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Russes, slaves et soviétiques

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Céline Gervais-Francelle

III. Histoire de l’U.R.S.S

The civil war-dynamics and legacy

Moshe Lewin

Texte intégral

Preliminaries

1The period of the Civil War is, no doubt, crucial in the history of the new regime. The dating of this period is debatable. It can be said that it begun in November 1917 and ended in the middle of 1922. The assumption behind this dating is based on the need to include in the given chronological segment all the most important trends and traits that produced the flavour and substance of the period, particular ways of acting and specific culture in the emerging system and its leaders. By mid-1922 almost all the military operations of importance, including against big and most smaller but widespred groups of guerillas and bandits have ceased ; the first reasonably abundant crop began to supply enough food to start healing the terrible wounds of the country, in particular the sequels of the atrocious famine of 1921 ; the war economy was returning to a more normal, peacetime functionning.

2We are dealing therefore with a time-span of about four years, marked by upheavals, battles, slaughter, a protracted national agony during which the new system was created and took shape. It was not just an important period but a very exciting one for historians and for other students of social and political systems. It seems easier to grasp essential features of a regime at its inception than to try and wrench them out from numerous accretions that accumulate in later stages of development.

3The system we are studying was not methodically built according to some pre-established blue-print. It was rather improvised under the pressure of constant emergencies, although ideologies and programmes of the previous era did play their role. This is visible, notably, in some policy preferences like distaste for markets, a special relation with the working class, to take just a few examples. But these ideological preferences produced more than just facts. They also engendered illusions which are best illustrated by the policies subsumed under the term of « War Communism ». An « illusion in action » or, to use a better term, « utopia » is a powerful mobiliser and yet its results can be – and were – quite different from what was hoped for. In any case, utopias of different kinds are often an important part of historical events and present an intricate subject for study.

4We can state further that although improvised – may be even because of it – the key institution of the new system, the party, its only pre-existing feature – was created or recreated in the course of the events under consideration, in a new garb, quite different from what it was at the start. This is a theme certainly worth returning to later. But it can be stated already that party cadres during their rather short history before October, trained themselves to be leaders in a revolution that wasn’t even supposed to be socialist. During this period they produced an ideology and a rather small number of dedicated cadres that found themselves in and after October engaged in activities and events, notably a bloody Civil War, during which they organized and ran armies, built a state apparatus and presided over a new state. As they became rulers of the improvised regime, they recreated themselves and acquired a new identity, even if initially this was not apparent to them. Nevertheless, the transformation went on speedely in all facetts of party life and many of its principes, like ties with the masses, organization, modus operandi, social composition, ways of ruling and style of life.

5All this was not the main worry yet of the participants of the events, proponents or foes of the new regime. They, and observers abroad, were still absorbed and deeply marked by the novelties introduced by the newcomer into the family of world systems. Whether a separate peace with Germany, land to the peasants, workers’ control or nationalization of banks and key industries, as well as less formalised but sharper and frightening stuff like « robb from the robbers » [grab’ nagrablennoe] = all those were outrageous to inner opponents and an insult to the Western systems, and forced labour for the bourgeoisie did not make things better. A civil war was in these conditions inevitable. What was puzzling was the considerable ease and relatively little, or easily broken resistance that the new regime enjoyed in its first months in power. Some would explain it by a power vacuum which the Bolsheviks skillfully used. But the crumbliness of the Provisional Government did not leave a full power vacuum. The vacuum was, at least partly, filled by the networks of soviets that helped the Bolsheviks into power and gave them a strong initial backing. The forces of the old regime and many undecided needed some time to regroup, to recover from the initial shock and to get the benefits of the new regime’s predictable difficulties and errors – and those did not fail to appear.

  • 1 Cf. David Footman, Civil War In Russia (London, 1961), pp. 85-135, for a description showing inepti (...)

6That the Civil War was in the cards can be hypothesized on grounds other than the challenge of the Bolshevik programme. We know how deeply the Whites hated the forces that stood behind the Kerensky government. SRs, Mensheviks, later also the liberals were considered by Monarchists and Nationalists, especially by the officers, to have been the main culprits of the Bolshevik take-over. It is therefore not an idle speculation to contend that a Constituent Assembly, dominated by the S’Rs, would have been dispersed and the S’Rs gave ample proof that they were not capable of defending it. They did not do much when told to disperse by the Bolshevik sailors and later showed again, in their Samara stronghold, that they failed to produce a military force ready to sustain them. They depended fully on the Checoslovak units, whereas their own forces were commanded by White officers who were just waiting for a chance to eliminate them1. This is what happened somewhat later in Siberia where White officers eliminated S’R leaders, including physically, making it clear to them how unwanted they were in the White camp.

7Behind these facts were the basic realities of the country in those years : the battle was not being waged between democracy and authoritarianism, but between two quite different authoritarian political camps that could field big armies and fight it out. Supporters of the Constituent Assembly could not do the same – and they were eliminated from the historical arena.

  • 2 Victor Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, Ithaca – London, 1970.

8We are next faced with another riddle that is still open to new insights : why did the Bolsheviks whom we just described as unprepared for the job of ruling a huge country, nevertheless became victors in the Civil War ? An easy answer comes to mind-with a grain of truth to it – that their success was due mainly to the ineptitude of their opponents. Victor Shklovsky, in his riveting Sentimental lourney said there that it was not a matter of who was the stronger but rather who was less weak2.

  • 3 References to some unfootnoted borrowings from memoirs by White officers were taken in this paper f (...)
  • 4 V.M. Krasnov, « Dobrovol’cy na Severnom Kavkaze », reproduced from Arxiv Russkoj Revoljucii, vol. X (...)

9But such an explanation won’t do. The Bolsheviks engaged in a feverish work of creating a central government as well as important civilian services and local authorities and at the same time organised a war machine, including armament industries and to sum it all up – they created a state. This testified to a dynamism that the other side clearly lacked. Neither of the main White territories – the Siberian, the Southern – managed to produce a credible state administration despite their claim to superior experience in « statehood » (gosudarstvenndst’). Numerous documents, notably memoirs of White officers, written during and after the events testified to the sad state of affairs in the different central and local administrations of White areas3. One officer described the administration of the Stavropol region under the Whites as the rule of pompadury, corrupt and arbitrary little despots4 and evidence from Kolchak country was not more cheerful. In the battle between the pompadury and the komissary, the latter certainly deserved to win. They turned out to have had a knack for state building that representatives of previously privileged classes lacked or lost. The deeper cause of this deficiency lay in their inability to convince their previously faithful subjects, especially the peasants that they still have something to offer to them. Their demise in October was not really an accident.

10It is worth noting that the Bolsheviks were entrenched and found most of their support in the very heart of historical Muscovy, Russia’s heartland, and the different ressources of the nation and the state acumulated by history in this area, served them well in winning the war and, later, in reuniting the country. The huge outskirts (okrainy) were the Whites operated, although well provided with raw materials, grain and an excellent military ressource – the Cossacks – did not give them the hoped for chance to surround and take Moscow. The okrainy proved, on the contrary, too diversified, too distant from each other and instead of being a base for victory they turned into a morass that engulfed them.

  • 5 Paul N. Milioukov, Russia Today and Tomorrow, London, 1922, chapter on the Whites. These were lectu (...)

11The socio-historical study of this period focusing on classes, nationalities, bureaucracies and parties, as well as the social composition of the armies, is an indispensable tool although this kind of studies is still in its infancy. Yet it is particularly satisfying to the historian to learn that not just the Bolsheviks but also the key figures of the opposite camp, notably Paul Miljukov and general Denikin, looked to the social factors, including the class composition of the contending camps and of the country in order to explain the causes of victories and defeats. The nefarious role of backward looking pomeshchiki, actions of the bourgeoisie, policies in relation to the peasantry, behaviour and attitudes of workers – such were the terms Miljukov used in his post-mortem analysis of the Whites. And Denikin, although he denied that his side had a class character, admitted and regretted that it never managed to shed its class image in the eyes of the population, and a very derogatory one at that. Denikin also resented the duplicity and stinginess of the bourgeoisie that did not want to come up with the necessary means to save what they themselves declared to be their cause5.

  • 6 For one good example of a partisan unit from Antonov-Ovseenko’s Red army in the Ukraine, calling th (...)

12Such terms are, in fact, indispensable provided they are used flexibly and based on good research. Both camps were coalitions, not neatly arranged clear-cut classes. Each side had an obvious core – though not entirely monolithical either – and around it coalesced broader layers of the population that often hesitated, changed sides, returned to the fold again or created a camp of their own. This made the Civil War so unpredictable for the participants and so complicated for the analyst. Such a state of affairs applied equally to both sides. We can quote many cases of military or partisan units, with red banners and comissars, turning against their communists, even killing them, and going over to the other side, or continuing on their own – or even staying... with the Reds6.

