Stalin полностью

A number of factors made such a terror possible. The Communist party underwent periodic “purges” to root out those deemed unworthy—because of background, beliefs, or inability to carry out responsibilities—and these long-standing practices that normally led to expulsion and possible arrest were ramped up to certain arrest and likely execution. Moreover, the very fact of the long history of party expulsions, even without arrest, had created a multitude of individuals who could be seen as potentially dangerous. The terror was also propelled by the bureaucratic imperatives and careerism of a formidable repressive apparatus that had been built up over many years, especially as a result of collectivization-dekulakization, as well as a pervasive fear in the ranks of the NKVD for their own lives. Additionally, the highly organized monopoly public sphere could be—and now was—ordered to disseminate charges of mass sabotage and spying. Even in the largest cities, tiny numbers of correspondents and editors—local Mekhlis equivalents—could fan mass hysteria. Public receptiveness to the charges, in turn, was facilitated by the widely shared tenet that building socialism constituted an adversarial crusade against myriad “enemies” at home and abroad, and by the circumstance that the system was not supposed to have a new elite, but did. The new elite’s apartments, cars, servants, concubines, and imported luxuries were often visible, while workers and farmers lived in hovels and went hungry. This did not mean that every ordinary Soviet inhabitant was eager for the blood of bigwigs, but few tears were shed.

The terror, like every aspect of Soviet reality, also depended upon isolation. Foreigners were kept from Soviet inhabitants, and the number permitted to go abroad, even on official business, shrank to the point that Stalin could examine delegation lists for approval (or not).³⁴ But the key to it all lay in the nature of Communism as a conspiracy to seize and hold power. Everywhere the mechanism for the terror was the same: a secret party circular from Stalin ordering a still more vigilant hunt for “enemies,” a local party meeting, a summons to Bolshevik “criticism,” further denunciations, pandemonium. Just a handful of “activists,” who understood the vocabulary of invective or insinuation to tear down rivals and protect themselves, could precipitate chain reactions of annihilation in which millions became complicit in additional meetings in factories, farms, schools. This was intentional, to achieve scale. The frenzy never escaped Stalin’s ability to shape and ultimately stop it. Still, often the denouncers were denounced right back by those they had aimed at, in a circular firing squad. And if a person defended someone accused of being an enemy of the people, well, then, that was proof that he or she, too, was an enemy.³⁵ Even if one merely inquired about a coworker who had suddenly stopped showing up, one could be accused of harboring “ties” or “sympathies.”³⁶ Party and state officials, in other words, became trapped in the twisted logic of the system they had helped create. They accepted that foreign capitalist powers would never accept the success of the Soviet Union, that “dying classes” could not be expected to go quietly, that socialism had myriad enemies, but now these loyal Soviet officials were themselves the enemy.

STALIN AND THE STATE