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<text> <title> (1930s) Stalin </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights </history> <link 08180> <link 08181> <link 08182> <link 08185> <link 00019><link 00040><link 00045><link 00046><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Stalin </hdr> <body> [The great evil of the 20th century's fourth decade was the triumph of totalitarian regimes in which of Europe, and the fear and moral cowardice that they engendered in much of the rest of the world. German national socialism and Russian Marxism-Leninism and to a somewhat lesser degree, Italian fascism, have more to unite than to divide them. Josef Stalin's dictatorship used the theme of class hatred to whip up enthusiasm, divide his enemies, and drown dissent. Adolf Hitler's used race hatred, then a more widespread obsession than in today's closer-linked, cosmopolitan world. Neither man paid more than lip service to ideology; both were absolute autocrats, who gathered all power into their own hands and relied on systematically applied terror to hold on to it. Stalin had inherited the apparatus of totalitarianism set up by Vladimir Lenin--the overlapping state and party organs, the systemic deceit, spying and betrayal, and above all a ubiquitous, brutal secret police organization. Italy's Benito Mussolini was an admirer of Lenin. Hitler learned from Lenin and Stalin how to entrench a vicious minority regime in power. Later in the decade, Stalin used the pattern of Hitler's purges of his own henchmen and supporters for use in his own Great Terror. As the decade opened, Stalin had decided that the eight years of relatively lenient treatment of the Russian peasantry would have to end. The policy had been adopted after the great famine of 1921, which occurred because the more than 100 million farmers refused to be coerced into providing an agricultural surplus, and millions were starving in the cities. But no longer were the peasants to remain outside the system of totalitarian control.] (January 13, 1930) Since in any country rich farmers are always the most conservative not to say reactionary class, it has been obvious from the first that they must be destroyed in Soviet Russia, but recently this has not seemed practical. "It is now," said Stalin with quiet menace last week. He launched into an argument which may be summarized thus: 1) Even two years ago the Government was largely dependent upon the kulak to produce what is called the "export surplus" of Russian grain. It is this surplus which the Government sells abroad, using the gold received in exchange to buy foreign manufactured goods. Since foreign manufacturers will not take they pay in Russian rubles, the surplus grain which equals gold is vitally important; 2) During the past two years thousands of kulak estates have been confiscated and turned over to collectivist farm workers for intensive cultivation under the direct supervision of the State. It is now found that in 1929 these collective farms produced a greater export surplus than did the kulak farms in 1927; 3) Ergo, argued Stalin last week, the Government is no longer dependent upon the kulak and will proceed to destroy him as a class, confiscating his lands but allowing him to exchange the stultifying sloth of wealth for hard, invigorating work as a collectivist farm hand, perhaps on what was once his own estate. [Virtually all peasants resisted collectivization, and in the violence unleashed in the next few months five million were killed, as many as ten million sent to labor camps. The peasants burned their crops and slaughtered their livestock rather than turn them over to the state. Little of this reached the Western press, however, until the telltale signs of hunger appeared again in cities like Moscow.] (September 12, 1932) Whether enough food got into Russian stomachs was an academic question to Moscow correspondents until last week. Suddenly Dictator Josef Stalin announced, for the first time, short food rations for not only all foreign correspondents but even for previously pampered foreign engineers. Worse still, the price of rationed food was drastically upped. Egg prices rose 250% overnight. Meat prices almost doubled. This winter the only foreigners in Russia to eat well will be the diplomatic corps, privileged to bring in food duty free under diplomatic seal. For the moment green vegetables remained plentiful in Russian cities peddled by peasants under Dictator Stalin's decree of last spring permitting limited resumption of private trade. Autumn grain sowing throughout the Soviet Union is "highly satisfactory," with only 7,000,000 acres sown this year as compared to 15,000,000 last year (to Aug. 25). Every Russian food