OPTIMIZACIÓN DE HERRAMIENTAS EXPERIMENTALES PARA EL ESTUDIO DEL PROTEOMA

R.W. Davies

ThischapterexaminesStalin’sroleinagriculturein1931–6inthecontext of the general development of Soviet agricultural policy. It is based pri- marilyonthecorrespondenceexchangedbetweenStalinandKaganovich, Stalin’sdeputyinMoscowduringhisfifty-sixweeksofvacationinthesesix years. The correspondence comprises some 850 letters and coded tele- grams. During his vacation Stalin also received a large packet of docu- 1

mentseighttotwelvetimesamonthviathecourierserviceoftheOGPU/

NKVD;listsofthesedocuments arealsonowavailable. Thecorrespon- 2

denceandthelistsofdocumentsprovideauniqueopportunitytoexamine hisbehaviourasapoliticalleader.Thisvacationmaterialhasbeensupple - mentedbytheprotocols(minutes) ofthePolitburo andStalin’s appoint- ments diary for the much longer period when he was not on vacation, by the telegrams he sent while he was in Moscow (available far less systematically),andbyhispublishedwritingsandspeeches.

BeforeexaminingtheStalin–Kaganovichcorrespondence,Isketchout thebackgroundupto1930,andthemainfeaturesofagriculturalpolicyin 1931–6.

Background

TheBolshevikstookitforgrantedthat,inthelongterm,thewayforward for agriculture in peasant countries like Russia was to replace individual

I amg r ate fu lt oO. Kh l ev ni uk,M.I l ic, S.G .W heat cr oft, a ndt h ee di to rs oft hisv o lum ef orˇ helpfulcommentsandsuggestions,andtoM.J.BerryforassistanceinsearchingStalin’s publications.

1 O. Khlevniuk, R.U. Devis (R.W. Davies), L. Kosheleva, E.A. Ris (Rees), and L. Rogovaia (eds.), Stalin i Kaganovich. Perepiska, 1931–1936 gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2001)(henceforthSKP).TheEnglish-languageedition,containingthemainlettersand telegrams, is R.W. Davies, O. Khlevniuk, E.A. Rees, L. Kosheleva, and L. Rogovaia (eds.),The Stalin–Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven: Yale University Press,2003)(henceforthSKC).

2 Forreferences,seenotetoTable 1.

121

householdeconomiesbylarge-scalemechanisedfarms.Thevictoryofthe workingclassin1917meantthatthelarge-scalefarmscouldbeorganised associalistenterprises.

During the Civil War, many Bolshevik leaders and Party members became convinced that this transformation could take place rapidly, with the support of the victorious working class in other countries. But in 1921 the collapse of the Soviet economy and the failure of world revolution led to the introduction of the New Economic Policy. Many leading Bolsheviks (including Lenin) now concluded that the establish- mentofsocialisminpeasantRussiawouldinvolvealongperiodofpatient re-educationofthepeasants,andtheprovisionbythestateofsubstantial resourcestosupportmechanisation.Foralongperiodstateownershipof industry would be combined with a market on which the individual peasant households would willingly sell an increasing amount of their produce.InthePolitburo, Bukharinandotherswereparticularly ardent advocates of this view, which overwhelmingly predominated in the People’sCommissariatsforAgricultureandFinance.

Until 1926 Stalin unconditionally supported this approach, and together with Bukharin campaigned against Trotsky and the Left Opposition for their alleged underestimation of the peasantry. But 3

within this orthodox anti-Trotskyist framework, Stalin’s view of the peasantry was quite different from Bukharin’s. In a speech to a party audience in January 1925 he displayed a certain contempt for the peasantry:

I t i s at our s i de, w ear el i vi ngw i t hi t , w ear eb ui l di n ga ne w l i f et oget her w i t hi t , whetherthat’sbadorgood,togetherwithit.Thisally,youknowyourselves,isnot averystrongone,thepeasantryisnotasreliableanallyastheproletariatofthe developedcapitalistcountries.Butallthesameitisanally,andofalltheavailable allies,itistheonlyonethatisprovidingandwillprovideuswithdirectassistance, receivingourassistanceinexchange.4

