The Red Army itself, however, was largely made up of peasant children. They understood that while they were suppressing riots in one area, troops in another area were using the same tactics to suppress their parents and siblings. Therefore, it is not surprising that small groups of Red Army troops defected to the rebellious peasants. In the North Caucasus, an air battalion refused to take off to bomb riotous Cossack villages. As a result, the battalion was disbanded and half of its personnel were shot. One of Stalin’s followers, Akulov, deputy head of the State Political Security Administration, was soon dismissed for failing to send the State Political Security Administration troops to the rescue of a besieged regiment, which was wiped out by the rioting Cossacks. No one survived. Vrinovsky, the commander of the border guards of the General Directorate of State Political Security, who was in charge of suppressing the riot and directing the sweep, reported at the Politburo meeting that hundreds of corpses had floated down the rivers of the North Caucasus. Hundreds of corpses floated down the rivers – such were the losses of the crusading troops. Likewise, the suppression of the riots was gruesome. Thousands of peasants were shot without trial. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were exiled and left to die slowly in concentration camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan.
The other evil consequence of total collectivization was the famine that swept through Ukraine, the former granary of Europe, as well as Kuban, the Volga Valley, and other parts of the country. Even foreign journalists, who often praised the Stalinist system, put the number of starvation deaths at between five and seven million. The statistics reported to Stalin by the Directorate General of State Political Security were 3.3 to 3.5 million. The cause of this chilling mass death was not some natural disaster that was not of the will of the people, but the ignorance and tyranny of the dictator. He has neither the ability to foresee the consequences of his actions, nor is he indifferent to the suffering of the people. The Western press wryly referred to this disaster as “organized starvation,” and rightly so.
In China, hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents are homeless and wandering. Their parents died of starvation. Or were shot, exiled. Begging and pickpocketing have become a way of life for these children. In order to control the movement of adult residents, an ID card system was immediately implemented. During the Great Depression and famine. So-called internal supply outlets appeared to supply food and other goods to Stalin’s bureaucrats. These internal stores deepened the people’s hatred for the ruling elite and the privileged class. For the same ruble, the privileged could buy ten to twenty times more in such stores than ordinary citizens could buy in ordinary stores.
The Soviet press made no mention of this famine, which shocked the nation, and only gushed about the “wise and beloved” industrialization achievements of Stalin. At that time, censorship was unbearably severe. Foreign journalists were forbidden to travel outside Moscow and to the suburbs.
Stalin’s officials did their utmost to create an image of prosperity in the capital for foreign envoys and journalists. Trains carrying food to the provinces were often “confiscated” and turned around en route to Moscow. The police spent their days hunting down homeless children, taking them off the streets and putting them in jail. In the theater, however, it was a different story: lavish plays were performed as usual, and the programs of the famous ballet companies were still popular. What a feast in times of famine!
The nation’s growing hatred of Stalin’s dictatorship affected even activists within the party. Even within the General Directorate of State Political Security, morale was low, and the staff was filled with doubts and fears about their future. There were days when Stalin himself felt the foundations under his feet shaking. He always trembled as he listened daily to the reports sent to him by the General Directorate of State Political Security, fearing that they spoke of increased rioting in the country. Opposition among party members was running high. Leaflets propagating the Trotskyist program of action began to be circulated in the Supreme Party School. Almost all the students of the Caucasus School of Government and the Moscow Pedagogical Institute had a copy of Lenin’s “will”, which was a forbidden substance. Angry slogans against Stalin could be seen on the walls of factories.
Perhaps it was during these days of crisis and uncertainty that Stalin made up his mind that if fate would see him through this crisis, he would purge himself of his hidden adversaries who were gloating over his downfall in the nick of time.
Even before killing Kirov, Stalin had used various political tricks and “strong-arm tactics” to free himself from any scrutiny from the party members and the masses. After Lenin’s death in 1924. The two men, Zinoviev and Kamenev, who had supported Stalin for a time, were intimidated by Trotsky’s great prestige. With their support, the latter announced a campaign called “Joining the Party in Memory of Lenin”. As a result, a large number of workers and employees, who had stayed away from the struggle during the most difficult founding period of the revolution, poured into the Party, while the old members, who were faithful to the revolutionary ideals, became isolated among the new, unmotivated members. Then, between 1924 and 1936, Stalin carried out several purges of the Party. During the purges, many thoughtful, war-tested Communists, persecuted by Stalin’s political line, were declared unreliable, lost their party votes, and their places were taken by new bureaucrats who had joined the Party. These people were willing to bend over backwards in order to gain material benefits and promotion opportunities, and were always ready to carry out any order given by their superiors.
The purges that followed the crushing of the opposition, in particular, weakened the party considerably. Differences that arose within the party were crushed by the General Directorate of National Political Security by force of arms, rather than by discussion and voting as in the past. The slightest disobedience to the leadership was enough for any party member to lose his or her membership card and be fired. In this case, the main merit of a party member should be obedience to the party committee, not loyalty to the party program.
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