The civil war in Russia had come to an end by the beginning of 1921. It had taken an enormous toll of life, but the Red Terror and the victories of the Red Army had guaranteed the survival of the Communist regime. During the civil war, Lenin had pursued a policy of “war communism.” Under this policy of expedience, the government had nationalized transportation and communication facilities as well as banks, mines, factories, and businesses that employed more than ten workers. The government had also assumed the right to requisition food from the peasants, who often resisted fiercely, slaughtering their own animals and destroying their crops, though without much success. Hunger led to an untold number of deaths in the countryside. Added to this problem was drought, which caused a great famine between 1920 and 1922 that claimed as many as 5 million lives. Industrial collapse paralleled the agricultural disaster. By 1921, industrial output was at only 20 percent of its 1913 levels. Russia was exhausted. As Leon Trotsky observed, “The collapse of the productive forces surpassed anything of the kind that history had ever seen. The country, and the government with it, were at the very edge of the abyss. “
THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY In March 1921, Lenin pulled Russia back from the abyss by establishing his New Economic Policy (NEP). The NEP was a modified version of the old capitalist system. Peasants were now allowed to sell their produce openly, and retail stores as well as small industries that employed fewer than twenty employees could operate under private ownership; heavy industry, banking, and mines remained in the hands of the government. In 1922, Lenin and the Communists formally created a new state called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, known by its initials as the USSR and commonly called the Soviet Union. Already in that year, a revived market and good harvest had brought the famine to an end; Soviet agriculture climbed to 75 percent of its prewar level. Industry, especially state-owned heavy industry, fared less well and continued to stagnate. Only coal production had reached prewar levels by 1926. Overall, the NEP had saved the Soviet Union from complete economic disaster even though Lenin and other leading Communists intended it to be only a temporary, tactical retreat from the goals of communism.
In the meantime, Lenin and the Communists were strengthening their one-party state. The number of bureaucrats increased dramatically and soon constituted a new elite with the best jobs, food, and dwellings. Even Lenin issued warnings about the widening power of the bureaucracy that he had helped create.
THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER Between 1922 and 1924, Lenin suffered a series of strokes that finally led to his death on January 21, 1924. Although Communist control theoretically rested on a principle of collective leadership, Lenin had in fact provided one-man rule. His death inaugurated a struggle for power among the members of the Politburo (POL-it-byoor-oh), the institution that had become the leading organ of the party.
In 1924, the Politburo of seven members was severely divided over the future direction of the nation. The Left, led by Leon Trotsky, wanted to end the NEP and launch the Soviet Union on the path of rapid industrialization, primarily at the expense of the peasantry. This same group wanted to continue the revolution, believing that the survival of the Russian Revolution ultimately depended on the spread of communism abroad. Another group in the Politburo, called the Right, rejected the cause of world revolution and wanted instead to concentrate on constructing a socialist state. Believing that too rapid industrialization would worsen the living standards of the Soviet peasantry, this group also favored a continuation of Lenin’s NEP.
These ideological divisions were underscored by an intense personal rivalry between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Trotsky had been a key figure in the success of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Red Army. In 1924, he held the post of commissar of war and was the leading spokesman for the Left in the Politburo. Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) had joined the Bolsheviks in 1903 and had come to Lenin’s attention after staging a daring bank robbery to obtain funds for the Bolshevik cause. Stalin, who was neither a dynamic speaker nor a forceful writer, was content to hold the dull bureaucratic job of party general secretary while other Politburo members held party positions that enabled them to display their brilliant oratorical abilities. He was a good organizer (his fellow Bolsheviks called him “Comrade Card-Index”), and the other members of the Politburo soon found that the position of party secretary was really the most important in the party hierarchy. The general secretary appointed the regional, district, city, and town party secretaries. In 1922, for example, Stalin had made some 10,000 appointments, many of them trusted followers whose holding of key positions proved valuable in the struggle for power. Although Stalin at first refused to support either the Left or the Right in the Politburo, he finally came to favor the goal of “socialism in one country” rather than world revolution.
