The Enigma of Terror: Part II

Constitutional Crisis

This is Part 2 of a series. You can read Part 1 here.

The 1936 Stalin Constitution

One of the most important pieces in understanding the history of the terror is the democratic electoral reform introduced by the 1936 “Stalin Constitution.” Historians of Stalinist repression have often emphasized the major role the Constitution played in the terror, particularly the 1937 “mass operations” against specific categories of people deemed anti-Soviet.¹ Barry McLoughlin, for instance, refers to the “paradox” of the mass arrests as being “an unforeseen result of the ‘democratisation’ of society as heralded by the new Constitution of 1936.”² Part two of this series on the terror will trace out how this came to be.

During its time, the Stalin Constitution was hailed by the leadership as the most “democratic constitution in the world,” a monumental achievement of revolutionary legality in which the Soviets believed socialism had officially been “built” in the USSR. Indeed, the Stalin Constitution was celebrated as superior to comparable foundational legal documents from different nations and historical periods, securing the rights of citizens in ways “bourgeois constitutions” could not, as these other legal frameworks were said to be subordinated to the “hegemony of a ruling class.”³

This document has taken up a curious place in Stalin-era Soviet history. It has often been dismissed as mere propaganda, too obviously so to warrant serious scholarly attention, especially given the bloodbath of the terror that accompanied its implementation. Most Western writers have tended to characterize it as an attempt to curry favour with Western liberal democracies as war loomed over an isolated USSR, appealing to a common set of political values against the backdrop of an emerging fascist threat.⁴ While this may have been one dimension of the Constitution, recent scholarship has emphasized the ideological and domestic political motivations behind it.

If the Constitution was merely political subterfuge, one would expect to find internal state documents and communications in the archives revealing this to be the case. The evidence is not there. Lomb, who has written what is the most comprehensive English-language analysis of the Stalin Constitution and the process of its drafting, explicitly rejects the notion that the document was merely a smokescreen, political manipulation, or a publicity stunt:

There are no documents in the archival record to contradict the Soviet leadership’s public support for a more participatory Constitution or to indicate they viewed the Constitution and the subsequent discussion as mere propaganda, as some historians suggest. In fact, the archival records indicate that Stalin and other leaders were invested in the process, reading Western constitutions, meticulously editing the draft, and demanding accountability from regional officials for the collection of all the popular suggestions⁵

Stalin notably had commissioned Karl Radek, with the assistance of Nikolai Bukharin (among others), to embark on a rigorous study of the various constitutions and electoral laws of the world as part of the groundwork in drafting a socialist constitution.⁶ The new Stalin Constitution was influenced by a number of different democratic legal frameworks, including the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Belgian, German, Norwegian, and Swiss electoral laws, and Czechoslovak reforms from 1935.⁷ The insights gleaned from this research exerted an important influence on both the provisions and structure of the new Constitution, which was to introduce secret ballot, multi-candidate elections, and a host of other promised guarantees and freedoms.⁸

Additionally, the state organized mass meetings and public discussions, encouraging Soviet citizens to contribute their ideas and perspectives to the drafting of the constitution.⁹ Lomb notes that the central leadership regarded citizen input as a crucial step in creating the Constitution, dedicating significant state labour and resources to facilitate this process.¹⁰ None of this would have been necessary if the Constitution was merely a geopolitical maneuver to ease international relations. These efforts reflect the Stalinist leadership's legitimate commitment to democracy and popular participation—though “strictly within prescribed limits.”¹¹

Lomb describes the contrast between how the leadership intended these mass discussions and how they were actually taken up by Soviet citizens, who at times viewed them as a means to express more general economic and social grievances.¹² The Soviet state was dedicated to creating a social contract between itself and its population, establishing a framework through which citizens could participate in statecraft. For the central leadership, this was an opportunity to bridge the divide between “leaders and the masses.” For the masses themselves, the abstract notions of democracy and socialist construction could sometimes take a back seat to more pressing and immediate concerns of daily life. Lomb writes:

discussions often turned into a discussion of other matters, such as economic and political campaigns, loans for haymaking, and preparations for harvesting rye. Daily realities and the legal complexities of the discussion often distracted or befuddled participants¹³

These encounters could be viewed as a negotiation between the state and its citizens, rather than a straightforward “depositing” of information in the heads of peasants and workers. Lomb describes how a diversity of pedagogical styles and formats were used to engage participants. Lecture-style sessions where state agents dryly read the different points of the draft constitution and invited questions per provision were not as successful, and led to off-topic discussion by a likely bored audience. Alternatively, when state agents employed more dialogic methods, explained the benefits of the Constitution in their own words, and used visuals to explicate their material, they saw greater success and genuine participation.¹⁴ State-led efforts to engage citizenry were often shaped by the interests and initiative of both the facilitators and the participants.

