__CAPTION__
Subbotnik at Kazan Railway Station, May 10, 1919
uniform, like the rank and file, eating the same rations, sharing
hardships with the men, and---in battle---always in a hurry to be
the first to die".INSTITUTE OF HISTORY ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE USSR
[1] __TITLE__ A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
__EDITOR__
Edited by Prof. A. Z. MAKFRED
Progress Publishers
Moscow
[3]Translated from the Russian by VLADIMIR VEIZY
Designed by V. KUZYAKOV
CROUP OF AUTHORS:
ACADEMICIAN \ A. A. GUBER\
DOCTORS OF SCIENCE (HISTORY):
I. B. BERKH1N, A. O. CHUBAKYAN, A. B. DAVIDSON, L. I. GINTSBERG, A. N. KHEIFETS, I. S. KREMER, L. N. KUTAKOV, ff. M. LAVROV, L. N. NF.ZHIXSKY, I V. G. POLYAKOV \
KPATKAH BCEMHPHAfl HCTOPHfl
KHHFA BTOPAfl
Ha
10603---588 014(01)---74
[4] CONTENTS Chapter One. OCTOBER 1917 REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA USHERS IN NEW ERA IN HISTORY OF MANKIND (I. B. Berkhin, A. O. Chubaryan).......... 7 Chapter Two. FIRST WORLD WAR: END AND AFTERMATH. REDIVISION OF THE WORLD (V. G. Polyakov) .... 42 Chapter Three. BUILDING SOCIALISM IN THE USSR (I. B. Berkhin, A. 0. Chubaryan)...........54 Chapter.Four. THE CAPITALIST WORLD BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS (V. G. Polyakov)........113 Chapter Five. THE NATIONAL LIBERATION MOVEMENT OF THE PEOPLES OF ASIA, AFRICA AND LATIN AMERICA IN THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS (A. B. Davidson, L. I. Gintsberg, A. A. Guber, L. N. Kutakov, A. N. Kheifets and N. M. Lavrov).........156 Chapter Six. THE SECOND WORLD WAR. THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR OF THE SOVIET PEOPLE (I. B. Berkhin and V. G. Polyakov)..............246 Chapter Seven. THE SOVIET UNION AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR. COMMUNIST CONSTRUCTION (I. B. Berkhin) . . . . ,...............282 Chapter Eight. THE WORLD SOCIALIST SYSTEM (L. N.On the night of October 25--26,^^1^^ long before the break of dawn, workers, soldiers and sailors led by the Bolshevik Party stormed and occupied the former residence of the emperors of Russia in Petrograd^^2^^: the Winter Palace, and placed under arrest the members of the Provisional Government, who, in a body, had taken refuge in one of its suites.
Three hours later the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies proclaimed Russia a Soviet Socialist Republic. State power had been taken over by the people; and the proletariat, destitute and exploited more than any other class, and the most revolutionary and best organised of all, now stood at the helm of government.
The Socialist Revolution had won in Russia. It was destined to achieve a noble historic aim, that of building a new society, in which there would be no exploiters and no exploited, no oppressors and no oppressed; a social system, in brief, which is called communism.
The Russian Socialist Revolution came as a logical sequel of the foregoing development of the human race; and it was in line with the basic interests of all peoples, even though this was not _-_-_
~^^1^^ November 7--8 New Style.---Ed.
~^^2^^ Now Leningrad.---Ed.
7 everywhere realised or understood at the time. That the revolution first came to pass in Russia, of all countries, was not a matter of accident. Russia, early in the 20th century, was a land of profound and acute social, political, national and other contradictions. The process of concentration of capitalist production had gone farther than in any other bourgeois country, resulting in the formation of powerful monopolist associations. Yet it had remained an agrarian country, possessing one-fourth of the modern machinery plant of Great Britain, one-fifth that of Germany, and one-tenth that of the United States. And it was particularly backward in agriculture. "The most backward system of landownership and the most ignorant peasantry on the one hand, and the most advanced industrial and finance capitalism on the other!'', Lenin commented on the country's economy.^^1^^Russia's workers were subjected to brutal exploitation by the capitalists, many of whom were foreigners, owners of enterprises in the country. Her peasantry, oppressed, humiliated, and deprived of all rights, eked out, as a general rule, an existence on the brink of starvation. The labouring masses of Russia lived under the heavy tsarist yoke, which tolerated no manifestation of a longing for freedom. The numerous non-Russian peoples suffered particular hardships, for they were an object of degrading national oppression, besides being deprived of their rights. For them tsarist Russia was a veritable gaol.
All these contradictions had grown increasingly acute during the First World War, a war that had brought disaster to the country and the people. And the people had finally lost their patience. In February 1917, in Petrograd, the workers and soldiers, supported by the working people throughout the country, had overthrown the tsarist monarchy. In the days that followed the revolution the workers and soldiers set up revolutionary government bodies known as Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, after the pattern established during the revolution of 1905-- 07. These Soviets were heartily supported by workers, soldiers and peasants alike. "We recognise the Soviet of Soldiers' Deputies and no one else, not even God,'' said one soldier-deputy at the March 1, 1917 meeting of the Petrograd Soviet.
Thus backed by a majority of the workers and soldiers, the Soviets could have seized the power and formed a government. But the petty-bourgeois Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties, who formed a majority in the Soviets, failed to do this. They failed to prevent the Constitutional-Democratic and the Union of October Seventeen parties from forming a self-styled _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 442.
8 Provisional Government headed by Prince G. Lvov, a wealthy landowner, which they invested with state power, though authorising the Soviets to ``control'' the Provisional Government's activities. A diarchy thus came into being in Russia, creating a situation in which, to quote G. Lvov, the Provisional Government "was a government shorn of power, while the Soviet of Workers' Deputies was a power but did not govern".Intoxicated by the early victories of the revolution, the masses innocently trusted the bourgeois government in the hope that it would accomplish the urgent tasks which had been the object of the revolution, i.e., that it would end the imperialist war; allot land to the peasants; introduce an eight-hour working day; banish national oppression; and take up the fight against the famine and the economic chaos.
The Provisional Government, however, did nothing to fulfil these hopes. There was more freedom in the air, no doubt, after the overthrow of the tsarist regime. But the new government's policies were aligned with the interests of the bourgeoisie and the landed gentry. It carried on the imperialist war and renewed its pledge to observe the military pacts concluded by the tsarist government. To force the army and the people to continue fighting the Provisional Government declared that the war was being fought in ``defence'' of the revolution, and this false slogan was supported by the Mensheviks and the Socialist-- Revolutionaries.
Landlord ownership of land remained intact and under the special protection of the Provisional Government. As a matter of fact, the capitalists and bankers were keenly interested in protecting landed estates, for 60 per cent of these were mortgaged and, besides, many capitalists owned estates in their own right. Nor was an eight-hour working day legalised. Moreover, the government took no action to combat high prices and speculation, which were a source of great distress to the population. National oppression continued, though in a somewhat milder form. To cap it all, the Provisional Government had retained practically intact the old machinery of state.
Such a policy ran counter to the interests of the people and the vital interests of the country as a whole. The only way out of the quandary lay in continuing the revolution and turning over state power to the workers and peasants, that is to say, in effecting a socialist revolution. As Lenin pointed out in the spring of 1917, humanity's only salvation lay in socialism.
Only a people's government could end the war, confiscate landed estates and distribute them among the peasants, invest ownership of industrial enterprises in the people as a whole, thus ending the chaotic condition of the national economy, raise the 9 country's economy to a higher level, end national oppression, establish equality of rights for all nationalities and foster cordial relations among them.
The necessity of such a policy was realised by only one of the various parties existing in Russia at the time. This was the party of the Communists (or Bolsheviks, as they were then called). The Communist Party, which had been driven underground by the tsarist government, was legalised after the February 1917 Revolution. Early in April Lenin returned to Russia, after several years' residence abroad as a political emigre. The party membership had begun to grow at a rapid rate, so that by April it numbered 80,000 members, or nearly double its membership of a month ago. This was the pick of the working class, the cream of the Russian intelligentsia. The wisdom, the honour, the conscience of our times: that is how Lenin aptly and deservedly described the Communist Party.
The April 1917 All-Russia Conference of the Communist Party drew up a programme for the transition from a bourgeois-- democratic to a socialist revolution. Its basic principle was "All Power to the Soviets!'', a slogan proposed by Lenin. This principle envisaged the transfer of state power on a nation-wide scale by peaceful means to the working people as represented by democratically elected Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. Once at the helm of government, the Soviets were to take immediate action as follows: propose a peace on democratic principles to the warring countries; implement urgent revolutionary reforms in the economic sphere; establish, on a nation-wide scale, control over production and distribution, taking over to that end the banks, inasmuch as these were essential to modern economic activities; nationalise the most important branches of industry; confiscate landed estates belonging to the gentry and distribute these among the peasants; introduce an eight-hour working day; annul immediately all restrictions and privileges based on nationality; etc.
The Russian working masses did not at once side with the Bolsheviks, it must be said. For a few months after the February Revolution the workers were under the strong influence of the petty-bourgeois party of the Mensheviks, who pretended to be socialists and, as such, champions of the workers. The peasantry were strongly influenced by the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which claimed to stand for the distribution of all lands, including private estates, on an equitable basis. On quite a few occasions in the weeks that followed the February Revolution the crowds attending meetings refused to listen to Bolshevik speakers who exposed the Provisional Government and the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who backed it. However, the policies 10 pursued by the Provisional Government and the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties soon showed them up for what they were. Developing events gradually dispelled the illusions of the masses, who increasingly listened to the Bolsheviks, rallied to their support and intensified their struggle against the bourgeois government.
The first important mass demonstration against the government's policy on the crucial question of the continuing war occurred as early as April 1917. On April 19, newspapers carried the text of a Note sent the day before to Russia's Allies by Foreign Minister P. N. Milyukov, leader of the Constitutional-Democratic Party. The Note emphasised Russia's determination to fight on to victory and admitted in a veiled form the necessity of annexions, that is, seizure of foreign territory, and contributions.
The Note revealed to the people the real aims behind the intention to continue the war, and this caused a sense of betrayal and a consequent wave of indignation. On April 20 and 21 more than 100,000 workers and soldiers demonstrated in the streets of Petrograd, carrying such slogans as "All Power to the Soviets!'', "Down with the War!" and "Down with the Policy of Annexations!" There were impressive demonstrations in various other cities; and it became clear that the Provisional Government had largely lost the confidence of the people. The Soviets could have taken over state power without resorting to force.
But the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders ignored the wishes of the people and came to the rescue of the tottering bourgeois government by securing the representation therein. On May 5, 1917, a new coalition government was formed, including ten ministers representing the bourgeois parties and six representing petty-bourgeois parties which claimed to be socialist. Prince Lvov remained head of the government.
The government's policies remained unchanged. Not a single square inch of land belonging to the gentry was confiscated, even though a Socialist-Revolutionary leader, V. Chernov, now headed the Ministry of Agriculture. Instead, the government increased its efforts to stop the seizure of landed estates by the peasants. The Ministry of Labour was placed under a Menshevik leader, M. Skobelev, but that did not bring legalisation of the eight-hour working day, and the government sided with the entrepreneurs in any conflicts between them and the workers. Nor were any efforts made to combat high prices and profiteering.
11A. F. Kerensky, member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and newly appointed Minister of War, did what his predecessor, Guchkov, of the Union of October Seventeen, had hesitated doing: on June 18, 1917, the ``socialist'' minister ordered the army to launch an offensive. And Tereshchenko, a leading figure in the sugar industry, now foreign minister, continued the policies of Milyukov.
The people, needless to say, could not support a government pursuing such policies, and another huge anti-government demonstration took place in Petrograd on June 18. This time over half a million workers and soldiers took part, bearing such slogans as "All Power to the Soviets!'', "Down with the Ten Capitalist Ministers!'', "No More Offensives at the Front!'', "Workers' Control Over Production and Distribution!'', and others.
