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The Lost Politburo Transcripts: From Collective Rule to Stalin's Dictatorship (The Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War) PDF

280 Pages·2008·5.82 MB·English
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The Yale-Hoover Series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War This page intentionally left blank 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 Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this 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. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Sabon by Keystone Typesetting, Inc., Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania. Printed in the United States of America by Thomson-Shore, Inc., Dexter, Michigan. 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

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