72 percent over the previous year, southern production had increased 464 percent. For the first time since the Civil War the South was producing more pig iron than the Urals,!* and the growth showed no signs of abating. In the next two economic years the South’s output of pig iron, rolled metal, and steel quadrupled again.!™ Because of the lack of financing, the Urals had made limited progress in 101 Tyjnadtsatyi s"ezd Rossiskoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (bol’shevikov), stenograficheskii

otchet, 23-31 maia 1924 (Moscow, 1924), pp. 91-92. oe

102], I. Fedorovich, “Vosstanovlenie khoziaistva Urala,” Planovoe khoziaistvo 6-7 (1923):

24-25; Livshits, Razmeshchenie, p. 134. oo

103 TsDOO SO, f. 1494 Uralbiuro TsK RKP(b), op. 1, d. 191 Plany predlozheniia i pis’ma o razvitii i reorganizatsii promyshlennosti Urala, Il. 136-—ob Rezoliutsiia vtoroi sessii Plenuma

Gosplana po voprosam Urala. 104]. Spivak, “Metallurgicheskaia promyshlennost’ ,” Sotsialisticheskoe khoziaistvo 4 (1924): 20.

; 16 Ocherki razvitiia, p. 222.

Regional Interests | 31 sustaining its short-lived competitive advantage over the South. In order to improve productivity, Urals metallurgy needed first and foremost to shift to production using Kuznetsk coal. In June 1923 the Presidium of Gosplan had approved the expenditure of eight hundred thousand gold rubles for the completion of railway lines connecting the Kuznetsk basin to the main lines of the Great Siberian railroad.'°° Two years later, over a third of Urals metal was produced with Siberian coal.!°” But the shift to coal was insufficient by itself to allow the Urals to compete with the South. Coal fuel permitted the use of larger and more efficient furnaces, but because existing Urals furnaces had been built for wood fuel, they had only a quarter to a fifth the capacity of southern furnaces.!°* This incapacity affected the cost of production: between 1924 and 1926 the cost of producing a ton of pig iron in the South

dropped by nearly twenty rubles, while in the Urals it dropped by only eight.!°? Once again the South threatened to capture the metals market because it could produce more and produce it more cheaply. The Urals needed not only to expand the supply of coal, but also to invest in the expansion of existing furnaces or the construction of new ones. This could not be done without substantial financing from the center. The 100-200 million gold rubles of investment proposed in the spring of 1924 had been postponed following the poor harvest the previous fall. But the rapid recovery of heavy industry, particularly of southern metallurgy, surprised the center and increased the pressure on central organs to increase

investment. Between the 1923-24 and 1924-25 economic years pig iron production doubled, steel production was up almost 50 percent, and the profits of industrial enterprises more than tripled. However, central investment in industry grew by only 28 percent.!!° This figure still barely exceeded the rate of depletion of the capital stock.!!! Though NKFin continued to oppose the expansion of financing to industry over agriculture, the successes of industry encouraged central policy-making bodies to support growth. The January 1925 Central Committee plenum instructed the Council of Labor and Defense (STO) to expand production targets by 15 percent and directed the Politburo to guarantee the necessary financing.'’ In April the Fourteenth Party Conference expanded production targets again, and gave preliminary approval to the construction of new metallurgical plants.! The extra financing allowed the Urals to undertake several minor new con106 Matushkin, Uralo-Kuzbass, p. 117. 107 Fel’dman, Vosstanovlenie promyshlennosti, p. 84. 108 Livshits, Razmeshchenie, pp. 136-37. 109 Thid., p. 138.

110 Lel’chuk, Sotsialisticheskaia industrializatstia, p. 112; Livshits, Razmeshchenie, pp. 140* U1 According to figures compiled by VSNKh in 1926, the capital stock in 1924-25 increased by only 1.4 percent. Lel’chuk, Sotsialistcheskaia industrializatstia, p. 112. 112 KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 3:331. 113 Chetyrnadtsataia konferentsiia Rossiskoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (bolshevikov). Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1925), pp. 304-5.

32 | The Great Urals struction projects,!!* but it was the prospect of large-scale new construction that Urals officials found particularly exciting. In the spring of 1925 the Urals Oblast’ Planning Commission (Uraloblplan) undertook a thorough review of regional construction plans,!!5 which encouraged it to promote a series

of new and ambitious projects. In addition to plans for new metallurgical plants,'*® Urals economic organs developed plans for a series of machinebuilding plants. The majority of these were to produce consumer goods or agricultural implements, but the key project involved the construction of a heavy-machine-building plant in Sverdlovsk (Uralmash) that would produce equipment for mining and metallurgy. That is, the Urals proposed to develop the capacity to renew the capital stock of regional metallurgy on the basis of its own natural resources (with the help of Kuznetsk coal). On 28 September 1925 Glavmetall approved in principle the plans for Uralmash and thirteen other machine-building plants, and allocated funds for further planning.!!’ For a while that fall it seemed as if yet another poor showing in grain collections together with evidence of growing inflation might disrupt plans for short-term central investment. Stalin, along with Bukharin, Rykov, and M. I. Kalinin, seemed to favor restraining investment in industry, while Kamenev and Zinoviev moved toward Trotsky’s “oppositionist” position of promoting industry at the expense of the peasantry.!!8 The “pro-peasant” leaders controlled the highest echelons of power, but it seems likely that their position was designed, at least in Stalin’s eyes, to provoke a conflict with Zinoviev and Kamenev.!!? In advance of the Fourteenth Party Congress (December 1925), a press campaign was launched against the “New Opposition,” while at the same time key central leaders were sent to the regions to assure regional

officials that construction and central investment would proceed apace. Among others, Kalinin was sent to Ukraine and A. A. Andreev was sent to the Urals.!*° In his speech to the Seventh Urals Party Conference in early De114 Including the expansion of pig iron production at the Nadezhdinsk plant, and of rolled metal production at the Verkh-Isetsk plant. Fel’'dman, Vosstanovlenie promyshlennosti, p. 87. ‘15 The review was requested by Gosplan RSFSR in preparation for a conference of regional planning organs to be held at the end of the year. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sverdlovskoi Oblasti _ (hereafter GASO) f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 1, d. 516 Materialy po sostavleniiu piatiletnego plana

coal. ,

promyshlennosti, |. 154-58 Pis’mo zamestitelia predsedatelia Gosplana RSFSR Essen obla-

stnym planovym komissiiam, 3 marta 1925. :

116 Urals planning officials promoted the construction of four metallurgical plants near ore deposits located in the mountains of Magnitnaia, Vysokaia, and Blagodat’, and near Alapaevsk. P. Ardov, “Osnovnye problemy Ural’skoi promyshlennosti,” Khoziaistvo Urala 1 (1925): 27—

| 28. Of these, the Magnitnaia project took precedence because of its easier access to Kuznetsk 117 GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 1 Promyshlennyi otdel, d. 524 Postanovleniia Oblispolkoma i dokladnye zapiski o postroike novykh metalloobrabatyvaiushchikh zavodov na Urale, 1925-1926, |. 368 Iz protokola zasedanii Glavmetalla VSNKh SSSR, 28 sentiabria 1925.

118 See E. H. Carr, Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926 (London, 1958), 1: 349-57. 119 The factional conflicts in the Politburo will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2. 0Tu. V. Voskresenski, Perekhod kommunisticheskoi partii k osushchestvleniiu politiki sotsialisticheskoi industrializatsii SSSR (Moscow, 1969), p. 123.

Regional Interests | 33 cember, Andreev told the delegates that “the Urals must become that main unit where several new giant metallurgical plants will be constructed.” 7! __ Andreev also discussed the future of Uralmash and the Ural-Kuznetsk problem. In Ukraine, central representatives discussed issues of regional concern such as the construction of a complex of new enterprises centered on the Dnieper hydroelectric station (Dneproges).!** The tone of these regional conferences was echoed at the party congress in Moscow. Rather than restrain-

ing investment in the interests of the peasantry, the Fourteenth Congress came to be known as the “Congress of Industrialization.” The growing emphasis on the interests of industry was accompanied by a renewed concern for planning. In the summer of 1925 Gosplan had made its first attempt to map the economic activity of the whole economy a year in advance—the control figures (“kontrol'nye tsifry” ) for 1925 —1926.!75 These figures, and the annual ones that followed them, formed the foundation of

the five-year plan. For all concerned, the main focus of planning was the accumulation of investment capital. Particularly following the Fourteenth Congress, the need for investment in new industrial construction was not seriously questioned. For the center, planning involved a strengthening of its control over the economy to counteract the “chaos” of the market, with such control encouraging the most effective expenditure of capital. According to the resolutions of the April 1926 Central Committee plenum, “the current tasks of the coming period must be found in an increase of accumulation, in the practical utilization of accumulated resources, and in a realization, far more rigid than before, of the planning principle.” !74 The significance of the shift to planning was perceived quite differently in the regions, which were chiefly concerned with the share of “accumulated resources” they would receive. Realizing that central investment was the key to modernizing the metal industry, Urals officials relentlessly pushed for an expanded supply of coal, the construction of a giant, modern metallurgical plant at Magnitnaia, and the foundation of the Uralmash plant as the basis for further construction of metallurgical plants. If any of these three invest-

ment targets was dropped, the Urals would revert to a backward and secondary metals producer. Rather than seeing the central plan as an expression

of control, the regions saw it as a springboard to greater profitability and

competitiveness in the national economy. |

In theoretical discussions the Bolsheviks had always conceived of the 121 Sed’maia Ural’skaia oblastnaia konferentstia RKP(b) 5-10 dekabria 1925, stenograficheskii otchet (Sverdlovsk, 1926), p. 20. 122 Voskresenskii, Perekhod, p. 126. 123 The decision to create a “comprehensive statistical plan encompassing the whole country” was made in early Februaury 1925. GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 1, d. 516 Materialy po sostavleniiu piatiletnego plana promyshlennosti, ll. 97-106 Rezoliutsiia rasshirennogo zase-

daniia biur kon”iunkturnogo soveta Gosplana SSSR. See also V. G. Groman’s report on the work of the Gosplan “kon’iunkturnoe biuro” in Planovoe khoziaistvo 4 (1925): §9-79. 124 KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 4: 11.

34 | The Great Urals “plan” in distinction to the “market.” In practice, however, it was hardly clear how the elements of the market would be “overcome” by the plan. In the instructions they were given concerning the creation of annual and long-term plans, regional organs were told to base their construction and production targets on the trajectory of demand.!*> Credits issued for the construction of projects were to be paid out of future profits. In fact, the profits of industry continued to be the single largest source of industrial investment well into the first five-year plan.!2° These elements of the “market”—demand, supply, sales, and profits—continued to function

alongside the plan. ,

Planning increased state intervention in the economy, but the situation was not dissimilar to state-sponsored industrialization under Sergei Witte, where the center had driven the growth of industry by directing state orders.

On the basis of those orders, enterprises had been able to attract finance capital to build new plants to fill the orders. Under the Bolshevik plan the center would both direct demand and play the role of the financier. This suited the regions. Hundreds of years of experience had dictated that substantial industrial growth in the absence of state orders was impossible. V. N. Andronnikov, Urals Oblispolkom vice-chairman, was aware of the Witte

precedent: | ,

At the present time . . . the issue of the geographical distribution of [new] metallurgical plants, on what fuel and ore sources to base them, has once again taken on a huge, decisive significance. As before, the Urals and the South are the main regions for the potential development of metallurgy. Again, these two regions must be weighed from the point of view of their production potential... . At the end of the nineteenth century the issue was decided by the financiers and industrialists of England, Belgium, and France, who had no sympathy for the state interests of Russia and her overall economic development. In the investment of capital, they were interested only in state orders, and the profits they generated. ... Now we must find the targets for the investment of the extremely 125 See, e.g., GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 1, d. 516 Materialy po sostavleniiu piatiletnego plana promyshlennosti, ll. 44-55 Instruktsiia po sostavleniiu piatiletnego perspektivnogo plana promyshlennosti mestnym organam VSNKh i respublikanskim trestam, 1925. See also the Urals projections of supply and demand in justification of the construction of new machine-building

plants. GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 1, d. 524 Postanovleniia Oblispolkoma i dokladnye zapiski o postroike novykh metallobrabatyvaiushchikh zavodov na Urale, ll. 368, 385-88 Protokol zasedaniia Prezidiuma Glavmetalla VSNKh SSSR, dokladnaia zapiska Mezhlauka. 126 Almost 65 percent of industrial investment in the 1925-1926 economic year was to come from the profits of enterprises. See Politburo instructions to STO on the size of new industrial investment, 25 February 1926. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Politburo, d. 210, I. 23 Protokol #12. The regions did not control the profits of local enterprises directly, but

, rather in the form of tax subventions from the center. Until 1929 almost half of the money Moscow raised in the regions it returned in the subventions. K. N. Plotnikov, Biudzhet sotsial-

isticheskogo gosudarstva (Moscow, 1948), p. 86. |

Regional Interests | 35 limited state funds from the point of view of the unified economic plan, with the goal of the achievement of the fullest and quickest effect for the economy as a whole.!?”

Andronnikov probably had more “sympathy for the state interests of Russia”

than the average Englishman or Belgian financier, but his claim to be con- , cerned about the “economy as a whole” seems less than sincere. Urals offcials wanted “the state orders and the profits they generated” as much as their prerevolutionary predecessors. The profits were key. In early versions of the Urals five-year plan, regional officials had justified huge initial demands on the state budget on the grounds that in subsequent years “all forms of construction ... will be conducted out of the internal resources of industrial enterprises and no demands will be made on the state budget.” !7® As under Witte, however, they had to compete with other regions—particularly the

South—for the initial investment.

The South was determined to regain the monopolist position it had enjoyed before the revolution. The “southerners” wanted all of the investment that the center offered, and they were less circumspect in their explanation of why this was in the interests of the economy as a whole: Not merely the Ural-Kuznetsk project in its several variants, but any conception of the construction in the Urals of metallurgy on the basis of Siberian coal represents a boundlessly harmful waste of the national capital, a reduction of potential tempos of the industrialization of the Soviet economy, and a hindrance to the development of the optimal industrial regions.'?

Any debate on the location of industry centered on the Urals and the South, so there could be little doubt that by the “optimal industrial regions,” the writers meant those of the South. Furthermore, in 1926 and 1927 the Commission on Metal of Ukrainian Gosplan published a series of pamphlets with the express purpose of discrediting investment in Urals metallurgy.'°° These

attacks on the Urals, and the salvos the Urals fired back, were not limited to | published materials. The “Urals-Ukraine competition” for investment was a regular feature of central party and state meetings discussing the fate of industry throughout the second half of the 1920s.17! 127V/, Andronnikoy, “K voprosu o perspektivakh Ural’skoi promyshlennosti,” Khoziaistvo Urala 2 (1928): 2.

128M. Solovov, “K piatiletnemu planu kapital’nogo stroitel’stva na Urale,” Khoziaistvo Urala 15-16 (1926): 50. 12974, B. Dimanshtein, Problema raionirovantia metallopromyshlennosti v sviazi s usloviiami promyshlennogo razvitiia Ukrainy i Soiuza (Kharkov, 1927), pp. 202-3. 130 See, e.g., I. I. Fedorovich et al., Kuznetskii bassein i Uralo-Kuznetskaia problema (Kharkov,

1926); E. R. Ianitskii et al., Fliusy i ogneupornye materialy Urala, Kuzbassa i Ukrainy (Kharkov, 1926); N. V. Shishkin et al., Margantsevye i zheleznye rudy SSSR (Kharkov, 1926). 131 The first explosion of the Urals-Ukraine rivalry in the Soviet period came at the Sixth

Congress of Trade Unions in November 1924 following the creation of a commission “to

| 36 | The Great Urals | 7 The competition was a continuation of the fifty-year Urals-Ukraine battle for market share in metallurgy. Both regions understood that the portion of state orders and investment they received would determine the percentage of the total market they would supply. Urals officials were particularly conscious of the continued backwardness of their capital stock and the ineffi— clency of production. D. E. Sulimov, the Urals party first secretary, admitted

to the April 1926 Central Committee plenum that the modernization of Urals metallurgy would require “hundreds of millions of rubles.” '°? And yet the consistent support of central organs, at least for the continued planning of giant construction projects in the region,'*? encouraged Urals officials to press for ever more ambitious targets of investment and production. Their appetite for state investment and imagination for ways to expand Urals industry were unbounded. When it seemed likely that the Urals would receive _ funding for Uralmash and the metallurgical plant at Magnitnaia, Urals officials pursued the idea of developing local supplies of coal fuel. They per- ceived that local coal supplies suitable for metallurgy would open up grand

, new vistas for local industrial growth: :

If the dimensions of the coal reserves at Alapaevsk turn out to be of all-union significance, then this could create a revolution in the geographical distribution of union ferrous metallurgy similar to that which followed the development of coal-fired metallurgy in the South in the 1880s and 1890s.... Ina short period, [Urals] metallurgy would take first place [in production] and reduce the South to second place.!34

The ghost of Sergei Witte haunted Urals officials. As the preparation of the first five-year plan gained momentum and the prospect of new statesponsored industrialization loomed, Urals officials feared losing the benefits _ of state investment to the South yet hoped to break the cycle of backward-

, ness and poverty in which the region was trapped. , Regional officials were not aware that the planned economy would ultimately “overcome the market,” that central control over the economy would

in One Country, 1:344.

regulate the proper distribution of state orders to the metal industries.” E. H. Carr, Socialism 132 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 213 Plenum Tsentral’nogo Komiteta 7 aprelia 1926 (Preniia po dokladu Rykova “O khoziaistvennom polozhenii i khozi-

aistvennoi politike”), |. 102. .

133 See esp. GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 1, d. 516 Materialy po sostavleniiu piatiletnego plana promyshlennosti, ll. 110-12 Rezoliutsiia s”ezda Gosplanov (10-16 marta 1926) po dokladu Uralplana. The resolutions were printed in Khoziaistvo Urala 9 (1926): 149-50. See also GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 1, d. 58 Perepiska s Gosplanom RSFSR i drugimi 0 general’nom plane Ural’skoi promyshlennosti, Il. 86-89 Osnovnye polozheniia general’nogo plana rekonstruktsii khoziaistva Urala priniato osobym soveshchaniem Gosplana RSFSR 29 oktiabria 1926; VSNKh SSSR, Materialy k piatiletnemu planu promyshlennosti SSSR (Moscow, 1927). 134.N. Berezov, “Ocherednye voprosy piatiletnego plana khoziaistva Urala,” Khoziaistvo

Urala 10 (1928): iv. :

Regional Interests | 37 deflate the meaning of “sales” and “profits,” and that the economic logic that had inspired interregional competition before the revolution would be undermined. In time, state orders would take the form of obligatory plan targets, the fulfillment of which would bring new responsibilities and little profit. Similarly, the centralized distribution of output would take the place of sales. But these elements of the “command-administrative system” emerged only in the early 1930s.!*° As regional officials were preparing for the first fiveyear plan, their behavior was driven by past experience, which clearly showed that regional interests would be best served by pressing the center for maximal tempos of industrialization and a maximal share of production targets and investment. 135 See Chapter 5.

2 Regional Influence

Regional pressure for high levels of investment and construction has received little attention in the historiography. Many volumes have been devoted to the subject of economic policy in the 1920s, but virtually nothing has been written on the significance to policy-making of regional interests and activities. Traditionally the historiography has equated the “industrialization debates” of the period with the conflicts among leaders in the highest echelons

of power. Stalin has been‘ portrayed as defending the “alliance of workers and peasants” with the right wing of the leadership (Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky) in order to defeat the “super-industrializers” of the Left opposition (Trotsky, joined somewhat later by Zinoviev and Kamenev). It has been argued that Stalin then cynically used the ideas of the Left in order to defeat the Right and take sole possession of the Soviet leadership. The industrialization drive, collectivization, and other transformations of the late 1920s and 1930s have come to be known collectively as the “Stalin revolution.” ! Because the various alternatives of economic policy were so strongly associated with senior Politburo members, the literature has paid meager at-

tention to the formal administrative structures and their roles. The Soviet | Union was a highly centralized, authoritarian system, where policy-making authority was concentrated in a narrow group of leading organs at the top of which was the Politburo. Given that the Politburo had the power to im-

pose its will on the apparatus—and the population—there seemed little purpose in exploring the interests and activities of the “executors” of that will. Furthermore, it has been commonly assumed that by means of the Sectretariat of the Central Committee and its power to appoint senior officials,

38 |

‘See, e.g., Adam Ulam, Stalin: The Man and His Era (New York, 1973); Helen Carrere

D’Encausse, Stalin: Order through Terror (London, 1981); Robert Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above (New York, 1990).

, Regional Influence | 39 Stalin was able to ensure his personal control over the apparatus and particularly over the regional leaderships. It is assumed that the patronage and protection which the Secretariat could provide was offered in exchange for the support of Stalin’s policy initiatives in central party forums. Were this the case, the regions could not have had any influence over policy not only because of their position down the formal hierarchy of power, but also because of their desire for protection. Such a summary of the historiography is, of course, crude and incomplete. Some studies have recognized the extraordinary vigor of institutional politics

in the 1920s and the vicissitudes of the coalitions and conflicts of groups promoting various paths of economic development.” But these studies generally have not been accompanied by efforts to conceptualize the links between institutional pressures and policy outcomes. The process of tracing and understanding these links need not involve the rejection of our current understanding of the system as highly centralized and authoritarian, where all in-

, put “from below” was accepted at the will and whim of the top leaders. There is a need for a more sophisticated understanding not of the power, but rather of the capacity of central leaders to direct the policy process.

The Center-Region Relationship in the Early Years of Soviet Power At the time of the October Revolution approximately twenty thousand members of the Bolshevik underground were distributed through thirty to forty regional organizations based mainly on the guberniia (province) division of the empire. In the early months of the regime local organizations were of necessity virtually independent of the center. Given the great distances between some regional organizations and the center, and the constantly shift-

ing front lines of the Civil War, even elementary communication with the center was difficult. Following the revolution in Petrograd regional organizations were left to seize power locally. They had to shut down the existing city administrations and zemstva (organs of local self-government) and set up soviets. They had to nationalize industry, set up factory committees, and take control of the economy. They had to do battle with other groups competing for power, including Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, and, in some cases, national minorities seeking to create independent states.? By 2 The work of E. H. Carr and R. W. Davies in the History of Soviet Russia series (London, 1950-1978) is particularly strong in this regard. See also E. A. Rees, State Control in Soviet Russia: The Rise and Fall of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, 1920-1934 (New York, 1987); V. Z. Drobizhev, Glavnyi shtab sotsialisticheskoi promyshlennosti: Ocherki istorii VSNKh, 1917-1932 gg. (Moscow, 1966); Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Ordzhonikidze’s Takeover of VSNKuh: A Case Study in Soviet Bureaucratic Politics,” Soviet Studies 37 (1985).

3In the Urals, for example, local Bashkirs and Cossacks challenged the authority of the regional organization. N. Lisovskii, 1917 god na Urale (Cheliabinsk, 1967), pp. 514-17.

40 | The Great Urals the summer of 1918 they had to organize the war effort. Lacking elementary resources, cadres, and organizational experience, few regional organizations _ could cope with these colossal tasks. Communication within the region— from the regional capital to the district centers and below —was often as diffi-

cult as it was with Moscow. To cope with the tasks, party membership was | allowed to expand rapidly. By January 1918 the Urals oblast’ party organization alone had approximately thirty-five thousand members.‘ It is not surprising, given the organizational tasks at hand, that the largest percentage of

| new recruits to the party had had governmental jobs or other positions of authority under the previous regime.° So the expansion of the party apparatus often created as many problems as it solved, as regional organizations were plagued with corruption, incompetence, and petty squabbling, as well

as insubordination. |

The central party leadership frequently discussed the corruption and otherwise “un-Bolshevik” behavior of new recruits. Party leaders were well aware that the vast expansion of the party was fueled as much by the access to jobs, housing, and rations that membership could bring as by pro-Bolshevik sentiment. Abuses of power and the “illegal” appropriation of privileges were discussed at the Eighth Party Congress and Ninth Conference. The behavior of some local officials was described as “not in the slightest degree bet-

| ter than the behavior of the old bourgeois.”*® But by no means were the problems of the regional organizations limited to the so-called careerism of their new recruits. A far greater challenge was presented by the committed prerevolutionary members of the Bolshevik underground. Once they were placed in charge of subregional units, in factory organizations, city committees, and so on, they were often unwilling to take orders from above. In some cases the regional organizations refused orders from Moscow.’ In the Urals oblast’ organization, for instance, there had been a short-lived movement in early 1918 to form an autonomous soviet republic “independent of central power.” ® In addition, issues of broader party policy often divided regional

organizations. For example, in early 1918 the issue of the Brest-Litovsk peace agreement split party organizations in the Urals, Siberia, Ukraine, the North |

Caucasus, and other regions much as it split party opinion in the center.? | As the Civil War and intervention began, tensions between Moscow and *P. S. Luchevnikov, Grazhdanskaia voina na Iuzhnom Urale, 1918-1919 gg. (Cheliabinsk, ,

rs . Raby, Communist Party Membership in the USSR, 1917-1967 (Princeton, 1968), — p. 79; Deviatyi s”ezd RKP(b), Protokoly (Moscow, 1960), quoted from T. H. Rigby, “Early Provincial Cliques and the Rise of Stalin,” Soviet Studies 1 (1981): 8.

168—69, 187.15. : ’ Izvestiia TsK 4 (1922):

6 See e.g., Vos ‘moi s”ezd RKP(b) mart 1919 goda. Protokoly (Moscow, 1959), pp. 283, 309— 10; Deviataia konferentsiia RKP(b) sentiabr’ 1920 goda. Protokoly (Moscow, 1972), pp. 161,

® Lisovskil, 1917 god na Urale, p. 514. According to Lisovskii the movement was led by the Socialist Revolutionaries and “some” Bolsheviks.

?D. V. Oznobishin, “K voprosu o bor’be s fraktsiei ‘levykh kommunistov’ v RKP(b),” Voprosy istorii KPSS 9 (1971): 71; Lisovskii, 1917 god na Urale, pp. 520-21. |

Regional Influence | 41 the regions as well as among regional organizations calmed somewhat. Most organizations understood that a high degree of centralization was required

in order to conduct the war against the Whites and other internal opposition. Nevertheless, tensions boiled under the surface as military organizations and central plenipotentiaries demanded the subordination of regional party committees, which in turn ran roughshod over the subordinate soviets. At the Eighth Congress in March 1919 delegates observed that the current state of relations among central, regional, and subregional organs made for “a colossal quantity of the most harmful tensions and spontaneous oppositions.” !° The congress ultimately resolved that in the current conditions of war “the strictest centralism and most severe discipline were absolute necessities,” !' but there was considerable criticism of the excesses of “rule by commissars” (komissaroderzhavie) and general agreement that the degree of future decentralization, and the delineation of the responsibilities of state and party organs from top to bottom, would have to be discussed at later party

meetings. As the Civil War progressed and a Bolshevik victory seemed imminent, tensions reemerged and oppositions reformed. At the Ninth Party Congress in the spring of 1920 an apparently innocent discussion of the role of trade unions and forms of administration in industry quickly became a source of profound conflicts in the regions. In his speech to the Tenth Party Congress, N.N. Krestinskii, the head of the Central Committee Secretariat, described these conflicts: The differences of opinion [at the Ninth Congress] on trade unions and, mainly, on collegiality or one-man management in the administration of industry were neither deep nor serious. .. . But according to evidence in the possession of the Central Committee, shortly after [the Congress] certain troubling phenomena began to appear in the regions, certain tensions and conflicts. In some regions [guberniia], there was a struggle... of groups of officials for influence, in other areas [mesta], the uezd organs struggled against the guberniia center in defense of local interests against the pressure which the guberniia centers had been forced to exert in connection with the military situation and the directives of the Central Committee.!°

The work of a series of regional organizations came to a standstill.'4 Rather than address ongoing issues of administration, the organizations were ab10 Quoted from the speech of N. Osinskii, a prominent old Bolshevik who later ran afoul of the regime for his persisent oppositional activities. Vos ‘moi s”ezd RKP(b), p. 307. "\ KPSS v rezoliutsiakh i resheniiakh s"ezdov, konferentsti i plenumov TsK (Moscow, 1982),

i. 12 Th fact the general lines of subordination within the party structure (from the congress to the party cell) were laid out at the Eighth Conference in December 1919. Ibid., 2: 201-9. 13 Desiatyi s”ezd RKP(b) mart 1921 goda. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1963), pp. 45—

4°, At the Eleventh Party Congress (March-April 1922) V. M. Molotov listed the regional party organizations in Samara, Simbirsk, Donbass, Petrograd, Briansk, Tula, and Nizhegorod

42 | The Great Urals sorbed in battles for control or influence. In the case of Samara the regional

| leadership resorted to arresting and imprisoning its party rivals.‘ Despite the signs of a total Bolshevik victory in the Civil War, the center had no patience for conflicts in the regions. The Whites had been defeated, but a new set of internal threats to the regime had arisen. Bolshevik mobilization policies had left the peasants on the edge of starvation and rebellion. The economy was in a state of collapse. Civil unrest in urban centers was imminent. In the spring of 1921 the soldiers of the Kronstadt garrison, a former stronghold of Bolshevism, had taken up arms against the new regime. Urgent measures and fundamental policy changes were needed. The Tenth Party Congress, which initiated the shift from “War Communism” to the New Economic Policy (NEP), met during the Kronstadt rebellion. In his speech to the congress Lenin referred to the trade union controversy as a “luxury” which could no longer be tolerated: “The circumstances of the dispute are becoming extremely dangerous and a direct threat to the dicta- — torship of the proletariat.” !° The Congress resolutions recognized the tensions and conflicts which had been created by the extreme centralization of the Civil War period,’’ but they spoke of “a greater need for unity and solidarity than at any other time.” The congress forbade any form of “fractional activity” on pain of expulsion from the party.!® Party members were en-

couraged to participate in discussions of policy, but once a decision was

made they were all expected to uphold it. , With the purpose of ensuring a rapid end to conflicts in the regional organizations, the Secretariat of the Central Committee was strengthened and N. N. Krestinskii was replaced by V. M. Molotov, who was succeeded by Stalin in 1922. The Secretariat quickly became deeply involved in regional

party affairs. In the next several years it took some form of disciplinary action in the majority of regional organizations. On a few occasions regional organizations that had openly opposed central leadership were disbanded and replaced.!? During 1922 alone the Secretariat removed or transferred thirty-seven top regional officials.2° From this time on, the Secretariat had the power to assign all leading workers in the regional organizations. as the locations of the most serious battles. Odinnadtsatyi s"ezd RKP(b) mart—aprel’ 1922

15 Thid., p. 54. :

goda. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1961), p. 55.

16 Desiatyi s"ezd, p. 28. ,

17 KPSS v rezoliutstiakh, 2: 325 (“Protivorechiia voennogo perioda i partiia”). _ 18 KPSS v rezoliutstiakh, 2: 336. A letter demanding an immediate end to fractional activity was sent to the regional organizations immediately after the congress. The letter was published

in Pravda, 25 March 1921, p. 1. , |

19 The leadership of the Samara organization had been taken over by members of the “Workers Opposition,” which was opposed to the decisions of the Tenth Party Congress on the trade union dispute. Odinnadtsatyi s"ezd, p. 54. The Biuro of the Arkhangel’sk guberniia organization was disbanded when it directly opposed the center’s decision to conduct a party purge.

Izvestiia TsK 4 (1922): 15. , 20 Robert V. Daniels, “The Secretariat and the Local Organizations in the Russian Communist Party, 1921-1923,” American Slavic and East European Review 3 (1957): 36.

Regional Influence | 43 Scholars have commonly accepted that the Secretariat’s power to appoint local party leaders resulted in “the complete subordination of local considerations, preferences and autonomy to the power of the party’s central institutions.” 2! It has been assumed that these appointees became detached from their regional constituencies: “Party secretaries owed their positions to their superiors rather than to their immediate colleagues or their rank and file electorate, and thereby effectively became, in many instances, the represen-

tatives of the center in the local organization.” It is further theorized that Stalin controlled the appointments process through the Secretariat and was able to build a loyal clientele in the broader party apparatus. Presumably these appointees, seeking a patron in the center and seeing Stalin as a logical choice, traded support for Stalin at major party meetings in exchange for security of tenure. This theory, known as “the circular flow of power,” has been the single most cited explanation for the rise of Stalin and the basis for our understanding of center-region relations for almost forty years. A primary problem with the patron-client image of center-region relations is that it exaggerates the need of regional leaders to have a patron in the center. Such a need for is derived from the supposed vulnerability of regional leaders to “attacks from above,” which are assumed to have been a continual danger created by the extreme difficulty of fulfilling central directives; regional officials “were all under unrelenting pressure from their . . . superiors in Moscow to perform the impossible with pitifully inadequate means.” *° Furthermore, regional leaders are assumed to have been relatively recent recruits to the Party with a strong desire to protect the privileges of their positions in the absence of guarantees of tenure.*4 But the danger of attacks from above was quite small. In the early 1920s the gravest danger to the tenure of regional leaders was in attacks from colleagues and subordinates, and more often than not central intervention was requested by one or both of the regional groups in conflict. Once the factional conflicts of the early 1920s had calmed, the involvement of the Sec- | retariat in the regional organs became far less invasive.*> Throughout the 19208 the Secretariat continued to remove and transfer large numbers of senior regional party officials, but these were hardly in the nature of attacks. Rather the Secretariat used the regional apparatus as a training ground for staffing the central bureaucracy. The Urals oblast’ leadership was no exception: regional party first secretaries N. K. Antipov and D. E. Sulimov were transferred to senior posts in the Central Control Commission; second 21 Tbid.; see also T. H. Rigby, “Early Provincial Cliques and the Rise of Stalin,” Soviet Stud-

jes r (1981): 3-28; Graeme Gill, The Origins of the Stalinist Political System (Cambridge, 1990), chap. 4. 22 Rigby, “Early Provincial Cliques,” 25; Gill, Origins, pp. 315-16. 23 Rigby, “Early Provincial Cliques,” 10; Gill, Origins, p. 314. 4 Rigby, “Early Provincial Cliques,” 9-10. 25 At the Eleventh Party Congress, Molotov was almost apologetic about the necessity of removing the entire regional leadership in Samara, and proud that the disputes in Simbirsk had been resolved “without appointments from above.” Odinnadtsatyi s’ezd, pp. §4—-55.

44 | The Great Urals , | secretary K. V. Gei was for a short time in the 1920s the head of the Cen- | tral Committee Orgbureau; and Oblispolkom chairman F. I. Lokatskov was made the chairman of the Main Administration of Ferrous Metals (Glavchermet) of VSNKh.?° These were not attacks. The idea that regional orga-

: nizations were “under unrelenting pressure to perform the impossible” seems to be a projection backward from the industrialization drive of the 1930s. Campaign politics and the issuance and enforcement of various targets by the center were indeed characteristic of the 1930s, but not of the NEP. | The regional organizations did not fear the center or the Secretariat. The regions could and often did reject appointments made from above. They refused four hundred of seven hundred cadres sent to the provinces by Stalin in his early tenure in the Secretariat. In the case of individual appointments they could protest the decision of the Secretariat, though the latter could insist. Also it was not uncommon for the regional organizations to demand new cadres from the Secretariat if there was a perceived shortage. Urals lead- | ers protested the removal of first secretary Antipov, for example, and when they failed to keep him, they demanded a replacement. When this request was refused, the Urals organization promoted Sulimov from within.?’ The regional organizations wanted leading secretaries with authority in the party, , not to protect them from the center but rather to increase their authority

| among other regions and their influence in the center. ne

_ The Secretariat was a significant organ in the context of the evolution of the Soviet political system. Under Stalin’s direction it used the directives of the Tenth Party Congress “On Party Unity” systematically to exclude the members of oppositions (“fractions”) from party meetings,2® but it could not have done so without the assistance of regional organizations. Regional leaders felt a strong interest in avoiding conflicts and tensions similar to those _ of the early 1920s, which the free expression of alternative policy “platforms”

had helped create. But this interest did not imply subordination of their “considerations, preferences and autonomy” to the center. Regional leaders understood that they could not openly oppose the “Central Committee line,” but, given that the “line” was generally vague and open to wide-ranging interpretation, this constraint hardly limited the expression of local inter-

ests. Until the late 1920s the only recognized opposition to the “Central Committee line” was unambiguous support for those labeled as “oppositionists.” The regions were free to express their interests and concerns within 26 Antipov was initially transferred to the Leningrad Obkom and Sulimov to the Commissariat of Transport. TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom op. 3 1925, d. 16 VII plenum Ural’skogo obkoma,

15-17 oktiabria 1925, |. 51; op. 4.1926, d. 2 II plenum Ural’/skogo obkoma, 10-13 marta

1926, Il. I-10. : | , sia (New York, 1964), p. 148. , | |

| 1926, ll. 1-2; op. 5 1927, d. 6 V plenum Ural'skogo obkoma, 23-26 marta 1927, Il. 2, 387. 27 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom op. 4 1926, d. 2 II plenum Ural’skogo obkoma, 10-13 marta 28 Robert V. Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Rus-

Regional Influence | 45 these loose limitations. Rather than stifle these expressions, from the early 1920s the center moved to encourage regional initiative and participation in decision-making. The trend toward the decentralization of administration began at the Tenth Party Congress, which has generally been cited instead for its centralizing impact. Aside from demanding an end to fractional activity, the resolutions

specifically criticized the “syndicalist and anarchist deviation” in the party.?? Subsequent congresses reinforced and clarified the strict hierarchy of the party and its leadership over state organs.*° This accomplishment has been considered the triumph of the monopoly control of the top party leadership over the state.! And yet the Tenth Congress also marked the beginning of a withdrawal of the Bolshevik leadership from many of the realms of decisionmaking which it had taken on in the Civil War period, particularly in regard

to the economy. The congress did announce a shift from grain requisitioning to a tax-in-kind, and the legalization of private trade in the products of agriculture, which were the first steps in the emergence of the New Economic

Policy. But as the NEP took form, the state not only withdrew its control over the production of agriculture and small-scale industry, it also loosened the more extreme forms of administrative centralization. The system of control over the economy through the sectoral departments of VSNKh (glavki) had been the biggest target of criticism and administrative reform. By the early 1920s “glavkism” had become synonymous with the confusion and inefficiency (“bureaucratism”) that resulted from the hypercentralization of the Civil War period. With economic control focused in the Moscow offices of each sector, many enterprises collapsed for want of

appropriate assistance and attention, and intersectoral trade (such as the supply of fuel and ores to metallurgy, or metals to machine building) suffered, to the detriment of industry as a whole. Some of the strongest criticism of the glavki came from the regional organizations.** Urals officials, for ex-

ample, insisted: }

The functions of the administration of industry should be transferred to the re- , gions [mesta] .. . Concentrating in their hands the administration of the most varied enterprises located in all corners of the Republic, and given the current means of communication .. . central organs are detached [otorvannymi] from the life of enterprises and unable to lead them .. . The lack of controls in the relations [neuregulirovannost’ vzaimootnoshenii] between the glavki and the 2? Desiatyi s"ezd, pp. §74-76. 3° Odinnadtsatyi s"ezd, pp. §5 4-62; Duvenadtsatyi s”ezd Rossiiskoi Kommunisticheskoi Partit (bolshevikov). Stenograficheskii otchet, 17-15 aprelia 1923 g. (Moscow, 1923), pp. 701-6. 31 Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase 1917-1922 (London, 1956), chap. 18 (“Leninism Triumphant”). 32 See E. H. Carr’s description of the debates at the Seventh All-Russian Congress of Soviets (December 1919) and the Third All-Russian Congress of the Councils of the National Economy (January 1920). The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917—1923 (London, 1952), 2: 180-82.

46 | The Great Urals regional economic councils .. . has had a particularly damaging impact on the

supply of raw materials, financing, and foodstuffs to industry.*° In May 1921 the Tenth Party Conference directed the Council of People’s

Commissars (SNK) to develop legislation for “the expansion of the inde- | pendence and initiative of every large enterprise with respect to spending and the distribution of material resources.” 34 Two months later a series of SNK

| decrees outlined a new, less centralized structure of economic administra- _ tion.*° Industrial enterprises were permitted to dispose of their income and output “on commercial principles” within limits established in the general directives of VSNKh.** The day-to-day “realization of leadership and oversight” of industry, including all-union industry, was left to the regional eco-

nomic organs.?”

Decentralization was driven not only by a recognition of the failures _

of Civil War administrative structures, but also by a recognition that central decision-making organs were overburdened. The narrow group at the apex of the decision-making hierarchy did not have the physical capacity to involve itself in every detail of administration, and its response was to strengthen the regional party and state organizations.** The issue was raised at the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923. In his address to the congress on “the administrative-economic division of the Republic [raionirovanie],” A. Rykov strongly supported the amalgamation of gubernii into larger, more powerful, more responsible oblasti: In the course of several years, from day to day, week.to week and month to month, as a member of the government of the Soviet Republic, I have become _ convinced that it is impossible to administer a country of 130 million citizens, , which covers one sixth of the earth’s surface, from Moscow, on the basis of bureaucratic centralism.... 33 TsDOO SO, f. 1494 Urasl’skoe biuro TsK, op. 1, d. 80 Politicheskii obzor o sostoianii oblasti . . . Tezisy ob itogakh NEP’a na Urale ianvar’—dekabr’ 1922, ll. 106-8 Tezisy ob itogakh NEP’a ne Urale. 34 KPSS v rezoliutstiakh, 2:421. 35 See the decrees of SNK (9 August 1921) “O provedenii v zhizn’ nachal novoi ekonomicheskoi politiki” and (16 August 1921) “O rasshirenii prav gosudarstvennykh predpriiatii v oblasti finansirovaniia i rasporiazheniia material’nymi resursami,” as well as the directive of the Council of Labor and Defense (12 August 1921) “Osnovnye polozheniia o merakh k vosstanovleniiu krupnoi promyshlennosti i podniatiiu i razvitiiu proizvodsta,” in Resheniia partii i pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam (Moscow, 1967), 1: 244-55. 36 At the same time, they lost the regular flow of state aid which had kept many of them from collapse. Most enterprises were expected to make a profit or be shut down. See Chapter 1. 37 Specifically to the Oblast’ executive committees. See, e.g., “Raionirovanie Ural’skoi

Oblasti,” Vlast’ sovetov 4 (1923): 34.

38 Since 1919 central planners had promoted the creation of larger regional administrative entities where groups of gubernii had strongly interdependent economies. The issue was addressed at successive congresses of soviets and sessions of the Central Executive Committee, where, in connection with discussions of the new constitution, it was linked to the distribution of administrative responsibilities between the center and the regions. See “Nuzhno li raionirovanie?,” Vlast’ sovetov 3 (1923): 58-63.

Regional Influence | 47 I must say that our party and Soviet elite [verkhushka], the government of our republic, of all governments known to humankind, ours is the most overburdened and overloaded with work. . . . It seems to me that the economic development of our republic, the future administrative-economic organization of the Soviet state must rest on the organization of oblasti.*?

The resolutions of the congress paved the way for the creation of oblast’ (and fundamentally similar krai) organizations throughout the Soviet Union. The Urals oblast’, combining the former Ekaterinburg, Perm’, Tiumen’, and Cheliabinsk gubernii, was the first to be created. By the end of the 1920s the gubernii had been almost totally replaced. The regions understood “raionirovanie” as an expansion of their powers and further protection against the sort of central mismanagement typical of the glavki.*° The creation of the oblast’ strengthened regional involvement in the administration of all enterprises within its boundaries and in the planning of the regional economy. These in turn strengthened the regions’ sense of identity and understanding of their interests with respect to other regions and the center. Consequently they became very jealous of regional prerogatives and fought any attempts to recentralize, criticizing, for example, the center’s move to collect the profits of enterprises and create a single fund for industrial investment. At a VSNKh conference in December 1924, E. V.

Luganovskii of the North Caucasus declared that “the regional executive committees and the republican Sovnarkomy were unlikely to permit [vriad li dopustiat] the funds of industry to be removed to a central fund and spent only with the permission of VSNKh.” Those central officials making spend-

ing decisions “don’t know the regions,” he claimed, and they would only make a mess of things.*! But the regions could not dictate policy to the center, and the centralized fund was created anyway. Still, the regions consis-

tently showed a determination to act on their sense of regional interests. Complaints of central officials against “localism” (mestnichestva) and against regional resistance to central decision-making were common throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s.

The central leadership did not intend that the decentralization of administrative functions to the regions should weaken its control. At the above conference of VSNKh, Chairman Dzerzhinskii told regional representatives that “when [they] lay claim to excessively large powers, I must say that these powers can be and will be granted only in measure as a given region, a given republic, trust or factory is fully aware of its role.” In his criticism of regional “insubordination [samochinstvo],” he made it clear that this role was to be 39 Duenadtsatyi s"ezd, pp. 468-69, 474. 40 See, e.g., Raionirovanie Urala (Sverdlovsk, 1924), pp. 7-10. 41 Rasshirennoe soveshchanie Prezidiuma VSNKh SSSR s mestnymi organami, 2-6 dekabria 1924 g. (Moscow, 1926), p. 277-79. The representatives of the Urals and Ukraine said much

the same thing (pp. 268-70, 281).

48 | The Great Urals | , | determined in the center.42 The discussions of the strengthening of the regions followed too closely after the regional problems in the trade union controversy for the center to be comfortable with expanding regional powers. Moreover, central leaders never lost their desire to control all aspects of policy. They wanted a disciplined and responsive apparatus that would unwaveringly execute its will.43 The lines of subordination between the center and the regions remained steeply hierarchical. The center wanted to encourage regional initiative, while ensuring that the regions would remain strictly subordinate.*4 The problem with the oft-quoted formula “central-

ization of leadership, decentralization of operative functions” was that, as Rykov had observed, there were physical limitations on the number of issues that a small group of top leaders could address. Particularly as the govern- — ment undertook to replace market forces with all-encompassing economic plans, the quantity and complexity of decision-making increased dramatically. The central leadership was forced to rely on the assistance of subordi-

, nate organs, including those of the regions. And the regions in turn used the Opportunity to project their own agendas.

Regional Pressure on Planning The formal Soviet policy-making structure was a hierarchical pyramid of | organs with divided responsibilities and clear lines of subordination. In the center, NKFin managed the formation of the budget, and TsIK distributed it. Gosplan composed the annual and five-year plans, while VSNKh was concerned with the day-to-day management of the economy. These organs were directed by Sovnarkom together with STO, which issued the directives

| emerging from the Politburo. The division of responsibilities in the center was mirrored in the subordinate regional organs (for example, oblFin, oblIK, oblPlan, and obISNKh). In practice there were substantial limitations on the

ability of the top organs to control the policy-making process. , The vast burden of decision-making on central organs did not disappear with the strengthening of the regions. Throughout the 1920s central organs sought to define and limit the issues which they addressed, and to pass issues of “secondary importance” to subordinate organs. In this period the Politburo regularly considered over fifty issues a week, most of which were addressed by a vote of members (oprosom) between its weekly sessions. Gen-

*2 Tbid., pp. 18, 29. ,

43 See, e.g., the resolutions of the Twelfth Party Congress “On the Tasks of the TsKK (Central

Control Commission) and the RKI (Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate),” KPSS v rezoliu-

— tstiakh, 3: 89-94. | “4 The articles on raionirovanie which appeared almost every month in Vlast’ sovetov | throughout 1922 and 1923 rarely mentioned the expanded regional powers without stressing

the issue of subordination to the center.

Regional Influence | 49 erally fewer than thirty received detailed discussion.** Even so, Stalin complained several times that the Politburo was overburdened and that the number of issues would have to be reduced.*¢ Many of the issues under discussion were matters of foreign policy, defense, or internal party matters. A minority related to economic policy, and most of these focused on the budget, the control figures, and capital investment. Before these issues were presented to the Politburo, they had usually been discussed at length and prepared as draft resolutions by the Council of People’s Commissars (SNK). Thus the Politburo did not generate economic policy. It generally only heard and approved, or edited resolutions which were presented at a given session.*7”

Most top-level economic decision-making took place in the offices of SNK, the chairman of which was also the head of the Council of Labor and Defense and a senior Politburo member. For most of the 1920s the chairman of SNK was A. I. Rykov, who had raised the problem of the excessive administrative burdens of the government at the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923. Rykov’s administration addressed the issues of the budget, control figures, and capital investment on a daily basis. It passed resolutions on these issues regarding the economy as a whole, given industries, and, at times, given trusts and individual enterprises. It handled a steady stream of appeals against these resolutions. It passed laws on the structure of economic decision-making and handled masses of jurisdictional disputes. Rykov’s administration based most of its decisions on materials prepared and presented by the responsible subordinate organs such as NKFin, Gosplan, and VSNKh. In some cases it passed the decision-making power wholesale to these organs. In December 1926, for example, SNK surrendered to VSNKh responsibility for the composition of the production plans and budgets for all-union industry.** In turn, VSNKh relied heavily on the glavki to perform these functions. The protocols of the presidiums of VSNKh and of Gosplan show a strikingly similar reliance on subdepartments and subordinate organs to “prepackage” issues in order to simplify and speed up the decision-making process. Though decision-making power rested firmly in the top of the administrative hierarchy, the necessity of having lower-level organs collect and process the information on which decisions were made left the top organs vulnerable to pressures from below. 45 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 3 Politburo. 46 See, e.g., O. V. Khlevniuk et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro v 30-e gody (Moscow, AIRO-

XX, 1995), p. 25. ,

47 These sessions were not limited to Politburo members. Though only Politburo members could vote, the sessions were formally open to full and candidate members of the Central Control Commission and the Central Committee. In addition, high officials with an institutional interest in the outcome of a given session were generally invited. Top officials of SNK, Gosplan, VSNKh, NKFin, and key glavki regularly attended and addressed Politburo sessions discussing economic policy. Attendance at sessions discussing especially crucial issues sometimes exceeded

en? Rossiiski gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (hereafter RGAE), f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. 1 Protokoly Prezidiuma, d. ‘5073 Zasedaniia prezidiuma, ianvar’—dekabr’ 1926, |. 159.