Taking advantage of the offensive at the front the Provisional Government proceeded to restrict democratic freedoms and to carry out measures of repression. Several revolutionary regiments were disbanded and many soldiers arrested. Stiffer measures were taken to check the growing peasant movement. If compelled initially to reckon with the Soviets, the bourgeois statesmen now decided that the time had come to dismiss them, establish a dictatorship, crush the revolutionary forces, and ensure that the war would be carried on to a victorious end.
In line with this plan the bourgeois ministers seized upon a slight pretext on July 2, 1917, and submitted their resignation, in the expectation that this would frighten the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and force upon them the choice of either carrying on without the bourgeois ministers or agreeing to establish autocratic rule, dismiss the Soviets, and crush all revolutionary organisations.
This insidious manoeuvre failed to fool the population of Petrograd and became in fact the last straw: on July 3, soldiers and workers came out en masse, intent on overthrowing the government. Elsewhere throughout the country, however, people were not yet ready to support this action, for the majority of peasants and soldiers, and indeed many workers, had not yet come to realise the necessity of throwing out the Provisional Government. The Bolshevik Party was hard put to it to forestall a premature armed uprising in the capital and steer the spontaneous action of the workers and soldiers into the channel of a peaceful and organised demonstration under the slogan of "All Power to the Soviets!" On July 4, the city's proletariat and garrison poured out into the streets in strength.
The Provisional Government retaliated by ordering the marching columns fired upon, killing and wounding some 400. This dastardly crime was perpetrated with the full approval of the 12 Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders. On July 8, Prince Lvov was replaced by A. F. Kerensky of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. His government arrested many of the revolutionary workers and soldiers; re-introduced capital punishment at the front; set up courts-martial; established preliminary military censorship; and dispatched punitive forces to several cities. All of which meant that the Kerensky government had openly resorted to armed force to crush the revolutionary forces. This policy was found very acceptable by the leaders of the Constitutional-Democratic Party, largest among the bourgeois parties, and they decided once more to take part in the government. On July 24, a new coalition government was formed with the participation of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements under the chairmanship of A. F. Kerensky.
The revolution continued to gather momentum, however. The bourgeoisie watched the rising revolutionary tide with a troubled eye, doubting the ability of the Provisional Government to crush it. "There will be no law and order in Russia until we have a dictator invested with the fullest power to act,'' said Purishkevich, representative of the extreme reactionary elements. Russia's wartime Allies also wanted a military dictatorship set up in the country. Late in August General Kornilov, Supreme Commander-- inChief, made an attempt to oust the Provisional Government, dispatching important military force against Petrograd. In an effort to aid Kornilov the Constitutional-Democratic ministers resigned in a body, thereby precipitating a government crisis.
The plotters had miscalculated, however; they had underestimated the revolutionary fervour of the people. The workers, the soldiers of Petrograd and other towns, and the sailors of the Baltic Fleet rallied against Kornilov at the call of the Bolshevik Party. Propaganda, meanwhile, had done its work among the Kornilov troops, who refused to move against the capital. And the counter-revolutionary gamble risked by the tsarist generals fell through.
The Kornilov revolt made millions aware of the true situation in the country. It became clear that the counter-revolutionaries were using the parties of the petty bourgeoisie as a weapon in their struggle against the revolution and that the Communist Party was the only one that expressed the true interests of the people; the realisation of this latter fact greatly enhanced the Party's influence, so that before the autumn of 1917 was over a majority of the working class, destitute peasantry, soldiers of the most important sectors of the front, and the Baltic Fleet sailors had given their allegiance to the Communist Party. Moreover, the Party had won a majority in the country's important Soviets, including those of Petrograd and Moscow. And scores of millions throughout Russia 13 had taken up the Communist Party's slogan---"All Power to the Soviets!''
Nonetheless, the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders, who were still at the helm in the Central Executive Committee (CEC) and the Provisional Government, stubbornly ignored the people's demands and came back into the government again to form a coalition cabinet with the Constitutional-Democratic Party even though the latter had been shown to have organised the counter-revolution and backed Kornilov. This last coalition government headed by Kerensky was formed on September 25. Its main efforts were directed towards fighting the growing revolutionary movement of the workers and peasants.
Economically, meanwhile, the country was rapidly going from bad to worse. In 1917 industrial production came to less than two-thirds of the preceding year's. Many entrepreneurs deliberately halted production and laid off personnel in order to starve them into submission. Ryabushinsky, a leading industrialist, urged seizing the workers by the throat with "famine's bony hand'', and the capitalists were all for carrying out his recommendation: over 800 factories were shut down and some 170,000 workers discharged between March and November. 1917. Real wages were nearly halved as compared with 1913. Profiteering in consumer goods assumed tremendous proportions. The value of the ruble dropped to less than ten pre-war kopeks. In the autumn of 1917 workers' families faced starvation, while the approaching winter threatened even greater hardships.
The Provisional Government increased repressions, fearful of its own people, which was waging with growing determination a struggle against the criminal policies of the propertied classes. Moreover, the Provisional Government was planning to lay down arms and let the Germans occupy Petrograd and other important towns. Riga was surrendered to the Germans in August. "If we fail to find the strength and the means to establish order in the country, that order will be established by German bayonets,'' candidly declared Minister of War A. Verkhovsky.
The American journalist John Reed, who was in Russia at the time, painted a true picture of the situation as he saw it in the autumn of 1917, in his Ten Days That Shook the World. "Winter was coming on....'' he wrote. "On the freezing front miserable armies continued to starve and die, without enthusiasm. The railways were breaking down, food lessening, factories closing. The desperate masses cried out that the bourgeoisie was sabotaging the 14 life of the people, causing defeat on the front. Riga had been surrendered just after General Kornilov said publicly, 'Must we pay with Riga the price of bringing the country to a sense of its duty?'
``To Americans it is incredible that the class war should develop to such a pitch. But I have personally met officers on the Northern Front who frankly preferred military disaster to co-operation with the Soldiers' Committees. The secretary of the Petrograd branch of the Cadet party told me that the break-down of the country's economic life was part of a campaign to discredit the Revolution. ... I know of certain coal-mines near Kharkov, which were fired and flooded by their owners, of textile factories at Moscow whose engineers put the machinery out of order when they left, of railroad officials caught by the workers in the act of crippling locomotives... .''
The criminal policy pursued by the bourgeois-landlord government threatened the existence of Russia as a nation. The working people of Russia saw this threat and broke with the parties that were responsible for this situation as well as with those which refused to take the radical steps that could ward off the impending disaster. It is hardly necessary to explain, therefore, why it was that the workers, the peasants, the soldiers, all honest men and women, in fact, rallied round the Communist Party headed by Lenin, which showed the people the only way of saving the country and fought to save Russia from the threat to her national existence.
In the autumn of 1917, a powerful revolutionary upsurge, led by the working class, swept across Russia.
As the strike movement turned into an open revolutionary struggle, workers began to seize industrial plants, removing the old management and arresting those who resisted, and often taking charge of production. Workers' meetings increasingly called for a transfer of state power to the Soviets. Its influence continuously growing, the Bolshevik Party now numbered around 400,000 members. The Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties, on the contrary, were torn by dissent and disintegration.
Peasant action against the landed proprietors often took the form of uprisings. Socialist-Revolutionary influence among the peasantry steadily receded, while that of the Bolsheviks grew day by day. The country's oppressed peoples fought with increasing vigour for national independence and equal rights.
Among the soldiers the mood had radically changed: sick of the war, they had no heart to fight for the interests of the capitalists and landlords. Desertions increased. Soldiers' meetings usually ended with a vote of no confidence in the Provisional Government and a demand for the transfer of state power to the Soviets. A preponderant majority of soldiers and sailors now backed the 15 Bolsheviks, whose prestige was particularly high on the Northern and Western, that is to say, the most important sectors of the front, as well as among the sailors of the Baltic Fleet. In short, the revolutionary movement throughout the country had reached its apex.
When all efforts to achieve a peaceful transfer of state power to the Soviets had failed and it became known that the Provisional Government was about to surrender Petrograd to the German troops and, with their help, defeat the people and crush the Revolution, the Communist Party summoned the workers and soldiers to overthrow the Provisional Government by force and establish a Soviet power.
For the peoples of Russia October 25 (November 7), 1917, was a fateful day, as, indeed, it was for the whole of mankind; for that day saw, in Petrograd, the victory of a people's uprising, gained with a minimum of bloodshed; the overthrow of the bourgeois Provisional Government; and the opening meeting of the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets attended by delegates elected by democratic procedures to represent more than 20 million voters, which proclaimed the transfer of state power in the capital and throughout the land to the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies and elected a Soviet Government---the Council of People's Commissars---headed by V. I. Lenin.
The Soviet Government lost no time in proceeding to carry out the basic demands of the masses. On October 26 (November 8, Gregorian calendar^^1^^) the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets adopted the historic Decree on Peace. The Soviet Government laid before the warring nations and their governments a proposal to open immediate negotiations for a just and democratic peace, a peace excluding any annexation of territories or payment of war indemnities. These conditions were not in the nature of an ultimatum, for the Soviet Government declared its readiness to negotiate on any other conditions that might be proposed by the belligerents. The Decree on Peace provided for a renunciation of secret diplomacy, and for the publication of secret imperialist treaties (which was shortly done by the Soviet Government) and their unconditional abrogation. The Decree served notice that the _-_-_
~^^1^^ From here on dates will be given only in accordance with the Gregorian calendar---Ed
16
__CAPTION__
VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN
Soviet Government stood ready to end the war and live in peace
with all countries.
That same day the Congress adopted a Decree on Land, which proclaimed the confiscation without compensation of land belonging to landlords, monasteries and churches, together with all property and livestock pertaining thereto. In line with the demands of the peasantry private ownership of land was abolished and all land henceforth became the property of the people, of the state. The Decree included the Peasant Mandate on the Land which had been compiled on the basis of local peasant mandates and which determined the method of land distribution and land tenure, etc. The Decree realised the age-long dreams of the peasants, granting them, free of charge, 150,000,000 hectares of land. The peasants were thus no longer obliged to buy or rent land from the landlords, which previously cost them annually around 700,000,000 rubles. Peasant indebtedness, aggregating upward of 3,000 million rubles, was cancelled at the same time.
Three days later the Soviet Government decreed an 8-hour working day, and followed this up by introducing free government unemployment and health insurance for workers and employees. On November 15, the Soviet Government issued a Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia, putting an end to the national oppression and proclaiming equality of rights, sovereignty and the right to self-determination, up to secession and formation of an independent state, for all peoples, and annulling all privileges, restrictions, etc., in respect of nations and national religious faiths.
In December 1917, acting in accordance with the Declaration of Rights, the Soviet Government recognised the independence of Finland, hitherto a part of Russia; the independence of the Ukraine; the right of the Armenians to free self-determination, etc. This piece of revolutionary legislation, so drastically reshaping society in the interests of the people, was a momentous new departure in the history of mankind.
Those were trying times for Soviet Russia. Counter-- revolutionary forces everywhere were on the march against the fledgling Republic. Kerensky, who had fled from Petrograd in an Americanowned motor-car, was marching on the capital at the head of General Krasnov's Cossack corps. Inside the capital, the Constitutional-Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were busy organising a counter-revolutionary revolt. In the valley of the Don, in the Ukraine and the Urals, and elsewhere, anti-Soviet fronts were formed by the capitalists and landlords ousted by the Revolution, the reactionary generals and officers of the tsarist army, the Cossack elite, a privileged estate under the monarchy, and other elements. All of these received support from abroad.
__PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---985 17Workers, peasants, poor Cossacks, Red Guard detachments of workers---the people, in short---led by the Communist Party, smashed all these hotbeds of counter-revolution in a triumphant march from one end of the vast land to the other, winning once and for all the allegiance of the toiling and exploited masses of Russia.
Thus it came about that the dictatorship of the proletariat was established in Russia: the working class was now the dominant class, standing at the helm of state government. More specifically, state power throughout the country was now exercised by government bodies created by the revolutionary working class, namely, the Soviets of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies, in the first place; and, in the second place, the leading, guiding role in the Soviet state belonged to the party of the working class, i.e., the Communist Party. The Soviet Government elected by the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets was composed of representatives of the Communist Party. In November 1917, following negotiations between the Communist Party and the Left SocialistRevolutionary Party which backed the Soviets at the time, an agreement embodied in a socialist programme was reached, and several Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were made members of the Council of People's Commissars. A majority in the government and leadership therein were retained by the Communist Party, however. In March 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries withdrew from the Council of People's Commissars in protest against the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany.
The bourgeois parties, which refused to recognise the authority of the Soviets and started a vigorous campaign against them, were soon prohibited. The petty-bourgeois Menshevik and SocialistRevolutionary parties began by participating in the elections to all^ Soviet government bodies and were represented therein. Gradually,' however, their leadership found itself in opposition to the measures proposed by the Soviet Government, and when the foreign military intervention started in the summer of 1918 it openly challenged the Soviet state. This cost the Mensheviks and SocialistRevolutionaries the gradual loss of support among the masses, and their membership in the Soviets dwindled with each successive election. Politically, the two parties lost all weight during the Civil War period (1918--20), and in the early 1920s their existence came to an end.
The influence and prestige of the Communist Party among the masses, on the contrary, grew stronger year by year, until it was the sole party in the land backed by all of its working people.
18Faced with the momentous task of building socialism in the country, the proletariat could not use the old machinery of government which had served the interests of the bourgeoisie and the landed gentry. It was therefore discarded and a new apparatus of government created in its stead. The highest authority was vested in the All-Russia Congress of Soviets and delegated in the periods between its sessions to the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, elected by the Congress. The functions of a central executive and administrative body were exercised by the Council of People's Commissars. The abolished ministries were replaced by People's Commissariats (of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, Labour, Education, Finance, etc.). Another government body was the Committee for Nationalities Affairs, charged with implementing the policy of equal rights and friendship among the peoples of Soviet Russia, as promulgated by the Soviet Government. Still another was the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission specially set up to deal with counter-revolutionary activities. The old judicial system was replaced by local courts and revolutionary tribunals elected by the Soviets. And the old army, now demobilised, was replaced by a new, Workers' and Peasants' Red Army---a nation armed and organised into an army.
Any resistance put up by the foes of the Revolution was mercilessly crushed by the proletarian dictatorship. This proletarian dictatorship represented a new and advanced type of democracy, a democracy for the good of the greatest number, a democracy for the people.
The builders of the new state found themselves compelled at the same time to engage in a bitter struggle against the classes that had lost their domination. The bulk of the civil service officials bent their efforts to sabotaging the Revolution. The bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were certain that the working class would never succeed in managing the affairs of the state, because it lacked qualified cadres and because the bourgeois officialdom would refuse to serve a workers' state. In its issue of November 8, 1917, the Robochaya Gazeta, mouth-piece of the Menshevik Central Committee, commented with open malice on the early results of the campaign of sabotage as follows: "Just twenty-four hours have gone by since the Bolsheviks won their victory, and the Nemesis of history has already begun to deal out harsh vengeance upon them... . They are simply unable to take over state power. It keeps eluding them, because they find themselves in a vacuum of their own making, because they are alone, because officials and technicians, in a body, refuse to serve them.'' As it turned out, however, these ``prophets'' merely made a laughing-stock of themselves. The Communist Party issued a call for the working people, men and women, to take over the job of 19 running the country. On November 18, in an appeal to the people Lenin wrote: "Remember that now you yourselves are at the helm of state. No one will help you if you yourselves do not unite and take into your hands all affairs of the state. Your Soviets are from now on the organs of state authority, legislative bodies with full powers. Rally round your Soviets. Strengthen them. Get on with the job yourselves; begin right at the bottom, do not wait for anyone."^^1^^
And the proletariat of Russia did just that. All over the country the Soviets took over the business of administration, eliminating the old government bodies. Deputies to the Soviets who failed to justify the expectations of the people were recalled by their electorate and replaced by deputies better able to handle the work. Workers at factories and trade unions selected their ablest members for work in government establishments. The nucleus of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs staff, for instance, was provided from among the workers of the Siemens-Schuckert factory in Petrograd (now renamed Electrosila) and sailors of the Baltic Fleet. A sailor named Markin was made business-manager of this Commissariat. With the help of a group of university students he published a series of secret predatory treaties concluded by the tsarist government, which had been found in the safes of the Foreign Ministry.
Drastic measures meanwhile had put an end to sabotage by the old civil service officials, and most of them had gone back to their jobs. Thus had the old bourgeois apparatus of government, which had served to oppress the people, now been smashed and a new government, a government of and by the people set up in its place.
The counter-revolutionary elements next tried to play off the Constituent Assembly against the Soviet Government. That body, elected in November 1917, comprised a Socialist-Revolutionary majority, and assumed a hostile attitude towards any and all revolutionary reforms implemented by the Soviet Government. Thus it refused to approve the Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People, which set forth a series of highly important Soviet Government decrees. In view of the openly counterrevolutionary attitude of the Constituent Assembly the All-Russia Central Executive Committee ordered its dissolution by the decree of January 19, 1918. News of this action was received with satisfaction by the masses.
From the very first, the Soviet Government spared no effort to induce the belligerent powers to conclude a general democratic _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 297.
20 peace that would end the criminal imperialist war, but the Entente powers turned a deaf ear to all talk of peace. In the circumstances, the Soviet Government realised that if the workers' and peasants' state was not to perish and the future of Russia was to be assured, it had no choice but to conclude a peace with Germany and her allies, A peace treaty was accordingly signed at Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918. Extremely harsh terms were imposed by the Germans, including the occupation of extensive territory by German forces, payment of contribution and so on. But for the Soviet Government it was a question of surviving, and the treaty was signed.Fired with revolutionary zeal, the Soviet people now set about the work of peaceful economic and cultural development, intent on building a new life. The Soviet Government lost no time in taking action to prevent an economic collapse and to develop the nation's productive forces. To begin with, it took over the State Bank and nationalised all other banks. A system of workers' control was established at all enterprises employing hired labour. This measure ran into violent opposition on the part of some entrepreneurs, and there were efforts to sabotage production. The Soviet Government countered by nationalising the enterprises of such entrepreneurs, and this brought it into possession of hundreds of firms, including some which had been foreign-owned. Railways and shipping were nationalised, and so were all major grain-storage facilities. State monopoly of foreign trade was established, and all foreign and domestic loans contracted by preceding governments were annulled. A Supreme Economic Council was set up to ensure the management of the nationalised enterprises and planned development of the national economy.
With the country no longer at war, the Soviet Government concentrated its efforts on the job of peaceful construction. In the spring of 1918 Lenin drafted a concrete programme of economic development with the accent on raising the productivity of social labour, which was to be achieved, in his opinion, by unremittingly perfecting technological processes, raising the workers' cultural and technological level, making wide use of experts and specialists to assure proper organisation of production, using a system of incentive remuneration of labour, introducing socialist emulation, etc. Socialist victory over capitalism in the economic field would be won, according to Lenin, by raising the productivity of social labour and producing a greater volume of material and cultural goods and services for the people.
21In accordance with a decision of the Soviet Government planning was initiated for the country's electrification, as well as for production on a regional basis and for specific branches of industry- Industrial facilities were shifting to non-military production. Construction of new industrial plants got under way, as well as of new power stations, such as the Volkhov, Svir and Shatura projects.
Steps were taken to strengthen labour discipline in industrial enterprises, achieve better organisation of production and raise productivity. Workers in nationalised plants came increasingly to realise that they were now working for themselves instead of for the benefit of capitalists; and this realisation prompted them to set, of their own accord, codes of behaviour on the job, which were models of self-imposed proletarian discipline. A case in point was the Bryansk Locomotive Works whose personnel worked out Provisional Regulations for their works.
The government made it a practice to appoint the ablest from among the working class to management, and knew how to induce experts and specialists from among the old cadres to go back to work. Continuous improvements were made in the work of the leading economic bodies, i.e., the Supreme Economic Council and the local economic councils. The Soviet Government thus found itself in a position to proceed with the nationalisation of entire branches of industry: May 1918 saw the nationalisation of the sugar industry; and the petroleum industry, the railways and important plants in other branches of industry were taken over in June. Thus the socialist sector expanded and grew considerably stronger.
In July 1918, the Fifth All-Russia Congress of Soviets adopted the first Soviet Constitution, which had been worked out undej: the direct supervision of V. I. Lenin and Y. M. Sverdlov, Chairman of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee. This Constitution legalised the history-making achievements of the first eight months of the Socialist Revolution, namely, the establishment of the Soviet state; the adoption of a federative state system; the granting of democratic freedoms, i.e., freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of union, and the creation of conditions making it possible to practise these freedoms. The Constitution declared labour to be the duty of all the citizens of the Republic, in accordance with the principle "He who does not work, neither shall he eat''. The Constitution further provided for universal military service in the interests of national 22 defence, with the proviso, however, that arms were to be supplied only to the working people. The right to elect and be elected to the Soviets was granted to all adult working men and women regardless of national or racial origin, sex, education or religious belief, if any. Exploitative and hostile elements were deprived of the franchise. The electorate was free at any time to recall deputies who failed to justify its expectations and to elect new deputies.
Speaking of the first Soviet Constitution Lenin said that "all constitutions that had existed till now safeguarded the interests of the ruling classes. The Soviet Constitution was the only one that served and would constantly serve the working people and was a powerful weapon in the fight for socialism."^^1^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ CIVIL WAR IN RUSSIAHardly had Russia begun to recover from the disastrous consequences of the world war when she became the victim of another destructive and sanguinary conflict---the Civil War, which lasted nearly all of three years.
Responsibility for that war rests with the governments of the United States, Japan, Great Britain and France, and also those of Germany and her allies, who organised a campaign of armed intervention against Soviet Russia and instigated the counter-- revolutionary forces inside the country to a new uprising. The governments of these bourgeois countries feared that the example set by the workers, peasants and soldiers of Russia might evoke among their own working classes a desire to follow suit and that Russia's withdrawal from the war might lend strength to the craving for peace rife among the peoples of the belligerent states, who had had their fill of misery. The foreign imperialists hoped that with the re-establishment of a bourgeois dictatorship in Russia they would get back their nationalised factories, collect the loans that had been annulled by the Soviet Government, and continue plundering the peoples of Russia as before.
Russia's very existence as an independent state hung in the balance. Early in 1918 the American imperialists offered their scheme of a partitioning of Soviet Russia. A map of Russia, prepared by the US State Department in 1919, showed Russia restricted to the Central Russian Uplands: the rest of the country was to be parcelled out to various "independent states''. A supplement to the map said, in part, that all of Russia should be broken _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, p. 105.
23 up into large natural areas, each with its own distinct economic pattern. And none of these areas should be self-sufficient enough to form a strong state.The imperialist states had reached an agreement in regard to a military invasion of Russia as early as December 1917, and had designated the areas each was to take over. Nor did they lose any time getting down to business. Rumania, with her bourgeois-- landlord government, backed by France, occupied Bessarabia in December 1917. Pleading the necessity of forestalling an allegedly impending "German attack'', French, British and American troops landed at Murmansk in March 1918. In August they occupied Arkhangelsk, where counter-revolutionary elements launched an anti-Soviet revolt. Joining forces, the invaders and counter-- revolutionaries overthrew the Soviet power of that city. The invaders established a harsh occupation regime and proceeded to plunder the region.
