In 1921, the Soviet economy was in ruins. The transport system was on the point of total collapse. Factories could not get the materials they needed and most industrial enterprises had ceased production. Grain production had fallen to disastrously low levels. Famine was rampant in the south and hunger people walked the streets of the northern cities. Hundreds of thousands died from disease – typhus, cholera, dysentery and the influenza epidemic which raged across northern Europe. In such dire circumstances, large sections of Russian society were not willing to put up with the continuation of wartime policies.
The main threat to the Communist government came from the peasantry. Now that the Civil War was over, the hostility of the peasants to grain requisitioning (still continuing because no food was getting to the cities) erupted in a series of revolts which engulfed the countryside. The source below describes this situation:
“According to Cheka sources there were 118 separate risings throughout Soviet Russia in February 1921 … But the best known and most widespread was the Tambov uprising [which] … began in August 1920 and lasted until June 1921 … At the height of the rebellion, large parts of the countryside of three [districts] of the Tambov province were no-go areas for Soviet power and there were patches of rebellion elsewhere in the province”
Nor, as we have seen, was dissent restricted to the countryside. The situation in the major cities was not unlike that of February 1917. There were called for ‘Soviets without Communists’ and there was a revival in support for other socialist parties. Martial law was imposed in Moscow and Petrograd. The mutiny of the Kronstadt sailors, the heroes of the 1917 revolution, was a great shock to the regime. Furthermore, the situation led to divisions within the Communist Party itself.
Lenin realised that concessions to the peasants and some measure of economic liberalisation were essential if the regime were to survive. Popular discontent could no longer be suppressed. He said that the Kronstadt revolt was the “flash that lit up reality more than anything else”. It was clear to him that the government could not continue with its policy of war communism, despite the desire of many Bolsheviks to do so.
Thus, in March 1921, faced with economic collapse and widespread rebellion, Lenin felt compelled to make a radical turnaround in economic policy, making significant concessions to private enterprise. This turnaround is called the New Economic Policy (NEP)
Using the information above, make a list of all the problems facing the Communist government in 1921. Give your work a title.
Explain the meaning of Lenin’s comment that the Kronstadt revolt was the ‘flash that lit up reality more than anything else’.
While the Kronstadt mutiny was at its height, the Communist Party was holding it’s Tenth Party Congress in Moscow. It was clear to everyone that the government faced a national emergency. Drastic action was needed if the Communists were to retain power. The peasants held the key, as Lenin realised. On 15 March Lenin explained to the party that it had to rebuild a smychka (alliance) with the peasants. “Let the peasants have their little bit of capitalism as long as we keep the power”, he said. He spoke for three hours and his speech was heard virtually in silence.
The New Economic Policy comprised:
Walter Duranty, An American reporter in Moscow, described how Lenin later justified this new policy to a meeting of party delegates:
'The real meaning of the New Economic Policy is that we have met a great defeat in our plans and that we are now making a strategic retreat,' said Lenin in one of the frankest admissions of failure ever made by a leader of a great nation...
'Before Lenin spoke,' says the official newspaper Izvestia, 'there had been a somewhat acrid discussion, which many Communists cannot fail to regard as an objuration (denial) of their dearest ideals. But, as usual, Lenin's logic vanquished opposition. His statement is clearly intended to close the discussion definitely.' 'Our defeat in the economic field, whose problems resemble those of strategy, though even graver and more difficult,' said the Soviet chief, 'is more serious than any we suffered from the armies of Denikin or Kolchak. We thought the peasants would give us sufficient food to ensure the support of the industrial workers, and that we should be able to distribute it. We were wrong, and so we have begun to retreat. Before we are utterly smashed, let us retrace our steps and begin to build on a new foundation.'
Moscow 22 October 1921. Walter Durranty, Russia Reported- a collection of reports for The New York Times, later published in 1934
Lenin’s argument was that it made no sense for the Bolsheviks to pretend that they could pursue an economic policy that took no account of the circumstances. His realism demanded that political theory take second place to economic necessity.
