Between 1934 and 1941 Stalin unleashed what came to be known as the ‘Great Terror’ against millions of Soviet citizens. The same period also saw the ‘Great Retreat’, the repudiation of many of the aspirations of the Russian Revolution. The response of ordinary Russians to the extraordinary events of this time has been obscure. Sarah Davies’s study uses NKVD and party reports, letters, and other evidence to show that, despite propaganda and repression, dissonant popular opinion was not extinguished. The people continued to criticise Stalin and the Soviet regime, and complain about particular policies. The book examines many themes, including attitudes towards social and economic policy, the terror, and the leader cult, shedding light on a hugely important part of Russia’s social, political, and cultural history.BLANK PAGEPOPULAR OPINION IN STALIN’S RUSSIABLANK PAGEPOPULAR OPINION IN STALIN’S RUSSIA Terror, propaganda and dissent, 1934-1941 SARAH DAVIES University of Durham a 3 CAMBR IDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSPUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge cp2 mp United Kingdom CAMBRIDOE UNIVERSITY PRESS ‘The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cn22Rv, United Kingdom ‘40 West 2oth Street, New York, Ny 1oot!-g211, USA, 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Sarah Davies 1997 This book isin copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1997 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge ‘Typeset in Baskerville 11/12} pt A catalogue record for this bok is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Davies, Sarah Rosemary. Popular opinion in Stalin’s Russia : terror, propaganda, and dissent, 1934-1941 / Sarah Davies. Pp. om. Includes bibliographical references (p. _) and index. ISBN 0 521 56214 7 (hb). — 15BN 0 521 56676 2 (pb) 1. Public opinion — Soviet Union. 2, Soviet Union — Politics and government — 1936-1953 ~ Public opinion. 3. Soviet Union — Social policy — Public opinion. 4. Soviet Union ~ Economic policy ~ Public opinion. 1. Title, 1N530.29°835 1997 303.3'8'0947-de2r 96-49928 cr 1sBNo 521 56214 7 hardback 18BN 0 521 56676 2 paperback ceFor all those who spoke outBLANK PAGEContents List of tables Acknowledgements Chronology List of abbreviations and archive references Glossary and notes on the text Introduction PARTI ECONOMYAND SOCIETY 1 Workers, the economy, and labour policy 2 Peasants and the kolkhoz 3 Women, family policy, education 4 Religion and the nationalities question PARTI POLITICS AND TERROR 5 International relations 6 The Constitution and elections 7 The Great Terror 8 ‘Us’ and ‘them’: social identity and the terror PARTI] THELEADERCULT g The leader cult in official discourse 10 Affirmative representations of the leader and leader cult 11 Negative representations of the leader and leader cult Conclusion page xi xii xiv xvi xvii 23, 49 59 73 93 102 113 124 147 155 168 183,x Contents Notes 188 Bibliography 217 Index 231oo Tables Anti-Soviet agitation cases page 16 Wage differentiation amongst Leningrad industrial workers in 1936 24 Abortions in Leningrad, 1930-1934 (per 1,000 population) ‘65 Abortions in Leningrad, 1936-1938 68Acknowledgements This book is the product of archival research in Russia carried out during the halcyon years of 1992-3, when large numbers of highly classified documents were made available to researchers for the first time. For allowing me access to these, I am grateful to the archivists at all the institutions where I worked, but especially to Taissa Pavlovna Bondarevskaia and the late Irina II'marovna Sazonova at ‘TsGAIPD SPb. The doctoral thesis from which this study evolved was supervised by Mary McAuley and David Priestland, who both gave enormous amounts of their time and energy to advising, criticising, and encouraging me. It is largely thanks to their dedication and enthu- siasm that the book has materialised. Many other people were generous with their advice at different stages of the work. My thesis examiners, Chris Ward and Catherine Andreyev, made stimulating suggestions on how to improve the work, as did Catherine Merridale, who read and commented on the whole manuscript. Sheila Fitzpatrick, whose own research on the social and cultural history of the 1930s has been an inspiration, offered extensive and invaluable criticisms. I would like to thank all those who have commented on work in progress or helped in other ways, in particular John Barber, Cathryn Brennan, Mary Buckley, Bob Davies, Paul Dukes, David Hoffmann, Anthony Kemp-Welch, Hiroaki Kuromiya, Natalia Lebina, Gabor Rittersporn, Lewis Siegelbaum, Boris Starkov, Robert Thurston, and the participants of the University of Chicago’s Workshop on ‘Letters’ in 1996. I am also grateful to my teachers at St Andrews and SSEES for encouraging my interest in all things Russian. My colleagues at Durham have been more than patient. Alex Green put up with this work and with me for far too long — I thank him, and all my friends and family for their support. I would also like xiiAcknowledgements xiii to thank Cambridge University Press and Michael Holdsworth, John Haslam, and Karen Anderson Howes. Last, but not least, I wish to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the British Council, the Pirie-Reid Fund, and the Thomas Reid Institute at the University of Aberdeen. None of these institutions or individuals bears any responsibility for the mistakes and shortcomings of the work, which are mine alone.1934 26 Jan.10 Feb. 18 Sep. 25-8 Nov. 1 Dec. December 1935 15-16 Jan. Jan-Mar. 17 Feb. go-31 Aug. 22 Sep. 25 Sep. 14-17 Nov. 29 Dec. 1936 12 June 27 June 18-24 Aug. September Autumn 5 Dec. Chronology Seventeenth Party Congress USSR joins League of Nations TsK plenum decrees end of bread rations effective from 1 January 1935 Assassination of Kirov Local soviet elections Trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others Mass expulsions from Leningrad New model kolkhoz charter adopted Stakhanov’s record Military ranks restored End of rations on meat, fats, fish, etc. First All-Union Conference of Stakhanovites Stalin’s speech ‘Life has become better, life has become merrier’ Decree ending restrictions on access to higher education on the basis of social origin Draft of new Constitution published Decree ‘In defence of the mother and child’ Trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others Ezhov succeeds Iagoda as head of NKVD Harvest failure in many regions Adoption of new Constitution xiv1937 6Jan. 23-30 Jan. 18 Feb. 25 Feb.