Feeble Constitution - A Red-and-Green Russia 1917 Timeline
- Thread starter Salvador79
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Hnau
Banned
Brusilov had many great qualities and advantages, for example his mastery of logistics, preparation, timing, and his methodical, detail-oriented approach. Those would be powerful especially as an adviser or Chief of Staff or something related.
Haha, I just invented "Ravnevik" on the fly in trying to come up with a word for this emerging group of Russian leftists. I mean, they'll probably still just call themselves Leninists, Trotskyists, narodniks and the like, but ravnyy means "equal" in Russian, so...... I'm curious if you think another term will become popularized. That sounds like fascinating reading, good luck in tracking the ideological development from that source material! The non-Leninist stuff is the best
Haha, I just invented "Ravnevik" on the fly in trying to come up with a word for this emerging group of Russian leftists. I mean, they'll probably still just call themselves Leninists, Trotskyists, narodniks and the like, but ravnyy means "equal" in Russian, so...... I'm curious if you think another term will become popularized. That sounds like fascinating reading, good luck in tracking the ideological development from that source material! The non-Leninist stuff is the best
OK, you convinced me
The formation of a Unified Command of the Western Front will have created all sorts of new and weird positions which needed to be filled anyway...We ought not forget that the current People's Commission is still a coalition, and that's not just a formal observation. I haven't dwelled much on this so far, but I will give this a lot more attention in the future, middle-term at least. It's a coalition mainly of two big blocks: the SRs on the one hand, and the "International Revolutionary Social Democratic Labour Party Unification" bloc (many Mensheviks, many Mezhraiontsy, many Bolsheviks, some Internationalist Mensheviks, various Jewish Socialist factions, and a few more splinter products of the old RDSLP) on the other hand. (The third and smallest faction supporting the Coalition, the "Bread Mensheviks", have gravitated towards the IRSDLP unification bloc, too.)Haha, I just invented "Ravnevik" on the fly in trying to come up with a word for this emerging group of Russian leftists. I mean, they'll probably still just call themselves Leninists, Trotskyists, narodniks and the like, but ravnyy means "equal" in Russian, so...... I'm curious if you think another term will become popularized. That sounds like fascinating reading, good luck in tracking the ideological development from that source material! The non-Leninist stuff is the best
In November, those men (and a few women) from the left wing of both blocs who see, first and foremost, what they have in common with the left wing of the other bloc have banded together and taken the reins. But in both blocs, there are also divergent positions and interests at work, and while for now, there is enough of a common agenda to pursue, and primarily a war to be survived, this coalition isn't going to last forever. There is the very elementary fact that the Social Democracy is the party of the industrial proletariat and the SRs, while they have certainly gained ground in the towns, too, are still primarily the party of the peasantry. On an entire host of economic questions, these two segments of society have different, and often contradictory interests and positions. (I've alluded to the question of food price controls already - this is just one area where the Social Democrats, and especially the Bread Mensheviks with their support base in the unions, are not at all happy with the elimination of price caps enacted by the SR Vikhliaev. Lots of other conflicts loom around - from the evidently politicised allocation of credit through the new Inter-Soviet Office of Mutual Aid to things like railroad workers' strikes, where the stikers are all aligned to some shade of SD, while the SR's support base is not quite so fond of having the transportation of goods across the country disrupted.) And beyond the pure interests, there are deep cultural differences, too. All of this will play out more, and while I don't want to spoil too much, I can assure you that there isn't going to be just one Russian socialism emerging from this revolution. A term which would cover both trends would be really too large an umbrella.
Now, within Social Democracy, Russia's revolution and post-revolutionary political developments have so far strengthened what contemporary observers would have called the "Marxist Centre". Throughout most of WW1, social democracy was perceived to be divided into three camps: the Right (mostly Revisionists), who saw their loyalty first and foremost to their country and thus supported the war, and who advocated incremental reform without provoking too much conflict with the bourgeoisie; the Centre (both Revisionists and Marxists), who opposed the war and called for a "peace without annexations or indemnities", who also believed in democratic ways to achieve socialism but who were, at least rhetorically, willing to take up arms against the bourgeoisie to achieve and defend democracy and its socialist outcomes, and who neither equated international peace and democracy with playing by the bourgeoisie's rules, nor with the need to overthrow all structures and create socialism with dictatorial scratches on a blank slate, and the Left (Marxists only), who opposed the war unconditionally and hoped to overthrow the old regimes everywhere to create a new society with new humans. IOTL, the Russian October Revolution and the subsequent German November Revolution and its course over the next few months strengthened the Left and the Right, leaving the Centre weakened and uncomfortably on the fence, hence why it took so long for anything to grow again on the poisioned "death strip" between what we now call Social Democracy and those who would come to call themselves Communists.
ITTL, Russia's Social Democracy is mostly pursuing a Centrist policy - having actively sought peace at any even remotely tolerable terms, and only when this turned out not to be available, reluctantly supporting a continuation of the war, with its leaders - Axelrod, the Inokom, is the only SD among the three signatories of the passionate call from the last installment - seeking close ties with Wilson's administrations, whom they see as the most rational and "ultra-imperialist" of the Entente powers; domestically taking bold steps with economic reforms without asking the bourgeoisie and its parties first, but also not pushing full socialisation of the means of production yet when there is obviously no democratic majority to back this. If this goes well, it's going to strengthen the Centre within Social Democracy elsewhere, too. By the way, the assassinated Tokoi in Finland was also a Centrist SD.
If this is already world-altering, the more influential development, I think, is going to be the success of the SRs (that should come as no surprise, given the TL's title), and thus Narodnichestvo. IOTL, the ideology basically petered out after 1918, and while there were left-wing populists and movements for agrarian reform throughout the 20th century and there still are some around even today, the whole thing is marginalised by other conflict lines, dichotomies and oppositions (even though half the world's population is still living in rural contexts). In the short term, if we look at the leftist opposition in various countries or possible future countries in Eastern Europe, then quite clearly, if an opposition is going to overthrow the pro-CP national-liberal government of Bulgaria, then it's going to be the Agrarian Union; if Romania should veer to the left, then this means the Partidul Taranesc gains power; if independence-minded left-wingers are steering Croatia out of A-H, the Croatian Peasant Party is going to be among its leaders, and while in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, SDs are playing first fiddle, there are strong peasant parties in the mix there, too. Within the Union of Equals, Estonia features leftist agrarians in its government, and in Finland, the future development of Maalaisliitto is still open, but so far they've stood at the side of the SDs in the conflict against the bourgeois Right. I am certainly preparing myself for a lot of work (but I'm also really full of anticipation with regards to that) to flesh out a theoretically as well as practically appealing Narodnichestvo for the 20th century...
