The 4th Branch of the Government: A Case Study of the Media as a Government Megaphone

In times of war, the media, be it in a corporate dominated state such as the United States, or a tightly controlled one-party system, such as the former Soviet Union, by and large acts as a megaphone for governmental policy. These case studies of media coverage on the crises in Poland in the early 1980s, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, utilizing primary sources, will demonstate the way in which biased media accounts can polarize public opinion in hostile nations, illustrating the importance of independent media in a time of war.

Part 1: The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

Comparing the viewpoints of the world’s two most powerful nation-states; nations that had been at war politically, economically and ideologically for decades, will no doubt turn up fundamental differences in opinion. However, in comparing several articles on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (from the U.S. based New York Times, and the Soviet Union based Current Digest of the Soviet Press) one will find a common position between both sides, hoping that a new chapter to the cold war will not unfold.

The fundamental difference, however, lies in the fact that while the US blames the war in Afghanistan and Carter’s reaction, for increasing tensions; the Soviet Union feels that the return to cold war policies has nothing to do with Afghanistan, but rather, is the product of US imperialistic foreign policy.

The New York Times articles acknowledge that the Soviet action is a “brutal violation of both moral and international law”[1]; and label the arrival of troops as an attempt to protect a Marxist regime - such as moves into Hungary and Czechoslovakia[2]; as well as proposing that the Soviet’s were acting to protect oil interests in the region[3].
While the move is criticized throughout the Times articles, President Jimmy Carter’s reckless and “dangerously explosive – policy of cold war rhetoric in the Afghan crises”[4], is met with far greater alarm.

The Current Digest of the Soviet Press does not share the New York Times condemnation of their actions claiming that the Soviet Union acted on an appeal from the legitimate government of Afghanistan, based the provisions of the “Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighborliness and Cooperation concluded between Afghanistan and the USSR in December 1978”[5] and that they would leave as soon as “aggression from the outside”[6] – the U.S. training and providing aid to insurgency groups within Afghanistan – came to an end. The Press appealed for understanding of the Soviet position, claiming “to act otherwise (than the present course) would have been to look on passively while a hotbed of serious danger to the security of the Soviet state was created on our southern border”.[7]

The Press claims that their actions in no way threaten the United States and that Carter, caught in an “election struggle”[8] is attempting an abrupt policy swing, citing a growing “Soviet military threat”[9], in order to instill fear in the populace and justify increased military spending.

Analysis of articles from both the New York Times and the Soviet Press illustrate that neither the American nor the Soviet media were in favor of a return to Cold War policies, but rather, were in opposition to a new wave of Cold War between the Super Powers. In his article for the Times: “Carter’s Cold War Tactic”, John B. Oakes acknowledges that the occupation of a neighboring Marxist country, by the Soviet Union, is not unprecedented; that the move has not placed America “in a state of crises”; and that Carter’s proclamation that the decision is “the most serious threat to world peace since the Second World War” is true – “if we choose to make it so”.[10]

The sentiment expressed by Oakes is mirrored by the article “Arabatov Hits US Return to Cold War” that “the greatest threat to world peace, at least in the past 10 years, is posed by the US policy swing toward cold war”.[11] There is however, one fundamental difference – the statements on the “threat to world peace”. The difference in understanding the situation at hand underscores the key issue in the divergent viewpoints. In criticizing the departure from détente and improved relations, the Times articles (excluding the Shabad article) blame the Carter administration’s reaction to the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, as the threat to peace; however only the Oakes article addresses the fact that Carter is drastically overreacting to the circumstances. The Press articles claim that Carter’s move to cold war rhetoric has nothing to do with events in Afghanistan. In the article entitled “Is the US Bringing Back the Cold War” it is argued that “the national interests or security of the United States of America or of other states are not in the least affected by the events in Afghanistan” and that “all attempts to pretend otherwise are absurd…[and] are being made maliciously, for the purpose of facilitating the achievement of these states imperial designs”.[12]

The fundamental problem separating these two sides, who share relatively similar goals, is where the blame is placed. While the Times articles go as far as to blame Carter for overreacting; the Press articles go beyond criticism of Carter, blaming the system of US foreign policy as a whole, rather than any single aspect. In summing up the conflict over Afghanistan the Press noted that “If there were no Afghanistan, certain circles in the US and NATO would surely have found another pretext to exacerbate the world situation”.[13]

The Press writers substantiate their assertion by claiming that the new policy (presented as a response to the events in Afghanistan) – “a course aimed at an accelerated buildup of the military power of the US and it’s allies” was adopted “before, not after, these events”.[14] The article cites the NATO decision to increase military budgets every year over a fifteen year period; a “five year plan” of new military programs and arms appropriations; and the deployment of medium range missiles in Western Europe - no doubt a direct threat to the Soviet Union.[15] The article continues to note the pre-Afghanistan breakdowns in peace, including the US freezing of arms limitation talks, a policy of delaying the SALT-II treaty – toward arms reductions – and a policy of promoting anti-Soviet hysteria during meetings in Peking.[16] The claims that the US was the driving force toward a nuclear disaster, was further substantiated by the fact that the US aided Pakistan – under a brutal dictatorship – as it sought to develop weapons of mass destruction.[17]

While the Oakes article in the Times calls Carter’s reaction a “frantic junking of some pretty firm principles that in a calmer moment the American people might well have wished to retain”.[18] Oakes also notes the mockery of US policy by offering aid to Pakistan, “as ugly a military dictatorship as exists today and almost certainly a developer of nuclear weapons”.[19] He continues his criticism noting:

Military spending is suddenly up; arms control is down if not out; critical problems of the economy are being shoved under the rug of the military emergency. Salt is being shelved (which Carter stated) is “in the national security interest of the United States and the entire world”.[20]

Bernard Gwertzman in his Times article “Afghanistan’s Impact: A New U.S.-Soviet Freeze” notes, “the events in Afghanistan, however, did not occur in a vacuum”, noting that ties between Moscow and Washington had been strained in recent months[21] despite the Brezhnev treaty, which he noted, “now seems to be the first and most obvious victim of deterioration in relations”.[22] Gwertzman, however, views the US response as similar to previous tensions over Czechoslovakia and Hungary; and claims that the Kremlin decided that relations with Washington were so poor, that the reaction could not stand in the way of a Soviet intervention.

