Table Of ContentStalin's Railroad
Stalin's Railroad
Turksib and the Building of Socialism
Matthew J. Payne
University of Pittsburgh Press
To my wife\ Jackie,
who put up with my shock work
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15261
Copyright © 2001, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Payne, Matthew J.
Stalin’s railroad: Turksib and the building of socialism /
Matthew J. Payne.
p. cm. — (Pitt series in Russian and East European studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-8229-4166-x (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Turkestano-Sibirskaia magistral’. 2. Railroads—Soviet
Union—History. 3. Railroads and state—Soviet Union.
4. Soviet Union—Economic policy—1928-1932. 5. Soviet
Union—Ethnic relations. 6. Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953.
7. Communism—Soviet Union. 1. Tide: Turksib and the
building of socialism. 11. Tide. in. Series in Russian and East
European studies.
HE3140.T87 P39 2001
385'-0957—^dc2i
2001003342
Contents
List of Illustrations and Tables vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction l
1. The Politics of Planning n
2. Managerial Hegemony: Spetsy and Reds 39
3. Turksib’s “Modey” Workforce 67
4. The Fall of the Bourgeois Specialists 99
5. Forge of a Native Proletariat? 126
6. The Struggle to Control KontroV 156
7. A New Commanding Staff 183
8. Reforging the Working Class 209
9. The New Industrial Order and Edinonachalie 246
10. Controlling the Unruly Working Class 267
Conclusion: Legacies 286
Notes 301
Glossary of Russian Terms 357
Bibliography 363
Index 377
Illustrations and Tables
Map
The Turkestano-Siberian Railroad and Southern Variants 32
Figures
3.1. Labor on the Turksib 70
8.1. Percentage versus Numbers of Kazakhs Employed 234
Tables
1.1. Numbers of Construction Workers in the Kazakh ASSR 28
2.1. Composition of the Southern Construction’s Administration 58
3.1. Workers by Quarter, 1927-30 73
5.1. Unemployment in Kazakhstan 132
5.2. Union Membership, Southern Construction 145
8.1. Nativization of Turksib Railroad Operations 240
9.1. Plan versus Construction Workers Employed 249
9.2. Members of Southern Construction’s TPO 253
VI
Preface
A WORD about the citation SYSTEM and the scholarly apparatus of
the work. First, the archival citations follow standard conven
tions and refer to the latest names of the referenced archives. As these
have undergone a constant whir of reorganization and renaming,
keeping the nomenclature current has not always been easy. In one
case, the archives of the former Communist party of Kazakhstan (pre
viously held by the filial branch of the Institute of Marxist Leninism,
now in Kazakhstan’s Presidential Archive), I have not been able to
check if the former numbering of institution file holdings (fondy) has
been maintained. Therefore, I have maintained its former nomencla
ture. Full citations for the various archives as well as their subunits and
abbreviations can be found in the bibliography. I use standard Russian
abbreviations for these citations, which, following the archive name,
are as follows: f (orfond, archival subdivision), op. (or opis\ inventory
division), d. (<delo, or file folder), and 1. (list) or ll. (listy, or pages). Sec
ond, these citations, as well as those of the local periodical press, have
been reduced to the bare minimum of information to avoid cluttering
the text with arcane references to Soviet sources. But, of course, such
arcane information is precisely what scholars most desire in citations.
To slake this thirst, the full text of all notes, including title and date of
the document, can be found at <http://www.emory.edu/HISTORY/
PAYNE> (follow the links). I apologize for any inconvenience such a
web-based scholarly apparatus might cause, but, in the competition
between text and notes, I thought most readers would prefer the
former.
vu
Acknowledgments
T HE TURKESTANO-SIBERIAN railroad (Turksib) took a little more
than three years to build, whereas I have labored on its history for
the better part of a decade. At times, I have felt that I, too, labored to
cross desolate deserts and raging rivers in this, my own little shock
project. But unlike the original builders, I cannot claim to have accom
plished my feat alone. I owe many debts of gratitude.
This book, such as it is, could not have been written without the as
sistance and encouragement of many people. The bulk of the research
for it was done during four trips to the archives in Almaty, Moscow,
and Semipalatinsk over the last decade. I am grateful for the University
of Chicago’s History Department for a fellowship to the Moscow State
Historical Institute (1990-91), the International Research and Ex
changes Board for a Long Term Grant (1991-92) and a Short Term
Grant (1996), and to Emory University’s Halle Seminar on Global
Learning for its fellowship (1998). In a period when archival access
seemed to open new possibilities for scholarship from month to
month, the generosity of these grants allowed me to present a far more
nuanced view of the building of Turksib than I ever thought possible. I
owe special thanks of gratitude to the archivists of the Central State
Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan. At a time when the entire
world had turned upside down and these consummate professionals
did not know if they would be able to continue to serve as stewards of
their nation’s past, they were more than kind to a lone foreign scholar
who stayed far past closing on many nights. I am also grateful to the
archivists at the now defunct party archive in Almaty, who allowed me
continued access to their holdings until the furniture was literally
carted away from under me! In a decade of hard times, I have always
been honored to work with them. I am also grateful to Oxford Univer
sity Press for allowing me to rework part of chapter 8, which was pub
lished as the essay, “The Forge of the Kazakh Proletariat?” in Ronald
IX
x Acknowledgments
Suny and Terry Martin, eds., A State of Nations: The Soviet State and Its Peo
ples in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
I cannot possibly thank personally all the people who have been kind
enough to read my articles and various draft chapters and taken the trouble to
engage the arguments in them. But some attempt must be made to single out
several. First off, Sheila Fitzpatrick shepherded this project through its original
stages, and anyone reading this book will note the intellectual and scholarly
debt I owe to her. Richard Hellie also gave selflessly of his time and intellect at a
very early stage of this work. Without his encouragement, I can honestly say
that I would not even be a historian. As for other persons in on the early stages
of this work, Ken Gill first encouraged me to explore the meaning of class and
ethnicity outside the Russian heartland, which led me to Turksib in the first
place and my long engagement with it. Thanks, Ken. The extraordinary and vi
brant atmosphere of the University of Chicago’s Russian and Soviet History
Workshop constantly enlightened and challenged me. Though we disagreed
constantly, you are the finest comrades I have ever known. Thank you.
At its later stages this work ballooned into a massive manuscript, and only
the wise advice of colleagues and well-wishers allowed me to pare it down to a
manageable level. To Rob Stone and Kate Gilbert, who offered keen editorial
eyes, and my colleagues Margot Finn and Kathy Amdur, who gave me very
good advice on the final manuscript, I owe a real debt of gratitude.
And one final word of thanks, to my wife Jackie. Even though I know you
were disappointed I did not entitle this book Train in Vain, I could not have
written it without your humor, strength, and love.
