Stalin

Under the slogan “Catch and Overtake” (the capitalists), the regime was on its way to acquiring not just a new industrial base but, finally, a substantial working class.¹⁸ Already in 1930, employed labor nearly reached the plan target for 1932–33. Full employment, a magical idea, resonated globally. By the end of 1930, unemployment had reached 2.5 million in Great Britain, more than 3 million in Germany (it soon doubled from that), and more than 4 million in the United States (it soon tripled). But the disappearance of the unemployed in the USSR gave rise to unprecedented labor turnover—workers had options—which in turn provoked draconian laws such as prison sentences for violations of labor discipline or perceived negligence, and mandatory labor books to track workers.¹⁹ Many workers and some managers fell into the inconsistently applied dragnet, but the excess of demand over worker supply subverted regime efforts to “plan” labor allocation. The flux was staggering: as many as 12 million rural folk permanently resettled in cities or at construction sites that became cities during the plan. (Moscow, which received migrants from other cities, too, swelled from 2 million to 3.7 million.)

²⁰ Many tramped from place to place.²¹

No central decree explicitly outlawed private trade, but Stalin incited attacks against NEPmen (traders).²²

The number of shops and kiosks shrank from more than 600,000 in 1928 to 140,000. Party-state pressure also squeezed out individual artisans. (Molotov then decried the severe scarcity of wooden spoons at factory canteens and the sheer impossibility of having clothes or shoes mended.)²³ Many NEPmen disappeared back to villages, but a large number found employment in supply departments, enjoying privileged positions in the new socialist order.²⁴ Meanwhile, with rationing for bread and other staples already introduced in major cities, Stalin had placed the Achilles’ heel of worker provisioning on the December 1930 plenum’s agenda. The gathering endorsed a practice, initiated at some factories, to form “closed” cooperatives inside the gates to distribute groceries and clothes. The larger factories would soon establish their own farms, granaries, and goods warehouses, an unplanned yet foreseeable result of the suppression of legal private trade and private enterprise.

²⁵

Simply by virtue of its monopoly over politics and the public sphere and its dynamic mass organizations, the Soviet party-state stood out from other contemporary authoritarian regimes, but piecemeal introduction of a socioeconomic monopoly, too, added another major dimension to fulfilling the aspirations of totalitarian control. Centralized procurement and distribution imposed a nearly impossible administrative burden, and vast corruption and everyday ingenuity afforded people space to maneuver. Still, the Soviet state now asserted sway over not just people’s political activities and thoughts but also their employment, housing, children’s schooling, even their caloric intake—effectively, their families’ life chances.²⁶

The state itself was in upheaval, undergoing headlong expansion, thanks to elimination of private property, and political purging.²⁷

Skilled workers were promoted to fill many of the vacancies created by expansion and arrests.²⁸ This altered the demographics of the apparatus (but not its behavior) and of the working class, pushing the ratio of workers in large-scale industry aged twenty-two and under up to one third; the percentage of female workers rose as well.²⁹ New managers and engineers would have far more hands-on experience than tsarist-era ones, but for now, competence was in short supply and, combined with the frenzied pace, caused an epidemic of accidents and waste.³⁰ Some high-profile projects had to be shelved. Orjonikidze opened an All-Union Conference of Leading Personnel of Socialist Industry (January 30–February 4, 1931) with a speech that defended quantitative output targets but called for controlling costs, supplementing centralized allocation with direct factory-to-factory contract relations for additional supplies, and holding managers accountable for financial results and output quality. Further, he defended the “bourgeois” specialists, who for eighteen months had been subjected to withering public denunciations and trials for wrecking.³¹