The Lost Politburo Transcripts: From Collective Rule to Stalin's Dictatorship

280 Pages·2008·0.823 MB·English

by  Paul R. Gregory, Prof. Norman Naimark

The Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin,
Stalinism, and the Cold War
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Edited by
PAUL R. GREGORY and NORMAN NAIMARK
The Lost Politburo Transcripts
FROM COLLECTIVE RULE TO
STALIN’S DICTATORSHIP
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, California
Yale University Press
New Haven &
London
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book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.
Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip
Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College.
Copyright ∫ 2008 by Yale University and the Board of Trustees of the Leland
Stanford Jr. University.
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The lost Politburo transcripts: From collective rule to Stalin’s dictatorship / edited
by Paul R. Gregory and Norman Naimark.
p. cm. — (The Yale-Hoover series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War)
‘‘Published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and
Peace, Stanford University.’’
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-13424-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. TSK KPSS. Politbiuro—History—Sources. 2. Soviet Union—Politics and gov-
ernment—1917–1936—Sources. I. Gregory, Paul R. II. Naimark, Norman M.
JN6598.K7L598 2008
324.247%075—dc22
2008021449
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on
Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
I. Introduction
1. Findings and Perspectives 3
Norman Naimark
2. The Politburo’s Role as Revealed by the Lost Transcripts 16
Paul Gregory
II. The Power Struggle
3. Stalin in the Light of the Politburo Transcripts 41
Hiroaki Kuromiya
4. ‘‘Class Brothers Unite!’’ The British General Strike and the Formation
of the ‘‘United Opposition’’ 57
Alexander Vatlin
5. Stalin, Syrtsov, Lominadze: Preparations for the ‘‘Second Great
Breakthrough’’ 78
Oleg Khlevniuk
v
vi Contents
6. The ‘‘Right Opposition’’ and the ‘‘Smirnov-Eismont-Tolmachev
Affair’’ 97
Charters Wynn
III. Discourse, Ideology, and Propaganda
7. The Way They Talked Then: The Discourse of Politics in the Soviet
Party Politburo in the Late 1920s 121
Robert Service
8. Making the Unthinkable Thinkable: Language Microhistory of
Politburo Meetings 135
Leona Toker
9. The Short Course of the History of the All-Union Communist Party:
The Distorted Mirror of Party Propaganda 165
Rustem Nureev
IV. Economic Policy
10. Grain, Class, and Politics During NEP: The Politburo Meeting of
December 10, 1925 181
R. W. Davies
11. The Politburo on Gold, Industrialization, and the International
Economy, 1925–1926 199
David M. Woodruff
12. Prices in the Politburo, 1927: Market Equilibrium versus the Use of
Force 224
Mark Harrison
Bibliography 247
List of Contributors 259
Index 261
Acknowledgments
There are any number of institutions and individuals who made this
publication possible. It would not have been possible without the support of
the Hoover Institution, which entered into a cooperative agreement with the
Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (Kirill Anderson, Direc-
tor), the Russian Archival Service (V. P. Kozlov, Director) and Rosspen pub-
lishers (Andrei Sorokin, Publisher) to organize and publish the thirty-one
newly discovered Politburo transcripts in their entirety.
The decision to initiate this project was a bold one, for at the time there was
little information as to whether the transcripts covered substantive Politburo
meetings. We therefore wish to thank John Raisian, Director of the Hoover
Institution, and Richard Sousa, Senior Associate Director, for their support.
We wish as well to thank Lora Soroka of the Hoover Institution for her
considerable assistance. The painstaking work of compiling the transcripts
was done admirably by a team of archivists, led on the Russian side by Oleg
Khlevniuk and Alexander Vatlin, both of whom have contributed essays to
this volume. We also thank the dedicated staff of Russian archivists headed by
Marina Astakhova who scoured the transcripts and pieced together fragments
from other archives to provide a complete record.
Thanks are also due to Yale University Press, in particular to Jonathan
Brent, for assistance in establishing the joint Yale-Hoover series, of which this
vii
viii Acknowledgments
volume serves as one of the first publications. We are grateful for the careful
reading of the manuscript and comments by Lynne Viola. We also would like
to acknowledge the contribution of Hiroaki Kuromiya, who read the manu-
script in full and made valuable comments. Gavin Lewis is also to be thanked
for his excellent editing work.
Paul Gregory
Norman Naimark
I
P A R T
Introduction