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Politics and the War Effort in Russia: The Union of Zemstvos and the Organization of the Food Supply, 1914-1916

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Thomas Fallows
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Extract

Russian liberals can easily be cast as weakhearted idealists, devoted to Western notions of fair play and moderation and naively optimistic of the chances of seeing those principles brought to life in their own country. As the opposing forces of the state and the revolution build toward their climax in 1917, the liberal Hamlets often appear incapable of seizing the moment. Yet consider the efforts of the “public organizations”—the War-Industry Committees, the Union of Zemstvos, and the Union of Towns, as well as the Progressive Bloc in the Duma—to take over the practical matter of running Russia's war effort during the First World War. Prince George Lvov, head of the Provisional Government until the July Days of 1917, seems to personify this stereotype of well-meaning yet tragically ineffective liberalism on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, but it was this same figure who energetically directed the Union of Zemstvos during the war.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 70 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1978

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References

1. Tikhon, Polner, Zhisnennyi put’ kniasia Georgiia Evgen'evicha L'vova (Paris, 1932), p. 188 Google Scholar.

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10. A Duma report of February 15, 1916 discussed the rising demand for food (see Prilozhenie k stenograficheskim otchetam Gosudarstvennoi Dumy: Chetvertyi sozyv, sessiia chetvertaia, 1915-1916 gg., vol. 2 [Petrograd, 1916], pp. 1-2).

11. Sobranie usakoznenii i rasporiashenii [hereafter cited as SUR], articles S51, 1169, 1760 (1915); and Kondrat'ev, N. S., Rynok khlebov i ego regulirovanie vo vremia voiny i revoliutsii (Moscow, 1916), p. 143 Google Scholar.

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13. On September 9 the Ministry of Agriculture decreed fixed prices on all food transactions. K. Kovalenskii, a leading figure in the government's food organization, explained the problem in a memo of September 24, 1916 to A. D. Protopopov, minister of internal affairs (see Anfimov, A. M., ed., Ekonomicheskoe poloshenie Rossii nakanune Velikoi Oktiabr'skoi Sotsialisticheskoi Revoliutsii: Dokumenty i materialy [Leningrad, 1967], part 3, pp. 166–67 Google Scholar).

14. A. N. Naumov writes that on January 17, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sazonov mentioned his expectations that the war would continue for at least a year. On February 3, 1915 the government, now expecting a prolonged war, called a special conference on the food problem (see Naumov, A. N., Is utelevshikh vospominanii, 1868-1917, vol. 2 [New York, 1955], pp. 278–80 Google Scholar).

15. The statute empowered the chairman to inspect commercial enterprises, repeal the orders of local authorities, and coordinate the activity of his Special Council with that of the troop commanders (SUR, article 1760, statutes 1, S, 7, 16, and 17 [1915]).

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18. Polivanov, A. A., Is dnevnikov i vospominanii po dolshnosti voennogo ministra i ego pomoshchnika, 1907-1916 gg., vol. 1 (Moscow, 1924), pp. 200–202 Google Scholar; Shakhovskoi, , “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi,” pp. 122–23Google Scholar; and Struve, P. B. et al., Food Supply in Russia During the World War (New Haven, 1930), p. 1930 Google Scholar.

