158. Sochineniia, XII: 173–4. Stalin was deferential to Gorky, explaining in a letter in Feb. 1930 to an editor about the republication in Gorky’s Collected Works of his essay about Lenin from 1925 that “if comrade Gorky expresses doubts or—more than that—does not agree to introduce the changes, . . . then it will be necessary to publish the articles without any changes.” Gorky refused to make the changes. Maksimenkov, Bol’shaia tseznura, 173–4 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 822, l. 7, 8–9), 183 (l. 10: Feb. 28, 1930), 183–4 (f. 4, op. 2, d. 474, l. 29–30: A. A. Strunov, 1957).
159. On Feb. 2, 1930, an OGPU secret instruction to the special departments watching over the Red Army instituted a registry of soldiers found to have connections to “kulak elements.” Soldiers observed in anti-Soviet activities were to be arrested. Suvenirov, Tragediia RKKA, 61; GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d. 1944, l. 17–25. Stalin also, yet again, dispatched grain plenipotentiaries. Davies, Socialist Offensive, 267.
160. He added of the brave new world of anti-market statization: “If we do not put an end to the flood of paperwork, it will drown us. We conquered Denikin and Yudenich, Wrangel and various counterrevolutionary scoundrels, but paper will asphyxiate us.” Ikonnikov, Sozdanie i deiatel’nost’, 212 (citing RGASPI, f. 85, op. 27, d. 27, l. 9).
161. A politburo decree of Jan. 30, 1930, divided the “kulaks” into three categories: “active counterrevolutionaries,” estimated at 60,000 people, were to be “sentenced” extrajudicially either to execution or internment in camps by “troikas” consisting of the local OGPU chief, provincial party boss, and local procurator; those in the second category, around 1.5 million people, were to be dispossessed and deported to uninhabited or sparsely inhabited places; and those in the third, some 2 million, were to be left in place, for now, but expropriated and not allowed to join collective farms. Danliov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 126–30 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 162, d. 8, l. 64–9). See also Viola, Best Sons, 216. Messing had asked Molotov to explain the party’s policy to the OGPU collegium on Jan. 30–31, 1930, but Stalin rejected the request: a Central Committee directive to the OGPU was not a matter of discussion. Mozokhin and Gladkov, Menzhinskii, 259–61 (no citation); Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 151–5 (TsA FSB, f. 2os., op. 8, d. 35, l. 2–8).
162. KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (7th ed.), II: 528. A volunteer’s employer was supposed to pay for transportation, top off the lower collective-farm wages, and accept the worker back in the future. Many factories resisted releasing their workers. Pravda, Dec. 30, 1929; Viola, Best Sons, 35, 41, 56–7.
163. In Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Siberia, the regime deployed OGPU border guards as well (both groups inflicted and took casualties). Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 405–9 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 329, l. 59–65: May 3, 1930). Officials had propagated the notion that collectivization would produce a “sharp improvement in the qualities of the human material available for the army.” But soon the army political directorate warned (Sept. 8, 1930) of “sharpening kulak moods in the army” and a flood of peasant letters “asking the soldiers ‘to defend the peasantry, to turn their guns against Soviet power.’” Gaevskii, “Kolkhoznoe stroitel’stvo”; Romano and Tarchova, L’Armata Rossa, 354–8 (RGVA, f. 9, op. 28, d. 161, l. 80–4). See also Tarkhova, “Krasnaia armiia,” 114. The families of soldiers would eventually be exempted from dekulakization. But the Red Army political administration would not pronounce the political atmosphere among the soldiery stable until the end of 1932 (a time of famine). By the end of 1933, discharges would rise to at least 37,000. Tarkhova, Krasnaia armiia, 131, 204; Zdanovich, Organy, 313–4 (citing TsA FSB, f. 66, op. 1 d. 208, l. 111), 314n134.
164. Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 52 (citing GASO, f. 1148, op. 148 r/2, d. 65, l. 39).
165. The 23–29 age cohort accounted for just 28.6 percent of the industrial work force. Kuromiya, “Crisis of Proletarian Identity,” at 296n101, citing Politicheskii i trudovoi pod”em rabochego klassa SSSR, 1928–1929 gg. (Moscow, 1956), 545; Meyer, Sozialstruktur sowjetischer Industriearbeiter, 139.
