Prodrazvyorstka is a system of government decisions that was carried out during the period of economic and political crises, involving the implementation of the necessary procurement of agricultural products. The main principle was that agricultural producers were obliged to hand over to the state the established or “deployed” norm of production at the state price. Such norms were called surpluses.
Introduction and essence of surplus appropriation
Initially, the surplus became an element of policy in December 1916. At the end of the October Revolution, the surplus was supported by the Bolshevik authorities in order to support the army in the unfolding. Later, in 1919-1920, the surplus became one of the main elements of the so-called war communism policy. All this was carried out in order to resolve the situation with employees and workers, when hunger and devastation reigned in the country after. Of the surplus taken away, the soldiers got the most, but the leadership of the state was best provided. Also, in this way, the Bolshevik government tried to eradicate the landowners and capitalists in the devastated country, as well as support the people, and influence the development of socialism in society.
The main facts of the surplus appraisal
- surplus appropriation was carried out only in the central regions of the country, which were completely under the control of the Bolsheviks;
- the surplus initially concerned only grain procurements, but at the end of 1920 it extended to all products of agricultural origin;
- it was forbidden to sell bread and grain, so commodity-money relations did not work here;
- in the provinces, a layout was carried out by counties, volosts, villages, and then between individual peasant villages;
- for the collection of agricultural products, special bodies of the People's Commissariat of Food were created, especially food orders.
It was originally planned that the peasants would be paid for the seized products, but since the currency was actually depreciated, and the state could not offer any industrial goods, then, accordingly, there was no payment for the products.
Surplus policy
Most often, the deployment came from the needs of the army and the population of cities, so no one particularly took into account the needs of the peasant himself. Often, not only the surplus was taken, but also seed funds, and all agricultural products available to the peasant. There was nothing to sow the next crop. This approach reduced the interest of the peasants in sowing crops. Attempts of active resistance were brutally suppressed, and those who concealed bread and grain were punished by members of the food detachments. At the end of the surplus appropriation policy of 1918-1919, more than 17 million tons of grain were collected, in the period 1919-1920 - more than 34 tons. The more the Bolsheviks took food supplies from the peasants, the more agriculture fell into decay. People lost their incentive to work, only an acceptable norm was grown, which could somehow feed themselves. Moreover, more and more armed rebellions were carried out, the result of which were human casualties.
Cancellation of the surplus policy
The disinterest of the peasants in agriculture led to the lack of necessary reserves, which was the main cause of the food crisis in 1921. It is important to note that monetary and commodity relations also fell into decline, which had a very negative impact on the post-war economy of the state. When the NEP came to replace war communism, the surplus appropriation was replaced by a tax in kind.
Results
In such a phenomenon as food distribution, there were both advantages and disadvantages. The surplus-appropriation process helped the army, which no longer had any sources of food. But, as you know, most of the products were lost, spoiled before reaching the army. This phenomenon is explained by the incompetence of the people responsible for this. The peasants were starving, they could not feed their families, and agriculture itself gradually fell into decay. The crisis was inevitable. Here, perhaps, are some of the most important results of the surplus appraisal carried out by the Bolsheviks. Neither stability, nor the maintenance of the army, nor any development of the peasantry was achieved.
Prodrazverstka is traditionally associated with the first years of Soviet power and the emergency conditions of the Civil War, but in Russia it appeared under the imperial government long before the Bolsheviks.
"Wheat and flour crisis"
With the outbreak of the First World War in Russia, essential necessities rose in price, the prices for which by 1916 had increased two to three times. The governors' ban on the export of food from the provinces, the introduction of fixed prices, the distribution of cards and purchases by local authorities did not improve the situation. Cities suffered severely from food shortages and high prices. The essence of the crisis was clearly presented in the memorandum of the Voronezh Stock Exchange Committee to the meeting at the Moscow Stock Exchange in September 1916. She stated that market relations had penetrated the countryside. The peasantry was able to sell less important items of production for a higher price and at the same time hold back bread for a rainy day due to the uncertainty of the outcome of the war and increasing mobilizations. At the same time, the urban population suffered. “We consider it necessary to pay special attention to the fact that the wheat and flour crisis would have come much earlier if trade and industry had not had some untouchable stock of wheat in the form of another cargo that had been lying at railway stations, waiting for loading since 1915, at the disposal of trade and industry. and even since 1914, - wrote the stockbrokers, - and if the Ministry of Agriculture had not released wheat from its stock to mills in 1916 ... and destined in a timely manner not for the food of the population, but for other purposes. The note firmly expressed the conviction that the solution to the crisis that threatened the entire country could be found only in a complete change in the country's economic policy and the mobilization of the national economy. Such plans have been repeatedly expressed by various public and state organizations. The situation required radical economic centralization and the involvement of all public organizations in the work.
The introduction of the surplus
However, at the end of 1916, the authorities, not daring to change, limited themselves to a plan of mass requisition of grain. The free purchase of bread was replaced by a surplus appraisal between producers. The size of the outfit was set by the chairman of the special meeting in accordance with the harvest and the size of the reserves, as well as the consumption norms of the province. Responsibility for the collection of grain was assigned to the provincial and district zemstvo councils. Through local surveys, it was necessary to find out the required amount of bread, subtract it from the general attire for the county, and distribute the remainder between the volosts, which were supposed to bring the amount of the attire to each rural community. The councils were supposed to distribute outfits among counties by December 14, by December 20 to develop outfits for volosts, by December 24, for rural communities, and, finally, by December 31, every householder had to know about his outfit. The confiscation was assigned to the zemstvo bodies together with the food procurement commissioners.
Having received the circular, the Voronezh provincial government convened on December 6-7, 1916, a meeting of the chairmen of the zemstvo councils, at which a layout scheme was developed and outfits for counties were calculated. The council was instructed to develop schemes and volost apportionments. At the same time, the question of the unfeasibility of the outfit was raised. According to a telegram from the Ministry of Agriculture, an allotment of 46,951 thousand poods was imposed on the province: 36,470 thousand rye, 3,882 thousand wheat, 2,43 thousand millet, and 4,169 thousand oats. I present to you now to increase the quantity of grains assigned by clause 1m in the allocation, and in the event of an increase of not less than 10%, I undertake by no means to include your province in a possible additional allocation. This meant that the plan was raised to 51 million poods.
The calculations carried out by the zemstvos showed that the full implementation of the apportionment was associated with the seizure of almost all grain from the peasants: at that time only 1.79 million poods of rye remained in the province, and wheat was threatened with a deficit of 5 million. This amount could hardly be enough for consumption and new sowing bread, not to mention the feeding of livestock, which in the province, according to a rough estimate, there were more than 1.3 million heads. Zemstvos noted: “In record years, the province gave 30 million throughout the year, and now it is planned to take 50 million within 8 months, moreover, in a year with a crop below average and on the condition that the population, not confident in sowing and harvesting the future harvest, can't help but strive to stock up." Taking into account that the railroad lacked 20% of the wagons, and this problem could not be solved in any way, the meeting considered: "All these considerations lead to the conclusion that the collection of the above amount of grain is in fact impossible." The zemstvo noted that the ministry had calculated the apportionment, obviously not based on the statistical data presented to it. Of course, this was not an accidental bad luck of the province - such a rough calculation, not taking into account the real state of affairs, concerned the whole country. As it was found out from a survey of the Union of Cities in January 1917: "the distribution of grain was carried out in the provinces for no one knows what, sometimes inconsistently, placing on some provinces a completely unbearable burden for them." This alone indicated that the plan would fail. At the December meeting in Kharkov, the head of the provincial council V.N. Tomanovsky tried to prove this to the Minister of Agriculture A.A. Rittikh, to which he replied: “Yes, all this may be true, but such an amount of grain is needed for the army and for factories working for defense, since this apportionment covers exclusively these two needs ... this must be given and we must give it obliged."
