214. Stalin also told the congress, “we are in favor of the state dying out, and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” He acknowledged the contradiction, but called it Marxist dialectics. In 1933, he would reiterate the point. Sochineniia, XIII: 211, 350. Engels had written in Anti-Dühring (1878) that “the interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself . . . The state is not ‘abolished,’ it withers away [es stirbt ab].” Engels, Unwälzung der Wissenschaft, 291–2.
215. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 17–57; Sochineniia, XII: 235–373. See also Davies, Socialist Offensive, 330–6. Stalin ridiculed “the complete absurdity of chatter about NEP being incompatible with an attack” on capitalist elements. Sochineniia, XII: 306–7. Select workers had been invited to deliver personal narratives to the congress, which became the first with no speeches against the leadership. Szamuely, “Elimination of Opposition.” Even after the opening of the archives, Szamuely’s article remains the most incisive on the problem of opposition to Stalin.
216. Shitts, Dnevnik, 195; Pavlova, Stalinizm, 68–9 (citing GARF, f. 1235, op. 133, d. 11, l. 28, 30). Shitts, born (1874) in Tambov, studied history with the medievalist P. Vinogradov at Moscow University, where he eventually got a position teaching Latin. In 1928 he became the editor of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. He would be arrested in 1933.
217. These words were omitted from Sochineniia, XII: 233, 234.
218. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 250–1, 372–5; Za industrializatsiiu, June 19, July 5, Oct. 8, 1930. On June 16, 1930, in his recognition of the newly opened Rostov Agricultural Engineering Works, Stalin also thanked “all those foreign specialists—engineers and technicians—who have helped.” Stikh, Zavod griadushchikh urozhaev, 22; Pravda, June 17, 1930.
219. Glan, Iakov Il’in, 235. See also Il’in, Bol’sheviki dolzhny ovladet’ tekhnikoi; Il’in, Liudi stalingradskogo traktornogo; and his incomplete posthumous novel Bol’shoi konveier (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1934). Il’in (b. 1905) died in Dec. 1932. Margaret Bourke-White, the photographer, observed at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory how “one Russian is screwing in a tiny bolt and twenty other Russians are standing around watching him, talking it over, smoking cigarettes, arguing . . . They are like children marveling over new toys. More than that, they are religious fanatics worshipping before a new shrine.” Bourke-White, Eyes on Russia, 118–9.
220. Boris Sheboldayev remarked at the congress (June 29): “In many party organizations we have witnessed demonstrations, both of the most straightforward right-wing opportunist and of the ‘leftist’ Trotskyite type, that for sheer boldness and effrontery surpass anything seen even at the height of our struggle with the rights.” XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 135–6.
221. While Mikoyan ripped into the “right deviation,” Rudzutaks told the delegates the rightists had engaged in “direct slander of the party, direct slander of comrade Stalin.” XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 39–44. The exiled Trotsky wrote that “the plebiscite regime has been established conclusively,” without acknowledging the root cause. Trotsky, “Preliminary Comments on the Sixteenth Congress” [July 25, 1930], II: 335–6.
222. Bukharin had known Larina since she was four. She had grown up in her stepfather Yuri Larin’s apartment in the Metropole, which was visited by top party officials, including Stalin. Bukharin lived one floor below. On the Black Sea he was still involved with Alexandra Travina—a lover planted on him (it seems she had miraculously appeared in the same coupé on the overnight train from Moscow to Leningrad). Larina and Bukharin would marry in 1934. “‘No ia to znaiu, chto ty prav’: pis’mo N. I. Bukharina I. V. Stalinu iz vnutrennei tiur’my NKVD,” 49 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 301, l. 129–33).; Gregory, Politics, Murder, and Love, 57–60, 67–9, 72–4; Larina, This I Cannot Forget, 107–12.
223. XVI s”ezd VKP (b), 142–8. Rykov was no coward: when criticized in person at a Urals party gathering in June 1930, he had responded forcefully and received an ovation.
224. Murin, Stalin v ob”iatiakh, 29–30 (APRF, f. 45, op. 1, d. 1550, l. 31–2).
