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Purge and Politics in the Periphery: Birobidzhan in 1937

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Robert Weinberg
Robert Weinberg*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Swarthmore College
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Extract

Recent scholarship on the purges and Great Terror has contributed immensely to our understanding of the Stalinist political system that emerged in the mid-1980s. Research by J. Arch Getty and Gabor Rittersporn, among others, has challenged the totalitarian perspective that views the Terror as part of a grand scheme designed by Stalin to silence his opponents in the Party and government, establish his personal dictatorship and coerce society into unquestioning submission.1 Instead, these historians emphasize the limits of power and control wielded by the national leadership which found itself at times frustrated in its efforts to impose its will on both society and regional party organizations. They conclude that the "cleansing" of the Party and government was the partial product of a conflict between national and subnational officials, with initiative from below sometimes playing as important a role as central directives in fueling the purges.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , Spring 1993 , pp. 13 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1993

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References

Generous support for this project was provided by Swarthmore College, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad program and the Hoover Institution. I would like to extend a special thanks to Galina V. Gorskaia of the Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii in Moscow and Liudmila N. Shavul'skaia of the Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Evreiskoi Avtonomnoi Oblasti for their gracious reception and assistance. Special thanks to J. Arch Getty and Thompson Bradley for their assistance in translating and clarifying certain phrases, and to John Stephan for his valuable criticism.

1. See Getty, J. Arch, Origins of the Great Purges : The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1985 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, “Partyand Purge in Smolensk : 1933–1937,” Slavic Review 42, no. 1 (1983): 60–79 and the following works by Rittersporn, Gabor : “Soviet Politics in the 1930s : Rehabilitating Society,” Studies in Comparative Communism 19, no. 2 (1986): 105–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Rethinking Stalinism,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 11, no. 4 (1984): 343–61; “Société et appareil d'Etat soviétique (1936–1938): contradictions et interférences,” Annates E.S.C. 34, no. 4 (1979): 843–67; “The 1930s in the Longue Durée of Soviet History,” Telos, no. 53 (1982): 107–16; Simplifications staliniennes et complications soviétiques : Tensions sociales et conflits poliliques en URSS, 1933–1953 (Paris, 1988); “Staline en 1938 : Apogee du verbe et défaite politique,” Libre, no. 6 (1979): 99–164; “L'Etat en lutte contre lui-meme : Tensions sociales et conflits politiques en URSS, 1936–1938, “Libre, no. 4 (1978): 3–38. Graeme Gill's recent The Origins of the Stalinist Political System (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1990) offers an excellent historiographical overview in his introduction.

2. Material on Khavkin's life is taken from a 1992 exhibit on the Stalinist repressions at the Museum of the Jewish Autonomous Region in Birobidzhan. See also Tribuna, no. 9 (178) (15 September 1934): 8–9; S. Iakubson, “Sud'ba iz ‘zabytoi pravdy, '” Birobidzhanskaia zvezda (28 October 1989); Organizatsiia KPSS Evreiskoi Avtonomnoi Oblasti, 1934–1985 : Khronika (Khabarovsk, 1986), 23.

3. Quote taken from the exhibit on the purges at the Museum of the Jewish Autonomous Region.

4. See Schwarz, Solomon, The Jews in the Soviet Union (Syracuse : Syracuse University Press, 1951 Google Scholar and idem, “Birobidzhan : An Experiment in Jewish Colonization” in Russian Jewry, 1917–1967, eds. Gregor Aronson, Jacob Frumkin, Alexis Goldenweiser, et al. (London : Thomas Yoseloff, 1969), 342–95; Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917 : Paradox of Survival (New York : New York University Press, 1988), vol. 1, chap. 13; Sloves, Henri, L'EtatJuifde I'Union Sovietique (Paris, 1982)Google Scholar; and Abramsky, Chimen, “The Biro-Bidzhan Project, 1927–1959,” in The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917, 3rd ed., ed. Kochan, Lionel (New York : Oxford University Press, 1978, 64–77 Google Scholar, for useful overviews of the JAR from its inception to the end of the 1930s. The most comprehensive account is provided in Hebrew by Jacob Lvavi, Jewish Colonization in Birobidzhan (Jerusalem, 1965).

5. Getty, “Party and Purge in Smolensk, 1933–1937,” 69.

6. Getty, The Origins of the Great Purges, 48–57.

7. See Partiinyi arkhiv obkoma KPSS Evreiskoi Avtonomnoi Oblasti, f. 6, op. 1, d. 43. Hereafter cited as PAOEAO.

8. F. Sachuk, “Vozvrashchennaia chest',” Birobidzhanskaia zvezda (4 March 1990): 2 and PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1, d. 16, 127–31 and 143–45, and d. 21, 33–34. See also the papers of the Otdel rukovodiashchikh partiinykh organov of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii in Moscow, especially f. 17, op. 21, d. 5403, 9–19, d. 5432, 174 and 182–182 ob., d. 5547, 60–61, 95–110 and 179, d. 5549, 93–97, 157 and 161, and d. 5550, 52–56, 60, 75–76, 95–97, 101, and 131–32. Hereafter cited as CC-ORPO.

