Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 31 – The day doesn’t
go by in which one or another Russian commentator suggests that Russia is on
the brink of a new 1937, the year of Stalin’s Great Terror that some fear
Vladimir Putin may seek to replicate to remain in power. But a discussion by
Russian historians suggests that the Kremlin leader may be more informed by
1929 than by 1937.
In the latter year, Urals Federal
University historians Lyudmila Mazur and Oleg Gorbachev say, a hungry and tired
Soviet population who valued stability above all else were prepared to accept
that repressions might be needed to produce it (znak.com/2019-07-31/kak_90_let_nazad_byurokraty_prigovorili_stranu_k_stalinizmu_intervyu_s_istorikami).
Although the two do not discuss the
possible analogy between the rise of Stalin and the rise of Putin, it appears
on the basis of their discussion that the current Kremlin leader was more than
a little informed by the actions of his Soviet predecessor in terms of building
his own power vertical while gaining the support of a population upset by
earlier turbulence.
Ninety years ago in 1929, even more
than 102 years in 1917, Gorbachev argues, the Soviet system was established as
bureaucratic socialism that was modified but remained in place until its end in
1991. It was “the year of ‘the great change,’” with Stalin having vanquished
his opponents, launched the first five-year plan, and accelerated
collectivization.
From the mid-1920s, Mazur continues,
“Soviet ‘administered democracy’ was put in place: the organs of power began to
be formed by the VKP(b) and controlled by it, not via official structures like
a parliament but by the use of another mechanism, the party nomenklatura
installed at all levels of administration.”
“In the 1930s,” she says, “’administered
democracy’ acquired a perfected character: the people unanimously voted for ‘the
inviolable bloc of communists and non-party people.’ Candidates formally were
advanced by meetings of voters but in fact were agreed to and confirmed in party
offices.”
“Formally, there was a democratic
system of secret elections; in reality, there was a dictatorship of the party bureaucracy,”
Mazur says, arguing that what occurred can be described as “’a bureaucratic revolution.’”
As far as economic change is
concerned, she continues, “however semi-feudal was the economy of imperial
Russia, it was already a market economy. The Bolsheviks when they came to power
without delay liquidated private property … and the means of production became government
owned.
In Stalin’s Russia, like all
authoritarian regimes, Gorbachev says, the new order came into existence “on a
wave of psychological exhaustion of the mass of the population,” which from
1914 on had suffered much turbulence, violence and uncertainty. People wanted something
they could count on even if it involved repression.
With regard to foreign affairs,
Mazur says, undoubtedly it was the case that the possible threat of a big war
played a role in what happened in 1929. “But the country didn’t limit itself to
defense. Willingly or not, it began to conduct itself as an aggressor: recall
the Soviet-Finnish war, the annexation of the Baltic states, and Western Ukraine
and Belaruss.”
But it is the final observation by
Mazur that may be the best reason for thinking 1929 has played a fundamental
role in Putin’s calculations. Should anyone really speak “about the end of the Soviet
project? Perhaps it would be better to
say that it still is continuing in a somewhat modified form?”
“There are no soviets, but there is
a decorative State Duma and municipal organs which have been deprived of
leverage on the authorities. We see as well that a return to the Soviet matric
in economics, politics, and psychology is taking place,” and not just the
Soviet past as a whole but to the year of the great change that shaped most of
Soviet history, 1929.
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