~5 Mar. 31 May 12 June 12 Dec. 1938 2-13 Mar. 8 Dec. 28 Dec. 1939 January 10~21 Mar. 27 May 23 Aug. 17 Sep. 29 Nov. 20 Dec. 1940 12 Mar. 26 June 2 Oct. 1940 22 June Chronology xv Abortive population census Trial of Radek, Piatakov, and others Death of Ordzhonikidze TsK plenum excludes Bukharin and Rykov from party, and calls for vigilance Suicide of General Gamarnik Tukachevskii and other generals executed Elections to Supreme Soviet Trial of Bukharin, Rykov, Iagoda, and others Beria succeeds Ezhov as head of NKVD Decree on labour discipline Population census Eighteenth Party Congress announces end of purges Decree on measures to prevent squander of public kolkhoz land Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed USSR annexes eastern Poland Winter War with Finland begins Stalin prizes instituted Peace treaty with Finland Labour decree Decree on fees for higher classes and vuzy, and decree on labour reserves Hitler invades USSRAbbreviations and archive references GARF Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii GANO Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Novosibirskoi oblasti LP Leningradskaia pravda P Pravda RR Russian Review RTsKhIDNI Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii SP Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants. Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivisation, Oxford, 1994 SR Slavic Review ST JA. Getty and R. Manning (eds.), Stalinist Terror. New Perspectives, Cambridge, 1993 TsGA SPb ‘Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv v Sankt Peterburge TsGAIPD SPb ‘Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko- politicheskikh dokumentov Sankt Peterburga TsKhDMO Tsentr khraneniia dokumentov molodezhnykh organizatsii The archival reference system has been adopted for the sake of conciseness. Throughout, all references are from TsGAIPD SPb unless otherwise specified. The references are to fond (collection), opis’ (inventory), edinitsa khraneniia or delo (file), list (folio). Thus 24/2v/2600/ 3 refers to fond 24, opis’ av, edinitsa khraneniia 2600, list 3. In the case of letters and documents reporting on popular opinion, I have indicated the provenance and date of a file according to the following system: p = a party source (information and agitprop departments); k = a Komsomol source; n = an NKVD source; | = a citizen’s letter (except in the case of intercepted letters reproduced by the NKVD which are classified as ‘n’). Thus ‘p/3q’ refers to a party file dating from 1934. xviGlossary and notes on the text agitprop agitation and propaganda artel cooperative batiushka ittle father’ (often applied to tsar) bezbozhnik member of the ‘League of Godless’ (pl. bezbozhniki) chastushka popular, often four-lined verse (pl. chastushki) edinolichnik individual peasant farmer (pl. edinolichniki) ezhovshchina campaign of mass terror in 1937-8 named after NKVD head, Ezhov gorkom gorodskoi komitet: city committee (of party) intelligent member of the intelligentsia (pl. intelligent) ispolkom ispolnitel'nyi komitet: executive committee ITR inzhenerno-tekhnicheskii rabotnik: engineering/ technical worker ‘Khutor consolidated farm (pl. khutora) Khutorianin khutor dweller (pl. khutoriane) kalkhoz kollektionoe khoziaistvo: collective farm (pl. kolkhozy) kolkhoznik member of the kolkhoz (f. kolkhoznitsa, pl. kolkhozniki) Komsomol Kommunisticheskii soiuz molodezhi: Communist League of Youth k. kopek(s) rai administrative region kraikom kraevoi komitet: regional committee (of party) ‘usta cottage industry lishenets disenfranchised person (pl. lishentsy) muzhik Russian peasant (colloquially, man) narodnik member of nineteenth-century populist movement xviixviii NEP my NKIu NKVD obkom oblast ablispolkom OGPU (GPU) okrug PPO raikom r, RSFSR sel'sovet sluzhashchii soratnik Sovnarkom (SNK) SR SSSR Torgsin TsIK TsK TsKK verkhi VKP(b) Glossary and notes on the text Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika: New Economic Policy lower classes, those at the bottom Narodnyi komissariat iustitsii: People’s Commissariat of Justice Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennikh del: People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs oblastnoi komitet: regional committee (of party) administrative region oblastnoi ispolnitel'nyi komitet: regional executive committee (of soviet) Ob’ edinennoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravleniie: Unified State Political Administration (Secret Police) administrative region pervichnaia partiinaia organizatsiia: primary party organisation raionnyi komitet: district committee (of party) ruble(s) Rossiiskaia sovetskaia federativnaia sotsialisticheskaia respublika: Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic sel’ skii sovet: village soviet employee, white-collar worker (pl. sluzhashchie) comrade-in-arms (pl. soratniki) Sovet narodnykh komissarov: Council of People’s Commissars Socialist Revolutionary Soiuz sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik: USSR: Shop trading for hard currency and precious metals (pl. Torgsiny) ‘Tsentral’nyi ispolnitel‘nyi komitet: Central Executive Committee Tsentral'nyi komitet: Central Committee (of party) Tsentral'naia kontrol’naia komissia: Central Control Commission (of party) upper classes, those at the top (s. verkha) ‘Vsesoiuznaia kommunisticheskaia partiiaGlossary and notes on the text xix (bol’shevikov): All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) vozhd" chief/leader (equivalent of Fiihrer; pl. vozhdi) VTsIK Vserossiiskii tsentral’nyi ispolnitel’'nyi komitet: All-Russian Central Executive Committee aydvizhenets upwardly mobile cadre (pl. wydvizhentsy) The transliteration system followed is that of the Library of Gon- gress, Certain Russian words with accepted English equivalents will be given in the English form, for example, Bolshevik, rather than bol'shevik, and soviet, rather than sove. Unless otherwise noted, all locations are in Leningrad and Lenin- grad region.BLANK PAGEIntroduction How do we recover the thoughts and values, hopes and beliefs of ‘ordinary people”? So often their voices have been