The Communists likewise fashioned a new public ideological language that, in erasing the difference between ideas and reality, liberated them from the need to provide any logical proof for their claims.[164] Communism's public language emphasised distrust of the class other; a hierarchy of class, soviets, privileges, even of countries; coercion as the necessary means that justified the hoped-for ends; and a national ideology as opposed to a parochial one. The specifics of the ever-changing narrative are less important than how it underscored the battle of the new world against the old, the need to sacrifice, and the despicable nature of the opposition. By the time the civil war drew to a close, the Bolsheviks were proclaiming that the Communist victory and survival of the Soviet state were inevitable, that capitalism was doomed, and that it would trigger a new war and world revolution. This conveyed the message that resistance was not only improper, but also futile. In promising a glorious future, the Bolsheviks thus inscribed historically delayed gratification into their narrative of revolution, which they presented to the population through newspapers, propaganda efforts, visual arts and other forms.[165] During periods of vulnerability the party took additional measures to propagate its views; however, these frenzied efforts only underscored how little cultural capital the Communists had at this point. Indeed, to make their ideology the ruling one, the Bolsheviks took over the state educational system, giving literacy and the spread of 'enlightenment' a top priority in order to facilitate the reception of their propaganda, but met with stiff opposition.
As party leaders and intellectuals quarrelled among themselves over how best to effect cultural change, practices immersed in everyday life continued to direct people's perceptions along more familiar, less revolutionary pathways, preventing a complete destruction of past culture. Ultimately, the Bolsheviks sacralised a new world that privileged workers and at times peasants not only through class-based policies but also through the construction of a heroic narrative of the revolution that reflected new social hierarchies. While this narrative of integration - and exclusion - made it possible for later generations of Soviet leaders to co-opt and mobilise individuals and groups, the ready employment of the despotic power of the state to effect cultural change helped obscure the fact that the party had failed to establish cultural domination, while its ideology continued to invite argument.
War Communism and Russia's peasant majority
The economic formation that prevailed between 1918 and March 1921 has subsequently come to be known as War Communism. A term lacking analytical precision, it was originally popularised by L. Kritsman, its leading spokesperson, and used by Lenin to discredit the opposition. In elucidating the term, the partisan and scholarly literatures either emphasise the role of ideology in implementing 'communist' economic principles during civil-war conditions, or downplay it, underscoring instead the emergency nature of the measures enacted.[166] Yet the lessons learned are less about the new economic order itself than about the significance of how the Bolsheviks attempted to put it into practice.
Civil war in industry started immediately after October 1917, when the Bolsheviks limited private property and the market, encouraging workers' control and nationalising banks.[167] Economic localism soon clashed with centralising impulses against a background of various ideological legacies. These included the tsarist wartime economic model in place since 1915 in which state intervention and control played a major role, and utopian Marxist visions of a socialist economy, which presumed an inherent hostility in class relations and the superiority of socialist principles.[168] Although previous state policies shaped economic practices during the civil war, Bolshevik ideology transformed practices of state intervention by justifying coercion. This point is manifested in the implementation of the food dictatorship and nationalisation of industry in 1918; in the obligatory grain quota assessment or razverstka and co-optation of the consumer co-operatives in 1919; and in the militarisation of labour and greater use of violence in the countryside in 1920.
The Soviet government created an organ responsible for economic life, the Supreme Economic Council (Sovnarkhoz), and urged local soviets to establish provincial councils. Industrial breakdown in 1918 posed the most pressing problem for local economic councils, which likewise navigated the rocky transition from workers' control to centralisation, and resolved which industries to nationalise and how to improve transportation, becoming embroiled in inter-agency squabbles in the process, particularly with the Food Supply Commissariat (Narkomprod). But pragmatism as well as conflict coloured the relationship between local councils and Moscow, especially since industries managed by the Centre had a greater chance of securing fuel to keep operating. The military threat also defined local councils' activities as some of their departments worked exclusively for the Red Army and eventually all of them did so to some degree. Their main problem, however, remained lack ofclearly defined jurisdiction between the councils and local agencies of Moscow's chief industrial branch administrations (glavki).
Growingfood shortages accompanied the collapse ofindustrial production. The problem had begun already during the war and gained momentum in 1917, when local agencies proved reluctant to release resources, fearing the destabilising consequences of the scarcity of food. As civil war unfolded, provincial agencies struggled to satisfy both local and larger demands on food supplies. To cope with the crisis, the Soviet government set up the Food Supply Commissariat on 27 May 1918. Local agencies soon registered the population in order to issue rations cards according to a class principle that privileged workers and discriminated against the bourgeoisie. The class principle of doling out food proved to be largely symbolic, however, owing to a constant reclassification of professions and to the fact that members of the bourgeoisie often tookjobs in the bureaucracy to obtain rations.[169] The Bolsheviks' co-opting of the consumer co-operatives, responsible for distributing food and other items, further exacerbated the distribution of food and other essentials. Oppositional socialists fought to retain the co-operatives' independence, adding to the difficulty the Bolsheviks had in taking them over.
Centring on procurement, Bolshevik economic practices alienated the peasantry and contributed to the famine of 1921-3. The party launched its first annual grain procurement programme in August 1918; however, the breakdown ofthe state infrastructure made procurement highly problematic. Shortages of employees in the procurement bodies, the parallelism of government organisations, destruction caused by the Whites, transportation difficulties and sundry decrees issued by local executive committees undermined campaigns. Moreover, the peasants' reluctance to hand over grain convinced the Bolsheviks to foment class war in the countryside by introducing committees of the village poor (kombedy). In the summer and autumn of 1918 brigades of Narkomprod's Food Army (prodarmiia), comprising workers from the capitals and other industrial cities, participated in the government's procurement programme. Most of them ended up speculating in grain, thereby sabotaging the Soviet government's system of fixed prices.
164
Mikhail N. Epstein,
166
See Silvana Malle,
167
Pavliuchenkov,
168
Jacques Sapir, 'La Guerre civile etl'economiede guerre: Origines dusysteme sovietique',