6. Abortion Rights, New Economic Policy and the Second Conference of Communist Women

November 1920 - April 1922

6.1 Introduction

It has to be said that in spite of all the attempts to implement measures aimed at improving the conditions of women, the lack of resources available to the new regime placed severe material limits on what could be achieved. The Soviets inherited a country that had suffered badly in the World War, and then been subjected to a bitter civil war. As it was catching its breath after these exertions it was hit by a terrible famine that claimed the lives of millions and left it to care for an unprecedented number of orphans and deserted children. The suffering was horrendous and no part of society was exempt. Heroism, dedication, and selflessness – primarily of the young – saved the regime. But a regime of scarcity by its very nature carries its own dangers and, without a successful revolution in a more advanced country, we see in the Soviet Union the beginnings of a self-serving bureaucracy that would, in time, impose itself as a ruling caste.

6.2 Abortion Rights in Soviet Russia

As working women became aware that they were living under a government which believed they should have equal rights with men, and would actively support that process, one of the first things they asked for was the right to not give birth to children they did not want. The question was discussed openly and at length in newspapers, magazines, and wherever women met together. Women were overwhelmingly of the opinion that as long as they were forced to bear a child every time they became pregnant, they could never have sufficient energy to either bring up a family as they should, nor participate effectively in political and social activities. In conditions where contraception was unavailable abortion was the only realistic means of controlling the size of one’s family.

During the civil war, the desperate situations in which many women found themselves had meant highly-dangerous, back-street abortions on a mass scale. About half of these women suffered serious infections as a result, and many thousands died. The problem was too big to ignore, and Zhenotdel, responding to the demands of its delegates, pressed for abortion to be legalised.[1]

On 18 November 1920, the People’s Commissariat of Health and Social Welfare and the People’s Commissariat of Justice in Soviet Russia issued a decree that made Russia the first country in the world to remove legal obstructions to women having an abortion. The Decree stated:

During the past decades the number of women resorting to artificial discontinuation of pregnancy has grown both in the West and in this country. The legislation of all countries combats this evil by punishing the woman who chooses to have an abortion and the doctor who makes it. Without leading to favourable results, this method of combating abortions has driven the operation underground and made the woman a victim of mercenary and often ignorant quacks who make a profession of secret operations. As a result, up to 50 per cent of such women are infected in the course of the operation, and up to 4 per cent of them die.

The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government is conscious of this serious evil to the community. It combats this evil by propaganda against abortions among working women. By working for socialism, and by introducing the protection of maternity and infancy on an extensive scale, it feels assured of achieving the gradual disappearance of this evil. But as the moral survivals of the past and the difficult economic conditions of the present still compel many women to resort to this operation, the People’s Commissariats of Health and of Justice, anxious to protect the health of the women and considering that the method of repression in this field fails entirely to achieve this aim, have decided:

  1. To permit such operations to be made freely and without any charge in Soviet hospitals, where conditions are assured of minimising the harm of the operation.
  2. To absolutely forbid anyone but a doctor to carry out this operation.
  3. Any nurse or midwife found guilty of making such an operation will be deprived of the right to practice and tried by a People’s Court.
  4. A doctor carrying out an abortion in his private practice with mercenary aims will be called to account by a People’s Court.

The decree was introduced first in Russia, then in July 1921 in the Ukraine, and then across the entire Soviet Union. Subsequently, women seeking an abortion were given the right to three weeks leave from work with pay. The decree established it was a woman’s democratic right to have an abortion: that an abortion was no longer a criminal offence, but only if carried out under specified conditions.

The preamble of the decree is clear, the socialist state intended to remedy those socio-economic circumstances that caused women to seek out ‘this evil’ in the first place. The emphasis is on eliminating the need for abortion. Reading the decree, it is clear that the attitude to abortion amongst the legislators reflected traditional views, as expressed by Zetkin, that the priority should be assisting “women who would like to experience motherhood as the highest joy”; that once the material burden was removed, any pregnant woman would naturally want to give birth.[2] Women, however, had other ideas. They wanted to control their own lives and that meant controlling their fertility. Despite its limitations the decree helped establish the expectation that a woman had the right to choose.

The initial regulations specified that doctors had no right to refuse to perform an abortion unless it was a woman’s first pregnancy (and did not seriously endanger her life), or if the woman were more than ten weeks pregnant. Doctors opposed to abortion were permitted to attempt to dissuade the woman, which some did with exaggerated warnings of future infertility, premature ageing and the pain that would have to be endured. This latter point was not unimportant, due to the absence of medical supplies, doctors performed abortions using the curettage procedure without anaesthetic (saved for exceptional circumstances) so the woman suffered severely.[3] Nevertheless, this measure substantially reduced the suffering and deaths of mothers and children.

However, the four conditions attached to the decree, interpreted as requiring that abortions be performed in state hospitals by doctors, meant, in war-ravaged Russia, that there were serious limits on who could obtain a legal abortion.[4] Hospital facilities were extremely limited, and a considerable proportion was allocated to wounded and disabled veterans. The facilities available for carrying out abortions were pitiful compared to demand, so illegal, ‘backstreet’ abortions remained widespread, especially in the countryside. This was before the development of antibiotics and in a country where basic hygiene was a serious problem. Of those hospital beds allocated for abortions a full one-third were taken up by women suffering adversely from illegal abortions.

The Third Congress of the Communist International agreed the ‘Resolution on Forms and Methods of Communist Work Among Women’ on 8 July 1921, more than seven months after the Soviet decree on abortion, and with leading women Bolsheviks contributing to the theses, yet it omitted any mention of women’s reproductive rights and contained no suggestion of a Woman’s Right to Choose.[5] This was almost certainly due to Zetkin who continued to present abortion as a social evil resulting from women’s poverty and subjugation, and arguments for birth control as Malthusian.

Coming out of the civil war the economy was in acute crisis which meant a desperate shortage of facilities, but a simultaneous huge demand for terminations that threatened to overwhelm the hospitals. The New Economic Policy (NEP) imposed financial constraints on hospitals which meant that those who could pay went to the top of the list. In 1924 the Commissariat of Health set up commissions consisting of a doctor, a member of the local Zhenotdel and a health worker to assess applications for free abortions. These were ranked:

  1. Single unemployed women.
  2. Single working women with one or more children.
  3. Wives of industrial workers with several children.
  4. Wives of manual workers with several children.
  5. Other women with social insurance.
  6. Other women.[6]

These commissions existed initially only in towns, then on 17 March 1925 a decree placed decisions on abortions in rural areas in the hands of local practitioners.

Within a year, however, on 12 February 1926, resource pressures meant the government banned abortions after three months of pregnancy, except on strict medical grounds and ruled that the families should pay something towards the cost of an abortion. The monies collected would be used to finance special facilities for the performance of abortions (abortaria). The charge was 25 per cent of one month’s income per capita of the woman’s family. If the family’s monthly income was less than a minimum amount, there was no charge.[7] As a result, the incidence of illegal abortions performed by untrained personnel in unsanitary conditions increased and, again, many thousands of women were admitted to hospital. Once more it was women in the countryside, with little or no access to hospital facilities, who suffered most.