On the night of April 4-5 two Japanese were murdered at Vladivostok by Japanese agents, and on the morrow Japanese troops landed and occupied the city ostensibly "to protect the life and property of foreign nationals''. That same day a British landing party was put ashore. In the middle of August an American expeditionary force arrived. And by autumn of 1918 the Soviets had been overthrown by the invaders and whiteguards all over the Soviet Far East.
Central Asia was another region where British troops were sent and where, with their help, the local nationalist-minded bourgeoisie, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks liquidated Soviet power and set up a counter-revolutionary Transcaspian government. In August British troops entered Baku, crushed the Baku Commune, took twenty-six of its leaders out of town and on September 20, 1918, had them shot without a trial.
There was yet another force in Russia which the Entente powers used in their anti-Soviet campaign. This was a Czechoslovak corps, 60,000-strong, composed of officers and men of the Austro-- Hungarian army captured by the Russians during the world war. Upon concluding the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Soviet Government had given the Czechoslovak corps permission to go home, via Vladivostok. Allied representatives succeeded in bribing the corps command and conspired with it to incite the soldiers to an anti-Soviet revolt. The revolt broke out on May 25, 1918, and soon spread over the entire stretch of the Trans-Siberian Railway from Penza to Vladivostok, over which the numerous Czechoslovak 24 troop trains were strung out on their way to the port of embarkation. Over 100,000 rifles and various other arms were supplied to these troops by the United States.
This revolt of the Czechoslovak corps sparked a kulak uprising in the Volga area, in the Urals, and in Siberia. The Soviets were overthrown everywhere between the Volga and the Pacific coast. Counter-revolutionary ``governments'' appeared at Samara, Omsk and Yekaterinburg, which gave the capitalists back their factories and the landlords their estates.
A 10-hour working day was established for the workers. Punitive detachments terrorised the population in town and countryside. And self-styled governments began forming armies to fight the Soviets.
The Baltic regions, most of Byelorussia, the Ukraine, the Don region, the Crimea and Georgia had been occupied by the German army early in 1918. The Soviets had been overthrown throughout these parts and the bourgeoisie and landlords were once again in power: The Soviet Republic found itself hemmed in on all sides by fronts held by the invading and whiteguard armies, and cut off from its main food, fuel and raw materials sources of supply.
The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who maintained clandestine contact with the invaders, were quick to profit by the plight of the Republic. During July 1918, anti-Soviet revolts organised by the Socialist-Revolutionaries broke out in twenty-three towns in Central Russia. Early in July Left Socialist-- Revolutionaries started a revolt in Moscow, assassinating Mirbach, the German ambassador, in the hope of provoking a war with Germany. A series of attempts against the lives of Soviet Government and Communist Party leaders were made by Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist bands. Lenin, head of the Soviet Government, was grievously wounded on August 30.
In the autumn of 1918, after the end of the First World War, the Entente powers intensified their criminal intervention against the Soviet people, bringing the numerical strength of their expeditionary forces to over 300,000 officers and men. During 1919 the authors of this war of aggression, notably British Minister of War Churchill, worked on a plan of organising a fourteen-power coalition for an anti-Soviet campaign. The fledgling Soviet state was destined to go through a heavy ordeal---a trial by battle.
Answering the call of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government, the workers and peasants of Russia rose in arms to defend the Revolution, filled with revolutionary enthusiasm and inflamed 25 by wrath against the foreign invaders and whiteguards. The Soviet Government declared the nation in danger and summoned the people to turn the country into an embattled camp. To better organise the defence of the country a Workers' and Peasants' Council of Defence was set up under the chairmanship of Lenin.
In a short time-span a large regular Red Army was created, composed of workers and peasants. Hundreds of thousands of workers and indigent peasants volunteered for service. In spite of heavy battle losses the Red Army continued to grow and by the end of 1920 numbered over 5,000,000 men. While Communist workers formed its backbone, peasants were numerically preponderant. Together with the workers the toiling peasants fought in defence of the Soviets, which, besides giving them political freedom, had given them land and freed them of the landlord yoke.
Numerous training centres for workers and peasants provided commanding cadres for the Red Army. Hundreds of talented commanders of battalions, regiments, divisions and larger units came from among people. The Civil War produced such renowned commanders as Vassily Bliicher, a worker-Communist, the first to receive the Order of the Red Banner; Vassily Chapayev, born into a poverty-stricken peasant family; Nikolai Shchors, son of a railway worker; Semyon Budyonny, a Cossack, who had risen from organiser of a partisan cavalry detachment to commander of the legendary Cavalry Army that spread terror in the enemy ranks; and Mikhail Frunze, a Communist, who began in 1918 as commander of a workers' detachment and in 1919 was in command of a front.
Thousands of officers of the old army were drawn into the work of building up and training the Red Army. Most of them served the Soviets loyally and quite a few worked up to high army posts and played an important role in the defeat of the invaders and whiteguards, as, for instance, Sergei Kamenev, former colonel of the tsarist army, who was given in 1918 command of the Eastern Front and in 1919 became commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Republic; and Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a young officer, who commanded an army in 1918, and in 1920 was put in command of the Western Front.
There were, on the other hand, quite a few former officers who
deserted from the Red Army to the enemy, and it became
necessary to keep an eye on the work of the commanders. This control
was carried out by the Commissars---the best men of the working
class, battle-hardened Communists, high-principled
revolutionaries. They were the soul of the Red Army, cementing it, welding
it into a united force. Dmitry Furmanov, Communist, writer,
commissar of the famous Twenty-Fifth Division whose commander was
Chapayev, described the army commissars as "wearing a plain
26
__CAPTION__
Subbotnik at Kazan Railway Station, May 10, 1919
uniform, like the rank and file, eating the same rations, sharing
hardships with the men, and---in battle---always in a hurry to be
the first to die".
People in the rear carried on in keeping with the slogan "All for the Front, All for Victory!" coined by the Communist Party. Industrial facilities were geared to the production of weapons, ammunition and army togs. Despite a critical shortage of raw materials, fuel and food, industrial output was generally able to meet the needs of the army. This should be attributed to a mass display of a high order of heroism on the part of the workers, a striking manifestation of which was voluntary unpaid week-end community work projects. Subbotniks or Communist Saturdays they were called; they were initiated by the railwaymen of Moscow in the spring of 1919, and the movement soon swept the country from end to end.
The country's economic policies were planned exclusively in the interests of winning the war. The process of nationalisation of industry was drastically speeded up in order to undermine the economic power of the bourgeoisie and to mobilise the country's entire resources for the war effort. Medium-size and even minor industrial plants were taken over by the state, to say nothing of 27 the important plants, and a lump revolutionary tax of 10,000 million rubles was imposed on the bourgeoisie. Bourgeois-owned apartment houses and residences were expropriated to house working-class families from slum areas. Members of the bourgeoisie were compelled to work.
Universal labour conscription was introduced to provide manpower for industry and transport. Industrial management was stringently centralised, no enterprises were permitted to do business independently, and all output was required to be delivered to the state.
While the Civil War lasted the Soviet Government was unable to stock enough grain by buying from the peasants or bartering for manufactured goods, inasmuch as money had devaluated and the output of manufactured goods was negligible. To feed the army and the civilian population, therefore, the Soviet Government had to have recourse to urgent measures. Thus a surplus appropriation system was introduced in January 1919, in accordance with which peasants were required to deliver surplus food products to the state. Approximately one half of the value of the products was paid for in manufactured goods and the remainder in paper money, the purchasing power of which was very low. Actually a part of the grain deliveries were appropriated by the state on a loan basis. The system admittedly worked a hardship on the peasants, but it was vitally necessary. The toiling peasants accepted it, well realising that the Red Army had to be fed if it was to beat off the onslaught against the Soviet state.
The sale of the most important lines of manufactured goods and food products was prohibited and replaced by a system of distribution through a co-operative network. Priority was given to the needs of workers and children. Wages were paid in kind, inasmuch as money had very appreciably fallen in value. Food and manufactured goods were rationed and issued to those who worked, on an equitable basis, in quantities just affording subsistence.
The reign of terror unleashed by the counter-revolutionaries and their numerous subversive conspiracies compelled the Soviet Government to counter with "red terror'', and the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission set up towards the close of 1917 under F. E. Dzerzhinsky, a revolutionary of an unimpeachable moral character, struck back hard at the foes of the Revolution. A number of important anti-Soviet plots were brought to light, hatched by members of foreign diplomatic missions in collaboration with the Constitutional-Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Nothing accounted for the successes of the Extraordinary Commission so much as the whole-hearted support of the masses.
This "red terror" was a defensive measure. In the beginning of
1920, when the foreign expeditionary forces and the whiteguard
28
__CAPTION__
Petrograd Railwayman's Communist Detachment before leaving for Eastern
Front (1918)
armies had been defeated in the main, the All-Russia Central
Executive Committee repealed the death penalty in the Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).
Looking back, it becomes clear that the eventual defeat of the foreign expeditionary forces and whiteguard armies had been assured by the formation of a mass Red Army, militarisation of the home front, adaption of the national economy and economic policy to war needs, and whole-hearted support of the Soviet state by the workers and toiling peasantry.
During the summer and autumn of 1918 the greatest threat to the Republic came from the east, where the Czechoslovak and whiteguard forces menaced the country's vital centres, including Moscow, which had become in March 1918 the capital of the Soviet state. The Red Army's main forces were therefore dispatched to the Eastern Front, and many Communists were sent there in accordance with the plan of Party mobilisation. In the course of September and October the Red Army inflicted a heavy defeat on 29 the enemy at Kazan, Simbirsk and Samara, liberating these three towns and throwing back the enemy troops to the Urals.
Heavy fighting went on about the same time in defence of Tsaritsyn on the Volga (now Volgograd) against the Cossack army of General Krasnov, which virtually invested the city in August and then again in October. The defenders fought with great Man. The slogan was "Die, but Don't Surrender Tsaritsyn!" A contingent of Tsaritsyn workers 10,000-strong fought shoulder to shoulder with the Red Army. After exhausting the enemy in defensive fighting the Soviet forces launched a counter-offensive in October, defeated the besieging troops and threw them back beyond the river Don. The final defeat of General Krasnov's Cossack army was achieved early in 1919.
In the spring of 1918 the Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Baltic regions rose in arms against the German forces of occupation. After the November 1918 revolution in Germany the Soviet Government annulled the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, came to the aid of the peoples of the areas which had been seized by the German imperialists, and their joint efforts succeeded in expelling the invaders. The Ukraine, Byelorussia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania proclaimed themselves independent Soviet republics, and were granted recognition as such by the Government of the RSFSR. Before the year 1919 was half over, however, counterrevolutionary elements in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, backed by foreign interventionists, succeeded in liquidating the Soviets and replacing them with bourgeois dictatorships.
Thus it came about that in the spring of 1919 Soviet Russia was fighting back on many fronts. The main attack was being pressed in the east by the Kolchak army which had driven close to the Volga; Denikin's army was attacking from the south; Yudenich was marching on Petrograd; Polish forces had invaded Russia from the west; foreign expeditionary forces and a whiteguard army under General Miller were advancing from the north, and the interventionist and whiteguard forces in Turkestan and Transcaucasia were stepping up their offensive. Weighing the situation, the Communist Party decided to concentrate on halting Kolchak, and within a brief time-span succeeded in mobilising the manpower and materiel that were to assure his eventual complete defeat.
On April 28, 1919, undaunted by spring freshets and muddy roads, the southern force of the Eastern Front under Frunze, attacking unexpectedly, dealt the enemy a powerful blow, throwing him back beyond the river Belaya; whereupon a successful offensive was developed by all the armies of the Eastern Front. During July the Kolchak forces were cleared out of the Urals and driven back into Siberia. Invaluable help was given the Red Army by the workers of the Urals industrial plants, who destroyed 30 Kolchak's communication lines, attacked his units, supplied the advancing Red Army with important information, and helped recapture one town after another.
