Europe: Early Modern and Modern
eager to launch a witch hunt against those construed as
politically suspect.
The grain crisis of 1927-1928 marked the death
knell of NKZem RSFSR. In March 1928, Smirnov and
his deputy I. A. Teodorovich were expelled from
NKZem RSFSR, and the commissariat was reorientated toward supporting collectivization. In 1929, the
commissariat was purged. Its leading officials were
slated to be tried with the so-called "Labouring Peasants Party," but instead they were sentenced to imprisonment by an OGPU tribunal. In December 1929, the
new NKZem USSR was established, headed by Ia. A.
Iakovlev, which energetically participated in enforcing
collectivization and "dekulakisation." Smirnov never
openly sided with the rightists, seeing their resistance
as doomed to failure. Most of the leading officials and
specialists of the old NKZem RSFSR perished in the
terror of 1937-1938.
The book is distinguished by its thoroughness, and
by its cool and balanced judgement. Heinzen writes
with sympathy for the leadership of NKZem RSFSRSmirnov and Teodorovich-and for the plight of the
bourgeois specialists-No D. Kondratiev, A. V.
Chianov, and others-who helped shape the agency's
policies. He is scathing on the role played by outside
control agencies (the "cadre hawks" of Rabkrin) who
led the attack on NKZem RSFSR. He is also highly
critical of the Agrarian Marxists, headed by L. Kritsman, with their conception of a class-divided peasant
society dominated by the "kulaks," and he takes to task
Western historians, including E. H. Carr, whom he
charges with being unduly influenced by Kritsman's
ideas.
This study brings out the full complexity of the
Bolshevik regime, its dilemmas, and its internal contradictions. Here Heinzen might have gone further.
How was it possible for people, such as Smirnov and
Kritsman, with such fundamentally divergent conceptions of policy to coexist within the same party? Why
did the "Rightists" show such weakness in meeting the
challenge of the Stalinists? Why did the bourgeois
specialists display such naivete in cooperating with a
regime that ultimately destroyed them? This is not
simply to exercise the wisdom of hindsight, but rather
to pose the question of the nature of Bolshevism, and
to question how far it could be persuaded onto a
reformist course, and whether the only realistic strategy for the moderates was that of open resistance.
E. A. REES
European University Institute,
Florence
PAUL R. GREGORY. The Political Economy of Stalinism:
Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives. New York:
Cambridge University Press. 2004. Pp. xi, 308. Cloth
$90.00, paper $32.00.
Original scholarly works ordinarily fall into one of two
categories. New theories or hypotheses are applied to
existing data in one type. In the other, new data are
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
1677
discovered to test established hypotheses. Paul R.
Gregory's opus is an outstanding example of the
second type. He has combined his own extraordinarily
wide knowledge of the secondary literature on the
Soviet planned economy with access to previously
closed Soviet-era archives to test a series of competing
theories on the nature of Soviet planning.
The question addressed is not simply how the system
evolved and functioned, but also and ultimately more
importantly, why the Soviet economy failed. Gregory
frames this issue in terms of an analogy conceived by
the late Joseph Berliner: "Did the administrativecommand economy fail because of a bad jockey or a
bad horse?" (p. 4). The author's new material comes
primarily from the Russian State Archive of the Economy (RGAE) and the State Archive of the Russian
Federation (GARF). The answer to Berliner's question proves to be more complicated and nuanced than
might have been expected, and, fortunately, Gregory
does not conclude that the truth is somewhere in
between.
In order to answer the question Gregory tests four
competing theories about what motivated Joseph Stalin's economic policies. What was the dictator's objective function? Model One is scientific planning to
maximize growth as was described in Soviet economic
textbooks and implied by Marxist ideology. Model Two
is the "stationary bandit," a concept developed by
Mancur Olson based on his reading of Stalin. The aim
in this instance is long-run growth and economic
development. Model Three is drawn from political
science literature on "the selfish dictator," in which the
leader seeks to maximize political power and totalitarian control of society. Finally, Model Four is based on
interest group analysis in which the political leader
serves as "referee-dictator" and promotes the economy only as a means to this end. As an economist,
Gregory is not very comfortable with models that
highlight the role of a single or several personalities as
determinants of historical developments, and he
hedges somewhat in order to avoid a great man
hypothesis. Even so, Stalin plays the principal role in
the creation of the Soviet system. Was this inevitable
given the ideology of the Bolsheviks, the political
infighting that followed V. I. Lenin's death, and the
fact of political and economic isolation of the early
Soviet regime? Did the horse get the bit in its teeth?
The simple answer is "yes," but the analysis is much
more involved and interesting.
The various substantive chapters describe the origins of the system of Soviet planning based on rapid
accumulation, collectivization and the centralization of
decision making, the formulation of investment and
wage policies, the role of long and medium-run formal
plans, the inevitable conflict between planners and
producers, and ruble control. Gregory shows "that
Stalin or the Politburo could make pitifully few decisions" (p. 270) These were, nonetheless, critical control variables: the investment budget, the allocation of
foreign exchange, and grain collection. All other deci-
DECEMBER
2004
1678
Reviews of Books and Films
sions were made by subordinates. Gregory accepts the
"Hayekian proposition" that an administrative system
based on the core values of the Bolshevik Party, that is,
based on planning, comprehensive state ownership and
primitive accumulation, "inevitably breeds a Stalin-like
figure" (p. 268).