Hnau
Banned
That's great work Salvador! Yes, there are many groups that may rally against their imperialist overlords in the months to come, it will be interesting for us to see where things develop further! Like I said, utterly fascinating, you know it took a long time in alternate history before writers have explored such Russian, German, and eastern ideologies and have done it justice in this time period! You're really creating a great contribution to the genre here, and it's all because of your great ability at research and narrative. I know you have some competitors in this area and time of exploration, looking at you @GiantMonkeyMan, but it really does have an amazing potential here.
Narodnichestvo is extremely interesting. I took a liking to it at a young age even living in the United States. It has some similarities with Britain's Georgism, as I'm sure you know. I wonder if there could be some international narodnik organizations that might spread the ideology more successfully to the west and the international world than Bolshevism experienced, since it has more libertarian leanings. Their great legacy really was butchered by the forces of Lenin and Stalin in our world. What makes this world interesting is really get to go into the consequences of their beloved policies, and I guess those can go any which way, depending on implementation and world events spiraling out of control. Of course, I know what I'm saying is mild heresy because the narodniks were insistent that each land area on Earth developed its people into a certain character through common interests with each other in their environment. In other words, strategic international alliances never really came to the forefront of party discussions in OTL, the SR Party was after all marred by its reputation as backing a terrorist organization. Yet, politics will fly ahead of philosophy, as the Russians in this situation have to cultivate international cooperation in order to save their country from the brink of destruction from the Central Powers! What does that mean for their ideology, and isn't it such a great natural fit for an expansionistic ideology? Autonomy and democracy for all nations!! It's practically the line that the United States has used for ITS international adventures in the last century or so. While all this could happen, IMO, in your scenario, it really seems like the Russians have held onto stability by the skin of their teeth already, I can't believe the Spanish Flu is just about to hammer them! Best of luck to the brave Russian, Finnish, Turkish, and other soldiers in your world
Like I said, utterly fascinating, you know it took a long time in alternate history before writers have explored such Russian, German, and eastern ideologies and have done it justice in this time period! You're really creating a great contribution to the genre here, and it's all because of your great ability at research and narrative. I know you have some competitors in this area and time of exploration, looking at you @GiantMonkeyMan, but it really does have an amazing potential here. Narodnichestvo is extremely interesting. I took a liking to it at a young age even living in the United States. It has some similarities with Britain's Georgism, as I'm sure you know. I wonder if there could be some international narodnik organizations that might spread the ideology more successfully to the west and the international world than Bolshevism experienced, since it has more libertarian leanings. Their great legacy really was butchered by the forces of Lenin and Stalin in our world. What makes this world interesting is really get to go into the consequences of their beloved policies, and I guess those can go any which way, depending on implementation and world events spiraling out of control. Of course, I know what I'm saying is mild heresy because the narodniks were insistent that each land area on Earth developed its people into a certain character through common interests with each other in their environment. In other words, strategic international alliances never really came to the forefront of party discussions in OTL, the SR Party was after all marred by its reputation as backing a terrorist organization. Yet, politics will fly ahead of philosophy, as the Russians in this situation have to cultivate international cooperation in order to save their country from the brink of destruction from the Central Powers! What does that mean for their ideology, and isn't it such a great natural fit for an expansionistic ideology? Autonomy and democracy for all nations!! It's practically the line that the United States has used for ITS international adventures in the last century or so. While all this could happen, IMO, in your scenario, it really seems like the Russians have held onto stability by the skin of their teeth already, I can't believe the Spanish Flu is just about to hammer them! Best of luck to the brave Russian, Finnish, Turkish, and other soldiers in your world
What exactly does Narodnichestvo mean? Is it simply a call for more support for farmers and something like a return to agriculture? Am I missing something here? Do you think, perhaps, given its agricultural roots, that it might pave the way for a more environmentally conscious Russia? How is it dissimilar from the Narodniks who became terrorists and killed the Tsar? I'm just kinda out of my depth here
Hnau
Banned
I'd assume Salvador and GiantMonkeyMan are the experts now, but the narodnik ideology is called Narodnichestvo, basically means people-ism. Focus was on what they regarded as the basic embryo of revolutionary society, in their case unlike the Marxists they thought of it as the village commune. Land was to become a resource as free and shared by all "as sunshine, water, and the air", in other words it was to be democratized. Later, of course, many of the ideas of direct democracy got swallowed by the fact that the national party was the "second to last man standing" so to speak in the political battles of OTL Russia before the October Revolution and intended to emerge on the national stage, so most of the focus was on political rule through the Constituent Assembly. That probably has happened here, too. Yet, it appears in this world at the very least Chernov and Kamkov have accomplished the Repartition and will have probably given quite a bit of property over to rural village councils to parcel out. I imagine a lot of the kulak type folk (wealthier peasants, farmers, local artisans, etc) are going to lose quite a bit of land, and the former aristocratic estates??? Just gone.
These narodniks definitely have a history of terrorism, btw, against the imperial government to accomplish people's representation, as well as the Bolshevik leadership IOTL, but most SRs weren't violent terrorists. It was a peasant's party, it constituted the majority of the rural Russian population, whereas I assume the Social Democrats remain the popular ones in the cities among urban workers, and where most of the new intellectual discourse will be concentrated. There will be quite a bit of political tension for sure! Especially considering most of the SR peasantry were single-issue voters, that being land reform, and may disengage from politics in different ways over time especially if the war ends or disease strikes.
These narodniks definitely have a history of terrorism, btw, against the imperial government to accomplish people's representation, as well as the Bolshevik leadership IOTL, but most SRs weren't violent terrorists. It was a peasant's party, it constituted the majority of the rural Russian population, whereas I assume the Social Democrats remain the popular ones in the cities among urban workers, and where most of the new intellectual discourse will be concentrated. There will be quite a bit of political tension for sure! Especially considering most of the SR peasantry were single-issue voters, that being land reform, and may disengage from politics in different ways over time especially if the war ends or disease strikes.
