THE YEARS OF WAITING
Saltykov-Shchedrin, the Russian satirist, told the story of the people of Glupov (Dumbville), who under one of their governors had a holiday in the spring to commemorate the ills of the past and one in the fall to prepare for the evils to come. The people of the Soviet Union celebrated the years 1923—1926 as a time of hope and expectation. It was one of the calmest periods in Soviet history, despite continued rumblings of discontent. The country was slowly convalescing, gradually getting back on its feet, remembering with horror the ills of the past, mourning its millions of dead, and hoping for better things to come.
One of the rare personal diaries that has come down to us from the 1920s has the following entry for December 17, 1923:
Policies have changed. Free trade is permitted now, and theaters, streetcars, newspapers, etc., cost money. But Lenin has preserved an oasis of socialism in Russia—the government agencies and their staffs—while he allows the rest of the country to live the capitalist way. So far as anyone can foresee, the second stage of our revolution will come down to a struggle between these two principles, the socialist and the capitalist.149
Mostly it was the rural areas that began to "live the capitalist way." Nowhere was the return to normalcy painless, however. Industry was seized with a sudden passion for profit making and raised its prices drastically. A widening gap, or "scissors," to use Trotsky's term, appeared between prices for manufactured goods and those for agricultural products. In 1924 the "scissors" began to close again as the party took up a new slogan, "Face the Countryside." The "link" (smychka), the bond between the workers and the peasants, was declared to be fundamental to all government policy. Land area under cultivation quickly increased, reaching 80 percent of the prewar total. In 1925 Bukharin issued his famous call to the peasantry: "Enrich yourselves. Develop your plots of land. Don't be afraid of restrictions."150 On the eighth anniversary of the revolution Stalin declared, "At present our task is to forge a solid alliance with the middle peasantry."
Industry also revived, although the process was slower than in agriculture. The introduction of material incentives in industry and the formation of conglomerates that were given the capitalist name trusts and that operated on the basis of profitability helped to hasten the recovery of industry. This was especially true of small industry, which produced for the peasant market. It did not require large outlays of capital and provided a quick return on investment. The expansion of the domestic market made possible a fairly rapid revival of plants producing consumer goods. Heavy industry recovered at a slower pace.
Industrial recovery based on the profit principle had one adverse effect, unemployment. In October 1921 there were 150,000 unemployed; at the beginning of 1924, 240,000. This increase was in part the result of layoffs by factories seeking to increase profits by reducing payrolls but also the result of an influx from the countryside. Together with unemployment there was a severe shortage of skilled labor.
Demands for higher productivity, which was obtained "through the intensification of labor and only to a small degree through improved organization of production and modernization of equipment,"151 caused much unrest among the workers, especially since increased productivity was not accompanied by wage increases. In the spring of 1925 a wave of strikes swept the main industrial areas, particularly Moscow and Ivanovo. Sokol- nikov, the commissar of finance, admitted in 1925 that "in the eighth year of Soviet power" the wages of metalworkers, miners, and rail workers had barely reached the prewar level. The average wage in 1925 was 40 cher- vonets. M. Larsons wrote that in 1923 a people's commissar received 210 chervonets as well as an apartment.152
A new class of capitalists, the Nepmen, came into existence with the introduction of the NEP, a social group that seemed to exist beyond the pale of Soviet society. They did not have the right to vote, they could not form professional associations or be members of trade unions, and their children could not study at the university level. They owed their existence to a policy reversal by the Soviet government, and they understood that at any time a change of policy could sign their death warrant. The Nepmen were necessary for NEP, but they were treated with repugnance. Private businessmen never lost the feeling of precariousness, that their existence was only temporary. That was why private enterprise attracted mainly adventurers and speculators, whose hope it was to make some fast money and spend it as quickly as possible while keeping out of sight of the ever watchful GPU. Due to the hostility of the Soviet system toward private enterprise and the reluctance of private businessmen to invest in any long- term industrial projects, throughout the NEP period the share of private business in overall industrial production remained quite smalclass="underline" 3.8 percent in 1925.153
The fact that the social organism contained an alien presence in the form of capitalists contributed to the special atmosphere of this era in Soviet history. The Nepmen were accused, for example, of corrupting the Communists and were blamed for the massive spread of alcoholism.
The question of whether to legalize the production of alcohol in the land of the radiant future provided lengthy debate among the Bolsheviks. Before the revolution they had fiercely criticized the tsarist government for profiting from drunkenness. Now they had to choose whether to continue or revoke prohibition, which had been introduced by Nicholas II at the beginning of World War I.
Those who favored legalizing alcohol production, with a state monopoly on vodka, argued that illegal production was very widespread and that large revenues for the state could be obtained by legalization. In 1922 Pravda published a ringing declaration by an Old Bolshevik, A. Yakovlev, with the headline, "It Shall Not Pass." Yakovlev sharply denounced a certain Professor Ozerov, who favored government sale of vodka, promising that it would bring 250 million gold rubles per year into the state coffers. Ozerov proposed charging twice the price before the revolution. Yakovlev replied:
Soviet power, which exists for the people and for the national economy,... cannot take this suicidal road for the sole reason that in the pursuit of these imaginary 250 million, or even a real sum of that size, the national economy would suffer such losses and such destruction that even billions of rubles would not make up for it.154
The ranks of the party and the Central Committee were against a revival of the state monopoly on the sale of alcohol. Nevertheless, the Politburo insisted on the measure. The debate continued until 1924. Stalin ended the discussion when he introduced a statement at a Central Committee plenum, signed by six other Central Committee members, solemnly stating that Lenin had told him and the other six in the summer and fall of 1922 that the vodka monopoly had to be introduced. In so doing Stalin annulled "all of Lenin's earlier statements on this question" found in his collected works. In 1927 Stalin recalled their discussions:
What's better, the bondage of foreign capital or the introduction of liquor? That was the issue before us. Clearly, we settled on vodka because we felt— and still feel—that if we, for the sake of the victory of the workers and peasants, have to soil ourselves a little bit, then we will agree to even those extreme means in the interest of our cause.155
The vodka monopoly introduced in January 1923 was a compromise. The production of vodka was legalized at only half its normal strength—that is, 40 proof. This was immediately called Rykov vodka, or rykovka, in honor of the party leader who signed the decree and who himself was no enemy of the bottle. The power and attraction of alcohol was explained this way by Aron Solts, the Old Bolshevik known as the "conscience of the party":