Georgy Oppokov 1918
First Published: in Kommunist. Ezenedel'nyi zurnal ekonomiki, politiki i obsenstvennosti. Organ Moskovskago Oblastnogo Byuro RKP (bol'sevikov) [The Communist. Weekly Magazine for Economics, Politics and Social Questions. Organ of the Moscow District Office of the RCP(B)], No. 2, April 1918.
Source: Internationalist Communist Tendency.
Online Version: Marxists Internet Archive 2021
HTML Markup: Zdravko Saveski
"Truly, the blindest are those who do not wish to see"[2]
Svoboda Rossii
With new tendencies come new songs...
Since the violent days of the proletarian assault on power, the irritated, exasperated bourgeoisie has sought everywhere to slander and spit on the great movement of the Russian working masses. Every new decree has enraged them. Every new victory has terrified them.
Now, reality has begun to offer them a few nice surprises. On the one hand, the Soviet power is inviting the old generals and officers to command the army, on the other hand, it begins to court the sharks of Russian capitalism. In these last few days, we have heard new "socialist" revelations from the People's Commissar of Finance, Gukovsky, with which many representatives of the banking world feel at ease. But every conscious worker must wonder - are these leaders leading us down the right path?
The political economic and financial aspects are fundamental aspects of our revolution because its future greatly depends on the decisions which will be taken in these areas. In October-November the Soviet power adopted an absolutely consistent policy in this domain: the nationalisation of production, supported by the management of enterprises by the workers, also instantly including the banks. We knew that these economic and financial measures would completely destroy the bourgeois system of credit. During the period of destruction of all the economic basis of the bourgeois order, the bourgeoisie and the kulaks, who were driven out of the mills and factories which had fallen under the control of workers' organisations, could not trust the financial measures of the socialist government and could not decide to trust it with their capital. In such a situation, the amount of money necessary for maintaining exchange must always grow, since credit in its old form collapses as long as direct exchange is no longer guaranteed. Following this, the financial policy of the working class is forced to reduce the issuing of banknotes as exchange is established, and as it is insured by a sufficient amount of money. The idea of restoring credit in its bourgeois form did not occur to those who made the Russian Revolution. In contrast, the Commissar of Finance of Soviet Russia found this idea necessary and in keeping with the programme. In the theses of his report read out at the Central Executive Committee (CEC) Comrade Gukovsky writes, "We must take urgent measures to restore the apparatus of credit in our country to clean up and reinforce the circulation of finances, in order to make paper money flow into the banks." By logically developing his propositions, the Commissar of Finance reaches conclusions that are completely in keeping with the bourgeois order.[3] The budget of the Soviet republic is too large, it must be greatly reduced. Taxation must be unified and centralised. In his speech, Comrade Gukovsky declared that this year the budget is forecast to increase to 80-100 billion roubles compared to the 3.2 billion of the previous budget. This incredible increase in expenditure only makes him fear reading its accounts. Trying to comprehend the figures mentioned by Comrade Gukovsky, Sokolnikov[4] has already pointed out errors in his calculations. It turns out that the budget from 1917, including military expenditure, must have come to around 40 billion roubles, not 3 to 4 billion. The local Soviets must be denied the right to tax the population; the productivity of work must finally be increased, etc. This programme of financial policy has very little in common with that of the October Revolution. It is not by accident that Svoboda Rossii took on this new Commissar as their own. "Gukovsky proposes," states the journal, "a fairly prosaic and 'bourgeois' programme of reforms which can be reduced, in short, to the restoration of what others destroyed, whether or not this is conscious, and or whether it is just not thought out, it sweeps everything off the road of socialism". The other bourgeois groups have welcomed this programme. Thus Mr Bernatsky[5] regards Gukovsky's report as "a challenge stamped with good sense against the reigning nightmare", etc. Moreover, appetite grows with eating, and in its following issue, the bourgeois journal, Svoboda Rossii softly reproaches Gukovsky and his measures "part of which doubtless seem reasonable. However, in these same theses of Gukovsky, we see no overt and direct refusal of the old economic and financial policy of the Soviet power".
The bourgeoisie is encouraged by sweet dreams of their lost paradise. The communist Commissar Gukovsky, in whom the bourgeoisie have discovered some "good sense", and, most importantly, a "fairly bourgeois" programme, has unfortunately stopped in his tracks - there is no "overt and direct rebuttal" of the Bolshevist past, but everyone knows that it's only that first step that will come at a cost.
But is the programme of the Commissar of Finance Gukovsky not perhaps characteristic of Soviet power? Let us listen to the Assistant Commissar, deputy Professor Bogolepov.[6] Summarising his analysis of Gukovsky's theses, he declares, "the programme of Comrade Gukovsky, which we could modify a little - softening some parts, strengthening others - will make it possible for us to reach a better future." All we need is an experienced apprentice at a university to touch it up just a little, and there you have the newly ready "programme". It is fashionable to put all sorts of sticking plasters on one's body; it "radically heals" rheumatism, gout and consumption! So what parts does the Assistant Commissar want to touch up?
