Reform in the Time of Stalin

REFORM IN THE TIME OF STALIN: NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV AND THE FATE OF THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY by Auri C. Berg A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of History University of Toronto © Copyright by Auri Berg (2012) Abstract “Reform in the Time of Stalin: Nikita Khrushchev and the Fate of the Russian Peasantry” Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Auri C. Berg Graduate Department of History University of Toronto “Reform in the Time of Stalin” is an exploration of a little-known, but highly significant chapter from the last years of the Stalin era. Between 1949 and 1951, Nikita Khrushchev attempted to carry out a radical reform of collective farms, an event that served as a turning point in the history of rural Russia and could be justifiably labeled “the second collectivization.” Through the prism of James Scott's concept of “high modernism,” this study examines the issue of reform under Stalin, demonstrating the political, economic, and social context in which the top leadership struggled to reform what had become an unworkable agricultural system. The dissertation draws on sources from party and state archives in Moscow, Kiev and Arkhangelsk, as well as central and regional newspapers and unpublished memoirs. To lay the background, the dissertation first explores the failed attempt by the Soviet Union to replace the traditional Russian commune with larger, rationally organized farms during the course of collectivization in the early 1930s. The subsequent two chapters are focused on the origins of the reform campaign: first in post-war Ukraine, where Nikita Khrushchev had considerable independence; and subsequently in Moscow, where high-level political rivalries and institutional competition undermined his efforts. Chapter four explores the local dimensions of the campaign through a case study from the province of Arkhangelsk. The final chapter ii turns to the relationship between center and periphery during the final chaotic months of the campaign. This study of late Stalin-era reform contributes to several recent debates in the historiography. First, it provides a new assessment of an increasingly controversial period in Nikita Khrushchev’s career. Second, it challenges the conventional view of a totalitarian society marked by conformity and fear by demonstrating that there was significant pressure throughout the country for reform during Stalin’s last years. What the prism of high modernism reveals is that advocates for change were limited by their own conviction that science and technology could solve social problems. iii Preface In the summer of 2005 I spent three weeks in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk investigating the origins of an open-air museum, the Malye Korely Museum of Traditional Wooden Architecture. I was interested in why the USSR, a nominally workers’ state that had long prioritized industrialization and urbanization, had come to create such a museum near this remote port city. Malye Korely, as it is called, is “the largest depository of wooden architecture in all of Russia.”1 Spread out over 150 hectares on hills overlooking the slow moving Dvina River, it is a peaceful and pastoral sanctuary, an elegantly designed and scientifically documented window into the province’s rich rural architectural legacy. Also a popular tourist destination since it opened in 1973, Malye Korely is one of the lesser known products of Soviet modernity. Its natural aesthetic stands in sharp contrast to the more recognizable Soviet icons that we passed on the thirty minute drive out of Arkhangelsk: the monumental square in the city center, the standardized concrete high rises of the working class district of Sulfate, and one of Arkhangelsk’s massive pulp and paper mills that continues to spew fumes, which, when the wind comes out of the southwest, engulf this northerly outpost with the smell of hydrogen sulfide. The origins of the Malye Korely museum, I found, can be traced to the early 1950s. The central figure in these early years was M. F. Kibirev, then the city’s chief 1 L. Bostrem, and G. E. Shestakova, eds. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchno prakticheskoi konferentsii “Narodnaia kul’tura i muzei pod otkrytym nebom. Puti sokhraneniia i vozrozhdeniia traditsionnoi kul’tury” (Arkhangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2000), 8. iv architect and a local proponent of architectural preservation during the post-war period.2 In the late 1940s he took measures to protect the now famous monastery complex on the nearby Solovetskii archipelago as well as the 17th century Preobrazhenskii cathedral in the nearby town of Kholmogory.3 Likely already with a museum in mind, in 1952 he asked the architectural administration of the Council of Ministers for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) for permission to relocate another wooden church built in 1642. His request was rejected (he was informed that the question of open air museums was currently “under discussion”), but he continued to support preservation efforts.4 Correspondence shows that he fought to keep aging structures on the government’s list of protected monuments and in 1954 he officially sought funding for a restoration workshop that would soon become an important local institutional base for the museum supporters.5 In order to understand what led Kibirev to first imagine and then advocate for the future museum, I began to ask broader questions about the social and cultural changes then occurring in the Arkhangelsk countryside. The museum, it seemed to me, was being created as a window on a rural past, which apparently was in danger of being irrevocably lost. Was this so? The idea that Russian villages were threatened by modernization, I discovered during my research, has been a topic of interest since the late nineteenth century.6 But it reemerged in the late 1950s, most prominently as a major theme in the literary movement known as Village Prose. And as the Soviet 2 In 1955 he published an architectural history of the city. M. F. Kibirev, Arkhangelsk (Arkhangelskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1955). 3 GAAO f. 2063, op. 1, d. 4392. 4 Bostrem, L., ed. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii, 3. 5 GAAO f. 2063, op. 1, d. 4235 and 4392. 6 L. N. Denisova, Ischezhaiushchaia derevnia Rossii: Nechernozem’e v 1960-1980-e gody (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1996), 3. v Union and then the Russian Federation’s rural population continued to decline, the story of the dying village was frequently repeated.7 What was the connection, I wondered, between the reality of village life in the 1950s Arkhangelsk countryside and the idea of creating a museum? Was there a relationship between the ways rural life was being “modernized” at the time and the urge to preserve traditional architecture? Were the churches, barns and windmills that were selected and eventually transferred to the museum still in everyday use, or had they been abandoned? And if they were obsolete, what structures had replaced them? I carried these questions with me as I began to systematically investigate the overarching question of rural modernization in the 1950s Soviet countryside. This in turn led me to the topic of this dissertation: the collective farm amalgamation campaign of 1950. Many people helped me on this journey, for which I am deeply grateful. This dissertation simply would not have been possible without the guidance, intellectual mentorship, and boundless generosity of my thesis advisor, Lynne Viola. Jennifer Jenkins, Robert Johnson, and Thomas Lahusen have also been supporters of this project since its inception, providing invaluable guidance at important junctures. And I thank 7 On Village Prose, see Kathleen Parthé, Russian Village Prose: the Radiant Past, (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992). Feodor Abramov, Village Prose author and Arkhangelsk native, weighed in on these debates in a 1978 article entitled “Ot etikh vesei Rus' poshla,” Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh (Leningrad: 1990), vol. 5, 133-152. For the argument that collective farm consolidation in fact did not impact out- migration rates, see G. Ioffe, Nechernozem'e: sotsial'naya geografiya i khoziaistvo (Moscow, 1986). T. I. Zaslavskaia recent memories provide one insider’s recollection of the debates: Moia zhizn' (2007), 619- 625. On the topic in general, I have found these works especially useful: L. Denisova, Ischezhaiushchaia derevnia Rossii and Judith Pallot, “Rural Depopulation and the Restoration of the Russian Village under Gorbachev,” Soviet Studies 42 (1990): 655-74. A recent contribution focusing on contemporary issues is G. V. Ioffe, T. G. Nefedova and Ilya Zaslavsky, The End of Peasantry?: The Disintegration of Rural Russia, (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006). The results of the 2010 census have prompted renewed concerns about the fate of tens of thousands of rural communities; for example, “Towns, villages a dying phenomenon in Russia,” RTE Online, 06 April 2011 (http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0406/russia1.html, last accessed 3 December 2011). vi my external reader, Kate Brown, for her thorough and deeply insightful commentary; as well as Alison Smith, especially for her many creative suggestions. Numerous organizations and institutions have supported my research and conference travel. I am extremely grateful to American Councils for International Education (as well to their staff and teachers in Moscow); the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program; the University of Toronto (in particular the School of Graduate Studies, the

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