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LOL I'm definitely not an expert - you probably mean Salvador79 Thank you for explaining. I just want to make sure I understand what @Salvador79 stated would be a prime influence on Russian political discourse ITTL. So you're basically stating that these Narodniks are different because they actually represent the peasants, unlike the terrorists. If so, then message received. Thanks!
Thank you for explaining. I just want to make sure I understand what @Salvador79 stated would be a prime influence on Russian political discourse ITTL. So you're basically stating that these Narodniks are different because they actually represent the peasants, unlike the terrorists. If so, then message received. Thanks!@Betelgeuse
What @Hnau said. Terrorism was quite an understandable means, given that there were no Democratic ways to exert any influence. At least, Former terrorists among the SRs were not at all unpopular among the peasantry.
Peasants had Land Reform on their Minds, but will they de-politicise thereafter? I doubt it. Each mir /obschina is connected to the rural soviet system by constitution now, and that's where decisions about road improvements, credits for mechanisation, co-operative investments in processing plants etc. are taken, the new healthcare is built Up, the new pension Funds are handled, emergency relief is administrated, Canal Projects decided etc. Also, Here is where resistance is organised If townfolk and their Parties want "Bread!" but don't want to give what's due.
And then there's all sorts of highly controversial stuff related to Religion coming Up...
As for early environmentalism, that's probably one strand emerging Here, but at the same time we ought Not forget Farmers are often those who See their vital interests at stake when e.g. a National Park is created, a biosphere protected, animal rights upheld etc.
I should probably also mention that Not only among the SDs, there is an Opposition against the coalition, too (Bukharin's Bolsheviks and Martov's Menshevik mixture), the same applies to Narodnichestvo, too, where Popular Socialist Labour (Trudoviks) Forms a centrist Opposition. From Update 10 and 11, you might glance that narodnik positions include some Dose of nationalism, too, and varying opinions in nationalised Industries.
What @Hnau said. Terrorism was quite an understandable means, given that there were no Democratic ways to exert any influence. At least, Former terrorists among the SRs were not at all unpopular among the peasantry.
Peasants had Land Reform on their Minds, but will they de-politicise thereafter? I doubt it. Each mir /obschina is connected to the rural soviet system by constitution now, and that's where decisions about road improvements, credits for mechanisation, co-operative investments in processing plants etc. are taken, the new healthcare is built Up, the new pension Funds are handled, emergency relief is administrated, Canal Projects decided etc. Also, Here is where resistance is organised If townfolk and their Parties want "Bread!" but don't want to give what's due.
And then there's all sorts of highly controversial stuff related to Religion coming Up...
As for early environmentalism, that's probably one strand emerging Here, but at the same time we ought Not forget Farmers are often those who See their vital interests at stake when e.g. a National Park is created, a biosphere protected, animal rights upheld etc.
I should probably also mention that Not only among the SDs, there is an Opposition against the coalition, too (Bukharin's Bolsheviks and Martov's Menshevik mixture), the same applies to Narodnichestvo, too, where Popular Socialist Labour (Trudoviks) Forms a centrist Opposition. From Update 10 and 11, you might glance that narodnik positions include some Dose of nationalism, too, and varying opinions in nationalised Industries.
I know it's only phrasing, but the first paragraph could be misinterpreted as pro - political violence. I know for a fact that that's not in your character, but I just want to let you know that it doesn't sound good on its own. Thank you for reading the rest of my question and for trying to ensure that I received an educated response.
Hm, maybe let's leave this on the clarifying note that, among the educated, the SR's terrorist episode was indeed controversially discussed, and is one reason for the split-off of the centrist Trudoviks. This has often been wielded against the SRs although, If you ask me, there was quite a lot more and worse political violence in 1917 and 1918 in OTL and to some extent ITTL, too. (And before, too.)
But, to avoid misunderstandings here, I am not condoning terrorism or any other Form of political violence.
@Hnau thank you for your Kind words! You know we're Standing on the shoulders of Giants, and in my case, you are one such Giant, your Lenin-Less World inspirng my quest to a great extent.
Expansionism vs Little Russian isolationism will soon become a controversy unless the counteroffensive backfires badly. In both blocs. With Trotsky, we already have an Icon for expansionist Left SD policies...a highly controversial one!
More success at exporting their ideology than the Bolsheviks is a tough Challenge! I mean, I See you probably mean how communism got discredited and this Limited its appeal later. But judging from how Communist Parties appeared Like mushrooms Out of nowhere in so many places in the 1920s, that was quite a lot of Export!
Narodnichestvo will try to compete Here, and Take steps in that direction. How that combines with its local particularism is an interesting paradox, but I think the US analogy is not so Bad for a number of reasons.
Expansionism vs Little Russian isolationism will soon become a controversy unless the counteroffensive backfires badly. In both blocs. With Trotsky, we already have an Icon for expansionist Left SD policies...a highly controversial one!
More success at exporting their ideology than the Bolsheviks is a tough Challenge! I mean, I See you probably mean how communism got discredited and this Limited its appeal later. But judging from how Communist Parties appeared Like mushrooms Out of nowhere in so many places in the 1920s, that was quite a lot of Export!
Narodnichestvo will try to compete Here, and Take steps in that direction. How that combines with its local particularism is an interesting paradox, but I think the US analogy is not so Bad for a number of reasons.
More Details on Repartitioning and different economic Policy positions between and among Narodniks and SDs tonight.
Sorry for the delay, wasn't able to finish this, will try again tomorrow.
Hnau
Banned
You’re right Betelgeuse, I mistyped. I meant Salvador no offense intended
The point about narodniks and exporting ideology is well taken. The communists were very motivated at spreading the Revolution right from the beginning. For the narodniks it’s going to take some time just to find the right framework for ideological evangelism, let alone all the other work needed in the enterprise. But I do wonder if in the long-run it has more potential than communism as an international ideology... meh, perhaps I’m misguided in the thought!
I’m looking forward to the update today
The point about narodniks and exporting ideology is well taken. The communists were very motivated at spreading the Revolution right from the beginning. For the narodniks it’s going to take some time just to find the right framework for ideological evangelism, let alone all the other work needed in the enterprise. But I do wonder if in the long-run it has more potential than communism as an international ideology... meh, perhaps I’m misguided in the thought!