50 | The Great Urals | | These pressures were most evident in the process of economic planning, the epitome of centralized control. The center created the plans, and the state bureaucracy was responsible for fulfilling them. However, the center was dependent on enterprises and trusts and the economic administrations of the regions in which they were located for the information on which the annual and long-term plans were based. Rykov himself had justified this reliance on —

the regions in his speech to the Twelfth Party Congress: | The very creation of a unified plan in Moscow can in no way be accomplished without the support of the regions, without the linkage of various economic

tasks on the level of the region. . . . The fact that to this day we are getting nowhere with economic planning can be explained by our failure to organize the regions, to create oblasti, and to face oblast workers with the task of working out the plan on a regional scale.*”

The information which the center received from the regions was accumulated in the form of “control figures.” In their composite form these included | an analysis of the previous year’s production and growth rates, results for _ the first half of the current year, and projections for the following year. The regional executive committees collected this material from enterprises and trusts, created regional-level control figures, and then sent the material to Moscow. In theory, NKFin, VSNKh, and Gosplan directives set target rates for in-

vestment, production, and money supply and thus limited the latitude of the regions to manipulate the process in their interests. In practice, however, the regional projections consistently ignored central targets.°° For 1926-27 Gosplan specified a growth in capital investment of no more than 5 percent, but Urals control figures proposed a 22 percent increase, which it justified in terms of the 39 percent increase given to Northeastern oblast’.>! Such pressures from the regions to develop “every conceivable branch of industry” was considered to be “a considerable threat to accurate planning.” *? At the end of the third VSNKh plenum in March 1928 it was observed that “even

in the planning campaign of 1927-28, that is, in the third year of capital construction, when, one would think, a sense of reality and of our real po- © tential would have penetrated the consciousness of the regions, their proposals for capital construction in the control figures turned out to be double the construction possible given available resources.” 3 __ The center had a very difficult time reducing regional plans. VSNKh, which | compiled the regional control figures in an all-union version, tended to be 49 Duenadtsatyi s"ezd, pp. 474, 476-77. 50R, W. Davies, The Development of the Soviet Budgetary System (Cambridge, 1958), p. 2-4.

517, Gol'dich, “O kontrol’nykh tsifrakh,” Khoziaistvo Urala 15-16 (1926): 7. 52 See “O raionirovanii novogo stroitel’stva,” Torgovo-promyshlennaia gazeta, 8 July 1927.

(Hereafter TPG.) |

53 “Kapital’noe stroitel’stvo i trebovaniia mest,” TPG, 22 March 1928.

Regional Influence | 51 overwhelmed by the volume of data. VSNKh RSFSR alone received upwards of three million figures a year. According to an article in the VSNKh newspaper, this led to a situation in which the control figures and the plans they entailed “were, in the majority of cases, confirmed automatically [chisto mekhanicheski].”°* In a speech on capital construction to the February 1927 Central Committee plenum, VSNKh chairman V. V. Kuibyshev admitted

that “the 1926-27 plan... like the 1925-26 plan... is the sum of regional proposals minus cuts [po kotoroi proshlas’ ruka sokrashchatelia]. We cut this and that, and accept this and that which has been proposed by the enterprises and regional organs.” °° The cuts invariably drew a flood of protests

from the regions on the grounds that they would create “disproportions,” undermine production programs, excessively delay construction, and ultimately increase costs. At a conference of Gosplan organs in March 1926, L. Gol’dich, chairman of the Urals Planning Commission, complained that “we often find ourselves in a situation where plans which we have worked out with the best of intentions .. . are completely undermined or reduced to nonsense” by the release of the central figures.°® Regional plans had to be completely rewritten once the cuts were announced. No matter how the cuts were divided, they often crippled regional plans. In the preparation for the 1926-27 economic year, for example, Urals economic organs proposed capital expenditures of fortyone million rubles for industry after having been promised thirty-three million; the figure was then reduced to twenty-four, and they actually received less than that. V. N. Andronnikov, chairman of the Oblast’ Executive Committee, warned Glavmetall that the cancellation of certain projects for capital repairs and mechanization would have a serious adverse effect on production programs, production costs, and the profitability of regional enterprises.°” Similarly, throughout 1926 southern coal and steel producers battered the center with demands for expanded financing on the grounds that current levels of investment would lead to net declines in production.*® Some trust and enterprise directors ignored the cuts and spent well beyond the central con-

trol figures.°? Others complained that they could not undertake the cuts because the money had already been spent—typically on equipment or con54 TPG, 20 January 1927. 5° RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 276 Stenograficheskii otchet plenuma Tsentral’nogo Komiteta, 7-12 fevralia 1927 g., l. 13. 56 GASO, f. 241-r Oblplan, op. 1, d. 516 Materialy po sostavleniiu piatiletnego plana promyshlennosti, ll. 302-3. 57 RGAE, f. 4086 Glavmetall, op. 1, d. 353 Stenogramma zasedaniia u nachal’nika Glavmetalla V. I. Mezhylauk po rassmoteniiu promfinplana Urala (December 1926), ll. 35-40. See also TPG, 24 December 1926; Gol’dich, “O kontrol’nykh tsifrakh,” 7.

58 TPG, 6 January, 28 January, 12 February, 24 April, 7 May, 4 July, 29 July, 4 September a A study conducted in the summer of 1926 suggested that among sixteen trusts and one syndicate, 25.3 million rubles in extra-plan expenditures had been undertaken. The biggest culprits were the Trust “Azneft’” which had overspent by 6.4 million, and the Southern Steel Trust,

52 | The Great Urals struction materials.°° In the process of approving “extraordinary” expendi-

tures to compensate for problems which the cuts had created, the spending , of the central government was regularly pushed well beyond the levels established in the initial central control figures. In an attempt to relieve the pressure from the regions, the Council of People’s Commissars createda “reserve fund” in the budget, which was to be opened on a quarterly basis for cases in which “demands emerged which could not have been foreseen in the creation of the budget.” *®! Instead of relieving pressure on spending, how- — > ever, the reserve fund increased it as trusts and enterprises buried the council with proposals to meet their “unforeseen” costs. The measure did noth-

ing to restrain spending.® | |

To some extent the center was responsible for the regions’ pressures on them, particularly where new construction was concerned. In the spring of 1925 the Fourteenth Party Conference and the Third Congress of Soviets, recognizing that the existing capital of industry was being used almost to Capacity and that future growth would depend on new construction, established the “construction of new factories, plants and mines, as well as the expansion and retooling of existing [enterprises] . . . as a first-priority task of the government.” *? Because planning new construction was a colossal task which had to be undertaken in a short period, the regions were given a relatively free hand in developing and promoting projects.® Already underway at this time was the planning of major projects in transportation, electricity generation, metallurgy, and machine-building in Kazakhstan, Eastern and Western Siberia, the Urals, Stalingrad (Tsaritsyn), Saratov, Rostov-naDonu, Ukraine, Leningrad, and other regions. The Urals alone was promoting twenty-two projects for new construction, including four new metallurwhich had overspent by five million. “Nedopustimye narusheniia planov i pereraskhody,” TPG, 13 August 1926. 6° See Rykov’s attack on such behavior, and VSNKh RSFSR chairman Iosif Kosior’s defense

at the April 1926 Central Committee plenum. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 211 Stenogramma s avtorskimi popravkami Plenuma TsK, 6 aprelia 1926, |. 31; d. 213 Preniia po dokladu Rykova o khoziaistvennom polozhenii i khoziaistvennoi politike |. 3. _ 61“Q poriadke raskhodovaniia-rezervnogo fonda Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov Soiuza SSR,” Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii raboche-krestianskogo pravitel’stva SSSR 58 (1926):

art. 432. (Hereafter SZ.) |

62 For subsequent legislative attempts to control unplanned spending see the directive of the Central Executive Committee and the All-union Council of People’s Commissars, “Ob utverzhdenii polozheniia o biudzhetnykh pravakh Soiuza SSR i sotuznykh respublik,” Biulleten’ finansovogo i khoziaistvennogo zakonodatel’stva 22 (1927): 806-12 (hereafter BFKhZ); the direc-

, tive of the Russian Council of People’s Commissars “O poriadke i srokakh prokhozhdeniia operatsionnykh planov po otdel’nym otrasliam narodnogo khoziaistva i kul’turnogo stroitel’ stva RSFSR,” GASO f. 241-r Uralplan, op. 1, d. 589 Perepiska s Gosplanom RSFSR i dr. 0 gen-

eral’nom plane Ural'skoi promyshlennosti, |. ro.

63 §“ezdy Sovetov Soiuza SSR, Soiuznykh i Avtonomnykh Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublikakh (Moscow, 1960), 3: 104; KPSS v rezoliutstiakh, 3:384. 64 Many regions had developed plans in advance of the initial Fourteenth Party Conference decision. Urals Oblast’ officials presented a series of proposals to VSNKh chairman Dzerzhin-

skii at the conference. A. I. Busygin, Pervyi direktor (Sverdlovsk, 1977), pp. 17-19. a

Regional Influence | 53 gical plants.*° Many projects were approved “in principle” and allowed to proceed. In March 1926 the Urals was granted four hundred thousand rubles

“for the planning and initial construction” of three projects: a machinebuilding plant in Sverdlovsk, a metallurgical plant at Magnitogorsk, and a rail-wagon plant in Nizhnyi Tagil.% Once the projects had been initiated, the regions expected steady streams

of financing for planning and construction. The center had an extremely difficult time choosing among proposed projects, and rather than commit financing to a limited number of projects, it tended to accept regional spending plans “in principle” but reorder central spending priorities at the beginning of each economic year. So projects that received funding one year were often completely cut the next. Again, this provoked angry protests from the regions. Funding for Uralmash, the machine-building plant in Sverdlovsk, was suspended on three separate occasions. Each time, the head of the project, A. P. Bannikov, complained to Glavmetall that shutting down the project would create senseless costs. The protection of unfinished structures from

damage would cost tens of thousands of rubles, and the dispersal of the existing labor force and construction materials would make restarting the project extremely expensive. Each time, financing was found and construction resumed.*’” In a speech to the July-August 1927 Central Committee plenum defending a series of projects throughout the RSFSR, VSNKh RSFSR

chairman I. Kosior explained how funding cuts to the Rostov agricultural machine-building construction project would increase the total cost of the plant by 15-20 percent: “the example of this plant can be translated to any of our construction projects. We usually start with great energy and efficiency and then, by cutting back, we drive up the cost of construction.” © This situation created an unfortunate dilemma for the center insofar as the large number of new projects were competing for a small amount of financing. Officials of Glavmetall calculated that in the summer of 1927, 645 million

rubles of new construction had been approved, but only 64.7 million were , planned for the upcoming economic year.® In order to speed up completion 65 See, e.g., P. Ardov, “Osnovnye problemy Ural'skoi promyshlennosti,” Khoziaistvo Urala

I (1925): 25-36. 66 A, F. Khavin, U rulia industrii (Moscow, 1968), p. 23.

67 Busygin, Pervyi direktor, pp. 32-36, 59-61, 64-66. See also GASO, f. 225-r Vostokgipromez, op. 1, d. 54 Materialy po stroitel’stvu Uralmashzavoda, |. 5; a letter from Bannikov to V. I. Mezhlauk (Glavemetall), 31 May 1927; RGAE, f. 4086 Glavmetall, op. 1, d. 649 Protokoly zasedanii, marta 1927-ianvar’ 1928, Il. 159-72; Bannikov letters to Mezhlauk outlining the costs of suspending construction, probably August 1927. A notation at the end of the second letter indicates that the Council of Labor and Defense approved extra funding for the

| Uralmash project on 6 September 1927. 68 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 3 Plenumy, d. 317 Stenotchet plenuma TsK i , TsKK, 29 iiulia—9 avgusta 1927 (vol. 2, pt. 2), |. 12. 6° Funding for new construction in the previous two years had amounted to less than 55 million rubles (total new construction, 118 million rubles in three years), leaving the overall level of completion at less than 20 percent by the end of the 1927—28 economic year. RGAE, f. 3429

54 | The Great Urals rates the center would be forced either to cut projects and face the costs in-

volved or find new sources of financing.

The issue arose each year with the compilation of the annual plan (promfinplan). NKFin, VSNKh, and Gosplan were supposed to work together in composing the plan, on the basis of preestablished targets. NKFin was directed to propose a budget before the new economic year.”? VSNKh was directed to compile all-union control figures for industry. In turn, Gosplan would propose the plan on the basis of the incomes projected by NKFin and the expenditures promoted by VSNKh.”! Conflict among the three was inevitable. Because the targets were set almost a year before the annual plan would be confirmed and, typically, were substantially modified as the year progressed, these organs did not feel restricted by them. In the process of compiling the plans, disagreements emerged as each organ interpreted incoming material according to its institutional perspectives. NKFin, which received regional projections of tax revenue and income from debt (zaimy), tended to promote modest increases in the budget. VSNKh tended to promote optimistic production and investment targets in sympathy with the concerns of regional factories and trusts.’* Gosplan projections generally fell between the two in that it promoted planning itself, that is, a strategy of growth that balanced income and investment. Invariably NKFin protested Gosplan’s plans as excessively optimistic, and VSNKh protested them as insufficient. Conflicts over whether to cut construction or find new sources of financing generally delayed the approval of the budget, the control figures, and the

promfinplan until well into the economic year.” Until then, enterprises, trusts, and construction projects were expected to restrict their spending to the levels established in the previous year’s plan.” The situation rarely satisVSNKh SSSR, op. 1 Protokoly zasedanii Prezidiuma, d. 5106 Doklad Glavmetalla na zasedanii

Prezidiuma 26~—465 (August 1927), |. 90.

70 See, e.g., the directive of SNK SSSR “O tverdom godovom biudzhete Soiuza SSR na 1925-

1926 god io poriadke ego sostavleniia i ispolneniia,” BFKhZ 7 (1925): 4. , 71 See, e.g., the directive of STO “O kontrol’nykh tsifrakh promyshlennosti na 1926-1927 g.,” BFKhZ 14 (1925): 14.

: 72VSNKh encouraged the trusts and enterprises to defend their proposals to Gosplan directly. One observer suggested that VSNKh had allowed them such initiative that “VSNKh had been removed from the leadership of industry, and appeared at the Gosplan sessions on [the approval of] plans [smet i programm] in the role of an outside observer.” RTSKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral'’nyi komitet, op. 3 Plenumy, d. 276 Stenograficheskii otchet plenuma, 7-12 fevralia 1927, I. 21. For other complaints about the “ineffective resistance” of VSNKh to the demands of re-

gional organs see TPG, 22 October 1926, p. I. |

73In part the delays were related to the necessity of calculating the fall harvest before national income could be accurately determined. The budget and control figures for 1926-27

, were approved only in the fifth month of the economic year. See the directive of SNK SSSR “O razmerakh zatrat na kapital’nye raboty promyshlennosti v 1926-27 godu i o planovoi distsipline v oblasti kapital’nogo stroitel’stva,” BFKhZ 8 (1927): 246; see also the directive of TsIK SSSR “O edinom gosudarstvennom biudzhete Soiuza SSR na 1926-27 g.,” BFKhZ 9 (1927):

(1926): art. 478. | | , 282-85.

74“() poriadke otkrytiia kreditov na pervyi kvartal 1926-1927 biudzhetnogo goda,” SZ 64

Regional Influence | 55 fied them, and directors sometimes made spending commitments in anticipation of increases in investment. In other cases, directors and other regional officials headed to Moscow to lobby directly for the approval of their plans.”

In the 1925-26 economic year the central leadership publicly insisted on restraining investment in heavy industry, and defined investment policy in terms of preserving the equilibrium between industry and agriculture. Central leaders were committed to the growth of heavy industry, particularly

through new construction, but as Rykov argued to the April 1926 Central Committee plenum, “the tempo of industrialization must correspond to existing resources.” 7° They continued to be concerned that if heavy industry was funded at the expense of agriculture, there would be a recurrence of a goods famine; that is, if investment in agriculture and light industry were allowed to lag, the peasantry might once again refuse to market the harvest.”” But the promotion of equilibrium was also driven by the struggle with the United Opposition, led by Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, which defended higher tempos of investment in heavy industry and accused the leadership of favoring the “capitalist” kulak (well-off peasant) at the expense of “socialist” industry.’® The connection between the spending pressure from regional industry and the “super-industrialism” of the Opposition was direct, and a source of considerable concern to the leadership, whose resolve to restrain tempos of industrial growth was weakened by worry that the Opposition might garner support among members of the Central Committee from the regions.”? At the April plenum Rykov warned of need “to feed and clothe the peasantry” before “putting industry in order.” But in the same speech he spoke of the necessity of “expanding and accelerating the accumulation of resources [for investment in industry] by any and every means.” °° Discussions of the control figures for 1926—27 showed the impact of the

factional struggle between the United Opposition and the leadership. In March 1926, in the light of criticism of the super-industrialist opposi75For complaints about pressure from regional organs see, e.g., TPG, 22 October, 5 November, 19 November 1926; for an account of the successful lobbying efforts of the chairman of the Ukrainian Council of People’s Commissars, V. Ia. Chubar’, and the chairman of the Ukrainian Central Executive Committee, G. J. Petrovskii, on behalf of the Dnieper hydroelectric dam project (Dneprostroi) see TPG, 21 November 1926, p. 2. 76 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral'nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 211 Stenogramma s avtorskimi popravkami Plenuma TsK, 6 aprelia 1926, |. 34. 77 See Chapter 1.

78 See, e.g., Kamenev’s proposed revisions to Rykov’s resolutions for the April 1926 Central Committee plenum, which he presented to a Politburo commission on the eve of the plenum. The proposals of the Opposition were more moderate than the leadership admitted to the plenum. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 210 Protokoly, 16 ianvaria, 6-9 aprelia 1926 (includes materials of both the January and April plenums of the Central Committee), ll. 79-80 Popravki t. L. Kameneva k rezoliutsii t. Rykova predstavlennye v komissiiu Politbiuro. 7? See below, pp. 145-68. 80 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 211 Stenogramma s avtorskimi popravkami Plenuma TsK, 6 aprelia 1926, Il. 23, 34.

56 | The Great Urals | tion, Gosplan proposed preliminary targets for capital expenditures of eight hundred million rubles, barely over the figure for the previous year. The calculations of NKFin suggested that state income would support only seven hundred million rubles. Buta VSNKh report—based on materials from enter-

prises and trusts compiled by the glavki—suggested that capital expenditures should be set at 916 million rubles.*! The report, issued in July 1926, , came on the eve of a Central Committee plenum at which the United Opposition engaged in another pitched battle with the leadership. Felix Dzerzhinskii, chairman of VSNKh, criticized the targets as overambitious: “|The report] is evidence of the fact that our industrial organizations have so far not taken the general state position sufficiently into account; their claims hang in the air, they grab greedily, not taking the real possibilities into account.” ° The next day, Dzerzhinskii addressed the plenum with a speech in which he argued that the leadership was making progress in expanding investment in

industry, but that the Opposition was “hindering [its] creative work.” * : Following the plenum the leadership eased its policy of restraint some-

what. Dzerzhinskii, who had died of a heart attack only hours after his speech to the plenum, was replaced by V. V. Kuibyshev, known for his sympathy to industry.*4 In his first weeks at VSNKh, Kuibyshev came out solidly —

in defense of the July report and in opposition to the Gosplan figures.®° At a | meeting of the Presidium of VSNKh, Kuibyshev called for unanimity in de-

| fense of the report as it was presented to “the highest legislative organs.” °° A meeting of the Council of People’s Commissars at the end of September

essentially split the difference between the August proposals of Gosplan and VSNKh, but it referred to the compromise figure (nine hundred million

rubles) as minimal.°®’ |

While the exact level of capital expenditures and their distribution were still under consideration, the regions redoubled their advocacy of local plans. At first there was considerable optimism for high tempos. When the Fifteenth

82 Thid., p. 280. | |

81 These figures are all taken from E. H. Carr and R. W. Davies, Foundations of a Planned

Economy, 1926-1929, vol. 1, pt. 1 (London, 1969), pp. 278-79. ,

83 Pravda, 1 August 1926. The speech was delivered on 20 July. 84 See, e.g., the report on Kuibyshev’s speech to the Central Control Committee reported in TPG, 8 April 1926, p. 2. 85 By August, though, the figures had been somewhat modified. The VSNKh commission which

_ had issued the July report now called for capital expenditures of 910 million rubles with a reserve of 32 million rubles. Gosplan had expanded its proposals to 880 million rubles with an 8-million-ruble reserve. According to the commission chairman, A. E. Shtern, the VSNKh variant would provide twice the levels of growth in industry promised by Gosplan (10-12 percent growth overall vs. 5-7 percent, and 18—20 percent in metallurgy vs. 10 percent). RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. 1 Protokoly Prezidiuma, d. 5076 Stenogramma zasedaniia Prezidiuma, 26 avgusta 1926, 1.243, 2460b (rolik 4). See also Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 284.

* 86 RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. x Protokoly Prezidiuma, d. 5076 Stenogramma

zasedaniia Prezidiuma, 26 avgusta 1926, |. 2460b (rolik 4). 87 See footnote 85; Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 285. |

Regional Influence | 57 Party Conference met at the end of October it was clear that the harvest would be good and government income from agriculture high. The conference confirmed the “minimal” figure of nine hundred million rubles, and discussed in concrete terms possible sources for the further expansion of capital investment.** Urals organizations continued to plan ambitiously, and they were supported by the leading economic organs of the RSFSR.8? SNK

RSFSR called the Urals “one of the most important industrial regions of the | Soviet Union” and promised to “take measures for the expansion of the fundamental capital of the Urals and the general reconstruction of Urals industry.” ?° However, as funding for specific projects was clarified, many that had been promoted by the regions were either dropped or severely cut back. The Presidium of VSNKh discussed the regional promfinplans with representatives of the regions in a series of meetings in November and December 1926.7! Many of these meetings ended without agreement, and with the issuance of regional protests (osobye mneniia) as addenda to the VSNKh resolutions. Ukrainian officials were angry at VSNKh’s refusal to accept their spending plans, and particularly that construction of the new Krivoi Rog metallurgi-

cal plant was given second-priority status.?* Urals officials bitterly complained of the damage that would be done by the rejection of almost onethird of its proposed capital expenditures. The chairman of Glavmetall told the Urals delegation not to take offense: “We are trying to... support the Urals on such a level as will allow it to give a modest increase in production from year to year.” 7°

The regions were not happy with the center’s restraint. At the February 1927 Central Committee plenum, delegates representing Ukraine, Leningrad, 88 KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 4: 73-75, 78-80. 89 A joint plenum of the Urals Obkom and Oblast’ Control Commission discussed the region’s 1926-27 control figures at a joint plenum in late November. TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 4 1926, d. 9 Stenogramma ob”edinennogo plenuma Obkoma i ObIKK VKP(b), 20-24 noiabria 1926. At a late October 1926 special conference, Gosplan RSFSR promised to help Urals planning organizations develop a series of projects for the development of local fuel supplies, modern metallurgy, metal working, machine-building, and other industries in order to “correct the historical error of the prerevolutionary period, when the Urals was considered only a mining region.” GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 1, d. 589 Perepiska s Gosplanom RSFSR i dr. o general’nom plane Ural’skoi promyshlennosti, ll. 86-89 “Osnovnye polozheniia general’nogo plana rekonstruktsii khoziaistva Urala.” °° A January 1927 directive of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR to this effect was published in Khoziaistvo Urala 1 (1927): xi—xix.

21 TPG, 11 November 1926.

72 RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. 1 Protokoly Prezidiuma, d. 5073 Zasedaniia prezidi-

VSNKh UkrSSR).

uma, ianvar’—dekabr’ 1926, |. 164-ob Svodnyi promfinplan na 1926-27 (raznoglasiia s

°3 RGAE, f. 4086 Glavmetall, op. 1, d. 353 Stenogramma zasedaniia u nachal’/nika Glavmetalla tov. Mezhlauk V. I. po rassmotreniiu promfinplana Urala, 13 dekabria 1926, |. 39; f. 4086, op. 1, d. 1328 Protokol zasedaniia Presidiuma Promplana VSNKh SSSR, 25-26 noiabria 1926 g., |. 231 Osoboe mnenie predstavitel’stva Uraloblasti v Promplan VSNKh SSSR, 26 noiabria 1926; TPG, 24 December 1926, p. 3.

58 | The Great Urals | the Urals, Siberia, the RSFSR, and other territorial units pointedly protested the level of capital expenditures.” R. I. Eikhe, chairman of the Siberian Ex-

ecutive Committee, complained that although everyone agreed on the necessity of building the Tel’bes metallurgical plant, the current level of invest-

| ment would drag out construction for the next twenty years.?> The delegates argued that cuts to their projects were not only squandering the vast poten_ tial (bogateishie vozmozhnosti) of local resources, but harming the economy by frustrating demand. D. E. Sulimov of the Urals portrayed cuts to local projects as wasteful, and argued that with 285 million rubles of investment over four years, the Urals could raise its output by 488 million rubles, thus providing one ruble of output for every sixty kopeks of investment.?® The plenum approved the proposal of the Council of People’s Commissars to set capital expenditures for 1926-27 at 947 million rubles,” but regional pressure on spending did not let up. The regions continued to bring their complaints against cuts and their demands for extra financing to VSNKh, and VSNKh took them to the government (STO and SNK). Only a couple of days after the February plenum an article in the VSNKh newspaper suggested that

the 947-million-ruble spending target was “far from satisfying the most crucial demands of several branches of industry.” ?® Through the spring and summer of 1927, VSNKh presented appeals from trusts and enterprises to the government every couple of weeks.?? Many of these appeals were rejected, but by the end of the economic year capital expenditures had reached

1,068 million rubles.! Capital expenditures in industry had far exceeded the levels which Gosplan and some people’s commissariats had called a threat to the equilibrium of industry and agriculture. At the Fourth Congress of Soviets in April 1927, VSNKh chairman Kuibyshev announced that economic growth in 1926-27 would likely exceed VSNKh’s projections from the fall.1°! It seemed as if the strict defenders of spending restraint in the interests of equilibrium had been discredited. And yet, by summer, evidence of an emerging goods famine was growing. At the same time, new pressures on capital expenditures in *4RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 276 Stenotchet plenuma TsK VKP(b), 7-12 fevralia 1927, Il. 25 (Kosior—RSFSR), 26 (Komarov—Leningrad), 28 (Eikhe—Siberia), 31 (Chubar’—Ukraine), 33 (Lobov—RSFSR), 41 (Kaganovich—Ukraine),

42 5 (Sulimov—Urals). Thid., |. 28. |, 6 Thid., 1. 42.

°7 KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 4:136-37; “O razmerakh zatrat na kapital’nye raboty promyshlennosti v 1926-1927 godu i o planovoi distsipline v oblasti kapital’nogo stroitel’stva,” SZ

10 (1927): 239 (art. 98).

98 TPG, 15 February 1927. 99 TPG, 18 February, 4 March, 22 March, 24 March, 21 April, 14 May, ro July 1927.

100 Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 278, n. I. |

101 Kuibyshev predicted that heavy industry would grow by 23 percent, light industry by 17 percent, and industry as a whole by 20 percent. IV S”ezd Sovetov. Stenograficheskii otchet

(Moscow, 1927), p. 226. | |

Regional Influence | 59 heavy industry arose. In mid-May Great Britain severed diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union following a raid on the Soviet trade agency in London in which documents indicating “anti-British espionage and propaganda” activities were found.!° In the ensuing weeks, incidents such as the assassination of several Soviet officials in Poland and the bombing of a party club in Leningrad added to a sense of foreign (and domestic) threat, fueling calls for immediate investment in military industries in case of an “attack on socialism.” 19?

Under these new conflicting pressures for both restraint and expansion of spending, the control figures for 1927-28 became a subject of heated controversy. In early July NKFin and Gosplan objected to VSNKh’s proposed target for capital investment of 1,152 million rubles. NKFin argued that the budget could bear no more than 1,050 rubles of investment. V. G. Groman of Gosplan suggested that the VSNKh figures were “based on assumptions which could not be realized” and warned that the violation of proportion-

ality in investment would hurt both agriculture and industry.!°* Several weeks later VSNKh agreed to reduce its proposal to 1,086 million rubles, including a cut to new construction from 361 million to 276 million rubles.!%

Ukraine’s Kramatorsk machine-building plant was dropped from the plan as | was the Nizhnii Tagil wagon plant in the Urals. Construction of the Tel’ bes metallurgical plant in Siberia and the Stalingrad tractor plant were threat-

ened with closure.!°* But the cuts were not long maintained. A storm of protest broke at the Second Plenum of VSNKh in mid-August. Officials of all the regions and industries represented at the meeting complained about the

damage and costs which would result from cuts in spending. Less than a week after the plenum had resolved that the 1,086-million-ruble plan was “minimal,” the Presidium of VSNKh had heard presentations of officials of VSNKh of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia as well as of the metal, chemical, and oil industries, and not only restored what had been cut but proposed a plan in excess of its original figure by thirty-one million rubles.!°? Within several weeks the Council of People’s Commissars accepted the VSNKh figures. 102 Michal Reiman, The Birth of Stalinism: The USSR on the Eve of the “Second Revolu-

tion” (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), pp. 11-12; Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 3,

PP The political police blamed the club attack on terrorists taking orders from “white guardists” living abroad. TPG, 10 June 1927. 104'V. G. Groman, “K otsenke khoziaistvennogo polozheniia SSSR,” Planovoe khoziaistvo 7 (1927): 137-38. 105 Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 299. 106 RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. 1 Protokoly Prezidiuma, d. 5106 Doklad Glavmetalla na zasedanii Prezidiuma ot 19, 22-24 avgusta 1927 g., ll. go-91. 107 RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. 1 Protokoly Prezidiuma, d. 5102 Materialy zasedaniia Prezidiuma, |. 117-19 Doklad komissii o kontrol/nykh tsifrakh promyshlennosti na 1927-28 predstavlennykh v Gosplan SSSR i raznoglasiiakh po nim, zaiavlennykh glavnymi upravlenilami i soiluznymi respublikami.

60 | The Great Urals | | The successful “rebellion” against the reduction of the control figures showed the weakness of support in the central leadership for the strict maintenance of equilibrium between agriculture and industry in investment policy. But it also showed that the regions were a significant pressure group in Soviet policy-making. Because the center was forced to rely on the regions for basic planning functions, and for the data which made up the all-union control figures, the regions took the opportunity to draw up optimistic spending and construction projections. These plans generally made solid sense in

the regional context, but once compiled they created huge demands on the national budget. And because they linked regional construction and production tasks, they defied easy cuts. When cuts were announced, the regions

could show clearly and directly the problems they would create. In the process of solving these problems with “extraordinary” credits, the government allowed spending gradually to climb. In 1927-28, after the 1,152-millionruble spending target had caused such controversy, total spending by year’s

| end was allowed to rise to over 1,300 million rubles. The pressure from the regions was an important element in the ultimate defeat of the forces of re-

straint by the enthusiasts of high tempos. , The Regions and the Left Opposition

Throughout the mid-1920s regional leaders were continually angered and

| frustrated by the insistence of the center on restraining the rate of industrial development. They persistently promoted their agendas for regional eco-

| nomic development, and brought their complaints and appeals to meetings of the central economic organs and central party organs— including the congresses, conferences, and plena of the Central Committee. During this period the central leadership was dominated by advocates of a balance of investment in agriculture and industry—the Right—while the Opposition comprised proponents of expanded investment in industry—the Left. Why did regional leaders, who commanded the single largest contingent of delegates at party congresses and over 40 percent of the Central Committee,!°* not

promote the Left against the Right? Party statutes dictated that the congresses were empowered to elect the Central Committee which in turn elected

the Politburo.’°? The traditional view in the historiography tells us that Stalin, the leader of the Right, was able to use the power of the Secretariat— 108 Graeme Gill, The Origins of the Stalinist Political System (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 228,

80 2.

. 10h fact, the Politburo had considerable influence over both representation at the congresses and eligibility for Central Committee membership. Nevertheless votes were held, and according to Molotov there were always votes cast against the leadership: “All the same, it’s a party and not some kind of secret police office [sysknoi dom]. . . . In any year, there were always opponents.” Sto sorok besed s Molotovym: iz dnevnika F. Chueva (Moscow, 1991), Pp. 307.

Regional Influence | 61 the power to hire and fire regional officials—in order to command their sup-

port at central political forums. It tells us that Stalin used the ideas of the Right in order to defeat his opponents on the Left, and then used those of the Right to eliminate the last remaining obstacles between him and supreme power. And it says that the significant events of the factional struggles of the 1920s were played out predominantly in the highest echelons of power. There are several problems with this view, some of which have been addressed above. For one thing, it exaggerates both the role of the Secretariat

and Stalin’s “control over the apparat.” The regional leaders could have supported the Left, and the competing factions in the Politburo were aware of this; what was the purpose of composing “platforms” and proposing alternative policies if not to garner support outside the narrow circle of the top leadership? More significantly, the traditional view exaggerates the differences between the Left and the Right. Both factions were careful to portray themselves as proponents of industrialization. The Left called the Right “kulak sympathizers” and “thermidors” for their determined emphasis on equilibrium and protection of nonproletarian groups. But members of the Right

were not without ammunition. They called the Left’s proposed supertax on the peasants dangerous and unsocialist. They portrayed the Left as “pessimists” and “capitulationists” for their constant criticism of central economic policy, which in the mid-1920s was producing unexpectedly impres-

sive results. When the leaders of the Left did propose specific targets for investment, the amounts tended not to be significantly greater than those proposed by the Right. For regional leaders the choice was very difficult; but they did not risk attempting to remove the leaders of the Right because they were not convinced that they had any more to gain under the Left. Regional leaders had good reason to feel uneasy about the economic pro-

posals of the Left when they were first elaborated. In the spring of 1923, when the Soviet Union was in the midst of a profound economic crisis, Trotsky, the leader of the Left, presented the Central Committee report “On the Work of Industry” to the Twelfth Party Congress. In the course of this report he presented graphs of the currently rising industrial prices and declining agricultural prices, which resembled scissors—thus giving birth to the term “scissors crisis.” At the time, the recovery of industry was lagging seriously behind that of agriculture, and the situation threatened to worsen as the peas-

antry refused to market grain in protest against low prices. In his speech, Trotsky vigorously promoted the strengthening of centralized planning, and proposed to increase financing to industry by means of what he termed “primitive socialist accumulation.” Regional leaders had few objections to planning insofar as they associated it with the ambitious spending targets of the GOELRO plan, and they were very anxious to secure an increase in investment to industry. And yet, as Trotsky developed his ideas at the congress and afterward, he failed to gain any significant regional support. It was abundantly clear in Trotsky’s speech that he associated planning with

62 | The Great Urals the strengthening of central control over the economy. Regional leaders, who had only recently been freed of the much-resented “interference” of the hypercentralized glavki, were in no mood to accept any recentralization. In this regard they had reason to be particularly suspicious of Trotsky, who had

a reputation for promoting military-style lines of subordination since his Civil War days as head of the Red Army.!"° Trotsky’s plans for increasing financing for industry were also greeted without enthusiasm. Following the congress, “primitive socialist accumulation” came to be associated with increased taxation of the peasantry and with consequent dangers to trade between industry and agriculture. Regional leaders accepted the criticisms of Trotsky’s plan raised by the Politburo majority because they had no desire

to risk a recurrence of the scissors crisis. 7

In this phase of the factional struggle the policy differences among Politburo members were not especially pronounced. None of them wished to provoke a conflict while Lenin was still alive. Nevertheless, given his illness, the issue of succession was very much on their minds. Most Politburo members personally disliked Trotsky. They feared his ascension following Lenin’s death

and they managed to isolate him in the Politburo.‘!! Thus he was weakened in his attempts to gather the support of the regional leaders. _ Following Lenin’s death in January 1924, the policy ideas of the various Politburo members were thrown into sharper relief. As Trotsky developed his “superindustrialist” position, Stalin countered with the concept of “socialism in one country.” Stalin tried to make a virtue out of the dependence

of industry on the development of agriculture. In addition to raising the specter of a reopening of the scissors, Stalin tried to paint Trotsky’s superindustrialism as essentially pessimistic. Trotsky, he claimed, lacked faith in the potential of internal economic forces.'!2 Trotsky had argued that the funds generated through taxation of the peasantry should be spent on im-

| porting capital equipment from abroad, which in Stalin’s view would reinforce Russia’s status as an agrarian country and create a dangerous dependence on the hostile, capitalist world. It was in these terms that Stalin sought to portray himself as the prime advocate of the interests of industry: There are two general lines. One proceeds from the assumption that our country should for a very long time remain an agrarian country, should export agricultural commodities and import capital, that we must rely on such a policy and develop this way into the future. This way, in point of fact, demands the cur10 Trotsky had used military forms of organization in responding to a crisis of the transportation system, and had promoted the militarization of labor in 1920. 411E. H. Carr, The Interregnum, 1923-1924 (London, 1965), chap. 13 (“The Campaign against Trotsky”); Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929 (London,

1960), chap. 2 (“The Anathema”).

112 The claim was reinforced by the memory of Trotsky’s “theory of permanent revolution”: he had argued that socialism could not be achieved in Russia without the success of socialist revolutions in Europe.

63 | The Great Urals Regional Influence | 63 tailment of our industry. . . . This line will lead to a situation in which our country will never, or almost never be able truly to industrialize. . . . This line signifies the retreat from the tasks of construction. It is not our line. There is another line... . This line demands the maximal expansion of industry.

He followed with the statement that this expansion would proceed “in mea-

sure and correspondence with those resources which we have... .” 113 Stalin’s ideas were less impressive for their clarity than for their use of cynical political calculation. His simultaneous support for equilibrium and high tempos of industrial construction was a form of “centrism” by which he dissociated himself not only from Trotsky but also from the Politburo Right in the person of Bukharin, who most clearly and unequivocally insisted that the growth of industry should proceed from the wealth and success of the agricultural sector. In the fall of 1925 Stalin endured the single greatest challenge to his right to speak in the name of the Central Committee. At this time, Politburo members Kamenev and Zinoviev began to criticize “socialism in one country”

and Stalin’s cynical centrism. On the eve of the Fourteenth Party Congress, | these two former allies of Stalin openly attacked the Politburo majority: They bandy about loud phrases on international revolution; but they portray Lenin as the inspirer of a nationally limited socialist revolution. They fight against the kulak; but they offer the slogan “Enrich yourselves!” They shout about socialism; but they proclaim the Russia of NEP as a socialist country. They “believe” in the working class; but they call on the wealthy farmer to come to their aid.!!4

As Zinoviev and Kamenev had moved away from Stalin’s centrism toward Trotsky and the Left, Stalin was compelled to reinforce his association with the leaders on the Right—Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky —in order to retain the majority in the Politburo. In the second half of 1925, however, his association with the Right had become a substantial political liability. Bukharin’s “enrich yourselves” comment had given the strong impression that the leadership gave priority to agriculture over industry, an impression further reinforced when the leadership reduced its projections for industrial growth in the 1925-26 economic year after the poor harvest of 1925.115

Stalin had every reason to fear a concerted attack from the Left at the Fourteenth Congress. Because he could not afford to alienate his allies on the Right, a united Left could capitalize on the regions’ frustrations with re"13 XIV s’ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b), 18-31 dekabria 1925 g. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1926), p. 27.

'144From Zinoviev’s 18 December 1925 editorial in Leningradskaia pravda, quoted in Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, p. 248. ‘15 Economic plans were being reviewed on the eve of the congress. See Rykov’s opening speech, XIV s”ezd, p. 2.

64 | The Great Urals ductions in the tempos of investment and construction. While Stalin maintained his defense of equilibrium, he tried to preempt the Left by giving the regions a substantial economic motivation for supporting the Politburo majority at the congress. He sent his trusted supporters as “representatives of the Central Committee” to many of the regional party conferences preceding the congress in order to convince the regions of the devotion of the Politburo

majority to industry: A. A. Andreev went to the Urals, M. I. Kalinin to Ukraine, Ia. E. Rudzutak to Nizhegorod, E. Iaroslavskii to Iaroslavl’, A. S. Bubnov to Ivanovo-Voznesensk, E. I. Kviring to Tula, K. V. Geito Tver, I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov to Belorussia, and F. E. Dzerzhinskii to Moscow.*!® Each of these representatives discussed the “concrete perspectives” of economic development in the region. No specific commitments were made,

but the regions were given assurances that large-scale construction projects | would be undertaken. At the Urals Oblast’ Party Conference, Andreev told the delegates that “the Urals should be that fundamental unit where several new, giant metallurgical plants should be built. To this end, in our economic policy, the party has begun this year to address this in earnest.” 1'” At the Ukrainian Republican Party Congress, the construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric project was discussed in terms of the huge complex of industrial enterprises that were to be built around it.11° Though the Left was on the offensive at the Fourteenth Congress, it had no success. Zinoviev and Kamenev failed to join forces with Trotsky, for despite their overtures, Trotsky continued to view them as his personal enemies and as representatives of the Right.'!? Stalin’s victory at the congress was not |

easy, but it was decisive. Zinoviev and Kamenev (the “New Opposition”) spoke of a dangerous, “kulak deviation” in the leadership, but delegates accused them of lacking a clear alternative.!2° When Zinoviev spoke to criticize the current problems of economic policy, Stalin was able to dismiss him | as a pessimist. When Kamenev declared to the congress that he “had come to the conviction that comrade Stalin could no longer fulfill the role of the unifier of the Bolshevik leadership,” he was heckled from several quarters: “It’s not true,” “nonsense,” “So that’s what you’re on about,” “We will not

surrender the commanding heights.” !2! |

, In the following weeks Zinoviev was removed from his position at the head of the Leningrad party organization, and Kamenev from his position in the Council of Labor and Defense. But Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev 116Ty, V. Voskresenskii, Perekhod kommunisticheskoi partii k osushchestvleniiu politiki sot-

sialisticheskoi industrializatsii SSSR (Moscow, 1969), p. 123. 117 Sed ‘maia Ural’skaia oblastnaia konferentsiia RKP(b) 5-10 dekabria 1925, stenograficheskti otchet (Sverdlovsk, 1926), p. 20. 118 Voskresenskii, Perekhod, pp. 125-26.

"Deutscher describes in detail this lost opportunity of the Left in Prophet Unarmed, PP. 252-57.

121 Thid., p. 275. 120 XIV s’ezd, p. 191.

65 | The Great Urals Regional Influence | 65 were still Politburo members, and their differences were soon bridged. For the next eighteen months their “United Opposition” was locked in battle with the Politburo majority. They continued to try to drive a wedge between the majority leaders and the Central Committee by pounding on their greatest weakness—the perceived inadequacy of capital expenditures. Regional | frustration with the level of central investment was such that the Opposition

had many chances to win over this constituency, but they made several crucial mistakes. The first was their failure, or inability, to promote a convincing, practical alternative economic strategy to that of the majority. The Opposition lacked the necessary institutional support to generate a policy program. Kamenev had lost his position in the Council of Labor and Defense, and Trotsky had refused to take a position in the state administration. Their best hope was their ally G. Piatakov, the chairman of the Special Conference on the Reproduction of the Capital Stock (OSVOK) of VSNKh. As a planning and policy organ, OSVOK had the wherewithal to produce a Left economic program. Since its creation in 1925 OSVOK had produced ambitious plans for capital construction and had encouraged the regions to propose large projects. Its plans appealed to the regions’ appetites for investment, but at the same time the regions were suspicious of their practical value, at least in the near term. For example, in 1925 the Siberian economic organs had proposed projects estimated at a cost of several tens of millions of rubles; Piatakov encouraged them to rework the plans, and together with OSVOK they were developed into a complex of new construction costing fove hundred million rubles. But the new proposals were so out of tune with the financial capacity of the state that Siberia had “priced itself out” of the competition for central investment, and over the next several years the Siberian projects garnered only five million rubles of investment.'*? OSVOK’s annual plans for capital investment were generally grossly in excess of what other central organs thought to be realistic. For example, in 1926, when Gosplan had set its preliminary directives for capital investment at eight hundred million rubles and NKFin had argued that the budget could bear no more than seven hundred million, OSVOK proposed capital investment of over 1,500 million.!?3 Such a discrepancy did not serve to expose an obsession with equilibrium

inspired or imposed by the Right. Rather, the OSVOK proposals were generally recognized as impractical. Even the leaders of the Left avoided endorsing them. But as a result the United Opposition continued to lack a pro-

grammatic alternative to the Politburo majority, and it was not clear how much more investment they could provide, and from which sources, if they were to take control of the leadership. That lack of clarity made their criti122 See the comments of the Siberian Executive Committee chairman R. I. Eikhe to the February 1927 Central Committee plenum. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 276 Stenograficheskii otchet plenuma TsK, 7-12 fevralia 1927, ll. 27-28. 123 Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 278, n. I.

66 | The Great Urals cisms of the majority sound hollow. At the April 1926 Central Committee plenum several regional delegates observed that the Opposition had offered nothing new in their “corrections” (popravki) to the resolutions on economic policy proposed by Rykov. D. E. Sulimov of the Urals observed that “we do not see in the corrections of comrades Trotsky and Kamenev any practical and businesslike [delovykh] suggestions that would help us workers in the

regions [na mestakh] to resolve those problems, to struggle with those difficulties which we face in our work.” 124 When the Opposition leaders did ultimately outline specific investment targets, the proposals of the Politburo majority tended not to be significantly lower. Even in early 1927, when regional leaders were bitterly protesting the inadequacy of central investment, Bukharin was able to point out that Trotsky’s promise of a billion rubles of

investment in 1926-27 differed little from the Central Committee’s commitment to a minimum of 947 million rubles.!7> In the course of the economic year, under pressure from both the regions and the Opposition, investment was allowed to rise to 1,068 million rubles.!*° The United Opposition failed to capitalize on the frustration of regional

leaders with the level of investment partly because it had underestimated the Politburo majority’s willingness to accommodate pressure from the regions. Opposition leaders had wasted opportunities, but this was not the worst of their tactical errors. Impatient with the course of the battle with Stalin and company in Moscow, they had actively begun to organize support in the regions, and by the fall there were Opposition groups in Moscow, Leningrad, Tula, Kharkov, Nikolaev, Tbilisi, Sverdlovsk, and other regional centers. At the October 1926 Central Committee plenum, Central Control Commission chairman E. M. Iaroslavskii spoke of the creation of Opposition committees,

bureaus, and other “underground” organizations. He called the development “an attempt to create another party within the All-union Communist Party.” !2” But Opposition organizations in the regions were not especially

strong or numerous. Though the Opposition had a reputation for being particularly active in the Urals,!*8 a report of the Urals Oblast’ Control Commission suggested that fewer than a hundred were active in the regional party organization.'*? These tended to be workers by social origin and party 124 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 213 Stenograficheskii otchet

plenuma TsK 7 aprelia 1926: preniia po dokladu Rykova o khoziaistvennom polozhenii i khoziaistvennoi politiki. See the speeches of Eikhe (Siberia) |. 83; A. A. Zhdanov (Nizhnii Nov-

: gorod), l. 139; d. 215 prodolzhenie prenii, Antipov (Urals) |. 12; Sulimov, |. roo. 125 RTSKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 276, Stenograficheskii otchet plenuma TsK, 7-12 fevralia 1927, |. 73. | 26 Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 278, n. 1. 127 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 254 Stenograficheskii otchet

Plenuma TsK i TsKK, 23-26 oktiabria 1926, |. 9. : 128 TD), E. Sulimov made the claim at the Fifteenth Party Congress in October 1926. XV kon-

ferentstia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b) 26 oktiabria—3 noiabria 1926 g.

Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1927), p. 177. ,

- 129 Total membership was over 65,000. TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 5 1927, d. 30 Spravki, dokladnye, telegrammy, akty dokladov o bor'’be Ural'skoi partorganizatsii s oppozitsiei Il.

67 | The Great Urals Regional Influence | 67 members of long standing who served in soviets and party committees (most often factory committees).!3° Their work seems to have been limited to arranging for and speaking at meetings and demonstrations.'3! These events, which often took place at or near factories, were aimed primarily at work-

ers. The speakers were usually members of the local Opposition groups, but occasionally they were supplemented by prominent Oppositionists from Moscow. They blamed the low living standards of “proletarians” and the success of the bourgeois NEPman on the central leadership; they claimed that the leadership was corrupt, and that a victory of the United Opposition would mean a return to the proletarian ideals of the revolution, rapid forward movement of industrialization and higher wages for the workers.1*? Reports from okrug party committees claimed that most workers reacted to Oppositionist speeches with indifference or hostility, but still there was concern that the Opposition could provoke labor unrest.!*? Party officials from the okrug, city, and regional organizations needed no pressure from above to take action against the Opposition. The situation was reminiscent to that in the earliest years of the regime when supporters of the Workers’ Opposition and other groups were active in the regions, and though the challenge from the United Opposition was far less threatening, there was no hesitation in silencing it.!34 The political police (GPU) collected information on known Oppositionists and passed it to the okrug control commissions, which sent regular reports to the Oblast’ control commissions.!** The

commissions began to expel Oppositionists from the party in the fall of 1926.'36 Regional leaders had no sympathy for the protests of the Opposition against violations of intra-party democracy. Stalin was able to use this lack of sympathy to silence the leaders of the

Left. The platform of the Left presented to the July 1926 Central Committee plenum was declared a “fractional” document.!?” By October, irrita133-35 Svedeniia ob Ural’skikh oppozitsionerakh privlekavshikhsia k partotvetstvennosti za fraktsionnuiu rabotu v techenie vremeni s 15-ogo oktiabria 1926-1 sentiabria 1927. For the size of the Urals oblast’ Party membership see Dva goda raboty: materialy k otchetu Ural’skogo Obkoma VKP(b) k VIII oblastnoi partkonferentsti (dekabr’ 1925 g.—noiabr’ 1927 g.) (Sverdlovsk, 1927), p. Xvi. 130 See footnote 128.

