A history of Russia

by Riazanovsky

  The Destruction of the Old Society

  Whereas the Great October Revolution catapulted the Communist party to power, it led to the destruction of entire social classes. Indeed, its initial impact

  resulted in a sweeping leveling of traditional Russian society. The landowning gentry, for centuries the top social group in Russia, disappeared rapidly in 1917 and 1918 as peasants seized their land. The upper bourgeoisie, financial, industrial, and commercial, was similarly eliminated when the Bolsheviks nationalized finance, industry, and trade. The middle and especially the lower bourgeoisie, to be sure, staged a remarkable comeback during the years of the New Economic Policy. Their final destruction, however, came with the implementation of the five-year plans. If the gentry occupied the stage in Russia too long, the bourgeoisie was cut down before it came into its own. The clergy, the monks and nuns, and other people associated with the Church, constituted yet another group to suffer harsh persecution, although in their case it stopped short of complete annihilation. The great majority of the intellectuals, too, found themselves in opposition to the new regime. Many of them emigrated. Many others perished in the frightful years of civil war and famine. In fact, although some of its members remained, the intelligentsia as a cohesive, articulate, and independent group was no more.

  The Peasants

  Whereas the Bolsheviks regarded the upper and middle classes as enemies by definition, they believed themselves to be acting in the interests of the masses, that is, of the workers and of the peasants. As it turned out, however, the peasants have borne the brunt of the privations and sacrifices imposed by the Soviet "builders of socialism." The total population of the U.S.S.R. was officially given in the spring of 1959 as only 208,826,000 - and as 262,400,000 according to the census of 1979 - a low figure which testifies to two demographic catastrophes: the one associated with the First Five-Year Plan, more especially the collectivization of agriculture, and the other resulting from the Second World War. In both cases peasants - and peasants as soldiers - suffered the most, dying by the millions. The extent to which the Soviet Union was a land of peasants is indicated by the fact that the rural population constituted 82 per cent of the total in 1928 and still almost a third sixty-five years later.

  Of course, peasants carried such a heavy burden in the U.S.S.R. not only because of their vast numbers, but also because of the policies pursued by the government. Lenin's original endorsement of the peasant seizure of gentry land had great appeal in the countryside. Influenced by the Bolshevik land policy and by revolutionary soldiers returning home - a point effectively emphasized by Radkey - the rural masses proved reasonably well inclined toward the new regime and on the whole apparently preferred it to the Whites during the great civil war. But War Communism antagonized many of them. Besides, the Bolsheviks tried to split the peasants, inciting the poor against the better-off and later attempting to utilize the poor and the middle peasant against the so-called kulak. While some social differentiation did exist in the villages, the authorities,

  applying abstract Marxist formulas where they did not fit, exaggerated it beyond all measure and ended by, in effect, condemning and punishing all peasants who did not behave in the prescribed manner.

  The respite during the N.E.P., in the course of which rural Russia recovered and in part even began to experience something akin to prosperity, was followed by the all-out offensive of the First Five-Year Plan. Five million kulaks and members of their families disappeared. Countless peasants, recalcitrant or relatively prosperous or simply unlucky, populated forced-labor camps. Other uncounted peasants starved to death. Scenes of horror in once bounteous Ukraine defied description. But, as we know, the peasants, in spite of their resistance, were finally pushed and pulled into collectives. The typical member of a kolkhoz was a new phenomenon in Russian history. The novelty resided not in his wretched poverty, not even in the extremely heavy exactions imposed upon him, but in the minute state organization and control of his work and life. While peasants profited from certain Soviet policies, notably the spread of education, and while some of them rose to higher stations in society, on the whole the condition of the rural masses, the bulk of the Soviet people, remained miserable and at times desperate. Largely supporting the five-year plans by their labor, as already explained, Soviet peasants received very little in return. After Stalin's death, Khrushchev and other leaders admitted the grave condition of the Soviet countryside, while writers presented some unforgettable pictures of it during the relative freedom of expression that prevailed for several months in 1956. Subsequent years, to be sure, witnessed an improvement. Yet rural Russia remains poor. Moreover, the party and the government continued their social engineering, as clearly indicated in such postwar measures and projects as the increase in the size of the collective farms, the abortive agrogoroda, the temporary emphasis on the sovkhoz form of agriculture, and the periodic campaigns against the private plots of kolkhoz members. Indeed - logically, from their point of view - Communists were not likely to relax until peasants disappeared as a separate group, having been integrated into a completely socialized, mechanized, and urbanized economy. No wonder that the coming of perestroika made peasant landownership a central issue and one very difficult to handle.

