The Russian Revolution полностью

Obviously, such largesse was possible only temporarily, as long as the Bolshevik regime could spend capital inherited from tsarism. It was able to dispense with the collection of rents because it neither built housing nor paid for its maintenance: nearly the entire residential housing of urban Russia, consisting of about half a million structures, had been built before 1917. When War Communism was at its height, the government constructed and repaired only 2,601 buildings in the country.¹¹¹ The other factor which made the policy of free distribution possible was the food that was extracted from the peasants without compensation or with make-believe compensation in the form of worthless money. Clearly, neither situation could continue forever, as buildings decayed and the peasant refused to grow surplus food.

In the meantime, the private sector burgeoned. It traded every conceivable commodity, and above all, foodstuffs. The bulk of the food consumed by the non-agrarian population of Soviet Russia under War Communism came not from state outlets but from the free market. In September 1918 the regime was forced to permit peasants to bring into the cities and sell at market prices up to one and a half puds (25 kilograms) of cereals.¹¹² These polutorapudniki, or “one-and-a-half-puders,” accounted for the lion’s share of the bread and produce consumed by the cities. A Soviet statistical survey conducted in the winter of 1919–20 indicated that urban inhabitants obtained only 36 percent of their bread from state stores; the remainder came, as the survey evasively put it, “from other sources.”¹¹³ It has been established that of all the foodstuffs consumed in Russian cities in the winter of 1919–20 (cereals, vegetables, and fruits), as measured by their caloric value, the free market furnished from 66 to 80 percent. In the rural districts, the proportion of victuals supplied by the “consumer communes” amounted to a mere 11 percent.¹¹⁴

A foreign visitor to Russia in the spring of 1920 found nearly all the stores closed or boarded up. Here and there small shops stayed open to dispense clothing, soap, and other consumer goods. Outlets of Narkomprod (Commissariat of Supply) were also few and far between. But the illicit street trade was booming:

Moscow lives. But it lives only in part from rationed goods and from earned money. In large measure, Moscow lives off the black market: actively and passively. It sells on the black market, it buys on the black market, it profiteers, profiteers, profiteers …

In Moscow money is made on everything. Everything is traded on the black market: from a pin to a cow. Furniture, diamonds, white cake, bread, meat, everything is sold on the black market. The Sukharevka in Moscow is a black-market bazaar, a black-market warehouse. From time to time, the police carry out raids, but these do not suppress the black market. It is a proliferating hydra, it reappears with a thousand heads.

Moscow has free markets, a number of them, officially tolerated markets, supplementary ones, delicatessen markets. For example, there is a supplementary market near Theater Square, dealing in cucumbers, fish, biscuits, eggs, vegetables of all sorts. It is a tumult on a long sidewalk. There are booths on the curbs, traders squat, traders whisper offers into the ears of buyers.

A cucumber costs 200–250 rubles, an egg 125–150 rubles: other items fetch corresponding prices. This is not much when converted into Western European currency, especially dollars. During my stay in Moscow, currency speculators paid 1,000 Bolshevik rubles for one dollar. I was told that one American exchanged $3,000 for 9 million Bolshevik rubles. It is forbidden to speculate … But there is speculation in currency. Profits are made on everything, naturally also on money …

This profiteering, this black marketeering, this hoarding hinders work. Profiteering sits in the soul of workers. They profiteer while they work, they profiteer while they should be working.¹¹⁵

Many of the peddlers were soldiers who were disposing of their uniforms, which explains why at this time so many Muscovites appeared on the streets in military garb.¹¹⁶ Dignified ladies could be seen standing self-consciously on the sidewalks offering for sale personal belongings from happier days.