silenced by the rich and powerful. In Stalin’s Russia, this process of silencing was particularly insidious. Not only were people literally silenced — shot, or incarcerated in concentration camps for expressing unorthodox views — but also the entire Soviet media eliminated virtually all reference to heretical opinion. Dissonant voices were written out of history by the Stalinist scriptwriters — but not forever. In letters and top secret documents, hidden in the archives, these voices were preserved. The aim of this book is simple: to ‘release’ them, and allow them to speak for themselves as far as possible. However, inevitably the selection and organisation of the material will have left its mark. What follows is just one of many possible interpretations that could, and should, be undertaken. This book focuses on popular opinion during a formative and momentous period of Soviet history. The years 1934-41 witnessed both the ‘Great Retreat’ and the ‘Great Terror’.! The term ‘Great Retreat’, coined by the sociologist Timasheff, symbolises the repu- diation of many of the values and aspirations of the Russian Revolution of October 1917. In the words of Stalin’s arch-enemy, Trotsky, the Revolution had been ‘betrayed’, and had given way to a ‘Soviet Thermidor’.? The Russian Revolution, carried out under the banner of socialism and the liberation of the working class, was followed by a bloody civil war, portrayed as a class struggle of the poor and exploited against the rich capitalists. During the war, the Bolshevik Party established a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and introduced ‘war communism’, a series of measures including the nationalisation of industry, a grain monopoly, the abolition of free trade, and rationing. The Bolsheviks won the civil war, but, in the face of mounting social disaffection, were forced to abandon war 12 Introduction communism in 1921 and introduce the New Economic Policy (NEP). Free trade was reintroduced, and only heavy industry, banking, and foreign trade remained under state control. The economy, shattered by war and revolution, began slowly to recover. However, NEP society was riddled with contradictions. A ‘bourgeois’ stratum flourished, epitomised by the petty capitalist ‘nepmen’ who flaunted their wealth in nightclubs and restaurants. With the growth of the party and state apparatus, it seemed to many, including Trotsky and the opposition which crystallised around him, as if the country was being run by a new ‘bureaucracy’. Relations between the party and the proletarians it claimed to represent were strained, and unemployment continued to blight workers’ lives. The peasants, meanwhile, were being encouraged by Bukharin to ‘get rich’, Their reluctance to supply the towns with grain precipitated an economic crisis which heralded the end of NEP. NEP was both economically unviable and ideologically unaccep- table to the leadership. In 1928, Stalin, who had secured power following the death of Lenin after outmanoeuvring his rivals Trotsky, Kameney, and Zinoviev, launched a new ‘revolution from above’ in many ways as far-reaching as that of 1917. It entailed unprecedent- edly rapid industrialisation carried out according to ‘five-year plans’, the first of which operated from 1928 until the end of 1932. New factories and even cities sprang up, the industrial workforce doubled, and the bureaucracy expanded. The collectivisation of agriculture was initiated in 1929, with peasants forced to join kolkhozy en masse. Millions of peasants were shot or resettled in Siberia for resisting the policy. The massive opposition to collectivisation by so-called kulaks led to a partial retreat, and complete collectivisation was not accomplished until the eve of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ (1941-5). The period 1929-32 also experienced Cultural Revolution — utopianism, social and cultural experimentation on a grand scale, and a class war against those of non-proletarian origins. The result of all these measures was not utopia, however, but social and economic turmoil and the famine of 1932-3 which claimed the lives of millions. In 1933-4, a new course was adopted. Stability, rather than revolution, was the watchword. More realistic targets were set for the second five-year plan, and concessions were made to the peasants. The emphasis on class war was moderated in favour of propaganda and policies promoting the unity of the ‘whole people’. Proletarian dictatorship was replaced by a Constitution which guaranteedIntroduction 3 everyone over eighteen the right to vote in secret elections for a Supreme Soviet, including those previously disenfranchised because of their social origins. Hierarchical rather than egalitarian values were actively encouraged through the promotion of Stakhanovite workers and other heroes. Specialists were now rewarded rather than persecuted. A new elite emerged, and a new ethos of consumerism. Religion was tolerated (within limits), stable family values were encouraged, and education, law, and the arts reverted to tradition. The Cultural Revolution was definitely over, and with it the privileges of workers, who were now expected to tolerate working practices in some ways reminiscent of those under capitalism. At the same time, in the international arena, the USSR sought alliances with capitalist states, and in 1939 went so far as to sign a non- aggression pact with fascist Germany. Yet this partial retreat to conservatism and tradition was accom- panied by a new ‘revolution’, in the form of the Great Terror, which had the effect of bringing down many of the elite and creating a climate of acute instability. Its origins lay in the still unexplained murder of Leningrad party boss, Kirov, on 1 December 1934. The murder was officially attributed to Stalin’s old opponents, Kamenev and Zinoviev, and was used by Stalin to launch a crackdown in early 1935 on thousands of former ‘oppositionists’ and ‘class enemies’, particularly in Leningrad. In mid-1936, terror struck again. Kamenev and Zinoviev were sentenced to execution in the first of many show trials in which prominent party figures were accused of spying and wrecking. For a number of reasons the terror escalated into what has become known as the ezhoushchina, after Ezhov, the head of the NKVD, who organised the terror against millions of innocent citizens in 1937-8.