The limits of mobilisation: Party, state and the 1927 civil defence campaign

Abstract

BY THE LATE 1920s mass mobilisation campaigns had become a permanent fixture on the Soviet political scene. In campaigns such as the liquidation of illiteracy, the 'five in four' of the first five-year plan and the 1927 campaign for civil defence, party workers, Komsomol members and common citizens alike were exhorted, urged and prodded to fulfil each campaign's objectives. Contemporary Soviet accounts of these campaigns presented the image of a nation moving forward under the guidance of an energetic, if demanding and strident, leadership. Few Western scholars have accepted such a simplified view of the mass mobilisation campaigns of this period. Peter Kenez, for example, observes correctly in The Birth of the Propaganda State that the campaigns often failed to achieve their ostensible purposes. Rather, the campaigns were important because they silenced alternative (that is non-state) voices, channelled and directed the genuine enthusiasm of activists into a controlled setting, and taught both activists and citizens a common political language and mode of political behaviour.1 Party and state officials in the centre seemed to be less concerned that the stated goals of the campaign were fulfilled, and more that it serve as means of political indoctrination. Hence, the campaigns drew people who otherwise might not have become engaged into the Soviet political system, even if a particular campaign failed to achieve its stated purpose.2 This conclusion, however, does not answer important questions about the nature of Soviet politics during this period. Was political socialisation the primary goal of mobilisation according to Soviet leaders? Did the mobilisation campaigns serve the same purposes for the centre and periphery, or did local officials interpret and transform the campaigns to meet their own objectives? What were popular responses to mobilisation? This article, a detailed study of the 1927 civil defence mobilisation campaign in Smolensk guberniya, will attempt to answer these questions and will examine this campaign as a case-study of the mobilisation process. The article analyses the national press, the records of the presidium of the voluntary civil defence society Osoaviakhim (OAKh),3 and the Smolensk Archives in order to study the campaign at various levels. What were the public representations of the campaign? How did senior officials in the centre formulate the campaign, and how did local officials interpret these directives? What were the results of the mobilisation campaign? I define mobilisation to be a process through which an authoritative agency