100th anniversary of the war with the peasantry in Russia

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the bright light of Victory Day, May 9, 1945, another thing remained in the shadows May 9 - a tragic day in our history. On this day 100 years ago, in 1918, signed by Sverdlov and Lenin, a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars was adopted "On granting the People's Commissar of Food extraordinary powers to fight the village bourgeoisie, hiding grain reserves and speculating them," "Or" The Decree on the Food Dictatorship."

The decree became the official declaration of war on the Russian peasantry, the declaration of the Civil War in Russia, the beginning of the First Russian Holocaust. The essence of the decree is that the peasants were obliged virtually freesurrender grain surplus to the state, and the amount of "surplus" was determined by the state itself, releasing the grain procurement figures to the provinces. Provisional appropriation (state monopoly on the grain trade) was introduced at the end of 1916 by the Tsar's government and continued by the Provisional Government, but it obliged the peasants sellpart of the harvest at fixed prices, and not give away for free.

Since the peasants refused to give away grain for free, it was taken from them by force - at first with the help of the kombedi (committees of the peasant poor, i.e., rural lumpen). It was a clever move to set one part of the villagers against the others. However, it soon became clear that the commissars did not so much procure grain as rob the working peasants (the "village bourgeoisie"). Then armed food detachments were sent to the villages, mainly led by foreigners, who, according to the order, and where and on their own initiative, confiscated bread in such quantities that not only did not leave the seed supply, but often doomed the peasants to starvation - this is the main the cause of the famine of 1921 - 1923, which took away more than 5 million people, and not at all a poor harvest in the Volga region. Concealment of bread was punishable by arrest, torture, and even execution.

One of the many thousands of examples shows how the surplus proceeds: “… a detachment with a machine gun arrested and imprisoned several peasants in cold barns, imposed monetary fines on them, gave them half an hour of time to think, after which the defaulter must be shot. One woman, having no money, was in a hurry to sell her last horse in order to rescue an innocent husband from arrest, and did not have time to appear at the appointed time, for which her husband was shot (from the statement of the Nikolsky volost council of peasant deputies of the Penza province).

The peasants responded to the violence with uprisings that flared up throughout the Bolshevik-controlled Russia. So, long before the speeches of Denikin, Yudenich and Kolchak, the Bolsheviks unleashed a civil war, about which, back in December 1917, Lenin's closest ally Trotsky said: “Our party is for the Civil War! The civil war needs bread. Long live the Civil War! " The war cost, according to various estimates, from 13 to 19 million victims, not counting the millions of street children-orphans, many of whom in the future joined the "army" of criminals.

Leninist adherents continue to assert that the Bolshevik surplus appropriation system (it was an integral part of war communism) was a forced measure, because: a) Ukraine became an independent state, in connection with which the RSFSR lost grain reserves, b) devastation began in the country, industry stopped, the peasants there was nothing to buy with the money earned from the sale of grain, and therefore they hid the grain, c) finally, the money itself was rapidly depreciating (inflation sometimes reached a thousand percent a day), and therefore for the peasants the only equivalent of money was bread, which they did not want sell for "Sovznaki".

This explanation is deceit. First, the Bolsheviks themselves actively contributed to the disintegration of the Russian Army, to "fraternization" with the Germans, to "peace without annexations and indemnities" and, consequently, to the defeat of Russia in the World War, the advance of the German army to the east and its capture of Ukraine. Even before the October Revolution, they shouted at all corners about the "right of nations to self-determination, right up to secession," and they should only blame themselves for the loss of the Ukrainian food base.

Secondly, industry did not stop by itself, it was stopped by the Bolsheviks. Having nationalized industry (including even small workshops), they overnight destroyed all production ties between enterprises and industries, and most importantly, they expelled the "bourgeois" leading cadres and replaced them with Bolsheviks, who did not know how to manage anything at all.

Thirdly, following their "textbooks", the Bolsheviks completely abolished private trade, counting on the state exchange of goods between town and country. Even when famine began in the cities, they waged a merciless struggle against the peasants (they were called "bagmen"), who tried to exchange their food for the household items of the townspeople.

