Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  The CSMR has continued its efforts to support the rights of soldiers and their families during the Second Chechen War (September 1999-) but with much more limited success and less public support. See also: CHECHNYA AND CHECHENS; CIVIL SOCIETY, DEVELOPMENT OF; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Lambroschini, Sophie. “Russia: Expressions Of Civil Society Gain Ground.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/1999/11/ F.RU.991130131712.html (Accessed November 12, 2002).

  JACOB W. KIPP

  COMMITTEES OF THE VILLAGE POOR

  Committees of the Village Poor (komitety dereven-skoy bednoty or kombedy in Russian) were peasant organizations created by the Bolshevik government in 1918 to procure grain and create a revolutionary counterweight to the traditional peasant commune.

  Bolshevik ideologists viewed peasant communities as divided between a small minority of rich kulaks and a majority of poor peasants. The kulaks controlled local soviets and traditional peasant communes, hoarded grain, and hired poor peasants to till their extensive lands. The kombedy, selected by poor peasants, would break this power, distributing food and consumer goods to the rural poor and assisting in expropriating grain from the kulaks for delivery to the city. With their knowledge of local conditions, they would be far more effective at finding hidden grain than food-supply detachments from the city.

  In practice, the committees failed to fulfill the hopes communist leaders had for them. Peasants made no firm distinction between the village soviet, the village commune, and the committee of the rural poor, and the committee was rarely more responsive to central control than the first two had been. Food supply officials complained that the kombedy focused too little attention on procuring grain and pursued local interests at the expense of the state. Most grain gathered by the kombedy was redistributed within the peasant community. Some committees used their powers to rob fellow peasants or to settle old scores. Bringing the revolution to the countryside did not result in more bread for the city.

  Attempts to requisition grain by force, depredations of the kombedy, and an ill-timed attempt at conscription led to uprisings throughout central Russia in November 1918. While Red Army detachments quickly suppressed the poorly organized peasant groups, the 6th Congress of Soviets decided to eliminate the Committees of the Village Poor in November 1918. It ordered new elections to local soviets in which kulaks would not participate. These new, more reliable soviets would replace the committees. This process was little more than a face-saving gesture, as the new soviets were no more pliable than the institutions they replaced. Communist government retreated to the cities, and the only influence it had over rural society was exercised by armed grain-procurement and recruitment detachments.

  The kombed experiment failed to create a rural government that was responsive to the center, and failed to procure significant amounts of grain. It did mobilize thousands of peasants to join the Communist Party (including Brezhnev-era ideologue Mikhail Suslov), but without creating a significant Party presence in the countryside. Ambitious, energetic rural party members moved to the cities or joined the Red Army, while most of the members remaining in the villages were soon purged for inactivity. See also: AGRICULTURE; COLLECTIVE FARM; COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Brovkin, Vladimir, ed. (1997). The Bolsheviks in Russian Society. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Figes, Orlando. (1989). Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution (1917-1921). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lih, Lars. (1990). Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  A. DELANO DUGARM

  COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES

  COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES

  The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was established on December 8, 1991, in the Belovezh Accords, which also brought an end to the Soviet Union. These accords were signed by leaders from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and on December 21, 1991, in the Almaty Delcaration and Proctocol to these accords, eight additional states (Moldavia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkemenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan) confirmed their intention to join the CIS and accept the demise of the Soviet state. Georgia joined the CIS in December 1993, bringing total membership to twelve states (the Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia never joined). The organization had several goals, including coordination of members’ foreign and security policies, development of a common economic space, fostering human rights and inter-ethnic concord, maintenance of the military assets of the former USSR, creation of shared transportation and communications networks, environmental security, regulation of migration policy, and efforts to combat organized crime. The CIS had a variety of institutions through which it attempted to accomplish these goals: Council of Heads of State, Council of Heads of Government, Council of Foreign Ministers, Council of Defense Ministers, an inter-parliamentary assembly, Executive Committee, Anti-Terrorism Task Force, and the Interstate Economic Committee of the Economic Union.

  Although in a sense the CIS was designed to replace the Soviet Union, it was not and is not a separate state or country. Rather, the CIS is an international organization designed to promote cooperation among its members in a variety of fields. Its headquarters are in Minsk, Belarus. Over the years, its members have signed dozens of treaties and agreements, and some hoped that it would ultimately promote the dynamic development of ties among the newly independent post-Soviet states. By the late 1990s, however, the CIS lost most of its momentum and was victimized by internal rifts, becoming, according to some observers, largely irrelevant and powerless.

  From its beginning, the CIS had two main purposes. The first was to promote what was called a “civilized divorce” among the former Soviet states. Many feared the breakup of the Soviet Union would lead to political and economic chaos, if not outright conflict over borders. The earliest agreements of the CIS, which provided for recognition of borders, protection of ethnic minorities, maintenance of a unified military command, economic cooperation, and periodic meetings of state leaders, arguably helped to maintain some semblance of order in the region, although one should note that the region did suffer some serious conflicts (e.g., war between Armenia and Azerbaijan and civil conflicts in Tajikistan, Moldova, and Georgia).

