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Tony Cliff

Russia: A Marxist analysis

Chapter I:
Socio-economic relations in Stalinist Russia
(Part 3)

The expropriation of the peasantry

The October Revolution expropriated the big landlords, the Church and the monarchy. The rural bourgeoisie – the kulaks – were not expropriated, and during the NEP period not only did the kulaks thrive, but many new ones rose out of the middle peasantry. The kulaks, together with the private merchants, exploited the rural poor. Private capitalism continued to rule agriculture until 1928.

Collectivisation changed the situation fundamentally. We shall not discuss the effect of collectivisation on the class differentiation among the agriculturalists, but shall deal with only the following question: How did collectivisation affect the total income received by the agricultural sector of the economy? The most important factor to deal with in answering this question is the influence collectivisation had on the state’s cut out of agriculture, that is, its influence on obligatory deliveries: taxes, payment for work done by Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) and government flour mills. Obligatory deliveries are taxes in kind, in fact if not in name, for the prices paid to the kolkhoz are extremely low. In 1935, the price fixed for obligatory delivery of oats, which the government was re-selling retail for 55-100 kopeks per kilogram, was 4-6 kopeks per kilogram. The figures for rye were 60-100 kopeks and 4.6-6.9 kopeks respectively. The retail price of farina (of poor quality) was 60-70 times the price at which wheat was bought. [128] The price paid for other agricultural products was equally niggardly, and, since then, the differences have become greater. “The government still pays producers about 10 kopeks per kilogram for delivered wheat, while – since the fall of 1946 – charging the consumer 13 roubles for a kilogram of wheat flour (probably of 85 per cent extraction), more than 100 times as much in terms of grain.” [129]

Secondly, the state receives a considerable proportion of the product as payment in kind for services rendered by the MTS. As the MTS have a monopoly of the supply of agricultural equipment, they are able to charge high rates for its use.

The following table shows how the grain produced by the kolkhozes was disposed of in 1938 (in percentages) [130]:

Not only this, but the state also – again these are 1938 figures – appropriated the following exceedingly large shares [131]:

These figures may be compared with the frugal share of the kolkhozniks themselves in the output of their so-called “collectively-owned” farms (1937) [132]:

At the same time the kolkhozniks have been compelled to work harder and harder on the collective farms, as is shown by the following figures [133]:

As far as the length of the labour-day in the kolkhoz is concerned, it is no shorter than it was under the tsars. At that time it was 14 hours for agricultural workers, whilst for horses it was only 11 hours and for oxen 10 hours. [134]

A government decree of 1 August 1940, lays down that during harvest the work-day in kolkhozes, sovkhozes and MTS should begin at five or six in the morning and end at sunset. Again, a pamphlet describing the work of a kolkhoz chairman in an exemplary kolkhoz stated that in spring and at harvest-time the working day was 15 hours, exclusive of meal times. [135] A current Russian textbook cites the following time-tables as models:

1. “For spring sowing and harvest periods, work starts at 4 a.m.; break for breakfast from 8 to 9 a.m., break for dinner from 1 to 3 p.m.; work till ... 10 p.m.” [136]
2. “For harvest, work is from 5.30 a.m. to 9 p.m.” (breaks not given). [137]
3. Stablemen looking after horses appear to have to work from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m., or possibly midnight in winter, and from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. in summer. [138]
4. Dairymaids ... start work at 4.30 a.m. and finish at 8 p.m. all the year round, with breaks of one and a half hours a day [139], and even larger spreadovers are cited elsewhere.
   (By the way, the norm demands that dairymaids work the full 365 days a year.) [140]
5. Hours at a pig farm are from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., with two breaks of 2 hours each. [141]

It is interesting to note that in his book, The Agrarian Question in Russia at the End of the Nineteenth Century (1908), Lenin wrote: “The horseless and one-horse peasants [i.e., the very poor peasants] pay in the form of taxes one-seventh and one-tenth respectively of their gross expenditure. It is doubtful whether serf dues were as high as that ...” [142] The agricultural toilers in the “Socialist Fatherland” pay much more than that!