In June of the same year, he firmly declared behind the scenes that Bukharin’s slogan ‘enrich yourselves’, which he had addressed to ‘all the peasants’, was ‘not our slogan’ and ‘incorrect’ – ‘our slogan is socialist accumulation’. More boldly than the other Soviet leaders at the time, 5

3 See, for example, his report to the Fifteenth Party Conference in October–November 1926. I.V. Stalin, Sochineniia, 13 vols. (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1946–52), VIII, pp.286–8.

4 Ibid. , V I I , p . 2 8 .

5 See E.H. Carr, Socialism in One Country, 1924–1926 (London: Macmillan, 1958), I, pp.260,284,andStalin, Sochineniia, V I I , p . 1 5 3 .

Stalin declared in public that ‘we need 15–20 million industrial proleta- rians’ (instead of the present four million). 6

At the end of 1927, the grain crisis turned the difference in emphasis between Bukharin and Stalin into a huge breach. Stalin launched the

‘extraordinary measures’ to coerce the peasants into handing over their grain, and, while publicly denying any such intention, abandoned the market relation with the peasants. In private, at the July 1928 Plenum of the Party Central Committee, he firmly rejected the idea that the free market in grain should be restored:

Try to open a free market (vol’nyi rynok), what would this mean? If the speculator pays 1 ruble 50 kopeks, we must pay 1r 60, if he pays 2r, you must pay 2r 10 ...

this would mean to give up everything, because then wages would have to be trebled, prices of industrial consumer goods would have to increase, everything would turn upside down.7

Even to increase the price of grain by 40 per cent would cost at least three hundred million rubles a year, and ‘in order to get this money, it would be necessa ry to take so me thing f ro m eit he r in dust ry o r trade’ . 8

Simultaneously with this rejection of the free market, Stalin was the prime mover in the campaign to established mechanised grain sovkhozy (state farms), which would supply grain to the state in the amounts so far supplied by the kulaks. By the end of 1929, Stalin claimed that the new 9

sovkh ozy would be ‘large grain factories of 50,000–100,000 hectares’, whichwaslargerthanthelargestfarmsintheUSA. 10

Against this background of rejection of the free market and strong emphasis on the advantages of large-scale mechanisation, Stalin led the campaignforthecollectivisationofagricultureandtheeliminationofthe kulaksasaclass.Untilthelastmonthsof1929theprevalentdoctrinewas that ‘comprehensive collectivisation is unthinkable without the large machine’. However, the amount of machinery available, even on the 11

most optimistic estimates of the authorities, was wholly inadequate to enable the horses and ploughs of the twenty-five million individual

6 Pravda,13May1925.SeeStalin, Sochineniia, V I I , p . 1 3 2 .

7 KaklomaliNEP (Moscow:Mezhdunarodnyifond‘Demokratiia’,2000),II,p.649;thisis theuncorrectedtypescript.

8 Ibid.,p.519;thisistheversionofthesamespeechasrevisedbyStalin.

9 ThePolitburoprotocolsrecordthatthisschemewasproposedbyStalinpersonally,and, contrary to normal practice, immediately approved: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoiistorii(henceforthRGASPI)f.17,op.3,d.684,l.7(26April 1928).

10 Pravda, 7 November 1929; twenty years later, in republishing this speech in his Sochineniia,XII,p.129,heprudentlyreplaced‘50,000to100,000’by‘40 –50,000’!

11 Pravda,7August1929(editorial).

peasant households to be replaced by tractors and combine harvesters.