  The second purpose of the CIS was to promote integration among the newly independent states. On this score, the CIS had not succeeded. The main reason is that while all parties had a common interest in peacefully dismantling the old order, there has been no consensus among these states as to what (if anything) should replace the Soviet state. Moreover, the need to develop national political and economic systems took precedence in many states, dampening enthusiasm for any project of reinte-gration. CIS members have also been free to sign or not sign agreements as they see fit, creating a hodgepodge of treaties and obligations among CIS states.

  One of the clearest failures of the CIS has been on the economic front. Although the member states pledged cooperation, things began to break down early on. By 1993, the ruble zone collapsed, with each state issuing its own currency. In 1993 and 1994, eleven CIS states ratified a Treaty on an Economic Union (Ukraine joined as an associate member). A free-trade zone was proposed in 1994, but by 2002 it still had not yet been fully established. In 1996 four states (Russia, Belarus, Krygyzstan, Kazakhstan) created a Customs Union, but others refused to join. All these efforts were designed to increase trade, but, due to a number of factors, trade among CIS countries has lagged behind targeted figures. More broadly speaking, economic cooperation has suffered because states had adopted economic reforms and programs with little regard for the CIS and have put more emphasis on redirecting their trade to neighboring European or Asian states.

  Cooperation in military matters fared little better. The 1992 Tashkent Treaty on Collective Security was ratified by a mere six states. While CIS peacekeeping troops were deployed to Tajikistan and Abkhazia (a region of Georgia), c
ritics viewed these efforts as Russian attempts to maintain a sphere of influence in these states. As a “Monroeski Doctrine” took hold in Moscow, which asserted special rights for Russia on post-Soviet territory,

  COMMUNISM

  and Russia used its control over energy pipelines to put pressure on other states, there was a backlash by several states against Russia, which weakened the CIS. After September 11, 2001, the CIS created bodies to help combat terrorism, and some hoped that this might bring new life to the organization. See also: BELOVEZH ACCORDS; RUBLE ZONE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Heenan, Patrick, and Lamontagne, Monique, eds. (1999). The CIS Handbook. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. Olcott, Martha Brill; Aslund, Anders; and Garnett, Sherman. (1999). Getting It Wrong: Regional Cooperation and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Sakwa, Richard, and Webber, Mark. (1999). “The Commonwealth of Independent States, 1991-1998: Stagnation and Survival.” Europe-Asia Studies 51:379-415.

  PAUL J. KUBICEK

  COMMUNISM

  In its broadest meaning communism describes a society in which all its members jointly (communally) own its resources and in which the society’s wealth and products are distributed equally to everyone. The term has been applied to premodern social and political constructs, such as communal societies propounded in Plato’s Republic and in Thomas More’s Utopia; to proposals of some radicals in the French Revolution of 1787; and to ideal communities advocated by nineteenth-century reformers such as Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, but none of these systems corresponded fully with the principles of communism.

  Most often, communism designates the ultimate good society espoused by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their Communist Manifesto of 1848 and the ideas and Soviet system in twentieth-century Russia associated with Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. The latter usage is a misnomer: Neither Lenin nor later Soviet leaders ever claimed that communism had been established in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, they willingly adopted the label, since it furthered their revolutionary and propagandistic purposes. As a result, in general discussion and writing, the Soviet state and its post-World War II offshoots in Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Cuba were generally called “communist.” Correspondingly, leaders of the Soviet Union, of other similarly constituted states, and of revolutionary parties worldwide that adhered to Marxist-Leninist doctrine were known as “communists.”

  MARX’S VIEW OF COMMUNISM

  More accurately, however, communism signifies only the very last step in the historical process and the ultimate and highly desirable goal of human development as outlined in Marx’s economic, social, and political philosophy. Influenced by egalitarian ideas current in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Marx was outraged by what he saw as the unjust nature of the economic system spawned by the Industrial Revolution, which he called capitalism. Marx and Engels portrayed history as determined inevitably by “scientific” laws, which divided human social evolution into five broad stages: “gentilism,” sometimes referred to as “primitive communism,” with individuals living in clans and holding property in common; “slavery” based on slave labor; “feudalism” dependent on serf labor; “capitalism,” in which entrepreneurs or capitalists exploited workers (the proletariat) and controlled the government; and “socialism,” with public ownership replacing private capital and the emergence of a classless society providing justice, equity and freedom for all. Since conflict and class struggle, the mechanism for social change, would not exist in this new order, socialism would be the final stage of history and the highest level of human development.