Collectivisation not only transformed those who came into industry into proletarians, but also those who remained in agriculture. The overwhelming majority of agriculturalists are in reality, if not in theory, people who do not own means of production; indeed, we should have less justification in calling the Russian agriculturalists of today owners of means of production, then the serfs of the nineteenth century.

Collectivisation has resulted in the freeing of agricultural products for the needs of industrial development, the “freeing” of the peasantry from its means of production, the transformation of a section of them into reserves of labour power for industry, and the transformation of the rest into part-workers, part-peasants, part-serfs in the kolkhozes.

Similar general results, although different in some important particulars, were achieved by the English bourgeoisie in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the eviction of the peasantry from the land. Marx called this process “primitive accumulation”. [G] He wrote: “The history of this ... is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.” [143]

Much more blood flowed during the primitive accumulation in Russia than in Britain. Stalin accomplished in a few hundred days what Britain took a few hundred years to do. The scale on which he did it and the success with which he carried it out completely dwarf the actions of the Duchess of Sutherland. They bear stern witness to the superiority of a modern industrial economy concentrated in the hands of the state, under the direction of a ruthless bureaucracy.

Engels’ prognosis about the future of primitive accumulation in Russia has been fully realised, although in circumstances different from what he imagined. In a letter to Danielson, dated 24 February 1893, he wrote:

The circumstances of Russia being the last country seized upon by the capitalist grande industrie, and at the same time the country with by far the largest peasant population, are such as must render the bouleversement (upheaval) caused by this economic change more acute than it has been anywhere else. The process of replacing some 500,000 pomeshchiki (landowners) and some eighty million peasants by a new class of bourgeois landed proprietors cannot be carried out but under fearful sufferings and convulsions. But history is about the most cruel of all goddesses, and she leads her triumphal car over heaps of corpses, not only in war, but also in ‘peaceful’ economic development. [144]

Chapter 1 Index

The turnover tax

Since 1930 the main contribution to capital investment and defence has been from the turnover tax. As M. Dobb writes: “Indeed we can trace a fairly close correlation, as one might expect, between the mounting curve of expenditure on investment and defence over the decade and the mounting revenue from the turnover tax. In 1932 revenue from this tax, as we have seen, was just over 17 milliard. The combined figure for expenditure out of the budget for defence and for financing the national economy was 25 milliard. In 1934 the two figures were respectively 37 and 37; in 1938 they were 80 and 75; in 1939 they were 91 and 100; in 1940 they were 106 and 113; and in the 1941 estimates they were 124 and 144 (the widened gap in this year being approximately covered by an increase in taxed profits).” [145]

The turnover tax is the most important single source of Russian state revenue. It makes up the following proportions of the total government income (excluding loans) [146]:

The turnover tax is similar to the British purchase tax, being levied upon commodities at the time of fabrication and upon government obligatory purchase of agricultural products from the peasants. It is included in the price of the commodity, and so paid to the full by the consumer. The tax is imposed almost solely on agricultural products and on the consumer goods’ industries, as can be seen from the following table regarding the proportion of different industries in total output and in government revenue from turnover tax (1939) [147]:

Thus we find that in 1939 almost 90 per cent of the turnover tax revenue came from impositions on food and consumer goods.

Since the turnover tax is not added to the selling price but is included in it in advance, a turnover tax of, say, 50 per cent actually increases the price of the commodity by 100 per cent; a turnover tax of 75 per cent raises the prices by 300 per cent, and a 90 per cent tax results in a tenfold increase in the actual price. Thus must be borne in mind when examining the following figures regarding the rate of turnover tax [148]:

The retrogressive nature of this tax is shown by the fact that while it falls lightly on cars (a mere 2 per cent), radio sets (25 per cent) and caviare (40 per cent), it bears down heavily on wheat (73-74 per cent), salt (70-80 per cent), sugar (73 per cent), laundry soap (61-71 per cent) and cigarettes (75-88 per cent). In the light of these facts it is rather surprising to read the following statement of M. Dobb, in which he talks of the turnover tax: “it was a means of ensuring that the bulk of the price-rise should be concentrated on luxuries or non-essentials and as little as possible on necessities. This was done by rating the tax on turnover different for different commodities, the differences ranging from 1 or 2 per cent up to nearly 100 per cent.” ... “the tax has the effect of a progressive general expenditure tax – a progressive tax on income when it is spent.” [149] And again: “The higher rates of tax are apt to be on luxury goods, since these tend to be in particularly scarce supply. The general effect of the differential rating apparently is, therefore, to cause the price structure to discriminate against non-essentials (and hence to make real differences of income smaller than an inspection of money differences would lead one at first sight to suppose).” [150]