° This dramatic tale is well known. What has been unclear until now and what this study seeks to address is the way in which ‘ordinary people’ responded to the Great Retreat and Great Terror. The focus is deliberately upon the views of subordinate groups in general, rather than one particular social category, because the opinions expressed cannot be clearly attributed to precisely defined groups. In any case, the a priori categorisation of social groups reveals more about the assumptions of scholars than it does about the identities and ideas of those alleged to constitute them. The determinist notions that skilled workers automatically possess a revolutionary4 Introduction class consciousness, that peasants are naturally backward and petty- bourgeois, and that white-collar workers have different interests to blue-collar workers are all too redolent of Bolshevik ideology. In reality, peasants, workers, sluzhashchie, and low-level party members often spoke a similar language, albeit with different degrees of competence. Clearly their concerns were not always identical, and this work reflects such differences with separate sections devoted to the particular interests of peasants, workers, or women. Even confining the study to subordinate groups is somewhat artificial and presupposes a rigid dichotomy between those with power and those without. In this period of social flux and purging, those at the top could easily end up at the bottom, and vice versa, and some views expressed by members of the elite may not have differed much from those of the ‘lower classes’. ‘An analysis of popular opinion in this period must take into account the role of propaganda and coercion in Soviet society. This was a period of unprecedentedly intense and uniform propaganda, and of censorship taken to absurd degrees. The propaganda per- vaded every sphere of public communication, including the media, the arts, and education. Its main messages, intoned with monotonous regularity, proclaimed that life in the Soviet Union was unequivo- cally rosy in contrast to the pitiful existence of workers living under capitalism, that in the USSR the whole people allegedly enjoyed satisfying jobs and high living standards, endorsed the policies of the party and Stalin to whom they were devoted, and believed in socialism with a Stalinist face. The standard formula accompanying the newspaper publicity for a policy or event proclaimed that ‘all the workers of Leningrad/Moscow/the USSR (or wherever) greeted the decision/policy/verdict with pleasure/approval/satisfaction’. The heavily censored media were forbidden to publish material about real feelings at the grassroots. In 1927 the censor classified informa- tion on the ‘political mood [politicheskie nastroeniia]’ alongside news about strikes, demonstrations, disorder, and similar manifestations of discontent as information which could not be printed lest it damaged the ‘political-economic interests of the USSR’.* Unacceptable views were referred to only occasionally and obliquely in public as ‘the survivals of capitalism in the consciousness of the people’, ‘the psychology of the petty proprietor’, ‘petty-bourgeois feelings’, and ‘outbursts [zylazki] of the class enemy’. ‘As well as propaganda and censorship, the regime also relied onIntroduction 5 repression to block alternative ideas. People were charged with the crime of ‘anti-Soviet agitation’ (the notorious article 58.10) for expressing opinions which seemed to the authorities to be aimed at ‘the overthrow, subversion, or weakening of? Soviet power.> This was an elastic definition and the numbers of those sentenced under article 58.10 fluctuated considerably. In lenient periods, the numbers were relatively small, but during collectivisation and the terror of 1936-8 many thousands of people were sentenced.° During the terror, convictions were even possible for statements such as ‘The loan is voluntary. I don’t want to subscribe 150 r., only 100’, or ‘in Greece there are many types of fruit, and in the USSR few’.’ At the peak of the terror, thought crime became institutionalised when a statement such as ‘I wish Stalin was dead’ was deemed to be equivalent to actually committing a terrorist act, and was supposed to be prosecuted accordingly.® So what was the effect of these measures? Were ordinary people reduced through a combination of repression and propaganda into either regurgitating the official discourse, or keeping their silence? Or was there any significant dissonant popular opinion in Stalin’s Russia? Although historians have broached this question, they have been stymied until recently by a lack of sources.? Most investigations have focused on the views of the intelligentsia, since the sources are richer for this group. The debate has centred on the sometimes unproduc- tive wrangle between adherents of the ‘totalitarian’ model of Soviet society and so-called revisionists, a debate which has dominated the field to such an extent that other perspectives have been rather marginalised. There is no need to rehearse in detail the arguments of both sides, except in so far as they touch on the question of popular opinion.!° Proponents of the ‘totalitarian’ model tend to ignore society,!! which they regard as being atomised and under the absolute control of the Soviet state. They stress the latter’s use of propaganda and coercion, and imply that the ‘masses’ were either brain-washed into conformity or were silent but implacable opponents of the regime. By contrast, revisionists portray society as an active and autonomous force, not merely an adjunct of the state. In their concern to overturn the ‘totalitarian’ orthodoxy about the terrorised, disaffected, and zombie-like masses, some revisionists attempt to demonstrate the existence of a social basis of support for Stalin amongst, for example,6 Introduction upwardly mobile cadres (ydvizhenty), Komsomol members, and Stakhanovites, all of whom, it is suggested, actively endorsed the regime.!? Although this interpretation provides a refreshing alter- native to the totalitarian perspective, it is sometimes taken to extremes. For example, one historian argues that most ordinary people did not feel terrorised in this period except at the worst moments of 1937, that they exercised the freedom of speech (within limits), and enjoyed the right to criticise and complain. He concludes that many workers were probably loyal to the regime. 