Ac c o rdi n gl y, o n th e e ve of the all-out collectivisation drive of

January–February 1930, Stalin, in his speech to the Marxist agrarians (reported in Pra vda on 29 December 1929) announced a dramatic

change in policy. This was based on the experience of the Khoper area in the Lower Volga region, where the ‘simple putting together of peasant

implements in the heart of the kolk hozy [collective farms] has given a

1

result of which our practical workers have never dreamed’. 2

In the 1930s, the development of large-scale mechanised sovkh ozy was pressed ahead, while in the kolk hozy machinery was gradually introduced

for the main agricultural operations. But even for the sovkh ozy the machinery available was insufficient. By 1933 they supplied a couple of

million of the twenty million tons of grain taken by the state; but their

construction proved far more expensive than had been envisaged, and they had to employ an unexpectedly large number of unskilled workers to

supplement the machinery. 13In agriculture as a whole, the calamitous decline in the number of horses in the USSR from thirty-five million on

1 July 1929 to a mere sixteen million on 1 July 1934, meant that grain production, and agricultural production generally, fell instead of increasing.

The state had to obtain food for the growing urban population, for the army, and for export fromareduced agricultural output.

Stal in’s ag ricultural preoc cupations , 1931– 1936

One-third of the topics dealt with in Stalin’s letters and telegrams to Kaganovich in 1931–6 were concerned with internal economic matters, andafurther9percentwithforeigntrade.Agriculturewasbyfarthemost prominent feature ofthecorrespondence,accounting for halfofStalin’s messagesontheeconomy,over100itemsinall.Duringhisvacationshe paidfarlessattentiontoindustrythantoagriculture,largelyleavingitt o the redoubtable Ordzhonikidze: Stalin merely intervened from time to timewhenhethoughtOrdzhonikidzewasoversteppinghisauthority,and sometimes,itappears,justbecausesomeissuetookhisfancy. 14

12 Thiswasthespeechinwhichhealsocalledforthe‘eliminationofthekulaksasaclass’.

For previous support for non-mechanised kolkhozy by Kalinin and Yakovlev see R.W.Davies, TheSocialistOffensive:theCollectivisationofSovietAgriculture,1929–1930 (London:Macmillan,1980),pp.115,388–91.

13 See R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), ch. 11.

14 See R.W. Davies, M. Ilic,ˇ and O. Khlevniuk, ‘The Politburo and Economic Policy-making’,inE.A.Rees(ed.), TheNatureofStalin’sDictatorship:ThePolitburo,1924–1953 (Basingstoke:PalgraveMacmillan,2004).

Within the agricultural sector, the crucial problem for Stalin was the production of grain and its collection by the state. This approach had a rational justification. Bread and other grain products were by far the most important source of calories and proteins in the diet of the population, and fodder grain was a major component of horse and cattle feed. The failure of grain yields to improve led Stalin in 1929, 1930, and 1931 to support strongly the expansion of the area sown to grain. As a conse - quence of the excesses of this policy, rational crop rotation disappeared in many districts. At the same time, he compelled the agricultural experts and statisticians to adopt exaggerated estimates of grain production. On a famous occasion in June 1933, a telegram from Molotov and Stalin was published prominently on the front page of Pravda, insisting that ‘the leaders of the Odessa Grain Trust have consciouslyreduced the harvest indicator for its sov khozy’, and that those responsible should be expelled from the Party and put on trial. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s the 15

graincollectionsbythestatewereconductedontheassumptionthatthe harvestwasconsiderablylargerthananyrealisticestimate.

Throughout 1931–6 most of Stalin’s letters and telegrams to Kaganovich about agriculture dealt with grain, and most of these with theprocurementofgrain.ThisemergesveryclearlyfromTable 1,which shows that eighty-one of the104telegramson agriculture sent by Stalin duringhisvacationswereconcernedwithgrain,andasmanyasfifty -nine of these with various aspects of grain procurement. 16Of his eighteen telegramsonothercrops,twelvedealt withcottonandsugarbeet. Most remarkablewashisfailuretotakeaday -to-dayinterestinlivestock.This wasthesecondlargestagriculturalsector,andanessentialprovideroffats tothepopulation.Hesentonlyfivetelegramsonthistopic.Onlyone,on afairlyminormatter,wastheequivalentofthemanytelegramshesenton grain procurement:on 27August 1933, he confirmed thathis signature couldbeaddedtothedecreeonthemeatcollectionsplanfor1934. The 17

three telegrams he sent in 1935 all dealt with the abolition of meat rationing, as part of the general campaign to abolish rationing in which he took a close interest.The telegram in 1936 agreed to delay the cattle census.