Zhenotdel, through Kommunistka, emphasised the social and personal conditions that made ready access to abortion a necessity. It described the inadequacies of abortion provision, of how working women with as many as three children were being turned away and forced to pay for illegal abortions. It quoted Dr V. Selinsky who implored “open your eyes to the facts of real life”, that it was better for a woman to have abortions than “to follow one little coffin after another to the cemetery and to bury her youth and vigour with them there”.[8]

With the end of the NEP and its financial constraints, funding for maternal and child welfare was increased and the number of women attending pregnancy and baby clinics, as well as giving birth in hospitals climbed steadily. By the end of the decade urban provisions had reached a level commensurate with those available in Western countries, an indication of the high priority attached to these services. But within the Bolshevik Party conservative elements were expressing unhappiness at the large number of women seeking abortions.

6.3 Women of the East: First Steps

The coolness of a section within the Bolshevik Party to the ‘Woman Question’ is well demonstrated by the initial stages of Zhenotdel’s campaign to raise the ‘Woman Question’ in the eastern republics. In the face of physical danger, Zhenotdel maintained a long-term commitment to a vast area with strong religious traditions.

The Bolsheviks were anxious to carry the October Revolution to Central Asia to demonstrate the benefits Soviet development could bring to an economically-backward area and were confident they would be welcomed. Muslims had rebelled against mass conscription in the summer of 1916, and as a result over 80,000 had been massacred by the Tsar’s army. The October Revolution had been greeted with joy and demands for religious and national freedom, and the Soviet government had responded with their declaration, ‘To All the Muslim Workers of Russia and the East’:

Muslims of Russia … all those whose mosques and chapels have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled underfoot by the tsars and oppressors of Russia! Henceforth your beliefs and customs, your national and cultural institutions, are free and inviolable. Build your national life freely and unhindered. You have a right to do so. Know that your rights, as well as the rights of all peoples of Russia, are protected by the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies.[9]

A series of measures were taken to re-assure Muslims that the Soviets meant what they said. Sacred Islamic objects looted by the tsars were returned; the Uthman Qur’an was ceremoniously handed back to a specially convened Muslim Congress in December 1919 in Petrograd. In Central Asia, where both parties agreed, a case could be heard by a Sharia court (though stoning and cutting off hands, ears or anything else were outlawed).

The Congress of the Peoples of the East was held in Baku in September 1920. This was the first attempt to appeal to the exploited and oppressed peoples in the colonial and semi-colonial countries to carry forward their revolutionary struggles under the banner of Marxism, with the support of Soviet Russia and advanced workers of the world.

Baku, the site of the Congress, had a large and cosmopolitan proletarian population working in the petroleum industry. It was a most appropriate place in which to hold such a gathering, by virtue of its revolutionary traditions. The Seventh Session of the Congress addressed the question of women’s social and political position in society, calling for:

  1. Complete equality of rights.
  2. Ensuring for women unconditional opportunity to make use of the educational and vocational-training institutions established for men.
  3. Equality of rights of both parties to marriage, unconditional abolition of polygamy.
  4. Unconditional admission of women to employment in legislative and administrative institutions.
  5. Everywhere, in cities, towns and villages, committees for the rights and protection of women to be established.[10]

The extreme oppression of the women of the east was generally viewed as an indicator of the primitive level of the whole society. Kollontai, as Director of Zhenotdel, was determined to directly, and in a skilful way, win over the indigenous women. From this point on, reports in Kommunistka and the party press of work among Muslim women and ‘Women of the East’ increased significantly.[11]

Many Muslim women, after childhood, knew only the inside of their husband’s family home. It was argued that drawing women out of the home and creating opportunities for work, social and political engagement, and education would mean that “life itself will provide the impetus for their awakening” and lead to the development of a revolutionary consciousness.[12] In Moscow, between 5-7 April 1920, a meeting of some forty-five Zhenotdel organisers from “women of the eastern nations and labour organisers from the Soviet Republics and regions of the East”, was held to prepare agitation and propaganda for the first All Union Non-Party Meeting of Eastern Women, to be held between the Second International Conference of Communist Women (9-15 June 1921) and the Third Congress of the CI (22 June-12 July 1921).[13] The organisers dispersed and began holding local meetings across the Soviet East to prepare and build for the meeting.

The Soviet Union had taken the step of legal equality, but women could not be drawn into political and social activities while they remained in household bondage, continued to be household slaves, and were overburdened with the drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking, and stultifying toil.[14] Nowhere was this truer than in the eastern republics. Zhenotdel’s campaign had as its main goals: ending the practices of infanticide of female babies, of polygamy, and of ‘bride price’ (the selling of girls as young as nine into marriage). Zhenotdel decided its strategy for working with indigenous women would be in a safe and non-confrontational way, concentrating its efforts on handicraft workers because these were the most numerous. Providing them with women’s clubs, crèches and literacy classes, and access to female doctors and political propaganda, would be good examples of the benefits the Soviet government could offer women. Some clubs were extremely successful; the women’s club in Baku claimed over a thousand members.

However, between the organisers’ meeting in Moscow and the Meeting of Eastern Women, the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party was held. The crisis the state and party faced were seen as so serious by certain party tops that they unilaterally demoted the work of Zhenotdel; in particular its work with the women of the east. The attitude can be seen in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History. Stalin’s objections to the All-Union Meeting are recorded as: “What for? Why drag women of the veil here? We will have too many problems to deal with. The husbands would protest. It’s too early. Who wants their affairs to be examined?”[15]

On 13 May 1921, Kollontai sent a letter of resignation to the Politburo. She raised the general failure of the Orgburo to support Zhenotdel, and the undermining by the Orgburo of Zhenotdel’s efforts to convene the All Union Meeting of Eastern Women. Kollontai was particularly incensed because the All Union Meeting had been cancelled and reinstated no fewer than three times by the Orgburo, and in each case the decision was taken without reference to herself as Director of Zhenotdel.[16] Kollontai’s resignation was rejected. Despite Lenin’s support for the Meeting, the Orgburo – while formally approving the venture – made no attempt to organise the resources necessary and, finally, cancelled the Meeting on the grounds that there was insufficient food in Moscow to feed the delegates.

During the early months of 1921, Zhenotdel was actively campaigning for delegates to attend the Meeting. Local activists toured towns and cities holding meetings, convincing women to elect delegates, some of whom had to run away from home to evade the head of the family refusing permission to travel. When the delegates assembled in Tashkent in May, ready to travel to Moscow, they were informed that the Meeting had been cancelled. Having spent so much effort to get that far, the women resolved to continue their journey and attend the Second International Conference of Communist Women (9-15 June 1921). The Turkistan Communist Party agreed to provide the necessary support. The Conference was a life-changing experience for these women, for whom this journey was the first time they had travelled any distance from home. According to Kommunistka, many unveiled, and on returning to Turkistan became activists for women’s rights.[17]

Zetkin met the Turkistani women, and as a result included in her address to the Third Congress (8 July 1921) the need for the CI to take action regarding the conditions of women of both the near and Far East. Her call resulted in a resolution calling on Communist Parties and ‘women’s sections’ to conduct a “vigorous struggle against all prejudices, customs and religious practices that bear down on women”.[18] As Director of Zhenotdel, Kollontai addressed the Second International Conference of Communist Women and the Third Congress of the CI to report on Zhenotdel’s activities, and helped lead the discussion on proposed strategies and international activities. She did this with some measure of success.