The meeting also informed the ministry that "the administrations have neither material resources nor means of influencing those who do not want to obey the conditions of the apportionment", so the meeting requested to give them the right to open bulk points and requisition premises for them. In addition, in order to save fodder for the army, the meeting asked to cancel the provincial outfits for cake. These considerations were sent to the authorities, but had no effect. As a result, the allocation was distributed by the Voronezh residents, and even with the recommended increase of 10%.
The deployment will be done!
The Voronezh provincial zemstvo assembly, due to the busyness of the chairmen of the district councils who were engaged in the collection of bread in the villages, was postponed from January 15, 1917 to February 5, and then to February 26. But even this date the quorum did not take place - instead of 30 people. 18 gathered. 10 people sent a telegram that they could not come to the congress. Chairman of the Zemstvo Assembly A.I. Alekhin was forced to ask those who came not to leave Voronezh, hoping that a quorum would be gathered. It was only at the meeting on March 1 that it was decided "immediately" to start collecting. This meeting also behaved ambivalently. After an exchange of views on the proposal of the representative of the Valuysky district, S.A. The Blinov Assembly drafted a resolution to report to the government, in which it actually recognized its requirements as unrealistic: “The size of the outfit given to the Voronezh province is without a doubt excessively exaggerated and practically unfeasible ... since its implementation in full should have led to the removal of all bread without a trace. The meeting again pointed out the lack of fuel for grinding bread, bread bags, the collapse of the railway. However, the references to all these obstacles ended with the fact that the assembly, having submitted to the supreme authority, promised that "by the common friendly efforts of the population and its representatives - in the person of the zemstvo leaders" the apportionment would be carried out. Thus, contrary to the facts, those "extremely resolute, optimistic statements of the official and officious press" were supported, which, according to contemporaries, accompanied the campaign.
Chairman of the Voronezh Zemstvo District Assembly A.I. Alekhine. Photo: Rodina/provided by the author
However, it is difficult to say how real the Zemstvos' assurances about the seizure of "all grain without a trace" were in the event of a complete implementation of the apportionment. It was no secret to anyone that there was bread in the province. But its exact amount was unknown - as a result, the Zemstvos were forced to derive figures from the data of the agricultural census, consumption and sowing rates, farm productivity, etc. At the same time, the bread of previous harvests was not taken into account, since, according to the councils, it had already gone for consumption. Although this opinion seems debatable, given that many contemporaries mention the grain reserves of the peasants and the markedly increased level of their well-being during the war, other facts confirm that there was a clear shortage of bread in the countryside. The city shops of Voronezh were regularly besieged by poor peasants from the suburbs and even other volosts. In the Korotoyaksky district, according to reports, the peasants said: "We ourselves can barely get bread, but the gentlemen of the landowners have a lot of bread and a lot of cattle, but their cattle were requisitioned little, and therefore both bread and cattle should be requisitioned more." Even the most prosperous Valuysky uyezd provided for itself largely through the delivery of grain from the Kharkov and Kursk provinces. When deliveries from there were banned, the situation in the county deteriorated markedly. Obviously, the point is the social stratification of the village, in which the poor of the village suffered no less than the poor of the city. In any case, the fulfillment of the government's allocation plan was impossible: there was no organized apparatus for collecting and accounting for grain, the allocation was arbitrary, there was not enough material base for the collection and storage of grain, and the railway crisis was not resolved. Moreover, the surplus appropriation, aimed at supplying the army and factories, did not solve the problem of supplying cities, which, with a decrease in grain supplies in the province, was only to become aggravated.
According to the plan, in January 1917 the province was to hand over 13.45 million poods of grain: of which 10 million poods of rye, 1.25 - wheat, 1.4 - oats, 0.8 - millet; the same amount was supposed to be prepared in February. To collect grain, the provincial zemstvo organized 120 bulking points, 10 per county, located 50-60 miles from each other, and most of them were supposed to open in February. Difficulties began already during the apportionment: Zadonsky district took over only part of the order (instead of 2.5 million poods of rye - 0.7 million, and instead of 422 thousand poods of millet - 188), and of in February, only 0.5 million was allocated. The distribution of the attire by the volosts was released from the control of the administrations due to the lack of reliable communication with the villages, so the matter dragged on there.
"A whole number of volosts completely refuses ... apportionment"
Already during the period of preparations, the zemstvos were skeptical about their result: “At least, the reports that have already arrived from some districts convince us of this, firstly, that a number of volosts completely refuse any appropriation, and, secondly, that and in those volosts where the apportionment was carried out by volost meetings in full - later, during the settlement and economic apportionment, it is found that it is impossible to carry it out. The sale didn't go well. Even in Valuysky uyezd, on which the smallest apportionment was imposed, and the population was in the best position, things were going badly - many peasants assured that they did not have so much bread. Where there was bread, speculation dictated the laws. In one village, the peasants agreed to sell wheat at a price of 1.9 rubles. per pood, but soon tacitly refused this: “It then happened that those who responded to the proposal of the authorities had not yet had time to receive money for the delivered bread, when they heard that the fixed price for wheat had risen from 1 ruble 40 kopecks to 2 rubles 50 kopecks "Thus, the more patriotic peasants will receive less for their grain than those who have kept it in. The conviction now reigns among the peasants that the longer they hold back grain, the more the government will increase fixed prices, and the zemstvo chiefs do not need believe, because they only deceive the people."
M.D. Ershov, in 1915-1917. and about. Governor of the Voronezh province Photo: Rodina/provided by the author
The procurement campaign was not supported by real means of implementation. The government tried to overcome this with threats. On February 24, Rittikh sent a telegram to Voronezh, in which he ordered, first of all, to proceed with the requisition of grain in the villages, most stubbornly unwilling to carry out the apportionment. At the same time, it was necessary to leave one pood of grain per capita on the farm until the harvest of a new crop, but no later than the first of September, as well as for the spring seeding of fields according to the norms established by the zemstvo council and for feeding livestock - according to the norms established by the authorized (even this manifested itself inconsistency). Governor M.D. Ershov, fulfilling the requirements of the authorities, on the same day sent telegrams to the county zemstvo councils, in which he demanded that they immediately start deliveries of bread. If the delivery does not begin within three days, the authorities were instructed to proceed with requisitions "with a decrease in the fixed price by 15 percent and, in the event of the grain not being delivered by the owners to the receiving point, with a deduction in addition to the cost of transportation." The government has not provided any specific directives for the implementation of these instructions. Meanwhile, such actions required providing them with an extensive network of executive apparatus, which the zemstvos did not have. It is not surprising that they, for their part, did not try to be zealous in carrying out an obviously hopeless enterprise. Ershov's order of December 6 to provide the police with "every possible assistance" in the collection of grain did not help much. V.N. Tomanovsky, usually very strict about state interests, took a moderate tone at a meeting on March 1: “From my point of view, we need to collect grain as much as possible, without resorting to any drastic measures, this will be some plus to the amount of stocks It is possible that the traffic of the railway will improve, there will be more cars ... to take drastic measures in the sense that "come on, carry it, by all means" would seem inappropriate.
