Soviet Russia: Anatomy of a Social History

Part IV: Perfection and Self-Destruction of the New Economic Policy

Chapter XIII: Growth and Limits of the Productive Forces

I: The Dilemma of Industry

The recovery from the scissors crisis was partly supported, partly delayed by the crop failure of 1924, but the next few years were distinguished by the hectic growth of output in all spheres of national economy.

The growth of industry in particular was nothing short of spectacular. At the beginning of the ‘period of rehabilitation’ (1924) the absolute level of industry was still very low. Since the autumn of 1924 a period of prosperity set in which raised industrial production within two years up to the prewar level: [1]

In the first wave of industrial prosperity after the success of the currency reform the initiative still lay with the consumption goods industries, and, in particular, with the cotton industry. The basis of industrial prosperity was the rapidly rising purchasing power of the peasants and, to a much lesser degree, of the workers. This demand was at first almost completely directed to consumption goods, and its continuation during the following years permitted the uninterrupted expansion of light industry which was assured of a remunerative market for everything it could turn out. At the same time, the peasants’ demand for industrial goods widened, and included an increasing number of producers’ goods. This rural demand made a great contribution to the recovery of heavy industry which was one of the spectacular facts of the later NEP period.

Other factors favouring the improvement in the situation of heavy industry were gradually gaining importance. With a balanced budget and industry working at full speed the state could resume work on the railways, and a modest demand for machinery developed from the depreciation and investment reserves of industry. Thus the prosperity of industry, which had still been definitely patchy in 1924, became general in 1925 and 1926. The involuntary abstention of the war years and the growing prosperity of the peasants created an inexhaustible market, but industry soon found itself unable to cope with the enormous demand.

This difficulty arose at first only in light industry because its expansion had begun very much earlier than that of heavy industry. Already during 1924, when heavy industry was still depressed, the cotton trade did brisk business, and this branch of industry shows the general tendencies particularly clearly. [2]

The increase in output gradually slackened when production approached the prewar level of 2250 million metres.

Why did not industry, and particularly light industry, increase its output in order to keep up with the rising demand? This question comprises all problems of Russia’s industrial development during the following decade.

After the breakdown of War Communism industry had too many factories and machines, and many were standing idle for years, conserved for later use. When the peasants were again able to buy the industrial goods they needed, production could be increased at first by a better utilisation of the best factories and the workers whose productive capacities had remained partly unused at first. Production costs fell until the best factories and their workers were producing at full speed; this stage was reached, at least in most branches of light industry, in the course of the financial year 1925-26. Further increases in output could be achieved only by utilising the ‘conserved’ plants. These plants were again started in the course of the last years of the NEP in order to satisfy the rising demand for manufactured articles. Thus Russian industry succeeded in reaching the prewar level of industrial production, and this must be regarded as a fine achievement because it was executed with old and worn-out machinery and in very difficult conditions.

Praiseworthy though this result may have been, it was emphatically not enough to satisfy the constantly increasing demand; on the other hand it was utterly impossible to increase production within the limits of the existing plant. Capital construction on a large scale became necessary; the demand for consumption goods could be satisfied only by building new factories and machinery for the consumption goods industries. Thus light industry had to turn to heavy industry for support; but heavy industry was not in a condition to lend a helping hand because it was itself suffering from similar difficulties.

During the years of the NEP Russian industry was, in the main, working with the productive apparatus of prewar industry. Prewar industry, however, was largely dependent for its capital equipment on imports from abroad. Russian engineers were able to build some of the less complicated agricultural machines, railway equipment, etc, but they had neither the necessary plants, patterns nor the experience required for the re-equipment of light industry as a whole. Apart from that, all branches of heavy industry, beginning with mining and quarrying, were themselves already in a state of virtually full employment.

In many branches of heavy industry the prewar level of production had been reached and surpassed. This is particularly true of fuel production which yielded 30 to 50 per cent more energy than before the war. The production of electrical energy had risen between 1913 and 1927-28 from 1945 to 5050 million kwh; the output of agricultural machinery was doubled, that of internal combustion motors was almost five times higher than before the war. [3] There was only one, though a particularly important, branch of heavy industry where progress had been sadly inadequate.

The modest prosperity of the iron and steel trade during 1924-26 soon brought out the dangerous weakness of this economic key position. After a few years of increased production the metallurgic industry reached its maximum production in the framework of its old plants—but it only just reached, or failed to reach, the prewar output of iron ore, steel and pig iron. [4]

This failure of the iron and steel industry was clearly a consequence of the devastation of its productive capacity during war and civil war.

With this important exception Soviet industry could boast of many great successes. But its situation at the end of the NEP period was nevertheless extremely grave. The very successes of yesterday prevented further advance which was urgently needed by the Russian people. The government could not solve the difficulties of light industry by building new factories and machines, because the production goods industries themselves had to be put on a new technical basis in order to turn out more building materials and more machinery. The most important single problem was, indeed, the supply of large quantities of iron and steel which could be produced only by investing enormous amounts of capital in mining and the construction of large furnaces.

Since the year 1926 the development of industry was overshadowed by this grave problem. The alliance of the workers and peasants was based on the satisfaction of the growing rural demand for manufactured goods in exchange for the supply of foodstuffs and raw materials; but both light and heavy industry were in dire need of new factories and new equipment. There was no way out of this dilemma within the framework of Russian industry; the Soviet power had to turn to world capitalism for help.

From an economic point of view it would have been extremely advantageous for both the Soviet government and American, British and German industry to finance the clearly necessary gigantic business transaction by long-term loans. The Soviet power was certain to find willing customers for any quantity of industrial goods at very remunerative prices, and would have been willing to pay comparatively high rates of interest for loans of this kind. But international finance was not to be attracted by the most liberal offers because investors of all countries were simply afraid of doing business with the ‘Reds’. Their hatred of the Soviet regime restrained the financial magnates of all countries from extending substantial loans to the Soviets.

Ever since 1920 the Communists tried to induce foreign capitalists to apply for concessions for large natural resources which the Soviet government could not exploit owing to lack of capital. The problem was important enough for the chairmanship of the Concessions Committee to be offered to Trotsky on his downfall from power, but not even the most energetic organiser of the Soviet regime was able to induce foreign capitalists to risk their money. Up to September 1927 the Soviets had received 2200 concession offers, but in February 1929 only seventy-five concession enterprises with investments of 50 095 000 gold roubles were entered upon. [5] Sums of this size were, of course, negligible in comparison to the capital requirements of the country.

In these circumstances the Soviet power had no choice but to intensify its foreign trade to such an extent that it could import its extraordinary requirements of capital equipment. Already during earlier years Soviet foreign trade underwent changes which prepared it for these great tasks. In the year of the famine, 1921, almost one half of total imports consisted of foodstuffs, but this demand vanished with the recovery of agriculture and imports were marked by the predominance of industrial raw materials. Finished goods were only rarely intended for individual consumption; they comprised all sorts of machinery, electrical and scientific apparatus, etc. Already during the whole NEP the Soviets employed the powerful weapon of the foreign trade monopoly for planning their economic intercourse with the outside world and for increasing their independence by large imports of capital goods at the expense of consumption goods.

The total amount of imports was, however, strictly limited by the lack of foreign credits; if the government wanted to increase it this could be done only by larger and more valuable exports of Russian commodities. With the exception of oil and timber, the most important export goods were, however, agricultural raw materials and foodstuffs, both of which were urgently needed at home. And to export these goods, the government had first to buy them from the peasants who had to be induced by means of a favourable market policy to produce and to sell them. Thus it appears that in this critical stage of Russia’s industrial development further progress depended on the relations between the Soviet power and the peasants, and on the latter’s ability to increase their market production. The development of agriculture and the state of the NEP village was a vital factor for the progress of the first proletarian state.

II: The Changing Village

During the years 1925 to 1928 the natural factors determining the fate of Russian agriculture were, on the whole, quite favourable, and agricultural output increased fairly rapidly. Grain production reached its peak in 1926, and in the following year it suffered a slight setback. But the last NEP year, 1928, was marked by retrogressive tendencies which caused the government serious trouble. Nevertheless it may be said that grain production in general had progressed very well, having regained its normal prewar level only five years after the disastrous famine of 1921 and the introduction of the NEP.

Some branches of agriculture developed at a considerably quicker pace. This is partly true of the cultivation of technical crops which were mostly produced for the market and fetched good prices. [6]

Although the production, and still more the yields, of technical crops were at the end of the NEP still below the prewar level, the rate of increase definitely slackened towards the year 1928, and in some cases even setbacks could not be avoided. The development of cattle breeding, on the other hand, was definitely satisfactory: [7]

The combined result of these strong, if unevenly distributed, increases was, of course, the growth of agrarian gross production as a whole which very soon reached the prewar level and approximately remained on it until the end of the NEP period: [8]

It is important that the index of agricultural production was actually higher than that of industrial output up to the year 1926-27.

The slight setback in agricultural production after the year 1926-27 is prima facie evidence for the plausible assumption that in this field, not less than in industry, the prewar level was a natural barrier against future progress. This was only too true. The supply of arable land was used up by the attainment of the prewar sown area in crop cultivation. The average yields of agriculture had fallen owing to the destructive events of the agrarian revolution, and the expansion of agricultural output became particularly difficult at a time when it was particularly necessary. Colonisation of virgin land in Siberia would have been possible, but this was a slow and expensive process, and the government had neither the money to spend nor the time to wait for the results.

