He was followed by Krestinsky, who pointed out that whereas the commissariats were, in a sense, altered forms of the old ministries, links with the past, the Council of Public Economy, organising the whole production and distribution of the country, building the new socialist state, was an entirely new organ and a link, not with the past, but with the future.
The two next speeches illustrated one of the main difficulties of the revolution. Krasin criticised the council for insufficient confidence in the security of the revolution. He said they were still hampered by fears lest here or there capitalism should creep in again. They were unnecessarily afraid to make the fullest possible use of specialists of all kinds who had taken a leading part in industry under the old regime and who, now that the old regime, the old system, had been definitely broken, could be made to serve the new. He believed that unless the utmost use was made of the resources of the country in technical knowledge, etc., they could not hope to organise the maximum productivity which alone could save them from catastrophe.
The speaker who followed him, Glebov, defended precisely the opposite point of view and represented the same attitude with regard to the reorganisation of industry as is held by many who object to Trotsky’s use of officers of the old army in the reorganisation of the new, believing that all who worked in high places under the old regime must be and remain enemies of the revolution, so that their employment is a definite source of danger. Glebov is a trade union representative, and his speech was a clear indication of the non-political undercurrent towards the left which may shake the Bolshevik position and will most certainly come into violent conflict with any definitely bourgeois government that may be brought in by counter-revolution.
In the resolution on the economic position which was finally passed unanimously, one point reads as follows: ‘It is necessary to strive for just economic relations with other countries in the form of state regulated exchange of goods and the bringing of the productive forces of other countries to the working out of the untouched natural resources of Soviet Russia’. It is interesting to notice the curiously mixed character of the opposition. Some call for ‘a real socialism’, which shall make no concessions whatsoever to foreign capital, others for the cessation of civil war and peace with the little governments which have obtained Allied support. In a single number of the Printers’ Gazette, for example, there was a threat to appeal against the Bolsheviks to the delegation from Berne and an attack on Chicherin for being ready to make terms with the Entente.
The next business on the programme was the attitude to be adopted towards the repentant Social Revolutionaries of the Right. Kamenev made the best speech I have ever heard from him, for once in a way not letting himself be drawn into agitational digressions, but going point by point through what he had to say and saying it economically. The SRs had had three watchwords: ‘War and alliance with the Allies’, ‘Coalition with the bourgeoisie’, and ‘The Constituent Assembly’. For over a year they had waged open war with the Soviet government over these three points. They had been defeated in the field. But they had suffered a far more serious moral defeat in having to confess that their very watchwords had been unsound. ‘War and alliance with the Allies’ had shown itself to mean the occupation of Russian territory by foreign troops in no way concerned to save the revolution, but ready, as they had shown, to help every force that was working for its suppression. ‘Coalition with the bourgeoisie’ had shown itself to be a path the natural ending to which was the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through military force. ‘The Constituent Assembly’ had been proved to be no more than a useful mask behind which the enemies of the revolution could prepare their forces and trick the masses to their own undoing.
He read the declaration of the Right Social Revolutionaries, admitting that the Soviet government was the only force working against a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and calling upon their troops to overthrow the usurping governments in Siberia, and elsewhere. This repentance, however, had come rather late and there were those who did not share it. He said finally that the Executive Committee must remember that it was not a party considering its relations with another party, but an organ of government considering the attitude of the country towards a party which in the most serious moment of Russian history had admittedly made grave mistakes and helped Russia’s enemies. Now, in this difficult moment, everyone who was sincerely ready to help the working masses of Russia in their struggle had the right to be given a place in the ranks of the fighters. The Social Revolutionaries should be allowed to prove in deeds the sincerity of their recantation. The resolution which was passed recapitulated the recantations, mentioned by name the members of the party with whom discussions had been carried on, withdrew the decision of June 14 (excluding the SRs from the Executive Committee on the ground of their counter-revolutionary tendencies) with regard to all groups of the party which held themselves bound by the recently published declarations, gave them the right equally with other parties to share in the work of the soviets, and notified the administrative and judicial organs of the Republic to free the arrested SRs who shared the point of view expressed in the recantations. The resolution was passed without enthusiasm but without opposition.
