STALIN'S IDEA OF THE NEW FORMS OF A BOND

By means of the comparative perspective of the Petrine and Jacobin tradition, the dissertation examines an idea which Stalin put forward in response to the grain crisis of 1928-9 and which would encapsulate the Stalinist turn toward rapid industrialization and mass collectivization in the latter part of 1929, namely the idea of forcible formation of the new forms of bond. Three main points emerge from this examination: (1) Stalin found the structural cause of the grain crisis in the gap between, on the one hand, a rapidly expanding demand for marketable grain, resulting from fast growing industry and its associated workforce and, on the other hand, a predominantly small farming system producing less marketable grain surpluses than large-scale farms employing advanced technology. As a solution to this gap, Stalin formulated the idea of forcible creation of the new types of bond, i.e., the concept of the rapidly developing heavy industry providing agricultural machines and tractors to forcibly collectivized agriculture. (2) Stalin's belief in the necessity of coercive transformation expressed through his idea of the forcible formation of new forms of bond had its Russian precedent in the belief held by Peter the Great and the Jacobins (as illustrated by Tkachev and Lenin), in their ideas, respectively of forcible Westernization and of minority revolution. (3) Stalin's adherence to the Petrine and Jacobin tradition came through a Leninist connection. Lenin evolved the Jacobin vision during and after 1917. As an operational concern of this vision, Lenin developed a concept of the bond between socialist industry and the peasant economy after the introduction of New Economic Policy in the spring of 1921. Stalin's idea of the forcible formation of new forms of bond came with his change from a mid-1920s position toward this operational concept of Lenin's Jacobinism.; The dissertation concludes by relating these points and other findings to questions of Russian studies, particularly those of Lenin's Jacobinism, the relationship between Leninism and Stalinism, and the factors behind Stalin's "revolution from above" of 1929-33.