I’m looking forward to the update today
I don't think you're misguided at all. This is certainly something I am spending a lot of thoughts on.
Maybe the next steps are to connect Russian Narodnik thought with similar (yet of course different - the in-built inter-culturalism of Narodnik thought is proving itself here, of course) schools of thought from elsewhere, intensify the exchange of ideas... You have already mentioned the close ties between Narodnik and Georgist thought in the 19th century; by the first quarter of the 20th century, the differences between Russian SRs and, say, US Progressives, Chinese reformers, and political thought arising in the context of the Indian struggle for independence (the Gandhi-Tolstoy links have even made it onto wikipedia) may be quite large, but perhaps that's not just an impediment, but also a great opportunity for cross-fertilisation. I have plans for a regular update, situated at some point in time around 1919/20, focusing in this direction. The author of this paper is going to be one Santeri Alkio...
I’m looking forward to the update today
It's not a regular update (the next regular update is still half-finished, but I hope to be able to send it to @Betelgeuse for editing tomorrow night), just a few more authorial comments...
OK, so some of the background stuff I'm posting here is probably known to many of you - you can just skip it in that case.
The Agricultural Question in Russia
In much of Russia, the last serfs were only emancipated in 1861. The overwhelming majority of them - as well as a good portion of peasants outside the Baltic and other Western regions who had been free even before 1861 - lived and now held their land in obshchina.
Throughout the last third of the 19th century, a very lively political debate centered around the reasons why the peasants' living standards did not improve after emancipation, or were even perceived to worsen. This was one of the key discussions in which Narodnik thought developed and deepened. The Narodniks and their political opponents, the so-called "Westerners", both agreed to some degree that under-development of Russia's agriculture was the root of the problem. But while the Westerners saw the obshchina system as part of the problem and proposed capitalist reforms, the Narodniks fervently defended the obshchina system, and blamed unfair and unproductive taxation, usurious rent, and the concentration of too much land outside the obshchinas in the hands of a small landowning group as the reasons why the obshchina-organised peasantry could not escape their abject poverty.
After the Peasant Revolts of 1905/6, the conservative reformer Pyotr Stolypin enacted a number of Westerner-style reforms, which incentivised individual farmers and families to leave the obshchina, to take out loans to improve productivity etc. Narodnik resistance against them began to splinter: on the one hand because a small faction agreed to play by the tsar's rules and participate in the pre-War Duma elections while the majority remained opposed to participation in them, on the other hand, and more importantly for our matter at hand, because the discourse on economic theory had developed dramatically, and both classical and Marxist thought seeped in and threw idealised views of the obshchina into question. Even among the SRs, which were the larger and more left-leaning party within Narodnichestvo, there were few who advocated a reversion to collective taxation, parcelling ever tinier pieces of land in the obshchina out to a growing population and swapping it again at the next repartition etc. That the large noble estates and the holdings of the church needed to be expropriated and partitioned among the peasantry was a position still held by all Narodniks, but while their right wing had begun to see wisdom in property rights and thus proposed expropriation with compensation, and also wanted to keep and strengthen Stolypin's very modest support for modern co-operative structures, the left wing had absorbed a dose of Marxist thought, which mostly confused them: it strengthened their resolve to reject calls for compensations, but it also weakened their resolve in resistance against overcoming old obshchina traditions, leaving them with the half-baked notion, or even: the mere hope that a society-wide socialist revolution would lead to modernisation and improvement, so that the old obshchina need not be restored, but should rather see a rebirth on a wider level.
This is still the wider domain-specific discourse we're finding ourselves in when the Great War begins. As it unfolds, a second and unprecedented crisis appeared: sinking supplies of agricultural products. Russia had always been a net exporter of agricultural products. Through 1916 and 1917, output fell dramatically. Various reasons are given with the benefit of hindsight: war-induced food price caps which disincentivised agricultural extra-work and the marketing of their produce and incentivised hoarding, war-induced personnel scarcity and a number of other war-related scarcities (in fertiliser, machinery, even in credit), or generally the (also war-induced) hyperinflation which damaged commercial relations across the board.
When ITTL the SRs almost obtain a majority in the Constituent Assembly and form two consecutive coalitions in which they are leading and various Social Democrats, Autonomists etc. play the roles of junior partners, they can and must go ahead with Land Reform, and they did. The way they did it was by defining rather loose general terms by national (Russian! this is important: Vikhliaev's Land Reform Act explicitly does not apply to the other federative republics) law: that there shall be no property in land, that possession of land shall not exceed what one can productively use, that the local ground rules how usufructuary / possession rights are to be awarded, transferred, revoked etc. shall be defined by Peasant Councils on the Uyezd Level, while actual parcelling, if it is to occur, still takes places in the mir / obshchina.
What does this mean? It means that, across Russia, the land reform takes all sorts of different shapes. In the Central Agricultural Zone, where poverty was worst and radicalisation most widespread, it certainly meant completely equal parceling (since even then it’s hardly enough for everyone to get by). In regions with a greater degree of Khutors, be they of Cossack descent or not, the transition may be much less sharp. How the church is treated will often depend on the charisma of its personnel and how well they interact with the new powerful people – from merely enforcing a “land use tax” on them over leaving e.g. monasteries with what they need to maintain themselves in a wider sense (i.e. including enabling them to do their clerical duties) to leaving them with nothing but what the clergymen need to subsist.
This is not just a product of the in-built localist strand in Narodnichestvo – it’s also an outflow of the weakness of any central institutions and the new-found power of a peasantry which has taken up arms, and an outflow of the insecurity in which the SRs found themselves in in terms of agro-economic theory.
And if we’re looking beyond Russia, the picture gets yet more diverse.
More on that, and on industrial policy, tomorrow if I find the time beside writing the regular update.
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Cont.:
Even though the Land Reform Act provides such a great leeway and space for local adaptation – which also lends power to the groups and charismatic individuals in them which control the local peasant councils –, there are still parts of the Russian Federative Republic where they were bound to exacerbate tensions. And I don’t mean tensions between (former) landlords and peasants.
