‘g'77 DEC 1 2 1947 5 J) v tc Y 79th Congress, 2d session House Document No. 754 tJ C f 'hrary o 1 nr •*5 O. * L eg. I 1 1 • . COMMUNISM IN ACTION ADOCUMENTED STUDY AND ANALYSIS OF COMMUNISM IN OPERATION IN THE SOVIET UNION PREPARED AT TIIE INSTANCE AND UNDER THE DIRECTION OF Representative Everett M. Dirksen OF ILLINOIS BY THE LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE SERVICE OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS UNDER THE DIRECTION OF ERNEST S. GRIFFITH EXTRA COPIES FREE UPON REQUEST 90681 American Wage ^rners Foundation EDWIN R. WRIGHT, Founding Chairman (FORMER PRESIDENT ILLINOIS STATE FEDERATION OF LABOR) Room 605 A 30 North La Salle Street Chicago 2, Illinois State 1633 THIS BOOK PURCHASED FROM UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 1946 V ^ ' HOUSE RESOLUTION 720 [Submitted by Mr. Dirksen] In the House of Representatives, July 22, 1946. Resolved, That the manuscript of a documented study and analysis of communism in operation in the Soviet Union be printed as a House document. Attest: South Trimble, Clerk . Passed July 26, 1946 s xi JAN 7 ► FOREWORD By Representative Everett M. Dirksen, of Illinois In the fall of 1945 I addressed a group of farmers and farm leaders in Chicago. 'A portion of that address was devoted to the march of communism in many areas of the world. Those remarks were based upon personal observations made in many countries in the winter and spring of the same year. At the conclusion of the speech several members of the audience wanted to know if I could recommend a short, simple treatise on how communism operates which dealt fairly and impartially with the subject and which did not employ a heavily slanted or biased approach. Offhand I could think of no suoh treatise. But the inquiry prompted me to explore the matter. I thought of the emotionalism with which this whole subject had been surrounded for a long period of time and how ineffective it was in dealing with this new totalitarian philosophy which has admittedly made some gains in the United States in recent years. One conclusion kept reasserting itself. The real antidote to communism lay in a diffusion of knowledge and information on how it operates. On the plane which brought me back to Washington I blocked out in my notebook the kind of a book I would write on this subject if time permitted and what should be included in such a volume to meet the inquiry of my farmer friends. If farmers could but know what the Soviet system of agriculture is really like; if laboring men had a better working knowledge of the status of labor in the Soviet Union, and especially the system of forced labor which is so common; if people who are devoted to God and who value a free conscience above all else could better know how religion fares in the Soviet Union; if our people generally, who enjoy the high¬ est living standard in any time or place, could know more about living standards under the Soviet scheme; if those who see in the free- enterprise system as it has been pursued in the United States for more than 150 years the greatest instrument for material human advancement could know a little more about industry and manage¬ ment in the Soviet Union; if those who at some time or other may have found themselves toying with the idea of bringing about a change in our form of constitutional representative government had a better perception of government and governmental methods under com¬ munism; if those who have at one time or another felt that a per¬ plexing world required a planned existence, had a broader knowledge of how leisure time is employed under communism; if those who feel that a regulated system of education might be preferable to the free system in the United States had a better perspective of how the educational system operates in the Soviet Union, it would halt the march of communism as nothing else could do. hi IV FOREWORD As I pondered this matter, several things were constantly in mind. Such a treatise should be reasonably short. It should be couched in understandable language. It should not be wearisome with too much historical detail. It should concern itself with communism in action. It should be well documented. That is to say that every authority for each observation should be quoted so that it could not be im¬ peached on the ground that it was merely naked and unsupported opinion. It should be fair and impartial. Having blocked out the chapters to be covered and indicated the method and manner in which the whole subject should be treated, the next problem was to assemble the material and make it available to the Congress and the country. . My first thought was to introduce a resolution m Congress to author¬ ize the creation of a joint committee of Senators and Representatives who would be empowered to select a dozen scholars of outstanding reputation in the fields of history, agriculture, labor, economics, busi¬ ness, education, religion, and government to undertake this task. This idea’ however, did not appeal to some of my colleagues and friends whom I consulted because they could foresee difficulty in bringing about the enactment of such a resolution and even greater difficulty in securing agreement upon the names of those who should be con¬ sidered for the task. It then occurred to me that there was at hand an agency ol govern¬ ment which was well equipped to do the job. It was the Legislative Reference Service in the Library of Congress under the very able direc¬ tion of Mr. Ernest S. Griffith. This Service—as a component of the Library of Congress—was under the immediate direction and control of the Congress. Its very business and its primary function was to probe for facts, to document those facts, and make them readily avail¬ able to Members and committees of Congress. Here then was a public agency, supported by public funds, and an integral part of the legisla¬ tive branch of Government itself, which seemed most appropriate to this labor. „ . , . tut Mr. Griffith and his staff cheerfully accepted the assignment. We had many conferences, in the course of which the scope and method of approach was carefully determined. At the very outset, I made it plain that the Legislative Reference Service was to have a free hand in the matter. Personally, I wanted the facts, good and bad. I wanted an unbiased account of communism in action and I am sure the people of this Nation who are interested in this problem would be equally interested in a thorough and unadorned treatment of the subject. At long last, the task has been accomplished. It represents a long and patient labor. The treatise embodies the careful and painstaking labor of many scholarly men and women who spared neither time nor effort in exploring books, documents, files, and even confidential sources of information, to make available to the Congress and. the people a short, practical, well-documented report on this vital subject. To Mr. Griffith and his associates, I express my personal apprecia¬ tion for the useful and notable contribution to better understanding of the challenge of communism. I esteem it a valuable work which deserves wide distribution. PREFACE Twenty-five years ago communism as an operating system was in its infancy. It has now grown up. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a Communist State, emerged from World War II in position to play a leading role in world affairs and to exert a powerful influence on the political, economic, and social institutions of many nations. The purpose of this study is to explain to the lay reader briefly and in simple terms how communism operates in the Soviet Union. It does not pretend to be an analysis of the theory of communism. Neither is it an appraisal of communism. It is primarily a description of the operation of the economic, political, and social institutions of the Soviet Union in recent years. Communism has proved to be like democracy in at least one respect; it has expressed itself in many and varied ways. No attempt is made, however, to trace its entire evolu¬ tion in the U. S. S. R. The dates of the more significant developments are noted in the chronological chart. Part I deals with the Soviet economic system. In keeping with the Communist emphasis on the economic basis of society, it includes three-fifths of the chapters of this study and even more than that proportion of the space. Part II contains chapters on the political system, national defense, education, the use of leisure time, religion, and individual freedom. In order to help the reader to visualize the institutions, practices, and policies described, comparisons and analogies are frequently made w T ith the United States. These comparisons and analogies are not to be taken as measures of the success or failure of communism, or as an indication of the precise form which communism would take if it were ever put into effect in the United States. It will be noted that references to monetary values in the Soviet Union are in rubles. It is recognized that the American reader would like to know the equivalent in dollars; but this is not really practicable. The ruble is used only in domestic transactions in the Soviet Union; it does not enter into trade like the dollar. In the U. S. S. R. the official exchange value of the dollar is 5.3 rubles. To put it the other way around, the ruble would be at that rate the equivalent of approx¬ imately 19 cents. The exchange value of the dollar for persons in the United States diplomatic service, hov r ever, is 12 rubles, indicating that the official rate may not constitute an accurate measure of the purchasing powder of the ruble. After consideration of this and other factors, it was deemed less confusing to make no attempt to convert. The direct sources used are nearly all in English. All chapters, however, have been read and commented upon by persons familiar with Russian sources in their respective fields. The study was undertaken at the request of Representative Everett Dirksen, of Illinois, who also indicated its general scope. Repre¬ sentative Dirksen had for some time felt the need of such an objective and comprehensive study so as to make the facts about the Soviet Union available to the American public. Ernest S. Griffith, Director , Legislative Reference Service. y AUTHORS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Chapters I, II, III, IV, and V were written by Gustav Peck; chapter VI by Leisa G. Bronson; chapters VII and XV by Hugh L. Elsbree; chapters VIII and IX by Raymond E. Manning; chapter X by Nancy Baster, Virginia Brewer, and Dudley B. Ball; chapters XI and XII by Charles A. Quattlebaum; chapter XIII by William H. Gilbert, Jr.; and chapter XIV by Amelia H. Baldwin. General editorial supervision was provided by Hugh L. Elsbree. Bibliographical assistance was provided by Janie E. Mason, and editorial assistance by Dudley B. Ball. The chronological chart was prepared by William H. Gilbert, Jr. Acknowledgments are made to the following for reading the chapters indicated and for offering valuable comments and suggestions: Dr. Sergius Yakobson, Library consultant, who reviewed the entire study. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Section of the Office of International Trade Promotion, Office of International Trade, Depart¬ ment of Commerce, which also reviewed the entire study. Dr. Lazar Volin, agricultural economist, Office of Foreign Agricul¬ tural Relations, Department of Agriculture, who reviewed chapters VI, VII, and XV. Also to Dr. Vladimir Gsovski, Chief, Foreign Law Section, Law Library, for advice on a number of points. V11 <■ ■ ■ . Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Columbia University Libraries https://archive.org/details/communisminactioOOIibr TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I—Economic Chapter I. From the revolution to the 5-Year Plan- Chapter II. The operation of the Soviet productive system Chapter III. The role of management- Chapter IV. Labor-- Chapter V. Forced labor- Chapter VI. Living standards-- Chapter VII. Agriculture--- ---- -- Chapter VIII. Transportation and communication—-- Chapter IX. Finance- Fa^e 1 7 26 33 54 59 73 79 85 Part II— Political and Social Chapter X. Government--- Chapter XI. National defense- Chapter XII. Education- Chapter XIII. The use of leisure time- Chapter XIV. Religion--- Chapter XV. How much freedom?--- — -- 93 100 110 117 126 133 IX . f COMMUNISM IN ACTION IN THE SOVIET UNION PART I—ECONOMIC Chapter I FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE 5-YEAR PLAN FIRST EFFORTS OF COMMUNISM When the Bolsheviks seized power on November 7, 1917, they took over plants and industries as the first step in the establishment of the basis of socialism or communism. Throughout 1918 an increasing number of industries and activities were nationalized, including banking and foreign trade. Former Government loans made by the Czarist regime were repudiated. By the end of June 1918 all large- scale industry, finance, and commerce was nationalized. Small-scale industry was permitted to continue in private hands until a decree issued in November 1920 nationalized all concerns employing not less than 5 workers where machinery was used and not less than 10 workers were there was no machinery. 1 In all these ways the Soviet Government succeeded in eliminating private capital and gaining control of the “commanding heights” of the national economy. Within a few weeks after the Revolution was proclaimed, tho Government set up a Supreme Economic Council charged with the organization of all industry and finance and tho coordination of all existing economic organizations; but it was many years before any real nationalization was attained. 2 3 The Supreme Economic Council later set up operating departments to deal with various branches of industry, and together they became the central state institution for the general administration of all nationalized industry. Subdepart¬ ments or trusts were created to direct the actual course of production and distribution for individual branches of industry or for groups of factories. The department for each industry retained the formulation of the broader industry plans, the coordination of requirements and the provision of supplies and finance, while the trusts were to direct and operate the concerns. The dire need to keep some industry in operation in the first 2 years after the Revolution left little time for the broader national planning which all this foreshadowed. But this was a beginning in gaining actual experience in the planning and management of socialized industiies. The departments of Government which took over the management of economic life were left with a legacy of dying industries which they i Alexander Baykov, The Development of the Soviet Economic System (Cambridge University Press, 1946), pp. 6-7; Emile Burns, Russia’s Productive System (New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1930), p. 18. 3 References are given in the first five chapters where there might be some dispute among the authorities or where a source for a judgment may be required. Specific reference is not made to the steps in the broad evolution of Soviet society or policies for which the writer must assume responsibility based on a careful comparison of authorities and reflection on the facts. 2 COMMUNISM IN ACTION were trying to bring under concentrated control. One of the principles of early communism, that money was “a testimony of the right of the exploiter to obtain social goods with a view to speculation, profit, and plundering the workers,” * 3 resulted in greatly hampering the exchange, of economic goods. The reckless issue of paper money when pro¬ duction and trade were declining led to a sharp depreciation of the currency and to the refusal of those who had goods to accept money at all. 4 5 Money thus ceased to serve its proper functions as a measure of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange. The Govern¬ ment then tried to move agricultural and industrial products without the use of money by such means as central depots, state-organized barter, forced collections, and requisitioning. State enterprises were instructed at the end of 1920 to reckon their costs in units of labor value, but this purely socialistic method of accounting never took hold. 6 None of this worked. Trade stagnated. Towns were deserted. Peasants reduced their production. Industrial discipline deteriorated under the workers’ control over management, relative equality of wages, and the payments in kind which grew in importance as the currency depreciated. During the period of communization as originally preached and ardently and fervently supported by Lenin and his followers at home and abroad, the Russian economy—that is, the actual production and exchange of goods—was, by all accounts, completely disrupted and tended progressively toward stagnation. 6 This is brought out by the State Economic Planning Commission itself (Gosplan). 7 Table I. — Index of 'production in Russia Industries Large-scale Small-scale Total Industries Large-scale Small-scale Total 1913-. 100.0 100.0 100.0 1918 33 8 73 4Q 4 1916..— 116.1 88. 2 109.4 1919 14 9 49 n 1917_ 74.8 78.4 75.7 1920_ 12.8 44.1 20.4 The decline in industrial production in 1917 may be understood in the light of the break-down of the war effort, the February Revolution and the November Revolution; but the continued steep decline in 1918, 1919, and 1920, although it is chargeable by some to the continuing civil war and the sabotage of former capitalists, must be ascribed in large measure to the failure of theoretical communism to build any solid foundation for the productive energies of the people, at least within 3 or 4 years. The decline in agricultural production was equally catastrophic. 8 Despite the fact that the Russian people did not have a very high standard of living in the years before the First “World War, production of both agricultural and industrial commodities was so much less in the first few years of the Soviet regime that the conclusion is in- 8 Lenin quoted in Boris Brutzkus, Economic Planning in Soviet Russia (London, G. Routledge & Sons Ltd., 1935), p. 105. i Baykov, op. cit., pp. 31-38. 5 Brutzkus, op. cit., p. 105; Baykov, op. cit., pp. 37-38. 8 Brutzkus, op. cit., pp. 99-109; Paul Haensel, Economic Policy of Soviet Russia (London, P. S. King & Son, Ltd., 1930), p. 29, Baykov, op. cit., p. 5; Leonard E. Hubbard, Soviet Labour and Industry (London Macmillan, 1942), pp. 30-37. 7 As reproduced in Baykov, op. cit., p. 8. « See the chapter on agriculture. Also Baykov, op. cit., table, p. 23, for decline in crop yields and in number of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats. * ‘ ' COMMUNISM IN ACTION 3 escapable tliat even the lower standard of the period between 1917-21 was possible because the people were living by grace of existing stocks from the prerevolutionary period and by confiscation of existing wealth as much as by fresh production. second breath: the new economic policy When the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party met in March 1921, Lenin made his followers face the bitter facts. We are living—he said—in such conditions of impoverishment and ruin, over¬ strain and exhaustion of the principal productive forces of the peasants and the workers, that for a time everything must be subordinated to this fundamental consideration—at all costs to increase the quantity of goods. * * * In our attempt to pass over to Communism, we had suffered by the spring of 1921, a more serious defeat than any previously inflicted on us by Kolchak, Denikin or Pilsudsky. Compulsory requisition in the villages and the direct Communist approach to the problems of reconstruction in towns—'this was the policy which interferred with the growth of the productive capacity of the country and proved to be the main cause of a profound economic and political crisis which confronted us in the spring of 1921. 9 It was at this Congress that the first steps were taken toward the introduction of the New Economic Policy (N. E. P.). Lenin himself described this policy in one sentence in the same speech: The New Economic Policy means the substitution of a food tax for requisitioning; it means a transition to the restoration of capitalism in no small degree. The New Economic Policy restored market dealings up and down and through the Various sectors of industry. Even though the N.E.P. was announced when industry was practically stagnant and agri¬ culture was in the early stages of the famine of 1921-22, some revival occurred at once. Wherever there was still some industry and where famine had not struck, production picked up. Hope was revived. Trade was stimulated. Small industries started up again. Despite the fact that small-scale industry cannot practice the econ¬ omies of large-scale industry (when properly managed), and despite the legal insecurity of private business during the N. E. P. period, private ventures made great headway in the ensuing years. By 1925-26 private trade did 44 percent of the retail trade of the country and 7 percent of wholesale trade. Their shops mostly employed four or fewer persons, but they constituted 83 percent of the retail enter¬ prises. Small private industry had more difficulty developing any substantial volume in the face of Government hostility, and larger private industry even more. In 1925-26 only 5,684 private factories employing more than six workers existed. 10 The entire Communist Party was by no means agreed as to the necessity for the N. E. P., for many of them, under the leadership of Trotsky, saw that it threatened the future of communism. Alto¬ gether private business was kept insecure and uncertain of its future. It could not engage in long-range planning and had to depend on quick turn-over and profits. Nonetheless, private firms, charging lower prices than the state monopolies, did more of the business of the nation. In the outside world the N. E. P. was viewed as a confession of the failure of communism in Russia and the return to capitalistic methods. In reality the years between August 1921 and 1926-27, when the s> Quotation from Lenin’s Collected Works In Baykov, op. cit., p. 43. 10 Hacnsel, op. cit., pp. 38-40. COMMUNISM IN ACTION N. E. P. was abandoned, were years of taking breath for the next great surge of communistic construction on lines which the changing leadership of Soviet Russia thought would be workable. The Govern¬ ment retained the ownership and management of large-scale industry, construction, transport, the credit system, foreign trade and shipping, and the larger trading organizations. The Soviet leaders clearly planned the N. E. P. as a breathing spell to restore economic activ¬ ities, gain time, study and learn the problems of administering large socialized enterprises and, above all, build up the interconnecting institutions of a planned socialist state which would work progressively to release and encourage the productive forces of the nation and the people. Consequently from the beginning of the N. E. P. Lenin and his followers thought in terms only of a temporary retreat. Not only did they hold on to all the “commanding heights” of the national economy, but they also planned from the beginning to restrict the restored portions of capitalism to serve communist ends. This was consciously done by numerous measures, such as restricting, dealings in profitable agricultural raw materials to Government trading insti¬ tutions and cooperatives, providing for the “planned transfer” of manufactured goods by state agencies, imposing discriminatory measures and heavy taxation. The foreign concessions, permitted during this period to stimulate capital development and the production of raw materials, were also restricted and by 1927--28 tended to dis¬ appear. 11 By 1928 except for a limited and contracted existence of private enterprise in some parts of domestic trade and small-scale industry, the Soviet economy was state-owned and state-administered. ORIGIN OF THE 6-YEAR PLANS The multiplication of local, provincial, and national agencies to plan and direct the increasing number of public enterprises and the policy of direct control by workers which was being followed by many individual factories in the early period of the Revolution resulted in the establishment in 1920 of a still higher coordinating authority entirely divorced from actual administration—the State Economic Planning Commission or the Gosplan. In February 1921, on the eve of the launching of the N. E. P., Gosplan was instructed to draw up a general plan for the national economy and to break it down into annual programs. It was the responsibility of Gosplan to formulate plans and programs for the control, expansion, and interrelation, of the entire economic life of the nation, including industry, agriculture finance, trade, and transport, whether nationalized, municipal, coop¬ erative, or still privately owned 'and operated. It developed its planning work into an Annual Plan and a 5-Year Plan and a more general Plan indicating the course of development beyond the 5 years. This has become the central planning agency of the Soviet economic system, without which the various individual plans and projects would come into conflict with one another. While Gosplan does not administer or operate any elements of the national economy, it records the progress of the plans, its successes or failures in different sectors of industry and in different sections of the country, and works out modifications as experience dictates. 11 Baykov, op~ cit., pp. 59-70, 125-127; Brutzkus, op. cit., pp. 112-122; Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia (New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1937), p. 81. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 5 All through the period of the N. E. P., Gosplan was at work studying and engineering the economy as a whole. Areas of development and expansion were laid out in different industries and regions, and in agriculture, transportation, trade, and public construction. A basic decision was made to emphasize capital development for future growth in the broad outlines of a general economic plan, and there would have to be much tightening of belts to carry out this program. In 1925, after a new stable currency had been introduced, Gosplan issued a report on the economic control figures of the U. S. S. E. for the year 1925-26. By that time the desperate need to increase food and raw materials for any broad program of Socialist construction seemed of the clearest urgency to the dominant leaders of the Soviet state. Increased raw materials were needed for the expansion of in¬ dustry and for exports with which to pay for machinery and foreign supplies. The program called for sharp increases in food and basic raw ma¬ terials on the farms to be furnished at what the peasantry considered low and confiscatory prices. The plan failed in its objectives largely, it was said, because private dealers were ready to pay much higher prices to the peasants than the Government's fixed prices. As private business was being squeezed out, it was left only in areas of life where it would not interfere with the laid-out plans of the Government, or might even help accomplish them, like the sale of certain perishable farm surpluses to the town and city populations. In 1926 the First 5-Year Plan was laid out by Gosplan, with the co¬ operation of numerous economic bodies and subsidiary planning organizations. The Plan was carefully studied and revised. In its final form it covered the period from October 1, 1928, to the end of 1932. A Second 5-Year Plan was launched in January 1933 and was completed at the end of 1937. The Third 5-Year Plan, started in 1938 was interrupted by the attack on the U. S. S. R. by Germany. Since a Fourth 5-Year Plan has already been announced, it may be assumed that the management of the economic system as a whole by the devices and techniques of the 5-Year Plans is a stable mechanism in the U. S. S. R. These succeeding 5-Year Plans embodied a large variety of specific programs which determined the direction and the rate of progress of the economy of Soviet Russia. They provided for the collectiviza¬ tion of agriculture, the rapid development of heavy industry, the in¬ crease in basic materials, the exploitation of the vast eastern areas of the country, mechanization and electrification, improvements in the transportation system, the absorption of planned increases in the urban population and of industrial employees. Tim Plans set goals of production in each industr 3 r and each plant, determined the increases in the productivity of labor and production costs to be accounted for, the reduction in hours, increases in pay, and the provision of social services. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The Soviet state, which originally had been a regime dominated by intellectual Marxian revolutionaries who thought they v r ere the spearhead of a world revolutionary movement, settled down by 1926 to try to achieve “socialism in one country." Lenin had passed away on January 21, 1924. Between 1924 and 1926 Stalin emerged as the undisputed leader of national communism and of the type of economic 6 COMMUNISM IN ACTION planning which has characterized Soviet Russia since the promulga¬ tion of the first of the 5-Year Plans in 1928. The three 5-Year Plans which have been completed, developed and maintained a stable eco¬ nomic structure and organization under which the Soviet economy has made genuine progress in industrialization and to a lesser extent in the standard of living of peoples living in the Soviet Union. There have, of course, been some changes in the organization, opera¬ tion, and management of industry, in the organization of labor, the functioning of trade unions and in the systems of work and pay in the Soviet Union since 1928; but such changes have not themselves been regarded as revolutionary, since they have retained the Government ownership and operation of productive property and were not adver¬ tised as having radically*changed the basic operating principles. Be¬ fore the victory of Stalinism there had indeed been another and greater revolution—the period of militant communism under Lenin and Trotsky which ended in 1921, and the period between 1921 and 1926 when the New Economic Policy (N. E. P.), reversing the prior steps of management of industry by committees of workers, single wage level for all workers, the prohibition of profit seeking and private trade, and the abolition of money as a medium of exchange, helped to revive industry from the stagnation into which these principles of militant communism had brought it. Between 1924 and 1928 the international revolutionary intellectuals who had sponsored militant communism gave way to the Communist Party bureaucracy and the military and civilian technicians whose ideology and planned construction domi¬ nates Soviet Russia today. Many dissidents still had to be liquidated in the purges of the 1930’s; but these “deviationists” of both the Left and the Right had been losing influence since the death of Lenin in January 1924. It is basic to an understanding of the present phase of Soviet devel¬ opment to distinguish the abstract communistic theories of its earlier revolutionary phase from the system of industrial control which has actually evolved in the U. S. S. R. The Communist or Leninist Revolution, by seizing power, made the present system of operation of industry in the U. S. S. R. possible; but the present Soviet industrial system is by no means the same as that initiated in the Revolution. Old' communistic theories, phrases, slogans, and poses were generally not officially repudiated; but those who were unable to accept the changing reality were displaced by followers who saw the need for the changes in organization and control which were being made. The official spokesmen of the new Party line did not drop many of the slogans of militant communism; instead they reinterpreted them and used them to describe a whole new set of controls which were succeed¬ ing as academic communism or the communism of the books had never succeeded. That is the system, perhaps better described as Stalinism than as communism, Marxian socialism, or Leninism, which prevails in the U. S. S. R. today and is described and compared with the American system in these pages. Chapter II THE OPERATION OF THE SOVIET PRODUCTIVE SYSTEM BROAD CONTRAST OF AMERICAN AND SOVIET ECONOMIES Aside from a very small part of the economy, the productive system of the United States is organized on the basis of the private ownership and operation of the factories, machines, and other facilities of pro¬ duction; a relatively free market for goods, services, and labor; prices determined by the free interchange of willing buyers and sellers—the whole economy deriving its stimulus from the type, character, and intensity of the wants of the people and their productive power. Business enterprise responds to these wants in its endeavor to produce the goods desired at a profit. The quest for profits results in the growth of competing units of production, while the discrimination of buyers throws the available business to the lower-cost firms. Mis¬ calculations of producers regarding the volume of demand for par¬ ticular products are borne as losses by producers who have not met market favor. New balances are continually created a't higher or lower levels of production, prices, employment, wages, and profits, as the public expresses its wants and as its buying power changes. In normal times these are the guiding principles in the operation of the American economy, although their force and effect are mitigated in certain sections of the economy by the existence of such phenomena as relative monopolies, other efforts to control or maximize profits, so-called administrative prices, and the regulation of business by Government by such means as licensing, rate regulation, the estab¬ lishment of parity prices, and the interference with absolutely free consumer choices in articles or services believed to be injurious to health or welfare. The Soviet economy has no such foundation of freedom of consum¬ ers’ choice, private property, freedom of enterprise, general and per¬ vasive competition, and private profit or loss. Private enterprise is restricted to an enterprise which can be managed by the owner- producer without any hired labor. This is a negligible element in the economy of Soviet Russia, since it is restricted practically to handicrafts. In addition farmers are permitted to cultivate their own very small plots of land on time available after they meet the standards of production on collective farms and to sell this produce on the open market. With these minor exceptions and some of the enterprises of the cooperatives, all the capital in production, distribution, finance, and so forth, is owned by the state. Agencies of the Government plan the economy as a whole, determine relative urgencies of production, manage its operating units, fix prices, and in all these ways tend to determine consumers’ choices. All profit theoretically goes to the state and the state makes all investments for additions or expansion. THE GOSPLAN Practically all economic activity in the U. S. S. R. is encompassed in a plan laid down by the Government and the Communist Party ill their directives and orders. The 5-Year Plan sets the major goals, and expected accomplishments. Amiual and quarterly plans break 7 OOOSl—-iti— 5 —2 8 COMMUNISM IN ACTION these down into branches of industry and single-plant operations. All economic activity and all economic behavior must be subordinated and coordinated within the objectives of the plans. The Gosplan, which has remained the central and highest planning body since 1921, although its functions and authority within the system have been altered through the years, receives general directives from the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Party Congresses. On these it bases its 5-Year, Annual, and Quarterly Plans. From these it draws up plans for the various interrelated sectors of economic life such as heavy industry, light industry, and transport. These are further broken down on a territorial basis. Gosplan also supervises the fulfillment of all plans on a national, regional, and plant basis. To accomplish this, they must lay out plans for the erection of new plants, determine the requirements for raw materials and manpower, and financial requirements. Representatives of Gos¬ plan are located in regions or large plants to watch operations on the spot and make some alterations when necessary. INTERMEDIATE PLANNING The general planning directives of Gosplan are carried out by the Commissariats, the Glavks, 1 the combines, and the trusts. These also have their own subordinate planning departments. In this way each branch of industry and every large-plant has its own plan, which of course is more specific and detailed than the general plans developed by Gosplan. They also have the problem of allocating production to single plants and settling interrelations among plants producing com¬ mon components. Plans move down from Gosplan to the individual plants through the planning departments of the Commissariats, the Glavks, the combines, and the trusts. Successful plants are permitted to work out their own production programs for the year based on the results of the previous year. These must be approved by the Glavk, which may also make changes based on broader national considerations such as new sources of supply, interrelations of plants, and financial resources. The consolidated program for the total of its subordinate plants is sent to the Commissariat for approval and further change. All of these are then coordinated and brought together by Gosplan in an annual plan. Quarterly plans do not need to be approved higher up than a Glavk. REGIONAL PLANNING Regional planning was given greater consideration in each of the 5-Year Plans, in part because of its obvious economy, such as regard for the location of plants near raw materials or fuel or power, and in part also for strategic reasons and to stimulate the interests of the various constituent republics within the U. S. S. R. Regional plan¬ ning was, however, mainly the work of central organs such as Gosplan, Commissariat, and Glavk rather than of regional planning boards. Regional planning boards operate in conjunction with the Gosplan of the various republics, which have an interest in developing local resources. In January 1941 a decree was issued decentralizing plants of local importance. 2 1 Glavks are planning coordinating units below the Commissariats. Combines or kombinats are complex plants making a wide range of goods based on the use of a single main raw material, with its byproducts and wastes, as in coal or rubber. 2 Summarized and reference given in Gregory Bienstock, Solomon M. Schwarz, and Aaron Yugow, Management in Russian Industry aud Agriculture (London, New York, Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 52. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 9 PLANT-LEVEL PLANNING Planning on the plant level is covered by directives from the Com¬ missariat or Glavk or trust and covers the familiar problems of plant management—production in quantity and value, new investment, working capital, number of workers and expected increases in labor efficiency, the total wage bill and planned increases which must be allowed, reductions in cost of production and sources from which reductions in cost must come. There is a certain amount of collab¬ oration with plant management in arriving. at these figures, plant management sometimes furnishing the original forecasts and esti¬ mates. Cooperation agreements are worked out between plants with the approval of higher authorities making for an economical dovetail¬ ing of suppliers and customers. THE HIERARCHY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION The lowest rung of the operating ladder is the individual enterprise; but the enterprise is a creature of the state, not the result of individual initiative and the collective aggregation of capital and management by- associates and stockholders as in the United States. The enterprise, be it a factory, shop, mill or mine, is not itself a legal or complete entity in the Soviet Union. It receives its orders from higher organizations and confines itself to carrying out technical operations.. Over the enterprises in the same branch of production are the state trusts, which are the lowest legal entities in Soviet industry. The trusts provide the enterprises with raw materials, machinery, credit, etc., and then dispose of the product to other state enterprises, to cooperatives or to the public. There are, however, a few very big enterprises, like the Magnitogorsk Metal Works in the Urals, which operate as trusts. In the First 5-Year Plan, the industrial combine was set over a number of trusts using the same basic raw materials. They direct the broad planning of production, the planning and control of capital construction, the organization of supplies and the disposal of the produce, technical management, the appointment and dismissal of the managerial personnel of the trusts and enterprises under their direction, broad questions of labor policy and the disposition of technicians and skilled workers. Over the combines (and trusts and enterprises) is the chief adminis¬ tration of the People’s Commissariat responsible for the type of production in question. The number of Commissariats has gradually been increased until there were 48 in 1946. Some of these are All- Union Commissariats, which are in charge of those branches of pro¬ duction of importance to the whole Union. (Coal,, petroleum, chem¬ icals, armaments, heavy machine building, electric power stations, etc.) Other People’s Commissariats are Union-Republican. -(Light industry, textiles, fish, building materials, etc.) They administer only a limited number of enterprises determined by the Supreme Soviet of the U. S. S. R. In general they worn through like-named People’s Commissariats of the constituent republics. The Commissariats are further coordinated by Interdepartmental Councils and by the Economsoviet, which is a. super-Commissariat headed by an outstanding official, such as the Chairman of the. Council of People’s Commissars. The function of the Economsoviet is to ]0 COMMUNISM IN ACTION coordinate the various People's Commissariats, issue decrees affecting or involving more than one Commissariat, confirm the supply plans of the different industries and regions as well as general plans for the transportation and warehousing of goods. QUESTION OF MALADMINISTRATION OR ILL EFFECTS OF COMMUNIST PLANNING This schematic presentation of the worldngs of the Soviet economy gives an impression of order, careful planning, the avoidance of waste, the interrelatedness of parts,, the assurance of markets—in fact, all that an engineer viewing the economy as a series of interrelated oper¬ ations would want. No wastes of capitalist individual enterprise. No uncontrolled competition. No interlopers starting new. businesses or new lines of old business. No advertising to take business away from one firm to another. No price “anarchy.” No strikes. No profiteering. Everything is in order and subject to control from on top. Because of the secrecy of the practices of the Soviet Union and because of the presumed unreliability or lack of technical competence' of journalists and opponents of the Soviet regime who were able to leave for other countries, criticisms of the actual operation of the Soviet economic system have always been subject, to reservation on grounds of bias, unfairness, prejudice., or inaccuracies. On the other hand, Government releases can certainly not be taken at face value; while the books of visiting firemen and fellow travelers are generally written by men without background in economic problems, whose chief qualification may indeed be nothing but an ardent will to believe . 3 While the best evidence, finally, is the statistics of produc- » For tnese reasons it may be well to state in this place the sources which were used in arriving at the judgments which are interspersed in this and the subsequent chapters. All the books to which references are made in the footnotes were read aud digested. A number of others—books and pamphlets—pro and con—detailed and general—served to fill in the background and to make the writer aware of the prejudices which abound, pro and con. . , . . , , . ., TT a o n The basic facts in this chapter and the subsequent chapter on mdustrial management m the U. S. S. R, come from the following publications: # ,, 4 - . - (a) Bienstock Schwarz, and Yugow, op. cit. This is a publication of the Institute of World Affairs and was released by the Oxford University Press in 1944. The Research Council of the Institute includes the names of some of the most outstanding American scholars. The authors were educated in Russia and lived there until sometime after the Revolution. They have followed Soviet economic developments conscien¬ tiously and have had their contributions accepted by the most reputable journals of several different C °(&j Alexander Baykov, Development of the Soviet Economic System (Cambridge University Press, 1946). This is a well-documented review of the experience and results of planning in the U. S. S. R., written bv the lecturer in charge of the Department of Economics and Institutions of the U. S. S. R. in the Uni¬ versity of Birmingham, England, and published in 1946. It is one of the publications of the National In¬ stitute of Economic and Social Research, which has among its staff some of the leading economists and statisticians of Great Britain. Dr. Baykov is a native of Russia, which he did not leave until 3 years after the revolution. Before coming to England he wrote and lectured on Soviet economy from his post in the University of Prague. . . „ . , ^ . /T . ^ ,, , , „ T . . ..... (c) Boris Brutzkus, Economic Plannmg in Soviet Russia (London, G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1935), This is an earlier publication than Baykov’s, also written by a Russian scholar and published in Great Britain in 1935. It is less factual than Baykov’s work and more given to theoretical analysis; but it exhibits the same breadth of view and fairness of approach, close familiarity with Soviet operating conditions and results and willingness to admit accomplishments which have actually occurred. Dr. Brutzkus had been professor of agricultural economics at Petrograd from 1907 to 1922. He served in the planning councils of Soviet Russia until the end of 1922, but was then compelled to leave. For the next 10 years he was profes¬ sor at the Russian Scientific Institute at Berlin, a position which he lost with the coming Of Hitler. (d) Alexander Barmine, One Who Survived (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945), embodying Bar- mine’s earlier work, Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat (London, L. Dickson, Ltd., 1938). Barmine is one of two Soviet industrialists and middle to top hierarchy men who have had wide industrial experience under Stalinism and are free to tell what they regard as the truth about their experiences. There is further dis¬ cussion of Barmine in the body of this chapter. (e) V'ctor Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom (New York, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1946). This book was written in the United States in late 1945 and early 1946 by a man who had had the most intimate industrial experi¬ ence as an engineer and director of enterprises under Stalinism. His experiences are presented in much greater detail than Barmine’s and they throw even more light on actual operations because Kravchenko worked little in Moscow. He was responsible for .industrial operations in a half dozen different sections of the U S. S R., including the area beyond the Urp.ls. There is also further discussion of Kravchenko in the body of this chapter. Barmine and Kravchenko did not know each other when they lived in Soviet Russia. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 11 tion and consumption, because this is the final test of any economy, it might be instructive to look at one or two experiences in the reports of two industrial managers and public officials of medium rank. One is Victor Kravchenko, whose career covered positions of assistant chief engineer of plants, assistant director and director of plants, enterprises, and trusts, and official of the Sovnarkom' of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. As a trusted Party member and official, Kravchenko was sent to the United States as a represent¬ ative of the Soviet supply agency. At the end of his term he decided to throw himself on the protection of public opinion of the United States rather than go back to the land of his birth, where his father had served much time as a political prisoner during the Czarist regime and had later fought in the Revolution, and where he himself had been brought up as a Communist, attended Soviet schools and had made a successful career for himself in the Soviet political-industrial hierarchy in the 20 years of his maturity. The other witness is Alexander Barmine, who had also had a successful career as a Soviet industrial manager as well as in the army and the diplomatic service. He had held the post of first vice president of the Machine-Tool Importing Trust and later was selected as the president of the new Auto-Moto- Export Trust. Barmine had represented the Soviet Union in Persia, Latvia, Belgium, and Greece before he escaped to France, from which country he finally came to the United States. Both these industrial managers have lifted the iron curtain to let us see political and economic planning as it involved men of their standing and position in the Soviet hierarchy—men who are the important cogs which make the plans and programs effective or ineffective, operate at more than 90 percent efficiency or 50 percent or 20 percent. A society can live according to its fashion at one level or at another, even though such indices as death rates, longevity, standard of living, and so forth, would be affected. The population might indeed continue to increase at a relatively low level of operation in comparison with its industrial potential—as, for example, in China or India. In one of his last, and up to that time, the most important post to which he was appointed, that of director of the steel pipe mill to be erected in Stalinsk in Siberia in 1939, Kravchenko reports the following series of events: 4 For many months the metallurgical industry had been discussing the decision of the top authorities to establish a grandiose pipe-rolling project in Stalinsk. The choice of the site, named after Joseph Stalin, attested to the importance of the project. The construction would cost 150,000,000 rubles. In the prescribed Soviet fashion, the plans were being ballyhooed well in ad¬ vance. * * * Without consulting my preferences, the Commissariat and the Central Committee of the Party selected me to direct the entire construction of this new plant. Kravchenko wanted to see the site before accepting the respon¬ sibility for its construction and operation. His immediate superior, the head of the Glavk that stood over enterprises and trusts in the iron and steel industry, “tossed me like a hot potato to Comrade Merkulov, who by this time had become Commissar of Ferrous Metallurgy.” 4 Kravchenko, op. cit., pp. 315-331. COMMUNISM IN ACTION Merkulov said: What’s the idea? I gather you want to make a personal check-up on a deci¬ sion confirmed by the Commissariat, the State Planning Commission (Gosplan), the Metallurgical Project Institute, the War Commissariat, the Central Com¬ mittee of -the Party and the Politburo. Are you in your right mind? Kravchenko was finally permitted to take a special trip to see the site. At the same time the Commissar cautioned that— funds for the factory had been appropriated. The Project Institute in Leningrad had been working on the blueprints for months. But since it can do no harm, I’ll authorize the trip. Only bear in mind that we can’t fool around with a party decision. What Kravchenko saw in Stalinsk appalled him: Conditions for undertaking the pipe-rolling project here were not merely diffi¬ cult or unfavorable; they were utterly impossible. The factories already in progress were stymied by shortages of wood, cement, brick, fuel. Despite the prison camps 6 there were neither enough workers nor living space for workers. The site was a huge naked stretch of muddy river front a considerable-distance from town without electric or gas lines, without railroad tracks or a trolley line, without so much as a negotiable road. Most serious of all, the terrain was wholly unsuitable for a metallurgical estab¬ lishment. One did not have to be a construction engineer to observe that the ground would not support big buildings and the heavy machinery called for by pipe-rolling—how in the world had so many engineers and commissions approved the site and the plans? Who had hoodwinked the Commissariat and the Central Committee? Who had permitted the outlay of millions of rubles in advance planning for an undertaking that was clearly doomed to failure? Equipped with photographs, charts, and other materials, we returned to Moscow. It was a heartrending task I faced—to unsell the government on a widely ballyhooed enterprise which had the imprimatur of the highest authorities- and involved the reputations, perhaps the freedom, of scores of big and little officials whose bureaucratic indifference or technical illiteracy was at the bottom of the inept project. My report to Merkulov (the Commissar of Ferrous Metallurgy) and his staff had the force of an earthquake. Everyone stared in stupefaction. All of them, it was evident to me, thought only how to extricate themselves from what might snowball into a political catastrophe. The picture I drew was too clear, too detailed to be wished away. Besides, it quickly appeared that voices had been raised in warning before, but had been silenced by fear. The responsible officials looked at me with angry, accusing eyes, as if my findings rather than their own ineptitude were responsible for the unpleasant situation. There followed weeks of stormy conferences, filled with veiled threats that my head would be forfeit if I made too much noise about the business. But I resisted all pressure to undertake the job despite the certainty that it meant wasted millions and wasted energy. In the end a solution was found: a perfectly typical Soviet solution, one, that is, which saved face for officialdom and concealed the gigantic mistake from wider circles. At Kemerovo, about 160 milesfrom Stalinsk, also on the Tom, another important industrial center was under development. At the time the project was planned, this place too had been mentioned as a possible site for this pipe-rolling factory. Galvanized by fear, the bureaucratic machine now went into high gear and soon all the enthusiasm pumped up for Stalinsk was being efficiently diverted to Kemerovo. All along the line, planning bureaus and Academicians, Party functionaries and technical authorities, suddenly discovered that Kemerovo must take precedence over Stalinsk. The “political conjuncture” abroad—by which w r e meant the tense relations with Japan—and the interests of Siberian industrialization gener¬ ally, it appeared, demanded that Kemerovo receive preference. Stalinsk could wait—forever, I knew full well, though no one as yet dared to concede that openly. Kravchenko patriotically characterizes this episode as 11 confusion which seems inevitable in planning on so large a scale.” s See tiie chapter on forced labor. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 13 Kravchenko details a number of other experiences in his long report which prefaces why he “chose freedom.” These reveal something less than perfection in the planning and coordination of the Soviet economic system. 