If the expansion of cultivated land was hardly practical politics, the existing supplies had to be used more economically. The very increase in population, which was estimated at not less than two and a half million people every year, demanded larger food supplies; the growth of industry increased the demand for agricultural raw materials, and the government required a large extraordinary fund of export produce in order to overcome the deadlock in industry by large-scale imports of machinery. Thus it was imperative to reorganise Russian agriculture so as to get higher yields.

But even if it is assumed that the peasants were quite willing to increase their market produce, how could they grow more without additional land, without better implements, and without much more agronomical knowledge than they actually possessed? Thus the dilemma of Soviet industry widened into a dilemma of Soviet economy as a whole. Industry needed agriculture in order to buy machinery for billions of roubles, whereas agriculture was physically incapable of rendering this service—and the peasants were besides morally unwilling to do so.

But the very urgency of the problem made the Communists definitely unwilling to accept a non possumus as final answer to their demands. Things could not go on in the old way for a long time without endangering the existence of the Soviet regime. If the NEP village was unable or unwilling to satisfy the vital needs of industry and the state, it had to be changed from top to bottom. Ten years after the October Revolution the Communists found themselves at grips with the ‘bourgeois’ character of the agrarian revolution which threatened their very existence.

According to NEP principles, the alliance between workers and peasants was based on the market. But the dilemma could not be solved within the framework of the NEP. The individualistic village was unable to effect the most elementary agrarian reforms which were fundamental for an increase in production. The Communists had been taught by Lenin that mechanisation was the best way of overcoming the backwardness of the Russian village. But mechanisation was impossible as long as every peasant cultivated his small plot individually.

Since time immemorial the Russian village consisted of a small community (Mir ) whose members divided the arable land among themselves in such a manner that each household received one strip of every kind of land. This distribution reduced the available land supply by innumerable small frontiers, and the resulting tiny plots could be cultivated only by the most primitive instruments, and were far too small for mechanised farming.

The technical offensive of the Soviets against the backwardness of the Russian village was not at first coupled with a big drive for the transformation of the agrarian organisation. The first Machine and Tractor Stations (MTS) tried to organise villages only for particular farming processes, ploughing, harvesting, etc, or for the mechanical processes of grain production for one season only. An educational policy of this kind, consistently pursued through many years and proving the success of mechanised large-scale farming by higher yields and higher incomes, would have been an ideal preparation for the reorganisation of agriculture, but when the first attempts in this direction were made towards the end of the NEP, it was actually already too late for such a policy.

The NEP was an excellent framework for the recovery of agriculture from the starvation level of War Communism to the conditions of 1913, but by 1927 it had become a rigid barrier which prevented the further growth of the productive forces. The continued existence of the Soviet power depended on its ability to overcome it. This truth was brought home to the Communists not only by abstract reasoning, but by practical necessity. It was only necessity which finally urged them into action, necessity in its coarsest and most brutal form—hunger.

Since the scissors crisis the peasants were able to wring important concessions from the government which had to grant higher agrarian prices and to reduce industrial prices, although conditions remained less favourable to the peasants than they had been before the war. Price relations were, however, only one of the factors influencing the position of the peasants on the NEP market. They were sure to find buyers for all their market produce, but very frequently they were unable to get manufactured goods in exchange. The scissors crisis taught the Soviet power the danger of balancing a large demand and a small supply by radical price increases of industrial goods. Prices had to be kept within certain limits, but it was after all impossible to increase supplies sufficiently to cope with demand. Thus the peasants retained large sums of money which they did not want, and asked for more industrial goods which they could not get. This ‘deficit’ cannot be ascertained by statistical methods, but it would seem that the official estimate of 250 million roubles annually was greatly on the low side. A ‘goods’ famine’ continued to exist, which was particularly severe in trades where the limits of industrial expansion were inelastic—for example, metals and cotton goods.

This goods famine was an intriguing phenomenon. The supply of industrial goods for the agrarian market was probably only very little, if at all, smaller than before the war. In view of the price conditions this supply ought to have been sufficient, on a superficial view, to absorb the rural demand created by the sale of agricultural products. This argument is further reinforced by the change in the market production of agricultural goods which was probably smaller than before the war. This was particularly, though not exclusively, true in the case of grain. The fall in the market supplies of grain was a natural but nevertheless a very disturbing factor in the economic life of the NEP period. It was a consequence of the increase in peasant consumption and of the destruction of large-scale farming through the revolution. [9]

Before the war Russia had been exporting about 600 million pood of grain a year, ten years later nothing remained for this purpose. Apart from that the food supplies of the towns were in an extremely unsafe state owing to the concentration of market production in middle and small farms, whose market supplies varied strongly according to the result of the harvest. The same picture of a strongly rising supply of agricultural goods since the years of War Communism, which was, nevertheless, insufficient to meet the demand of the town population and the state, may be gathered from the purchasing figures for technical crops, meat and milk products, etc. In view of the necessity of exporting large quantities of agricultural produce, the government had to use all the means at its disposal to stimulate the increase in rural market production. The most important method for this purpose was, of course, the increase in the supply of industrial goods for the village—but it was exactly this method which the government could no longer successfully apply after the prewar level had been reached by industry.

In spite of the fact that the supply of industrial goods for the village was probably as high as before the war, and in spite of the reduction in agricultural market production during these years, the peasants were left with a considerable money surplus, whereas before the war they normally had to grapple with a money deficit.

Before the war an appreciable part of the rural market production was not exchanged for goods but was needed for settling financial obligations, taxes, rent, interest, etc. These payments were partly abolished, partly greatly reduced by the revolution. The economic structure of Russian national economy was, however, still determined by its prewar development, and its balance still depended on the exploitation of the village; although the need for interest payments to foreign investors had been abolished, the even more pressing need for capital payments in exchange for foreign machinery, etc, arose very soon. The Soviet government was unable to recognise the economic consequences of the agrarian revolution which brought it into power.

The economic expression of this complicated social relationship was a twofold struggle of the government against the right of the peasants to expect a fair deal on the market. At first it simply tried to overcharge them according to the simple maxime of what the traffic can bear. This method had to be greatly modified after the scissors crisis which showed the readiness of the peasants to hit back with all their power. For this reason a more subtle and more successful method was adopted: the government tried to regulate the market itself by expelling the private traders and confronting the millions of small sellers by a monopolistic buying system. This way proved temporarily successful, but the very suppression of peasant interests and discontent prepared a violent outbreak between the Soviet power and the peasants. For the NEP itself was the dragon’s seed creating the most dangerous internal enemies which the Soviet power had to face, the kulaks .

Lenin’s prediction about the effects of free trade on the village were fulfilled even earlier than was to be expected. The peasant revolution was directed not only against noble landowners but also against kulaks , and was completely equalitarian in its tendency; the NEP had the very opposite effect. A new differentiation of the peasant mass ensued very quickly which left the middle peasants as the ‘central figure’ of the village, but created again the village poor and the kulak . The number of the poor increased by the ruin of smaller middle peasants, and the number of comparatively wealthy peasants—who were soon to be regarded as kulaks by the Soviet power—grew at an even quicker pace.

This fact was responsible for the reappearance of the movement from the villages to the towns which had been stopped by war and War Communism. There was a large potential surplus population in the Russian village which could not find sufficient work. But it was only under the spur of distress and ruin that peasants decided on leaving their villages. In spite of their quick growth the towns were unable to absorb these splinters of the disintegrating NEP village, and this was the reason for the unemployment problem of these years.

On the other end of the NEP village an upper layer of wealthier peasants re-established itself on the basis of differences in material conditions, above all the possession of tools and implements, in knowledge, skill, unscrupulousness and luck; the well-being of these kulaks grew with the golden opportunities of the NEP, and their influence over the village grew with their prosperity.

The kulaks maintained intimate relations with the market, and used its fluctuations in their interests. The other peasants, who wanted the same from the market as the kulaks, turned to them as their natural leaders in their economic relations with the towns. All of them wanted to sell dear and to buy cheap. The kulak knew, or was supposed to know, when to sell and when to refrain from selling, and it was his lead which the other peasants followed. In this manner the NEP itself created the basis and the leaders of a stubborn resistance against the attempts of the government to break the deadlock of Russia’s economic development at the expense of the peasants.

But market relations were only a part of rural economic life, and whereas the kulaks had the same interests as the rest of the peasants as traders of agrarian produce, they were at the same time the product of a division of the village itself into opposed groups. Their prosperity was achieved not only by clever market transactions, but first and foremost by their possession of more cattle, better implements and, frequently, larger fields than the other peasants. These possessions made the poorer members of their communities as a rule dependent on their good will, which was, however, only to be won by heavy payments. Thus the village which the kulaks were ‘leading’ at the end of the NEP had ceased to be an homogeneous organism and their ‘leadership’ further increased the existing internal tension. This process was, however, still in its initial stage; class struggle within the village certainly had its future, but the present belonged to the economic struggle of the peasant masses against the towns, as represented by the Soviet government. Economic interests and social tension made the ultimate struggle between the Soviet state and the village inevitable.

III: The Workers as an Agent of Production

Regarded not as a social class but as an agent of production, the fate of the working class during these years was pretty much the same as that of the mechanical apparatus of industry or that of the cultivated land. The New Economic Policy at first permitted spectacular successes in a very short space of time, consisting of considerable improvements in the material living conditions, increase in the number of employed workers, and rise in the productivity of labour; later on a slackening of the pace of advance was followed by an over-exertion of all forces which became increasingly less capable of coping with their growing tasks.