Kollontai made two major interventions at this Congress, the first was on the Women’s Conference and was warmly welcomed. However, on 5 July 1921, at the session devoted to the Russian Communist Party she broke party discipline by appealing for support for the Workers’ Opposition against the Russian Communist Party (RCP). Her justification, i.e. that in the face of a dying capitalism the RCP had adopted the NEP, a policy which was enabling a new bourgeois class to creep back into power, demonstrated her ultra-leftism and complete lack of understanding of Bolshevik policy on this question.[19] Incensed, the Central Committee called her to Moscow. Her work with Zhenotdel was terminated; she was removed as Director in January 1922 for organisational ‘inefficiency’.

6.4 Tenth Party Congress, New Economic Policy and Ban on Factions

With the end of the civil war, the peasants were vigorously resisting requisitioning and, in some areas, rose up in armed resistance. Detachments sent to seize grain were increasingly met by ever larger bands of armed peasants, many of whom were ex-soldiers, determined to stop the requisitioning. Collection practices became increasingly punitive, and soon included seizures of possessions, destruction of dwellings, and even execution of hostages.[20] The next stage of peasant resistance was even more serious; many peasants planted only what they needed for themselves leaving no grain to requisition. The longer the forces of the new state suspected that the hunger in the cities resulted from kulaks hiding supplies of grain, the more extreme their behaviour became in the face of peasant opposition and the less grain that was harvested.

In early 1919, Trotsky had inspected the First Revolutionary Army of Labour in the Ural Mountains. He returned to Moscow convinced that no matter what improvements were made in the methods of requisitioning, grain that had not been planted could not be collected. Trotsky proposed to the CC a version of the New Economic Policy that Lenin would later adopt, but was defeated 11 – 4, with Lenin adamant he would not surrender to rural counter-revolution.[21] What Trotsky understood was that the requisitioning of grain – the very heart of War Communism – had become a mechanism for reducing grain production. He advocated a new policy in which the peasants paid a tax in kind and could sell their surplus grain on an open market. Within just over a year, Lenin came around to the same idea and put it to the Politburo.[22]

With less food being produced, the situation in the towns became steadily worse. By the end of 1920, party members were being booed and harangued at factory meetings. In January 1921, the already-meagre rations of the factory workers in Petrograd and Moscow were cut further. The abject failure of the kombedy to feed the cities meant that War Communism was unsustainable.[23] As we have seen, at this time communal kitchens operated by Zhenotdel fed as many as 12 million town-dwellers.[24]

One cannot properly understand the policies pursued by the Bolsheviks in this period without remembering the actual situation in Russia: severe hunger, partial atomisation of the proletariat, economic catastrophe, very low cultural level of the population, and pressures from the petty-bourgeois peasant masses – all greatly amplified by the delay of the international revolution. In the face of such stresses how was the Soviet state to be maintained? Lenin was convinced that class enemies who had entered the party were consciously using the differences raised by genuine but mistaken Bolsheviks (for example, the ultra-left Workers’ Opposition) to weaken the party for counter-revolutionary purposes. As author of the policy document of the Workers’ Opposition, Kollontai’s remaining authority within the party was further eroded.

The Tenth Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was taking place in Moscow between 8-16 March 1921, when halfway through, the Kronstadt mutiny took place, reflecting the fact that relations between the Soviet state and the peasant masses had reached an all-time low. The Bolshevik Party came down hard on the mutiny because it was accompanied by, and inspired, widespread peasant unrest particularly in central Russia.[25] It was obvious that War Communism had to go, and the Tenth Congress agreed to move towards the NEP.

The NEP provided a breathing space, but at the cost of introducing a market economy in agricultural produce which increased social differentiation in the countryside. The peasants were now free to sell their surplus grain, the amount produced after paying their taxes, on the open market and would have the incentive to produce as much as possible. But the NEP had other dimensions; it introduced a new system of cost accounting into state enterprises, and the sharp reduction in state support for social services, such as communal dining and childcare, which impacted women the most.

The NEP was forced onto the Bolsheviks by petty-bourgeois forces and Lenin characterised it as a retreat, always describing it as a temporary measure. Lenin understood a large-scale revival of petty-bourgeois elements could indeed provide the basis for counter-revolution, but the delay in adopting the NEP meant the abruptness and magnitude of the consequent social differentiation that appeared over 1922-25 was significantly greater than if an earlier and more limited form of NEP, with more reliance on the poorer and middle peasants, had been accepted. It would also have substantially increased the harvest for 1920-21 at a time when food was in short supply.

VTsIK passed the relevant decree on 21 March. With their immediate demands met, the widespread dissidence amongst the peasantry rapidly died away. However, 1921 would see a catastrophic drought in the major grain producing areas of south and south-east Russia. Within a month of the VTsIK decree the Government issued its first drought warning.

Despite the guarded language of the decree, the NEP represented a turn by the Communist Party to the middle peasants, kulaks, and market forces. Collective responsibilities were explicitly abolished, state support previously for the poorest peasants became a cash bonus for those who exceeded their quota and delivered a surplus. The decree unleashed petty-bourgeois greed and corruption in the countryside which rapidly tainted many local party officials.[26] This was on the back of the long-term adverse effects of War Communism with its top-down command, and the introduction of a system of appointment rather than election of local Party leaders. The civil war had been the catalyst for introducing and moulding a hierarchical Party structure.

After the civil war, a party card was almost a guarantee of a secure job, and careerists flooded in.[27] As Serge put it:

… we knew that the Party had been invaded by careerist, adventurist and mercenary elements who had come over in swarms to the side that had the power. Within the Party the sole remedy to this evil had to be, and in fact was, the discrete dictatorship of the old, honest, and incorruptible members, in other words the Old Guard.[28]

Lenin warned again and again against the dangers of infiltration of careerist, capitalist, white-guard, Menshevik, and SRs into the party, and was for their wholesale expulsion. However, the influx continued, and one estimate had former Mensheviks and SRs comprising about one quarter of the active higher cadres by 1927.[29] Given the critical nature of the situation in which the party found itself, waverings such as those expressed by the Workers’ Opposition were considered intolerable, at least for the near future. Lenin’s fear was that with one-party rule, the RCP would begin to reflect the pressures of alien classes which, if allowed to express themselves as factions, would eventually split the party on class lines. This would mean the overthrow of the Revolution, since it was the Communist Party that guaranteed the existence of the workers’ state.

The membership of the Bolshevik Party had been overwhelmingly proletarian in October 1917 and the early days of the civil war, when capture by the Whites meant a certain and cruel death.[30] By the Tenth Congress membership was almost three-quarters of a million which meant only about one in ten members predated 1917.[31] The new members were in their vast majority honest communists, but their political education was more military manual than grounded in an understanding of Marxism. It was a party literally steeled on the fields of battle, where some 200,000 had lost their lives. The massive influx of new members brought with it more traditional Russian attitudes and patterns of behaviour, particularly towards women.