To gauge the real burden imposed by the turnover tax upon consumers it will be useful to examine simultaneously the total amount of turnover tax and the corresponding net retail turnover [151]:

The turnover tax, being an indirect, retrogressive tax, openly contradicts the original programme of the Bolshevik Party. Even the Minimum Programme of the Bolsheviks, that is, a programme that could be realised under capitalism, called for the “abolition of all indirect taxation, and the establishment of a progressive tax on incomes and inheritance.” [H] [152] The Eleventh Party Congress (1922) declared that: “Taxation policy must aim at regulating the process of accumulating resources by means of direct taxation of property, incomes, etc. Taxation policy is the principal instrument of the revolutionary policy of the proletariat in a transitional epoch.” [153] To solve the contradictions between precept and practice, the authorities have ceased to call the turnover taxes taxes at all. Jasny has pointed out that the 1935 year-book listed the turnover taxes among taxes [154], but in the next edition of the same year-book the turnover taxes were detached from the item “income from taxes”. [155] This change is terminology enabled the Minister of Finance of USSR to declare before the Supreme Soviet: “It is known that the overwhelming part of the revenues of the Soviet budget is composed of payments by the national economy. In 1939 the total sum of taxes from the population amounted to 6.5 milliard roubles, which made up only 4.2 per cent of all budgetary incomes.” [156]

Chapter 1 Index

The subordination of man to property

Article 6 of the Soviet Constitution states that: “The land, its deposits, waters, forests, mills, factories, mines, railways, water and air transport, means of communication, large state-organised form enterprises (state farms, machine-tractor stations, etc.) and also the basic housing facilities in cities and industrial localities are state property, that is, the wealth of the whole people.”

It is odd that although the people thus, through the state, own the country’s wealth, the Russian state should go to such extraordinary lengths to defend this wealth from them!

Under a law of 7 August 1932, On the Protection of the Property of State Enterprises, Collective Farms and Co-operatives and Institutions of Socialist Property, the theft of property belonging to the state, kolkhozes and co-operatives and theft on the railways or waterways, became punishable by death by shooting, accompanied by the confiscation of all property. If there were extenuating circumstances, the penalty incurred was imprisonment for not less then ten years and confiscation of all property. [157] Stalin christened this law “the foundation of revolutionary legality.” [158]

In point of fact this law was seldom applied in cases of minor theft. Therefore, when the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR passed a decree on 4 June 1947, on Protection of Citizens’ Private Property, the first article of which reads [159]: “Theft – that is, covert or open appropriation of the private property of citizens – in punishable by confinement in a reformatory labour camp for a period of five to six years. Theft committed by a gang of thieves or for a second time is punishable by confinement at a reformatory labour camp for a period of six to ten years” [160], any mitigation of severity in dealing with crimes against property was more apparent than real.

On the same day the Presidium also passed a decree on Embezzlement of State and Public Property, which included the following articles:

1. Theft, appropriation, defalcation or other embezzlement of state property is punishable by confinement in a reformatory labour camp for seven to ten years, with or without confiscation of property.

2. Embezzlement of state property for a second time, as well as when committed by an organised group or on a large scale, is punishable by confinement in a reformatory labour camp for ten to twenty years, with confiscation of property.

3. Theft, appropriation, defalcation or other embezzlement of collective farm, co-operative or other public property is punishable by confinement in a reformatory labour camp for five to eight years, with or without confiscation of property.

