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

The International Newletter of Communist Studies Online XIII (2007), no 20 35
movements and their role in assuring the triumph of Bolshevism is, in short, simply waiting to
be written. 72
Lest we forget, the Bolsheviks, unlike the Nazis, won their war against the world in the first
half-decade after the Russian Revolution, establishing a firm hold on power which would
endure for three-quarters of a century. Whereas many Nazis faced a day of judgment for
their crimes, no such fate was in store for Bolshevism after 1922. Although many of Lenin’s
associates would later feel the wrath of Stalin when he turned on the “Old Bolsheviks,” the
Russian Communist Party itself has never, to this day, faced its own Nuremberg.
Here, perhaps, we are getting closer to an explanation for the gross disparity in attention
paid to Nazi and Bolshevik wartime finances. There is little joy in chronicling an ill-fated
Entente blockade of Soviet Russia which failed so miserably to dislodge or contain Bolshevism.
Any glory in accounts of the Allied intervention, and the Russian Civil War more generally,
was on the Soviet side. Little wonder the once-hysterical obsession in Entente statehouses
with Bolshevik gold movements, and the menace to western civilization they represented,
slipped rapidly down the memory hole. In historiography, as in democratic politics, victories
will have many proud chroniclers; a crushing defeat, like the Allies suffered in trying to
quarantine Soviet Russia and its global influence, will remain a scholarly orphan.
It is time to rescue the orphan. Now that the Russian archives are open, the last piece in the
puzzle of Bolshevik gold movements has fallen into place. My forthcoming book aims to
introduce readers to this long-forgotten subject, which holds the key to the greatest mystery
of the Russian Revolution: how the Bolsheviks, despite facing a world of enemies and
producing nothing but economic ruin in their path, were able to stay in power. The story will
be narrated as a historical drama in two acts. In the first, we shall learn how the Bolsheviks
came into possession of what had (until recently) been the world’s largest gold reserve in
1917-1918, and how this hoard was then enlarged, as armed detachments fanned out across
Russia to fulfill Marx’s injunction to “expropriate the expropriators!”: breaking open safe
deposit boxes in “nationalized” banks, withdrawing hundreds of millions of Tsarist rubles from
other people’s savings accounts, looting landed estates, churches, and monasteries, and
prying precious stones and other valuables from the bloodied bodies of anyone who dared
resist Bolshevik confiscations. To the Imperial gold reserve was thus added money, bonds,
watches, platinum, diamonds, jewelry, silverware, precious paintings, icons, engraved books:
the wealth of a continent, built up over generations.
Once in possession of the colossal patrimony of Tsarist Russia, we shall see in the book’s
second act, the Bolsheviks proceeded to dump the bulk of it as fast as they could, at well
below market rate, to anyone who would buy. The reason for haste was simple. Surrounded
by enemies both real and imagined, the Bolsheviks needed to arm their supporters to the
teeth first to survive, and then to perpetuate their hold on power. With breathtaking
audacity, they transformed the accumulated wealth of centuries into the sinews of class war:
72 Interestingly, though, the problem of White gold and silver movements during the Civil War has found
an able chronicler in Oleg Budnitsky, who wrote a three-part series on the subject for Diaspora between
2002 and 2004: “Kolchakovskoe zoloto,” Diaspora vol. 4 (2002), pp. 457-508; “Natsional’nyi fond,”
Diaspora vol. 5 (2003), pp. 283-332; and “Generalyi i den’gi, ili ‘Vrangelevskoe Serebro,” Diaspora vol. 6
(2004), pp. 134-173. Although his study sheds little light on Bolshevik gold movements, Budnitsky’s
series will likely remain the final word on the murky finances of Kolchak and Wrangel.