In the civil war, the resolution of problems had to be immediate, with centralisation of decision-making and a non-elected command structure. The very purpose of the Red Army and the central role of the party within it had enhanced the fusion of state and party, and increased centralisation of decision-making within the party itself. After 1920, the demobilised Communist soldiers who became administrators in the local soviets and the economy, everywhere enhanced the trend towards expecting submission to one’s superiors and obedience to oneself.[32]

The need for communists in senior positions in government and industry meant that upon demobilisation, large numbers of party members were directly appointed to administrative posts. By the end of 1921, the proportion of members who were still factory workers was no more than one fifth while the proportion in peasant cells was one third. In the latter half of 1922 in Moscow alone, nearly 2,000 party members were appointed to local and central state bodies. Schapiro claims that by 1923, half of the party was under the age of thirty and only 10 per cent were aged forty or over.[33]

At the Tenth Congress it was reported that the party Secretariat had been responsible for the transfer and/or appointment of 42,000 members to their posts. As a result, Stalin significantly increased his proportion of the popular vote to the CC. It can be argued, that from this Congress, Stalin was in such a strong position in the party because of the mechanisms he had in place for selecting Congress delegates, and ‘recommending’ branch officers and officials, that only Lenin’s direct opposition could have removed him. There were two important exceptions; Petrograd and Moscow where Zinoviev and Kamenev enjoyed a great deal of local power. These islands were left alone for the time being as Stalin still needed their support to complete his control over the national party. At the Tenth Congress the only specific mention of work among women occurred in a resolution on party agitation and propaganda and confirmed Agitprop would direct the work of Zhenotdel.

Later in Where is the Soviet Republic Going, published in early 1929, Trotsky assessed how the NEP had allowed the new layer of bureaucrats to strengthen their position:

On the basis of the New Economic Policy a broad layer of petty-bourgeoisie in the towns reappeared or newly came into being. The liberal professions revived. In the countryside, the rich peasant, the kulak, raised his head. Broad sections of officialdom, precisely because they had risen up above the masses, drew close to the bourgeois strata and established family ties with them. Increasingly, initiative or criticism on the part of the masses was viewed by the bureaucracy as interference. The apparatus was able to exert pressure on the masses more easily because … the psychology of the masses themselves expressed an unquestionable reduction in the level of political activity. It has happened not infrequently in recent years that workers have heard bureaucrats or the new property-owning elements shout peremptorily at them: ‘This isn’t 1918 anymore.’ In other words, the relationship of forces has shifted to the disadvantage of the proletariat.[34]

6.5 Theory of the Offensive, March 1921 in Germany

Lenin praised those across the world who flooded into the Communist Parties as being full of a noble, working-class hatred for the bourgeois, but he recognised that they were, in their great majority, inexperienced and impatient.[35] Unfortunately, despite the discussions and resolutions of the Second CI Congress, the day-to-day leaders of the ECCI, Zinoviev and Nikolai Bukharin, remained wedded to the ‘Theory of the Offensive’. Levi, in the VKPD, the most important section of the International after Russia was, based on the experience of the Kapp Putsch, moving in the opposite direction. His methods were rather abrupt and resulted in a major split within the VKPD with nearly half the membership being expelled and forming the short-lived Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD).

On 8 January 1921 the VKPD published an Open Letter proposing a united front of all the workers’ parties and trade unions to protect wages and restrict price increases – the aim was to educate and win the mass of workers to the VKPD by joint actions on a limited number of concrete demands rather than alienating them through ultimatums. Lenin described the Open Letter as laying out a broadly correct political strategy for the KPD, and its essence would be accepted and developed into the strategy of the united front at the Third Congress of the CI (22 June-12 July 1921).[36]

However, Zinoviev still believed that revolution was knocking at the door. Supported by Bukharin, he sharply attacked the Open Letter. Without Lenin’s hurried intervention the ECCI would have issued a public condemnation. Zinoviev determined Levi must go.[37] An ECCI emissary, Mátyás Rákosi, was sent to Berlin to convene a meeting of the CC of the VKPD and, by demanding loyalty to the CI, got a 28 – 23 vote condemning Levi and ejecting him from the leadership. To Lenin’s dismay, Zetkin and three others resigned in support of Levi, leaving the ultra-lefts with a majority on the leadership bodies. Rákosi returned to Moscow and was replaced at the end of February 1921 by two ECCI emissaries (Béla Kun being one)[38] with the task of getting the KPD to launch an armed insurrection. Kun began a series of discussions with individual leaders, making a bloc with the far-left within the VKPD and pushing his perspective of forcing the revolution by an active, heroic intervention.

For some time, gangs of armed Freikorps thugs had been disrupting workers’ meetings, trying to breach picket lines and clashing with workers’ demonstrations. The workers, many of whom had retained weapons confiscated during the Kapp Putsch defended themselves, and on 16 March, Otto Hörsing, the head of the Social Democratic government in Saxony, announced that the police would occupy the mining area of Mansfeld to confront and disarm the workers, restore calm, and put an end to ‘lawlessness’. This was a clear provocation, and as the police moved in, they came under fire. The new VKPD leaders called on the workers to defy the law and take up arms. Kun wrote in Die Rote Fahne on 18 March, demanding: “Every worker must flout the law and take up arms, wherever he can find them”, and in a brazen display of sectarian ultra-leftism added: “Those who are not with us are against us”.[39]

Police moved in to occupy the district, and a protest strike spread throughout the Mansfeld region accompanied by fighting between workers and police. Outside of Mansfeld the workers’ response was negligible, but the VKPD leaders ploughed on regardless, blinded by the Theory of the Offensive, and on the 24 March issued a call for a nationwide general strike. With little preparation, those who came out on strike were usually limited to VKPD members and close supporters, invariably a minority in a factory. They sought to stop production not by gaining majority support but by fratricidal fighting with the scabs who were streaming in to work … and lost. The Social Democrats and the trade union leaders indignantly denounced the splitting tactics of the VKPD and the attempted ‘uprising’. Thousands of militants were arrested and thrown in prison, communists were ousted from positions of influence within the unions, tens of thousands lost their jobs, and the membership of the VKPD fell by over half, losing some 200,000 members.[40] The international Communist movement had seen its first example of an attempt at revolution by diktat.

It was obvious that Béla Kun had not acted alone and must have had the support of at least Zinoviev though, of course, it is more likely that Bukharin and the ultra-lefts on the ECCI backed the action. However, within the ECCI, the methods and mistakes of Zinoviev were covered up. Who carried the can for the March Action? Serge had this to say:

At a meeting of the ECCI Lenin made a lengthy analysis of the Berlin affair (March Action), this putsch initiated without mass support, serious political calculation, or any possible outcome but defeat. There were few present, because of the confidential nature of the discussion. Béla Kun kept his big, round, puffy face well lowered; his sickly smile gradually faded away. Lenin spoke in French, briskly and harshly. Ten or more times, he used the phrase ‘les bêtises de Béla Kun’: little words that turned his listeners to stone. My wife took down the speech in shorthand, and afterwards we had to edit it somewhat: after all it was out of the question for the symbolic figure of the Hungarian Revolution to be called an imbecile ten times over in a written record![41]

Despite Lenin’s critique, a pattern was being set of direct control from Moscow over the activities of a national section and with failure the blame was placed on a subsidiary player. Stalin would develop this so that again and again the blame for Moscow’s failures would fall on local leaders.

As a result of the March Action, Paul Levi published a pamphlet attacking the VKPD leadership, Béla Kun and the methods of the ECCI.[42] While Lenin condemned those he believed to have been responsible for the March Action (Kun’s theses were “politically utterly fallacious”)[43] and believed Levi was largely correct in his political criticisms, he endorsed his expulsion from the CI and VKPD for this breach of discipline.

The ECCI glossed over the severity of the defeat and even issued a statement: “You acted rightly!”.[44] An unrepentant, ultra-left VKPD leadership remained in place, and in early April, hailed the March Action as a success, as “the fruitful germ of new, broader revolutionary actions”. Zetkin and other VKPD leaders who opposed the Action were condemned and without the intervention of Lenin, Zetkin would have been expelled from the CI and VKPD. This was the situation at the start of the Third World Congress. The German leadership were backed by Zinoviev, Bukharin, Béla Kun and (initially) Karl Radek, against Trotsky, Lenin and Zetkin.

