Some notable events, 1929
January 1: At the end of the first quarter of the Soviet statistical year, grain procurements by the state falls short by nearly two million tonnes. This shortfall not only restricts the maintenance of the grain reserve and the export of grain to procure capital goods, but also threatens the food security of the urban population and military.
January 8: Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera is released, an experimental, ultra-realist look into metropolitan life in urban areas in the Soviet Union.
January 12: Tintin in the Land of Soviets by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi (under the nom de plume Herge) begins serialization in the Franco-Belgian children’s newspaper Le Petit Vingtième , the first appearance of the character Tintin and his dog Snowy, as they adventure through the USSR (written as openly anti-communist propaganda).
January 17: Popeye the Sailor makes his debut in EC Segar’s comic strip Thimble Theater
January 21: Mussolini orders the Regia Marina to begin clandestinely preparing for naval expansion by drawing up new plans for “world-class” battleships and aircraft carriers that would exceed the limits imposed by the Naval Treaties.
January 29: Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (based on his experiences fighting in the first World War) causes considerable controversy in Germany, especially among the far-right, for its anti-war themes and depiction of German soldiers.
February 4: As streetfighting between Croat and Serb groups intensifies, King Alexander I suspends the constitution and declares martial law. Hardline members of the various nationalist groups are arrested.
February 11: Leon Trotsky, his wife Natalia Sedova, and children are expelled from the USSR, to Istanbul, Turkey.
February 28: With news coming from Russia of the persecution of Christians alarming his congregation, “General” of the Salvation Army Edward Higgins reluctantly gives leave to his Commissioners in the United States to combat the rise of communism “directly if necessary”.
March 1: Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (originally serialized in the socialist magazine Streetlight) is published as a full novel.
March 4: Herbert Hoover is sworn into his second term as President. Nicholas Longworth forms a Republican-DFL coalition government.
March 14: After a tense meeting, Bukharin manages to convince Stalin that the grain shortfalls are a result of climate conditions and not willful sabotage. The rift between the two politicians begins to widen, as VSNKh increases support for voluntary collectivization with tractors and fertilizer plants procured from the United States.
March 20: President Hoover signs an executive order establishing the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, 10 miles south of Yellowstone.
March 21: The Rand School for Social Science publishes an article in the journal Masses , signed by its economic faculty, warning of an imminent economic crisis.
April 3: Following new budget agreements, work resumes on the five United States -class battlecruisers. The two most amenable to conversion, Gettysburg and Shiloh , begin modification to full-scale aviation cruisers as CV-4 and CV-5.
April 8: The Great Break: At the Sixteenth Conference of the All-Union Communist Party (bolshevik) [VKP(b)], Bukharin’s faction are decisively out-voted, as Stalin and his allies adopt the rapid industrialisation programme which had been the central demand of the now purged Left Opposition and Trotsky.
April 13: Samantha, Samawal, and Spartak publish the co-authored illustrated book “Aeon Lullaby: Sophia’s Dawn ”, featuring a coming of age story of twelve Children who embody a different gnostic Aeon. A serialy published fantasy story, though the work would come to be eclipsed by their later films, the book becomes well regarded for its deceptively simple art style and snappy characters. Some controversy does arise over its leftist politics and non-conformist approach to sexuality however.
April 16: Edwin Hubble publishes his paper on the correlation between galactic distances and redshift, which indicates that galaxies are moving away from each other. Despite it being theoretically posited by Belgian physicist Georges Lemaître a year earlier, “Hubble’s Law” will show the first evidence that the universe is expanding.
April 30: In a conference in Atlantic City attended by several leading figures in Italian and Jewish American organized crime , the “National Crime Syndicate” is formally codified as an organization.
May 1: May Day celebrations turn violent in New York City and Chicago, as Silver Legionists attempt to disrupt proceedings, prompting police intervention. The police support for the Silver Legion results in a wave of wildcat strikes and riots over the next three days, as many officers turn in their badges in disgust.
May 4: The KPD’s paramilitary arm, the Roter Frontkämpferbund(League of Red Front Fighters), is banned under the Law for the Protection of the Republic. Nonetheless, the organization continues to collect dues and mobilise against the still legal Stahlhelm and Sturmabteilung , eschewing uniforms and its trademark “clenched fist” banners.