4. Embezzlement of collective farm, co-operative or other public property for a second time, as well as that committed by an organised group or gang or on a large scale, is punishable by confinement in a reformatory labour camp for eight to twenty years, with confiscation of property. [161]

A month later the Public Prosecutor’s Office gave ten examples of how the decrees were being carried out:

1. In the city of Saratov, V.F. Yudin, who had been previously convicted for theft ... stole fish from a smoke factory. On 24 June 1947 ... Yudin was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment in corrective-labour camps.

2. On 11 June 1947, an electrician on the power lines of the Moscow-Riazan railroad, D.A. Kiselov, stole fur goods from a railroad car ... On 24 June 1947, the war tribunal of the Moscow-Riazan railroad sentenced D.V. Kiselov to ten years’ imprisonment in the corrective-labour camps.

3. In the town of Pavlov-Posad, in the Moscow region, L.N. Markelov ... stole clothing from the Pavlov-Posad textile factory. On 20 June 1947 ... Markelov was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment in corrective-labour camps.

4. In the Rodnikov district of the Ivanov region, Y.V. Smirnov and V.V. Smirnov ... stole 375 pounds of oats from a kolkhoz. On 26 June 1947 ... both were sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment in corrective-labour camps.

5. In the Kirov district of Moscow, E.K. Smirnov, a chauffeur, was arrested for stealing 22 pounds of bread from a bakery. The people’s court ... sentenced E.K. Smirnov to seven years’ imprisonment in corrective-labour camps.

6. In Saratov, E.I. Gordeyev ... stole various products from a warehouse. On 21 June 1947 ... Gordeyev was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in corrective-labour camps.

7. In Kuibyshev, E.T. Poluboyarov stole a wallet from a train traveller ... On 4 July he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in corrective-labour camps.

8. On 7 June 1947, in Kazan, at the kolkhoz market, W.E. Bukin snatched money from the hand of Citizeness Pustinsky ... On 20 June 1947 ... Bukin was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment in corrective-labour camps.

9. On 6 June 1947, in the village of Subovka in the Kutuzovsk district of the Kuibyshev region, A.A. Chubarkin and V.G. Morozov stole from a cellar 88 pounds of potatoes belonging to Citizeness Presnyakov. On 17 June 1947 ... both were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in corrective-labour camps.

10. On 5 June 1947, in Moscow ... K.V. Greenwald, who had been previously convicted for theft, took advantage of the absence of his neighbour, entered the room of Citizeness Kovalev and stole various household articles ... Greenwald was sentenced ... to ten years’ imprisonment in corrective-labour camps. [162]

That the severity of this branch of Soviet law is in marked contrast to the relative leniency with which murder, kidnapping, and other violent forms of crime, are dealt with, is highly significant. It becomes clear that, in Stalinist Russia, the individual is rated much lower than property.

Thus the Criminal Law of RSFSR lays it down that:

Art. 136. Premeditated murder, if committed: (a) for mercenary motives, for jealousy (unless covered by Art. 138) or from any other base incentive, (b) by a person who has already been tried for premeditated murder or for inflicting grievous bodily harm, and his undergone the measure of social defence imposed by the court, (c) in a manner endangering the life of many people or causing extreme suffering to the victim, (d) with the aim of facilitating or concealing some other serious crime, (e) by a person who had a particular responsibility for the victim’s welfare, (f) by taking advantage of the helpless condition of the victim, entails – deprivation of liberty for a period of up to ten years.

Art. 137. Premeditated murder, if not committed in any of the circumstances described in Art. 136, entails – deprivation of liberty for a period of up to eight years.

Art. 138. Premeditated murder committed under the sudden impulse of strong emotional excitement aroused by violence or gross insult on the part of the deceased, entails – deprivation of liberty for a period of up to five years, or forced labour for a period of up to one year. [163]

Some of the other punishments laid down for violent crimes against persons are:

Art. 147. Unlawfully depriving any person of liberty by the use of force, entails – deprivation of liberty or forced labour for a period of up to one year.

Depriving any person of liberty by any method endangering the life or health of the victim of causing him physical suffering entails – deprivation of liberty for a period of up to two years.

Art. 148. Placing a person known to be of sound mind in an asylum for mercenary or other personal motives, entails – deprivation of liberty for a period of up to three years.