Stalin used his post as party general secretary to gain complete control of the Communist Party. Trotsky was expelled from the party in 1927. Eventually, he made his way to Mexico, where he was murdered in 1940, no doubt on Stalin’s orders. By 1929, Stalin had succeeded in eliminating the Old Bolsheviks of the revolutionary era from the Politburo and establishing a powerful dictatorship.
THE STALINIST ERA (1929-1939) The Stalinist era marked the beginning of an economic, social, and political revolution that was more sweeping in its results than the revolutions of 1917. Stalin made a significant shift in economic policy in 1928 when he launched his first five-year plan. Its real goal was nothing less than the transformation of the Soviet Union from an agricultural country into an industrial state virtually overnight. Instead of consumer goods, the first five-year plan emphasized maximum production of capital goods and armaments and succeeded in quadrupling the production of heavy machinery and doubling oil production. Between 1928 and 1937, during the first two five-year plans, steel production increased from 4 to 18 million tons per year, and hard coal output went from 36 to 128 million tons.
The social and political costs of industrialization were enormous. Little provision was made for absorbing the expanded labor force into the cities. Though the industrial labor force increased by millions between 1932 and 1940, total investment in housing actually declined after 1929; as a result, millions of workers and their families lived in pitiful conditions. Real wages in industry also declined by 43 percent between 1928 and 1940, and strict laws limited workers’ freedom of movement. To inspire and pacify the workers, government propaganda stressed the need for sacrifice to create the new socialist state. Soviet labor policy stressed high levels of achievement, typified by the Stakhanov cult. Alexei Stakhanov (uh-LEK-say stuh-KHAH-nuf) was a coal miner who mined 102 tons of coal in one shift, exceeding the norm by 1,300 percent. He was held up as an example to others, even though his feat had been contrived for publicity purposes.
Rapid industrialization was accompanied by an equally rapid collectivization of agriculture. Stalin believed that the capital needed for industrial growth could be gained by creating agricultural surpluses through eliminating private farms and pushing people onto collective farms (see the box on p. 818). The first step was to eliminate the kulaks (KOO-Iaks), or wealthy farmers, who were sent to the Siberian camps beginning in 1930. By eliminating private property, a Communist ideal would also be achieved.
By 1930, some 10 million peasant households had been collectivized; by 1934, the Soviet Union’s 26 million family farms had been collectivized into 250,000 units. This was done at tremendous cost since Stalin did not hesitate to starve the peasants to force them to comply with the policy of collectivization, especially in Ukraine, where 2.9 million died. Stalin himself supposedly told Winston Churchill during World War II that 10 million peasants died during the artificially created famines of 1932 and 1933. The only concession Stalin made to the peasants was to allow each household to have one tiny, privately owned garden plot.
Stalin’s program of rapid industrialization entailed additional costs as well. To achieve his goals, Stalin strengthened the party bureaucracy under his control. Those who resisted were sent to forced labor camps in Siberia. Stalin’s desire for sole control of decision making also led to purges of the Old Bolsheviks. Between 1936 and 1938, the most prominent Old Bolsheviks were put on trial and condemned to death. During this same time, Stalin undertook a purge of army officers, diplomats, union officials, party members, intellectuals, and numerous ordinary citizens. One old woman was sent to Siberia for saying, “If people prayed, they would work better.” Estimates are that 8 million Russians were arrested; millions died in Siberian forced labor camps. This gave Stalin the distinction of being one of the greatest mass murderers in human history. The Stalinist bloodbath made what some Western intellectuals had hailed as the “new civilization” much less attractive by the late 1930s.