Clearly an ideological gap exists between the columnists for the Soviet Union and the United States. While both sides acknowledge the existence of a crises and Carter’s hard-line reaction; the Soviet leaders felt a revival of cold war politics was inevitable and was dictated by a US foreign policy pattern; while the United States attributed the crises to Afghanistan and Carter’s reaction. The fact that the US felt the crises was rooted in the Afghanistan conflict; while the Soviet’s felt the crises had nothing to do with Afghanistan, led to a complete ideological divergence. The Shabad article[23] on Moscow receiving Afghan gas, and other such articles, served only to provide a possible Soviet motivation, diverting attention from the underlying issues.

If the Soviet Union and the United States were to work toward their common goal, to ease tensions and move away from cold war politics; it was necessary to acknowledge the underlying issues between the powers. Clearly this would not to be accomplished, as the two nations failed to agree on what the real issues were. The ideological differences then, served to further complicate the goal of easing nuclear tensions, common, not only to both sides, but to the rest of the worlds inhabitants as well.

[1] John B. Oakes. “Carter’s Cold War Tactic,” New York Times, 22 January 1980, p. A21.
[2] Bernard Gwertzman. “Afghanistan's Impact: A New U.S.-Soviet Freeze," The New York Times, 1 Jan. 1980, pp: 2.
[3] Theodore Shabad. “Moscow to Receive Extra Afghan Gas: Opening of Large New Field Could Mean Double Share for Soviet,” New York Times, 4 February 1980, pp: A1
[4] Oakes, A21
[5] “Bringing Back the Cold War,” Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, Vol XXXII, no. 2, 13 February 1980, pp: 2
[6] “
[7] “
[8] “Arbatov Hits US Return to Cold War,” Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, Vol. XXXII, no. 9, 2 April 1980, pp. 1
[9] “
[10] Oakes, A21
[11] “Arbatov Hits” pp. 2
[12] “Bringing Back” pp. 2
[13] “
[14] “Arbatov Hits” pp. 1
[15] “
[16] “
[17] “
[18] Oakes, A21
[19] “
[20] “
[21] The Soviet’s would argue this was due to intentional planning by the US.
[22] Gwertzman, 2
[23] Shabad, Theodore. “Moscow to Receive Extra Afghan Gas: Opening of Large New Field Could Mean Double Share for Soviet,” New York Times, 4 February 1980, P. A1-A2.

Part II: The Crises in Poland

The crises in Poland of the early 1980’s, which began with strikes in July and August of 1980, and culminated in a declaration of Martial Law by the Polish government on December 13, 1981, was heavily covered in both the American and Soviet press. Extensive media coverage, which would ideally provide a truthful, accurate understanding of the crises, instead served to polarize U.S. and Soviet opinion on the crises through a massive, ideologically driven propaganda war. The United States argued that the Solidarity movement represented an “overwhelming majority”[1] of the Polish people acting against “brutal repression”[2] by the government; while the Soviet’s labeled the movement as “counterrevolutionary”[3] and argued that Martial Law had been declared to “safeguard public order”[4].

These exceptionally polar viewpoints certainly leave one lacking a truthful and accurate understanding of the crises in Poland. These divergent viewpoints offer a textbook example of the “war of words” that existed throughout the Cold War period. The declining Soviet Union desperately sought to preserve the power-structure in Poland, lest the Solidarity movement infect the rest of the Soviet bloc. The United States, focused on weakening the Soviet bloc, supported Solidarity in Poland. Victory for Solidarity would prove a crushing blow to the Soviet bloc, while a Soviet military invasion would play into the United States anti-Soviet rhetoric. Thus, the Soviet Union had no choice but to protection a mediocre, repressive and illegitimate regime at all costs.

The United States sensed the weakened Soviet position and took common cause with the Solidarity movement by launching a campaign of blistering anti-Soviet rhetoric. It is clear that the United States was not overly concerned with freedom or abolishing brutally repressive regimes, as is evident by U.S. policy of limiting freedom and supporting brutal dictatorships in the Middle East, South America, East Asia and the rest of the world throughout the Cold War era.

Nevertheless, the rigid Cold War framework resulted in a traditional, polarized rhetorical debate, each side attacking the others position, both sides indifferent toward establishing stability, which the people so desperately needed. Examining the United States and Soviet Union’s conflicting viewpoints on the government under the Polish Communist Party; the Solidarity movement; and the will of the Polish people, clearly illustrates that the media - the New York Times and the Current Digest of the Soviet Press - could not be relied upon for anything but a biased rhetorical attack against the interests of their respective Cold War rival.

Following the declaration of martial law by the Polish government, United States President Ronald Reagan boldly proclaimed that “freemen will not stand by in the face of brutal oppression.”[5] Martial law – “a state of war” had been declared following over a year of social upheaval, sparked by the government’s failure to abide by the Gdansk agreement it had signed. The “state of war” was declared against the “self organization” or Solidarity movement under Lech Walesa. The Soviet Press praised the declaration of martial law which they argued was instituted in the face of “anarchy” - to “safeguard public order” and “cleanse Polish life of evil”.[6]

An act of “Brutal repression”, ordered to “safeguard public order”? Clearly these descriptions, both on the declaration of martial law, were written with radically divergent agendas. The leadership of the communist party in Poland was described as both a Russian “instrument”[7] of oppression and a force defending the “constitutional foundations”[8] of People’s Poland in the face of encroachment by “class enemies”[9]. The implications are obvious. The Soviet Union had no choice but to defend the regime, as its only chance to preserve a foothold in the Eastern European bloc, short of military invasion. By defending the governing apparatus, they had no choice but to attack the Solidarity movement, which stood in opposition.