The first approximation to an appraisal of working-class conditions is, of course, the chart of money and of real wages: [10]

The impression of an uninterrupted increase in wages is not quite justified; there was a close connection between real wages and agrarian prices. After the harvest, when food was cheap, real wages rose and were maintained over the following spring in spite of rising food prices. This interesting connection was the guiding principle of Soviet wage policy, and its abandonment in 1926 was one of the most important single factors preparing the abolition of the NEP itself.

This was a remarkable form of the alliance between workers and peasants; every concession to the peasants had to be balanced by a concession to the workers or by a fall in their real wages. It was the disadvantage of this situation which was responsible for the change in Soviet market policy, and, partly, for the conflict with the peasants.

Real wages climbed to their prewar level hardly earlier than national economy as a whole. But the worker nevertheless received a far larger share in the national income under the new regime than he got before the war. Apart from his cash wages he was favoured by low rents or even, before 1925, by free dwelling accommodation which was, however, unsatisfactory; social insurance benefits and similar ‘socialised wages’ were said to amount to not less than one-third of the money wages. Probably the greatest material advantage for which the Russian workers were indebted to the revolution was the reduction in working hours. The eight-hour day as normal working day, the six-hour day for unhealthy and dangerous occupations, were great and permanent gains for the working class and the condition of further cultural advances. Factory inspection was by no means very efficient, but it was an unqualified progress in comparison with prewar conditions. The number of industrial accidents was rather high, for machinery was generally old, overworked and in a bad state of repair, and many workers were actually peasants only lately come from their villages who suffered from lack of education and technical understanding; even so grave and fatal accidents were far less numerous than they had been under the rule of capitalism. Even housing conditions, however disgraceful they appeared to Western observers, were not worse, and for many workers, indeed, far better than the caves and barracks of pre-revolutionary times.

Shorter hours, higher wages and better living conditions made a great physical improvement of the working class possible, but no other factor contributed so much to this end as the steady progress in nutrition: [11]

The average NEP worker had sufficient, though not abundant, food, he dressed probably not better but not worse than before the war, he lived in overcrowded dwellings which often were still better than before the war, and were in any case among the best which Soviet Russia had to offer to anybody; he was safe from starvation in case of illness, and, if he really was an industrial worker, he received insurance benefit during unemployment. However modest these material advantages may appear to the Western observer, their attainment was the result of extraordinary efforts under very unfavourable conditions, and they caused a moral and physical regeneration of the Russian working class. At the end of the NEP the workers had practically overcome the consequences of malnutrition and over-exertion during the ‘seven lean years’, 1914-21. Only the future was to show the size of the tasks to which the working class proved equal after these few years of comparative ease.

Simultaneously with the improvement in living conditions, the number of industrial workers increased after having reached its minimum in 1922. At first production could be expanded while many thousands were dismissed as superfluous. Later on, every increase in output required an increase in the number of workers until in this field, too, the prewar level was attained at the end of the NEP period.

The industrial working class suffered more from war and revolution than the other agents of production. Fallow land improves in quality, closed factories, though not immune from physical damage, suffer most from ‘moral depreciation’, but the loss is incomparably smaller than that endured by skilled labour under similar circumstances. Individual workers lose part of their qualifications by unemployment, and the working population as a whole suffers ‘natural’ depreciation by old age and death. At the beginning of the NEP the prewar stock of skilled labour was greatly reduced, but at first the volume of production was so small that many skilled workmen were unable for some time to find suitable employment.

During the whole NEP period there was no absolute shortage of industrial labourers or would-be workers, viz peasants who had left their villages and wanted to become workers. For this reason the labour market of these years is marked by the paradox of rising employment coupled with rising unemployment: [12]

At the same time an acute shortage of skilled workers was felt with increasing intensity. The labour problem of the NEP was not the temporary absorption in times of boom of the ‘industrial reserve army’, it was, on the one hand, the employment of millions of ruined and technically illiterate peasants in industry and, on the other hand, the shortage of skilled labour.

Neither the rising generation of industrial workers, whose training had been interrupted or prevented by war and revolution, nor the disintegration of handicraft produced a sufficient number of skilled workmen for industry. Apart from these objective causes, Communist policy must be accused of having made a difficult problem even more intractable. After the introduction of the NEP the Red Directors were permitted, or even ordered, to dismiss as many workmen as possible without reducing production. Naturally the workers with the lowest efficiency were dismissed first, and this applied particularly to the adolescent workers who were protected by generous legislation, but for this very reason expensive to keep. The percentage of workers under eighteen years of age which had been as high as 12.8 in 1918 fell to only 5.2 in 1922 and 5.5 in 1923. [13]

This practice artificially restricted the technical education of the rising generation which at that time could have been effected without disturbing the process of production. The shortage of skilled labour, which only a few years later was one of the major industrial problems, could not have been prevented but considerably alleviated by such a policy. The immoderate and complete subordination of all other considerations to the rule of the market, which was so typical of the earlier NEP, was not less injurious to the interests of the Soviet Union than the bureaucratic contempt for economic realities during War Communism. The sale of state property during the spring crisis 1922 is matched by this mismanagement of the delicate and important problem of skilled labour.

The third element determining the position of labour as a productive agent is its productivity. The attempts to raise the level of productivity lasted throughout the NEP and up to the present day. The methods were on principle still the same as those of earlier times. They may be divided into rewards for better work and higher efforts, and into measures for the enforcement of stricter discipline. The Central Committee of the Communist Party stated in its resolution of 17 August 1924, that all restrictions preventing the widest use of piecework should be abolished. The factory managers were ordered to enforce the full use of the eight-hour working day and to prosecute workers absenting themselves without sufficient reason from work.

These measures were at first completely successful, and their success was, indeed, too great. Piece rates were reduced so as to make the workers work harder for their normal wages, but at the same time they had to pay higher prices for their food because the government had been warned through the scissors crisis to turn ‘the face towards the village’. Between October 1924 and February 1925 real wages fell by 15 per cent, whereas the productivity of labour went up by 26.1 per cent. [14] The consequence was a serious conflict between the workers and the Soviet power, and a wave of illegal strikes in state industry as well as a large increase in the number of industrial disputes settled by arbitration.

These threatening signs were not lost on the ruling bureaucracy. Its leaders recognised that a dangerous ‘over-success’ had been won; during summer and autumn of 1925 demands on the workers were kept within moderate limits, wages were permitted to rise, and owing to the bountiful harvest food prices went down. Real wages reached a temporary peak, and for more than a year they could be maintained only at a lower level. After this breathing space the drive for higher productivity of labour set in again, although the trade unions complained that further increases could be obtained only at the expense of the health of the workers. Despite these protests the productivity (or intensity) of labour continued to increase, although up to 1927 at a slower tempo. Simultaneously, however, rose the accident figures in consequence of the constant speeding-up of production, the bad state of the machinery, the low quality of raw materials, the deterioration in the quality of the workers themselves owing to the influx of peasants from the villages, and finally the indifference of the management to the damage arising to lives and limbs of their workers.

In the following spring, 1926, the reduction in real wages owing to the seasonal increase in food prices again caused a minor crisis between the Communists and the workers. Although the workers were gravely dissatisfied with the fall in nominal and real wages, no strikes or demonstrations occurred. The government and the Communist Party had been surprised the year before, but they had learned their lesson and prevented the repetition of similar disturbances. But the unrest among the workers threatened to have other even more unfavourable consequences: the ‘left’ and the ‘united’ opposition which had been provisionally defeated within the Communist Party without much difficulty, appeared to get the backing of part of the trade unions and tried to act as spokesman for the disgruntled workers.

The government wanted to induce the workers to higher exertions without permitting them to retain the lion’s share in the larger output in form of higher wages; on the other hand, it could not permit the peasants to destroy this balance by raising food prices which had to be borne either by the workers in a reduction of their real wages or by national economy by a fall in industrial profits. The tense financial position and the increasingly urgent need for large capital construction ruled out a general increase in wages; the discontent of the workers made their reduction completely impossible. The government could only try to influence one of the factors contributing to this seasonal ‘spring tension’, the increase in agricultural prices. The level of agricultural prices was to be stabilised the whole year round at the lower level of post-harvest prices. This apparently simple and unimportant action of the government was, however, the straw which broke the camel’s back and occasioned the final breakdown of the NEP.

Meanwhile the problem of the productivity of labour was assuming a different aspect. During the earlier NEP years it had been the aim of the government to ease relations between the peasants and the Soviet power by keeping the prices of industrial goods as low as possible. The perfection of the NEP produced the goods famine which threatened to upset the social balance between town and country, and which was a much more intractable problem than the increase in the productivity of the individual worker. The expansion of industrial production was now hampered not only by the shortage of skilled and efficient labour, but also by the lack of sufficient plant. The principle of producing at the lowest possible cost had to be disregarded whenever it collided with the demand for increased production at any price.

In view of the difficulty of solving this problem radically by large capital investments in all branches of industry, the Soviet authorities tried at first to exhaust all temporary possibilities for expanding production within the existing mechanical framework. The simplest way was obviously the working of the existing machinery for longer hours. It was planned to abolish the weekly rest period of thirty-six hours by the introduction of Sunday work and the working in two or three daily shifts. Whatever the cost, the total of industrial goods was to be increased by letting the existing machinery work practically without interruption all the year round.

This new order was bound to have serious consequences for the working class. It included night work for women and children, and the general introduction of night work was particularly harmful in Russia where living accommodation was painfully inadequate. Another effect was the abolition of a common rest-day for the next few years, which was a very serious interference with the private and family life of practically every individual. On the other hand, there is no shirking the fact that the expansion of production was a vital problem which had to be solved in one way or another, and it must be further acknowledged that the Soviet power did its best to sweeten this pill by connecting the introduction of the seven-hour day with the abolition of a common rest-day and the introduction of general night work. The moment for proclaiming this measure, the eve of an important Party Congress, was certainly determined by political motives, but this does not reduce the value of this concession for the working class, which lost this achievement, however, in the dark days of 1940.