131 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 5 1927, d. 30 Spravki, dokladnye, telegrammy, akty dokladov o bor’be Ural’skoi partorganizatsii s oppozitsiei, ll. 82-85 dokladnaia zapiska predsedatelia ObIKK Larichev ob oppozitsii (approximately June 1927). 132 Thid., ll. 56, 68-69, 90 (from reports of okrug party committees quoting Opposition speeches).

133 [bid., ll. 86-104. The (intercepted) letters of Oppositionists transcribed in many okrug reports indicate great desire to take advantage of the dissatisfaction of workers. 134 Tbid., Il. 56, 119, 143 (reports from the okrugy); Dva goda raboty: Materialy k otchetu Ural’skogo Obkoma VKP(b), pp. xvi, 131. 135 TsDOO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 5 1927, d. 30 Spravki, dokladnye, telegrammy, akty dokladov o bor’ be Ural’skoi partorganizatsii s oppositsiel, ll. 77, 86-104. 136 Thid., ll. 133-35; Dva goda raboty, p. 131. 137 Tt is referred to as the “Platform of the Thirteen.” RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 238 Protokol #7 zasedaniia Plenuma TsK i TsKK, 21-23 iiulia 1926, L. 1.

68 | The Great Urals , , | tion with the Left had reached the point where Stalin was able to have Trotsky and Kamenev removed from the Politburo by a vote of the Central Committee.!38 At the October plenum the Opposition was forced to negoti-

ate the terms of their presentations to the upcoming fifteenth Party Conference. Zinoviev tried to convince the delegates that the Opposition had no principled disagreements with the Central Committee and that their

, speeches would not constitute a continuation of “fractional activity.” But Rykov and others, wishing to take advantage of the hostility created by its challenges, used the Opposition’s appeals to the workers as a basis for demanding that its leaders explain their differences with the leadership at the

conference.8? ,

A year passed before the central leadership attempted to take further punitive action against the leaders of the Opposition. Regional leaders were irritated with the Left for their political tactics, but as they appreciated the pressure the Left continued to exert on central investment policy, they did not want to silence them entirely. The central leadership continued to show con-

| cern that restraining capital investment might result in increased support for the Left. Rykov, explaining to the Fifteenth Party Conference, that economic growth would be lower than in the previous year, observed that the decline “disoriented some members of our party and created the kind of defeatist-

- capitulationist moods which are in essence the platform of the United Opposition.” !4° But in the course of 1927, as the central leadership continued to withdraw from its strict defense of equilibrium, the regions lost interest in

, tolerating the Opposition. By the end of the year the advance of industry was such that support for the Left seemed pointless. In his address to the Fif~ teenth Party Congress in December, A. I. Muralov echoed the sentiments of

many regional party secretaries: , On the territory of our guberniia, new workers’ regions are beginning to ap-

pear, new nests of industrial construction that we never before have had in , Nizhegorod Guberniia. In the deep forests, new construction projects are un-

| derway, electrificaton is being carried out and so on and so forth. All this is liv- | ing proof of our successes in the matter of industrialization. To us arriving here at the Fifteenth Congress with vital, practical experience,

it seems surprising that all we get from the Opposition is silence.1*! | 138 The vote was 182 for and six against, with five abstentions. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’ nyi Komitet, Op. 2 Plenumy, d. 248 Protokol #9 zasedaniia Plenuma TsK i TsKK, 23 oktiabria

7TS The leaders of the Opposition protested the “declaration of the Opposition” to be pre| sented to the conference on the grounds that the opinions expressed in it were attributed to them unjustly and inappropriately. RTsSKhIDNI f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet op. 2 Plenumy d. 254

Stenograficheskii otchet Plenuma TsK i TsKK, 23-26 oktiabria 1926 Il. 8-21. | 140 Piatnadtsataia konferentsiia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b). Stenograficheskii otchet, 26 oktiabria—3 noiabria 1926 g. (Moscow, 1927), p. III. 141 Piatnadtsatyi s"ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b), dekabr’ 1927 goda. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1961), p. 171.

69 | The Great Urals Regional Influence | 69 When the Left did speak out, more often than not it attempted to undermine the growing sense of enthusiasm. The epithets “capitulationists” and “cowards,” attached to them by the press, were millstones which the Opposition could not shake off. They appeared to have been left behind as the center allowed the tempos of industrial construction to rise. Regional officials did not let up their pressure for ever higher levels of central investment. On the contrary, as discussions of economic policy focused on the confirmation of the five-year plan and the mass of construction projects it promised, each region was determined that the center should approve its proposals. Regional pressure increased, and so did the regions’ impatience with any group that suggested their plans were unrealistic. There had

been little sense of urgency in the regions about rooting out support for the , Left, but when members of the central leadership and like-minded officials in the regions spoke out against further increases in investment and construction, they were attacked without hesitation.

3 The Great Urals Plan

In the mid-1920s the regions, perceiving that central investment in the local economy was the key to regional economic health, exerted considerable pressure on the center to expand investment and construction. Modernization of existing capital stock and new construction improved the efficiency of production, and thus the ability to compete for markets and sales. In the context of the New Economic Policy (NEP), with its emphasis on commercial principles (khoziaistvennyi raschet), unprofitable industries were shut down. Profitable ones brought the regions tax income, employment, and the potential for further reinvestment and growth. Enterprise profit was an important part of capital investment, but Soviet industry was still too weak to generate internally a significant rate of growth; central investment could give a relatively quick competitive advantage to its beneficiaries. In this context the regional leaders understood that five years of central investment would have a profound impact on the state (and status) of their economies. As the five-year plan emerged from its preliminary outlines, it was the object of ever greater controversy and conflict. Each region tried to prove that its own contribution was indispensible, that it could produce better, faster, and less expensively than the others. This competition created

| further upward pressure on the levels of investment and construction, but it also exacerbated existing tensions between those who believed in a revolutionary potential of the planned economy and those who understood the essence of planning to be thorough and careful calculation. Fear of losing five-year-plan investment to competing regions drove support for ambitious goals, but it also led to conflicts within the regional leadership and between the regional party and economic officials over the capacity of regional economy to achieve them. The center’s enthusiasts of high-tempo industrializa-

| tion, led by Stalin, were able to manipulate these conflicts for their political _ ends. In 1928 the Shakhty trial (see pp. 88-93) and the campaign against the 70

The Great Urals Plan | 71 “Right danger” (see pp. 92-97), both of which were signals to attack opposition to high tempos, served not only Stalin’s desire to gain control of the central leadership, but also the determination of many regional leaders to promote ambitious plans.

Interregional Competition and the First Five-year Plan

By the 1927-28 economic year the economy of the Urals oblast’ was , showing signs of its potential. The development of rail lines between the Kuznetsk basin and Urals metallurgy had formed a basis for the realization of a half-century-old aspiration to shift from the eighteenth-century technologies of wood-fueled metallurgy to modern, efficient coal-based metallurgy. In 1927-28 almost half of the region’s ferrous metals production was generated in coal-fired furnaces, compared to only 7.7 percent in 1913.! Moscow had agreed to the construction of a machine-building plant in the Urals that would allow the region to supply its own mining industry and metallurgy with new equipment. Confirmation was pending on the construction of a giant new metallurgical plant in Magnitogorsk. And yet, the Urals’

economic future was by no means assured. Its capital stock was outdated and in poor repair, with the majority of its metallurgical plants over a hundred and fifty years old.2 The aging equipment required a consistent flow of investment in maintenance to prevent production capacity from declining. A

| few new plants alone did not form a solid basis for future growth. The gravest threat to the Urals’ economy came from Ukraine. The Ukrainian metallurgical colossus had revived, and could outcompete the Urals in most major categories of production. Its plants were more modern and effi-

| cient, and ores and fuel sources were in closer proximity. It had a more developed transportation system, and was better supplied with engineers and other technical specialists. By 1927-28 Ukraine (together with the neighboring North Caucasus and parts of southern Russia) produced almost three-quarters of all-union pig iron, up from barely over a half in 1923-24.3

Ukrainian officials made no secret of their aspirations to a monopoly of heavy industrial production—aspirations which had been shared by Ukrainian industrialists in the three decades before the Revolution.* In the compe-

| tition for central investment Ukraine was a threat not only to the Urals, but also to Leningrad, the Central Industrial Region, the Lower Volga, Siberia, and other regions. 'M. Oshvintsev, “Proizvodstvennyi i finansovyi plan Ural’skoi chernoi metallurgii na 192728 g.,” Khoziaistvo Urala 2 (1928): 8. 2M. Oshvintsev, “Desiat’ let Ural’skoi metallopromyshlennosti,” Khoziaistvo Urala 10

7922) ‘. Livehits, Razmeshchenie chernoi metallurgti SSSR (Moscow, 1958), pp. 12, 140-41. 4 See, e.g., Ia. B. Dimanshtein, Problema raionirovaniia metallopromyshlennosti v sviazi s usloviiami promyshlennogo razvitiia Ukrainy i Soiuza (Khar'kov, 1927).

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nee, had istributi ot pro instanc O dictri t 9.to mere ? tion o ~ t ly retur f metal : cu vers roductio sums off pre-civil-w ion, For ere the . early ar° levels.° cent rom ; ou in each n s b q e 192 min ° Mminus: q ea9208, 3 men : ubseque Inve By I92 8 |Int eo] d:uced erregional any clea competiti ; petition central inv r winners an rforInvestmen

ill ylav in thThou , butP the promi ad almost e future. ise of truly rapid wav.® ° 5 few ; rapid con ‘ V5 the U . maior c . struction als rain Struction p o1ec for ° €, and other regi rojects were u e centralmic economi hada pl! heerorgans regions t , plethora of pro

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reconstruc O OoDta ropo uction ° CrmiSsi f T f projects. r major constructi wo factors serv lon Or : ° ed to intensi . . oOeconom! the rregional competiti sinnin siry inte 'nning [2 petition gions, and |192 mic year. Fi toward 5 in8 response ft r. First, pbe unexpected omisi ureunder from re: promisin dthereIn j the ®

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The Great Urals Plan | 73 center had begun to move away from a strict defense of financial restraint and equilibrium between the agricultural and industrial sectors. Relative investment in industry was increasing and the regions were determined to increase their shares. In the months after the Council of Peoples Commissars had accepted a 30-percent increase in the 1927-28 control figures over Gosplan’s initial targets—to almost 1.2 billion rubles’—the regions were madly revising their projections for the upcoming economic year. In late November 1927 Ukrainian planning officials submitted plans for five new construction projects, including two metallurgical plants.’ Northwestern oblast’ pressed for permission to start the construction of several new metallurgical and machine-building plants.? Urals planning officials proposed a » program of “profound and thorough reconstruction,” which in essence involved the construction of new, modern metallurgical plants on the old sites, alongside the ancient wood-burning furnaces.'° By March 1928, as Gosplan , was preparing its targets for the 1928-29 economic year, regional proposals had cumulatively exceeded two billion rubles. An editorial in the VSNKh newspaper observed that “even in the preceding planning campaign of 1927/ 28, that is, in the third year of capital construction when a sense of reality and a conception of our real potential should have settled in the consciousness of the regions, their proposals for capital construction in the control figures were double available resources.” It criticized the pattern of regional behavior as “the psychology of immediately winning one’s place in the sun.” !!

In fact, the regions were driven not only by the desire to expand industrial

production and profit, but also by the fear that the benefits of industry would be won exclusively by their competitors. In particular, Ukrainian offcials encouraged the view that the center could still not afford to invest in

industrial construction in more than one region—that any support for regions other than Ukraine would constitute an uneconomic dispersion of cen-

tral resources.” The second factor intensifying regional competition was the center’s growing emphasis on long-term planning. Experiments with long-term plans had

been ongoing since the GOELRO commission had published its results in ? See Chapter 2. 8 TPG, 22 November 1927. ? TPG, 15 December 1927. 10 GASO, f. 94-r Uralmet, op. 4, d. 9 Perepiska predsedatelia Pravleniia Uralmeta s Glavmet-

allom i promyshlennymi predpriiatiiami o finansirovanii i stroitel’stva zavodov, |. 2 Pis’mo Oshvintseva Mezlauku, V. I., 3 oktiabria 1927. 11 TPG, 22 March 1928. 12 See, e.g., E. O. Shatan, Problema rabochei sily v osnovnykh promyshlennykh raionakh SSSR. Trudy komissii po metallu pri Gosplane UkrSSR (Kharkov, 1927), p. 98; Ia. B. Dimanshtein, Problema raionirovaniia metallopromyshlennosti v sviazi s usloviiami promyshlennogo razvitiia Ukrainy i Soiuza (Kharkov, 1927), pp. 202~3. Urals officials feared that. central investment might predominantly benefit the Ukraine. S. Sigov, “Problema rabochei sily na Urale v osveshchenii komissii po metallu pri Gosplane Ukrainy,” Khoziaistvo Urala 4 (1927); N. Berezov, “Iuzhane ob Urale,” Khoziaistvo Urala 4 (1927).

74. | The Great Urals 1920, but they tended to produce only crude speculations. In the course of several years of experience with the annual control figures, however, planning organs built a solid foundation for the development of more extended plans. By the fall of 1927 the idea of a five-year plan had emerged from the subcommissions and subdepartments of Gosplan and VSNKh into the forefront of policy discussions. Five years of central investment, set in advance, _ had the potential to make or break the economic future of a given region, bringing a thorough modernization of Urals industry or the completion of a Ukrainian industrial monopoly. An editorial in the newspaper Torgovopromyshlennaia gazeta on the eve of the confirmation of the five-year plan _ observed that “we are witnessing the creation of a new industrial topography of the Union which will determine the fate of individual economic re-

gions for decades to come.” !3 __ |

Urals officials had been particularly sensitive to the potential benefits and | dangers of long-term plans. In advance of other regions their planning organs published a fifteen-year “general plan” for the regional economy in the summer of 1927. For its time, the plan was ambitious. It projected a sixfold growth in the production of metals by 1941 on the basis of almost two billion rubles of central investment. At the time that the initial targets for the plan had been set, the total value of industrial capitalin the Urals was a mere 221 million rubles,'* and annual capital investment had yet to exceed sixtyfive million rubles.!> But the plan was never pursued in the form in which it was published. During 1927 central planning organs had shifted their focus away from the fifteen-year “general plan” to the five-year plan, and, more significantly, the rate of industrial growth and the expansion of central investment had made the original targets seem conservative. Even before the plan was published, work had begun on revising the targets. Before the Urals plan could be reworked, other regions were well on their way to creating their own five-year plans.'° When the Fifteenth Party Con-

gress met in December 1927, regional delegates presented the outlines of their five-year proposals. The obvious tensions created by their conflicting

| ambitions were a source of concern to the center. In their speeches to the congress, both Gosplan chairman G. M. Krzhizhanovskii and Sovnarkom

chairman A. I. Rykov observed that discussions of the five-year plan had | “provoked unnecessary disputes” among regions. They tried to calm the regions with assurances that the consideration of all regional interests would 13 TPG, 22 November 1928. 14 The targets were set in October 1926. P. Stepanov, “Voprosy general’nogo plana khozi-

aistva Urala,” Khoziaistvo Urala x (1928): 11. 15K. Klimenko, “Kontrol’nye tsifry ural’/skogo khoziaistva na 1926-7 god,” Khoziaistvo

Urala 15-16 (1926): 23.

16 Generally this work was being done in the absence of specific instructions from the center. See, e.g., the comments of the representative from the Caucasus at the Second Congress of the Gosplan Presidiums in August 1927. GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 2, d. 2043 Materialy po obsuzhdeniiu II-ym Vsesoiuznym S”ezdom Prezidiumov Gosplanov Soiuznykh Respublik, |. 11.

The Great Urals Plan | 75 form an essential part of the compilation of the five-year plan.!” However, VSNKh chairman V. V. Kuibyshev suggested that the planning officials of the Urals and other regions of the east had already succeeded in establishing an

advantage in the competition for five-year projects: | There is an ongoing dispute about the Urals. It seems to me that one can now be certain of one thing: the construction of our five-year plan and the relative interregional distribution of financing in industry and the whole economy must focus more on the east. The Urals and Siberia have every basis for expecting that the five-year plan will boost the development of their industry, particularly that of the Urals... . The Urals has inexhaustible riches of fuels, minerals, and ores. It is the safest among regions in the sense of strategic defense. . . . It is geographically the most logical base for the industrialization of the entire east. Therefore, the reconstruction of the backward, pre-emancipation economy of the Urals is one of the most important tasks of our five-year plan. We must undertake a substantial shift to the east.1®

Urals delegates were thrilled. Disgusted delegates from other regions heckled

- Kuibyshev with accusations of “localism” (mestnichestvo). In fact, Kuibyshev’s remarks were not confirmed in the congress resolutions. The Urals’ economic future was as yet far from assured. On the contrary, its ambitions were dealt a sequence of blows beginning with the congress resolutions themselves.

The resolution “On the Directives for the Composition of the First Fiveyear Plan for the National Economy” established criteria for the distribution of projects and identified the sources of financing for accelerated economic development. The directives emphasized that the tempo of industrialization depended on the ability of industry to produce more efficiently. The reduction of industrial costs (snizhenie sebestoimosti) and the rationalization of production processes were to be key sources of new financial and material resources for accelerated growth. Capital was to be invested in those projects that would produce the highest rate of return at the lowest cost in the shortest period of time.!? This was not pleasing to Urals officials. With its aging capital stock, Urals industry could not hope to reduce production costs. Labor-intensive eighteenth-century technologies were not conducive to “rationalization,” and the Urals could not promise a quick return at low cost. It could promise substantial returns only with large-scale new construction and the closing of old plants.2° Ukraine, on the other hand, could update and 17 Piatnadtsatyi s"ezd VKP(b), 2 dekabria-19 dekabria 1927 g. Stenograficheskii otchet, pp. 769-70, 798; TPG, 15 December 1927. 18 Piatnadtsatyi s"ezd, p. 850. 19 “Q) direktivakh po sostavleniiu piatiletnego plana narodnogo khoziaitsva,” KPSS v rezo-

liutsiiakh i reshentiakh s’ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK (Moscow, 1984), 4: 278-91. 20 See the speech of M. Oshvintsev to the Third Plenum of VSNKh RSFSR in late February 1928: “To work with the existing capital, in the absence of fundamental reconstruction, will

76 | The Great Urals | ; a Comune — tis ee . _ a : oe Vs jae 88 ¢ : . az a Vy ; “= a ,

pF SN ’ if AY ae n/n ee @ \*r

.oefgeoa ge se Se [ | oh! 5 . Ss _ Ne ee : : = 7 7 Figure 4. VSNKh chairman V. V. Kuibyshev (first row center) with the delegates to the

, Fifteenth Party Congress from the Sverdlovsk City Party Committee (July 1927). Obkom first secretary N. M. Shvernik is seated to his left. Courtesy Tsentr dokumentatsii ob- —

shchestvennykh organizatsii Sverdlovskoi oblasti (TsDOO SO). OS ,

, supplement its more modern capital stock and provide meaningful benefits

without the same colossal investment demands. The economic situation in 1928 further reinforced demands for efficiency.

, In the beginning of the year, evidence of a “metals famine” was growing. Producers could not meet demand and the backlog of orders exceeded supply by 25 to 30 percent.*! An immediate expansion of production capacity was required to maintain the momentum of industrialization. At the same time, the financing of such an expansion was severely challenged by a grain

| collections crisis, which officials of the commissariats of Finance and Agri- , culture blamed on overinvestment in heavy industry. They reiterated their arguments for moderate growth rates and the equilibrium of the industrial

«58. | ,

be impossible, just as it will be impossible in such conditions to further expand production and

reduce production costs.” TPG, 1 March 1928. , Oo

, 1 “Doklad V. V. Kuibysheva na zasedanii partiinoi iacheiki apparata VSNKh SSSR o sostoianii i zadachakh razvitiia promyshlennosti, 18 ianvaria 1928,” Istoricheskii arkhiv 3 (1958):

The Great Urals Plan | 77 and agricultural sectors which they had failed to defend in the previous fall. But VSNKh and the regions reacted strongly against any talk of lowering the rate of investment in industry. Again, central policy makers were caught in the crossfire of conflicting bureaucratic interests. The first response, at Stalin’s personal instigation, was to force peasants to surrender their grain’*; though Stalin’s “extraordinary measures” promised to resolve the grain collections crisis, over two months passed before new financing was issued to industry. In a decree of 20 March 1928, Sovnarkom expanded investment in metallurgy by thirty-seven million rubles, but it also redoubled its emphasis on the necessity of reducing industrial costs and maximizing income from improvements in the efficiency of production.”? The level of industrial investment remained in the spotlight, at the center of discussions of the 192829 control figures in the summer and fall.** During the course of 1928, as work on the five-year plan intensified both in Gosplan and VSNKh, the idea of a “shift to the east” was treated with increasing suspicion. Kuibyshev continued to promote the idea,”> but his opinion was not shared by many planning specialists of Gosplan or VSNKh. According to V. A. Gassel’blat, a top official of the Urals Planning Commission, central planners were consistently ill-disposed toward Urals projects. He was particularly frustrated by the hostility of S$. A. Khrennikov and other specialists in the VSNKh Main Administration of the Metals Industry (GUMP) to the Magnitogorsk project of which he was in charge.?° Leading planning specialists in Gosplan also recommeded against substantially increasing investment to the Urals in the first five-year plan, commenting in the central industrial press that “the Urals is too deeply rooted in the primitive methods of the past” and “the time has not come for a sharp increase in the growth of Urals industry.” 2” In his correspondence with A. I. Rykov of Sovnarkom, R. Gartvan of Gosplan was unequivocal: central investment was more wisely spent in Ukraine than in the Urals.*® In such private remarks central plan*2 See M. Lewin’s discussion of the collections crisis in Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization (Evanston, Ill., 1968), chap. 9.

*3 Postanovlenie SNK SSSR, 20 marta 1928, “O svodnom proizvodstvenno-finansovom plane i plane kapital’nogo stroitel’stva promyshlennosti planiruemoi Vysshim Sovetom Narod-

nogo Khoziaistva Soiuza SSR, na 1927-1928 god,” SZ 20 (1928): 374-80 (art. 180). 24 RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. 1 Protokoly prezidiuma, d. 5132 zasedanie 13 avgusta 1928, “Kontrol’nye tsifry piatiletnego plana promyshlennosti,” Il. 1380b, 1460b-—47 Doklad Mezhlauka i prilozhenie k nemu. *5 See Kuibyshev’s speech to the Third Plenum of All-union VSNKh. TPG, 4 March 1928. *6 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv administrativnykh organov Sverdlovskoi oblasti (hereafter GAAO SO), f. x, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 7504 Delo Gassel’blata, Vitaliia Alekseevicha, |. 34. 27 The first comment was made by N. A. Kovalevskii, a member of the Gosplan department in charge of the regional distribution of industry (raionirovanie). TPG, 5 January 1929. The second comes from an official of the Gosplan industrial section. TPG, 22 January 1929. 28 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv rossiiskoi federatsii (hereafter GARF), f. 5446 SNK i STO SSSR,

op. 55 Sekretariat Rykova, d. 2753 Perepiska po voprosam general'nogo 1 perspektivnogo planov narodnogo khoziaistva, 15 fevralia—30 aprelia 1929, |. 67 Pis'’mo Gartvana Rykovu 22 marta 1929 “Osnovnye cherty piatiletnego plana razvitiia narodnogo khoziaistva po proiektu Gosplana SSSR.”

78 | The Great Urals ners could be extremely harsh. K. G. Sedashev of the Urals Metallurgical Trust quoted his counterpart in GUMP as saying of the trust’s aging plants, “That crap [der’mo] has had its day. Why the hell should I concern myself with them when altogether they produce less... than a single southern metallurgical plant?” ?? Ukrainian officials, particularly the Commission on Metals of Ukrainian Gosplan, worked hard to reinforce the prevailing hostility to the Urals. The —

commission employed a team of specialists under the direction of Ia. B. Dimanshtein which compiled volume after volume of statistical materials “proving,” industry by industry and project by project, the superior efficiency and profitability of Ukrainian projects over projects proposed by the Urals and other regions. The materials were published in relatively small runs, but they were distributed to key officials in VSNKh and Gosplan and quoted frequently at meetings of these organs when the annual control figures and five-year targets were discussed. Ukrainian officials kept a close watch

sion makers in Moscow.*° |

on planning discussions, and took every opportunity to influence top deci-

Confident of their advantage, Ukrainian trusts submitted increasingly

ambitious proposals. The Southern Steel Trust requested investment of a billion rubles in the five-year plan, and a budget of 195 million rubles for the 1928—29 economic year. In contrast, the entire five-year plan of the Urals Metallurgical Trust called for only 327 million rubles.*! Both plans were ini-

tially rejected in June after Sovnarkom set the 1928-29 control figures at 1,560 million rubles—almost seven hundred million rubles less than the sum

of regional proposals. Nevertheless, as in previous years, the preliminary targets came under assault and the figure for total investment began to rise. Ukrainian planners went on the offensive. In September they were pressing to initiate construction of a second giant metallurgical plant in addition to the existing plans for a plant at Krivoi Rog. By early 1929 they had developed plans for a third new plant. Overall proposals for capital investment in the first Ukrainian five-year plan rose from 2.7 billion rubles in November to 4.7 billion in February 1929.72 Meanwhile many Urals projects were in trouble. In the spring of 1929 Gosplan still rejected Uralmet’s plans for

reconstruction on the grounds that they represented “new construction alongside the old and backward plants.” 33 Funding for the Uralmash plant 2? GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, Konstantina Gavrilovicha

OM. Bogushevskii and A. Khavin, “God velikogo pereloma (tysiacha deviat’sot dvadtsat’ deviatyi),” in God deviatnadtsatyi. Almanakh deviatyi, ed. M. Gor'kii et al. (Moscow, 1936), * 31 CASO, f. 94-r Uralmet, op. 1, d. 1049 Protokoly zasedanii planovykh komissii, direktivnye ukazaniia Glavmetalla po sostavleniiu piatiletnego plana razvitiia metallurgicheskoi promyshlennosti, perepiska s Glavmetallom i dr., |. 144 Piatiletnyi plan Uralmeta, iun’ 1928. 32, TPG, 19 September, 10 November, 27 November, 19 February 1928. 33 GASO, f. 94-r Uralmet, op. 1, d. 216 Protokoly zasedanii tekhnicheskoi komissii Glavchermeta i dr., ll. 167-68 Pis’mo Gosplana SSSR v STO, aprel’ 1929.

The Great Urals Plan | 79 was reduced, and the suspension of construction narrowly averted.** Plans

for the metallurgical plant at Magnitogorsk were not approved until the spring of 1929, and construction narrowly missed the budgetary ax a few months later.°° Perhaps the strongest evidence of the center’s prevailing favor for Ukraine

was in the imbalance of investment in the coal industry. In the 1928-29 control figures Ukraine received financing for the construction of seventeen new mines while the Urals received financing for two and Siberia for only one. Without a growing supply of coal for metallurgy, the Urals plans for modernization—the shift from wood-fueled furnaces—were pointless, and a substantial growth of production was impossible. At the Fifth Congress of Gosplan Presidiums in March 1929 the head of the Gosplan commission on the regional distribution of industry told delegates that “the resolution of the issue of shifting industry to the east will be possible only in the course of the third five-year plan.” *° Ukraine’s successes in selling its plans to the center forced the Urals to reconsider its tactics. Since the GOELRO plan Urals officials had justified their proposals with the same basic arguments: the Urals had vast reserves of ores and minerals; it was the logical base from which to industrialize all of nonEuropean Russia and Central Asia; given the vulnerability of Ukraine as a frontier republic, the development of Urals industry was necessary to Soviet defense interests. Urals officials had not seriously occupied themselves with calculating the comparative efficiency of investment in the Urals, but by 1928 perceptions had changed: in a March meeting of the Obkom bureau, party first secretary N. M. Shvernik admitted that “if we do not show that we can improve the efficiency of production, we are certainly doomed [my pogibnem opredelenno].”*” A commission of the Urals executive committee (Oblispolkom), chaired by I. D. Kabakov, was created to undertake an investigation of every branch of Urals industry with the purpose of finding “reserves” of efficiency. In preliminary findings at the end of June, Kabakov concluded that existing Urals plans were too conservative, focused on gradual improvements to existing capital rather than new investment to transform the regional economy.*® Urals planners were sent back to the drawing board. Their new task was to show that the Urals industry could produce faster, cheaper, 34 A. I. Busygin, Pervyi direktor (Sverdlovsk, 1977), p. 64; G. A. Unpelev, Rozhdenie Uralmasha, 1928-1933 g. (Moscow, 1960), p. 24. 35 According to Kuibyshev, the Magnitogorsk plant was saved at a Sovnarkom meeting on budget cuts by a “brilliant” speech of Gassel’blat. RTsSKhIDNI, f. 79 Lichnyi fond V. V. Kuibysheva, op. 1, d. 338 Kopiia stenogrammy zasedaniia partiacheiki VKP(b) OGPU s dokladom V. V. Kuibysheva “O khoziaistvennom polozhenii SSSR,” I. 16. 36 TPG, 15 March 1929. 37 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 6 1928, d. 16 Stenogramma zasedaniia biuro obkoma VKP(b) po itogam raboty promyshlennosti za 1926-27 1 snizheniia sebestoimosti produktsii, 30-31 marta 1928, |. 116. 38 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 6 1928, d. 281 Doklad I. D. Kabakova na zasedanii Oblispolkoma 23 liunia 1928, |. 70; A. A. Popova, “I. D. Kabakova vo glave ural’skoi partiinoi

' organizatsii v bor’be za uskorenie tempov sotsialisticheskoi industrializatsii” in Ural’skie

80 | The Great Urals and in greater volume than other regions of the Soviet Union. It was a formidable task, increasingly demanding and difficult as Ukrainian plans ex-

| panded in the fall. |

The central focus of the revisions was ferrous metallurgy and the Urals Metallurgical Trust. Trust director M. Oshvintsev asserted that current plans were “compiled on the basis of excessively careful, technical calculations which exaggerated costs.” He also pointed out that a much greater impact could be achieved if investment were directed at a smaller number of projects.°? But Oshvintsev and others agreed that the single greatest obstacle to _ the expansion of trust plans was the expense and inconsistency of the sup-

| ply of coal from the Kuznetsk basin in Siberia. The high cost of transporting

Kuznetsk coal over a thousand kilometers to the Urals was well known.

Ia. B. Dimanshtein and the engineers of the Ukrainian metals commission widely publicized it. Equally frustrating was the failure of the Siberian coal industry to keep up with demand from the Urals.*° The Urals needed to find its own local supply. Experiments on local coal had been ongoing for over

a decade, and though the results were still inconclusive, Urals planners , worked on the assumption that suitable supplies would be found. The “excessively careful calculations” of which Oshvintsev had complained were re-

placed with projections of rich imagination: |

If the coal fields of Alapaevsk turn out to be of all-union rather than of local significance, it will create a revolution in the distribution of Soviet ferrous metallurgy such as was brought by the development of coal-fired metallurgy in the

_ South in the 1880s and gos. . . . In such conditions, Urals ferrous metallurgy SO will take over the markets of central Russia and Northwestern oblast’ and in a short period become the predominant producer in the Soviet Union, relegating

the South to second place.*! ,

In the fall and winter of 1928 the Urals Planning Commission was hard at work recalculating plans not only for metallurgy but also for machinebuilding, chemicals, forestry, and railroad construction.42 Commission officials were preparing a plan that would show the superior efficiency of invest-

, ment in the Urals versus other competing regions. They sought to win central investment by promising a higher rate of return—by presenting a bid that offered high production with low investment. Many factory directors and technical specialists were dubious of the emerging plans and angered by parttinaia organizatstia v bor’be za razvitie promyshlennosti, ed. V. N. Zuikov (Sverdlovsk, , 1978), p. 63.

"Ss ve Oshvintsev, “Kapitalnoe stroitel’stvo Uralmeta v 1927-28 godu,” Khoziaitvo Urala

5-6 (1928): IIo. 40 Siberia was anxious to keep a large part of Kuznetsk coal production in order to develop , its own ferrous metal industry. See the comments of V. S. Kornev, the chairman of the Siberian Krai Sovnarkhoz, in TPG, 15 July 1928. 4tN. Berezov, “Ocherednye voprosy piatiletnego plana khoziaitsva Urala,” Khoziaistvo

Urala 10 (1928): iv. .| 42 Tbid., vili-ix.

The Great Urals Plan | 81 the pressures they created to fulfill new, substantially higher targets. But there was also considerable enthusiasm for the plans. In part, it was driven by the fear of being passed over for first five-year investment and being left with a decaying, uncompetitive, and unprofitable industrial economy, and in part by a near blind faith in the Urals potential to become a rich and powerful base of Soviet industry. For many Urals officials the competition with Ukraine was a rallying point; they were prepared to silence opposition to the revision of regional plans if it meant that they could overcome Ukraine and take its place. As interregional competition was reaching its peak of inten-

sity, the tensions between the proponents of high-tempo industrialization and its opponents broke into conflict.

Opposition to High-tempo Industrialization The reconstruction of the Soviet economy following the devastation of war and revolution was a task that had been embraced by party members, economic officials, and nonparty specialists alike. Participation in the restoration of the country’s economic health was above all a patriotic act. How-

ever, the question of how to proceed once prerevolutionary production levels had been achieved was a matter of considerable controversy at every level. How fast could the economy grow? What should be the relationship between agriculture and industry? Was the current economic structure conducive to the construction of socialism? These were the issues over which the Politburo majority had fought with the Left, and they remained unresolved despite a clear victory for the majority. At first, Stalin’s “Socialism in

One Country” was vague and flexible enough to accommodate both increased industrial investment and “equilibrium” with agriculture. But the upward drift of the tempo of industrialization brought existing tensions into sharp relief.

Within the party leadership there was considerable support for testing the upper limits of investment and growth, but there. was also concern for the potentially disruptive effects of an overaggressive industrialization program—in particular the danger of a break with the peasantry. Party leaders were at pains to maintain an ambiguous policy position and avoid another open conflict on the heels of the battle with the Left. The Central Committee lent its approval to substantial increases in investment in heavy industry, while at the same time stressing the continuing necessity of economic equilibrium.*? However, shortly after the Fifteenth Party Congress of December

1927 had confirmed the standing ambiguities, the grain collections crisis 43 “Direktivy k sostavleniiu piatiletnego plana narodnogo khoziaistva (Tezisy, odobrennye ob”edinennym plenumom TsK i TsKK VKP(b) 23 oktiabria 1927 goda),” KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 4: 219-23; these theses were approved virtually unchanged by the Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927.

82 | The Great Urals | brought the issue back to the political center stage. As the peasantry withheld grain, the party leadership had to decide whether to slow the tempo of

, industrialization and transfer financing to agriculture in order to ease the crisis. The decision to adopt “emergency measures” forcing the peasants to part with their production was initiated by Stalin and supported by the proponents of rapid industrialization. But no decision was made as to how long the measures would be maintained. As industry continued to expand, so did

, — the resolve to sustain its momentum. Within the central economic and planning organs the tempo of industrialization was the subject of ever sharper conflicts. VSNKh continued to be the most ambitious planner, while Gosplan, NKFin, and NKZem fought to restrain tempos—each group convinced of the dire economic consequences of a failure to accept its plans. At the same time, a more important set of conflicts was emerging within each of these organs. The debates had evinced a division between nonparty specialists and their party colleagues, between “bourgeois” specialists and their soviet-trained counterparts. Even within VSNKh the two sides began to view one another with hostility. The divisions were not absolute, or even particularly clear. But primarily they lay between those embued with the Bolshevik transformationalist spirit—the sense that the Soviet system created new rules and new opportunities, that there were ~ “no fortresses which Bolsheviks could not storm”—and those whose training and experience made them suspicious of plans based on anything but careful calculation or practice. Urals party leaders were absorbed with the task of maximizing industrial investment and growth, but they could not agree on how far or how fast to proceed. They disagreed about how ambitious their plans could be, how hard they could push the center for investment, and how hard they could push local trusts and enterprises to produce. The steady advance of Ukraine’s ambitions and the danger of being passed over for five-year investment lent new urgency to the issue. Members of the Obkom lost patience with any hesitation to meet the Ukrainian threat head-on. In the course of 1927 and 1928 Urals Obkom first secretary N. M. Shvernik developed a reputation as a “helpless and characterless figure” who was not doing enough to promote regional interests.44 On these grounds his position was twice challenged

from within the Obkom. On the first occasion, in February 1928, an attempted “putsch” by Oblispolkom chairman F. I. Lokatskov, Perm’ Okruzhkom secretary K. V. Ryndin, and others was put down and the instigators removed by the Central Committee at the request of the Obkom.*> On the second occasion, in January 1929, Shvernik was successfully deposed by the 44 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, Ivana Dmitrievicha, Il. 37, 38.1. D. Kabakov, who replaced Shvernik as Obkom first secretary in January 1929, suggested that this opinion was commonly held by “native Urals workers” in the party. 45 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 6 1928, d. 70 Politicheskie svodki obkoma VKP(b) 0 bor’be

s oppozitsiei, ll. 86-92. This matter was not connected to the “opposition” factions, but was

referred to, rather, as a “group struggle with the Obkom.”

The Great Urals Plan | 83 new Oblispolkom chairman I. D. Kabakov, his assistant P. T. Zubarev, and a group of “native Urals workers” in the Obkom.*® Regional economic officials were also divided on the desired rate of industrial growth. Enterprise directors were not opposed to high tempos, but many were disturbed by the accompanying pressures on their performance.

| There was little resistance to the demand that their enterprises make a profit, but demands for increased efficiency were another matter. The directors un-

derstood that “rationalization” and reductions in production costs could create new funds for investment, but they generally needed the investment first in order to improve efficiency. They insisted that efficiency targets could be met only by reducing workers’ wages or by dangerously straining the ex-

isting capital.4” Many enterprise directors either refused to respond to the new demands, or faked improvements in efficiency in their quarterly and annual reports.*8 Others, such as A. P. Bannikov, director of Uralmashinostrol, accepted the efficiency targets, proposed ambitious plans, and openly called for the resignations of those who resisted high tempos.*? “Bourgeois” specialists, both in the center and in the regions, were perhaps those most troubled by the demands for improved efficiency and the sudden acceleration of industrialization. Many specialists who had been committed to the tasks of reconstruction were highly skeptical of the emerging economic policies. Nothing in their experience or education suggested that Soviet industry could by means of increased efficiency internally generate the financ-

ing necessary to maintain colossal rates of growth. As the question of sustaining growth rates became a matter of blinkered determination for many Bolsheviks, some specialists found themselves unable, or unwilling, to fulfill their roles. According to M. A. Solovov, a “bourgeois” specialist and chairman of the Uralplan industrial section, 1926-27 was a decisive year dividing two completely different periods of construction—in the past, the period of reconstruction on the old, still persisting 46 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, Ivana Dmitrievicha, ll. 37, 38.

47 See, e.g., a letter from M. Oshvinstev, Urals Metallurgical Trust chairman, and V. A. Andronnikov, ObISNKh chairman, to V. I. Mezhlauk, head of Glavmetall VSNKh SSSR, 3 October 1927. GASO, f. 94 Uralmet, op. 4, d. 9 Perepiska predsedatelia Pravleniia Uralmeta s Glavmetallom i promyshlennymi predpriiatiiami o finansirovanii i stroitel’stve zavodov, ll. 2-3. 48 With the help of the enterprise accountant, faking improvements in production efficiency was relatively straightforward. Expenditures on wages and material inputs were underreported,

while expenditures in other categories such as capital construction and repair were overreported. While lending the impression of advances in efficiency, the shift in real expenditures away from improvements to the underlying capital made factual advances in efficiency more difficult. TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 6 1928, d. 16 Stenogramma zasedaniia biuro Obkoma VKP(b) po itogam raboty promyshlennosti za 1926 —27 gg. isnizhenii sebestoimosti produktsii, 30-31 marta 1928 g., 1. 108. Obkom first secretary N. M. Shvernik referred to such fakery as “whiteguardism [belogvardeishchina].” For evidence of open refusals to meet Obkom demands, see the February 1928 report of an Obkom instructor on the fulfillment of Obkom targets for

the reduction of production costs. TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 6 1928, d. 103 Informatsiia Permskogo Okruzhkoma o proverke partiinykh reshenii, ll. 104-9. 49 Busygin, Pervyi direktor, p. 67; Unpelev, Rozhdenie Uralmasha, pp. 24-26.

| 84 | The Great Urals | capitalist principles, and in the future, socialist construction. The old special- , ists, who had gained a sense of comfort with their conditions and with Soviet power, found themselves in a dead-end, unable to use their technical knowledge in the new context, with a different ideology. This marked the beginning of dissension and collapse [razlad i raspad]. Specialists became disoriented in the [new] industrial economy, both as managers [rukovoditeli] and planners.°°

Among “bourgeois” specialists, enthusiasts of rapid industrialization such |

as V. A. Gassel’blat, a graduate of the Swedish Upper Mining School (1909) and technical director of Magnitostroi, were in the minority.>! In _ Gassel’blat’s words, “the majority of specialists —75 percent—are scared, and follow the path of least resistance.” *? Others, particularly those with © the strongest qualifications and experience under the old regime, such as

V. P. Krapivin, technical director of the Urals Metallurgical Trust, scarcely | restrained their scorn for ambitious local plans and those who supported them.»*?

By the middle of the 1926-27 economic year it was clear that production costs were rising and that VSNKh’s target of a 5.6-percent reduction of costs would not be met. The resistance of enterprise officials to the targets was no secret to the regional party leadership. The Obkom bureau raised the possibility of firing those responsible for the poor results. In early March 1927 it ordered the Oblast’ SNKh to “make recommendations on necessary per- _ sonnel changes among the administrators of trusts and the directors of factories giving the worst results [in reducing costs].”°* But regional economic officials were able to convince the Obkom that firings would only make matters worse, and there is no evidence that any immediate punitive action was

taken. The Urals was already desperately short of capable economic admin- | - istrators and it was unlikely that new cadres would make a positive difference.*> Obkom first secretary Shvernik agreed with ObISNKh chairman

- I4.

V. N. Andronnikov, Urals Metallurgical Trust chairman M. Oshvintsev, and others that existing enterprise officials should be protected, but he insisted on stepping up the oversight of the fulfillment of efficiency targets by local

, (okrug and raion) party organs and trade unions. A minority of Obkom members supported harsher measures.°°

; °° GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 7504 Delo Solovova, Mikhaila Aleksandrovicha, i M. E. Glavatskii and V. G. Chufarov, eds., Dela i sud’by: nauchno-tekhnicheskaia intelligentsiia Urala v 20-e—30-e gody (Ekaterinburg, 1993), p. 16. 52 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 6 1928, d. 85 Soveshchanie ITR pri Obkome, 1.21. 53 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 7504 Delo Gassel’blata, Vitalliia Alekseevicha, |. 44.

*4TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 5 1927, d. ro Protokoly biuro Obkoma 1927, |. 42 Zasedanie biuro Obkoma 7 marta 1927, “O finansovykh rezul'tatakh raboty promyshlennosti.” 55 A presentation to this effect had been made to the Obkom in mid-February 1927. TsDOO

SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 5 1927, d. 10 Protokoly biuro Obkoma 1927, |. 25 Zasedanie biuro Obkoma 11 fevralia 1927, “O sostoianii rukovodiashchikh kadrov promyshlennosti.” 56 See, e.g., TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 6 1928, d. 16 Stenogramma zasedaniia biuro Obkoma VKP(b) po itogam raboty promyshlennosti za 1926-27 gg. i snizhenii sebestoimosti

produktsii, 30-31 marta 1928, Il. 104-8 rech’ tov. Shvernika. , ,

The Great Urals Plan | 85 By April 1927 central organs had taken an active interest in local resistance to efficiency targets. The Obkom received a letter from the Central Committee Information Department requesting information on “incidents of opposition to rationalization and [the region’s] methods of struggling with

it.”°” As in the Urals oblast’, some members of the central leadership took a dark view of local resistance. That same month, the political police took a newly active interest in “sabotage” at the factory. It is unclear on whose initiative the OGPU was drawn into the matter,**® but on April 7 a letter sent to

okrug leaders warned that |

a sudden increase of accidents, explosions, and fires at enterprises and construction sites of all-union significance has been observed. . . . Investigations of a large number of cases have established that these incidents are the result of: (1) the wrecking activity of foreign spies [inostranrazvedok] of hostile governments and counterrevolutionary organizations directed toward the destruction of the most

important industrial organisms [organizmov] in order to undermine the military, economic and political might of the Soviet government; (2) the impermissible lack of attention on the part of the leading personnel of enterprises to the question of security and the failure to take preventive measures... . Taking into

account the seriousness of the situation, the organs of the OGPU have been given a broader range of powers, including both the defense of the enterprises themselves and punitive functions. ... The organs of the OGPU have been given directives to remove from all the most important state enterprises and construction sites politically unreliable elements as well as foreign turncoats [perebezhchikov], former white guardists, re-

turned emigrants, and others. ... From now on, any negligence as a result of which any significant accident occurs will be viewed as a counterrevolutionary crime.>*?

This letter was relayed “to all secretaries of okrug party committees, chair-

men of okrug executive committees, and chairmen of okrug trade union

councils” by F. I. Lokatskov, the chairman of the Urals Oblast’ Executive | Committee, and two other members of the Urals Obkom. As mentioned above, Lokatskov was one of the hard-liners who attempted to oust first secretary Shvernik from the Obkom in February 1928. Lokatskov led an oblast’ commission on cost reductions in industry, and he used this position to pressure okrug officials to get results from the factories “at all costs.” © In

the months that followed, attacks on directors and technical specialists in- | 57 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 5 1927, d. 34 Perepiska s Tsentral’nym komitetom o bor'be S oppozitsiei, |. 64. ‘8 The protocols of Central Committee organs, including the Politburo and the Secretariat, were not helpful in this regard. 5° TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 5 1927, d. 34 Perepiska s Tsentral’nym komitetom o bor’be S oppozitsiel, |. 55.

60 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 5 1927, d. ro Protokoly biuro Obkoma, Il. 9, 53, 107-9, 339, 364. These are all resolutions of the commission critical of okrug party committees for their failure to ensure reductions in production costs.

86 | The Great Urals creased. There were no arrests or accusations of “counterrevolutionary activity,” but acts of intimidation were common. Particularly in cases where efficiency targets were substantially underfulfilled, okrug and raion leaders commonly accused factory officials of resisting directives or labeled them as incompetents and took measures to fire them.*! As yet, the OGPU was not playing an especially large role.° Both in Moscow and in the Urals, the voices calling for repression of directors and technical specialists remained in the minority. In the summer of | 1927, when the central leadership discussed the issue of resistance to improving efficiency, there was no talk of repression. Rather, the leadership proposed the steady replacement of “backward” and “incompetent” factory

officials with “qualified party members”: ,

The realization of the tasks put forward by the party in socialist rationalization and the reconstruction of production requires new expertise and effort. Experience has shown that many economic managers [khoziaistvenniki] have proven to be insufficiently prepared for the new demands despite considerable organi-

zational and practical successes in the period of restoration. 7 | There have been many cases of significant errors in capital construction, in. excessive construction expenditures, weak and incompetent use of foreign technologies, delays in the reduction of production costs, inadequate attention to

the rationalization of production, and so on.... ,

Though the most advanced and [politically] conscious element among special- —

ists has been actively drawn into socialist economic construction, the conservatism, the backward production methods and skills, and inadequate theoretical ' preparation of a significant part of the corpus of old specialists has complicated and slowed work on rationalization. The situation demands an immediate increase in the number of young specialists, graduates of Soviet institutes [VUZy] and the creation of a new cadre of

builders of socialist industry.® ,

Aside from expanding training programs for specialists, the first concrete action taken by the center to promote soviet-trained party specialists was not on the enterprise level, but rather in central planning organs. Serious conflicts had emerged among planning organs over the five-year plan and the 61 See, e.g., GASO, f. 94-r Uralmet, op. 4 1926, d. 9 Perepiska predsedatelia Pravleniia Ural-

, meta s Glavmetallom i promyshlennymi predpriiatiiami o finansirovanii i stroitel’stve zavodov, ll. 3, 10, 13, 20, 38, 54, 80-87, 109, 112-16. 62 In June 1927 a regional OGPU plenipotentiary requested an increase in the number of enterprises under the “protection” of the OGPU, but his officers rarely participated in the intimidation of factory officials. TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 5 1927, d. 10 Protokoly biuro

Obkoma, |. 99. , | oe

63 The issue was first discussed in the Central Committee Orgbiuro on 29 August 1927, and the resolution was passed in early March 1928. RIsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 113 Organizatsionnoe biuro i Sekretariat TsK, d. 602 Protokol zasedaniia Orgbiuro, Il. 2329 Proekt rezoliutsii po dokladu na Orgbiuro o proverke sostava rabotnikov predpriiatii i

trestov v tseliakh ikh ukrepleniia 1 podgotovki novykh kadrov. |

The Great Urals Plan | 87 control figures for 1927-28. By October the VSNKh had substantially revised upward its five-year plan on the basis of optimistic cost-reduction calculations. NKFin was solidly opposed to the VSNKh plan and Gosplan was divided. Many old specialists warned that VSNKh’s tempos would have disastrous consequences for the economy. Others, such as S. G. Strumilin of Gosplan, argued that “‘armchair scholars’ often neglected the ‘collective will of the producers’ as a factor in the economy; the job of the planner was to mold this collective will.” °* That fall, the Politburo and Secretariat had begun to take measures to limit the influence of these old specialists by expanding the number of party specialists in VSNKh, Gosplan, and NKFin.® Factory officials in the Urals still received considerable protection despite poor results on efficiency targets. Trust directors such as Oshvintsev of the Urals Metallurgical Trust retained their staffs of enterprise directors and specialists despite attacks from okrug party organs and from workers. In cases where tensions at the factory had undermined the authority of its administration, directors and specialists were generally transferred to similar posts in other factories within the trust.°° However, Shvernik’s “soft line” was being subjected to increasing criticism from within the Obkom. Continued failure to meet cost-reduction targets was becoming a threat to the Urals’ long-term construction plans. At.a meeting of the Central Committee Secretariat in early 1928 the first secretary of the Sverdlovsk okrug party committee was asked to explain the region’s underfulfillment. Leading economic officials in attendance, including S. V. Kosior of All-union VSNKh and S. S. Lobov of VSNKh RSFSR, warned him that the hundred and forty mil-

lion rubles which had been invested in the Urals to date had “not provided the necessary effect.” Inadequate production could not continue, they said, if the Urals expected to receive further increases of investment from the center.®” In an attempt to capitalize on the growing nervousness within the oblast’ leadership about the future of the Urals plans, Oblast’ Executive Committee chairman Lokatskov and several okruzhkom secretaries tried to oust Shvernik from the Obkom. Shvernik, however, was able to rally his own supporters and survive the challenge, and within a matter of days, by “a joint decision of the Central Committee and the Obkom bureau,” Lokatskov and 64 Quoted in Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 792. 65 RT'sKhIDNI f.17 Tsentral/nyi komitet op. 113 Organizatsionnyi biuro i Sekretariata TsK d. 603 Protokol zasedaniia Sekretariata TsK VKP(b) |. 1 Ob usileni planiruiushchikh organov otvetsvennymi rabotnikami kommunistam1. 66 In a letter to Glavmetall director V. I. Mezhlauk dated 3 October 1927, Oshvintsev argued that attacks on factory officials had become the greatest obstacle to improvements in efficiency. Specialists and directors were afraid to take on the risks associated with introducing new equipment and other measures of “rationalization” for fear of denunciation (shel’movanie). GASO, f. 94-r Uralmet, op. 4, d. 9 Perepiska predsedatelia Pravleniia Uralmeta s Glavmetallom 1 promyshlennymi predpriiatiiami o finansirovanii i stroitel’stve zavodoy, Il. 2-3. 67 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 113 Organizatsionnoe biuro i Sekretariat

TsK, d. 605 Protokol zasedaniia Orgbiuro TsK VKP(b), 13 marta 1928, ll. 16-76 Stenogramma zasedaniia: doklad Sverdlovskogo okruzhkoma (tov. Shipov).