The Soviet media launched a tirade of propaganda against the movement, labeling them as “counterrevolutionaries”[10]. They are “terrorizing workers”, threatening physical violence against those who stop striking, the Soviet Press contended.[11] The accusations also included “promoting starvation”, by stopping agricultural production in order to create instability[12]; and according to “documents and materials” Solidarity leaders planned to “take repressive measures against or physically annihilate” about 80,000 members of the Polish United Workers Party.[13] One Soviet editorial even concluded that “Solidarity’s leaders were guided above all by the experience of the Nazi party and it’s storm troopers.”[14]

Naturally the United States was quick to condemn the government’s actions and take the side of the Solidarity. In an address to the nation on December 22, nine days after the declaration of martial law, President Reagan announced that the Polish people “have been betrayed by their own government”, “the men who rule them and their totalitarian allies” he continued, “fear the very freedom the Polish people cherish.”[15] Reagan argued that ten-million out of the population of thirty-six million people were members of Solidarity and taken with their families comprised an overwhelming majority of the Polish nation.[16] Thus, he concluded that “in attacking Solidarity, it’s enemies attack an entire people”.[17]

This assessment, published in the New York Times was far from that of the Soviet Press, which argued that the Polish people reacted to the “foiling of the (Solidarity) plot” with “complete satisfaction” and a “sigh of relief” from “strike terror”.[18] Public opinion, the Press noted, found that 91% of Polish citizens supported the military operations.[19] It is not necessary to further comment on these absurdly polar assessments of what the people wanted, suffice to say, an accurate description was not readily available in either the US or Soviet Press.

Perhaps the best available assessment of what the people in Poland wanted was made by Pope John Paul II who, although critical of martial law in Poland, urged renewed dialogue between the two sides.[20] The US and Soviet media, however, seemed more determined to expand the breach that had developed between Solidarity and the government, than to reconcile the two. In the process, US and Soviet relations began to deteriorate once again.

The New York Times intensified the conflict by accusing the Soviet Union of acting behind the scenes. In an article titled “Russian Attitude Toward Poland Has Changed Little Since Days of the Czars”, the Times argued that Russia used “Polish military and political leaders as it’s instruments” in order to “extinguish the flame of Polish nationalism” once and for all.[21] Reagan also attacked Soviet leadership in it’s alleged involvement, claiming martial law plans had been printed in the Soviet Union months before it’s declaration; that Soviet Marshal Kulikov – chief of the Warsaw Pact, and other senior Red Army officials were in Poland while the “outrages” were being initiated; and that the situation had been precipitated by public and secret pressure directly from the Soviet Union.[22]

The accusations in the US media were met with flat out denial by the Soviet Press, who argued that the Soviet Union was a “dependable ally and true friend” to Poland, and that the US and it’s allies were attempting to undermine the “fraternal friendship” between Poland and the Soviets, which was formed in the “joint struggle against Fascism”.[23] The Soviet’s also countered the US position by alleging US involvement in the “counterrevolutionary” activities.

The Solidarity movement was condemned as having “flowed from overseas” with “plans hatched in Washington” acting in the interest of US imperial circles”.[24] Furthermore, the Press blamed Washington for promoting destabilization in order to create further tensions to justify continuation of the arms race.[25] Following Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s declaration in Brussels that he was “concerned about the decision of martial law”, the Soviet Press responded alleging that Haig was “starting to threaten the Polish people”.[26]

The “renewed dialogue”[27] that Pope John Paul II prayed for clearly was not on the agenda for either US or Soviet planners. Rather than continuing to work toward diplomacy and improved relations or to help restore order for the people who suffered in Poland, the US and Soviet media used the crises in Poland to attack one another’s position and manipulate public opinion. The relentless media attacks illustrate how an ideological war – as the Cold War was, can be fought with words rather than weapons.

The interests of each side were made clearly evident by the media coverage of the crises in Poland. The arguments were biased and in many cases, completely contradicted that of the rival media. Thus, studying the crises in Poland in the early 1980’s, through the accounts in the US and Soviet media will perhaps illustrate the rigid doctrinal framework of the Cold War era, but will leave one with anything but a truthful and accurate account of the actual events in Poland.


[1] Drew Middleton, “Russian Attitude Toward Poland Has Changed Little Since Days of the Czars,” New York Times, 17 January 1982, p. 12.
[2] “Reagan’s Remarks on Marshal Law in Poland,” Special to The New York Times 24 December 1981, p. A10.
[3] “Poland Begins the Second Week of Martial Law,” Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, Vol. XXXIII, no. 51, 20 January 1982, pg. 9
[4] “Poland Declares Martial Law,” Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, Vol. XXXIII, no. 50, 13 January 1982, p. 4
[5] “Reagan’s Remarks on Marshal Law in Poland”
[6] “Poland Declares Martial Law”, p. 4 and 5
[7] Middleton, 12
[8] “Poland Declares Martial Law”, pg. 7
[9] Ibid. pg. 4
[10] Poland Begins the Second Week of Martial Law”, pg. 9
[11] Ibid.
[12] “Poland Declares Martial Law”, pg. 2
[13] Poland Begins the Second Week of Martial Law”, pg. 6
[14] Ibid.
[15] “Reagan’s Remarks on Marshal Law in Poland”, A10
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Poland Begins the Second Week of Martial Law”, pg. 7
[19] Ibid. pg. 10
[20] “Pope Denounces Polish Crackdown”, A9.
[21] Middleton, 12
[22] “Reagan’s Remarks on Marshal Law in Poland”, A10
[23] Poland Begins the Second Week of Martial Law”, pg. 6, 9
[24] Ibid. pg. 8
[25] Poland Begins the Second Week of Martial Law”, pg. 10
[26] Ibid. pg. 8
[27] “Pope Denounces Polish Crackdown”, A9.

The Cycle of War Hates and War Crimes in the Pacific Theatre of WWII

In times of war, a primary tool to promote national unity and legitimize the war efforts is the dehumanization of ones enemy. Throughout modern history, the media has served as a government tool of dehumanization. This phenomena persists today, with the way Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi insurgents, Iran, Venezuela and North korea, among others, have been portrayed in the media, as well as the way the west is portrayed in these places. Such efforts create hatred for ones enemies, leading to a dangerous climate where war crimes become the norm as cycles of violence and government propaganda spin relentlesly beyond control. This study of war hates and war crimes in the WWII Pacific theatre will, I hope, demonstrate this viscious cycle.

