The Moscow workers' movement in 1921 and the role of non-partyism

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Notes

The following archives are cited: State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF); Russian State Archive for Social and Political Research (RGASPI); Central Archive of Social Movements of Moscow (TsAODM); Central State Archive of the Moscow Region (TsGAMO); Central Municipal Archive of Moscow (TsMAM). This article was presented at a panel at the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies conference in Cambridge, 29–31 March 2003. It is based on PhD research, supervised by Professor Steve A. Smith at the University of Essex, on changes in relations between the Communist Party and the working class in Moscow during, and as a result of, the transition from the civil war to the NEP (1920–24).

Israel Getzler, ‘Soviets as Agents of Democratisation’, in E.R. Frankel, J. Frankel & B. Knei-Paz (eds), Revolution in Russia: Reassessments of 1917 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 17–33; Tim McDaniel, Autocracy, Capitalism and Revolution in Russia (Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1988), pp. 373–377; I. Ya. Grunt, Moskva 1917-i, revolyutsiya i kontrrevolyutsiya (Moscow, 1976), p. 226.

Israel Getzler, Kronstadt 1917–1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 37–38, 55–56, 66 and 134–142; A.F. Zhukov, Ideino-politicheskii krakh eserovskogo maksimalizma (Leningrad, Izdatel'stvo LGU, 1979), pp. 48–49; Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton and Guildford, Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 189–192, 290–291; Kh.M. Astrakhan, Bolsheviki i ikh politicheskie protivniki v 1917-m godu (Leningrad, 1973), pp. 364–370.

S.V. Yarov, Gorozhanin kak politik: revolyutsiya, voennyi kommunizm i NEP glazami petrogradtsev (St Petersburg, 1999), p. 24; V.N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship (Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 165–166; the movement is also discussed by Mary McAuley, Bread and Justice: State and Society in Petrograd 1917–1922 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991), pp. 94–99 and elsewhere; David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Seizure of Power (London, Macmillan, 1983), pp. 379–383 and 390–413; William G. Rosenberg, ‘Russian Labor and Bolshevik Power After October’, Slavic Review, 44, 2, 1985, pp. 213–238, followed by comments by Moshe Lewin and Vladimir Brovkin, and a reply; there are documents in Piterskie rabochie i ‘Diktatura Proletariata’ Okt. 1917–1929: ekonomicheskie konflikty i politichestkii protest (St Petersburg, Blitz, 2000), pp. 55–113.

Piterskie rabochii, p. 66 (Rozenshtein biography) and p. 71 (Glebov biography); Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October, p. 167; Yarov, Gorozhanin kak politik, pp. 28–29; Piterskie rabochie, pp. 113–115 (resolutions of 1918); Yarov, Gorozhanin kak politik, pp. 38–39 (resolution of 1919). For Marx and Engels on the self-emancipation of the working class see F. Engels, ‘Preface to the English Edition of 1888’, in K. Marx & F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (Moscow, Progress, 1977), p. 20, and K. Marx, ‘Provisional Rules of the Association’, in The General Council of the First International 1864–1866 (Moscow, Progress, n.d.), p. 288.

Yarov, Gorozhanin kak politik, p. 24.

For a more detailed discussion of issues raised in this section see S. Pirani, ‘Class Clashes With Party’, Historical Materialism, 11, 2, 2003.

On rationing see Grazhdanskaya voina i voennaya interventsiya v SSSR: entsiklopediya (Moscow, 1983), pp. 396–397; Lars I. Lih, Bread and Authority in Russia (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990), pp. 162–192; McAuley, Bread and Justice, pp. 282–297. On the tram workers see TsAODM, f. 3, op. 1a, d. 11, l. 38.

The principle of udarnichestvo had been adopted during the civil war, but came into widespread use only in the second half of 1920, when, in the metal industry for example, the number of ‘shock’ plants rose from 20 to 240. By the end of the year there were 1,716 ‘shock’ enterprises and by the spring of 1921 a speaker at a trade union conference said there were more ‘shock’ than non-'shock' plants; see Thomas Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), pp. 157–161; and E.H. Carr, History of Soviet Russia (London and Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1970), vol. II, pp. 216–217.