88 | The Great Urals the okruzhkom secretaries were removed from their jobs in the region for

“leading a group struggle against the Obkom.”°° — a , ,

The tensions within the Urals Obkom paralleled tensions in the center, where a substantial group were not satisfied with the actions taken to break resistance to cost-cutting targets and to high-tempo industrialization generally. In early 1928 Stalin decided to throw his support behind those who promoted harsher measures against this resistance. In February Stalin had received a letter from the Azovo-Chernomorskii krai alleging a criminal conspiracy of pre-Revolutionary specialists in the coal industry of the Donets basin (Donbas) to disrupt the Soviet fuel supply on behalf of foreign interests. After the letter was presented to the Politburo and discussed with members of the OGPU (N. M. Ianson and V. R. Menzhinskii), a top-level delegation including Politburo members M. P. Tomsky, V. M. Molotov and Central

Control Commission chairman E. Jaroslavskii was sent to the Donbas “to acquaint themselves with the local situation, evaluate the work of trade union, party, economic, and other organizations and make recommendations for practical measures which can form the basis for the work of a Polit-

| buro commission.” ©? The initial letter and the documents of the Politburo | commission are still held in closed archives, but the primary recommenda- tion of the commission is well known: the organization of a show trial of preRevolutionary specialists, the Shakhty trial. At the beginning of April a Central Committee plenum met to discuss the Shakhty affair. The plenum showed the continuing division of opinion on economic policy. In a speech introducing the issue, A. I. Rykov observed that | “since the conspiracy was uncovered, some party comrades have thought

that the affair was blown out of proportion [slozhilos’ ubezhdenie ob iskus- , stvennom ‘razduvanii’ etogo dela].” Rykov insisted that the investigation : was making it clear that the seriousness of the conspiracy was, if anything,

initially underestimated. Rykov outlined the “anti-Soviet” activities of the | Donbas specialists: “(1) delaying the effects of investment, (2) drawing attention away from the potentially most productive objects of investment, (3) hindering planning, (4) ordering expensive equipment which could not be used, and (5) directing vast expenditures on shallow mines which produced no results.” According to Rykov, these activities were part of “an attempt to create a fuel crisis in the USSR.” ”° In the course of the subsequent speeches, delegates including A. A. Zhdanov of Nizhnyi Novgorod and A. A. 68 RITsKhIDNL, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 3 Protokoly Politbiuro, d. 676 Protokoly #13, 14 (7, 8 marta 1928) |. 5 Ob otozvanii s Urala tt. Lokatskova i Ryndina. See also TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 6 1928, d. 70 Politicheskie svodki obkoma VKP(b), ll. 86-92. 6° RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 3 Protokoly Politbiuro, d. 676 Protokol #14, 7 marta 1928, |. 22 Ob ekonomicheskoi kontrrevoliutsii v iuzhnykh raionakh ugol’noi promy-

shlennosti; d. 677 Protokol #23, 15 marta 1928, same title.

7 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 344 Stenogramma plenuma TsK i TsKK, 6-11 aprelia 1928, “O prakticheskikh meropriiatiiakh po likvidatsii nedostatkov obnaruzhennykh v sviazi s Shakhtinskim delom,” t. 1, Il. 2, 3, 5.

The Great Urals Plan | 89 Andreev of the North Caucasus enthusiastically agreed that there were counterrevolutionary elements among their economic managers. They cited local investigations which “established” that incidents of “mismanagement and resistance to cost-cutting measures” were directly related to the “accumulation of obviously white-guardist elements” among managers.’! It was convenient for local leaders to blame “wreckers” for poor economic results in their regions.’”” Other delegates, including K. V. Sukhomlin of Ukraine and M. Oshvintsev of the Urals, warned about the dangers of whipping up hostility to managers. Sukhomlin suggested that creating a political campaign on the Shakhty issue could “bring harm, make matters worse.” 7? Oshvintsev agreed, explaining that many managers were already so frightened that they spent much of their time getting written approval of all their actions and had little time left to oversee production.”* The plenum ended in a stalemate between the advocates of repressive action against pre-Revolutionary specialists and nonparty managers and those who sought to prevent a campaign against them. Despite Stalin’s open advocacy of a “class struggle” of old and new economic officials,” the resolutions of the plenum showed clear evidence of a compromise between the conflicting groups in the leadership: A review of the facts of the Shakhty affair sharply underlines the necessity of improving the use of specialists of science and technology in industry, transport, and so on. For this, it is particularly important to strengthen the oversight of their work and set strict responsibility for tasks assigned to them and also to show continual concern to establish favorable conditions for their work. While mercilessly punishing malicious saboteurs and wreckers, it is necessary to improve the working conditions of the vast majority of honest and devoted specialists.”6

The resolutions neither afforded protection for managers and specialists nor signaled an attack. Party leaders in the regions were essentially free to proceed as they saw fit. Consequently, existing tensions went unresolved. Conflict in the Urals over the tempo of industrialization intensified during 71 Thid., ll. 82-85 (Zhdanov), 133-38 (Andreev). 72§, Ordzhonikidze of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (RKI) specifically observed this in his speech. On the subject of poor economic results he said, “I must say here, comrades, that you should blame yourselves more, and not the managers.” RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 347 Stenogramma Plenuma TsK i TsKK, 6-11 aprelia 1928, t. 4, I. 212. 73 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 344 Stenogramma Plenuma TsK i TsKK, 6-11 aprelia 1928, t. 1, |. 21. 4 Thid., |. 122. 75 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 347 Stenogramma Plenuma TsK i TsKK, 6-11 aprelia 1928, t. 4, ll. 34-35. Stalin was effusive in his praise of Andreev’s “truly revolutionary speech.” He insisted that “we must arm new specialists in such a way that they will be certainly victorious in a struggle with old specialists.” 76The number of party members among economic managers was also to be rapidly increased. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 4: 328.

90 | The Great Urals 1928. The need for dramatic action was apparent, as it was generally perceived that the majority of new investment was going to Ukraine. An article . in the VSNKh newspaper had observed that with projected investment of over one hundred million rubles in the Southern Steel Trust, Ukraine could significantly expand production, but that projected investment of fifty million rubles in the Urals might not prevent production there from shrinking.”’ In order to avoid losing projects to Ukraine and other regions, Urals leaders increasingly felt the need to show that regional industry could provide a higher rate of return. They had hesitated to pressure local managers and planners to revise their plans, but as Ukrainian industry advanced, the mood began to change. In the fall of 1928, in connection with an investigation of wrecking in the gold and platinum industries in the USSR, the Urals OGPU uncovered a local group of “counterrevolutionary specialists.” ”® The new Oblast’ Executive Committee chairman I. D. Kabakov, among others in the Urals leadership, made much of the discovery—which came to be known as the “Uralplatina

affair.” At the November 1928 Central Committee plenum Kabakov announced that documents found on local specialists—geologists—showed they had long masked reserves not only of gold and platinum, but also of coal and ores.”? The Urals State Geological Surveying Administration (UGGRU) became a special target for political pressure from the Obkom. Urals geologists were told to find new reserves of metals, ores, and especially cokeable coal in an extremely short period. Significant proven deposits had

the potential to substantially reduce the cost of metal production by reducing or even eliminating the need to import coal from Siberia. Senior geologists scoffed at the demands. M. S. Volkov, the technical director of UGGRU,

later described his senior colleagues as scholars with their own research agendas, unhappy being compelled to serve the immediate needs of indus-try. They were most offended by the demands for immediate results. They knew that surveying the requested areas would require much more financ-

ing, cadres, and time than they were given, and they were quick to call the , new tasks “impossible” and “absurd.” 8° The Obkom was equally quick to

respond. It replaced the administration of UGGRU with party members, . and encouraged the soviet-trained geologists to criticize their bosses. Shortly thereafter, the new UGGRU administration removed senior geologist D. F. Murashev for submitting an article to the press suggesting that Urals copper

| reserves were “exaggerated.” Administration officials accused him of “attempting to discredit the Urals as a powerful base for the Soviet copper industry.” The Obkom had made it clear that giant new finds would be re-

77 TPG, 7 July 1928. a

78 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. K-12238 O kontr-revoliutsionnoi vreditel’skoi or-

ganizatsii v zoloto-platinovoi promyshlennosti SSSR. .

79 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 385 Stenogramma plenuma

Tsentral’nogo Komiteta, 16-24 noiabria 1928, t. 4, ll. 144-45. !

80 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 43927 Delo Volkova, Mikhaila Semenovicha, |. 64.

The Great Urals Plan | 91 warded. Anything else would be viewed as an attempt to “reduce the Urals to the status of a second-rate mining center in the USSR.” ®! The Uralplatina affair was the most important, but not the only case used by members of the Obkom to put upward pressure on regional plans. In the fall, incidents of open resistance to high tempos were the subjects of trials in many of the Urals’ main industrial districts, including Kushva, Bakal, Solikamsk, and Zlatoust.82 Many of those who opposed existing efficiency targets or disputed the realism of targets for industrial growth were intimidated into silence. V. P. Krapivin, the technical director of the Urals Metallurgical Trust, promoted the plans of the trust before central organs despite his firm conviction that the construction schedules and advances in efficiency which they projected were exaggerated.®? The aftershocks of the Shakhty affair appear to have had similar effects throughout the Soviet Union. M. A. Solovov, a prominent specialist in the Urals Planning Commission, later recounted how he had “felt the general lack of faith in the tempos of the five-year plan in the corridors of the [April 1928] Gosplan Congress.” He remarked on the “bravery” of I. A. Kalinnikov, his counterpart in Gosplan, in approaching him to discuss the dangers of the plans under consideration.*4 But they were no longer prepared to voice their concerns in public forums. As resistance to high-tempo industrialization was weakened, construction and production targets and the calculations on which they were based became ever more ambitious. Despite the fact that the target for the reduction of industrial costs was not met in 1927-28, it was initially raised 7 percent for production and 15 percent for construction in the 1928-29 economic year. It was estimated that the reduction of production costs would provide an extra seven hundred million rubles of industrial investment in the upcoming year. Capital expenditures were set at 1.66 billion rubles, or approximately 340 million more than in the previous year.®* Further expansion of investment and growth was opposed within the Politburo, and by NKFin, NKZem, and Gosplan, but a considerable body of opinion within the center and the regions insisted that the increases were still insufficient. In the fall of 1928 tensions over the tempo of industrialization broke into conflict in the center, and this time specialists and managers were not used as proxies. At the end of September, Politburo member N. I. Bukharin published his “Notes of an Economist” in Pravda, warning of the potential dangers to economic equilibrium presented by the control figures.*° Less than two weeks later, at a Gosplan congress, Gosplan chairman G. M. Krzhizhanovskii 81 Tbid., ll. 7, 23-25, 64. 82 Ural ‘skit rabochii, 1 September, 23 October, 1928.

83 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 7504 Delo Solovova, Mikhaila Aleksandrovicha

ll. 66-67. 84 Thid., ll. 19-20.

85 See A. I. Rykov’s speech “On the Control Figures for 1928-29” to the November 1928 Central Committee plenum. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 377

Stenogramma plenuma Tsentral’nogo komiteta, 16—24 noiabria 1928, ll. 19-20. |

86 Pravda, 30 September 1928. |

92 | The Great Urals accused VSNKh planning officials of having “lost their feeling for reality.” VSNKh officials responded with criticism of Gosplan’s “vulgar realism.” 8”

: Meanwhile, in the regions there was a sense of desperation about the control figures. The figures for 1928—29 were to constitute the first year of the

| five-year plan. Failure to establish a favorable relative share of investment in the 1928-29 figures could undermine a region’s ambitions for a much

| longer period. Thus tensions in the regions were also driven to a head. In mid-October, probably on Stalin’s initiative, the press began to print articles warning of a “Right deviation” in the Party. At the November Central _ Committee plenum, Sovnarkom chairman Rykov, in his opening speech, at-

tempted to smooth over differences of opinion. He admitted that the control figures had left a “huge mass of unsatisfied demands,” but he argued against “creating a fetish for tempos,” as the economy could not sustain a consistent _ _ growth of tempos, or even the maintainance of the existing rates of growth. He agreed that the “Right deviation” in the party constituted cowardice before the tasks presented in the plan, but he insisted that it was necessary to

struggle with it “on an ideological level” and not by means of expulsion from the party.®® Nevertheless, many delegates from both the regions and the

center insisted on higher tempos and a much harder line on the “Right dan- | ger.” They took the podium with criticism of inadequate funding for proj-

] ects under their jurisdiction, tempos had to be raised, and those who opposed them removed from the party.®? Again, the Central Committee issued

a compromise resolution: : While leading a decisive struggle against all deviations, particularly underlining the necessity of an ideological struggle with the Right danger at the current moment... the Central Committee plenum draws the attention of the whole party

, to the necessity of a thoughtful, and not clamorous, discussion of the issues of economic construction, which will demand a sober Bolshevik analysis of the whole situation, without any smoothing over of difficulties or . . . panicked ex-

aggeration of dangers.” a . |

As in April, on the Shakhty issue, Moscow did not resolve ongoing conflicts

but rather gave room for them to be played out. | |

, The pressure on Urals geologists was the only first step in the “radicalization” of the Urals party leadership. Through the fall of 1928, concern to protect managers and specialists faded as the leadership was gripped with

87 Quotes from Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 321-22. | 88 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 377 Stenogramma plenuma ,

Tsentral’nogo komiteta, 16-24 noiabria 1928, ll. 23-24, 63-64. , :

8° RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 381 Stenogramma plenuma

Tsentral’nogo komiteta, 16-24 noiabria 1928. See, e.g., the speeches of R. I. Eikhe (Siberia) | oe chap. 1, |. 15; F. I. Goloshcheikin (Kazakhstan) chap. 1, ll. 25-26; V. Ia. Chubar’ (Ukraine) cna. - I 2, ° 1. 54; S. I. Syrtsov (Siberia) chap. 2, 1. 128; M. M. Khataevich (Middle Volga) chap. 2, |

a KPSS v rezoliutsiiakk, 4: 382-83. : | |

The Great Urals Plan | 93 fear over losing investment to Ukraine. The regional leaders increasingly supported pressuring enterprises to substantially revise their plans. I. D. ©

: Kabakov, an Obkom bureau member, led this shift, in the face of opposition from first secretary N. M. Shvernik. Kabakov later recounted that, with the help of his first assistant in the Oblast’ Executive Committee, P. T. Zubarev, he was able to build a “solid core of support” of the Obkom and

| Obkom bureau among the “native Urals workers.” ?! Kabakov then began to contradict Shvernik at Obkom meetings, at first on minor matters, then directly on the question of tempos. By the winter of 1928—29, Shvernik was consistently left in the minority in Obkom votes.”? In mid-January the final conflict was provoked over the issue of the expansion of plans for the Urals Metallurgical Trust. Shvernik was accused of failing to lead the struggle against the “Right danger,” that is, against factory-level resistance to expansion, and the Obkom bureau requested his removal as first secretary.” The Politburo accepted the request, naming Kabakov first secretary and Zubarev second secretary. A week and a half later the Urals issued a revised version of its five-year plan which doubled targets for investment, construction, and production.”* On the Offensive By 1929 the campaign against the “Right danger” was gaining momentum, and five-year-plan targets were being upwardly revised both in Moscow and the Urals. And yet it was still far from clear whether Moscow would ultimately agree to build a second metallurgical base in the east. When Kabakov was named first secretary, Urals plans underwent massive changes, and con-

sequently were vague and often confused. New opposition to the plans emerged, not only to their increased ambitiousness but to their instability. Neither managers nor planners could do their work without a commonly

: accepted set of targets. Furthermore, the Urals was not alone in revising its plans. All regions were increasing their demands on central investment, including Ukraine. For four months, beginning in January, Gosplan was reviewing the five-year plan in its “regional breakdown [v raionnom razreze].” It had to decide among the competing regional proposals before the Congress of Soviets was to “confirm” the plan in May. The new Urals leaders were unambiguous in their demands for immediate action and their intolerance of opposition to tempos. New plans had to be °1 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, Ivana Dmitrievicha, t. 1 ll. 37-38.

% Tbid., 1. 37. : 3 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 6 1928, d. 9 Stenogramma zasedaniia biuro Obkoma,

11 January 1929; GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, Ivana Dmitrievicha, t. 1, |. 37. 7 : °4 TPG, 22 January 1929.

94 | The Great Urals prepared in the upcoming weeks for presentation to Gosplan. The center’s response could affect the Urals’ fate for the years to come. At the January 1929 Obkom plenum, Kabakov rallied oblast’ leaders to the task by quoting extensively from the current version of the Ukrainian five-year proposals: al- _ most five billion rubles in investment, a projected increase of pig iron produc-

tion to 6.6 million tons annually, a decrease in production costs of 30 percent.?> Like a coach addressing his squad of underdogs in the locker room

before the big game, he told them that though their competitors thought a lot of themselves, Urals leaders had it in them to win. L. E. Gol'dich, the Urals Planning Commission chairman, told them what awaited them if they

did not play along: , ,

We have achieved some recognition of the necessity of promoting Urals issues

and accelerating the development of the Urals economy. All that comrade Kabakov has quoted you from the Ukrainian five-year plan better than anything else confirms that we have not yet achieved decisive results. . . . There is only one solution—to push forward and overcome these difficulties at any

doesn’t spin.”°

costs... . And if anyone announces that we need to slow down a bit because his head is spinning—then we'll have to replace him with someone whose head

This time they knew they would be fired— or worse—and not merely moved to another position. Ukraine and the other regions were nevertheless not the chief worry. On 21 January B. V. Didkovskii, the assistant chairman of the Urals Planning Commission, presented the outlines of the Urals proposals for the first five-

year plan to the Presidium of Gosplan. The response was cool. Speakers from various subdepartments of Gosplan questioned basic elements of the proposals. Plans for the reconstruction of the Urals Metallurgical Trust were unfavorably compared to plans for new construction in other regions. Some of the Urals plans for new construction were deemed premature. A member of the Gosplan industrial section (promsektsiia) suggested that “the time had not yet come for such a sharp increase [dlia takogo rezkogo forsirovaniia] in the growth of Urals industry.” ?” Four days later, R. Gartvan, a senior specialist in Gosplan, published an article in the central industrial press calling into question the Urals’ ability to realize the plans it had presented, particularly with respect to the reconstruction of metallurgical plants.98 But all was _ not yet lost. Urals planners were told to further develop their ideas and present them to the ongoing sessions of the Gosplan Commission on Long-Term

Planning. , ?5 TPG, 19 February 1929.

varia 1929 g., Il. 318-19. }

°6 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 7 1929, d. 7 Stenogramma plenuma Obkoma VKP(b), ian?7 TPG, 22 January 1929. °8 TPG, 25 January 1929.

The Great Urals Plan | 95 The Urals was not the only region to face hostility in the center. Senior officials in Gosplan were angered by the grandiose pretensions of several regions. As targets for the all-union five-year plan were rising, many regions were scrambling to increase their share of investment and construction. In February, N. Gorbunov, a member of the Gosplan Presidium, wrote a letter of complaint to A. I. Rykov, the chairman of Sovnarkom: In Gosplan, there is a well-known case in which one region rewrote its five-year plan several times in the course of a short period of time. It did so not because it had found new internal reserves, or new potential, but because its representatives, having arrived in Moscow with prepared five-year-plan proposals, discovered that all-union tempos and capital construction had risen and they did not want to lag behind the rest of the country. This region, unfortunately, is not the exception. [Many regions] justify themselves with self-serving projections based on local interests [interesov svoei kolokol’ni]. [Their] exaggerations, demands, lack of objectivity, inexact calculations all serve to undermine the very foundations of planning. .. . It is all the result of their formal and fac-

tual irresponsibility.”

The Gosplan leadership was particularly dubious of the proposals of “less developed” regions and was inclined to reinforce the existing distribution of industry. At the Fifth Gosplan Congress in March, a senior member of the subsection on the regional breakdown [raionnyi razrez] of the five-year plan told regional delegates that “whatever is said about the necessity of developing new regions, we cannot forget that Ukraine, the Central Industrial Region, and Leningrad possess sixty percent of our industrial capital and we must not undermine them.” !°° The “old” industrial regions were to dominate the first five-year plan in order to supply new regions with capital goods in subsequent plans. The East (including the Urals, Siberia, the Far East, and Kazakhstan) was identified as representative of the sort of area that would have to wait until the third five-year plan for significant development of its capital stock.!°! Gosplan’s vision of the regional distribution of five-year projects seemed likely to stand despite the fact that its credibility as the leading planning organ was severely strained by having been forced into a series of retreats in the course of a relentless attack primarily from VSNKh. VSNKh convinced the Politburo to accept a target of ten million tons of pig iron by 1932-33 versus Gosplan’s seven million tons. Its “optimal variant” dominated discussions of the five-year plan despite Gosplan’s insistence on the development of °° GARF, f. 5446 SNK i STO SSSR, op. 55 Sekretariat A. I. Rykova, d. 2753 Perepiska po voprosam general’nogo i perspektivnogo planov narodnogo khoziaistva, 15 fevralia—30 apre-

lia 1929, Il. rorob-102. 100 TPG, 15 March 1929. 101 TPG, 15 March, 2 April, 3 April 1929.

96 | The Great Urals | a “minimal variant.” 192 Nevertheless, VSNKh made no immediate moves to question Gosplan’s stand on the regional distribution of five-year projects. The VSNKh leadership may not have agreed with Gosplan’s position on the

issue, but it lacked the cadres to develop an alternative. | For the next several months the “new” regions fought bitterly to avoid the ©

fate Gosplan had set for them. At the Gosplan Congress, the April plenum , of VSNKh, and the Sixteenth Party Conference (23-29 April), they persis- : tently protested cuts to their plans. Delegates from the Far Eastern Region objected to the lack of investment in its gold and silver industries. Delegates from Uzbekistan warned that cuts to irrigation programs would hurt the cotton industries and animal husbandry. Those from the Central Black Earth Region demanded the construction of a metallurgical combine at Lipetsk and a tractor factory. Those from the Lower Volga Region insisted on the bene-

fits of building a complex of chemical plants. Officials from the Caucasus _ complained that their vast mineral resources had been overlooked.!°? Those | , from the Urals and Siberia observed that for two years Kuibyshev and Krzhizhanovskii had promised a “shift to the East” in Soviet industry, but that “we do not see an adequate realization of this commitment.” 1% , The anger of the regions played into the ongoing campaign against the ~ “Right danger.” On the eve of the party conference, the April 1929 Central

, Committee plenum was devoted to “inner-party issues.” In his keynote speech, Central Control Commission chairman G. I. Petrovskii accused Politburo members Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky of opposition to the “Central

Committee line,” of “violations of party discipline.” They argued in turn that they had been the objects of a campaign of rumors and “unprincipled

| persecution” by the rest of the Politburo.!°> But the key issue was the perception of the Politburo Right that the current tempos were unrealistic and would create an economic crisis. In their speeches Central Committee members agreed that the actions of the Right had “disorganized” the economy and slowed the tempo of industrialization.!°* At the party conference regional delegates specifically linked cuts to proposed projects with the lead- , ers of the “Right opposition.” N. B. Riazanov of the Institute of Marx and Engels joked that “every speaker ends his presentation with ‘Give us a fac102 Bogushevskii and Khavin, “God velikogo pereloma,” pp. 327-29; Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 888-90. ; 103 TPG, 15 March, 3 April, 4 April, 6 April, 16 May 1929. 104 Shestnadtsataia konferentsiia VKP(b), 23-29 aprelia 1929g. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1929), p. 45.

105 RTsSKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 399 Plenum TsK i TsKK, 1623 aprelia 1929, ll. 13-9, 45, 61-62 (Petrovskii); d. 400 Plenum TsK i TsKK, 16-23 aprelia © 1929, ll. 11-30 (Tomsky). | . — 106RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 399 Plenum TsK i TsKK, 1623 aprelia 1929, t. 1, |. 58 (Petrovskii on the resolutions at regional party conferences generally); d. 400 Plenum TsK i TsKK, t. 2, l. 71 (Zhdanov on the situation in the Urals); d. 401 Plenum TsK i TsKK, t. 3, 1. 129 (Bauman on the Moscow organization).

The Great Urals Plan | 97 tory in the Urals and to hell with the Right!’ ‘Build us a power station and to hell with the Right!’” !°” Regional leaders not only accepted Stalin’s campaign against the Right, they encouraged it. During the campaign many regional party and economic officials refused to accept cuts to their plans. When a new proposal was rejected, or financing to an existing project reduced, these officials commonly sought to overturn the decision by accusing its authors of “disorganizing” the economy. In

the spring of 1929 funding for the construction of the Uralmash plant was , cut from 6.5 million to two million rubles, and then in May instructions were received by telegram from Glavmetall to suspend construction altogether. Upon receipt of this telegram a meeting of the Uralmash party cell resolved to “declare the instructions of Glavmetall incorrect and achieve their reversal.” !©8 Bannikov, the director of Uralmash, then headed to Moscow. In meetings with party leaders, members of the VSNKh Presidium, and the chairman of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, $. Ordzhonikidze, . he denounced the Glavmetall instructions.!°? According to S. A. Khrennikoy,

a member of the Collegium of Glavmetall, regional officials frequently presented exaggerated, excessively expensive, incomplete, and unworkable plans to central organs and leapt to accusations of “wrecking and sabotage” if the plans were rejected.'!° Beginning in the summer of 1929 the OGPU led a wave of arrests of economic officials accused of “wrecking.” In the process of its “investigations” it received masses of denunciations of central officials

from the regions.!"! | .

Regional economic officials were by no means exempt from the advance of unmitigated repression. Arrests and trials of oblast’ administrators, enterprise directors, and specialists were increasingly common. In the previous several years arrests had been largely limited to the most outspoken critics of ambitious regional plans. By 1929 the swath of repression was wider. Many officials who had initially supported expanding regional plans had begun to question how far plan targets could be pushed. Ia. P. Ivanchenko, the director of the Eastern Steel Trust,!!* later recounted that “in conversations with me about the development of the Urals economy, Kabakov constructed literally fantastical plans... [including] unbelievably exaggerated targets for 107 Shestnadtsataia konferentsiia, p. 102. 108 Busygin, Pervyi direktor, p. 64; Unpelev, Rozhdenie Uralmasha, p. 24. 109 Busygin, Pervyi direktor, p. 66. 110 Material k otchetu TsKK VKP(b) XVI s"ezdu VKP(b), sostavlennyi OGPU (k dokladu

tov. Ordzhonikidze) (Moscow, 1930), pp. 50, 53. 111 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 43927 Delo Dunaeva, Borisa Sergeevicha (member ‘of the Presidium of the Urals Oblsnkh), |. 157; d. 43927 Delo Girbasova, Petra Afanas’eva (technical director of the Urals Mining Trust), Il. 136-37; d. 7504 Delo Gassel'blata, Vitaliia Alekseevicha (technical director of Magnitostroi), |. 32; Unpelev, Rozhdenie Uralmasha,

| PP ain one of the many “reforms” of economic administration which accompanied the first five-year plan, the Eastern Steel Trust became the successor to the Urals Metallurgical Trust.

98 | The Great Urals the production of pig iron without the necessary calculation of the balances of raw materials, energy and cadres.” 113 Ivanchenko and others were frightened of being forced to fulfill plans that they believed were doomed to fail-

ure. Some officials fully supported colossal plans but spoke out against the constant revision of targets. Vitalii Gassel’blat, the technical director of Magnitostroi, spent much of 1929 in the United States working with an engineering firm to develop plans for the plant. Each time the targets for the plant were adjusted—rising from 660,000 tons of pig iron to 2.5 million tons and then to four million tons—the plans had to be redrawn, and the contract with the U.S. firm renegotiated.!14 Other officials were arrested and

tried as scapegoats for problems in the region. Several members of the - oblast’ sovnarkhoz and planning commission, for example, were arrested after it was discovered that no one had revised plans for the electricity supply to keep up with the expansion of industry.''5 Administrators and specialists of the Motovilikhinskii machine-building plant were arrested after it

became clear that persistent production problems were undermining a regional proposal to VSNKh to turn the plant into a major producer of artillery and tanks.116

The savage repression of all those standing in the way of higher targets inevitably affected the tempo of industrialization. The Fifth Congress of Soviets had approved the five-year plan in May, but its targets were soon swept aside by those proposed during discussions of the control figures for 192930. In August the Presidium of VSNKh set the preliminary control figures at 3.1 billion rubles—30 percent higher than the target set by the Congress of Soviets, and 80 percent higher than the figure for 1928—29.'!7 In turn, five-

year-plan targets were revised through the fall. By October the target for crude oil production in 1932-33 had been raised from 22 to 40 million tons. The projected output of the coal industry jumped to 140 million tons from the 75-million-ton target set in May. The target for pig iron was raised from 10 million to 17 million tons.1!® 113 GAAO SO, f. 1 op. 2 lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, Ivana Dmitrievicha, t. 2, 1. 254.

114 Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995), pp. 435 46. See also Perepiska iz Ameriki, a private collection of Vitalii Gassel’blat’s letters from his trip

to the United States compiled by his descendant, G. V. Gassel’blat, chairman of the Ekaterinburg Association of the Victims of Political Repression. 115 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 8 1930, d. 102 Spravki, protokoly rassledovaniia organov OGPU po Uralu, raikomov i gorkomov VKP(b) o faktakh klassovoi bor'by i vreditel’stva na

predpriiatiiakh oblasti, ll. 110-20 Dokladnaia zapiska pomoshchnika nachal'nika EKU PPOGPU Kaletskii v Obkom “O sostoianii energeticheskogo khoziaistva oblasti.” 116 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 8 1930, d. 103 Spravki i agenturnye svodki organov OGPU

o likvidatsii posledstvii vreditel’stva na Molotovskom (Motovilikhinskom) mashinostroitel’ nom zavode, ll. 1-21. 117 RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. 1 Sekretariat Presidiuma, d. 5134 Protokoly ##5-36 presidiuma VSNKh SSSR, |. 743 Zasedanie #29, 14-g0 avgusta 1929, doklad t. Kuibysheva “O kontrol'nykh tsifrakh na 1929-30 g.”; R. W. Davies, The Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 19291930 (London, 1989), pp. 179-80.

| 118 Davies, Soviet Economy, pp. 195, 199. ,

The Great Urals Plan | 99 Once again many regions began to redraw their plans in order to ensure their share of investment and production.'!? In September, in a letter to VSNKh chairman Kuibyshev and Gosplan chairman Krzhizhanovskii, Urals Obkom first secretary Kabakov withdrew the regional control figures for 1929-30 which had been proposed in the summer: “The control figures which the Urals presented for discussion to VSNKh and Gosplan underestimate the changes in the tempo of economic development in the USSR which became apparent toward the end of the current economic year.” 12° Kabakov requested a reexamination of the tempo of construction in most branches of Urals industry—metallurgy, fuel, and chemicals as well as transport and electricity production. At the same time, Urals planners were scrambling to rework the five-year-plan targets. Urals leaders had reason to be concerned. While Ukrainian investment and construction targets were being steadily raised, Urals proposals were still treated with suspicion. In particular, the Main Administration of Ferrous Metallurgy (Glavchermet) refused to accept the validity of regional experiments with local coal supplies in metal production. Continued dependence on wood fuel or Siberian coal made Urals proposals for expanding regional metallurgy and, consequently, machine-building unattractive. Toward the end of September the Urals launched an offensive of self-advertisement.!?! It was announced that one of the Urals’ largest metallurgical plants had made the transition from wood fuel to Urals coal: This disproves the opinion that sulphurous coals of the Kizel region cannot be used in blast furnaces. This first attempt has unexpectedly provided such promising results that they may bring forth fundamental review of the paths of development of Urals metallurgy. .. . Urals metallurgy has received an extra reserve for its development. . . . Now the potential has been created for an exponential increase in the tempo of pig iron production on the basis of local coking coal.!?

For the next several weeks the Urals engaged in battle with Glavchermet on the front pages of the central economic press. The chairman of a Glavchermet commission appointed to review Urals plans rejected the “discovery”: “We must not construct plans and spend tens of millions of rubles on the basis of unproven, dubious propositions, and such are, doubtlessly, the possibilities — which Urals officials presuppose.” Urals leaders stopped short of accusing the commission members of being “Rightists,” but they insisted that their conclusions were seriously flawed, and that Kizel coal gave the Urals the po-

119 AF, Khavin, U rulia industrii (Moscow, 1968), pp. 66-67. | 120 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 7 1929, d. 63 Sekretnye pis’ma za podpis’iu Kabakova otpravlennye v TsK VKP(b), |. 52. 121 Khavin uses the term “offensive” in his memoirs. U rulia, p. 67. 122 The announcement was published in TPG, 25 September 1929, under the headline “By

Telegraph from Sverdlovsk.” :

100 | The Great Urals | tential to produce over ten million tons of pig iron a year by the end of the first five-year plan.!?? | ~ In the beginning of November the Urals sent a delegation of three hundred and fifty workers to the capital to meet with leaders of Sovnarkom, VSNKh, Gosplan, and the central press. This latest public relations ploy coincided with the anniversary of the Revolution and preparations for the November Central Committee plenum. On behalf of the oblast’ the delegation requested

, a thorough revision of the Urals five-year plan and the “construction of a new Urals at revolutionary tempos.” + According to A. F. Khavin, a journalist with Torgovo-promyshlennaia gazeta, the appeals of these “Urals pa- _ triots” were passionate and compelling.!** On the eve of the Central Com-

mittee discussion of the control figures for 1929-30, they managed to draw | considerable attention in the central press and intensify debate among the leadership about the Urals five-year plan. The Urals “offensive” was an attempt not merely to manipulate the media or decision makers, but to capitalize on a certain key change in central policy on industrialization that had

emerged in recent months. :

As the tempo of industrialization had accelerated in the summer and fall of 1929, central economic organs had softened their opposition to new con-

struction versus reconstruction projects. It had become apparent that no , amount of reconstruction could meet the skyrocketing targets for key industrial goods. Initially central officials, particularly those of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (Rabkrin), had increased their demands on exist- |

ing reconstruction projects. Much of the burden of new ferrous metal pro- , duction fell on the enterprises of the Southern Steel Trust. The Donetsk Coal Trust was expected to satisfy much of the new coal production target. The directors of these trusts objected to Rabkrin’s position because their targets were being raised without substantial increases in investment. Stepan Birman,

the director of the Southern Steel Trust, openly fought the new demands, with the support of some Ukrainian leaders.!2° Though the targets for the Southern Steel Trust were ultimately retained and Birman was removed, the

center began to shift its attention to expanding the number of new construction projects. This shift freed the Urals from the burden of having to justify the reconstruction of its ancient capital stock. The region’s new proposals were no longer extrapolations of existing production coefficients, but rather calculations of the maximal use of existing resources with the most 123 TPG, 6 October, ro October, 19 October 1929. 124 Prayda, 7 November 1929; TPG, 6 November, 12 November, 15 November 1929. |

| 25 Khavin, U rulia, p. 67.

126 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Ordzhonikidze’s Takeover of Vesenkha: A Case Study in Soviet Bureaucratic Politics,” Soviet Studies 2 (1985): 159-60. At the November 1929 Central Committee plenum, the director of the Donbas Coal Trust, G. Lomov, insisted that the trust had “reached its limit” and that “VSNKh should put more pressure on the Moscow coal basin.” RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 441 Plenum TsK VKP(b), 10-17

noiabria 1929. Stenograficheskii otchet, t. 1, |. 76. |

The Great Urals Plan | 1o1 advanced of European and American technologies. The calculations were extremely loose and highly questionable. By mid-November the Urals’ pro-

posals for pig iron production at the end of the first five-year plan ranged | from eight to thirteen million tons annually.!?” Urals officials insisted that the Kizel region contained between two and four billion tons of cokeable coal, though local coal supplies ultimately never proved to be of a quality appropriate to fueling blast furnaces.!28 However, the calculations themselves were not the key issue. The shift of central policy toward new construction, combined with the resistance in Ukraine and other regions,!*? gave Urals officials _ the hope that they could win the center’s sympathy with their “revolutionary spirit” and become the Soviet Union’s main center of heavy industry over the course of the next five-years.

At the November 1929 Central Committee plenum the revolutionary changes in the economy were at the center of discussion. The control figures were set at levels twice those of the previous year. The rate of collectivization had exceeded all plan targets. The Right Opposition was in full retreat. S. I. Syrtsov warned, however, that the growth in the number of collective ‘farms had dangerously exceeded the state’s capacity to administer them, and others expressed concern that investment in infrastructure, specifically transportation and energy, was grossly inadequate to support the growth of industry.'%° Still, there was plenty of enthusiasm among delegates for current tempos, though they did not agree on the distribution of investment. The

Urals and other “new” regions—regions that had not been able to propose , competitive reconstruction projects—attacked the dominant “old” industrial regions of the center. They had not been able to win central investment in reconstruction, but they were determined to take advantage of the expansion of new construction. For example, Ukraine and the predominantly agricultural Central Black Earth Oblast’ (TsChO) had competing proposals for the construction of agricultural machine-building plants. After V. Chubar’ complained about the level of financing received for the Ukrainian projects,

I. M. Vareikis of the TsChO said, “When comrade Chubar’ argues that Ukraine has been passed over, he reminds one of the bear who ‘eats the cow and still complains [korovu deret i sam revet].’ We must take the task of restructuring the geographical distribution of our industry more seriously.” 7! Regional leaders traded personal insults and sniped at one another’s projects. They all demanded more construction and financing. The resolutions of the plenum made no comment on the geographical dis127 TPG, 6 November, 15 November 1929. 128 See Chapter 6.

129 See Davies, Soviet Economy, pp. 189-90, 193. The Politburo doubled the plan for the Leningrad Machine-building Trust in July. RTIsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral'nyi komitet, op. 3 Polit-

buro, d. 750 zasedanie Politbiuro, 25 iiulia 1929, ll. 7-8. 130 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral'nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 441 Plenum TsK VKP(b), 1017 noiabria 1929, t. 1, ll. 67-68, 76 (Lomov, Donbas), 80 (Kadatskii, Leningrad).

131 Ibid. 1. 66. | |

102 | The Great Urals tribution of industry, but it was nevertheless clear that the “new” regions had made their point. Kuibyshev agreed to Kabakov’s request to establish a special commission of the Presidium of VSNKh which would review the five-

year plan of the Urals,!¥* and in time this commission also reviewed the plans of Siberia, the Middle Volga Region, the Central Black Earth Oblast’,

Central Asia, and others.!? | In the two months between the Central Committee plenum and the first

meeting of the commission, Urals officials put together what came to be known as the “Great Urals plan,” which was the strongest expression yet of the Urals’ desire to become the Soviet Union’s leading producer in heavy industry. The targets it set were astronomical. Urals planners asked for almost _

eight billion rubles in industrial investment by 1932-33. By contrast, the Sixteenth Party Congress in April had set an overall figure of 16.4 billion rubles for industrial investment and the Urals had asked for two billion.!34

, The “Great Urals plan” proposed six new metallurgical plants which, together with the reconstructed plants of the Urals Metallurgical Trust, would produce ten million tons of pig iron; the April version of the Urals five-year

plan had called for output of two million tons by 1932-33. The “Great , Urals plan” called for the annual production of sixteen billion tons of coal by 1932-33 versus four billion in the April plan. The target for the annual output of Urals machine-building plants was more than doubled, from 164.6 to 382 million rubles. Seventeen new machine-building plants were requested

in addition to the Uralmash plant currently under construction. The target for copper production was tripled to almost 100,000 tons, and two new copper-smelting plants were proposed. Overall, by the end of the first fiveyear plan the output of Urals industry was to be eleven times the level of 1927-28, versus the factor of four proposed in the April plan.13> Among in-

, dustrial regions the Urals would have taken a leading position in all categories of production had the plan been accepted as proposed. VSNKh made no commitments after its first consideration of the plan at the end of January 1930. Kuibyshev specifically refused to comment on the potential impact of the development of a Urals supply of cokeable coal on the future of Ukrainian metallurgy. Both should receive substantial investment, he argued. Kuibyshev complimented Urals officials for their work, but he immediately ordered VSNKh subdepartments to work through “every aspect” of the plan.1°° Kuibyshev’s polite and vague remarks at this first meet132 “Vystupleniia V. V. Kuibysheva na zasedanii Presidiuma VSNKh SSSR o plane promy-

shlennogo razvitiia Urala, 26 ianvaria 1930 g.,” Istoricheskii arkhiv 3 (1958): 70; TPG, 22 November 1929. 133 Ta. Ioffe, “Piatiletka ‘Bol’shogo Urala,’” Puti Industrializatsii 7-8 (1930): 63. ‘84 RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. 1, d. 5193 Piatiletnii plan razvitiia promyshlennosti Urala, |. 31; K. Klimenko, “Piatiletnii perspektivnyi plan Urala,” Khoziaistvo Urala 4-5 (1929): xxl; KPSS v rezoliutstiakh, 4: 449. 135 RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. 1, d. 5193 Piatiletnyi plan razvitiia promyshlennosti Urala, Il. 31-33; Klimenko, “Piatiletnyi perspektivnyi,” iii-v, x, xvi; “Vystupleniia V. V. Kuibysheva,” Istoricheskii arkhiv, p. 71. 136 “Vystupleniia V. V. Kuibysheva,” pp. 70-74.

The Great Urals Plan | 103 ing of the commission masked the hesitation of VSNKh officials to accept the Urals’ astronomical targets. For the next five months VSNKh failed to pro-

duce any concrete decision on the “Great Urals plan,” and while VSNKh was at work, the Urals Metallurgical Trust was the object of a major investigation by Rabkrin.!%” As it had in many other cases, Rabkrin pushed to increase the tempo of construction while trying to decrease the related costs.

Enterprise directors and specialists of the trust objected, as their counterparts in the Southern Steel Trust had in the fall. But the reaction from within

the Urals leadership was swift and harsh. While their five-year plan was under consideration, they were not prepared to tolerate any resistance to tempos. The Obkom bureau directed the regional OGPU and okrug party committees to take measures against “the wrecking element at various Urals factories .. . paralyzing the work of enterprises.” !3° There is no evidence to suggest that Urals leaders objected to the work of Rabkrin investigators. On the contrary, it is likely that they fundamentally shared Rabkrin’s sentiments, at least with respect to the tempos of new construction. The results of the Rabkrin commission together with the preliminary findings of the VSNKh commission formed the basis of a Central Committee resolution of 15 May 1930 “On the Work of the Urals Metallurgical Trust.” The significance of the resolution was not limited to the trust. The central

party leadership finally gave its approval to the “creation of second main metallurgical base in the East.” The resolution criticized delays in the consideration of the Urals plans and ordered the development of Urals metallurgy “at the high tempos dictated by its serious and growing significance in the economic system of the USSR.” 1°? A month later the VSNKh commission released its decision on the Urals five-year plan. The targets which it set were considerably less ambitious than those requested by the Urals. Pig iron production was to reach four million tons in 1932-33 instead of the ten requested by the Urals. The target for coal production was lowered from sixteen to ten million tons. Total capital investment was reduced from eight to six billion rubles.'*° Urals leaders did not realize their aspiration to pull ahead of Ukraine and become the leading center of heavy industry in the Soviet Union. Neverthe137 The Rabkrin investigation was the last of sixteen separate investigations of the trust since February 1929. GASO, f. 94-r Uralmet, op. 1, d. 1359 Postanovleniia komissii VSNKh SSSR o rezul’tatakh obsledovaniia raboty zavodov “Uralmeta,” |. 2 Svedeniia o proizvedennykh obsledovaniiakh stroitel’stva s ianvaria 1929 po ianvaria 1930. 138 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 8 1930, d. 102 Spravki i protokoly rassledovaniia organov OGPU po Uralu raikomov i gorkomov VKP(b) o faktakh klassovoi bor'’by i vreditel’stva na

predpriiatiiakh oblasti, Il. 3-ob Pis’mo vtorogo sekretaria Obkoma P. T. Zubareva Okruzhkomam; |. 13 Pis’mo I. D. Kabakova OGPU Iansonu. Rabkrin also had a hand in purges at the factory level, but it seems clear that most of the Rabkrin “purge brigade” was made up largely of Urals cadres. GASO, f. 94-r Uralmet, op. 1, d. 602 Vyvody brigady komissii RKI po chistke apparata Uralmeta, 15 aprelia 1930, Il. 161-92. 139 KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 5: 112-17.

'40 However, the plans for machine-building, nonferrous metals, and chemicals “corresponded with the draft submitted by the Urals ObISNKh.” RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh SSSR, op. 1, d. 5193 Piatiletnii plan razvitiia promyshlennosti Urala, Il. 31-33.

104 | The Great Urals | less, the “Great Urals plan” as accepted by VSNKh was fully sufficient to ensure the region would not be left behind by its competitors. After almost sixty years of uncertainty as to whether regional industry could overcome the burden of its ancient capital stock, it appeared as though the projected construction program would put the issue to rest. And yet the plan itself would be meaningless unless it was realized. A long and difficult struggle lay

ahead. |

Once the outlines of the plan had been accepted by VSNKh in the summer, the planning organizations had to work out the specific breakdown of tasks and targets. This process dragged on for months. When the Central Committee discussed the annual plan for 1931, Kabakov complained that the Urals had yet to receive a finalized version of its five-year plan.'*! In the absence of plans some projects did not receive sufficient funding to pro-

| ceed. The Urals immediately fell behind the general targets established by VSNKh.'* But despite the complaints of Urals leaders that central organizations were holding up construction, it was not these delays but the excessive speed of expansion that caused the region to fall behind its targets. Capital investment in heavy industry had more than doubled from the previous year.'*3 The Urals received less investment than the Kuibyshev commission had promised, but more than it could possibly absorb. Throughout the Soviet Union emerging shortages of key materials and services from elec-

tricity to engineers threatened plan fulfillment. For Urals leaders the most troubling of all was the shortage of labor which, as we shall see, could have doomed the “Great Urals plan” at its very inception. 441 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 460 Ob’edinennyi plenum TsK

i TsKK VKP(b), 17-21 dekabria 1930, |. 46. , :

(1931): 17. :

12 T Dol'nikov, “Osnovnye ustanovki perspektivnogo plana UKK,” Puti industrializatsii 10

143 Davies, Soviet Economy, p. 378.

4 The Gulag

After years of relatively small and steady increases, the projected tempos of construction and investment in industry skyrocketed in the fall of 1929. The version of the “Great Urals plan” that Urals leaders had presented to VSNKh in November projected a tripling of capital expenditures in heavy industry for the following year alone: from 148 million rubles in 1928-29 to 532 million in 1929-30.! Almost every region of the Soviet Union faced a huge expansion of construction and production. At the same time, little attention was paid to the capacity of the labor market. After struggling with unemployment throughout the NEP period, few were prepared for the onset of labor shortages. But labor shortages threatened to undermine the ambitious new plans. A crisis was avoided by means of a massive expansion of the Gulag—the system of labor camps. Between the fall of 1929 and the spring of 1930 the population of labor camps rose from three hundred and fifty thousand to over nine hundred thousand. By the summer of 1931 another six hundred thousand had been added.” In this short period, which coincided with the wholesale collectivization and “dekulakization” campaigns, labor camps be-

gan to play a crucial role in Soviet industrialization. , There is a vast literature devoted to the origins and development of the Soviet camp system. Many authors tend to see labor camps as a punitive ' RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh, op. 1 Protokoly Prezidiuma, d. 323 Piatiletnyii plan razvitiia promyshlennosti Urala (1929), |. 59 Kapital’nye zatraty po gruppe “A.” * The first figure is quoted from a Commissariat of Justice (NKIust) information abstract from March 1930. GASO, f. 148-r Uraloblsud, op. 5 sekretnaia chast’, d. 33 Informatsionnye svodki NKlu, |. 60 Obshchoe sostoianie prinudrabot po RSFSR, 1930. The second two are from tables compiled by a Central Committee commission on “dekulakization” chaired by sec-

| retary A. A. Andreev. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 120 Otdely TsK, d. 52 Protokoly i materialy Komissii TsK VKP(b) po voprosu o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv i trudovom ustroistve spetspereselentsev, |. 20 Spravka o kolichestve vyselennogo kulachestva v 193011937 §g. LO5

106 | The Great Urals instrument for dealing with the real and perceived enemies of the regime.? Others argue that the camp system was driven by the needs of rapid industrialization.* Until recently there was a near monolithic consensus that, whichever way one might look at it, the camp system was an instrument of the dictatorship and attempts to explain its growth necessarily meant deciphering the agenda of the Soviet leadership, or of Stalin himself. But as access has been granted to previously secret archives relating to the camp system, scholars have begun to question the existence of a clearly articulated agenda.’ They have observed that central policy tended to be vague, to en-

courage initiative rather than to direct action.