6 From the outset our efforts were snarled in red tape and blocked by bureau¬ cratic stupidity. I had to accumulate materials and tools and arrange for their transport and storage. Thousands of skilled and unskilled workers had to be mobilized, then provided with homes and elementary care. Under normal condi¬ tions such problems would not involve insurmountable difficulties. Under our Soviet system every step required formal decisions by endless bureaus, each of them jealous of its rights and in mortal dread of taking initiative. Repeatedly petty difficulties tied us into knots which no one dared untie without instructions from Moscow. We lived and labored in a jungle of questionnaires, paper forms and reports in seven copies. We were in critical need of brick. Hundreds of prisoners marched from their distant camps to toil fourteen hours a day to meet construction demands for this material by various Kemerovo administrations. At the same time, however, two large and well-equipped brickyards stood idle. They happened to belong to another commissariat which was “conserving” them for some mythical future purposes. I begged and threatened and sent emissaries to Moscow in an attempt to unfreeze these yards, but bureaucracy triumphed over common sense. The brickyards remained dead throughout the period of my stay in the city. While we were making frenzied efforts to find homes for our workers, a block of new houses stood like a taunt, unfinished and useless, on the outskirts of Kemerovo. The credits made available for this project, it appeared, had been exhausted be¬ fore the work was finished. I had the necessary money to buy and complete this housing but never succeeded in breaking through the entanglements of red tape. The organization which had started the building was willing to relinquish its interest. Everyone, in fact, seemed willing and authorization for the deal seemed about to come through—only it never did. A vital tramway line running through our area was nearly completed, beveral tens of thousands of rubles would have sufficed to put it into operation, and the funds were on tap. But because of some budgetary snarl the city fathers dared not release them without a decision from higher up. I wrote dozens of urgent letters demanding that the line be opened. There were stormy sessions of the City Committee of the Party and the Kemerovo Soviet on the issue. But month after month passed and nothing happened. Meanwhile thousands of weary men and women spent two and three hours a day trudging to and from work. One is struck particularly with the relative unconcern on the part of the Soviet planners for the human aspects of economic production. When construction was started on ambitious industrial enterprises, as in Stalinsk and Magnitogorsk, little thought was given to the provision of decent living accommodations for workers. This is all the more noteworthy in a communist society which is supposed to be devoted to the welfare of workers as a capitalist society never is supposed to be and when the problem is simplified because the complete plans of capacity production and employment do not depend upon an uncer¬ tain market but are altogether in the hands of the Government indus¬ trial officials. Moreover, Government housing and the provision of facilities would be only an extension of the Government factory and the odium of company towns and company housing would not adhere. Yet they have opened plants employing tens of thousands of workers without any special facilities for them, depending to a large degree on the manager's fund obtained through reductions in cost below planned reductions for housing facilities for workers with the passing years. Kravchenko mentions the pathetic housing in Stalinsk, the neaiby concentration colonies of “8,000 slaves,” and the slums which the workers called “shanghais.” “What a contrast,” he exclaimed, “be- ® These quotations are from Kravchenko, op. cit., pp. 328-329. 14 COMMUNISM IN ACTION tween these ‘shanghais’*and these mud ‘homes’ and the propaganda pictures in our films and magazines!” 7 In Pervouralsk, Kravchenko remarked that “intrinsically good human material was being spoiled by a senseless emphasis on production which ignored the comfort and the health of the human beings behind the production.” 8 . Alexander Barmine gives numerous experiences illustrating the poor planning, ineffective coordination, the loss of time in formalities and in waiting for approval from higher up. Two of these are selected be¬ cause they illustrate other weaknesses than these pointed out by Kravchenko. The manufacture of ball bearings involves much detailed calculation and ex¬ treme precision of workmanship. The machinery used for the purpose is very costly and has to be maintained with scrupulous care. When I w r ent.through the shops with Mr. Brown [manager of an English machinery concern], a number of machines 'were standing idle, since no one had yet learned how to use them. Moreover, my guest noticed that the floors of the rooms where the work of highest precision was being carried out were made of cement. “Cement dust,” he said, ‘will soon deteriorate delicate machinery.” Nobody had ever thought of that! Mr. Brown suggested that the floors be covered with a certain oil byproduct, and I wrote a report to the Industry Commissariat, mentioning his suggestion. Two years later I went over the factory again. I found an epic struggle now being carried on against bad work. A higher and higher percentage of the product was being rejected as below standard. Alleged sabotage was being hunted down; there was a never-ending series of investigations; and “shock tactics” had been introduced, with the usual slogan: “Get on with the plan.” But I noticed that the floors were still made of cement! There had been no time to halt the machines and make the necessary alterations. The Party chiefs insisted that the plan of production of this much-publicized factory should be “exceeded at any costs.” 8 In 1934, 16 years after the Revolution, Barmine arranged to drive from Leningrad to Moscow in an American Buick on a road which “had been the pride and joy of the Department of Roads and Bridges under the Imperial regime.” This was a distance of about 450 miles. First we had to get a card entitling us to buy gasoline. We made the necessary requests to the administration of the road and car society, the Avtodor, to the gasoline rationing board, and to the Committee of the Party in the hope that we might be able to hasten the formalities. The business was completed in two days, for we both held high positions. Our gasoline cards gave us the right to replenish our tanks anywhere in the Union, without further explanations. We were in high good humor when we took the road. The first 150 miles passed pleasantly enough against a background of trackless snow and a mildly Artie landscape. From time to time we passed trucks standing motionless by the roadside, some empty, some loaded. There was never any sign of their drivers. The heavy vehicles waited there on the white road, looking oddly abandoned. The sight was a strange one and pricked our curiosity. The further we got, the more numerous became these trucks, until at times it looked as though whole caravans had been abandoned by the roadside. It was only very occasionally that we met one on the move, and when we did so we noticed that the driver stared at us with an expression of surprise mingled with respect. We began to think about refilling our tanks. We would do it at the next market town, a traffic center of importance, the hub of several roads linking the various big townships of the ancient government of Tver. The small town was dozing in the cold sunlight. We went into a tavern. “Where can we find gas?” Some truck drivers seated at a table made ironic faces when we put the question to them. “Gas, comrades? We've been waiting for gas for two days! There’s not a drop anywhere along the road. Didn’t you see all the stalled trucks?” We gazed at each other in amazement, for we had been led to believe that the Soviet Union came second only to the United States in oil production. We would 7 Kravchenko, op. cit., p. 325. 8 Ibi'd., p. 294. 8 Barmine, op. cit., p. 210. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 15 have to look into this mystery later; but what could be done to solve the immed¬ iate difficulty? We had a bad quarter-hour cudgeling our brains. Then my friend had a brilliant inspiration. “There must be a few druggists somewhere in this hole. Let’s buy up all their benzine.” We went through that town with a fine-tooth comb, putting our case to every druggist we could find. They were impressed when they learned that we were directors of the Commissariat of Foreign Trade, and we collected several quarts of benzine. We started off again under the surprised gaze of the stranded drivers. It wasn’t that they thought us adepts in black magic, but that they assumed that the G. P. U.—the only people still likely to have any gas—had got us out of our difficulties because we happened to be, so to speak, “in the trade.” We counted on being able to fill up again nearer Moscow. But as a result of the delay there was no longer any hope of getting home that evening. We should have to put up somewhere for the night. This new problem was hardly less difficult than our last one. There were no hotels on this roa-d, and the few taverns were already crammed with carters, truck drivers, local officials, and peasants. Their taprooms were suffocating, and most of them had no accom¬ modations. We finally found one with beds in the living room, and sheets, to be sure, but sheets which had already been used by someone else. The manager explained, “We do our washing once a month.” We accepted the inevitable, for sleeping in our cars would have meant risking death from cold. Next day our drugstore benzine carried us another 70 miles and then gave out. We realized with horror that we still had more than 200 miles to go. The white ribbon of road stretched endlessly before us. The abandoned trucks which we passed at intervals reminded us of an army in retreat. Several of them were scarcely visible under their blankets of snow. At every village, at every filling station, we made the same inquiry, always without effect. There was no gas to be had. We began to hate the sight of those cards which gave us permission to replenish our tanks “anywhere in Russia.” Wouldn’t it have been simpler to tell us there was no gasoline to be had between Leningrad and Moscow—after five peaceful years of triumphant industrialization—or, rather, that the filling stations were there but all bone dry? “Does this often happen?” we asked. “It’s very remarkable when it doesn’t,” was the reply. In Moscow we had seen for ourselves hundreds of persons queuing up for a few quarts; we knew that gasoline was being sold on the black market at four or five times its official price, but we had thought that those in charge of the Five-Year Plan would at least have provided for the needs of people traveling on state business on the main road between the capitals. All these broken-down trucks meant disorganization of work and failure to transport food over vast districts of the country. We spent our second night at an empty filling station. Whatever happened we’d got to get to Moscow' somehowd My eye caught sight of a barrel. “Kero¬ sene?” I asked. The risk wns considerable, but we had to take it. We trembled with apprehension as we fed our cars, accustomed to the refined product of Shell, with the awful stuff used for local lighting—black, greasy crude oil, full of foreign bodies. Surely our engines .would never be able to digest such food! But they did. To an accompaniment of spitting, kicking, groaning, and jerking, we finally got off. The road was a road now only by courtesy. Ruts of frozen snow alternated with stretches of ice. There were quite unaccountable holes and lumps in the surface. Our springs broke. We got them mended in a rough-and-ready w r ay at a village smithy. We were frozen and exhausted: we both had streaming colds. My companion went to sleep as he drove, very nearly turned his car over in a stream, and got a nasty jab in the ribs from the wheel, which was damaged in the process! We looked pitiful and sick. We might have been conducting a*retreat from Moscow' instead of traveling to Moscow in modern cars. At last, at Kalinin, we managed to get some gas. Victory! 10 An illustration of more careful planning is given by Barmine in the episode of his purchase of coke furnaces for Kuznetsk from a French company. The quotation is from Barmine, op. cit., pp. 203-205. There is more to the story: He never actually made Moscow; the car was smashed and sold to Torgsin without repairs. (Torgsin are the stores where more expensive purchases may be made for gold or foreign exchange.) 16 COMMUNISM IN ACTION We asked for delivery in nine months. The director of the French company Pr °But e< Tve just come back from Kuznetsk/’ he exclaimed. “The place is a trackless desert. What is the point of taking delivery of stuff which you can t possibly use until the district has been opened up? And that won t happen for two years at least.” , , ,, . , , . Actually Stalin’s ruthless determination had thrown into Kuznetsk gangs composed of Old Bolsheviks, Young Communists, workers’ shock brigades engineers fired, by enthusiasm or terrified by threats, convicts condemned to forced labor, and expropriated kulaks. These men lived in huts and ate black bread and stale cabbage. But the factory was ready in a year.* 1 Aside from the industrial experience of these two men, there are no free, self-critical studies and analyses of operations under the Plans, which appear on paper to be so carefully worked out; but the sharp criticism of a large number of writers who have lived in the Soviet Union and the vast numbers—estimated by all who have looked into the matter in the millions—who have been liquidated or exiled for poor work, for sabotage, “wrecking/” etc., generally the direct consequence of orders issued in Moscow, certainly does not support the picture of a perfect plan perfectly worked out from on high, with the ablest and the most effective officials exactly in the right places and the mecha¬ nism of production planning on local, industrial, interindustry, and national levels all worked out to promote the welfare of all. PLANNING AND COMPETITION The human love of order has lent a certain amount of prestige to the Soviet system because their economy gravitates about the concept of Plans. But it certainly has not been proved to the satisfaction of dispassionate economic analysts that the faults of a completely planned economy, which must effectively eliminate competition and socialize all productive assets—probably also completely control the movement of workers and their compensation—are less serious than the faults and instabilities of a free competitive society, whose excesses may be con¬ trolled in the public interest. The principal value of competition is that it gives a vested interest to no one. It leaves vast areas of our economic life open to continu¬ ous exploration, experimentation and innovation, and, by the sub¬ stantial rewards it makes possible, stirs people to action in very many directions. If one metal or plastic at lower cost and price is success¬ fully substituted for another, no other decision is necessary. Com¬ petitive producers must conform or lose their market. In a fully protected economy, like that of Soviet Russia, traditional methods tend to continue because no one competes with the Government enterprise. Inefficiency has a larger measure of protection. The managers are intent on meeting and even surpassing goals set by the top Government planners and executives, all of whose interests tend to be to go along together. Even in Soviet Russia a purge is a serious matter. You can’t have one every year and still get the necessary work done. An d the ultimate question as to who is to purge the purgers always remains. Are the top men always right? Do they always know and employ the best methods? Do they never grow old or stodgy? Have they never any interest to protect their own par¬ ticular methods and ways of doing things? Are all the brains and n Barmine, op. eit., p. 178. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 17 daring in the top management and do they have the exclusive genius always to select the best of all possible methods for the welfare of all? The question is not plan or no plan, for there is plenty of planning in American industry as well as in the U. S. S. R. The twentieth century has indeed been called the Plan Age by many analysts of economic and social trends in the United States. The question which is of paramount interest to Americans is the effectiveness of the opera¬ tion as a whole, its ability to furnish to tho people the highest possible standard of living and the largest area of freedom to pursue their own lives and make the best contribution possible to their own and the common welfare. PROGRESS OF SOVIET INDUSTRY, 1928-38 As already indicated, the N. E. P. was a strategic retreat which served the dual purpose of restoring productive industry of the country to some level near the productivity of prerevolutionary Russia, while it retained a dominant position for the sector of large-scale production which remained socialized. The First 5-Year Plan, inaugurated in 1928, undertook a definite reconstruction of the whole national economy. Its broad elements have also been outlined. This system is the present Soviet economy. What progress has been made in the decade or more before the Second World War during which it was in operation? We must recognize that this entire period was planned for a vast effort at industrialization—that is, to increase the capacity to produce and to become more self-sufficient, rather than to increase the volume and variety of consumers’ goods here and now. The volume of con¬ sumers’ goods was increased under all tho 5-Year Plans, but the em¬ phasis on armaments, which began in the Second Plan and continued more urgently in the Third Plan, took up much of the slack which would have been released by the progress of general industrialization. Historically, both Stalin and the Communist Party have recognized that the main achievement of the First 5-Year Plan was a vast capital construction. They were not, however, satisfied that production was efficient because neither management nor labor still had the know-how. Emphasis in the Second 5-Year Plan was therefore to be placed on mastering the technique of production, improving quality, increasing labor productivity, and lowering production costs. 12 After soberly examining the results of the First 5-Year Plan, goals for the Second 5-Year Plan, which had provided for very steep increases in the preliminary proposals, were sharply reduced. They provided over all for an average annual increase of 16.5 percent in industrial produc¬ tion over the levels attained in the First 5-Year Plan. 13 The Second 5-Year Plan called for a gross output of 92.7 billion rubles in 1937. Official figures show that 95.5 billion was produced. . The Third 5-Year Plan stepped up the industrialization of the country still further, with emphasis on the location of new industries and the development of the local resources in the eastern and far- eastern regions of the U. S. S. R. 14 An average annual increase of all industrial production of 12.4 percent was planned. In the Third, as in the other two Plans, the increase in producers’ goods was .to be greater than the increase in consumers’ goods. Under the Third 5- i2 Baykov, op. cit., pp. 168,179. J» Ibid., p. 183. w Ibid., p. 287i IS COMMUNISM IN ACTION Year Plan, the gross output of industry was to increase from 95.5 billion rubles in 1937 to ISO billion rubles in 1942. By 1940 it had reached only 125.5 billion rubles, which suggests that even if war had not intervened, the goal would not have been fulfilled. Whatever the cost in suffering and sacrifice, in internal tensions, acerbity of emotion, and ruthlessness, there can be no doubt that very substantial economic progress was made by those who survived. To the opponents of the regime—emigres, those who were made to suffer, those who “escaped” and those who could not take it, and to hosts of foreign correspondents and visitors—the U. S. S. R. became a vast prison. To others inside and outside the country it is reported as a land in which thought is taken, as in no other land, of the welfare of the common man. The regime planned far ahead and, beginning with so little, belts had to be tightened. But goals were set for the calculable future, and all energies were focused on them. The goals were met in general, modified only as sound experience dictated. In the process a new and virile people were created who felt they were on their way to being masters of their own destiny. The emphasis of Soviet Russia’s development has been on indus¬ trial power—capital goods, basic materials, fuel, and electricity. Secondly it has been on the opening of the vast eastern areas, “behind the Urals.” Both of these developments give promise of propor¬ tionately greater achievements in the production of consumers’ goods than the record thus far shows. A measure of the progress of industrialization between the pre¬ revolutionary period and 1938 is given in the following physical terms: 15 (Milliard rubles, 1926-27 value) Engineering and metal industries Engines_ Goods trucks (thousands).. Motor cars (thousands)- Electric power (milliard kw-h.)_. Coal (million tons).... Oil (million tons)... Iron ore (million tons)_ Manganese ore (thousand tons).. Pig iron (million tons)_ Steel (million tons)__ Rolled steel (million tons)_ Copper (thousand tons)_ Aluminum (thousand tons)_ Cement (million tons)_ Cotton textiles (million m.)_ Woolen textiles (million m). Leather shoes (million prs.)_ Raw sugar (thousand tons).-. 1913 1929 1933 1937 1938 1,446 3, 054 10,822 27, 519 33,613 418 602 941 1, 581 1, 626 14.8 15.9 18.2 66.1 49.1 1.4 49.7 200.0 211.4 1.9 6.2 16.4 36.4 39.6 29.1 40.1 76.3 127.9 132.9 9.2 13.8 22.5 30.5 32.2 9.2 8.0 14.4 27.7 26. 5 1, 245 702 1,021 2, 752 2, 273 4.2 4.0 7.1 14.5 14.6 4.2 4.9 6.9 17.7 18.0 3.5 3.9 5.1 13.0 13.3 35.5 44.5 7.0 99.8 37.7 103. 2 56.8 1. 5 2.2 2.7 5.5 5.7 2,227 3, 068 2, 422 3, 447 3,491 95 100.6 86.1 108.3 114.0 48.8 80.3 164.2 213.0 1, 290 1,233 995 2,421 2,519 Official statistics of industrial production as a whole show a steady increase since the First 5-Year Plan became a working success: Gross production , all industry 16 [In milliard rubles in fixed prices at 1926-27] 1928 1932 1937 1938 15. 7 34. 3 95. 5 106. 8 1939 _ 1940 _ 1941 (plan) 1942 (plan) 1 5 Official figures reproduced in Baykov, op. cit., p. 307. is Derived from official figures reproduced in Baykov, op. cit., pp. 165, 283, 289 , 291 123. 9 137. 5 162. 0 184. 0 COMMUNISM IN ACTION 19 Detailed comparisons with progress made during this period m the United States could prove almost anything a writer sets out to prove. Even without getting into the rabid controversy as to the reliability of Soviet statistics and the consistent playing down of Russian industrial accomplishments in pre-Soviet days, with its own potenti¬ alities for progress in the three decades in which private enterprise was destroved, we must arrive at the admitted fact that the Russian people are still very poor not only by American, but also by prewar western European standards as well. Until we were all involved in the Second World War, Soviet leaders, proud of their accomplishments, were nonetheless always ready to admit that Soviet industry still had a way to go “to catch up with and surpass capitalism, and that per capita production was still far behind that of the United States and Germany—Hitlerite Germany, be it remembered. In their own minds the Soviet leaders, have been fighting a con¬ tinuous war since the great days when, with the slogans Peace and No Annexations and No Indemnities” and “ All Power to the Soviets’’, they established themselves as the governing power in the land. Ail through its history Soviet industry has been organized and managed on the analogy of battles to be won on the way to victory over capital¬ ism. There is an economic General Staff that lays out what needs to be done. There is a military organization with military discipline from the top down. War metaphors such as “the coal front,” “the grain front/’ “shock brigades,” “the hero of Soviet labor,” the “storming” of positions, have been commonly used in describing industrial needs or problems. . The concentration on public investment and capital development may indeed have saved the country in the tune of its greatest peril. They had the plants, the power, and the basic materials which coulu rapidly be devoted to abundant war production. They have, how¬ ever, never had the abundance of consumers’ goods available to the American and the western European. The mere establishment of large factories and the increase in basic materials was the basic “victory.” „ , . , Looked at, then, from the point of view of what the average worker and farm laborer and their families have, the Russian is still a poor man. His life revolves around the factory—his precious productive unit which yields him not only wages, but housing, food, and such recreation as he has. Mr. W. L. White, the American journalist who recently toured the Soviet Union in company with JVlr. Eric Johnston, was very much impressed with this. He noted: A Russian belongs to his job. He and his family usually sleep in an apartment which his factory owns. He probably eats, in his factory dining room, food raised on his factory’s farm. His children attend a day nursery which it maintains. Thev play games and go to movies in its culture palace and they go on vacations when it can spare them, on trains which it designates, to resorts and workers rest homes which it controls. 17 Whether the acknowledged shortages of consumers’ goods will con¬ tinue to be a characteristic of the Soviet economy cannot be said with certainty. The Fourth 5-Year Rian seems to differ hardly at all from its predecessors. The chief emphasis continues, on heavy industry and transport. There will still be a very low level of consumption for a high level of production if the Fourth 5-Year Plan is successful n W. L. White, Report on the Russians (New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1945), pp. 29-30, 20 COMMUNISM IN ACTION by the end of 1950. At the same time the economic might of Soviet Russia is already a fact. As John Scott, the American who worked in the Urals between 1932 and 1938, put it: Pig iron was pig iron, whether or not the blast furnace "was constructed by prisoner specialists and disfranchised kulaks. 18 » - r . PROFITS IN THE SOVIET ECONOMY The theory of socialism and communism is that profits are a purely capitalistic phenomenon—the share which the owners of capital, machinery, and other instruments of production by then- superior economic power are able to wrest from the defenseless workers wdio have no capital and therefore must accept jobs which yield them just enough for sustenance and to perpetuate their kind. The expropriation of capitalists and landlords, which was the heart of the original Communist Revolution, was justified on the moral ground that property was theft, built up by robbing the workers of the full product of their labor. Indeed, one early slogan of the revo¬ lution was ‘‘rob the robbers. The first 2 or 3 years of the Revolution furnished abundant proof to the thinking leaders of the Revolution that there was more to it than that. The people were living on accumulated stores, which were running out. Production was stagnating. Machinery was deteriorating. They acknowledged temporary defeat in inaugurating the new economic policy. Beginning with the N. E. P. the Soviet leaders never again .made the mistake of assuming that labor produces all values, that capital in its myriad forms just reproduces itself, and that business management was a parasitic capitalistic appendage. There is a certain naivete in the speculations of theoretical commu¬ nists about "surplus value” and the right of the worker to "the whole product.” In the actual operation of the Soviet economy, as in any economy, it was soon learned that there are other costs of operation and that reserves must be set aside for the restoration of capital and for its enlargement, for fluctuations in business, and for the social cost of both industry and government. This is brought out very well by a Soviet economist who later became head of Gosplan. He wrote: It would be thoughtless to suppose that under socialism the worker receives as his individual allotment the full product of his labor for his personal consump¬ tion. * * * The total product of the labor of all workers constitutes the en¬ tire social product of a given society. From this it is necessary to deduct, first the part needed for restoring the depreciated means of production; an additional part for expanding production; and a reserve fund as an insurance against acci¬ dents and unforeseen natural calamities. The remainder is that part of the total social product which is to be used for consumption. But before this can be distributed to individuals, the following must be set aside: the general expenses for that administration not directly connected with production; a share for the social satisfaction of needs, such as schools, hospitals, etc.; a fund for the sup¬ port of those who are unable to work, etc. Only after this is done do we finally have that part of the [consumption fund which is distributed as the individual allotment. The other parts constitute the social accumulation, reserve, and socialized consumption funds. The problem of what part of the workday should be for consumption and what part should be put into the fund of socialist ac¬ cumulation is concretely a historical problem, and will be solved in each case by a planned directive of the proletarian state. 19 if John Scott, Behind the Urals (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1942), p. 227. » N. Voznesensky, The Problem of the Economics of Socialism, Bolshevik, Nos. 1-3, January 30,1932, p. 26. Quoted in Joseph Freeman, The Soviet Worker (New York, Liveright, Inc., 1932), p. 53. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 21 The size of the profit account in the Soviet economy may be drawn from some available statistics on Government receipts from profits and from the turn-over tax, which is another form of profits in the Soviet economy, because it is added to other costs in fixing prices. The profits of factories are the difference between prices set by the state and total costs, including the turn-over tax, multiplied by the volume produced. In 1940 profits made up 12 percent of all federal revenues, while the turn-over tax provided 59 percent of total reve¬ nues—71 percent in all. 20 This is not all, because only about half of the profits go into the federal treasury; the other half remains with the enterprises and is used for servicing the plant and for the benefit of workers. The turn-over tax is a charge on all industry, and the vast receipts from this tax are the main contribution of every worker and producer to the expenses of Government. The contribution is made whether or not the enterprise is profitable, since the Plans fix the prices, which include the turn-over tax. Price is manipulated to attain whatever ends the Government may desire. Reduction of cost does not ultimately result, as under free competition, in reduction of price. In an even more absolute way than the monopolistic corpo¬ rations of the capitalist countries, the Soviet State may keep prices unchanged despite reduction of cost: State monopoly is complete. Reduction of cost may, therefore, wholly or in part, result in increased plant profits and State revenue, instead of in lowered prices. * * * Not more than one-third to one-half of all cost economies achieved during the three Plan periods can have been used for reductions in sales prices. 21 Turn-over tax rates differ widely and are imposed in accordance with the purposes of the Plans. Some of the prewar rates on con¬ sumers’ goods as percentages of retail prices were: Bread, 75 percent; meat, 7Cf percent; butter, 60 percent; salt, 82 percent; tea and coffee, 86 percent; tobacco, 80 percent; textiles, 74 percent; shoes, 80 percent; soap, 62 percent. The retail price of sugar in 1940 was fixed at 6.50 rubles per kilogram, of which 5.20 rubles represented turn-over tax. 22 As this is not a graduated tax and there are no exemptions for persons of low income, the “ultimate consumer” pays plenty from whatever the proceeds of his labor may yield in wages. The appropriation of interest, profits, and taxation by the state does not change their function. Neither does it add 1 pound of sugar or one pair of shoes to the supplies available to the people. In fixing prices in the Soviet economy a wide margin is maintained between the price charged and the costs of production, including labor costs. In the First 5-Year Plan this margin was said to be wide enough on the average to permit the reinvestment of 30 percent m capital expansion and to pay the vast bureaucratic overhead as well. 23 In Soviet Russia this surplus is said to belong to the whole nation, but it is, of course, withheld just as effectively from the possible enjoyment of the workers in any year of its production. It is supposed to be indicative of a deep concern of the Soviet planners for the future, as indeed the existence of capital in any land is a measure of the value which is placed by the community upon the future in comparison with the present. In that sense, the amount of capital at the disposal of the average American worker is still many times the amount available to the average Soviet 20 Bienstock, Schwarz, and Yugow, op. cit., pp. 79, 85. 21 Ibid., p. 84. 22 Ibid. 23 Brutzkus, op. cit., pp. 131-133. 22 COMMUNISM IN ACTION worker. Reliable comparable statistics are not available, but the Soviet leadeis have always been ready to admit this fact and to gear their plans to the prospect of attaining the degree of mechanization which exists in the United States. PEOFITS AND “EXPLOITATION” Communist literature assumes that private property per se is a means of exploiting other men—and the only means. But the regime hi the U. S. S. R. furnishes ample proof that under any system capital is the product of past and present industry withheld from present consumption in order to be used in further production and that it must be paid for in waiting and sacrifices. . Whether one or another method of paying for the services of capital is preferable may, of course, be debated; but even on moral grounds, the decision would rest on what is, in the long run, available to the people after all deductions for plant and other capital are made. The possibilities of exploitation in the Soviet Union are found both in the operations of the economy and in political life. Abundant illustrations of these possibilities which became actualities are given in this and the following three chapters. There are many who would regard these forms of exploitation as far more destructive of human values than the institutional exploitation which is postulated by Communists as characterizing every private business enterprise. There are many old Socialists and revolutionaries inside and outside the Soviet Union who feel rather strongly about this. Kravchenko's father was such an old revolutionary who grew very bitter about what he considered the exploitation of Stalinism even when his son was rising in the Soviet hierarchy. He saw that his son had everything that Soviet Russia had to offer—a car, a chauffeur, a beautifully fur¬ nished apartment, fresh fruits and vegetables, what seemed to be security and savings, while in his bitterness he generalized that the workers were worse off than under the Czars. I am not happy that a son of mine is among the new exploiters, even if he is not himself to blame for it. 24 In the Soviet Union, where all the profits of the labor of all the people are absorbed by capital investment, the state and its apparatus, and by the officialdom, it is the totalitarian Government which determines what the different classes of workers shall get, how much shall be withheld to restore and develop capital and to support the bureauc¬ racy, what shall be the place and conditions of work, what shall be produced and the selling prices, the terms of exchange (through price fixing) between agricultural and industrial production, the amount and type of export and import, who and what numbers shall be housed or go into exile at forced labor, and how many others shall be destroyed with or without trial. 25 Yet it is said that this cannot possibly be exploitation of man by man because, forsooth, the state owns all productive property. By contrast, they allege that each and every worker employed in the automotive, steel, chemical, textile, air-trans¬ port, and motion-picture industries in the United States, and every worker in transportation, communication, and any of the large service trades is sure to be “exploited” because the “means of production” are furnished by private individuals or corporations. * 4 Kravchenko, op. cit., p. 205. a Por more elaborate treatment on some of these matters, see the chapters on labor ana forced labor. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 23 CONTRASTING BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SOVIET AND AMERICAN ECONOMY The workers (and peasants) of Russia have had a long memory of hostility and struggle against the Government of the country. In Czarist days it was the people against the Government. When they took over the Government and with it the expropriation and national¬ ization of the land and industrial property, the people were told there was nothing else to light against. The people owned everything. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” was said to be a holding opera¬ tion against the return of “bourgeois rule,” of landlords and capitalists. In the first decade of the revolution the distinction and antagonism between the people and the Government broke down. It is true that a new governing class was being created—a class of politicians, commissars, planners, administrators, managers, Army officers, and intellectuals drawn from the Communist Partju These now make up the Government, and their Government runs industry and agri¬ culture as well as the political activities of the State. The Soviet Government which manages all industry is not, of course, a democracy in the American sense; but neither is it simply a personal dictatorship. It has developed many new forms in structure and organization in its three decades of history. It is operated in con¬ sultation and with the cooperation of numerous representative bodies in their society. A Government decision is, however, final in realms in which Government does not operate in the United States. A course of action having been settled upon in accordance with the determined needs of the state (as viewed by the Communist Party hierarchy), it is carried out whether or not desired or repugnant to the persons or groups directly and indirectly affected. Forms and symbols of cooperation are set up and elaborate steps are taken to show the great benefit of the course of action to all and its superiority to “capitalist methods.” Thus all Government action in the economic sphere is always presented as the embodiment of the will of all the people—and this is true whether the decision, for example, is to spend vast sums for capital development rather than for consumers’ goods, or to increase production quotas without increases in pay, to pay on a piecework rather than time basis, or to have greater inequality rather than relative equality of income for different categories of workers. Government decisions may be debated thoroughly in the inner councils of the Communist Party; but once they are made, they are the official “Party line,” and the Party line brooks no “right devia- tionists” or “Mt deviationists.” The new Party line may, indeed, be the opposite of the Party line of a year or two ago; but.it is none the less true Marxism and Leninism. Thus, as we shall see in the chapter on labor, equality in wages turned into magnified wage differentials, payment in accordance with needs was supplanted by payment by results to a greater extent than elsewhere in the world, the cooperative management of industry was interpreted to include “Socialist com¬ petition,” speed-up and Stakhanovism, severe penalties for minor industrial infractions, and the discipline of “labor books.” To further convince the unwilling or skeptical, these changes iii the operations of the Soviet economy (as well as turnabout with reference to matters of foreign policy) were accompanied by the liquidation of the dissi¬ dents. In these ways the success of the new programs and the dangers of irregularity were advertised. And since any of those who were 00681—46-3 24 COMMUNISM IN ACTION articulate in their opposition to a Party policy are no longer articulate, the Party decision becomes indisputably “the will of the people. lhe Government, and, behind the Government, the Party, speaks for the whole nation on all matters of economic policy at all times. _ . The decisions of the Government are accepted without deviation in minor as well as in major matters, and they permeate not only the broad planning of the interrelation of parts in industry but also the operations of plant and institutional management and the status, of the individual worker. There is at the present stage of the evolution of communism in the XJ. S. S. R. apparently no question of the coirect- ness of this point of view, for the country has no traditions of popular government and the withholding from the governing party of precious inalienable rights reserved for the individual. . . In contrast with centralized economic planning m boviet Russia, the American system has left the initiative in industry to private planners, employers, and investors who are given an inducement to find new markets, reduce costs of production (but not at the expense of the highest wage levels of any country in the world), and meet the needs and predilections of their customers. When our system remains in balance, it is because the risks taken by thousands of independent enterprises or corporations either fill voids which exist or these enter¬ prises contract or are eliminated when they do not find a profitable place for themselves in serving the consumer or as suppliers of other lines of business. 26 The phenomenon of the market is itself one of the most democratic forces ever devised. It determines whether there shall be more beer, more petroleum products, more retail outlets, and moie housing rather than more industrial plants, more coal, more blacksmith shops, and more outmoded styles of apparel. It also determines the success of particular types of housing, particular styles of clothing, varied types of public eating accommodations, and public amusement. It depends upon the individual whether he spends more for milk or fruits and vegetables or liquor or household furnishings or books or the latest automatic fountain pen; whether he chooses to spend or save without regard to the standards or wishes of a Government department. Our choices are free, limited only by the amount of money we can make and the ingenuity of our collective intelligence to furnish anything the people may want to buy. On the production side also there is no fixed way of doing things. Different producers obtain their own sources of materials and com¬ ponents, employ different processes, are at different degrees of mecha¬ nization, and are struggling for their existence and for ever wider mar¬ kets. If they see an opportunity to reduce costs and widen their markets by substituting one material for another, substituting new machinery, rearranging the plant, using new fuels or byproducts, for the most part they need no one’s permission beyond the management of the plant. 27 If they lose, they lose only the company’s money. If they win, others will soon be forced to make similar improvements, and the winning company will have to try again to keep ahead of the pro¬ cession. This is called by Oommumsts the anarchism of capitalistic production.” 2« Unemployment as an economic phenomenon is treated in tho chapter on labor. ...... 27 An exception must be made of the “administered” sector of our economy; whether the administration is private through such a device as a patent pool or public through policies such as agricultural crop control. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 25 Taking the economy as a whole, the people in the Soviet Union live on a hand-to-mouth basis, which makes it comparatively easy to con¬ trol purchasing power and the direction of spending. The widespread use of rationing and different levels of prices for different classes of persons in the Soviet Union makes it easy to lap up excess purchasing power which may flow from differential wages or high payments for Staklianovites, executives, artists, and Government officials, for whom in any case only a small proportion of luxuries must be produced. There has been persistent evidence of the dissatisfaction in the Soviet Union with the comparatively small increases in the production of con¬ sumers’ goods available to the general public. Living standards for the average man and woman are still pitiably low—estimated by some of the warmest friends of the Soviet system as at the level of relief workers in the United States in the depth of the depression of 1931-32. There seems to be a need for official promises to increase the supply of consumers’ goods whenever new plans or programs are announced or reports of accomplishments are made. While there is no Gosplan in the United States, the cooperative efforts' of management, finance, labor, and Government have made it possible to produce goods and services purchased by nearly all families and persons which are considered the greatest luxuries in the Soviet Union. Nor has it been necessary for any Government department to continue year after year to withhold these benefits from the people in order to produce the necessary factories, machine tools, locomotives, etc. Funds for capital maintenance and expansion are made available from the savings of all the people. New workers are induced to take their proper places largely on the basis of their own self-interest and generally at more attractive pay and working conditions than hereto¬ fore. Prices for all these items are reduced as markets expand and the more efficient firms drive out the less efficient. . In all this the Govern¬ ment plays its part, of course. It sets minimum labor standards; it tries to prevent monopolistic price control; it encourages competi¬ tion; it promotes collective bargaining; it renders vast social services, adjusted to the ebb and flow of business success or failure; it conducts its own public works when the people decide that these are best oper¬ ated as public enterprises. Through its elaborate taxation system, the Government collects its receipts largely on the basis of ability to pay and uses these receipts increasingly to balance inequalities and open opportunities for all. And if the people do not like the degree or direction of change, there is nothing to stop them from calling in new leaders end passing new laws which will bring the results more nearly to their heart’s desire. Chapter II-I ROLE OF INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT Industry Without Management The communism of the 5-Year Plans is not the natural communism of the treatises or the communism envisaged by the early Russian revolutionaries. To be specific about the type, of communism flourishing in the U. S. S. R. today, we have defined it as Stalinism, in commemoration of the Soviet leader who nourished it, gave it scope, defended it against all attacks from within and without, and now proposes to continue the system in wider domains in a Fourth 5-Year Plan. . Lenin was a revolutionary par excellence and practically his whole life experience had been as an intellectual leader and pamphleteer in the underground Russian revolutionary movement. Not the least element in his great influence and appeal to his supporting revolu¬ tionaries was the directness and simplicity with which he visualized the task before him. He thought that capitalism had so simplified and routinized methods of operation that socialized industry could be operated by anyone— who can read and write. The ability to observe and record and to make out receipts-—this, with a knowledge of the four rules of arithmetic, is all that is re¬ quired. 1 At first the work of the manager of industry was not regarded as at all important to the success of industry.. He was thought to be merely an instrument concerned with siphoning off the “surplus value” created by the workers. In the early months of the revolution, factory committees took over the function of the owners and managers of the enterprises in which they were employed. Lenin soon saw that this would not work because the workers were not trained to deal with the problems of supply, manufacturing, and distribution. A few years of operating without trained and authoritative business management resulted practically in the drying up of economic activity in all parts of the country. Old managers were called back under the N. E. P. and new private ventures were encouraged to get started by self-appointed managers. As the responsible head of the Government which had to make communism work, Lenin tended to go slow in eliminating all capital¬ istic organization and nationalizing all industry, He is quoted as having admitted that “for a considerable period our decrees were a form of propaganda.” 2 Py nationalizing the banks immediately he hoped to gain control of the capitalist economic system without destroying its economic organization. This attempt failed because capitalism simply could not operate under the revolutionary stimulus which resulted in the seizure of property by the workers, the disappearance of the old owners and managers and the sudden removal of all the guaranties and induce- 1 N Lenin, State and Revolution. Quoted in Boris Brutzkus, Economic Planning in Soviet Russia (London, G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1935), pp. 99-100. 2 Boris Souvarine, Stalin (London, Seeker & Warburg, 1940), p. 197. 20 COMMUNISM IN ACTION 27 merits which make the capitalist world go ’round. The foundering of the “ Communist experiment” for so many years was due in large measure to the lack of appreciation of the constructive role played by management in organizing and directing the general productive forces of any country, which lie ultimately in its resources, its manpower, its capital and machinery, its teclmical knowledge, and its effective and stimulating institutions to make the efforts of work worthwhile. Later the Soviet authorities tried to fill this void by enlarging schools for the training of engineers, technicians, and managers and by giving greater scope and status to the role of the manager in state industries. As-we have seen, the Communists did not abandon their long-time goals under the N. E. P. The big Government projects remained nationalized and plans were being laid for their extension and better interrelation. For this task a new type of industrial leader had to be developed—one who could plan economically, direct factory operations, measure and improve results, eliminate waste, get things done and on time. He would deal with a less recalcitrant labor force—the Govern¬ ment would see to that by other measures . 3 His position would be recognized by his subordinates and he would receive material and social rewards commensurate with the importance of his work and the dependence upon it of the success of the Communist enterprise as a whole. But tnis took time to get across to the workers who had been led to believe that it was “ their” enterprise to manage as it was theirs in putative ownership. For years the great problem of management in the Soviet Union was its lack of freedom to manage. Factory committees and trade-unions had to be consulted on every matter. To build up the manager and the technical personnel aud to make them independent of the workers became a conscious policy of the highest authorities in the Soviet Union. It may be listed as one of the triumphs of the Stalinist regime. SELECTION OF MANAGERS The number of original Communists with practical industrial experi¬ ence or special managerial training was, of course, very small. The earliest Communists were underground workers, intellectuals, factory workers, journalists, and students. Since active Party control was a first principle of the Revolution, many men with inadequate experience and training had to be used in posts for which they had no training or experience whatever. The employment of non-Party members in im¬ portant managerial posts meant special surveillance by Party members and by the security officers of the OGPU'or the NKVD . 4 The evolution of “one-man control” was accompanied by a lessening of supervision and consultation with Party and trade-union organiza¬ tions. But there were Party representatives in all levels of manage¬ ment up to the outbreak of the war and their influence is always felt; while the secretary of the provincial or city Party committee is the chief controller and inspector of all the industrial plants in the province and can, and does, interfere in the management of the plants . 5 8 See chapter on labor. * The NKVD is an institution which plays a big part in Soviet society. It has a number of functions having to do with “internal security.” The NKVD absorbed the OGPU (or GPU as it is mere generally known in the United States) which earlier had absorbed the Cheka. See the chapter on forced labor for further details regarding the activities of NKVD which has recently been divided into the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security. The distribution of functions is not known. * Gregory Bienstock, Solomon M. Schwarz, and Aaron Yugow, Management in Russian Industry and Agriculture (London, New York, Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 19-31. 28 COMMUNISM IN ACTION The higher executive, administrative, and planning posts are prac¬ tically always held by Party members and the Party influence is thus also represented in appointments to the manager’s staff. Kravchenko, who was himself a Party member, nonetheless was not permitted to select his own administrative staff when he was placed in charge of the pipe-rolling project in Kemerovo. The top officials were appointed directly by the Commissariat and the chief of Glavtrubostal, without so much as asking my opinion. This system aimed to encourage officials to watch each other and tended to create ^ mutual distrust among people brought together for common tasks * * *. Some of the local appointees, it was evident, were merely espionage agents for the Regional Com¬ mittee, the City Committee, the Economic Department of the NKVD and Glavtrubostal. * * * * 6 The highest authorities of the Government recognized the resulting inefficiencies and held a number of exhibition trials and purges to ferret out inefficiency as well as political unreliability. As far back as 1928, after the Shakhty trial, the Central Committee of the Party proclaimed: Under present conditions it is especially intolerable that economic officials lack knowledge of the productional-technical side of enterprises; that they are often transferred from one kind of work to another; that they are overburdened with tasks utterly alien to the job of production (reports, lectures, trips to the center); that, furthermore, various circumstances transform them from economic leaders into commissars and bad commissars at that, people incapable of assuming genuine responsibility for the work entrusted to them. 7 In each one of the purges that liquidated famous names in Soviet revolutionary history there were some who had attained their high posts because of Party services in the past and not because they had been specially selected for their managerial competence. 