Just like Commissar Gukovsky, Bogolepov is dissatisfied with the fact that "the Soviet power has quickly begun to raise taxes in the form of contributions. This form has a defect, it is poorly developed." And then he says modestly, "We need a well designed fiscal apparatus." Alas, it is true that the form of contributions is "poorly developed", but the esteemed Assistant Commissar has forgotten one thing: during the revolution it is necessary to take the inappropriateness of the fiscal apparatus into account. The growth of the budget must be noted (whilst also accounting for the fall in the price of the rouble). What is the cause for this? Is it because there are too many functionaries paid by the Republic? Alas, it is very unlikely that this response would satisfy everyone. Professor Friedman[7] offers a far better explanation: "Socialism means the existence of a single regulated and planned economy. The budget of the state is integrated with the national economy." As we have gone down the path of nationalising production, our budget naturally had to be increased. Comrade Gukovsky does not see this, he is terrified by these figures, he is their prisoner. The growth in our budget attests to that of the socialised economy. Comrade Gukovsky wants to reduce and make cuts to the budget, halting thus the process of organisation of socialised production and nationalisation of industry. The rest of us, whose programme opposed that of the Commissar of Finance, do not propose to retreat, but to move towards the rapid nationalisation of production, and so towards an inevitable growth in our budget. These expenditures are productive expenditures for our Soviet economy and for the construction of a socialist economy; in this time of profound disarray of the national economy, limiting the growth of the budget is a senseless and impossible task. We must choose: either we renounce the construction of socialism and reorder our finances through a series of bourgeois measures, or we construct socialism without fear of productive expenditure. Is the flaw of the revolution that it started to "zealously" tax these contributions? No, or it would deny itself any financial basis. The flaw of the revolution is that its financial commissariat is led by equally "zealous" commissars. How is the Commissariat intending to build a fiscal apparatus? "If the local authorities, which have no relation to the centre, get involved in business, it will inhibit working together. We must struggle decidedly against this."
In other words, down with the power of local Soviets, long live the power of the Commissariat of Finance!
But where are we with the fiscal apparatus? I hear you ask. Alas, nobody is telling us anything. They merely respond that even the existing fiscal apparatus must be destroyed, despite it being born in the revolution and having worked more or less fine: that is, the local Soviets. Certainly their work did not please the bourgeoisie too well, but according to the revolutionary experience of several Soviets (in Siberia, Simbirsk, Moscow, Ivanovo-Voznesensk), they are not just limited to contributions, they have taxed gross revenues, in particular those of the village kulaks, which is the most important thing (in Siberia, in Simbirsk etc). Now (given that times have obviously changed), it has been resolved that we should "struggle decisively against" them. With such a decision, the leaders of our Commissariat of Finance condemn them to degeneration into a mere bureaucracy, incapable of realising their functions as Soviets.
But we have to save the day! It is no coincidence that Comrade Gukovsky has shown the supposed expenditures to a shocked Russia. It is true that credulous speakers and readers have not asked to examine the figures in detail, otherwise they would have discovered some interesting facts. For example, you, reader, think in your innocence that all of our foreign debts were cancelled long ago (even if comrade Gukovsky considered their non-payment an error, to the great pleasure of the bourgeoisie). You are wrong. Our financiers are politicians, realists and enemies of the "revolutionary phrase", they "intervene" and, probably by intervening in the future, Comrade Bogolepov has the intention of allocating one billion four hundred thousand roubles of the budget to paying interest on foreign loans. And it is undoubtedly on these figures that Comrade Gukovsky is basing his report!
Why do the comrade commissars not say a word about this in their speeches? And where do these figures come from? No doubt "from themselves". This is why we are persuaded that the comrades have committed an unforgivable error by not analysing all of the figures. It is entirely likely that there are many interesting and instructive things to be found there, and in particular for the partisans of the "revolutionary phrase".
Saying that, we do not wish to deny the terrible danger of a financial crash. Indeed, if we impotently hesitate, looking back with nostalgia to the peaceful past, or by "softening some parts" and "strengthening others", the crash will be inevitable. Instead of "strengthening" it, the revolution must sweep away without ambiguity all forms of discourse and political lines that are in reality nothing but the lamentable slurs of terrified philistines. The revolution in Russia can only win by being socialist. We do not need to reform old practices, we need to subject everything to the necessities of the new socialist policy. In his speech dedicated to critiquing the programme of bourgeois reforms in their essence (which even the bourgeoisie highlights) of Comrade Gukovsky, Comrade Bukharin has shone light on a path that was not discovered by cabinet scholars but by the October Revolution itself. Without straying down the path of the bourgeoisie, without opportunistic detours, we must move coherently towards an organisation of market exchange without money. Such is the course of the development of the revolution. Currently they are trying to turn it from this path to orient it towards the restoration of bourgeois credit and towards other similar reforms. The left communist Comrade Bukharin has characterised these attempts of our commissars very well. "It is senseless to expect," he says, "to restore the bourgeois form of credit during the socialist revolution."
