To meet the emergency of the civil war, War Communism was established by the Bolsheviks. This program was dictated by economic scarcity and military necessity and it was marked by an extreme centralization of government controls in every sphere of social life. It bore the harsh stamp of regimentation and compulsion. The cornerstone of the War Communism was the forcible seizure of grain from the peasantry. This meant that the army was sent into villages to confiscate surpluses of grain production to feed the cities and Red Army. Though soldiers were told to leave sufficient grain for the peasants to live and sow, it was common that more than the surpluses were taken.[1] Lenin himself conceded this: “The essence of War Communism was that we actually took from the peasants all his surpluses and sometimes not only the surpluses but part of the grain the peasant needed for food”[2].
It was also common that not only grain was taken at gunpoint, but also vegetables, horses, wagons, fodder and other items for military use, so that eventually the peasants stayed robbed behind because very often no payments were made. The inevitable result was the revolt of the peasants, in who’s eyes War Communism was in the end a return to serfdom and tsarism.
Further more, the techniques of requisitioning and robbing re-opened the age-old cleavage between the urban population and the peasants.[3]
Though not always had this relationship between the peasantry and the Bolsheviks been so difficult. In fact the Bolshevik land decrees of October 26, 1917 and February 19, 1918 were in very close harmony with the populist and egalitarian urges of the rural po-pulation. The general land distribution, secured by the above mentioned decrees, had al-ways been an ancient dream of the peasants.[4] In this way most of the peasantry suppor-ted Bolshevik rule. And this was very important to gain and retain power, given Russia’s retarded economical and social condition and the relative demographic importance of the rural population.
Thus, the program of War Communism put an end to most of the rural ‘support’[5] for Bolshevik rule. In the beginning of their revolt, the peasantry ‘only’ used evasive tactics to protest against the requisitions. In 1920 more than a third of the total harvest was successfully hidden from the government requisition teams. By 1921 total output of agrarian production had fallen to less than a half of prewar figures. The quantity of live-stock fell to about two-thirds of prewar figures. Basic crops like flax and sugar beets were particularly hard hit, as their output was only a fifth or a tenth of prewar production. But not only the hard program of requisitioning contributed to this dramatic decline in agricultural production. The peasants started to cultivate only enough land to meet their own direct needs. It seems that by the end of 1920 a mere three- fifths of the fields used in 1913, the last normal year before the war and revolution, were tilled.[6]
More and more peasants began to think that the Communists only gave land to them to take away their products and freedom. They also resented the state farms which were being gradually established. By December 1920 there were over 16000 collective and state farms with nearly ten millions acres of land and a million employees. Many of these collective and state farms can be seen as “microcosm of the experimental communist lifestyle”, as FIGES puts it. There the peasants were alienated from their traditions (like religious practise) and confronted with an urban lifestyle. Even more scandalous to the peasants was the fact that most of the managers of the collective and state farms knew nothing about agriculture. In addition the sovkhozy were made up of unemployed workers who fled the cities and the kolkhozy were made up of landless labourers, rural artisans and the poorest peasants who could not farm the land in a good manner.[7]
One of the results was a weird situation were the peasants came to believe that Bolsheviks and Communists were different people. To the former they attributed the pre-vious gift of the land through the issuing of the land decrees in 1917-1918. The latter instead were accused of forcing the peasantry once again into a bondage; a bondage with the state rather than with the nobility. This resulted in fiercer resistance, also of a more political nature, were the Communist rule was being questioned. “We are Bolsheviks not Communists. We are for the Bolsheviks because they drove out the landlords, but we are not Communists because they are against individual holdings”[8].[9]
Already in 1920 evasive resistance resulted in armed uprisings which swept rural Rus-sia. Throughout the winter of 1920-1921 they rapidly gathered strength. The most serious outbreaks occurred in Tambov province, the middle Volga region, the Ukraine, the northern Caucasus area and western Siberia. The defeat of Wrangel’s army paradoxically worsened the situation for the Bolsheviks, because for the peasantry the white threat was now mostly gone - the white threat being one of the major reasons why the peasants tolerated Communist rule. Further more, millions of disbanded soldiers returned to their homes amidst the atmosphere of violence and social unrest. Some of them soon joined the ranks of the peasant forces. In Tambov province, where perhaps the fiercest struggle had taken place, the movement of former Socialist-Revolutionary Antonov counted some 50000 insurgents. In a single district of western Siberia the guerillas numbered some 60000.[10]
In the course of two to three years the displeasure of the peasantry escalated from evasive and rather peaceful means of opposition to War Communism, to fierce and violent protest and revolts. As illustrated above, we were able to prove that the peasant revolts were not merely a demand for more food and consumer goods. There were also political motives, clearly when the uprisings became mass movements in some regions and when they were led by such ‘politicians’ as Antonov; in Tambov their aim was to “overthrow the rule of Communists-Bolsheviks, who have brought the country poverty, death, and disgrace”[11]. Thus, quite clearly a dangerous situation for Communist rule appeared; a situation where the Communist government lost support of one social class, namely that of the peasantry. Even Lenin pointed out to the fact that the peasant revolts could be the beginning of a politically inspired civil war.
[1] HILDERMEIER M. Op. Cit. p. 146-148.
[2] In: AVRICH P. Kronstadt 1921. New Jersey, Princeton UP, 1991. p. 9.
[3] HILDERMEIER M. Op. Cit. p. 148-149 and AVRICH P. Op. Cit. p. 9-10.
[4] CARR E.H. The Bolshevik Revolution: 1917-1923. (3 vol.) Middlesex, Penguin, 1953. (II) p. 39-46.
[5] Actually the peasantry rather tolerated Bolshevik rule and feared a restorement of “White power” than really supported the communists.
[6] AVRICH P. Op. Cit. p. 9-10.
[7] FIGES O. Op. Cit. p. 729-730.
[8] AVRICH P. Op. Cit. p. 12.