The Fixed Prices Come Unstuck
The level of fixed prices had already created difficulties for the Provisional Government. In March it raised the fixed prices decreed by the tsarist government in September 1916 by 60 percent. This decision led to a falling-out with Groman. Though admitting that the earlier prices were now out of line with prices for industrial items, Groman wanted to lower the industrial prices, not raise grain prices. Since this could not be done immediately, Groman proposed to give grain producers temporary certificates. When the Provisional Government rejected this proposal as impractical, he decided that Shingarev was just another tsarist official like Bobrinskii and Rittikh.[1]
The decision of the Provisional Government was not a complete victory for peasant producers. In 1916 Rittikh had surreptitiously raised prices by paying them at the producer's storehouse rather than at the railroad station or wharf, so that transport costs were borne by the government instead of
[1] Sukhanov, Zapiski , 2:271-75; Jasny, Soviet Economists , 29-32.
the producer. This move had infuriated opposition activists, and when the Provisional Government raised prices, it went back to the old system. Accordingly the further away a producer was from transportation points, the less benefit he received from the new prices. Sigov quotes the commissioner of Viatka as saying that, on average, prices were lowered ten kopecks a pood in his province.[2] Thus one of the first acts of the new revolutionary government was to lower the prices paid to many producers.
The Provisional Government assured the peasants that it was useless to hold out for better prices since the March prices would not be raised under any circumstances. Despite the growing urgency of the food-supply situation, Peshekhonov ruled out the possibility of a change in prices. He therefore sent a telegram on 20 August telling the local committees not to shrink from the use of force. Speed was essential: if grain were not shipped north by the middle of September, many northern provinces would have no way of getting food, and all consumer regions would be threatened, given the wretched state of the railroads and the coming end of navigation on the river system. Grain was to be taken first of all from large firms and from producers who were closest to transportation points since the next two or three weeks would decide everything. The telegram went on to say that "extreme measures are dictated by a state necessity that is the equivalent of military service."[3]
Meanwhile other forces within the Provisional Government sought another way out of the crisis. On 23 August a meeting of the Special Council of Defense observed that the food-supply crisis was now threatening the entire economy and the war effort. Lack of flour and grain in the Donets and Baku regions was causing a mass exodus of workers from the mines and oil fields, which in turn meant no fuel, no railroads, and no defense production. The council also felt that the "existing organization of the general food-supply system does not correspond to present circumstances": despite the availability of adequate grain supplies as well as transport capacity, producers had no motivation to part with their grain. And since this motivation had been destroyed by the lack of correspondence between the fixed grain prices and the price of everything else, the solution seemed obvious.[4]
This pressure from the right wing of the government coalition came at the very time that Kerensky (the closest person the Provisional Government had to a head of state) was accusing his own commander in chief, Kornilov, of a counterrevolutionary plot. The urgency of the situation, the small likelihood that Peshekhonov's use of force would be successful, and
[2] Sigov, Arakcheevskii sotsializm , 9-12.
[3] Izv. po prod. delu 3 (34), ofitsial'nyi otdel (O.O.), p. 38.
[4] TsGVIA, 369-13-62/7; Ek. pol. , pt. 2, doc. 491.
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the precariousness of his own political position all pushed Kerensky to what Bukshpan called the "complete capitulation of the Provisional Government before the peasantry of the producing provinces."[5]
The price-doubling decree was issued 27 August when Kornilov's troops were still approaching Petrograd. The official excuse was that doubling the fixed price restored a town-country equilibrium that had been destroyed "by the uncontrollable (stikhiinyi ) course of events." In an attempt to save face a warning was also issued: "The government will show firmness both in resisting any unfounded pressure to increase the income of the nonagricultural population and in using force against grain producers [to ensure] timely and exact fulfillment of their responsibilities in the delivery of grain needed to prevent starvation by the Army and the population."[6]
It is difficult to assess the impact of the new prices. The center pointed to increased deliveries, but skeptics claimed that the increase was due to the harvest. The skeptics are borne out by figures showing the increase starting before the announcement of the new prices (see Table 1).[7]
By heightening the atmosphere of uncertainty, the sudden doubling of prices provided an incentive not for delivering grain but for holding on to it. The new prices even upset many of the grain producers and dealers, who had called for higher prices but had not expected a clumsy across-the-board doubling.[8] When the peasants themselves were ready to sell the grain, the food-supply apparatus often ran out of paper money (or "money tokens"
[5] Bukshpan, Politika , 516; see also Ek. pol. , pt. 2, p. 356.
[6] Prod . (Poltava), no. 2, 9 September 1917. The price doubling was made retroactive to 1 August. The decree also made more generous allowances for transport costs. Ek. pol. , pt. 2, doc. 522; Browder and Kerensky, Provisional Government , 2:641-43.
[7] See also Lozinskii, Ekonomicheskaia politika , 139.
[8] Izv. po prod. delu 3 (34): 56-59.