In the WWII Pacific Theatre, as Japanese historian John Dower points out, many of the atrocities reported by both sides did occur, and the “horror, rage, and hatred this provoked on all sides was natural.”[1] The problem, Dower continues, is that:

such behavior was offered as confirmation of the innately inferior and immoral nature of the enemy–a reflection of national character–when, in fact, the pages of history everywhere are stained with cruelty and unbridled savagery.[2]

Understanding why atrocities, an inevitable consequence of war, were manifested as expressions of national character must be understood in a wider historical context. Dower concurs, arguing that the dehumanization which took place on both sides must be understood as having belonged to “webs of perception that had existed for centuries in Western and Japanese culture,” and he adds, “the atrocities were taken as simply confirming their validity.”[3]

Simply addressing the phenomenon through this lens, however, would be to ignore the tools utilized to fit these atrocities into the webs of perception: “selective reporting,” and “centralized propaganda.”[4] Returning to the question posed by Dower then, we may say that Japanese propaganda depictions of US atrocities were an attempt to take isolated, though at times recurrent, incidents and present them as consequences of the savagery inherent in the psyche of the military and population alike. This tool was utilized to convince the Japanese people and military to continue a war which, throughout the years, increasingly revealed itself as unwinnable. Likewise, the United States also used selective reporting and propagation of isolated incidences in constructing a universal American understanding of the Japanese national persona.

I would thus like to trace a path from the comparatively minor act of "collecting souvenirs" to the ultimate Allied atrocity of the atomic bombing of the civilian centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; illustrating, with examples from the Dower text, the role that selective reporting and centralized propaganda played in compounding atrocities. As Dower illustrates, in the Japanese war against the Anglo-Americans, atrocities and crimes of war were inherent in the webs of perceptions and fierce fighting. Selective reporting and propaganda on both sides, however, culminated in a vicious cycle where atrocities were committed on a far grander scale than seemingly anyone on either side could have imagined in 1941.

Let me begin with Dower’s contention that while the Japanese public was not completely unaware of Japanese atrocities, accounts of most massacres such as the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, and the sack of Manila “appear to have been successfully censored, and even withheld from relatively well placed individuals.”[5] Thus, “to the majority of Japanese, as to the Anglo-Americans, atrocities committed by one’s own side were episodic, while the enemy’s brutal acts were systematic and revealed a fundamentally perverse national character.”[6] Let us then, conduct our examination through this crucial frame of reference.

The first example Dower gives of Japanese propaganda which portrays the allies as the “real barbarians of the modern age” is the “mutilation of Japanese corpses for ‘souvenirs.’”[7] These atrocities did take place and were, in fact, well documented. Dower includes accounts by several American servicemen of such practices including one particularly gruesome account of a “wounded Japanese thrashing on the ground as a Marine slit his cheeks open and carved his gold-crowned teeth out with a kabar.”[8] These practices were not entirely taboo in the West, although Dower notes “it is virtually inconceivable, however that teeth, ears and skulls could have been collected from German or Italian war dead and publicized in the Anglo-American countries without provoking an uproar.”[9] To illustrate, Life magazine published a photo of an attractive blonde posing with a Japanese skull she had been sent by her fiancé.[10] As Edgar L. Jones, a former American war correspondent in the Pacific noted, this and other atrocities certainly took place on all sides, but, he adds this atrocious behavior and others were “not condoned by all or even most fighting men.”[11] The Japanese propagandists, nevertheless, took the practice and “gave it wide publicity as a revelation of the American national character,”[12] much as the diary found on a fallen Japanese soldier depicting a “good story” of the decapitation of an Allied soldier was editorialized in the New York Times as having illuminated “the real nature of our Asiatic enemy.”[13]

While these ‘revelations’ no doubt fueled the dehumanization of each respective ‘other,’ a new trend had emerged which would have far graver implications in terms of the ferocity of fighting and war crimes committed, as well as unforeseeable destructive consequences for the future. The Allies had become increasingly reluctant to take prisoners. Propaganda and selective reporting on both sides played a significant role in this trend. The American web of perception, in which racism was a prominent aspect, played a role; so too did the “rage bordering on the genocidal,”[14] which followed in the aftermath of the “treacherous” attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese practices: “booby-trapping their dead and wounded, and using fake surrenders to ambush unwary foes,” the most notorious example being the “Goettge patrol” where over twenty marines responding to an apparent Japanese surrender were ambushed and shot or bayoneted to death, perpetuated this trend as well.[15] Nevertheless, Dower maintains that this is yet another example of “certain incidents elevated to symbolic status,” and that it was indeed a rare marine, who did not “know” the enemy through this particular encounter.[16] As a result, Allied soldiers became reluctant to take prisoners and engaged in massacres of helpless, wounded or captured Japanese, practices which were ignored, given tacit support or sometimes even ordered by allied officers;[17] behavior which, when practiced by their opponents was seen as “revealing the unique and inherent savagery of the Japanese.”[18]

Japanese propagandists utilized this Allied trend, combining incidents such as the “Slaughter on the Bismark Sea,” coupled with the Allies extreme exterminationist rhetoric like the Marine battle cry on Tarawa: “Kill the Jap bastards! Take no prisoners,”[19] and the proud title of the 41st Division under MacArthur, “the 41st didn’t take prisoners.”[20] Japanese propaganda such as Tokyo Rose’s broadcasts characterizing war in the Pacific as “no holds barred,”[21] effectively convinced the soldiers that surrender was not an option and thus served to perpetuate the very stereotypes which the allies were constructing. Although Dower gives surprisingly few concrete examples of Japanese propaganda depicting the Allies reluctance to take prisoners, he illustrates the effects in two telling examples. Dower cites a US Office of War Information report dated June, 1945 discussing a group of interrogated Japanese prisoners, 84 percent of whom claimed they expected to be tortured or killed if captured.[22] A second example is a summary OWI report citing documents pertaining to Japanese prisoners which were “full of ingenious schemes devised by POWs to avoid being shot while trying to give themselves up,” due to the fact of “surrender being made difficult by the unwillingness to take prisoners” on the part of the allies.[23]

