IGA-677 / Lecture 5: Building Communism
Yuri M. Zhukov
Visiting Associate Professor of Public Policy
Harvard Kennedy School
September 19, 2023
Today’s objectives
- Identify: key groups of actors central to Russian Civil War
- Understand: how Bolsheviks were able to support war effort
- Discuss: trade-offs between ideological purity and
economic development/performance
Picking Sides
How would you expect the average member of each group to align?
- Peasants
- Urban workers
- Minorities
- Military officers
- Military rank-and-file
- Landed aristocracy
- Bureaucrats
- Cossacks
- Clergy
- Bourgeoisie
The choices are:
Reds
Whites
Third Party
War Communism
Who Were the Bolsheviks?
- radical faction of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP(b))
- ideological split from Mensheviks, 1903
- “minority” Mensheviks supported:
- cooperation with bourgeoisie
- Russian participation in WWI
- use of terrorism, violence
- collectivization of agriculture
- “majority” Bolsheviks supported:
- cooperation with bourgeoisie
- Russian participation in WWI
- use of terrorism, violence
- collectivization of agriculture
- “minority” Mensheviks supported:
- support base: factory workers, soldiers
- party banned in 1914 due to war stance
- Lenin in exile until April 1917
Lenin and Friends
The Revolutionary Moment
- February Revolution
- mass protests, mutinies in Petrograd lead to regime change
- dual power: Provisional Council/ Government (SRs, Mensheviks) vs. Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ & Soldiers’ Deputies (Bolsheviks)
- main disagreements: WWI, death penalty on front, land reform
- October Revolution
- Petrograd Soviet seizes power, announces new cabinet
- pro-Bolshevik soldiers, sailors storm Winter Palace, arrest PG
- “left” SR faction backs Bolsheviks
- Mensheviks, SRs oppose coup
- armed opposition forms almost immediately
Man Yells at Crowd
Crowd Reacts
National legislative elections held 20 days after October Revolution
…they do not go well for the Bolsheviks.
1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election results
How to lose a country, in 3 simple steps
- Dissolution of Constituent Assembly
- Bolsheviks lose Nov 1917 elections
- Lenin disbands Assembly, begins repression of rival parties
- Agricultural policy
- Bolsheviks keep PG’s state monopoly on grain sales
- announce “produce dictatorship” to address urban food shortages
- 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
- Bolsheviks sign peace treaty with Germany, Austro-Hungary
- default on all allied commitments
- territorial concessions: Finland, Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland
Each of these moves was deeply unpopular.
Why did the Bolsheviks do this?
Did they have any better options?
A Bad Policy?
A Bad Deal?
Russian Civil War
Fallout from Brest-Litovsk
- Political isolation
- left SRs oppose treaty, leave Bolshevik government in protest
- Foreign occupation / intervention
- Germany, Austria occupy Ukraine
- Entente troops land in Murmansk, Vladivostok, Odesa, Sevastopol
- flow of weapons to opposition
- foreign weapons, aid to opposition
- Food crisis worsens
- no flow of Ukraine grain to cities
- food prices spike, breadlines form
- Soviets take emergency steps to requisition grain by force
Help Arrives
Russian Civil War
| Year | Key Events |
|---|---|
| 1917 | - Don Cossack uprising in South |
| - Japanese invasion of Far East | |
| 1918 | - Ukraine (UNR) declares independence |
| - Don Cossacks defeated, for now | |
| - Czech legion captures Trans-Sib railroad | |
| - Allied invasions of n. Russia, Siberia | |
| - Failed Bolshevik takeover of Finland | |
| - Bolsheviks capture, lose, reoccupy Kyiv | |
| - Kolchak seizes power in Siberia | |
| - Polish-Ukrainian War in Galicia | |
| - Failed Bolshevik invasion of Baltics | |
| 1919 | - Denikin’s forces take s. Russia, Ukraine |
| - Red counteroffensives in south, Siberia | |
| - Bolsheviks retake Kyiv | |
| - Denikin’s forces defeated in s. Russia | |
| - Most foreign troops withdrawn | |
| 1920 | - Kolchak’s forces defeated in Siberia |
| - Poland captures w. Ukraine, w. Belarus | |
| - Wrangel’s forces defeated in Crimea | |
| - Whites evacuate by Black Sea |
Shcho robyty?
