An extract from S Reed Brett, European History 1900-1960 (1967) S Reed Brett was a textbook writer from the 1930s to the 1960s. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
1. THE MARCH REVOLUTION, 1917
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Autocracy before the Revolution When war broke
out in 1914 Russia was the only considerable State in Europe that still
had an autocratic government. The Czar and his immediate circle ruled all
the Russias European and Asiatic through two sets of people,
namely, a vast set of uniformed officials (the bureaucracy), and the
secret police. Among the mass of his subjects the Czar's power was
immensely increased because he was the nation's religious head as well as
its political ruler: he was the 'Little Father' venerated as the protector
of the Orthodox Church. This dual
autocracy, political and religious, had long continued unimpaired in spite
of repeated efforts to change it. Since the middle of the nineteenth
century there had been two attempted revolutions, each of them resulting
in some superficial changes but without much practical reduction in the
Czar's autocratic authority. Each of these revolutions like the
greater one to come in 1917 followed a disastrous foreign war. The first was the Crimean War of 185456 when Russia
was defeated by the combined forces of Britain and France. This failure,
which was almost as great a shock to the Czar as to his subjects,
discredited the Government of Nicholas I, and in March 1855, only half-way
through the war, he died. The new Czar, Alexander II, was very different
from his predecessor: instead of being a stern soldier he was a simple,
kindly man well disposed towards his subjects. Faced with general demands
for reforms, he made a series of changes: political prisoners were
released, the Press was freed from some of its restrictions, and
industries were encouraged. The climax of this process came in 1861 when
the serfs were set free. This step was of enormous
importance. It was truly revolutionary. But it did not of itself end the
peasants' troubles. Often the peasants were compelled to pay more now that
they held from the Government than formerly they had paid in dues to their
lords; and they were too poor and ignorant to use the land profitably.
During the latter part of Alexander II's reign extreme revolutionary ideas
spread in Russia not only among the poor peasants but also among the
educated classes. Many thou sands of revolutionaries known generally
as Nihilists were exiled to Siberia, but this only drove the rest to
more extreme courses. In March 1881 Czar Alexander II was killed by a bomb
thrown into a street. The next two
Czars, Alexander III (188194) and Nicholas II (18941917), adopted a
policy of merciless repression, and for a time they seemed to hold their
own. But in fact the discontent was only being driven underground whence
it emerged as the result of yet another disastrous war, the war against
Japan in 19045. Once again the Czar's Government was shown up as
corrupt and inefficient. Early in 1905 strikes and riots broke out. There
was a general demand for a Duma, that is, a Parliament, and this demand
the Czar was compelled to grant. Russia's first Duma met in May 1906. This
contained so large an anti-government majority that it was soon dissolved.
The second Duma, of March 1907, was similarly composed and similarly
dissolved. Thereafter the franchise was so drastically restricted that
only land owners had votes. Hence the next two Dumas, of November 1907 and
of 1912, had government majorities. Such were the political conditions in
Russia at the outbreak of war in August 1914. The incompetence of the Czarist Government in the
conduct of the war, and the consequent defeats and privations, led to the
Revolution of March 1917 and to the overthrow of the Czarist regime. It is
the further story of that Revolution and its consequences that we now have
to follow.
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The End of Czardom The occasion of the outbreak was a gala performance in Petrograd on 8th March 1917. The contrast between the luxury and wealth
of those attending the theatre and the starving, shivering queues outside
the bakers' shops seems to have stirred the people to anger. There was
some looting that day; and as, during the following days, the crowds grew
denser and the feeling among them more intense, there began to be trouble
when the police tried to restore order. The soldiers, however, fraternized
with the people and mutinied when ordered to fire into them. When the outbreak
began, the Czar was with the Army at the front. Though he sent troops to
restore order in Petrograd, they deserted on the way. When he dissolved
the Duma it remained in session; and on 12th March it appointed a
Provisional Government. This consisted of moderates under Prince Lvov as
Premier. Its most forceful member was Alexander Kerensky, the Minister of
Justice. When two delegates from the Government visited Czar Nicholas II
on 15th March, without any fuss he signed his abdication in favour of his
brother the Grand Duke Michael. The latter, more justly assessing the
situation, declared that he would not accept the throne unless it was
offered by a Constituent Assembly elected by universal suffrage. This,
therefore, was the end of the long history of Czarist Russia. For the moment
the only authority was that of the Provisional Government under Prince
Lvov, and for eight months this Government struggled with the double task
of ruling Russia and conducting the war. Either task alone would have been
beyond its capacity. The two together broke it completely. In the meantime
events had been taking a strange turn. Workers mostly factory workers
in the towns, though in some instances peasants in the countryside and
soldiers and sailors, took it upon themselves to form Soviets (that
is, councils) for the discussion of their needs and to express their
views. Because there was no strong central government, these Soviets,
expressing the mind of the masses of the people, acquired a political
character. The Petrograd Soviet, the most powerful of them all, issued
orders to the people of the city, and even to the Army, and so virtually
challenged the Provisional Government. Before long most cities throughout
Russia had Soviets chosen in similar ways. The outside world strangely misjudged the meaning of
these events. The Allied Governments welcomed the
Russian Revolution for two reasons. First, there was a general belief that
autocratic Czardom had been replaced by a moderate democracy similar to
those of western Europe and of America. Second, because Russian failure in
the war was blamed on Czarist incompetence, there seemed reason to hope
that the new Government would conduct its campaigns with more energy and
efficiency. At first this
hope looked like being fulfilled. In May the Government formally declared
to the Allies that Russia would honour its undertakings and was determined
to achieve victory. Kerensky, now War Minister, toured the Russian armies
urging them to new efforts. In July a Russian offensive was launched in
Galicia. At first this had some success, chiefly because the Russians were
fighting Austrian troops who had little heart in the war. When, later,
they met Germans, they were outclassed and compelled to retreat. This was
not merely a military set-back: it undermined the whole authority of the
Provisional Government. By the autumn of
1917 there was general discontent with the Government. It had neither
achieved success in the field nor as the mass of the people wished
had it taken Russia out of the war. Also it had failed to satisfy the
peasants' clamour for land. As this discontent deepened, there were those
eager to use it for their own advantage. The instruments ready to hand
were the Soviets. The supreme leader was Vladimir llyich Ulyanov whose
simpler pen-name was Lenin.
