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Chapter 2
production arose on the basis of socialized cooperative collective farm property. In the process of the revolutionary transformation of the rural economy, there was some temporary lowering of the level of agricultural production. This is why one of the most important tasks of the Second Five-Year Plan was the liquidation of the breakdown which had been created in agriculture and also the raising of the organizational and economic strengthening of the collective farms. The mobilization of all resources for this task was called for so that already during the Second Five-Year Plan the collective farms began to play a great economic role in the country. 45
Legal historians are part of a separate apparat (administrative apparatus or jurisdiction) from other historians and are often able to say things which other historians cannot. In 1968 one of them, D. Suslo, was able to write one of the most daring statements found in all Soviet literature. In the text of The History of Criminal Justice in Soviet Ukraine, he wrote, “At the beginning of 1933 in the UkSSR, considerable food supply difficulties began. In many districts, including fundamental grain-producing ones, the population was left without bread. This led to a marked increase in crime.” In his footnote to this passage, he continued:
An inquiry into what caused the food supply difficulties has not yet been done. There is some basis for stating that party and state organs on the local level, with the connivance of certain leading workers of the UkSSR (the Commissariats of Agriculture, State Planning, etc) by setting the 1932 harvest level so as to embellish the results of the first year of total collectivization, knowingly raised the indices of the harvest and from these careerist considerations, by raising (through their figures) the grain procurements plan, left in the collective farms only seed reserves. The hypothesis that within the CC CP(b)U and the UkSSR government enemies of the people were in control and tried to undermine the construction of socialism does not correspond to reality. 46
Thus, hidden away in the footnote, Suslo was able to chide other Soviet historians for their timidity in approaching the problem.
Soon those who felt that the pendulum had swung too far counterattacked. In 1969 the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow published The Leninist Cooperative Plan and the Struggle for its Implementation. In it we read:
One cannot but be amazed at the fact that some authors present the issue as though the errors and excesses of the collective farm movement, in essence, are only now being made known, as if these authors are the only ones capable of revealing what really took place. But this contradicts reality and is inconsistent with scholarly truth. Such authors are usually silent about the fact that the errors were immediately revealed and with all possible resoluteness thoroughly criticized by the party itself and by its Central Committee. The Central Committee itself pinpointed the character and causes of the errors and pointed out the ways by which they were overcome. The Central Committee carried out a merciless struggle against the errors and execesses, made titanic efforts to liquidate distortions of the party line, reaffirmed the Leninist principle of voluntarism of cooperation, and by its deeds showed the entire peasantry that leftist distortions in collective farm construction have nothing in common with the party’s policies. Such an approach in illuminating the most important questions in the history of collectivization has principled (printsipial’noe) political and methodological significance. 47
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45 Ibid, pp. 411-412.
46 Istoriia sudu Radians’koi Ukrainy (History of Law Courts in Soviet Ukraine) (Kiev, Naukova dumka, 1968), p. 126. I am indebted to Dr. Steven Velychenko for pointing out this reference.
47 Leninskii kooperativnyi plan i bor’ba za ego osushchestvlenie (The Leninist Cooperative Plan and the Struggle for its Realization) (Moscow, Gospolitizdat, 1969), p. 111.