The Intensification of Class Struggle

The Soviet state's commitment to a new democratic constitution was part of its utopian state-building project, one that was set to unfold according to a Marxist historical schema. The implementation of collectivization and industrialization, in the eyes of the leadership, had vanquished domestic enemies and established Soviet power, ushering in a new phase in history.¹⁵ This phase marked the completion of socialism's construction, necessitating a legal framework to reflect the new state of affairs.

The Stalin Constitution should be situated within the context of Stalin’s “revolutionary legality.” Historian Alfred Rieber describes Stalin as a legalist—a leader who employed a range of new “judicial norms” to advance both domestic and foreign policy objectives, including orchestrating the Moscow show trials, forging treaties with capitalist nations, and implementing electoral reforms.¹⁶ These legal structures were very different from the ones typical of Western liberal democracies; Stalin sought to harness the power of the state to remake society according to “law governed ends,” pushing to “overcome the last obstacles to the achievement of communism.”¹⁷ Indeed, the 1936 Stalin Constitution emphasized that socialism had been developed in the USSR and that it was now on the path to communism. In this highly voluntaristic conception of the socialist state, the Communist Party was to function as an active agent of history, guiding society along its historical mission and intervening as necessary. Legal frameworks were useful insofar as they facilitated this process.

Marxist theory posits that the economic system (the base) shapes society’s culture, politics, and institutions (the superstructure). In this view, under capitalism, the legal system would serve the interests of the ruling class. In Stalin’s conception of socialism, the "superactive role of the superstructure," as exercised by the leadership, was necessary to “bring a changing society into a relationship with the laws of economic development.”¹⁸ With Stalin declaring that socialism had now been constructed, the active intervention of the state was required to align the superstructure with the advanced state of economic development.

Paradoxically, for Stalin, the construction of socialism’s foundations and the purported destruction of enemies through the collectivization process did not signify a lasting period of peace. Of relevance is Stalin’s theory of the “intensification of class struggle under socialism,” which he postulated years earlier that:

The dying classes are resisting, not because they have become stronger than we are, but because socialism is growing faster than they are, and they are becoming weaker than we are. And precisely because they are becoming weaker, they feel that their last days are approaching and are compelled to resist with all the forces and all the means in their power. Such is the mechanics of the intensification of the class struggle and of the resistance of the capitalists at the present moment of history.¹⁹

Even during the brief period of relative calm after collectivization was carried out, the USSR never abated its concerns around infiltration, invasion, and sabotage. This was a state founded on violent revolution, immediately followed by a brutal civil war against an enemy backed by Western capitalist powers—a conflict that, in turn, preceded the exceptionally violent collectivization crisis, itself partly triggered by the 1927 war scare.²⁰ The tendency of regional leaders to shift blame and deflect responsibility for incompetence, deceit, accidents, and under-fulfillment only heightened the leadership’s insecurity amid the emerging fascist threat, as war loomed once again.²¹ The escalating tensions between Stalin and his regional subordinates confirmed the leadership’s beliefs that the Soviet state was under attack, erroneously associating the thinly veiled resistance of the regional cliques and their failure to fulfill plans with foreign sabotage.²² Soviet society was birthed in the crucible of revolutionary violence and shaped by the geopolitical reality of communist isolation (i.e. “capitalist encirclement”), and this conditioned their response to domestic turmoil: a reflexive inclination to ascribe industrial and economic difficulties to infiltration and counterrevolutionary activities. The leadership continued to view the world through the lens of underground revolutionaries, even though they were no longer in the revolutionary underground.

