Bukharin's program had a positive impact on agriculture. As Valentinov- Volsky put it, 'The year 1925 and the first half of 1926 were indeed happy times for the peasantry."2 But this period can be called happy only in relative terms: it was better than the preceding one and immeasurably better than the one that followed. Even in this "happy" period the peasants were squeezed by taxes and uncertain what the future would bring. On an income of 250 rubles, a peasant paid as much in taxes as a small businessman or merchant paid on 1,200 rubles or a worker on 3,800.3 For 16.4 kilos of rye in 1913 a peasant could buy 5.48 meters of cloth; for the same amount of rye in June—July 1927 he could buy only 2.55 meters of cloth. The corresponding figures for malt were 103 and 61.9; for sugar, 8.24 and 3.93 pounds.4
Still, the peasants were much better off than the workers. Unemployment was increasing, but wages were not. "Nine years after the October revolution the workers in the main branches of our industry do not even dare to dream of their prewar wages."5 Discontent over a policy that allowed the peasants to live better than the workers was quite natural. Among rank-and-file party members and lower-level party officials nostalgia for the lost paradise of war communism was felt more and more strongly. "Once there were some brothers named Wright," recalls the hero (one of a group of "the last real Communists," who have gathered in a cave) of "Mahogany," a story by Boris Pilnyak. 'These brothers decided to fly into the sky, and they perished, smashed to the ground, after falling from the sky. ... Comrade Lenin has perished, like the Wright brothers. ... What kind of ideas he had no one remembers any more, comrades, except us." Such was the lament of a "Communist called up under war communism, demobilized in 1921. "6
In 1928 Artem Vesely published a "demi-short story" called 'The Barefoot Truth." Some Communists from the Kuban, heroes of the civil war, were writing a letter of complaint to their former commander, Mikhail Vasilievich: "The truth must be spoken plainly—there's more bad in our life than good." They complained of their poverty and the scornful attitude of the Soviet authorities, the bureacratic apparatus, toward them. "The old saying isn't wrong," the veterans complained, bitterly recalled their wartime exploits against the Whites. "As long as the watchdog barked, he was needed. When he got old, he was chased away." They asked a key question: "What did we fight for, Mikhail Vasilievich? For government bureaus or workers' committees?"7 The heroes of Vesely's story were not the only ones asking this question or voicing these complaints, as is shown by the fact that the party's Central Committee passed a special resolution on May 8, 1929—the first of its kind—"sharply reprimanding" the editors of the magazine Molodaya gvardiya (Young guard) for publishing "The Barefoot Truth," "a one-sided, tendentious depiction of Soviet reality, essentially a caricature that is objectively beneficial only to our enemies."8 For the heroes of 'The Barefoot Truth" the main source of misfortune, the death of the revolution, lay in the fact that "committees were replaced by bureaus"—that is, by the bureaucratic apparatus.
The Soviet apparatus—in the government, the state economy, and the party—never stopped growing. By 1928 functionaries numbered 4 million. But this gigantic apparatus, controlled from the center, was incapable of administering the country under normal conditions. "A big fuss is made about the apparatus," wrote Demyan Bedny, the leading "proletarian" poet, in its defense. "But it has to make a devilish effort to get the proletarian steamshhip moving." What's more, this steamship was "towing behind it a huge barge, the peasantry, which is reluctant, sluggish, and intractable."9 In fact, the apparatus itself was sluggish and incapable of independent action, consisting as it did of two incompatible elements: unskilled, often illiterate Communist leaders; and the civil servants under them, who trembled with fear—a fear the leaders cultivated perennially and systematically.
The only efficient organ of Soviet power was the Cheka-GPU. Whenever something had to be done quickly an "extraordinary commission" was created. This combination of words—it was assumed—could produce results just by itself. For example, Mikoyan relates that in December 1922, when it was necessary to obtain boots and warm clothing, the Council of Labor and Defense established an extraordinary commission for the procurement of felt boots (valenki), bast shoes (lapti), and sheepskin coats (polushubki), abbreviated Chekvalap.10 When an extra effort had to be exerted and a special committee was set up for that purpose, Feliks Dzer- zhinsky, head of the Cheka-GPU, was invariably placed in charge. He directed the rail system, the aid program for homeless children, the Main Labor Committee, and the Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle Against Snowdrifts. When a mass society of Friends of the Soviet Cinema was organized, Dzerzhinsky was chosen its chairman.11 Again, in 1924, when the Society for the Study of Interplanetary Communications was founded, the head of the GPU was not forgotten.12 This was how they carried out the will of Lenin, who proclaimed that "the Cheka must become an instrument of discipline such as we succeeded in creating in the Red Army."13 On January 31, 1924, Dzerzhinsky was nominated chairman of the Supreme Economic Council, the VSNKH, the body that directed the Soviet economy. "Dzerzhinsky brought the GPU apparatus closer than ever to the tasks of economic construction," his biographer tells us.14 Valentinov- Volsky, in his memoirs about work at the Vesenkha, portrays Dzerzhinsky as a calm, sober-minded director. The quality that Valentinov valued most in the head of the GPU at the Vesenkha was Dzerzinsky's awareness that he should not frighten those who worked under him. After his death in July 1926 the functionaries at Vesenkha sincerely mourned him. "What a shame that Dzerzhinsky's gone. It was easy to work with him. He appreciated and defended us specialists. Under him we could sleep in peace without fear that the Black Maria would come for us."15 These lamentations effectively convey the atmosphere in the "peaceful years" of the NEP. Dzerzhinsky's reasonableness was akin to that of the intelligent slavemaster, who knows that slaves represent material value. Nevertheless, the head of the GPU made clear where he stood: "I was named to the Supreme Economic Council. ... I introduced the principle of planning with an iron hand. Some people know very well that I have a very heavy hand which can strike strong blows. I will not permit work to be done as it has been up to now, that is, anarchically."16
The most important characteristic of the system of rule created by the Communist party was that all problems were considered solely from the point of view of political utility. This applied to the economy as much as to other problems. In the latter part of the NEP the handling of economic problems, as with all questions of "the general line," ran into difficulties that had not existed during war communism, when Lenin's authority swept all disagreements or objections aside, difficulties that would not exist after 1929 either, when Stalin's power would likewise sweep all objections aside.
The difficulties in 1926—1927 consisted mainly in the fact that the United Opposition existed. Trotsky was easily beaten, but his slogans and his criticism of Stalin and Bukharin as "defenders of the kulaks" found an echo in the party, among those who were asking, "Is this what we fought
for?"—among those who remembered the ideals of communism, among workers discontented with their conditions, and among the almost 2 million unemployed.17 Trotsky's criticisms were reinforced when his former opponents Zinoviev and Kamenev joined him. The oppositionists, although excluded from the party apparatus, were still able to air their views in the "Discussion Bulletin" supplement to Pravda, published from time to time during precongress discussions, and to circulate them privately in manuscript form by the method later called samizdat. Within the party it was known not only that Ustryalov praised the policies of Stalin and Bukharin but also that the Mensheviks criticized them sharply from a Marxist viewpoint, on the grounds that they were leading the country not to communism but "from the old landlord-capitalist economy to a new peasant-capitalist economy."18