by Ian Grey
Faced with the stark problems of the economy and the survival of the Soviet regime, Lenin and his colleagues at first thought the system of war communism would provide the answer. Trotsky was a fanatic exponent of this view. His plan, first presented in Pravda in December 1919, was approved initially by the Central Committee, but many party members argued strenuously against it. The plan provided for “the mobilization of the industrial proletariat, liability for labour service, militarization of economic life, and the use of military units for economic needs.” He insisted that labor must be subject to the same strict discipline as the Red Army. Wholly authoritarian in outlook and without the least understanding of or feeling for human needs and emotions, he set about imposing this discipline. The immediate result was an angry storm of protest and rebellion. The Third Red Army was on his orders redesignated “The First Revolutionary Army of Labor” and assigned to labor duties in the Urals. The soldiers deserted. Peasants, infuriated by the takeover of their districts by labor armies, burned the crops as they were gathered.
Trotsky came into direct conflict with the trade unions. He had plunged into the task of restoring the railway system, and overruling the objections of the union, he had mobilized the railwaymen under army discipline. Then, again in the face of union opposition, he had set up his own transport authority, the Central Transport Committee, known as Tsektran. His overbearing treatment of this union and his threats that he would deal likewise with other unions infuriated unionist members of the party.
Trotsky had provoked the conflict with the unions, but there was also growing opposition to the high-handed practice of the central party organs of disregarding democratic elections and making appointments to high offices. Dispute over these fundamental issues threatened to split the party. Lenin, supported by ten of the nineteen Central Committee members, including Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, proposed some moderating of party rule. Immediate abolition of Trotsky’s hated Tsektran was to be a first step. Trotsky violently opposed such “liberal” policies. He was supported by Bukharin, Dzerzhinsky, and the three members then in charge of the party Secretariat. The rift within the Central Committee could not be bridged, and it was decided to put the matter to the party at large. Zinoviev, the party leader in Petrograd, led the attack on Trotsky, whom he had always detested, condemning him as a dictator. The debate raged between the factions as all prepared for the Tenth Party Congress, due to meet in March 1921, when these questions would be resolved.
The driving sense of purpose which possessed the party leaders, and the distraction of such internecine disputes, caused them to minimize and even overlook the explosive mood of the people. Uprisings among the peasantry were too frequent to arouse special concern. But now the resourceful anarchist peasant leader Nestor Makhno had plunged the Ukraine into turmoil. Uprisings by peasants in western Siberia disrupted the Trans-Siberian Railways and further aggravated the food shortages in Moscow and other cities. Most serious of all was the rebellion of the peasants of the Tambov region, who were renowned for their turbulence. In April 1921, the Red Cavalry and special army units, commanded by Tukhachevsky, crushed the rebel forces, but it was not until autumn that order was restored in the region.
The mood of the cities was demonstrated in February 1921 by strikes in Petrograd and elsewhere. The government declared martial law in Petrograd, and the protests were smothered in other places. But it took the mutiny in Kronstadt to make them realize the full danger of the situation.
A stronghold of Bolshevism in 1917, Kronstadt, the island naval base in the Finnish Gulf, guarding the approaches to Petrograd, rebelled against the Soviet government. The garrison of 15,000 sailors and soldiers, recruited from the peasantry, had been increasingly incensed by reports of forced grain requisitioning, of the brutalities of the Cheka, and the savage suppression of uprisings. Following a mass meeting of the garrison on March 1, 1921, Kronstadt rang with shouts of “Down with the Bolshevik tyranny!” and “For the Soviets - without the Communists!” The rebels proclaimed themselves to be the liberators of Russia from the new Bolshevik autocracy.
The rebels were confident that their demands would have popular support throughout the country. On the night of March 4, the Petrograd Soviet sent a demand for the immediate surrender of the garrison. Trotsky followed up this ultimatum with a threatening manifesto. Kronstadt refused to submit.
Preparations were made hurriedly to take the island fortress by storm before the ice thawed on the Neva and the Gulf. Special Cheka and communist units under the command of Tukhachevsky made three attacks and all failed. On March 16, the Soviet troops, camouflaged in white sheets, attacked again, and, after two days of savage fighting, the rebels were crushed. All who were captured were executed.
The Konstadt uprising, which had broken out on the eve of the Tenth Party Congress, unsettled Lenin and the party hierarchy. They had believed that world revolution was at hand, that the proletariat of Western Europe would soon follow their leadership, and that the epic struggle of the Civil War heralded the transition of Russia to socialism. But Lenin and Stalin, and perhaps others in the Central Committee, now recognized that world revolution was far off and the Western proletariat had no stomach for revolution. And the Kronstadt mutiny opened their eyes to the fact that inside Russia, the communist leadership was the object of popular hatred. “This was the flash,” Lenin acknowledged, “which lit up reality better than anything else.”