The provision that possession is tied to “direct productive use of the land” will have been like gas on the fire of ethnic/anti-colonial conflicts in the Central Asian steppe. Where a region is solidly inhabited only by non-Russian groups (like Semirechye), conflicts are maybe avoided, but wherever there are Russian settlers and cotton planters living side by side with nomadic Kazakhs or Kyrgyz, the former, who were IOTL much quicker to organize in soviets (the indigenous population used other forms, it’s not that they weren’t affected by the revolution), may well interpret this as a carte blanche for further enclosures. When such decisions become as-good-as-law, groups with an at least partly nomadic way of securing their livelihood will be torn between attempting to force their way into these soviets and reform them from within / overwhelm the settlers, or pushing for autonomy or independence, so that their own forms of organization will take the place of the Russians’ soviets (with the main difference between autonomy and independence being that the latter also allows you to expel the Russians and Cossacks, which was a common demand and enjoyed some popularity after the bloodbath of 1916).
Speaking about autonomy… the situation in Ukraine, Finland, and the Baltic is considerably different. The latter two have a long(er) tradition of a free peasantry, and in Ukraine, both old Cossack traditions and the modern co-operative movement were significant factors. Across the board, though, some type of agrarian reform was called for here, too, but it took or will take different shapes in each country. (I have no idea how things could be in Georgia and Armenia, to be honest – if there are any experts on this region in this thread, I’ll gladly listen to them…)
As for Finland, we have already discussed that the land reform must improve the lot of the “renters”, and this is what Tokoi’s Senate has done, too. In the Finnish Land Reform, there is no mentioning of uyezd soviets and the mir, of course; instead, legal provisions are uniform and clear-cut across the entire federative republic, including the preservation of private property in land and modest compensations for the expropriated.
The two Baltic federative republics established so far – Estonia and Latvia – have not yet legislated their land reforms, and now they’re under German occupation. If they are liberated and restored, the mood is going to have changed somewhat… taking on a more anti-German tone. Expect expropriations to very much target the Baltendeutsche nobility.
Ukraine is the most difficult candidate. In a number of regions, the situation is as desperate and radicalized as in the worst parts of Russia proper, but in the general picture, including the distribution of parliamentary seats in the Centralna Rada, even without Kaledin’s host of Don Cossacks resisting the Revolution and the incorporation into the Ukrainian Federative Republic so far, there is still a lot more Cossack influence, less agricultural communalism (or communalism of a different sort, one which doesn’t equate to negating individual property), and a stronger co-operative movement along Western lines. The Ukrainian SR leadership is, thus, rather centre-right, when compared to the wider SR family in the Constituent Assembly. On the ground, though, facts have been created by the peasants in some places – the Centralna Rada is in a difficult position here. Both the moderate SDs and the moderate SRs who have so far alternated in leading the young federative republic have sought to avoid openly taking sides in this class struggle because they rely on both nationalist-minded members of the privileged classes to enlist in their territorial defense forces, revolutionary-minded peasant militia to support the government’s course of defending against the Germans (and defiantly maintaining the independence should Petrograd/Moscow get second thoughts or any other funny ideas about Ukraine’s autonomy), and at least some Cossacks to back them over Kaledin, too. Therefore, Land Reform has not yet been completed in Ukraine; the bill is still being debated in the Rada’s sub-committees and in the plenary, again and again, and the SRs are torn among themselves as to how radical (i.e. how close to the Russian version) they want it to be. So far, the Rada has not been able to convince itself of the obvious solution – copying Russia’s leeway for local pluralism – yet, because its young nationalism means that dangerous illusions of “unity” are much more present. If things are to remain stable, this is probably where the country should head, though. If they don’t, then some part of the country is likely to split off and align with other powers soon…
Industrial Policies and Social Democracy
This section is somewhat short-ish, as I don’t aim to give you a portrait of Russian industrialization. I am merely trying to clarify one point – where hindsight is often blocking us from seeing how the situation looked to contemporaries.
The fact that there hasn’t been an all-out nationalization of Russia’s industry yet – in contrast to what happened after the October Revolution – is not a sign of “more moderate social-democrats” participating in the governing coalitions, or of the SRs favouring market economies, or whatever. I can only stress how difficult it is for me not to apply knowledge, categories, and models to the Russian situation which IOTL we have only gained AFTER the October Revolution and the economic Socialist Calculation Debate of the 1920s.
Today there is a near-consensus that a “centralized command economy” leads to very serious misallocations – this is how famines in North Korea and Venezuela, shortages in Cuba etc. are commonly understood, not only by people of a right-wing persuasion, but also by the vast majority of leftists. Although this is, in every individual case, a gross over-simplification (there are always more factors at play), the general tendency of the explanation is right. Running highly dynamic industrial economies without any sort of market mechanism appears to be an approach which has not yet yielded results which can compete with (more indirectly politically managed or “tamed”) markets anywhere. The few people who still advocate such policies are unregenerate communists, a very small radical fringe.
Now, all of this is because we have the benefit of hindsight, the Socialist Calculation Debate, and all sorts of alternative (“third way”) approaches (the welfare state / social security, various schools of monetary and fiscal policies etc.), which we have come to associate with “Social Democracy” (as opposed to "Communism"), but which all have only developed in response to the failures of both centralized command economies (in the Soviet Union) and laissez-faire capitalism (with the Great Depression as the last major shock in that direction).
In 1917/18, people could not have been aware of these consequences of a centralized command economy. There had been a few voluntary utopian experiments here and there with abolishing markets, which had mixed results, but which most socialists (and many non-socialists, too) interpreted, with regards to their shortcomings, in culturalist terms – explaining them either as results of religious bigotry, or too traditional / too modern social views – or in terms of scale (too small to survive and thrive in a competitive world). Anti-socialist opposition to such ideas were – again, very oversimplified – either from those who didn’t want to lose their wealth (even if it was just a few shares), or based on meritocratic (“But those who are frugal and industrious must be rewarded!”) or Darwinist (“Can’t treat lazy drunkards and clever, sober geniuses alike – or else we’ll all end up as the former and we don’t even have anyone to beg from!”) logic. Within Social Democracy, where there was opposition to ideas like Lenin’s, who had speculated long before October that a socialist state could very well function like the Post Office, it was not a rejection of the end result, but fear with regards to the way to get there. “Moderate” socialists in 1917/18 did not envision a mixed economy as their end goal (not even the staunchest Revisionists) – what made them “moderates” was that they didn’t want to have the blood of the class enemy on their hands (and this was what the unacceptable “radicalism” of the Bolsheviks was associated with from mid-1918 onwards, for quite a number of years to come).