The argument concerning NEP was such a divisive one that the Bolsheviks may well have split over it, had it not been for Lenin’s great moral authority within the Party and his ability to command personal loyalty. The Tenth Party Congress in 1921 had also voted overwhelmingly in favour of Lenin’s resolution ‘On Party Unity’. As well as seeking an end to groups or factions emerging within the Party, Lenin also outlawed all political parties other than the Bolsheviks in the USSR.
|
1913 |
1920 |
1921 |
1922 |
1923 |
1924 |
1925 |
1926 |
Grain harvest (million tons*) |
80.1 |
46.1 |
37.6 |
50.3 |
56.6 |
51.4 |
72.5 |
76.8 |
Sown area |
105.0 |
- |
90.3 |
77.7 |
91.7 |
98.1 |
104.3 |
110.3 |
Industrial (factory) production |
10,251 |
1,410 |
2,004 |
2,619 |
4,005 |
4,660 |
7,739 |
11,083 |
Coal (million tons) |
29.0 |
8.7 |
8.9 |
9.5 |
13.7 |
16.1 |
18.1 |
27.6 |
Electricity |
1,945 |
- |
520 |
775 |
1,146 |
1,562 |
2,925 |
3,508 |
Pig iron |
4,216 |
- |
116 |
188 |
309 |
755 |
1,535 |
2,441 |
Steel |
4,231 |
- |
183 |
392 |
709 |
1,140 |
2,135 |
3,141 |
Cotton fabrics (million metres) |
2,582 |
- |
105 |
349 |
691 |
963 |
1,688 |
2,286 |
Rail freight carried (million tons) |
132.4 |
- |
39.4 |
39.9 |
58.0 |
97.5 |
83.4 |
- |
Agricultural and industrial production figures, 1913-1926, taken from A. Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917-1991, 1992
* NB. Tons (Imperial Measure) are used throughout. 1 ton = 1.016 tonnes (metric)
By 1922, the results of the NEP were better than anyone expected. There was food in the markets in the cities and brisk trade in other goods. Shops, cafes and restaurants reopened and life began to flow back into the cities. By 1923, cereal production had increased by 23 per cent compared with 1920. Industrial production also made a rapid recovery as small-scale enterprises responded quickly to surging demand. From 1920 to 1923, factory output rose by almost 200 per cent, admittedly from a very low base. When there were profits to be made, it was amazing how quickly distribution systems began to operate, albeit in a haphazard and disorganised way. Larger-scale industry took longer to revive but the recovery was well underway by 1924.
One of the chief agents in the revival was the appearance of the private traders, or 'Nepmen' as they came to be called. They scoured the villages buying up produce - grain, meat, eggs, vegetables - to take into the markets in the cities. They travelled round the workshops picking up nails, shoes, clothes and hand tools to sell in the markets and to the peasants. Stalls turned into premises and then into much larger shops. By 1923, Nepmen handled as much as three- quarters of the retail trade.
The first three or four years of the NEP were the heyday of the Nepmen. Deals were made, corruption was rife and the rewards were high. Property speculators were back. You could get anything from officials if the bribe was big enough. This was a get-rich-quick society and the Nepmen, a much coarser breed than the old bourgeoisie, displayed their wealth conspicuously. They crowded the restaurants, where dinners with French wine cost $25 a head, and then went on to gaming clubs or brothels. Prostitution and crime flourished. The Moscow municipal government got most of its income from taxes on gambling clubs. It has been estimated that only two years after the beginning of the NEP there were over 25,000 private traders in Moscow.
Progress was not even and there were problems. By 1923, so much food was flooding into the cities that the prices started to drop whilst the price of a industrial goods rose because they were still in short supply. Trotsky called this the 'scissors crisis'. This imbalance was problematic because it made the peasants reluctant to supply food. But the crisis did not last long: the government took action to bring industrial prices down and started to take the peasant tax in cash rather than in kind to encourage the peasants to sell their produce. Meanwhile, industry made steady progress, reaching the production levels of 1913 by 1926 (see table)
The peasants did well out of NEP. After the famine, there was rapid recovery in the villages. A great deal of the trade was between villages, in produce and in hand-crafted goods. Peasants could also make money on the side in the cities or through the Nepmen. It seemed to them that they had won back their villages to something like the situation in late 1917 - they could farm their land without too much interference from the government The local branches of the soviet were, on the whole, still weak in the countryside and traditional forms of organisation around the communes were still much stronger.
