There was more discussion in the Politburo about industry than about agriculture. Stalin knew his mind about the countryside even though he felt the need to make concessions. Industrial policy put him in a quandary, and he listened to the debate in the Politburo as Molotov and Kaganovich argued for a slowing down against the wishes of Ordzhonikidze in the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry. Stalin’s instincts tugged him towards Ordzhonikidze but he moved increasingly against him. At the January 1933 Central Committee plenum Stalin announced a lowering of the industrial growth target to 13–14 per cent.6
The pressure on society was only moderately relieved. The reduced agricultural collections did little to stave off starvation since the 1932 harvest, badly affected by the weather, was a poor one. Stalin’s concessions to the peasants had their limits; and the insistence on keeping up grain exports was maintained. The penal sanctions for disobedience were made more severe than ever. On 7 August, at his personal instigation, peasants who stole even a handful of grain became liable to the death sentence or a minimum of ten years’ imprisonment.7 At a time when peasants in several regions were so desperate that some turned to cannibalism, this was a decree of extraordinary ferocity even for Stalin. The yeast in the bread of reform was repression. He also instructed the OGPU to see that kulaks and ‘speculators’ did not take advantage of the concessions being made.8 Police, army and party were used to ensure that the basic economic and political changes introduced since 1928 would stay intact. Stalin was completely in charge of economic policy. The slightest sign of disagreement from communist leaders in Moscow or the provinces earned his instant rebuke. The result was that not once after the second half of 1932 did a fellow Politburo member dare to challenge any of his decisions.9
At times Stalin seemed baffled by the abuses and chaos he had caused through his policies. Writing to Kaganovich and Molotov in June 1932, he mentioned that party committees in Ukraine and the Urals were crudely dividing the centrally assigned quotas for grain procurement among the lower territorial units of each province. He asked why such committees did not take local peculiarities into account.10 But in order to fulfil the quotas imposed from Moscow there was little that provincial administrators could do but use rough and ready methods. They were only doing at the local level what Stalin was doing in the Kremlin. Being cut off from rural and administrative realities, he assumed that the problem was local incompetence or mischief.
Yet reports on the poor harvest and spreading famine caused even Stalin, comfortably on vacation by the Black Sea, to lighten Ukrainian grain collections in mid-August; and once his sanction had been secured, the Politburo halved its quotas to alleviate the hardship.11 (Not that he stopped feeling let down by the republican party leaders in Kiev: he kept his promise to the Politburo that eventually they would be removed.)12 Stalin also allowed a lowering of procurement quotas in the Volga, the Urals and Kazakhstan after the 1933 harvest.13 But his indulgences were temporary and partial. When Kaganovich in September 1934 requested yet another lowering of the Ukrainian grain quotas, Stalin retorted:14
I consider this letter an alarming symptom since it shows that we can slip on to an incorrect path unless we switch the matter to a firm policy on time (i.e. immediately). The first lowering was necessary. But it is being used by our officials (not only by peasants!) as a first step, which has to be followed by a second step, towards putting pressure on Moscow for a further lowering.
Politburo member Kaganovich was being reminded that the general orientation of policies was to be sustained.
The palliative measures of 1932–3 had little immediate effect. Even the lowered collection quotas left the peasantry with less wheat and potatoes than they needed for subsistence. They ate berries, fungi, rats and mice; and, when these had been consumed, peasants chewed grass and bark. Probably six million people died in a famine which was the direct consequence of state policy.15 Further measures were announced. The Kolkhoz Model Statute, introduced in 1935, allowed each household between a quarter and a half of a hectare for its private plot.16 This additional incentive to the economy’s non-state sector was a signal of the terrible conditions for Soviet consumers. Without private agricultural production, albeit in a very restricted framework, conditions would have been still worse. Peasants eked out their existence in the most severe circumstances even after the famine ended in 1933. But life was only a little better for most workers in the towns. Urban wages remained lower in real terms than before the First Five-Year Plan. Industrialisation and collectivisation had thrown society into the maelstrom of hunger, migration and the Gulag. But Stalin and his Politburo had pulled back from the most extreme of their policies for economic transformation, and many officials and most citizens were hoping that the frenzied chaos of 1928–32 had been terminated.
The Seventeenth Party Congress of January and February 1934 was hailed in advance as the Congress of Victors. On the surface there was unanimity among the delegates. No direct criticism of the ascendant party leadership was made. Stalin’s Central Committee report was met with rapturous acclaim; its contents ranged confidently across both foreign and internal policy. He took pride in the ‘victories’ achieved since 1928. Rapid industrialisation and agricultural collectivisation had been imposed. Bolshevik oppositions on the left and the right had been crushed. Priority had been given to socialism in one country. The Central Committee was distinguished more by its listing of long-term objectives than by its specification of immediate policy.
Delegates confined themselves in public to making pleas on behalf of particular localities or economic sectors. Some asked for adjustments of existing measures; but there was no overt discussion of the Ukrainian famine or general industrial policy.17 Behind the scenes, however, there were grumbles about Stalin’s methods and ambitions. Republican and provincial party officials had had a rough time in recent years as they strove to implement the demands of the Politburo and Gosplan. They had no objection to the additional powers and privileges all this had brought. But the perspective of a regime of permanent pressure was undesirable for them. Quite apart from their personal interests, they believed that a period of consolidation was required. In the absence of open opportunities some of them — at least according to a few sources — approached Politburo member Sergei Kirov and asked him to consider taking over the General Secretaryship from Stalin. Other memoirs suggest that, when the vote for the Central Committee took place, Stalin did badly and that Kaganovich, who was in charge of the counting, had to fiddle the results to secure Stalin’s re-election. If this was true, then the call of the arrested Ryutin was being answered, and Stalin stood in danger of political oblivion.18