The Treasure Trove of the Soviet Archives

The Soviet state and party archives, which began to be released for scholarly use in the early 1990s, offer a rare opportunity to write history using the very words of those who made history.

The USSR, as created by Lenin and Stalin, generated huge numbers of documents, many top secret and only for internal use.  The most fundamental of these described the creation and distribution of the “general party line” that set basic policy. This “party line” was formulated by a Politburo of around ten full members and in Central Committee Plenums, where one to two hundred national and regional party leaders assembled periodically.  Party members, who played a constitutionally dictated “leading role,” had to be informed of the party line in order to carry it out.

The Politburo met regularly, at least until Stalin’s rise to absolute power.  Records were made of each agenda item and its disposal.  Transcripts of debates were taken only rarely when members requested them; we have verbatim transcripts for only a few meetings, some of which were quite important.  Central Committee plenums were called to address the most fundamental policy issues facing the party.  The most significant lasted a week or more.  Many speakers addressed the assembly, and, with only a few exceptions, exhaustive transcripts were made.  “Uncorrected” transcripts captured what was actually said on the floor.  Speakers were allowed to edit their remarks (sometimes changing their meaning entirely).  A final (corrected) version was distributed to designated recipients.  In some cases, sensitive agenda items were dropped from the final version, but the uncorrected version remained in the party archive. The originals of the transcripts reside in Moscow.  Microfilm copies are now available in the Hoover Institution Archives in California.

My book Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina uses dialog from these transcripts to describe the power struggle that ensued after Lenin’s death.  The stenographers related not only the spoken words but also the mood with entries like:  “movement in the hall,” “laughter,” “noise,” applause.”  If they did not understand shouted interventions, they recorded:  “Inaudible exclamation by ____.”

I use these transcripts to describe the three phases of the power struggle over the Soviet leadership:  Stalin’s alliance with Bukharin and his allies to expel Trotsky and his allies (1926-1927), the clash between Stalin and his allies with the Bukharin group over collectivization and forced industrialization (1928-1929), and Stalin’s destruction of the defeated Bukharin group ending with their arrest (1936-February 1937).  

I provide abbreviated and abridged samples of dialog, starting with the attack by Bukharin and Stalin on Trotsky and his allies (Zinoviev and Kamenev) of September 8, 1927.  Trotsky’s “united opposition” had asserted that it had the right to distribute its party platform directly to the party membership.  Stalin and Bukharin argued that only the Central Committee (which it controlled) could communicate directly with the party membership:

Bukharin:  I want to make several remarks about the speech of Comrade Zinoviev.  He said that the party is high-handed against the opposition.  But I consider that it is the party that is being subjected to systematic attacks by the opposition.

Zinoviev:  You are not the party!

Bukharin:  I know I am not the party.  But let’s take your charge of “deceiving” the party.  Would not any member of the party understand this hypocrisy?  Look:  you have admitted that your factional work is a deviation from Leninism.  Did you write this?  Yes...and you gave your solemn promise to return to the correct path of Leninism.  It was you who deceived the party.

(An inaudible exclamation from Zinoviev.)

Bukharin:  Thieves always shout, “Catch the thief!”  Zinoviev is always doing this.  He said:  We are for the Central Committee, while all the while he worked against it.  Lenin detected such tactics in Trotsky’s “policy of schism covered with phrases of unity.”  You are now conducting the same policy, despite the fact that you admitted in your corrupt language that this is a deviation from Leninism.  (Noise in the hall.  Chairman rings a bell.  An inaudible exclamation from Zinovyev)

Trotsky (interrupting):  Our platform answers this question.

Bukharin (ignoring the interruption):…The answer is not that in your verbose and absurd platform.  The answer is that the party considers proposals that are offered by one or another group of leaders and the party decides.  The party, Comrade Zinoviev, has by no means become a herd of sheep.

Stalin:  Comrade Trotsky demands equality between the Central Committee, which carries out the decisions of the party, and the opposition, which undermines these decisions.  A strange business!  In the name of what organization do you have the audacity to speak so insolently to the party?