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Lenin (18701924) Lenin's father had been an inspector of schools, and so
Lenin was brought up in a scholarly atmosphere which encouraged
independent thinking. In 1887 his brother was hanged for plotting to
assassinate the Czar. Lenin was then at the impressionable age of
seventeen, and henceforward his ideas became more and more revolutionary.
They were intensified by what he saw of the hopeless poverty of masses of
the Russian people, and he became convinced that Marxism was the only
means of meeting the people's needs. Karl Marx (181383) was a German
writer whose most notable book, Das Kapital, became the
foundation of modern socialism.
It advocated the abolition of private enterprise and the direction of all
industry, including agriculture, by the State or by groups of workers.
Believing that a class war' had always existed, in various forms,
between the master-class and the workers, he urged that this 'war' would
have to be intensified if the workers' aims were to be achieved. Not
surprisingly, therefore, Lenin organized in Petrograd the Militant Union
for the Liberation of the Working Classes, and from 1897 until 1900 he was
exiled in Siberia. Later he carried on his activities from outside Russia,
first in Munich and then in Switzerland. In 1903 a
Conference of the United Russian Social Democratic Party was held in
London. Lenin's forceful intervention in the debates split the members
into two sections. Lenin, who advocated violent class war and an end to
all co-operation with moderates, managed to secure a temporary majority of
the members, and thenceforward his followers called themselves Bolsheviks,
from the Russian word for 'majority'. Their opponents therefore were known
as Mensheviks (minority). Though in fact Lenin's more permanent group
within the party was a highly organized minority of professional
revolutionaries, they continued to call themselves Bolsheviks. During the 1905 disturbances Lenin was back in
Petrograd where he incited violence against the moderate democrats and the
Duma. Thereafter he lived abroad writing pamphlets and articles and
organizing revolutionary propaganda of all kinds. So he continued until
the outbreak of war in 1914 and during its opening stages. The breakdown
of Russia's war efforts and the exhaustion of the country presented
exactly the conditions necessary for the spread of Lenin's ideas. The
uncertainty and confusion resulting from the Czar's abdication in
mid-March 1917 opened the way for any man with clear-cut aims and a
tightly organized band of followers. The Germans, thinking that Leninism
would increase Russian confusion still further, made it possible for Lenin
to cross Germany from Switzerland (which he did in a sealed railway car)
and, via Sweden, to arrive in Petrograd on 16th April 1917. In contrast to
the vacillation of the Provisional Government, that very day Lenin made
known his three-fold policy for Russia: immediate peace, the confiscation
of landed estates without compensation
to the owners, and government through Soviets of workers' deputies. Though
at the moment the Bolsheviks were in a minority (in spite of their name)
on the Soviets, Lenin rightly judged that his programme was certain to win
the support of the masses of the workers, both in towns and in the
country. Further, declaring that the March Revolution had been
insufficient, he called for a second revolution that would achieve his
objects. Thus the stage was set for the November Revolution which swept
the Bolsheviks into power.
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2. THE NOVEMBER REVOLUTION, 1917
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Soviet Constitution We have seen that
the turn in the tide against the Provisional Government began with the
failure of the July offensive in Galicia. The fact was that only a miracle
could have made good within a short time the deficiencies which the
Czarist regime had left behind, and Kerensky and the other members of the
Government were not miracle-workers. But when the Russian people saw that
war was no more successful under the new Government than under the old
they turned against the whole policy of war. Kerensky tried a compromise:
he wished to remain loyal to the Allies and to seek a peace without
annexations or indemnities. Here, however, the Allies were not helpful:
they refused to consider any peace until they had won an outright victory.
The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, were able to declare that Kerensky was
fighting for the benefit of foreign Capitalist governments. Bolshevik
propaganda among the troops led to a stream of desertions by men who
hurried home so as not to lose their share of the lands that they expected
to be seized from the landowners and divided up. So, during October, the
Government's authority declined and the Bolsheviks' influence
correspondingly rose. The decisive day was 7th November 1917. On that day an
All-Russian Congress of Soviets was to meet at Petrograd. During the
previous night Bolshevik troops were posted at key-points in railway
stations, telegraph and telephone offices, power plants, and the like. The
Petrograd garrison recognized the authority of the
Revolutionary Committee of the Soviets. Thus the Leninists gained control
of Petrograd, and before the day was out the members of the Provisional
Government were seized except for Kerensky who managed to escape. On 8th November
the All-Russian Congress set up a new Government called the Soviet of the
People's Commissars which was to be provisional until a Constituent
Assembly could be convened. Of this Government Lenin was President and
Trotsky was Commissar for Foreign Affairs. In order to give momentum to
the swing of popular opinion Lenin at once declared that landed estates
were to be handed over to local committees. A fortnight later Trotsky
opened a peace offensive. Through
the Allied ambassadors at Petrograd he proposed an immediate armistice and
negotiations for peace. Because the Allies refused to adopt these
proposals the Russians themselves opened negotiations with Germany. On 5th
December they signed an armistice at Brest Litovsk, and this was followed
by the Treaty of Brest Litovsk of 3rd March 1918. Its terms entailed
tremendous concessions by Russia. But to the Bolsheviks peace at almost
any price was essential if they were to be free to carry out their
policies. This accorded also with the mood of the Russian people; and
Lenin knew that unless the people got satisfaction from the Bolsheviks
there would be another swing of public opinion that might sweep away him
and his party just as their predecessors had been swept away.
