2. Economic Growth and the Zigzags of the Leadership¶
Core Argument¶
In the decade following the October Revolution, Soviet economic policy lurched between catastrophic collapse and forced modernisation, driven less by Marxist theory than by the desperate exigencies of civil war and the bureaucratic leadership’s profound irresoluteness. The first three years of “military communism” (1918–21) subordinated all economic life to the needs of civil war, aiming to leap directly into a planned communist economy. This utopian project, resting on the expectation of an early proletarian victory in Germany—a prospect dashed by the Social Democrats—ended in ruin: steel production fell to one twenty-third of its pre-war level, grain harvests shrank sharply, and foreign trade plummeted from 2.9 billion roubles to a mere 30 million.
The New Economic Policy (NEP) restored market relations, recognising that a planned economy could not rest solely on intellectual data and that the play of supply and demand remained necessary. Production doubled by 1922–23 and reached pre-war levels by 1926. Yet disagreements erupted over how much to extract from the peasantry for industrialisation. The Left Opposition warned of the “scissors” crisis—diverging industrial and agricultural prices—and opposed the government’s turn toward the kulak under the slogan “face to the country.” Bukharin urged peasants to “get rich”; by spring 1926, 6 percent of peasant proprietors held almost 60 percent of marketed grain. Stalin even considered de-nationalising land, proposing leases of up to 40 years. The Left Opposition’s call for accelerated collectivisation and industrialisation was ridiculed as “super-industrialisation” and “fantastic plans.” The first five-year plan draft (1927) projected industrial growth declining yearly from 9 to 4 percent, with consumption rising only 12 percent over five years.
The theory of “socialism in one country”, advanced by Stalin in autumn 1924, comprised irresoluteness toward individual peasant enterprises, distrust of large plans, defence of a minimum tempo, and neglect of international problems. The strengthened kulak subjected cities to a grain blockade; by January 1928 the working class faced famine. The government initially blamed kulak hostility but was forced to change policy. Rykov and Stalin affirmed individual farming as the chief task in July 1928, yet within a year “complete collectivisation” was imminent. The Left Opposition’s prediction that cutting off the left would accelerate struggle between right and centre proved correct. Stalin condemned the Right deviation in October 1928, but soon Rykov, Bukharin and Tomsky were denounced. Industrialisation was prioritised; the five-year plan was replaced with one borrowing from the Left Opposition’s platform. Opportunism turned into adventurism: from a “tortoise tempo” the bureaucracy jumped to 20–30 percent yearly growth, printing money and shaking the currency. Collectivisation was forced through without adequate machinery or political preparation. Peasants slaughtered their livestock; the number of horses fell 55 percent, horned cattle 40 percent, pigs 55 percent, sheep 66 percent. The harvest fell below 700 million hundredweight. The regime survived due to its popular roots and favourable external circumstances, but the zigzags reflected both objective contradictions and the leaders’ inadequate foresight, imposing immense overhead expenses on the Soviet economy.
The least ideologically rich and most error-laden faction nonetheless gained unlimited power—a puzzle demanding further analysis. It will also show how bureaucratic autocratic leadership increasingly conflicts with economic and cultural demands, inevitably generating new crises and disturbances in Soviet development. Before examining the dual role of the “socialist” bureaucracy, the question must be answered: what is the net result of preceding successes? Is socialism actually achieved in the USSR? More cautiously, do current economic and cultural achievements guarantee against capitalist restoration, in the way bourgeois society’s own successes eventually secured it against restoration of serfdom and feudalism?