YURI MUKHACHEV

PROGRESS PUBLISHERS MOSCOW

Translated from the Russian by Galina Glagoleva and

Valery Podkolzin

Designed by Galina Karaseva

CONTENTS

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INTRODUCTION.....................

5

Chapter I. THE TRIUMPH OF THE REVOLUTION .............................

7

1. Classes and Political Forces in Russia.

7

2. Resistance of the Exploiter Classes . .

15 Chapter II. THE CIVIL WAR..............

24.

1. The Class Struggle Intensifies......

24

2. On the Blade of the Bayonets......

32

3. Rout of Clandestine Counter-- Revolution.......................

~^^45^^

Chapter III. THE NEW CORRELATION OF FORCES........................... 61

1. Classes at the Beginning of the Period

of Peaceful Socialist Construction . .

61

2. Admittance of Private Capital.....

67

3. Ways and Means of Regulating the Petty-Bourgeois Elements ........

73

Chapter IV. THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES ... 78

1. The Enemy Does Not Give Up.....78

2. Conspiracies and Uprisings

.... 85

3. Failure of the "Quiet CounterRevolution".................104

Chapter V. THE FINAL BATTLE..........123

1. Removing the Bourgeoisie from Industry and Trade..............124

2. The Abolition of the Class of Rural Bourgeoisie.................131

CONCLUSION.......................147

The book we offer provides a penetrating analysis of the balance of class forces during the various stages of the construction of socialism in the USSR. Insight is given into the forms and means of the class struggle as they changed, beginning with the first months of Soviet power, to the complete abolition of the exploiter classes in this country.

The place and role of the various groups-- ythe remnants of the landowners', bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties---united in a common camp against Soviet power are dealt with, as well as the theoretical fallacy of the ideological and political views of the counterrevolutionary ideologists.

Using concrete examples, the author expounds on the experience gained in the strengthening of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, which played the decisive role in the fight against external and internal reactionary forces, resulting in the victorious rise of a new, socialist society.

© Progress Publishers 1988

.

...

Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

M

0505030100 -015

34-88

014(01 )-88 ISBN 5-01-000457-7

INTRODUCTION

Ever since mankind split into antagonistic classes, its history has been one of struggle between these classes, i.e., of the oppressed against the oppressor, the working people versus the exploiters. The history of slaveowning, feudal and capitalist societies is replete with outbursts of fighting between slaves and slave-owners, serfs and feudal lords, proletariat and bourgeoisie. For never could the oppressed people reconcile themselves to a situation where they---the creators of all the material values---were doomed to poverty, hunger, inequality and brutal exploitation, while a handful of overlords appropriated the fruits of their labour and grew rich on the exploitation of millions.

The class struggle has been waged in various forms ranging from passive resistance, to wars that have shaken entire nations and empires. History has known a multitude of heroic deeds performed by the people in the fight for their liberation. The slaves' insurrections in Ancient Rome and the Kingdom of Bosphorus, the peasant uprisings in medieval Germany and France, the peasant wars in China and Russia, and the proletariat's revolutionary battles---the Paris Commune

and the first Russian revolution of 1905-- 1907---were all examples of this struggle. But each time, the ruling classes were able to retain power, preserving their economic might and political supremacy.

And then, for the first time in history, came the hour of defeat for exploiter -4rule---the socialist revolution of October 1917 triumphed in Russia. For the first time, the people had become the masters of their country and their future. The workers' struggle against exploitation, against social and national oppression had been long and hard, but it was crowned with their complete victory. The counter-revolutionary forces were defeated, and the exploiter classes liquidated. This book is about the class battles, both armed and ideological, fought on the road of Soviet Russia's transition from capitalism to socialism.

Chapter I

THE TRIUMPH OF THE REVOLUTION

1. Classes and Political Forces in Russia

Russia's social-class structure in the early 20th century was that of a society with a fairly well-developed capitalism. The emergence and the shaping of capitalist relations had given rise to a numerically strong proletarian class in both town and country. It was opposed by big and middle-class bourgeoisie. However, the agro-industrial pattern of the country's economy predetermined the numerical predominance of the rural population over the urban. Considerable traces of feudalism remained in the countryside; the peasants were ruthlessly exploited by the landowners.

The social patterns of the peoples inhabiting the Caucasus, Central Asia, Kazakhstan and the Far East had many strikingly distinctive features. Capitalist relations among many of them were just beginning to take shape or were non-existent altogether; the working class and national bourgeoisie were only just budding. The social structures of these peoples were predominantly feudal, some of them with strong remnants of tribal relations. Some peoples of the European North and the

northern regions of Siberia and the Far East were basically still passing through a patriarchal-tribal stage.

Russia's population in 1913 numbered some 139.3 million, with the number of rural inhabitants amounting to 114.6 million (82%) and the urban population, 24.7 million (189^. The working masses---the factory workers, the rural poor, the lower-ladder groups of intellectuals and civil servants ---accounted for 85 per cent, i.e., the overwhelming majority of the population. The proletariat made up 15.8 per cent, the rural labourers and craftsmen---66,7 per cent, and intellectuals and office employees---2.2 per cent. The exploiter classes---the landowners, the landlords, the urban bourgeoisie, and the rural bourgeoisie (called kulaks)---- accounted for roughly 15 per cent.

For many centuries the shadow of the two-headed eagle, symbol of the autocracy of the tsar, stretched over Russia. Upheld and safeguarded by the soldiers' bayonets, the cossacks' knouts, and a formidable police force with its numerous prisons, the absolute monarchy (autocracy) seemed to be unshakable, eternal. But historically its days were numbered.

Progressive figures of many generations had devoted their lives to the cause of freeing the people, the Decembrists and Herzen, revolutionary intellectuals and heroes of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Freedom) among them. But they all fought in isolation, cut off from the people. It was the Russian proletariat, expressing the interests of all working people, that rallied behind itself the many-millioned

mass of the people. Its political vanguard--- the Communist Party or the Party of Bolsheviks^^1^^ founded by Lenin---led the people to attack the autocracy and, later, to carry out the socialist revolution.

The revolution in Russia was both natural and inevitable. By the beginning of the 20th century all the objective conditions for its realization had ripened. Above all, the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system had become intertwined with the vestiges of serfdom, making the people's plight virtually intolerable. Russia's part in World War I (1914) graphically exposed these contradictions. Unleashed to promote the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie and hated by the people, to whom it was absolutely alien, the war revealed in no uncertain terms the rottenness and insolvency of the tsarist regime. The senseless slaughter of millions of Russian soldiers at the front and the economic dislocation in the rear had led to widespread discontent and unrest among the masses.

A revolutionary outburst was in the offing and nothing could prevent it. In 1916 a mighty wave of strikes swept the country, with ever

~^^1^^ When the Party's leading bodies were elected at the Second Congress of the Russian Social-- Democratic Labour Party (the RSDLP) held in 1903, Lenin's followers got the majority (bolshinstvo---in Russian) of votes. Hence the name Bolsheviks. The opportunists at the Congress remained in the minority ( menshinstvo) and have since been called the Mensheviks. In 1918 the RSDLP was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and in 1952 became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (the CPSU).

new contingents of workers joining the struggle. The Army was disintegrating. The soldiers grew increasingly aware that they were being sent to die for a cause not their own. The ruling circles were gripped by crisis, resulting in a constant reshuffling of the Cabinet.

The reactionaries sensed the impending disaster. The Monarchists tried desperately to rally the counter-revolutionary forces, seeking a deal not ony with the liberal bourgeoisie, but also with representatives of the petty bourgeoisie. Fearing a people's revolution, the liberal bourgeoisie struck a deal with the landowners and bourgeois conservatives, advancing a programme of reforms which would preserve the monarchy. But nothing could now halt the avalanche of the people's wrathful protest.

The revolution forged ahead tempestuously. In late February 1917, Russia's capital, Petrograd (today Leningrad) was to all intents and purposes in the hands of the freedom fighters. Demonstrations by workers and soldiers flooded its streets. Fiery calls of "Down with the Monarchy!", "The Landlords' Lands to the People!", and "Down with the War!" sounded everywhere. The February revolution brought an end to the autocracy. In a matter of a few days, the citadel of absolute monarchy that had stood for centuries crumbled to the ground.

But it was not only to overthrow the tsar that the working people had risen in arms. Taken by itself, that action would not solve the pressing social problems facing the counry. While the bourgeoisie strove to bring the

imperialist war to a "victorious finish" and maintain the high profits from their investments and landlords' estates, the aim proletariat and the peasantry set for themselves was to end the hateful war, restrain the unbridled capitalist plunder and turn the land over to the peasants. Thus, the February revolution had not done away with the class antagonisms between the bourgeoisie and landowners on the one hand, and the workers and peasants on the other. These contradictions underlay all the ensuing clashes between the revolutionary and the counter-- revolutionary forces.

Following the February events, two political camps had crystallized which were to determine the further course of the class struggle in the country. One was that steered by the bourgeoisie, which was led by the main party of Russian imperialism^the Constitutional-Democratic Party, the party of "people's freedom" (Cadets), rallied behind which were practically all political and social forces personifying capitalist Russia. Allied with it was the landowning oligarchy. Opposing it was the working class, led by the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Between these two camps stood the petty-bourgeois groups (well-to-do farmers, small-scale owners and traders, craftsmen) who were numerically strong, but incapable of independent action. The petty-bourgeois parties (the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries) were the spokesmen for their interests. The outcome of the struggle depended, ultimately, on how these petty-bourgeois masses, constituting the majority of the population, would act,

which camp they would choose to join.

On the day of the victory of the February revolution, the Bolsheviks called on the workers to set up the Soviets of Workers' Deputies. From that time on, the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies became their single revolutionary organisation. They were set up throughout the country in all cities and large administrative centres. Without waiting for legislative acts to be handed down from above, they began to introduce an 8-hour working day, disbanded police units and formed Red Guards detachments to protect the factories and other industrial enterprises, discharged the tsar-nominated judges and elected new, people's judges. There were cases when they dismissed the factory managements whose attitude towards the employees was especially savage, and introduced workers' control over the respective industrial establishments. They were also tackling the food problem.

But alongside the Soviets, a bourgeois Provisional Government arose as a ruling body representing the bourgeoisie and the landowners.

Thus, a dual power emerged in the country; divided between the Provisional Government and the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. The Bolshevik Party was faced with the task of having all power transferred to the Soviets.

The leaders of the petty-bourgeois Party--- Kerensky, Chernov, Avksentyev, Tseretely--- entered the Provisional Government, thus helping to strengthen its authority and begin a steady mustering of the counter-revolu-

tionary forces. The Provisional Government continued the bloody war, made no haste in turning the land over to the peasants, and sabotaged the elections, promised at the time of the February revolution, to the Constituent Assembly, which, it was alleged, would enact the revolutinary demands of the people. Then, having gathered its forces and secured the backing of the counter-- revolutionary generals, it moved on to a series of repressive measures that would pave the way to the setting up of a military dictatorship. The rulers of the imperialist powers, primarily the USA, Britain and France, came to the aid of the Russian capitalists. The US bankers extended credit to the Provisional Government to the tune of 100 million roubles to crush the "home enemy". The Provisional Government began to concentrate troops around Petrograd.

The grave danger of these actions stirred up the general masses. The Bolshevik Party revealed the Provisional Government's treacherous policies and the disloyalty of the leaders of the petty-bourgeois parties of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who, in alliance with the Right-wing reactionaries, were hatching a coup d'Etat. Heeding the call of the Bolshevik Party, over 400,000 workers of Moscow and its environs ( practically four-fifths of all the Moscow proletarians) organised a general strike. Following suit, the workers of Kiev, Kharkov, Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), Nizhni Novgorod (Gorky), Kostroma, Vladimir, Tsaritsyn (Volgograd) and other cities also went on strike. Under the guidance of the Communist Party, Rus-

sia's proletariat roused the mass of the people and led them on to a socialist revolution. "To the battle cry of the bourgeoisie who have rallied their ranks", the Bolshevik declaration ran, "the working class has counterposed its own slogan---for a proletarian and peasant revolution.... The proletariat will carry out the revolution to its desired end, giving land to the peasants, and peace, bread, and freedom to the people.''

The growing revolutionary movement and the action against the counter-revolutionaries' military plot invigorated the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Led by the Bolsheviks and mobilizing the masses to fight the counter-revolution, they established revolutionary order, taking over factories, banks, post and telegraph communications. The Soviets in Kronstadt, Helsingfors, Tsaritsyn, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Ekaterinburg, Revel (Tallinn), Chelyabinsk, Vladivostok, Odessa and many other cities and towns announced that they would take over power and exercise authority in their respective localities.

The Communist Party roused the working class and all other working people to the victorious Great October Socialist Revolution. The armed uprising of October 25 ( November 7), 1917 deposed the Provisional Government. On that day, in Petrograd and the nearby towns and villages, at industrial enterprises and in Army and Navy units, the workers, soldiers, and peasants rejoiced at reading in the paper "Rabochii i soldat" ("Worker and Soldier") Lenin's appeal "To the Citizens of Russia!" This is what that historic document said, in part'.

``The Provisional Government has been deposed. State power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies---the Revolutionary Military Committee, which heads the Petrograd proletariat and the garrison.

``The cause for which the people have fought, namely, the immediate offer of a democratic peace, the abolition of landed proprietorship, workers' control over production, and the establishment of Soviet power ---this cause has been secured.

``Long live the revolution of workers, soldiers and peasants!''^^1^^

October 25 (Novemebr 7), 1917 went down in history as the day of the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. On the evening of the same day, the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets was convened. It adopted the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land, and elected the Soviet Government---the Council of People's Commissars. Lenin, the leader of the revolution, was elected its Chairman.

2. Resistance of the Exploiter Classes

The revolutionary steps taken by the Soviet Government in both the political and economic spheres met with a desperate resistance by all the forces of the old world. The bourgeoisie resorted to staging riots, slan-

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, p. 236.

derous campaigns, and acts of sabotage and subversion in factories and offices. It tried to disrupt food supplies and transport communications and disorganise the banking system. It provoked the seizure and plunder of wine cellars. Their main aim in all these actions was to discredit the Soviet Government, and, eventually, to overthrow it.

The Soviet Government responded with a resolute policy for the suppression of the bourgeoisie's counter-revolutionary designs. It set up the Petrograd Revolutionary Military Committee (RMC), and similar revolutionary committees in the provinces, to fight counterrevolution and subversion. The RMC took prompt measures to put an end to the riots and provide Petrograd with food, to stamp out larceny and institute revolutionary order. The newly-formed Red Guards and workers' militia were of great help in this. Together with the revolutionary soldiers and sailors they became the armed force of the Soviets, called upon to help implement the Soviet Government's policies, which were aimed at building a new society and combatting the foes of the revolution.

Resolution and prompt action was urgently needed to suppress acts of sabotage, subversion, and espionage being staged by the counter-revolutionaries. To tackle this problem, an All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution, Sabotage and Profiteering (Vecheka) was set up, with Felix Dzerzhinsky as its chief.

Military counter-revolution presented another very grave danger in its frantic efforts to strangle the Revolution. In a number of re-

gions-Hhe Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus, the Southern Urals---the counter-- revolutionaries tried to take advantage of the counterrevolutionary sentiments of some of the Cossacks. As soon as the news had spread that the armed uprising in Petrograd had gained the upper hand, an active counterrevolutionary centre arose in the South of the country. The supreme body of the Cossack Troops Assembly and Government headed by General Kaledin, the Commanderin-Chief of the Don Cossack Troops, declared that they would not recognize the Soviet Government and seized power in the town of Novocherkassk. Kaledin circulated an order which stated, in part, "in view of the extraordinary situation and the severance of communications with the country's central regions, the government of the Cossack troops assumed, as of October 25, 1917, full state executive authority in the Don region until the Provisional Government and order in Russia are restored''.

The counter-revolutionaries tried hard to prevent the revolution from spreading southwards and create a jumping-off ground from which to intensify the fight against the revolutionary movement in Russia's central region. With this aim in mind, the Donskaya Cavalry Division was dispatched to the town of Voronezh to "restore order" and pave the way for the advance of the Cossack troops towards Moscow and Petrograd. To form fresh and reliable Cossack units, Kaledin announced the mobilization of older-age Cossacks.

Reactionary-minded Cossacks formed the

2-454

main force of the counter-revolution in the Southern Urals as well. Back in October 1917, when the Provisional Government was still in office, the Cossack Troops in Orenburg had elected an Orenburg Troops' Government headed by Dutov, Chairman of the reactionary All-Russia Council of the Allied Cossack Troops. When the Orenburg Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies led by the Bolsheviks raised the question of authority being turned over to the Soviets, Dutov and his troops mutinied.

From the very start of the revolution, Russian counter-revolutionaries had pleaded for help from international reactionary circles. Following the October Revolution, foreign representatives staying in Russia busied themselves with the formation of a broad network of agents for espionage and subversion. General Niessel, head of the French Mission, later acknowledged that upon his arrival in Petrograd, he at once resolved to organise an intelligence service unprecedented in Russia.

It should be noted that imperialist powers had representatives in a fairly large number of Russian cities and towns. For example, the United States had an Embassy and a Consulate in Petrograd, Consulate General in Moscow and Irkutsk, Consulates in Archangel, Vladivostok, Chita, Tomsk, Ekaterinburg, Samara (Saratov), Tiflis (Tbilisi), and a Consulate Agency in Murmansk. Many other American missions were also present in Russia, such as the Red Cross and the Young Men's Christian Association, as well as others, fulfilling the assignments of US intelligence. The same

applies both to France and Britain. In their subversive actions the Entente's^^1^^ secret agents had the backing of the Military Missions, which had remained in Russia with a fairly large personnel. After the October Socialist Revolution many officers of the Tsarist Army, who were formerly attached to foreign missions or served as liaison officers between the Russian and Entente troops, also formed part of the intelligence network of Western powers. Rabid counter-- revolutionaries, prepared to fight the Soviet Government by any means available, were also employed. In December 1917, British intelligence began to recruit Russian officers in Petrograd. Thus, an official of the British Embassy in Petrograd wrote in his memoirs that "the War Office had its natural affinities with the officers of the Russian Army, who were gradually forming centres of resistance to the Bolsheviks". The French and American representatives were quick to follow suit. They established contacts with the underground counter-revolutionary organisations and leaders of the anti-Soviet parties of Cadets, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, the purpose being to step up their fight against Soviet power both in Central Russia and in the border regions. Plans were hatched to stage a sweeping coup d'Etat, as well as to

~^^1^^ The Entente---an imperialist bloc of Great Britain. France, and Tsarist Russia. It was formed in 1904---1907, and in the course of the war against the German coalition it united over 20 states (Italy, the USA, and Japan among them). The Entente powers became the main organisers of the anti-- Soviet intervention of 1918-1920.

carry out acts of individual terrorism against prominent leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government, and above all against Lenin, leader of the October Revolution. In November 1917, a conspiracy by a monarchist organisation, master-minded by V. Purishkevich, who personified Russia's monarchist forces, was uncovered in Petrograd. The conspirators possessed considerable wherewithal to procure weapons---small arms, grenades, bombs and machine-guns, as well as printing devices to put out leaflets. The funds came from monarchist and foreign sources. The action was intended to start at the moment counter-revolutionary forces approached Petrograd. Constant contacts were maintained with the counter-revolutionary generals of the Don region in the south. In a letter dated November 4, 1917, Purishkevich informed the Cossack Chief Kaledin that the organisation he headed was very busy recruiting and arming officers and military cadets of the military academies. In his words, the situation could be saved only through forming officers' and junkers' regiments. Further on he wrote that the ``mob'' could only be handled by resorting to public shootings and the gallows. And these were not empty words. Purishkevich was designing a plan to an attempt on Lenin's life. This was not the only instance in which counter-revolutionaries planned a cold-blooded murder of the leader of the proletarian revolution. On January 1, 1918, an attempt on his life was made as he was returning by car from the Mikhailov Manege in Petrograd, where he had made an address to the men of the Red Army.

By mere chance Lenin was unharmed.

Wishing to overthrow the Soviet Government at all costs, the intelligence men in the embassies and other envoys of Western powers spared neither effort nor means to support the Russian counter-revolutionaries.

The US emissaries acted hand in glove with the French and British representatives. On December 5, 1917, the American Consul De Witt Clington Poole arrived in Southern Russia and met with General Alekseyev and the Cossack Chief Kaledin. Americans helped the counter-revolutionaries form the so-called ``voluntary'' units. In addition, the US Consulate in the town of Yassy put together a Whiteguard detachment to assist the counterrevolutionaries in Southern Russia.