The first experience with the system of shorter hours and increased shifts was made already during 1928. For the time being, the most seriously overworked of all NEP industries, cotton weaving, was chosen for experimental purposes. Although conditions were very unfavourable, the result was satisfactory. The reduction of working hours very soon produced an increased productivity of labour, though not during the night shift. Very soon it was possible to work the plant for twenty-one hours with the same number of workers that had been required for sixteen hours before. The output of industry increased, and the workers gained one leisure hour daily, though at considerable inconvenience in other directions, and at the cost of excessive depreciation of machinery.

However, the incontestable resourcefulness of the Russian dictatorship could do no more than delay the moment when all resources of NEP Russia were exhausted. This was particularly true for the problem of labour supply. The number of skilled workers was actually falling while industrial production was increased as quickly as possible. How could the lack of artisans, foremen, masters and technicians be overcome? New cadres of skilled workers could be trained only by the sustained efforts of many years, with great expenses of money and energy. The lack of suitable skilled workers was not only an acute present-day problem which made the expansion of production increasingly difficult from week to week; in this sphere the outlines of an historical impasse could be traced which was bound to be of permanent importance for the Soviet regime.

Chapter XIV: Between the Classes

I: The Zigzag Course Towards the Peasants

The social forces unchained by the NEP drove the Soviet village into a clearly defined direction—to the disintegration of the primitive equality of the members of the Mir by the effects of money power and the market. The attitude of the government towards this socially undesirable and politically dangerous process was ambiguous and wavering. The NEP, the ultimate reason for the disintegration of the village and the rise of the kulak class, was also the basis of the spectacular recovery of national economy in general and ‘Socialist’ industry in particular. Was it feasible to curb these consequences of the NEP without endangering the whole system of the smychka ? Was it possible to strike at the kulaks without endangering the vitally important supply of agricultural produce?

This practical question was for some years answered in the negative by the Soviet government. If the government wanted to increase market production of agricultural goods within the framework of the NEP it could not fight the kulaks .

At the same time, the social and economic interests of the kulaks , alone of all agrarian classes, were in the long run clearly opposed to those of the Soviet power. Though their growing power over the village may have produced a temporary improvement in market production, at their own terms, it was bound to endanger the smychka from a different angle, by the resurrection of an exploiting class. Thus the Communists found themselves on the horns of an awkward dilemma, and unfortunately they chose in the end the worst of both worlds.

After having made considerable concessions, the government found itself in 1926 faced by the fact that the workers were gravely disturbed by the rise in food prices which the peasants desired. The interests of the peasants as sellers conflicted with those of the workers and the government as buyers.

Nevertheless the Communists acted during a considerable stretch of time on the assumption that the NEP was a serious long-term policy the unfavourable consequences of which had to be accepted together with its more desirable results. Wherever the interests of the more prosperous peasants did not directly clash with those of the towns and, particularly, the workers, the government supported them by its legislation and administration. The agrarian law of 1922 had been unfavourable to the growth of such a prosperous upper layer in the village, particularly by discouraging the renting of additional land and the employment of labourers. After the scissors crisis the government, in pursuance of its new slogan ‘the face towards the village’, relaxed these restrictions. In 1925 it was made legal to rent land for a maximum period of twelve (instead of six) years; under the NEP the ‘landlords’ were small peasants unable to cultivate their plots of land, and the ‘tenants’ were prosperous farmers on the look-out for opportunities to increase their land holdings. In 1924 the ‘landlord’ had an average sown area of 2.9 dessiatines in comparison with 8.0 dessiatines for their ‘tenants’, whose livestock was on an average seven times as large as that of their ‘landlords’. [15] The Provisional Decree of 22 April 1925 went a step further and permitted the employment of labourers by private peasants as a normal institution. It was thought impossible to enforce the eight-hour day, and the regulation of hours was left to agreements between master and servant. The number of agricultural labourers was not exactly known, but in all probability it was not much lower than before the war. Only a comparatively small part was employed by state and collective farms, and perhaps as many as a million and a half worked for private farmers.

Thus the government had a large share in promoting the growing power of the kulaks over the Soviet village. The increase in agricultural production was considered as essential for the further development of national economy, and this consideration was strong enough to overrule all doubts created by the growth of the kulaks . Although Bukharin’s notorious ‘enrichissez vous ’ to the peasants (1925) was officially censured by Stalin, it was the true slogan of these years.

It would be unfair to overlook the attempts made by the government to prepare for the reorganisation of the agrarian system. Already during these years the Communists, in spite of the lack of funds, tried to furnish modern agricultural machinery. The symbol and the most important instrument of technical reorganisation was the tractor, during the NEP not yet produced in Soviet Russia but imported from abroad, particularly from the United States. Although the first idea of the famous Machine and Tractor Stations was developed during this period, a fundamental reorganisation of agriculture was, of course, impossible without a complete transformation of the NEP village which was essentially a social and political problem.

Up to 1928 this problem was consistently ridiculed and shelved by the Soviet power. It may well be said that the government simply could not do more than buy a few thousand tractors and organise a number of scientific agronomic stations because it did not dispose of the necessary means. This obvious explanation is, however, contradicted by the fact that at last the government was compelled by the force of events to embark on this experiment under much more difficult and dangerous conditions than those of 1926 or 1927. And it is particularly true that these difficulties and dangers were largely, though not completely, a consequence of the official policy itself which refrained from curbing the power of the kulaks while there was still time to do so.

The reversal of this conciliatory policy was a consequence of its failure in the sphere of market relations with the peasants which was of crucial importance during this period. After the scissors crisis the government encouraged the doubling of agrarian prices within a few months, and the bad harvest of 1924 caused a new advance. In spite of the serious trouble occasioned partly by this development in the relations between the workers and the Soviet power, the latter did not feel strong enough to take action and, even after the excellent harvest of 1925, food prices soared again in the spring of the following year. The reasons responsible for this untoward development were clearly recognised by the leading Soviet statesmen as early as 1925, and correctly described by Stalin:

In its fight against soaring prices, in its endeavour to stabilise wages, the state is forced to take measures of an economic character… The kulaks respond by buying up the harvest of the middle and poor peasants… They do not, forthwith, send these goods to market, for they know that the ‘corner’ they thus establish will lead to an artificial rise in prices, and that large profits will accrue to the successful speculator. [16]

In the autumn of 1926 the Soviet power thought itself strong enough to strike a blow. The relations of power between the Soviets and the peasants seemed to have changed, and nobody was readier than the Soviet bureaucracy to draw the most extreme conclusions from changed relations of power.

But this change in policy had unforeseen results: the grain market needed just a shock of this kind to become gravely disorganised. The disproportion between the purchasing power of the peasants and the supplies of industrial goods restricted agricultural market production as a whole and made it very sensitive to price changes; the peasants sold only those goods which fetched particularly high prices and kept those which were less highly valued by the market—or by the government. The government’s desire to keep bread as cheap as possible was, therefore, a powerful check on the supply of grain, which fluctuated violently from year to year with the result of the harvest because it consisted of the surplus of millions of small farms over their domestic requirements. Apart from that, the small peasants could get the money they needed for buying the few things they could get on the market by selling flax, tobacco, cotton, vegetables and fruit, etc.

Speculation in grain had been a ‘legitimate’ business of the kulaks as long as this class existed. Although they furnished during the NEP only one-fifth of the total market grain, it was their most important market product. The larger the sown area, the greater the importance of grain sales which, in farms with more than ten dessiatines of sown area, constituted approximately one-half of total sales on the market. Thus the kulaks were particularly interested in grain production and grain prices and the other peasants regarded them as specialists and natural models in the vital question of when to sell. The effect of the united speculative action of kulaks and grain traders was a strong seasonal increase in grain prices during the spring when the outcome of the next harvest was still in the balance: [17]

The first action of the government was the virtual suppression of private grain trading in the course of the summer of 1926, which secured a monopoly for the public grain purchasing agencies. These were ordered not to buy at higher prices than those prescribed by the authorities, and the kulaks , who had refrained from selling in the autumn, were squeezed out of their holdings during the following spring without any extra profit whatsoever. Between October 1926 and March 1927 wholesale prices rose by not more than two per cent and the Soviet authorities scored a complete success over speculators and profiteers without violating the NEP laws. By stabilising food prices they had taken an important step for the stabilisation of wages and they were apparently justified in looking forward to a successful new grain purchasing campaign. The harvest of 1927 was certainly not quite up to the mark of the previous year or two but the domination of grain trade by public agencies was bound to bring good results. Actually things took a different turn. Suddenly and without grain reserves worth mentioning the Soviet power was faced by a situation which has been aptly described as ‘bread front’. The meaning of this term was explained in July 1928 by Stalin:

What was the situation on 1 January of this year? … There was a deficit of 128 million pood grain as compared with last year… what had to be done in order to make up the lost ground? It was necessary first of all to strike hard at the kulaks and speculators… Secondly it was necessary to pour the maximum amount of goods into the grain purchasing regions… The measures adopted were effective, and by the end of March we had collected 275 million poods of grain… From April to June we were unable even to collect 100 million ponds… Hence the second relapse to emergency measures, administrative arbitrariness, violation of revolutionary laws, raids on peasant houses, illegal searches, and so forth, which affected the political conditions of the country and created a menace to the smychka between the workers and the peasants. [18]

The final result was that grain collections in 1927-28 fell from 11 319 000 tons to 9 705 000 tons. [19] The policy of laissez-faire in the village and of benevolent neutrality towards the kulaks as producers had landed the Soviet power in a first-class crisis. For it was the social policy of the government which had permitted the kulaks to become powerful enough to challenge the Soviet power.

