Spies and Commissars: The Bolshevik Revolution and the West (55 page)

30. THE ECONOMICS OF SURVIVAL

Although the Bolsheviks believed they were close to concluding trade negotiations with Britain and faced no immediate military threat, the domestic situation was far from easy. Until the winter of 1920–1 it looked as if the Kremlin would indefinitely maintain its wartime economic system which involved the forcible requisitioning of grain from the peasantry without compensation. Previous attempts to modify this policy, first by Trotsky and then by Lenin, met with furious objections from the rest of the leadership. In February 1920, indeed, Lenin himself had led those who shouted down Trotsky as a promoter of capitalism. At the end of the same year he received his own come-uppance when he recommended a milder scheme of his own.
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The party had been distracted by an internal dispute between Lenin and Trotsky about what limits to place on the freedoms of trade unions in peacetime, but the leadership could not ignore the growing danger of serious insurrection for long. Industrial strikes had broken out in most cities. There was discontent in every garrison, and mutinies were not unknown. And the peasants grew ever more hostile to a government that seized their harvests. On 8 February 1921 the Politburo came to its senses when reports reached Moscow about the crescendo of rural revolts. Western Siberia and Ukraine – Russia’s bread basket – were ablaze. If their crucial agricultural contribution was threatened, the cities would starve. The final straw for the Soviet leaders was a rebellion led by Socialist-Revolutionary A. S. Antonov throughout Tambov province in the mid-Volga region. Having won the Civil War, the Bolsheviks were on the point of losing the peace. The Politburo urgently needed to offer some concessions to the peasants. The solution was obvious: the authorities had to stop seizing the whole agricultural ‘surplus’ from the villages and introduce a tax-in-kind, allowing them to make a profit from what was left of their harvest after meeting their fiscal obligation. A corner of
private trade would be restored to them through this New Economic Policy.

Still troubled by the wrangling over the unions, Lenin was keenly aware that the New Economic Policy would be even more divisive. He and the rest of the Politburo were determined to keep the proposals strictly confidential until all the details had been worked out. The same degree of caution was exercised over the London trade talks, with
Pravda
keeping its reports deliberately vague. Lenin had delayed reopening his campaign on concessions until December 1920 at the Congress of Soviets, where he cited the Kamchatka deal with Vanderlip as the model. But his ideas had met with a stormy reaction from Bolsheviks, and he reverted to discussing the matter behind closed doors; but he had no doubt that the collapse of Soviet oil production made it crucial to attract foreign companies back to Baku.
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This was deeply uncongenial to Azerbaijani communist leaders who remembered the Nobel Brothers’ Petroleum Co. and other enterprises for their careless attitude both to the health of workers and to the environment. Lenin’s blandishments to Western petrochemical companies would flood the republic with capitalism. Soviet leaders were naturally nervous about changes in policy that could touch off a split in their fiery party.

