To monitor the fulfillment of the universal labor duty, a special committee was created, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission [Cheka], headed by Feliks Dzerzhinsky (1877–1926). The system of military and communist measures included abolition of payment for urban and interurban rail transportation, for fuel, fodder, foodstuffs, mass consumer products, medical services, housing, etc. Furthermore, on November 14, 1919, the CPC of the RSFSR accepted the “Provision on Workers’ Disciplinary Comrade Courts.” It provided such punishments as sending malicious violators of discipline to hard-labor public works, and in the case of “stubborn unwillingness to submit to comrades’ discipline,” to subject them “as a non-labor element, to dismissal from enterprises and transfer them to a concentration camp.”
On November 1, 1919, only 204,000 barrels of oil remained in Soviet Russia. The country was in the grips of a “fuel famine,” which could have easily resulted in the Bolsheviks falling from power. However, understanding the importance of the energy problem as a whole, the Bolshevik leadership undertook extreme measures to solve the crisis in supplying the economy with fuel. In November of 1919, in a circulating letter from the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) [RCP(b)] to party organizations titled “On the Struggle with the Fuel Crisis,” Lenin emphasized: “The fuel question has come to stand at the center of all other questions. The fuel crisis must be overcome at any cost; otherwise, it will not be possible to solve either the food problem, or the military problem, or the general economic problem.”6
Another of Lenin’s telegrams, sent in February 1920 to the party functionaries Ivars Smilga (1892–1937) and Sergo Orjonikidze (1886— 1937) regarding the Kuban and Grozny fields, read: “We desperately need oil. Consider a proclamation to the population saying that we will slaughter everyone if they burn and destroy oil or the oil fields, but on the other hand we will grant life to everyone if they turn over Maykop and especially Grozny intact.”
By the spring of 1920, the Bolshevik leadership considered the Civil War to be coming to a close and began looking ahead to developing the postwar Soviet state. At this time, the Ninth Congress of the RCP(b) discussed the transition to a militarized economic system, the essence of which “must consist of bringing the army as close as possible to the production process, since the living human force of certain economic regions is simultaneously the living human force of certain military units.”
Meanwhile, on June 15, 1920, the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense of the RSFSR resolved that the oil industry be separated into a separate strike force for supply. All state agencies had to satisfy the requirements of the Main Petroleum Committee for materials, equipment, etc.
In November 1920, the CPC of the RSFSR issued a decree extending nationalization in Soviet Russia to all “enterprises having more than 10 workers, or more than five workers using a mechanical engine,” of which there turned out to be around 37,000. Of these, 30,000 had not appeared earlier in the basic lists of the VSNKh.
At the end of December 1920, the Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets adopted a plan from the State Commission for Electrification of Russia [GOELRO], which, among other things, established priorities for developing the branches of the fuel energy complex. For instance, production of shale, Moscow coal, and peat needed to grow at the fastest rates, and oil at lower rates. The GOELRO plan was accepted at the peak of the policy of war communism, when an attempt was being made to administer everything possible from the center. Accordingly, the types of fuel were evaluated according to this basic criterion: Do they or don’t they contribute to centralization? Shale and peat, which had to be burned in small electric power plants (state power plants, of course), did contribute to centralizing administration. But, as Soviet leader Gleb Krzhizhanovsky (1872–1959) pointed out at the Congress, petroleum fuel, which could both be burned in oil burners and used in internal combustion engines, “contributed only to decentralization,” in other words, a producer that used such fuel was technologically independent of state power, in contrast to a consumer using only electricity.
However, the harsh realities of the time and the wave of popular uprisings that broke out in the country soon forced the Bolsheviks to reexamine the foundations of war communism, and thus the Tenth Party Congress (1921) declared war communism methods of management, which were based on coercion, to be obsolete. In the spring of 1921, the Bolshevik leadership announced the transition to the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was aimed first and foremost at the economic rebirth of the country. Helping the Bolsheviks in this regard was the fact that by this time all of the primary oil-producing regions of the former Russian Empire had fallen under the influence, if not outright control, of the Bolshevik government.
Caucasian Oil Gets a Red Bow
In 1915, oil production in the Russian Empire totaled 68.7 million barrels, of which 54.5 million barrels (79.3%) came from the oil fields of the Absheron Peninsula. The economic and geopolitical importance of the oil-producing Caspian region was not lost on the government of Soviet Russia, and the years following the October Revolution were marked by the ongoing struggle of the Soviet leaders to take control of this vital region.
After the end of the First World War, it became clear that development of the world economy in the 20th century would be determined largely by national access to and uninterrupted delivery of crude oil and petroleum products. Here, Caspian oil would play a critical role. The Soviet leadership’s position on this was articulated most clearly by Joseph Stalin (Iosif Dzhugashvili) (1879–1953), people’s commissar for ethnic affairs: “The Caucasus is very important to the Revolution not simply because it is a source of raw materials, fuel, and foodstuffs, but because of its position between Europe and Asia, in particular between Russia and Turkey, and the presence of critical economic and strategic roads (Batumi-Baku, Batumi-Tabriz, Batumi–Tabriz–Erzurum).... Who will ultimately gain a foothold in the Caucasus, who will use the oil and critical roads leading deep into Asia, the Revolution or the Entente? That is the question.”7
After seizing power in Petrograd in October 1917, the Bolshevik leaders were initially confident that their hold over the oil industry of the Absheron Peninsula was unshakable. This conviction was based on the fact that on October 31 (November 13), 1917, the Baku Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Sailors’ Deputies declared itself “the local authorized Revolutionary legislative body,” acknowledging the power of the Petrograd Council of People’s Commissars over it.
The Bolshevik leaders came to believe the entire Caucasus region would soon follow the Baku example and, as a result, on December 3 (16), 1917, the Petrograd Council of People’s Commissars appointed Stepan Shaumian (1878–1918) as its extraordinary commissar for Caucasian affairs. In his “Address to All Soviets and All Workers of the Caucasus,” published in the first issue of the Kavkazsky vestnik Soveta narodnykh komissarov [“Caucasian Herald of the Council of People’s Commissars”] of January 31, 1918, published in Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Russian, he emphasized: “Strive to make your uprising universal, so that Muslim peasants carry out an organized seizure of the beys’ land everywhere, and create peasant committees that are to take this land.”
In turn, adoption of the “Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia” by the Council of People’s Commissars on November 2 (15), 1917, and of the subsequent “Address to the Working Muslims of Russia and the East,” gave a new impetus to the practical implementation of the idea of federalizing the country along geographic and ethnic lines.