3 While it seems appropriate to jettison the stereotype of the ‘terrorised masses’, claims about workers’ loyalty appear less well founded. Just because workers did not feel terrorised, and continued to criticise managers and so on, it does not follow that they were always satisfied with the Soviet regime or its policies. Indeed, the large amount of criticising and complaining going on might imply quite the contrary. Recent research on both workers and peasants indicates that they did indeed feel oppressed and adopted many tactics of passive resistance.'* Evidently it is time to reevaluate the whole question of popular opinion, to get away from the totalitarian insistence on the atomised, voiceless masses, without moving to the other extreme of painting a socialist realist picture of satisfied and contented workers and peasants singing in unison ‘life has become better, life has become merrier’. Clearly along the continuum from active consent to active resistance/dissent were a range of heterogeneous positions. There were few absolute ‘conformists’ and ‘dissenters’. In practice, people’s views were far more ambivalent and contradictory: opposition to one policy or facet of the regime was quite compatible with support of others, a tendency which has been noted by historians of other authoritarian societies. Detlev Peukert shows that in Nazi Germany ‘diverse forms of criticism and “grumbling” were quite capable of existing side by side with partial recognition of the regime or at least with passive acceptance of authority’, while Luisa Passerini’s oral history also highlights the ambivalence of popular attitudes in Fascist Italy. In his recent important work on the new Soviet city of Magnito- gorsk in the 1930s, Stephen Kotkin rejects the totalitarian/revisionist, opposition/support dichotomy, and is aware of the tactical use of language by ordinary citizens. However, he is inclined to take propaganda at its face value, overemphasising the popular tendencyIntroduction 7 to ‘speak Bolshevik’ (i.e. to use the official language).!° He denies that a Great Retreat occurred and makes the provocative claim that “To the vast majority of those who lived it, and even to most of its enemies, Stalinism, far from being a partial retreat let alone a throwback to the Russian past, remained forward-looking and progressive throughout.’!” He also asserts that: Even the truest of true believers appears to have had regular bouts with private doubt. But few could imagine alternatives. Nor was anyone encouraged to do so. Sealed borders and censorship did their part.!® In the only significant study of Soviet propaganda, Peter Kenez argues in a similar vein that the regime succeeded in preventing the formation and articulation of alternative points of view. The Soviet people ultimately came not so much to believe the Bolsheviks’ world view as to take it for granted. Nobody remained to point out the contradictions and even inanity in the regime’s slogans.!® These conclusions are undermined by the new sources, which reveal that, on the contrary, ordinary people were adept at defeating the censor, seeking out alternative sources of information and ideas in the form of rumours, personal letters, leaflets (listovki), and inscrip- tions (nadpisi).2° They also continued to draw on a variety of rival discourses, including those of nationalism, anti-semitism, and popu- lism, which proved tenacious despite concerted attempts to eradicate them. Moreover, the official language was used and understood in a far from passive way. As Voloshinov points out, language is inherently flexible and can become an arena in which social conflicts are played out over the meaning of signs: ‘every living ideological sign is double- headed like Janus. Every living abuse may become praise, every living truth ‘inevitably will sound like the greatest lie to many others.”*! This ‘janus-headed’ character of signs prevented the Stalinist regime from imposing one monolithic interpretation of reality. This seems to be the point Bakhtin was trying to convey in the late 1990s in his work on Rabelais, which represents, in the view of Clark and Holquist, ‘Bakhtin’s most comprehensive critique to date of Stalinist culture’.22 Whether or not Bakhtin deliberately set out to describe his own culture in an aesopian way, some features of this work ostensibly about medieval France do illuminate similar pro- cesses underway in Soviet Russia. He describes a society in which the8 Introduction hegemonic class maintains its dominance partly through its ideolo- gical diktat. Official culture is characterised by its attempt to present only one ‘natural’ interpretation of reality. It projects seriousness, retrospectivity, immutability, eternity. It is also associated with fear and violence. However, the monopoly of the official culture of the medieval world is undermined by a second culture of laughter, typified by the carnival. During carnival, official symbols are invested with new meaning, for ‘the second life, second world of popular culture is constructed to a certain extent as a parody on the usual ... life, like a “world inside out’”. Its role lies in the desacralisation of all that represented by the hegemonic culture. It breaks all the taboos, mocks the sacred, reverses the hierarchy. It represents equality, utopia, and freedom from fear.?