Zinoviev:  Each member of the party has the right to speak before the party congress.

Stalin:  It is not permitted to speak so insolently as a turncoat to the party.  Only those who have joined our enemies could sink so low.  But we wish to pull you out of this morass.

Trotsky:  You should pull your own self out of the swamp first.  (Noise, shouting, the chairman’s bell.)

The second dialog from the June 4-12, 1928 plenum captures Bukharin’s attack on Stalin’s use of “extraordinary measures” (the confiscation of grain by force) and the defense by Stalin’s team.  Bukharin contended that extraordinary measures were ruining agriculture and turning peasants against the Bolshevik regime:

Bukharin:  We must immediately remove extraordinary measures.  They have outlived their time.  But we now face a wave of mass unrest.  There have been some one hundred and fifty uprisings and dozens of terrorist acts.  Middle peasants are deserting to the camp of the kulaks.  We were victorious in gaining Soviet power, but we can also lose it.”

At this point, Stalin’s ally Lazar Kaganovich, former head of the party in Ukraine, where much of the peasant unrest occurred, protested that Bukharin was exaggerating.

Bukharin (to Kaganovich): I could cite still more such examples given at the Central Committee plenum of Ukraine.

Kaganovich:  There were other speeches there.  You should cite them as well.

Voice (a Bukharin ally):  And the former general secretary of Ukraine, Comrade Kaganovich, comes here and doesn’t say anything about this?

Kaganovich:  Give me two hours like Comrade Bukharin, and I will tell you all and cite speeches.

Bukharin:  When Lenin encountered panic mongers, he said they must be shot to maintain a united front.  But he never said that we should keep quiet about facts.

Despite the dead seriousness of the debate, a note of levity was introduced by a top Ukrainian party official, playing on Bukharin’s use of the term “sit” (slang for “sit in jail”).  When he asked Bukharin:  “And for what did you ‘sit’?”  Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, the head of the OGPU, quipped:  “He ‘sat’ for panic mongering.” 

(Laughter)

The third abridged excerpt is from the April 16-23, 1937 plenum.  Bukharin now stands accused, among other crimes, of plotting to murder Stalin.  His colleagues and allies have implicated him in their interrogations, and he understands that he has no chance.  Before the plenum, he sends word that he is going on a hunger strike until he is cleared of these charges.  Accused of an anti-party attack, Bukharin attempts to justify his hunger strike before a jeering audience:

Bukharin:  I first want to say that I know the Central Committee well enough to immediately rule out that it can be frightened by my declaration of a hunger strike.

Voice:  Then why did you write that you’ll not stop your hunger strike until the charges are dropped?

Bukharin:  Comrades, I plead with you not to interrupt because it is very difficult for me to speak.  In my letter I described my psychological condition as it should be understood as a person.  If, of course, I am not a human being, then there is nothing to understand.  But I consider myself a human being and that I have the right to write about my psychological condition in this particularly difficult moment of my life.  And in this regard, there was no attempt to frighten or deliver ultimatums.

Stalin:  And your hunger strike?

Bukharin:  And I’ll continue my hunger strike.  I wrote to you, because I, in despair, grasped at this option.  I wrote to a narrow circle because, with such accusations hanging over me, it is impossible to live.  I am not able to shoot myself because then they’ll say that I committed suicide to harm the party; but if I die, as from a disease, what would you lose from this?

Voice:  Blackmail!

Bukharin:  But understand how difficult it is for me to live.

Stalin: And is it easy for us?

These are only three short examples drawn from thousands of pages of Central Committee transcripts that cover the major policy issues of the 1920s and 1930s.  They represent virgin territory for researchers.  They remain largely unread.  There have been no attempts to analyze the handwritten corrections speakers made to their floor remarks. They are at their richest during the critical period of creating the Soviet economic and political system.  They provide, moreover, a highly personal view of the founders of the Soviet state:  How they spoke to one another; when and why they got mad; how they behaved under fire.