The Village and the Class War: Anti-Kulak Campaign in Estonia 1944-49

Chapter 2 Soviet Repression as a Special Case of State Violence

Chapter 2 soviet repression as a special Case of state Violence Mass violence conducted by states has been a plague of the twentieth century. attempts to explain it have generated a large number of studies—holocaust studies most prominently—but also studies of communist atrocities. in the case of communist countries, and the soviet union in particular, there has been a continuing discussion on the role of violence in the society. some historians emphasise the totalitarian character of soviet society and maintain that violence was its main characteristic, inherent in the state-sponsored ideology. a majority holds that violence is best understood as a crucial, but not exclusive, part of the attempt to build a society, one different from those that had existed previously.1 The latter view gives more scope for the context within which other parts of society can be equally drawn into the picture. While the determined focus on violence seems most efficient for moral uses of history, the perspective of building a new society holds more possibilities to understand and explain the violence. This book contributes to the understanding of atrocities in the soviet union; it is my contention that mass violence should be studied as part of the communist attempt to change society. The deportations of kulaks and nationalists from estonia, latvia and lithuania in March 1 an overview is given for instance in Kõll, Kan and hart, Research on Communist Regimes, 20–26 in particular. 38 THE VILLAGE AND THE CLASS WAR 1949 were the most extensive cases of atrocities in these republics and left a deep scar in the societies. other deportations and waves of arrests in the area were directly connected to the war between nazi germany and the soviet union, an aspect that considerably complicates the analysis of motives and driving forces. The March 1949 deportations, on the other hand, occurred four years after victory, when the soviet union was not directly threatened, in estonia or elsewhere. studying this case serves as an opportunity for an attempt to understand the violent tendencies in the society itself. The deportations followed on decisions taken at the central level by the Central Committee of the Communist party of the soviet union (Cpsu). The decision process was largely external to estonia and seems to have followed the pattern of the collectivisations from 1929–32 in the soviet union in a somewhat mechanical fashion. The implementation and its consequences were on the other hand strictly local. The decision to attack kulaks was almost impossible to understand from a local perspective when it landed in the egalitarian rural society of estonia. in addition, local rural society had lacked perceptible communist sympathies in the past, which made the task even more difficult. previous local studies of other parts of the soviet union have convincingly demonstrated the usefulness of studying violence in the light of power struggles, economic change and local social antagonisms .2 in studying the events on a local level, i found something that had only been mentioned in passing in the existing research on violence in communist countries. it was apparent that the local government —that is, the local branch of the council (rus. sovet) system—was made responsible for the dekulakisation process, the attack on the socalled kulaks, to a considerable extent. local governments consisted of ordinary people who had not chosen a profession in the repressive organs—the police, the various security systems or the military. They did not wear uniforms, they were not armed professionals; on the contrary , they were simply recruited among the local population. Was it really possible that ordinary people could be assigned such a task? how 2 The most brilliant of these is stephen Kotkin’s Magnetic Mountain, Stalinism as a Civilization. its main theme is forced industrialisation, and the insights gained about the great Terror of the 1930s in Chapter 7 clarify a great deal. 39 Soviet Repression as a Special Case of State Violence is it that they actually carried out such terrible actions without protest? Who were they, and why did they consent? state violence in this case took a form different from that of the terror conducted by the security forces. The ruling institutions of the state, the Central Committee of the Communist party, the politburo, stalin himself, decided to launch a campaign against a social group, still, local leaders were required to hand in a demand for it as a kind...