Disturbed by a rapidly declining birthrate, Stalin also reversed much of the permissive social legislation of the early 1920s. Advocating complete equality of rights for women, the Communists had made divorce and abortion easy to obtain while also encouraging women to work outside the home and liberate themselves sexually. After Stalin came to power, the family was praised as a miniature collective in which parents were responsible for inculcating values of duty, discipline, and hard work. Abortion was outlawed, and divorced fathers who did not support their children faced heavy fines. A new divorce law of June 1936 imposed fines for repeated divorces, and homosexuality was declared a criminal activity. The regime now praised motherhood and urged women to have large families as a patriotic duty. But by this time, many Soviet women worked in factories and spent many additional hours waiting in line to purchase increasingly scarce consumer goods. Despite the change in policy, no dramatic increase in the birthrate occurred.
The Stalinist era did witness some positive changes in the everyday lives of Soviet citizens. To create leaders for the new Communist society, Stalin began a program to enable workers, peasants, and young Communists to receive higher education, especially in engineering. There was also tremendous growth in part-time schools where large numbers of adults took courses to become literate so that they could advance to technical school or college. Increasing numbers of people saw education as the key to better jobs and upward mobility in Soviet society. One woman of peasant background recounted: “In Moscow I had a burning desire to study. Where or what wasn’t important; I wanted to study.” For what purpose’ “We had a saying at work: ‘Without that piece of paper [the diploma] you are an insect; with it, a human being.’ My lack of higher education prevented me from getting decent wages.”
A number of other states in Europe had conservative authoritarian governments that adopted some of the trappings of states like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, especially their wide police powers, but for these states, the greatest concern was not the creation of a mass movement aimed at establishing a new kind of society but rather the defense of the existing social order. Consequently, the authoritarian state tended to limit the participation of the masses and was content with passive obedience rather than active involvement in the goals of the regime. A number of states in eastern Europe adopted this kind of authoritarian government.
Nowhere had the map of Europe been more drastically altered by World War I than in eastern Europe. The new states of Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia adopted parliamentary systems, and the preexisting kingdoms of Romania and Bulgaria gained new parliamentary constitutions in 1920. Greece became a republic in 1924. Hungary’s government was parliamentary in form but was controlled by its landed aristocrats. At the beginning of the1920s, political democracy seemed well established, but almost everywhere in eastern Europe, parliamentary governments soon gave way to authoritarian regimes.
Several problems helped create this situation. Eastern European states had little tradition of liberalism or parliamentary politics and no substantial middle class to support them. Then, too, these states were largely rural and agrarian. Large landowners who feared the growth of agrarian peasant parties with their schemes for land redistribution still controlled much of the land. Ethnic conflicts also threatened to tear these countries apart. Fearful of land reform, Communist agrarian upheaval, and ethnic conflict, powerful landowners, the churches, and even some members of the small middle class looked to authoritarian governments to maintain the old system.
Already in the 1920s, some eastern European states began to move away from political democracy toward authoritarian structures. A military coup d’etat established an authoritarian regime in Bulgaria in 1923. Poland established an authoritarian regime in 1926 when Marshal Joseph Pilsudski (peel-SOOT-skee) (1867-1935) created a military dictatorship. In Yugoslavia, King Alexander I (1921-1934) abolished the constirution and imposed a royal dictatorship in 1929. During the 1930s, all of the remaining parliamentary regimes except Czechoslovakia succumbed to authoritarianism. Eastern European states were increasingly attracted to the authoritarian examples of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Although Admiral Miklos Horthy (MIK-lohsh HOR-tee) (1868-1957) had ruled Hungary as “regent” since 1919, the appointment of Julius Gombos (GUM-buhsh) (1886-1936) as prime minister in 1932 brought Hungary even closer to Italy and Germany. Romania witnessed the development of a strong fascist movement led by Corneliu Codreanu (kor-NELL-yoo kaw-dree-AH-noo) (1899-1938). Known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael, it possessed its own paramilitary squad called the Iron Guard. As Codreanu’s fascist movement grew and became Romania’s third largest political party, King Carol II (1930-1940) responded in 1938 by ending parliamentary rule, crushing the leadership of the legion, and imposing authoritarian rule. In Greece, General Ioannis Metaxas (yah-AH-nees muh-tahk-SAHSS) (1871-1941) imposed a dictatorship in 1936.
