Stalinism: Its Nature and Aftermath: Essays in Honour of Moshe Lewin

306 Pages·1992·31.34 MB·English

by  Nick Lampert

STUDIES IN SOVIET HISTORY AND SOCIETY
General Editors: R. W. Davies, Professor of Soviet Economic Studies, University of
Birmingham and E. A. Rees, Lecturer in Soviet History, University of Birmingham
Gregory D. Andrusz
HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN TilE USSR
Lynne Attwood
THE NEW SOVIET MAN AND WOMAN
John Barber
SOVIET HISTORIANS IN CRISIS, 1928-32
Judy Batt
ECONOMIC REFORM AND POLITICAL CHANGE IN EASTERN EUROPE: A
Comparison of the Czechoslovak and Hungarian Experiences
R. W. Davies
FROM TSARISM TO THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY: Continuity and Change in the
Economy of the USSR (editor)
SOVIET HISTORY IN THE GORBACHEV REVOLUTION
Stephen Fortescue
THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND SOVIET SCIENCE
Philip Hanson
TRADE AND TECHNOLOGY IN SOVIET-WESTERN RELATIONS
Jonathan Haslam
SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY, 193(}...41
Volume 1 THE IMPACT OF THE DEPRESSION, 1930-33
Volume 2 THE SOVIET UNION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR COLLECTIVE SECURITY
IN EUROPE, 1933--39
Volume 3 THE SOVIET UNION AND THE THREAT FROM THE EAST, 1933-41
(forthcoming)
Volume 4 SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY, 1939-41 (forthcoming)
THE SOVIET UNION AND THE POLmCS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE,
1969-87
Malcolm R. Hill and Richard McKay
SOVIET PRODUCT QUALITY
Peter Kneen
SOVIET SCIENTISTS AND THE STATE: An Examination of the Social and Political
Aspects of Science in the USSR
Ronald I. Kowalski
THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY IN CONFLICT: The Left Communist Opposition of 1918
Nicholas Lampert
THE TECHNICAL INTELLIGENTSIA AND THE SOVIET STATE: A Study of Soviet
Managers and Technicians, 1928-35
Nicholas Lampert
WHISTLEBLOWING IN THE SOVIET UNION: Complaints and Abuses under State
Socialism
Nicholas Lampert and Gl\bor T. Ritterspom (editors)
STALINISM: ITS NATURE AND AFTERMATH
Robert Lewis
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRIALIZATION IN THE USSR
Neil Malcolm
SOVIET POLITICAL SCIENTISTS AND AMERICAN POLmCS
Silvana Malle
EMPLOYMENT PLANNING IN THE SOVIET UNION: Continuity and Change
David Mandel
THE PETROGRAD WORKERS AND THE FALL OF THE OLD REGIME: From the
February Revolution to the July Days, 1917
THE PETROGRAD WORKERS AND THE SOVIET SEIZURE OF POWER: From the July
Days 1917 to July 1918
Catherine Merridale
MOSCOW POLITICS AND THE RISE OF STALIN: The Communist Party in the Capital,
1925-32
E. A. Rees
STATE CONTROL IN SOVIET RUSSIA: The Rise and Fall of the Workers' and Peasants'
Inspectorate, 1920-34
Christopher J. Rice
RUSSIAN WORKERS AND THE SOCIALIST-REVOLUTIONARY PARTY THROUGH
THE REVOLUTION OF 1905-{)7
Richard Sakwa
SOVIET COMMUNISTS IN POWER: A Study of Moscow during the Civil War, 1918-21
Jonathan R. Schiffer
SOVIET REGIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY: The East-West Debate over Pacific Siberian
Development
Nobuo Shimotomai
MOSCOW UNDER STALINIST RULE, 1931-34
Roger Skurski
SOVIET MARKETING AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Daniel Thorniley
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET RURAL COMMUNIST PARTY, 1927-39
J. N. Westwood
SOVIET LOCOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY DURING INDUSTRIALIZATION, 1928-52
Professor Moshe Lewin
Stalinism: Its Nature
and Aftermath
Essays in Honour of Moshe Lewin
Edited by
Nick Lampert
and
Gabor T. Rittersporn
in association with the
Palgrave Macmillan
© Nick Lampert and Gabor T. Ritterspom 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
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or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
First published 1992 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-12262-2 ISBN 978-1-349-12260-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-12260-8
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
04 03 02 01 00 99 98
Contents
List of Tables vii
Preface ix
Notes on the Contributors xiii
1 Grappling with Social Realities: Moshe Lewin and
the Making of Social History
Roland Lew 1
2 Demons and Devil's Advocates: Problems in
Historical Writing on the Stalin Era
Vladimir Andrle 25
3 Gorbachev's Socialism in Historical Perspective
R. W. Davies 48
4 The Tsar, the Emperor, the Leader: Ivan the
Terrible, Peter the Great and Anatolii Rybakov's
Stalin
Maureen Perrie 77
5 The Omnipresent Conspiracy: On Soviet Imagery
