'The countryside is against us': the deputy finance commissar who said it to the Politburo
'The countryside, except for a small section of the poor peasants, is against us.' One sentence from Deputy Finance Commissar Frumkin's letter to the Politburo, 15 June 1928. It became the starting pistol for the crackdown on the Right Opposition.
An Old Bolshevik who joined the Bund in 1898 before entering the RSDLP, Frumkin served in the Food Commissariat during the Civil War and as deputy commissar for foreign trade and finance under NEP. In June 1928, at the height of the grain-procurement crisis, he sent a letter to the Politburo declaring that 'the countryside, except for a small section of the poor peasants, is against us': a direct indictment of Stalin's forced-requisition policy and its destruction of the smychka, the worker-peasant alliance. That single letter made him the first man formally accused of the 'Right Deviation,' the opening salvo of Stalin's liquidation of the NEP coalition. Arrested in October 1937, he was shot in July 1938 and rehabilitated in 1956.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1898Joins the Bund, then the RSDLP
- 1909–1911Chairman, Central Bureau of Trade Unions, Moscow
- 1911–1917Exiled to Yenisei Governorate
- 1918–1922Collegium member, then Deputy Commissar of Food
- 1922–1928Deputy Commissar of Foreign Trade
- 1928–1929Deputy Commissar of Finance
- 1928–1930Identified as 'Right Deviation'; first official target of the anti-Right campaign
- 1932–1935Deputy Commissar of Foreign Trade (reinstated)
- 1935–1937Manager, Soyuzplastmass Trust, Moscow
Related historical events
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)Deputy Finance Commissar exposing smychka ruptureIn a letter to the Politburo in June 1928, he declared that 'the countryside, except for a small section of the poor peasants, is against us,' exposing the rupture of the smychka that was central to NEP.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeArrested and executed victimHe was arrested in October 1937 and shot in July 1938.
1928: the making of a 'Right Deviation'
Frumkin's letter to the Politburo, dated 15 June 1928, was submitted at the height of the grain-procurement crisis. For him it was a question of the central document on grain collection, and at the same time an argument over the emergency measures the party had deployed since January. Writing to the Politburo, Frumkin questioned the international and domestic situation and the countryside policy pursued after the Fifteenth Party Congress, and stated that 'the countryside, except for a small section of the poor peasants, is against us.' The literature summarises his point as a charge that the alliance with the middle peasants was breaking down.
The letter became a Politburo-level matter. Stalin wrote his reply addressed 'to the members of the Politburo' and refuted the letter point by point, disputing the diagnosis that the main masses of the middle peasants had been driven to 'hopelessness,' the demand to 'return to the Fourteenth Congress,' the reservations about expanding collective and state farms, and the criticism of excesses in the countryside. On 25 June Molotov sent a further reply 'to all members and candidates of the Politburo,' agreeing with Stalin's answer and again rejecting Frumkin's assessment. With both replies circulated to the whole Politburo, Frumkin's letter became a document the party leadership handled officially, and Frumkin was named the first figure in the Soviet leadership to be officially accused of a 'Right Deviation.'
Frumkin's criticism was aimed at the emergency grain-procurement measures themselves. These included requisitioning, the closure of markets and administrative pressure on the kulaks, and Frumkin held that coercion of this kind damaged the alliance with the middle peasants. The other side argued that holding to those measures was precisely how the worker-peasant alliance would be preserved, and Frumkin's diagnosis was characterised as one predicting catastrophe. The conflict ran on into the resolution of the July 1928 plenum and into the November plenum.
At the November 1928 plenum Stalin read Frumkin's first letter of June together with his second letter of November, placed him in the first rank of the 'Right Deviation,' and made the two letters the standard text for explaining it. The year 1928 was thus not simply the year of Frumkin's personal condemnation within the party. It was the year in which the category 'Right Deviation' was formally constituted inside the party, a category that would lead on to organised repression of opponents.