Stalin and Crimes of the State: The Soviet Terror, 1936–7

History, 2010

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 2019

In the present article, I attempt to bring to light the particularities of Stalinist wartime criminal justice via the example of the implementation of the most “popular” article of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic [RSFSR] Criminal Code on “counterrevolutionary crimes,” Article 58-10, regarding propaganda or agitation containing a call to overthrow, undermine, or weaken Soviet power or to commit specific counterrevolutionary crimes. In my view, counterrevolutionary crime cases most clearly demonstrate both the continuity of Stalinist criminal justice from the period of the 1930s and its evolution under the influence of the realities of war. Above all, the penal policies and judicial practices of the beginning of the war are in many regards reminiscent of the Great Terror, even though in absolute numbers the scale of repression was significantly smaller.

Revolutionary Russia, 1991

1. Was the policy of collectivization motivated more by a desire to destroy the peasants' traditional way of life or by a desire to achieve socialist modernization? Choose a side, discuss the evidence you find for that position in our two textbooks, and evaluate how successful the policy was in terms of the objective you decided to highlight. Although the lives of peasants were greatly impacted by collectivization in a myriad of ways, some of which included violence and terror, the policy of collectivization was more motivated by a desire to achieve socialist modernization and catch up to the industrial progress of the West. This is clear due to the widespread cultural reorganization in Russia, such as the secularization of church and state as well as in the use of terror as a means to subdue public resistance and secure the stability of new leadership, despite the atrocities and injustices inflicted upon the lower and peasant classes as a result. It was the primary concern of the Bolsheviks and Stalin to modernize and industrialize Russia. This modernization meant a shift in the entirety of Russian culture in order to dispose of the old regime and, as a result, the peasant way of life was also altered; however, this was not the primary intention of the Bolshevik party, simply a side effect of their political agenda. Stalin once said, "socialism in one country," advocating for a monolithic and nationalistic culture that united the people under collectivization and socialism. "He meant that the country could bring about socialism by creating an industrial base and by raising the cultural level of the people without waiting for international revolution," (78, Kenez, emph mine). Stalin advocated for "independence and pride" meaning the people must be united through a culture that valued socialism and industrialization. This meant that Russian way of life was being challenged and altered in order to fit these new political ideals of the country. We can see the more encompassing ways in which the entirety of Russian culture was altered, not just the peasantry, in the secularization of Russia. The soviets believed that the old regime used religion in order to manipulate the lower classes into accepting their lowly conditions in life as divine or destiny. In order to take power from the church, religious institutions were forced to register members, holidays were outlawed and replaced with socialist propaganda holidays, priests and religious people were arrested, and churches were shut down. Therefore, the challenging of traditional Russian culture, including that of the peasant way of life, was used as a tool to dismantle the remnants of the old regime to prevent revolt and resistance. This can be seen within Russian society on a larger scale than simply the peasantry. The utopian ideals of the soviets were seen as only possible by cutting ties with old traditions and ways of life that supported the ideals of the monarchy. Although peasant life was undoubtedly altered and challenged, it was only a result of soviet's political goal to dismantle the old regime and institute a new leadership. This was clearly effective according to Kenez in that 60% of the general public supported the effort to collectivize, abandoning (albeit resentfully) their old way of life. 1 1 Page 85 kenez

Economics & Politics, 2007

There is no agreement about the reasons for Stalin's Great Terror of 1937-1939. This paper argues that the problem faced by Stalin was similar to the standard principalagent problem: the country was run as one enormous firm with Stalin as the only residual claimant. The monetary incentive structure was inadequate and the threat of mass shirking by the agents was real. A simple model of a principal with two agents is developed to address the problem. Assuming that the agents can observe and can reveal each other's shirking, it is shown that, under some assumptions, an equilibrium exists with the following strategy profiles: unless someone's shirking is revealed, the principal is committed to randomly punishing one of the agents with positive probability; an individual agent never shirks and always reveals co-worker's shirking. A case study of the period is used to check the plausibility of this hypothesis.