The Russian Revolution полностью

In the realm of distribution, the task of Soviet authority at present consists in steadfastly pursuing the replacement of trade by a planned and nationally organized distribution of products. The objective is the organization of the entire population in a single network of consumer communes which will be capable, most speedily, in a planned manner, economically and with the least expenditure of labor, of distributing all the necessary products, strictly centralizing the entire mechanism of distribution.¹⁰³

The Bolsheviks pursued this goal by a variety of means, including the confiscation of the means of production of goods other than food, forceful requisitions of foodstuffs and other commodities, a state monopoly on trade, and destruction of money as a medium of exchange. Goods were distributed to the population by means of ration cards, initially (1918–19) at nominal prices, later (1920) free of charge. Housing, utilities, transport, education, and entertainment were also withdrawn from the market and eventually made available at no cost.

While the production of industrial goods was turned over to the Supreme Economic Council, responsibility for the distribution of commodities was assigned to the Commissariat of Supply (Kommissariat po Prodovolstviiu), another bureaucratic empire with an array of its own glavki and a network of distribution agencies. Its head, Alexander Tsiurupa, had only limited business experience, having been employed before 1917 as manager of a landed estate. His commissariat was a very costly operation. Komprod, as it was popularly known, first and foremost received and distributed the foodstuffs which the government managed to collect through purchase, barter, or forceful requisitions. It was also supposed to receive for purposes of barter consumer goods from the nationalized industrial establishments and household industries. For distribution, it relied to some extent on its own network of state-run stores, but mainly on the consumer cooperatives which had developed before the Revolution and which the Bolsheviks, with some reluctance, retained after removing the SRs and Mensheviks from their directing staffs.¹⁰⁴ In the spring of 1919 these cooperatives were nationalized. A decree of March 16, 1919,¹⁰⁵ ordered the creation in all cities and rural centers of “consumer communes” (potrebitel’skie kommuny), which all the inhabitants of a given area, without exception, had to join. The communes were supposed to provide food and other basic necessities upon presentation of ration cards. Such cards came in several categories, the most generous ones being issued to workers in heavy industry: the “bourgeoisie” received at best one-quarter of a worker’s ration, and often nothing.¹⁰⁶ * The system lent itself to terrible abuses: in Petrograd in 1918, for instance, one-third more ration cards were issued than there were inhabitants, and in 1920, the Commissariat of Supply distributed ration cards for 21.9 million urban residents whereas their actual count was only 12.3 million.¹⁰⁷

In the words of Milton Friedman, the more significant an economic theory, “the more unrealistic the assumptions.” The Soviet experiment in the nationalization of trade amply corroborated this statement. The measures enacted under War Communism, instead of eliminating the market, split it in two: in 1918–20 Russia had a state sector, which distributed goods by ration cards at fixed prices or free of charge, and, alongside it, an illicit private sector, which followed the laws of supply and demand. To the surprise of Bolshevik theoreticians, the more the nationalized sector expanded, the larger loomed what one Bolshevik economist called its “irremovable shadow,” the free sector. Indeed, the private sector battened on the state sector, for the simple reason that a large part of the consumer goods which the workers bought at token prices or received gratis from state stores or “consumer communes” found their way to the black market.¹⁰⁸

The government inaugurated free public services in October 1920 with a law exempting Soviet institutions from paying for telegraph, telephone, and postal services; the following year, these were offered free to all citizens. During this time government employees received all utilities gratis. In January 1921, residents of nationalized and municipalized houses were freed from the payment of rents.¹⁰⁹ In the winter of 1920–21, Komprod is estimated to have assumed responsibility for supplying, at virtually no cost, the basic needs of 38 million people.¹¹⁰