A Reconstituted Political Class?
All political parties (except of course the anarchists) agreed on the need to reconstitute a firm political authority (tverdaia vlast' ). The Bolsheviks were no exception. Their distinctiveness lay in their political formula, which outlined a strategy for reconstitution that made sense to the population while providing a basis for unity of the political class. A central element in this political formula was sabotage.
[43] Zaitsev and Dolinsky, "Organization and Policy," 24-25. The organizational continuity is overlooked by Keep, Russian Revolution , 498 n. 12.
[44] Radkey, Agrarian Foes , 65; Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga , 111.
[45] A. V. Peshekhonov, Pochemu ia ne emigriroval (Berlin, 1922), 51-60. Material on Peshekhonov's outlook can be found in Rex Wade, The Russian Search for Peace (Stanford, 1969), 24; Rosenberg, Liberals , 229; Browder and Kerensky, Provisional Government , 2:633-36, 3:1640-41; Kitanina, Voina , 328; Roger Pethybridge, The Spread of the Russian Revolution (London, 1972), 98-99; Sukhanov, Zapiski , 4:236-37, 5:70-75; Prod. delo (Moscow), 28 May-4 June 1917, 10; 11 June 1917, 7-8; 25 June 1917, 7; 20 August 1917; Agurskii, Ideologiia , 21.
When coordinating institutions that are usually taken for granted no longer perform properly, theories based on conspiracies, stabs in the back, and other forms of conscious wrongdoing are apt to flourish. Sabotage theories were no monopoly of the Bolsheviks. Since the beginning of the war conservative circles had worried about German control of the economy (nemetskoe zasil'e ). Jews were another popular target not only of the Black Hundreds but also of tsarist generals who thought it politic to uproot the Jewish population of the front regions and intensify chaos in the rear zones by sending a wave of refugees eastward.[46] The liberal opposition had also been willing to believe halfheartedly, and utilize wholeheartedly, suspicions of German sympathizers in high court circles; these suspicions were inflamed by speeches such as Miliukov's in late 1916 asking whether government policy was stupidity or treason.
Food-supply difficulties strengthened the attractiveness of sabotage theories. Even before the revolution Peter Struve observed that the foodsupply problem made the political stubbornness of the tsar seem like a "consciously designed policy directed towards creating insuperable internal difficulties."[47] After the revolution both liberals and socialists tended to explain the failure of the grain monopoly by speaking of the agitation of "dark forces," although socialists were more apt to use the word sabotage . If the nonelite classes made heavy use of sabotage theories, they did not do it without the instructive example of their educated leaders.
Sabotage was the popular explanation for food-supply difficulties, and the party that gave this explanation its most vigorous and coherent expression was the Bolsheviks: only the Bolsheviks made sabotage a central theme in their political outlook and the crushing of sabotage a key plank in their political platform. The Bolsheviks' general outlook in 1917 was a radical version of the enlistment solution, stressing both popular participation and extensive regulation by the state.[48] Lenin was aggressively unoriginal in his vision of state economic regulation, declaring that the Bolsheviks wanted no more than what even the tsarist or German governments had seen was necessary, or at most the economic program adopted by the moderate majority of the soviets in spring 1917.[49]
Economic analysis was secondary in the Bolshevik response to the food-
[46] Cherniavsky, ed., Prologue to Revolution .
[47] Hoare, Fourth Seal , 194-95.
[48] Alfred B. Evans, "Rereading Lenin's State and Revolution," Slavic Review 46 (1987): 1-19; S. Smith, Red Petrograd , 153-56.
[49] Lenin, PSS , 32:247-49, 195-97, 292-94, 443-44; 34:155-61. This continuity between Groman and the Bolsheviks was pointed out by Sukhanov in Protsess , 386-87.
supply crisis and required no more than vague phrases lifted from elsewhere. At the May food-supply congress the Bolshevik contingent did not offer any alternative economic program. Its spokesman Vladimir Miliutin associated himself with the resolution proposed by Groman, and Bolshevik representatives abstained in the final vote on the congress resolution only because they felt that the measures called for could only be realized by a proletarian state authority.[50]
It was political analysis that was primary in the Bolshevik answer to the question, "Why are there no goods in the village or bread in the towns?"[51] Lenin's stress on consensus in regard to the content of state regulation was meant to suggest the following question: if the way out of the economic crisis was straightforward and obvious to all concerned, why was the situation getting worse, not better? His answer was sabotage by people whose interests were threatened since any effective regulation meant limitation of profits and an end to commercial secrecy. Therefore it was not experts in the required economic measures who were needed to solve the crisis but experts in political will and decisiveness.
This analysis was elaborated in a pamphlet by Emelian Iaroslavskii. After admitting that the war was part of the answer, Iaroslavskii went on to assert:
The reason lies in the intentional derangement of all of economic life by the messieurs capitalists, factory owners, plant owners, landowners, bankers, and their hangers-on; the reason for the high cost of living, lack of goods, and lack of bread lies in the intentional hiding of bread and goods in warehouses and storage points, in the intentional closing of mines and factories [and in the intentional breakdown of transport]. All this is done intentionally so that the bony hand of hunger and poverty will grab the working class by the throat [as Riabushinskii said at the Moscow congress—see below].[52]
In explaining this intentional sabotage, the Bolsheviks projected their own intense political focus onto their opponents: Iaroslavskii argued that the main reason that landowners demanded high prices, for example, was not just to receive twice or three times as much money, eager as they were to enrich themselves—no, their main calculation was to create disunity between workers and peasants.
[50] Prod. delo (Moscow), 28 May-4 June 1917 (Nogin).
[51] E. Iaroslavskii, Otchego net tovarov v derevne, khleba v gorodakh (Moscow, 1917). The work was written in the fall of 1917.
[52] Iaroslavskii, Otchego , 17-19.
Sabotage was the cause of the shortages, and therefore vigorous political action was the solution: "If we carry out a thorough search and registration of all warehouses, goods storehouses, basements, cellars, and grain-dealer depots, then it will be seen that [hidden] reserves are much greater than the amount put into circulation. But this search and registration must be carried out everywhere. Sooner or later the food-supply committees and the soviets will have to do it; better to do it now than later."[53]
The sabotage theory also made the task of reconstituting society along noncapitalist lines entirely unproblematic: "We must tear the matter of exchange out of the hands of the parasites and speculators and turn over the whole matter of distribution to democratic consumer and producer societies and cooperatives. The peasants and workers themselves must [create the framework of] exchange between town and village. Then there will be cheap bread; then there will be cheap goods."[54]
Iaroslavskii's rhetoric gives an indication of why many observers in 1917 dismissed the Bolsheviks as irresponsible demagogues. Yet events seemed to confirm the Bolshevik analysis. One strong piece of evidence was a speech given by the prominent Moscow industrialist Pavel Riabushinskii. Riabushinskii had long been a leader of the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie in its opposition to tsarism; he was a founder of the War Industries Committees, one of the public organizations interested half in cooperation, half in opposition. The speech included a phrase that became one of the most notorious of the revolutionary era, "the bony hand of hunger"; it appeared in the context of a violent attack on the soviets:
Our commercial and industrial class will do its job to the end without expecting anything for itself. But at the same time it
[53] Iaroslavskii, Otchego , 13-14. For examples of such searches, see Prod. delo (Moscow), 24 September 1917, 6-8; Koenker, Moscow Workers , 129-30; Ek. pol. , pt. 3, doc. 110.
[54] Iaroslavskii, Otchego , 17-19. Continued food shipments to the Allies also strengthened the sabotage outlook; see Ek. pol. , pt. 2, doc. 475; Kitanina, Voina , 350-54. For other examples of the sabotage outlook, see Alexander Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution (Bloomington, Ind., 1968), 118; Ek. pol. , pt. 2, doc. 535 (M. Vladimirov); Stalin, Sochineniia , 3:210-12, 251-52. The workers' suspicion of sabotage is a major theme in David Mandel's two-volume study of the Petrograd workers; see especially The Petrograd Workers and the Fall of the Old Regime (New York, 1983), 137-48, and The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power (New York, 1984), 211-12. The sabotage outlook has dominated much of Soviet historiography. See Lozinskii, Ekonomicheskaia politika , chap. 4, esp. 143-44; Volubuev, Ekonomicheskaia politika , esp. 410-11, 429-30. Kitanina and Laverychev are less constrained by the sabotage outlook; see also A. I. Suslov, "Sovremennaia anglo-amerikanskaia burzhuaznaia istoriografiia o prodovol'stvennoi politike v pervye gody sovetskoi vlasti," Istoriia SSSR , 1978, 3:188-95. Marc Ferro is one of the few Western historians to give credence to accusations of sabotage. Ferro, La revolution[révolution] de 1917 (Paris, 1967-1976), 2:242-43
feels that at present it is unable to convince anybody or influence people in leading positions.
Therefore our task is very difficult. We must wait—we know that the natural course of life will go on its way and unfortunately it will severely punish those who destroy economic laws. But it is bad when we have to sacrifice state interests to convince a small group of people. This is unforgivable. It is just like the sacrifices we have had to bear at the front. It was necessary that several armies be destroyed and that our valiant officers suffer before the soviets of workers' deputies changed their convictions in time. Therefore, gentlemen, we are forced against our will to wait; a catastrophe, an economic and financial defeat, will be inevitable for Russia, if we are not already in the midst of a catastrophe, and only when it becomes evident to everybody, only then will people feel they have gone down the wrong path. Toward that time we have to ready ourselves in a practical manner so that our organizations will be up to the situation.
We feel that what I have said is inevitable. But unfortunately it is necessary for the bony hand of hunger and the people's poverty to grab by the throat the false friends of the people, the members of various committees and soviets, before they come to their senses. The Russian land groans in their comradely embrace. The people at present do not understand this, but they soon will, and they will say: "Away, deceivers of the people." (Stormy applause) . . .
All that is pure and clean is cursed, all cultured people are thrown out, mutual hate and fury reign, there is no feeling of national responsibility even for the state's existence, honor, and unity. When will arise, not yesterday's slave, but the free Russian citizen? Let him come soon. Russia awaits him. All around we hear the satanic laughter of those who scorn to pronounce the word homeland . In this difficult time, when a new time of troubles is approaching, all vital cultural forces of the country must become one harmonious family. Let the firm merchant's nature show itself. People of trade, the Russian land must be saved![55]
[55] Ek. pol. , pt. 1, doc. 80. For Riabushinskii's political activity before the February revolution, see Lewis H. Siegelbaum, The Politics of Industrial Mobilization in Russia (New York, 1983). In 1921 Riabushinskii did approach the American Relief Agency to suggest that control of food distribution might allow the agency to become the actual governing body of Russia. Benjamin M. Weissman, Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia (Stanford, 1974), 49-50. Riabushinskii's ghost continued to vex the Soviet government. The defendants in the "industrial party" show trial of 1930 were accused of plotting with Riabushinskii in 1928, although he had been dead for some years.
Despite the violence of the rhetoric, Riabushinskii's speech is not good evidence of sabotage. According to Riabushinskii, the business classes saw that the country is going toward disaster, but their warning voice was unheeded—the people would have to learn through bitter experience that they had listened to false leaders. Obviously, there is no call here for any action to make food supply worse; indeed, the import of the speech is that the business classes must keep trying to help, despite the hostile attitude shown toward them. Nevertheless, Riabushinskii's intent to starve the revolution seemed clear enough to the Russian people. As a Soviet study of Bolshevik propaganda remarks, Riabushinskii's "bony hand of hunger" was "often cited in propagandistic literature and therefore well known to the masses; it demonstrated better than any other argument that the struggle with hunger was a class struggle."[56]
The rhetoric of sabotage offered great advantages to the Bolsheviks, for it tied them to the common discourse of the other Russian political parties while emphasizing their distinctiveness. The Bolsheviks could argue that extensive economic regulation was clearly realistic and not overambitious—otherwise it would not have been endorsed by the vast majority of moderate socialists and many of the liberals. Groman and his friends themselves documented the refusal of the governing elite to take the steps that would resolve the crisis. The political implication was clear: the crisis could be overcome without undue difficulty by a party with the courage and commitment to make refusal impossible.[57]
The sabotage outlook could easily be couched in the Marxist rhetoric of class, and this allowed the Bolsheviks to give expression to deep popular feelings of suspicion and outrage.[58] In turn a sabotage theory was needed to support the position that class struggle was an adequate response to pressing practical problems. In the fall of 1917 Lenin asserted: "Which class holds sovereign authority [vlast' ]—that decides everything."[59] These words make sense only if economic and administrative solutions are already available but are not being adopted solely for reasons of class interest.