The immediate priority was to recover support for the party, in particular, the support or at least the acquiescence of the peasants. They formed the great majority of the population, and their food production and demands dominated the economy. The party was at the mercy of the peasantry; it was a fact that Stalin was never to forget. But Lenin and then Stalin also kept in mind the fundamental principle of “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” which, as Lenin had stated and reiterated, justified the use of “unlimited power, based on violence and bound by no laws” in maintaining the supremacy of the party.
In a desperate move to win over the hostile peasantry and the people generally, Lenin introduced at this time the New Economic Policy (NEP). The forcible requisitioning of produce from the peasants was halted. A graduated tax in kind took its place, and any future surpluses could be voluntarily delivered to the government or traded on the open market. The new incentives for free trade would probably have produced immediate results, but drought, afflicting especially the Volga basin, led to a terrible famine. Relief measures and large-scale aid from America saved many lives, but toward the end of 1921, more than 22 million people were starving to death. There seemed to be no limit to the sufferings that the Russian people were condemned to endure.
In the following year, when the harvest was abundant, agriculture produced impressive results. NEP heralded a great economic revival and a return to normal living. Initially, the new policy applied to agriculture and internal trade, but it spread to industry. Private entrepreneurs, the Nepmen, emerged suddenly, injecting vitality and purpose into the devastated economy. As though to make up for the years of stagnation, the economic revival gathered an amazing momentum.
Many party members protested vigorously against this reversion to capitalism. The party as a whole was deeply shaken by this reversal of Marxist principles. Stalin keenly defended NEP. “Russia is now experiencing the same mass outburst in the development of its productive forces as Northern America experienced after its civil war.” Lenin rebutted criticisms of the betrayal of the revolution, claiming that, while the state retained control over the “commanding heights” of industry and foreign trade, the achievements of the Revolution were secure.
The Tenth Party Congress, meeting from March 8 to 16, 1921, marked a new era in the history of the party. The battle against the Kronstadt insurgents was raging at this time, and the delegates to the congress were both angry and intimidated by the widespread hostility toward their regime. It was a critical time when Lenin’s leadership and his ruthless use of tactics of expediency wer
e fully displayed.
The Congress approved the principles of NEP after relatively little debate. In their nervous, beleaguered mood, the delegates recognized that however contrary to communist principles, concessions had to be made to the peasants at this time. Lenin was not greatly concerned about this retreat from dogma, which he considered temporary. Economic reforms were for him far less important than the political reforms needed to entrench the monopoly of power in the Communist party. Throughout the Congress, he gave his attention primarily to the strengthening of the party political machine. He saw this as the real center of control.
In the early sessions, Lenin’s Platform of Ten, which purported to stand for relaxation of party dictatorship and discipline, gained the support of a large majority. Trotsky’s proposals for rebuilding the economy by using the methods of war communism were heavily defeated. Lenin’s resolutions on the trade unions and democratic centralism seemed to introduce a new spirit of reasonableness. One resolution declared that “it is above all necessary to put into practice . . . on a wide scale the principle of election to all organs . . . and to do away with the method of appointment from the top.” Another resolution emphasized that members must be able to take “an active part in the life of the party” and that “the nature of workers’ democracy excluded every form of appointment in place of election as a system.”
Suddenly on the last day of the congress, Lenin moved two new resolutions, one on “Party Unity” and the other entitled “The Syndicalist and Anarchist Deviation in Our Party.” The first denounced and outlawed all opposition groups as sources of weakness and danger, and demanded their immediate dissolution or the expulsion of their members from the party. The second resolution rejected the trade-union claims to control industry as “inconsistent with membership of the party.” The trade unions were, in fact, to be merged into the state machine and to function as the servants of the state. This was no more than Trotsky had advocated, but his handling of the proposal had caused angry opposition.
The two resolutions were passed by an overwhelming majority of the delegates. It was an extraordinary reversal of their earlier decisions. Lenin’s tactics had gained full acknowledgment of the absolute power of the leaders at the center. But the conduct of the delegates demonstrated also the new significance of the party. It had become an entity, something apart from the small group of leaders dedicated to revolution and communism. It had been sanctified in the furnace of the Civil War. It had overcome the Kronstadt rebellion, but it must remain vigilant. All members owed it absolute obedience and loyalty, although this might mean subjugating genuine fears and objections. They voted for Lenin’s two resolutions to preserve the unity of this almost mystic concept of the party: To have rejected them would have been akin to apostasy.
Trotsky suffered an ignominious defeat at the congress, and the campaign waged against him by Zinoviev, Stalin, and others seriously damaged his reputation. His plans for the militarization of labor, for the subordination of the trade unions, and for the greater centralization of power had been overwhelmingly rejected. The adoption of NEP had also been a rebuff to his economic policies. His public conflict with Lenin had lowered his standing with members among many of whom he was personally unpopular. In the election of the Central Committee, he nevertheless retained his place, but others who had supported his platform were not re-elected.
Stalin played an unobtrusive part in the disputes which dominated the Tenth Congress. He was one of the Platform of Ten supporting Lenin’s proposals. He was evidently content to leave it to Zinoviev to launch the main attack on Trotsky in the pre-congress debate, but he was active in the campaign. In Pravda, on January 5, 1921, he published an article, entitled “Our Differences,” which was his first polemical article against Trotsky. He argued that “democratism” and the use of persuasion among the proletariat were essential now that the war was over and the party had to deal with the complex threats of economic collapse. It was an effective polemic but moderate in tone and without the strident vigor of Zinoviev’s attacks. Apparently, however, he was more active in the background. In the course of the congress, one delegate, who was a member of the Democratic Centralist group, referred to the campaign against Trotsky under the generalship of Zinoviev in Petrograd, and in Moscow led by “the military strategist and arch-democrat, Comrade Stalin.”
Although unobtrusive during the congress, Stalin emerged from it with greatly increased authority. In part, this was due to the eclipse of Trotsky and his supporters, which led to vacancies on the Central Committee and other central organs, many of which were filled by men close to Stalin. But a more important reason was his growing mastery over the party apparatus. He alone understood how it should develop and function in order to maintain the absolute power of the oligarchy at the center. Of course, Lenin had always insisted the party must be in exclusive control and administered efficiently. But he was somewhat scornful of administration as a form of drudgery to be entrusted to lesser men. He had more than once dismissed it as something “any housewife” could manage. Trotsky saw his role as one of inspiring and driving men by oratory, and like Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin he had no patience for the backroom work of administration.
Stalin did not make this mistake. Administration and organization were inseparable and essential to the strength of the party. In running the Central Committee’s Secretariat, Sverdlov had shown himself to be an outstanding administrator-organizer. Stalin himself paid tribute to him in an article, published in 1924 in The Proletarian Revolution. He described him as “an organizer through and through, an organizer by nature, by habit, by revolutionary training, by intuition, an organizer in all his intense activity.” He had been a “leader-organizer” who had possessed the two essential qualities. The first was capacity to understand the party workers with their abilities and shortcomings, and the second was to be able to post them so that each one felt himself to be where he could most effectively carry out the party’s policies. In his tribute to Sverdlov, he was describing something of his ideal of the party worker, as a man who submerged himself in his duties, quiet, self-effacing, and utterly dedicated.
The years from 1919 to 1922 were a period of great change and development in the party. The transition from a conspiratorial revolutionary organization into a legal governing party with not only power but responsibility had come as a shock to Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders. It was a matter now of urgently reorganizing the party apparatus so that it could meet the new demands upon it. At the same time, the relationship between the party organization and the machinery of the Soviet state had to be established.
The Eighth Party Congress, in March 1919, had increased the size of the Central Committee to nineteen members and eight candidates. Two subcommittees had been set up, each comprising five Central Committee members. The first was the Politburo (Political Bureau), and its members from 1919 to 1921 were Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Kamenev, and Nikolai Krestinsky. The second subcommittee was the Orgburo (Organizational Bureau) of which Stalin was also a member. Lenin described the functions of the two new organs broadly in the statement that “the Orgburo allocates forces, while the Politburo decides policy.” A third organ, the Secretariat of the Central Committee, was soon exercising extraordinary power and influence.
In the early days of the party, Krupskaya and Elena Stasova had acted as secretaries under Lenin’s personal supervision. The work had expanded rapidly after 1917, and Sverdlov took over the Secretariat. In March 1919, he fell ill with Spanish flu and died. Krestinsky was appointed in his place.
The reorganization and expansion of the party apparatus were accelerated by the need to establish the dominant role of the party organs over those of the Soviet state. Lenin had declared that the party must be “the leading and directing force” in Soviet society. This function demanded a strong and efficient party machine.
The Eighth Party Congress in March 1919 had approved a special Resolution on Organizational Questions. It described the function of part
y committees as being to “guide” and “control” Soviet or government organs through directives passed to party “factions” within them, but without involving themselves directly in administration.
The creation of a massive, highly organized party apparatus quickly gathered momentum. Sverdlov had handled the party administration with the help of fifteen assistants and a total staff of thirty. By December 1919, the staff of the Secretariat numbered eighty; three months later, it was 120; and by March 1920, 602.
The rules of party structure provided for a hierarchy of committees under the authority of the annual party congress and conference and the Central Committee. Such committees were set up at regional, provincial, district, and rural levels, and there were party cells in the Red Army and in industries. Each committee was subordinated to the committee next above it, and its membership had to be approved by its next senior committee. All answered to the supreme body at the top of the pyramid, which decided who would be elected as secretary and which could replace any member of any committee.
The key to the effectiveness of this vast hierarchal network lay in the appointment of trusted party members to exercise control at every level. In the early years of the Secretariat, personnel records were far from complete, but by the beginning of 1922, a party census made it possible for the first time to record biographical data on every member. On the basis of the new records, postings could be selective. Between April 1900 and mid-February 1921, there were more than 40,000 postings, and the number grew as the party tightened its grip on the country.