Dower suggests that despite popular notions of loyalty to the emperor, mass frenzy and fear of ostracism at home being the purported reasons why the Japanese did not surrender, the
understanding that surrender was not an option, true in some cases, a manifestation of propaganda in others, was likely the pivotal reason. Allied propaganda utilized this stereotype of the Japanese “willingness to accept incredible casualties” and convinced their camp, planners, soldiers and civilians alike, that the Japanese were an enemy which “not only deserved to be killed, but had to be.”[24] The consequences are well known. Although the Allies had harshly condemned Japanese bombings of civilian targets in China, American and British planners had, in secret, discussed the prospect of bombing enemy cities months before Pearl Harbor, however they feared a public reaction “detrimental to the postwar development of the air forces.”[25] By the time Japan surrendered, sixty-six cities had been bombed, including the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an estimated 400,000 civilians were killed, “scorched and boiled and baked to death,” and yet “there was scarcely a murmur of protest on the home front,” Japan had merely “reaped what it had sowed.”[26] The escalation from the inevitable atrocities of war, to some of the fiercest fighting the world has seen, and the culmination of “nuclear destruction against two virtually defenseless cities,”[27] was by and large a consequence of selective reporting and propaganda on both sides; atrocities took place, were propagated as universal and in turn, fueled further atrocious behavior to be utilized again, culminating in a vicious cycle. War hates and war crimes in the Pacific theater between the Allies and the Japanese can not be understood outside of this framework. As Professor Bix often deals with comparative history, I would like to close in saying that with the nature of tensions between the United States and the Islamic world today, these lessons on the effects of language in times of war may indeed prove pertinent.


End Notes:

[1]. Dower, John W. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York, NY:
Pantheon Books, 1986. 72
[2]. Dower, 72
[3]. Ibid.
[4]. Dower, 73
[5]. Dower, 61
[6]. Ibid.
[7]. Dower, 34
[8]. Dower, 65
[9]. Dower, 66
[10]. Dower, 65
[11] Dower, 64
[12]. Dower, 65
[13]. Dower, 51
[14]. Dower, 36
[15]. Dower, 64
[16]. Ibid.
[17]. Dower, 66-67
[18]. Dower, 66
[19]. Dower, 68
[20] Dower, 69
[21] Ibid.
[22] Dower, 68
[23] Ibid.
[24] Dower, 52
[25] Dower, 40-41
[26] Ibid.
[27] Dower, 34

A Comparative Analysis of Lynne Viola’s Monographs on Collectivization in the Soviet Union

The drive to collectivize Soviet agriculture, an integral aspect of Stalin's First Five Year Plan revolution, was about more than agricultural production. As this comparative analysis of Russian historian Lynne Viola's monographs on collectivization will illustrate, collectivization defined the true dynamics of the Soviet revolution, which came to be defined less by class warfare, than by a civil war between city and countryside, worker and peasant. Under the auspicies of the dictatorial vanguard, a people's revolution was transformed into rule by a tyrannical, one-party state. The collectivization drive also had longstanding implications for the Soviet state, and is key to capturing the true dynamics of the 1917 revolution. Understanding the dynamics of the revolution is important, not only to the Russian historian, but to society at large, as communism and socialism have been discredited in the popular discourse based on the failure of the USSR which, I also hope to demonstrate, did not constitute a communist entity in virtually any sense of the word.

A Comparative Analysis of Lynne Viola’s Monographs on Collectivization in the Soviet Union

Viola, Lynne. Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Viola, Lynne. The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987.


The campaign to collectivize agricultural production in the Soviet Union, a vital component of Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan revolution, marked a period of fundamental transformation for all realms of Russian society. In the countryside, the drive for wholesale collectivization constituted a full-scale assault on peasant culture, autonomy and subsistence. Indeed, to many peasants Soviet power and the collectivization campaign were synonymous with the antichrist and the advent of apocalypse. In the cities, collectivization was seen as a new front - a war against kulak saboteurs, endemic hunger, Russian backwardness and capitalist encirclement. The campaign was to be the final surge in realizing the utopian vision of the Communist revolution. For the Soviet regime, the collective farm was to be an instrument of state control, guaranteeing the procurement of grain while extending political and administrative control over the countryside to the detriment of peasant culture and autonomy.[1]

Russian historian Lynne Viola – the first Western scholar granted access to the Soviet state archives on collectivization, has prepared two English language monographs on the collectivization campaign: The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization (1987) and Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (1996). Although the Russian Revolution has been widely portrayed in the Marxist context of class struggle, Viola argues that notions of class conflict served to veil the true dynamics of the revolution – a struggle between town and countryside, state and peasantry, modernity and “backwardness.”[2] Collectivization marked the culmination of this struggle, as the dictatorship of the proletariat launched an “all-out attack” in an attempt to transform the peasantry into a “cultural and economic colony.”[3]

While firmly condemning the state’s brutal assault on the countryside, Viola is critical of the emphasis Western-scholarship has placed on “high-politics,” and the tendency of simply “fixing blame” rather than “understanding the historical process and the actors who participated in the process.”[4] Viola quotes the late E.H. Carr who observed that much of Western historiography on the Soviet Union “has been vitiated by this inability to achieve even the most elementary measure of understanding what goes on in the mind of the other party…History cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing.”[5] Rather than engage in wholesale condemnation of what she describes as “one of the twentieth century’s most horrific episodes of mass repression,” Viola presents collectivization through the vantage of both worker and peasant in an attempt to capture the underlying dynamics of the campaign.