Net territorial losses and gains
Governance During War
Problem: how to finance war effort?
- no tax revenue due to anarchy
- black market, barter economy
- food shortages, famine
- labor shortages in cities, rural areas
Solution: “War Communism”
- Nationalization of banks
- all deposits, savings confiscated
- Nationalization of all industries
- heavy industry 75% state-owned
- agriculture 12% state-owned
- Compulsory labor regime
- labor units formed in Red Army
- Requisitioning of grain from farmers
- doesn’t prevent famine, but provokes peasant uprisings
- Red Terror
- repression of “class enemies”
Give Us Bread
Post-War Communism
A Dictatorship, If You Can Keep It
- by 1921, Bolsheviks had won civil war
- but the country was devastated
- Human toll
- up to 9 million dead from violence, famine, repression
- 1-2 million refugees, exiles abroad
- Economic toll
- grain production down 56%
(from pre-war 1913 levels) - livestock production down 73%
- industrial production down 70%
- grain production down 56%
- Political toll
- Bolsheviks still widely despised
- international diplomatic isolation
- losing support among soldiers, sailors (1921 Kronstadt uprising)
Now What?
New Economic Policy, 1921-1928
| Policy area | War Communism | New Economic Policy |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | Grain requisitioning | Grain taxation |
| Heavy industry | Nationalization | Nationalization |
| Light industry | Nationalization | De-nationalization |
| Private property | Forbidden | Small private enterprise allowed |
| Private trade | Forbidden | Permitted |
| Foreign trade | State monopoly | State monopoly |
| Banks | State monopoly | State monopoly |
| Economic goals | Mobilize resources for war | Stop economic crisis |
| Political goals | Establish party dictatorship | Maintain party dictatorship |
Discussion:
In what ways was NEP an economic success, but ideological failure?
Results of NEP
- Industry, agriculture recovers
- output returns to prewar levels
- But couldn’t reap full benefits of capitalism or socialism
- no employment expansion beyond what market allows
- no incentive for peasant communes to consolidate, fully feed urban industrial class
- Ideological divide in party
- leftists see NEP as heresy
- NEP creates new “class enemies” (NEPmen, kulaks)
The NEPman
Five Year Plan
Debating Industrialization Policy
- Nikolay Bukharin
- advocated co-development of heavy industry and agriculture
- proposals:
- reduce price of manufactures
- improve terms of trade for agro
- Yevgeniy Probrazhenskiy
- advocated heavy industrialization, at expense of agriculture
- proposals:
- surplus extraction over taxation
- stack terms of trade against agriculture (higher consumer goods prices, low grain prices)
Discussion:
Who won this debate, and why?
Impossible?
| Policy area | New Economic Policy | Five Year Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | Grain taxation | Collectivization |
| Heavy industry | Nationalization | Nationalization |
| Light industry | De-nationalization | Nationalization |
| Private property | Small private enterprise allowed | Forbidden |
| Private trade | Permitted | Forbidden |
| Foreign trade | State monopoly | State monopoly |
| Banks | State monopoly | State monopoly |
| Economic goals | Stop economic crisis | Rapid industrialization |
| Political goals | Maintain party dictatorship | Consolidate Stalin’s rule |
NEXT MEETING
Collectivization, Industrialization, Famine (Th, Sep. 21)
- Stalin asserts control
- things to consider:
- what happens when prices, profits become irrelevant, and output targets become everything?
- was mass famine of 1932-1933 preventable?