  • 7 V.I. Lenin, in Devjataja konferencija VKP(b), sentjabr’ 1920, protokoly, Moskva, 1972, p. 12. He st (...)

13We know that there was a nucleus of workers, poor peasants, different raznočincy on the side of the Reds and members of the previously privileged classes, richer peasants and, especially, military officers, on the other side. The problem was who will be the better social and political strategist (and analyst, of course) and mobilise the support of large circles of the urban plebs, more importantly, the small scale peasant farmers. In this crucial task of social strategy the Bolsheviks did a much better job. The Whites, on the other hand, who much of the time were better militarily, found themselves in trouble the moment they turned to forceful drafting of peasants. According to Lenin this was their undoing7. Their basic force became hopelessly diluted.

14But social analysis makes us aware of yet another, further complexity and strain in the social environment of each side. The heat generated by the Civil War was such that the nucleus of both sides showed cracks at different moments and especially in the later stages of the war. Dissention and decomposition set in the White camp earlier but the Bolsheviks were not spared either. Confusion, exhaustion and signs of fragmentation hit finally the party – the tool the Whites could not match – but luckily for the Reds this happened after the Whites were defeated.

15What it all means is that the Reds were tested in the crucible as cruelly as anybody. The Civil War marked them as deeply as it marked the whole nation.

16This was an age of incredible sufferings, cruelty and destruction and terms like « time on the cross », « via dolorosa », were most evocative to the bulk of the deeply religious people. Writers used such terms in their works about the period and the question was even raised by symbolists on whose side was Christ. The Church though was quite firmly on the side of the Whites.

17The human sufferings were not only the result of cruelties of the Civil War but also a result of one of its broader aspects : widespread dislocation, destruction, decomposition of groups, classes, parties – brief, a deeply morbid state of the whole social fabric. Shklovsky, again, in his strangely titled work, written soon after the events, was particularly impressed, even fascinated by the phenomena of morbidity – cruelty, dissolution of social and human bonds, the sickening sight of a society in a state of disagregation.

18This extremely important – and fatal – character of the period has to be studied attentively. Without it, the problem of the sequels and legacy of the Civil War will become unintelligeable. We emphasized that social strategy was a key aspect in the outcome of the war. But we also mentioned one other part of the big game where the Bolsheviks bested the Whites, namely in the domain of state building. Once the tsarist state collapsed and the Provisional Government was not able to shore it up or build a new one, the stage was opened for the social forces in attendance to try their hand at recreating a new political organization. There is no need to repeat the well known story about who tried and failed. The country was going to be reunited and a socio-political system set by the camp that would produce a state. In abstract terms, one can imagine situations where a large movement of the masses wins and produces a state thereafter. Historically, such seems to have been the case during « the times of troubles » (smutnoe vremja) in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. During the not less tragic smuta of the 20th century the (Bolshevik run) state was produced, partly, hand in hand with a social movement and soon ever more independently of it or, at least, of the shifting moods of sympathisers, neutral or even hostile masses. An important feature of this process, to which we will still return in the conclusion, consisted in that the new state was being erected amidst a disintegrating economy and decomposing social fabric, at a time of a catastrophic setback for the whole country. This was therefore a state emerging on the basis of a social development in reverse. The Bolsheviks were little aware at that time of this aspect Of their achievement : but the very moment of their triumph, the shadow of Pyrrhus was certainly present.

The ordeal

  • 8 V.P. Naumov, Letopis’ geroičeskoj bor’by : sovetskaja istoriografija graždanskoj vojny, Moskva, 197 (...)

19It is the study of demographic trends, of cities, the social classes, the economy and the parties that will allow us to distinguish such shadowy aspect of the emerging regime. These factors are « system makers » in any conditions and we shall try to pull together these themes, after a survey of the different components. The chapters of our book are quite eloquent in drawing a picture of hunger, breakdown of communications, demographic losses endured by the population. We would like to draw the attention in particular to the collapse of the two capitals. The capitals were the centers and the main base of the revolutionary movements, in particular for the Bolsheviks. But both Petrograd and Moscow suffered the biggest losses. None of them was ever conquered but the ennemy was sometime quite near and the overall social and economic situation of the country repercuted itself with particular severity on the capitals. In 1917 both cities had a combined population of four million inhabitants. In 1920 only 1,674 thousand remained. To understand how the pillars were collapsing under the feet of the new regime, it is worth examining the plight of Petrograd. Almost all the industrial workforce of this important industrial center was lost through migration, mobilizations, deaths. Existing data show that 380 thousand industrial workers left production and only some 80 thousand remained8. Calamity is certainly the right term here.

20But the weakening of the social mainstay of the regim was occuring not just in the capitals. The population of all the big cities shrank, to different degrees : the more developped and dynamic the city, the more it suffered... The smaller and less industrialized the city, the less it declined – and might have even grown.

21Second, all large scale industry, if it didn’t come to a full standstill in many branches, declined drastically in most of them.

  • 9 I. A. Gladkov, ed., Istorija socialističeskoj èkonomiki, 7 vol., Moskva, 1976-1981, vol. I : 1917 – (...)
  • 10 An overall statistical evaluation shows a decline, for 1919-1920, to just 13,4 % of the base year. (...)

22Finally, the national industrial labour force fell by half or was strongly « diluted » or « déclassé » by black market activities, idleness or flight to the villages9. The term « deindustrialization » is fully legitimate here. Only armament industries working for the Red Army were kept alife. By the end of the Civil War many key industries, absolutely vital for the functionning of the country, reverted back to the pre-1861 level10.

23In a situation like that, cities and industries became parasites on, basically, the rural economy, not unlike the armies in those days that lived « of the land » or, in Russian, na podnožnom kormu. As long as such a situation lasted there could be but an ever deepening economic crisis, the term « economy » becoming actually something of an overstatement. With the economic decline went the continuing tearing apart of the social fabric which could not be sustained in a situation of the breakdown in economic life. There were also other corrosive and destructive factors, one of them being the very onerous duty of raising and equipping – let alone enduring – so many armies, their activities, iniquities and casualties.

  • 11 For the overall losses of Russia during the Civil War see V. Z. Drobižev et al., op. cit., p. 333.

24The Reds alone had an army of about five million people towards the end of the Civil War and suffered some 1,200,000 casualties. Kolchak, at his peak mobilized some half-a-million people. Denikin begun his dashing northbound drive in mid-1919 with some 300,000 under his banners but as his offensive developed he mobilised several hundred thousand more, mainly peasants11 – and his army seemed to have stumbled badly on these draftees.

  • 12 Ibid., p. 332 quotes an official Soviet publication which assessed the loss of population during th (...)
  • 13 L. M. Spirin, Klassy i partii v graždanskoj vojne, Moskva, 1968, p. 347, maintains that between Jun (...)

25The overall casualties of the Whites are not known but we have different assessment of the general population losses from war, epidemics and famine12 that our demographers offer us in this book. A figure of eight million people, including the unborn, are quoted sometime in Soviet sources as sum total of direct losses from the Civil War. But all assessments cannot but be tentative. On the other hand, the whole problem of mobilizations and of armies and their numbers urgently need some monographs. Let us take, for example, the problem of deserters. The figures quoted, for the Red camp alone, are staggering. Some talk about a million-and-half, some other of a million. With figures like that no data on the size of the armies can be reliable. Many joined the induction centers, even the units, and then melted away. Many others did not present themselves at all. They stayed in their villages or headed immediately for the forrests. They also, at some stage, came back in considerable numbers13 – an event of great significance for the outcome of the war. The riffraff quality of the Red Army, especially in the early stages, was predictable in this conditions and the shiftiness and unreliability of the recruits instilled considerable paranoia in the Red camp. So many of those recruits could easily find their way and swell the ranks of all kind of « greens » – Makhno, Grigoriev, Antonov – and of the opposite camp. But the other side faced a similar problem.

26There is no need to insist that the armies killed, requisitioned, often just pillaged.

  • 14 The number of ex-tsarist officers who voluntereed or were, mostly, drafted into the Red Army reache (...)

27The story of the deserters is, of course, one of peasants. It does reflect, quite faithfully, their moods and attitudes towards both camps. The figures given for the numbers of deserters that begun to return in mid-1919, and later, are significant not only for their impact on the rout of the Whites in the autumn of the same year but also for the hint they give us about the predominantly peasant character of the Red Army. At the stage when the Reds took to the army volunteers only, the majority of the soldiers were workers. Since compulsory drafting became the main way of recruiting, the Red Army became 80 % peasant. Its NCOs were at the same time 60 % peasant but the peasant component diminished drastically in the middle and higher ranks14.