Thus, when there is a “socialist” majority in the Constituent Assembly, and socialist-minded soviets are de facto in control of most of the country, Mensheviks, Mezhraiontsy, Bolsheviks, Vperedists, Gorkyists etc. did not differ much on the socio-economic structures they envisioned to emerge: capitalism was to be overcome, period. And at least the left wing of the SRs would agree.
So why have they not socialized the means of production across the board yet? (There have been some socializations, mostly in natural resources – which is another reason why the Commission is having such troubles with granting its Muslim South independence: that’s where the Baku Oil is, too, which they have only recently declared to be national property of the Russian Federative Republic… -, but also some industrial enterprises on a local level where provincial workers’ soviets have given their go-ahead to factory committees taking over their shops, often in the context of bankruptcies and the like, where the alternative to worker takeover would have been shutdown and unemployment.)
I see three reasons for this. The first is the same as in the case of the recognition of tsarist debt: The Commission is aware that they need to stay within the Entente, and they want to be in a good international position after the war, which allows for some degree of safety – and quite a lot of industrial ventures across Russia are fully or partly owned by foreign capital.
The second is the localist streak in Narodnik thought. The SRs are seeing the role of the soviets, now that a democratic CA and government have been elected and soon a democratic Duma, President, and Government will be elected, as macro-managing economic questions locally and regionally. Socialism based on such local soviet structures would either turn industry into public works like in a Municipalist system, or it could hand over individual factories to their individual workers’ committees, like in a Syndicalist system. To many Russian SDs, this is not how they envisioned socialism, and Lenin has already in the late summer of 1917 called the whole concept a “new and perverted version of capitalism”. Their thoughts look a lot more like OTL’s Gosplan – and why would they not, see above. The SRs, on the other hand, are not particularly happy with the idea of a top-heavy centralized office running everything – not because they think it would be economically inefficient, no, they have no way of anticipating that, but because they fear a Petrograd / Muscovite bureaucracy misunderstanding / not knowing what “the people” across the vast countryside do or want. Their crisis of identification with the old obshchina model has not made things easier for them, either, as they can certainly abstract and apply the whole debate about it to the question of common ownership of industries.
And the third reason, related to the second, is that there really isn’t the power structure yet to manage things centrally, and our Russian socialists, standing firmly on the ground of democratic structures and having to conduct a war, and especially those of a Narodnik background, are averse to throwing structures out the window without knowing how to replace them, given that they don’t particularly like to concentrate power in a top-heavy central administration (see above).
This is another area where Narodnik and Social Democratic policies might soon diverge more clearly, though (and especially when the war is over). Trotsky’s adventure in Finland was a hint at how some envision things could also go, and to some among the more impatient Marxist Social Democrats, he is a hero for having catalyzed worker takeovers of the Southern Finnish industry (although the more perspicacious are also observing that this adventure didn’t last very long…).
Even though the Land Reform Act provides such a great leeway and space for local adaptation – which also lends power to the groups and charismatic individuals in them which control the local peasant councils –, there are still parts of the Russian Federative Republic where they were bound to exacerbate tensions. And I don’t mean tensions between (former) landlords and peasants.
The provision that possession is tied to “direct productive use of the land” will have been like gas on the fire of ethnic/anti-colonial conflicts in the Central Asian steppe. Where a region is solidly inhabited only by non-Russian groups (like Semirechye), conflicts are maybe avoided, but wherever there are Russian settlers and cotton planters living side by side with nomadic Kazakhs or Kyrgyz, the former, who were IOTL much quicker to organize in soviets (the indigenous population used other forms, it’s not that they weren’t affected by the revolution), may well interpret this as a carte blanche for further enclosures. When such decisions become as-good-as-law, groups with an at least partly nomadic way of securing their livelihood will be torn between attempting to force their way into these soviets and reform them from within / overwhelm the settlers, or pushing for autonomy or independence, so that their own forms of organization will take the place of the Russians’ soviets (with the main difference between autonomy and independence being that the latter also allows you to expel the Russians and Cossacks, which was a common demand and enjoyed some popularity after the bloodbath of 1916).
Speaking about autonomy… the situation in Ukraine, Finland, and the Baltic is considerably different. The latter two have a long(er) tradition of a free peasantry, and in Ukraine, both old Cossack traditions and the modern co-operative movement were significant factors. Across the board, though, some type of agrarian reform was called for here, too, but it took or will take different shapes in each country. (I have no idea how things could be in Georgia and Armenia, to be honest – if there are any experts on this region in this thread, I’ll gladly listen to them…)
As for Finland, we have already discussed that the land reform must improve the lot of the “renters”, and this is what Tokoi’s Senate has done, too. In the Finnish Land Reform, there is no mentioning of uyezd soviets and the mir, of course; instead, legal provisions are uniform and clear-cut across the entire federative republic, including the preservation of private property in land and modest compensations for the expropriated.
The two Baltic federative republics established so far – Estonia and Latvia – have not yet legislated their land reforms, and now they’re under German occupation. If they are liberated and restored, the mood is going to have changed somewhat… taking on a more anti-German tone. Expect expropriations to very much target the Baltendeutsche nobility.