The discussions continued long into the New Year, and on 5 February 1921 the Politburo asked Kamenev and Rykov to enquire whether concessions were simply the best way to reverse the decline in Azerbaijani oil output.
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If Baku industry was to be restored, rapid action was required – and there was no evidence that the communist leaders in Azerbaijan had any idea how they would raise their own capital to begin the process. At a further discussion, nonetheless, the votes in the Politburo were split and the matter was referred to the Party Central Committee rather than risk a dispute throughout the party.
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This deflected the debate to a wider circle of party leaders as regional officials got to hear about what was being proposed. The Central Committee itself was divided but eventually decided to pronounce concessions acceptable in principle if the ‘mortal danger’ of the slump in production could be prevented (although it was recognized that foreign companies might not wish to operate again in Baku). Lenin had won the debate, but it was only by a slim majority that he did so; and nobody could be sure that the rest of the party would not raise objections when the decision became public knowledge.
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In London, despite reports of continued objections to a trade treaty appearing regularly in
The Times
,
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there was an air of expectancy. Krasin had signed contracts with British companies in advance of a settlement between the two governments, and Yorkshire textile factories queued to sell cloth to Russia.
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Businessmen travelled from the United Kingdom to Tallinn to sign their Russian deals using Sweden as the umbrella for their business and readying themselves for what was expected to be an enormous expansion of commerce.
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The British government refused to give way on certain of its demands. Soviet Russia had to cease all hostile activities, including propaganda, in the territories of the British Empire. Britons in Russian captivity had to be immediately released; in return the British would repatriate the Russians they had incarcerated. Chicherin, however, told Krasin to resist any pressure because Britain’s hold on its empire in the East was no longer as strong as it had been. Lenin was blunter still: ‘That swine Lloyd George has no scruples of shame in the way he deceives. Don’t believe a word he says and gull him three times as much.’
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But Chicherin and Lenin soon calmed down since they knew that they would lose the deal if they rejected the British conditions, and Lenin remained pessimistic about Russia’s capacity for independent economic recovery without foreign assistance. His sudden explosions were characteristic. When Soviet officials went abroad on missions he frequently accused them of appeasing foreigners and quietly forgot how he had succumbed to the Germans at Brest-Litovsk. At any rate Krasin could show that the British government was willing to overlook the entire question of loans made to Russia’s previous governments; and since Lloyd George was not driving the hardest of bargains, Sovnarkom empowered Krasin to strike the deal.

Since the débâcle near Warsaw, the Red Army had stood aside as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania proclaimed their borders and confirmed their independence. Adolf Ioffe led the Soviet delegation in the peace negotiations with Poland in Riga. The Poles had given up their hope that any Russian force could bring down the Bolsheviks. Wrangel’s army felt the full strength of a Red Army which was no longer being asked to fight a campaign on Polish territory. Crammed into Crimea, the Volunteer Army was in a desperate plight by early November 1920 and Wrangel ordered a mass evacuation, along with hundreds of thousands of civilian fugitives, across the Black Sea. The Russian White cause had gone down to comprehensive defeat. The Polish
leadership recognized its incapacity to drive the Reds out of Ukraine and settled for a lot less than Poland’s April 1920 war aims. It was no longer convenient for the Poles to host Russian forces, and Pilsudski told Bulak-Balakhovich and his troops to leave the country.
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The Polish border would stay as it had been established in war by October 1920, hundreds of miles east of the Curzon Line. The Central Committee ordered the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to press for a peace treaty with all speed.
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The prospect of peace between Soviet Russia and Poland proved disastrous for Menshevik-ruled Georgia because it freed the Red Army to cross into Georgian territory from Armenia. The campaign began on 15 February 1921. Tiflis fell ten days later and a Georgian Soviet Republic was proclaimed. Almost the entire territory of the Russian Empire south of the Caucasus was drawn back under Moscow’s control – just a few slivers of land were ceded to Turkey, which the Kremlin was seeking to placate at a time when it could not contemplate any military initiative abroad.

Hoping to reduce the intensity of all external threats, on 26 February Russia signed a friendship treaty with Persia. The newly appointed Soviet ambassador to Tehran was none other than Theodore Rothstein. Meanwhile Krasin had returned to Moscow to discuss the finalization of the trade agreement with the British. He gave an interview to Louise Bryant, denying that Soviet Russia was in any way a menace to other countries: ‘After all, the talk of the Third International is exaggerated and ridiculous. We haven’t enough people in Russia to meet our needs. We are not fools enough to send our best people abroad when they are needed here to develop Russia. The best means for the world to get rid of this bogy of Bolshevik propaganda is to begin vigorous trade.’
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In her report, Bryant stressed that a freshly signed treaty with Afghanistan put aside the ‘imperialist’ legacy of old Russia. She predicted an end to the ‘English’ domination of the region and reported that Soviet emissaries in Kabul received an unusual amount of diplomatic freedom.
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Not long afterwards, Chicherin announced that Turkey too was aspiring to better relations with Soviet Russia.
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Step by step, the communist leadership were improving their security. None of the world’s great powers had yet concluded a treaty with Soviet Russia, but the chances were steadily improving.