8 The train¬ ing of engineers and managers whose entire education and experience had been in a Communist society became a major objective. Scholar¬ ships were granted. Courses were accelerated. Intense specializa¬ tion was ordered. Younger ambitious workers were given opportun¬ ities for technical training while on the job and during short periods of leave. . When these measures tended to lower the quality of technical train¬ ing, they were revised to lessen the number of students admitted and there were stricter examinations given; they also reduced the number of youths of proletarian origin who were favored. 9 The great purge which began toward the end of 1936 caused a very sharp turn-over of industrial chiefs. This purge, which lasted over a year, resulted in the displacement of practically all the old Bolsheviks who held high posts in administration and in the Party. Its reverber¬ ations were felt in every planning board, every coordinating agency, every plant, and all through the Party machinery. Managers of different rank were displaced by the thousands. Estimates of the total number of persons involved in the purges go into the millions and many thousands of these were managers and executives of all ranks. The new industrial chiefs who were promoted to responsible posts were the better trained energetic men who had had no other experience e Victor Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom (New York, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1946), p. 328. Kravchenko gives numerous illustrations of the diffusion of authority—the orders and counterorders from Moscow the charges made against managers for mistakes made in Moscow. It was routine practice to have agents of the NKVD disguised as workers in the factories. They took up time in endless investigations, interfered with opera¬ tions, and frightened the life out of the personnel. i Bienstock, SchWarz, and Yugow, op. cit., p. 105. . .. _ « .. r, „„„ 8 Alexander Baykov, The Development of the Soviet Economic System (Cambridge University Press, Bienstock, Schwarz, and Yugow, op. cit., pp. 104r-113. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 29 than that in a Communist countiy. They were practical professional men, not too much concerned with shades of political beliefs and devia¬ tions from the eternal truths of the communism of the books. As they were growing up, they had seen Stalinism win over all opposition. It was not for tnem to question basic political decisions and they learned how to accept such decisions without wavering or deviation. They felt their country was going somewhere and they were going to help to get it there. They must have decided early in their careers to let the past bury the past—the Leninist past as well as the Czarist past. They were Russian patriots and this was their country. The progress the country had made had been dearly bought. They could see that there were great opportunities in this society to build, to improve their own positions, and to make the Soviet Union a power in the world. At the same time, since the catchwords of the revolu¬ tion had not been abandoned, they were impressed that they lived in a classless society, that they were the advance guard of social and eco¬ nomic progress, and that they had devotees in every country in the world who looked to the day when they too would overthrow their “capitalist oppressors” and establish a “classless society.” INCENTIVES AND REWARDS OF MANAGEMENT The plant manager, as we have seen, works under the close super¬ vision of the Commissariat, the Glavk, the combine, or the trust; and all of these, in turn, are guided, inspected, and supervised by the regional and national planning agencies, the State Bank, and Party committees under the discipline of the 5-Year and Annual Plans. This is unavoidable and doubtless makes for stimulation, as well as irritation and interference. • While Party membership is still generally a condition of appoint¬ ment to a managerial post, merit and previous success now count most even among Party members. Each man’s career is followed very carefully and his successes or failures in relation to the plans are freely discussed in industrial periodicals. In the United States managers are supposed to be dominated by the profit motive, which leads them to make the economies in purchas¬ ing, using materials, arranging production, etc., in order to keep a margin between costs and selling prices while enlarging sales. Among corporation executives there is not quite the direct reward for profits made, since these go to the owners and not directly to the managers. American businessmen are mixtures of enterprisers and managers. Only a small proportion of them are capitalists, strictly speaking, although they typically own some shares in the business which they manage. Successful corporation executives also covet honor and prestige as end products as well, frequently, as a step to higher opportunities Within the corporation or with another corporation. In Soviet Russia there has been a steadv drift to treat and reward «/ managers after the capitalistic pattern. After establishing his status vis-a-vis the workers, the Party cell, and the trade-union, they began to reward the manager with much higher salaries. Bonuses were paid to practically all managerial personnel from foremen up for reducing cost, saving materials and fuel, and for exceeding quotas of production, so that total bonuses sometimes were higher than regular salaries. In addition generous compensation in kind was made in 30 COMMUNISM IN ACTION the form of luxurious apartments and dachas, special food, a private automobile, and free transportation. Servants in the homes of some important executives sometimes reach the number of a half dozen or more and this was possible even in wartime, when the country was organized for a desperate defense of its territory. Published data on the earnings of various classes of managers is not very ample but some information is available. In 1921, before the managerial class had reached its later high estate, technical personnel was limited to a schedule which gave it from 1.6 to 5 times the rate of the lowest paid workers, while the leading administrative person¬ nel was paid from 4 to 5 times the rate paid the lowest paid workers. On the American analogy that would mean that in a plant where the minimum wage yielded, say, $1,000 per year, the top executive salary would be $5,000. This schedule of salaries for technicians and managers, which tied them to the rates of the lowest paid workers, remained in effect for 5 1 or 6 years. In 1929 a salary schedule was fixed without reference to workers’ wages. This general schedule has been revised from time to time by Economsoviet, the coordinator of Commissariats. The appointing body fixes the classification of each manager, depending upon the size of the job. The Commissar for a particular branch of industry may, however, supersede these general rates by “personal” rates, which may be up to 150 percent of the general rates. Some actual salaries in different years may be given from the scanty material available. In coal mining, chief engineers, a category just below the managers, received in 1933 from 550 rubles to 1,500 rubles per month, depending on the type of mine. In that year the monthly average earnings of manual workers in coal mines was 133 rubles. ~ Chief engineers therefore earned from 4 to 13 times the average miner’s wages, easily from 5 to 15 times the earnings of the lowest-paid workers in the mines. In iron and steel, regular engineers’ salaries were 600 to 1,500 rubles per month. In 1940 the over-all monthly average for technical personnel (engineers, technicians, foremen) was 1,223 rubles in an open hearth in Moscow and 1,570 rubles in a coal mine nearby. 10 In Sverdlovsk in 1938 Kravchenko received approximately 3,000 rubles a month in salary and bonuses, while unskilled labor received about 150 rubles, skilled mechanics about 250, and qualified engineers around 600. The salary and bonus of Kravchenko were supplemented by an apartment, two automobiles, and horses assigned for his exclusive use. * 11 Sir Walter .Citrine, General Secretary of the British Trades Union Congress, found in a shoe factory in Leningrad in 1935 that the technical director earned 2,000 rubles in salary and bonuses; the head of the children’s boot department received 1,900 rubles and his assistant 1,500; the head of the cutting department received 1,600 rubles and his assistant 1,300. Production workers in this factory earned from 125 to 250 rubles a month, while wages in the technical staff ranged from 306 to 663 rubles a month. In the Kirov Engineering Works, where 30,000 people were employed, the chief construction engineer and the chief draftsman received 1,800 rubles a month, while the wages of the workers ranged from 120 rubles to about 475 rubles per 10 Ibid., p. 93. 11 Kravchenko, op. cit., p. 285. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 31 month. In the Kaganovitch Ball Bearing Works in Moscow both the director and the chief engineer received 2,000 rubles per month, while wages ranged from 106 to 496 rubles. In a Moscow underwear factory, where 98 percent of the 3,000 workers were women, the mass of the workers received about 160 rubles per month, the highest category yielded 268 rubles, while the heads of departments received about 700 rubles in salary and bonuses. 12 GENERAL CONTRASTS BETWEEN SOVIET AND AMERICAN MANAGERS The Soviet manager is a state official. His psychology must always remain that of an order taker. Goals are set for him. He agrees and he works hard to meet and surpass the tasks set for him. He wants to have a good reputation at headquarters and he tries to avoid mistakes. He is not working for big gams but for a good record or in fear that failure may result in serious punishment, such as social disgrace, exile to remote regions, or worse. At the same time, he has no sales or consumer problems and the market for his production is assured. There are no “unreasonable” unions demanding steep increases in pay, which will increase his labor costs at a time when higher prices are impossible. If the total wage bill is to be increased, the Soviet manager knows about it at the beginning of the year and provision is made for it in prices or production standards. He is given his “planned costs” and even his “planned profits,” which together make up the fixed factory price, but if he is to get bonuses and promotions he has to reduce costs and increase profits above the planned figure. The People’s Commissar (Narkom) of a branch of industry is really the boss. He is the Soviet equivalent of the Fords, Graces, Girdlers, Wilsons, du Ponts, Sinclairs, and Averys, with the difference that they run whole industries rather than merely giant corporations and they are also part of the top machinery of Government and of the Communist Party as well. On this analogy the top executives on the level of the combine would be equivalent to the American director of an important subsidiary of a very large corporation, the director of a trust would be the counterpart of a chief executive officer of a representative American corporation, while the head of an enterprise would be represented by an American superintendent of a plant or a factory manager. The analogy is not a very good one because, except for the Commissar, all these Soviet executives are subordinate functionaries carrying out plans made largely by others from which they may generally not deviate. At the very top, however, even at the level of the Commissar, there is a greater concentration of power than under the American system. While there has been some loosening of control from Moscow to in¬ termediate and plant levels, the Soviet industrial operator 'is subject to the surveillance of both party representatives and the NKVD in the localities. The Soviet manager must always operate within the confines of the master and minor plans. There is real danger in ex¬ perimenting because of the close oversight of the management hier¬ archy, the Party, and the NKVD. Lack of success according to plans could be interpreted as “wrecking.” The Soviet manager can never have anything like the latitude and the freedom to experiment which > 2 Walter Citrine, I Search for Truth in Russia (London, G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1936), pp. 39, 51, 92-93,100-101. 32 COMMUNISM IN ACTION his American counterpart has in laying out his ground, choosing his own course, arranging his production program, providing for materials, comnohcnts, and supplies, and expanding his own customers. The manager in the American economy may be self-elected, as when he risks his own capital, or appointed, as is more common in the larger companies where other people's money has been acquired by the sale of bonds, stocks, and so forth. Such managers are tried and tested in the various divisions of management like sales, production, pur¬ chasing, and so forth. Some are organizers, others are specialists, still others are executives—as such they can make a team work to¬ gether more successfully than others. Managers are promoted to higher responsibilities within organizations and among organizations. Individually and severally they are subjected to the test which deter¬ mines the constructive role they play in a capitalistic economy, that they can so organize and combine all the factors in production and execute the tasks undertaken that their total outlay is at least coveied by their total sales. But that is not enough. If a manager wants to make real money he will find ways'of reducing his costs below any ot his competitors and he will have to keep ahead of them ah the time. His self-interest is in every way tied up with thb success of the enter¬ prise he manages and thus he gives it all he has in ingenuity, energy, drive, and perseverance. The top men are judged by the expansion and profits of their enterprises, not by the meeting of formal require¬ ments from a Government bureau or even by meeting or surpassing someone else’s plans in accordance with more or less prescribed methods of operation. Chapter IV LABOR LABOR LEGISLATION IN THE FIRST SOVIET DECADE In all Socialist and Communist literature and agitation it is pre¬ sumably the desperate position of the industrial workers, whose status and standard of living is supposed to become worse with the progress of capitalism, that serves as the foundation for the logic of communist theory and action. It became something of an embarrass¬ ment as the years passed that the Revolution did not spread to the more advanced industrial nations after the example of Russia, for that would have been “according to Marx.” The Revolutionary Government early decreed the control by workers’ representatives over all enterprises, including questions of supply, production, and marketing. Labor mobilization offices were instituted under the management of trade-unions. The Government also formally decreed an 8-hour day, prohibited nightwork and under¬ ground work for women and children, established annual holidays of 2 weeks to 1 month at full pay and a social-security scheme which covered unemployment, disablement, sickness, and pregnancy. The contents of some of these decrees were later amended. The standards intended were not, however, actually in operation during the period of militant communism or even under the N. E. P., since the where¬ withal to carry them out was not provided. In fact, the decline in production and in general well-being resulted in a strong movement back to the villages, which were closer to the food supply as well as to some kind of shelter. 1 True to what were then believed to be Communist or Socialist principles, wages tended toward equality. By 1921 workers of entirely different qualification, skill, or performance received nearly equal wages. What effect this may have had on productivity is not known accurately, but it doubtless contributed to the general decline. In 1919 the efficiency of labor was estimated to be only 22 percent of average prewar efficiency. 2 Under the N. E. P. many forms of capitalistic economy were reinstated, including the freedom of choice of employment; the right to strike was recognized; wider differences in wages were permitted. In the following years additional labor decrees were issued and some revoked. These are of interest in revealing the experimentalism of the Soviet regime, but they may be passed over quickly because they are, after all, no longer descriptive of prevailing conditions. Among the more interesting were the mobilization of “labor armies” for heavy work in different parts of the country and the establishment of a workweek of 5 days followed by a free day for each worker, the i Alexander Baykov. The Development of the Soviet Economic System (Cambridge University Press, 1946), pp. 39-44, 140-141. * Paul Haensel, Economic Policy of Soviet Russia (London, P. S. King & Sons, Ltd., 1930), pp. 29-30. 33 34 COMMUNISM IN ACTION plant itself being operated on a 7-day-a-week basis. While labor conscription was formally abandoned for free workers, restrictions on the free movement of workers continued to be imposed and forced labor became a thriving institution for politically unreliable workers and others forced by the millions into labor camps. 3 The confusion and disorganization caused by the continuous workweek canceled out the benefits of the fuller use of resources; and this measure also was subsequently abandoned. COMMUNIST PRINCIPLES IN TRANSITION * In the first years of the Revolution, workers, factory committees, and unions interfered with management at every turn. The expro¬ priated owners and managers could not be depended upon to lend themselves to the purposes of a Communist society, while the revolu¬ tionary-conscious workers could. And as, during the period which we have called militant communism, factory committees tried to manage the existing plants, the original owners, managers, foremen, and technical staffs disappeared. The factory committees became the new managers, issuing orders, buying materials and fuel, and pricing their products. In order to lessen the disorganization thus caused, the trade-unions, representing a larger point of view, were pushed forward to take over the factory committees. For a while factories were managed by representatives of the Supreme Economic Council and the trade-unions. The New Economic Policy of Lenin, inaugurated in 1921, was definitely a strategic retreat in this as in other respects, made neces¬ sary by the failure of militant communism. While industry was making progress under the N. E. P., that was no final solution for the Communist leaders since they had no intention of restoring capitalism in the sense of the private ownership of productive capital. . Anyway, national production was still below prerevolutionary times in a coun¬ try whose national production had never been outstanding. The years following Lenin’s death brought an intense struggle among the leaders. But matters were really worked out in Party Congresses which came more and more under Stalin’s personal control. During these years Stalin’s party had become convinced that diffused re¬ sponsibility and equality of reward do not bring results. It was a fact that despite the confiscation of all productive property, the socialization of all industry, and the steep increase in the total num¬ ber of industrial workers in Soviet Russia, neither total industrial production nor the plane of living of the workers was greater a decade after the Revolution than they had been in Czarist times. 4 * In the 5-Year Plan high goals were set by themew masters of Russia. The Plan called for a 110-percent increase in the productivity of labor in manufacturing, 60 percent in construction and 75 percent in trans¬ portation. 6 While all the old vocabulary was retained—in other words, while the workers were still supposed to “own” the factories manage them themselves and receive all the benefits—since there were 3 See ch. V on Forced Labor. 4 Much of the statistics published by the Soviet Government and by sympathetic foreign enthusiasts use 1917,1918,1919, or 1920 as a base. As production was declining steeply in all these years, any compari¬ sons with later years must show progressively better results. For the accuracy of the generalization in the text see Baykov, op. cit., p. 121 ff. and Leonard E. Hubbard, Soviet Labour and Industry (London, Mac¬ millan & Co., Ltd., 1942), pp. 41, 50, 51, 67. * Joseph Freeman, The Soviet Worker (New York, Liveright, Inc., 1932), p. 77; Baykov, op. cit., p. 186. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 35 no “capitalist oppressors”—the dictatorship masked a power which no capitalist possesses. In Stalin's famous “six-point program,” issued in 1931, the whole emphasis was on raising productivity and reducing waste and ineffi¬ ciency. It called for more rigid cost accounting. It eliminated the 5-day. continuous workweek and interference by workers, factory committees and unions with the operation of plants. It glorified piece rates and differential wages. It raised the status of manage¬ ment and the technical specialists and was to make the manager per¬ sonally responsible for the success of each enterprise, accountable only to the top management, and to be rewarded for success with ample bonuses and other perquisites. The 5-Year Plan undertook to break with the revolutionary past and it is no wonder that Stalinism has aroused such hostility from doctrinaire Communists and Socialists in every land who have had no experience with communism in practice but are certain that Stalinism is not in accordance with Communist theory. Anyway, since the rise of Stalinism we have had the spectacle of a Communist society where the greatest emphasis is being placed on inequality of treatment and reward as a spur to ambition and responsibility. Per¬ haps we could say that Stalin and his lieutenants had waited patiently for a decade or more for Russian workers to learn to act as they are supposed to act in a society where they “own” everything. 6 But “capitalistic” and “bourgeois” traits perversely persisted in Russian human nature and could not be eradicated by legal transfers of prop¬ erty, by Communist progaganda or even by wholesale liquidations and purges. It is this development of individual responsibility, payment in accordance with individual output, high rewards as a goal and as inducement to further activity, and the stimulation of “Socialist competition”—topics which will be discussed in later pages of this chapter—which former Ambassador Davies had in mind when he wrote on the basis of his Mission to Moscow: “To maintain its exist¬ ence, the Soviet Government has to continue to apply capitalistic principles. Otherwise it will fail and be overthrown. That will not be permitted by the men presently in power, if they can avoid it. I expect to see this government, while professing devotion to Com¬ munism, move constantly more to the right, in practice, just as it has for the past eight years.” 7 THE PROBLEM OF LABOR DISCIPLINE In discussions of labor in the Soviet Union the problem of “labor discipline” comes up again and again, year after year. In the first decade and a half there was an erratic movement from the country and the villages to the cities with changes in the agricultural ancl 9 What the original Communist attitude toward labor and reward may have been is suggested by the following quotation from Lenin: “Communist labor in the narrower and stricter sense of the word is unre¬ warded toil for the common good, toil not to discharge a fixed duty, nor to earn a claim to certain goods, nor according to previously fixed standards, but voluntary toil without a fixed task, given without calculation or condition of remuneration, toil performed through the habit of toiling for the common good and the consciousness that toil is necessary for the common good—in other words, toil must be regarded as a vital necessity of a healthy organism.” (Quoted in Hubbard, op. cit. p. 33.) The Eighth Congress of the Com¬ munist Party in March 1919 had announced haltingly: “While aspiring to equality of remuneration for all kinds of labor and to total communism, the Soviet Government cannot consider as its task the im- raed iate realization of this equality at the present moment when only the final steps are being made toward the transition from Capitalism to Communism”. (Quoted in Baykov, op. cit., p. 43). ? Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow (New York, Readers League of America, 1943), p. 253. 36 COMMUNISM IN ACTION y industrial situation. Workers would shift about to improve their position or to accommodate themselves to changing circumstances. At different times decrees were issued tying workers to their jobs or requiring internal visas. In 1632, a penalty was imposed for 1 day’s absence without good cause. A decree in 1938 required managers to make rigid application of the 1932 decree. Lateness, idling, and taking too long for meals were causes for dismissal, if these offenses were repeated three times in 1 month or four times in 2 months. In addition to continued “labor legislation” of this type, which con¬ tinued until the Second World War, the Government counterattacked the problem of labor discipline by sponsoring and propagandizing a movement which was known as Stakhanovism after its Soviet- acknowledged originator, Alexei Stakhanov. As a technique, Stakhanovism is nothing more than a combination of the well-known principles of the division of labor and Taylorism; but as a Soviet institution it came to be regarded as the workers’ own contribution to the blessings of speed-up and relentless work. American manage¬ ment has had a hard road to sell similar principles of efficiency to American labor, although they are of course widely used in American industry. The problem has always been a fair distribution of the in¬ creased production thus made possible. In Soviet Russia in the form of Stakhanovism the system is well-nigh universally imposed by the Government and the differential rates and bonuses are worked out and revised by its industrial officials. The Government pushed this movement with great vigor. No less a person than Stalin presided at the first congress of Stakhanovites in November 1935. Machines were overhauled and tuned up for public exhibitions and everything arranged for the smoothest flow of pro¬ duction during the trial period. The press and factory and public speakers were called in to spread the new gospel. A Stakhanovite— an official title now given only to those who regularly meet rigidly high standards of production, quality, avoidance of waste and ma¬ chine maintenance—is given special facilities to maintain these standards. He also gets “the best flats in factory tenement houses, holidays at a fashionable watering place, trips to Moscow, tours in the Caucasus, etc., and infrequently the right to buy and run a private motorcar.” 8 In 1937 only Stakhanovites hadg been put up by the Party and elected to the Council of the Union, which is one of the two Houses in the Supreme Soviet. 9 Thus the representation of the working class was through the Stakhanovites and they too dictated for the proletariat. Though they are not everywhere popu¬ lar among Soviet workers, Stakhanovites are undoubtedly as en¬ thusiastic about communism as the “aristocrats” of American labor are about capitalism—and for the same reason. This new version of “workers’ solidarity” in Soviet Russia today suggests a consideration of the role of trade-unions, the traditional institution of modern industrialism designed to protect the interests of the workers against the interests of those who direct their operations and tend to determine their remuneration. 10 ‘ Hubbard, op. cit., p. 79. • Ibid., p. 81, quoting a high Soviet official. IC “ Labor discipline” is discussed further at tho end of this chapter in the section entitled “Labor Legisla¬ tion Before World War II." - COMMUNISM IN ACTION 37 SOVIET TRADE-UNIONS IN TRANSITION Trade-unions in Soviet Russia, we are told, are voluntary organiza¬ tions of workers; but practically all workers join up. There is said to be a small proportion of workers who are indifferent or slow to join the unions in their plant and industry, but they do not make up more than 5 or 6 percent of the workers. In practice, joining the union in the plant is a political and economic necessity. Nonunion members do not receive the benefits under the social security program extended to union members; if, for example, they are incapacitated, they receive only half the benefits extended to union members. Before the Revolution trade-unions were regarded by the Commun¬ ists as “organs of revolt” and the spearhead of the coming Revolution. In the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm it was thought that the worker, through the Soviets, would also manage, direct, and control the factories. In the early years of the Revolution unions played an active part in the management of the factories and in the effort to construct a So¬ cialist state. The industrial workers during the time of the Revolution, numbering only about 3,000,000, were told they were to own and manage the producing facilities. They carried with them notions about the role of trade-unionism derived from their capitalistic past and from the hard conditions of Czarist times. The industrial popu¬ lation increased to the present total of some 28,000,000 by drawing large numbers from rural areas and villages who flocked to the towns and cities or were forced by conditions to leave for the new industrial areas. Between 1928 and 1935 the industrial communities of Soviet Russia absorbed over 17 % million of its vast peasantry. Many of the old working class rose to managerial or administrative positions in the extensive hierarchies of industry, administration, Party, state, regional and local government. Others died or were liquidated during the years. The children of these workers had even a better oppor¬ tunity to rise to the places vacated by the hated bourgeoisie. As a consequence the working class who would constitute the new labor movement were overwhelmingly men and women without urban experience, people recently come from the country and to whom city life under almost any condition would be an improvement, provided food was available. But when the crops failed, as in 1921 and 1932, they flocked back to the country. During the early period of the N. E. P. Lenin thought of the unions as schools of communism which would have the dual function of de¬ fending the interests of the workers against the exploitation of the Nepmen and the faults and failures of the bureaucracy in the state industries. A well-known statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Party written by Lenin said: State plants have been shifted to so-called business accountability. At the same time it is urgently necessary to increase labor productivity, to abolish deficits, and to assure profitability in every factory. All this along with inevi¬ table departmental interests and overzealousness unavoidably brings about a certain clash of interests in questions of work conditions between the working masses and the plant managers or the relevant government departments. With respect to socialized factories, trade-unions have therefore the absolute duty to defend the interests of the workers. As far as possible they must help to raise the workers' material living conditions. To achieve this, the unions have to 38 COMMUNISM IN ACTION correct systematically errors and exaggerations committed by organs of economic administration and resulting from bureaucratic distortion in the State apparatus. 11 Up to' the period when the First 5-Year Plan was taking shape, the traditional notion that unions were designed to protect workers against the driving, cost-cutting and, overzealousness of management to make a success of the enterprise, prevailed in Soviet Russia. The leader of the trade-unions had Remained Michael Tomsky, 12 a member of the Politbureau and close friend of Lenin. While his influence was dominant, the arguments that unions should be obedient organs of the state concerned primarily with the improvement of production, while raised, were without much practical effect. 13 However, with the inauguration of accelerated industrialization under the First 5-Year Plan, the whole influence of the Communist Party under its new hierarchy of leaders was thrown against Tomsky. The Party had started on a program to build up new industries, and to expand in many directions. The old trade-unionism would have resulted in the dissipation of the earnings of specific enterprises to the particular workers who happened to be employed in those enter¬ prises. The workers might have gotten more nearly “the full value of their labor/’ to the detriment of the planned industrial expansion. This is the way the Ninth Congress of Trade Unious described the transition: Instead of mobilizing all the forces of the working class for the development of an increased tempo in* socialist construction, for the fulfillment of the Five-Year Plan, and for leadership in the growing productive activity of the wide masses of proletarians directed toward an increase in the productivity of labor and toward overcoming the difficulties involved in the Socialist reconstruction of national economy, the old leadership of the trade unions gave precedence to the “defensive” work of the trade unions as against the problems of their participation in socialist construction. Through Tomsky, the old leadership urged that “it is impossible at the same time to manage an enterprise on the basis of commercial cost account¬ ing and yet be the exponent and defender of the workers’ interests.” Actually, this meant leading in the direction of isolating the trade unions from the struggle for the building of socialism in our country. This was an expression of narrow “trade unionism,” departmental and other petit-bourgeois moods in the trade unions alien to the proletarian. At the same time it meant a refusal to struggle for the radical improvement of the material conditions of the workers on the basis of developing socialist economy and increasing labor productivity * * *. The slogan “face production” signifies a new stage in the development of the work of the trade unions, and their turning to the problem of a wide development of socialist competition. The problem was to make socialist competition the basis of all productive work of the trade unions, to make it the decisive method in the daily struggle of the trade unions for fulfilling and exceeding the industrial- financial plan. 14 Tomsky and his followers were therefore purged and replaced by men appointed by the ruling group. With these came anew program of activities for trade-unions centering about the united effort to make and surpass new production goals in all industries, to increase differential wages, improve “labor discipline,” organize “shock brig¬ ades,” promote “socialist competition,” speed up production by the universal adoption of Stakhanovism, and keep busy by administering ” Quoted in Gregory Bienstock, Solomon M. Schwarz and Aaron Yugow, Management' in Russian Industry and Agriculture (London, New York, Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 34. 12 Tomsky was the only member of the Politbureau’at the time of Lenin’s death, excepting only Stalin, who was not killed as a traitor or “wrecker” in later years, or banished, as was Trotsky. Tomsky committed suicide. ia Freeman, op. cit., pp. 104-110; Bienstock,. Schwarz, and Yugow, op. cit., p?55. m Quoted in Freeman, op. cit., pp. 133-134. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 39 the social security and welfare programs of the state. 15 With varia¬ tions and additions this has been the dominant sphere of activity of Soviet trade-unions to this day. Lenin’s earlier notion of the proper function of trade-unions now was characterized by such themes as “opportunist” and “trade-unionist”. PRESENT ROLE OF UNIONS IN SOVIET RUSSIA The primary functions of trade-unions in Soviet Russia in recent years was made clear by N. M. Shvernik in April 1941, when, suc¬ ceeding Tomsky, he had been President of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions for some 13 consecutive years. Speaking to the All-Union Council he—• emphasized that the most important task facing the trade-unions, “as the nearest helpers of the Bolshevik Party, as schools of communism/’ was to concentrate the efforts of the workers on fulfilling the state plan of production for 1941 * * *. Trade-unions did not put enough energy into organizing socialist competition and the Stakhanov movement in the factories; factory meetings were not summoned with sufficient energy to serve as a real means of improving organization of labor and speeding up production; labor discipline was still low; * * * not enough attention was being paid to the adjustment of wage rates so as to eliminate “the rotten practice of leveling” and stimulate productivity. The delegates who spoke in the subsequent debate unanimously sup¬ ported these criticisms and agreed with the need for improvement. 16 The role of unionism thus revealed is radically different from its role in the United States and indeed in Soviet Russia itself in the early years of its history. In the early years, labor agreements were made with industrial organizations in the Soviet Union and there was a recognition of the need of protecting the workers from any type of administration. In reports of labor and industry conventions in the 1920’s reported in the International Labor Review differences in the point of view of state managers of industry and the workers and unions were frequently indicated. For instance, in connection with the decline in production "for several months in 1928, the increase of absenteeism and the relaxation of discipline, management ascribed these conditions to the increasing consumption of alcohol by workers and their refusal to accept the authority of the technical and managerial staff, while the trade unions ascribed these conditions to the lack of initiative of management, the failure of management to train workers and raise their cultural level, poor supply and accident prevention, frequent errors in drawing up production programs, and continual modification of such programs. 17 One may assume that in any country, if workers are free, they would emphasize just such shortcomings of management, while management would tend to lay the blame at the feet of labor. Rut with the liquidation of Tomsky, unions ceased to be independent fighting organs of labor and became pait of the apparatus of the government machinery in which labor and unions had their assigned parts to play. is Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization (New York, C. Scribner’s Sons 1936), p. 161; Solomon M. Schwarz, “Trade Unions in Russian Industrial Life”, International Post- War Problems, J.uly 1945, pp. 320-324; Hubbard, op. cit., pp. 156-161. . . _ . 18 Quoted in Margaret Miller, Labour in the U. S. S. R. (London,^British Association for Labour Legis¬ lation, 1942), p. 25. “The study is confined to statements of facts based on Russian sources and prepared by a constant visitor to Russia and keen student of its industrial life” (p. 5.). _ ir Reported from various Soviet periodicals in Industrial and Labor Information of the International Labor Organization (I. L. O.), September 24, 1928. 9063 . 1—46 -4 40 COMMUNISM IN ACTION The planning system requires that a decision be made in advance regarding the amount of the national income to be devoted to wages. The size of the total pay roll—the amount of money to be paid out in wages in each branch of industry—is worked out by Gosplan. It deals, among other things, with the total national pay roll, the total number of workers to be employed in industry and the planned pro¬ ductivity per worker, Its report is submitted to the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions for study and review, but all decisions are made by Gosplan. Thereafter, the total amount of national income going to wages is fixed and is not subject to discussion or negotiation between the government and the trade-union. This fund could not be made subject to the uncertainties of collective bargaining, and collective-bargaining contracts ceased to be instru¬ ments of labor policy after 1935. Wage rates are fixed by economic planning agencies on the basis of the principles established by the Government. It is true that trade-union officials play a part in this machinery; but since their dominant outlook must be to protect the enterprise in carrying out its assigned tasks, their influence on wages is conceded by all impartial students to be negligible. The wage committee of the local union is, however, permitted to discuss classifi¬ cations, plant inequalities, and incentive rates with the local state management and to assist management in setting daily work quotas. It would be “opportunistic deviation” and “an attempt to destroy the one-man leadership and to interfere with administration” for trade- unions to have equal say with the economic agency in fixing wages. 18 It is said in all seriousness that there could not be any divergence in the views of the Government and all labor regarding the size of tho total wage bill or between local management and labor regarding its local application, none at least which could not be settled on & the Government’s terms. Such arbitration is carried out locally and may be carried up to higher trade-union bodies, the highest of which has already agreed to the soundness and justice of the total wage payment and the amount available for the particular enterprise. This, and not collective bargaining over the terms of employment, is an important function of trade-unions in Soviet Russia. Their other functions and activities are to handle the administration of the social insurance program of the U. S. S. R., sponsor recreational activities: operato schools for children attached to the factories, rest homes and bathing beaches; provide for lectures on Soviet policy and Stakhanovism; participate in state and communal activities, such as housing, food distribution, and the allotment of garden land; and help in political campaigns. Soviet unions are not organized to conduct strikes. While there does not appear to be any specific legislation prohibiting strikes, strikes never occur in state industries, at least not since the strike of the Kronstadt sailors way back in 1921. 19 One writer puts it cryptically that “strikes, according to the unwritten and ‘Unpublished Soviet law, are forbidden.” 20 Schwas, op. cit., p. 328. See also Bienstock, Schwarz and Yugow, op. cit, pp. 35-38, 40-41. T ; e ? r 1 °P s - a dt sailors had demanded freedom of speech and the press, the liberation of workers and peasants held as political prisoners, equal rations for all workers and the right of nonprofiteering peasants and artisans to sell the products of their labor. They were treated as “counterrevolutionaries and their protests were drowned in blood.” Freda Utley, The Dream We Lost (New York,'The John Day Co., 1940), 36 Manya Gordon, Workers Before and After Lenin (New York, E. P. Dutton une 1931, Stalin said that— in a number of establishments the wage rates are established in such a manner that the difference almost disappears between qualified labor and unqualified labor between heavy labor and light labor. Equalitarianism leads to this, thau the unqualified (unskilled) laborer is not interested in becoming a qualified laborer * * * We cannot tolerate a situation where a railway locomotive driver earns only as much as a copy clerk. * * * We must give the unskilled worker a stimulus and prospect of advancement, of rising to a higher posi¬ tion. * * * It is necessary to organize such a system of wage scales as will take into account the difference between qualified labor and unqualified labor, between heavy labor and light labor. * * * Marx and Lenin say that the difference between qualified and unqualified work will exist even under socialism, even after the destruction of classes. * * • Who is right Marx and Lenm or the equalitarians? 24 This was the signal for a campaign against “equalitarianism ” No law had to be passed or decree issued. The^ Party leaders, the trade-unions and the press went to work. Henceforth “equalitarian¬ ism” was “pettv bourgeois” or “counterrevolutionary” or a symptom of “rotten liberalism,” characteristic phrases used to describe those who had difficulty in accepting and following the evolving Party line. To invigorate this policy and to obtain better coopeiation from ail elements in production it was decreed that half the reduction in cost realized in a state enterprise below Plan be set aside as a Director s Profits Fund, half of it to be used for workers’ housing, which has been grossly below western standards throughout the Soviet period, and the rest for further technical improvement and supplementary capital construction, bonuses for outstanding workers, training, and the im¬ provement of social and recreational services such as creches, clubs, and dining rooms. In addition one-half of 1 percent of the annual wage bill of each enterprise was to be set aside for the payment of 24 Quoted in Abram Bergson, Structure of Soviet Wages (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1944), p. 178. ( 44 COMMUNISM IN ACTION premiums for outstanding production records and economies realized from “Socialist competition” and “shock” work. This was part of the movement to solve “labor discipline” by placing complete authority in the directors of enterprises. The unions, as we have seen, could take their complaints to superior organs of their own hierarchy but they must otherwise take orders from plant management and carry out their assigned tasks. As an official manual puts it: Current operations in fulfillment of Plan are the task of the administration. The chief of a workshop, the manager of the plant, the head of the Glavk, have full powers, each within his field, and the Party and trade-union organizations may not interfere with their orders . 23 SOVIET WAGE SCALES Despite the oft-repeated slogan that in a Communist society every value created by the worker redounds to his own personal advantage, Stalinism has found it necessary to place before the worker the pos¬ sibility of higher earnings for himself alone in order to induce him to undertake longer or more intensive training, greater risk, greater re¬ sponsibility, to accept a harder or more disagreeable job, and to stick to his job with less idling, waste, and indifference. There does not seem to be any national minimum wage in the Soviet Union. The lowest wage rate in different industries is determined by the industrial management, which has the problem of keeping within the pay-roll allowances fixed by the Plans. Wages above the minimum are determined by a schedule of wage rates, expressed as multiples of the wage rate of the lowest-paid category. The range and number of categories above tho minimum are determined by the Commissariats and approved by the Eco- nomsoviet, the body whose function it is to coordinate the various Commissariats and act as a kind of economic general staff. The in¬ fluence of trade-unions and plant committees on fixing wages and norms declined at the end of the 1920 J s. As collective contracts died away, trade-unions and plant committees gradually ceased to participate in fixing wages in the plant . 28 Wherever possible and more commonly than in the United States, wages arc paid on a piecework basis or on some other form of measured production. The elements include “norms” of production or standard tasks, rates per unit of production, and bonuses for exceeding the norms. Even clerks in retail stores and in offices have norms. The differential rates or “categories,” as they call them, are designed to induce workers with different degrees of skill and responsibility to do their very best and thus to assist in attaining the highest possible levels of production, while indirectly and as a result, they influence the availability of supply of workers in the different categories needed. In January 1938, according to a Soviet publication, 75 percent of the total number of workers were paid on a piecework basis, with assigned standard tasks or norms. Of these 43 percent were paid on straight piece rates plus bonuses while 32 percent were paid at progressive piece rates—that is, higher rates for later increments or production beyond standard. 27 » Quoted in Bienstock, Schwarz, and Yugow, op. cit., p. 19. *« Ibid., p. 41. 27 Soviet source quoted In Bergson* op. cit., p. 161. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 45 In setting wage scales all tlie familiar capitalist principles are given weight, since these measure the relative supply of different classes of labor or their relative productivity—the arduousness of the work, its riskiness or unpleasantness, its complexity or exactness; the degree of independence and responsibility borne by the worker; the education and experience recjiiired; the volume and quality produced. . As in the United States, where competition and collective bargaining rather than the Government agencies fix wage rates, these principles work out in higher wages for heavy industry than for light industry, higher wages for men than for women, higher wages for all degrees of skill compared with unskilled labor, regardless of the family obligations oi unskilled labor. The difference between the scales in the Soviet Union and the United States is one of degree and trend—the Soviet Union maintaining wider differentials and showing a definite tendency to increase differentials and inequalities, while in the United S cates, the widespread educational and training opportunities, the imposition of higher legal minimum wages, and the operating effect of ^ wage adjustments based on the notion of a “living wage” are tending to narrow differentials and inequalities in wages among different classes of workers. 23 f . .» . A further practice to encourage individual initiative on the part of workers in the Soviet Union, similar to that of a large percenbage of private firms in the United States, is the practice of paying premiums for savings in fuel or materials, improvement in quality, in safety and sanitary techniques, and other technical improvements similar to those rewarded in American “suggestion systems.” WAGES AND PRODUCTIVITY With the progress of industry in Soviet Russia new “norms” or standard tasks "were established at different times.^ Each of the Plans, as we have seen, provided for a planned increase in labor produc¬ tivity’. Norms which form the basis of the piecework scales are revised each year in consideration of expected average increases in productivity. 2 ’ 9 How much the real wages of workers have been raised by these increases in labor productivity or in the higher standard tasks or norms assigned in the various wage categories is a. debatable matter. The evidence necessary for any sound conclusion is not available to the outsider. It is known, however, that at some times new norms were estab¬ lished requiring increases in production for the same amount of pay. For instance, in 1936 new norms were established for all industry from 10 to 30 percent above the old norms without any adjustment in wages. 30 A strong defender of the Soviet economy has made the following defense of the increases in norms at that time! But it is equally clear that, once the new methods of work had been popularized, and the speed of work "of the majority of workers in a plant had thereby been substantially enhanced, it would have been impossible to maintain the old output standards intact. At any rate, if these had been so maintained, the whole struc¬ ture of industrial costs would have been drastically inflated just at the time when, 2« This refers onlv to differences in wages received by workers, not to inequalities of income among all the people, which are, of course, much greater in the United States than in Soviet Russia because of the much more extensive private appropriation of interest, profits, and rents, thcmuch higher general level of incomes, and the existence of almost universal private trading. „ OK 29 Maurice Dobb, Soviet Planning and Labor (New Yorn, International Publishers, 1943), p. 85. 80 Hubbard, op. cit., pp. 105-107. 46 COMMUNISM IN ACTION following derationing, strenuous efforts were being made to reduce retail prices. It was, accordingly, decided that as soon as the new methods had come to be widely adopted among the workers, and opportunity had been given to more backward workers to improve their output, and upward revision of output stand¬ ards must occur. This was done in most industries in the course of April 1936. By the end of August it was announced that in heavy industry between 70 and 80 percent of the pieceworkers were able to attain or to exceed the new output standards: that is, to assimilate the more rationalized methods of work sufficiently to suffer no loss of earnings from the change. There seems to be little ground, therefore, for the statements sometimes made that an outstanding result of Stakhanovism was to create a labor aristocracy, whose higher earnings were at the expense of the majority of the unskilled. The minority, constituting perhaps a quarter or a third of the labor force at the outside, may have suffered some reduction of earnings as a result of the change; and to a large extent these may have been the same persons as, previous to derationing, had spent a relatively large proportion of their earnings on rationed foodstuffs, and hence were adversely affected by the abolition of the low ration price. Many Stakhanovites also, no doubt, suffered a reduction of earnings on the high levels at which they had been earning for the first few months after their achievements, although they continued to benefit substantially as compared with their original position. 31 In my plant of 1,500 men'— wrote Kravchenko— perhaps 200 qualified as Stakhanovites or speed kings. For the others the revision of norm meant simply a serious cut in earning power. * * * To add insult to injury, the new norms had to be presented and accepted by the workers ‘Them¬ selves,” not only “voluntarily” but “enthusiastically.” Kravchenko then goes on to show how this was staged. 32 Ambassador Davies called this 1936 maneuver an “effort to reduce costs, to improve the profit position of these industries.” 33 It appears also that— the decree increasing the ^working day from 7 to 8 hours in most industries and from 6 to 7 hours in all others, and lengthening the working week from 5 days to 6, did not -include any raise in wages; in fact the daily and monthly rates of pay remained unchanged, while the production quotas were raised and piecework rates lowered to correspond to the greater number of hours worked. 34 The foregoing illustrations and quotations are not meant to imply that workers did not sometimes participate in the increases in produc¬ tivity directly or that they did not benefit by increases in production in other ways. In the Soviet Union the workers’ receipt of goods and services is also influenced by their actual production and availability, by the expansion of the social services, by rationing and special low- price stores, by progressive rental rates and the like. While no attempt is made to compare workers’ incomes in the U. S. S. R. and the U. S. A., it is not disputed anywhere that the aver¬ age level of wages and earnings and the standard of living is very much higher in the United States. This is so principally and finally because production and output per worker is higher in the United States. For instance, Soviet iron workers produced 86 kilograms of pig iron per capita in 1937, while in the United‘States 292 kilograms per capita were produced. In the same year Soviet coal miners mined 757 kilo¬ grams per capita compared with 3,429 in the United States. 35 One could argue ad infinitum, as it has been, regarding all the reasons for 31 Dobb, op. cit., pp. 87-88. 32 Kravchenko, op. cit., p. 189. Kravchenko reports another general upward revision of norm without wage increases in 1939 (p. 312). 33 Joseph E. Davies, op. cit., p. 112. 