In August the Soviet forces undertook an offensive designed to drive the Kolchak army out of Siberia, where a strong partisan movement under Bolshevik leadership was already under way. Some 150,000 workers and peasants were fighting in various partisan detachments scattered over Siberia and Russia's Far East. Their daring operations were of great help to the Red Army in liberating Siberia. On January 6, 1920, at Krasnoyarsk, the main body of Kolchak's army was forced to surrender, Kolchak himself placed under arrest, sentenced to death by the Irkutsk Revolutionary Committee, and shot.
When Kolchak's main forces were defeated by the Red Army back in the summer of 1919 the imperialist powers began feverish preparations for a new campaign against the Soviet Republic. The main blow was struck in the south by the army of General Denikin. By the autumn of 1919 it had succeeded in occupying the Ukraine, the towns of Kursk, Orel and Voronezh, reaching the vicinity of Tula, and creating a threat to Moscow.
Launching an appeal for an all-out effort to stop Denikin, the Communist Party mobilised some 25,000 Communists and sent them to the Southern Front. The Komsomol, in turn, sent 21,000 members, and the trade unions 35,000 workers. In October the troops of the Southern Front started a counter-drive, and heavy fighting took place at Orel and Voronezh, where Denikin's best divisions were smashed. On October 20 the Red Army took Orel, and on the 24th Voronezh. The entire whiteguard front buckled in and began to retreat, pursued by the Soviet cavalry under Budyonny. By March 1920 Denikin's army had suffered a resounding defeat, its remnants withdrew to the Crimea, and Denikin fled abroad, surrendering the command to General Wrangel.
When 1919 drew to a close the forces of General Yudenich had also been completely defeated. They had twice been able to approach Petrograd, once in the spring, and again in the autumn. The defence of Petrograd was a heroic episode of the Civil War. Workers---men and women, all Communists and Komsomols capable of bearing arms fought by the side of the Red Army. Munition factory workers worked round the clock producing arms and ammunition. Backed by so strong a home front the Red Army not only held Petrograd but inflicted a crushing defeat on Yudenich's forces and drove their remnants out of the country.
In the foreign expeditionary forces, meanwhile, battered as they
were by the Red Army and subjected to the revolutionary
propaganda spread by underground Bolshevik organisations, a process
of demoralisation was making rapid headway among the rank and
31
__CAPTION__
Fighters of the First Cavalry Army hold meeting
file. Soldiers began refusing to fight against the workers and peasants of Russia. Sailors of the French squadron in the Black Sea mutinied and flew the red flag---to show their approval of the Russian Revolution. The spring of 1919 saw the beginning of a general withdrawal of foreign troops from the Soviet soil. Those in the south of Russia were the first to go. They were followed that summer by those in Central Asia and Transcaucasia. Evacuation of the force in northern Russia was begun in the autumn. And in the beginning of 1920 the US troops cleared out of the Russia's Far East. Lenin speaking in December 1919 said: "The victory we won in compelling the evacuation of the British and French troops was the greatest of our victories over the Entente countries. We deprived them of their soldiers. Our response to the unlimited military and technical superiority of the Entente countries was to deprive them of it through the solidarity of the working people against the imperialist governments."^^1^^
Thus, at the opening of 1920, the Red Army had won a decisive victory in the Civil War: the main forces of counter-- revolution at home, that is, the whiteguard armies of Kolchak, Denikin _-_-_
~^^1^^ V I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 211.
32 and Yudenich, had been crushed and those of the foreign invaders driven out of the country. The imperialist powers, however, would not give up and continued their criminal aggression against the peoples of Russia. In the spring of 1920 the bourgeois-landlord government of Poland, egged on by the leading imperialist powers, started a large-scale war with Soviet Russia. Early in May the Polish forces succeeded in taking Kiev. And in June the whiteguard army under General Wrangel launched an offensive northward from the Crimea. It was as if international imperialism was reaching out with two hands---Poland and Wrangel---in an effort to throttle the Soviet Republic.In a series of hard-fought battles the Red Army defeated the Polish forces and forced them to retreat. The war ended with Poland in possession of some Soviet territory, i.e., Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia, though less than the Soviet Government had been ready to cede to Poland in order to avoid war.
In the autumn of the same year, 1920, the Red Army had crushed the Wrangel forces. Courage of the highest order was displayed by the Soviet fighters who stormed the powerful fortifications barring access to the Crimea. M. V. Frunze, in command of the Southern Front, telegraphed Lenin as follows: "I wish to testify to the high valour displayed by our heroic infantry in storming Sivash and Perekop.^^1^^ They advanced over narrow passages in the face of murderous fire to break through barbed-wire entanglements. Our losses have been extremely heavy. Some divisions lost three-fourths of their personnel. Total casualties in this operation were no less than 10,000. Our armies have done their duty by the Republic. The last foothold of the Russian counterrevolution has been liquidated and Soviet rule has been re-- established in the Crimea.''
In Central Asia, too, the Civil War came to an end during 1920 with the clearing of foreign expeditionary forces and whiteguards out of all of Turkestan. Aided by the Red Army, the people of Khiva deposed the local Khan and the people of Bukhara overthrew the local emir. Both Khiva and Bukhara were proclaimed Soviet People's Republics by the respective congresses of people's representatives. For several years to come, however, armed basmachi^^2^^ bands supported by the British terrorised Central Asia bringing much woe to the working people of Turkestan, Khiva and Bukhara.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Sivash---lagoons east of the isthmus of Perekop.---Ed.
~^^2^^ Basmachi is an Uzbek word meaning oppressor, tyrant or robber. The basmachi movement was a counter-revolutionary nationalist movement which survived in Central Asia between 1918 and 1924. Headed by beys and mullahs, the movement was in the nature of undisguised political banditry and aimed at the re-establishment of the rule of the exploiting classes and the detachment of the Central Asian Republics from Soviet Russia.----Ed.
__PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---985 33Action by the workers and peasants toppled the bourgeois-- nationalist dictatorship in Azerbaijan (April 1920), Armenia ( November 1920) and Georgia (February 1921), and the three countries were proclaimed Soviet Socialist Republics. Red Army units moved into the new republics at the request of their revolutionary governments to help deal with the remnants of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary elements.
In the Soviet Far East the Japanese invaders managed to hold out until the end of 1922. At Spassk and Volochayevka the joint forces of the Japanese and whiteguards suffered a decisive defeat; on October 25, 1922, the revolutionary troops entered Vladivostok; and the Japanese expeditionary force sailed for home.
This history-making Soviet victory in a three-year-long war against foreign and counter-revolutionary armies showed what a people that had gained its freedom was capable of doing. This victory was made possible by the fact that the workers and peasants of Russia had risen in defence of their own Soviet power, in defence of their right to be free and independent. They won because they had joined together to form a strong and enduring union and because their effort was directed by the Communist Party under the leadership of Lenin.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ SOVIET RUSSIA STANDSNow that Soviet Russia had gained an opportunity to turn to the task of peaceful development, the governments of the bourgeois world found themselves in a quandary: what should be their relations with a revolutionary Russia? Should they resume trading with her? Should they meet with her representatives at international conferences? Or should they continue the blockade a"nd ignore the Soviet Government as before?
During the past few years the Soviet Government had repeatedly declared in clear and unequivocal terms that it was interested in peace and in normal economic and political relations with all countries. "Our motto,'' G. V. Chicherin, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, used to say, "has invariably been 'peaceful coexistence with other governments, whatever their nature'.'' More than ten official overtures of peace were made by the Soviet Government just between August 1918 and May 1919. There had been no response. Nevertheless, having suffered a defeat in an armed clash with the Soviet Republic, the leading statesmen of the bourgeois countries undertook a reappraisal of values.
34The new trend appeared, earlier and with greater force than elsewhere, in Great Britain, whose government was headed by Lloyd George. Lenin spoke of him as one of the bourgeois world's most adroit politicians. As for the most violent opponents of any deals with Soviet Russia, these were: Winston Churchill, the "greatest Russia-hater''; Lord Curzon, one of the pillars of British colonialism; President Harding of the United States; and Premier Poincare of France. These four called for another war of intervention against Soviet Russia. No well-wisher of the Soviet state, of course, Lloyd George differed from the four only in that he expected to make short work of that country by economic means.
Anglo-Soviet talks began in London towards the end of 1920. Soviet Russia was represented by L. B. Krasin, one of the first Soviet diplomats. Having received a technical education, Krasin had held responsible posts in the Soviet Government. Lenin described him as a man of exceptional talent. M. M. Litvinov, prominent Soviet diplomat, wrote of him in glowing terms: "In my memory Krasin embodies the virtues of a revolutionary, a Party member, a Soviet leader, and a diplomat. I remember him as a strong, energetic and very charming individual.''
The atmosphere at these London talks was extremely strained: the reactionary elements did their best to prevent them from succeeding.
The negotiations ended on March 16, 1921, in the conclusion of an Anglo-Soviet trade agreement. This was an eminent success for Soviet diplomacy. Italy followed suit and concluded a similar agreement. The firmness and restraint displayed by the Soviet Government and its consistent efforts to establish peaceful relations with all countries had produced very tangible results.
These early successes of Soviet Russia in the sphere of foreign relations showed that the Bolsheviks, besides being very able organisers of their country's defence, were also able politicians and diplomats. Friendly interest in the workers' and peasants' state had begun to grow all over the world and in many different sections of its population.
In April 1922, newspapers and magazines in the capitalist world became preoccupied with Genoa, Italy, where the first international conference with the participation of Soviet Russia was shortly to meet. Eminent political figures of the bourgeois world, ministers, big capitalists, diplomats and press correspondents flocked to Genoa. They expected that there would be no more than some general talk about peace and the usual flood of __PRINTERS_P_35_COMMENT__ 3* 35 bourgeois demagogy. There was also the intention to dictate harsh peace terms to Soviet Russia, which would be made to pay up all the debts incurred by the tsarist and Provisional governments. Not content with that, the bourgeois money-bags wanted the Bolsheviks to admit hundreds of foreign experts into their country to exercise control over the settlement of those debts. The French and British capitalists wanted to put these ``experts'' and " advisers" in charge of the Soviet economic and financial departments. These plans of theirs were not destined to materialise, however.
The Genoa Conference opened on April 10, 1922, in the crowded hall of the Palazzo di San Giorgio. The Soviet delegation had come to Genoa with a definite programme worked out by the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government under Lenin's personal supervision and outlining strategic and tactical objectives for the Soviet diplomats, top priority being given to the establishment of economic and commercial relations between the USSR and the capitalist world. The Soviet programme was a programme of peace and peaceful coexistence.
In accordance with the decision of the Soviet Government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party the Soviet delegation was to be headed by Lenin. Yet the troubled international atmosphere together with the presence of numerous Russian counter-revolutionaries in the various European countries made Lenin's voyage abroad appear dangerous. A stream of letters to the Soviet Government kept pouring in meanwhile from people all over the country, asking that Lenin should not be sent abroad; and both the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars decided to comply with these wishes.
Following this decision the Soviet Government appointed G. V. Chicherin, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, as vicechairman of the Soviet delegation with full exercise of the rigkts of chairman. Since 1918 Chicherin was for twelve years in charge of the Soviet diplomatic service. A man of great culture and an authority on international law, he was a convinced and devoted Party worker. Lenin greatly valued his contribution to the activities of the Soviet diplomatic service.
Chicherin was accompanied to the conference by V. V. Vorovsky, L. B. Krasin, M. M. Litvinov and Y. E. Rudzutak. At Genoa, the interest of those who came to attend the conference was largely focussed on the Soviet delegation. What were they like, these mysterious Bolsheviks from Russia, concerning whom so many yarns were being spun in the capitalist world? Would they be able to hold their own against the crafty politicians of the bourgeois countries?