It may seem difficult to reconcile the democratic impulse of the Constitution with mass repression that occurred in the same period, but it was this very impulse that often enabled the violence of the Stalin era. While Stalin sought to continually advance the historical progress of socialism through state-building, these very advances, in his view, exposed the Soviet state to greater risks at the same time. Stalin had deemed it time to introduce legitimate elections into socialist society, yet these elections simultaneously provided an opportunity for “anti-Soviet elements” to stage a return and use the universal elections to elect their own people—groups that had been formally disenfranchised until the new Constitution (white guards, kulaks, priests, etc.). Stalin initially saw this as a battle worth fighting and one in which Soviet citizens were to play a large part. This made the popular education and mass mobilization of patriotic Soviet voters all the more important—a true test of the popular support for Soviet power. The use of mass mobilization and “class struggle” was also foreshadowed to some extent during collectivization. Priestland writes:

The market and material incentives, [Stalin] argued, could no longer be relied on to motivate the peasantry to produce and deliver grain. The kulaks were refusing to give up their grain for a fair price, he claimed, and only force and class struggle would ensure that they delivered it. The scene was therefore set for an assault on all manifestations of ‘backward’ capitalism in the countryside. ‘Class struggle’ was initiated against the ‘kulak’ (a term which was frequently applied to any peasant resisting collectivization), by mobilizing the poor peasantry against their rich neighbours and using state repression against them²³

Stalin had sought to mobilize the poor peasantry against well-to-do peasants, fostering “class struggle” against exploitative, capitalist elements in the countryside. For the leadership, collectivization was to some extent a participatory process, intended to expropriate the oppressors and emancipate the poor peasants labouring under the yoke of the nefarious “kulak” through mass mobilization. However, as we have seen in part one of the series, poor peasants often felt more secure in allying with the familiar wealthy peasants rather than a new and highly intrusive state. Those that threw their lot in with the wealthy peasants were incorporated into the category of “kulak” by the state, and consequently faced its wrath.

Stalin viewed the imposition of the collective farm “as essential for transforming peasant attitudes,” correcting their “individualist psychology.”²⁴ At the same time, Stalin saw the peasants themselves as having a key role in this radical transformation, writing “class struggle would continue against kulak survivals within the collective farm.”²⁵ In the words of Lars Lih, Stalin viewed collectivization as not just the entry of the peasantry into the kolkhozy, but a “mass struggle of the peasants against kulakdom.”²⁶ Thus, the Soviet leadership understood the process of collectivization—and industrialization—as progressive and socialist policies of modernization built upon the collective efforts and participation of its citizenry. The introduction of democratic reform and voting rights was viewed as a natural extension of these socialist achievements. However, opposing the Soviet state, or even being perceived as doing so, placed one outside the Soviet collective and effectively an enemy to be destroyed.

For the USSR, the 1936 constitution was a crowning achievement, and Stalin took a personal sense of pride and ownership over the Constitution. Kotkin notes how the rise of the Stalin cult of personality was bound up with the new Constitution. For instance, he writes: “In 1936 the Magnitogorsk newspaper's pages overran with praise and gratitude for Stalin, ‘our happiness’ and with photograph after photograph of the ‘creator of the constitution.’”²⁷ Depictions of Stalin as a warm, fatherly figure protecting the “little people” of the USSR emerged in the wake of the Constitution, no doubt connected to the new political campaign centred on the extension of voting rights for all Soviet citizens. However, not all were pleased about the new electoral reform.

Battlegrounds of Democracy

In the first part of the series, “A House Divided,” I wrote about the growing tensions between the centre and periphery. The regional leaders’ power ambitions and desire for greater autonomy led many of these officials to covertly deceive and resist the centre as a “united front,” forging plans, bribing subordinates, and deliberately withholding information. Getty writes:

While Moscow gave the orders, it seems that local party bodies and leaders, far removed from the capital, carried out policies independently and frequently at odds with those desired by Moscow…²⁸

Beginning with the first Five Year Plan, our sources contain many references to regional party first secretaries not fulfilling their economic quotas (and lying about it), hiding their and their subordinates’ mistakes, and ignoring Stalin’s “repeated warnings”²⁹

One recurring theme of the terror was the constant push-and-pull between the centre the periphery, each side using the discourses and tools of the state to further their own interests. The TsKK (Central Control Commission) became a battleground for this intrastate political struggle. The TsKK was initially created in the early 1920s to maintain party discipline, investigate misconduct, and combat corruption; it was designed to be independent from the party's Central Committee and its local branches, ensuring impartial investigations of corruption and other violations.³⁰ Under Stalin, the TsKK evolved from a theoretically neutral body into one that he stacked with his loyalists transforming it into an instrument of the central leadership. By the late 1920s, the Stalinist leadership had exerted significant control over the central TsKK, staffing its leadership with loyalists like Shkiriatov and Kuibyshev to purge factional opponents. Yet at the regional level (and below), the TsKK remained under the control of regional party cliques, as “the composition of the commissions that were supposed to be checking the activities of party committees, was controlled by the party committees themselves. The foxes were guarding the hen house.”³¹

As a result, despite the presence of Stalin loyalists in the upper echelons of the TsKK, Stalin's control over this political body was not total. Regional party barons and their cliques retained significant power, often determining the composition of district and provincial control commissions. This prompted the creation of the KPK (Party Control Commission) in 1934, a direct successor to the TsKK. The KPK was placed directly under the authority of the Central Committee, with regional plenipotentiaries appointed by Moscow, making it a more forceful means of diminishing the power of local leaders.³² The agents of the KPK answered only to Moscow and were inserted directly into the heart of regional politics to surveil, control, and discipline the regional leaders, drawing out the centre-periphery conflict to the surface.

