The focus of this book is on how secrecy affects state capacity. It combines quantitative and qualitative evidence to conclude that Soviet secrecy helped to keep the Communist Party in power, while doing material damage to the capacities of the state the communists built. If it has a shortcoming of which I am aware, it is that my book is not always able to determine the size of these effects. Where my skills fall short, I have every confidence that others will be able to improve on my efforts.
2. THE SECRECY/CAPACITY TRADEOFF
The Bolsheviks began to build their state from near zero. World War I had weakened Russia’s old monarchical regime and its governing institutions, and the Bolshevik insurrection completed their collapse. Now the Bolsheviks had to reestablish the minimum duties of any state—external defense, internal security, the promulgation of laws, and the policing of crime. Restoring these minimum functions received the Bolsheviks’ first attention. As the historian Lars Lih noted, the communist experiment had “many long-term destructive consequences,” but history should recognize the communists’ achievement of building a “serviceable state apparatus out of nothing” despite their inexperience.[78]
But the Bolsheviks’ goal was not to restore the state as it had been. They aimed to build a new state that was far more powerful than Russia had ever seen, with broader scope and more sweeping authority than other states of the time.
It took the Bolsheviks no more than twenty years to achieve this goal. Within that time the Soviet state became virtually the sole legal owner of land, industrial capital, and transport infrastructure, public utilities and services, urban housing, educational and health facilities, public media, news and entertainment, and virtually the sole employer of nonagricultural labor. It became the monopoly buyer of farmers’ surpluses of major foodstuffs and of nearly all nonagricultural goods and services, which it resold to the population at controlled prices. It censored the press and communications. It kept the public and private lives of the citizens under continuous surveillance. As well as strictly policing the external borders, it also controlled where broad categories of people could live and move within their own country.[79]
As the powers of the Soviet state expanded, the rights of citizens were restricted by laws that created many novel offences. These laws extended the powers of the agencies of Soviet internal security and law enforcement. As a result, while policing is among the functions of any state, the police functions of the Soviet state became much more sweeping and intrusive than was normal elsewhere. That kind of society is sometimes called a “police state.”[80]
The growing operational demands that the party leaders placed on the Soviet state continually challenged its capabilities. One result was continuous policy cycles in all aspects of Soviet life, from the economy to criminal justice to culture. These cycles began with aggressive plans and campaigns that designated new priorities and imposed new controls. The cycle ran from initial successes and touted achievements to overreach, disorder, and retrenchment, followed eventually by normalization. Whether the new normal involved more or less centralized regulation than the old one depended on the historical phase of the Soviet system.
The functions and powers of the Soviet police state were more comprehensive than in other countries, but this was not all. They were also more secret. The enforcement of secrecy was another challenge to the capabilities of the Soviet state. This chapter considers how secrecy could add to these capabilities, how it could also detract from them, and what was the net effect.
Wherever they took power, communist rulers pursued two objectives: to monopolize state power and to expand it. To monopolize power, they repressed opposition and silenced unauthorized criticism. To expand power in all its “hard” and “soft” dimensions, they invested in the military, economic, and cultural capabilities of the state.
This is a simplified interpretation of the goals of communist rule. Like all simplifications, it might not be useful for all purposes.[81] At first sight it seems to exclude the influence of communist ideas (officially defined by “Marxism-Leninism”) about raising the condition of the workers and modernizing society. In fact, both Marx and Lenin are represented by the goals of monopolizing and expanding state power, although in somewhat reduced form. From Marx, the communists inherited an antipathy to private property in general and specifically to private property rights as the legitimate basis of decentralized social action. As Marx told the story of “primitive” accumulation, the capitalist class had exploited state power to help them seize the means of production from the producers. In the workers’ hands, as the Bolsheviks saw it, state power became the agent that would now expropriate the expropriators (or “loot the looters” in Lenin’s more colorful phrase).[82] For this reason, the Bolsheviks laid tremendous weight upon seizing state power, on excluding all other influences and interests from its direction, and on developing it to the utmost.
