Man of Steel by Jules Archer

Author:Jules Archer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sky Pony
Published: 2017-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

9

The Moscow Trials

In announcing a Second Five-Year Plan in 1933, Stalin carefully sweetened the pill. Now that they had heavy machinery, he declared cheerfully, Socialism had been achieved in the USSR. Now they must use it to multiply production so fantastically that there would be more than enough of everything for everybody, so they could enjoy Communism—when everyone could help himself to whatever he needed!

Gaiety was encouraged under a new Stalin slogan, “Life has become easier and more cheerful!” Workers were given every sixth day off. Restaurants were reopened, some staging fashion shows for officials’ wives. Factories held classes in modern dance steps—attendance compulsory. One summer night in 1934, walking with colleagues near his summer residence in the Caucasus, Stalin watched people dancing to a jazz band in a hotel pavilion. “Enjoying themselves,” he chuckled. “Very good.”

In just five short years he had amazed the Western world by transforming a backward, despised Russia into a modern industrial society. Now, he mused, why couldn’t he use the next five years to change his uncouth, ignorant people into cultured citizens the equal of any in the world?

“I want to talk about people,” he told the graduating class of Frunze Academy, Russia’s West Point. “Comrades, the slogan ‘machines decide everything’ reflects a period now past. It must be replaced by a new slogan—‘people decide everything.’ Now is the time to realize that, of all the valuable capital the world possesses, the most valuable is people.”

He began a campaign of kultura (culture) to teach every Russian to read and write, along with instructions in hygiene, etiquette, and well-bred behaviour. Girls were encouraged to use lipsticks and carry handkerchiefs. Men were ordered to dress neatly, behave politely, speak courteously. Scolded as nekulturny (uncultured) were boys who spoke roughly to girls, girls who behaved loosely, fathers who beat sons, peasants who cursed, soldiers who shoved civilians.

To give these new Russians an inspiring symbol of their new Soviet, Stalin built the world’s most beautiful subway, the Moscow underground. Its palatial passages, gleaming with marble columns, semiprecious stones, mosaic floors, and beautiful sculptures quickly became the showplace of the Soviet Union, a source of wonder and national pride to all Russians. Confiscated churches changed overnight from “State Antireligious Museums” to “Museums of Religious Cultural History,” with all church-baiting signs and pamphlets removed.

Was this a new, kindlier, mellower Stalin? Was it true, after all, that he had indeed been innocent of the slaughter of the kulaks, deceived by bloodthirsty subordinates?

The answer was not long in coming.

When the Bolsheviks had first won power, Lenin, knowing that conspiracy came as naturally to them as breathing, had made each Party leader pledge never to kill a rival or have him assassinated. That pledge was kept for sixteen years until December 1, 1934, when Sergei Kirov was murdered. He was the young, popular Party chief of Leningrad, considered Stalin’s close friend and probable successor. The Politburo, which credited Kirov with talking Stalin into the liberal reforms of 1933, wanted him to join them in the Kremlin.

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