"The apportionment undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture definitely failed"
M.V. Rodzianko wrote to the emperor just before the revolution: “The apportionment undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture definitely failed. Here are the figures characterizing the course of the latter. It was supposed to allocate 772 million pounds. That is, 129 million poods less than expected, 2) by uyezd zemstvos 228 million poods, and, finally, 3) by volosts only 4 million poods. These figures indicate the complete collapse of the apportionment ... ".
Chairman of the State Duma M.V. Rodzianko was forced to state that the surplus appraisal initiated by the Ministry of Agriculture had failed. Photo: Bibliotheque nationale de France
By the end of February 1917, the province not only failed to fulfill the plan, but also failed to deliver 20 million poods of grain. The collected bread, as was obvious from the very beginning, could not be taken out. As a result, 5.5 million poods of grain accumulated on the railway, which the district committee undertook to take out no earlier than in two and a half months. There were no wagons for unloading, no fuel for locomotives. It was impossible even to transport flour to dryers or grain for grinding, since the committee did not deal with domestic flights. And there was also no fuel for the mills, which is why many of them were idle or were preparing to stop working. The last attempt of the autocracy to solve the food problem failed due to the inability and unwillingness to solve the complex of real economic problems in the country and the lack of state centralization of economic management necessary in military conditions.
This problem was inherited by the Provisional Government, which followed the old path. Already after the revolution, at a meeting of the Voronezh Food Committee on May 12, Minister of Agriculture A.I. Shingarev stated that the province was short of 17 out of 30 million poods of grain: "It is necessary to decide: how right is the central administration ... and how successful will the execution of the order be, and can there be a significant excess of the order?" This time, the members of the council, obviously falling into the optimism of the first revolutionary months, assured the minister that "the mood of the population had already been determined in terms of the delivery of grain" and "with the active participation" of the food agencies, the order would be fulfilled. In July 1917, the orders were completed by 47%, in August - by 17%. There is no reason to suspect the local figures loyal to the revolution of lack of zeal. But the future showed that this time, too, the Zemstvo promise was not fulfilled. The objectively prevailing situation in the country - the exit of the economy from state control and the inability to regulate processes in the countryside - put an end to the well-intentioned efforts of local authorities.
Notes
1. Voronezh telegraph. 1916. N 221. October 11.
2. Journals of the Voronezh Provincial Zemstvo Assembly of the regular session of 1916 (February 28 - March 4, 1917). Voronezh, 1917. L. 34-34v.
3. State Archive of the Voronezh Region (GAVO). F. I-21. Op. 1. D. 2323. L. 23v.-25.
4. Journals of the Voronezh Provincial Zemstvo Assembly. L. 43v.
5. Sidorov A.L. The economic situation in Russia during the First World War. M., 1973. S. 489.
6. GAVO. F. I-21. Op. 1. D. 2225. L. 14v.
7. Journals of the Voronezh Provincial Zemstvo Assembly. L. 35, 44-44v.
8. Voronezh telegraph. 1917. No. 46. February 28.
9. Voronezh telegraph. 1917. No. 49. March 3.
10. Sidorov A.L. Decree. op. S. 493.
11. Popov P.A. City government of Voronezh. 1870-1918. Voronezh, 2006. P. 315.
12. GAVO. F. I-1. Op. 1. D. 1249. L.7
13. Voronezh telegraph. 1917. No. 39. February 19.
14. Voronezh telegraph. 1917. N 8. January 11.
15. Voronezh telegraph. 1917. No. 28. February 4.
16. GAVO. F. I-21. Op.1. D. 2323. L. 23v.-25.
17. Voronezh telegraph. 1917. N 17. January 21.
18. GAVO. F. I-1. Op. 2. D. 1138. L. 419.
19. GAVO. F. I-6. Op. 1. D. 2084. L. 95-97.
20. GAVO. F. I-6. Op.1. D. 2084. L. 9.
21. GAVO. F. I-21. Op. 1. D. 2323. L. 15v.
22. Note by M.V. Rodzyanki // Red archive. 1925. T. 3. S. 69.
23. Bulletin of the Voronezh district zemstvo. 1917. No. 8. February 24.
24. GAVO. F. I-21. Op. 1. D. 2323. L. 15.
25. Bulletin of the Voronezh provincial food committee. 1917. N 1. June 16.
26. Voronezh telegraph. 1917. N 197. September 13.
90 years ago, one of the tragic events in Russian history took place - the surplus appraisal was introduced.
Sometimes they refer to the fact that, strictly speaking, the surplus appraisal was proposed even earlier, in 1916. However, there are very important nuances that mean a significant difference ....
In the Russian Empire, during the First World War, to supply the army and workers in the defense industry, it was proposed to seize surplus food from the peasants. On November 29, 1916, the manager of the Ministry of Agriculture, A.A. Rittich signed a decree on the grain allocation, and on December 7, the norms for provincial supplies were determined, followed by the calculation of the surplus allocation for counties and volosts. The surplus appraisal came into force in January 1917.
A.A. On February 17, 1917, Rittich spoke in the State Duma with a detailed justification for surplus allocation as a means of solving food problems, pointing out that, as a result of political bargaining, fixed prices for the purchase of products by the state were set in September 1916 somewhat lower than market prices, which immediately significantly reduced delivery of bread to the centers of transportation and grinding. He also pointed out the need for the voluntariness of the surplus appraisal:
“I must say that where there have already been cases of refusal or where there have been short cuts, they immediately asked me from the localities what should be done next: should I act as required by the law, which indicates a certain way out when rural or volost Societies do not decide the sentence that is required of them for the performance of this or that duty or assignment - whether this should be done, or whether it should, perhaps, resort to requisition, also provided for by the decision of the Special Conference, but I always and everywhere answered that here it is necessary to wait with this, it is necessary to wait: perhaps the mood of the meeting will change; it is necessary to assemble it again, indicate to him the purpose for which this apportionment is intended, that this is exactly what the country and homeland need for defense, and depending on the mood of the gathering, I thought that these decisions would change. In this direction, voluntary I considered it necessary to exhaust all means.
Alas, for the sake of political intrigues, the deputies did not want to agree with Rittich. A.I. wrote about this with sadness. Solzhenitsyn: “Alexander Rittich, who fell out of the tradition of the last Russian governments — absent, impersonal, paralyzed, himself from the same educated layer that liberalized and criticized for decades, Rittich, all focused on business, always ready to report and argue, as if on purpose he was sent by fate for the last week of the Russian State Duma, to show what she was worth and what she wanted. All the time, her criticism was that there were no knowledgeable, active ministers in the government, and now a knowledgeable, active, and in the most responsible deed appeared, and all the more it was necessary to reject him!
A little about A.A.Rittikh. A native of the Livonian noble family. Father - Lieutenant General of the Russian Army Alexander Fedorovich Rittikh.
