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The Soviet Procuracy and the Class Struggle: Smolensk, 1929-1930
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2019
Extract
The decision to terminate the NEP and to introduce rapid collectivization in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1920's brought the problem of social classes into sharp focus. Although the role of the kulaks had been encouraged under the NEP, it was now decided to move against them and to expropriate them. In pursuance of the instructions of the Fifteenth Party Congress, which opened on December 2, 1927, "the Party launched a determined offensive against the kulaks, putting into effect the slogan: rely firmly on the poor peasantry, strengthen the alliance with the middle peasantry, and wage a resolute struggle against the kulaks."
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1957
References
1 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course (New York: International Publishers, 1939), p. 292 Google Scholar.
2 Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: a Political Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), pp. 324-25.
3 History of the CPSU(b), ibid.
4 Material for this paper was obtained in the course of a seminar at Harvard in the spring of 1956. The writer is grateful to Professor Merle Fainsod for allowing him to use the photostats of the Smolensk Archive. The original documents repose in the Departmental Records Branch, the Adjutant General's Office, Alexandria, Virginia.
5 All of the bulletins covered in this paper were located in folders WK.P 250 and WKP 261. The “Information Bulletins” for February-March, April, and May (June and July are missing), 1929, were issued by the Procuracy of Smolensk Gubernija; those bulletins starting with August, 1929, were issued by the Procuracy of Western Oblast’ (became Smolensk Oblast’ in September 1937).
6 Professor Fainsod has stated to the writer that he has seen directives in the Party material calling for the destruction of documents for security reasons, so perhaps later Procuracy bulletins were in the material thus destroyed.
7 It is interesting to note to whom the bulletins were sent. One copy of “Information Bulletin No. 1” for August, 1929, was sent to each of the following: 8 okrug procuracies; procuracy of the RSFSR; chairman of the oblast’ court; procurator of Ivanovo Oblast'; i procurator of Leningrad Oblast'; Obkom of the Party; Oblast’ Control Commission; Oblast’ j Executive Committee.
8 information Bulletin No. 13-14, February-March, 1929.
9 Information Bulletin No. 2, September, 1929.
10 Information Bulletin No. 1, August, 1929.
11 Joseph Stalin, Leninism (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1940), p. 258.
12 It may be noted that Stalin in his speech began his quote a sentence earlier than did the Procuracy, and he added after the phrase “it is a manifestation of the class struggle in its most acute form” the comment in brackets: “This is not true, for the most acute form of the struggle is rebellion,” a comment not included in the section quoted by the Procuracy. See N. Bukharin, Put’ k sotsializmu i raboche-krest'janskij soyuz (4th edition, Moscow: State Publishing House, 1927), pp. 53-54, for this excerpt, which is taken from a much longer paragraph. As to whether the Smolensk Procuracy was quoting Bukharin directly or Stalin's quote, as will be noted later, this writer is inclined to believe that the latter source was used.
13 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), op. cit., p. 304.