The kulaks did not expect active support by the government; they only wanted to be left alone, not to have to pay ruinous taxes, not to be prevented by legal quibbles from expanding their farms, not to be controlled too strictly in their dealings with the market and the poor peasants. And this was exactly what they got from the government, in spite of serious misgivings within the Communist Party, for some years. Stalin said in 1925:

It is strange! We introduced the NEP knowing perfectly well that this involved the reinvigoration of capitalism, the reinvigoration of the kulaks… Yet directly the kulaks so much as poke their noses round the corner, many of the comrades turn pale with fear and shout: ‘Help! Murder! Police!’ So pitiable is their panic that they quite forget the middle peasants. Nevertheless our main task in the villages at the present moment is to detach the middle peasants from the kulaks , to isolate the kulaks by entering into a firm alliance with the middle peasants. [20]

These arguments are far from flawless but there is in any case no doubt of the fact that the policy described so forcefully by Stalin himself after three years of entering into a firm alliance with the middle peasants was bound to throw them back into the arms of the kulaks .

The Soviet power simply declined to consider the ultimate results of its expedient policy and allayed its theoretical conscience and the restive opposition within the Communist Party by carefully balanced half-truths which were worse than false. In the end the accumulated and neglected tension within the village and between the village and the towns produced an acute crisis which shook the whole structure of Soviet society and which could be fought only by ruthless methods and at a terrible cost in human and material values.

The ultimate outbreak, though specially connected with the market policy of the government, was bound to come with the attainment of the prewar level after the year 1927 which was the latest possible moment for starting with a policy of agrarian reorganisation. Even so the delay of this task for two or three precious years involved its execution in the struggle against the kulaks and thereby increased its difficulties and reduced its beneficial results.

This interaction of technical and social-political tension transformed the agrarian crisis into a crisis of the Soviet regime as a whole. The mistaken policy of government concessions was replaced by a draconic regime which broke not only the power of the kulaks but very nearly wrecked the whole Soviet regime. The government had started by using the NEP as a breathing space to restore the strength of the organism of post-revolutionary Russia; it had found this time so pleasant that it postponed agrarian reorganisation to a distant future when industry would be strong enough to help agriculture to overcome its traditional backwardness and finally it found itself in a situation where industry could be reconstructed only with the help of agriculture while agriculture could be reorganised only with the help of industry, and was besides quickly passing under the rule of anti-Soviet forces.

The Soviet power had failed to win the peasants by a policy of large (and temporarily inevitable) concessions; it continued this policy even when its effects were contrary to its intentions (1926-27) and involuntarily strengthened its future enemies. The ensuing struggle had some features in common with the events of 1920-21, but this time it was not the result of uncontrollable circumstances but the outcome of a wrong agrarian policy. In spite of tenacious and sincere efforts, the Soviet power could not win the friendship of the individualistic village; it found sympathy only with the village poor, but suspicion with the middle peasant and open hostility on the part of the kulaks .

II: The Destruction of the NEP-Man

The NEP left the structure of urban economy largely unchanged but it had a deep influence on its methods and the outlook of its leaders. The anticipation of the Communists that it would be sufficient for the maintenance of their regime to occupy the ‘commanding heights’ of urban economy was completely borne out by events. The principle of public ownership and state direction of economy made steady headway. The lion’s share in the net product of Russian industry and trade was taken by the state and not by private capitalists. The state centralised the resources of Russian society and used them, according to the principles of Communist economic policy, in a more or less planned manner for the reconstruction of industry.

This was at least the theory; in practice private traders made huge profits and since the scissors crisis it was an important aim of Communist economic policy to eliminate the dangerous and expensive NEP bourgeoisie. This struggle ended, of course, with the complete victory of the state which had, however, to apply administrative pressure against its stubborn opponents who withstood all economic attacks. In wholesale trade the importance of the NEP-men was quickly destroyed. Their share in the total turnover fell from 9.3 per cent in 1924-25 to a bare 1.5 per cent at the end of the NEP [21] and state industry was freed from the last traces of dependence on private middle-men.

The removal of private businessmen from retail trade was much more important but not less difficult than necessary. The experience of the scissors crisis taught the government that the control of retail trade was at least as important as that of wholesale prices. During the next few years official policy was, at least in intention, deflationary, particularly in the sphere of industrial prices. But in spite of their theoretical soundness the practical results of these efforts were disappointing, and the most important reason for this failure was the strong position of private business in retail trade. The government compelled state industry to reduce selling prices and in view of rising turnover and falling costs during the years 1924-26 this was feasible in spite of the demands of ‘commercial management’. But this reduction in wholesale prices was only rarely transmitted to the ultimate consumer and mostly served to swell the profits of private traders. In the Trotskyist criticism of official economic policy the ‘billion’ alleged to have disappeared on the way between producer and consumer played a prominent part—and not without justification. Owing to the absence of effective competition the private traders formed a ‘natural cartel’. It was especially effective because price reductions had been ordered particularly to please the peasants; peasant trade being almost completely in private hands, the peasants had not much chance of benefiting by the benevolent intentions of the government.

But this development on top of the scissors crisis moved the Soviet power to energetic actions against private trade and a drive for its liquidation was initiated. Nevertheless, and in spite of ruthless extraordinary measures, at the beginning of the Five-Year Plan private trade was far from being suppressed and was still responsible for more than a quarter of the whole retail turnover. Its share in this turnover had constantly declined from 42.6 per cent in 1924-25 to 27.0 per cent in 1927-28, [22] but it was obviously fulfilling a necessary function in Soviet economy.

This surprising power of resistance was not a consequence of its competitive prices; on the contrary, it charged on the average ten or fifteen per cent more than public trade. It could continue in business only owing to the widespread lack of goods because the private trader succeeded in a more or less miraculous manner in getting hold of commodities which could not be bought in cooperative stores. This explains the complete indifference of private trade to price reductions in public trade which were actually an invitation to the private trader to increase his prices!

Soviet commercial policy restored to the NEP-man in profits the largest part of the losses inflicted on him by Soviet fiscal policy. Private trade was obviously invincible by economic measures within the framework of the NEP. Consequently the NEP was practically abolished as far as private trade was concerned. Capitalism, disregarding all dangers in quest of profits, broke through all market regulations with elemental force and could not be bound by economic fetters. It had, therefore, either to be ruined by excessive taxation and arbitrary fines or crushed by administration and police without any legal cover.

The government had to apply these extraordinary and dangerous measures at all critical periods. In the year of Communist reaction, 1924, it fought the NEP-man with the weapon of compulsory loans hoping to kill two birds with one stone, to curb private trade and to improve the financial situation of the country. But after some months it was understood that the participation of private business in retail trade was still necessary. In the beginning of 1925 the compulsory contribution to state loans was discontinued and a spokesman of the Supreme Economic Council told the NEP-men that they had a legitimate part to perform within the framework of Soviet economy. Towards the end of the NEP the increasing social and financial tension intensified the official struggle against private traders. They were doomed to complete destruction and it was only a question of time before they would be completely ousted from Soviet life.

During the last years of the NEP the government adopted also a new policy towards private industry and handicraft. The rise of state industry reduced the comparative weight of small-scale production and made it completely dependent on state economy, and the hundreds of thousands of handicraftsmen were in their economic character simply outworkers for the economic authorities of the state. They had to be controlled and for this reason they were collected into so-called cooperative societies. This process was encouraged by the government and individual handicraftsmen were practically compelled to join. Private businessmen exploiting these cooperative societies for their own ends were weeded out and handicraft was made for all intents and purposes a part of the state economic system.

As far as urban economy was concerned, the Communists were completely justified in regarding the NEP as a strategic retreat, a step back in order to make a leap forward. The attacks of private capital on the commanding heights of state economy—industry and trade, transport and finance—had been repelled and the NEP-man was dislodged in stubborn struggle from the positions which he had managed to occupy in the first moments of confusion and despondency. Only in retail trade was he able to continue his existence in the interstices of Soviet society—although in a less harmless manner than Epicure’s gods. But this position was not strong enough to win Russia back for capitalism or even to guarantee the continued existence of private business, although it was a thorn in the flesh for the Soviet power.

It is another symptom indicating the fundamentally progressive tendency of Soviet development during the following years that the convulsions of the period of reconstruction destroyed private capital as a social force and, indeed, as a social phenomenon in Russia.

III: The Workers in the NEP State

During the whole NEP period, from 1921 to 1928, the Soviet power was using all the means at its disposal to repair the havoc wrought by the social catastrophes of the years 1914-21. These tasks were very important in themselves, yet they must be regarded as a simple routine job, as an imitation of an already known historical process and a movement on paved paths, when they are compared to the tremendous difficulties awaiting the Communists later on. This routine character of their tasks contributed to the gravest mistake committed by the Soviet government during these years, the bureaucratic oversight of the moment when the material basis of its policy underwent a gradual but complete transformation.

The backwardness of Russia’s social and economic development, the predominant position of an individualistic peasantry and the need for reconstruction of the devastated areas were hard facts which determined the course of events during these years of ‘rehabilitation’. This does not mean that the relations between the workers and the Soviet power were only of secondary importance for Russia’s social history; but as long as the reconstruction of industry and the reorganisation of agriculture demanded the undivided attention of the best elements of the Russian people, these relations were only the shadow, a kind of secret history of Russia’s social development.