28Such a huge peasant participation in the ranks of the army at a time when the peasantry was not only supporting but also deserting, « hesitating » and changing sides, underscores both the complexity of the tasks the Reds were facing and the degree of their achievement in transforming rather unruly bands into something resembling an army and learning to execute serious strategic and tactical moves, amidst the chaotic conditions of those years. All this testified to the talent of the leadership and their growing military know how.

  • 15 S.S. Xromov, ed., Graždanskaja vojna i inostrannaja intervencija v SSSR : Enciklopedija, Moskva, 19 (...)

29Modern Soviet writers still stick, officially, to the version that all the achievements were due to the leadership of Lenin and the party. Trotsky is mentioned mainly for his real or imaginary errors, although some most recent writings manage not to mention him at all, or to mention occasionally but without the usual virulence15. Is a « rehabilitation » of some kind in the offing ? One never knows with the glasnost’ of our days...

30But this remark is only a marginal one here although it certainly belongs to the big problem of « legacies » and of the more particular one of the army and its leadership. Memoirs of the Whites, among others, are an inestimable source for the assessment of the Red Army of the Whites themselves and the behaviour of different groups in the population towards them. We read often in memoirs of generals how industrial settlements or often even quite peaceful looking villages could suddenly open fire at the approaching Whites. They often prided themselves in that their hundreds could easily round thousands of Reds but they also noticed, with growing disillusionment that the Reds kept coming at them as if the numbers of their supporters never dried out... The quality of the Red Army kept improving and the memoirists consoled themselves with the idea that it all was due to the good work of their own kind who deserted to the Reds or were forced to serve them.

31In fact the Reds had their own problems with numbers, especially when real « bayonets and sabres » were concerned. When it came to real field armies they were often outnumbered by the Whites who almost always had a superiority in cavalry – the Cossacks – at their disposal. It is a measure of the difficulty to wrench out real fighting units from the mobilized mass of recruits : in an army about five million strong (by the and of 1920) no more than 400,000 « bayonets and sabers » could be fielded. But the same figures – we quote them in note 13 make it clear why the Whites felt the Reds were « inexhaustible ». The latter managed to build up reserves the Whites could’t even dream of. The story of support for the Reds – enthusiastic, lukewarm or even non-hostile neutrality – is confirmed by these figures. But this is certainly not the whole story. The picture of social decomposition we are sketching here out is suggesting convincingly why the support for the Reds was weakening and actually begun drying out towards the end of the War.

32Next in our inventory of destructive and decomposing forces we should mention terror. For some, of course, this was and indispensable tool of war, notably as a means of paralysing the actual and potential ennemies by spreading fear among them. But at the same time terror is a physical and psychological source of all kind of pathologies and an important factor of demoralization for all involved. The existing literature in the West payed here attention mainly to the Cheka. In fact, even on the Red side alone there were all kind of security units, in addition to the Cheka, as well as, finally, a special security army to deal with security problems in the rear of the fighting forces.

33But the depth and scope of the destructive effects of terror cannot be understood without realizing that terror was not a monopoly of the Reds. It is less known that the different White armies had intelligence and security units of all kinds, special anti-subversive squads, punitive squads. All of them applied individual and mass terror against the population, chased after Communists or members of soviets engaged in executions or mass flogging of whole villages and all this is well described, sometime with glee, sometime with disgust, by White memoirists. There were so many armies, each with their own karateli that villages, or cities, were not always sure who it was that was marching in, assembled the population and engaged in exactions and executions. The killings and atrocities of this kind were widespread – and the existence of illegal networks of sympathisers, spies and saboteurs on both sides of ennemy lines made sure that « rationale » for terror and counter-terror was not in short supply. One should add that in conditions of moral decay, so ripe in those days, terror gained easily its own momentum and a special attraction for psychological perverts of all kinds. The chaos and arbitrariness of those times offered a large scope for destructive urges in the human psyche.

  • 16 About 7 % of all party members by 1921 came from other parties, Istorija KPSS, t. IV, op. cit, p. 8 (...)

34Among the losses the country took – be it through terror, starvation, migration, demoralization or deaths – we should mention the loss of a considerable number of professionals and intellectuals. This important pool of talent – Kendall Bailes showed that it was not too big in the first place – was greatly diminished by the ordeals of the war. The damage caused to the country by this type of casualties was acknowledged in Soviet writings, directly, only recently. No quantitative assessment was offered as yet, to my knowledge. What was never acknowledged as constituting a regretable loss was the dispersal or destruction of the cadres and leaders of the multi party system that emerged around the revolution of 1905. Only Bolsheviks and some remnants from other parties were preserved by either joining the Bolsheviks or being employed by them as « bourgeois specialists »16. It is a point worth discussing whether, how and to what extent the loss of at least certain parts of the political class did contribute to the political and intellectual impoverishment of the country.

  • 17 A. Lunačarskij, Revoljucionnye siluety, Kyïv, 1924.

35Whatever the cost, presumed unavoidable, of a revolutionary upheaval, Lenin must have known the extent of such damage. We have an indirect inkling into his thinking from Lunacharsky’s Revolutionary Silhouettes, written in 1919 and published just after Lenin’s death. Lunacharsky reveals there, among many other important things, that Lenin did regret that it was not possible to attract to the Bolshevik party a man like Martov. He might have made, Lenin said, an excellent leader for the party’s right wing...17

36If the problem of a political class is sufficiently tricky, the loss of a different group of opponents – the owners and captains of industry – most of the country’s entrepreneurial talent – is certainly an obvious and straight – forward debit. Such a « commodity » takes time and effort to be recreated. After all, if there were parasitic sectors in the Russian economy and society that had better be removed – the rather dynamic capitalist sector was not one of them. Lenin’s awareness of this problem is known and is well expressed by his program and hope that the country will become « state capitalist » although under the aegis of a socialist government. This ment not just employment of bourgeois technicians and specialists but cooperation with big and smaller owners of capitalist enterprises in a regime of co-ownership. Whatever the merits and realism of this idea, it serves us as proof of our point that the loss of the entrepreneurs was a deep cut in the social fabric and has to be included here in the « decomposition » column.

  • 18 Rykov maintained that the countryside lost during the Civil War 30 % of its able bodied men, see Vt (...)

37Demographic losses and other forms of social decay struck all the classes, groups and caucuses, in different ways and degrees – except probably, the criminal underworld that should have actually thrived in such conditions. The peasants, the sturdiest and least vulnerable of all classes, due to its closeness to the essential means of biological survival and the relative ease of rebuilding its villages, also endured its share of calamities, deaths, invalids and just removal, at least temporarily, of a great mass of able bodied man through mobilizations, desertions and participation in different guerillas18. It was just after the Whites were defeated that the worst struck millions of peasants : the famine that resulted from a very poor crop in 1920 followed by an even worse one in 1921. The same years also saw the most furious and widespread uprisings of peasants against the Reds, under slogans, mostly, of « down with the prodrazverstka » (i.e. compulsory grain requisitions) and for « Soviets without Bolsheviks ». Finally workers in industrial centers – or what was left of them – engaged in waves of strikes making it clear that they too had enough. The whole system looked almost phantomatic, with a rickety state facing emaciated masses seething with unrest, but so enfeebled that even the rickety state could put them down.

38The turmoil and general exhaustion finally caught up with the ruling – and now victorious-party, until now almost indefatiguable. Leaders and the rank and file, although in different ways, showed symptoms of strain. This was most obvious at te moment of transition to the NEP when the « trade union debate » showed a party splintering into groups and grouplets, desoriented and, according to Lenin, « shivering » badly. « Partiju lixoradit » – he declared – and decided to take drastic measures.

39But even before things reached the point of forbidding factions and thereby changing some important rules in the party’s inner life, it was not easy to keep the party in a state of permanent high alert and high morale. Even in the highest echelons of leadership cliques and personal infighting were rife and the thick web of intrigue reached particularly dangerous proportions by mid-1919 when it really begun to weaken the very top, until now the party’s main asset. It all turned around the powerful yet vulnerable figure of Trotsky whose strength was due to his talents but also to the crucial support of Lenin. The cooperation and mutual trust of these two leaders was an important source of strength in the Red camp but the intriguers, whatever their reasons, were working hard to break the actual duumvirate, as the party, the country and the world conceived it to be.

  • 19 Some of these events are described briefly by the editor Jan M. Meijer, The Trotsky Papers, 1917 – (...)

40Lenin was delivering in those years a superhuman effort, suffered from debilitating headaches and it can be surmised that the relentless work by some of his chief lieutenants to discredit Trotsky must have made him waver. Things have reached a crisis point in early July 1919 : during a meeting of the Politbureau, on July 3-4, Lenin abandoned Trotsky and voted with his critics on all points in dispute. Outraged, Trotsky resigned from all his posts and stormed out of the room. Members of the Politbureau, first among them Stalin, ran after him and implored him to stay on, notably in his capacity of war overlord. The vote was reversed and Trotsky was given, officially, satisfaction on points of interest to him19.

