The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome (free ebook novel .TXT) 📖

(piece-work, premiums for good work, etc.) imposed by the revolution in its desperate attempts to raise the productivity of labor. For this reason alone, he wrote, the first “Saturdaying” on the Moscow-Kazan railway was an event of historical significance, and not for Russia alone.

 

Whether Lenin was right or wrong in so thinking, “Saturdayings”

became a regular institution, like Dorcas meetings in Victorian England, like the thousands of collective working parties instituted in England during the war with Germany. It remains to be seen how long they will continue, and if they will survive peace when that comes. At present the most interesting point about them is the large proportion of non-Communists who take an enthusiastic part in them.

In many cases not more than ten per cent. of Communists are concerned, though they take the iniative in organizing the parties and in finding the work to be done. The movement spread like fire in dry grass, like the craze for roller-skating swept over England some years ago, and efforts were made to control it, so that the fullest use might be made of it.

In Moscow it was found worth while to set up a special Bureau for “Saturdayings.” Hospitals, railways, factories, or any other concerns working for the public good, notify this bureau that they need the sort of work a “Saturdaying”

provides. The bureau informs the local Communists where their services are required, and thus there is a minimum of wasted energy. The local Communists arrange the “Saturdayings,” and any one else joins in who wants.

These “Saturdayings” are a hardship to none because they are voluntary, except for members of the Communist Party, who are considered to have broken the party discipline if they refrain. But they can avoid the “Saturdayings” if they wish to by leaving the party. Indeed, Lenin points, out that the “Saturdayings” are likely to assist in clearing out of the party those elements which joined it with the hope of personal gain. He points out that the privileges of a Communists now consist in doing more work than other people in the rear, and, on the front, in having the certainty of being killed when other folk are merely taken prisoners.

 

The following are a few examples of the sort of work done in the “Saturdayings.” Briansk hospitals were improperly heated because of lack of the local transport necessary to bring them wood. The Communists organized a “Saturdaying,”

in which 900 persons took part, including military specialists (officers of the old army serving in the new), soldiers, a chief of staff, workmen and women. Having no horses, they harnessed themselves to sledges in groups of ten, and brought in the wood required. At Nijni 800 persons spent their Saturday afternoon in unloading barges. In the Basman district of Moscow there was a gigantic “Saturdaying” and “Sundaying”

in which 2,000 persons (in this case all but a little over 500

being Communists) worked in the heavy artillery shops, shifting materials, cleaning tramlines for bringing in fuel, etc.

Then there was a “Saturdaying” the main object of which was a general autumn cleaning of the hospitals for the wounded. One form of “Saturdaying” for women is going to the hospitals, talking with the wounded and writing letters for them, mending their clothes, washing sheets, etc. The majority of “Saturdayings” at present are concerned with transport work and with getting and shifting wood, because at the moment these are the chief difficulties. I have talked to many “Saturdayers,” Communist and non-Communist, and all alike spoke of these Saturday afternoons of as kind of picnic. On the other hand, I have met Communists who were accustomed to use every kind off ingenuity to find excuses not to take part in them and yet to preserve the good opinion of their local committee.

 

But even if the whole of the Communist Party did actually indulge in a working picnic once a week, it would not suffice to meet Russia’s tremendous needs. And, as I pointed out in the chapter specially devoted to the shortage of labor, the most serious need at present is to keep skilled workers at their jobs instead of letting them drift away into non-productive labor. No amount of Saturday picnics could do that, and it was obvious long ago that some other means, would have to be devised.

INDUSTRIAL CONSCRIPTION

The general principle of industrial conscription recognized by the Russian Constitution, section ii, chapter v, paragraph 18, which reads: “The Russian Socialist Federate Soviet Republic recognizes that work is an obligation on every citizen of the Republic,” and proclaims, “He who does not work shall not eat.” It is, however, one thing to proclaim such a principle and quite another to put it into action.

 

On December 17, 1919, the moment it became clear that there was a real possibility that the civil war was drawing to an end, Trotsky allowed the Pravda to print a memorandum of his, consisting of “theses” or reasoned notes about industrial conscription and the militia system. He points out that a Socialist State demands a general plan for the utilization of all the resources of a country, including its human energy. At the same time, “in the present economic chaos in which are mingled the broken fragments of the past and the beginnings of the future,” a sudden jump to a complete centralized economy of the country as a whole is impossible. Local initiative, local effort must not be sacrificed for the sake of a plan. At the same time industrial conscription is necessary for complete socialization. It cannot be regardless of individuality like military conscription. He suggests a subdivision of the State into territorial productive districts which should coincide with the territorial districts of the militia system which shall replace the regular army. Registration of labor necessary.

