The Russian Revolution полностью

The systematic nationalization of Russian industry got underway with the decree of June 28, 1918.⁷³ The impetus came from Larin. Having attended the commercial negotiations in Berlin, Larin concluded that German businessmen intended to seize control of Russia’s major industries. In the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Bolsheviks had agreed to exempt citizens and business firms of the Central Powers from Soviet economic laws, allowing them to hold properties and to pursue business activities on Russian territory. Owners of the nationalized properties were to be adequately compensated: a provision that made it possible for Russians to sell their enterprises to Germans, who could either take control or claim compensation. Larin convinced Lenin that only a sweeping nationalization measure could prevent the Germans from becoming masters of Russia’s industry.⁷⁴ If Lenin hesitated to act it was out of concern over the German reaction: we know from Larin that many Bolsheviks feared the measure could provoke the Germans to break diplomatic relations and launch an anti-Bolshevik “crusade.” The fears proved groundless: while complaining that it was “disloyal,” “[the Germans] nevertheless acquiesced to the nationalization of all [Soviet] industry and did not declare war over it.”⁷⁵ The reason was that German interests were guaranteed full compensation for their nationalized assets, whereas Allied interests received none.

The decree of June 28 ordered the nationalization, without recompense, of all industrial enterprises and railroads with capital of one million rubles or more owned by corporations or partnerships. Cooperatives were exempt. The equipment and other assets of the nationalized businesses were taken over by the state. Managers were ordered to remain at their posts under the threat of severe penalties.

From then on the process of nationalization proceeded apace. By the fall of 1920, the Supreme Economic Council was nominally in charge of 37,226 enterprises with a total work force of 2 million; 13.9 percent of the nationalized enterprises had one employee and almost half lacked any mechanical equipment. In fact, however, the council managed but a small portion of these establishments (4,547, according to one authority), the remainder being state-owned in name only.⁷⁶ In November 1920, the government issued a supplementary decree nationalizing most small-scale industries.⁷⁷ On paper, at the beginning of 1921, the government owned and managed nearly all of Russia’s manufacturing facilities, from one-man workshops to giant factories. In reality, it controlled only a fraction and managed even fewer.*

The Supreme Economic Council—that “trust of trusts,” as it has been called⁷⁸—developed a massive bureaucratic machinery, headed by a Presidium. It was subdivided into agencies organized vertically (functionally) and horizontally (territorially). The vertical organizations were “trusts” called either glavki or tsentry. These numbered forty-two in late 1920, each responsible for one branch of industrial production and directed by a board. They bore melodious acronyms, such as Glavlak, Glavsol, and Glavbum, for the paint, salt, and paper industries, respectively.⁷⁹ Larin, who played a major role in designing the council’s structure and operations, admitted later that he had borrowed his ideas from abroad: “I took the German Kriegsgesellschaften, translated them into Russian, infused them with worker spirit, and gave them currency under the name glavki.”⁸⁰ In addition to glavki, the Supreme Economic Council had a network of provincial branches, of which there were nearly 1,400 in 1920.⁸¹ The organizational chart of the council resembled a celestial map on which the Presidium represented the sun and the glavki, tsentry, and regional agencies the planets and their moons.⁸²

Abroad, this gigantic enterprise of “socialist construction” made a great impression. Soviet propaganda in the West spoke glowingly of the “rationalization” of Russian industry under the benevolent eye of an all-seeing government, but it stressed intent rather than performance. The graphs and charts depicting how Russian industry was regulated aroused the admiration of many Westerners trying to cope with the chaos of the postwar world. But inside Russia, from the pages of newspapers and journals, as well as reports of Party Congresses, a very different picture emerged. The claims of economic planning proved to be a travesty: as late as 1921 Trotsky confirmed that no central economic plan existed and that, at best, “centralization” was carried out 5–10 percent.⁸³ An article in Pravda in late 1920 bluntly admitted: “khoziaistvennogo plana net” (“there is no economic plan”).⁸⁴ The council’s glavki had but the vaguest notion of the condition of industries for which they were responsible: