STUDIES IN SOVIET HISTORY AND SOCIETY General Editors: R. W. Davies, Professor of Soviet Economic Studies, University of Birmingham and E. A. Rees, Lecturer in Soviet History, University of Birmingham Gregory D. Andrusz HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN TilE USSR Lynne Attwood THE NEW SOVIET MAN AND WOMAN John Barber SOVIET HISTORIANS IN CRISIS, 1928-32 Judy Batt ECONOMIC REFORM AND POLITICAL CHANGE IN EASTERN EUROPE: A Comparison of the Czechoslovak and Hungarian Experiences R. W. Davies FROM TSARISM TO THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY: Continuity and Change in the Economy of the USSR (editor) SOVIET HISTORY IN THE GORBACHEV REVOLUTION Stephen Fortescue THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND SOVIET SCIENCE Philip Hanson TRADE AND TECHNOLOGY IN SOVIET-WESTERN RELATIONS Jonathan Haslam SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY, 193(}...41 Volume 1 THE IMPACT OF THE DEPRESSION, 1930-33 Volume 2 THE SOVIET UNION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR COLLECTIVE SECURITY IN EUROPE, 1933--39 Volume 3 THE SOVIET UNION AND THE THREAT FROM THE EAST, 1933-41 (forthcoming) Volume 4 SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY, 1939-41 (forthcoming) THE SOVIET UNION AND THE POLmCS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE, 1969-87 Malcolm R. Hill and Richard McKay SOVIET PRODUCT QUALITY Peter Kneen SOVIET SCIENTISTS AND THE STATE: An Examination of the Social and Political Aspects of Science in the USSR Ronald I. Kowalski THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY IN CONFLICT: The Left Communist Opposition of 1918 Nicholas Lampert THE TECHNICAL INTELLIGENTSIA AND THE SOVIET STATE: A Study of Soviet Managers and Technicians, 1928-35 Nicholas Lampert WHISTLEBLOWING IN THE SOVIET UNION: Complaints and Abuses under State Socialism Nicholas Lampert and Gl\bor T. Ritterspom (editors) STALINISM: ITS NATURE AND AFTERMATH Robert Lewis SCIENCE AND INDUSTRIALIZATION IN THE USSR Neil Malcolm SOVIET POLITICAL SCIENTISTS AND AMERICAN POLmCS Silvana Malle EMPLOYMENT PLANNING IN THE SOVIET UNION: Continuity and Change David Mandel THE PETROGRAD WORKERS AND THE FALL OF THE OLD REGIME: From the February Revolution to the July Days, 1917 THE PETROGRAD WORKERS AND THE SOVIET SEIZURE OF POWER: From the July Days 1917 to July 1918 Catherine Merridale MOSCOW POLITICS AND THE RISE OF STALIN: The Communist Party in the Capital, 1925-32 E. A. Rees STATE CONTROL IN SOVIET RUSSIA: The Rise and Fall of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, 1920-34 Christopher J. Rice RUSSIAN WORKERS AND THE SOCIALIST-REVOLUTIONARY PARTY THROUGH THE REVOLUTION OF 1905-{)7 Richard Sakwa SOVIET COMMUNISTS IN POWER: A Study of Moscow during the Civil War, 1918-21 Jonathan R. Schiffer SOVIET REGIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY: The East-West Debate over Pacific Siberian Development Nobuo Shimotomai MOSCOW UNDER STALINIST RULE, 1931-34 Roger Skurski SOVIET MARKETING AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Daniel Thorniley THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET RURAL COMMUNIST PARTY, 1927-39 J. N. Westwood SOVIET LOCOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY DURING INDUSTRIALIZATION, 1928-52 Professor Moshe Lewin Stalinism: Its Nature and Aftermath Essays in Honour of Moshe Lewin Edited by Nick Lampert and Gabor T. Rittersporn in association with the Palgrave Macmillan © Nick Lampert and Gabor T. Ritterspom 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WlP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1992 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-12262-2 ISBN 978-1-349-12260-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-12260-8 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 Contents List of Tables vii Preface ix Notes on the Contributors xiii 1 Grappling with Social Realities: Moshe Lewin and the Making of Social History Roland Lew 1 2 Demons and Devil's Advocates: Problems in Historical Writing on the Stalin Era Vladimir Andrle 25 3 Gorbachev's Socialism in Historical Perspective R. W. Davies 48 4 The Tsar, the Emperor, the Leader: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Anatolii Rybakov's Stalin Maureen Perrie 77 5 The Omnipresent Conspiracy: On Soviet Imagery of Politics and Social Relations in the 1930s Gabor Tamas Rittersporn 101 6 Soviet Peasants