Ustryalov was rather disconcerted by Pravdas compliments and in reply to "A Sign of the Times" wrote that the authors of Changing Landmarks were by no means "five minutes from being Communists."124 Nevertheless, the logic of reconciliation forced the changing landmarks supporters, who believed that they could become a loyal opposition, equal partners in a dialog with the Bolsheviks, to do such things as approve the terror, approve the deportation of "thinking people" from the country, and welcome the birth of the GPU. The GPU was welcomed because it was replacing the "notorious Cheka." Terror was welcomed because "it was necessary to freeze hearts with fear in order to paralyze the enemy's will and restore discipline in the army and among the unbridled masses. To this end all means are good and all hands acceptable."125 Deportation was justified because "at the present time a purely organic process is underway in Russia, in which the tissues of the state are being reconstituted. The country's 'brain' must not interfere in any way with this process during this period of time (which cannot by necessity last very long)."126
Perhaps the most important practical result of the changing landmarks movement was that it provided an ideology for the intelligentsia remaining in the country and for the bureaucratic apparatus, which was growing with spectacular speed. When Lenin returned to work in 1922 after several months' illness he discovered with horror that the Council of People's Commissars in his absence had created 120 committees. In his estimation 16 would have been enough. The nationalization of industry and the system of requisitioning and distributing food had led to a vast increase in the number of officials. Since most of them were totally untrained, it was necessary to staff each post with several persons, swelling the apparatus still further. In 1917 there were nearly 1 million functionaries; in 1925, 2.5 million. The transportation system employed 815,000 people in 1913; in 1921 the number had grown to 1,229,000, although utilization of the system had declined to one fifth of its 1913 volume. In 1913 civil servants were only 6.4 percent of the work force; in 1920 they were 13.5 percent. For the most part people went to work in Soviet government offices out of necessity, in order to receive a ration. The changing landmarks movement provided them with an ideological rationalization.
In September 1922 Pravda published the results of a statistical survey among 230 engineers and staff members of Soviet government offices and industrial "trusts." To the question, "What is your attitude toward the Soviet government?" the answer of 12 was "hostile" and of 46 "indifferent"; 34 gave no answer; 28 said "sympathetic"; and 110 said they were changing landmarks supporters. Their answer to the second question helps to explain the appeal of the changing landmarks ideology. The question had to do with the future prospects of the Soviet Republic: 34 had no definite opinion; another 34 did not answer; 68 answered that the consolidation of state capitalism would lead to the victory of communism; and 94 foresaw the collapse of state capitalism and a return to the previous capitalist system.127 That was how the changing landmarks message was understood, that the Bolshevik government would reestablish a strong state and then remove itself from the scene or be transformed.
The changing landmarks movement gave new legitimacy to the Bolsheviks by presenting them as authentic heirs of the Russian historical tradition. This justified the methods used by the new government. In commemoration of the seventh anniversary of the October revolution, Ustryalov commented approvingly: "Across the limitless plains of Russia an idea is spreading far and wide—Konstantin Leontiev's slogan, dormant until now: 'We must rule without shame.'"128 Although the changing landmarks ideology legitimized the Bolshevik nationalities policy, it did so too openly, too much "without shame." When Ustryalov wrote, 'The Soviet government will naturally try as quickly as possible to incorporate into the 'proletarian revolution' those petty states which have now erupted like a rash upon the body of the former Russian empire," this was certain to cause indignation among the Communist leaders of the national minorities. At the Eleventh Party Congress in 1922 the Ukrainian Communist Nikolai Skrypnik demanded that the changing landmarks supporters within the government apparatus be given a firm official rebuff: "Russia one and indivisible, the past slogan of Denikin and Wrangel, is now the slogan of all these changing landmarks people. Professor Ustryalov is also an advocate of this slogan." At the Twelfth Party Congress Stalin complained that the "great power ideas of the changing landmarks people are filtering all through the party," that the party was falling under the hypnotic spell of "Great Russian chauvinism."129
The penetration of these ideas into the government apparatus and into the party was particularly harmful, from Lenin's point of view, for in 1921 and 1922 a debate was on within the party leadership over the future form and structure of the Soviet state.
AN INDISSOLUBLE UNION
After the civil war it became necessary to establish a constitutional basis for normal relations between the various Soviet republics. The Russian Republic, the RSFSR, occupied 92 percent of the territory and was inhabited by 70 percent of the population of the future Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The remaining territory was occupied by the Union republics: the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, the Far Eastern Republic, with its capital at Chita, and the two "people's republics" of Khorezm and Bukhara.
On September 20, 1920, the RSFSR and Azerbaijan signed a treaty which became the prototype for all future treaties between the RSFSR and other Soviet republics. The two sides agreed to a close military, financial, and economic union. The treaty provided for the unification in the shortest possible time of the armed forces and the military commands of both republics, as well as the agencies in charge of foreign trade, the domestic economy, supply, rail and water transport, postal and telegraph services, and finance. Azerbaijan was the weakest and poorest of the Soviet republics. The Ukraine, on the other hand, was the strongest and the most stubborn defender of its sovereign rights. The treaty signed with the Ukraine in December 1920 left substantially greater powers in its hands. The Ukrainian Republic's commissariats of war, foreign trade, finance, labor, and posts and telegraph and its Supreme Economic Council were merged with the central government of the new union, but the Ukraine retained a number of commissariats, in particular a commissariat of foreign affairs, which had the right to enter into diplomatic relations with other countries.
The treaties between the RSFSR and the other Soviet republics created a paradoxical situation. Each republic had the formal right to conduct its own foreign policy but in practice was denied the right to pursue an independent domestic policy. Moscow constantly violated the treaties by intervening unceremoniously in the internal affairs of the republics. The Communists of the Ukraine and Georgia sharply protested these intrusions. Moscow's constant conflicts with Kiev and Tiflis clearly showed the inadequacies of the system of bilateral treaties among the Soviet republics. Soviet Russia's full emergence upon the international scene (in connection with the Genoa conference in the spring of 1922) made it more necessary than ever that relations between the center and the outlying regions be normalized, and in August 1922 the Central Committee established a commission to draft a new Soviet constitution, in part to resolve these issues.
The only anti-Soviet nationalist movement that had not been crushed during the civil war was the Basmachi movement of Central Asia (then called Turkestan). This movement gained new strength in the aftermath of the Red Army takeover of Bukhara in September 1920. After a brief period of collaboration with the Communists, the Young Bukhara movement turned against them. In the fall of 1921 the situation in Turkestan was further complicated by the appearance of Enver Pasha. Formerly a leader of the Young Turks in Turkey, Enver had been minister of war under Sultan Abdul Hamid during World War I. After Kemal Ataturk came to power in Turkey (in 1920), Enver declared himself a supporter of the Communists, as did a number of other Young Turk leaders. He drafted a memorandum for the Congress of the Peoples of the East, held in Baku in September 1920, offering his services in the fight against "Western imperialism."