34 Economic Conditions in the U. S. S. R. in 1940, International Reference Service, U. S. Department of Commerce, May 1941. See also Hubbard, op. cit., p. 98. 35 Frederick L. Schuman, Soviet Politics (New York, Knopf, 1946), p. 578. The figures are attributed to Molotov, Land of Today and Tomorrow, Report of Congress, XVIII, pp. 113-114. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 47 or explanations of the much greater per capita productivity in the United States. The only thing which is clear and indisputable is that the final result for the worker depends on per capita productivity and the availability of the goods and services which the public needs and wants, since that which can possibly be distributed as earnings for the worker must first be produced. It is also true that the efficiency of an economic and social- system and the standard of living it yields is a resultant of all the forces in a society that contribute to its compre¬ hensive productivity. In the face of all the argument and discussion regarding private property and free enterprise, state-owned produc¬ tion and state-managed enterprise, the validity or value of this or that social institution, it is per capita production which finally counts most in determining what workers in all categories shall receive for their labor. The history of industry and labor in the Soviet Union and the guiding hand of Government has impressed upon the workers that the only sure way to increase wages permanently is to increase production. It is doubtless easier to explain this in a land where private profit is not permitted and where, therefore, alkprofit and all investment is by definition for the good of all. In the United States the close relation¬ ship between per capita production and wages is concealed by the ideology that higher wages come from the “swollen profits” of the employer. But the close relationship between productivity and real wage increases through the years is even clearer in the United States than it has been in the Soviet Union, where the market for consumer goods has been rather severely restricted. Soviet trade-unions have for a decade before the war preached the urgent necessity for increased production. Government decrees and propaganda and not “selfish management” ever seeking to “exploit the worker” 36 developed the miscellany of high-pressure methods and practices to get out production in the Soviet Union—“labor discipline”, “shock brigades”, “socialist competition”, a system of wage payments based on standard tasks, piece rates, measured production, bonuses, and the increase in “norms” with the progress of industry, Stakhano- vism, “heroes of Socialist toil”, rest homes for fast workers, and a union movement whose primary function is to increase production. But the methods have helped Soviet industry to make a very creditable record in increasing both the physical volume of production and the out¬ put per worker. WORKERS OF LOW AND HIGH ESTATE The setting of increasing production goals, the emphasis on capital development rather than consumers’ goods, the time limits set, the lack of competing establishments, the labor movement absorbed in managerial and administrative problems, and the working of the whole economy against time—added to the complete control of all operations by undisputed authority—all work to place the human element in production in a very subordinate position. In one of the ss “It is a cardinal article in the Communist faith that in no circumstances can a capitalist employer ever behave otherwise than as a ruthless exploiter. If the workers in a capitalist State receive undeniable good wages and enjoy free social services, it is because (a) the workers themselves have extorted these concessions from unwilling and inimical employers, or (ft) the employers have for their own ends improved the workers’ conditions on the same principle that it pays to keep a beast of burden well fed and in good condition. Hence th<‘ extraordinary distortions of fact and misrepresentations of motive always found in Soviet references to conditions elsewhere.” (Hubbard, op. cit., p. 104.) 48 COMMUNISM IN ACTION first engineering investigations he was asked to make, Kravchenko reported that the failure of the project (at Nikopol) was due to two broad causes: First, the interference with local authority by distant management and Moscow planners, and second, a group of causes which— can all be summed up as disregard of the human factor in the process of produc¬ tion. Although tens of millions of rubies were being thrown away recklessly in unused machines and abandoned construction, wages were kept pitifully how when measured in what the ruble could buy just then. Workers’ homes existed in blue prints, but the flesh-and-blood workers were packed into hastily con¬ structed wooden barracks, with leaking roofs, moist walls and floors, lacking even the most primitive hygienic comforts. The emphasis was on output in utter contempt of the men who did the work. 37 Great masses of people have lived for decades under the most crowded conditions under which decent privacy is next to impossible. Practically every report on conditions in Soviet Russia throughout its history mentions or admits the thoroughly inadequate housing of the people in both city and country—in western Russia, including Moscow and Leningrad, as well as “behind the Urals.” A roofn for a whole family is standard in the western regions, barracks or crudely covered dugouts in the Siberian and eastern regions. This is not a war phenomenon but has been a characteristic of Soviet economic planning from the beginning. The International Labor Review (Journal of the International Labor Office) regularly carried reports on the housing shortage in Soviet Russia, characterizing the situa¬ tion as “never more critical” in August 1925 and “becoming more * and more intense” in May 1928. In 1935 Citrine fulminated about housing conditions everywhere he went on his second tour of Soviet western industrial cities. He never located a worker’s family with its own exclusive toilet facilities. John Scott, the American who lived and worked in Alagnitogorsk, said that conditions steadily improved from 1932 to 1938. Yet he offers the following break-down of available housing for this city of 200,000 inhabitants in 1938: 33 Percent Berezki and the Central Hotel_ Kirov district and other permanent apartment houses Permanent individual houses_ Barracks and other “temporary” houses_ Zemlyanki (“shanghais”) _ 2 15 8 50 25 The inequalities resulting from better earnings are not the only inequalities in the Soviet Union among different classes of workers. A Stakhanovite and others who have not quite made that grade are privileged workers. They not only earn more, but they are given special facilities for work, special foods, special restaurants and the 'imU Li4UL m a uuuuuy wuere ^anny, war, lamine, and strife had made life very cheap.” (Scott, COMMUNISM IN ACTION 49 right above others to purchase needed industrial goods and clothing. In 1932, William H. Chamberlin, the American journalist who repie- sen ted the Christian Science Monitor in the U. S. S. R., noted seven different dining rooms in Magnitogorsk, the big iron and steel center in the Urals. They “ranged in quality from the plentiful, if heavy, food served to high plant official and imported Ameiican engineers to the subhuman diet allotted to the unfortunate kulaks and political prisoners, of whom tens of thousands were employed on forced labor jobs.” 38 In 1944 this “caste system” in dining rooms was reported as existing in a Soviet motor factory visited by-W. L. White. Next to the stimulation of productivity, the conduct of welfare activities (including the administration of the social-security benefits) is the most important and time-consuming function of Soviet trade- unions. Much is made of the provision of rest homes and summering places for workers. Rut a selection must be made, since obviously there is no provision at these resorts for 25 to 27 million workers, not to speak of their families. Citrine estimated that 3 percent of the industrial workers had the privileges of a rest home in 1932. 40 In the plant managed by Kravchenko at Nikopol, pretty near the Black Sea, where several of these resorts are located, only 57 workers out of 1,500 had been to a rest home during the year, even though all the workers had had deductions from their wages for this service. To be sent to a rest home was something of a prize, to say the least.* 1 A holiday in the Crimea or the Caucasus was a reward for exceptional services both in the field of productive work and political activity—it was far from being the right of every worker. 42 Consistent with the new Soviet practice of differentiating all classes of labor, three new “orders” were created in 1938. Of these the highest was the order of “Hero of Socialist Toil,” which carried with it double pay or salary. The second was the order of “Prowess of Labor” which entitled the" holder to a medal, R. 10 a month and unlimited free tram rides throughout the U. S. S. R. The third was the order of “Excellence in Labor” with a medal, R. 5 a month and tram rides. 43 UNEMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION * It is said that in the third year of the First 5-Year Plan there was no longer any unemployment in the Soviet Union. The growth of industry, the opening of new areas, the construction of elaborate public works, and the increase in the size of the Army in the succeeding years kept the total demand for manpower ahead of available supplies. Larger numbers of peasants were released from agricultural employ¬ ment by one means or another and went to the towns to work. Be¬ tween 1928 and 1940 the number of wage and salary workers (including employees on collective farms, but not members of collective farms nor individual farmers) increased from 11.6 million to about 30.4 million. In no country in the world is there so large a proportion of women in industry, especially in heavy industry, as in Soviet Russia. Between January 1, 1929, and November 1, 1939, the proportion of women manual workers increased from 28.8 to 43.4 percent. 44 m W. H. Chamberlin in American Mercury, May 1945, p. 626. « Waiter Citrine, I Search for Truth in Russia (London, G. Rontledge & Son, Ltd., 1936), p. 242. 4' Kravchenko, op cit., p. 203. ♦3 Hubbard, op. cit., p. 51. « Ibid., pp. 97-98. « Judith Grunfeld, Women’s Work in Russia's Planned Economy, Social Research, February 1942, pp. 22-45. 50 COMMUNISM IN ACTION The decree abolishing unemployment benefits, issued on October 9, 1930, provided: 45 1. In view of the great shortage of labor in all branches of state industry, in¬ surance bureaus are requested to discontinue payment of unemployment benefit. No provision for the payment of unemployment benefit has been made in the Budget of Social Insurance for the supplementary quarter October-December 1930. 2. Labor exchanges are instructed to take all necessary measures in order that the unemployed be immediately sent to work, and of these the first to be sent are persons entitled to draw unemployment benefit. 3. Unemployed persons are to be drafted not only to work in their own trades, but also to other work necessitating special qualification. At the same time labor exchanges, according to local conditions (the needs of any particular trade) should extend their activities in the training and retraining of unemployed. 4. No excuse for refusal to work, with the exception of illness, supported by a medical certificate, should be considered. Refusal of work carries with it removal from the registers of the labor exchanges. Medical certificates should be issued to the unemployed by medical boards and medical control boards. Unemployed in possession of medical certificates will receive benefits under the heading of unemployment benefit, but this benefit will come out of the sums allocated for temporary incapacity. 5. The personal responsibility for the due and correct execution of the present decree is placed upon the heads of the labor exchanges (and in districts where these are not in existence on the directors of labor organizations) and upon the chairmen of insurance bureaus. The responsibility for finding jobs and training for available jobs was thus placed on the individual and on the labor exchanges. In order to fill the goods-starved economy of Soviet Russia the Govern¬ ment expanded existing plants and built many new ones. There could be no question either of overproduction, or missing the market, since the market was completely controlled. Everything produced was sure to be sold at planned profits or more and at prices which included a huge tax for the Government. Unemployment could arise only when one plant was deliberately curtailed, but the workers released would be taken up by expansion elsewhere. There were many complaints about high labor turn-over, and a number of decrees attempted to deal with this problem. A very small part of the labor force was engaged in the making of consumption goods, where, owing to the nature of demand for the goods, seasonal unemployment might have developed and, in a really rich country, some overemployment. Even a smaller proportion of the labor force is engaged in the numerous service industries, which fluctuate violently with changes in the levels of income and demand. The only large-scale unemployment possible was that whicn could arise out of faulty planning or radical changes in the planned production program. In a free society there is always some unemployment caused by seasonal fluctuations, industry shifts, and workers’ efforts to locate a satisfactory job, rather than any job. In the United States in 1944 and 1945 we always had a floating unemployment of 750,000 to 1,500,000 despite the full utilization of all the available local man¬ power and womanpower in war, war-sustaining, and civilian pro¬ duction. But furriers are not expected to work in foundries nor are skilled workers forced to take work unsuitable to them or to go immediately to distant places where work in their skill may be avail¬ able. Such workers are unemployed during their off season and during the period of readjustment; and they receive unemployment com- 45 Reproduced in W. IT. Chamberlin, The Soviet Planned Economic Order (Boston, World Peace Foun¬ dation, 1931), pp. 201-202. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 51 pensation in the United States. In the light of some of the evidence of the misapplication of capital and labor in Soviet industry it is inconceivable that for 15 years there never has been any unemploy¬ ment which did not merit some unemployment compensation. 46 It is written in the Soviet constitution that “he who does not work shall not eat.” It does not say that exceptions will be made for con¬ certed efforts to quit work (strikes) or because of temporary difficulties in locating a new and satisfactory job (seasonal or frictional unem¬ ployment). Thus far the conclusion is inescapable that the cyclical fluctuation in production and employment is a . characteristic of capitalism and of a surplus economy. Soviet Russia has neither the competitive anticipation of market changes which makes for the scramble and imbalances of the business cycle, nor has it had the great surpluses in consumer production and income spent on abund¬ ance, luxury, and more or less “unnecessary” and postponable items, which in turn create industries on a shakable foundation and stimulate extremes of expansion and contraction in all other industries. Since cyclical unemployment is the most costly and fearsome expenence of workers in capitalist countries, and business depression and cyclical unemployment have afflicted capitalist nations periodically, the pay¬ ment of unemployment compensation, which amounts to from one- third to one-half*of normal wages, is a necessary concomitant of a responsible capitalist society. It is noteworthy also that unemploy¬ ment compensation in the United States and even relief under the WPA gives workers a greater command over goods and services than full employment has given the average Russian worker in the period of the three 5-Year Plans. 47 LABOR LEGISLATION BEFORE WORLD WAR II Labor legislation in the Soviet Union is made up of Government decrees, generally later approved by the Supreme Soviet in its short sessions and always unanimously. These decrees are, by hypothesis, the embodiment of the will of the people. The decrees issued between 1938 and 1941 would be considered harsh, restrictive, and undemo¬ cratic by American standards. They would certainly be regarded as “antilabor” by union spokesmen in the United States because they restricted the. freedom of movement of workers, imposed severe penalties for absenteeism, lengthened hours, reduced maternity bene¬ fits, and made other insurance benefits dependent upon length of em¬ ployment on the same job. 46 Am oner the charges leveled against Tomsky before he was removed from the headship of the trade- unions was that “unemployment relief was distributed in such a way as to become m effect an inducement to the nseudo-unemployed to avoid working” (Hubbard, op. cit., p. 58). 47 In November 1941, Mr. Ralph Ingersoll, editor of PM, a New York newspaper very friendly to the Soviet Union visited the U. S. S. R. and wrote a series of articles for the American press. He came to the con¬ clusion on a comparison of wages and prices in Moscow and the United States, that a typical Soviet indus¬ trial worker was able to buy commodities in Moscow on his weekly earnings which could be purchased for SofaTthe ! United States (Washington Evening Star, November 10,1941) At that time the average factory earnings^n the United States were $29.58. Most States pay 50 percent of earnings m unemployment com- nensation with a maximum generally of $15 to $20 per week. . ., . ~ . . Walter Citrine, general secretary of the British Trade Union Congress, remarked on his lsit to So let Russia in 1935 that the average worker did not earn any more than the unemployed British worker was receiving in unemployment compensation at that time (Citrine, op. cit., PP'^,201). 0TTQVQn . 0 Ambassador Davies wrote about a survey of industrial plants at the end of 1936: The average wage generally was 200 to 250 rubles a month (about $10 to $12.50 ‘bootleg ruble gold value) (Davies, op. cit., P ’“The Soviet svstem admits of no unemployment except of persons who are not fully trusted or who are boi^punilhed! 7 MHlions ot people in the country, however, are not working to theaddsin.which they desire to be employed, and although regularly employed are m much worse status than those in the United States employed with relief funds. Political prisoners are not unemployed. Thev are working fDa^ .es, op. cit., p. 240). 52 COMMUNISM IN ACTION The last-mentioned decree, effecting new conditions and reductions in insurance benefits, was issued on December 28, 1938. It was entitled “A Decree of the Council of the People’s Commissars of the U. S. S. R., of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and of the All-Union Council of Trade Unions, Concerning Measures for Regulating Labor Discipline, for Improving the Practice of State Social Insurance and for Combating Abuses in this Matter.” When this decree came up for ratification by the Supreme Soviet, it did not receive a word of criticism. 48 “Labor discipline” has never ceased to be a subject of solicitude on the part of the Soviet lawmakers. In American industry, workers are expected to be “disciplined” by their own skill and natural desire to do a good job, supported by a sense of justice growing out of mutual relations of employer and employee, fair work loads, and wage differ¬ entials—all of it energized by the natural and encouraged desire of everyone to improve his Own position. Excesses of “discipline” by employers and management are curbed by both unions and the Govern¬ ment. It would be a most uncommon thing for an American em¬ ployer, even though lie is supposed to be guided exclusively by the quest for profit, to discharge an employee for a single day’s absence even without good cause. Discharge is a serious matter in trade- union ideology and in the psychology of the individual worker, and the employer is restrained by numerous contract provisions from abusing the pow T er or opportunity to discharge. The last thing in the world anyone could ever expect is for the top American labor leaders to recommend such legislation and for the American labor movement to endorse it “unanimously.” In the decree of December 28, 1938, a number of provisions were designed to reduce labor turn-over and to encourage workers to stick to a definite job and factory. Benefits were tied in with continuity in one job. A worker could receive full relief for temporary incapacity only if he had served G years in his last employment. He receives less than 100 percent of benefit for lesser years of continuous service, down to 50 percent of full relief for less than 2 years of continuous service. Workers dismissed for misconduct or leaving a job of their own accord must serve 6 months in a new r job before qualifying for any relief at all. The amount of relief for permanent disability was also made to vary with the years of employment in the same establish¬ ment. 49 Thus, although the administration of social insurance is in the hands of the trade-unions themselves, the trade-unions are in a mood to reduce benefits and so to operate the system as to make it a weapon of the state in inculcating “labor discipline.” The decree of December 28, 1938, not only provided for the fore¬ going. changes in the operation of the social-security system and for the dismissal of workers absent without good cause for even 1 day, but it also provided penalties for clocking in late, knocking off before time, spending too long over meals, or idling during working hours. Dismissal was made compulsory if these offenses were repeated three times in 1 month or four times in 2 months. Still another stimulant to “labor discipline” under this decree was the restriction of the opportunity to take the annual vacation until 11 months had been served in the same enterprise. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 53 A law of June 28, 1940, extended the industrial working day from 7 to 8 hours, 'revoked the 6-day week, and reestablished the 7-day week with Sunday as a day of rest. Piece rates, were adjusted downward in order that the workers should not earn more from the extra hours of work. Workers were expressly forbidden to leave their employment without authority, the penalty being “correctional labor” for 6 months with a 25-percent cut in wages. 50 As war approached in 1940 and 1941 further decrees were issued lengthening the working day, freezing workers to their jobs, arranging for the calling up and training of a million boys a year between the ages of 14 and 17, and conferring upon the Government the power to transfer workers from one part of the Union to another. The details of this legislation need not concern us, because they may definitely be regarded as war measures. Yet it is noteworthy that both in content and in the penalties provided, the wartime labor legislation of Soviet Russia follows the pattern of its peacetime legislation, passed by a self-perpetuating bureaucracy on the fiction and propaganda of “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” 60 Ibid., pp. 98-93. Chapter V FORCED LABOR u acloubteclly the most troublesome of all the Soviet institutions to present and discuss without passion is the institution of forced labor. Although the Government publishes no statistics regarding the camps in which prisoners are concentrated—and thus confuses and throws out of line all its other employment statistics—there can be no reason¬ able doubt that in the Soviet Union several million workers are employed under police discipline and receive only miserable keep for their labor. 1 The Government makes every effort to conceal the existence of these camps. No foreigner or correspondent is ever permitted to see them. Correspondents accredited to the country do not dare to tangle with the censors and the NKVD regarding this matter. 2 One Canadian newspaperwoman who succeeded by wile in gaining entrance to a con¬ centration camp was quickly expelled from the Soviet Union. 3 Our information comes from those who have escaped, from Russian writers now living abroad, from Americans who have worked, lived, or trav¬ eled in Soviet Russia, and from American correspondents who were able to write about the institution of forced labor after they left the Soviet Union. The first correction labor camp was established in 1923. They grew rapidly in the 1930 ? s, when it was apparently decided to keep most of the “liquidated” alive and working for the state rather than to kill them. 4 The men and women—for there are very large numbers of women among them—work on railways, highways, and canals, cut timber, mine metals and minerals, fill swamplands, help on large con¬ struction projects, and open up new areas for settlement. Some are segregated in barracks and work in heavy industries. The population of these camps was drawn from political offenders, nonconforming engineers and intellectuals, kulaks, _ recalcitrant peasants, former industrial and other officials, and deviating Commu¬ nists of the right and of the left. They are exiles who are sent thousands of miles from the towns or villages of their birth. In later years the reserve of forced labor was increased by national groups believed to be hostile and populations residing along the many borders of the Soviet Union in Europe and Asia. There are apparently some differ¬ ences in the treatment of the various groups which make up the forced 1 Official statistics do not mention the category of-forced labor. They sometimes appear under “workers” and sometimes not at all. David J. Dallin, The Real Soviet Russia (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1944), p. 98. 2 The NKVD has recently been divided into the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security.. The distribution of functions is not known. * Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia (New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1937), f>. 425. 4 Freda Utley,'The Dream We Lost (New York, the John Day Co.; 1940), pp. 239-245. This book con¬ tains on pp. 240-253 a long quotation from Professor Tchemavin’s Life in Concentration Camps in the U. S. S. R., which describes conditions in the camps, the original policy of extermination, the new policy of profiting from their labor begun in 1930, the formal organization of camps as copies of Soviet enterprises, food rations, discipline, and the vast amount of productive work performed. Professor Tchernavin is connected with the Natural Science Museum in London and was formerly pro¬ fessor of ichthyology in the Agronomic Institute of Leningrad. He performed the miracle of escaping from a concentration camp. He also wrote I Speak for the Silent, and his wife published Escape From the Soviets. Many concrete examples of forced labor and conditions of life and work under GPU and NKVD control will be found in the other books mentioned in this section. 54 COMMUNISM IN ACTION 55 labor of the Soviet Union from those living in the many concentration camps spread all over the land, to those exiled to work at reduced wages in the unsettled sections of the country, to those exiled as precautionary measures from frontier regions. Also, large numbers charged with or convicted of some unreliability by the authorities are permitted to work in established communities and factories at their old jobs at reduced pay. 6 We are concerned only to the extent that such camps exist m a country with the pretension of leading the world in improving the conditions of those who toil and labor. Nor does it matter in a sober comparison of industrial and social conditions whether these are called “correctional” or “educational” or “prison labor,” “forced labor” or “slave labor.” It is sufficient that for more than two decades reliance has been placed upon millions of involuntary workers who have pro¬ duced enormous wealth practically at no cost to the state. Conditions, discipline, death rates, etc., in these camps will not be described. It is sufficient that millions who have been sentenced to them work for years or for life without wages and that they have no freedom to move out until then sentences are commuted or have run out. The labor camps became very important economic enterprises in the Soviet Union in the 193G’s and the GPU, which then bossed them, became the world’s largest employer of labor. In July 1934 the GPU was transferred into the NKVD. “Originally Cheka, then GPU, now NKVD, the changes in name had altered neither the methods nor the awesome reputation of this naked sword of the revolution.” 6 Under the NKVD there was organized the Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Labor Settle¬ ments (GULAG) to administer the growing forced-labor camps. Besides using millions of political prisoners directly—on the highways, in mining salt, or gold, laying rails, felling forests, clearing swamps, building harbors and industrial plants—the NKVD farmed out its surplus prison labor to other Soviet enterprises. .While the supply of forced labor was always available in the millions it was insufficient to meet the demand. 7 The question remains, how many workers were condemned to forced labor? Estimates vary widely. This has always been secret infor¬ mation in the Soviet Union, admitted only inadvertently, as on some occasions when some prisoners were amnestied. The following esti¬ mates come from a variety of sources. They differ very widely be¬ cause of the different sources of information of the estimators and the different years in which the estimates were made; but they all attest to the existence of the institution of forced labor and of camps con¬ ducted under harsh prison conditions and they all count the victims in the millions—not only at any one time, but also year after year. 6 W. L. White, Report on the Russians (New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1945), pp. 228-229; Victor Kravchenko I Chose Freedom (New York, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1946), pp. 285, 286, 351, speaks of a sentence imposed on him of “1 year’s compulsory labor at my present place of employment. This is a unique Soviet invention The convicted citizen continues to live and work in freedom but 10 or 20 percent of his earnings are forfeit to the NKVD. In my case it was 10 percent. Tens of thousands of Russians through this device are forced to pay a part of their income as tribute to the secret police under guise of punishment for crime. Notification of my new status was received by the. bookkeeping department at the factory. F rom then until the case was thrown out by the supreme court, 10 percent of my wages and bonuses was deducted eJ As a career man in the Soviet managerial hierarchy Kravchenko later had many experiences with the use of prison labor camps in the different sections of the country to which he was assigned. His book contams numerous illustrations of prison labor as a key Soviet institution. 7 Itad^DD. 199 285-286, 406. Kravchenko found-forced labor camps in and around every industrial enter¬ prise ■with which he was connected—in Taganrog, at Pervouralsk, in Sverdlovsk, Stalinsk, Kemerovo, and other places. 90681—46-5 56 COMMUNISM IN ACTION Lyons, 6,000,000 in 1933 8 ; Dallin, 10,000,000 in 1940 9 ; Barmine, 12,000,000 in 1938 I0 ; Souvarine, 15,000,000 in 1937 n ; Siliga, 10,000,000 in 1937 12 ; Krav¬ chenko, 18,000,000 in 1941 13 ; Koestler, 17,000,000 in 1943 14 ; White, 14,000,000 in 1945 15 . Other sources, but no estimates: Citrine 1Q , Utley I7 , Schuman 18 , Hub¬ bard 19 , Scott 20 , Littlepage 21 , Atkinson 22 . 8 Lyons, op. cit. Lyons was the American representative of the United Press in the USSR between 1928 and 1934. (a) “No tourist parties were taken to visit those places. The few foreign correspondents who attempted to visit them were always prevented. * * * The Government concealed the extent of forced labor. However, from isolated official admissions by the Government (at least 200,000 prisoners engaged on tho Baltic-White Sea Canal, several hundred thousand in double-tracking the Trans-Siberian Railroad, etc.) a conservative estimate of the total * * * would be 2,000,000. If we add the exiled peasants transported to areas under GPU supervision—technically free but as helplessly the creatures of the GPU as any prisoner—the total would be at least tripled” (p. 425). There were great increases in the number of exiled prisoners preceding and following the great purges of 1936-39. (b) “Whatever differences there may have been in our estimates of the number in GPU peonage, the existence of such peonage was accepted in Moscow as normal, matter-of-course, and indisputable” (p. 426). (c) “The blossoming of the GPU into a ‘vast industrial organization’ began with the liquidation of the kulaks in 1930. The police suddenly found themselves in charge of enormous masses of raw labor— herded deliberately into harsh sections of the country where free labor could not be lured. Subsequent mass arrests in city and country alike expanded this labor force, and the influx of engineers and specialists by the tens of thousands gave the GPU a terrorized technical personnel as well. Specific industrial jobs were therefore assigned to this ‘educational institution,’ particularly in the Far North, the Central Asiatic wilderness, and the more inhospitable sectors of Siberia. When the civilian economic authorities could not cope with a particularly difficult industrial task—certain chemical enterprises in the sub-Arctic territory, for instance—it was taken over by phe GPU and administered with compulsory labor by ‘educational’ methods” (p. 426). (, d ) In 1930 in an inspection trip in central Asia, which Lyons was permitted to take under guide, he accidentally came across a trainload of exiled prisoners, including many women, who thought they were “being taken to Turkestan—to the canals” (p. 318). In other places in his report of his experiences in the Soviet Union Lyons speaks of “a system of involuntary labor for millions of prisoners and economic con¬ scripts” and of extensive concentration camps and thinly veiled conscript labor (pp. 368-371). 6 Dallin, op. cit., p. 96. Mr. Dallin is an old Menshevik, living in the United States of America. He has written extensively about developments in the Soviet Union. “The forced labor class, -the exact extent of which is not known, and the number of which has fluctuated at frequent intervals, may be estimated at from 7 to 12 million.” Alexander Barmine, One Who Survived (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945), p. 273. Mr. Barmine was the head of the automobile export trust who later became a Soviet diplomat. He escaped to France and later became an American citizen. In another place Barmine remarks that labor furnished by the con¬ centration camps had built some of the most important Soviet projects. (Alexander Barmine, Mem oil’s of a Soviet Diplomat (London, L. Dickson, Ltd., 1938), p. 273.) 11 Boris Souvarine, Stalin (London, Seeker & Warburg, 1940), p. 641. Mr. Souvarine is a French Com¬ munist who has lived in the Soviet Union. 12 Aux Pays du Grande Mensonge, quoted in Utley, op. cit., p. 253. Siliga (sometimes spelled Ciliga) is a Jugoslav Communist who is one of the few who escaped from a Soviet concentration camp. u Kravchenko, op. cit., p. 302. Mr. Kravchenko is the Soviet official who recently relinquished his citizenship and threw himself on the protection of public opinion in the United States. “Already (in 1938) among Communists close to the Kremlin throne, whispered estimates placed the slave labor forces at more than 15,000,000; in the next few years the estimate would be close to 20,000,000” (p. 302). i* Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar (London, J. Cape, 1945), pp. 181-187. Mr. Koestler is a distinguished international novelist and essayist. Koestler also points out that the Government publishes no figures and permits no outsiders to enter but recalls that the Government has officially admitted that the Baltic-White Sea Canal was built entirely, and the Turk-Sib Railway partly, by forced labor brigades. These involved the labor of about a million prisoners. From an examination of Soviet statistics, however, and from published reports of eyewitnesses and others who have left the Soviet Union, Koestler estimates a total of about 17,000,000, despite eyewitness reports of an annual mortality rate up to 30 percent among the prisoners. , is ’White, op. cit. (Mr. White is the American journalist who accompanied Mr. Eric Johnston on his trip to the U. S. S. R. in 1945.) Two American engineers working in the Soviet Union and whom White met in Siberia made their estimate of the number of prisoners engaged in forced labor as 13 to 15 millions. They added that much of the free labor on the projects in which they were engaged were sent out from the western regions because they were believed to be unreliable (pp. 228-229). In one project on which they were employed half of the 70,000 workers were prisoners, mostly women (p. 228). These American engi¬ neers told White that the best Soviet engineers were in the NKVD (which absorbed the GPU) and that the NKVD bids on big construction jobs (p. 228). On his own authority, White reports that it was generally known that 3,000,000 prisoners were used to build a canal connecting Moscow with the Volga River (p. 72). He also reports suddenly coming upon a long column of ragged women marching four abreast on their way to work under armed guards (p. 211). Walter Citrine, I Search for Truth in Russia (London, G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1936), p. 81. This book is based on a diary kept by the General Secretary of the British Trades Union Congress on his second tour of Russia in 1935. When Citrine was being shown the Moscow-Volga Canal project he was told that all but 10 percent of the 80,000 workers there were prisoners. The following colloquy took place, after Citrine was told that a prisoner was paid 40 rubles a month and food: Citrine. “The Soviet Government must pay for its labor like any other Government. The more it pays to the workers the more they will consume and the less the Government will have to finance its schemes of capital development. It seems to me that this is setting an example for people like Hitler and Mussolini.” G. P. U. Man. “But the situation is different because the workers in Russia are the State. In Germany the State is under capitalism. We do not exploit our prison labor.” Citrine. “Then why have you stopped paying them the trade-union rate? It is as plain as day to me. You do not pay them the proper rates because you want to get their labor cheaply.” 17 Utley, op. cit., pp. 166, 186, 195, 213, 216, 238-310. Miss Utley is an English scholar and intellectual who became a Communist because she thought that communism would liberate the worker from exploita¬ tion. She married a Russian and lived in the Soviet Union for years. The title of her book suggests COMMUNISM IN ACTION 57 that she did not quite find what she sought and expected in the only country in the world where communism ' S '^Frederick 8 L^Schuman, Soviet Politics at Home and Abroad (New York, A. A. Knopf, 1946). Pro¬ fessor Schuman of Williams College, is a great friend and warm admirer of the Soviet Union. He has made two tours of Soviet Russia since 1928. Professor Schuman deals only briefly with this subject in a book of 650 pages which covers all phases of Soviet Russia’s history and its economic, political, and social life He ridicules estimates of others as too high and offers as his contribution that “since 1929 extensive use’ has been made of correctional labor camps, whose inmates have been engaged in road construction, canal building, and other public works, often under highly adverse conditions of climate, housing, nutri¬ tion and sanitation. * * * For reasons which seem to them sufficient, the Soviet authorities have not seen fit to publish statistics regarding these penal institutions” (p. 340). In his evident fear that this may give support to those who defame Soviet Russia, Professor Schuman tries hard to give the impression that these penal colonies are made up largely of men and women who have committed crimes similar to violence and theft in the United States. But he adds: “There may be a comparable number of political prisoners in penal camps. All such estimates are, however, guesswork” (p. 341). is Leonard E. Hubbard Soviet, Labour and Industry (London, Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1942). Mi. Hub¬ bard is an English economist who has spent many years observing and studying the Soviet economy in ooeration He lived in the U. S. S. R. for stretches of time in 1930, 1934, 1937, 1939, and 1941. His comments on the labor of prisoners in the Soviet Union are cautious and restrained but he too docs not deny the existence of the institution of forced labor. “I think it has been pretty well established that the GPU did at one time round up large numbers of humble citizens, mainly belonging to the peasant class, on trumped-up charges simply because they wanted their labor. I would not say quite the same about the scientists, engineers, and specialists who fell into the GPU net. Probably these had been indiscreet in their conversation or had afforded the GPU some grounds for arresting them by unconsciously showing that they could not swallow Bolshevism But it is quite possible that when the GPU wanted an engineer or other technical expert they examined their dossiers to see who could be arrested on some plausible charge. In any case the quan¬ tity of labor at the disposal of the GPU in their various convict camps throughout the U. S. S. R. ran into millions This labor was employed in the forests and sawmills of northern Russia and Siberia and in con¬ structing canals etc. The White Sea-Volga aud Moscow-Volga canals were among those built with con¬ vict labor The GPU is also said to run manufacturing enterprises with prison labor. I cannot say much about this from personal experience, except that once in Tiflis, having been apprehended on suspicion of being about to photograph a forbidden building, I found myself in some GPU officer’s room in Tamara s Castle admiring a display of colored models of animals and flowers in compressed bread. 7 hose, my host or jailer said had been made by some of his prisoners in the bakery. All the prisoners were usefully era- ployed - as far as I remember hats and boots and perhaps earthenware were among their products. This was only prison industry on a small scale compared with the big factories fully equipped with machinery which the GPU is credited with running. But the point concerning convict labor on canal construction is that these enterprises would almost certainly prove to have been uneconomic to construct with free labor. The convicts were given the minimum food, clothing, and shelter and lived under conditions that free labor would not have tolerated for a moment. The output per worker would almost certainly be much less than that of free labor, so the difference in cost per unit of work done by convict and free labor was perhaps not so great as one would think. The more important consideration, however, was not the cost of food and clothing but machinery, at a time when all sorts of capital goods were scarce and every sort of industry clamoring for equipment and machines. The convicts were made to do all the excavation work, etc., with the minimum of labor-saving and power-driven machinery. It did not matter much how long the work took for supplying them with food was only a problem of transport, and it was no matter for regret if quite a large proportion succumbed to privation and disease. The use of convict labor in the 1930’s has certain similarities with the use of serf and forced labor by Peter I, when he built canals and roads and drained marshes In both cases free labor was difficult to procure either because it was not available on the spot or because it demanded supplies and equipment that were scarce. In Peter’s day power-driven machinery had not been invented; in the early 1930’s it was not available, because Soviet industry was not yet able to make it or was fully occupied in producing other things, and the Soviet Government could not afford to im 2 Uohn Scott? b Behffid < 'the Wrals (Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1942). Mr. Scott, an American who worked in Magnitogorsk in the Urals from January 1933 to early in 1938, wrote that m 1933 some 50,000 Magnitogorsk workers were directly under GPU supervision” (p. 85). Writing only of what he had himself experienced and observed, Scott said of the local sabotage trials: “The trials were almost always in camera, and usually in absentia. There were almost no acquittals in Magnitogorsk in 1937, nor were there more than half a dozen death sentences. After the trial, the operative department of the NKVD turned the convicts over to the ULAG (criminal camp administration), whose job it was to get certain construction work done, using the labor of the convicts, and also to carry on reedu- cational work. The ULAG was a completely separate and independent part of the NKVD organization. They received a prisoner accompanied by a frayed document stating-that he had been convicted on such- and-such an article. Beyond this they knew nothing. Their job was to build dams and railroads, and m the interest of high productivity, if for no other reason, they treated the prisoners as well as possible. "Arrived at the construction job, the prisoners received better food than they had had since their arrests and warm, sturdy clothes, and were told that from then on the thing that counted was theii woik. Until 1938, 20, 40, or 60 percent of their sentences were frequently commuted for good work “After 1938, however, commutations of sentences became rare, probably because NKVD felt reluctant to release workers when so few new ones were coming in. In the camps, frequent meetings, newspapers, speeches were calculated to reeducate the prisoners in the spirit of liberty, freedom, and justice in the workers’ fatherland under the new Stalinist constitution. . , , , . 4< Iri Magnitogorsk in 1937 the activities of the NKVD were often cbaiactcrized by groat confusion* Prisoners were lost or their identity mistaken. The NKVD came around one night to arrest the former occupant of the apartment over ours who had left Magnitogorsk months before. There were cases where notices were sent to wives, informing them that their husbands had been arrested and requesting them to bring packages, when the husbands were living at home and working normally and continued to do so. These things bespoke the muscle-bound and inefficient organization of the NKVD apparatus. . "Alexei Ivanovich Pushkov, the chief of the Magnitegorsk NKVD during 19o7, was himself purged in 1939 for his excessive ardor in purging the people of Magnitogorsk” (pp. 193-194). _ W. L. white reported seeing columns of women prisoners being led under guard at Magnitogorsk on his visit in the Eric Johnston party in 1944 (W. L. White, Report on the Russians, pp. 211-213). . ,, T .... John D. Littlepage, In Search of Soviet Gold (New York, Blarcourt, Brace & Co., 1938). Mr. Little- page is an American mining engineer who spent from 1928 to 1937 in the Soviet Union. (a) "I found that almost all Russians are remarkably wary in discussing concentration camps and prisons. The authorities have succeeded in surrounding this subject with such an atmosphere of mystery and fear that even the subject is avoided. I met a few Russians who seemed disposed to bring up the subject of 58 COMMUNISM IN ACTION prisons, but one never knows whether or not such people are police agents, and I gave them no encourage¬ ment, since in any case it was none of my affair” (pp. 136-137). ( b ) “The authorities have never given out figures of the total number .of men and women put to forced labor; I have heard the number estimated at anywhere from 1 to 5 millions. Thousands of the small farmers rounded up during and after 1929 have since regained their freedom, but so far as I could see the number of forced laborers remained fairly constant up to the time I left Russia in 1937. The recent purges, which af¬ fected hundreds of thousands of persons, undoubtedly added to the labor army" (p. 135). (c) “I don’t know how many of these kulaks were put at forced labof; I have run across them all over the eastern districts of Russia not only in mines, but in factories and forests and at work on dams, railways, canals, and powerhouses. There were so many of them that they converted the federal police into the largest single employers of labor in Russia, and gave the police a great reputation with the Communist General Staff for getting things done. The police have an advantage over other Soviet organizations; they can alwavs count on a steady supply of labor, no matter what kind of living conditions exists where the given task has to be done. The kulaks formed the backbone and basis for the great forced labor army which has worked in Russia ever since. This army of forced labor mixes up murderers, thieves, and other ordinary criminals with such groups as kulaks, whose offense was of a different nature" (p. 81). (d) “As a rule, forced laborers are shipped to some part of the country as far as possible- from their old homes. This is supposed to reduce their temptation to run away; it also cuts off all their old ties, and thus makes them more disposed to accept the new life laid down for them. I have seen Central Asian tribes at work in the far north, and the southern Asiatic regions have been filled up with people from European Russia who didn’t come of their own free will” (p. 134). (e) “As a matter of fact, there is not a great deal of difference so far as I could observe, between the treat¬ ment accorded to those in free exile and those who are presumably entirely free. From the American view¬ point, all Soviet citizens are treated very much like prisoners on parole, especially since the old Tsarist passport system was revived in 1932. Every citizen must have a passport and register it with the police at regular intervals; he must show his ‘documents’ whenever he turns around. He has to get special permission to travel from one part of the country to another, and register with the police wherever he goes. He must have a very special standing with the authorities to get permission to leave his country; only a few hundred get such permission every year” (pp. 140-41). 22 Brooks Atkinson, who has recently returned from his assignment as Moscow correspondent of the New York Times from August 1945 to„May 1946 reported in an article in the Times on July 7, 1946, that “no ore knows how m an y mil-lion political prisoners are now living in jail or in exile. The estimates run all the way from 10 million to 15 million." Chapter VI LIVING STANDARDS INTRODUCTION An accurate appraisal of the standards of living in Soviet Russia on a statistical basis is rendered difficult because of the lack of official price indices and family budget figures, publication of such figures having been discontinued in 1930. 1 Variations in the purchasing power of the ruble also make comparisons difficult. . This is especially true in attempting to compare costs in Russia with those in other countries. 2 On this point it has been stated: To compare the retail price level of Soviet articles with prices in capitalist countries is next to impossible because the ruble in which prices are expressed is an isolated currency without connection with foreign money markets. 3 This difficulty has been stressed by a number of writers. 4 Other factors which render an accurate appraisal difficult include: Payments in varying proportions made in kind to agricultural workers and before 1935 to industrial workers; variations in prices as between Government, kolkhoz, and private stores; quality of articles available, and the amount of goods and services furnished free or at nominal cost at various periods. 6 . General statements about living standards are also ot doubtful accuracy, because of the wide variety of peoples and cultures included in Soviet territory. Life is very different for the Kazakh nomad dwelling in a circular tent, the Mohammedan Uzbek, the Ukrainian peasant in his white-washed, thatch-roofed mud hut, the Caucasian mountaineer, and the city dweller in Moscow. . In spite of such difficulties, available information relating to pro¬ duction of consumers’ goods, methods of distribution, social and cultural services rendered by the state, and variations in wages re¬ ceived by different types of workers, may help to throw light on the question of living standards. , 0 . , Sources friendly as well as those unfriendly to the present Soviet regime appear to agree that a wide variation exists in living standards of individuals within occupation groups and also between such groups as a whole. ,, ,. , Thus a peasant may belong to a prosperous or poor collective farm; his remuneration will be based both on the total production of the farm and his own productivity. The wage of an industrial worker varies with his productivity, the degree of skill required m the work he per¬ forms, and its importance to the state. 6 i Henry A. Freund, Russia From A to Z (Sydney, London, Angus & Robertson Ltd., 1945), p. 367. »Ibid, pp. 443, 446. » Ibid, p. dt 6 '-R„ OQ s Q * *, -FYnnnmlo Front for War and Peace, (New York and London, Harper Bros., 1942), p. wi X Ite » DitoSnt Way of Life, Liberty (New York), May 26, 1945, p 25 • Yugow, op. clt., PP-, d , b ln Peace and War (New York, International Publishers, Schwarz and Aaron Yugow Management in Russian 64,67. 59 60 COMMUNISM IN ACTION Controversy exists as to the degree to which living standards have risen since Tsarist times and the extent to which such rise is attributable to the Soviet regime. Widely differing figures are cited by \arious authorities. However, the weight of the evidence would seem to support a conclusion that living standards have risen gradually but steadily since pre-Soviet times, but that such standards have not attained the level of many European countries and remain far below those of the United States. 7 Published wage rates give little indication of the level of real wages. “The published wage rates are merely the minimum rates established by law, and only averages are published.” Nor do such rates take into account fluctuations in the purchasing power of the ruble, or other factors mentioned above. 8 A consideration of living standards should take into account factors that cannot be measured in physical terms. Among these might be mentioned increased security due to lack of unemployment, and psy¬ chological satisfactions due to cultural rise. A recent writer makes the following distinction between material and morale factors in the standard of living: When dividing into ideal and material values the component elements together constituting the standard of living, the improvement of the former in comparison with pre-Revolutionary standards is enormous. The education of the great ma¬ jority of the population to literacy and to an active participation in the cultural, political, and social life of the nation has elevated the Russians to a level hardly dreamed of under the reactionary regime of the Tsars. 