Another kind of fear: The Kirov murder and the end of bread rationing in Leningrad

Slavic Review

Volumn 56, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 481-499

  Rimmel, Lesley A ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0347499596     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2500926     Document Type: Article

References (114)

1. For a discussion of the leading western interpretations of the murder, see J. Arch Getty, "The Politics of Repression Revisited," in J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning, eds., Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, Eng., 1993), 42-49.
2. E.g., Leningradskaia pravda, 2 and 4 December 1934.
3. In a popular version of his biography of Kirov, S. V. Krasnikov wrote that after news of the murder was broadcast over the radio late on 1 December, "the city on the Neva became blanketed in deep mourning. On that night, stunned Leningraders sobbed in their workshops, on the streets, and in the squares, at home." Krasnikov, S. M. Kirov v Leningrade (Leningrad, 1966), 95.
4. See, e.g., Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (New York, 1958), 302, 422;
5. Oleg V. Khlevniuk, 1937-i: Stalin, NKVD, i sovetskoe obshchestvo (Moscow, 1992), 52;
6. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York, 1994), 291-93.
7. This is in effect mostly a study of the negative opinions, which is not to say that positive reactions to rationing did not exist. In many cases it is impossible to tell from these reports whether the positive statements represent true belief or instead reflect fear, apathy, ignorance, or the desire to please the authorities. The authors of these reports usually insisted that positive opinions constituted the "overwhelming majority," while opponents of the regime claimed the opposite. Proregime views were invariably couched in language identical to that of the government (as it appeared in the newspapers), while antiregime sentiment was usually expressed in colloquial, not to mention quite earthy, language. This study also uses reports on popular dispositions collected by the Leningrad branch of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD). For a more extensive discussion of sources used for this work, and for the demographics of the population studied, see Lesley A. Rimmel, "The Kirov Murder and Soviet Society: Propaganda and Popular Opinion in Leningrad, 1934-35" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1995), chap. 1, esp. 38-43.
8. E. H. Carr and R. W. Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929 (New York, 1969), vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 702.
9. Elena A. Osokina, Ierarkhiia potrebleniia: O zhizni liudei v usloviiakh stalinskogo snabzheniia, 1928-1935 gg. (Moscow, 1993), 16, 19-20, 30, and 97 (I thank Julie Hessler for bringing this work to my attention);
10. Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930-e gody (Moscow, 1996), 122-25.
11. Leningradskaia pravda, 30 November 1934. The November 1934 Central Committee resolution claimed that "the state now has at its disposal a sufficient quantity of grain to provide for all of the population's needs without rationing; instead there will be an expansion of the grain trade throughout the country." KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s''ezdov, 7th ed. (Moscow, 1957), pt. 2:80.
12. Stalin initiated the reform and was its most fervent supporter; at the November 1934 plenum, he apparently had to berate skeptical Central Committee members for their "insufficient grasp" of the new policy's significance. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 122, 125-27.
13. Leningradskaia pravda, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, and 20 December 1934.
14. From S. V. Krasnikov, Sergei Mironovich Kirov: Zhizn' i deiatel'nosti (Moscow, 1964),
15. quoted and translated in Borys Levytsky, comp., The Stalinist Terror in the Thirties: Documentation from the Soviet Press (Stanford, 1974), 38.
16. Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-politicheskikh dokumentov goroda Sankt-Peterburga (TsGAIPD), f. 25, op. 5, d. 47 (Leningrad City Party Committee, Department of Leading Party Organs [ORPO], Information Sector), l. 31. See also d. 52 (Leningrad City Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), l. 1.
17. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 46 (Leningrad City Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), l. 134. See also ll. 68, 116, 125, 131-33; d. 52, ll. 127, 128; d. 48 (Leningrad City Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), l. 28. The policy was officially announced by Sovnarkom chairman V. M. Molotov; see Leningradskaia pravda, 29 November 1934.
18. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 44 (Leningrad City Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), l. 16. A party member, Mil'nov, disagreed that Shvarts had said this; an investigation was forthcoming.
19. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 47, l. 21.
20. Ibid., l. 2.
21. See also Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York, 1996), esp. 187, where the author discusses "women's central role in the domestic economy" and their consequent initiative in protesting change, as their "subsistence ethic . . . taught peasants that experimentation could be dangerous." This could, and did, apply equally to urban subsistence.
22. Roberta Manning notes that the ending of rationing meant "the growing availability of consumer goods for those with money and influence to acquire them." Manning, "The Soviet Economic Crisis of 1936-1940 and the Great Purges," in Getty and Manning, eds., Stalinist Terror, 139.
23. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 44, l. 22.
24. See, for example, TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 49 (Leningrad City Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), l. 55, where Pligina, working at the October Car Repair plant, welcomed the new policy "as a woman [who had to] spend so much time looking for bread." See also d. 47, l. 55.
25. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 110.
26. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 46, l. 116. This is not to say that many men did not have strong views on the subject, especially as they were often the primary breadwinners. Nevertheless, they apparently did not express themselves as vocally as women did. See also Grigory Alexandrovich Tokaev, Betrayal of an Ideal, trans. Alec Brown (Bloomington, 1955), 181-82, 195, and 278-79, for an example of a once-poor but now better-off person praising the end of rationing and, having lost contact with the poor for the previous two years, attributing to them the same sentiments as his own.
27. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2291 (Leningrad Oblast Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), l. 24. At this time, Opochetskii raion had one of the lowest percentages (38.8 percent) of collectivized households in the oblast. V. A. Seleznev and A. Ia. Starikova, comps., Kollektivizatsiia sel'skogo khoziaistva v severo-zapadnom raione (1927-1937 gg.) (Leningrad, 1970), 19.
28. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2291, ll. 55, 116. Also d. 2290 (Leningrad Oblast Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), l. 3 (Kaduiskii raion), and l. 9 (Starorusskii raion), where housewife Rinkevich suggested that workers killed Kirov because he reduced their rations. Krasnogvardeiskii raion also had fewer collectivized households at this time, possibly because of highly developed craft industries and fisheries. Seleznev and Starikova, comps., Kollektivizatsiia sel'skogo khoziaistva v severo-zapadnom raione, 19.
29. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2291, l. 43. A pood is equal to 16.3 kilograms. Market prices for a pood were even higher, and this hurt workers as well as peasants. See Osokina, Ierarkhiia potrebleniia, 40-41, 45-46.
30. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 46, l. 25.
31. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 52, l. 8.
32. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 45 (Leningrad City Party Committee, ORPO Information Sector), l. 10.
33. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 108.
34. Ibid., l. 102.
35. In her path-breaking study of resistance to collectivization, Lynne Viola emphasizes the destruction of most urban-rural ties during this period (and earlier, during the civil war, through requisitions). Yet although the fragile smychka created by the communists may have been broken, party policies in turn helped create a new, if unintended, version. See Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin, e.g., 8, 12-16, 25, 141.
36. Il'ia E. Zelenin, "Kollektivizatsiia i edinolichniki (1933-i-pervaia polovina 1935 g.)," Otechestvennaia istoriia, 1993, no. 3:47.
37. For demographic characteristics of the newcomers, many of whom had migrated illegally, see A. R. Dzeniskevich, "Izmeneniia v sostave promyshlennykh rabochikh Leningrada v gody industrializatsii (1926-1932 gg.)," in Zakharii V. Stepanov, ed., Rabochie Leningrada v bor'be za pobedu sotsializma: Sbornik statei (Leningrad, 1963), 175;
38. and Viktor N. Zemskov, "Sud'ba 'kulatskoi ssylki' (1930-1954 gg.)," Otechestvennaia istoriia, 1994, no. 1:119-20, 122-23.
39. Seleznev and Starikova, comps., Kollektivizatsiia sel'skogo khoziaistva, esp. 8, 92, 130, 179-80, 256-63, 330-37.
40. See also K. T. Egorov, ed., Bastiony revoliutsii: Stranitsy istorii Leningradskikh zavodov, pt. 3, Rabochie goroda Lenina v bor'be za sotsialisticheskoe stroitel'stvo v derevne (Leningrad, 1960), 13;
41. and also I. A. Ivanov, "Pomoshch' Leningradskikh rabochikh v kollektivizatsii sel'skogo khoziaistva podshefnykh raionov," in Stepanov, ed., Rabochie Leningrada v bor'be za pobedu sotsializma, esp. 196-98;
42. and V. M. Ivanov, Po zovu partii: Sbornik vospominanii i statei leningradtsev-dvadtsati-piatitysiachnikov i tridtsatitysiachnikov (Leningrad, 1961), 14, where the author writes that Leningrad "25,000ers" received two weeks of training in kolkhoz politics and agriculture before leaving for the countryside.
43. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2680 (Leningrad Oblast Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), ll. 100-101.
44. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 45, l. 10.
45. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 45. See also d. 46, l. 53ob., where a survey by a partkom member of the Academy of Sciences found that the scientists were not overly concerned about the new prices but that the lower-paid workers worried that wage increases would not offset the price hikes.
46. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 52.
47. According to Moshe Lewin, some producer prices were raised in 1935, but they remained "inadequate" and on the whole were hardly altered between 1928 and 1953; they certainly did not maintain parity with prices for manufactured consumer goods. See Lewin, "'Taking Grain': Soviet Policies of Agricultural Procurements before the War," in Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York, 1985), 169.