  The Workers

  Industrial workers in many ways profited most from the Bolshevik revolution. That revolution was made in their name, and they gave the new regime its greatest social support. Because of this, perhaps a million and a half workers and their children rose to new importance. They became Party functionaries, Red Army officers, and even organizers of collective farms. Many received rapid training to be graduated as technologists. Persons of a proletarian background enjoyed priorities in institutions of higher learning and elsewhere. The upward social mobility of workers was all the more remarkable because their total number was not

  very large, and it contrasted sharply with the relatively static nature of tsarist society. Many prominent people in all walks of life today owe their positions to that rise.

  But, of course, while many workers went up the social ladder, new men and women entered the factories. After the inauguration of the five-year plans the influx turned into a deluge. Peasants of yesterday became workers of today. Russia finally acquired vast crowds of proletarians characteristic of the industrial revolution. Whether the condition of the workers in the Soviet Union improved compared to tsarist times remains an open question. That it continued to be miserable cannot be reasonably doubted. Soviet workers profited from increased educational and cultural opportunities, but their pitiful real wages probably remained below the prerevolutionary level as late as the early 'fifties. After all, the huge industrialization was made possible by keeping industrial wages down as well as by squeezing the peasants. In addition, workers suffered from the totally inadequate and deteriorating urban housing, and, together with other Soviet citizens, they had to contribute their efforts and their scarce time to various "voluntary" projects, to their own and others' political education, and to other prescribed activities. In contrast to tsarist days, they could not strike or otherwise openly express their discontent. The material condition of the Soviet proletariat did improve, however, after the death of Stalin. Still, it remained quite poor as the Soviet system came to its end.

  The "New Class"

  Whereas the initial impact of the Bolshevik revolution, coupled with famine and other catastrophes, did much to level Russian society, smashing the rigid class structure of imperial Russia and even destroying entire classes, before long social differentiation began to grow again. In particular, the five-year plans produced a tremendous expansion of administrative and technical personnel, which, together with the already existing Party and government bureaucracies, became, broadly speaking, the leading class in the country. One author estimated that the Soviet economy employed 1,700,000 bookkeepers alone! Scientists, writers, artists, professors, and other intellectuals, purged and integrated into the new system, became prominent members of the pr
ivileged group. Army and naval officers and their families provided additional members. Altogether, the privileged, distinguished primarily by their education and nonmanual occupations, came to compose about 15 per cent of the total population. Relatively speaking - paradoxically, if you will - they enjoyed greater advantages compared to the masses than their counterparts in Western capitalist societies. It is also of interest that material differences within the educated class and within the worker and peasant classes, who were often paid according to some form of the piece rate, were very marked in Soviet Russia. Paid vacations and other rewards supplied by the regime were distributed in a similarly uneven manner. In fact,

  wages and salaries tended to show a greater differentiation in the U.S.S.R. than in the West, although, of course, Soviet citizens could not accumulate fortunes based on profits, rent, or interest.

  The "Great Retreat"

  As the new Soviet elite advanced to the fore, Soviet society lost many of its revolutionary traits and began to acquire in certain respects a strikingly conservative character. The transformation occurred essentially during the thirties, but on the whole it continued and developed further during the Second World War and in the postwar years. While state laws and regulations were crucial in this process, they reflected, as well as contributed to, basic social and economic changes.