9 To a considerable extent consumers’ goods remained scarce and living standards were kept from rising by the deliberate Government policy of concentrating first on rapid industrialization in the interests of building a modern economy; and later in preparation for expected war. 10 The effect of the war has been to lower living standards to a bare subsistence level for great numbers of people. Whole areas have suffered almost wholesale destruction. Schools, hospitals, and fac¬ tories have been destroyed in great numbers. Food has been and still is extremely scarce in many areas. There is a famine of many types of consumer goods. The following statistics are furnished by the magazine World Report: 11 Nazi armies, invading Russia, destroyed 1,710 towns and 70,000 villages. More than 25 million people were made homeless during the war. Now, nearly 3 million are being transferred from dug-outs to 650,000 new homes, but millions are still living in crude dug-outs, or shacks, or are severely overcrowded in Russia’s large cities. Moscow’s population, for instance, has swollen from 3 million to nearly 7 million, including 500,000 homeless refugees who are there illegally. Industrial plants and enterprises employing' 4,000,000 people were destroyed. The Ukraine, for example, was occupied by the Germans and, when they re¬ treated, largely left in ruins. It must be rebuilt before the Soviet Union can produce again at the prewar rate. The Ukraine Republic, the most densely populated, normally produced three- fourths of the Soviet Union’s sugar, one-third the coal,, one-fifth the wheat, two-thirds the cast iron, one-sixth the machinery, one-third the total freight turn-over. 7 Freund, op. cit., p. 367; see also, Yugow, op. cit., pp. 213-214. 8 Yugow, op. cit., p. 198. * Freund, op. cit., p. 368. 70 Sumner Welles, An Intelligent American’s Guide to the Peace (New York, the Dryden Press, 1945), p. 115. 71 Inside the U. S. S. R. World Report (Washington, D. C.) July 11,1946, p. 22. See also. Albert Ryhs Williams, op. cit., p. 224. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 61 For some time to come there is the prospect of a continued famine of consumer goods. Variations in Living Standards STANDARDS OF LIVING OF INDUSTRIAL WORKERS The effects of the gradual rise of real wages previously noted have been augmented by the fact that several members of a family are now frequently wage earners. Real wages were kept low during the years 1929-32, but at this time prices of rationed essential commodities were also low. In addition workers received many benefits in housing, social insurance, education, medical and cultural services, at little or no cost. The period 1932-35 was a difficult one for the worker, since it was a time of transition from rationing to the sale, of all articles m commercial stores or markets. Prices rose more rapidly than wages, which were not adjusted until late in 1935. From 1935 to 1939 a gradual rise in real wages was experienced. 12 Some measure of differences between groups may be found m the relative rate of pay, although it must be borne in mind that money is not the only form of remuneration received by Soviet workers.. It should also be noted that during periods of rationing, income differ¬ entials assumed little importance due to the scarcity of consumer goods and very high prices on nonrationed items. One writer has given the following figures, as average for 1935: Rubles per month Industrial worker- Office worker--- Machinist- Engineer-—-- Unskilled workers (messengers, attendants)-- i This figure appears to be high, unless it applies only to chief engineers and their assistants. 213 319 540 i 1, 714 89 This writer further states: By 1940. the wage of the industrial worker had increased to 335 rubles. But the differentials in compensation had increased rather than diminished and were emphasized by a system of liberal bonuses for proof of efficiency, both m manage¬ ment and labor. 13 Considerable variation is found in wage figures cited by different authorities. Thus Dobb reports that office workers received an average wage of 234 rubles in 1935, engineers 436 rubles, and unskilled wmrkers 118 rubles. These figures, Dobb states, were taken from Socialist Construction in the U. S. S. R.: Statistical Abstract, pages 368 and 385. 14 Due to the system of piecework and bonuses now m operation in Russia, it has been stated that “the average earnings of higher-paid grades may well be five or six times that of the lowest grades. Stakhanovites generally receive a bonus of 100 percent or more over the normal wage of their grade. 15 . _ . , .. . Some studies have been attempted comparing standards ol living of Russian workers with those in other countries, but such studies are incomplete and somewhat contradictory when compared with one 12 Yugow, op. cit.. pp.J205-2l0. is William H. Chamberlin, The Russian Enigma (New York, u Dobb, op. cit., p. 91. » Drucker, op. cit., pp. 90-91. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1943), p. 162. 62 COMMUNISM IN ACTION another. This is due to the inadequacy of Soviet statistics, to vari¬ ations in the value of the ruble, and to factors such as social security benefits included in Soviet wage figures. Since a very large proportion of a worker’s budget is customarily spent on food, however, it is of interest to note a comparison made between the diets of workers employed in large plants in the Soviet Union with those of similar workers in other countries. It has been stated: In 1938 the Soviet workman was not only more poorly fed than the French or German workman but more poorly even than the Bulgarian. Compared with the Swedish workman, the Soviet worker, though he ate much more bread, had one- third the meat, two-thirds the fats, one third the milk, one-tenth the sugar, and one-fifteenth the eggs, not to speak of vegetables, fruit, and so on. 16 The author points out that while engineers would naturally be able to afford a much better diet than this, unskilled workmen would have a correspondingly more meager fare. STANDARD OF LIVING OF PEASANTS Peasants comprise more than 50 percent of the total population of the Soviet Union. Stringencies of peasant existence are .depicted in an account written in 1938, which states that: Almost every peasant home still uses the old-fashioned brick stove, which combines the functions of heat supply and cooking. Most refrigerators are pits dug deep into the ground in which the winter’s ice is packed with straw or saw- • dust. The village well is the usual source of water supply. In the typical Soviet village, practically every family owns its own “bathhouse,” a log shack, with wooden benches inside, located on the bank of the usual small brook. 17 Such standards may be compared only with those of the most underprivileged section of agricultural labor in the United States, such as the share-croppers or migrant workers; or with the conditions in certain of our mining communities. It would appear, however, that standards of living of peasants, like those of industrial workers, have been gradually improving although still far below those typical of American farmers. The following picture of the changing Soviet village, in sharp contrast to that cited above, is given by a writer with a less gloomy outlook: The old hut, built of clay, without a chimney, with its sleeping bunks and tiny windows has disappeared. New houses with more light and space have been built in large numbers. The interior of the house has become cleaner; furniture, crockery, and linen have appeared for the first time. In many regions, the villages have electric light, a pump, and paved streets. Public buildings have been erected for the village Soviet (council), the kolkhoz administration, the school, a hut reading room, and frequently a' club, a day nursery and hospital. 18 Although peasants are now consuming a greater amount of bought goods than formerly, this is partially offset by the fact that not nearly so many articles are now produced on the farm. 19 Native handicrafts, formerly very extensive in the rural areas, have greatly diminished. On the other hand, peasant consumption of such items as meat, butter, sugar, and soap is said to have greatly increased. In 1939 rural cooperatives sold such articles as gramophones, cameras, bicycles, sports and athletic goods to the amount of 900 million rubles. 20 19 Yugow, op. cit., p. 212. M. E. Tracy, Our Country, Our People, and Theirs (New York, the Macmillan Co., 1933), p. 55. i® Yugow, op. cit., p. 217-218. is L. E. Hubbard, Soviet Trade and Distribution (London, Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1938), p. 292. V. Batov, Co-operatives in the Soviet Union (London, Soviet News, 1945), p. 27. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 63 The Soviet Union appears, however, to continue to suifer from a problem of rural overpopulation, in spite of the drawing off of great numbers of peasants to the cities. It has been suggested that “there can never be a very high standard of living in the collective faim while 1,200 acres must support 75 of 80 families.” 21 THE RED ARMY The Army is one of the more privileged groups in the U. S. S. others being Party officials, plant managers, intellectuals and Stak- hanovite workers. The following figures give some insight info disparities between the pay of officers and privates in the Army. Ordinary private earns N. C. O. may earn as much as- = - Cadet entering military academy begins at Officer_ Captain_ Colonel---- 10 y 2 rubles per month, 21 while actually on the line, about double if he has acquired some special skill such as chauffeur. 130 rubles per month. 600 rubles per month. 900 rubles. 1,700 rubles. 2,400 rubles. 3 i Hutt, op. cit., pp. 41-42. Members of the Army also receive various special privileges, such as discounts at special stores and store departments; preferred places at the theater or at sports events; and large discounts for officers at night clubs and commercial restaurants. 22 PLANT MANAGERS Two rapporteurs for the I. L. G. in 1936 pictured plant managers who might be receiving $50,000 a year in the United States for com¬ parable work and responsibility, as earning 2,000 rubles a month and living on a very modest scale, although such remuneration was about nine times the average wage in the U. S. S. It. at that date. 23 Some of the special privileges enjoyed by such plant managers in¬ clude: use of a car and chauffeur; “free family vacations in a rest home, including transportation; or perhaps a factory apartment or cottage—of special value in a country with acute housing shortage.” The plant manager, the chief engineer, and their assistants also .re¬ ceive bonuses for overfulfillment of their production quota, which “occasionally equal or even surpass annual salary.” 24 INTELLECTUALS A newspaper reporter recently writing from Moscow describes people in this category as owning their own automobiles prior to the outbreak of the war, and possessing country villas, “small yachts and speedboats, motorcycles, furs, pianos, and expensive radios, well- filled bookshelves, good phonograph records, and practically every- thino- they could have asked for except an electric refrigerator or a can Opener that really worked. Many of them talked of owning a helicopter after the war. Chamberlin, op. cit., pp. 183-184. 23 Dobb. op'. eft., p. 93; see also Lorwin and Adamson, International Labour Review (Geneva), January 1936, p. 17’. ’ , .. n . 24 Bienstock, Schwarz and Yugow, op. cit., p,p. 94-95. 64 COMMUNISM IN ACTION “Authors and playwrights live in comparative luxury because of the impressive royalties they get, but even the average factory worker’s home, though a bit dark and crowded, is not much different from a similar home in Flushing or Camden.” 25 Consumer Standards METHODS OF DISTRIBUTION OF CONSUMER GOODS Consumer goods are sold through consumer cooperatives and in farmers’ markets in the rural areas; and in state-owned and operated stores of various types in the cities. At the beginning of the First 5- Year Plan, rationing and price-fixing were resorted to, but rationing was discontinued on January 1, 1936, until the outbreak of the war. 26 Government shops include large department stores, and also special¬ ized shops selling only one type of commodity. 27 “Closed shops” are those in which only one category of workers can buy. Such shops exist for the Red Army and for other special groups, such as Govern¬ ment officials, higher technical personnel, and university and high school teachers. Luxury goods, made by cooperative artels, are often sold through artel stores. 28 The Commissariats of Food, Light, and Industry also operate stores in which various food products are sold direct to the public. 29 Consumer cooperatives are under state regulation, which deter¬ mines the amount and kinds of goods to be sold and their prices. Such cooperatives, which are credited by various authorities with from 40 to 60 million members, follow a hierarchical plan of organization. 30 Like cooperatives in the United States, these organizations carry on extensive educational work with their members. In the year 1944-45, i. e., the fourth year of the war, Centrosoyuz (the top organization of the cooperatives) spent for cultural and educational activities, 169 million rubles, including 9 million on the institutes, 27 million on vocational schools, 33 million on cooperative business schools, 2 million on cooperative high schools and 40 million rubles on regional cooperative courses. 31 The following table shows the retail trade turn-over handled by the various types of trade organizations during the years 1930 to 1934, inclusive. Retail trade turn-over, including that of public restaurants {in millions of rubles) 1 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 State trading organizations.. Cooperative societies... Private dealers __ 4,422.5 14,450.0 1,043.0 6, 887. 2. 20, 578.0 14, 531. 5 25, 825.1 25,119.8 24, 669.4 36, 823.3 24, 991.4 Collective farmers and peasants_ 7, 500.0 11, 500. 0 14,000.0 Total_____ 19, 915.5 27,465. 2 47, 856. 6 61, 289.2 V 75,814.7 i Batov, op. cit., p. 10. 35 Kendrick, op. cit., p. 79. 30 Hubbard, op. cit., p. 34. 3? Freund, op. cit., p. 541. 28 Hubbard, op. cit., pp. 150, 371. 29 Tracy, op. cit., p. 41. 80 Freund, op. cit., pp. 149-155; see also Leslie A. Paul, Cooperation in the U. S. S. R. (London, Gollancz, 1934), pp. 69-73. 31 Bato v, op. cit., p. 32. COMMUNISM IN ACTION G5 In 1935, state trading organizations took over the cooperative trade outlets in the towns, and from that time on the cooperatives concen¬ trated on rural trade, handling 75 percent of the purchases of the rural population by 1939. 32 ADEQUACY OF THE DISTRIBUTIVE NETWORK The distributive network appears to be very limited, considering the number of people to be served. The following account has been given: In Russia in 1912 there were 1 million trade units. At the end of the N. E. P. in 1927 there were not more than 648,000. Rut after the abolition of private trade there remained only 285,000 in 1933. After that, under the Secmid Plan which fostered the production of consumption goods, the number rose to 355,000 units in 1938. Of these there were 154,000 stores in the towns, catering for a total of 50,000,000 inhabitants, and 200,000 in the county districts with their 120,000,000 inhabitants. 33 AVAILABILITY OF CONSUMERS’ GOODS By far the most important factor contributing to the inadequacy of supply of consumers’ goods was the allocation of manpower and materials to heavy industry. Other factors Ox lesser impoitan.ee have included, according to one writer, the over-all population increase; new demands made because of the influx of rural people to the cities; and a higher level of demands on the part of workers, due to the Government program of education. In line with the latter policy, production of cultural items, such as books, phonographs, radio and art reproductions, as well as the build¬ ing of*theaters and concert halls, has gone forward more rapidly than production of other types of consumer goods. 34 Hubbard speaks of the greatly improved situation in 1937 as com¬ pared with 1930, mentioning stores well stocked with foou, clothing f household goods, furniture, and cultural goods. He notes, however, that shortages of particular items were likely to occur. 3 ® A measure of availability of certain basic consumption items o\er a period of years may be found in the following table of per capita production, since during this period such items were little affected by imports or exports. Table 31 .—Per capita production of articles of mass consumption 1 2 Products Unit Wheat and rye. Potatoes- Meat and fats.. Milk_ Sugar. Soap.. Cotton fabrics. Woolen fabrics. Lealher shoes.. Paper^... Kilogram*. _do_ _do_ _do_ _do. _do_ Square meter. _do.. Pairs_ Kilogram- 1913 2.9 160.0 9.4 .86 15.3 .7 1.4 1928 2.5 300.0 27.7 195.0 7.7 .94 15.2 .5 .4 1.8 1932 2.6 329.0 9.2 202.0 5.0 2.1 15.8 .5 .5 3.9 1937 4.5 386.0 * 21.1 8170. 0 14.0 3.0 16.0 .6 1.0 6.0 1942 (plan) 5.0 43~0 19.7 5.2 22.0 1.0 1. 45 1 Table based on: The First Five-Year Plan, 1929, No. 2, pt. 2, p. 81. A. Arutinian, Great Triumphs of the Land of Socialism (Gosizdat, 1939), p. 91; The.U. S. S. R. and Capitalist Countries, pp. 249 252, Socialist Agriculture in the U. S. S. R., p. 60, 73. 2 Yugow, op. cit., p. 200. * Data relating to meat and fats and mil*: are for 193S. ♦Unit for wheat and rye apparently should be quintal. 32 Alexander Baykov, The Development of the Soviet Economic System (London, Cambridge, Uni¬ verity Press, 1946), p. 253. 33 Freund, op. cit., p. 542. 35 Leonard°E.mublmrd,Soviet Labour and Industry (London, Macmillan, 1942), pp. 182-183. 66 COMMUNISM IN ACTION The same author gives the following comparisons between consump¬ tion of certain items in the United States and the U. S. S. R.: 36 1937: Sugar consumption, two-fifths that of the United States. 1935: Fabrics, one-fourth that of the United States. 1937: ShoeSj two-fifths that of the United States. The brake which military appropriations placed on production of consumer goods is indicated by the fact that from an appropriation of less than a billion rubles in a budget of 29,000,000,000 rubles in 1932, the Army appropriation rose to 40,000,000,000 in a budget of 156,000,000,000 in 1939, the year of the German-Soviet pact, and to 70,000,000,000 rubles in a budget of 216,000,000,000 in 1941. 37 Anew 5-Year Plan, recently announced, contemplates more empha¬ sis on production of consumer goods in the immediate future, although heavy industry will continue to be given first consideration. 38 QUALITY OF CONSUMER GOODS Various references have been found of the tendency to sacrifice quality in the effort to increase production. Typical of such com¬ ments is the following: Although it is a criminal offense, under Soviet law, to put defective goods on the market, the quality of Soviet suits, shoes, phonographs, tennis rackets, and other consumption goods, as any foreign resident of Moscow can testify, is far below what would be considered normal in western countries. Indeed there could have been no better camouflage for the surprisingly good quality of Soviet munitions than the shoddy and inferior character of Soviet civilian production. One possible explanation of this puzzling paradox is that war industries enjoyed A-l priority as to engineers, skilled workers, and material. 39 SERVICES RENDERED THE CONSUMER In 1936-37 delivery service was very rare, even among the best shops in Moscow, although it was said to be increasing. There was no daily delivery of such articles as bread or milk at homes. Credit was not granted by Soviet shops. Installment purchases were rare, and when made the purchaser obtained his purchase on payment of the last installment, not the first, as in the United States. 40 HOUSING Soviet spokesmen claim that a considerable portion of the worker’s remuneration is to be found in the “socialized portion” of his wage. This includes educational and recreational facilities furnished by the state, low-cost housing, social insurance benefits and social services. Some examination will therefore be made of the last three of these items. While “nearly half of the nonfarm housing space in use at the out¬ break of the war had been built under the Soviets,” the urban popula¬ tion during the same period had nearly trebled. 41 This has produced an acute housing shortage. Average' floor space per head in Moscow is said to have been about 45 square feet prior to the war. Since privileged persons such as Stakhanovites 3® Yugow, op. cit., p. 203. 37 Albert Rhys Williams, The Russians (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1943), p. 163. 38 Nikolai A. Voznessensky. Fourth Five-Year Plan, Information Bulletin, Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Washington, D. C., April 1946. See also, Inside the U. S. S. R„ World Report (Washington, D. 0.), July 11, 1946, pp. 22-23. 3» Chamberlin, op. cit., p. 167. 40 Hubbard, Soviet Trade and Distribution, op. cit., pp. 203-204. « Hans Blumenfeld, The Soviet Housing Problem, The American Review on the Soviet Union (New York), November 1945, p. 20. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 67 occupied much more than this, the ordinary worker had much less. 42 This may be compared with a schedule of minimum room sizes adopted by the National Capital Housing Authority of Washington, D. C. Schedule of minimum room sizes, National Capital Housing Authority [Areas in square feet] Unit size (number of bedrooms) Living room 1 Kitchen Total of living room, kitchen, and dining space First bedroom Second bedroom Third bedroom Fourth bedroom 165 170 70 250 130 1 DCGrooni- 80 280 130 110 A DcUl OOIlIb-.-- 170 80 290 130 110 100 4 bedrooms- 170 80 300 130 110 110 100 i When space heater is in living room, add 15 square feet. Note— Storage space, in addition to required closets, 30 square feet. The decree of August 20, 1918, abolished private ownership of real estate, although former owners retained some rights in their houses. Prior to the 5-Year Plans much building was done by the cooperative societies. Most of these houses were later taken over by the local soviets and state organs. City soviets then dominated building, with the exception of some building of suburban houses or cottages by private owners. Houses not privately owned are administered by housing depart¬ ments of state agencies. Big apartment houses furnish the most common type of housing in cities, former large six-room apartments being allotted to workers on the basis of one family per room, with common use of the bathroom and kitchen. 43 New apartments provide small flats of one to four rooms, with kitchen and bath. These were intended ultimately for one family but as long as the shortage lasts they are usually shared by two families, occasionally even by three or four. 44 Most of these apartments were walk-up in buildings two to four stories high. “With the exception of some two-story houses heated by stoves, all houses have hot-water heating.” 46 Many apartments were built by state industrial enterprises to house their workers. The “right to living space” is acknowledged in the Soviet housing law, and such right is hereditary passing to the husband, spouse, or children. Rents are very low, covering only maintenance costs, since the erection of houses is financed from the state budget. The maximum rental amounts to the equivalent of 3 cents per square foot monthly, or about $3 for the per capita “sanitary norm.” For persons with low income this amount is reduced so as not to exceed 10 percent of income. The average rent absorbs not more than 4 to 5 percent of the family income. 46 Privately owned houses may be leased as under our system, with free choice of tenants, but under state supervision and subject to price control and to restrictions regarding eviction. Most of the space, however, is provided by the state, either as part of a labor contract, or 42 Hubbard, Soviet Labour and Industry, op. cit., p. 167. 43 Freund, op. eit., pp. 266-268. 44 Blumenfeld, op. cit., p. 17. «Ibid., p. 18. m Ibid., p. 16. (38 COMMUNISM IN ACTION as a lease made by the housing administrator responsibile for the prop¬ erty in question. Leases may run up to 5 years, after which time the tenants who have a good record in performing their contracts have a preferential right to renew. 47 In appraising the Soviet housing law, John N. Hazard asserts that it is used to “encourage men to stay at their jobs and to adhere to the strict rules of labor discipline," since increasing numbers of workers are housed in buildings constructed or assigned by state enterprises for their workers, and since occupants may be ousted for infringement of labor discipline, without provision for other housing. He notes that existing restrictions,tend to prevent profits being made from dealings in living space, and asserts that “ Soviet citizens accept the housing law as fair means of allocating a scarce commodity," although they do grumble at the slow rate at which houses are built. 48 Veterans of ffie present war “have first claim on vacancies and on repairs, and receive free lumber if they want to build their own homes." 49 Social Security and Social Services SOCIAL SECURITY , . The social-security system covers all factory and office workers. Contributions come entirely from employing enterprises, representing a percentage of the pay roll, which differs in different branches of the national economy. Benefits include: Sickness, injury, and other tem¬ porary disablement; maternity benefits; old-age and permanent-dis¬ ability pensions, and pensions to families deprived of breadwinners; funeral benefits; care in rest homes and sanatoria; services of diet kitchens, physical culture facilities, and children’s institutions. In 1945 approximately 1,700,000 children were given vacations in summer camps. Social-security funds are now administered by the trade-unions, through union factory committees and social-insurance councils, under the general supervision of the Central Council of Soviet Trade Unions. Each trade-union group in a factory elects an insurance delegate who works with individuals in his leisure time. The social-insurance budget for 1945 exceeded 10,000,000,000 rubles. 50 Amounts of pensions are related to the length of time worked in a given job; to the detrimental effect of the job on health; and certain privileges are given to pensioners who continue to do part-time work in industry, and to women and young workers applying for pensions. Much work is done in finding occupations suitable for invalids or for * those with limited working capacity. 51 Workers on the land are not covered except as the collective farms may make provision, or through mutual benefit societies maintained by cooperatives. According to Hubbard, contributions of employing enterprises in 1938 averaged 6.6 percent of wage payments. 52 He criticizes the adequacy of the pensions, however, stating: <7 Freund, op. cit., pp. 269-270. 48 John N. Hazard, Soviet Housing Law (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1939), pp. 120-125. 4(1 Blumenfeld, op. cit., p. 21. 40 L. Berkhina, Americans Examine Our Social Insurance Scheme, Soviet Weekly (London), November 15, 1945, p. 5. 81 Z. Mokhov, Social Insurance in the U. S. R. R. (Soviet News, 1945), p. 44. 52 Hubbard, Soviet Labour and Industry, op. cit., p. 211. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 69 Permanent disability pensions are granted to workers only when they have had a total period of employment varying according to their age when disability occurred. A man of between 55 and 60 must have been employed for at least a total of 18 years during his lifetime and a woman of the same age 14 years to qualify for a pension, while a young man or woman of 20 to -22 having the mis¬ fortune to become crippled will only get a pension if he has worked 3 years and she 2 years. An increase in the standard rate is allowed to workers, who, when disability overtook them,.had been in the same employment for a certain number of years. 53 Contending that: In educational, medical, and social services, we find that plans, hopes, and dreams of the future have been described as though they were accomplished facts, Hutt cites the 1937 budget figures as proof that a very low per capita amount was spent for such services. He gives the following figures: Aggregate Soviet expenditures on “social and cultural services '’ (includes social insurance , old-age pensions, health sanatoria , housing, education, public paths , stadiums, etc.) Figures from 1937 budget: (1) Social and cultural services (including education, (2) Allocation paid to budgets of Union Republics.-. Million rubles health, etc.)__ 10, 870 __ 15,933 Total, assuming that whole of (2) was spent on social services, etc--26, 803 Dividing total expenditure by population gives us a figure of 157.6 rubles per head per annum. 64 Trade union members are said to receive preferential treatment with regard to social insurance and services, receiving double the amount of sickness insurance benefits awarded to nonunion members in equivalent situations, and priority in accommodations at rest homes and sanatoria. SOCIAL SERVICES The social-security system is supplemented by a range of social services which includes free medical service for all in clinics and hospitals and through home visits of physicians; “parks of rest and culture” and other recreational facilities; educational services. 65 A study of Soviet health care published in 1943, cites the fact that article 20 of the Soviet Constitution of 1936 specifically mentions free medical service as one of the rights of citizens of the U. S. S. it., and Article 14 reserves to the federal government the right to estab¬ lish basic principles in the sphere of public health. Article 70 gives the Health Commissar of the U. S. S. It. a seat in the federal cabinet, the highest executive and administrative organ in the country; Article 63 does the same for the health commissars of the 16 constituent republics in their respective republic cabinets 66 ”. General and specialized health centers for workers and their families may be situated at their places of work, or may be district centers serving entire localities. By 1941, 13,461 such centers had been es¬ tablished. At the health centers, special services are offered to women and children. Great stress is placed on preventive medicine. 67 53 Ibid., p. 213. 54 Hutt, op. cit., p. 40. ss Freund, op. cit., pp. 500-501. 66 Rose Maurer, Soviet Health Care in Peace and War (New York, American Russian Institute, 1943), P '57 Henry E Sigerest, Medical Care Through Medical Centers in the Soviet Union, American Review of Soviet Medicine (New York), December 1943, p. 177. 70 COMMUNISM IN ACTION Through established and newly founded medical schools, great efforts have been made to increase the very inadequate supply of doctors. The number of physicians is said to have increased from 19,785 in 1913 to 63,162 in 1928, 76,027 in 1932, and 112,405 in 1938. Doctors and dentists are permitted to take private patients in addi¬ tion to their assigned duties. General hospital beds are said to have numbered 142,310 in 1913, and to have increased to 217,744 in 1928; while maternity beds increased in the same period from 6,824 to 27,338. 68 Hubbard gives the following figures on total hospital beds in 1938 and compares them unfavorably with the number of hospital beds in Germany in 1934 and in England and Wales in 1936. 69 U. S. S. R. 1938 Germany 1934 England and Wales 1936 Tnta.1 number of hospital beds . __ 672, 000 3.9 457,358 6.8 260, 819 6. 5 ■Reds per 1 000 of the population . _ Beds in maternity hospitals _ _ 81, 342 14, 264 1.1 8, 626 1.2 Reds per 100 births __ __ i 1.6 \ i Assuming the annual number of births to be about 5,000,000. I The following table illustrates the development of various health facilities in the Soviet Union between 1913 and 1941. 60 Growth of medical facilities in the U. S. S. R., 1913-^1 Hospital facilities (nonpsychiat¬ ric). Psychiatric facilities. Maternity hospitals. Sanatoria and health resorts_ Urban medical centers_ Rural medical centers_ Tuberculosis dispensaries and sta¬ tions. Veneral-disease dispensaries and stations. Women’s and children's consulta¬ tion centers. Permanent nurseries Seasonal nurseries Physicians_ Health budget— Units 1913 1928 1932 1938 1941 Beds, city... 93, 223 158, 514 256,158 450, 694 491, 543 Beds, village .. 49, 087 59, 230 116,075 153,129 169,888 Total... 142, 310 217, 744 372, 233 603, 823 661,431 Beds... 36, 240 30, 016 39, 945 66 , 265 73, 992 Beds, city.. 5,192 18, 241 26, 984 74, 480 75, 612 Beds, village. 1,632 9, 097 16, 673 60, 323 66 , 261 Total_ 6 , 824 27, 338 43, 657 134, 803 141, 873 Beds — .. 2 , 000 36,100 63, 300 102 , 000 132, 000 Institutions.. 1,230 5, 673 7,340 12, 645 13, 461 _do.. 4, 367 7, 531 9,883 1 11, 594 13, 512 _do.. 43 498 498 925 1,048 _do... 12 800 683 1,351 1,498 Institutions, city_ 9 1,383 2,126 3,103 3, 499 Institutions, village.. 768 1,162 1,765 2, 304 Total.... 9 2,151 3, 288 4,868 5, 803 Capacity, city. _ 550 53, 748 257, 659 460, 911 554, 448 Capacity, village.. 8 , 306 342, 519 280, 568 299, 598 Total . _ 550 . 62,054 600,178 741, 479 854, 046 Capacity, village (in thousands). 10.6 195 3, 929.1 3, 242. 3 4, 045. 6 Number _ 19, 785 63,162 76, 027 112,405 130, 348 Millions of rubles_ 660.8 2 2, 540.0 9,433.0 11, 960.0 i On Jan. 1,1938. J For 1933. 58 Henry E. Sigerist, Twenty-five Years of Health Work in the Soviet Union, American Review of Soviet Medicine (New York), October 1943, pp. 89-70. m Hubbard, Soviet Labour and Industry, op. cit., p. 204. 60 Henry E. Sigerist, Twenty-five Years of Health Work, op. cit., p. 74. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 71 Rural medical care is under the supervision of district health officers, and includes rural medical stations and hospitals, maternity homes, women’s and children’s consultation centers, and special facilities provided during the sowing and harvesting seasons. Health stations have been located with a view to serving several collective farms. 61 The degree of adequacy of such care is viewed with different eyes by those who consider the increase over what formerly existed, and those who compare what exists in Russia with what would be considered adequate in the United States. Thus to serve a rural population of some 115,000,000 people, the following facilities were said to exist in 1938: 62 12,000 physicians (this number is said to have more than doubled in the years immediately succeeding). 13,500 rural clinics, staffed by physicians. 39,400 medical stations, staffed by feldshers and midwives. (A feldsher is a medical worker with more training than a nurse, but less than a doct.or.) 144,255 hospital beds. 143 tuberculosis clinics. , 1,568 women’s consultation centers, 63 children’s consultation centers. In addition, some 10,000 traveling seriological laboratories went to outlying districts in 1940 to combat infectious diseases. Considerable success appears to have attended the latter under¬ taking, according to statistics on epidemics and communicable disease. 63 It has also been stated that by 1935— the death rate from diphtheria in the larger Russian cities had been reduced to one-fifth of what it was in 1913; and the incidence of syphilis, as measured by a greatly improved machinery for reporting, had declined to a similar extent. The infant mortality rate and the total death rate from all causes had fallen to about one-half the figure for 1913. 64 SANATORIA AND REST HOMES An increasing proportion of Soviet workers and employees spend their vacations (paid vacations of from 15 days to a month) in rest homes maintained by the state. It has been stated that in 1928 the number of such workers was 408,000; in 1932, 1,336,000; and by 1939 some 2,000,000. 65 Such rest homes are situated on the shores of the Black Sea, in the mountains and other vacation areas. Special sanatoria are main¬ tained for officers of the Red Army and for Government officials. In 1938, nearly 2 or 3 million persons spent the whole or part of their holidays at rest homes, and 439,000 were sent to sanatoria. These figures indicate the differ¬ ence between the two institutions. A holiday at a sanatorium is rather an event in the life of a factory worker and, seeing that the total number of people employed in large-scale industrial enterprises is somewhere in the region of 10,000,000, it is obvious that on the average such a treat comes only about once in 20 years. * . * * * $ * * ®i Henry E. Sigerist, Rural Health Services in the Soviet Union, American Review of Soviet Medicine (New York), February 1944, pp. 270-280. 62 Maurer, op. cit., pp. 14-15. 63 Henry E. Sigerist, Socialized Medicine in the Soviet Union, (W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1937), Appendix IX, also pp. 208-237. Charles—Edward A. Winslow, Public Health in the Soviet Union, American Review of Soviet Medicine (New York), December 1943, p. 163. 64 Dr. I. A. Pertsov, Health Resorts of the U. S. S. R.: A Symposium of Articles Compiled from Data of the Central Institute of Balneology in Moscow (Moscow, The U. S. S. R. Society of Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (V. O. K. S.), 1939), p. 12. 90681—£6-6 72 COMMUNISM IN ACTION It is quite a mistaken idea to think that holidays m a sanatorium are free. The All-Union Central Committee of Trades-Union m two decrees of February 29 and March 7 1940, laid down that all workers earning more than R.dOO a• month must pay 30 percent of the cost of their holidays, while those earning less than that sum nav a sum fixed by their own local Social Insurance Council or their iactory m- surance committed Another thing to be noted is that if about 3 000,000 persons enioy holidays partly at the expense of the State, or rather the Social Insurance Fund it is only about 10 percent of the total number of workers and employees m the national economy. Also a certain number of this 3,000,000 are peasants, who do not count as state workers. 66 63 Hubbard, Soviet I/abouraud Industry, op. cit., pp. 208, 210. Chapter VII AGRICULTURE . Although the U. S. S. R. contains one-sixth of the earth’s land area, its farmers have long been “land hungry.” The amount of land under cultivation before the war was about the same as in the United States, but because of its larger population there were only 2.2 acres per person in the U. S. S. R. as compared to 2.8 acres per person in the United States. 1 What makes the land problem particularly acute is the size of the rural population. In spite of the Soviet emphasis on industrialization, the rural population in 1939 was 114,557,278, or 67.2 percent of the total population. The rural population’ of the United States in 1940 was only 57,245,573, or 43.5 percent of the total. 2 The pattern of farm ownership and operation in the U. S. S. R. is totally different from that in this country. In 1940 there were over 6,000,000 farms in the United States, averaging 174 acres in size; 58.2 percent of all farms and 50.3 percent of all farm land were in farms of 50 to 500 acres; 4.3 percent of all farms and 44.9 percent of all farm land were in farms of 500 acres and over; and 60.7 percent of all farms were operated by full or part owners, 38.7 percent by tenants, and 0.6 percent by managers. 3 In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, 242,400 collective farms, with an average sown area of 1,198 acres, and-3,961 state farms with an average sown area of 6,651 acres, accounted in 1938 for more than 99 percent of all land under cultiva¬ tion. 4 * _ The collective farms are cooperative associations of peasants operating under comprehensive Government control and include on the average about 75 peasant households. 6 The state farms are operated by state-appointed managers with hired laborers. In addi¬ tion to the collectives and the state farms there were in the late 1930’s a million* or more individual peasant holdings, but these averaged only about 2 acres in size and amounted altogether to less than 1 percent of the total land under cultivation. i George B. Cressey, the Basis of Soviet Strength (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co 1945) p 140 /?* A Freun 4> Russia From A to Z (Sydney, London, Angus & Robertson, Ltd., 1945), p. 434: Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States (Washington, Government Printing Office 1943) Population, vol. 1 p. 18. Farm population in the U. S. S. R. in 1939 was probably over one-half of the total population, but the census does not afford a reliable figure. The farm population of the United States in 1939 was approximately 30,480,000, slightly under one-fourth of the total population. (U S Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Statistics, 1942, p. 643.) v Note on Sources.— Several excellent studies of Soviet agriculture have been published in English These include Alexander Baykov, the Development of the Soviet Economic System (Cambridge Universitv Press, 1946), pp. 9-24,129-139,189-211,309-334; Gregory Bienstock, Solomon 1V1. Schwarz, and Aaron Yugow Management in Russian Industry and Agriculture (London, Oxford University Press, 1944), pt. II, Manage¬ ment Collective Farmsby A. Yugow; Leonard E. Hubbard, the Economics of Soviet Agriculture (London Macmillan and Co., 1939); W. Ladejinsky, Collectivization of Agriculture in the Soviet Union, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 49, March 1934, pp. 1-43; June 1934, pp. 207-252; Soviet State Farms, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 53, March 1938, pp. 60-82; June 1938, pp. 207-232; Lazar Volin, Agrarian Collectivism in the Soviet Union, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 45, October 1937, pp. 606-633, and December 1937 pp 759-788; Lazar Volin, Effects of the Drought and Purge on the Agriculture of the Soviet Union Foreign Agriculture (U. S. Department of Agriculture), vol. 3, May 1939, pp. 175-196; Lazar Volin, The Russian Peasant Household Under the Mir and the Collective Farm System, Foreign Agriculture, March 1940 pp. 133-146. This chapter relies primarily on these sources, which are in general agreement on major points! Other sources used are cited in footnotes. 3 Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States, Agriculture, vol. 3, pp. 76-77, 150 4 Cressey, op. cit., p. 141. «The majority of Russian peasants have always lived in villages. The village therefore generally con- titutes the basis of the collective*farm. In some cases a village will contain two or more collectives. 73 74 COMMUNISM IN ACTION The collectivization of farming was actually the second agricultural revolution since the overthrow of the Czarist Government. Under that Government, agricultural land was divided, roughly, into three t} T pes of holdings: the estates of the landlords, the church, and the imperial family; the holdings of independent peasant farmers, owned in fee simple; and communal property, owned by the village communi¬ ties, but farmed individually. Only a relatively small number of peasant holdings were large enough to support a household, at the prevailing low level of farming technique, and the great majority of peasants rented land or worked as hired laborers to supplement the income derived from their own strips or farms. TVhen the Czarist Government collapsed, the peasants seized the land of the great estates, and to some extent of the wealthier peasants, and added it to the communal holdings, which they con¬ tinued to farm individually. The Bolshevik program had called for the “nationalization” of the land, that is, ownership and operation of the land by the state. Early policy, however, consisted chiefly of the ratification of the peasant seizures. Some state farms were established, as well as a few collec¬ tives, but neither made much headway. During the period of the so-called New Economic Policy the more enterprising peasants were able to lease land and even employ hired labor, leading to the growth of the relatively wealthy “kulak” class. 6 In 1929 the Government decided to encourage the collective farm, and to discourage the independent peasant holding. Heavy taxation, refusal of credit, prohibition of ownership or lease of farm machinery, and compulsory “liquidation” were among the measures used to force the peasants into the collectives. 7 By 1932 this second agricultural revolution was nearly complete. The state farms, next in importance, accounted for only 9 percent of the total agricultural production in 1937. For the time being, at any rate, the collective is the basis of agriculture in the U. S. S. R., and only incidental reference will be made to the state farm and the independent peasant holding in the remaining part of this discussion. In the years following the Revolution several types of collective were developed. The form ultimately adopted by the Government, how¬ ever, was the “artel,” a type midway between the loose sort of coop¬ erative in which individual property was predominant and the com¬ munal type in which even common living quarters were provided. At the present time the organization and administration of the col¬ lective is regulated largely by the Model Charter or Statute for Artels, issued as a decree in 1935. 8 OWNERSHIP AND USE OF LAND Since the Revolution in 1917 all land in the Soviet Union has been owned by the state. Only in the case of the state farms, however, is agricultural land actually cultivated by state agencies. The collective farms are given perpetual title-deeds to the land allotted them. The land holdings of the collectives may be increased but not diminished. 6 See Baykov, op. cit., pp. 129-139, and Leonard E. Hubbard, the Economics of Soviet Agriculture (London, Macmilian & Co., Ltd., 1939), pp. 81-99, for agriculture under the N. E. P. 7 See articles by Ladejinsky and Volin cited above for an account of collectivization in this period. Also Hubbard, op- cit., ch. 14, and Baykov, op. cit., ch. 12. *Eor English translation, see Hubbard, op. cit., pp. 131-146. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 75 By far the larger proportion of the land held by the collectives is collectively farmed. Each member is allotted a small plot, averaging an acre or more, for his own use. The member has no title to this plot, nor may he transfer it. What he enjoys is simply the use of the land while a member of the collective. If he leaves the collective he for¬ feits his allotment. This entire system of land ownership is in sharp contrast, of course, to our system of private ownership in fee simple, with the right of transfer and inheritance. OWNERSHIP OF FARM PROPERTY Upon entering a collective, the member turns over to it all major farm buildings (except dwelling house), all draft animals, all but a designated amount of livestock, all equipment except small tools, and all fodder and seed. These are henceforth the property of the collective, and the individual member may not thereafter acquire property of this description. On the other hand, the individual mem¬ ber may own privately a dwelling house (though not the land upon which it is built); such minor buildings as are needed in connection with his allotted plot of land; a limited amount of livestock; and small toolsf In general, the individual is permitted to own such farm prop¬ erty as is required in tilling the land allotted to him. With some exceptions, not even the collective is permitted to own tractors, com¬ bines and other large mechanized equipment. Nearly all farm equip¬ ment of this type is owned by the Machine and Tractor Stations, which are state agencies. These Stations, numbering over 6,000 altogether, furnish and service farm machinery for the collectives, the latter supplying the operators. No restrictions comparable to these are to be found in the United States, although as a matter of practice, of course, many tenants and nearly all hired laborers own little or no farm property. There are, however, no legal restrictions preventing them from acquiring such property. WORK AND INCOME Each able-bodied member of a collective is obliged to perform a specified amount of work for the collective. The governing body of the collective determines the amount each year, subject to certain minimum standards prescribed for all collectives. The specified amount of labor to be devoted to the collective is expressed in terms of “•workdays”. A workday is measured, not in terms of time, but in terms of the type of work performed and the quality of the per¬ formance. Production quotas are established for various kinds of work. The number of workdays credited for one actual day’s work may vary from one-half to two, depending on the type of work and on performance in relation to the quota. Skilled work, such as tractor driving, is given a higher evaluation than unskilled work. In other words, one member may earn the number of workday credits pre¬ scribed for the year in far less actual working time than another. The member is largely free to spend the remainder of his time as he chooses. He may earn extra credits, work on his individual plot, or engage in other work. There appears to have been a steady increase in the proportion of working time given to the collective, the average having been nearly 50 percent before the war. 76 COMMUNISM IN ACTION Collectives are required to furnish workers to the state for road building and certain other purposes. . On the average, only a few days work is"required. Sometimes collectives contract, on a legally volun¬ tary basis, to provide labor for state organizations. Collectives are not supposed to employ outsiders for work on the collective except in the case of certain specialized or technical labor, but this regulation is not always observed. Work for the collective is carried on in brigades and squads, each of which is given a definite task. The brigade leader allocates work within the brigade, maintains discipline, and is generally responsible for the performance by the brigade of its assigned task. In recent years a system of bonuses has been instituted under which individual members receive extra compensation for superior performance by their brigades or squads. The individual member’s income is derived partly from sale of the produce raised on his own plot of land, and partly from, dividends received from the collective. Dividends are paid partly in produce and partly in cash, and are based on the number of workday credits earned by the member. The value of a “workday” is determined at the end of the year by dividing the collective income, after certain deductions, by the total number of workdays. No reliable estimates are available as to the monetary value of peasant incomes. Inequalities are substantial. They arise in part from the fact that cash and crop dividends paid for workday credits are at a much higher rate in prosperous collectives than in poor ones. Other inequalities arise out of the classification of positions, the piece¬ work and bonus system, and variations in returns from household plots. MARKETING The marketing of farm produce, like other aspects of Soviet agricul¬ ture, has more of the characteristics of “private enteiprise” than Soviet industry, though it is quite unlike our system of marketing. In normal times, most agricultural products are marketed in the United States through various types of “middlemen.” In the Soviet Union private middlemen are strictly forbidden. The collectives and their members, however, are permitted to sell a part of the produce themselves in open town markets, the only semblance of “free” markets remaining in the Soviet Union. There are, in general, three methods of marketing the produce raised on the collective farms. A stated quantity per hectaie or per unit of livestock must be sold to the state at a fixed rate. This “con¬ tribution” is in reality a form of tax, and a relatively low price is set. An equally large or larger proportion goes to the Machine and Tractor Stations as compensation for their services. A second market for collective produce consists of the state industrial enterprises and the cooperatives, with which the collectives make contracts at prices con¬ siderably higher than those paid for the “forced contribution.” A third type of market is the “free,” or relatively free, town market. Here the collectives may sell any produce not disposed of in the above ways, and here members of collectives may dispose of produce raised on their own plots as well as produce received from the collective as their share in the receipts of the enterprise. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 77 This privilege of marketing produce directly in town markets is very important, because prices in these markets are geneially well above the prices paid by the state or its agents. One writer estimates that in 1935 the sale of farm produce on the open markets yielded a larger sum than sales to the state and state organizations, although the latter were at least four times as great in volume. 9 It should be noted, how¬ ever, that a given collective is restricted as to the markets available. Since the collectives and their members must market then own produce and cannot sell through middlemen there is a limited market for any one collective. Another difference between these markets and our peacetime market¬ ing is that the state can step in at any time when market prices appear to be too high and compete through its own stores. In spite of this and other restrictions, however, the collective markets represent an unusual degree of free enterprise in the Soviet Union, and they have done much to increase the income of the collectives and their members. GOVERNMENT CONTROL Emphasis in this discussion has been placed on the position of the collective farmer in the Soviet Union, and his relation to the collective. The relation of the collective to the Government will be dealt with more briefly. As previously indicated, the Government owns the land and the major instruments of production, the tractors and mechanized equip¬ ment being leased to the collectives by the Machine-Tractor Stations, which are part of the state administrative organization. The Govern¬ ment's influence, however, is not confined to ownership. Direct and important controls are exercised over nearly all phases of agricultural production. According to the Model Charter, the internal adminis¬ tration of the collectives is largely left to the General Assembly of the collective and the various officers and agencies selected by and responsible to it. Internal self-government is subject, however, to the conditions prescribed in the Charter itself and in subsequent decrees. The more significant limitation lies in the relatively restricted scope of a collective's “internal" concerns. Under the Soviet system of economic planning, the collective must adapt its operations to the state plan, and to the specific goals set for it in the plan. Roughly speaking, the state prescribes annually the scope and nature of work for each collective, and sets certain “control figures" or goals. The collective then prepares a detailed production plan. The plan can make no changes in assignments or methods prescribed by the Government. Periodic reports must be made to the Govern¬ ment on the percentage of fulfillment of the plan. On the planning side, the collective's relations are primarily with the People's Com¬ missariat (now Ministry) for Agriculture and its local and regional offices, and with the district and local Soviets (local government agencies). In addition, a considerable measure of control, partly official and partly unofficial, is exercised by the Communist Party. On the average, collectives contain fewer Party members than are found in industrial organizations. Due to the importance of agriculture in • Hubbard, op. cit., p. 208. 78 COMMUNISM IN ACTION the Soviet economy, however, the Party has taken an active interest in the collective and its operations, and it was, in fact, through the Party that the peasant holdings were collectivized. Comparison of Government control of agriculture in the Soviet Union and in the United States indicates how inadequate the word “planning” is. We have seen in this country an increasing amount of planned agricultural production and prices since the great agricultural depression of the 1920’s. We have had a great variety of price sup¬ porting measures and crop-control schemes, as well as the more traditional types of Government technical and financial assistance. With few exceptions, however, Government planning in this country has proceeded with the consent of the farmers. The Government has provided technical and scientific information and assistance and financial inducements, and has suggested methods and schemes by which production and demand might be brought into balance and agricultural income increased and stabilized. The decision whether or not to adopt the plans proposed, however, has remained largely with the farmers themselves. In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, the Government's “control figures” constitute the master plan to which the collective’s operations must be geared. Chapter VIII TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION We may say with Napoleon that an Army marches on its stomach, but the Russians well know that transportation is helpful too. Their defeats in thg Crimean and Japanese Wars and their collapse in World War T were due in large measure to inadequate and inefficient transportation. 