He graduated from the Alexander Lyceum with a big gold medal (1888). Since 1888 he served in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) as a clerk. Since 1898, he was an official for special assignments at the Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1898-1899 he was on a business trip in the Ussuri region, where he served as head of the resettlement business. In 1901 and 1902, he repeatedly acted temporarily as assistant to the head of the Resettlement Administration. In 1902-1903, at the same time, he was the clerk of the Special Conference on the needs of the agricultural industry under the leadership of S. Yu. Witte. Supervised the compilation of a systematic set of works of local agricultural committees. The materials of the meeting later became one of the sources of the Stolypin agrarian reform. Author of works on issues of peasant land use and the legal status of peasants. Since 1905 - Director of the Department of State Land Property of the Main Directorate of Land Management and Agriculture. One of the main developers and executors of the Stolypin agrarian reform. Since 1915 - Deputy Minister of Agriculture. Since March 1916, at the same time, a senator. From November 14, 1916 - temporary manager, from November 29, 1916 - manager of the Ministry of Agriculture, from January 12, 1917 - minister. According to his colleague, Minister of Finance P. L. Bark, "the new minister was unusually energetic, knew the affairs of his department perfectly ... knew the country better than all other members of the cabinet."
He officially introduced the food distribution - in a much softened form compared to the subsequent practice of the Bolsheviks. He tried to cooperate with the State Duma in combating the food crisis, but met with rejection from the opposition (which reacted negatively to his speech in the Duma in February 1917).
After the overthrow of the monarchy, he went into hiding, was arrested, but then released. In 1918 he lived in Odessa. In 1919 he emigrated. He lived in England, where he was the director of a Russian bank in London. In 1920, A. V. Krivoshein offered him a post in his government, which operated in the Crimea under General P. N. Wrangel, but Rittikh refused, as he "lost faith in his own strength."
When the Bolsheviks took power, it soon turned out that "freedom comes naked." I mean naked. It got cold and hungry...
But on the other hand, the Bolsheviks did not have the hindrance that the "dark tsarist regime" had. The Bolsheviks did not have a "chimera called conscience." The Soviet government began to pursue a mobilization policy of war communism, part of which was the surplus appropriation. First, bread and grain were taken away. Then potatoes, meat, and by the end of 1920 almost all agricultural products. Food was confiscated from the peasants free of charge, since the banknotes offered as payment were almost completely depreciated, and since plants and factories were standing, industrial goods were not offered to replace the seized grain. When determining the size of the distribution, they proceeded not from the actual surpluses of food from the peasants, but from the food needs of the army and the city. They confiscated not only the available surpluses, but also the entire seed fund and agricultural products necessary to feed the peasants themselves with their families. Naturally, the robbed men began to grab axes, pitchforks and sawn-off shotguns. The uprisings of the peasants were mercilessly suppressed by the armed detachments of the committees of the poor, as well as by the special forces of the Red Army (CHON).
These pages of Soviet history were never advertised: the robbery of peasants with subsequent reprisals against them turned out to be too unsightly. The cruel ruthlessness of the struggle is partly reflected in the stories of Sholokhov ...
In the Pronsky district of the Ryazan province, 300 were shot.
Voronezh, Kostroma, Oryol provinces - thousands of those who were shot.
With fierce cruelty, the uprising in the Ufa region was suppressed - more than 25 thousand dead. These are just a few examples of the huge number of executions and massacres against thousands and thousands of peasants.
The rebellious villages were often wiped off the face of the earth by artillery fire, so it is almost impossible to take into account all the victims. The uprising in the Tambov province was suppressed with particular inhumanity. Armored cars and asphyxiating gases were launched.
The “kind grandfather” Lenin sent a note to the Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council E. Sklyansky with a proposal to use “armored trains, armored cars, airplanes” to fight the insurgents (Lenin V.I. Complete collection of works. T.52.S.67) .
The most famous are the Kronstadt and Tambov uprisings, and in their shadow remained the West Siberian uprising, covering the Tyumen, Omsk, Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg provinces ...
In connection with the transition from war communism to the NEP on March 21, 1921, the surplus appropriation was replaced by a tax in kind, but the position of the peasantry remained difficult. And not only the peasantry. In 1920 the civil war is almost over. The population hoped for an alleviation of their situation. But the policy of "war communism" did not soften. Its result was an unprecedented decline in production, increased mortality among workers, a severe crisis erupted in agriculture, and social dependency grew. General dissatisfaction with "war communism" reached its limit by the winter of 1921. The food detachments continued to take away all the "surplus" grain from the peasants. The workers also received meager rations.
Until recently, historical studies have emphasized the role of the "tipping point" in March 1921. However, the decision to replace the food surplus with the tax in kind, hastily adopted under the threat of a social explosion on the last day of the meetings of the Tenth Congress of the RCP (b), did not entail either an end to the peasant uprisings and workers' strikes, or a weakening of the punitive policy of the Soviets. The archives now available prove conclusively that civil peace throughout the country did not reign one fine day in the spring of 1921. Tension in many areas continued until the summer of 1922, and in some areas even longer. Requisition teams continued to rage in the countryside, workers' strikes were still severely suppressed, the last socialist activists remained behind bars, "the eradication of the bandit element" continued according to "all the rules" - with mass executions of hostages and the use of poison gases in recalcitrant villages.
In the end, the unprecedented famine of 1921-1922 took over, striking precisely those areas where resistance to food requisitions was especially strong, where the peasants rebelled simply to survive. If we put on a map all the areas affected by the famine, we will see that these are precisely the areas where, for several years before the start of the famine, especially devastating requisitions were carried out, as well as areas marked by powerful peasant uprisings. Having become an "objective" ally of the Bolsheviks, an unfailing instrument of pacification, the famine also served as a pretext for them to strike a decisive blow at the Orthodox Church and the intelligentsia, who were trying to fight this disaster.
Of all the peasant uprisings that began in the summer of 1918, along with a broad campaign of requisitions, the uprising in the Tambov province was the longest, most important and most organized. Located five hundred kilometers southeast of Moscow, the Tambov province has been from the beginning of the century one of the bastions of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the heirs of the Russian Narodniks. In 1918-1920, despite all the repressions that fell upon this party, its supporters were numerous and active in the Tambov region. But besides this, the Tambov province was also the closest grain-producing region to Moscow, and since the autumn of 1918 more than a hundred food detachments raged in this densely populated area. In 1919, dozens of riots broke out here, and all of them were ruthlessly suppressed. In 1920, the surplus appraisal was sharply increased.
And at the same time, a thousand kilometers to the east, a new center of peasant unrest appeared. Having pumped out everything they could from the rural areas of southern Russia and Ukraine, the Bolsheviks turned their eyes in the autumn of 1920 to Western Siberia, where the surplus appraisal was arbitrarily determined in accordance with ... the export of grain from the region in 1913! But how can one compare a harvest grown in the expectation of receiving a full-fledged gold ruble for it, with one that the peasant will have to give up under the threat of reprisal? As elsewhere, the Siberian peasants rose up to protect the fruits of their labor and for their own survival. In January-March 1921, the Bolsheviks lost control over the provinces of Tobolsk, Omsk, Orenburg, Yekaterinburg - that is, a territory larger than France. The Trans-Siberian Railway, the only railway linking the European part of Russia with Siberia, was cut. On February 21, the People's Peasant Army captured Tobolsk and held this city until March 30.