41It would be very interesting to see some day the protocols to check the exactitude of this story. But it is clear at this point that the intriguers overplayed their hand. They will be back at work later again. In the meantime, the relations between the two leaders were strained during the next year – and a half – or at least they were not so cordial anymore and they soon reached another crisis point in the trade union debate where the two fought each other over points that would soon lose any relevance. 1922 saw signs of a new rapprochement between Lenin and Trotsky – but this is by now a well known story.

42All this is mentioned here as an illustration, among others, of the ravages and difficult legacies of the Civil War. The war certainly undermined Lenin’s health and soon removed him, practically, from effective leadership. Sverdlov died of illness already at the beginning of 1919. Trotsky came out of the war apparently basking in glory, in fact quite isolated inside the party and having provoked the appearance of an alliance against him that was going to see to his undoing.

43So, not all was well with the victorious party and its leaders at the end of the Civil War. We shall return to the theme of the party in a later section, after examining a peculiar segment of the regime’s de facto elite during and after the war.

The intelligentsia

44The complicated and tortured saga of the new regime’s relations with the intelligentsia is partly connected still with our previous theme of crisis and dislocation. But, taken from a different angle, it also belongs to a broader theme reflecting problems of state building, with many important implications for the future. Relations were « tortured » because both sides had good reasons to distrust each other. They also had equally good reasons to cooperate, even before or without dispelling mutual suspicions. The intelligentsia, dubbed « bourgeois » because of its training and role in the previous regime, but also the mass of elementary school teachers, usually called « popular » rather than bourgeois, met the new government with a wave of strikes and refusal to cooperate. This attittude was widespread among the intellectuals of all kinds as well as among yet another big squad of literate people – the state officials...

45The strikes did not last too long but they brough home to the Bolsheviks a bitter and unexpected lesson : the professional segments of the population, however small their relative numbers, were strategically important. It was impossible to build and run a state and an economy without them. Even the army could not be built and run without such experts – namely ex-tsarist officers. Communism, it was realised now, that was supposed to be an affair of the liberated popular masses and a revolutionary party, had to be constructed, Lenin dixit, « with foreign hands ».

46Now, taking yet another angle, « from below » this time, restoring to positions of privilege and power members of the previous ruling class smacked of treason. Even if flanked by commissars, « bourgeois specialists » in the governement and especially the army, were an offensive sight for most party members and for many working people.

47At the beginning, the policy of enlisting the services of experts tended to reinforce the anti-bourgeois and anti-intellectual feelings among the popular classes that supported the revolution. If left uncontrolled such feelings could hit back at the party, especially at many of its leaders, themselves members of the intellectual breed. It was all a very dangerous strategy. Keeping an alien body in sensitive positions did not augur for the smooth functionning of the new system. After all, the distaste for the privileged bourgeois expert, expressing itself in « specialists baiting » (speceedstvo), was not only the preserve of the rank and file but also of many activists in the middle and upper rank of party and state. Witness, among other, the very powerful « military opposition » or different other oppositions that resented and fought bitterly against the employment of such experts in high places.

48When the Civil War was over, things became calmer but nothing was simple as yet in this vexed domain. The expert, even if ready now to shed some or most of his previous hostility remained at best quite sceptical and very eager, in any case, to get rid of his situation of subservience to politically appointed superiors. The party bosses in comissariats and factories resented their own dependence on the « bourgeois » who had the expertise and often a sense of superiority to go with it. The regime defended the expert but proclaimed publicly that the aim was to produce, as soon as feasible, « their own » experts endowed with the right ideology and class origin.

49But soon a new dimension begun to creep in, imperceptibly at the start, ever more visible later, into the complicated partnership. As long as the revolution was the aim, or in progress, the orientation of the party on the masses took precedence over much else. The same applied, in many ways, during the Civil War. However important the experts, the moods, interests and reactions of the masses were decisive for the outcome of the struggle. But as the task of ruling was coming ever more to the fore, soon to, became the first priority, the emphasis switched to « the cadres ». This tendency will blossom fully a good decade later but many militants or just attentive observers perceived the growing buds with increasing anxiety. To assuage such anxieties an argument was presented in the party, often quite sincerely, that there was no danger involved in cadres of popular extraction. As to the experts of alien origin, this was just the case of using their expertise without conceding any power to them. Such argument could sound plausible as long as the expert was almost openly hostile and even deserted sometimes to the other side. Or if he stayed but made it clear that he is doing it just because there is no other employer to work for.

  • 20 N.N. Azovcev, ed., op. cit., t. II, p. 397 shows that by mid-1919 the Peoples’ Commissariats of the (...)

50It all begun to change when, during the NEP, many specialists got used to and accepted the regime and even found more positive reasons for working with the regime. Their party bosses also learned to live and work with them, came to trust many of them and defended them from detractors. It was all becoming during the NEP a real partnership, here and there even a co-rulership. This, though, was just a beginning. A real status revolution will take place in the thirties and will then concern a larger sector than just those old specialists and although this process will be marred by tragic setbacks, it will not be reversed. The co-rulership, in conditions of the dictatorship of those days, would turn out to be easier to preserve than the wholehearted loyalty of the popular masses – and that much could already be perceived by perspicacious observers20 during the NEP and even during the Civil War.

51It becomes clear to the reader how many problems, lessons and legacies were rooted in the relations with the professional classes that were trained in the tsarist period. It was out of this maze that a certain so called « Bolshevik art of governing » appeared that leaders liked to present often, especially in the 1930s as the quintessence of the wisdom of governing and motivating cadres. When demanding from people to do what was asked from them they were to be told : ne umeeš’ – naučim, ne zaxočeš’ – zastavim (« if you do not know how to – we shall teach you, if you refuse, we shall force you »). This prescription seems to have emerged during the Civil War. The first part applied to those who were not professionally prepared for the jobs they were being prompted to. It sounded paternalistic and was certainly a mass phenomenon in those years. The other part was to be applied to those who did not wish to serve. This part concerned fully the professionals of the previous regime. The term « art » implied some fine balancing between persuasion and coercion, but in fact the whole maxime was sternly dictatorial. When no real choice is offered coercion permeates the whole relationship and marks the supposed « art ». The fact that so many experts helped to build the Soviet system was not based on coercion alone. A relaxed general usage of the « art » was possible, but in the absence of clear rules for restraint, the zastavim ingredient had its ominous potentials. It did, in fact, play out this potential, not unnaturally, during the Civil War, subsided and let work its paternalistic facet during the NEP and returned again, full blast, under Stalin when it was not possible to reiterate the supportive « not unnaturally ». Yet, as will finally transpire, the « bourgeois » intelligentsia was to be treatead to the samples of « the art » much more leniently than the huge numbers of newly created cadres of immaculate social origin and ideology. This is one of the enigmas of Stalinism.

The party

52The previous section delt with the peculiar problem of an élite malgré soi that was constituted by the experts of the previous regime. It is now time to turn our attention to the ruling party – an agency without precedent in the history of political systems before 1917. The opponents of the regime during the Civil War did not have at their disposal any equivalent for it.

53The party certainly was a versatile agency. It helped produce a central and local governement, raised and organised an army sustained the fighting military by an influx of dedicated party members, responded to mobilisations for all kind of tasks and, finally, was a good tool for clandestine activities behind enemy lines.

54Not unexpectedly, a tendency appeared among party leaders, with the exception of the founder himself, to glorify, later even to « mythologise » the party. This certainly did not testify to continuing good health. A political party has to be submitted to all the stringencies of socio-historical and political analysis – and the tendency to turn the party into some super-historical tool was hindering analysis at a quite early stage in the party’s development. We know that the party went through rough times and acted in ever more complicated and changing situations. The impression that tends to prevail in both the Soviet and many Western presentations of some rather immutable « essence », called « the communist party » has to be dispelled. First, as we know, they were a network of clandestine committees, not more than 24,000 strong at the beginning of 1917. During its previous, rather short history, the number of its adherent fluctuated widely. It was quite strongly led, from abroad mostly, by its founder Lenin. There also was an internal leadership inside Russia but it was often decimated by arrests.

55Was the party at that time really the disciplined and centralised squad of « professional revolutionaries » who did as told by the top leader ? Would this « classical » leninist model withstand the scrutiny of a good monograph ?

56There were more than just professional revolutionaries in the party. There were elections, conferences, congresses, debates. As is often the case, a closer look may change many preconceived ideas. What is clear though is the fact that this was a quite original organization and it was not bracing itself for taking power directly because they did not expect the coming revolution to be immediately socialist. At least, they were not at all sure what the character of it would be.