The Soviet Government branded the counter-revolutionary actions in the Don region and the mutiny of the Cossack Chief Dutov in the Southern Urals as an anti-popular movement led by the Constitutional-Democratic Party. In an appeal "To the Entire Population", dated November 25, 1917, the Council of the People's Commissars pointed out that "the Rodzyankos, Milyukovs, Guchkovs and Konovalovs want a comeback to power and, availing themselves of the help of the Kaledins, Kornilovs and Dutovs, are turning the labouring Cossacks into the tool for their criminal ends. Kaledin introduced martial law in the Don region, he prevents bread from being delivered to the front and musters forces, threatening Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov and Moscow.... The Central Committee of the Constitutional-Democratic Party acts as the political headquarters of that rebellion. Thebour-

geoisie grants the counter-revolutionary generals dozens of millions to organise an insurrection against the people and their rule.... The bitterest enemies of the people, the Cadets, together with the capitalists of all countries, have paved the way to the present-day worldwide slaughter, and cherish the idea... of coming to the aid of their generals---"the Kaledins, Kornilovs, Dutovs---in order to jointly strangle the people.''^^1^^

All this impelled the Soviet Government to take resolute action. Lenin stressed: "Either conquer the Kaledins and Ryabushinskys or give up the Revolution.''^^2^^ The Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) prepared a plan for routing the counter-revolution in Southern Russia. In January 1918, detachments of the Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers began their march against the enemy. Kaledin was forced to admit: "Ours is a hopeless case. Far from backing us, the population is hostile to us. We do not have strength, and resistance is useless." Having made this confession, the Cossack Chief put a bullet through his head. Detachments of Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers marched into the towns of Novocherkassk and Rostov. Soviet power was reinstated in the Ukraine, where by mid-February 1918 the Central Rada units were fully routed. Soviet power was also restored in the Southern Urals. The Soviets won in Russia's central regions, in the cities and towns of the

~^^1^^ The Decrees of Soviet Power, Vol. I, pp. 154-- 155 (in Russian).

~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, 1972,

Ukraine, the Volga region, the Urals, Central Asia, and Siberia. In little over three months from the October 25th armed uprising in Petrograd, the Soviets had gained the upper hand throughout the country. The revolution had triumphed. This period went down in the history of the Soviet State as a " triumphant march of Soviet power''.

Chapter II THE CIVIL WAR

commanded a rather formidable military force in Moscow, with branches in Petrograd and other cities. Close contacts were established with the Voluntary Army.

Alongside these counter-revolutionary centres, another organization was also operating in Moscow and Petrograd in the spring and summer of 1918. This was the "Union for the Re-Birth of Russia", which united Cadets, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and Mensheviks.

Preparing for a rebellion, the Union founded a military centre which gave guidance to the officers' organisations. As one of its leaders disclosed, the action was planned to coincide with "the appearance on the scene of a more or less serious force coming from the Allied Armies". He also intimated that from the very moment it came into existence, the Union had maintained contacts with representatives of the Allied Missions in Moscow, Petrograd and Vologda, mainly by proxy of the French ambassador Joseph Noulens.

The underground organisations were very closely connected with each other. Some counter-revolutionary leaders were at once members of several groups controlled by different Centres or Unions. They all had the backing of the embassies, military missions and individual agents of imperialist powers, who financed and directed all of their activities.

Boris Savinkov, a Socialist-Revolutionary militant before the Revolution and Aide to the War Minister in the Provisional Government, headed an organisation which was perhaps the most active among the host of other counter-revolutionary groupings. Fol-

1. The Class Struggle Intensifies

While the counter-revolutionary forces were concentrating in Russia's border regions and the imperialist powers began their armed intervention there, in Central Russia the world reactionary circles were bent on organising a conspiracy to overthrow the Soviet Government. In the spring and summer of 1918, the most diverse political forces opposed to Soviet power united to form underground organisations, carrying out acts of subversion and terror in Moscow, Petrograd and other major cities.

In March 1918, a counter-revolutionary Right-wing Centre representing the clandestine Commercial and Industrial Committee and the Union of Landowners, as well as the Right-wing Cadets, began functioning in Moscow, making preparations for rebellion. A task force of officers was being formed, and contacts arranged with the Witheguard Voluntary Army in Southern Russia.

In May, the Cadets set up a new organisation called the National Centre, which turned to the imperialist powers---the USA, France, and Britain---for assistance. This organisation

lowing the overthrow of the Provisional Government, Savinkov fled to Southern Russia. However, having failed to reach agreement with the counter-revolutionary generals, he returned to Petrograd, where he established close contacts within the foreign embassies and military missions. In the spring of 1918 Savinkov arrived in Moscow to engineer a counter-revolutionary coup d'Etat.

Effective support from imperialist circles abroad enabled Savinkov to knock together the counter-revolutionary "Union for the Defence of Homeland and Freedom". The Union operated in deep secrecy: all rankand-file members were divided in twos and fours, the chiefs of the fours knew all their men, while the men forming the twos knew only each other. The Union presented a motley gathering of Socialist-Revolutionaries, Cadets, and Monarchists. Its armed groups were commanded by Rychkov, a former tsarist general, while the monarchist colonel Perkhurov acted as Chief of Staff.

The Union had groups operating in most of the major cities of Central Russia. Some groups had as many as 500 members and were fairly well-armed. All in all, by the latter part of May 1918, the Union had gained a membership of some 5,500. The conspirators had their own print shop to issue anti-Soviet leaflets.

Although Savinkov proclaimed himself an "independent Socialist", he lived and operated on French and British money, being actuaUy in the service of the imperialist powers' ruling circles. His contacts were especially close with the French, who subsidized him with nearly

2,500,000 roubles. "The French," he confessed later on, "knew in detail about all the resources we commanded. They gave me money to be spent at my own discretion." Savinkov also maintained contacts with the British diplomat Bruce Lockhart and the British spy Sidney Reilly.

In May 1918, preparations for the rebellion were nearing their conclusive stage. On May 26, Lockhart sent a wire to the British Government in London. The dispatch was so informative that it was immediately forwarded to the King and Members of the War Cabinet. Lockhart's communication ran as follows: "Today I've had a lengthy talk with one of Savinkov's agents. This man---I have known him for many years and he can be absolutely trusted---stated that Savinkov's counter-revolutionary plans are fully geared to the realisation of the Allied intervention. The French mission affirms that they fully sup^ port the decision for intervention. Savinkov proposes to kill all Bolshevik leaders at the moment of the Allied landing and form a government, which, in effect, would be a military dictatorship." Lockhart further pointed out that, under French pressure, Savinkov had come to the conclusion that action should be taken without delay, and that he was ready to begin at once.

By that time, Savinkov's agents had managed to infiltrate some of the Soviet administrative and military organisations. They had made a preliminary survey of the city, locating the disposition of various Soviet establishments, military units, depots, food storages, etc.

A special terrorist group, headed by Savinkov himself, worked out the scenario of the attempt on Lenin's life. They began to shadow the movements of the leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet State.

However, Savinkov's conspiratory efforts in Moscow failed. On May 29, the Extraordinary Commission arrested the staff of one of the so-called regiments of the Moscow branch of the Union, and the conspiracy was disclosed. By the evening of May 30, over onehundred "defenders of homeland and freedom" were arrested in other secret hideouts throughout the city. However, members of the main staff managed to escape from Moscow.

Simultaneously, the Extraordinary Commission took action to cut short the Union's activities in Kazan, arresting a great number of counter-revolutionaries. While doing away with the Kazan branch of the Union, they uncovered a 500-strong group of monarchist-minded officers headed by General I. Popov. It had at its disposal a fairly large reserve of fire arms. As the General himself later admitted, his men were to act in close contact with the fighting men of Savinkov's Union.

The Socialist-Revolutionary Party was also getting ready to come out against the Soviets. Its 8th Congress, held in mid-May 1918, strikingly demonstrated its patently antiSoviet stand and its readiness to launch an open campaign against the Soviet Government.

The Central Committee of the Socialist-- Revolutionary Party approved the setting up in

Petrograd of a so-called Central Combat Detachment, whose purpose was to organise attempts on the lives of prominent leaders of the Bolshevik Party, V. Volodarsky, the Commissar for the Press, Propaganda and Agitation, Member of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, and M. Uritsky, Chairman of the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission, where chosen as the first victims. On June 20, 1918, the Socialist-Revolutionaries murdered Volodarsky, an outstanding figure in the Russian revolutionary movement. Shortly afterwards, a group of terrorists began to plot the killing of Uritsky, and a second group left for Moscow to organise an attempt on Lenin's life. The Whiteguard underground embarked on a large-scale terror campaign against the leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government.

The class struggle rose to a new pitch. In the West, the German occupation troops stood in combat readiness, any moment they could violate the Brest Peace Treaty and start an offensive. In the North, British troops were concentrated, in the Far EastUS and Japanese troops. On May 25, the Czechoslovak corps^^1^^, provoked by British and French reactionaries, rose in revolt. All these events encouraged the counter-- revolutionary underground in Central Russia to step up its actions. It had the all-out backing of the Allies, who demanded resolute moves. As

~^^1^^ The Czechoslovak corps consisted of men and officers who had been prisoners of war. By agreement with the Soviet Government, it was heading from Russia's Central European regions to Vladivostok, from where it was to go home via France.

General Denikin testified, "the Allied millions went into the political work of the centres, the opening of its branches in the provinces, and, partly, into the formation by each of them of an armed force, primarily of officers....''

The French ambassador, Noulens, tried hard to activate the underground Guards of the counter-revolution. The representatives of Western powers, Lockhart, Poole, Lavergne, and Grenard held numerous talks with the Whiteguard organisations.

Their efforts were not in vain. The National Centre and the Union for the Re-Birth of Russia worked out a common political platform and secured the agreement to it by the Union for the Defence of Homeland and Freedom. Later on, testifying in the dock, Savinkov said that he received instructions from ambassador Noulens to seize, with the forces under his command, the towns of Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, Kostroma, and Murom. This French provocateur, holding an ambassador's post, asked him "to hold ground only for four days, after which we would move in our troops" which were to land in Archangel in early July. To cope with this task, Savinkov received from the French two million roubles. Large sums were given to the National Centre as well.

Fulfilling the orders of the Entente, the Union for the Defence of the Homeland and Freedom, together with other Whiteguard organisations, started a rebellion. Anti-Soviet armed uprising burst out in rapid succession: in Yaroslavl on July 6, in Rybinsk on July 7, and in Murom on July 8. They were directed

by the Union leaders who had escaped arrest in Moscow. The counter-revolutionaries attempted armed actions in other towns of Central Russia as well (Kaluga, Vladimir, Arzamas, Vologda).

The Soviet Government did everything in its power to suppress the Whiteguard uprising in the Upper Volga region.

At that moment the Revolution got a stab in the back from the Left Socialist-- Revolutionaries, who resolved to launch a string of revolts throughout the country and, above all, in Moscow.

Having failed to secure agreement to the demands they advanced at the Fifth All-- Russia Congress of Soviets, which opened on July 4, 1918, the Left Socialist-- Revolutionaries gave the zero-hour signal. On July 6, a few hours after the Whiteguard riot flared up in Yaroslavl, and taking advantage of the strained situation in the country in general, the Left S.R.s killed the German ambassador Mirbach and started a revolt in Moscow. They had at their disposal some 1,800 riflemen and 80 cavalrymen, four armoured cars, 48 machine-guns and eight light cannon. They began to shel the Kremlin, but were unable to capture the city's centre. Red Army units and promptly-armed detachments of workers stopped the Left S.R. traitors. Fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Soviet troops was a detachment of Hungarian internationalists led by Bela Kun. By the end of the following day, the revolt had been suppressed.

On the same day, July 7, Lenin granted an interview to an Izvestia correspondent, in which he said: "Their criminal terrorist act

and the revolt have fully and completely opened the eyes of the broad masses to the abyss into which the criminal tactics of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary adventurers are dragging Soviet Russia, the Russia of the people.

``And if anybody was well pleased with the action of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and rubbed his hands with glee, it was only the whiteguards and the servitors of the imperialist bourgeoisie.''^^1^^

2. On the Blade of the Bayonets

The growing resistance of the exploiter classes expressed in the formation of the Whiteguard armies, the counter-revolutionary plots and the Whiteguard and kulak riots showed that the counter-revolutionaries were bent on deciding the issue of power exclusively by the force of arms, unleashing a civil war in Russia.

The ever-greater financial and material assistance that the imperialist powers gave to the Russian counter-revolutionaries, and the escalation of an overt military intervention against the Soviet State, clearly revealed who were the actual inspirers and master-minds of the armed offensive by the exploiter classes against the workers' and peasants' government.

The imperialists of the USA, Britain, France and a number of other countries came out as the exporters of counter-revolution to

~^^1^^ V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, 1977, pp. 534, 535.

Russia. Systematically persistent, they were making preparations for an onslaught on the Soviet Republic. Already in the spring of 1918 it became clear to them that the landlords, capitalists and kulaks alone would not be able to do away with the workers' and peasants' state. The Entente's military intervention began with the landing of troops in Murmansk from the British cruisers Glory (March 9, 1918), Cochrane (March 14), the French cruiser Admiral Aube (March 18), and the American cruiser Olympia (May 24). From indirect political, economic and ideological backing of the internal counterrevolution, the Entente imperialists moved on to the unfolding of a direct intervention against the Land of Soviets.

In the summer of 1918, the Soviet State found itself virtually encircled by the enemy. Whiteguard units and interventionist troops were attacking from all sides: in the North--- from Archangel and Murmansk; in the East--- from the Far East and Siberia; in the West--- from Finland, the Baltic provinces, Poland, and Romania; in the South---from the Black Sea Coast, the Caucasus and the Central Asian regions.

In the autumn of 1918, the world situation changed radically. The First World War came to an end. Germany and its satellites---Austria and Turkey---were vanquished. The USA, Britain and France, their hands united, were now in a position to launch a broad military intervention in Russia. They took upon themselves the co-ordination of all hostilities being carried out across Russia by the internal and external counter-revolution.

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On November 12, 1918, the day after the signing of the Armistice with Germany, the General Staff of the Allied Armies' Supreme Command stationed in Paris prepared a document relating to the use of the Allied troops against Soviet Russia. It spoke about maintaining the positions captured by the interventionists in the Urals and Siberia, and the spread of hostilities from the North to Petrograd, and from the Caspian Sea region to the Volga region. A special section dealt with the intervention in Southern Russia (the Ukraine and the Don Region), which was to be accomplished via the Black Sea ports and Romania. The building up of a strong group of interventionist troops was proposed.

The Entente's plans concerning the intervention in the Ukraine were immediately communicated to General Denikin, Commander of the Whiteguard army in Southern Russia. His liaison officer in the Staff of the French troops in Bucharest wrote to inform him that the command of the interventionist forces would be taken by General d'Anselme, with headquarters in Odessa. "Under the cover of the Allied occupation," the message ran, "it is necessary to immediately start forming Russian Armies in Southern Russia in the name of the re-birth of the great and single Russia." It was also said that great quantities of arms, munitions, and equipment would be delivered to Odessa. Armed by the Entente, the Whiteguard armies would march on Moscow under a single command.

On November 23, 1918, the Anglo-French troops made a landing in the port of Novorossiisk, on the 25th, in Sebastopol, and on the

27th, in Odessa. On January 31, 1919, they captured Kherson, and on February 2, Nikolayev. The command of the united occupational troops was entrusted to General d' Anselme. The interventionists began to move along the railway lines deep into the Ukraine and by February 1919, they had advanced 100 to 150 kilometres from the ports of landing.

On December 9, 1918, the General Staff compiled a special summary of the plan to be followed by the interventionist forces in Southern Russia. It enumerated all the antiSoviet troops that would lay siege to Russia, detailing their particular tasks. The section dealing with the organization of the Whiteguard Armed Forces specified that, while continuing to render help to Kolchak and the White Guards in the North, the Entente .would direct its main efforts to the Russian South, the purpose being to concentrate there the main mass of the counter-revolutionary armed forces and assist them when they launched an offensive on Moscow. That mass would incorporate the armies of Denikin and Krasnov, as well as the nationalist contingents which would be formed in the process of occupying the Ukraine.

On January 18, 1919, the General Staff of the Supreme Command of the Allied Armies disclosed, for the first time, its plan to coordinate all the anti-Soviet armed forces in Russia. This was preceded by the signing, two days earlier in the city of Omsk, of an agreement between Admiral Kolchak, the French General Maurice Janin and the British General Knox on the distribution of roles in the war against Soviet Russia in the eastern part of

the country. General Janin was nominated Commander-in-Chief of the Allied troops operating eastward of Lake Baikal. In order to ensure the unity of hostilities along th entire front, the Russian command was requested to co-ordinate the conduct of operations with General Janin, who was the acting representative of the Inter-Allied Supreme Command. General Knox was to be Janin's Aide, providing the Whiteguard and interventionist troops with materiel coming from abroad.

In the spring of 1919, the General Staff of the Allied Armies' Supreme Command had finalized the plan for a joint offensive on Soviet Russia by the external and internal counter-revolution to be implemented in 1919. The plan stressed, in particular, that the large-scale military operations should be the main strategic course pursued in the fight against Soviet Russia.

By that time, a certain degree of success had been reached in co-ordinating the military operations of the interventionist and the counter-revolutionary forces inside the country. Together with the foreign troops, the Whiteguard armies hoped they would be able to surround and, eventually, seize Moscow. In Archangel, Murmansk and in the Baltic provinces, British troops operated in conjunction with General Yudenich's army, which was moving on the capital of the Soviet State from the North and the North-West. Deriikin's army and the French troops stationed in the Caucasus and on the Black Sea Coast occupied the Southern part of the country. Admiral Kolchak operated in the East, his army in the Volga region and the Urals receiv-

ing guidance from British and French advisers. With the aid of French officers, J. Pilsudski was forming a Polish Army in the Western part of the country. The troops of the Cossack Chiefs Semyonov and Kalmykov, with the connivance and active assistance of Japanese, American and British troops, were ravaging Siberia and the Far East.

The flames of war were spreading rapidly, embracing vast areas. By the close of 1918, the combined length of frontlines exceeded 10,000 kilometres. The Eastern frontline alone stretched over 2,000 kilometres, running from the forests of the Northern Urals to the Southern Trans-Volga steppe regions.

By the spring of the following year, the White Guards and interventionists had concentrated on these fronts troops of the following numerical strength: in the North--- 12,000 and 23,000 respectively; in the Westsome 13,000 and 20,000; in the South (the Ukraine, the Don region, the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region)---100,000 and 30,000; in the East (the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East)---200,000 and 120,000, with Japanese troops numbering about 70,000.

Apart from that formidable force, the Entente was planning to involve Finnish divisions and supporting forces from Poland and the Baltic region in the hostilities against the Red Army; while in the South it counted on forces from Serbia, Romania, and Greece.

In late February---early March 1919, Red Army units passed over to the offensive against the interventionists and White Guards in the South of the country. The occupationists could not withstand the increased strength

of the Red Army, foreign soldiers and sailors refused to obey combat orders. The French 176th Regiment came out with a demand to end the war.

The interventionists were unable to defend their main bases---Odessa and Sevastopol. On the eve of the Red Army's direct onslaught on Odessa, another two French regiments refused to fight the battle. On April 6, Soviet troops, joined by partisan fighters, entered Odessa. In Sebastopol, French sailors, led by Andre Marti, started an insurrection aboard many warships, including the flagship Waldeck-Rousseau. They demanded an end to the intervention in Soviet Russia and to return to their homeland. On April 29, Soviet troops marched into Sebastopol.

Having failed to destroy Soviet power by its own forces or by the Whiteguard armies, the Entente began to prepare for a combined campaign.

Relying on the active backing of the Generals Janin and Knox, Colonel Ward, military instructors and other representatives of the Entente, Kolchak was able, by the spring of 1919, to build up a 400,000-strong army with 140,000 men and officers directly engaged in the hostilities.

At the end of May, when it became clear that Kplchak's offensive on Moscow had hung fire, disputes again flared up among the interventionists concerning the Whiteguard armies' future actions in the East of the country...

By late June, Kolchak had lost everything he had managed to seize in the spring offensive. His position both at the front and in the

rear was much worse than it had been prior to the offensive in the Volga region. His army's combat capability and morale were deteriorating day by day, while in the rear insurrections against the bloody regime of the White Guards and interventionists gained momentum.

To the West of Lake Baikal were stationed the British, French, Italian, Czechoslovak, Polish, Serbian, and Romanian units, while the area lying east of Baikal was the theatre of operations for US and Japanese troops, which were disposed in a chessboard pattern. They all acted as one man in assisting the White Gurads to reinstate with sword and fire the old, pre-revolutionary order, fostering military terrorism.

But neither the White Guards, nor the interventionists could check the growing partisan movement led by the Bolsheviks. Acting on the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party of July 19, 1919, the Siberian Bolsheviks, actively supported by the working masses, formed huge partisan armies, which drew off a large number of the Kolchak forces and destabilized the enemy's rear. The mammoth rise of the partisan movement, defeats suffered by the Kolchak troops at the front, the growing scale of the revolutionary movement in the West, whose battlecry was "End Intervention in Russia", -Till this brought confusion into the ranks of both the White Guards and the interventionists, who stood guard over the Kolchak army's rear in Siberia. Once Kolchak's troops were routed, the greater part of the interventionist troops retreated to the Far East.

The Entente's attempts to unite the military actions of the internal counter-revolution and launch a massive offensive on Moscow in the early summer of 1919, proved to be futile. For that reason, hopes were placed on Denikin's army, operating in the South. It was to deal the main blow, while the remaining internal and external counter-- revolutionary forces in the East, North and West were assigned to assist it.

