Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union by Barry s> McLoughlin Kevin McDermott (review)

Abstract

762 SEER, 8I, 4, 2003 McLoughlin, Barry,andMcDermott,Kevin(eds).Stalin's Terror. HighPolitics andMassRepression in theSoviet Union. Palgrave,Basingstoke and New York,2002. XViii + 255 pp. Notes. Tables.Selectbibliography. Index. ?50?00? THISisanexcellentcollectionofessays.Thewriters ofthetwelvechapters are leadingRussian,German,Austrian, AmericanandIrishscholars,andsome ofthemwillbe newtoAnglo-American readers.It isnowtenyearssincethe publicationof the importantrevisionistvolume, Stalinist Terror, edited by J. ArchGettyandRobertaManning(Cambridge,I993). This collection,a productofthenewarchival research ofrecentyears,offersa contrasting and moretraditional perspective on the GreatTerror.Accordingto mostof the authorsin thisvolume,it is in the realmof highpoliticswherethe keysto understanding the Stalinregimeare to be found;the emphasisis on high politics,interventions of the centreand the primacyof Stalin.At the same time, it is made clear that the terrorcannotbe understoodas a unitary phenomenon (pp.5-6), andboth'intentional' and'functional' interpretations ofterrorpoliciesareendorsed(p. 7). In thiscollection,StalinandEzhovemergeclearlyas thearchitects of the Great Terror of I937-38. In a fascinating article on the Comintern and Stalinistrepressions, the GermanscholarFriedrikh Firsovnotesthatit was Stalinhimselfwhoco-ordinated theattacks ontheComintern leadership: the Comintern'sGeneralSecretary,Dimitrov,basicallydid what he was told (p. 63).FirsovmakesgooduseofDimitrov's recentlypublished diariesofthe period.According toDimitrov,inNovemberI937 StalinpraisedtheRussian tsarsforcreating apowerful state,notingthattheBolsheviks hadsubsequently unitedand strengthened it. DimitrovalsoreportsStalinas saying:'Anyone who in deedor in thought,yes, in thought,attacksthe unityof the socialist statewillbemercilessly crushed byus'(pp.66-67). Itiscertainly atotalitarian pictureoftheUSSRunderStalinthatemergesfromthepagesofthisbook. Manyof the contributors to the volumeemphasizethe wayin whichthe Stalinregimecame to emphasizenationand stateratherthanclassin the middleofthe 1930s;theterroristhusexaminedinthecontextofa widershift in the regime'sideology.Writingon Ezhov'sscenariofor the GreatTerror andtheThirdMoscowShowTrial,Wladislaw Hedelerwritesthattheshow trialsof 1936-38werepartof a wider'conspiracy tapestry' thatincreasingly emphasizedthreatsfrom abroad(pp.50-52). In his articleon the mass operationsof the NKVD in I937-38, BarryMcLoughlin putsthe infamous Operation00447, launchedin the summerof I937, into the contextof the ideologicalshift away from class to people and nation that is elsewhere examinedbyRobertTuckerandTerryMartin(pp. I42-43). Inanarticleon socialdisorder, massrepression andtheNKVD,DavidShearersuggests that class-specific formsofrepression endedwiththecompletion ofthecollectivizationanddekulakization campaigns (p. II3);andhealsoobserves thatEzhov was more concernedthan lagoda with politicaland foreignintelligence conspiraciesthan with socialand economiccrime.In theirarticleon the 'PolishOperation'of the NKVD in 1937-38, NikitaPetrovand Arsenii Roginskii argue that by the mid-I930s, Stalin had come to discard REVIEWS 763 conventional ideas of classstrugglein favourof focusingon the need to defend state and nation (p. I63); they note that the 'questionnaire'method that was used to uncover hostile elements in I937-38 emphasized people's foreign links rather than their class background (p. I65). The overall effect of these studiesis thus to linkthe terrorwith the internationalcontext. Some of the authorsdifferon the relative influence of certain international events. Endorsing an argument made elsewhere by Oleg Khlevniuk, David Shearer suggests that the mass operations of summer 1937 were rooted in Stalin's reading of nationalist rear-guarduprisingsin Spain during the Civil War (p. 104); by contrast, BarryMcLoughlin places greater emphasis on the failure of the Kremlin to come to understandingswith Germany and Poland (p. I42). The book contains many other important points. Oleg Khlevniuk argues that the Great Terrorcan be seen in terms of a shift of power away from the Partyto the NKVD that was at its strongestbetween June 1937 andJanuary I938 (pp. 22-27). In his chapter, David Shearer shows how the functions of socialorderand statesecuritybecame intertwinedin the I930s. He also argues that the periodic campaigns to rid the cities of undesirablesin the early I930s reflected both a lack of proper administrativecontrol and a preference for campaign-style methods (p. 96). Barry McLoughlin observes that it was ordinarypeople ratherthan the communist elites who were the main victims of the terror. He also argues that denunciations played a small role in mass operations, since victims were arrested on the basis of broader sociological and national affiliations (p. I44). In an article on terror against foreign workersat the ElektrozavodPlant, SergeiZhuravlevdisputesthe view that the purgesin the factoriesin 1937-38 were an elite phenomenon (p. 237). Adding to the growing literatureon Stalinistsubjectivity,BertholdUnfried notes that the practices of 'criticism and self-criticism'had an educational purpose in termsof constructingpersonal identityin StalinistRussia, but that duringthe purgesthey became an instrumentfor eradicatingthe personalityof the cadre (p. 190). In his memoirs, Molotov argued that thanks to 1937 there was no fifth column in the USSR when the war broke out. The evidence provided by this volume supportsthe view that fear of potential enemies at home, if...