Excerpts from Order No. 171 of June 11, 1921, signed by Antonov-Ovseenko and Tukhachevsky:
"1. Citizens who refuse to give their names will be shot on the spot, without trial.
2. To the villages in which weapons are hidden, by the authority of the political commission or the regional political commission, to announce a verdict on the removal of hostages and to shoot them if they do not hand over their weapons.
3. If a hidden weapon is found, shoot the senior worker in the family on the spot without trial.
4. The family in whose house the bandit has taken refuge is subject to arrest and expulsion from the province, its property is confiscated, the senior worker in this family is shot without trial.
5. Families hiding family members or property of bandits are considered as bandits, and the senior worker of this family is shot on the spot without trial.
6. In the event of the flight of a bandit's family, its property should be distributed among the peasants loyal to Soviet power, and the abandoned houses should be burned or dismantled.
7. This order is to be enforced severely and mercilessly.”
The day after the announcement of this order, Commander Tukhachevsky ordered the use of gases against the rebels. “The remnants of the broken gangs and individual bandits continue to gather in the forests.<...>The forests in which the bandits hide must be cleared with asphyxiating gases. Everything must be calculated so that the gas curtain, penetrating into the forest, destroys all life there. The chief of artillery and specialists competent in such operations must provide a sufficient amount of gases.
By July 1921, the military authorities and the Cheka had already prepared seven concentration camps, where, according to as yet incomplete data, at least 50,000 people were placed, mainly the elderly, women and children, "hostages" and family members of deserting peasants. . The situation in these camps was terrible: typhoid and cholera raged there, and the half-dressed prisoners suffered from all possible ills. In the summer of 1921, hunger made itself felt. Mortality by autumn rose to 15-20% per month. By September 1, 1921, a number of disparate gangs remained, in which one could hardly count up to a thousand armed people. Recall that in February the number of rebels reached 40 thousand. Antonov's peasant army was finished. Starting in November 1921, many thousands of prisoners from among the most able-bodied were taken out of the "pacified" villages and villages to concentration camps in the north of Russia, in Arkhangelsk and Kholmogory.
Judging by the daily reports of the Cheka to the Bolshevik leadership, the "restoration of revolutionary order" in the countryside continued in many regions - in Ukraine, in Western Siberia, in the provinces of the Volga region, in the Caucasus - at least until the second half of 1922. The skills acquired in previous years were preserved, and although the surplus appropriation and related requisitions were officially abolished in March 1921, the tax in kind that replaced them was often levied with the same ferocity.
From the report of the chairman of the authorized "five" on punitive measures against the bandits of the Tambov region. 10.7.1921
“Operations to clear the villages of the Kurdyukovskaya volost began on June 27 from the village of Osinovka, which was previously a frequent place for gangs. The mood of the peasants towards the detachments that arrived for the operation was incredulously expectant: they did not give out the gangs, they answered all the questions asked with ignorance.
40 hostages were taken, the village was declared under a state of siege, orders were issued setting a 2-hour deadline for the issuance of bandits and weapons with a warning - hostages would be shot for failure to comply. At the general meeting, the peasants began to noticeably hesitate, but did not dare to take an active part in helping to seize the bandits. Apparently, they had little faith that the execution orders would be carried out. After the expiration of the prescribed period, 21 hostages were shot in the presence of a gathering of peasants. The public execution, furnished with all the formalities, in the presence of all members of the "five", representatives, commanders of units, etc., made a tremendous impression on the peasants.<...>.
As for the village of Kareevka, where, due to the convenient territorial position, there was a convenient place for the constant stay of bandits<...>, the “five” decided to destroy this village, evicting the entire population and confiscating their property, with the exception of the families of the Red Army soldiers, who were relocated to the village of Kurdyuki and placed in huts seized from gangster families. Strictly after the seizure of valuable materials - window frames, seeders, log cabins, etc. - the village was set on fire<...>.
July 3 began operations in the village. Theology. It is rare to see such a closed and well-organized peasantry. When talking with the peasants, from the young to the old man, whitened with gray hair, all as one on the question of bandits excused themselves with complete ignorance and even answered with inquiring surprise: "We don't have bandits"; “Once we passed by, but we don’t even know well whether they were bandits or someone else, we live peacefully, we don’t disturb anyone and we don’t know anyone.”
The same tricks were repeated as in Osinovka, hostages were taken in the amount of 58 people. On July 4, the first batch of 21 people was shot, on July 5 - 15 people, 60 gangster families were seized - up to 200 people. As a result, the turning point was reached, the peasantry rushed to catch bandits and look for hidden weapons.<...>.
The final cleaning of the mentioned villages and villages was completed on July 6, the results of which affected not only the region of the two volosts adjacent to them; The appearance of the bandit element continues.
Chairman of the Plenipotentiary Five
Uskonin.
In order to improve tax collection in Siberia, a region that was supposed to supply most of the agricultural products at a time when the Volga provinces were hit by famine, Felix Dzerzhinsky was sent to Siberia in December 1921 as an emergency commissioner. He brought into action "flying revolutionary tribunals" that traveled around the villages and sentenced peasants who did not pass the food tax to prison or camp right there, on the spot. Like the requisition detachments, these tribunals, with the support of the "tax detachments", committed so many abuses that the chairman of the Supreme Tribunal, Nikolai Krylenko, was forced to send a special commission to investigate the actions of these bodies, which relied on the authority of the chief of the Cheka. On February 14, 1922, one of the commission's inspectors reported from Omsk: “The abuses of the requisitioning detachments have reached an unimaginable level. The detention of arrested peasants in unheated barns is practiced systematically, floggings and threats of execution are used. Those who have not fully paid the tax are driven bound and barefoot along the main street of the village and then locked in a cold barn. Women are beaten until they lose consciousness, they are lowered naked into holes hollowed out in the snow ... "
Here are excerpts from the summary of the political police for October 1922, a year and a half after the start of the NEP:
“In the Pskov province, more than 2/3 of the crop will go to the food tax. Four counties revolted.<...>In the Novgorod province, the collection of tax in kind is not feasible, despite the 25% reduction in rates, due to crop failure. In the Ryazan and Tver provinces, the fulfillment of 100% of the food tax dooms the peasants to starvation.<...>In the city of Novonikolaevsk, Tomsk province, famine develops, and the peasants prepare grass and roots for their food for the winter.<...>But all these facts pale next to reports from the Kyiv province of mass suicides of peasants due to the unbearable rates of food taxes and the confiscation of weapons. The famine that has befallen a number of regions is killing any hope for the future in the peasants.
In the autumn of 1922, the worst happened. After a two-year famine, the survivors piled into the bins the harvest that would allow them to survive the winter, provided that the food tax rates were reduced. “This year the grain harvest promises to be below the average level of the last ten years,” - with these words on July 2, 1921, in the Pravda newspaper for the first time on the last page, in a short note, it was mentioned that the “food problem” was aggravated on the “front agriculture". Ten days later, the July 12 appeal of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee “To all citizens of the RSFSR,” signed by the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Mikhail Kalinin, admitted that “in many areas, the drought of this year destroyed the crops.” Next, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) adopted the appeal of the Party's Tasks in the Fight against Famines, which appeared in Pravda on July 21. “The disaster,” the appeal explained, “is not only the result of this year's drought. It has been prepared and conditioned by past history, the backwardness of our agriculture, lack of organization, low level of agricultural knowledge, low technology, and backward forms of crop rotation. It has been strengthened by the results of the war and the blockade, by the unceasing struggle against us by the landlords, capitalists and their servants; even now it is being exacerbated by those who carry out the will of organizations hostile to Soviet Russia and all of its working population.”
