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Origins of a Gulag Capital: Magadan and Stalinist Control in the Early 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

David J. Nordlander
David J. Nordlander*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

High above Nagaevo Bay, the city of Magadan affords an impressive panorama of rocky cliffs that fall precipitously into the Sea of Okhotsk. Beautiful and serene, the view typifies the natural scenery of this mountainous Pacific coasdine in the farthest reaches of northeastern Russia. But it also belies the tragic history of the region in the Stalin era, when the Soviet government sent upwards of one million prisoners to Magadan for servitude in the hard labor camps of the Kolyma and Chukodsa. In the national consciousness, the city has for many years held a unique and vexing significance, all the more intense because so many thed on the neighboring tundra. Standing as the most notorious center of the gulag, indeed as its "capital," Magadan became synonymous witii the Great Terror.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , Winter 1998 , pp. 791 - 812
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Stuthes. 1998

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References

I wish to thank Donald J. Raleigh, David Griffiths, Gerhard Weinberg, and the three anonymous readers for Slavic Review for dieir comments and suggestions, as well as the International Research and Exchanges Board and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for generous fellowships that supported this work.

1. For instance, see Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, trans. Whitney, Thomas P. (New York, 1974), 1–2: ix-xGoogle Scholar. The most famous account of the camps in the Magadan region, translated into English as a two-part memoir, remains that of Ginzburg, Evgeniia, Journey into the Whirlwind, trans. Stevenson, Paul and Hayward, Max (New York, 1967)Google Scholar, and Ginzburg, , Within the Whirlwind, trans. Ian Boland, with an introduction by Boll, Heinrich (New York, 1981)Google Scholar. These reminiscences have now been published in Magadan under the original title Krutoi marshrut (Magadan, 1992). See also Shalamov, Varlam, Kolyma Tales, trans. Glad, John (New York, 1994)Google Scholar.

2. Among others, see Ivanova, G. M., GULAG v sisteme totalitarnogo gosudarstva (Moscow, 1997)Google Scholar; Tsaplin, E. V., “Arkhivnye materialy o chisle zakliuchennykh v kontse 30-kh godov,” Voprosy istorii, 1991, nos. 4–5: 157–63Google Scholar; Arch Getty, J., Rittersporn, Gabor, and Zemskov, Viktor N., “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence,” American Historical Review 98, no. 4 (October 1993): 1017–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jakobson, Michael, Origins of the Gulag: The Soviet Prison Camp System, 1917–1934 (Lexington, 1993)Google Scholar; and Harris, James R., “The Growth of the Gulag: Forced Labor in the Urals Region, 1929–31,” Russian Review 56, no. 2 (April 1997): 265–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For related works, see also Volkogonov, Dmitri, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, ed. and trans. Shukman, Harold (Rocklin, Calif., 1992)Google Scholar, as well as Khlevniuk, Oleg V., 1937-i: Stalin, NKVD, i sovetskoe obshchestvo (Moscow, 1992)Google Scholar; Khlevniuk, , Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930-e gody (Moscow, 1996)Google Scholar; and Khlevniuk, , In Stalin's Shadow: The Career of “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze, ed. Donald J. Raleigh with the assistance of Kathy S. Transchel, trans. David J. Nordlander (Armonk, N.Y, 1995)Google Scholar.

3. My work also addresses issues raised by earlier monographs on the gulag or secret police, including those by Conquest, Robert, Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Conquest, , The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Conquest, , Inside Stalin's Secret Police: NKVD Politics, 1936–1939 (Stanford, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dallin, David J. and Nicolaevsky, Boris I., Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New Haven, 1947)Google Scholar; and Swianiewicz, S., Forced Labour and Economic Development: An Enquiry into the Experience of Soviet Industrialization (London, 1965).Google Scholar

4. For further reference to this well-known debate, see Cohen, Stephen F., Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917 (New York, 1985)Google Scholar, as well as the discussion among Cohen, Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Eley, Geoff, Kenez, Peter, and Meyer, Alfred in Russian Review 45, no. 4 (October 1986): 357–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For some of the classic revisionist standpoints, see Arch Getty, J., Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938 (New York, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rittersporn, Gabor T., Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications: Social Tensions and Political Conflicts in the USSR, 1933–1953 (New York, 1991)Google Scholar. Among other works, see also Weinberg, Robert, “Purge and Politics in the Periphery: Birobidzhan in 1937,” Slavic Review 52, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 13–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. My work has benefited from several important stuthes on the Stalin era, including, in brief, Tucker, Robert, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington, 1977)Google Scholar; Fitzpatrick, , Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934 (Cambridge, Eng., 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kotkin, Stephen, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995)Google Scholar; and Rassweiler, Anne, The Generation of Power: The Planning and Construction of Dneprostroi (Oxford, Eng., 1988)Google Scholar.

6. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, l-2: ix-x.

7. My analysis of Dal'stroi for this article rests upon the primary materials in a number of archives in both Moscow and Magadan: in Moscow, Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (RTsKhIDNI); and Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF); in Magadan, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Magadanskoi oblasti (GAMO); Otdelenie spetsial'nykh fondov, Informatsionnyi tsentr Upravlenii vnutrennykh del (OSF ITs UVD).

8. See A. G. Kozlov, “Svetloe nachalo Magadana,” Reklamnaia gazeta, 7 March 1989, 8.

9. For more information on the Sovietization of native groups throughout Siberia and the Soviet Far East, see Slezkine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, 1994).Google Scholar

10. The term bright beginning found common usage in the late 1980s as Soviet authors searched for positive episodes in the history of Magadan that could balance its image as a gulag capital. For example, see Kozlov, “Svetloe nachalo Magadana,” 8.

11. See Lukin, I. I., Pervostroiteli: Iz istorii stroitel'stva na Krainem Severo-Vostoka SSSR (Magadan, 1986), 5–8.Google Scholar

12. For Sovnarkom discussions of these matters, see GARF, f. 5446, op. 10a, d. 483, 10, 12 (Sovnarkom materials).

13. Ibid., 1. 14.

14. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 746, 1. 11 (Politburo protocols).

15. Ivanova, GULAG v sisteme totalitarnogo gosudarstva, 31.

16. For further information on Luks and his cohort, see Kozlov, A. G., Magadan: Konspekt proshlogo (Magadan, 1989), 9–15.Google Scholar

17. For example, see RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 853, 1. 5 (one of Stalin's presentations recorded in the Politburo protocols); f. 17, op. 3, d. 843, 1. 1 (report by Ordzhonikidze); f. 17, op. 3, d. 852, 1. 2 (report by Rudzutak); f. 17, op. 3, d. 869, 1. 5 (reports by Mezhlauk and Akulov); f. 17, op. 3, d. 876, 1. 6 (report by Iagoda).

18. GARF, f. 5446, op. 12a, d. 79, 1. 23 (Sovnarkom materials). For more on Deribas, who was at the time a major figure within the secret police, see Conquest, Inside Stalin's Secret Police, 14—16.

19. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 860, 1. 9 (Politburo protocols).

20. For more particulars on the birth of Dal'stroi, see GAMO, f. r-23ss, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 1 (top secret orders of the Dal'stroi director).

21. See “Luchshii chekist—tverdyi Bolshevik,” Kolymskaia pravda, 7 November 1934, 2. For a modern assessment that more objectively reveals the conundrums facing Berzin's career in Magadan, see A. G. Kozlov, “Pervyi direktor,” Politicheskaia agitatsiia, September 1988, no. 17: 28–31. For Berzin's official appointment as director of Dal'stroi, see GAMO, f. r-23ss, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 2.

22. A. S. Navasardov, “Dal'stroi: Pervye stranitsy istorii,” Magadanskaia pravda, 3 June 1990, 3.

23. Stalin had strengthened such control after the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934, where he had introduced a plan reorganizing the party apparatus to augment central power. See Tucker, Stalin in Power, 252–54.

24. See Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 62.

25. For a general analysis of the Soviet bureaucracy in regard to Magadan, see Shirokov, A. I. and Etlis, M. M., Sovetskii period istorii Severo-Vostoka Rossii (Magadan, 1993), 12 Google Scholar. For more on the functioning of Stalin's “command-administrative system,” see Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 557–66.

26. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 905, 11. 52–54 (Politburo protocols).

27. On the various commissions established in Moscow to oversee Dal'stroi's activities, see GARF, f. 5446, op. 16a, d. 79, 11. 4–16 (Sovnarkom materials). Stalin's careful oversight, particularly in relation to budget issues and economic plans, has been revealed in other sources, such as his letters to Molotov. For example, see Lih, Lars T., Naumov, Oleg V., and Khlevniuk, Oleg V., eds., Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925–1936, trans. Fitzpatrick, Catherine A. (New Haven, 1995), 234–35.Google Scholar

28. For an example of Berzin's detailed response to central directives on these types of issues, see GAMO, f. r-23s, op. 1, d. 7, 11.123–27 (secret orders of the Dal'stroi director).

