Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the Bolshevik's post-Russian Civil War turn (retreat?) from "war communism" to the "New Economic Policy" (NEP). As is noted in that entry, and as I have noted previously in this space, there are disputes over the wisdom of pursuing this policy and its implementation, including the question of timing by Trotsky. In any case although this link will give a basic outline of what the arguments were all about it is not provided as a substitute for reading Carr's informative, and painstaking, analysis. The points that he makes in his book is where we should start to argue about this policy.
Book Review
The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Volume Two, Edward Hallet Carr, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1951
The first couple of paragraphs have been used in other reviews of E.H. Carr’s fourteen volume master work on the consolidation, isolation, stabilization and subsequent Stalinization of the Soviet Union in the early days.
“In early reviews of books on the Russian Revolution, including Leon Trotsky’s seminal study of the revolutionary seizure of power itself, “The History Of The Russian Revolution”, I used the following paragraph to introduce the reviews. I am reposting it here because it is appropriate to place the work of the British master bourgeois historian of the whole early period of that revolution, Edward Hallet Carr:
“This year is the 90th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (2007, Markin). I have endlessly pointed out that the October Revolution in Russia was the definitive political event of the 20th century. The resulting change in the balance of world power with the demise of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s is beginning to look like a definitive political event for the 21st century, as well. I have urged those interested in the fight for socialism to read, yes to read, about the Russian Revolution in order to learn some lessons from that experience. Leon Trotsky’s three volume “History of the Russian Revolution” is obviously a good place to start for a pro-Bolshevik overview. If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its affect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr’s “History Of The Bolshevik Revolution” offers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920’s. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing in 1917 from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov’s “Notes on the Russian Revolution”. For a more journalistic account John Reed’s classic “Ten Days That Shook the World” is invaluable. Forward to new October Revolutions.”
Needless to say E.H. Carr, as noted above, is in some pretty good company and properly belongs there as well. I noted that his work entails a several volume effort. The present review is of Volume One of his three volume “History Of The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923”. A review of the other two volumes will follow as will other volumes on the Stalin-Trotsky struggle for the direction of the revolution and the eventual Stalinization of the Bolshevik Party, the Communist International and the Soviet state.
Naturally, Carr in his first volume gave a quick historical narrative of the pre-revolutionary struggles among the socialist and democratic factions and the immediate post- Bolshevik seizure of power period but from there spend most of that volume dealing with the questions of soviet constitutionality and the socialist implementation of the right to national self-determination for the previously subject nations (or wannabe nations) of the former Tsarist Empire. In Volume Two, under review here, he goes into great detail about the various strategies that the Bolsheviks used in order to consolidate the economic foundations of the Soviet state. As this is the first workers state to, at least by the end of the period under discussion, to retain power (unlike the previous but nevertheless still revered experience of the Paris Commune in 1871) this is an important period to learn about.
It would seem needless to say that much of Bolshevik economic policy (and this includes financial policy as well that Carr spends some time on) in the process of taking over a broken, war-ravaged bourgeois/semi-feudal overwhelmingly agrarian state was “by the seat of the pants”. Partly this was by design, as previously Marxist experience had concentrated on the struggle for power and left the outlines of the future socialist and then communist society to the actual conditions at the time of the seizure of power. And part this was due to the expectation that many economic problems would be solved by the successes of revolutions in the more industrially advanced West, especially Germany. This concept, along with some serious idealistic communist-derived notions abut running a broken state (made worst, shortly after the seizure of power, by all manner of civil strife and civil war), colored more than its fair share in the workings of the upper councils of the Soviet financial and economic apparatus.
The central value of this volume is in Carr’s breakdown of the three phases of the early days of the revolution: the immediate post-seizure period when the agrarian question- “land to the tiller”- drove much of economic policy in order to feed the cities, keep industry alive and satisfy that great land hunger of the peasants/soldiers that the Bolsheviks were able to retain the support of against the other political parties contending for poor and middle peasant support; the period of “war communism” driven by the necessities of keeping state power against white counter-revolution and to feed the armies: and, the rudiments of the New Economic Policy (NEP) which followed in the aftermath of victory and was recognized as a necessary “retreat” back to some capitalist activity in order to jump start the economy. Carr fully addresses the various controversies over policy both within the increasingly isolated but still politically robust Bolshevik Party and the various classes and part of classes in society. His strongest presentation is the period of the “retreat” to the NEP where he very carefully puts forth the compelling case for that policy.
Along the way we are also treated to other important controversies like the question of workers control of individual factories; the necessary use of bourgeois economic specialists in those factories in the transition period; the role of the state in the distribution process; the role of trade unions in a workers state; the contrast between the necessity of giving land to the tiller and the socialist perspective of the collectivization of land; the role of money, concessions and the state monopoly on foreign trade; and, many other questions that not only concerned the besieged Bolshevik then but will confront a future workers state. I would only add here what I have written in previous reviews. Carr, more than most historians has attempted to understand what the Bolsheviks were trying to do without letting his own British foreign service background (a plus here for analytical purposes) color his narrative too much. That should be considered high praise coming from this quarter. In any case I have not done justice to Carr’s extensive gathering of materials, his copious use of sources, his plentiful footnotes and bibliography so you are just going to have to read this book (and the other volumes as well).
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