493. Stalin would later boast in a discussion of five historical turning points—1905, 1917, the Brest-Litovsk peace of 1918, the Russian civil war, “and especially collectivization”—that the latter entailed “a completely novel, historically unprecedented event.” Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 69 (Nov. 11, 1937).
494. The figure officially reported was 89.8 million tons (as of Oct. 1933), 20 million more than the wildly inflated 1932 official figure of 69.8 million. Davies and Wheatcroft, Years of Hunger, 446. The degree to which the regime contributed to the bumper harvest, by the distribution of tractors, seed aid, and food relief, remains a matter of intense controversy. Some of it was improvisation by local officials. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, 117–30. Tauger, seeking to place the Soviet story in a broader one of agricultural modernization, emphasizes how the collective farm system facilitated Soviet relief efforts and the peasants’ ability to generate the harvest that saved them and the country. Tauger, “Soviet Peasants”; Tauger, “Stalin, Soviet Agriculture, and Collectivization,” 109–42.
495. Famine conditions persisted into late fall 1933 and, in some places, would last through summer 1934. Ammende, Human Life in Russia, 80–4. In fall 1933, the regime was pressing for workers to cultivate gardens to grow their own food, on the example of Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Pavlov, Anastas Mikoian, 71 (citing RGASPI, f. 84, op. 2, d. 19, l. 125–6). Kazakhstan would be given 18,000 tons of food aid by decree on Nov. 28, 1933. Antipova et al., Golod v SSSR, 507 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 15, l. 142, 145, 148).
496. Kvashonkin, Sovetskoe rukovodstvo, 240–1 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 16, l. 7–9); Khromov, Po stranitsam, 158. Voroshilov, too, sent a letter to Yenukidze that month, doubtless aware the OGPU perlustrated his correspondence and the contents could get to Stalin. “A remarkable man, our Koba,” he wrote. “It is simply incomprehensible how he can combine the great mind of the proletarian strategist, the will of a statesman and revolutionary activist, and the soul of a completely ordinary kind comrade who bears in mind every detail and cares for everything that concerns the people he knows, loves, and values.” Kvashonkin, Sovetstskoe rukovodstvo, 241–2 (RGASPI, f. 667, op. 1, d. 17, l. 5–7: Voroshilov to Yenukidze, June 29, 1933). See also Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 186.
CHAPTER 3. VICTORY
1. Lunacharskii, “Puti i zadachi sovetskoi ramaturgii,” Literaturnana gazeta, Feb. 28, 1933, retitled (and not abridged) as “Sotsialisticheskii realism,” Sovetskii teatr, 1933, no. 2–3; reprinted in Lunacharskii, Sobranie sochinenii, VIII: 491–523 (at 497). Lunacharskii, in a draft text from around the same time, explained: “The socialist realist . . . may resort to all manner of hyperbole, caricature and utterly improbable comparisons, not to conceal reality but, via stylization, to reveal it.” Or, as he put it, “A Communist who cannot dream is a bad Communist,” Lunacharskii, Sobranie sochinenii, VIII: 615–6: RGASPI, f. 142, op. 1, d. 318, l. 15–21, Feb. 10, 1933. See also Louis Fisher, in Crossman, God that Failed, 205–6.
2. Hunter, “Optimal Tautness in Development Planning”; Hunter, “First Soviet Five-Year Plan”; Cheremukhin et al., “Was Stalin Really Necessary?”
