Table Of ContentStalinist Reconstruction and the Confirmation of
a New Elite, 1945-1953
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Stalinist Reconstruction
and the Confirmation of
a New Elite, 1945-1953
J. Eric Duskin
Assistant Professor of History
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb
Illinois
USA
© j. Eric Duskin 2001
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 15t edition 2001 978-0-333-91894-4
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Duskin, j. Eric.
Stalinist reconstruction and the confirmation of a new elite,
1945-1953 / j. Eric Duskin.
p. cm.
Originally published: landham, Md. : University Press of America, 1999.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-42392-7
1. Soviet Union-Economic conditions-1945-1955. 2. Industrial
management-Soviet Union. 3. Elite (Social sciences)-Soviet Union.
\. Title.
HC335.7 .D85 2000
338.94 T009'045-dc21
00-041512
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
Contents
Tables
VI
Acknowledgments
Vll
Introduction
The Price of Victory 11
2 Educating a New Elite 41
3 Recruiting Industry's Supervisors 63
4 Anointing the Masters of the Workplace 95
5 The Implications of Stalin's Technocracy 129
Notes 141
Bibliography 169
Index 183
v
Tables
1.1 Number of Prisoners in Gulag Camps and Colonies 25
1.2 Selected Targets of the Fourth Five -Year Plan 34
3.1 Heavy Machine-Building Industry:
ITR Composition 67
3.2 Heavy Machine-Building Industry ITR, 1950 67
3.3 Moscow Oblast Cotton Manufacturing Industry:
Total Praktiki/Total ITR 73
3.4 Moscow Oblast Cotton Manufacturing Industry:
Female ITRITotal ITR 76
3.5 Moscow Oblast Cotton Manufacturing Industry:
Female Praktiki/Total Praktiki 77
3.6 Glukhovskii Cotton Manufacturing Complex:
Female ITR 79
3.7 Glukhovskii Cotton Manufacturing Complex:
ITR Age Distribution, 1950 79
4.1 Fourth Five-Year Plan Rationalization
Suggestions 124
VI
Acknowledgments
As I labored to transform my dissertation into this book, many graced
me with their assistance, guidance, and support. I am indebted to the
friends and scholars who took time to read all or part of this work and
offer helpful suggestions. This group of altruistic readers included Bar
bara Anderson, Geoff Eley, Jonathan Harris, Padraic Kenney, Lewis
Siegelbaum, and Ronald G. Suny. lowe my greatest intellectual and
personal debt to Professor William G. Rosenberg, who has allowed me
to extend his job as graduate advisor into a lifetime appointment. Pro
fessor Rosenberg taught me by example what integrity and profession
alism mean, and without Bill Rosenberg's advice and friendship this
book and my career as a historian would never have existed.
I must also acknowledge some of the many people whose friendship
and support helped me to keep working on this project no matter how
Sisyphean the task sometimes seemed. My colleagues at Northern Illi
nois University, Bruce Field, Jim Schmidt, Simon Newman, and Sam
Kinser, have been my comrades and friends and have helped make me a
better teacher and historian. I must thank Ian Whitman at the OECD for
inviting me to travel across Russia with his inspirational team of spe
cialists: Jaak Aaviksoo, Maree Bentley, Mary Canning, John Coolahan,
Johanna Crighton, Boris Galabov, Friedrich Kuebart, Aims McGuin
ness, and Douglas Windham. I also owe great thanks to my friends in
Oak Park and at Barbary Lane whose conversation and company have
been invaluable and always welcome. This band of merry pranksters
includes Curt Hicks, Scott and Wendy Baxter, Bill Lohnes, Jamie Damato,
Derek Rose, Katherine Larson, and Gian DiLoreto. My friends Andrei,
vii
Acknowledgments
Igor, Sasha, and Sergei in Moscow always helped make my visits to
Russia pleasant and memorable. I thank them greatly. I am also indebted
to Matthew Howard for his patience, good humor, and willingness to
walk me through the process of academic publishing. Finally, my mother,
Betty, my sister, Meg, and my dog, Toby, have been the best family a
struggling academic could ever hope for. Their support was boundless
and they always said what I needed to hear.
The research for this work was carried out over a period of many
years. Among the funding organizations that made my research and writ
ing possible were the Institute for International Education, the Kennan
Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, the Rackham School of Gradu
ate Studies at the University of Michigan, the Northern Illinois Graduate
School, and the Northern Illinois History Department. I would also like
to express my gratitude to the many helpful and caring employees at the
State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Archive
of the Economy in Moscow and at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.
I thank Camille Smith as well for her fine and timely copyediting. It
goes without saying that I am solely responsible for the views and errors
found in this book's pages.
Vlll
Introduction
The Soviet people learned on March 6, 1953, that their leader for the last
quarter-century had died. Three days later Stalin was laid to rest in the
Soviet Union's most hallowed site, inside the Red Square Mausoleum,
next to Lenin. People say that upon hearing of Stalin's death every man,
woman, and child in the Soviet Union wept. Russia, in that month when
winter turns to spring, was a nation in mourning, and hundreds ofthou
sands journeyed to Moscow to view the General Secretary's body. Andrei
Sakharov, the noted Soviet nuclear physicist and future leader of Russia' s
successful anti-Communist movement, wrote that for days after Stalin
died "people roamed the streets, distraught and confused, with funeral
music in the background. I too got carried away."l Only in the dictator's
notorious labor camps was the news of Stalin's passing greeted with
nearly unanimous shouts of joy.
The upwelling of grief that opened the post-Stalin era shocked Stalin's
Kremlin survivors. They had expected trouble. Army units around the
country had been placed on alert, and the capital's streets were lined
with gun-wielding soldiers. Stalin's lieutenants had good cause for
concern. Some of the grief-stricken had lived in regions where, only
twelve years earlier, many had hoped German troops would be libera
tors. Millions more were peasants who had used the Red Army's 1941
retreat and the government's disarray as an opportunity to flout local
authorities and reestablish more traditional ways of life, and who had
resented the government's postwar enforcement of collectivized agri
culture. Why were so many Soviets distressed and saddened when told
of the General Secretary's demise? Why were so few Muscovites, even
in the privacy of their own homes, toasting the end of a brutal dictator-