57During the year 1917 dramatic changes occured in this party. It certainly became, at least, a different genus of the same species, if not a different species altogether. It now became a legal organization operating in a multi-party system ; it grew in size to, maybe, over 250 thousand members and operated as a quite democratic political party, under a strong authoritative leadership. Lenin was at the helm but he was flanked at the apex by a group of leaders and below them stood influential networks of lower leading cadres who participated actively in policy making and, if they accepted Lenin’s line, it was mostly after lively debates and after sounding out the moods and opinions of the rank-and-file. There were factions in this party and they were fully acknowledged as the party’s normal way of doing bussiness.

58At this stage, under Lenin’s proddings, the party was going for power-but, again, not without serious differences of opinion about the modalities of taking and exercising it.

59Once in power, in conditions of a civil war, an other, deep transformation took place : the party became militarized, highly centralized, in a state of almost permanent mobilization and of disciplined action. Its cadres were moved around where necessary by a newly created department, the učraspred, and elections to secretarial positions were now gone, not to reappear in any meaningful way until the very recent efforts to reintroduce them under the Gorbachev aegis. The role of the center became all powerful, even if this was often regretted as an unavoidable evil in the circumstances of war. The situation did, in fact, command it imperatively. Still, factions, debates during party gatherings continued and the conferences and congresses were regularly convened.

60At that time there was no sign of any « religious » reverence towards Lenin in the party caucuses. His prestige was enormous but criticisms of party policies and of Lenin personally were often quite sharp. Such was the still unextinguished party tradition. There barely was one leader or activist of some standing who did not engage, at some time or other, in a polemic or even serious challenge to Lenin’s policies. 1917 was replete with such facts and the tradition continued despite the civil war.

  • 21 L. M. Spirin, Klassy ipartii..., op. cit., pp. 29-30. Somewhat different figures are in N.N. Azovce (...)

61In addition to militarization, another factor was at work that contributed to the changes in the party. The fluctuating membership characteristic of those years and, finally, an almost new social composition, were of far reaching importance. We learn from a good source that there were 350,000 members between October 1917 and mid-1918 ; that this figure dropped thereafter to 150,000 and then begun to climb again to reach 600,000 in the spring of 192121. Whatever the accuracy of such figures, one interesting phenomenon becomes obvious : the party entered a period of hectic growth at a time when mass support for the regime was at its lowest – in 1920 and 1921. Was this an aberration ? Probably not.

62By the end of the Civil War many of the would-be members and cadres perceived the regime as one that was here to stay. No other alternative was visible or possible anymore, despite, the incredible furies of the uprisings, and the growth of the party in these conditions indicated just that. It also indicated the growing strength of the party’s orientation on the needs of ruling and running things. Nobody spoke seriously at that time about « every cook » being able to run the state. Hence the influx into the party of people, including numbers of careerists and croocks, soon to be removed by a powerful purge of unsavoury elements – if this was at all possible.

  • 22 Istorija KPSS, IV, 2, op. cit., p. 70 says that 90 % of the membership at the beginning of 1921 joi (...)

63Significantly, towards the spring of 1921, party statistics showed that 90 % of the membership were now of Civil War vintage22 – pre-revolutionary cadres, even those who joined in 1917, were now drowned in a mass of new entrants, many of them active participants of military and security operation and, quite naturally, imbued with a military, if not militaristic, political culture. They carried it into the party where it persisted, in different forms, for decades.

64After the 1921 purge that discarded, probably, a third of the membership, a new, powerful influx occured and during the next six years the membership will reach the one million mark. The majority by now would be made by entrants who joined during NEP. What was the political culture and culture tout court of these newcomers ? The answer to this question does not belong to our topic. But it underscored our thesis about the changing substance of the party, notably because of the massive changes in social composition. This in turn allows to state the following : the « old guard » was still at the top and running the show, but their numbers, stamina, even health, were slackening. Could they assimilate, re-educate in their own image the enormous mass of « crude » newcomers ? If not, what would stop this mass from having a pervasive impact on the party and change it rather in its own image ?

65There is evidence that many of « the old guard » were despairing. They felt themselved overwhelmed, besieged, by huge numbers of people of a different culture and mentality from their own. We already stated that Civil War entrants brought in a military culture and tendency of doing things. The newer entrants were now bringing in cultures and methods expressing the NEP society whereas the layer at the top still continued something of an earlier Bolshevik tradition and fought among themselves using terms and arguments that were not understandable to the bulk of the rank-and-file. The « old guard » lived on an upper floor and it can be said that they constituted still a separate party, inside an other and bigger one in the process of forming all around them and finally creating one more model, another genus, or more than a genus, of a party differently run and politically and ideologically transformed.

The peasant revolution

  • 23 L. Trockij, Istorija Russkoj revoljucii, t. I, Berlin, 1931, p. 73 stated : « Had the bourgeoisie s (...)

66The role of the peasantry during the events of interest to us was multifacetted and relations between them, the Reds and the Whites, were rich in momentous meanders and upturns. The peasant constituted historically a heavy weight factor in Russia but during the Civil War their weight, if anything, increased considerably. One important reason for this to be so was the fact that they produced in 1917-1918 the most genuine agrarian revolution of their own. It had its aims and methods but in addition – whether they realised this or not – they became the underwriters of the Bolshevik revolution and the regime it engendered. Without their concurrence, the Bolshevik revolution would not be possible. We have a good witness to rely upon on this score : Trotsky, the presumed anti-muzhik accused of « underestimating the peasantry »23. Yet, in doing his thing, the peasant not only made the Bolshevik power possible but he also saddled himself and the new regime with endless problems.

  • 24 L. Kritsman, Geroičeskij period russkoj revoljucii, Moskva, 1925, p. 226.
  • 25 On the widespread and massive peasant uprisings and guerilla movements see Ju. A. Poljakov, op. cit (...)

67The support given by the peasants indirectly, by default, was also sometime given directly, but this one was not unambiguous. If anything, it was unpredictable, was withdrawn here, given back again there. The peasants hesitated, and each time this happened – as one Soviet author suggested – enormous sweeps of armies occured, to and from Moscow, over the endless stretches of Russian territory24. The support was no more than a marriage of convenience related to the possession of land. This aspect of the revolution – the redistribution among themselves of privately owned land – was irreversible in the eyes of the peasants. The Whites were struck by blindness on this crucial point and payed the price for it. Once the Whites were defeated, as we already know, the peasants turned against the Bolsheviks to pay them, in turn, for their inequities and errors25. There was no more menace of pomeshchiki coming back.

  • 26 Ju. A. Poljakov, Oktjabr’ i graždanskaja vojna, Moskva, 1966, p. 367, quoting a letter to Lenin fro (...)
  • 27 Ju. A. Poljakov, Perexod k NEPU..., op. cit., pp. 198-199 and 235-236. He dismissed the problem but (...)

68But the policy of prodrazverstka was still there which consisted of forceful requisitions of grain from the peasants manu militari, with the help of a special « food army » created for this purpose. The rationale for this policy is still debatable. On one hand, there were ideological motivations, namely the ideological interest in eliminating markets that provided the underpinning for the policies of « War Communism ». On the other hand it cannot be denied that in given condition some grain had to be received from the peasants in ways other than through market transactions. But out of the combination of an utopia and a perceived necessity grew a policy that amounted to the virtual sweeping clean of peasant granaries – pod metelku –, stated source26. The claim that there was no alternative to this is dubious. In the wake of such a question it is also reasonable to ask whether a change of strategy similar the NEP should not have been tried earlier than in the spring of 1921. Some Soviet authors, cautiously, raised this problems themselves27.

  • 28 Ibid., pp. 73-74 stated : « The party’s programatic orientation on transition to collectivisation w (...)

69Two other policies that are less often described in the literature were straightforward blunders that whipped up the ire of the peasants. First was the policy of collectivization that was proclaimed and conducted in 1919 and, at least initially, was applied with consirable zeal and coercive pressures28. Although Lenin realised the trouble it was causing quite soon and tried to apply some breaks, the responsability for this policy was his. Peasants hated the kommunija as badly as they hated the prodrazverstka and it was doubly offensive to them to see the collectivization policy launched just at a time when their agrarian revolution whetted their aspiration to become independent farmers – xozjaeva – on their land. This was true for the better off as well as the poor peasants who just were alloted some badly needed land or were about to get it.

70It looks and sounds quite puzzling that such a policy could be launched just after the disbanding of the Kombedy and the official adoption of a new pro- serednjak line.

  • 29 E.G. Gimpel’zon, Voennyj Kommunizm, Moskva, 1973, pp. 84-85 describes how the policy of collectiviz (...)

71The collectivisation policy failed and was abandoned, only to be replaced by another grand scheme, equally « war-communist » in inspiration, namely the « etatization » (ogosudarstvlenie) of agricultural production. The aim, of course, was to cope somehow with the desperate food situation and the plan was drafted and formally endorsed for implementation29. In this scheme, the peasant household and land were left alone, but were supposed to become part of a state plan – a sowing plan, to begin with – where every household was to get its prescribed target of what, how much, even where and how to sow. A national network of « sowing comittees » was decreed, to supervise the implementation of the whole scheme and enforce the quotas. The work of the peasants, well in line with the ideology of the day, was declared to constitute « a state duty » (gosudarstvennaja povinnost’’) and penalties were to be meted out for non compliance.