shortage is produced by the same cause: a failure of sufficient goods to reach the peasantry in time to stimulate them to grow more food than will suffice their own needs. Lazy and shrewd, the Russian peasant will not pile up a food surplus which the Government may seize from him by force. It was thought that with a State-appointed Communist in charge of each farm the peasants would produce, produce, produce. For a time they did. But this year the State's failure to ship sufficient goods to the mechanized collectives is producing a new and most ominous "collective strike." (April 10, 1933) Gareth Jones, a serious young man with glasses, arrived in Berlin last week after a three-week tour of the Ukraine. He had a dreadful tale to tell: "I walked through the country visiting villages and investigating twelve collective farms. Everywhere I heard the cry: `There is no bread, we are dying!' This cry is rising from all parts of Russia; from the Volga district, from Siberia, from White Russia, from Central Asia and from the Ukraine black dirt country. "Most officials deny any famine exists, but a few minutes following one such denial in a train I chanced to throw away a stale piece of my private supply of bread. Like a shot a peasant dived to the floor, grabbed the crust and devoured it. The same performance was repeated later with an orange peel. Even transport and G.P.U. officers warned me against traveling over the countryside at night because of the numbers of starving, desperate men...A foreign expert who returned from Kazakstan told me that 1,000,000 of the 5,000,000 of inhabitants there have died of hunger. (July 3, 1933) Nothing brings such a thunderous frown to the dark brow of Josef Stalin as reports from the farm front that food production is lagging. Promptly agents of his Gay-Pay-Oo pounce (usually at night) on peasant laggards, ship them off from their ancestral farms to saw wood and split rocks in bleak Siberia. All last year food shortage gripped the Soviet Union, peasant deportations continued, prophesies flew that a peasant "passive strike" might crack the Stalin regime. In Moscow, last week, relieved State statisticians produced curves and sheaves of figures which made Stalin smile. Apparently the State spring sowing campaign is now 95.4% fulfilled--and this year's figures, even if a trifle optimistic, should be far more accurate than last year's. For conspiring to deceive Dictator Stalin last year with over-optimistic farm statistics 35 comrades were shot. The great fact is that the Soviet State has plowed definitely through a "famine winter." Last week Stalin's smile translated itself into prompt action. More than 100,000 thoroughly punished peasants were released from their harsh exile, sent back on joyously clattering trains to help till the 225,000,000 Soviet acres thus far sown. Best of all, from the peasant's standpoint, Dictator Stalin created an All-Union Procuratorial Department to curb and supervise his strong-arm agents: the Gay-Pay-Oo, the militia, the criminal police. [Emboldened by the success of Hitler's blood purge of his followers, Stalin in 1934 began to move against the Old Bolsheviks of his party, mostly men who had been his equals or better and who had opposed or angered him in the past. For an excuse, he used the murder of Sergei Kirov, the Leningrad party boss. The killing was almost certainly engineered by Stalin himself.] (December 17, 1934) When some 77 Germans were shot during Adolf Hitler's "blood purge," they at least were accused of plotting with that plug-ugly pederast Captain Ernst Roehm. Last week Josef Stalin resorted to more drastic Bolshevik Terror, terror in its purest form. Because a member of the Soviet Politbureau or Red Big Ten had been assassinated, Soviet firing squads last week mowed down 66 Russians, one a woman, who were not accused of having anything to do with Assassin Leonid Nicolaev or his crime. According to dispatches passed by the Soviet censor, "they died to express the Government's determination that Nicolaev's act should not be the model for others." Assassin Nicolaev himself was being carefully nursed in a Leningrad hospital, doctors hoping to prevent Death from his self-inflicted wound and the beating he received. if saved, he was expected to go, first to the Gay-pay-oo for third degree, then into a monster Soviet propaganda trial and finally before a firing squad. Last week the Gay-pay-oo were reported to have shot his 85-year-old mother, his wife, his daughters and his sons--in addition to the 66 executions of pure Bolshevik Terror. (December 31, 1934) Twice has Old Bolshevik Grigory Zinoviev organized opposition to Comrade Stalin's policies within the Party. Twice has Stalin permitted him abjectly to repent