22d: The Soviet Union Is Created

The Communists replaced "War Communism" with the "New Economic Policy" (NEP, for short) on March 21, 1921. The NEP guarded alliance between workers and peasants, upon which the Communists based their power. It set a level of surplus grain (or other agricultural product) for the peasants to give to the state; the remaining surplus  dispensed of as the peasants pleased. Most of heavy industry, transportation, and finance stayed in the hands of the Communists, but even this limited market economy paid big dividends. Given a motive to be productive, the Russian peasants came through. In fact, production of grain surpassed pre-World War I times as the peasants drove an economic boom. Due to the New Economic Policy's success, Soviet industries, still battered by civil war, had more freedom in planning their production. At first the industrial sector barely kept up with the demand for manufactured products. When the demand continued to grow, the factories found they could earn just as much profit by producing fewer products and charging the peasants more. Soon the peasants were producing too much grain. Now the only grain buyers were illegal speculators, who stored it until higher prices returned. By October 1923, the peasants and the industrial sector had literally switched places in the smychka, and industry was driving the economy. Eventually, the NEP lost popularity with the Communists. Marx had never been a big fan of supply and demand. Even a small dose of capitalism offended the old Bolsheviks who had risked their lives to bring down Tsarism. The grain speculators and even some peasants started to get a little too rich for the Communist Party's liking. Bad harvests also played a role. But the biggest threat to the peasant/worker alliance was the rise to power of Iosif Stalin.

As the new Communist state assumed permanent borders, and the NEP built up the economy, Lenin and company worked on the Communist state's permanent form. The word of the Commissar for Nationalities, Iosif Stalin, carried exceptional weight on this topic. Though Stalin himself was Georgian by birth, he wanted to keep all the former subject peoples of the Russian Empire in the existing Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. He believed, with reason, that letting non-Russian peoples to consider themselves independent was dangerous. But he had a powerful opponent. Vladimir Lenin would employ any means to reach Communist ends, in Russia or elsewhere. He was ingenious at interpreting Marx's writings to justify any political maneuver he felt necessary. His friends could become enemies in a moment, and vice versa. But even Lenin, it turns out, had his principles. National self-rule was one of them. Although he himself was a Russian, he would not abide forcing Ukrainians, Balts, Belarussians, Caucasians, and Poles into one big Russian state. To him, that was Tsarism all over again. Lenin wished to create a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, composed of the Belarussian, Ukrainian, and Transcaucasian (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan) Socialist Republics alongside the RSFSR. Under Lenin's scheme, each republic was officially equal and officially independent, each ruled by its own Communist Party. Additional republics could be added to the Soviet Union on an equal basis, much as (at least in theory) additional states could be added to the United States under the Northwest Ordinance. Again, that was the theory. In fact, the entire Soviet Union would be under the "All-Russian Communist Party;" that is, the already existing Communist Party of the RSFSR. In December 1922 Lenin got his way. To avoid any appearance of Russification, the new republics were encouraged to use their national languages and retain their national traditions. Supposedly, any republic could secede from the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union formally received its constitution in January 1924, nobody dreamed of such a possibility.

Even though the Soviet Union had now been declared the homeland of Communism, the Communists themselves had not abandoned the idea of world revolution. Oh no, far from it. In 1919 the Communist Party created  the Third International, or "Comintern,"  expressly designed to promote its brand of revolution throughout the world. Unlike the Socialist International, which was a democratic assembly of authentic Socialist parties from around the world, membership in the "Comintern" was restricted to international parties either created by, controlled by, or sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Some European Communist parties quickly became large and powerful, as in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. Other parties, especially in the Far East (China and French Indochina) grew more slowly but exhibited greater independence. The Communist Party in the United States, although lavishly supported by the Soviet Union, was never much of a force politically or intellectually. Although all of these parties supposedly reached reaching out to the workers and peasants of their nations, the Western parties were basically Soviet tools. The leaders of these Communist parties were usually trained in Moscow, and returned to Moscow regularly to report and get further instructions. If they ever questioned Moscow's orders or failed to carry them out - they were removed, or, once Stalin took power, removed from the face of the earth. The Eastern Communist parties would be more successful, but not for years to come.