  • 30 The problem needs a special treatment but we can point to the opinion of number of Bolsheviks for w (...)

72Soviet authors today write about this episode with barely concealed embarrassment and point to the fact that this policy was no more than the last gasp of War Communism. NEP was, in fact, only a few months away. But for the peasants this plan was just the last drop in a bucketful of exactions – labour duties, grain requisitions, collectivization – and they irrupted like a chain of volcanos in numerous uprisings and guerilla movements. They fought against a force they now came to perceive as a foreign conqueror. It was Antonov-Ovseenko, in his report to Lenin about the causes of the dangerous uprising in the Tambov area under the leadership of (a different) Antonov, who used the terms « military-confiscatory raiders » to describe Soviet officials and military as seen by peasants. In this remarkable document Antonov-Ovseenko, himself one of those « raiders » (naezdniki), talks with great lucidity about the Soviet power as « military occupants » – and his opinion might have been instrumental in deepening the NEP policies that were being tried out, initially timidly, since March of 192130

73Shedding this kind of image was certainly on Lenin’s mind when he wrote, two years later, his article entitled « Better Less But Better ». His « Testament » was a powerful condemnation of « war-communist » policies, past and future, and an offer of an alternative strategy. But there were other texts in Lenin that could support quite different policies. The « testament » will be entirely forgotten when, some years later, policies will be launched that were to surpass what « war communism » only adumbrated. This time collectivization and etatization of agriculture were going to be applied simultaneously.

74But the problem is not in the ideological aspects of the precedents of Stalin’s policies. It is more important to point out – as we feel – that seeds of the future fateful turn were sown, to a large extent, by the agrarian revolution of 1918.

75By forcefully taking and redistributing land of the pomeshchiki the peasants initiated, first of all, important changes in their own economy and society. Many poor peasants got land, many of the richer lost not a little of theirs. Social stratification and differentiation in the countryside was considerably narrowed down and it is quite legitimate to speak about a certain « equalization » (poravnenie) among the peasants. It expressed itself in a new predominance of the middle peasants – the serednjaki – in rural society. The result of it was the transformation of Russia into an ocean of small family farms, mostly oriented on family consumption, with very little left for marketing. Before this poravnenie, there were sectors of petty bourgeois producers, and large scale entrepreneurs in agriculture, how the largely used term of « petite bourgeoisie » in relation to most peasants did not make much sense at this stage. A petty bourgeois works, by definition, for the market. If this is not the case, we are short of an appropriate term to apply to the peasant of the early NEP, in a situation – this has to be added – where the domains of the pomeshchiki and larger scale peasant producers, brief – any remnant of capitalism – were gone.

76There was not too much capitalism in agriculture even before the revolution, otherwise the events we are studying would not have happened. The Stolypin reforms would have been pointless too, as there would be no need to turn the countryside upside down in order to create a class of « sturdy producers ». One can legitimately expect that debates on such points, never too far away from the surface in the Soviet Union, will flare up soon on the surface and in full limelight.

77In the meantime it can be stated that the agrarian revolution wiped out almost all the effects of the Stolypin reforms. Most of the consolidated home-steads (xutora), Stolypin’s main plank, were reintegrated into the villages except in the Western region that had not much of an obščina in the first place. The obščina itself – the traditional agrarian community – that was the main target of the reforms, re-emerged again, on a larger scale than before, to become the prevailing form of land use in most of the country. The complicated problem of property rights inside the household – the dvor – that the Stolypin reform declared to be household elder’s private property, reverted to the former, quite ambiguous collective family ownership.

  • 31 For a contemporary evaluation see B. Knipovič, O zemle, I, Moskva, 1921 ; also two leading Narkomze (...)

78The Russian peasant now became not just more « traditional », more muzhik than before. Because of the widespread ruination of the country agriculture and the peasantry were now looming larger in Russian society than ever before in the modern times. This « ruralization » of a rural country – a paradox in itself – was flanked by yet another : the peasant « ruralized » even himself by retreating economically and culturally, at least for some time to come, into his age old shell, characteristic of much more primitive times. The whole country, willy nilly, had to follow this movement backward too, to a considerable extent. The agrarian revolution in Russia – an event of great consequence and drama – turned out to be quite sterile, if not actually wasted-at least as seen from the vantage point of its immediate results31.

Conclusion

  • 32 I raised this problem briefly in my The Making of the Soviet System (New York, 1985) in the introdu (...)
  • 33 The opinion that the countryside moved some centuries backward was expressed by the noted ethnograp (...)

79This idea of « a wasted agrarian revolution » which demands still further thought, leads us to our concluding section. The other theme we insisted upon at some length – phenomena of social disintegration – are also extremely important, as we now try to pull the threads together. The sufferings endured by the peasant population did not lead it to the same state of « decomposition » that afflicted other social groups32. Peasant society survived much better but it recreated or acquired traits that were already on the wane in the pre-revolutionary period and ran counter the developmental path of the times. The post-civil-war village stuck to its moulds that hardened into a very sturdy system that wasn’t easily responsive to change, in particular as long as the urban sectors were still recovering from their own misfortunes. What we described as « archaization » of the rural world was paralleled by the destruction or weakening of vulnerable modern sectors of society and this entitles us to speak of a more generalised « primitivization » of the whole social system. The main legacy of the Civil War can be stated, therefore, simply : when the new regime finally got the chance to lead the country towards its declared goals, the departing point turned out to be more backward than what was Russia in 1917, let alone 191433.

80As the peasantry looms larger and urban society weaker, the other side of the legacy is getting clearer too. The democratic components of the revolutionary regime – trade unions, workers’ comittees, soviets – that were initially quite important in this system, were all weakened, atrophied or eliminated. The bureaucratic and coercive features of the state became, on the contrary, much more potent and, finally, predominant. The democratic aspects of the party itself underwent a metamorphosis in the same direction. Although the militarization of the Civil War subsided, the party was well on its way towards becoming an administrative machine dominated by its top leaders and, ever more, by its apparaty, with little or no say left for the rank-and-file.

  • 34 « Local life came to a full standstill [soveršenno zamerla] » said V.S. Nemčinov about the years of (...)

81The interaction of the two processes engendered by the Civil War – « archaization » and deep « etatization » – created, in due course, most of the sequels that are part of the « legacy » we are trying to establish. It is the second of the two processes that warrants some further remarks. The strain and decomposition caused by the ordeals of the Civil War, made the extensive use of administrative and coercive methods look like almost natural and, often, the only ones available. The fact that state agencies were stuffed, to a large extent, by revolutionaries and people of popular origin, helped to mask the ever deepening trend towards a pervasive authoritarianism : the revolutionary masses as meaningful actors and partners in power were being eased out, whereas bureaucrats and comissars of the new, still rudimentary state, were becoming the mainstay of the system. More ominously, the coercive measures that were initially deviced mainly for the bourgeoisie – labour conscription, forced labour – soon began to be applied to other groups and, finally, to the main backers of the regime themselves. The militarization drive was all consuming whereas the shiftiness of social support, including among the industrial workers, especially in later stages of the war, raised a profound anxiety in the system and required an ever present vigilance. And again, the contradiction between the decay of local and, in general, any autonomous social activity – as good sources keep informing us34 – and the pressures of the prevailing methods of udarnost (shock methods), mobilisational by definition, all worked in the same direction. The constant exactions of « state duties » (gosudarstvennaja povinnost’), the unceremonious although acceptable to the cadres shuffling around of by the učraspred, were all adumbrations of features that were here to stay and later – even to flourish.

82The Civil War delt a severe blow to the libertarian aspirations of the makers of the 1917 revolutions. By causing an enormous « geological » shift backwards in society, it made the historical process change rails, as it were. It created parameters in the social system and political environment that narrowed the available choices quite severely and made some of the nastier prospects, still ahead, look like more of a fate than an alternative. By destroying so many of the previous cultural, political and economic advances, the country and the new state became more open and vulnerable to some of the more archaic and backward looking features of the Russian historico-political tradition, less open to the deployment of its forward looking and progressive features.

