Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926-1933 by David R. s> Stone (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 763 showed the trappings of a fully-fledged government, its administration of Ukraine was chaotic, especiallyat local level. The subsequent Hetman government intended to recompense landowners forthe lossesinflictedon landed estatesby the peasantsduringthe Radaperiod by burdeningpeasantswithveryhigh paymentsforrentedland. The Germans opposed this solution, arguing that it would be unjust to make the peasants carry the entire burden of the landowners' losses; rather, they should be shared between the two social classes. As a result, the government refrained from introducingthisplan. It is also noteworthy that Mfdrzecki is sceptical of the accusation that German troops had been exterminating the Ukrainian civilian population. The Germans, he argues,carriedout theirpunitive actions strictlyas reprisals for specificacts of breakinglaw and orderby the local inhabitantsratherthan as an element of a policy of terroror conscious extermination. The firstopportunityfor Germany to acquire any grain in Ukraine arrived only in the autumn of I9I8. The harvest was surprisinglygood, considering the circumstances.The Hetman government, however, chargedthe Germans three times the official maximum price paid in Germany. In addition, the grain had to be paid for in rubles rather than marks, and the Germans had barely enough to buy the estimated two million tonnes of grain available. In the end, they paid for I.3 million tonnes. Only a smallfractionof that amount reached Germany, however, due to the general uprisingin Ukraine following the signingof the armisticeon the WesternFront. Although this is a scholarlywork, it is not free from some minor mistakes. The name of the BolshevikPiatakov,forexample, properlyrenderedin Polish transliteration as 'Piatakow', is consistently misspelled as 'Piatkow'. In addition, the two maps, while helpful, contain several errors of which the worstis the mislabellingof the riverDonets as the 'Don'. Nevertheless, Medrzecki's book is, without doubt, an important monograph . Any scholar interested in the I9I8 German intervention in Ukraine will find it worth reading. Department ofHistory JERZY BORZECKI University ofToronto Stone, David R. Hammerand Rif/e: The Militarizationof the SovietUnion, 1926-i933. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2000. viii + 287pp. Notes. Tables. Index. $39.95. THIS book traces the process by which Stalinist Russia decided to commit large resources in peacetime to military production. Focusing especially on the decision-making apparatus in the central government and using an impressiverange of archival sources the author traces the faltering decisions thatwere made. The ideological motivation for peacetime militarizationis well developed. The Communist regime had an exaggeratedfearof enemies, and thisfearwas increased by a belief that the Depression had made outside countries even more rapacious.Lessfullyconvincing isthe discussionof theinternaldynamics 764 SEER, 79, 4, 200 I of the process. The argument is that the Red Army was an extremely influential pressure group, but it is not made clear how it acquired this influence. Voroshilov, the Peoples Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs is described as a 'dim-witted professional revolutionary' (p. 2 i) and the professionals like Kork, Shaposhnikov, Tukhachevskii, Uborevich, and Unshlikht were not political heavyweights. (One of the very few mistakesin the book is the statement that Uborevich was elected to the Politburoin 1930 (p. I3I); he was actually elected a candidate member of the Central Committee.) NeverthelessStone isprobablyrightthatthe militarythrewwhat weight they had against Bukharinand Rykov in I928-I930, since the Right were seen as defenders of fiscal conservatismwho kept down the Red Army budget. Coverage of the civilians is actually rather better than that of Red Army leaders, but it might have been noted somewhere that Rykov had been overall head of the militarized economy in the last conflict, the Civil War of 1917-20. Mark von Hagen has made the more general point, which Stone acknowledges and seems to accept, that the Communist elite as a whole had been militarized by the Civil War. It was also important that Communist leaders civilian and military had a fascination with technology that contributedto theirreadinessto spendvast amounts of money on aircraftand motor vehicles. Stone is probably correct that military over-expenditure had a more negative effect on Soviet economic development on the I 930s than a number of historianshave allowed. He is rightthat structuresand prioritiesestablished at the end of the 1920S led to the military-industrialcomplex which distorted Soviet development over the following six decades. Above all he is right to stressthe centralityof the militaryconsiderations(ifnot...