Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  During the Civil War the Tsarist Empire went to pieces and, for a while, the Soviet Republic controlled only a small area round Moscow and Leningrad. Encouraged by the Western Powers, several nationalities bordering the Baltic Sea—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania— became independent States. So also of course did Poland. As the Russian Soviet triumphed in the Civil War and foreign armies withdrew, separate and independent Soviet governments grew up in Siberia and Central Asia. These governments, having common aims, were naturally closely allied to each other. In 1923 they joined together to form the Soviet Union, or, to give it its full official title, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. This is often known by its capital letters—the U.S.S.R.

  Since 1923 there have been some changes in the number of Union republics, as in one or two cases republics have split up into two. At present there are seven Union republics:

  (1) Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, or the R.S.F.S.R.

  (2) White Russia S.S.R.

  (3) Ukrainian S.S.R.

  (4) Trans-Caucasian Socialist Federative S.R.

  (5) Turkmenistan, or Turkemen S.S.R.

  (6) Uzbek S.S.R.

  (7) Tadjikistan, or Tadjik S.S.R.

  Mongolia is also in some kind of alliance with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is thus a federation of several republics. Some of these federating republics are themselves federations. Thus the Russian S.F.S.R. is a federation of twelve autonomous republics, and the Trans-Caucasian S.F.S.R. is a federation of three republics: the Azerbaijan S.S.R., Georgia S.S.R., and Armenia S.S.R. Besides these numerous interrelated and interdependent republics, there are many “national” and “autonomous” regions within the republics. The object of introducing so much autonomy everywhere is to encourage each nationality to keep its own culture and language and to have as much freedom as possible. As far as possible, an attempt has been made to avoid the domination of one national or racial group over another. This Soviet solution of the minorities’ problem has interest for us, as we have to face a difficult minority problem ourselves. The Soviets’ difficulties appear to have been far greater than ours, for they had 182 different nationalities to deal with. Their solution of the problem has been very successful. They went to the extreme length of recognizing each separate nationality and encouraging it to carry on its work and education in its own language. This was not merely to please the separatist tendencies of different minorities, but because it was felt that real education and cultural progress could take effect for the masses only if the native tongue were used. And the results achieved already have been remarkable. In spite of this tendency to introduce lack of uniformity in the Union, the different parts are coming far nearer to each other than they ever did under the centralized government of the Tsars. The reason is that they have common ideals and they are all working together in a common enterprise. Each Union Republic has in theory the right to separate from the Union whenever it wants to, but there is little chance of its doing so, because of the great advantages of federation of socialist republics in the face of the hostility of the capitalist world.

  The principal republic of the Union is of course the Russian—the R.S.F.S.R. This spreads out from Leningrad right across Siberia. White Russia S.S.R. lies next to Poland. Ukraine is in the south along the shores of the Black Sea; it is the granary of Russia. Trans-Caucasia is, as its name tells us, across the Caucasus mountains, between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. One of the Trans-Caucasian republics is Armenia, which was for so long the scene of frightful massacres by Turk and Armenian. Now as a Soviet republic it seems to have settled down to peaceful activities. On the other side of the Caspian Sea we have the three Central Asian republics—Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, which has the famous cities of Bokhara and Samarqand, and Tadjikistan. Tadjikistan lies just north of Afghanistan, and is the nearest Soviet territory to India.

  These Central Asian republics have a special interest for us because of our age-old contact with Middle Asia. They are even more fascinating because of the remarkable progress made during the past few years. Under the Tsars they were very backward and superstitious countries with hardly any education and their women mostly behind the veil. Today they are ahead of India in many respects.

  180

  The Piatiletka, or Russia’s Five Year Plan

  July 9, 1933

  Lenin, so long as he lived, was the unchallenged leader of Soviet Russia. To his final decision every one bowed; when there were conflicts, his word was law and brought together the warring sections in the Communist Party. Trouble came inevitably after his death when rival groups and rival forces fought for mastery. To the outside world, and to a lesser extent in Russia also, Trotsky was the outstanding personality among the Bolsheviks after Lenin. It was Trotsky who had taken a leading part in the October Revolution, and it was he who, faced by stupendous difficulties, created the Red Army which triumphed in the Civil War and against foreign intervention. And yet, Trotsky was a newcomer to the Bolshevik Party, and the old Bolsheviks, Lenin apart, neither liked him nor trusted him greatly. One of these old Bolsheviks, Stalin, had become general secretary of the Communist Party, and as such he was in control of the dominant and most powerful organization in Russia. Between Trotsky and Stalin there was no love lost. They hated each other, and they were wholly unlike each other. Trotsky was a brilliant writer and orator, and had also proved himself a great organizer and man of action. He had a keen and flashing intellect, evolving theories of revolution, and hitting out at his opponents with words that stung like whips and scorpions. Stalin seemed to be a commonplace man beside him, silent, unimposing, far from brilliant. And yet he was also a great organizer, a great and heroic fighter, and a man of iron will. Indeed, he has come to be known as “the man of steel”. While Trotsky was admired, it was Stalin who inspired confidence. He came from the masses himself, being a Georgian of peasant origin. There was no room in the Communist Party for both these towering personalities.