1 Without the subsequent extensive developments and new wartime construction, they might have lost the battle of transportation in World War II. 2 Nationalization of the railroads, inland shipping, and the merchant marine were among the first sweeping measures taken by the Soviet regime. 3 The sheer size of the country—three times that of the United States and containing one-sixth of the land surface of the earth—• also impresses one with the need of transportation. It takes days over the Trans-Siberian Railroad to travel the nearly 6,000 miles from Leningrad to Vladivostok. But only the airplane now covers the 3,700 miles from the southern boundaries northward at the widest point to the Arctic. Difficult as are the land-transportation problems, those by sea are likewise great. It is entertaining for the armchair sea captain to plan getting his ship from one Russian port to another, but there is very great economic and military significance in the actual situation. Notwithstanding the fact that two-thirds of the Soviet Union’s borders are oceans or seas, voyages of many thousands of miles are necessary to connect some ports which are geographically close. RAILROADS The pre-Soviet railroads were described as “ribbons of rust.” The cars were “splintered matchboxes” and the locomotives “bat¬ tered Samovars.” Now, however, it is quite different and new powerful locomotives draw heavy loads over “nonrusty” rails carry¬ ing perhaps the greatest traffic density of any large railway system in the world—three times greater than in the United States in 1939. Before the war, railroads carried nine-tenths of all the country’s inland transportation. 4 If I’ve Been Working on the Railroad were as popular a tune as the Volga Boatman, there would be twice as many women in the chorus as men; for example, over 20,000 women worked as stokers, engineers or engineers’ assistants in the summer of 1945. 5 1 Paul Wohl, Transport in the Development of Soviet Policy, Foreign Affairs (New York), April 1946, vol. 24, pp. 466, 472; Vladimir Obraztov, Soviet Railways in Wartime, Voks Bulletin (Moscow), 1944, Nos. 9 and 10, pp. 20-21; Vladimir Obraztov, Soviet Railways Under War Conditions, Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., April 22,1944, vol. 4, p. 3. 2 Wohl, op. cit., pp. 466-472. 2 Ibid., pp. 467-468. It will be remembered that most of the railroads were already owned and operated by the state under the Tsar. 4 T. S. Khachaturov, Organization and Development of Railway Transport in the U. S. S. R., Inter¬ national Affairs (Toronto), April 1945, vol. 21, pp. 220, 224, 227, 228; Obraztov, “Soviet Railways in War- tiniG p 22 * 70 percent of Our Railway Workers Were Women, Soviet Weekly (London), August 16, 1945, p. 7 . 79 80 COMMUNISM IN ACTION The strength of the Soviet railroads was underestimated by Hitler when he attacked in the fall of 1941. There was a belief that the railroads would collapse as they had in TVorld War I. To the Soviets in retreat, the movement of men and supplies was of exceptionally great importance. And “unprecedented gigantic transportations” had to be made for carrying out evacuation. Thousands of indus¬ trial establishments, their equipment and raw material, hundreds of cultural establishments, and millions of people were moved eastward outside the reach of the enemy. * * 6 The destruction suffered by the railroads was tremendous, b orty percent of the total mileage was occupied by the enemy. According to the Ministry of Railways, the Germans dismantled 32,560 miles of track, 10,883 miles of narrow-gage line, 2,455 stations, 2,393 bridges, 317 railway depots. The bridges, especially the large ones, suffered heavy damage or were destroyed. By the close of the war, 30,234 miles of railway track had been restored. 7 To many persons, Russian railways and the Trans-Siberian are synonymous, and indeed the latter is perhaps the life line of the Soviet East for which there is no substitute, 8 But there are of course other lines since this 4,606-mile route from the Ural Mountains is only about one-fourteenth of the total 66,000 miles of route, one-third of which (including all of the Trans-Siberian) is double-tracked. 9 One thousand two hundred miles of road were electrified during the first three of the 5-Year Plans. 10 The Fourth Plan calls for 4,493 miles of new railway lines and electrification of 3,309 additional miles. 11 Electrification is being introduced first on single-track lines where high train fre¬ quency would otherwise require the laying of a second track; only double-track lines with the heaviest traffic will be electrified. 12 In the United States there are 228,000 miles of route, of which 36,000 miles are double-tracked and 2,800 miles are electrified. SHIPPING AND WATERWAYS The U. S. S. R. has the longest coastline in the world, yet much of it is quite useless. 13 Its shores may be washed by the Arctic and the Pacific and an arm of the Atlantic and 13 seas as well, yet the obstacles to the Soviet Union becoming a great sea power are very great. The Arctic ports (except at Murmansk) are open only a few months out of the year. To reach the ocean from the Black Sea ships must pass through Gibraltar or Suez. In the northwest, Russian sea traffic can reach the Atlantic only through the landlocked Baltic or around the North Cape. The frontiers are discontinuous, and sea routes between them involve long and roundabout voyages involving passage through narrow straits or around a continental promontory. 14 The principal ports of the Soviet Union—which we heard so much about 8 Khachaturov, op. cit., pp. 228-230. i 70 percent of Our Railway Workers Were Women, p. 7. 8 Harriet Moore, “The Soviet Far East”, Foundations of National Power, ed. by Harold and Margaret Sprout, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1945), p. 427. 8 Khachaturov, op. cit., p. 220. “Railroad Electrification in the U. S. S. R.”, Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Wash¬ ington, Mar. 23, 1946, vol. 6, p. 241. a “Law on the Five-Year Plan” (pt. II, Sec. 35), supplement to Soviet Weekly (London), May 16,1946; Edmund Stevens, “Five-Year Plan Marks Transit Boom,” Christian Science Monitor, March 20, 1946, p. 1. is Wohl, op. cit., p. 478. is Cf. George B. Cressey, The Basis of Soviet Strength, (New York, Whittlesey House, 1945), p. 3. h Harold and Margaret Sprout, Foundations of National Power, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1845), pp. 440-441; Cressey, op. cit., pp. 3, 9. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 81 during the war—are Leningrad on the Baltic Sea; Murmansk and Archangel in the North on the Barents and White Seas respectively; Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan; and the Black Sea ports of Odessa, Sevastopol, Novorossisk, and Batum. 16 The merchant fleet of the Soviet Union consists of 251 vessels with a deadweight tonnage of 1,199,000 tons. In comparison, the United States fleet has 5,529 vessels with a dead-weight tonnage of 56,797,700. 16 According to the Fourth Russian 5-Year Plan, the 1950 shipbuilding program is to double that for 1940, while the freight carriage is to be 2.2 times that of prewar. 17 Inland waterways of the Soviet Union include many thousands of rivers, numerous canals, and several seas which before the war carried an estimated 70,000,000,000 ton-miles of cargo. 18 A 38 percent in¬ crease by 1950 is provided under the’Fourth 5-Year Plan. 19 In 1939, the Soviet Union possessed 68,310 miles of inland water¬ ways, and an additional 130,410 miles of waterways suitable for raft and timber. 20 The total mileage goal for navigable inland waterways is 71,458 by 1950. 21 Because of the cold weather in most parts of the country, inland water transport is possible only 6 or 7 months out of - the year. 22 Bulk goods constitute most of the traffic, timber in rafts or barges representing over one-half the total, but oil, minerals, con¬ struction materials, grain and coal are also important. 23 The Volga is the leading waterway, and its freight accounts for about one-half the total. 24 Of the seas that wash Soviet shores, the Caspian has carried more freight than has any other, 25 but this is now being threatened by a 6foot fall in the level of the water. 26 Operations have also been extensive on the Black Sea (famous for its health resorts) and to a lesser extent on the Baltic. 27 It will be recalled that the Don and the Dnieper rivers empty into the Black Sea, while the Volga flows into the Caspian; most of the other important rivers end in the seas border¬ ing on the Arctic. . So it is that most of the commerce on Russia’s inland waterways has been quite distinctly internal, because the Caspian is landlocked, and the only exit for the Black Sea is through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean, and then to the Indian Ocean via Suez or to the Atlantic by way of Gibraltar. From Odessa on the Black Sea to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan, the mileage is 13,264 through Suez or 14,177 through Panama; an alterna¬ tive is 6,835 via the Northern Sea Route. 28 The Northern Sea Route across the top of the U. S. S. R. (of which the Russians are very proud) provides a connecting link between the u “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Summary of Current Economic Information,” Internationa Reference Service, U. S. Department of Commerce, Jan. 1946, vol. 3, p. 3. is “War Quadrupled Merchant Fleet,” New York Times, Jan. 27, 1946 (Based on release of the U. 8. Maritime Commission). “Law on the Five Year Plan” (pt. II, sec. 37-38). is Wohl, op. cit., p. 480. i» “Law on the Five Year Plan” (pt. II, sec. 36). so “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” op. cit., p. 3. According to the Minister of River Transport, there are 108,000 rivers in the Soviet Union with more than 310,000 miles of navigable waters of which one-fifth have been utilized. Stevens, op. cit., p. 1. si “Law on the Five-Year Plan” (pt. II, sec. 36). 82 Khachaturov, op. cit., p. 222. 23 Cressey, op. cit., p. 137; William Mandel, “Soviet Transport,” Soviet Russia Today (New York) February 1944, vol. 12, p. 22. 2i Cressey, op. cit., pp. 136-137. 23 Mandel, op. cit., p. 21. 26 “Scientists Stifdy Problem of Raising Caspian Sea Level,” Moscow News (Moscow), Dec. 1, 1945, p. 2; “Caspian Drops titt Feet,” New York Times, July 8,1946, p. 1-3. 2< Cressey, op. cit., pp. 136-137. 8» Ibid., pp. 135-127o 82 COMMUNISM IN ACTION Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Sea lanes for convoys of freighters through the Arctic ice are smashed by 40 ice breakers ranging up to 12,000 tons each. They are guided by information relayed from 50 weather stations and airplanes seeking open water. Scores of steamers call at Siberian ports during the brief summer period of open water, and a few dozen make the complete transit from Murmansk on Barents Sea in northwestern Russia to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan by way of Bering Strait. 29 It is to be converted into a normally working sea lane by 1950. 30 Three of the world’s great rivers, each about 3,000 miles long, the Ob, Lena, and Yenisei, and in addition the important Dvina, all flow north into the Arctic. Large quantities of wood have been brought out through the rivers, especially the Yenisei. Most of the other carriage is inward. Materials can be carried down at least as far as the Trans-Siberian Railway. 31 The sea route-has made possible the tapping of the natural wealth of the northern wastes and has stimulated the development of Arctic industry. 32 HIGHWAYS AND MOTOR VEHICLES Highway transportation has not played as important a role in the economic life of the Soviet Union as it has in the United States. 33 Russian writers and historians have deplored the roads of their coun- try. 34 There are some exceptions, but in general few roads are capable of carrying really heavy motor traffic. The largest towns, especially outside European Russia, are connected only by dirt track or corduroy road. 36 It is said that when new model Soviet cars were taken out for long-distance cross-country test runs before the war, a compass was standard equipment for the driver. 36 Highway statistics indicate that in 1939 there were 831,330 miles of roads in the Soviet Union of which 29,808 were paved and 24,506 were improved with gravel. 37 This may be contrasted with the United States where there were more than 3,000,000 miles of rural roads in 1942 of which 187,679 had a high-type surface, 1,218,657 had a low- type surface, and 1,538,700 miles had no surface. 38 However* Soviet plans are said to be under way for paving more than 100,000 miles of Soviet highways and making accessible to automobile several hundred thousand miles of dirt road. 39 Motor vehicles in 1941 numbered 1,060,000 of which the great majority were trucks. 40 Annual production of vehicles in Soviet factories totaled about 200,000 in 1938 and 1939, of which nearly seven-eighths were trucks. 41 Of the passenger vehicles, most of the output has been for government and industry, few being available for « Ibid., -pp. 217-218; Man del, op. cit., p. 21. so “Law on the Five-Year Plan” (pt. II, sec. 37). . _ „ r ,. .. si Murray G. Harris, The Logic of War, (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1944), p. 78; Wohl, op. cit., p. 474; Man del, op. cit., p. 21; Cressey, op. cit., pp. 217-218. „ ,.. T t o a n 32 Rear Admiial I. Papanin, “Winter in the Arctic,” Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. b. b. R., Washington, D. C., January 12, 1946, vol. 6, pp. 31-32. 33 “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” op. cit., p. 3. _ . , _ r .84 Eddy Gilmore, “Soviet Program Calls for Vast Waterway and Highway Projects, Washington Star, April 21, 1946, p. A-9. 35 Harris, op. cit., p. 72; Cressey, op. cit., p. 137. 8« Mandel, op. cit., p. 32. a? “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” op cit., p. 3. .^ T _ ,. . _ 38 u. S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1944-45 (Washington, Govern¬ ment Printing Office, 1945), p. 456. 39 Wohl, op. cit., pp. 481-482. !i Cressey* op' cit., p. 137. See also G. Osipov, “Postwar Development of the Soviet Automobile In¬ dustry,” Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R. t Washington, D. C., February 14,1946, vol. 6, p.140. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 83 private purchase. 42 In the United States, 1941 production totaled 4,839,000 of which 3,744,000 were passenger vehicles and 1,094,000 were trucks. Registrations in 1944 (excluding publicly owned vehicles) totaled 30,086,000 of which 25,573,000 were passenger vehicles and 4,513,000 were trucks. 43 Plans for stepping up production have been made, so that by 1950, the last year of the Fourth 5-Year Plan, 500,000 cars annually will be produced, distributed as follows: Trucks—428,000; passenger cars— 65,600; motor busses—6,400. 44 New plants are being built, others are being reconstructed, and three or four new models are on the assembly line. The new models range from the low-powered Mosk- vich in the popular-car class with a speed of 56 miles per hour to the ZIS-110 eight-cylinder seven-passenger limousine with a top speed of 87 miles per hour. 46 Motor transport is engaged mainly in delivery of goods to railway stations, river ports, and in conveying the goods from stations and ports to small towns and villages. Some internal town and village traffic is carried, and there is some long-distance hauling in the eastern and southern parts of the country. 46 AVIATION The network of air routes in the Soviet Union before the war covered 58,125 miles, carrying 292,700 passengers, 10,700 tons of mail, and 45,500 tons of freight in 1938. 47 In the summer of 1935, “over 30 regular lines were in operation.” 48 According to Soviet Air Marshal Fedor Astakov, civil air lines will be covering 108,000 miles by 1950. 49 Main developments are to be connections between Moscow and the capitals of the constituent Republics and regional centers and the air lines in the North, Siberia, and the Far East. 50 In the Far East and in Arctic Siberia, precious alloys, gold, and furs are most likely to be moved by air. 61 Large-scale developments are ordered for combating farm and forest pests, for use by the public health service, and for geodetic surveying. 62 Detailed plane-production figures have not been made public, although Premier Stalin in his speech of February 9, 1946, said that the Soviet aircraft industry had turned out an average of 40,000 planes a year for 3 years. 53 This may be compared with production in the United States when in the best year 96,359 planes were produced, or a total of 297,000 in the 5 years ending June 1945. 64 - COMMUNICATION Moscow is the key radio city of the Soviet Union from which broad¬ casts are beamed to central stations all over the country. Because the system is Government owned and operated, programs vary greatly from those we know in the United States. No advertising is 43 Cressey, op. eit., p. 137. <3 Statistical Abstract of the United States 1944-45, op. cit., p. 460. . 44 “Law on the Five Year Plan” (pt. II, sec. 2). 43 Osipov, op. cit., p. 140. « Khachaturov, op. cit., p. 222; Mandel, op. cit., p. 32. « “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” op. cit., p. 3. « “Some Details of the U. S. S. R. Airlines Are Revealed,” American Aviation (Washington), August 15, 1945, vol. 19. p. 26. « “Russians Plan 17-Fold Rise in Air Service,” Washington Post, April 8, 1946, p. 3. See also “Law on the Five Year Plan” (pt. II, sec. 40). m “Law on the Five Year Plan” (pt. II, sec. 40). «> Wohl, op. cit., p. 482. 32 “Law on the Five Year Plan” (pt. II, sec. 40). 43 Washington Star, February 10, 1946, p. A-6. "“Russian Aims, 1944 to 1966”, United States News (Washington), February 22,1946, p. 19j 84 COMMUNISM IN ACTION carried and most of the time is given over to news, music, readings, and educational broadcasts, including pick-ups from the theater, opera, and ballet. 55 The radio is the chief source through which the press gets its news. 56 Some news and radio entertainment programs originate locally. . . A Russian, Alexander S. Popov, is regarded m the Soviet Union as having invented the radio in 1895. Fifty years later, the numbei cn loud speakers was estimated at 5,000,000; and many of these were located in public places. 57 Many others are connected directly with the local transmitting station, so that no manipulation of a dial is necessary. 58 . . . . , Radio has a role in Soviet communications which corresponds to our telephone and telegraph. 59 It is reported that this method of communication was so developed that by the end of the Second 5-Y eai Plan (1937) more messages had been transmitted by radio in the U. S. S. R. than in any other country of the world. 60 But radio in the sense that we know it has progressed much further in the United States than it has in the Soviet Union if current estimates of 34.000,000 United States homes with radios is any criterion. 61 The development of the telephone and telegraph systems cf the two countries may be most simply pictured by a few statistics: 62 United States U. S. S. R. 26, 859,090 21.3 109, 000, 000 2, 310, 000 1, 273, 000 0.8 2,000, 000 600, 000 Miles of wire: The Fourth 5-Year Plan requires that “reliable” telegraph and tele* phone communication be established between Moscow and all Repub* lican, territorial, and regional centers, and between the capitals of the Republics and their regional centers. 63 NEWSPAPERS The 10,000 daily and weekly newspapers in the Soviet Union (as in most of Europe and Asia) are party-controlled (or censored) papers receiving their, news from Toss by radio or on mats flown by plane. Best known of the papers is Pravda (organ of the Communist Party) and Izvestia (organ of the Soviets of Deputies). The wartime standard (due to the paper shortage) was four to six pages as contrasted with six to. eight before the war. The papers carry very little in the way of advertisements, although they do have announcements of what is playing at the theaters and operas. 64 «t Fred W. Hirt, “Radio in the Soviet,” New York Times, September 2, 1945, p. X-5. o» New York Times, April 11, 1939, p. 32. 57 Alexander Fortushenko, “Radio’s 50th Year,” Daily Worker (New York), May 27, 1945. 53 “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” op. cit., p. 3. si See New York Times, July 11,1939, p. 32. so Fortushenko, op. cit. 61 Radio Annual. 1946 (New York, The Radio Daily, 1946), p. 246. , _. _ , 62 National Industrial Conference Board, Economic Almanac for 1945-46 (New York, The Board, 1945), p. 283. 63 “Law on .the Fourth Five-Year Plan” (pt. II, sec. 41). 6< Ralph McGill, “Free News and Russia,” Atlantic Monthly (Boston), April 1946, vol. 177, pp. 76-79. Chapter IX FINANCE MONEY AND BANKING The citizen of the Soviet Union carries rubles (instead of dollars) in his wallet, and takes his change in kopeks—of which there are 100 to the ruble. The ruble is a much smaller unit than the dollar; legally in the U. S. S. R. the dollar is worth 5.3 times as much as the ruble, the latter thus being legally valued at 18.868 cents. It does not follow, however, that the ruble actually buys what 18.868 cents would buy in the United States. Since rubles are not on the foreign exchange it is extremely difficult to make comparisons. 1 The money in circulation in the Soviet Union consists of notes of the State Bank, Treasury notes (which are obligations of the Treas¬ ury, though issued through the State Bank), silver coins, and other subsidiary coins. 2 This may be compared with the currency in circulation in the United States, most of which consists of Federal Reserve notes, silver certificates, and subsidiary coin. The Federal Reserve notes which constitute about six-sevenths of all the money now in circulation in the United States, are obligations of the United States and a first lien on the assets of the Federal Reserve banks through which they are issued. 3 The State Bank of the U. S. R. R. is the most important bank in the Soviet Union. It is responsible for regulating the entire currency system through its power to control, expand, and contract the currency. 4 The corresponding authority in the United States is the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System which determines monetary, credit, and operating policies and formulates the rules of the Federal Reserve System. 5 The State Bank is owned by the Government, as are the six other banks of the Soviet Union, except the Cooperative Bank. 6 Most of these banks have many branches throughout the country. This is greatly in contrast with the system in the United States where (although there are numerous Government lending organizations) the more than 14,500 banks, some of which have branches, are privately owned. 1 Persons in the United States diplomatic service in the Soviet Union, receive 12 rubles for each dollar instead of the 5.3 they would receive according to legal parity. In view of the ruble’s entirely domestic character, all foreign trade operations are conducted by the Government or its agents in foreign currency. The State Bank, through its correspondents, makes the necessary settlements in the foreign currency, at the same time conducting the accounts with its Soviet clients in Soviet currency at the fixed rate of exchange. See Bank Structure of the U. S. S. R., Information Bulletin, U. S. S. R. Embassy, Washington, D. C. f November 13, 1945, p. 6. See also H. A. Freund, Russia from A to Z (Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1945), p. 171. 2 Standard and Poor’s Corporation Records (T-Z), August-September 1945, p. 6310. 2 U. S. C., title 12, Secs. 411-413; U. S. Treasury, Circulation Statement of United States Money. 4 Bank Structure of the U. S. S. R., Information Bulletin, U. S. S. R. Embassy, Washington, Novem¬ ber 13, 1945, pp. 5-6; Mikhail Bogolepov, The Soviet Financial System (London, Lindsay Drummond, 1945), pp. 36, 61-62. 6 U. S. C., title 12, Sec. 248. fi Freund, op. cit., pp. 38-41; Soviet Banking, the Economist (London, Banking Supplement) September 19, 1942, vol. 143, p. 7; Bogolepov, op. cit., pp. 35-36. 85 86 COMMUNISM IN ACTION The credit system in the Soviet Union is also greatly different from that in the United States. 7 All short-term financing is done by the State Bank and the Bank for Foreign Trade; no firm may grant credit to any other firm. Every producing enterprise and business organ¬ ization must maintain its cash balances with the State Bank and make all payments (except minor sums) through it. Banks other than the State Bank (such as the Industrial Bank, the Communal Bank, and the Agricultural Bank) grant long-term credit to'industrial enterprises, credit for financing public works, state agricultural enterprises, col¬ lective farms, etc. The Cooperative Bank finances capital construc¬ tion by all cooperative organizations, except the housing cooperatives,- and accumulates the funds necessary for operation of the cooperatives. The foregoing may be contrasted with the system in the United States where it is possible to secure credit from private sources of many different and well-known kinds. It must be remembered though that most of the businesses in the Soviet Union are Government-owned. In the United States, there are also certain Government agencies for the obtaining of credit, such as the Reconstruction Finance Corpora¬ tion, Farm Credit Administration, etc. Interest rates charged by the banks in the Soviet Union are fixed by the state and ranged, in 1945, from 2 to 4 percent, depending on the nature of the loan. The savings 8 of the people of the Soviet Union may be placed in the Savings Bank (the only bank that may accept deposits of private persons) or invested in Government loans. The interest rate on savings in 1939 was 3 per¬ cent, but it is believed to be as high as 5 percent now on time deposits. In addition, there are non-interest-bearing deposits on which depos¬ itors have the opportunity to win lottery prizes. Savings may also be lent to private persons, but such lending.may not develop into a business. The savings must not become capital, nor be used for pro¬ ductive purposes in ways permitted in the United States. There is, of course, no stock exchange in the Soviet Union where individuals can buy or sell stocks and bonds. PUBLIC FINANCE The Soviet budget is to be distinguished from the budget of the United States or of any other capitalist country primarily because in the Soviet Union there is a concentration in the hands of the state of all industrial production, most of the trade, and a certain part of the agriculture. 9 During peacetime, therefore, the Soviet budget normally absorbs a good half of the national income, and during the war period absorbed much more. 10 In the prewar years, expenditures for all government in the United States usually ranged between 20 and 30 percent of the national income. 11 But during the war, they constituted a much larger proportion (about two-thirds of the national income i fiscal 1945). 12 The federal budget of the Soviet Union is required by the con¬ stitution to include the budgets of the 16 constituent Republics and the 7 Bank Structurepf the U. S. S. R., op. cit., pp. 5-6; Freund, op. cit., pp. 38 41; Bogolepov, op. cit., pp. 33-36, 58-59; Moody’s Manual of Investments: Government Securities, 1946 (New York), p. 1885 8 Freund, op. cit., pp. 197-198; the Nature of Interest Rates in the Soviet Union, the Statist (London), February 25, 1939, pp. 11-12; Moody’s Manual of Investments, op. cit., p. 1185. ® Freund, op. cit., p. 76. ^ TT „ „ ^ 70 Mikhail Bogolepov, Soviet Finances, Information Bulletin, U. S. S. R. Embassy, Washington, D. C., October 20, 1944, p. 5. See also Soviet Union News (Delhi), December 1944, pp. 407-409. n Computed from Paul W. Ellis, the World’s Biggest Business, American Public Spendmg, 1914-44 (New York, National Industrial Conference Board, 1944), p. 9. ^ rT a . ■ . n 12 See Daily Statement of the United States Treasury, July 16,1945, p. 7; U. S. Department of Commerce, Survey of Current Business (Washington), April 1944, vol. 24, p. 13; February 1945, vol. 25, pp. 5-6. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 87 local governments as well. 13 In all, 77,000 different budgets are com¬ prised in the budget of the U. S. S. R. 14 This is to be contrasted with the United States where each level of government maintains its separate budget, although financial aid passes down from the higher to the lower levels of government. The 1945 budget 16 for the Soviet Union was 305.3 billion rubles, divided as follows: The Union, 253.1 billion rubles; the Republics, 52.2 billion rubles, part of which goes to the local governments. The Republics receive further sums from the profits of local industry and local taxes that were estimated for 1945 at 12.8 billion rubles. The local governments also have addi¬ tional sources of revenue; in 1940 they derived nearly half their total revenues from local sources, the remainder coming from the U. S. S. R. and Republican budgets. 16 Expenditures 17 in the Union have shown a steady rise from 23.1 billion rubles in 1931 (for example) to 93.9 billion in 1937; 174.3 billion in 1940, and a budgeted 305.3 billion in 1945. Of the total 305.3 billion budgeted expenditures, defense was to absorb about 45 percent or 138 billion rubles; Government, trade and industry, etc. about 65 billion; education, health, pensions, etc. about 66 billion; and other expenditures about 36 billion. The military expenditures for the 13-year period, 1933-45, totaled 749.4 billion rubles of which 508.9 billion rubles were expended during 1942-45. Under the Fourth 5-Year Plan— * * * it is necessary: * * * (6) to attain high rate of capital accumula¬ tion, fixing for this purpose the centralized capital investments for the rehabilita- tion’and development of the National Economy for the U. S. S. R. in the five-year period of 250,300 million rubles and putting into operation rehabilitated and new enterprises to a total value of 234,000 million rubles (in 1945 estimated prices) * * *. 18 The total expenditures for all levels of government in the United States 19 over the same period of years discussed above were as follows: For 1931, 11.4 billion dollars; for 1937, 15.9 billion dollars; for 1940, 18.1 billion dollars; for 1945, 109.2 billion dollars. Of these totals, the expenditures for the military took about 82percent or 90.0 billion dollars during the fiscal year that ended June 30, 1945. The total military expenditures for the United States during 1933-45 totaled 289.1 billion dollars, of which 275.2 billion dollars were expended during 1942-45. During most of this period the annual expenditures by the State and local governments amounted to between 8 and 9 billion dollars. The receipts of the Soviet Union 20 are derived from taxes, loans, and state-owned industries, state farms, and Machine and Tractor Stations, state trade and transport, and other forms of socialist enterprise. The turn-over tax and profits withheld for 1945 were estimated to produce 138 billion rubles or about 45 percent of all receipts. Direct is Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, U. S. S. R. Embassy, Washington, D. C., 14 A. Birman, ‘the Soviet Financial System, Information Bulletin, U. S. S. R. Embassy, V ashmgton, ^b^ovTet^UnionV 1945’Budget, Foreign Commerce Weekly (Washington), May 19, 1945, vol. 19, pp. 50-51. is The Budget of the Russian S. F. S. R., Information Bulletin, U. S. S. R. Embassy, Washii^ton, D. C., June 26, 1945,"p. 3; Bogolepov, op. cit., p. 39. ii See Standard and Poor’s Corporation Records (T-Z), August-September 1945, p. 6310. 13 Law on the Five Year Plan (pt. I, sec. 416), supplement to Soviet Weekly (London), May 16, 1946. is Ellis op. cit., p. 3; Dailv Statement of the United States Treasury, July 16, 1945; Survey of Current Business’(Washington), September 1945, vol. 26, p. 18; Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of Finances for Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1944, p.560. .. _ ._ 1(1 .._ 20 Bogolepov, “Soviet Finances,” op. cit., p. 5. See also Soviet Union News (Delhi), December 1944, pp. 407-409; Standard and Poor’s Corporation Records (T-Z), August-September 1945, p. 6310. 90681—46-7 83 COMMUNISM IN ACTION taxes of 45 billion rubles and borrowing of 25 billion rubles, were also estimated. Prior to the war the turn-over tax occupied a much more important place than it did during the war, due very likely to the fact that there was a considerable shortage of goods to be sold during the period of the war. The turn-over tax alone during 1940 provided 58 percent of total revenue. In the United States, 21 total Federal, State, and local tax collections in 1941 amounted to 18.6 billion dollars. In 1945 they approximated 55 billion dollars. The principal taxes in 1941 produced revenues as follows: Income tax, 3.9 billion dollars; property taxes, 4.5 billion; sales taxes, "etc., 4.7 billion; pay-roll taxes, 1.9 billion. For 1945, the following rough estimates are made: In¬ come tax, 36 billion dollars; property taxes, 5 billion; sales taxes, etc., 8.5 billion; pay-roll taxes, 3 billion. PUBLIC DEBT The internal funded debt 22 of the Soviet Union is estimated (1946) to reach 166.9 billion rubles bearing interest partly at 2 percent and partly at 4 percent. Four war loans were issued during the period 1942-45 for a total of 89.4 billion rubles; 12.5 billion rubles were of the war lottery class. A recent 20-billion-ruble lottery issue was sold “for further strengthening of the military and economic might of the nation.’’ The holders of the lottery bonds do not receive any interest thereon, but take a chance on receiving prizes in lieu of interest; at maturity they receive back only the nominal value of the bond. It should be noted that all borrowing is from the general public, the cooperatives, collective farms, etc. Bond holders may sell the bonds only after securing special permission. The bonds are free from inheritance tax and interest on them is exempt from income tax. 23 The public debt of the United States in July 1946 amounted to 284.2 billion dollars, divided roughly as follows: Federal, 267.7 billion dollars; State, 2.5 billion dollars; local, 14 billion dollars. 24 The estimated distribution of ownership of the Federal debt as of August 31, 1945, was reported as follows: 25 Debt held by individuals, 59.8 billion dollars; banks, 107.2 billion dollars; insurance companies, 22.5 billion dollars; United States Government agencies and trust funds, 26.2 billion dollars; State and local governments, 5.2 billion dollars; and other corporations, 40.3 billion dollars. TAXATION The Soviet Constitution establishes the principle of a united financial system and provides that all sources of revenue (irrespective of which budget they form a part) are approved by the Supreme Soviet of the U. S. S. R. However, nearly all revenues are divided among the various budgets, except customs duties and income of the tractor stations (which go to the state) and local taxes (which go to Ellis, op. cit., p. 16; Bureau of Internal Revenue, Release of August 30,1945; Bureau of the Census, State Tax Collections, 1945. 22 Standard and Poor’s Corporation Records (T-Z), AugtisUSeptember 1945, p. 6308; Economic News Letter (U. S. Embassy, Moscow), May 5, 1945; Financing the War in the U. S. S. R., Trade Information Service of the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce, January 1945, Bulletin No. 768; Bogolepov, Soviet Finances, op. cit., p. 5. 23 Moody’s Governments and Municipals, May 8, 1948, p. 1380; Russia Floats Big Internal Loan, New York Times, May 4, 1946, p. 1; Freund, op. cit., p. 371. 24 Daily Statement of the U. S. Treasury; Alvin Slater, United States Debt Pattern in War and Peace, Survey of Current Business (Washington), September. 1945, vol. 25, pp. 8-18; U. S. Bureau of the Census, State Debt in 1945 (Washington, the Bureau, 1945), p. 2. 23 Bulletin of the Treasury Department, December 1945, p. 48. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 89 tlie local budgets). Local bodies collect all state revenue and retain a percentage of it. 26 The principal taxes of the Soviet Union 27 are a turn-over tax, a tax on the profits of state enterprises, an income tax, and taxes in kind on the rural population. There are other levies such as a death tax, a tax on bachelors, a tax on admissions, and social insurance contributions. The Republics and local governments share in the proceeds of federal revenues in varying percentages and also impose certain levies. The taxes enumerated above are discussed in further detail below. The Soviet turn-over tax is a type of sales tax paid by state enter¬ prises and cooperatives (manufacturing goods for the general market) in the form of a percentage of the selling price. As a rule, the tax is paid only once, i. e., by the producing enterprise but is of course passed on to the purchaser. The rates are said to be altered quite frequently and often vary as between localities. A few sample prewar rates are given: Wheat and rye, 75 percent; butter, beef, pork, and mutton, 60 to 72 percent; sugar, 85 percent; boots and shoes, 12 to 35 percent. There are (or were) said to be about 2,400 or 2,500 rates of tax. 28 In the United States 29 there is no Federal general sales tax, but there are such taxes in some of the States. The rates imposed by the States do not usually exceed 3 percent, but many Federal excises range between 5 and 25 percent and tobacco and liquor taxes approximate 100 percent. It should be noted that a 100 percent sales tax in the United States would only be a 50 percent turn-over tax under the Russian system because the latter tax is expressed as a percent of the sales price (including tax) rather than as an addition to the sales price (before tax). The profits of factories (sales price minus the sum of costs and turn¬ over tax) belong to the state, but only part is handed over, and this in accordance with a special procedure. If an expansion is planned, then the profit may be used for such purpose. If the profits are insufficient, the factory may receive budgetary grants. If the factory does not contemplate any expansion and is not in need of further working capital, the entire profit may go into the budget. Thus the amount transferred fluctuates from year to year, and plant to plant. Industry as a whole turns over to the budget approximately half of its total profits and maintains control of the other half. Trading establishments pay into the budget whatever part of the surplus (of receipts over expenditures) is provided for by the plan. 30 In the w Bogolepov, op. cit., pp. 28-29. s? Paul Haensel, Public Finance in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Taxes (Chicago), September, October, November, December, 1938, vol. 16, pp. 517-520, 591-594, 659-662, 725-726; Paul Haensel, The 1943 Tax Increases in U. S. S. R., Bulletin of the National Tax Association (Lancaster, Pa.), March 1944, vol. 29, pp. 167-169; Paul Haensel, Soviet Finances, Openbare Financien (Haarlem, Netherlands), 1946, No. 1, pp. 37—48; Freund, op. cit., pp. 532-535. 28 Haensel, op. cit.; Freund, op. cit.; Theodore Sumberg, “The Soviet Union’s War Budgets,” American Economic Review (Evanston), March 1946, vol. 36, p. 119. An explanation of why there are so.many rates and why they vary is offered as follows: “The Turnover Tax is not a price determining factor, but follows from the prices fixed by plan. In fixing the amount of the tax the prime consideration is the price of the commodity in question. Hence, the technical process is roughly as follows: The tax on a certain commodity is fixed in proportion to its price. For example, if it is planned to market a given commodity at 150 rubles per unit, its production cost being 100 rubles per unit, the Turnover Tax may be fixed at 30 percent (45 rubles), thus leaving 5 rubles for profit. If consideration of economic policy dictate a lower price, the Turnover Tax is lowered accordingly. Increase of price is ac¬ companied by an increase of tax. In other words, the Turnover Tax is both a method of controlling the accumulation of reserves by State-owned industry and at the same time is a very flexible instrument for carrying out a definite price policy.” Bogolepov, op, cit., p. 11; Maurice Dobb, The Soviet Financial System, Anglo-Soviet Journal (London), October-December 1942, vol. 3, p. 210. 2 ® Roy Q. and Gladys C. Blakey, Sales Taxes and Other Excises (Chicago, Public Administration Service, 1945). Bogolepov, cp. cit., pp. 9, 12-13. 90 COMMUNISM IN ACTION United States, 31 corporations pay a Federal tax on their profits with rates ranging between 21 percent and 38 percent, to which should be added (in certain States) a further tax which usually does not exceed 6 percent but does occasionally go higher. 32 Employees in the Soviet Union, like employees in the United States, have a part of their wage withheld at the source in payment of their income tax. 33 The rate in the Soviet Union varies between percent and 13 percent, the maximum applying where monthly earnings exceed 1,000 rubles. A 30-percent reduction is allowed persons with three or more dependents. There is an exemption of 150 rubles per month. Interest on state loans, savings-bank deposits, pensions, salaries of members of the armed forces, and certain heroes and prize¬ winners are also exempt. The earnings of other groups such as writers, artists, physicians, attorneys, teachers, etc., in private practice, and certain other groups are taxed higher rates, some of which go as high as 65 percent. These rates may be compared with those imposed in the United States, 34 which has a 3 percent normal tax and surtax with rates ranging from 17 percent to 88 percent, the maximum applying on all over $200,000. There is an exemption of $500 for each tax¬ payer and dependent in the United States. It should be noted too, that many of the States impose taxes which usually do not exceed 10 percent but occasionally go higher. 35 The rural population in the Soviet Union 36 pays money taxes and also taxes in kind. Thus, collective farms which are exempt from the turn-over tax, are taxed from 4 to 8 percent of their income (i. e., 4 percent on income used by the farm itself, and 8 percent on income distributed to members), and members of collective farms pay taxes on earnings (which are not a par* of the proceeds of the collective farms) at rates which vary in the different Republics (8 to 20 percent in Russia proper). Exemptions or reduced rates are pro¬ vided for collective farms organized by peasants settling on new land; complete exemption is accorded collective farms in the vast northern areas. Individual peasant households (not members of collective farms) pay a tax which is double that of members of collective farms. The taxes in kind paid by the rural population are in the form of com¬ pulsory sales of agricultural products by the collective farms to the state at prices fixed by the Government considerably under the market price. Voluntary additional sales at higher prices may also be made to the state. The high progressive tax on estates and gifts in the Soviet Union was abolished in 1943, and there was substituted a simplified probate duty that ranges from 10 rubles for inheritances under 300 rubles to 10 percent for inheritances over 10,000 rubles. 37 The corresponding rates imposed by the Federal Government of the United States vary between 1 percent and 77 percent, and are imposed on the estate as distinguished from the inheritance. 38 There are also death duties of one kind or another imposed by the States of the United States, but 81 Revenue Act of 1945, approved November 8, 1945. 82 Tax Systems of the World (Chicago, Commerce Clearing House, January 1942), p. 140. 88 Haensel, op. cit.; Bogolepov, op. cit., p. 20. 84 Revenue Act of 1945, approved November 8,1945. 88 Tax Systems of the World (Chicago, Commerce Clearing House, January 1942), p. 128. 86 Haensel, op. cit.; Freund, op. cit., p. 535; Bogolepov, op. cit., pp. 15-16. 87 Haensel, Soviet Finances, op. cit. 88 U. S Code, title 26, sec. 810, 935. I COMMUNISM IN ACTION 91 a credit is allowed as a deduction from the Federal tax for all or a part of the State tax. 1 ' 9 A tax of 6 percent is imposed on the yearly income of unmarried men between 20 and 45 years, and childless married couples.. Married couples with one child pay 1 percent and those with two children pay one-lialf of 1 percent. There are exemptions granted for Red Army men and their wives. 40 There is no similar tax in the United States. The social insurance system in the Soviet Union 41 provides for medical care, sickness, maternity, death and funeral benefits, and pensions to be paid to incapacitated persons. The individual worker does not pay a social-security tax as he does in the United States, but all contributions are made by the employer in a lump sum which forms a percentage of the wage bill of the enterprise. The payment is said to average about 6 % percent but varies for particular enter¬ prises between about 4 percent and 10 percent according to the degree of risk which employment entails. The social-insurance fund, though included in the state budget, is controlled organizationally by the trade-unions. There is no unemployment insurance in the Soviet Union because unemployment is said to have been “wiped out.” The taxes imposed in the United States are imposed on both employee and employer. The present old-age rate for employees is 1 percent and the combined old-age and unemployment insurance rate for employers is 4 percent. There are some other taxes imposed in the Soviet Union 42 which may be noted briefly, such as the tax on admissions (5 to 60 percent), a local tax on buildings (% to 1 percent of value), a land-rent tax in cities (tax on the use of land—six classes at varying rates per square meter), and a system of stamp and license taxes. U. S. Code, title 26, sec. 813 (b). « Freund, op. cit., pp. 534-535; Bogolepov, op. cit., pp 54-55. _ .. .. _ _ c _ 41 Freund op cit., pp. 497-499; Social Insurance m the U. S. S. R., Information Bulletin, IT. S. S. R. Embassy Washington, November 29, 1945, p. 5; Maurice Dobb, Social Insurance in the Soviet Union, Soviet Russia Today (New York), January 1944, pp. 10, 32-33; L. Berkhina, Americans Examine Our Social Insurance Scheme, Soviet Weekly (London), November 15, 1945, p. 5; Bogolepov, op. cit., p. 59. 42 Haensel, op. cit. v ■ \ i I PART II—POLITICAL AND SOCIAL Chapter X GOVERNMENT INTRODUCTION The structure of Soviet Government since the 1936 Constitution has much in common with western democratic systems. There is a federa¬ tion of Republics. There is a Supreme Soviet consisting of two houses, one representing the Republics and the other representing the whole population of the Union, elected by secret ballot on a geographical basis. There is universal suffrage. The usual rights of freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, immunity from arbitrary arrest, and in addition wide economic rights are guaranteed. The Constitution was hailed as representing the highest form of democracy. The real nature of government behind the facade is quite alien to western tradition, and is based on the philosophy and power of the numerically small Communist Party, which began as an illegal revo¬ lutionary group at the end of the last century and which seized power in 1917 in the tottering, overcentralized, and economically backward Empire of the Czars. The goal of communism seen by Marx and adopted and adapted by Lenin as the basis of his party is still the professed goal of the Communist Party. The revolutionary technique of the dictatorship of the proletariat devised by Lenin as the only way of moving the inert mass of unawakened Russia is still the basis of Soviet philosophy. The structure of the federation and of Soviet Government will be outlined first, and then the motive force behind these, the philosophy and technique of the Communist Party. The Federation THE GROWTH OF THE UNION The first constitution drawn up by the Bolshevik leaders in 1918 renamed the central block of Russia, including Great Russia, Crimea, Caucasus, Siberia, and the Far East, the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (R. S. F. S. R.) ; The outlying parts of the former Russian Empire were outside their control, but it was hoped by using the word federation to win over groups like the Ukrainians and White Russians, who had suffered from the Czarist policy of Russification. December 1922 marked the agreement of the R. S. F. S. R. to form a federal union with Ukraine, White Russia, and the Trans-Caucasus Federation, which was named the Q. S. S. R. The first constitution of the new union was adopted by the Central Executive Committee in July 1923 and confirmed by the Second Congress of the U. S. S. R. in July 1924. The five Republics in Central Asia were added between 03 94 COMMUNISM IN ACTION 1924 and 1936. Five new Republics have been formed on the western border from areas taken over by the U. S. S. R. since 1939, most of which were within the borders of the Czarist Empire/ Today the U. S. S. R. is a federation of 16 constituent Republics, a federation which combines strong political centralization with wide local cultural autonomy. POLITICAL CENTRALIZATION The 1936 Constitution gives the Federal Government wide powers in every branch of Government—political, economic, and social. The Republics have no independent budget and with certain minor excep¬ tions their ministries are simply representatives of the federal min¬ istries. The U. S. S. R. is divided into economic regions which do not correspond to the political groups, a fact which further lessens the importance of the Republics. The Constitution gives the Repub¬ lics the right to secede, but the demand for separation is a recognized counterrevolutionary action, and separatist movements figured prom¬ inently in the 1938 trials. 1 A law of February 1, 1944, gave the Republics the right to have their own Commissariats of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic repre¬ sentatives, and the right to maintain their own armies, navies, and police. This was variously interpreted abroad as a move to placate the new Republics in the west, and as a move to secure greater repre¬ sentation in international meetings. Representatives of the Ukraine and White Russia have in fact taken an active part in the affairs of oiganizations such as UNRRA. But the main lines of foreign policy are determined by the Federal Government and the Party, and the Republics would be unlikely to stray far from the fold. THE NATIONALITIES This political centralization is balanced by a wide local cultural autonomy. There are nearly 200 ethnic groups in the U. S. S. R. and the most important of these were embittered by the Czarist policy of “Russification” and exploitation. Before the Revolution the Bolshevik Party made wide promises of “self-determination”, and since the Revo¬ lution Stalin himself has been closely concerned with a solution of the problem. His policy is based on cultural autonomy for definite terri¬ torial units and the economic development of the more backward regions. The more powerful units formed the constituent Republics. - Within these constituent Republics other ethnic groups weie given varying degrees of autonomy as autonomous Republics, autonomous provinces and national districts. All these groups are represented in the Council of Nationalities, the second house of the Supreme Soviet, which corresponds roughly to the Senate of the United States of America. Since the 1936 Constitu¬ tion the Council of Nationalities is elected directly on the basis of 25 seats for a constituent Republic, 11 for an autonomous Republic, 5 for an autonomous province, and 1 for a national district. iJohn Maynard, the Russian Peasant, (London, Gollancz, 1943), p. 379, describes the right to secede • * * ♦ “self-determination is a right; but it is the duty of the Party and the Trade Unions to prevent the exercise of it, except so far as cultural autonomy is concerned.” COMMUNISM IN ACTION 95 The Soviet Government The original association between the Bolshevik Party and the Soviets was due, not to any plan, but to historical circumstances. Soviets of workers had sprung up spontaneously in the 1905 Revolution and were revived in the 1917 March Revolution. These met together in a Congress of Soviets of Soldiers’, Workers’, and Peasants’ Dele¬ gates. In October 1917 the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets had Bolshevik majorities, and Lenin used the Congress as an instrument for seizing power. He visualized the Soviets as a new kind of demo¬ cratic organization which could be combined with party dictatorship, through which the party could work, and the Soviets remain today the important link between the Party and the people. The nature of the Soviets explains many of the features of Soviet Government which remained until the 1936 Constitution. The elec¬ tion system was based on occupational representation and indirect election. Election was by show of hands at the voter’s place of work. The city population was given a voting advantage over the peasants, and all “ class enemies” were disenfranchised. PRESENT STRUCTURE OF SOVIET GOVERNMENT Under the 1936 Constitution the Union Government consists of the Supreme Soviet, the Presidium, and the Council of Ministers. The Supreme Soviet consists of two houses, the Union Soviet and the Council of Nationalities. The former represents the population on a geographical basis, and the latter represents the population on a basis of nationality. The two houses have equal powers of legislation and pass laws by a simple majority, and meet together to elect the Presidium and appoint the Ministers, the U. S. S. R. Supreme Court and the Attorney General. The Supreme Soviet may repeal any act of any authority of the constituent Republics. It meets normally twice a year. The Presidium consists of 42 members elected by the Supreme Soviet. It has authority to issue edicts between meetings of the Su¬ preme Soviet, to declare war, to interpret laws, to convene and dis¬ solve the Supreme Soviet and to appoint and remove officials. So that, although in theory only the Supreme Soviet has legislative powers, in fact the Presidium has considerable executive, legislative, and judicial powers, and many important measures have been introduced by an edict of the Presidium. For example, the edict introducing the compulsory annual call-up of 800,000 to 1,000,000 young persons for industrial training in the State Labor Reserves was an edict of the Presidium issued without any discussion in the Supreme Soviet. 2 The Council of Ministers (until February 1946 called the Council of People’s Commissars) is ‘The highest executive and adminis¬ trative organ of the state authority of the U. S. S. R.” 3 and corre¬ sponds in many respects to the cabinet in western democracies. There is a constant reshuffling of Ministries, but at the present time the Council of Ministers consists of the Chairman (Stalin) and 8 Vice Chairmen, 45 Ministers, and 3 other officials. The ordinary Ministers are grouped under the Vice Chairmen. 4 8 Edict of the Presidium, October 2, 1910. 3 Constitution of the U. S. S. R., 1936, art. 79. 4 r ihe Soviet Government, the Economist, June 29, 1946. 96 COMMUNISM IN ACTION The decrees of the Council of Ministers have the force of law. There is in fact no formal separation of powers in the Soviet Gov¬ ernment. Soviet legislation may have the, form of an act of the Supreme Soviet, technically called a law, an act of the Presidium (called Edict) or an act of the Council of Ministers (called decree, order, instruction, resolution, or statute ). 