In the long enumeration of the causes of this calamity, which has not yet been dared to be called by its true name, the most important factor has been omitted: the policy of requisitions and plunder, which for years has been carried out against an already weakened agriculture. The leaders of the provinces affected by the famine, gathered in Moscow in June 1921, unanimously accused the government and the all-powerful People's Commissariat of Food of provoking the famine.
From the reports of the Cheka and the military command, it can be concluded that the first signs of famine appeared in many regions already in 1919. Throughout 1920, the situation steadily worsened.
Lenin's government proved unable to feed the starving. The world community wanted to help the starving - the American Relief Organization (ARA) fed up to 10 million people, allocating 140 million gold rubles. The public created the All-Russian Committee for Assistance to the Starving, which included the most prominent representatives of the intelligentsia, including M. Gorky, E. Kuskova. How did Lenin react to this? “The directive today in the Politburo is to strictly neutralize Kuskova. You in the "communist cell" do not yawn, observe strictly. From Kuskova we will take a name, a signature, a couple of carriages of those who sympathize with her (and so on). Nothing else"(Lenin collection. T. XXXVI.C.287)
The agony of those dying of hunger hardly touched the Kremlin elite: the party leaders ate well even in times of famine. The myth of "hungry drug addicts" is just a myth.
But the Orthodox Church responded to human suffering. Patriarch Tikhon spoke in August 1921 in the world press. He penetratingly wrote: "Help! Help the country that has always helped others!.. Not only to your ears, but to the depths of your heart, let my painful groan of millions of people doomed to starvation die and lay it on your conscience, and on the conscience of all mankind!
On February 19, 1922, the Orthodox Church permitted donations to the needs of the starving people of the Volga region "precious church decorations and objects that do not have liturgical use."
However, a few days later, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree on the forcible removal of all valuables from churches, including the attributes of worship. For a long time Lenin's letter was classified. Here are a few quotes (quoted from: News of the Central Committee of the CPSU. 1990. N 4. P. 190-193):
“... Precisely now and only now, when people are being eaten in hungry areas and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are lying on the roads, we can (and therefore must) carry out seizures of church valuables with the most frenzied and merciless energy and without stopping before suppressing any kind of resistance.
What was the purpose of this action? Help for the hungry? No!
“We need to make a withdrawal at all costs” in order to “...secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles ... Without this fund, no state work in general, no economic construction in particular, and no defending one's position in Genua is completely unthinkable.
Lenin demanded that a directive be given to the judicial authorities to “the process was carried out with maximum speed and ended with nothing more than the execution of a very large number of the most influential and dangerous Black Hundreds of the city of Shuya, and, if possible, not only of this city, but also of Moscow and several other spiritual centers ... The more representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie we manage to shoot on this occasion, the better.”
Instead of the Committee, the government created the Famine Relief Commission (known as Pomgol), a cumbersome bureaucratic organization made up of functionaries from various people's commissariats, highly inefficient and corrupt. During the worst famine in the summer of 1922, which affected almost 30 million people, the Commission provided, and rather irregularly, food assistance to only 3 million people. As for the ARA, the Quakers, the Red Cross, they fed about 11 million a day.
(apparently, that's why we still scold the Americans - for the good they have done)
Despite international assistance, the famine of 1921-1922 claimed at least 5 million lives, with a total of 29 million starving. The last terrible famine in pre-revolutionary Russia, which hit the country in 1891 and engulfed approximately the same regions (the Middle and Lower Volga and part of Kazakhstan), claimed from 400 to 500 thousand people. But then the state and society competed with each other in helping the starving. In the early nineties, Vladimir Ulyanov, a young assistant to a barrister, lived in Samara, the center of the province most affected by the famine in 1891. He turned out to be the only representative of the local intelligentsia who not only did not take any part in organizing assistance to the starving, but also categorically objected to such assistance. As one of his friends recalled, “Vladimir Ilyich had the courage to openly declare that the consequences of the famine - the birth of the industrial proletariat, this gravedigger of the bourgeois system, is a progressive phenomenon.<...>The famine, destroying the peasant economy, is moving us towards our final goal, towards socialism through capitalism. Hunger at the same time breaks faith not only in the king, but also in God.
Prodrazverstka entailed terrible human casualties from hunger, the despair of peasant uprisings, drowned in blood by the Bolsheviks. And the famine served as a formal pretext for the massacre of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Meanwhile, A.A. Ritikh, whose proposals for voluntary surplus appropriation were criticized by the State Duma, was in 1921 a member of the Russian society in England to help the starving in Russia ... The circle was closed.
surplus appropriation
surplus appropriation(short for the phrase food distribution) - in Russia, a system of state measures, carried out during periods of military and economic crises, aimed at the implementation of procurement of agricultural products. The principle of surplus appropriation consisted in the obligatory delivery by producers to the state of an established ("deployed") norm of products at prices established by the state.
For the first time, the surplus appraisal was introduced in the Russian Empire on December 2, 1916, at the same time, the previously operating system of public procurement on the free market was maintained.
Due to the low supply of grain from state procurements and surpluses, on March 25, 1917, the Provisional Government introduced a grain monopoly, which involved the transfer of the entire volume of grain produced, minus the established consumption norms, for personal and household needs.
The "grain monopoly" was confirmed by the government of the Council of People's Commissars by a Decree of May 9, 1918. The surplus appraisal was reintroduced by the Soviet government at the beginning of January 1919 in the critical conditions of the civil war and devastation, as well as the food dictatorship that had been in effect since May 13, 1918. The surplus appropriation became part of a set of measures known as the policy of "war communism". During the procurement campaign of the 1919-20 financial year, the surplus appraisal also extended to potatoes, meat, and by the end of 1920, almost all agricultural products.
The methods used in procurement during the period of the food dictatorship caused an increase in peasant discontent, which turned into armed actions by the peasants. On March 21, 1921, the surplus appropriation was replaced by a tax in kind, which was the main measure of the transition to the NEP policy.
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Prerequisites for introduction
| I must say that where there have already been cases of refusal or where there have been short cuts, they immediately asked me from the field what should be done next: should I act as required by the law, which indicates a certain way out when rural or volost communities they do not decide the sentence that is required of them for the performance of this or that duty or assignment - whether this should be done, or whether it is necessary, perhaps, to resort to requisition, also provided for by the decision of the Special Conference, but I always and everywhere answered that here it is necessary to wait with this, it is necessary to wait: perhaps the mood of the gathering will change; it is necessary to assemble it again, indicate to him the purpose for which this apportionment is intended, that this is exactly what the country and homeland need for defense, and depending on the mood of the gathering, I thought that these decisions would change. In this direction, voluntary, I considered it necessary to exhaust all means. |
The tight deadlines resulted in errors, expressed, in particular, in the deployment of more food than was available in a number of provinces. Others simply sabotaged them by greatly increasing consumption rates and leaving no visible surplus. The desire not to infringe on the existing parallel free purchase eventually led to the actual collapse of this venture, which required the readiness for self-sacrifice of the masses of producers - which was not there - or the widespread use of requisitions - for which, in turn, the system was not ready.