83The peasantry and the state, although both were shaped by the same circumstances were, nevertheless, moving in different directions. They lived on different historical floors – and here was yet another legacy to contend with in the future, portending clashes and crises still to come. The mentality of the rural mass, reared by the communal, relatively isolated and mostly small villages, was deeply patriarchal and the culture – naturally parochial. The state though was authoritarian – it was a dictatorship by its own definition and its vistas and horizons were large scale. The complicated crisscrossing of these traditions and cultures contributed to the mixture of attitudes and outlooks of the people entering the ruling party and state that were composed of such heterogenous elements. Authoritarianism was an unavoidable feature in these conditions – the question was what type of authoritarianism this was going to be. What kind of socialism if any was, obviously, a related question. It was going to be backward, said Bukharin sometime during the NEP…

  • 35 We do not know of any serious testimony that Lenin did not share some or most of War Communism’s il (...)

84In this context it may be appropriate to single out the readiness during the Civil War, among leaders and cadres alike, due to ideology and circumstances, to believe in the instant feasibility of socialism, even communism, despite the prevailing conditions of massive disruptions. The well known caveats that a transitional period is necessary, especially in a rather backward country, could go overboard all to easily. It was understood by some, before and later, that without the creation of indispensable preconditions « instant communism » cannot be tried without massive coercion. In fact, as we know, such coercion was already as characteristic of War Communism than its other trait – the extreme egalitarianism – or the aversion to markets and preference for a « natural », planned economy. Lenin himself spread enough and, maybe, came to believe himself in some of the war communist illusions... Trotsky, as is well known, stumbled upon the war-communist identification of militarization with socialism and many party cadres accepted the practices of the Civil War as the right policies leading directly to the final goal35.

85All these developments have a direct bearing on our quest for the legacy of the Civil War. Notwithstanding the unpopularity, during the NEP, of terms like « war communist methods » or « spirit », and the dying Lenin’s warnings against such methods one trait of the temporarily discarded policy proved very durable, namely the identification of etatization with socialism – a long standing Soviet ideological plank that now begins to lose some of its potency, hesitatingly, in the most recent perestrojka. One of the upshots of this kind of legacy was excessive centralization of power and the stiffling of autonomous initiatives and actions that are indispensable for the healthy development of any modern system. For a time, such action became deeply suspect and was castigated as « spontaneity », the enemy, supposedly, of planning. Instead, there were to be endless agencies of control and others to control the controller – all carrying in them the germs of stagnation, in the longer run at least, and in some walks of life – almost immediately.

86The way the Civil War evolved and was won carried some concrete, albeit not necessarily openly acknowledged, sometime not even consciously perclived lessons that supported, nevertheless, the future version of Stalinist despoty.

87Any realpolitiker – and there were some among the party leaders, could not but be impressed and reflect upon the following facts of the near past :

  1. that there was no class that could be fully trusted in conditions of adversity ;
  2. that alliances, on the contrary, can be struck with not necessarily friendly social groups and real support can be gained from such unreliable forces or even past or potential foes ;
  3. that stick and carrot policies can be applied successfully to whole, even big, social groups ;
  4. that when popular support is waning or absent, the state, if it wields its power ruthlessly enough, can hold out in relative isolation ;
  5. that the condition for holding out in such circumstances is the absence of any real political alternative in the social system ;
  6. that, finally, even when of alien social origin and ideologically inimical the bureaucracy can become a reliable and even massive social base – not to mention the more favorable situation when it is stuffed by socially more reliable cadres. In this case, they can offer, at least, a surrogate of social support.

88All these situations actually did occur during the Civil War and appropriate policies were practiced although without much grounding in any experience. Now they became a legacy, even if dormant for a short period, but certainly available for further uses.

89Brief, the Civil War legated a whole tradition, a knot of problems to handle and some rather grim advice for handling them. It is fascinating to observe, in this context, the current efforts of reform in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Gorbachev. It does not take long to realise that what is questioned and is being, slowly, discarded nowadays is not just Stalinism, but also this older legacy stemming from the « archaization cum etatization » twosome that the Civil War saddled the Soviet system with.

Notes

1 Cf. David Footman, Civil War In Russia (London, 1961), pp. 85-135, for a description showing ineptitude and full dependence of the Samara government on the Checoslovaks. There is enough evidence to confirm the statement that the White officers that commanded Samara’s own forces were more a threat than a shield to the S’Rs.

2 Victor Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, Ithaca – London, 1970.

3 References to some unfootnoted borrowings from memoirs by White officers were taken in this paper from the very useful multivolume collection of excerpts or unabridged texts in S. A. Alekseev, ed., Revoljucija i graždanskaja vojna v opisanijax belogvardejcev, Moskva – Leningrad, 1925-1927.

4 V.M. Krasnov, « Dobrovol’cy na Severnom Kavkaze », reproduced from Arxiv Russkoj Revoljucii, vol. XI, in the volume from the series op. cit., N.M. Meščerjakov, Načalo graždanskoj vojny, Moskva, 1927, pp. 248-274.

5 Paul N. Milioukov, Russia Today and Tomorrow, London, 1922, chapter on the Whites. These were lectures given in the United States soon after the Civil War. For examples of A. I. Denikin’s assessments see his « Kak načalas’ bor’ba s bol’ševikami… », in Načalo graždanskoj vojny…, op. cit., p. 31 and passim.

6 For one good example of a partisan unit from Antonov-Ovseenko’s Red army in the Ukraine, calling themselves « soviet » but persecuting Communists or, at best, preventing them from organizing their cells in the unit, see V.I. Nevskij, ed., Za sem’let, Leningrad, 1921. There were many partisan, even regular military units of this kind.

7 V.I. Lenin, in Devjataja konferencija VKP(b), sentjabr’ 1920, protokoly, Moskva, 1972, p. 12. He stated : « We defeated Kolchak and Denikin only […] after their main, solid cadres were diluted in the mobilised mass of peasants ».

8 V.P. Naumov, Letopis’ geroičeskoj bor’by : sovetskaja istoriografija graždanskoj vojny, Moskva, 1972, p. 424. His data are : Leningrad had 2.3 million inhabitants in 1917. In 1919 only 900,000 remained. Industrial workers 418,700 strong in 1917 had only 87,900 left in 1920. The figures on the combined losses of inhabitants in both capitals are from V. Z. Drobižev et al., Izmenenija social’noj struktury sovetskogo obščestva, 1917 – 1920, Moskva, 1976, p. 62. This book is rich in data and insights. Ju. A. Poljakov’s book Sovetskaja strana posle okončanija graždanskoj vojny : territorija i naselenie, Moskva, 1986, containing a mass of data relevant to our theme was not available at the moment of writing the article.

9 I. A. Gladkov, ed., Istorija socialističeskoj èkonomiki, 7 vol., Moskva, 1976-1981, vol. I : 1917 – 1920 gg., Moskva, 1976, p. 354.

10 An overall statistical evaluation shows a decline, for 1919-1920, to just 13,4 % of the base year. See, I. A. Gladkov, ed., op. cit., pp. 262-263. More revealing data can be found in Istorija Kommunisticeskoj Partii Sovetskogo Sojuza, t. IV, kniga I-ja, Moskva, 1970, p. 10 where it is said that in terms of industrial development « Russia was thrown back by whole decades ». The so called « census industry » produced five times less than in 1913. The output of iron was half of the 1862 output, output of cotton fabrics stood at the level of 1857.

11 For the overall losses of Russia during the Civil War see V. Z. Drobižev et al., op. cit., p. 333.

12 Ibid., p. 332 quotes an official Soviet publication which assessed the loss of population during the years 1913-1919 at 5,1 million and this did not include the unborn. But it is known that the following two years 1920 and 1921 were particularly devastating for the population. Nevertheless even the 5,1 million look too small.

13 L. M. Spirin, Klassy i partii v graždanskoj vojne, Moskva, 1968, p. 347, maintains that between June and the end of December 1919 775,000 deserters returned to the ranks of the Red Army. It is believable that a movement of this magnitude did result from a change of attitude among the peasants and helped to clinch the victory. But the way of compiling this figure is not known. The global number of soldiers in the Red Army is often given as 5 million at the time the military operations against the Whites were almost finished. See, G.V. Šarapov, ed., Istorija Sovetskogo Krest’janstva, vol. I : 1917 – 1927, Moskva, 1986, p. 81, but Ju. A. Poljakov in Perexod k Nèpu i sovetskoe krestjanstvo, Moskva, 1967, quoting different sources speaks of about 4 million Reds and up to 2 million Whites. The social composition of the Red Army is given by G.V. Šarapov, ed., op. cit. : peasants – 77 %, workers – 14,8 %, others – 8,2 %. The commanders of all ranks were : peasant – 67 %, intelligentsia – 20,7 %, workers – 12 %. 20 % of all commanders were party members. It is obvious that the peasants constituted the majority of the lower ranks, especially of the NCOs. The higher ranks had a majority of ex-tsarists officers (see next note for them). It is highly significant that the units in the field, the actual fighters, had at the same time just 337,879 infantry (bayonets) and 72,374 cavalry (sabers). The figures are from N.N. Azovcev, ed., Istorija graždanskoj vojny v SSSR, v dvux tomax, vol. II, Moskva, 1986, p. 46. This book by military historians and the one edited by Šarapov, op. cit., have a wealth of data that allow to reconstitute the making and composition of the Red Army through consecutive mobilizations. N.N. Azovcev also brings detailed figures of the field units facing each other on the different fronts during the main battles of the Civil War.