[denznaki ], in the professional jargon). Other bottlenecks developed—in carts, bags, storage space, and rail space.[9]
Whether because of the new prices, the harvest, or the growing effectiveness of local committees, grain deliveries did in fact increase. But this change brought little consolation to the starving cities because river navigation had come to an end and rail transport was in terrible shape. Little more than one half of the September grain procurement had left the area of procurement by the middle of October.[10]
In Petrograd, officials felt that difficulties within the city—unloading the congested railroad warehouses, setting up a tolerable distribution system—were at least as severe as the problem of getting grain delivered to the city in the first place. At a meeting of the Petrograd City Duma in October speakers declared the situation "very close to catastrophe": there was a real possibility that the city would soon be without flour. It was an open secret that the northern front had no reserves, and that soldiers in the Petrograd garrison were upset by a lowering of their ration. The situation in the army constituted a direct threat to civilian order since soldiers had physically threatened city officials to ensure that military needs were met first of all.[11] The garrison proved a key supporter of the Bolshevik takeover.
If the sudden doubling of prices did not avert the collapse of food supply, it actively hastened the collapse of political authority. It was a heavy blow to the morale of the food-supply officials. Having vociferously assured everybody that there was absolutely no chance of any price rise, they were "stunned" by the announcement and deeply humiliated. The first issue of the Poltava food-supply publication contained a strong assurance to the peasant producers that the fixed price was stable. In the very next issue the chairman had to eat his words: "In the life of the state there are moments when the most firm of governmental intentions must be modified by the force of events. To our great and general sorrow, such a moment has come."[12]
The life of a food-supply worker was not enviable: it was hard work for which the reward was hatred, baseless accusations, and physical danger. Food-supply workers felt more and more threatened by pogrom violence
[9] Prod . (Tobolsk), no. 9, 12 October 1917; Prod. delo (Moscow city), no. 21, 17 September 1917.
[10] Ek. pol. , pt. 2, pp. 356-58; Frenkin, Russkaia armiia , 479-80; Prod. delo (Moscow), 22 October 1917.
[11] Prod. delo (Moscow), 15 October 1917, 13; Ek. pol. , pt. 9, doc. 535. This situation may have contributed to the decision to move the garrison that touched off the chain of events leading to the Bolshevik takeover.
[12] Prod . (Poltava), no. 1, 26 August 1917; no. 2, 9 September 1917.
from below and more and more abandoned by the center. Peshekhonov had resigned in protest and the new minister, Sergei Prokopovich, was perforce preoccupied with forming a cabinet. Paralysis at the top was matched from below by a wave of resignations of local officials or by actions such as that of the Tobolsk committee, which refused "moral responsibility for implementation of the grain monopoly" under the new prices.[13] In October one food-supply official asserted that none of the proposals for reform of the monopoly would work: "With complete clarity I affirm this, and I feel that the one way out of the food-supply problem from the side of the population will be for them to come to me, beat up the whole board—and then hang me."[14]
The demoralization of one political class was matched by the growth of support for another. The dramatic political events of the capital city could not match the societywide impact of the doubling of prices, which communicated its antigovernment message, day in and day out, better than any press campaign. In an article written in late October one writer stated that "the price doubling for grain continues to disturb all Russia" and that the question had only grown sharper. He asserted on the basis of a questionnaire sent out by the newspaper Narodnaia vlast ' that in all social classes the reaction was unanimous condemnation. A common formulation was that the doubling of grain prices had undermined the foundations of everyday life.[15]
The doubling of prices seemed to confirm the Bolshevik diagnosis of sabotage. It was more than the closeness of dates that indicated a connection between Riabushinskii's outburst about the "bony hand of hunger," Kornilov's attempted coup, and the price-doubling decree. Both Riabushinskii and Kornilov were horrified at the disintegration of the country and put the blame squarely on the soviets. Riabushinskii supported higher grain prices, and he had been among those who gave Kornilov a ringing public endorsement in early August. When the Menshevik minister Matvei Skobelev moved against the factory committees, the picture seemed complete. A worker resolution stated, "We are forced to conclude that in the present context [of the Kornilov mutiny] the ministry for the 'protection of labor' has been converted into the ministry for the protection of capitalist interests and acts hand in hand with Riabushinskii to reduce the country to famine, so that the 'bony hand' may strangle the revolution."[16]
When a predominantly socialist government suddenly doubled the price
[13] Prod . (Tobolsk), no. 2, 12 October 1917 (resolution of 27 September 1917).
[14] TsGVIA, 12593-36-69/45-47, 54-56, 52-54, 59-62.
[15] Prod. delo (Tver), 22 October 1917.
[16] S. Smith, Red Petrograd , 180-81; Ek. pol. , pt. 2, doc. 486; Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks , 105-6.
of a basic staple, it seemed to indicate either criminal weakness or actual connivance with counterrevolutionary sabotage. For years to come, the necessity of a firm state authority based on the soviets was most easily proved by pointing to Riabushinskii and Kornilov.