48. A kolkhoz market, in which peasants could charge higher prices, did exist. Thus some Leningrad peasants may have benefited from the higher prices there. But the bulk of the farm produce was requisitioned by the government, which paid low prices. See also Lazar Volin, A Century of Russian Agriculture, from Alexander II to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 251-52,
49. and Il'ia E. Zelenin, "Kolkhozy i sel'skoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1933-1935 gg.," Istoriia SSSR, 1964, no. 5:19-20.
50. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2291, l. 4.
51. E.g., TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2290, ll. 80, 89.
52. Zelenin, "Kollektivizatsiia i edinolichniki," 45.
53. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2290, l. 25.
54. Ibid., l. 78. The raion secretary, Smirnov (who wrote this report), noted that the NKVD was investigating this incident. See also Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants, 156, 157, on the gradual lessening of antagonisms between individual and collectivized peasants.
55. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2291, l. 32.
56. Lynne Viola, "The Second Coming: Class Enemies in the Soviet Countryside, 1927-1935," in Getty and Manning, eds., Stalinist Terror, 96, 98,
57. and throughout Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin.
58. Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants, 9, 10, and 335n6.
59. Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, with the assistance of Laura Banfield (New York, 1967), e.g., 83, 110-11.
60. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 45, l. 98. See also d. 45, l. 6 and TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2291, ll. 20, 46 (in the latter two cases, the belief that the policy would be abrogated was explicitly expressed). Because of her "lack of consciousness," Sapozhnikova was merely reprimanded rather than expelled.
61. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2291, l. 3.
62. Kirov's portliness was the subject of numerous comments, especially from those who had viewed the open casket. For example, the worker Podola from the Bebel' factory rhetorically asked, "What did Kirov ever do for workers, besides develop a paunch?" TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 47, l. 109.
63. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2290, l. 29ob.
64. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 51 (Leningrad City Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), l. 12.
65. Ibid., l. 58.
66. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2290, l. 29.
67. A good discussion of this tendency can be found in Diane P. Koenker, "Introduction: Social and Demographic Change in the Civil War," 51,
68. and Koenker, "Urbanization and Deurbanization in the Russian Revolution and Civil War," esp. 84 and 100, both in Diane P. Koenker, William G. Rosenberg, and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Party, State and Society in the Russian Civil War: Explorations in Social History (Bloomington, 1989).
69. TsGAIPD, f. 25., op. 5, d. 48, l. 55.
70. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 46, l. 3ob. See also l. 155.
71. The few comments on elections that appeared in reports were often hostile, such as those of Sergeeva, a former Komsomolka of the Fourth Metal-Imprint plant, who, reacting to the upcoming end of rationing, said of Stalin's candidacy, "And we even have to reelect that idiot." TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 46; see also d. 49, ll. 117.
72. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 8. See also l. 104, where discussion leaders were hard put to keep people's comments centered on the Trotskii-Zinov'ev opposition, the topic of the day (1 January 1935).
73. For example, the worker Lavitskii at the Red Dawn plant, TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 52, l. 149. Also TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2290, l. 64ob.
74. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 52, l. 127ob.
75. Ibid., l. 138.
76. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 53.
77. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 5, ch. 3, d. 2290, l. 48.
78. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 45, l. 112.
79. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 46, l. 27. (The peasant-born poet Sergei Esenin committed suicide in 1925.)
80. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 54.
81. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 46, l. 109. The report hastens to add that the overall mood of the workers was "satisfactory."
82. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 44, l. 26. The head of Bakery no. 52, Neiman, and the (unnamed) deputy head of Bakery no. 48 both agreed that the repeal of rationing would increase opportunities for corruption: "There'll be a lot of blat, since the store managers will get the delivery people tipsy [podpaivat'], and those managers will then receive better goods, while those who don't engage in bribery will get lower quality goods." Ibid., l. 22.
83. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 46, l. 125; also d. 45, l. 80.
84. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 45, l. 105. See also Osokina, Ierarkhiia potrebleniia, 63-73, for concrete confirmation of these comments. Such criticisms of communist privilege echo earlier complaints during a similar (if more extreme) period of transition from rationing to the market in 1920-21. See Mary McAuley, Bread and Justice: State and Society in Petrograd, 1917-1922 (Oxford, 1991), 302-3.
85. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 46, l. 106.
86. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 110 (implying that those who do not labor get cognac). The New Year brought forth a lot of snide and sarcastic remarks - such as one from Pashuk of the Red Vyborger plant, who greeted his fellow workers with the remark, "Happy New Year - today macaroni will cost 55 kopeks" (S novym godom, s novym schast'em - segodnia makarony 55 kopeek, ibid., l. 109).
87. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 46, l. 4ob.
88. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 49, l. 116. Nearly twenty years earlier, in 1915, Aleksei Khvostov, the tsarist minister of internal affairs, had similarly declared, "politics depends on the stomach," as he launched bread supply projects that he claimed "struck his fellow ministers as equivalent to socialism." Cited in Lars T. Lih, Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921 (Berkeley, 1990), 36.