15 Pravda, 20 June 1933; for this incident, see Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, pp.245–6.

16 Theconcentrationongrainprocurementandloansinthiscorrespondencewasonlytoa small extent related to the months in which he took his vacation. Grain was a worry throughouttheyear.InJuly–December,andintheearlymonthsofthefollowingyear, grain was procured by the state; in the spring, the state had to cope with the grain shortagesbeforethenewharvestandtoplantheprocurementsfromthenextharvest.

17 SKP,p.313n.2;thedecreewaspublishedin Pravda,29August1933.

126 R.W.Davies

Table1 TopicsoftelegramsaboutagriculturesentbyStalinonvacationto Kaganovich,1931–1936

ofwhich, Allagricultural

Grain graincollections Livestock Othertopics topics

1931 5 4 0 3 8

1932 18 10 0 4 22

1933 13 11 1 2 16

1934 16 14 0 5 21

1935 19 11 3 3 25

1936 10 9 1 1 12

Total 81 59 5 18 104

Source: ThetelegramsanalysedabovearepublishedinSKP.Thelistsoftelegramsandother documentssenttoStalinandoftelegramssentbyStalinduringhisvacations,usedinTables 1, 2 and 3, ar e loc at ed i n RG AS PIf. 55 8, op .1 1, int h efo l l o wi n g d el a:1 9 31 :d. 7 6,l l.

91–129;1932:d.79,ll.61–138;1933:d.82,ll.75–149;1934:d.87,ll.67–146;1935:d.92, ll.83–155;1936:d.96,ll.1 –53.

Inallhiscorrespondenceaboutagriculture,Stalinneverdisplayedthe detailed interest which characterised his approach to armaments. In discussing the preparation of the Second Five-Year Plan, he sometimes attemptedtotakeawiderview.Buthisobservationsontheprospectsfor cottonproduction,forexample,didnotgetbeyondgeneralities:

Themaintask:toguaranteefulfilmentofthesecondfive-yearplanforcotton(Ithink itis40or50millionpuds[655,000–819,000tons]ofpurecotton)andtoprepare thisguaranteebyyearsbygettingtoworkwithoutdelay.Themainwaystothisgoal:

a) raising the yield year after year (improving cultivation, maximizing fertilisers, irrigation,etc.);b)expandingcropareas(preparingmoreandmorenewsownareas everyyear);c)bonusesforhighyields,specialbenefitsforexpandingthesownarea, medalsforgoodworkers;d)supervisingtheimplementationofdecisions.

Besides an overall guiding decision, specific planning-and-guiding decisions mustbeadoptedforeachcottonrepublicseparately.

Without this the decision will drift towards a declaration with mere good intentions.18

Stalindid,however,takeaclosebutintermittentinterestintractorsand lorries,andinsecuringafairshareofthemforagriculture. 19

The most astonishing evidence of Stalin’s preoccupation with grain procurement is provided by the record of the documents he received

18 SKP,p.460(letterof28August1934).

19 See, for example, the correspondence with Kaganovich in September–October 1933 aboutthedistribut ionpl anfortrac torsandlorr iesinSKP,pp.3 65,36 7–9,378–80.In thepresentchapterandtheaccompanyingtablesagriculturalmachineryhasnotbeen includedin‘agriculture’butin‘industry’.