6.6 Famine, Deserted Children, Orphans and Besprizprniki

As we have seen, by late 1920, Moscow, Petrograd and all the major cities, had lost between half and two-thirds of their populations as the inhabitants fled to relatives in the countryside where they hoped to be fed. The collapse of the transport system meant food, coal, and oil supplies failed to reach the cities or other areas of need. The 1920 harvest had barely met the most basic needs of the population, after which many peasants had restricted their plantings to meet only their own needs. It was against this background of hunger and want that the theories and ideas of the authors of the 1918 Family Code would be tested.

As we have seen, Russia had a long history of child abandonment, with deserted and orphaned children (besprizorniki) roaming the streets, sleeping rough, desperate for food; during winter their frozen bodies littered the pavements in the morning. What to do about these ‘children of the state’? In May and June 1919, the Soviet Government authorised and undertook to provide free food for children under the age of sixteen. Congresses for the Protection of Childhood met in Petrograd and Moscow, with many delegates voicing the view that the state had to replace the family, with society becoming ‘one big family’.

Idealism was combined with hope for the future and, occasionally, bitter realism. The principles of Bolshevik policy were laid: “There can be no wretched children belonging to no-one. All children are the children of the state. … Children must be first in line for fuel and food … Children should not be put in prison; they should be rehabilitated not punished”.[45] Delegates reminded Congress that socialisation of child rearing was essential for woman’s liberation.[46] It was agreed, for example, that manor houses in the countryside which had been abandoned by their former owners – especially in food-rich areas such as the Volga – would be suitable for besprizorniki, and by 1921 almost half a million were living in such orphanages. However, these manor houses had been looted during the civil war; anything of any worth, including toilets and floorboards, was long gone.[47]

Given the real-life conditions existing after the civil war, the state had to be a substitute family for millions of children immediately, with few trained staff, with no organisational structure and without anything close to the necessary food, accommodation, clothing, or fuel. This was a material barrier to the implementation of Soviet policies regarding children. To the best of its ability, the state distributed free food to many tens of thousands of children housed in dilapidated state institutions, but it was fundamentally taking on a task for which it was totally unprepared, in an exhausted economy that would soon face a major famine. The problem was compounded by the inexperience of the Bolsheviks in the governing, and of running a state machine, let alone with coping with one of the world’s worst-ever human disasters.

In the spring of 1921, a severe drought hit the Crimea, northern Caucasus and southern Ukraine, causing a near total crop failure. As the famine took hold, its most immediate effect was on the youngest children who, already weakened by food shortages, quickly succumbed. The death rate for those aged three or younger reached over 90 per cent. The state rallied and, given the paucity of resources available to it, worked wonders. Mass evacuations now took children out of the famine-stricken areas, returning many to the cities from whence they had come. Over a quarter of a million were evacuated by train from the famine-stricken regions. All that was available to house them were already overcrowded children’s institutions, but now in much harsher conditions with even less food available. Zhenotdel established public kitchens in the famine areas and, during the worst of the famine, provided cooked food with untrained staff in hastily constructed kitchens – often primitive and basic – but they fed as many as four and a half million adults and children.

This was a make-do-and-mend operation. There wasn’t enough food. Sometimes the responsible authorities would be able to supply just one meal for every five children, with the children in the homes fighting each other over scraps. With so little food, children’s homes had to refuse entry to the crowds of starving children begging to be admitted. The tragedy was of catastrophic proportions – at its peak the estimated number of besprizorniki was between four and a half million to seven million.[48] Filthy, lice-infested, and staggering from exhaustion and hunger, these children fled the famine and began arriving in Moscow in the early summer of 1921.

The introduction and implementation of the NEP had imposed severe constraints on state spending. Orphanages and day care centres were transferred to impoverished local authorities, which resulted in the closure of many orphanages and most day care centres. Entry rules were tightened, only orphans under the age of sixteen, and those who had lost a parent while he or she served with the Red Army, were eligible. The aspirations of the 1918 Family Code had to be put on hold. Despairing officials desperate to find accommodation for children sent them to whoever would provide a roof over their heads and feed them. Most were sent to peasant families to work the land, others to anyone who claimed to be a relative, to private families who wanted to adopt, and to workshops and/or co-operatives that could be cajoled into offering training.

At an individual level, the NEP had a contradictory effect on the besprizorniki. The legalisation of private trade allowed numerous juveniles (with or without a licence) to work the streets and markets without interference from the police. This could involve buying, selling, or swapping, though on many occasions the process began with a theft. Some of these young people eked out a living selling Pravda and Izvestia, others sold hand-rolled cigarettes, prostitution was as rampant amongst girls in their early teens as purse-snatching, pickpocketing and robbery was amongst the boys (who made up some 75 per cent of the besprizorniki). However, children were often recruited by employees of the government’s tobacco trust who would skim a portion of their merchandise and pass it on to besprizorniki for sale on the streets, by-passing the official routes; this was just one example of how a stratum within the state administration was already using its position to reap personal benefit from generalised want.

Many state-funded day care centres simply closed, whilst others were forced to raise their fees to stay open. These actions seriously undermined attempts to liberate women. Already subject to lower pay and higher levels of unemployment, women were thrown back on the family, making a mockery of the free union promised by the 1918 Marriage Code. Many mothers, and particularly single mothers were hard hit. Without day care they were back in the vicious circle of being unable to work or even look for work. But simultaneously, they could not support their children if they were unemployed. Day care was a basic requirement for women’s liberation from the family, and married women whose day care provision was removed were forced back into dependence on their husband’s pay-packet. Such measures increased the numbers of besprizorniki as children left (or were forced to leave) impoverished homes. Zhenotdel campaigned vociferously and the state did order local authorities to stop closures of orphanages, but to little effect. Increasingly, in factories, Komsomol, Zhenotdel and trade unions, day care centres were set up to offset the cuts imposed by the government. Users were to pay according to their earnings, with no exemptions for single mothers, or those seeking work. Trotsky declared:

A revolution does not deserve its name if, with all its might and all the means at its disposal, it does not help the woman – twofold and threefold enslaved as she has been in the past – to get out on the road of individual and social progress. A revolution does not deserve its name, if it does not take the greatest care possible of the children – the future race for whose benefit the revolution has been made.[49]

However, Alexei Rykov, who had resigned from the CC with Kamenev and Zinoviev in protest at the October Revolution, had risen to be Lenin’s deputy on the Council of People’s Commissars, and member of the Politburo, voiced the views of the most conservative elements in the party when he spoke against any expansion of state aid to orphanages on the grounds that such assistance was creating a generation of “idlers”.[50] In his opinion care was the responsibility of the extended family.

Rykov’s views found an echo in the party, even Kommunistka, which in one issue carried an article arguing that families should be encouraged to bring up their own children. Lack of resources forced a volte-face on the government; it accepted that if a family could not afford to support a child it was more cost-effective for the state to make maintenance payments than to fund a place in an orphanage. Women’s housework cost the state nothing, transferring child-rearing to government institutions was prohibitively expensive. The government openly retreated from the provisions of the 1918 Code in August 1925 when children’s homes were sent an instruction that all children older than three months were to be put up for adoption as a purely ‘temporary measure’. Those seeking to adopt had to have a steady income and few children. Well-to-do peasants who would use children as little more than unpaid labour were actively sought. For their services these families would be paid up to one rouble per day, per child. The child was accompanied by the allocation of a plot of land to the adopting family, tax exemptions for three years and a lump sum of up to fifty roubles. So keen were the authorities to remove children from the state system and put them to work on the land that few, if any, checks were made to determine the credentials of the adoptee.