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Civil War, 191720 How precarious
was the position of the Bolsheviks was shown clearly by the elections,
held on 25th November 1917, to the Constituent Assembly. Voting was by
universal and secret suffrage, and the resulting Assembly was thus the
most genuinely representative body that Russia had ever known. The
Bolsheviks naturally hoped for an overwhelming representation in their
favour, but in the event they secured only a small minority of the seats,
a large majority being held by more moderate Socialist Revolutionaries. Though a number
of the majority party, fearing interference by the extremists, absented
themselves altogether, and though those who met did so under a sense of
constraint, the Socialist Revolutionaries elected their own leader,
Tchernov, as the Assembly's President and then proceeded to vote down
certain Bolshevik resolutions. As a result the Bolsheviks left the
Assembly and then declared it to be closed, giving as their reason that it
was counter-revolutionary and bourgeois. Even then the
Bolsheviks did not secure control of the country without a long and bitter
struggle. Armed opposition to them was led by several Czarist military
leaders. In the Ukraine and the Caucasus, in White Russia and the Baltic,
and in Siberia, civil war was waged under such leadership. At the same
time the Allied nations gave fitful support to the insurgents, hoping thus
to restore the Russian moderates. Beginning in December 1917, the civil
war continued for three years. More than once the Bolshevik position
seemed hopeless because no sooner was one revolt crushed, at the expense
apparently of all the Bolshevik resources, when another broke out
elsewhere. But somehow in the end the Bolsheviks survived, and by November
1920 they were in control of the whole country. The victory was
an astonishing achievement. Four factors helped to explain it. First was
the organizing drive of Trotsky who, with the help of some Czarist
officers, evolved a new Bolshevik Army the 'Red Army'. Second, in
contrast to this, the rebellious Generals acted independently of, and at
vast distances from, one another, and the help that they received from
Allied Governments was insufficient and unreliable. Third, the Czarist
Generals, leading White Armies', were associated in the minds of the
Russian people with the Czarist regime and with foreigners who were
helping them: thus, strangely, the Bolsheviks, though in fact only a
minority of the nation, came to be thought of as the (people's party.
Fourthly, and closely tied to this consideration, was the peasants' fear
that the overthrow of the Bolsheviks would be followed by the restoration
of land to its former owners. Their victorious survival of the civil war seemed to
leave the Bolsheviks at last supreme. There was no longer a dangerous
rival for power. Moreover they had at their disposal not only the Red Army
but also the 'Cheka' as a means of crushing out opposition.
Immediately
after the November Revolution of 1917 this body of secret police was set
up by Lenin to deal with 'counter-revolution and sabotage' in Petrograd.
Gradually the scope and authority of the Cheka was widened until it was
operating throughout the country, arresting, trying, and shooting any who
were considered dangerous to the Bolshevik Government. In its early days
its methods were tolerated because anything that threatened the
Government's security, at a time of civil war and foreign intervention,
was a threat also to the safety of the State. In 1922 the work of the
Cheka was taken over by a new organization known, from the initial letters
of its title, as OGPU, but in its duties and methods the new body differed
little from the old. Among the
earliest victims of the rule of terror was Czar Nicholas II and his
family. They had been arrested as early as March 1917, after which they
were kept in close and humiliating confinement in various places. Finally
they were sent to Ekaterinburg, an industrial town in the middle Urals
(now called Sverdlovsk) where the Czar, his wife, and five children were
herded into three rooms. The approach of a White Army sent the local
soviet into a panic, and by its orders, on 16th July 1918, the whole royal
family was pushed into a cellar and shot. Tragic though
this event was, it was only one of countless similar events. Anyone known
to be actively opposed to the regime was liable to arrest. Thus many
thousands of Russians lived under a constant sense of uncertainty, and
thousands fled from the country.
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3. COMMUNISM ESTABLISHED
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The Communist Task The end of war, both external and internal, presented
Russia's new rulers with a challenge, indeed with a complexity of
challenges, on a colossal scale. Economically the nation was in a state of
chaos and decay. Its industrial output, in manufactures and in minerals,
was only a small fraction of what it had been before the war. Its railways
were utterly disorganized. Regular trade had almost ceased. Because for
years grain had been requisitioned, the peasants,
lacking any normal incentive, were producing less and less. The town
populations were seriously depleted partly as the result of the wars and
partly because large numbers, unable to obtain food by means of ordinary
trading, had scattered throughout the countryside where they hoped at
least to find enough to avoid starvation. Not the least serious aspect of
the situation was the sense of hopelessness and apathy that more and more
was taking possession of the people: the constant devastation of war and
of civil war, the disorganization of life, uncertainty about the future,
all these combined to produce an utter weariness of spirit. Unless Russia
could find a quality of leadership that would transform this depression
into hope and confidence, no reforms in government or in economics could
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The Communist Creed In this situation
Lenin at last came into his own. He was the only man with sufficiently
clear ideas and power of will to reduce the chaos to some sort of order.
