Contenu du sommaire : Les années 30 - Nouvelles directions de recherche

Articles

• Avant-propos - Jutta Scherrer, Andrea Graziosi p. 7
• Professional identity and the vision of the modern Soviet countryside [Local agricultural specialists at the end of the NEP, 1928-1929] - James W. Heinzen p. 9-25
  James W. Heinzen, Professional identity and the vision of the modern Soviet countryside: Local agricultural specialists at the end of the NEP, 1928-1929. This article discusses the position of rural agricultural and land specialists on the eve of the forced collectivization of the peasantry, before the violent and disorganizing nature of the drive was apparent. The study focuses on a group of specialists who have been neglected in the literature, yet who comprised one of the most important links between the Soviet regime and the peasantry during the period of the New Economic Policy. Very few were communists, and many were holdovers from tsarist land administration. The article uses archival and published materials to show that local agricultural and land specialists resented the fact that they were treated poorly relative to their peers in industry. Local specialists were also dissatisfied with their treatment by local Communist Party and soviet officials. Further, party officials appealed to these specialists at the end of the decade by explicitly appealing to their wounded professional identities. Many specialists saw in plans to modernize and urbanize rural Russia a chance vastly to improve their status and working conditions, while simultaneously carrying out their vision of a rationally organized countryside.
• Stalin and the Ital'ianka of 1932-1933 in the Don region* - D'Ann R. Penner p. 27-67
  D'Ann R. Penner, Stalin and the Ital'ianka of 1932-1933 in the Don region. The Soviet government's handling of the 1932 grain crisis and the subsequent famine, which killed at least 6.7 million Soviet citizens between 1932 and 1934, decisively changed the way peasants who experienced the famine's strongest waves viewed the regime. Villagers in these areas interpreted the famine as "artificial" and deliberately "organized." The peasants' version of the famine is examined here in the Don region — the northern half of what in 1932 was known as the North Caucasus Territory. The decisions made by the Soviet Communist Party from 1928 to 1932 to push forward short-sighted, counter-productive, and unpopular plans led to a breakdown in political relations between the peasantry and the Party. The dynamics between the Party and the collective farm workers in the second and critical phase of the grain-harvesting and -collecting season escalated the grain shortage from crisis to famine. Villagers' united, effective, and determined resistance was interpreted and responded to by the Central Party as a declaration of war against the Party, the cities, and the Red Army. Although the Communist Party did not have the power to create a famine, in the black-listed areas it did abet the process whereby shortage becomes famine, thereby making famine its partner in the subjugation of the villagers. Throughout the famine-stricken regions, famine was not only tolerated by the government even in the white-listed areas, but starvation politics were used to discipline and instruct. As a result, the Party lost what remained of support from the pro-Bolshevik farming peoples of the Don and the willingness to collaborate by more neutral villagers.
• Политика и идеология чрезвычайных мер между сталинской революцией сверху и большим террором, 1930-1936 гг. - Gennadij A. Bordjugov p. 69-79
  Gennadij A. Bordjugov, The policy and ideology behind emergency measures between the Stalinist revolution from the top and the Great Terror, 1930-1936. This article emphasizes the "crucial points" of the policy and ideology behind the emergency measures applied as a special means of administering the country. On the basis of "special files" of the minutes of the Politbiuro, it studies the limits and the causes of the transformation of the emergency measures into "chrezvychaishchina." This change in the measures applied weakened the social bases of Stalin's regime and undermined the foundations of the productive forces of the country. The author shows how the policy of taking drastic action, which was first applied to production (grain supply, etc.), was progressively extended to the problems of security and political control, and how those in power tried to find ways of preventing a shift towards "chrezvychaishchina."
• Une hiérarchie de la pauvreté [Approvisionnement d'État et stratification sociale en URSS pendant la période du rationnement, 1931-1935] - Elena A. Osokina p. 81-97
  Elena A. Osokina, A hierarchy of poverty. In the late 1920's and early 1930's, the development of forced industrialization in the USSR led to the disorganization of the market and to the state control of the economy. It Ls from this period that the state began to distribute material goods in society, giving priority to industry. The state supply of food and common consumer goods during the 1930's, while guaranting the vital needs of the population, coastituted one of the main foundation blocks in the establishment of a new social order. This article analyzes the government policy of food supply and shows that the first "state founded on social equality" in history presented a social stratification based on a hierarchy of poverty. The rural population was condemned to starvation by the state, while a majority of the urban population, including the pioneers of industry, was constantly undernourished. Even the ruling class, which possessed in its own country far more power than the élite of Western countries, was barely able, as far as material comforts were concerned, to reach the upper middle class standard of living in capitalist societies.
• The russification of the RSFSR - Terry Martin p. 99-117
  Terry Martin, The russification of the RSFSR. This article examines the Soviet state's attempts to deal with their "awkward nationality," the Russians, in the period from 1922 to 1938. Initially, Soviet policy called fora systematic de-emphasis of Russian national identity, on the grounds that their national self-assertion could both provoke non-Russian nationalism and threaten Soviet national unity. Russians, therefore, were denied many of the national institutions, such as a Russian Communist Party, granted to the non-Russian republics. The RSFSR was a compromise half-Russian, half-central institution, which did not function as a defender of Russian national interests. By 1933, the Soviet government had concluded that the de-emphasis of Russian national identity had failed to prevent the emergence of non-Russian nationalism and also provoked an undesirable level of Russian resentment. Therefore, from 1933 to 1938, they promoted a strategic "russification of the RSFSR," which involved an abolition of national minority institutions within the Russian oblasti of the RSFSR, in order to create a purely Russian national space. It was this policy that created a homogeneous Russian core and an ethnically mixed national periphery. This solution was also a compromise, which gave the Russians a place to feel at home nationally, but not a full-fledged ethnic Russian republic which might threaten the Soviet center. This latter development, which Stalin foresaw already in 1922, would occur only in 1990 under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin.
