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History Lecture:
Ben Tromley
December 7, history major Ben Tromly, ’99, spoke on the
results of the research he conducted in Russia under the guidance
of Mr. Kaiser in “Politburo Intrigue and Economic Debates
in post-War Soviet Russia: The Fall of N.A. Voznesenskii and
the Defeat of “Market Stalinism” 1948-1950.”
Tromly argued that after the Second World War, the Stalinist
regime “loosened” and that “the public and the
state were more united than ever before.” It was during
this period of improved relations between the government and
the public that a high ranking government official, Voznesenskii,
proposed to improve industrial production via “market means.”
He sought to impose a profit principle and to implement a financial
regime on an industrial infrastructure that had been badly disorganized
in the course of the war.
Initially, Voznesenskii had the support of Stalin. However,
the reforms antagonized other members of the government’s
inner circle, and worsening economic conditions led to an ideological
crackdown. Voznesenskii, who had risen to the peak of the party
and state elite, was arrested in 1949. He was tried as an enemy
of the state in 1950 in the beginning of what would become the
biggest wave of repression in the post-war period. Eventually,
Voznesenskii’s brother and sister were also executed, and
his ninety year-old mother was exiled.
Tromly argues that the explanation for Voznesenskii’s
meteoric fall can be found in the cyclical “boom and bust”
pattern of economic policies that characterized Stalin’s
regime. Stalin alternated between periods of economic planning
that emphasized rapid growth in particular sectors (calling for
the concentration of resources on those sectors) with plans that
emphasized a more balanced economic growth more favorable to
consumers. Voznesenskii was a proponent of balanced, if slower,
growth at a time when Stalin was “gearing up for a new mobilization
phase” in response to the emerging Cold War and the remilitarization
of the USSR. Voznesenskii’s refusal to set high goals for
economic growth was seen (and treated) as a crime.
In the question and answer period that followed, Tromly further
explained that Voznesenskii’s economic plans were the product
of wartime reform. - Marci Sortor |