Indeed, regional officials played a key role in the expansion of the camp system. The coincidence of the collectivization and dekulakization campaigns

with the rapid expansion of industrial construction created powerful pressures for a massive transfer of “kulak labor.” In the countryside, local officials had long desired to rid themselves of those in the village who had resisted the conduct of various political and economic campaigns. In industrial areas, the “kulaks” were needed to meet labor shortages. Stalin’s announce-

ment in December 1929 that the time had come to “eliminate the kulak as a | class” released these pressures and gave rise to a flurry of repressive activity. The subsequent efforts of central leaders to regulate the process of dekulakization generally accommodated the initiatives already taken in the regions. The center never questioned the expansion of the camps; rather it came to play the role of a clearinghouse, matching the requests of agricultural regions to exile “kulaks” with those of industrial regions to make use of their labor.

The First Five-year Plan and the Failure of Organized Labor Recruitment After years of relatively small and steady increases, the projected tempos of industrial investment and construction skyrocketed in the fall of 1929. In November the leadership of the Urals oblast’ convinced top party and state officials to revise the regional five-year plan and permit a range of projects

that would create a metallurgical and machine-building colossus in the 3 Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York, 1990); Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (New York, 1989); Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

(New York, 1973). | : |

4$. Swianiewicz, Forced Labour and Economic Development: An Enquiry into the Experience of Soviet Industrialization (London, 1965); M. M. Gorinov, “Sovetskaia strana v kontse 20-kh—nachale 30-kh godov,” Voprosy istorii 11 (1990): 38-40. ‘J. Arch Getty, Gabor Rittersporn, and Viktor N. Zemskov, “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence,” American Historical Review 4 (1993): 1043; V. P. Danilov and S. A. Krasil’nikov, eds., Spetspereselentsy v Zapadnoi Sibiri (Novosibirsk, 1992), pp. 15-16; A. E. Bedel’ and T. I. Slavko, eds., Raskulachennye spetspereselentsy na Urale, 1930-1936 (Ekaterinburg, 1993), p. 12.

The Gulag | 107 Urals. The new plans which were being promoted from within the Oblast’ would triple capital expenditures in heavy industry for the following year __ alone—from 148 million rubles in 1928-29 to 532 million in 1929-30.° Yet, almost no one addressed the issue of the capacity of the labor market. After struggling with unemployment throughout the NEP period, few offcials in Moscow or the regions anticipated labor shortages. At a conference of leading workers of the Commissariat of Labor (NKTrud)

in February 1930, one official acknowledged that by the summer of 1929 certain sectors of industry, particularly forestry and construction, were suffering shortages of labor in the hundreds of thousands, but he insisted that “unemployment... has not yet been overcome... the question of reducing unemployment, of taking measures to reduce and eliminate it, cannot be removed from our agenda.” ’ Indeed, as of early January 1930, unemployment was Officially registered at over 1.3 million, though shortages of labor in some areas were threatening to upset the plan. At the February conference, a Commissariat official admitted that inadequate mapping of where shortages and excesses of labor were located severely impeded corrective action.° In the 1920s a voluntary, contractual system for the recruitment of peas-

ant labor had been the basic means for augmenting the industrial work force. Many industries in the Urals oblast’, particularly forestry, mining, and metallurgy, were dependent on the recruitment of seasonal peasant labor. Local recruiting agents were supposed to ensure that enterprises received workers in specific numbers and according to specific schedules as production required. But while the problem of unemployment predominated, the Commissariat of Labor was focused on keeping peasants in the village, and the recruitment apparatus received little attention or funding. When faced with a massive increase in the demand for labor, the apparatus was quickly overwhelmed.? Regional leaders, deeply concerned with the threat that inadequate labor posed to their economic plans, scrambled to find means to shore up the recruitment system. The collectivization of agriculture was the most promising.!° In the fall of 1929 Urals leaders made it clear that they believed col6 RGAE, f. 3429 VSNKh, op. 1, d. 323 Piatiletnyii plan razvitiia promyshlennosti Urala (1929), 1. 59 Kapital’nye zatraty po gruppe “A.” 7 RGAE, f. 7446 Kolkhoztsentr SSSR, op. 8 sektor truda, d. 85 Stenogramma soveshchaniia NKTruda po voprosu snabzheniia sezonnykh proizvodstv rabochei siloi, 9 fevralia 19309, Il. 8, 16 Rech’ tov. Gindina. 8 Tbid., 1. 17.

? For more information on the weaknesses of the labor recruitment system, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The Great Departure: Rural-Urban Migration in the Soviet Union, 1929-1932” and Stephen Kotkin, “Peopling Magnitostroi: The Politics of Demography,” in Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization, ed. William G. Rosenberg and Lewis H. Siegelbaum (Bloomington, Ind., 1993), pp. 17-21, 67-69; David L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929-1941 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), pp. 45-53. 10 Peter Solomon has observed that by the fall of 1929 regional leaders had already explored the use of convict labor. The Commissariat of Internal Affairs organized a timber processing penal colony in the Urals on the initiative of regional officials. In July 1929, in response to the

108 | The Great Urals | , lectivization would be a useful tool for expanding and expediting labor recruitment. At the October plenum of the Oblast’ Executive Committee

plainly: | | - . (Oblispolkom), the party first secretary I. D. Kabakov had put the case quite

We must ... undertake collectivization in our industrial regions, particularly because industry — especially forestry and mining—is now suffering a substan-

, tial deficit of labor. We must use collectivization in order to free up excess labor within the collectives. Through the collectives, the process of labor recruitment will be considerably eased. . . . This issue soon will be discussed in the appropriate organizations. They must be sure apply such measures to the industrial

counties [okruga]. , , If there was any doubt about Kabakov’s meaning, it was soon dispelled. On 15 January 1930 the Oblast’ Party Committee (Obkom) announced that the mining and metallurgical districts (raiony) of the Urals were areas of wholesale collectivization, to be 80-percent collectivized by spring.!! The targets it set were far more ambitious than those of the central legislation. (The Central Committee decree “On the Tempos of Collectivization and Measures of State Aid to Collective Farm Construction,” which had been issued only ten days before, identified only the main grain regions as areas of wholesale collectivization: the North Caucasus, the Middle Volga, and the Lower Volga.'” Regional trusts wasted little time in expanding their requests for recruitment or demanding the immediate fulfillment of existing targets. The Labor ~ Department of the Oblast’ Executive Committee received the requests and directly transferred them to the raion-level executive committees, village soviets, and collective farms. These organizations were generally givena week — to fill the targets and threatened with dire consequences otherwise.!? With only a week to provide tens (and usually hundreds) of workers, recruitment quickly ceased to be voluntary. It was not uncommon for village soviets to call a general assembly (obshchee sobranie grazhdan), and announce who growing labor demands of industry, the All-union Council of People’s Commissars called for the eventual replacement of prisons with labor colonies, though the prison population was too

_ small to significantly alleviate labor shortages. Peter Solomon, “Soviet Penal Policy, 1917-1934: A Reinterpretation,” Slavic Review 2 (1980): 208-10. 11 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 2565 Materialy IV i III plenuma Uralob-

lispolkoma, |. 17 rezoliutsii, 15 ianvaria 1930. |

12B. A. Abramov, “O rabote komissii Politburo TsK VKP(b) po voprosam sploshnoi kollek-

: tivizatsi,” Voprosy istorii KPSS 1 (1964): 40. , | oe

13 The threats were constant, but at first only vague. GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezi- | , dium, d. 2941 Perepiska s otdelom truda, raionnymi sovetami i dr. ob obespechenii promyshlennosti i stroitel’stva rabochei siloi i verbovka rabochei sily, 1930-31, Il. 34, 36, 39, 40, 47, 53. By the fall of 1930 the Oblispolkom clarified the situation by calling upon the oblast’ in_ spectorate (RKI), court, and procuracy to “immediately and decisively bring an end to all attempts to disorganize [recruitments] and arrest [the officials of raiispolkomy and sel’sovety]

who are responsible.” Ibid., |. 15. Oe |

The Gulag | 109 was to be sent to work in a factory.'* Individual peasants rather than members of collective farms were often chosen because soviet officials did not | want to weaken newly established collectives. Moreover, this form of “recruitment” provided a suitable pretext for collectivizing individual peasants. “Join the collective farm,” they were told, “and then you can stay at home.” Almost a full year passed before oblast’ officials bothered to criticize such actions. They were more interested in getting peasants to work in sectors of industry facing acute labor shortages. At the end of April 1930 the Oblast’ Labor Department tabulated the intial requests of Urals industry and announced that almost 450,000 peasants were to be recruited in that year.'® The figure was more than triple the size of the industrial labor force of the Urals in 1929.!’ The center was slow to restrain or regulate the process of recruitment; : the only legislation in the first half of 1930 merely criticized local officials and collective farm (kolkhoz) chairmen for inhibiting recruitments from kolkhozy.!® Only in the late fall, when the construction season was coming to a close, did the center begin to address complaints, mostly from the Commissariat of Labor, about abuses in recruitment. At the request of the commissariat, the Council of People’s Commissars of the Russian Federation (SNK RSFSR) issued a decree critical of “excess” recruitments, lack of housing and tools, and basic sanitary conditions for recruits.'? Labor was drawn into production before the basic supply infrastructure was established. In early 1931 the Commissariat of Labor independently issued two directives intended to bring order to the recruitment process. The first instructed re-

gional labor departments to provide a calculation of surplus labor along with their recruitment demands for 1931—the intention being to balance the deficit and surplus figures in order to restrain the growth of recruitments. The second directive, issued jointly with Kolkhoztsentr (the central agency directing collective farms), set guidelines for the relationship between enterprises and surrounding collectives which would prevent the practice of regular “looting raids” on collective farm labor.*° These efforts were undermined, however, by a decree of the Council of Labor and Defense (STO) in 14 Thid., |. 207.

'S Thid., ll. 27-33.

16 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 432 Perepiska s otdelom truda i okrispolkomami o verbovke rabochei sily, Il. 48, 57 Oblastnoi Otdel Truda: Plan snabzheniia rabochei siloi sezonnykh rabot po 16-i okrugov Ural'skoi oblasti. 17 GASO, f. 339-r ObISNKh, op. 7 1929, d. 343 Svedeniia o proizvoditel’nosti truda i potrebnosti rabochei sily v promyshlennosti, 1929-1933, |. 8 Dokumenty soveshchaniia pri

Otdele Ekonomiki Truda UralObISNKh’a, 3 dekabria 1929. :

'8 “Ob ustranenii prepiatsvii k svobodnomu otkhodu krest’ian na otkhozhie i sezonnie raboty” (SNK SSSR, 16 March 1930), Biulleten’ uzakonenii i rasporiazhenti po sel’skomy 1 lesnomu khoziaistuu NKZem RSFSR 9 (1930). 19 Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii raboche-krest’ianskogo pravitel’stva RSFSR 56

(1930): art. 674. | 20 BFKhZ 9 (1931): 53.

110 | The Great Urals | March. When recruitment targets for 1931 were established in January, the Urals and other regions had protested that they were insufficient,”! and the council responded by permitting supplementary labor recruitments and/or recruitment by enterprises themselves.?? The decree included clauses on the enterprises’ responsibility to avoid exaggerated recruitment and to provide the “necessary” housing and supplies for new workers, but they were largely ignored. The council had, in effect, restarted the “open season” on the kolkhoz, and rural labor generally. Despite their extraordinary powers, recruiters were still unable to satisfy the labor demands of industry. The archival holdings of the Urals Labor Department contain over fifteen hundred pages of labor demands from regional enterprises for 1931 alone.*? Many of these came from enterprises asking for supplementary recruitments to make up for peasants who had violated their “contracts” and run away. A telegram from the Urals Metallurgical Trust to the Oblast’ Labor Department, typical of such communications in 1931, complained that of 2,700 recruits received in that year, a thousand had already left. Including new labor demands, the trust requested an additional 1,300 men.** Supplying labor with food and housing was a constant problem. The resources of the Commissariat of Supply (NKSnab) were already strained, making undersupply the norm.*° Shipments of food and other materials were often delayed by weeks and months because of the rail system was overburdened.*° Seeing no immediate prospects for creating conditions adequate to keep recruits on the job, enterprise managers tended to see the camp system as the solution, not by transforming their entire factories into labor colonies, but rather by using forced labor for those jobs with particularly harsh conditions, from which the rate of “leakage” (utechka) was especially high. This was the basis for demands for the expansion of the camp system. For example, the above telegram from the Urals Metallurgical Trust 21 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 2941 Perepiska s otdelom truda, raionnymi sovetami i dr. ob obespechenii promyshlennosti i stroitel’stva rabochei siloi i verbovka rabochei sily, 1930-31; RGAE, f. 7446 Kolkhoztsentr SSSR, op. 8 sektor truda, d. 90 Perepiska s NKZem’om SSSR, NKTrudom RSFSR, kraevymi i oblastnymi kolkhozsoiuzami o verbovke rabochei sily iz kolkhozov na sezonnye raboty v promyshlennost’, ll. 72, 79, 259. *2 The permission given to factories to conduct recruitments amounted to an admission that the recruitment system of the regional labor departments was overburdened with demands.

BFKhZ 12 (1931): §1.

— 23 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, dd. 2941-46 Perepiska s otdelom truda, raionnymi sovetami i dr. ob obespechenii promyshlennosti i stroitel’stva rabochei siloi i ver-

bovka rabochei sily, 1931. ,

24 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 2942 Perepiska s otdelom truda, |. 19. 25 GASO, f. 88-r op. 1 Prezidium, d. 432 Perepiska s otdelom truda i okrispolkomami 0 verbovke rabochei sily Il. 82, 96-98; op. 1 Prezidium, d. 2941 Perepiska s otdelom truda, raionnymi sovetami i dr. ob obespechenii promyshlennosti i stroitel’stva rabochei siloi i verbovka rabochei sily, 1931, Il. 19, 110. 26 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 2941 Perepiska s otdelom truda, raionnymi 1 dr. ob obespechenii promyshlennosti i stroitel’stva rabochei siloi i verbovka rabochei sily, 1931, |. 7o.

The Gulag | 111 argued that “the transfer of a labor colony [to the Nadezhdinskii plant] would solve the problem” of the need to continue housing construction in the middle of winter.?” Peasants were less likely to run away when they were being watched by armed guards. By the late 1930s forced labor was used in all major industries in the Urals

and throughout the Soviet Union. The major consumers of this labor included construction, mining, metallurgy, and agriculture (usually on northern virgin lands),*® but at first forestry was the single largest target for the

establishment of camps. Throughout the NEP period forestry had suffered , chronic labor shortages, which were reaching crisis proportions by the fall of 1929.2? In order to understand the interrelationship of the economic and political motivations for the expansion of the camp system, and the pressures exerted by regional officials on central policy, it is useful to examine in greater depth the forestry crisis and the opportunities that collectivization and dekulakization presented to address it.

The First Five-year Plan and the Crisis of Urals Forestry The very existence of forestry in the Urals was predicated on the backwardness of the region’s capital stock; it was an ugly step-sister of heavy industry, the vast majority of its output consumed in the wood-fired furnaces of aging metallurgical plants. Local economic leaders paid far more attention to the development of forestry’s more promising relatives, particularly, to coal supplies in Cheliabinsk and Kizel as well as the importation of western Siberian coal from the Kuznetsk Basin. Persistent underfunding of forestry (before the transition to coal-based fuels) left the Urals unprepared for the sudden surge in the demand for metals that accompanied the first fiveyear plan.*° In early January 1929 the Oblast’ Economic Council (ObISNKh) called a meeting of leading workers and specialists in the forestry industry in order to discuss a plan of action.! There was general agreement that the mapped 27 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Presidium, d. 2942 Perepiska s otdelom truda, |. 19. 28V, N. Zemskov, “‘Kulatskaia ssylka’ v 30-e gody,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia 10

es he oft January 1930, forestry trusts had been able to recruit only 65.9 percent of their , targets for fellers (rubshchiki) and 28.1 percent for haulers (vozchiki). The Southern Urals Forestry Trust had barely over 30 percent for both targets. A. Aizenberg, “Ispol’zovanie rabochei sily v kolkhozakh i v narodnom khoziaistve,” Planovoe khoziaistvo 3 (1930): 25. 30In the 1928—29 economic year, Urals metallurgy was permitted 38.5 million rubles in capital expenditures (vs. 26.1 million in 1927-28) and machine-building was given 2.97 million (vs. 1.90 in 1927-28). Ural’skoe khoziaistvo v tsifrakh, 2d ed. (Sverdlovsk, 1930), PPT GASO. f, 339-r ObISNKh, op. 6 1929, d. 561 Perepiska s polnomochennoi komissiei po lesozagotovkam pri oblispolkome po voprosam o razrabotke lesotrestami lesosek i raspilovke

syria, ll. 32-33.

112 | The Great Urals | forest supply had been exhausted, and that virgin tracts in the north had to _

, be explored, but doubts were raised about the practical implications of ex- . ploiting them. Because the north was virtually unpopulated, new rail lines would have to be laid and the labor force would have to be shipped in; given |

the harsh climate, huge expenses would be required in order to create the conditions necessary to keep peasant recruits on the job. To some specialists

it seemed that these expenditures would make the cost of harvesting the forests prohibitive. At the same time, Urals economic officials were loath to

engage in large capital expenditures in forestry. Almost three months passed before Urals economic organs took any concrete action. Toward the end of March the Urals Planning Commission _ (Uralplan) requested permission to undertake a study of the feasibility of extending Urals forestry to the north. The State Planning Commission of the Russian Federation (Gosplan RSFSR) assented, but insisted on a detailed ac- | counting of the cost of final output—a tall order.

The first sign of a change in regional attitudes to the forestry industry came from the Oblast’ Economic Council. Rather than attempting to justify an incremental move into the northern forests with its high costs and marginal benefits, it recommended an aggressive investment program that could. | be justified in terms of the hard-currency export potential of Urals forestry.** In late August the Oblast’ Executive Committee put its weight behind the idea, forming a commission of representatives of the major forestry trusts and Urals economic organs to study “the potential for the further expansion of the production programs of forestry organizations.” >> The change was characteristic of the increase of regional demands on the center generally: it was easier to propose a grand scheme with vast future benefits than to justify marginal gains from a modest investment. Through the summer and fall of 1929 the Oblast’ Economic Council’s plan was developed and elaborated

: into the concept of an “industrial-forestry combine” producing not only fuel and construction materials but also paper, cellulose, and wood-based chemicals. Rather than reinforcing dependence on wood fuel for heavy industry, the plan identified new targets for forestry products that could absorb excess production as coal use grew. All stages of the production process were to be _ mechanized and seventy-nine new settlements “of an industrial type” were

to house the incoming population.** | 32 GASO, f. 339-r ObISNKh, op. 7 1930, d. 73 Materialy i perepiska o rabote lesnoi promyshlennosti, Il. 1-2. 33 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 2496 Perepiska s VSNKh, trestami o khode lesozagotovok i splavnykh operatsii, 1929, |. 13. The commission included members of the three largest forest collection agencies: Kamuralles, Volgokaspiiles, and Uralmet, as well as representatives of the oblast’ finance department, planning commission (Uralplan), economic

council (SNKh), and inspectorate (RKI). ,

34 GASO, f. 339-r ObISNKh, op. 7 1929, d. 73 Materialy i perepiska o rabote lesnoi promyshlennosti, ll. 47-56, 74-76.

The Gulag | 113 The tardy recognition of the threat to Urals heavy industry posed by the weakness of regional forestry accounted for these grandiose proposals.

The control figures for 1929-30 that were being promoted within the oblast’ would result in a tripling of capital expenditures in heavy industry (from 148 million rubles in 1928-29 to 532 million in 1929-30).*° By the first of August the forestry industry had fulfilled its targets for construction materials, but it was almost 30 percent short of the target for wood fuel.°° All the reservations of the Urals economic organs about developing the northern forestry tracts had now dissolved. They bombarded central organs

: with demands for the financing of new infrastructure, leveraging the demands with promises of exorbitant increases in production.°’ The forestry trusts did not object to the idea of developing the north given the planned investment levels, but they had serious concerns about the way the Urals economic organs had posed the issue of labor supply. Even if central investment were delivered at the beginning of the economic year, it was unlikely that mechanization could be conducted fast enough to seriously reduce labor demand, and the insufficiency and unreliability of peasant seasonal labor was the most common cause of plan underfulfillment.*? When the Oblast’ Labor Department projected the labor requirements of forestry

in 1929-30 at 162,000 (excluding horses) versus 89,000 in the previous economic year, forestry industry officials argued that this projection exaggerated the impact of mechanization and rationalization. At a November 23 meeting of the Forestry Commission of Uralplan, the head of forestry collections for the Urals Metallurgical Trust warned the Urals economic officials in attendance that in the absence of significant progress in mechanization and factoring in the peasant recruits’ tendency to withdraw before the ex-

piration of contract terms, the labor demands of Urals forestry trusts in 1929-30 would exceed half a million.” 35 GASO, f. 339-r ObISNKh, op. 8 1930, d. 92 Obshchaia perepiska po kontrol'’nym tsifram, Il. 31-32. 36 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 2496 Perepiska s VSNKh, trestami o

, khode lesozagotovok i splavnykh operatsii, 1929, |. 91. 37 By early 1930 the Urals was proposing to VSNKh SSSR a 2,808 percent increase in production by 1932-33 in return for 163 million rubles of investment over five years. Production would rise from 80 million rubles of output in 1928-29 to 559 million in 1932~—33 and investment from 1.87 million in 1929-30 to 59 million in 1932-33. GASO, f. 339-r ObISNKh, op. 8 1930, d. 92 Obshchaia perepiska po kontrol’nym tsifram, |. 32. 38 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 2496 Perepiska s VSNKh, trestami o khode lesozagotovok i splavnykh operatsii, 1929, Il. 26-30; GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 2 Sektor severa, d. 2457 Ekonomicheskii obzor Severnogo Urala, 1928-1930, |. 200 Pis’mo Lesnogo Otdela Tresta Uralmet Predsedatel’iu Uralplana Didkovskomu; GASO, f. 339-r ObISNKh, op. 7 1929, d. 73 Materialy i perepiska o rabote lesnoi promyshlennosti, |. 35. The latter citation refers to a table prepared by the ObISNKh in mid-1929, comparing underfulfillment of forestry production targets to underfulfillment of labor recruitment targets. 39'V. E. Tarasevich of Uralmet quoted the figure of 193,000 in felling crews (rubshchiki) and 326,000 in transporting crews (vozchiki). GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 1518

114 | The Great Urals Thus far, Urals economic organs did not share the forestry industry’s pessimism over the prospects of mechanization. At the November plenum of the Central Committee, V. V. Kuibyshev, chairman of VSNKh SSSR, had agreed

~ to establish a commission to undertake a substantial upward revision of the | Urals five-year plan. The agreement was made in connection with a discussion of the prospects for the new economic year, and the Urals leadership had high hopes for a quick upward revision of investment targets for 1929—30. But at least in the short term the effect of the Kuibyshev Commission was

completely the opposite. Negotiations between the commission and Urals economic organs dragged on into the summer of 1930, and in the absence of clear directives from the center the Commissariat of Finance was unwilling

to release any significant funding.

The worst-case scenario for Urals forestry was realized. Demands for forestry products from Urals industry grew exponentially and forestry trusts were compelled to begin operations in the north before the needed infrastructure was in place. At the same time, peasant labor was increasingly in demand in central Urals industrial centers, making recruitment of peasant labor—particularly to the severe climates of the northern counties—an impossible task. Despite frequent appeals for interim credits, as of early February 1930 the Urals forestry industry was promised only 917,000 rubles (versus four million in the original five-year plan, and eight million as promoted by regional leaders).*° However, a way out of this apparent dead end

had already presented itself. Collectivization, Dekulakization and the Labor Demands of Urals Forestry, December 1929—March 1930

, In the late 1920s Soviet leaders—both regional and central—armed district and village officials with the legal authority to take increasingly violent action against peasant resistance to agricultural campaigns.*! At the request of the leaders of agricultural regions, the Politburo commission on wholesale collectivization was convened in December 1929 to codify and direct the coercive measures being used by district and village officials to drive peasants into kolkhozy.*? The resolutions of the commission, particularly the decision Predvaritel’nye dannye po lesozagotovkam Urala, 1929-1930, |. 45 Doklad na soveshchanii pri Promsektsii Uralplana, 16 marta 1930. 40 Tbid., 1. ror.

“1 See Lynne Viola, “The Campaign to Eliminate the Kulak as a Class, Winter 1929-1930:

. A Reevaluation of the Legislation,” Slavic Review 3 (1986): 505.

42 Tt seems likely that the regional leaders participating in the work of the commission promoted the “liquidation of the kulak as a class.” Many of them aggressively pressed the center in 1930 and 1931 to give them permission to exile ever larger numbers of “kulaks”— often in the face of Moscow’s attempts to restrain them. For example, B. P. Sheboldaev of the Lower Volga region, who was credited with having initiated the December 1929 Politburo commission,

The Gulag | 115 to shift from a policy of the “limitation [ogranichenie]” of the kulak to one of the “elimination of the kulak as a class” served to accelerate rural violence and hugely expand the numbers of those who could be deployed in labor camps. When faced with a rapidly growing contingent of “dekulakized” peasants, regional leaders did not hesitate to send them to areas with a deficit of labor, and in the case of the Urals, to forestry enterprises in the north. District and village officials reacted immediately to the publication of the Politburo commission’s decision on dekulakization.*? According to a report from Irbitskii County (okrug) to the Urals Obkom, despite the absence of specific central or regional legislation on the methods and goals of dekulakization, by mid-January the campaign “was moving full speed ahead [raskulachivanie bylo v polnom razgare].” 44 Some district party organizations set up “command posts for the liquidation of the kulak” and launched a campaign of arrests.*> The report suggests that officials of the district party and executive committees and village soviets were dekulakizing for weeks without reporting to their county-level superiors. Lists of targets for dekulakization had already been compiled, and officials merely called meetings of local poor peasants in order to approve these lists.4° The Cheliabinsk County Party Committee reported to the Oblast’ Party Committee in early February that in seven districts eleven hundred meetings on dekulakization had been held, attended by almost fifty thousand peasants and collective farm mem-

ce . ‘ . bd

bers. As a result of these meetings seventeen hundred peasants were deku- | lakized and another 3,848 were approved for dekulakization.*’

The first Urals legislation on dekulakization was formulated by the Oblast’ Executive Committee on 15 January*® and circulated in the name of the Oblast’ Party Committee on the following day. It reinforced the ongoing processes by demanding “the immediate organization of landless, poor, and middle peasants, and rural society in the struggle against the wrecking work of kulaks and against counterrevolutionary elements... and the immediate applied to the Central Committee in April 1931 to approve the exile of 20,000 “kulaks.” The Andreev Commission on kulak policy approved the exile of only half that number. In the spring of 1931 alone, ten agricultural regions lobbied Moscow for permission to exile over 225,000 “kulaks.” They were allowed to exile less than one hundred thousand. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral'’nyi komitet, op. 120 Otdely TsK, d. 26 Protokoly i materialy Komissiei po voprosu o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv 1 trudovom ustroistve spetspereselentsev, ll. 224-25. 43 The decision was announced by Stalin in his 27 December 1929 speech to the Conference

of Agrariari Marxists. The speech was immediately published in the central press. I. Stalin, “K voprosam agrarnoi politiki v SSSR (Rech’ na konferentsii agrarnikov-marksistov, 27 dekabria 1929 g.),” Sochineniia (Moscow, 1952), 12: 169—70. 4 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 8 1930, d. 54 Materialy po voprosu o spetspereselentsakh, I. 75. 45 Thid., 1. 56.

*6 The report indicates that unapproved dekulakization had not been uncommon in the second half of 1929. Ibid., |. 75. 47 bid., 1. 4x.

48 GASO, f. 88-1 Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 2565 Materialy tret’ego i chetvertogo plenumov Uraloblispolkoma, |. 16.

116 | The Great Urals | promulgation . . . of resolutions on their exile beyond the borders of the county”; but in order to be sure that exile was organized in the best interests _ of northern forestry, it categorically stated that kulaks were to remain in the village “until instructions had been received from the oblast’.” 4?

The first working session of a Politburo commission on dekulakization was also held on 15 January and chaired by Viacheslav Molotov. Unfortunately the materials of the commission are in the “Presidential Archive,” which is closed to most researchers, and thus the activities of the commission are still a matter of speculation. We do know, however, that regional leaders, among them Urals party first secretary I. D. Kabakov, were well represented on the commission and were active participants. They were anxious that the center assist them in the process of dekulakization both materially

and with the publication of clear and consistent directives.°° The center, however, was not quick to delimit the campaign. In late January Genrikh lagoda, the assistant chairman of the political police (OGPU), directed the regions to develop their own plans for dekulakization, including the number

to be exiled, the location of exile, and the amount of manpower and techni- |

cal support required.*! |

a On 22 January the bureau of the Urals Oblast’ Party Committee established a commission to identify the county and district of origin and the destination of the initial ten to fifteen thousand kulak households and to “es-

tablish a concrete plan for the use of kulaks on forestry and... for the construction of concentration camps.” °* On 25 January a closed meeting of the Oblast’ Executive Committee distributed among regional organizations responsibility for transporting, feeding, and housing kulak labor.*? Five days later it passed a resolution doubling the target for exile to thirty thousand.*4 By 1 February the Oblast’ Party Committee had determined the future location of labor camps, which it used as the basis for instructions to the Oblast’ OGPU to ship the first five thousand kulaks by the tenth of the month.** Also on t February the Central Executive Committee (TsIK) and the All-union Council of People’s Commissars (SNK SSSR) published the first legislation __ on dekulakization since the resolutions of the December Politburo commission had been confirmed by the Central Committee. It merely ordered the regional executive committees and governments of autonomous republics | 4? TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 8 1930, d. 54 Materialy po voprosu o spetspereselentsakh,

. 89. .

) "so N. A. Ivnitskii, “Raskulachivanie” (forthcoming), p. 46. |

‘1 Tbid., pp. 46-47. 52 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 21 sekretnaia chast’, d. 51 Perepiska i drugie materialy o vyselenie kulatskikh khoziaistv, Il. 3-5.

53 Thid.,ll.|. 9. | | 54 Tbid., 9-10.

, . TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 8 1930, d. 54 Materialy po voprosu o spetspereselentsakh,

The Gulag | 117 “to take all necessary measures in the struggle versus the kulak up to and including the full confiscation of property and exile.” °° The regions were given permission to proceed—or so it seemed. During March, central organs, which were receiving a great volume of letters from poor and middle peasants who had been “dekulakized,” *” became increasingly concerned about “excesses” in the methods employed by local officials in the campaign. Entire villages were being blackmailed into joining collective farms under the threat of dekulakization.°® The leadership of the Urals oblast’ had been aware of such actions, but had taken few measures to stop them.*? The first move against local excesses came from Moscow. On 4 February the Central Executive Committee and the All-union Council of People’s Commissars issued a decree that somewhat restricted who was to be dekulakized. Exiled households per region were not to exceed an average of 3 to 5 percent of the rural population. Exile beyond the borders of the district was reserved only for the richest and most influential kulaks. Certain groups, notably Red Army soldiers and officers, were exempt from exile. And those whose family members had prolonged work experience in the factory were to be “treated with especial caution.” © Following the promulgation of this decree the regional and central press more frequently published articles critical of violations. The Urals Oblispolkom dutifully followed suit, passing a regional version of the central decree and joining the press campaign.°! Neither the press campaign against excesses nor the legislation which preceded it slowed the campaign.” Beginning in February the Central Commit56 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 21 sekretnaia chast’, d. 51 Perepiska i drugie materialy o vyselenie kulatskikh khoziaistv, |. 78; Spetspereselentsy v Zapadnoi Sibiri, 193 0-vesna 19318., ed. V. P. Danilov and S. A. Krasil’nikov (Novosibirsk, 1992), pp. 20-21. 57 The Urals Oblast’ Executive Committee received a letter to this effect from Krest‘ianskaia gazeta on 10 February. GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 21 sekretnaia chast’, d. 51 Perepiska 1 drugie materialy o vyselenie kulatskikh khoziaistv, |. 78. 58. Viola, “The Campaign to Eliminate the Kulak as a Class, Winter 1929-1930: A Reevaluation of the Legislation,” Slavic Review 3 (1986): 515, nN. 51. 59 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 8 1930, d. 54 Materialy po voprosu o spetspereselentsakh,

pp. 21-25. : ,

ll. 52-79, 89. 60 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 21 sekretnaia chast’, d. 51 Perepiska i drugie materialy o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv, Il. 28-31; Danilov and Krasil’nikov, Spetspereselentsy, 61 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 21 sekretnaia chast’, d. 51 Perepiska i drugie materialy o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv, ll. 21-22. For an example of criticism of excesses in the Urals press see Ural’skii rabochii, 8 February 1930, p. 3. 62 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 120 Otdely TsK, d. 26 Protokoly 1 materialy Komissii TsK VKP(b) po voprosu o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv i trudovom ustroistve spetspereselentsev, |. 84. Unfortunately the central documents give quarterly reports on forced resettlement for 1931 but not for 1930. Thus it is impossible to say with certainty how the process varied over time in that year. But reports from the target points of forced resettlement in the Urals suggest that the dekulakized peasants were first shipped out of their villages in early February and continued to arrive well into the summer. GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 21 sekretnaia chast’, d. 51 Perepiska i drugie materialy o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv, Il. 30-

310b, 74-76, 137, 140, 179-80.

118 | The Great Urals , tee Commission on Kulak Policy ® distributed exiled “kulak” households from the main agricultural areas to areas with acute labor shortages at the request of regional authorities involving tens of thousands of kulak households. Urals party first secretary Kabakov requested the delivery of between fifty and sixty thousand kulak households from grain regions to northern forestry trusts in the oblast’.®* Not even Stalin’s famous 30 March article, “Dizziness from Success,” which criticized the violent measures being employed by local officials and emphasized the necessity of voluntariness in the collectivization campaign, slowed dekulakization. A mass exodus from collective farms followed its publication. Though a Central Committee commission began to review cases of peasants “exiled in error,” its efforts immediately bogged down in the complexities of dealing with returning peasants who had been shipped thousands of kilometers from their villages.® Release from exile was limited to a small percentage of cases, however, and the number of new exiles kept rising. Dekulakization continued to be driven by two powerful effects: it gave agricultural regions a weapon with which to deal with open resistance to agricultural campaigns; and it gave regions with acute labor shortages access to a ready labor supply. These effects, which originated in the regions and were facilitated by the ongoing Central Committee Commission on Kulak Policy, in turn fueled the expansion of the camp system.

The Expansion of the Camp System, Spring 1930-—Fall 1931 Central organs were never unqualified in their enthusiasm for the camp system. They regularly criticized regional enterprises for their “appalling [bezobraznoe]” use of kulak labor. Their concern was not motivated by moral considerations, however, but rather by a sense that enterprises were unpre-

pared to absorb the “kulaks” or that they were using them “wastefully.” As early as 17 February 1930, a commission of the Supreme Economic Council of the Russian Federation (VSNKh RSFSR) recommended against expanding the existing labor force in the Urals forestry industry because the enterprises were unable to guarantee an adequate supply of housing and food.% These recommendations were ignored in the Urals. The first five thousand

“kulaks” had already been shipped north and the Commission on Kulak

| Policy had promised them another twenty-five thousand from outside the 63 This commission seems to have evolved from the January Politburo commission on dekulakization headed by Molotov. 64 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 120 Otdely TsK, d. 26 Protokoly i materialy

Komissii TsK VKP(b) po voprosu o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv i trudovom ustroistve spetspereselentsev, |. 15.

65 Thid., ll. 1-5. | 66 GASO, f. 339-r ObISNKh, op. 7 1929, d. 73 Materialy i perepiska 0 rabote lesnoi pro-

myshlennosti, ll. rr1-22. ,

The Gulag | 119 oblast’ by summer. From this early stage, the tone was set for the administration of forced labor in the regions. Regional organs—at first, the Administrative Department of the Oblast’ Executive Committee—were responsible for camp conditions and the use of kulak labor, but the center set no mini-

mum living standard beneath which the supply of dekulakized peasants would be stopped. A. A. Andreev, who took over the Commission on Kulak

Policy in March 1930, had declared that exiles had been shipped “on the insistent requests [po nastoiatel’nym pros’bam]” of the regions, which in so doing “took upon themselves entirely specific responsibilities” for their “well-being [ustroistvo]” and efficient use.®” In essence, he washed his hands of them.

In the spring of 1930 the Urals Executive Committee was in too great a

panic over underfulfillment in forestry to worry about the well-being of | “kulaks”. At a meeting of the major Urals forestry trusts on 8 February 1930, executive committee officials announced that there were forty thousand kulak households to be distributed among the trusts. When the trusts responded that they were prepared to accept only thirteen thousand, the Executive Committee gave them three days to prepare a general plan for the larger number.*®* The supply of food and housing were addressed on an ad hoc basis, generally by appealing to Moscow. The regional trade and supply

administrations (OblTorg and OblSnab) were ordered to appeal to their superiors—the Commissariat of Trade (NKTorg) and the Commissariat of Supply (NKSnab)—for extra food and other supplies. The Oblast’ Health Administration (OblZdrav) was to appeal to the Commissariat of Health (NKZdrav) for extra medical supplies. The Oblast’ Financial Administration (ObIFin) was told to appeal to the Commissariat of Finance (NKFin) for the money to pay for it all. And the permanent representation of the Oblast’ Executive Committee in Moscow was supposed to expedite these requests. The subsequent flurry of correspondence between the Urals and Moscow produced few promising results. The Commissariat of Trade agreed to send food sufficient to supply 75,400 people in the forestry industry, but the number of workers exceeded a quarter million at the height of the season.*? Medical supplies were sent only after the outbreak of epidemics.”° The Com-

missariat of Finance promised less than a third of the 1.2 million rubles requested to pay for housing construction.”! Only the OGPU, which was 6&7 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral'nyi komitet, op. 120 Otdely TsK, d. 26 Protokoly i materialy Komissii TsK VKP(b) po voprosu o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv 1 trudovom ustroistve spetspereselentsev, |. 74. 68 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 21 sekretnaia chast’, d. 51 Perepiska i drugie materialy o vyselenie kulatskikh khoziaistv, Il. 3 rob. 6? Somewhat later, the Oblispolkom representative in Moscow managed to increase supplies to cover 106,000 people. The daily ration was to include 300 grams of bread, 20 grams of cereal, 75 grams of fish, and 100 grams of cabbage daily. Ibid., ll. 93-102, 158. 70 Thid., ll. 148—490b. 71 Thid., |. 173.

120 | The Great Urals

its operations.” | ,

responsible for shipping the kulak labor to the camps, was fully funded in ,

Dekulakized peasants arriving in the north faced hellish conditions.” Many died of cold, starvation, or disease within weeks. They lacked not only food and housing but also the basic tools of forestry. Nevertheless, they , often were forced to work 10 to 12 hours a day. Often 30 percent of the labor force was too sick and weak to work. But because the local “kommandanty”—the bosses in charge of kulak labor in given forest sections—were held responsible for labor productivity, they often brutally punished those who failed to show up for work. It was not uncommon for peasants simply

to drop dead on the job.” ,

Well aware of conditions in the camps, central officials took little concrete action to improve them. Criticisms issued by the Andreev Commission were generally followed by vague instructions for local organs to “take the necessary measures to correct the situation.” 75 The Commissariats of Trade and Supply were told simply to “facilitate supply.” 7° The problem with such advice was that food, medicine, construction materials, and other goods necessary to improve conditions were in disastrously short supply. To send them

to the camps meant diverting resources from other industries.”” Neither the , local organs nor the commissariats would risk underfulfillment in other industries in order to save peasants who were perceived as “class enemies.” In the summer of 1931 the Central Committee and the All-union Council | of People’s Commissars passed legislation on minimal supply levels to the camps.’”® No action was taken. At the end of July Andreev took a list of complaints to the Politburo, which then ordered a series of “urgent measures.” ”? G. Iagoda of the OGPU was put in charge of ensuring fulfillment. Again, the Central Committee and Council of People’s Commissars issued | decrees on the supply of camps.®° But a follow-up investigation undertaken a month later by the chief of the State Administration of the Labor Camps (GULag—a subdepartment of the OGPU) discovered that few of the Polit72 Thid., ll. 62-63; Danilov and Krasil'nikov, Spetspereselentsy, p. 29. 73 Camp conditions in the Urals are described in gruesome detail in A. A. Bazarov, Kulak 1

agrogulag (Cheliabinsk, 1991). 4 Thid., pp. 190-238; RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 120 Otdely TsK, d. 26 Protokoly i materialy Komissii TsK VKP(b) po voprosu o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv i tru-

dovom ustroistve spetspereselentsey, ll. 203-23.

75 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 120 Otdely TsK, d. 26 Protokoly i materialy

Komissii TsK VKP(b) po voprosu o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv i trudovom ustroistve

spetspereselentsey, Il. 76, 77, 127, 203. | 76 Thid., Il. 75-76.

77 Thid., |. 213. | |

78 The Central Committee resolution “On the Situation of Kulaks” was passed on 20 May 1931, and the SNK decree on 1 July. RTIsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 120 Otdely Tsk, d. 52 Protokoly i materialy Komissii TsK VKP(b) po voprosu o vyselenii kulatskikh kho-

: ziaistv i trudovom ustroistve spetspereselentsev, ll. 108-15. 7? Thid., Il. 92-107.

days later. Ibid., |. 287. , 80 The Central Committee decree was issued on 10 August. The SNK decree followed six

| The Gulag | I21 buro measures had been taken. For example, the commissariats of agriculture (NKZem) and supply were supposed to have been given twelve million

rubles to arrange agricultural land and farm animals for the camps, but the | Commissariat of Finance had considered it “impossible” to release any more than 1.77 million from the reserve fund. The All-union Supreme Economic Council was supposed to have transferred construction materials necessary to build housing for a mere thirty thousand households. Nothing had been done.*! At a time when Soviet industry was desperately short of resources, the bureaucracy almost uniformly resisted the idea of increasing supplies to

the camp system. The dekulakized peasants themselves were the one “resource” considered

to be in abundant supply. In planning for the 1931 economic year, Urals forestry trusts had estimated their labor needs at more than twice the actual

labor force of 1929-30." The control targets for 1931 released by the Council of Labor and Defense had included only the most meager of financing for replacing workers by mechanization.*? In response to the requests of the Urals forestry industry, the Andreev Commission tripled the population of their labor camps.*4 The 1931 economic year also marked the beginning of a rapid expansion

of forced labor in other industries. Crises in coal and ore production and railroad construction, attributed to a shortage of workers, were addressed with shipment after shipment of kulak labor. At the request of Urals economic organs “new [exile] operations” were initiated to supply mining, metallurgy, and construction. The enterprises of the Eastern Steel Trust (Vostokostal’) applied for and were granted fourteen thousand kulak households. Of these, Magnitostroi alone received five thousand households and Tagilstroi three thousand. The Urals coal industry (Cheliabinsk and Kizel mines)

received 2,200. The Zlatoust and Tagil metallurgical plants received five hundred and two hundred respectively.8> The Andreev commission acted as a clearing house of kulak labor, rarely refusing applications from regional organs.®*° In the year and a half since the beginning of the campaign to eliminate the kulak as a class, 356,544 households (1,679,528 people) had been absorbed by the camp system. The Urals camp population was the largest: 123,547 households (571,355 people).°®” 51’ The report of the Gulag director was delivered to the Andreev Commission on 11 Sep-

tember 1931. Ibid., Il. 287-90. |

82 GASO, f. 339-r ObISNKh, op. 8 1930, d. 289 Obshchaia perepiska po kontrol’nym tsifram k planu Ural’skoi promyshlennosti na 1930-1931, |. 129. 83 Tbid., Il. 233-34.

84 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 120 Otedely TsK, d. 52 Protokoly i materialy

Komissii TsK VKP(b) po voprosu o vyselenii kulatskikh khoziaistv i trudovom ustroistve spetspereselentsey, Il. 15-20 Spravka o khode vyseleniia kulatskikh semei. 85 Thid., Il. 15-20.

86 The Northern Forestry Trust was refused the 17,000 households it had requested on the grounds that r had poorly organized its existing forced labor contingent. Ibid., ll. 5—1o.

122 | The Great Urals The sudden vast expansion of the camp system was driven by the pull of , industrial regions desperate to overcome acute labor shortages and the push of agricultural regions anxious to crush peasant resistance to local authority. The camp system itself was not an innovation of the regions, but the absorption of hundreds of thousands of dekulakized peasants into the system of forced labor would not have taken place in the absence of regional initiative. The Urals leaders were motivated by the “Great Urals plan.” Their desire to establish a modern metallurgical and machine-building colossus in the oblast’ was seriously threatened by shortages of wood fuel and lumber for construction. When Stalin approved the decision of the December 1929 Politburo commission to initiate a campaign to “eliminate the kulak as a class,” Urals leaders did not discourage local repression and tried to direct it toward accumulating forced labor for northern Urals forestry. Their initiatives did not directly violate central legislation—which was vague in the extreme—but leaders took advantage of the lack of clarity and acted in their own economic interest. The decision of oblast’ leaders to undertake a massive expansion of the camp system saved the “Great Urals plan”—at the ex-

pense of hundreds of thousands of lives. |

5 Breakdown

The targets established by the first five-year plan were far beyond the capacity of the Soviet economy. Except for the amount of money invested, the plan was underfulfilled in almost all major categories. The second five-year plan was more modest, and more of a plan in the sense of soberly matching tasks with capacities. It is commonly assumed that the first plan was the product of a narrow group of central interests, if not of Stalin’s will; that it generated considerable social support from sectors of the working class, but was imposed on a frightened and passive government apparatus. Similarly, it is assumed that the transition to “sober” planning brought a collective sigh of relief from harried regional officials who had feared the consequences of their inability to meet the tasks imposed on them. From the perspective of regional leaders of the period, however, this image of the first plan is completely back to front. Regional leaders were among the most enthusiastic supporters of the high tempos of construction and investment that characterized the first plan. Regions had specific economic agendas, and it was the rare official who felt that a large influx of central investment could not help the local economy. Regional leaders did not fear underfulfill-

ment, though it angered them—as it angered central officials—and they sought solutions and assessed blame together with the center. But the “sober” second plan, which was the center’s response to underfulfillment, upset and

disturbed regional leaders, who did not want to see the pace of investment

and construction decline. And they were yet more disturbed as central officials began to blame them for the failure of the first plan, and demand total and prompt fulfillment in the second. This severity from the center made the modest targets of the second five year plan seem much more threatening and difficult than those of the first. The transition from the first to the second five-year plan marks the origins of the “planned-administrative economy,” when competition and conflict 123

124 | The Great Urals among a wide array of institutional and economic interests produced “rules” of economic activity and administration. These rules had not emerged with the end of market relations at the end of the 1920s; had this been the case, regional leaders would hardly have behaved as they did. As it happened, this

period begins with the center and the regions united in a shared enthusiasm for high-tempo construction, and it ends with the breakdown of their relationship.

~The Urals and the All-out Drive, 1930-1931 _ During the years of the first five-year plan the foundations of a new and | modern Urals economy had been laid. At the First Sverdlovsk Oblast’ Party Conference in January 1934, first secretary I. D. Kabakov summarized the change: “From the grand and graying old handicraftsman . . . the Urals has been transformed into one of the most powerful and modern industrial centers of the Soviet Union.” ! These words were not empty self-advertisement.

transformation. |

Kabakov had reason to speak them with genuine pride, for he and other

_ members of the Obkom leadership had struggled long and hard to realize the

Throughout Russia the backwardness of Urals industry had been legend-

ary. Into the 1920s many Urals metallurgical plants continued to produce | metal in small open furnaces heated with wood, using the seasonal labor of peasants who were disinclined to stay on the job more than the few months between harvest and spring sowing. Urals machine building was devoted primarily to the simplest of agricultural and mining implements for the local |

market. When the central leadership promoted the construction of new met- | allurgical plants at the Fifteenth Party Congress in 1927, Urals proposals were treated with scorn. Leading Soviet economic officials assumed that the lion’s share of new investment would go to more developed industrial centers such as the Donbass. S. A. Khrennikov, the head of Glavmetall, told Urals officials that such projects were to be placed in the hands of “more enlightened people [bolee umnye golovy].” V. E. Grum-Grzhimailo, a prominent metallurgist who advised Soviet planners on key construction projects, rejected Urals proposals as cost-inefficient, and recommended instead the con-

struction of small plants for the satisfaction of local needs.? oe Five years later Khrennikov was in prison for “wrecking,” * and the Urals had become Russia’s largest and most technologically advanced producer of metals and heavy machinery. By 1933 Urals industry had received 3.7 billion rubles in capital investment— over seven times the investment of the previous 'TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 12 1934, d. 2 Stenograficheskii otchet XII Ural’skoi i I Sverdlovskoi partiinoi konferentsii, 12-22 ianvaria 1934, |. 12.

*3Khrennikov Ural'skii rabochii, 1 January 1931, p. I. : was arrested in connection with the Industrial Party trial in 1930. Grum-

Grzhimailo had died in 1928. :

oe ee ee ee IG a po 8 USS ee ee ee Pe ee CL — ee —r—“‘=EEECCC — SS rc rr — rrr— GASO, f Sovetov, Prezid mm 88-r Oblispolkop. Prezidi ; . olkom, 1 Prezidium oblastnogo s”ezda 12-17 fevrali nia .

