31. Ordzhonikidze, Stat’i i rechi, II: 284–301. There were 728 attendees. Pervaia vsesoiuznaia konferentsiia rabotnikov sotsialisticheskoi promyshlennosti. Stalin crossed out or softened barbed references to bourgeois specialists from the original draft of his speech to the conference of industrialists on Feb. 4, 1931; a politburo resolution of Feb. 20 would indicate concern about the number of engineers arrested and their disposition. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 22960, l. 7, 9, 23; f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 139. On April 10, the politburo would allow industrial specialists convicted of wrecking to work in prison institutes, which would play a significant part in Soviet industrial design. Viktorov, Bez grifa “sekretno,” 169; Westwood, Soviet Locomotive Technology, 88–9, 163. On June 23, 1931, in a speech to industrialists (“New Conditions, New Tasks”), Stalin would belatedly absolve bourgeois specialists as a class, though not specific individuals, a turnabout echoed by Pravda (June 25). Sochineniia, XIII: 51–7; Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution, 263–86; Sochineniia, XIII: 72–3. A note to Stalin (Nov. 26, 1931) would list 1,087 imprisoned specialists who had been handed over to economic agencies; industry had placed requests for another 700. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i VChK, 287–8 (APRF, f. 3, op. 58, d. 143, l. 15–6: Akulov). By fall 1931, many “bourgeois” specialists were amnestied, and the police began to restore specialists who had not been executed to work. Dzanovich, Organy, 438.
32. “O zadachakh khoziaistvennikov,” Pravda, Feb. 5, 1931, reprinted, with changes, in Sochineniia, XIII: 38–9. “The country ought to know its heroes,” Pravda wrote (March 6, 1931). “The outstanding shock worker, the inventor, the rationalizer who has mastered production technology—this is the hero of the land of socialism under construction.”
33. Il’in, Bolshoi konveier, 143–50; 1933 god, 104–9.
34. In Sochineniia, XIII: 41. In Sept. 1929, culminating a year-long campaign, unified management (edinonachalie) had been formally introduced for industrial enterprises: the manager was supreme, not the party cell or the technical director, who was usually a “bourgeois” specialist. Kuromiya, “Edinonachalie and the Soviet Industrial Manager, 1928–1937”; Gregory, Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy, 57–9. On Aug. 23, 1931, the regime would award sole decision- making powers for both military and political issues to the military commanders over the political commissars. “Letopis’ stroitel’stva sovetskikh vooruzhennykh sil 1931 god (mai-iiul’),” 122–3.
35. Directives from above tasked local communists and Communist Youth League organizers with drawing up lists, usually in a few frantic days, and the police placed special boxes in rural soviets, schools, or streets to solicit denunciations. Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 241.
36. Peasant letter writers called for establishing collective farms without haste on a voluntary basis, and respecting churches. Zelenin, Stalinskaia ‘revoliutsiia sverkhu,’ 17 (RGAE, f. 7486, op. 37, d. 194, l. 252); Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule, 252. Officials more often took notice of the village solidarity: “in many villages the kulaks were seen off by the whole population, in tears of sympathy,” the party boss of the Tatar autonomous province reported to Stalin. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 822, l. 43.
37. Although category I “kulaks”—those subject to exile to remote regions or execution—had been envisioned at around 60,000, the actual number turned out to be 283,717 for the period from Jan. 1 to Oct. 1, 1930, half of them following the tactical retreat of “Dizzy with Success.” Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, II: 704 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 329, l. 198–212: Nov. 17, 1930); Viola, “Role of the OGPU,” 21, 43n82. In the Urals, the typical dekulakized household had one cow, one horse, three sheep, a modest family residence and stable, a bath-house, a storehouse, and between six and eight acres of sown land. Bedel’ and Slavko, “Iz istorii raskulachennykh spetspereselentsev,” 12. See also Scott, Behind the Urals, 17–8.
38. Yagoda ordered this situation corrected, informing operatives that it was “not obligatory to seize by the quota.” But there was no state medal for trailing the overachievers. Berelowitch and Danilov, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD, III/i: 107–9 (TsA FSB, f. 2, op. 8, d. 41, l. 38–41).