> So too, in Stalinist Russia, the official discourse, characterised by gravity, a sense of its own permanence and so on, was subjected to carnivalisation in the form of jokes and songs which ‘deconstructed’ the hierarchies and assump- tions implicit in the official discourse, reversing the traditional topography, bringing high down to low and vice versa, emphasising the physical side of life, and using profanities. This is just one example of the various ways in which the official discourse became a tool in the hands of subordinate groups who reappropriated it for their own purposes. Likewise, officially hal- lowed words, such as ‘revolution’ and ‘the people [narod]’ were reclaimed for the expression of dissent. So, while the regime employed narod to denote the ‘whole people’, and thereby to imply unity, dissenters used it in a divisive way to signify the powerless nizy (lower classes). Citizens also couched illegitimate or subversive requests and complaints in terms of the official discourse, protecting themselves by invoking their Constitutional rights, Stalin’s words, the working class, and other officially cherished notions. Rigby refers to this practice in his analysis of a ‘shadow culture’ in the USSR. He argues that ‘political hypocrisy’ was a ‘time-bomb’ with a self-fulfilling potential. The collapse of the Soviet regime was facilitated by the existence of an official rhetoric about democracy, rights, and so forth which could be used by those seeking real democracy.2* It is not my aim to give the erroneous impression that the official language was always used with purely subversive or cynical intent. There were undoubtedly true believers and fanatics, as chapter 10 will show. It is also likely that some of the less committed sometimesIntroduction 9 ‘welcomed the policies’, ‘condemned the enemies’, or said whatever they were alleged to be saying in newspaper articles reporting so- called ‘popular reactions’ to various measures. However, ‘popular opinion’ in this sense is not the main subject of this book. Rather, the objective is to illuminate the hitherto neglected body of dissonant opinion which distorted, subverted, rejected, or provided an alter- native to the official discourse. It is difficult to generalise about the content of this popular opinion, to make categorical assertions about a hypothetical ‘Russian popular political culture’. Often the values expressed seem to contra- dict each other, refusing to fit conveniently into boxes labelled socialist, anarchist, conservative, liberal, or whatever. However, certain themes do feature prominently. Hostility towards officialdom and antipathy towards ‘the state’ were often expressed. Conversely, there was also a widespread contrary opinion that the state should provide for and look after the people. A paternalist style of leadership was valued highly. Materialism and egalitarianism pervaded many popular statements. ‘Socialism’ seems to have been favoured and ‘class’ feelings were very pronounced. Social conservatism was wide- spread. Politics and the law were treated in various ways: although many were indifferent to them, others took them more seriously. Above all, popular opinion was heterogeneous. People’s attitudes depended as much upon the nature of particular policies or issues as upon any coherent worldview. For this reason, and because the sources lend themselves to this treatment, this book is structured thematically. Part I focuses on economic and social questions. Part II considers politics, including international relations, and various aspects of the terror. Part III concentrates on the leader cult. Before we proceed any further, at this stage it is worth examining the sources for the study and considering how these may have affected the representation of popular opinion. SOURCES The evidence for this study includes citizens’ letters, memoirs, diaries, and newspaper reports. Reports prepared by party agitators on the feedback they obtained from their audiences have also been used. However, the main sources are summaries produced by the NKVD and party (and Komsomol) information departments on popular responses to particular events or policies (svodki/spetssoobshcheniia 010 Introduction nastroenii). As this is a large body of untapped and valuable material, it deserves particular attention. The party, through the various incarnations of its Information Department, and the secret police, through its Secret-Political Department, had been involved in the surveillance of popular opinion since the revolution (and, in the party’s case, even before that).?> The party Information Department was responsible for coordinating the exchange of information between centre and periphery on a variety of subjects, including information on the popular mood.”° According to a directive of 1934, each PPO was supposed to have a party informant (informator), who was required to be politically literate and authoritative, and to have experience of political work with the masses. His job was to analyse both positive and negative aspects of grassroots party organisations in a clear, self- critical, profound, and objective fashion. He was also to be aware of the general mood of workers and to pay particular attention to characteristic events of the day (accidents and stoppages, interrup- tions to services, various types of feelings). The job entailed main- taining close links with the party secretary, being present at meetings, and liaising with grassroots activists and editors of local newspapers in order to maximise the possibility of obtaining what was described as ‘objective’ information.?” This was the theory. In practice, information work was not always accorded a high priority, even in the powerful Leningrad party organisation, although there were some improvements after the Kirov murder, when additional informants were appointed. Even so, in 1939 it transpired that certain PPOs lacked any informants. If the party information system sometimes functioned moderately efficiently in the factories of Leningrad, it was far less effective in the countryside and amongst the intelligentsia.2® By contrast, the NKVD was able to monitor a far broader range of social groups through its network of paid and unpaid secret agents (seksoly).29 Party and NKVD informants noted down conversations, rumours, jokes, and other evidence of the popular mood which were compiled into svodki (summaries). In the case of the party, the data was sent to the raikom, which summarised it for the obkom. The Information Department of the obkom then compiled a summary on the basis of all the raikom reports. Both party and NKVD summaries were classified ‘top secret’ and addressed to about two to six recipients. For example, Leningrad NKVD reports were usually sent to the firstIntroduction 1 three obkom secretaries, the head of the SPO (Secret-Political Department) in Moscow, and occasionally to the president of the oblispolkom. All party and NKVD reports invariably began with the standard formula that ‘the majority of the people’ had reacted to a policy or event in a ‘healthy’ way. This was always followed by examples