From Lenin came the Bolsheviks’ view of global society as an arena of conflict between capitalism and socialism, where hostile classes and social systems contended for the prize of domination. Without an exclusive hold on state power, the Bolsheviks would be quickly dislodged by the internal class enemy. But to hold power within Russia was not enough. In Lenin’s words of 1917, Russia must “either perish or overtake and outstrip the advanced countries.”[83] The workers’ state must be powerful enough to dominate its neighbors, or the Bolsheviks would be crushed by the external enemy.
The communists found secrecy useful in working toward both their twin goals. And secrecy did contribute to both the monopolization and expansion of state power—but not at the same rate, and only up to a point.
The contribution of secrecy to the ruling party’s monopoly of power does not require detailed explanation. Secrecy and censorship allowed the communist leaders to frame public discourse as they wished by excluding competing voices, values, visions, and the knowledge that might have lent credibility to the alternatives. The same secrecy and censorship also kept those with private access to alternative ideas and facts isolated from each other. Those who felt they had an alternative for Russia were prevented from finding each other and from building networks, developing strategies, and summoning others to collective action to challenge the regime. These considerations made secrecy the key to the security of the ruling party’s hold on power.
How might secrecy promote the expansion of the state’s powers—as distinct from state security? The distinction may seem like a thin one at first sight. But the experience of liberal democracies shows the difference: they have found uses for secrecy that protect the state, but without shielding the ruling party from public criticism, political competition, and frequent elections with unpredictable outcomes. Secrecy that is limited in this sense is widely regarded as legitimate in that the limits are regulated by law and can be appealed in the courts. Limited secrecy can then be thought of as something like a government prerogative: just as law-abiding citizens may close their curtains against nosy neighbors, rulers that govern by consent are entitled to conceal information that private or foreign interests might exploit to the detriment of the community.[84]
Military secrecy and budget secrecy are examples. If the outsider is a foreign power, the government holds its war plans in secret. The gain to the community is to make the foreign adversary uncertain of its best move. Alternatively, if the outsider is a special-interest group that seeks preferential treatment, the government shields its budgetary processes by secrecy. The gain to the community comes from closing off the lobbyists’ inside track. In both cases, secrecy gives the state greater autonomy, making it more capable of choosing its own path. In both cases, it is true, secrecy also somewhat limits the rights of citizens to take part in formulating policies or to know what state officials are up to when they are being paid by the public. When there is secrecy, the voters must trust the government to do the right thing. Only afterward can they hold it accountable. For liberal democracies, therefore, some secrecy may be necessary, but it is still a necessary evil.
80
The term “police state” had its origins in the mid-nineteenth-century development of Prussia’s bureaucracy, but it became widely used only in the 1950s when observers grappled with the similarities and differences of “totalitarian” rule in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. Again, see Google’s Ngram Viewer at https:// books.google.com/ngrams
81
For other purposes, the goals of communist rule might be formulated otherwise. Many economists have sought to analyze the Soviet economy on the basis that the goal of communist rule was to promote civilian development goals such as industrial modernization or productivity growth. An up-to-date example of that tradition, well received and widely cited, is Allen, Farm to Factory. By contrast Kontorovich, Reluctant Cold Warriors, argues that Soviet economic policies and institutions are better understood as promoting military power. For discussion see Harrison, “Foundations of the Soviet Command Economy,” 375-76
82
Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 713-15; Lenin, “Rech’ pered agitatorami,” 327. On 5 February 1918 Lenin spoke to party activists about to fan out to the countryside to campaign for food confiscations: “The old Bolshevik was right,” Lenin said, “when he explained Bolshevism to the Cossack. When the Cossack asked if it was true that the Bolsheviks are looters, the old man replied: Yes, we loot the looters.” “We loot the looters” is a widespread but loose translation of “My grabim nagrablen- noe,” literally, “We loot what was looted.” See also Millar, “Note on Primitive Accumulation.”
83
Lenin, “Groziashchaia katastrofa,” 198. See also Harrison, “Communism and Economic Modernization.”