14 The number of ex-tsarist officers who voluntereed or were, mostly, drafted into the Red Army reached 48,000 – this is the most often cited figure. It is less known that the number of NCOs of the tsarist army fighting with the Reds, also mostly drafted, reached the substantial figure of 20,000. This was, no doubt, an important factor leading to victory. See also precedent note.

15 S.S. Xromov, ed., Graždanskaja vojna i inostrannaja intervencija v SSSR : Enciklopedija, Moskva, 1983.

16 About 7 % of all party members by 1921 came from other parties, Istorija KPSS, t. IV, op. cit, p. 85. During the NEP this percentage increased considerably.

17 A. Lunačarskij, Revoljucionnye siluety, Kyïv, 1924.

18 Rykov maintained that the countryside lost during the Civil War 30 % of its able bodied men, see Vtoraja sessija Tsik 4 – go sozyva, stènografičskij otčet, Leningrad, 1925, p. 24. He did not specify in what way these losses occur. A similar figure is quoted by N. Oganovskij, Èkonomičeskoe obozrenie, 12, p. 60.

19 Some of these events are described briefly by the editor Jan M. Meijer, The Trotsky Papers, 1917 – 1922, Den Haag, 1964, vol. I, pp. 592-594. The Politbureau decision is on pp. 590-592.

20 N.N. Azovcev, ed., op. cit., t. II, p. 397 shows that by mid-1919 the Peoples’ Commissariats of the RSFSR alone employed 28 000 experts who worked before for the tsarist regime. In the factories 35 % of the administrators and technicians were also of the same category.

21 L. M. Spirin, Klassy ipartii..., op. cit., pp. 29-30. Somewhat different figures are in N.N. Azovcev, ed., op. cit., t. I, Moskva, 1986, p. 397 who shows just 4,000 peasants in the party at the beginning of 1918 and 12,000 at the end of the same year. From G.V. Šarapov, ed., op. cit., p. 176 we get the figure of 55 000 peasants in the party by January 1918 in 40 gubernias of European Russia, followed by a big increase towards the end of the year. Yet another source gives the figure of 16,700 peasant members in 1918 increasing to 165,000 in 1921. All this shows that exact figures were difficult to come by in those years and that, whatever they were, the number of peasants in the party was very small. In addition, there were 138 000 members in 1921 classified as « officials » (služaščie) only slightly less than the number of peasants. For the global numbers of party membership we can turn to the computations of S.G. Strumilin based on the 1922 party census, quoted in RaboČij klass v Oktjabr’skoj revoljucii i na zaščite ee zavoevanij, Moskva, 1984, p. 348 : in 1918-115,000 ; 1919 – 251,000 ; 1920 – 431,400 ; 1921 – 585,600. A serious purge followed in 1921 that expelled almost one third of the total, but during the next few years hundreds of thousands of new members were recruited.

22 Istorija KPSS, IV, 2, op. cit., p. 70 says that 90 % of the membership at the beginning of 1921 joined in 1918-1920. In view of facts like that it is plausible to hypothesize that the party was built anew in those years and from a different human material.

23 L. Trockij, Istorija Russkoj revoljucii, t. I, Berlin, 1931, p. 73 stated : « Had the bourgeoisie solved the agrarian problem, had it been possible to solve it, the Russian proletariat could not have conquered power in 1917 ». And later, on p. 429 : « The agrarian problem constituted the subsoil of the revolution » – we do not know whether the pun was intended.

24 L. Kritsman, Geroičeskij period russkoj revoljucii, Moskva, 1925, p. 226.

25 On the widespread and massive peasant uprisings and guerilla movements see Ju. A. Poljakov, op. cit., p. 194 and more details in the very recent (1986) Šarapov, ed., op. cit., pp. 214-217 and Azovcev, ed., II, op. cit., pp. 322-327.

26 Ju. A. Poljakov, Oktjabr’ i graždanskaja vojna, Moskva, 1966, p. 367, quoting a letter to Lenin from a rural party member.

27 Ju. A. Poljakov, Perexod k NEPU..., op. cit., pp. 198-199 and 235-236. He dismissed the problem but raised it nevertheless.

28 Ibid., pp. 73-74 stated : « The party’s programatic orientation on transition to collectivisation was immediately perceived as an orientation on a broad, large Scale forced movement ». A noted agrarian specialist and participant in the events of those years P. Pershin remarked in his article O zemle, vyp. 1, Moskva, 1921, pp. 73-74, that collectivisation was launched (in the beginning of 1919) just when the peasants aspired predominantly to family farming on their own land. The authorities were blocking initiatives of peasants to move on separate (uchastkovye) lots and numerous troubles with the peasants followed. V. Osinsky, the chief architect of the new agricultural policy of « etatization » stated quite unambiguously : « The countryside [derevnja] turned out to be indifferent towards socialism. It rejected the lommuniia categorically ». The quote is from Osinsky’s brochure published in 1920 and reproduced in O.S. Rozenbljum, Zemel’nyj kodeks RSFSR, 3rd ed., Moskva, 1929, p. 96.

29 E.G. Gimpel’zon, Voennyj Kommunizm, Moskva, 1973, pp. 84-85 describes how the policy of collectivization was rejected and replaced by the one of « etatization » (ogosudartsvlenie). A contemporary author I. A. Kirillov, Očerki zemleustrojstva za tri goda revoljucii, Petrograd, 1922, p. 10 stated that it was the catastrophic situation in agriculture that caused the switch to a new policy towards the end of 1920. This policy, as explained by V. Osinskij in Pravda, sept. 5, 1920, p. 2, consisted in essence in « a decisive, coercive intervention of the governement » in running the agricultural sector. For a good brief survey of soviet agricultural policies during the Civil War see the speech by Sviderskij, XI Vserossijskij s"ezd Sovetov, sten. otčet, Moskva, 1924, pp. 17-19.

30 The problem needs a special treatment but we can point to the opinion of number of Bolsheviks for whom the agrarian revolution was a political success because it enabled the party to conquer power but also constituted a serious economic setback for the country. In fact, the 32 or 35 million desiatins the peasants received in the RSFSR at the expense of the pomeshchiki diminished the number of the bednjaki (without eliminating them altogether) but did not raise sufficiently the average size of the farms, did not absorb the notorious overpopulation of the countryside and did worsen considerably the supply of agricultural, output to the markets.

31 For a contemporary evaluation see B. Knipovič, O zemle, I, Moskva, 1921 ; also two leading Narkomzem officials, Latsis and Sviderskii in XI Vserossijskij…, op. cit., pp. 63, 80. Seen from the peasants’ side there certainly were important advantages for many of them in reaching the status of rather independent xozjaeva and some improvement in the economic situation of many of them, except for the richer ones. But for such a stormy and shattering revolution that was not followed by any serious advance in productivity and way of life the achievement is problematic whereas the negative consequences were quite palpable, especially on the national scale.

32 I raised this problem briefly in my The Making of the Soviet System (New York, 1985) in the introduction and in the last chapter. The whole subject still needs to be explored in more depth.

33 The opinion that the countryside moved some centuries backward was expressed by the noted ethnographer Tan-Bogoraz, Revoljucija v derevne, Moskva – Leningrad, 1924, p. 7. During the Civil War – he said – « the Russian village looked as if it was reliving again the 17th and 18th centuries ». It seemed to be sliding back « a century per year ».

34 « Local life came to a full standstill [soveršenno zamerla] » said V.S. Nemčinov about the years of the Civil War, in his Izbrannya proizvedenija, t. III, Moskva, 1967, p. 31. The quote is from a text written in 1926.

35 We do not know of any serious testimony that Lenin did not share some or most of War Communism’s illusions. The quotes we are offering here do not exclude Lenin from the general assessment. War communist policies found a deep response among cadres in the highest positions and this was the reason why Lenin, once he went over to a different strategy, had to devote a lot of energy to prove to the party that he was not reneging on principles. « Things moved at such speed – reminisced Pokrovskij in 1922 – that we imagined we really were near to Communism, a Communism being produced by our own means without awaiting the victory of a proletarian revolution in the West. » Lunacharskii, in the mid-twenties, concurred. It was necessary – he said – to adopt the war-communist road but « we got used to it, we almost came to like it and when the times demanded to reject it, we hesitated and stalled ». Both quotes are in E.G. Gimpel’zon, Voennyj kommunizm..., op. cit., pp. 196 and 220, respectively. Lunacharski’s statement can be applied to the year 1920, not just to the first months of 1921.

Auteur

(University of Pennsylvania)

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