of typical ‘correct’ opinions, which tended merely to reiterate the official line published in the newspapers. Negative remarks followed the positive comments in a section beginning ‘However, alongside this there are certain cases of backward/negative/unhealthy/anti- Soviet/counter-revolutionary statements’ (usually about three of these adjectives were employed). Information about the identity of those alleged to be making the remarks was usually provided, such as their name, occupation, and place of work, for example, ‘worker Sizova, second galoshes shop, Krasnyi Treugol'nik’. Party and Komsomol affiliation were also mentioned. Other details sometimes highlighted included age, length of work, and any information indicative of the speaker’s general political orientation, such as ‘recently arrived from the country’, ‘formerly engaged in trade’, ‘excluded from the party’, ‘has relations with enemy of the people’, or ‘evangelist’. This type of information tended to be more prevalent in NKVD reports, partly because the latter was already involved in the surveillance of ‘socially dangerous elements’, and partly because of its own preconceptions about the causes of undesirable attitudes. Sometimes, particularly in 1937, a hostile opinion was followed by phrases such as ‘has been arrested’, ‘will be arrested’, or ‘investiga- tion is being carried out’. It is hard to know whether party, and particularly NKVD informants, influenced by the general atmosphere of conspiracy which characterised the Great Terror and under pressure from above to exercise vigilance and expose ‘enemies’, invented or distorted the negative comments in their reports. The temptation to invent remarks, or to report an unverified denunciation must have been great. Informants signed undertakings to provide accurate material, and could be punished for not doing so: in 1932, 180 OGPU informants were given five-year sentences for supplying ‘unobjective information’. Informants could also be excluded from the party for failure to adhere to the criteria of objectivity.°° However, these undertakings may have meant little in 1937. It is plausible that some genuine expressions of discontent may12 Introduction have been given a more ‘counter-revolutionary’ gloss by some informants, perhaps by the addition of fictitious praise of Trotsky, threats to kill Stalin, or other such formulae. However, it is also clear that many of the opinions cited in the reports do correspond with those contained in other sources, such as memoirs, diaries, the emigre journal Sotsialisticheskii vestnik,*! censors’ reports, and even occasionally the official media.*? Some of these will be cited in subsequent chapters; however, just one example is a survey of items expunged during the preliminary censorship of the factory press of Leningrad’s Tsentral'nyi district in April 1934. The censor removed several items concerning the ‘political mood’, which editors had included to illustrate undesirable attitudes (publishing such com- ments was deemed to be equivalent to the outright propagation of anti-Soviet views). One newspaper had intended to print the following chastushki: ‘Ne poidu ia na sobran'e / Ne poidu na preniia / Skazhem priamo est’ zhelan'e / Netu nastroeniia’ (‘I won’t go to the meeting / I won’t go to the discussion / I'll tell you straight out there is the desire / but not the mood’); ‘Govoriu zhe Vam po russki / Mne ne nravitsia nagruzki / Mne nagruzki po plechu / da rabotat’ ne khochu’ (‘I will tell you in Russian / I don’t like duties / I have duties up to here / No, I don’t want to work’). Another contained an article on the state loan campaign which reported the words of a person unwilling to contribute: ‘The state does not help me, but drags out my last kopeks. Go away, I’m not going to subscribe.’33 This type of language echoes very closely that of the party and NKVD opinion reports. The authenticity of the reported opinion can also be verified by comparing it with that from various areas and periods. A comparison of reports in several archives* reveals that regardless of where the information was assembled, by whom, and for whom — the centre or the regions, European or Siberian Russia, by party or NKVD workers, for the Kremlin or for the Komsomol — there were certain consistent traits of popular opinion, certain discourses which existed independently of the whims and fantasies of those responsible for the reports. Nor did the discourses of the terror period differ significantly from those of other years. Some opinion reports for the civil war, 19208, and collectivisation period have already been published, while historians have begun to analyse reports in the context of work on the 1920s and 1930s.°° These reveal that a body of critical opinion existed throughout the early Soviet period, and that views held byIntroduction 13 ordinary Russians during the terror did not diverge significantly from those expressed at other times. Similarly, even when the terror had abated, during the ‘thaw’ of 1939-40, there was still continuity between the views uttered then and those of previous years. In the immediate pre-war period, when serious attempts were made by Stalin and Beria to restore legality and to repair the damaged prestige of the procuracy, courts, and NKVD, there was a corre- sponding drive to tighten up the accuracy of the opinion reports. Negative comments recorded in an opinion report were checked, and if they were found to be incorrect, this was noted in a subsequent report.2® The range and substance of opinion in reports prepared in more ‘liberal’ periods, when falsification was minimised and the fear of punishment less acute, did not differ markedly from that of the years of the Great Terror. Distortion occurred rather in the manner in which material was selected and analysed, The selection of material was clearly influ- enced by considerations of what informants and the compilers of reports imagined their superiors wanted to hear at any particular moment. If the regime was particularly concerned with, for example, exposing ‘Trotskyists’ or ‘saboteurs’ of the Stakhanovite movement, informants may have made a special effort to record comments expressing pro-Trotsky or anti-Stakhanovite feelings. Reports were compiled because the regime wished to monitor reactions to parti- cular