With their victory over the White Russians in 1920, Soviet
leaders now could turn for the first time to the challenging
task of building the first socialist society in a
world dominated by their capitalist enemies. In his writings,
Karl Marx had said little about the nature of the
final communist utopia or how to get there. He had spoken
briefly of a transitional phase, variously known as
“raw communism” or “socialism,” that would precede the
final stage of communism. During this phase, the Communist
Party would establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat”
to rid society of the capitalist oppressors, set up the
institutions of the new order, and indoctrinate the population
in the communist ethic. In recognition of the fact
that traces of “bourgeois thinking” would remain among
the population, profit incentives would be used to encourage
productivity (in the slogan of Marxism, payment
would be on the basis of “work” rather than solely on
“need”), but major industries would be nationalized and
private landholdings eliminated. After seizing power,
however, the Bolsheviks were too preoccupied with survival
to give much attention to the future nature of Soviet
society. “War communism”—involving the government
seizure of major industries, utilities, and sources of
raw materials and the requisition of grain from private
farmers—was, by Lenin’s own admission, just a makeshift
policy to permit the regime to mobilize resources for the
civil war.
In 1920, it was time to adopt a more coherent approach.
The realities were sobering. Soviet Russia was
not an advanced capitalist society in the Marxist image,
blessed with modern technology and an impoverished
and politically aware underclass imbued with the desire to
advance to socialism. It was poor and primarily agrarian,
and its small but growing industrial sector had been ravaged
by years of war. Under the circumstances, Lenin
called for caution. He won his party’s approval for a moderate
program of social and economic development
known as theNew Economic Policy, or NEP. The program
was based on a combination of capitalist and socialist
techniques designed to increase production through the
use of profit incentives while at the same time promoting
the concept of socialist ownership and maintaining firm
party control over the political system and the overall direction
of the economy. The “commanding heights” of
the Soviet economy (heavy industry, banking, utilities,
and foreign trade) remained in the hands of the state,
while private industry and commerce were allowed to operate
at the lower levels. The forced requisition of grain,
which had caused serious unrest among the peasantry, was
replaced by a tax, and land remained firmly in private
hands. The theoretical justification for the program was
that Soviet Russia now needed to go through its own
“capitalist stage” (albeit under the control of the party)
before beginning the difficult transition to socialism.
As an economic strategy, the NEP succeeded brilliantly.
During the early and mid-1920s, the Soviet economy
recovered rapidly from the doldrums of war and civil
war. A more lax hand over the affairs of state allowed a
modest degree of free expression of opinion within the
ranks of the party and in Soviet society at large. Under
the surface, however, trouble loomed. Lenin had been increasingly
disabled by a bullet lodged in his neck from an
attempted assassination, and he began to lose his grip
over a fractious party. Even before his death in 1924, potential
successors had begun to scuffle for precedence in
the struggle to assume his position as party leader, the
most influential position in the state. The main candidates
were Leon Trotsky and a rising young figure from
the state of Georgia, Joseph Djugashvili, better known by
his revolutionary name, Stalin. Lenin had misgivings
about all the candidates hoping to succeed him and suggested
that a collective leadership best represented the
interests of the party and the revolution. After his death
in 1924, factional struggle among the leading figures in
the party intensified. Although in some respects it was a
pure power struggle, it did have policy ramifications as
party factions debated about the NEP and its impact on
the future of the Russian Revolution.
At first, the various factions were relatively evenly balanced,
but Stalin proved adept at using his position as
general secretary of the party to outmaneuver his rivals.
By portraying himself as a centrist opposed to the extreme
positions of his “leftist” (too radical in pursuit of revolutionary
goals) or “rightist” (too prone to adopt moderate
positions contrary to Marxist principles) rivals, he gradually
concentrated power in his own hands.
In the meantime, the relatively moderate policies
of the NEP continued to operate as the party and the
state vocally encouraged the Soviet people, in a very un-
Marxist manner, to enrich themselves. Capital investment
and technological assistance from Western capitalist
countries were actively welcomed. An observer at the
time might reasonably have concluded that the Marxist
vision of a world characterized by class struggle had become
a dead letter.
World History