May 7: The Executive Board of the Bank of the Republic issues a warning to the public about the excessive amount of credit absorbed in speculative loans.
May 11: The government of Italy announces that it has uncovered evidence of underground Communist sedition and treason against the Fascist party’s rule of the Kingdom and begins a wave of arrests. Included in these arrests are the remainders of Italy’s above ground homo and bisexual communities to curry favour with Catholic traditionalists and to crush the last remnants of the Futurists.
May 16: The first Academy Awards are held at the Fairbanks Hotel in Los Angeles. Howard Hughes’ The Racket wins “Outstanding Picture”, and Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, directed by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, wins “Best Unique/Artistic Picture”
May 28: The US House of Representatives passes the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill. The Workers’ Party stages a walk out over the bill’s tariffs against the Soviet Union, side-stepping the political costs of running against trade-union consciousness. The Senate takes up the bill with great reluctance.
May 30: The UK General Election results in a hung parliament, with the Labour Party under Ramsay MacDonald holding a plurality of seats for the first time.
June 1: 1st Conference of the Communist Parties of Latin America is held in Buenos Aires, with representatives from many Latin American nations attending. The Workers’ Party in the US sends their own representative to observe the proceedings.
June 4: A political cartoon entitled “Fish-y Accusations” (satirizing Hamilton Fish and the Mejer affair) appears in the Daily Worker, the first in many by young Massachusetts cartoonist Theodor Geisel.
June 7: The Lateran Treaty between the Fascist Italian government and the Vatican, recognizes Vatican City as a sovereign state.
June 9 : Setsuko, Princess Chichibu, dies from childbirth complications. The child does not survive. The tragedy sends Japan into mourning, and heir presumptive Prince Chichibu falls into a deep depression. He seeks comfort in the Risshou Gokokudou Temple, and comes into close contact with Inoue Nisshou.
June 12: Eidel Waver is born to Samantha and Leonid.
June 18: Prime Minister MacDonald details his import substitution plans intended to curb unemployment to the House of Commons.
July 1: The Soviet Union and the Republic of China establish a trade and military agreement, including technical support for the fledgling National Revolutionary Navy.
July 13th: After consulting with geologists convinced that Libya could hold oil, Mussolini announces an offer of a reward equivalent to 5 million lire to anyone who can prove the existence of significant oil reserves within the colony of Libya, beginning a wave of hopeful prospectors.
July 18: John C. Garand’s gas-operated semiautomatic T1E2 rifle, chambered in 7 x 51 mm (.276 Pedersen commercially) is selected for development as the main-service rifle of the US Army.
July 21st: Seeking to address fears of Soviet expansion into eastern Asia, Benito Mussolini seeks an audience with the Imperial Japanese government in the hopes of securing ties with another newcomer to the game of empire. The Republic of France, wary of Italy’s conflicting designs for the Mediterranean as well as Japan’s potential desire for Southeast Asia, makes its protest to this effort known the following day.
July 28: The Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War is adopted and signed by 53 countries.
August 1: Tension over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem leds to weeks of fighting between Arab and Jewish forces, leading to over 250 people killed and 470 injured.
Wikibox by Asami
August 6: President Hoover graciously offers political asylum to Leon Trotsky over the objections of Workers’ Party Secretary-General Jay Lovestone, who formally protested the move based on his party’s stance of “not interfering with the internal affairs of the Soviet Union,” something his party’s relative independence from Moscow’s dictates depended on.
August 8 : The LZ Graf Zeppelin begins what would be a successful circumnavigation of the Northern Hemisphere from the Lakehurst airfield in New Jersey. Over the next three weeks, the Graf Zeppelin will travel across the world, including becoming the first nonstop flight to cross the Pacific Ocean, doing so from Tokyo to Los Angeles.
August 14: President Hoover signs the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929 into law. The new bill modifies existing farm relief programs in the Department of Agriculture by implementing production limits, relieving the overtaxed crop surplus system.