events and policies; thus the subject matter of the reports was already circumscribed. In reports on reactions to the Stakhanovite movement, for example, the majority of recorded comments con- cerned this issue. Comments and discussion about other non-related questions were generally mentioned only en passant. This can convey the false impression that in the week in which a report was compiled, people were talking only about the Stakhanovite movement, or the state loan, or whatever; also, that in the intervals between important events and policies warranting reports, no popular discussion took place. Reporting was very uneven. Weeks could pass without a report, and then a major crisis, such as the murder of Kirov or the outbreak of war with Finland, would precipitate a mass of daily and even hourly reports. Because of this irregularity, it is difficult to plot the dynamics of the popular mood. Since the choice of subjects warranting reports was dictated by regime priorities, which did not necessarily coincide with the people’s own interests (or with those of a future historian for that matter),4 Introduction there are many lacunae. There is an abundance of comment on purely political issues, as it was these which primarily concerned the regime. However, this abundance does not necessarily reflect the actual weight of political subject matter in the discourse of ordinary people. More private concerns, such as those connected with the family and leisure, are hardly represented at all. Likewise, because reports were compiled in relation to specific events and policies, popular opinion about more ill-defined phenomena such as the mass terror of 1937-8 is less well represented. There are of course no ‘Summaries of popular reactions to terror’. However, inferences about reactions to this and other phenomena not specifically covered in reports can sometimes be gleaned from reports on different questions. Analysis of the causes of incorrect opinions was usually superficial in both types of report. The NKVD favoured the ‘enemy’ theory, identifying those holding hostile views with alleged ‘enemies of the people’. Both party and NKVD emphasised the work of ‘anti-Soviet/ counter-revolutionary agitators’ in spreading rumours and discontent amongst ordinary people. For example, a party report on reactions to the sale of unrationed bread in January 1935 noted that ‘counter- revolutionary elements try to use the new system of bread sales and price rises for ordinary slanderous attacks’.2’ However, in some party reports, the party tried to shoulder responsibility for negative views, especially in the case of worker discontent, blaming poor agitprop and ‘explanatory work’ for workers’ failure ‘correctly’ to understand a particular policy. They sometimes even highlighted the material conditions of workers as a cause of discontent, suggesting that the failure to be paid on time, low levels of pay, inadequate provision of services, and so on were influencing popular opinion. Party reports differed from those of the NKVD in that they included a large proportion of positive comments. Presumably party officials were keen to demonstrate that their particular organisation was functioning well, and that the propaganda was being absorbed. Unlike the party, the NKVD was concerned primarily with mon- itoring ‘enemies’ and the suppression of dissent, and its reports therefore devoted the majority of space to critical comments. However, in both cases the insistence was always that negative comments were in a minority. No statistics were provided so it is almost impossible to establish how widely these opinions were in fact articulated.Introduction 5 Were they in fact in a minority? One solution is to look for other evidence of the scale of discontent. Thus, some letters to party leaders contain overtly ‘anti-Soviet’ comments similar to those recorded in the reports. These form a tiny proportion of all letters; for example, 15 of 5,638 letters sent to Leningrad party secretary Zhdanov in January 1940 were classified as anti-Soviet.® However, this fact alone is not necessarily indicative of the extent to which such views were expressed. In this period it was clearly a far more dangerous and deliberate act to put critical views in writing to a party leader than to make an impromptu remark to fellow workers in the relative safety of the toilets. While explicitly ‘anti-Soviet’ letters are rare, there are millions of letters and petitions complaining about living conditions, corruption, and so on. While these adopted a loyal tone, and directed their criticism towards local bureaucrats only, they provide evidence of general social discontent which corresponds with the tone of some of the negative opinion. This is substantiated by the evidence of behaviour, although it is difficult to make a direct correlation between attitudes and beha- viour. However, it is clear that there were many infractions of the labour decree of June 1940, that people committed suicide on learning that they were to be prosecuted, and that party members and the judiciary tried to obstruct the decree. This suggests that there may have been a correspondingly high incidence of negative opinion in relation to the decree. Consumption patterns can also be compared with reported popular opinion. If there were complaints about the price of bread or food in canteens after the end of rations, and these were accompanied by a quite substantial decline in the amount of bread and canteen meals consumed, it is plausible that such complaints were quite prevalent. Likewise, the difficulty the party experienced in its collection of state loans suggests that the anti-loan comments reflected widespread opinion. Statistics on the prosecution of cases of anti-Soviet agitation present a somewhat distorted impression of the numbers expressing dissonant views. A report on arrests and sentences in cases initiated or investigated by police agencies reveals the figures for arrests for anti-Soviet agitation shown in table 1. Quite apart from the intrinsic difficulties of dealing with the regime’s statistics on repression,*? there is a problem in that the regime’s definition of what constituted anti-Soviet agitation was constantly changing. Many of the examples in this study, such as complaints about price rises, would not