Moreover he had had such a long career of revolutionary activity that no
one could doubt his genuineness or consistency. As early as 1918, after
the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, the Bolsheviks had begun to call themselves
the Russian Communist Party. They had, in fact, under Lenin's leadership,
taken over the theories of Kari Marx, 'the prophet of Communism'. The essential features of Communist belief may be
summarized under three headings. First, because private property was
regarded as the root reason for the subservience of the masses of the
people to the few property-owners, private ownership must be replaced by
communal ownership of land and goods. Second, this change could be
achieved only by the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'; this, however, was
to be a temporary stage which would last only until the coming of a
classless society which would render all government unnecessary. Third,
Communism was a solely materialist creed: that is, it had no place for
religion or for belief in a future life partly because religion, in
particular the Christian religion, places supreme importance upon the
value of individual men and Russia
had been one of the bulwarks of the old ruling classes and government. In one sense Communism became itself a kind of
religion: whereas most members of ordinary political parties such as
the British Liberals or Conservatives regarded their party activities
as little more than spare-time hobbies, to the true Communists their creed
was the all-important faith that governed the whole lives of themselves
and their fellows. Thus it came about that, though in Russia the active
membership of the Communist Party, until at least Russia's entry into the
Second World War, was never more than one in every hundred of the
population, these few held their belief so fanatically that they were able
to impose revolutionary changes upon the more passive minority. |
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The
Soviet System In theory the
system of government set up under Lenin's influence was a thorough-going
democracy, a system whereby the will of the people was supreme. Certain
people had no voting rights. These included employers of labour hired for
profit, persons living on unearned income, monks and clergy, officials of
the Czarist regime, criminals, and lunatics. Apart from these every
individual, male or female, of eighteen years of age or upwards, had the
right to vote. This looked like political equality. But the practice did
not accord with the theory; for in practice the Soviet system was a means
whereby the Communist Party ruled Russia in the name of the Russian
people. The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (R.S.F.S.R.)
was inaugurated in July 1918. Its governmental system was a pyramid of
Soviets. At the base were the city and village Soviets where everyone had
a vote. Votes were, however, recorded by show of hands, not by secret
ballot. Also, the city Soviets, made up largely of industrial workers,
were much more numerous, in proportion to population, than were the
village Soviets. Because the strength of the Communist Party lay in the
towns, where well-organized groups of factory workers could be arranged
easily, the peasant class was relatively uninfluential. From these primary
Soviets, the district and regional and provincial Soviets were
elected,
each from those below it, until at the apex of the pyramid there was the
All-Russian Congress of Soviets which in its turn elected the Central
Executive Committee, and this again elected a seventeen-man body called
the Council of People's Commissars. This complicated, indirect means of
electing a government gave the advantage, at every stage, to the highly
disciplined Communist minority to send its nominees forward. Thus it was
that a constitution that seemed to be thoroughly democratic was in fact an
instrument of Communist machinery. The Russia of the
R.S.F.S.R. was very much smaller than that ruled by the Czars. By the
Treaty of Brest Litovsk Russia had lost her sovereignty over the Ukraine
in the south and over the Baltic lands in the north-west, namely, Finland,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Also, beyond the Caucasus the
three provinces Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia formed themselves into
independent States. Since Communism professed that every people had the
right to decide upon its own government, Russia had to recognize these new
States with the best grace that she could. Nevertheless their breakaway
would be a serious handicap to the recovery of her prosperity. Being now
little more than a sprawling inland country centred on Moscow, which once
again had become the capital city, she would have difficulty in opening up
trade with industrial Europe and she would have no control over the vast
corn-growing lands of the Ukraine. Lenin's solution
of these problems was to organize a federal State, similar in idea to the
U.S.A., wherein individual States would remain self-governing in internal
affairs but would be federated together for matters that they had in
common and in particular for defence. In December 1922 active steps were
taken to make this idea effective by setting up a Union of Socialist
Soviet Republics to which the Soviet Republics could join themselves if
they wished, those who did so having equality within the Union. On this
basis the U.S.S.R. became effective in July 1923. Various republics joined
at various times, but as finally constituted it included seven Soviet
Republics, namely, the R.S.F.S.R., the Ukraine, Transcaucasia, White
Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tadjikistan. The system of government of the new federation was
similar in principle to that of the R.S.F.S.R.: there was a
pyramid of councils, each rank in which elected its superior, and thus the
citizens elected their government by a system that gave only indirect and
remote control. Indeed the political power of the citizens was much less
than even this description suggests because no political party other than
the Communist was allowed. Hence at an election voters could declare
themselves as either Communists or 'non-party'; so, in the U.S.S.R. as in
the R.S.F.S.R., the constitution was a means of carrying out Communist
policy only. |
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Famine, 192021 While these
political changes were taking place, the R.S.F.S.R. was trying to find
means to restore order and prosperity to the Russian people. The basic
economic principle of Communism was State ownership of all land (including
minerals) and of all means of production, trade, transport, and banking.
