The centralized administration system dictated a command style of leadership, and one of the features of war communism policy was the system of extraordinary agencies, whose tasks included subordination of the entire economy to the needs of the front. On November 30, 1918, the VTsIK resolved to create a new extraordinary agency of the Soviet state: the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense of the RSFSR. Its task was to mobilize all forces to wage the Civil War successfully. Resolutions of the Council of Defense were binding on all departments. It comprised representatives of the VTsIK, the Revolutionary War Council, the People’s Commissariat for Railroads, the Extraordinary Committee to Supply the Red Army, the People’s Commissariat for Foodstuffs, the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions, the VSNKh, and the Main Committee on Labor. The Council of Defense was directed by the chairman of the CPC, and as a rule, it met twice a week and decisions were made by majority vote. When necessary, the Council of Defense created numerous committees, including one on fuel, and sent authorized extraordinary representatives with broad powers into localities, including the right to dismiss all officials and prosecute them before revolutionary tribunals.
The oil industry also suffered shortages following the October Revolution. For a long time, the terrible events of the Civil War had interrupted deliveries to Central Russia of coal from the Donets Basin and the Kuznetsk Basin, as well as of oil from the North Caucasus and Transcaucasus. As recently as November 24, 1917, Chechen bandits had burned down new Grozny fields. In December 1917, the journal Neftyanoye delo published a report by the chairman of the Tersk Military Industrial Committee, who reported to Petrograd: “The oil fields of the new Grozny region, which were producing 5–6 million poods [600,000–720,000 barrels] of oil per month, have been destroyed and completely burned. It is impossible to restore the fields under existing circumstances.” The Grozny fields burned for almost 17 months, and according to some estimates this fire consumed oil worth almost a quarter of the annual prewar budget of the Russian Empire.
By the end of 1918, the situation was dire: Soviet Russia needed 2.6 million barrels to meet the plans of 1919, but only had around 10,000 barrels of fuel oil on hand. As for alternate energy sources, all the Soviet government really had left at its disposal at this time was the Moscow coal basin, which was capable of producing only a small quantity of low-quality brown coal.
The Red Army’s failures in the early spring of 1919 in the Volga region and in the east produced an even greater strain on the fuel supply. On April 26, 1919, Lenin sent the following directive to the Revolutionary War Councils in the Volga region: “In view of the critical situation with fuel oil, it is prohibited, under penalty of the strictest accountability, for anyone to use or issue fuel without permission of the Main Committee on Fuel. Those guilty of unauthorized seizure or distribution of fuel shall be immediately prosecuted by a revolutionary court.”5
Several days later, on April 29, 1919, he sent a new telegram: “The threat of [White Army leader Aleksandr] Kolchak to the Volga necessitates prompt measures to remove petroleum products from the threatened area, and timely transportation of petroleum products destined for wharves in the upper Volga through the threatened area. To carry out the indicated tasks successfully, it is ordered that: 1) The Main Petroleum Committee immediately send its representatives to the Volga wharves to load the petroleum products into pilotage barges of vessels carrying petroleum products; 2) The Main Water Committee provide the necessary loading vessels and tugboats per agreement with the Main Petroleum Committee; 3) All military and civilian powers cooperate fully with the representatives of the Main Petroleum Committee and in no way interfere with their directives on vessel loading or movement. Those in violation of this provision shall be subject to prosecution before military revolutionary tribunals under martial law.”
Table 8. Breakdown of the Soviet Russian Fuel Budget
Source: Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR [Grazhdanskaya voyna i voyennaya interventsiya v SSSR]. Moscow, 1987, p. 598.
Removal of the oil was under the constant daily control of the Soviet government, and the stream of telegrams signed by Lenin was continuous. Another telegram, this one from June 25, 1919, provides further evidence of the dire fuel situation: “The Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense orders that the most energetic measures be taken immediately to move all petroleum product reserves from Tsaritsyn to Saratov, in accordance with the directive of the Main Petroleum Committee. The measures taken and also every shipment sent should be reported by telegraph to the Supreme Council for the National Economy and Main Petroleum Committee; in the telegraph office, go to the head of the line without waiting, and use a direct line to send this report. No consumption of petroleum products shall be allowed without permission of the Main Petroleum Committee. Those guilty of disobedience will be prosecuted.”
It was also during this time that the oil industry was incorporated into another of war communism’s primary tenets—the militarization of labor. Initially, the policy covered blue-collar and white-collar workers in defense industries, but by the end of 1919, all industries and railroad transportation had been put on a war footing. On June 27, 1919, fuel industry workers accepted the resolution “On Counting of All Blue-Collar and White-Collar Workers in the Main Forestry Committee, the Main Coal Committee, the Main Petroleum Committee, the Main Peat Committee, and the Main Fuel Committee as Military Personnel, Leaving Them at Their Workplaces,” which said, in particular: “All blue-collar and white-collar workers of the Main Petroleum Committee, irrespective of their age, are considered called up for active military service, effective the day this resolution is promulgated.”