August 19: Congress enacts the Reapportionment Act of 1929, fixing the size of the House at 471 members, and apportioning seats based on the results of the forthcoming 1930 Census. The apportionment will go into effect following the 1932 general election.
August 24: Soviet physicist Georgiy Gamov first proposes hydrogen fusion as the source of a star’s energy. He subsequently begins a correspondence with Harvard astronomers Cecilia Payne and Henry Russell, who found evidence that the sun is indeed mostly hydrogen.
September 1: The close of the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern inaugurates the “Third Period”. Amidst premonitions of global economic instability, communist parties are directed to break ties with reformists, and openly agitate for social revolution.
September 8: Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich shocks the Russian-xile community by associating with the Union of Mladorossi, a group that increasingly wished to square the circle of monarchism and support of the Soviet system.
September 10: The last ever arrest strictly for the possession of some the infamous pornographic “Tijuana bibles” is made in Richmond, Virginia; with local university student Ella Meyer being detained by the authorities for ownership of several dozen copies of “obscene material” on everything from celebrities to popular fictional characters.
September 13: Citing evolving Supreme Court jurisprudence on obscenity, First Secretary Longworth repeals prohibitions on the import of “obscene” literature and their transport by US Mail, while simultaneously strengthening restrictions on political literature advocating political violence or the overthrow of the state.
September 14: Ella Meyer is released from prison due to the charges she was arrested on no longer being valid and is photographed giving the now famous “two fingered salute” to the police building as she exits.
September 23: Following new reports by the Bank of the Republic, the Dow Jones Industrial Average tanks five percent in an hour at the start of trading. A coalition of investors, led by the J.P. Morgan Company, shore up market confidence by midday.
October 1: The First Five Year Plan begins in the Soviet Union. The comprehensive programme is as much propaganda as it is economic policy, aiming to rapidly industrialise the country as well as establish the supremacy of the VKP(b) over all facets of society.
October 10: Leon Trotsky arrives in New York City quietly. He meets with local Workers’ Party officials, who demand that he not interfere with internal party affairs.
October 17: The Ford Occupation: following a breakdown in collective bargaining, unionists occupy a majority of the Ford Motor Company’s largest factories and a number of subcontractors in Michigan.
October 20: Due to the ongoing occupation, plans to formally inaugurate the Edison Institute (a pet project of Henry Ford) in Dearborn, Michigan are delayed indefinitely.
October 25: Samantha Waver completes the first draft of what would later become the script for the first film in her Columbia project many years later, in between work as a commission artist and an animator.
October 29: The German Reichstag votes overwhelmingly against the so-called “Liberty Law”, a reactionary proposal to make it treason for any German to collaborate with the payment of reparations.
November 6: On the 12th Anniversary of the October Revolution, Stalin publishes an article titled “The Year of the Great Turn” in Pravda , outlining the Leninist ideological justification for the ongoing radical restructuring of the Soviet economy.
November 11: Amidst fears of economic troubles ahead, President Hoover sets a directive ordering the Bank of the Republic to shore up the dollar by increasing gold and silver bullion holdings, triggering a speculative bubble. The silver-standard currency of the Republic of China is put in crisis, as silver speculators buy up silver, putting the currency into a deflationary spiral.
November 16 : Japanese PM Tanaka Giichi suddenly dies of angina pectoris, and a new cabinet is formed under Inukai Tsuyoshi.
November 18: The Catholic Ultratraditionalist society known as the “Humble Knights of God” issue a manifesto penned by Cristiano Boaventura condemning the spread of “Atheism, Whorishness, and Depravity”.
November 28: US Navy Commander Richard E. Byrd and his crew disappear, while attempting to fly over the South Pole. They are presumed dead after months of searching.
December 5: The Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of America proposes a name change, “Communist Workers’ Party”, to satisfy Third Period directives. The name change will be voted by the Party Congress next summer.
December 11: The Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic is established as part of ongoing national delimitation in the Soviet Union.
December 18: Josef Stalin rejects proposals from Pravda for a lavish issue devoted to him and his leadership on his 50th birthday. Whatever his protests, the roots of his cult of personality are already planted.