  Marx noted, however, that socialism would have two phases: the lower phase, also known as “socialism,” and a higher phase, “communism.” The latter would be the ultimate good society benefiting all mankind. In the lower, socialist phase, the whole society would own its productive forces, or the economy, but work would still be valued and paid differentially and distribution of the society’s goods and wealth would not yet be equal. To reach the higher, communist phase, two requirements had to be met. First, the productive forces of society, restricted by the capitalists in a vain attempt to prop up their profits, would be liberated, and the economy, hugely expanded by modern scientific and technological inputs, would become capable of producing “a superabundance of goods.” This enormous output would permit everyone to have whatever they needed. Second, in counterbalance, an individual’s needs would be limited and sensible, because society would develop, through

  COMMUNISM

  Young communists salute as they pass Lenin’s tomb on May Day. © HULTON ARCHIVE education and by example, “a new-type socialist person.” Reoriented individuals would desire only what was truly necessary to sustain life, eschewing ostentation and waste. They would also contribute to the socialist society altruistically, applying their work and varied talents to the common welfare. With the superabundance of goods and the new socialist individual, society could then be organized on the principle: “from each according to his ability; to each according to his needs.” Thus, communism would mark an end to coercion, want, and inequality.

  LENIN AND COMMUNISM

  Circulating in tsarist Russia by the 1880s, Marx’s views were adopted by Vladimir Lenin, who soon led the Bolsheviks, a Marxist-oriented revolutionary party. Lenin linked his effort in Russia to the global spread of capitalism, which he labeled “imperialism,” and counted on aid from successful workers’ revolutions in Europe to help the Russian proletariat achieve socialism. He was dismayed, therefore, when, after the “imperialist” World War I broke out, most European workers and their Marxist leaders chose patriotism over revolution and backed their own national governments in the war.

  Many Marxists in Russia also rallied to support the tsarist war effort. Determined to keep his party in control after the Bolsheviks came to power in November 1917 and to discredit other Russian Marxist revolutionaries, Lenin in 1918 changed the name of the Bolsheviks to the Russian Communist Party, and a year later he founded an international revolutionary organization called the Communist International. These actions were taken to broaden the appeal of the Bolshevik Revolution and to distinguish Lenin and his followers from other MarxCOMMUNIST ACADEMY ian socialists in Russia and throughout the world, whom he considered insufficiently revolutionary, if not collaborators with the hated imperialists.

  Lenin added little to Marx’s sketchy ideas on the characteristics of communism, once mentioning cooperatives as a possible organizational basis for the future and another time referring to “accounting and control” and “the administration of things” as keys to establishing a truly communist society. Stalin proclaimed in the 1930s that the Soviet Union had achieved the lower phase, socialism, of Marx’s fifth stage of history, and after World War II Soviet theoreticians added that Soviet society had entered “the transition to communism.” But what communism would actually look like remained vague, except for speculation about free transportation, state-run boarding schools, and communal eating.

  THE DISCARDING OF COMMUNISM

  In the 1980s, as the weaknesses of the Soviet economy and system became apparent, the appeal of communism, so closely linked to the Soviet experience, dimmed. In 1989 and 1991, when socialist states in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed, many observers declared that communism was dead. Although nominally communist systems still existed in North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Cuba, even these governments made concessions to nonsocialist economic activity. Moreover, none of these regimes argued that it had achieved communism, or even that it was nearing the ultimate good society envisaged by Marx. See also: BOLSHEVISM; ENGELS, FRIEDRICH; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; MARXISM; SOCIALISM

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Daniels, Robert V. (1993). The End of the Communist Revolution. New York: Routledge. Heilbroner, Robert L. (1980). Marxism, For and Against. New York: Norton. Hunt, Carew R. N. (1983). The Theory and Practice of Communism: An Introduction, 5
th rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books. Mayo, Henry B. (1966). Introduction to Marxist Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Meyer, Alfred G. (1986). Leninism, 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Sowell, Thomas. (1985). Marxism: Philosophy and Economics. New York: Morrow.

  JOHN M. THOMPSON

  COMMUNIST ACADEMY

  The Communist Academy (Akademiya kommu-nisticheskaya) was founded on June 25, 1918, by order of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Known until 1924 as the Socialist Academy, this institution was designed to rival the nearly 200-year-old Academy of Sciences. Indeed, although it was formally established “from above” by government decree, the Communist Academy also answered calls “from below” from the radical wing of the Russian intelligentsia, which had lobbied for an alternative to the conservative Academy of Sciences since the 1880s.

  The Communist Academy served to coordinate communist higher education and research alongside the Institute of Red Professors and the Commissariat of the Enlightenment. It consisted of a number of institutes devoted to subjects ranging from philosophy, history, literature, and the natural sciences to economics, socialist construction, and international relations and development. It also boasted a number of specialized sections and commissions, as well as an array of societies revolving around groups such as the Militant Materialist Dialecticians, Marxist Historians, Marxist Orientalists, and Marxist Biologists.

  Structurally reminiscent of the older Academy of Sciences, the Communist Academy supplanted its rival’s apolitical “bourgeois” approach to science and scholarship with an explicitly political agenda grounded in the tenets of Marxism-Leninism. Moreover, there was a fairly explicit division of labor between the two, with the Communist Academy attempting to monopolize the most important areas in the social and natural sciences and ceding only experimental, abstract work to the Academy of Sciences (along with arcane subjects like archeology and the study of antiquity). Scarcity of resources and the frequent overlapping of scholarly research, however, kept the two institutions in a state of fierce competition for much of the 1920s.