Many people inside and outside Soviet Russia thought that the NEP marked the end of the Communist experiment. They believed that Lenin's government had realised that centrally directed industry and food supply could not work and had returned to the capitalist fold. Foreign powers wanted to encourage this trend and started to make trade agreements, Germany in 1922 and Britain in 1924. The NEP's success in lifting the economy and taking the steam out of the peasant revolts was not in doubt, but the Communist experiment was merely on hold; it was far from over.
W. Duranty, I Write As I Please, 1935. pp. 138-50. Duranty was an American journalist who spent long periods in Soviet Russia and was in Moscow during the NEP period. Malcolm Muggeridge, the English writer and journalist, called Duranty 'the greatest liar in history' when he subsequently became an apologist for the Stalinist regime. But there is no reason to doubt that his observations of the NEP reflect what was happening in the early 1920s. These are extracts from the section on the NEP in his book
Moscow had changed during my three weeks' absence on the Volga. Everywhere dilapidated and half-ruined buildings were being refurbished and restored, and the fronts of the houses cleaned and painted. Shops, cafes and restaurants were being opened in all directions The city was full of peasants selling fruit, vegetables and other produce, or transporting bricks, lumber and building materials in their clumsy, creaking carts. Suddenly goods began to appear from unexpected comers, hidden or hoarded . . .
To the Communists and to the small group of proletarian leaders who had benefited by the Military Communist period NEP was doubtless repugnant, but to the mass of workers it brought jobs that would henceforth be paid in money instead of valueless paper or mouldy rations. To the traders NEP meant opportunity and the dawn of betterdays. Until August 9th it was a crime... to buy and sell anything. It is true that buying and selling was practised more or less overtly, even in the public markets, but the latter were continually raided to 'suppress speculation' and any owner of valuables might find himself denounced, arrested, and his property confiscated. The NEP decree changed all that. . . .
Ill-informed foreigners like myself naturally saw first the superficial phases of NEP, its reckless gambling, its corruption and license; which were not all the truth but real enough. .. The restaurant proprietor was a typical case of the earlier NEP-man. He began to speculate in apartments and furniture and made a lot of quick money. At one time he had a fine eight-room apartment of his own, no less than three automobiles, two mistresses and a large amount of gold. [He was going to escape abroad] when he was arrested by the Gay - pay - 00 [GPU secret police], which made short work of him. All his property was confiscated and he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment on the lonely isle of Solovetsky in the White Sea.
Without going so far as to say that the authorities approved or encouraged NEP's excesses, there is no doubt that they deliberately 'took the lid off' in many respects. Gambling halls and night clubs had no difficulty in getting licenses on condition that part of the receipts were reserved for the State. It was estimated that the receipts of the Moscow Soviet from this source were 4,000,000 gold roubles in the year 1922, which was used for much-needed repairs to the streets, sidewalks, drainage and lighting systems.
One morning at the top of my street I saw a man sitting on the sidewalk selling flour, sugar and rice on a little table . . . at the end of a week his 'table' had doubled in size and he was selling fresh eggs and vegetables. That was October and by mid-November he had rented a tiny store across the street, handling milk, vegetables, chickens and the freshest eggs and apples in Moscow . . . By the following May he had four salesmen in a fair-sized store, to which peasants brought fresh produce each morning . . . In July he added hardware. In October, after a year's trading he sold out . . . to buy a farm and live independently for the rest of his life. . .
His enterprise stimulated scores of peasants to fatten chickens and little pigs, or giant vegetables, or fashion wooden bowls and platters and forks and spoons and produce clay pots and the rest of the village handcraft. In a single year the supply of food and goods jumped from starvation point to something nearly adequate and prices fell accordingly. This was the rich silt in NEP's flood, whereas the gambling and debauchery were only froth and scum.
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