The Mejer Affair Through The Ages
Paul Mattick, “J’Accuse!”, originally in Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung , 2 December 1928. Translated and republished by the author in The Daily Worker(Chicago)
These are the facts in the court-martial of Lieutenant Colonel Karol Mejer. Mejer is an exemplary officer, twice awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for heroism in the Great War. Mejer is a graduate of Command and General Staff College and the Infantry School, the latter of which he is currently an instructor, earning the nickname “The One-Eyed Fox” from his colleagues and students. It of course must also be said that Mejer is a left-wing fellow traveller, though he is not a member of any political organisation.
So why then is one of the best officers of the US Army being dragged before the bar, his life and honor on the line? Why indeed.
Mejer has been accused of being a Soviet agent actively on the payroll of the GRU, selling military secrets to the Soviet Union for baubles. The lurid pages of “the Honorable” Hamilton Fish III’s speeches to the HISC paint a picture of a rogue with a personal vendetta against Lady Liberty herself, selling out the country to I.V. Stalin to get revenge for the eye he lost in the 1918 Summer Offensives.
[…]
One might be forgiven for thinking this is a dime-store novel. But it is deadly serious. The boxes of testimony and documents being marshalled to indict Mejer are filled with innuendos, anonymous sources, outright fabrications, and antisemitic libel.
For it cannot be forgotten that Mejer is a Jew by ancestry. The ancient myths of the cosmopolitan parasite have been dusted off in the service of this campaign. Fish outright conflates Judaism, Zionism and Bolshevism in indictments, and out right charges that as a Jew, Mejer has a divided allegiance between the United States, of which he is a naturalized citizen, and “the Jewish-Bolshevik state in Russia” (his words).
I accuse: Hamilton Fish III is an antisemite, a racialist, and above-all-else a perjurer. It is widely known that his office distributes the Tsarist forgery, the so-called Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Fish is a stooge of a long dead regime too stupid to recognize he’s been played for a fool by the Great Hermit of the Mountain of Prejudice. And in service to this stupidity he commits outright fabrications, accusing Mejer of being a veritable Houdini, able to slip out of army field maneuvers, fly six hundred kilometers to meet with his GRU contacts, and still be back in time for lights-out, with no one in his unit ever being the wiser. […]
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Joseph Medill Patterson, Editor, “The Communist Threat”, in The Chicago Tribune , 24 February 1929
The result of the Mejer court-martial is an unmitigated disaster for the Republic. In failing to find the traitor guilty of espionage, and merely cashiering him under an Article 84 “conduct unbecoming” charge, those thirteen officers have given in to the communist radicals.
One can guess their reasoning. I suspect it goes beyond their stated rationale of “lack of evidence” and leniency “for past heroism.” The United States Army, the inheritors of the great Minutemen, the trials of Valley Forge and of Washington, and our last line of defense, have given in to the false notion that this is an antisemitic assault on the Jewish community.
There have been voices that have given into this prejudice, but they are rare. What is at issue is that Mejer is, by his own admission in general court-martial, a communist. Communists oppose all existing nations and governments. Whatever else they believe in, this core belief that workers have no country makes all communists traitors in spirit.
There is motive. Mejer was also privy to many state secrets, which would have been highly valuable to his liege in Moscow. Opportunity. Already of guilty-mind, there is no reason to doubt any of the evidence, as admittedly limited as it is. He should have been walking to the gallows today, and not being paraded through the streets as a martyr of international communism.
Who knows how many of the officers, judge-advocates, and employees of the War Department are communists. They keep popping up elsewhere in the military. We have been far too complacent in dealing with this fifth column, on the mistaken belief that if we gave workers indulgences at the expense of property and the true toilers, the captains of industry, they would not longer be so vindictive. Clearly this thesis has failed.
The communist Workers’ Party is the second largest party in the country. They must be removed from the halls of government before it is too late. The Republic and the Bill of Rights are at stake.
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Editorial, “Carol Mejer, Social Patriot” in Pravda(Moscow), 14 June 1938, Translated and reprinted by Druzhba 1
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR has, in the spirit of socialist brotherhood and proletarian internationalism, awarded the coveted Order of Lenin to Komdiv Carol Mejer, for his exemplary service to the workers’ fatherland.
