The story of Stalin's trip to Siberia

• The story of Stalin's trip to Siberia

In 1927, the Soviet government was faced with a problem: the peasants refused to sell grain to the state at a low price. As a result, Joseph Stalin himself went to Siberia agitating farmers to take corn, and in one village Omsk replied, "And you, katso, splyashem us lezginka - maybe we'll loaf-and give."

It is said that Katso answer is not appreciated and decided to crush all the peasantry under the state machine. At least, that's what sometimes explain the reasons for collectivization. In fact, the history of Stalin's trip to Siberia was a bit more complicated ...

The crisis of the grain procurement

Poster "crush fist." 1929.

During the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the Soviet Union, relations between the state and the peasants were formed on the principles of mutual benefit: farmers sell grain to the state, and the state exported it abroad, and use the proceeds to build industrial. But the money for a large-scale industrialization is still not enough, so that the prices paid to farmers began to drop - to benefit from the resale has more.

In response, the peasants began to reduce the sale of grain. Party leaders looked at in different ways this problem. "Right deviators" led by Nikolai Bukharin considered it necessary to make concessions to the village and to invest in the development of agriculture. "Left Opposition" offered Leon Trotsky hit "fist on the village" and forcibly remove from it the necessary resources for the industry.

Collective Farm Workers antikulatskim poster. Photo 1931.

Stalin vacillated between the two party groups and wanted to show that keeping the economic situation under their own control. Therefore, at the beginning of 1928, he made a trip to Siberia, which is not written in the newspapers and almost nothing is mentioned in the documents of record keeping.

A secret mission

For 17 days, Stalin visited Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Rubtsovsk, Omsk and Krasnoyarsk. He met with local leaders and repeated to them that in frustrating blanks plan fists and blame speculators who buy grain from other farmers for the purpose of self-enrichment. His personal pressure to bypass the collective decision of the party leadership led to the fact that the Siberian power unleashed repression on the shaft resisting peasants bringing them to justice for hiding bread and refusal to sell.

The meeting of the party leadership Barnaul organization of the CPSU (b) in January 1928. In the second row on the center - Stalin.

Supporters of Trotsky, Stalin, though considered the trip "imitative tyranny", agreed with the need for a violent solution of the peasant question. Stalin was inclined to this decision because he feared a possible war with the capitalist powers and insisted on the rapid construction industry - it costs is not confused. Siberian "practice" was later extended to the whole country.

The trip reinforced Stalin's confidence that he can single-handedly take and implement decisions without paying attention to the rest of his comrades. His solidarity with the Trotskyists in the rural policy has not prevented the drill active struggle against "left opposition" and send Trotsky to Alma-Ata, and then completely from the Soviet Union. Probably because of the political goals trip was arranged by a certain secrecy, and only after twenty years in the published Stalin's collected works was published part of her materials.

As the poster B. Denis Civil War, the Soviet government blamed the kulaks buy up bread from the other peasants, the causes of hunger.

Unknown conversation with a peasant

The fact that from Omsk Stalin went to some village agitating farmers on delivery of bread, written in popular books and told in documentaries. Vivid image offended by mocking answer of the leader, of course, very beautiful, but the evidence in the documents are not found. In addition, it would be wrong to explain the historical anecdote a turn in the country's history.

We do not even know whether Stalin wanted to personally go to the villages - in Siberia, he met with local party and economic leaders in the open "meetings with voters" in a modern way is not needed. The idea of ​​the violent methods of obtaining bread he came even before the trip, and it only strengthened the trend for future collectivization turned the Russian peasantry in the "agricultural workers" and the inhabitants of the farms.