Circumstances are now forcing the Russian Revolution, fumbling and reflecting, to search for its way forward. We must summon all our strength to prevent the diversion of the revolution on to the path of bourgeois realist plans and reforms. Commissar Gukovsky proposes a heavily realist, heavily bourgeois, programme of reforms which leads, in the words of Svoboda Rossii, to "the restoration" of what the October Revolution destroyed. Comrade Gukovsky demands that the organ leading the Soviet Republic clearly express itself on this programme, and furthermore, instead of responding, that the CEC addresses it to a commission. So has it approved it? No, in the CEC we can see in certain places a strong critique of Gukovsky's programme. So has it perhaps rejected it? Alas, no. So Soviet Russia remains with no financial programme, whether socialist or bourgeois. By contrast, it does have a recognised head, Commissar Gukovsky, and a deputy-head, Comrade Bogolepov, who together are passing the essentials of the bourgeois programme, as well as a commission before which this programme is quietly dismissed. Nothing has changed. No-one has approved nor disapproved it. Everything has gone well, thank God! We can sigh with relief. We are persuaded that the CEC was wrong to refer Gukovsky's programme to a commission. It deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of history, to be subject to the rigorous criticism of mice along with the theses of the leaders of our financial policy. The working class must be brave enough to show the revolution the path which will not lead it into the bourgeois swamp but will open the way to the socialist future.
A. Lomov
Notes
[1] Isidor Emmanuelovich Gukovsky (1871-1921), a son of a merchant, participated in a group of revolutionary workers in 1989. He became a Menshevik and imprisoned for inciting workers to strike. In 1904 he was sent as an agitator amongst the oil workers of Baku. Editorial secretary of the journal Novaya Zhizn, he continued a wandering life (Odessa, foreign exile) before being arrested on his return to Russia. He was acquitted in 1908. After October 1917 he became a Bolshevik and was appointed People's Commissar for Finance by Lenin. He carried on his career as a leading functionary as a diplomat representing Russia in Estonia. He died of pneumonia in March 1921.
[2] Svoboda Rossii (The Liberty of Russia) was the journal of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets). Suppressed in July 1918.
[3] Lenin's comment on Gukovsky's plan only underlines the enormous dilemmas which were raised by the revolution as it waited for the international proletariat to make its own class response: "I shall not dwell upon whether this plan is good or bad. One thing only is clear to me: at the present time it is impossible to fulfil even the best plan in the financial sphere because as a matter of fact the machinery has not been organised for fulfilling it." Speech On The Financial Question At The Session Of The All-Russia C.E.C., 18th April 1918.
[4] Grigori Yakovlevich Sokolnikov (1888-1939): Bolshevik since 1905, imprisoned in Moscow in the autumn of 1907, exiled to Siberia and then to Paris in 1909, returned to Russia after the February Revolution of 1917 on the same train as Lenin. He was elected to the Central Committee (of which he would remain a member until the mid 1920s) and to the editorial staff of the Central Organ of the Party at its 6th Congress. Member of the Political Bureau at the time of the October Revolution, he was then part of Zinoviev's group and then rejoined the United Opposition before leaving it following its declaration on the 16th October 1926 that it would renounce the fractional struggle. He was prosecuted at the second Moscow Trial (January 1937) where he was sentenced to ten years in prison. He died in obscure conditions in 1939.
[5] Mikhail Vladimirovich Bernatsky (1876-1943): Russian economist, Minister of Finance in Kerensky's Provisional Government from 25th September 1917. Arrested in October, he was imprisoned for a time in the Peter and Paul Fortress before being released, to then join the forces of the Whites. He effectively became Minister of Finance in the governments of Denikin, and then of Wrangel.
[6] Dmitry Petrovich Bogolepov (1885-1941): Social Democrat since 1907, academic specialising in financial law, he became Deputy Commissar of Finance, Director of the State Treasury Department and participated in the drafting of the first Soviet Constitution. Rector at the University of Moscow from 1920 to 1921, he then worked as a professor and collaborated in Gosplan.
[7] Mikhail Isidorovich Friedman (1875-1921): Russian economist, Assistant Minister of Finance in the Provisional Government from 27th July 1917, he later lectured and produced a few scientific studies on the Bolshevik government accounts.