By the start of his summer offensive, Denikin had concentrated a force of about 150,000 men at the front. Its strength was greater than Kolchak's at the initial stage of his offensive in the Volga region. Hundreds of British officers gave instruction to the White Guards. On July 3, 1919 Denikin signed the directive for a general offensive. Its aim was the same as Kolchak's---to capture Moscow. The plan was in concordance with the Entente, mapping out the common strategic task of the interventionists and the White Guards for the year 1919. In July 1919, Lenin worte: "This is one of the most critical, probably even the most critical moment for the socialist revolution.''^^1^^

On July 3 and 4, 1919, a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the RCP ( Bolsheviks) was held to discuss the military issue, and on July 9 a letter by the Central Committee entitled "All Out for the Fight Against Denikin!" was made public. That letter was actually the Soviet Government's programme to rouse all workers and labouring peasants to

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, 1977, p. 436.

the struggle against the internal and external counter-revolution. Thousands upon thousands of Communists were sent to those places where the destiny of the Revolution was being decided. Fierce battles raged at the Southern front thoughout the summer.

In the latter part of October 1919, Soviet troops of the Southern front, commanded by A. Yegorov, took the offensive. In hardfought battles the enemy was halted, and then thrown back. Denikin's men were soon retreating in panic to the Black Sea. The horsemen of the Cavalry Army, commanded by Semyon Budyonny, did much to rout the enemy, deservedly gaming immortal glory.

By the spring of 1920, only two hotbeds of war remained in Soviet Russia: Baron Wrangel's Whiteguard army, which had taken refuge in the Crimea, and the Japanese interventionists with the remaining Kolchak troops in the Far East. It was clear that these forces were inadequate to wage an effective fight against Soviet power. Thus, additional forces had to be brought in from somewhere. The prime candidate was the army of bourgeoislandowner Poland, which had long been spurred on and prepared by Britain, France and the USA to embark on an anti-Soviet venture.

Preparing Poland for war, the Entente helped its puppet rulers strengthen their positions, suppress unrest among the Polish workers and peasants, and ruthlessly domineer the Ukrainian and Byelorussian population inhabiting the Soviet areas occupied by them in 1919. The invaders had reinstated the old regime, returned land to the landowners and factories to the capitalists. The popula-

tion suffered from both social and national oppression. This is what the paper Byelorusskaya Pravda wrote in May, 1920, about the atroctities of the coccupation forces in the Minsk, Igumen, and Slutsk districts: "In these regions the actions of Polish gendarmes were more violent than in any other place, plunging these districts into a bloodbath. Mass shootings before firing squads, plunder, violence, manhandling and humiliation were a daily occurrence and a means of enslaving the poor.''

Meanwhile, the Soviet Government did everything in its power to prevent war with Poland and the Entente. "Poland faces a decision which may have the gravest of consequences for many years to come, affecting as it does the lives of both our peoples,"---said one of its statements. "All things go to show," it went on to say, "that the imperialist extremists of the Entente, the followers and agents of Churchill and Clemenceau, are exerting every effort to plunge Poland into a groundless, senseless and criminal war with Soviet Russia." Further, the basic provisions of Soviet policy in relation to Poland were put forth, which followed the principles of national self-determination, and recognition of the independence and sovereignty of the Polish Republic. The Soviet Government declared that all outstanding issues could be settled in a spirit of good-neighbour relations.

Strengthening and arming Wrangel's troops, the Entente prepared them for an offensive against the Red Army. To make it easier for the White Guards, the British Fleet in the Black Sea took the Crimean coast under its

protection. London gave orders to the Naval commanders to sink every ship they encountered flying the red flag. At the same time, Britain took some diplomatic steps to win time, making it possible for the Wrangel army to reform and arm itself. "Just like Kolchak and Denikin, Wrangel is the mercenary of the French and English capitalists," the Bolsheviks explained the situation that had developed to Russia's workers and peasants, "he gets money from them, military equipment (guns and munitions), uniforms, and the aid of specialists; for that he has undertaken to deliver abroad Russian grain, oil, coal, and kerosene; with the help of Wrangel the West European bourgeois governments want to depose the Soviet Government and restore in Russia the old order suitable to them.''

Having completed the preparations of the troops, the Entente gave orders to advance. The Polish concentrated six armies, armed to the teeth by the Entente (some 150,000 men and officers against 65,000 Red Army men), on the Soviet front. On April 25, 1920, they launched an offensive on a broad front from the Pripyat River to the Dniester River, aiming to seize the Ukraine. At first, they scored considerable successes. Kiev fell on May 7. Once more Ukrainian towns and villages were in flames. In its proclamation "The Polish Front and Our Tasks*', the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolsheviks) pointed out that "we are waging a life and death struggle. It will be a strenuous and grim fight". On May 12, martial law was again proclaimed in the Land of Soviets.

But the Soviet troops took a counter-of-

fensive and liberated Kiev (on June 12), Vilnius (on June 14), and Minsk (on July 11). Towards the end of July 1920, the Red Flag was raised over the larger part of the Ukraine and Byelorussia. The Entente Military Council had to admit that "in view of the Bolshevik offensive, Poland's position seems to become increasingly grave with every passing day''.

At the same time as the war against Wrangel and bourgeois-landowner Poland was waged, the Red Army, relying on the support of the woking people of Central Asia, had fully liberated Turkestan, as well as Khiva and Bukhara, where people's revolutions had taken place. Soviet power triumphed in Transcaucasia in 1920-1921, where the Soviet Socialist Republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia were founded. This was a staggering blow to world imperialism and its henchmen in Russia.

The conclusion of a preliminary peace treaty with Poland sealed the fate of Wrangel's Whiteguard army.

Led by Mikhail Frunze, the Red Army carried out a bold offensive operation: performing feats of heroism and braving heavy fire, on the night of November 8, 1920 they crossed the cold waters of the Sivash Strait and advanced into the enemy's rear. Simultaneously, a frontal attack was launched.

Under the blows of the Soviet troops the enemy rolled back to the Black Sea ports. From there, ships with the fleeing White Guards aboard sailed to Turkey. On November 13, Red Army units freed Simferopol, and on November 15, Sebastopol.

``The selfless courage of the Southern front

troops," it was said in the Resolution of the Council of Labour and Defence, whose Chairman was V. I. Lenin, "rendered it possible to rid the Russian Federation of the last rampart of the Russian counter-revolution: their heroic efforts resulted in the liberation of the Crimea; Wrangel has been thrown into the Black Sea and his forces have been finally dispersed. At long last, after a three-year Civil War imposed by the White Guards, the country can have a respite, begin healing the numerous wounds inflicted on it, and engage in the rehabilitation of the national economy so much war-ravaged during these years.''^^1^^

3. Rout of Clandestine Counter-Revolution

In the first year of Soviet power the counter-revolution was dealt a heavy blow. When conspiracies and rebellions were crushed in the summer of 1918, many of the leaders and rank-and-file of the anti-Soviet underground were either arrested by Soviet security organs, or fled to join the Whiteguard armies.

In retaliation to the Whiteguard terror unleashed against Soviet leaders, workers and peasants, the Soviet Government was compelled in the autumn of 1918 to introduce punitive measures, dictated by extreme necessity. In the Ukraine and the Baltic provinces, in the Volga region and Siberia, in the Urals and in Turkestan, wherever the White Guards and interventionists conquered temporarily, from their hands flowed the blood of fighters for

~^^1^^ V.I.Lenin, Military Correspondence (1917-- 1920), Moscow, 1954, p. 260 (in Russian).

the power of the working people.

The White terrorists operated in the Soviet rear, striving to behead the Revolution. In Moscow a group of S.R. terrorists began shadowing the movements of Lenin. The city was divided into several sectors, each of which was under the surveillance of a particular terrorist-executor. On August 30, 1918, their sinister plan was carried out. At about 7 p.m. in the Zamoskvoretsky district of Moscow, Vladimir Lenin spoke before the workers of the Mikhelson factory (today this factory is named after Lenin). Having finished his speech, he proceeded to his car, surrounded by workers, with whom he was engaged in a lively conversation. At that moment three shots thundered.... Lenin was seriously wounded. On that same day, a few hours earlier, the Chairman of the Petrograd Cheka M. Uritsky was shot.

The crimes committed by counter-- revolutionaries evoked great indignation among the working people, who demanded that the bloody misdeeds of the reactionaries be stopped. On August 31, papers carried a statement by the All-Russia Central Executive Commitee^^1^^ concerning the attempt on Lenin's life. It called on the working people to step up the fight against the counter-revolution, declaring that "the working class will respond to the attempts on the lives of its leaders by rallying its forces closer still".² On September 2, the Committee heard a com-

~^^1^^ The supreme legislative and executive body of state power in the Russian Federation in 1917-- 1938.

~^^2^^ The Decrees of Soviet Power, Vol. HI, p. 266.

munication by Yakov Sverdlov, its Chairman, on the Whiteguard terror, and adopted a resolution which stated that all counter-- revolutionaries and their inspirers shall be held responsible for any attempt on the lives of prominent Soviet leaders. In compliance with this, the Council of People's Commissars announced on September 5, 1918, that all persons involved in Whiteguard organisations, conspiracies and riots, shall be put before the firing squad.

Having lost a considerable number of its members in the fight against Soviet power, the enemies did not lay down their arms, but rather tried to re-group their forces in order to continue their subversive actions.

In the winter of 1918-19, striving to unify all the counter-revolutionary forces, the National Centre established contacts with a military Whiteguard organisation in Moscow--- the so-called Staff of the Voluntary Army of the Moskovsky district. Drawing on information supplied by military specialists (as former officers of the Tsarist Army who later joined the Red Army were called), the National Centre through its couriers, was forwarding to the Denikin Headquarters secret data about the state of the Red Army and the economic and political situation in the rear.

To get an idea of the great significance of the information collected by the National Centre and supplied to the Denikin Headquarters, it is enough to familiarize oneself with only a small part of the material later found by the Vecheka. It consisted of: a memorandum exposing the strategic plan of actions by the Red Army in the region of Sa-

ratov; summarized data on the strength and structure of the armies operating on the Western, Eastern, Turkestan and Southern fronts as of August 15, 1919; a detailed survey of the Tula reinforced region indicating the number and pinpointing the disposition of anti-aircraft batteries; a letter containing data on particular armies, the strategic plans of the Soviet Command, and information about the Whiteguard forces operating in Moscow. A piece of developed film showed letters of various functionaries of the Cadet Party attached to the Denikin staff. From these letters it was clear that the secret information supplied by the National Centre was of tremendous interest to the Whiteguard command.

Members of the National Centre organized and supported kulak riots, conducted subversive actions against railway transport, blew up bridges, instigated sabotage in factories and mills, and compiled lists of Communists to be eliminated as soon as Whiteguard troops captured Moscow.

In the summer of 1919, the National Centre, acting through its Petrograd branch, got in touch with Paul Dukes, a British agent in Russia. In June, Dukes secretly visited Moccow where he met with N. Shchepkin, the Cadet Chief of the Centre, promising him funds to the tune of 500,000 roubles monthly. Colonel Hartulary, chief of the Denikin intelligence, also came regularly to Moscow to deliver reports to the leaders of the National Centre. Moscow and Petrograd were frequented by other Denikin agents, as well as by those serving in the intelligence networks of Admiral Kolchak and General Yudenich.

The Whiteguard commanders-in-chief contributed large sums of money to support the counter-revolutionary underground in the capital of the Soviet Republic. Thus, Kolchak paid 25 million roubles to the National Centre branches in Moscow and Petrograd, while Denikin paid out 100,000 roubles a month.

The bulk of the money went into subversive activities and preparations for rebellions, timed to start at the moment of the decisive offensives of the Whiteguard armies on Petrograd and Moscow. The Staff of the Voluntary Army of the Moskovsky District worked out a plan for an insurrection to be launched in the capital, and co-ordinated it with the National Centre. A major role was to be played by counter-revolutionary officers, who masked themselves as Cadets of military colleges, and by many of the former tsarist officers now serving in Red Army units. The military counter-revolutionary organisation numbered 800 former officers, who were excellently armed. It was proposed that the armoured cars and artillery of one of the military colleges be used According to the plan, the insurrection would start in the districts outside Moscow---Vishnyaki, Kuntsevo, Volokolamsk, to draw the Soviet forces there, and then the rebellion in the city proper would be launched. Moscow was divided into sectors. The plotters thought it advantageous to station artillery units along the Sadovoye Koltso (The Garden Circle), and erect barricades in the adjoining streets, cutting off the Government officers from the workers' districts. Their plan also included the seizure of the

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main railway stations in Moscow and the storming of the Kremlin. The counter-- revolutionaries hoped they would be able to capture Moscow, if only for a few hours, in order to seize the powerful Moscow radio and telegraph stations and broadcast to the fronts that the Soviet Government had toppled. This, they believed, would bring confusion into the ranks of the Red Army and open a road to the capital for the Denikin troops.

An insurrection plan was worked out also for Petrograd. It was prepared by an underground military organisation which took guidance from a branch of the National Centre and British agents. As an immediate task, the rebels set themselves the staging of mutinies on the major approaches to Petrograd-H;he Kronstadt Fortress and the Krasnaya Gorka forts. This accomplished, the rebels of the Krasnaya Gorka, supported by the British fleet which, as the plotters calculated, should have by that time entered the Neva River, would strike a blow at Gatchina, lying near Petrograd, and jointly with Yudenich's troops capture the city.

The offensive on Petrograd began in the spring of 1919. The counter-revolutionary rebels' actions in the city had gained momentum. On May 31, 1919, an appeal to the people "Beware of Spies" was made public. It was signed by Lenin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, and Felix Dzerzhinski, Chairman of the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission (Vecheka). It pointed out that "the Whiteguards' advance on Petrograd has made it perfectly clear that in the vicinity of the frontline, in every large town, the Whites

have a wide organization for espionage, subversion, the blowing-up of bridges, the engineering of revolts in the rear and the murder of Communists and prominent members of workers' organisations.''^^1^^ It called upon all politically-aware workers and peasants to rise to a man to defend Soviet power, to fight against spies and Whiteguards. The enemy stood on the threshold of Petrograd. The city had to be defended at any price. Already in the latter part of May, when the Whiteguards captured Pskov, the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolsheviks) adopted an appeal to all Party, government and trade union organisations. It read, in part; "Soviet Russia just cannot surrender Petrograd even for a short time. It must be defended at all costs. For the significance of that city which was the first to raise the banner of armed struggle against the bourgeoisie and was the first to win a decisive victory, is too great. The Petrograd workers never spared their efforts, delegating to all fronts dozens of thousands of freedom fighters. It is time now that all Soviet Russia helped Petrograd.''

The Petrograd sector of the front was given the utmost priority. The Central Committee of RCP (Bolsheviks) and the Defence Council sent prominent Communists to assist the local Party, government, and military organisations. The 7th Army, operating near Petrograd, was reinforced with Communist workers. Military units were brought in from the Central

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, 1977, p. 403.

regions and the Eastern front.

A special Staff for the internal defence of the city was set up to take resolute steps to purge the city of counter-revolutionary elements.

In the next few days, revolutionary troops drew nearer to the rebellious forts, laying seige to them. The crews on the man-of-wars Petropavlovsk and Andrei Pervozvanny refused to support the mutineers, thus frustrating their nopes. Nor did the sailors of Kronstadt join them, although the rebels resorted to the shelling of that fort. On the night of June 16, 1919, the rebellion was suppressed.

From mid-summer 1919, when Denikin's onslaught on Moscow reached its peak, the counter-revolutionaries had been stepping up their activities in the capital. The National Centre was already counting the days remaining before zero-hour. On August 22, the Cadet Shchepkin informed the Denikin Headquarters, that in fortnight's time they would have a try at capturing the city. A week later, he prepared a letter addressed to the commander of any Whiteguard detachment it could reach, requesting him to promptly send the enclosed information over the wireless to Colonel Hartulary, Head of the Staff's Intelligence Division. The Letter contained information on the plan of actions of the Red Army and expressed confidence that at "the critical juncture of the uprising in Moscow" the organisation would be fully able to cope with the task set. The counter-revolutionaries were so sure of their success, that the Centre's last meetings even set an exact zero-hour

(6 p.m.). Proclamations and orders were printed in advance, to be made public at the outset of the action. On August 22, I. Pavlunovsky, Deputy Chief of the Special Division of the Vecheka, submitted to Lenin a report, informing him of the disclosure of the counter-revolutionary National Centre. "At the present moment," it said, "we have all the threads leading to the central organisation." On the following day, on August 23, in a note to Dzerzhinski, Lenin pointed out that "Special attention" should be paid to the elimination of the counter-revolutionary underground. "A prompt, vigorous and broad action should be taken to round them up,"¹ he stressed.

An operation was worked out and put into effect to render the enemies of the revolution harmless. On the night of August 29, 1919, the leaders of the National Centre were arrested. Martial law was instituted in Moscow and special detachments set up to carry out, under the Vecheka's command, round-ups and arrests among the counter-revolutionaries. On September 13, the Vecheka announced that the searches had made the situation in the city more secure, and permitted the confiscation of a significant quantity of concealed firearms. At the same time, a secret printing shop was disclosed, as well as stockpiles of issues of counter-revolutionary newspapers and thousands of anti-Soviet leaflets.

These extraordinary measures prevented the counter-revolutionaries from getting toge-

~^^1^^ Lenin's Miscellany, Vol. 37, 1970, p. 167 (in Russian).

ther for a common action, tethered their initiative, and narrowed the periphery around their conspiratorial centres. On the night of September 19, 1919, the Vecheka arrested the Staff of the Voluntary Army of the Moskovsky district.

Some 700 counter-revolutionaries were disarmed. The conspiracy was nipped in the bud.

Having dealt a staggering blow to the counter-revolutionary underground in Petrograd and Moscow, the Vecheka made public an appeal "To All Citizens of Soviet Russia!", in which it gave the counter-revolutionary leaders the dressing-down they deserved: "Workers! Look at these men! Was it not them who wanted to sell you out and betray you? You see among them the Cadet landlords and the `noble' teachers branded as spies, officers and generals and engineers, the former dukes and barons and wretched Right-wing Mensheviks---they all mixed to make a disgusting batch of scoundrels, spies, traitors, and mercenaries in the service of the English Bank''.

The counter-revolutionary ringleaders were forced to confess that they had performed "black misdeeds" and saw at the time what retribution they could expect from the Soviet Government. The head of the National Centre Shchepkin said plainly: "If they put me before ten firing squad, it will not be for nothing.''

The Vecheka had foiled the perfideous designs of the reactionaries just in time. In September, General Denikin's Whiteguard armies seized the towns of Kursk, Voronezh, and Orel, General Mamontov's cavalry raged

in the rear of the Soviet troops. An appeal of the Vecheka carried by Izvestia stated: "While the Denikin hordes try hard to make a break-through into Soviet Central Russia, the spies of the Entente and the Cossack generals have been engineering a revolt in Moscow.... But the traitors and spies have miscalculated.... The hand of the revolutionary proletariat has caught them by the collar...''

When the struggle with the Whiteguard underground reached its crest, anarchist terrorists thought it timely to take advantage of the difficulties Soviet power was experiencing. In mid-1919 P. Sobolev, K. Kovalevich and others founded in Moscow an All-Russian Organization of the Anarchist Underground. The Steering Committee of the Anarchist Underground consisted of some 30 members divided into several sections, the main of which was called the arsenal and combat section, whose purpose was to procure arms for the members of the organization and commit armed raids, robberies, and terrorist acts.

The money they collected from raids and plunder went into the setting up of a lab near Moscow where bombs were produced, or was spent on providing the equipment for a printing shop. They arranged several secret hideouts in Moscow, planning to commit a number of terrorist acts, one of them being the blowing up of the building of the Council of People's Commissars. They decided to time it to the second anniversary of the October Revolution.. They made persistent attempts to infiltrate the Kremlin, studied the time-

table of the Government's sessions and tried to locate the general places where they were held.

At a time when the National Centre's conspiracy in Moscow was being liquidated and the Whiteguard armies were approaching the capital, when, heeding the appeals of the Soviet Government, the people mustered all their strength to rebuff the enemy, the anarchist underground men endeavoured to "show their strength". They drew up a plan for blowing up the premises of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) while the latter was in session.

On September 25, explosives were delivered from Kraskovo, a village near Moscow. At about 9 p.m. a home-made bomb was thrown through the balcony window of an old mansion in Leontievsky street, where over 100 Committee members and Party functionaries had gathered. The plotters thought Lenin was attending the meeting. Fortunately, he wasn't. The explosion killed 12 people, Secretary of the Moscow Committee Vladimir Zagorsky among them. Fifty-five men and women were wounded.

Thus, the anarchists aligned themselves with the Whiteguard organisations. The young Soviet republic made an all-put effort to salvage the Revolution. The painstaking activity of the Cheka helped discover the anarchists' hiding-places in Moscow. Shortly afterwards, the accomplices of the Moscow anarchist underground were arrested in the towns of Bryansk, Tula, and Podolsk. Many secret arms and munition stores were liquidated.

In October 1919, when Yudenich's troops were, for the second time, approaching Petrograd, the counter-revolutionary underground had again stepped up its activities in the Soviet rear. The Cadets still hoped they could frustrate the city's defence efforts using the National Centre's agents who had escaped arrests, and its military organisation.

Many members of that underground military organisation were also acting as agents of a British-sponsored spy network set up by the British agent Paul Dukes. This network was made up of two spy groups: one was headed by B. Berg, chief of the Oranienbaum air squadron, who sent his fliers on spy missions to Finland with intelligence information for Yudenich; and the other was headed by I. R. Kyurts, a former agent of the tsarist counter-intelligence service. One of his most valuable agents was a certain colonel Lundequist, who held the post of the Chief of Staff of the 7th Army defending Petrograd. Apart from subversive actions, the National Centre's military organisation took great pains to collect espionage information for the Entente powers. The French resident E. Bajour had installed his own network of spies, acting hand in glove with Dukes' agents.