36The atmosphere in the conference hall, on April 10, was one of suspense. Hundreds of reporters and correspondents made ready to take down the declaration about to be made, for the first time in history, by a delegation of a socialist country at an international conference. They saw a man, slight of build, with a keen, intelligent glance, wearing a short beard, mount to the rostrum: this was Chicherin. He spoke in Russian, himself interpreting his speech in French. He read the statement prepared by the Soviet delegation, urging the necessity of peaceful co-existence of their socialist country and the capitalist powers. "While abiding by the principles of communism,'' the statement read, "the Russian delegation admits that in the present historical epoch, which makes possible the parallel existence of the old and the rising new socialist systems, economic co-operation between countries representing these two systems of property is an imperative necessity for universal economic reconstruction.''
The statement further urged a businesslike approach to the problem of a general reduction of armaments and support of any measures designed to lighten the burden of militarism if they provide for a reduction in the size of the armies of all states and an amendment of the rules of warfare completely prohibiting the use of particularly savage methods, such as poison gas, air warfare, destructive weapons aimed at the civilian population, etc. In short, the Soviet statement envisaged peace and disarmament. The statement made it clear to the working people throughout the world that Soviet Russia was determined to fight for peace and universal prosperity, against the policy of aggression and an armaments race.
Among the delegates of the capitalist powers the Soviet statement produced a reaction of extreme irritation and nervousness. Meeting followed meeting, luxurious limousines sped in all directions, carrying perturbed bourgeois diplomats from place to place. They were busy looking for a "satisfactory answer" to the Russian problem and seeking agreement on joint demarches against the Soviet delegation.
The peace offers made by the Soviet Republic were turned down by the Western diplomats. "The minute the Russian delegation proposes consideration of the problem [of disarmament.---Ed.]," said the French foreign minister, "it will encounter on the part of the French delegation not only a cool reception or a protest, but a pointed, categoric, final and decisive refusal.'' This declaration was supported by the Italian prime minister; and the Soviet proposals were as good as turned down by Lloyd George as well.
Two attitudes thus became clearly apparent to the judgement of public opinion. Soviet Russia urged peaceful co-existence and 37 disarmament; and the capitalist countries wanted to re-establish bourgeois rule in Soviet Russia and refused to disarm. The schemes of the bourgeois politicians, however, intended to force crippling economic terms on Soviet Russia, miscarried grievously. The Soviet delegation rejected their importunities. In fact it brought about a schism in the united anti-Soviet front.
It should be mentioned that the Genoa Conference was the first international conference, since the war of 1914--18, to be attended by a German delegation. Under the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty the German bourgeoisie was carrying a heavy burden which it was anxious to lighten. The situation had given birth to forces among the German ruling circles which considered that it would be useful to establish economic and political relations with Soviet Russia. The Soviet delegation, taking advantage of this development, entered into negotiations with the German representatives. As for the Germans, they were at once anxious for and fearful of any agreement with Soviet Russia.
The German delegation, which had been given accommodations at Rapallo, a few miles out of Genoa, sat up all through the night of April 15 discussing whether to enter negotiations with the Russians or not. At 2 a.m. Chicherin telephoned to inform the German delegation that Germany would receive preferential treatment in trade with Soviet Russia in the event of the conclusion of a Soviet-German treaty. Chicherin's message strengthened the Germans' interest in a treaty. Lengthy consultations by telephone between the German delegates and Berlin took place on the following day, resulting in a decision; and in the evening of April 16, 1922, the two sides signed the Soviet-German Treaty of Rapallo.
This act was a manifestation of the policy of peaceful co-- existence between states with different political systems. Under the terms of the Treaty of Rapallo the Soviet Republic and Germany withdrew all reciprocal claims and cancelled all pending payments in settlement of military and other disbursements. Germany and Russia, two great European powers, resumed diplomatic and consular relations, and expressed their desire to establish commercial and economic relations on mutually advantageous terms. The Rapallo Treaty signified the defeat of the imperialist policy of isolating the Soviet Republic.
The ruling circles of Great Britain, France, and other countries met the Soviet-German treaty with extreme irritation and even undisguised anger. French Prime Minister Poincare called an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers, which decided to lodge a protest. Lloyd George demanded that Germany should abrogate the treaty, threatening to expel the German delegation from Genoa if this were not done. Alarmed by such serious 38 repercussions, the Germans requested the Soviet delegation, on April 19, to abrogate the signed document; which the Soviet representatives, naturally, refused to do. And the treaty remained in force.
The activities of the Soviet delegation at the conference were continuously directed by Lenin, even though it was very difficult to maintain contact between Moscow and Genoa. Telegrams were dispatched via London, so that messages from Genoa reached Moscow nearly twenty-four hours later; diplomatic pouches made the trip in five or six days. The Western publications gave distorted accounts of the proceedings. All these difficulties notwithstanding, the Soviet delegation never for a day felt itself neglected by Moscow. Lenin watched the conference with great attention. On April 18 he brought up in the Political Bureau the question of publishing the text of the Treaty of Rapallo, and on the 19th it was duly given in the Soviet press.
No decisions were made at the Genoa Conference, but it did signify initial success for Soviet foreign policy and the principles of peaceful coexistence as formulated by Lenin.
Under the tsarist regime and also under the Provisional Government, Russia had been a prison-house for her peoples. Besides being that, however, she had been unscrupulous in the exploitation of her economically weak neighbours. For in this respect the Russian rulers were no better than the British, German, French and American imperialists.
Her southern and southeastern neighbours were Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. Never since history began had any of the great powers concluded a single treaty or agreement with any of these countries on terms of Fairness and equality of rights. After October 1917, however, the situation changed.
On January 17, 1918, the Soviet People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs notified Asad Khan, the Persian envoy, that the Soviet Government declared all treaties and agreements incompatible with the freedom and independence of the Persian people abrogated. The news caused rejoicing throughout Iran. The Soviet diplomatic representative at Teheran reported: "The impact of this news upon the Persians is beyond description. Teheran has been literally rocked by the burst of universal joy. Endless deputations and individuals coming to greet me leave me not a moment's time. I have been receiving ovations even in the streets.''
By the spring of 1918 the Soviet Republic had completed the
withdrawal of Russian troops from Iran, thereby opening the road
39
__CAPTION__
Representatives of Iran signing treaty with Soviet Union (1921)
to Iranian independence and to the establishment of friendly
relations between the two countries.
A Soviet-Iranian treaty was signed in Moscow in February 1921, confirming the abrogation of all unequal treaties, conventions and agreements concluded with Iran by tsarist Russia. It provided for the cancellation of all Persian debts and the return to Iran of all concessions and property acquired by tsarist Russia. That was the first equal treaty ever concluded with Iran, and it proved extremely helpful to the Iranian people.
Progressive elements in Iran expressed a high opinion of Soviet Russia's policy in regard to the Iranian people. The newspaper Rah-nema wrote: "In the murk that enveloped our political horizons there came blinding flashes of lightning that created an extraordinary impression in the dark night of Persian politics. .. . This brilliant flash came out of the North, and its source was Moscow. Out of Moscow it flashed with surprising force to illuminate the darkness in which we live.''
Relations improved between Soviet Russia and Turkey, too. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the eminent statesman then at the head of the Turkish Government, realised the importance of friendly relations with Soviet Russia. A Turko-Soviet treaty was 40 concluded on March 16, 1921---the first equal treaty in Turkish history---and in implementation of this treaty there was a heavy movement of export goods to Turkey during 1921 and 1922, to the great advantage of that country.
In 1921 similar treaties were concluded by the Soviet Republic with Afghanistan (February 28, 1921) and Mongolia (November 5, 1921). Thus did Lenin's diplomatic methods lay the foundation of a new, Soviet policy in respect of the countries of Asia, the salient elements of which were: support of national liberation movements; economic and political aid; and defence of sovereignty and independence.
[41] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Two __ALPHA_LVL1__ FIRST WORLD WAR:The victory of the 1917 October Socialist Revolution in Russia struck the capitalist system a blow from which it would never fully recover. The general crisis of capitalism set in; an inevitable down-grade trend involved capitalist ideology as well as the economic and political system. The main feature of the general crisis is the breaking up of the world into two opposing social systems. Capitalism ceased being dominant throughout the world after the October Revolution in Russia: a new, socialist system now developed side by side with the capitalist system. The two systems are in conflict, and it is this conflict, this confrontation between them that is the main content of the epoch of capitalism's general crisis.
Another feature of this crisis is the disintegration of the imperialist colonial system. The October Revolution impelled a powerful upsurge of the national liberation movement in the colonies and dependencies. The peoples of tsarist Russia, who had broken the bonds of national slavery and oppression and had struck out for themselves to develop their country, set an inspiring example for the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies in their struggle against foreign imperialist domination. These peoples had had enough of the old life and were fully resolved to fight on until they achieved independence.
Other features peculiar to the general crisis of capitalism are: aggravation of contradictions among the imperialist powers in connection with markets, sources of raw materials, and spheres of influence; rivalry for leadership in the capitalist world; unprecedented growth of the struggle between the working class and the capitalists; and a growing revolutionary movement in the capitalist countries. Imperialism reduces millions and millions to a state of hunger and poverty, deprives them of their legal rights, makes 42 them bear the burden of economic crises and suffer the countless calamities of the wars of which it is the cause. That is why the struggle of the working people has been marked from year to year by growing organisation and determination.
Having split the world into two systems, the October Revolution now carried the basic contradiction of our time---the contradiction between moribund capitalism and nascent socialism---into the sphere of international relations. Developing the teaching of a world-wide socialist revolution as a more or less lengthy process, Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, showed the inevitability of a temporary co-existence of countries with different social systems. This co-existence postulates a rejection of war as a means of resolving controversial international issues, and their settlement through negotiation; complete equality of rights for nations; noninterference in the internal affairs of nations; and the development of co-operation among states on the basis of mutual advantage. As the two systems compete with one another, the advantages of socialism, as compared with the waning capitalist system, will become abundantly clear. This competition, or struggle, will inevitably end in the victory of socialism.
The principle of peaceful co-existence is applicable solely to the relations among states with different social systems: it is entirely inapplicable to the class antagonisms within the imperialist states or to the relations between the oppressors and the oppressed, that is, between the imperialist colonialists and the victims of colonial oppression. That explains why the Soviet state has repeatedly declared that it has given and will continue to give support to any liberation struggle and all manner of aid to the countries or peoples fighting to end imperialist oppression.
Imperialism is aggressive by its very nature. It refused to put up with the appearance of the Soviet Republic, and the fight against it became, indeed, ever since October 1917, one of the high priority aims of international reaction in the sphere of international politics. Soviet power, points out very rightly F. Th. Schumann, the prominent American historian, lost no time, upon coming to power, in offering peace to the West, but the West's reaction was war, a real hot war with great loss of life and vast destruction.
By defeating the forces of intervention and the whiteguard armies the peoples of Soviet Russia compelled the imperialist powers to adopt a policy of co-existence with the Soviet Union. 43 The ruling circles of the most capitalist states were compelled to establish diplomatic relations and look to the development of certain commercial and political contacts with the USSR. Nevertheless, the international reactionary forces had not the slightest intention of dropping their plans for weakening and destroying the Soviet state, nor did they abandon their efforts to achieve an economic boycott and diplomatic isolation of the USSR, nor give up forming all kinds of anti-Soviet blocs and alliances whose supreme object was a military expedition against the USSR. The imperialist powers were particularly persistent in their efforts to push Germany into a conflict with the Soviet state, and to that end helped her reconstruct her military-economic potential.