But more trouble was brewing off the coast of Petrograd. On 28 February the Soviet naval garrison on the nearby island of Kronstadt
assembled to demand an end to communist oppression. Mikhail Kalinin and other Bolshevik leaders held a meeting with them the next day. The list of grievances was a long one. The sailors objected to the Bolshevik political monopoly. They demanded free soviet elections and an end to police terror; they denounced the blocking detachments on city outskirts which stopped the ‘sack men’ from bringing food supplies from the countryside for illicit sale. Kalinin failed to calm the situation and soon there was open mutiny in Kronstadt. Trotsky, who had spent the winter months polemicizing about the trade unions, lamented the lack of a proper plan to retake Kronstadt and – on 5 March – co-signed a military order with Commander-in-Chief S. S. Kamenev. If the mutineers refused to heed their warnings, the full force of the Red Army would be deployed against them with air support.
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When Kronstadt held fast to its rebellion, measures were put in hand to suppress it two days later. The symbolism was clear to everyone. The Kronstadters had formed part of the backbone of Bolshevik political and military support in 1917. Now they were turning on Lenin and his party for betraying their hopes. Neither side saw room for compromise.

The Tenth Party Congress opened on 8 March in the shadow of these events. The Politburo by then had clear ideas on the desirable direction of policy and asked Lenin to explain its proposals. The peasantry was to be allowed to sell some of its grain harvest for private profit. The trade unions were to be subjected to greater state control, but not to the degree demanded by Trotsky. Peace was to be ratified with Poland. Foreign concessions were to be encouraged and the draft trade agreement with the United Kingdom confirmed. Lenin stressed the need for the party to deal mercilessly with threats to its power. Peasant revolts and the Kronstadt mutiny alike had to be crushed. Internal party discipline had to be tightened while communists were conducting a retreat from wartime economic policy. Lenin demanded a ban on party factions and denounced the Workers’ Opposition, which called for workers and peasants to have decisive influence on economic decision-making, as a ‘deviation’ from Bolshevik principles. Every single one of these proposals was contentious. But the worse the news about Kronstadt became, the easier it was for Lenin and his group in the leadership to impose their will on the Congress. A consensus developed about the urgent need to fight for the common cause. Even the Workers’ Oppositionists overlooked
their verbal mauling by Lenin and volunteered for service in the military operation against Kronstadt. A quarter of the 717 full delegates immediately left the Congress in Moscow and travelled north.
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Although Trotsky spoke at the Congress at some length about the trade unions and a little about the proposed agrarian reform,
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he stood shoulder to shoulder with Lenin over Kronstadt and handed the military command to Tukhachevski while warning the Politburo that the mutiny should be liquidated before the spring thaw. Once the ice melted, the rebel sailors would again be able to make contact with foreign countries and the trouble could severely worsen. Tambov province was far from the prying eyes of the Allies, but Kronstadt lay in the Gulf of Finland and was easily approachable from abroad by vessels. Trotsky charged the Central Committee with failing to understand the gravity of the situation.
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The Party Congress ended on 16 March with victory for the ascendant group on nearly every big question of policy even though the debates were sometimes fiery. Communists from Azerbaijan repeated their objections to leasing the Baku oilfields to foreigners. But the tightness of the scheduling at the Congress disabled those wishing to express dissent, and the New Economic Policy was raced through to confirmation almost before anyone had time to read the draft decree. The discussion on Anglo-Soviet trade was left until last, and Kamenev barely had time to introduce it before the entire proceedings were brought to a close and everyone stood to sing the Internationale. Lenin had dominated the proceedings and his friends in the leadership gained an easy majority of seats in the election of the Central Committee. And despite banning internal party factions, Lenin behaved as if he headed one both by reducing the number of Trotsky’s followers and by clearing them out of the Secretariat. Trotsky in Lenin’s opinion needed to suffer for having inflicted an unnecessary dispute about the trade unions on the party. Only then could they again start to work in mutual trust. Lenin regarded this as a priority: the communist leaders faced far too many emergencies for them to fall out.