The Best Sons of the Fatherland provides a case study of the 25,000ers, a cross-section of the urban social base of the Stalin revolution. The 25,000ers were mobilized in December of 1929, as the violence and “dizziness” of the collectivization campaign reached a crescendo in the Soviet countryside. This particular group of workers, which Viola argues represent a significant portion of the working-class, were urbanized, hereditary proletariat with long factory tenure and records of service to the party and state.[6] In addition, many of these workers had participated in the “formative experience,” of the civil war which provided the “revolutionary myths and traditions” that Stalin would call upon during the mobilization.[7] Viola presents the 25,000ers as a vehicle to explore the dynamics of collectivization through an “on-the-scene angle of vision,” in order to illuminate the actual process of collectivization and how little Moscow’s intentions corresponded with the realities on the ground.[8] In doing so, Viola attempts to illustrate that Stalin’s “revolution from above” had a significant support base among the working class.[9] Thus, “understanding the motivations, perceptions and behavior of the cadres is necessary to analyze both the process of policy implementation and the often tragic consequences of both the policy and the process.”[10] Together with an examination of the political and social profile of the cadres, Viola seeks to “resurrect the mentality of the times,” as the brutal legacy of the 1930s has altered the “historical recollection” of the “optimism, excitement, and revolutionary militancy of the First Five-Year Plan revolution.”[11] While this atmosphere is often dismissed as artificial, or attributed to a few fringe elements or utopian dreamers, Viola argues that there was in fact a significant core of “true believers” whose mentality not only shaped the drive to collectivize agriculture but “preconditioned the country for the events of the 1930s.”[12] Thus, Viola examines the campaign of the 25,000ers in order to “achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom [she] is writing,” in this case, the rank and file cadre worker in the midst of the collectivization campaign.

While The Best Sons of the Fatherland presents the collectivization campaign from the vantage of the worker, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin examines the attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and actions which formed a peasant “culture of resistance” against the brutal policies of the collectivization campaign.[13] Viola uses resistance as a prism to understand peasant consciousness, arguing that resistance allows the peasant to “speak out loud,” and thus grants a voice to an otherwise inaccessible sector of society.[14] Besides serving to complement her previous work on collectivization, Viola’s sequel aims to challenge the traditional image in Western scholarship of the “passive and inert Russian peasant,” as well as Sheila Fitzpatrick’s contention that the peasantry accepted collectivization “fatalistically.”[15] Ultimately, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin seeks to “understand something of the politics of the revolution by understanding the politics of the countryside during the climax of the revolution,” since Viola maintains the primary aspect of contention was never class, but rather city vs. countryside, state vs. peasantry.[16] In order to illustrate this dynamic, Viola focuses the study on the “circulatory of response and effect” between peasant actions and state policy.[17] Viola admits that due to the nature of sources, she must view peasant resistance through the lens of the state.[18] This does not detract from the study, however, as Viola utilizes the nature of the sources to examine the “official discourse” – “the language and mentality that transformed the peasantry into enemies.”[19] Finally, the study examines the consequences of peasant resistance for both the peasantry and the state.

I will now shift to a more in depth summary of Viola’s monographs, focusing on the evolution of her primary assertions. I will then demonstrate that within the context of collectivization as civil war, Viola’s ability to understand and articulate the mindset of each opposing side allows the reader to step back from the endemic brutality and understand the historical and social circumstances that served as a backdrop for the Stalinist revolution.

Viola opens The Best Sons of the Fatherland with a discussion of the civil war years, which served as a “formative experience” that would prefigure the behavior of workers and the state during the crises period of the late 1920s.[20] Lenin proclaimed that the rural-bourgeois were using grain “as a political weapon against Soviet power,” and workers were mobilized to procure grain for the urban base.[21] Although fierce peasant resistance ultimately forced a retreat, the war scare of 1927, combined with endemic food shortages reignited the civil war mentality among the urban-workers.[22] With Stalin’s calls for “extraordinary measures,” the rural officialdom launched the collectivization drive, and, understanding the need to exert central control over the process, the Central Committee passed a resolution authorizing the mobilization of the 25,000ers in November, 1929. Manipulating the radical, militant, revolutionary atmosphere the war scare and grain procurement crises had provoked among urban cadres, the state was able to mobilize the 25,000ers with resounding success.[23]

The success of the recruitment drive should not be overlooked, for as Viola illustrates “there was little material incentive for a skilled worker to leave his factory and share in the trials and tribulations of the collective farmer.”[24] Western scholars often attribute the high levels of success to coercion, but Viola dismisses this claim, arguing that state policy and workers interests overlapped on the issue of collectivization.[25] This of course was due in part to the success of the state in portraying collectivization as the solution to the “grievances, fears, and needs of a part of its working class.”[26] Understanding the political and social origins of these cadres, as well as the atmosphere in which they were mobilized, is significant not only to our comprehension of the collectivization campaign, but also to our understanding of the “social underpinnings of the Stalin revolution,” as these workers would come to dominate the party and state bureaucracies throughout the 1930s.[27]

Having established the historical circumstances surrounding the worker-cadres in question, Viola turns to the onset of the campaign, highlighting the disparities between central policy and implementation in the rural countryside. The 25,000ers arrived in late-January and early-February 1930 amid the frenzied drive to collectivize.[28] Upon arrival in the countryside, the disorder of the campaign became apparent, as hostile local officials had received no instructions for the newly dispatched workers.[29] Indicative of the bureaucratization that plagued the Soviet Union throughout its existence, some 19 different agencies were responsible for certain aspects of the 25,000ers campaign.[30] “Everyone was responsible but no one assumed responsibility,” Viola adds cynically.[31] It was not until March, following the retreat and consequent purge of rural officialdom that the 25,000ers, often the beneficiaries of the vacant positions, were able to settle in and begin to consolidate power.[32] The disorder of the campaign in the first months serves as a microcosm of the reigning disorder plaguing rural administration during the frenzied drive to collectivize.[33] While Moscow presented an image of total control, Viola argues “the center was both all-powerful and completely helpless.”[34]

Collectivization was initiated to undermine the old order, modernize agriculture, create reliable grain collection, facilitate a cultural revolution, and build a new administrative base in the countryside.[35] Not only had the local officials failed to create something new, but the violent force employed had severely disrupted the agricultural foundation.[36] The 25,00ers were left to “pick up the pieces after the destructive interference of district cadres.”[37] The March retreat, however, was more about reclaiming central control than stopping excesses, although there was some fear of a massive peasant uprising.[38] Placing blame on rural officials also held the innate assumption that central policy had been correct and realistic, and with better leadership might well have been successfully implemented.[39] As the 25,000ers would come to find, however, such assumptions did not hold true when faced with the realities of the Russian countryside.

