The Lost Politburo Transcripts. From Collective Rule to Stalin's Dictatorship ed. by Paul R. Gregory and Norman Naimark (review)

There are few better illustrations of the radical vision of the Soviet state than the vast corpus of sources that continue to surface more than twenty years after its demise: colorful memoirs and personal accounts, diaries, biographies, and, of course, hefty volumes of declassified party and state records documenting the promises and pitfalls of the construction of socialism. This valuable collection of essays examines a particular set of these recently accessible sources − minutes (or so-called stenograms) from meetings of the Politburo, the effective center of political power within the Soviet system. Scholars long anticipated access to these high-level records, assuming that they would provide important insights on crucial questions like the Great Terror and the thinking at the top. A few items made available in the 1990s were limited to protocols containing the agenda of these meetings, rather than the actual transcripts. Then, over a decade ago, thirty-one such transcripts of Politburo meetings were transferred from the Presidential Archive (APRF) to the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI). They refer to meetings held between 1923 and 1932, with the exception of one transcript from a meeting held in October 1938. Those documents were published in three volumes in 2007. ¹ In this companion volume, Paul Gregory and Norman Naimark present the main themes covered in the Politburo transcripts, whereas ten other scholars examine individual transcripts and offer their assessments.

The result is a stimulating volume that highlights the potential and limitations of the sources under investigation. As the editors clarify, the transcripts are remarkably selective. In 1923, the Politburo decided to create stenographic records on the main items discussed in its meetings. Of the thousands of issues discussed at this level, however, only a very small number made it into these records. The Politburo decided whether stenograms were to be produced, and it also decided on whether the texts could be distributed to other party members. Still, the documents discussed in this volume cover a number of important subjects, from internal struggles in the Politburo (between Stalin and his supporters, on the one hand, and the so-called United Opposition or the Right Opposition, on the other) to issues of collectivization, dekulakization, and industrial development. They offer additional insights into the deeply transformative character of these years, the ambience of high-level party meetings, and, to a lesser extent, the dramatic consequences of the Great Terror.

The volume is divided into three sections: one focused on power struggles within the Politburo; one dealing with discourse and ideology; and a final section devoted to economic matters. Hiroaki Kuromiya makes the case for Stalin as "a skillful and tactical politician capable of presenting himself as a humble, loyal, selfless and even impersonal representative of the state and the party" (P. 54). With a "penchant for 'rudeness,'" Stalin aggressively attacked those who opposed him as objective enemies of the whole party (P. 44). Turning to foreign policy, Alexander Vatlin assesses the transcript of the June 3, 1926, meeting of the Politburo, in which Soviet leaders responded to the British General Strike, which had taken place earlier in May. An important point that may appear evident in retrospect, but that has been inexplicably neglected in the predominantly inward-looking literature on the Stalin era is that external developments such as the General Strike informed debates and conflicts at the highest levels of the Soviet leadership. Oleg Khlevniuk, who has been at the forefront of the work with new Soviet archival sources, examines the transcript from the meeting on November 4, 1930, during which Soviet leaders discussed the "factional" activity of S. I. Syrtsov and V. V. Lominadze. Both were removed from their posts, but Khlevniuk emphasizes Stalin's ability to...