Stalinaseconomicpolicy-maker 127 Table2 StatisticalmaterialonalltopicssenttoStalinonvacation,

1931–1936(numberofitemsbysubject)

ofwhich,

Grain graincollections Industry Othertopics Total

1931 11 11 0 1 12

1932 9 8 5 0 14

1933 16 15 4 1 21

1934 17 17 2 1 20

1935 13 13 2 0 15

1936 13 13 0 0 13

Total 79 77 13 3 95

Source: seeTable 1.

during his 1931–6 vacations. The ‘lists [opisi] of materials sent to com- radeStalin’areclassifiedindifferentwaysindifferentyears,butbasically hereceivedfivekindsofdocuments:

1. TASStelegrams;

2. NKVDreports,etc.;

3. Other letters and memoranda, presumably selected by the head of his specialsector,Poskrebyshev,asbeingofinteresttoStalin;andmaterials forinformation,sometimesspecificallyassociatedwithPolitburosittings;

4. Politburoprotocols;

5. Statisticalmaterials.

As Table 2 shows, the statistical materials sent to Stalin were overwhel- mingly concerned with grain procurements and purchases by the state (zagotovki, postavki, zakupki). Each item listed in Table 2 usually con- sistedofseveraltables,presentingthegraincollectionsonafive -dailyand monthlybasis,bothfortheUSSRasawholeandfortheseparateregions.

Hereceivedveryfewstatisticalmaterialsonindustry.Inthecourseofhis sixannualvacationshewassentonlytwoitemsconcernedwithaspectsof grainotherthanprocurements(onthespringsowingin1932andonthe autumn sowing in 1933), andonly one oncrops otherthangrain (listed for21August1931,as‘summaryofcollectionsoffoodcropsforthefirst, second and third five-day period [of August]’). He was not apparently sentanystatisticalmaterialaboutlivestockanddairyproducts.

Table 3 shows that the letters and other memoranda sent to Stalin (item3)above)coveredawiderrangeoftopics,thoughevenherebyfar the largest single item was grain procurements. Many of these memo- randaweresenttoStalinbecausetheywereassociatedwithitemsonthe

128 R.W.Davies

Table3 Memoranda,etc.,aboutagriculturesenttoStalinonvacation, 1931–1936(numberofitemsbysubject)

ofwhich,grain

Grain collections etc.a Livestockb Othercrops Othertopics Total

1931 19 19 6 13 0 38

1932 20 16 6 12 9 47

1933 28 23 5 6 11 50

1934 17 13 3 1 2 23

1935 7 3 0 6 2 15

1936 0 0 0 3 3 6

Total 91 74 20 41 27 179

Source: seeTable 1.

Notes:

aIncludesutilisation,loans,andthefts.

bTwoitemswereconcernedwithlivestockcollections(bothin1932).

Politburo agenda; it will be seen from Table 1 that he rarely responded to those memoranda which dealt with topics other than grain.

The evidence about Stalin’s concerns while he was in Moscow is less systematic. Stalin’s appointments diary records his meetings with the senior officialsresponsible foragriculturalprocurementsand withthe Commissars (later Ministers) for agriculture and the sovk hozy.Table4 showsthatinthe years 1933–7 he met the senior procurements’ official 119 times, but met thePeople’sCommissarofAgricultureonlyninety-fivetimes.Thispattern wasresumedaftertheSecondW orldWar,thoughhismeetingsweremuch less frequent. In 1946–52 he met the Minister of Agriculture fifteen times andtheMinisterofAgriculturalProcurementstwenty -ninetimes.

ThePolitburoprotocolsrecorditemsonitsagendawhichwereintroduced byStalin,sometimesinassociationwithotherseniorfigures.Thisinformation isnotveryreliable.Topicsinwhichhewasknowntotakeacloseinterestwere often introduced in Politburo sessions by other Politburo members, or by seniorofficials.Withthisimportantproviso,theprotocolsfor1931and1932 againshowthecloseinteresthewastakingingrain.In193 1,heintroduced nineteen items on agricultural topics; seven of these were concerned with grain,sevenwithothercrops,andthreewithlivestock.In1932,heintroduced thirteen items; six were concerned with grain, and three with livestock. 20

From1933onwards,thePolitburometlessfrequentlyanditsprotocolsrarely indicatedwhowasresponsibleforintroducingaparticularitem.

20 Derived from the Politburo protocols: RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 810–912, and from Politbiuro TsK RKP(b)–VKP(b): povestki dnia zasedanii, 1919–1952: katalog, 3 vols.