True, the central government sent instructions to local authorities to stop shutting children’s homes and did send some monies to assist. But the sums involved were far too small to have any real significance, especially as it was a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul arrangement. In other words, more money was made available for besprizorniki, but day-care facilities were to charge for their services, placing the burden on families and local organisations.

In 1920, some tens of thousands of Bolshevik Party members were attempting to bring order to Soviet society. Grossly overworked and with few, if any, material privileges, these party officials were trying to lay the foundations of Soviet rule. By the time of the Ninth Party Congress of September 1920, the appointment of secretaries of provincial committees was well established, though at that time, local recommendations for the posts were still preferred. Serge described how by the period of 1920-21, a “state of siege had now entered the Party itself, which was increasingly run from the top, by secretaries. We were at a loss to find a remedy for this bureaucratisation.”[51] Many leading members of the Stalin group were Old Bolsheviks with numerous personal links going back, in many cases, to before 1903. They were efficient, capable organisers, hard-working, often patient and prudent, creatures of the apparatus and well aware of their own importance. They shared a common conservative outlook. Stalin, as General Secretary, embodied this new group, united them, and brought them together. It was around him that they formed a growing freemasonry. To these ‘practical’ men, these ‘realists’, these ‘committee men’, the time and energy spent in democratic decision-making was a waste of effort that delayed – even threatened – necessary work.[52]

6.7 Second International Conference of Communist Women and Third Congress of the CI

Attended by eighty-two delegates from twenty-eight countries, the Second Women’s Conference was held in Moscow between 9-15 June 1921, immediately prior to the Third CI Congress (22 June-12 July 1921). Drawing on their experiences of Rabotnitsa and Zhenotdel, Armand and the Russian comrades again advocated the application – in suitably adapted forms – of the Russian model by which non-party women had been mobilised, educated, and drawn into political work. The two key methods proposed were a network of delegate meetings and non-party women’s conferences, supported by reading and discussion groups, and women’s clubs as appropriate for women whose social and political isolation otherwise put them beyond the party’s reach. The Theses were put to the Third CI Congress where they were adopted.[53]

The programme for women’s emancipation included: total equality of rights in law and practice, integration of women into political life, the right to free and equal education and medical care, social measures to ease the burden of housework and childcare, daughters to be given equal inheritance rights with sons, and measures to do away with the sexual double standard for men and women. Given the depth of women’s subjugation at the time, these demands might have seemed pure utopia. The International Women’s Secretariat (IWS), however, could point to women’s dramatic gains in Soviet Russia, where women had been legal slaves of husbands and fathers before the revolution. Equality before the law, and the advancement of women as judges, lawyers, doctors, writers, and artists was emphasised. In the winter and spring of 1922-23 the IWS in Berlin, working directly with the women’s commissions of Communist Parties, initiated and led campaigns on the war danger and fascism, taking the lead in implementing the united front strategy.

The Theses again omitted mention of women’s reproductive rights despite many young communists being actively engaged in campaigns for abortion rights and the right to information on contraception. However, Soviet Russia’s measures to assure women freedom to marry and divorce at will, and to work outside the home were pointed to as steps toward freeing them from violent and oppressive relationships. Also surprising to modern eyes is that although domestic labour and housework were given considerable attention, little interest was shown in gender roles, in the mechanics of the relations by which women were subordinated. This was because the party saw the path to resolving the ‘Woman Question’ as rebuilding the economy, which had been nearly destroyed by World War One, the civil war, and the famine, seeing this as the best way to end feudalism and capitalism which blighted relations between men and women.

Kollontai did attempt to address gender roles, primarily through her novels which attempted to push Marxists into expanding their horizons to include “the dynamics of sexuality” which she interpreted as “complete freedom, equality and genuine friendship” in personal relations, something quite at odds with the actual material possibilities in Soviet Society. Her ultra-leftism and idealism combined in a complete failure to appreciate the resources required to enact her proposals and this seriously weakened her arguments. It would be Trotsky who, while accepting the paucity of resources available was limited, sketched out what could be achieved in freeing women from housework.[54] However, there was a powerful conservative current within the party, reflecting the backward traditions of Russian society, that endorsed the traditional family and shied away from examining the gender roles that underpinned it. This current acted as a bulwark protecting traditional gender relations which remained largely unchanged within most families.

The Third World Congress of the CI met in Moscow with 509 delegates and over 100 guests, from forty-eight countries. The March Action dominated the Congress. In the run-up to, during and after the Congress, Zetkin was subjected to criticism, even vilification by the VKPD leaders. Seeing her as a softer target than Lenin and Trotsky, the ‘leftists’ made her a focus of their assaults, misrepresenting her opposition to the Theory of the Offensive and presenting her defence of Paul Levi as a betrayal of the VKPD.[55] Lenin, as usual, went out of his way to avoid personal antagonisms, ensuring that while the Congress resolutions and theses were politically clear on the united front perspective, they were worded in ways that could be presented as a ‘compromise’ to save the faces of the ‘Left’ Communists. Initially, the supporters of the Theory of the Offensive, were in the majority on the floor of the Congress, but as the Congress progressed the mood of the delegates shifted under Lenin’s and Trotsky’s struggle for the united front concept.

The Third Congress was a school of revolutionary strategy for communists; how to build Leninist Parties, how to work constructively in the trade unions, and among the youth and women. The turn in the objective situation and the necessary adjustment of tactics were the major topics. After much heated debate, with Lenin and Trotsky battling the supporters of the Theory of the Offensive, a formal agreement was reached on the policy of the United Front.[56] This policy was a development of that approved at the Second Congress towards, for example, the leaderships of Social Democracy. Proposals were advanced for collaboration in common actions where it was possible to reach a minimum agreement on practical measures. Communists were to prove to the masses by their actions that they stood in the front lines of working-class struggles and that their programme corresponded to its fundamental, long-range interests. A precondition was the political independence of the Communist Party; the united front was in no way a step towards reunification with the centrists. Criticism of Social Democratic policies was not abandoned; any agreement which restricted the communists’ freedom of criticism and agitation was “absolutely unacceptable”. However, there was a prerequisite for the success of such a policy, it was necessary to have in place a core leadership sufficiently politically mature not to succumb to either ultra-leftism or opportunism when working in a bloc with the Social Democratic leadership.

On 8 July 1921 the Third Congress adopted two resolutions; the first was the ‘Theses on Methods and Work Among Women’ and the second was the ‘Resolution on Strengthening International Contact and on the Tasks of the Comintern’s International Secretariat on Work among Women’. In her report to the Congress, Zetkin was frank about the lack of support and the hidden and, in some cases, even open opposition to the Communist Women’s Movement by the national Communist Parties. The ultra-left current within the CI disparaged the struggle for women’s rights as reformist, which often left the way clear for bourgeois feminists to take the lead and recruit working-class women. Zetkin emphasised that the proletariat could not succeed in its economic and political struggles without the participation of the masses of women, going so far as to urge the Comintern not to overlook the contribution that some bourgeois women could make to weakening the bourgeoisie while balancing this with the warning that for working women to join with “capitalist feminism” could weaken the struggle of the proletariat.

