Sholokhov’s letter describes how suspected hoarders were coerced into handing over their grain: mass beatings, the staging of mock executions, branding with hot irons, and hanging by the neck to induce partial asphyxiation during interrogations, among other methods. The writer did not attempt to whitewash the fact that the criminal abuses being perpetrated in the Veshensky District were part of a purposeful campaign by the regional authorities—not “deviations” by local zealots. But for obvious reasons, he did not press this point.
Stalin took the news in stride. He ordered that the Veshensky District be given additional grain assistance and that an investigation be conducted into the abuses Sholokhov described. Overall, however, he supported the local authorities. In a response to Sholokhov he accused the writer of taking a one-sided view and of covering his eyes to sabotage by peasants. The local leadership, some of whom were at first condemned to harsh punishment for abuses, were ultimately acquitted. On Stalin’s orders they were simply removed from their posts and given reprimands. They were not even expelled from the party.47 Stalin had no intention of retreating from his war against the peasants, however many innocent lives were taken in the process.
The victory over the peasants had all the hallmarks of defeat. Despite the campaign’s extreme ruthlessness, the grain procurement plan was not fulfilled. And the 20 percent decline in grain collections between the meager harvest of 1931 and the disastrous one of 1932, bad as this was, paled in comparison to the decimation of the livestock sector. If ruthless measures could not squeeze food out of the countryside, what should be done next? Continuing a policy of confiscation—prodrazverstka—would only kill off the population. Furthermore, the policy of forced industrialization was proving untenable. The mad surge of capital investment in heavy industry had reached its limit. Trotsky’s call to make 1933 “a year of capital repair” resonated with Stalin’s opponents, who called on him to reduce the pace of growth.48
Even the relentless terror machine was beginning to falter. By 1933 the large network of camps and prisons could not handle the growing flood of arrestees. The government took urgent steps to create remote settlements capable of accommodating 2 million internal deportees, but this program failed because of a lack of resources. In the end, only about 270,000 people were sent into internal exile.49 The seemingly limitless capacity for destroying and isolating “enemies” apparently had its limits. And while the execution, arrest, and deportation of vast numbers helped the government maintain control, even Stalin could see that these tactics were doing as much to undermine the smooth running of the system as to bolster it.
All this dysfunction weakened the USSR at a time of escalating international tension. One of the first signs of looming war was Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in late 1931. “The Japanese are certainly (certainly!) preparing for war against the USSR, and we have to be ready (we must!) for anything,” Stalin wrote to Ordzhonikidze in June 1932.50 An urgent buildup of military forces was begun in the Soviet Far East. But trouble was also brewing in Europe. In January 1933, while the Soviet Union was in the throes of famine, the Nazis came to power in Germany. The Bolsheviks’ European strategy, which was centered on building relations with Weimar Germany, had to be immediately revamped. Faced with growing threats from east and west, Stalin was forced to seek alliances with Western democracies. On 19 December 1933 the Politburo adopted a top secret resolution concerning the USSR’s possible entry into the League of Nations and conclusion of a regional mutual defense pact against Germany with a number of Western countries, including France and Poland.51 Stalin understood that this new foreign policy would not be possible unless he sent clear signals that the Stalinist USSR was a “normal” country and not simply a convenient enemy of fascism. The Soviet regime would need to improve its reputation. Soviet leaders did not have to exchange their military service jackets for tailcoats, but they at least needed to button up.
Stalin had led the Bolsheviks into a dead end. The resources that had made the First Five-Year Plan possible had been used up. Too late for countless victims of his policies, he agreed to measures that could and should have been taken years before.
First among them were some minor but critical concessions to the peasantry. Although the Stalinist state continued to rely primarily on compulsion in the countryside, there were important changes. Essentially recognizing the tremendous harm done by limitless confiscations, in January 1933 the government introduced set quotas for grain deliveries (a food tax or prodnalog, in official Soviet parlance). The peasants were promised that predictable quotas would be set for the amount of produce to be taken and that they would have the right to sell the surplus. The resolution mandating this change was never put into practice, but it was a milestone in the transition from the Stalin-era War Communism of the First Five-Year Plan to the Stalin-era NEP of the Second. It was within the framework of this transition that other, more practical and effective, decisions were adopted.
Stalin grudgingly allowed peasants to have small private plots that they were allowed to cultivate for their own benefit, a concession of great importance to the survival of the countryside and the country overall. At the first congress of “kolkhoznik-udarniks” (collective farm shock workers) in February 1933, he promised that the state would help each kolkhoz household acquire a cow over the coming two years.52 Laws guaranteeing ownership of farm plots were gradually put into place. This expansion of private agriculture was critically important, paving the way toward a new compromise between the state and the peasants. The peasants, who earned almost nothing working on collective farms, would now be able to make ends meet by farming their private plots. Despite being subject to exorbitant taxes, these plots were exceptionally productive. Although private agriculture took up a miniscule amount of land compared with the kolkhozes, official statistics from 1937 show that it provided 38 percent of the country’s vegetables and potatoes and 68 percent of its meat and dairy products.53 When yet another famine hit after the poor harvest of 1936, it was private agriculture that helped the country survive, once again underscoring how flawed the original collectivization plan had been. If the mad rush toward total collectivization had been adjusted to allow private plots, peasants (and Soviet agriculture) would not have been utterly ruined overnight.
Also long overdue and unavoidable were changes to industrial policy. The first limited signs that the state was being compelled to pull back from the destructive policy of forced industrialization and repression against those running the Soviet economy came in 1931–1932. During the Central Committee plenum of January 1933, Stalin provided a new set of slogans to go with the new policies. While proclaiming new class battles ahead, he nevertheless promised that the pace of industrial construction during the Second Five-Year Plan would be significantly reduced. Unlike many other slogans, this one did not prove empty. Alongside reduced growth for capital investment in industry, in 1934–1936 various experiments and reforms were introduced aimed at enhancing enterprises’ economic independence and reviving financial incentives for labor. By this time, the idea of an economy based on the exchange of goods had been definitively rejected as “leftist,” “money” and “commerce” were no longer dirty words, and the need to strengthen the ruble was a hot topic. That Stalin was reorienting the economic signposts became apparent in his remarks during a discussion on abolishing the ration system at the November 1934 plenum: