Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Various outside Powers also intervened in the Russian chaos. An allied expeditionary force invaded northern Russia from Murmansk and Archangel, while a force of Japanese and another of Americans landed at Vladivostok and pushed westward for hundreds of miles. The British seized the oil fields of the Caspian region (late 1918), while the French occupied parts of the Ukraine about Odessa (March 1919).

Against these various forces the Bolsheviks fought with growing success, using the new Red Army and the Cheka, supported by the nationalized industrial and agrarian systems. While these fought to preserve the revolutionary regime within Russia, various sympathizers were organized outside the country. The Third International was organized under Grigori Zinoviev to encourage revolutionary movements in other countries. Its only notable success was in Hungary where a Bolshevik regime under Bela Kun was able to maintain itself for a few months (March-August 1919).

By 1920 Russia was in complete confusion. At this point the new Polish government invaded Russia, occupying much of the Ukraine. A Bolshevik counterattack drove the Poles back to Warsaw where they called upon the Entente Powers for assistance. General Weygand was sent with a military mission and supplies. Thus supported, Poland was able to reinvade Russia and impose the Treaty of Riga (March 1921). This treaty established a Polish-Russian boundary 150 miles east of the tentative “Curzon Line” which had been drawn along the ethnographic frontier by the Western Powers in 1919. By this act Poland took within its boundaries several millions of Ukrainians and White Russians and ensured a high level of Soviet-Polish enmity for the next twenty years.

Much of the burden of this turmoil and conflict was imposed on the Russian peasantry by the agricultural requisitions and the whole system of so-called “war Communism.” As part of this system not only were all agricultural crops considered to be government property but all private trade and commerce were also forbidden; the banks were nationalized, while all industrial plants of over five workers and all craft enterprises of over ten workers were nationalized (1920). This system of extreme Communism was far from being a success, and peasant opposition steadily increased in spite of the severe punishments inflicted for violations of the regulations. As counterrevolutionary movements were suppressed and foreign interventionists gradually withdrew, opposition to the system of political oppression and “War Communism” increased. This culminated in peasant uprisings, urban riots, and a mutiny of the sailors at Kronstadt (March 1921). Within a week a turning point was passed; the whole system of “War Communism” and of peasant requisitioning was abandoned in favor of a “New Economic Policy” of free commercial activity in agricultural and other commodities, with. the reestablishment of the profit motive and of private ownership in small industries and in small landholding. Requisitioning was replaced by a system of moderate taxation, and the pressures of the secret police, of censorship, and of the government generally were relaxed. As a result of these tactics, there was a dramatic increase in economic prosperity and in political stability. This improvement continued for two years, until, by late 1923, political unrest and economic problems again became acute. At the same time, the approaching death of Lenin complicated these problems with a struggle for power among Lenin’s successors.

Because the political organization of the Bolshevik regime in its first few years was on a trial-and-error basis, its chief outlines were not established until about 1923. These outlines had two quite different aspects, the constitutional and the political. Constitutionally the country was organized (in 1922) into a Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR). The number of these republics has changed greatly, rising from four in 1924 and eleven in the 1936-1940 period to fifteen in the i96o’s. Of these, the largest and most important was the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which covered about three-quarters of the area of the whole Union with about five-eighths of the total population. The constitution of this RSFSR, drawn up in 1918, became the pattern for the governmental systems in other republics as they were created and joined with the RSFSR to form the USSR. In this organization local Soviets, in cities and villages, organized on an occupational basis, elected representatives to district, county, regional, and provincial congresses of Soviets. As we shall see in a moment, these numerous levels of indirect representation served to weaken any popular influence at the top and to allow the various links in the chain to be controlled by the Communist political party. The city Soviets and the provincial congresses of Soviets sent representatives to an All-Russian Congress of Soviets which possessed, in theory, full constitutional powers. Since this Congress of Soviets, with one thousand members, met no more than once a year, it delegated its authority to an All-Russian Central Executive Committee of three hundred members. This Executive Committee, meeting only three times a year, entrusted day-to-day administration to a Council of People’s Commissars, or Cabinet, of seventeen persons. When the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics was formed in 1923 by adding other republics to the RSFSR, the new republics obtained a somewhat similar constitutional organization, and a similar system was created for the whole Union. The latter possessed a Union Congress of Soviets, large and unwieldy, meeting infrequently, and chosen by the city and provincial Soviets. This Union Congress elected an equally unwieldy All-Union Central Executive Committee consisting of two chambers. One of these chambers, the Council of the Union, represented population; the other chamber, the Council of Nationalities, represented the constituent republics and autonomous regions of the Soviet Union. The Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR was transformed, with slight changes, into a Union Council of Commissars for the whole Union. This ministry had commissars for five fields (foreign affairs, defense, foreign trade, communications, and posts and telegraphs) from which the constituent republics were excluded, as well as numerous commissars for activities which were shared with the republics.

This system had certain notable characteristics. There was no separation of powers, so that the various organs of government could engage in legislative, executive, administrative, and, if necessary, judicial activities. Second, there was no constitution or constitutional law in the sense of a body of rules above or outside the government, since constitutional laws were made by the same process and had the same weight as other laws. Third, there were no guaranteed rights or liberties of individuals, since the accepted theory was that rights and obligations arise from and in the state rather than outside or separate from the state. Last, there were no democratic or parliamentary elements because of the monopoly of political power by the Communist Party.

The Communist Party was organized in a system similar to and parallel to the state, except that it included only a small portion of the population. At the bottom, in every shop or neighborhood, were unions of party members called “cells.” Above these, rising level on level, were higher organizations consisting, on each level, of a party congress and an executive committee chosen by the congress of the same level. These were found in districts, in counties, in provinces, in regions, and in the constituent republics. At the top was the Central Party Congress and the Central Executive Committee chosen by it. As years went by, the Central Party Congress met more and more rarely and then merely approved the activities and resolutions of the Central Executive Committee. This committee and its parallel institution in the state (Council of People’s Commissars) were dominated, until 1922, by the personality of Lenin. His eloquence, intellectual agility, and capacity for ruthless decision and practical improvisation gave him the paramount position in both party and state. In May 1922, Lenin had a cerebral stroke and, after a series of such strokes, died in January 1924. This long-drawn illness gave rise to a struggle, for control of the party and the state apparatus, within the party itself. This struggle, at first, took the form of a union of the lesser leaders against Trotsky (the second most important leader, after Lenin). But eventually this developed into a struggle of Stalin against Trotsky and, finally, of Stalin against the rest. By 1927 Stalin had won a decisive victory over Trotsky and all opposition.