Here follows the statement of the M.I. Kalinin, Chairman of the Presidium:
Mejer, at great risk to his own life, performed numerous feats of gallantry in the service of the RKKA2. His actions are in keeping with the highest standards of international brotherhood, and are a testament to service to the communist cause overcoming reactionary national chauvinism.
Mejer’s citation for this coveted award references his heroic acts aiding the Soviet peoples during the worst periods of bourgeois encirclement, acquiring vital intelligence while serving as an officer in the United States Army that enabled the workers’ state to thwart several plots for Tsarist restoration, and undo several British supported terrorist-saboteur plots.
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Archibald Fairfax*, “Patterns in Soviet Espionage” in Journal of Sovietology , London, UK. Vol VI, No. 1. (January 1940)
[…]A 14 June 1938 article in Pravda was the first public acknowledgement on either side of the Atlantic that Mejer was a GRU agent. Details surrounding the case remain sparse, but a few important facts are known. Possibly as a diplomatic move, Mejer has been awarded the Order of Lenin explicitly for his espionage work, having been previously awarded the Order of the Red Banner by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet for his operations with Soviet Naval Infantry expeditionaries during the Second American Civil War. The official promulgation lists several presumably fictitious plots against the USSR, but the author suspects this is a way to sidestep more prosaic motivations.
Interestingly, the Presidium of the All-American Congress of Soviets has chosen to award Mejer, currently an active duty major general, their highest military award, the Hero of Socialist Labor. This medal is awarded “for conspicuous acts of gallantry and intrepidity, at risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty.”
This move signals the current regime in the former United States emphasising the internationalist, revolutionary character of the regime.[…]
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Rosa Ikeda*, The Grave Digger of the Revolution: Stalin Against Internationalism (Metropolis: Revmira, 1972)
[…]Soviet espionage in the 1920s must be in light of Stalin’s foreign policy prerogatives. While the International clung resolutely to the hope of a renewed wave of revolution across Europe and the Americas, the fallout of the Polish-Soviet War hung over the VKP(b). Agitation, even in America, was directed towards a policy of Soviet defencism, away from a renewed revolutionary offensive.
Workers’ Party actions turned towards supporting the economic prerogatives of the Soviet Union. Yearly “peace marches” opened the door to normalised relations with the USSR, and with it trade and technical exchange. American firms in automotive, steel, chemical and construction industries made business partnerships with Soviet interests. These exchanges were both lucrative and popular during the period of uneasy social peace.
But when the USSR could not acquire it through legitimate means, it showed no compunctions against acquiring technology through duplicitous means.[…]
The much-hated HISC was tipped off to a major breach of military security when a Soviet propaganda reel of a military demonstration accidentally included a copy of the J. Walter Christie M1927 tank in the background. Only a handful existed in the United States’ arsenals, as Congress dithered about procurement. The investigation immediately led to inventor J. Walter Christie’s doorstep.
Christie was arrested and harshly interrogated by the Secret Service based on the theory that he had evaded his known financial troubles by selling the tank and/or its schematics to the GRU in violation of the State Secrets Act of 1918. When the investigation resulted in nothing but embittering Christie, HISC wided its probe to the War Department and the US Army.
[…]
The investigation of Karol Mejer was a disaster from start to finish. The US Army had protected its own. Worse, the Secret Service had let prejudice dictate the course of investigation as they zeroed in on Mejer. The lead investigator, Special Agent Ronald Morris* had infused official documents with his own prejudice against Jews and Poles. When coupled with serious mishandling of evidence, the case against Mejer would have never survived in a civilian court.
Nevertheless, it must be remembered that Mejer was in fact a committed communist and a GRU source, operating under the code name “Kasha”. He did in fact furnish plans and schematics for the M1927, along with other intelligence, to his Soviet contacts. Notably, technical documentation that would prove a major boon to the Soviet chemical and munitions industries.
This espionage had much less to do with world revolution and much more to do with the expansion of Soviet capitalism. In recent years, with the declassification of much of the secret archives of the 1930s and 40s, a clearer picture of the state of international revolution has resulted.