Colonel Lundequist was the central figure in the underground military organization. Having at his disposal accurate and reliable information about the strength, structure and disposition of Soviet units near Petrograd, he drew up and handed over to Yudenich's Headquarters a detailed plan for an offensive. At the same time, a plan was prepared for an uprising in the city itself. Task forces were

assigned to seize the telegraph and telephone offices. Plans were also made to capture the battleship Sebastopol, lying at anchor in the Petrograd merchant marine port, and use its artillery to shell the city's strategic objectives. Meanwhile, Yudenich's troops approached the vicinity of Petrograd. General Vladimirov, Chief of the Yudenich counter-- espionage division, had his motorized troops ready to drive into the city to support the rebels.

But the counter-revolutionaries' plans were foiled. On October 27, the 7th Army took the offensive. Next day Lenin sent the following telegram to Petrograd: "It is devilishly important for us to finish with Yudenich ( precisely to finish---io deal a final blow).... It is necessary to finish with Yudenich soon; ; then we shall turn everything against Deni- j kin.''^^1^^ The Whiteguard troops were hurled [ back from Petrograd, the plot having been \ routed in good time. The Petrogradskaya Pravda printed a Vecheka's statement about ? the disclosure of the Whiteguard conspiracy in [ Petrograd, indicating that the plotters were \ "high-ranking officials of the tsarist regime, ! certain generals, admirals, and members of I the Cadet Party, the National Centre, as well as persons associated with the S.R. Party and the Mensheyiks." It made a special point that \ all the activities of the counter-revolutionaries were immediately directed by the Entente agents, who master-minded the espionage missions, financed the plot, holding in their

hands all its threads. Such was the end of the National Centre in Petrograd, and by the end of 1919---beginning of 1920 its remnants had been done away with in Moscow as well.

Russia's transition from capitalism to socialism began with a heavy and prolonged war which jeopardized the very existence of the Soviet Republic. Aggravated by foreign interference and armed imperialist intervention, the war against the internal counterrevolution was waged on an unprecedented scale and with a desperate intensity.

Russia's proletariat, who was the first in the world to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie, was also the first to beat off the most powerful and concentrated strike of the united forces of international imperialism. And throughout the long war period, the main efforts of the Communist Party, the working class, and all working people had to be directed towards solving military problems and upholding their revolutionary gains. This could not but affect the entire job in building socialism. On top of this, the mammoth destruction of the productive forces, resulting from the ravages of Whiteguards and interventionists, presented a difficult stage of economic rehabilitation lasting for five years. All this gave birth to a multitude of additional difficulties, protracted the process of socialist transformations and the building of the material and technical basis of socialism, retarding the country's irreversible advance.

What happened in 1917 through 1920 was

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 44, p. 299. 58

actually the first military confrontation of the two systems---the capitalist and the socialist. Led by the Communist Party, with Lenin at the head, the Soviet people won a victory over the united forces of the internal counterrevolution and international imperialism. They foiled their attempt to destroy the workers' and peasants' state by the force of arms and eliminate the world's first stronghold of the international revolutionary movement. This has had an inestimable impact on human society's further progress.

It should be stressed that civil wars and imperialist military interventions do not necessarily attend the transition from capitalism to socialism. Now that the world socialist system exists, the international position of a particular country may be such that, given a definite balance of class forces, the bourgeoisie would not be in a position to unleash a civil war, although its resistance, as well as the resistance of other exploiter classes, is inevitable and may assume the most diverse forms---from plots and insurrections to ideological expansion and economic subversion. The following chapters relate how the remnants of the exploiter classes and the counter-revolution in Soviet Russia utilized these forms of the class struggle to fight against the proletarian dictatorship.

Chapter III THE NEW CORRELATION OF FORCES

1. Classes at the Beginning of the Period of Peaceful Socialist Construction

The October Socialist Revolution and the Civil War changed society's socio-economic and political structure. The main exploiter classes---the landowners and capitalists-^were abolished, with two non-antagonistic classes--- the workers and peasants---becoming the country's two main classes. The establishment of harmonious relations between them, always an issue of paramount importance for a proletarian revolution, assumed even greater significance for Soviet power and became the political basis for all activities of the Communist Party and Soviet State.

The proletariat, which had been deprived of any means of production and mercilessly exploited, overthrew the bourgeoisie and attained political power in the course of the October Socialist Revolution, thus becoming the country's ruling class. During the Civil War the working class was in the lead of the selfless struggle for the revolutionary transformation of the country and its defence. The proletariat of Russia assumed power under ex-

tremely trying conditions and, like any dictatorship, it sternly protected its political power.

After the end of the Civil War the working class found itself in a difficult situation. A large number of workers had been killed in action, and many of those who had remained in the rear left for the villages to work as craftsmen as a result of the decrease in industrial production. Thus, the proportion of experienced workers employed in industry was reduced, while the number of workers from the intermediate and petty-bourgeois population increased. During wartime the number of working women, especially in light industry, had also naturally increased.

With the decline of large-scale industry the working class risked becoming declassed which, in turn, threatened to undermine the social basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, the remaining core of the working class, one united and hardened in the struggle, proved capable of overcoming all difficulties and leading the working people on the road to socialism.

Peace time provided the working class with all necessary conditions for fulfilling its role as the creator of a new socio-economic system and as the driving force of social progress.

The peasantry, which comprised almost 80 per cent of the country's population, was the most numerous class of Soviet society.

Radical changes took place in the position and consciousness of the peasantry during the Revolution. The peasants had ridded themselves forever of the oppression of landlords and capitalists.

The social structure of the peasantry also underwent a change, with the proportion of poor peasants decreasing and that of middle peasants increasing. While prior to the Revolution poor peasants comprised close to 65 per cent of the peasantry, after the Revolution this percentage was drastically reduced with middle peasants becoming the predominant group in the villages.

After the liquidation of landed estates the poor peasants received land and began to maintain their own holdings. The Revolution dealt a strong blow to the rural bourgeoisie (the kulaks). Soviet power limited kulak holdings; they were deprived of the land they leased from the landowners and monasteries and also of most of their allotted land, on which agricultural associations (which at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s were reorganized into collective and state farms) were later founded.

At the same time, inequality, unavoidable under small-scale commodity production, continued to exist, as well as proletarian and semi-proletarian groups exploited by the kulaks.

The socio-economic inequality in the villages could only be done away with by transferring the villages onto a socialist path of development. The historical necessity of the creation of large-scale socialist agricultural production was caused by the fact that the only way of saving the poor and middle peasants from poverty and kulak exploitation was to engage them in large-scale collective farming. The ways and means by which this objective was fulfilled were outlined in

Lenin's plan for the cooperation of the peasants, which was part of the general programme for building socialism in the Soviet State.

The New Economic Policy^^1^^ (NEP), adopted by the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party in March 1921, was in full conformity with the basic ways and means of building socialism and provided for the gradual transition to socialism.

The introduction of NEP did not in the least change the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or its socio-economic and political foundation. The complete abolition of capitalist production relations and the exploiter classes, as well as the establishment of the basis of socialism was the principal objective of the dictatorship of the working class in the course of the entire transition period.

Russia's proletariat and peasantry, which had, under the guidance of the Bolshevik Party, embarked upon the road of peaceful socialist construction, were compelled to overcome the stubborn resistance of the rem-

^^1^^ The New Economic Policy was conducted by the Communist Party and Soviet Government during the period of transition from capitalism to socialism; it was called ``new'' in order to distinguish it from the economic policy pursued during the Civil War (1918-1920). It was inaugurated in 1921 and abandoned in the late 1930s with the victory of socialism in the USSR. The essence of NEP lay in the consolidation of the alliance of working class and the peasantry on an economic basis, and in the establishment of ties between socialist production and smallscale commodity peasant holdings through the broad use of commodity-money relations and the drawing of the peasants into socialist development.---Ed.

nants of the exploiter classes and of the counter-revolutionary forces routed in the Civil War.

The exploiter classes of landlords and capitalists had been, in the main, abolished and were completely deprived of political power and economic supremacy. In the course of the prolonged and severe Civil War the exploiters, who with the aid of international imperialism had attempted to crush the victorious revolution by armed force, lost the majority of their representatives, who either were killed in action or fled abroad.

As a result of the nationalisation of largescale and middle industry, transport, the banks, large trade enterprises and the introduction of a monopoly of foreign trade, the bourgeoisie lost its economic base, although it still retained certain economic positions. A number of middle industrial enterprises were not yet nationalised by the end of 1920, and small-scale enterprises were nationalised only partially. NEP gave the former and the latter an opportunity to prosper temporarily.

In 1921-1922, due to the revival of smallscale private industry and trade that followed the implementation of NEP, groups of `` Nepmen'', petty entrepreneurs and owners of private capital, whose aim was to establish profitable production or trade, grew rapidly.

The kulaks continued to occupy fairly strong economic positions as a result of the preservation of small-scale commodity production. They made use of every opportunity to increase their wealth and restore their former influence in the villages. The leasing of

5-454

land and hiring of farm hands were practiced j despite legal prohibition. With the help of j various loopholes the kulaks tried to circumvent the law and preserve their economic might by accumulating capital and exploit- f ing the poor. The kulaks' activity acquired an | illicite nature, although due to the existence of small-scale commodity production in the villages it was remarkably wide-spread.

Transition to the New Economic Policy temporarily provided an opportunity for a certain growth of capitalist elements both in the rural and urban areas. This tendency became fully evident in the second year of NEP, which was duly noted in the decisions of the 12th Party Congress held in April 1923.

The economic growth of the kulak holdings was a result of the advantages _uof largescale farming over small-scale farming, and also of the kulaks' exploitation of the poor peasants. This called for the abolition of the kulaks as an exploiter group. However, the expropriation of the kulak's property could not be carried out directly by the proletariat, for the necessary material, technical and social conditions for the socialisation of such holdings were still absent. The kulaks could be done away with only on the basis of mass collectivisation which would lay the material foundation for supplanting largescale kulak production by large-scale collective production and remove all grounds for the revival of capitalism.

Thus, the class struggle in the country had not ended, but only taken on new forms. Bourgeois elements which occupied certain economic positions exerted every effort to

force Soviet power to political consessions, to legalise non-socialist forces and use them to oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat and its programme for building socialism.

2. Admittance of Private Capital

The elimination of the most acute forms of resistance on the part of the overthrown exploiters did not signify an end to the class struggle. The struggle moved into economic and ideological spheres.

Capitalist elements were deprived of political rights and of the right to govern the country's economy; they could not lean on the support of state power. Both the rural and urban bourgeoisie became a subordinate class. The Soviet State temporarily permitted its limited activity in the economic sphere. The state rigidly regulated and limited the bourgeoisie's economic and property rights, as well as its possibilities to exploit hired labour, and decisively suppressed all counterrevolutionary plotting.

The working class occupied the key positions in the national economy and were supported by the state apparatus. Acting in alliance with the peasantry and guided by its time-tested vanguard---the Communist Party, the working class had to determine its general class policy, and in particular its attitude towards the bourgeoisie, in such a way so as to ensure that the initiative in choosing the further path of social development, i.e. the path of building socialism, remained in their hands.

The dictatorship of the proletariat allows for an extremely multiform, persistent class struggle against the forces and traditions of capitalist society---a struggle which is violent and peaceful, taking place in the military, economic, administrative and educational spheres. Of extreme importance here is the simultaneous suppression of the exploiter classes resistance, and the use of their experience and knowledge in the interests of building socialism. In this lay the dialectics of this form of the proletariat's class struggle against the bourgeoisie: to provide limited opportunities for capitalist development but, at the same time, to make this process contribute towards the development of the Soviet State and the building of socialism by suppressing the resistance and the too energetic activity of the bourgeoisie, and by neutralising its influence on the working class and peasantry.

With the transition to NEP, capitalist elements became most active in commerce, since under conditions of the revival of market relations this particular sphere provided the greatest latitude for their activity.

Along with the growth of private capital came the rise of ``Nepman'' bourgeoisie. In a review of reports ot economic conferences (April, 1922) Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta (Trade and Industry Newspaper) stated that "the market is gradually being taken over by real businessmen from among formerly petty traders. Chance dealers are either being pushed into the background or are completely disappearing from the market''.

NEP also revived private capital in industri-

al production. The reconstruction of largescale industry had to be supported by the development of small-scale commodity production. In the early 1920s state-run industrial production was yet unable to fulfill the needs of the population. Therefore, private capital was given a certain role in the development of small-scale and, to some extent, middle industry.

Private capital both in trade and industry was concentrated mostly in Moscow, Petrograd, Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa and some other cities. Pravda noted at the end of 1922'. "Private capitalists initiative rushed into trade and partly, into industry when the workers and peasants decided to give it the opportunity. It was a fever which could make the impudent Nepmen and their ideologists believe that the Soviet State is weak and that Soviet economy is only waiting to be pushed into the background by private capitalist initiative. These were Nepman illusions.

As a result of the rapid revival, in 1921-- 1922, of small-scale private industry and trade, rumours of the strength and significance of private capital began to be spread abroad. In October 1922 Arthur Ransome, correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, addressed several questions on this subject to Lenin. Ransome wrote, in part, that apparently a new commercial class was emerging and that profitable production was in the hands of private owners, ``Nepmen''; and asked whether this was a sign of the state's weakness.

Lenin answered Ransome's questions concerning the might of the new bourgeoisie quite ironically. He wrote that the abundance

of petty traders and their activities did not attest to the class's economic strength, and that "the Nepmen!... make more noise than their economic power warrants".^^1^^

Lenin spoke with deep respect about the workers and peasants who had revived agriculture and light industry and stressed that "the basis of political power in Russia is the workers and peasants''.

By that time the basic ways in which the bourgeoisie were to be utilized and the limits of their admittance to the national economy had already been established. Nepmen were permitted to operate only in those areas of the economy and to that degree which did not run counter to the interests of the dictatorship of the proletariat. All key economic positions remained in the hands of the Soviet State, which carried out a decisive struggle against all forms of speculation and profiteering (smuggling, currency dealing, etc.).

In industry the activities of private entrepreneurs were limited to the production of consumer goods, processing some types of raw materials and the manufacture of simple implements; in commerce they could act as middlemen between small-scale commodity producers and sell goods produced by private industrial enterprises and only some of those produced by state enterprises; in the sphere of transport they were allowed to organise domestic transportation of small batches of goods; and in banking they could serve private industry and trade.

~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, 1973, p. 407.

The sphere of private capitalist enterprise was limited by a system of state controls and regulations. Unique to the Soviet experience was the fact that private capital was admitted to the economy only after nationalisation had beeen almost completely carried out and the principles of admitting private entrepreneurs and ways of controlling and regulating their actions had been determined by a series of legal acts. Thus, the activities of private owners were, in the main, placed within certain limits from the very start, and any attempts by capitalist elements to exceed these limits were resolutely suppressed.

The Soviet Government used an extensive taxation system to prevent any large concentration of private capital. It introduced producers' income tax, stamp-duty, taxes on rent and education and local taxes in order to prevent the ``Nepmen'' from gaining large profits. A large share of accumulated capital was confiscated by financial organs. In 1924-- 1925, taxes consumed from 35 to 52 per cent of the private owners' incomes.

Class policy achieved these same goals in the spheres of crediting, purchase and selling prices, transportation tariffs, and labour laws, all of which made it possible to keep the bourgeoisie in check. Although a certain degree of spontaneity in the development of a number of forms of capitalist activity did exist, these forms of development and their place in the economy were determined by the Soviet Government, which closely followed all changes in the correlation of forces and took timely measures to eliminate undesirable tendencies in the evolution of private capital.

Depending on the nature of economic tasks, various types of private enterprise were used and corresponding methods of regulation were worked out. The government could influence private enterprises only mediately, through the system of taxation, credit and prices, labour laws, etc. State capitalism--- the renting of state enterprises by private entrepreneurs, concessions, and mixed jointstock industrial and trade companies---- provided vast opportunities for control and regulation. By granting the right to temporarily exploit certain natural resources and fixed and circulating capital, the Soviet government, through the use of credits, supplies of raw materials and other production materials and the purchase of produced goods, obtained an opportunity to directly influence capitalist enterprises, to control the size and distribution of profits and to include these enterprises into the planned economy. Besides, the existence of various forms of private capital made it possible to put their objective contradictions to use. The Soviet Government successfully pursued a similar policy during the first year of the Revolution by using bourgeois cooperation for doing away with unorganised private trade.

Making use of commanding economic heights, the Soviet State influenced the correlation of class forces in the country, changing it in favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

3. Ways and Means of Regulating the Petty-Bourgeois Elements

During the period of transition from capitalism to socialism the proletariat was engaged in a struggle not only against the exploiter classes, deciding the question "who will win" in favour of socialism: but also against the bourgeoisie's ideological and political influence on the petty-bourgeois population, and for putting an end to the political wavering of these groups, drawing them to the side of the revolution. In this case the efforts of the proletariat were directed towards providing the necessary conditions for the formation of a stable alliance between the working class and the non-proletarian working masses, towards preventing the latter from being subordinated to the bourgeoisie, and gradually attracting them to the building of socialism.

After the end of the Civil War, when the danger of the landlords' return had ceased to exist, and the victory of Soviet power had become a reality, the peasants' petty-- bourgeois wavering once again became apparent. Petty-bourgeois elements, as in the summer of 1918 after the introduction of the surplusappropriation system by Soviet power, became politically unsteady and by the end of 1920 had begun to turn into an anarchic counter-revolutionary force. It must be noted that under new conditions, as compared with 1918, the petty-bourgeois mass was a larger and more powerful force, owing to the growth of the number of middle peasants in the villages and the increasing dissatisfaction of the general masses (peasant and proletari-

an) with their difficult material position.

Most of the peasants were dissatisfied with existing conditions, which were characterised by general economic dislocation, an absence of manufactured goods and the decay of peasant holdings. Although during the Civil War the peasants had expressed a negative attitude toward the surplus-appropriation system, it had never been as strong as during this period. During the war the peasants' political interests coincided with those of the working class and most of them handed in their grain quotas regularly, regarding this as their duty to the state. After the end of the Civil War the middle peasant, who had become the central figure in the villages, displayed strong dissatisfaction with those relations that had been established between the proletariat and the peasantry during the war, and demanded the abolition of the surplus-appropriation system and the introduction of free trade.

On January 12, 1921 the Communist Party Central Committee discussed the question of the peasants' sentiments and formed special commission whose task was to initiate all possible measures for improving, as quickly as possible, the position of the peasants. On examining the situation in the country, as well as the peasants' sentiments, the commission decided that it was necessary to change the economic relations between the cities and the countryside, which had been formed during the Civil War. The war demanded the utmost effort from all; the peasants supplied the state with grain in accordance with special assessment. After the war there was no further need for this surplus-appropriation

system. Moreover, it was a heavy burden for the peasants and prevented them from developing their holdings. The peasants were ready to hand a certain amount of grain over to the state, but they were interested in leaving another part for themselves.

The Communist Party was faced with the problem of strengthening the union between the working class and the peasantry, and of outlining its policy in regard to the pettybourgeois masses in general. The decision to replace the surplus-appropriation system by a tax, adopted by the Tenth Party Congress (March 1921) met the peasants' vital interests and served as a basis of the Party's policy in this sphere. Lenin noted that the replacement of the surplus-appropriation system by a tax in kind was of tremendous political significance. It produced an immediate political result: an end to the wavering of the middle peasants who now became interested in developing and consolidating the economic alliance with the working class.

In building socialism, the working class cannot afford to perpetuate the system of small-scale commodity production, since its low productivity, primitive equipment and outdated technology hamper the development of the national economy and slow down progress towards socialism. Therefore, during the period of transition the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat helps small-commodity producers to socialise private property and transform it into socialist property, and to turn individual labour into joint, collective labour. In the process of this transformation both the social and personal interests of the

petty-bourgeoisie are taken into account. Thus, the solution of non-antagonistic contradictions between the working class and the non-proletarian working masses leads not to their split, but, on the contrary, to their unification and drawing together into a single force. By the same token, overcoming the contradictions which appear in the course of socialist development does not undermine the foundations of socialism, but, on the contrary, strengthens them.

The successful elimination of petty-- bourgeois sentiments, and the establishment of control over small owners were only possible on the basis of a definite system of economic levers and political and ideological measures. The development of the socialist sector of the national economy, first and foremost of largescale industry, serves as the economic foundation for the transformation of smallscale commodity production and of the labour and living conditions of urban and rural small private owners, while the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the promotion of the alliance between the working class and the non-proletarian working masses serves as a political condition of this transformation. Socialist ideology and the ability of the Communist Party to persuade the peasants and urban craftsmen and artisans to cooperate and turn to large collective production served as an important prerequisite for the socialist transformation of the petty-bourgeois masses.

In the beginning of NEP, when the revival of economic exchange between the cities and the countryside was a matter of primary

importance, the regulatory activity of the socialist state was directed first of all towards aiding the peasantry, organising the supply of manufactured goods to the villages and the purchase of agricultural products. The socialist state followed a policy of developing cooperation, simplifying taxation and regulating sale and purchase prices. The peasants were granted credits and provided with machinery and agricultural and live-stock equipment. In such a way the state determined, to an increasing degree, the labour orientation of the peasants, the organisation of their production processes and the distribution of incomes.

