7. Objective Circumstances Limit Bolshevik Aspirations¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 7: Objective Circumstances Limit Bolshevik Aspirations¶
The years 1914–23 brought successive demographic catastrophes to Russia: 2.5 million lost in the World War, one million in the Civil War, 1.5 million to disease, and roughly two million in the 1921–22 Volga famine. The revolution’s isolation in a backward, devastated country created the conditions for bureaucratic degeneration and Stalinism. Despite this, the October Revolution galvanised women, producing rapid shifts in identity and legal equality. The Zhenotdel’s literacy campaign made millions of women regular readers; women reached 46 per cent of industrial workers by 1921. The New Economic Policy (NEP) adversely affected urban women’s economic position but occurred within a context of massive social gains: marriage equality, divorce rights, bodily autonomy, and unprecedented public roles. Trotsky argued that socialisation of housework required economic improvement, yet returning soldiers demanded their old jobs back. The Zhenotdel fought for equal pay, job access, and against sexual harassment, but trade union leaders dismissed these demands as unaffordable luxuries. Cuts reduced canteen provision, trebly burdening urban women.
The NEP enriched kulaks and NEPmen, reversed land equalisation, and left 83.4 per cent of retail trade in private hands. Party and state officials’ salaries rose far above the official ratio. By summer 1923, heavy industry languished at 10 per cent of 1912 levels; the party tops cut industrial prices to maintain the smychka at workers’ expense. Unemployment rose from 500,000 to 1.25 million; women were disproportionately sacked. A wave of strikes followed. The Secretariat restricted party democracy and used the GPU against dissent. Trotsky’s 8 October 1923 letter to the Central Committee blamed bureaucratisation and incorrect economic policy; Zinoviev and Stalin accused him of factionalism. Red managers, alienated from workers, joined the party in thousands, coalescing into a future ruling stratum.
The Fourth Congress of the Communist International was Lenin’s last; he attacked the mechanical application of the Russian experience and called for new thinking. Russian domination of national parties stemmed from the prestige of October, superior Marxist knowledge, and organisational experience, later reinforced by financial control and emissaries who removed non-compliant leaders. In 1923, the German Communist Party received enough CI funding to publish twenty-seven daily papers and support nearly 200 full-time officials; without these funds it could have supported only a dozen officials and four papers. This arrangement might have been acceptable short-term when revolution in Western Europe seemed imminent and Lenin and Trotsky led, but as a long-term strategy it proved disastrous. The failure of the German October strengthened conservative forces in the Russian Party. Zinoviev blamed Brandler and removed him, strengthening the feeling that Moscow’s authority was absolute.