Fourthly, inflation was caused not by the peasants, but again by the Bolsheviks. According to all the same "textbooks" of theirs, they abolished money altogether and temporarily (until a direct product exchange was established) introduced unsecured "sovznaks" that were printed without restrictions and which had no value.

Fifth, the peasants sharply reduced their crops: why sow if the Reds come and take everything away?

The introduction of war communism (part of which was also the introduction of labor service and even labor armies; the question of socializing wives and children has not yet been officially raised) was not at all a forced measure. This communism strictly corresponded to the tenets of Marxism and was planned long before 1917. It was only later, as if for justification, the word "military" was added to it. The forced measure, just, was its cancellation ("seriously and for a long time, but not forever"), forced only because the incessant popular uprisings - not only peasants, but also urban ones - brought the Bolshevik government to the brink of collapse.

In 1921, Lenin, justifying the introduction of the NEP, wrote: "The layout was the most accessible measure for an insufficiently organized state to hold out in an unheard-of difficult war against the landlords" (PSS, vol. 44, p. 7). Considering that at the beginning of May 1918 there was not only "unheard of difficult", but also no war against the landowners at all, the only truth in these words is a veiled recognition of the inability to run the state.

The Bolsheviks retreated, but "not forever." The NEP was just a respite for them, and the peasantry was still a thorn in the eye, since in its hands was private property (the products of its labor), which means it still remained "bourgeois", it still remained the main enemy of Marxist communism. The Bolsheviks dealt with the big Russian bourgeoisie quickly (those who did not have time to escape were shot or imprisoned, moreover, they were very tolerant of the bourgeois foreigners), therefore the fight against the "petty bourgeois" peasantry remained one of their main tasks. And they resumed it in 1929, starting collectivization - the Second Russian Holocaust.

There was one more, no less important reason for the extermination of the peasantry as an estate. Lenin and all his "guards", including ethnic Russians like Bukharin, were Russophobic internationalists. Their plans included the creation of a World Republic of Soviets, without borders, and in the future - without national differences, or, in modern terms, globalization by military-revolutionary methods (the Polish adventure of 1920 had precisely these roots). These plans were hampered by the national consciousness of the Russian people and, consequently, it had to be suppressed. And since the most massive bearer of national self-awareness was the Russian peasantry, it was necessary first of all to de-nationalize it, driving it into communes and collective farms.

All 70 years of its power, excluding only a few years of the NEP, the Communist Party fought with the peasantry, not one step away from the "omnipotent doctrine." Only the methods of de-peasantization changed. Collectivization turned peasants into serfs. Collective farmers were deprived of passports, worked for sticks in magazines (workdays), their household plots were sharply limited and were subject to huge taxes.

After 25 - 30 years, small indulgences began, but the peasants did not become the owners of the land. Regional and district committees continued to dictate to the collective farms what, how much and when to sow, and they strictly asked for the backlog, now in the sowing, now in the harvesting area, now in the removal of manure to the fields. Collective farms were transformed into state farms, state farms - and agro-cities, "unpromising" villages were liquidated - and all this in order to exterminate the private ownership instinct. The dogmatism of party ideology was also skillfully used by disguised Russophobes, such as Academician Zaslavskaya, the chief theoretician of the liquidation of "unpromising" villages.

As a result, the peasant left the land, but did not reach the city, as a result, the peasant did not give a damn about everything (let the bosses think!), As a result, the peasant began to drink ten times more than under the 1963 began to buy grain abroad.

And today, although ideological banners are fluttering in the opposite direction, the extermination of the peasantry, more precisely, its remnants, continues, only other ways - usurious loans and fabulous prices for fertilizers, equipment and fuel.

As you know, Russians are "the most rebellious people in the world" (A. Dalles). And, as you know, the peasantry is the most conservative part of this people, and therefore the least susceptible to denationalization. That is why the Russian peasantry is being destroyed as an estate, that is why fertile fields are overgrown with weeds, and that is why they have filled the country with cheap imported poison.

Let's put aside urban arrogance, take off our caps in front of the Russian Peasant! And in the Patriotic War of 1612, and in the Patriotic War of 1812, and in the Great Patriotic War, he saved Russia. Will the peasant withstand the current Patriotic War …