Dizzy with Success

Background

The article belongs to the context of the resolution 'On the Tempo of Collectivization and Measures of State Assistance to Kolkhoz Construction' adopted by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on 5 January 1930, whose programme was forced collectivization and the liquidation of the kulaks as a class. In practice the pace ran ahead of it. In the Ukrainian SSR the resolution set complete collectivization for the end of 1931 to spring 1932, but local authorities accelerated it: by March 70.9 per cent of arable land and 62.8 per cent of peasant households were collectivized, and almost 200,000 households were affected by the requisition of property, land and houses.

Content

The article opened by acknowledging that the scale of the collective-farm successes had exceeded expectations: 50 per cent of peasant farms collectivized by 20 February 1930. Its central category is 'dizzy with success': comparatively easy, 'unexpected' successes produce vanity and conceit and a loss of any sense of proportion and capacity to understand realities.

The article insisted that collective farms must not be established by force, must rest on the active support of the main mass of the peasantry, and that examples from developed areas must not be mechanically transplanted elsewhere. This was the passage through which the excesses were attributed to local executors. It also asked who benefited from the distortions and bureaucratic decreeing and answered that 'nobody, except our enemies', framing local executors as objectively serving Right opportunism.

Assessments

The article denied that these dangerous sentiments were widespread in the Party but warned that if given free scope the collective-farm movement would be considerably weakened and the danger of its breaking down could become a reality. It concluded that a radical turn of the countryside toward socialism might be considered already achieved, while criticizing violations of the voluntary principle and the ignoring of diverse regional conditions in the northern areas and Soviet Turkestan.

The day after publication, on 3 March 1930, Pravda's front page carried a further article, 'A Turn to the Spring Work', supporting what Stalin had said the day before. Soon after, the Politburo resolution of 14 March 1930 'On the Struggle against Distortion of the Party Line in the Kolkhoz Movement' classified the actions of the party workers in question as 'leftist excesses'; the collectivization campaign was temporarily halted and a number of lower-level officials were convicted.

In March-June 1930 there began a mass outflow from the collective farms: by 1 July only 21 per cent of the total number of peasants remained in the kolkhozes, and the trend was stopped by resolutions of the Sixth Congress of Soviets. Collectivization was not ended, however. In Ukraine it was rolled back after the article to 38.2 per cent of peasant households and 41.1 per cent of arable land by 1 May 1930, falling to 29.2 per cent and 35.6 per cent by the end of August, and a second forced 'voluntary' campaign began in winter-summer 1931.

Reception and debate

The fast-track collectivization incited numerous peasant revolts in Ukraine and elsewhere in the USSR. The regime stepped back with the 2 March 1930 Pravda article and issued numerous orders and decrees banning the use of force and administrative methods, but only insignificant numbers of the 'mistakenly dekulakized' recovered property.

The 14 March 1930 resolution also provided for some softening of anti-church policy, banning the liquidation of churches concealed as the population's voluntary wish. The number of mass disturbances on religious grounds fell sharply from April 1930: monthly totals were 514 in March, 391 in April, 126 in May, 69 in June, 38 in July, 25 in August and 10 in September. The USSR Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars resolution of 13 October 1930 changed the criteria for classifying peasant households as kulak, so that households of clergy were no longer considered kulak.

Assessments differ. In 1950 the journal Kommunist stressed the article's role in preventing 'distortions' in kolkhoz construction. After Stalin's death, in 1964 Ogonyok writers (Andriasov, Kalinin, Popovkin, Sofronov) argued that Stalin found culprits in the local party leadership for excesses he had directly directed, while concealing the real nature of the problems; a number of modern sources, including S. V. Novikov's Bolshaya istoricheskaya entsiklopediya, hold a similar view. Some modern historians suggest that the publication of the article was dictated by the authorities' fears of peasant revolts. In post-Soviet Russian-language assessments the predominant reading treats the article as a political staging operation that made local 'excesses' the scapegoat in order to conceal the centre's responsibility.