and eat crow. Last week he was turning obscurely as a minor cog in the Party bureaucracy when abruptly the Dictator chose to flaunt again and pillory the name ZINOVIEV. Some sort of name simply had to be produced in the third week of capriciously shooting batches of Russians in oriental vengeance for the murder of Josef Stalin's "Dear Friend Sergei" Kirov. Conviction grew that the Kirov assassination was indeed a major inside job, the only kind of job that could conceivably get the Dictator himself. On the growing hypothesis that steel-nerved Stalin for once has been badly scared, his executions of "pure terror" and continued arrests were understandable last week. Down in Kiev, ancient, church-jammed Mother Town of All the Russias, star chamber trials continued under famed Judge Ulrich. Meanwhile Comrade Nicolaev, the assassin of "Dear Friend Sergei," remained alive awaiting trial. For six days the Government concealed the fact that Comrade Zinoviev was arrested last week, along with Comrade Lev Kamenev, onetime Soviet Ambassador to Italy, Comrade G.E. Yevkokimov, one-time Red Boss of Leningrad, and 13 others. All had been members of the Left Opposition which fought Stalin in 1926-27. [Nikolaev and his 13 purported co-conspirators were shot after a secret trial, along with a total of 117 others. But Zinoviev and Kamenev were not tried until 18 months later, it having taken that long to extract their enthusiastic confessions.] (August 31, 1936) As thick clouds rolled over Moscow one afternoon last week the ornate chandeliers of the onetime Nobles Club were lighted, Soviet soldiers in blue caps appeared with fixed bayonets, and some 500 people were admitted to the stately Hall of Columns after their credentials had been checked and rechecked by sentries at the doors. Somewhat less light of step and panther-like than usual entered Chief Prosecutor Andrei Vishinsky, longtime pouncer in broadcast Bolshevik trials. At the left of Judge Ulrich was the box of 16 prisoners around whom stood Red Army guards, changed every half hour. A clerk at Judge Ulrich's elbow read rapidly an indictment of the accused so complex that his swift sentences left spectators blurred as to details. Quite clear, though, were the main charges that the 16 prisoners had contrived among themselves at least four separate plots to kill Joseph Stalin, Secretary General of the Communist Party and as such Dictator of Russia. It was announced that the prisoners had all chosen not to be defended by Soviet lawyers but to defend themselves. One by one each of the 16 popped up in the box and cried: "I admit the charge against myself." Asked Prosecutor Vishinsky: "Did you, Zinoviev, organize the Terrorists?" "Yes." "Did you plot the death of Kirov?" "Yes." "Did you organize the plan to kill Stalin?" "Yes. I am guilty of every charge in the indictment." A few minutes later two other prisoners became tangled in argument with each other as both were rapidly confessing. A third prisoner named Bakayev, a bearded figure in a khaki blouse, arose and loudly interrupted, "I know that Zinoviev ordered his own secretary to kill Stalin!" Said Zinoviev: "I acknowledge that." "The secretary," breathlessly continued Bakayev, "instead of killing Stalin killed himself!" With the air of a professor addressing pupils of none too great intelligence and striving to make everything crystal clear. Prisoner Kamenev made his confession at such length that his lecture was interrupted four times by the changing of the soldiers guarding the prisoners' box. In case this academic presentation in a two-hour address should go over the heads of millions of Russians striving to comprehend in their cities, towns and villages. Prosecutor Vishinsky, showing marked deference to a once great Party figure who was Lenin's friend and is Trotsky's brother-in-law, interrupted Prisoner Kamenev with the simple question: "Were you a blood-thirsty enemy of the Government?" Replied Kamenev readily: "Yes, I was." Kamenev and Zinoviev, although confessing by the yard to the greatest crimes possible in Russia, split hairs and quarreled violently before the Court over such fine points as whether Kamenev had "meant" to write an article such as Zinoviev actually wrote for Soviet newsorgans excoriating the assassins for Kirov. "You did mean to write it!": cried Zinoviev. Snorted Kamenev: "I did not! I had no intention of writing an article." Judge Ulrich, who has the reputation of having handed out more Death sentences than any other jurist in the world, left the court to cogitate with his three assistant judges for seven hours, returned to deliver the verdict: all 16 prisoners were to be shot "within 72 hours," subject to the remote possibility of an overriding decree of