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

Stalin’s victory was due very largely to his ability to control the administrative machinery of the party behind the scenes and to the reluctance of his opponents, especially Trotsky, to engage in a showdown struggle with Stalin lest this lead to civil war, foreign intervention, and the destruction of the revolutionary achievement. Thus, while Trotsky had the support of the Red Army and of the mass of party members, these were both neutralized by his refusal to use them against Stalin’s control of the party machinery.

The party, as we have said, remained a minority of the population, under the theory that quality was more important than quantity. There were 23,000 members in March 1917, and 650,000 in October 1921; at this latter date a purge began which reduced the party rolls by 24 percent. Subsequently, the rolls were reopened, and membership rose to 3.4 million by 1940. The power to admit or to purge, held in the hands of the Central Executive Committee, completely centralized control of the party itself; the fact that there was only one legal party and that elections to positions in the state were by ballots containing only one party, and even one name for each office, gave the party complete control of the state. This control was neither weakened nor threatened by a new constitution, of democratic appearance and form, which came into existence in 1936.

In 1919 the Central Executive Committee of nineteen appointed two subcommittees of five each and a secretariat of three. One of the subcommittees, the Politburo, was concerned with questions of policy, while the other, the Orgburo, was concerned with questions of party organization. Only one man, Stalin, was a member of both of these; in April 1922, a new secretariat of three was named (Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Valerian Kuibyshev) with Stalin as secretary-general. From this central position he was able to build up a party bureaucracy loyal to himself, purge those who would be most opposed to his plans, or transfer to remote positions those party members whose loyalty to himself was not beyond question. At the death of Lenin in January 1924, Stalin was the most influential party member, but still lurked in the background. At first he ruled as one of a triumvirate of Stalin, Grigori Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev, all united in opposition to Trotsky. The last was removed from his position as war commissar in January 1925, and from the Politburo in October 1926. In 1927, at Stalin’s behest, Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the party. Zinoviev was later restored to membership but in 1929 Trotsky was deported to exile in Turkey. By that time Stalin held the reins of government firmly in his own hands.

Stalinism, 1924-1939

As Stalin gradually strengthened his internal control of the Soviet Union after Lenin’s death in 1924, it became possible to turn, with increasing energy, to other matters. The New Economic Policy, which Lenin had adopted in 1921, performed so successfully that the Soviet Union experienced a phenomenal recovery from the depths to which “War Communism” had dragged it in 1918-1921.

Unfortunately for the economic theorists of the Soviet Union, the NEP was not really a “policy” at all, and it certainly was not Communism. By reestablishing a new monetary system based on gold, in which one of the new gold rubles was equal to 50,000 of the old, inflated paper rubles, a firm financial basis was provided for recovery. Except for a continuance of government regulation in international trade and in large-scale heavy industry, a regime of freedom was permitted. Agricultural production rose, commercial activities flourished, and the lighter industrial activities devoted to consumers’ goods began to recover. Distinctions of wealth reappeared among the peasants, the richer ones (called “kulaks”) being regarded with suspicion by the regime and with envy by their less fortunate neighbors. At the same time, those who made their fortunes in commerce (called “nepmen”) were sporadically persecuted by the regime as enemies of Socialism. Nonetheless, the economic system flourished. Acreage under cultivation rose from 148 million acres in 1921 to 222 million in 1927; grain collections, after the famine of 1922 had passed, approximately doubled in 1923-1927; coal production doubled in three years, while production of cotton textiles quadrupled. As a consequence of such recovery, the Russian economic system in 1927 was, once again, back to its 1913 level, although, since population had gone up by ten million persons, the per capita income was lower.

In spite of the economic recovery of the NEP, it gave rise to important problems. Just as the free agricultural economy produced kulaks, and the free commercial system produced nepmen, so the mixed industrial system had undesirable consequences. Under this mixed system industries concerned with national defense were under direct state control; heavy industry was controlled by monopolistic trusts, which were owned by the state, but operated under separate budgets and were expected to be profitable; small industry was free. One bad result of this was that small industry was squeezed in its efforts to obtain labor, materials, or credit, and its products were in scarce supply at high prices. Another result was that agricultural prices, being free and competitive, fell lower and lower as agricultural production recovered, but industrial prices, being monopolistic, or in short supply, remained high. The result was a “scissors crisis,” as it is called in Europe (or “parity prices,” as it is called in America). This meant that the goods farmers sold were at low prices, while the goods they bought were at high prices, and scarce. Thus, in 1923, agricultural prices were at 58 percent of the 1913 level, while industrial prices were at 187 percent of their 1913 level, so that peasants could obtain only one-third as much manufactured goods for their crops as they had been able to obtain in 1913. By withholding credit from industry, the government was able to force factories to liquidate their stocks of goods by lowering prices. As a consequence, by 1924 industrial prices fell to 141 percent of 1913, while agricultural prices rose to 77 percent of 1913. The peasant’s position was improved from one-third to one-half of his 1913 position, but at no time did he regain his 1913 parity level. This gave rise to a great deal of agrarian discontent and to numerous peasant disturbances during the latter part of the NEP.

Lenin had insisted that the weakness of the proletariat in Russia made it necessary to maintain an alliance with the peasantry. This had been done during the period of state capitalism (November 1917— June 1918), but the alliance had been largely destroyed in the period of “War Communism” (June 1918-April 1921). Under the NEP this alliance was reestablished, but the “scissors crisis” once again destroyed it. Then it was reestablished only partially. Stalin’s victory over Trotsky and his personal inclination for terroristic methods of government led to decisions which marked the end of these cycles of peasant discontent. The decision to build Socialism in a single country made it necessary, it was felt, to emphasize the predominance of heavy industry in order to obtain, as quickly as possible, the basis for the manufacture of armaments (chiefly iron, steel, coal, and electrical power projects). Such projects required great masses of labor to be concentrated together and fed. Both the labor and the food would have to be drawn from the peasantry, but the emphasis on heavy industrial production rather than on light industry meant that there would be few consumers’ goods to give to the peasantry in return for the food taken from them. Moreover, the drain of manpower from the peasantry to form urban labor forces would mean that those who continued to be peasants must greatly improve their methods of agricultural production in order to supply, with a smaller proportion of peasants, food for themselves, for the new urban laborers, for the growing party bureaucracy, and for the growing Red Army which was regarded as essential to defend “Socialism in a single country.”