The Bolsheviks were firmly convinced of their position as the ‘vanguard’ of the working class, and not even their transformation into the bureaucratic backbone of a bureaucratic Soviet state changed their intellectual outlook and their will to do their best for the realisation of their Socialist ideals, but it changed the simple, and in the long run decisive, principle that the construction of a Socialist state must depend on the democratic self-determination of the workers. At the same time the material interests of the bureaucratic dictatorship pushed it into a definitely progressive direction. It was in its interests to suppress attempts of the old ruling classes to restore their rule, it was further in its interests to reconstruct the social and economic system on a new and stable basis and for this purpose a numerous, better educated and well contented working class was absolutely essential. The very fact that its rule was based on the overthrow of capitalism compelled the Soviet government to grapple with and overcome the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system. Nevertheless this attempt did not automatically lead to Socialism. The conflict between the essentially social character of modern economy and the rule of capital, the ‘anarchy’ of the capitalist economic system, may be replaced by another system which has centralised control or even ownership of capital in the hands of a central authority without subjecting the actions of this authority to the democratically expressed will of the people. Whether it is possible or not to establish a stable system in this manner, it certainly is possible to establish it. In this case it is merely a question of fact (or time), whether society will be ruled by a bureaucracy pursuing a policy of enlightened absolutism in the interests of the people or whether it will be the victim of a bureaucracy pursuing simply an egoistic policy in the interests of its own power and material advantage.

The formation of the bureaucratic Soviet state may have had good reasons and may have been inevitable in a country like Russia and under the conditions of War Communism; the fact remains that this power exerted a strong and, in the long run, dangerous influence on the fate of Soviet Russia. During the period of the NEP, however, the bureaucracy was certainly an absolutist organism whose policy was determined by its internal conditions and the relations between its leading members, but neither its policy nor its interests were in fundamental points opposed to those of the working class.

This does not mean, of course, that there were no differences of policy and no friction between the government and the workers. After the scissors crisis the interests of the peasants had to be considered to a certain degree and the rise in food prices was a periodical source of working-class discontent, wages increased very slowly because the need for capital construction became very pressing towards the end of the NEP, the intensity of labour increased and the management urged the workers to constantly rising exertions. This was particularly true towards the end of the rehabilitation period when Sunday was abolished as a rest-day and night work became a common feature for adults, women and youths alike. On the other hand it must be acknowledged that the seven-hour day and the five-day week were considerable improvements which were gladly accepted as such by the workers; had they lasted—and both have meanwhile been abolished—they would have more than counterbalanced the temporary inconvenience suffered by the working class.

It was an interesting feature of those years that even the failures of Soviet policy served to improve relations between the government and the workers. This is particularly true for Soviet agrarian policy. When the inadequacy of this policy bore fruit in the ‘danger of famine in the country’ (Stalin), the workers could be easily persuaded that the difficulty was simply the attack of a hostile class on ‘their’ government and, indeed, on themselves. The common danger was a strong bond of unity and in the following struggle the workers were, of course, wholeheartedly on the side of the government against the peasants and particularly the kulaks , although the whole crisis had been the result of an inefficient and dangerous treatment of one of the most vital problems of the time.

In the meantime, the ruling bureaucracy completed its development as an independent social power. In all questions concerning its own interests its policy was determined by the relations of power within the party caucus. The role of the working class in this process was essentially that of the chorus in Greek tragedies—it had not the slightest influence on the course of events and was only permitted to comment upon it. Only its intervention came at a different moment: it did not wait until after the event but was induced to exert a formal initiative, which was clearly inspired from above, by resolutions, letters to Pravda , and similar ‘spontaneous’ actions.

The care for the material interests of the workers remained in the hands of the trade unions under Tomsky’s leadership. During the early NEP, it will be remembered, the work of the unions had been energetic and successful; during the rehabilitation period, however, they again degenerated into mere bureaucratic machines regarding their own existence as sufficient justification for the enormous outlay which their upkeep required. During the later NEP the balance between the interests of national economy, the peasants and the workers was the aim of Soviet social policy and the work of the unions was subordinated to this aim. They were ordered to ease the work of the economic authorities by contributing to this policy the willing cooperation of the workers, who had to be induced to work harder and to be more modest in their demands for higher wages.

When the workers struck in masses during the spring of 1925, the unions were morally and organisationally unprepared to cope with the situation. The leaders of the Communist Party were gravely dissatisfied with their failure and ordered a vigorous campaign against inefficiency and corruption within the trade union movement. The first object of this campaign was the notorious ‘Triangle’, a local combination of the exponents of the Soviet power against the workers. The Triangle consisted of the ‘Red Director’, the secretary of the Communist ‘cell’ and the secretary of the factory committee of the trade union branch in the enterprise. The Red Director proposed concrete measures in accordance with orders from above, the cell secretary controlled them and requested sometimes their change if they seemed to deviate from the general line of party policy, and the trade union secretary usually had to consent and to look after the moving of resolutions which were unanimously adopted by the workers. The essential task of the Triangle was the ‘fight for a high productivity of labour’ which was practically identical with more work for the same wages.

When this unnatural alliance began to defeat its own ends by creating widespread working-class discontent, the authorities intervened. Already at a Miners’ Conference (April 1925) delegates complained that the workers’ representatives in mixed Commissions simply adopted the point of view of the management without protecting the workers. During the following month similar complaints were uttered by the Metal Workers’ Union and in July 1925 the All-Russian Central Committee of the Trade Unions under Tomsky’s leadership reproved the growth of bureaucracy in the factory committees, demanded free elections and free criticism by the workers and warned workers’ representatives in mixed commissions not to agree to reductions in piece rates which would occasion a reduction in wages. This official campaign was no less officially endorsed by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which prohibited the petty interference in union business by party officials (October 1925).

The question reappeared in December 1925 on the agenda of the Fourteenth Congress of the Communist Party. Here an excellent recipe for eating the cake and having it was worked out—the restoration of trade union democracy ‘below’ combined with the maintenance of bureaucratic absolutism ‘above’. This unrealistic and bureaucratic treatment of an almost hopeless problem was, of course, completely in vain. At the very next session of the Central Committee of the trade unions, February 1926, it appeared that the democratically elected representatives of the workers were simply deposed by higher officials; the uncontrolled elections did not give the workers an opportunity of choosing their own representatives but removed only the last check on the autocracy of local pashas who were now able to do completely what they liked. Tomsky told the next conference of the Communist Party that the struggle against the Triangle had been successful; now the union officials refrained from openly supporting the management, but they remained ‘neutral’ in the quarrel between workers and management about piece rates and working conditions. They were indeed in a sad dilemma: they could not support the management without offending their Central Committee and they could not support the workers without violating the ‘general line’ ordering an increase in the productivity of labour at all costs.

Trade union organisation was hardly better than trade union policy, while its numerical strength increased with the number of wage-earners. It was officially alleged that the unions used their funds not for the protection of the workers but for paying their staffs and amassing bank balances. [23] Thefts and fraud by union officials increased at an alarming rate and the union leaders had to take stricter measures of control from above because democratic control from below was, naturally, non-existent. But all these measures could not transform the unions into living organisms; their growing mechanical tasks, on the contrary, demanded a growing administrative system which under the circumstances was identical with further increases in union bureaucracy. Already in 1926 the basis of this bureaucracy consisting of the fully-paid members of factory committees was extraordinarily large and comprised not less than 28 000 people! [24]

On the credit side of this development only one valuable and important discovery in working-class organisation is due to this attempt of the unions to win the support of the workers for higher efforts—the production conference. This method of interesting the workers in the problems of their factories was a happy application of the ‘instinct of workmanship’ to the difficult problems of Soviet industry. On the other hand, its effects were strictly limited by the existence of numerous delicate and forbidden questions which could not be discussed by the workers for fear of dangerous consequences. These limits were insurmountable under a bureaucratic dictatorship and freedom of speech remained even then an unattainable ideal for the workers, although they were not yet completely used to its absence.

Chapter XV: At the Cross Ways

I: Between Rehabilitation and Reconstruction

During the economic year 1925-26 industry and agriculture were running with the maximum of efficiency attainable with their old instruments of production, although the output of industry was still considerably below prewar level. The difference in actual output between 1913 and 1926 was a natural consequence of the strong depreciation suffered by the economic system of the country which was only partly, if at all, made good by the installation of modern machinery in some branches of industry as, for example, the production of electrical current. With the existing means of production, output could be increased only by more intensive work and by over-exertion of machinery.

These hard facts put the problem of a new economic policy on the order of the day. Even in 1925-26 it had become very urgent because reserves in productive capacity were being reduced from month to month with the prospect of rapidly increasing future difficulties. Nevertheless things went on as before for two more years, plans were designed and rejected and the new policy was inaugurated only towards the end of 1928, when the crisis had already become very acute indeed.