19. Bukshpan, , Voenno-khosiaistvennaia politika, p. 383 Google Scholar.

20. Naumov, , Iz utelevshikh vospominanii, vol. 2, p. 346Google Scholar.

21. Kondrat'ev, Rynok khlebov, p. 54Google Scholar.

22. Letters of the Tsaritsa, p. 214.

23. Kondrat'ev, Rynok khlebov, p. 80Google Scholar.

24. Bukshpan, , Voenno-khoziaistvennaia politika, p. 385 Google Scholar.

25. An extreme example in which the zemstvos practically ran the government's food organization can be found in Kostroma province, where the chairman of the provincial zemstvo board served as the agent po prodovol'stviiu and where zemstvo officials (along with members of the town organization and the War-Industry Committee) held six of the seven posts on the government's food council. Zemstvo business was actually conducted at this council, and the council's communications were published not in a government journal but in the zemstvo's own local Bulletin (see Izvestiia Kostromskogo gubernskogo zemstvo, 1915, no. 8, p. 2; 1916, no. 1, p. 278, no. 3, pp. 23-29, and no. 4, pp. 20-21, 24). Much the same was true for Moscow and Tambov provinces, the two areas besides Kostroma where local sources were available to me (see A. Chaianov, ed., Matcrialy po voprosam organizatsii prodovol'stvennogo dela, vol. 2: Organisatsiia prodovol'stvennogo dela v Moskovskoi gubernii (Moscow, 1916), p. 47; and vol. 3: Organisatsiia zagotovki khleba v Tambovskoi gubernii (Moscow, 1917), pp. 30-33.

26. M., Lemke, 250 dnei v tsarskoi stavke (25 sent. 1915-2 iiulia 1916) (Petrograd, 1920), pp. 471 and 825Google Scholar; Iu. N. Danilov [Daniloff], Dem Zusammenbruch entgegen (Hanover, 1928), pp. 75–76 Google Scholar; and Danilov, Iu. N., Rossiia v mirovoi voine, 1914-1915 gg. (Berlin, 1924), pp. 117–18 Google Scholar.

27. Priloshenie k stenograficheskim otchetam Gosudarstvennoi Dumy: Chetvertyi sosyv, sessiia chetvertaia, vol. 5 (Petrograd, 1916), no. 299, p. 4.

28. Anfimov, , Ekonomicheskoe poloshenie Rossii, part 3, p. 33Google Scholar.

29. Betty A. Laird and Roy D. Laird, eds., To Live Long Enough: The Memoirs of Naum Jasny, Scientific Analyst (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976), p. 18Google Scholar.

30. Osoboe Soveshchanie dlia obsuzhdeniia i ob “edineniia meropriiatii po prodovoPstvennomu delu, Predvaritel'nye itogi t>serossiiskoi scl'skokhoziaistvennoi perepisi 1916 goda (po podshchetam, proizvedennym mestnymi perepisnymi uchrezhdeniiami), 1: Evropeiskaia Rossiia: Pouezdnye, pogubernskie i poraionnye itogi (Petrograd, 1916), pp. i-xii.

31. This embittered many state officials. Naumov, among others, complained that the Union failed to account for their expenses and consequently wasted millions of government rubles (see Naumov, , Is utelevshikh vospominanii, vol. 2, p. 458Google Scholar). The empress sought to ensure that the public realized to what extent the government was subsidizing zemstvo operations, so that the zemstvos could not claim to have single-handedly saved Russia from disaster (see Letters of the Tsaritsa, pp. 350 and 415).

32. Polner, , Zhiznennyi put', p. 185 Google Scholar. 33. Vserossiiskii Zemskii Soiuz pomoshchi bol'nym i rannenym voinam, Izvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, nos. 30-31, pp. 243-44; and Izvestiia Kostromskogo gubernskogo semstva, 1916, no. 6, pp. 50-55.

34. Izvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, nos. 30-31, pp. 220-21; no. 34, pp. 152-54; nos. 35-36, pp. 304-9.

35. Ibid., no. 33, pp. 161-64; nos. 35-36, pp. 300-302, 310-11; nos. 37-38, pp. 108-12.

36. Ibid., nos. 30-31, p. 57; no. 33, pp. 148-51.

37. Ibid., no. 28, p. 24; no. 29, pp. 51-57; nos. 30-31, pp. 57-63; no. 33, p. 32.

38. A chronicle describing the great variety among the practices of the county zemstvos can be found in the Isvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, no. 29, pp. 190-96.

39. Ibid., no. 28, p. 26; nos. 30-31, pp. 62-63, 262-63.

40. Struve, et al., Food Supply in Russia, pp. 51–57 Google Scholar.

41. Isvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, nos. 30-31, p. 261; ho. 34, pp. 160-62; nos. 35-36, pp. 21-22.