How, then did the system work at all for sixty years
and work sufficiently well to challenge the military
power of the United States? Gregory argues that there
was not just one Stalin but many lesser Stalins at all
levels of the bureaucracy. All were acquainted with the
priorities set at the top for allocation decisions. Allocation decisions were simplified by fact that "virtually
all economic instructions were based upon the principle that this year's activity would be last year's plus a
minor adjustment" (p. 271). Thus the Soviet economic
system was inherently resistant to the exercise of
initiative at lower levels of the bureaucracy and could
only change through pressure from the top. Mikhail
Gorbachev's determination to change the system undermined its foundations and it collapsed. It is obvious
that Gregory's analysis of the character of the Soviet
planned economy has implications for an analysis of
Gorbachev's successors, especially Vladimir Putin, but
that is another story.
JAMES R. MILLAR
George Washington University
YORAM GORLIZKI and OLEG KHLEVNIUK. Cold Peace:
Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945-1953. New
York: Oxford University Press. 2004. Pp. viii, 248.
$35.00.
This book is the first archive-based study focused
exclusively on Joseph Stalin's relationship with his
postwar Politburo underlings. Yoram Gorlizki has
teamed with Oleg Khlevniuk to produce a highly
detailed study of Politburo operations during the final
eight years of Stalin's rule. The picture they paint of
decision making in the Kremlin (and in Stalin's various
dachas) reinforces some old notions of postwar continuity. This study suggests that, in the postwar period,
Stalin recreated and strengthened a system and a
process of dictatorial rule that he had constructed
before the war. The general secretary's associates are
shown to have understood their roles in the dictator's
government and to have consistently practiced what
they hoped would be appropriate subservient behavior.
The authors portray the postwar state as a smoothly
functioning dictatorial regime absent the factions and
internecine rivalries that prior scholars had postulated.
The book is organized in six largely chronological
chapters that demonstrate how Stalin kept Politburo
members in line. The first two chapters cover the
period from 1945 to 1948, when Stalin worked to
extinguish the small degree of autonomy his deputies
had been able to exercise during the war. First, he
orchestrated an episode in which Viacheslav Molotov
was made to admit to various errors. Stalin apparently
had no intention of demoting or arresting Molotov.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
His purpose, according to the authors, was to remind
Molotov that he served only at the dictator's pleasure.
Stalin then essentially repeated the process with Anastas Mikoian and then with Georgii Malenkov.
The authors do not claim that Stalin tried to personally administer the government. Instead, they show
that Stalin supported "a strong technocratic tendency"
(p. 12) by delegating powers to committees run largely
out of the Council of Ministers. While Stalin expected
others to administer political and economic affairs, the
authors argue that Stalin reserved for himself the sole
right to make policy. To bolster this claim, Gorlizki
and Khlevniuk offer evidence to show that the period's
notorious anti-intellectual, anti-Western campaign
named for Andrei Zhdanov (the Zhdanovshchina) had
been orchestrated by Stalin. Zhdanov, they argue, did
little more than follow Stalin's orders.
In chapters three and four, the authors cover the
Leningrad and Gosplan Affairs of 1949. These episodes accounted for the only instance in the postwar
period in which a Politburo member was expelled and
later executed. The authors believe that the demotions
and arrests of hundreds and the execution of Politburo
member, Nikolai Voznesenskii, had no policy implications. These purges, the authors argue, were meant to
reinforce "the sense of fear and subjugation among
Stalin's subordinates" (p. 94).
In chapter five, the authors survey discussions inside
leadership circles about the gulag system and collectivized agriculture. The records indicate that Stalin's
associates were aware of a need for reform in both
those sectors, but none dared to take any action. The
sole enacted reform-a 1952 decision to raise cattle
procurement prices-had been made by Stalin personally. In the final chapter the authors find that, despite
growing health problems toward the end of his life that
compelled him to spend most of his time away from
Moscow, Stalin continued to dominate and menace his
subordinates. The authors argue that the 1952 Party
Congress, the Doctor's Plot, and denunciations of
Molotov and Mikoian had been orchestrated by Stalin
to stave off thoughts of succession. The book also
argues, however, that Stalin's physical absence from
Moscow gave the Politburo's ruling group more autonomy to administer government affairs and thereby
helped create "an embryonic collective leadership ...
that would put them in good stead once Stalin died"
(p. 106).
The book's narrow focus on politics at the highest
level creates a somewhat misleading image of the
postwar USSR. This portrait of an ossified regime with
an all-powerful dictator subjugating a cowed group of
subordinates cannot depict any of the significant social
changes taking place in the postwar era that recent
scholarly studies by Amir Weiner, Elena Zubkova, and
others have illuminated. In the final analysis, this book
is less about the Soviet Union than it is about dictatorship. It provides insight into the inner workings of
modern dictatorships and would be useful reading for
DECEMBER 2004