5 The 1936 Constitution introduced important changes into the elec¬ toral system. Direct voting on a geographical basis replaced indirect voting. Secret ballot took the place of show of hands. Inequality of representation between industrial worker and peasant was abolished— the peasant of the collective farm had become a reliable citizen. The suffrage became universal and disenfranchisement for class reasons was abolished—an indication that the danger from the dispossessed classes was over. Thus in many ways the 1936 Soviet electoral system was designed according to the traditional western model, but it would have been strange if the spirit could have been changed so easily. In fact Stalin asserted that the 1936 Constitution was framed to retain “the regime of the dictatorship of the working class as well as the present directing position of the Communist Party.’’ 6 The Constitution specifically lays down that the Communist Party is “the directing nucleus of all organizations, both social and state, of the workers,” 7 and provides that “the right to nominate candidates is secured to public organizations and societies of the working people, Communist Party organizations and Trade Unions, cooperatives, youth organiza¬ tions, and cultural societies.” 8 In this way the Constitution insures that the single list of candidates for which the electorate may vote is put forward by the Communist Party or Communist Party dominated organizations. The debate comes in the selection of the candidate, rather than on the election, and the final choice of candidates for seats lies with a special committee of the different nominating bodies. Elections should be held every four years but were postponed from 1937 until February of 1946 because of the war. This method of election is responsible for one fact which is always commented on in the west, namely the unanimity of debate in the houses. Although there is criticism of detail all the members are ipso facto in general agreement with the basic lines of Party policy. There could not be for instance a heated debate on the nationalization of the coal mines, because the state ownership of all property is a basic tenet of the party. SOVIET DEMOCRACY How is it possible for the Soviet leaders to maintain that this system represents the highest form of democracy? In the first place great emphasis is put on economic democracy which the Russians maintain is ignored in “bourgeois” democracy. The Constitution guarantees the right of rest and leisure, the right to maintenance in old age, sickness or loss of capacity to work, the right to education, the right to work, and the equality of rights of citizens irrespective of their nationality, sex, or race. 9 These rights it is 8 Vladimir Gsovski, the Lawyers Directory (Cincinnati, 1946), p. 1963. 6 Stalin in the report on the Constitution, November 25, 1936. 1 Constitution of the U. S. S. R., 1936, art. 126. 8 Constitution of the U. S. S. R., 1936, art. 114. 9 Constitution of the U. S. S. R., 1936, arts. 118-123. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 97 argued are possible only because the state belongs to the working class and any shortcomings result from the fact that the Communist society •is not yet fully attained. The citizen is also encouraged to take an active part in criticizing and making constructive suggestions about the daily life in factories, farms, mines, and offices, and this is held to be a more real democracy than the formal rights of western de¬ mocracies. 10 According to Commimist philosophy the dictatorship of the prole¬ tariat is the highest form of democracy. In the working class democ¬ racy the state belongs to the working class. As there is only one class there is only one party, * 11 representing the most alert members of the class, whose duty it is to direct and train the masses. Especially in the transition period before the complete Communist society is reached and when society is going through a period of hardship and shortages and surrounded by class enemies, the state has to exercise the strictest control, where necessary by force. Given these basic assumptions the social, economic, and political rights guaranteed in the Constitution fall into perspective. The dictatorship of the Party provides the link between the Soviets and the Communist Party. THE PARTY Development and organization: Lenin insisted from the formation of the Bolshevik Party in 1903 as a separate group in the Social Democrat movement, that the Party should be small and strictly organized and trained to carry out its illegal revolutionary work. The Party was to be an organized elite of the working-class movement.. When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 there were only 200,000 members and the Party has remained small, although with a heavy turn-over of membership following the periodic purges. In later years the members were as follows: Members 1921 _____----- _ 650,000 1928_ 1, 500, 000 1933_ 3, 000, 000 1939 (after the purges of 1934-36 and 1936-38)- 1, 588, 000 1941___2,515,481 In 1939 only 1.3 percent of the Party had belonged to the Party since 1917. The organization of the Party is highly centralized. The Party Congress is still elected on an indirect basis with each committee sub- ' ordinate to the one above it in the hierarchy. Since 1933 there has Keen an increasing tendency to fill local offices by members appointed by central Party authorities. The Party Congress, which was the scene of heated debates in the early days, has become comparatively unimportant, and the last meetings were in 1931, 1934, and 1939. The Central Committee, which is elected by Congress by secret ballot, now numbers 71 members with 68 alternates and has lost much of its authority, and real power has become increasingly concentrated in 10 Joseph Freeman, An American Testament (New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1936), p. 50. “In the Soviet factory where I worked, every single change in production or administration was the subject of the widest and most heated discussion among the workers. * * * From the floor came not only criticism but constructive proposals. The rank and file contributed enormously to the reorganization of the factory. If this isn’t democracv, I don’t know what the word means.” 11 Stalin, Pravda, November 26,1936: “In the Soviet Union there is no basis for existence of several parties or consequently for the freedom of parties. In the Soviet Union there is a basis only for the Communist Party.” 98 COMMUNISM IN ACTION the committees of the Central Committee—the Political Bureau, the Organization Bureau, the Secretary’s office, and the Central Control Commission. The Political Bureau originally consisted of only 5 members, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Kamenev, and Bukharin, but has now been increased to 10. In it are 'concentrated the policy-making powers of the Party and therefore of the Soviet Government. The Organization Bureau deals with personnel and now has 15 members, including the 5 mem¬ bers of the Secretariat. The Central Control Commission was formed in 1921 to purge unreliable Party members and plays an important part in keeping the Party membership in line. It was Stalin’s key position in all these committees of the Party which made it possible for him to defeat his rivals in the struggle for power which followed Lenin’s death in 1924. It is under Stalin’s leadership that the Party has become an instru¬ ment for registering the Party line. The critical decisions of the 1920’s, the pace of development under the 5-Year Plan, the collectiviza¬ tion of the farms, the role of the Communist Internationale, were in¬ evitably criticized for going too fast or as compromising with Com¬ munist ideals; and gradually all of the independent thinkers of the early days were eliminated from the Party. Blind obedience to Stalin’s command became the law. The revised Party Constitution pf 1934 demanded absolute obedience and discipline and provided for the purge of all undesirables ranging from “hostile elements” to “double dealers who cheat the party and conceal from it their actual opinions.” The most important ways by which the Communist Party directs the machinery of Government are by the overlapping of personnel at the top level, by assuming legislative powers either independently or jointly with the Council of Ministers and by control of Soviet mass organizations by Party groups. 12 The fusion at the top level is striking. 13 Stalin is Secretary-General of the Party and member of the Orgburo and Politburo and chairman of the Council of Ministers, be¬ sides being Supreme Commander in chief. Six vice chairmen of the Council of Ministers are also members of the Politburo. Zdhanov, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, is a member of the Secretariat, Polit¬ buro, and Orgburo of the Party, and so is Malenkov, one of the mem¬ bers of the Presidium. Most responsible positions are held by Party members. The Party has considerable generally accepted legislative powers. 14 In the earlier years of the regime Party Congresses adopted a policy and this was subsequently enacted by the Soviet Congresses, but during the 5-Year Plans many directives in the economic field were issued direct by the Party to Government departments and had the force of law. The 5-Year Plans themselves have been programs of the Party. From 1932 onward an increasing amount of legislation came into force under the joint signature of the secretary of the Party and chairman of the Council of Ministers. In any case the presence of Party groups in all legislative bodies 16 insures that the Party policy H Studenikin, The Soviet Administrative Law (in Russian, 1946). This Soviet textbook prefaces an out¬ line of the role of Communist Party in the Soviet Government: “Comrade Stalin teaches that the Com¬ munist Party guides the government machinery. The Communist Party through its members working in (he government agencies guides their work, directs their activities.” n The Soviet Government, Economist, June 29, 1946. u Studenikin, op. cit.; further, no “important question is decided without directive of party agencies.” i« Ibid.: “At all congresses, conventions, and in all elective Soviet organizations where there are not less than three party members, party groups are created.” COMMUNISM IN ACTION 99 shall be adopted and their influence in administration and all channels of information insures that it shall be carried out. The relationship between the Party and the Government is openly acknowledged. The author of an editorial in the New Times 13 on the recent elections to the Supreme Soviet writes that the election was a great triumph for socialist democracy, and he explains why the electors voted for the Communist nominees. The leadership of the Communist Party insured the triumph of the policy of socialist industrialization and collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union; and it insured the progressive development of the Soviet Society on the basis of scientific socialist planning. No less convincing were the plans of work of the Communist Party for the future as outlined by Stalin, The dictatorship of the Party is certainly very firmly established. The Judicial System All courts of the Soviet Union form one judicial system, operating under the Constitution of 1936 and the Judicial Law of 1938. There is only one federal court, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union. All courts below 17 are State courts but they enforce equally State and federal laws. 18 The U. S. S. R. Supreme Court supervises all subordinate courts except the agencies of the Ministry for the Interior. Judges of the People’s Courts are elected directly; those of the other courts are elected by the corresponding Soviet (Council). Citizens are chosen to serve as cojudges for a 10 days’ session annually. The Supreme Court of the U. S. S. R. may offer to the Supreme Soviet “instructive resolutions,” which are close to what we term judicial interpretation of statutes. However, the Supreme Soviet is its own judge of when its legislation constitutes an amendment to the Constitution or when the law of a Republic should be suspended as contravening a federal law or the Constitution. 19 A position of great power is held by the federal Attorney General (otherwise translated as prosecutor, procurator, or procurer), who has supreme supervisory power over the execution of laws by all minis¬ tries and their agencies, all public officials and citizens. 20 He is elected by the Supreme Soviet and “appoints all the attorneys for the Republics, regions, and provinces, and approves the appointment of the district attorneys.” 21 All these subordinate officials are inde¬ pendent of local authorities. Certain agencies of the Ministry for the Interior are concerned with investigations and may, without judicial procedure, impose limited penalties of forced labor, exile, or banishment. 22 16 February 15, 1946. ... „ . ~ , ,,, + I? Supreme Courts of the Constituent Republics; Regional, Provincial, or Supreme Courts of the autono¬ mous Republics; and People’s Courts at the lowest level. 16 Gsovski, op. cit., p. 1968. ,, _ . „ . .. , p. . i» John N. Hazard, the Soviet Constitution, Lawyers Guild Review, vol. 3, No. 6, November-December 1943, p. 41. 20 Constitution of the U. S. S. R., 1936, art. 113. 2 1 Gsovski, op. cit., p. 1961. 22 See the chapter on freedom. Chapter XI NATIONAL DEFENSE General Aims Preparations for the national defense of the Soviet Union are broadly based upon a series of 5-Year Plans for the period 1946-70. From a recent speech by Premier Stalin 1 it is apparent that the U. S. S. R. intends to develop war power equal to the present might of the United States. Stalin has said, in effect, that he expects future world conflicts. 2 He has set goals for scientific achievement and for agri¬ cultural and industrial (potentially military) production sufficient to insure the Soviet Union against “all possible accidents,” or eventu¬ alities. 3 CURRENT 5-YEAR PLAN FOR DEFENSE One of the main tasks specifically set forth in the 5-Year Plan for 1946-50 is to raise further the defensive power of the Soviet Union and to supply her armed forces with the most modern military equip¬ ment. Commenting" upon this particular task, Nikolai A. \oznes- sensky, Chairman of the State Planning Commission, said on March 15, 1946: 4 One should not forget that monopolistic capitalism is capable of breeding new aggressors. To avert new aggression it is necessary to disarm the aggressive nations completely, to place them under military and economic control, and to have in the United Nations organization an organ which will guard world peace and security and will be capable of defending peace and opposing new aggression. We must strengthen the armed forces of the Soviet Union; we must work tirelessly to provide them with the most modern equipment and to strengthen further the military and economic power of the Soviet State. The 5-Year Plan for 1946-50 attaches much importance to scientific research particularly with respect to national defense measures. The highest priority is given to atomic development. Technical resources are under tremendous pressure to catch up with the American-British atomic combine. 6 DEFENSE PLANS, 1946-70 Some elements of the 5-Year Plans for 1946-70 which constitute partial measures for national defense are the following: 1. Increase of steel production to 60,000,000 tons annually. (Ihe United States produced about 80,000,000 tons in 1945.) 2. Increase of pig-iron production to 50,000,000 tons a year, almost the equal of United States output in 1945. i J. V. Stalin, Speech Delivered at a Meeting of Voters of the Stalin Electoral Area of Moscow, February 8 , 1946." Published by the Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., March 1946. ’2 Ibid., p. 3. ! Nikolai^A! Voznessensky, Report on the Fourth Five-Year Plan Delivered Before the Supreme Soviet of the U. S. S. R., March 15,1946, p.4. Published by the Embassy of the U. S. S. R., TV ashmgton, D. C., Vavilov, The Five-Year Plan of Science, Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Wash* Daniel De Luce, Soviets’Give Atom Study Top Priority, Washington Post, June 3, 1946, p. 3. 100 COMMUNISM IN ACTION 101 3. Annual production of 500,000,000 tons of coal. (The United States mined 575,000,000 tons of bituminous coal in 1945.) 4. Production of 420,000,000 barrels of oil. (United States pro¬ duction in 1945 was about 1,700,000,000 barrels.) In considering these figures it should be borne in mind that the high United States production in 1945 was attained under the pres¬ sure of war, with greatly increased plant capacity. United States production may taper off within the next few years. The Soviet Union plans to expand the plants she built during the war. * 7 Constitutional Provisions With respect to provisions for national defense, the constitutions of the Soviet Union and of the United States are comparable to some extent. Each assigns to the central Government the responsibility for organization and direction of the national defenses. In the United States this responsibility rests largely with the legislative body. 8 The constitutions of both the United States and the U. S. S. R. prescribe the relationship between the military organizations of their constituent States and their central Government authorities. Universal military service in the Soviet Union is law by constitu¬ tional declaration. 9 The Constitution of the United States contains no similar provision. Potential Military Might The present military strength of the Soviet Union is not equal to that of the United States. Although retaining a powerful army, the U. S. S. R. lost millions of young men in World War II, and younger replacements, many of whom have not reached military age, are untrained for service. While able to produce great numbers of tanks and guns, the Soviet Union is not yet prepared to manufacture com¬ petitive long-distance aircraft. The Soviet electronics industry is not flourishing. 10 Although greatly strengthened within the last several years, the Soviet Navy is still small compared to the navies of the United States and Great Britain. The potential military might of the Soviet Union is, however, very impressive. MANPOWER According to official prediction, within the 20-year period of de¬ velopment foreseen by Premier Stalin in his speech of February 9, 1946, the population of prewar Russia will reach 250,000,000. By including, the inhabitants of annexed Baltic states the Soviet Union may increase its population an additional hundred million or more by 1970. By that time prewar Russia alone probably will have about 32,000,000 men between the ages of 20 and 34 years with 22,000,000 of them in the ideal military-age group of 20 to 29 years. Within the same period, the population of the United States may reach 160,000,000 with 18,000,000 men between the ages of 20 to 34 years, about 10,500,000 of them between 20 and 29. i Russian Aims, 1946-1966: Power Equal to that of the United States, United States News, February 22,1946, p. 19. 8 Constitution of the United States, 78th Cong., 2d sess., S. Doc. No. 232, 1938, art. I, sec. 8. * ’Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Embassy of the U. 8. 8. R., Washington, D. C., December 1945, art. 132. i° G. F. Eliot, Soviet Military Power, Washington Star, June 1, 1946, p. A-0. 102 COMMUNISM IN ACTION The Soviet Union’s 32,000,000 men in 1970 will almost equal the combined military-age manpower of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. 11 RESOURCES-ESSENTIAL TO DEFENSE While the United States begins to foresee the end of some of its richest deposits of natural resources, the Soviet Union claims more than 50 percent of the known world supply of many minerals and other raw materials vital to industrial growth and national defense. Particularly, the U. S. S. R. claims over half of the known oil reserves and iron-ore deposits of the world. In agricultural resources im¬ portant to national defense, the Soviet Union is rivaled only by the United States. The Soviet Government has planned decentralization of industry so that industrial concentrations may never again be trapped by an invading enemy. The process of decentralization was accelerated by the war and is continuing in progress. 12 Universal Military Service System Compulsory military service in Russia antedates its incorporation in the 1936 Constitution of the USSR. The basic law of 1930, which may be regarded as what the Soviet Government considered adequate in peacetime, provided for preservice training, active service, and service in the reserves. Preservice training lasting 2 months was carried on at schools in the neighborhoods in which the candidates lived. The training consisted of military science, military-political orientation, and body building. Persons not physically fit were excluded. Candidates who passed to the “active list” served from 2 to 4 years with refresher service and periods on call varying with the branches of service—army, navy, and airforces. During service in the reserves, which followed from the end of active service to the forty-first birthday, total refresher service did not exceed 3 months, with not more than 1 month in any single year. In 1936 the age for beginning active service was reduced from 21 to 19. As the German Army advanced into Poland in 1939, the Soviet law on military service was revised to improve preparation for active military operations. Women have not been subject to compulsory service except in time of war, and then only for specialized services. In the early days of World War II, the principle of compulsory military training in spare time was extended to all males from 16 to 50 to prepare the industrial and professional population for service in guerilla bands when the German Army overran populated areas. 13 The Army COMPOSITION AND STRENGTH Extreme secrecy is maintained concerning the composition and strength of the Red Army. Although the army suffered heavy losses during the early part of the war with Germany, it was able to draw -i * ' u United States News, February 22, 1946, p. 20. ii Ibid., p. 21. la John N. Hazard, National Security and the Soviet Union, the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 1945, pp. 153-155. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 103 enough replacements to rebuild to its peak strength, estimated at 20,000,000. The number has decreased with demobilization following the end of the war. 14 Early in 1945 it was estimated that besides the armies m the north and the large garrison forces in the interior, the Balkans, and the Far East, the Red Army had over 400 infantry divisions, as well as a very large number of independent tank brigades, available for offensive operations on the German front between the Baltic and the Danube. According to an Associated Press dispatch, a “high Allied military source” stated on June 2, 1946, that the Soviet Union had at that time 6,000,000 men under arms but was preparing to reduce her forces to a long-range level of 4,500,000. According, to this report, the Red Army had on June 2 a strength of 4,500,000, while an additional 1,500,000 were in the air force, navy, and internal police. A long¬ term strength of 3,000,000 men in the Army, excluding reservists, was predicted. 15 ORGANIZATION The Army was reorganized during 1942 and 1943. Its subsequent successes have been largely attributed to this reorganization. Im¬ portant changes included a simplification of the supply system and a remodeling and reduction in size of the division, which had formerly included over 17,000 men. Without the time-wasting interposition of a corps headquarters, an army command now directly handles nine or more divisions. The high commanders in charge of a “front” control as many as seven armies. By the use of smaller divisions, with fewer links in the chain of command, the Red Army has gained in maneuverability and speed of operations. At the beginning of the war with Germany, the numerical superiority of the Red Army was partly offset by its technical difficulties. The Soviet artillery, historically powerful, was the main factor in checking the German advances until the Russians were able to train and equip adequate tank forces for counteroffensive. The Red Army tanks are formed in brigades rather than in divisions. The use of cavalry has decreased as armored and motorized forces have become available. Political commisars in the Army were abolished on October 10,1943* EQUIPMENT In spite of enemy occupation of many of her most important prewar industrial areas, the Soviet Union succeeded in supplying equipment to keep pace with the vast expansion of her army during the war. The supply of equipment was greatly aided by lend-lease from the United States. The Red Army has almost every conceivable type of armament and equipment needed in modern warfare, including engineering machinery and motor vehicles. ORIGIN AND AIMS The Red Army was a product of the great October Socialist Revo¬ lution, which predetermined its character and its historical mission. i 4 The World Almanac and Book of Facts for 1946 (New York, the New York World Telegram, 1946), P 'i« Russian Forces Put at 6,000,000. Atomic Industry Has Top Priority, New York Times, June 3, 1946, p. 1. 90681—46 8 104 COMMUNISM IN ACTION It became an army of the workers and peasants who had triumphed in the Revolution, the protector of their interests and of their revolu¬ tionary gains. The interests and aims of the Red Army have been set forth as the interests and aims of the people, with “identity with the people” as the chief and principal feature of the Army. It enjoys the confidence and support of all nationalities of the multinational Soviet Union. 16 DISTINGUISHING FEATURES Two features of the Red Army distinguish it from others. The first of these is that an officer generally must serve as a soldier before receiving a commission. The second is that promotion is by selection and not by seniority. 17 These rules are consistent with the Soviet principles that everyone must start as an ordinary worker and that each shall be rewarded according to his work. MILITARY EDUCATION AND CULTURAL ACTIVITIES According to Soviet literature great importance has always been attached to military education and cultural activities in the Red Army. Two principal reasons are given for this. The first is the prevalent opinion among leaders of the Soviet State that only edu¬ cated, socially conscious men and commanders can carry out the aims and tasks of the Red Army. The second is the belief of Soviet leaders that only skilled soldiers can master the complex and varied arma¬ ments of modern warfare, and that this requires proper education or training. In addition, it is considered that modern war requires high morale, and that this can only be expected of men of a definite cultural level. 18 The Red Army training program has been based upon the assump¬ tion that a future war would be a war of motors and machines, re¬ quiring a large personnel trained in all army skills. Guided by Mar¬ shal Stalin’s statement that trained personnel—people who have mastered the techniques of their professions—are in everything the deciding factor, the Red Army has established schools covering all branches of military knowledge. The following are the various types of schools and colleges main¬ tained by the Red Army for the education of its officers: (1) Officer training schools for subalterns (platoon commanders)-—the largest section of officers on the Red Army rolls—and junior technical special¬ ists for all arms of the services; (2) special military schools under the Ministry of Education, and Suvorov Cadet Schools; (3) officers’ re¬ fresher courses and officers’ colleges; (4) military academies and higher schools for officers. 19 Cultural activities form part of the normal military training in the Red Army. Such study is carried on in groups which sometimes consist of not more than a squad. Special political instructors—who often go into the thick of the fire with the men—explain new or important events, relay to the fighters the daily communiques of the Soviet Information Bureau, 16 Lenin and Stalin, Organizers of the Red Army, Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., February 23, 1945, p. 2. 17 Junius B. Wood, How Russia Goes At a Job, Nation’s Business, July 1944, p. 32. 18 Lt Col. Sergei Rostovsky, Cultural and Educational Activities in the Red Army, Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., February 15, 1945, p. 6. 18 Lt. Gen. Vasili Morosov, Training of Red Army Officers, Information Bulletin, Washington, D. O. March 3, 1945, p. 3. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 105 I and keep the soldiers posted on the international and home situation. The Red Army maintains various study circles, teaches trades, and gives courses of many kinds. # The regimental and divisional clubs have large libraries. Every battalion, company, and platoon has a special tent, dugout, or corner in the barracks, set aside for cultural activities, with a library, games, and musical instruments. Educational activities are too varied for enumeration m this writing. It is claimed by Soviet writers that “without exaggeration * * * the Red Army is the most cultured army in the world.” 20 The encouragement of sports, to which the Soviet Government has given great attention in recent years, has developed large numbers of skiers, sharpshooters, swimmers, and mountain climbers for the Red Army. 21 MEDICAL SERVICES Dr. Nikolai Priorov, Deputy Minister for Public Health of the U. S.'S. R., has claimed for the Red Army Medical Services accom¬ plishments superior to those of the medical services of any other belligerent army during World War II—namely, 1.1 percent mortality rate in military hospitals in the rear areas, and 73 percent of the wounded cured and returned to active service. 22 The material on which Dr. Priorov bases his comparison is not known. The United States War Department is compiling, but has not published, data on deaths in front-line and rear-area activities of the Medical Department during World War II. In the United States Army 73 percent of the wounded were returned to active service. 23 Characteristic features of the service given to the sick and wounded of the Red Army are: (1) Maximum surgical attention on or near the battlefield; (2) wide development and unification of a military hospital network under the Ministry of Health of the U. S. S. R.; (3) the. introduction of a single doctrine of war medicine; (4) the application of highly tested and effective methods of treatment on a large scale; (5) profound research work, both in hospitals and in research institutions, which at the end of 1944 were united in the Academy of Medical Sciences of the U. S. S. R.; (6) growth of indus¬ tries that supply medical stores; and (7)‘the extensive aid rendered in the care and treatment of the wounded by the whole Soviet people. 24 A OFFICER-SOLDIER RELATIONSHIPS Within recent years an Army aristocracy has been forming in the Soviet Union. The Red Army has developed along tight new lines resembling those of the old Czarist armies and the armies of some capitalistic countries. The distinction between soldier and officer has constantly increased. An elite military class has arisen through the development of corps of Guardsmen, who have special privileges and receive higher pay than other units. 25 2° Rostovsky, op. eit., p. 6. , ^ tt a a -d 2» Lt. Col. Mikhail Yuriov, Red Army Infantrymen, Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. 8. S. R., Washington, D. C., February 20, 1945, p. 5. . ... TT a a r> 22 Nikolai Priorov, Red Army Medical Services, Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Wash¬ ington, D. C., March 23; 1946, p. 245. . . . . _ I tt a ?3 Information obtained from the Medical Statistics Division, Office of the Surgeon General, U. S. Army. 25 C^^^Sulzb’erger.^Army Aristocracy Forming in Soviet, New York Times, June 28, 1943, p. C-5. 106 I COMMUNISM IN ACTION . COMMUNIST CONTROL The Red Army grew from an amorphous organization of workers and peasants. Former Czarist military professionals supervised its early training under the watchful eyes of Communists stationed at each headquarters. After Communists had worked into the com¬ mands the system of political observation was abolished. 26 The Communist Party now controls the top military heirarchy. Party and Army leaderships are so interwoven as to be almost indis¬ tinguishable. At the top these leaderships are merged in Premier Joseph Stalin, who combines in his person the offices of General Sec¬ retary of the Communist Party, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, and Generalissimo of the Soviet Union (Commander in Chief). A decree of February 1944 established a separate defense Commis¬ sariat and national army for each constituent Republic of the Soviet Union. The effect of this system would be to strengthen the role of the Party as the one interlocking and all-powerful organization, de¬ priving the military of any organizational framework parallel and possibly rival to the Party. 27 Restraint upon publicity given to Army generals works toward preventing their rise to political power through military fame alone. The Navy RECENT GROWTH At the start of World War II the Soviet Navy was very small com¬ pared with the fleets of the great naval powers of the world. The Red Fleet had 3 battleships about 30 years old, 1 modern cruiser, 6 fairly up-to-date cruisers, 2 old cruisers, an unknown number of small unit-tonnage submarines, and about 70 destroyers, of which 23 were of extra large tonnage. 28 In 1938 Stalin proposed to develop a strong navy, but the advent of war in 1939 interrupted ship construction. On July 27, 1940, Admiral Nikolai G. Kuznetsdv, Commissar of the Navy, announced that in 1939 the fleet had been increased by 112 ships, including large and small torpedo cutters. He stated that in 1940 the Navy would add 168 ships—an increase of 50 percent. 29 As the war progressed, the United States and Great Britain delivered (on loan or«otherwise) various types of war vessels-to the Soviet Union, including the famous British battleship Royal Sovereign , the speedy American cruiser Mil¬ waukee, destroyers, submarines, and torpedo boats. 30 The last-named were used in the defense of Sevastopol and Leningrad. During and since the war the Soviet Union has acquired war vessels from Italy, Germany, and Japan . 31 COMPARATIVE STRENGTH On May 21, 1946, Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, testifying before the Appropriations Committee of the United States House of Repre¬ sentatives, gave the total numbers of major ships of leading naval 28 Henry Sowerby, Race for Survival Won in Ten Years of Sacrifice, Christian Science Monitor, July 24, 1944, p/7. 27 Edmund Stevens, Red Army and Communists, Christian Science Monitor, August 18, 1944, p. 1. 28 Louis J. Gulliver, Russia at Last to Have a Real Navy, Christian Science Monitor, August 24, 1945, p. 14. 29 The World Almanac and Book of Facts for 1946, p. 374. 30 C. L. Sulzberger, U. S., British Ships Bolster Red Fleet, the New York Times, March 27, 1945, p. 8, 81 Gulliver, op. cit., p. 14. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 107 powers as follows: United States, 756; Great Britain, 491; Russia, 204; Italy, 47; France, 46. Admiral Nimitz said that the Soviet Union had 4 battleships, 7 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers,, no aircraft carriers, no escort carriers, 51, destroyers, and 140 submarines. 32 DISTRIBUTION AND BASES The Red Navy is distributed in four fleets, the Baltic, Black Sea, Pacific, and Northern, and in several flotillas (in the Amur and Dnieper Rivers and the Caspian Sea). 33 Naval bases have been reconstructed, and canals widened for the passage of capital ships from the White Sea into the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. The Soviet Union has taken over German and Finnish bases and some Japanese ports in the Kuriles, and appears determined to acquire at the peace con¬ ference certain bases to pull together its far-flung naval squadrons. 34 NAVAL EDUCATION On Soviet Navy Day, July 22, 1945, Stalin declared that— The task of the navy is tirelessly to train and improve the cadres of seamen, to master fully the experience gained in the patriotic war, and to raise still higher the naval skill, discipline, and organization. Eleven colleges have been founded for naval education at Vladivos- tok, Baku-Zykh, Taganog, and .Vibourg. Major General Zvyagin stated in the spring of 1945 that there is need of “a more thorough study of contemporary naval science.” 35 COOPERATION WITH THE ARMY Precise terms have been worked out for cooperation between the Navy and the Army. During World War II this coordination assumed its most graphic form when the Red Army took the offensive. The part taken by the Navy in coastal, river, and lake areas considerably facilitated and accelerated the Army’s advances. The fleet has become expert in performing landing operations, assisting in the operational transfer of troops across water barriers, and supporting a land offensive with naval fire. 36 During the 3 years of war previous to Red Navy Day, July 22, 1944, the Soviet Fleet and Naval Air Force are credited with sinking more than 2,500 enemy surface craft, damaging more than 1,200 others, and destroying 6,600 enemy planes. 37 In part, these accomplishments occurred during activities in support of Army operations. THE SOVIET MARINES Formed during the reign of Peter I, the organization of Russian Marines grew and developed with the Navy. Numerically theMarines form but a small part of the armed forces of the Soviet Union, but thev are said to have won the affection of the people. During World */ * 15. aa Comparison of the World Navies, the New York Times, May 22, 1946, p. 83 The Statesmen’s Yearbook for 1945, p. 1234. « The Russian Navy is Reborn, Life, December 17,1945, p. 91. 8« Robert F. Kemer, Russian Naval Aims, Foreign Affairs, January 1946, p,,296. 36 Qeorge Padalka, Cooperation of Navy and Army, Information Bulletin, Embassy of the u. ^37 2,500 Enemy Vessels Claimed by Red Navy in 3 years of War, the Sunday Star, Washington, D. C. July 23, 1944, p. A-4. S. S. R. 108 COMMUNISM IN ACTION War II the Marines operated on nearly all fronts and fought in the most dangerous sectors. 38 NAVAL AIMS Stalin proclaimed on Navy Day, 1945; that— the Soviet peoples wish to see their Navy still stronger and mightier. Our people will create new fighting ships and new bases for the Navy. The effect of the Yalta agreement, whereby the U. S. S. R. is to get outright title to the Kuriles Islands, the southern half of Sakhalin Island, and concessions in Manchuria, is to strengthen the position of the Soviet Union as an oceanic power. 39 The course of future Soviet naval policy is indicated in Stalin’s quoted statement. Due to geographical factors, the Soviet Navy must operate in widely separated areas. The primary aim of the Navy appears to be that of defending Soviet national interests in the White and Barents Seas, the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and Sea of Japan. Russian and British naval power meet at the gates of the Baltio and in the Mediterranean and in these areas agreement between Great Britain and the Soviet Union is essential for peace. Similarly the U. S. S. R. and the United States must agree in regard to the Western Pacific, where the interests of these two countries meet. 40 The Air Forces The Red Army and Navy each has an “air arm.” 41 Little infor¬ mation on the composition and strength of these forces is available. Estimates of the number of Soviet military aircraft at the beginning of the war with Germany range from 4,000 42 to 30,000 43 or more. In 1943 a German aviation correspondent estimated that the Russians were building 20,000 planes yeaidy. 44 These included a wide range of aircraft types of latest design and construction. 45 During the war the Soviet Air Forces were greatly strengthened by the addition of many thousands of planes obtained under lend-lease from the United States. The “Military Air Fleet of the Red Army” occupies a position com¬ parable to the Army Air Force within the United States Army. The officers and enlisted personnel are trained separately from other branches of the Army. 46 During the war with Germany the “Air Arm of the Red Navy” was engaged chiefly in three theaters—the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Arctic Ocean. The airmen not only protected naval bases and vessels from enemy attack, but themselves struck a number of blows behind the German lines. 47 38 l. Ivich, the Soviet Marines, Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., February 20, 1945, p. 3. 3« U. S. S. R. as an Oceanic Power, the United States News, February 8, 1946, p. 28. 40 Korner, op. cit., pp. 297-299. _ A _ JT 41 Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. O., August 19,1944, p. 2, and June 21, 1945, p. 1. 42 World Almanac and Book of Facts for 1946, p. 374. 43 Russian Air Force Praised by Experts, A T ew York Times, September 12, 1941, p. 9. 44 Russians Producing 20,000 Planes Yearly Now, German Says, Washington Star, August 22, 1943, p. A-5. 4» Soviet Air Force Using Wide Range of Aircraft Types, Aviation, July 1943, p. 229. - 46 Leonard Eneel, Rod Air Force, Air Progress, April 1943, p. 6. Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., June 21, 1945, p. 1. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 109 • « Expenditures for Defense The war economy of the Soviet Union antedated the war. The defense expenditures of the U. S. S. R. rose steadily from 3.5 billion rubles in 1933 to 56.0 billion rubles in 1940. The following are the state budget totals and the expenditures for national defense (actual and percental) for the fiscal years 1938, 1940, 1941, 1943, 1944, and 1945 (in billions of rubles): 48 1933 1940 1941 , 1943 1944 1945 Total budget.- National defense... Percent for national defense:- 124.0 27.5 22.2 174.3 66.0 32.1 216.0 70.9 32.8 210.0 124.7 59.4 263.0 137.9 62.4 305.3 137.9 45.2 The following are the total expenditures of the United States Government and the expenditures for war activities (actual and per¬ cental) for the same fiscal years, 49 (in millions of dollars): 50 1938 1940 1941 1943 1944 1945 Total expenditures- War activities---- Percent for war activities--- 7,239 1,029 14.2 8,998 1,657 18.4 12, 711 6, 301 49.6 78,179 72,109 92.2 93, 744 87, 039 92.8 100,405 90, 029 89.6 In considering these figures it should be borne in mind that the Soviet budget is peculiar in that it contains, in addition to the normal expenditures cited in any other national budget, the total annual investments in the operation and expansion of the nation’s economy. In the United States the national economy is financed through private channels. This partly, if not entirely, accounts for the higher per¬ centages of the national budget expended for war activities m the United States. Conclusion The basic national defense policies of the U. S. S. R., as announced in statements made by her leaders, are (1) support of the United Nations Organization for collective security, and (2) maintenance of a stron 0. Army and Navy as a guaranty of security m case ot failure of international measures. These policies have been set fort i m Commissar Molotov’s speech on February 6, 1946, m part, as follows: The Soviet Union has made no mean contribution to the building of a new and more effective organization to safeguard the peace and security th nations • Our participation in this organization’s work is aimed at making it effective m nrpventine: fresh wars * * *. That does not mean that we_are complacent the Red Army and of our Navy. The Government and the leadership of the Red Army are doing everything to ensure that * our army may be in no way inferior to the Army of any other country.' 1 Soviet national defense policies also emphasize the economic potential for military action, with increased provision for scientific research and development, particularly with respect to the use ol atomic energy. t. A. Sumberg, The Soviet Union's War Budgets, The American Economic Review, March 1946, P « The Soviet fiscal year coincides with the calendar; the United States fiscal year begins July 1 of the Ca lo e u da s r . : TmaSyDepartment, Treasury Bulletin, May 1946, p. 6. (Percentage computed by the present W M t V.- ) M. Molotov, Speech Delivered at an Election Rally in the Molotov Ekctior^ Area Moscow, Feb¬ ruary G, 1946, p. 9. Published by the Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, u. lviarcn Chapter Xii EDUCATION s CENTRAL GOVERNMENT CONTROL A study of education in the U. S. S. R. gives an insight into the general course of Soviet policy. Education by its very nature repre¬ sents preparation for the long future; and in the*Soviet Union all important educational policies are established by the highest authori¬ ties of the central Government. The Soviet leaders regard education as an extremely serious business. To them it is an instrument through which the Communist Party aims to achieve its purposes. In the United States, on the other hand, educational policies are generally initiated by the teaching profession or by educational authorities of the several States and localities, without central control by the Government or any political party. In every phase of education in the Soviet Union, the doctrines of the Communist Party are the only ones which can be presented to or considered by the learners. 1 2 If the form of government now existing in the U. S. S. R. should be established in the United States, the Communist Party would control education. The free study of other types of political doctrines and ideologies presumably would be prohibited, as in the Soviet Union. POLICY CHANGES UNDER SOVIET LEADERSHIP After a number of experiments with the more radical pedagogical doctrines of the West, sometimes included in the term “progressive education,” the Soviet school system is returning to more traditional methods of teaching. A similar movement is in process, without Government control, in many American schools. The Communists’ approach to educational problems has been influenced by such factors as their abhorrence of tradition, the extraordinary importance assigned by them to education and culture, the necessity of securing their regime by strong ideological support among the younger generation, and the secular character of the state and society which they have been creating. 3 The initial decree for universal education was passed in October 1918, only a year after Soviet rule was established. In that year Lenin announced to the nation: We need a huge advancement of culture. We must master the knowledge of all races. 4 1 Primary sources: George S. Counts, Remaking the Russian Mind, and To Overtake and Surpass America, Asia and the Americas, October 1945, pp. 478-484, and November 1945, pp. 534-537. Some of the other sources used are indicated by footnotes. 2 U. S. Office of Education, Education Under Dictatorships and in Democracies, Education and National Defense Series, Pamphlet No. 15, 1941, p. 9. 3 H. A. Freund, Russia from A to Z (London, Angus & Robertson, Ltd.. 1945). p 199. 4 Mitzi Bara'ch, Education in the Soviet Union, the Journal of the National Education Association, February 1945, p. 40. 110 COMMUNISM IN ACTION 111 The Communist Party without experience in government had under¬ taken to govern 150,000,000 people of many races and languages, three-fourths of whom were illiterate. 6 A unified system of general elementary and secondary education was introduced, covering the ages between 8 and 17. All former privileges of class, religion, and nationality were annulled. The upkeep of the schools was assumed by the state, and education was free. Provision was made for needy pupils to receive aid from the state, such as school supplies, clothing, and lunches. 6 When the Bolsheviks seized power and established the dictatorship they encountered widespread and bitter hostility among the educated classes. The Soviet leaders took measures to win the younger genera¬ tion and rear a generation of specialists loyal to their ideology. Chil¬ dren from the former privileged classes were denied entrance to higher educational institutions. In some instances workers with little academic preparation were admitted to the universities. A special institution called the Workers Faculty was established to prepare unschooled youths from the laboring classes for the institutions of higher education. Organizations such as the Society of Young Pioneers and the League of Young Communists were created to be¬ come the eyes, the ears, and the voice of the Communist Party in the schools. Student self-governing organizations played the role of a “militant organ of struggle” against the old school and the old teacher, who neither understood nor wished to understand the aims of the new Soviet school. 7 . „ _ .. ™ , , The year 1928, which marked the triumph of Stalm over Irotsky and other rivals, also marked the launching of the first 5-Year Plan with the slogan— to overtake and. surpass in the shortest possible historical period the most ad¬ vanced capitalistic countries and thus to insure the victory of socialism in its historic competition with the system of capitalism. The main task of the educational system became the task of helping to achieve the goals of that plan, particularly with respect to building a strong industrial state. By 1938 the resources of the educational system had become directed to “the mastery of knowledge,” with systematic curricula, student grading, and rigorous examinations. Some of the earlier emphases, such as political education, had been modified, partly because certain experimental methods of teaching had proved unsuccessful, and partly because the ideas of the revolu¬ tion had become fully established and expressed in the life and out¬ look of educational institutions. The authority of the teacher, which had been minimized in the struggle to capture the schools, was re¬ stored and strengthened. THE CONSTITUTION AND EDUCATION Article 121 of the Soviet Constitution as amended by the first, second, third, sixth, seventh, and eighth sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the U. S. S. R., declares that Citizens of the U. S. S. R. have the right to education. This right is insured by universal compulsory elementary educationj by education, including higher 8 U. S. Office of Education, op. cit., p. 9. rT „ 0 „ w . . . „ n „ t Education in the U. S. S. R., Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., ^Albert P^’Pinkevitc'h, the New Education in the Soviet Republic (New York, the John Day Co., 1929), p. 213. 112 COMMUNISM IN ACTION education, being free of charge; by the system of state stipends for the over- whelming majority of students in the universities and colleges; by instruction in schools being conducted in the native language, and by the organization in the factories, state farms, machine and tractor stations and collective farms of free, vocational, technical, and agronomic training for the working people. 8 Article 124 of the Constitution reads in part: In order to insure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the U. S. S. R. is separated from the state, and the school from the church. 9 At the time of the framing of the Constitution of the United States, publicly controlled nonsectarian schools were the distant hope of statesmen and reformers. 10 Education was almost universally re¬ garded as a matter of church control, and since in America there was' no established national church, it would have been impossible to obtain agreement on constitutional provisions with respect to Gov¬ ernment control of education. 11 Since powers not delegated to the Federal Government were reserved to the States, public education, as it developed, came under their control. However, under its consti¬ tutional powers to tax and appropriate for the general welfare, the Federal Government has played an increasingly important role in education as it has become increasingly important in the life of the Nation. AIMS OF SOVIET EDUCATION The aim of the Soviet school as officially stated is “to give general education to the citizen and to make him a useful member of the community.” 12 ' The study of the labor processes and participation of the children in the productive effort are main objectives of the school system. 13 Since 1934 cultural aims have been stressed also. The earlier aim of indoctrinating communism is now expressed in the aim of developing patriotic fervor. Albert P. Pinkevitch, president of the Second State University of Moscow, wrote in 1929: The aim of all workers in the sphere of public education will be to instill into the growing generation socialistic (communistic) ideas and thereby to increase the ranks of those who are fighting for the establishment of the socialistic (com¬ munistic) state. The aim is, so to speak, the indoctrination of the youth in the proletarian philosophy * * *. In the words of the accepted program, “the school must be not only a vehicle of the principles of communism in general, but also an instrument through which the proletariat may affect the proletarian and nonproletarian strata of the laboring masses with a view to training’up a genera¬ tion capable of finally establishing communism.” 14 A professor of education in the Higher Communist Institute of Education at Moscow wrote in 1937: In speaking of public education in the broad sense of the term it should be said that the entire Soviet system educates the masses of the people in the spirit of communism. This far-reaching process has been particularly intensive during the last few years, since the purpose of the second Five-Year Plan of Socialist construc- 8 Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Washington, D. C., Embassy of U. S. S. R., December 1945), p. 25. 9 Ibid., p. 26. 10 Elwood P. Cubberley, Public Education in the United States (New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1934), p. 73. “ J. F. Messenger, An Interpretative History of Education (New York, Thomas E. Crowell Co., 1031), p. 279. 12 Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., op. cit., p. 7. 13 H. A. Freund, op. cit., p. 200. i* Pinkevitch, op. cit., pp. 29-30, I COMMUNISM IN ACTION 113 tion in the Soviet Union (1933—37) is to eliminate the last vestiges of capitalism both in the economy and in the minds of men. 15 However, in February 1943, V. P. Potemkin, Commissar of Educa¬ tion of the R. S. F. S. R. said: The chief moral and political aim of the school is the training of the pupils in the spirit of patriotism. 10 increase of schools and enrollments Accomplishments of the Soviet school system in raising the level of educational attainment of the population have been impressive. Considerable progress had been made under the Czarist Government. The number of pupils in elementary and secondary schools had in¬ creased from less than 2,000,000 in 1881 to between eight and nine million in 191,4. Between 1906 and 1916, the number of elementary schools had doubled, and state expenditures on elementary schools had increased tenfold. 17 According to Soviet statistics the number of pupils of all age groups in the territory of the present Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic increased from 5,551,600 in 1914 to 20,408,800 in 1939. Similar growth has occurred in other Republics of the Soviet Union. The total enrollment in 1939 was 47,400,000. Illiteracy has been “almost completely wiped out in the Soviet Union.” In 1914 there were 24,700 students in 81 universities and institutes; in 1941, 564,573 students in 782 universities and colleges. 18 expenditures for education During the calendar year 1945 the Soviet Government spent about 28,600,000,000 current rubles on education, 19 over 8 percent of the national income of approximately 355,000,000,000 current rubles. 