29. Secret instructions from either Iagoda or Deribas concerning the establishment of a new department within the camp administration, for example, were also transmitted through specific OGPU channels. See OSF ITs UVD, f. 1, op. 1, d. 2, 11. 20–22 (orders of the OGPU plenipotentiary in Magadan).

30. The cited event occurred on 13 November 1934. See RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 954, 1. 1 (Politburo protocols).

31. On the makeup and convening of the commission, see RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 904, 1. 6 (Politburo protocols).

32. See Boris Piskarev and Evgenii Berling, “Tekhnologiia bezumiia,” Territoriia, 6, 8, 10 June 1995, 1.

33. For the intricacies of the didactic and bureaucratic role of the Moscow brigade in Magadan, see A. G. Kozlov, “Garanin: Legendy i Dokumenty,” Magadanskaia pravda, 12 October 1993, 3. For more on such central commissions sent across the USSR, see Medvedev, Roy, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, rev ed., ed. and trans. Shriver, George (New York, 1989), 511–12.Google Scholar

34. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 889, 1. 20 (Politburo protocols).

35. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 888, 1. 46 (Politburo protocols).

36. Stalin sent numerous high-level emissaries to distant regions to check up on the fulfillment of Kremlin orders. Some trips, like that of L. Z. Mekhlis to the Soviet Far East later in the decade, resulted in widespread purges. See Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 328.

37. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 840, 1. 9 (Politburo protocols).

38. Ibid., 1. 1.

39. T. S. Smolina, “Kolyma—god 1938,” Magadanskii komsomolets, 3 September 1988, 4.

40. For this and other examples, see Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 338–39. Stalin's control over executions nationwide has been highlighted as well by other authors. For example, see Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, 287.

41. For example, see GARF, f. 9401s, op. la, d. 36, 1. 122 (gulag records).

42. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 866, 1. 9; f. 17, op. 3, d. 905, 1. 52 (Politburo protocols).

43. See Trud, 4 June 1992, 1.

44. For an example of Moscow stationery, carefully preserved in Berzin's own file, see GAMO, f. r-23ss, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 1–10. For copies of Berzin's stationery, see ibid., 11. 160–66.

45. See GARF, f. 9401s, op. la, d. 9, 1. 340 (gulag records).

46. For an example of the Dal'stroi uniform, as worn by Berzin, see A. G. Kozlov, “U istokov Sevvostlaga,” Kolyma, 1992, no. 12: 28. For a comparison with the dress of NKVD administrators in Moscow, see Sovetskaia Kolyma , 2 February 1938, 1. In later years, as the regional gulag grew in importance, official attire became more elaborate throughout Magadan.

47. GAMO, f. r-23s, op. 1, d. 17, 1. 3 (secret orders of the Dal'stroi director).

48. For other examples, see GAMO, f. r-23s, op. 1, d. 8, 1. 6.

49. The Politburo voted on all funding for Dal'stroi, an amount later funneled through Sovnarkom. See GARF, f. 5446, op. 16a, d. 79, 11. 4–16 (Sovnarkom materials). Stalin's personal role in the establishment of budgetary targets has been revealed in several sources, including his directives to Sovnarkom and the Central Committee. See Lih, Naumov, and Khlevniuk, eds., Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 236.

50. For example, see GARF, f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 135, 1. 1 (Sovnarkom materials).

51. Berzin had carefully researched this purchase (seemingly from a mail-order catalogue!), for in his lobbying effort he had suggested to the Soviet leadership that Caterpillar products could be purchased in America for 20 percent less than prices offered by subsidiaries in Europe. For this interesting interlude, see GARF, f. 5446, op. 9s, d. 907, 11. 3, 6 (Sovnarkom resolutions).

52. The camera and film cost $24, 518, which Sovnarkom released for the Dal'stroi purchase. GARF, f. 5446, op. 13, d. 1471, 1. 2 (Sovnarkom materials).

53. For Iagoda's order, see GAMO, f. r-23ss, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 8.

54. Ibid.

55. Dal'stroi in fact revisited this problem numerous times. For the correspondence between lagoda and Kuibyshev, as well as the Sovnarkom resolution, see GARF, f. 5446, op. 15a, d. 1159, 11. 2–3 (Sovnarkom materials).

