Stalin

Whether the grudging concessions could save the situation was uncertain. “Stalin figured out trade with collective farms late,” the OGPU reported of one worker’s reaction in Minsk. “If he had thought about this in 1929–30, it would have been better, but now nothing will come of it, because the peasants have nothing; everything was destroyed.”²²⁸ Union-wide stocks of food and fodder amounted to perhaps a month’s supply, with less than that in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and the Lower Volga. A rattled Kuibyshev handwrote a supersecret memo in blue pencil on May 23, 1932, proposing to slice rations even for those with absolute highest priority (“special list” and “list 1”). The politburo rejected this, but it reduced allocations to the Red Army by 16 percent and resolved to accelerate grain imports from Persia.²²⁹

Molotov led a commission to Ukraine that reported (May 26) that “the situation is worse than we supposed,” and suggested granting still more “loans” of seed, fodder, and food. Stalin conceded release of another 41,000 tons of seeds from the strategic reserves in Ukraine and Belorussia.²³⁰ These loans—which would reach 1.267 million tons Union-wide for the year, three times the amount provided in spring 1931—were supposed to be returned from the pending 1932 harvest, seed for seed.²³¹

In late May, Stalin departed for his annual southern holiday, which would be especially prolonged (through late August). “The number of politburo inquiries has no effect on my health,” he wrote from Sochi. “You can send as many inquiries as you like—I’ll happily answer them with pleasure.”²³² He rebuffed requests to send Red Army troops to Mongolia. “We cannot conflate Mongolia with Kazakhstan or Buryatia,” he instructed Kaganovich (June 4), adding that Mongolian officials “should announce that the leaders of the rebellion are agents of the Chinese and especially the Japanese imperialists, who are seeking to strip Mongolia of its freedom and independence.”²³³

He also ordered documents concerning Soviet-Mongolian relations evacuated from Ulan Bator.²³⁴ “The Japanese, of course (of course!), are preparing for war against the USSR,” he wrote to Orjonikidze in June 1932, “and we need to be ready (for sure!) for everything.”²³⁵

Stalin kept up the pressure. “Will our industrialists produce the planned number of tanks, airplanes, antitank weapons?” he wrote to Voroshilov (June 9). “Have the bombers been sent to the East? Where, exactly, and how many? The trip on the Volga was interesting—I’ll say more: magnificent. A great river, the Volga. Damn.”²³⁶

Stalin’s mood oscillated. “It seems I shall not be getting better anytime soon,” he complained to Kaganovich in mid-June. “A general weakness and real sense of fatigue are only now becoming evident. Just when I think I am beginning to get better, it turns out that I have a long way to go. I am not having rheumatic symptoms (they disappeared somewhere), but the overall weakness is not going away.”²³⁷ He was chauffeured to his usual polyarthritis salt baths at nearby Matsesta. While on the terrace or out fishing, he would tell tales of the revolutionary underground and prison. He tended to his mandarins, berries, and grapes and played badminton or skittles with a cook against a bodyguard. Evenings, he competed in billiards, and the losers, which included himself, crawled under the table to absorb the winners’ banging from above. Gypsy dances and other performances accompanied the late-evening meals and drinking. The lights usually went out in his quarters at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.