Only Czechoslovakia, with its substantial middle class, liberal tradition, and strong industrial base, maintained its political democracy. Thomas Masaryk (MAS-uh-rik) (1850-1937), an able and fair leader who served as president from 1918 to 1935, was able to maintain an uneasy but stable alliance of reformist socialists, agrarians, and Catholics.
Parliamentary regimes also failed to survive in both Spain and Portugal. Both countries were largely agrarian, illiterate, and dominated by powerful landlords and Catholic clergy.
Spain’s parliamentary monarchy was unable to deal with the social tensions generated by the industrial boom and inflation that accompanied World War I. Supported by King Alfonso XIII (1886-1931), General Miguel Primo de Rivera (PREE-moh day ri-VAY-ruh) (1870-1930) led a successful military coup in September 1923 and created a personal dictatorship that lasted until 1930. But a faltering economy because of the Great Depression led to the collapse of Primo de Rivera’s regime in January 1930 as well as to a widespread lack of support for the monarchy. Alfonso XIII left Spain in 1931, and a new Spanish republic was instituted, governed by a coalition of democrats and reformist socialists. Political turmoil ensued as control of the government passed from leftists to rightists until the Popular Front, an antifascist coalition composed of democrats, socialists, Communists, and other leftist groups, took over in 1936. But the Popular Front was unacceptable to senior army officers. Led by General Francisco Franco (1892-1975), Spanish military forces revolted against the government and inaugurated a brutal and bloody civil war that lasted three years.
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR The war split the country between left and right (see the box on p. 821). On the left were the Republicans who supported the Popular Front. They were concentrated in urban areas such as Madrid and Barcelona and favored modernization, workers’ rights, the expansion of manufacturing, a civilian army, and secularization. On the right were the Nationalists who supported Franco’s military coup, the monarchy, the military, an agrarian economy, and the Catholic Church.
The Spanish conflict was complicated by foreign intervention. In 1936, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union signed a Nonintervention Agreement, declaring that they would not provide economic or military support for either side. Germany and Italy quickly rejected the agreement, however, and sent troops, weapons, and military advisers to assist Franco. Hitler used the Spanish Civil War as an opportunity to test the new weapons of his revived air force. The devastating air attack on Guernica (GWAIR-nih-kuh or gair-NEE-kuh) on April 26, 1937, initiated a new level of brutally destructive warfare. Meanwhile, the British and French adhered to their position of nonintervention, so the Republicans turned to the Soviet Union for aid. The Soviets sent tanks, planes, and pilots. The Republicans also gained assistance from international brigades of volunteers, including the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the United States.
Gradually, Franco’s forces wore down the Popular Front, and after they captured Madrid on March 28, 1939, the Spanish Civil War finally came to an end. The war had been a brutal one. Probably 400,000 people died in the war, only one-fourth of them on the battlefield. Civilians died from air raids, disease, and bloody reprisals by both sides against their enemies and their supporters. Another 200,000 people were executed in the years following Franco’s victory.
THE FRANCO REGIME General Franco soon established a dictatorship that lasted until his death in 1975. It was not a fascist government, although it was unlikely to oppose the Fascists in Italy or the Nazis in Germany. The fascist movement in Spain, known as the Falange (fuh-LANJ) and led by Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, son of the former dictator, contributed little to Franco’s success and played a minor role in the new regime. Franco’s government, which favored large landowners, business, and the Catholic clergy, was yet another example of a traditional, conservative, authoritarian regime.
PORTUGAL In 1910, the Portuguese had overthrown their monarchy and established a republic. Severe inflation after World War I, however, undermined support for the republic and helped intensify political instability. In 1926, a group of army officers seized power, and by the early 1930s, the military junta’s finance minister, Antonio Salazar (SAL-uh-zahr) (1889-1970), had become the strongman of the regime. Salazar controlled the Portuguese government for the next forty years.