There followed the reading by Avanesov of the decree concerning the Menshevik paper Vsegda Vpered (‘Forever Forward’, but usually described by critics of the Mensheviks as ‘Forever Backward’). The resolution pointed out that in spite of the Mensheviks having agreed on the need of supporting the Soviet government they were actually carrying on an agitation, the effect of which could only be to weaken the army. An example was given of an article, ‘Stop the Civil War’, in which they had pointed out that the war was costing a great deal, and that much of the food supplies went to the army. On these grounds they had demanded the cessation of the civil war. The committee pointed out that the Mensheviks were making demagogic use of the difficulties of the food supply, due in part to the long isolation from the Ukraine, the Volga district and Siberia, for which those Mensheviks who had worked with the White Guard were themselves partly responsible. They pointed out that Russia was a camp besieged from all sides, that Kolchak had seized the important centre of Perm, that Petrograd was threatened from Finland, that in the streets of Rostov and Novo Tcherkassk gallows with the bodies of workmen were still standing, that Denikin was making a destructive raid in the northern Caucasus, that the Polish legionnaires were working for the seizure of Vilna and the suppression of Lithuania and the White Russian proletariat, and that in the ports of the Black Sea the least civilised colonial troops of the Entente were supporting the White Guards. They pointed out that the Soviet government had offered concessions in order to buy off the imperialistic countries and had received no reply. Taking all this into consideration the demand to end civil war amounted to a demand for the disarming of the working class and the poor peasantry in the face of bandits and executioners advancing from all sides. In a word, it was the worst form of state crime, namely, treason to a state of workers and peasants. The committee considered useful every kind of practical criticism of the work of the Soviet government in all departments, but it could not allow that in the rear of the Red Army of workers and peasants, under that army’s protection, should be carried on unrestrained an agitation which could have only one result, the weakening of Soviet Russia in the face of its many enemies. Therefore Vsegda Vpered would be closed until the Mensheviks should show in deed that they were ready to stand to the defence and support of the revolution. At the same time, the committee reminded the Mensheviks that a continuation of their counter-revolutionary work would force the Soviet government ‘to expel them to the territories of Kolchak’s democracy.’ This conclusion was greeted with laughter and applause, and with that the meeting ended.
Twenty two / Commissariat of Labour
FEBRUARY 28
This morning I went round to the Commissariat of Labour, to see Schmidt, the Commissar. Schmidt is a clean shaven, intelligent young man, whose attention to busin
ess methods is reflected in his Commissariat, which, unlike that of foreign affairs, is extremely clean and very well organised. I told him I was particularly interested to hear what he could say in answer to the accusations made both by the Mensheviks and by the extremists on the left that control by the workers has become a dead letter, and that a time will come when the trades unions will move against the state organisations.
Schmidt answered: ‘Those accusations and suggestions are all very well for agitational purposes, but the first to laugh at them would be the trade unions themselves. This commissariat, for example, which is the actual labour centre, is controlled directly by the unions. As Commissar of Labour, I was elected directly by the General Council of the Trade Unions. Of the college of nine members which controls the whole work of the commissariat, five are elected directly by the General Council of the Trades Unions and four appointed by the Council of People’s Commissaries, thus giving the unions a decisive majority in all questions concerning labour. All nine are confirmed by the Council of People’s Commissaries, representing the state as a whole, and the Commissar is confirmed by the All-Russian Executive Committee.’
Of course control by the workers, as it was first introduced, led speedily to many absurdities and, much to the dissatisfaction of the extreme elements, has been considerably modified. It was realised that the workers in any particular factory might by considering only their own interests harm the community as a whole, and so, in the long run, themselves. The manner of its modification is an interesting example of the way in which, without the influence of tanks, aeroplanes or bayonets, the cruder ideas of communism are being modified by life. It was reasoned that since the factory was the property, not of the particular workmen who work in it, but of the community as a whole, the community as a whole should have a considerable voice in its management. And the effect of that reasoning has been to ensure that the technical specialist and the expert works manager are no longer at the caprice of a hastily called gathering of the workmen who may, without understanding them, happen to disapprove of some of their dispositions. Thus the economical, administrative council of a nationalised factory consists of representatives of the workmen and clerical staff, representatives of the higher technical and commercial staffs, the directors of the factory (who are appointed by the Central Direction of National Factories), representatives of the local council of trade unions, the Council of Public Economy, the local soviet, and the industrial union of the particular industry carried on in the factory, together with a representative of the workers’ co-operative society and a representative of the peasants’ soviet of the district in which the factory is situated. In this council not more than half of the members may be representatives of the workmen and clerical staff of the factory. This council considers the internal order of the factory, complaints of any kind, and the material and moral conditions of work and so on. On questions of a technical character it has no right to do more than give advice.
The night before I saw Schmidt, little Finberg had come to my room for a game of chess in a very perturbed state of mind, having just come from a meeting of the union to which he belonged (the union of clerks, shop assistants and civil servants) where there had been a majority against the Bolsheviks after some fierce criticism over this particular question. Finberg had said that the ground basis of the discontent had been the lack of food, but that the outspoken criticism had taken the form, first, of protests against the offer of concessions in Chicherin’s note of February 4th, on the ground that concessions meant concessions to foreign capitalism and the formation in Russia of capitalist centres which would eventually spread; and second, that the Communists themselves, by their modifications of workers’ control, were introducing state capitalism instead of socialism.