  The conflict between Stalin and Trotsky was a personal one, but it was really something more than that. Each of them represented a different policy, a different method of developing the revolution. Trotsky had, many years before the Revolution, worked out a theory of “Permanent Revolution”. According to this, it was not possible for a single country, however advantageously situated it might be, to establish full socialism. Real socialism would only come after a world revolution, as only then could the peasantry be effectively socialized. Socialism was the next higher stage in economic development after capitalism. As capitalism became international, it broke down, as we see happening in the greater part of the world today. Only socialism could work this international structure to advantage, hence the inevitability of socialism. That was the Marxist theory. But if an attempt were made to work socialism in a single country—that is, nationally and not internationally—this would mean a going back to a lower economic stage. Internationalism was the necessary foundation for all progress, including socialist progress, and to go back from it was neither possible nor desirable. According to Trotsky, therefore, it was not economically possible to build up socialism in a separate country, even in the Soviet Union, big as it was. There was so much for which the Soviets had to rely on the industrial countries of Western Europe. It was like the co-operation of the city and the village or rural areas; the industrial West was the city, and Russia was largely rural. Politically, also, Trotsky was of opinion that a separate socialist country could not survive for long in a capitalist environment. The two were—and we have seen how true this is—wholly incompatible with each other. Either the capitalist countries would crush the socialist country, or there would be social revolutions in the capitalist countries and socialism would be established everywhere. For some time, of course, or some years, the two might exist side by side in an unstable equilibrium.

  To a large extent this seems to have been the view of all the Bolshevik leaders before and after the Revolution. They waited impatiently for world revolution, or at any
rate revolutions in some European countries. For many months there was thunder in the air of Europe, but the storm passed off without bursting. Russia settled down to NEP and a more or less humdrum life. Trotsky thereupon raised the cry of alarm, and pointed out that the Revolution was in danger unless a more aggressive policy aiming at world revolution were followed. This challenge resulted in a mighty duel between Trotsky and Stalin, a conflict which shook the Communist Party for some years. The conflict resulted in the complete victory of Stalin, chiefly because he was the master of the Party machine. Trotsky and his supporters were treated as enemies of the Revolution and driven out from the Party. Trotsky was at first sent to Siberia, and then exiled outside the Union.

  The immediate conflict between Stalin and Trotsky had taken place on Stalin’s proposal to adopt an aggressive agrarian policy to win over the peasant to socialism. This was an attempt to build up socialism in Russia, apart from what happened in other countries, and Trotsky rejected it and stuck to his theory of “permanent revolution”, without which, he said, the peasantry could not be fully socialized. As a matter of fact Stalin adopted many of Trotsky’s suggestions, but he did so in his own way, not in Trotsky’s. Referring to this, Trotsky has written in his autobiography: “In politics, however, it is not merely what, but how and who that decides.”

  So the great struggle between the two giants ended and Trotsky was pushed off the stage on which he had played such a brave and brilliant part. He had to leave the Soviet Union, of which he had been one of the principal architects. Nearly all the capitalist countries were afraid of this dynamic personality, and would not admit him. England refused him admittance, as did most other European countries. At last he found temporary refuge in Turkey in the little island of Prinkipo, off Istanbul. He devoted himself to writing, and produced a remarkable History of the Russian Revolution. His hatred of Stalin possessed him still, and he continued to criticize and attack him in biting language. A regular Trotskyist party grew up in some parts of the world, and this ranged itself against the Soviet Government and the official communism of the Comintern.

  Having disposed of Trotsky, Stalin devoted himself to his new agrarian policy with extraordinary courage. He had to face a difficult situation. There was distress and unemployment among the intellectuals and there had even been strikes of workers. He taxed the kulaks, or the rich peasants, heavily, and then devoted this money to building up rural collective farms—that is, big co-operative farms in which large numbers of farmers worked together and shared the profits. The kulaks and richer peasants resented this policy and became very angry with the Soviet Government. They were afraid that their cattle and farm materials would be pooled with those of their poorer neighbours, and because of this fear they actually destroyed their livestock. There was such a great destruction of livestock that in the following year there was an acute shortage of foodstuffs, meat, and dairy produce.

  This was an unexpected blow to Stalin, but he clung on grimly to his programme. Indeed, he developed it and made it into a mighty plan, covering the whole Union, for both agriculture and industry. The peasant was to be brought near to industry by means of enormous model State farms and collective farms, and the whole country was to be industrialized by the erection of huge factories, hydro-electric power works, the working of mines, and the like; and side by side with this, a host of other activities relating to education, science, co-operative buying and selling, building houses for millions of workers and generally raising their standards of living, etc., were to be undertaken. This was the famous “Five Year Plan”, or the Piatiletka, as the Russians called it. It was a colossal programme, ambitious and difficult of achievement even in a generation by a wealthy and advanced country. For backward and poor Russia to attempt it seemed to be the height of folly.