With the 25,000ers finally settled into the newly vacated positions as collective farm heads and rural officials, the “constructive phase of the socialist transformation of the countryside” was set to begin.[40] For many of the 25,000ers, “collectivization was much more than simply a struggle for grain,” it was a revolution aimed at forever destroying the antagonisms dividing city and countryside by rooting out the “idiocy of rural life.”[41] The directives were to come from the center as well as from the cadres own factory experience, however it soon became apparent that a third factor would play a decisive role in shaping the formation of the collective farm as well.[42] Bringing the “proletarian experience” to the countryside - the organization of piecework, wage scales, labor discipline, production conferences, shock work, and socialist competition - meant an entirely new form of life and labor, one that necessarily entailed the destruction of traditional means of farming and led to a direct clash between two disparate cultures.[43] The peasantry responded with numerous forms of active and passive resistance and the 25,000ers were forced to balance the factory experience and directives from the center with traditional peasant norms. Ultimately, the collective farms that were most successful were those that interfered least with peasant traditions.[44] By 1932 the state was forced to accept a socialized agriculture which combined elements of old and new to varying degrees.

On 23 December 1931, the Central Committee issued a decree coinciding with the conclusion of the First Five-Year Plan revolution which instructed regional and district organs not to retain those 25,000ers who wished to return to the factory.[45] Although the First Five-Year Plan had been a relative success, the realities of rural Russia had led to a loss of revolutionary momentum.[46] Consolidation and gradualism became the new order of the day.[47] Many of the cadres, increasingly isolated from the revolution, the working class, and the factory, returned to the city.[48] Despite the hardships and loss of revolutionary momentum, some 18,000 of the original 27,000 cadres deployed in the 25,000er campaign served until the end. The relative success of the campaign, as well as the dedication of the workers illustrated the strong social foundations upon which the Stalinist revolution was built.[49] It was these same workers - activists, party members, highly skilled workers and civil war veterans that would rise up through the party and state bureaucracy to replace the cadres purged in the 1930s.[50]

The workers took a leading role in the construction of the collective farm system, helping to establish a basic structure that would remain by and large unchanged throughout the Soviet period.[51] The irony of the revolution in the countryside is that its outcome was directed less by the center than by the “undisciplined and irresponsible” activities of rural officials and the experimentation of the collective farm leaders (25,000ers) who attempted to pick up the mess.[52] The experience of the 25,000ers was indicative of the gap between Moscow’s intentions and the actual implementation of policy.[53] The state ruled by decree but did not have the proper organizational infrastructure or manpower to ensure proper implementation.[54]

Like The Best Sons of the Fatherland, Viola begins Peasant Rebels Under Stalin with a discussion of the civil war. The brutalizing legacy of years of war, revolution and civil war created a party determined to wage what Lenin called “the last and most decisive battle.”[55] Foreshadowing the mind-set of the late 1920s, in May 1918 Lenin declared that anyone with surplus grain, regardless of social status would be regarded as “enemies of the people.”[56] In order to justify the contradiction, Lenin cited a “kulak mood [that] prevails among the peasants.”[57] Any anti-party activity could be labeled as kulak activity, therefore peasant revolts against grain requisitioning became kulak revolts against the people.[58] It is important to establish this precedent, as the official discourse was used to dehumanize the peasantry, thereby making repression and violence permissible.

The smychka of the mid-1920s was short-lived, as the grain procurement crises – partially created by Soviet pricing policies, was interpreted in the city as a “kulak grain strike,” igniting a civil war-like mood and mentality.[59] Collectivization and dekulakization campaigns began in the summer of 1929, jumping the rails of central control and creating an escalating cycle of violence.[60] In the countryside the party and the collective farm came to be viewed in apocalyptic terms, declaring them to be “tools of the antichrist,” while in the town the peasantry became a “parasite, able and willing to hold the town hostage.”[61] Poor and middle peasants who “rebelled” were deemed podkulachniki, literally “under the kulak” or agents of the kulaks.[62] Despite the clear political and social aims of peasant rebellion, the kulak lost all political agency and was deemed a “terrorist,” “bandit” or “arsonist.”[63] While hostile actions by the peasantry were demonized, atrocities committed by the state or its agents “became mistakes, deviations, or excesses committed by cadres who were “dizzy from success” rather than by criminals or savages.”[64]

With collectivization and dekulakization came a wholesale assault on peasant culture as well. Churches were closed, bells were removed and priests were arrested.[65] Other cultural institutions and social spaces were also targeted such as agricultural markets, the peasant commune, the skhod (peasant council), mills and shops in order to eliminate key grounds for meeting and interaction.[66] Community leaders such as priests, intelligentsia, village elders, craftsmen, traders and shop-owners were targeted as well.[67] It is against this repressive backdrop that Viola condemns collectivization as internal colonization, both economically and culturally.[68] In response, peasants of every social-stratum united behind their common culture, forming a culture of resistance rooted in biblical notions of the apocalypse.[69]

Rumors, ever-present among peasantries during times of fear and upheaval “spread like wildfire throughout the [Soviet] countryside.”[70] Rumors of the return of serfdom, the coming of the apocalypse and the imposition of the “common blanket,” were all used as weapons “in the arsenal of peasant resistance.”[71] The apocalyptic tradition was used to delegitimize collective farms and the state that backed them as many peasants argued that to join the collective farm was to be stamped with the mark of the beast.[72] “Tales of moral abomination in the collective farms served as metaphors for the amorality, atheism, and evil of communism,” while rumors of the return of serfdom implied a betrayal of the revolution.[73]

Another non-violent tool in the arsenal of peasant resistance came in the form of collective and individual forms of self-help. Razbazarivanie, or Luddism - the “squandering,” destruction or sale of livestock, machinery and crops was utilized for the purpose of self-dekulakization, protest and/or sabotage.[74] A collective form of self-help was community defense, as peasants across the countryside declared “we have no kulaks here.”[75] Some peasants even went so far as to boycott the sale of expropriated properties in a demonstration of solidarity.[76] The long-standing tradition of peasant complaint through letters and petitions also remained strong, despite the fact that petitioning could bring charges of counterrevolutionary activity.[77] Forms of collective resistance both undermined and enhanced Stalin’s revolution in the countryside, undermining it through vast destruction and opposition, while enabling him to “kulakize,” and therefore wage war against, the entire countryside.[78]