(Moscow:Rosspen,2001),II.

Stalinaseconomicpolicy-maker 129 Table4 Stalin’smeetingsinhisKremlinofficewiththeseniorofficials concerne d with agric ulture, 1933– 1952 (num ber of occasi ons ) a

People’sCommissar People’sCommissar Seniorofficial (Minister)of (Minister) concernedwith

Agriculture ofSovkhozy agriculturalprocurements

1933 from April 23b 19 10 29

1934 28 21 33

1935 13 7 19

1936 12 8 12

1937 13 5 16

1933–1937 95 51 119

1938 0 1 1

1939 1 0 0

1940 3 0 0

1941–1945 0 0 0

1946 4 0 6

1947 7 3 11

1948 0 0 3

1949 1 0 4

1950 0 0 0

1951 1 1 0

1952 2 0 5

1946–1952 15 3 29

Source: ObtainedbycombiningdataonStalin’sappointmentsin Istoricheskiiarkhiv 4(1998), andintheissueslistingthedatesandtimesoftheappointments,withthenamesofsenior officialslistedinR.W.Davies,M.J.Ilic,H.P.Jenkins,C.Merridale,andS.G.W heatcroftˇ (eds.), SovietGovernmentOfficials,1922–1941:AHandlist (Birmingham:CREES,University ofBirmingham,1989);andin Gosudarstvennaiavlast’SSSR:vysshieorganyvlastiiupravleniia iikhrukovoditeli,1923–1991:statistiko-biograficheskiispravochnik (Moscow:Rosspen,1999).

Notes:

aThesemeetingsfrequentlytookplaceinthepresenceofanumberofotherPolitburo membersandofficialsapartfromStalin.

bPriorto23April1933,Kuibyshevwasinchargeofagriculturalprocurements.Asamemberof

thePolitburo,andinothercapacities,hefrequentlymetStalinonmattersnotcon nectedwith procurements,andhismeetingsaboutprocurementscannotbeseparatelydistinguished.

Stalin’sagriculturaldecisions

In the discussion which follows, I confine myself to those decisions for which Stalin was clearly personally responsible. 21Two sectors of

21 ManyotherdecisionswereprobablytakenwithStalin’sactiveparticipation,butIdealhere onlywiththosedecisionsspecificallyattributedtoStalin’sinterventionintherecords.

130 R.W.Davies

agriculture are compared and contrasted: grain, to which he paid very closeattention;andlivestock,towhichhepaidmuchlessattention.

Decisions about grain. From the end of the 1920s, Stalin guided and controlled the successive grain procurement campaigns, beginning withhisfamousjourneytoSiberiainJanuary–February1928inwhichhe attempted to accelerate the grain collections. Then at the July 1928 plenumhetheorisedaboutthegraincrisisbyassertingthatintheinterests ofcapitalaccumulationtofinanceindustrialisationitwasessentialinthe absence of foreign loans to obtain ‘tribute’ (dan’) from the peasants: a term which reached back to the days of the Mongol invasions. 22

Hencefortheveryharvestinvolvedapubliccampaigntosecuregrain.

The senior official directly responsible for the grain collections until 1934, Chernov, answered to Mikoian in the People’s Commissariat for Trade(laterthePeople’sCommissariatforSupply)untilthebeginningof 1932, and then to Kuibyshev as head of the new State Committee on AgriculturalCollections(Komzag),beforehimselfbeingappointedhead ofKomzag.ButhereportednotonlytothembutalsotoStalin(andoften also to Molotov as chair of Sovnarkom) about every important change proposed for the grain collection plans; and periodically prepared for their consideration budgets for the agricultural year or quarter showing the actual and proposed receipts and main expenditures of grain. The mostimportantofthesebudgetswereapprovedbythePolitburo.

Stalin paid attention to the proposed changes, and usually but not always accepted them. All the changes and some of the grain budgets wereformallyendorsedbythePolitburo(usuallybypoll).Fullmeetings ofthePolitburoconsideredimportantchangesingraincollectionpolicy.