Later on the collectivisation of agriculture, as well as the socialist cooperation of craft production, brought about a deep revolutionary transformation in the entire way of life, activity and outlook of private producers. As a result of the prolonged and painstaking educational work conducted by the Party, the government and public organisations, the peasants and craftsmen gradually developed into a new type of labour force, one with a conscientious attitude toward their work and socialist property, one with a feeling of collectivism, comradely cooperation and mutual aid. Under the leadership of the working class the former small producers and entrepreneurs became creators of Soviet society and active participants in the building of socialism.

Chapter IV THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

reactionary forces in the Civil War the time had come for the struggle of the "labour democracy". Having been brought to the surface by the petty-bourgeois mass at the end of 1920-beginning of 1921, they once again found themselves in the vanguard of the counter-revolutionary forces. The struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Bolshevik Party had always been the cornerstone of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party's policy and activity.

Although the Mensheviks did not adhere to the policy of an armed struggle against Soviet power, in the autumn of 1920, following the Socialist-Revolutionaries, they increased their anti-Soviet activities. Along with legal activities, the Mensheviks had organised secret underground groups headed by committees which received orders from the Central Bureau of their Party and "foreign delegation" in Berlin.

Bourgeois-nationalist elements, striving for separation from Russia, came out jointly with the Russian counter-revolutionary forces. They all fought for the restoration of capitalism in one form or another and some even called for the revival of patriarchal--- feudal rule. Such organisations functioned in the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

At the beginning of 1920 the reactionary forces within the country were closely connected with the Whiteguard emigration. Representatives of the overthrown classes who had fled abroad and the remnants of the defeated counter-revolutionary forces who had stayed to fight were trying somehow to

1. The Enemy Does Not Give Up

Having suffered a defeat in the Civil War, the Russian counter-revolutionaries did not give up hope of achieving their aims. Trying to continue the struggle against the Soviet State, they resorted to such time-tested tactics as conspiracies, revolts, sabotage and terrorism.

Under the guidance of monarchists and Cadets, various Whiteguard and military-- terrorist groups continued their anti-Soviet activities underground. As many as 40,000 Whiteguard officers remained in Siberia after the defeat of the Kolchak army and numerous counter-revolutionary elements were active in other regions of the country. Collecting information on the Soviet Republic and establishing ties with foreign countries the underground counter-revolutionary forces were preparing for an armed uprising against Soviet power.

The remnants of the Socialist-- Revolutionary and Menshevik Parties became active, attempting to head the anti-Soviet movement. The leaders of these parties came to the conclusion that with the defeat of the monarchist

unite and with this aim founded political and military organisations.

The monarchists began to hold congresses and created the Supreme Monarchist Council. They established ties with monarchists from other countries, above all Germany, Hungary and Austria, and tried to organise a European monarchist movement.

The bourgeoisie, supported by international imperialism, united into its own class organisations: the "Russian Trade, Industrial and Financial Alliance" (Torgprom), which united over 600 large Russian emigre capitalists; the "Private Railroad Council"; the "Russian Commercial Banks Representatives Committee", the "All-Russian Trade and Industry Alliance" and others.

Branches of the following parties were formed in a number of European cities: People's Freedom (Cadets), the People's Socialist Party, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, Social-Democratic Party (Menshevik). All of them had their own publications, conducted anti-Soviet propaganda campaigns in the press and worked out ways and means of liquidating the Soviet State.

Along with these alliances secret military organisations appeared which were connected with foreign intelligence services. These included organisations headed by Boris Savinkov and General Wrangel, the " Administrative Centre" of the non-party union of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, "Action Centre" and other similar organisations.

The bourgeois-nationalist emigration which amounted to tens of thousands of enemies of

Soviet power, was a component part of the Whiteguard emigration. Thus, in Poland alone close to 35,000 members of Ukrainian bourgeois-nationalist organisations had gathered after the end of the Civil War. Bourgeoisnationalist centres were formed in a number of countries.

The Caucasian and Central Asian emigration also founded nationalist organisations; there was also the "Kuban Rada and other similar organisations.

In those years there was no dearth of prophecies of the imminent fall of Soviet power in emigrant circles.

After the defeat of the Whiteguard army in the Crimea, part of the reactionary forces continued to make plans for new battles. Many of its politicians and commanders believed that a newly-formed army could launch an attack on Soviet Russia.

At the end of 1920 the foreign press reported widely on the plan for a joint GermanWhiteguard campaign against the Bolsheviks. This plan called for the formation of a 1.3 million-strong joint army.

The forthcoming resumption of the armed struggle against Soviet power was discussed at the very first meeting of military leaders which took place only a few days after the rout of General WrangeFs army in the Crimea. The same question v/as discussed in January 1921 in Berlin at a meeting of Russian commanders presided over by General Krasnov, as well as at a number of similar gatherings held abroad in the course of the winter and spring of 1921.

Other leaders of the counter-revolution

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began to review the old methods of struggle critically, trying to adapt to the new conditions of the class struggle. Representatives of the insolvent bourgeois and petty-bourgeois counter-revolutionary parties tried to draw lessons from their defeats and assume a new attitude towards the socio-economic and socio-political process taking place in Soviet Russia. They now placed all their hopes on the intensification of contradictions between the working class and the peasantry. They adhered to slogans of "labour democracy", "people's power", "Soviets without Communists", since it would be overbold to adopt clearly counter-revolutionary slogans.

These ideas were presented by Milyukov, the leader of the Constitutional-Democrats, in his report "On New Tactics" delivered at the beginning of May 1920 in Paris, and in his report "What Must Be Done After the Crimean Catastrophe? (a review of People's Freedom Party's tactics)" delivered again in Paris in December of that year. These ideas were in keeping with the decisions adopted by the meeting of representatives of the Constitutional-Democratic committees of Siberia and the Far East, and also with the numerous speeches delivered by Cadets abroad.

The Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were engaged in the elaboration of the concept of a "peasant revolution" against Soviet power, enthusiastically supported the new tactical principles devised by bourgeois ideologues. Like the Cadets, they hoped to make use of the petty-bourgeois masses' hesitation, with the aim of seizing power and establishing a bourgeois dictatorship.

The monarchists also attempted to shift the centre of the struggle to "within the country". This issue was discussed at the closed sessions of the monarchist " Motherland Salvation Committee" held in FebruaryMarch 1921. It was proposed to send special ``agitators'' to Russia who would not only carry out work among the rural and urban population, but would also penetrate the Red Army. This would result, in their opinion, in a spontaneous "outburst of the people's discontent which would sweep all Russia". General Wrangel, who continued to place his hopes on intervention and the formation of a new army, also pointed out the possibility and necessity of conducting work inside Russia.

A motley counter-revolutionary forces, headed by Boris Savinkov, N. Chaikovsky, leader of the "People's Socialists", S. Petlyura, S. Bulak-Bulakhovich and others, supported the "actions from within" tactics. These expectations were encouraged by the imperialist circles of Western Europe represented by British Prime Minister Lloyd George and Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill, France Prime Minister A. Briand and others.

The "Address to Communists" issued by the RCP(B) Central Committee indicated that "our enemies are conducting the same war against us, only in different forms. A struggle on the internal front, organised by the Entente, the Mensheviks, ConstitutionalDemocrats and Socialist-Revolutionaries, is all the more dangerous since the country's exhaustion and impoverishment resulting from

6*

the seven years of war are sharply felt at present". In a letter to provincial Party committees (April 4, 1921) the RCP(B) Central Committee once again noted that "having sustained a defeat on the external front, the counter-revolution has directed its strength toward demolishing Soviet power from within''.

Thus, at the end of 1920 and the beginning of 1921 a definite change in the forms of class struggle took place.

The new tactics of the anti-Soviet forces provided both for armed actions provoked and organised by counter-revolutionaries, and for subversive activities of an economic and ideological nature designed to make Soviet system evolve towards a bourgeois model. These tactics were divided into two basic forms respectively; attempts to coordinate the armed actions already begun in early 1921 and the organisation of other mutinies on Soviet territory; and the use of legal opportunities provided by NEP to launch a "quiet counter-revolution" which included the penetration of state and public organs. The two forms of the new tactics went hand in hand, with the second creating the necessary conditions for the promotion of the first. However, emphasis was gradually shifted from certain methods to others. Thus, in 1921 the most emphasis was placed on revolts, while "quiet counter-- revolution" was more typical of the following years. We shall examine these two forms in detail.

2. Conspiracies and Uprisings

The country's economic dislocation and the population's poverty and exhaustion were direct result of the imperialist war and subsequent Civil War launched by world reactionary forces. The kulak counter-revolution emerged on the rising tide of the discontent with economic difficulties displayed by the petty-bourgeois population, especially the peasantry. At the beginning of 1921 kulak revolts flared up in the Ukraine, the province of Tambov, some regions of Western Siberia, the Northern Caucasus and in the Black Sea region; the Basmach became active in Turkestan and the Dashnaks instigated a mutiny in Soviet Armenia. By the spring of 1921 over 130 large kulak-Whiteguard formations (not counting hundreds of small kulak gangs) up to 150,000 in number were operating within the territory of the Soviet State (not including Eastern Siberia and the Far East).

Massive kulak revolts took place in Western Siberia and in the province of Tambov, where the peasants, incited by the kulaks, refused to supply grain in accordance with the surplusappropriation system. Through propaganda, intimidation and terrorism the kulaks drew the wavering peasants into the revolt. By the beginning of 1921 the bands of the SocialistRevolutionary Antonov, who headed the revolt in the Tambov region, had grown to include 50,000 people.

Their political slogans were nothing more than an illiterate paraphrase of the SocialistRevolutionary Party's programme principles

and reflected exclusively the socio-political interests of the rural bourgeoisie. As early as May 1920 the Tambov Province Congress of kulaks, following a proposal of the SocialistRevolutionary Provincial Committee, adopted a programme of revolt which stipulated the overthrow of Soviet power and the elimination of the Communist Party, the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the granting of political freedoms to the rural and urban bourgeoisie, the inviolability of private property and the admittance of foreign capital to the country's economy. The programme stated: "The Alliance of Working Peasants' regards the overthrow of the power of Communists-Bolsheviks as its paramount task.''

The Tambov Soviet of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies forcibly exposed the class essence of the kulak programme. The insurgents viewed propaganda of socialism and the support of the Bolsheviks as a grave crime punishable by execution. Antonov proclaimed the annihilation of Communists and savage reprisal to all those who sympathised with Soviet power. A report of one of the provincial Party committees to the RCP(B) Central Committee revealed that in the villages seized by the bandits the population was terrorised, damages were tremendous and the peasant holdings were in a terrible state. It was noted in the report: " Plunder, violence, atrocities and ruin are common to them. The humiliation and suffering the bandits impose on their victims are indescribable...''

The insurgents' programme and activities reflected the interests of the most reactionary

anti-Soviet kulak groups in the country's central regions. F. Podkhvatilin, the SocialistRevolutionary Party veteran and participant in the revolt, who has become disillusioned in the uprising and voluntarily surrendered to Soviet authorities, admitted: "The conspirators and leaders of the bandits are mostly semi-literate, crude people... Most of them do not understand the programme of the revolt... They do not act in accordance with this programme. Plunder, hard drinking, violence and bloody executions of the working people-Hhis is their programme.''

The kulaks in Siberia also tried to implement a similar ``programme''. At the beginning of 1921 they started a number of armed uprisings in various regions of Western Siberia, demanding the convocation of a Constituent Assembly and the establishment of "Soviets without Communists". The timely liquidation by Soviet organs of the counter-revolutionary "Siberian Peasant Alliance" Central Committee, and its provincial centres in the cities of Novonikolayevsk, Barnaul and Krasnoyarsk, kept this movement from becoming an organised force in all but the extreme western regions of Siberia. Only in the Ishim district of the Tyumen province the insurgents raised a force of 60,000 people. The kulak and Whiteguard gangs which controlled the grain-producing regions located along the Omsk-Chelyabinsk and Omsk-Tyumen railroads held up the delivery of grain to the country's central industrial regions, which caused serious difficulties in supplying the population with bread; they also confiscated and destroyed close to 320,000 tons of grain.

All these revolts were not merely isolated, local occurrences, but served as links of the chain by which the Russian counter-- revolution intended to strangle the Soviet state. In March 1921 mutiny broke out at the Kronstadt Fortress. Almost all the forces of Russian counter-revolution and world reaction, setting aside their differences, united around this event. Like a bolt of lightning, the Kronstadt revolt illuminated reality more clearly than ever before, and the familiar figures of Whiteguard generals, landlords and capitalists quickly became known to the masses.

From the beginning of the mutiny, the most various emigrant organisations leaped into energetic activities directed towards aiding the rebels.

Newspapers were full of reports on Cadet meetings and resolutions, on meetings of monarchists at which programmes and policies to be used in case of the fall of Soviet power, were worked out and on the generous aid rendered by emigrant and foreign financialindustrial circles. The International Bank allocated 5,000 pounds, the Russian Bank in Paris---225,000 francs, the Russian-Asian Bank ---200,000 francs, the Zemstvo-City Committee---100,000 francs, the Nikopol-Mariupol Metallurgical Society---20,000 francs, etc.

The money was intended mostly for providing the insurgents with food. One of the members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party Central Committee wrote: "Supplying food is now the most important task. If we could deliver food to Kronstadt, we could inform the entire world about it. When Soviet Russia

finds out that Kronstadt rebels, who freed themselves from the Bolsheviks, immediately received food from Europe, this news will act like a spark in a powder keg.''

While money was being collected, a crowded meeting of the Committee of Representatives of Russian Commercial Banks decided to urgently provide Kronstadt with food. With this aim the Committee chairman, N. Denispv, immediately left for London. The Alliance of Russian Industrialists and Financiers appealed to the US Secretary of Trade in a telegramme, asking to send a transport of grain to Kronstadt. The Parliamentary Committee asked the US President to hand over to the insurgents 6,000 tons of American foodstuffs stored in Finland.

V. Chernov, leader of the Socialist-- Revolutionary Party hurried to Revel; where Kerensky was also expected to arrive soon. In case of an armed uprising in Petrograd, Chernov intended to form a new Russian government. Boris Savinkov's emissaries came to Revel and Helsingfors. Baron Von Bruk, former Russian Consul General in Helsingfors, was delegated by the monarchist to the Baltic from Berlin. Agents of Wrangel, Chaikovsky and of other leaders of foreign antiSoviet forces were active in the Baltic. The Administrative Centre urgently decided to form a "people's army" which would include Whiteguard officers who had arrived in Revel. All this was reminiscent of the situation when General Yudenich was preparing to attack Petrograd. It was no mere chance that Chernov was planning to form three detachments, each 300-strong, from the officers

and soldiers of the former Yudenich Army interned in Estonia, who were to attack Yamburg, Pskov and Gdov. Simultaneous uprisings in a number of cities of Soviet Russia had also been planned.

The events at Kronstadt stirred all the counter-revolutionary forces to greater activity. The mutiny served as a banner under which the reactionary forces tried to gather the remnants of the anti-Soviet camp, both within the country and abroad. Soon the western winds would break the ice on the Gulf of Finland and, in accordance with the plans of the Whiteguard emigrant centres, which had taken part in preparing the uprising, foreign warships with a Whiteguard landing force would appear at the Kronstadt raid. Not without reason Georgy Chicherin, Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, reported to the Soviet Government on March 9, 1921, that according to information he had received, "between the 2nd and 5th of March an enemy squadron left Copenhagen in the direction of Revel and Kronstadt. It consists of 14 warships ... including British destroyers and large ships ... and French light cruisers..." The squadron's exact plan of action was unknown, but there was no doubt that it was not headed for the Soviet state on a courtesy visit. Chicherin noted in the same report: "Since it is most likely that the Entente will try to use the Kronstadt mutiny for dealing us a new blow, I consider it most necessary to regard the threat aimed at us by the hostile squadron most seriously." If not for the decisive measures taken by the Soviet government for suppressing the mutiny, it

could have become a serious threat to Soviet power.

In the letter to his colleagues in Prague, Chernov, leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, estimated the chances of a counterrevolution in the spring of 1921: "There was a good chance that the turmoil would move far to the east, destroying the Bolshevik's lines of communication, which would, in turn, reduce to zero their shock force near Kronstadt. This would have meant that Kronstadt would have been able to hold out until the ice started to melt. With the help of Kronstadt, which has always been like the Sword of Damocles hanging over Petrograd, and given the general situation in the country, Bolshevism could have been liquidated during that spring.''

From the spring of 1921 the Administrative Centre immersed itself in feverish activity. The organisation of uprisings on Soviet territory was its primary task. Colonel F. Makhin suggested that an organised, allembracing and, if possible, simultaneous uprising be carried out and devised a special tactical and technical plan for such an uprising. He stressed the necessity of a preparatory period for uniting the masses in the villages, districts and regions, arming the peasants, organising a partisan movement and disorganising the Soviet system. Makhin urged the destruction of the means of communication and attacks on military transports, ammunition depots, etc.

The Administrative Centre considered the north-western region of Soviet Russia, to the south of the Moscow- Riga Railroad, to be the

most favourable area for starting the uprising. According to an excerpt from a resolution made by the Committee of the SocialistRevolutionary Group of the North-Western Region, a large shock terrorist group had been created there. The Socialist-Revolutionary groups operating in the north-western regions of Soviet Russia were to be aided by the agents of the Administrative Centre who, under the guidance of Colonel Makhin, and with the support of a representative of the French General Staff in Revel, had begun military preparations in the Baltic. Chernov and Zenzinov, leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, made inspection tours of the Baltic states.

In the south of the country the Administrative Centre took part in the movement in the Northern Caucasus, the Black Sea Region, in the Kuban, where the agents of Colonel Voronovich, representative of the Centre posted in Constantinople from August 1921, were actively operating. Voronovich was a member of the Provisional Committee of the People's Alliance for Emancipating the SouthEast, whose aim was to unite the insurgent Cossacks and the urban organisations of the Don region, Kuban, Terek region, Stavropol, Black Sea region and Astrakhan. Following the insurgents' congress, which was secretly held in July 1921, Voronovich reported that "the population is ready to join the last and decisive battle against the Bolsheviks, but abstains, allegedly, because of an absence of leadership". Meanwhile, the Administrative Centre together with Wrangel's organisations were preparing an uprising in Baku, aimed at

depriving the Soviet Republic of the region's oil fields. The uprising was planned for September-October 1921. According to information provided by the Administrative Centre, at the time 73 of the envisaged 126 insurgent headquarters had already been organised in the Northern Caucasus.

Along with preparing an uprising in the south of the country, Voronovich's activities included the collection of espionage information on the location and number of the Red Army in the Caucasus. A four-page dispatch by Voronovich, of November 22, 1921, bears a note by the secretary of the Administrative Centre: "To be translated into French in three copies." Thus, the Administrative Centre was not only arranging a counter-revolutionary revolt in Soviet Russia, but was collecting intelligence data in the interests of imperialist states as well. Therefore, the Centre was an anti-Soviet, sabotage and intelligence organisation functioning under the control of imperialist states.

While preparing armed uprisings against the Soviet government, the Administrative Centre maintained close ties with Savinkov's Russian Political Committee and the Alliance for the Rebirth of the Cossacks, and was also planning to found an officers' union. Along with donations from the French and Czech governments, the Administrative Centre received subsidies from the former ambassador of the Provisional Government to the USA, who had also financed Wrangel's organisations.

From the beginning of 1921 Savinkov's Russian Evacuation Committee (which he later renamed the Russian Political Cornmit-

tee) became extremely active. In a secret document sent to the War Minister of France and to government figures in Great Britain and Poland, Savinkov wrote: "The Russian Evacuation Committee has come to the conclusion that ... only a mass uprising led by people who have a knowledge of the peasant psychology can put an end to Bolshevik power." He also pointed out that preparations for such an uprising must include, the elaboration of a political programme, one taking into account the psychology of the peasantry; the establishment of ties between separate insurgent groups; the formation of detachments from among the remnants of regular armies; and the organisation of a coordination centre in Poland. Seeking financial aid from Western powers, Savinkov reported that an Information Bureau had been formed for establishing ties between insurgent groups and his ``Committee''. The Bureau had agents in various cities of Soviet Russia and was headed by his brother V. Savinkov. The Information Bureau of the Russian Political Committee conducted intelligence work against the Soviet Republic. Data on the Red Army and on the situation in the country was passed to the Polish General Staff and to the French Mission. As a result, Poland's secret services were able to place intelligence bureaus, which received the name Volk (wolf), along the Soviet-Polish border: in Glubokoye, Stolbtsy, Lupinets, Ternopol, Rovno, Lvov and other areas.

The zealous support rendered to Savinkov by France and Poland enabled him to set up the anti-Soviet People's Union for the De-

fence of the Motherland and Freedom in a fairly short period of time. The organisation's All-Russia Commitee was housed in the Brule, a hotel in Warsaw. As was noted in a report of the director of the police department of Poland (June 10, 1921), the aim of the People's Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom was "an uprising in Russia for overthrowing the Bolsheviks, organised at any cost''.