42. Ibid., no. 29, p. 240; no. 32, pp. 34-36.

43. Ibid., no. 40, pp. 14-29.

44. Anfimov, A. M., Rossiiskaia derevnia v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow, 1962), pp. 95 and 195Google Scholar.

45. For more on this, see William E. Gleason, “The All-Russian Union of Towns and the All-Russian Union of Zemstvos,” pp. 151-60. According to Gleason, Lvov withdrew from the Special Council in order to prevent domestic politics from diverting attention from the war effort. Gleason sees this as an indication of Lvov's abhorrence of politics. I, on the contrary, see it as Lvov placing zemstvo autonomy ahead of the practical matter of assisting the refugees. To paraphrase Bismarck, politics were primary.

46. The only zemstvo comment I have seen on the problem of institutional parallelism appears in Veselovskii's monumental history of the zemstvos, where the author criticizes the Ministry of Agriculture's meddling with the zemstvos in the implementation of the Stolypin reform. Veselovskii concludes that the zemstvos, not the government, should have monopolized “the entire business of rendering agricultural assistance to the population” ( Veselovskii, V. V., Istoriia semstva za sorok let, vol. 4 (St. Petersburg, 1911), p. 124 Google Scholar.

47. Izvestiia Glaiunogo Komiteta, nos. 30-31, pp. 257-59.

48. Ibid., pp. 242-43.

49. Polner, , Zhisnennyi put', pp. 58–59Google Scholar. Polner contrasts Lvov with this group; this may have been true for 1900, but not after 1915.

50. Grave, , Burzhuasiia nakanune fevral'skoi revoliutsii, pp. 33–34Google Scholar.

51. Ibid., pp. 19-20.

52. “Progressivnyi Blok,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 50-51 (1932): 138 and 144.

53. Shakhovskoi, , “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi,” p. 133 Google Scholar.

54. Krasnyi arkhiv, 52 (1932): 147.

55. Ibid., pp. 150-51

56. George Katkov, using different evidence, arrives at the same general conclusion. As I explain below, however, I do not share his willingness to accept police reports of a public conspiracy (see Katkov, , Russia 1917, pp. 155-60, 172)Google Scholar.

57. Isvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, nos. 35-36, pp. 25-26. Guchkov sketched a roughly similar picture, using the image of a speeding car driven by a mad chauffeur (see Katkov, , Russia 1917, pp. 178–79Google Scholar). The difference between the two images is subtle yet significant. Guchkov, writing in September of 1915, places the public in the back seat, helplessly wondering how to stop the mad driver. Lvov, speaking five months later (after the zemstvos had begun to expand their involvement in the food supply), sees the public firmly in control of the situation, safely guiding the vessel while the mad captain stands aside.

58. He wrote, for example, that “the Russian public has acquired state-like qualities [russkaia obshchestvennost’ stala obshchestvennosfiu gosudarstvennoi]” ﹛Isvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, nos. 37-38, pp. 1-2). Later he called upon the zemstvos to resolve the dispute over the meat supply between the town and the village from a “supreme, state-like point of view [vysshaia, gosudarstvennaia tochka sreniia]” (ibid., no. 39, p. 2).

59. Ibid., no. 51, pp. 1-2.

60. Grave, , Burshuasiia nakanune fevral'skoi revoliutsii, pp. 20, 33-34, 47-48, S2-S3, 150-51Google Scholar.

61. The Union made a determined effort to strengthen the ties in 1916 by sponsoring all-zemstvo conferences and sending out questionnaires to promote communication within the zemstvo hierarchy (Izvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, nos. 52-53, pp. 25-26).

62. See, for example, the greetings addressed to Lvov in January of 1916 from the chairman of the Ekaterinoslav provincial zemstvo board (ibid., nos. 30-31, p. 260).

63. Ibid., no. 40, pp. 185-92; no. 41, pp. 189-94; no. 57, pp. 69-72; and Anfimov, , Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii, part 3, pp. 102-3Google Scholar.