; 7 fevralia 1931, |. 35.

126 | The Great Urals building was also completely modernized at this time. The Uralmash factory was poised to produce excavators, cranes, blast furnaces, and other complex machinery of heavy industry. The Cheliabinsk tractor factory was producing gas-powered agricultural machinery for large-scale farming. Other branches of industry such as nonferrous metals were brought to the latest world stan-

dard of technology. Production of zinc and alloys was created from the ground up.® Similarly, modern pulp and paper and chemicals industries in the Urals were creations of the first five-year plan.” The vast majority of capi- _ tal investment in Urals industry in this period went to new construction as opposed to reconstruction of existing plants. In ferrous metallurgy, for example, fully 84 percent of investment was devoted to the construction of new plants.’ The “grand and graying old handicraftsman” of the NEP period had not been able to generate enough profit to conduct capital repairs. The Urals “industrial combine” of the early 1930s seemed ready to compete with the

most efficient producers of heavy industry in the Soviet Union. __ _ The desire to be competitive in a centrally planned economy may strike the reader as odd. We are inclined to think of the Stalinist administrativecommand system as involving the centralization of economic decisionmaking and the punctual, unquestioning fulfillment of directives from above: , a system in which officials struggle for a reasonable plan and a favorable allocation of resources in order to ease the pressures of expanding production

. targets and avoid the punishments resulting from underfulfillment.? But these are not characteristics that Soviet officials would have immediately rec-

ognized, particularly in the early 1930s. The administrative-command system did not emerge fully formed at the end of the NEP in the late 1920s, for the © logic that had driven economic decision-making in the 1920s continued to inform decisions well into the 1930s. During the NEP, Urals officials had been

concerned about competitiveness to the point of obsession. Until the late 1920s industrial investment from Moscow was grossly insufficient to renew

~~ the capital stock. Much of the local capital investment had accumulated from the profits of enterprises. For a region like the Urals, with its aging and inefficient metallurgical plants, the cost of modernization was as huge as the profits were small. The cynicism that central officials like Khrennikov and Grum-Grzhimailo expressed toward the Urals seemed likely to condemn the

region to a cycle of poverty and backwardness. | The massive investment program of the first five year-plan was an opportunity for Urals leaders to overcome the economic backwardness of the ° Istoriia industrializatsti Urala (Sverdlovsk, 1967), pp. 335, 357. ’ Sotsialisticheskoe stroitel’stvo SSSR (Moscow, 1934), pp. 378, 382; V. S. Lel’chuk, Sozdanie khimicheskoi promyshlennosti SSSR (Moscow, 1959), p. 247. 8G. N. Shaposhnikov, “Stroitel’stvo novykh kombinatov i predpriatii (v pervom piatiletnom plane)” (unpublished, 1992), p. 23. ? See Joseph Berliner, Factory and Manager in the USSR (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), chaps.

6-7.

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128 | The Great Urals a Presidium, complained: ,

of productive forces in April 1932, G. I. Lomov, a member of the Gosplan When discussing the issues of culture, of coal-mining or chemicals, every region, every district, every branch of industry insists on the absolute necessity of ex-

_ panding production . . . to fantastical proportions. Region after region com__ petes for the construction of a large number of metallurgical plants, stretching , their production capacity to unparalleled levels, and in the end each one gets

offended if the tempos of construction are reduced.!! , ,

The Urals could not justly count itself among the offended. Since the November 1929 Central Committee plenum had agreed to create a commission | | under VSNKh chairman V. V. Kuibyshev to review the Urals five-year plan,

central party and state organs had been consistently well disposed to the region’s needs. In May 1930 the Central Committee issued a directive “On the Work of Uralmet,” critical of VSNKh for the slow pace of construction

| in the Urals. The directive called for the expansion of construction, financing, and materials supply to Urals metallurgy in order to build a “second — , metallurgical base” in the East: “The industrialization of the country canno longer depend on southern [that is, Ukrainian] metallurgy alone.” 12 Simi-

larly, the resolutions of the December 1930 Central Committee plenum and directives of Sovnarkom, Gosplan, and VSNKh in 1931 and 1932 promised _

further assistance in financing, supply, and planning.'* Central financing was coming to the Urals thick and fast. The region seemed to be getting

everything it asked for. Oe , ,

I. 49. | , 5: L12-17. , 11 RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan, op. 30 1932, d. 784 Stenogramma Vsesoiuznoi konferentsii po razmeshcheniiu proizvoditel’nykh sil v UKK, 7-11 aprelia 1932, |. 3. Similarly, Sergo

Ordznonikidze complained to the December 1930 Central Committee plenum that though capital investment had been recently increased by over two billion rubles, “when you speak to the | comrades, you get the impression that nobody got anything.” Rossisskii Tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (hereafter RTsSKhIDNI), f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 460 Ob’edinennyi plenum TsK i TsKK VKP(b), 17-21 dekabria 1930 g., 12 KPSS v resoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s"ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK (Moscow, 1984),

'S At the December 1930 plenum Kuibyshev referred to the construction of the Ural-

Kuznetsk Combine as “the most characteristic feature of the five-year plan together with the target to produce 17 million tons of pig iron.” RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 , Plenumy, d. 460 Ob’edinennyi plenum TsK i TsKK VKP(b), 17~21 dekabria 1930 g., |. 8. The 3 March 1931 directive of the Presidium of All-union VSNKh “On the Ural-Kuznetsk Combine” increased financing to Urals metallurgy by 350 million rubles. RGAE, f. 9205 Vsesoiuz-

noe ob"edinenie tiazhelogo mashinostroeniia (hereafter VOMT), op. 1 1930-1933, d. 155. Protokoly zasedanii gruppy po UKK pri planovom otdele VSNKh, postanovleniia presidiuma VSNKh i doklady sotrudnikov o razvitii proizvodstva tiazhelogo mashinostroeniia, gornogo i obogatitel’nogo oborudovaniia vo vtoroi piatiletke dlia UKK, 11 ianvaria 1931-4 maia 1932, ll. 75-760b. The 26 January 1932 directive of All-union Sovnarkom “On the development of the most important branches of the Urals economy in 1932” obligated the Commissariat of

Heavy Industry (NKTP) to take measures to guarantee supplies to key Urals enterprises, par- | , ticularly to metallurgy. GASO, f. 241-r Uraloblplan, op. 1 Presidium, d. 350 Postanovleniia | SNK SSSR i Gosplana RSFSR o razvitii vazhneishikh otraslei khoziaistva Urala v 1932, |. 9.

Breakdown | 129 The effect was to create a plan with targets of production, construction, and financing well beyond what the regional economy could meet. In every year

of the first five-year plan the Urals substantially underfulfilled plan targets. Metals production was rarely fulfilled by more than 70 percent, and construction had an even worse record: only sixty-three of over one thousand projects initiated in the Urals plan were completed by 1932.'* Regional leaders were less inclined to fear punishment than to blame central state organs for the sorry state of affairs. In early January 1931 the chairman of the Urals Planning Commission complained to a session of the Presidium of Gosplan that “a year and a half ago we presented the ‘Great Urals’ plan, which clearly described the potential to produce seven and a half million tons of pig iron by 1932 given a pressurized construction program in 1930. Now, [because of delays in planning] unavoidably this figure will be smaller.” 15 The Obkom published an open letter to the Verification Commission (Kommissiia ispolneniia) of All-union Sovnarkom in the newspapers Ural’skii rabochii and Za industrializatsiiu which pointed out that VSNKh’s failure to provide timely approval for the Urals economic plan was in violation of the Central Committee’s resolution of 15 May 1930 “On the Work of Uralmet.”!® Regional officials also blamed the transportation system for current production problems. In their annual reports to central economic organs, the trusts and enterprises consistently blamed supply shortages for their failure to meet plan targets.!” Almost without exception, regional officials at the December 1930 Central Committee plenum raised the issue of supply. For example, a dele-

gate from Leningrad claimed: “We frequently receive 50 percent of that which we are promised. We need to review thoroughly the system by which

supply is organized. The existing system has lost all concept of contract discipline.” '® Regional complaints were taken seriously. Central Committee

secretary A. A. Andreev admitted that the transport system took a large 4 GASO, f.88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 3406 Kon"iunkturnye doneseniia i obzory promyshlennosti Urala, 1932 g., ll. 16-20. Shaposhnikov, “Stroitel’stvo novykh,” p. ro. 1S RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan, op. 29 1931, d. ro1 Stenogramma ob”edinennogo zasedaniia Presidiuma Gosplana SSSR s osoboi kommissiei po UKK, 30 ianvaria 1931, |. 271. See also Kabakov’s complaints to the December 1930 Central Committee plenum, RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 460 Ob"edinennyi plenum TsK i TsKK VKP(b), 17-21 dekabria 1930 g., |. 46. 6 Ural’skii rabochii, 1 January 1931, p. I. '7TIn 1931 Uralmashstroi received 52 percent of its target for cement, 24 percent for bricks, 15 percent for rails, etc. Its 1931 report to VOMT stated that undersupply “had an extremely negative effect on construction, restrained tempos, and [was] one of the decisive and fundamental factors affecting the fulfillment of production plans.” RGAE, f. 9205 VOMT, op. 1 1930-1933, d. 228 Godovoi otchet gosudarstvennogo upravleniia po postroike Uralmashzavoda “Uralmashstroi” za 1931 s ob’iasnitel’noi zapiskoi k nemu, |. 14. For similar difficulties at the Eastern Metallurgical Trust (Vostokostal’) see RGAE, f. 4086 Glavnoe upravlenie metallurgicheskoi promyshlennosti (Glavmetall), op. 2 obshchaia dokumentatsiia, d. 77 Ob’iasnitel’naia zapiska k godovomu otchetu ob"edineniia “Vostokostali” za 1932, |. 6. 18 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 460 Ob’edinennyi plenum TsK i TsKK VKP(b), 17-21 dekabria 1930 g., |. 27.

130 | The Great Urals share of the blame for the underfulfillment.’? The next two Central Committee plena addressed questions of transport and supply. Though the “all-out drive” rarely included strict enforcement of central targets, the command-administrative system was beginning to exercise a high degree of centralization of economic administration. In 1929 Moscow had extended its control over all of the major first five-year-plan projects.*° At the time, the regions had not felt threatened, viewing such control as an unfortunate necessity in order to ensure that their projects would receive a high priority in financing and supply. In his address to the Sixteenth Party Congress in June 1930, Kuibyshev indicated the center’s sensitivity to the regions’ needs: “There is not one important branch of industry in which the Central Committee is not involved. And there has not been one case when the Central Committee . . . with the help of the economic organs did not find extra sources for the acceleration of tempos [of construction].” 7! Nevertheless there were grumblings from the regions, particularly in cases where industries being administered by VSNKh were performing badly. V. Ia. Chubar’ a Ukrainian Politburo member, commented in his speech to the December 1930 Central Committee plenum: “I don’t object [to centralization (otobranie)| because it means we’ll receive real capital investment generated by the development of the economy . . . but too much is centralized out of inertia.” 2? Indeed, central officials were prepared to admit they had bitten off more than they could chew. In the course of 1930 and 1931 significant parts of most major branches of industry were “re-decentralized.” The regions felt little threat from centralization not only because they bene— fited from it in the chaotic conditions of the all-out drive but also because they did not anticipate that such centralization was permanent. Similarly, the centralization of the financial system did not raise strong objections. The creation of the “unified state budget” meant that, in contrast to the 1920s when about half the tax revenue was distributed by the regions, the vast majority was now distributed by Moscow. As long as the state bank was generous with credits, however, the regions were not anxious to return to a system in which capital construction was funded largely out of industry profits.

Nevertheless, there were complaints that excessive centralization did not , 19 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral'nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 473 Plenum TsK VKP(b), 11-

, 15 iiunia 1931 g., |. 88.

20 The Central Committee resolution “On the Reorganization of the Administration of Industry” (5 December 1929) promised the trusts greater autonomy over “technical leadership and rationalization,” but passed to VSNKh control over finances, supply, planning, and capital

construction. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 5: 60-67. ,

21 XVI Sezd vsesoiuznoi kommunisticheskoi partii (b), stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow,

OD CPO? argued, as did other regional leaders, that centralization confused and complicated administration more than it helped. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 460 Ob"edinennyi plenum TsK i TsKK VKP(b), 17-21 dekabria 1930 g., Il. 18-19. 23 A. V. Venediktov, Organizatsiia gosudarstvennoi promyshlennosti v SSSR, 1921-1934

(Leningrad, 1961), pp. 561-64. |

Breakdown | 131 give enterprises the flexibility to “maneuver finances in the interests of construction or wages.” ** In the summer of 1931 a Council of Labor and Defense (STO) directive gave enterprises the right to dispose of 10 percent of

their turnover capital.2> But even this was not as important to the Urals as breaking the cycle in which its backward industry could not afford to modernize itself. To achieve this, it was willing to contribute to a centralized financial system. According to the rather optimistic 1932 projections of the Urals Planning Commission, if the local budget were to receive 1.3 percent of the national income in 1937 (versus 0.9 percent in 1932), the total would be almost 1.2 billion rubles—more than a third of total investment in the first Urals five-year plan. In the course of the second five-year plan over 300 million rubles could be invested from the regional budget.?¢ Even in the context of financial centralization, the Urals leadership had visions of wealth for the region. High-tempo industrialization did not disturb the regions; indeed they did

everything in their power to encourage the center to spend and build as much as possible. If Moscow had become infected with “gigantomania,” it had caught the disease from the regions. The fast pace of new construction allowed the Urals to fundamentally renew the aging capital stock and overcome the apparent dead end into which sixty years of negligible capital investment had driven it. The central leadership shared this position on fundamentally similar terms. Stalin argued that Russia had to overcome her backwardness in a short period, or risk losing her independence: We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it or we shall go under.?’

Stalin was referring to the capitalist West. The same words would not have seemed out of character for Obkom first secretary I. D. Kabakov in reference

to Ukraine. ,

Regional and Central Plans Diverge

Though substantial underfulfillment had plagued most key branches of the economy in 1930, the following economic year began with a common *4 See the speech of F. P. Griadinskii (Western Siberia) to the December 1930 Central Committee plenum. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 460 Ob"edinennyi plenum TsK i TsKK VKP(b), 17-21 dekabria 1930 g., |. 15. 25 Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii raboche-krest‘iaskogo pravitel’stua SSSR 46 (1931): 570-72 (art. 316). (Hereafter SZ.) 26 GASO, f. 241-r Uralplan, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 420 Instruktsii k sostavleniiu kontrol/nykh tsifr, 1932-33, |. 93.

71. V. Stalin, Sochineniia (Moscow, 1951), p. 39.

132 | The Great Urals | feeling of optimism. In his address to the December 1930 Central Committee plenum, Kuibyshev declared: “Despite certain miscalculations and breakdowns, we are experiencing an enormous forward movement.” 28 He expressed great confidence that if the Party paid special attention to transportation and fuel supply, this movement could be further accelerated. The control figures for 1931 projected a 45-percent growth of production and a 75-percent increase in capital investment in the socialized sector versus

1930.29 oo

Urals officials shared this enthusiasm, though with some anxiety. Frequent

changes in targets and delays in financing had held up the “Great Urals plan,” and they were worried that Moscow might not carry through on its promises. In his concluding statement Kuibyshev noted that “in the speeches of some of our comrades from the East . . . one senses a note of criticism that the control figures for 1931 don’t fully express the decisions of the Party on the resolution of the Ural-Kuznetsk Combine [UKK] issue.” 3° He went on to

explain that the UKK, a complex of construction projects in the Urals, Siberia, and Kazakhstan, would receive 1.6 billion rubles, or 28 percent of __ all-union capital investment in 1931. Of this, one billion would be invested in the Urals. Similarly, other central officials sought to calm the impatient eastern leaders. In his opening address to a meeting of the All-union Gosplan Presidium in January 1931, the chairman of the Special Commission on the

_° Ural-Kuznetsk Combine agreed with Urals officials that in the past year “there had not been a sufficiently serious attitude to the Ural-Kuznetsk issue in leading planning organizations and other state organs.” In presenting the 1931 control figures for the UKK, he spoke of the need to “make up for lost time and to enforce, at all costs, such tempos as will ensure the fulfillment of

party directives on the construction of the UKK.” *! Urals officials were determined to assure such momentum. In the absence of instructions from the center, and fully two years before the end of the first

five-year plan, the Oblast’ Planning Commission was hard at work mapping the contours of the second five-year plan. The initial version, issued in July 1931, took the vision of the “Great Urals plan” to new heights of tele-

ological fantasy. In ruble terms, it projected the production of Urals industry in 1937 at 1,000 percent of the overambitious target for 1932 and 1,800 percent of the plan for 1931—a plan fulfilled by less than 70 percent. The production of pig iron was to rise from 1.5 million tons in 1931 to al*8 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 460 Ob”edinennyi plenum TsK i TsKK VKP(b), 17-21 dekabria 1930 g,, ll. 5, 9-10. 2? Tbid., |. 6; Eugene Zaleski, Planning for Economic Growth in the Soviet Union, 19181932 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: 19712), p. 158. 30 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 460 Ob"edinennyi plenum TsK i TsKK VKP(b), 17-21 dekabria 1930 g., |. 81. 31 RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan SSSR, op. 29 1931, d. tor Stenogramma ob”edinennogo zasedaniia prezidiuma Gosplana SSSR s osoboi komissiei po UKK, 31 ianvaria 1931, |. 2.

Breakdown | 133 most twenty million tons in 1937.°* Copper production was to increase by a factor of eleven, and electricity production by a factor of sixteen. Entirely new industries such as automobile production and nickel mining and processing were to sprout up and become giants by 1937.*? This plan is perhaps the best evidence that in the early 1930s the Urals was undaunted by the possibility of underfulfillment and determined to wrest from the central government all the investment it could get. (The plan came with a price tag of 33.5 billion rubles in central capital investment—more than ten times the figure for the first five-year plan.) *4 It is also clear evidence that Urals officials

had not given up the idea of regional economic autarchy despite the inclusion of Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Bashkiria in the center’s plans for the “second metallurgical base in the East.” The plan speaks of the Urals as “main base” of the UKK and concludes that the “principle idea of the plan is the concentrated development of industry in the Urals and the dominance of a self-contained production cycle from raw materials to finished product, because only in this way are conditions created for the most rational organization of the exploitation of [Urals] natural resources.” °° The other regions were to be only secondary suppliers of raw materials to a Urals-centered UKK. The plan was a remarkable statement of the regional agenda: to use central investment in order to make the Urals a rich, modern, diverse economic empire in the heartland of the Soviet Union. The circumstances under which the plan was proposed could not have been

less propitious. Under the burden of attempts to make up for the underfulfillment of 1930, the disproportions— of construction and production on the one hand, and supply and distribution on the other—were further exaggerated. By year’s end it was clear that efforts to make up for 1930 had not merely failed, for there was an absolute decline in the production of ferrous metals—the very core of Soviet heavy industry.°° The focus of party organs on transportation problems had failed to produce any results, except perhaps a suspicion that “wreckers had chosen transport to paralyze the economy.” ?7 For the time being, the transportation system was the main target of blame for the failure to meet plan targets. Though the tendency to see underfulfillment in terms of “wrecking” grew in the course of the next several 32 Actual all-union production of pig iron in 1937 was approximately 14.5 million tons. Eugene Zaleski, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, 1933-1952 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980),

P33 A target of one million cars annually was set for 1937. Most other new industries were also to be in the machine-building sector, covering every possible need and desire from ball bearings to specialized blast furnaces. 34 GASO, f. 241-r Oblplan, op. 1 Sektsiia promyshlennaia, d. 827 Perspektivnyi plan UKK (Ural’skoi chasti) na 1931-1937, ll. 33-35. 35 Thid., Il. 1, 20.

36 Zaleski, Stalinist Planning, p. 203. 37 A, A. Andreev, Commissar of Transport (Putei Soobshcheniia) in RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsen-

tral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 473 Plenum TsK VKP(b), 11-15 tiunia 1931 g., |. 88.

134 | The Great Urals years, many central officials were beginning to examine the causes of the growing crisis in order to prevent gross underfulfillment in the future. The fall of 1931 marks the beginning of both blame assessment and a search for concrete adjustments in planning. All-union Gosplan reviewed the draft of the second Urals five-year plan in August 1931. Its initial response was to cut production targets for machine building and ferrous metallurgy by approximately 25 percent, but other targets—notably capital expenditure—were left without substantial revision, and the Urals was congratulated for its efforts. But already there was evidence of a countertrend to accepting such uncontrolled regional spending. At the request of the Commissariat of Finance (NKF), the Council of Labor and Defense (STO) passed a law in June 1931 demanding better accounting of investment funds received from the center.3® What NKF and others had observed was that the increase in capital investment was not being reflected in the amount of construction and production. Money was being misused. Three months later NKF was given extra powers to “take control of the execution of the state budget . . . and compose directives to ensure its execution.” 3° Its investigations suggested that enterprises were not following approved plans, but rather were acquiring inputs regardless of the costs. In these “violations of plan discipline” they not only built up substantial debts, but they were also hoarding inputs, which were in short supply.*° For example, it was observed that the Petrovskii factory in Dnepopetrovsk had a

| fourth-quarter spending plan of 6.3 million rubles, but actual spending was 9.6 million rubles. Many such cases were cited. Little action was taken immediately, but the evidence that subnational players were not acting in good faith undermined the argument of the regions that Moscow was to blame for |

the sorry state of plan fulfillment and that the continuation of high rates. of | spending and construction was necessary. The findings of the NKF investigations were reinforced by the work of a Central Control Commission—Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (IT'sKKRabkrin) group studying the administration of industry in the fall of 1931.

Though most of its work was devoted to an examination of the top of the VSNKh hierarchy, it also criticized the organization of the enterprises: The existing forms of administration [of the enterprises] are unwieldy, complex,

and slow to action . . . they are not based on comprehensive planning, the preparation of the production process, or the efficient use of productive re38 RGAE, f. 7733 Narodnyi kommissariat finansov SSSR (hereafter NKF), op. 10 1932,

d. 363 Materialy po obsledovaniiu pravleniia Prombanka, |. 15.

39 This directive of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars was based on an initiative of NKF. RGAE, f. 7733 NKF SSSR, op. 10 1932, d. 21 Materialy po organizatsii finapparata kraevykh i oblastnykh finorganov.

Prombanka, I. 15. ,

40 RGAE, f. 7733 NKF SSSR, op. ro 1932, d. 363 Materialy po obsledovaniiu pravleniia

Breakdown | 135 sources, which leads to disorganization in the shops . . . the incorrect use of equipment, labor, etc. .. . Technical control over the quality of production as well as... control over the fulfillment of production program is organized extremely poorly and does not signal in timely fashion the onset of production breakdowns and does not create the necessary conditions for the correction of these breakdowns.*!

Central officials were getting clear signals that the massive amounts of investment in the regional economies were being squandered, or at least incompe-

tently allocated. It was increasingly clear that to blame the transportation system and simply reinforce investment in that sector was inadequate to ensure a rapid economic growth. The winter of 1931-32 was a time of considerable confusion in economic policy. There was no shortage of advocates—both in the regions and the center— of continued high rates of growth and investment. This was to be the year when several of the giant projects of the first five-year plan were to begin production, including the Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk Metallurgical Combines. Great hopes were placed on the ability of these and other plants to contribute to economic growth. There was a sense that changes were needed, but as yet no clear idea of which changes. Gosplan delayed the release of the 1932 control figures for weeks. At a December 1931 session of the Presidium of Gosplan on the control figures, an official from Turkmenistan complained that they “have been kept in secret, so that we can’t present our own material and debate them.” *? A representative from western Siberia commented that “when we approached the [industrial] sector, they showed us four and five and sometimes as many as eleven variants and told us they didn’t know which ones would be accepted.” #2 When the figures were released, they came in a form considerably less detailed than in previ-

ous years. They seemed almost provisional. But they did not constitute a withdrawal from high tempos: capital expenditures were to rise from 16.1 billion rubles in 1931 to 21.1 billion rubles in 1932.44 Despite the usual complaints from the regions that certain projects had been cut and certain sums of investment were insufficient, no radical shift in policy was evident. There was also no increase in fulfillment. Urals heavy industry was running an average of 67-percent fulfillment in January and February, and the

figure was falling. The supply of ores was falling, and the number of blast 41 GARF, f. 5446 Sovet Truda i Oborony i Sovet Narodnykh Kommissarov SSSR (hereafter STO i SNK SSSR), op. 13 1932, d. 86 O sostoianti i perspektivakh razvitiia respublikanskoi i mestnoi promyshlennosti i o razgranichenii upravleniia soiuznoi, respublikanskoi i mestnoi promyshlennosti, Il. 3-4. 42 RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan, op. 29 1931, d. 67 Stenogramma zasedaniia Prezidiuma Gosplana o kontrol’nykh tsifrakh 1932 g., 13 dekabria 1931, |. 191. 43 Tbid., |. 170.

44 SZ 75 (1931): 836-44 (art. 500).

136 | The Great Urals , furnaces under repair was rising. Capital construction at the largest projects was less than 60 percent of the target.*> And the situation was little different in other regions. This time, Moscow’s reaction to underfulfillment was different. The influence of the Commissariat of Finance, Rabkrin, and the Central Control Commission was rising as regional credibility was waning. In contrast to 1931, when the Council of People’s Commissars had increased investment and construction in order to make up for underfulfillment, in 1932 it reduced the plan at each quarter below the average of the annual plan.*¢ By the time Gosplan opened a series of conferences on the second five-year __

plan, it was clear that the policy shift was not a temporary measure. In his Opening speech to the conference on the UKK five-year plan, G. I. Lomov criticized the regions for pushing for “fantastical” tempos, saying: “very often, the drive for quantity hurts the quality of our work.” He singled out the Urals for his examples: the millions of rubles invested in electricity stations that do not work because of poor planning; the growing rate of industrial accidents at enterprises; the appalling organization of labor and use of equipment; the extended breakdowns. He expressed his determination to avoid the approval of such figures “as would in the end only register our inability to plan.” 4” Gosplan radically reduced the Urals construction plans. The tar-

| get for pig iron production was brought from twenty-two million tons in 1937 to less than ten million tons. Machine building was reduced from five to three billion rubles across the five years. Copper production targets were cut by 75 percent.*® And the Urals dreams of a closed production cycle, of regional economic autarchy, were dismissed. Much of the new investment in nonferrous metals and chemicals was to go to Kazakhstan. Western Siberia was favored for new construction in “middle” machine building—transport, agricultural, and mining machinery. Urals officials were told that they should “understand the necessity of distributing productive forces, and not

pressing all the factories into Sverdlovsk.” 4? | Urals officials were livid. And they were not alone. Other regions of the UKK also felt slighted by the overall decline in construction targets. They accused Gosplan of violating the decisions of the Central Committee and 45 GASO, f. 88-r Oblispolkom, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 3406 Kon’iunkturnye doneseniia i obzory promyshlennosti Urala 1932 g., ll. 16-21, 57.

46 Zaleski, Stalinist Planning, p. 208. 47 RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan, op. 30 1932, d. 784 Pervaia konferentsiia po razmeshcheniiu proizvoditel’nykh sil v UKK, |. 3.

, 48 RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan, p. 30 1932, d. 786 Stenogramma vsesoiuznoi konferentsii po , razmeshcheniiu proizvoditel’nykh sil vy UKK, vechernoe zasedanie 1o aprelia 1932, |. 35; TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 10 1932 d. 196 Stenogramma zasedaniia partaktiva o razrabotke | plana vtoroi Ural’skoi piatiletki, 27 maia 1932, |. 10. 49 RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan, op. 30 1932, d. 784 Pervaia konferentsiia po razmeshcheniiu proizvoditel’nykh sil v UKK, ll. 25-26, 35, 122.

Breakdown | 137 the Sixteenth Party Congress on “the movement [of industry] to the East.” °° Gosplan officials responded with criticism of “local patriotism” *! and of the common assumption that Gosplan was in a position to accept any project without regard to costs and benefits.** The halls of the conference were

full of talk of the “vast scale of the disagreements” and of the “enormous divide” between the views of central and regional officials.*? These differences were not resolved at the conference; Gosplan continued its work on the second five-year plan and Urals officials returned home defiant. Though some of the key reduced figures were accepted, Urals planners continued to develop their own vision of the plan, to criticize “those who misunderstand

the foundations of the Ural-Kuznetsk Combine,” ** and to bombard the Council of People’s Commissars with requests to review construction and investment plans.»*°

The regions may have hoped that they could overcome the pressure for re-

straint much as they had done in the late 1920s, when a battle had been fought over the direction of the control figures. The Commissariat of Heavy

Industry (NKTP) supported regional concerns and protested to SNK that NKF credit policy was substantially responsible for industrial underfulfillment because shortages of money were preventing the payment of workers and suppliers.** NKF responded by insisting that SNK had already approved the cuts and that the issue was the poor work of industry.*” But in contrast

to the late 1920s, Rabkrin—formerly the biggest enthusiast of tempos— joined with the Central Control Commission in supporting NKF, citing huge losses in the metals and mining sectors, excessive wages, rising production costs, and falling production.°’ At the fall 1932 Central Committee plenum NKTP commissar Sergo Ordzhonikidze presented a valiant defense for the _ SORGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan, op. 30 1932, d. 699 Stenogramma Pervoi vsesoiuznoi konferentsii po razmeshcheniiu proizvoditel’nykh sil vo vtorom piatiletii, 20 aprelia 1932, |. 17. Sl [bid., |. 16.

52 RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan, op. 30 1932, d. 786 Stenogramma vsesoiuznoi konferentsii po | razmeshcheniiu proizvoditel’nykh sil v UKK, vechernoe zasedanie ro aprelia 1932, |. 3. 53 RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan, op. 30 1932, d. 699 Stenogramma Pervoi vsesoiuznoi konferentsii po razmeshcheniiu proizvoditel'nykh sil vo vtorom piatiletii, 20 aprelia 1932, |. 66.

54TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 10 1932 d. 196 Stenogramma zasedaniia partaktiva o razrabotke plana vtoroi Ural’skoi piatiletki, 27 maia 1932, |. 8. The speech of Obkom secretary L. I. Mirzoian to a meeting of the Urals party activists on the development of the Urals second five-year plan was clearly critical of central officials, though without mentioning any names.

55 GARF, f. 5446 STO i SNK SSSR, op. 13 1932, d. 20 Protesty mest i vedomstv po kontrol’nym tsifram na 1932. 56 GARF, f. 5446 STO i SNK SSSR, op. 13a sekretnaia chast’ 1932, d. 958 Tekushchaia perepiska po voprosam finansirovanii kapital’nogo stroitel’stva, |. 7. 57 Thid., ll. 17-18.

58 GARF, f. 5446 STO i SNK SSSR, op. 13 1932, d. 91 O finansovom polozhenii ugol’noi i metallurgicheskoi promyshlennosti, |. 8. Probably the strongest support for high tempos shifted from Rabkrin to NKTP when Ordzhonikidze left the chairmanship of the former and took over the latter.

138 | The Great Urals continuation of high tempos. He contended that despite serious underfulfillment, industry was “on the upswing,” and those who argued that the nonfulfillment of the 1932 plan was evidence that “we had gone too far [slishkom razmakhnulis’]” were “un-Bolshevik.”*? Regional officials were more aggressive than ever. Again they blamed supply problems and the financing cuts for their troubles, but the tone was now decidedly hostile. When the cancellation of plans for construction of a metallurgical plant in the Central Black Earth Region was raised, regional party secretary I. M. Vareikis declared that this was “Right opportunism in practice, a reference to the attempts of the Right Opposition to restrain the tempo of construction in 1929.”° The director of Magnitostroi asked why central officials should be surprised at underfulfillment when the financing promised at the beginning of the year is subsequently withdrawn: “Everyone says that Sergo

[Ordzhonikidze] is good, but that the [administration of industry] is no good. I declare here in the presence of the Commissar of Heavy Industry that

whether or not the administration is any good, if we receive the [financing], the [factories] will be built.” *! But Ia. Rudzutak of Rabkrin was equally categorical and totally intolerant of attempts to evade blame for underfulfillment: “The failure of our factories to work at capacity is caused not by an insufficiency of labor force or raw materials, but rather is exclusively the result of the poor technological, economic, and administrative leadership [of _ the enterprise].” ©* The solution to existing problems, as he saw it, was the

more efficient use of materials already available. ,

Ordzhonikidze’s defense of high tempos proved to be a losing proposition. The “upswing” he had envisioned did not materialize and impatience with underfulfillment increased. Rudzutak’s—and Rabkrin’s—intolerance toward those who blamed their problems on the center became state pol-

icy, which was reflected in the changing tone of center-region correspon- , dence. Rather than blankly requesting action on one or other issue, telegrams from Stalin and other Central Committee secretaries and from the Council of People’s Commissars and the commissariats now demanded immediate “strict” measures and reports every five or ten days, all under the “personal responsibility” of a given Obkom secretary.®? Once any explana-

, tion of underfulfillment had been excluded from political discourse, it was a short leap to the conclusion that underfulfillment was an act of resistance to state policy.

60 Tbid., 1. 167. 7 62 Thid., |. 149. ,

59 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 500 Plenum Tsentral’nogo komiteta VKP(b), 28 sentiabria—2 oktiabria 1932, Il. 137-38, 147. 61 Tbid., 1. 177.

63 See, e.g., TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 11 1933, d. 175 Telegrammy sekretarei TsK VKP(b), predsedatelia SNK i STO, prikazy, pis’ma narkomatov o rabote promyshlennosti, transporta 1 uchebnykh zavedenii oblasti.

Breakdown | 139 Regional and Central Interests in Conflict Nothing did more to reinforce the impression of resistance than the experience of the grain collection campaign in 1932. It was generally anticipated

that the collectivization of agriculture would ease the collection process insofar as the kolkhoz was under the administrative control of local organs and thus more directly responsible for the fulfillment of government directives than the uncollectivized village. However, collections continued to lag seriously behind planned levels, primarily because of the poor organization of labor on newly formed kolkhozy. The center responded to underfulfillment by pressing regional organizations to meet the targets by whatever means necessary.** The situation deteriorated seriously in 1932, when, despite a fairly good harvest, the combination of poor labor organization and peasant resistance left grain collections substantially below the poor results of the previous year.®> The response of the government—the infamous 7 Au-

gust law “On the Protection of Socialist Property’—and the devastating famine which resulted from the enforcement of collection targets are well known and will not be described here.** A less studied and more salient aspect of the period is the resistance of regional officials to the collection campaigns in the early 1930s. Rather than consider any softening of policy, cen-

tral leaders took sweeping action against recalcitrant local officials. For example, in the Kuban, 45 percent of the party membership was expelled during 1932.’ Though the vast majority of expulsions affected the local or district apparatus, oblast’-level officials were not immune. At the end of October 1931 P. T. Zubarev was removed from the Urals Obkom bureau for issuing instructions limiting the collection targets of Urals state farms (sovkhozy).® These and other incidents severely shook the faith of central leaders in the loyalty of the subnational apparatus. Many party officials might have hoped that the January 1933 Central Committee plenum would be an opportunity to review proudly the results of the 64In the fall of 1931 the central press was full of demands for immediate action. See, e.g., “Samotek i demobilizatsionnye nastroeniia razbivat’ besposhchadno,” Pravda, 13 September 1931, p. 1; “Sokrushitel’nyi udar po dezorganizatoram khlebozagotovok,” 19 September 1931, p. 2; “Vesti besposhchadnuiu bor’bu s opportunisticheskimi antizagotovitel’nymi nastroeniiami,” 20 October 1931, p. I. 65 As of r5 August 1932 collections were less than 30 percent of the level of 1931. Pravda, 19 August 1932, p. 1, cited in Nobuo Shimotomai, “A Note on the Kuban Affair: The Crisis of Kolkhoz Agriculture in the North Caucasus,” Acta Slavica Iaponica 1 (1983): 39-56. 66 See, e.g., Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow (New York, 1986). 67V. P. Danilov, ed., Ocherki istorii kollektivizatsii sel’skogo khoziaistva v sotuznykh respublikakh (Moscow, 1963), p. 55. 68 Pravda, 30 October 1931, p. 3. Obkom first secretary I. D. Kabakov suggested that the Obkom bureau had passed the directive collectively, but that Zubarev was made a scapegoat in order to diffuse a growing Politburo investigation. GAAO SO, f. 1 op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, I. D., t. 1, Il. 66-67.

140 | The Great Urals first five-year plan, which had concluded only the week before. Instead, after a short review of the accomplishments of the period, the meeting addressed the continuing slow progress of industry. The second item on the agenda was the creation of “political departments” that would oversee the enforcement of central instructions in the countryside. The third was the announcement of a general purge of the party—a purge that would result in the expulsion of

, approximately a third of the membership in the course of the next two years.°? The fourth item was a discussion of the “anti-party group” of N. B. Eismont, V. N. Tolmachev, A. P. Smirnov, and others. These highly placed officials were expelled for “conducting anti-party work” while “declaring their agreement with the party line.” 7° It was a clear signal that political loyalty had to be expressed in concrete deeds (the fulfillment of instructions) and not merely in

words. Rather than celebrating the first five-year plan, the plenum set an agenda for a struggle against the “open and hidden enemies” of the “construction of a socialist society.” 7! At the same time that central officials were venting their anger over resistance to the party line, they were setting the course of economic policy in a

direction that was deeply disturbing to the regions. They wanted more results for less investment. Stalin set the tone with his opening report to the January plenum: Did the party react correctly when it instituted the policy of maximal tempos?

Yes, absolutely correctly... , Can one say that in the second five-year plan it will be necessary to conduct the

same policy of the maximal tempos of development?

No one cannot say that. As a result of the successful conduct of the first five-year plan we have already fundamentally completed its main task—the construction of a new, advanced technological base for industry, transport, and agriculture. . . . In the second

| five-year plan, the main role will be played not by old factories, the technology of which has been assimilated, but rather by new factories, the technology of which has not been assimilated and which needs to be assimilated.”

“Assimilation” (osvoenie) was to be the key concept of the second five-year

plan. Newly constructed factories had to be brought on line. before signi- , ficant new construction would be undertaken. The Urals oblast’ had pro6° T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the USSR, 1917-1967 (Princeton, 1968),

P 70 KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 6: 32-33. | 71 Quoted from the speech of V. V. Kuibyshev, who was a relative moderate in the Politburo. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 514 Ob"edinenyi plenum TsK i TsKK

72 Thid., Il. 8-9. |

VKP(b), 7-12 ianvaria 1933, |. 41. :

Breakdown | 141 moted the construction of over thirty new factories in machine building alone. For this they had requested 1.2 billion rubles in the second five-year plan.’? With the new emphasis on assimilation, planned new construction in all-union machine building was reduced to only forty million rubles over~ all.”4 Other branches of industry received similar, though less radical cuts in - new construction. The era of free spending —which the regions had done so

much to encourage—was over. G. F. Grin’ko, the commissar of Finance, spoke of Stalin’s backing for a new “iron discipline .. . before the budget of the proletarian state” which was to be enforced in all organizations. He labeled overspending and hiding trade turnover (tobaroborot) or tax obligations as characteristic of “bourgeois degeneracy.” ”* But worst of all for the regions, on the basis of “completed” construction, assimilation was to bring

a high rate of growth in production without significant increases of invest- , ment. In his speech to the January plenum, V. M. Molotov announced that construction was to rise by 25 percent with an increase in investment of only 12 percent. Industrial production was to rise by 22 percent against a 16-percent rise in investment. Production of ferrous metals was to rise by over 45 percent. As if in consolation, Molotov reminded the delegates: “One must not forget that the targets for 1933 [in ferrous metallurgy] only repeat

the targets which had been set for 1932.” 7 Central leaders perceived assimilation as a payoff for the investment during the first five-year period. The central press was full of articles portraying the starting of production at the new plants as the “payment of debts to the state.” ”” Bringing erstwhile construction projects into full-scale production was a

tall order for the regions. The supply and transportation problems which had plagued industry in the first five-year plan promised to worsen as new plants demanded inputs. But the shift from construction to production required much more than a mere increase in material supply. Many of the new

plants were a technological quantum leap from what had preceded them. Starting production required inputs of a less tangible and much more subtle nature. First and foremost, it required specialists, engineers, and a trained work force, which were in short supply throughout the Soviet Union. In the first five-year period much of the expansion of the industrial labor force had , 73 RGAE, f. 9205 VOMIT, op. 1 1930-1933, d. 155 Protokoly zasedanii gruppy po UKK | Tete Main Administration for the Machine-Building Industry (Glavmashprom) blamed the huge numbers of incomplete projects and the terrible shortage of supplies. RGAE, f. 8081 Glavmashprom, op. 1 Planovo-ekonomicheskii sektor, d. 45 Ob"iasnitel’naia zapiska Glavmashproma k planu vtoroi piatiletki tiazhelogo mashinostroeniia, |. 1. 75 RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 514 Ob’edinenyi plenum TsK i TsKK VKP(b), 7-12 ianvaria 1933, ll. 93, 95. 76 Thid., ll. 17, 22.

77 See, e.g., “Small-scale Metallurgy Will Pay Its Debt to the State,” Za industrializatsiiu, 6 July 1933; “[The Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine] Is Returning the Millions [of rubles] Which Have Been Invested in It,” 9 July 1933; “A Quarter of a Billion Rubles in Investment Must Be Returned through Production,” 5 November 1933.

142 | The Great Urals come from the countryside. The move from the field to the construction site | had been a difficult one, but it was not nearly as far from plough to shovel as from shovel to Bessemer furnace.”* Training programs had been set up at

an impressive pace, but they were more often than not rushed and superficial.’”? For the Urals and other isolated regions the problem was particularly acute because specialists could enjoy a higher standard of living in more developed areas. When asked to explain the high rates of turnover among specialists, the director of the Alapaevsk metallurgical plant said, “They earned eight hundred rubles in Moscow and Leningrad and so life in Alapaevsk is

unappetizing [nevkusno].” ®° |

The process of assimilation in the Urals was also complicated by the structure and tempos of construction. In the process of negotiating the “Great Urals plan” and the “Ural-Kuznetsk Combine,” planning for construction had been disorganized. Plans for the Magnitogorsk metallurgical plant were changed four times. Uralmash plans were changed five times. The Krasnoural’sk copper foundry plans went through eight drafts.®! In some cases investment which had been delayed in the planning process was massively increased in the last two years of construction.®* This lack of stability resulted in a low quality of construction and a plethora of engineering and . planning miscalculations. It was not uncommon for equipment to be installed in ways that destroyed the efficiency of the production process, as when sequential stages of production were located at opposite ends of a plant. New

equipment was frequently damaged when it was installed prematurely — in some cases before the floor or roof had been completed.®? Other crucial elements of the production process, such as internal transportation systems, storage facilities for inputs, and linkages to the local power station, were installed only after great delays. Temporary structures, particularly those 78 The director of Uralmashstroi complained to a NKTP commission that “we have five million rubles in imported equipment . . . extremely expensive and advanced equipment and those working around it are wearing bast sandals [khodiat v laptiakh— peasant footwear]. This should not be.” GASO, f. 262-r Uralmashstroi, op. 2 Upravlenie kapital'nogo stroitel’stva, d. 258 Dokladnaia zapiska o priemke UZTM v SNK SSSR, doklad zavodoupravleniia v NKTP O sostoianii stroitel’stva na zavode, materialy k proektu zavoda, |. 106. , ”? The director of Uralmashstroi complained that when instructors had been offered ten rubles per graduate of a five-month training program, they had “dragged people off the street ... in a drive for money.” GASO, f. 262-r Uralmashstroi, op. 2 Upravlenie kapital’nogo stroitel’stva, , d. 257 Postanovlenie kollegii NKTP o priemke pravitel’stvennoi komissiei Ural’skogo zavoda tiazhelogo mashinostroeniia i t.d., |. 179. 80 GASO, f. 1150-r Vostokostal’, op. 1 Sekretariat, d. 102 Stenogramma soveshchaniia di-

rektorov zavodov chernoi metallurgii, 11-13 oktiabria 1932, |. 104. !

81 G, Shaposhnikov, “Stroitel’stvo novykh,” p. 4.

82 In the case of the Uralmash plant, 17.5 million rubles worth of construction was undertaken between 1928 and 1930, and over 100 million in 1931 and 1932. GASO, f. 262-r Uralmashstroi, op. 2 Upravlenie kapital’nogo stroitel’stva, d. 257 Postanovlenie kollegii NKTP o priemke pravitel’stvennoi komissiei Ural'skogo zavoda tiazhelogo mashinostroeniia i t.d., |. 98. 83 GASO, f. 262-r Uralmashstroi, op. 2 Upravlenie kapital’nogo stroitel’stva, d. 316 Protokoly i stenogrammy zasedanii pravitel’stvennoi kommissii po priemke stroitel’stva UZTM, 1933, |. 64.

Breakdown | 143 around blast furnaces created terrible fire hazards.** (Ironically, the only major Urals construction project destroyed by fire was an asbestos plant.)

Though the problems of assimilation were not necessarily deeper in the Urals than elsewhere, they were certainly more numerous. The percentage of new construction there, as opposed to reconstruction, had been much higher than the USSR average, and thus more new technological processes had to be introduced. Assimilation was a monumental task in itself, but with the center’s suspiciousness and demands for immediate results it had become a nightmare. The poor results of the 193 2 economic year continued through 1933. Most of the major enterprises and trusts of Urals industry underfulfilled the plan:

the Eastern Steel Trust by 16.5 percent, the Urals Nonferrous Metallurgy Trust by 31.3 percent, and the Urals Machine Building Trust by 15.4 percent.®> The newly “assimilated” enterprises were also behind schedule.** The

central government increasingly resorted to criminalizing, or at least establishing specific sanctions for, various forms of nonfulfillment. The best known of these sanctions was the 7 August 1932 law “On the Protection of Socialist Property,” which primarily affected rural areas but was also applied in industry. Decrees of the Council of People’s Commissars and the Council of Labor and Defense in December 1932 made misspending or overspending of turnover capital and wage funds punishable by party or criminal sanctions.°” In late 1933 the Central Executive Committee and Council of People’s Commissars made the production of faulty or incomplete goods (brak) punishable by a minimum of five years in prison.®® At the same time, the central press was full of articles driving and directing the ongoing party purge. The articles identified specific targets such as spendthrifts and the producers of brak, but they also encouraged the purge commissions to target enterprises that egregiously underfulfilled the plan. They identified the offense as “sabotage of assimilation” and “sabotage of production.” ®? The Urals was a notorious target. By the fall of 1933 the cases of wrongdoing in the Urals oblast’ 84 Much of the evidence for these construction and planning problems is found in the archives of the provincial court. GASO, f. 148-r Oblastnoi Sud, op. 5 sekretnaia chast’. 85 RGAE, f. 4086 GUMB, op. 2 obshchaia dokumentatsiia, d. 351 Zakliuchenie Soveta po delam otchetnosti NKTP o khoziaistvennoi deiatel’nosti ob”edineniia “Vostokostali” za 19331934, l. 1. RGAE, f. 8034 Glavnoe upravlenie tsvetnoi metallurgii, op. 1, d. 625 Kontrol’nye tsifry i promfinplany trestov i kombinatov Glavki na 1934, |. 3. TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 12 1934, d. 2 Stenograficheskii otchet XII Ural’skoi i I Sverdlovskoi partiinoi konferentsii, 12-22 ianvaria 1934, |. 25. 86 The Uralmash factory underfulfilled the 1933 plan by 32.9 percent (in rubles). RGAE, f. 8081 Glavmashprom, op. 1 Bukhgalteriia, d. 96 Godovye otchety: Ural'skii zavod tiazhelogo mashinostroeniia imeni Sergo Ordzhonikidze po osnovnoi deiatel’nosti i kapital’nogo stroitel’stva za 1933, |. 153. 87 SZ 73 (1932): 728 (art. 447); M. P. Kim, ed., Industrializatsiia SSSR, 1929-1932 gg.: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow, 1970), p. 615. °8 SZ 73 (1933): 791 (art. 442). 89 See, e.g., Za industrializatsiiu, 2 July 1933, p. 2; 22 August 1933, p. 1; 22 September 1933,

p. I.

144 | The Great Urals were so common that “Urals anecdotes (jokes)” were a constant source of

black humor in the press. . | In early 1934, on the eve of the Seventeenth Party Congress, the Urals.

oblast’ was divided into three smaller oblasti: Sverdlovskaia, Cheliabinskaia, and Obsko-Irtyshskaia. Given their erstwhile dreams of making the Urals an autarchic economic power in the heart of Soviet Russia, one might have ex-

. pected that Urals leaders would react with anger to the decision. But some evidence suggests that during the first five-year plan the Urals leadership it-

, self, in order to cope with the massive expansion of administrative responsibility that accompanied the all-out drive, was trying to divide planning and administrative functions among three economic zones that almost precisely corresponded to the three new oblasti ratified in January 1934.7 It is possible that the division of the Urals was devised as a punishment for resistance to central directives, or at least incompetence in executing them. Orders for the division of the Urals came directly from Stalin’s office, and seem to have taken Urals officials by surprise.*! But the legislation on the issue makes reference to the “petitions” of various Urals organs on the issue, and the First Sverdlovsk Party Conference in January praised the division as an appropriate response to the “growing complexity of leadership in the years of the first five-year plan.** Urals leaders may have wanted to shed responsibilities that were getting them into trouble, though they probably wished to accomplish _ this within the existing boundaries of the oblast’. It seems likely that the division of the oblast’ was both a punishment and a relief. The quiet response from regional leaders may have been evidence of a fear of further retribution, but it was also symptomatic of their search for a new

modus vivendi. They were coming to terms with the sudden and radical change in Moscow’s relations toward them. It was no longer possible, or in their interests, to press for large new investment projects. And to protest against central demands or actions would have brought severe and immediate punishment. In the late 1920s they had had considerable clout. Moscow was dependent on them to compose the control figures on which the annual *° GASO, f. 241-1 Oblplan, op. 1 Prezidium, d. 879 Osnovnye problemy razvitiia promysh- __ lennosti vo vtoroi piatiletke, 1932-1937, ll. 11-12. GARF, f. 1235 Vserossiiskii tsentral'nyi ispolnitel’nyi komitet (VTsIK), op. 76 Sekretariat Prezidiuma, d. 77 Delo ob administrativno-

territorial’nom razdelenii Ural’skoi oblasti na Sverdlovskuiu, Cheliabinskuiu i Obsko~ Irtyshskuiu oblasti, |. 69. 1 Correspondence on the division was conducted between Stalin’s personal secretary A. N. Poskrebyshev and the party fraction of the Central Executive Committee. GARF, f. 1235

VIsIK, op. 141 [sekretraia chast'], d. 1623 Perepiska s Tsental’nym Komitetom VKP(b) ob obrazovanii kraev i oblastei na territorii RSFSR i o pereimenovanii gorodoy, ll. 1, 17. Only two months before the division, the Urals Oblast’ Executive Committee had been pressing Gosplan to make adjustments to the second five-year plan which would “consider the Urals as a com-

plex.” TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 11 1933, d. 175 Telegrammy secretarei TsK VKP(b), predsedatelia SNK i STO, prikazy, pis'ma narkomatov o rabote promyshlennosti, transporta i uchebnykh zavedenii oblasti, Il. 155-56. 2 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 12 1934, d. 2 Stenograficheskii otchet XII Ural’skoi i I Sverdlovskoi partiinoi konferentsii, 12-22 ianvaria 1934, l. 32.