Hence all profits from these activities would go to the State and would be
distributed among the workers who had helped to produce them. For three years
191821 the Bolshevik Government tried to carry out this policy
of thoroughgoing nationalization. The land was nationalized, and gradually
factories were to be taken over and managed not by their former owners but
by committees of workers. Whether the theory behind this process was sound
or otherwise, the practical results were disastrous. In most instances the
committees of workers were not competent to manage the factories. They
lacked general education and experience of industrial organization. The
buying of raw materials, the co-ordination of processes within the
factory, the marketing of the manufactured goods, all these were beyond
the abilities of a committee of un-trained workers. Also, because each
factory was independent of every other, wages, prices, and marketing
varied from place to place, and the inevitable result was industrial
chaos. So as to bring some sort of order into industry, in
June 1918 all industry was declared nationalized and a supreme economic
council was set up to secure raw materials and machinery, and to
distribute these to factories according to their needs. By the end of 1920
nearly 40,000 factories had become State owned. To organize
supplies
on this vast scale was an impossible task for one central council
especially when handicapped by an inadequate transport system. Even when
compared with the not very efficient production of Czarist Russia,
industrial output declined sharply. Only 30 per cent as much coal was
being produced as before the war, 15 per cent as much sugar, 47 per cent
of oil, and so on. At the same time costs rose because management was
inefficient, raw materials were scarce, and the workers demanded higher
wages. The resulting hardships caused risings among the peasants and even,
in February 1921, a naval mutiny at Kronstadt near Petrograd. At the same time catastrophe of another sort struck the
nation on a huge scale. In 1920 a prolonged drought destroyed crops over a
vast area on the Volga and Don and in the Ukraine. So scarce was grain
that the hungry peasants consumed what should have been seed for the
following year. In 1921 there was drought again. The whole south and east
of Russia, with a population of between 20 and 30 million, was starving.
Undernourishment encouraged epidemics including cholera and typhus
and these in turn produced despair and suicides. Other countries,
including Britain, U.S.A., France, and Germany, sent such food and
medicines as were possible, but these could touch only the fringe of the
famine. As many as 3 million persons are said to have perished from the
famine and its effects. |
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N.
E. P. The Soviet
Government had to face the fact that the crisis could not be resolved by
the strict enforcement of Communist principles. Lenin himself, at the
Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, declared that: 'Everything must be set
aside to increase production. . . . Only an agreement with the peasantry
can save the socialist revolution in Russia.' The result was seen in what
came to be known as the New Economic Policy. Its aim was to encourage the peasants not only to
increase production but also to carry their crops to market. This was done
by limiting several Communist practices and by allowing many normal
capitalist methods. The peasants were to be allowed to dispose of their
surplus products in the open market, and trade between country and town was freed from
restrictions; the peasants were given secure tenure of their lands which
they could work by hired labour or let out to others. Similarly in
industry, small-scale private enterprises were allowed. These decrees gave
an incentive to individual workers, in both agriculture and manufacture,
which began to show results almost at once, and thus before long the
threat to the Communist regime began to ease. We must not
imagine that the N.E.P. weakened the basis of Communist organization in
general. Large-scale enterprises remained under State control, and the
Government remained firmly Communist in ideals. The N.E.P. was intended
only as a temporary withdrawal in a limited sector so as, in due course,
to make possible a general advance. In effect, Lenin's concessions
preserved the Soviet System and made possible the thoroughgoing changes
introduced by his successor several years later. |
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International
Communism One of
Communism's basic beliefs was in the coming of world-wide socialism.
Nationalism was regarded as outmoded. The watchword was: 'Workers of the
world, unite.' It was almost an accident of history that Communism began
to be practised in Russia. The natural place for a Communist regime was a
highly industrialized nation in western Europe. Lenin and his colleagues
had expected, and would have welcomed, the transfer to some western city
of the central direction of European Communism. Had this happened.
Communism might have had a truly international character, whereas it
became Russian-centred (so far as Europe was concerned) and Russian
featured. Many years before
the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 there had been world-wide democratic
movements. In 1864 the International Working Men's Association had been
founded by Karl Marx and had begun to hold annual conferences. Later it
was known as the First International. Soon wide differences of views
appeared among its members: on the right were the parliamentary
democracies and on the left the revolutionaries. The result of these
divisions was the break-up of the First International in 1874. The Second International, founded in 1889, became
divided in much the same way though it continued to meet
until the war of 1914. Because its general tenor was opposed to revolution
Lenin would have nothing to do with it. Hence at the close of the war he
founded the Third International which was to be exclusively Communist. The
time seemed ripe for such a movement. In the countries that had suffered most severely from
the effects of war, especially among the industrial workers there was
exactly the sort of discontent that provided favourable conditions in
which Communism could take root. This accorded with Lenins belief that
Capitalism everywhere was in its last dying stage and that world-wide
revolution was imminent. For a time in Germany and Austria, and to a less
degree in Italy, there were Communist stirrings, and the Russian
Communists not unnaturally hoped that a definite lead and a tight
organization would encourage the growth of Communist Parties in the west.
It was in these circumstances, and with such hopes, that in March 1919
Lenin founded the Third International, or Comintern, in Moscow with
Zinoviev as its President. Its avowed object was to replace world
Capitalism by world Communism, and its methods were to establish in every
country a Communist Party that would be under discipline from the
Comintern and would work to seize political power by revolutionary means.