This surprising and dangerous delay was not due to lack of understanding by the leaders of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, this problem was practically the leitmotif for countless speeches by the best-known men within the country. Although Trotsky’s voice was by no means that of the rulers of the Soviet Union, his words were heard by everybody and particularly by his opponents. Already during 1925 he treated this problem, not as a startling discovery of his own but simply as a well-known and recognised fact:

During the coming financial year (October 1925–September 1926) when the basic capital inherited from the bourgeoisie will be working at full capacity, we shall commence extensive operations in the renewal of basic capital… In the future we shall have to create new basic capital. This constitutes the fundamental difference between the coming economic period and that which is now passing. [25]

Nevertheless capital expenditure during the next three years was, according to later official explanations, hardly sufficient to cover actual depreciation. The same view was expounded by one of the most distinguished opponents of Trotsky, the President of the Supreme Economic Council, Felix Dzerzhinsky, who said in December 1925, not long before his sudden death:

Can we propose an increase in wages? Let me tell you frankly, Comrades, that we cannot. We must not hide from the working class that it is an impossibility. Why? Because we must deal with the fundamental problem, the problem on which our very existence depends: the renewal of capital. [26]

Exactly a year later, the Seventh Trade Union Congress was told by Dzerzhinsky’s successor, Kuibyishev:

The old equipment is almost entirely used up. We no longer possess the resources which allowed us to increase production in 1925-26. We must create something new, or reorganise the work and make other efforts in order to increase production. [27]

This random selection could be increased by utterances of practically all leading Soviet economists. All the experts were unanimous in this question, whatever their political allegiance may have been. Yet nothing happened for two or three fateful years, although time was more precious than anything else.

This crucial importance of the time factor is emphasised by the course of events in the country. The economic year 1925-26 was the last NEP year to witness rapid progress in industry and agriculture. The latter marked time during the following two years but grain supplies for the towns and the state suffered a sharp setback. The obstacles to a revision of the agrarian policy grew with the duration of the delay; the enemies of the Soviet power became more powerful, its own position in the village became increasingly weaker. This fact is a complete refutation of Stalin’s plea that the Communists ‘gathered strength’ during these years; actually they were incomparably weaker in 1928 than in 1926 as far as the resistance against the kulaks was concerned.

Actually the behaviour of the Soviet power cannot be understood as a policy, as the planned direction and control of elemental economic forces by the state which influenced and ruled them according to its Socialist aims; but if incomprehensible as a rational policy, the actions and omissions of the Soviet government are perfectly clear as the behaviour of a bureaucratic organisation. The NEP had been very successful in its time; the economic recovery of the country made splendid headway, wages, though not very high, were still on the upgrade and the cultural rise of the workers could be seen by all observers. The recovery of the countryside was complete and the village prospered, though modestly, yet as a whole satisfactorily.

The rulers of the country were sincerely—partly with good reason—convinced that these desirable events were an effect of their policy and that its continuation would bring even greater successes. They could not completely overlook the insufficiency of the productive apparatus of the country for the growing needs of its inhabitants but they hoped to enlarge it gradually and without fundamental changes of any kind. In the philippics of the opposition they saw hardly more than demagogic phrases, for they were fully aware of the superiority of their repressive system to any danger which might threaten from the kulaks .

This attitude explains the surprising inconsistency in the official explanation of fundamental economic problems. At the end of 1926 the termination of the period of rehabilitation was shouted from all house-tops and the dawn of the new era of reconstruction was pompously announced. However, reconstruction somehow did not get under way during the following two years. Capital expenditure increased but the principles of economic policy remained unchanged. The official and semi-official interpreters of the First Five-Year Plan, as, for instance, the—meanwhile ‘liquidated’—People’s Commissar of Finances, G Grinko, later on extended the duration of the NEP by fully two years. 1927-28 was ‘the year in which the rehabilitation period was practically completed’. [28] This inconsistency is shown already by the fact that as early as 1925 a first sketch of an economic plan had been designed by the authorities which was rejected by the Central Committee of the Communist Party as a consequence of cogent Trotskyist criticism.

If the Soviet government, in full knowledge of the problems involved, chose to continue the New Economic Policy, this was probably due to the dangers connected with a radical change. The Russian people would probably have been spared many of the sufferings of the following years if the government had adopted a different policy as early as 1925 or 1926—but even in this case the difficulties would have been very great indeed. The Soviet bureaucracy declined to arouse these difficulties instead of letting sleeping dogs lie as long as they chose to do so. This attitude, however natural and human it may have been, was nonetheless wrong and dangerous. Only a few years later the bureaucracy found itself in a cul de sac and had to run its head through the wall in order to extricate itself.

In a bureaucratic absolutist state all problems and all changes come with surprising suddenness. Classes with conflicting interests are not permitted to quarrel in the broad light of day; thus numerous small difficulties are avoided at the expense of a few first-rate crises. It may be easier to govern by dictatorial methods than by democratic principles, but it is decidedly more dangerous. The leaders of the Soviet power had lost the precious gift of foresight. This was the direct consequence of the political weakness of the working class whose far-sightedness was simply a consequence of its readiness to change the existing world; the Soviet bureaucracy, on the other hand, was well satisfied with the present, and the future was by no means seductive enough to justify the sudden reversal of a proved and trusted policy the essence of which was the maintenance of the status quo .

The bureaucracy was afraid to leap into the dark, to face the undeniable dangers of a daring industrial policy and the grave agrarian problems. This fear was overcome only by the emergency caused by the intensification of class warfare during the last two years of the NEP period which ended with the bread war against the peasants.

II: Stalinism Versus Trotskyism

The struggle of these two tendencies within the bureaucratised Communist Party is an interesting part of Russia’s social history which can be understood only against the social background of these years and was itself a factor of considerable influence on the future fate of the country. The disappearance of the acknowledged party leader by illness and, later on, by death was bound to lead to a struggle for power; within the bureaucratic party machine factional struggles were inevitable after the disappearance of the figure occupying the point of strategic vantage within the whole structure. Lenin, the beau-ideal of an unbureaucratic leader and prime minister, had done more than anybody else, including even Trotsky, to strengthen the bureaucracy. Yet this struggle for his succession had not only organisational reasons.

The first skirmish to precede the general fray was the clever campaign to discredit Trotsky as enemy of Lenin and representative of the theory of permanent revolution. This interesting and important idea was easily overcome by the slogan ‘Socialism in One Country’ represented by the ‘Troika’ (Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin). Trotsky’s theory certainly suffered from serious defects and its abstract form made it easy to arrive at erroneous and, indeed, at grotesque conclusions. The injustice of these conclusions was, however, demonstrated by the fact that the ‘defeatist’ and defeated Trotskyist opposition demanded a quicker pace of industrialisation and agrarian reorganisation.

Partly as a means for quick industrialisation by ‘original Socialist accumulation’, partly as a measure of self-defence for the Soviet regime, Trotsky and his friends demanded energetic action against the kulaks and against the disintegration of the Soviet village.

These cardinal planks of the Trotskyist platform were clearly rejected by the majority of the Communist Party, although they were destined to be the basis of the future policy pursued by the same party majority. They were indeed essential parts of economic reconstruction and Trotsky’s arguments are today in the main to be accepted as valid. Other parts of his social and economic programme were much weaker. This is particularly true of the demand for quick and extensive wage increases which was clearly utopian. The financial plans of the opposition were partly vitiated by this weakness, otherwise they were probably sound but not energetic enough. While it may have been hardly possible at such an early stage of development to give an exact forecast of financial problems of this magnitude, the party majority may well have been antagonised by the undue optimism of these proposals.

The soundness of Trotsky’s main points of criticism cannot be denied by the impartial observer. Apart from that the opposition was much keener on publishing and advertising its point of view than the ruling group within the Communist Party and it was proved by the actual course of events that a policy essentially on those lines was necessary in order to maintain the Soviet regime itself. Why then did the opposition—whether Trotskyist or united—suffer one defeat after another until it was at last destroyed? Why could not Trotsky, the great orator and energetic leader, convince the party of these facts, why was he ‘liquidated’ politically by Stalin and his supporters without even seriously endangering their position? Apart from the general situation, which was extremely advantageous for the government in the struggle against its critics, the state of the Communist Party itself was of decisive influence on the result of this conflict.

One of the most interesting factors was the position of Trotsky and his friends within the party. Among the living, nobody had done so much for the bureaucratic dictatorship as Trotsky. The use made by him during the Civil War of ‘bourgeois’ officers, though it may have been inevitable, was resented by many Communists, particularly Stalin and Voroshilov, and the organiser and administrator Trotsky certainly overestimated the value of bureaucratic power—at least when it was wielded by himself. Although he had maintained for more than ten years an independent position between the factions of the Russian Social Democratic Party, he was later on ready to defend every kind of bureaucratic excess on the part of the Communist Party, not excluding the shooting of revolutionary sailors rebelling for the re-establishment of Soviet Democracy. Later on, when he was compelled to fight the rigid and short-sighted policy of the bureaucratic caucus, he did it hesitatingly and without resolution, indeed with a bad conscience, which was entirely absent at other stages of his career. Detailed criticism of his behaviour in this crisis—as attempted by B Souvarine in his Stalin— proves that he acted in a completely irrational manner and committed blunders which in his case cannot be explained by personal shortcomings.

Trotsky and his friends among the old Bolsheviks suffered during this period from the conflict between two loyalties; to the bureaucratised Communist Party and to their Socialist ideals. The actual conflict between these factors was and is the tragic side of the development of Soviet Russia; its personal result for the ‘Old Bolsheviks’ was Trotsky’s death as a practical politician and the extermination of the old guard of Bolshevism. At the beginning of his struggle against the dangerous tendencies of the official policy pursued by the ruling group, Trotsky did not dare to appeal from the bureaucratic party to the masses; it was not lack of physical courage in the organiser of the Red Army but lack of moral courage to break with the bureaucracy to which he himself belonged. The same fact explains the miserable alliance with Kamenev and Zinoviev which proved nothing but his hopeless inferiority to Stalin in the handling of a bureaucratic machine. The belated and tame attempts at mass propaganda, on the other hand, were not to be taken seriously from a political point of view. They were easily suppressed by the government and a welcome pretext for the final destruction of the opposition.