clemency by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union. (February 1, 1937) The first quoting interview ever given by J. Stalin to a foreign journalist was obtained by Eugene Lyons, manager of the United Press Moscow Bureau for many years. Now resident in the U.S. and writing widely. Mr. Lyons turned out in the January American Mercury a dispassionate, detailed six-point analysis of how it happens that in the Soviet Union there is so much abject confessing of whatever it would do the Dictator good to have confessed. Mr. Lyons, veteran of innumerable Moscow trials, says in sum that Soviet prisoners who do not succeed in convincing the henchmen of Justice that they can be depended on to confess fairly convincingly in open court are never brought to trial at all, just taken downstairs and shot. Justice today, in Russian cases of importance, according to Mr. Lyons, does not in the great majority of cases ever reach a courtroom. Scores, even hundreds of Russians are quietly executed after the Soviet police have satisfied themselves that Death is required. In perhaps 1% of cases involving crimes for which Death is the penalty, sound Red propaganda makes a public trial advisable. Writes Eugene Lyons: "The prisoners brought to trial are always a handful carefully selected from a larger number arrested on the same charge...hand-picked specimens painstakingly sorted out." After Soviet newsorgans have announced the confessions, convictions and executions, "a condemned man whose execution was announced may still be alive, as a result of a bargain or for some other reason...The Soviet State does not deliver up the bodies of the men and women it executes...There is not even habeas cadaver and of course no habeas corpus in the Soviet Union." In a dispatch from Moscow not long ago the rumor that Soviet scientists had invented a gas with the special property of deranging the mentality of a prisoner so as to make him speak and behave for some hours afterward as hypnotically required by Justice, was cautiously mentioned, the writer still employed in Moscow. Without resorting to the hypothesis of such "confession gas," Mr. Lyons mentions that the use of hostages (wives, children or others dear to the prisoners) is an old Soviet custom, and moreover that in Moscow the authorities have now had 20 full years in which to perfect their "third degree methods, familiar enough in all police systems" to "an extreme of refined cruelty..." "There have been instances when...the victim's children were tortured before his eyes--a more terrible ordeal for the father than any that could be inflicted on his own body." [Arrests and trials followed without end, some public, most secret. More than 5,000 party members already arrested were executed after Zinoviev and Kamenev. The secret police themselves were thoroughly purged. Then Stalin turned on the Red Army. The widening circle of terror spread to the provinces and beyond them to the diplomatic corps abroad.] (April 12, 1937) This week in Moscow the most drastic government shakeup of vice-Commissars and the official bureaucracy ever ordered by J. Stalin was in full swing. Simultaneously came the most sensational demotion in Russia since that of Trotsky eight years ago: dismissed from the Cabinet of Commissars with every indication that he is to be arrested and tried was enigmatic Genrikh ("Henry") Grigorivich Yagoda, who for ten years served as head of Stalin's Ogpu, the dread secret police, and rose to be Commissar of Internal Affairs. If this close colleague of Stalin is now to spout confessions in court, the Dictator will have discovered an adherent of "Trotskyism" among the two or three men he most trusted. All Moscow signs pointed to Russia containing today so many "Trotskyists"--that is, critics of Stalin--that the Dictator must now (in addition to making popular appeals) attempt within the Communist hierarchy to win over by cajolery and threats as many "Trotskyists" as he can, and by executions wipe out the rest. Uncertain this week as to just who are friends, who foes, harassed J. Stalin made two opposite moves. (May 31, 1937) Ordered established in all military districts were war councils of three similar to those set up in the infancy of the Russian Revolution when a Red Army was being licked into shape by ex-Tsarist officers who had to be watched closely for signs of treachery. Stalin thus aimed last week at uncovering incipient Trotskyism or other heresies in his hitherto potent military commanders, who in future must get their orders countersigned by at least one other council member (probably a civilian) mainly interested in the welfare of the Communist Party. This shakeup followed the demotion week before of Mikhail Nikolaivich