Rethinking the Varga Controversy, 1941–1953

Abstract

Previous studies have interpreted the disgrace of Eugen Varga and the subsequent dissolution of his prestigious institute in the early postwar years in the Soviet Union as the result of ideological attacks by dogmatic academicians, masterminded by Stalin. The Varga group have been seen as vulnerable because of their ‘revisionist’ ideas on the postwar capitalist economy. Based on a study of newly available Russian archival documents, this article argues that their fall was not related to their theoretical positions and research conclusions, which had never been seriously questioned by Stalin, but to their personal, ethnic and generational backgrounds and the attitudes of some Party leaders, particularly Andrei Zhdanov and his followers, to their backgrounds.

Notes

Will Lissner, The New York Times, 25 January 1948, p. 37.

In developing this explanation they have drawn on the insights of contemporary journalists and diplomats, for instance, W. Bedell-Smith, an American diplomat who was in Moscow at that time, who reported to Washington that the ultimate fate of the Varga group ‘may therefore well serve as a weathercock of party attitudes toward [the] western world … ’ (Haslam 1997, p. 178).

Hough holds that the key reason for Varga's fall was not his theory of postwar economic crisis in the capitalist world, but his ideas about Eastern European reform. Taubman argues that Varga's points about the postwar Western economy were actually shared by Stalin.

Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii), fond. 17, opis 116, delo 96, line 2.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 25, l. 60. Khavinson was the principle director of the TASS and later became a key member in the Soviet Information Bureau of the Council of Ministers (Sovinformbyuro) and also the head of the foreign department of Pravda.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 25, ll. 61–67.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 117, d. 279, ll. 103–20.

‘Vydvizhentsy’ means a cohort of ‘workers from the factory and Communists of working-class origin’ (and to a lesser extent peasant origin) who, thanks to a policy of the Stalinist leaders to create a new workers' and peasants' elite, were ‘promoted into technical jobs, management, and administration, or recruited to higher education’ in the late 1920s and the early 1930s (Fitzpatrick 1992, p. 147).

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 25, ll. 24–46.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 116, d. 91, l. 4; d. 96, ll. 1–2.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 25, ll. 48–56.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 116, d. 96, l. 2.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 25, ll. 54–55; see also Kostyrchenko (2001, pp. 215–17).

RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 716, l. 49.

Ivanov's letter in 1943 was not stored in the Russian archives. This paragraph is based on his memory in 1949 of the 1943 letter. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 158, ll. 178–84.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 203, ll. 58–67.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 203, l. 73.

In addition to some big names, including Potemkin and E. V. Tarle, a renowned historian, some current and future Varga critics, like L. N. Ivanov and V. S. Zakharov, were recommended.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 203, ll. 76–77.

RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 716, ll. 46–47.

See Bulatova (2003, pp. 5–8, 142–44).

Archive of Russian Academy of Sciences (Arkhiv Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, ARAN), f. 1993, op. 1, d. 185, l. 45. Interestingly, one of these reports would be later developed into a book titled Changes in the Economy of Capitalism, the book which many scholars have believed cost Varga and his economists their careers in 1947.

ARAN, f. 1513, op. 1, d. 215, ll. 4–7.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 340, ll. 61–65.

Kolotov (1974, pp. 133–34), Voznesenskii's assistant and biographer, claimed that the Gosplan chief was actually an initiator of the new attack against Varga.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 552, ll. 213–17; see also Pollock (2000, p. 400).

ARAN, f. 1993, op. 1, d. 216, ll. 3–7.

Varga's formulations on the ‘decisive role of capitalist states in war economy’ and ‘capitalist planning’ were particularly the subject of heated discussions. The conference participants argued that Varga had not paid enough attention to the subordination of capitalist states to monopolists and imagined the state as an arbitrator of class relations. They declared that any kind of planning in capitalist economies was not plausible. Also, they discussed Varga's treatment of ‘new democracies in Eastern Europe’ and ‘colonial problems’ in a detailed manner. The critics disapproved of Varga's theoretical attempt to understand the new democracies as state capitalism, and they maintained that these states were already making a transition out of a capitalist phase. The fact that many former colonies had become creditors to their metropoles during the war, the discussants contended, did not seriously transform the existing colonial relations as Varga thought it did. As for the book's methodology, many of the economists stated that Varga touched on the changes of the economies of capitalist states only and downplayed the impacts of politics on them. See Soviet Views (1948, pp. 8–114) and Day (1995, pp. 45–48).

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 551, ll. 90–97.

This draft resolution was endorsed by Zhdanov and the Secretariat already on 9 June 1947 (Akademiya 2000, p. 361).

ARAN, f. 1513, op. 1, d. 198, l. 17.

ARAN, f. 1513, op. 1, d. 198, ll. 17–18.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1066, l. 48.

RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11. d. 716, l. 69.

According to Pevzner, one of Varga's colleagues, the first and second chapters in Varga's 1946 book were particularly criticised in 1947. Both chapters were already published in IMKh's journal in 1945 (see Pevzner 1989).

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 527, ll. 137–49.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 552, l. 101.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 117, d. 979, l. 71.

The new institute found their ‘new’ home on the 4th floor of Volkhonk 14, which IMKh had occupied for many years.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1076, l. 32.

ARAN, f. 1513, op. 1, d. 198, l. 19.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 552, ll. 98–101.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 33, ll. 40–44; see also O nedostatkakh (1948a, pp. 66–110, 1948b, pp. 52–116); Wohlforth (1993, pp. 82–83); Day (1995, pp. 54–55); Cherkasov (2002, pp. 67–68).

On this see Gorlizki and Khlevnyuk (2004, pp. 79–89).

ARAN, f. 615, op. 1, d. 5, l. 24. I thank Ethan Pollock for sharing the document with me.

RGASPI, f. 17. op. 132, d. 158, ll. 1–22; ARAN, f. 615, op. 1, d. 5, l. 24.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 33, ll. 40–44. For a different interpretation of the document, see Nadzhafov (1997, p. 208).

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 118, d. 352, ll. 1–17; see also Pollock (2000, p. 414) and Kostyrchenko (2001, pp. 573–74).

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 158, ll. 178–84; see also Kostyrchenko (2001, p. 574).

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 118, d. 477, ll. 76–77; see also Pollock (2000, p. 413) and Kostyrchenko (2001, pp. 574–75). Here I used Pollock's translation.

Varga was reportedly close to Malenkov. Some scholars even argue that Varga was a member of the Malenkov faction (Ebon 1953, p. 61).

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 118, d. 610, ll. 176–81.

ARAN, f. 1513, op. 1, d. 67, ll. 1–19.

ARAN, f. 1877, op. 1, d. 313, ll. 1–68. Ironically and interestingly, one Agitprop document ‘graded’ Vishnev as a second-tier scholar (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 144, l. 21).

In this sense, my study supports one idiosyncratic view advanced by a leading Western scholar a quarter of a century ago: ‘The dictator seems to have shared Varga's sophisticated and quite undogmatic view of capitalism's immediate prospects' (Taubman 1982, p. 135).