The All-Russia Committee tried to establish district and regional committees of the Union on Soviet territory. The committees were to organise counter-revolutionary groups at various enterprises and offices, in army units and headquarters, both in the rural and urban areas. For this purpose special organisers, mostly from among Whiteguard officers were sent to the Soviet Republic. In April 1921 alone, groups of agents consisting of 192 persons arrived in the Volga region. In the spring of 1921 the Western Regional Committee of the People's Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom, which embraced the Gomel, Smolensk and Minsk provinces, and the Southern and Black Sea Regional Committees were set up. These committees consisted of parallel organisations which operated independently of each other. Such a structure was necessary because of the need for conspiracy and the attempt to join in the union the most various anti-- Soviet elements, beginning with Socialist-- Revolutionaries and ending with the monarchists. Savinkov intended to turn the People's Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom into an All-Russia anti-Soviet centre.

With this aim he concluded agreements on coordinating activities with Petlyura's UkPR government (Ukrainian People's Republic, an alliance of counter-revolutionary forces), with Byelorussian nationalists, with the Kuban Rada and the Don Cossack District; while Gen. Makhrov, Wrangel's military representative in Warsaw, took part in the meetings of Savinkov's Committee.

As can be seen from an agreement between the People's Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom and the UkPR Government, published by the Daily Herald on December 21, 1921, Savinkov, recognising the independence of the UkPR and the legality of Petlyura's government, agreed to act as mediator between Petiyura on the one hand, and the Russian political circles abroad and representatives of Western powers on the other. Savinkov also pledged to assist Petiyura in obtaining a loan of 30 million Polish marks and to provide him with military equipment, which was to be supplied by France, for the organisation of an uprising in the Ukraine. On his part, Petiyura promised to render assistance in forming "contingents of the Russian national army under the exclusive leadership of Boris Savinkov" and to support it by all possible means, including financing, food and arms supplies. This agreement was supplemented by a secret treaty concluded with the Polish Government. Savinkov's secret correspondence, which had been stolen from the hotel Brule and appeared, in part, in the press, proves that this agreement included the formation of an independent Byelorussia under Polish protec-

torate and the transfer to the latter of the western districts of the Volyn and Podol provinces. It also granted Poland the right to use the port of Odessa, to build army barracks and docks for the Polish Navy there, and to run the Rovno-Shepetovka-- KazatinOdessa Railroad.

There is abundant evidence to the effect that Savinkov received orders and directives from the French Military Mission in Warsaw (Gen. Niessel) and from the Polish General Staff. Savinkov maintained relations with political leaders of imperialist states: Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War (Great Britain); Pilsudski, President of Poland; Sosnovsky, War Minister of Poland; Masaryk, President of Czechoslovakia; E. Benes, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia; and others. Savinkov admitted later in court that "we could not have fought without foreign support''.

After the unsuccessful attempts to rouse the peasants to a struggle against Soviet power in the spring of 1921, the regional anti-Soviet committees were ordered to form local insurrectional detachments. At the beginning of the uprising, strike detachments from abroad were to start moving from the Polish border in three directions: towards Petrograd, PolotskSmolensk-Mpscow, and Minsk-Gomel-Oryol. It was decided to disorganise the life of the country, while preparing the uprising, by resorting to the following means: assassinations of the leaders of the Bolshevik Party and Soviet State, as well as rank-and-file Communists; mass executions of activists; and the poisoning of Red Army units. These methods

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also included economic sabotage'- damaging railroads and other communications and destroying grain-collection stations and foodstuffs, with the aim of increasing famine and the economic crisis. "We must burn out a free place on which we shall begin to build everything anew", was the motto of the "All-Russia Committee''.

The People's Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom supported the activities of the Western Regional Committee until its liquidation by the Cheka at the end of May 1921. Other committees also tried to make their contribution to the uprising. The Black Sea Regional Committee devised a plan for an uprising in the Black Sea region and even fixed the day of its beginning. Branches of the People's Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom operated in Moscow, Petrograd, Tula, Samara, Kharkov, Kiev and Odessa; strike groups and detachments penetrated Soviet territory from abroad. The Polish General Staff was concerned with the transfer of counter-- revolutionaries and with supplying them with passes. Polish representatives demanded that the counter-revolutionaries were to become engaged in action not closer than 50-70 kilometres from the Polish border in order to create the impression that these were local detachments. These detachments, which committed terrible atrocities during their punitive raids, only provoked anger and condemnation among the local population. They acted in complete isolation, received no aid from the peasants and were followed by Red Army units; the remnants of these detachments were com-

pelled to flee abroad. At the end of 1921, realising that it was impossible to draw the peasantry into the anti-Soviet movement, Savinkov once again decided to resort to terrorism against the leaders of the Soviet State. In January 1922, former LieutenantColonel Svezhevsky, who had been ordered to make an attempt on Lenin's life by the All-Russia Committee and the People's Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom, was arrested at the Soviet border.

When all hopes for a successful uprising in Soviet Russia had vanished, foreign states and their intelligence services suspended payments to the Union. Its activities on Soviet territory were paralysed as a result of the liquidation of its branches by the All-Russian Special Commission for Combatting Counter-Revolution, Sabotage and Profiteering (Cheka). As a result, Savinkov was compelled to pass his lines of communication on the Polish-Ukrainian and Finnish-Soviet borders over to the Action Centre, a counter-revolutionary intelligence organisation. It was founded in 1921, in Paris, and was also engaged in the futile attempt to instigate an uprising against Soviet power. Its leadership, which consisted of N. Chaikovsky, leader of the Popular Socialist Party, and the Cadets Kartashov and Vakar, issued a special "Instructions for the heads of local centres of action''.

The Regional Centre of the Ukrainian Military Organisation, formed in the Western Ukraine, engaged in anti-Soviet, subversive activities on a wide scale: it trained the bulk of the leadership of anti-Soviet underground organisations, as well as spies sent to Soviet

Russia. In 1920 this organisation had smuggled in dozens of groups of counter-- revolutionaries, who were to settle in the Soviet Ukraine and organise anti-Soviet underground organisations.

Organisations connected with Wrangel's Russia Emancipation Alliance also tried to participate in preparing the uprising. One of the largest of these was the Petrograd Fighting Organisation or, as it was also called, the Russia Emancipation Alliance Regional Committee.

Wrangel's centres in Paris and Finland carried out coordinating functions with US, British and French intelligence services, organised financial aid to the Petrograd Fighting Organisation (PFO), and recruited, on a mass scale, members of the Kronstadt mutiny who had fled to Finland, supplied them with arms and anti-Soviet literature, and smuggled them to Petrograd. Through its couriers the Petrograd Fighting Organisation maintained constant contacts with a foreign centres and intelligence services of imperialist powers.

During the Kronstadt mutiny the PFO received 2 million roubles from the former tannery owner Lurye, to be used for preparing an uprising in Petrograd. After the defeat of the Kronstadt mutiny, the uprising was rescheduled for the autumn of 1921, for which the organisation received close to 10 million roubles from its Paris centre. At that time an assassination attempt on L. Krasin, a Soviet diplomat, was planned, with the aim of preventing him from visiting Western states and establishing trade relations between them and the Soviet Republic. P. Lebedev, President of the Russia Emancipation Union, ar-

rived in Petrograd to aid the preparation for an uprising there. The transfer to Soviet Russia of sailors who had emigrated to Finland after the Kronstadt mutiny was carried out on an increasing scale.

All the member organisations of the PFO, as well as the other organisations of the Russia Emancipation Union, which operated in the north-western regions, were dispersed in the summer of 1921 by Cheka organs. The same fate befell the groups which were preparing for an uprising in the south of the country.

Wrangel's organisations attempted to unite and expand anti-Soviet activities in the Northern Caucasus. The former Terek Cossack, General Vdovenko, residing in Constantinople, sent his agents to the Terek region in order to form armed detachments. Yerarsky, head of Wrangel's counter-intelligence service in Constantinople, maintained relations with the Terek organisation of the Socialist-- Revolutionaries. Colonels Serebryakov and Zelensky were sent to the Northern Caucasus to promote the ``green'' movement. Their forged documents bore visas of the British military mission in Constantinople. Their main task was to organise insurrectional detachments and establish lines of communication for passing information abroad. Zelinsky became the head of the espionage organisation named the Pyatigorsk Regional Committee of Central Action, while Serebryakov established relations with the Terek organisation of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and formed an armed group of the so-called People's Army of Northern Caucasus, which by May 1921 consisted of four regiments. Having begun

hostilities, the counter-revolutionary formations sustained a number of defeats in the face of the Red Army. The remnants of these formations were compelled to take refuge in the mountains. In August 1921 a new group of Wrangel's officers arrived from Constantinople. They intended to unite the insurrectional detachments of the Caucasus. Having split up into groups, the officers joined the detachments and organisations to which they had been assigned beforehand. One of these organisations attempted to restore the forces of the Northern Caucasus People's Army. Their activities resulted in the formation of the underground Kuban Provisional Insurrectional Government in Kuban in September 1921.

In September and October 1921, the Russia Emancipation Union jointly with the Administrative Centre were preparing an uprising in the Transcaucasus with the aim of seizing the local oil fields. The Kuban Insurrectional Army's offensive on Stavropol and Rostov was scheduled for the same period. Wrangel organisations in the Black Sea region and the Crimea tried to instigate an uprising.

On September 22 the units of the First Cavalry Army routed the counter-- revolutionary bands at the B'eloye village. Counter-- revolutionary organisations were also successfully eliminated. By the autumn of 1921 only small and disjointed groups, which had degenerated into bandit gangs, remained in the Northern Caucasus.

Along with Wrangel, S. Petlyura also tried to organise nationalists' subversive activities in Soviet Ukraine. His Central Headquarters

operated in Lvov under the control of Polish intelligence services. The Main Insurrectional Committee, founded by Petlyura in January 1921, sent a large number of officers to various regions of the Ukraine with the aim of organising insurgent committees and armed detachments there. The underground AllUkrainian Central Insurrectional Committee, organised in Kiev was intended for coordinating the activities of all the organisations. The underground forces amounted to several thousand members. The insurrection was planned for the autumn and was timed to coincide with the collection of the tax in kind.

Although in the summer of 1921 the Cheka had liquidated the All-Ukrainian Central Insurrectional Committee, as well as a number of other Petlyura and Wrangel organisations, Petlyura once again resorted to adventurist actions, which ended in complete failure. With the aim of rousing the peasants against Soviet power, he ordered the transfer of several large detachments numbering 2,000 to cross into Soviet territory. But these were defeated by the Red Army.

At the beginning of 1922 the Central Headquarters tried to stir the counter-- revolutionary forces in the Ukraine to action and, in particular, the Right-Bank Ukraine Cossack Rada which had been organised as a new Petlyura centre in the place of the liquidated All-Ukrainian Central Insurrectional Committee, as well as two other underground organisations: the UkPR Underground Counter-intelligence Service of the City of Kiev and the Eighth Insurrectional Re-

gion. The UkPR ``government'' formed a special commission in which the military section headed by Gen. Delvig was most active. Three infantry regiments and three cavalry squadrons, ready to be transferred to the territory of Soviet Ukraine, were formed in the Tiraspol-Dobruchi area in Romania. Special shock groups intended for the spring campaign were formed in the border towns of Bessarabia. At the same time, Petlyura officers were smuggled into Soviet territory with orders to reinforce anti-Soviet underground organisations and form the Insurrectional Army from among the peasants. However, the peasants gave a hostile reception to the counter-revolutionaries, who were soon discovered and done away with by Soviet counterintelligence. Petlyura's ventures, as well as the ``operations'' stage by the other Whiteguard forces had once and for all proved the ideological and political bankruptcy of the Russian counter-revolutionaries, who tried to organise a broad insurgent movement against Soviet power.

ideologues began cherishing hopes for the bourgeois transformation of the new system. The so-called programme of "economic liberalism", advocating in fact the country's return to capitalism, was widely advertised by numerous magazines and publications printed by private publishing houses. These were echoed by the publications of counter-revolutionary leaders in the Whiteguard emigrant press.

Picturing NEP as the revival of capitalism, bourgeois ideologues peached the necessity of expanding the sphere of free enterprise and rejected the idea of a planned national economy; they attempted to discredit the policy of the Communist Party by claiming that reality had compelled even the "most confirmed Communists ... to expect improvements from the partial return to free market and capitalism''.

Having defined the Soviet state's transition to NEP as a return to capitalism, Russian counter-revolutionary ideologues decided to use all possible means to accelerate this `` process'' and directed the anti-Soviet forces towards a broad offensive against the gains of the working class on the ideological front. Hopes for the Soviet system's bourgeois ``transformation'' were hastily translated into action. In an attempt to demonstrate the solidity of their positions, the Cadet leaders noted in the autumn of 1921 that the Cadet "Central Committee opposed to the Bolshevik calculations its extremely cautious plan for gradually winning the minds of the masses.''

On realising the futility of an armed strug-

3. Failure of the "Quiet Counter-Revolution"

On realising the futility of trying to eradicate revolutionary power through the use of arms, the anti-Soviet forces directed their efforts against the dictatorship of the proletariat on the ideological front. They regarded the admittance of private capital into Soviet economy as a sign of the Soviet power's weakness and a deviation from communist aims and tasks. Many Russian Bourgeois

gle, the enemies of Soviet power had shifted to the tactics of "quiet counter-revolution". In regard to this, the leader of the Cadet Party, MUyukov wrote that "foreign democracy is not counting on defeating the power through conspiracies and secret organisations. It expects this from the internal process itself". At that time he tirelessly repeated that they could only count on the Soviet system's change and evolution towards capitalism, to which counter-revolutionary tactics had to be adopted. Milyukov placed the most emphasis on the anticipated fall of the Soviet state and the disintegration of the Bolshevik Party. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks held to the same tactics. The Socialist-Revolutionaries' leader Chernov, who believed that "all Soviet establishments are full of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks", instructed his party members to win over "factory committees, delegates' meetings, non-Party conferences and all local workers' bodies in general". He held the opinion that under certain circumstances his party could return to the Soviets and become engaged in a legal struggle against the Bolsheviks. As for the Mensheviks, representatives of their Central Committee directly stated that "the subsequent development of the Russian revolution must go through a stage of the split and disintegration of the RCP(B)". In this connection the Menshevik Central Committee, in its theses "On the Political Situation and the Tasks of Social-Democracy" (August 1921), set its organisations the task of achieving the independence of the trade unions and cooperative organisations and changing

Soviet power's general policy. The theses called for the denationalisation of all industrial enterprises and the liquidation of the state monopoly of foreign trade.

The Communist Party closely followed the evolution of the Russian counter-- revolutionary forces. The RCP(B) pointed out that the activisation of the anti-socialist forces presented a serious threat, and noted in one of its letters to regional committees in 1922 that "the growth of capitalist relations both in the cities and in the villages, the revival of private trade, the differentiation of the peasantry, etc., confront us with the threat of an increased influence of the bourgeois and pettybourgeois ideology on the workers' and peasant masses, and of the possible attempts to use these masses as a means of capitalist restoration". A. Bubnov, one of the Soviet political leaders, describing the essence of these tactics, wrote that the counter-- revolutionary foces held that "having failed to defeat Soviet power by a direct armed attack, as well as by 'undermining it from inside', they will try to defeat Soviet power insiduously, by infiltrating all the pores of the Soviet state apparatus on the basis of NEP, with the use of 'new tactics' and legal possibilities''.

Encouraged by the increasing political activity of the private owners, kulaks and nepmen, the bankrupt remnants of petty-- bourgeois and bourgeois parties, together with representatives of various counter-- revolutionary organisations and aliances, tried to use the legal opportunities provided by NEP in the interests of the anti-Soviet movement. Posing

as non-Party members they penetrated the state and economic machinery and expanded and increased their influence in local government bodies, especially in the village Soviets. With the aim of eliminating the influence of the Bolshevik Party, they infiltrated public organisations, above all the trade unions and cooperative societies (especially agricultural and crafts), and the cultural-educational youth organisations. It must be noted that at that time the share of Communists among the employees of many economic bodies and even of People's Commissariats was quite insignificant.

``Quiet counter-revolution" was aimed at disintegrating the Communist Party from within and isolating the Bolsheviks from the masses. Various actions, from attempts to penetrate the Party and make use of innerParty disagreements, to all sorts of provocations, served these aims. In a resolution on the issue of building of the Party, the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B) noted that the disorganisation of former class groupings and pseudo-socialist parties resulted in the influx of these elements to the ranks of the RCP(B) and cautioned that "they, who possess experience accumulated during their former activities,... have an opportunity to rapidly ascend in state, military, professional or Party hierarchy''.

The Mensheviks were the most active in this respect. The leadership of their underground organisation maintained constant ties with the city organisations of Petrograd, Kharkov, Odessa and other cities. They were supported ideologically and politically by

their fellow-members from abroad. One of the documents determining the tasks of the Mensheyik Party for that period stressed the necessity of ousting the Bolsheviks from power as soon as possible by using ``criticism'' and "the masses' pressure". To this end the Menshevik leaders L. Martov, R. Abrampvich and F. Dan proposed to form an organisation of oppositional elements within the Bolshevik Party and to use this kind of ``democracy'' for disorganising the RCP(B).

Bourgeois ideologues who counted on the ``transformation'' of the Soviet system, also stated the necessity of weakening the role of the Communist Party. L. Galich, a Cadet known for his publications in pre-- revolutionary bourgeois press, in his articles printed in emigrant newspapers, advised counter-- revolutionary elements to infiltrate the RCP(B), believing, not without reason, that "without cracks in communism" the transformation of the Soviet system would be impossible. V. Nabokov, leader of Berlin Cadet groups, devoted a special article to this question. Noting that, lately, "large numbers of pettybourgeois elements---office workers, former salesmen, etc.---have entered the Party" he came to the conclusion that "the formerly muscular body of the Party, able to withstand the strongest blows, has begun to weaken''.

The danger of the anti-socialist forces' activities was increased by the formation within the RCP(B) of anti-Leninist factions ("the Workers' Opposition", the "Democratic Centralism" group and the Trotskyites). The influence of petty-bourgeois psychology and bourgeois ideology on the proletariat and

its party was the chief reason for the appearance of these factions and the inner-Party struggle. These issues became the subject of a special review by the 10th Party Congress, which decided to prohibit the formation of factional groups within the Communist Party, no matter what platforms they put forward.

The Party purge, carried out from August 15 to December 1921 on a decision by the Tenth RCP(B) Congress, played an important part in consolidating the party's unity. Thus the Party freed itself from representatives of petty-bourgeois parties and especially the Mensheviks, who had ``stuck'' to the RCP(B) after the October Revolution and who failed to prove their loyalty to the working class. The decrease in the number of former members of other parties among RCP(B) members helped implement the resolution of the llth RCP(B) Congress "On Consolidation and New Tasks of the Party''.

The task of clearing the Party of alien elements, consolidating its ranks, and promoting political training and Marxist-Leninist education of Party members was the focal point of all the decisions adopted by Party conferences and congresses in the early 1920's. The llth RCP(B) Congress, held in 1922, noted in one of its decisions that Soviet Party schools, Marxist circles and a system of higher Party schools (Marxism courses at the Socialist Academy, communist universities, etc.) were to play a major role in installing a Marxist outlook in the members of the Party. It also stressed the importance of training instructors in social sciences for

higher educational establishments and of preparing for the political education system. In May 1921, the Institute of Red Professorship was founded in Moscow and Soviet Party schools were organised throughout the country.

The ideological defeat of anti-Leninist groups and the elimination of factions within the Party provided all the necessary conditions for launching an offensive against the anti-socialist forces. The Communist Party resolutely suppressed the activities of the remnants of the non-proletarian parties and counter-revolutionary organisations. By the summer of 1922 this struggle had become so intense that it became a special issue discussed at the 12th Party Conference (August 1922), which passed a specific resolution on antiSoviet parties and trends.

The Conference noted the danger of the revival of bourgeois ideology, indicated the attempts of the anti-Soviet forces to encircle Soviet power from the rear and recommended that the Party organs pay special attention to those areas of public life which were "the most accessible field of action" to bourgeois ideologues. Among these areas the Conference specifically pointed out the trade unions, cooperative societies, higher educational establishments, publishing, public congresses, and the cultural educational youth movement. The RCP(B) Central Committee set the task of gaining these "commanding heights" of the ideological front in order to deprive the anti-Soviet forces of the opportunity to influence them. The Communist Party regarded the successful completion of this tasks as

no

ill

one of the main conditions for building socialism.

The class enemies of the proletariat were set on undermining the leading role of the Bolsheviks in the Soviets and trade unions. The Mensheviks, intending to "make a breach in the most vulnerable spot of the enemy system", put forth the slogan of the `` democratisation'' of the Soviets. They presented such a ``democratisation'' as the chief means for the successful elimination of the postwar state of economic ruin, when in reality it would only allow elements alien to socialism to penetrate government bodies. With this aim the Mensheviks demanded that ``free'' re-elections be carried out immediately. They were echoed by Novaya Rossia (New Russia), a newspaper printed in Petrograd, in which representatives of the bourgeois intelligentsia, who called themselves ``non-Party'', published articles like "The Great Synthesis" and "The Emancipation of the Soviets", calling upon the intelligentsia to enter the Soviets with their ``own'' programme ( actually anti-socialist and bourgeois) for building a new society. At the Plenum of the Moscow Soviet the Left-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries called upon the audience to organise ``free'' Soviets and trade unions, and at the Fifth All-Russia Congress of Trade Unions they maintained that the Bolsheviks had, politically isolated the "revolutionary-socialist and worker-peasant community", and urged the delegates to embark upon the "truly revolutionary road-H;he creation of syndicate-- cooperative organisations". Towards the end of 1922 Socialist-Revolutionary maximalists

made unsuccessful attempts to canvass the indusrial workers of Moscow for ``free'' Soviets and ``independent'' trade unions.

