csillagkohó’s Reviews > Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 > Status Update

"Purely in relation to the 1920s (Stalinism in the 1930s was a different matter), it is not obvious that Soviet society was more violent than its tsarist predecessor. Historians often fail to convey how ingrained violence was in late-imperial Russia, evinced in colonial conquest, police repression, counter-insurgency, terrorism by left and right, pogroms, and everyday violence such as child abuse and wife-beating."

🤓 "A poor peasant sent a letter to the Peasant Newspaper: 'Send me a list of books published on the following subjects because I am interested in everything: chemistry, science, technology, the planets, the sun, the earth, the planet Mars, world maps, books on aviation, the number of planes we posses, the number of enemies the Socialist Republic has, books on comets, stars, water, the earth and sky'."

"Significantly, by the end of the 1920s, the bulk of those deprived of voting rights were not 'former people' from aristocratic or bourgeois backgrounds, or former White officers, or even priests, but those who had been forced by unemployment and economic necessity to dabble in trade. Those who appealed against the loss of rights invariably argued: 'I took up trade not for profit but to support my family.'"

✉️✒️ "A sample of 407 letters from peasants to Red Army soldiers, intercepted by military censors between 1924 and 1925, shows that almost two-thirds were positively disposed to the central government, but that virtually all complained about the local soviets."

"In Bolshevik eyes uprisings were the work of 'kulaks', 'counter-revolutionaries', and 'Black Hundreds'. Kulaks were a not insignificant force –many centres of insurgency in Simbirsk and Samara were settlements where up to 40% of households were wealthy– but almost everywhere rebellions were supported by the entire peasant community. ...One official admitted that 'those taking part were from the poorest population.'"

Het woeste "productivisme" van de jaren '30 had zijn roots in de NEP, al beseften sceptici toen al dat dat tot technocratie en verrechtsing kon leiden: "When A.K. Gastev proclaimed in 1928 that 'the time has gone beyond recall when one could speak of the freedom of the worker in regard to the machine or the enterprise', critics condemned this conception of the worker as indistinguishable from that of Henry Ford."

"The political culture of the RKP(b) was shaped by the experience of civil war. The Bolshevik ethos had always been characterized by ruthlessness and authoritarianism; but the civil war turned these qualities into cruelty, fanaticism, absolute intolerance of any views outside the range of permitted opinion. The crude belief that the end justifies the means was espoused without any sense that means may corrupt ends."

(3/3) "Yet the Bolsheviks were deeply suspicious of the cooperative movement – not without reason, since it had initially opposed soviet power – and were reluctant to recognize that it had a far more effective network of distribution in place. So the regime expended more energy trying to oust the moderate socialists from the cooperatives than it did in seeking to tap their potential to mitigate the food crisis."

(2/3) "If congresses of peasant soviets are any guide – most of which were dominated by Left SRs – peasants were willing to exchange grain for manufacturer goods on an organized basis, preferably through the cooperatives, and so long as this was at a price that did not discriminate in favour of manufactured goods."

(1/3) "Even if the Bolsheviks had not requisitioned any grain from the peasants, the latter would still have had little incentive to produce more than was necessary for subsistence, since there were no manufactures to buy and money had become almost worthless ... That said, this does not mean that there was no alternative to the policy that was pursued. Much more use could have been made of the cooperative network."