Breakdown | 145 and longer-term plans were based. They had used the situation to press for ever more ambitious plans. Now Gosplan had gained experience and built the necessary skills to compose sensible economic plans in the absence of consultation with the regions. In the 1920s they had used conflicts among cen-

tral leaders and institutions to their advantage, giving their support—and votes in the Central Committee—to groups that supported their agenda. Ordzhonikidze and the Commissariat of Heavy Industry continued to be sympathetic to their concerns, but political discourse was no longer so open as to permit the aggressive use of this support. In the late 1920s the regions had been among the loudest voices in the chorus supporting the removal of officials who “lacked faith in the party line” of high-tempo construction. Now, as the party line had shifted to modest targets and prompt fulfillment, they were trapped within the political discourse they had helped to create. To speak out against current policy was to risk being accused of lacking faith in the party line and being purged, just as they had purged their opponents. By the mid—1930s regional leaders loudly professed their devotion to the party line, and engaged in a complex of adaptive strategies in order to deflect the center’s suspicions of their loyalty.

6 The Terror

At the time of the Seventeenth Party Congress in early 1934 the centerregion relationship was at a dangerous crossroads. After the shared enthusiasm for high-tempo industrialization, the series of economic crises and years _ of underfulfilled plans caused central leaders to blame the regions for the problems of the planned economy: overspending, poor organization of labor, poor use of new equipment, accidents, and underfulfillment. To the center it seemed that central legislation was being ignored in the regions. The regions in turn were angered that Moscow had radically reduced the flow of investment and tempos of construction and disturbed by Moscow’s categorical demands for prompt and complete fulfillment. By 1934 the regions were trying to defend a modicum of autonomy, while the center was testing their

responsiveness to its leadership. |

The relationship was not initially conflictual, for 1934 marked the beginning of two years of promising economic growth. There was no shortage of evidence of administrative incompetence and inertia, but central leaders were not inclined to take radical action against this ill which they labelled “bureaucratism” as long as the indicators of overall plan fulfillment ap- — peared to be good. When things did go wrong, they tended to accept that the

fault lay at the factory or raion (district) level; they were not inclined to doubt the loyalty of the apparatus at the regional level. Likewise, regional leaders resented Moscow for unilaterally increasing their responsibilities and reducing the benefits of construction and investment, but they could point to a long list of concrete accomplishments of “socialist construction” during the first five-year plan, when the Urals oblast’ had overcome its longstanding industrial backwardness. Particularly in the context of the world economic crisis, the future must have seemed quite promising. No doubt the tensions between center and regions would relax once the plants under construction during the first five-year plan were brought to capacity. 146

The Terror | 147 But though the process of starting up the five-year projects may have seemed straightforward, it proved to be exceedingly difficult. Incomplete and incompetent planning, rushed and low-quality construction, and a shortage of skilled workers made the efficient use of new enterprises a Herculean task. Given Moscow’s unwillingness to accept excuses or delays, it had become politically impossible to raise economic problems with central officials. As the second five-year plan progressed, an ever higher percentage of production was to come from new plants, thereby compounding the difficulty of plan fulfillment. In response to these pressures regional leaders employed a series of adaptive strategies. They tried to control Moscow’s access to information. Economic “successes” were exaggerated or invented. Underfulfillment was hidden. Production and construction costs were exaggerated, and production capacity was hidden. Central policies and campaigns perceived to complicate plan fulfillment—such as the Stakhanovite movement (see

pp. 150ff.)—were pursued by the regions in such a way as to limit their effects while promoting an image of vigorous action. In this period a close-knit “clique” of regional leaders developed. In order

to protect their positions and mask their adaptive strategies, top Obkom leaders formed a group that could present a united front in the face of central pressures. The purge campaigns of the 1930s—the Verification and the Exchange of Party documents (see pp. 162ff.)—as well as the periodic campaigns to uncover vestiges of the former oppositions were controlled in order to protect the clique and eliminate those on whom it could not rely.! The cynical use of purges and the labeling of “enemies” was common in all levels of the regional apparatus. When shortcomings of any kind, from industrial accidents to resisting central campaigns, were uncovered, scapegoats were found and fired—or arrested and tried. Local show trials were a convenient alternative to explaining the systemic causes of underfulfillment. If plan targets could not be met or policies not be implemented, finding culprits and shifting blame were easier than facing the consequences of nonfulfillment. The tendency was so strong as to provoke Moscow to restrain the use of trials in the regions.

The quickness to scapegoating was the Achilles’ heel of the regional leadership. As long as plan fulfillment was sufficient to satisfy the central leadership, the group remained relatively cohesive and the task of masking failures manageable. But when plan fulfillment suddenly declined, as it did in the first half of 1936, tensions within the regional apparatus flared dramatically. Because of the interconnectedness of the regional economy, any attempt to mask failures in one branch of the economy heightened the impression of failure in another. And the systematic misrepresentation of regional activities to Moscow made each member of the clique cruelly aware 1y. Arch Getty, The Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 (Cambridge; 1985), p. 63; Graeme Gill, The Origins of the Stalinist Political System (New York, 1990), p. 262.

148 | The Great Urals of his vulnerability. Blame-shifting flourished among factory managers and local party organizations as well. Rather than risk being fired for underfulfillment or other production problems, they tried to deflect blame onto underlings or other organizations. Tensions were further aggravated by resentments of workers at high work norms, low pay rates, and poor living conditions. Under different circumstances the regional leadership would have been able to deal with the flare-up of Moscow’s hunt for oppositionists in the summer

of 1936. They had succeeded in the past. But the poor economic results of the time found the whole regional apparatus on a hair trigger of mutual denunciation. Moscow’s demands to unmask members of the “TrotskyistZinovievist band” (those with purported associations to the left opposition of the 1920s)—which the press declared had been “routed, reduced to ash,” “crushed to bits” 2—accelerated the use of denunciation at the factory and district level. Regional leaders’ attempts to stem the denunciations were hampered by tensions within the clique, and they were unable to prevent the

progress of denunciations up the bureaucratic hierarchy into the oblast’ administration itself. With each arrest Moscow learned more about the systematic resistance to central policy that had been sponsored in the regions. As this incriminating information accumulated, Moscow responded not only by activating the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NK VD-

successor to the OGPU) but also by encouraging mutual denunciation through campaigns of “self-criticism.” The Terror was not solely an NK VD action. It was also fueled by the combustion of tensions within the bureaucracy—tensions created by central plans that were unfulfillable.

The Second Five-Year Plan: Problems of Fulfillment In each of its versions, from 1931 to the plan confirmed at the Seventeenth Party Congress in early 1934, the fifth-year targets for the second five-year plan were substantially reduced. The production of pig iron, which had been projected at fifty to sixty million tons in 1931, was reduced to sixteen mil-

| lion tons in the 1934 plan. The target for coal extraction was reduced from over 390 million tons to 152.5 million tons. The final target for the produc-

tion of refined copper was less than one-sixth of the figure projected in 1931.° In part, the moderation of the plan was necessitated by the underfulfillment of current production targets in each of the three years that separated the first and the final versions. (By 1934 national income was far below what would have justified the 1931 plan.) But the moderation of the 2 Pravda, 7 August 1936, p. 1; 13 August 1936, p. I. 3 Eugene Zaleski, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, 1933-1952 (Chapel Hill, N.C.,

1980), p. 108. : :

The Terror | 149 plan was also driven by a rough consensus among central leaders that overambitious plans created disorder. As one senior Gosplan official put it at a conference on the second five-year plan in 1932, “Our conference [should] not produce such figures as will in the end only register our planlessness.” 4 The need for order had been reinforced in the early thirties by the emergence of fascist regimes in both Europe and Japan that were openly hostile to the Soviet Union. Again, Soviet leaders were concerned about preparing for the possibility of foreign invasion. Central “moderation” meant lower overall targets, but also higher expectations for the realization of returns on every ruble invested. What had replaced the “gigantomania” of construction of the first five-year plan was a sort of “gigantomania” of efficiency. Great hopes were placed on the economic impact of the huge, technologically advanced plants under construction in the first five-year plan; the second plan was to be the period of “the introduction of the giants.”* The plan was based on the assumption of the efficient use of this capital in much the same way that the first five-year plan had been based on the assumption that the economy could absorb fantastic amounts of investment and construction. By 1937 almost half of the production of ferrous metals in the Soviet Union was projected to come from blast furnaces constructed or completed in the second five-year plan.® Only thirty-six new blast furnaces were planned for the period—about half the number of furnaces in operation in 1928—but the capacity of the majority of new furnaces was to be over a thousand cubic meters, compared to an av-

erage capacity of barely over 250 cubic meters at the end of the 1920s.’ (Larger furnaces were supposed to demand significantly smaller quantities of ores and fuel per unit of metal.) Mechanization of production was projected to rise from 25 percent of processes in 1932 to 80 percent in 1937.” The pro-

ductivity of each worker, in rubles, was to double in the same period.'° Other branches of industry such as nonferrous metallurgy or machine building, where the percentage of new construction was higher, were projected to produce even more rapid advances in productivity per worker and greater reductions in the cost of production. 4RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan SSSR, op. 30 1932, d. 784 Pervaia konferentsiia po razmeshcheniiu proizvoditel’nykh sil v UKK, 10 aprelia 1932, |. 3. The official was V. V. Kuibyshev’s first assistant, A. Lomov. 5 The phrase “introduction of the giants [pusk gigantov]” was used regularly and enthusiastically at the Gosplan conferences on the second five-year plan. 6 RGAE, f. 7297 Narkomtiazhprom (hereafter NKTP), op. 28 Planovyi otdel, d. 73 Piatiletnyi plan chernoi metallurgii vtoroi piatiletki, 1933-1937, |. 85. If one included furnaces completed in the first five-year plan, 80 percent of the pig iron and 63 percent of the steel produced in 1937 was to come from new equipment. Ibid., |. ro.

7 Thid., |. 76. , ? Thid., |. ro. |

*Tbid., ll. 11, 27. The cost per unit of production was projected to fall by 33 percent between 1933 and 1937. 10 Tbid., |. 7.

150 | The Great Urals The emphasis on efficiency became more striking and disturbing to the regions following the center-region conflicts over the second five-year plan in 1932. Once central planners had developed a functional plan for the whole economy, the necessity of consultation with the regions declined, and in the

aftermath of the conflicts regional and central planners met far less frequently.!! Overall planning remained at Gosplan, but the planning of individual projects shifted from the regions to a system of planning institutes associated with the glavki.!2 These institutes promoted construction plans that projected costs at a fraction of what the regions anticipated. For example, the chairman of the Azov Steel Trust complained to the State Administration of the Metallurgical Industry (GUMP) that the cost estimates of their planning institute for second five-year plan construction had to be “viewed with extreme caution” and should be reworked to “bring them closer to the real cost of construction” (the figures of the planning institute were less than half of the projections of the Trust).!3 Regional officials throughout the Soviet Union learned to hate and fear the projections of these planning institutes.'*

Perhaps the most frequently cited example of the center’s grandiose plans for the efficient use of new capital in the second five-year plan is the Stakhanovite movement.!5 On the basis of the example of the coal miner Aleksei Stakhanov, who had exceeded his work norm by a factor of fourteen in September 1935, local officials were put under pressure to expand production beyond existing norms on the basis of an “intensified and rationalized” organization of labor. Central officials had legitimate complaints about the poor organization of labor in the factory, but the Stakhanovite move11 In the fall of 1933 Urals planning authorities complained to Gosplan that they still did not have regional versions of the second five-year plan. TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 11 1933, d. 175 Telegrammy sekretarei TsK VKP(b), predsedatelia SNK SSSR, postanovleniia SNK i STO, prikazy, pis’ma narkomatov o rabote promyshlennosti, transporta i uchebnye zavedenii oblasti, 1. 155. Meetings of the regional and central planning officials continued to occur, but. they often involved as much exhortation as consultation. See, e.g., RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan, op. 32 1934, d. 54 Perepiska s kraevymi i oblastnymi planovymi komissiiami o vydelenii fon-

dov po kapitalovlozheniiam. ,

12 F.g., GIPROMEZ (State Institute for the Planning of Metallurgical Plants), associated with the State Administration of the Metallurgical Industry (GUMP), and GIPRORUDA (State Institute for the Planning of Ore Excavation), associated with the State Administration of the Ore

Industry (Glavruda). ,

13 RGAE, f. 4086 Glavnoe upravlenie metallurgicheskoi promyshlennosti (GUMP), op. 2 obshchaia dokumentatsiia, d. 684 General’nye smeta kapital’nogo stroitel’stva GUMP’a s

prilozheniiami ekspertnykh zakliuchenii, Il. 226-32. :

14 For a selection of other regional criticisms of planning institute projections in 1933 see ibid., ll. 412-51; for an example from the Urals see GASO, f. 241-r Oblplan, op. 1 Prezidium d. 879 Osnovnye problemy razvitiia promyshlennosti vo vtoroi piatiletke, 1.48. 15 Recent studies of the Stakhanovite movement include Lewis Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935-1941 (New York, 1988); Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928-1941 (Armonk, N.Y., 1986); Francesco Benvenuti, “Stakhanovism and Stalinism, 1934-1938,” CREES discussion papers, no. 30, SIPS, University of Birmingham, 1989.

The Terror | 151 | ment created many new problems. It drew the attention of managers away from broader issues of administration such as supply and safety. It led to increased breakdowns of equipment, to accidents, and to defective production.!® While it did not necessarily have a positive impact on production, the Stakhanovite movement consistently drove up labor costs.!” It was not uncommon for factories to be full of “Stakhanovites” and still be unable to meet the targets of the plan.!®

Hopes were high for “the introduction of the giants” to overcome the problems which had plagued the first five-year plan. But the transportion infrastructure continued to lag behind the development of the economy as a whole, deepening problems of supply in both industry and agriculture, and the introduction of huge new plants promised to put significant new strains on the system.!? The shortages of qualified cadres which had been keenly felt in the first five-year plan threatened to become even more severe, for the

“siants” were built with advanced technologies which required training even for basic operations and specialized knowledge for repair work and the organization of labor. The accidental destruction of expensive and complex equipment by poorly trained laborers straight from the village was a common occurrence in the 1930s.7° The potential for breakdowns, shortages, and accidents was greater in the second five-year plan than in the first. A new budgetary restraint also complicated fulfillment of the plan. When new projects ran into trouble, central authorities were more inclined to cut them rather than increase their funding as in the first five-year plan. Citing poor preparation for the 1934 construction season, the Council of People’s Commissars cut planned investment by 3.5 billion rubles—almost 20 percent of the total investment plan.*! Although by the end of the year the cuts 16 Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism, p. 104; Robert Thurston, “The Stakhanovite Movement: Background to the Great Terror in the Factories, 1935-1938,” in Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, ed. J. Arch Getty and Roberta Manning (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 149, 152-53. 17 See, e.g., RGAE, f. 8034 Glavnoe upravlenie tsvetnoi metallurgii (Glavtsvetmet), op. 1, d. 840 Plany, otchety i perepiska s predpriiatiiami Glavka o stakhanovskom dvizhenii na zavodakh i rudnikakh, ll. 5-7. 18 See pp. 392-96 for more detail. Tsentr khraneniia sovremennykh dokumentov (hereafter TsKhSD), f. 6 Komissiia Partiinogo Kontrolia pri TsK VKP(b) (hereafter KPK), op. 1 Protokoly,

d. 17 Stenogramma zasedanii tret‘ego plenuma KPK pri TsK VKP(b) 7-8 marta 1936 po voprosu o rabote upolnomochennykh KPK pri TsK VKP(b), |. 126. 19 Top central leaders made no secret of transportation problems in their speeches to the Seventeenth Party Congress. XVII s’ezd vsesoiuznoi kommunisticheskoi partii (b), stenograficheskti otchet (Moscow, 1934). For Stalin’s comments see p. 26; for Molotov’s see pp. 362-63. For more detail on this issue see E. A. Rees, Stalinism and Soviet Rail Transport, 1928-1941 (New York, 1995). 20 Sergo Ordzhonikidze, the commissar of Heavy Industry, was aware of this danger at the beginning of the second five-year plan. RGAE, f.7297 NKTP, op. 36 Sekretariat, d. 47 Rech’ Sergo Ordzhonikidze na Moskovskoi konferentsii inzhenerno-tekhnicheskikh rabotnikov, 19 iiulia 1933, |. 19. 21 GARF, f. 5446 STO i SNK SSSR, op. 15a 1934, d. 87 O peresmotre kapitalovlozhenii na 1934, |. 98.

152 | The Great Urals had been limited to 1.6 billion,?? serious damage had been done. Projects

that had been shut down had to be restarted, suppliers went unpaid, and | completion dates for projects were delayed.”? In 1936 a similar series of cuts was made in response to unplanned spending and the underfulfillment of the construction plan in 193 5.7* Gosplan and the Commissariat of Finance continued to blame the regions for the cuts, citing their poor record of reducing construction and production costs and staying on budget.” Indeed, between 1934 and 1936 in heavy industry, the debts of one enterprise to another had _ doubled from 419 million to 831 million rubles.2* Conflict over what to do about this debt—between the Commissariat of Heavy Industry on the one hand and the Commissariat of Finance and Gosplan on the other—seems to

| have been one of the main reasons for the inconsistency of financing in the period.?” This inconsistency made life extremely difficult for economic officials in the regions. In their testimony to NKVD interrogators during the

Terror, trust directors frequently blamed budget cuts for the poor perfor-

mance of their enterprises.7° , Perhaps the factor most complicating fulfillment was the legacy of the

“Great Urals plan.” In their determination to develop certain sectors of the local economy, regional planners had attempted to convince central officials of the vastness of local ore reserves or the tremendous capacities of given plants, before local geologists or engineers were able to calculate their potential with certainty. In many cases mine and plant capacities proved to be significantly lower than the regions predicted. Deficiencies could be hidden during construction, but certainly not after production began. By the mid*2 Zaleski, Stalinist Planning, pp. 236, 689. *3 GARE, f. 5446 STO i SNK SSSR, op. 15a 1934, d. 87 O peresmotre kapitalovlozhenii na

1934, ll. 26, 31, 57, 73. ,

Stalinist Planning, p. 244. , 25426Zaleski, See Chapter 5. | GARF, f. 5446 STO i SNK SSSR, op. 18a 1936, d. 34 O finansirovanii tiazheloi promysh-

lennosti, ll. 5, 7. |

*? Ordzhonikidze discouraged the tight fiscal restraint promoted by V. I. Mezhlauk of Gosplan and G. F. Grin’ko of the Commissariat of Finance, and he tried to encourage the Council of People’s Commissars to pay off inter-enterprise debt out of the profits of industry resulting from the overfulfillment of the 1935 production plan. GARF, f. 5446 STO i SNK SSSR, op. 16a 1935, d. 34 Raznaia perepiska po finansirovaniiu promyshlennosti, ll. 4-7, 14=6, 28-36. But it may be a mistake to think of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry as a consistent opponent of fiscal restraint. The regions attributed much of the budget cutting to G. L. Piatakov, Ord- __ zhonikidze’s first assistant. See, e.g., GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22947 Delo Zharikova, Mitrofana Arkhipovicha. The same sort of “good cop, bad cop” scenario had been _ played out in Gosplan under Kuibyshev, when Kuibyshev had been sympathetic to regional spending plans and his first assistant A. Lomov critical of them. See GARF, f. 4372 Gosplan _ SSSR, op. 30 1932, d. 799 Stenogramma vsesoiuznoi konferentsii po razmeshcheniiu proizvoditel/nykh sil v UKK, Il. 1-6. 28 See e.g., GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, Konstantina Gavrilovicha (director of the Eastern Steel Trust), |. 33; d. 22947 Delo Zharikova (director of the Middle Urals Copper-Chemicals Combine). On the use of transcripts of NKVD interrogations as a source see “A Note on the Sources” below.

The Terror | 153 1930s Moscow was demanding the prompt and full use of capacity projected

in the first five-year plan. Given the virtual certainty of plan underfulfill-

ment, regional officials, particularly those in the related enterprises, were profoundly worried. The Urals coal industry was perhaps the clearest example of such a situation. The lack of local supplies of cokeable coal had been the single greatest hindrance to the development of the Urals as a metals and machine-building center. Because of the high cost of transportation, the importation of coke from the Kuznetsk basin in western Siberia pleased neither Moscow nor the Urals. Coking experiments on Urals coal had been conducted throughout the 1920s without producing clear results. By the late 1920s, when the Urals version of the first five-year plan was under consideration in central economic organs, regional party leaders exerted intense pressure on local geologists and metallurgists to produce favorable results because they were concerned that new investment in coal production would go to the Moscow or Don basins.”? The pressure resulted in a split between senior specialists trained before the revolution and the new cadre of soviet-trained specialists.°° The former resisted the pressure and the latter took the opportunity __ to discredit their bosses by exaggerating the success of their experiments.*! In the summer of 1930 oblast’ party first secretary I. D. Kabakov wrote in a

letter to the head of the Urals Coal Trust: , The issue [of the coking of Urals coal] is not looking good. Not in the sense that Kizel [a Urals coal basin] coke can’t be used for metal production, but rather in the sense that people out there have tried to discredit [kakaia-to ruka sdelala vse dlia togo, chtoby diskreditirovat’] the coking of Kizel coal. The issue is being investigated, and at the present stage it’s clearly a criminal affair [prestuplenie na litso]. In all probability it’s the work of specialists—of course those hostilely oriented toward us. It’s better not to raise a fuss. We'll finish the investigation

and everything will be clear. We can hope to extricate ourselves [ob etom dele vykruchivat’sia] and not permit the discreditation of Kizel coke.** *9 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 43927 Delo Girbasova, Petra Afanas’evicha, ll. 136-37. 30 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 43927 Delo Volkova, Mikhaila Semenovicha, ll. 62-64. The transcripts of the interrogations of Volkov, Girbasov, and others are included in the same delo. 31 The process follows a pattern distinctly similar to that of other professions. See, e.g., Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Cultural Revolution as Class War”; Susan Gross Solomon, “Rural Scholars and the Cultural Revolution”; and George M. Enteen, “Marxist Historians during the Cultural Revolution: A Case Study of Professional In-fighting,” in Cultural Revolution in Russia, 19281931, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (Bloomington, Ind., 1978). 32 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 8 1930, d. 102 Spravki, protokoly rassledovaniia organov OGPU po Uralu, raikomov i gorkomov VKP(b) o faktakh klassovoi bor'by i vreditel'stva na predpriatiiakh oblasti, 1. 54. One can assume that V. P. Shakhgil’dian, then head of the Urals Coal Trust, was a party to this affair. He and Kabakov were reputed to be very close friends until they were both arrested in 1937. GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 39; d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, Ivana Dmitrievicha, |. 75.

154 | The Great Urals | Within a couple of months a group of Urals metallurgists and geologists were arrested and charged with “criminally delaying the development” of the regional coal industry.*? The affair was kept sufficiently quiet that Moscow never saw fit to question the results of the coking experiments. In the next five years hundreds of millions of rubles were spent developing mines in the Kizel basin and building coking plants—though Kizel coal never was cokeable.**

A similar scenario was played out in the Urals copper industry in 1931 when local officials were preparing the initial version of the second fiveyear plan for the region. Huge copper reserves were being discovered in Kazakhstan,35 and Urals officials were determined not to lose investment capital to their southern neighbor. Copper production was crucial to the production of alloys, construction materials, and machine building, and it promised the development of subsidiary chemicals production based on by-products. The Urals was hoping for over a billion rubles of investmentin __ its nonferrous metals industry in the second five-year plan.*° Rather than ad- | mit that the regional geological surveying administration still had no clear. data on ore reserves, local leaders pressured the administration to fake firm conclusions in a presentation to the government.*” Construction was ap~ proved (though not the full billion rubles requested), and when the plants ~ were completed the ores proved to be of neither the quantity nor quality promised in the plan.°° Other elements of the regional plan were characterized by incompetence

rather than deceit. For example, in his testimony to the NKVD in 1937, Ia. P. Ivanchenko, a former director of the Eastern Steel Trust, described in , some detail the elements of the trust’s plans that complicated the production process in the second five-year plan: faults in the crane system impeded the mechanized delivery of fuel to the furnaces as well as the pouring of molten metal; the use of narrow rail lines in internal plant transport created delays in the receipt of inputs and the delivery of supplies outside the plant, where

wide rails were used; structures near the furnaces were often constructed with wood, thus creating a constant threat of fires; and the electricity supply was given grossly inadequate attention.*? Because of a general shortage of 33 GAAO SO, f. 2, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 43927 Delo Volkova; d. 43935 Delo Anitova,

| Sergeia Ivanovicha.

4 To this day, despite steady advances in coking technology, neither Kizel coal nor any other

Urals coal is considered efficiently cokeable. ,

35 RGAE, f. 4372 Gosplan SSSR, op. 31 1933, d. 784 Stenogramma Vsesoiuznoi konferentsii

po razmeshcheniiu proizvoditel’nykh sil v UKK, 7-11 aprelia 1932, |. 25. , 36 RGAE f. 8034 Glavtsvetmet, op. 1, d. 453 Piatiletnyi plan razvitiia tsvetnoi i zoloto-

platinovoi promyshlennosti na Urale na 1933-1937 gg., ll. 170-81. 37 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 33. 38 Materials were also faked in the justification of the Sinara pipe factory project. Here too production could not physically meet plan targets because of the lack of ores. GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22329 Delo Davydova, Andreia Aleksandrovicha, |. 5. 39 The testimony of Ia. P. Ivanchenko can be found in GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela,

d. 17638 Delo Kabakova, ll. 272-82.

The Terror | 155 electricity throughout the oblast’ and the sorry state of power stations, factories often had their electricity supplies cut without warning. Power outages

not only brought production to a halt; in some cases they led to the destruction of equipment and the deaths of workers when, for example, inter-

ruption of power led to the spillage of molten metal.*° ) Uniting and intensifying all the pressures of the second five-year plan was the center’s demand for complete and prompt fulfillment of targets. In the first five-year period Moscow had reluctantly accepted the underfulfillment of wildly ambitious targets, but not with the second plan and its reduced targets. At the January 1933 Central Committee plenum Sergo Ordzhonikidze made it clear to the delegates that the central leadership was prepared to deal with underfulfillment in industry just as it dealt with the current underfulfillment of grain collection targets: These days, the discipline of industry is not especially deserving of praise. It is not uncommon that directives of the party and government are held up for discussion—“can they be fulfilled?” We decisively must put an end to this. I don’t think that economic managers would like it if the party instilled discipline in industry in the way we have been forced to do among the directors of sovkhozy. I don’t think any factory director would envy the sovkhoz director who must be driven from the party, fired from his position, and thrown in jail. . . . Those targets which the party has issued this year are absolutely fulfillable. Any decision of the party and government must be fulfilled or otherwise all we have is

chaos.*! ,

Targets were not to be questioned, and excuses for underfulfillment would not be accepted. In his speech to the Seventeenth Party Congress, Stalin declared: “Everything depends on the work of our party, soviet, economic, and other organs and their leaders. Reference to so-called objective conditions cannot serve as a justification [of underfulfillment].” Anything less would be considered cause for their “removal... and the promotion of new people to their places.” +2 Economic managers and other regional officials understood that their careers were on the line. In the fall of 1935, when the Urals Nonferrous Metals Trust had developed a reputation for unenthusiastic participation in the Stakhanovite movement, trust chairman A. L. Kolegaev warned his managers that he could not protect them: “If [you] do not turn things around, there will be victims [bydyt zhertvy].” 43 40 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 76.

“I RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 514 Stenogramma plenuma Tsentral’nogo komiteta VKP(b), ianvaria 1933 g., |. 111. 2 XVII s”ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b), stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow,

73 ae complaints of Stakhanovites had already resulted in the purging of the labor organization department of the trust. RGAE, f. 8034 Glavtsvetmet, op. 1, d. 839 Stenogramma soveshchaniia aktiva tresta “Uraltsvetmeta” po voprosam organizatsii truda i Stakhanovskogo dvizheniia na predpriiatiiakh tresta, 20 oktiabria 1935, |. 214.

156 | The Great Urals Regional officials were not likely to have shared the center’s perception that the targets of the second five-year plan were more moderate than those of the first. The irregularity of financing, continuing problems of supply, shortages of trained cadres, and colossal demands for production and construction efficiency made these targets extremely difficult to achieve; the extravagant promises offered by the regions in the context of the free-spending _ first five-year plan made achievement impossible. When the deadlines for the

introduction of first five-year projects passed and these new enterprises were expected to carry a growing burden of production, the danger of systematic underfulfillment increased, as did the vulnerability of regional officials to the

wrath of central leaders unwilling to accept any excuses. } , Regional Coping Strategies Since the 1957 publication of Joseph Berliner’s Factory and Manager in the USSR, it has been accepted that economic managers engaged in a range of practices intended to ease the pressures of plan fulfillment. These included the hoarding of inputs, underestimating production capacity, adjusting the assortment of output to simulate fulfillment, and deliberately sacrificing quality for quantity.*4 These practices were widespread at the factory level and not especially well hidden. The local and central press reported on them frequently and they were punished severely at times,*> but they usually pro-

' voked little more than formal reprimands (vygovora). The coping strategies of the regional leadership, that is, of the members of the Obkom, have received considerably less attention in the literature. They were not fundamentally different from the strategies of the managers. Both groups sought to mask their failures and advertise their successes. Both had a strong interest in protecting the perquisites of their respective positions. In part, the strategies of regional leaders involved the public condemnation of yet private collusion in managerial practices. More broadly they consisted of encouraging an image of aggressive loyalty to the “Central Committee line” while trying to reduce plan responsibilities and simplify tasks. This approach often involved ignoring or passively resisting central directives perceived to be counterproductive of regional (or personal) interests. It also involved deflecting blame if things went wrong or the strategies were uncovered. From their positions in the Obkom it was somewhat easier for regional leaders 4 Joseph Berliner, Factory and Manager in the USSR (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), chaps. ° Tp a law of 8 December 1933 the Central Executive Committee and Council of People’s

Commissars set a minimum five-year prison term for the deliberate production of substandard or incomplete goods. GASO, f. 148-r Oblastnoi sud, op. 1, d. 1181 Rukovodiashchie materialy po postanovleniiu TsIK i SNK SSSR ot vosmogo dekabria 1933 “ob otvetstvennosti za vypusk

nedobrokachestvennoi produktsii,” Il. 1-3. Actual prosecution on this level of severity was rare. Cases could not be brought to trial without the approval of the all-union procuracy.

The Terror | 157 than economic managers to control Moscow’s access to information on their “successes” and “failures.” The second five-year plan marks the origins of a functional regional clique. In this period the top regional leaders strove to isolate or remove those in the Obkom whose loyalties were not given exclusively to them. The experience of the grain collection campaigns of the early 1930s had taught them that it was personally dangerous not to have a tight control over potentially damaging information. When regional resistance to collections had become public and the ensuing scandal had provoked the creation of a Politburo investigative commission, the regional leadership felt compelled to scapegoat Oblast’

Executive Committee chairman P. T. Zubarev.*¢ A year later, when the com- | mission discovered that members of the Oblast’ Control Commission were leaking information on fulfillment problems to the press, the offending parties were removed from their posts.4”7 After Moscow created regional state and party control commissions independent of and parallel to oblast’ -level organs and invested them with the power to purge any officials who failed to implement central directives, the issue of control] took on a new urgency.*®

The.clique employed a range of tactics to ensure its control, mostly in the nature of unsubtle positive and negative reinforcements. The positive reinforcements were largely financial. The members of the clique and “especially important members of the oblast’ party leadership” #? were ensured an excellent standard of living in exchange for their loyalty. They received large apartments, dachas, special access to consumer goods and food supplies, and large supplements to their salaries. The central fund for this kind of graft (podkup or podkarmlivanie) was run out of the economic administration of the Oblast’ Executive Committee, but the leaders of the major city party committees and trust directors had their own “slush funds.” °° As for nega46 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, Il. 66-67. 47 Kabakov suggested that the investigators were trying to embarrass the regional leadership as part of a plan to take over the Obkom. Ibid., Il. 29-30. 48 The Commission for Party Control and the Commission for Soviet Control (KSK and KPK), created to replace the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (Rabkrin), were given the power to remove “any responsible official up to and including members of the Central Committee” by the Seventeenth Party Congress in early 1934. XVII s’ezd, p. 35. 4? The distinction is made in the NKVD “confessions” of the key participants, but its boundaries are unclear. The “especially important members of the leadership” seem to have included the heads of the Oblast’ Control Commission, the Oblast’ Executive Committee, the largest city party committees, the Obkom departments, the regional press, and the directors of the largest enterprises and trusts. The clique seems to have been a much smaller group, more fully in_ formed about the network of payments, protection, and punishments used to encourage loyalty

or silence.

50 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, |. 68; d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, ll. 63-64, 174. Bribes were sometimes paid in special circumstances. For example, the assistant oblast’ procurator was given a car by Eastern Steel Trust director Ia. P. Ivanchenko in exchange for shutting down an investigation of corruption at the trust. The oblast’ procurator was on the central graft “payroll,” and frequently stopped investigations on the basis of a phone call from oblast’ first secretary I. D. Kabakov. GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 38.

158 | The Great Urals .

ae _ b gee e a a") ae

: a. a a an SS ee hl ie

Figure 7. Obkom first secretary I. D. Kabakov (second from left) at the Seventeenth Party Congress (1934). Courtesy Tsentr dokumentatsii obshchestvennykh organizatsii

Sverdlovskoi oblasti (TsDOO SO). ee

tive reinforcement, those who made trouble for the members of the clique were removed from their posts, thereby losing all the attendant privileges.>! The party purges of the 1930s, including the Verification and the Exchange of Party Documents, were favored means of removing untrusted colleagues.°*? It was generally not difficult to find some element from an enemy’s past and use it to get him purged. Kabakov had four members of the administration of the Middle Urals Copper Trust purged on the grounds that they had been promoted by a certain comrade Shul’man, who had been a member of the

_ “Workers’ Truth” opposition group in the 1920s.° Once the offending parties had been removed, those who replaced them were carefully chosen— | +1 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, I. 68. , | 5? TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 62 Zasedanie biuro, 21 aprelia 1936, ll. 92-124. | °3 Kabakov had written a letter to Stalin on the issue. It is possible that he was less interested in ridding the oblast’ of the four trust administrators than arranging the ouster of the assistant editor of Za industrializatstiu, who was implicated in the affair. Za industrializatsiiu consistently published articles critical of the administration of Urals industry. TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK,

op. 1, d. 103 Protokoly 58, 60, 63, 64, 66, 68, 23 marta—15 maia 1935, ll. 28-30.

The Terror | 159 known friends of the clique. They were appointed by the clique, rather than elected by an Obkom plenum as had been the practice in the 1920s and early 1930s.°* Leading party and state workers who came to the oblast’ on orders from Moscow were greeted with great hospitality, established in luxurious surroundings, and then carefully observed. If they then criticized local work, they were “discredited in their practical work as a result of which they were usually sent to distant districts, or beyond the borders of the oblast’.” ** If they were accepted into the clique, their professional reputations were systematically protected and promoted at state and party meetings and in pub-

lic forums. The regional press was used to build their authority as “outstanding administrators with exceptional organizational skills, close to, and valued by the Central Committee and People’s Commissars.” ** According to Kabakov, all key positions in the oblast’ were under the control of the clique by 1935, even including the local representative of the NKVD, Reshetov, who was very much in the inner circle of the clique and a close personal friend of Kabakov.*’ According to Kabakov what resulted was a “wall” which not even the most determined and brave could break through. In addition to which, the combined authority of the leading oblast’ organs under our control had been driven so deeply into the minds of the broad party masses, that it was impossible to expect that anyone would attempt to aggregate and draw conclusions from scattered evidence of wrongdoing and criminal activity. . . . This would mean casting suspicion on all elements of the party, state, and economic leadership of the oblast’ .°®

This state of affairs in which any attempt to criticize or discredit the leadership was likely to draw an overwhelming counterattack gave the members of the clique the confidence to believe that they were “untouchable.” °’ The existence of this protected, mutually reliant group made it possible to manage the pressures of the central plan and the political campaigns appar54 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, |. 70. See also A. A. Zhdanov’s criticism of the phenomenon at the February-March 1937 Central Committee plenum. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17 Tsentral’nyi komitet, op. 2 Plenumy, d. 612 Stenograficheskii otchet Plenuma TsK VKP(b), 23 fevralia—5 marta 1937, ll. 4-8. 55 Ta, P. Ivanchenko refers to the drink-soaked banquets used to greet incoming central workers (“primenia[li] pri etom metody pyshnykh vstrech, s obil’nymi popoikami”). GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 174. See also Kabakov’s testimony, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, |. 48.

56 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 35; d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, |. 69. 57 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, Il. 50-51. The NKVD shared with members of the clique materials it received which could have proved dangerous to its members. GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, ll. 36-37; d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, |. 64. 58 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, I. 64. 5° Kabakov used the term. Ibid., |. 69.

160 | The Great Urals ently without personal risk. At public forums and at party and state meetings, the stenograms of which would be read in Moscow, oblast’ leaders aggressively defended the “general line of the party” and denounced any de- | viations from it. Privately, however, their behavior was often quite different. After party meetings at which managers were publicly humiliated for enterprise failures and threatened with being fired, Kabakov was known to take

, them aside and tell them that they were trusted and did not have to fear for - their positions. In some cases the heads of oblast’ organizations were fired , amidst scandal and then returned to their positions when things had calmed ~down.®? Meanwhile the oblast’ leadership colluded with trust directors in masking plant capacity and defending exaggerated spending plans before central organs.*! When spending plans were rejected on the grounds of poor production results, good results were faked.®* The lack of needed financing was often considered a greater immediate danger than the impossibility of sustaining faked results. In many cases the People’s Commissariats were convinced of “continuous forward movement” by little more than creative manipulation of real production figures in monthly, quarterly and annual re-

ports.°? The clique was not merely aware of these various managerial prac- | tices. It coordinated them and protected those who engaged in them, particularly when members of the clique, such as the directors of especially large trusts and construction projects, were involved. But if central officials uncovered clear evidence of these practices, the clique promptly found a scape- | , goat—usually from outside and well below the level of the clique—and he and his crimes were publicly condemned. In much the same way the clique resisted central campaigns that were perceived to be counterproductive to regional interests, publicly promoting them but privately acting to evade them or limit their effects. The Stakhanovite 6° GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 46. 61 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22947 Delo Zharikova, |. 80; d. 20017 Delo Golovina, Vasiliia Fedorovicha, |. 143; d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 29; d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, t. 2, 1. 254 from the testimony of Ja. P. Ivanchenko. 6 Kabakov’s phrase was “prikhodilos’ sozdavat’ vneshnie effekty po linii ‘krupnykh sdvi-

| gov.” “Evidence” of substantial progress in production or construction was consistently the basis of successful appeals for extra financing. Kabakov claims that this tactic was used “more

than once” with Uralvagonstroi, Sreduralmed’stroi, and other major construction projects.

GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, t. 1, ll. 62-63. 63 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 185 from the testimony of Ia. P. Ivanchenko. The People’s Commissariats did this sort of thing too when they wished to create the popular impression that underfulfilled plans had been met. From year to year the raw

| production figures were often not measured in consistent terms which could be compared. 64 In 1934, after hundreds of millions of rubles had been spent to improve the production capacity of the plants of the Eastern Steel Trust, director Ia. P. Ivanchenko understood that the trust was still years and millions of rubles from being able to substantially increase production. The clique conspired to promote a “reduced production plan” but the newspaper Za industrializatstiu examined the trust plan and made a scandal of it. vanchenko and Kabakov arranged to deflect blame onto the head of the production department, who was subsequently fired. GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, t. 2, Il. 268-69.

The Terror | 161 | movement is a prominent example of a campaign that met active resistance in the regions. The literature on Stakhanovism has noted that much of the resistance to the campaign came from the factory. Factory managers were having great difficulty meeting existing production targets. Stakhanovite meth-

ods produced some improvements in productivity, but they also complicated | the tasks of economic administration, created accidents, breakdowns, and bottlenecks, and brought with them increases in production norms.® Engineers and technical workers often perceived Stakhanovite methods to be inapplicable and inefficient.°* Neither managers nor engineers were pleased that workers were encouraged to criticize them, and non-Stakhanovite workers were angered by increases in production norms without compensating increases in pay. But resistance was not limited to the factory level. There was little enthusiasm in the oblast’ leadership as a whole for a campaign that raised targets and increased administrative tasks without providing clear local benefits. Through the winter of 1935-36 no organizational measures were undertaken by the Obkom to promote the Stakhanovite movement. By March 1936 this inaction had come to the attention of the Politburo, which “recommended the immediate improvement of all party-mass work on the development of the Stakhanovite movement.” *’ In his speech to the April 1936 Obkom plenum, the head of the Oblast’ Commission for Party Control hinted that further inaction was likely to bring a purge of Obkom department heads.®® In order to deflect blame, the Obkom had pushed the legal organs to find cases of “sabotage and resistance” to Stakhanovism in the factory.° In the spring of 1936 there were 236 trials on accusations of resisting the Stakhanovite movement in Sverdlovsk oblast’ alone.”° At the same time, a minimum of action was undertaken in order to create the impression 65 See n. 15.

66 For example, the chief engineer of the Kalatinsk copper factory defended his inaction in promoting the Stakhanovite movement on the grounds that it “began in such branches of industry as coal mining and machine building, where each individual worker can distinguish himself at his job. Here, copper is the result of the work of the entire collective.” Shop heads were , quoted as saying that “Stakhanovite methods are inapplicable and individual accounting is impossible.” RGAE, f. 8034 Glavtsvetmet, op. 1, d. 839 Stenogramma soveshchaniia aktiva tresta Uraltsvetmet po voprosam organizatsii truda i Stakhanovskogo dvizheniia na predpriatiiakh

tresta, 20 oktiabria 1935, ll. 187, 195. | 6°? TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. 6 Stenogramma X plenuma obkoma VKP(b), t. 1,1. 6. 68 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. ro Stenogramma X plenuma obkoma VKP(b), t. 4, 1. 13. 6? TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. 6 Stenogramma X plenuma obkoma VKP(b),

ll. 4-5. 70 Of six regions criticized by the Commission for Party Control for excessive use of the courts and procuracy in the “struggle against the sabotage of the Stakhanovite movement,” Sverdlovsk oblast’ had held more trials than all the other regions combined. The commission recognized that “in a majority of cases, party and professional organs had resorted to naked administrative measures and legal repression instead of developing party-mass work on the introduction of Stakhanovite methods of work.” TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 59 Zasedanii biuro, 29 fevralia—3 marta 1936, ll. 184, 186.

162 | The Great Urals ‘of progress. The feats of Stakhanovites were loudly proclaimed in the press and in correspondence with the Central Committee and People’s Commissariats, often in a context of overall underfulfillment.”4 On orders from trust

| directors—members of the leadership clique—Stakhanovites were given financial rewards or consumer goods “to shut them up.” ”* Those who did not keep quiet were taken aside and intimidated into silence.”? Thus the regional leadership was promoting the very “sabotage” of the Stakhanovite movement which they claimed to be actively struggling against. Similarly, the regional leadership was opposed to the Verification and Exchange of Party Documents in the mid-1930s. These campaigns were continuations of the purge of 1933, promoted to weed out “alien elements” that had been accepted into the party in the early 1930s and to bring order to party cadre registration. In the documents of the Smolensk Archive, J. Arch Getty observed a high degree of resistance to these campaigns in the Western oblast’ party apparatus, resulting “from a natural and universal reluctance to ‘rock the boat’ and from the hesitation of local leaders to criticize ‘their people’ or to encourage or allow self-criticism.” 4 The same phenomenon occurred in Sverdlovsk oblast’. Little was done to organize the Verification until specific threats issued by the central leadership relayed to city and raion party committees, after which the numbers of those purged rose dramatically.”> Getty is inclined to think of the Verification campaign as an example of “bureaucratic ineptitude” and “bungling.” 7° But the documents of the Urals NKVD archives reveal that the oblast’ leadership clique was disturbed by such purge campaigns and the demands for criticism of superiors. If uncontrolled, such criticism—usually in the form of denunciation—could

reveal damaging information on the coping strategies of the oblast’ leader- | ship.’” It was in the clique’s interests to portray the city and raion party com7 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. 149 Dokladnye zapiski, telegrammy, perepiska obkoma s Tsentral’nym komitetom i Narkomatami 0 sostoianii i razvitii chernoi i tsvetnoi met-

allurgii, fevral’-dekabria 1936, ll. 1-4, 21-23, 39-53. ” The expression used by Sedashev was “chtoby bol’she k nam ne lez.” GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 184. 73 From the testimony of a factory party committee secretary, N. G. Gar’kavenko, who implicated Sedashev—the head of the Eastern Steel Trust—in this “suppression of criticism.” Ibid., |. 219. 74 J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 90. 75 A secret letter in the name of the Central Committee was received by the oblast’ leadership in June 1935, which declared that in the absence of immediate action the Sverdlovsk Obkom would share the fate of the Western Obkom. Evidently there had been a purge of promi-

nent Obkom officials. TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 13 1935, d. 1 Stenogramma plenuma obkoma ob itogakh proverki partdokumentov, 22-23 ianvaria 1936, l. 7. 76 Getty, Origins of the Great Purges, pp. 58, 64. ’7 Getty makes this observation in ibid., pp. 67-68, but he does not directly address the is-

sue of how this constituted “bungling.” For a specific statement of the clique’s strategy, see GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, t. 1, ll. 102-3. Kabakov commented that on several occasions, scandals had broken that could have resulted in the removal of the Obkom leadership if immediate action had not been taken to head off investigations with prominent scapegoats.

The Terror | 163 mittees and primary party organizations as “bunglers” and publicly promote such campaigns, while privately limiting and directing them. Common tac-

tics to this end included demands to restore purged cadres trusted by the clique and directing the purges against elements perceived as hostile to the clique 7’ or groups unlikely to be a threat, such as “kulaks” or “former whiteuardists.” ’”? The Obkom leadership portrayed its efforts as fully attuned to the will of the central leadership. At the conclusion of the Verification cam-

guard) ership portray lly

paign, Obkom second secretary K. F. Pshenitsyn declared that “the Sverdlovsk organization is now a solid, monolithic, reliable pillar of the Stalinist Cental Committee forged in the process of an uninterrupted struggle with var-

ious anti-Leninist, counterrevolutionary groups.” °° The central leadership was annoyed by this sort of overladen self-promotion, especially given the necessity of prodding the regions into action, but there is little evidence to suggest that they questioned the loyalty of the regional leadership. When the , central leaders criticized top regional officials, it was always in terms of the officials’ “inability” to get quick and effective action out of the organizations they directed. There is no reason to believe that they suspected regional leaders of colluding in “bureaucratic” resistance to central directives and systematically deceiving them about the real state of arrairs in the regions. In the mid-1930s the oblast’ clique had good reason to believe that it was well protected by its network of “friends” in the party and state apparatuses, major enterprises, the courts, the press, the NK VD, and so on. Each had much to gain from participating in the clique, and even more to lose from fighting it. As Kabakov put it, “A large number of party leaders were imperceptibly enveloped into the clique [by means of illegal gifts] such that within a year or two when they understood the criminal nature of what they were involved in, they were already beholden to us.” ®! They were tied to the clique not only in terms of the lifestle which they had come to enjoy, but also out of fear of being publicly implicated in its “illegal” coping strategies. For the time being, scapegoating lower officials proved to be an effective means of deflecting blame for the failures of regional organs. 78 The Commission for Party Control observed this phenomenon in Mordovskaia oblast’, but the oblast’ leadership successfully defended its actions on the grounds that those purged were “class aliens.” TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 62 Zasedanie biuro, 21 aprelia 1936, Il. 92-124. At the third plenum of the plenipotentiaries for the Commission for Party Control, the representative from Kurskaia oblast’ noted that directives of the Central Committee often met resistance in the oblast’, but that those who resisted the Obkom were quickly arrested. TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 17 Sterogramma zasedanii tret’ego plenuma KPK, |. 136. See also Kabakov’s remarks on the removal of a member of the Sverdlovsk city committee for remarks critical of him. GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368, Delo Kabakova, I. 70. ”? In both the Verification and the Exchange, “kulaks” constituted the single largest category of those purged. TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 13 1935, d. 1 Stenogramma plenuma obkoma ob itogakh proverki partdokumentov, 22—23 ianvaria 1936, |. 15; op. 14 1936, d. 25 Materialy k XII plenumu Obkoma VKP(b), 21-23 oktiabria 1936, t. 2, |. 2. 8° TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 13 1935, d. 1 Stenogramma plenuma obkoma ob itogakh proverki partdokumentov, 22-23 ianvaria 1936, |. 5. 51 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, |. 68.

