22c: War Communism

When everyone actually is out to get you, it's not paranoia. The RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic) had staved off expeditions sent by Britain, France, and the US. But there was no guarantee that capitalist powers like Japan or the US had given up designs on the Soviet Far East. The Communists had put down the so-called "White Russian" warlords, but there were still plenty of White guerrillas left, especially in Ukraine.  The Communists were destroying the remnants of Russia's other political parties, but this process would take time. Aside from its internal woes, Communist Russia was the outcast of the civilized world: unrecognized by the victorious Allies and excluded from worldwide diplomacy. To the Communists, Russia was an isolated island in a capitalist sea. They saw themselves as an elite caste of holy warriors fighting a class war against capitalism - spreading the Marxist cause as interpreted by Lenin. Trotsky's mighty Red Army had smashed the Communists' armed enemies, but it could not fix Russia's economy or rebuild its infrastructure.

The new Russian state was run on a principle called "War Communism." To Lenin, the ends always justified the means. The most important end was to ensure the Communists stayed in power. Although the Soviets officially ruled and the slogan "All power to the Soviets" could still be heard, all decisions were made in Moscow by Lenin and a few trusted advisors. The decisions to strip the peasants of their grain came from Moscow. To Lenin, the peasants (especially the better off ones) were all leeches anyway, and peasants who wanted to keep more grain than they could eat deserved death. The decision to conscript all able-bodied males into the Red Army came from Moscow. The penalty for refusal to serve was death. All economic decisions, great or small, came out of Moscow and there was no appeal. Not that there wasn't friction. Even the Communists themselves disagreed from time to time; and even Lenin had to defend himself at times. The Red Army commander Trotsky and the Minorities Commissar Stalin already hated each other. But the Communists always closed ranks against their enemies, real or perceived. They were guided less by Marx's scripture than they were by the will to survive. When the Central Committee decided in August 1918 that the deposed royal family might be a rallying point for the "White Russian" movement, the entire family was executed. Later that month Lenin was wounded by a Socialist Revolutionary named Fanya Kaplan. This gave Lenin's secret police, the Cheka, an excuse to eliminate droves of the Communists' political opponents, real or perceived. Those political opponents famous enough to be known outside of Russia were packed up and sent to exile in the West. They were lucky. They got to live.

Faith in Marx's impending world revolution affected all of the Communists' decisions. The Red Army was planned not to defend the Communist regime from the Whites, the Greens, the Poles, and the Western Allies - but to help the oppressed European proletariat to overthrow its masters. The Communists routinely printed new rubles to pay their expenses; even if the rubles were worthless, Marx taught that money would become obsolete in the new workers' paradise. Lenin assumed the non-Russian peoples of the former Russian Empire, such as the Finns, Ukrainians, Poles, Balts and Caucasians, would beg to be allowed to join their Russian comrades. Indeed, the Declaration of the Rights of Peoples of Russia had been planned to lure the non-Russians in. Of course, this apparently noble offer assumed that the non-Russian peoples would accept more Russian leadership. Plans can fall through, as so often they do. Communist revolutions failed in both Germany and Hungary. While the Red Army was off fighting the White Russian forces, the Finns claimed (and kept) their independence. When the newly restored Polish nation fought with Russia over Ukraine, Lenin ordered the Red Army to pursue the Poles back into Poland. As a Marxist, he expected the Polish workers to join their Communist liberators. but his hopes were dashed when it turned out that Poles of all classes hated Russians, period. And as mentioned earlier, the Ukrainians never quit resisting.

To make matters worse, revolution broke out in two important and previously pacified areas. In mid-1920, a socialist group called "The Union of Toiling Peasants," revolted in Tambov province. The Tambov Rebellion was not the first peasant uprising against the Communists; it was unique for its size and its socialist program. The Union of Toiling Peasants fought against Communism to save socialism. It took 30,000 Red Army veterans more than a year to squelch this rebellion. The Communists were so desperate, in fact, that they resorted to using chemical weapons. Their hold on the countryside was very sketchy.  Also in February 1921, the sailors of the Kronstadt Naval Base, on an island near Petrograd, broke out in open revolt against the Communists. During the October 1917 Revolution, the sailors of Kronstadt had been Lenin's most devoted followers. In fact, they had fired the October Revolution's first shots from the cruiser Avrora. Four years later, 50,000 Red Army veterans put out the Kronstadt revolt; 10,000 of them lost their lives in the process. The surviving sailors were brutally punished; the lucky ones either escaped or were executed. If even the Communists' early supporters were deserting them, it was a clear sign that War Communism had outlived its usefulness. It was time for Lenin to make nice.