Clara Zetkin was now over sixty-five years of age, her sight was failing, she found it difficult to walk and spent long periods receiving treatment and care in Soviet sanitaria. Possibly due to her absence, the women cadres of the Communist International were increasingly campaigning on abortion as a symptom of women’s poverty and subjugation, arguing that anti-abortion laws brutally punished innocent women. These campaigns met with success, attracting large numbers of women, particularly from the so-called middle classes such as teachers, librarians, and office workers. Communist women denounced the dreadful toll of illegal abortions and demanded abolition of all anti-abortion laws. The mass campaign in Germany, under the slogan ‘Our bodies belong to us’, was a prime practical example of Communist women applying the Third Congress’ ‘Theses on Tactics and Strategy: Single-issue Struggles and Single-issue Demands’.[57]

Zetkin strongly supported the united front strategy, and this formed the framework for the guidance given in the Theses on Methods and Work Among Women to the national Communist Parties for practical, constructive work to win the oppressed female masses to the side of the revolution. The Congress insisted “that a special apparatus for conducting work among women was necessary. This apparatus must consist of departments or commissions for work among women, attached to every party committee at all levels, from the CC of the party, right down to the urban, district or local party committee. This decision is binding on all Parties in the Communist International”.[58]

It is important to mark the significant, possibly qualitative, difference between this type of work amongst women and Zetkin’s work prior to 1914. Gone were the days when Zetkin represented the only socialist, working-class party. Now an important element in the campaigns was the winning of (predominantly) female USPD members to the Communist International. The united front approach, which she expressed as winning over the masses as a precondition to winning power, had the declared support of Lenin but came under heavy criticism within the VKPD and the ECCI.[59]

6.8 Authority and Privileges of Party Members

The Eleventh Party Congress (March-April 1922) was the last Congress in which Lenin participated and the first at which appointment rather than election of Congress delegates was practised on a major scale.[60] After her breach of discipline the previous year at the Third Congress of the CI, Kollontai was saved from expulsion only by her support amongst the rank and file.[61] One of her few remaining friends, Georgy Chicherin, Commissar for Foreign Affairs, recommended to the Central Committee that she be assigned a diplomatic post, and in October 1922, she entered Norway as a member of a trade delegation. She began her new life as an attaché by immersing herself in writing Love of Worker Bees, her most famous fictional work. She made her peace with Stalin, avoided active politics and rose slowly through the diplomatic ranks until appointed ambassador to Sweden in 1943.

The Congress elected a Secretariat consisting of the General Secretary, Stalin and two loyal allies Vyacheslav Molotov and Valerian Kuybyshev. This Congress agreed to expand the Central Control Commission from four to seven members, enabling Stalin’s supporters to gain the majority. The party had leapt from the underground to the heights of power and as circumstances changed, so too did people. More and more, Stalin was using his increasing domination of the party organisation to recruit to important posts, people who were personally obligated and loyal to him. As he dispensed favours and fortune, the foundations were being laid for an inevitable conflict with genuine Bolshevism.

With the ban on internal factions, power within the party became progressively centralised in the Politburo and CC. This centralisation inevitably had its organisational form: the Secretariat (under Stalin) increasingly supervised (i.e., controlled) the appointment and allocation of party personnel. As Kremlin files have become public, much attention has been concentrated on the details of the growth of a centralised system of party functionaries effectively appointed by, and beholden to, the General Secretary. The wealth of detail now available only confirms the essential analysis made at the time by opposition currents within the RCP. The major difference is that the bureaucracy was more extensive, self-seeking, and servile than the Trotskyist or United Opposition ever dreamed.

The Tenth Congress had sanctioned a purge of those whose behaviour was too gross and blatant to tolerate, but after the Eleventh Congress, which placed great emphasis on unity and party discipline, purges were also directed at crushing criticism and dissent. From the summer of 1922 the Secretariat rapidly increased its control over the party and state apparatuses and extended the imposition of elements loyal to Stalin.[62] The practice of appointments had become so widespread by the Twelfth Congress (April 1923) that when Yevgeni Preobrazhensky protested that almost a third of the secretaries of local committees had been recommended for their position by the Secretariat, he seriously underestimated the extent of the appointments. Data now available shows 94 of the 191 secretaries of provincial committees had been recommended or directly appointed.[63] Soon, every secretary of a district or provincial committee would be Stalin’s appointee.

Publicly, Stalin called for the free election of regional and provincial party leaders but behind the scenes he was busy ensuring the domination of the centre and appointment from above. This two-faced approach would become his trademark, in public give voice to the concerns of party members for greater democracy, in private pursue his agenda of increasing central control. Thus, local elected party committees could discuss what they liked but their freedom to act was strangled when the Secretariat appointed unelected provincial bureaux, responsible to the Orgburo, to monitor the work of the elected committees.[64]

A major organisational requirement for the bureaucratisation of the party was the Secretariat’s take-over of local Control Commissions. These bodies, initially composed of independently-minded party members, could act to protect the rank and file from overbearing and bureaucratic officials. At the Eleventh Party Congress, however, it was agreed that the Central Control Commission should play a much greater role in guiding the work of the local Commissions. As the Central Control Commission became Stalin’s cat’s-paw, the local Control Commissions soon became a parallel mechanism to the party secretaries for controlling members. The function of the Commission was turned on its head; from defending the rights of the membership it became a mechanism for tighter control.

Even the pre-revolutionary Old Guard was coming under attack; a 1922 Secretariat report on cadre distribution harangued the ‘old boys’ as not being sufficiently ‘malleable’ and argued that post-civil war recruits were much more amenable and therefore preferable: “the young, active worker, elected at some All-Russian Congress, meeting or conference, having attended and got the hang of things there, already has a great advantage over an authoritative, respected old cadre”.[65] What is being praised here is the military style obedience brought into the party by the civil war and the development of the culture of deference. The dissatisfaction with Old Bolsheviks was precisely because of their independence of mind which inevitably brought them into conflict with the practices of the Stalin faction.

With Lenin absent due to illness, the Secretariat, as a move to increase its control of the party, held out a carrot. The Eleventh Congress instructed the CC to examine the material conditions of those in the party hierarchy and “at all costs ensure them tolerable living conditions”. The CC formed a commission, headed by Molotov who reported to the Orgburo which, on 31 July 1922, approved a proposal to be put before the Twelfth Party Conference (4-7, August 1922, with Lenin still too ill to attend): The Improvement of the Living Conditions of the Active Functionaries of the party.

This created a strict hierarchy of wages for all party functionaries providing for top party officials to receive: (i) salaries equivalent to middle and senior management grades, (ii) plus 50 per cent addition for ‘extraordinary work’, (iii) plus 50 per cent addition for a family of three or more persons, (iv) plus guaranteed housing and medical support, and (v) childcare and education for their children. The Conference, many of whose delegates would have qualified for the benefits, enthusiastically endorsed the proposals and then called on the CC to work out a similar system for party officials in rural districts who had not been included.[66]

Top party members were also to be protected in other ways. In March 1922, the Orgburo informed the local judiciary across the Soviet Union that no action could be taken against regional party secretaries or higher ranks without prior approval from Moscow and assumed the authority to require courts to drop any case “not in the party’s interest”.