Kommunisticheskii trud, 14 December 1920.

Pravda, 22 January 1921; S.A. Pavlyuchenkov, Krest'yanskii Brest, ili predystoriya bolshevistskogo NEPa (Moscow, Russkoe, 1996), pp. 259–260; Shmidt quoted in Shirokaya konferentsiya fab-zavkomov g. Moskvy 29 Okt. 1921 (Moscow, 1921), p. 55; N.M. Aleshchenko, Moskovskii sovet 1917–1941 (Moscow, 1976), pp. 297–299; Bertrand M. Patenaude, ‘Bolshevism in Retreat: the Transition to NEP 1920–22’, PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1987, pp. 118–129; E.B. Genkina, Gosudarstvennaya deyatel'nost' V.I. Lenina 1921–1923gg. (Moscow, Nauka, 1969), p. 62.

For Lozovsky see Desyatyi s”ezd RKP(b): stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, Gosizdat, 1963), p. 291; GARF, f. 393, op. 43a, d. 1714, l. 253; TsGAMO, f. 66, op. 12, d. 879, l. 26; Maslov quoted in Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1988), p. 222; information on the bakers' meeting from Jonathan Aves, Workers Against Lenin (London and New York, Tauris, 1996), pp. 137–138, quoting Kommunisticheskii trud.

I have read extensively on the inner-party discussions, including minutes of national, Moscow, district and factory party bodies, as part of my PhD research, and this passage is based on this reading.

The verbatim minutes of the meeting are at TsGAMO, f. 180, op. 1, d. 236, ll. 6–66 (all quotations from speeches are taken from these minutes) and at TsGAMO, f. 180, op. 1, d. 235; other materials are at TsGAMO, f. 180, op. 1, d. 237. See also Vyshinsky's account in Pravda, 8 February 1921, and the resolutions published in Kommunisticheskii trud, 8, 15 and 16 February 1921. Discussions of the meeting include Aves, Workers Against Lenin, pp. 131–136; Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991); pp. 35–36; and Patenaude, ‘Bolshevism in Retreat’, pp. 129–140, but none of these historians was able to read the minutes.

Letter from Podvoisky, Muralov and four others, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 265, ll. 1–2, published in Kronshtadt 1921 (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnyi fond Demokratiya, 1997), pp. 24–25.

RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 166, ll. 2–2ob and f. 76, op. 3, d. 166, l. 3, published in Kronshtadt 1921, pp. 27–29.

Maslov's account, in S.S. Maslov, Rossiya posle chetyrekh let revolyutsii (Paris, 1922), along with other published material, is used by Aves, Workers Against Lenin, p. 139, and Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, pp. 244–245. But Messing's correspondence with Dzerzhinsky, previously unavailable, throws doubt on Maslov's claims; the incident in which Kuzmenko was shot so concerned Messing that he reported it in detail and referred to it again in two subsequent telegrams, but he made no mention of other casualties. Also, while Messing referred to the dangerous mood of the demobilised soldiers, he made no mention of them, or other troops, being ordered to shoot at the crowd, or of them refusing to do so.

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 166, ll. 3 and 6, published in Kronshtadt 1921, pp. 29 and 34; Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, p. 245, quoting the Soviet historian Manevich; meeting at Dinamo, TsMAM, f. 100, op. 5, d. 5, l. 16, and V.I. Lenin & A.V. Lunacharsky, Literaturnoe nasledstvo: perepiska, doklady, dokumenty (Moscow, Nauka, 1971), pp. 253–254.

On the repression see RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 57, ll. 1–2, published in Kronshtadtskaya tragediya 1921 goda: dokumenty (Moscow, Rosspen, 1999), vol.2, pp. 364–365; RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 166, ll. 2–2ob; B. Dvinov, Moskovskii Sovet Rabochikh Deputatov, 1917–1922: Vospominaniya (New York, Inter-University Project on the History of the Menshevik Movement, 1961), p. 100; RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 167, l. 24, published in Kronshtadtskaya tragediya, vol. 1, p. 105. On the Bromlei workers' action see GARF, f. 393, op. 43, d. 1714, ll. 259–259ob.