Ukraine is the most difficult candidate. In a number of regions, the situation is as desperate and radicalized as in the worst parts of Russia proper, but in the general picture, including the distribution of parliamentary seats in the Centralna Rada, even without Kaledin’s host of Don Cossacks resisting the Revolution and the incorporation into the Ukrainian Federative Republic so far, there is still a lot more Cossack influence, less agricultural communalism (or communalism of a different sort, one which doesn’t equate to negating individual property), and a stronger co-operative movement along Western lines. The Ukrainian SR leadership is, thus, rather centre-right, when compared to the wider SR family in the Constituent Assembly. On the ground, though, facts have been created by the peasants in some places – the Centralna Rada is in a difficult position here. Both the moderate SDs and the moderate SRs who have so far alternated in leading the young federative republic have sought to avoid openly taking sides in this class struggle because they rely on both nationalist-minded members of the privileged classes to enlist in their territorial defense forces, revolutionary-minded peasant militia to support the government’s course of defending against the Germans (and defiantly maintaining the independence should Petrograd/Moscow get second thoughts or any other funny ideas about Ukraine’s autonomy), and at least some Cossacks to back them over Kaledin, too. Therefore, Land Reform has not yet been completed in Ukraine; the bill is still being debated in the Rada’s sub-committees and in the plenary, again and again, and the SRs are torn among themselves as to how radical (i.e. how close to the Russian version) they want it to be. So far, the Rada has not been able to convince itself of the obvious solution – copying Russia’s leeway for local pluralism – yet, because its young nationalism means that dangerous illusions of “unity” are much more present. If things are to remain stable, this is probably where the country should head, though. If they don’t, then some part of the country is likely to split off and align with other powers soon…
Industrial Policies and Social Democracy
This section is somewhat short-ish, as I don’t aim to give you a portrait of Russian industrialization. I am merely trying to clarify one point – where hindsight is often blocking us from seeing how the situation looked to contemporaries.
The fact that there hasn’t been an all-out nationalization of Russia’s industry yet – in contrast to what happened after the October Revolution – is not a sign of “more moderate social-democrats” participating in the governing coalitions, or of the SRs favouring market economies, or whatever. I can only stress how difficult it is for me not to apply knowledge, categories, and models to the Russian situation which IOTL we have only gained AFTER the October Revolution and the economic Socialist Calculation Debate of the 1920s.
Today there is a near-consensus that a “centralized command economy” leads to very serious misallocations – this is how famines in North Korea and Venezuela, shortages in Cuba etc. are commonly understood, not only by people of a right-wing persuasion, but also by the vast majority of leftists. Although this is, in every individual case, a gross over-simplification (there are always more factors at play), the general tendency of the explanation is right. Running highly dynamic industrial economies without any sort of market mechanism appears to be an approach which has not yet yielded results which can compete with (more indirectly politically managed or “tamed”) markets anywhere. The few people who still advocate such policies are unregenerate communists, a very small radical fringe.
Now, all of this is because we have the benefit of hindsight, the Socialist Calculation Debate, and all sorts of alternative (“third way”) approaches (the welfare state / social security, various schools of monetary and fiscal policies etc.), which we have come to associate with “Social Democracy” (as opposed to "Communism"), but which all have only developed in response to the failures of both centralized command economies (in the Soviet Union) and laissez-faire capitalism (with the Great Depression as the last major shock in that direction).
In 1917/18, people could not have been aware of these consequences of a centralized command economy. There had been a few voluntary utopian experiments here and there with abolishing markets, which had mixed results, but which most socialists (and many non-socialists, too) interpreted, with regards to their shortcomings, in culturalist terms – explaining them either as results of religious bigotry, or too traditional / too modern social views – or in terms of scale (too small to survive and thrive in a competitive world). Anti-socialist opposition to such ideas were – again, very oversimplified – either from those who didn’t want to lose their wealth (even if it was just a few shares), or based on meritocratic (“But those who are frugal and industrious must be rewarded!”) or Darwinist (“Can’t treat lazy drunkards and clever, sober geniuses alike – or else we’ll all end up as the former and we don’t even have anyone to beg from!”) logic. Within Social Democracy, where there was opposition to ideas like Lenin’s, who had speculated long before October that a socialist state could very well function like the Post Office, it was not a rejection of the end result, but fear with regards to the way to get there. “Moderate” socialists in 1917/18 did not envision a mixed economy as their end goal (not even the staunchest Revisionists) – what made them “moderates” was that they didn’t want to have the blood of the class enemy on their hands (and this was what the unacceptable “radicalism” of the Bolsheviks was associated with from mid-1918 onwards, for quite a number of years to come).
Thus, when there is a “socialist” majority in the Constituent Assembly, and socialist-minded soviets are de facto in control of most of the country, Mensheviks, Mezhraiontsy, Bolsheviks, Vperedists, Gorkyists etc. did not differ much on the socio-economic structures they envisioned to emerge: capitalism was to be overcome, period. And at least the left wing of the SRs would agree.
So why have they not socialized the means of production across the board yet? (There have been some socializations, mostly in natural resources – which is another reason why the Commission is having such troubles with granting its Muslim South independence: that’s where the Baku Oil is, too, which they have only recently declared to be national property of the Russian Federative Republic… -, but also some industrial enterprises on a local level where provincial workers’ soviets have given their go-ahead to factory committees taking over their shops, often in the context of bankruptcies and the like, where the alternative to worker takeover would have been shutdown and unemployment.)
I see three reasons for this. The first is the same as in the case of the recognition of tsarist debt: The Commission is aware that they need to stay within the Entente, and they want to be in a good international position after the war, which allows for some degree of safety – and quite a lot of industrial ventures across Russia are fully or partly owned by foreign capital.
The second is the localist streak in Narodnik thought. The SRs are seeing the role of the soviets, now that a democratic CA and government have been elected and soon a democratic Duma, President, and Government will be elected, as macro-managing economic questions locally and regionally. Socialism based on such local soviet structures would either turn industry into public works like in a Municipalist system, or it could hand over individual factories to their individual workers’ committees, like in a Syndicalist system. To many Russian SDs, this is not how they envisioned socialism, and Lenin has already in the late summer of 1917 called the whole concept a “new and perverted version of capitalism”. Their thoughts look a lot more like OTL’s Gosplan – and why would they not, see above. The SRs, on the other hand, are not particularly happy with the idea of a top-heavy centralized office running everything – not because they think it would be economically inefficient, no, they have no way of anticipating that, but because they fear a Petrograd / Muscovite bureaucracy misunderstanding / not knowing what “the people” across the vast countryside do or want. Their crisis of identification with the old obshchina model has not made things easier for them, either, as they can certainly abstract and apply the whole debate about it to the question of common ownership of industries.
And the third reason, related to the second, is that there really isn’t the power structure yet to manage things centrally, and our Russian socialists, standing firmly on the ground of democratic structures and having to conduct a war, and especially those of a Narodnik background, are averse to throwing structures out the window without knowing how to replace them, given that they don’t particularly like to concentrate power in a top-heavy central administration (see above).