Tukhachevsky, youngest and most brilliant of the Soviet's five field marshals. For some reason not officially explained he was stripped of his office--and sidetracked to a comparatively insignificant Volga military district immune from foreign invasion, with headquarters at Kuibishev. All that Russians knew was that he had been "mentioned with suspicion" by the prosecuting GPU during last January's trial of "Trotskyites." He was entirely absolved, but it was expected in Moscow that "something might happen to him: because sudden misfortunes had befallen others similarly "mentioned." (June 21, 1937) The trial did not take long. The defendants, as is Communist custom, loudly pleaded guilty. Judge Ulrich gave out the verdict: "The court had established that the defendants were employed by the military secret service of a foreign government conducting an unfriendly policy against the Soviet Union. They...permitted wrecking acts intended to undermine the power of the Red Army and to prepare for...the defeat of the Red Army in event of an attack against it..." Promptly then the big gold star was ripped from the cap of Marshal Tukhachevsky, the four red pips from the collars of his colleagues, and all eight of them fell dead before the acrid volleys of a firing squad. Official Pravda wrote their obituary: "Dogs die like dogs. There is no place for such murderers in the Soviet scheme of things." Because the Bolshevik enthusiasm of Tukhachevsky and his fellow culprits was not questioned until very recently,the official charge that they had sold military secrets was not accepted in any informed quarter. Two conflicting explanations for the executions seemed equally valid: that Stalin had uncovered a plot in the high command of the Red Army to usurp his own political power; that Stalin, now turned conservative, is systematically doing away with all old-line bolsheviks. The Red Army's commander, Klimentiy Voroshilov, is still Dictator Stalin's most prized adviser. Immediately after the executions last week "Klim" Voroshilov sent a message to all Red Army units: "Tukhachevsky and other lackeys of capitalism have been abolished from the face of the earth, their memory to be cursed and forgotten." (December 13, 1937) Summons after summons continued last week to call Soviet ambassadors, ministers and members of their staff's home to Moscow from abroad. Once they reached the Soviet capital most of those recalled are no longer seen. Inquiries from friends abroad or foreign governments with whom they have been conducting negotiations receive no reply from the Soviet Foreign Office. Meanwhile last week all Russia observed the third anniversary of the assassination of Dictator Joseph Stalin's famed "Dear Friend Sergei" Kirov. Even since then the Dictator has been almost daily grilling and shooting prominent Russians especially Communists. Among some 1,300 victims have been the President and Premier of two Union Republics, both suicides; a most illustrious Marshal of the Red Army and seven of his Generals, all shot; the onetime Chief of the Soviet Munitions Trust, shot; even the editor of the Soviet State's own newsorgan Izvestia, who was arrested. In Russia, where it is impossible to throw up one's job and flee, since the greater part of the Soviet frontier is sealed with barbed wire and guarded day and night, the number of suicides among Russians of consequence is said to have touched as high as 200 per week. (May 9, 1938) Meanwhile, since May 1937, according to accounts in the Soviet press, the example set by Stalin in arraigning as traitors to Russia her greatest military leaders has been followed by an epidemic of soldiers denouncing their officers before Red Army courts-martial, these made up of other officers afraid not to convict lest they in turn be denounced, no matter how flimsy the evidence or grudge. Firing squads have been crackling all over Russia at such a rate than even the official Red Army organ Krasnaia Zvezda ("Red Star") has expressed concern at the "great depletion of regimental, brigade and divisional commanders." In one or two cases prospective purge victims in the Red Air Force have hopped into Soviet battle planes, escaped over the frontier. [By the time the terror began to ebb, it had claimed the lives of 1,000,000 party members, 30,000 officers (about one-half of the corps), 3,000 secret policeman and thousands of provincial officials. Millions more were sent to the Gulag, the archipelago of concentration and labor camps that were dotted like islands across the Soviet heartland. Contemporary estimates by an independent Soviet historian. Roy Medvedev, are that about 400,000-500,000 people were simply shot, and another 4,500,000 died in the camps.] </body> </article> </text>