Abstract
This essay aims to shed some fresh light on decision-making concerning the introduction of the system of grain collection known as the Ural—Siberian method (the USM) on the basis of materials of the former Central Party Archive (now RTsKhIDNI). In accordance with Stalinist orthodoxy, the USM is briefly mentioned by Russian historians in the context either of the grain problem or of the inner party struggles.1 In the West there is the pioneering work of M. Lewin who investigated the implementation of the USM and its effects.2 The background and implementation of the USM are lucidly traced in the joint work of E. H. Carr and R. W. Davies.3 The present author contributed an article on the subject to Soviet Studies in 1981.4 It attempted to discuss the emergence, implementation and significance of the USM and concluded that it marked the final stage in the development of the conflicts between the state and the peasantry, which had their origin in the grain crisis which emerged early in 1928, and spelt the end of NEP in political terms.
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Notes
Yu.A. Moshkov, Zernovaya problema v gody sploshnoi kollektivizatsii sel’skogo khozyaistva SSSR (1929–1932 gg.) (Moscow, 1966) pp. 52–3:
F.M. Vaganov, Pravyi uklon v VKP(b) i ego razgrom (1928–1930) (Moscow, 1977) p. 154: Istoriya krest’yanstva SSSR (Moscow, 1986) T.2, pp. 37–8: Krest’yanstvo Sibiri v period stroitel’stva sotsializma, 1917–1937 (Moscow, 1983) p. 212.
M. Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivisation (London, 1968) ch. 14.
E. H. Carr and R. W. Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929, vol. 1 (London, 1969) pp. 95–105.
Y. Taniuchi, ‘A Note on the Ural-Siberian Method’,Soviet Studies, vol. XXXIII, no. 4, October 1981, pp. 518–47.
F. M. Vaganov,Ope cit., pp. 154–5.
Carr and Davies, op. cit., pp. 76–82. At the session of the July plenum Rykov acknowledged having made a serious mistake in agreeing to an application of extraordinary measures early in 1928. ‘In the eleventh year since the revolution and for the first time in the period of NEP we inflicted administrative oppression on peasants or grain producers on a large scale. We did not have such an experience of the application of administrative influence on the peasants on a large scale in the period of NEP.’ He conceded that the application of extraordinary measures did not result in a liquidation of the grain crisis and that he was one of the leaders responsible for the mistake. In any other state the government which led the country to such a situation would, he said, be subject to fierce attack and forced to resign
RTsKhIDNI, 17/3/729, 6, 9. Bukharin disclosed that confiscation of grain from the well-to-do and kulak strata was included in the platform of the Trotskyist opposition at the XV party congress. See N.I. Bukharin, Problemy teorii i praktiki sotsializma (Moscow, 1989) p. 262.
N. Bukharin, Problemy teorii i praktiki sotsializma (Moscow, 1989) pp. 253–90; RTsKhIDNI, 17/2/417, 73–88.
Bukharin, op.cit., pp. 263, 288–9.
Pravda, 2 and 26 June 1929; Krest’yanskaya gazeta, 1929, no. 49 (21 June); also Y. Taniuchi in Soviet Studies, 1981, no. 4, pp. 533–5.
RTsKhIDNI, 17/3/746, 1. A published Central Committee decision of 29 July 1929 on grain collection gave instructions on the use of the experience of the past grain collection for the organisation of public opinion of the poor and middle peasants (namely the USM) from the beginning of the campaign (Izvestiya TsK VKP(b), 1929, no. 23–4 (25 August), pp. 12–14). On the Kremlin archives containing the ‘special files’ of Politburo decisions, see V. P. Danilov, ‘Sovremennaya rossiiskaya istoriografiya’, Novaya i noveishaya istoriya, 1993, no. 6, pp. 95–101.
RTsKhIDNI, 17/3/761, 4, 5, 15–16; V. P. Danilov and N. A. Ivnitskii (eds), Dokwnenty svidetel’stvuyut (Moscow, 1989) pp. 258–61.
RTsKhIDNI, 17/2/441, vyp. 2, ch. 2, 7; vyp. 2, ch. 1, 33; vyp. 1, ch. 2, 40, 57. The guideline on collectivisation laid down by the Siberian party on 5 January 1930 gave instructions to conduct it ‘on the basis of the conversion of the whole village into a kolkhoz’ (RTsKhIDNI,17/21/3190, 17–18)
The agrarian commune maintained a strongly cohesive power in the countryside in the 1920s (V.P. Danilov, Sovetskaya dokolkhoznaya derevnya, naselenie, zemlepol’zovanie, khozyaistvo (Moscow, 1977);
Y. Taniuchi, The Village Gathering in Russia in the Mid-1920s, Soviet and East European Monographs No. 1 (Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, 1968). It even tended to place the village soviet under its control (lzvestiya TsK VKP(b), 1927, no. 29, pp. 3–5). This state of affairs did not change after the eruption of the grain crisis in 1928 (Izvestiya, 1 March 1929 (Kiselev)).
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Taniuchi, Y. (1995). Decision-making on the Ural—Siberian Method. In: Cooper, J., Perrie, M., Rees, E.A. (eds) Soviet History, 1917–53. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23939-9_4
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