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