These parties were to spread their influence among workers, and especially
among trade unions, in preparation for world-wide revolution. Events belied
Lenin's faith. Though Communism had many sympathizers in most western
countries, only a few were prepared to take an active share in revolution,
and those who were prepared to take orders from the Comintern were fewer
still. Consequently in most countries the Socialist Party split into two
sections: the majority continued to favour a parliamentary form of
democracy, and only a breakaway minority was linked up with the Comintern.
Thus those sections of the western workers on which the Communists had set
their hopes remained predominantly democratic and never became Communist.
Even the Comintern had to recognize its failure, and during its later
years it tended to be less rigid in its methods. Finally in 1943 it was
abolished. In May 1922 Lenin suffered a paralytic stroke. From
then onwards he was incapacitated for leadership until his death in
January 1924. Only after his death was the enormous
scale of his work appreciated. He had believed passionately in revolution
as the only means of achieving the rights of the common people, and to the
revolutionary cause he had devoted all the powers of his being. It was he
who had led the vast Russian peoples through revolution and civil war,
economic disruption and famine, and had made of them a nation that would
become one of the few great world Powers. No matter whether we approve or
disapprove of his beliefs and his methods, it is clear that Lenin was one
of the few outstandingly great men of the modern world. Almost as soon as
he was dead he became a legendary figure in Russia. His body, embalmed,
was enclosed under glass in a mausoleum of red granite within the Kremlin
and guarded by soldiers of the Red Army. It became a place of pilgrimage
for his devotees. All over Russia Lenin's name was given to large cities
and to small towns, to streets and factories, and to almost every other
sort of place that could bear a name. Even Petrograd was renamed
Leningrad. All this semi-worship, by showing how incomparable
Lenin was, showed up also the difficulties of finding an adequate
successor. This was a problem which every dictatorship has to face.
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4. THE STALINIST SYSTEM
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Rivalry for Leadership There was no
clear answer to the question of who should succeed Lenin as dictator of
the Soviet Union. Much more was involved than merely finding a capable
politician. Though only one political party was allowed in Russia, within
that party there were different groups who emphasized different items of
policy. While Lenin lived, his enormous and unrivalled prestige had kept
those differences within bounds, but no sooner was he removed than they
showed themselves in the form of bitter feuds. In the main these
corresponded to the different methods of achieving the Communist
objective, and they centred around two men Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky was the best known of all Lenin's lieutenants.
By birth he was a Jew, his real name being Lev Bronstein. Under the Czars
his political views had compelled him to move from place to place
outside Russia, including spells in Paris and New York,
and twice he had suffered exile in Siberia. After the 1917 Revolution he
was Commissar for War, and the Red Army's victories in 1919 and 1920 were
due largely to his organization and planning. Believing that Communist
Russia could never be safe in a Capitalist world, his policy was to spread
Communism through world-wide revolution. Within Russia he would have been
uncompromising in enforcing a full Communist programme. He therefore did
not agree with the N.E.P. and its concessions to the peasants. Stalin, though as
uncompromising as Trotsky in his devotion to Communism, differed from him
in his policy for achieving it. He believed that the first step must be to
build a strong Communist Russia which should be sound economically and as
nearly self-sufficing so possible, so as not to be dependent upon trade
with Capitalist competitors. In the rivalry between the two men, it was
Stalin's policy that accorded more nearly with the wishes of most of the
Russian people and of the Communist leaders. Trotsky's aim of
international Communism almost inevitably would have brought clashes with
the Capitalist West, and Russia was tired of the bloodshed and devastation
that revolutionary war had brought. The details of
the clash between Stalin and Trotsky do not concern us. Indeed many of
them have never been clear. The main facts are that Stalin, winning the
support of most of the influential Communist leaders, gained office after
office, as he climbed the political ladder, though not until 1929 was he
in a position of complete supremacy. Parallel with this, Trotsky was being
driven from position to position. In 1926 he lost his place on the
Politburo the small central committee which controlled official
appointments and policy and in 1927 he was expelled from the Party,
and finally, in 1929, he was exiled from Russia. Thereafter he moved from
country to country spending most of his time in writing, until at last,
while in Mexico, he was murdered in August 1940. |
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Stalin, 18791953 The man on whom Lenin's mantle fell had been named
Joseph Djugashvili. He came of peasant stock and was the son of a
shoemaker in a small Georgian town in the Caucasus.