Art. 149. Kidnapping, concealment or exchanging of another person’s child for mercenary motives, out of revenge, or with any other personal object, entails – deprivation of liberty for a period of up to three years. [164]

This religion of property-worship subjects even the weakest members of the community – children – to it. As we have seen, the maximum punishment of kidnapping a child, is a mere three years imprisonment, whereas the punishment meted out to a child for stealing is much greater. Although Stalinist law, in its dealings with juvenile delinquents, accounts children of twelve to be mature and fully responsible for their offences, in civil affairs they are rated as only children. For instance, the Code of Laws on Marriage, Family and Guardianship of RSFSR, declared: “Guardians shall be appointed for minors who have not reached the age of fourteen years.” [165] And again: “Curators shall be appointed over minors who are between the ages of fourteen and eighteen years.” [166]

And yet, on 7 April 1935, a law was promulgated which abolished juvenile courts. “With the aim of the quickest liquidation of criminality amongst minors,” it stated that “the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars decree: (1) Young people from twelve years of age caught at theft, violence, infliction of bodily injury, mutilation, homicide, or attempts at homicide, are to be brought before the criminal law courts and punished in accordance with all measures of the Criminal Code.” [167] (Apparently capital punishment was still prohibited for those under eighteen, since Article 22 of the Code, which covered this point, was nor cancelled.)

This law was soon put into effect, as witnesses Izvestia, which on 29 May 1935, made it known that in a little more than two weeks a special tribunal had already distributed many years of imprisonment to sixty “young bandits”. [168] In some cases the hand of the law was even heavier, imposing the death sentence on youths. Thus, two weeks after the promulgation of the terrible law against juvenile delinquents, a Moscow court sentenced a youth convicted of robbery in a train to death. [169]

The official apologia for using such harsh measures, namely, the doubling of the number of cases of juvenile delinquency in Moscow between 1931 and 1934 [170], is no justification, and certainly belies the legend about the “victory of socialism” and the “prosperous and happy life of the people”.

In 1940, the law of 1935 was extended to include children of twelve or over who commit acts endangering railway traffic, such as loosening rails, placing objects on the rails, and so on. The decree of 31 May 1941 [171], expressly states that the law of 1935 applies not only to deliberate offences, but to offences due to negligence as well.

On 15 June 1943, the government ordered the establishment of special reformatory colonies under the NKVD for confinement without juridical procedure of children from 11 to 16 years of age, who are vagrants, have committed larceny, and such-like minor offences. [172] There is evidence that children are also to be found among the grown-up inmates of slave camps. Dallin writes that “the Zakamensk Camp in Eastern Siberia has a considerable number of children from the Moscow region among its internees, boys and girls sentenced for criminal offences. They work in mines and nearby industrial plants.” [173]

All that has been said above serves as a new illustration of the statement of Marx: “Law as well as crime, i.e., the struggle of the isolated individual against dominant relationships has an origin which is not purely arbitrary. On the contrary, crime is rooted in the same conditions, as the governing power existing at the time.” [174] In Stalin’s Russia the concept of the nature of crime, and the punishments meted out to the offenders, are rooted in the subordination of humanity to property, of labour to capital, that is, in the basic contradiction propelling the bureaucratic state capitalist order.

Chapter 1 (cont’d)

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Footnotes

E. This includes the remuneration of the administrative apparatus. According to an article by A. Teraeva, Organisational-Economic Strengthening of Unified Kolkhozes, Voprosy Ekonomiki, 1950, No.12, the payments to the administrative apparatus, taking into account the size of the kolkhoz, made up the following proportions of all trudodni: kolkhozes with up to 20,000 trudodni, 8 per cent; 20-35 thousand, 7 per cent; 35-55 thousand, 6 per cent; 55-75 thousand, 5 per cent; 75-100 thousand, 4 per cent; over 100 thousand, 3 per cent.

F. Trudoden – literally, a workday but actually used as an abstract unit of kolkhoz labour. One day of the most unskilled labour equals one half a trudoden, a day of the most highly skilled labour equals two and a half trudodni.