When the euphoria of the American revolution passed, many of these GRU contacts had sobering revelations about the internal nature of the Soviet Union, and even their complicity in the exploitation of Soviet workers by the Stalinist state capitalist apparatus.
Excerpts from Yuri Shokk,The Great Break: Stalin’s Counterrevolution(Leningrad: Soyuz Books, 1965)
The old English saying is that “politics makes strange bedfellows.” The VKP(b)‘s Sixteenth Congress was amongst the strangest. After having vanquished L.D. Trotsky’s Left Opposition and the defectors L.B. Kamenev and G.Y. Zinoviev, Stalin had the party thoroughly under the control of his office.
Once the lowly “Comrade Card-Index” in charge of keeping the party’s membership records, Stalin had transformed the office of General Secretary into the party’s paramount leader, and thus also the state’s.
In this period, Stalin played the tail-ender, expertly reading the room and always placing his position near the points of consensus. Everyone underestimated the coarse, soft-spoken Georgian. This quality may have been an admirable one in other circumstances.
Throughout the 1920s, the direction of the Soviet revolution dominated the affairs of state. The New Economic Policy had never been a happy compromise. Its announcement brought the Kronstadt uprising and general malaise among the urban proletariat. The RKKA had been demoralised by the suppression operation. Many of its best leaders, including M.V. Frunze, had spent the next decade deciding how to win the next war.
The conclusions of the Unified Military Doctrine required a powerful, mechanised military supported by a strong industrial base. In the 1920s, the industrial base available to the Soviets was well below the bare minimum for this. The results of the Great War and the vicious civil war represented ten years of lost growth. GDP only began to exceed the 1913 high in 1925, and by all metrics industrial building was weak.
Meanwhile, most of the country’s large population remained tied to the land in petty production. This was stupendously inefficient. The peasantry were usually at cross purposes with the working class on every issue, from religion to the price of grain.
No one in the party disputed this. The factions disagreed, not on the facts, but in what to do about them.
[…]
The Left Opposition were the meek inheritors of earlier groups such as the Workers’ Opposition. They had been in the centre while Lenin still lived and considered themselves the authentic expression of Bolshevik-Leninism. Trotsky, who had been reproached by Lenin over the issue of the militarisation of the trade unions, emerged as the strongest voice of this platform. While some of the measures were on balance more than fair, including strengthening the remaining workers’ institutions and party democracy, the Left Oppositionists caused the most stir with their economic proposals.
Abolishing the NEP, and with it the peace with the peasantry, was at the centre of their vision. The peasantry were to be dismantled as a class through collectivization. The surplus labor would be turned towards industrial activities at the direction of the workers’ soviets. The country would be uprooted and modernised in a crash program of capital accumulation.
This brought the Left Opposition into concert with the RKKA. And with Trotsky as one of its founding leaders, stirring phantoms of a Red Bonaparte who would hijack the revolution. The charismatic Trotsky fit the role too well.
[…]
The Great Break began with a crisis in grain procurement. The rural populations of the Soviet Union would suffer the hardest in the horrors to come, but the brutality was visited upon all sectors of Soviet society.
The Soviet government turned to grain confiscation to maintain export quotas. Peasants had their tools, buildings, and livestocks seized as they were physically herded into the kolkhozy. Violence begat violence, as peasants resisted the physical immiseration they faced through various methods. Since grain was requisitioned at unnaturally low prices and in quotas irrespective of the available stocks, resistance could very well be a matter of life and death.
Peasants in the kolkhozy had to physically support themselves with the food they raised. Quotas that were too high meant literal starvation. Grain was hoarded or burned for fuel. Livestock slaughtered well above the rate of replacement. Soviet authorities turned to increasingly harsh measures to ensure compliance.
By the nadir of this process in 1933 and 34, 95 percent of Soviet agriculture had been collectivized. But poor rainfalls and ongoing mismanagement by corrupt, malicious, and/or inept officials combined to place most of the Soviet food system in crisis. Without the mass procurement of tractors, irrigation equipment and fertilizer in mutual aid programs, the Soviet Academy of Science estimated that between 3 and 7 million people could have died in the winter of 1934-35.