164 | The Great Urals | Fighting Bureaucratism and Former Oppositionists . Though central leaders had little knowledge of the systematic deception

orchestrated by the regional clique, they carefully watched the fulfillment of a their directives, and they were frustrated by what they called “bureaucrat, ism”: an apparent inertia or incompetence of the apparatus. As Moscow saw it, the grain collection campaign of 1931-32, the Stakhanovite movement, the Verification and Exchange campaigns, among other policy intitiatives, were occasions of considerable “footdragging” until regional organizations were threatened with specific punishments for nonfulfillment.8* On several

occasions, such punishments were enacted as examples,*? but there is no , clear evidence to suggest that the center ever contemplated combating “bureaucratism” with the sort of onslaught of political violence that constituted the Terror. Rather, the Terror was a war declared against former oppositionists and other “enemies of the people.” Ironically, it was regional officialdom that drew the connection between “bureaucratism” and such “enemies.” The essential tactic of scapegoating was to blame wreckers and saboteurs for the shortcomings of one’s own organization, which worked well as long as the problems of fulfillment were relatively minor or could be hidden from the center. But when problems rapidly accumulated toward the end of the second five-year plan, the scapegoating escaped the control of the clique and the center drew the conclusion that regional organizations were indeed nests of enemies. In the process of investigating their activities, the regional lead-

ers’ systematic deception of the center was uncovered. , Well before the Stakhanovite movement or the Verification campaign, central leaders had observed that “when we issue directives, we are uncertain whether they will be implemented.” *4 In his 1934 speech announcing the creation of the commissions for Party and Soviet Control, Stalin made it clear that these organs would be empowered to remove “any responsible official, including officials of the Central Committee” who refused

, to promptly implement central directives, or to remove “officials with wellknown services in the past .. . who think that party and Soviet laws were written not for them, but for idiots.” ®° The threat to remove top officials fol-

lowed in the aftermath of the disastrous grain collection campaigns of the previous two years in which many local officials had shown a lack of enthu82 Gill, Origins of the Stalinist Political System, pp. 214, 264-67; Getty, Origins of the Great

Purges, chap. 3; Gabor Rittersporn, Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications (Chur, Switzerland, 1991), pp. 42-44. 83 See, e.g., Nobuo Shimotomai, “A Note on the Kuban Affair: The Crisis of Kolkhoz Agriculture in the North Caucasus,” Acta Slavica Iaponica 1 (1983): 39-56. ~ §4 Quotation from Sergo Ordzhonikidze, early 1934. RGAE, f. 7297 NKTP, op. 38 Sekretariat, d. 104 Stenogramma vystupleiia t. S. Ordzhonikidze na zakrytom partiinom sobranii

sotrudnikov NKTP SSSR ob itogakh raboty XVII s’ezda VKP(b), I. 1. | 85 XVII s’ezd, pp. 34-35.

The Terror | 165 siasm for central targets in the face of widespread famine. But when the commissions were created, the worst of the famine was over and industrial production was beginning to surge forward. Moscow was less certain about attacking high officials once things had started to improve. The commissions were immediately put in an ambiguous position. For example, the plenipotentiaries of the Commission for Party Control were given formal independence from the regional organizations that they were assigned to oversee. They were allowed to issue their own instructions and they could apply to the bureau of the commission to have regional party decisions repealed. But they were instructed to issue “all of the most important instructions with the participation of the regional party committees.” °° They were encouraged to remove officials who violated or ignored central directives up to and including Obkom secretaries, yet they were criticized by the commission leadership if their actions were perceived to be disruptive of the work of the Obkom.®’ The plenipotentiaries never really understood how they were supposed to deal with the regional committees. One delegate to the 1936 plenum of plenipotentiaries declared, “I don’t know what to consider normal relations, and what abnormal.” °° The Commission for Soviet Control did not face the same problems largely because they were involved in the finer details of economic administration and had fewer powers to remove officials.°? Regional officials never considered the Soviet Control plenipotentiaries to be a threat.”° The effectiveness of the commissions’ challenge to regional bureaucratism was limited by several other factors. The large number of issues they were

instructed to address made for superficial investigations.?! In 1937 the Sverdlovsk Commission for Party Control was conducting almost twenty “main” investigations among a similar number of permanent staff members. 86 TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 7 Stenogramma vtorogo plenuma KPK pri TsK VKP(b) ot 26-28 iiunia 1934 po voprosam otchety upolnomochennykh KPK pri TsK VKP(b), ll. 53-54. 87 TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 62 Zasedanie biuro, 21 aprelia 1936, ll. 92-124; d. 17 Stenogramma zasedanii tret’ego plenuma KPK pri TsK VKP(b) 7-8 marta 1936 goda po voprosu o rabote upolnomochennykh KPK pri TsK VKP(b), |. 26. 88 TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 17 Stenogramma zasedanii tret’ego plenuma KPK, | I. 121. 89 The Commission for Soviet Control addressed such issues as “the struggle with ticks” and “the verification of preparation for the peat season.” GARF, f. 7511 Komissiia sovetskogo kontolia pri SNK SSSR (hereafter KSK), op. 1, d. 89 Plan raboty KSK i zadaniia po planu upolnomochennykh KSK po kraiam, oblastiam i respublikam na ianvar’—iiun’ 1935, |. 55. The commission rarely pressed for the removal of officials, and the plenipotentiaries mostly issued official reprimands (vygovora). It seems likely that in cases where serious scandals were uncovered, the issue would be passed to their counterparts in the Commission for Party Control. °° In fact, Kabakov claimed that the head of the Sverdlovsk commission was a member of the regional clique. GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, I. 64. °1 TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 68 Zasedanie biuro, 1 dekabria 1936, |. 234. In the summer of 1934 the leadership included over 120 people, and the regional commission chief at the time complained that this number gave the commission insufficient time to follow up on investigations. D. 7, |. 70.

166 | The Great Urals Perversely, as the commission expanded, many new members came from the Obkom or lower party apparatus.°? Regional party members were unlikely

to be objective critics of themselves or their co-workers. Many of the regional commissions simply lost the will to lock horns with the organs they were overseeing.”? Those that did not faced a constant struggle against the attempts of regional organs to intimidate or isolate them. Some regional party organs blocked the commission’s access to the press to publish their directives.°* Others had directives accepted by the regional party committee and then indefinitely delayed in implementation.?* The process became ritualized in Sverdlovsk oblast’. Before each party meeting, top members of the Obkom would determine who was to disagree with the commission plenipotentiary,

so that by the end of the discussion Kabakov could “come to his defense” and arrange a “compromise” acceptable to the Obkom.”* Constant conflict with regional organs often took its toll on the health of the commission plenipotentiaries. Many asked for transfers to other work on the grounds of “disorders of the nervous system.” ”” Despite these obstacles to their effectiveness, the commissions managed to make themselves a thorn in the side of the regional clique. On several occasions investigations by the Commission for Party Control revealed informa- , tion threatening to the clique. Within its first year the Sverdlovsk oblast’ Commission for Party Control, for example, uncovered evidence of financial irregularities in the economic administration of the Oblast’ Executive Committee.” In essence, it had discovered the regional fund used by the clique to buy the loyalty of “especially important members.” This discovery proved to be a serious scare for the clique because disbursements had been directed by - the top Obkom leadership.*? But the Obkom immediately purged the head of the economic administration and several other executive committee mem92 This was true of many regions. See, e.g., TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 102 Zasedanii partkollegii, 4 ianvaria-17 marta 1935, |. 53 (Kharkovskaia Oblast’); d. ror Zasedanii partkollegii, 13 oktiabria—20 dekabria 1934, 1. 198 (Komi Oblast’); d. roo Zasedanii partkol-

legii, 3 iiunia—3 oktiabria 1934, |. 57 (Vinitskaia Oblast’). : |

°3 The KPK plenipotentiary from Kievskaia oblast’ warned against the danger that the local commissions would “adapt to the situation in the oblast’ and lose their keenness [chutkost’] and vigilance.” TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 7 Stenogramma zasedanii vtorogo plenuma KPK, 26-28 iiunia 1934, |. 49. °4 TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 17 Stenogramma zasedanii tret’ego plenuma KPK,

50. , | 7-8 marta 1936, ll. 24, 55. oe |

95 TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 7 Stenogramma zasedanii vtorogo plenuma KPK,

26-28 liunia 1934, |. 72.

96 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 62.

°7 TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 67 Zasedaniia biuro, 14 avgusta—29 oktiabriar936, l. 11; GARF, f. 7511 KSK, op. 1, d. 146 Postanovleniia, oprosnye, vypiski iz protokolov biuro KSK i dokladnye zapiski po organizatsionnym i kadrovym voprosam, o shtatakh upolnomochennykh KSK v kriaiakh, oblastiakh i respublikakh i dr., ianvar’—dekabr’ 1936, 98 Pravda, 12 September 1934. The evidence was revéaled in an article entitled “Take what you want, but keep silent” (“Beri skol’ko khochesh’, no tol’ko molchi”). : 99 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, |. 102. |

, The Terror | 167 bers, accusing them of stealing the money for personal use.!° No further investigation was held, and charges were limited to embezzlement.'*! A year and a half later, simultaneous Commission for Party Control investigations of the progress of the Stakhanovite movement and the Verification of Party Cards in Sverdlovsk oblast’ uncovered evidence of “bureaucratic inertia” in the Obkom. Investigation materials were passed to the bureau of the commission in Moscow, whereupon commission chairman N. I. Ezhov arranged for them to be discussed at a meeting of the Orgbureau of the Central Committee.'°* There is no stenogram of.the meeting, but it would have been a grave humiliation for Kabakov to be dressed down by the top central leaders. When Kabakov returned home, two Obkom department heads were fired, and there was a wave of arrests of “saboteurs” of the two campaigns.!% Such incidents reinforced the regions’ tendency to believe that finding specific targets to blame for problems was the best way to convince Moscow that everything was under control. Kabakov described the tactic as “being louder than anyone else in defense of the general line of the Party, and in certain circumstances not being afraid to sacrifice certain of our people to make it more convincing, and particularly when it seemed clear that they were sure to be purged anyway.” !% It seemed to work very well as long as the scandals were well separated in time and central investigations could be stopped short. But as we shall see, when Moscow refused to stop its investigations as it did in 1936, the clique began to turn on itself. Much the same dynamic could be seen at lower levels of the regional apparatus. It was at the level of the city, raion, and factory party committees, and in the lower state apparatus and enterprises that the commissions for Party Control and Soviet Control were most active in their struggle against bureaucratism. Given the dangers and difficulties of investigating high regional officials, much of the energy of the commissions (in proving their “effectiveness”) was spent removing or otherwise punishing lower-level officials for various manifestations of bureaucratism.'® But even before the advent — 100 According to Sedashev, then the first assistant to the head of the Eastern Steel Trust, the key players in the coverup were Kabakov, Chudnovskii (the chairman of the Oblast’ Court) and Ivanchenko (head of the Eastern Steel Trust). GAAO SO, f. 1, op 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 38.

, 1 101 CAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 20017 Delo Golovina, Vasiliia Fedorovicha, - IT§—-i1o6. " TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. 10 Stenogramma X plenuma obkoma VKP(b), Tos TSKSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 59 Zasedaniia biuro, 29 fevralia—3 marta 1936, | “Toe GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, |. 65. 105 Plenipotentiaries often opened their presentations to their Moscow bosses by reporting

the number of firings and exclusions from the party. For example, the plenipotentiary from Azovo-Chernomorskii Krai opened his speech to the second plenum of the Commission for Party Control by saying, “In three months of work five raikom leaders have been removed on our suggestion and two raikom secretaries have:been excluded from the party. These tempos, as you can see, are very fast... . We have taken the issue of removing leaders very seriously.”

168 | The Great Urals of the control commissions in 1934, lower officials too had understood the ~ advantages of finding scapegoats. The archives of the Oblast’ Court are full of cases in which such officials blamed underlings for various crises. For example, the Uralmash factory was notorious for the frequency of show trials which it generated. Ultimately, trying shop directors and section heads for wrecking was easier than explaining to oblast’ leaders or officials in the People’s Commissariats that construction targets had not been met, or that production targets were unrealistic. In the fall of 1932 the factory was already supposed to be producing its own pig iron. The blast furnaces had been installed, but storage facilities for raw materials had received almost no attention and they were in a mess. Under great pressure to start pig iron production and in the confusion over where the appropriate supplies were located, the furnaces were sent gypsum instead of lime, thereby resulting in the

production of thousands of tons of useless metal, and necessitating costly and time-consuming repairs. The head of the storage facility had warned both officials in Moscow and the factory administration of the inadequacy and confusion of the storage facilities, but nothing had been done. Rather than weigh complex evidence of diffuse responsibility, the court accepted the verdict that the raion and factory newspapers had been pushing for on the instructions of the raion and factory Party committees. The head of the storage facility and the factory supply director were sentenced to death and six others were given five-years in prison.! A year later the factory technical director and ten others were tried as counterrevolutionaries for setting fire to the metal pressing shop. In the rush to get this section of the factory working, temporary wooden walls had been set up next to a furnace used for | heating metal. Fragments of heated metal hit the wood and the ensuing blaze burnt the shop to the ground. The fire undercut any possibility of meeting the 1934 plan; it was estimated to have caused almost four million rubles in damage, requiring six months for repair.'°” These crises were more than in-

stances of mere bureaucratism, but they show the patterns of the response of | lower-level regional officials to situations that threatened their positions. When the commissions for Party and Soviet Control established themselves, the variety of offenses for which an official could be removed from his post substantially increased, as did the tendency to deflect blame on subor- dinates. The number of court cases increased so much that in early 1936 the — Commission for Party Control was ordered to investigate the use of courts

by local organs. Its report to the commission bureau stated: ,

28 iiunia 1934, |. 3. |

TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 7 Stenogramma zasedanii vtorogo plenuma KPK, 26-

106 The death sentences were later reduced to ten years in prison. GASO, f. 148-r Oblsud, .

op. 5 sekretnaia chast’, dd. 684-86 Delo po obvineniiu Beia, Semena Iakovlevicha; Vorob’eva,

Dmitriia Pavlovicha; Dvorkina, Izraila Moiseevicha i dr. vo vreditel’stve i sryve protsessa

proizvodstva na Ural’skom zavode tiazhelogo mashinostroeniia po st. 58/14, I09, III Ugolovnogo kodeksa. 107 Tbid., dd. 687-706.

The Terror | 169 The analysis .. . of court materials shows that in a number of oblasti, especially Sverdlovsk and Saratov regions, the courts and procuracy have completely baselessly arrested and convicted people and undertaken mass repressions for minor problems [nepoladki], sometimes for ineffective leadership, and in the majority of cases arrested and convicted workers who merely needed educational work. !8

Some central leaders, such as Sergo Ordzhonikidze, had observed this phenomenon long before,!°’ but by the spring of 1936 Moscow was taking ac-

tion to limit the access of local organs to repressive measures.'!° In the months before he took control of the NK VD and led the Terror, N. Ezhov, then head of the Commission for Party Control, was active in this move. Central leaders were anxious to fight bureaucratism, that is, to make the bureaucracy more responsive to its demands, and the use of repression by local officials had become part of the problem. Central leaders had recognized the tendency of local officials to use repression as a means of self-protection, or of blame-shifting. They were extremely frustrated with resistance to their directives, but they did not see the solution in further repressive measures. The resolutions of the Third Plenum of the Commission for Soviet Control,

confirmed by All-union Sovnarkom and published on the front page of Pravda at the end of May 1936, stated that “administrative measures [that is, repression] .. . do not help strengthen state discipline.” ''' Rather, the resolutions promoted “harsh and severe criticism by the masses” as the appropriate antidote to bureaucratism. By encouraging criticism of local offi-

cials, however, central leaders were indirectly promoting repression, for such criticism only reinforced the tendency to blame-shifting. Pressure from the central leadership to seek out “enemies of the people” gave definition and impetus to regional blame-shifting. This pressure was exerted most strongly on two occasions before the Terror: first, following the murder of Sergei Kirov in late 1934, and then during trial of the “Trotsky108 TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 59 Zasedaniia biuro, 7 fevralia—3 marta 1936, l. 186. At the very same time, the commission was pressing the issue of “sabotage” of the Stakhanovite movement, that is, the sort of crime that lower officials were most anxious not to be implicated in. Ll. 145-70. 109 In a 1933 speech to a Moscow conference of technical workers, Ordzhonikidze observed:

The workers of the Magnitogorsk blast furnaces . . . have only recently come from the countryside. At first he [sic] dug the foundations with a shovel, then he worked alongside an excavator and now he stands at a huge mechanized blast furnace. It’s understandable that he can’t be held responsible for what happens. Say for example that when the furnace is working at full capacity, the ventilation suddenly shuts off—it turns out that he’s turned the wrong lever. We start to swear at him and take him to the local court. We want to throw him into jail. But all the same, he can’t do what we’re asking him to do. Force me to play the organ and I won’t be able to play. The same is true of that worker. We have to teach him.

RGAE, f. 7297 NKTP, op. 36 Sekretariat, d. 47 Rech’ Ordzhonikidze na Moskovskoi konferentsii ITR, 19 tiunia 1933, 1. 19. — 110 “Fal’shivaia samostrakhovka” (False Self-defense), Pravda, 30 May 1936, p. I. 111 Pravda, 30 May 1930, p. I.

170 | The Great Urals Zinoviev counterrevolutionary bloc” in the summer of 1936. In both cases Moscow pressed regional authorities to identify active members of the former (especially Left) oppositions and expel them from local organizations. In both cases what resulted was a flurry of denunciations and expulsions from the party. Recent research suggests that the specter of former oppositionists fighting the regime from within the country was a real concern for Soviet leaders.!!* It did not require a great logical leap to consider the possibility that industrial accidents, mine explosions, fires—or the murder of Kirov—were the work of counterrevolutionary terrorists inspired by or under the direction of former oppositionists. But it is not clear that central lead-

, ers believed such “terrorist” activity was widespread. On the eve of the Terror, though Pravda called for “vigilance in every corner [na liubom uchastke],” its editorials suggested that the opposition had been “ground into dust” and that it “could not have any serious number of supporters.” 1 In the fall of 1936 as in the aftermath of the Kirov murder, Moscow did not see the threat from “enemies” as sufficiently grave to warrant the massive use of political violence. In the regions, the underfulfilled plan targets, supply problems, industrial accidents, administrative incompetence, and resentment of workers at rising work norms gave purpose and value to the use of the labels “enemy,” “wrecker,” and “counterrevolutionary.” Moscow had never defined these labels clearly and they proved to be highly adaptable and popular. Conspiracy theories of plan underfulfillment were not uncommon in the regions. For example, in the fall of 1930 a newly hired engineer, A. Lozovskii, wrote a letter to Kabakov and the local OGPU in which he envisioned enemies everywhere: Having worked for three weeks at the metal factory [no. 5 of the Urals Metal-

: lurgical Trust] and watched the course of production, the relations among factory administrators, the shops, and the attitude of various economic organizations to the production of high-quality steels, I have come to the conclusion that at this factory and around it organized wrecking is being conducted. I have no evidence. I cannot name names. But I feel some kind of alien hand. What’s more, I have the feeling that these wrecking elements are to be found in the administrations of the Urals Forestry Trust, the Urals Metallurgical Trust, the Urals Housing Construction Project, and the Urals Coal Trust, to say nothing of factory number five, which teems like an anthill with blatant saboteurs and

, counterrevolutionaries.!"4 112 PDmitrii Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia: I.V. Stalin, politicheskii portret, vol. 2, pt. 1 (Moscow, 1989), pp. 165-78; Getty, Origins of the Great Purges, pp. 119-24. 113 Pravda, 7 August, 9 August, 13 August, 15 August 1936. 1144 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 8 1930, d. 102 Spravki, protokoly rassledovaniia organov OGPU po Uralu, raikomov i gorkomov VKP(b) o faktakh klassovoi bor’by i vreditel’stva na predpriiatiiakh oblasti, ll. 51-52. The popularity of conspiracy theories is described and analyzed in detail in Gabor T. Rittersporn, “The Omnipresent Conspiracy: On Soviet Imagery of Politics and Social Relations in the 1930s,” in Stalinist Terror: New Perpectives, ed. J. Arch Getty and Roberta Manning (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 99-115.

The Terror | 171 The common acceptance of conspiracy theories encouraged the cynical use of labels in blame-shifting. In the first Uralmash trial described above, key defendants were accused of hiding their class origins.!!5 In the second trial, the defendants were accused of being counterrevolutionaries in the pay of the German government through its purported agent in the factory, German engineer Valdemar Yost.'!® When Moscow encouraged the search for enemies following the murder of Kirov and again following the trial of the TrotskyZinoviev bloc, the use of such labels expanded substantially. Local officials used the opportunities to rid themselves of personal enemies and simultaneouly excuse the poor performance of their organizations. The leaders of Sverdlovsk oblast’, however, did not share these aims; they tried and failed to control the process of repression,!'” as uncontrolled denunciation threatened to draw attention to problems of production and administration rather than deflect it. At the Tenth Plenum of the Sverdlovsk Obkom in April 1936, Kabakov angrily criticized the ubiquity of denunciation: “At the current time, accusations from all sides are being cast on those who are not directly involved . . . accusations against us leaders, against the heads of shops, against the secretaries of party committees, against the leaders of trade union organizations.” !!8 Central leaders weren’t pleased either.

In pushing the search for “enemies,” they identified the primary task as “unmasking” members of anti-Soviet groups associated with the former Left opposition; eliminating “double-dealers” (dvurushniki—those who publicly support the party line and privately work against it) and class-alien elements in the apparatus were seen as secondary tasks.!!° But the secondary tasks

consistently got more attention from the regions, for there were not that many officials with clear ties to the former oppositions. In the summer of 1936 Moscow acted to limit repressive action against class aliens and other opponents of the party line, and focus attention on the narrower category of oppositionists and their supporters.'*° Central legislation of 30 May 1936 forbade the use of class origins and “former convictions” as a cause for firing a worker or official. The Central Committee secret letter of 29 July 1936 “On the Concrete, Subversive, Counterrevolutionary Activity of Trotsky115 The head of the storage department admitted that his father was a “kulak.” Two others were identified as former exiled kulaks. GASO, f. 148-r Oblsud, op. 5 sekretraia chast’, d. 686 Delo po obvineniiu Beia, Semena Iakovlevicha i dr., |. 109. 116 ‘Yost consistently denied the charges and was later released, but the accusation of working for a foreign government continued to be leveled against the other defendants. GASO, f. 148-r Oblsud, op. 5 sekretraia chast’, d. 688 Delo po obvineniiu Beia, Semena Iakovlevicha

idr., ll. 207-8. 117 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, |. 103. 118 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. ro Stenogramma X plenuma obkoma VKP(b),

t. 4, Il. 103-4. 119 For the text of the 18 January 1935 secret letter of the Central Committee “On the Lessons of the Villanous Murder of Comrade Kirov” see Izvestiia TsK KPSS 8 (1989), pp. 95—

roo. For the text of the 29 July 1936 secret letter on the Trotsky-Zinoviev Bloc see ibid., pp. Ioo-115. 120 Pravda, 30 May 1936, p. I.

172 | The Great Urals | ists” and subsequent Pravda editorials encouraged local officials to develop | “the ability to identify the enemy.” 12!

In the summer of 1936 the central leadership was not united by a desire to restrain repression, however. The 29 July letter clearly stated that the Verification and Exchange of Party Cards had not successfully uncovered all oppositionist elements in the apparatus and that these elements should be

, uncovered and arrested,!22 but it would be a mistake to assume that the letter called for a campaign of violence against the apparatus. The Terror began, rather, because the practices of blame-shifting and labeling “enemies” that local officials had employed to evade responsibility accelerated out of

the control of the regional organizations. , The rapid decline of production figures in 1936 meant that it was no longer possible to sustain the impression of overall plan fulfillment. In each year of the second five-year plan, new plants had been expected to provide a larger share of production. By 1936 regional officials could no longer hide the fact that the capacities of these plants had been exaggerated; that the designs were faulty; that ores supplies were not as large as promised. But these officials were not in a position to admit to these problems, for to question the plan was to engage in a “Trotskyist deviation.” Since the late 1920s Trotsky and his followers had been vilified for their “lack of faith in the construction of socialism in one country.” Blaming others for underfulfillment created the impression that the guilty parties were “wreckers” and “saboteurs.” Until the summer of 1936 regional leaders had been able to control the effects of blame-shifting, but the combination of widespread underfulfillment and a campaign to uncover hidden “enemies” proved to be explosive.

Declining Production and Growing Tensions in the Oblast’ According to statistics published in 1937 by the Commissariat of Heavy Industry for internal use, the 1936 plan was overfulfilled by five percent.123 Aside from the well-known necessity of approaching any Soviet statistics with caution, there are good reasons for doubting this particular figure. In a recent article, Roberta Manning demonstrated that a serious economic

| downturn had begun in 1936. She observed that downward pressure on growth rates had accumulated in the previous several years. The majority of unfinished projects from the first five-year plan had been brought on line, 121 Pravada, 7 August 1936, p. I. 122TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. 138 Informatsionnye, dokladnye zapiski obkoma, gorkomov o khode obsuzhdeniia materialov protsessa nad Trotskiistsko-Zinovievskoi gruppoi, |. 85. 123 Tiazhelaia promyshlennost’ SSSR za 1936 (Moscow, 1937), p. 12. Though the volume was bound, it was never publicly circulated. The front cover indicated in bold print that it was a secret document (“ne podlezhit oglasheniiu”).

The Terror | 173 while new capital investment had declined. Other resources such as the labor force had already been stretched to their limits. And the state budget was under pressure from the rapidly increasing burden of military spending. Meanwhile, bad weather had made 1936 a terrible year for Soviet agriculture.!*4 For regional officials these factors only further complicated the fulfillment of a plan they already knew to be impossible. The 1936 economic year began with the near collapse of production at the Eastern Ore Trust. In the first five months of 1936 the trust had produced only 28 percent of its plan.!*° The whole production cycle of metal production and machine building—the core of Urals industry —was affected. Smaller metallurgical plants were shut down and the larger ones were getting only a portion of the ores they required, thus making it impossible for them to supply machine-building factories.'*° The existence of old reserves prevented more widespread shutdowns, but the reserves themselves were being rapidly depleted.!?” At the Urals Copper Ore Trust, reserves had declined from almost ten million tons in January 1933 to barely over two million tons in January 1937.!'*8 The situation would only worsen because mining operations had typically exploited the most easily accessed, superficial strata and concentrated resources on ongoing production rather than long-term planning and construction.!*? Metal and machine-building production were also hampered by the gross inadequacy of the electricity supply. Even when the plants had needed ores or metals, electricity blackouts often forced them to shut down.!°° The failure to complete first and second five-year plan construction projects constituted another impending crisis. The Middle Urals Copper Trust was supposed to supply one half of all-union copper by 1937, but plant con-

struction was nowhere near completion.'*! The reconstruction of Eastern Steel Trust factories for the production of high quality steels had been ongoing since 1930. Hundreds of millions of rubles had already been invested in the project and further hundreds of millions were required to bring produc124 Roberta T. Manning, “The Soviet Economic Crisis of 1936-1940 and the Great Purges,” in Stalinist Terror, pp. 129-33. 125 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22329 Delo Davydova, I. 2. '26 This information comes from the NKVD interrogation of the chairman of Uralvagon, whose factory could not produce rail cars because the Eastern Ore Trust was not supplying the Nizhnii Tagil Metallurgical Plant with iron ores, which it in turn used to supply Uralvagon with pig iron. The chairman of the Eastern Steel Trust and his technical director made similar remarks in their NKVD interrogations. Ibid., ll. 4, 24-25, 27. 127 Thid., |. 2.

28 RGAE, f. 8034 Glavtsvetmet, op. 1, d. 1015 Postanovlenie SNK SSSR “O meropriiatiiakh po uluchsheniiu raboty mednoi promyshlennosti,” prikaz NKTPa “O meropriiatiiakh po likvidatsii posledstvii vreditel’stva na rudnikakh Tresta Uralmed'ruda,” I. 19. 129 RGAE, f. 8034 Glavtsvetmet, op. 1, d. 1017 Prikazy i dokladnye zapiski po NKTP 1 Glaku o Karabashskom medeplavil’nom zavode, o sostoianii raboty, |. 4. 130 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, t. 3, ll. 272-73; d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 76. 131 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22947 Delo Zharikova, |. r9.

174 | The Great Urals tion to capacity. This was a particularly sensitive case because the trust was expected to produce special alloys for the defense industry, and the delays came as the military threat from Japanese and German fascism was becoming obvious.'32 Other projects nearing completion proved to be fundamentally defective. The Sinara pipe factory, for example, lacked the iron ores which the regional geological administration had claimed were present.'?3 Furthermore, regional officials were finding it increasingly difficult to hide the fact that coal from the Kizel region was unsuitable for metal production—after years of construction and investment based on that assumption.!*4 As regional officials were reaching the limit of their ability to mask problems of production and construction, Moscow showed no tendency to lessen its demands on them. Noting the poor progress of the Stakhanovite move-

ment, the December 1935 Central Committee plenum made it clear that the center expected substantial increases in the productivity of industry on the basis of Stakhanovite methods.'*° Two months later the Central Committee passed a directive critical of the Urals nonferrous metals industry for its lack of action on the issue.!3° Through the fall of 1936 the Urals Nonferrous Metallurgy Trust sent frequent reports of the production “records” of Stakhanovites, though production continued to fall steadily behind targets. Inspectors from the Commissariat of Heavy Industry noted the “complete lack of operative leadership” and the “desire to cloud, hide and mask losses of metal [in the production process],” and recommended substantial changes in personnel.!3”7 Some of the enterprises of the Trust panicked and stopped sending production reports altogether.'7* Though nonferrous metallurgy bore the brunt of central criticism for failure properly to promote the Stakhanovite movement, no branch of regional industry was safe from critical attention. The Eastern Steel Trust developed a reputation for Stakhanovite record-breaking that resulted in extended and expensive breakdowns of equipment, and regional forestry was known to have worse production results in periods when the Stakhanovite movement was especially

promoted.!»? , To make matters worse, the Council of People’s Commissars increased the 132 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, t. 3, 1. 266.

133 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22329 Delo Davydova, |. 15. 134 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, t. 3, |. 282; d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 75. 135 K PSS v rezoliutsiiakh (Moscow, 1984), 6: 284-95. 136 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. 6 Stenogramma X plenuma obkoma VKP(b),

ll. 3-5. 137 RGAE, f. 8034 Glavtsvetmet, op. 1, d. 900 Perepiska s Krasnoural’skim zavodom o rezkom padenii. protsenta izvlechenii medi, ll. 194-99. 138 RGAE, f. 8034 Glavtsvetmet, op. 1, d. 903 Perepiska s Trestom “Uraltsvetmet” o prichinakh neudovletvoritel’noi raboty obogatitel/nykh fabrik i o drugikh proizvodstvennykh

voprosakh, ianvar’—oktiabr’ 1936, ll. 24-240b. : 139 See the speech of the Sverdlovsk oblast’ plenipotentiary of the Commission for Party Control to the 1936 plenum of the commission. TsKhSD, f. 6 KPK, op. 1 Protokoly, d. 17 Stenogramma zasedanii tret’ego plenuma KPK, 7—8 marta 1936, Il. 124-29.

The Terror | 175 pressure on industry to meet the targets for lowering construction and production costs. The 1936 investment plan for heavy industry was raised by 9.§ percent over the target for 1935, and the target for cost reduction was

raised by 11 percent. At the same time, funding was concentrated on proj- , ects closer to completion, resulting in the freezing of financing to a wide range of ongoing projects.'4° The Council, together with the Commissariat of Finance and All-union Gosplan, was angry with industrial enterprises and trusts for their inability, or unwillingness, to stay within spending plans established at the beginning of the economic year.'*! Despite a series of strongly worded prohibitions throughout the mid-1930s, enterprises and trusts had continued to make unplanned expenditures resulting in the expansion of inter-enterprise debt that totaled 831 million rubles as of 1 May 1936.'*2 Unsanctioned expenditures by the enterprises was not the only category of unplanned spending. In 1935 alone the Council of People’s Commissars had approved over three and a half billion rubles of above-plan investment (17.2 percent of the overall plan) in order to cover unexpected costs in construction and production.'!*3 The unwillingness to undertake such spending in 1936, however, promised to complicate plan fulfillment. With financing cuts, high cost-reduction targets, and persistent inter-enterprise debt, many enterprises were less able than ever to pay suppliers and in turn supply their own customers. !*4

The combined pressure of overstrained production capacity and increas- _ ing central demands created unprecedented tensions within the party and economic apparatuses in Sverdlovsk oblast’. Tensions between factory party officials and factory directors, as well as between directors and shop (tsekh)

managers, grew with the level of underfulfillment, accidents, and breakdowns. Each was determined to show that the others should bear the burden of blame. Regional plenipotentiaries of the Commission for Soviet Control noted that in the summer of 1936 firings and “administrative punishments

[administrativnye vzyskanii]” were being conducted on “on a massive scale.” 14° In cases of particularly serious underfulfillment these struggles led

to locally sponsored show trials. In October 1936 production in the Urals nonferrous metals industry was (officially) hovering at about 80 percent of 140 Zaleski, Stalinist Planning, pp. 243-46. 141 GARF, f. 5446 STO i SNK SSSR, op. 18a 1936, d. 34 O finansirovanii tiazheloi promysh-

lennosti, Il. 14-16, 28-36. 142 Thid., |. 7.

143 Zaleski, Stalinist Planning, p. 243. 44 Ordzhonikidze described potential problems in a 2 June 1936 letter to Molotov chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars. GARF, f. 5446 STO i SNK SSSR, op. 18a 1936, d. 34

O finansirovanii tiazheloi promyshlennosti, Il. 7-8. ‘45 Despite publication of the resolutions of the May 1936 plenum of the Commission for Soviet Control specifically prohibiting such action (see p. 416 above). For the cited comments of regional delegates see GARF, f. 7511 KSK, op. 1, d. 187 Postanovleniia Biuro KSK pri SNK SSSR, dokladnye zapiski i informatsii upolnomochennykh KSK, protokoly, soveshchaniia dokladchikov i agitatorov, postanovleniia Prezidiuma Obl'IKov o khode obsuzhdeniia i realizatsii reshenii III plenuma KSK pri SNK, iiun’—iiul’ 1936, |. 82.

176 | The Great Urals plan levels and the rate of accidents had increased to 142 per thousand work © hours (versus 88 in 1935). At a Moscow conference on the issue of safety in the workplace, officials of Glavtsvetmet recommended educational measures

for workers and engineers, but a trust director insisted that trials would do more to reduce the number of accidents.1*¢ Workers fueled conflicts in the factory by voicing their resentments against

administrators. Stakhanovites were pitted against non-Stakhanovites, and both groups expressed anger toward their bosses. Stakhanovites felt that they were not getting enough support from factory managers or the local party organs. Non-Stakhanovites complained about the high work norms and low

rates of pay. A Uralmash worker and candidate member of the party was | quoted as saying, “With the new work norms we’ll be left without our under- , pants.” !47 Both groups complained about living conditions, safety in the factory, and the factory organizations’ lack of interest in doing anything about

it. When such complaints could be used by one factory organ against another, workers might get action; otherwise, vocal workers were likely to be taken aside and intimidated into silence, or fired.'48 After Pravda published the directives of the Commission for Soviet Control and commentary critical of the “inattentive and frequently callously bureaucratic attitude” to the complaints of workers, the number of complaints doubled.'4? But many workers were still afraid to speak out. At a party meeting at the Krasnoural'skii copper smelting plant held to discuss the trial of the Trotsky-Zinoviev bloc in August 1936, a master of the casting section was asked why he had not made a speech. “Why flap your gums?” he replied, “Zinoviev and Kamenev jabbered and jabbered and they got shot for it.” %° Nevertheless, the resentments of workers were sufficiently serious that when conflicts among factory 146 RGAE, f. 8034 Glavtsvetmet, op. 1, d. 938 Stenogramma soveshchanii aktiva Trestov “Uraltsvetmet” i “Uralmed'ruda” po voprosam okhrany truda i tekhniki bezopasnosti na predpriiatiiakh trestov, 10 oktiabr’ 1936, Il. 7, 28, 40. The Glavtsvetmet official said: “If we conducted [educational] work among workers and engineering-technical workers, it wouldn’t be necessary to conduct trials.” The next speaker, a director from the Kirovogradskii coppersmelting plant, replied: “One must say that some managers, particularly from the smelting shop, demonstrate a determined lack of desire [to undertake safety measures].” If we have a few

trials, he suggested, “then we’ll lower the number of accidents.”

gruppoi, |. 93. , |

147 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. 138 Informatsionnye, dokladnye zapiski

obkoma, gorkomov 0 khode obsuzhdeniia materialov protsessa nad Trotskiistsko-Zinovievskoi

148 Said one factory party official, “the brave ones [smel’chaki] who spoke out particularly harshly against problems in the factory I called into my office and demanded they stop their squabbling [skloki].” GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 219. 149 For the legislation and commentary see Pravda, 30 May 1936. Evidence of the doubling of complaints is from the reports of regional plenipotentiaries of the Commission for Soviet Control. GARF, f. 7511 KSK, op. 1, d. 189 Postanovleniia Biuro KSK pri SNK SSSR, dokladnye

zapiski i informatsii Upolnomochennykh KSK, t. 2, |. 95 (Leningradskaia Oblast’, 81-percent , January—May average versus June-July); |. 161 (Kuibyshevskii Krai. Complaints received by

the commission: April, 278; May, 318; June, 627; July, 650).

150 TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. 138 Informatsii, dokladnye zapiski obkoma, gorkomov o khode obsuzhdeniia materialov protsessa nad Trotskistko-Zinov’evskoi gruppoi. Spiski iskliuchennykh v khode obsuzhdeniia I. 34.

The Terror | 177 managers or between factory directors and the local party organs burst into the open, the conflicting parties were likely to call upon workers to support their respective cases. Until 1936 the Obkom clique had been able to interfere in such conflicts and prevent them from getting out of hand. The clique had managed to present an image of competence, control, and devotion to the current political line and to successfully mask local conflicts and economic problems. But central demands for efficiency and budding regional economic crises were threatening the capacity of the clique for united action. Clique members continued to send Moscow reports of regional “successes” into the fall of 1936, but these diverged ever further from reality. A report of K. G. Sedashev, chairman of the Eastern Steel Trust, to the Commissariat of Heavy Industry spoke of “huge, remarkable successes . . . new world records [of efficiency] .. . systematic overfulfillment” and claimed that production was “undergoing a massive expansion.” !*! A short while earlier the local Commission for Party Control had sent a report to the commission bureau in Moscow outlining the frequency of accidents and breakdowns, the failure of the Trust to report production of defective metal, and the exaggeration of overall production figures.'°* When uncovered, these reports reflected badly on those who composed them; when accepted, they created problems for others. For _ example, V. P. Shakhgil’dian, the head of the Perm’ railroad (and an Obkom bureau member), consistently reported false information about fulfillment of shipping targets in the plan, thus creating problems for trusts whose production plans were upset by nondelivery. Other clique members regarded Shakhgil’dian with hostility.'°* The chairman of the Eastern Ore Trust made enemies among many directors of metallurgy trusts by delivering an everdeclining quantity and quality of ores, which slowed production and led to poor quality metals and damage to the smelting equipment.'** Because of the interconnectedness of the regional economy, the failures of one trust could not but affect others. Each of the trust directors—all members of the Obkom clique—believed he was doing the best he could and resented others for complicating his work. These mutual hostilities fractured the clique in 1936. The level of mutual reliance and trust declined as each feared he was the object of the intrigues of others.'°° The fear was intensified by the knowledge that each possessed potentially damaging information about the activ'S1TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 14 1936, d. 149 Dokladnye zapiski, telegrammy, perepiska obkoma s Tsentral’nym Komitetom i Narkomatami 0 sostoianii i razvitii chernoi i tsvetnoi metallurgii Il. 21-23. 152 Thid., Il. 26-29.

153 They did not criticize him openly because Shakhgil’dian and Kabakov were known to be the “closest of friends.” GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, |. 42; d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, t. 3, 1. 75. 154 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, Il. 33-34, 68; d. 22329 Delo Davydova, ll. 24-25.

'S5In his suicide note, Obkom second secretary K. F. Pshenitsyn noted that Kabakov and Obkom secretary M. V. Kuznetsov “were always conducting intrigues against me.” TsDOO

178 | The Great Urals ities of the others.!5° When the scandals and crises that drew the attention of

Moscow had been infrequent, the clique had been able to work together to control them and deflect criticism. But as underfulfillment and other failures of the regional leadership became increasingly difficult to hide, clique members were in a bind. To defend other members left one open to the accusation of participation in their “crimes.” To denounce them was to risk a de-

nunciation in response. | _A favored alternative— one which affected the course of the Terror—was ~

to blame central officials for problems in the regions. According to Kabakov, “When... there were delays at large-scale construction projects ... we typically put all the blame on the People’s Commissariats, above all on the Commissariat of Heavy Industry which upset the financing and supply of these projects.” 57 Regional leaders resented Moscow for the dislocating effects of

budget cuts, and those of 1936 were especially damaging to production. When the first clique members were arrested in October 1936, they denounced without hesitation officials of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry, particularly Ordzhonikidze’s first assistant G. L. Piatakov.'*? In the words of M. A. Zharikov, director of the Middle Urals Chemical-Copper Combine:

, “By releasing an obvious pittance in financing, Piatakov simply undermined construction. From the beginning of the year, construction was a mess.” !°?

, (Throughout the 1930s the Commissariat of Heavy Industry had actually fought budget cuts promoted by the Commissariat of Finance and Gosplan, but when cuts had been approved by the Council of People’s Commissars, the commissariat had to implement them.) But the primary reason for denouncing Piatakov was his association with the Left opposition, the leaders of which—Trotsky and Zinoviev—had been tried in August. In September 1936, while on a trip to the Urals to inspect the regional copper industry, Piatakov wrote a letter to Ordzhonikidze complaining, “In party organizations I am greeted with great guardedness . . . the shadow of suspicion... seriously weakens my effectiveness.” !©° In their desperation to find a convenient scapegoat for local problems, regional leaders smelled blood. If the problems of industry could be blamed on a counterrevolutionary organizaak f. 4 Obkom, op. 24 Lichnye dela, d. 1888 Delo Pshenitsyna, Konstantina Fedorovicha, ) re? K.G. Sedashev described how, in the spring of 1937, the NKVD had accumulated a substantial body of materials on him, but Kabakov was afraid to act against him. “Kabakov couldn’t ignore the materials of the NK VD, but on the other hand, he was afraid of me.” GAAO

SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, Il. 44-45.

157 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 17368 Delo Kabakova, t. 1, |. 62. 158 Thid., |. 63; d. 22947 Delo Zharikova, |. 20; d. 20017 Delo Golovina Vasiliia Fedorovicha, 1. 120. The chairman of the Eastern Steel Trust, K. G. Sedashev (arrested May 1937), reserved

his wrath for officials of the Main Administration of the Metallurgical Industry (GUMP).

D. 22861 Delo Sedasheva, Il. 33, 49, 69, 70. , |

159 GAAO SO, f. 1, op. 2 Lichnye dela, d. 22947 Delo Zharikova, |. 20. : |

160 Quoted in O. V. Khlevniuk, Stalin i Ordzhonikidze: Konflikty v Politbiuro v 30-e gody (Moscow, 1993), p. 70.

| The Terror | 179 tion in the Commissariat of Heavy Industry, they could present themselves as its victims.!*! Regional leaders understood the dangers of scapegoating one another, but they did not anticipate that the arrest of Piatakov would provoke a brutal hunt for “co-conspirators” in the regions. Previous experience with scapegoating had taught them that Moscow was generally satisfied with the arrest of a few “concrete perpetrators [konkretnye vinovniki],” and there was little reason to expect that anything had changed. In the summer of 1936 central leaders did not imagine a giant conspiracy of counterrevolutionaries. As we have seen, the Pravda commentary on the trial of the Trotsky-Zinoviev bloc suggested that the former opposition had been “crushed to bits” and was driven to acts of terrorism by its utter lack of support.!© But tensions were so great within the party and state organs that regional leaders could not stem the flow of accusations, mutual recriminations, and denunciations that was encouraged by the center’s search for “enemies.” The more the center looked, the more it found, the more it understood the outlines of the regional “conspiracy,” and the more determinedly it pursued its investigations.

The Tensions Explode In the literature on the Terror the question of the chronological starting point is one of the essential controversies. The standard view suggests that Stalin carried out the Terror according to a step-by-step plan beginning with the murder of Kirov.!*? Others have suggested that into 1937 there was con- | siderable conflict and confusion in the Soviet leadership about the use of terror.!*4 In a recent article based on the documents of the Moscow party archives, David Hoffmann has argued that the Terror began quite suddenly

in August 1936: , The initial impetus for the purges came from the Central Committee in the form of a July 29, 1936, top-secret letter directing local party committees to root out

all Trotskyists. In turn the Moscow city and oblast’ party committees sent a letter to all factory committees on August 16, 1936, advising them to do the 161 Kabakov used this tactic to escape association with Urals leaders arrested in early 1937.

At the February-March Central Committee plenum, Bukharin, Rykov, and other former “Right Oppositionists” stood accused of conspiring against the regime, and Kabakov took the opportunity to accuse them of organizing a “terrorist” group in the oblast’. See “Materialy fevral'sko-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP(b) 1937 goda,” Voprosy istorii 8-9 (1992): 11. 162 “ Khrushchev did not surrender there, but rather presented the commission’s results for public discussion without the approval of the party leadership. He was very direct, even with foreign journalists. To the New York Herald Tribune he announced: “We mean to do away with the industrial ministries altogether, both in the center and the republics. Instead, all industrial enterprises . . . will be directed by territorial departments.” 2° The regions proceeded to work out their own plans for the restructuring of local industrial administration.*’ 21 Khrushchev had first raised the issue at the Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956. “Rezoliutsii po otchetnomu dokladu TsK KPSS (N. S. Khrushchev),” KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (Moscow, 1985) 9: 21. *2 Tbid., 9: 151.

23 TsKhSD, f. 5 Otdely apparata TsK KPSS, op. 5 obshchii otdel, d. 196 Stenogramma zasedaniia komissii TsK KPSS po reorganizatsiiu promyshlennosti i stroitel’stva i soveshchaniia s

predsedatel'iami sovnarkhozov i sekretariami obkomov i kraikomov RSFSR, 4 fevral’ia 1957, - 2. 24 Tbhid., passim.

25 Plenum TsK KPSS, 13-14 fevralia 1957, “O dal’neishem sovershenstvovanii organizatsii upravleniia promyshlennost'iu i stroitel’stvom,” KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (Moscow, 1985) 9:

ae Guoted in Conquest, Power and Policy, p. 298. 27 For the discussions in the Urals see TsDOO SO, f. 4 Obkom, op. 57 1957, d. 7 Stenogramma V plenuma obkoma KPSS, ro aprelia 1957, “O dal’neishem sovershenstvovanii organizatsii upravlenii promyshlennost’iu i stroitel’stvom Sverdlovskogo ekonomicheskogo raiona.”

The Origins of the Urals Republic | 197 The Leningrad and Gorki Obkoms both created territorial departments before any central legislation had been passed.7° Malenkov and other members of the Presidium were livid with Khrushchev’s usurpation of their authority and violation of norms of political conduct. But this was hardly the only case in which Khrushchev had struck out on his own. He had also initiated a massive agricultural reform, called the Virgin Lands program, without adequately consulting Presidium members, and in May 1957 he announced on his own initiative an absurdly ambitious campaign to outstrip the United States in the production of meat, milk, and butter by 1960. According to Presidium member Anastas Mikoian, the atmosphere of the party leadership was poisoned by an unspoken hostility to Khrushchev.?? It was unspoken because Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich were surveying members of the Presidium for the support necessary to remove him. In June 1957, when they were confident of a majority, they convened a meeting and demanded that Khrushchev resign. But he refused on the basis of party statutes: the Presidium was not authorized to elect or remove its own members. This prerogative belonged to the Central Committee—a body in which he had strong support especially among regional party secretaries, who constituted nearly half of its members. Khrushchev rejected the “illegal”

decision of the Presidium and insisted that a Central Committee plenum be convened. The Presidium majority initially refused, but regional leaders, hearing of events in the Kremlin, rushed to Moscow and themselves demanded a plenum. The Presidium majority relented, not wanting to leave the impression that they were leading a coup against the will of the party. When the plenum was convened, regional leaders solidly backed Khrushchev and the reform of industrial administration. Members of the Central Committee from the ministerial apparatus saw the correlation of forces and remained conspicuously silent.2° Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich were removed from their posts and Khrushchev took over the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers. With Khrushchev’s victory the reform proceeded apace. Most of the ministries were abolished and their employees were sent to the regions. The day-

to-day administration of the economy was transferred to regional “economic councils” (sovnarkhozy).?! The regions were ultimately responsible to a supreme sovnarkhoz (VSNKh), but the permitted degree of functional regional autonomy remained to be explored. In this context regional leaders 28 Conquest, Power and Policy, p. 304. 9 “Posledniaia anti-partiinaia gruppa: stenograficheskii otchet iiun’skogo (1957 g.) plenuma TsK KPSS,” Istoricheskii arkhiv 4 (1993): 22. 30 The full stenogram of the meeting was published in Istoricheskii arkhiv 3-6 (1993), 1-2 (1994). For a comment on the reaction of ministerial officials see ibid., 5 (1993): 12. 31 “Cb utverzhdenii Polozheniia o sovete narodnogo khoziaistva ekonomicheskogo administrativnogo raiona (26 sentiabria 1957),” Sobranie postanovlenii Pravitel’stva SSSR 12 (1957):

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