and Soviet Literature Alec Nove 121 7 Masters of the Shop Floor: Foremen and Soviet Industrialisation Lewis H. Siegelbaum 127 8 Urban Social Mobility and Mass Repression: Communist Party and Soviet Society Hans-Henning Schroder 157 9 Construction Workers in the 1930s Jean-Paul Depretto 184 10 Nationality and Class in the Revolutions of 1917: a Re-examination of Categories Ronald Grigor Suny 211 v vi Contents 11 The Background to Perestroika: Political Undercurrents reconsidered in the light of recent events Peter Kneen 243 12 Legality in Soviet Political Culture: a Perspective on Gorbachev's Reforms Peter H. Solomon, Jr. 260 Index 288 List of Tables Table 7.1: Numbers of managerial and engineering-technical personnel 135 Table 7.2: Educational background of foremen (in %) 136 Table 7.3: Social background, Party saturation and gender of foremen 138 Table 8.1: Numerical growth and qualification of technical engineering and economic specialists in Soviet industry, 1929 and 1933 159 Table 8.2: Membership figures for the VKP(b) 1927-41 (full members and candidates) 167 Table 8.3: Distribution of Party members (full members) in the Leningrad area according to duration of membership 169 Table 8.4: Graduates 1928-37, and specialists as listed in the census of January 1941 172 Table 8.5: Incidences of death in the years 1934-9 of members of the generation born in 1906 173 Table 8.6: Estimates of the mortality rate in the Soviet Union 1920-38 (incidences of death per 1000 inhabitants) 174 Table 8.7: Proportion of men in the age-cohorts of the Soviet population on 17.1.1939 (in% of the number of women of the corresponding age-group) 175 Table 8.8: Occupations of newly-admitted candidates in the Leningrad area 193(}-40 179 Table 9.1: Personnel employed in building (annual average in thousands) 185 Table 9.2: Personnel employed in building (thousands) 186 Table 9.3: Rates of raw material consumption and investment in construction 188 Table 9.4: Growth of productivity in the building trade 189 Table 9.5: Forced labour: the role of the NKVD in total (planned) production in 1941 200 vii Preface Nick Lampert In this volume a number of specialists in Russian and Soviet studies acknowledge their debts to a scholar who has been an inspiration in their field over the past twenty-five years, and who, approaching the start of his eighth decade, continues to work with undiminished vigour. The contributors - from the USA, Continental Europe and Britain - are not all well-known to each other, but they share one thing: a respect for the work of Moshe Lewin, who has greatly enriched our understanding of Soviet history and thus of the recent transformations in the USSR. The title of our Festschrift relates to a central preoccupation in Lewin's work - the inter-war period of social and political upheaval which made a profound impact upon the character of the Soviet system. But the scope of Lewin's contribution is even broader than this suggests. It moves backwards and forwards in the attempt to grasp the overall dynamic of Soviet history, the relationship between Stalinism and the Tsarist past, and the ways in which, in its very formation, Stalinism prepared the ground for its demise. There are several distinguishing features of Lewin's approach, which together make up a powerful synthesis. Starting with his first book, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, published when the author was already in his forties and had a rich and varied life experience behind him, he brought to Soviet studies a new sense of the interplay of socio-economic, cultural and political forces. The cold-war climate of the post-war period had encouraged a singularly one-dimensional approach to the study of the Soviet Union in the West-an approach in which the 'total' claims of Soviet ideology and politics were all too often taken at face value. This perception, whether given a plus or a minus sign, was so strong that for many of us {the editors included) the first acquaintance with Lewin's work in the late 1960s had the quality of a revelation. For the first time we gained a sense of the complex relationship between political and social developments and the dynamic that they contained. Such a dynamic might be taken for granted in other contexts, but it had been successfully screened out of public consciousness by the cold war and by sheer ignorance about Soviet society that prevailed in the West. ix