The exchange of manufactured goods for agricultural products (tovaroob- men) served as the linchpin of procurement. Established by a decree of 2 April 1918, tovaroobmen became mandatory for thirteen 'grain producing' provinces.[170] This involved setting up a food monopoly, abolishing private trade and establishing fixed prices, creating central supply organs and combating 'speculation'. Despite unfavourable sowing conditions in the spring of 1919 and the disruption of civil war, the government's assessment in 1919 represented a significant increase over the previous year. Acknowledging that a black market in just about everything undermined state procurement efforts, the party justified the use of force to carry out requisitioning. Although repression sparked disturbances throughout the countryside, the Bolsheviks needed to rely on the measures to hold onto power while they tried to effect the changes that they believed would make coercion unnecessary in the long run. To be sure, the peasantry designed their own strategies to ward off domination. The result was famine. The introduction of NEP was made possible only after a massive social and political rejection of War Communism on the part not only of the peasantry, but also of workers and elements in the party and state apparatus.
But it did not have to be that way. Until mid-1918 village autonomy flourished as the peasants finished the social revolution in the villages, liquidating gentry landholding and promoting a levelling process. In fact, the Right SRs' bid for power failed in part because the peasantry, satisfied with the land settlement, remained neutral before that summer. However, the Communist Party's decision on 11 June 1918 to establish kombedy to promote social revolution in the villages, facilitate grain collection and curb free trade marked a tragic turn in the party's course in the countryside. Combined with the introduction of the grain monopoly and food dictatorship in May and the first mobilisations into the Red Army, the party's resolve to manufacture class war in the villages represented the beginning of the end of the fleeting period of peasant self- rule.38 These measures also exacerbated the rift between town and country, strained relations between the Bolsheviks and Left SRs, and eventually forced the Bolsheviks to reject their own policies.
Although the Red Army served as an institution ofsocialisation, mandatory service also turned the countryside against the Communists, as is evinced in the colossal rate of desertion. Soldiers deserted because they wanted to be left alone, because they were concerned about the fate oftheir loved ones, because ofthe terrible conditions in the ranks andbecause oftheir opposition to specific policies such as requisitioning and the imposition of an extraordinary tax. The failure of rural soviets to work the fields of Red Army men contributed to the problem, as did the vile conditions in military hospitals. The party applied carrot and stick measures to deserters, including execution, the taking of hostages and amnesties, yet between 1918 and 1920 probably over half of all of those drafted deserted.39
Ultimately, the ideology of Bolshevism, as well as a strain in Russian intellectual life that viewed the countryside in a negative light, drove the Bolsheviks to force unfavourable rates of exchange on the peasants. In fact, the language the party used in describing the peasantry -' disorganised', 'poor and ignorant know-nothings', who lacked 'consciousness' because they were 'politically illiterate' and had a 'low cultural level' - bears some striking similarities to the language of colonialism.40 Communists blamed the 'darkness' of the village for the peasants' antipathy towards Soviet power, susceptibility to rumours and failure to understand the imminence of world revolution. They understood
38 Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution (1917-1921) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 71.
39 Raleigh, Experiencing, pp. 332-7; and Mark Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 69-79.
40 Alvin W Gouldner, 'Stalinism: A Study of Internal Colonialism', in Political Power and Social Theory: A Research Annual (Greenwich, Conn., 1978): 209-59; 212, 216, 238; S. V Leonov,RozhdenieSovetskoiimperii: Gosudarstvoiideologiia, 1917-1922gg. (Moscow: Dialog MGU, 1997), p. 183.
that the peasantry demonstrated little interest in Communism, seeking solace in the argument that economic ruin caused the peasantry's lack of enthusiasm. That is, if Communism had worked, the peasantry would have been all for it.
In 1919 forced requisitioning replaced the hitherto haphazard approach to obtaining grain deliveries. Discontent stemming from unfair quotas and from confiscations surfaced immediately, as a result of which punitive measures proved necessary to realise the state's objectives. One illustrative episode from Saratov province involved an armed unit under the command of N. A. Cheremukhin in the summer of 1919, which violently struck out against desertion and the brewing of illicit spirits. Known in party circles for his 'tact, experience . .. and devotion to the interests of the Revolution', Cheremukhin torched 283 households in the village of Malinovka. Applying 'revolutionary justice', he confiscated 'kulakproperty', levied contributions on entire villages that participated in anti-Soviet uprisings and shot 'active opponents of Soviet power, deserters, kulaks, and chronic brewers of moonshine'. Between July and September his forces executed 139 people in an attempt to break the spirit ofthose opposed to Soviet decrees. Party members, non-Communists and Red Army units protested against Cheremukhin's repression.[171] But local party boss V A. Radus-Zen'kovich insisted that Cheremukhin's detachment 'did not use force at all'.[172] Such episodes made it certain that peasants would later welcome armed peasant bands bent on overthrowing Bolshevik power.
Beginning in mid-1918, peasant rebellions against Communist policies represented attempts to restore an earlier, partially mythical, time before Soviet power, which had done plenty to drive the peasantry into the opposition. Soviet power mobilised peasant youth. It brought in hungry urban workers from the outside to wrench grain from the countryside. It created havoc when it set up the kombedy. It levied an extraordinary tax. It attacked religion. It threatened traditional power and gender relations. It subjected the peasantry to abuses of power that exceeded anything rural inhabitants had experienced before. As a result, peasant bands known as Greens composed of deserters and others surfaced in 1918 and again in 1919 during the White offensive. Triggering uprisings in Tambov, the Volga and Urals regions, Ukraine and Siberia, the peasant revolt reached a crescendo in 1920 and 1921, when Lenin remarked that this 'counter-revolution is without doubt more dangerous than Denikin, Yudenich, and Kolchak taken together'.[173]
Although the SR Party might not have orchestrated the peasant revolt, SR values - including violence - provided the political frame for the peasant rebels' programme.[174] Despite some differences in the demands of particular groups, the Greens did not oppose Soviet power, but rather the specific policies of War Communism and the arbitrary lording over them of 'vampire-Communists, Jews and commissar-usurpers'. Seeking to put an end to 'Bolshevik tyranny', the Greens advocated restoration of the Constituent Assembly. The relative isolation of local communities and the subaltern nature of the peasant world made it unlikely that a peasant revolt triggered by one-time Red Army men would succeed without outside leadership and organisation, but the Bolsheviks feared that the spate of uprisings could have tipped the scales against the party because of the potent ferment in the cities. Interrupting grain requisitioning and agricultural production, the Greens killed Communists whenever they encountered them, destroyed collective farms, disbanded Soviet agencies and seized seed, agricultural products and livestock, thereby exacerbating food shortages in the cities.
170
See M. I. Davydov, 'Gosudarstvennyi tovaroobmen mezhdu gorodomi derevnei v 19181921 gg.',
171
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Saratovskoi oblasti (GASO), f.521, op. 1, d. 445, ll. 4-6, 19-21, 59, 76, 85, 102; f. 521, op. 1, d. 445, ll. 60-61 ob, 63-63 ob, 67; and Tsentr Dokumentatsii Noveishei Istorii Saratovskoi Oblasti (TsDNISO), f. 151/95, op. 2, d. 8, l. 17.
172
See Pavliuchenkov,
173
V I. Lenin,
174
Seth Singleton, 'The Tambov Revolt (1920-1921)',