What is particularly noteworthy is how the regional leaders actively fought against the encroachments of the central leadership, defending their autonomy in the face of Stalin’s advances. Of course, the regional leaders could not explicitly articulate any kind of outward opposition towards Stalin, and thus carried out their maneuvers within the language and channels of the existing state structures, carefully but purposefully upending the schemes of the central leadership.³³ While the KPK sought to enforce Stalinist discipline on the party structures, it was sidelined and subverted by the political manipulation of regional bosses. A major turning point in this struggle was the the Third Plenum of the KPK, where the regional leaders went on the offensive.

The published resolutions of the Third Plenum were a carefully worded critique of the KPK, who the regional leaders essentially characterized as overzealous bureaucrats impeding local officials from carrying out their urgent economic tasks.³⁴ In this way, they coopted the language of anti-bureaucratism used by Stalin to further their interests while still retaining their image as loyal Soviet subjects. The plenum forbade the KPK from investigating beyond appeals and required inspectors to “regularly inform” provincial party secretaries of their plans and not to “concern themselves with…complaints about party leaders,” effectively neutering the power and reach of the KPK.³⁵

A major misconception about the Stalin era is the idea that Stalin maintained absolute dominance and control over the Soviet system. In reality, the Soviet state was complex and vast, providing ample room for political maneuvering, intrastate conflict, and intrigue. One episode that is demonstrative of the tensions generated by conflict between these bodies was the regional leader Rumianstev’s outburst against the KPK. Rumianstev, growing intolerant of the meddling of central state agents, began to openly criticize the locally assigned KPK official, Parade. J Arch. Getty describes these interactions:

In Smolensk, Rumiantsev drew his wagons into a circle against Paparde and the KPK. He confided to his intimates that Paparde was a “petty intriguer” who was “not one of us.” On another occasion, Rumiantsev dressed down one of his own district secretaries who had talked to Paparde: “Who is your boss, Paparde or the provincial party committee?” In the words of one insider, Rumiantsev began an “open struggle” against Paparde ³⁶

The defiance shown by regional leaders reflected a growing sense of independence—an attitude the central authorities viewed as a threat and were determined to suppress. However, instantly removing regional leaders would have destabilized the system and hindered the fulfillment of economic plans. As a result, Stalin sought more subtle methods to undermine his regional opponents. As a revolutionary legalist, Stalin operated within a flexible legal framework to wage his, at this point in time, non-violent struggle against the regional leaders, but they, in turn, employed the same tactics. The regional leaders effectively neutralized the KPK and reasserted control over their parties through the Third Plenum. Faced with this challenge, Stalin was forced to consider alternative strategies. The 1936 Constitution, which promised secret, equal, universal, and multi-candidate elections, offered a more direct approach to breaking up regional party cliques by channeling popular discontent against his adversaries. Getty writes:

Until 1937, Soviet elections were rigged with one candidate for each seat, preselected by the local party clan, and with open ballot voting. This meant that regional party clans could easily control these elections and ensure the election of their own. The Stalin Constitution of 1936 produced a new electoral system in which elections to soviets were to be universal, equal, direct, and secret with multiple candidates for each position. ³⁷

The introduction of elections would make incompetent, lazy, and/or corrupt regional leaders accountable to Soviet citizens. New sweeping elections would “clean house” and bring forth a new crop of regional leadership with democratic legitimacy. Olga Velikanova notes that Stalin’s commitment to democracy was not simply utilitarian maneuvering against his political rivals, but “that the new election law and the constitution as a banner of democracy had much wider functions beyond the purges,” utilizing “democratic procedures to motivate, revitalize, outvote, or purge the sluggish, corrupt, or unreliable elites.”³⁸ Stalin saw his crusade as one that was fundamentally in service of everyday citizens, waging a war against bureaucratism and regional unaccountability to the people.