McAuley, Bread and Justice, pp. 403–411; Getzler, Kronstadt, pp. 212–213; Yarov, Gorozhanin kak politik, pp. 68–79.

This argument is put by Orlando Figes and Richard Pipes; see the conclusion of this article.

TsAODM, f. 3, op. 1a, d. 11, l. 70.

On the make-up of the soviet see TsGAMO, f. 66, op. 12, d. 814, l. 82; for the Moscow party committee minutes see TsAODM, f. 3, op. 2, d. 23, ll. 51–53. The voting system gave equal weight to workers, sluzhashchie and soldiers (who had one representative per 500 or part thereof above 100); some other groups, including pensioners and domestic workers, were entitled to one representative per 500 voters; and trade unions sent one delegate per 5,000 members, effectively giving workers an extra 10% weighting. There were 671,927 eligible voters, and 340,061 voted (50.5%); officially in late 1920 there were 205,427 workers and 233,375 sluzhashchie in Moscow (no figures are available for 1921), and along with garrison soldiers they made up the vast majority of the electoral college. Clearly, the Moscow committee's analysis accords with the figures: provided the Bolsheviks retained some support among sluzhashchie, they could easily have won the majority they did (73% of soviet delegates) while their support among industrial workers collapsed. On the voting system see Aleshchenko, Moskovskii sovet 1917–1941, pp. 248–249; on the occupational structure of Moscow see William J. Chase, Workers, Society and the Soviet State: Labour and Life in Moscow 1918–1929 (Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 311. The election defeat so candidly acknowledged by Zelensky is a ‘black spot’ of party history: two official histories of the soviet (Moskovskii sovet rabochikh, krest'yanskikh i krasnoarmeiskikh deputatov 1917–27 and Aleshchenko, Moskovskii sovet 1917–1941) and one of the Moscow party (Ocherki istorii Moskovskoi organizatsii KPSS kn. 2, noyabr' 1917–1945 (Moscow, Moskovskii rabochii, 1983)) make no mention of it.

B. Dvinov, Ot legal'nosti k podpolyu 1921–22 (Stanford, Hoover Institution, 1968), p. 42. The Cheka reports are at TsAODM, f. 3, op. 2, d. 48, ll. 15ob–18.

For the elections at AMO see TsGAMO, f. 186, op. 1, d. 598, l. 3ob (on the conduct of the vote), l. 10 (on arrests); TsMAM, f. 415, op. 16, d. 318, l. 9 (election results). Davydov and Nastas'- yan were probably sympathetic to left SRism, Chukhanov was torn between left Menshevism and Bolshevism; this is further discussed below.

Moscow party committee minutes.

Dvinov, Ot legal'nosti, pp. 42–43. Dvinov was a Moscow soviet delegate from 1917 to 1922, and then went into exile. On Mikhailov see TsMAM, f. 337, op. 2, d. 29 and A.M. Panfilova, Istoriya zavoda ‘Krasnyi Bogatyr’ (Moscow, 1958), pp. 61, 75–81; he told the soviet he had ‘never’ been in a party.

Dvinov, Moskovskii sovet, p. 104. All quotations are from the verbatim minutes of the meeting, at TsGAMO, f. 66, op. 12, d. 814, ll. 4–5.

No biographical information on Ozerov is available, except his statement to the soviet that he was ‘an old activist, long a party member, now non-party’.

Ibid., ll. 40–44. The speaker who identified himself as a representative of the Left SRs and SR maximalists is named ‘Shternberg’ by the stenographers; I presume this was Isaak Shteinberg, who served as commissar of justice in the Bolshevik–Left SR coalition of 1917–18 and was by far the most prominent Left SR in Moscow in 1921.

Dvinov, Moskovskii sovet, p. 107.

Yarov, Gorozhanin kak politik, pp. 79–88, notes the importance in Petrograd in February– April 1921 of non-party meetings, at which anti-bureaucratic and ‘Makhaevist’ tendencies were manifested on one hand, and strong support for the slogan ‘free trade’ on the other.