The traditional depiction of Stalin as relentlessly pressing ahead with the grain collections without mercy or constraint is to a large extent confirmed by the archives. The grain collections from the 1932 harvest provide a striking example. He actively promoted the grain campaign, evenwhenhewasonvacation.Atthebeginningofthe1932campaign,on 18 June 1932, he sent a letter to Kaganovich and Molotov which pro- posed that a conference should be convened of party secretaries and chairs of soviet executive committees in the fourteen grain regions or republicsmostimportantforthesupplyofgrain.Theconferenceshould consider‘theorganisationofthegraincollectionsandtheunconditional fulfilment of the plan’. His letter set out the main lines which the con- ferenceshouldtake,andwasreadoutbyMolotovattheconferenceasin

22 Stalin, Sochineniia,XI,pp.159,188–9;thistextwaspublishedforthefirsttimein1949.

effect its main document. Thirteen subsequent letters and ciphered tele- grams exchanged between Stalin and Kaganovich (or both Kaganovich

and Molotov) between20 June and 9 July dealt with the conference and the published Central Committee resolution on the grain collections

2

which emerged from it. 3

A few weeks later he personally instituted the notorious decree of 7 August which imposed the death penalty for the theft of grain from kolkhoz fields. In24 the campaign which followed, Stalin publicly insisted on the view that most of the difficulties in collecting grain could be

attributed to the attempts of the kulaks and other class enemies to sabotage the grain collections; this was his justification for the repression

of those who opposed the grain collection policy. According to Stalin,

these class enemies had infiltrated themselves into the kolk hozy, and were undermining the campaign by ‘quiet sabotage (tikhaia sapa)’. S25talin took the initiative in severe measures which forced the peasants to yield theirgrain.Thuson8November1932,hepersonallyinsistedthatvillages which failed to deliver grain should be deprived of all consumer goods. 26

Inthesamemonth,hewroteonadocumentabouttheNorthCaucasus:

‘Warn the population of the stanitsy (large villages) placed on the black list that they may be exiled.’ 27

Assoonastheworstconsequencesofthefaminewereover,Stalinagain pressed for additional grain. The archives show that in the autumn of 1934Stalininsistedonlarge,moreorlesscompulsory,additionalcollec - tions of grain from the kolkhozy and the peasants in the form of so-called

‘purchases[zakupki]’,whichweretakenfromthepeasantsatlowpricesin return for the supply of earmarked consumer goods. The purchases additional to the obligatory collections from the 1934 harvest made it possibletoabolishbread-rationing. 28

But this was not the whole story. On a number of occasions, Stalin reluctantlyrespondedtoevidencefromhisadvisersthatthegraincollec - tionplanswereexcessive,andpaidseriousattentiontoresistancebythe peasants.AttheplenumofthePartyCentralCommitteeinOctober1931,

23 SKP,pp.179–80,182,186–8,196,201–3,207–8,211,214,218,220.Thedocument onp.220includesaveryunusualcorrectionofStalinbyKaganovichandMolotov:Stalin so misunderstood a paragraph in the resolution about advance payments in kind to collectivefarmersthattheyaskedhimtowithdrawhisamendment,whichassumedthe paragraphreferredtomoneypayments–hepromptlyagreed.

24 Fordetails,seeDaviesandWheatcroft, YearsofHunger,pp.162–8.

25 See ibid.,pp.203–4. 26 RG A S P I f . 5 5 8 , o p . 1 1 , d . 4 5 , l . 3 2 .

27 SeeE.N.Oskol’kov, Golod1932/33:khlebozagotovkiigolod1932/33vSevero-Kavkazskom krae (Rostov-on-Don:Izdatel’stvoRostovskogouniversiteta,1991),p.93.