[56] A. P. Kupaigorodskaia, Oruzhiem slova: listovki petrogradskikh bol'shevikov 1918-1920 gg . (Leningrad, 1981), 49. The Bolsheviks themselves were responsible for one documented case of sabotage. A. D. Tsiurupa, at this time a food-supply official in Siberia, kept back food shipments to Petrograd in October until after the Bolshevik takeover. M. I. Davydov, Aleksandr Dmitrievich Tsiurupa (Moscow, 1961), 38-39; V. Tsiurupa, Kolokola pamiati , 78.
[57] Lenin, PSS , 34:158; Sukhanov, Zapiski , 6:93-94. For the same argument in Bolshevik debates over the armed uprising, see Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks , 197-99.
[58] Ferro, La revolution[révolution] , 2:422-27; S. Smith, Red Petrograd , 167; Koenker, Moscow Workers , 132, 251-52; Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga , 272; Ek. pol. , pt. 3, docs. 219, 271.
[59] Lenin, PSS , 34:200.
Any version of the enlistment solution—perhaps like most democratic theories—contained a large component of distrust and suspicion.[60] In the radical Bolshevik version the proposed scope of enlistment was much broader than the educated "vital forces" championed by the prerevolutionary opposition: "The miraculous means [of increasing the strength of the state apparatus] is the enlistment of the toilers, the enlistment of the poor to the everyday work of state administration."[61] This step was necessary not only for the usual reasons (ending irresponsible government, obtaining social trust and cooperation) but also because the new state authority could act like proletarians (po-proletarski ) and show the saboteurs that it meant business.
Lenin's insistence on the necessity of an act of decisive violence has been shown to be an important theme in his campaign in the fall of 1917 for an armed uprising.[62] The same insistence is found in the economic sphere. In a discussion of bread rationing, Lenin brought out the underlying motive: to point up the contrast between "reactionary bureaucratic methods of struggle with [economic] catastrophe—methods that try to limit transformations to a minimum—and revolutionary-democratic methods. To deserve the name, revolutionary-democratic methods must make their primary task a violent break with the old and outmoded and [by so doing] the quickest possible movement forward."[63] Violence was the most visible form of decisiveness, and visible decisiveness could solve the crisis almost by itself by inspiring loyalty and confidence while ensuring the enforced cooperation of erstwhile saboteurs. This reasoning supported Lenin's contention that the soviets could form a solid foundation for a reconstituted political authority. The soviets gained prestige from this proposed role: the power of the term sovetskaia vlast ' (political authority based on the soviets) stemmed just as much, or more, from vlast ' as from sovetskaia .[64]
For Peshekhonov, the paradox was that the Bolsheviks, a politically destructive force in the short run, was the only available force capable of reconstituting political authority. The sabotage outlook contributed to this paradox. Accusations of sabotage helped tear apart Russian society, and the
[60] Jane J. Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy (New York, 1980).
[61] Lenin, PSS , 34:313.
[62] Sergei Mstislavskii, Five Days Which Transformed Russia (1922; Bloomington, Ill., 1988), 113; Ferro, La revolution[révolution] , 2:366-68; Robert Vincent Daniels, Red October: The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 (New York, 1967), 53, 75-77, 157-58.
[63] Lenin, PSS , 34:179. Lenin refers to an armed uprising as the "most decisive, most active policy" (34:395). A similar argument is made by Mao Zedong in "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan" (1927).
[64] Lenin, PSS , 34:200-207, 340; Koenker, Moscow Workers , 253, 267; Ferro, La revolution[révolution] , vol. 2, chap. 7; Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga , 202, 254; Ek. pol. , pt. 3, doc. 107; Chaadaeva, Pomeshchiki , 122-23.
belief that sabotage was the cause of economic difficulties led to some disastrous policy choices. But the sabotage outlook, since it viewed opposition or even simple lack of cooperation as a crime, gave the Bolsheviks the moral fervor and the popular support necessary to fulfill and overfulfill the task of imposing order and reconstituting political authority. Sabotage linked together the fight fight against enemies of Bolshevik political reconstitution (called counterrevolutionaries) and the fight fight against enemies of Bolshevik economic reconstitution (called speculators). To a greater extent than is realized, the popular meaning of the revolution is accurately summed up in the full title of the first Soviet secret police, the Cheka: the Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle Against Counterrevolution, Sabotage, and Speculation.