THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

COMMUNISM ESTABLISHED
The Communist Task,    The Communist Creed,    The Soviet System,    Famine (1920–21),    NEP,    International Communism.

3. COMMUNISM ESTABLISHED

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 save the new Russia from ruin.

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.

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.

Famine, 1920–21

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 – 1918–21 – 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.

NEP

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.

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 Lenin’s 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.