Necessary also to coordinate military and industrial registration. At demobilization the cadres of regiments, divisions, etc., should form the fundamental cadres of the militia. Instruction to this end should be included in the courses for workers and peasants who are training to become officers in every district. Transition to the militia system must be carefully and gradually accomplished so as not for a moment to leave the Republic defenseless. While not losing sight of these ultimate aims, it is necessary to decide on immediate needs and to ascertain exactly what amount of labor is necessary for their limited realization. He suggests the registration of skilled labor in the army. He suggests that a Commission under general direction of the Council of Public Economy should work out a preliminary plan and then hand it over to the War Department, so that means should be worked out for using the military apparatus for this new industrial purpose.

 

Trotsky’s twenty-four theses or notes must have been written in odd moments, now here now there, on the way from one front to another. They do not form a connected whole.

Contradictions jostle each other, and it is quite clear that Trotsky himself had no very definite plan in his head. But his notes annoyed and stimulated so many other people that they did perhaps precisely the work they were intended to do. Pravada printed them with a note from the editor inviting discussion. The Ekonomitcheskaya Jizn printed letter after letter from workmen, officials and others, attacking, approving and bringing new suggestions.

Larin, Semashko, Pyatakov, Bucharin all took a hand in the discussion. Larin saw in the proposals the beginning of the end of the revolution, being convinced that authority would pass from the democracy of the workers into the hands of the specialists. Rykov fell upon them with sturdy blows on behalf of the Trades Unions. All, however, agreed on the one point-that something of the sort was neccesary.

On December 27th a Commission for studying the question of industrial conscription was formed under the presidency of Trotsky. This Commission included the People’s Commissars, or Ministers, of Labor, Ways of Communication, Supply, Agriculture, War, and the Presidents of the Central Council of the Trades Unions and of the Supreme Council of Public Economy. They compiled a list of the principal questions before them, and invited anybody interested to bring them suggestions and material for discussion.

 

But the discussion was not limited to the newspapers or to this Commission. The question was discussed in Soviets and Conferences of every kind all over the country. Thus, on January 1st an All-Russian Conference of local “departments for the registration and distribution of labor,”

after prolonged argument, contributed their views. They pointed out (1) the need of bringing to work numbers of persons who instead of doing the skilled labor for which they were qualified were engaged in petty profiteering, etc.; (2) that there evaporation of skilled labor into unproductive speculation could at least be checked by the introduction of labor books, which would give some sort of registration of each citizen’s work; (3) that workmen can be brought back from the villages only for enterprises which are supplied with provisions or are situated in districts where there is plenty. (“The opinion that, in the absence of these preliminary conditions, it will be possible to draw workmen from the villages by measures of compulsion or mobilization is profoundly mistaken.”) (4) that there should be a census of labor and that the Trades Unions should be invited to protect the interests of the conscripted. Finally, this Conference approved the idea of using the already existing military organization for carrying out a labor census of the Red Army, and for the turning over to labor of parts of the army during demobilization, but opposed the idea of giving the military organization the work of labor registration and industrial conscription in general.

 

On January 22, 1920, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, after prolonged discussion of Trotsky’s rough memorandum, finally adopted and published a new edition of the “theses,” expanded, altered, almost unrecognizable, a reasoned body of theory entirely different from the bundle of arrows loosed at a venture by Trotsky.

They definitely accepted the principle of industrial conscription, pointing out the immediate reasons for it in the fact that Russia cannot look for much help from without and must somehow or other help herself.

 

Long before the All-Russian Congress of the Communist Party approved the theses of the Committee, one form of industrial conscription was already being tested at work.

Very early in January, when the discussion on the subject was at its height, the Soviet of the Third Army addressed itself to the Council of Defense of the Republic with an invitation to make use of this army (which at least for the moment had finished its military task) and to experiment with it as a labor army. The Council of Defense agreed.

Representatives of the Commissariats of Supply, Agriculture, Ways and Communications, Labor and the Supreme Council of Public Economy were sent to assist the Army Soviet. The army was proudly re-named “The First Revolutionary Army of Labor,” and began to issue communiques from the Labor front,” precisely like the communiques of an army in the field. I translate as a curiosity the first communique issued by a Labor Army’s Soviet:

 

“Wood prepared in the districts of Ishim, Karatulskaya, Omutinskaya, Zavodoutovskaya, Yalutorovska, Iushaly, Kamuishlovo, Turinsk, Altynai, Oshtchenkovo, Shadrinsk, 10,180 cubic sazhins.

Working days, 52,651. Taken to the railway stations, 5,334 cubic sazhins. Working days on transport, 22,840. One hundred carpenters detailed for the Kizelovsk mines. One hundred carpenters detailed for the bridge at Ufa. One engineer specialist detailed to the Government Council of Public Economy for repairing the mills of Chelyabinsk Government. One instructor accountant detailed for auditing the accounts of the economic organizations of Kamuishlov.

Repair of locomotives procceding in the works at Ekaterinburg.

January 20, 1920, midnight.”

 

The Labor Army’s Soviet received a report on the state of the district covered by the army with regard to supply and needed