D.B. Pavlov, Bolshevistskaya Diktatura protiv sotsialistov i anarkhistov 1917—seredina 1950-kh godov (Moscow, Rosspen, 1999), pp. 59–60; Dvinov, Ot legal'nosti, p. 47.

Sources on AMO at TsMAM, f. 415, op. 16, include factory committee minutes in d. 317, general meeting minutes in d. 318, party cell records in d. 586, d. 587 and d. 590 and memoirs of V. Rudakov in d. 657; see also Istoriya Moskovskogo avtozavoda imeni I.A. Likhacheva (Moscow, 1966), especially pp. 80–105.

Sources on the non-party group include an interview with Chukhanov at TsMAM, f. 415, op. 16, d. 262, ll. 1–37; metalworkers meeting, TsGAMO, f. 180, op. 1, d. 236, ll. 9–10, 13, 35, 36; April 1921 resolution, TsMAM, f. 415, op. 16, d. 314, l. 13: interview with Lidak, TsMAM, f. 415, op. 16, d. 167, ll. 59–60. Information on 13 members of the non-party group who held soviet or factory committee positions shows these political sympathies: three, SR centrist; two, left SR; one, Menshevik; four, positive indications of non-partyism on principle; three, no information.

TsGAMO, f. 475, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 4–5 and 33–34.

For Panyushkin's background see Vasilii M. Katanov, Michman Panyushkin (Moscow, Priokskoe, 1976); Dvinov, Ot legal'nosti, p. 55. RKSP material is at RTsKhIDNI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 2572, l. 52; also see TsAODM, f. 3, op. 2, d. 18, l. 4a.

The expression ‘opekuny-kommunisty’ is used. An opekun is a guardian appointed to safeguard the interests of minors or incompetents, but the translation ‘guardian-communists’ obviously would not do justice to the sense, that the communist ‘high-ups’ treated workers as incapable children. This was a common accusation by party oppositionists at the time, e.g. Efim Ignatov's speech at the tenth congress, during which he called on party leaders to ‘cut out the petty nannying (otbrosit’ melochnuyu opeku)' (Desyatyi s”ezd, p. 238). The Tatar communist S.G. Said-Galiev (not to be confused with M. Sultan-Galiev) wrote to Lenin protesting at Russian communists playing ‘pedagogues and nursemaids’ (pedagogov i nyanek) to Tatar workers (V.I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 36 (Moscow, Gosizdat, 1966), p. 661).

On mobilisation of ‘honest non-party workers’ see for example TsMAM, f. 415, op. 16, d. 317, 1l. 42 and 44; Moscow party committee minutes; Vasil'ev, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 145, l. 12.

Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: the Russian Revolution 1891–1924 (London, Jonathan Cape, 1996), pp. 758–759; Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (London, Harvill, 1994), p. 380. Pipes' view is that the strike movement was contained principally by Lenin's readiness to use military force against it: ‘Confronted with worker defiance, Lenin reacted exactly as had Nicholas II …: he turned to the military. But whereas the last tsar … soon caved in, Lenin was prepared to go to any length to stay in power. … Whereas in February 1917 the main source of disaffection had been the garrison, now it was the factory’.

For discussions on the character of the working class and ‘deproletarianisation’ see for example L. Siegelbaum & R. Suny, ‘Class Backwards? In Search of the Soviet Working Class’, in L. Siegelbaum & R. Suny (eds), Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class and Identity (Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 1–27; Diane Koenker, ‘Urbanization and Deurbanization in the Russian Revolution and Civil War’, Journal of Modern History, 57, September 1985, pp. 424–450. The standard Soviet history of the Moscow party states that ‘SRs, Mensheviks, anarchists and other enemies of soviet power, speculating on the post-war difficulties … penetrated the factories, carried out hostile agitation and instigated workers to go on strike’ (Ocherki, p. 191); the standard Western history of the Moscow party in 1917–21, relying of necessity largely on SRs' and Mensheviks' accounts, perceived a ‘Moscow protest movement for the three freedoms—labour, trade and political—and for a freeing of the soviets from party control’ (Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, p. 246).