89. See also Mary McAuley, "Bread without the Bourgeoisie," in Koenker, Rosenberg, and Suny, eds., Party, State and Society in the Russian Civil War, 164, where, during the hungry spring of 1919, with strikes breaking out over rations at the Putilov works and at other Petrograd plants, "a party spokesman reporting on a meeting in Smolny with a nonparty delegation from a large factory argued: 'The stomach has become all important.'"
90. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 103; also d. 45, l. 96. For a party member to criticize government policy in front of nonmembers was a serious infraction of party discipline. The comment was reported to the raion konfliktnaia troika.
91. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 46, l. 126; also d. 46, l. 125 and d. 45, l. 80.
92. This group was called First Section of the Unorganized Population - i.e., those segments of the population that were not already encompassed by the workplace or school structure.
93. TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 48, l. 53. The report noted that, upon investigation, Shelonina was found to be the wife of a communist: "The husband makes 300 rubles and does not want for anything materially."
94. There was, of course, much complaining during the period of rationing as well. See Osokina, Ierarkhiia potrebleniia, 40-42.
95. The "nearly dozen" Magnitogorsk workers of the 1930s whom Stephen Kotkin interviewed in the 1980s told him that rationing had been "widely appreciated" and that the government was expected to "provide for the people" as a matter of "social justice." Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995), 268, 269.
96. At the Seventeenth Party Congress, however, Stalin himself labeled as "leftist blather" any notion that rationing was a higher stage of socialism. See Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 126.
97. "O meropriiatiakh sviazannykh s vypolneniem resheniia noiabr'skogo plenuma TsK VKP(b) 'Ob otmene kartochnoi sisteme po khlebu i nekotorym drugim produktom,'" Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (RTsKhIDNI), f. 17, op. 21, d. 2700 (Leningrad Oblast Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), ll. 110-13. (This was the copy for the Central Committee's files.)
98. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 2v, ch. 2, d. 1188 (Special Sector, NKVD Reports on Leningrad), ll. 141-42. The report stated that 28 tons were needed, although only 13 tons were delivered in January and only 8 tons in February.
99. TsGAIPD, f. 24, op. 2v, ch. 2, d. 1188, l. 96.
100. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the actual effects of the new bread policy. A recent account argues that Leningrad, previously one of the most privileged areas during the rationing regime, suffered a setback in terms of overall consumption. According to E. A. Osokina, this change was the result of an intentional policy on the part of the central government, which used its control of access to consumption as a lever: the city of Leningrad was to be collectively punished as the center of the "Trotskii-Zinov'ev opposition." Osokina, Ierarkhiia potrebleniia, 97-99.
101. See McAuley, Bread and Justice, 280, 285-86, 297.
102. See, e.g., nn. 13, 42, 80, and 83 above, which document investigations of cases of people expressing "unhealthy" opinions.
103. McAuley, Bread and Justice, 304;
104. Diane P. Koenker, "Men against Women on the Shop Floor in Early Soviet Russia: Gender and Class in the Socialist Workplace," American Historical Review 100 (1995): 1459.
105. McAuley, Bread and Justice, 295.
106. For example, TsGAIPD, f. 25, op. 5, d. 65 (Leningrad City Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), l. 96; see also d. 66 (Leningrad City Party Committee, ORPO, Information Sector), l. 77.
107. See Emily E. Pyle, "Village Social Relations and the Reception of Soldiers' Family Aid Policies, 1912-1921" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1997), chaps. 4 and 5;
108. Lih, Bread and Authority, 241-42, where the author discusses pre-Soviet antecedents of official and popular concern about hoarding and speculation;
109. McAuley, Bread and Justice, 296, 304, and 375 (quoting Alexander Berkman on how a young Chekist told him that "counterrevolutionaries" were "a menace, and it [was] a waste of food to feed them. They should be shot");
110. and Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin, 223, 227.
111. A.[leksandr N.] Afinogenov, Fear, in Eugene Lyons, ed., Six Soviet Plays (London, 1935), 585-89. I thank Lars Lih for bringing this play to my attention. See also "The Story of a Soviet Waif," the account of Stepan Kurilov, a Soviet émigré from World War II, who remembered fearing "hunger and cold" more than any punishment during the 1930s. David Dalin file, Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture, Columbia University, 6.
112. In the words of Gábor Támas Rittersporn, "The Omnipresent Conspiracy: On Soviet Imagery of Politics and Social Relations in the 1930s," in Getty and Manning, eds., Stalinist Terror, 106-7.
113. E.g., Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 341-44, 352;
114. cf. Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants, 287, 312, who notes the lack of "naive monarchism" among the peasantry during this period.