What was the real purpose of the idea of the ``democratisation'' of the Soviets? This idea had a definite aim---the limitation of the Bolsheviks' sphere of influence in the Soviets and the ideological and organisational suppression of the proletariat by the petty-bourgeois mass. The essence of the slogan was the same "independent trade unions''.

The RCP(B) waged an all-out struggle against the subversive activities of the remnants of non-proletarian parties. Throughout the country plenary meetings of Party committees were held which outlined measures to be taken against the growth of the influence of bourgeois ideology.

The Party and Soviet press gave much attention to this matter. A series of articles revealing the intentions of the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Cadets, who under the cover of being non-Party members tried to penetrate the bodies of Soviet power, was published in October 1922 in connection with the forthcoming re-elections to the Soviets. It was noted in one of the articles printed in the Pravda: "Today the bourgeoisie, the nepmen, merchants, traders, industrialists, mediators, usurers, progressive ' parsons' and skilful intellectuals of the political volte-face trend, who wish to 'participate in power', are all hoping for the transformation of this power and will lay themselves out to make use of all opportunities to worm themselves into electoral meetings, and through them to Soviet elective offices and political

8-454

power." In another article the Pravda once again warned its readers: "Re-elections to the Soviets must not be used as a loop-hole for surrounding Soviet power with its enemies and dubious friends.''

The attempts of counter-revolutionary elements to ``seize'' the Soviets ended in failure. Among the deputies of the Petrograd Soviet in 1921 there were 1,500 Communists and only 1 Socialist-Revolutionary; in the Moscow Soviet in 1922 there were 2 Socialist-- Revolutionaries, 1 Menshevik and 1,500 Communists. The All-Russia Congress of Soviets (1922) consisted of 2,084 Communists and 125 non-Party members, while representatives of the Mensheviks and Right- and Left-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries were not elected at all.

The anti-Soviet forces' plans to penetrate the leadership of the trade unions were also foiled. Taking into account the class structure of Soviet society during the period of transition and the heterogeneous composition of the working class, the RCP(B) believed its paramount task was to reinforce the trade union leadership with Communists and non-Party working-class cadres devoted to the revolutionary cause.

The Twelfth Congress of the RCP(B), held in 1923, noted the positive changes that had taken place in the composition of the trade union leadership. In the beginning of 1922 Communists with long-standing membership, i.e. those who had become Party members before the revolution, comprised only 27 per cent of all chairmen of the provincial trade union committees, while by

1923 this figure had been raised to 57 per cent. The Party promoted experienced Party activists to trade union posts, thus clearing the trade union leadership of elements hostile to the cause of building socialism and eliminating the influence of bourgeois ideology on the working class. This measure served to democratise the trade unions and promote their role in the rehabilitation of the national economy and the development of socialism.

The various congresses and conferences of scientific and technical specialists, at which counter-revolutionary demands and resolutions were put forth expressed the attempts of the anti-Soviet forces to achieve a bourgeois ``transformation'' of the Soviet system. The All-Russia congresses of doctors, geologists and teachers demanded the limitation of the state's interference in private legal relations, an immediate return to capitalist free enterprise, and the withdrawal of science, public education and public health from the control of the state.

Congresses of agronomists and agricultural cooperative societies were especially demonstrative in this respect. The First All-Russia Congress of Agricultural Cooperative Societies, held in the summer of 1921, consisted of representatives from 25 provinces: 32 Socialist-Revolutionaries, 25 Cadets, 21 non-Party members and only 2 Communists, with the Socialist-Revolutionary and Cadet groups eventually forming an anti-Soviet bloc. The counter-revolutionary anti-Soviet majority formed at the All-Russia Agronomists' Congress advanced the principle of "economic

freedom", which was actually directed towards the development of kulak holdings and the subsequent implementation of reforms in the spirit of bourgeois restoration.

Attempts to push through similar decisions were made by kulak elements, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Cadets acting under the guise of non-Party members at local conferences of cooperative societies. It was noted in a special article in Peasant Russia, a Whiteguard emigrant collection of articles printed by Socialist-Revolutionaries in Prague, that "work at district and regional peasant non-Party conferences, and especially at cooperative societies' conferences, yielded sizeable results". Of course, this was only wishful thinking, although the counter-- revolutionaries did make every effort to use this form of work for organising a broad anti-Bolshevik movement among the peasantry, intelligentsia and even the working class.

In order to suppress the activities of counter-revolutionary elements in the cooperative societies' system and organisationally reinforce the cooperative movement, special cooperative commissions were formed at the RCP(B) Central Committee and Provincial Party Committees. The RCP(B) Central Committee urged the local Party organisations to take over the cooperative apparatus. The Central Committee instructed the Provincial Party Committees to delegate Communists familiar with local conditions to the provincial and local bodies of cooperative societies. At the same time, the Central Committee pointed out the necessity of training special Party cadres for work in cooperative societies

and recommended that the Party schools include in their curriculum the study of such subjects as the cooperative societies' movement, Soviet laws on cooperative societies and the practical work of cooperative societies.

With the aim of taking over the cooperative societies' apparatus, cooperative bodies and their boards were organisationally reinforced: the number of Communists in provincial cooperative boards increased from 3-5 per cent in 1922 to 50 per cent in 1923. The 12th Congress of the RCP(B) noted the achievements that had been reached in the cooperative sphere and instructed the Party organisations to continue their activities directted towards ousting capitalist elements from cooperative societies and increasing the Bolshevik influence in their local organisations.

Along with the use of congresses and conferences of various non-Party organisations, the anti-Soviet forces made attempts to establish permanent political centres. Such were their activities under the aegis of the AllRussia Committee for Assisting the Famished (Vserospomgol). The endeavour directed towards reducing famine that struck the country in 1921, called for a strenuous effort on the part of the whole nation. With the aim of drawing as many public forces as possible to the struggle against the disaster, the Soviet Government permitted the establishment of Vserospomgol which included, along with representatives of bourgeois intelligentsia, a number of Soviet officials.. However, the bourgeois majority of the organisation formed an opposition to Soviet power, conducted

an anti-Soviet policy and tried to sabotage the measures introduced by the state organs.

The guiding centre of Vserospomgol, situated in Moscow, comprised autonomously operating committees in other cities---- Petrograd, Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir, Kazan, Samara, Saratov---which also contained antiSoviet oppositions. Various anti-Soviet forces tried to turn Vserospomgol into a centre uniting the country's counter-revolutionary forces and to use it as a means for bourgeois restoration. The ``terms'' of assisting the famished laid down by P. Milyukov serve as a typical example. The cadet leader called for the organisation everywhere of committee branches, to which the local anti-Soviet activists were to be attracted, and for the gradual takeover of power from the Soviets. Continuing to adhere to "quiet counterrevolution", Milyukov in fact suggested to supplant Soviet bodies by oppositional centres, i.e. the Vserospomgol branches, hoping in the end, to replace the Soviet Government by the Vserospomgol Central Committee.

Imperialist circles in the West fully supported this programme and bourgeois press printed articles demanding the transfer of all political power to Vserospomgol. The Frankfurter Zeitung, reporting on the meeting between French Prime Minister Briand and A. Kerensky, noted that "perhaps Briand already regards Kerensky as the prime-- minister of the Russian coalition government which has originated from the Vserospomgol. We must say that all over the world it is believed that the Vserospomgol is nothing less

than the embryo of the future coalition government''.

The bourgeois members of the Vserospomgol, supported from abroad and instigated by the leaders of the Whiteguard emigration and the ruling circles of the imperialist states, tried to launch a broad anti-Soviet campaign. Taking advantage of their legal position they conducted meetings, drew up action plans, and established ties with antiSoviet groups both within the country and with those abroad who were making appeals to joint forces for overthrowing Soviet power. The oppositional elements of Vserospomgol, intending to expand and legalise their ties with emigrant centres and be able to act outside Soviet organs, demanded of the Soviet Government that their delegation be sent abroad. In an instruction issued for the delegation by Vserospomgol it was stressed: "The delegation acts abroad independently and has a right to directly contact governments of foreign powers and various establishments and persons". At the end of August 1921 the leaders of the opposition put forth an ultimatum that demanded their representatives be permitted to go abroad as Vserospomgol's representatives in London. One of the committee's members cynically noted in his diary, characterising the political course pursued by Vserospomgol: "We and famine are a means of the political struggle.''

It is only natural that the Soviet State could not allow the activities of such organisations to become a tool for counter-- revolution. In a government report on the dissolution of Vserospomgol it was stated that

most of its members had turned out to be pursuing political aims which had nothing to do with actual assistance to the famished, and that Whiteguard emigrant groups and bourgeois governments of European states had indulged in a gambling game around the committee.

In time it became evident that Vserospom-

fol, which tried to use its legal status in antioviet interests, was only the first step in the counter-revolutionaries' attempts to create such centres. Bourgeois ideologues tried to act through various scientific associations and educational establishments of higher learning. The Free Philosophic Association, which united mostly reactionary philosophers holding anti-Soviet views was especially active.

The anti-state activities of the professors and instructors of some higher educational establishments presented an ideological and political threat. In the winter of 1921-1922 their most reactionary representatives organised strikes in Moscow, Petrograd, Kazan and other cities, demanding the withdrawal of the system of higher education from state control. Their actual motives were covered by the slogans of ``autonomy'' for higher educational establishments and return to `` democratic'' enrollment in universities, which meant the liquidation of class privileges for the proletarian youth. A number of professors of Kazan University openly preached the necessity of restoring capitalism in Russia.

In the beginning of 1922 the Pravda published a series of articles analysing the reasons and aims of bourgeois professors'

sabotage. It was said in one of the articles that university professors were engaged in a furious campaign against Soviet power. Other articles unmasked the intentions of bourgeois professors who refused to teach students "in working clothes and Red Army uniforms" and dreamed of "bourgeois lawyers, enginneers, agronomists, doctors, chemists and teachers" through which they could manipulate Soviet power as they wished.

A letter of the RCP(B) Central Committee to all Party organisations "On the Work of Party Organisations in Higher Educational Establishments and Workers' Faculties" ( December 14, 1922) once again stressed the necessity of withdrawing the system of higher education from the influence of bourgeois ideology. It noted that "the Party, having gathered proletarian and communist students in higher educational establishments, must now take the next step in the field of re-- organising the system of higher education, in which bourgeois scholars and bourgeois ideology still prevail and at times even attack the foundations of scientific Marxist world view". Determining the task of the ideological transformation of the system of higher education, the Bolshevik Party's Central Committee indicated that "the Party must saturate the very workings of the system of higher education with its ideological influence". The 12th Congress of the RCP(B) discussed the task of forming a communist outlook among students and pointed out that " whatever the basic goals of an educational establishment, particularly universities and technical schools, they must not only produce special-

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ists in a particular field, but also social-- political workers armed with Marxist theory.''

The extensive ideological work conducted by the Communist Party among the masses and its persistent struggle against hostile ideology resulted in a noticeable decrease of the ideology of bourgeois restoration during the first years of the New Economic Policy. This led to the defeat of the "quiet counter-- revolution". The more actively the masses were involved in the execution of the plan for building socialism, the more obvious it became that all the hopes and intentions of bourgeois ideologues and their petty-- bourgeois yes-men were doomed to fail.

Chapter V THE FINAL BATTLE

In the late 1920s the Communist Party and Soviet government embarked upon a course directed towards the complete ousting of capitalist elements from both rural and urban areas on the basis of the reconstruction of the country's national economy. This course was based on the firm and leading position of the socialist sector in the Soviet economy, on the fact that the problem of the economic competition between socialism and capitalism, in terms of the correlation of class forces, had virtually been resolved, and that the only remaining issue was the final ousting of the nepmen bourgeoisie and kulaks from the country's national economy.

The policy pursued by international imperialism in the late 1920s and the increasing threat of new intervention by imperialist states against the USSR contributed to the growth of the capitalist elements' resistance to socialist construction and to the aggravation of the class struggle in the country. Every complication in the country's international position and every anti-Soviet action of the international reactionary forces inspired the capitalist forces within the country to increase their anti-Soviet activities.

10*

1. Removing the Bourgeoisie from Industry and Trade

class, devoted to the ideals of socialism.

During the first years of industrialisation construction on the following projects was begun: the Kerch and Krivoi Rog metallurgical plants in the south of the Ukraine; the Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk combines in the Urals and Siberia; oil refineries in Baku, Grozny, Batumi and Tuapse; and new mines in the Donetsk and Kuznetsk coal basins. In December 1926 the Volkhov Hydro-Electric Power Station was put into operation as well as similar stations in Chelyabinsk and Kizelovsk. In 1927 the construction of ten new hydro-electric power stations was begun; including a huge one on the Dnieper ( Dneproges), one of the major projects of a plan for the radical reconstruction of the national economy on the basis of electrification. Much attention was paid to the development of the chemical, machine-building, tractor and automobile industries. In all, 528 new enterprises were being built during 1926- 1927.

In the interests of developing the economy of backward outlying regions a number of industrial enterprises were built there, including cotton factories in Central Asia and the Transcaucasian Region. The development of the outlying regions was greatly aided by the construction in 1927-1930 of the 1,500-km Turkestan-Siberia Railroad which linked Siberia, a land rich in grain, timber and coal, with the cotton-growing regions of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. This project, in which over 50,000 workers, representatives of the Russian, Kazakh, Kirghiz and other peoples of the Soviet Union participated, was a living exam-

In December 1925 the 14th Congress of the Communist Party proclaimed a course towards the country's industrialisation, which meant the reconstruction of the whole national economy on a new technological and social basis. This reconstruction rested on the radical changes which had taken place in society: the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the nationalisation of the means of production, transport, the banks, foreign trade and the land. These changes provided all necessary conditions for the development of the USSR's national economy along socialist lines.

The Soviet State began industrialisation by mobilising its own resources received from its industry and state budget; the rationalisation of production and the rise in labour productivity served as important sources of accumulation.

The ranks of the Soviet working class grew rapidly. In 1926 there were 2 million industrial workers in the country, while in 1928 this figure stood at 3 million. Almost all the old cadres of skilled workers returned to the factories and plants. New workers coming from the villages replenished the working class and were politically educated in their work collectives. The workers achieved unprecedentedly high labour productivity and displayed real heroism in their work. It was not only a time of the formation of a new industrial base, but of the growth and consolidation of a Soviet multi-national working

pie of the cooperation among the Soviet peoples.

The construction of the Shterovsk Thermoelectric Power Station in Donbass, the Nizhegorodskaya (Gorky) and Zemo-Avchalskaya (in the outskirts of Tbilisi) electric power stations and thermo-electric power stations was completed.

In 1926-1928 the Soviet State had made all necessary preparations for achieving industrialisation. The successful fulfillment of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) was crucial to converting the country into an industrial power and laying the foundations of a socialist economy.

During this period the Soviet Union resembled a gigantic construction site. Recalling these years the Soviet writer Boris Gorbatov wrote: "The people suddenly became aware of their strength, of the might of their hands and of a collective effort. Everything became possible: taming the deserts and changing the people's outlook, draining swamps and transforming the world....

``The squeak of wheels was heard throughout the country. Everything came into motion, everyone was on the road travelling, moving; a railroad car placed in the desert became a railway station, a tent became a home and mud-huts became a city. They were temporary cities and temporary stations inhabited by a migrant people carrying tools upon their backs. Those were the days of great, agonising and happy events and achievements". Millions of Soviet people were fired by the enthusiasm of creative labour.

The development of socialist industry

was the main direction of the working class's offensive against capitalist elements. The growth of large-scale state industry in the USSR meant the growth of socialism and the removal of the bourgeoisie from the national economy. The large-scale, highly-- concentrated socialist industry which possessed tremendous productive assets, had reached a level of labour productivity which was unattainable for small-scale, dispersed private production.

The socialist industry was built up by the entire people led by the working class. Capital investments in industry amounted to billions of roubles and were growing steadily. Private industry allowed irrational expenditure of funds and labour. The employees of private industrial enterprises showed no interest in increasing labour productivity, since they were working not for themselves, but for the master who exploited them. Only capitalist elements were interested in the development of private industry. Private enterprises experienced a chronic shortage of raw materials, fuel and circulating capital, which resulted in constant work stoppage. Capital investment in private industry was dwindling and it was unable to compete with large-scale socialist industry. In Moscow, from November 1926 to March 1927 alone, the private textile industry's production was reduced by more than half. Production in the private sector was decreasing everywhere. If during the rehabilitation period the periods of recession in private industry and trade were followed by new revivals, during the period of reconstruction the possibilities of private capital had

for the most part already been exhausted; and this predetermined the inevitable ruin of the remnants of the bourgeois class.

The turning point in the struggle against private capital came at the end of 1926, when private capitalist production in a number of industrial branches was rapidly reduced and the rate of growth of private trade slowed down considerably.

As in the rehabilitation period, the decisive role in ousting private capital from wholesale trade was played by state trade, while the broad-based consumer cooperation was gaining sway in the retail sector. On the eve of the period of reconstruction of the national economy cooperative societies became economically strong mass organisations, numbering close to 9.5 million members.

In 1928 and 1929 the process of ousting the bourgeoisie was gathering momentum as a result of the high development rates of the socialist economy and the rapid industrialisation of the country. Centrally planned and technologically advanced large-scale production was forcibly demonstrating its advantages over the backward and anarchic private sector dominated by small-scale producers.

Under the difficult economic conditions of the reconstruction period, the disorganising role of private capital increased, thus weakening it significantly. Making use of market behaviour, private owners tried to derive maximum profits. Therefore, the bourgeoisie inflated prices in the private market and increased the exploitation of workers at private enterprises, consequently spending less on the

development and improvement of production. This fully revealed the predatory and speculative nature of private capital. The gap between prices in socialised and private trade increased from 24 per cent in 1917 to 100 per cent in 1929. The workers who were ruthlessly exploited at private enterprises demanded that agreements with the Nepmen be revoked and the nationalisation of bourgeois property be completed.

The decline of private industry and trade was precipitated by the mass collectivisation of agriculture. The bulk of private enterprises was concerned with processing agricultural produce and selling it in the free market. For instance, in 1928 the share of private owners in the dairy and flour-grinding industries amounted to 50 per cent. The mass collectivisation movement which began in the second half of 1929 and the establishment of economic ties between the collective farms and socialist industry considerably narrowed the capitalist structure of the economy and drained free enterprise of opportunities. The increased capacities of state and cooperative production became able to process most of the country's agricultural produce.

The rapid development of the socialist national economy and the growing realization by the working masses of the advantages of socialist labour, predetermined the fate of the remnants of the exploiter classes in the USSR. In the appeal "To All Workers and Working Peasants of the Soviet Union" the Communist Party pointed out the necessity of waging a decisive offensive against bourgeois elements. The Party stressed that "the kulaks

and the Nepmen will not surrender without resistance. The kulaks are opposed to the Soviet policy in the fields of grain procurement and the establishment of collective and state farms, and are trying to intimidate the builders of a new life in the countryside by terrorism. The kulaks and Nepmen are supported by counter-revolutionary saboteurs in industry who are assisted by bureaucrats in our administrative bodies. They are inspired and supported in every possible way by foreign capitalists''.

Economic sabotage pursued by pre-- revolutionary professionals and bourgeois elements was the most acute form of the class struggle at that time. Saboteurs were exposed almost in all branches of the national economy. In 1928 a sabotage organisation which was active in the coal industry was uncovered in the Shakhty region of Donbass.

As the socialist build-up of the national economy proceeded, the struggle against manifestations of bourgeois ideology became more intense. Bourgeois economists who held posts in Soviet state bodies and collaborated with Soviet government during the period of the rehabilitation of the national economy,

fave a hostile reception to the Communist arty's policy of all-embracing socialist construction. However, under the existing conditions the actions of bourgeois ideologues failed to meet the support of the Soviet people.

Socialism was being built throughout the entire country. Without any outside assistance the USSR managed to implement a tremendous programme of capital construction. By

1933 as many as 1,500 large industrial enterprises had been completed, with new cities built around many of them: Magnitogorsk, Kuznetsk, Khibinogorsk, Komsomolsk-- onAmur. The material and technical basis of socialist society had been created. Almost all of the country's workers were employed in socialist industry which produced 99.3 per cent of the national industrial output.

The process of ousting capitalist elements in the cities differed essentially from the process of doing away with the rural bourgeoisie, since the Soviet State did not conduct a policy of abolishing the former as a class, although in a number of cases the struggle took on acute forms. It is characteristic that in the cities the capitalist elements, which were driven out mostly by the use of economic measures, as a result of the development of socialist industry and trade, ceased to exist before the complete liquidation of the kulaks.

2. The Abolition of the Class of Rural Bourgeoisie

The development of socialist industry objectively led to the abolition of capitalist elements in the national economy both in the rural and urban areas. The further progress of society persistently called for a radical transformation of agricultural production. The low level of labour productivity in individual peasant holdings doomed the village population to poverty and kulak exploitation. Only a transition to large-scale cooperative production could make it possible to use the achieve-

ments of science and technology in agriculture, to notably increase labour productivity and engage the rural population in free labour devoid of kulak exploitation.