From the Eleventh Party Congress of 1922 to the Twelfth Party Congress of 1923, gigantic strides were made in increasing the domination of the RCP over all aspects of Russian life: the proportion of regional leaders of trade unions who were members of the party increased from 27 per cent to 57 per cent, the proportion of managers of co-operatives from 5 per cent to 50 per cent, and so on in all important institutions of public life.[67] To marshal its forces, the party Secretariat now had a personnel department with branches spread throughout the country and which kept detailed files on all members. It had the power to order members to change their occupation and place of residence at short notice, and this was used not only for promotion but also for maintaining discipline: a shift from the capital to the wilderness of Siberia could be the result of voicing dissent.[68]

It is no surprise that at this time there began the gradual abolition of those activities in and around the party where free discussion on political matters took place. The first to go were the party discussion clubs and study circles, but later all free discussion, even pre-Congress, would be discouraged and then disappear.[69]

In an organisation where votes are cast on the basis of factional loyalty and material interests, an objective, free discussion is not something that can be tolerated. The party press had to be tightly controlled, Pravda and Izvestia became a means of hiding the very sharp struggles taking place inside the Central Committee and the Politburo. The exceptions were those occasions when the party machine mobilised to launch an attack on an opposition current, as occurred in the New Course debate against demands for greater internal party democracy. The CC soon extended such control nationally, and after 1925 regularly sent instructions to local newspaper editors about what should, and what could not be published.[70] Within ten years, in a letter to the editorial board of Proletarskaya Revolyutsia, Stalin declared Lenin (i.e., Stalin’s interpretation) to be infallible, Lenin’s history and writings could not “be made the subject of discussion”.[71]

Endnotes

[1] See A. Kollontai, The Woman Worker and Peasant in Soviet Russia.

[2] J. Riddell, ‘The Communist Women’s Movement (1921-26)’, John Riddell, 2011. Available at: https://johnriddell.com/2011/06/12/the-communist-womens-movement-1921-26/ (accessed 31 January 2023).

[3] See M. Savage, The Law on Abortion in the USSR.

[4] See ibid.

[5] See J. Riddell, To the Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International.

[6] A. Avdeev, ‘The History of Abortion Statistics in Russia and the USSR from 1900 to 1991’, Population: An English Selection, 1995, pp. 39-66.

[7] See M. Savage, The Law on Abortion in the USSR.

[8] M. Buckley, Women and Ideology in the Soviet Union, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989, p. 38.

[9] M. Georgadze, USSR: Sixty Years of the Union 1922-1982, Progress Publishers, 1982, p. 35.

[10] B. Pearce, ‘Congress of the Peoples of the East’, Marxists Internet Archive, 1920. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/baku/cpe-baku-pearce.pdf (accessed 31 January 2023)

[11] See A. McShane, Bringing Revolution to the Women of the East.

[12] Quoted ibid, p. 83.

[13] See A. Kollontai, ‘Conference of Communist Women and Organisers of the East’.

[14] See V. I. Lenin, ‘International Working Women’s Day’.

[15] Quoted in M. Patterson, ‘Red Teaspoons of Charity: Zhenotdel, Russian Women and the Communist Party, 1919-1930’, PhD Thesis, University of Toronto, 2011, p. 30.

[16] See ibid.

[17] See M. Kamp, ‘Pilgrimage and Performance: Uzbek Women and the Imagining of Uzbekistan in the 1920s’.

[18] J. Riddell, To the Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, Haymarket Books, 2015, p. 1020.

[19] See C. Porter, Kollontai.

[20] See S. Singleton, The Tambov Revolt.

[21] See R. Segal, The Tragedy of Leon Trotsky.

[22] See V. I. Lenin, ‘Theses Concerning Peasants’.

[23] See E. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution.

[24] See R. Schlesinger, Changing Attitudes in Soviet Russia.

[25] See S. Singleton, The Tambov Revolt.

[26] See P. Broué, History of the Bolshevik Party (CP) of the USSR.

[27] See V. I. Lenin, ‘Speech Closing the Fourth Congress’.

[28] V. Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1942, Oxford University Press, 1963, pp. 118-9.

[29] See K. Murphy, Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory.

[30] See M. Liebman, Leninism Under Lenin.

[31] See L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

[32] See L. Trotsky, Stalin.

[33] See L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

[34] L. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky, Pathfinder Press, p. 47.

[35] See V. I. Lenin, “Left Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder.

[36] See V. I. Lenin, ‘Letter to G. Y. Zinoviev’.

[37] See P. Broué, The German Revolution 1917-1923.

[38] Béla Kun, leader of the Hungarian Communists during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919. He rejected of Lenin’s advice and agreed to a unity government with the social-democratic leaders (who soon deserted), liquidating the Communist Party into the SPD. He also rejected Lenin’s advice on policy towards the peasantry, adopting an ultra-left stance opposing the peasant seizure of the landed estates and division of the land by the peasants amongst the peasants, thus depriving the Soviet regime of the support of half the population.

[39] R. Sewell, Germany 1918-1933: Socialism or Barbarism, Wellred Books, 2018, p. 205.

[40] See ibid.

[41] V. Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1942, Oxford University Press, 1963, p. 140.

[42] See P. Levi, Our Path: Against Putschism.

[43] V. I. Lenin, ‘Letter to G. Y. Zinoviev’, June 1921, LCW, Vol. 42, p. 319.

[44] R. Sewell, Germany 1918-1933: Socialism or Barbarism, Wellred Books, 2018, p. 208.

[45] W. Goldman, ‘The “Withering Away” and the Resurrection of the Soviet Family, 1917-1936’, PhD Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1987, p. 83.

[46] See ibid.

[47] See W. Goldman, Women at the Gates.

[48] See A. Ball, Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia 1918-1930.

[49] L. Trotsky, ‘The Struggle for Cultured Speech’, Pravda, 15 May 1923. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/women/life/23_05_16.htm (accessed 1 February 2023).

[50] W. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 80.

[51] V. Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1942, Oxford University Press, 1963, pp. 118-9.

[52] See N. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin.

[53] See J. Riddell, To The Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International.

[54] See L. Trotsky, ‘From the Old Family to the New’.

[55] See J. Riddell, To The Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International.

[56] See V. I. Lenin, ‘Speech in Defence of the Tactics of the Communist International’.

[57] See A. Grossmann, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform.

[58] ‘Theses on Methods and Forms of Work of the Communist Parties Among Women’, Marxists Internet Archive, 2018. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/3rd-congress/riddell-translations/Women-resolutions.htm (accessed 1 February 2023).

[59] See V. I. Lenin, ‘A Letter to the German Communists’.

[60] See R. Segal, The Tragedy of Leon Trotsky.

[61] See R. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution.

[62] See ibid.

[63] See A. Podsheldolkin, ‘The Origins of the Stalinist Bureaucracy – Some New Historical Facts’.

[64] See I. Deutscher, Stalin.

[65] S. Pirani, ‘The Party Elite, Industrial Managers, Specialists and Workers: 1922-23’, Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 19(2), 2006, pp. 197-228.

[66] See ibid.

[67] See R. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution.

[68] See I. Deutscher, Stalin.

[69] See ibid.

[70] See A. Podsheldolkin, ‘The Origins of the Stalinist Bureaucracy – Some New Historical Facts’.

[71] J. Stalin, ‘Some Questions Concerning the History of Bolshevism’, Marxists Internet Archive, 1931. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/x01/x01.htm (accessed 1 February 2023).