20 During the school year 1944-45, the total amount spent in the United States for all types and levels of education, public and private, was about $3,500,000,000, 21 or a little over 2 percent of the national income of $161,000,000,000 for 1945. 22 It should be noted that in the Soviet Union educational institutions include the state theaters, libraries, operas, and cinemas, which are partly self-supporting. 23 The cost of physical training, separately itemized in the Soviet budget, is largely included in expenditures for education in the United States. The comparability of the data on expenditures for education in the Soviet Union and in the United States is therefore questionable. It appears, however, that in propor¬ tion to the national income the Russian people are supporting educa¬ tion several times as generously as the people of the United States. According to George S. Counts, professor at Columbia University, the Russians are supporting education far more generously than any other people in history. 24 is Johanson I. Zilberfarb, Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, Educational Yearbook of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University, 1937, p. 476. 16 Counts, op. cit., p. 535. . , „ . T , f „ ii W. n. Hutt, Two Studies in the Statistics of Russia, the South African Journal of Economics, 1945, p’p. 27-28. „ ^ is Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., op. cit., p. 3. 15 Izvestia, February 3, 1946, p. 4. 20 u. S. Department of Commerce, estimate. 21 U. S. Office of Education, estimate. 22 U. S. Department of Commerce, Survey of Current Business, February 1946, p. 8. 23 Information obtained from the Soviet Embassy, Washington, D. C. 24 Counts, op cit., p. 479. March 114 COMMUNISM IN ACTION ORGANIZATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM The educational system of the Soviet Union consists of a network of -si^ny types of general and vocational schools and educational insti¬ tutions for children and young people. Besides the kindergartens for children of 3 to 7 years of age the system includes: A. Educational institutions for children and adolescents: (a) Elementary, junior secondary, and secondary schools for general •education. (b) Special schools: (1) Forest schools, (2) schools for the deaf and dumb, and for the blind, (3) schools for backward and mentally defective children, (4) special schools for the arts. (c) Residential educational institutions: (1) Children’s homes, (2) Suvorov schools. 25 (d) Children’s institutions for out-of-school activities. B. Vocational schools for children and adolescents: (a) Trade and railway, ( b ) factory apprentice, (c) teacher training, (d) medical (nurses et cetera). C. Universities and specialized institutes. All types of schools are organized in a unified system so that various stages in education are successive links in an unbroken chain from the kindergarten to the university. 26 All cultural-educational institutions, such.as libraries, clubs, reading rooms, theaters, cinemas, et cetera, come under the supervision of the educational authorities. 27 THE CURRICULUM The elementary-school curriculum includes the Russian (and native) language, arithmetic elements, nature study, history, geography, drawing, penmanship, physical culture, and manual training. 28 The secondary-school curriculum includes the following subjects: The Russian language and literature, mathematics, physics, chemistry, natural sciences, astronomy, the Constitution of the U. S. S. R., history (with special emphasis on the U. S. S. R.), geography, one foreign language, physical training, writing, draftmanship, art, singing, and military training. The curriculum for institutions of higher education is planned by the Committee on Higher Education in accordance with the requiie- ments of every branch of the country’s economy. The first 3 years are devoted to lectures giving a general picture of a specialty, and the fourth and fifth years to specialization in a certain subject. 29 The uniformity of educational curricula, syllabuses, and textbooks contributes to the realization of the principles of the uniform school, a uniform standard of education for the younger generation and central Government supervision over the school. This enables pupils to take up their studies without examination and without difficulty in the corresponding class of a new school when moving to another town. In the United States students frequently do not have this advantage. 25 Military schools for sons of Red Army men and officers, for sons of partisans, and for war orphans. 26 Eugene Medynsky, Education in the Soviet Union, the Education Forum, March 1945, p. 286. 27 Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., op cit,', p 5. 28 Medynsky op. cit., p. 236. 20 Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington, D. C., op. cit., pp. 8, 12. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 115 SEPARATION OF THE SEXES A recent educational 4e ve i°P men ^ in the Soviet Union was the abolition of coeducation in secondary schools. After 25 years of experimentation with coeducation, the Soviet school authorities decreed that beginning with the school term 1943-44 all boys and girls 7 years of age and over in cities throughout the country should attend separate boys’ and girls’ schools. 30 - Although the basic curriculum in the schools is essentially the same, the girls are given special instruction in nursing, first aid, and domestic science. The boys, on the other hand, receive intensive training to become members of the armed forces. 31 Soviet educators maintain that differences in the rate of physical development of boys and girls during adolescence produce psycho¬ logical reactions for which the necessary allowances cannot be made in mixed classes. 32 STUDENT FEES Although, in general, education in the Soviet Union is free by con¬ stitutional declaration, secondary-school pupils from the eighth to the tenth year pay a small fee of 50 rubles a year—about 1.4 percent of the average annual income per person. Textbooks are published by the Government and sold to students at very low prices. The fee for education in universities and institutes is 400 rubles per annum, but all good students receive a grant ranging from 185 rubles a month the first year to 300 rubles a month the last year. Scholarships are granted to brilliant students. 33 TEACHER-PUPIL RELATIONSHIPS Since about 1938 the authority of teachers has been emphasized and pupils have been subjected to increasingly strict supervision in the school, at home, and on the street, as under the old regime. Teachers regulate the out-of-school lives of their pupils and control attendance at the theater, movies, and other places of amusement. The program constitutes an unprecedented attempt to bring pressure on the young to master knowledge for the purpose of making the Soviet Union first among the nations. 34 Since the school year 1943-44 each student from the fifth to the tenth grade in secondary school has been required to carry with him a card stating 20 regulations for conduct. These rules of the Soviet Govern¬ ment are designed to make for stricter discipline and the development of a keen sense of duty, honor, and responsibility. The following are illustrative: (3) Obey unquestioningly the orders of the principal of the school and the teachers. (6) Keep your desk in school clean and neat. (14) Do not use abusive and coarse expressions; do not smoke. Do not play games for money or other valuables. (17) Obey your parents, help them, and take care of your younger sisters and brothers. « ■ ■ ■ — ^ ao U.. S. S. R. Department of Education, Uchitalskaya Gazeta, August II, 1943, a 1 Barach, op. cit., p. 41. aa The Journal of Education (London), August 1944, p. 400. *3 Embassy of the U. S. S. R., Washington D. op. cit., p. 4. n Counts, op. ciL, p. 483. 116 COMMUNISM IN ACTION For violation of these regulations the student may be punished to the extent of expulsion from the school. 35 EMPHASES IN INSTRUCTION Soviet education emphasizes love of country, the glorification of Russia in history, science, the equality of peoples, socialism, and military power. # The entire educational program expresses Soviet domestic and foreign policy and is directed toward the goal of over¬ taking and surpassing “the most advanced capitalistic countries.” The American emphasis on individual instruction and freedom of teaching contrasts sharply with Soviet emphasis on a unified system and indoctrination in communism. 38 U. S. Office of Education, Education for Victory, December 1, 1943, p. 29. Chapter XIII THE USE OF LEISURE TIME INTRODUCTION The use of the individual’s leisure time is a matter of primary political concern in the Soviet Union. As a result, leisure has been organized and directed toward special ends to a degree that seems entirely unique. The proper use of leisure time by the individual Soviet citizen is regarded as essential both for health and for educa¬ tional needs. Furthermore, it is the duty of the Soviet citizen to be ready for both labor and national defense, and this preparation is provided in considerable measure by the collective and purposeful utilization of his or her individual leisure. The development of leisure-time activities in the Sot Union mayeiv be considered under six aspects. The first is the definition or de¬ limitation of time for leisure and the manner in which this allotment is made. The second is the allocation of center's or places for leisure use and the ways in which these are used. The third, the collective or group organization for leisure, deals with the numerous social bodies which enable the individual to participate in leisure-time activities. The fourth aspect considered is the utilization of leisure by youth and children and the development of athletic sports. The fifth is.the cultural utilization of leisure for. enjoyment of traditional art forms and the expression of group patriotic sentiment. The sixth and last is the manner of control of leisure-time employments in ordei that tne ends of the Soviet State may be fostered and maintained. TIME ALLOTTED FOR LEISURE Article 119 of the (1936) Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics states that: Citizens of the U. S. S. R. have the right to rest and leisure. The right to rest and leisure is ensured by the reduction of the working day to 7 hours for the overwhelming majority of the workers, the institution of annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees, and the provision of a network of sana- toriums, rest homes, and clubs for the accommodation of the working people. This, in general terms, lays out the policy of time allotment for recreation and leisure of the working citizens of the Soviet Union. Until 1929 the general practice in Soviet industries was labor lor a 6-day workweek with an additional day allotted for rest and recrea¬ tion. From 1929 to 1940 there was a general attempt to achieve uninterrupted, continuous production by a working period of 5 days with workmen allotted rest days on every sixth day. The working day was 7 hours. After 1940 the 6-day workweek plus a day of rest on Sundays was restored, and the 8-hour day was also restored m spite of the provision in article 119. It must be remembered that over two-thirds of the Soviet population at this time was rural and 117 118 COMMUNISM IN ACTION was not affected by the allotment of rest periods for urban workers. 1 During the war the working day was increased to 11 hours. The official holidays or anniversary days of the Soviet Union are designed to recall notable events and principles connected with the Revolution. Thus, January 21 commemorates the date of Lenin’s death, May 1 is International Labor Day, November 7 is celebrated as the anniversary of the first assumption of power by the Soviets in 1917. There are a number of other local Revolutionary days of rest which do not have quite the same degree of universal observance as the foregoing. Then there are the 30 or more traditional holidays of the Russian Church, including Christmas and Easter, which are still celebrated in rural areas. 2 These are not, however, official holidays. PLACES ALLOTTED FOR LEISURE For the general use of the urban citizenry several hundred “parks of culture and rest” have been laid out in.the various cities of the Soviet Union. In Moscow the Central Park of Culture and Rest contains grounds for sport, entertainment, theaters, cinema houses, and a “Town of Children” where parents may leave their offspring while enjoying the facilities of the Park. The parents may employ their time reading in libraries, listening to lectures, visiting picture galleries, or viewing the exhibitions in figures, posters, and diagrams of the achievements of the Soviet Union . 3 Excursions into the country or to parks of culture and rest are arranged for families on rest days and holidays. These would cor¬ respond in nature to the American family picnic. Similarly, trips to the city are arranged for peasant families fpr recreational purposes. One of the most notable developments in the Soviet Union has been the rise of innumerable technical, historical, literary, educational, art, and other museums. Some of the palaces of the Tsar and former nobility are preserved as museums. The role of the museums is partly instructive and partly propagandists . 4 * In the period before the Second World War annual vacation holi¬ days were enjoyed by all workers under Soviet labor laws. The num¬ ber varied, from 14 to 28 days or more, according to the grade of the work. For the convenience of vacationers a large number of health resorts, sanatoria, clinics, convalescent homes, and rest homes have been founded throughout the Soviet Union. There are over 1,000 mineral springs, mud-bath sites, and other recreational and curative spots. Along the Black Sea are a number of coastal resorts, such as Sochi and Yalta; in the Caucasus are mountain spas and mineral springs and mud-cure resorts, while on the steppes are kumiss or mare’s milk resorts. The rest homes are located in picturesqfie and healthy areas and are put at the disposal of workers by the State. (See the chapter on standards of living.) Thousands of selected workers come to these places every year. 6 1 V. Gsovski, Legal Status of the Church in Soviet Russia, Fordham Law Review, January 1939, p. 20; N. S. Timasheff, The Great Retreat (New York. E. P. Dutton & Co., 1946), pp. 125, 229. 2 Dorothy Spicer, The Book of Festivals (New York, the Woman's Press, 1937), pp. 283-306; S. N. Harper, Civic Training in Soviet Russia (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1929), pp. 224-241. 2 S. Bodrov, The Moscow Park of Culture and Rest, Soviet Cultural Bulletin (Moscow), No. 5, Septem¬ ber 1931. 4 Harper, op. cit., p. 240; A. R. Williams. The Soviets (New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1937) pp, 365-423. >>U. S. S. R. Handbook (London, V. Gollancz, Ltd., 1936), pp. 401, 489. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 119 GROUP ORGANIZATION FOR LEISURE A considerable proportion of the workers of the Soviet Union aro organized in workmen’s clubs, which constitute the most important agents in political education. A large factory may have a club of its own, while in other cases, as in “group clubs,” a single club serves several factories situated in the same neighborhood. There are also “interunion clubs” which are organized for members of all the trade- unions so that many different kinds of employees may be served by the same club. Club activities may be separated into two kinds: (1) Mass activi¬ ties, and (2) the work of circles.. . The mass activities bring in the entire membership and their families and consist of lectures, motion pictures, and the question-and-answer forums. Cultural and educa¬ tional activities are also stressed, including dramatic performances, concerts, and excursions to museums and villages. Clubs have their own libraries and reading rooms and are also used for lectures, dis¬ cussions, young people’s activities, and amateur circles. The circles of clubs dealing with particular subjects meet regularly under their own leadership. Circles are devoted to politics, trade-union matters, production, and cultural or recreational matters such as art, music, literature, physical culture, and athletics. As in the case of other organizations, the aim is propagandists as well as instructional. * * 6 If labor unions in the United States were to organize community centers in or near all important factories which would take up much of the worker’s free time for studying the meaning and applications of Marxism to everyday life, it would to some degree resemble these Soviet clubs and circles. . _ Closely allied to the clubs are the “Red Corners.”. The Red Corner is to be found generally in the smaller enterprises, in workmen s dor¬ mitories, and in the separate shops of large factories. Newspapers and other current reading matter are supplied at the Red Corners, and there is no formality of membership. The “cult-commission” of the local factory or factory committee, a body elected within the local union, is responsible for the equipment and maintenance of Red Corners. 7 . . ... Also of interest are the “Lenin Corners.” In every club or village reading room the Lenin Corner is the center of the political activities of the group. It consists essentially of a portrait or bust of Lenin, together with any other objective mementoes of the leader of the Revolution and extensive reading matter. Lenin Comers are to be found in schools, in houses of detention and correction, and in Red Army barracks as well as in the ordinary clubs .and meeting places. The village reading room is an important institution for the leisure time of the rural areas. Sometimes this institution will be housed in a single hut and at other times in a room within a cooperative head¬ quarters or in some other building. These places are sometimes called “village libraries” or “village reading huts.” Each village reading room has a permanent director and a file of periodicals and books. Newspapers may be read out loud at these centers. ..These reading rooms also serve as information bureaus and as bases for the organi¬ zation of local cells of the Komsomol or “All-Union Leninist Com- # Harper, op. cit., pp. 156-160. 1 1bid., p. 155. 6 Ibid., pp. 38-39, 293. 90681—46-9 120 COMMUNISM IN ACTION munist Union of Youth.” The celebration of Revolutionary anniver¬ saries is often arranged by the local village reading room. Recrea¬ tional circles may be organized in the reading rooms in the same way as in workmen’s clubs. Dramatic circles are especially cultivated.® In our country a parallel development to the village reading room might be imagined if every small town had a library organized by the Federal Government for educational and propagandistic ’purposes among the rural inhabitants. The organization of workmen’s clubs for the urban proletariat and of village reading rooms for the rural population or peasantry creates the need for some bond of interrelationship between these two insti¬ tutions, particularly for the purpose of transmitting political education from the city to the country. This function is in some degree fulfilled by the so-called “patronage societies.” Essentially a patronage society is a group of workmen who take under their wing some corresponding peasant group for educational or other cultural purposes. 10 The factory committee is the accepted basis for all patronage socie¬ ties of workmen. There is a Central Patronage Commission main¬ tained by the state for the workmen-peasant societies. Their activi¬ ties consist in excursions of members to the village, in holding meet¬ ings, giving speeches, and in the bringing of literature, subscriptions to newspapers, and even farm implements to villagers. Representa¬ tives of these societies help in the organization of rural cooperatives or discuss the political and economic problems of the village with the more active elements. Many of the workmen members spend their vacations in the patronized village in order to acquaint themselves better with its problems. Excursions of peasants to the city have also been arranged by these societies. In general the function of the patronage societies is to interpret the policies of the state and the Party to the peasant. 11 If, in the United States, the urban A. F. of L. or CIO union locals were to select backward rural communities for special educational as¬ sistance we would have somewhat of a parallel to the patronage socie¬ ties of the Soviet Union. There are a considerable number of Soviet civic organizations which may claim a large part of the leisure time of their members. For example there is the “Conference of Delegates of Workwomen and Peasant Women.” The active leaders in these Conferences are the women’s sections of the Communist Party units, and these bodies furnish the staffs of organizers and instructors. The literature for the Conferences is largely supplied by the publication departments of the Party, and the location of the meetings is frequently at the head¬ quarters of the Party cell. Once a week, on the average, an evening meeting is held at local centers. The main function of the Conferences is to bring before the women the current problems of a political and economic nature which face the state and the Party. In addition to the discussions proper, there are special circles organized to cover certain fields of interest such as military preparedness or more prosaic items such as everyday problems of housewives and w'orkingwomen. 12 > Ibid., pp. 274-275. io Ibid., pp. 189-194. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 121 SPORT AND THE LEISURE OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH There is an “All-Union Committee for Sports and Physical Culture” which, subject to central authority, helps to promote sports and to guide the public policy in regard to these activities. Every Republic in the Union has its representation on the Committee, while each Repub¬ lic, in turn, has its own executive council for sport and physical culture. 13 The schools encourage athletic . exercises by awarding diplomas or medals of fitness bearing the insignia “G. T. O.” (Ready for Work and Defense). The tests for these medals are severe and place considerable emphasis on military activities as well as sports. A person may study many aspects of athletics in school but practice is a private affair connected with the voluntary activities of clubs and allied,organizations. Personal athletic loyalty develops with regard to the club rather than with regard to the school. Junior clubs cover the period of the secondary school from ages 12 to 17 and are divided into three groups according to age. If a student wishes to compete outside of his or her age group medical permission is required.. Ath¬ letic competition continues long after school age and may include anyone not incapacitated by age or accident. Free medical examina¬ tions, both to determine physical fitness to participate and to check up on possible injuries, are provided by the state. 14 There are no professional athletes outside of circus performers, but teams are organized to represent factories or farms, and the members receive their wages while on tour as they do on other vacations. They are sometimes sent abroad. They are not paid, however, in relation to their athletic skill. Their pay is simply a continuation of their salary in the place of regular industrial or rural employment. Several research institutes in the Soviet Union have turned their attention to efficient methods of training athletes and to a discovery of the most effective sports techniques. 15 “Socialist competition” is the guiding principle of athletic contests and implies a purposeful matching of skills in the interest of coll ecti vis tic enterprise and for physical fitness to defend and maintain the Soviet Union from outside attack. 16 Competition among the various athletic clubs is local, regional, and country-wide. The junior clubs compete among themselves in the same school or with clubs of the same age groups representing certain parks or streets in other parts of the city, or with clubs in other towns. Most sports have their junior national championship, which is open to entries from all over the country. In summer the clubs carry on their competition in Pioneer camps (equivalent in some ways to Boy and Girl Scout camps in this country). 17 The bulk of the financial support for the athletic activities is obtained from the budgets of the armed services, the unions, and the collective farms. As in the case of other activities, the trade-unions particularly play an important role. Membership fees are nominal in order to encourage participation by young persons with low incomes. The wealthy larger clubs have built their own athletic plants, while 13 G. Sinfield, Soviet Sport (London, Russia Today Society, 1945), p. 10. „ . ^ J u H e. a. Starbuck, Soviet Sports (New York, The National Council of American-Soviet friendship, 1945). pp. 12-13. is Ibid., pp. 36-37. 10 Ibid., pp. 37-88. »Ibid., p. 13, 122 COMMUNISM IN ACTION the smaller clubs pool their membership in order to form all-star teams made up of the best athletes from the several clubs. In addition to the expenditures required for running expenses, there have also been large sums allocated for the construction of stadiums, swimming pools, ski runs, and tennis courts. 18 Insofar a's the range of active sports is concerned it may be said to pretty well cover the gamut of activities familiar to us in the United States. Except for baseball, football, polo, and golf the sports popular in the United States are also carried on in the Soviet Union. Soccer is the most popular game and attracts huge crowds of spectators at the larger matches. Gymnastics are next to soccer in popularity and mass demonstrations are given on important occasions. Cross¬ country races on skis are popular in winter and draw huge entry lists. Skiing in fact is not only a sport but a necessity in some occupations and in military training activities due to the nature of the climate. Foot races in the summer draw equally huge participation. Other activities worthy of note are track and field competition, swimming, skating, boxing, wrestling, basketball, and tennis. _ Rowing is popular near cities while bicycling is largely rural. Military significance is attached to a great number of sports. Rifle shooting, parachute jumping, and glider training are especially of this character and, allied to sport training generally, are well developed in the Soviet Union. Sailing and mountain climbing have their share of devotees also. 19 The leisure time of the child begins with the creche or day nursery in which he or she is left while the mother is employed in the factory. As the child grows up the collectivistic activities are gradually un¬ folded to him by means of play until the age of 14 when he or she is eligible for at least part-time employment. Perhaps the most elaborate provisions for children’s use of leisure time are found in the “ Children’s City” in the Moscow Central Park of Culture and Rest. This is a place where physical culture and hygienic training along with political, educational, and mass cultural activity are carried on among the younger generation. In the “Home of the Young Technician” hundreds of school children are instructed by engineers and workers on such subjects as aviation, radio, car¬ pentry^ locksmithery, and other fields. There are also provisions for child participation in volley-ball, basketball, tennis, swimming, rowing, etc. Here are held a large number of celebrations on children’s holidays. Mass gatherings occur especially in connection with the completion of the school terms. On the special children’s days during the summer the entire park is put at their disposal and adults are barred. Items of attraction include a small electric railway, a child’s agricultural station, and drawing or reading rooms. 20 Under the tutelage of the Communist Party there have been de¬ veloped within the Soviet Union a series of organizations for the differ¬ ent age groups below 18 years, the age of eligibility to the Party itself. These organizations involve a variety of civic duties and are closely integrated with the life of the factory and the community. For the ages from 14 to 23 there is the Komsomol, or “League of Communist Youth”; from 10 to 16 there are the “Red Pioneers”; and from 8 to 10, the little “Octobrists.” The activities of the Komsomols con- 18 Ibid., p. 14. » Ibid., pp. 16-35. M “Children in the Park of Culture and Rest", Soviet Cultural Review, No. 10, 1933, pp. 41-43. 123 COMMUNISM IN ACTION v sist in preparation by athletics and other activities for military service, the spreading of science and the dispelling of religious notions, and the study of the principles of the Revolution and their civic applica¬ tion. The Red Pioneers, who correspond in age limits to the Boy Scouts in our country, are delegated the duties of organizing the cele¬ brations of Revolutionary events in schools, pushing the Communist cause in their homes, assisting the Komsomols, and many other civic activities. The little Octobrists, like the Cubs in relation to the Scouts of America, are attached to the older age group of the Pioneers in organization and activities. 21 One of the most striking developments in the use of children's leisure time is the children's theater, There are over a hundred of these throughout the Soviet Union, and many are staffed with a pro¬ fessional organization of actors, playwrights, composers, artists, musi¬ cians, stage hands, and other requisite specialists. The children's theater functions not only as a source of propaganda, education, and amusement for the younger folk but also as a center of other play activities, such as carnivals, fetes, mass games, excursions, and the like. Stage plays are graded for the various age levels, 6—9, 10-13, and 14-16 years, and careful attention is devoted to making the dramatic performance suit the needs of the particular group. Atten¬ tion is devoted to children's needs by means of ‘’Children's Boards ' which are composed of children elected from Pioneer groups and school groups to meet regularly with the theater directors and discuss new plays, costumes, and modes of presentation. 22 CULTURAL USE OF LEISURE The adult theater is not only a place for the performance of plays but is also a major rendezvous for social gatherings and discussion. Extensive cloak rooms, refreshment bars, and spacious lounges allow for gathering during intermissions and extensive exchange of views. The theater itself is conceived of as a place where current problems are brought to focus and solutions for them presented. New ideas in social life are brought into focus, and a vital part in the education of the people is performed. The Soviet Union's population has an un¬ limited enthusiasm for the theater, and attendance is frequent and repeated. 23 A number of the larger theaters have theatrical schools attached to them for the training and education of recruits to the profession. Each of these theaters and corresponding schools has its own style of dramatic performance. In addition to the schools there are several theatrical institutes directly under the Peoples' Commissars for Edu¬ cation. These institutes give a 4 years' training course and aim to supply professionally trained persons who will be capable of starting new theaters in the more remote parts of the country. Not only actors but producers, managers, and other experts are trained in groups which go out as bodies to form new theaters. 24 Dramatic clubs are attached to various individual groups such as circles of trade-unions or other bodies. Actors from the regular theater go out to visit the clubs and help them in the production of Harper, op. cit., pn. 49-57 (Komsomol), 75-85 (Pioneers). « Hubert F. Griffith, ed., Playtime in Russia (London, Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1935), pp. 136-183. 33 Ibid., pp. 19-44. m Eric Capon, Actors and Audiences in the Soviet Union (London, Russia Today Society, 1814), pp. 5-7. 124 COMMUNISM IN ACTION plays. Professional producers give their services voluntarily, and in return the workers in that particular factory undertake to support the professional theater by taking tickets for its performances. Some¬ times plays written by leading dramatists are given their premieres at nonprofessional theaters attached to collective farms. 25 Musical life in the concert sense is exclusively under the control of state organizations. For example the Philharmonic Orchestra of Leningrad controls the entire musical development of the city and draws up the musical program for soloist recitals and concerts and chamber music for an entire year. There are two kinds of perform¬ ances, open and closed. The “open performance” is a public concert for which tickets can be bought at scaled prices. “Closed perform¬ ances” are concerts for particular groups such as the Red Army, the Komsomol, or the employees of a particular factory and tickets are complimentary. 26 The production of motion pictures in the Soviet Union has been under the Commissariat of Education which formed a “State Cinema Trust.” (There has recently been established a Committee on Cinematography.) Both foreign and native films have currency on the Soviet screen. About 20 percent of cinema productions are exclusively for children. 27 The propagandistic role of the movies is emphasized. It has recently been reported, for example, that the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee of the Communist Party have approved a program of films for 1946 and 1947 to serve as propaganda in the completion of the 5-Year Plan. Historical films and fairy tale themes were denounced by the weekly organ of the propaganda and agitation board of the Central Committee, which warned the Soviet film industry: “The cinema is a sharp ideological party weapon, and departure from contemporary life would mean the loss of its principal valuable qualities.” Every film, it was said, must be “ideological and a highly artistic production.” 28 Libraries are widespread in the Soviet Union. The two largest are the Lenin Library in Moscow and the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library in Leningrad, each with over 6,000,000 volumes and 600 employees. There are over 6,000 libraries specializing in technics and science, 3,000 for children, 43,000 for general readers, and 20,000 migratory libraries for harvest fields, logging camps, and for herders or shepherds of the steppes. Other outlets for books are in the thousands of book¬ stores, bookstalls, vendors in parks, farms, railway and machine tractor stations, and the lobbies of cinema houses. 29 One of the most impressive developments in the cultural use of leisure time in the Soviet Union has been the extensive cultivation of the folk cultural heritage of the various nationalities. In addition to the many local theaters, there are several language theaters in Mos¬ cow. These institutions perform plays in the language of the folk involving the traditions of the individual national group. Similarly gigantic folk festivals have been organized for particular regions. In Leningrad Province some 2,000 farmers take part in a gigantic “Festival of Art” which includes “flax” dances, ensembles of shep- 2* Griffith, op. cit., pp. 78-82. ss Ibid., pp. 119-135. 47 Ibid., pp. 95-118; Harper, op. cit., pp. 327-330. 39 “ ‘Fairy Tale’ Films Berated in Soviet," The New York Times, July 8, 1940. p. L-31. 8 Harper, op. cit., pp. 380-382. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 125 herds’ horns and reeds for musical accompaniment and the enactment of various ancient rites and ceremonies. 30 Ensembles sometimes make visits to other parts of the Union. Dancing is cultivated by each separate national group; Great Russian, Armenian, Ukrainian, etc. There are “dance circles” in parks, mills, skating rinks, and schools. Many popular western dances such as the foxtrot, tango, and Charleston are also m vogue. Scores of ensembles and hundreds of soloists appear at the Olympiads of dance and music. 31 In the early days of the Revolution there was a good deal ol the so-called “agitation music”—popular songs and musical dialogues organized to express slogans and other socially significant items. Special marching songs have been devised for the Young Communists and other groups. The traditional popularity of singing and band music received additional impetus with the Revolution, ibe bala¬ laika, a kind of mandolin, and the gypsy-derived accordion were used by the workmen to accompany group singing. Choruses have been organized by the various musical circles of the workmen’s clubs and the Red Army. 32 THE CONTROL OF LEISURE Leisure time use in the Soviet Union is strictly controlled by the state and the Communist Party. This fact is demonstrated in a number of ways. The amount of time allotted a worker for leisure depends upon the type of work he is engaged in and the quality of his performance. The places to which he may go in search of rest and recreation are likewise determined for him. The groups within which his leisure time activities are performed are organized and activated by Communist Party members. The sports in which he participates are designed to strengthen his physical power and skills for military and for labor purposes. His cultural activities during leisure time are further conditioned by the political control of newspapers and books, plays or movies, and radio programs or musical concerts. 33 Finally, it is noteworthy that in some measure, the control of leisure time merges into the actual taking of leisure time for state purposes. Very early in the development of the Soviet Union, during the critical time of the civil war between the Whites and Reds, the railroad workers of Razan voluntarily donated their rest days to the public welfare by working at other socially important employments. The workers on Saturdays, the so-called “Saturdayers,” found their incentive in the needs of the state for machinery repairs and for maintenance of public works such as streets and utilities. In the course of time the habit of “Saturdaying” became so widespread that it practically took the form of a social obligation. 34 Here, perhaps, is the most striking demonstration of the subordination of leisure time to the ends of the socialist state. so J. Macleod, The New Soviet Theatre (London, Geo. Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1943), pp. 22 63, V illiams op. cit., p. 723 Williams, op. cit., pp. 406—412. s 2 Ibid., pp. 402-406: Harper, op. cit., pp. 336-342. 33 Williams, op cit., pp. 378, 387, 399; Harper, op. cit., pp. 27-28, 38-39,_ 88-89, 318-319. 34 Williams, op. cit. p. 89; Sidney J. and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization (Now York, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1930), vol. 2, pp. 752-758. Chapter XIV RELIGION THE CHURCH UNDER THE IMPERIALIST REGIME For an understanding of the position of religion in the Soviet Union of today it is necessary to understand the background of religion under Tsardom. From the time of Peter the Great until the Revolu¬ tion of 1917, power over the church as well as over civil affairs was held by the Imperial Government. Peter’s reforms brought about the centralization of power in the Tsar, with all branches of government and national life being subject to his sovereign will. This supremacy over the church w r as carefully guarded by the successors of Peter the Great. Although various religious bodies existed in prerevolutionary Russia, the overwhelming majority of Russians were members of the Orthodox Church—the Russian branch of the Greek Orthodox Church. With the institution of Peter’s program of reform, the— Church was bound hand and foot, signed, sealed, and delivered to the state, or rather to the autocratic will of the tsar. * * * Its spiritual autonomy was gone and it could neither define truth nor prescribe conduct without interference. 1 Succeeding monarchs appropriated large areas of the most productive ecclesiastical lands by imperial decree, leaving the church increas¬ ingly dependent upon the state. The High Procurator, an ecclesi¬ astical official whose office was established under Peter’s reforms, maintained strict supervision over the political and social sympathies of the clergy. The higher clergy were the recipients of large incomes and complaints of their “wealth and irresponsible luxury” were of long standing . 2 With the official policy of the church supporting and indeed symbolizing the imperialist system, it was inevitable that the church should be the center of Bolshevik attack. RELIGION IN THE U. S. S. R. One of the fundamental doctrines of the Communist Party is atheism. Karl Marx’s characterization of religion as an “opiate for the people” was readily accepted by the Communist leaders who set about to destroy the church and stamp out religion. On January 23, 1918, the famous decree which separated the church from the state and the school from the church w T as published. This provision was also embodied in the constitution adopted by the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (R. S. F. S. R.) in July 1918 and its revised edition of 1925. 3 It stated: For the purpose of securing real freedom of conscience for the workers, the Church is declared separate from the government and the schools from the Church. 1 Robert Pierce Casey, Religion in Russia (New York, Harper & Pros., 1946). d. IS. 2 Ibid., p. 90. ! H. A. Freund, Russia From A to Z (London, Angus & Robertson, Ltd., 1945), p. 98. 126 COMMUNISM IN ACTION 127 But freedom for religious and antireligious propaganda is recognized for every citizen. 4 In 1929 another revision of the R. >S. F. S. R. Constitution embodied a significant modification of the article on religion. The provision ‘‘ free¬ dom for religious and antireligious propaganda/’ was replaced with 44 freedom in the exercise of religious worship and freedom for antire- limous propaganda is recognized for all citizens.” 5 In the 1936 Stalin Constitution of the U. S. S. R., which is still in force, article 124 reads virtually the same: In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the U. S._ S. R, is separated from the state, and the school from the church. Freedom of religious worship and freedom of antireligious propaganda is recognized for all citizens. 6 If applied to American life this provision would eliminate the pub¬ lication of all church literature, including Bibles, prayer books, church school publications, periodicals, and the like. It would also prevent the administration of any type of social service work in the name of the church. Parochial schools would not be permitted and religious forces would be unable to counterbalance outwardly the attacks of atheistic groups. . _ Eradication of religion, the Bolsheviks’ objective, was to be accom¬ plished through the youth of the land. Under the Constitution, reli¬ gious instruction in public or private schools was forbidden. How¬ ever, until 1929 children in groups of three or less were allowed to receive religious instruction provided it .was given outside the churches and schools. The decree of April 8, 1929, abolished this right and confined the teaching of religion to the parents. 7 In the United States certain State laws regulate religious instruction in public schools, but the regulations do not apply to private schools, church, or private groups. Under Bolshevism the miracles and splendors of the church were exposed as superstitions and unscientific processes. The reli¬ gious youth of the land were made to feel as outcasts and outsiders who were not contributing to the welfare of their country. The state confiscated all church buildings and property. Many churches were closed and others diverted to various uses—schools, clubrooms, antireligious museums, lodgings, and industrial works. In some instances members of the clergy were jailed or executed. Anti- religious demonstrations were organized, services in churches inter¬ rupted, and the clergy insulted by members of the Komsomol (Com¬ munist Youth Association). 8 The reaction of public opinion against such exhibitions, however, put a stop to them. Atheistic publications waged violent attacks on religion, whereas, after 1927, no religious publications were allowed. ... • Although antireligious activities flourished and religious activities were curbed or eradicated, religious'worship was never forbidden. Groups of adult believers could be formed and upon registration with the district administrative authorities could use churches assigned to them. They could not own property and religious activities were to be confined within the registered congregation. No missionary or welfare work could be pursued. Discriminations and persecutions 4 Quoted by Casey, op. cit., p. 88. 6 Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (New York, The National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, 1941), p. 35. ^ N S. Timasheff, “The Church in the Soviet Union, 1917-1911,” The Russian Review, November 1941, vol. I, p. 24. s Casey, op. cit., p. 96. 128 COMMUNISM IN ACTION resulted in a great shortage of ministers and the restriction of theologi¬ cal education left many congregations without leadership. Such religious restrictions are virtually unknown to Americans. The churches in the United States not only own property but in most States such property is exempt from taxation. In addition to edifices of worship the churches own various types of schools, colleges, or¬ phanages, hospitals, and other institutions and engage in all kinds of social service and missionary work. Church expenditures amounted to $518,953,571 during the year 1936. 9 Religious persecution under the Communists varied in intensity from 1917 until the beginning of World War II. Between 1917 and 1922 an intense antireligious campaign was waged, with every method believed effective to “annihilate God” being used. A second wave of persecution struck in 1929-30, and a third in 1937-38. The attack on religion, however, regardless of violence and propa¬ ganda was inadequate to bring about its extermination. One writer observes that: The outstanding weakness in the attack appears to have been the failure to understand the nature of religion as a psychological force either in the individual or in society. An argument may be cracked but an experience cannot be shattered by a syllogism, and the intellectual onslaught on religion suffered not only from its patent ineptitude but from its ignorance of where the roots of religion lie. In treating theological tradition as if it were current scientific theory which needed only to be refuted on the surface in order to be discredited, Soviet critics accom¬ plished little more than the pruner who cuts the leaves and surplus branches from the tree tops. The result in the long run was to encourage a more healthy growth. 10 In an official report entitled, “On Anti-Religious Propaganda,” published in 1939, Yaroslavsky, the head of the Union of Militant Godless, stated that two-thirds of the peasant population and one- third of the city population remained attached to “religious super¬ stitions.” 11 Since the close of 1938, a drastic change has taken place in the attitude of the Soviet Government toward the church. In December of that year the Government’s position on religious matters was redefined. It was directed that, beginning in January 1939, all forms of “direct action” against religion be discontinued and that anti- religious propaganda be toned down. 12 The Constitution of Decem¬ ber 1936 had restored civil rights to the clergy and all other “non¬ workers.” 13 A statement on Religious Communities in the Soviet Union, published by the press department of the Soviet Embassy [London] on August 22, 1941, said: The clergy in the U. S. S. R. enjoy equal rights with all other citizens. The most important right of citizens of the U. S. S. R.—to elect and be elected members of the supreme organs of the Soviet Government—is fully guaranteed to preachers, priests, mullahs, rabbis, etc. 14 The following statistics give some insight into the status of religious affairs in the U. S. S. R. in 1941 as compared with 1917: 15 9 United States Bureau of the Census, Religious Bodies: 1936 (Washington, Government Printing Office 1941), vol. I, p. 17. 10 Casey, op. cit., p. 105. 11 Helene Iswolsky, Soul of Russia (London, Sheed & Ward, 1944), p. 154. I 3 N. 8. Timasheff, Religion in Russia, Current History, February 1945, p. 107. 13 N. S. Timasheff, Religion in Soviet Russia, 1917-42 (New York, Sheed e g }> but the interests of the workers will win out! 25 Since this early period, laws have been codified, a hierarchy of courts has been established, and comprehensive procedural measures >0 Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., pp. 170-171. S John Hazard?'“Soviet Criminal Law". Journal of Criminal Law and Crimonology, voL 29, July- August 1938, pp. 157-169, at p. 158. 21 Freund, op. cit.. l». 83. 25 Quoted by IIaz,^id, op. cit., p. 169. 138 COMMUNISM IN ACTION have been devised. There has been a tendency to afford greater protection to the individual accused of crime, and to take more pains to prevent pimishment of the innocent. 26 The evidence is clear, however, that Lenin’s view still prevails, and that, as one writer says, ‘The protection of the State against treason and crime is deemed more important than the protection of the individual against abuse of authority.” 27 Hazard notes that in Soviet writings advocating greater protection of the individual— there is always present * ** * * the lurking suspicion that a really clever counterrevolutionary or spy might twist the procedural rules in his favor and upset justice, and one finds the experts trying to protect against such an eventu¬ ality, while preserving the new protection of the individual. 28 Various protections are provided in the 1936 Constitution. They have generally a limited application. In all courts cases are heard in public “unless otherwise provided by law,” and the accused is guar¬ anteed “the right to defense” (art. 111). The Constitution also guarantees “inviolability of the person” and provides that no one shall be subjected to arrest except by a court order “or with the sanc¬ tion of a state attorney” (art. 127). Trials must be in the local languages and interpreters must be provided where needed (art. 110). The Prosecutor of the U. S. S. R. has the duty of seeing that officials, as well as citizens, observe the laws (art. 113). An individual may telegraph or write if he is placed under arrest or otherwise penalized in what appears to be an illegal fashion. The Prosecutor maintains a special department to hear complaints. While this procedure would hardly seem as protective as the writ of habeas corpus in common law, the Soviet jurists claim that it is designed to achieve the same purpose. 29 The inviolability of homes and secrecy of correspondence are “protected by law” (art. 128). This guaranty is said to “prevent an individual without training or experience from making an unauthor¬ ized arrest or search.” 30 In this country there can be no crime without a law defining human action as such. The Soviet Criminal Code provides that acts danger¬ ous to the state, though not specifically listed as crimes, may be pun¬ ished by analogy to the closest statutory offense. 31 Also, persons may be arrested as socially dangerous because of their connections or former activities, even though no crime has been committed. 32 The vague definitions attached to many forms of crime would seem arbitrary by our standards. A “socially dangerous” act, for example, is denned as— every action or omission directed against the Soviet order or violating the legal organization established by the workers’ and peasants’ authority * * *. 33 Although some of the extraordinary powers possessed by the former Cheka and O. G. P. U. have been abolished, many features^of the administration of justice which these agencies embodied have been continued. In the great purges of the 1930’s, large numbers of cases involving counterrevolutionary activities were tried by “military commissions” of the Supreme Court, without the safeguards provided *3 See the writings of John N. Hazard, cited in this section. S7 Schuman, op. cit., p. 340. * 8 Soviet Criminal Procedure, Tulane Law Review, vol. 15, February 1941, pp. 220-240, at p. 222. *» John N. Hazard, Law, the Individual and Property in the U. S. S.R., American Sociological Review, vol. 9, June 1944, pp. 250-256, at p. 253. so Ibid. *i Schuman, op. cit., p. 339; Freund, op. cit., p. 164. ** Freund, op. cit., p. 164. »Ibid. COMMUNISM IN ACTION 139 by the Constitution. 34 Under the Statutes of July 10, 1934, the NKVD (Commissariat for the Interior), successor to the Cheka and the O. G. P. U., has extensive investigatory and punitive powers* Following an investigation it— may turn the matter to an ordinary or military court, or impose, in a nonjudicial procedure, the penalty of imprisonment in a convict labor camp up to five years, exile with settlement in a certain locality for a period up to five years, and banish¬ ment from the Soviet, Union. 35 Hazard states that the “only requirement for this action [adminis¬ trative exile] is that the committee [of the NRVD] find that the person is deemed to be socially dangerous. 36 We would have a somewhat comparable situation m the United States if the I pi could exile to Alaska for 5 years or less any person its authorities found “socially dangerous.” PROPERTY RIGHTS The right to acquire private property is strictly limited in the Soviet Union, as is the right of engaging in private enterprise. Ihe right to employ hired labor for profit is forbidden altogether > The extent of private property and enterprise is marked out m the 1936 Constitution. Every collective farm household shall have for personal use a plot of land attached to the house and, as personal property, the subsidiary husbandry on the plot, the house, productive livestocks poultry, and small farm tools (art. 7). There is also allowed— small-scale private enterprise of individual peasants and handicraftmen based on their personal labor, provided there is no exploitation of the labor of otho s (art. 8). All instruments of production, and all forms of enterprise not specifi¬ cally named, are ‘‘socialized.” The Constitution also provides that: The right of personal property of citizens in their income from work and in their savings in their dwelling house and auxiliary husbandry, m household articles and utensils and in articles for personal use and comfort as well as the nght of inheritance of personal property of citizens, is protected by law (art. 1U). The Civil Code qualifies this protection by providing that rights protected by the Code cannot be exercised to the detriment of the state. 37 It should be noted also that, while the laws afford protection to the property of individuals, they do not do so to the same extent as in the case of public or socialist property. Such property is “sacred” and enjoys special protection. Persons attacking it are “enemies of the people” (art. 131), for whom the severest penalties are reserved. Much lighter penalties are given to those who violate private property. 38 In respect to property rights, as with other rights, the preservation of the socialist system is placed ahead ol individual rights, since that system is considered to be the foundation of all true individual freedom. si Thi l n orU Hamer op eit p 140. points out also that where there is any vestige of po 1 it 1 G ti^‘afcSlSSS^W« “is always political rather than judicial according to western stanaards 0 ^\ e fdie ) Lawyers Directory (Cincinnati, Lawyers Directory, I f n - 1 5;Pg 196 I e People’s Commissariat for t?e^terlor'^^roc 0 ntty 3 been r^laced. b/the^lfe&rTfor internal Affairs and the Ministry for State "^"Hazard, American Sociological Review, supra, p. 255. u Ibid., p, 253; Freund, op. cit., pp. 166-7. 140 COMMUNISM IN ACTION P o n - 23 o O 3 in ^ o a S3 . ""3 ^ £ o •P CQ -S o 4-4 P ' »n CD 03 ° N •a o3 bD u Ph o to g 2 23 CO *-H 05 H d o +-3 03 £ PH O' t>> JR d .. . 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