This is another area where Narodnik and Social Democratic policies might soon diverge more clearly, though (and especially when the war is over). Trotsky’s adventure in Finland was a hint at how some envision things could also go, and to some among the more impatient Marxist Social Democrats, he is a hero for having catalyzed worker takeovers of the Southern Finnish industry (although the more perspicacious are also observing that this adventure didn’t last very long…).
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Hnau
Banned
That's a great explanation of the land reforms accomplished so far. It really is a much smarter and more realistic policy, especially with the continuing war. I understand why the Bolsheviks will be arguing its capitalism by other means, because evidently the state is going to be hands-off when it comes to productive activity by free peasants and workers democratically distributing land and infrastructure, so that's something of a market system. If I could speak as to the actual efficiency of such a system in Russia, I would have to say that Scissors Crisis notwithstanding it probably will still be a better policy than the War Communism model during the OTL civil war, which broke down the social contract as it effectively was nationalized theft. If the system endures, it'll certainly be a significant improvement upon OTL's Soviet agricultural collectivization.
This link explains very well the crisis experienced by the OTL Russian peasantry from the end of the war on through the 1930s and beyond. They were virtually liquidated as a class by the experience of Communist agricultural collectivization. In this timeline, despite any negative critique one can make of the extremely experimental land policy and mixed market economy, there will be a lot of horror avoided. Just by improving how many cattle, swine, horses survive in Russia, you could radically alter the health of the peasantry and increase economic activity. There will be famines... *cough* maybe sooner than we'd like to see, but they'll have less of a death toll with more food resources available, and a more competent bureaucracy with more friendly foreign assistance, and the beneficial effect will compound, as there will be more labor available later for more harvests and sowing. Consider that Bolshevik collectivization (AFTER they instituted the NEP and let the rich peasants and tradesmen thrive, the very people they would target and kill) in addition to famine killed perhaps 6-9 million peasants and up to 14 million overall into the 1930s. Perhaps increasing food supply in short term, but long-term that's a lot of lost productivity, invention, and labor to say nothing of the human lives!
I can't speak as to what might ultimately happen with anything like the Scissors Crisis in multiparty politics, but my thought is that voters would turn against peasants if they start buying less and growing less food because of a post-war drop in crop prices. That would basically be a fuck you to your countrymen even when times are good and the war has been won! Whether the peasants do will also depend on whether industrial manufacturing can rebound faster and more efficiently before the mid-1920s, and would probably be less of an issue in any case because the peasants will probably overall be in a better situation without War Communism and with the reforms and peace in the countryside, but it'll still be noteworthy in multiparty politics.
Then, there's the fact that after collectivization, the kolkhozniks didn't have the freedom of movement until the 1970s... if that's avoided here, it's going to do much for Russia's economic and cultural development.
Lol, Trotsky for the win in this world!! I love that he's a hero to the Navy here, and to Finnish workers alike!
This link explains very well the crisis experienced by the OTL Russian peasantry from the end of the war on through the 1930s and beyond. They were virtually liquidated as a class by the experience of Communist agricultural collectivization. In this timeline, despite any negative critique one can make of the extremely experimental land policy and mixed market economy, there will be a lot of horror avoided. Just by improving how many cattle, swine, horses survive in Russia, you could radically alter the health of the peasantry and increase economic activity. There will be famines... *cough* maybe sooner than we'd like to see, but they'll have less of a death toll with more food resources available, and a more competent bureaucracy with more friendly foreign assistance, and the beneficial effect will compound, as there will be more labor available later for more harvests and sowing. Consider that Bolshevik collectivization (AFTER they instituted the NEP and let the rich peasants and tradesmen thrive, the very people they would target and kill) in addition to famine killed perhaps 6-9 million peasants and up to 14 million overall into the 1930s. Perhaps increasing food supply in short term, but long-term that's a lot of lost productivity, invention, and labor to say nothing of the human lives!
I can't speak as to what might ultimately happen with anything like the Scissors Crisis in multiparty politics, but my thought is that voters would turn against peasants if they start buying less and growing less food because of a post-war drop in crop prices. That would basically be a fuck you to your countrymen even when times are good and the war has been won! Whether the peasants do will also depend on whether industrial manufacturing can rebound faster and more efficiently before the mid-1920s, and would probably be less of an issue in any case because the peasants will probably overall be in a better situation without War Communism and with the reforms and peace in the countryside, but it'll still be noteworthy in multiparty politics.
Then, there's the fact that after collectivization, the kolkhozniks didn't have the freedom of movement until the 1970s... if that's avoided here, it's going to do much for Russia's economic and cultural development.
Lol, Trotsky for the win in this world!! I love that he's a hero to the Navy here, and to Finnish workers alike!
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A lot of Finnish workers will curse his name for decades to come, considering the way his forces more or less brought the civil war to Finland when they retreated northwards.
Thank you
I hope I'm not wanking Russia overly here and overestimating the correctional effects of having a democratically elected parliament with a leftist, but splintered majority, where decisions need a lot of negotiating.
But: Yes, it's hard to conceive of a worse fate for the Russian and Ukrainian peasantry than that of OTL's 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Improving their lot should be so easy as to not yet count as a wank ;-)
When the war is over, agriculture is certain to recover faster than industrial production, I'm not spoling much by that prediction. But if ITTL the Russian market is saturated, in contrast to OTL there's nothing (well, not nothing, but considerably less trade barriers than IOTL) stopping them from co-operating in exporting this surplus, as Russia had done for many years before the Great War. Also, if the Russian industry isn't competitive, Russian or Ukrainian farmer co-ops could start buying foreign tractors, threshing machines, refrigerators etc., not to speak of consumer goods. A crisis in industrial production is certainly going to be a nasty thing even for a multi-party democracy, but a Scissors Crisis is not something I'd expect to see ITTL.
Yes, given his OTL record with the Kronstadt sailors, that's some bitter irony here.
I quite agree. When will both sides discover this? ;-)
True.
Trotsky may have cursed that decision, too, although when they were encircled on all three other sides in Petrograd, his other choices would have been a likely futile attempt to break out (with lots of civilians!), or surrender, so...
I was not thinking so much about Finnish workers celebrating him (after all, he did start a big riot there, but then, when push came to shove, he simply disappeared across the sea...), but revolutionary Marxists across Russia (and maybe other countries, too, as far as censorship allows them to receive such news coverage).