I mentioned this union to Schmidt, and asked him to explain its hostility. He laughed, and said: ‘Firstly, that union is not an industrial union at all, but includes precisely the people whose interests are not identical with those of the workmen. Secondly, it includes all the old civil servants who, as you remember, left the ministries at the November Revolution, in many cases taking the money with them. They came back in the end, but though no longer ready to work openly against the revolution as a whole, they retain much of their old dislike of us, and, as you see, the things they were objecting to last night were precisely the things which do not concern them in particular. Any other stick would be as good to them. They know well that if they were to go on strike now they would be a nuisance to us, no more. If you wish to know the attitude of the trades unions, you should look at the Trade Union Congress which wholly supported us, and gave a very different picture of affairs. They know well that in all questions of labour, the trades unions have the decisive voice. I told you that the unions send a majority of the members of the college which controls the work of this commissariat. I should have added that the three most important departments—the department for safeguarding labour, the department for distributing labour, and that for regulating wages —are entirely controlled by the unions.’
‘How do politics affect the commissariat?’
‘Not at all. Politics do not count with us, just because we are directly controlled by the unions, and not by any political party. Mensheviks, Maximalists and others have worked and are working in the commissariat. Of course if a man were opposed to the revolution as a whole we should not have him here, because he would be working against us instead of helping.’
I asked whether he thought the trade unions would ever disappear in the soviet organisations. He thought not. On the contrary, they had grown steadily throughout the revolution. He told me that one great change had been made in them. Trade unions have been merged together into industrial unions, to prevent conflict between individual sections of one industry. Thus boilermakers and smiths do not have separate unions, but are united in the metalworkers’ union. This unification has its effect on reforms and changes. An increase in wages, for example, is simultaneous all over Russia. The price of living varies very considerably in different parts of the country, there being as great differences between the climates of different parts as there are between the countries of Europe. Consequently a uniform absolute increase would be grossly unfair to some and grossly favourable to others. The increase is therefore proportional to the cost of living. Moscow is taken as a norm of 100, and when a new minimum wage is established for Moscow other districts increase their minimum wage proportionately. A table for this has been worked out, whereby in comparison with 100 for Moscow, Petrograd is set down as 120, Voronezh or Kursk as 70, and so on.
We spoke of the new programme of the Communists, rough drafts of which were being printed in the newspapers for discussion, and he showed me his own suggestions in so far as the programme concerned labour. He wished the programme to include, among other aims, the further mechanisation of production, particularly the mechanisation of all unpleasant and dirty processes, improved sanitary inspection, shortening of the working day in employments harmful to health, forbidding women with child to do any but very light work, and none at all for eight weeks before giving birth and for eight weeks afterwards, forbidding overtime, and so on. ‘We have already gone far beyond our old programme, and our new one steps far ahead of us. Russia is the first country in the world where all workers have a fortnight’s holiday in the year, and workers in dangerous or unhealthy occupations have a month’s.’
I said, ‘Yes, but don’t you find that there is a very long way between the passing of a law and its realisation?’
Schmidt laughed and replied: ‘In some things certainly, yes. For example, we are against all overtime, but, in the present state of Russia we should be sacrificing to a theory the good of the revolution as a whole if we did not allow and encourage overtime in transport repairs. Similarly, until things are further developed than they are now, we should be criminal slaves to theory if we did not, in some cases, allow lads under 16 years old to be in the factories when we have not yet been able to provide the n
ecessary schools where we would wish them to be. But the programme is there, and as fast as it can be realised we are realising it.’
Twenty three / Education
FEBRUARY 28
At the Commissariat of Public Education I showed Professor Pokrovsky a copy of The German-Bolshevik Conspiracy, published in America, containing documents supposed to prove that the German General Staff arranged the November Revolution, and that the Bolsheviks were no more than German agents. The weak point about the documents is that the most important of them have no reason for existence except to prove that there was such a conspiracy. These are the documents bought by Mr Sisson. I was interested to see what Pokrovsky would say of them. He looked through them, and while saying that he had seen forged documents better done, pointed as evidence to the third of them which ends with the alleged signatures of Zalkind, Polivanov, Mekhanoshin and Joffe. He observed that whoever forged the things knew a good deal, but did not know quite enough, because these persons, described as ‘plenipotentiaries of the Council of Peoples’ Commissars’, though all actually in the service of the Soviet government, could not all, at that time, have been what they were said to be. Polivanov, for example, was a very minor official. Joffe, on the other hand, was indeed a person of some importance. The putting of the names in that order was almost as funny as if they had produced a document signed by Lenin and the Commandant of the Kremlin, putting the latter first.