  This Five Year Plan had been drawn up after the most careful thought and investigation. The whole country had been surveyed by scientists and engineers, and numerous experts had discussed the problem of fitting in one part of the programme into another. For the real difficulty came in this fitting in. There was not much point in having a huge factory if the raw material for it was lacking; and even when raw material was available, it had to be brought to the factory. So the problem of transport had to be tackled and railways built, and railways required coal, so coal-mines had to be worked. The factory itself wanted power for its working. To supply it with this power, electricity was produced by the water-power obtained from damming up great rivers, and this electric power was then sent over the wires to the factories and farms, and for the lighting of cities and villages. Then again, all this required engineers, mechanics, and trained workers, and it is no easy matter to produce scores of thousands of trained men and women within a short time. Motor tractors could be sent to the farms by the thousand, but who was to work them?

  These are but a few instances to give you an idea of the amazing complexity of the problems raised by the Five Year Plan. A single mistake would have far-reaching results; a weak or backward link in the chain of activity would delay or stop a whole series. But Russia had one great advantage over the capitalist countries. Under capitalism all these activities are left to individual initiative and chance, and owing to competition there is waste of effort. There is no co-ordination between different producers or different sets of workers, except the chance co-ordination which arises in the buyers and sellers coming to the same market. There is, in brief, no planning on a wide scale. Individual concerns may and do plan their future activities, but most of this individual planning consists in attempts to overreach or get the better of other individual concerns. Nationally, this results in the very opposite of planning; it means excess and want, side by side. The Soviet Government had the advantage of controlling all the different industries and activities in the whole Union, and so it could draw up and try to work a single co-ordinated plan in which every activity found its proper place. There would be no waste in this, except such waste as might come from errors of calculation or working, and even such errors could be rectified far sooner with a unified control than otherwise.

  The object of the Plan was to lay down the solid foundations of industrialism in the Soviet Union. The idea was not to put up some factories to produce the goods which everyone needs, such as cloth, etc. This would have been easy enough by getting machinery from abroad, as is done in India, and fixing it up. Such industries, producing consumable goods, are called “light industries”. These light industries necessarily depend on the “heavy industries”, the iron and steel and machine-making industries, which supply the machinery and equipment for the light industries, as well as engines, etc. The Soviet Government looked far ahead and decided to concentrate on these basic or heavy industries in the Five Year Plan. In this way the foundations of industrialism would be firmly laid, and it would be easy to have the light industries afterwards. The heavy industries would also make Russia less dependent on foreign countries for machinery or war material.

  This choice in favour of heavy industry seems to have been the obvious one under the circumstances, but it meant a far greater effort and tremendous suffering for the people. Heavy industries are far more expensive than light ones, and—a more vital difference—they do not begin to pay for a much longer time. A textile factory starts making cloth, and this can be sold to the people immediately; so also in regard to other light industries producing consumable goods. But an iron and steel factory might produce steel rails and locomotives. These cannot be consumed, or even used, till a railway line is built. This takes time, and till then a great deal of money is locked up in the concern, and the country is the poorer for it.

  For Russia, therefore, this building of heavy industries at a tremendous pace meant a very great sacrifice. All this construction, all this machinery that came from outside, had to be paid for, and paid for in gold and cash. How was this to be done? The people of the Soviet Union tightened their belts and starved und deprived themselves of even necessary articles so that payment could be made a
broad. They sent their food-stuffs abroad, and with the price obtained for them paid for the machinery. They sent everything they could find a market for: wheat, rye, barley, corn, vegetables, fruits, eggs, butter, meat, fowls, honey, fish, caviare, sugar, oils, confectionery, etc. Sending these good articles outside meant that they themselves did without them. The Russian people had no butter, or very little of it, because it went abroad to pay for machinery. And so with many other goods.

  This mighty effort embodied in the Five Year Plan began in 1929. Again the spirit of revolution was abroad, the call of an ideal stirred the masses and made them devote all their energy to the new struggle. This struggle was not against a foreign enemy or an internal foe. It was a struggle against the backward conditions of Russia, against the remains of capitalism, against the low standards of living. Almost with enthusiasm they put up with further sacrifices and lived a hard, ascetic life; they sacrificed the present for the great future that seemed to beckon to them and of which they were the proud and privileged builders.

  Nations have, in the past, concentrated all their efforts on the accomplishment of one great task, but this has been so in times of war only. During the World War, Germany and England and France lived for one purpose only—to win the war. To that purpose everything else was subordinated. Soviet Russia, for the first time in history, concentrated the whole strength of the nation in a peaceful effort to build, and not to destroy, to raise a backward country industrially and within a framework of socialism. But the privation, especially of the upper and middle-class peasantry, was very great, and often it seemed that the whole ambitious scheme would collapse, and perhaps carry the Soviet Government with it. It required immense courage to hold on. Many prominent Bolsheviks thought that the strain and suffering caused by the agricultural programme were too great and there should be a relaxation. But not so Stalin. Grimly and silently he held on. He was no talker: he hardly spoke in public. He seemed to be the iron image of an inevitable fate going ahead to the predestined goal. And something of his courage and determination spread among the members of the Communist Party and other workers in Russia.