Vol. XIII (2007), no 20 - The International Newsletter of Communist ...

The International Newletter of Communist Studies Online XIII (2007), no 20 33
wrath on the Bolsheviks. 65 In 1922, with the peasant rebellion largely broken by the Volga
famine, the Bolsheviks fought yet another pitched conflict against the Russian Orthodox
Church. 66 And all along, the struggle against “class enemies” required ever-increasing
quantities of weapons in the hands of secret police (Cheka) enforcers. Although a few
ammunition factories continued functioning for the duration of all these conflicts in
Bolshevik-controlled territory at Tula, it was at a much-diminished capacity compared to pre-
1917 output. As the Civil War heated up in 1919, the Red Army and Cheka tore through small
arms rounds three to four times faster than they could be replenished. 67 Chronic ammunition
shortage would be overcome only in 1920, when the Allied blockade eased up enough for the
Bolsheviks to begin importing war supplies in quantity across the Baltic.
The pent-up demand, by then, was enormous. Like boiling water bursting through a sieve,
Bolshevik agents rushed through the blockade breakpoint at Reval (Tallinn) to place import
orders as fast as they could. There was no shortage of suppliers. As Lenin famously
prophesied, capitalists proved quite willing to sell Communists the rope with which they
would be hanged. The Bolsheviks’ pariah status was powerful inducement to businessmen
eager to exploit their desperation, charging hefty premiums for surplus German automatics
and American rifles, artillery and cannon, with shells, rounds, gunpowder and explosives;
military aircraft, vehicles, and trains — plus engines and spare parts for all of them; cloth for
uniforms and greatcoats; binoculars, goggles, and boots in the millions; cigarettes, foodstuffs,
pots and pans for field kitchens; entrenching equipment, field telephones and
communications wire; medicines and painkillers; and not least, the blank paper, ink, and film
stock for the propaganda which was the true mother’s milk of Bolshevism. Then there was
Russia’s reeling civilian economy and its own war factories, which after the depredations of
“War Communism” was desperately short of the most basic necessities — rolling stock, ferrous
metals, ball bearings, agricultural machinery and implements, pumps and centrifuges, castor
oil and machine lubricants, cotton spinning machines and thread, dairy processing equipment,
even vegetable and legume seeds. In the absence of goods to trade, all this needed to be
65 The best overview of all the peasant revolts is Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: the Volga
Countryside in Revolution, 1917-1921 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). For a more recent
overview of the literature, see Taisia Osipova, “Peasant Rebellions: Origin, Scope, Dynamics, and
Consequences,” in The Bolsheviks in Russian Society. The Revolution and Civil Wars, ed. Vladimir N.
Brovkin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 154-176. On the economics of the peasant
rebellions, see especially Alessandro Stanziani, “De la guerre contre les blancs a la guerre contre les
paysans (1920-1922),” in L’Economie en Révolution. Le cas russe 1870-1930 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998),
66 For recent accounts, see Georgii Mitrofanov, Istoriya russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi 1900-1927 (St.
Petersburg: Satis, 2002); Natalya Alexandrovna Krivova, Vlast’ i Tserkov’ v 1922-1925 gg. Politbyuro i
GPU v borb’e za tserkovnyie tsennosti I politicheskoe podchinenie dukhovenstva (Moscow: Airo-XX,
1997). In English, see Jonathan Daly, “‘Storming the Last Citadel’: The Bolshevik Assault on the
Church,” in Brovkin, Bolsheviks in Russian Society, S. 235 et sqq.
67 The monthly figure of small arms rounds fired for 1919, Orlando Figes estimates, ranged from 70 and
90 million; only 20 million rounds a month were being turned out at Tula. Figes, A People’s Tragedy:
the Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 (New York: Penguin, 1998), p. 598. Soviet authors agree that the
upper ceiling on production was 30 million rounds/month. See D. A. Kovalenko, Oboronnaia
promyishlennost’ sovetskoi rossii v 1918-1920 gg. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ‘Nauka’, 1970), pp. 274-278.
From Trotsky’s well-publicized complaints about ammunition shortages, and eyewitness reports which
suggest that maybe one Red Army soldier in ten carried adequate rounds, it is clear even such an
amount was nowhere near enough.