G. In one fundamental point the process connected with collectivisation is dissimilar to the process which took place in Britain. In Britain the eviction of the peasants created a surplus of agricultural products which was sold in the towns. In Russia the overwhelming majority of the surplus of agricultural products is appropriated by the government as taxes without anything being given in exchange.

H. Below in this chapter, we deal with the present income and inheritance taxes in Russia.

References

128. N. Jasny, The Socialised Agriculture of USSR, op. cit., pp.374-375.

129. ibid., p.375.

130. A. Arina, Kolkhozes in 1938, Sotsialisticheskoe Selskokhoziaistvo (monthly organ of the Commissariat of Agriculture), Moscow 1939, No.12.

131. Arina, op. cit. and Jasny, The Socialised Agriculture of USSR, op. cit., p.684.

132. T.L. Basyuk, The Organisation of Kolkhoz Production (Russian), Moscow 1946, pp.272-273.

133. Prokopovicz, op. cit., p.164.

134. F. Semenov, A. Pankratova and others, The Proletariat in the Revolution of 1905-1907 (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1930, p.232.

135. M..P.Osadko (ed.) Problems of Organisation of Kolkhoz Production (Russian), Moscow 1945, p.94.

136. ibid.

137. ibid., p.95.

138. ibid., p.191.

139. ibid., p.201.

140. ibid., p.212.

141. ibid., p.217.

142. V.I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol.I, p.179.

143. K. Marx, Capital, New York, Modern Library n.d.. Vol.I, p.193.

144. K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, London 1941, pp.509-510.

145. M. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development since 1917, London 1948, p.364.

146. A.K. Sochkov (ed.), Revenues of the State Budget of USSR (Russian), Moscow 1945, p.14; Plotkinov, op. cit., pp.17, 26, 102, 181, 259; N.N. Rovinsky, The State Budget of USSR (Russian), Moscow 1950, p.393; The National Economy of USSR 1950 (Russian). Moscow 1950, p.393; The National Economy of USSR 1951 (Russian), Moscow 1951, p.337; Planovoe Khoziaistvo 1952, No.2, p.20.

147. Suchkov, op. cit., p.16.

148. N. Jasny, The Soviet Price System, Stanford 1951, pp.164-165.

149. M. Dobb, Soviet Planning and Labour in Peace and War, London 1942, pp.61-62.

150. M. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development since 1917, op. cit., pp.371-372.

151. Prokopovicz, op. cit., p.316; Bolshevik No.12, 1950.

152. AUCP in Resol., Moscow 1932, 4th ed. Vol.I, p.22.

153. ibid., p.506.

154. Socialist Construction, 1935, p.644; Jasny, The Soviet Price System, op. cit., p.78.

155. Socialist Construction, 1936, pp.646-647; Jasny, ibid..

156. Zverev, op. cit., p.43.

157. Coll. Laws USSR 1932, No.62, Article 360.

158. J.V. Stalin, Works (Russian), Vol.VIII, p.209.

159. This extract and the following two are quoted from Gluckstein, op. cit., pp.93-95.

160. Pravda, 5 June 1947.

161. ibid..

162. Pravda, 9 July 1947.

163. Criminal Code of RSFSR (Russian), Moscow 1937, pp.70-71.

164. ibid., p.74.

165. Code of Laws on Marriage, Family and Guardianship of RSFSR (Russian), Moscow 1948, p.19, Article 69.

166. ibid., p.19, Article 70.

167. Coll. Laws USSR 1935, No.19, Article 155.

168. Quoted by M. Yvon, L’URSS, telle qu’elle est, Paris 1938, p.243.

169. Vecherniaia Moskva, 19 April 1935, in N.S. Timasheff, The Great Retreat, New York 1946, p.325.

170. See Sovetskaia Ustitsiia, 1935, No.10. Quoted by Timasheff, op. cit., p.321.

171. Supreme Soviet USSR Gazette, 1941, No.25.

172. I.T. Goliakov (ed.) Criminal Law (Russian) 3rd ed. 1943, p.137. Quoted by Gsovski, op. cit. Vol.I, p.122.

173. Dallin and Nicolaevsky, op. cit., p.84.

174. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works (Russian), Vol.IV, p.312.

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