Only revolutionary maximalists could have equated these early measures with socialism: by the early 1920s building a new society was still a task for the future. Despite the bold language of revolutionary pronouncements, years of ‘government by decree’ in 1917–20 had given the Communist Party only a paper hold on most spheres of life, while seven years of warfare had reduced the national economy to ruin. During the closing months of the civil war, the population increasingly demanded that the state produce tangible improvements to justify the sacrifices made in the name of revolution. As public tolerance of grain requisitioning and other emergency measures reached its limit, workers and peasants openly defied Soviet power. Even the most ideological Bolshevik could not deny the gravity of the situation. In March 1921—on the eve of the important Tenth Party Congress—the state had to use force to repress an anti-Bolshevik uprising at the Kronstadt Naval Base, a bastion of revolutionary radicalism in 1917.
Both in response to public pressure and in keeping with their own ideological predilections, in 1921–9 the Bolsheviks pursued what would be the most open and experimental phase of Russian communism. The turning-point came in 1921 when the Tenth Congress endorsed the controversial New Economic Policy (NEP). Its aims were many: to ease public resentment against the emergency measures of the civil war; to regularize supply and production through a limited reintroduction of the market; to invigorate the grass-roots economy and generate investment capital for industrialization; and, in general, to lay the foundation for the transition to socialism at some unspecified but inevitable future date. At the same time, the political and military victory demanded that revolutionaries fulfil their promise of a more equitable social and economic order. In that sense, the extensive destruction of the pre-revolutionary system in 1917–20 provided a mandate for broad reconstruction and social transformation.
With opportunity, however, came responsibility; the real tasks of a ruling party soon brought the limitations of Bolshevism into sharp focus. The political leaders were divided; their control of the country was largely illusory. The international proletarian revolution that the Party had confidently predicted failed to materialize, and Soviet Russia found itself the steady object of international suspicion and antagonism. Ongoing economic problems threatened the survival of the regime, forcing compromises on the state that engendered widespread resentment. Social and artistic innovations produced genuine improvements, but their unanticipated results frequently offended public sensibilities. In the end, NEP promoted at once conservative and revolutionary sentiments. Paradoxically, enthusiasm for experimentation and for Stalinist regimentation sprang from the same source.
The Politics of Revolutionary Consolidation
The Communist Party faced a pressing need in 1921 to transform itself from a revolutionary cadre into an effective ruling institution. Early in the year, the Bolsheviks continued to increase repression and centralization despite popular discontent; only in the face of the Kronstadt revolt did the awareness of the need to retreat strike root. The leadership also faced challenges within the party. One faction advocated the reinstitution of greater internal democracy; another sought to restore the independence of trade unions; and a third complained that the party had lost its revolutionary vision. Faced with such contradictory pressures, the Tenth Party Congress did not rush into political reform. It did endorse NEP—a market, an end to grain requisitioning, a tax on harvests, and denationalization of small-scale enterprises—but not before the Bolsheviks had outlawed opposing political parties and banned party factions.
In the politics of the 1920s, the Bolsheviks were neither omnipotent nor single-minded. As before, their policy reflected as much mass pressure as Marxist ideology; the problem of discipline was as great as ever. Regional and local institutions were weak, unreliable, even non-existent; considerable segments of intermediate and lower officials resisted central authority and opposed the NEP. When Lenin declared that the party would pursue NEP ‘seriously and for a long time’, he tacitly admitted that Bolshevism had failed to establish a dictatorship of workers and poorer peasants. Rather, Lenin admitted, Soviet power had produced a burgeoning bureaucracy that was staffed largely by officials from the old regime and by opportunists, especially in the local areas.
