351. Kuibyshev, back on Aug. 2, 1932, in a speech not covered by the press but published in 200,000 copies, had told Moscow party officials that peasants lacked incentives—so he knew the score. Kuibyshev, Uborka, khlebozagotovki, i ukrelplenie kolkhovov: rech’ na sobranii dokladchikov Moskovskoi partiinoi organziatsii (Moscow, 1932), reprinted in Kuibyshev, Stat’i i rechi, V: 294–322; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 242. Ivnitsky points out that Stalin had denied he was forcing collectivization to solve the procurement problem; rather, Stalin claimed he was building socialism in the countryside. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie, 205.
352. Rees, Iron Lazar, 110, citing O kolkhoznom stroitel’stve (Moscow, 1932), 218; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, III: 520–1 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 21, d. 3377, l. 83), 575–7 (op. 3, d. 2025, l. 42–42ob.: Dec. 14, 1932); Graziosi, Soviet Peasant War, 67–8. “If one were to sack them one would have to sack half,” Kaganovich wrote to Stalin (Nov. 5) about the state farm directors. “We will have to remove some, and work on others. . . . Judges passed sentences, but no one carried them out. Clearly, in such a situation, they are mocking us.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganaovich, 298–9 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, l. 177–80). About 26,000 of the 120,000 rural Communists in the North Caucasus would be purged; another 30,000 would quit rather than submit to the procedure. Shimotomai, “Note on the Kuban Affair”; O kolkhoznom stroitel’stve (Rostov, 1932), 281–3, 286–90.
353. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 769, l. 108. In the wake of the North Caucasus purge, party organizations in Kazakhstan and Ukraine requested permission to purge their ranks. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 26, d. 54, l. 265; Tauger, “People’s Commisariat of Agriculture,” 298n99 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 907, l. 73/49–74/50).
354. Stalin also sent a secret telegram to OGPU plenipotentiaries to forward interrogation protocols on sabotage of grain procurement and embezzlement of collective farm property to “the Central Committee.” Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 201 (APRF, f. 3, op. 40, d. 84, l. 84: Nov. 29, 1932). Goloshchiokin replied immediately that severe repression was already under way, apologizing for not having informed Stalin earlier. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 197 (APRF, f. 3, op. 40, d. 83, l. 137), 198–9 (l. 138–138ob.).
355. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 74 (citing Sotsialisticheskoe zemledelie, Nov. 12, 16, 28, and Dec. 17, 1932).
356. Maximilien Savelev wrote the letter to Stalin (Nov. 19), indicating he had heard of the meeting from someone else (I. V. Nikolsky), a colleague of Eismont’s. Savelev and Nikolsky co-signed a second letter to Stalin (Nov. 22) with new details. They quoted the drunk Eismont as stating, “What is to be done! Either comrade Stalin, or peasant uprisings.” According to the informant, “Smirnov said that one speech by Stalin at the congress of Agrarians Marxists in a few days brought to nothing the results of his [Smirnov’s] three-year work to restore the herds.” Kozlov, Neizvestnaia Rossiia, I: 56–128 (at 66); Vatlin, Stenogrammy zasedanii politburo, III: 551–676 (at 642: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1011).
357. Mikoyan as well as Kirov, among others, inserted more fervid condemnations into the transcript when offered a chance to edit their remarks. Wynn, “‘Right Opposition,’” 97–117. Stalin removed his heckling of Smirnov. The crisis atmosphere was well summarized by the émigré press: Sotsialisticheski vestnik, Nov. 26, 1932.
358. Serge, Portrait de Staline, 94–5. Serge gives no date for the rumored resignation, vaguely referring to a time after Nadya’s suicide and before the 17th Party Congress. Serge was in Moscow then. Deutscher has Stalin asking to resign in late 1932. Deutsher, Stalin, 333–4.
359. He underscored the many nonaggression pacts as evidence of his success, asserting that capitalists do not sign such pacts with the weak, and once again blamed food difficulties on kulak saboteurs, their silent middle-peasant supporters, and soft (or worse) rural party officials. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l. 141–2. See also Davies and Harris, Stalin’s World, 52. Stalin’s gloss on the countryside was fed back to him in the secret police reports. Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, 446–52 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 43, l. 75–95), 472–6 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 10, d. 520, l. 699–708), and 488–9 (d. 514, l. 145–7).