28 See O.V. Khlevniuk and R.W. Davies, ‘The End of Rationing in the Soviet Union, 1934–1935’, Europe-AsiaStudies 4(1999),557–609,especiallypp.571–2.

several regional Party secretaries insisted that in view of the bad harvest thegrainplansfortheirregionsweretoohigh.Stalinunexpectedlycalled ameetingofthePartysecretariesinthegrainregions,asaresultofwhich the annual grain plan was reduced from 25.8 to24.3million tons. On 29

4 May 1932, Stalin introduced the Politburo discussion on the grain collection plan, which resulted in the adoption of a plan which was lower than in the previous year. 30After the campaign began, he wrote to Kaganovichand Molotovproposing asubstantial changein the grain planforUk rainei nviewofthepoorharvest:

OurapproachthatthegraincollectionplanfortheUSSRmustbeunconditionally fulfillediscompletelycorrect.Butbearinmindthatanexceptionmustbemade for the districts in Ukraine which have specially suffered.

He proposed that the plan for the peasant sector (kolkhozy plus indivi- dual peasants) in Ukraine should be reduced by 655,000 tons, from 5.8 to 5.2 million tons. He also suggested that the plan for the Transcaucasus wouldprobablyhavetobereduced. Manyotherc utsinthegrai npl an 31

for Ukraine and elsewhere were also made in the course of the next six months, so that the total plan for the USSR was reduced from 23.5 to 19.6 million tons. 32In the course of the campaign, the Politburo fre- quentlyannouncedthatnograinloanswouldbemadetothepeasantsfor seed,food,orfodder.Buttheextremeshortageofgraininseveralmajor regions in the spring of 1933 led to a large number of decisions to issue small amounts of grain to the kolkhozy and the peasants, all of which had requiredStalin’sapproval.Forinstance,asmanyasthirty-fivedecisions weremadetoissuesmallfoodloansinthespringof1933.Eventually,the stateissuedseedassistanceandloansamountingto1,274,000tons,and foodassistanceandloansamountingto330,000tons,1,604,000tonsin all–noneofwhichwasoriginallyscheduled. 33

Stalin also revised other aspects of grain policy when he realised that previousmeasureshadfailed.Themostremarkablechangeperhapswas in the plans for sown area. Following the drought in 1931, Iakovlev, Commissar for Agriculture, concluded that the over-expansion of sown areahaddisruptedcroprotation(seep.125above).Stalindidnotaccept this proposed change in policy until after the 1932 harvest. His corres- pondencewithKaganovichandMolotovinJulyandAugust1932reveals theconfusedandhesitantwayinwhichhereachedhischangeinpolicy.

He received a number of reports about the poor state of the harvest,

29 SeeDaviesandWheatcroft, YearsofHunger,pp.90,476.

30 R G A S P I f . 1 7 , o p . 3 , d . 8 8 2 , l . 3 ( i t e m 1 4 ) . 31 SKP,pp.241–2.

32 SeeDaviesandWheatcroft, YearsofHunger,p. 4 78. 33 Ibid.,p.471.

Stalinaseconomicpolicy-maker 133 including an alarming letter from Voroshilov describing the infestation of

the sowings in the North Caucasus with weeds, and on 17 July launched a ferocious criticism of the Commissariat of Agriculture in a letter to

Kaganovich. He accused it of failing to devote sufficient attention to raising yields, and contrary to previous practice insisted:

It is necessary:

1) To renounce the policy of wholesal e extension of the sown area both of kolkhozy and (especially!) of sovkhozy (especially in relation to labour-intensive crops).34

Two weeks later, on 1 August, the Politburo adopted the plan for the autumn sowings in 1932 for the 1933 harvest. The total area to be sown was only slightly greater than in 1931, and less than the 1931 plan. On the

following day Kaganovich wrote to Stalin somewhat complacently:

We have approved the figures for the autumn sowing and ploughing; our starting

We have approved the figures for the autumn sowing and ploughing; our starting

In document INTEGRACIÓN DE APROXIMACIONES PROTEÓMICAS Y TRANSCRIPTÓMICAS PARA EL ESTUDIO DE CÉLULAS MADRE DE GLIOBLASTOMA HUMANO (página 82-91)