Collectivisation was the most progressive method of creating a new social system in the villages, since it did not cause the impoverishment and proletarisation of the peasants, but promoted the alliance of the working class and the working peasants and eradicated capitalism in the villages. It met the people's vital interests and provided for the victory of socialism in the country. Both the working class and peasants were society's most progressive and revolutionary forces.

The kulaks and their following who were opposed to the creation of collective farms, endeavoured to preserve capitalist relations in the villages and were a reactionary force, blocking social progress.

The entire course of the country's socioeconomic development condemned the kulaks, as the class opponents of the Soviet order to an inevitable downfall.

Proceeding from Lenin's cooperative plan, the 15th Congress of the CPSU(B), held in December 1927, declared a course towards the collectivisation of agriculture and stressed the need for "waging a more decisive offensive against the kulaks". The Congress marked a new stage in the struggle between the two opposing tendencies in the socio-- economic development of the villages.

Prior to the cooperation movement the Soviet state conducted a policy of curtailing the kulaks' exploiter tendencies. To this end, the size of leased land was limited, the use of

hired labour in kulak holdings was strictly regulated, the kulaks payed higher taxes, were deprived of suffrage, were not admitted to cooperative management bodies, etc.

Such a policy considerably undermined the kulaks economically, and their share in the overall number of pesant holdings decreased. Nevertheless, the kulaks continued to be a strong force.

With the support of the poor peasants and jointly with the middle peasants, the working class, guided by the Communist Party, launched an attack against the kulaks, the only remaining exploiter class. In 1928 and 1929, prior to the mass collectivisation movement which began in the summer of 1929, this attack was launched along two lines. The first included the development of new types of economic ties between socialist industry and agriculture, which strengthened the influence of the dictatorship of the proletariat on the life of the countryside, and rallied the poor and middle peasant masses around the working class. The second line called for direct measures against the kulaks.

The establishment of hiring stations, tractor pools and machine and tractor stations (MTS) was an important form through which the working class aided the peasantry. With the appearance of tractor pools and MTSs in, the villages, the position of the newly-- established collective farms and of the poor and middle peasants who had been freed from kulak exploitation improved noticeably. For instace, in 1928 in the Northern Caucasus close to 2,000 hectares of land were leased to the kulaks, while in 1929, after the appearance

of a tractor pool, the figure dropped to 162 hectares. Tractor pools and machine and tractor stations vividly demonstrated to the peasants the advantages of large-scale socialised agricultural production based on the use of machinery.

The first collective and state farms were the beacons of socialism in the villages. The state farms served as an example of socialist organisation of labour and were the leading force in the collectivisation movement. They rendered extensive assistance to the working peasants, providing them with hiring and grain-cleaning stations, tractor pools, highquality seeds and pedigree cattle. Between

1926 to 1928 state farms set up 900 hiring stations, 1,300 grain-cleaning stations, and 235 repair shops. During the same period the state farms handed over to the peasants 100,000 head of pedigree cattle and 120,000 tons of high-quality seeds.

The collective farms enjoyed extensive privileges in tax exemption, the system of land tenure and the use of forests. By the summer of 1929 there were close to 60,000 collective farms in the Soviet Union, while in

1927 there had been four times less.

The purchase by the state of agricultural produce from the peasants and collective farms on contractual terms was one of the forms of urban-rural economic integration. In 1928 as many as 3 million peasant holdings signed such contracts. This method ensured the development of the poor and middle peasants' holdings and their joining the supply-- andmarketing and production cooperatives. The contracts favoured the collective farms and

the poor peasants by offering high advance payments, and the use of tractors, graincleaning stations and repair shops on preferential terms.

The strengthening of the alliance between the working class and the working peasants consolidated the socialist sector in agriculture, promoted political organisation of the peasants along socialist lines and created the necessary conditions for the transition to mass collectivisation. The poor peasants and farm labourers were the most active members of the cooperation movement, since only collective farms could help them get rid of poverty and kulak exploitation. A female farm labourer from the lower Volga thus explained her desire to join a collective farm: "I have worked enough for the kulaks; the grain I receive in payment only lasts until the middle of the winter, so I am joining the collective farm and no kulak propaganda will stop me." The struggle against capitalist elements in the villages was gaining scope and, despite the kulaks' stubborn resistance, the socialist transformation of agriculture proceeded successfully. The poor and middle peasants had a reliable leader---the working class backed by the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat ---and this was a guarantee of their victory over the kulaks.

During this period the struggle against the capitalist elements in the countryside was directed towards undermining the economic sources of their existence. To this end the Soviet state introduced a number of new restrictions for the kulaks. The Law on the use of land and land tenure passed in 1928 limited

the period of land lease to 6 years and prohibited the lease of land to kulaks. In 1928- 1929 all tractors were confiscated from the kulaks and, starting from 1928 they were deprived of the right to purchase complex agricultural machines. State bodies, the trade unions and poor peasants' groups intensified their control over the observance of labour laws. Farm labourers were granted an 8-hour working day, sick leave, a monthly payment in cash and a weekly day off. Beginning with 1928, the State sharply raised the taxes paid by the kulaks. In 1929-1930 only 2.7 per cent of kulak holdings payed 27.7 per cent of the overall agricultural tax. In pursuit of the interests of the working peasants, their taxes during that year were decreased by a sum which had been additionally imposed on the kulaks... As a result, certain contingents of the rural bourgeoisie were ousted from the national economy.

The kulaks fiercely resisted the socialist transformation of the villages. By manoeuvring the considerable means accumulated during the first years of the NEP, the kulaks strived for the preservation of capitalist relations in the countryside. In the course of this struggle the kulaks resorted to all possible means, from economic sabotage to terrorist actions against Communists and activists of the collectivisation movement.

The sabotage of the state grain purchase campaign was one of the most wide-spread methods of this struggle. In 1928 and 1929 it reached its peak, developing into "grain strikes" of the rural bourgeoisie. The kulaks refused to sell grain at state-fixed prices. They

buried grain and let it rot, fed it to the cattle or made home-distilled liquor from it, so as not to hand it over to the state. They spread provocative rumours on the introduction of a surplus-appropriation system in order to purchase grain from the working peasants for next to nothing and later sell it to them at speculative prices. It was obvious that the kulaks had turned the accumulated grain into a means by which they could economically enslave the poor and middle peasants and exert political pressure on Soviet power.

The Soviet State was compelled to respond to the "grain strikes" by taking extraordinary measures against the kulaks. Sabotage of the grain purchase campaign was equated with speculation and was punished in accordance with the penal code clause on speculation. At the same time the Communist Party launched a broad campaign aimed at consolidating the poor and middle peasants against the counterrevolutionary actions of the kulaks.

A bitter class struggle flared up in the villages in the course of the election campaign to the Soviets. In rn address to the working people "On Re-! ?tions to the Soviets* the CPSU(B) Central Committee noted; "In connection with re-elections to the Soviets the kulaks and organised counter-- revolutionary groups have intensified their hostile activities." The anti-Soviet forces held secret meetings at which they planned their actions during the pre-election campaign; bribed and distributed drinks among the poor peasants, conducted propaganda among the working peasants aimed at drawing them to their side; staged terrorist acts against village activists,

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Communists, progressive-minded youths and Soviet officials. According to a report made by Derevenski Kommunist (Village Communist) magazine on the basis of newspaper dispatches for December 1928, the kulaks had committed 900 counter-revolutionary actions.

Elections to the Soviets demonstrated the complete political insolvency of the rural bourgeoisie. During the elections much was done to reveal kulak holdings and deprive the kulaks of suffrage. Farm labourers and poor peasants' committees, which acted under the guidance of the Communists, workers and activists of the collectivisation movement, played a tremendous role in solving this task.

The development of socialism in the countryside and the ouster of capitalist elements evoked severe resistance on the part of the disintegrating class. The kulaks, who felt that the ground was slipping away from under their feet, started resorting to violence on a wider scale. In an impotent rage the kulaks took the path of bloody terrorism.

The second half of 1929 was a turning point in the socialist transformation of the countryside: most of the working peasants expressed the desire to join collective farms. This was the beginning of the decisive changeover from the old, capitalist road of development to the new, socialist road.

In the late 1929 and the early 1930, when mass collectivisation was gaining momentum, the Soviet State passed over from the policy of limiting and undermining the kulaks' economic foundations to the policy of abolishing them as a class. The Decision of the Communist Party Central Committee (January 30,

1930) "On Measures for Liquidating Kulak Holdings in Regions of Mass Collectivisation", as well as the resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the USSR Council of People's Commissars (February 1, 1920) "On Measures to Promote the Socialist Transformation of Agriculture in Regions of Mass Collectivisation and to Combat the Kulaks" adopted on the basis of that decision determined the new class policy of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat in regard to the kulaks and outlined ways and means of implementing it.

In regions of complete collectivisation the lease of land and use of hired labour by individual peasant holdings was forbidden. Local state bodies had the right to use all necessary measures for suppressing the kulaks, up to the confiscation of their property and deportation. These measures were to be applied on a differentiated basis to various categories of kulak holdings. The first category included counter-revolutionary kulak militants, organisers of anti-Soviet and terrorist actions. To these repressive measures, including capital punishment, were to be applied. The second category embraced rich kulaks who were to be deported to the country's outlying regions. The bulk of the kulaks, i.e., 75 per cent, who were to be moved to specially assigned plots in the same region but outside the collective farm, fell into the third category. A strict order in carrying ou+ measures directed toward liquidating kulak holdings was established: each region could abolish not more than 3-5 per cent of the kulak holdings (this was to assure the removal of the most rich

kulak holdings); time limits were set for deporting former kulaks to new places; a special system for confiscating and using the kulak property was established etc. The Party decisions placed special emphasis on the necessity to abolish the kulaks as a class, as a compound part of the process of complete collectivisation.

Collective farms continued to be organised on a mass scale. It was a truly revolutionary movement of the working peasants for the socialist transformation of the countryside. In January and February 1930 meetings at which the issues of collectivisation and the liquidation of the kulaks as a class were discussed were held in the country's rural regions.

As the collectivisation movement gained momentum, as well as the campaign for abolishing the kulaks, the latter's resistance continued to grow. However this did not serve as an indication of the rural bourgeoisie's strength, but, on the contrary, was a sign of its weakness, of the agony of the last exploiter class. As the ring of isolation tightened round the kulaks, they frantically searched for a way out, resorting to one or another methods of struggle.

In their effort to keep a part of the peasants at their side at any cost, the kulaks directed their actions against collectivisation. Their methods of the anti-collectivisation struggle were quite versatile, but the main ones were the following: the most blatant counterrevolutionary propaganda against the collective farms and the dissemination of provocative rumours aimed at discrediting collectivisation;

undermining the collective farms materially by persuading the peasants to slaughter the cattle and steal seeds and collective farm property; organisation of subversive actions and arsons; terrorist actions against village activists, Young Communist League members and Communists; penetrating collective farms with the aim of disintegrating them from within.

After the beginning of mass collectivisation the kulaks started agitating for slaughtering cattle and squandering seeds, stealing agricultural machinery and other collective farm property. The kulaks played on the peasants' psychology of private owners in their attempt to undermine the newly-formed collective farms. In the autumn of 1929 and winter of 1930 the slaughter of cattle reached tremendous proportions. The slaughter of horses caused greatest damage to the collective farms, since at that time 85 per cent of the fields were still cultivated by use of horse traction.

Another wide-spread method of kulak sabotage was setting fire to collective farm buildings and the houses of collective farm activists.

The kulaks also intensified their terrorist activities. Over two-thirds of all terrorist acts were directed against activists of the collectivisation movement. The kulaks constantly threatened to beat members of collective farms.

However, despite agitation and terrorism, the kulaks failed to reach their aims. The working peasants overcame the kulaks' resistance and joined collective farms. Seeing that

the kulaks tried to infiltrate some of the collective farms. They announced their desire to voluntarily cede their property to collective farms and to "root themselves in socialism through work". They sometimes resorted to another method, selling their property, moving to another place and joining a collective farm under the guise of poor peasants. Kulaks who had managed to enter collective farms ruined machinery, infected the horses and cattle by glander, spread counter-- revolutionary rumours and used every opportunity to disrupt the communes from within.

During the mass collectivisation campaign the kulaks tried to unite into counter-- revolutionary organisations, plotting anti-Soviet conspiracies and revolts. Underground counterrevolutionary organisations formed by kulaks and former White Guards sprang up in the Northern Caucasus, the Volga region, Central Black Earth areas and in Siberia.

The decision adopted by the Central Executive Committee and the USSR Council of People's Commissars on combatting the predatory slaughter of cattle and horses dealt a heavy blow to the saboteurs. Executive committees of regional Soviets were instructed to confiscate cattle, land and agricultural implements from kulaks guilty of slaughtering cattle or of inciting others to do so, and to institute criminal proceedings against them.

Tens of thousands of front-rank workers who came to the villages at the end of 1929 and in the beginning of 1930 were of great help to the peasants' struggle against the kulaks and the building of a new life on the basis of collective farms. In 1930 alone the

country's Party and trade unions organisations sent 180,000 workers to the rural areas. During the two-and-a-half years between the 15th and 16th Congresses the Party sent over 250,000 workers to the villages. Twenty five thousand^^1^^ workers who, following the Party's call voluntarily went to the villages to work at various jobs, played a special part in the collectivisation of agriculture and in the elimination of the kulaks as a class.

Poor peasant and farm labourers' groups, formed under the Soviets, collective farms and cooperative societies, were instrumental in consolidating the poor and middle peasant masses. By the end of 1929 there were over 24,000 such groups comprising 283,500 members.

The abolition of the kulaks was a political campaign in which the broad peasant masses participated actively. The working peasants were outraged by the kulaks' subversive and terrorist activities. They had seen for themselves that the kulaks were deadly enemies of

~^^1^^ The "twenty five thousand workers"---- frontrank workers from large industrial centres of the USSR who voluntarily went to the villages to assume managerial and organisational posts in the collective farms and machine and tractor stations in the early 1930s during the period of the collectivisation of agriculture. They took an active part in forming collective farms, conducted political, and educational work among the peasants, and helped collective farms to take stock of their property, promote work discipline and establish a just wage system. Many of them were elected members of collective farm boards or collective farm chairmen. They joined the class struggle against the kulaks who fiercely resisted the socialist transformation of agriculture. Many of them remained in the villages for good.---Ed.

Soviet power. The following statement made by the peasants of a village in the Urals region to a local kulak is characteristic in this respect: "We are taking away your cattle, machines, land and house not because we are angry at you for oppression during the power of the White Guards, but because you are a kulak and because before the revolution and during the 12 years of Soviet power you have only shown hatred for the people and for Soviet power. There is no place for you on our collective farm land...''

The working peasants' long-felt hatred of the kulaks finally burst out. Farm labourers and the poor peasants who were the ones most opposed to the kulaks, were the initiators of confiscating kulak holdings. This was proof of the class solidarity of the rural proletariat and the poor peasants. They stirred to action and united all working peasants.

The kulaks were dispossessed by special commissions which consisted of farm labourers, poor peasants, activists from among the middle peasants, workers, representatives of the village and district Soviets. All the confiscated means of production, as well as other property were placed under strict public control. The houses of the kulaks were turned into libraries, recreation and reading rooms and other educational and cultural facilities. The kulaks' means of production were included in the collective farms' indivisible funds. By the mid-1930 the total number of expropriated kulak holdings reached 320,000, with the means of production, buildings and other property worth over 400 million roubles being handed over to the collective farms.

Of the one million kulak holdings that existed in the country prior to the mass collectivisation, there still remained 450,000.

In 1931-1932 the elimination of the kulaks as a class continued, but the methods used were less drastic. The kulaks had been routed and the class struggle became less tense. In most of the regions where the expropriation of the kulaks was continuing, they were divided in only two categories instead of three: the first category was deported to other regions and the second moved beyond the limits of the collective farms. By the early 1931 the kulak counter-revolutionary activists and organisers of anti-Soviet and terrorist actions were rendered harmless, which made it possible for Soviet power to change its methods of expropriating the remaining kulaks. Since the majority of the most dangerous kulaks had been removed from the regions of complete collectivisation in 1931, the mass deportation of the kulaks became no longer necessary. In 1932 the Communist Party Central Committee forbade the mass removal of the kulaks, except for counterrevolutionary elements. By the end of 1932 there were approximately 60,000 kulak holdings which were strongly undermined economically and deprived of the possibility to exploit hired labour.

Thus, the kulaks, the last exploiter class and rampart of capitalism in the countryside was shattered and, in the main, abolished. The victory of collectivisation put an end to the centuries-old backwardness of agriculture and the exploitation of the working peasants, ridding almost 20 million poor pesants.

In the course of only four years Soviet agriculture changed beyond recognition. Over 200,000 collective farms, 5,000 state farms and 3,000 machine and tractor stations appeared in the place of the mass of dispersed peasant holdings. Lenin, founder and leader of the Soviet state, said long before the mass organisation of collective farms: "If tomorrow we could supply one hundred thousand first-class tractors, provide them with fuel, provide them with drivers---you know very well that this at present is sheer fantasy-^he middle peasant would say ;'I am for the Communia' (i.e., for communism).''^^1^^ This time had come. As many as 265,800 tractors worked in 1937 on the country's farmlands. Socialism had triumphed over capitalism in the economic field. The question "Who will win?"---the key economic question during the transition period---ceased to exist.

CONCLUSION

When the socialist revolution triumphed in October 1917 in Petrograd and, later, throughout all of Russia, it met with the unconcealed hostility not only of Russia's bourgeoisie, but of the entire capitalist world. During a number of years, these two forces both jointly and separately made numerous attempts to strangle the revolution and conducted concentrated military, economic, ideological and political attacks against Soviet power. From the very moment of its inception the Soviet State was faced by a relentless anti-Soviet struggle waged by the reactionary forces.

From the very first day of the October Revolution the working masses of Russia were compelled to defend their revolutionary gains from the bourgeoisie and the landlords of their country who had unleashed a civil war, as well as from the attacks of the capitalist states which launched a military intervention against the newly-formed Soviet State, stifled the famine-stricken country with a military and economic blockade, organised conspiracies and revolts against Soviet power and staged attempts on the lives of the leaders of the Communist Party and Soviet State. The Civil War raged for over three years.

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 214.

Although defeated in armed combat, the Russian counter-revolutionary forces did not abandon their aims and continued to plan new invasions with the aid of interventionist armies; they also shifted to more flexible methods of anti-Soviet struggle which took on the following two basic forms. The first included the organisation of anti-Soviet mutinies and attempts to make use of the peasants' wavering in the struggle against Soviet power; and the second, the so-called "quiet counter-revolution", was aimed at creating the necessary conditions for the bourgeois transformation of Soviet order. Capitalist elements were engaged in economic sabotage and tried to infiltrate the Soviets, trade union and other state and public organisations; the ``disintegration'' of the Communist Party by internal opposition was to play a special role.

From the early 1920s, the focus of the class struggle shifted to the economic and ideological spheres. In the course of the Civil War, the working class gained a political victory. However, this victory had to be substantiated economically. It was created under conditions of economic competition between the two opposed economic sectors-Hhe socialist and the capitalist. This gave rise to a stubborn economic struggle between the working class, on the one hand, and the Nepmen and kulaks, on the other. This struggle was accompanied by ideological confrontation centred around the principal question of whether the dictatorship of the proletariat should be strengthened or capitalism restored? Bourgeois ideologues tried to propagate

their ideas in the press, universities, at various congresses and conferences of professionals. The enemies of Soviet power tried to organise legal opposition centres throughout the country, presenting them as the ``true'' defenders of the people's interests. Bourgeois ideologues who received support from various Whiteguard emigre organisations abroad intended to divert the masses from socialist ideology and sow distrust among them in the possibility of building socialism in the USSR.

The counter-revolutionary forces of Russia were a strong and dangerous enemy, and they were defeated only because of the determination of the Communist Party, the unprecedented self-sacrifice of thousands of Communists, and the staunchness and discipline of the working class.

During the NEP, the working class and the working peasants, guided by the Communist Party, achieved a decisive victory. In a relatively short period of time, the socialist structure of the economy proved its advantage over the capitalist structure. The rapid upsurge of socialist industry was followed by the growth of the working class and of its influence as society's leading force. The constant strengthening of socialist forces and the simultaneous weakening of capitalist elements predetermined the ruin of the remnants of the exploiter classes in the country.

The working class, having united the working people and achieved decisive superiority over its class enemies in the country, took the initiative. During the entire period of transition from capitalism to socialism the initiative in the class struggle belonged to the dic-

tatorship of the proletariat making it possible for it to force its will upon the enemy, displaying exceptional versatility in the choice of the ways and means of the class struggle.

The working people of those countries which have thrown off the colonial yoke and have embarked upon the road of socialist development are also faced by the fierce resistance of the former colonialists and their accomplices.

This struggle is actively assisted by the imperialist powers which are trying, by using economic pressure, bribery, blackmail, terrorist actions and armed force, to regain their lost power over their former colonies.

The working people are waging a selfless struggle for the freedom and independence of their countries, supported by the world's revolutionary forces and progressive public opinion.

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