As it was, over one hundred thousand people, mostly peasants, starved to death in the Ukraine and Caucasus in “the Black Year.” Many thousands more were killed as a part of internal repression, with several hundred thousand deported to internal exile by GULAG.3
[…]
In the cities, the Great Break meant the militarisation of labor. The workweek was progressively extended. Work days increased in length, leave time disappeared. The tempos of work were subject to increasingly aggressive dictates of the party spetsy. Wages were repressed as the trade unions came under increasing levels of state control. Absenteeism became criminalised, and soon changing jobs became impossible without the involvement of the bureaucratic apparatus.
Industrial management turned towards fines for misbehavior and inefficiency. Consumer goods were subjected to strict rationing
Stalin obfuscated the nature of this program through an intellectual shell game. Propaganda extolled the virtues of the “socialist system of management” that would establish the Soviet Union as a world industrial leader in a single generation. The intense valorization of labor and expansion of national and international exchange of commodities was defended with a logical barbarism of “socialist commodity production.”
The state ideology of Marxism-Leninism, codified as Stalin, was used to police resistance to this program of capital accumulation as counterrevolutionary. The growth of the state security apparatus coincided with the growth of the national economy.
With the doubling of the size of the industrial labor force in the First Five Year Plan alone came all of the other features of capitalism. State firms were directed towards ruthless economisation, increasing output and decreasing costs. Substandard workers faced deportation into the GULAG apparatus to shore up extractive industries, particularly timber.
In this era of “Stalin Ltd.”, the products of Soviet industry were marketed for export, particularly to the United States during the period of the bilateral trade agreement. “Soviet Inc.” proved to be lucrative to many Western capitalists, who sold industrial durable goods and contributed technical work to the growing industrial apparatus.
[…]
History demonstrates with innumerable examples that industrial capital accumulation is a murderous process. It proceeded in the Soviet Union with a ruthless intentionality not seen since the days of the Transatlantic Slave Trade or the Great Famines in India.
This process destroyed the peasantry as a class. While we should not be mystified by aradian notions of peasant life, its institutionalized misogyny, sexual abuse, patriarchy and xenophobia, neither should we accept the violence of the Great Break as a natural evil.
This would put us in the same category as the British industrialists who shrugged their shoulders at the millions of Irish starving during the Great Famine, and pawned responsibility off on weather, pestilence, or the moral failings of the Irish.
Trotsky’s life in exile was haunted by the increasingly dark picture that came with the Great Break. He did argue, with some merit, that the methodology undertaken where wholly owned by Stalin and his associates, and that he could have never countenanced such barbarity.
When he came to America, full of hopes of how to leverage the largest communist party outside the Soviet Union into a way to, charitably, check the Soviet Union’s degeneration, he hoped that the sizeable Left Fraction would welcome him warmly.
Instead, his first meeting with Solon Deleon, Paul Mattick, and William Foster was received coolly. While none of the men present had any love for Stalin, they had somber beliefs about Trotsky’s chances.
As Trotsky discovered, the Communist Left internationally was a different beast than in the USSR. Over the course of their conversation in old Greenwich Village, much coffee was drunk but very little headway was made in a coherent political programme. The Americans ultimately did not believe that any headway could be made by the Soviets alone.
DeLeon, ever fond of chess metaphors, likened the situation to zugzwang. Whoever moved first in the Soviet Union lost. The Americans believed that the stalemate could only be broken by the rupture of revolution elsewhere, either in America or in Germany. Crash industrialisation could strengthen the Soviet state, but the process would be as brutal in the USSR as anywhere else, and the resulting brutality and surrender to the laws of bourgeois political economy would destroy the internationalist character of the Soviet Union, and harm the prospects of the very revolutionary rupture that the Soviets needed to break the stalemate.
- “Friendship” in Russian. It is an English language affiliate of Pravda , headquartered in America.
- Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army
- GULAG is an acronym based on the name of the government agency that ran the system of internal forced labor camps. G lavnoye** U** pravleniye** LAG** erey i mest zaklyucheniya , or Main Directorate of Camps and Places of Detention.
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