9. Getty, The Origins of the Great Purges, 149–50.

10. Tribuna, no. 8 (229) (30 April 1937): 5 and 7; Tikhookeanskaia zvezda (8 April 1937 and 9 May 1937).

11. It is unclear upon what evidence Suturin bases his conclusion regarding the conversation between Khavkin and Suturin, Malenkov. A., Delo kraevogo masshtaba (Khabarovsk, 1991), 122 Google Scholar and idem, “Bez viny vinovatye,” Birobidzhanskaia zvezda (12 May 1989).

12. CC-ORPO, f. 17, op. 21, d. 5552, 60; PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1, d. 22, 17.

13. PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1, d. 23, 3–5.

14. Tikhookeanskaia zvezda (11 April 1937, 26 April 1937 and 9 May 1937). See also PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1. d. 22, 9–13 for additional material on Kremer's struggle with Khavkin.

15. Tribuna, no. 8 (229) (30 April 1937): 4–8 and no. 11 (232) (15 June 1937): 3–5.

16. CC-ORPO, f. 17, op. 3, Protokoly Politbiuro, ed. khr. 987, 44.

17. CC-ORPO, f. 17, op. 21, d. 5439, 7–9 and 121; Tikhookeanskaia zvezda (2 June 1937); Suturin, Delo kraevogo masshtaba, 122–24 and idem, “Bez viny vinovatye,” Birobidzhanskaia zvezda (19 May 1989).

18. PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1, d. 21 and d. 22 for the stenographic account of the conference. The quotes are from d. 21, 28 and d. 22, 21, respectively.

19. PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1, d. 21, 20.

20. PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1, d. 22, 17–18. See also CC-ORPO, f. 17, op. 21, ed. khr. 5381, 217–21 and ed. khr. 5385, 182–83.

21. For the stenographic account of the conference, see CC-ORPO, f. 17, op. 21, ed. khr. 5381–5386.

22. CC-ORPO, f. 17, op. 21, ed. khr. 5382, 200.

23. I thank John Stephan for the information about the article in Pravda.

24. Lappo, D. D., “Stoikii leninets (Stranitsy zhizni i deiatel'nosti I. M Vareikisa),” Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 11 (1963): 100–5.Google Scholar

25. Tikhookeanskaia zvezda (16 October 1937 and 17 October 1937); PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1, d. 23, 19 and d. 37, 12–13; Suturin, Delo kraevogo masshtaba, 125.

26. Iakubson; Exhibit at the Museum of the Jewish Autonomous Region.

27. See Rittersporn, “Soviet Politics in the 1930s,” 118; Getty, The Origins of the Great Purges, 178.

28. In his recent book Stalin in Power, Robert Tucker, who is hardly sympathetic to the views of Getty and Rittersporn, agrees that the February-March plenum was designed to stir up the rank-and-file membership against its immediate superiors. However, he views the plenum as a cynical maneuver by Stalin, with little or no connection to the struggle between the national and regional leaderships that animates the approaches of Getty and Rittersporn. See Tucker, , Stalin in Power : The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York : W. W. Norton, 1990)Google Scholar, chap. 17, especially 459 and 464–65.

29. Gelb, Michael, “Mass Politics Under Stalinism : Two Case Studies.” John Strong, ed., Essays on Revolutionary Culture and Stalinism (Columbus : Slavica, 1990, 188–89Google Scholar.

30. See the sources listed in note 1.

31. PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1, d. 21, 4–5 and d. 37, 3.

32. CC-ORPO, f. 17, op. 21, d. 5538, 14–15 and d. 5539, 16; PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1, d. 21, 24.

33. CC-ORPO, f. 17, op. 21, d. 5547, 95, and d. 5552, 38.

34. Tribuna, no. 9 (230) (15 May 1937): 3–7; CC-ORPO, f. 17, op. 21, d. 5550, 58; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Evreiskoi Avtonomnoi Oblasti, f. 75, op. 1, d. 63, 1; PAOEAO, f. 1, op. 1, d. 11, 58, d. 15, 15, and d. 21, 75; Pinkus, Benjamin, The Jews of the Soviet Union : The History of a National Minority (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1988), 125 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. CC-ORPO, f. 17, op. 21, d. 5551, 97–98.

36. Exhibit at the Museum of the JAR.

37. Suturin writes that “the first steps in beginning to unmask enemies” in the JAR did not occur as a result of “initiative from below, but from massive pressure from above.” See “Bez viny vinovatye,” Birobidzhanskaia zvezda (12 May, 1989).