• Crime and social disorder in Stalin's Russia [A reassessment of the Great Retreat and the origins of mass repression] - David R. Shearer p. 119-148
  David R. Shearer, Crime and social disorder in Stalin 's Russia. Historians have traditionally regarded the middle years of the 1930's as a time of stabilization and accomodation. The era of the Great Retreat supposedly followed the revolutionary period of the early 1930's and preceded the sudden onslaught of a second period of state-induced violence in 1937 and 1938. Using police, NKVD, and other reports, this article questions such an interpretive periodization. Far from being an era of stabilization, the middle part of the decad witnessed continued social unrest — not in the form of overt, organized acts of opposition to the regime, but in terms of thousands of small (and often big) acts of disobedience and even violence directed against state property and representatives of Soviet power. The article distinguishes between the political purge process of state and party elites and the mass operations, known as the Great Terror, that began in the summer of 1937. By examining the patterns of crime and policing throughout the decade, this article shows that the so-called Great Terror did not descend on Soviet society suddenly, after a period of relative social peace. The mass operations of 1937 and 1938 are best understood as the culmination of a decade-long, largely failed, attempt to impose Soviet authority on an unruly population.
• The crime of "anti-Soviet agitation" in the Soviet Union in the 1930's - Sarah Davies p. 149-167
  Sarah Davies, The crime of "anti-Soviet agitation " in the Soviet Union in the 1930's. The article examines the prosecution of cases of "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" in the USSR in the 1930's. It traces how the crime originated in Soviet law after the revolution, and then examines how the article covering the crime (58. 10) was applied during the 1930's. It shows how definitions of what constituted anti-Soviet agitation fluctuated throughout this period. It was only with the onset of collectivization that large numbers of people began to be prosecuted for anti-Soviet agitation. In 1933-1934 an attempt was made to curb prosecutions. This "liberalism" evaporated after the murder of Kirov when the defmition of what constituted anti-Soviet agitation was broadened, and the numbers prosecuted rose accordingly. In 1936 the judiciary attempted to limit the application of article 58.10 again, but proved unable to resist the might of the NKVD which began to apply it indiscriminately during the terror. From 1939 a concerted attempt was made to restore legality and to restrain the powers of the NKVD; in this period the courts were active in overturning convictions for anti-Soviet agitation. The study reveals that repressive policies during this decade were characterized by inconsistency and fluctuation. Conflicts between individuals, between institutions and between the center and regions impeded the smooth functioning of the Stalinist regime.
• À l'origine des purges de 1937 [L'exemple de l'administration de la statistique démographique*] - Alain Blum p. 169-195
  Alain Blum, The roots of the 1937 purges. The case of demographic statistics. During the 1930's, the Soviet administration for demographic statistics was one of the best places from which to observe the social and human catastrophies that hit the USSR from the collectivization until the famine of 1933. The data provided by this office to the political leaders indicate the importance and extent of the catastrophe. The present article studies the conflicts which arose at that time between this office and various political bodies, e.g. the control commissions, the NKVD, and the political leadership, including Stalin himself; it analyzes the professional requisites as applied and their interaction with a political need to deny reality. Finally, the article shows how the purges of 1937-1939, which have a deep effect on this administration, may be interpreted as the absurd result of an impossibility to resolve the contradictions inherent to the political leadership in power, i.e. its desire, on the one hand, to exercise a planned management of society and therefore to make use of statistics, but its need, on the other hand, to deny the highly unstable condition of society and the dramatic events of the 1930's which these statistics reveal.
• Les mécanismes de la « Grande Terreur » des années 1937-1938 au Turkménistan - Oleg Hlevnjuk p. 197-207
  Oleg Khlevniuk, The mechanism of the "Great Terror" of 1937-1938 in Turkmenistan. Based on new materials derived from the archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and from those of the Prokuratura, this article describes how the "Great Terror" was exercised in one of the republics of the USSR, i.e. Turkmenistan, and how the orders from Moscow to carry out mass arrests and executions were applied locally. The action of the Turkmenistan NKVD as well as its relationship with the various institutions of the party are analyzed. The article shows how the groups destined to be the victims of repression were selected, how false accusations, through the use of the torture, were fabricated, and how the Turkmenistan troika functioned. The article concludes that, on the whole, the Great Terror was the result of centralized state actions. Despite innumerable cases of abuse of power, local leaders acted within the bounds of the orders received from the Soviet leadership in Moscow.
• Children of "ennemies of the people" as victims of the Great Purges* - Corinna Kuhr p. 209-220
  Corinna Kuhr, Children of "enemies of the people " as victims of the great purges. Several hundred thousand children lost their parents during the years 1936-1938 as a result of the purges. Many of them were sent to orphanages, colonies for young delinquents or even to labour camps. Plans for the registration and accomodation of these children existed. They are to be viewed as a consequence of the arrest of thousands of people and the need to take care of a great many children. This, and not an ideological goal, was the reason for such treatement of the children of "enemies of the people." Memoirs and interviews of contemporary witnesses make it possible to reach several general conclusions: on the one hand, most of the children were treated like other orphans and their future in the homes depended on the local people and special circumstances. On the other hand, there were conditions which made discrimination probable: being a member of a family which belongs to the old Soviet élite, being older than fifteen years of age, and showing signs of opposition.
• Entre répression et reconstruction : l'armée soviétique dans la seconde moitié des années 30 [Résultats et perspectives de la recherche] - Antonella Cristiani p. 221-232
• 30-е годы в архивах ВКП(б) - Larisa Rogovaja p. 233-238