9. Following Mekhlis’s graduation in May 1930 from the Institute of Red Professors, Stalin had appointed him head of the Central Committee press department and, concurrently, to Pravda’s editorial collective; he took over as editor-in-chief in 1931, and would help boost Pravda’s circulation to 1.8 million, but Stalin worried about his ability to handle the load. Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovic, 37 (RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 100, l. 115–8: earlier than Aug. 6, 1931). See also Avtorkhanov, Tekhnologiia vlasti, 109–10, 116; and Rubtsov, Teni vozhdia, 81–2.
10. Stalin had stopped bothering to attend formal meetings of the party secretariat or orgburo. The latter functioned as a kind of permanently empowered commission of the politburo, while the former, from 1931, did not even refer questions to the politburo. Detached from even nominal politburo oversight, the central apparatchiks all reported to Stalin. Rosenfeldt, “Special” World. By 1933, secret department salaries were 30–40 percent higher than in the rest of apparatus. Khlevniuk, Master of the House, 53. At the government (Council of People’s Commissars), procedures stipulated “only in matters of special importance to refer them to the politburo,” but Molotov sought approval for all “sensitive” issues at the politburo. Rees, “Stalin as Leader, 1924–1937,” 33–5; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 823, l. 9.
11. The melding of zeal (“You will be masters of the whole world!”) and opportunism was often intense. But some speakers at the Communist Youth League Congress in Jan. 1931 mentioned a “desertion rate” of nearly half among Communist Youth assigned to the Donbass coal mines. Davies, Crisis and Progress, 10 (citing Ekonomicheskaia zhizn’, Jan. 22, 1931); Fisher, Pattern for Soviet Youth, 162, 257; IX Vsesoiuznyi s”ezd VLKSM.
12. Viola, “Peasant Nightmare,” 762; Davydenko et al., Put’ trudovykh pobed, 270–5.
13. Globally, learning how to mechanize production in concrete cases was easier said than done, and mass production was not readily achieved in some industries, or even in some countries. Kinch, “Road from Dreams,” 107–36. Soviet mass production, even more than in Germany, would be associated with producer (or capital) goods. There were fierce internal debates in the USSR about proper industrial organization, with references to American and German production experiences. Shearer, Industry, State, and Society.
14. Istoriia industrializatsii SSSR, 1926–1941. Stalin had offered a threefold justification for the crash Five-Year Plan the month after it launched: to catch and overtake capitalist countries; to ensure the Soviet Union’s ability to remain independent in the international system; and to furnish agriculture with machines because industry could not move forward without agriculture being modernized. Stalin, “Ob industrializatsii strany i o pravom uklone v VKP,” Sochineniia, XI: 245–90 (at 247–53).
15. Sutton, Western Technology, II. On Feb. 14, 1931, Mężyński reported to Stalin that at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant “extensive housing construction is being done completely unconnected to when the factory goes into production,” and that “not a single factory shop will be completed during the year.” Such a state of affairs was typical. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 261 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 9, d. 18, l. 162–3).
16. Lewis, “Technology and the Transformation of the Soviet Economy,” 196.
17. Davies et al., Years of Progress, xiv.
18. During the first Five-Year Plan, the urban labor force would rise from around 11.9 million to 22.9 million. Heavy industry would count more than 6 million employees in 1932, as against perhaps 3 million in 1928. Most newcomers came from villages. By 1932–33, between 45 and 60 percent of industrial workers had begun factory work in 1926 or later. Drobizhev, Industrializatsiia i izmeneniia, 4–5.
19. The first decree forbidding free movement of labor (Oct. 1930) was followed by one forbidding factory directors from hiring workers who had quit their previous employ without authorization. Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 419–30; Davies, Crisis and Progress, 26–7; Rees, Stalinism and Soviet Rail Transport, 44; Friedman, Russia in Transition, 218; Izvestiia, Jan. 14, 1931; Za industrializatsiiu, Feb. 14 and 16, 1931.