Later he took the simpler name of Stalin which means 'steel'. He had
joined Lenin's party as early as 1903 and thus was one of the Old Guard
among Bolsheviks. Yet he differed from most of his associates in not being
an intellectual and in having a viewpoint limited to Russia. His peasant
background remained the moulding influence of his life. This is not to say
that he was unintelligent or slow-witted. He could be a crafty schemer,
but he lacked Lenin's general culture and, unlike Trotsky, he had no
personal experience of western countries. He was a man of inflexible will,
bitterly vindictive towards enemies, and so rough in his dealings with
colleagues that Lenin considered him unfit to be the ruler of Russia. Stalin's
succession to power was expected to assure the supremacy of the Old Guard
to whom he belonged. In fact the reverse took place. Stalin could endure
neither rivals nor equals, preferring to be surrounded by such as we have
come to call 'Yes-men'. The result was a series of 'purges', especially in
193638, in which most of those who had been prominent Party leaders
were either executed or sentenced to long imprisonments. To Western
observers the strangest feature of the trials was the readiness, almost
the eagerness, with which the accused men confessed themselves guilty of
treason or of sabotaging the Government's industrial or agricultural
projects, or the like. In addition to the prominent men who were executed
after such trials, many thousands of others were disposed of without
trial. The result of these 'purges' was that by the time that the Second
World War broke out in 1939 Stalin remained undisputed dictator of the
U.S.S.R., though he did not become Prime Minister until May 1941, previous
to which he had been (since 1922) only the Secretary of the Communist
Party. His methods of reaching this eminence differed little from those of
Hitler and Mussolini. It was at a critical moment in Russian development that
Stalin elbowed his way into supremacy. Lenin's regime had made the
Revolution secure against any immediate danger of overthrow from enemies
either inside or outside the country. But only slight beginnings had been
made to reorganize the Russian nation on Communist principles, and even
those beginnings had been modified
by Lenin's N.E.P. of 1921. The supreme task, therefore, to which Stalin
set himself was to transform Russia from a peasant society into a highly
industrialized, self-sufficient nation. With ruthless, inflexible
determination, heedless of the cost to masses of the population who would
be involved, he pursued his course and so far succeeded that his work
constituted a second revolution. By 1939 Russia had become the third
nation in the world in industrial production (a position formerly held by
Britain), the first two being the U.S.A. and Germany. This result was
achieved by a double process: on the land and in the factories. |
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Collectivization
of Land Stalin's purpose
in transforming the agricultural system was partly greater efficiency and
partly social. Russian agriculture was still carried on by primitive
methods wooden ploughs, broadcast sowing, sickle harvesting mostly
on very small holdings. The peasants, who by such methods had to raise
Russia's basic food supplies, numbered about 85 per cent of the whole
population. One effect of Lenin's N.E.P. had been to enable some of the
more enterprising and better-off peasants to hire farm labourers and to
acquire capital of their own. These relatively prosperous and independent
peasants were called kulaks. They were regarded as capitalists
within a Communist State; and they were especially hated because they
refused to take their grain to market until prices reached high levels,
thus causing dear food for the rest of the people. It was against them
that Stalin's schemes were particularly directed, his method being the
collectivization of the land. This meant the
grouping together of several peasant holdings so that each group would be
worked as one large agricultural unit. This would economize labour,
facilitate the use of up-to-date agricultural methods and machinery, and
allow more efficient marketing of crops. Also it would have the social
effect of putting all the peasants on an equal status and so would
eliminate the kulaks. When in 1928 the Government began to introduce this
scheme, the kulaks resisted strongly. The next year, therefore,
Stalin used sterner, more brutal measures. Whole villages were compelled,
by force of arms, to accept the collectivization of their
holdings. Some 2 million kulaks with their families perhaps 8
million people altogether were driven from their homes; some were
killed as they were being expelled; many starved to death; and many more
were driven into Siberia there to scrape whatever sort of living they
could either from the land or in mines or lumber-mills. Many, before
giving up their holdings, did their best to defeat the Government's plans:
they slaughtered their livestock, smashed machinery, and burned crops. So
widespread was the peasants' resistance that in 1930 even Stalin had to
make a few concessions. In 1932, while agriculture was still disorganized,
a crop failure spread a famine that was so serious that 4 or 5 million
peasants are said to have starved to death. Yet nothing was allowed to
interfere with the main Communist programme. In spite of the cost in human
suffering and lives, by 1939 95 per cent of Russian farms had been
collectivized.
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The Five-Year Plans Stalin's
industrial programme, which went parallel with the agricultural measures,
was achieved in a series of Five-Year Plans, each one having a particular
aim. The first Plan
was for the years 192832. Its aim was to lay the foundations for heavy
industry, namely, factories to produce steel and tractors and automobiles;
coal and iron; hydroelectric plants; and railways. In all sections the
Plan had to overcome enormous difficulties. Russia was still an extremely
poor nation, yet the vast scheme envisaged by Stalin would need
correspondingly vast capital. Though the raw materials, needed for most
industries, were available in abundance, the machinery and precision tools
would have to be imported (and paid for); and highly skilled foreign
planners and workers would be needed to set the industries going, and such
workers would be attracted only by high wages and good conditions of
living and working. It is against this background that the successes and
failures of the Plan must be judged. The successes were truly enormous. A dam on the river
Dnieper made possible a vast hydroelectric station at Dniepropetrovsk.
Magnitogorsk, on the eastern slopes of the Urals, was
created as a great industrial centre specializing in steelworks. Tractor
factories were set up in Stalingrad. The oil output of the Caucasus wells
was greatly increased; so was the coal output at Kutnesk. The
Trans-Siberia railway, hitherto a single track, was double-tracked, and
new railways were laid to serve the new industrial centres. These were but
typical of the developments of many various kinds which went on all over
Russia. One of the advantages of much of this development was that the
industrial plants of the Urals and in Siberia were too far removed from
Russia's frontiers to be vulnerable in wartime to invaders from either
west or east. So vast and novel
an industrial programme was not likely to be carried through without a
hitch. It was not easy to gauge the raw materials that would be needed in
every one of the hundreds of various factories. Also, too many of their
products tractors and motor-cars, for example were liable to break
down under strain. Nevertheless, within the first five years Russian
industry at least doubled its output. The achievement had its disadvantage, so far as the
mass of the Russian people was concerned. The Plan dealt only with what
were called 'capital' industries, that is, those that were necessary in
order that other industries, dependent upon them, might expand. Thus the
coal and steel were the materials for other products, the tractors were
needed for agriculture, and so on. They did not meet the people's
immediate needs. There was almost no more choice of foodstuffs or clothes
'consumer goods' in the shops than before, certainly not at prices
that ordinary people could pay. Luxury goods scarcely existed. Thus the
workers lacked the immediate incentives to labour, and the shortages,
added to those resulting from harvest failures, were causing discontent.