  Initially the Bolshevik regime took a disdainful and even negative view of the family. Marriages became matters of little importance in the eyes of the state, while divorce could be obtained simply by declaration of one of the parties involved. Abortions were legal and extremely common. In the thirties, all that changed. Authorities declared themselves in favor of a strong Soviet family. Particular emphasis was placed on having many children. Mothers with five or six living offspring received the Motherhood Medal, those with seven or eight were awarded a decoration known as Motherhood Glory, while those with ten achieved the status of Heroine Mother. Financial grants to large families helped further the implementation of the new policy. At the same time abortions lost their legal sanction, while divorce became much more difficult to obtain in the U.S.S.R. than in most countries in the West. The family - the proper, Marxist, Soviet family, to be sure - was hailed as a mainstay of the socialist order.

  Discipline improved in the army, and it made an effective reappearance in schools and elsewhere. Ranks, titles, decorations, and other distinctions, whether bureaucratic, military, or academic, were restored and acquired vast importance. Even social manners made a comeback. Pomp and circumstance re-entered the stage. Uniforms blossomed everywhere, reminding observers of tsarist Russia. Generalissimo Stalin toasting his marshals at a gargantuan Kremlin reception presented a far different picture from Lenin in his worn-out coat haranguing workers in squares and factory yards. In a sense, the Soviet regime had arrived. Equally important changes took place, as we shall see, in education and culture, where the avant-garde and experimental approach of the early years gave place to rock-ribbed conservatism. Patriotism and historical tradition emerged again, although in a minor key and as aids, rather than rivals, to the fundamentally Marxist ideology.

  Women and Feminism

  Women constituted half, actually considerably more than half, the population of the Soviet Union, and they certainly contributed their share to its history. In a

  very real sense they carried half, or more, of the burden of that history on their shoulders. The communist program included liberating women from oppression, discrimination, and drudgery as part of the liberation of humankind. The first decade or more after the October Revolution was full of promise for Soviet feminists, as well as of new departures in the position and activities of Soviet women, perhaps most notably and permanently so among the Islamic peoples of the country. But, for the Soviet leaders, feminist ideals were always ancillary to the fundamental Marxist vision of class straggle and the building of socialism. And they were crushed, together with other autonomous views, once the U.S.S.R. was set in the firm Stalinist mold. There was some relaxation but no basic change in the situation after the death of the crucial dictator.

  Lapidus and other scholars have done much recently to present and interpret the position of Soviet women in both its positive and its negative aspects. The former include, notably, the great increase in education, to where women came to be proportionately better represented as students in Soviet institutions of higher learning than men. Concurrently women rose remarkably in the professions, so that today, for example, the great majority of the doctors of medicine in Russia are women. Yet, as it has been repeatedly pointed out, few women reached the top rungs of their profession, medicine included, and they were strikingly absent at the highest levels of both Party and government. Moreover, Soviet women both held full-time jobs and performed the great bulk of the work at home, a task made all the more difficult by the hard conditions of life in the Soviet Union. It might be added that feminism in the Western sense was at best in its incipient stage in the U.S.S.R. Nor were all its emphases - as a student of Soviet society will readily understand - particularly relevant to the Soviet scene.

  The Nationalities

  Its multinational composition was a major problem for the Soviet Union as it had been for the Russian Empire. While in 1917 Great Russians formed about half of the population of the country, and Ukrainians and White Russians, or Belorassians, approximately another quarter, the remaining quarter consisted of a staggering variety of ethnic and linguistic groups. The Caucasus alone contains a fantastically complicated mixture of peoples. More than a hundred and fifty languages and dialects were spoken in the Soviet Union. Soviet nationalities ranged from ancient civilized peoples, such as the Armenians and the Georgians, to primitive Siberian tribes. They included Lutherans and Catholics as well as Orthodox, and Moslems and Buddhists together with shamanists. Moreover, many of these peoples showed nationalist tendencies in the years of revolution and civil war, which corresponded only too well to the generally nationalist atmosphere of the twentieth century.

