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Having disposed of the so-called Left opposition, Stalin had no trouble dealing with the Right opposition, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky, and was then supreme in the Politburo, the real governing body. By virtue of his patronage and purge powers, the General Secretary was able to dominate the Central Committee. He did so cleverly. He had a studied technique—to say little, to puff his pipe, while others talked and fought, then to announce quietly at the end which Comrade was right. He thus profited by their arguments and throve on their differences.
The first Five Year Plan was launched by Stalin in 1929, and the collectivization of land and the liquidation of the kulaks began at the same time. The orders were simple, abrupt, brutal. Collectivization never fully succeeded, for the peasants began burning their barns and cutting the throats of their cattle, threatening the entire economic life of the country. It was Stalin's biggest, and perhaps only, political defeat. After millions had been starved and shot, he softened the program. Even today the peasants maintain a hold on the country's economy. There never have been enough staunch Communists to create party cells in all of Russia's scores of thousands of small villages. Many "collectivized" villages are in fact tight family communities, loyal to their family interests. Hence Stalin's effort in 1949 to amalgamate the villages into large, well-policed agricultural towns, called agrogoroda. The attempt was quietly abandoned. Russia needs more & more bread for her expanding industrial cities. To the end. Stalin dared not risk another setback like that of 1929-33.
During the kulak crisis his young (31) wife Nadezhda died, some sources say by her own hand, some say by Stalin's. Stalin buried her with honors in Novodevichy Monastery in Moscow, and erected a marble statue. Said he: "She is dead, and with her have died my last warm feelings for all human beings."
In 1934, the residue of restlessness among the Bolsheviks came to a head with the assassination of Sergei Kirov, Leningrad Party boss, and one of Stalin's stooges in the Politburo. Stalin went to the scene and took charge. He ordered 117 suspects to be shot without trial; thousands of Leningrad Party members were sent to Siberia. It was the beginning of a huge purge. From 1935 through 1938 successive trials were held of all prominent Bolsheviks who were not Stalin's sycophants, with Andrei Vishinsky prosecuting. They appeared a craven lot:
Vishinsky: What appraisal should be given to the articles and statements you wrote in 1933, in which you expressed loyalty to the party? Deception?
Kamenev: No, worse than deception.
Vishinsky: Perfidy?
Kamenev: Worse!
Vishinsky: Worse than deception; more than perfidy—would the word be treason?
Kamenev: You have found the word!
To Kamenev, former comrade on the Politburo, Stalin had once said: "To choose one's victim, to prepare one's plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed—there is nothing sweeter in the world."