Ussr

Meanwhile, the difficulty of maintaining the food supply from the countryside increased, in spite of the distribution of the land to the peasants. Though the Land Decree reconciled the villages politically to the new regime, it did not afford any additional in centive to the peasant to market his grain ; while in so far as the land of the former large estates was now less efficiently farmed, the Decree accentuated the food problem. In the spring of 1918, accordingly, the policy which had already been inaugurated under the Provisional Government was carried an important stage fur ther, and the drastic step was taken of requisitioning the peasant surplus by declaring that all surplus grain above the requirements of the peasant household for food and seed-corn was to be sur rendered to the State collecting-organs at the official prices. To enforce the measure and to counter evasion Committees of the Village Poor were organised, since the poorer peasants who pro duced little or no surplus were thought to be the natural allies of the towns in forcing the richer peasants (called kulaks) to submit to the decree. Trade union and military detachments were organised at the same time and sent to the villages to make forcible seizure of requisitioned grain ; and Food Commissars were ap pointed to particular areas, with extraordinary powers to punish evasion with the penalty of death. At the same time all private trade in requisitioned products was prohibited, and also in certain other products not actually requisitioned but declared a state monopoly. Nominally, at least, only the organs of the Com missariat of Supplies and of Agriculture and the co-operatives were allowed to handle the majority of agricultural products; although in practice a considerable measure of illicit private trade continued in the "free market." Temporarily the requisitioning policy was able to increase the food supplies at the disposal of the army and the towns by over coming the problem of grain hoarding. But from its very character it could offer only a short-period solution of the food crisis.

Previously the poor return (in industrial goods) which the peasant secured for his produce caused him to hold back grain from the market. Now this loophole was closed to him ; but the lack of incentive merely transferred its effects a stage further back, causing the peasant to restrict his sowings of grain and to confine his efforts merely to cultivating and harvesting as much produce as he required for his own needs. By 1920 the sown area had shrunk by nearly 3o per cent, and the yield per acre by 4o per cent, so that the total harvest was scarcely more than two-fifths of the normal pre-war amount. In pre-war days the peasant marketed less than a third of his total crop, using the remainder for seed-corn and his own consumption ; and when we have made allowance for the home-consumption of the village, it is clear that the surplus available for the towns had in 192o shrunk much more catastrophically than the total yield. This decline continued in 1921, when it was aggravated by the tragic failure of the crops in the Volga region, so that instead of drawing upon the surplus grain of this rich producing area, the government had to draw supplies from other areas—principally by a I,000-mile railway haul from across the Urals—and to despatch them to the famine stricken area.

The New Economic Policy.

The end of the civil war, accord ingly, saw Russia face to face with an economic crisis darker even than the ravages of civil war; and if any reconstruction was to be possible, certain drastic changes had to be made at once in the improvised military measures of administration which the civil war had produced. Already at the 9th Congress of the Com munist Party in the Spring of 1920 and again at the 8th Soviet Congress in November and December severe criticism of the Glavki system in industry had been voiced, and as a result certain measures of decentralisation in the administrative apparatus had been introduced. Between December and March 1921 a vigorous discussion was conducted in the official Press on the general eco nomic situation, with a resulting plethora of suggestions and the emergence of seven or eight different "platforms" or policies within the central committee of the Party. The recrudescence of an acute fuel crisis at the beginning of the year and the spread of a wave of peasant discontent, resulting in actual risings in cer tain provinces, and finding a reflection in the revolt at the Kron stadt naval station at the end of February, precipitated a decision; and the crucial change came when Lenin at the loth Party Con gress in March proposed the abandonment of the grain requisi tions, their replacement by an Agricultural Tax on the peasant assessed (at first in kind, after 1923 in money) as a proportion of his produce, the scrapping of the war-time State grain-monopoly and the reversion to free trade in grain.

This was the crucial turning-point from "war communism" to what came to be known as the New Economic Policy ; and in its wake a series of further important changes quickly followed. The peasant was now free to sell his surplus as and when he liked —to the organ of the Commissariat of Supplies, to the co-opera tives or to the private trader. This implied a revived currency for the paper rouble, and indirectly led the various State economic organs to abandon their war-time system of direct barter, and to re-introduce normal exchange dealings on a money basis. Partly for this reason, and partly to relieve the burden, both financial and administrative, which rested on the central authori ties, an increasing number of enterprises were removed from the category of those which were furnished direct with supplies of fuel and materials and food in kind through the Glavki, and were permitted to operate on the market at their discretion. Some smaller factories were leased to private owners or to co-operative groups ; while offers of special "concession" rights for working cer tain mineral areas, etc. (such as the Lena goldfield concession) were made to foreign capitalists, and "mixed companies," formed by the combined participation of State and private capital, were legalised. By the end of 1922 the number of leased factories and workshops amounted to about 4,00o; but they averaged only 18 workers each and covered in all only 5 per cent of industrial production.