64. For background on this, see Krivoshein, , A. V. Krivoshein, pp. 221–24Google Scholar; Naumov, , Iz utelevshikh vospominanii, vol. 2, pp. 284-85, 418-19, 462, 562Google Scholar; and “Soveshchanie gubernatorov,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 33 (1929): 147-51.

65. Kurlov, P. G., GibeV imperatorskoi Rossii (Berlin, 1923), p. 165 Google Scholar; Padenie tsarskogo reshima, vol. 4 (Leningrad, 1925), p. 72.

66. Letters of the Tsaritsa, p. 3S0.

67. Ibid., pp. 360-61. jC.

68. Naumov, , Is utelevshikh vospominanii, vol. 2, p. 562Google Scholar.

69. Letters of the Tsaritsa, pp. 394, 395, 398. On September 9 Alexandra wrote to her , », husband, “Please, take Protopopov as minister of the interior, as he is one of the Duma, it will make a great effect on them and shut their mouths.”

70. SUR, article 2120 (1916).

71. Letters of the Tsaritsa, p. 428. B»,

72. Kurlov, , GibeV, pp. 208–9Google Scholar; Diakin, V. S., Russkaia burzhuaziia i tsarizm v gody i pervoi mirovoi voiny, 1914-1917 (Leningrad, 1967), p. 240 Google Scholar. fe

73. SUR, article 1914, no. 2 (1916) ; article 220, section 3, no. 31 (1916).

74. Grave, , Burzhuaziia nakanune jcvral'skoi revoliutsii, pp. 145, 150—51Google Scholar. The evidence clearly indicates that in the few months before the overthrow of the monarchy Lvov was at least toying with the idea of a coup. V. I. Gurko reports that “in the fall of 1916” Lvov and Chelnokov told a meeting of the Progressive Bloc that Russia's only hope of salvation lay in a revolution ( Gurko, V. I., Features and Figures of the Past [Stanford, 1939], p. 582Google Scholar). S. P. Melgunov published a report of a coup planned by Lvov and four others in December of 1916 to force Nicholas to abdicate in favor of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, allowing Lvov to become premier ( Melgunov, S. P., Na putiakh k dvortsomu perevorotu [Paris, 1931], pp. 91–Google Scholar).

75. Izvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, no. 48, pp. 122-23; no. 50, pp. 36-44; no. 56, pp. 43-44.

76. Jasny, , Opyt regulirovki, p. 103 Google Scholar. It is unclear why Bobrinskii changed his mind on the local food organizations. 77. Ibid., pp. 56-70. . 78. Strove et al., Food Supply in Russia, pp. 89-97Google Scholar; Sidorov, A. L., Ekonomicheskoe poloshenie Rossii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow, 1973), pp. 486–91 Google Scholar; Izvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, no. 56, pp. 90-95; no. 57, pp. 84-88.

79. Padenie tsarskogo reshima, vol. S (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926), p. 284.

80. Izvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, no. SO, p. 118.

81. Kondrat'ev, , Rynok khlebov, pp. 85 and 134Google Scholar; and Anfimov, , Rossiiskaia derevnia, p. 309 Google Scholar.

82. Naumov, , Is utelevshikh vospominanii, vol. 2, p. 469Google Scholar.

83. Anfimov, , Rossiiskaia derevnia, pp. 191, 195, 280Google Scholar; R., Claus, Die Kriegswirtschaft Russlands (Bonn, 1922), pp. 129–30, 133Google Scholar; and Volobuev, P. B., Ekonomicheskaia politika Vremennogo pravitel'stva (Moscow, 1962), p. 388 Google Scholar.

84. Anfimov, , Rossiiskaia derevnia, p. 321 Google Scholar.

85. Izvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, nos. 35-36, pp. 128-35. Struve's comments in 1916 on the food supply can be found in Richard Pipes, ed., P. B. Struve: Collected Works in Fifteen Volumes, vol. 11: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914-1920 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1970), nos. 500, 501, 504, and 515, which essentially repeat the themes he outlined in his conference report.

86. Izvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, nos. 41-42, pp. 231-33; Izvestiia Kostromskogo gubernskogo zemstva, 1915, no. 7, pp. 41-48; and no. 8, pp. 1-4.

87. Izvestiia Glavnogo Komiteta, no. 50, pp. 49-57, 115-21; and no. 56, pp. 43-44.

88. Stone, , Eastern Front, pp. 297 and 329Google Scholar. It is difficult to follow his argument, since he writes in a different passage that price controls could have worked if accompanied by subsidies (pp. 288-89).

89. Laird, Betty and Laird, Roy, To Live Long Enough, p. 21 Google Scholar. . 90. Sidorov, , Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii, p. 490 Google Scholar.

91. Forty-three million poods, as opposed to nineteen million in the previous year ( Anfimov, , Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii, part 2, p. 356Google Scholar).

92. Anfimov, , Rossiiskaia derevnia, p. 310 Google Scholar. A report by the director of the State Bank of Ekaterinoslav in October of 1916 illustrates the problem of not fixing prices on all items. He wrote that peasants agreed to comply with fixed prices, but only if prices were also fixed on textiles, iron goods, nails and the like. R. Claus (whom Stone considers one of the most astute of the foreign observers of the Russian economy in these years) supports Struve's position on the price policy ( Claus, , Kriegswirtschaft, p. 140 Google Scholar).

93. Stone, , Eastern Front, p. 297 Google Scholar; and Anfimov, , Rossiiskaia derevnia, pp. 243–69Google Scholar. Anfimov holds that expenses for poor and middle peasants were rising faster than their income. His claim that salaries paid to the families of soldiers did not cover the costs of sending a peasant to the recruiting office is unsatisfactory, for it does not calculate the income the family received after their man had reached the front; similarly, his argument that the number of jobs for hire was reduced is incomplete, for he does not consider that fewer peasants were in the fields looking for work. He acknowledges that rent was falling, but denies the importance of this by asserting, without offering any evidence, that this benefited only the “kulaks” (a category whose boundaries he does not define). He notes the declining number of peasant households engaged in handicrafts, and attributes this to their supposedly falling wages, instead of considering the more likely possibility that this was attributable to the surge of rural labor into the army and the war industries. Finally, Anfimov bases his argument that the lower and middle strata of peasants did not market enough grain to benefit from the rising food prices on figures presented by Stalin in his 1928 article, “On the Grain Front,” which attempted to justify the initial collectivization drive by claiming that “kulaks” were the only village group that marketed their grain.

94. Claus, , Kriegswirtschaft, pp. 138–40Google Scholar; Kondrat'ev, Rynok khlebov, pp. 48–49 Google Scholar; and Prokopovich, S. N., Voina i narodnoe khosiaistvo (Moscow, 1917), pp. 130–42 Google Scholar.

95. Sidorov, , Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii, pp. 490–91Google Scholar.

96. After this study was completed a new essay on the Zemstvo Union in World War I has come to my attention. Presented at the Stanford Conference on “The Zemstvo: An Experiment in Local Self-Government” on April 14-15, 1978, William Gleason's paper significantly revises the position he originally took in his dissertation. Using police records in the Soviet archives (which are the only sources for tracing the growth of hostility between the Union's gentry leadership and the professional specialists serving the Union), Professor Gleason now emphasizes the social tensions within the Union. The article should appear in a book to be published in the future, under the editorship of Wayne S. Vucinich. Professor Gleason and I now agree that the Union truly represented a source of opposition to the autocracy, but we disagree over the extent to which it exploited its potential for subverting the regime. He questions why the Union failed to employ tactics such as work-stoppage or strikes to assault the state, and insists that Lvov refused “to use the organization for partisan ends.” I am grateful to Professor Gleason for showing the conflicts within the Union, something which my own sources were unable to reveal, but I disagree with his assumption that the mundane aspects of running the war effort were divorced from high politics. For more on the political potential underlying the public's organization of the war effort, see my review of E. D. Chermenskii's recent book on the Fourth Duma in Kritika, Winter 1978, especially pp. 71-72.