The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📕

On January 23rd the Council of Defense of the Republic, encouraged to proceed further, decided to make use of the Reserve Army for the improvement of railway transport on the Moscow-Kazan railway, one of the chief arteries between eastern food districts and Moscow. The main object is to be the reestablishment of through traffic between Moscow and Ekaterinburg and the repair of the Kazan-Ekaterinburg line, which particularly suffered during the war. An attempt was to be made to rebuild the bridge over the Kama River before the ice melts. The Commander of the Reserve Army was appointed Commissar of the eastern part of the Moscow-Kazan railway, retaining his position as Commander of the Army.

With a view of coordination between the Army Soviet and the railway authorities, a member of the Soviet was also appointed Commissar of the railway. On January 25th it was announced that a similar experiment was being made in the Ukraine. A month before the ice broke the first train actually crossed the Kama River by the rebuilt bridge.

By April of this year the organization of industrial conscription had gone far beyond the original labor armies.

A decree of February 5th had created a Chief Labor Committee, consisting of five members, Serebryakov and Danilov, from the Commissariat of War; Vasiliev, from the Commissariat of the Interior; Anikst, from the Commissariat of Labor; Dzerzhinsky, from the Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Dzerzhinsky was President, and his appointment was possibly made in the hope that the reputation he had won as President of the Extraordinary Committee for Fighting Counter-Revolution would frighten people into taking this Committee seriously. Throughout the country in each government or province similar committees, called “Troikas,” were created, each of three members, one from the Commissariat of War, one from the Department of Labor, one from the Department of Management, in each case from the local Commissariats and Departments attached to the local Soviet. Representatives of the Central Statistical Office and its local organs had a right to be present at the meeting of these committees of three, or “Troikas,” but had not the right to vote. An organization or a factory requiring labor, was to apply to the Labor Department of the local Soviet. This Department was supposed to do its best to satisfy demands upon it by voluntary methods first. If these proved insufficient they were to apply to the local “Troika,”

or Labor Conscription Committee. If this found that its resources also were insufficient, it was to refer back the request to the Labor Department of the Soviet, which was then to apply to its corresponding Department in the Government Soviet, which again, first voluntarily and then through the Government Committee of Labor Conscription, was to try to satisfy the demands. I fancy the object of this arrangement was to prevent local “Troikas” from referring to Government “Troikas,” and so directly to Dzerzhinsky’s Central Committee. If they had been able to do this there would obviously have been danger lest a new network of independent and powerful organizations should be formed. Experience with the overgrown and insuppressible Committees for Fighting Counter-Revolution had taught people how serious such a development might be.

Such was the main outline of the scheme for conscripting labor. A similar scheme was prepared for superintending and safeguarding labor when conscripted. In every factory of over 1,000 workmen, clerks, etc., there was formed a Commission (to distinguish it from the Committee) of Industrial Conscription. Smaller factories shared such Commissions or were joined for the purpose to larger factories near by. These Commissions were to be under the direct control of a Factory Committee, thereby preventing squabbles between conscripted and non-conscripted labor.

They were to be elected for six months, but their members could be withdrawn and replaced by the Factory Committee with the approval of the local “Troika.”

These Commissions, like the “Troikas,” consisted of three members: (1) from the management of the factory, (2) from the Factory Committee, (3) from the Executive Committee of the workers. (It was suggested in the directions that one of these should be from the group which “has been organizing ‘Saturdayings,’ that is to say that he or she should be a Communist.)The payment of conscripted workers was to be by production, with prizes for specially good work.

Specially bad work was also foreseen in the detailed scheme of possible punishments. Offenders were to be brought before the “People’s Court” (equivalent to the ordinary Civil Court), or, in the case of repeated or very bad offenses, were to be brought before the far more dreaded Revolutionary Tribunals. Six categories of possible offenses were placed upon the new code:

(1)Avoiding registration, absenteeism, or desertion.

(2)The preparation of false documents or the use of such.

(3)Officials giving false information to facilitate these crimes.

(4)Purposeful damage of instruments or material.

(5)Uneconomical or careless work.

(6)(Probably the most serious of all) Instigation to any of these actions.

The “Troikas” have the right to deal administratively with the less important crimes by deprival of freedom for not more than two weeks. No one can be brought to trial except by the Committee for Industrial Conscription on the initiative of the responsible director of work, and with the approval either of the local labor inspection authorities or with that of the local Executive Committee.

