western White Russia to Poland, Bessarabia to Rumania, and the Kars-Ardakhan area in Transcaucasia to Turkey. Also, as already mentioned, Japan evacuated all of the Siberian mainland of Russia only in 1922, and the Russian half of the island of Sakhalin in 1925. In spite of these reductions in size, the U.S.S.R. emerged as an enormous country.
The Crisis
At the end of the Civil War Soviet Russia was exhausted and ruined. The droughts of 1920 and 1921 and the frightful famine during that last year added the final, gruesome chapter to the disaster. In the years following the originally "bloodless" October Revolution epidemics, starvation, fighting, executions, and the general breakdown of the economy and society had taken something like twenty million lives. Another two million had left Russia - with Wrangel, through the Far East, or in numerous other ways - rather than accept Communist rule, the emigres including a high proportion of educated and skilled people. War Communism might have saved the Soviet government in the course of the Civil War, but it also helped greatly to wreck the national economy. With private industry and trade proscribed and the state unable to perform these functions on a sufficient scale, much of the Russian economy ground to a standstill. It has been estimated that the total output of mines and factories fell in 1921 to 20 per cent of the pre-World War level, with many crucial items experiencing an even more drastic decline; for example, cotton fell to 5 per cent, iron to 2 per cent, of the prewar level. The peasants responded to requisitioning by refusing to till their land. By 1921 cultivated land had shrunk to some 62 per cent of the prewar acreage, and the harvest yield was only about 37 per cent of normal. The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920, and cattle from 58 to 37 million during the same span of time. The exchange rate of an American dollar, which had been two rubles in 1914, rose to 1,200 rubles in 1920.
The unbearable situation led to uprisings in the countryside and to strikes and violent unrest in the factories. Finally, in March 1921, the Kronstadt naval base, celebrated by the Communists as one of the sources of the October Revolution, rose in rebellion against Communist rule. It is worth noting that the sailors and other Kronstadt rebels demanded free Soviets and the summoning of a constituent assembly. Although Red Army units ruthlessly suppressed the uprising, the well-nigh general dissatisfaction with Bolshevik rule could not have been more forcefully expressed. And it was against this background of utter devastation and discontent that Lenin, who, besides, had finally to admit that a world revolution was not imminent, proceeded in the spring of 1921 to inaugurate his New Economic Policy in place of War Communism. Once more Lenin
proved to be the realist who had to overcome considerable doctrinaire opposition to have his views prevail in the party and, therefore, in the entire country.
The New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy was a compromise, a temporary retreat on the road to socialism, in order to give the country an opportunity to recover; and it was so presented by Lenin. The Communist party, of course, retained full political control; the compromise and relaxation never extended to politics. In economics, the state kept its exclusive hold on the "commanding heights," that is, on finance, on large and medium industry, on modern transportation, on foreign trade, and on all wholesale commerce. Private enterprise, however, was allowed in small industry, which meant plants employing fewer than twenty workers each, and in retail trade. The government's change of policy toward the peasants was perhaps still more important. Instead of requisitioning their produce, as had been done during War Communism, it established a definite tax in kind, particularly in grain, replaced later by a money tax. The peasants could keep and sell on the free market what remained after the payment of the tax, and thus they were given an obvious incentive to produce more. Eventually the authorities even permitted a limited use of hired labor in agriculture and a restricted lease of land. The government also revamped and stabilized the financial system, introducing a new monetary unit, the chervonets; and it put into operation new legal codes to help stabilize a shattered society.
The New Economic Policy proved to be a great economic success. After the frightful starvation years of 1921 and 1922 - years, incidentally, when many more Russians would have perished, but for the help received from the American Relief Administration headed by Herbert Hoover, from the Quakers, and from certain other groups - the Russian economy revived in a remarkable manner. In 1928 the amount of land under cultivation already slightly exceeded the pre-World War area. Industry on the whole also reached the prewar level. It should be added that during the N.E.P. period, in contrast to the time of War Communism, the government demanded that state industries account for costs and pay for themselves. It was highly characteristic of the N.E.P. that 75 per cent of retail trade fell into private hands. In general, the so-called Nepmen, the small businessmen allowed to operate by the new policy, increased in number in towns, while the kulaki - or kulaks, for the term has entered the English language - gained in the villages. Kulak, meaning "fist," came to designate a prosperous peasant, a man who held tightly to his own; the prerevolutionary term, used by Soviet sources, also has connotations of exploitation and greed.
These social results of the New Economic Policy naturally worried the
Communists. The Eleventh Party Congress declared as early as 1922 that no further "retreat" could be tolerated. In 1924 and 1925 the government introduced certain measures to restrict the Nepmen, and in 1927 to limit the kulaks. The Party long debated the correct policy to determine the future development of the country. Ideological arguments came to be closely linked to personalities and to the struggle for power that gained momentum after Lenin's death in January 1924.
The Struggle for Power after Lenin's Death
Three main points of view emerged among the Russian Communists during the twenties. The so-called Left position, best developed by Trotsky, maintained that, without world revolution, socialism in Russia was doomed. Therefore, the Bolsheviks had to support revolutionary movements abroad and at the same time pursue a militant and socialist policy at home. An opponent of the N.E.P., Trotsky also came to criticize Stalin for his cooperation with bourgeois forces abroad and for his destruction of democracy within the Party. Such prominent Communist leaders as Gregory Zinoviev - born Radomyslsky - and Leo Kamenev - born Rosenfeld - essentially shared Trotsky's view. The Right faction, led by a prominent theoretician, Nicholas Bukharin, agreed with the Left that socialism in Russia depended on world revolution. But the members of this group concluded that, because such a revolution was not immediately in prospect, the Soviet government should not quixotically force the pace towards socialism, but rather continue the existing compromise and develop the New Economic Policy. Finally, the third faction, the Center headed by Stalin, came to the conclusion that, in spite of the fact that world revolution failed to materialize, socialism could be built within the one country of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, with its huge size, large population, and tremendous resources. The Center therefore called for a great effort to transform the Soviet Union. Putting the Right group aside, it should be realized that Trotsky as well as Stalin wanted to build socialism in Russia - Stalin, in fact, has been accused of simply borrowing the Left program - and that Stalin as well as Trotsky aimed at world revolution. The ideological difference between the two was that of emphasis, not of fundamental belief. Yet emphasis can be very important at certain moments in history. Moreover, Stalin's approach for the first time gave Russia, or rather the Soviet Union, the central position in Communist thought and planning.