As state policies continued to back the peasant into a corner, however, violence was increasingly seen as the sole recourse to state repression.[79] Violence had always been a last recourse for peasants, however forced to resort to such measures, they played into the state image of terror, becoming “kulaks with sawed-off shotguns,” in the official discourse.[80] Terror served as both a threat, as well as retribution for anyone who might break from the village community.[81] Arson, known as the “red rooster,” was also a powerful tool, as it could be portrayed as an accident by the perpetrators, and consequently accidental fires could be portrayed as arson as well.[82] Peasant summary justice (Samosud), part of a traditional and brutal form of peasant justice, could take the form of beatings, burning, drowning or even the murder of one’s family.[83] While peasant terror was indeed dangerous to the state, it also served to “sustain the violent momentum of the state’s campaign and to rationalize the repression of the peasantry.”[84]

The cycle of state repression and peasant violence reached a crescendo in March of 1930, a period described as “March fever,” in an attempt to cast it in a pathological light.[85] March fever was marked by a sharp increase in mass disturbances often with women assuming the leading role as the men waited on the sides, armed, waiting for the outbreak of violence.[86] Women’s riots (bab’i bunty) may in fact have been the “dominant mode of active protest in the peasant culture of resistance during collectivization.”[87] Women understood that they had little chance of being punished, as the state designated them as “irrational,” and thus apolitical.[88] Viola argues that these riots were often in response to “generic” peasant concerns including threats to subsistence, the village ethos of collectivism or symbols of village culture and tradition.[89]

The “March fever” of 1930, however “represented the last real wave of active resistance on any large scale, the final open, collective act in the peasant civil war against Soviet power.”[90] There was much less resistance to the Fall collectivization campaign, as the peasantry was already “too exhausted by food shortages and state repression to continue active collective resistance.”[91] By the end of 1930 peasant resistance entered a new phase under the official rubric of tikhaia sapa - “on the sly,” “a quiet or stealthful undermining or weakening of foundations.”[92] This form of resistance included refusal to work, foot dragging, dissimulation, pilfering, flight and sabotage as the peasants struggled against those who sought to extract labor, food, taxes, rents, and interests from them.[93] Such forms of resistance had been deeply ingrained from the earliest days of serfdom and into the Soviet period.[94] These forms of resistance would continue to varying degrees throughout the Soviet period. In 1935 the Model Collective Farm Statute fully legalized private plots, ensured the inviolability of private property and even allowed the use of collective farm horses - at a price - for private usage.[95] The state understood they would have to accept certain realities of the countryside and settle for “just” taking grain, rather than completely re-socializing the peasant colony.[96] While the peasantry did not emerge triumphant, resistance had maintained the cohesiveness and durability of the peasantry as an “autonomous social formation.” Peasant resistance to state repression had led to an uneasy truce between city and countryside with consolidation and compromise extended from each end of the spectrum.

The grain procurement crises combined with the war scare in the late 1920s struck a death blow to the uneasy alliance (smychka) between worker and peasant. In the urban sphere, chronic unemployment, housing problems and a lack of material benefits combined with the food supply crises and the reintroduction of rationing to plague urban workers.[97] Stalin successfully presented the shortcomings of the state as products of internal sabotage and argued that collectivization “as an integral part of industrialization and the resolution of food supply problems, was of immediate interest to the working class.”[98] The peasantry, meanwhile, saw intrusion from Soviet power as the advent of the apocalypse, the return of serfdom, the onslaught of amorality and/or a direct threat to their very means of subsistence. Resurrecting the mentality of the times, understanding the escalating cycle of violence and placing collectivization within its proper historical context, Lynne Viola, in her complementary monographs, is able to instill a degree of empathy for both the worker and the peasant as they engaged in a brutal civil war.

Nevertheless, while Viola’s monographs excel in accessing the mind-set of the workers, peasants and central authorities, they fail to offer the reader a sufficient understanding of why the rural officialdom acted as it did. While offering explanations, though not necessarily justifications, for the actions of the other major players, Viola fails to provide access into the rural officialdom and thus, perhaps inadvertently, fixes much of the blame for the “excesses” of the collectivization campaign upon them. Perhaps a third study on collectivization from the vantage of the rural officialdom would serve to complement the reader’s understanding of the “historical process and the actors” – in this case the local officials – “who participated in the process.”


[1]Viola, Lynne. Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of
Peasant Resistance. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996., vii
[2] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, viii
[3] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, vii
[4]Viola, Lynne. The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987, 5
[5] Ibid.
[6] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 6, 34
[7] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 9, 16
[8] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 5
[9] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 6
[10] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 5
[11] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 6
[12] Ibid.
[13] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 4
[14] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 4-5
[15] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 4
[16] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, viii
[17] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 11
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 9
[21] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 10
[22] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 26-7
[23] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 25
[24] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 56
[25] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 53
[26] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 72
[27] Ibid.
[28] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 74
[29] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 79-80
[30] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 87
[31] Ibid.
[32] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 88
[33] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 89
[34] Ibid.
[35] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 91
[36] Ibid.
[37] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 104
[38] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 114
[39] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 115
[40] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 152
[41] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 153
[42] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 154
[43] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 161
[44] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 160
[45] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 179-80
[46] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 180
[47] Ibid.
[48] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 186
[49] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 211
[50] Ibid.
[51] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 215
[52] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 216
[53] Ibid.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 15
[56] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 16
[57] Ibid.
[58] Ibid.
[59] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 21
[60] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 28
[61] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 30-1
[62] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 34
[63] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 36
[64] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 37
[65] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 39
[66] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 40-1
[67] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 41
[68] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 44
[69] Ibid.
[70] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 45
[71] Ibid.
[72] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 55-6
[73] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 59
[74] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 68
[75] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 88
[76] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 90
[77] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 91, 93
[78] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 99
[79] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 100
[80] Ibid.
[81] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 101
[82] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 121-2
[83] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 127
[84] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 130
[85] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 132
[86] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 154-5
[87]Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 197
[88] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 204
[89] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 155
[90] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 176
[91] Ibid.
[92] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 205
[93] Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 206
[94] Ibid.
[95]Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 232
[96] Ibid.
[97] The Best Sons of the Fatherland 24-5
[98] The Best Sons of the Fatherland, 27