No one with the slightest knowledge of Russia will suppose for a moment that this elaborate mechanism sprang suddenly into existence when the decree was signed. On the contrary, all stages of industrial conscription exist simultaneously even today, and it would be possible by going from one part of Russia to another to collect a series of specimens of industrial conscription at every stage of evolution, just as one can collect all stages of man from a baboon to a company director or a Communist. Some of the more primitive kinds of conscription were not among the least successful.

For example, at the time(in the spring of the year)when the Russians still hoped that the Poles would be content with the huge area of non-Polish territory they had already seized, the army on the western front was without any elaborate system of decrees being turned into a labor army. The work done was at first ordinary country work, mainly woodcutting.

They tried to collaborate with the local “Troikas,” sending help when these Committees asked for it. This, however, proved unsatisfactory, so, disregarding the “Troikas,” they organized things for themselves in the whole area immediately behind the front. They divided up the forests into definite districts, and they worked these with soldiers and with deserters. Gradually their work developed, and they built themselves narrow-gauge railways for the transport of the wood. Then they needed wagons and locomotives, and of course immediately found themselves at loggerheads with the railway authorities. Finally, they struck a bargain with the railwaymen, and were allowed to take broken-down wagons which the railway people were not in a position to mend. Using such skilled labor as they had, they mended such wagons as were given them, and later made a practice of going to the railway yards and in inspecting “sick” wagons for themselves, taking out any that they thought had a chance even of temporary convalescence. Incidentally they caused great scandal by finding in the Smolensk sidings among the locomotives and wagons supposed to be sick six good locomotives and seventy perfectly healthy wagons. Then they began to improve the feeding of their army by sending the wood they had cut, in the trains they had mended, to people who wanted wood and could give them provisions. One such train went to Turkestan and back from the army near Smolensk.

Their work continually increased, and since they had to remember that they were an army and not merely a sort of nomadic factory, they began themselves to mobilize, exclusively for purposes of work, sections of the civil population. I asked Unshlicht, who had much to do with this organization, if the peasants came willingly. He said, “Not very,” but added that they did not mind when they found that they got well fed and were given packets of salt as prizes for good work. “The peasants,” he said, “do not grumble against the Government when it shows the sort of common sense that they themselves can understand. We found that when we said definitely how many carts and men a village must provide, and used them without delay for a definite purpose, they were perfectly satisfied and considered it right and proper. In every case, however, when they saw people being mobilized and sent thither without obvious purpose or result, they became hostile at once.” I asked Unshlicht how it was that their army still contained skilled workmen when one of the objects of industrial conscription was to get the skilled workmen back into the factories. He said: “We have an accurate census of the army, and when we get asked for skilled workmen for such and such a factory, they go there knowing that they still belong to the army.”

That, of course, is the army point of view, and indicates one of the main squabbles which industrial conscription has produced. Trotsky would like the various armies to turn into units of a territorial militia, and at the same time to be an important part of the labor organization of each district.

His opponents do not regard the labor armies as a permanent manifestation, and many have gone so far as to say that the productivity of labor in one of these armies is lower than among ordinary workmen. Both sides produce figures on this point, and Trotsky goes so far as to say that if his opponents are right, then not only are labor armies damned, but also the whole principle of industrial conscription. “If compulsory labor-independently of social condition-is unproductive, that is a condemnation not of the labor armies, but of industrial conscription in general, and with it of the whole Soviet system, the further development of which is unthinkable except on a basis of universal industrial conscription.”

But, of course, the question of the permanence of the labor armies is not so important as the question of getting the skilled workers back to the factories. The comparative success or failure of soldiers or mobilized peasants in cutting wood is quite irrelevant to this recovery of the vanished workmen. And that recovery will take time, and will be entirely useless unless it is possible to feed these workers when they have been collected. There have already been several attempts, not wholly successful, to collect the straying workers of particular industries. Thus, after the freeing of the oil-wells from the Whites, there was a general mobilization of naphtha workers. Many of these had bolted on or after the arrival of Krasnov or Denikin and gone far into Central Russia, settling where they could. So months passed before the Red Army definitely pushed the area of civil war beyond the oil-wells, that many of these refugees had taken new root and were unwilling to return. I believe, that in spite of the mobilization, the oil-wells are still short of men. In the coal districts also, which have passed through similar experiences, the proportion of skilled to unskilled labor is very much smaller than it was before the war.

There have also been two mobilizations of railway workers, and these, I think, may