Siberian communists were put on notice that an immediate increase in grain procurements was demanded. Unlike Ukraine and the north Caucasus, Siberia — which had supplied a third of Soviet wheat exports — had experienced a warm summer. Stalin was determined to extract the grain from its kulak owners. He and a select group of party functionaries set off by train from Moscow on 15 January 1928. Politicians like Mikoyan, Kirov, Zhdanov, Shvernik, Postyshev and Kosior made similar trips, accompanied by thousands of party officials, to the agricultural regions of the USSR.4
State grain procurements had tumbled to only 70 per cent of the total obtained a year before. The difficulties had arisen from the Politburo’s mishandling of the economy. Since 1926 several measures had been introduced to squeeze additional revenue from the private sectors. A class tax was levied on the kulaks: fiscal revenue from them rose by over 50 per cent in 1926–7. ‘Evil-intentioned’ hoarding of industrial and agricultural products was in 1926 made a criminal offence under Article 107 of the Criminal Code. Surcharges were imposed on the traffic of private goods on the railways. The government expropriated many private flour-mills. These measures followed the reorientation of immediate economic objectives proposed by Stalin and Bukharin at the Fourteenth Party Congress in December. Party policy was being geared to an accelerated pace of industrialisation through a steady expansion of state capital accumulation. This emphasis was reaffirmed in July 1926. Gosplan — the State Planning Committee, which was responsible for drawing up a plan for the country’s economic development — was told to prepare for a situation where enterprises would become subject to greater instruction and supervision. Moves were made towards bringing the entire economy under central governmental authority.5
Politburo members became impatient about the NEP; and as they turned policy in the direction of radical change they committed themselves to the socialist and industrialising aims of the makers of the October Revolution. In opting for rapid and fundamental change they were intensifying the transformation of the USSR in the direction of ‘modernity’. The vestiges of the old order were to be eradicated. Irked by Trotski, they wished to demonstrate their credentials. They also knew that the slow pace of economic transformation made fertile soil for the United Opposition’s propaganda among party leaders in the provinces6 — and despite the ceaseless political centralisation since mid-1918 there was reason for the ascendant leaders to fear a sudden flaring up of resistance to their supremacy. But they believed in what they were doing. Stalin lived for Bolshevism; but he combined ideological adherence with feelings towards his rivals — jealousy, rancour and vengefulness — that were far from pure.
The predictable consequence of the economic measures from 1926 was the disruption of the market economy. Even before hacking at the roots of the NEP, Stalin — together with Bukharin until the expropriations of January 1928 — had been giving them a serious bruising. They had disturbed the garden still earlier by lowering prices for products from state-owned factories as a means of resolving the ‘scissors crisis’ in 1923. The effect was cumulative. A shortage of goods was reported as traders bought up what was available. Three years later Stalin and Bukharin also brought down prices they were willing to pay for grain. The result was a decline in the marketing of the cereal harvest. The two leading individuals in the Politburo had competed with each other in incompetence. Only one of them, Bukharin, saw the error of his ways by indicating to the Central Committee that retail prices needed to be raised to avoid calamity. Stalin faced him down. He had had enough: the NEP in its early years had restored the economy but could not secure industrial advance at a pace rapid enough for Politburo members. The Central Committee plenum in February 1927 backed the measures taken in the previous year.