Prodrazvyorstka after the February Revolution
After the February Revolution, on February 27, 1917, the Food Commission of the Provisional Government was organized. In the first two months of the activity of the Provisional Government, the food policy was led by the zemstvo doctor cadet A. I. Shingarev. The failure of the preparations led to disaster. At the beginning of March 1917, in Petrograd and Moscow, grain supplies remained for several days, and there were sections of the front with hundreds of thousands of soldiers where grain supplies were only for half a day. Circumstances forced us to act: on March 2, the Food Commission of the Provisional Government makes a decision: “without stopping the usual purchases and receipt of bread by apportionment, immediately begin requisitioning bread from large landowners and tenants of all classes with a plowing capacity of at least 50 acres, as well as from trading enterprises and banks." On March 25, 1917, the Law on the transfer of grain to the disposal of the state (monopoly on bread) was issued. According to him, “the entire amount of grain, the food and fodder harvest of past years, 1916 and the future harvest of 1917, minus the stock necessary for food and household needs of the owner, comes from the time the grain is taken into account, at the disposal of the state at fixed prices and can be alienated only through the state food authorities. That is, the state monopoly on all grain, except for their own consumption and economic needs, and the state monopoly on the grain trade. The norms of own consumption and economic needs were established by the same law, based on the fact that: a) the amount of grain for sowing is left, based on the sown area of the farm and the average sowing density according to the data of the Central Statistical Committee, with possible adjustment according to Zemstvo statistics. When using a seeder, the size is reduced by 20-40% (depending on the type of seeder); b) for food needs - for dependents at 1.25 poods per month, for adult workers - 1.5 poods. In addition, cereals at 10 spools per capita per day; c) for livestock - for working horses - 8 pounds of oats or barley or 10 pounds of corn for each day. For cattle and pigs - no more than 4 pounds per day per head. For young animals, the rate was halved. Feeding rates could decrease locally; c) An additional 10% for each item (a, b, c) "just in case".
On April 29, the supply norms for the rest of the population, primarily the urban ones, are also streamlined according to the rationing system. The maximum norm in cities and urban-type settlements is 30 pounds of flour and 3 pounds of cereals per month. For persons engaged in hard work, a surcharge of 50% was established.
On the same day, an "institute of emissaries with great powers" is approved to carry out food policy in the field and establish closer ties with the center.
The law of March 25 and the instruction issued on May 3 toughened the responsibility for concealed grain stocks subject to surrender to the state or refusal to surrender visible stocks. If hidden reserves were discovered, they were subject to alienation at half a fixed price, in case of refusal to voluntarily surrender visible reserves, they are forcibly alienated.
“It is an inevitable, bitter, sad measure,” said Shingarev, “to take the distribution of grain stocks into the hands of the state. This measure cannot be avoided." Having confiscated the cabinet and appanage lands, he postponed the question of the fate of the landowners' estates until the Constituent Assembly.
On July 1, the People's Commissariat of Food orders by decree the local food authorities to take account of bread and set deadlines for surpluses in accordance with the norms for leaving bread with the owners (dated March 25, 1917), but no more than until August 1, 1918.
On July 27, 1918, the People's Commissariat for Food adopted a special resolution on the introduction of a widespread class food ration divided into four categories, providing for measures to account for stocks and distribute food.
The resolution of August 21 determined the size of the surplus for the new crop of 1918, based on the same norms of March 1917 for seed grain, for food the norms were reduced to 12 pounds of grain or flour and 3 pounds of cereals. Above the norms for each household up to 5 eaters - 5 pounds, over 5 eaters +1 pood for each. Livestock rations have also been reduced. As before, these norms could be lowered by the decision of local organizations.
The food authorities, the People's Commissariat for Food and personally Tsyurupa were given emergency powers to supply the country with bread and other products. Relying on the personnel core of the People's Commissariat and old, experienced food workers, Tsyurupa puts into practice the surplus appropriation developed by the tsarist minister Rittich and the law on the grain monopoly passed by the Cadet Shingarev.
In 1918, the harsh measures recommended by Lenin for the collection of grain did not become widespread. The People's Commissariat for Food was looking for more flexible methods of its withdrawal, which would less embitter the peasants and could give the maximum result. As an experiment, in a number of provinces, a system of agreements, contracts between food authorities and peasants through the Soviets and committees on the voluntary delivery of grain by them with payment for part of it in goods, began to be used. The experiment was first tested in the summer in the Vyatka province by A. G. Schlikhter. In September, he applied it in the Efremov district of the Tula province, achieving a significant result in those conditions. Previously, in the Efremov district, food workers could not feed their workers and the poor even with the help of emergency commissars and military force.
Schlichter's work experience showed that it was possible to reach an agreement with the peasants provided that they were attentive to their needs, understood their psychology, and respected their work. Trust in the peasants, a joint discussion with them of the difficult question of determining surpluses, firmly pursuing one's line without threats and arbitrariness, fulfilling the promises made, helping them as much as possible - all this met with understanding among the peasants, brought them closer to participating in solving the nation's cause. Clarification, help, business control were most valued by the peasants.
The contractual-razvyorstochny method gave a guaranteed collection of bread. It was partially practiced in other provinces - Penza, Kaluga, Pskov, Simbirsk. However, in the Kazan province, the use of agreements with peasants yielded only 18% of the collection of surpluses. Here, in the organization of the apportionment, a serious violation of the class principle was committed - taxation was carried out in an equalizing manner.
Low grain receipts, even with the beginning of the harvest, led to starvation in industrial centers. To alleviate hunger among the workers of Moscow and Petrograd, the government went on a temporary violation of the grain monopoly, allowing them, according to the certificates of enterprises, to purchase at free prices and transport one and a half pounds of bread privately for five weeks - from August 24 to October 1, 1918. Permission to transport one and a half pounds took advantage of 70% of the population of Petrograd, having bought or exchanged for things 1,043,500 pounds of bread
In total, in 1918, 73,628 thousand thousand pounds of cereals. Nevertheless, the fulfillment of procurement plans was extremely low (the Provisional Government planned to harvest 440 million poods for 1918) and the methods of "unlimited" grain procurements on the ground, in many cases looking like robbery and banditry, caused active opposition from the peasantry, which in a number of places grew into armed uprisings that carried anti-Bolshevik overtones.
Grain procurement policy and practice of other regimes during the civil war
By the autumn of 1918, the territory of the former Russian Empire under the control of the Bolshevik Soviets amounted to no more than 1/4 of its original size. Before the end of the large-scale operations of the Civil War, various territories of the former Russian Empire changed hands and were controlled by forces of various directions - from monarchists to anarchists. These regimes, in the case of more or less long-term control over the territory, also formed their own food policy.
Ukraine
The surplus appraisal was again introduced by the Bolsheviks during the Civil War on January 11, 1919. (Decree on the introduction of food surplus for bread) and became part of the Soviet policy of building communism.
Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of January 11, 1919 announced the introduction of surplus appropriation throughout the territory of Soviet Russia, but in reality, surplus appraisal was carried out at first only in the central provinces controlled by the Bolsheviks: in Tula, Vyatka, Kaluga, Vitebsk, etc. Only as the control of the Bolsheviks spread over the rest of the territories later surplus appropriation was carried out in the Ukraine (beginning of April 1919), Belorussia (1919), Turkestan and Siberia (1920). In accordance with the resolution of the People's Commissariat for Food of January 13, 1919, on the procedure for deploying state planning targets, they were calculated on the basis of provincial data on the size of sown areas, productivity, and stocks of previous years. In the provinces, the apportionment was carried out by counties, volosts, villages, and then between individual peasant farms. Only in 1919 did improvements become noticeable in the efficiency of the state food apparatus. The collection of products was carried out by the organs of the People's Commissariat of Food, food detachments with the active assistance of the committees (until the termination of their existence in early 1919) and local Soviets. Initially, the surplus appraisal extended to bread and grain fodder. During the procurement campaign (1919-20) it also covered potatoes, meat, and by the end of 1920 almost all agricultural products.
Food was confiscated from the peasants virtually free of charge, since the banknotes that were offered as payment were almost completely depreciated, and the state could not offer industrial goods in return for the seized grain due to the fall in industrial production during the war and intervention.
In addition, when determining the size of the distribution, they often proceeded not from the actual food surpluses of the peasants, but from the food needs of the army and the urban population, therefore, not only the available surpluses, but very often the entire seed fund and agricultural products needed to feed the peasant himself, were confiscated on the ground.
The dissatisfaction and resistance of the peasants during the seizure of products was suppressed by the armed detachments of the Committees of the Poor, as well as the special forces of the Red Army (CHON) and detachments of the Prodarmiya.
After the suppression of the active resistance of the peasants to the surplus appropriation, the Soviet authorities had to face passive resistance: the peasants hid bread, refused to accept money that had lost its purchasing power, reduced the sown area and production so as not to create surplus useless for themselves, and produced products only in accordance with the consumer norm for their family.
As a result of surplus appropriation, 832,309 tons of grain were collected in the procurement campaign of 1916-1917; before the October Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government collected 280 million poods (out of 720 planned) in the first 9 months of Soviet power - 5 million centners; for 1 year of surplus appropriation (1/VIII 1918-1/VIII 1919) - 18 million centners; 2nd year (1/VIII 1919-1/VIII 1920) - 35 million centners 3rd year (1/VIII 1920-1/VIII 1921) - 46.7 million centners.
Annual data on grain procurements for this period: 1918/1919 −1,767,780 tons; 1919/1920 −3480200 tons; 1920/1921 - 6011730 tons.
Despite the fact that the surplus appropriation allowed the Bolsheviks to solve the vital problem of supplying food to the Red Army and the urban proletariat, due to the ban on the free sale of bread and grain, commodity-money relations were significantly reduced, which began to slow down the post-war recovery of the economy, and sowing began to decline in agriculture. area, productivity and gross harvest. This was due to the lack of interest of the peasants to produce products that were practically taken away from them. In addition, the surplus in
surplus appropriation food distribution, the system of procurement of agricultural products. products. It consisted in the obligatory delivery by the peasants to the state at fixed prices of all surpluses (in excess of the established norms for personal and household needs) of bread and other products. It was used by the Soviet state during the Civil War of 1918-20. In 1918 the center of Soviet Russia was cut off from the most important agricultural enterprises. regions of the country. Stocks of bread ran out. The urban and poorest rural populations were starving. To meet the minimum requirements, the Soviet government was forced to introduce the strictest accounting of food surpluses, mainly from the prosperous part of the village, which sought to disrupt the state grain monopoly and preserve freedom of trade. In those conditions, bread was the only possible form of bread preparation. “The apportionment was the most accessible measure for an insufficiently organized state in order to hold out in an unheard of difficult war against the landowners” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 44, p. 7). P. was carried out in the second half of 1918 in the provinces: Tula, Vyatka, Kaluga, Vitebsk, and others. By decree of the Council of People's Commissars of January 11, 1919, P. was introduced throughout the territory of Soviet Russia, and later in Ukraine and Belarus (1919), Turkestan and Siberia (1920). In accordance with the resolution of the People's Commissariat for Food of January 13, 1919, on the procedure for deploying state planning targets, they were calculated on the basis of provincial data on the size of sown areas, productivity, and stocks of previous years. In the provinces, the apportionment was carried out by counties, volosts, villages, and then between individual peasant farms. The collection of products was carried out by the bodies of the People's Commissariat of Food, food detachments with the active assistance of the committees and local Soviets. Provision was an expression of the food dictatorship of the working class and the poorest peasantry. Initially, P. spread to bread and grain fodder. During the procurement campaign (1919-20), it also covered potatoes, meat, and by the end of 1920, almost all agricultural crops. products. In 1918-19 107.9 million poods of grain and grain fodder were harvested, in 1919-20 212.5 million poods, in 1920-21 367 million poods. Food production enabled the Soviet state to solve the vitally important problem of planned food supplies for the Red Army and urban workers and for supplying industry with raw materials. With the increase in procurements in the P., commodity-money relations narrowed (the free sale of bread and grain was prohibited). Socialism has left its mark on all aspects of economic relations between town and countryside, becoming one of the most important elements of the system of "war communism" (see War communism). With the end of the Civil War, Poland no longer met the interests of socialist construction, hindered the restoration of the national economy, and hindered the growth of productive forces. In agriculture, sown areas were reduced, yields and gross harvests were reduced. The further preservation of P. caused dissatisfaction among the peasants, and in some areas kulak-Socialist-Revolutionary revolts. With the transition of the Soviet country to the New Economic Policy (See New Economic Policy)
P. in March 1921, by decision of the 10th Congress of the RCP (b), was replaced by the Prodnalog om. Lit.: Lenin V.I., Preliminary, rough draft of the theses, about the peasants. February 8, 1921, Full. coll. soch., 6th ed., v. 42; his, Report on the replacement of the apportionment with a tax in kind on March 15, ibid., vol. 43: his, On the food tax. there; his, Report on the tactics of the RCP (b) July 5, 1921, ibid., vol. 44; his, the New Economic Policy and the tasks of political enlightenment, ibid.; History of the CPSU, vol. 3, book. 2, M., 1968; Gimpelson E. G., "War Communism": politics, practice, ideology, M., 1973; Gladkov I. A., Essays on the Soviet economy. 1917-1920, M., 1956; Strizhkov Yu.K., From the history of the introduction of food distribution, in the collection: Historical Notes, vol. 71, M., 1962. V. P. Dmitrenko.
Great Soviet Encyclopedia. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1969-1978 .
Synonyms:See what "Prodrazvyorstka" is in other dictionaries:
surplus appropriation- surplus, and ... Russian spelling dictionary
surplus appropriation- surplus, and ... merged. Apart. Through a hyphen.
- (short for the phrase food deployment) in Russia, a system of state measures carried out during periods of military and economic crises, aimed at procuring agricultural products. ... ... Wikipedia
AND; and. Food allocation (the system of procurement of agricultural products by the Soviet state in 1919-1921, which obliged the peasants to hand over to the state all surplus grain and other products at fixed prices). * * * surplus appropriation… … encyclopedic Dictionary
PRODRAZVYORSTKA, and, wives. Abbreviation: food allocation during the period of war communism in 1919 1921: food procurement system. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov- as well as surplus appropriation, as well as (BSRG) ... Dictionary of the use of the letter Yo
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