The first phase of the general crisis of capitalism was ushered in as the result of the imperialist world war of 1914--18 and the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. This first phase, which lasted to the beginning of the Second World War, may be broken down into three distinct periods, as follows:
First period, 1917--1923. This was a revolutionary period that rocked the very foundation of capitalism. In power and scope this revolutionary upsurge in the countries of Western Europe and Asia exceeded any of the mass movements of the proletariat in the past and did much to undermine the base of bourgeois domination in a number of capitalist countries, even if the bourgeoisie did succeed in defeating the proletariat, for reasons that we shall examine elsewhere.
In the sphere of international relations the most important event of this period was the enactment of the Versailles-Washington system of treaties which consolidated the victory of the Entente powers and the United States in the First World War and legalised the redivision of the world. But this system of treaties had been worked out without the participation of the USSR and was aimed, moreover, precisely against it; and that was one of its gravest defects. This system was not fit to serve as a sound foundation for the post-war development of international relations, and, what is worse, contained within itself the dangerous germ of further international conflicts, planted there by the resolution of many territorial and other problems in line with imperialist policies.
Second period, 1924--1929. This was a period that was marked by a partial stabilisation of capitalism. Its salient features were a temporary ebb of the revolutionary movement and a certain strengthening of the economic and political systems in the 44 capitalist countries. In the sphere of international relations this period was marked by the latent development of contradictions within the Versailles-Washington system of treaties, contributing to the erosion of its foundations. Most of the capitalist countries accorded diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union, faced as they were with its incessantly growing power, though the extreme reactionary circles of the Western powers had not renounced their attempts to weaken the Soviet Union and to organise an anti-Soviet bloc.
Third period, 1929--1939. This decade witnessed a setback for the partial stabilisation of capitalism that had been achieved in the second period, and the preparation of a new world war and its outbreak. The unprecedented world economic crisis that crashed in 1929 and lasted until 1933 strained the contradictions within the imperialist system to a breaking point. The decade also witnessed a considerable upswing of the revolutionary movement in the capitalist countries, as well as in the colonies and dependencies.
During this period the Versailles-Washington treaty system broke down under the pressure of the contradictions from within and the blows of a bloc of the currently most aggressive powers, namely, nazi Germany, militarist Japan and fascist Italy. The ruling circles of Great Britain, France and the United States, anxious to ward off a possible attack by Germany and her allies against themselves and channel it eastward against the Soviet Union, followed a policy of appeasement in regard to the fascist aggressors. It was precisely this policy that led to a war without parallel in history, which brought untold calamities upon the peoples of the world and took a toll of tens of millions of human lives.
In August 1918, the armies of the Entente powers, using great numbers of tanks and artillery, unleashed a general offensive on the Western Front. The strong fortifications which had been erected by the Germans were powerless to halt the onslaught, and the German army was rolled back. The common people of Germany and Austro-Hungary, worn out and exhausted by four years of war, were openly indignant over their governments' policy of carrying on a hopeless war.
Under the hammering of the Allied armies the military and political coalition of the Central Powers began to crumble. Bulgaria was the first to surrender, on September 29, and Turkey 45 pulled out of the war on October 30. An Allied break-through forced the Austro-Hungarian Government to appeal to the warring powers to start peace talks. The multinational Austrian empire began to disintegrate, giving birth to new independent states, namely, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Austria and Hungary. In Germany herself a revolutionary outbreak was gathering. While the German troops were still in occupation of extensive territories, German imperialism stood on the brink of military disaster. The German people had had enough of war, and early in November 1918, a revolution broke out, toppling the Hohenzollern dynasty, which had ruled first Prussia and then all of Germany for over two hundred years. Germany became a republic.
On November 11, 1918, in the forest of Compiegne, near Pans, in the railway coach of Marshal Foch, commander-in-chief of the Allied armed forces, an armistice was signed between Germany and the Allied powers; and the First World War was over.
The governments of the Western powers, visibly alarmed at the revolution in Germany, abandoned any notion of completely disarming the German army and did not insist on marching their armies into Berlin. By agreement with the Allies Germany maintained her troops in the Baltic lands and took an active part in crushing the revolution in that area. In a show of undisguised hostility towards the Soviet state, Ebert's social-democratic government refused to resume diplomatic relations with it, ruptured through the fault of the German side in the beginning of November 1918.
The peace conference convened to work out the terms of a peace treaty with Germany and the other defeated states met at Versailles on January 18, 1919. Significantly, meetings were held in the selfsame Hall of Mirrors where the German empire had been proclaimed forty-eight years ago. Twenty-seven Allied or associated states that had taken part in the war were represented. Neither Germany nor her allies were admitted to the conference, whose meetings were later transferred to Paris. Nor was Soviet Russia, though it was a matter of common knowledge that the Russian armies had made a very substantial contribution to the war effort. The imperialist participants in the conference were guided by a common desire to overthrow as soon as possible the Soviet Government in Russia, "strangle Bolshevism in its cradle'', and preclude any repetition of the "Russian experiment" elsewhere.
46While nearly thirty states took part in the conference, actually the representatives of the three leading imperialist powers took charge of its proceedings. These were: President Wilson of the USA, Prime Minister Lloyd George of Great Britain, and Prime Minister Clemenceau of France. Serious differences arose from the very outset among the great powers regarding the basic issues on their agenda, the problem of Germany, above all.
Speaking at the opening session, President Poincare of France made it quite plain that France would insist on the partitioning of Germany in order to prevent any renewal of German aggression. The French imperialists meant to weaken their German competitor as much as possible economically, politically and militarily. They insisted, specifically, on the cession of Germany's western regions which would form a so-called Republic of the Rhine, and certain other areas, and the annexation by France of the coal-rich Saar basin. Moreover, France wanted Germany to pay the maximum in reparations for loss and damage caused by her aggression.
Both Wilson and Lloyd George, however, rejected the French attempts at dismembering Germany and utterly sapping her strength. The reasons for this attitude were an open secret: Great Britain and the United States were interested in keeping Germany sufficiently strong to offset French influence in Europe and, which was still more important, in using her as a weapon against the Soviet Republic, of which international imperialism stood in such terror.
Officially, the conference agenda did not list the "Russian problem'', that is to say, the problem of how to combat the proletarian revolution in Russia. Nevertheless, it was just this problem that became the pivot of the proceedings as soon as the conference got to work. The imperialist powers vied with one another in the hatred they felt towards the world's first workers' and peasants' state, planning armed intervention in Soviet Russia, providing generous military, material and technical aid to the whiteguard generals, and making meanwhile every effort to strangle the revolutionary movement elsewhere in Europe. No agreement, however, was reached by the imperialists in Paris on joint military action against Soviet Russia. Differences of opinion among the capitalist countries and doubts entertained by the ruling circles of some of them regarding the probable success of any attempts to impose their will on the revolutionary people of Russia at the point of the bayonet were doubtlessly partly responsible for this failure. But another factor was the opposition of the masses in the West to any plans of armed intervention in Soviet Russia. Lloyd George, for one, frankly voiced apprehension that the war the Allies were planning against the 47 Bolsheviks might produce unrest in the ranks of organised labour on an unpredictable scale.
Deliberations on the future of the German colonies and the territories belonging to the Ottoman empire produced a sharp conflict among the participants, notably among the great powers. Great Britain, hopeful of taking over the major part of these possessions, developed the greatest activity in this sphere. But neither were the other predatory imperialist powers inclined to relinquish the share in the booty which they considered themselves entitled to get. In the end, the question was settled mainly in favour of Great Britain, France and Japan and to the detriment of the United States.
An important item on the agenda of the Paris conference was the question of the League of Nations, which was to be the world's first international organisation designed to guarantee the nations of the world peace and security. Projects of such an organisation had been worked out in many countries while the war was still on, and the USA, Great Britain and other members of the Entente had been particularly active in this respect. And for good reason: the peoples of the world, plunged into the inferno of a bloody and destructive war that was taking a toll of millions of lives, resolutely called upon their governments to create a world order that would preclude any possibility of another such calamity in the future. On November 8, 1917, the Soviet Government proclaimed from the rostrum of a Congress of Soviets the history-making Decree on Peace, which represented a new, democratic programme of international relations, a programme which rejected wars of aggression, proclaimed the idea of peace with neither territorial annexations nor indemnities, and called upon all nations to build their relations on the principles of friendship and mutual co-operation. The Soviet proposals met with a downright opposition from the imperialist powers, but the ideas of a stable peace and international security had by then taken a hold on the minds of men the world over. To counteract the Soviet Decree on Peace, the Western powers intensified their efforts to work out a scheme for the League of Nations. Yet each imperialist government---whether British, French or American--- while given to a lot of talk about the necessity of maintaining "universal peace" and guaranteeing the security of "all nations'', strove to force upon its partners a project that would primarily serve its own interests and be instrumental in strengthening its own influence.
48The United States, which more than any other country in the world had grown stronger and richer as a result of the First World War, openly aspired to a leading role in the matter of establishing the post-war pattern of international relations. These aspirations would be furthered, in President Wilson's opinion, by the draft covenant of the League of Nations which he had submitted to the Paris conference and which he proposed to incorporate in the peace treaty with Germany. However, his plans for setting up an international organisation under the aegis of the United States ran into the opposition of Great Britain and France. Although not rejecting the idea of a League of Nations openly (and having in fact submitted to the conference their own proposals on the subject), the British and French representatives did what they could to hinder the drafting of the covenant, suggested endless addenda and amendments, argued against incorporating the covenant in the text of the peace treaty, and so on. At the same time Great Britain and France could not reach agreement between themselves on certain important provisions of the covenant. A joint Anglo-American draft, agreed upon in unofficial talks, was finally adopted as a basis for the League of Nations covenant to be worked out.
By the terms of the treaty signed on June 28, 1919, at Versailles, Germany was to return to France the region of AlsaceLorraine, which she had occupied in 1871. While the ownership of the Saar coal-mines was transferred to France, the district itself was to be governed by the League of Nations for a period of fifteen years, upon the expiration of which a plebiscite was to decide its future. Belgium was to get Eupen and Malmedy, and Denmark---Northern Schleswig.
Germany was to recognise the independence of Poland and to return to her some of the occupied areas (such as Poznan and certain districts of Silesia and Pomerania). Other Polish lands, however, were retained by Germany, which could only aggravate the German-Polish contradictions. Gdansk (Danzig) was made a free city to be governed by the League of Nations. Germany was to recognise the independence of Czechoslovakia, to which it was to cede the region of Hulchin. A special provision of the Treaty of Versailles prohibited the accession of Austria to Germany. Altogether Germany lost one-eighth of her pre-war territory and one-twelfth of her population.
Germany was further deprived of all her colonies. Great Britain and France shared both Togo and the Cameroons. The 49 German possessions in Southwest and East Africa went to Great Britain, Belgium, the Union of South Africa and Portugal. In the Pacific area, Japan took over the Marshall, Mariana and Caroline Islands, and the district of Kiaochow and the German concessions in the Chinese province of Shantung. Other German colonies in the Pacific Ocean were taken over by Australia and New Zealand.
Germany was to pay reparations to the Allies to the amount of 132,000 million gold marks, the sum being set later, in 1921.
The military provisions of the treaty set limits on Germany's armed forces. Conscription was to be abolished and the numerical strength of the Reichswehr, a volunteer army, was not to exceed 100,000. Germany was prohibited from possessing submarines,, heavy artillery or an air force.
Incorporated in the peace treaty was the covenant of the League of Nations. The covenant proclaimed lofty and noble aims, such as: a guarantee of peace and international security; the development of friendly relations among states; the peaceful settlement of international conflicts; the use of sanctions against states guilty of aggression; etc. The subsequent activities of the League bore witness, however, to the fact that the leading imperialist powers---the very ones that had created the League--- never really intended it to be an effective instrument for strengthening peace or developing international co-operation. As. a matter of fact for a few years after its creation the League was an important centre of the military and diplomatic war waged by the Western imperialist powers against the world's first socialist state. In later years the League of Nations, kowtowing before the Anglo-French ruling circles who called the tune in that organisation, stood out against accepting the co-operation of the Soviet Union.