Partly because of pressure from the Government, and partly because of the
hope of benefits to come, very large numbers of factory workers had
sacrificed leisure and had accepted low wages; but by the end of four or
five years they were looking for results. Hence the second and the third
Five-Year Plans, for the years 193337 and 193842 (until interrupted
by war in 1939), aimed at adjusting the balance between the two classes of
goods capital and consumer. To some degree the later Plans fulfilled
their purpose; but the proportion of
goods produced by the heavy industries still very much exceeded those of
any others. Also a large part of the success had been made possible only
by modifying Communist principles. In particular, the theory of equality
among the workers broke down in practice: as an incentive to production,
piece-work replaced fixed rates of daily wages, and scales of pay were
drawn up based upon skill and quality. But the real test of the
Government's achievement came with the outbreak of war: the success of the
Communist U.S.S.R. against Capitalist Germany in 194145 contrasted with
the defeats of Czarist Russia in 191417 and was tangible evidence of
the effect of the Five-Year Plans. Between the two wars the U.S.S.R. had
become largely a self-sufficient industrial nation.
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New Constitution In addition to
the industrial and economic changes of the 1930s, in 1936 Stalin
introduced a new and apparently democratic constitution for the Soviet
Union. Reasons for the change are not difficult to find. Successful as the
industrial reorganization had been, it had been achieved by methods of
dictatorship. How long the Russian people would be content with this
condition was doubtful. Conditions outside Russia also needed to be
watched. From 1933 onwards Hitler was in power in Germany, and his hatred
of Communism was so intense and bitter that sooner or later conflict
between the two countries seemed inevitable. When that day came the
U.S.S.R. would need the support of the democratic nations of the West, and
this she was not likely to receive unless she herself had at least the
appearance of democracy. The new constitution of 1936 displaced the former
elaborate pyramid of councils and its system of indirect elections. At
every level the councils were to be elected directly. Even the Soviet of
the Union was to be elected in the proportion of one deputy for 300,000
electors. Former disqualifications for the franchise including
capitalists and members of the Czarist regime were abolished, and a
vote was given to every citizen of eighteen years of age and upwards
irrespective of sex, race, religion, or any other consideration. Elections
were to be by secret ballot. Equal representation was given to town and
country districts. All this looked like true democracy. In practice the
changes were little more than nominal. To grant votes to the aristocratic
and capitalist classes would make very little practical difference since
these had all but disappeared. The secret vote, too, was of little value
since only Stalinist Communists would be allowed as candidates for office.
Moreover Russia remained a police State: though the OGPU had changed its
name to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (the MVD), its methods were not
less violent. Under its control, many thousands of people who were
suspected of disloyalty to Communism were herded into forced labour camps
in the wilds of Siberia.
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Culture In spite of all
that Stalin had been able to do to force changes upon the older generation
of Russians, Communism's real hope lay rather with the children and the
youth of the country. By 1937 twenty years had passed since the original
Russian Revolution, and already there was growing up a new generation that
had no experience of any but a Communist society; and with every passing
year the proportion of such people in the nation would grow and grow.
Stalin's natural policy, therefore, was to concentrate upon this younger
element and, from their childhood upwards, to train them exclusively in
Communist ideas. One of the difficulties of instilling new ideas into
the adults was that they were too ignorant to understand ways to which
they were not accustomed. At the time of the Revolution, one-half of the
population was illiterate. One of the Soviet Government's first cares was
to open schools as fast as circumstances allowed so that all the children
would learn at least to read and write. Behind this there was something
more than enthusiasm for education for its own sake. During the period of
the first Five-Year Plan, Russia had to depend upon foreign technical
experts, but she would need to train technicians of her own in every
sphere of manufacture and science. One effect of her early efforts towards
general education was that between 1933 and the outbreak of the Second
World War she provided various forms of higher education for a million
young people. Though the resulting standards of qualification were
not always as high as those in the West, there
began to flow a wide stream of scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers,
agricultural experts, and others of a calibre to take managerial
responsibility in factories and elsewhere. These were the men who made
possible the enormous advances in every branch of knowledge and industry,
especially during the generation following the Second World War. Related to this subject of education and culture is that of the Soviet Government's attitude towards religion. This is a difficult subject, and the facts have not always been easy to reach or to interpret justly. The basic fact is that Communism is atheist, finding no place for the idea of God or the life of the spirit. So far as Russia was concerned, this was understandable because of the close association between the Orthodox Church and the Czars. The Communists believed that religion had been the tool of Czardom to keep the people quiet. They said: 'Religion is the opium of the people', and so they rejected all religious ideas, good and bad together. But because the Revolution was supposed to set people free, the Communists did not forbid religious practices: churches remained open, and attendance at worship was allowed. Strong anti-religious pressure, however, was exerted. In part this was direct: the Orthodox Church lost its property and its schools, and its members had to support its priests; also no openly practising Christian would be acceptable to the Communist Party and so would not receive the benefits that Party membership brought with it. In part it was indirect: State schools were the only ones allowed, and in these Marx's anti-religious ideas were taught, and so the rising generations would have less and less contact with religious beliefs and practices. Religion would become limited to older and ageing people, and thus in time it would die out altogether.
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S Reed Brett, European History 1900-1960 (1967) |