Sooner or later, as even Nikolai Bukharin thought, the market had to be eliminated from the economy and the social elements hostile to socialism — the kulaks, the nepmen, clergy, ‘bourgeois specialists’, nationalists and supporters of all other political and cultural trends — had somehow to disappear. The need for a wholly state-owned economy and state-directed society was the shared objective of leading Bolsheviks. They did not flinch at the use of force. Hardened by their experiences before and after the October 1917 Revolution, they were more than willing to ensure compliance by crude methods. The frustrations of the NEP were immense. The military threat from abroad did not fade and the technological gap between the USSR and the West was growing. Loyal supporters of the ascendant party leadership, moreover, were embarrassed by oppositionists who declared that they had betrayed the objective of the Revolution led by Lenin. Such a mentality offered a framework of assumptions inside which it was possible for Stalin to make his piecemeal proposals from 1928 and to count upon substantial support in the wider party.
Stalin started with basic assumptions about the world. These came from his peculiar and distorted reaction to his Georgian background, to his experience of the revolutionary underground and to the Bolshevik variant of Marxism. Whatever the matter to be decided, he was never perplexed to the point of vacillation. His axioms did not prescribe policy in detail. By thinking and commanding according to his fundamental ideas, he could be instantly decisive. Any given situation might sometimes require much study — and Stalin worked assiduously even after the Second World War at keeping himself well informed. But most situations could be decided without a great deal of work; indeed Stalin could afford to leave them to his subordinates and demand reports on what had been decided. He surrounded himself with persons such as Molotov and Kaganovich who shared his assumptions, and he promoted others who could be trained to internalise them (or to go along with them out of ambition or fear). It is this inner world of assumptions which gives the clue about Stalin’s otherwise mysterious capacity to manoeuvre in the changing situations of the 1930s.
During the First Five-Year Plan the USSR underwent drastic change. Ahead lay campaigns to spread collective farms and eliminate kulaks, clerics and private traders. The political system would become harsher. Violence would be pervasive. The Russian Communist Party, OGPU and People’s Commissariats would consolidate their power. Remnants of former parties would be eradicated. ‘Bourgeois nationalists’ would be arrested. The Gulag, which was the network of labour camps subject to the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), would be expanded and would become an indispensable sector of the Soviet economy. Dozens of new towns and cities would be founded. Thousands of new enterprises would be created. A great influx of people from the villages would take place as factories and mines sought to fill their labour forces. Literacy schemes would be given huge state funding. Promotion of workers and peasants to administrative office would be widespread. Enthusiasm for the demise of political, social and cultural compromise would be cultivated. Marxism–Leninism would be intensively propagated. The change would be the work of Stalin and his associates in the Kremlin. Theirs would be the credit and theirs the blame.
Stalin in 1929 was determined to alter the USSR’s economic structures and practices. Gosplan was put under a political clamp and told to produce ever more ambitious versions of the First Five-Year Plan. The Politburo resolved that targets should be hit inside four rather than five years, and the officials of Gosplan were commanded to carry out the gigantic task of amending schemes involving the country’s industry, agriculture, transport and commerce. Warnings by experts against hyper-optimism were ignored. Whole new cities such as Magnitogorsk were constructed. Digging began of the White Sea–Baltic Canal. Engineering plants in Moscow and Leningrad were expanded; new mines were sunk in Ukraine, the Urals and the Kuznets Basin. Peasants in their millions were attracted into the expanding labour force. Skilled workers became managers. Factories were put on to a seven-day working week. American and German technology was bought with revenues which accrued from the rise in grain exports. Foreign firms were contracted to establish new plants and help train Soviet personnel. Educational facilities were expanded. Youth was promoted. A vast economic transformation was put in hand.