The Trotskyists and their friends of diverse political shades were certainly still animated by revolutionary ideals but the Communist Party was no longer a party, a group of people voluntarily united by common social and political aims. It was a bureaucratic machine in control of all social, economic and political organisations and interested above all in the maintenance of its power. Its own situation compelled it for the time being to develop the productive forces of the country, to suppress attempts at capitalist restoration and to fight reactionary tendencies amongst the peasants—but its movements were controlled not by its belief that this or that measure was in the interests of the workers but only by its desire to maintain its own position.

However well Trotsky’s criticism of official Soviet policy was justified by events, his policy was bound to fail because he only understood the change in the character of the Communist Party when it was far too late. No arguments were able to influence the ‘majority’ whose attitude was a foregone conclusion because it had been selected not for the purpose of defining a new policy but only in order to crush the opposition.

Thus the Communist Party was an inert substance, bound to the existing state of affairs by the powerful influence of its own inertia and acting only by necessity, under the pressure of difficulties and dangers. Yet within these limits it was still capable of tremendous exertions and of great successes. It was wrong to regard the transformation of the Communist Party into a ruling bureaucracy simply as the natural adaptation of the old organisation to its new tasks, but it was no less wrong to denounce the bureaucracy as ‘thermidorian’ and counter-revolutionary and incapable of all progressive efforts.

III: The General Line

The end of the period of rehabilitation is a signpost in the life and development of the new Russia. Before this moment the peasants had been permitted to organise agriculture according to their wishes. The government interfered only in the distribution of the agrarian produce, at first by requisitioning, later by influencing the market. On this agrarian basis industry quickly recovered from the chaos of war and revolution. In spite of the increase in industrial and agricultural output up to and over the limits of the ‘prewar level’ it was impossible to achieve a stable balance between these social powers. The revolution whetted the appetite of workers and peasants and dried up the flow of capital which had been essential for the growth of Russian industry before the war. The reconstruction of industry became inevitable, although this process had now to be financed completely by the Russian people itself.

The great instrument for the transformation of Russian life and society was to be planning. Under the rule of an absolutist bureaucracy planning was a very one-sided affair, but nevertheless it was the clearly recognised, though in practice seriously delayed, task of the Soviet government to develop the productive forces of the country and to use the enormous resources of modern science in the interests of the whole people.

But if this task was necessary and if the government even proclaimed its fulfilment as its dearest aim, was the bureaucratic Soviet power capable of this achievement? Even during the NEP with its simpler problems the bureaucracy had proved short-sighted and inert, not to mention its inveterate selfishness; how would these qualities and defects influence the great and far-reaching decisions of the next period? As it happened, the Soviet power had not to make these decisions, it was compelled to their adoption by the constant lashing of a ruthless and extremely able criticism and by the emergency of the ‘bread front’. Thus the transition from the NEP to the period of reconstruction was made and the policy of the General Line came into being.

At the end of the NEP the Soviet power had definitely ceased to act under the impulse of aims and ideals. The government tackled its new task only when it was impossible to avoid it any longer and this delay enormously increased its difficulties. The machine which had been running with a minimum of friction during the NEP had to meet insuperable difficulties before the party leaders resolved to reverse their policy. This is certainly a grave indictment against the Communists as a party, but after all it must not be overlooked that at last the Soviet power really made a move in the right direction and acted in a manner which was roughly in accordance with the interests of the Russian people and the workers in particular. Though the Soviet regime was bureaucratic it was by no means counter-revolutionary, as the Trotskyists asserted.

Two years after the end of the NEP, Stalin embarked on a belated justification of the official agrarian policy during this critical period:

What would have happened if we had followed the opportunists of the right of the Bukharin group, if we had renounced the offensive, if we had falsified the rhythm of industrial development, if we had slowed down the development of state and collective farms, and if we had relied on the private peasant organisations? We would have certainly struck our industry a deadly blow, we would have strangled the work of Socialist reconstruction, we would have remained without grain, and in the end we would have ceded our place to the domination of the kulaks . [29]

The colours are very glaring but on principle these assertions are probably true. With his peculiar predilection for formal symmetry he continued:

What would have happened, if we had followed the opportunists of the left of the Trotsky–Zinoviev group and if we had started the offensive in 1926-27, when there was no possibility whatever to replace the production of the kulaks by that of the state and collective farms? Our offensive would have failed, and we would have proved our impotence, we would have thrown the middle peasant into the arms of the kulak , we would have sabotaged our Socialist construction, and we would have remained without bread. [30]

These assertions are in open conflict with the facts. In 1930, when a highly successful collecting campaign followed an excellent harvest, the individual peasants furnished 11.9 million tons of grain out of a total collection of 13.8 million tons. [31] According to the figures given by Stalin himself some years later, the position was not very much different: in 1929-30 individual peasants delivered 780 million pood (about 12.8 million tons), and public farms 120 million pood (about 1 970 000 tons). [32] During 1929, the year after the offensive started in earnest, individual peasants had a sown area of 91.1 million hectares as compared to 4.9 million sown by public farms. [33]

Although Stalin was very far indeed from the truth with his endeavour to justify the winter of 1928 as the right moment for starting the offensive against the peasants, his words contain a complete clue to the meaning of the celebrated ‘General Line’. His just condemnation of the ‘Right’ secures his policy in one direction; his criticism of Trotsky, though in contradiction to the facts, is not groundless. Trotsky may have been right, but the policy proposed by him could never have been executed by the bureaucratic Soviet state. In the absence of visible enemies and tangible dangers a bureaucracy cannot make a gigantic leap into the dark. Such a policy would not simply have destroyed the ‘Stalin clique’—which Trotsky regarded as the root of the evil—but the bureaucratic system as a whole. His weakness was just his inability to see the transformation of the Soviet regime and his endeavour to get the Soviet bureaucracy to jump over its own shadow. Stalin’s justification of his policy is very lame from the point of view of Socialism and working-class interests; yet it is valid from the standpoint of the bureaucracy. The idealised Soviet power existed only in the imagination of a tiny élite of Communists, the solid majority of the Communist Party regarded itself as the embodiment of the revolution and its achievements. By maintaining itself, the bureaucracy pretended to maintain the revolution; its personal enemies were the enemies of the Soviet system, its power the power of the working class. And their claims were just sufficiently justified to make their bona fide assertion possible.

This is the real meaning of the General Line and the various ‘Deviations’ from it. The dangerous tension at the end of the NEP made far-reaching political changes inevitable. The balance between the interests of the bureaucracy, those of the workers and those of the peasants could be maintained only by a mixture of ruthlessness and concessions, of long-term aims and brazen opportunism; such a policy required all the practical instincts and the energies of the Soviet rulers. In this passage between Scylla and Charybdis one excessive movement in the wrong direction could destroy the balance once for all. After the fall of Trotsky this could come about only by a movement to the ‘Right’ and, for the bureaucracy not less than for the Russian Revolution, since the creation of the Bread Front the watchword was: the enemy stands to the Right!

Notes

1. The Soviet Union Looks Ahead: The Five-Year Plan of Economic Reconstruction (London, 1930), p 10.

2. Soviet Union Year Book (London, 1929), p 129.

3. The Soviet Union Looks Ahead , p 2.

4. A Yugow, Le Plan Quinquennal (Paris, 1932), p 30; The Soviet Union Looks Ahead , p 2; Soviet Union Year Book , 1929, pp 110ff.

5. Soviet Union Year Book , 1929, pp 183ff.

6. Ibid, p 88.

7. Itogi diesiatilietiya sovetskoi vlasti v tsifrakh, 1917-27 Results of Ten Years of Soviet Power in Figures, 1917-27 . (Central Statistical Office, Moscow), p 118; Soviet Union Year Book , 1929, p 96.

8. The Soviet Union Looks Ahead , p 10.

9. A Yugoff, Economic Trends in Soviet Russia (London, 1930), p 129.

10. S Zagorsky, Wages and Regulation of Conditions of Labour in the USSR (ILO, Geneva, 1930), p 196.

11. Itogi… , p 361.

12. Zagorsky, Wages and Regulation of Conditions of Labour in the USSR , p 198; International Labour Review , May 1926, p 708.

13. Industrial Life , p 167. Strauss does not give the full reference to this source—MIA.

14. International Labour Review, May 1926, p 709.

15. P and I Petroff, Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung der Sowjetunion (Berlin, 1926), p 25.

16. J Stalin, Problems of Leninism , Volume 1, p 312.

17. Itogi… , p 416.

18. Stalin, Problems of Leninism , Volume 2, p 129.

19. Itogi… , pp 379, 389; Soviet Union Year Book , 1929, p 239.

20. Stalin, Problems of Leninism , Volume 1, pp 411ff.

21. Soviet Union Year Book , 1929, p 233.

22. Ibid, p 233.

23. ILO, Industrial and Labour Information , Volume 14, p 385.

24. ILO, Industrial and Labour Information, Volume 20, p 500.

25. L Trotsky, Toward Socialism or Capitalism? (London, 1926), pp 79ff.

26. Quoted in International Labour Review , May 1926, p 712.

27. Quoted from Trud in Industrial and Labour Information , Volume 21, p 107.

28. G Grinko, The Five-Year Plan (London, 1932), p 24.

29. J Stalin, Discours sur le plan quinquennal (Paris, 1930), p 135.

30. Ibid, pp 135ff.

31. K Elster, Der Rubel beim Aufbau des Sozialismus (Jena, 1933), p 29.

32. Cited in USSR: Bilan 1934 (Paris, 1934), p 52.

33. Cited in ibid, p 51.

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