Moreover, the League soiled its reputation by supporting the shameful system of colonialism. Apprehensive of causing worldwide indignation, Great Britain, France, Japan and the other imperialist powers did not dare to openly annex the colonial possessions of which they had deprived Germany and Turkey. Arguing that the peoples of these territories were as yet incapable of governing themselves the British and the French resorted to the League of Nations mandate system to govern these former German and Turkish possessions, taking the function of " mandatory powers" upon themselves. The mandate system was nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to perpetuate colonialism in a slightly refurbished form.
Lenin called the Treaty of Versailles a predatory instrument. It had nothing to do with the fine words said by the diplomatists of the Entente powers about a "fair peace''; it was the dictate 50 of the winner to the loser, like that of the German imperialists to Soviet Russia at Brest-Litovsk in 1918. The Treaty of Versailles placed Germany in an inequitable position, provoking deep resentment among the German people, which later put a trump card into the hands of the German nazis in their struggle against the bourgeois-democratic regime in Germany.
In 1919--20 peace treaties were concluded with Germany's former allies, namely, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey. Hepeating basically the Versailles pattern, they legalised the territorial adjustments following the disintegration of the AustroHungarian and Ottoman empires and the formation of new states. Like the Treaty of Versailles, the treaties with Germany's erstwhile allies constituted a gross violation of the vital interests of the nations directly concerned. Far from promoting a normalising of international relations in Central and Southeastern Europe, they continued to be for years a dangerous source of tension in these relations.
A new redivision of the world was also to be completed in the Far East. A nine-power conference was convened to that end on the initiative of the United States, comprising the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and China. It opened in Washington, in November 1921. The United States, relying on its increased economic and financial might, sought to consolidate its dominance in the Pacific area and the Far East. Another US objective was a revision of certain decisions of the Paris conference which it considered contrary to its interests (as, for instance, the decision to recognise Japan's ``rights'' to the Shantung peninsula).
The decisions made in Washington (the nine-power treaty on policies in regard to China, the five-power treaty on the restriction of naval armaments, and some others) favoured, above all, the interests of the United States and served to weaken the position of Japan. While the Washington treaties did contain certain concessions to China, which the imperialist powers had been compelled to make in view of the growing national liberation struggle of the Chinese people, they nevertheless ran counter to the vital interests of the latter and were therefore incapable of promoting lasting peace in the Far East.
Following the example of the Versailles ``appeasers'', the sponsors of the Washington conference saw to it that the Soviet Government was not admitted, though the conference took up issues which directly affected the interests of the Soviet state.
The system of international relations established by the peace
treaties with Germany and her allies in Europe and by the
Washington treaties on Far Eastern issues was profoundly
reactionary and imperialistic: glib and flowery phrases about "common
__PRINTERS_P_51_COMMENT__
4*
51
Stale frontiers in 1914
------Stale frontiers as on July 24 1923
(at conclusion of Treaty ol Lausanne)
At STKIA Stales which emerged as a result of
Ihe disintegration ol Austria Hungary
_______ Territories ceded
by Germany under Treaty ol Versatile
ol June 28 1919
by Ausltia underTrealy of Sainl Germ*
of September 10 1919
by Bulgaria under Treaty of Neuilly
"I by Hungary under Treaty ol Tnanon
of June 4 1920
Rijeka Freec.t.es
(Ftum.)
Pechenga (Pelsamo) region ceded
by Russia to Finland under Treaty
of October 14 1920
Corzon Line
Fronhers between Sov.el Russia
and Poland as laid down by (he
Riga Trealy ol March 18 1921
Bessarabia seized by Rumania
in January 1918
W.lno district seized by Poland
from Lithuania in October 1920
Figures indicate
Schleswig
districts ol Eupen and Malmedy
Burgenland
Transcarpalh.an Ukraine
Bukov.na
(stria
Europe under Treaties of 1919--23
__CAPTION__
Europe under Treaties of 191--23
[52]
interests'', ``peace'' and "international co-operation'', which
abounded in the body of the Versailles and other similar
treaties, served as a smoke-screen to conceal the thoroughly
selfish, imperialist interests of the predatory powers that came out
victorious in the clash with their rivals.
As a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles the contradictions between the victors and the vanquished were to continue for years to come. Yet Germany and the other defeated countries were not the only marks aimed at by the Versailles system. That system was also aimed at the Soviet state. The Western powers hoped to be able in due course of time to prod Germany into an armed conflict with the USSR and also have her strangle the revolutionary movement in Europe. With this in mind, they refrained from destroying militarism and the armaments industry in defeated Germany, and winked at her systematic infraction of the military provisions of the Treaty of Versailles and her surreptitious rearming. This made it easier to prepare for a war of revenge which had begun to haunt the dreams of the German militarists the day following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
A cordon sanitaire was established all the length of the Soviet frontier. It was made up of minor countries with reactionary regimes, subservient to the influence of the Western powers. The Anglo-Franco-American reactionaries meant these countries to constitute a "barrier against communism" and a springboard for an attack on Soviet Russia.
One in their hatred of the world's first socialist state, the victor powers were yet unable to see eye to eye on quite a number of international issues. Great Britain and France were continuously vying for supremacy in Europe, and French plans for sapping further Germany's strength and subjecting her to French domination were running into strong opposition on the part of the British. The United States, who failed in its efforts to prevent Great Britain from strengthening her positions in the Middle East, France in Europe and Japan in the Pacific, refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the covenant of the League of Nations. Sharp differences cropped up between Italy, which felt that she had been cheated of her share of the ``plunder'', and the other leading Entente powers.
The authors of the Versailles system kept saying that it would end wars for all time. As a matter of fact, however, it was precisely at Versailles that further wars for a redivision of the World were made inevitable.
[53]
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Chapter Three
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BUILDING SOCIALISM
H. G. Wells, the well-known English writer, made a trip to Russia in the autumn of 1920, which resulted in a hook which he called Russia in the Shadows. An English or American reader could hardly picture to himself, wrote Wells, the devastation and poverty which prevailed in Russia. And that was the bitter truth, for the country did lie in ashes and ruins. The decrease in population over the period of the First World War and the Civil War that followed topped the 20,000,000 figure. The 1920 output of heavy industry was but one-seventh of that of 1913, the output of cotton textiles was back where it was in the middle of the 19th century and that of cast-iron---200 years ago. Transportation had broken down. Agricultural production was down to half of what it used to be. There was a critical shortage of the barest necessities.
This appalling destruction and devastation must be ascribed to international imperialism and the counter-revolution at home. Wells did not share the principles and aspirations of the Bolsheviks, but he was fair, and he was not going to conceal the truth; and this is what he told his readers: "And this spectacle of misery and ebbing energy is, you will say, the result of Bolshevist rule! I do not believe it is.'' ".. .Bolshevik government in Russia is neither responsible for the causation nor for the continuance of these miseries.'' "It was not communism that plunged this huge, creaking, bankrupt empire into six years of exhausting war. It was European imperialism. Nor is it communism that has pestered this suffering and perhaps dying Russia with a series of subsidised raids, invasions, and insurrections, and inflicted upon it an atrocious blockade. The vindictive French creditor, the journalistic British oaf, are far more responsible for these deathbed miseries than any communist."^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ H. G. Wells, Russia in the Shadows, New York, 1921, p. 30.
54
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V. I. Lenin conversing with H. G. Wells, English author (1920)
In addition to the economic difficulties there were difficulties of a political nature. Now that the Civil War was over and the danger that the landlords might come back had passed, the peasants began to openly show their resentment of the surplus appropriation system which required them to deliver surplus grain to the government. Demands were voiced that this system should be ended and that they, the peasants, should be free to sell their surplus grain in the market, using the money thus earned to buy manufactured goods.
Peasant discontent with the surplus appropriation system was used by the Socialist-Revolutionaries who organised kulak uprisings in various localities, which were supported by rather numerous groups of middle peasants. More dangerous than all others was the revolt at Kronstadt in February 1921, where the SocialistRevolutionaries and Mensheviks had succeeded in instigating some unenlightened elements of the Baltic Fleet sailors to action.
The grave difficulties caused by the war bred discontent among a section of workers as well. This, too, was made use of by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who strove to provoke strikes. To make matters worse many workers were going to the country to make a living and taking to handicrafts inasmuch as most factories were idle, and this process of dispersal of the working class presented a very real danger.
55Such were the exceptional hardships and difficulties that the Soviet people had to face when it turned to the work of peaceful construction. By the time the Civil War ended a vast programme of economic revival on the basis of nation-wide electrification was already in existence. It had been worked out in 1920 by a special commission made up of prominent experts in energetics, economists and other members of the technological intelligentsia and headed by G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, specialist in energetics, old Party member and Lenin's personal friend, who, in 1921, was put in charge of the State Planning Commission. The electrification plan was adopted by the Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets in December 1920. It provided for the construction in the span of from ten to fifteen years of thirty large power plants with an aggregate capacity of 1,500,000 kw, that is to say, one and a half times more than that of all the power plants built in previous years. It also provided for a re-equipment of existing industrial plants, further development of industry with special emphasis on heavy industry, that is, metallurgy, engineering, etc. In short, the plan envisaged the development of a material and technical basis of a socialist society.
The vast scope of the plan astounded even H. G. Wells, author of fantastic tales that he was. "Can one imagine,'' he said, "a more courageous project in a vast flat land of forests and illiterate peasants, with no water power, with no technical skill available, and with trade and industry at the last gasp?" He referred to Lenin as the "Dreamer in the Kremlin" and said that he had "succumbed at last to a Utopia, the Utopia of the electricians''. But he was greatly mistaken, for Lenin's electrification plan was implemented ahead of schedule.
The most urgent task that the Soviet state had to face when it turned to the work of peaceful construction was to establish proper economic relations between town and country, which had been sadly lacking during the years of the Civil War. No recovery or development of the national economy was possible until this problem was solved. It was necessary to evolve an economic policy that would help accomplish that all-important task.
Working on the fundamental principles of the new policy, Lenin subjected to a painstaking analysis the measures taken by 56 the Soviet Government up to date in the economic field. He talked with workers and peasants and read with diligent attention letters addressed by peasants to the newspaper Bednota (The Indigent) in order to sound out the needs and general frame of mind of the people. Lenin considered these peasants' letters to be genuine human-interest documents. The material he was able to assemble helped him find the right solution to the problem of drafting the new economic policy and outlining ways and means to implement it.
The first step, under the New Economic Policy, was to abolish the surplus appropriation system and to impose on the peasants a fixed tax in kind. A decision to that effect was made by the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, and subsequently by the AllRussia Central Executive Committee. The total collections under the taxation scheme were nearly 50 per cent less than those under the surplus appropriation system. The tax was assessed proportionately to property ownership, that is, indigent peasants paid nothing, middle-class peasants paid a moderate amount, and the kulaks a greater amount. Surplus produce remaining after payment of tax could be freely sold in the market. Trade, then, was to be the main factor in the economic relations between town and country. Private trade was permitted, and state and cooperative trade began to develop.
Introduction of the tax in kind on farm produce and permission to sell surplus produce in the market offered the peasantry a greater incentive to increase their output, which was in the interests of the peasants themselves and the society alike.
The government encouraged and stimulated the organisation of various forms of rural co-operation on a strictly voluntary basis. Government loans were made available to co-operatives, and tax exemptions allowed. Co-operatives gradually began to play an important role in the development of peasant farms and the establishment of close economic relations between town and country.
In line with its policy of accelerating industrial reconstruction and the production of more and more consumer goods, the government concentrated efforts and means on the revival of the major industrial plants, while leasing many of the smaller enterprises to co-op