Behind the Front Lines

What had been happening inside Russia while the fighting was going on?  Everywhere there was indescribable human suffering and the destruction of property.  The bitter fighting between the various forces caused the collapse of the economy.  Industry was in a state of paralysis, and agriculture was ruined.  There was a decline in food production and cities were threatened with starvation.  Transportation facilities hardly existed any longer. 

By 1920 industry employed only about half the workers that it had employed before the war, and the workers, because of the shortage of raw materials, were producing only two-thirds of what they had turned out before the war.  All manufactured products were difficult to obtain.  Imports were cut off by the Allied blockade, and of course no raw materials were available from such former centres of industry as Poland, the Urals, and the Donets Basin.  At times there was no coal or oil for the railways, and locomotives had to burn wood.  The shortage of metal meant that engines and track could not be repaired; in fact, by 1920 two-thirds of the prewar number of locomotives were out of service.  The lack of transportation resulted in food shortages in the cities and famine appeared. 

Workers deserted their jobs and tried to find food supplies in the countryside.  They did receive a ration, but it was very small and had to be supplemented by theft or by migration to the country.  The government tried to find a solution to its difficulties by printing more and more money, but this led only to inflation, which reached crisis level in 1922.  In May, for example, railway fares were one million times as much as they had been in 1917.  The inflation not only destroyed the savings of the former wealthier classes, but also made it impossible, as already pointed out, for the state to offer anything to the peasants, for they had no faith in this new paper money. 

The consequence was that bartering took the place of buying and selling.  It was not uncommon for factories in the towns to exchange their products for grain in the country-side.  It was also common for workers to be paid their wages in food instead of money. 

In the larger cities such as Moscow, open black markets came into existence where the former wealthier classes traded their possessions for scarce foodstuffs.  They offered china, jewelry, paintings, silver, glassware, even pianos, for food.  Streets in Moscow were set aside where these precious articles were displayed in makeshift stalls or on the pavements.  It was a pathetic sight, as their owners, now thoroughly declassed, bartered family heirlooms for even more precious food. 

IIt was almost impossible to obtain even the most common everyday articles.  One American journalist, for example, has described how she bought a saucepan in Moscow in 1920.  First she had to go to a trading office for a permit to buy the pan.  Then she had to go to another office where the permit had to be signed by three officials.  This took a whole day.  The next step was to exchange the permit for an inspection order, which permitted her to visit a shop where various types of saucepans were displayed.  There she chose the type of saucepan she wanted, and again had to exchange her inspection order for a coupon that entitled her to buy the saucepan at a particular cooperative store.  But this shop sold saucepans only on a particular day.  So she had to find out the day and then stand in line from early morning, until she could take possession of the precious object. 

As the cities were losing a good number of their population because there was not enough food to go around, many of the amenities of life also came to an end.  Shops were closed; there were few tramcars on the streets and even fewer motor-cars; buildings were not heated and badly illuminated.  In the coldest weather it was not unknown for people to die of cold and starvation in the very offices where they were working. 

But the greatest problem of all was food.  "Among all the questions troubling our hearts there is one single question which nevertheless weighs more heavily than all the rest: this is the question of our daily bread," said Trotsky.  "Over all our thoughts, over all our ideals, there now prevails the one worry, the one fear, how to survive tomorrow.  ..  .  It must be said, every day everything gets more and more difficult.  Although it is bad in Petrograd, bad in Moscow, nevertheless there are many places in Russia where people still look at these cities with envy." Trotsky then mentioned telegrams that he received – "Give us bread or else we die"; "In the factories a tremendous death rate, especially among children" ; "Completely without bread for two weeks, great starvation and much illness". 

In order to deal with these almost catastrophic conditions, the Bolshevik government applied a policy known as "war communism".  The state controlled the grain trade – or tried to – and allowed the peasants to keep just enough of their produce to support themselves.  The rest was confiscated for the benefit of the townspeople and the Red Army. 

What else could it do?  If the state abandoned the grain monopoly, it would give a free hand to speculators; it was futile to exchange manufactured goods for grain; and if it offered more money to the peasants, then it would have to pay the workers more. 

However, despite civil war and the complete breakdown of the economy, the state did have some success in forcing the peasants to give up their surplus grain.  Of course, illegal private trade continued to flourish and perhaps provided as much as one half of the food supply to the towns.  It was an impossible task to coerce the millions of peasants, especially since they were practicing a sort of passive resistance.  Although special troops of the Red Army watched all roads to check illegal trade, they could not prevent starving towns-people from descending on the countryside in hopes of exchanging their possessions for food. 

The peasants simply did not believe in the Bolsheviks' glorious promises of a better future; nor could they do anything with the paper money offered by the government.  And until industry was restored, the Bolsheviks could not offer the peasants anything in the way of material goods to encourage them to produce more and feed the towns. 

Thus there existed a state of great mistrust between the Bolshevik government and the peasantry.  This came to a climax in the winter of 192o-21.  A disastrous famine hit a large portion of south-eastern Russia and made the political crisis even more explosive. 

Because of drought, the territory around the lower Volga failed to produce any crops at all, and some so million people were threatened with death by starvation.  The catastrophe would have been even worse than it was had it not been for aid from outside, especially the United States.