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THE NEWS IN BRIEF, University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia, 19 June 1998, Vol 7 No 22
It is summer solstice in the USSR and General Secretary Stalin is at work by
5.45am. He is joined in his Kremlin office by commanders of the armed forces
and prominent members of the Politburo.
Stalin remains in his office until 4pm while various visitors such as Beria,
chief of the security services, clock in and out. At 12.05pm, Molotov, his
closest colleague in the Politburo, leaves the room and returns 20 minutes
later.
These administrative details mark the entry of the USSR into World War II in
1941. They are part of an extraordinary record of Stalin's office activities
recently released in Russia. Everyone who visited for a period of two and a
half decades from 1929 to 1953 was clocked in and clocked out in his
secretarie's notebooks.
What does this information and other secret details from the Soviet archives
tell us about one of the 20th century's most significant figures?
It means that we need to rewrite the political history of the Stalinist
period and reassess the role of Stalin, says Stephen Wheatcroft, Associate
Professor of History at the University of Melbourne.
"Much of the earlier political commentary on Stalin's period is based on
very slight acquaintance with primary material from inside the system,"
Professor Wheatcroft says.
He cites the record of Stalin's activities during the declaration of war.
When Molotov rather than Stalin announced on radio that Russia had declared
war on Germany, many people jumped to the conclusion that Stalin had broken
down.
The myth of Stalin as a mad dictator acting in isolation was largely
perpetuated by rumour and defectors to the West, and by Stalin's own
colleag ues who later were attempting to belittle their own involvement,
Professor Wheatcroft says.
The Kremlin records tell a vastly different story. "The world sees Stalin as
an individual tyrant but if you look at his meetings and the number of
people passing through his office there appears to have been a far greater
degree of collective responsibility," he says.
"We now know who Stalin's visitors were and can begin to understand how
the decision-making system really worked."
Resolutions before the Politburo were redrafted in committees in meetings
that typically lasted all night as members haggled over the wording of
decrees.
"All of the political action was in these redrafting committees. Stalin was
like a Sir Humphrey Appleby whose authority was initially based on his
efficiency as a decree redrafter.
"It is clear that the Politburo was a most amazing political organisation
unlike any other. A great many radical and terrifying decisions were made by
this oligarchy. It was a bureaucracy gone crazy."
Dr Wheatcroft heads an ARC-funded project using these records to analyse
Stalin's relationship with the major military, security, economic and
cultural figures of the day. The work is part of a collaborative project
with scholars in Moscow and the University of Birmingham.
In another ARC project he will use archival material recently released in
Russia to revise Soviet social and economic history of the Stalin period.
This period covered one of the most dramatic and influential transformations
the world has seen when the means of existence of over 100 million peasants
changed from private to collective agriculture.
Dr Wheatcroft was the first Western scholar to gain access to the monthly
registration data on mortality in the Ukraine and other parts of Russia
which document the tragic famines that followed collectivisation from 1931 -
1933.
He claims that these famines - publicly denied by the Politburo, which
suppressed census figures - were in fact the best recorded famines in
history.
"What is remarkable is that the authorities were collecting and keeping
mortality data which gives a detailed breakdown of the incidence of the
famine through the geographic regions of the USSR."
Data interpreted by Dr Wheatcroft show mortality in Ukraine rural areas rose
by up to five times the average rate. Researchers were also able to map the
progress of the famines. "Results from mass secret food consumption surveys
recorded peasant food consumption of as low as 830 Kcals per day in Odessa
Oblast and 1100 in Kiev Oblast in the first half of 1933," he says.
Analysis shows the populous towns of Moscow and Petrograd suffered most
from the early famines of 1918 - 1920, when millions of people were forced
into rural areas.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s urban mortality again began rising
sharply, and especially in comparison with rural mortality. At first this
was mainly in the Urals, Siberia, Volga and Black Earth regions of Russia.
Ukraine, which was to become the major famine area, was relatively well
protected until after the harvest of 1932. But from late 1932 and early
1933, when all other regions had been severely strained, there was a
devastating increase in attention on Ukraine and the North Caucasus, where
the famine reached its peak.
"Some people claim the famines were purposely carried out to attack
Ukrainian nationalism. Our conclusions are that there were major economic
problems associated with industrialisation. The famines developed as
unexpected consequences of over-ambitious plans."
Dr Wheatcroft admits that this research focuses on a very sensitive subject.
"Some of the old Cold War warrior types claim that the opening up of the
Soviet archives adds nothing new to the picture. Others say that this
research diminishes the unthinkable Great Terror by quantifying the deaths.
As a social scientist and an economic and social historian, I want to apply
social scientific methodology to make sense of this tragic story," he says.
THE NEWS IN BRIEF, University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia, 19 June 1998, Vol 7 No 22
http://www.unimelb.edu.au/ExtRels/Media/UN/archive/1998/319/
stalinismwasacollective.html FOR PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC USE ONLY
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