of Politics and Social Relations in the 1930s
Gabor Tamas Rittersporn 101
6 Soviet Peasants and Soviet Literature
Alec Nove 121
7 Masters of the Shop Floor: Foremen and Soviet
Industrialisation
Lewis H. Siegelbaum 127
8 Urban Social Mobility and Mass Repression:
Communist Party and Soviet Society
Hans-Henning Schroder 157
9 Construction Workers in the 1930s
Jean-Paul Depretto 184
10 Nationality and Class in the Revolutions of 1917: a
Re-examination of Categories
Ronald Grigor Suny 211
v
vi Contents
11 The Background to Perestroika: Political Undercurrents
reconsidered in the light of recent events
Peter Kneen 243
12 Legality in Soviet Political Culture: a Perspective on
Gorbachev's Reforms
Peter H. Solomon, Jr. 260
Index 288
List of Tables
Table 7.1: Numbers of managerial and
engineering-technical personnel 135
Table 7.2: Educational background of foremen (in %) 136
Table 7.3: Social background, Party saturation and
gender of foremen 138
Table 8.1: Numerical growth and qualification of
technical engineering and economic specialists
in Soviet industry, 1929 and 1933 159
Table 8.2: Membership figures for the VKP(b) 1927-41
(full members and candidates) 167
Table 8.3: Distribution of Party members (full members)
in the Leningrad area according to duration of
membership 169
Table 8.4: Graduates 1928-37, and specialists as listed in
the census of January 1941 172
Table 8.5: Incidences of death in the years 1934-9 of
members of the generation born in 1906 173
Table 8.6: Estimates of the mortality rate in the Soviet
Union 1920-38 (incidences of death per 1000
inhabitants) 174
Table 8.7: Proportion of men in the age-cohorts of the
Soviet population on 17.1.1939 (in% of the
number of women of the corresponding
age-group) 175
Table 8.8: Occupations of newly-admitted candidates in
the Leningrad area 193(}-40 179
Table 9.1: Personnel employed in building (annual
average in thousands) 185
Table 9.2: Personnel employed in building (thousands) 186
Table 9.3: Rates of raw material consumption and
investment in construction 188
Table 9.4: Growth of productivity in the building trade 189
Table 9.5: Forced labour: the role of the NKVD in total
(planned) production in 1941 200
vii
Preface
Nick Lampert
In this volume a number of specialists in Russian and Soviet studies
acknowledge their debts to a scholar who has been an inspiration in
their field over the past twenty-five years, and who, approaching the
start of his eighth decade, continues to work with undiminished
vigour. The contributors - from the USA, Continental Europe and
Britain - are not all well-known to each other, but they share one
thing: a respect for the work of Moshe Lewin, who has greatly
enriched our understanding of Soviet history and thus of the recent
transformations in the USSR.
The title of our Festschrift relates to a central preoccupation in
Lewin's work - the inter-war period of social and political upheaval
which made a profound impact upon the character of the Soviet
system. But the scope of Lewin's contribution is even broader than
this suggests. It moves backwards and forwards in the attempt to
grasp the overall dynamic of Soviet history, the relationship between
Stalinism and the Tsarist past, and the ways in which, in its very
formation, Stalinism prepared the ground for its demise.
There are several distinguishing features of Lewin's approach,
which together make up a powerful synthesis. Starting with his first
book, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, published when the author
was already in his forties and had a rich and varied life experience
behind him, he brought to Soviet studies a new sense of the interplay
of socio-economic, cultural and political forces. The cold-war climate
of the post-war period had encouraged a singularly one-dimensional
approach to the study of the Soviet Union in the West-an approach
in which the 'total' claims of Soviet ideology and politics were all too
often taken at face value. This perception, whether given a plus or a
minus sign, was so strong that for many of us {the editors included)
the first acquaintance with Lewin's work in the late 1960s had the
quality of a revelation. For the first time we gained a sense of the
complex relationship between political and social developments and
the dynamic that they contained. Such a dynamic might be taken for
granted in other contexts, but it had been successfully screened out of
public consciousness by the cold war and by sheer ignorance about
Soviet society that prevailed in the West.
ix