A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

After its triumphs in the civil war it was no doubt tempting for the Bolsheviks to view the Red Army as a model for the organization of the rest of society. Po voennomy — 'in the army way' — became synonymous with efficiency in the Bolshevik lexicology. If military methods had defeated the Whites, why could they not be used to construct socialism? All that had to be done was to turn around the army so that it marched on the economic front, so every worker became a foot soldier of the planned economy. Trotsky had always argued that factories should be run on military lines.* Now, in the spring of 1920, he outlined this brave new world of Communist labour, where the 'headquarters' of the planned economy would 'send out orders to the labour front' and 'every

* The same idea was expressed at this same time by Gastev and the other pioneers of the Taylor movement in Soviet Russia (see pages 744—5).

evening thousands of telephones would ring at headquarters to report conquests on the labour front.' Trotsky argued that the ability of socialism to conscript forced labour was its main advantage over capitalism. What Soviet Russia lacked in economic development it could make up through the coercive power of the state. It was more effective to compel the workers than it was to stimulate them through the market. Where free labour led to strikes and chaos, state control of the labour market would create discipline and order. This argument was based on the view, which Trotsky shared with Lenin, that the Russians were bad and lazy workers, that they would not work unless driven by the whip. The same view had been held by the Russian gentry under serfdom, a system with which the Soviet regime had much in common. Trotsky extolled the achievements of serf labour and used them to justify his economic plans. He would have no truck with the warnings of his critics that the use of forced labour would be unproductive. 'If this is so,' he told the Congress of Trade Unions in April 1920, 'then you can put a cross over Socialism.'³

At the heart of this 'barracks communism' was the Bolsheviks' fear of the working class as an independent and increasingly rebellious force. Significantly from about this time the Bolsheviks began to talk of the 'workforce' (rabochaia sila or rabsila for short) rather than of the 'working class' (rabocbii klass). The shift implied the transformation of the workers from an active agent of the revolution into a passive object of the party-state. The rabsila was not a class, nor even an assortment of individuals, but simply a mass. The word for a worker (rabochii) was returning to its origins: the word for a slave (rah). Here was the root of the Gulag system — the mentality of dragooning long lines of half-starved and ragged peasants onto building sites and into factories. Trotsky epitomized this when he said that the labour armies were made up from a 'peasant raw material' (muzhitskoe syr'ie). It was the idea that human labour, far from being the creative force which Marx had extolled, was in fact no more than a raw commodity which the state could use up to 'build socialism'. This perversion was implicit in the system from the start. Gorky had foreseen this in 1917 when he wrote that 'the working class is for a Lenin what ore is for a metalworker'.⁴

The experience of the civil war had done nothing to boost the confidence of the Bolshevik leaders in their relationship with the working class. Shortages of food had turned the workers into petty traders and part-time peasants, shuffling between factory and farm. The working class had become nomadic. Industry was reduced to chaos by the constant absence of half the workers on trips to buy food from the countryside. Those in the factories spent most of their time making simple goods to barter with the peasants. Skilled technicians, in high demand, roamed from factory to factory in search of better conditions. Productivity fell to a tiny fraction of pre-revolutionary levels. Even vital munitions plants were brought to a virtual standstill. As the living standards

of the workers fell, strikes and go-slows became common. During the spring of 1919 there was a nationwide outbreak of strikes. Hardly a city was left untouched. Everywhere better food supplies topped the list of strikers' demands. The Bolsheviks answered with repression, arresting and shooting the strikers in their thousands, many of them on suspicion of supporting the Mensheviks.⁵