  Soviet authorities developed several basic policies in dealing with national groups. They allowed them no independence in ideological, political, economic,

  or social matters, and even no deviation from the established official line. The U.S.S.R. remained essentially a most highly centralized state. The single Communist party of the Soviet Union acted as an especially important foundation and guarantee of that unity. At the same time, Soviet rulers granted a kind of cultural autonomy to the nationalities in the Soviet Union - indeed they sponsored heavily such autonomy - stating that their cultures should be "national in form, and socialist in content." The form included the language and the cultural tradition of a given people, which, however, had to be fitted, as in the case of the Russians proper, into the Soviet-Marxist framework. Thus, the government tried to destroy Islam as well as Orthodoxy and interpreted Georgian history as well as Russian in the simple terms of a class straggle.

  But this dual approach to nationalities proved difficult to maintain in practice. Cultural autonomy could easily become cultural nationalism, and that in turn would lead to separatism. Always suspicious, the Soviet leadership kept uncovering "bourgeois nationalists" in union republics and lesser subdivisions of the U.S.S.R. In the crucially important case of Ukraine, for example, the Party apparatus itself suffered several sweeping purges because of its "deviations." Moreover, after a controlled measure of Great Russian patriotism and nationalism became respectable in the Soviet Union, Stalin and the Politburo began to stress the Russian language and the historical role of the Great Russian people as binding cement of their multinational state. This trend continued during the Second World War and in the postwar years. Eastern peoples of the U.S.S.R. were made to use the Cyrillic in place of the Latin alphabet for their native tongues, while the Russian language received emphasis in all Soviet schools. Histories had to be rewritten again to demonstrate that the incorporation of minority nationalities into the Russian state was a positive good rather than merely the lesser e
vil as compared to other alternatives. Basically contrary to Marxism, the new interpretation was fitted into Marxist dress by such means as stress on the progressive nature of the Russian proletariat and the advanced character of the Russian revolutionary movement, which benefited all the peoples fortunate enough to be associated with Russians. But Stalin, and some other Soviet leaders as well, went further, giving violent expression to some of the worst kinds of prejudices. Notably the quite un-Marxist vice of anti-Semitism found fertile soil in the Soviet Union. Yiddish intellectuals were among the groups virtually wiped out by the purges. Jews were generally excluded from the Soviet diplomatic service. Stalin's and Zhdanov's fierce attack on "cosmopolitanism" after the Second World War seemed particularly difficult to reconcile with the international character of Marxism or with the legacy of Lenin. The Jewish emigration from the U.S.S.R. had more than one sound reason behind it.

  Education

  Education played an extremely important role in the development of the Soviet Union. Educational advances were a most important part of state planning

  and made the striking Soviet economic and technological progress possible. As already indicated, education also stood at the heart of the evolution of Soviet society.

  Somewhat less than half of the Russian people were literate at the time of the Bolshevik revolution. Furthermore, the years of civil war, famine, epidemics, and general disorganization that followed the establishment of the Soviet regime resulted in a decline of literacy and in a general lowering of the educational level in the country. Beginning in 1922, however, the authorities began to implement a large-scale educational program, aiming not only at establishing schools for all children, but also at eliminating illiteracy among adults. By the end of the Second Five-Year Plan, that is, by 1938, a network of four-year elementary schools covered the U.S.S.R., while more advanced seven-year schools had been organized for urban children. The total elimination of illiteracy proved more difficult, although the government created more than 19,000 "centers for liquidating illiteracy" by 1925 and persevered in its efforts. The census of 1926 registered 51 per cent of Soviet citizens, aged ten and above, as literate; that of 1939 81.1 per cent. Projecting the increase, 85 per cent of the Soviet people must have been literate at the time of the German invasion, and almost all at the end of the Communist regime.