221. A decree of May 20, 1932, that lowered taxes on the legalized collective-farmers’ trade urged local officials to disallow “the opening of shops and kiosks by private traders,” adding that “middlemen and speculators trying to live off the workers and peasants must be extirpated everywhere.” Ball, Russia’s Last Capitalists, 81, citing Resheniia partii i pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam, 16 vols. (Moscow: Politicheskaia literatura, 1967–), II: 388–9.
222. Soviet officials had been discussing the market following the launch of “wholesale” collectivization, but the discussions could be deceiving. At the 17th party conference (Jan.–Feb. 1932), for example, the ideologue Alexei Stetsky had mentioned the imperative to “develop Soviet trade, the Soviet market,” but he meant state-controlled trade and markets. XVII konferentsiia VKP (b), 193. At the Jan. 1933 plenum, when Stalin would underscore the place of trade in a socialist economy, he would insist that “this is not a return to NEP.” Bordiugov and Kozlov, “Dialektika teorii i praktiki stsialisticheskogo stroitel’stva,” 14 (citing unspecified party archives).
223. Davies, Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 11–2.
224. Sandag and Kendall, Poisoned Arrows, 72–3. On Mongolia’s collectivization, see Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 11 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 73).
225. Bawden, Modern History of Mongolia, 290–327. A list of Mongol rebellions against Soviet domination can be found in Misshima and Goto, Japanese View of Outer Mongolia, 16–24. A purge would reduce the Mongol People’s Party from around 40,000 to 11,000. Lkhamsuren, Ocherki istorii Mongol’skoi narodno-revoliutsionnoi partii, 147.
226. At the same time as ordering dispatch of the goods, on March 16, 1932, the regime established a standing politburo commission for Mongolia headed by Postyshev, with Voroshilov, Karakhan, and Eliava as members. Instructions for the Soviet proconsul Okhtin were approved on April 23. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 18–20, 31, 92, 111–2; Baabar, Twentieth-Century Mongolia, 282–325 (esp. 317).
227. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 113; Terayama, “Soviet Policies toward Mongolia,” I: 37–66. Stalin emerges in the documents as trying to impose order amid conflicting reports, while venting his fury.
228. Kondrashin et al., Golod v SSSR, I/ii: 152–5 (GA Minskoi obl., f. 164p, op. 1, d. 132, l. 546–9).
229. Davies et al., “Stalin, Grain Stocks, and the Famine of 1932–33,” 650–1 (citing RGASPI, f. 79, op. 1, d. 375, l. 1–3; f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, 1. 153–4; GARF, f. 5446, op. 27, d. 33, 1. 127).
230. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 114–5 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 153; f. 82, op. 2, d. 138, l. 150–3: Redens to Molotov, May 28 and 29, 1932).
231. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 115–6.
232. Kosheleva, Pis’ma Stalina Molotovu, 243; Lih et al., Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 231 (before June 1932). During his summer 1932 holiday, Stalin received 91 registered documents, many lengthy. He did not answer all of them. A politburo commission (Kaganovich, Postyshev, Yenukidze) on fixing resorts recommended forming an all-Union agency; Stalin abstained from weighing in. The body was approved on June 23, 1932. Khlevniuk, et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 201 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 114), 201n (f. 17, op. 3, d. 881, l. 12, 29–31; d. 889, l. 9, 29; d. 895, l. 15).
233. Stalin added that only if the situation was truly beyond internal rescue, which he doubted, could Soviet troops be dispatched, and then only ethnic Buryats. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 173–4 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 37, l. 46–8: June 6, 1932), 174n3 (f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 133; f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 49–52), 174n5 (f. 17, op. 162, d. 12, l. 175); Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 136 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, l. 49–52: June 4, 1932), 143, 156–7, 182 (f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 76: June 19, 1932).
234. In a June 10 telegram, Stalin reiterated his opposition to overt military intervention in Mongolia to Molotov, Voroshilov, and Kaganovich. “A hurried and insufficiently prepared decision could provoke a conflict with Japan and give a basis for a united front of Japan, China, Mongolia against the USSR,” he warned. “We will be portrayed as occupiers . . . and the Japanese and Chinese as liberators . . .” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 157–8 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 77, l. 42–5).
