Why are we abolishing the ration system? First and foremost it is because we want to strengthen the cash economy.… The cash economy is one of the few bourgeois economic apparatuses that we, socialists, must make full use of.… It is very flexible; we need it.… To expand commercial exchange, to expand Soviet commerce, to strengthen the cash economy—these are the main reasons we are undertaking this reform.… Money will start to circulate, money will come into fashion, which hasn’t been the case for some time; the cash economy will be strengthened.54
Underlying this liberalization was a recognition of the importance of personal interests and material incentives. The sermons on asceticism, calls for sacrifice, and hostility toward high salaries that had characterized the First Five-Year Plan were replaced by a focus on “culture and a prosperous life.” Instead of the mythic images of a future of abundant socialism that had been promoted with the First Five-Year Plan, the Soviet people, especially the urban population, were now offered the prospect of tangible creature comforts: a private room, furniture, clothing, a tolerable diet, and expanded leisure. The possibility of an improved standard of living was being deliberately used to motivate the workforce.
The improved quality of life after the successful harvest of 1933 was, of course, remarkable only in contrast with the previous years’ mass famine. The full store shelves seen in major cities came as some rural areas continued to starve. But compared to 1932–1933, these pockets of hunger were “nothing,” just as the ongoing arrests and deportations could be seen as “nothing” compared with previous years. For a while, state terror continued at a low and predictable pace. The pullback began with a special directive Stalin signed in May 1933 calling for the release of some of those arrested for “minor crimes” from overcrowded prisons and prohibiting the secret police from conducting mass arrests and deportations.55
Stalin continued to demonstrate adherence to “socialist legality.” It was on his instigation that in February 1934 the Politburo voted to abolish the odious OGPU and place the political police under the newly formed People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), blending it with the more innocuous branches of law enforcement and public safety. On paper, people’s rights in the regular judicial system were expanded, and the power of extrajudicial bodies—the instruments of mass terror—was reduced.56 The handling of certain legal matters in which Stalin clearly had a hand was especially significant. Within the Soviet political system, it was these signals from the vozhd that showed the way forward for government officials.
One of the first such signals had to do with the conviction of Aleksei Seliavkin. During the witch hunt of the early 1930s Seliavkin, a senior heavy-industry official and decorated Civil War veteran, had been sentenced to ten years for selling classified military documents. In a petition sent from labor camp, Seliavkin stated that his interrogators had dictated a false confession and forced him to sign it under threat of being shot.57 This petition came at an opportune time. Stalin (without whose consent Seliavkin would never have been arrested in the first place) now signaled leniency. Not surprisingly, an investigation showed that the secret police had fabricated the evidence. On 5 June 1934 the Politburo annulled Seliavkin’s sentence and demanded “attention to serious deficiencies in the handling of the case by OGPU investigators.”58
The annulment of Seliavkin’s sentence was just the start. In September 1934 Stalin ordered the Politburo to establish a commission to investigate several other cases that had been brought against “wreckers” and “spies.” He called on the commission to free the innocent, purge the OGPU of perpetrators of certain “investigative techniques,” and punish them “without favoritism.” “In my opinion,” he wrote, “this is a serious matter and it has to be pursued to the end.” Surviving documents show that this commission actually took its work seriously, assembling evidence of secret police abuses. There was no shortage of cases.59
Then came the murder of Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov. The commission never completed its task.
Had it not been for Kirov’s murder, would there have been a serious effort to put an end to secret police abuses? The evidence suggests otherwise. Although there were fewer arrests in 1934, the victims of repression still numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Stalin himself sent contradictory signals. In September 1934, at the height of the campaign for “socialist legality,” the Politburo sanctioned the execution of a group of employees of the Stalin Metallurgical Factory in Siberia who were accused of spying for Japan. It was Stalin who instigated the roundup, writing: “Everyone caught spying for Japan should be shot.”60 There were other examples. The foundation of Stalin’s system of oppression was never dismantled. The “moderation” of 1934 was nothing more than a temporary adjustment in the level of terror.
Although this moderation was inconsistent and limited, it did imply recognition that the Great Leap policy had been misguided. In theory, this forced change-of-course might have cast an unfavorable light on Stalin and prompted dissatisfaction with him. Such apparently logical inferences have inspired historians to posit the existence of plots and intrigues against Stalin among the party ranks. One focus of these theories is Sergei Kirov, a close Stalin associate and the Leningrad party boss. The confusion surrounding the circumstances of Kirov’s murder and the crackdown that followed it have led some to conclude that Kirov was actually behind the new political moderation, making him someone an anti-Stalin movement might rally around. This speculation, of which there has been a great deal, is based solely on the memoirs of people with only a second- or third-hand knowledge of the central facts in the matter.61
Setting aside the many discrepancies in these “eyewitness” accounts, we are left with the following picture. During the Seventeenth Party Congress a number of senior party officials (various names are mentioned) discussed the possibility of removing Stalin as general secretary and replacing him with Kirov. Kirov rejected this proposal, but Stalin got wind of the plans. According to some accounts, Kirov himself told Stalin what others were plotting. During Central Committee elections at the congress, many delegates supposedly voted against Stalin. On learning about this, Stalin allegedly ordered the removal of any ballots where his name was crossed out. Ten months later, he organized Kirov’s murder in order to remove a dangerous rival. These contradictory accounts have never inspired much confidence, and now that the archives have been opened, they appear even less convincing. A number of painstaking searches have failed to turn up even circumstantial evidence of a plot against Stalin.
The details of Kirov’s party career offer scant evidence that he enjoyed an independent political position and much to suggest that he did not. Like other Politburo members in the 1930s, Kirov was a Stalin man. His initiatives were confined to the needs of Leningrad—requests for such items as new capital investment and resources or for the opening of new stores. He rarely came to Moscow to attend Politburo meetings or participated in voting on Politburo resolutions or the polling of its members. Not only was Kirov not a reformer, but the available documents do not even show that he took any serious part in developing or implementing high-level political decisions. He was Stalin’s faithful comrade-in-arms and remained so to the end. Within the party he was never regarded as a political leader on a par with Stalin, and he did not promote any political programs that differed from Stalin’s.62 His death had an incomparably greater effect on the country’s development than his life. As often happens, it was his death that turned Kirov into a legend.