56. GARF, f. 5446, op. 15a, d. 1174, 1. 1 (Sovnarkom materials).

57. GARF, f. 5446, op. 14a, d. 657, 1. 10 (Sovnarkom materials).

58. For example, see OSF ITs UVD, f. 1, op. 1, d. 2, 11. 4–5.

59. On the renaming of the native reindeer transport team in honor of Berzin, see Vernyi put', 7 November 1934, 5. For other examples of the regional “cult of personality” surrounding the director of Dal'stroi, see A. G. Kozlov, Magadan: Konspekt proshlogo, 23.

60. For this statement, see GAMO, f. r-23, op. 1, d. 2, 1. 139.

61. GAMO, f. r-23ss, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 67–118.

62. GAMO, f. r-23, op. 1, d. 2, 1. 171.

63. Navasardov, “Dal'stroi: Pervye stranitsy istorii,” 3.

64. For more on how this mechanism of central political control strengthened over the course of the 1930s, see Piskarev and Berling, “Tekhnologiia bezumiia,” 1.

65. For a number of these penalties, see RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 872, 1. 3 (Politburo protocols).

66. See Shirokov and Etlis, Sovetskii period istorii Seuero-Vostoka Rossii, 11.

67. See A. G. Kozlov, Magadan: Konspekt proshlogo, 33.

68. A. G. Kozlov, “Zolotoi iubilei,” Politicheskaia agitatsiia, June 1989, 21–25.

69. GAMO, f. r-23ss, op. 1, d. 5, 11.14–20 (top secret orders of the Dal'stroi director).

70. GAMO, f. r-23ss, op. 1, d. 6, 1. 55 (top secret orders of the Dal'stroi director).

71. S. M. Mel'nikov, “Dal'stroi: Stranitsy istorii,” Kolyma, 1993, nos. 9–10: 46.

72. The totals for both the Soviet labor camp system in general and Dal'stroi in particular are from the gulag's own internal statistics kept biweekly in central and regional record books. For 1932 statistics in Magadan, see GAMO, f. r-23ss, op. 1, d. 6, 1. 55; for 1940 statistics, refer to GARF, f. 9414, op. 1 supplement, d. 364, 11. 1–70 (gulag statistics). See also Vilenskii, S. S., ed., Soprotivlenie v GULAGe: Vospominaniia, pis'ma, dokumenty (Moscow, 1992), 121 Google Scholar; and Shirokov and Etlis, Sovetskii period istorii Severo-Vostoka Rossii, 14.

73. For some of the higher estimates, spread throughout their work, see Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago; Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment; Medvedev, Let History Judge, and Antonov-Ovseenko, Anton, The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny, trans. Saunders, George, with an introduction by Cohen, Stephen F. (New York, 1981).Google Scholar

74. See Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years,” 1017–49. Before the opening of the Soviet archives, Stephen Wheatcroft became engaged in an often polemical dispute on these issues with Steven Rosefielde and Robert Conquest, as well as with Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver. Some of the earliest debates can be found in a series of articles in Soviet Stuthes in the early 1980s, followed by a continuation in Slavic Review later in the decade. For example, see the “Ongoing Discussion” in Slavic Review 45, no. 2 (Summer 1986): 295–313, and 48, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 724–31. For a more recent compendium of Soviet prison statistics, see Zemskov, V. N., “Zakliuchennye v 1930-e gody: Sotsial'no-demograficheskie problemy,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 4 (July-August 1997): 54—79.Google Scholar

75. For his calculations on prisoner counts and deaths in the northeastern region, see Conquest, Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps, 227–28.

76. By contrast, Robert Thurston has argued against this sentiment in some of his works. See Thurston, , “Fear and Belief in the USSR's ‘Great Terror': Response to Arrest, 1935–1939,” Slavic Review 45, no. 2 (1986): 213–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Thurston, , Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia (New Haven, 1996).Google Scholar

77. Earlier critiques against the “new cohort” of revisionists raised similar complaints. See Russian Review 45, no. 4 (October 1986): 357–413. See also Arch Getty, J. and Manning, Roberta, Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (New York, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78. Rittersporn has minimized Stalin's role so extensively as to make him a rather minor player even in the late 1930s. For example, see Rittersporn, Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 183–221. Getty likewise undervalued Stalin's primary role in much of Soviet decision making. For more on his argument, see Getty, Origins of the Great Purges, 203–4.

79. This last point has been argued in other works as well. For example, see Shishkin, Vladimir I., “Moscow and Siberia: Center-Periphery Relations, 1917–30,” in Kotkin, Stephen and David, Wolff, eds., Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East (Armonk, N.Y., 1995), 83–86.Google Scholar

80. See again the works of Volkogonov, Khlevniuk, and Ivanova, among others.